ly he came to some mountains he had never
seen before, and from the top of the mountains
he looked down upon a great lake! So then
he knew that his wife had disclosed the secret
fountain, and that all had perished because of
her sin.”
The other tradition imparted to me by the
ancients of Ujiji relates that many years ago—
how long no one can tell—the Luwegeri, a
river flowing from the east to the lake near
Urimba, was met by the Lukuga flowing from
the westward, and the united waters filled the
deep valley now occupied by the Tanganika.
Hence the Luwegeri is termed “ the mother of
the Lukuga.”
Still another tradition relates that the Luwegeri
flowed through the plain by Uguha, and into
the great river of Rua, but that when the plain
sank the Luwegeri flowed into the profound
gulf caused by the sudden subsidence of what
had once been a plain.
The Waguha have also their legend, which
differs slightly from that of the Wajiji. They
say that at a very remote period there was a
small hill near Ururtgu, hollow within, and very
deep and full of water1. This hill one day burst,
and the water spread over a great depression
that was made, and became thè lake we now
see.
I made many attempts to discoter whether
the Wajiji knew why the lake was called Tanganika.
They all replied they did not know,
unless it was because it was large y and canoes
could make long voyages on it. They did not
call small lakes Tanganika, but they called them
Kitanga. The lake of Usukuma would be called
Tanganika, but the little lakes in Uhha (Musunya)
would be called Kitanga. Nika is a word they
could hot explain the derivation of, but they
suggested that it might perhaps come from Nika,
an electric fish which was sometimes caught in
the lake.
A rational definition of Nika I could not obtain
until one day, while translating into their language
the English words, given in the comparative table
of African languages annexed to these volumes, I
came to the word “ plain,” for which I obtained
nika as being the term in Kijiji. As Africans
are accustomed to describe large bodies of water
as being like plains, “ it spreads out like a plain,”
I think that a satisfactory signification of the
term has finally been obtained, in “ the plainlike
lake.”
The people of Marungu cali the lake Kimana,
those of Urungu call it Iemba, the Wakawendi
call it Msaga, or “ the tempestuous lake.”
Westward from Ujiji the lake spreads to a
distance of about thirty-five miles, where it is
bounded by the lofty mountain-range of Goma,
and it is when looking north-west that one com