914 LIFE OF DA YID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



of this convulsion, and the section whence the earth first began to feel her 

 throes. At Tongive we see an aggregation of aspiring peaks and semi-cir- 

 cular cones, which would perhaps, with more exact knowledge, be called 

 closed vomitories or craters. South of Tembive we see a ridge inclining to 

 the north-east, lofty and irregular, with much of the same structure as the 

 rocks of Tongive exhibit. North of Tembive, on the same side, is to be 

 observed a considerable depression in the land. From a height of four thou- 

 sand feet above the surface of the lake, the soil has suddenly subsided into a 

 low, rolling surface, the highest point of which is scarcely one thousand five 

 hundred feet above the water, with isolated domes and cones. The rock 

 also changes in character from the basalt and trap to a decomposed felspathic 

 kind, followed by a conglomerate and a calcareous tufa, strongly impregnated 

 with iron, which is the character of the banks on each side of the Lukuga. 



"In no other part of the lake coast have I found rock of such soft character 

 as at the Lukuga. This depressed country continues as far as Goma, where 

 we see the land upheaved highest, but with slopes less abrupt and rugged 

 than at the south end, and clothed with a tropical luxuriance of vegetation, 

 mammoth trees, and numberless varieties of shrubs and plants. The high 

 altitude which marks the verge of the Goma tract compared to that of the 

 plateau lying immediately west of it inclines one to think that the volcanic 

 explosion tilted the whole of this north-western coast, merely raising higher 

 and loosening the edges of the chasm, which has since by action of weather 

 and water become worn and decomposed, presenting for a breadth of from 

 four to five miles all those various effects in mountain scenery which most 

 approach the sublime in character. Once out of view of the chasm filled by 

 the Tanganyika, the plateau is seen clearly in its original form, and has a 

 gradual westward slope. 



" Between North Goma and the high mountains of Uvira there is another 

 remarkable depression in the land, similar to that of Uguhha. It appears as 

 if there had been a sudden subsidence of this part, and a flow of the subter- 

 ranean rock N.N.E., which afterwards was ejected bodily upward, and now 

 forms the peninsula of Ubwari, over thirty miles in length. Burton and Speke, 

 on their voyage from Ujiji to Uvira, sketched Ubwari as an island, probably 

 from the fact that the Wajiji carelessly called it ' Kirira,' or ' island.' Liv- 

 ingstone and myself, in 1871, also heard of what our predecessors had called 

 Ubwari Island as the island of Muzimu. Here is an instance of four travel- 

 lers mistaken about one small section of Lake Tanganyika. The truth is, we 

 were all wrong. My recent exploration has proved that the countries of 

 Karamba and Ubwari form a long, narrow peninsula, joined firmly enough 

 to the mainland by an isthmus seven miles in width, with an altitude in its 

 centre of about two hundred feet above the lake. So it will be seen that, before 

 any of our former statements can become correct, the Tanganyika must have a 



