The great river Zambesi runs eastward across Southern Africa and empties, by many mouths, into the Indian Ocean. It is an immense water system, with its head far toward the Atlantic Ocean, yet draining on its north side that mysterious lake region which occupies Central Africa, and on its south side an almost equally mysterious region.

Its lower waters have been known for a long time, but its middle waters and its sources have been shrouded in a cloud of doubts as dense as that which overhung the reservoirs of the Nile. Livingstone has contributed more than any other explorer to the lifting of these doubts.

He was born in Glasgow, March 19, 1813, and was self-educated. He studied medicine and became attached to the London Missionary Society as medical missionary. In 1840, at the age of twenty-seven years, he was sent to Cape Town at the southern terminus of Africa, whence he went 700 miles inland to the Kuruman Station, established by Moffat on the southern border of the Kalihari desert. Here and at Kolobeng, on the Kolobeng River, he acquired the language of the natives, principally Bechuana. On a return trip from Kolobeng to Kuruman he came near losing his life by an adventure with a lion. The country was being ravaged by a troop of these beasts. When one of their number is killed, the rest take the hint and leave. It was determined to dispatch one, and a hunt was organized in company with the natives. They found the troop on a conical hill. The hunters formed a circle around the hill and gradually closed in. Meblawe, a native schoolmaster, fired at one of the animals which was sitting on a rock. The bullet struck the rock. The angered beast bit the spot where the bullet struck and then bounded away. In a few moments Livingstone himself got a shot at another beast. The ball took effect but did not kill. The enraged beast dashed at his assailant before he could re-load, and sprang upon him. He was borne to the ground beneath the lion’s paws and felt his hot breath on his face. Another moment must have brought death. But the infuriated beast saw Mebalwe, who had snapped both barrels of his rifle at him. He made a dash for him and lacerated his thigh in a terrible manner. The natives, who had hitherto acted in a very cowardly manner, now came to the rescue with their spears. One of their number was pounced upon and badly torn. The beast now began to weaken from the effect of Livingstone’s shot, and with a quiver throughout his huge frame rolled over on his side dead. After the excitement was over Dr. Livingstone found eleven marks of the lion’s teeth on his left arm, which was broken close to the shoulder and the bone crushed into splinters.

Livingstone married Moffat’s daughter in 1844. She had been born in the country and was a thorough missionary. He made Kolobeng a beautiful station and produced an excellent impression on the natives—all except the Boer tribes to the south and east, who had become much incensed against the English, owing as they thought, to the particularly harsh treatment they had received down in their former homes south of the Vaal River.

At Kolobeng, Livingstone first heard of Lake Ngami, north of the Kalihari Desert. He resolved to visit it, and started in May 1849, in company with his wife and children, several English travellers and a large party of Bechuana attendants. They rather skirted than crossed the desert, yet they found it to consist of vast salt plains, which gave a constant mirage as if the whole were water. Though destitute of water, there are tufts of dry salt-encrusted grass here and there, which relieve it of an appearance of barrenness, but which crumble at the touch.

In July they struck the river Cubango, or Zonga, flowing eastward and, as far as known, losing itself in a great central salt-lake, or Dead Sea. They were told that the Zonga came out of Lake Ngami, further west. Ascending the river sixty miles they struck the lake, and were the first Europeans to behold this fine sheet of water. The great tribe about and beyond the lake is the Makololo, whose chief is Sebituane, a generous hearted and truly noble character. They could not see him on this trip. So they returned, making easy journeys down the Zonga, admiring its beautiful banks, which abounded in large game, especially elephants.

The next year (1850), Livingstone and his family started again for Lake Ngami, accompanied by the good chief Sechele, who took along a wagon, drawn by oxen. While this means of locomotion gave comfort to the family, it involved much labor in clearing roads, and the animals suffered sadly from attacks by the tsetse fly, whose sting is poisonous. But the lake was reached in safety. The season proved sickly, and a return journey became compulsory, without seeing Sebituane. But the chief had heard of Livingstone’s attempts to visit his court, and he sent presents, and invitations to another visit. He set out on a third journey, and this time directly across the desert, where they suffered much for want of water.

This time they found the chief. His headquarters were on an island in the river, below the lake. He received the party with the greatest courtesy, and appeared to be the best mannered and frankest chief Livingstone ever met. He was about forty-five years old, tall and wiry, of coffee-and-milk complexion, slightly bald, of undoubted bravery, always leading his men in battle, and by far the most powerful warrior beyond Cape Colony. He had reduced tribe after tribe, till his dominions extended far into the desert on the south of the Zonga, embraced both sides of that stream, and ran northward to, and beyond, the great Zambesi River.

Chief Sebituane died while Livingstone was visiting him, and was succeeded by his daughter Ma-Mochisane. She extended the privileges of the country to the travellers, and Livingstone went north to Sesheke to see her. Here in June, 1851, he discovered the great Zambesi in the centre of the continent of Africa where it was not previously known to exist—all former maps being incorrect.

Though the country was not healthy, he was so impressed with the beauty of the Zambesi regions, and the character of the Makololo people, that he resolved to make a permanent establishment among them. But before doing so he returned to Cape Colony and sent his family to England. Then he went back, visiting his old stations on the way. He arrived at Linyanti, where he found that the new queen had abdicated in favor of her brother, on May 23, 1853. The new king Sekelutu was not unlike his father in stature and color, was kindly disposed toward white people, but could not be convinced that their religious notions were suited to him.

Livingstone remained a month at Linyanti, on the Chobe, or Cuando River, above its junction with the Zambezi. He then started on a further exploration of the latter river, and was gratified to find that Sekelutu determined to accompany him with 160 attendants. They made royal progress down the Chobe to its mouth. Then they began to ascend the Zambesi in thirty-three canoes. The river was more than a mile broad, dotted with large islands and broken with frequent rapids and falls. The banks were thickly strewn with villages. Elephants were numerous. It was the new king’s first visit to his people and everywhere the receptions were grand. Throughout this Barotse valley hunger is not known, yet there is no care exercised in planting.

The spirit of exploration had such full possession of Livingstone that, on the return of the royal party to Linyanti, he organized an expedition to ascend the Zambesi and cut across to Loanda on the Atlantic coast. This he did in 1854. It was on this journey that he discovered Lake Dilolo. It is not much of a lake, being only eight miles long by three broad. But it was a puzzle to Livingstone, and has ever since been a curiosity. It is the connecting link between two immense water systems—that of the Congo and Zambesi.

When he struck it on his westward journey toward Loanda, he found it sending out a volume into the Zambesi. “Head-waters of a great river!” he naturally exclaimed. And there was the elevation above the sea, the watershed, to prove it, for soon after all the waters ran northward and westward instead of eastward and southward.

But in a few months he was making his return journey from Loanda to the interior, to fulfil his pledge to bring back his Makololo attendants in safety. He then approached this lake from the north. What was his surprise to find another slow moving, reed-covered stream a mile wide, flowing from this end of the mysterious lake and sending its waters toward the Congo.

Though ill with fever both times, he was able to conquer disease sufficiently to satisfy himself that this little lake, Dilolo, four thousand feet above the sea level, is located exactly on the watershed between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and distributes its contents impartially between the two seas. A drop of rain blown by the wind to the one or the other end of the lake may re-enforce the tumbling floods that roar through the channels of the Congo and rush sixty miles out into the salt waters of the Atlantic, or may make with the Zambesi the dizzy leap through the great Victoria Falls and mingle with the Indian ocean. No similar phenomenon is known anywhere. Lake Kivo may form a corresponding band of union between the Congo and the Nile, but this we do not know. Apart from the eccentric double part it plays, the physical features of Dilolo are tame and ordinary enough. It has, of course, hippopotami and crocodiles as every water in Central Africa has, and its banks are fringed with marshes covered with profuse growth of rushes, cane, papyrus, and reeds. Around it stretch wide plains, limitless as the sea, on which for many months of the year the stagnant waters rest, balancing themselves, as it were, between the two sides of a continent, unable to make up their mind whether to favor the east coast or the west with their tribute.

No trees break the horizon. The lands in the fens bear only a low growth of shrub, and the landscape is dismal and monotonous in the extreme. “Dilolo means despair,” and the dwellers near it tell a story curiously resembling the tale of the “Cities of the plain,” and the tradition handed down regarding some of the lakes in Central Asia, of how a venerable wanderer came to this spot near evening and begged for the charity of shelter and food, how the churlish inhabitants mocked his petition, with the exception of one poor man who gave the stranger a nook by his fire and the best his hut afforded, and how after a terrible night of tempest and lightning the hospitable villager found his guest gone and the site of his neighbor’s dwellings occupied by a lake. When the rains have ceased and the hot sun has dried up the moisture the outlook is more cheerful. A bright golden band of flowers of every shade of yellow stretches across the path, then succeeds a stripe of blue, varying from the lightest tint to purple, and so band follows band with the regularity of the stripes on a zebra.

The explorer is glad, however, to escape these splendid watersheds and to pass down into the shadows of the forests of the Zambesi, where, at least, there will be a change of discomforts, and a variety of scenery. There are four methods of travel familiar in Southern Africa. One is the bullock-wagon, convenient and pleasant enough in the Southern Plains, but hardly practicable in the rude wilderness adjoining the Zambesi. Riding on bullock back is a mode of travel which Livingstone frequently adopted from sheer inability to walk from weakness. Marching on foot is, of course, the best of all plans when a thorough and minute acquaintance with the district traversed is desired. But for ease and rapid progress there is nothing like “paddling your own canoe,” or better still, having it paddled for you by skilled boatmen down the deep gorges and through the rushing shallows of the third of the great African rivers. Before the main stream of the Zambesi is reached, the forest shadows of the Lotembwa and the Leeba have to be threaded. These dark moss-covered rivers flow between dripping banks of overgrown forests and jungle with frequent clearings, where the villagers raise their crops of manihoc, the plant that yields the tapioco of commerce, and which here furnishes the chief food of the natives.

Fetisch worship flourishes in these dark and gloomy woods. In their depths a fantastically carved demon face, staring from a tree, will often startle the intruder, or a grotesque representation of a lion or crocodile, or of the human face made of rushes, plastered over with clay and with shells or beads for eyes, will be found perched in a seat of honor with offerings of food and ornaments laid on the rude altar. Whether human sacrifices are offered at these shrines cannot positively be said, but the most simple and trifling acts are “tabooed,” and unless the traveller is exceedingly wary in all that he does or says, he is likely to be met with heavy fines or looked upon as a cursed man, who will bring misfortune on all who aid or approach him. The medicine man has a terrible power which he often exercises over the lives and property of his fellows, and a sentence of witchcraft is often followed by death. A great source of profit is weather-making but, unlike the prophets in the arid deserts on the south, the magicians of this moist, cool region devote their energies to keeping off rain and not to bringing it down from Heaven. Of course if they persevere long enough the rain ceases to fall, and the credulous natives believe that this has been produced by the medicine they have purchased so dearly, just as the Bechuana of the desert believe in the ability of their rain-makers, when handsomely paid, to bring showers down on the thirsty ground by virtue of drumming and dancing.

The behavior of the inhabitants of these villages, on the appearance among them of a white man, is apt to shake the notion of the latter that the superior good looks of his own race are universally acknowledged. Their standard of beauty is quite different from ours. Sometimes a wife is measured by the number of pounds she weighs, sometimes by her color, often by the peculiarities of ornamentation, or by special style of head-dress or some disfigurement of the nose, lips or ears, on which the female population mainly rely for making themselves attractive. The wearing of clothes is regarded as a practice fairly provocative of laughter, and as improper as the want of them would be in America. Nothing could be more hideous to them than the long hair, shaggy beard and whiskers, like the mane of a lion, which strangers wear. If the stranger have blue eyes and red whiskers he is regarded as a hob-goblin, before whom the village girls run away screaming with terror, and the children hide trembling behind their mothers. At the village of the Shinte, the principal tribe on the Leeba River, Livingstone was very kindly treated by the chief. He received him seated in state under the shade of a banyan tree, with his hundred wives seated behind him, and his band of drummers performing in front. Out of gratitude, the Doctor treated the distinguished party to an entertainment with the magic-lantern. The subject was the death of Isaac, and the party looked on with awe as the gigantic figures with flowing Oriental robes, prominent noses, and ruddy complexions appeared upon the curtain. But when the Patriarch’s up-lifted arm, with the dagger in hand, was seen descending, the ladies, fancying that it was about to be sheathed in their bosoms instead of Isaac’s, sprang to their feet with shouts of “Mother! Mother!” and rushed helter-skelter, tumbling pell-mell after each other into corners or out into the open air, and it was impossible to bring them back to witness the Patriarch’s subsequent fortunes.

On the lower part of the Leeba the scenery becomes very beautiful and richly diversified. The alternation of hill and dale, open glade and forest, past which the canoe bears us swiftly, reminds one of a carefully kept park. Animal life becomes more plentiful with every mile of southward progress, and the broad meadows bordering the stream are pastured by great herds of wild animals—buffaloes, antelopes, zebras, elephants, and rhinoceri,—all of which may be slaughtered in scores before they take alarm.

Below the confluence of the Leeba with the Zambesi, the abundance of game on the banks of the river is more remarkable. The air is found darkened by the flight of innumerable water fowl, fish-hawks, cranes, and waders of many varieties. The earth teems with insect life and the waters swarm with fish life. As an instance of the prodigious quantity and exceeding tameness of wild animals here, Livingstone mentions that “eighty-one buffaloes marched in slow procession before our fire one evening within gun shot, and herds of splendid deer sat by day without fear at two hundred yards distance, while all through the night the lions were heard roaring close to the camp.” In the heat of the day sleek elands, tall as ordinary horses, with black glossy bodies and delicately striped skins, browsed or reclined in the shade of the forest trees. Troops of graceful, agile antelopes, of similar species, scour across the pasture lands to seek the cool retreat of some deep dell in the woods, or a solitary rhinoceros comes grunting down to the bank in search of some soft place where he can roll his horny hide in the mud. The trees themselves have a variety and beauty which the sombre evergreen foliage of higher latitudes lacks, and which is equally wanting in the dust colored groves of the desert further south.

The voyage down the stream is by no means without incident. The river swarms with hippopotami and crocodiles. The former lead a lazy sleepy life by day in the bottom of the stream, coming now and then to the surface to breathe and exchange a snort of recognition with their acquaintances, and are only too well pleased to let the passer by go in peace, if he will but let them alone. In districts where they are hunted, they are wary and take care to push no more than the tip of their snouts out of the water, or lie in some bed of rushes where they breathe so softly that they cannot be heard. But in a place where they have not been disturbed, they can be seen swimming about, and sometimes the female hippopotamus can be seen with the little figure of her calf floating on her neck. Certain elderly males who are expelled from the herd become soured in temper and are dangerous to encounter, and so also is a mother if robbed of her young. Such a one made an attack on Livingstone’s boat, when descending the Zambesi in 1855, butting it from beneath until the fore end stood out of water, and throwing one of the natives into the stream. By diving and holding on to the grass at the bottom, while the angry beast was looking for him on the surface, he escaped its vengeance and, the boat being fortunately close to the shore, the rest of the crew got off unharmed. The alligators of this part of the Zambesi are peculiarly rapacious and aggressive, and the chances are that anybody unlucky enough to fall into the river will find his way into the mouth of a watchful crocodile. Every year these ferocious reptiles carry off hundreds of human victims, chiefly women, while filling their water jars, or men whose canoes are accidently upset, and the inhabitants in their turn make a prey of the beast, being extremely fond of its flesh and eggs. The crocodile attacks by surprise. He lurks behind the bank of rushes, or lies in wait at the bottom of a pool, and dashes out as soon as he sees a human limb in the water. Sometimes, however, when hungry and where favorable opportunity occurs, he will haul his body ashore and waddle up the bank on his stumpy legs. If, while disporting himself on shore, his wicked green eyes fall on some likely victim in the stream, he will dash rapidly through the rushes, plunge into the river and make a bound for his prey. The young crocodiles show their vicious temper almost as soon as they are out of the shell, and one savage little wretch about two feet long made a snap at Dr. Livingstone’s legs, while walking along the side of a stream in the Zambesi region, that made the explorer jump aside with more agility than dignity.

Some distance below the junction of the Leeba, the Zambesi enters the valley of the Barotse. This is one of the most fertile, yet the most unhealthy, districts in the interior of Africa. It is stocked with great herds of domestic cattle of two varieties. One very tall with enormous horns, nearly nine feet between the tips, and the other a beautifully formed little white breed. The country could grow grain enough to support ten times the inhabitants it has at present. Like the lower valley of the Nile, the Barotse country is inundated every year, over its whole surface, by the waters of the river, which deposit a layer of fertilizing slime. The banks of the Zambesi, for some distance above and below this district, are high and cliffy, presenting ridge after ridge of fine rock and pleasing scenery, while the stream runs swiftly over its stony bed. For a hundred miles through the Barotse valley the stream has a deep and winding course and the hills withdraw to a distance of fifteen miles from either bank. To the foot of these hills the waters extend in flood time, and the valley becomes temporarily one of the lake regions of Central Africa.

At the lower end of the valley the rocky spurs again approach each other, and the river forces its way through a narrow defile in which, in flood time, the water rises to a height of sixty feet above its original level. Here are situated the Gonye Falls which are a serious impediment to the navigation of the Upper Zambesi. But there is no such danger or difficulty here for canoes as poor Stanley met with on the Congo. Practice has made the natives, living near the falls, experts in the work of transporting these canoes over the rocky ground and, as soon as a boat approaches the rapids from above or below, it is whisked without difficulty by a pair of sturdy arms to the quiet water beyond. Below the Gonye Falls, the water bounds and rolls and bounces from bank to bank and chafes over the boulders in an alarming manner, their breadth being contracted to a few hundred yards. But these swollen rapids might all be ascended, Livingstone thinks, when the river is full. After many leagues of this mad gamboling, the Zambesi settles down again for a hundred miles to sober flow, and opens out into a magnificent navigable river a mile or two from bank to bank.

Still more grand, however, are its dimensions after it receives a great deep, dark colored, slow flowing river, the Cuando, or Chobe, before mentioned. The Chobe empties through several mouths with winding channels fringed with beds of papyrus, the stems of which are plaited and woven together into an almost solid mass of vines, and by grass with keen, sharp, serrated edges, which cut like razors. Even the hippopotamus has no little ado in forcing a way through this forest, and less weighty personages have to walk humbly in his track. So wide is the Zambesi below the entrance of the Chobe, that even the practiced native eye cannot tell from the bank whether the land, dimly seen beyond, is an island or opposite shore, and the stream flows placidly past with no sign that it is almost within sight of a tremendous downfall.

The only traveller who has explored the upper waters of the Chobe is Major Serpa Pinto, on his recent journey from Benguela to Natal. But we shall learn more of his travels hereafter. It is, however, interesting now to note that he found a spot on this river also, where he could almost have placed his cap on the point of junction between streams draining toward the Atlantic, the Zambesi, the Indian Ocean, and the Kalihari Desert.

Livingstone has already made us familiar with Lake Ngami and the banks of the lower Cuando. These are the furthest outposts of equatorial moisture toward the south, just as Lake Chad and the White Nile mark its northern limits. Once, it is supposed—and indeed the fact seems beyond dispute—the Zambesi, and all its upper branches, flowed down into this southern basin and formed a goodly inland sea, until some great cataclysm happened, that diverted it and its waters toward the eastern coast, leaving the central lake to be dried up into the shallow Ngami, and the streams of this region to wander about haphazard and uncertain whether to keep in the old tracks or follow in the new direction.

The discovery of the Cuando River by Livingstone in 1849 demolished the theory of a burning desert occupying the interior of Africa from the Mediterranean to the Cape, and went far to prove, what has since been completely established, that the fabulous torrid zone of Africa, and its burning sands, is a well watered region, resembling North America in its mountains and lakes, and India in its hot humid plains, thick jungles, and cool highlands. We have already seen that the South African desert is not without vegetation, but its pride and glory are herds of big and small game—antelopes, gnues, zebras, ostriches, elands, gemsbocks, gazelles, various species of deer—that roam over its spacious plains. Great deeds of slaughter have been done with the rifle, and told over and over again in many a stirring book of African sport by Gunning, Anderson, and other Nimrods, who were among the first of the army of hunters who now annually go in search of hides, tusks, and horns, which every year become more difficult to obtain. The lion is practically the only animal of the cat tribe which they have to encounter, the tiger being unknown in Africa, and the leopard comparatively rare. The lion seem to be more at home in these salt deserts than in the rank forests further north, probably because he finds food more plentiful. Livingstone had no great opinion of this beast. He describes him as “about the size of a donkey and only brave at roaring,” even the talk of his majestic roar he regards as “majestic twaddle,” and he says he could never tell the voice of the lion from the voice of an ostrich, except from knowing that the quadruped made a noise by night and the bird by day. The lion would never dream of putting himself against a noble elephant, though he will tear an elephant calf if he finds one unprotected, and he would still less engage in a contest with the thick skinned rhinoceros. Even a buffalo is more than a match for the “King of Beasts.” Major Oswald once came across three lions who were having much trouble in pulling a mortally wounded buffalo to the ground.

Both the elephant and rhinoceros are hunted here by the natives with packs of dogs. The yelping curs completely bewilder their heavy game, and while he is paying attention to them and making attempts to kill them, the native creeps up and plants his bullet or poisoned spear in a vital spot. English sportsmen prefer to go out against the elephant on foot or on horseback or, as Anderson, upon the back of a trained ox. In former times as many as twenty have been killed on a single excursion. The chase of the huge animal, which attains a maximum height of twelve feet on the Zambesi, becomes really exciting and dangerous work, for the African variety, owing to the formation of its skull, cannot be brought down by a forehead shot like the Indian variety. The giraffe and ostrich are also hunted on horseback, and the plan adopted by hunters is to press them at a hard gallop from the first, which causes them to lose their wind and sometimes to drop dead from excitement. The ostrich, when at the top of his speed, has been known to run at the rate of thirty miles an hour, so that there is no hope of overtaking him in a direct chase, but the stupid bird often delivers itself into the hands of its pursuers by running in curves instead of speeding straight ahead.

The people of the Kalihari Desert are as characteristic of the soil and climate as its vegetable life and four-footed beasts. They are of two kinds, first Bushmen, who are true sons of the wilderness, wild men of the desert, who live by the chase. They are of diminutive stature and, like the dwarfs further north, are supposed to represent the real aborigines of Africa. The second are remnants of the Bechuana tribes. These have been driven into the desert by the pressure of stronger peoples behind. They are a people who cling to their original love for domestic animals, and watch their flocks of lean goats and meagre cattle with great care. On the edges of the desert are the Boers, emigrant Dutch farmers, who have fled from British rule in the Transvaal, as their fathers fled from Cape Colony and Natal. The coming of these always betokens trouble with the natives, and as gold miners and diamond diggers are penetrating into the Kalihari Desert, we may expect to see British authority close on their heels, and perhaps at no distant day fully established on the banks of the Zambesi, unless forsooth, some other nations should see fit to interfere.

In his trip to Loanda, Livingstone had been seeking an outlet to the Atlantic for the Makalolo people. On his return, they were dissatisfied with his route and preferred an outlet eastward toward the Indian Ocean. He therefore resolved to explore a path in this direction for them. With all his wants abundantly supplied by the friendly chief Sekelutu, he set out for this great journey and after a fortnight’s laborious travel reached the Zambesi at the mouth of the Chobe, in November 1855. Sailing down the Zambesi, Livingstone saw rising high into the air before him, at a distance of six miles, five pillars of vapor with dark smoky summits. The river was smooth and tranquil, and his boat glided placidly over water clear as crystal, past lovely islands, densely covered with tropical vegetation, and by high banks with red cliffs peering through their back-ground of palm trees. The traveller was not altogether unprepared for the marvels that lay ahead. Two hundred miles away he had heard of the fame of the great gorge Mozi-oa-Tunia—“the sounding smoke,” where the Zambesi mysteriously disappeared. As the falls were approached the pulse of the river seemed to quicken. It was still more than a mile wide, but it hurried over rapids, and chafed around points of rocks, and the most careful and skillful navigation was needed, lest the canoe should be dashed against a reef, or hurried helplessly down the chasm. The mystery in front became more inexplicable the nearer it was approached, for the great river seemed to disappear suddenly under ground, leaving its bed of hard black rock and well defined banks. By keeping the middle of the stream and cautiously paddling between the rocks, he reached a small island on the tip of the Victoria Falls—a spot where he planted some fruit trees, and for the only time on his travels carved his initials on a tree in remembrance of his visit.

It could not be seen what became of the vast body of water, until the explorer had crept up the dizzy edge of the chasm from below, and peeped over into the dark gulf. The river, more than a mile in width, precipitated itself sheer down into a rent extending at right angles across its bed. The walls of the precipice were as cleanly cut as if done by a knife, and no projecting crag broke the sheet of falling waters. Four rocks, or rather small islands, on the edge of the falls divide them into five separate cascades, and in front of each fall rises one of the tall pillars of smoke which are visible in time of flood at a distance of ten miles. Only at low water can the island on which Livingstone stood be approached, for when the river is high any attempt to reach it would result in a plunge into the abyss below. Against the black wall of the precipice opposite the falls two, three, and sometimes four rainbows, each forming three fourths of an arc, are painted on the ascending clouds of spray, which continually rush up from the depths below. A fine rain is constantly falling from these clouds, and the cliffs are covered with dense, dripping vegetation. But the great sight is the cataract itself. The rent in the rocks seems to be of comparatively recent formation, for their edges are worn back only about three feet.

Since Livingstone’s first visit, the falls have been more minutely examined by other explorers, so that we now know more accurately their dimensions and leading features. The breadth of the river at the falls has been ascertained to be over 1860 yards, and the depth of the precipice below the island 360 feet, or twice that of Niagara. At the bottom of the rent, all the waters that have come over the falls rush together in the centre of the gulf immediately beneath the island where, confined in a space of twenty or thirty yards, they form a fearful boiling whirlpool. From this a stream flows through the narrow channel at right angles to the course above and, turning a sharp corner, emerges into another chasm parallel with the first; then through another confined gap to a third chasm; and so backward and forward in wild confusion through forty miles of hills, until it breaks out into the level country of the lower Zambesi. The rush of the river through this inaccessible ravine is not so turbulent as might be imagined from its being pent in between walls less than forty yards apart. It pushes its way with a crushing, grinding motion, sweeping around the sharp corners with a swift resistless ease that indicates plainly a great depth of water. It was through this gap, caused by some unrecorded convulsion of the earth, that the great lake which must have at one time occupied South Central Africa, has been drained, and it forms undoubtedly the most wonderful natural feature in Africa, if not in the world.

At the great falls of the Zambesi, named the Victoria Falls in honor of the Queen of England, we are still a thousand miles from the sea, and hundreds of miles from the first traces of civilization, such as appear in the Portuguese possessions of eastern Africa.

Nature has been exceedingly lavish of her gifts in the Lower Zambesi Valley, giving it a fertile soil, a splendid system of river communication, and great stores of mineral and vegetable wealth, everything indeed, that is necessary to make a prosperous country, except a healthy climate, and industrious population. Here as upon the borders of the Nile, war and slave hunting have cursed the country with an apparently hopeless blight. Around the falls themselves are the scenes of some of the most noteworthy events in Central African warfare. The history of what are called the “Charka Wars,” has not yet and never will be written, nevertheless they extended over as great an area and shook as many thrones and dominions as those of Bonaparte himself. Charka was a chief of the now familiar Zulu tribe, and grandfather of that celebrated Cetywayo, whose ill-starred struggle with the English cost him his country and his liberty, and whom we read of the other day as a royal captive in the streets of London. It is said that he had heard of the feats of the first Napoleon, and was smitten with a desire to imitate his deeds. He formed his tribes into regiments, and these became the famous Zulu bands which immediately began to make war on all their neighbors. Conquered armies were incorporated into the Zulu army, and Charka went on making conquests in Natal, Caffaria, and Southern Africa, leaving the lands waste and empty. He spread the fame of the Zulus far into the possessions of the English and Portuguese.

Turning north, he occupied the country as far as the Zambesi. Crossing this stream, he moved into the regions between the Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika, then he carried his power to the westward as far as the Victoria Falls, where he was met by the Makalolos, with whom Livingstone has just made us familiar. In this people, under their chief, Sebituane, he found an enemy worthy of his steel. This tribe could not be conquered so long as their chief lived, but at his death their kingdom began to go to pieces under Sekelutu, though he was not less brave and intelligent than his father. It was over the smouldering embers of these wars that Livingstone had to pass in his descent of the Zambesi.

As he descended the Zambesi and approached the Indian Ocean, the stream gathered breadth and volume from great tributaries which flow into it on either side. The Kafue, hardly smaller than the Zambesi itself, comes into it from the north. Its course has still to be traced and its source has yet to be visited. Further down, the Loangwa, also a mighty river, enters it, and its banks, like those of the Kafue, are thickly populated, and rich in mineral treasures. The great Zambesi sweeps majestically on from one reach of rich tropical scenery to another. On its shores are seen the villages of native fisherman. Their huts and clearings for cotton and tobacco are girded about by dense jungles of bamboo, back of which rise forests of palm. Behind the forests the grand hills slope up steeply, diversified with clumps of timber and fringed with trees to their summits. Behind, extend undulated plains of long grass to the base of a second range of hills, the outer bank of the Zambesi Valley. Now and then, on either bank, a river valley opens, whose sides are thickly overgrown with jungle, above which rise the feathery tops of the palms and the stately stems of the tamarind; on their margins, or on the slopes above, herds of buffaloes, zebras, roebucks and wild pigs may be seen peacefully grazing together, with occasionally a troop of elephants or a solitary rhinoceros. Dr. Livingstone says, nowhere in all his travels has he seen such an abundance of animal life as in this portion of the Zambesi.

Yet it is possible even here to be alone. The high walls of grass on either side of the jungle path seem to the traveller to be the boundaries of the world. At times a strange stillness pervades the air, and no sound is heard from bird or beast or living thing. In the midst of this stillness, interruptions come like surprises and sometimes in not a very pleasant form. Once while Dr. Livingstone was walking in a reverie, he was startled by a female rhinoceros, followed by her calf, coming thundering down along the narrow path, and he had barely time to jump into a thicket in order to escape its charge. Occasionally a panic stricken herd of buffaloes will make a rush through the centre of the line of porters and donkeys, scattering them in wild confusion into the bush and tossing perhaps the nearest man and animal into the air. Neither the buffalo nor any other wild animal, however, will attack a human being except when driven to an extremity. The lion or leopard, when watching for their prey, will perhaps spring on the man who passes by. The buffalo, if it thinks it is being surrounded, will make a mad charge to escape, or the elephant, if wounded and brought to bay, or in defense of its young, will turn on its pursuers. A “rogue” elephant or buffalo, who has been turned out of the herd by his fellows for some fault or blemish, and has become cross and ill-natured by his solitary life, has been known to make an unprovoked attack on the first creature, man or beast, that presents itself to his sight. Thus, one savage “rogue” buffalo, furiously charged a native of Livingstone’s party, in the ascent of the Zambesi in 1860, and the man had barely time to escape into a tree when the huge head of the beast came crashing against the trunk with a shock fit to crack both skull and tree. Backing again, he came with another rush, and thus continued to beat the tree until seven shots were fired into him.

But as a rule, every untamed creature flees in terror on sighting red-handed man.

The only real obstacle to a descent of the Zambesi by steamer between Victoria Falls and the sea, is what are called Kebrabesa Rapids, and even the navigation of these is believed to be possible in time of flood, when the rocky bed is smoothed over by deep water. In the ordinary state of the river these rapids cannot be passed, although the inhuman experiment has been tried of fastening slaves to a canoe and flinging them into the river above the rapids. Dr. Kirk had here an accident which nearly cost him his life. The canoe in which he was seated was caught in one of the many whirlpools formed by the cataract, and driven broadside toward the vortex. Suddenly a great upward boiling of the water, here nearly one hundred feet deep, caught the frail craft, and dashed it against a ledge of rock, which the doctor was fortunately able to grasp, and thus save himself, though he lost all his scientific instruments. When Livingstone’s boat, which was immediately behind the doctor’s reached the spot, the yawning cavity of the whirlpool had momentarily closed up and he passed over it in safety. All along the line of the Lower Zambesi we find traces of Portuguese colonies, and also of the slave trade. Nowhere in all Africa has this traffic been more flourishing or ruinous in its effects, than in the colony of Mozambique. Here too, Livingstone was the champion who, almost single handed, marched out and gave battle to this many headed monster. Like Baker in the north, he inflicted upon it what we must hope is a fatal wound. As with the Egyptian authorities in the north, so the Portuguese authorities in the south, seem to have been actively concerned with the slave dealers. They not only connived at it, but profited by it. At one time, before slave trading became a business, European influence and Christian civilization under the auspices of the Jesuit missionaries extended far into the interior. At the confluence of the Loangwa and Zambesi is still to be seen a ruined church of one of the furthest outposts of the Jesuit fathers, its bell half buried in the rank weeds. The spot is the scene of desolation now. Livingstone bears generous testimony to the zeal, piety and self abnegation of these Jesuit priests. Their plans and labors hindered the slave-gatherers’ success, and it became necessary to get rid of them by calumny and often worse weapons. With the failure of their mission perished all true progress and discovery, and when Livingstone visited the Portuguese colonies on the Zambesi, he found complete ignorance of the existence of the Victoria Falls and only vague rumors of the existence of Lake Nyassa from which the ShirÉ, the last of the great affluents of the Zambesi, was supposed to flow.

Only ninety miles from the mouth of the great Zambesi, empties the ShirÉ from the north. It is a strong, deep river, and twenty years ago was unknown. It is navigable half way up, when it is broken by cataracts which descend 1200 feet in thirty-five miles. If this river is always bounded by sedgy banks, magnificent mountains are always in view on either side. No vegetation could be richer than that found in its valley, and its cotton is equal to our own Sea Island. The natives have both the skill and the inclination to work. It is not a healthy region along the river, for often the swamps are impenetrable to the base of the mountains. Animal life abounds in all tropical forms. The glory of the marshes is their hippopotami and elephants. Livingstone, in 1859, counted 800 of these animals in sight at once. But they have been greatly thinned out by hunters.

From the cataracts of the ShirÉ, Livingstone made several searches for lakes spoken of by the natives. He found Lake Shirwa amid magnificent mountain scenery. But the great feature of the valley is Lake Nyassa, the headwaters of the stream. It was discovered by Livingstone, September 16, 1859. It is 300 miles long and 60 wide. It resembles Albert Nyanza and Tanganyika, with which it was formerly supposed to be connected. Its shores are overhung by tall mountains, down which cascades plunge into the lake. But once on the tops of these mountains, there is no precipitous decline; only high table land stretching off in all directions. The inhabitants are the wildest kind of Zulus, who carry formidable weapons and paint their bodies in fiendish devices. They are the victims of the slave traders to an extent which would shock even the cruel Arab brigands of the White Nile.

Lake Nyassa is a “Lake of Storms.” Clouds are often seen approaching on its surface, which turn out to be composed of “Kungo” flies, which are gathered and eaten by the natives. The ladies all wear lip rings. Some of the women have fine Jewish or Assyrian features, and are quite handsome. The fine Alpine country north of Nyassa has not been explored, except slightly by Elton and Thompson, who found it full of elephants, and one of the grandest regions in the world for sublime mountain heights, deep and fertile valleys, and picturesque scenery. The mountains rise to a height of 12,000 to 14,000 feet, and are snow capped.

In the valley of the ShirÉ lie the bones of many an African explorer. Bishop Mackensie is buried in its swamps. Thornton found a grave at the foot of its cataracts. A few miles below its mouth, beneath a giant baobab tree repose the remains of Mrs. Livingstone, and near her is the resting place of Kirkpatrick, of the Zambesi Survey of 1826.

Yet the thirst for discovery in the Zambesi country has not abated. Nor will it till Nyassa, Tanganyika, and even Victoria and Albert Nyanza, are approachable, for there can be no doubt that the Zambesi is an easier natural inlet to the heart of Africa than either the Nile or Congo.

No account of the Zambesi can be perfect without mention of Pinto’s trip across the continent of Africa. He started from Benguela, on the Atlantic, in 1877, under the auspices of the Portuguese Government and in two years reached the eastern coast. He was a careful observer of the people, and his journey was through the countries of the Nano, Huambo, Sambo, Moma, BihÉ, Cubango, Ganguelas, Luchazes and others till he struck the Zambesi River. His observations of manners and customs are very valuable to the student and curious to the general reader. His work abounds in types of African character, and in descriptions of that art of dressing hair which Christian ladies are ever willing to copy but in which they cannot excel their dusky sisters. It takes sometimes two or three days to build up, for African ladies, their triumphs of barbers’ art, but they last for as many months. The Huambo people, male and female, enrich their hair with coral beads in a way that sets it off with much effect. The Sambo women, though not so pretty in the face, affect a louder style of head dress, and one which may pass as more artistic. But Pinto was prepared to wonder how human hair could ever be gotten into the various artistic shapes found on the heads of the Ganguela women. Their skill and patience in braiding seemed to be without limit. The BihÉ head dress was more flaunting but not a whit less becoming. Indeed there seemed in all the tribes to be a special adaptation of their art to form and features, but whether it was the result of study or accident, Pinto could not of course tell, being a man and not up in ladies’ toilets. The Quimbande girls wore their hair comparatively straight, but their heads were covered with cowries bespangled with coral beads. The Cabango women have a happy knack of thatching their heads with their hair in such a way as to give the impression that you are looking on an excellent job of Holland tiling, or on the over-lapping scales of a fish.

The Luchaze women evidently take their models from the grass covers of their huts. They make a closely woven mat of their hair which has the appearance of fitting the scalp like a cap. The Ambuella head dress is as neatly artistic as any modern lady could desire. Indeed there is nothing in civilized countries to approach it in its combination of beauty and adaption for the purposes intended.

Pinto’s journey across Africa was one of comparative leisure. He was well equipped, and was scarcely outside of a tribe that had not heard of Portuguese authority, which extends inland a great ways from both the east and west sides of the Continent. He did not however escape the ordinary hardships of African travel, even if he had time to observe and make record of many things which escaped the eye of other explorers.

The high carnival, or annual festival, of the Sova Mavanda was a revelation to him. He had seen state feasts and war dances, but in this the dancing was conducted with a regularity seldom witnessed on the stage, and the centre of attraction was the Sova chief, masked after the fashion of a harlequin, and seemingly as much a part of the performance as a clown in a circus ring.

The rivers of this part of Africa are a prominent obstacle in a traveller’s path. Even where they are bordered by wide, sedgy swamps, there is in the centre a deep channel, and nearly always an absence of canoes. But the natives are quick to find out fording places which are generally where the waters run swiftly over sand-bars. Pinto’s passage of the Cuchibi was affected at a fording where the bar was very narrow, the water on either side 10 to 12 feet deep, and the current running at the rate of 65 yards a minute. It was a difficult task, but was completed in less than two hours by his whole party, and without accident.

After striking the tributaries of the Zambesi, he followed them to their junction with the main stream in the very heart of Africa. Then he descended the Zambesi in canoes to the mouth of the Cuango, or Chobe, in the country of the Makalolos. He passed by the Gonye Falls, and down through the Lusso Rapids, where safety depends entirely on the skill of the native canoemen. After passing these rapids, which occupy miles of the river’s length, he came into the magnificent Barotze region where the river waters a finer plain than the Nile in any of its parts. But Livingstone has already made us familiar with the Zambesi throughout all these parts. Yet it is due to Pinto to say he made, with the instruments at his command, more careful observations of the great Victoria Falls (Mozi-oa-tunia) than any previous explorer, especially from below. He could not get a height of over 246 feet, owing to the difficulty of seeing to the bottom of the gorge, and found the verge broken into three sections, one of a width of 1312 feet, another of 132 feet, and the remainder a saw-like edge over which the waters poured smoothly only when the stream was full.

“These falls,” says Pinto, “can be neither properly depicted nor described. The pencil and the pen are alike at fault, and in fact, save at their western extremity, the whole are enveloped in a cloud of vapor which, perhaps fortunately, hides half the awfulness of the scene. It is not possible to survey this wonder of nature without a feeling of terror and of sadness creeping over the mind. Up at the Gonye Falls everything is smiling and beautiful, here at Mozi-oa-tunia everything is frowning, and awful.”

Pinto’s journey was now southward across the great Kalihari Desert, and thence to the eastern coast. We must go with him to the centre of this desert, for he unravels a secret there in the shape of “The Great Salt Pan.”

We remember Livingstone’s discovery of Lake Ngami, into which and out of which pours the Cubango river, to be afterwards lost in the central Salt Pan of the desert. Pinto discovered that this “Salt Pan” received, in the rainy season, many other large tributaries, and then became an immense lake, or rather system of pans or lakes, ten to fifteen feet deep and from 50 to 150 miles long. This vast system, he says, communicates with Lake Ngami by means of the Cubango, or Zonga River, on nearly the same level. If Ngami rises by means of its inflow, the current is down the Cubango toward the “Salt Pans.” If however the “Pans” overflow, by means of their other tributaries, the current is up the Cubango toward Lake Ngami. So that among the other natural wonders of Africa we have not only a system of great rivers pouring themselves into an inland sea with no outlet except the clouds, but also a great river actually flowing two ways for a distance of over a hundred miles, as the one or the other lake on its course happens to be fullest.

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