On the 18th, Kurshid Agha was summoned by the constant fire of musketry, a mile or two down the river, and went off in his vessels to the relief. A party of his had come across from the N'yambara country with ivory, and on the banks of the Nile, a few miles north of this, were engaged fighting with the natives. He arrived just in time to settle the difficulty, and next day came back again, having shot some of the enemy and captured their cows. Petherick, we heard, was in a difficulty of the same kind, upon which I proposed to go down with Baker and Grant to succour him; but he arrived in time, in company with his wife and Dr James Murie, to save us the trouble, and told me he had brought a number of men with him, carrying ivory, for the purpose now of looking after me on the east bank of the Nile, by following its course up to the south, though he had given up all hope of seeing me, as a report had reached him of the desertion of my porters at Ugogo. He then offered me his dyabir, as well as anything else that I wanted that lay within his power to give. Suffice it to say, I had, through Baker's generosity, at that very moment enough and to spare; but at his urgent request I took a few more yards of cloth for my men, and some cooking fat; and, though I offered to pay for it, he declined to accept any return at my hands.
Though I naturally felt much annoyed at Petherick—for I had hurried away from Uganda, and separated from Grant at Kari, solely to keep faith with him—I did not wish to break friendship, but dined and conversed with him, when it transpired that his Vakil, or agent, who went south from the N'yambara station, came amongst the N'yam N'yam, and heard from them that a large river, four days' journey more to the southward, was flowing from east to west, beyond which lived a tribe of "women," who, when they wanted to marry, mingled with them in the stream and returned; and then, again, beyond this tribe of women there lived another tribe of women and dogs. Now, this may all seem a very strange story to those who do not know the negro's and Arab's modes of expression; but to me it at once came very natural, and, according to my view, could be interpreted thus:—The river, running from east to west, according to the native mode of expressing direction, could be nothing but the Little Luta Nzige running the opposite way, according to fact and our mode of expression. The first tribe of women were doubtless the Wanyoro—called women by the naked tribes on this side because they wear bark coverings—an effeminate appendage, in the naked man's estimation; and the second tribe must have been in allusion to the dog-keeping Waganda, who also would be considered women, as they wear bark clothes. In my turn, I told Petherick he had missed a good thing by not going up the river to look for me; for, had he done so, he would not only have had the best ivory-grounds to work upon, but, by building a vessel in Madi above the cataracts, he would have had, in my belief, some hundred miles of navigable water to transport his merchandise. In short, his succouring petition was most admirably framed, had he stuck to it, for the welfare of both of us. [28]
We now received our first letters from home, and in one from Sir Roderick Murchison I found the Royal Geographical Society had awarded me their "founder's medal" for the discovery of the Victoria N'yanza in 1858.
Conclusion
My journey down to Alexandria was not without adventure, and carried me through scenes which, in other circumstances, it might have been worth while to describe. Thinking, however, that I have already sufficiently trespassed on the patience of the reader, I am unwilling to overload my volume with any matter that does not directly relate to the solution of the great problem which I went to solve. Having now, then, after a period of twenty-eight months, come upon the tracks of European travellers, and met them face to face, I close my Journal, to conclude with a few explanations, for the purpose of comparing the various branches of the Nile with its affluences, so as to show their respective values.
The first affluent, the Bahr el Ghazal, took us by surprise; for instead of finding a huge lake, as described in our maps, at an elbow of the Nile, we found only a small piece of water resembling a duck-pond buried in a sea of rushes. The old Nile swept through it with majestic grace, and carried us next to the Geraffe branch of the Sobat river, the second affluent, which we found flowing into the Nile with a graceful semicircular sweep and good stiff current, apparently deep, but not more than fifty yards broad.
Next in order came the main stream of the Sobat, flowing into the Nile in the same graceful way as the Geraffe, which in breadth it surpassed, but in velocity of current was inferior. The Nile by these additions was greatly increased; still it did not assume that noble appearance which astonished us so much, immediately after the rainy season, when we were navigating it in canoes in Unyoro.
I here took my last lunar observations, and made its mouth N. lat. 9° 20' 48", E. long. 31° 24' 0". The Sobat has a third mouth farther down the Nile, which unfortunately was passed without my knowing it; but as it is so well known to be unimportant, the loss was not great.
Next to be treated of is the famous Blue Nile, which we found a miserable river, even when compared with the Geraffe branch of the Sobat. It is very broad at the mouth, it is true, but so shallow that our vessel with difficulty was able to come up it. It has all the appearance of a mountain stream, subject to great periodical fluctuations. I was never more disappointed that with this river; if the White river was cut off from it, its waters would all be absorbed before they could reach Lower Egypt.