middle of November, 1861, and a few days country, the ever-smiling Rumanika begged us to be seated on the ground opposite to him, and at once wished to know what we thought of Karagwah, for it had struck him his mountains were the finest in the world; and the lake, too, did we not admire it?" Speke's chapters upon Karagwah and his The life read like a veritable romance. country was charming; it abounded with small mountain lakes and streams, and on a hill overlooking a lake which Speke called the Little Windermere, Rumanika's palace was built. The people have many curious customs and superstitions. Among the former may be mentioned the fashion of having fat wives. Being introduced to a great chief's wife, Speke thus describes her: "I was struck with the extraordinary dimensions yet pleasing beauty of the immoderately fat fair one. She could not rise, and so large were her arms that the flesh between the joints hung down like large loose stuffed puddings." The chief, pointing to his wife, said: "This is the product of our milk pots; from early youth upward we keep those pots to their mouths, as it is the fashion at court to have very fat wives." SPEKE CHASED BY A BUFFALO. All A sister-in-law of the king was a perfect wonder of hypertrophy. She was unable to stand except on all fours. Speke unblushingly requested permission to measure her. This is the result: "Round the arm 23 inches; chest 52 inches; thigh 31 inches; calf 20 inches; height 5 feet 8 inches. of these are exact except the height, and I believe I could have obtained this more accurately if I could have had her laid on the floor. Not knowing what difficulties I should have to contend with in such a piece of engineering, I tried to get her height by raising her up. This, after infinite exertions on the part of us both, was accomplished, when she sank down again fainting, for her blood had rushed into her head. Meanwhile, the daughter had sat stark-naked before us, sucking at a milk pot, on which the father kept her at work by holding a rod in his hand; for, as fattening is the first duty of fashionable female life, it must be duly enforced by the rod, if necessary.' From the fascinating kingdom of Karagwah the expedition commenced their journey to Uganda on the 11th of January, 1862. One hardly knows to which country to award the palm for the greatest interest. Rumanika was a humane king, ruling his people mildly; Mtesa, king of Uganda, was a very fiend, and slaughtered his people upon a mere whim, yet with Speke, though he often exhibited the usual native greed for everything he saw, he was invariably kind. King Mtesa was a spoiled child in his whims and fancies-one day all friendship, the next cold and haughty. He constantly importuned Speke to shoot birds for his amusement, and every attempt to introduce the former's real object, which was that of discovering the outlet of Lake Victoria N'Yanza, was put aside by this most wayward of barbarians. On the 25th March he indites in his diary a description of a scene, one of many such of which he was a spectator: "I have now been for some time within the court precincts, and have consequently had an opportunity of witnessing court customs. Among these, nearly every day since I have changed my residence, incredible as it may appear to be, I have seen one, two, or three of the wretched palace women led away to execution, tied by the hand, and dragged along by one of the body-guard, crying out, as she went to premature death, 'Hai min. RIPON FALLS. angé!' (Oh, my lord!) Kbakka!' (My king!) Hai n'yawo!' (My mother!) at the top of her voice, in the utmost despair and lamentation; and yet there was not a soul who dared lift hand to save any of them, though many might be heard privately commenting on their beauty." After a long detention in the strange land, exposed daily to the caprice of the king, the goal of so many struggles and dangers was attained on the 28th of July, 1862. The falls over which Father Nile escapes from the Lake Victoria N'Yanza was called the Ripon Falls, in honor of the President of the Royal Geographical Society. Then bidding adieu to the scene which had cost him so much labor to see, the explorer turned his face towards home, congratulating himself that his journey was almost ended. On the 15th February, 1863, the two friends arrived at Gondokoro, where, to their great delight, they met Baker-Sir Samuel Baker-who was en route to the land they were then in such a hurry to leave, determined to pluck one laurel leaf at least to deck his brow as a Nile Explorer. Eleven days later Speke and Grant floated down the Nile towards Cairo, which place they reached in safety, and where they parted finally with their devoted adherentsBombay and his party, who had clung to them with fidelity through all their troubles. They were received with great enthusiasm by the Royal Geographical Society, and by their countrymen. Speke published the record of his travels under the title, Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile; and Grant, who had been welcomed by Lord Palmerston on his return, with a "You have had a long walk, Captain Grant," adopted for his book the title of A Walk Across Africa. Both books are thoroughly readable, and they reflect the travelers' natures faithfully as amateur explorers, gentlemen hunters -nothing more. Poor Speke's travels are ended. He will charm us no more with his graphic descriptions of hunting feats, or with accounts of strange African lands. Shortly after he had finished writing his book, and during the sitting of the British Association at Bath, he shot himself, by accident, while out hunting birds. Grant's career has been prosperous since his advent in England as the companion of Speke in his discovery of the Nile's sources. He has married a wealthy lady, and lives at his ease in Scotland, near Inverness. The writer of this article saw him in Abyssinia, and was much charmed with his suavity and polished exterior. He will shortly publish an interesting book on the "Flora and Fauna of Central Africa," a book that is sadly needed upon a subject to which he can do ample justice. SIR SAMUEL AND LADY BAKER. Had Captains Speke and Grant thoroughly performed their work in Central Africa; had they not been in such a hurry to leave the region of the Nile's sources before they had explored that other lake they had heard of in Karagwah and Uganda, which lay to the west of their route as they marched toward Gondokoro and home, we doubt whether we should have heard of Baker as one of the White Nile explorers, or have received such an interesting work from the press as the Albert N' Yanza. Sir Samuel Baker is a different person alto. gether from either Livingstone, Burton, Speke or Grant. While he lacks the silent, moral heroism and the lofty enthusiasm of Livingstone, he undoubtedly is a hero of the muscular and bold type. He does not seem to enter on the work of exploration for the sole sake of acquiring geographical knowledge, but because it furnishes him with the food his adventurous spirit requires. The dangers and excitements incidental to African exploration lend to it an alluring charm, which has been the inducement for Baker to visit Central Africa. As a man, Baker is singularly devoid of angularities of disposition. He is honest, warm-hearted, and impulsive, with a cheery, sunny temper, which, though apt to wax hot occasionally, has no malice in its grain, and this enables him to win the love of his people. He is, perhaps, too severe a disciplinarian, but he makes up for this severity by such an open-handed generosity that his people feel more than compensated for any severity they may be subjected to. In scholarship and erudition he is the inferior of Burton, but he is superior to him in the vim and energy requisite for a great explorer, and his style of writing is much more attractive. He is the equal of Speke in the hunting-field, and second to none, not even Gordon Cumming; and though he is not such a student of natural history as Grant, he certainly excels both Speke and Grant in the art of book-making. Per But Baker has the advantage over his predecessors in Africa-if it can be called an advantage of having a loving wife as his companion. Both may sicken of fever, suffer from famine, be menaced by belligerent natives, yet are they all in all to each other; true companions in misfortune or in pleasure; helpmates one to the other. No acridity can arise from such companionship, the interest of one cannot clash with the other's, enmity stands abashed, treachery avoids. them, jealousy is unknown, suspicion may not hide between the close embrace of man and wife isolated from their species in the jungles of Central Africa. Sweet is the companionship of the lonely pair, and ro mance surrounds them with its halo. haps it is this charm which makes Baker's books so attractive to the general reader. Baker in person truthfully embodies the ideal, which the writer of this article in common per haps with other readers, has formed of him. Indeed, when I saw him at Cairo, in 1869, preparatory to his start on his present journey, I fancied I knew him well. There he stood, the burly, bearded incarnation of the hunter who shot rhinoceroses with the Hamram sword-hunters, had bagged elephants by the dozen near the sources of the Atbara, and had "tumbled over" antelopes at 600 yards' distance in the lowlands of the Sobat. true Englishman in appearance, with a keen and bold blue eye, a wealth of brown beard over the lower part of his face, a square, massive forehead, and prominent nose; a man with broad shoulders, of firm, compact build, a little taller than the average of his fellow-men; a man who planted his feet down solidly as he walked, like the surefooted, dogged, determined being that he is. A His wife a Hungarian lady whom he met, loved, and married at Cairo, in Egypt-is the feminine counterpart of himself-frank and hearty, with enough prettiness in her features to make her interesting at first sight; in short, a real woman, possessing womanly lovingness, strength of character, endurance, and every other virtue fit for an explorer's wife. Sir Samuel Baker prefaces his account of his journey to the Albert N'Yanza with the following: "I weighed carefully the chances of the undertaking. Before me, untrodden Africa; against me, the obstacles that had defeated the world since its creation; on ny side, a somewhat tough constitution, perfect independence, a long experience in savage life, and both time and means, which I intended to devote to the object without limit. England had never sent an expedition to the Nile sources previous to that under the command of Speke and Grant. Bruce, ninety years ago, had succeeded in tracing the source of the Blue or Lesser Nile-thus, the honor of that discovery belonged to Great Britain; Speke was on his road from the south; and I felt confident that my gallant friend would leave his bones upon the path SIR SAMUEL AND LADY BAKER. rather than submit to failure. I trusted that England would not be beaten; and although I hardly dared to hope that I could succeed where others greater than I had failed, I determined to sacrifice all in the attempt. Had I been alone, it would have been no hard lot to die upon the untrodden path before me, but there was one who, although my greatest comfort, was also my greatest care; one whose life yet dawned at so early an age that womanhood was still a future. I shuddered at the prospect for her should she be left alone in savage lands at my death; and gladly would I have left her in the luxuries of home instead of exposing her to the miseries of Africa. It was in vain that I implored her to remain, and that I painted the difficulties and perils still blacker than I supposed they really would be; she was resolved, with woman's constancy and devotion, to share all dangers and to follow me through each rough footstep of the wild life before me." Baker's travels from Gondokoro southward, though they cover very little ground com pared to the great march of Speke and Grant, are yet so full of incidents that it is a difficult task to give any. thing like a fair résumé of them in an article like this. Those who would like to know what Baker and his noble wife suffered and performed, had better read Bayard Taylor's abridgment of the |