These men had found the source of the Nile in the Victoria
Nyanza. But they told the Bakers a wonderful story of how they had heard
rumours from time to time of the existence of another lake into which
the Nile was said to flow.
The minds of Baker and his wife were fired to emulation. Parting from
their newly-met countrymen, they pressed onwards and southwards. They
had to go a long distance out of their way to avoid the slave-traders
who were determined to wreck their plans if they could.
"We have heard a good deal recently of lady travellers in Africa," said
the _Times_ a long time afterwards, "but their work has been mere
child's play compared with the trials which Lady Baker had to undergo in
forcing her way into a region absolutely unknown and bristling with
dangers of every kind."
But after encountering many adventures, the determined traveller and his
brave wife at last reached the top of a slope from which, on looking
down, they saw a vast inland ocean. No eye of white man had ever beheld
this lake before, and to Lady Baker, not less than to her husband,
belongs the glory of the discovery of the lake which all the world knows
to-day as the Albert Nyanza.
"Thus," to quote an earlier passage in the same _Times_ article, "amid
many hardships and at the frequent risk of death at the hands of Arab
slavers and hostile chiefs, Baker and his wife forged one of the most
important links in the course of one of the world's most famous rivers.
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