How I found Livingstone : $b Travels, adventures, and discoveres in Central Africa, including an account of four months' residence with Dr. LivingstoneStanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton)
History
How I found Livingstone : $b Travels, adventures, and discoveres in Central Africa, including an account of four months' residence with Dr. Livingstone
Stanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton)
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Livingstone, David, 1813-1873
This river may be the Congo, or, perhaps, the Niger. If the Lualaba is
only 2,000 feet above the sea, and the Albert N'Yanza 2,700 feet, the
Lualaba cannot enter that lake. If the Bahr Ghazal does not extend by
an arm for eight degrees above Gondokoro, then the Lualaba cannot be the
Nile. But it would be premature to dogmatise on the subject. Livingstone
will clear up the point himself; and if he finds it to be the Congo,
will be the first to admit his error.
Livingstone admits the Nile sources have not been found, though he has
traced the Lualaba through seven degrees of latitude flowing north; and,
though he has not a particle of doubt of its being the Nile, not yet can
the Nile question be said to be resolved and ended. For two reasons:
1. He has heard of the existence of four fountains, two of which gave
birth to a river flowing north, Webb's River, or the Lualaba, and to a
river flowing south, which is the Zambezi. He has repeatedly heard of
these fountains from the natives. Several times he has been within 100
and 200 miles from them, but something always interposed to prevent his
going to see them. According to those who have seen them, they rise on
either side of a mound or level, which contains no stones. Some have
called it an ant-hill. One of these fountains is said to be so large
that a man, standing on one side, cannot be seen from the other. These
fountains must be discovered, and their position taken. The Doctor does
not suppose them to be south of the feeders of Lake Bangweolo. In his
letter to the 'Herald' he says "These four full-grown gushing fountains,
rising so near each other, and giving origin to four large rivers,
answer in a certain degree to the description given of the unfathomable
fountains of the Nile, by the secretary of Minerva, in the city of Sais,
in Egypt, to the father of all travellers--Herodotus."
For the information of such readers as may not have the original at
hand, I append the following from Cary's translation of Herodotus:
(II.28)
(Jul 2001 The History of Herodotus V1 by Herodotus; Macaulay)
*** With respect to the sources of the Nile, no man of all the
Egyptians, Libyans, or Grecians, with whom I have conversed,
ever pretended to know anything, except the registrar* of Minerva's
*the secretary of the treasury of the goddess Neith, or Athena as
Herodotus calls her: ho grammatiste:s to:n hiro:n xre:mato:n te:s
Athe:naie:s>
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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