LIVINGSTONE'S LETTERS. 4S1 



Mend Sir Roderick Murehison set me, with John-Bullish tenacity, believing 

 that all will come right at last." 



After giving a brief account of his geographical discoveries, he says : — 

 " I must go to Unyanyembe at Mr. Stanley's and your expense, ere I can put 

 the natural completion to my work ; and if my disclosures regarding the ter- 

 rible Ujijan slavery should lead to the suppression of the East Coast slave 

 trade, I shall regard that as a greater matter by far than the discovery of all 

 the Nile sources together. 



" Now that you have done with domestic slavery for ever, lend us your 

 powerful aid towards this great object. This fine country is blighted as with 

 a curse from above, in order that the slaving privileges of the petty Sultan of 

 Zanzibar may not be infringed, and that the rights of the Crown of Portugal, 

 which are mythical, should be kept in abeyance till some future time, when 

 Africa will become another India to Portuguese slave dealers." 



Dr. Livingstone's despatch, addressed to the Earl of Clarendon, gives 

 the best summary of his geographical conclusions up to the time of which 

 we are writing. No single letter from any traveller, from the scene of his 

 labours, ever recorded so important discoveries. We give it entire: — 



" I wrote a very hurried letter on the 28th ultimo, and sent it by a few 

 men who had resolved to run the risk of passing through contending parties 

 of Banyamwezi and mainland Arabs at Unyanyembe, which is some twenty 

 days east of this. I had just come off a tramp of more than four hundred 

 miles beneath a vertical torrid sun, and was so jaded in mind by being forced 

 back by faithless attendants, that I could have written little more though the 

 messengers had not been in such a hurry to depart as they were. I have now 

 the prospect of sending this safely to the coast by a friend ; but so many of 

 my letters have disappeared at Unyanyembe, when entrusted to the care of 

 the Lewale or Governor, who is merely the trade agent of certain Banians, 

 that I shall consider that of the 28th as one of the unfortunates, and give in 

 this as much as I can recall. 



"I have ascertained that the watershed of the Nile is a broad upland 

 between 10° and 12° south latitude, and from four thousand to five thousand 

 feet above the level of the sea. Mountains stand on it at various points, which, 

 though not apparently very high, are between six thousand and seven thou- 

 sand feet of actual altitude. The watershed is over seven hundred miles in 

 length, from east to west. The springs that rise on it are almost innumerable; 

 that is, it would take a large portion of a man's life to count them. A bird's- 

 eye view of some parts of the watershed would resemble the frost vegetation 

 on window-panes. They all begin in an ooze at the height of a slightly 

 depressed valley. A few hundred yards down the quantity of water from 

 oozing earthen sponge forms a brisk perennial burn or brook a few feet broad, 

 and deep enough to require a bridge. These are the ultimate or primary 



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