“In passing over sixty miles of latitude I waded thirty-two primary sources from calf to waist deep, and requiring from twenty minutes to an hour and a quarter to cross stream and sponge. This would give about one source to every two miles. A Suaheli friend in passing along part of the Lake Bangweolo during six days counted twenty-two from thigh to waist deep. This lake is on the watershed, for the village at which I observed on its northwest shore was a few seconds into eleven degrees south. I tried to cross it in order to measure the breadth accurately. The first stage to an inhabited island was about twenty-four miles. From the highest point here the tops of the trees, evidently lifted by the mirage, could be seen on the second stage and the third stage; the mainland was said to be as far as this beyond it. But my canoe men had stolen the canoe and got a hint that the real owners were in pursuit, and got into a flurry to return home.
“The length of this lake is, at a very moderate estimate, 150 miles. It gives forth a large body of water in the Luapula; yet lakes are in no sense sources for no large river begins in a lake; but this and others serve an important purpose in the phenomena of the Nile. It is one large lake, and, unlike the Okara, which, according to Suaheli, who travelled long in our company, is three or four lakes run into one huge Victoria Nianza, gives out a large river which, on departing out of Moero, is still larger. These men had spent many years east of Okara, and could scarcely be mistaken in saying that of the three or four lakes there only one (the Okara) gives off its waters to the north. The ‘White Nile’ of Speke, less by a full half than the Shire out of Nyassa (for it is only eighty or ninety yards broad), can scarcely be named in comparison with the central or Webb’s Lualaba, of from two thousand to six thousand yards, in relation to the phenomena of the Nile. The structure and economy of the watershed answer very much the same end as the great lacustrine rivers, but I cannot at present copy a lost despatch which explained that. The mountains on the watershed are probably what Ptolemy, for reasons now unknown, called the Mountains of the Moon. From their bases I found that the springs of the Nile do unquestionably arise. This is just what Ptolemy put down, and is true geography. We must accept the fountains, and nobody but Philistines will reject the mountains, though we cannot conjecture the reason for the name.