How I Found Livingstone Travels, Adventures And Discoveries In Central Africa Including Four Months Residence With Dr. Livingstone By Sir Henry M. Stanley
- Page 214 of 310 - First - Home
However, They Conducted Them Through Vast
Morasses, And When They Had Passed These, They Came To A City In
Which All The Inhabitants Were Of The Same Size As Their Conductors,
And Black In Colour:
And by the city flowed a great river, running
from the west to the east, and that crocodiles were
Seen in it."
Thus far I have set forth the account of Etearchus the Ammonian;
to which may be added, as the Cyrenaeans assured me, "that he said
the Nasamonians all returned safe to their own country, and that
the men whom they came to were all necromancers." Etearchus also
conjectured that this river, which flows by their city, is the Nile;
and reason so evinces: for the Nile flows from Libya, and intersects
it in the middle; and (as I conjecture, inferring things unknown
from things known) it sets out from a point corresponding with the
Ister. For the Ister, beginning from the Celts, and the city of
Pyrene, divides Europe in its course; but the Celts are beyond
the pillars of Hercules, and border on the territories of the
Cynesians, who lie in the extremity of Europe to the westward;
and the Ister terminates by flowing through all Europe into the
Euxine Sea, where a Milesian colony is settled in Istria. Now
the Ister, as it flows through a well-peopled country, is generally
known; but no one is able to speak about the sources of the Nile,
because Libya, through which it flows, is uninhabited and desolate.
Respecting this stream, therefore, as far as I was able to reach by
inquiry, I have already spoken. It however discharges itself into
Egypt; and Egypt lies, as near as may be, opposite to the
mountains of Cilicia; from whence to Sinope, on the Euxine Sea,
is a five days' journey in a straight line to an active man; and
Sinope is opposite to the Ister, where it discharges itself into
the sea. So I think that the Nile, traversing the whole of Libya,
may be properly compared with the Ister. Such, then, is the
account that I am able to give respecting the Nile.
***
2. Webb's River must be traced to its connection with some portion
of the old Nile.
When these two things have been accomplished, then, and not till
then, can the mystery of the Nile be explained. The two countries
through which the marvellous lacustrine river, the Lualaba, flows,
with its manifold lakes and broad expanse of water, are Rua (the
Uruwwa of Speke) and Manyuema. For the first time Europe is made
aware that between the Tanganika and the known sources of the Congo
there exist teeming millions of the negro race, who never saw, or
heard of the white people who make such a noisy and busy stir
outside of Africa. Upon the minds of those who had the good
fortune to see the first specimen of these remarkable white races
in Dr. Livingstone, he seems to have made a favourable impression,
though, through misunderstanding his object, and coupling him with
the Arabs, who make horrible work there, his life was sought after
more than once.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 214 of 310
Words from 111965 to 112494
of 163520