“In consequence of the northern islands of the Bengal Archipelago before-mentioned obstructing the view, the western shore of the lake could not be defined: a series of low hill-tops extended in this direction as far as the eye could reach; while below me, at no great distance, was the _débouchure_ of the creek which enters the lake from the south, and along the banks of which my last three days’ journey had led me. This view was one which even in a well-known and explored country would have arrested the traveller by its peaceful beauty. The islands, each swelling in a gentle slope to a rounded summit, clothed with wood between the rugged, angular, closely-cropping rocks of granite, seemed mirrored in the calm surface of the lake, on which I here and there detected a small black speck,--the tiny canoe of some Muanza fisherman. On the gently shelving plain below me blue smoke curled among the trees, which here and there partially concealed villages and hamlets, their brown thatched roofs contrasting with the emerald-green of the beautiful aloes, the coral flower-branches of which cluster in such profusion round the cottages, and form alleys and hedgerows about the villages as ornamental as any garden shrub in England. But the pleasure of the mere view vanished in the presence of those more intense and exciting emotions which are called up by the consideration of the commercial and geographical importance of the prospect before me. “I no longer felt any doubt that the lake at my feet gave birth to that interesting river, the source of which has been the subject of so much speculation, and the object of so many explorers. The Arabs’ tale was proved to the letter. This is a far more extensive lake than the Tanganyika; ‘so broad that you could not see across it, and so long that nobody knew its length.’ I had now the pleasure of perceiving that a map I had constructed on Arab testimony, and sent home to the Royal Geographical Society before leaving Unyanyembe, was so substantially correct in its general outlines I had nothing whatever to alter. Further, as I drew that map after proving their first statements about the Tanganyika, which were made before my going there, I have every reason to feel confident of their veracity relative to their travels north through Karagwe, and to Kibuga in Uganda.” [Illustration: SKETCH MAP BY BURTON AND SPEKE, 1858. From the Original in the possession of the Royal Geographical Society.]