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 an explorer, mastered Arabic, and acquired the use of astronomical instruments. He now spent six months at Khartoum in preparation for his greater effort.

Failing to secure government troops as an escort, he started on 18 Dec. 1862 up the Nile with three vessels, twenty-nine transport animals, and a party of ninety-six, including forty-five armed men. Gondokoro was reached on 2 Feb. 1863, and information was there received of two white men who were detained on the Upper Nile. On the arrival of Speke and Grant on 15 Feb. Baker supplied them with stores and placed his three vessels at their disposal for their journey down the Nile; no less generous were they in informing him of what remained to be discovered. Speke gave his own maps, in which he had inserted the supposed position of the lake into which he had been informed the Nile flowed, and from which it issued again, and urged his friend to complete the discovery of the Nile source. Baker's first difficulties were due to the active hostility of the slave-dealers, to whose caravan he attempted to attach himself. Despite a dangerous mutiny of his men he was not deterred, but, accompanied by only fifteen of his original party, whom he forced to obey orders, he followed another company of ivory and slave traders returning to the Latuka country, regardless of their threats. From Latomé, where another mutiny among his men was only quelled by his own courageous decision, he marched to Tarrangolé, the capital of the Latuka country. He now found all progress much hampered owing to his dependence on the slave-trader Ibrahim, which had become complete because of the continued desertion of his men. For a time he was practically a captive at Tarrangolé and the unwilling companion of a slave-dealer engaged in harrying the country in all directions. In May 1863 he made a short reconnaissance to the south, leaving his wife with a friendly chief at Obbo, when he secured some valuable information with regard to the sought-for lake; but it was not till 3 Jan. 1864 that he was able to persuade Ibrahim to direct the course of the caravan towards Kamrasi's country and the Karuma falls. He arrived at the White Nile on 22 Jan., and at the Karuma falls on the next day, but experienced great difficulty in his dealings with King Kamrasi, from whose country it was as difficult to get away as in the first instance to approach. For carriers, as well as for permission to pass through his country, Baker was completely dependent on the will of this grasping potentate, whose extortion reached its climax in a demand for the explorer's wife. Leaving the Nile towards the end of February with an escort of three hundred of Kamrasi's men, whom he was soon glad enough to be rid of, Baker pursued his way along the right bank of the Kaja river with only twelve male followers. Here his troubles were enhanced by the dangerous illness of his intrepid wife from sunstroke. Threatened with her loss at a moment when the journey was most toilsome, yet the end near, his own health and spirit were wellnigh broken; with unconquerable resolution he struggled forward — his wife, in a state of coma, being carried in a litter — and on 14 March 1864 he reached at Mbakovia, a south-eastern point of the lake, the object of his quest. He records in his journal how he 'went to the water's edge, drank a deep draught, and thanked God most sincerely for having guided him when all hope of success was lost. . . and named the lake the Albert Nyanza.' Baker's observations of the lake proved to be curiously inaccurate; misled probably by the haze on the surface ( account in Geog. Journal, ix. 369) and native reports, he subsequently in error described the lake as extending a vast distance to the south ( in Darkest Africa, ii. 326). He now coasted along the eastern shore for thirteen days, when he reached Magungo, the entrance of the Victoria Nile. Obliged to abandon his intention of tracing the river northwards from its exit from the Albert Nyanza on account of the savage nature of the tribes in the Madi and Koshi districts, he explored the portion of the stream over which Speke had been unable to pass, from Magungo to the Island of Patooan, and named the Murchison Falls after his friend Sir Roderick, the president of the Royal Geographical Society. At Patooan he remained for two months, dangerously ill from fever, and again dependent for transport on King Kamrasi, by whom he was detained for several months at Kisuna and constantly harassed for further gifts and for assistance against the king's enemies. It was not until 17 Nov. 1864 that Baker was able to start on his return journey north, again in the company of the trader Ibrahim. He arrived at Gondokoro on 17 March, and at Khartoum on 3 May 1860, after an absence of two years and a half.

The discovery of the Albert Nyanza was the most remarkable feat accomplished in Baker's adventurous career; the work of Speke and Grant was thus completed, and the source of the Nile freed from mystery. Though it was left to Stanley (15 Dec. 1887) to discover the third lake and to