probably took place when the ancient inland seas were let off by similar fissures nearer the ocean.'

There is reason to believe that nearly the whole district now drained by the Zambesi and its tributaries was once a vast freshwater lake, of which many traces exist over a tract extending from 17° to 21° south latitude. Nearly the whole of this vast area is covered with a bed of tufa more or less soft where it has been exposed to atmospheric influences. The waters of this great inland sea have escaped by means of cracks produced in its surrounding boundaries, at some remote period, by subterranean agency. Thus the fissure of Victoria Falls has probably contributed to drain an enormous valley, leaving only the deepest portion of the original sea which now constitutes the Nyassa Lake. Most of the African lakes are indeed comparatively shallow, being the residua of much larger bodies of water. The African climate is therefore supposed, with reason, to have been once much moister than it is at present, and the great equatorial lake regions are gradually being desiccated by a process of drainage which has been in operation for ages. That the Nyassa Lake has shrunk considerably is proved by the existence of raised beaches on its borders and by the deep clay strata through which several of its affluents run. The character of the rocks in the central part of the continent is generally that of a coarse grey sandstone, lying horizontally, or only very slightly inclined. Within this extensive sandstone deposit is a coal-field of vast but unknown extent, the materials of which were derived from the tropical plants which grew on the low shores of the great inland sea, the basin of which must have undergone several oscillations. Africa is the grand type of a region which has, on the whole, preserved its ancient terrestrial conditions during a period of indefinite duration unaffected by any considerable changes except those which are dependent on atmospheric and meteoric influences.* By far the largest portion of the vast interior has been unaffected by the great cataclysms to which the other continents have been exposed. In no part of it, we believe, has limestone with marine exuviæ been discovered; nor has either chalk or flint been met with. Its surface is free from coarse superficial drift. It exhibits no traces of volcanoes; nor has its surface been much disturbed by internal forces, although the primitive rocks have been protruded in one or two places in isolated masses, as on the shores of the Albert Nyanza and the great mountain groups of Kenia and Kilimandjaro.

Address of the President of the Royal Geographical Society, May, 1864.

In

In the latest explorations of Dr. Livingstone and his companions a discovery is alleged to have been made which has some bearing in the vexed question of the antiquity of man. Dr. Kirk, while botanizing the banks of one of the tributaries of the Zambesi, came upon a bed of gravel in which fossilized bones of nearly all the species of animals now existing in the country, such as hippopotami, wild hogs, buffaloes, antelopes, turtles, crocodiles, and hyenas, were associated with pottery of the same construction, and with the same ornamental designs as that now in use by the existing inhabitants. Utensils, the undoubted workmanship of man, were thus found intermixed with fossil remains unquestionably of the tertiary or even an older geological period. If the evidence of this discovery should be found to be satisfactory, and taking into consideration the time required for the conversion of bones into fossils, we must come to the inevitable conclusion that the civilisation, such as it is, of the black man in Africa has been stationary for an immense period, and that his intellect must consequently be of an inferior order to that of the European or the Asiatic type. The African negro has certainly hitherto shown no capacity for political construction. His governments are pure despotisms, and society has scarcely anywhere advanced its simplest principles and most barbaric forms. He has neither tamed the elephant, nor domesticated the horse, nor discovered the use of the plough, nor learned to spread the sail. He has not acquired even the elements of public economy, and he is as ignorant of the rudiments of science as a child. Although he has acquired a rude skill in the metals, he has not discovered that coal is inflammable; and although his country teems with all the appliances of civilisation, his political and social condition remains one of the enigmas of the world. Notwithstanding the low intellectual development of the black man of Africa, the recent explorations have ascertained the existence of a very large population in the interior neither deficient in the virtue of industry nor incapable of social improvement, and that among their chiefs are men of the most kindly manners, humane dispositions, and generous aspirations, anxious for a higher civilisation than has yet dawned upon their benighted country, or than it can probably ever attain without the guidance of a superior race.

The Rovuma, a river some leagues to the north of the Zambesi, it was thought might afford an easier access to the district of the Nyassa than the Zambesi and the Shire, and conduct to a healthier region, and one more promising for missionary labour. Dr. Livingstone, accompanied by Bishop Mackenzie, accordingly entered the Rovuma in 1861, with the Pioneer,' which, drawing nearly five feet of water, proved too deep for its continued navi

c 2

gation.

gation. The river was ascended for five days, when the water began to shallow, the navigation became intricate and unsafe, and the expedition was obliged to return to avoid the risk of being cut off from communication with the sea. The valley of the Rovuma seems to resemble that of the Zambesi, but is on a smaller scale. The result of the exploration was that the river was found to be unfit for navigation during four months in the year, but that like the Zambesi it might be available for commerce for the other eight months. This river possesses little interest in its lower course, where it is a mile wide and from five to six fathoms in depth. Higher up, the scenery is described by Bishop Mackenzie as extremely beautiful, consisting of finely-wooded hills two or three hundred feet in height within a short distance of the river. The natives asserted that the Rovuma issued from Lake Nyassa, but none had ascended the stream high enough to prove it. The hopes founded on the appearance of the mouth of the Rovuma, which is without a bar, were thus disappointed.

And after four years of laborious exploration, attended with many unforeseen difficulties, the expedition was withdrawn by the Government in 1862, orders having been transmitted to Dr. Livingstone to return to England. The disappointment experienced in the capabilities both of the Zambesi and the Rovuma for commerce, the prevalence of the slave-trade, the lamentable failure of the Universities' Mission, and the generally unsettled and dangerous state of the country, all contributed to influence the decision of the Government. The expedition, however, has made known a district of boundless capabilities, together with the causes which operate to shut it out from intercourse with the civilised world. We should be glad to avoid adverting to a subject which seriously compromises the character of a Christian Power. Dr. Livingstone accuses the Portuguese Government of a gross neglect of its duty in omitting to put in force the laws which have been enacted for the suppression of the slave-trade in its African possessions, if not of direct complicity with its colonial officers in the iniquitous traffic. It is carried on, he says, in connexion with the trade in ivory, and from fifteen to twenty canoes have been seen on the Upper Zambesi freighted with slaves for the Portuguese settlements. Dr. Livingstone asserts that he was not only the first to see slavery in its origin in this part of Africa, but to trace it through all its revolting phases. He had not only seen tribe arrayed against tribe for the capture of slaves, but he had been in places where family was arrayed against family and every house was protected by a stockade. Tribes the highest in intelligence were found morally the most degraded,

the

the men freely selling their own wives and grown-up daughters. On the shores of Lake Nyassa the slave-merchants were at the time of his visit paying two yards of calico, worth one shilling, for a boy, and four yards for a good-looking girl. Barbarism must be the inevitable condition of a land where such practices exist. If the statements which Dr. Livingstone has made in the face of the world are incapable, as we fear they are, of being denied, a heavy responsibility rests upon the Portuguese Government if it should fail to interpose in the most summary manner, call its officers to a strict account, and put an end for ever in Eastern Africa to a system which is a disgrace to the Portuguese name. These decayed settlements on the remote shores of the Indian Ocean—the melancholy relics of a dominion which was once exercised for nobler purposes than the traffic in human flesh and blood-seem now to be kept up only for the maintenance of a few military pensioners. The terrible lesson which the last few years have taught the world has not failed to impress the most impassive of Powers. Spain, the most inveterate of European offenders, has taken the lesson to heart, and resolved to abandon for ever the abominable traffic in man; and Portugal is now alone branded with the stigma of this atrocious crime. We entertain no doubt, that the development of legitimate trade with the regions in which its African settlements are situated, would prove of far greater benefit in a material sense than any that can possibly result to it from the slave-trade. The capacity of the eastern coast of Africa for a large and lucrative trade is unquestionable, and it has, notwithstanding many discouragements, made considerable progress within the last thirty years. In 1834 the island of Zanzibar possessed little or no trade; in 1860 the exports of ivory, gum copal, and cloves, had risen to the value of 239,500l., and the total exports and imports amounted to 1,000,5777., employing 25,340 tons of shipping, and this under the rule of a petty Arabian Prince. Although it may be long before the natives can be induced to cultivate extensively cotton and sugar for exportation, there are many valuable natural products the preparation of which for the European market requires but little industry and no skill. The hard woods which grow on the banks of the Zambesi and the Shire are especially valuable; they may be obtained in any quantity at the mere cost of cutting, and they can be transported to the coast at all seasons without difficulty. The lignum vitæ attains a larger size on the banks of the Zambesi than anywhere else. The African ebony, although not botanically the same as the ebony of commerce, also attains immense proportions, and is of a deeper black. It abounds on the Rovuma, within eight miles of the sea,

as

as does likewise the fustic, from which is extracted a strong yellow dye.

The additions which have been made to our geographical knowledge from the two expeditions of Dr. Livingstone are important and interesting. In his latest he entered and partially explored a region the hydrography of which requires to be thoroughly known before the great mystery of the source of the Nile can be considered as solved, for it is in the district of the equatorial lakes that the head-springs of the mighty river undoubtedly exist, and the connexion of all of these great reservoirs with each other is rendered so probable by Mr. Baker's recent discovery of the magnificent lake (the Little Luta Nzigè of Speke), which he has appropriately named the Albert Nyanza, that a fresh interest has been imparted to the subject, for if the Albert Nyanza should prove to be connected with the great Tanganyika, the source of the Nile is not the Victoria Nyanza or one of its affluents, but must be sought for in a region many degrees to the south of that lake, or of any of its tributary streams. That such a connexion does exist between the Albert Nyanza and the Tanganyika there is the strongest reason to believe, for a party of Arab traders informed Captain Speke while making a voyage on the Tanganyika, that the river which flows through Egypt issues from that lake; and a respectable Arab merchant, who could have no conceivable motive for misrepresentation, accompanied a statement to the same effect made to Captain Burton with such circumstantial details as tend strongly to establish its probability. A large river, he said, called the Marunga, enters the lake at its southern extremity, but on a visit to its northern end he saw a river which certainly flowed out of it, for he approached so near its termination that he distinctly saw and felt the influence of an outward current. This statement derives considerable support from information received by Dr. Livingstone from Arabs well acquainted with the Tanganyika, and who told him that a river flowed out of its northern end, and they drew on the sand the Nyassa discharging its waters to the south, but the Tanganyika to the north. He was also told, in the course of his first missionary travels, by an Arab who declared that he knew the Tanganyika well, that it was connected with another lake still further north called Garague (Kazague), and King Kamrasi and the natives inhabiting its banks assured Mr. Baker that the Albert Nyanza was known to extend far to the west of Karagwè. We are thus in possession of evidence from four distinct and independent

*

* Missionary Travels,' p. 476.

sources