Away off northward from where we are, some thirty miles, can be seen with the glasses the outlet of the lake—the Nile. It is settled that the inflow from Victoria Nyanza and the outlet northward are thus close together. But is that outlet the
Nile after all? Lady Baker wants to settle this question too, and she proposes, after circumnavigating the lake and proving
that it is an ultimate source, to descend the Nile through the northern outlet. But the Colonel urges want of time. The attendants tell horrible stories of dangerous falls and hostile natives. So we decide against Mrs. Baker, and, taking the Colonel’s advice, begin to ascend the Victoria Nile toward lake Victoria Nyanza, that being in the direction of our homeward march. We go but a few miles till a new marvel greets us—the Murchison Falls. On either side of the river are beautiful wooded cliffs 300 feet high. Bold rocks jut out from an intensely green foliage. Rushing through a gap in the rock directly ahead of us, the river, contracted from a broad stream above, grows narrower and narrower, till where the gorge is scarcely fifty yards wide, it makes one stupendous leap over a precipice 120 feet high, into the dark abyss below. The river then widens and grows sluggish again. Anywhere can be seen numberless crocodiles. While the Colonel is sketching the Falls, one of these animals comes close to the boat. He cannot resist a shot at it. The canoemen are disturbed and allow the boat to get an ugly swing on them. It strikes into a bunch of reeds, when out rushes a huge hippopotamus in fright and bumps against the canoe, almost oversetting it.
There are cataracts innumerable on the Nile, but this is its greatest water fall, and a majestic picture it is. Our return journey to Gondokoro repeats many of our former experiences. We revisit the same tribes and meet with the same adventures. Kartoum is reached in May, 1865. Then we go by boat to Berber, and thence by caravan across the desert to Sonakim on the Red Sea, where a steamer is taken for England, and where the Colonel receives the medal bestowed on him by the Royal Geographical Society.
In concluding this long journey we must ever regret that Colonel Baker did not do more to make sure of the honors of his discovery. Since then Gordon Pasha and M. Gessi have navigated Albert Nyanza. They curtailed the proportions it showed on first maps, and proved that, as Lady Baker supposed, it had a southern inlet, which was traced for a hundred miles till it ended in a mighty ambatch swamp, or collection of
stagnant waters, which may be counted as the Lake Nzige of the natives, and of which Colonel Baker so often heard.
These travellers also settled forever one of the delusions under which Livingstone ever labored, and that was, that the sources of the Nile must be sought as far south as the great Lake Tanganyika, and even further.
Since then, other travellers have traced the whole course of the Victoria Nile to Lake Victoria Nyanza, discovering on their way a new lake, Ibrahim. And this brings us to Victoria Nyanza again, which must be studied more fully, for after all we may not have seen in Albert Nyanza, so much of an ultimate Nile reservoir as we thought. It is hard too, of course, to rob our travels of their glory, but we cannot bear laurels at the expense of after discovered truth.
It was in 1858 that Speke and Grant, pushing their perilous way westward from Zanzibar on the east coast of Africa, discovered and partly navigated Lake Tanganyika, probably the greatest fresh water reservoir in Central Africa. On their return journey, and while resting at Unyanyembe, Speke heard from an Arab source of a still larger lake to the north. Grant was suspicious of the information, and remained where he was, while Speke made a trial. After a three weeks march over an undulating country, intersected by streams flowing northward, he came in view (July 30, 1858) of the head of a deep gulf expanding to the north. Pursuing his journey along its eastern cliffs, he saw that it opened into an ocean-like expanse of water, girted by forests on the right and left, but stretching eastward and northward into space. He felt that he stood on a Nile source, but could not inquire further then.
When he returned to England and made his discovery known, powerful arguments sprang up about these Nile sources. Speke and one school contended the Nile reservoirs were under the equator and that Victoria Nyanza was one of them, if not the only one. Burton and others contended that Tanganyika, and perhaps a series of lakes further south, must be the true sources. So in 1860 Speke and Grant were back in Africa, determined to solve the mystery. They were kept back by