EXPLORATIONS OF LAKE TANGANIKA.
It was with strange feelings that Stanley caught from the last ridge the
sparkling waters of Tanganika. Sweet associations were awakened at the
sight, as he remembered with what a thrilling heart he first saw it
gleam in the landscape. Then it was the end of a long, wasting and
perilous journey--the goal of his ambition, the realization of his
fondest hopes; for on its shores he believed the object for which he had
toiled so long was resting. No more welcome sight ever dawned on mortal
eye than its waters as they spread away on the horizon; and though he
should see it a hundred times, it will never appear to him like any
other sheet of water. He has formed for it an attachment that will last
forever; and whenever in imagination it rises before him, it will appear
like the face of a friend.
As he now descended to Ujiji, it was with sensations as though he were
once more entering civilized life, for there was something almost
homelike about this Arab colony. People dressed in civilized garments
were moving about the streets, cattle were coming down to the lake to
drink, and domestic animals scattered here and there made quite a
homelike scene.
At first sight, it seems strange that Stanley should have selected this
lake as the next scene of his explorations. He had previously, with
Livingstone, explored thoroughly the upper half of it, and passed part
way down the western side; Livingstone had been at the foot of it, and
to crown all, Stanley had heard, before leaving Zanzibar, that Cameron
had explored the entire southern portion, so that really there was
nothing for him to do but follow a path which had been already trodden.
To employ an expedition fitted out at so great a cost, and spend so much
valuable time in going over old ground, seems an utter waste of both
time and labor, especially when such vast unexplored fields spread all
around him. But there was a mystery about Tanganika, which Stanley
probably suspected Cameron had not solved, and which he meant to clear
up. Here was a lake over three hundred miles long, with perhaps a
hundred streams, great and small, running into it, and yet with no
outlet, unless Cameron had found it, which he thinks he did. To find
this was the chief object of the expedition Stanley and Livingstone made
together to the north end of the lake. They had heard that the Rusizi
River at that extremity was the outlet, but they found it instead a
tributary. In fact, they proved conclusively that there was no outlet at
the northern end. It therefore must be at the southern, and if so, it
was the commencement of a river that would become a mighty stream
before it reached the ocean. But no such stream was known to exist. The
Caspian Sea has large rivers flowing into it, but no outlet, yet it
never fills up. Evaporation, it is supposed, accounts for this. But the
Caspian is salt, while the Tanganika is fresh water, and such a large
body of fresh water as this was never known to exist without an outlet,
and if it could be that evaporation was so great as to equal all the
water that runs into it, it would not remain so fresh as it is.
We will let Cameron state his own case concerning the solution of this
mystery. He started with two canoes and thirty-seven men, and sailed
down the eastern shore of the lake, now ravished with the surpassing
beauty of the scene composed of water and sky, and smiling shores, and
again awed by beetling cliffs; one evening camping on the green banks
and watching the sun go down behind the purple peaks, and another
drenched with rain, and startled by the vivid lightning and awful
thunder crashes of a tropical storm, yet meeting with no incident of any
peculiar interest to the reader. The natives were friendly, and he
describes the different villages and customs of the people and their
superstitions, which do not vary materially from other native tribes. At
last, on the 3d of May, he entered the Lukuga Creek, which a chief told
him was the outlet of the lake. He says that the entrance was more than
a mile wide, "but closed up by a grass sand-bank, with the exception of
a channel three or four hundred yards wide. Across this there is a rill
where the surf breaks heavily, although there was more than a fathom of
water at its most shallow part." The next day he went down it four or
five miles, until navigation was rendered impossible, owing to the
masses of floating vegetation. Here the depth was eighteen feet, and
breadth six hundred yards, and the current a knot and a half an hour.
The chief who accompanied him said that it emptied into the Lualaba. He
tried in vain to hire men to cut a passage through the vegetation that
he might explore the river. This was all the knowledge he obtained by
actual observation, the rest of his information being obtained from the
natives.
Now, we must say, that this is a sorry exhibit for the outlet to a lake
almost twice as long as Lake Ontario. That such an immense body of water
should trickle away at this rate seems very extraordinary. Stanley at
Ujiji started inquiries respecting this stream, and found Cameron's
guide, who stoutly denied that the river flowed south from the lake.
Another veteran guide corroborated this statement, while many others
declared that before Cameron came, they had never heard of an outflowing
river.
These contradictory statements, together with the universal testimony
that the lake was continually rising (the truth of which he could not
doubt, as he saw palm-trees which stood in the market-place when he was
there in 1871, now one hundred feet out in the lake), made him resolve
to explore this stream himself. He started on the 11th of June, and
three days after landed to take a hunt, and soon came upon a herd of
zebras, two of which he bagged, and thus secured a supply of meat.
On the 19th, on approaching a large village, they were astonished to see
no people on the shore. Landing, they were still more astonished at the
death-silence that reigned around, and advancing cautiously came upon
corpses of men and women transfixed with spears or with their heads cut
off. Entering into the village they found that there had been a
wholesale massacre. A descent had been made upon the place, but by whom
no one was left to tell. Its entire population had been put to death.
As Stanley proceeded, he found many evidences of the steady rise of the
lake. He continued on his course, finding the same varied scenery that
Cameron did, with nothing of peculiar interest occurring, except to the
travelers themselves, and at length came to the Lukuga Creek. He found
various traditions and accounts here--one native said the water flowed
both ways. The spot on which Cameron encamped, some two years before,
was now covered with water, another evidence that the lake was rising.
Stanley very sensibly says, that the "rill," which Cameron states runs
directly across the channel, is conclusive evidence that the Lukuga runs
into the lake, not out of it; for it must be formed by the meeting of
the inflowing current and the waves. An outpouring stream driven onward
by waves would make a deep channel, not a dam of sand. He tried several
experiments, by which he proved, to his entire satisfaction, that the
stream flowed into the lake instead of being its outlet. Having settled
this question he set about finding the other river, which the natives
declared flowed out or westward. After traveling some distance inland he
did find a place where the water flowed west; it was, however, a mere
trickling stream. His account of his explorations here, and of the
traditions of the natives, and his description of the formation of the
country and of its probable geological changes, is quite lengthy, and
possesses but little interest to the general reader.
The result of it all, however, is that he believes the Lukuga was
formerly a tributary of the lake, the bed of which at some former time
was lifted up to a higher level; that the whole stretch of land here has
been sunk lower by some convulsion of nature, taking the Lukuga with it,
and thus making a sort of dam of the land at the foot, which accounts
for the steady rise of the river year by year; and that in three years
the lake will rise above this dam, and, gathering force, will tear like
a resistless torrent through all this mud and vegetation, and roaring
on, as the Nile does where it leaves the Victoria Nyanza, will sweep
through the country till it pours its accumulated waters into the
Lualaba, and thus swell the Congo into a still larger Amazon of Africa.
This seems to be the only plausible solution of the mystery attached to
Tanganika. The only objection to it is, no such convulsion or change of
the bed of the Tanganika seems to have occurred during this generation,
and what has become, then, for at least seventy years, of all the waters
these hundred rivers have been pouring into the lake? We should like the
estimate of some engineer of how many feet that lake would rise in fifty
years, with all its tributaries pouring incessantly such a flood into
it. We are afraid the figures would hardly harmonize with this slow rise
of the lake. It may be that there is a gradual filtering of the water
through the ooze at the foot, which will account for the slow filling up
of the great basin--a leakage that retards the process of accumulation.
But if Stanley's explorations and statements can be relied upon, the
mystery will soon solve itself, and men will not have to hunt for an
outlet long. He makes the length of Tanganika three hundred and
twenty-nine geographical miles, and its average breadth twenty-eight
miles.
The wonderful influence of Livingstone over all African explorers is
nowhere more visible than at Ujiji, on both Cameron and Stanley. Both of
these set out with one object--to try to complete the work that the
great and good man's death had left unfinished. His feet had pressed the
shores of almost every lake they had seen, as well as of others which
they had not seen. The man had seemed to be drawn on westward until he
reached Nyangwe, where dimly arose before him the Atlantic Ocean, into
which the waters flowing past his camp might enter, and did enter, if
they were not the Nile. Discouraged, deserted and driven back, he could
not embark on the Lualaba and float downward with its current till he
should unveil the mystery that wrapped it. Cameron became filled with
the same desire, but disappointed, though not driven back, he had
pressed on to the ocean, into which he had no doubt the river emptied,
though by another route. And now, last of three, comes Stanley, and
instead of finishing Livingstone's work around the lakes, he, too, is
drawn forward to the same point. It seemed to be the stopping-place of
explorations in Africa; and although he knew that Cameron had not
returned like Livingstone, and hence might have discovered all that was
to be discovered, so making further explorations in that direction
useless, still he felt that he must go on and find out for himself.
True, there was an interesting district between Ujiji and the Lualaba.
There was the beautiful Manyema region, about which Livingstone had
talked to him enthusiastically, with its new style of architecture, and
beautiful women and simple-minded people. But those did not form the
attraction. He must stand on the spot where Livingstone stood, and look
off with his yearning desire, and see if he could not do what this good
man was willing to risk all to accomplish.
[Illustration: SETTING OUT TO CROSS LAKE TANGANIKA.]
At all events, he must move somewhere at once, and westward seemed the
most natural direction to take, for if he stayed in Ujiji much longer
the expedition would break up. He found on his return that the small-pox
had broken out in camp, filling the Arabs with dismay. He had taken
precaution on starting to vaccinate every member of his party, as he
supposed, and hence he felt safe from this scourge of Africa. He did not
lose a single man with it on his long journey from the sea to the
Victoria Nyanza. But it had broken out in Ujiji with such fury that a
pall was spread over the place, and it so invaded his camp that in a few
days eight of his men died.
This created a panic, and they began to desert in such numbers that he
would soon be left alone. Thirty-eight were missing, which made quite a
perceptible loss in a force of only one hundred and seventy men. The
chiefs of the expedition were thoroughly frightened, but they told him
that the desertions would increase if he moved westward, for the men
were as much afraid of the cannibals there, as of the small-pox in their
midst. They were told horrible stories of these cannibals till their
teeth chattered with fear. Besides there were hobgoblins--monsters of
every kind in the land beyond the Tanganika. Stanley saw, therefore,
that prompt measures must be taken, and he at once clapped thirty-two of
the discontented in irons, drove them into canoes, and sent them off to
Ukurenga. He with the rest followed after by land to Msehazy Creek,
where the crossing of the lake was to be effected. Reaching the other
side he proceeded to Uguha, where, on mustering his force, he found but
one hundred and twenty-seven out of one hundred and seventy, showing
that one-third had disappeared. Among the last to go, and the last
Stanley expected would leave him, was young Kalulu, whom he had taken
home to the United States with him on his return from his first
expedition. He had him placed in school in England for eighteen months,
and he seemed devoted to Stanley. A gloom hung over the camp, and
desertion was becoming too contagious. If such men as Kalulu could not
be trusted, Stanley knew of no one who could be, and with his usual
promptness he determined to stop it. He therefore sent back Pocoke and a
faithful chief with a squad of men to capture them.
Paddling back to Ujiji, they one night came upon six, who, after a stout
fight, were secured and brought over to camp. Afterward young Kalulu was
found on an island and brought in. This desertion is a chronic disease
among the Arabs. Their superstitious fears are quickly aroused, and
they are easily tempted to break their contract and leave in the lurch
the man to whom they have hired themselves.
Stanley's march to Manyeme was noticeable only for the curious customs
or habits of the people, and on the 5th of October he reached the
frontier of this wonderful country. Livingstone had halted here several
months, and this was an inducement for Stanley to stop a few days. The
weapons of the natives were excellent, and there was one custom that
attracted his particular attention--the men wore lumps in various forms
of mud and patches of mud on their beard, hair and head, while the women
wove their front hair into head-dresses, resembling bonnets, leaving the
back hair to wave in ringlets over their shoulders. He, as well as
Cameron, was amazed at their villages, which, usually had one or more
broad streets running through them, each being from one hundred to one
hundred and fifty feet wide, and along which are ranged the square huts,
with well-beaten, cleanly-kept clay floors, to which they cheerfully
invite strangers.
On the 12th he reached the village on the Luma which he had been
following, where both Livingstone and Cameron left it and turned
directly west to Nyangwe. He, however, determined to follow it till it
reached the Lualaba, and then proceed by this stream to the same place.
He found the natives kind but timid, with many curious traditions and
customs. The expedition at last reached the Lualaba, and moving
majestically through the forest and making rapid marches, it arrived on
the next day at Tubunda.