Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/356

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340
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

gallantly does that which three Englishmen were going to do and not doing, did less than might still have been done and comes home and tells the thrilling tale when and where he found the great Livingstone, and in his sore need helped him.

Mr. Stanley's story is so well known that a brief outline of the work he found accomplished after the meeting at Ujiji, November 3, 1871, will be sufficient to complete this sketch.

Leaving the renegade Johannese to carry home their lie, Livingstone first crosses the Chambézi River in latitude 11 S., which, relying on Portuguese information, he passed unnoticed as the head of his own Zambesi, but which afterward was to prove such a name of note. In the beginning of 1867, he enters Londa, where he is kindly received by the chief Cazembe, and enters upon the exploration of the regions to the east. Lake Liemba, first visited, he ascertains to be the southern extension of Lake Tanganyika, which covers a latitudinal area of 360 miles. After many and complicated wanderings among the waters of this vast region, he reaches Ujiji in the March of 1869, and it was then the letter was written which has been quoted. Crossing Tanganyika in the following June, he reaches Ugupha on its western side, and, entering Rua (Speke's Ururoa), commences a long series of journeys of which the details are yet his own secret.

But a bird's-eye view is given us. First, a vast water-shed between latitude 10° and 12° S., a tree-covered belt, some 700 miles from east to west. From a plain 4,000 to 5,000 feet above the level of the sea, mountains rise to a height of from 6,000 to 7,000 feet, taking the same level. Countless brooks on this wide upland converge and form broad streams that flow toward the centre of a far-extending trough, which Livingstone supposes to be the valley of the Nile. Three large rivers form primary sources in this great valley; and these unite in what he calls "an enormous lacustrine river." This is the Lualaba—"Webb's Lualaba," as he names it, after his friend, the owner of Newstead, to distinguish it from other streams bearing the same appellation. In the valley are five considerable lakes. First, Bemba, or Bangweolo, into which the Chambézi flows—the most conspicuous among many other river-sources. Out of Bangweolo runs the Luapula, to enter the beautiful lake Moero, from which a stream, "Webb's Lualaba," pours impetuously through a rift in the surrounding mountains, and, spreading out in the plain-country beyond, winds away in a course of confusing tortuousness, till it enters Lake Kamolondo. The Lufira, the second of the three great primary rivers, discharges itself into the Lualaba, north of Kamolondo. Then comes the third, the Lomami, which, flowing from a lake westward of Kamolondo—"Lake Lincoln," as Livingstone styles it—fed by another Lualaba, joins the central drainage-line lower down. The three thus uniting, a mighty stream flows northward toward a lake, which may be that discovered by an Italian explorer, Paggia, but which Livingstone designates as the "Unknown Lake;" for at this