the vessel would
either upset, or else the river would dry up, in consequence of their
Neptune taking offence at me. Once over, I looked down on the noble
stream with considerable pride. About eight yards broad, it was sunk
down a considerable depth below the surface of the land, like a huge
canal, and is so deep, it could not be poled by the canoemen; while it
runs at a velocity of from three to four knots an hour.

I say I viewed it with pride, because I had formed my judgment of its
being fed from high-seated springs in the Mountains of the Moon solely
on scientific geographical reasonings; and, from the bulk of the stream,
I also believed those mountains must obtain an altitude of 8000 feet
[16] or more, just as we find they do in Ruanda. I thought then to
myself, as I did at Rumanika's, when I first viewed the Mfumbiro cones,
and gathered all my distant geographical information there, that these
highly saturated Mountains of the Moon give birth to the Congo as well
as to the Nile, and also to the Shire branch of the Zambeze.

I came, at the same time, to the conclusion that all our previous
information concerning the hydrography of these regions, as well as the
Mountains of the Moon, originated with the ancient Hindus, who told
it to the priests of the Nile; and that all those busy Egyptian
geographers, who disseminated their knowledge with a view to be famous
for their long-sightedness, in solving the deep-seated mystery with
enshrouded the source of their holy river, were so many hypothetical
humbugs. Reasoning thus, the Hindu traders alone, in those days, I
believed, had a firm basis to stand upon, from their intercourse with
the Abyssinians--through whom they must have heard of the country of
Amara, which they applied to the N'yanza--and with the Wanyamuezi or
men of the Moon, from whom they heard of the Tanganyika and Karague
mountains. I was all the more impressed with this belief, by knowing
that the two church missionaries, Rebmann and Erhardt, without the
smallest knowledge of the Hindus' map, constructed a map of their own,
deduced from the Zanzibar traders, something on the same scale, by
blending the Victoria N'yanza, Tanganyida, and N'yazza into one; whilst
to their triuned lake they gave the name Moon, because the men of the
Moon happened to live in front of the central lake. And later still, Mr
Leon, another missionary, heard of the N'yanza and the country Amara,
near which he heard the Nile made it