shall succeed? I ask this because there are such
odds against us— not that I for a moment think
it would be best to return, having proceeded
so far.”
“Believe? Yes, I do believe that we shall all
emerge into light again some time. It is true
that our prospects are as dark as this night.
Even the Mississippi presented no such obstacles
to De Soto as this river will necessarily present
to us. Possibly its islands and its forests possessed
much of the same aspect, but here we are
at an altitude of sixteen hundred and fifty feet
above the sea. What conclusions can we arrive
at? Either that this river penetrates a great
distance north of the Equator, and, taking a
mighty sweep round, descends into the Congo—
this, by the way, would lessen the chances of
there being many cataracts in the river;— or that
we shall shortly see it, in the neighbourhood of
the Equator, take a direct cut towards the Congo,
and precipitate itself, like our Colorado river,
through a deep cañón, or down great cataracts;
or that it is either the Niger or the Nile. I
believe it will prove to be the Congo; if the
Congo then, there must be many cataracts. Let
us only hope that the cataracts are all in a lump,
close together.
“ Any way, whether the Congo, the Niger, or
the Nile, I am prepared, otherwise I shóúld not
be so confident. Though I love life as much as
rDec. 27,1876.-1 A VOID ABOUT TO BE FILLED UP. 2 5 1
I Vinya-Njara. J
you do, or any other man does, yet on the
success of this effort I am about to stake my
life, my all. To prevent its sacrifice foolishly I
have devised numerous expedients with which
to defy wild men, wild nature, and unknown
terrors. There is an enormous risk, but you
know the adage, ‘Nothing risked, nothing won.
* * * * *
“ Now look at this, the latest chart which
Europeans have drawn of this region. It is a
blank, perfectly white. We will draw two curves
just to illustrate what I mean. One shows the
river reaching the Equator and turning westward.
Supposing there are no cataracts, we ought to
reach ‘Tuckey’s Furthest’ by the 15th February;
but if the river takes that wider sweep from
20 north of the Equator, we may hope to reach
by the 15th March, and, if we allow a month
for cataracts or rapids, we have a right to think
that we ought to see the ocean by either the
middle or the end of April 1877-
“ I assure you, Frank, this enormous void is
about to be filled up. Blank as it is, it has a
singular fascination for me. Never has white
paper possessed such a charm for me as this
has, and I have already mentally peopled it,
filled it with most wonderful pictures of towns,
villages, rivers, countries, and tribes all in the
imagination— and I am burning to see whether