  Words: The names Loanda and Zambesi are given in most modern texts as Luanda and Zambezi. In three cases, the spelling used in the original was distracting enough that it has been changed: musquito > mosquito, hachshish > hashish, and nomade > nomad. In three other cases, two variant spellings of a word were used in the text. These were made uniform in accordance with the modern standard. They were: water-buck > waterbuck, Mosambique > Mozambique, and imbody > embody. Other notes on terms: Livingstone often refers to ground-nuts—this is the British term for a peanut. Mutokwane ('Cannabis sativa') must be some variety of marijuana. Symbols: As the symbols for the British Pound (a crossed L), Degrees (small circle, in the upper half of the line of text), and fractions cannot be represented in ASCII, the following standards have been used: Pounds: written out, and capitalized, AFTER the number of pounds, rather than before it. Hence "L20" becomes 20 Pounds. (where L represents the Pound symbol.) Degrees, Minutes, Seconds: "Degrees", when used alone, is either spelled out or abbreviated "Deg."—but is always capitalized where it replaces the symbol. When a location is given with a combination of degrees and minutes, or degrees, minutes, and seconds, [d] is used to denote the symbol for degrees, ['] represents minutes, and ["] represents seconds—these latter two are the common symbols, or at least as similar as ASCII can represent. For an example, lat. 9d 37' 30" S. would be latitude 9 degrees 37 minutes 30 seconds south. All temperatures given are in Fahrenheit. Fractions: Where whole numbers and fractions are combined, the whole number is separated from the fraction with a dash. For example, in Chapter 21: 16 ounces and 2-19/20 drams would translate as 16 ounces and two-and-nineteen-twentieths drams. Incidentally, Livingstone uses British measurements, which sometimes differ from the American. Corrected Errors: Errors in the original text were corrected when the context presented compelling evidence that there was in fact an error. When possible, proper names were checked against the index for extra surety. Chapter 2, "All around Scroti the country is perfectly flat" changed to "All around Serotli". Chapter 2, "one species of plants" changed to "one species of plant". Chapter 3, "a fire specimen of arboreal beauty" changed to "a fine specimen". Chapter 12, "till a stranger, happening to come to visit Santaru" changed to "to visit Santuru". Chapter 14, "the orders of Sekeletu as as to our companions" changed to "the orders of Sekeletu as to our companions". Chapter 14, "while Mashuana plants the poles" changed to "while Mashauana". Chapter 15, "In other cases I have known them turn back" changed to "In other cases I have known them to turn back". Chapter 20, p. 438, "to make a canal from Calumbo to Loando" changed to "from Calumbo to Loanda". (Loando, while correct, is otherwise only given in the full Portuguese name.) Chapter 26, "we saw the Batoko" changed to "we saw the Batoka". Chapter 28, "with whom Lekwebu had lived" changed to "with whom Sekwebu". Accented Characters in Words: To maintain an easily searchable text, accented or special characters have been discarded. The following is a pretty complete list of the words in the text which were originally accented. They appear more or less in the order in which they first appear |
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