Note 3 — Chapter XIV

"The following extract from the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, May 9, 1859, will best illustrate what I mean:—

"'Mr. Macqueen, F.R.G.S., said the question of the sources of the Nile had cost him much trouble and research, and he was sure there was no material error either in longitude or latitude in the position he had ascribed to them, namely, a little to the eastward of the meridian of 35° and a little northward of the equator. That was the principal source of the White Nile. The mountains there were exceedingly high, from the equator north to Kaffa Enarea. All the authorities, from east, west, north, or south, now perfectly competent to form judgments upon such a matter, agreed with him; and among them were the officers commanding the Egyptian Commission. It was impossible they could all be mistaken. Dr. Krapf had been within a very short distance of it; he was more than a hundred and eighty miles from Mombas, and he saw snow upon the mountains. He conversed with the people who came from them, and who told him of the snow and exceeding coldness of the temperature. The line of perpetual congelation, it is well known, was seventeen thousand feet above the sea. He had an account of the navigation of the White Nile by the Egyptian Expedition. It was then given as 30° 30' N. lat. and 31° E. long. At this point the expedition turned back for want of a sufficient depth of water. Here the river was 1370 feet broad, and the velocity of the current one quarter of a mile per hour. The journals also gave a specific and daily current, the depth and width of the river, and everything, indeed, connected with it. Surely, looking at the current of the river, the height of the Cartoom above the level of the sea, and the distance thence up to the equator, the sources of the Nile must be six or eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, and still much below the line of snow, which was six or eight thousand feet farther above them. He deeply regretted he was unable to complete the diagram for the rest of the papers he had given to the Society, for it was more important than any others he had previously given. It contained the journey over Africa from sea to sea, second only to Dr. Livingstone. But all the rivers coming down from the mountains in question, and running south-eastward, had been clearly stated by Dr. Krapf, who gave every particular concerning them. He should like to know what the natives had said was to the northward of the large lake. Did they say the rivers ran out from or into the lake? How could the Egyptian officers be mistaken?

"'Captain Speke replied. They were not mistaken; and if they had pursued their journey fifty miles further, they would undoubtedly have found themselves at the northern borders of this lake.

"'Mr. Macqueen said that other travellers—Don Angelo, for instance—had been within one and a half degrees of the equator, and saw the mountain of Kimborat under the Line, and persisted in the statement, adding that travellers had been up the river till they found it a mere brook. He felt convinced that the large lake alluded to by Captain Speke was not the source of the Nile; it was impossible it could be so, for it was not at a sufficiently high altitude.

"'The paper presented to the Society, when fully read in conjunction with the map, will clearly show that the Bahr-el-Abiad had no connection with Kilimanjaro, that it has no connection whatever with any lake or river to the south of the equator, and that the swelling of the river Nile proceeds from the tropical rains of the northern torrid zone, as was stated emphatically to Julius Cæsar by the Chief Egyptian Priest, Amoreis, two thousand years ago.

"'In nearly 3° N. lat. there is a great cataract, which boats cannot pass. It is called Gherba. About halfway (fifty miles) above, and between this cataract and Robego, the capital of Kuenda, the river becomes so narrow as to be crossed by a bridge formed by a tree thrown across it. Above Gherba no stream joins the river either from the south or south-west.'"