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Soundings indicated six feet deep, and the same depth was kept to within a few hundred yards of the principal mouth of the Rusizi. The current was very sluggish; not more than a mile an hour. Though we constantly kept our binocular searching for the river, we could not see the main channel until within 200 yards of it, and then only by watching by what outlet the fishing; canoes came out.
* After the patient investigation of the North end of the Lake, and satisfying ourselves by personal observation that the Rusizi ran into the Lake, the native rumor which Sir Samuel Baker brought home that the Tanganika and the Albert N'Yanza have a water connection still finds many believers!
We felt quite at home when we sat down on our black bear-skin, gay Persian carpet and clean new mats, to rest with our backs to the wall, sipping our tea with the air of comfortable men, and chat over the incidents of the "picnic," as Livingstone persisted in calling our journey to the Rusizi.
The western channel was about eight yards broad. We observed, after we had returned to the bay, that the easternmost channel was about six yards broad, and about ten feet deep, but very sluggish. We had thus examined each of its three mouths, and settled all doubts as to the Rusizi being an effluent or influent.
Mukanigi, governed by Warumashanya, which occupied the whole of the north-eastern head of the lake, through which issued into the lake the small rivers of Karindwa and Mugera wa Kanigi. 3rd. On the eastern half of the district, at the head of the lake, was Usumbura, governed by Simveh, ally and friend of Warumashanya, extending to the eastern bank of the Rusizi. 4th.
On reaching the mouth of the Rusizi, they pushed up it a short distance, but were stopped by its shallowness, it not being navigable for anything but the smallest canoes. It, however, abounds in crocodiles, though not one hippopotamus was seen. The most important point, however, which they discovered was that the current was flowing, at the rate of six to eight miles an hour, into the lake.
"I distinctly deny that `any misleading by my instructions from the Royal Geographical Society as to the position of the White Nile' made me unconscious of the vast importance of ascertaining the direction of the Rusizi River. The fact is, we did our best to reach it, and we failed." Burton's Zanzibar.
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