The Sun.
London, England, 1863-06-23 00:00:00

WELCOME TO THE DISCOVERERS OF THE

SOURCE OF THE NILE.
Last night a special meeting of the Royal Geo-

Taphical Society was held in Burlington House,

Piccadilly, to welcome Captain Speke and Captain
Grant, the discoverers of the source of the White

Nile, on their return to this country. The hour ap-
pointed for the commencement of the prcceedings
was nine o'clock, but long before eight o'clock a

stream of carriages flowed steadily into the court-
yard, and shortly after that hour every nook and

cranny wns filled to overflowing by an audience re-
presenting the fashion, art, and science of the
metropolis, while an almost equal number in vain

sought admission. The utmost animation and ex-
citement prevailed in the immense audience, which
was so densely crowded that it was with the ut-

most difficulty the President fought his way to the
dais, and the heroes of the night, in the effort to
find their places on each side of him must have
preferred many of their experiences of African
travel. Among those in the immediate vicinity of
the chair, we noticed Sir R. Peel, M.P., Mr. Monck-

:on Milnes, M.P., Mr.LayardX.P., Mr. Alderman

Salomons, M.P., Mr. Gregson, M.P., Sir L. M'Clin-
took, Lady Franklin, Sir G. Clerk, Sir A. S. Waugh,

Sir H. James, Admiral Murray, Col. Lynch, Che-

valier Duprat, Signor Nigra, Sir H. Vavasour, Sir
F. Nicholson, Sir T. Fremantle, &c.
-Sir R. MURCHISON, the presideat, said—The hour
appointed for commencing the business was nine
o'clock, but looking at the crowded state of the
room, although it wants 15 minutes to that hour,
we may as well proceed. The hon. baronet then

spoke as follows :—Gentlemen, we are now specially
assembled (for our regular session has terminated)
to do honour to the two men who have accomplished
the most remarkable geographi3al feat which has

been performed in our time, and one which it has
been the ambition of other nations to accomplish

during all ages. The council of this society has the
greater reason to be proud of this achievement, be•

cause it was by their exertions that the means were
obtained to carry it out; and her Majesty's Govern-

ment and the India❑ Government must also have a
real gratification in reflecting that they complied
with the wishes of the geographers who organised
the East African expedition, in furnishing the essen-

tial means of accomplishing it. But, gentlemen,

whilst we may well dwell with satisfaction on the
encouragement we warmly offered, let us at once
turn to the man, without whose earlier as well as
recent labours this great feat could never have been
brought about—l mean, of course, Captain Speke.
(Cheers.) In the year 1858, when serving with our
former medallist, Burton, and when that eminent
explorer lay sick at Kazeh, Captain Speke having
heard of this lake from Arab merchants hastened to
reach it; and, finding that its southern extremity
was on the high plateau-land, between 3,000 and
4,000 feet above the sea—(the land which forms,
indeed, the watershed between North and South
Africa in that meridian)—he finding also that
the waters of this vast lake were fresh,
he, then and there, after accurately determining
the longitude of its southern end, was convin-
ced that this body of water must be the great
southernmost reservoir out of which the White or
Main Nile flowed at its northern end. It was for

this first great discovery that the Royal Geogra-
phical Society awarded our founder's gold medal to
Captain Speke, Though obliged to return to Eog-
land with his leader, Captain Burton, Captain
Speke held pertinaciously to his project; and en-
gaging his Indian brother officer, Captain Grant,
to accompany him (an officer, let me say, who dis-
tinguished himself, and was severely wounded in

the great Indian mutinies), and, encouraged by this
society and the Government, he has gone and done
the great deed, and has followed the Nile from its
source to its mouth. Gentlemen, it is not for me
to recapitulate any portion of that abstract of the
vast labours gone through by Captains Speke and
Grant which I read to you at our anniversary, and
which was printed in the public journals of the
26th May last. But I think it necessary to say that
I now know, that, in my anxiety to satisfy the
desire of the public, there were omissions and errors
in that address. I know, for example, that I did
not on that occasion do sufficient justice—and I am
sorry for it—to able critical geographers, who had
framed hypotheses, or had collected data from na-
tives and other authorities as to the probable source
of the Nile ; but I beg you to consider that I was
then solely bent on developing, as well as I could,
from the records sent home by Speke, the main
features of the great actual and practical survey
which had been made by himself. As to the errors
in that rapidly-prepared abstract, I may advert at
once to one. It was stated by me that the young
King of Nganda, who was so kind to Captain
Speke when he was separated from his companions,
had 3,000 wives, but I now find that there was a
nought too many, and that his Majesty has
hitherto been contented with 300 wives ! (Laughter.)
Then as to the statements which are arising and will
arise as to the dates of the old maps on which lakes
were marked in the interior of Africa, and out of
which the Nile is made to flow, they are not con-
fined to the old (probably Portuguese) maps of the
16th century, of which I spoke, and which exist in
the library of the Propaganda Fede in Rome. One
Arabian map is now indeed cited, which is upwards
of 1,000 years old, in which one or more pieces of
water occupy nearly the position of the Victoria
Nyanza of Speke. Not pretending to be able to
decide upon who may have been the people who
first were acquainted with such great interior waters
Capt. Speke informs me that he believes the traders
from Hindostan were probably anterior even to
the Greeks in visiting this region. When, how-
ever, we come to the latter, Captain Speke is of
opinion that Ptolemy, that great geographer, is
the authority who first placed upon historical
record the existence of African lakes under the
Equator, out of which the Nile flowed. But age
after age rolled on ; traveller after traveller, from
the days of the Roman Emperors to our time, endea-
voured to ascend the Nile to its source, and all have
failed. In our days, one Miani., a Venetian, who
had lived many years in Egypt, is the person who
got farthest southward in ascending from Egypt,
and he, not being an astronomical observer, thought,
and has asserted, that he had reached to the second
degree of north latitude, where he cut his name
upon a tree. He has even written to me from
Vienna what he calls a " protest " against the
river of Speke being the true Nile ! Speke, how-
ever, in passing southwards, determined the lati-
tude of that very tree, with Miani's name on it, to
; and as Speke had
rewesatenrortohflatthiteudNile from 3 degreese
btreac3ed degrees
south of the equator, it follows that the Venetian
was never within about 400 miles of the head
waters of the Nile ! As it would be impossible on
this occasion for Capt. Speke to carry you along
with him on this long pilgrimage which he and his
companion made from Zanzibar on the east coast, to
the central and equatorial kingdoms in which they
were so long detained, he will now first read to
you a brief sketch of the whole course of the great
White Nile, and will show you how vastly superior
it is, not only
in length, but also in volume and im-
portance, to all the effluents which it receives from
the east or from the west, including the great B.ue
Nile. Cavillers about the source of the Nile there
are I know in abundance, and such persons will pro-
bably not even be satisfied by my assuring them
that Capt. Speke himself does not talk of the source,
but ho tells you that, whilst the southernmost end
of the late Victoria Nyanza does not receive waters
from the south, that great body is fed by numerous
small streams which flow into it from the west and
the east as it extends northwards; the great fact re-
maining that the southernmost end of this lake is on
the watershed between North and South Africa,
and in degs. south latitude. Before I call on
Capt. Speke to read his communication on the Nile,