The dramatic meeting between Livingstone and Stanley on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in 1871 had impressed the public in England and America, and an expedition was now planned by the proprietors of two great newspapers, the London Daily Telegraph and the New York Herald. Stanley was chosen to command it. And perhaps there is hardly a better-known book of modern travels than Through the Dark Continent, in which he has related all his adventures and discoveries with regard to the Congo. Leaving England in August 1874 with three Englishmen and a large boat in eight sections, the Lady Alice, for the navigation of lake and river, the little exploring party reached Zanzibar a few weeks later and started on their great inland journey. The way to Victoria Nyanza lay through what is now known as German East Africa. They reached Ugogo safely and turned to the north-west, entering an immense and silent bush-field, where no food was obtainable. On the eighth day five people died of starvation and the rest of the expedition was only saved by the purchase of some grain from a distant village. But four more died and twenty-eight miles under a hot sun prostrated one of the white men, who died a few days later. Thus they entered Ituru, "a land of naked people, whose hills drained into a marsh, whence issue the southernmost waters of the Nile."
Here they were surrounded by angry savages on whom they had to fire, and from whose country they were glad to escape.
On 27th February 1875, after tramping for one hundred and three days, they arrived at their destination. One of the white men who was striding forward suddenly waved his hat, and with a beaming face shouted out, "I have seen the lake, sir; it is grand."
Here, indeed, was the Victoria Nyanza, "which a dazzling sun transformed into silver," discovered by Speke sixteen years before, and supposed to be the source of the Nile. The men struck up a song of triumph—
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"Sing, O friends, sing; the journey is ended. Sing aloud, O friends; sing to the great Nyanza. Sing all, sing loud, O friends, sing to the great sea; Give your last look to the lands behind, and then turn to the sea. Lift up your heads, O men, and gaze around. Try if you can to see its end. See, it stretches moons away, This great, sweet, fresh-water sea." |
"I thought," says Stanley, "there could be no better way of settling, once and for ever, the vexed question, than by circumnavigating the lake."
So the Lady Alice was launched, and from the shores of Speke Gulf, as he named the southern end, the explorer set forth, leaving the two remaining Englishmen in charge of the camp.
"The sky is gloomy," writes Stanley, "the rocks are bare and rugged, the land silent and lonely. The rowing of the people is that of men who think they are bound to certain death; their hearts are full of misgivings as slowly we move through the dull dead waters." The waters were not dead for long. A gale rose up and the lake became wild beyond description. "The waves hissed as we tore along, the crew collapsed and crouched into the bottom of the boat, expecting the end of the wild venture, but the Lady Alice bounded forward like a wild courser and we floated into a bay, still as a pond."
So they coasted along the shores of the lake. Their guide told them it would take years to sail round their sea, that on the shores dwelt people with long tails, who preferred to feed on human beings rather than cattle or goats. But, undaunted, the explorer sailed on, across the Napoleon Channel, through which flowed the superfluous waters of the lake rushing northward as the Victoria Nile. "On the western side of the Channel is Uganda, dominated by an Emperor who is supreme over about three millions of people. He soon heard of my presence on the lake and dispatched a flotilla to meet me. His mother had dreamed the night before that she had seen a boat sailing, sailing like a fish-eagle over the Nyanza. In the stern of the boat was a white man gazing wistfully towards Uganda."