General Lamboozi now became thoroughly alarmed, and stubbornly refused to grant Stanley's request to move to the edge of the lake and intrench. It seemed probable that the natives meant to give battle, but with what numbers or prospect of success, Lamboozi took no measure to ascertain. Next day he resolved to march back. Entreaties and threats were alike in vain, and there was nothing left for Stanley to do but march back with him. He was greatly disappointed and thoroughly disgusted, but there was no help for it. That Unyoro and Abba Rega would be hostile, Stanley knew before he started, and on that account took so large a force with him. Yet he says, after this miserable failure, that it was a foolhardy attempt at the outset. Looking at it calmly, he pronounces it a great folly, redeemed from absurdity only by "the success of having penetrated through Unyoro and reached the Albert." It is difficult to see wherein lies the greatness of this success; for, according to his own account, it was one of the most peaceful marches he ever performed, with hardly enough incident in it to make it interesting. It matters little, however; all that can be said is, they marched up to the lake and then marched back again.
On the morning of the 13th, they began their return in order of battle—five hundred spearmen in front, five hundred as a rear guard, and the expedition in the centre—but no enemy attacked them or attempted to do anything but pick up some stragglers. The next day the expedition formed the rear guard, and once some natives rushed out of the woods to attack them, but were quickly dispersed by a few shots.
This is all that happened to this army in terrible Unyoro, and presents a striking contrast to Baker's gallant march through it with his little band, fighting every day for nearly a week. Four days after, without any further molestation, they re-entered Uganda, where Lamboozi turned off to his home. Stanley had heard no news of Gordon or of the steamers he was to place on the lake according to the plan of Baker; and though at first he thought that he would seek some other way to reach it and make his explorations, he finally resolved to start for Tanganika, which he would reach in about four months, and explore it. Hence, while Lamboozi turned eastward toward Lake Victoria, he with his little band, turned southward. He sent a letter, however, to Mtesa, informing him of Lamboozi's cowardice and refusal to build a camp at Lake Albert, and telling him also that this redoubtable general had robbed him. He had intrusted to his care three porter's loads of goods to relieve his own carriers, and these he had appropriated as his own.
When the letter reached the emperor he was thrown into a towering passion, and immediately dispatched a body of troops to seize the general, with orders to strip him of his wives, slaves, cattle and everything he possessed, and bring him bound to his presence. He also sent letter after letter to Stanley, begging him to return, and he would give him ninety thousand men, with brave generals to command them, who would take him to Lake Albert, and protect him there till he had finished his explorations. Stanley was very much moved by this generous offer and the anxiety of the king to make amends for Lamboozi's poltroonery and thieving conduct. The noble savage felt it keenly that he, who valued so highly the esteem of Stanley, should be disgraced in his sight, and it was hard for the latter to refuse his urgent request to be allowed to redeem his character and his pledge. But Stanley had had enough of Waganda troops, and felt that whatever was accomplished hereafter must be by his own well-trained, compact, brave little band. He kept on his way, and never saw Mtesa again.
He had been able to add considerably to the geography of the country bordering on Lake Albert. Usongora, a promontory running thirty miles into the lake southward, he ascertained to be the great salt field, from whence all the surrounding countries obtain their salt. From all he could hear, it was truly a land of wonders, but he says the man who should attempt to explore it would need a thousand muskets, for the natives cannot be enticed into peace by cloth and beads. They care for nothing but milk and goat skins. "Among the wonders credited to it," he says, "are a mountain emitting fire and stones, a salt lake of considerable extent, several hills of rock-salt, a large plain encrusted thickly with salt and alkali, a breed of very large dogs of extraordinary ferocity, and a race of such long-legged natives, that ordinary mortals regard them with surprise and awe." They do not allow members of their tribe to intermarry with strangers, and their food, like that of the dwellers in the Himalaya Mountains, consists chiefly of milk. Mtesa once invaded their territory with one hundred thousand men, to capture cows, of which the natives have an immense number, and in watching which consists their sole occupation. The army returned with twenty thousand, but they were obtained at such a fearful sacrifice of life, that the raid will not be repeated.
Stanley rested a few days after Lamboozi left him, before proceeding northward. He then continued his march leisurely through the country, inquiring on the way the character of the tribes westward toward that part of Lake Albert which extended south from where he struck it, but one and all were reported hostile to the passage of any strangers through their territory.
Arriving on the Kagera River, in Karagwe, he found the King Rumanika, a mild, pleasant-spoken man and very friendly, but he told him that none of the neighboring tribes would let him enter their lands. Stanley being a little suspicious of the motives that prompted this bad report of the surrounding tribes, to test him, asked him if he had any objections to his exploring his country. He said no, and cheerfully promised to furnish him guides and an escort, and his party should be supplied with food free of charge. Stanley, surprised at this generosity, at once got ready to start. He first went south to Lake Windermere, a small body of water so named by Captain Speke, because of its fancied resemblance to the lake of that name in England. The Lady Alice was taken there, screwed together, and launched on the peaceful waters. Accompanied by six native canoes, he sailed round it and then entered Kagera River, called by Speke the Kitangule. Suddenly it flashed on Stanley's mind that he had discovered the true parent of the Victoria Nile. It fed and drained this little lake some nine miles long. Moreover, he found that there was a depth of fifty-two feet of water and a breadth of one hundred and fifty feet. He therefore pushed up it some three days, and came to another lake nine miles long and six miles wide. Working up through the papyrus that covered the stream, he came to another lake or pond a mile and a half long. Ascending an eminence, he discovered that this whole portion of the river was a lake, large tracts of which were covered with papyrus, or that vegetation which we have seen Baker had to contend with in ascending the Nile. It seemed solid ground, while in fact it was a large body of water covered over, with here and there an opening, making a separate lake, of which Windermere was the largest. This apparently underground lake was some eighty miles in length and fourteen in width.
Following the river as it flowed eastward into the Victoria Nyanza, he found he entered another lake, thirteen miles long and some eight miles broad. This was, of course, the continuation of the lake, covered at intervals with this tropical vegetation, which gave to it the appearance of land. There were in all, seventeen of these lakes. This river now broadening as the formation of the land causes it to expand, now narrowing till its channel is forty feet deep, it at last tumbles over cataracts and rushes through rapids into the Victoria Nyanza. All this seems of little account, except, as Stanley says, he has found in it the true source of the Victoria Nile.
The great and persistent efforts to find out the source of the Nile have led explorers to push their theories to an absurd extent. Because Herodotus made the Nile to rise in some large springs, they seem to think they must find something back and beyond a great lake as its source. Now, when a river flows right on through one lake after another, making lakes as the formation of the ground allows, it of course maintains its integrity and oneness.