DOWN THE VICTORIA NILE 
i45 
They once saw an elephant come down out of the forest to bathe. At 
another time, fourteen of those majestic animals were seen disporting 
themselves in a sandy bay, throwing jets of water in all directions. 
On another occasion they pased a waterfall, 1,000 feet high, made by 
the river Kaiigiri, which rises in the swamp which turned them out of 
their way on leaving M'rooli. 
Such were the sights of their voyage, but at the same time it was 
not in all respects a pleasant one. They were both still suffering from 
fever, and they were cramped together in this narrow boat, under a low 
awning of bullock's hide. At night they camped on the shore. 
Besides, the weather was bad. At one o'clock every day a violent tor¬ 
nado lashed the lake into fury, and placed their craft in imminent 
danger. In the course of their sailing explorations, they were nearly 
lost by this means, having been caught by the gale four miles from 
land, and obliged to run before it, being nearly swamped at times by 
the heaviness of the swell. They managed to reach the shore, how¬ 
ever, but their boat was overturned on the beach, and all the live-stock 
was drowned; and it was with difficulty that they recovered the boat. 
After thirteen days, when they had rowed for ninety miles, the lake 
began to contract, and vast reed-beds extended from the shore to the 
distance of a mile, there being a floating vegetation similar to that of 
the bridge which they were crossing when Mrs. Baker was struck 
down. Preferring to find a gap in this false shore to the ordinary 
method of walking over it, he coasted the floating reeds for a mile, 
and came to a broad still channel, bounded with reeds on both sides. 
This was the embouchure of the Victoria Nile—the river which con¬ 
nects the Albert with the Victoria Nyanza. 
4 Speke had followed the Nile downwards from the Victoria 
Nyanza to the Karuma Falls, at the head of the Murchison Rapids, 
but from that point to the Albert Nyanza the river was still unknown 
and Baker determined to explore it. The chief of Magungo and all 
the natives assured him that the broad channel of dead water at his 
feet was positively the brawling river which he had crossed below the 
Karuma Falls, but he 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 his unbelief, and declared 
