I could not have slept among those rocks, eternal
guardians of the mighty secret. The absence of all breathing,
transitory existence but my own rendered it too solemn for me to dare
to intrude there. So I went back to the forest, (I returned much
quicker than I had come,) ate some supper, and, wrapped in a blanket I
had brought with me, went to sleep under the arching branches of a
tree. I have as little recollection of my next day's journey, except
that I defined a diagonal and thus avoided the bend. I found Herndon
waiting in front of the tent, rather impatient for my arrival.
"Halloo, old fellow!" he shouted, jumping up at seeing me, "I was
really getting scared about you. Where have you been? What have you
seen? What are our chances? Have you had any adventures? killed any
lions, or anything? By-the-by, I had a narrow escape with one
yesterday. Capital shot; but prudence is the better part of valor, you
know. But, really," he said again, apparently struck by my abstraction
of manner, "what _have_ you seen?"
"I have found the source of the Nile," I said, simply.
Is it not strange, that, when we have a great thing to say, we are
always compelled to speak so simply in monosyllables? Perhaps this,
too, is an example of the law that continually reduces many to
one,--the unity giving the substance of the plurality; but as the
heroes of the "Iliad" were obliged to repeat the messages of the gods
_literatim_, so we must say a great thing as it comes to us, by itself.
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