The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile, Samuel White Baker [inspirational novels .TXT] 📗

was utterly unknown, it is natural to suppose that

the races that exist upon that surface should be unaltered from their

origin. That origin may date from a period so distant, that it preceded

the Adamite creation. Historic man believes in a Divinity; the tribes of

Central Africa know no God. Are they of our Adamite race? The equatorial

portion of Africa at the Nile sources has an average altitude above the

sea-level of about 4,000 feet; this elevated plateau forms the base of a

range of mountains, that I imagine extends, like the vertebrae of an

animal, from east to west, shedding a drainage to the north and south.

Should this hypothesis be correct, the southern watershed would fill the

Tanganika lake: while farther to the west another lake, supplied by the

southern drainage, may form the head of the river Congo. On the north a

similar system may drain into the Niger and Lake Tchad: thus the

Victoria and the Albert lakes, being the two great reservoirs or sources

of the Nile, may be the first of a system of African equatorial lakes

fed by the northern and southern drainage of the mountain range, and

supplying all the principal rivers of Africa from the great equatorial

rainfall. The fact of the centre of Africa at the Nile sources being

about 4,000 feet above the ocean, independently of high mountains rising

from that level, suggests that the drainage of the Equator from the

central and elevated portion must find its way to the lower level and

reach the sea. Wherever high mountain ranges exist, there must also be

depressions; those situated in an equatorial rainfall must receive the

drainage from the high lands and become lakes, the overflow of which

must form the sources of rivers, precisely as exemplified in the sources

of the Nile from the Victoria and the Albert lakes.

 

The fact that Sir Roderick Murchison, as a geologist, laid down a theory

of the existence of a chain of lakes upon an elevated plateau in Central

Africa, which theory has been now in great measure confirmed by actual

inspection, induces me to quote an extract from his address at the

anniversary meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, 23d May, 1864. In

that address, he expressed opinions upon the geological structure and

the races of Central Africa, which preceded those that I formed when at

the Albert lake. It is with intense interest that I have read the

following extract since my return to England:—

 

“In former addresses, I suggested that the interior mass and central

portions of Africa constituting a great plateau occupied by lakes and

marshes from which the waters escaped by cracks or depressions in the

subtending older rocks, had been in that condition during an enormously

long period. I have recently been enabled, through the apposite

discovery of Dr. Kirk, the companion of Livingstone, not only to fortify

my conjecture of 1852, but greatly to extend the inferences concerning

the long period of time during which the central parts of Africa have

remained in their present condition, save their degradation by ordinary

atmospheric agencies. My view, as given to this Society in 1852, was

mainly founded on the original and admirable geological researches of

Mr. Bain in the colony of the Cape of Good Hope. It was, that, inasmuch

as in the secondary or mesozoic age of geologists, the northern interior

of that country was occupied by great lakes and marshes, as proved by

the fossil reptile discovered by Bain, and named Dicynodon by Owen, such

it has remained for countless ages, even up to the present day. The

succeeding journeys into the interior, of Livingstone, Thornton and

Kirk, Burton and Speke, and Speke and Grant, have all tended to

strengthen me in the belief that Southern Africa has not undergone any

of those great submarine depressions which have so largely affected

Europe, Asia, and America, during the secondary, tertiary, and quasi

modern periods.

 

“The discovery of Dr. Kirk has confirmed my conclusion. On the banks of

an affluent of the Zambesi, that gentleman collected certain bones,

apparently carried down in watery drifts from inland positions, which

remains have been so fossilized as to have all the appearance of

antiquity which fossils of a tertiary or older age usually present. One

of these is a portion of the vertebral column and sacrum of a buffalo,

undistinguishable from that of the Cape buffalo; another is a fragment

of a crocodile, and another of a water-tortoise, both undistinguishable

from the forms of those animals now living. Together with these, Dr.

Kirk found numerous bones of antelopes and other animals, which, though

in a fossil condition, all belonged, as he assured me, to species now

living in South Africa.

 

“On the other hand, none of our explorers, including Mr. Bain, who has

diligently worked as a geologist, have detected in the interior any

limestones containing marine fossil remains, which would have proved

that South Africa had, like other regions, been depressed into oceanic

conditions, and re-elevated. On the contrary, in addition to old

granitic and other igneous rocks, all explorers find only either

innumerable undulations of sandstones, schistose, and quartzose rocks,

or such tufaceous and ferruginous deposits as would naturally occur in

countries long occupied by lakes and exuberant jungles, separated from

each other by sandy hills, scarcely any other calcareous rocks being

found except tufas formed by the deposition of landsprings. It is true

that there are marine tertiary formations on the coasts (around the Cape

Colony, near the mouth of the Zambesi opposite Mozambique, and again on

the coasts of Mombas opposite Zanzibar), and that these have been raised

up into low-coast ranges, followed by rocks of igneous origin. But in

penetrating into the true interior, the traveller takes a final leave of

all such formations; and in advancing to the heart of the continent, he

traverses a vast region which, to all appearance, has ever been under

terrestrial and lacustrine conditions only. Judging, indeed, from all

the evidences as yet collected, the interior of South Africa has

remained in that condition since the period of the secondary rocks of

geologists! Yet, whilst none of our countrymen found any evidences of

old marine remains, Captain Speke brought from one of the ridges which

lay between the coast and the lake Victoria N’yanza a fossil shell,

which, though larger in size, is undistinguishable from the Achatina

perdix now flourishing in South Africa. Again, whilst Bain found fossil

plants in his reptiliferous strata north of the Cape, and Livingstone

and Thornton discovered coal in sandstone, with fossil plants, like

those of our old coal of Europe and America,—yet both these mesozoic

and palaeozoic remains are terrestrial, and are not associated with

marine limestones, indicative of those oscillations of the land which

are so common in other countries.

 

“It is further to be observed, that the surface of this vast interior is

entirely exempt from the coarse superficial drift that encumbers so many

countries, as derived from lofty mountain-chains from which either

glaciers or great torrential streams have descended. In this respect, it

is also equally unlike those plains of Germany, Poland, and Northern

Russia, which were sea-bottoms when floating icebergs melted and dropped

the loads of stone which they were transporting from Scandinavia and

Lapland.

 

“In truth, therefore, the inner portion of Southern Africa is, in this

respect, as far as I know, geologically unique in the long conservation

of ancient terrestrial conditions. This inference is further supported

by the concomitant absence, throughout the larger portion of all this

vast area, i.e. south of the Equator, of any of those volcanic rocks

which are so often associated with oscillations of the terra firma

[“Although Kilimandjaro is to a great extent igneous and volcanic, there

is nothing to prove it has been in activity during the historic era.”]

 

“With the exception of the true volcanic hills of the Cameroons recently

described by Burton, on the west coast, a little to the north of the

Equator, and which possibly may advance southwards towards the Gaboon

country, nothing is known of the presence of any similar foci of

sub-aerial eruption all round the coasts of Africa south of the Equator.

If the elements for the production of them had existed, the coast-line

is precisely that on which we should expect to find such volcanic vents,

if we judge by the analogy of all volcanic regions where the habitual

igneous eruptions are not distant from the sea, or from great internal

masses of water. The absence, then, both on the coasts and in the

interior, of any eruptive rocks which can have been thrown up under the

atmosphere since the period when the tertiary rocks began to be

accumulated, is in concurrence with all the physical data as yet got

together. These demonstrate that, although the geologist finds here none

of those characters of lithological structure and curiously diversified

organic remains which enable him to fix the epochs of succession in the

crust of the earth in other quarters of the globe, the interior of South

Africa is unquestionably a grand type of a region which has preserved

its ancient terrestrial conditions during a very long period, unaffected

by any changes except those which are dependent on atmospheric and

meteoric influences.

 

“If, then, the lower animals and plants of this vast country have gone

on unchanged for a very long period, may we infer that its human

inhabitants are of like antiquity? If so, the Negro may claim as old a

lineage as the Caucasian or Mongolian races. In the absence of any

decisive fact, I forbear, at present, to speculate on this point; but

as, amid the fossil specimens procured by Livingstone and Kirk, there

are fragments of pottery made by human hands, we must wait until some

zealous explorer of Southern Africa shall distinctly bring forward

proofs that the manufactured articles are of the same age as the fossil

bones. In other words, we still require from Africa the same proofs of

the existence of links which bind together the sciences of Geology and

Archaeology which have recently been developed in Europe. Now, if the

unquestioned works of man should be found to be coeval with the remains

of fossilized existing animals in Southern Africa, the travelled

geographer, who has convinced himself of the ancient condition of its

surface, must admit, however unwillingly, that although the black man is

of such very remote antiquity, he has been very stationary in

civilization and in attaining the arts of life, if he be compared with

the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the Red Indian of America, or even with

the aborigines of Polynesia.” (“The most remarkable proof of the

inferiority of the Negro, when compared with the Asiatic, is, that

whilst the latter has domesticated the elephant for ages, and rendered

it highly useful to man, the Negro has only slaughtered the animal to

obtain food or ivory.”)

 

CHAPTER XIX.

 

THE BLACK ANTELOPE.

 

We continued our voyage down the Nile, at times scudding along with a

fair wind and stream, when a straight portion of the river allowed our

men respite from the oars. This was the termination of the dry season,

in this latitude 7 degrees (end of March);—thus, although the river

was nearly level with the banks, the marshes were tolerably firm, and in

the dryer portions the reeds had been burnt off by the natives. In one

of these cleared places we descried a vast herd of antelopes, numbering

several thousands. The males were black, and carried fine horns, while

the females were reddish-brown and without horns. Never having shot this

species, I landed from the boat, which I ordered to wait in a sheltered

nook, while, accompanied by the boy Saat and Richarn, I took the little

Fletcher 24 rifle and commenced a stalk.

 

The antelopes did not evince their usual shyness, and with a