We were the first; and this was the key to the great secret that even Julius Caesar yearned to unravel, but in vain.

Here was the great basin of the Nile that received EVERY DROP OF WATER, even from the passing shower to the roaring mountain torrent that drained from Central Africa toward the north.

This was the great reservoir of the Nile! The first coup d'oeil from the summit of the cliff 1500 feet above the level had suggested what a closer examination confirmed.

The lake was a vast depression far below the general level of the country, surrounded by precipitous cliffs, and bounded on the west and south-west by great ranges of mountains from five to seven thousand feet above the level of its waters--thus it was the one great reservoir into which everything MUST drain; and from this vast rocky cistern the Nile made its exit, a giant in its birth.

It was a grand arrangement of nature for the birth of so mighty and important a stream as the river Nile.