336 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



walked every inch of the journey dressed in thick woollen clothes, and 

 slept every night between blankets." About 1,000 miles west of the 

 Indian Oeean'and fifty miles south of the equator, and in thirty degrees 

 east longitude, lies a range of mountains, some of the peaks of which are 

 said to be 10,000 feet high. Their form is semicircular; and from 

 these mountains and the other high grounds the water drains east and 

 north and, indeed, west and north from the other side of the table- 

 land into three great lakes. One of these a round piece of water 

 about fifty miles by thirty - - is said to lie in the semicircle formed by the 

 Mountains of the Moon. Some distance south of this lies a much 

 larger one, between three and four hundred miles long, and varying in 

 width from thirty to sixty miles. It is pear-shaped, the larger end be- 

 ing at the south, and the direction nearly due north and south. The 

 twentieth parallel of longitude runs along it for a considerable distance. 

 The third and most important of the three lakes is the Nyanza. Its 

 level is 3,740 feet above the sea, and its shape is very nearly that of 

 an equilateral triangle of which each side is about two hundred miles 

 in length. The lines are, of course, a little irregular ; but if the north 

 side were represented by a straight line, that straight line would be 

 furnished by the equator. The best possible notion of the lake will be 

 obtained by taking two hundred miles of the equator, and describing 

 upon it an equilateral triangle with the point to the south. At the 

 east corner of that triangle there is another loner and somewhat irreg- 



~ o o 



ular body of water imperfectly known. The Nile flows out of the 

 north side of the lake in three separate channels. Two of them appear 

 to be rather swamps or (as Captain Speke calls them) rush drains than 

 rivers, but the third is a noble stream, and flows out of an arm of the 

 Nyanza, and over a fall about twelve feet high and four or five hundred 

 feet wide. The Nile is thus one of the very few rivers to which a defi- 

 nite beginning can be assigned, fcr from this point it pursues an inde- 

 pendent course of upwards of 2,000 miles to the sea, having on its way 

 only three or four tributaries, none of which can be compared to it in 

 importance. No other river in the world has such a splendid individu- 

 al career. The American rivers are the outlet of a thousand stream?, 

 and the same may be said of the great rivers of India and China ; but 

 the Nile is the Nile from its source to the Mediterranean. Capt. Speke 

 describes the stream as six or seven hundred yards wide, some way fur- 

 ther down, and the banks as fertile and beautifully wooded, popu- 

 lous, and abounding in animal life. 



Besides the Nyanza, which he actually saw, and to a great extent ex- 

 plored, Captain Speke obtained information of two other remarkable 

 lakes. One of these is a very large one, called Lake Uniamesi, and 

 said to lie east and somewhat to the south of the Nyanza ; the other is 

 a singular lake, called the Luta Nzige, said to be about two hundred 

 miles long, and fifty broad, running from 8. to N. E., which communi- 

 cates with the Nile at its northeastern extremity. It is supposed by 

 Captain Speke to be a mere backwater which the Nilells by its over- 

 flow when the Nyanza receives an, extra supply of water from the 

 mountains. He supposes (as we understand him) that, when this res- 

 ervoir is filled, and the Nile begins to fall, the water runs back into the 

 Nile, and produces the floods down to Egypt. 



The discoverers traced the course of the river to the second degree 



