In the country of Lunda lives the famous Cazembe, who was first made known to Europeans by Dr. Lacerda, the Portuguese traveller. Cazembe is a most intelligent prince; he is a tall, stalwart man, who wears a peculiar kind of dress, made of crimson print, in the form of a prodigious kilt. In this state dress, King Cazembe received Dr. Livingstone, surrounded by his chiefs and body-guards. A chief, who had been deputed by the King and elders to discover all about the white man, then stood up before the assembly, and in a loud voice gave the result of the inquiry he had instituted. He had heard that the white man had come to look for waters, for rivers, and seas; though he could not understand what the white man could want with such things, he had no doubt that the object was good. Then Cazembe asked what the Doctor proposed doing, and where he thought of going. The Doctor replied that he had thought of proceeding south, as he had heard of lakes and rivers being in that direction. Cazembe asked, "What can you want to go there for? The water is close here. There is plenty of large water in this neighbourhood." Before breaking up the assembly, Cazembe gave orders to let the white man go where he would through his country undisturbed and unmolested. He was the first Englishman he had seen, he said, and he liked him.
Shortly after his introduction to the King, the Queen entered the large house, surrounded by a body-guard of Amazons with spears. She was a fine, tall, handsome young woman, and evidently thought she was about to make an impression upon the rustic white man, for she had clothed herself after a most royal fashion, and was armed with a ponderous spear. But her appearance—so different from what the Doctor had imagined—caused him to laugh, which entirely spoiled the effect intended; for the laugh of the Doctor was so contagious, that she herself was the first to imitate it, and the Amazons, courtier-like, followed suit. Much disconcerted by this, the Queen ran back, followed by her obedient damsels—a retreat most undignified and unqueenlike, compared with her majestic advent into the Doctor's presence. But Livingstone will have much to say about his reception at this court, and about this interesting King and Queen; and who can so well relate the scenes he witnessed, and which belong exclusively to him, as he himself?
Soon after his arrival in the country of Lunda, or Londa, and before he had entered the district ruled over by Cazembe, he had crossed a river called the Chambezi, which was quite an important stream. The similarity of the name with that large and noble river south, which will be for ever connected with his name, misled Livingstone at that time, and he, accordingly, did not pay to it the attention it deserved, believing that the Chambezi was but the head-waters of the Zambezi, and consequently had no bearing or connection with the sources of the river of Egypt, of which he was in search. His fault was in relying too implicitly upon the correctness of Portuguese information. This error it cost him many months of tedious labour and travel to rectify.
From the beginning of 1867—the time of his arrival at Cazembe's—till the middle of March, 1869—the time of his arrival at Ujiji—he was mostly engaged in correcting the errors and misrepresentations of the Portuguese travellers. The Portuguese, in speaking of the River Chambezi, invariably spoke of it as "our own Zambezi,"—that is, the Zambezi which flows through the Portuguese possessions of the Mozambique. "In going to Cazembe from Nyassa," said they, "you will cross our own Zambezi." Such positive and reiterated information—given not only orally, but in their books and maps—was naturally confusing. When the Doctor perceived that what he saw and what they described were at variance, out of a sincere wish to be correct, and lest he might have been mistaken himself, he started to retravel the ground he had travelled before. Over and over again he traversed the several countries watered by the several rivers of the complicated water system, like an uneasy spirit. Over and over again he asked the same questions from the different peoples he met, until he was obliged to desist, lest they might say, "The man is mad; he has got water on the brain!"
But his travels and tedious labours in Lunda and the adjacent countries have established beyond doubt—first, that the Chambezi is a totally distinct river from the Zambezi of the Portuguese; and, secondly, that the Chambezi, starting from about latitude 11 degrees south, is no other than the most southerly feeder of the great Nile; thus giving that famous river a length of over 2,000 miles of direct latitude; making it, second to the Mississippi, the longest river in the world. The real and true name of the Zambezi is Dombazi. When Lacerda and his Portuguese successors, coming to Cazembe, crossed the Chambezi, and heard its name, they very naturally set it down as "our own Zambezi," and, without further inquiry, sketched it as running in that direction.
During his researches in that region, so pregnant in discoveries, Livingstone came to a lake lying north-east of Cazembe, which the natives call Liemba, from the country of that name which bordered it on the east and south. In tracing the lake north, he found it to be none other than the Tanganika, or the south-eastern extremity of it, which looks, on the Doctor's map, very much like an outline of Italy. The latitude of the southern end of this great body of water is about 8 degrees 42 minutes south, which thus gives it a length, from north to south, of 360 geographical miles. From the southern extremity of the Tanganika he crossed Marungu, and came in sight of Lake Moero. Tracing this lake, which is about sixty miles in length, to its southern head, he found a river, called the Luapula, entering it from that direction. Following the Luapula south, he found it issue from the large lake of Bangweolo, which is nearly as large in superficial area as the Tanganika. In exploring for the waters which discharged themselves into the lake, he found that by far the most important of these feeders was the Chambezi; so that he had thus traced the Chambezi from its source to Lake Bangweolo, and the issue from its northern head, under the name of Luapula, and found it enter Lake Moero. Again he returned to Cazembe's, well satisfied that the river running north through three degrees of latitude could not be the river running south under the name of Zambezi, though there might be a remarkable resemblance in their names.
At Cazembe's he found an old white-bearded half-caste named Mohammed bin Sali, who was kept as a kind of prisoner at large by the King because of certain suspicious circumstances attending his advent and stay in the country. Through Livingstone's influence Mohammed bin Sali obtained his release. On the road to Ujiji he had bitter cause to regret having exerted himself in the half-caste's behalf. He turned out to be a most ungrateful wretch, who poisoned the minds of the Doctor's few followers, and ingratiated himself with them by selling the favours of his concubines to them, by which he reduced them to a kind of bondage under him. The Doctor was deserted by all but two, even faithful Susi and Chumah deserted him for the service of Mohammed bin Sali. But they soon repented, and returned to their allegiance. From the day he had the vile old man in his company manifold and bitter misfortunes followed the Doctor up to his arrival at Ujiji in March, 1869.
From the date of his arrival until the end of June, 1869, he remained at Ujiji, whence he dated those letters which, though the outside world still doubted his being alive, satisfied the minds of the Royal Geographical people, and his intimate friends, that he still existed, and that Musa'a tale was the false though ingenious fabrication of a cowardly deserter. It was during this time that the thought occurred to him of sailing around the Lake Tanganika, but the Arabs and natives were so bent upon fleecing him that, had he undertaken it, the remainder or his goods would not have enabled him to explore the central line of drainage, the initial point of which he found far south of Cazembe's in about latitude 11 degrees, in the river called Chambezi.
In the days when tired Captain Burton was resting in Ujiji, after his march from the coast near Zanzibar, the land to which Livingstone, on his departure from Ujiji, bent his steps was unknown to the Arabs save by vague report. Messrs. Burton and Speke never heard of it, it seems. Speke, who was the geographer of Burton's Expedition, heard of a place called Urua, which he placed on his map, according to the general direction indicated by the Arabs; but the most enterprising of the Arabs, in their search after ivory, only touched the frontiers of Rua, as, the natives and Livingstone call it; for Rua is an immense country, with a length of six degrees of latitude, and as yet an undefined breadth from east to west.
At the end of June, 1869, Livingstone quitted Ujiji and crossed over to Uguhha, on the western shore, for his last and greatest series of explorations; the result of which was the further discovery of a lake of considerable magnitude connected with Moero by the large river called the Lualaba, and which was a continuation of the chain of lakes he had previously discovered.