These mountains decreased in height toward the north, in which direction the lake terminated in a broad valley of reeds.
We were informed that we had arrived at Magungo, and after skirting the floating reeds for about a mile we entered a broad channel, which we were told was the embouchure of the Somerset River from Victoria N'yanza.

In a short time we landed at Magungo, where we were welcomed by the chief and by our guide Rabonga, who had been sent in advance to procure oxen.
The exit of the Nile from the lake was plain enough, and if the broad channel of dead water were indeed the entrance of the Victoria Nile (Somerset), the information obtained by Speke would be remarkably confirmed.

But although the chief of Magungo and all the natives assured me that the broad channel of dead water at my feet was positively the brawling river that I had crossed below the Karuma Falls, I could not understand how so fine a body of water as that had appeared could possibly enter the Albert Lake as dead water.

The guide and natives laughed at my unbelief, and declared that it was dead water for a considerable distance from the junction with the lake, but that a great waterfall rushed down from a mountain, and that beyond that fall the river was merely a succession of cataracts throughout the entire distance of about six days' march to Karuma Falls.

My real wish was to descend the Nile in canoes from its exit from the lake with my own men as boatmen, and thus in a short time to reach the cataracts in the Madi country; there to forsake the canoes and all my baggage, and to march direct to Gondokoro with only our guns and ammunition.