REPORT ON THE ZAMBESI. 297 



In his letters he made a formal report on the Zambesi, and its capacity 

 as a channel of commerce, and the importance of the district through which 

 it flows for trading purposes, he says : — 



" In endeavouring to form an estimate of the value of the Zambesi for 

 commercial purposes, it is necessary to recollect that we were obliged in the 

 first instance to trust to the opinions of naval officers who had visited it, and 

 the late Captain Parker, together with Lieutenant Hoskins, having declared 

 that it was quite capable of being used for commerce, though the Portuguese 

 never did, and do not now enter it directly from the sea, we trusted in the 

 testimony of our countrymen, and though we failed to find a passage in by 

 Parker's Luabo, we discovered a safe entrance by the Urande Kongone ; and 

 H.M.S. Lynx, Captain Berkely, at a subsequent period, found a good channel 

 by the main stream (Parker's Luabo) though we had failed to observe it in a 

 three days' search. The question of safe entrance from the sea having thus 

 been satisfactorily solved, our attention was next directed to the rest of the river, 

 the subject of this report. It is desirable also to rememberthat, in an experimental 

 expedition like ours, it was plainly an imperative duty to select the most healthy 

 period of the year, in order to avoid the fate of the Great Niger Expedition. Had 

 we come at any time between January and April, a large vessel could have been 

 taken up as far as Tete, but that is the most unhealthy time of the year, and we 

 then looked on the African fever as a much more formidable disease than we do 

 now. We entered the river in June, when it was falling fast, but even then 

 the official reports of Captain Gordon and other naval officers were precisely 

 the same as those of Captain Parker and Lieutenant Hoskins. Their testi- 

 mony, however, referred to only about 70 miles from the sea, Mazaro, the 

 point at which the Portuguese use of the river begins. We have now enjoyed 

 a twelvemonth's experience, which is the shortest period in which all the 

 changes that occur annually can be noted, and we have carefully examined 

 the whole, from the sea to Tete, five times over, in a craft the top-speed of 

 which, (3^ knots) admitted of nothing being done in a hurry, and may there- 

 fore be considered in a position to give an opinion of equal value to that of 

 flying visitors, better qualified in all other respects for the task. As a report 

 on the river would be incomplete without a description of it when at its 

 lowest, I sent the journal of Mr. T. Baines to the Society, which was written 

 at the worst part of the river, and in a season said by all to be one of unusual 

 drought. Mr. Baines was taken up by a southern channel, which contained 

 much less water than that which we ascended a month later ; but adopting 

 that journal as showing what the river may again become in a season of 

 drought, I would only add that in passing from the sea to Tete, when the 

 river had fallen still lower than at the period when the journal was penned, 

 we were obliged to drag the vessel over three crossings, 100 or 150 feet long, 

 of from 24 to IK inches of water. It is not, however, to be understood that 

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