Four fountains rising so near to each other would readily be supposed to have one source, and half the water flowing into the Nile and the other half to the Zambesi, required but little imagination to originate, seeing the actual visitor would not feel bound to say how the division was effected. He could only know the fact of waters rising at one spot, and separating to flow north and south. The conical tops to the mound look like invention, as also do the names.
A slave, bought on Lualaba East, came from Lualaba West in about twelve days: these two Lualabas may form the loop depicted by Ptolemy, and upper and lower Tanganyika be a third arm of the Nile.
Patience is all I can exercise: these irritable ulcers hedge me in now, as did my attendants in June, but all will be for the best, for it is in Providence and not in me.
The watershed is between 700 and 800 miles long from west to east, or say from 22° or 23° to 34° or 35° East longitude. Parts of it are enormous sponges; in other parts innumerable rills unite into rivulets, which again form rivers—Lufira, for instance, has nine rivulets, and Lekulwé other nine. The convex surface of the rose of a garden watering-can is a tolerably apt similitude, as the rills do not spring off the face of it, and it is 700 miles across the circle; but in the numbers of rills coming out at different heights on the slope, there is a faint resemblance, and I can at present think of no other example.
I am a little thankful to old Nile for so hiding his head that all "theoretical discoverers" are left out in the cold. With all real explorers I have a hearty sympathy, and I have some regret at being obliged, in a manner compelled, to speak somewhat disparagingly of the opinions formed by my predecessors. The work of Speke and Grant is part of the history of this region, and since the discovery of the sources of the Nile was asserted so positively, it seems necessary to explain, not offensively, I hope, wherein their mistake lay, in making a somewhat similar claim. My opinions may yet be shown to be mistaken too, but at present I cannot conceive how. When Speke discovered Victoria Nyanza in 1858, he at once concluded that therein lay the sources of the Nile. His work after that was simply following a foregone conclusion, and as soon as he and Grant looked towards the Victoria Nyanza, they turned their backs on the Nile fountains; so every step of their splendid achievement of following the river down took them further and further away from the Caput Nili. When it was perceived that the little river that leaves the Nyanza, though they called it the White Nile, would not account for that great river, they might have gone west and found headwaters (as the Lualaba) to which it can bear no comparison. Taking their White Nile at 80 or 90 yards, or say 100 yards broad, the Lualaba, far south of the latitude of its point of departure, shows an average breadth of from 4000 to 6000 yards, and always deep.
Considering that more than sixteen hundred years have elapsed since Ptolemy put down the results of early explorers, and emperors, kings, philosophers—all the great men of antiquity in short longed to know the fountains whence flowed the famous river, and longed in vain—exploration does not seem to have been very becoming to the other sex either. Madame Tinné came further up the river than the centurions sent by Nero Cæsar, and showed such indomitable pluck as to reflect honour on her race. I know nothing about her save what has appeared in the public papers, but taking her exploration along with what was done by Mrs. Baker, no long time could have elapsed before the laurels for the modern re-discovery of the sources of the Nile should have been plucked by the ladies. In 1841 the Egyptian Expedition under D'Arnauld and Sabatier reached lat. 4° 42': this was a great advance into the interior as compared with Linant in 1827, 13° 30' N., and even on the explorations of Jomard(?); but it turned when nearly a thousand miles from the sources.
Manuema Hunters killing Sokos
[The subjoined account of the soko—which is in all probability an entirely new species of chimpanzee, and not the gorilla, is exceedingly interesting, and no doubt Livingstone had plenty of stories from which to select. Neither Susi nor Chuma can identify the soko of Manyuema with the gorilla, as we have it stuffed in the British Museum. They think, however, that the soko is quite as large and as strong as the gorilla, judging by the specimens shown to them, although they could have decided with greater certainty, if the natives had not invariably brought in the dead sokos disembowelled; as they point out, and as we imagine from Dr. Livingstone's description, the carcase would then appear much less bulky. Livingstone gives an animated sketch of a soko hunt.]