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
The "extraordinary quiet rise of the periodical flood," proved by
the first expedition, argues that the Congo "issues from the
gradual overflowing of a lake or a chain of lakes." The increment
in the lower bed, only eight to twelve feet where the Nile and
the Ganges rise thirty and the Binuwe fifty, would also suggest
that it is provided with many large reservoirs. The Introduction
to Tuckey's "Narrative" (p. xviii.) assumes that the highest
water is in March, but he entered the stream only on July 6, and
the expedition ended in mid-October. The best informants assured
me that from March till June there are heavy freshets. As in the
Ogobe, the flood begins in early September, somewhat preceding
that of the Lualaba, but, unlike the former stream, it attains
its highest in November and December, and it gradually subsides
from the end of June till August, about which time the water is
lowest.
In the middle region of the Tanganyika, I found the rainy season
lasting from September to May. At Lake Liemba, the south-eastern
projection of the Tanganyika, Dr. Livingstone in 1867 saw no rain
from May 12 to September, and in Many-wema-land, west of the
central Tanganyika, about south latitude 5°, the wet season began
in November, and continued till July with intervals, marking the
passage of the belt of calms. But, for the Congo to rise in
September, we must assume the rains to have fallen in early
August, allowing ten or fifteen days for the streams to descend,
and the rest for the saturation of the land. This postulates a
supply from the Central African regions far north of the equator.
Even for the March-June freshets, we must also undoubtedly go
north of the Line, yet Herr H. Kiepert[FN#24] places the
northernmost influent of Congo some 150 miles south of the
equator. Under these limitations I agree with Dr. Behm:--"Taking
everything into consideration, in the present state of our
knowledge, there is the strongest probability that the Lualaba is
the head stream of the Congo, and the absolute certainty that it
has no connection with the Nile or any other river (system) of
the northern hemisphere." And again: "As surely as the sun stands
over the southern hemisphere in our winter and the northern in
our summer, bringing the rains and the swellings of the tropical
rivers when it is in the zenith with regard to them, so surely
can it be predicated, from a comparison of the rainy seasons and
times of rising, that the Lualaba belongs to no river of the
northern hemisphere; in the southern hemisphere Africa possesses
only one river, the Congo, which could take up the vast water
supply of the Lualaba." The Brazil shows the curious feature of
widely different and even opposite rainy seasons in the same
parallel of latitude; but this is not the place to discuss the
subject.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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