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Updated: May 19, 2025
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.
On discovering that the insignificant stream called the Chambezi, which rises between 10 degrees S. and 12 degrees S., flowed westerly, and then northerly through several lakes, now under the names of the Chambezi, then as the Luapula, and then as the Lualaba, and that it still continued its flow towards the north for over 7 degrees, Livingstone became firmly of the opinion that the river whose current he followed was the Egyptian Nile.
Also, Livingstone's instruments for observation and taking altitudes may have been in error; and this is very likely to have been the case, subjected as they have been to rough handling during nearly six years of travel. Despite the apparent difficulty of the altitude, there is another strong reason for believing Webb's River, or the Lualaba, to be the Nile.
European explorers had for centuries striven to penetrate the darkness. The natives themselves did not know whither the Lualaba ran. All at once Stanley had filled up the blank and knit together the scattered meshes of the net; and now a railway runs beside the falls, and busy steamboats fly up and down the Congo.
Here, having exhausted the means of purchasing fresh provisions, and his followers refusing to proceed further, he was compelled to bring his journey northward to a termination. This was not till the year 1871. He, however, heard of another enormous lake to the northward, into which the Lualaba empties itself, bounded by a range to the westward called the Balegga mountains.
Here begins the historic Lualaba, which is the initial link in the almost endless chain of the Congo River. I at once went aboard the first of the boats which were to be my habitation intermittently for so many weeks. It was the "Louis Cousin," a 150-ton vessel and a fair example of the draft which provides the principal means of transportation in the Congo.
The great Tippu Tib considered it impossible to advance through such a country, and wished to turn back with all his black rabble, but after much hesitation he was at last persuaded to accompany Stanley for twenty days longer. So on they went once more, and after innumerable difficulties came again to the bank of the Lualaba. The huge volumes of water glided along silently and majestically.
The altitude of the most northerly point to which the Doctor traced the wonderful river was a little in excess of 2,000 feet; so that, though Baker makes out his lake to be 2,700 feet above the sea, yet the Bahr Ghazal, through which Petherick's branch of the White Nile issues into the Nile, is but 2,000 feet; in which case there is a possibility that the Lualaba may be none other than Petherick's branch.
Probably this was genuine geography, although he could not tell the name of the inner sea, the Achelunda of old cosmographers. Tuckey's map also lays down in N. lat. 2deg. to 3deg. and in E. long. This would suggest a reservoir alternately flooded and shrinking; possibly lacustrine bays and the bulges formed by the middle course of the Lualaba.
The house where the illustrious missionary lived still stands, and is an object of veneration both for black and white visitors. From Kabalo I proceeded to Kongolo, where navigation on the Lualaba temporarily ends. It is the usual Congo settlement with the official residence of the Commissaire of the District, office of the Native Commissioner, and a dozen stores.
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