EXTRACTS FROM DR LIVINGSTONE'S LETTERS. These Extracts are numbered and arranged according to the dates of the Letters to which they belong. No. 1. Addressed to Mr JOHN LAIRD, Birkenhead, builder of the Launch. MY DEAR SIR, Ma Robert, Zambesi, 21st June, 1858. As you will no doubt feel anxious to hear how we got on with the launch, I am happy to be able to inform you that we entered what has been called West Luabo (properly Luave) on the 15th of May, and finding a fine safe harbour, we proceeded at once to take out the three compartments of the Ma Robert from the Pearl. The first day was sufficient for getting her into the water, and putting her together, by the admirable and simple contrivance your son invented. We had only to stand on a compartment in sufficient numbers to sink it down, and drawing it to the middle section, the bolts slipped in with the greatest ease; and on the evening of the third day she was ready to act as pilot to the larger vessel, and has been doing admirable service ever since. She goes puffing away on this great Zambesi now, to the infinite disgust of the hippopotami, whole herds of which rush off pell-mell as soon as we approach them, and the crustiest old bachelor among them dares not to do her battle. It would be an immense boon if Government would send out such vessels to run up creeks and rivers, and chase slavers, instead of taking it out of the poor sailor's muscles at the oar, but you would require to make them broader than this, and not quite so long; the length might be borne with if they were four or five feet broader, and no objection would be taken to this, as the men of war would pox, and six were killed by a rebel chief, who, in defiance of Portuguese authority, holds a stockade at the confluence of the Luenya. This grieves them and me more than anything. The excuse is he did it in a fit of drunkenness. There were three such rebels, half-caste Portuguese of Goa, who defied the Portuguese. One who had a stockade at the mouth of the Shire, has just now been conquered by the governor of Killimane. The war has been against us, though we have gone from one side to the other, without molestation, as friends of both, or rather as English, for it is the English name that was our passport. I came one night to a party after dark, and created an alarm, but that was quelled when I called out "Mglze.”—The river is now nearly at its lowest; and, unlike the muddy rivers of the west, it may be styled one of sand-there is very little mud, comparatively. Below Lupata, it is spread out from one mile to three in width, with many islands. In the wide parts I experienced considerable difficulty, and especially in one part called Shigogo; but when we approached Lupata, where all the river is in one body, our difficulties end. At Kebrabasa we shall have another obstacle to surmount. It is described as a number of rocks jutting out of the stream, and narrowing the channel, which is deep and tortuous. There is no water-fall, but we shall go and examine it carefully as soon as we get up; and this being low water, we shall be able to give a clear idea of the whole. If we could travel as geographers do, with the legs of a pair of compasses, we might have been there long ago. At present, we are taking up our luggage from stage to stage, and having been deceived by a false report on the engine of this vessel, it is rather slow work. It consumes an enormous quantity of fuel, and half our time, when we have no coals, is spent in wood-cutting. This, however, led to our discovering that lignum vitæ abounds, and there is also ebony, and teak, or African oak; but we cannot yet say how much. The canoes pass us and look back at the "Asthmatic," as I call her now. The vessel herself is all very well, though drawing much more than was predicted; but the engine turns out a wretched piece of gingerbread when worked on wood alone. From the information I formerly received from the Portuguese, I believed that the river could be navigated during only six or nine months in the year, but it is now not far from its lowest, and I begin to think that a vessel drawing only two feet might run the whole year; but this we shall be able to decide next month. It begins to rise again in that following. The Portuguese ought to do something in the lighthouse way, and if they would only be at the expense of a few piles at three places, all obstructions from shallowness of water would vanish. Taking the river as a whole, there is no lack of water,-witness the reports of Captains Gordon and Bedingfeld; and though it is now eight or nine feet lower, it has still much the same appearance, and always makes me wonder how our easy-chair geographers could imagine it all to come out of a "great interior sandy desert." When it spreads out into several channels, a few piles driven in at the part above where the water takes the swing into a shallow one, would, in one flood, effect what is now done by snags, create a deep channel. A few piles would widen the Kongone canal in one year. When I came in among mangrove swamps I pushed on the work with all haste to get out of the Delta. People, I hear, blame me for this; but they would have blamed me much more had I lost nearly all the expedition. We take quinine daily, and the short illnesses we have had have partaken more of the character of common colds than fever. Here, in the Mangrove swamps, two of our number, who are now better, had, in addition, a dry skin for some hours. But with quinine and care, I see no obstacle to passengers going up to Teté from that disease, and there begins the healthy country. Yet it is not to be trusted either: irregularities must be avoided. No. 3. Addressed to Sir GEORGE GREY. Tette, 18th December, 1858. DEAR SIR GEORGE, WE have been up to examine the rapids of Kebra, or more correctly Kevra-basa, when the water in the Zambesi was at its lowest, and we found that all we knew of it previously from Portuguese description was just nothing at all. We steamed about four miles beyond, where any description we could get even here terminated, and found that instead of a number of detached rocks jutting out of the water across the stream, the affair arises from the Zambesi being confined by mountains to a bed a quarter of a mile wide at parts, and at one point to fifty or sixty yards. In the wider parts there is a deep groove cut out of the solid rock, if such it can be called, where rocks are twisted, broken, cleaved, and huddled together in every direction, besides being water-worn and drilled with pot-holes everywhere. When sailing up the groove, with the walls far above our masts, the man at the lead kept calling out, "No bottom at ten fathoms;" yet the groove fills at flood, and flows over the adjacent bed, though to do so it must rise perpendicularly eighty or a hundred feet. There are rapids in the groove, which this feeble vessel cannot stem; but we have no doubt that a steamer of good power would go up easily at flood. One rapid, which had five feet of fall, became level at three feet general rise of the river. The Ma Robert was just one-sixteenth of an inch thick when new, but is now thinner; so we fear to try towing her up, lest she should go craunch, like an old tin kettle, in the operation. There is also a place with perpendicular walls, past which no towing-line could be carried. The mountains are at least 2,000 or 2,300 feet high, covered with trees and very healthy. As far as the eye can reach northwards we see ranges of the same, even into the blue distance. We slept without cover or quinine, and, but for the toil, which was excessive, we should all have returned improved in health. It made us so lean, that, had I come down this way in 1856, I should have perished before reaching Tette. It is an impediment to navigation, i. e. canoe or bum-boat navigation; they cannot paddle against a four-knot current; and then here they cannot punt at sixty feet deep, nor tow from a height of eighty feet, so they go overland. We have abundance of work in the meantime down here. The geologist reports having found three seams of coal-first, seven feet thick; second, thirteen feet six inches; third, twenty-five feet thick, in a fine cliff section. It was first fired by lightning a few years ago, and burned a long time. We are all in good health, have had colds only; no fever, except among the Kroomen. The Portuguese commandant, Major Sicard, gave us the Residency, or Government House, to live in at Tette: I am going up the Shire next week. MR THORNTON, the geologist, reports to me, having found three seams of coal, all cliff sections; 1st, 7 feet thick; 2nd, 13 feet 6 inches 3rd, 25 feet thick. This last was fired a few years ago by lightning, and burned a long time. The coal is of superior quality. With abundance of coal, and the finest iron ore, surely Africa was not destined by the Great Architect to be always a poor trodden-down slave-market. Now that my |