A
Walk Of About A Mile Through Flat Sandy Meadows Of Fine Turf
Interspersed With Trees And Bushes Brought Us To The Water's Edge.
The
waves were rolling upon a white pebbly beach; I rushed into the lake,
and thirsty with heat and fatigue, with a heart full of gratitude, I
drank deeply from the Sources of the Nile.
CHAPTER XXI.
The cradle of the Nile - Arrival at Magungo - The blind leading the
blind - Murchison Falls.
The beach was perfectly clean sand, upon which the waves rolled like
those of the sea, throwing up weeds precisely as seaweed may be seen
upon the English shore. It was a grand sight to look upon this vast
reservoir of the mighty Nile and to watch the heavy swell tumbling upon
the beach, while far to the south-west the eye searched as vainly for a
bound as though upon the Atlantic. It was with extreme emotion that I
enjoyed this glorious scene. My wife, who had followed me so devotedly,
stood by my side pale and exhausted - a wreck upon the shores of the
great Albert Lake that we had so long striven to reach. No European foot
had ever trod upon its sand, nor had the eyes of a white man ever
scanned its vast expanse of water. We were the first; and this was the
key to the great secret that even Julius Caesar yearned to unravel, but
in vain. Here was the great basin of the Nile that received EVERY DROP
OF WATER, even from the passing shower to the roaring mountain torrent
that drained from Central Africa toward the north. This was the great
reservoir of the Nile!
The first coup d'oeil from the summit of the cliff 1500 feet above the
level had suggested what a closer examination confirmed. The lake was a
vast depression far below the general level of the country, surrounded
by precipitous cliffs, and bounded on the west and south-west by great
ranges of mountains from five to seven thousand feet above the level of
its waters - thus it was the one great reservoir into which everything
MUST drain; and from this vast rocky cistern the Nile made its exit, a
giant in its birth. It was a grand arrangement of nature for the birth
of so mighty and important a stream as the river Nile. The Victoria
N'yanza of Speke formed a reservoir at a high altitude, receiving a
drainage from the west by the Kitangule River; and Speke had seen the
M'fumbiro Mountain at a great distance as a peak among other mountains
from which the streams descended, which by uniting formed the main river
Kitangule, the principal feeder of the Victoria Lake from the west, in
about 2 degrees S. latitude. Thus the same chain of mountains that fed
the Victoria on the east must have a watershed to the west and north
that would flow into the Albert Lake. The general drainage of the Nile
basin tending from south to north, and the Albert Lake extending much
farther north than the Victoria, it receives the river from the latter
lake, and thus monopolizes the entire head-waters of the Nile.
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