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Updated: June 20, 2025
Provisions ran short, and a hired porter ran away with the medicine chest. From this time Livingstone had no drugs to allay fever, and his health broke down. But he came to the southern extremity of Tanganyika, and the following year discovered Lake Bangweolo. He rowed out to the islands in the lake, and very much astonished the natives, who had never seen a white man before.
A wall map recently in use in one of the public schools of New York City was a curious example of ignorant compilation. It exhibited the Victoria Nyanza of Speke, the Bangweolo of Livingstone, and the Upper Congo of Stanley, all obsolete for practical purposes years before this map was printed.
It would be marvellous, however, if in the course of twenty years of exploration he had not made some blunders. His map of Lake Bangweolo, for example, was very inaccurate. The Lokinga Mountains, which he mapped to the south of the lake, have not been found by later explorers.
This Lake has a sandy, not muddy bottom, as we were at first informed, and there are four islands in it, one, the Bangweolo, is very large, and many people live on it; they have goats and sheep in abundance: the owners of canoes demand three hoes for the hire of one capable of carrying eight or ten persons; beyond this island it is sea horizon only. The tsébula and nzoé antelopes abound.
I shall require a few days more at Bangweolo than I at first intended. The moon being in its last stage of waning I cannot observe till it is of some size. 19th July, 1868. Went down to Masantu's village, which is on the shore of the Lake, and by a spring called Chipoka, which comes out of a mass of disintegrated granite.
It then flows south-west and west till it reaches lat. 11° S., and long. 29° E., where it forms Lake Bemba or Bangweolo, emerging thence it assumes the new name Luapula, and comes down here to fall into Moero. On going out of this Lake it is known by the name Lualaba, as it flows N.W. in Rua to form another Lake with many islands called Urengé or Ulengé.
Thus the question of the Lualaba remained unsolved, but Livingstone began to suspect that his theory of the Nile sources was wrong. He heard a doubtful tale of the Lualaba bending off to the west, but he still hoped that it flowed northwards, and that therefore the ultimate source of the Nile was to be found among the feeders of Lake Bangweolo.
He informed us that the Lake is much the largest at the part called Bangweolo. The country around the Lake is all flat, and very much denuded of trees, except the Motsikiri or Mosikisi, which has fine dark, dense foliage, and is spared for its shade and the fatty oil yielded by its seeds: we saw the people boiling large pots full of the dark brown fat, which they use to lubricate their hair.
According to those who have seen them, they rise on either side of a mound or level, which contains no stones. Some have called it an ant-hill. One of these fountains is said to be so large that a man, standing on one side, cannot be seen from the other. These fountains must be discovered, and their position taken. The Doctor does not suppose them to be south of the feeders of Lake Bangweolo.
At the end of August the indefatigable Doctor set off on his last journey. He made for Tanganyika, and on New Year's Day, 1873, he was near Lake Bangweolo. It rained harder than ever, pouring down as if the flood-gates of heaven were opened.
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