548 
THE WHITE NILE. 
These men had spent many years east of Okara, and could 
scarcely be mistaken iu saying that of the three or four 
lakes there only one (the Okara) gives off its waters 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 cen- 
tral or Webb’s Lualaba, of two 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 explains that. The mountains on the water- 
shed are probably what Ptolemy, for reasons 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 conjecture 
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 dif- 
ferent 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 toward 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 then ten miles apart. That is one fountain rising on 
