June 20, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



925 



heard of (as "Nyanja") by the Portu- 

 guese of the eighteenth century and early 

 nineteenth ; but it was not till 1846 that its 

 waters — so far as historical records go — 

 were actually seen by a Portuguese (Can- 

 dido de Costa Cardoso). Gasparo de 

 Boearro passed near to Lake Nyasa in 1616 

 on his way to Kilwa and Mombasa, but 

 seems to have crossed Lake Malombe or the 

 upper Shire only, and not actually to have 

 seen Lake Nyasa. 



Returning from Angola to the Chobe 

 River, he discovered the Victoria falls, and 

 followed the Zambezi more or less closely 

 down to its delta, emerging on the sea- 

 coast at Quelimane. 



On his second Zambezi expedition he re- 

 vealed to the world Lake Nyasa, Lake 

 Chilwa (miswritten Shirwa), the high 

 mountains of the Shire region, and the 

 course of the Shire River, the Luangwa 

 River to the west of Lake Nyasa, most of 

 the northern confluents of the Zambezi in 

 their lower courses, and the Butonga high- 

 lands. This second expedition was also the 

 means of effecting a great increase in our 

 knowledge of the Zambezi delta. 



On his third great African journey he 

 renewed previous explorations in the direc- 

 tion of the Ruvuma, and traced a good deal 

 of the course of that East African river. 

 He was practically the first European to 

 explore West Nyasaland and the northern 

 Bemba or Awemba country; he discovered 

 the south end of Tanganyika, and made a 

 shrewd guess at its outlet through the 

 Rukuga (which river he styled the Lon- 

 gumba). He first revealed the great 

 Mweru swamp or Chisera. ["Elephants, 

 buffaloes and zebras grazed in large num- 

 bers on the long sloping banks of a river or 

 marsh called Chisera." This considerable 

 extent of alternate swamps or shallow 

 water was afterwards rediscovered by Sir 

 Alfred Sharpe.] Livingstone made known 



to us lakes Mweru and Bangweulu and the 

 connecting Luapula River, and the course 

 of the great Lualaba or upper Congo at 

 Nyangwe. Pie also recorded the existence 

 of the upper Lualaba or Kamolondo. He 

 was the first European to penetrate as far 

 north as S. lat. 3° 30' near the Elila River, 

 and describe the Manyuema forests with 

 the large chimpanzis and pygmy elephants 

 found in them. He mentions for the first 

 time the Lomami River, and is the first ex- 

 plorer to hear of the country of Katanga, 

 its mineral wealth and its — as yet — unex- 

 plored, inhabited caverns of vast size. 



A month to the westward of Kazembe 's country 

 lies Katanga, where th > people smelt copper ore 

 (malachite) into large ingots shaped like the 

 capital letter I, weighing from fifty to a hundred 

 pounds. The natives draw the copper into wire 

 for armlets and leglets. Gold is also found at 



Livingstone was the first writer to men- 

 tion the possible existence of Lake Kivu; 

 of Kavirondo gulf (Victoria Nyanza) ; and 

 of Lake Naivasha : from Arab information, 

 of course. 



He was the first to record the existence 

 of drilled stones in the country to the south- 

 west of Tanganyika, which seemed to be 

 evidence of the existence of a people of an- 

 cient Bushmen culture in that direction, 

 and his remarks generally on the Stone 

 Age in Africa, on the possible existence of 

 undiscovered ancient types of mammals and 

 of mammalian fossils, all show an enlight- 

 enment in speculative scientific imagina- 

 tion greatly in advance of his times. He 

 was also in all probability the first writer 

 since the Portuguese chroniclers of the six- 

 teenth century to allude to the remarkable 

 ruins of stone-built forts, villages and 

 cities in southeast Africa. He derived 

 his information from natives, and perhaps 

 also from Boer hunters. He also mentions 

 the coins found in excavating the shore of 



