Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 30, April, 1860

After some days' pushing in this way, now driven by a strong head wind almost back from our course, again, by a sudden change, carried rapidly many miles on our journey,—after some days of this sailing, we arrived at a long, low reef of rocks. The water here became so shallow and boisterous that further attempt at sailing was impossible, and we determined to take our boat to pieces as much as we could, and carry it with us, while we walked along the shore of the river. I concluded, from the marked depression in the ground we had just passed, that there must be a corresponding elevation about here, to give the water a sufficient head to pass over the high ground below; and the almost cataract appearance of the river added strength to my hypothesis. We were all four armed to the teeth, and the natives had shown themselves, hitherto, either so friendly or so indifferent that we did not have much apprehension on account of personal safety. So we set out with beating hearts. Our path was exceedingly difficult to traverse, leading chiefly among low trees and over the sharp stones that had rolled from the river,—now close by the noisy stream, which babbled and foamed as if it had gone mad,—now creeping on our knees through bushes, matted with thick, twining vines,—now wading across an open morass,—now in mimosa woods, or slipping in and out of the feathery dhelb-palms.

Since our conversation spoken of above, Herndon and I had talked little with each other, and now usually spoke merely of the incidents of the journey, the obstacles, etc.; we scarcely mentioned that for which we were both longing with intense desire, and the very thoughts of which made my heart beat quicker and the blood rush to my face. One day we came to a place where the river made a bend of about two miles and then passed almost parallel to our point of view. I proposed to Herndon that he should pursue the course of the river, and that I would strike a little way back into the country, and make a short cut across to the other side of the bend, where he and the men would stop, pitch our night-tent, and wait for me. Herndon assented, and we parted. The low fields around us changed, as I went on, to firm, hard, rising ground, that gradually became sandy and arid. The luxuriant vegetation that clung around the banks of the river seemed to be dried up little by little, until only a few dusty bushes and thorn-acacias studded in clumps a great, sandy, and rocky tract of country, which rolled monotonously back from the river border with a steadily increasing elevation. A sandy plain never gives me a sense of real substance; it always seems as if it must be merely a covering for something,—a sheet thrown over the bed where a dead man is lying. And especially here did this broad, trackless, seemingly boundless desert face me with its blank negation, like the old obstinate "No" which Nature always returns at first to your eager questioning. It provoked me, this staring reticence of the scenery, and stimulated me to a sort of dogged exertion. I think I walked steadily for about three hours over the jagged rocks and burning sands, interspersed with a few patches of straggling grass,—all the time up hill, with never a valley to vary the monotonous climbing,—until the bushes began to thicken in about the same manner as they had thinned into the desert, the grass and herbage herded closer together under my feet, and, beating off the ravenous sand, gradually expelled the last trace of it, a few tall trees strayed timidly among the lower shrubbery, growing more and more thickly, till I found myself at the border of an apparently extensive forest. The contrast was great between the view before and behind me. Behind lay the road I had achieved, the monotonous, toilsome, wearisome desert, the dry, formal introduction, as it were, to my coming journey. Before, long, cool vistas opened green through delicious shades,—a track seemed to be almost made over the soft grass, that wound in and out among the trees, and lost itself in interminable mazes. I plunged into the profound depths of the still forest, and confidently followed for path the first open space in which I found myself.

It was a strangely still wood for the tropics,—no chattering parroquets, no screaming magpies, none of the sneering, gibing dissonances that I had been accustomed to,—all was silent, and yet intensely living. I fancied that the noble trees took pleasure in growing, they were so energized with life in every leaf. I noticed another peculiarity,—there was little underbrush, little of the luxuriance of vines and creepers, which is so striking in an African forest. Parasitic life, luxurious idleness, seemed impossible here; the atmosphere was too sacred, too solemn, for the fantastic ribaldry of scarlet runners, of flaunting yellow streamers. The lofty boughs interlaced in arches overhead, and the vast dim aisles opened far down in the tender gloom of the wood and faded slowly away in the distance. And every little spray of leaves that tossed airily in the pleasant breeze, every slender branch swaying gently in the wind, every young sapling pushing its childish head panting for light through the mass of greenery and quivering with golden sunbeams, every trunk of aged tree gray with moss and lichens, every tuft of flowers, seemed thrilled and vivified by some wonderful knowledge which it held secret, some consciousness of boundless, inexhaustible existence, some music of infinite unexplored thought concealing treasures of unlimited action. And it was the knowledge, the consciousness, that it was unlimited which seemed to give such elastic energy to this strange forest. But at all events, it was such a relief to find the everlasting negation of the desert nullified, that my dogged resolution insensibly changed to an irrepressible enthusiasm, which bore me lightly along, scarcely sensible of fatigue.

The ascent had become so much steeper, and parts of the forest seemed to slope off into such sudden declivities and even precipices, that I concluded I was ascending a mountain, and, from the length of time I had been in the forest, I judged that it must be of considerable height. The wood suddenly broke off as it had begun, and, emerging from the cool shade, I found myself in a complete wilderness of rock. Rocks of enormous size were thrown about in apparently the wildest confusion, on the side of what I now perceived to be a high mountain. How near the summit I was I had no means of determining, as huge boulders blocked up the view at a few paces ahead. I had had about eight hours' tramp, with scarcely any cessation; yet now my excitement was too great to allow me to pause to eat or rest. I was anxious to press on, and determine that day the secret which I was convinced lay entombed in this sepulchre. So again I pressed onward,—this time more slowly,—having to pick my way among the bits of jagged granite filling up terraces sliced out of the mountain, around enormous rocks projecting across my path,—overhanging precipices that sheered straight down into dark abysses, (I must have verged round to a different side from that I came up on,)—creeping through narrow passages formed by the junction of two immense boulders. Tearing my hands with the sharp corners of the rocks, I climbed in vain hope of at last seeing the summit. Still rocks piled on rocks faced my wearied eyes, vainly striving to pierce through some chink or cranny into the space behind them. Still rocks, rocks, rocks, against whose adamantine sides my feeble will dashed restlessly and impotently. My eyeballs almost burst, as it seemed, in the intense effort to strain through those stone prison-walls. And by one of those curious links of association by which two distant scenes are united as one, I seemed again to be sitting in my garret, striving to pierce the darkness for an answer to the question then raised, and at the same moment passed over me, like the sweep of angels' wings, the consciousness of that Presence which had there infolded me. And with that consciousness, the eager, irritated waves of excitement died away, and there was a calm, in which I no longer beat like a caged beast against the never-ending rocks, but, borne irresistibly along in the strong current of a mighty, still emotion, pressed on with a certainty that left no room for excitement, because none for doubt. And so I came upon it. Swinging round one more rock, hanging over a breathless precipice, and landing upon the summit of the mountain, I beheld it stretched at my feet: a lake about five miles in circumference, bedded like an eye in the naked, bony rock surrounding it, with quiet rippling waters placidly smiling in the level rays of the afternoon sun,—the Unfathomable Secret, the Mystery of Ages, the long sought for, the Source of the Nile.