More important, however, than Baringo is the new Lake announced to us by Mr Wakefield’s African Pandit, Sádi bin Ahedi. The latter ignoring Nyanza, calls it Nyanja, possibly a dialectic variety, and therefore a difference neither to be dwelt upon too much nor wholly to be neglected. Of greater value is the name Bahari ya Pili, or Second Sea, not called so, we are expressly informed, because inland of the First Sea—Indian Ocean—but evidently because leading to a neighbouring water on the west. Most suggestive of all, and therefore adopted by me, is the term ‘Bahari ya Ukara,’ or Sea of Ukara, the latter being the region on the Eastern shore. Here we detect the true origin of the ancient Garava, and of Captain Speke’s Ukewere, which he applied to a peninsula projecting from the Eastern shore, and which the Wanyamwezi, translating ‘island water,’ gave to the Oriental portion of the so-called Victoria Nyanza.
Respecting the length of the Ukara Lake, Sádi was informed that it could be crossed by canoes in 6 full days, paddling from sunrise to sunset; but if the men went on night and day, the voyage is to be accomplished in three days. Now the native craft used upon these dangerous plateau-waters never dare to cross them: the voyager may rush over the narrow parts of the Tanganyika Lake, but of course he would not attempt the physical impossibility of navigating without chart or compass beyond sight of land. It is impossible to believe in a canoe-cruise of 6 days across the lake: it is evident that a coasting-cruise is meant. The total of hours, allowing the day to be 12, and without halts, would be 72. Upon the Tanganyika I estimated the rate at a little more than 2 knots an hour. Thus, in round numbers, we have 145 miles, which probably require reduction: an estimate of the mean amount of error distributed on the whole of Mr Wakefield’s ‘Routes’ gives, according to the annotator, an exaggeration of 1.24 : 1.0; and of course, when estimating the length of these distant and dangerous navigations, exaggeration would be excessive. We may, therefore, fairly assume the semi-circumference of the Ukara Lake at 120 miles, and the total circumference at 240. Sádi, we are told (p. 309), made Bahari-ni on the Eastern shore the terminus of his long journey from Tanga Bandar to the ‘Lake Nyanza’ (Nyanja?). Let us protract the full 145 miles as the exceptional rate of 3 knots an hour upon Captain Speke’s last map, without allowing anything for the sinuosities of the coast, and the end would strike the entrance of ‘Jordan Nullah’ off the ‘Bengal Archipelago,’ about half the width of the so-called ‘Victoria Nyanza.’
As regards the breadth of the Ukara Lake, we read (p. 310), ‘Standing on the Eastern shore, Sádi said he could descry nothing of land in a western direction, except the very faint outline of a mountain summit, far, far away on the horizon.’ This passage is again suggestive. The sandy and level Eastern shore of the Nyanja (i. e. water) or Ukara Lake about Bahari-ni, whence Sádi sighted, it is probably in E. long. (G.) 35° 15′. The easternmost, that is, the nearest, point of the Karagwah, or, as Captain Speke writes it, the Karague Highlands, is in E. long. (G.) 32° 30′. Thus the minimum width is 165 miles, whilst man’s vision under such circumstances would hardly cover a dozen. Here, again, we have room for a First as well as for a Second Sea. Mr Johnston suggests that the mountain-summit in question might be an island rising high in the midst of the Lake; but, he adds, such a feature could not well have been missed entirely by Captain Speke. Here I join issue with him for reasons which can be deduced from these pages—my companion and second in command never saw or heard of the Ukara Lake. But it is highly improbable that those who could tell Sádi the number of days required to cross or to coast along the Lake would not have known whether the summit was that of a mountain on terra firma or of a lacustrine islet. The latter feature is not unfamiliar to Mr Wakefield’s informant: he does not fail to mention (p. 324) the small conical hill in the southern waters of the Baringo Lake.
When Sádi declared that ‘he travelled 60 days (marches?) along the shore without perceiving any signs of its termination,’ he evidently spoke wildly, as Africans will. His assertion that the natives with whom he conversed were unable to give him any information about its northern or southern limit, simply means that in this part of the African interior neither caravans nor individuals trust themselves in strange lands, especially with the prospect of meeting such dangerous plunderers as the Wasuku. Similarly a ‘two months’ journey’ and ‘going to Egypt,’ asserted by ‘all authorities without exception, African and Arab,’ signify nothing but the total ignorance of the informant concerning the country a few leagues beyond his home. A lake 120 miles in length, that is to say, even a little smaller than the Baringo is supposed to be, will amply satisfy all requirements in this matter.
Finally, we have Sádi’s report that 8 or 9 years ago (before 1867?) the Ukara Lake was navigated by Europeans. Certain very white men, we are told, who bought only short ivories (Serivellos), refusing long tusks, and who purchased large quantities of eggs—Africans have learnt by some curious process to connect Europeans with oöphagy—came up in a large vessel, carrying three masts and another in front (bowsprit?), with many white cloths (sails). The event took place only a month and a half before he reached the Lake, and it is described with an exactness of detail which seems to vouch for its truth. If this be a fact, it is clear that the Nyanja cannot be Captain Speke’s Nyanza, and that the visitors could not have made it viâ his ‘White Nile,’ with its immense and manifold obstructions. But it may be that of which he heard (Journal, p. 333) from the ‘Kidi officers,’ who reported a high mountain to rise behind the Asua (Nyarus?) river, and a lake navigated by the Gallas in very large vessels. We now understand why the ‘King’ Mtesa (Ibid. p. 294) offered to send the traveller home (to Zanzibar) in one month by a frequented route, doubtless through the Wamasai and other tribes living between the Nyanja and the Nyanza. Thus Irungu of Uganda (Ibid. p. 187) expressed his surprise that Captain Speke had come all the way round to that country, when he could have taken the short and safe direct route up the mid-length of his own lake—viâ Umasai and Usoga, by which an Arab caravan had travelled.
The Ukara Lake will be found laid down (A.D. 1712) in the Africa of John Senex, F.R.S. (quoted by the late Mr John Hogg, F.R.S., ‘On some old maps of Africa, in which the central equatorial lakes are laid down nearly in their true positions’). It is evidently the Garava of Mercator (A.D. 1623), whose atlas supplies it with a northern effluent draining to the Nile. The ‘Couir’ of D’Anville’s folio atlas (A.D. 1749), and placed where the Lake No and the Bahr el Ghazal actually exist, may be a confusion with the equatorial Lake Kura Kawar, given by Ja’afar Mohammed bin Musa el Khwarazmi (A.D. 833) in the Rasm el Arzi, published in Lelawel’s Géographie du Moyen Age (Brussels, 1850), and, like Garava, both may be derived from Ukara.
The third water is evidently the Nyanza of which I first heard at Kazah of Unyamwezi, whence Captain Speke was despatched on a reconnoitre between July 29 and August 25, 1858. After returning, he reported that this lake being nearly flush with the surface of the level country to the south, bears signs of overflowing for some 13 miles during the rains. The second expedition found no traces of flood on the marshy lands to the North and the N. West of the so-called ‘Victoria Nyanza.’ This fact, combined with a difference of level amounting to 400 feet in the surface of the two waters, speaks for itself. We are justified in suspecting a fourth lake, or broadening of a river along whose banks Captain Speke and Grant travelled northward to Uganda, and there must be more than one, if all his effluents be correctly laid down.
Briefly to resume: Mr Wakefield’s very valuable ‘Routes’ teach us these novelties:
1. That the Baringo is a Lake distinct from the so-called Victoria Nyanza; that it has a northern effluent, the Nyarus, and consequently that its waters are sweet.
2. That the Nyanja, Ukara, Ukerewe, Garava or Bahari ya Pili, is a long narrow formation like the Baringo, perhaps 20 miles broad, with 240 of circumference, and possibly drained to the White River or true Nile by a navigable channel.