The Pasha on this day sent me his muster-roll for the beginning of the month, which was as follows:—
| 44 | officers, heads of families, and clerks. |
| 90 | married women and concubines. |
| 107 | children. |
| 223 | guards, soldiers, orderlies, and servants. |
| 91 | followers. |
| 555 |
On the 3rd of July we entered Katari settlement, in Ankori, on the borders of the Lake. At the camp of the 28th of June symptoms of fever developed, and numbered me among those smitten down with the sickness, which raged like a pest through all ranks, regardless of age, colour, or sex, and I remained till the 2nd of July as prostrated with it as any person. Having laid every one low, it then attacked Captain Nelson, who now was the hardiest amongst us. It took its course of shivering, nausea, and high fever, irrespective of medicine, and after three or four days of grievous suffering, left us dazed and bewildered. But though nearly every person had suffered, not one fatal case had occurred.
1889.
July 3.
Katari.
From the camp of the 28th, above which was visible Mt. Edwin Arnold, we skirted the base of the upland, and two days later entered the country of Kitagwenda. By Unyampaka E. is intended the Lake shore of Kitagwenda. The entire distance thence to Katari in Ankori is an almost unbroken line of banana plantations skirting the shore of the Lake, and fields of Indian corn, sugar-cane, eleusine, and holcus, which lie behind them inland, which are the properties of the owners of the half-dozen salt markets dotting the coast. The mountainous upland looms parallel with the Lake with many a bold headland at the distance, varying from three to six miles.
We have thus travelled along the north, the north-west, and eastern coasts of Lake Albert Edward. We have had abundant opportunities of hearing about the south and western sides, but we have illustrated our information on the carefully-prepared map accompanying these volumes. The south side of the Lake, much of which we have viewed from commanding heights such as Kiteté, is of the same character as the flat plains of Usongora, and extends between twenty and thirty miles to the base of the uplands of Mpororo and Usongora. Kakuri’s canoe-men have been frequent voyagers to the various ports belonging to Ruanda and to the western countries, and all around the Lake, and they inform me that the shores are very flat, more extensive to the south than even to the north, and more to the west than to the east. No rivers of any great importance feed the Albert Edward Lake, though there are several which are from twenty to fifty feet wide and two feet deep. The largest is said to be the Mpanga and the Nsongi. This being so, the most important river from the south cannot have a winding course of more than sixty miles, so that the farthest reach of the Albertine sources of the Nile cannot extend further than 1° 10′ south latitude.
Our first view, as well as the last, of Lake Albert Edward, was utterly unlike any view we ever had before of land or water of a new region. For all other virgin scenes were seen through a more or less clear atmosphere, and we saw the various effects of sunshine, and were delighted with the charms which distance lends. On this, however, we gazed through fluffy, slightly waving strata of vapours of unknown depth, and through this thick opaque veil the lake appeared like dusty quicksilver, or a sheet of lustreless silver, bounded by vague shadowy outlines of a tawny-faced land. It was most unsatisfying in every way. We could neither define distance, form, or figure, estimate height of land-crests above the water, or depth of lake; we could ascribe no just limit to the extent of the expanse, nor venture to say whether it was an inland ocean or a shallow pond. The haze, or rather cloud, hung over it like a grey pall. We sighed for rain to clear the atmosphere, and the rain fell; but, instead of thickened haze, there came a fog as dark as that which distracts London on a November day.
The natural colour of the lake is of a light sea-green colour, but at a short distance from the shore it is converted by the unfriendly mist into that of pallid grey, or sackcloth. There is neither sunshine nor sparkle, but a dead opacity, struggling through a measureless depth of mist. If we attempted to peer under or through it, to get a peep at the mysterious water, we were struck with the suggestion of chaos at the sight of the pallid surface, brooding under the trembling and seething atmosphere. It realised perfectly the description that “in the beginning the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” This idea was strengthened when we looked up to examine the composition of this vaporous mist, and to ascertain whether we might call it haze, mist, or fog. The eyes were fascinated with the clouds of fantastic and formless phantasms, the eerie figures, flakes, films, globules, and frayed or wormlike threads, swimming and floating and drifting in such numberless multitudes that one fancied he could catch a handful. In the delirium of fevers I have seen such shapes, like wriggling animalculæ, shifting their forms with the rapidity of thought, and swiftly evolving into strange amorphous figures before the dazed senses. More generally, and speaking plainly, the atmosphere seemed crowded with shadowy, elongated organisms, the most frequent bearing a rough resemblance to squirming tadpoles. While looking at the dim image of an island about three miles from the shore, it was observed that the image deepened, or got more befogged, as a thinner or thicker horizontal stratum of these atmospheric shapes subsided downward or floated upward; and following this with a fixed sight, I could see a vibration of it as clearly as of a stream of sunbeams. From the crest of a grassy ridge and the crown of a tall hill, and the sad grey beach, I tried to resolve what was imaged but three miles away, and to ascertain whether it was tawny land, or grey water, or ashen sky, but all in vain. I needed but to hear the distant strains of a dirge to cause me to imagine that one of Kakuri’s canoes out yonder on the windless lake was a funereal barge, slowly gliding with its freight of dead explorers to the gloomy bourne from whence never an explorer returned.
And oh! what might have been seen had we but known one of those marvellously clear days, with the deep purified azure and that dazzling transparency of ether so common to New York! We might have set some picture before the world from these never-known lands as never painter painted. We might have been able to show the lake, with its tender blue colour, here broadening nobly, there enfolding with its sparkling white arms clusters of tropic isles, or projecting long silvery tongues of blazing water into the spacious meadowy flats, curving everywhere in rounded bays, or extending along flowing shore-lines, under the shadows of impending plateau walls, and flotillas of canoes gliding over its bright bosom to give it life, and broad green bands of marsh grasses, palms, plantains, waving crops of sugar-cane, and umbrageous globes of foliage, to give beauty to its borders. And from point to point round about the compass we could have shown the irregularly circular line of lofty uplands, their proud hill bosses rising high into the clear air, and their mountainous promontories, with their domed crowns projected far into the basin, or receding into deep folds half enclosing fair valleys, and the silver threads of streams shooting in arrowy flights down the cliffy steeps; broad bands of vivid green grass, and spaces of deep green forest, alternating with frowning grey or white precipices, and far northward the horizon bounded by the Alps of Ruwenzori, a league in height above the lake, beautiful in their pure white garments of snow, entrancingly picturesque in their congregation of peaks and battalions of mountain satellites ranged gloriously against the crystalline sky.
But alas! alas! In vain we turned our yearning eyes and longing looks in their direction. The Mountains of the Moon lay ever slumbering in their cloudy tents, and the lake which gave birth to the Albertine Nile remained ever brooding under the impenetrable and loveless mist.