CROSSING A SPONGE.
Having passed this obstacle the journey is easier to Gondokoro, where the land is firm. Twenty-three years ago Gondokoro was a collection of grass huts in the midst of an untrodden
wilderness, and surrounded by barbarous and hostile tribes. It has since been made an Egyptian military station and named Ismailia.
Though the spot is not inviting except as it affords you rest after your hardships, yet it is the scene of an interesting episode in the history of African exploration. Speke and Grant had started on their memorable trip from Zanzibar in 1861. Colonel Baker and his wife had started up the Nile for its sources in the same year. Now it is February, 1863. A travel stained caravan, with two white men at its head, comes down the high ground back of the station. They quicken their pace and enter the village with shouts, waving of flags and firing of musketry. It is Speke and Grant on their return trip, with the secret of the Nile in their keeping.
On their long tramp they had visited strange peoples and countries, and by courage and tact had escaped unharmed from a number of difficulties and perils. They had traced the one shore of that vast reservoir of fresh water under the Equator which Speke had sighted on a previous expedition, and had named Victoria Nyanza. They had seen this beautiful equatorial reservoir discharging its surplus waters northward over the picturesque Ripon Falls, and knew that they were in possession of the secret which all the world had sought from the beginning.
Lower down, at the Karuma Falls, they were compelled to leave the stream, which they now felt sure was the Nile. Crossing to the right bank, they struck across the country, northward, and in a direct line for Gondokoro. Here they caught sight of the furthest outpost of Egyptian exploration, and again gladly looked on the river that was to bear them down to the Mediterranean.
By a curious coincidence, the first Englishman who had penetrated so far to the southward, was at that moment in Gondokoro. Samuel Baker and his wife were interrupted in their preparations for their journey to the Nile sources by the noise of the approaching party, and they rode out to see what all the hubbub meant. Four people from a distant nook of Europe met in the heart of Africa; and as they clasped hands, the hoary
secret of the Nile was unriddled! All of them had numberless difficulties before as well as behind them; but their hearts were undismayed, and swelled only with pride at what had been accomplished for science and for their native land. The travellers from Zanzibar bore the marks of their long journey—“battered and torn, but sound and seaworthy.” “Speke,” Baker tells us, “appeared the more worn of the two; he was excessively lean, but in reality in good tough condition. He had walked the whole way from Zanzibar, never having once ridden during the weary march. Grant was in honorable rags, his bare knees projecting through the remnants of trousers that were an exhibition of rough industry in tailor-work. He was looking tired and feverish, but both men had a fire in the eye that showed the spirit that had led them through.” The first greetings over, Baker’s earliest question was: Was there no leaf of the laurel reserved for him? Yes; there was. Below the Karuma Falls, Speke and Grant had been informed the stream from the Victoria Nyanza fell into and almost immediately emerged again from another lake, the Luta Nzigé. This therefore might be the ultimate reservoir of the Nile waters. No European had ever seen or heard of this basin before. Baker determined it should be his prize.
But now we meet a new class of obstacles as we undertake a land journey into intertropical Africa. There is no longer, as in the desert, danger from thirst and starvation, for game abounds, and we are in some degree out of the interminable swamps of river navigation. But a small army of porters must be got together. They must be drilled, and preparations must be made for feeding them. True, some explorers have gone well nigh alone. But it is not best. Stanley always travelled with one to two hundred natives, and quite successfully.
And these natives are by no means easy to handle. They are ready to make bargains, but are panicky and often desert, or, what is worse, take advantage of any relaxation of discipline to rise in mutiny. Their leader must be stern of will, yet kind and good-natured, wise as a serpent and watchful as a hawk. When a start is made, difficulties accumulate. You must expect