After Skirting The Floating Reeds For About A Mile, We Turned Sharp To The East, And Entered A Broad Channel Of Water Bounded On Either Side By The Everlasting Reeds.

This we were informed was the embouchure of the Somerset river from the Victoria N'yanza.

The same river that we had crossed at Karuma, boiling and tearing along its rocky course, now entered the Albert N'yanza as dead water! I could not understand this; there was not the slightest current; the channel was about half a mile wide, and I could hardly convince myself that this was not an arm of the lake branching to the east. After searching for some time for a landing place among the wonderful banks of reeds, we discovered a passage that had evidently been used as an approach by canoes, but so narrow that our large canoe could with difficulty be dragged through - all the men walking through the mud and reeds, and towing with their utmost strength. Several hundred paces of this tedious work brought us through the rushes into open water, about eight feet deep, opposite to a clean rocky shore. We had heard voices for some time while obscured on the other side of the rushes, and we now found a number of natives, who had arrived to meet us, with the chief of Magungo and our guide Rabonga, whom we had sent in advance with the riding oxen from Vacovia. The water was extremely shallow near the shore, and the natives rushed in and dragged the canoes by sheer force over the mud to the land.

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