Mr. Speke who was now known as Captain Speke, was intrusted with the command of the succeeding expedition which the Royal Geographical Society determined to send out for the purpose of verifying the theories above stated. He was accompanied this time by an old brother officer in India, Captain James Augustus Grant. The expedition under Speke and Grant set out from Zanzibar on the 25th of September, 1860. On the 23rd of January, 1861, it arrived at the house occupied by Burton and Speke’s expedition, in Tabora, Unyanyembé, having traversed nearly the entire distance along the same route that had been adopted formerly. In the middle of May the journey to Karagwé began. After a stay full of interest with Rumanika, king of Karagwé, they followed a route which did not permit them even a view of Lake Victoria, until they caught sight of the great lake near Meruka, on the 31st of January, 1862. From this point, the expedition, up to its arrival at the court of Mtesa, emperor of Uganda, must have caught several distant views of the lake, though not travelling near its shores. During a little excursion from the Emperor’s capital, they also discovered a long broad inlet, which is henceforth known as Murchison Bay, on its northern coast. On the 7th of July, 1862, the two travellers started in a north-easterly direction, away from the lake, and Speke states that he arrived at Urondogani on the 21st. From this point he marched up the river along the left bank, and reached the Ripon Falls at the outlet of Lake Victoria on the 20th of July. He thus sums up the result and net value of the explorations of himself and companion in the years 1860-62:— “The Expedition had now performed its functions. I saw that old Father Nile without any doubt rises in the Victoria N’yanza, and as I had foretold, that Lake is the great source of the holy river which cradled the first expounder of our religious belief.... The most remote waters, or _top-head of the Nile_, is the southern end of the lake, situated close on the 3° lat., which gives to the Nile the surprising length in direct measurement, rolling over 34 degrees of latitude, of above 2300 miles, or more than one-eleventh of the circumference of our globe. Now, from the southern point round by the west, to where the great Nile stream rises, there is only one feeder of any importance, and that is the _Kitangule_ River; while from the southernmost point round by the east, to the strait, there are no rivers of any importance.”... ---------------------------------------------------------------- LIVINGSTONE, BURTON & SPEKE, SPEKE & GRANT & VON DER DECKEN — 1856-1863. [Illustration: _London: Sampson Low, Marston & Company, Limited. E. Weller, Litho._] ----------------------------------------------------------------