Mr. Stanley brought a most kind and encouraging despatch from
Lord Clarendon (whose loss I sincerely deplore), the first I have
received from the Foreign Office since 1866, and information that
the British Government had kindly sent a thousand pounds sterling
to my aid. Up to his arrival I was not aware of any pecuniary
aid. I came unsalaried, but this want is now happily repaired,
and I am anxious that you and all my friends should know that,
though uncheered by letter, I have stuck to the task which my
friend Sir Roderick Murchison set me with "John Bullish" tenacity,
believing that all would come right at last.
The watershed of South Central Africa is over seven hundred wiles
in length. The fountains thereon are almost innumerable - that is,
it would take a man's lifetime to count them. From the watershed
they converge into four large rivers, and these again into two
mighty streams in the great Nile valley, which begins in ten degrees
to twelve degrees south latitude. It was long ere light dawned on
the ancient problem and gave me a clear idea of the drainage. I had
to feel my way, and every step of the way, and was, generally,
groping in the dark - for who cared where the rivers ran? "We drank
our fill and let the rest run by."
The Portuguese who visited Cazembe asked for slaves and ivory, and
heard of nothing else. I asked about the waters, questioned and
cross-questioned, until I was almost afraid of being set down as
afflicted with hydrocephalus.
My last work, in which I have been greatly hindered from want of
suitable attendants, was following the central line of drainage
down through the country of the cannibals, called Manyuema, or,
shortly Manyema. This line of drainage has four large lakes in
it. The fourth I was near when obliged to turn. It is from one
to three miles broad, and never can be reached at any point, or
at any time of the year. Two western drains, the Lufira, or Bartle
Frere's River, flow into it at Lake Kamolondo. Then the great
River Lomame flows through Lake Lincoln into it too, and seems
to form the western arm of the Nile, on which Petherick traded.
Now, I knew about six hundred miles of the watershed, and
unfortunately the seventh hundred is the most interesting of the
whole; for in it, if I am not mistaken, four fountains arise from
an earthen mound, and the last of the four becomes, at no great
distance off, a large river.
Two of these run north to Egypt, Lufira and Lomame, and two run
south into inner Ethiopia, as the Leambaye, or Upper Zambezi, and
the Kaful.
Are not these the sources of the Nile mentioned by the Secretary
of Minerva, in the city of Sais, to Herodotus?
