After The Scene Just Enacted I Felt Sure That My Escort
Would Give Me More Cause For Anxiety Than The Acknowledged Hostility Of
The Natives.
I had been waiting at Gondokoro twelve days, expecting the arrival of
Debono's party from the south, with whom I wished to return.
Suddenly,
on the 15th of February, I heard the rattle of musketry at a great
distance and a dropping fire from the south. To give an idea of the
moment I must extract verbatim from my journal as written at the time.
"Guns firing in the distance; Debono's ivory porters arriving, for whom
I have waited. My men rushed madly to my boat, with the report that two
white men were with them who had come from the SEA! Could they be Speke
and Grant? Off I ran, and soon met them in reality. Hurrah for old
England! They had come from the Victoria N'yanza, from which the Nile
springs . . . . The mystery of ages solved! With my pleasure of meeting
them is the one disappointment, that I had not met them farther on the
road in my search for them; however, the satisfaction is, that my
previous arrangements had been such as would have insured my finding
them had they been in a fix . . . . My projected route would have
brought me vis-a-vis with them, as they had come from the lake by the
course I had proposed to take . . . . All my men perfectly mad with
excitement. Firing salutes as usual with ball cartridge, they shot one
of my donkeys - a melancholy sacrifice as an offering at the completion
of this geographical discovery."
When I first met the two explorers they were walking along the bank of
the river toward my boats.
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