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 towards the north.
This was the great reservoir of the Nile!
The first coup d'oeil from the summit of the cliff 1,500 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 southwest 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 the 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.
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