--health, vigour, abundance.

No wonder Burton felt a marvellous exultation of spirits when he viewed
this great expanse of waters. Here, he thought, are the sources of that
ancient river--the Nile. Now are fulfilled the longing of two thousand
years. I am the heir of the ages! Having hired "a solid built Arab
craft," the explorers made their way first to Ujiji and then to Uvira,
the northernmost point of the lake, which they reached on April 26th.
On their return voyage they were caught in a terrible storm, from which
they did not expect to be saved, and while the wild tumbling waves
threatened momentarily to engulf them a couplet from his fragmentary
Kasidah kept running in Burton's mind:

"This collied night, these horrid waves, these gusts that sweep
the whirling deep;
What reck they of our evil plight, who on the shore securely
sleep?" [172]

However, they came out of this peril, just as they had come out of
so many others. Burton also crossed the lake and landed in Kazembe's
country, [173] in which he was intensely interested, and some years
later he translated into English the narratives of Dr. Lacerda [174]
and other Portuguese travellers who had visited its capital, Lunda, near
Lake Moero.

38. The Return Journey, 26th May 1858 to 13th February 1859.

The explorers left Tanganyika for the return journey to Zanzibar on May
26th. At Yombo, reached June 18th, Burton received a packet of letters,
which arrived from the coast, and from one he learnt of the death of his
father, which had occurred 8 months previous. Despite his researches,
Colonel Burton was not missed in the scientific world, but his son
sincerely mourned a kind-hearted and indulgent parent. At Kazeh,
Fortune, which had hitherto been so favourable, now played Burton a
paltry trick. Speke having expressed a wish to visit the lake now called
Victoria Nyanza, a sheet of water which report declared to be larger
than Tanganyika, Burton, for various reasons, thought it wiser not to
accompany him. So Speke went alone and continued his march until he
reached the lake, the dimensions of which surpassed his most sanguine
expectations. On his return to Kazeh he at once declared that the
Victoria Nyanza and its affluents were the head waters of the Nile, and
that consequently he had discovered them. Isis (he assured Burton) was
at last unveiled. As a matter of fact he had no firmer ground for making
that statement than Burton had