He Has Written Me,
Since My Arrival In England, That My Men Had Killed Four Elephants
In The Course Of Two Months After My Departure.
On the day of my arrival I was visited by all the gentlemen of the village,
both white and colored, including the padre.
Not one of them had any idea
as to where the source of the Zambesi lay. They sent for
the best traveled natives, but none of them knew the river
even as far as Kansala. The father of one of the rebels
who had been fighting against them had been a great traveler to the southwest,
and had even heard of our visit to Lake Ngami; but he was equally ignorant
with all the others that the Zambesi flowed in the centre of the country.
They had, however, more knowledge of the country to the north of Tete
than I had. One man, who had gone to Cazembe with Major Monteiro,
stated that he had seen the Luapura or Loapula flowing past
the town of that chieftain into the Luameji or Leeambye,
but imagined that it found its way, somehow or other, into Angola.
The fact that sometimes rivers were seen to flow like this
toward the centre of the country, led geographers to the supposition
that inner Africa was composed of elevated sandy plains, into which
rivers ran and were lost. One of the gentlemen present, Senhor Candido,
had visited a lake 45 days to the N.N.W. of Tete, which is probably
the Lake Maravi of geographers, as in going thither they pass through
the people of that name.
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