To-Day We Reached The Kitangule Kagera, Or River, Which, As I
Ascertained In The Year 1858, Falls Into The Victoria N'yanza On
The West Side.
Most unfortunately, as we led off to cross it,
rain began to pour, so that everybody and everything was thrown
into confusion.
I could not get a sketch of it, though Grant was
more fortunate afterwards; neither could I measure or fathom it;
and it was only after a long contest with the superstitious
boatmen that they allowed me to cross in their canoe with my
shoes on, as they thought the vessel would either upset, or else
the river would dry up, in consequence of their Neptune taking
offence at me. Once over, I looked down on the noble stream with
considerable pride. About eight yards broad, it was sunk down a
considerable depth below the surface of the land, like a huge
canal, and is so deep, it could not be poled by the canoemen;
while it runs at a velocity of from three to four knots an hour.
I say I viewed it with pride, because I had formed my judgment of
its being fed from high-seated springs in the Mountains of the
Moon solely on scientific geographical reasonings; and, from the
bulk of the stream, I also believed those mountains must obtain
an altitude of 8000 feet[FN#16] or more, just as we find they do
in Ruanda. I thought then to myself, as I did at Rumanika's, when
I first viewed the Mfumbiro cones, and gathered all my distant
geographical information there, that these highly saturated
Mountains of the Moon give birth to the Congo as well as to the
Nile, and also to the Shire branch of the Zambeze.
I came, at the same time, to the conclusion that all our previous
information concerning the hydrography of these regions, as well
as the Mountains of the Moon, originated with the ancient Hindus,
who told it to the priests of the Nile; and that all those busy
Egyptian geographers, who disseminated their knowledge with a
view to be famous for their long-sightedness, in solving the
deep-seated mystery with enshrouded the source of their holy
river, were so many hypothetical humbugs. Reasoning thus, the
Hindu traders alone, in those days, I believed, had a firm basis
to stand upon, from their intercourse with the Abyssinians -
through whom they must have heard of the country of Amara, which
they applied to the N'yanza - and with the Wanyamuezi or men of
the Moon, from whom they heard of the Tanganyika and Karague
mountains. I was all the more impressed with this belief, by
knowing that the two church missionaries, Rebmann and Erhardt,
without the smallest knowledge of the Hindus' map, constructed a
map of their own, deduced from the Zanzibar traders, something on
the same scale, by blending the Victoria N'yanza, Tanganyida, and
N'yazza into one; whilst to their triuned lake they gave the name
Moon, because the men of the Moon happened to live in front of
the central lake.
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