The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 — John Shaqi
The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868Livingstone, David
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The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868
Livingstone, David
Africa, Central -- Description and travel
The reader must be warned that, however versed in books of African
travel he may be, the very novelty of his situation amongst these
pages will render him liable perhaps to a danger which a timely word
may avert. Truly it may be said he has an _embarras de richesses!_ To
follow an explorer who by his individual exertions has filled up a
great space in the map of Africa, who has not only been the first to
set foot on the shores of vast inland seas, but who, with the simple
appliances of his bodily stature for a sounding pole and his stalwart
stride for a measuring tape, lays down new rivers by the hundreds, is
a task calculated to stagger him. It may be provoking to find
Livingstone busily engaged in bargaining for a canoe upon the shores
of Bangweolo, much as he would have secured a boat on his own native
Clyde; but it was not in his nature to be subject to those paroxysms
in which travellers too often indite their discoveries and
descriptions.
At the same time these journals will be found to contain innumerable
notes on the habits of animals, birds, and fishes, many of them
probably new species, and on phenomena in every direction which the
keen eye searched out as the great traveller moved amongst some of the
grandest scenes of this beautiful world: it may be doubted if ever eye
so keen was backed by so much perseverance to shield it from a mere
superficial habit of noticing. Let his adventures speak for
themselves.
Amongst the greatest facts recorded here the Geographer will perceive
that the Doctor has placed it beyond doubt that Lake Nyassa belongs to
a totally distinct system of waters to that which holds Lake
Tanganyika, and the rivers running north and west. He was too
sagacious to venture the surmise that Tanganyika has a subterranean
outlet without having duly weighed the probabilities in the scale with
his elaborate observations: the idea gathers force when we remember
that in the case of limestone cliffs, water so often succeeds in
breaking bounds by boring through the solid rock. No more interesting
problem is left to solve, and we shall yet learn whether, through the
caverns of Western Kabogo, this Lake adds its waters to the vast
northerly flow of rivers we now read of for the first time, and which
are undoubtedly amongst the largest in the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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