BURTON ON TANGANYIKA. 413 



several days lie had been carried in a hammock. For three hundred years 

 the existence of this great lake had been known, and various guesses had 

 been made as to the course of its effluent waters. In some maps it was laid 

 down as having a connection with the Nyassa lake; in others it figured as the 

 head-waters of the Congo or the Nile — although Livingstone, Stanley, and 

 Captain Grant, have visited it since the date of Captain Burton's visit, and 

 the direction of its outflow is as great a mystery as ever. As its waters are 

 sweet it must have an outlet somewhere, and in all likelihood they find an 

 exit by a rent in the mountains, similar to that through which Livingstone 

 saw the Lualaba escaping from Lake Moero, through the mountains of Rua. 

 Captain Burton inclines to the belief that it has no effluent. He says : — 



"A careful investigation and comparison of statements leads to the be- 

 lief that the Tanganyika receives and absorbs the whole river system — a 

 net-work of streams, nullahs, and torrents — of that portion of the Central 

 African depression, whose water-shed converges towards the great reservoir. 

 Geographers will doubt that such a mass, situated at so considerable an alti- 

 tude, can maintain its level without an effluent. Moreover, the freshness of the 

 water would, under normal circumstances, augur the escape of saline matter 

 washed down by the influents from the area of drainage. But may not the 

 Tanganyika, situated, like the Dead Sea, as a reservoir for supplying with 

 humidity the winds which have parted with their moisture in the barren and 

 arid regions of the south, maintain its level by the exact balance of supply and 

 evaporation ? * And may not the saline particles deposited in its waters be 

 wanting in some constituent which renders them evident to the taste. 



" As in Zanzibar, there is little variety of temperature upon the Tanganyika. 

 The violent easterly gales, which, pouring down from the cold heights of 

 Usagara, acquire impetus sufficient to carry the current over Ugogo, Unyam- 

 wezi, and Uvinza, are here less sharply defined. The periodical winds over the 

 latter — regular, but not permanent — are the south-east and the south-west, 

 which also bring up the foulest weather. The land and sea breezes are felt 

 almost as distinctly as upon the shores of the Indian Ocean. The breath of 

 the morning, called by the Arabs el barad, or the zephyr, sets in from the 

 north. During the day, are light variable breezes, which often subside, when 

 the weather is not stormy, into calms. In the evenings, a light afflatus comes 

 up from the lake. Throughout the dry season the lake becomes a wind trap, 

 and a heavy ground-sea rolls toward the shore. In the rains there is less 

 sea, but accidents occur from sudden and violent storms, which are preluded, 

 as about Zanzibar, by sudden gusts of cold and rainy wind. The moun- 

 tainous breakers of Arab and native informants were not seen ; indeed, with a 



* Dr Livingstone has demonstrated that there is no desert to the south nearer than the Kalahari 

 Desert, nearly a couple of thousand miles to the south, so that this theory falls to the ground. 



