Dr. Beke's Summary of recent Nilotic Discovery. 265 



Wemey penetrated up the stream of the Bahr-el-Abyad as far 

 as 4° 9' N. lat. Here, on ascending a mountain called Logwek, 

 he saw the Nile trending away in a south-westerly direction 

 till it vanished between two mountains named Rego and Kidi ; 

 and he was informed there by the Bari negroes_, the last natives 

 he met with, that beyond those mountains the river comes 

 straight from the south. From the summit of Logwek Dr. Knob- 

 lecher observed, in the extreme distance of the southern horizon, 

 a lofty mountain-chain, the outlines of which were barely dis- 

 cernible through the haze of the atmosphere, and which, from 

 its distance, must be considered as lying nearly in the third 

 parallel of north latitude. 



According to Dr. Knoblecher, the Nile as far as the fourth 

 parallel of north latitude continues to be a considerable stream, 

 of the average breadth of 200 metres, with a depth of from 2 to 

 3 metres ; which proves, beyond all question, that the river must 

 come from a considerable distance, and most probably from beyond 

 the Equator, in order to allow of the collection of a volume of water 

 sufficient to form so large a stream. Dr. Knoblecher was con- 

 firmed in the opinion that the source of the Nile is to the south 

 of the Equator, " by the fact that the river was rising on the 

 16th of January, which he considered as a consequence of the 

 rainy season having set in in districts much further south *.^^ 



The longitude of the river at the extreme point reached by 

 M. d^Arnaud in 18il, is, according to him, 31° 38' east of Green- 

 wich. If, now. Dr. Knoblecher's "furthest'' in 4° 9' N. lat. 

 be conjecturally placed in the same longitude of 31° 38' E. — 

 which cannot be very far from the truth, — we shall have a 

 distance between that point and Kenia of 370 geographical 

 miles, on a bearing of S. 33° E. ; while from the same point to 

 the northern extremity of the lake in Uniamezi the distance is 

 360 geographical miles, on a bearing of S. 25° VY. Within 

 these limits therefore we may reasonably look for the southern 

 boundary of the basin of the Nile \ and it is not at all unlikely 

 that Kenia itself is the ^' high mountain, the top of which is quite 

 white,'' of which Baron von Miiller, a recent traveller in Sennar, 

 heard from the report of a native of the country of Bari, who was 

 said to have travelled a great way to the south, and to have there 

 seen the origin of the Bahr-el-Abyad in " the "White Mountain " 

 in question f. 



In the present state of our knowledge on the subject, it would, 

 of course, be wrong to pretend to establish any absolute identi- 

 fication. It is most probable that in the Alpine region of which 



* See Athenseum of February 22iid and March 29th, 1851, Nos. 1217, 

 1222, pp. 217, 353. 

 t See Journal of the Royal Geogi-aphical Society, vol. xx, p. 287^i)^«;i 



