508 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



Sessi. The lake," they added, " was divided into two parts, with a connection 

 between them, which a canoe required a day to pass through. Both of the 

 lakes bore the name Sessi, but they drew a distinction between the Victoria 

 Nyanza and the Albert Nyanza. This latter lake," they said, " was a con- 

 tinuation of the Tanganyika — the whole bearing the name of Mwootanzige. 

 He did not state this as his own theory, but as what he had himself heard." 



If these statements are true, Sir Samuel Baker accounted for a connection 

 between the lakes, even if the Tanganyika was on a lower level than the Albert 

 Nyanza at certain seasons: — " When it is remembered that the Tanganyika 

 received its rainfall at the season of the rainfall south of the Equator, while 

 the Albert Nyanza received its rainfall at the season of the rains north of the 

 Equator, it was easy to imagine, that to keep up the equilibrium between the 

 two lakes, there must be a constant flux and reflux. In 1869, Livingstone 

 addressed a letter to Sir Roderick Murchison, in which he said — ' Baker's 

 Lake and Tanganyika are all one water.' That was what Livingstone heard 

 at Ujiji, and he had heard exactly the same account at the north end of the 

 Albert Nyanza." Our readers will remember that, on the occasion of Living- 

 stone's first visit to Lake Ngami, he imagined that the River Zouga was 

 the outlet of the lake which Mr. Chapman, several years afterwards, when 

 the lake was very low, found the Zouga flowing into. In vast districts, 

 where there is little difference in level for many miles, it is easy to under- 

 stand how the streams may flow in one direction during the rainy season, 

 and fill up a lake at the end of the watershed, and that, when the lower 

 lakes fall at the end of the rainy season, the accumulated waters will flow in 

 the opposite direction. If these two great lakes are connected, this would 

 account for the steady flow to the north of the waters of Tanganyika, which 

 Livingstone observed at Ujiji. As it was during the rainy season that Mr. 

 Stanley and Dr. Livingstone examined the Rusizi, they may have witnessed 

 the commencement of the influx of water from the Albert Nyanza. If tbis be 

 so the Rusizi is both an influent and an effluent of the Tanganyika, which 

 would account for the conflicting accounts received of it from the natives. 



Even should there be a connection between the Tanganyika and the 

 Nile, it does not necessarily follow that Livingstone's Lualaba is not the 

 head waters of the Nile. Geographers at home have not hesitated to theo- 

 rize, and have almost unanimously gone counter to Dr Livingstone's declared 

 impression as to the further course of the Lualaba. With wonderful unani- 

 mity, they throw aside the belief of the man who has suffered so much in 

 acquiring it and insist that the Lualaba must be the Congo. We shall be 

 curious to hear what they will say for themselves if it should turn out, as we 

 believe it will, that he who had the best of means of coming to a conclusion 

 was right, and that they who could only theorize were wrong. 



