Going westwards, Livingstone met a party of Arabs amongst whom he remained for over three months, till he could make his way on to Lake Meoro, reported to be only three days' journey. It took him sixteen days to reach it. "Lake Meoro seems of goodly size," he says, "and is flanked by ranges of mountains on the east and west. Its banks are of coarse sand and slope gradually down to the water. We slept in a fisherman's cottage on the north shore." After a stay of six weeks in the neighbourhood, Livingstone returned to the Arabs, until the spring of 1868, when he decided to explore the Lake Bangweolo. In spite of opposition and the desertion of more men, he started with five attendants and reached this--one of the largest of the central African lakes--in July. Modestly enough he asserts the fact. "On the 18th I saw the shores of the lake for the first time. The name Bangweolo is applied to the great mass of water, though I fear that our English folks will bogle at it or call it Bungyhollow. The water is of a deep sea-green colour. It was bitterly cold from the amount of moisture in the air." This moisture converted the surrounding country into one huge bog or sponge, twenty-nine of which Livingstone had to cross in thirty miles, each taking about half an hour to cross. [Illustration: THE DISCOVERY OF LAKE BANGWEOLO, 1868: LIVINGSTONE ON THE LAKE WITH HIS MEN. From Livingstone's _Last Journals_, by permission of Mr. John Murray.] The explorer was still greatly occupied on the problem of the Nile. "The discovery of the sources of the Nile," he says, "is somewhat akin in importance to the discovery of the North-West Passage." It seemed to him not impossible that the great river he found flowing through these two great lakes to the west of Tanganyika might prove to be the Upper Nile. It was December before he started for Tanganyika. The new year of 1868 opened badly. Half-way, he became very ill. He was constantly wet through; he persistently crossed brooks and rivers, wading through cold water up to his waist. "Very ill all over," he enters in his diary; "cannot walk. Pneumonia of right lung, and I cough all day and all night. I am carried several hours a day on a frame. The sun is vertical, blistering any part of the skin exposed, and I try to shelter my face and head as well as I can with a bunch of leaves." On 14th February 1869 he arrived on the western shores of the lake, and after the usual delay he was put into it canoe for Ujiji. Though better, he was still very ill, and we get the pathetic entry, "Hope to hold out to Ujiji." At last he reached the Arab settlement on the eastern shores, where he found the goods sent to him overland from Zanzibar, and though much had been stolen, yet warm clothes, tea, and coffee soon revived him. After a stay of three months he grew better, and turned westwards for the land of the Manyuema and the great rivers reported to be flowing there.