I now heard the distressing news of the death of my poor friend
Speke. I could not realize the truth of this melancholy report
until I read the details of his fatal accident in the appendix of
a French translation of his work. It was but a sad consolation
that I could confirm his discoveries, and bear witness to the
tenacity and perseverance with which he had led his party through
the untrodden path of Africa to the first Nile source. This
being the close of the expedition, I wish it to be distinctly
understood how thoroughly I support the credit of Speke and Grant
for their discovery of the first and most
elevated source of the Nile in the great Victoria N'yanza.
Although I call the river between the two lakes the "Somerset," as
it was named by Speke upon the map he gave to me, I must repeat
that it is positively the Victoria Nile, and the name "Somerset"
is only used to distinguish it, in my description, from the entire
Nile that issues from the Albert N'yanza.
Whether the volume of water added by the latter lake be greater than
that supplied by the Victoria, the fact remains unaltered: the Victoria
is the highest and first-discovered source; the Albert is the second
source, but the ENTIRE RESERVOIR of the Nile waters. I use the term
SOURCE as applying to each reservoir as a head or main starting-point of
the river. I am quite aware that it is a debated point among
geographers, whether a lake can be called a SOURCE, as it owes its
origin to one or many rivers; but, as the innumerable torrents of the
mountainous regions of Central Africa pour into these great reservoirs,
it would be impossible to give preference to any individual stream. Such
a theory would become a source of great confusion, and the Nile sources
might remain forever undecided; a thousand future travellers might
return, each with his particular source in his portfolio, some stream of
insignificant magnitude being pushed forward as the true origin of the
Nile.
I found few letters awaiting me at Khartoum: all the European population
of the place had long ago given us up for lost. It was my wish to start
without delay direct for England, but there were extraordinary
difficulties in this wretched country of the Soudan. A drought of two
years had created a famine throughout the land, attended by a cattle and
camel plague, that had destroyed so many camels that all commerce was
stagnated. No merchandise could be transported from Khartoum; thus no
purchases could be made by the traders in the interior: the country,
always wretched, was ruined. The plague, or a malignant typhus, had run
riot in Khartoum:
