ABSTRACT
As 1875 disappeared beyond the horizon Gordon determined to press on to Victoria Nyanza. He had been unable to reach Lake Albert by steamer. He set his teeth and made up his mind that Lake Victoria should not escape him. He felt that until the country adjacent to it was properly recorded by map-makers, peaceful penetration, so essential to civilization’s warfare on slavery, could not begin. He had but recently read a paper by Dr. Schweinfurth in which that eminent explorer had said : “ It may be that Lake Albert belongs to the Nile basin ; but it is not a settled fact, for there are seventy miles between Foweira and Lake Albert that have never been explored, and we are not authorized in making the Nile leave Lake Albert. The question is very doubtful.” This statement caused Gordon to write : “ It was contended that the Nile did not flow out of Lake Victoria, and thence through Lake Albert, and so southward, but that one river flowed out of Lake Victoria and another out of Lake Albert ; that these two rivers united and formed the Nile. This statement could not be positively denied, inasmuch as no one had actually gone along the river from Foweira to Magungo.” 1
Gordon reached Fatiko on his trek to Foweira on 3rd January, 1876. He had marched forty-eight miles in three days. “ I have great pains in the back,” he wrote, “ and though I can walk my fourteen miles it makes me feel much fatigued, and I feel sure I ought to get out of the country as soon as I can.”
