298 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D 



such is then the general depth. In the broad parts of the river we have three 

 or four channels, and the greater part of these channels contains water from 

 8 to 15 feet deep, even when the river has reached its lowest ebb. But we are 

 often obliged to cross from one channel to another, and sometimes from one 

 bank to the other ; and it is in these crossings that the difficulties occur. I 

 am not aware that anything has been written on the form of the bottoms of 

 rivers, but familiarity with that and the signs on the surface will enable one 

 man to find three fathoms, while another will run aground in one or two feet. 

 From our experience of a year in which the river was unusually low, and the 

 rise deferred to a later than ordinary period, it is certain that a vessel really 

 of 18 inches or 2 feet draught could ply at all seasons on the first 300 miles 

 of the Zambesi. 



" We have in the course of one year cut up into small pieces upwards of 

 150 tons of lignum vitse alone, which, according to the average prices in 

 London during 1858, was worth about £900. This wood, when dry, was, in 

 the absence of coal, the only fuel with which we could get up steam, owing to 

 the boiler-tubes being singularly placed all on one side and chiefly below the 

 level of the fire, from which novel arrangement one side remains long cold 

 while the other is hot, like a patient in the palsy ; and four and a half or five 

 mortal hours of fuel-burning are required to get up steam ; yet by incessant 

 labour and a dogged determination to extract all the good possible out of an 

 engine probably intended to grind coffee in a shop- window, we have traversed 

 2350 miles of river. Now, had we been permitted to show what could be 

 effected in this one branch of commerce, it is not unreasonable to say that 

 every time the saw went through lignum vitse it might have been to secure or 

 dress a log. Without any great labour we might have cut a thousand instead 

 of one hundred and fifty tons of that valuable wood, and given a practical 

 exposition of what may, and very probably soon will be effected by the 

 Germans in Zambesi commerce. 



" The only paper that reached us up to the middle of June last contained 

 a short notice of the meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, in which 

 some interesting assertions were made in connection with a pretty theory and 

 an engineering plan, that the Zambesi, which, under the very serious 

 disadvantages of that plan, we have actually been navigating, was not 

 navigable at all. If our fellow-members will only believe that we have a 

 merry smile on our faces, we would venture to move, for the support of the 

 theory, in parliamentary fashion, that the word ought be inserted thus : 

 ' Wheat ought not to grow at the level of the sea ;' ' indigo ought not to grow 

 more than a foot high,' and - it ought not to contain indigo at all.' ' The seeds 

 of cucumbers and water-melons ought not to contain a fine bland oil, fit for the 

 purposes of the table,' because that would be like 'extracting sunbeams from 

 cucumbers.' ' The Zambesi ought not to be navigable for commercial 



