Part 18

In conclusion, we have the pleasure of adding that although the Geographical Society could not exactly award with propriety their Royal gold medal to discoveries in their science; made in a secondary point of view, and but indifferently described, when it should be reserved for a Bruce or a Humboldt,--yet they have with great satisfaction and alacrity awarded the value of the medal in money; and it is devoutly to be hoped that Mr L. may be spared to continue the exploration which he has thus auspiciously begun. P. S.

_Letter from the Rev. David Livingston, addressed to the Rev. Arthur Tidman, Foreign Secretary, London Missionary Society._

_Banks of the River Zonga, 3rd September 1849._

DEAR SIR,--I left my station, Kolobeng (situated 25° South lat., 26 East long.), on the 1st of June last, in order to carry into effect the intention, of which I had previously informed you, viz. to open a new field in the North, by penetrating the great obstacle to our progress, called the Desert, which, stretching away on our West, North-West, and North, has hitherto presented an insurmountable barrier to Europeans.

A large party of Griquas, in about thirty waggons, made many and persevering efforts at two different points last year; but, though inured to the climate, and stimulated by the prospect of much gain from the ivory they expected to procure, want of water compelled them to retreat.

Two gentlemen, to whom I had communicated my intention of proceeding to the oft-reported lake beyond the desert, came from England for the express purpose of being present at the discovery, and to their liberal and zealous co-operation we are especially indebted for the success with which that and other objects have been accomplished. While waiting for their arrival, seven men came to me from the Batavana, a tribe living on the banks of the lake, with an earnest request from their chief for a visit. But the path by which they had come to Kolobeng was impracticable for waggons; so, declining their guidance I selected the more circuitous route, by which the Bermangueato usually pass, and, having Bakwains for guides, their self-interest in our success was secured by my promising to carry any ivory they might procure for their chiefs in my waggon; and right faithfully they performed their task.

When Sekhomi, the Bermangueato chief, became aware of our intentions to pass into the regions beyond him, with true native inhumanity he sent men before us to drive away all the bushmen and Bakalihari from our route, in order that, being deprived of their assistance in the search for water, we might, like the Griquas above mentioned, be compelled to return. This measure deprived me of the opportunity of holding the intercourse with these poor outcasts I might otherwise have enjoyed. But through the good providence of God, after travelling about 300 miles from Kolobeng, we struck on a magnificent river on the 4th of July, and without further difficulty, in so far as water was concerned, by winding along its banks nearly 300 miles more, we reached the Batavana, on the lake Ngami, by the beginning of August.

Previous to leaving this beautiful river on my return home, and commencing our route across the desert, I feel anxious to furnish you with the impressions produced on my mind by it and its inhabitants, the Bakoba or Bayeiye. They are a totally distinct race from the Bechuanas. They call themselves Bayeiye (or men), while the term Bakoba (the name has somewhat of the meaning of "slaves,") is applied to them by the Bechuanas. Their complexion is darker than that of the Bechuanas; and, of 300 words I collected of their language, only 21 bear any resemblance to Sitchuana. They paddle along the rivers and lake in canoes hollowed out of the trunks of single trees; take fish in nets made of a weed which abounds on the banks; and kill hippopotami with harpoons attached to ropes. We greatly admired the frank, manly bearing of these inland sailors. Many of them spoke Sitchuana fluently, and, while the waggon went along the bank, I greatly enjoyed following the windings of the river in one of their primitive craft, and visiting their little villages among the reed. The banks are beautiful beyond any we had ever seen, except perhaps some parts of the Clyde. They are covered, in general, with gigantic trees, some of them bearing fruit, and quite new. Two of the Baobab variety measured 70 to 76 feet in circumference. The higher we ascended the river, the broader it became, until we often saw more than 100 yards of clear deep water between the broad belt of reed which grows in the shallower parts. The water was clear as crystal, and as we approached the point of junction with other large rivers _reported to exist_ in the North, it was quite soft and cold. The fact that the Zonga is connected with large rivers coming from the north awakens emotions in my mind, which make the discovery of the lake dwindle out of sight. It opens the prospect of a highway, capable of being quickly traversed by boats, to a large section of well-peopled territory.

One remarkable feature in this river is its periodical rise and fall. It has risen nearly three feet in height since our arrival, and this is the dry season. That the rise is not caused by rains is evident from the water being so pure. Its purity and softness increased as we ascended towards its junction with the Tamunakle, from which, although connected with the lake, it derives the present increased supply. The sharpness of the air caused an amazing keenness of appetite, at an elevation of little more than 2000 feet above the level of the sea (water boiled at 207½° thermometer), and the reports of the Bayeiye, that the waters came from a mountainous region, suggested the conclusion that the increase of the water, at the beginning and middle of the dry season, must be derived from melting snow.

All the rivers reported, to the north of this, have Bayeiye upon them, and there are other tribes on their banks. To one of these, after visiting the Batavana, and taking a peep at the broad part of the lake, we directed our course; but the Batavana chief managed to obstruct us, by keeping all the Bayeiye near the ford on the opposite bank of the Zonga. African chiefs invariably dislike to see strangers passing _them to tribes beyond_. Sebitoane,--the chief who in former years saved the life of Sechele our chief,--lives about ten days north-east of the Batavana. The latter sent a present as a token of gratitude. This would have been a good introduction; the knowledge of the language, however, is the _best_ we can have. I endeavoured to construct a raft, at a part which was only fifty or sixty yards wide, but the wood, though sun-dried, was so heavy it sunk immediately; another kind would not bear my weight, although a considerable portion of my person was under water. I could easily have swam across, and fain would have done it; but, landing without clothes, and then demanding of the Bakoba the loan of a boat, would scarcely be the thing for a messenger of peace, even though no alligator met me in the passage. These and other thoughts were revolving in my mind as I stood in the water,--for most sorely do I dislike to be beaten,--when my kind and generous friend Mr Oswell, with whom _alone_ the visit to Sebitoane was to be made, offered to bring up a boat at his own expense from the Cape, which, after visiting the chief, and coming round the north end of the lake, will become missionary property. To him and our other companion Mr Murray, I feel greatly indebted,--_for the chief expense of the journey has been borne by them_. _They_ could not have reached this point without my assistance; but, for the aid they have rendered in opening up this field, I feel greatly indebted; and, should any public notice be taken of this journey, I shall feel obliged to the directors if they express my thankfulness.

The Bayeiye or Bakoba listened to the statements made from the Divine Word with great attention, and, if I am not mistaken, seemed to understand the message of mercy delivered better than any people to whom I have preached for the _first_ time. They have invariably a great many charms in the villages; stated the name of God in their language (without the least hesitation) to be "Oreeja;" mentioned the name of the first man and woman, and some traditionary statements respecting the flood. I shall not, however, take these for certain, till I have more knowledge of their language. They are found dwelling among the reed all round the lake, and on the banks of all the rivers to the north.

With the periodical flow of the rivers great shoals of fish descend. The people could give no reason for the rise of the water, further than that a chief, who lives in a part of the country in the north, called Mazzekiva, kills a man annually and throws his body into the stream, after which the water begins to flow.

The sketch which I enclose is intended to convey an idea of the river Zonga and the lake Ngami. The name of the latter is pronounced as if written with the Spanish ñ, the _g_ being inserted to shew that the ringing sound is required. The meaning is "Great Water." The latitude, taken by a Sextant on which I can fully depend, was 20° 20´ south, at the north-east extremity, where it is joined by the Zonga; longitude about 24° east. _We do not, however, know it with certainty._ We left our waggon near the Batavana town, and rode on horseback about six miles beyond it to the broad part. It gradually widens out into a Firth about 15 miles across, as you go south from the town, and in the south-south-west presents a large horizon of water. _It is reported_ to be about 70 miles in length, bends round to the north-west, and there receives another river similar to the Zonga. The Zonga runs to the north-east. The thorns were so thickly planted near the upper part of this river, that we left all our waggons standing about 180 miles from the lake, except that of Mr Oswell, in which we travelled the remaining distance; but for this precaution our oxen would have been unable to return. I am now standing at a tribe of Bakurutse, and shall in a day or two re-enter the desert.

The breadth marked is intended to show the difference between the size of the Zonga, after its junction with the Tamunakle and before it. The farther it runs east, the narrower it becomes. The course is shewn by the arrow-heads. _The rivers not seen, but reported by the natives_, are put down in dotted lines. The dotted lines running north of the river and lake, shew the probable course of the Tamunakle, and another river which falls into the lake at its north-west extremity. The arrow-heads shew also the direction of _its_ flow. At the part marked by the name of the Chief Mosing it is not more than 50 or 60 yards in breadth, while at 20° 7´ it is more than 100, and very deep.

The principal disease reported to prevail at certain seasons appears, from the account of the symptoms the natives give, to be pneumonia and not fever. When the wind rises to an ordinary breeze, such immense clouds of dust arise from the numerous dried-out lakes called salt-pans, that the whole atmosphere becomes quite yellow, and one cannot distinguish objects more than two miles off. It causes irritation in the eyes, and, as wind prevails almost constantly at certain seasons, this impalpable powder may act as it does among the grinders in Sheffield. We observed cough among them, a complaint almost unknown at Kolobeng. Musquitoes swarm in summer, and the Banyan and Palmyra give in some parts an Indian cast to the scenery.

(Signed) DAVID LIVINGSTON.

_A Brief Sketch of the Geology of the West Indies, from_ Dr DAVY'S _Lectures on the Study of Chemistry, drawn up chiefly from the Author's own Observations_.[88] Communicated for the Philosophical Journal.

Footnote 88: Lectures on the Study of Chemistry, in connection with the Atmosphere, the Earth and the Ocean, and Discourses on Agriculture, with Introductions on the present State of the West Indies, and on the Agricultural Societies of Barbados. By JOHN DAVY, M.D., F.R.S., &c. London, Longmans. 1850.

In the preceding lecture, I brought under your notice the antagonist and compensating, or correcting influences of animal life in preserving the uniformity of composition of the atmosphere. In the earth we witness influences of the like kind, as it were opposed to each other, and producing opposite effects. Water, in its operation, aided by air, may be considered as destructive, wearing away rocks and mountains, and carrying their comminuted parts to lower levels, and even into the sea, to be buried in its depths. Fire may be considered as restorative; acting below the surface, it melts and also consolidates, according to its degree of intensity, tending to reproduce crystalline rocks in one instance, and stratified in the other. Even when it appears most eminently to act according to our ordinary notions of its operation as a devastating and destroying agent, for example, in the eruption of a volcano, the ashes which are discharged into the atmosphere, and are widely scattered by the winds, even when they fall on the adjoining countries, may help to supply the place of the old surface-materials, carried away by streams and floods, and to renovate the soil with new elements of fertility. And acting in another form and manner, the same power which occasions volcanic eruptions appears to be productive of another effect, viz., the gradual elevation of the bed of the sea, tending to the formation of new land, of which we seem to have examples in the extension of certain coasts, and the appearance of rocks and dry land above the waves, preceded by a gradual diminution of the water over the spots where these remarkable phenomena occur.

Of most of the geological changes alluded to in the preceding remarks, the West Indies afford well marked instances.

From the continent of America are to be seen vast rivers flowing into the sea, turbid with the detritus of the country through which they have descended in a course of thousands of miles, and discolouring and freshening the waters with which they mix at an extraordinary distance from land. Between their mouths on the coasts and their rapids in the boundary hills of the interior, immense level, or almost level tracts occur,--marsh, morass, and sandbank, neither land nor water, covered chiefly with aquatic plants,--tracts formed by deposits from the great rivers, and commonly of materials somewhat coarser and heavier than those which are longer suspended and are carried out into the sea in consequence of their greater fineness.

In many of the islands not only are there rocks to be seen evidently of volcanic origin--columnar basalt, trachyte, and many varieties of tufa, but also craters from whence eruptions have taken place, and in which the fires are hardly yet extinct that once acted, as is indicated by the hot steams and exhalations still proceeding from them.

Moreover, in some of these islands, rocks of volcanic origin, crystalline in their structure, and totally destitute of organic remains, are associated with others of a perfectly different character, stratified and abounding in organic remains,--various species of sea shells and of coral; and it is worthy of notice, that, in one of the instances in which the appearance is best observed, viz., at Brimstone Hill, in St Christopher's, the volcanic rock, flanked by the stratified rock, and the latter--an aggregate of shells, coral, and calcareous marl, has its strata highly inclined, tilted up as it were by the former.

Other islands, or parts of islands, occur, in which there are only partial volcanic traces, and these not so much of volcanic action and disturbance on the spot, as of materials, such as ashes, thrown up by volcanoes, and those distant ones. The island Barbados is an example. Composed in great parts of a calcareous aggregate, in which organic remains abound, it has very much the character, in its peculiar features, of having been raised from the bed of the ocean (where it is certain it was formed), by some mighty force, slowly acting, and which, it is probable, is acting still.

Nor is there wanting in these seas instances of islands, in which almost every variety of formation is exemplified. Barbados, in its smaller portion--the Scotland district, exhibits some interesting varieties, such as beds of chalk abounding in the remains of microscopic animalcules, strata of sandstone, some siliceous, some calcareous; the one without organic remains, containing, however, deposits of coal and bitumen; the other--the latter having included in them organic remains, and of a kind to connect them with the calcareous rock of which the larger portion of the island is formed, for instance, the spines of echini and the teeth of squali. The larger islands, Trinidad and Jamaica, Port Rico, and Cuba, yield examples, still more in point. In Trinidad I am not aware that any volcano, or crater of one, has been discovered, or any rocks evidently volcanic in their origin; but from the imperfectly crystalline rocks, destitute of organic remains and distinct stratification, to clays and marls, to mud eruptions or volcanoes as these are sometimes called, through limestones and sandstones stratified, and containing organic remains, a tolerably well-marked series may be traced. In the adjoining and smaller island Tobago some of the same series are observable, but in a broken manner, not a little interesting and instructive. There, highly crystalline rocks, destitute of organic remains, are in juxtaposition with others abounding in these remains; coral rock is even found resting on granite; and in another situation the latter rock is contiguous to mica slate, in which quartz in mass is not of rare occurrence.

_On the Differences between Progressive, Embryonic, and Prophetic Types in the Succession of Organized Beings through the whole Range of Geological Times._

It was a great improvement in our zoological investigations when the differences in their relations, according to the various degrees of affinity or analogy which exist between animals, were pointed out, and successively better understood. In earlier times, zoologists made no distinction between the different relations which existed among animals. Affinity and analogy, so dissimilar in their essential characters, were constantly mistaken one for the other; and upon the peculiarities which struck the observer most at first sight, animals were brought together, sometimes upon the ground of true affinity, sometimes, also, upon the ground of close analogy; and though comparative anatomy did put the mistakes arising from such confusion right, by showing that external appearances were sometimes deceptive, and that a more intimate knowledge of internal structure was necessary fully to understand the real relations between animals, there remained, nevertheless, a degree of uncertainty in many cases, as long as the principles of affinities and of analogies were not fully distinguished. Every naturalist now knows that true relationship--affinity--depends upon a unity in structure, however diversified the forms may be under which their fundamental structure is displayed. For instance, the affinity of whales and the other mammalia was not understood before it was shown that, under the form of fishes, these animals had truly the same structure as the highest _vertebrata_.

Again, the forms of _cetacea_ exemplify the analogy there is between whales and fishes. They are _related_ to mammalia; they are _analogous_ to fishes; they bear close affinity to the mammals which nurse their young with milk; they have rather close analogy to the gill-breathing fishes.

Since the fossil animals which have existed during former periods upon the surface of our globe, and which have successively peopled the ocean and the dry land, have been more carefully studied than they were at the beginning of these investigations; since they are no longer considered as mere curiosities, but as the earlier representatives of an order of things which has been gradually and successively developed throughout the history of our globe, facts have been brought to light which now require a very careful examination, and will lead to a more complete understanding of the various relations which exist between these extinct types and those which still continue to live in our days. Upon close comparison of these facts, I have been led to distinguish two sorts of relations between the extinct animals, and those of our days, which seem to me to have been either overlooked or not sufficiently distinguished. Indeed, the general results derived from Palæontological investigations, seem scarcely to have gone beyond showing that the animals of former ages are specifically and frequently also generically distinct from those of the present creation; and also to establish certain graduation between them, agreeing more or less with the degree of perfection which we recognise between the living animals according to their structure.

It is now pretty generally understood that fishes, which rank lowest among the _Vertebrata_, have existed alone during the oldest periods; that the reptiles which, in the gradation of structure, rank next above them, have followed at a later period; that still later the birds, which, according to their anatomy, rank above reptiles, have next made their appearance; and that mammalia, which stand highest, have been introduced last, and even among these the lower families seem to have been more numerous, before the higher ones prevailed over them. Man, at last, has been created, only after all other types had acquired their full development. These facts which, in such generality are fully exemplified in every country in the order of succession of the different fossil characteristics of the various geological deposits, shew plainly that a gradation really exists in this succession, and constitutes one of the most prominent characters of the development of the animal kingdom as a whole.

If we investigate, however, this gradation, and the order of succession of animals more closely, we cannot but be struck with the different relations which exist between the fossils and the living animals. Many extinct types have been pointed out as characteristic of different geological periods, which combine, as it were, peculiarities which at present are found separately in different families of animals.

I may mention as such, the _Ichthyosaur_, with their fish-like vertebræ, their dolphin or porpoise-like general form, and several special characters reminding us of their close relation to the Crocodilian reptiles; thus combining characters of different classes in the most extraordinary manner.

Again, the _Pterodactyli_, in which reptilian characters are combined with peculiarities reminding us both of birds and bats.

Again, the large carnivorous fishes of the coal period, combining peculiarities of the _Saurians_, with true fish characters; and so on.

These relations are of an entirely different kind from those which I have pointed out between some of the older fossils and the early stage of growth of the living representatives of the same families.