118 THE WORLD'S WONDERS. 



JOYFUL MEETING WITH SIR SAMUEL BAKER. 



Two days later Mohamed overtook Speke, and together they 

 journeyed, with plundered cattle, slave girls and ivory, which the 

 old Turk had so cruelly wrested from the helpless savages, on to 

 Gondokoro. On reaching that place, they met the noted English 

 traveler, Samuel White Baker, and his wife, on their way to the 

 interior of Africa. This meeting must be described in Speke's 

 own language : 



" Walking down the bank of the river where aline of vessels 

 was moored, and on the right hand a few sheds, one-half broken 

 down, with a brick house representing the late Austrian mission 

 establishment we saw hurrying on toward us the form of an 

 Englishman, who for one moment we believed was a Simon 

 Pure [Petherick] ; but the next moment my old friend Baker, 

 famed for his sports in Ceylon, seized me by the hand. A little 

 boy of his establishment had reported our arrival, and he in an 

 instant came out to welcome us. What joy this was I can hardly 

 tell. We could not talk fast enough, so overwhelmed were we 

 both to meet again. Of course we were his guests in a moment, 

 and learned everything that could be told. I now first heard of 

 the death of H. R. H. the Prince Consort, which made mereflect 

 on the inspiring words he made use of, in complimentio myself, 

 when I was introduced to him by Sir Roderick Murchison a short 

 while before leaving England. Then there was the terrible war 

 in America, and other events of less startling nature, which came 

 on us all by surprise, as years had now passed since we had re- 

 ceived news from the civilized world. 



" Baker then said he had come up with three vessels one 

 dyabirand two nuggers fully equipped with armed men, camels, 

 horses, donkeys, beads, brass wire, and everything necessary 

 for a long journey, expressly to look after us, hoping, as he 

 jokingly said, to find us on the equator in some terrible fix, that 

 he might have the pleasure of helping us out of it. He had 

 heard of Mohamed's party, and was actually waiting for him to 

 come in, that he might have had the use of his return-men to 

 start with comfortably. Three Dutci ladies, also, with a view 



