WESTWARD TO LAKE VICTORIA NY AN Z A 119 



This signal discovery was made on the the loth of July, 1858, 

 at the end of a long and toilsome journey which he had made with 

 Captain Richard F. Burton from Zanzibar. Speke was satisfied in his 

 own mind that this great lake was the source of the great river whose 

 origin had long excited so much interest, and on his return home suc- 

 ceeded in inducing the Royal Geographical Society to send him out 

 on a second exploring expedition to this interesting region. 



Setting out in i860 with another British officer, Captain Grant, 

 he found himself in the summer of 1862 again gazing on the noble 

 lake, and being confident now, from information received from the 

 natives, that the Nile flowed from the northern end of the Victoria 

 Nyanza, he set out in search of its outlet. Success now attended his 

 efiforts, and on the 21st of July he reached the river whose source had 

 been sought so long and with such ardent enthusiasm. 



His discovery of its outlet from the lake is a story replete with 

 interest. The northern shore of the lake is long and broken, being 

 diversified by hundreds of gulfs and inlets, with nothing to distin- 

 guish one from the other. No current is felt until within a few miles 

 of the falls, and the explorers might have searched the lake for a year 

 without discovering the spot. Yet as he drifted and paddled over 

 its broad surface a slight increase was felt in the pace of his canoe and 

 a far-ofif murmur told him of the nearness of the place he sought, 

 that in which the waters of the lake were drawn into the mighty river. 



We give in his own words the story of how he finally reached the 

 much-sought-f or stream : 



"Here at last," he writes, "I stood on the brink of the Nile ; most 

 beautiful was the scene, nothing could surpass it ! It was the very per- 

 fection of the kind of effect aimed at in a highly kept park ; with a mag- 

 nificent stream from six hundred to seven hundred yards wide, dotted 

 with islets and rocks, the former occupied by the fishermen's huts, 

 the latter by many crocodiles basking in the sun, flowing between 

 fine grassy banks, with rich trees and plantations in the background, 

 where herds of the hartebeest could be seen grazing, while the hippo- 

 potami were snorting in the water, and florikin and guinea-fowl rising 

 at our feet." 



They proceeded up the left bank of the Nile, at some distance 



