similar claim. My opinions may yet be shown to be mistaken too, but at
present I cannot conceive how. When Speke discovered Victoria Nyanza in
1858, he at once concluded that therein lay the sources of the Nile. His
work after that was simply following a foregone conclusion, and as soon
as he and Grant looked towards the Victoria Nyanza, they turned their
backs on the Nile fountains; so every step of their splendid achievement
of following the river down took them further and further away from the
Caput Nili. When it was perceived that the little river that leaves the
Nyanza, though they called it the White Nile, would not account for that
great river, they might have gone west and found headwaters (as the
Lualaba) to which it can bear no comparison. Taking their White Nile at
80 or 90 yards, or say 100 yards broad, the Lualaba, far south of the
latitude of its point of departure, shows an average breadth of from
4000 to 6000 yards, and always deep.

Considering that more than sixteen hundred years have elapsed since
Ptolemy put down the results of early explorers, and emperors, kings,
philosophers--all the great men of antiquity in short longed to know the
fountains whence flowed the famous river, and longed in
vain--exploration does not seem to have been very becoming to the other
sex either. Madame Tinné came further up the river than the centurions
sent by Nero Cæsar, and showed such indomitable pluck as to reflect
honour on her race. I know nothing about her save what has appeared in
the public papers, but taking her exploration along with what was done
by Mrs. Baker, no long time could have elapsed before the laurels for
the modern re-discovery of the sources of the Nile should have been
plucked by the ladies. In 1841 the Egyptian Expedition under D'Arnauld
and Sabatier reached lat. 4° 42': this was a great advance into the
interior as compared with Linant in 1827, 13° 30' N., and even on the
explorations of Jomard(?); but it turned when nearly a thousand miles