Livingstone in Africa/Notes
It may be said by somebody that I have taken a liberty with the Mountains of the Moon. Let him that is without sin cast the first stone. Burton maintains that Ptolemy knew perfectly well what he was about in making a great range of mountains run east and west across Central Africa. It is even probable (from what Du Chaillu and others have seen) that snowy Kilimandjaro (Meru) and Kenia form its eastern limit, while Burton's Cameroons Mountain, with the mountains Du Chaillu saw, form its western. But, at any rate, the most recent discoveries seem to indicate that the Karagwé highlands also send out branches southward. These flank Tanganyika, and run down to the west of Lake Bangweolo or Bemba, afterwards trending off again south of the same lake to enclose lakes Nyassa and Shirwa (see Keith Johnstone's Map of Livingstone's discoveries). The high plateau of Lobisa, where the river Chambezi probably takes its rise, may on this view be considered as belonging to the same system. But there are north and south coast ranges inosculating with these latitudinal mountains—while possibly neither Abyssinian highlands on the one hand, nor heights enclosing Albert Nyanza on the other, ought to be regarded as cut off from them. Where Livingstone's "four fountains of Herodotus" (which he was so keen to find) are, seems indeed to be still a moot point—like most matters connected with Central African geography.
2. Livingstone's discoveries remarkably confirmed Sir R. Murchison's theories as to the geological condition of South Afirica—for he found no evidences of marine formations, which would be found if the land had been submerged, as other continents have been, since the oldest secondary era of geologists. In his books may be read his statements of fact, and his inferences on these matters. The great lakes that, at the time of the deposition of the oldest secondary strata, were much larger than at present, have been let out, he believes, by fissures suddenly opened in the flanking ranges, as at the Falls of Mosi-oa-tunya. See Murchison on the Physical Geography of Inner Africa.—Journal R. Geog. Society, 1864.
3. In Manyuema, west of Tanganyika, where Livingstone has been, the huts are built almost entirely of ivory; while in Ashantee gold is profusely employed.
4. Du Chaillu; and Schweinfurth, the record of whose very remarkable and daring explorations have been recently published. I am of course aware that Livingstone did not really know of the latter. It is indeed sad to think how near the two travellers were to one another when both were turned back.
5. I do not deem this inconsistent with Livingstone's large, though reverent and evangelical, utterance respecting the death of Sebituane. (See "Missionary Travels.")
6. A bird of Ashantee will brilliant red plumage. This vision is suggested by descriptions given of African races that practive human sacrifice—e. g. those of Ashantee and Dahomey.
7. The negroes can hardly conceive of death, in the case of young persons, without supposing it brought about by some malignant enchantment. They beleive themselves surrounded by all kind of spiritual agencies, good and bad—and, though their ideas about spiritual matters are vague and variable enough, they are often found to hold a somewhat crude form of the doctrine of transmigration.
8. The medicine-man or magician is relied on to point out who have bewitched the dead—which affords him ample scope for malignity. He makes each victim drink the ordeal poison (various plants are used—the Muave, the Mboundou, &c.); then if the poison takes effect, the popular voice decides that the person is truly guilty, and the tribe despatch him or her with knives. It is said that the old rascal has some secret, by the knowledge of which he renders the poison innocuous to himself.
9. This anecdote is told in Livingstone's first great book of missionary travels—and it was by the imperfectly-healed fracture of the bone of his left arm that the remains brought over to England were identified on their arrival as those of Livingstone; Sir W. Ferguson making the examination in the presence of the Rev. Dr. Moffat, Dr. Kirk, Mr. Webb of Newstead, and Mr. Waller, who had formerly seen Livingstone's injured arm.
10. This dog the traveller seems to have procured on his last voyage. Mr. Young, in his "Search for Livingstone," says that he heard of this dog at a village where he arrived; and where he gained such information as assured him of the falsehood of the traitor Musa's fabricated report respecting Livingstone's murder by the Ma-Zitu—said to have taken place in 1866. Sir R. Murchison, doubting the report, as President of the Royal Geographical Society, together with the Council, sent out Mr. E. Young to ascertain the truth. He proved a most competent leader. The native woman who spoke of this dog said, laughing, "it seemed to have two tails"—and the Rev. Mr. Waller afterwards suggested an explanation of this to Mr. Young; relating how Livingstone (ever fond of a joke) had disputed the fact alleged by learned men, that every dog under domestication still retains the tendency of a wild dog's tail to curl to the left, and complained that he was always obliged now, whenever he heard a dog bark, to march out of his way in order to examine his tail! Mr. Waller further suggested that Livingstone had picked up a dog, whose tail curled to the right; and that this controversy being explained to the natives, they made a hash of it, saying the dog Chitani seemed to have two tails.
11. At St. Paul de Loanda, the Portuguese settlement on the West Coast.
12. Mrs. Livingstone died at Shupanga, whither she had come from England to join her husband for the second time—having before gone with him, after their marriage, from Kuruman (Moffat's station) to Kolobeng; and after residing with him there as a missionary's wife, having travelled with him and some of their children to Lake Ngami, across the Kalahari desert, when the children greatly suffered. In the lyric that follows I have to acknowledge some obligation to a pretty poem in a small life of the traveller, published by Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton. Bishop Mackenzie and Rev. Mr. Burrup are alluded to.
13. The Makololo chief, Sekeletu, and his people, furnished Livingstone with the means necessary to enable him to go from Linyanti to the west coast, and afterwards to the east. Without these "niggers," who urged him and helped him to explore—to open a highway for commerce and Christianity—he could have done nothing.
14. This was the little ship Livingstone built with the £6000 derived from the sale of his first book; for the steamer sent by Government did not answer his purpose of exploring the Zambesi and Shirè. This sum, as Stanley tells us, in his latest edition of "How I Found Livingstone," the traveller lost. Having crossed to Bombay in his little craft—a marvellous feat—he sold her for £2000; but lost this afterwards through the bankruptcy of the banker with whom it was deposited.
15. See Irving's "Life of Columbus."
16. A kind of cuckoo, so called by the natives.
17. This was before Stanley explored the north of Tanganyika with Livingstone, and found the Rusizi river to be an influent. If there should be an effluent in the direction of the Kabogo mountains, to the west, this might join the Lualaba; and so possibly (according to Livingstone's theory), the Nile. Perhaps Lieutenant Cameron, now at Ujiji, will discover this. But Schweinfurth's discoveries seem to prove that this could only be by way of the Albert Nyanza; not by way of Petherick's branch, the Bahr el Ghazal.
18. Named by Livingstone "Victoria Falls." The native name signifies "sounding smoke." Mr. Oswell, who was with Livingstone when he first discovered the cataract, and had seen Niagara, gave the palm to Mosi-oa-tunya. The Mowana is the gigantic Baobab tree of Africa. The Mohonono tree is said to be like a cedar, and the Motsouri like a cypress. For a full account of the falls, see Livingstone's two books of travel. The water (of the river Zambesi, or Leeambayee) clears a moment as it falls, becomes a sheet of foam, or rather a sheet of comets of foam, separate from one another, with nucleus and tail. This phenomenon is apparently very remarkable; though I think I remember to have observed something like it in the falls of the Rhine. The "Evergreen Grove" is on a ledge of rock opposite the fall. But "Garden Island," where the travellers made a garden, is on the same side.
19. Ntanda, a native name for the planet Venus, meaning firstborn.
20. The Bakwain chief, with whom Livingstone resided at Kolobeng. For an account of Africaner, see the Rev. Dr. Moffat's "Missionary Travels."
21. Mr. Young, of Kelly, a true friend to Livingstone, without whose private generosity he could not have carried forward his great labours.
22. Dysentery was the disease to which he was subject, and of which he died (1873). The precise locality where he died seems almost strangely vague.
23. Zanzibar.
24. Jacob Wainwright, a negro slave, educated at Nassick College, near Bombay, came over in the "Malwa" with his master's remains, and attended the funeral in Westminster Abbey. He read some of the English service over those parts of the body that were buried under the tree at Muilala, or Ilala. He was sent up to the Doctor from Zanzibar by Mr. Stanley, with other valuable men, as soon as the latter reached the coast—Livingstone having resolved to wait for them and other necessary supplies at Unyanyembe.
25. If in Lobisa the Chambezi rises—which is the same river that flows out of Lake Bangweolo or Bemba as the Luapula; which again, on issuing from Lake Moero, becomes Lualaba—and if the Lualaba send one branch to the Congo, and another to the Nile—then this claim may be made for the presumed whereabouts of Livingstone's death. On the other hand, Mr. Findlay still maintains (unless I mistake) with Sir S. Baker and Captain Burton, that Tanganyika is virtually the same as Albert Nyanza; or has an effluent north, which joins the latter. But as Livingstone died somewhere near the southern feeders of Lake Liemba, which is the same lake as Tanganyika, even on this view, the same claim can be made.
26. It is to be hoped that the provisions of Sir Bartle Frere's treaty, concluded with the Sultan of Zanzibar, which we owe to Livingstone's fearless representations by letter of the slave-trading horrors he witnessed on his last journey, will be faithfully carried out, and that England will see that they are.