The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-05-06
THE MYSTERY OF TANGANYIKA.
It's Waters Are T~wenty-Six Feet Lower
Than They Were Twenty Years Ago.
New York Sun.

-N1" Olh oun.
Father Daull, a Roman Catholic mission
airy at Lake Tanganyike, one of the large
lakes of Central Africa, writes that since
1879 the level of the lake has fallen about
t~wenty-six feet. The natives are now Gull
tivating banana patches for about a half
ago was covered by the lake. In other
words, the width of the lake has been di-
minished about a mile throughout its
length of 400 miles. Fort Karema was
built on a hill whose base was Tapped by
the waves of Tanganyike, but now a gently
sloping, cultivated plain stretches be-
tween the fort and the lake. Many of the
native villages in the ten tribes that in
habit the thousand miles of the coasts
have been moved forward along the new
shore line. AT present the level of the
lake appears to be stationary for there has
been no perceptible change within a year
or more.
Father Daull expresses his views on the
cause of this remarkable diminution in the
voIume of ~Tanganyike's waters. In his
opinion there was a time, quite a number
of years ago. when the head of the Luz
kuga river. which carries the waters of
the lake to the Congo, was effectually
damned by an accumulation of tree
trunks, heritage and sand so that finally
none of the waters was able to escape and
The level of the lake began abnormally
10 rise. This went on for a number of
years until at last the barrier at the head
OF the Lukuga was gradually broken down
and since then the waters have been slow
~ falling and the lake has been returning
to its natural level.
Father Daull's observation of facts is &C.
curate, but he seems to nave got the cart
before the horse and has mistaken the
effect of falling waters for the cause that
produced them. 1t has been clearly shown
by explorers that the barriers that some
times form at the head of the Lukuga are
not the cause of the lakes diminution, but
the result of 1t. Like many a white man in
Africa, Father Daull has not been able to
keep pace with the geographical literature
relating to the very region where he lives.
All the evidence tends TO show that Tan
ganyfka is subject to periodical rise and
fall of level due to meteorological causes
that are not fully understood. For a period
of years the water receipts of the lake are
steadily less than its outflow and the evap-
grafton from its surface, and then the lake
recedes, the head OF the Lukuga becomes
choked with vegetation, no water enters
the river from the lake and ii partly dries
up as it receives only the drainage of it's
valley. This was the condition of things
when Stanley visited the Lukuga in 1876.
But the lake had been rising then for a
number of years. The succeeding cycle
was in progress when the water receipts
were steadily greater than the evaporation.
Stanley said that if the lake continued to
rise, in two or three years more it would
burst through the vegetable barrier at the
head OF the Lukuga and once more con-
tribute its waters to the Congo. This
actually happened, as Missionary Hore and
the explorer. Thomson, discovered. and al
most simultaneously the succeeding period
of deficient water supply came in, and the
lake has been falling ever since. 1t seems
to have reached the turning point again.
and We may soon expect to hear that the
level OF Tanganyika is rising.