On the thirteenth day we reach the point where the waters from Lake Victoria Nyanza enter the Albert Nyanza. They pour in through the Victoria River, or as some call it, the Somerset River. Now arises a momentous question. Shall we go further. If we are not back in Gondokoro in a few weeks we may leave our bones in Central Africa. We are a fatigued, even a sick party, and the season is approaching when a white man had better be away from under the Equator. The Colonel proposes to forego further navigation and return. Lady Baker, with a fervor the Colonel seems to have lost, proposes to go to the other end of the lake in order to make sure that it is an ultimate reservoir of the Nile. [Illustration: THE MURCHISON FALLS.] Away off northward from where we are, some thirty miles, can be seen with the glasses the outlet of the lake——the Nile. It is settled that the inflow from Victoria Nyanza and the outlet northward are thus close together. But is that outlet the Nile after all? Lady Baker wants to settle this question too, and she proposes, after circumnavigating the lake and proving that it is an ultimate source, to descend the Nile through the northern outlet. But the Colonel urges want of time. The attendants tell horrible stories of dangerous falls and hostile natives. So we decide against Mrs. Baker, and, taking the Colonel’s advice, begin to ascend the Victoria Nile toward lake Victoria Nyanza, that being in the direction of our homeward march. We go but a few miles till a new marvel greets us——the Murchison Falls. On either side of the river are beautiful wooded cliffs 300 feet high. Bold rocks jut out from an intensely green foliage. Rushing through a gap in the rock directly ahead of us, the river, contracted from a broad stream above, grows narrower and narrower, till where the gorge is scarcely fifty yards wide, it makes one stupendous leap over a precipice 120 feet high, into the dark abyss below. The river then widens and grows sluggish again. Anywhere can be seen numberless crocodiles. While the Colonel is sketching the Falls, one of these animals comes close to the boat. He cannot resist a shot at it. The canoemen are disturbed and allow the boat to get an ugly swing on them. It strikes into a bunch of reeds, when out rushes a huge hippopotamus in fright and bumps against the canoe, almost oversetting it. There are cataracts innumerable on the Nile, but this is its greatest water fall, and a majestic picture it is. Our return journey to Gondokoro repeats many of our former experiences. We revisit the same tribes and meet with the same adventures. Kartoum is reached in May, 1865. Then we go by boat to Berber, and thence by caravan across the desert to Sonakim on the Red Sea, where a steamer is taken for England, and where the Colonel receives the medal bestowed on him by the Royal Geographical Society.