To show how prankish and pitiable royalty is among even a tribe like the Unyoro’s, who dress with some care, and disdain the less intelligent tribes about them, it turned out that this Kamrasi was not the real king at all, but only a substitute, and that the regularly annointed Kamrasi was in a fit of the sulks off in his private quarters, all the time of our visit.
The march is now a long one of eighteen days through the dense forests and swamps of the Kafoor River. Mrs. Baker is sick with fever incident to a sun-stroke, and has to be borne upon a litter most of the way. In crossing the Kafoor upon the “sponge,” it yields to the weight of the footmen, and she is saved from sinking beneath the treacherous surface by the Colonel, who orders the men to quickly lay their burden down
and scatter. The “sponge” proves strong enough to bear the weight of the litter alone, and it is safely hauled on to a firmer part by her husband and an attendant.
We are now near our goal and all the party are enthusiastic. Ascending a gentle slope, on a beautiful clear morning, the glory of our prize suddenly bursts upon us. There, like a sea of quicksilver, lays far beneath us the grand expanse of waters—the Luta Nzigé then, but soon to be christened the Albert Nyanza. Its white waves break on a pebbly beach fifteen hundred feet below us. On the west, fifty or sixty miles distant, blue mountains rise to a height of 7000 feet. Northward the gleaming expanse of waters seem limitless. Here is the reward of all our labor. It is a basin worthy of its great function as a gathering place of the headwaters of the Nile, which issue in a full grown stream from its northern end.
Using Colonel Baker’s own language,—“Long before I reached the spot I had arranged to give three English cheers in honor of the discovery, but now that I looked down upon the great inland sea lying nestled in the very heart of Africa, and thought how vainly mankind had sought these sources throughout so many ages, and reflected that I had been the humble instrument permitted to unravel this portion of the great mystery when so many greater than I had failed, I felt too serious to vent my feelings in vain cheers for victory, and I sincerely thanked God for having guided and supported us through all dangers to the good end. As I looked down from the steep granite cliffs upon those welcome waters, on that vast reservoir which nourished Egypt and brought fertility where all was wilderness, on that great source so long hidden from mankind; that source of bounty and of blessings to millions of human beings; and as one of the greatest objects in nature, I determined to honor it with a great name. As an imperishable memorial of one loved and mourned by our gracious Queen and deplored by every Englishman, I called the great lake ‘the Albert Nyanza.’ The Victoria and the Albert Lakes are the two sources of the Nile. My wife, who had followed me so devotedly, stood by my side, pale and exhausted—a wreck upon
the shores of the great Albert Lake that we had so long striven to reach. No European foot had ever trod upon its sand, nor had the eyes of a white man ever scanned its vast expanse of water. We were the first; and this was the key to the great secret that even Julius Cæsar yearned to unravel, but in vain.”
And now the lake is christened. We rush down to the shores and bathe our feet in its clear fresh waters. Then we prepare a frail canoe, large enough to carry our party of thirteen and manned with twenty oarsmen. In this we skirt the lake northward from where we first touch it at Vacovia. The journey is full of novelty. Every now and then we get a shot at a crocodile, or a hippopotamus, and herds of elephants are seen along the shores. Thunder storms are frequent, making the navigation dangerous. The heat at midday drives us into the shade. Our work hours are in the mornings and evenings. Here we pass under beetling precipices that line this eastern shore, down which jets of water—each a Nile source—are seen plunging from the height of a thousand feet. There we float through flat wastes of reeds, and water plants and floating rafts of vegetable matter in every stage of growth and decay.
On the thirteenth day we reach the point where the waters from Lake Victoria Nyanza enter the Albert Nyanza. They pour in through the Victoria River, or as some call it, the Somerset River. Now arises a momentous question. Shall we go further. If we are not back in Gondokoro in a few weeks we may leave our bones in Central Africa. We are a fatigued, even a sick party, and the season is approaching when a white man had better be away from under the Equator. The Colonel proposes to forego further navigation and return. Lady Baker, with a fervor the Colonel seems to have lost, proposes to go to the other end of the lake in order to make sure that it is an ultimate reservoir of the Nile.
THE MURCHISON FALLS.