“These falls,” says Pinto, “can be neither properly depicted nor described. The pencil and the pen are alike at fault, and in fact, save at their western extremity, the whole are enveloped in a cloud of vapor which, perhaps fortunately, hides half the awfulness of the scene. It is not possible to survey this wonder of nature without a feeling of terror and of sadness creeping over the mind. Up at the Gonye Falls everything is smiling and beautiful, here at Mozi-oa-tunia everything is frowning, and awful.”
Pinto’s journey was now southward across the great Kalihari Desert, and thence to the eastern coast. We must go with him to the centre of this desert, for he unravels a secret there in the shape of “The Great Salt Pan.”
We remember Livingstone’s discovery of Lake Ngami, into which and out of which pours the Cubango river, to be afterwards lost in the central Salt Pan of the desert. Pinto discovered that this “Salt Pan” received, in the rainy season, many other large tributaries, and then became an immense lake, or rather system of pans or lakes, ten to fifteen feet deep and from 50 to 150 miles long. This vast system, he says, communicates with Lake Ngami by means of the Cubango, or Zonga River, on nearly the same level. If Ngami rises by means of its inflow, the current is down the Cubango toward the “Salt Pans.” If however the “Pans” overflow, by means of their other tributaries, the current is up the Cubango toward Lake Ngami. So that among the other natural wonders of Africa we have not only a system of great rivers pouring themselves into an inland sea with no outlet except the clouds, but also a great river actually flowing two ways for a distance of over a hundred miles, as the one or the other lake on its course happens to be fullest.
THE CONGO.
Lake Tanganyika had been known to the Arab slave hunters of the east coast of Africa long before the white man gazed upon its bright blue waters. These cunning, cruel people had good reasons for guarding well the secret of its existence. Yet popular report of it gave it many an imaginary location and dimension. What is remarkable about it is that since it has been discovered and located, it has taken various lengths and shapes under the eye of different observers, and though it has been circumnavigated, throughout its 1200 miles of coast, no one can yet be quite positive whether it has an outlet or not.
It is 600 miles inland from Zanzibar, or the east coast of Africa, and almost in the centre of that wonderful basin whose reservoirs contribute to the Nile, Zambesi and Congo. The route from Zanzibar half way to the lake is a usual one, and we need not describe it. The balance of the way, through the Ugogo and Unyamwezi countries, is surrounded by the richest African verdure and diversified by running streams and granitic slopes, with occasional crags. At length the mountain ranges which surround the lake are reached, and when crossed there appear on the eastern shore the thatched houses of Ujiji, the rendezvous of all expeditions, scientific, commercial and missionary, that have ever reached these mysterious waters.
Burton and Speke were the white discoverers of Tanganyika. It seemed to them the revelation of a new world—a sight to make men hold their breath with a rush of new thoughts, as when Bilboa and his men stood silent on that peak in Darien and gazed upon the Pacific Ocean.
Fifteen years later Cameron struck it and could not believe that the vast grey expanse was aught else than clouds on the distant mountains of Ugoma, till closer observation proved the contrary.