Meanwhile an important theory concerning the Nile Sources was published by my friend, Dr Charles T. Beke. He had surveyed and explored (Nov. 1840-May 1843) the Abyssinian plateau and the lowlands near the Red Sea, and he had determined the water-parting of the streams which feed the Nile and the Indian Ocean (Journal Royal Geographical Society, vol. xii). Whilst Ritter (Erdkunde) and other geographers made the White River rise between N. lat. 7° and 8° and even 11°, whilst Messrs Antoine d’Abbadie and Ayrton were searching for the Coy Fountains in Enaria and Kaffa (N. lat. 7° 49′ and E. long. 36° 2′ 9″); and whilst Mr James Macqueen located ‘the sources of the chief branch of the Bahr-el-abiad in about N. lat. 3°’ (Preface xxiv. Geographical Survey of Africa, London, Fellowes, 1840), and ‘at no great distance from the equator’ (Ibid. 235), Dr Beke announced at the Swansea meeting of the British Association, that he would carry the Caput Nili to S. lat. 2°-3° and E. long. 34°; moreover that he would place it ‘at a comparatively short distance from the sea coast, within the dominions of the Imam of Maskat.’ Rightly judging the eastern coast to be the easiest road into central intertropical Africa, Dr Beke, then secretary to the Geographical Society of London, collected a subscription[subscription] for exploring the Nile Sources, viâ Zanzibar, and sent out Dr Friedrich Bialloblotsky to attempt the discovery. This Professor of Hebrew and literary man presented in February 1849 his credentials to H. M. the Sayyid and to Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton. The latter, backed by Dr Krapf, sent back the explorer to Egypt, without allowing him even to set foot upon the East African shore, and he was justified in so doing. The recent murder of M. Maizan had thrown the coast into confusion, the assassin was at large, and the motives which prompted the deed were still actively at work within the Island of Zanzibar. Dr Bialloblotsky could speak no eastern tongue, at least none that was intelligible in S. Africa; he was completely untrained to travel, he collected ‘meteoric’ dust during a common storm at Aden—magno cum risu of the Adenites; he did not know the difference between a sextant and a quadrant, and he asked Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton what a young cocoanut was.
Dr Beke, in his character of ‘Theoretical Discoverer of the Nile Sources,’ has published the following studies.
‘On the Nile and its Tributaries,’ a statement of his then novel views (Oct. 28, 1846, and printed in the Journal Royal Geographical Society, vols, xvii., xviii. of 1847-8). ‘The Sources of the Nile: being a General Survey of the Basin of that River, and of its Head-streams, with the History of Nilotic Discovery’ (London, Madden, 1860). The appendix contains a summary of Dr Bialloblotsky’s projected journey.
‘On the Mountains forming the eastern side of the Basin of the Nile, and the origin of the designation, “Mountains of the Moon,” applied to them.’ This paper, being refused by the Royal Geographical Society, was read (August 30, 1861) before the British Association at Manchester.
‘Who discovered the Sources of the Nile?’ A letter to Sir Roderick I. Murchison (Madden, Leadenhall-street, 1863).
‘On the Lake Kurá of Arabian Geographers and Cartographers.’ This paper argues that the equatorial Lake Kura-Kawar, drawn by an Arab, and published in Lelewel’s “Geographie du Moyen Age,” represents the lakes and marshes of N. lat. 9°.
Dr Beke, it appears, doubly deserves the title ‘Theoretical Discoverer of the Nile Sources.’ He has lately transferred the Caput from S. lat. 2°-3° to S. lat. 10° 30′-11°, and from E. long. 34° to E. long. 18°-19°, making the stream pass through 43° of latitude, and measuring diagonally one-eighth of the circumference of the globe. (‘Solution of the Nile Problem,’ Athenæum, Feb. 5, 1870). The Nile is thus identified with the Kasai, or Kassavi, the Casais of P. J. Baptista (the Pombeiro), the Casati of Douville, the Casasi of M. Cooley, the Cassabe of M. J. R. Graça, the Kasaby of Mr Macqueen, and the Kasye or Loke of Dr Livingstone. These ‘New Sources’ are in the ‘primæval forests of Olo-Vihenda and Djikoe or Kibokoe (the Quiboque of the Hungarian officer Ladislaus Magyar), in the Mossamba Mountains, about 300 miles from the coast of Benguela. Mr Keith Johnston, jun. believes that the Lufira-Luapula river is the lower course of the Kassavi or Kassabi, which is usually made to rise in S. lat. 12°, near the Atlantic seaboard, and after flowing N. E. and N. as far as about S. lat. 8°, to turn eastward instead of continuing to the N. W. and W. He makes it, however, the true head of the Congo, not of the Nile.
Amongst minor explorations, I may mention that of Mr Henry C. Arcangelo, who in 1847 ascended the Juba or Govind River. It is, however, doubtful how far his explorations extended. He was followed in 1849 by Captain Short. In November, 1851, a party of three Moors or Zanzibar Arabs landed at ‘Bocamoio’ (the Bagamoyo roadstead village where M. Maizan disembarked), travelled with 40 carriers to the Lake ‘Tanganna’ (Tanganyika), crossed it in a boat which they built, visited the Muata Cazembe, and reached, after six months, the Portuguese Benguela. The late Mr Consul Brand communicated, through the Foreign Office, this remarkable journey, in which Africa had been crossed, with few difficulties, from sea to sea, and it excited the attention of the Royal Geographical Society (Journal, vol. xxiv. of 1854).
In 1852 Sir Roderick I. Murchison propounded his theory of the basin-shaped structure of the African interior. This was an important advance upon the great plateau of Lacépède (Mémoire, etc., dans les Annales du Musée de l’Histoire Nat., vi. 284), and it abolished the gardens and terraces of Ritter (Erdkunde, le Plateau ou la Haute Afrique). About the same time Col. Sykes recommended that an expedition be sent from Mombasah to explore the ‘Arcanum Magnum,’ opining that the discovery of Kilima-njaro and Kenia had limited the area of the head-waters between S. lat. 2°-4° and E. long. (G.) 32°-36°, almost exactly the southernmost position of the Nyanza Lake. In March, 1855, Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton forwarded concise but correct notices, ‘On various points connected with the H.M. Imam of Muskat,’ which was published in the Bombay Selections (No. 24). In Dec. 10, 1855, followed Mr James Macqueen’s paper on the ‘Present state of the Geography of some parts of Africa (read at the Royal Geographical Society, April 8 and June 10, 1850), with ‘Notes on the Geography of Central Africa,’ taken from the researches of Livingstone, Monteiro, Graça, and others (Journal Royal Geographical Society, vol. xxvi. 109). They show great critical ability. The map accompanying the memoir separated the ‘Tanganyenka’ from the Nyassa Lake; moreover, it disposed the greater axes of these several waters as they should be, nearly upon a meridian. Maps still suffered from that incubus the N’yassi or Single Sea, stretching between S. lat. 7°-12°, and distorted by its ‘historien géographe’ from the N. S. position occupied by the half-dozen lakes which compose it[[16]] to a N. W. and S. E. rhumb. As afterwards appeared, Mr Macqueen had confused the Tanganyika and Nyanza waters by placing the centre of the former in long. (G.) 29°. This, however, was not suspected when my excellent and venerable friend gave me the rough proofs of his paper, which travelled with me into Central Africa. Mr Macqueen has also done good by editing (Journal Royal Geographical Society, vol. xxx.) the Journeys of Silva Porto with the Arabs from Benguela to Ibo and Mozambique, and by other labours too numerous to be specified.
A pause in East African exploration followed the departure of Dr Krapf. M. Erhardt, whose project of entering viâ Kilwa was not supported, had joined his brother missionaries in India. M. Rebmann alone remained at Rabai Mpia. And whilst under H. H. Abbas Pasha a large and complete Egypto-European expedition was, after the old fashion, organized to ascend the stream, ‘ad investigandum caput Nili’ (Seneca, Nat. Quæst. vi. 8), the new and practicable route from the Zanzibar coast seemed to have been clean forgotten.