THE NILE FOUNTAINS. 483 



be mistaken in saying that, of the three or four lakes there, only one, the 

 Okara, gives off its water to the north. 



"The 'White Nile' of Speke, less by a full half than the Shire out of 

 Nyassa (for it is only eighty or ninety yards broad), can scarcely be named 

 in comparison with the central or Webb's Lualaba, of from two thousand to 

 six thousand yards, in relation to the phenomena of the Nile. The structure 

 and economy of the watershed answer very much the same end as the great 

 lacustrine rivers, but I cannot at present copy a lost despatch which explained 

 that. The mountains on the watershed are probably what Ptolemy, for rea- 

 sons now unknown, called the Mountains of the Moon. From their bases I 

 found that the springs of the Nile do unquestionably arise. This is just what 

 Ptolemy put down, and is true geography. We must accept the fountains, 

 and nobody but Philistines will reject the mountains, though we cannot con- 

 jecture the reason for the name. 



" Mounts Kenia and Kilimanjaro are said to be snow-capped ; but they are 

 so far from the sources, and send no water to any part of the Nile, they 

 could never have been meant by the correct ancient explorers, from whom 

 Ptolemy and his predecessors gleaned their true geography, so different from 

 the trash that passes current in modern times. 



" Before leaving the subject of the watershed, I may add that I know 

 about six hundred miles of it, but am not yet satisfied, for unfortunately the 

 seventh hundred is the most interesting of the whole. I have a very strong 

 impression, that in the last hundred miles the fountains of the Nile mentioned 

 to Herodotus by the Secretary of Minerva in the city of Sais do arise, not, 

 like all the rest, from oozing earthen sponges, but from an earthen mound ; 

 and half the water flows northward to Egypt, the other half south to Inner 

 Ethiopia. These fountains, at no great distance off, become large rivers, 

 though at the mound they are not more than ten miles apart. That is, one 

 fountain rising on the north-east of the mound becomes Bartle Frere's Lua- 

 laba, and it flows into one of the lakes proper, Kamolondo, of the central line 

 of drainage ; Webb's Lualaba, the second fountain, rising on the north-west, 

 becomes (Sir Paraffin) Young's Lualaba, which passing through Lake Lincoln 

 and becoming Loeki or Lomame, and joining the central line too, goes north 

 to Egypt. The third fountain on the south-west, Palmerston's, becomes the 

 Leeambye or Upper Zambesi ; while the fourth, Oswell's fountain, becomes 

 the Kafue, and falls into the Zambesi in Inner Ethiopia.* 



* The following is the passage in Herodotus alluded to by Dr. Livingstone : — 

 " With regard to the sources of the Nile, not one of the Egyptians, or Eybians, or Greeks, pro- 

 fessed to know anything, excepting the guardian of the precious things consecrated to Minerva in 

 Sais, a city of Egypt. But this individual, in my opinion at least, did but joke when he asserted he 

 was perfectly acquainted with them. He gave the following account : — ' That there were two peaked 



