LIVINGSTONE'S LETTERS.

Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1599, 4 August 1874, Page 309

LIVINGSTONE'S LETTERS.

At the meeting of the Royal Geographical Society on Monday evening, 27th April, a large number of ladies and gentlemen assembled to hear extracts from letters of the late Dr. Livingstone. Sir Bartle Frere, in opening the proceedings, said he was in great hopes, from the very voluminous materials which had been preserved through the courage and perseverance of the Nassic boys that they might be able in time to construct a connected narrative of Livingstone's discoveries, and that no great point of the labors to which his life had been devoted would remain unillustrated. That, however, must necessarily be a work of time, and everyone interested in geography—above all the fellows of that society—would rejoice with him to hear that the work of editing the remains which his father had left behind in the shape of journals and correspondence, had been undertaken by his most worthy son, Mr Livingstone, who had given up for a time a promising career in Egypt to undertake this pious duty to his parent, to his country, and to mankind. Mr Major then proceded to read a large number of extracts from various letters. The first was dated from the Manyuema country, Oct., 1869, and directed to Sir Bartle Frere. It stated that he was about 150 miles west of Ujiji, having, as soon as he had recovered from pneumonia, gone up to an islet called Kasenge, in Tanganyika, and then struck west to avoid the mountains opposite Ujiji. He was then in the great bend the Lualaba makes before going N. and N.E., as he supposed, into the Nile. It was a very large river, he said, eight or ten miles broad and he had to go down and see where it joined the eastern arm. Lulaba and Tanganyika he took to be the two great head branches into which .Ptolemy made the head waters collect. He was of opinion that Ptolemy's predecessors in the second century of our era must have visited this region, and that all they had left moderns was the rediscovery of what had sunk into oblivion. He was not without hope that the lost city of Meree had existed at the confluence of the Laulaba and the Tanganyika, and that the extensive underground houses reported there might prove to be the places of sepulchre of a race which had left no descendants. Two other letters written to Sir Henry Rawlinson were full of interesting information respecting Livingstone's own position. The first was as follows : " To Sir Henry Rawlinson, K.C.B. "South Central Africa, 1873. " My dear Sir Henry,—l have felt, ever since I left Unyanyembe on this my concluding trip, that I expressed very inadequately the gratitude that welled up in my heart to you and all the promoters of the ' Search and Relief Expedition ;' but I was so overjoyed by Mr Stanley promptly '< procuring fifty-six free men and what additional goods I nee'ded, to finish all I proposed to do, that I was more like a boy going home from school than the staid, toothless, old fogie which 'the Sources' have made. My expe'dition was carefully arranged, with all the experience of many long years of African travel; and the uselessness of the Indians and desertion of the Jonanna men did not actually detain, me an hour from my work, fori got the country people easily to carry from village to Village, as far as Manyuome.' The Zanziber Arabs, who were not members of a slaving coterie upheld by Banian money, were all remarkably kind; but I sent as traders constantly do, a lot of goods to be placed in depot at Ujiji; the carriers, as usual, brought them onto Unyanyembe in safety, and there Syde bin Salem, the Governor, gratuitously placed the caravan in charge of his confidential slave Selim, who when near Ujiji, stopped it ten days, while ho plundered the stores, and went off to buy ivory for his master in Karagwe. These goods were amply sufficient to enable me to finish all work I had undertaken to do, without any of that trouble and anxiety which I greatly regret having since caused. . I feel really extremely grateful for the kind interest manifested by so many, but no one, who knows mc, or has

a faint idea of the devotedness with which I endeavored to make a feasible finish up of the old problem before I retired, will suspect me of a desire to make a fuss about myself. No evidence of this first act of plunder was to be

allowed to go to the coast, and the robbery having been perpetrated as all acknowledge by the direct arrangement of the governor, the head of the slaving coterie or ring inland, and Ludha Darnje, the great money-lender and head of the ring at Zanzibar, having the ear of those in authority, managed effectually to keep me out of sight. I wish it to be explicitly understood that I twice sent off copies of all my astronomical observations, with sketch maps; and, as often as opportunities presented themselves, pretty full consecutive accounts of all I had done, for the Foreign Office and for you (Boyal Geographical Society); but, except a letter secreted on the person of a buffalo driver, 30th May, 1867, none were forwarded. A letter from near Bangweolo was taken by an Arab, not a member of the ring,

and, the three head men of the caravan being slain in the way down, the survivor took it on to Zanzibar in safety. It is but lately that I have been able to infer that a letter which succeeded the Bangweolo one, about December, I.BGB, never reached its destination, for I find that you had been bamboozled by Arab palaver about the upper end of Tanganyika, instead of my statement in letter that, having followed Luapula down through all Lake Moero, I saw the vast rent in the lofty black mountains of Eua (not Ruiva Riweva f?] please, by which Lualaba finds an exit, and I went on a three days' journey round the north end of these Eua Mountains and saw Lualaba emerge and flow away to the north-west. That sight took off all interest in Tanganyika as a source of the Nile ; but I had the opinion that it had an outlet, because the water of shut-in bays with a river at the end is decidedly brackish, while out in the stream it is perfectly sweet, though rivers, as the Malagarazi and others, from whose banks great quantities of salt are daily excavated, have been flowing in for ages. Like all large rivers in this country, which have north and south reaches, it wears away its eastern bank. Ujiji is a full mile from the spot—now deep water—where it stood in the memory of persons still living, and palm-oil palms stand fifty yards out from the bank where, when young, they could not have lived ; and so of other trees whose habitat is dry land, they now stand dead, like the palms> where it is never now dry; and I watched, when in great weakness, the steady flow northwards at Ujiji, in 1869, by the rivers Liche, Malagarazi) and others having discoloured water being at once bent away in that direction, as also by large masses of confervro and other aquatic vegetation. But Tanganyika has no great interest as regards ' the sources,' its springs are too far down the great valley. It was gratifying to find that, though my letters disappeared, Keith Johnston secundus, as he ought to be called had, with the true geographical acumen of my lamented friend Keith Johnston primus, conjectured that the drainage went north-west, as I found it, and to the Congo, as I often feared. My longitude by reckoning was two degrees wrong, and no wonder—the dense, dark forests of Manyuema would puzzle any one but a soko or gorilla. By a patent process I squeezed a longitude out of a dead chronometer ; and as the same process agreed pretty closely with Speke's north end of Tanganyika I set the Lualaba in 4 deg. 9 min. S.„ as flowing in 27 deg. E. nearly. Lat. 3 deg. 36 min. was my furthest down, but my last instrumental observation was 4 deg. 9 min. S. I had the good fortune, unwittingly, to verify the famous hypo, thesis of my late much-loved friend Sir Roderick, and I have since discovered an additional feature to that which he sagaciously conjectured, in that while the continent has two subtending ridges, the enclosed space is not a hollow, but a series of miniature formations exactly like the main continental one. " I cannot now describe them, but each lake and river system has lofty subtending ridges of the old crystalline rocks exactly alike, and sometimes as high as those that flank the continent. A knowledge of these is conclusive against Lualaba being Congo, but I am not ' cock sure' (though all the rivers right from Congo's eastern flanking ridge flow into the great valley) till I meet with Baker, and for that meeting I do most intensely long. I am tired beyond measure ; it was only the plaguey John Bull tenacity that bore me on, plundered by the head of the slaving coterie inland ; then another lot of goods were delivered to Thani bin Ab" dulla, a boon friend of the governor, and it disappeared altogether; then a third lot of some £SOO was sent with slaves in* stead of men, and, except £4 worth, was sold off at Ujiji by Shei'eef for slaves and ivory, and (£4) the exchange of good for unsaleable articles sent, and obviously intended to force me back, were reported to the Arch (?) Ludha, and without a hint from the nominal recipient was reported as ' all Dr. Livingstone's wants supplipfV and Shereef called active and rlis .interested. It is wearisomo '<> •: ■•■ ant all the villany. The fourth lot i,]: &v»'.uu £3OO lay with slaves and the inevitable Ludha's agent Masudi three and a half months at Bagainoio; not a hint of these losses went

to the consulate ; even Stanley was kept I in the dark, except that a lot of slaves had ■ been sent to bring me back, .and every effort was made at Unyanycmbe to prevent him going to my aid. In extreme anxiety to reach me he tried to pass the so-called rebel Mirambo with the Arab army, but governor cut and run ; this difficulty, duly magnified, was promptly reported at the coast and at home, and led to the Search and Belief Expedition ; but no mention was made of me, though the governor acknowledged the receipt of two dispatches written as soon as I reached .Ujiji. Shcrecf. was living at the governor's table, and Stanley learned only at the Malagarazi from a native that I was.close ty a * Ujiji. Hearing of a great Banian friendship, I gave up all hopes of aid from Zanzibar, and resolved to work my way down to Baker for help, when Stanley came on the scene as my good Samaritan. I would willingly have died rather than be beaten outright by intrigue ; the men who have profited by my losses are all rich except Shereef and the slaves. It is proposed now to punish the latter only. I think the rich ought to refund, as was done in the case of the Baron von der Decken. Ludha and Nassur are said to be dead, but their estates, and'even debts, could amply repay the money stolen ; but it seem that I alone am to blame. When my letters were destroyed my salary was stopped by, it is said, a Mr Murray, third Under Secretary in the Foreign Office, who, when his own correspondence was stopped by the cessation of the West Coast slave trade, did not cease to draw and augment his own salary.

" My case was ' anomalous,' said Lord Russell, but he gave £BOO a year to my subordinate, Dr. Meller, for the ' anomalous ' position of being consul at Madagascar, without any consular duties; but all will come right in the good time coming—Yours, &c, " David Livingstone. " The watershed runs from east to west, an elevated mass about 4 degrees of latitude broad, across two-thirds of the continent, and gives sources to Nyassa and Shire, to Loangwe, to Zambesi, to Congo, and to Nile."

In the last letter Livingstone says : " My dear Sir Henry,—-I have felt, ever since I left Unyanyembe on this my concluding' trip, that I expressed very inadequately the gratitude that welled up in my heart to you and all the promoters of the search and relief expedition, but I was so overjoyed by finding that Mr Stanley'had promptly procured fifty-five • men, and what additional goods I needed to finish all I proposed to do, that I was more like a boy going home from school than the staid toothless old fogie I find myself to be. Whatever you may have thought was lacking, you are too much of a traveller yourself to pass a very heavy judgment on me ; for verily I did feel, and do feel, extremely grateful to you all. I was a little sorry that by a strong dose of the cheap nostrum called good advice, the gallant athletes chose to wait for the cessation of the rains, for by remaining on a most unhealthy and an awfully stinking island all their good intentions oozed out at their finger ends, and I had no opportunity of bringing to their notice the very important service of exploring the lake system of the Victoria Nyanza. I certainly did not need them for my work ; they would have 'resigned' a naval phrase for ' going on strike ' —before they waded through half the water I have been obliged to ford around Lake Bangweolo, and unanimously voted me to be a beast, deserving death, or, as the Articles of War say, some worse punishment. I don't know who gave the good advice, but Stanley went off at the beginning of the heavy rains, and, after knowing their worst, coolly elected to go through all the Masika again in order to hasten up the men and goods I so much needed. I left in the middle of the Masika, too, for the reason that I had my English stock of robust health with which to battle against the pelting rains. I have had another spell of Masika on the watershed, the worst I ever endured, for the cold north-west stratum of air, thick with clouds, lay like a wet blanket on all that upland forest land. For three months I could not get an astronomical observation, except a few snap latitudes. Was laid down to the back or northern side of Bangweolo and near to its western end. Had to plod away to the south-east through riverine meshes, each thread from half a mile to three miles broad, deep, and encumbered with great masses of aquatic vegetation. Branches come out of the larger streams and flow over endless slightly depressed valleys, among four or five species of rushes—among three species of lotus or sacred lily plants, papyrus plants, and many other plants that grow only in water, very much w other rivers near the coast flow in nvni'.ches among mud and mangroves. Some of these deltas of aquatic vegetation are from forty to fifty miles long, and too broad to be seen over, but only grassy seas, with ant-hill island, having trees at great distances from each other. No ono but an eye-witness could imagine the vast amount of water in the country. Six rivers, of Cam or Isis size, flow in from the south ; they rise on the "edge of the watershed, or not so far off, that overlooks the deep valley of the Loangwa of Zumbo. The' shores of the lake, and for days out, are remarkable only for extreme flatness. When I visited it

in the dry season there ;vas generally no more slope to it than then is from the Isle of Dogs down to the Thames ; now it is nearly impossible to tell where land ends and lake begins. Some one, overcome by the fascination of describing the said that it was, like Nyassa, Tanganyika, or the Albert Nyanza, overhung by high mountain slopes that open out into bays and valleys. ' The only slopes I saw were thoso of ant-hills, whicl) may be called high if thought of as perched on 'the general attitude of almost 4,000 ft. This seems to be the head of one main line of drainage of the Nile ; but I am not positive till I meet with Baker, and for that meeting Ido most intensely long. I was not aware till Mr Stanley came that a letter that succeeded oce of 18G8, from near Bangweolo, had beea destroyed ; the three head men of the caravan that carried the Bangweolo letter were slain by a tribe on the way, but the survivor carried it on safely to Zanzibar. Following Luapula down through Moero, I saw the vast rent in the lofty black mountains of Rua through which the Lualaba finds its birth, and I went three days' journey round the end of these Rua mountains and saw Lualaba coming out of the same fissure and flowing away to the north-west. The drainage clearly did not go into Tanganyika, and that lake, though it probably has an outlet, lost all its interest to me as a source of the river of Egypt. I wrote to this effect, in December, 1868, but it never went beyond the governor of Unyanyeinbc. I was amused to find that geographers had been bamboozled most unmercifully by the Arab palaver that"the Nile flowed out of Tanganaika's northern end. I had already written that it was distinctly brackish in shut-in bays and perfectly sweet out in the main stream, though rivers from whose banks, as the Malagarazi, enormous quantities of salt are daily taken, have been flowing in for ages; that like all great rivers in this country having north and south reaches, it was fast wearing away its eastern banks (the village of Ujiji, for instance, stands a full mile east of where it stood in the now deep water in the memory of persons still living); that several palm-oil palms now stand out fifty yards from the Ujiji village shore where they could not have grown had water been there when they were young, and many other land trees now stand in the water in the same circumstances. These reasons made me form an opinion that it had an outlet, and I unwisely mentioned that opinion in a private letter. We did not find an outlet in the north, though an Arab asserted, within one day's sail of the Lusizo, that positively Tanganyika water ran out by it and not in. He was not ashamed when told to look at it.

"Knowing where the main drainage went, 1 worked at it, though without men and means, and then-got Banian slaves—the worst of all slaves—and about £4 out of £SOO or £6OO worth of goods. It was gratifying to see incidentally in some paper that Keith Johnston, who ought to ho called ' Secundus,' for he has the genuine geographical acumen of Keith Johnston ' Primus,'' had, without knowing the rent in the Rua (not Euvva or Druwa) Mountains, reasoned out the drainage from Bangweolo as going north-west, as I found it, and, as I often feared, went thence to the Congo. My reckoning made it flowing 24 deg. to 25 deg. E.; and no wonder; the dense dark forests of Manyema would puzzle anything except a gorilla or soke. By a patient process I succeeded in squeezing a longitude out of a dead-chronometer, and that made it flow in 27 deg. nearly. The same process made the north end of Tanganyika nearly the same as Speke's. It is interesting to find an offer made to the Government to supersede me by running up to the end of Tanganyika, and to call me out of Manyeme, where Arab palaver said I was tiving like an Arab.' My discovery shews that I alone knew what I was about; and the other plan than a search or relief expedition, about which you did not inquire, would have shewn the unwisdom of believing Arabs, who are the least reliable of all informants. I wish it to be especially understood that I twice sent copies of all my astronomical observations) with sketch-maps, and, as opportunities presented themselves, pretty full consecutive accounts of all my work for the Foreign Office and you; but not a letter was suffered to pass the members of a slaving coterie or ring, of which Ludha Damji was the head and chief moneylender at Zanzibar, and Syde bin Salem, the Governor of Unvanvembe, was the chief inland. One letter alone escaped. It went off in company with a large packet of observations, dispatches, and letters) but in the hands of a buffalo driver, who wisely secreted it on his person, in the belief that on its production his wages depended. All else were destroyed, though I explained to Governor that tho packet contained dispatches which his Sultan desired to be sent on with great care. Evidence that Syde bin Salem had, by his slave Salim, plundered my caravan, was not to be allowed to go to the coast, and so of the plundering by Thaui bin Abdullah, and Shereef, and they were successful; and because these wretches destroyed my correspondence, Mr Murray, of the Foreign Office stopped my salary—a very un-English deed, to be laid at the door of the English Government. The

slavers did their utmost to prevent Stanley going to aid me ; and when he went with their army, to try and get pass the rebel Mirambo, Governor cut and ran. This was promptly enough reported as' Stanley in a difficulty,' in hopes of getting him recalled, and it led to the Search and Belief Expedition. No prompt report was made of my presence at Ujiji, though Governor acknowledged that he had received two despatches from me there, written immediately after my arrival. Stanley learned of my presence only at the Malagarazi, close to Ujiji. Not only was information burked on its way to you, by notes put into Arab pockets being extracted, but they gave only what was convenient to H.M.'s Vice-Consul; and when the two heads of the ring were entrusted with stores and men for me, the result might, have been anticipated. I think that the plunderers, -or their estates, ought to refund as was done in the' case of Baron von der Decken; but this may not be agreeable to their friends. Meanwhile we shall see, —Yours, &c. David Livingstone."

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