The first coup d’oeil from the summit of the cliff 1500 feet above the level had suggested what a closer examination confirmed. The lake was a vast depression far below the general level of the country, surrounded by precipitous cliffs, and bounded on the west and south-west by great ranges of mountains from five to seven thousand feet above the level of its waters–thus it was the one great reservoir into which everything MUST drain; and from this vast rocky cistern the Nile made its exit, a giant in its birth. It was a grand arrangement of nature for the birth of so mighty and important a stream as the river Nile. The Victoria N’yanza of Speke formed a reservoir at a high altitude, receiving a drainage from the west by the Kitangule River; and Speke had seen the M’fumbiro Mountain at a great distance as a peak among other mountains from which the streams descended, which by uniting formed the main river Kitangule, the principal feeder of the Victoria Lake from the west, in about 2 degrees S. latitude. Thus the same chain of mountains that fed the Victoria on the east must have a watershed to the west and north that would flow into the Albert Lake. The general drainage of the Nile basin tending from south to north, and the Albert Lake extending much farther north than the Victoria, it receives the river from the latter lake, and thus monopolizes the entire head-waters of the Nile. The Albert is the grand reservoir, while the Victoria is the eastern source. The parent streams that form these lakes are from the same origin, and the Kitangule sheds its waters to the Victoria to be received EVENTUALLY by the Albert, precisely as the highlands of M’fumbiro and the Blue Mountains pour their northern drainage DIRECTLY into the Albert Lake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first coup d’oeil from the summit of the cliff 1500 feet above the level had suggested what a closer examination confirmed. The lake was a vast depression far below the general level of the country, surrounded by precipitous cliffs,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[4],"yoast_head":"\n