Volume Ii Part 7 (1/2)
5, an admirable paper ent.i.tled ”Observations, Systematical and Geographical, on Professor Christian Smith's Collection of Plants from the Vicinity of the River Congo, by Robert Brown, F.R.S.”
The ”Geology,” by Mr. Charles Konig, of the British Museum, is based upon very scanty materials. The folio must not be severely criticized; had the writers lived, they might have worked up their unfinished logs into interesting and instructive matter.
But evidently they had not prepared themselves for the work; no one knew the periods of rain at the equator; there was no linguist to avoid mistakes in the vocabulary; moreover, Professor Smith's notes, being kept in small and ill-formed Danish characters, caused such misprints as ”poppies” for papaws. Some few of the mistakes should be noticed for the benefit of students. The expedition appears to have confused So Salvador, the capital, with St. Antonio placed seven days from the river mouth (p. 277). It calls Santo Anto (Cape Verds) ”San Antonio;”
the Ilha das Rolas (of turtle doves) Rolle's Island; ”morfil”
bristles of the elephant's tail, and manafili ivory, both being from the Portuguese marfim; moudela for mondele or mondelle, a white man; malava, ”presents,” for mulavu (s. s. as msamba, not maluvi, Douville), palm wine, which in the form mulavu m'putu (Portuguese) applies to wine and spirits. We have also ”Leimba”
for Lyamba or Dyamba (Cannabis saliva); ”Maca.s.so, a nut chewed by great people only,” for Makazo, the bean of the Kola (Sterculia); ”Hyphaea” and ”Dom” for Palmyra Flabelliformis, whose ”fruit hangs down in bunched cl.u.s.ters;” ”Raphia” for Raphia Vinifera, commonly called the bamboo or wine palm, and ”casa,” a purgative legumen, for nkasa, ”sa.s.s,” or poison wood, identified with the red-water tree of Sierra Leone, the erythropheum of Professor Afzelius, of the order Caealpineae, which gave a name to the Brazil.
The next important visit to the Congo River was paid by Captain Owen's Expedition, when homeward bound in 1826. The ”Leven” and ”Barracouta” surveyed the stream twenty-five miles from its mouth during a week, beginning with January 1, just after the highest flood. At thirteen miles out at sea the water was fresh and of a dingy red; it fermented and remained in a highly putrescent state for some days, tarnis.h.i.+ng silver; kept for four months, it became perfectly clear and colourless, without depositing any sediment.
This reminds us of the changing colours, green, red and milky white, to which the Nile and all great African rivers that flood periodically are subject.[FN#15]
The next traveller that deserves notice is the unfortunate Douville,[FN#16] through whose tissue of imposture runs a golden thread of truth. As his first journey, occupying nearly two of the three volumes, was probably confined to the Valley of the Cuanza River, so his second, extending beyond the equator, and to a meridian 25 east of Paris, becomes fable as he leaves the course of the Loge Stream. Yet, although he begins by doubting that the Coango and the Zaire are the same waters, he ends by recognizing the fact, and his map justly lays down the Fleuve Couango dit Zaire a son embouchure. Whether the tale of the mulatto surveyor be fact or not is of little matter: the adventurer had an evident inkling of the truth.
A flood of side light is thrown upon the head waters of the Congo River by Dr. Livingstone's first memorable journey (1852-56), across Africa, and by the more dubious notices of his third expedition The Introduction (p. xviii.) to Captain Tuckey's narrative had concluded from the fact of the highest flood being in March, and the lowest level about the end of August, that at least one branch of the river must pa.s.s through some portion of the northern hemisphere. The general observations affixed to ”Narrative” (p. 346), contain these words: ”If the rise of the Zaire had proceeded from rains to the southward of the Line, swelling the tributary streams and pouring in mountain torrents the waters into the main channel, the rise would have been sudden and impetuous.” Of course the writer had recourse to the ”Lakes of w.a.n.gara,” in north lat.i.tude 12 to 15: that solution of the difficulty belonged inevitably to his day. Captain Tuckey (p.
178) learned, at Mavunda, that ten days of canoeing would take him beyond all the rapids to a large sandy islet which makes two channels, one to the north-west, the other to the north-east. In the latter there is a fall above which canoes are procurable: twenty days higher up the river issues, by many small streams, from a great marsh or lake of mud.[FN#17] Again, a private letter written from the ”Yellala” (p. 343) declares that ”the Zaire would be found to issue from a lake or a chain of lakes considerably to the north of the Line; and, so far from the low state of the river in July and August militating against the hypothesis, it gives additional weight, provided the river swell in early September”--which it did. In his ”Journal” (p. 224), we find a memorandum, written as it were with a dying hand, ”Hypothesis confirmed. The water...”
On February 24, 1854, Dr. Livingstone, after leaving what he calls the ”Dilolo Lake,” found on an almost level plain, some 4,000 to 5,000 feet high and then flooded after rains, a great water parting between the eastern and the western continental sh.o.r.es. I have carefully considered the strictures upon this subject by the author of ”Dr. Livingstone's Errors” (p. 101), and have come to the conclusion that the explorer was too experienced to make the mistakes attributed to him by the cabinet geographer.
The translation ”despair” for ”bitterness” (of the fish?) and the reference to Noah's Deluge may be little touches ad captandum; but the Kibundo or Angolan tongue certainly has a dental though it lacks a cerebral d.
The easterly flow was here represented by the Leeba or upper course of the ”Leeambye,” the ”Diambege of Ladislaus Magyar, that great northern and north-western course of the Zambeze across which older geographers had thrown a dam of lofty mountains, where the Mosi-wa-tunya cataract was afterwards discovered. The opposite versant flowing to the north was the Kasai or Kasye (Livingstone), the Casais of the Pombeiros, the Casati of Douville, the Casasi and Casezi of M. Cooley (who derives it from Casezi, a priest, the corrupted Arabic Kissis ); the Ka.s.sabi (Casabi) of Beke, the Ca.s.saby of Monteiro and Gamitto (p. 494), and the Ka.s.saby or Ca.s.say of Valdez. Its head water is afterwards called by the explorer Lomame and Loke, possibly for Lu-oke, because it drains the highlands of Mossamba and the district of Ji-oke, also called Ki-oke, Kiboke, and by the Portuguese ”Quiboque.” The stream is described as being one hundred yards broad, running through a deep green glen like the Clyde. The people attested its length by a.s.serting, in true African style, ”If you sail along it for months, you will turn without seeing the end of it:” European geographers apparently will not understand that this declaration shows only the ignorance of the natives concerning everything a few miles beyond their homes. The explorer (February 27,1854) places the ford in south lat.i.tude 11 15' 47”, and his map shows east longitude (G.), 21 40' 30”, about 7 30' (=450 direct geographical miles) from Novo Redondo on the Western Coast. He dots its rise in the ”Balobale country,”
south lat.i.tude 12 to 13, and east longitude 19 to 20.
Pursuing his course, Dr. Livingstone (March 30) first sighted the Quango (Coango) as it emerged from the dark jungles of Londa, a giant Clyde, some 350 yards broad, flowing down an enormous valley of denudation. He reached it on April, 1854, in south lat.i.tude 9 53', and east longitude (G.) 18 37', about 300 geographical linear miles from the Atlantic. Three days to the west lies the easternmost station of Angola, Ca.s.sange: no Portuguese lives, or rather then lived, beyond the Coango Valley.
The settlers informed him that eight days' or about 100 miles'
march south of this position, the sources are to be found in the ”Mosamba Range” of the Basongo country; this would place them in about south lat.i.tude 12 to 13 and east longitude (G.) 18 to 19.
The heights are also called in Benguela Nanos, Nannos, or Nhanos (highlands);[FN#18] and in our latest maps they are made to discharge from their seaward face the Coango and Cuanza to the west and north, the Kasai to the north-east and possibly to the Congo, the Cunene south-westwards to the Atlantic, and southwards the Kubango, whose destination is still doubtful. Dr. Charles Beke (”Athenaeum,” No. 2206, February 5, 1870), judged from various considerations that the ”Ka.s.sabi” rising in the primeval forests of Olo-vihenda, was the ”great hydrophylacium of the continent of Africa, the central point of division between the waters flowing to the Mediterranean, to the Atlantic, and to the Indian Ocean”--in fact, the head-water of the Nile. I believe, however, that our subsequent information made my late friend abandon this theory.
On his return march to Linyanti, Dr. Livingstone, who was no longer incapacitated by sickness and fatigue, perceived that all the western feeders of the ”Kasa” flow first from the western side towards the centre of the continent, then gradually turn with the main stream itself to the north, and ”after the confluence of the Kasai with the Quango, an immense body of water collected from all these branches, finds its way out of the country by means of the River Congo or Zaire, on the Western Coast” (chap. xxii.). He adds: ”There is but one opinion among the Balonda respecting the Kasai and the Quango. They invariably describe the Kasai as receiving the Quango, and beyond the confluence a.s.suming the name of Zaire or Zerezere. And thus he verifies the tradition of the Portuguese, who always speak of the Casais and the Coango as ”supposto Congo.” It is regrettable that Dr. Livingstone has not been more explicit upon the native names.
The Balonda could hardly have heard of the semi-European term Zaire, which is utterly unknown even at the Yellalas. On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that Maxwell was informed by native travellers that the river 600 miles up country was still called ”Enzaddi,” and perhaps the explorer merely intends Zaire to explain Zerezere. It is hardly necessary to notice Douville's a.s.sertion (ii. 372).
Meanwhile the late Ladislaus Magyar, who had previously informed the Benguelan Government that the Casais was reported to fall into the Indian Ocean at some unknown place, in 1851 followed this great artery lower than any known traveller. He heard that, beyond his furthest exploration point (about south lat.i.tude 6 30,[FN#19] and east longitude, G. 22), it pursues a north- easterly direction and, widening several miles, it raises waves which are dangerous to canoes. The waters continue to be sweet and fall into a lake variously called Mouro or Moura (Morave or Maravi?), Uhanja or Uhenje (Nyanza?), which is suspected to be the Urenge or Ulenge, of which Livingstone heard in about south lat.i.tude 3, and east longitude (G.) 26. The Hungarian traveller naturally identified it with the mythical Lake Nya.s.sa which has done such portentous mischief in a day now gone by. Ladislaus Magyar also states:[FN#20] ”The Congo rises, I have convinced myself by reports, in the swamp named Inhan-ha occupying the high plateau of Moluwa, in the lands of the Luba, uniting with the many streams of this region; at a distance of about five days from the source it becomes a deep though narrow river, which flows to the westward, through a level country covered with dense forests, whose frequent streams coming from the north (?) and south are taken up ”by the river; then it bends north-westward under the name of Kuango.” Here we find the drowned lands, the ”sponges” of Livingstone, who, however, placed the sources much further to the south-east.
Dr. Livingstone's third and last expedition, which began on March 24, 1866, and which ended (1873) with fatal fitness in the swamps of the Bangweolo, suggests a new and more distant derivation for the mighty Congo. After travelling from the Rovuma River to Lake Nya.s.sa, the great explorer in l867-8 came upon an ”earthern mound,” west of Lake Bangweolo or Bemba, in about south lat.i.tude 11; and here he places the sources of the Nile, where geographers have agreed provisionally to place the sources of the Congo. Already, in 1518, Fernandez de Enciso (Suma de Geographia), the ”theoretical discoverer” of Kilimanjaro, was told by the Congoese that their river rises in high mountains, from which another great stream flows in an opposite direction-- but this might apply to more watersheds than one. The subject is treated at considerable length in an article by Dr. E.
Behm,[FN#21] certain of whose remarks I shall notice at the end of this chapter.
The article proves hypsometrically that the Lualaba, in which the explorer found the head waters of the Egyptian river, cannot feed the Tanganyika nor the Lake Nzige (N'zighe, Mwutan, Chowambe, or Albert Nyanza Lake), nor even the Bahr el Ghazal, as was once suspected. From the latter, indeed, it is barred by the water parting of the Welle, the ”Babura” of Jules Poncet (1860), in the land of the Monb.u.t.tu; whose system the later explorer, Dr.
Schweinfurth, is disposed to connect with the Shari.
Hydrometrically considered, the Lualaba, which at Nyangwe, the most northerly point explored by Dr. Livingstone (1870), rolls a flood of 124,000 cubic feet per second in the dry season, cannot be connected either with the Welle (5,100 cubic feet), nor with the Bahr el Ghazal (3,042 to 6,500 cubic feet), nor with the Nile below the mouth of the Bahr el Ghazal (11,330); nor with the Shari (67,500); nor with the shallow Ogobe, through its main forks the Rembo Okanda and the Rembo Nguye.
But the Lualaba may issue through the Congo. The former is made one of the four streams ferried over by those travelling from the Cazembe to the Mwata ya Nvo, and Dr. de Lacarda[FN#22] records it as the ”Guarava,” probably a dialectic form of Lualava. It is the Luapula of the ”Geographer of N'ya.s.si,” who, with his usual felicity and boldness of conjecture (p. 38), bends it eastward, and discharges it into his mythical Central Sea.
Dr. Behm greatly under-estimates the Congo when he a.s.signs to it only 1,800,000 cubic feet per second. He makes the great artery begin to rise in November instead of September and decrease in April, without noticing the March-June freshets, reported by all the natives to measure about one-third of the autumnal floods.
His elements are taken from Tuckey, who found off the ”Diamond Rock” a velocity of 3.50 knots an hour, and from Vidal's Chart, showing 9,000 English feet or 1.50 nautical miles in a Thalweg fifty fathoms deep. Thus he a.s.sumes only two nautical miles for the current, or sixty inches per second, which must be considerably increased, and an average depth of ten fathoms, which again is too little. For 1,800,000 cubic feet of water per second, which Tuckey made 2,000,000, we may safely read 2,500,000.