History of Egypt From 330 B.C. To the Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12)

by A. S. Rappoport

The whole course of the White Nile was also revealed with more or less accuracy, and all the mysterious surmises as to the great flow of the Nile from some unknown headwaters of enormous extent were now solved. It was only necessary to fill in the details of the map in regard to the great lakes and the rivers which flowed into them, and further to investigate the extensive territory between the lakes and the Egyptian settlements to the north. Sir Samuel Baker was the man who more than any other helped to supply the details of the work already accomplished. From Cairo he started on a journey up the course of the Nile. When he had reached Berber, he chose the course of the At-bara, or Blue Nile, the branch which receives the floods of water from the Abyssinian table-lands. He travelled up the western frontier of Abyssinia, proceeding as far as the river Rahad, a river flowing into the Blue Nile from the Egyptian side. From this point Baker turned backwards towards Khartum, which he reached in June, 1862, where he made a stay of some duration. He now made up his mind to search for Speke, and went up the White Nile as far as Gondokoro, where the meeting with Speke took place. Baker left this place March 26, 1863, but met with almost insuperable obstacles in trying to make further advance. The porters deserted, the camels died, and the ammunition and the presents intended to ease the way through the territory of native princes had to be all abandoned. Thus disencumbered, his party ascended the White Nile until they reached the Victoria affluent. The Bauyno tribes now prevented his intended advance to the Albert Nyanza. Baker, however, had the good fortune to be well received by the chieftain Kamurasi, and, as he was at this moment suffering from a severe attack of fever, the friendliness of this Central African chieftain was probably the means of saving his life. The king graciously received Baker’s present of a double-barrelled gun, and then sent him onward with two guides and three hundred men. The party now managed to push their way to the shores of the Albert Nyanza. They first arrived at a place called Mbakovia, situated near the south-east coast, and on March 16, 1864, they saw for the first time the great lake itself, which they now named the Albert Nyanza. After a short stay at Mbakovia, they proceeded along the coast of the lake until they reached Magungo, where the Victoria branch of the Nile flows into the Albert Nyanza. Continuing the journey up the source of the Victoria Nile, they discovered the Murchison Falls. When they set out for the Karuma Falls the porters deserted, and after many desperate adventures they at length returned to Khartum in May, 1865. Baker then went on to Berber, and crossed the desert to Suakin on the Red Sea. He returned to England late in the year 1865, and was received with honour and decorated by the queen with a well-earned knighthood.

In the year 1869 Baker entered the service of the Egyptian government, and was commissioned by the viceroy to subdue the regions of Equatorial Africa, and annex them to the Egyptian Empire. To succeed in this enterprise he waged many a war with African tribes like the Boni. On several occasions these conflicts had been forced upon him; on other occasions Baker Pasha was the aggressor, owing to his fixed determination to extend on all sides the limits of the Egyptian Sudan. With all the rulers, however, who treated him well, he remained on terms of loyalty and friendship; and, in time, he inspired them with respect for his fairness and liberality. Baker Pasha scattered the slave-traders on all sides, and, for the time being, effectually broke up their power. The slave-traders of the Sudan were of Arab nationality, and were in the habit of advancing farther, year by year, upon the villages of the defenceless Africans, and spreading their ravages into the heart of Africa. They always attacked the less warlike tribes, and, upon breaking into a negro settlement, would carry off the whole population, except the aged or sick. The slaves were herded together in vast numbers by help of logs of wood sawn in two, with holes cut large enough to enclose the neck of a slave, and the two sides of the log afterwards securely fastened again, thereby yoking together a row of these unfortunate beings. Every year, out of five hundred thousand or more slaves, at least half the number perished.. The markets for the slaves were the cities of the Muhammedans all through North Africa, Syria, Turkey, and Persia. The death-dealing hardships to the slaves were for the most part endured on the long journey to Cairo, or, when the trade was suppressed there, to points north of the Sudan, such as Tripoli, or certain ports on the Red Sea. Those who were hardy enough to reach the slave-markets were usually well treated by their Muhammedan masters. During the time of Baker Pasha’s administration, while he was pursuing the slave-traders and establishing Egyptian outposts, the whole course of the Nile from the Great Lakes became well known to the civilised world, though after this period Baker Pasha did not make any further voyages of discovery into unknown parts.

During the years of 1859 and 1860, an adventurous Dutch lady of fortune, Miss Alexandrine Tinné, journeyed up the Nile as far as Gondokoro, and in 1861 she commenced to organise a daring expedition to find the source of the Bahr-el-Ghazel, and explore the territory between the Nile basin and Lake Chad. She started from Khartum, and ascended the Bahr-el-Ghazel as far as the affluent Bahr-el-Hamad. She then crossed overland as far as the Jur and Kosango Rivers, and reached the mountains on the outlying districts of the Nyam-Nyam country. Here the members of the expedition suffered from black-water fever, and only with the greatest difficulty were they able to return to Khartum, where they arrived in July, 1864. In 1868 Miss Tinné, nothing-daunted, started for Lake Chad from Tripoli, with the intention of closing in upon the Nile from the eastern sources of the affluents of the Bahr-el-Ghazel. On reaching Wadi-Aberjong, however, this brave-hearted woman was waylaid by the fierce Tuaregs, and was beheaded August 1, 1868.

In the sixties, Georg Schweinfurth, a native of Riga, in the Baltic provinces of Russia, set out to explore Nubia, Upper Egypt, and Abyssinia for botanical purposes. Subsequently the Royal Academy of Science in Berlin equipped him for an expedition to explore the region of the Bahr-el-Ghazel. He entered the Sudan by Suakin on the Red Sea, and crossed the desert to Berber, reaching Khartum on November 1, 1868. The following January he set out along the course of the White Nile, passed Getina, and examined the vegetation (sudd) which had drifted down from all the affluents of the White Nile. He prolonged his stay for three years on the Bahr-el-Ghazel, solely absorbed in scientific studies, and, unlike his predecessors, he was unconcerned with reforms and attempts to suppress the slave-trade.

Schweinfurth penetrated so far into the heart of Africa that he reached the Congo basin and explored the upper waters of the Welle River, and on his return to Europe he published a work, in 1873, called “The Heart of Africa.” In this book he tried to demonstrate that the area of the Victoria Nyanza was taken up by a chain of five lakes.

About this time, in the same year, the famous Henry Morton Stanley returned to London from his adventurous discovery and relief of Dr. David Livingstone. The distinguished missionary and explorer died not long afterwards, and the fame of his brilliant discoveries and heroic life aroused great sympathy and interest in African exploration. The great river which Livingstone had explored was believed by him to have been the Nile, but was more correctly thought by others to have been the Congo River. On account of the interest aroused in Livingstone, the New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph of London decided to send Stanley on a fully equipped expedition to solve the many problems relating to the heart of Africa about which the civilised world was still in the dark.

Stanley chose the route of Zanzibar, and, landing there, he went up the course of the river and crossed the country to the Victoria Nyanza by the way of Unyamwezi. He reached the lake by the end of February, 1875. On March the 8th he set out to explore the shores of the lake, and mapped the whole region, including its bays, islands, and archipelagoes, with a considerable amount of accuracy. He also examined Napoleon Gulf, and reached as far as Ripon Falls, at which point the waters of the lake flow towards the Albert Nyanza. He then verified the accuracy of Speke’s supposition that the Victoria Nyanza really was the main source of the White Nile. Stanley set out from Uganda at the end of the year 1875, and travelled across the country to the Congo. About the same time three English surveyors, Colonels Purdy, Colston, and Sidney Enser, made several topographical reports on much of the territory between the Bahr-el-Ghazel, the Shari, and the Nile. Later on, in 1876, General Gordon sent Romolo Gesei, an Italian in the service of the khédive, to navigate and to explore Lake Albert Nyanza. In the following year Colonel Mason, an American, surveyed the lake, of which he made an accurate topographical chart.

In the year 1880, Mr. E. G. Ravenstein, an eminent geographer, made some valuable surveys of eastern equatorial Africa, which had the effect of inciting the Royal Geographical Society to send out, in 1882, an expedition under Joseph Thomson, a brilliant young African explorer, in order to find out a direct route to the Victoria Nyanza. Thomson set out from Momhasa early in the year 1883, but he never succeeded in realising the purpose of his mission.

Emin Pasha, as we have seen, was the governor appointed by the khédive to rule the Egyptian equatorial provinces. He made a few discoveries, such as the Semliki River, which was called by him Divern. Whilst he was engaged in travelling through the Bahr-el-Ghazel district, the revolt of the Mahdi occurred, and Emin Pasha was isolated from the outer world. In the year 1886 Doctor Junker returned to Europe from Emin, and roused great interest by his account of the adventures of the pasha, whom most people had believed to have died, but whom they now learned had set up an independent sovereignty in the heart of Africa, awaiting anxiously the advent of a relief expedition. Then Henry M. Stanley volunteered to go out on a relief expedition to bring Emin Pasha home.

Stanley avoided the route through the German colony on the East, and started upon his ever memorable relief expedition by the Congo route. The veteran adventurer succeeded in relieving Emin Pasha, and, furthermore, he discovered the Mountains of the Moon, called by the natives Ruwenjori, on May 24, 1888. He also traced to its sources the Semliki River, and explored Lake Albert Edward and a gulf of the Victoria to the south-west. The remainder of this famous journey, for the success of which he was knighted as Sir Henry M. Stanley, was outside the basin of the Nile, and is recorded in his book, “Through Darkest Africa.”