of the Pisan Cortosa. A critic in Colburn’s New Monthly Magazine (The Nile Basin), remarks, ‘It was when travelling with Burton that Speke first discovered Lake Nyanza, and his less fortunate fellow-traveller seems never to have forgiven the brilliancy of an achievement which left him comparatively in the shade.’ Mean, indeed, must be the man who thus gratuitously imputes the meanest of motives to another! What interest can the leader of an expedition have in reducing his field of exploration, of not doing his best, of not discovering as much as Fate allows him to discover? May he not expect, like the general of an army, at least to share in the glory won by the arms of his lieutenants? Capt. Speke was provided with a gang of 34 guards, servants, and porters: he much wanted the little Shaykh Said, but the latter wept privily at the prospect of meeting death by want and hardship, and I allowed him to remain at Kazeh, lest his intrigues might work mischief. Though my companion was a match for ‘Sidi Bombay,’ he was a child in the hands of the tricky Arab.
Captain Speke made a most spirited march. On August 3rd he sighted the ‘Nyanza Lake,’ to which he gave 3740 feet of altitude; and he returned, after covering in 47 days (June 9th to August 25th) 300 direct and 425 indirect geographical miles. He brought back the information that this great equatorial reservoir was known to the people as Nyanza, a generic term which, like Nyassa, means a sea, a stream, or a lake. Standing 250 feet above its level, he saw 20 to 22 (not ‘over a hundred’) miles of surface, hardly enough to command a liquid horizon between the islets which he called Mazita, Ukerewe, and Majid.
Presently, by comparing Arab accounts, I found in Capt. Speke’s diary sundry uncertainties of detail, such as making Mazita, and perhaps Ukewere, insular instead of peninsular features. Nor could I hear a word beyond the old legend current amongst African tribes, from Somaliland to the Mozambique, touching white men and ships navigating a lake or a river in the interior. The Kazeh people, as I ascertained by consulting them, Knoblecher in hand, equally ignored the familiar tribal names of Nyam-Nyam, Rungo, Mundu, Dor, Jur, Kek, Nuehr, and the Shilluks, West, with the Dinkas, East of the Nile. Their Bari was simply ‘Bahri’—Accolæ of the sea or river. But Capt. Speke had discovered on ‘that broad open lake,’ not only the ‘sources of some great river,’ not only the Palus Orientalis Nili, but ‘The Sources of the Nile’: he had raised the veil of Isis, he had settled for ever the ‘mystery of old Nilus’ origin.’ The subject soon proved too sore for discussion, and evidently at that time my companion began to prepare for a future campaign, by lavishly retouching his maps, and by barring the Upper Tanganyika from any possible connection with the northern basin.
During the second expedition Capt. Speke left Kazeh in May, 1861, and travelled to the N. West, without ever sighting the ‘broad surface.’ Living with King Rumanika of Karagwah, he might have visited it, but he did not. He then turned nearly due north, and on January 28th, 1862, he first viewed, from Mashonde, a water which he instinctively determined to be the Nyanza. In vain the petty chief Makaka (Journal, p. 130) assured him that ‘there were two lakes, and not one’: as vainly others made the Mwerango, or Kafu river, rise from a range in the centre of the so-called lake, and ‘did not know what Nyanza he meant.’ These, and other remarks naïvely recorded, could not disperse foregone conclusions; and the explorer never attempted to ascertain by inspection if his preconceived ideas were correct.
We can therefore accept only the southern part of the Nyanza discovered by Capt. Speke, when I despatched him from Kazeh; and the marshy reed-margined and probably shallow N. Western water, which he sighted in January and July, 1862. The result is a blank occupying nearly 29,900 square miles, and of the recognized and official form of the assumed Victoria Nyanza I may observe, that it is a triangle, whose arms, viewed by one standing at the southern apex, trended N. East and N. West; the extremities, 240 miles distant, being connected arbitrarily by a horizontal base running nearly due East-West a little north of the Equator. Finally, Captain Speke made his own lake a physical impossibility. Within little more than 60 miles from east to west he has given it three main effluents, the Mwerango, the Luajerri, and the Nile or Napoleon channel, to say nothing of the Myo Myanza, the Murchison Creek, the Usoga stream, together with the Asúa river from the Baringo. It is wonderful that our 19th century maps continue to print such a phenomenon. What will posterity say of this magnum opus?
After Captain Speke’s return we debated, in frequent conferences with the Arabs, the advisability of remaining at Kazeh till fresh supplies could be procured from Zanzibar, thus enabling us to visit the northern kingdoms—Karagwah, Uganda, and Unyoro. Our good friends unanimously advised us to reserve the exploration for another journey. The lake was, unlike the Tanganyika, unnavigated; to travel along the S. Eastern shores was, they said, impossible owing to the ferocity of the pastoral tribes, and the mutual jealousies of great despots on the western banks would necessitate a large outfit, and perhaps years of delay. Their advice appearing sound, I applied myself to the ways and means of marching upon Kilwa, thus avoiding a return by the same road, which led us into Unyamwezi. But as the former project was dismissed because we could not depend upon assistance from Zanzibar, so the latter was frustrated by the unmanageable obstinacy of our porters. I wanted exceptional resources for bribing them into compliance, and our leave of absence having ended, it was judged imprudent to attempt that expenditure of time, which in these regions alone compensates for extensive outlay of capital.
The East African Expedition bade adieu to Unyanyembe on Sept. 26, 1858, and after a march eventless except in delays and difficulties caused by desertion and sickness, by the drought and the famine then desolating the land, it reached in early February, 1859, the little maritime village Konduchi. From the slope of red hill we hailed with delight the first gleam of the Indian Ocean, and my companion thanked me with effusion for the efforts which I had made in enabling him to travel with me. Verily ‘there were nights and days before us,’ and we thought little of what presently was to be the consequence!
The results of the East African Expedition of 1857–1859, which, with the aid of many friends—their names will be found in the preceding pages—was organized wholly by myself, may thus be briefly summed up. When ignorant of the country and knowing little of its languages, preceded only by a French officer, who was murdered shortly after he landed, and under other immense disadvantages, especially the deaths of Sayyid Said and Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, I led the most disorderly of caravans into the heart of Intertropical Africa, and succeeded in discovering the Tanganyika, and the southern portion of what is now called the Victoria Nyanza Lake. The road was thus thoroughly laid open: those who would follow me had only to read vol. xxxi. (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society) and the ‘Lake Regions of Central Africa,’ to learn all they require concerning seasons and sickness, industry and commerce, what outfit and material were necessary, what guides, escort, and porters were wanted, what obstacles might be expected, and what facilities would probably offer themselves. My labours thus rendered easy the ingress of future expeditions, which had only to tread in my steps. Dr Beke, the traveller who deserves all praise for having suggested a feasible way to explore the Nile Sources, kindly found ‘reason to call this emphatically a memorable Expedition.’ My friend Mr Findlay’s estimate is still more flattering: ‘The first East African Expedition has had scant justice done to it of late, seeing that it was the finest harvest, and that by much the most abundant one, of those brilliant discoveries in Eastern Africa so eminently fostered by the Royal Geographical Society.’
One wise in his generation whispered into my ear before returning to England, ‘Boldly assert that you have discovered the source of the Nile—if you are right, tant mieux, if wrong, you will have made your game before the mistake is found out!’ I need hardly explain why the advice was rejected, nor does it befit me to complain that Honesty, in my case at least, has not hitherto proved the best policy. Meruisse satis!
* * * * *