Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/358

 2S6 SOUTH AND EAST AFRICA. perhaps, in course of time, rise completely above the surface, just as the northern ridpe has emerged with the continual subsidence of the waters. Shirwa is fed by a few swamps and rivulets, and the overflow of the recently discovered little Luke Limbi. Kilwu having ceased to communicate with the Lujenda, this great headstream of the Rovuma now receives its first contributions from the Mtorandanga morass, followed by another farther north. From this point the stream, which changes its name at every station, traverses in succession the two elongated Lakes Chiuta and Amaramba. It first takes the name of Lujenda at the outlet of the Amaramba basin, which is lined by pile-built cabins serving as granaries and refuges for the rivoruin populations. Here the river, flowing with a uniform and rapid current between steep banks, enters one of the most charming and fertile valleys in the interior of the continent. The broadening stream is divided by a chain of elevated islands, which are never submerged during the highest floods, and are everywhere clotlud with an exuberant vegetation of forest-trees, interlaced from branch to branch with festoons of creeping plants. Along the banks follow in pleasant variety grassy tracts, cultivated lands, and clumps of tall trees, while the distant horizon is bounded by the crests of blue mountain ranges. The Li jknda and Lower Rovuma. Swollen by all the torrents tumbling down from the Nyassa highlands, the Lujenda flows without any abrupt meanderings in the direction of the north-east, then trends northwards, plunging over a series of falls and rapids down to its confluLiKc with the Rovuma. This river, which rises not far from the east side of Nyassa, descends from the uplands in a far more precipitous channel than the Lujenda. Above the confluence it pierces a deep gorge flanked by granite walls, while the current is strewn with huge boulders as destitute of vegetation as are the cliffs themselves that here confine the stream in its stony bed. The wild rocky landscape is here relieved only by a little brushwood clothing the fiswures of the escarpments, and although lying within the equatorial zone the riverain scenery presents rather the aspect of a gorge in some northern region scored by glacial striic and strewn with moraines. At the issue of these defiles begins the region of plains and lowlands. The confluence itself of both branches stands at an altitude of not more than 730 feet, at the foot of a hill with polished rocky slopes. Lower down, the united stream discharges during the floods a portion of its overflow into two reservoirs near its right bank. Lakes Lidedi and I^agandi, shich after the subsidence of the waters flow back to the Rovuma. The level of the stream is little more than 300 feet above the sea at the point where its winding ramifications over the lowlands again converge in a single channel, which is pent up between the escarp- ments of the two lateral i)lateaux skirting its lower course. Livingstone ascended to a distance of nearly 180 miles from its mouth, but the trip was made in the mouth of October, that is, during the season of low water, so that the bo»t often