named De Bono. These were the men that Petherick had arranged with De Bono were to come into touch with Speke’s expedition. Here, however, they met with some disappointment. Instead of being allowed to proceed directly to Gondokoro, Muhammad Wad-el-Mek sought to detain them by alleging that no boats would be waiting for them at Gondokoro at that season (December). The usual heart-breaking delays took place. Speke decided from this point (Faloro) to send back Kijwiga,--a fairly faithful Unyoro guide, who had been with him now, one way and the other, about a year, having originally been sent to greet him in Uganda. Meantime Muhammad, De Bono’s agent, went off to the southward with his men to fight one African chief on behalf of another so as to secure a large quantity of ivory. Speke was shocked, during his stay in Unyoro, at the abominable way in which the “Turks” treated the inoffensive Madi natives. At last, on the 12th of January, 1863, Speke, disgusted and hopeless at the delay, started ahead to a village called Panyoro. He was followed up by Muhammad’s men, and they arrived at the Nile near the modern station of Afuddu (close to the junction of the river Asua and the Nile). At this place they found a tree with the letters M. I. inscribed on its bark. This was the remains of an attempt on the part of the Venetian traveller Miani to carve his name on a tree so as to give some information to Speke, who had long been expected in this direction. At this place there was another halt, which Speke and Grant employed in killing game, and giving a great deal of the meat thus acquired to the natives. On the first of February they started again, Muhammad having procured porters by the most arbitrary methods. They followed the Nile down to the confluence of the Asua River. This stream Speke imagined to flow out of what we now call Kavirondo Bay. It is strange that so great a geographer should have had such elementary notions about hydrography. He gives the Victoria Nyanza something like four principal outlets, much as the Portuguese in earlier days provided lakes in the centre of Africa which fed impartially the Congo, the Nile, and the Zambezi. Crossing the Asua, they emerged along the Nile rapids until they arrived at the verge of the Bari country. One serious attack was made on them, but was met by the determined measures taken by Muhammad. At last, on the 15th of February, 1863, they walked into Gondokoro. Here their first inquiry was for Petherick. “A mysterious silence ensued; we were informed that Mr. De Bono was the man we had to thank for the assistance we had received in coming from Madi.” Hurrying down through the ruins of the abandoned Austrian Mission to the bank of the river, where a line of vessels was moored, the explorers suddenly saw Mr. Samuel Baker marching towards them. “What joy this was I cannot tell. We could not talk fast enough, so overwhelmed were we both to meet again.”[74]