The magnificent river Zambesi, known in its upper course by the local appellation of Leambye—both words having the same signification in the native tongue, “the River”—fertilizes and brightens these productive regions. Flowing at first from north to south, it makes a sharp bend westward, to march with stately step from south to north, and from west to east, until, with a south-eastern inclination, it moves onward to the Indian Ocean.
It was at a point nearly midway between the two oceans—the Indian and the Atlantic—that the intrepid Livingstone first descried the Zambesi, regarding its fertile banks and noble stream with much the same emotions of delight and surprise as thrilled to the heart of Balboa, when
“With eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent,upon a peak in Darien.”[83]
He arrived there near the close of the dry season, and yet a grand volume of water still sparkled in the river’s bed, which varied from 950 to 1900 feet in breadth. At the epoch of the great floods, the Zambesi rises perpendicularly more than eighteen feet, and at certain points extends more than forty miles from its bank. From the borders of the Chobé to those of the Zambesi spreads a low, level country, whose uniform expanse is only broken by the gigantic hillocks of the termites. At intervals the traveller lights upon spots where the waters have formerly settled, then on great morasses and deep rivers, winding their slow way through an almost impervious jungle. There is a certain fatal beauty about the whole region, like that of a Circe or a Lucrezia Borgia; but its atmosphere breathes disease and death.
A general depression and flatness of surface seems to be the physical characteristic of this part of Central Africa. Thus, on the route adopted by Livingstone, in a N.N.E. direction, from the chain of Bamunguatos to the Zambesi, all is level. Mount N’goua, an isolated mass in 18° 27´ 20´´ south latitude, and 24° 13´ 63´´ east longitude, is a wholly exceptional accident. The Kandehy Valley, which deploys on the northern slope of this narrow colossus, is one of the most picturesque scenes that greeted the eyes of Livingstone during his adventurous pilgrimage. Fruit trees, loaded with emerald foliage, adorn its sides; a crystal brook ripples in the centre. Under the shade of an enormous baobab the graceful antelopes browse undisturbed, until alarmed by the footfall of the approaching traveller. Gnus and zebras contemplate the strange intruder with an air of surprise. A few continue to crop the grass indifferent; others pause in the banquet, uncertain whether to stay or take to flight. The huge hulk of a white rhinoceros drags labouring up the shady valley. Buffaloes, and condors, and giraffes stray far into its pleasant depths as peaceful and almost as trustful as those of their race which, in days remote, wandered among the beauties of Eden, in
“That delicious grove,
That garden, planted with the trees of God.”
Further to the north, even to the river Sanshureh, the country increases in richness and beauty, the water-courses multiply, and the herbage aspires to such a height that vehicles and animals are lost amongst it.
An exceeding gentleness, an almost Arcadian calm, characterizes the landscape on the banks of the Leeba, a great affluent of the Leambye. This river drags its slow and ever-winding waters through a delightful meadow-land, which is probably flooded every year, for there is no wood except where the ground rises four or five feet above the general level of the plain. The soil of these tree-crowned plateaux, or knolls, is sandy, while that of the prairies consists of an alluvial earth, gray and black, and mixed with numerous river-shells.
Ascending the Leeba, we enter on a plain more than eighteen miles in breadth, where the water rises to the traveller’s ankles. This water, says Livingstone, does not proceed from the overflow of the river; but the level of the ground is so horizontal that the rain-water cannot pass away, and abides there for months. Still more humid are the adjacent plains of Lobala. This vast submerged area forms a watershed between the rivers of the north and those of the south. Up to this point all the rivers wend their way southward; but from this point they adopt a northerly course, to empty their tribute into the Kasaï or Loké.
The interior table-land, especially towards the mid-course of the Zambesi, is intersected by lofty mountain-chains. It is in this region, and at the southernmost point of the river’s great Delta, which is 270 miles in length, that the famous Falls occur, named by the natives “Mosioatounya,” or “Smoke-resounding,” re-christened by Livingstone, the Victoria. Their vast columns of vapour are visible at a distance of five or six miles, and might suggest to an American traveller the rolling clouds that ascend from a burning prairie. The banks and islands of the river are here enriched with sylvan vegetation of every variety of form and colour: the mighty baobab, each of whose enormous arms would form the trunk of a large tree; the graceful palm, with its crest of plume-like foliage; the silvery mohonams, whose leaves sparkle in the sunshine like Achilles’ shield; and the nutsouri, abounding in clusters of pleasant scarlet fruit.