Part 36 (2/2)

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 lat.i.tude. 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?

I have heard of them so often, and at great distances off, that I cannot doubt their existence, and in spite of the sore longing for home that seizes me every time I think of my family, I wish to finish up by their rediscovery.

Five hundred pounds sterling worth of goods have again unaccountably been entrusted to slaves, and have been over a year on the way, instead of four months. I must go where they lie at your expense, ere I can put the natural completion to my work.

And if my disclosures regarding the terrible Ujijian slavery should lead to the suppression of the East Coast slave trade, I shall regard that as a greater matter by far than the discovery of all the Nile sources together. Now that you have done with domestic slavery for ever, lend us your powerful aid toward this great object. This fine country is blighted, as with a curse from above, in order that the slavery privileges of the petty Sultan of Zanzibar may not be infringed, and the rights of the Crown of Portugal, which are mythical, should be kept in abeyance till some future time when Africa will become another India to Portuguese slave-traders.

I conclude by again thanking you most cordially for your great generosity, and am,

Gratefully yours,

David Livingstone.

To the above letter I have nothing to add--it speaks for itself; but I then thought it was the best evidence of my success. For my own part, I cared not one jot or t.i.ttle about his discoveries, except so far as it concerned the newspaper which commissioned me for the ”search.” It is true I felt curious as to the result of his travels; but, since he confessed that he had not completed what he had begun, I felt considerable delicacy to ask for more than he could afford to give.

His discoveries were the fruits of of his own labours--to him they belonged--by their publication he hoped to obtain his reward, which he desired to settle on his children. Yet Livingstone had a higher and n.o.bler ambition than the mere pecuniary sum he would receive: he followed the dictates of duty. Never was such a willing slave to that abstract virtue. His inclinations impelled him home, the fascinations of which it required the sternest resolves to resist. With every foot of new ground he travelled over he forged a chain of sympathy which should hereafter bind the Christian nations in bonds of love and charity to the Heathen of the African tropics. If he were able to complete this chain of love--by actual discovery and description of them to embody such peoples and nations as still live in darkness, so as to attract the good and charitable of his own land to bestir themselves for their redemption and salvation--this, Livingstone would consider an ample reward.

”A delirious and fatuous enterprise, a Quixotic scheme!” some will say.

Not it, my friends; for as sure as the sun s.h.i.+nes on both Christian and Infidel, civilised and Pagan, the day of enlightenment will come; and, though Livingstone, the Apostle of Africa, may not behold it himself, nor we younger men, not yet our children, the Hereafter will see it, and posterity will recognise the daring pioneer of its civilization.

The following items are extracted in their entirety from my Diary:

March 12th.--The Arabs have sent me as many as forty-five letters to carry to the coast. I am turned courier in my latter days; but the reason is that no regularly organized caravans are permitted to leave Unyanyembe now, because of the war with Mirambo. What if I had stayed all this time at Unyanyembe waiting for the war to end! It is my opinion that, the Arabs will not be able to conquer Mirambo under nine months yet.

To-night the natives have gathered themselves together to give me a farewell dance in front of my house. I find them to be the pagazis of Singiri, chief of Mtesa's caravan. My men joined in, and, captivated by the music despite myself, I also struck in, and performed the ”light fantastic,” to the intense admiration of my braves, who were delighted to see their master unbend a little from his usual stiffness.

It is a wild dance altogether. The music is lively, and evoked from the sonorous sound of four drums, which are arranged before the bodies of four men, who stand in the centre of the weird circle. Bombay, as ever comical, never so much at home as when in the dance of the Mrima, has my water-bucket on his head; Chowpereh--the st.u.r.dy, the nimble, sure-footed Chowpereh--has an axe in his hand, and wears a goatskin on his head; Baraka has my bearskin, and handles a spear; Mabruki, the ”Bull-headed,”

has entered into the spirit of the thing, and steps up and down like a solemn elephant; Ulimengo has a gun, and is a fierce Drawcansir, and you would imagine he was about to do battle to a hundred thousand, so ferocious is he in appearance; Khamisi and Kamna are before the drummers, back to back, kicking up ambitiously at the stars; Asmani,--the embodiment of giant strength,--a towering t.i.tan,--has also a gun, with which he is dealing blows in the air, as if he were Thor, slaying myriads with his hammer. The scruples and pa.s.sions of us all are in abeyance; we are contending demons under the heavenly light of the stars, enacting only the part of a weird drama, quickened into action and movement by the appalling energy and thunder of the drums.

The warlike music is ended, and another is started. The choragus has fallen on his knees, and dips his head two or three times in an excavation in the ground, and a choir, also on their knees, repeat in dolorous tones the last words of a slow and solemn refrain. The words are literally translated:--

Choragus. Oh-oh-oh! the white man is going home!

Choir. Oh-oh-oh! going home!

Going home, oh-oh-oh!

Choragus. To the happy island on the sea, Where the beads are plenty, oh-oh-oh!

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