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Livingstone, undoubtedly, will have solved the problem of the sources of the Nile; but the source of the Congo is still to be discovered, unless the expedition which started from the West Coast to the relief of Livingstone has ere this settled the question: while Sir Samuel Baker, when once he gets his steamers launched on the waters of the Albert Nyanza, is not likely to stop till he has made further discoveries to the west and south of his vast lake.
His book was scarcely off the press when the letters describing Stanley's boat journeys around the shores of Victoria Nyanza began to be published in London and New York; and the foolish fellow was compelled to recall all the copies of his book that had not passed beyond his reach, and eliminate the statements that made him so ridiculous. Fortunately, there are not many explorers of this stripe.
With respect to an allied species, in which there is an equal sexual difference in colour, see Sir S. Baker, 'The Albert Nyanza, 1866, vol. ii. p. 627. For the A. sing-sing, Gray, 'Cat. B. Mus. p. 100. Desmarest, 'Mammalogie, p. 468, on the A. caama. The emasculated bull reverts to the colour of the female.
At length, after triumphing by sheer skill and will over a thousand difficulties, Mackay reached the southern shore of Victoria Nyanza at Kagei, to find that his surviving companions had gone on to Uganda in an Arab sailing-dhow, leaving on the shore the Daisy, which had been too small to carry them.
We spent a few days at Nairobi, now a flourishing town of some 6,000 inhabitants, supplied with every modern comfort and luxury, including a well laid-out race course; and after a short trip to Lake Victoria Nyanza and Uganda, we made our way back to the Eldama Ravine, which lies some twenty miles north of Landiani Station in the province of Naivasha.
On his return to Kazeh he at once declared that the Victoria Nyanza and its affluents were the head waters of the Nile, and that consequently he had discovered them. As a matter of fact he had no firmer ground for making that statement than Burton had in giving the honour to Tanganyika, and each clung tenaciously to his own theory. Speke, indeed, had a very artistic eye.
We found them only in a short stretch of five or six miles, although they doubtless are found all the way down the Nzoia River to Victoria Nyanza. The cob is a curiously reliable animal. He likes one certain place that he is accustomed to, and nothing can drive him away. If you see him there one afternoon, you are reasonably certain of coming back the next afternoon and seeing him there again.
The last intelligence concerning the "unity" of the lake is from Colonel C. C. Long, a staff-officer in the service of His Highness the Khedive, who was sent by Colonel Gordon on a friendly mission to King Mtesa of Uganda. With permission to descend "Murchison Creek," and to view "Lake Victoria Nyanza," Colonel Long, after a march of three hours, took boat.
Stanley stated that King Mtesa was ready and willing to receive Christian teachers, if any were prepared to go out to his kingdom of Uganda. The result of that letter was, that in a few days no less than £14,000 was sent to the Church Missionary Society, in order that they might have the means to establish a mission by the shores of the Victoria Nyanza.
Baker continued his search, and succeeded in showing that another source of the Nile was to be found in a smaller lake to the west, which he named Albert Nyanza. Thus these three Englishmen had combined to solve the long-sought problem of the sources of the Nile.
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