Scotland/Scots > Last years of Livingstone

THE LAST TEARS OF LIVINGSTONE.
19
live altitudes of the two rivers. Meanwhile, the other
English geographers look upon Livingstone’s theory as
untenable. At the meeting of the Geographical Society
addressed by Stanley, the principal objectors were Col.
Grant and Consul Petherick. The former urged that, at
that time, there were still 1000 miles unexplored by
Livingstone, and that he had adopted his conclusions too
hastily; that in this distance there are Speke’s Mountains
of the Moon, and the great bend to the west of the Nile
at seven degrees, eight minutes, north latitude. There are
also 300 miles of longitude between the two positions;
besides which Schweinfurth, the botanist,visited the source
of the Gazal, and found it north of the equator and nob
as Livingstone supposes it, eleven degrees south of it,
Consul Petherick, the first Englishman who had navigated
the Bahr-il-Gazal, also thought the explorer mistaken.
He believed that there must be a water-shed, running
east and west separate from that of the Gazal; and that
the waters that Livingstone was pursuing northward
must find some other outlet—where he did not profess to
say. To these objections Mr. Stanley replied at length,
dwelling particularly on the fact that though the objectors
denied that this mighty water-system was a feeder of the
Nile, they could not tell what became of it. “ If the Nile
has not been discovered,” said he, “ what, let me ask,
has been discovered ? What is that great and mighty
river, the Lualaba ? Where does it go to ? Does it go
into a lake, as Sir Henry Rawlinson supposes ? What !
the Lualaba flow into a lake!—into a marsh !—into a