Scotland/Scots > Last years of Livingstone

THE LAST YEARS OF LIVINGSTONE.
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■would like to see every other ruling blockhead slain. But
all were kind to strangers j and, though terrible fellows
among themselves, with their large spears and huge
wooden shields, they were never known to injure foreigners,
till slavers tried the effects of gunshot upon them and
captured their women and children.
As I could get no geographical information from them
I had to feel my way, and grope in the interminable forests
and prairies, and three times took the wrong direction
going northerly, not knowing that the great river makes
immense sweeps to the west and south-west. It seemed
as if I were running my head against a stone wall. It
might after all turn out to be the Congo; and who would
risk being eaten and converted into black man for it ? I
had serious doubts, but stuck to it like a Briton; and at
last found that the mighty river left its westing and flowed
right away to the north. The two great western drains,
the Lufira and Lomame, running north-east before joining
the central or main stream—Webb’s Lualaba—told that
the western side of the great valley was high, like the
eastern ; and as this main is- reported to go into large
reedy lakes, it can scarcely be aught else but the western
arm of the Nile. But, besides all this—in which it is quite
possible I may be mistaken—we have two fountains on
probably the seventh hundred mile of the watershed,
giving rise to two rivers—the Liambai, or Upper Zambezi,
and the Kafue, which flow into Inner Ethiopia; and two
fountains are reported to rise in the same quarter, forming
Bufira and Lomame, which flow, as we have seen to the