192 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



by which we went to Loanda, a curious phenomenon, which then escaped our 

 notice, was now discovered, viz., that of the river Lotembwa flowing in two 

 nearly opposite directions. By the tracing sent from Angola, you will see it 

 as if rising in the small lake Dilolo. Such seemed the fact as far as the southern 

 portion of the river is concerned. Our former route having led us to the Kasai, 

 at some distance west of the northern portion, we were not aware of its existence. 

 In returning, however, we were surprised at being obliged to cross the Lotembwa 

 before we reached Lake Dilolo. It was more than a mile broad, three or four 

 feet deep, and full of Arum Egyptiacum, lotus, papyrus, mat-rushes, and other 

 aquatic plants. Not being then informed of the singular fact that it actually 

 flows N.N.W. into the Kasai, I did not observe the current, simply concluding 

 it was a prolongation of the Lotembwa beyond the lake, and that it rose in a 

 long flat marsh, as most of the rivers in this quarter do. But we were positively 

 informed afterwards that the flow was to the Kasai, and not into Dilolo. I 

 have no reason to doubt the correctness of this information. I could not 

 ascertain whether Lake Dilolo gives much water to the northern Lotembwa ; 

 but if there had been a current of one-fourth the strength of that which flows 

 into the southern Lotembwa, I must have observed it. It looks like an arm of 

 the lake where I crossed it, and probably flows faster when nearer the Kasai. 

 The southern Lotembwa proceeds from an arm of the lake, half a mile broad, 

 and at the part where most of the water flows it is chin deep. We crossed the 

 river above its confluence with the latter arm, and the great body of flowing 

 deep water it contained there (from 80 to 100 yards wide) made me suppose 

 that it receives a supply from the northern as well as from the southern end of 

 Dilolo. The fever having there caused vomiting of large quantities of Wood, 

 I could not return and examine the curious phenomenon more minutely ; but 

 I consider it as almost quite certain that Lake Dilolo divides its waters between 

 the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. A portion flows down the Kasai — Zaire, or 

 Congo, and another down the Leeba to the Zambesi. The whole of the 

 adjacent country is exceedingly flat. In coming to the Lotembwa from the 

 north we crossed a plain 24 miles broad, and so level that the rain-water stands 

 on it for months together ; and when going north we waded through another 

 plain to the south of the northern Lotembwa, 15 miles broad, with about a foot 

 of water on it, and the lotus flowers in bloom therein. 



" As the Royal Geographical Society receives geographical information 

 from every quarter, and then acts on the eclectic principle of securing the good 

 and true from the heaps of materials which travellers abroad and loungers at 

 home may send to the crucible, I have, with less diffidence than I should 

 otherwise have felt, resolved to state some ideas which observation and native 

 information have led me to adopt as to the form of the southern part of the 

 continent. It is right to state also distinctly that I am now aware that the same 

 views were clearly expressed in the anniversary speech of 1852, by the 



