1870, he writes: - " The Tanganyika, whose
majestic flow I marked by miles and miles of confervae and other aquatic
vegetation for three months during my illness at Ujiji, is, with the
lower Tanganyika, discovered by Baker, a riverine lake from twenty to
thirty miles broad."
It is thus clear that Livingstone considered that the Tanganyika and the
Albert N'yanza were one water. On 30th May, 1869, dated Ujiji, he writes
to Dr. Kirk: - "Tanganyika, N'zige Chowambe (Baker?) are one water, and
the head of it is 300 miles south of this."
"The majestic flow" of confervae remarked by Livingstone on the
Tanganyika is beyond my comprehension, if that vast lake has no outlet
at the north.
In Livingstone's letter of 27th Nov., 1870, he writes: - "Speke's great
mistake was the pursuit of a foregone conclusion. When he discovered the
Victoria N'yanza he at once leaped to the conclusion that therein lay
the sources; but subsequently, as soon as he and Grant looked to the
N'yanza, they turned their backs on the Nile fountains. Had they doubted
the correctness of the conclusion, they would have come west into the
trough of the great valley, and found there mighty streams, not eighty
or ninety yards, as their White Nile, but from 4,000 to 8,000 yards, and
always deep."
I was surprised that Livingstone could make such an error in quoting
Speke's White Nile from the Victoria N'yanza as eighty or ninety yards
in width! At M'rooli, in latitude N. 1 degree 37", I have seen that
magnificent river, which is at least A THOUSAND YARDS in width, with a
great depth. I have travelled on the river in canoes, and in the
narrowest places, where the current is naturally increased; the width is
at least 300 yards.
From my personal experience I must strenuously uphold the Victoria Nile
as a source of enormous volume, and should it ever be proved that the
distant affluents of the M'wootan N'zige are the most remote, and
therefore the nominal sources of the Nile, the great Victoria N'yanza
must ever be connected with the names of Speke and Grant as one of the
majestic parents of the Nile Basin.
Latterly, when speaking of the Lualaba, Livingstone writes to Sir Henry
Rawlinson: - "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."
We are, therefore completely in the dark concerning the flow of water
from the Lualaba south of the equator, and of Schweinfurth's Welle north
of the equator, but both these large rivers were tending to the same
direction, north-west. The discovery of these two rivers in about the
same meridian is a satisfactory proof of the western watershed, which
completely excludes them from the Nile Basin.
