Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1863-06-10

the Nyanza. Spoke was Hospitality delayed
Ave months as sort of state prisoner at Ug-
anda, for his movements were narrowly con-
strained; thence he pushed on to the next
kingdom-that of Ungoro-still inhabited by
the same peculiar Wahuma race, but by far
less advanced portion of them. North of I'M
caro- the South African family of Languages,
which had been universal thus fal, suddenly
ceased to be used, and the northern dialects
took its place. Hitherto Spoke had had no
trouble about Interpreters, for one single lam
guage was understood more or less by per-
sons in every kingdom he passed through.
Henceforth he could not get on in the least
without UngorO Interpreters. The people,
too, were far more barbarous.
Our traveller reached Gondokoro
on the 10th of February, and there met Mr..
Baker. In his retrospect of the more civil
lied countries he had visited, or the three
kingdoms of Karagwe, Uganda and Ungoro,
Spoke unhesitatingly gives the preference to
the first named, inasmuch as the king, Ru-
manika is described as person of character
and intelligence; Mtesa, the sovereign of
Uganda, being an amiable youth surrounded
by his wives and delighting in field sports,
while one of the rules Of his court seems to
require the execution of one man per diem
for the good of the state. The northernmost
VI St " tIlG llollii VI WubSC uO-
minionS the language changes entirely, is de-
scribed as a morose, suspicious, churlish
creature, yclept Kamrasi, whose chief occu-
patton was the tattening of his wives and chill
dren till they could not stand, and in the prac-
ticing of witchcraft. Our travellers spent a
whole year in getting through these three
kingdoms, in no one OF which had white man
ever been seen before, nor would our
friends, in all probability, ever have escaped
from their clutches had they not supplied
their majestes with numerous presents, and
that the kings had not eagerly desired to open
a traffic with the whites"
''When delayed in the interior Gap
tain Spoke occupied his leisure hours by writ
ing history of the Wahuma otherwise Gal
las or AbysSinianS, particularly i'll reference
to the portion of that nation that crossed the
Nile, and founded the large kingdom of Kill
laja, which is bounded on the south by the
lake Victoria Nyanza and the river Kitangule
Kagera on the east by the Nile, on the north
by the small river lake Nuta Nzge, and on
the west by the Kingdoms of tumble and
Whole. These names, as well as those of
the Kingdoms of Karagwe, Ugunda and I'm
goro, were only made known to geographers
i'll Speke's first journey; while no historian
has heretofore heard Of the dynastes which
Spoke enumerates, among whose kings we
read of Ware the Seventh and Rohinda tho
Sixth; one of the descendants of these soy
ereigns now possesses from three to four thou
sand wives. Not wishing however, to do
more on this occasion than increase your de-
sire to listen to this narrative at some future
meeting, must be permitted to read the very
words of Spoke, when at the end of the long
pilgrimage of himself and companions, he
fell in at GondOkoro, on the 18th of February
lnct with Gar Rolyar hO
onward to assist him. The meeting says
he, 'of two old friends suddenly approaching
one another from opposite hemispheres, with
out the slightest warning, can be better I'M
derstood than described; we were intoxicated
with joy, though my good friend had inward
ly hoped till now to find us in some fix from
which he might have relieved us. Baker had
one dahabiyek and two smaller vessels,
slowed with corn, which he at once placed at
our disposal. He also lent me money to pay the
way to Cairo, and finally supplied our dahab-
yek with every little decacy for our comfort.
He was our savior, if not in the interior, at
any rate on the Nile Nor can here omit
to notice the para graph in Spekes first letter
to myself, in which he says, L may safely say
| never felt so rejoiced as when Petheriek de-
livered to me your letter announcing 10 me
that the Royal Geographical Society had
awarded to me the Founders medal. The
determination of the reservoir from which the
Nile flows will enable us to speculate with
more accuracy than before on the regular PEE
riodicity of the rise of this stream in Egypt,
and which is now generally attributed, not to
the melting of the SHOWS of the higher chain,
but, in far the greater part, to the fall of the
equatorial rains on the interior spongy upper
basins, which, when supersaturated, must fill
to overlooking the lakes into which the wa
IL. l.
by the passage of the sun over the equator"
And here | cannot but observe that if there
remain any persons In the old fashioned
erroneous belief that the interior of Africa is
a mountainous sandy desert, from which the
sources OF the Nile are derived, the discover
les of Burton and of Spoke and Grant have as
completely dispelled the illusion, as respects
the equatorial ATTITUDES as the journey of Liv-
ingstone put an end to a similar hypothesis in
the south side of this great continent. Mod
ern discovery has indeed proved the truth of
the hypothesis, which / ventured to suggest
to you eleven years ago, that the true center
of Africa is great elevated watery basin, Of
ten Astounding in rich lands, its large lakes
being fed by numerous streams from adjacent
ridges, and its waters escaping to the sea bv
assures and depressions in the higher sur
rounding lands"
''Phe other CONGRATULATIONS which have
been established by Spoke and Grant, indie
pendently of the true source of the White Nile,
are Il. That the hypothetical chain of
mountains which have been called the Noun.
tains of the Moon, and which Ptolemy spoke
of as traversing the equatorial regions of Afri-
ca from east to west nave no such range as
theoretically inferred by DR.. Beke. Accord
ing to our travellers they are simply a separate
interior cluster of hills, from which some
small feeders of the Lake Victoria Nyanza
proceed. In fact, the Monies Luna of Bur-
ton and Spoke occupy the higher part of the
central watershed between North and South
Africa. Now, as they supply the Victoria
Nyanza, and, consequently, the Nile, with
son.e water, they may possibly send contribu-
tons to the Congo, in the west, while to the
south there seems now little doubt that their
waters flowed into the Lake Tanganyika of
Burton and Spoke, and thence into the Ny
ASA of Livingstone, as had been, indeed, in
ferred, on what seems to me very sound rea
sons, by Mr.. Francis Gallon. 2. That the in
habitants of the kingdoms of Karagwe
and Uganda, in the central and equatorial
parts OF Africa, are much more civilized and
advanced than the people who live to the
north on the banks of the Nile, between the
Lake Victoria, Nyanza and Gondokoro, the
latter being for the most part these naked
barbarians, probably the anthropophagi of
Herodotus, who have doubtless been the real
impedments during all ages to explorations
up the stream, or from north to south. 3.
We learn that an acquaintance with the lam
guage Of the natives on the east coast enabled