THE LAKE REGION OF AFRICA. 



507 



in the valleys. This region has been, if we may use the term, only pricked into by 

 travelers. Burton just touched upon its borders, Livingstone, in his second expe- 

 dition, did the same, and it is here that he has been for five years lost to the civilized 

 world, save for vague and sometimes contradictory accounts that have reached us. If 

 the most recent reports are to be trusted, there is good reason to hope that he will yet 

 return, and then we shall learn something of this as yet almost unknown region. As 

 yet Speke and Hanning are the only ones who have brought back any thing like an 

 account of this vast region, and their journey of 1,500 miles, although it occupied 

 nearly thirty months, from Zanzibar on the Indian Ocean to Khartoum, where the two 

 main branches of the Nile unite, at a distance of 1,500 miles from the great river of 

 Egypt, was almost on a single line. Speke died in the belief that he had solved the 

 mystery of the Nile, by the discovery of the origin of its main branch in Lake Victoria 

 N'yanza, hardly a mile from the equator ; but the subsequent explorations of Baker 

 render it almost certain that Speke discovered only one, and that by no means the 

 largest of the sources of the river, which, as far as we know, is the sole outlet of the 

 waters of a region larger than that drained by St. Lawrence. 



From all that we now know, this great region is one admirably adapted for the abode 

 of civilized man. Here and there in Speke's Journal occur passages like the following : 

 " The hill-sides and tops are well covered with bush and small trees, among which the 

 bamboo is most conspicuous, while the bottoms, having a soil still richer and deeper, 

 produce fine large fig-trees of exceeding beauty, the huge calabash, and a variety of 

 other trees." Again : " Our day's march has been novel and very amusing. The 

 hilly country surrounding us brought back to recollection many happy days which I 

 had once spent with the Tartars in the Thibetan Valley of the Indus ; only this was 

 more picturesque ; for though both countries are wild and thinly inhabited, this was 

 greened over with grass, and dotted here and there on the higher slopes with thick 

 bushes of acacias, the haunts of the rhinoceros, both white and black ; while in the 

 flat of the valleys herds of hartebeest and fine cattle roamed about like the kiyang 

 and tame yak of Thibet." Again : " We descended into the close valley of the 

 Uthenga, bound in by steep hills hanging over us more than a thousand feet high, 

 as prettily clothed as the mountains of Scotland ; while in the valley there were 

 not only magnificent trees of extraordinary hight, but also a surprising amount of 

 the richest cultivation, among which the banana may be said to prevail." At Kara- 

 gue, on Lake N'yanza, 5,100 feet above the level of the ocean, Speke kept a 

 record of the thermometer for six months, from November to April. The lowest 

 point was 65°, in April, the highest 70<^, in November, for the mean temperature 

 of a day. The highest absolute point at any hour of the day was 85°. As, strictly 

 speaking, there is no summer and winter at the equator, one six months of the year 

 will be the same as the other ; the mean temperature of the whole year is put down 

 at 680. 



Here and there Speke came upon an isolated tribe living in almost pastoral quiet- 

 ness ; but they were under perpetual apprehensions of attacks from their fierce neigh- 

 bors ; for, as a general rule, the life of these tribes is one of perpetual war. The 

 main object of predatory inroads is to procure slaves., These slaves are bartered from 

 tribe to tribe, the survivors ultimately falling into the hands of the Portuguese slave- 

 traders on the coast. 



