A rich country was passed through, and on the 4th of August the caravan, after leaving the village of Isamiro, ascended a hill, when the vast expanse of the pale blue waters of the Nyanza burst suddenly on the travellers’ gaze. It was early morning. The distant sea-line of the north horizon was defined in the calm atmosphere between the north and west points of the compass. An archipelago of islands intercepted the line of vision to the left. The sheet of water extended far away to the eastward, forming the south and east angle of the lake, while two large islands, distant about twenty or thirty miles, formed the visible north shore of this firth. Ukerewe is the name by which the whole lake is called by the Arabs. Below, at no great distance, was the debouchure of the creek along which he had travelled for the last three days.
This scene would anywhere have arrested the traveller by its peaceful beauty. He writes enthusiastically—
“The islands, each swelling in a gentle slope to a rounded summit clothed with wood, between the rugged, angular, closely-cropping rocks of granite, seen mirrored in the calm surface of the lake, on which is here and there detected the a small black speck—the tiny canoe of some Muanza fisherman. On the gentle-shelving plain below me blue smoke curled above the trees, which here and there partially concealed villages and hamlets, their brown thatched roofs contrasting with the emerald green of the beautiful milk-bush, the coral bunches of which clustered in such profusion round the cottages, and formed alleys and hedgerows about the villages, as ornamental as any garden shrub in England.
“But the pleasure of the mere view vanished in the presence of those more intense and exciting emotions which were called up by the consideration of the commercial and geographical importance of the prospect before me. I no longer felt any doubt that the lake at my feet gave birth to that interesting river the source of which has been the subject of so much speculation and the object of so many explorers. The Arab’s tale was proved to the letter. This is a far more extensive lake than the Tanganyika: so broad, you could not see across it, and so long that nobody knew its length.”
To this magnificent lake Speke gave the name of Victoria Nyanza.
Note. It has since been proved to be only one and the least considerable of the sources of the White Nile, by the later discoveries of Baker and Livingstone.
He now descended to Muanza, on the shores of the lake, having altogether performed a journey of two hundred and twenty-six miles from Cazé.
He was here kindly treated by Sultan Mahaya, with whom an Arab merchant, named Mansur, was residing, who gave him much valuable information.
Taking a walk of three miles along the shores of the lake, accompanied by Mansur and a native, the greatest traveller of the place, he ascended a hill whence he could obtain a good view across the expanse of water spread out before him. Several islands were seen, but some so far-off as scarcely to be distinguishable. Facing to the west-north-west was an unbroken sea horizon, and he calculated that the breadth of the lake was over a hundred miles. The native, when asked the length of the lake, faced to the north, and, nodding his head, indicated by signs that it was something immeasurable, adding that he thought it probably extended to the end of the world.
Poor Mansur had been robbed of his merchandise, by a sultan whose territory was on the shore of the lake, and he had very little chance of obtaining redress.