WESTWARD TO LAKE VICTORIA NYANZA 
119 
This signal discovery was made on the the 10th of July, 1858, 
at the end of a long and toilsome journey which he had made with 
Captain Richard F. Burton from Zanzibar. Speke was satisfied in his 
own mind that this great lake was the source of the great river whose 
origin had long excited so much interest, and on his return home suc¬ 
ceeded in inducing the Royal Geographical Society to send him out 
on a second exploring expedition to this interesting region. 
Setting out in i860 with another British officer, Captain Grant, 
he found himself in the summer of 1862 again gazing on the noble 
lake, and being confident now, from information received from the 
natives, that the Nile flowed from the northern end of the Victoria 
Nyanza, he set out in search of its outlet. Success now attended his 
efforts, and on the 21st of July he reached the river whose source had 
been sought so long and with such ardent enthusiasm. 
His discovery of its outlet from the lake is a story replete with 
interest. The northern shore of the lake is long and broken, being 
diversified by hundreds of gulfs and inlets, with nothing to distin¬ 
guish one from the other. No current is felt until within a few miles 
of the falls, and the explorers might have searched the lake for a year 
without discovering the spot. Yet as he drifted and paddled over 
its broad surface a slight increase was felt in the pace of his canoe and 
a far-off murmur told him of the nearness of the place he sought, 
that in which the waters of the lake were drawn into the mighty river. 
We give in his own words the story of how he finally reached the 
much-sought-for stream: 
“Here at last,” he writes, “I stood on the brink of the Nile; most 
beautiful was the scene, nothing could surpass it! It was the very per¬ 
fection of the kind of effect aimed at in a highly kept park; with a mag¬ 
nificent stream from six hundred to seven hundred yards wide, dotted 
with islets and rocks, the former occupied by the fishermen’s huts, 
the latter by many crocodiles basking in the sun, flowing between 
fine grassy banks, with rich trees and plantations in the background, 
where herds of the hartebeest could be seen grazing, while the hippo¬ 
potami were snorting in the water, and florikin and guinea-fowl rising 
at our feet.” 
They proceeded up the left bank of the Nile, at some distance 
