166 FROM KARAGUE TO LONDON BY WATER. 
heard of him. No intelligence had actually been re- 
ceived, but M nanagee had consulted his magic horns, 
and they told him that " Baraka was perfectly well, 
but his companion Seedee was suffering from a chest 
complaint ! " M nanagee was so confident about this 
telegraphing on his own part, that he said, " If it does 
not turn out true, 111 give you that goat." Months 
afterwards, on our reaching Kamarasi's, we were told 
that the man had been ailing slightly ! 
Of Speke I could hear occasionally by letter ; his 
men were discontented at getting nothing to eat but 
boiled plantain ; but they ultimately found out that 
there was nothing else to be procured in the country. 
He had crossed a body of water four hundred yards 
wide, running to the north. What a pleasure it must 
have been to him to come upon the first flowing 
waters of the Nile ! In a previous letter, dated 12th 
February, from the borders of Nyanza, he wrote say- 
ing he was to return for me in a boat along the lake. 
On mentioning to Rumanika that an Uganda boat was 
to arrive in his lake to convey the baggage and my- 
self away, he replied, " It was all practicable except 
for two miles, at the Kitangule, where the river is 
shallo w, and the boat must be carried." I added, that 
as the waters we then looked upon mingled with 
those in my country (alluding to the Mediterranean), 
the day might come when a traveller could go from 
Karague to London and vice versa by water ! Since 
saying this, we have discovered that cataracts are the 
only obstacle to this grand tourist route. 
The cattle of this country resemble those we saw at 
Cape Town — all horn, with staring ribs. The sultan 
kept 400 of such animals at his residence on the high 
