SIR SAMUEL BAKER'S THEORY. 507 



Dr. Livingstone humorously designates him. The waters of Lake Lincoln 

 pass into the Lualaba by the river Loeki or Lomame 



The river which, issuing out of Lake Kamalonda and flowing to the 

 north, was, he now found, the central or main line of drainage, and he named 

 it the Lualaba proper. Although sick and worn, he followed its course as far 

 as four degrees south latitude, and found that it flowed into another large 

 lake. From his letters we know how the brave and dauntless traveller 

 was compelled to turn back when so near to the termination of the quest he 

 had suffered so much in following up thus far, and fell back to Ujiji, with but 

 little hope of succour arriving there from the coast. But help was at hand. 

 He had barely settled down to what he feared must be a weary waiting for 

 succour when Mr Stanley made his appearance, and so unexpectedly, that he 

 was all but face to face with his deliverer before he even knew that any tra- 

 veller with a white skin was in search of him. 



What the result of his exploration after parting with Mr Stanley at 

 Unyanyembe may be, we do not at present know. At that time, the great 

 traveller appeared to have no doubt that the Chambezi, the Luapula, and the 

 Lualaba, were none other than the Nile ; and that these were connected by 

 a series of lakes and shallow lakelets with Petherick's White Nile, which issues 

 out of the Bahr-Ghazal. The great lake in four degrees south latitude into 

 which Dr. Livingstone found that the Lualaba flowed, Mr. Stanley conjectures 

 may be the lake discovered by the Italian traveller Piaggia. If Dr. Living- 

 stone be correct in his conclusions — and we know that he is not a rash theo- 

 rizer — the Nile is the second longest river in the world, and flows two thousand 

 six hundred miles in a straight line, or seven hundred miles farther than we 

 had previously supposed. 



Speaking at a meeting of the Geographical Society, on 26th January, 

 1874, Sir Samuel Baker said " it would be quite an impossibility to say, for 

 certain, whether or not the Tanganyika Lake was connected with the Albert 

 Nyanza, but during his recent expedition he had heard accounts from native 

 merchants which had shaken his faith in the opinion he had formerly ex- 

 pressed that there was no connection between the two lakes. Two merchants 

 told him that they had formerly travelled from one lake to the other by 

 boats, but had ceased to perform the journey in that way, because the canoes 

 were too small to carry ivory. These men had no object in telling a lie — no 

 interest in deceiving him. Some months after this, the envoys whom the 

 Sultan of Uganda sent to Fatiko, gave him a detailed explanation of the geo- 

 graphical features of the country. They said that the Lake Victoria Nyanza, 

 discovered by Speke and Grant, bore the name of Sessi. The natives had 

 formerly stated to Speke and Grant, that Sessi was the name of an island in 

 the lake j but these envoys said not that there was an island in the lake, but 

 that if a person wanted to inquire for the Victoria Nyanza, he must ask for 



