The people were the Banyamwezi, smart traders and given to lying like Greeks. They are populous, but having been raided by the Mazitu, many of their villages were deserted. Passing through their country, the land becomes flat and forest covered, and so continues all the way to Bangweola. The streams are all banked by the juicy sponge, before described, which make traveling so treacherous and tiresome. All the forests are infested with lions and leopards, necessitating the greatest care at night.
It was January 18th, 1868, when Livingstone first set eyes on Lake Bangweola. The country around the lake is all flat and free from trees, except the mosikisi, which is spared for its dense foliage and fatty oil. The people have canoes and are expert fishermen. They are numerous, especially on the large islands of the lake. The variety of fish is numerous and some are taken which measure four feet in length. The bottom of the lake is sandy, and the shores reedy. During windy weather the waters become quite rough and dangerous. The islanders have herds of goats and flocks of fowls, and are industrious and peaceable, not given to curiosity, but sitting unconcernedly and weaving their cotton or knitting their nets, as a stranger passes by. According to Livingstone’s estimate this splendid body of water is some 150 miles long by 80 broad. The Lokinga mountains, extending from the southeast to
the southwest are visible, and this range joins the Mokone range, west of Kantanga, which range is the water-shed between the Zambesi and Congo basins.
The people are still the Banyamwezi. Besides being skilled in weaving cotton and in net-making, they are expert copper workers. In forging they use a cone-shaped hammer, without a handle. They use bellows, made of goat skin and wood. With these they smelt large ingots of copper in a pot, and pour it into moulds, which give a rough shape to the article they wish to forge.
Livingstone’s observations in this section taught him that there was no such thing as a rainy zone, to account for the periodical rise of rivers like the Nile and Congo. From May to October is a comparatively dry season, and from October to May almost every day gave a thunder shower, but there is no such continuous down pour as has been imagined by meteorologists in Europe. He accounts for the humidity of both the Congo and Zambesi watersheds, by the meeting of the easterly and westerly winds in that section, thus precipitating the evaporations of both oceans in mid-Africa. It is certain that the Congo does not get its yellow hue from its head waters, for all the streams run clear even when swollen. The sponges, or bogs, which are so frequent are accounted for by the fact that some six to eight feet beneath the surface is a formation of sand which cakes at the bottom, thus holding up the saturated soil above and preventing the escape of the water. The same is true of large sections on the Zambesi, and especially in the Kalahari Desert, though the vegetable mould is wanting on the top. In that desert wells must be dug only so deep. If water does not come, they must be dug in another place. To puncture the substratum of caked sand is to make an escape for the water, and create a dearth in an entire drainage system. A peculiarity of the sponge everywhere is that it absorbs so much water as to keep the streams from flooding till long after the shower. Then they assume what would be an unaccountable flow, but for knowledge of the fact that it has taken several hours for the rain-fall to penetrate them. When traveling on the Limda, Livingstone had great trouble with his ox teams, which became invariably bogged in the sponges, and when they saw the clear
sand in the centre of the streams, they usually plunged headforemost for it, leaving nothing in sight but their tails.
DANGEROUS FORDING.
Livingstone’s return from Bangweola to Cassembe gave him no opportunity for observation, owing to the fact that the tribes were at war with one another, instigated by the Arabs, who were gathering a rich crop of slaves. Yet this misfortune was compensated in part by a return of his deserters to his service, on his arrival at Cassembe, thereby enabling him to continue his northward journey more comfortably, and to run the gauntlet of the contending tribes with greater safety.
His journey to Tanganyika, arrival at Ujiji, sickness there, receipt of welcome stores from the coast, slow recovery, make a sad history, but does not add to our knowledge of the natural features and resources of the Congo region. However, our interest is again awakened in this heroic adventurer when we find him once more on his feet and resolved to visit the land of the Manyuema, off to the west and on the Lualaba, in the very heart of the Upper Congo valley, and the stamping ground of the now celebrated Tippoo Tib. The Manyuema country was then unknown, and Livingstone went in the trail of the first of those Arab hordes which ever visited it, but whose repeated visits in quest of ivory and slaves have carried murder, fire, theft and destruction to a once undisturbed, if not happy people.