1870.] FELLOW-EXPLORERS. 51 



sources of the Nile was asserted so positively, it seems 

 necessary to explain, not offensively, I hope, wherein their 

 mistake lay, in making a somewhat similar claim. My 

 opinions may yet be shown to be mistaken too, but at present 

 I cannot conceive how. When Speke discovered Victoria 

 Nyanza in 1858, he at once concluded that therein lay the 

 sources of the Nile. His work after that was simply follow- 

 ing a foregone conclusion, and as soon as he and Grant looked 

 towards the Victoria Nyanza, they turned their backs on the 

 Nile fountains ; so every step of their splendid achievement 

 of following the river down took them further and further 

 away from the Caput Nili. When it was perceived that the 

 little river that leaves the Nyanza, though they called it 

 the White Nile, would not account for that great river, 

 they might have gone west and found headwaters (as the 

 Lualaba) to which it can bear no comparison. Taking their 

 White Nile at 80 or 90 yards, or say 100 yards broad, the 

 Lualaba, far south of the latitude of its point of departure,, 

 shows an average breadth of from 4000 to 6000 yards, and 

 always deep. 



Considering that more than sixteen hundred years have 

 elapsed since Ptolemy put down the results of early explorers, 

 and emperors, kings, philosophers — all the great men of 

 antiquity in short longed to know the fountains whence flowed 

 the famous river, and longed in vain — exploration does not 

 seem to have been very becoming to the other sex either. 

 Madame Tinne came further up the river than the cen- 

 turions sent by Nero Caesar, and showed such indomitable 

 pluck as to reflect honour on her race. I know nothing* 

 about her save what has appeared in the public papers, but 

 taking her exploration along with what was done by Mrs. 

 Baker, no long time could have elapsed before the laurels 

 for the modern re-discovery of the sources of the Nile should 

 have been plucked by the ladies. In 1841 the Egyptian Ex- 

 pedition under D'Arnauld and Sabatier reached lat. 4° 42' : 



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