The following paper was read out on December 11, 1871, before a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, Major-General Sir Henry Rawlinson, President of the Society, being in the chair.
Much light had been lately thrown upon the dark points of Eastern Africa, especially those which gather round the much-vexed Ethiopic Olympus, Kilima-njaro, by the labours of the Rev. Thomas Wakefield. This gentleman, we are informed (Preface by Mr Samuel S. Barton, General Mission Secretary, to ‘Footprints in Eastern Africa.’ London: Reed, 1866), was one of four missionaries sent out to Mombasah in 1861 by the United Methodist Free Churches under charge of Dr Krapf, who first established the now world-renowned ‘Mombas Mission.’ After a residence of five years he published the interesting series of ‘Notes on a Visit to the Southern Gálas’ above alluded to; and in 1866-7, accompanied by the Rev. C. New, he marched from Mombasah to Upokomo, on the Dana river. He is therefore an African traveller of some experience; and as he has evidently mastered the Kisawahili tongue, he is unusually well qualified to supervise and to correct the ‘Routes of Native Caravans from the Coast to the Interior of Eastern Africa, chiefly from information given by Sádi bin Ahedi, a native of a district near Gázi (Gasi Bandar?) in Udogo, a little north of Zanzibar.’ Especially advocated by my old and tried friend Mr Alexander Findlay, F.R.G.S., this valuable paper was published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (pp. 303-339, No. xi. Vol. xl. of 1870), and I felt somewhat surprised that the extent of its importance has not attracted more attention in England.
I will consider this addition to our scanty knowledge of one of the most interesting regions in tropical Africa under two heads—the philological and the geographical.
Firstly, Mr Wakefield, like Doctors Livingstone and Kirk, all being practical linguists, invariably uses the system of Zangian orthography, adopted by the ‘Mombas Mission,’ and by myself since 1859. He speaks, for instance, of Kilima-njaro and Unyamwezi, not the Monomoezi of Mr Cooley or ‘the authentic word Mueni Muezi,’ translated landlord, or petty chief country (p. 11, The Memoir on the Lake Regions of East Africa reviewed, &c. &c., by W. D. Cooley. London: Stanford, 1864). We find in Mr Wakefield’s Notes (p. 316) ‘Líma, a term denoting extraordinary size—Mlíma being the general term for mountain,’ whilst (p. 321) Ki-Mrima is justly applied to the dialect spoken on the Mrima or mainland facing Zanzibar Island. We read also (323) ‘Mtanganyíko,[[126]] Kisawáhílí, meaning the place of mingling or mixture (rendezvous).’ This is precisely the meaning attached by me to the Lake’s name, yet I was assured in the Memoir above alluded to (p. 7) that nothing can be ‘more ridiculous’ than my explanation of Tanganyika. Even in philological details of the Kisawahili dialect Mr Wakefield agrees with me. He writes, for instance, Udogo (Notes, p. 313), Ugala (Footprints, p. 67, 68), and Ulangulo (Ibid. p. 63). I was assured in the Memoir (p. 9) that U is prefixed to the names of countries only by Dr Krapf and Captain Burton—this, too, after I had for years been talking of Europe as Uzungu, literally, Land of white men. Mr Wakefield speaks of Wasămbá, of Wasawahili (or Wa-Sawahili), and of Wanyamwezi, thus sanctioning the use of Wamrima, continental men, and Wakilima, hill-men. He adopts Kisawahili, Kikwavi, Kimasai, and so forth, prefixing an adjectival particle ‘Ki’ to the root, and denoting chiefly dialect, yet I was assured by Mr Cooley (Memoir, p. 9) that ‘Ki’ has never an adjectival form. I may now invite the author of Inner Africa Laid Open to revise the verdict (Memoir, p. 7) which pronounces me ‘totally ignorant’ of the language of which I affect to be master.
It may be deemed trivial to dwell upon these philological minutiæ, but, firstly, nothing is unimportant when it affects the accuracy of a traveller, especially of an explorer, in the smallest matters of detail. Secondly, without an exact nomenclature all topographical literature must be imperfect and of scant value. And, finally, as Mr Cooley and I have been differing upon these points for the last ten years, it is well that the portion of the public which takes an interest in the subject should see who is right and who is not. I have no personal feeling in the matter; and if the ‘Geographer of N’yassi’ will bring, as I have done, independent testimony to bear upon the points in question, and not evolve his learning out of the depths of his self-consciousness, I am at all times ready and willing to own myself wrong.
Far more important and generally interesting, however, is the geographical knowledge brought home or rather confirmed to us by Mr Wakefield’s ‘Routes.’ We now know that the block whose apices are Mounts Kilima-njaro and Kenia (alias Doenyo Ebor, Mont Blanc) to be a great upland, bounded on the South by the Panga-ni river in S. lat. 5°, and on the N. West by a lacustrine region in S. lat. 6°; whilst it may possibly anastomose to the North, as was suggested by my friend Dr Beke, with the Highlands of Harar and of Moslem Abyssinia, lying upon the same meridian. The breadth between N. West and S. East will be included between East long. (G.) 37° and 39°. Assuming, therefore, roughly the bounding lines to measure 240 by 120 direct geographical miles—we obtain a superficies of 28,800 square geographical miles, more than a fourth of the area assigned to the British Islands. We can now safely believe, with Dr Krapf and Mr Rebmann, the explorers, that the block is a high volcanic country, separating the watershed of the Nilotic Basin from that of the Indian Ocean; sending off, like the Highlands of Abyssinia, its own tributary or tributaries to the White river, and corresponding with the Camarones or Theōn Ochēma in West Africa (N. lat. 4°); that it is a land of high plains and thickly forested hills, rising to summits capped, not with delomite and quartz, but with glaciers and eternal snows; and that it abounds in the lakes and swamps, sweet and salt, necessary to feed the inland ‘smoke mountains’ or volcanoes,[[127]] whose existence before appeared so problematical. And now the two mighty summits, Kilima-njaro, explored by the late lamented Baron von der Decken and Doenyo Ebor, reported to Dr Krapf under the alias Kenia or Kirenia, and unexpectedly confirmed by fresh evidence, have obtained local habitations as well as names.
But the interest of Mr Wakefield’s Routes culminates in the fact that they show even to a certainty the existence of a lake before unknown, and they lead to the conclusion that the area of 29,900 square geographical miles, assigned to the so-called Victoria Nyanza, contains at least four and probably a greater number of separate waters; that it is, in fact, not a Lake, but a Lake Region.
Mr Keith Johnston observes (p. 333), ‘It is remarkable that not one single name of a district, people, or place (with the exception of that of the Wamasai, a general name for the people of the white region west of the Lake)[[128]] given in these new routes has any such remote resemblance to names reported by Speke and Burton as to warrant any identification with any one of them.’ The reason will presently appear in the fact that we are speaking of different waters. The annotator further observes (p. 333) that ‘the arguments which Captain Burton used in recommending a division of the Nyanza had not a sufficient basis of proof to give them moment, as is shown by the acceptance of the Lake as one sheet by the whole geographical world.’
The mapper will readily understand that it is much more sightly and convenient to have a basin neatly outlined, and margined sky-blue, like the Damascus swamps, than to split it into fragments as I did. A volume published by the late Mr Macqueen and myself (The Nile Basin. London: Tinsleys, 1864), offered a sketch of what was actually seen by the second expedition, and the aspect of disjecta membra was not inviting. Afterwards, however (p. 334), Mr Johnston remarks, ‘Captain Burton’s recommendation would seem to receive some slight support from the new information obtained by Mr Wakefield.’ To this I would add that his language might have been less hesitating, as these ‘Routes,’ so important to the geography of Eastern Africa, at once establish the existence of two lakes wholly independent of the so-called Victoria Nyanza.
The first is that which we named from hearsay Bahari ya Ngo, contracted to Bahari Ngo, sea or water of Ngo(-land). In the atlas of Mercator (Gerhard Kauffmann) we find it written Barcena for Barenca or Barenga. Mr Wakefield prefers (324) Baringo, meaning a ‘canoe,’ and ‘possibly so called from its form.’ I shall follow his example, at the same time observing that African negroes rarely adopt such general and comprehensive views of larger features or venture upon such comparisons unless they can command a birds-eye glance at the prospect. Route No. 5, from ‘Lake Nyanza’ to Lake Baringo, conclusively proves that the latter is not ‘a sort-of backwater’ connected with the former ‘by a strait, at the same distance from the East of Ripon Falls as the Katenga river is to the West.’ Nor is it a ‘vast salt marsh’ without effluent: the saline water has evidently been confused with the lately reported Lake Naïrvasha or Balibali lying S. West of Doenyo Ebor. Native description supplies the Baringo with the Northern Nyarus—the southern effluent of the same name being clearly an influent. Nyarus thus corresponds with the old Thumbiri, Tubirih, and Meri, afterwards called Achua, Usua, and Asua, words probably corrupted from Nyarus.