Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/512

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WEST AFRICA.

picturesque cascades, such as the Juo falls, where the white foaming waters tumble down a height of 80 feet between rocky red sandstone walls. The main stream on the contrary flows through a chain of lakes, of which the largest, known as the Lo-Hamba, lies secluded in the upper valley, while the others follow along the lower course like a string of pearls on a necklace. Reichard, who crossed it at over 120 miles above the confluence, asserts that of the two Lua-Labas the Kamolondo is the most copious, and although not the longest, should on this account be regarded as the main branch of the Upper Congo. On the other

Fig. 207. — Lake U-Nyamezi, according to Erhardt and Rebmann.

hand the Tanganyika emissary sends down very little water, and was even dry when first visited by explorers.

Lake Tanganyika.

Tanganyika was long known to the Portuguese and Arabs, and is mentioned under various names in numerous documents of the eighteenth century, although generally confounded with Nyassa and other lakes. The three basins of Nyassa, Tanganyika and Nyanza are even merged in a single inland sea stretching north and south across thirteen degrees of latitude, and still figured as Lake U-Nyamezi on Erhardt and Rebmann's map of 1856. But this great Mediterranean has been resolved into its three constituent elements-by the memorable voyage of Burton and Speke in 1858, and the subsequent explorations of Livingstone and Stanley.