Through the Dark Continent, Vol. 1 (of 2) : $b or, The sources of the Nile around the Great Lakes of Equatorial Africa and down the Livingstone River to the Atlantic OceanStanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton)
History
Through the Dark Continent, Vol. 1 (of 2) : $b or, The sources of the Nile around the Great Lakes of Equatorial Africa and down the Livingstone River to the Atlantic Ocean
Stanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton)
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Stanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton), 1841-1904 -- Travel -- Africa, Central
From this it will appear evident that the only portion of Lake Tanganika
remaining unvisited was that part of the west-end shore, between Kasengé
Island and the northernmost point of what Burton and Speke called Ubwari
Island, and what Livingstone and I called Muzimu Island. Doubtless there
were many portions of Livingstone’s route overland which rendered the
coast line somewhat obscure, and in his hurried journey to Ujiji in
1869, by canoe from Mompara’s to Kasengé, a portion of the Uguha coast
was left unexplored. But it is Livingstone who was the first to map out
and give a tolerably correct configuration to that part of Lake
Tanganika extending from Urimba round to the south end and up along the
eastern shore to Kasengé Island, as it was Burton and Speke who were the
first to map out that portion of the Tanganika extending from Ujiji to a
point nearly opposite Ubwari and the north-west, from Ubwari’s north end
as far as Uvira.
In February 1874 Lieutenant Verney Lovett Cameron, R.N., arrived at the
same village of Ujiji, which had been seen by Burton and Speke in 1858,
and which was known as the place where I discovered Livingstone in 1872.
He had traversed a route rendered familiar to thousands of the readers
of the ‘Lake Regions of Central Africa,’ ‘the Journal of the Discovery
of the Nile,’ and ‘How I found Livingstone,’ through a country carefully
mapped, surveyed and described. But the land that lay before him
westerly had only been begun by Livingstone, and there were great and
important fields of exploration beyond the farthest point he had
reached.
Lieutenant Cameron procured two canoes, turned south, and coasted along
the eastern shore of the Tanganika, and when near the southern end of
the Lake, crossed it, turned up north along the western shore, and
discovered a narrow channel, between two spits of pure white sand.
Entering this channel, the Lukuga creek, he traced it until farther
progress was stopped by an immovable and impenetrable barrier of
papyrus. This channel, Lieutenant Cameron wrote, was the outlet of Lake
Tanganika. Satisfied with his discovery, he withdrew from the channel,
pursued his course along the west coast as far as Kasengé Island, the
camping-place of both Speke and Livingstone, and returned direct to
Ujiji without making further effort.
Lake Tanganika, as will be seen, upon Lieutenant Cameron’s departure,
had its entire coast-line described, except the extreme south end, the
mouth of the Lufuvu and that portion of coast lying between Kasengé
Island and the northern point of Ubwari, about 140 miles in extent.
LIVINGSTONE’S GREAT RIVER.
What we knew distinctly of this great river began with Livingstone’s
last journey, when he wrote from Ujiji in 1869, repeating what he had
already written in 1867, at the town of Cazembe, in a despatch to Lord
Clarendon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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