[Illustration: MAP _OF THE_ WHITE NILE, _laid down from the Diary of_ FERD. WERNE. by H. Mahlmann 1848. Hillmandel & Walton Lithographers. Richard Bentley New Burlington Street, 1849.] EXPEDITION TO DISCOVER THE SOURCES OF THE WHITE NILE, IN THE YEARS 1840, 1841. BY FERDINAND WERNE. From the German, BY CHARLES WILLIAM O’REILLY. * * * * * IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty. * * * * * 1849. PREFACE. * * * * * The rich contents and originality of the work before us will escape no one who casts a glance at it, however hasty that may be. It presents the liveliest views of the Natural Productions and People of regions hitherto entirely unvisited. The surprising novelty of the phenomena is described by a writer of much experience, bold energy, and intense devotion to the land of the South. We welcome it, therefore, as a pleasing contribution to our literature of travel, often so insipid. The discoverer of the Source of the White Nile, under the vertical rays of the sun in Equatorial Inner Africa, will share the same fate as his illustrious predecessor, James Bruce, the discoverer of the Sources of the Blue Nile, if many of his statements should be doubted, criticised, and misunderstood. We have, however, no pretensions to be defenders of them. Some ten years later, perhaps, their justification, with the exception of a few errors, may follow our Herodotean wanderer into a _terra incognita_. Such was the case with a Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, James Bruce, and Mungo Park. Two French accounts have preceded the present narrative of a German fellow-traveller, in one of the three vast expeditions by water, undertaken by Mohammed Ali in 1840 and the succeeding years, with unequal success, for the discovery of the Sources of the Bahr el Abiad. We welcomed the French accounts on their first appearance, notwithstanding their meagreness and doubtfulness, in consequence of their main results. At the same time we expressed our hope that we should be better informed of these events by their fellow-traveller, for we were already aware of the exertions of the author of the present narrative. Everything, therefore, introductory to this Work will be found in the undermentioned pamphlet, to which it is only necessary here to refer to avoid repetition in a preface:—