delays till 1862, when, as we have seen, they caught sight of the lake they sought. Keeping on high ground, they followed it northward to Uganda where they fell in with Mtesa, the king. Mtesa has been painted in all sorts of colors by different explorers. Speke and Grant formed the worst possible opinion of him, but they passed through his dominions safely, till they came to the northern outlet of the lake—the Victoria Nile. Taking for granted that this was the real Nile, they cut across the country to Gondokoro, where they met Baker on his southern march, as we have already seen.
This unsatisfactory journey did not set controversy at rest. Speke’s opponents ridiculed the idea of a body of water, 250 miles long and 7000 feet above the sea level, existing right under the Equator. Moreover they denied that its northern outlet was the Nile, or if so, that there must be a southern inlet. All the old maps located the sources of the stream further south. Colonel Baker heard a native story, in 1869, to the effect that boats had gone from Albert Nyanza to Ujiji on lake Tanganyika. Livingstone held firmly to the opinion that all these equatorial lakes were one with Tanganyika—till he disproved it himself. He never was convinced that Victoria Nyanza existed at all as Speke had mapped it, nor that it had any connection with the Nile River.
Thus what Baker and Speke and Grant had been glorying in as great discoveries, but which they failed to establish by full research, was still a puzzle. They are not to be robbed of any honors, but it is not claiming too much to say that the real discoverer of the true Nile reservoir is due to the American Stanley. At least he resolved to solve the problem finally and set discussion at rest. He would establish the claims of Victoria Nyanza to vastness and to its functions as a Nile source, or show it up as a humbug.
Henry M. Stanley is no ordinary figure among African explorers. In tenacity of purpose, courage and endurance, he is second only to Livingstone. In originality, insight and crowning effort, he is ahead of all. He introduced a new method of African travel and brought a new power at his back. Already he had, under
the auspices of the New York Herald, made a successful Central African journey and “discovered Livingstone.” On his present expedition he was accredited to both American and English papers, and bore the flags of the two countries. He travelled in a half scientific and half military fashion.
HENRY M. STANLEY.
He started from Zanzibar November 17, 1874. Let the reader keep in mind that this was his second exploring trip into Africa—the first having been made a few years before under the auspices of the New York Herald for the rescue of Livingstone, if alive. Here, in his own words, is the gallant young leader’s order of march:—
