Para, his guide, said that the white man could
not have seen the river flowing towards Rua,
because it did not.
Ruango, the veteran guide, declared that he
had crossed it five times, that it was a small
river flowing into the Tanganika, and that if I
found it to flow in a contrary direction, he would
return me all his hire.
Natives from the Lukuga banks whom we
found in Ujiji asserted positively that there were
two Lukugas, one flowing into Lake Tanganika,
the other into Rua.
Muini Kheri, governor of Ujiji, Mohammed bin
Gharib, Muini Hassan, Bana Makombe, and Wadi
Safeni, all of whom had travelled across this
Lukuga river, also declared, in the most positive
manner, that during the many times they had
crossed the “Lukuga,” they either passed over
it on dry land or were ferried in canoes across
the entrance, which appeared to them only an
arm of the lake; that until the white man had
come to Ujiji, they had never heard of an outflowing
river, nor did they believe there was one.
The positiveness of their manner and their testimony,
so utterly atvariance with what Commander
Cameron had stated, inspired me with the resolution
to explore the phenomenon thoroughly, and
to examine the entire coast minutely. At the
same time, a suspicion that there was no present
outlet to the Tanganika had crept into my mind,
when I observed that three palm-trees, which
had stood in the market-place of Ujiji in November
1871, were now about 100 feet in the
lake, and that the sand beach over which Livingstone
and I took our morning walks was over
200 feet in the lake.
I asked of Muini Kheri and Sheikh Mohammed
if my impressions were not correct about the
palm-trees, and they both replied readily in the
affirmative. Muini Kheri said also, as corroborative
of the increase of the Tanganika, that
thirty years ago the Arabs were able to ford
the channel between Bangwe Island and the mainland;
that they then cultivated rice-fields three
miles farther west than the present beach; that
every year the Tanganika encroaches upon their
shores and fields; and that they are compelled
to move every five years farther inland. In my
photograph of Ujiji, an inlet may be seen on a
site which was dry land, occupied by fishing-nets
and pasture ground, in 1871.
I proceeded to Bangwe Island, before setting
out on my voyage, and sounded the channel
separating it from the mainland. Between a
pebble-covered point bf Bangwe and the nearest
tongue on the mainland, I dropped my lead
thirteen times. In mid-channel I found 18, 21,
23, 24, 25, 22, 23, 20, 19, and 17 feet.
The Wajiji lake-traders and fishermen have
two interesting legends respecting the origin of