Suddenly, On The
15th 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 them they were walking along the bank of the river
towards my boats. At a distance of about a hundred yards I recognised my
old friend Speke, and with a heart beating with joy I took off my cap
and gave a welcome hurrah!
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