144 DOWN THE VICTORIA NILE 



lishman, I called this great lake the 'Albert Nyanza.' The Victoria 

 and the Albert lakes are the two sources of the Nile." He subse- 

 quently procured the means, and gave his men a feast in honor of the 

 discovery and in gratitude for his wife's recovery. 



Baker on the occasion of his first sighting the water stood on a 

 point 1,500 feet above it. Opposite to him, the lake was about sixty 

 miles broad, but to the south and southwest lay a boundless horizon 

 like the ocean. Immediately on the other side rose a grand range of 

 mountains, some of them seven thousand feet high, and down two 

 streams in their rifts there streamed great waterfalls, visible even at 

 that vast distance, to add their contributions to the fresh-water ocean. 

 This, then, was the Luta Nzige, the lake of the dead locusts, the reser- 

 voir of the Nile. Mrs. Baker, utterly worn out with sickness, was 

 assisted with difficulty to reach this first point of discovery. The 

 ascent was too steep for cattle, but leaning on her husband's 'shoulder 

 she accomplished it, and they both descended to the shore. Wild 

 waves were sweeping over the surface of the water, and bursting at 

 their feet upon the white shingly beach. In his enthusiasm. Baker 

 dashed in headlong, and drank deep of the pure, fresh element which in 

 so vast a body was now actually before their eyes. 



Preparations were now made for a fortnight's voyage on the lake. 

 Two canoes were selected, — the one twenty-six and the other thirty- 

 two feet long, both made of single logs. A cabin was constructed in 

 the smaller of these, and they started. The scenery was most beau- 

 tiful. Sometimes the mountains to the west were quite invisible, and 

 the canoes usually kept within a hundred yards of the shore. At one 

 time the cliffs would recede, and leave a meadow more or less broad 

 at their base; at another the rocks would go right down into deep 

 water; and, again, a grand mass of gneiss and granite, 1,100 feet high, 

 would present itself feathered with beautiful evergreens and giant 

 euphorbia, with every runnel and rivulet in its clefts fringed with 

 graceful wild date-trees. Hippopotomi lazily floated about ; and croco- 

 diles, alarmed by the canoe, would rush quickly out of the bushes into 

 the water. On one occasion Baker killed one of them with his rifle, 

 and it sank in eight f c^t of water ; but the water was so beautifully 

 transparent that it could be seen plainly lying at the bottom bleeding. 



