He is a little better a fortnight later, and anxious to move on. But whither? He had intended to follow the lake to the north-west; but the road seems barred by the Mazitu, who are out for plunder. He has heard of Lake Moero, which lies to the west some two hundred, or two hundred and fifty miles. Is it not possible that this lake may be the common source of the Congo and the Nile? The geographical problem is most persistent, and he cannot be satisfied to leave Lake Moero unexplored. On the first day’s march he has another fit of insensibility, but this does not constitute an argument for delay. He reached the village of a chief Chitimba, only to find that the country between him and Lake Moero is the scene of a small war, which would involve “a long détour round the disturbed district.” He decides to wait events, which turns out to be a tedious business; but the Arabs are kind to him, and the enforced leisure is probably beneficial. His diary is full of descriptions of the cruelties inflicted by the slave-trade. In all, he was detained at Chitimba’s village nearly three months and a half. In his onward march he visits the famous Nsama, with whom the war has been waged, and is again laid up with illness in that neighbourhood. After this, he crosses the Chisera and the Choma, and then ascends the high lands between the rivers and the northern part of the lake. It is exhilarating travelling here, for Livingstone is always pleasantly excited by beautiful and hilly scenery which brings back memories of Scotland. But, alas! “the long line of slaves and carriers” is a frequent incident in the march. On the 8th of November, he reaches Lake Moero, “which seems of goodly size, and is flanked by ranges of mountains on the east and west.” There he sleeps in a fisherman’s hut, for the lake abounds in fish, the fishermen enumerating thirty-nine varieties. The end of November finds him at the town of Casembe, where he meets an Arab trader, Mohamad Bogharib, “with an immense number of slaves,” who gives him a meal—the first honey and sugar he had tasted for fourteen months—and is useful to him in many ways. The chief also is civil to Livingstone; but has been guilty of hateful barbarities, as the mutilated arms and ears of many of his people bear witness. Livingstone looks with disgust on the executioner who carries sword and scissors for his horrible work. The people generally are more savage than any he has seen.
The results of extended explorations of Lake Moero, lasting for some months, are set forth in a despatch to Lord Clarendon, dated the 10th of December, 1867. From this despatch we can see that Livingstone had been misled by a similarity of name to imagine that Lake Bemba, of which he had heard years before, was the same as Lake Liemba. He now knows that Lake Liemba is only the southern portion of Lake Tanganyika; and that Lake Bemba is the lake otherwise called Lake Bangweolo; and that on his northern travels from Lake Nyassa, when he crossed the River Chambezé, he had been less than a hundred miles from this latter lake, and might have saved himself many a hundred miles of trudging had he explored it first of all. He had discovered also, that a great river, the Luapula, flows from Lake Bangweolo into the south of Lake Moero, and that at the north the waters flow out in what is called the River Lualaba. He is uncertain in his own mind what this great river Lualaba is, and whither it goes. It may be the Nile; it seems more probable that it is the Congo. It may flow into the northern portion of Lake Tanganyika, or it may flow away to the north-west. Livingstone is assured by the natives that Lake Bangweolo is only ten days distant. But he adds, “I am so tired of exploration without a word from home or anywhere else for two years, that I must go to Ujiji on Tanganyika for letters before doing anything else. Besides, there is another reason—I have no medicine.” He is satirical on the subject of the published maps, one of which tacks on 200 miles to Lake Nyassa, and another makes a river—“the new Zambesi”—flow 4,000 feet up hill! “I have walked over both these mental abortions and did not know that I was walking on water till I saw them in the maps.”
The year 1868 finds him still interested in Lake Moero. His New Year’s prayer is: “If I am to die this year, prepare me for it.”
It was towards the end of March that the idea of going south and exploring Lake Bangweolo took hold on him. His reason was that at least two more months must be passed at Lake Moero before a passage could be made to Ujiji. There were many difficulties in the way, notably that his stores were nearly done and he could not give presents to chiefs on the way. What was more serious was that those on whose help he counted were in open revolt against his plan. Mohamad Bogharib, who intended to accompany him to Ujiji, was incensed at Livingstone for making a proposal so mad; and the latter expresses the fear that he must give up Lake Bangweolo for the present. Next day, however, he is bent on going, but his own carriers have been corrupted by the Arabs, and refuse to accompany him. Only five of his men remain loyal; but Livingstone’s blood is up now, and he starts out at the head of this meagre escort to find Lake Bemba or Bangweolo. “I did not blame them very severely in my own mind for absconding,” he writes; “they were tired of tramping, and so verily am I.” They might well resent Livingstone’s decision, for at the time it was taken they were at the north end of Lake Moero, where Livingstone had gone to look at Lualaba, examine the country, and draw his conclusions as to whether this great river was the Congo or the Nile. The way to Tanganyika and Ujiji was now open, and this sudden turn south was almost more than flesh and blood could stand. However, the leader was obdurate, and early in May, with his faithful few, he is back at Casembe’s, to the south of Moero, with his mind fully made up for Bangweolo. Again there were tedious delays, and it is the second week in June before he is definitely off for the south. A month’s travelling brings him to Lake Bangweolo. A Babisa traveller asked him why he had come so far, and he answered that he wished to make the country and people better known to the rest of the world; that we were all children of one Father, and that he was anxious that we should know each other better, and that friendly visits should be made in safety. He began exploring the islands of the lake. It was bitterly cold on one of them, and the shed where he slept was decidedly airy, but he tells us that he was soon asleep and dreamed that he had apartments in Mivart’s Hotel! At the end of July he started back, and at Kizinga he deviated from his former route and struck out to the north for the Kalongosi River. All goes well, and by the first of November be is back again at the north of Moero, preparing to march to Ujiji, and intently preoccupied with the problem of the Nile. The men who had deserted him when he went south are now pleading to be taken back. He reflects that “more enlightened people often take advantage of men in similar circumstances,” and adds characteristically, “I have faults myself.” So all the runaways are reinstated.
The expedition would have got away now without further delay but that the slave raids of Mohamad Bogharib’s men roused the countryside against him, and Livingstone found himself at the very centre of a small war, and literally in the zone of fire. Stockades were hastily erected, and the perpetrators of the outrage had to stand a siege. Horrible scenes were witnessed, and Livingstone comments on the miseries which this devilish traffic entails. The country is now very disturbed and unsafe, and it is not till December 11th that a start can be made. Mr. Waller describes the “motley group” that now set out for Tanganyika: “Mohamad and his friends, a gang of Unyamwezi hangers-on, and strings of wretched slaves yolked together in their heavy slave-sticks. Some carry ivory, others copper or food for the march, whilst hope, and fear, misery and villainy may be read off the various faces.” Livingstone is now an actual eye-witness of a slave march. The slaves constantly escape. Sickness and accidents pursue the miserable cavalcade, and make progress slow. Food for so many mouths is difficult to obtain. Christmas Day passes in a land of scarcity. The weather is very damp and cheerless; and on New Year’s Day Livingstone, as he says, got wet through once too often. Yet he is so anxious to be on the far side of the Lofuko that he wades through, though it is waist deep and very cold. This is the last straw. He breaks down utterly, is “very ill all over; cannot walk; pneumonia of right lung, and I cough all day
THE TRAGEDY OF CENTRAL AFRICA.
and all night; sputa rust of iron, and bloody; distressing weakness.” He chronicles the illusions that come and go; sees himself lying dead on the way to Ujiji, and all the letters waiting for him useless. It seems as if he is near the end. Mohamad Bogharib constructs a kind of litter for the helpless veteran, and in this litter he is carried forward four hours a day. It is the best that can be done; but Livingstone tells of the pain he endured as he was jolted along, sometimes through steep ravines and sometimes over volcanic tufa, the feet of the carriers being at times hurt with thorns, and the sun beating down on Livingstone’s face and head, which in his weakness he could not even shelter with a bunch of leaves. For six endless weeks the sufferer was borne onward thus, and on February 14th all that is left of him is deposited on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, and canoes are sought to transport the party up the lake to Ujiji. It was stormy weather on the lake, and the canoes had to creep along the western shore from village to village—“Patience was never needed more than now,” writes the sick man in his extremity—then across the lake to the east, and at last, March 14th, the heroic traveller reaches his goal, and does actually stand for the first time in the streets of Ujiji. He had fixed so many hopes on this Arab settlement, and had lived for so long on the anticipation of letters and journals, stores and medicines, that the disappointment awaiting him was heartrending. He had reached a den of thieves, the vilest he had ever known. His stores were plundered—only eighteen pieces of cloth out of eighty remained, and what was harder to bear, only one old letter out of all that had been sent to him. As for the medicines, he is told they are at Unyanyembe, thirteen days to the east. He knew quite well that there was a conspiracy to thwart him, and if possible to drive him out of the country or compass his death. He was fighting the slave trade single-handed, and was ringed around by cruel and unscrupulous enemies, whose dark deeds had only him to fear. He is almost beaten in the unequal strife; almost, but never quite. No man was ever yet quite beaten who is as sure of Christ as he was. He has one thing to rely on, as he said before—“the word of a Gentleman of the strictest honour”—and it is enough. So he will remain and outwit the slave-traders if he can. And yet it is a misnomer to call it a “trade”; “it is not a trade, but a system of consecutive murders.”