CUTTING A ROAD.
This time they found the chief. His headquarters were on an island in the river, below the lake. He received the party with the greatest courtesy, and appeared to be the best mannered and frankest chief Livingstone ever met. He was about forty-five years old, tall and wiry, of coffee-and-milk complexion, slightly bald, of undoubted bravery, always leading his men in battle, and by far the most powerful warrior beyond Cape Colony. He had reduced tribe after tribe, till his dominions extended far into the desert on the south of the Zonga, embraced both sides of that stream, and ran northward to, and beyond, the great Zambesi River.
Chief Sebituane died while Livingstone was visiting him, and was succeeded by his daughter Ma-Mochisane. She extended the privileges of the country to the travellers, and Livingstone went north to Sesheke to see her. Here in June, 1851, he discovered the great Zambesi in the centre of the continent of Africa where it was not previously known to exist—all former maps being incorrect.
Though the country was not healthy, he was so impressed with the beauty of the Zambesi regions, and the character of the Makololo people, that he resolved to make a permanent establishment among them. But before doing so he returned to Cape Colony and sent his family to England. Then he went back, visiting his old stations on the way. He arrived at Linyanti, where he found that the new queen had abdicated in favor of her brother, on May 23, 1853. The new king Sekelutu was not unlike his father in stature and color, was kindly disposed toward white people, but could not be convinced that their religious notions were suited to him.
Livingstone remained a month at Linyanti, on the Chobe, or Cuando River, above its junction with the Zambezi. He then started on a further exploration of the latter river, and was gratified to find that Sekelutu determined to accompany him with 160 attendants. They made royal progress down the Chobe to its mouth. Then they began to ascend the Zambesi in thirty-three canoes. The river was more than a mile broad, dotted with large islands and broken with frequent rapids and falls. The banks were thickly strewn with villages. Elephants were numerous. It was the new king’s first visit to his people and everywhere the receptions were grand. Throughout this Barotse valley hunger is not known, yet there is no care exercised in planting.
The spirit of exploration had such full possession of Livingstone that, on the return of the royal party to Linyanti, he organized an expedition to ascend the Zambesi and cut across to Loanda on the Atlantic coast. This he did in 1854. It was on this journey that he discovered Lake Dilolo. It is not much of a lake, being only eight miles long by three broad. But it
was a puzzle to Livingstone, and has ever since been a curiosity. It is the connecting link between two immense water systems—that of the Congo and Zambesi.
When he struck it on his westward journey toward Loanda, he found it sending out a volume into the Zambesi. “Head-waters of a great river!” he naturally exclaimed. And there was the elevation above the sea, the watershed, to prove it, for soon after all the waters ran northward and westward instead of eastward and southward.
But in a few months he was making his return journey from Loanda to the interior, to fulfil his pledge to bring back his Makololo attendants in safety. He then approached this lake from the north. What was his surprise to find another slow moving, reed-covered stream a mile wide, flowing from this end of the mysterious lake and sending its waters toward the Congo.