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Updated: May 19, 2025
Late in the afternoon of the day which marked the encounter with the Campbells I reached Kindu, where navigation on the Lualaba is resumed again. By this time you will have realized something of the difficulty of travelling in this part of the world. It was my third change since Bukama and more were to come before I reached the Lower Congo. At Kindu I had a rare piece of luck.
Settlements appear at rare intervals. You only encounter an occasional native canoe. The steamers frequently tie up at night at some sand-bank and you fall asleep invested by an uncanny silence. I spent six days on the Lualaba where we made many stops to take on and put off freight. Many of these halts were at wood-posts where our supply of fuel was renewed.
Thirty miles from the Lualaba, there were but few people who had ever heard of the great river. Such ignorance among the natives of their own country naturally increased the labours of Livingstone.
This, in brief, is the way you make the trip that Rhodes dreamed about, but not the way he planned it. There are various suggestions for alternate routes after you reach Bukama or, to be more exact, after you start down the first stage of the journey on the Lualaba. At Kabalo, where I stopped, a railroad runs eastward from the river to Albertville, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.
The Lualaba therefore must make its way to the Atlantic, and in fact this river is nothing but the Upper Congo. Lieutenant Cameron was also the first European to cross Central Africa from east to west. On the shores of the great lake the two travellers beheld a series of beautiful landscapes.
He offered a chief, Dugumbé, a liberal reward if he would help him to prepare for this expedition. While Dugumbé was considering the offer, Livingstone witnessed an episode which surpassed in horror all that he had previously met with in Africa. It was a fine day in July on the bank of the Lualaba, and 1500 natives, mostly women, had flocked to market at a village on the bank.
He believes his speculations on this point will be verified; he believes he is strong enough to pursue his explorations until he can return to his country, with the announcement that the Lualaba is none other than the Nile.
His dream of finding the sources of the Nile, and of throwing light on the destination of the Lualaba, was not fulfilled, but he discovered Ngami and Nyassa and other lakes, the Victoria Falls and the upper course of the Zambesi, and mapped an enormous extent of unknown country. In the autumn of 1874 Stanley was back in Zanzibar to try his fortune once more in Darkest Africa.
Aigrettes and birds of paradise fly on all sides and every hour reveals a hideous crocodile sunning himself on a sandspit. Night on the Congo enhances the loneliness that you feel on all the Central African rivers. Although the settlements are more numerous and larger than those on the Lualaba and the Kasai, there is the same feeling of isolation the moment darkness falls.
He visited Uganda, came again to Ujiji, where Livingstone's hut had long been razed to the ground, and sailed all round Lake Tanganyika. Two years after he started he was at Nyangwé on the Lualaba.
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