Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

horns and skulls of game and cattle, imitations of bows and arrows pointing towards water, and heads of holcus. Sometimes a young tree is bent across the path, and provided with a cross-bar; here is a rush gateway, like the yoke of the ancients, or a platform of sleepers, supported by upright trunks; there a small tree felled, and replanted, is tipped with a crescent of grass, twisted round with bark, and capped with huge snail shells, and whatever barbarous imagination may suggest. Where many roads meet, those to be avoided are barred with a twig, or crossed by a line drawn by the foot. In Western Uvinza and near Ujiji the paths are truly vile, combining all the disadvantages of bog and swamp, river and rivulet, thornbush and jungle, towering grasses, steep inclines, riddled surface, and broken ground. The fords in the whole line are temporary as to season, but permanent in place; they are rarely more than breast deep; and they average in dry weather a cubit and a half, the fordable medium. There are but two streams, the Mgeta and the Ruguvu, which are bridged over by trees; both could be forded higher up the bed; and on the whole route there is but one river, the Malagarazi, which requires a ferry during the dry season. Cross roads abound in the populous regions. Where they exist not, the jungle is often impassable, except to the elephant and the rhinoceros. A company of pioneers would, in some places, require a week to cut their way for a single march through the network of thorns and the stockade of tree trunks. The directions given to travellers about drawing off their parties for safety at night to rising grounds, will not apply to eastern Africa. It would be far easier to dig for themselves abodes under the surface.

"It is commonly asserted in the island of Zanzibar, that there are no caravans in these regions. It is true, if the term be limited to the hosts of camels and mules that traverse the deserts and the mountains of Arabia and Persia. It is erroneous, if applied to a body of men travelling for commercial purposes. From time immemorial the Wanyamwezi have visited the road to the coast, and though wars and blood feuds may have temporarily closed one line, another necessarily opened itself. Among a race so dependent on trade for comfort and pleasure, commerce, like steam, cannot be compressed beyond a certain point. Until a few years ago, when the extension of traffic induced the country people to enlist as porters, all merchants traversed these regions with servile gangs, hired on the coast or island of Zanzibar-a custom still prevailing in the

northern and southern routes, from the sea-board to the lakes of Nyanza and Nyassa. Porterage on the long and toilsome journey is now considered by the Wanyamwezi a test of manliness, and is readily undertaken. It varies every year, and with every caravan. When the Wanyamwezi began to carry, they demanded for a journey from the coast to their own country, six to nine dollars' worth of domestics, colored cloths, brass wires, and beads. In 1857 the rate was twelve dollars."-Pp.

233-236.

In December the party proceeded from Unyanyembe toward the Lake Tanganyika, where, after obstructions and disasters like those they had before encountered, they arrived in February, 1858. Their route lay much of the way along the Malagarazi river, which devolves into the Tanganyika. A range of mountains stretches from Unyanyembe northward towards lake Nyanza, which is at a distance of three hundred and fifty miles; and another runs towards the north-west. The elevation of Unyanyembe above the sea-level, is about four thousand feet, and the plateau does not sink below two thousand five hundred till near Tanganyika. The following is the description given of that lake:

"The Tanganyika occupies the centre of the length of the African continent, and lies on the western edge of the eastern third of the breadth. Its general direction is parallel to the inner African line of volcanic action drawn from Gondar southward through the regions of Kilimanjaro to Mount Njësa, the eastern wall of the Nyassa lake. The general formation suggests, as in the case of the Dead Sea, the idea of a volcano of depression, not, like the Nyanza, a vast reservoir formed by the drainage of mountains. Judging from the eye, the walls of this basin rise in an almost continuous curtain, rarely waving and infracted, two to three thousand feet above the water level. The lower slopes are well wooded; upon the higher summits, large trees are said to grow; the deficiency of soil and the prevalence of high fierce winds, would account for the phenomenon. The lay is almost due north and south, and the form a long oval, widening in the central portions and contracting systematically at both extremities. The length of the bed is estimated at 250 miles. The breadth varies from eight or ten to thirtyfive. Assuming the length as 250, and the mean breadth twenty

miles, the circumference is in round numbers 550 miles. The superficial area is about 5000 square miles; and the drainage from the beginning of the descent in Unyamwezi about 240 miles. The altitude of the lake above the sea level is 1,850 feet, but about 2,000 feet below the adjacent plateau of Unyamwezi and the Nyanza, or northern lake. This difference. of level, even did not hill ranges intervene, would preclude the connexion of the waters of the two lakes. The position of the Tanganyika is thus the centre of a deep synclical depression in the continent; a long narrow trough in the southern spurs of Urundi, which with its mountain neighbor Karagwah, situated upon the equator, represents the inner portion of the Lunar Mountains. The parallel of the northern extremity of the Tanganyika nearly corresponds with the southern creek of the Nyanza, and they are separated by an arc of the meridian of about 343 miles.

"The water of the Tanganyika appears deliciously sweet and pure, after the salt and bitter, the putrid and slimy produce of the wells, pits, and pools, on the line of march. It was found impossible to take soundings. The shingly shore shelves rapidly into blue water. Judging from the eye, the bottom is sandy and profusely strewn with worn pebbles. The affluents are neither sufficiently numerous nor considerable to alter by sedimentary deposit the depth or shape of the bed. The borders are generally low; a thick fringe of rush and reed, obviating erosion by the water, conceals the margin. Where the currents beat, they cut out a short and narrow strip of quartzose sand, profusely strewn with large gravel, comminuted shells, and marine exuviæ, with a fringe of drift formed by the joint action of the wind and waves. Beyond this is a shelving plain, the principal locality for cultivation and settlements. In some parts it is a hard clay conglomerate; in others, a rich red loam, apparently stained with oxyd of iron; and in others sandy, but everywhere coated with the thickest vegetation extending up to the background of mountains. The coast is here and there bluff, with miniature cliffs and headlands, whose formation is of sandstone strata, tilted, broken, and distorted, or small blocks imbedded in indurated reddish earth.

"A careful investigation and comparison of statements lead to the belief that the Tanganyika receives and absorbs the whole river system-the network of streams, nullahs, and torrents-of that portion of the central depression whose water-shed converges towards the great reservoir. Geographers will doubt that such

[blocks in formation]

a mass, situated at so considerable an altitude, can maintain its level without an affluent. Moreover, the freshness of the water would, under normal circumstances, argue the escape of saline matter washed down by the influents from the area of drainage. But may not the Tanganyika, situated like the Dead Sea, as a reservoir for supplying with humidity the winds which have parted with their moisture in the barren sand regions of the South, maintain its general level by the exact balance of supply and evaporation."-Pp. 367-370.

Captain Burton suggests that probably the Nyanza, like Tanganyika, is without an outlet, though at a far higher elevation above the sea. A mountain range separates it, he suspects, from the White Nile, of which it is supposed by many to be the head.

"It is impossible not to suspect that between the upper portion of the Nyanza and the water-shed of the White Nile, there exists a longitudinal range of elevated ground running from east to west, draining northward into the Nile, and southward into the Nyanza lake, like that which separates the Tanganyika from the Nyassa.

"The periodical swelling of the Nyanza, which, flooding a considerable tract of land on the south, may be supposed, as it lies flush with the basal surface of the country, to inundate extensively all the low lands that form its periphery, forbids belief in the possibility of its being the head stream of the Nile, or the reservoir of its periodical inundation.”—Pp. 417, 418.

After a voyage in a boat to the northern part of Tanganyika, Captain Burton set out on his return journey, and reached the coast opposite Zanzibar, February, 1859, after an absence of a year and seven months.

The passages we have transcribed render it apparent that this part of Africa is extremely ineligible in every relation. The only articles of any moment it yields at present for export, are ivory and copal, of which Zanzibar is the mart; and there is no likelihood that cotton, sugar, rice, or any other product can be raised on any considerable scale, except on the low lands of the coast. The climate and the barrenness of large regions west of the Usagara mountains preclude a numerous, or vigorous and cultivated population. The exhalations generated from decaying vegetation and

putrid pools, are deadly to blacks as well as whites; and the hot and cold blasts that sweep in ceaseless alternations over the table lands, strike all exposed to them with an equal blight. That part of the earth must be new-created before it can become the abode of health, energetic labor, and refinement. And the population are as deformed in body, as brutalized in mind, and as wretched in every relation as their nature permits. What a miracle of power and grace it will be to restore such lost beings to intelligence, rectitude, and happiness; to mould them into the image of God, and exalt them to the glory and bliss of an, immortal life here! How plain that it must be wholly the work of the Almighty, and can only take place under a dispensation essentially different from the present!

ART. IX. THE LESSONS TAUGHT by the late EXTRAORDINARY POLITICAL EVENTS, AND THE CATASTROPHES TO WHICH THEY

ARE TENDING.

Ir sometimes happens that a ship that has repeatedly crossed the ocean without accident, and acquired a high character for strength, manageableness, and speed, is at length, when laden with a rich cargo, crowded with passengers, and advancing on a prosperous voyage, suddenly arrested by a fatal disaster, and after a few hours, or perhaps moments, goes down with all her living freight into the depths of the sea. A fire kindles spontaneously in the cargo, and rapidly spreads and smothers the crew and passengers, or drives them overboard. A sudden gust throws her on her side, and she fills and sinks. Or she is dashed against by another ship in rapid motion, and a fatal chasm opened in her bow or side, and soon deck and mast disappear beneath the waves.

Such a sudden transition from safety and prosperity to danger, consternation, and death, bears a likeness to the disastrous change that has lately befallen our government and people, and is rapidly advancing to no one knows what catastrophe. A few months since, and the nation was in

« ÎnapoiContinuă »