The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1857-01-08
Dr.. Lisi.ssee.s's Discoveries /. Africa


The discoveries Of DR.. Livingstone In Africa,
are considered Of great commercial value. He
lived with . tribe of Bechuanas for eight years,
and in cooperation with Mr.. Oswald, discovered
Lake Ngami He traced by himself the course of
the great river Zamhesi, in Eastern Africa, and
extending two thousand miles.
This immense stream, whose discovery is the
great fruit Of the journey, il in itself enigma
without parallel. But . small portion of its va.
ters reach the seacoast. Like the Atyssinian
Nile, falls through basaltic cleft, near the mid.
die of It's course, which reduces its breath from
1000 to 90 yards. Above these falls it spreads out
periodically into . great sea, filling hundreds of
lateral channels; below it Ia tranquil stream Of
totally different character. It's mouths seem to
be closing. The southernmost was navigabe when
the Portuguese first arrived in the country, 300
years ago, but It has long since ceased TO be prae-
ticabie. The QuilliInane mouth has of late years
been impossible, even for canoe, from July to
February, and for 200 or 800 miles up the river
navigation is never attempted in the dry season.
And in this very month of July, when the lower
portion of the river, after its April freshets has
sunk to . mere driblet, above the falls the river,
spreads out like sea over hundreds of square
miles. Xhis, with frequent catarac.s, and the hos
tiity OF the natives, would to tie an eectual
bar to the high hopes OF fat '.aGa and flli5us er
ing, in which English merchant. and journals are
now induigng
During this Unprecedented march, aloae and
among savages, to whom 3 white face was ri
racie, DR. Livingstone was compelled to struggle
through indescribable hardskps. The hospitality
of the natives he conquered by his intimate know.
ledge Of their character and the Bechuana tongue
TO which theirs is related. He waded rivers and
slept In the sponge and oozes of marshes being
often 80 drenched as to be compelled to turn his
armpit into q watch. pocket: His cattle were de-
stroyed by the terrible tsese fly, and be was too
poor to purchase a canoe. Lions were numerous
being worshipped by many of the trit es as the
receptacles of the departed souls of their chiefs
dangerous, too, as his crushed arm testifies
However, he thinks the fear of African wild
beasts greater in England than in Africa Many
OF his documents were los. while crossing a river
in which he came near losing his life also, but he
has memoranda of the latitudes andIongiGndes of a
multitude of Cities towns, rivers aud mountains
which will 60 far to fill up the unknown region"
in our ALIASES
Toward the interior he found the country more
fertile and more populous. The natives worship
ped idols believed in transmigraed existence after
death, and performed religious ceremonies in
groves and woods. They were less ferocious and
suspicious than the seaboard tribes; had tradition
of the deluge and more settled governments
Some of them practiced inocuaton and used qu.
nine, and all were eager for trade, being entirely
dependent on English calico for clothing, small
piece of which would purchase q slave. Their
language was sweet and expressive. Although
their women, on the whole, were not well treated
q man having as many wives as be chose they
were complete mistresses of their own houses and
gardens which the husband dared not enter in his
wife's absence. They were fond of show and
glitter, and much as $50 had been given for an
English rife On the arid platena of the interior
watermelons supplied the place of water for some
months of the year, as they do on the plains CT
Hungary in summer A Quaker tribe, on the river
Ianga, never fight, never have consumption, scro.
fula, hydrophobia, cholera smallpox, or measles
These advantages, however, are eounterbalanced
by the necessity of assiduous devotion to trade and
raising children to make good their loss from the
frequent inroads of their fighting neighbors