The Exit Of The Nile From The Lake Was Plain Enough, And If The Broad
Channel Of Dead Water Were Indeed The Entrance Of The Victoria Nile
(Somerset), The Information Obtained By Speke Would Be Remarkably
Confirmed.
Up to the present time all the information that I had
received from Kamrasi and his people had been correct.
He had told me
that I should be about twenty days from M'rooli to the lake; I had been
eighteen. He had also told me that the Somerset flowed from Karuma
direct to the lake, and that, having joined it, the great Nile issued
from the lake almost immediately, and flowed through the Koshi and Madi
tribes. I now saw the river issuing from the lake within eighteen miles
of Magungo; and the Koshi and the Madi countries appeared close to me,
bordering it on the west and east. Kamrasi being the king, it was
natural that he should know his own frontier most intimately; but,
although the chief of Magungo and all the natives assured me that the
broad channel of dead water at my feet was positively the brawling river
that I had crossed below the Karuma Falls, I could not understand how so
fine a body of water as that had appeared could possibly enter the
Albert lake as dead water. The guide and natives laughed at my unbelief,
and declared that it was dead water for a considerable distance from the
junction with the lake, but that a great waterfall rushed down from a
mountain, and that beyond that fall the river was merely a succession of
cataracts throughout the entire distance of about six days' march to
Karuma Falls.
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