Anon he
would dwell on the primitive African faith; its recognition of one
Almighty Creator, its moral code, so like our own, save in the one
article of polygamy; its pious recognition of a future life, though the
element of punishment is not very conspicuous; its mild character
generally, notwithstanding the bloodthirstiness sometimes ascribed to
it, which, however, Livingstone held to be, at Dahomey for example,
purely exceptional.
Another subject that occupied him was the natural history of the
country. He would account for desert tracts like Kalahari by the fact
that the east and southeast winds, laden with moisture from the Indian
Ocean, get cooled over the coast ranges of mountains, and having
discharged their vapor there had no spare moisture to deposit over the
regions that for want of it became deserts. The geology of Southern
Africa was peculiar; the geographical series described in books was not
to be found here, for, as Sir Roderick Murchison had shown, the great
submarine depressions and elevations that had so greatly affected the
other continents during the secondary, tertiary, and more recent
periods, had not affected Africa.
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