March 1864. How they passed through the uncivilised country so
lately traversed by Speke and Grant, how in the Obbo country all their
porters deserted just a few days before they reached the Karuma Falls,
how Baker from this point tried to follow the Nile to the yet unknown
lake, how fever seized both the explorer and his wife and they had
to live on the common food of the natives and a little water, how
suddenly Mrs. Baker fell down with a sunstroke and was carried for
seven days quite unconscious through swamp and jungle, the rain
descending in torrents all the time, till Baker, "weak as a reed,"
worn out with anxiety, lay on the ground as one dead.

It seemed as if both must die, when better times dawned and they
recovered to find that they were close to the lake.

Baker's diary is eloquent: "The day broke beautifully clear, and,
having crossed a deep valley between the hills, we toiled up the
opposite slope. I hurried to the summit. The glory of our prize burst
suddenly upon me! There, like a sea of quicksilver, lay far beneath
us the grand expanse of water, a boundless sea-horizon on the south
and south-west, glittering in the noonday sun, while at sixty miles'
distance, blue mountains rose from the lake to a height of about seven
thousand feet above its level. It is impossible to describe the triumph
of that moment; here was the reward for all our labour! England had
won the sources of the Nile! I looked from the steep granite cliff
upon those welcome waters, upon that vast reservoir which nourished
Egypt, upon that great source so long hidden from mankind, and I
determined to honour it with a great name. As an imperishable memorial
of one loved and mourned by our gracious Queen, I called this great
lake 'the Albert Nyanza.' The Victoria and the Albert Lakes are the
two sources of the Nile."

Weak and spent with fever, the Bakers descended tottering to the
water's edge. "The waves were rolling upon a white pebbly beach. I
rushed into the lake and, thirsty with heat and fatigue, I drank deeply
from the sources of the Nile. My wife, who had followed me so devotedly,
stood by my side pale and exhausted--a wreck upon the shores of the
great Albert Lake that we had long striven to reach. No European foot
had ever trod upon its sand, nor had the eyes of a white man ever scanned
its vast expanse of water."

[Illustration: BAKER'S BOAT IN A STORM ON LAKE ALBERT NYANZA. From
Baker's _Albert Nyanza_.]

After some long