The Story of Geographical Discovery: How the World Became Known

by Joseph Jacobs

African exploration of the interior begins with the search for the sources of the Nile, and has been mainly concluded by the determination of the course of the three other great rivers, the Niger, the Zambesi, and the Congo. It is remarkable that all four rivers have had their course determined by persons of British nationality. The names of Bruce and Grant will always be associated with the Nile, that of Mungo Park with the Niger, Dr. Livingstone with the Zambesi, and Mr. Stanley with

DAPPER'S MAP OF AFRICA, 1676. the Congo. It is not inappropriate that, except in the case of the Congo, England should control the course of the rivers which her sons first made accessible to civilisation.

We have seen that there was an ancient tradition reported by Herodotus, that the Nile trended off to the west and became there the river Niger; while still earlier there was an impression that part of it at any rate wandered eastward, and some way joined on to the same source as the Tigris and Euphrates—at least that seems to be the suggestion in the biblical account of Paradise. Whatever the reason, the greatest uncertainty existed as to the actual course of the river, and to discover the source of the Nile was for many centuries the standing expression for performing the impossible. In 1768, James Bruce, a Scottish gentleman of position, set out with the determination of solving this mystery—a determination which he had made in early youth, and carried out with characteristic pertinacity. He had acquired a certain amount of knowledge of Arabic and acquaintance with African customs as Consul at Algiers. He went up the Nile as far as Farsunt, and then crossed the desert to the Red Sea, went over to Jedda, from which he took ship for Massowah, and began his search for the sources of the Nile in Abyssinia. He visited the ruins of Axum, the former capital, and in the neighbourhood of that place saw the incident with which his travels have always been associated, in which a couple of rump-steaks were extracted from a cow while alive, the wound sewn up, and the animal driven on farther.

Here, guided by some Gallas, he worked his way up the Blue Nile to the three fountains, which he declared to be the true sources of the Nile, and identified with the three mysterious lakes in the old maps. From there he worked his way down the Nile, reaching Cairo in 1773. Of course what he had discovered was merely the source of the Blue Nile, and even this had been previously visited by a Portuguese traveller named Payz. But the interesting adventures which he experienced, and the interesting style in which he told them, aroused universal attention, which was perhaps increased by the fact that his journey was undertaken purely from love of adventure and discovery. The year 1768 is distinguished by the two journeys of James Cook and James Bruce, both of them expressly for purposes of geographical discovery, and thus inaugurating the era of what may be called scientific exploration. Ten years later an association was formed named the African Association, expressly intended to explore the unknown parts of Africa, and the first geographical society called into existence. In 1795 MUNGO PARK was despatched by the Association to the west coast. He started from the Gambia, and after many adventures, in which he was captured by the Moors, arrived at the banks of the Niger, which he traced along its middle course, but failed to reach as far as Timbuctoo. He made a second attempt in 1805, hoping by sailing down the Niger to prove its identity with the river known at its mouth as the Congo; but he was forced to return, and died at Boussa, without having determined the remaining course of the Niger.

Attention was thus drawn to the existence of the mysterious city of Timbuctoo, of which Mungo Park had brought back curious rumours on his return from his first journey. This was visited in 1811 by a British seaman named Adams, who had been wrecked on the Moorish coast, and taken as a slave by the Moors across to Timbuctoo. He was ultimately ransomed by the British consul at Mogador, and his account revived interest in West African exploration. Attempts were made to penetrate the secret of the Niger, both from Senegambia and from the Congo, but both were failures, and a fresh method was adopted, possibly owing to Adams' experience in the attempt to reach the Niger by the caravan routes across the Sahara. In 1822 Major Denham and Lieutenant Clapperton left Murzouk, the capital of Fezzan, and made their way to Lake Chad and thence to Bornu. Clapperton, later on, again visited the Niger from Benin. Altogether these two travellers added some two thousand miles of route to our knowledge of, West Africa. In 1826-27 Timbuctoo was at last visited by two Europeans—Major Laing in the former year, who was murdered there; and a young Frenchman, Réné Caillié, in the latter. His account aroused great interest, and Tennyson began his poetic career by a prize-poem on the subject of the mysterious African capital.

It was not till 1850 that the work of Denham and Clapperton was again taken up by Barth, who for five years explored the whole country to the west of Lake Chad, visiting Timbuctoo, and connecting the lines of route of Clapperton and Caillié. What he did for the west of Lake Chad was accomplished by Nachtigall east of that lake in Darfur and Wadai, in a journey which likewise took five years (1869-74). Of recent years political interests have caused numerous expeditions, especially by the French to connect their possessions in Algeria and Tunis with those on the Gold Coast and on the Senegal.

The next stage in African exploration is connected with the name of the man to whom can be traced practically the whole of recent discoveries. By his tact in dealing with the natives, by his calm pertinacity and dauntless courage, DAVID LIVINGSTONE succeeded in opening up the entirely unknown districts of Central Africa. Starting from the Cape in 1849, he worked his way northward to the Zambesi, and then to Lake Dilolo, and after five years' wandering reached the western coast of Africa at Loanda. Then retracing his steps to the Zambesi again, he followed its course to its mouth on the east coast, thus for the first time crossing Africa from west to east. In a second journey, on which he started in 1858, he commenced tracing the course of the river Shiré, the most important affluent of the Zambesi, and in so doing arrived on the shores of Lake Nyassa in September 1859.

Meanwhile two explorers, Captain (afterwards Sir Richard) Burton and Captain Speke, had started from Zanzibar to discover a lake of which rumours had for a long time been heard, and in the following year succeeded in reaching Lake Tanganyika. On their return Speke parted from Burton and took a route more to the north, from which he saw another great lake, which afterwards turned out to be the Victoria Nyanza. In 1860, with another companion (Captain Grant), Speke returned to the Victoria Nyanza, and traced out its course. On the north of it they found a great river trending to the north, which they followed as far as Gondokoro. Here they found Mr. (afterwards Sir Samuel) Baker, who had travelled up the White Nile to investigate its source, which they thus proved to be in the Lake Victoria Nyanza. Baker continued his search, and succeeded in showing that another source of the Nile was to be found in a smaller lake to the west, which he named Albert Nyanza. Thus these three Englishmen had combined to solve the long-sought problem of the sources of the Nile.

The discoveries of the Englishmen were soon followed up by important political action by the Khedive of Egypt, Ismail Pasha, who claimed the whole course of the Nile as part of his dominions, and established stations all along it. This, of course, led to full information about the basin of the Nile being acquired for geographical purposes, and, under Sir Samuel Baker and Colonel Gordon, civilisation was for a time in possession of the Nile from its source to its mouth.