Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo, Volume 2Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
History
Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo, Volume 2
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Africa, West -- Description and travel; Congo River -- Description and travel; Ethnology -- Africa, West
And first, touching the name of this noble and mysterious stream.
Diogo Cam, the discoverer in 1485, called it River of Congo,
Martin von Behaim Rio de Padrao, and De Barros "Rio Zaire." The
Portuguese discoveries utilized by Dapper thus corrupted to the
sonorous Zaïre, the barbarous Nzadi applied by the natives to the
lower bed. The next process was that of finding a meaning.
Philippo Pigafetta of Vicenza,[FN#10] translated Zaïre by "so,
cioè Sapio in Latino;" hence Sandoval[FN#11] made it signify "Rio
de intendimiento," of understanding. Merolla duly records the
contrary. "The King of Portugal, Dom John II., having sent a
fleet under D. Diego Cam to make discoveries in this Southern
Coast of Africa, that admiral guessed at the nearness of the land
by nothing so much as by the complexion of the waters of the
Zaire; and, putting into it, he asked of the negroes what river
and country that was, who not understanding him answered
Zevoco,' which in the Congolan tongue is as much as to say I
cannot tell;' from whence the word being corrupted, it has since
been called Zairo."
D'Anville (1749), with whom critical African geography began,
records "Barbela," a southern influent, perhaps mythical, named
by his predecessors, and still retained in our maps: it is the
Verbele of Pigafetta and the Barbele of Linschoten, who make it
issue either from the western lake-reservoir of the Nile, or from
the "Aquilunda" water, a name variously derived from O-Calunga,
the sea (?), or from A-Kilunda, of Kilunda (?) The industrious
compiler, James Barbot (1700), mentions the "Umbre," the modern
Wambre, rising in the northern mountains or, according to P.
Labat, in a lake: Dapper (1676), who so greatly improved the
outline of Africa, had already derived with De Barros the "Rio
Zaïre" from a central reservoir "Zaïre," whose island, the
Zembre, afterwards became the Vambere, Wambre, and Zambere, now
identified through the Zambeze with the Maravi, Nyassa or Kilwa
water. The second or northernmost branch is the Bancora of modern
maps, the Brankare of Pigafetta, and the Bancari of Cavazzi; it
flows from the same mountain as the Umbre, and Duarte Lopez
(1560) causes it to mingle with the Zaire on the eastern borders
of Pango, at the foot of the Sierra del Crystal. In certain
modern maps the Bankare fork is called "Lekure,"and is made to
receive the "Bambaye." The Barbela again anastomoses with the
Luba (?) or northern section of the Coango, including its
influent, the Lubilash; the Kasai (Kasabi) also unites with the
Coango, and other dotted lines show the drainage of the Lualaba
into the Kasai.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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