CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF VICTORIA NYANZA. 751 



Mtesa's messengers had previously travelled from Uganda to Zanzibar, and 

 thus reached in one hundred and three days, including halts, the southern 

 shore of the lake, distance seven hundred and thirty miles from Bagamoyo, 

 having fought a severe battle with the natives on the way, and having also 

 discovered and followed to the lake a new river, the Shimeeyu, which rises 

 some three hundred miles beyond the Victoria Nyanza, and is thus, as far as 

 our present information extends, the true southern source of the "White Nile. 



" Embarking at a short distance to the east of the Jordan's Nullah of Speke 

 in a portable boat, called the 'Lady Alice,' which accompanied the Expedition 

 from England, Mr. Stanley, with a portion of his followers, succeeded in trac- 

 ing the sinuous shores of the lake along its southern, eastern, and northern 

 sides to Mtesa's capital at Uganda. His description of this very considerable 

 extent of new country — for we knew nothing of it before except from native 

 information — is full of interest to the geographer, and would have entitled 

 Mr. Stanley to a very high place among African discoverers if his explorations 

 had been confined to this single voyage. From Mtesa's capital at Uganda 

 Mr. Stanley followed the western shores of the lake to the River Kagera, the 

 Kitangule of Speke, and then seems to have struck across direct to his station 

 on the shore of Usukuma, leaving the south-western corner of the sea for sub- 

 sequent explorations. His circumnavigation of the Victoria Nyanza covered 

 about one thousand miles, and seems to have been verified throughout by a care- 

 ful series of observations for latitude and longitude. Pending the examination 

 of the register of these observations we cannot affirm that the positions, as 

 laid down on the map, and which differ slightly from Speke's positions, are 

 rigidly correct ; but, for all practical purposes, Stanley's delineation of the 

 lake may be accepted as sufficiently accurate, and as a great boon to African 

 geography. With regard also to his hypsometrical observations, it is inte- 

 resting to note that whereas there was a difference of more than four hun- 

 dred feet in Speke's calculations of height for the northern and southern por- 

 tions of the lake respectively — a difference which first led geographers to sus- 

 pect that the lake might be composed of separate basins of varying elevation 

 — Mr. Stanley's measurement by boiling water at his station, east of Jordan's 

 Nullah, gave a result within seventy feet of Speke's observation near the same 

 spot ; so that the height of the Victoria Nyanza may now be considered to be 

 determined at about three thousand eight hundred feet above the sea. Mr. 

 Stanley intended, after completing his survey of the Victoria Nyanza, to cross 

 the intervening country to the Albert Nyanza, where he hoped, by means of 

 the ' Lady Alice,' to make a second voyage of discovery round this hitherto 

 almost unvisited lake; but more recent intelligence from the Upper Nile leads 

 us to expect that he will have been anticipated in this second achievement by 

 Colonel Gordon, or by some officers of the Upper Nile command, as it appears 

 that a steamer has at length forced its way to a point above the principal 



