144 
DOWN THE VICTORIA NILE 
lishman, I called this great lake the 'Albert Nyanza.’ The Victoria 
and the Albert lakes are the two sources of the Nile/' He subse¬ 
quently procured the means, and gave his men a feast in honor of the 
discovery and in gratitude for his wife’s recovery. 
Baker on the occasion of his first sighting the water stood on a 
point 1,500 feet above it. Opposite to him, the lake was about sixty 
miles broad, but to the south and southwest lay a boundless horizon 
like the ocean. Immediately on the other side rose a grand range of 
mountains, some of them seven thousand feet high, and down two 
streams in their rifts there streamed great waterfalls, visible even at 
that vast distance, to add their contributions to the fresh-water ocean. 
This, then, was the Luta Nzige, the lake of the dead locusts, the reser¬ 
voir of the Nile. Mrs. Baker, utterly worn out with sickness, was 
assisted with difficulty to reach this first point of discovery. The 
ascent was too steep for cattle, but leaning on her husband’s shoulder 
she accomplished it, and they both descended to the shore. Wild 
waves were sweeping over the surface of the water, and bursting at 
their feet upon the white shingly beach. In his enthusiasm, Baker 
dashed in headlong, and drank deep of the pure, fresh element which in 
so vast a body was now actually before their eyes. 
Preparations were now made for a fortnight’s voyage on the lake. 
Two canoes were selected,—-the one twenty-six and the other thirty- 
two feet long, both made of single logs. A cabin was constructed in 
the smaller of these, and they started. The scenery was most beau¬ 
tiful. Sometimes the mountains to the west were quite invisible, and 
the canoes usually kept within a hundred yards of the shore. At one 
.time the cliffs would recede, and leave a meadow more or less broad 
at their base; at another the rocks would go right down into deep 
water; and, again, a grand mass of gneiss and granite, 1,100 feet high, 
would present itself feathered with beautiful evergreens and giant 
euphorbia, with every runnel and rivulet in its clefts fringed with 
graceful wild date-trees. Hippopotomi lazily floated about; and croco¬ 
diles, alarmed by the canoe, would rush quickly out of the bushes into 
the water. On one occasion Baker killed one of them with his rifle, 
and it sank in eight feet of water; but the water was so beautifully 
transparent that it could be seen plainly lying at the bottom bleeding. 
