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Mohamad has resolved to go to Manyuema as soon as parties of his men now out return: this is all in my favour; it is in the way I want to go to see the Lualaba and Lufira to Chowambé. The way seems opening out before me, and I am thankful.
It is probable that they are not the workmanship of the ancestors of the present occupants, for they ascribe their formation invariably to the Deity, Mulungu or Réza: if their forefathers had made them, some tradition would have existed of them. 23rd October, 1868. Syde bin Habib came over from Mpwéto's; he reports Lualaba and Lufira flowing into the Lake of Kinkonza.
Each comes out of a fountain; the Lufira one is called Changozi, and is small, and in a wood of large trees S.W. of Katanga; the fountain of the Liambai is so large that one cannot call to a person on the other side, and he appears also very small there the two fountains are just five hours distant from each other.
Two of these run north to Egypt, Lufira and Lomame, and two run south into inner Ethiopia, as the Leambaye, or Upper Zambezi, and the Kaful. Are not these the sources of the Nile mentioned by the Secretary of Minerva, in the city of Sais, to Herodotus?
In apparent contradiction of the foregoing, so far as touches the sources of the Zambesi, Syde bin Habib informed me a few days ago that he visited the sources of the Liambai and of the Lufira.
A range of mountains, named Lokinga, extends from the south-east to the south-west: some small burns come down from them, but no river; this range joins the Koné, or Mokoné range, west of Katanga, from which on one side rises the Lufira, and on the other the Liambai, or Zambesi.
Lufira is less than Kalongosi up there; that is less than 80 or 200 yards, and it has deep waterfalls in it. The Koné range comes down north, nearly to Mpméto's. Mkana is the chief of the stone houses in the Baloba, and he may be reached by three days of hard travelling from Mpwéto's; Lufira is then one long day west.
It is from one to three miles broad, and never can be reached at any point, or at any time of the year. Two western drains, the Lufira, or Bartle Frere's River, flow into it at Lake Kamolondo. Then the great River Lomame flows through Lake Lincoln into it too, and seems to form the western arm of the Nile, on which Petherick traded.
This valley, or line of drainage, while it does not receive the Kassai and the Kwango, receives rivers flowing from a great distance west, for instance, the important tributaries Lufira and Lomami, and large rivers from the east, such as the Lindi and Luamo; and, while the most intelligent Portuguese travellers and traders state that the Kassai, the Kwango, and Lubilash are the head waters of the Congo River, no one has yet started the supposition that the grand river flowing north, and known by the natives as the Lualaba, is the Congo.
It is said to flow into the Lufira, and that into Tanganyika. 18th March, 1868. On reaching Mpwéto's yesterday we were taken up to the house of Syde bin Habib, which is built on a ridge overhanging the chiefs village, a square building of wattle and plaster, and a mud roof to prevent it being fired by an enemy. It is a very pretty spot among the mountains.
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