On the 27th of July they reached the town of Libonta, where they were received with almost frantic demonstrations of joy, and this continued during the progress down the Barotse valley, where every village gave them an ox, and sometimes two. The people were, indeed, kind to a degree, and that without any hopes of repayment, for the stock of goods brought from Loanda had been exhausted by the delays caused by sick

ness.

On arriving at Naleile, which they did on the 1st of August, some of our traveller's Makololo attendants were doomed to great annoyance at finding that their wives had married other men during their two years' absence. On the day that they left this place (the 13th of August), Dr. Livingstone's canoe, although keeping close to the shore, was struck by an hippopotamus, whose young had been speared the day before. The force of the butt she gave tilted one of the men into the river; the rest sprang to the shore. No damage was thus done, except wetting person and goods. The accompanying illustration is exceedingly inaccurate; it places the boat in the middle of the river. The amount of organic life seen on descending this stream is described as surprising. Fourteen ducks could be killed at a shot. It was less agreeable to be stung by the hornets, being more like a powerful discharge of electricity than anything else, and producing momentary insensibility.

On his arrival at Sesheke, the doctor found despatches awaiting him from Mr. Moffat, and, amongst other things, Sir R. I. Murchison's address to the Geographical Society in 1852. "In his easy-chair," writes the doctor, "he had forestalled me by three years, though I had been working hard through jungle, marsh, and fever, and since the light dawned on my mind at Dilolo, had been cherishing the pleasing delusion that I should be the first to suggest the idea that the interior of Africa was a watery plateau of less elevation than the flanking hilly ranges."*

On the doctor's arrival at Linyante, the reports of his companions, and the presents he brought to Sekeletu, soon procured for him volunteers to accompany him to the east coast. His waggon, and everything he had left at the capital of the Makololo in 1854, were quite safe. Some Arabs who had come from Zanzibar to the same town, assured the doctor that he could proceed home that way, crossing the great eastern lake or lakes, but he determined to continue to trace out the valley of the Zambesi.

He accordingly set forth with this view on the 3rd of November, after being fitted out a second time by his kind friend Sekeletu, reaching Sesheke in a storm. On the 14th he began the descent of the river, but he and his companions were soon obliged to leave their canoe on account of rapids, and proceed along the banks on foot. On one of the islands they visited the grave of Sekote, a Batoka chief, who had been slain by the Makololo. It was decorated with numbers of human skulls mounted on poles, a large heap of the crania of hippopotami and tusks of the same animal, as also of elephants—a rare and valuable museum.

* The subsequent discovery of a central axis of granite with metamorphic rocks, with outlying secondary trap and sedimentary deposits, forming ridges in the centre of South Central Africa, which attain an elevation of five thousand feet; whilst the so-called "spine of the world"—the littoral, or coast chain of Lupata does not average more than from eight hundred to one thousand feet in elevation, militates greatly against this otherwise ingenious theory of Sir R. I. Murchison.

It was near this point that Dr. Livingstone visited the wondrous falls, the representation of which constitute an appropriate frontispiece to his work. It is impossible to enter into a full description of this great natural phenomenon here. "It had never been seen before by human eyes," the doctor observes; "but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight." The falls are called by the natives Mosioatunya, or more anciently, Shongwe; but our traveller justly affixed to them the only English name he has given to any of his discoveries, and they will be known to future ages as the "Victoria Falls." "No better proof of previous ignorance of this river," he adds, "could be desired, than that an untravelled gentleman who had spent part of his life in the study of the geography of Africa, and knew everything written on the subject from the time of Ptolemy downwards, actually asserted in the Athenæum, while I was coming up the Red Sea, that this magnificent river, the Leeambye, had no connexion with the Zambesi, but flowed under the Kalahari Desert, and became lost;" and "that, as all the old maps asserted, the Zambesi took its rise in the very hills to which we have now come.' This modest assertion smacks exactly as if a native of Timbuktu should declare that the "Thames" and the "Pool" were different rivers, he having seen neither the one nor the other. Leeambye and Zambesi mean the very same thing-viz., the RIVER.*

The outer falls (says the doctor) are simply a crack made in a hard basaltic rock from the right to the left bank of the Zambesi, and then prolonged from the left bank away through thirty or forty miles of hills. If one imagines the Thames filled with low tree-covered hills immediately beyond the Tunnel, extending as far as Gravesend, the bed of black basaltic rock instead of London mud, and a fissure made therein from one end of the Tunnel to the other, down through the keystones of the arch, and prolonged from the left end of the Tunnel through thirty miles of hills, the pathway being one hundred feet down from the bed of the river instead of what it is, with the lips of the fissure from eighty to one hundred feet apart, then fancy the Thames leaping bodily into the gulf, and forced there to change its direction, and flow from the right to the left bank, and then rush boiling and roaring through the hills, he may have some idea of what takes place at this, the most wonderful sight I had witnessed in Africa.

It is to be regretted that our traveller was unable to follow this magnificent river in its course through the country of the Batoka. Retracing his steps from the "Victoria Falls," he bade adieu to the Makololo on the 20th of November, and proceeded northwards to the Lekone. Dr.

* Sir R. I. Murchison, whose views on African geography have met with Dr. Livingstone's approbation, has warmly praised the style of his work, "which, without being professedly rhetorical, was so graphic and nervous as to be a model in its way to more ambitious authors." The Athenæum, on the contrary, its views on the geography of Central Africa having been disproved-revenges itself by sneering at the doctor's zeal as a naturalist, and incompetency as a literary man. It were easy, it says, to point out thousands of blemishes and inaccuracies, and the author would have acted wisely had he entrusted his journal to an efficient hand! Dr. Livingstone remarks upon the Bechuanas, that they observe most carefully a missionary at work, until they understand whether a tire is well welded or not, and then pronounce upon its merits with great emphasis; but there their ambition rests satisfied. "It is the same peculiarity among ourselves which leads us in other matters, such as book-making, to attain the excellence of fault-finding without the wit to indite a page. It was in vain that I tried to indoctrinate the Bechuanas with the idea that criticism did not imply any superiority over the workman, or even equality with him." This is like a paragraph out of Dean Swift.

Livingstone believes that, before the Zambesi found its way to the sea by the rent, the whole of this portion of Africa to Lake Ngami and the Zouga, was one large fresh-water lake. The Batoka tribes, among whom the doctor was now travelling, all followed the custom of knocking out the upper front teeth, which gave them an uncouth, and sometimes hideous appearance. Those who lived on the Zambesi were generally very dark in colour, and very degraded and negro-like in appearance, but those who lived on the high lands were frequently of the colour of coffee and milk. These people planted fruit-trees in gardens-a practice seen nowhere else among the natives. The mental and physical degradation of these tribes is, however, mainly owing to their smoking hemp.

Beyond Kaonka, our travellers entered (November 28th) the border territory of the independent Batokas. They had come into a country which the natives magnified as being a perfect paradise, being alike suitable for cattle, corn, and health. Fig-trees grew to forty feet in circumference. Large game also abounded. Buffaloes, elands, hartebeests, gnus, and elephants were seen, all very tame, for no one disturbs them. Lions, which always accompany other large animals, were also numerous. On the 30th, after passing a river which flowed to the Zambesi, they reached the apex of the land, the rivers beyond that point taking an easterly direction. The estimated elevation above the sea was five thousand feet. The rocks are granitic and metamorphic. These highlands, which are exceedingly healthy, it has now been determined, can be reached by water, with only one short rapid as an obstruction, right up to their base!*

On the 3rd of December our travellers passed a hill called the "White Mountain," from a mass of white rock, probably dolomite, on its top. Much importance has been attached to this by some, as explaining away the supposed snow mountains of the north-east, but without any valid reason. On the 4th they reached a village the inhabitants of which manifested the greatest hostility to the travellers, but they were luckily enabled to get on without actual molestation. This must be attributed in a great measure to the forbearance of Dr. Livingstone. When, however, they had passed the outskirting villages, which alone consider themselves in a state of war with the Makololo, they found the Batoka, or Batonga, as they then called themselves, quite friendly.

The farther they advanced the more they also found the country swarming with inhabitants. Great numbers came to see the white man, and they always brought presents. Their mode of salutation was very

* The importance of this discovery, in a geological point of view, has already been noticed. Dr. Livingstone, remarking upon the same in the spirit of a missionary when his life was imperilled by the border tribes on the east coast, said: "I felt some turmoil of spirit in the evening, at the prospect of having all my efforts for the welfare of this great region and its teeming population knocked on the head by savages to-morrow, who might be said to know not what they do.' It seemed such a pity that the important fact of the existence of the two healthy ridges which I had discovered should not become known in Christendom, for a confirmation would thereby have been given to the idea that Africa is not open to the Gospel." It is obvious, however, that that which is applicable to the dissemination of the truths of the Gospel is equally so to the benefits of agriculture, industry, and civilisation, and with them their great concomitant, an amelioration in the condition of the natives, where slavery is not, as has hitherto been the case, made to go hand in hand with Europeanism versus civilisation.

singular. They threw themselves on their backs on the ground, and rolling from side to side, slapped the outside of their thighs. The women clothed themselves, but the men went about in puris naturalibus. Dr. Livingstone thinks so low of them, that he says, if ever converted, the influence must be divine.

Sunday, the 10th of December, was spent at the village of Monze, whose chief was considered the chief of all the Batonga they had seen. His residence was on a hill, whence they had a view of at least thirty miles of open, undulating country, covered with short grass, and having but few trees. Their way hence lay through a beautiful country, furrowed by deep valleys; where there were villages, the people supplied them with food in great abundance; where there were no inhabitants, game abounded. On the 14th they killed two fine elephants. On the 18th they reached the village of Semalembue, a chief of the Bashukulompo, who received them most kindly. The mode of salutation here was simply clapping the hands. Trade with the east coast now began to make itself felt. Semalembue transmits ivory to other chiefs on the Zambesi, and receives in return English and American cotton goods, which come from Mozambique by Babisa traders.

6

On the 30th they once more reached the Zambesi. "I never saw a river," the doctor says, "with so much animal life around and in it, and, as the Barotse say, its fish and fowl are always fat.'" Buffaloes came up to look at the oxen, and elephants charged through their line. They struck upon the river about eight miles east of its confluence with the Kafue. An island on the river was actually tenanted at the same time by human beings and by a herd of buffaloes, who carried on war with one another. As they travelled on, each village they passed furnished them with a couple of men to take them to the next. These people were great agriculturists, and weeded their large gardens. The women pierced the upper lip, and enlarged the orifice till they could insert a shell. One chief-Selole by name-exhibited symptoms of hostility, he having suffered from the lawless depredations of an Italian who had settled north of Tete. At the next station to this also-Mburuma— although kindly treated, they were viewed with manifest suspicion. At Ma-mburuma, "the village of the mother of Mburuma," they found that traders, called Bazunga, supposed to be half-caste Portuguese, had been in the habit of coming up in their canoes. Hence the cause of the suspicion with which they were now viewed. They have words of peace, the natives said—all very fine; but lies only, as the Bazunga are great liars."

On the 14th of January, 1856, they reached the confluence of the Loangwa and the Zambesi, "most thankful to God for his great mercies in helping us thus far." This is the fourth great tributary to the Zambesi; the Chobe, which is, however, strange to say, supposed to have relations with the Embara and Lake Ngami, being the most westerly; the Leeambye, or Central Zambesi, and the Luambesi, which is made to pour its waters at once into the Central Zambesi, the Kafue, and the Loangwa, whilst the Kafue itself has another channel, the Majeela, which flows into the Central Zambesi near Victoria Falls. The Loangwa drains the countries to the eastward, and the Lower Zambesi has also some considerable tributaries from the country of the Matebeli Mashona and Matuka to the south. Further investigation will, however,

no doubt show that much remains to be corrected in this complicated hydrographical system. If we compare the map attached to Dr. Livingstone's work with that of Cooley's "Inner Africa Laid Open," the extreme simplicity attained by the discovery of the connexion of the basin of the Chobe and Leeambye with the Zambesi will be felt in all its force. There is no doubt it will ultimately be the same thing with regard to the great lake system of the east, and of the rivers of Cazembe and Babisa. It was by admitting two Zambesis that Cooley got into a first trouble, and his second was emptying the whole central hydrographical basin of South Africa into "twelve salt pans!" The importance of Dr. Livingstone's discovery of one great river receiving all the waters of Central South Equatorial Africa cannot be over-estimated. It is like opening at one stroke the doorway to a vast and previously unknown country; it is, without contradiction, the greatest geographical discovery of modern times.

To return, however, to our travellers, who are slowly wending their way down the Lower Zambesi. Crossing the Loangwa, they found, at a place called Zumbo, traces of a former Portuguese establishment. It was probably from hence that Lacerda and Peirara visited the chief of Cazembe, who, according to information obtained by Dr. Livingstone, is only a vassal to Matiamvo. A little beyond Zumbo three buffaloes dashed through the party, and tossed one of the men into the air, but luckily without injuring him much. On the 17th they met with a native with a hat and jacket on. He came from the Portuguese settlement of Tete, and gave them the disagreeable intelligence that the Portuguese had been in open hostility with the natives for the last two years. The next chief they came to, Mpende by name, was thus hostile to the progress of the party, and it was with great difficulty that he was conciliated. This done, however, he was induced to assist in ferrying them across the river, for Tete was ascertained to be on precisely the opposite side of the river to what has been hitherto represented. They were now among tribes inured to slave dealing, but still the people were hospitable and even liberal.

On the 6th of February the party reached Chicova, which is not a kingdom, as has been stated, but a level tract, a part of which is annually overflowed by the Zambesi, and is well adapted for cultivation. Here the doctor found silicified wood, and a thin seam of coal in sandstone and shale. The importance of this discovery will be at once felt when the proximity of a great and, it is to be hoped, navigable river is taken into consideration. Though now approaching the Portuguese settlement, the country was still full of large game, only that certain laws existed among the natives as to rights, more especially in elephants' tusks. On the 20th they came to the village of a chief called Monina. Mono, according to Dr. Livingstone, means "chief," and the emperor, Monomotapa of geographers, is Katolosa, a vassal, like Monina, of a chief called Nyatewe. Passing the dominions of the latter, without going out of the way to visit him, Dr. Livingstone at length arrived safe at Tete on the 3rd of March. He had enjoyed tolerable health ever since he reached the great central ridges or highlands, and had been better on the lower than he was on the Upper Zambesi.

The town of Tete is built on a long slope down to the river, the fort being close to the water. Dr. Livingstone was most kindly received,