How I Found Livingstone Travels, Adventures And Discoveries In Central Africa Including Four Months Residence With Dr. Livingstone By Sir Henry M. Stanley
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It Was During This Time That
The Thought Occurred To Him Of Sailing Around The Lake Tanganika,
But The Arabs
And natives were so bent upon fleecing him that, had
he undertaken it, the remainder or his goods would not
Have enabled
him to explore the central line of drainage, the initial point of
which he found far south of Cazembe's in about latitude 11 degrees,
in the river called Chambezi.
In the days when tired Captain Burton was resting in Ujiji,
after his march from the coast near Zanzibar, the land to which
Livingstone, on his departure from Ujiji, bent his steps was
unknown to the Arabs save by vague report. Messrs. Burton and
Speke never heard of it, it seems. Speke, who was the geographer
of Burton's Expedition, heard of a place called Urua, which he
placed on his map, according to the general direction indicated by
the Arabs; but the most enterprising of the Arabs, in their search
after ivory, only touched the frontiers of Rua, as, the natives
and Livingstone call it; for Rua is an immense country, with a
length of six degrees of latitude, and as yet an undefined breadth
from east to west.
At the end of June, 1869, Livingstone quitted Ujiji and crossed
over to Uguhha, on the western shore, for his last and greatest
series of explorations; the result of which was the further
discovery of a lake of considerable magnitude connected with Moero
by the large river called the Lualaba, and which was a
continuation of the chain of lakes he had previously discovered.
From the port of Uguhha he set off, in company with a body of
traders, in an almost direct westerly course, for the country of
Urua. Fifteen days' march brought them to Bambarre, the first
important ivory depot in Manyema, or, as the natives pronounce it,
Manyuema. For nearly six months he was detained at Bambarre from
ulcers in the feet, which discharged bloody ichor as soon as he
set them on the ground. When recovered, he set off in a northerly
direction, and after several days came to a broad lacustrine river,
called the Lualaba, flowing northward and westward, and in some
places southward, in a most confusing way. The river was from one
to three miles broad. By exceeding pertinacity he contrived to
follow its erratic course, until he saw the Lualaba enter the narrow,
long lake of Kamolondo, in about latitude 6 degrees 30 minutes.
Retracing this to the south, he came to the point where he had
seen the Luapula enter Lake Moero.
One feels quite enthusiastic when listening to Livingstone's
description of the beauties of Moero scenery. Pent in on all sides
by high mountains, clothed to the edges with the rich vegetation
of the tropics, the Moero discharges its superfluous waters through
a deep rent in the bosom of the mountains. The impetuous and grand
river roars through the chasm with the thunder of a cataract, but
soon after leaving its confined and deep bed it expands into the
calm and broad Lualaba, stretching over miles of ground.
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