o36 AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
cultivated uplands where they are born, down to the 
mighty reservoir called the Victoria Nyanza. We had 
circumnavigated the entire expanse ; penetrated to 
every bay, inlet, and creek ; become acquainted with 
almost every variety of wild human nature — the mild 
and placable, the ferocious and impracticably savage, the 
hospitable and the inhospitable, the generous-souled as 
well as the ungenerous ; we had viewed their methods 
of war and had witnessed them imbruing their hands in 
each other’s blood with savage triumph and glee ; we 
had been five times sufferers by their lust for war and 
murder, and had lost many men through their lawlessness 
and ferocity ; we had travelled hundreds of miles to and 
fro on foot along the northern coast of the Victorian Sea, 
and, finally, had explored with a large force the strange 
countries lying between the two lakes Muta Nzige and 
the Victoria, and had been permitted to gaze upon the 
arm of the lake named by me “ Beatrice Gulf,” and to 
drink of its sweet waters. We had then returned from 
farther quest in that direction, unable to find a peaceful 
resting-place on the lake shores, and had struck south 
from the Katono-a lagoon down to the Alexandra Nile, 
the principal affluent of the Victoria Lake, which drains 
nearly all the waters from the west and south-west. We 
had made a patient survey of over one-half of its course, 
and then, owing to want of the means to feed the rapa- 
city of the churlish tribes which dwell in the vicinity of 
the Alexandra Nyanza, and to our reluctance to force our 
way against the will of the natives, opposing unneces- 
sarily our rifies to their spears and arrows, we had been 
compelled, on the 7th of April, to bid adieu to the lands 
which supply the Nile, and to turn our faces towards 
the Tanganika. 
I have endeavoured to give a faithful portrayal of 
nature, animate and inanimate, in all its strange peculiar 
phases, as they were unfolded to us. I am conscious that 
I have not penetrated to the depths ; but then I have not 
ventured beyond the limits assigned me, viz., the Ex- 
ploration of the Southern Sources of the Nile, and the 
solution of the problem left unsolved by Speke and 
