Some Heroes of Travel, or, Chapters from the History of Geographical Discovery and Enterprise

At mid-day, on the 12th of February, Burnaby and his companions galloped across the frozen highway of the Syr-Daria, and into the streets of Kasala, having ridden three hundred and seventy one miles in exactly nine days and two hours. He remained at Kasala for a few days, endeavouring to obtain permission to return to European Russia viâ Western Siberia; but his application failed, and he was informed that the authorization he had received to travel in Russian Asia had been cancelled. There was nothing to be done, therefore, but to complete the necessary preparations for his journey to Orenburg. A sleigh was hired, and amid a chorus of farewells from his Russian acquaintances, who showed themselves more friendly than their Government, he started on his homeward route, having undergone some novel experiences, and seen Khiva, but gathered no information of any value to geographers or men of science. In fact, the chief interest attaching to Major Burnaby’s expedition is personal: it shows that he was a man of much energy, resolution, and perseverance, and he may fairly be complimented on the good use he made of these qualities in his bold but unsuccessful Ride to Khiva. 19

SIR SAMUEL BAKER, AND THE SOURCES OF THE NILE

I

Of late years the Lake Regions of Central Africa have offered a fertile and attractive field to the explorer. The interest of the public in African discovery, which had for some time been dormant, was revived in 1849, by the achievements of Dr. Livingstone, who, starting from the south, crossed the tropic of Capricorn, and penetrated to the shores of Lake Ngami. In 1853 to 1856 the same great traveller traced the course of the river Leeambye or Zambési, and traversed the entire breadth of the “black continent” from Angola on the west coast to Zanzibar on the east. In 1865 he resumed his labours, striking into the very heart of Africa, with the view of tracing out the Sources of the Nile, and entering into a fertile country, the resources of which he found to be capable of immense development. For the first two or three years of his absence his letters and despatches reached England with some degree of regularity, but at length a veil of silence fell across his path, and it began to be feared that he, like other explorers, had fallen a victim to his enthusiasm. An expedition in search of the missing traveller was equipped by Mr. Gordon Bennett, proprietor of the New York Herald, in 1871, and placed in charge of Mr. Henry M. Stanley, who had the good fortune to find Livingstone at Ujiji, near Unyanyembé, on the 10th of November. He remained with him until the 14th of March, 1872, when he returned to England with his diary and other documents. Dr. Livingstone at this time reported that, in his belief, the Nile springs up about six hundred miles to the south of the southernmost point of Lake Victoria Nyanza. In November, 1872, a relief or auxiliary expedition, under Lieutenant V. Lovett Cameron, started from Zanzibar; but in October, 1873, while at Unyanyembé, its leader received the intelligence of Livingstone’s death, which had taken place at Ujiji, and soon afterwards the corpse arrived in charge of his faithful followers. Cameron then took up the work of exploration, and in spite of immense difficulties, great mental and physical suffering, and obstacles of every kind, he made his way to Lake Tanganyika, thence to Nyangwé, and after identifying the Lualaba with the Kongo, struck to the southward, and passing through regions hitherto unexplored, struck the west coast at Benguela. As a result of his observations, Lieutenant Cameron thus sketches the river system of Africa: —

“The basin of the Nile is probably bounded on the south-west by the watershed reached by Dr. Schweinfurth; on the south of the Albert Nyanza, by the high lands between that lake and the Tanganyika, whence the watershed pursues a tortuous course to Unyanyembé (where, I believe, the basins of the Nile, Kongo, and Lufiji approach each other), and then follows a wave of high land running east till it turns up northwards along the landward slopes of the mountains dividing the littoral from the interior. Passing by Mounts Kilima Njaro and Kenia, it extends to the mountains of Abyssinia, where the sources of the Blue Nile were discovered by Bruce [1770], and so on to the parched plains bordering the Red Sea, where no rains ever fall. The western boundary of the Nile basin is, of course, the eastern portion of the desert.

“The basins of the Niger and the Ogowai cannot yet be defined with any degree of exactitude, and the northern boundary of the basin of the Kongo has still to be traced.

“The Zambési drains that portion of the continent south of the Kongo system, and north of the Kalahari desert and the Limpopo, the northern boundary of the Transvaal Republic; some of its affluents reaching to within two hundred and fifty miles of the west coast.

“The mighty Kongo, king of all the African rivers, and second only to the Amazon (and perhaps to the Yang-tse-Kiang) in the volume of its waters, occupies a belt of the continent lying on both sides of the equator, but most probably the larger area belongs to the southern hemisphere. Many of its affluents fork into those of the Zambési on a level tableland, where the watershed is so tortuous that it is hard to trace it, and where, during the rainy season, floods extend right across between the head-waters of the two streams.

“The Kelli, discovered by Dr. Schweinfurth, may possibly prove to be the Lowa, reported to me as a large affluent of the Lualaba [or Kongo] to the west of Nyangwé; or, if not an affluent of the Lualaba, it most probably flows either to the Ogowai or the Tchadda, an affluent of the Niger.”

In 1874 another expedition of discovery was fitted out, at the joint expense of the proprietors of the London Daily Telegraph and the New York Herald, and Mr. H. M. Stanley was appointed to the command. In 1875 he reached Lake Victoria Nyanza, and through the good offices of Mtesa, King of Uganda, obtained a flotilla of canoes, with which he circumnavigated the lake. It proved to be the largest basin of fresh water in the world, occupying the immense area of sixty thousand square miles. Mr. Stanley next pushed on to Lake Albert Nyanza; afterwards circumnavigated the northern half of Lake Tanganyika; struck westward to the Lualaba at Nyangwé (1876), and thence descended the Lualaba as far as the Isangila Falls (June, 1877), whence he crossed the country to Kalinda, on the west coast.

But we must now return to 1857, when Captains Burton and Speke, under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society of London, started from Zanzibar to explore the inland lacustrine region; and discovered, to the south of the equator, Lake Tanganyika, which they partially explored in a couple of canoes. Captain Burton being taken ill, Speke pushed on to the north alone, and discovered the immense basin now known as the Victoria Nyanza, which he immediately conceived to be the great reservoir and head-waters of the Nile. To ascertain the truth of this supposition, he started again from the east coast in October, 1860, accompanied by Captain Grant; crossed the great equatorial table-land of the interior; reached the Victoria Nyanza; skirted its shores until they discovered its main outlet, which proved to be the Nile, and then traced the course of the famous river to Gondokoro, whence, by way of Assouan, Thebes, and Cairo, they proceeded to Alexandria. Their well-directed energy had to a great extent solved the geographical problem of ages, and dispelled the cloud-land in which the Nile springs had so long been hidden: —

“The mystery of old Nile was solved; brave menHad through the lion-haunted inland past,Dared all the perils of desert, gorge, and glen,Found the far Source at last.”

With heroic patience they had accomplished on foot their journey of thirteen hundred miles, and shown that the parent stream of the Nile, even in its earliest course a considerable river, was fed by the vast reservoir of the “Victorian Sea.” What remained to be discovered was the feeders of this vast basin, and which among them was indeed the primary source of the Nile. Some fresher light was thrown on the subject by Sir Samuel Baker, 20 who, with his wife, underwent some remarkable experiences in Central Africa, and earned a right to be included among our Heroes of Travel. Let us now follow him “through scorching deserts and thirsty sands; through swamp and jungle and interminable morass; through difficulties, fatigues, and sickness,” until we stand with him on that high cliff where the great prize burst upon his view, and he saw before him one of the chief sources of the Nile in the Luta N’zige, or Albert Lake.

Accompanied by his courageous and devoted wife, who insisted upon sharing his labours and his perils, he sailed up the Nile from Cairo on the 15th of April, 1861. In twenty-six days they arrived at Kousko, whence they crossed the Nubian desert, so as to cut off the western bend of the river, touching it again at Aboù Hamed. Eight days more and they reached Berber, where they remained until the 11th of June. A year was spent in exploring the Abyssinian frontier and the Abyssinian tributaries of the Nile; and the travellers made their appearance at Khartûm on the 11th of June, 1862. Khartûm is a densely populated, unclean, and pestiferous town, in lat. 15° 29′, at the junction point of the White and Blue Nile; it is the capital of the Soudan, and the seat of a governor-general. Twenty years ago it was also the centre of a cruel and desolating slave-trade, but the exertions of Sir Samuel Baker and Colonel Gordon have done much to lessen its proportions.

Having engaged a Nile boat, or dahabeeyah, and two larger noggens or sailing barges, with an escort of forty armed men, and forty sailors, and accumulated four months’ supplies of provisions, Sir Samuel set sail from Khartûm on the 18th of December, 1862. On Christmas Day he was slowly ascending the river, the banks of which were fringed with immense forests. These trees are the soont (Acacia Arabica), which produce an excellent tannin; the fruit is used for that purpose, and yields a rich brown dye. The straight smooth trunks are thirty-five feet high, and about eighteen inches in diameter. When in full foliage they look well from a distance, but on a closer approach the forest is seen to be a desolate swamp, completely overflowed; “a mass of fallen dead trees protruding from the stagnant waters, a solitary crane perched here and there upon the rotten boughs; floating water-plants massed together, and forming green swimming islands, hitched generally among the sunken trunks and branches; sometimes slowly descending with the sluggish stream, bearing, spectre-like, storks thus voyaging on nature’s rafts to freer lands unknown.” This kind of scenery – depressing enough, no doubt – continues for a considerable distance, and so long as it lasts deprives the Nile of that romance with which it has been invested by the imagination of poets. There is neither beauty nor interest in it; and one is surprised to see the low flat banks studded with populous villages. The flooded plains, however, afford abundant pasture for the herds of the Shillooks, who in their choice of a locality are governed by considerations of utility, and not by the principles of æstheticism.

The junction of the Sobat takes place in lat. 9° 21′. This tributary, at the point of confluence, is a hundred and twenty yards broad, and flows at the rate of two miles and a half per hour. Still the Nile valley presents the same characteristics – broad tracts of marsh and grasses; dull, monotonous levels, unrelieved by any vividness of colour. After receiving the Bahr-el-Ghazal, the White Nile turns abruptly to the south-east, and winds upward through a flat country, which, in the rainy season, is resolved into a system of extensive lakes. Its highway is half choked with floating vegetation, which nurtures innumerable clouds of mosquitoes. The people on its banks belong to the Nuehr tribe; the women pierce the upper lip, and wear an ornament about four inches long, of beads upon a iron wire, which projects like the horn of a rhinoceros. The men are both tall and robust, and armed with lances. They carry pipes that will hold nearly a quarter of a pound of tobacco; when the supply of “the weed” fails, they substitute charcoal.

The monotony of the voyage was broken one day by the appearance of a hippopotamus close to Sir Samuel’s boat. He was about half grown, and in an instant a score of men jumped into the water to seize him. The captain caught him by the hind-leg; and then the crowd rushed in, and, with ropes thrown from the vessel, slipped nooses over his head. A grand struggle ensued, but as it seemed likely to result in a victory for the hippopotamus, Sir Samuel slew him with a rifle ball. The Arab seamen, who have an extraordinary appetite, like the old school-men, for the most trivial arguments, observing that the animal had been “bullied” and scarred by some other and stronger hippopotamus, plunged into a fierce contention on the point whether he had been misused by his father or his mother. As they could not agree, they referred the question to the arbitration of Sir Samuel, who pacified both parties by the felicitous suggestion that perhaps it was his uncle! They set to work at once with willing vigour to cut up the ill-treated hippopotamus, which proved to be as fat as butter, and made most excellent soup.

Continuing their “up-river” course, the voyagers came to the country of the Kegtah tribe. Such savages as they saw were equally uncivilized and emaciated. The young women wore no clothing, except a small piece of dressed hide across the shoulders; the men, instead of the hide, assumed a leopard-skin. There was greater appearance of intelligence in the termites, or white ant, than in these poor half-starved wretches. The white-ant hills here rise like castle-towers above the water of the marshes. Their inmates build them ten feet high in the dry season, and when the rains come, live high and dry in the upper stories. Humanity, meanwhile, sickens in the stagnant swamp, and lingers out a miserable existence. The Bohr and Aliab tribes are a degree higher in the scale of civilization, but the Shir go beyond them. They are armed with well-made ebony clubs, two lances, a bow and arrows; they carry upon their backs a neatly made miniature stool, along with an immense pipe. The females are not absolutely naked; they wear small lappets of tanned leather as broad as the hand; at the back of the belt which supports this apron is a tail, depending to the lower portions of the thighs – a tail of finely cut strips of leather, which has probably given rise to the Arab report that a tribe in Central Africa had tails like horses. The huts here, and all along the Nile, are circular, with entrances so low that the inmates creep in and out on hands and knees. The men decorate their heads with tufts of cock’s feathers; their favourite attitude, when standing, is on one leg, while leaning on a spear, the uplifted leg reposing on the inside of the other knee.

All the White Nile tribes are quick to collect their harvest of the lotus, or water-lily, seed, which they grind into flour, and make into a kind of porridge. The seed-pod of the white lotus resembles an unblown artichoke, and contains a number of light red grains about the size of the mustard-seed, but in shape like those of the poppy, and like them in flavour. The ripe pods are strung upon reeds about four feet long, formed into large bundles, and carried from the river to the villages, to be dried in the sun, and stored away until wanted.

The 1st of February was a “white day” in the voyagers’ calendar, for on that day the scenery of the river underwent a welcome improvement. The marshes gave place to dry ground; the well-wooded banks rose four feet above the water level; the thickly populated country bloomed like an orchard. At Gondokoro the picture was fresh and pleasant, with a distant view of high mountains, and neat villages nestling under the shade of evergreen trees. Gondokoro is not a town, but merely a station of the ivory traders, and for ten months of the year is almost a solitude. Its climate is hot and unhealthy. Sir Samuel Baker did not meet with a friendly reception. The men who profited by the slave-trade regarded him with suspicion; they believed he had come to watch their doings, and report them to the world. Their hostility, however, did not disturb his composure, and he amused himself in riding about the neighbourhood, and studying the place and its inhabitants. He admired the exquisite cleanliness of the native dwellings, which almost rose to the standard of the famous village of Brock. Each house was enclosed by a hedge of the impenetrable euphorbia, and the area within was neatly plastered with a cement of ashes, cow-dung, and sand. Upon this well-kept surface stood one or more huts, surrounded by granaries of neat wicker-work, thatched, resting upon raised platforms. The huts are built with projecting roofs for the sake of shade, and the entrance is not more than two feet high. On the death of a member of the family, he is buried in the yard, his resting-place being indicated by a pole crowned by a bunch of cock’s feathers, and ornamented with a few ox-horns and skulls. Each man carries with him, wherever he goes, his weapons, pipe, and stool, the whole (except the stool) being held between his legs when he is standing. The Gondokoro natives belong to the Bari tribe: the men are well grown; the women are not prepossessing, with good features, and no sign of negro blood, except the woolly hair. They tattoo themselves on stomach, sides, and back, and anoint their persons with a peculiar red clay, abounding in oxide of iron. Their principal weapon is the bow and arrow; the arrow they steep in the juice of euphorbia and other poisonous plants.

At the secret instigation of the slave-traders, Sir Samuel Baker’s escort broke out into open mutiny, declaring that they had not meat enough, and demanding leave to carry off the oxen of the natives. The ringleader, an Arab, was so violent that Sir Samuel ordered him to receive twenty-five lashes. The vakeel, Saati, advanced to seize him, when many of the men rushed to his rescue; and Sir Samuel was compelled to interfere. The Arab then rushed at his employer; but Sir Samuel knocked him back into the middle of the crowd, caught him by the throat, and called to the vakeel for a rope to bind him; but in an instant all the mutineers sprang forward to his assistance. How the affair would have ended seems doubtful; but as the fray took place within ten yards of the boat, Lady Baker, who was ill with fever in the cabin, witnessed the whole of it, and seeing her husband surrounded, rushed out, forced her way into the middle of the crowd, and called on some of the least mutinous to assist. For a moment the crowd wavered, and Sir Samuel seized the opportunity to shout to the drummer-boy to beat the drum. Immediately, the drum beat, and in his loudest tones Sir Samuel ordered the men to “fall in.” The instinct of discipline prevailed: two-thirds of the men fell in, and formed in line, while the others retreated with the ringleader, declaring he was badly hurt. Then Sir Samuel insisted upon their all forming in line, and upon the ringleader being brought forward. At this critical moment, Lady Baker, with true feminine tact, implored her husband to forgive the man if he kissed his hand and begged for pardon. The men were completely conquered by this generosity, and called on their ringleader to apologize, and that all would be right. Thus the affair ended; but Sir Samuel rightly foresaw in it the promise of future troubles. According to the custom of the White Nile, the men had five months’ wages in advance; he had therefore no control over them; yet he and his wife were about to penetrate into the midst of a probably hostile native population, with an escort on whose faithfulness no reliance could be placed.

On the 15th of February, Captains Speke and Grant arrived at Gondokoro, from the Victoria Nyanza, and the meeting between them and Sir Samuel was necessarily very cordial. The information they communicated had a material effect upon his plans. He found that they had been unable to complete the actual exploration of the Nile – that a most important portion remained to be determined. It appears that in lat. 2° 17′ N. they had crossed the Nile, after tracking it from the Victoria Lake; that the river then turned suddenly to the west, and that they did not touch it again until they arrived in lat. 3° 32′ N., when it was then flowing from the west-south-west. The natives, and Kamrasi, King of Unyoro, had assured them that the Nile from the Victoria Nyanza, which they had crossed in lat. 2° 17′ N., flowed westward for several days’ journey, and at length fell into a large lake called the Luta N’zige (“Dead Locust”); that this lake came from the south, and that the Nile, on entering its northern extremity, almost immediately made its exit, and as a navigable river continued its course to the north through the Koshi and Madi countries. Circumstances prevented Speke and Grant from pushing their explorations as far as the Luta N’zige; and the question that remained to be answered was, What was the exact position of this lake in the basin of the Nile? what was its relation to the great river?

This question Sir Samuel Baker resolved upon settling. Speke and Grant sailed from Gondokoro, homeward bound, on the 26th, and he immediately began to prepare for his journey to the Luta N’zige. His preparations were delayed, however, by the mutinous conduct of his escort, and the obstacles thrown in his path by the nefarious ivory-traders and slave-hunters; and it was the 26th of March before he was able to effect a start. Then, with his escort reduced in number to fifteen men, with two faithful servants, Richard and the boy Saat, and a heavily loaded caravan of camels and donkeys, with Lady Baker mounted on a good strong Abyssinian hunter, Tétel (“Hartebeest”), and Sir Samuel himself on his horse Filfil (“Pepper”), and the British flag waving proudly above the cortége, they left Gondokoro, and began their march into Central Africa.

The country was park-like, but dried up by the hot weather. The soil was sandy, but firm, and numerous evergreen trees enlivened the landscape, which was further animated by clusters of villages, each surrounded by a fence of euphorbia. It varied greatly in character as the travellers advanced; sometimes presenting a magnificent forest, sometimes a dense jungle, sometimes a labyrinth of ravines, through which the caravan made its way with difficulty. The view of the valley of Tollogo was exceedingly picturesque. An abrupt granite wall rose on the east side to a height of about a thousand feet; from this perpendicular cliff huge blocks had fallen, strewing the bottom with a confused mass of fragments, among which the natives had built their village. A slow stream wound its way in the hollow, which was nowhere more than half a mile wide, in the shade of numerous fig trees. At Ellyria Sir Samuel narrowly escaped a hostile encounter with an ivory-trader’s party, but through the firmness and skilfulness of himself and his wife, not only was it avoided, but friendly relations were established with its leader. No supplies, however, could be procured from the natives, whose character Sir Samuel paints in the darkest colours. Of the village of Wakkala he gives a pleasant description. The soil was very rich, and the ground being protected from the burning sun by the large trees, there was a wealth of luscious grass; while the good pasturage, the extensive forest, and a plentiful supply of water insured a not less plentiful supply of wild animals – antelopes in numerous varieties, rhinoceros, buffaloes, elephants, and giraffes. The next town was Latomé, where the traveller’s presence of mind and courage were tested by another mutiny; but again he succeeded in defeating the intentions of the insurgents, and reducing them to obedience.

Along the foot of the Lafut mountains, which attain a general elevation of six to seven thousand feet, the travellers pursued their way. Desertions reduced their escort by five men, but they abated not their high hopes or spirit of daring enterprise. They duly arrived at Tarangdlé, famous for its fine trees – the chief settlement of the Latookas, a fine, frank, and warlike race, who resemble the Irish in their readiness to join either in a feast or a fray. The town contains three thousand houses, each of which, as well as the town itself, is protected by an iron-wood palisade. The cattle are kept in large kraals, and at various points high platforms are erected, where sentinels keep watch and ward both day and night. The cattle are the wealth of the country, and so rich are the Latookas in them, that ten or twelve thousand head are housed in every large town. The natives are constantly on guard to prevent the depredations of neighbouring tribes.