486 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



" The predecessors of Ptolemy probably gained their information from 

 men who visited this very region ; for in the second century of our era he 

 gave, in substance, what we now find to be genuine geography. 



" The springs of the Nile, rising in 10° to 12° south latitude, and their 

 water collecting into two large lacustrine rivers, and other facts, could have 

 been learned only from primitive travellers or traders — the true discoverers 

 of what emperors, kings, philosophers, all the great minds of antiquity, longed 

 to know, and longed in vain. 



" The geographical results of four arduous trips in different directions in 

 the Manyema country are briefly as follows : — The great river, Webb's Lua- 

 laba, in the centre of the Nile valley, makes a great bend to the west, soon 

 after leaving Lake Moero, of at least one hundred-and-eighty miles ; then, 

 turning to the north for some distance, it makes another large sweep west, of 

 about one hundred-and-twenty miles, in the course of which about thirty miles 

 of southing are made ; it then draws round to north-east, receives the Lomame, 

 or Loeki, a large river which flows through Lake Lincoln. After the union a 

 large lake is formed, with many inhabited islands in it ; but this has still to 

 be explored. It is the fourth large lake in the central line of drainage, and 

 cannot be Lake Albert ; for, assuming Speke's longitude of Ujiji to be pretty 

 correct, and my reckoning not enormously wrong, the great central lacustrine 

 river is about five degrees west of Upper and Lower Tanganyika. 



" The mean of many barometric and boiling-point observations made 

 Upper Tanganyika two thousand eight hundred-and-eighty-feet high. Respect 

 for Speke's memory made me hazard the conjecture that he found it to be 

 nearly the same ; but from the habit of writing the Anno Domini, a mere 

 slip of the pen made one thousand eight hundred-and-forty-four feet. But I 

 have more confidence in the barometers than in the boiling-points, and they 

 make Tanganyika over three thousand feet, and the lower point of Central 

 Lualaba one inch lower, or about the altitude ascribed to Grondokoro. 



" Beyond the fourth lake the water passes, it is said, into large reedy 

 lakes, and is in all probability Petherick's branch — the main stream of the 

 Nile — in distinction from the small eastern arm, which Speke, Grant, and 

 Baker, took to be the river of Egypt. 



" In my attempts to penetrate farther and farther I had but little hope 

 of ultimate success ; for the great amount of westing led to a continual effort 

 to suspend the judgment, lest, after all, I might be exploring the Congo in- 

 stead of the Nile ; and it was only after the two great western drains fell into 

 the central main, and left but the two great lacustrine rivers of Ptolemy, that 

 I felt pretty sure of being on the right track. 



" The great bends west probably form one side of the great rivers above 

 that geographical loop, the other side being Upper Tanganyika and the Lake 

 River Albert. A waterfall is reported to exist between Tanganyika and 



