[29] Missionary Travels, p. 65.
Twelve days after, the travelers came to the northeast end of Lake 'Ngami, and it was on 1st August, 1849, that this fine sheet of water was beheld for the first time by Europeans. It was of such magnitude that they could not see the farther shore, and they could only guess its size from the reports of the natives that it took three days to go round it.
Lechulatebe, the chief who had sent him the invitation, was quite a young man, and his reception by no means corresponded to what the invitation implied. He had no idea of Livingstone going on to Sebituane, who lived two hundred miles farther north, and perhaps supplying him with fire-arms which would make him a more dangerous neighbor. He therefore refused Livingstone guides to Sebituane, and sent men to prevent him from crossing the river. Livingstone was not to be baulked, and worked many hours in the river trying to make a raft out of some rotten wood,--at the imminent risk of his life, as he afterward found, for the Zouga abounds with alligators. The season was now far advanced, and as Mr. Oswell volunteered to go down to the Cape and bring up a boat next year, the expedition was abandoned for the time.
Returning home by the Zouga, they had better opportunity to mark the extraordinary richness of the country, and the abundance and luxuriance of its products, both animal and vegetable. Elephants existed in crowds, and ivory was so abundant that a trader was purchasing it at the rate of ten tusks for a musket worth fifteen shillings. Two years later, after effect had been given to Livingstone's discovery, the price had risen very greatly.
Writing to his friend Watt, he dwells with delight on the river Zouga:
"It is a glorious river; you never saw anything so grand. The banks are extremely beautiful, lined with gigantic trees, many quite new. One bore a fruit a foot in length and three inches in diameter. Another measured seventy feet in circumference. Apart from the branches it looked like a mass of granite; and then the Bakoba in their canoes--did I not enjoy sailing in them? Remember how long I have been in a parched-up land, and answer. The Bakoba are a fine frank race of men, and seem to understand the message better than any people to whom I have spoken on Divine subjects for the first time. What think you of a navigable highway into a large section of the interior? yet that the Tamanak'le is.... Who will go into that goodly land? Who? Is it not the Niger of this part of Africa?... I greatly enjoyed sailing in their canoes, rude enough things, hollowed out of the trunks of single trees, and visiting the villages along the Zouga. I felt but little when I looked on the lake; but the Zouga and Tamanak'le awakened emotions not to be described. I hope to go up the latter next year."
The discovery of the lake and the river was communicated to the Royal Geographical Society in extracts from Livingstone's letters to the London Missionary Society, and to his friend and former fellow-traveler, Captain Steele. In 1849 the Society voted him a sum of twenty-five guineas "for his successful journey, in company with Messrs. Oswell and Murray, across the South African desert, for the discovery of an interesting country, a fine river, and an extensive inland lake." In addressing Dr. Tidman and Alderman Challis, who represented the London Missionary Society, the President (the late Captain, afterward Rear-Admiral, W. Smyth, R.N., who distinguished himself in early life by his journey across the Andes to Lima, and thence to the Atlantic) adverted to the value of the discoveries in themselves, and in the influence they would have on the regions beyond. He spoke also of the help which Livingstone had derived as an explorer from his influence as a missionary. The journey he had performed successfully had hitherto baffled the best-furnished travelers. In 1834, an expedition under Dr. Andrew Smith, the largest and best-appointed that ever left Cape Town, had gone as far as 23° south latitude; but that proved to be the utmost distance they could reach, and they were compelled to return. Captain Sir James E. Alexander, the only scientific traveler subsequently sent out from England by the Geographical Society, in despair of the lake, and of discovery by the oft-tried eastern route, explored the neighborhood of the western coast instead [30]. The President frankly ascribed Livingstone's success to the influence he had acquired as a missionary among the natives, and Livingstone thoroughly believed this. "The lake," he wrote to his friend Watt, "belongs to missionary enterprise." "Only last year," he subsequently wrote to the Geographical Society, "a party of engineers, in about thirty wagons, made many and persevering efforts to cross the desert at different points, but though inured to the climate, and stimulated by the prospect of gain from the ivory they expected to procure, they were compelled, for want of water, to give up the undertaking." The year after Livingstone's first visit, Mr. Francis Galton tried, but failed, to reach the lake, though he was so successful in other directions as to obtain the Society's gold medal in 1852.
[30] Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xx. p. xxviii.
Livingstone was evidently gratified at the honor paid him, and the reception of the twenty-five guineas from the Queen. But the gift had also a comical side. It carried him back to the days of his Radical youth, when he and his friends used to criticise pretty sharply the destination of the nation's money. "The Royal Geographical Society," he writes to his parents (4th December, 1850), "have awarded twenty-five guineas for the discovery of the lake. It is from the Queen. You must be very loyal, all of you. Next time she comes your way, shout till you are hoarse. Oh, you Radicals, don't be thinking it came out of your pockets! Long live Victoria [31]!"
[31] In a more serious vein he wrote in a previous letter: "I wonder you do not go to see the Queen. I was as disloyal as others when in England, for though I might have seen her in London, I never went. Do you ever pray for her?" This letter is dated 5th February, 1850, and must have been written before he heard of the prize.