346 



NATURE 



\Aug. 22, 1872 



our feet, and beyond was the silver lake, the Tanganyika, and 

 beyond the broad belt of water towered the darkly-purpled 

 mountains of Ugoma and Ukaramba. 



"The connection between the Tanganyika and the Albert 

 Nyanzi was a subject of interest to all geographers before I went 

 to Central Africa. Livingstone even was almost sure that the 

 Albert Nyanza vras no more than a lower Tanganyika, and 

 indeed he had very good reason for believing so. He had per- 

 ceived a constant (low northward. All the Arabs and natives 

 persisted in declaring that the Rusizi ran out of the Lake 

 Tanganyika. Before I arrived at Ujiji he had never been to tlie 

 north end of the Tanganyika. As we hugged the coast of Uj'ji 

 and Uriindi, looking sharply to every little inlet and creek for 

 the outlet that was said to be somewhere in a day's pulling, we 

 would pass by from fifteen to twenty miles of country. It took 

 us ten days' hard pulling to reach the head of the lake, a distance 

 of nearly 100 geographical miles from Ujiji. Two days sufficed 

 forthecoastof Ujiji, theremainingeightwewere coasting along the 

 bold shores of Urundi, which gradually inclined to the eastward, 

 the western ranges, ever bold and high, looking like a huge blue- 

 blaclv barrier some thirty miles west of us, to all appearances 

 impenetrable and impass,ible. Only two miles from shnre I 

 sounded, and rhough I let down 6.:o !eet of line I found n'l 

 botiom. Livingstone sounded when crossing tlie Tanganyika 

 from the westward, and f miul no bottom witli 1,800 feet of line. 

 The evening before we saw the Rusizi a freedman of Zanzibar 

 was asked which way the river ran — out of the lake or into it ? 

 The man swore tliat he hr.d been on the river but the day before, 

 and that it ran out of the lake. I thought the news too good 

 to be true. I should ceitainly have preferred that the river ran 

 out of the lake into either the Victoria or the Albert. Living- 

 stone and I resolved, if it flowed into the Victoria Nyanza, to 

 proceed with it to ihat lake, and I hen strike south to Unyam- 

 yembe, and, if it Aovvl;! into the .Mljerl Lake, to proceed nuo 

 the Albert and cruise al! round it, in tlie hope of meeting liaker. 

 Ju«' after d.irk we started, and in the morning we ariived at 

 Muighewa, and sUirted for the mou;h of the river. In about 

 fifteen minutes we were eii'ering a little bay alxut a mile wide, 

 and saw before us to llie north a dense brake of papyrus and 

 mitete cane. Until we were clo;e to tliis brake we could not 

 detect the slightest opening for a river such as we imagined the 

 Rusizi to be. We followed some canoes w^hich were disappear- 

 ing mysteriously and suspiciously through some gaps in the 

 dtrnse brake. Pulling boldly up, we foimd ourselves in what 

 aftei wards proved to be ihe central mouth of the river. All 

 d'lubt as to what the Rusizi was vanished at once and for ever 

 before that strong brown flood, which tasked our exertions to 

 the utmost as we pulled up. I once doubted, as I seized an oar, 

 th.it we should ever be able to ascend ; but, after a hard quarter 

 of an hour's pulling, the river broadened, and a lit'le higher up 

 we saw it widen into lagoons on either side. The alluvial plain 

 through which the river makes its exit into the lake is about 

 twelve miles wide, and narrows into a point after a length of 

 fifteen miles, or a narrow valley folded in by the eastern and 

 western ranges, which here meet at a distance of a couple of 

 miles. The western ranije, which inclines to the eastward, halts 

 abruptly, and a portion of it runs sharply north-westward, while 

 the ca^tei'n range inclines westward, and aficr over-lapping the 

 westernr.angeshootsoff north-westward, where it is lostamida per- 

 fect jumble of mountains. The chief K-ubinga, living at Mugihewa, 

 said that the Rusizi rose from the Lake Kivo, a lake fifteen miles 

 in length and about eight in breadth. Kwansibura wasthe chief 

 of the district in North-eastern Urundi, which gives its name to 

 the lake. Through a gap in a mountain tlie river Rusizi escaped 

 out of Lake Kivo. On leaving Kivo Lake it is called Kwange- 

 regere ; it then runs through the district of Unyambungu, and 

 lie onies known as the Rusizi or Lusizi. A day's march fioni 

 Mugihewa, or say twenty miles north of ihe mouih, it is joined by 

 the Luanda, or Ruanda, flowing from a north-westerly diiection, 

 from which I gather that the river Luanda is called a'ter the 

 name of the country — Ruanda, said to be famous for its copper 

 mines. Bes des the Luanda, there are seventeen other sUeams 

 which contributed to the Rusizi ; thtse are the Mpanda, 

 Karindwa, Wa Kanigi, Kagiiiissi, Kaburan, Mohira, Niamagana, 

 Nya Kagunda, Ruviro, Rofuba, Kavimvira, Mujove, Ruhuhha. 

 Mukindu, Sange, Rubirizi, Kiriba. Usige, a district of Urun(5i 

 occupying the head of the lake, extends two marches into the 

 north, or thirty miles ; after which comes what is called Urundi 

 Proper for another two days' march ; and direcily north of 

 that is Ruanda, a very large country, almost equal in size to 



Urundi. Rubinga had been six days to the northward. There 

 were some in his tribe who had gone farther ; but from no one 

 could we obtain any intelligence of a lake or a large body of 

 water, such as the Albert Nyanza, being to the north. .Sir 

 •Samuel Baker has sketched the lake as being within one degree 

 north of the Tanganyika ; but it is obvious that i's length is not 

 so great as it is represented, thoug'i it might extend thirty or forty 

 miles south of Vacovia. Ruanda, as represented to us by 

 Rubinga, Mokaml^a, chiefs of Usige, and their elders, is an ex- 

 ceedingly mountainous country with extensive copper mines. It 

 occupies that whole district north of Urundi Proper between 

 Mutumbi on the west and Urundi on the east, and Ita'-a north- 

 east. Of the countries lying north of Ruand.i we could obtain no 

 information. West of Urundi is the extreme frontier of Man- 

 yueiiia, which even here has been heard of. In returning to Ujiji, 

 after the satisfactory solution of the river Rusizi, we coasted down 

 the western shore of the Tanganyika, and came to Uvira at noon 

 on the following day. We were shown the sandy beach on 

 which the canoes of Burton and .Speke had rested. Above, a 

 little south of this, rises the lofty peak of Sumburizi, fully 4,500 

 feet above the level of the lake. Mruti, the chief of Uvira, still 

 lives in the village he occupied when Burton and Speke visited 

 his doiuiuions. A day's march, or fifteen miles to.i'h of this, 

 Uvira narrows do\vn to the alluvial plains fjrnied i^y the nume- 

 rous streams which dash down the slopes of the western range ; 

 while the mountainous country is known as Uhembe, the land 

 of the cannibals, who seldom visit the canoes of the traders. 

 .South of Uvira is Usan.si, peopled by a raceexlremely cannibalistic 

 in its taste, from Usansi we struck olT across the lake, and, 

 rowing all night, at dawn we arrived at a port in Suutliern 

 Urundi. Three days afterwards we were welcomed by the Arab 

 traders of Ujiji, is -ve once more set foot on the beach near that 

 bunder. We have thus coasted around the northern half of the 

 Tanganyika, and I might iniorm you of other tribes who dwell 

 on its shores ; but the prin jipal subject of my paper was to show 

 you how we settled that ve^ed question, " Was the Rusizi an 

 effluent or an influent?" There is, then, nothing more to be 

 said on that point. — In reply to a question from the President, 

 Mr. Stanley said thit Burton and Speke halted on a sandy beach 

 just thirteei. iniie^ from the extre:ne end of Tanganyika. Had 

 they gone but half way up the mountain, to the village where 

 resided Amruta, the King of Uveri, they must have seen the 

 northern head of Tanganyika plainly. But in drawing up at this 

 point they simply took the point where the ea^tirn and western 

 ranges meet. The western range halts abruptly ; the eastern 

 ranges overlap it. I would not wish for sweeter water than the 

 water of Lake Tanganyika. 



Dr. Livingstone s Recent Discoveries, by Colonel J. A. Grant. . 



The two letters from Dr. Livingstone to Mr. Gordon Bennett, 

 of the Meio York Herald, inform us that he had traced the 

 southern waters from 11° to 5° south latitude, and he supposed 

 they must flow on to the Nile by the Bahr Gazal, at 9° north 

 latitude. I must say that this is an extravagant idea wh'ch 

 cannot be entertained, for there are many circumstances pre- 

 cluding such a thing. The distance still unexplored by Dr. 

 Livingstone may be roughly stated as nearly one thousand miles 

 between his most advanced position and the mouth of the Gazil. 

 In this distance we have Speke's Mountains of the Moon, and 

 the great bend (to the west) of the Nile at 7" to 8° north latitude 

 as the principal obstiuctions to Dr. Livingstone's theory. We 

 also have three hundred miles of longitude between the two 

 positions, but the crowning objection to Dr. Livingstone's waters 

 reaching the Nile is the fact that we already know that the 

 source of the Gazal was visited and determined only a few years 

 ago by the eminent botanist Schweinfurth, who fully satisfied all 

 geographers that the source of the Gazal is about 5" north of the 

 Equator, and not, as Dr. Livingstone supposes, 11° south of it. 

 My observations e.n the Gazal, made in March 1863, when de- 

 scending the Nile from Gondokoro with my late companion, show 

 that it is insignificant when compared with the Nile ; it seems to 

 be a swamp wiih little current, for the Nile branch, along which 

 we were sailing, was not increased in width by the water from 

 the Bahr Gazal, the Nile maintained its width of one hundred 

 yards till after the Giraffe and Sooba joined it, then the stream 

 was increased to a breadth of five hundred yards. The Gazal 

 had no perceptible stream ; at the junction its waters wsre still, 

 and looked like a backwater, half a mile across, and surrounded 

 by rushes. Our boatm.an and others told us that no boats were 

 able to ascend it that year, 1863, as its channel was choked with 



