ART. IV.-SOUTH AFRICAN EXPLORATIONS.

Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, including a Sketch of Sixteen Years' Residence in the Interior of Africa, and a Journey from the Cape of Good Hope to Loando on the West Coast; thence across the Continent, down the River Zambesi to the Eastern Ocean. By DAVID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D., D.C.L., etc. 8vo., pp. 730. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1858. The Lake Regions of Central Africa, a Picture of Explorations. By RICHARD F. BURTON, Capt. H.M.I.A., etc. 8vo., pp. 572. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1860. Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa; with Accounts of the Manners and Customs of the People, and of the Gorilla, the Crocodile, Leopard, Elephant, Hippopotamus, and other Animals. By PAUL DU CHAILLU, M.A.E.S., etc. 8vo., pp. 531. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1861.

IN a former number we presented to our readers, in a review of Dr. Barth's "Northern and Central Africa," some account of the great interior region of Africa lying to the south of the Desert of Sahara, including the two scarcely separated basins of the Niger and the Tsad. To the east of this region lies the elevated range in which are the head waters of the Nile; and to the south, not far from the equator, is the water-shed between this valley and that of the southern interior. Some geographers believe that a mountain range extends nearly across the continent, along the line of the equator, which others earnestly deny; it is quite certain however that there is a water-parting along that line, making a boundary between the northern and southern portions of the interior of Africa, virtually coincident with the equator. Nearly along the same line are the mutual frontiers of the two great social and religious classes of interior Africa. In the northern portion the people have been largely affected by the medieval civilization of the Arabs and Saracens, by which they were raised from the low level of pagan barbarism to a kind of barbaric civilization. With this also came the faith of Islam, which for a thousand years has been naturalized in that region, and though now somewhat in decay, especially among the older races, it never completely extirpated the primitive paganism;

it is still the most powerful branch of that whole system. South [interior] Africa, on the other hand, has escaped all direct influence from the world beyond, and its people are simply pagans, worshiping fetiches and practicing the grossest observances of heathenism, and apparently without any notions of virtue and morality.

The southern interior extends from the equator to the borders of the basin of the Gwàrip or Orange river, in latitude 26° or 27° S. On the west it is bounded by a range of not very high hills, some two hundred miles from the coast, through which no river penetrates; and on the east by the basaltic wall running parallel to the coast, at a distance of two or three hundred miles, through which the Zambezi and some smaller rivers find their way to the sea. In area it is rather less extensive than the basin of the Niger and Tsad, being about 1,800 miles in length north and south, and its average breadth scarcely half that extent. This is sometimes called the Lake Region of Africa, as it has Lake Ngami in the southwest, Lake Nyassa in the east, Lake Tanganyika in the north, and Lake Nyanza in the far north-east, if indeed this last does not belong to another physical region. None of these lakes have any known effluent, though in the wet seasons they receive very considerable streams; but a large portion of the region is drained by the Zambezi and its branches, which rises on the west side of the basin and flows south-eastwardly, receiving large tributaries, and passing the basaltic barrier at the Victoria Falls reaches the sea.

Turning our attention first to the southern extremity of the continent, we find it, as far as the Orange river, (lat. 28° S.,) occupied by Europeans and their descendants, and a considerable region further north thoroughly explored. This whole country was originally occupied by the Hottentots, the Kafirs, the Bosjemens, (Bushmen,) and the Bechuanas, large and once powerful negroid races, having many points in common with the genuine negro, but in others clearly distinguished from that race. They are partially civilized nomads, proverbially filthy and improvident, and less warlike than more energetic savages usually are. To the north of the Orange river, toward the west, is the Desert of Kalahari, which for a long time limited explorations from the south as effectually as Sahara from the

north; but more recently it has been found to be not a desert but a dry prairie, neither barren nor uninhabited, though destitute of running water. To the west and north-west of this is a belt of land with Walfish Bay on the coast, the country of the Damaras, among whom English and German missionaries, the former chiefly Wesleyans, have stations, and are laboring not without good results. Toward the eastern coast is a broad and rather irregular region, inclining eastward and drained into the Indian Ocean by the rivers Limpopo, Maputi, and Unyinzati, and traversed from north-east to south-west by the Drakenberg Mountains, with Port Natal and Dolgoa Bay on the coast. It was in the north of this region, chiefly along the Limpopo river, that Gordon Cummings performed his more than Nimrodic feats of huntsmanship, "bagging" elephants and giraffes by the hundred, and small game, as he accounted ostriches, elands, and lions, in uncounted masses. Northward from the Kalahari desert is Lake Ngama, for a long time an object of great interest among South African explorers. It was first discovered (by Europeans) by Messrs. Livingstone, Murray, and Oswell in 1849, and visited a second time by Livingstone the next year. A few years later the region lying from Walfish Bay to this lake, and thence across the desert to the Orange river and the Cape Colony, was the scene of the somewhat celebrated "Wanderings," first of Messrs. Galt and Anderson, and afterward of the latter alone, of which he has given an interesting account in his "Journey to Lake Ngama."

The work of exploration was well started when, in 1851, Dr. Livingstone, accompanied by Mr. Oswell, entered upon a wider field by striking directly northward from the colony, and penetrating far toward the equator, into parts hitherto unknown. Leaving Lake Ngama to his left he crossed the Zouga, the effluent of that lake, by which in the rainy season it discharges its surplus waters in the vast marshes of Kumaihahu, and thence proceeding up the Chobe, a principal affluent of the former river, flowing from the north, till at about the fifteenth degree of south latitude, in the country of the Makololo, he discovered the river Lambeye, or Leembye, or as it is called nearer the coast, Zambezi. This discovery was of the highest interest. It was then near the end of the dry season,

and yet the river was more than three hundred yards wide, and deep and flowing. A perennially navigable river in the heart of Southern Africa was now a demonstrated fact, draining a country of undoubted fertility, with healthy localities, and a peaceful, active, and slightly civilized people. Dr. Livingstone at once appreciated the importance of his discovery, and began to devise measures for its further prosecution, and for ultimately opening its trade to the world, and for speedily subjecting it to systematic Christianizing influences. He therefore returned to the Cape, and sending his family to England, where he promised, Providence permitting, to join them at the end of two years, he began to prepare for a great journey into the interior. With a very scanty outfit, and unattended by any European associate, he returned to the country of the Makololo and there made arrangements for further proceedings. As the river flowed from the north-west, he hoped, by ascending it as far as navigable for canoes, to approach pretty nearly to the head waters of the Coanza, which, according to a Portuguese map upon which he relied and was deceived by it, had its rise far in the interior, and at a point from near which the former river seemed to proceed. By this route he hoped to make a not very difficult passage to Loando on the Atlantic, and so to open an outlet from the valley of the Leembye to the ocean, and to the commerce and civilization of Europe.

Having pretty nearly perfected his arrangements, on the 11th of November, 1853, Dr. Livingstone set out from Linyanti on the Chobe, and passed over to Shesheke on the "great river," up which, through the aid of Sekeletu, king of the Makalolo, with a fleet of thirty canoes and a hundred and sixty men, he began his perilous journey. His route lay through a most beautiful and picturesque country, that of the Barotsi, which he describes with the evidently glowing enthusiasm which animated him.

After passing north-westerly over about four degrees of latitude and two of longitude, the river was given up, and pack oxen took the place of the canoes. A little further the natural water-shed between the north and south rivers was passed, and as the hoped for Coanza did not appear as the map promised, and when found did not run in the desired direction, that mode of conveyance was continued to the end of the journey at Loan

da, and resumed in like manner on the return route. To the northwest of the country of the Makololo is that of the Balonda, or people of Londa, a much more savage and intractable race than the Makololo, whose territories border to the west on those of the Portuguese. They are true They are true negroes and gross idolators, addicted to human sacrifices and other cruel rites of paganism. They are also much addicted to the slave-trade, which among them, as everywhere, is the fruitful source of every species of cruelty. On the fourth of April, 1854, Dr. Livingstone and his Makololo entered the Portuguese territory, and on the last day of May arrived at Loando, the decaying capital of the decaying Portuguese power in Western Africa.

After a three months' residence at the Portuguese African capital, during which time he suffered most terrible sickness, attended with protracted delirium, and was treated with very great kindness by both the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, he and his companions, the faithful Makololo, set out on their return journey, which lasted through a full year, and was attended with peculiar hardships. The generous reception with which they met from Sekeletu and his people was at least some little compensation for their toils and privations; but to Dr. Livingstone himself the results of the journey could not fail to be in a high degree satisfactory. He had traversed more than one thousand miles of hitherto unexplored African territory, all of which, instead of arid and uninhabitable deserts, had proved to be a region of wonderful fertility and of untold capabilities, and already occupied by a population somewhat advanced in material civilization. A large contribution had also been made by him to the science of physical geography from a region the most unknown in the world.

Though highly successful as a journey of exploration, the trip to Loanda proved the unsuitableness of that route as an outlet to the sea from the great and fertile valley of the Leembye; another was therefore to be looked for. After recruiting himself, Dr. Livingstone therefore turned his thoughts toward the eastern ocean, in the hope that the noble river which seemed tending thitherward might prove to be identical with some of those known along the coast, and so open a passage to the Indian Ocean. In his design to explore the lower country he was heartily seconded and generously assisted by Sekeletu,