A Mzaramo.
Ferry Boat on the Malagarazi River.
CHAP. XV.
THE TANGANYIKA LAKE AND ITS PERIPLUS.
The Tanganyika Lake, though situated in the unexplored centre of Intertropical Africa, and until 1858 unvisited by Europeans, has a traditionary history of its own, extending through more than three centuries.
“Accounts of a great sea in the interior of Africa obtained (partially from native travellers) at Congo and Sofala,” reached the Portuguese settlements on both shores of the continent.[6] The details of de Barros (first printed in 1852), whilst affording substantially correct details, such as the length of the Lake—100 leagues—the capability of navigation, and the one large island—Ubwari—are curiously intermingled with the errors of theoretical conclusion. Subsequently Pigafetta (1591), writing upon the authority of Portuguese inquirers, affirms that there is but one lake (the N’yassa) on the confines of Angola and Monomotapa, but that there are two lakes (the Nyassa and the Tanganyika), not lying east and west, as was supposed by Ptolemy of Alexandria, but north and south of each other, and about 400 miles asunder, which give birth to the Nile. From that epoch dates the origin of our modern misconceptions concerning the Lake Region of Central Intertropical Africa. The Nyassa and the Tanganyika were now blended, then separated, according to the theories or the information of the geographer; no explorer ventured to raise from the land of mystery the veil that invested it; and the “Mombas Mission” added the colophon by confounding, with the old confusion, the Nyanza or Ukerewe, a third lake, of which they had heard at Mombasah and elsewhere. It is not wonderful then that Dr. Vincent suspected the existence or the place of the Central Lake, or that the more ignorant popularizers of knowledge confounded the waters of the Nyassa and the Ngami.[7]
[6] Mr. Cooley’s ‘Memoir on the Geography of N’yassi,’ p. 1. (Vol. XV. of 1845, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society.) The extracts from Portuguese history in the text are entirely taken from that learned paper, which in describing actualities wanted nothing but a solid foundation of data. The geographer’s principal informant in 1834 was one “Khamisi bin Tani,” civilised into “Khamis bin Osman,” a Msawahili of Lamu who having visited the Nyassa, Maravi or Kilwa Lake, pretended that he had travelled to the Tanganyika Lake. I cannot allow this opportunity to pass without expressing my gratitude to Mr. Cooley for his courtesy in supplying me with references and other information.
[7] In the ‘Westminster Review’ (New Series, No. XX.) occurs the following passage, which sufficiently illustrates the assertion in the text; the critic is discussing Mr. C. Andersson’s ‘Lake Ngami,’ &c. &c. (London, 1856):—“African missionaries, penetrating some little distance inland from the S.E., recently brought information, which they received second-hand from Arab travellers, of a vast fresh-water lake far in the interior, described as being of enormous dimensions—as nothing less than a great inland sea. Frequenters of the Geographical Society’s meetings in Whitehall-place have observed in consequence, on the site which used to be marked in the maps as a sandy desert, a blue spot, about the size of the Caspian, and the shape of a hideous inflated leech. We trusted that a more accurate survey would correct the extreme frightfulness of the supposed form. Mr. Andersson has spared us further excitement. The lake turns out to be a mirage—a mythus with the smallest conceivable nucleus of fact. On the very spot occupied by this great blue leech—long. E. from Greenwich 23° and lat. S. 20° 21′—he found a small speck of bitter water, something more than twenty miles across, or the size of Lake Corrib in Galway. So perishes a phantom which has excited London geographers for a whole season.”
Had the learned reviewer used his eyes or his judgment in Whitehall-place, he would not thus have confounded the hypothetic sea of the ‘Mombas Mission Map’—a reservoir made to include the three several waters of Nyanza, Tanganyika, and Nyassa—in E. long. 24°-29°, and S. lat. 0° 13′—with the little Ngami explored by Dr. Livingstone and a party of friends in August, 1849, and placed by him in E. long. 23°, and in S. lat. 20° 20′ 21′. The nearest points of the two waters are separated by an interval, in round numbers, of 700 miles.
The earliest name given by theoretical writers to the hypothetical single lake appears to have been Zembére, Zémbere, Zambre, Zambri, or Zembre, probably a corruption or dialectic variety of Zambesi, that river being supposed, like the Nile, the Zaire, the Manisa, and others, to be derived from it. The word Moravi or Maravi, which still deforms our maps, is the name of a large tribe or a lordly race like the Wahinda, dwelling to the south-east and south-west of the Nyassa. In the seventeenth century Luigi Mariano, a missioner residing at the Rios de Sena, calls the Central Sea the Lake of Hemosura; his description however applies to the Nyassa, Maravi or Kilwa Lake, and the word is probably a corruption of Rusuro or Lusuro, which in the language of Uhiao signifies a river or flowing water. In the ‘Mombas Mission Map’ the lake is called “See von Uniamesi,” a mere misnomer, as it is separated by hundreds of miles from the Land of the Moon: the northern part is termed Ukerewe, by a confusion with the Nyanza Lake and the southern N’hánjá, for Nyassa, the old Maravi water near Kilwa. It is not a little curious, however, that Messrs. Cooley and Macqueen should both have recorded the vernacular name of the northern Lake Tangenyika, so unaccountably omitted from the ‘Mombas Mission Map.’ The words Tanganyenka and Tanganyenko used by Dr. Livingstone, who in places appears to confound the Lake with the Nyanza and the Nyassa, are palpable mispronunciations.
The African name for the central lake is Tanganyika, signifying an anastomosis, or a meeting place (sc. of waters,) from ku tanganyika, the popular word, to join, or meet together: the initial t being changed to ch—ku changanyika for ku tanganyika—in the lingua Franca of Zanzibar doubtless gave rise to Mr. Cooley’s “Zanganyika.” The word Tanganyika is universally used by the Wajiji and other tribes near and upon the Lake. The Arabs and African strangers, when speaking loosely of it, call it indifferently the Bahari or Sea, the Ziwa or Pond, and even the Mtoni or River. The “Sea of Ujiji” would, after the fashion of Easterns, be limited to the waters in the neighbourhood of that principal depot.