From These Falls The Country Gradually Ascends Toward The East,
The River Finding Its Way By This Deep Fissure Through The Hills.
Every Thing Shows That This Whole Region, For Hundreds Of Miles, Was Once
The Bed Of An Immense Fresh-Water Lake.
By some convulsion of nature,
occurring at a period geologically recent, this fissure was formed,
and through it the lake was drained, with the exception of its deepest part,
which constitutes the present Lake Ngami.
Similar indications exist
of the former existence of other immense bodies of water, which have
in like manner been drained by fissures through the surrounding elevations,
leaving shallow lakes at the lowest points. Such are, undoubtedly,
Tsad at the north, Ngami at the south, Dilolo at the west,
and Taganyika and Nyanja, of which we have only vague reports, at the east.
This great lake region of former days seems to have extended 2500 miles
from north to south, with an average breadth, from east to west,
of 600 or 700 miles.
The true theory of the African continent is, that it consists
of a well-watered trough, surrounded on all sides by an elevated rim,
composed in part of mountain ranges, and in part of high sandy deserts.
Livingstone, who had wrought out this theory from his own
personal observations, was almost disappointed when, on returning to England,
he found that the same theory had been announced on purely geological grounds
by Sir Roderick Murchison, the same philosopher who had averred
that gold must exist in Australia, long before the first diggings
had been discovered there.
Sekeletu had commissioned Livingstone, when he reached his own country,
to purchase for him a sugar-mill, a good rifle, different kinds of clothing,
brass wire, beads, and, in a word, "any other beautiful thing he might see,"
furnishing him with a considerable quantity of ivory to pay for them.
Their way lay through the country of the Batoka, a fierce tribe
who had a few years before attempted "to eat up" Sebituane, with ill success,
for he dispersed them and took away their cattle. Their country,
once populous, is now almost desolate. At one of their ruined villages
Livingstone saw five-and-forty human skulls bleaching upon stakes
stuck in the ground. In the old times the chiefs used to vie with each other
as to whose village should be ornamented with the greatest number
of these ghastly trophies; and a skull was the most acceptable present
from any one who wished to curry favor with a chief. The Batoka have
an odd custom of knocking out the front teeth from the upper jaw.
The lower ones, relieved from the attrition and pressure of the upper,
grow long and protruding, forcing the lower lip out in a hideous manner.
They say that they wish their mouths to be like those of oxen,
and not like those of zebras. No young Batoka female can lay any claim
to being a belle until she has thus acquired an "ox-mouth".
"Look at the great teeth!" is the disparaging criticism made upon those
who neglect to remove their incisors.
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