Also, Livingstone’s instruments for observation and taking altitudes may have been in error; and this is very likely to have been the case, subjected as they have been to rough handling during nearly six years of travel.  Despite the apparent difficulty of the altitude, there is another strong reason for believing Webb’s River, or the Lualaba, to be the Nile.  The watershed of this river, 600 miles of which Livingstone has travelled, is drained from a valley which lies north and south between lofty eastern and western ranges.

This valley, or line of drainage, while it does not receive the Kassai and the Kwango, receives rivers flowing from a great distance west, for instance, the important tributaries Lufira and Lomami, and large rivers from the east, such as the Lindi and Luamo; and, while the most intelligent Portuguese travellers and traders state that the Kassai, the Kwango, and Lubilash are the head waters of the Congo River, no one has yet started the supposition that the grand river flowing north, and known by the natives as the Lualaba, is the Congo.

This river may be the Congo, or, perhaps, the Niger.  If the Lualaba is only 2,000 feet above the sea, and the Albert N’Yanza 2,700 feet, the Lualaba cannot enter that lake.  If the Bahr Ghazal does not extend by an arm for eight degrees above Gondokoro, then the Lualaba cannot be the Nile.  But it would be premature to dogmatise on the subject.  Livingstone will clear up the point himself; and if he finds it to be the Congo, will be the first to admit his error.

Livingstone admits the Nile sources have not been found, though he has traced the Lualaba through seven degrees of latitude flowing north; and, though he has not a particle of doubt of its being the Nile, not yet can the Nile question be said to be resolved and ended.  For two reasons: 

1.  He has heard of the existence of four fountains, two of which gave birth to a river flowing north, Webb’s River, or the Lualaba, and to a river flowing south, which is the Zambezi.  He has repeatedly heard of these fountains from the natives.  Several times he has been within 100 and 200 miles from them, but something always interposed to prevent his going to see them.  According to those who have seen them, they rise on either side of a mound or level, which contains no stones.  Some have called it an ant-hill.  One of these fountains is said to be so large that a man, standing on one side, cannot be seen from the other.  These fountains must be discovered, and their position taken.  The Doctor does not suppose them to be south of the feeders of Lake Bangweolo.  In his letter to the ‘Herald’ he says “These four full-grown gushing fountains, rising so near each other, and giving origin to four large rivers, answer in a certain degree to the description given of the unfathomable fountains of the Nile, by the secretary of Minerva, in the city of Sais, in Egypt, to the father of all travellers—­ Herodotus.”