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Updated: June 8, 2025
According to his description, Magungo is situated on a lake so large that no one knows its limits. Its breadth is such that, if you journey two days east and the same distance west, there is no land visible on either quarter, while to the south its direction is utterly unknown. Large vessels arrive at Magungo from distant and unknown parts, bringing cowrie-shells and beads in exchange for ivory.
The natives who shot arrows must have come from Magungo, as none of the other districts were armed with bows. The arrows that had been shot at us, which my men had collected, were thickly poisoned with a hard gummy matter. It was now rendered certain that a snare had been laid for the massacre of Major Abdullah's party.
The cradle of the Nile Arrival at Magungo The blind leading the blind Murchison Falls. The beach was perfectly clean sand, upon which the waves rolled like those of the sea, throwing up weeds precisely as seaweed may be seen upon the English shore.
We had been so entirely hidden while on the lake on the other side of the reed bank that we had been unable to see the eastern, or Magungo shore; we now found ourselves in a delightful spot beneath the shade of several enormous trees on firm sandy and rocky ground, while the country rose in a rapid incline to the town of Magungo, about a mile distant, on an elevated ridge.
From Magungo he told me that I should see the Nile issuing from the lake close to the spot where the Somerset entered, and that the canoes should take me down the river, and porters should carry my effects from the nearest point to Shooa, and deliver me at my old station without delay.
I had followed the Somerset from its junction with the lake at Magungo to this point; here it was a beautiful river, precisely similar in character to the point at which I had left it at Karuma: we were now within thirty miles of that place, and about eighteen miles from the point opposite Rionga's island, where we had first hit upon the river on our arrival from the north.
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.
I had a bad attack of fever that evening, and missed my star for the latitude; but on the following morning before daybreak I obtained a good observation of Vega, and determined the latitude of Magungo 2 degrees 16 minutes due west from Atada or Karuma Falls.
I impressed upon our guide and the chief that we must be furnished with large canoes immediately, as we had no time to spare, and I started off Rabonga to Magungo, where he was to meet us with our riding oxen. The animals would be taken by a path upon the high ground; there was no possibility of travelling near the lake, as the cliffs in many places descended abruptly into deep water.
The lake can be no other than the 'N'yanza, which, if the position of Magungo be correct, extends much farther north than Speke had supposed. The 'white men' must be Arab traders who bring cowries from Zanzibar. I shall take the first opportunity to push for Magungo.
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