DOWN THE VICTORIA NILE 145 



They once saw an elephant come down out of the forest to bathe. At 

 another time, fourteen of those majestic animals were seen disporting 

 themselves in a sandy bay, throwing jets of water in all directions. 

 On another occasion they pased a waterfall, 1,000 feet high, made by 

 the river Kaiigiri, which rises in the swamp which turned them out of 

 their way on leaving M'rooli. 



Such were the sights of their voyage, but at the same time it was 

 not in all respects a pleasant one. They were both still suiifering from 

 fever, and they were cramped together in this narrow boat, under a low 

 awning of bullock's hide. At night they camped on the shore. 

 Besides, the weather was bad. At one o'clock every day a violent tor- 

 nado lashed the lake into fury, and placed their craft in imminent 

 danger. In the course of their sailing explorations, they were nearly 

 lost by this means, having been caught by the gale four miles from 

 land, and obliged to run before it, being nearly swamped at times by 

 the heaviness of the swell. They managed to reach the shore, how- 

 ever, but their boat was overturned on the beach, and all the live-stock 

 was drowned; and it was with difficulty that they recovered the boat. 

 After thirteen days, when they had rowed for ninety miles, the lake 

 began to contract, and vast reed-beds extended from the shore to the 

 distance of a mile, there being a floating vegetation similar to that of 

 the bridge which they were crossing when Mrs. Baker was struck 

 down. Preferring to find a gap in this false shore to the ordinary 

 method of walking over it, he coasted the floating reeds for a mile, 

 and came to a broad still channel, bounded with reeds on both sides. 

 This was the embouchure of the Victoria Nile — the river which con- 

 nects the Albert with the Victoria Nyanza. 



Speke had followed the Nile downwards from the Victoria 

 Nyanza to the Karuma Falls, at the head of the Murchison Rapids, 

 but from that point to the Albert Nyanza the river was still unknown 

 and Baker determined to explore It. The chief of Magungo and all 

 the natives assured him that the broad channel of dead water at his 

 feet was positively the brawling river which he had crossed below the 

 Karuma Falls, but he could not understand how so fine a body of water 

 as that had appeared could possibly enter the Albert Lake as dead 

 water. The guide and natives laughed at his unbelief, and declared 



