358 THE VICTORIA NILE AT MAGUNGO . [chap. xii. 
Up to the present time all the information that I had 
received from Kamrasi and his people had been correct. 
He had told me that I should be about twenty days 
from M’rooli to the lake ; I had been eighteen. He 
had also told me that the Somerset flowed from Karuma 
direct to the lake, and that having joined it, the great 
Nile issued from the lake almost immediately, and 
flowed through the Koshi and Madi tribes. I now saw 
the river issuing from the lake within eighteen miles 
of Magungo; and the Koshi and the Madi countries 
appeared close to me, bordering it on the west and 
east. Kamrasi being the king, it was natural that he 
should know his own frontier most intimately; but, 
although the chief of Magungo and all the natives 
assured me that the broad channel of dead water at my 
feet was positively the brawling river that I had crossed 
below the Karuma Falls, I could not understand how 
so fine a body of water as that had appeared could 
possibly enter the Albert Lake as dead water. The 
guide and natives laughed at my unbelief, and declared 
that it was dead water for a considerable distance from 
the junction with the lake, but that a great waterfall 
rushed down from a mountain, and that beyond that 
fall the river was merely a succession of cataracts 
throughout the entire distance of about six days’ march 
to Karuma Falls. My real wish was to descend the 
Nile in canoes from its exit from the lake with my 
own men as boatmen, and thus in a short time to reach 
the cataracts in the Madi country; there to forsake 
the canoes and all my baggage, and to march direct to 
Gondokoro with only our guns and ammunition. I 
knew from native report that the Nile was navigable 
as far as the Madi country to about Miani’s tree, which 
Speke had laid down by astronomical observation in 
lat. 3° 34'; this would be only seven days’ march from 
Grondokoro, and by such a direct course I should be 
sure to arrive in time for the boats to Khartoum. I 
had promised Speke that I would explore most tho¬ 
roughly the doubtful portion of the river that he had 
