River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1872-10-11

flowing, one-half to the Nile and one
half into Ethiopia. The main lacustrine
stream thus tracked for the first time
for 600 miles is held implicitly by the
great traveller to be no other than the
Nile. And this discovery he announces
as the browning Plory of his career Of
toll. Here it is unhappily impossible
for geographers to follow him. It is
no question between gentlemen sitting
at home in easy chairs, as Mr.. Stanley
somewhat holly puts it, and one who
has with his own eyes seen the Nile.
As a matter, not of fact, but of infer
ence, it is, to say the least, as much
within the capacity of those at home,
with the command of concurrent aids
to Judgment and all the light of indie
pendent discovery, as of an observer
on the spot. The simple and obvious
laws of nature are at all events not to
be gainsaid; and the mere considera-
tions of level, unless the figures have
undergone some strange and unimagl-
nable juggling, are fatal to Livingstones
darling hypothesis. 1t is difficult to
conceive the traveller himself sitting
down to pen it without misgiving, on
second thought, that the height of the
lower part of Central Lualaba, being
one inch lower by barometer than Tan
ganyika, which he makes out to be g.
600 feet, "is about the attitude
ascribed to Gondokoro." Some fifteen
degrees of latitude, by his estimate,
separating the Lualaba at this point
from Gondokoro, both the latitude of
which lover five degrees north) and the
elevation are fixed by full and concur.
rent testimony, how is he going to ac-
count for the river actually keeping a
dead level for thousand miles and up
ward? As for Livlngstone's river flow
ing into the Bahr-el-Gazal, as
has been suggested, not only
is the same difficulty of
level in the way, but ali evidence con-
ours in representing the Bahr-el-Gaza
as shallow, reedy stream, utterly I'M
equal to the reception of broad and
deep volume of water like the Laulaba,
in places over two miles in width. Liv-
ingstone confesses himself at times to
be haunted by suspicion that he had
hit upon the Congo, Which if we mis-
take not, will be the impression of
geographers in general. for that
stream of this magnitude can lose itself
in some inland lake or swamp passes
the bounds of what is probable. 1t
may be, of course, that Livingstone's
observation of level, as well as of geo.
graphical distribution, were incorrect
What instruments he had with him APP
pear to have been imperfect at the
long in use. The DO ling-water
test, at no time scientifically exact is
anything put enhanced in accuracy in
the tropics, where the pole-star, too,
can be scarcely, if at all, Available for
observation, and the sun is seen under
the worst conditions for latitude. Liv-
ingstone's timepieces having long been
useless, longitude must for some time
past have become a mere matter of
dead reckoning; and with what strict
ness he had kept count of time may be
tested by the fact of his allowing him
self to have been three weeks out in his
reckoning when found by Mr.. Stanley.
Refreshed as he must have been, and
amply supplied, as he himself writes,
with stores, he reports it as his future
plan of action to go southwest from
Unyanyembe to Fipa, near the
southeastern end of Tanganyika,
from thence round to Pambette
so as to cross the Chambesi, and coast
the southern shores of Lake Bauweelo
latitude IL degrees south), and thence
due west to the ancient fountains of He
secret of its unknown issue. This is
sue he hopes and believes to be the
Nile. In this belief and hope there
can be but few to join him. Still, the
result, whatever it may be, cannot fail
to prove valuable gain to our know
ledge of African geography, and to our
admiration of the indefatigable ex-
plorer.