Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/193

ber 12, 1877, and arrived at the end of his journey in Durban, on the Indian Ocean, on April 14, 1879, a journey occupying nearly twenty months. He discovered the source of the river Cubango, west of Bihé; and, shortly afterward, two of its affluents, finding the river to be contrary to all the descriptions of it on the maps. He says, in speaking of those affluents, "I use the words small rivers, but the smallest in Africa are almost always enormous ones." He found the river Cuqueima, to his surprise, running to the north, which was contrary to its position on the maps, and flowing from the north to the southwest, toward the Quango, of which it is an affluent. He afterward struck the Quango, flowing to the north, and the Cuito, an affluent of the Cuando, running to the south. All the great rivers, he says, of South Africa, have their sources in an immense rich plain, which is in 12° south latitude. The way in which rivers in this part of Africa take their rise and are formed, as described by him, is interesting. They begin with a slight humidity, resembling the trickling of a small fountain. By degrees the current swells, and suddenly, without having received any visible affluents, it becomes an enormous river, on which any one may sail with a boat. He says he saw the source of the Cuando, first as a tiny rill, which flowed between his feet; that a little lower down he descended it in a canoe, and that thence it was quite navigable till it entered the Zambesi, where Livingstone calls it the Chobe, a name which Major Pinto says is utterly unknown at the present day in Africa. Not only is the Cuando navigable, but also many of its affluents; and there is a cataract at its extremity, which nearly proved fatal to the explorer, as it had not been previously mentioned by any one. There is, he says, no connection by water between the Cuando and the Cubango, and while in the region of the Cuando he met one of the most curious discoveries in his journey. He found that one of the carriers supplied to him by a friendly chief was, to his astonishment, a white man belonging to a race in Africa heretofore entirely unknown. This race, called the Cassequer, he says, exist in large numbers in this part of South Africa, and that they are whiter even than the Caucasians, with this distinction, that, instead of hair, their heads are covered with small tufts of very short wool, that they have prominent cheek-bones, and eyes like the Chinese. He states that he has seen girls with such a complexion that, if their features were European, they would pass in Europe for beauties. Lieutenant de Braza is of the opinion that this race of people came from North Africa, as he states that he has seen a race greatly resembling them, called the Ubamlo, south of the Congo. The men of this white African race, Major Pinto says, are remarkably muscular and robust, and that when they discharge an arrow at an elephant they bury the entire shaft in the animal's body. They live by themselves, subsisting on roots or the spoils of the chase; and it is only when their supplies fall short that they hold any communications with