THE FOUNTAINS OF HERODOTUS. 
525 
had various doubts, but I stuck to it like a Briton, and at 
last found that the mighty river left its washing and flowed 
right away to the north, the two great western arms, the 
Luflra and Lomaine, running northeast before joining the 
central line or main. Webb’s Lualaba told that the 
western side of the great valley was high like the eastern, 
and as this main is reported to go into large reedy lakes, 
it can scarcely be aught else than the western arm of the 
Nile. But beside all this, in which it is quite possible that 
I may be mistaken, we have two fountains on, probably, the 
seventh hundred miles of the watershed, and giving rise to 
the two rivers, the Loambai on the Tipper Zambesi, and the 
Kafue, which flow into inner Ethiopia; and two fountains 
are reported to rise in the same quarter, and, forming 
Luflra and Lomaine, flow, as wo have seen, to the north. 
These from full grown, gushing fountains, rising so near 
each other, and giving origin to four large rivers, answer 
in a certain degree to the description given of the un- 
fathomable fountains of the Nile by the Secretary of 
Minerva, in the city of Sais, in Egypt, to the father of all 
travellers, Herodotus ; but I have to confess that it is a 
little presumptuous for me to put this forward in Central 
Africa, and without a single book of reference, on the dim 
recollection of reading the ancient historian in boyhood. 
The waters were said to well up from an unfathomable 
depth, and then part — half going north, to Egypt, and 
half south, to inner Ethiopia. Now I have heard of the 
fountains aforementioned so often, that I cannot doubt 
their existence, and I wish to clear up the point in my con- 
cluding trip. 
I am not to be considered as speaking without hesitation, 
but prepared, if I see reason, to confess myself wrong. 
No one would like to be considered a disciple of the testy 
old would-be geographer who wrote Inner Africa Laid 
Open, and swore to his fancies until he became blue in the 
face. The work would have been all finished long ago, had 
the matter of supplies of men and goods not been en- 
