“The task I undertook was to examine the watershed of South Central Africa.  This was the way Sir Roderick put it, and though he mentioned it as the wish of the Geographical Council, I suspect it was his own idea; for two members of the Society wrote out ‘instructions’ for me, and the watershed was not mentioned.  But scientific words were used which the writers evidently did not understand.

“The examination of the watershed contained the true scientific mode of procedure, and Sir Roderick said to me:  ‘You will be the discoverer of the sources of the Nile,’ I shaped my course for a path across the north end of Lake Nyassa, but to avoid the certainty of seeing all my attendants bolting at the first sight of, the wild tribes there, the Nindi, I changed off to go round the south end, and if not, cross the middle.  What I feared for the north took place in the south when the Johanna men heard of the Mazitu, though we were 150 miles from the marauders, and I offered to go due west till past their beat.  They were terrified, and ran away as soon as they saw my face turned west.  I got carriers from village to village, and got on nicely with people who had never engaged in the slave-trade; but it was slow work.  I came very near to the Mazitu three times, but obtained information in time to avoid them.  Once we were taken for Mazitu ourselves, and surrounded by a crowd of excited savages.  They produced a state of confusion and terror, and men fled hither and thither with the fear of death on them.  Casembe would not let me go into his southern district till he had sent men to see that the Mazitu, or, as they are called in Lunda, the Watuta, had left.  Where they had been all the food was swept off, and we suffered cruel hunger.  We had goods to buy with, but the people had nothing to sell, and were living on herbs and mushrooms.  I had to feel every step of the way, and generally was groping in the dark.  No one knew anything beyond his own district, and who cared where the rivers ran?  Casembe said, when I was going to Lake Bangweolo:  ’One piece of water was just like another (it is the Bangweolo water), but as your chief desired you to visit that one, go to it.  If you see a traveling party going north, join it.  If not, come back to me and I will send you safely along my path by Moero;’ and gave me a man’s load of a fish like whitebait.  I gradually gained more light on the country, and slowly and surely saw the problem of the fountains of the Nile developing before my eyes.  The vast volume of water draining away to the north made me conjecture that I had been working at the sources of the Congo too.  My present trip to Manyuema proves that all goes to the river of Egypt.  In fact, the head-waters of the Nile are gathered into two or three arms, very much as was depicted by Ptolemy in the second century of our era.  What we moderns can claim is rediscovery of what had fallen into oblivion, like the circumnavigation of Africa by the Phoenican