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"The Zambesi. Nobody knows Whence it comes and whither it goes." |
So ran an old canoe-song of the natives.
With twenty-seven faithful black Makololos, with "only a few biscuits, a little tea and sugar, twenty pounds of coffee and three books," with a horse rug and sheepskin for bedding and a small gipsy tent and a tin canister, fifteen inches square, filled with a spare shirt, trousers, and shoes for civilised life, and a few scientific instruments, the English explorer started for a six months' journey. Soon his black guides had embarked in their canoes and were making their way up the Zambesi. "No rain has fallen here," he writes on 30th November, "so it is excessively hot. The atmosphere is oppressive both in cloud and sunshine." Livingstone suffered badly from fever during the entire journey. But the blacks took fatherly care of him. "As soon as we land," he says, "the men cut a little grass for my bed, while the poles of my little tent are planted. The bed is made and boxes ranged on each side of it, and then the tent pitched over all. Two Makololos occupy my right and left both in eating and sleeping as long as the journey lasts, but my head boatman makes his bed at the door of the tent as soon as I retire."
As they advanced up the Barotse valley, rains had fallen and the woods had put on their gayest hue. Flowers of great beauty grew everywhere. "The ground begins to swarm with insect life, and in the cool, pleasant mornings the place rings with the singing of birds."
On 6th January 1854 they left the river and rode oxen through the dense parts of the country through which they had now to pass. Through heavy rains and with very little food, they toiled on westward through miles and miles of swamp intersected by streams flowing southward to the Zambesi basin. One day Livingstone's ox, Sindbad, threw him, and he had to struggle wearily forward on foot. His strength was failing. His meagre fare varied by boiled zebra and dried elephant, frequent wettings and constant fever, were reducing him to a mere skeleton. At last on 26th March he arrived at the edge of the high land over which he had so long been travelling. "It is so steep," he tells us, "that I was obliged to dismount, and I was so weak that I had to be led by my companions to prevent my toppling over in walking down. Below us lay the valley of the Kwango in glorious sunlight." Another fortnight and they were in Portuguese territory. The sight of white men once more and a collection of traders' huts was a welcome sight to the weary traveller. The commandant at once took pity on Livingstone, but after a refreshing stay of ten days the English explorer started off westward to the coast. For another month he pursued his way. It was 31st May 1854. As the party neared the town of Loanda, the black Makololos began to grow nervous. "We have stood by each other hitherto and will do so to the last," Livingstone assured them, as they all staggered into the city by the seashore. Here they found one Englishman sent out for the suppression of the slave trade, who at once gave up his bed to the stricken and emaciated explorer. "Never shall I forget," he says, "the luxury I enjoyed in feeling myself again on a good English bed after six months' sleeping on the ground."
Nor were the Makololos forgotten. They were entertained on board an English man-of-war lying off the coast. Livingstone was offered a passage home, but he tells us: "I declined the tempting offers of my friends, and resolved to take back my Makololo companions to their Chief, with a view of making a path from here to the east coast by means of the great river Zambesi."
With this object in view, he turned his back on home and comfort, and on 20th September 1854 he left Loanda and "the white man's sea," as the black guides called the Atlantic Ocean that washes the shores of West Africa. Their way lay through the Angola country, rich in wild coffee and cotton plantations. The weather was as usual still and oppressive, but slowly Livingstone made his way eastward. He suffered badly from fever as he had done on the outward journey. It had taken him six months to reach Loanda from central Africa; it took a year to complete the return journey, and it was September 1855 before Linyanti was again reached. Waggons and goods left there eighteen months before were safe, together with many welcome letters from home. The return of the travellers after so long an absence was a cause of great rejoicing. All the wonderful things the Makololos had seen and heard were rehearsed many times before appreciative audiences. Livingstone was more than ever a hero in their eyes, and his kindness to his men was not forgotten. He had no difficulty in getting recruits for the journey down the Zambesi to the sea, for which he was now making preparations.
On 3rd November he was ready to resume his long march across Africa. He was much better equipped on this occasion; he rode a horse instead of an ox, and his guide, Sekwebu, knew the river well. The first night out they were unfortunately caught in a terrific thunderstorm accompanied by sheet-lightning, which lit up the whole country and flooded it with torrents of tropical rain.
A few days' travelling brought the party to the famous Zambesi Falls, called by the natives "where smoke sounds," but renamed by Livingstone after the Queen of England, Victoria. The first account of these now famous Falls is very vivid. "Five columns of vapour, appropriately named smoke, bending in the direction of the wind, appeared to mingle with the clouds. The whole scene was extremely beautiful. It had never been seen before by European eyes. When about half a mile from the Falls, I left the canoe and embarked in a lighter one with men well acquainted with the rapids, who brought me to an island in the middle of the river and on the edge of the lip over which the water rolls. Creeping with care to the verge, I peered down into a large rent which had been made from bank to bank of the broad Zambesi. In looking down into the fissure one sees nothing but a dense white cloud; from this cloud rushed up a great jet of vapour exactly like steam, and it mounted two or three hundred feet high."
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THE "SMOKE" OF THE ZAMBESI (VICTORIA) FALLS. After a drawing in Livingstone's Missionary Travels. |
Livingstone now continued his perilous journey with his hundred men along the Zambesi, the country once densely populated, now desolate and still. The Bakota tribes, "the colour of coffee and milk," were friendly, and "great numbers came from all the surrounding villages and expressed great joy at the appearance of a white man and harbinger of peace." They brought in large supplies of food, and expressed great delight when Livingstone doctored their children, who were suffering from whooping-cough. As they neared the coast, they became aware of hostile forces. This was explained when they were met by a Portuguese half-caste "with jacket and hat on," who informed them that for the last two years they had been fighting the natives. Plunging thus unconsciously into the midst of a Kafir war rendered travelling unpleasant and dangerous. In addition, the party of explorers found their animals woefully bitten by the tsetse fly, rhinoceroses and elephants were too plentiful to be interesting, and the great white ant made itself tiresome.
It was 3rd March before Livingstone reached Tete, two hundred and sixty miles from the coast. The last stages of the journey had been very beautiful. Many of the hills were of pure white marble, and pink marble formed the bed of more than one of the streams. Through this country the Zambesi rolled down toward the coast at the rate of four miles an hour, while flocks of water-fowl swarmed upon its banks or flew over its waters. Tete was the farthest outpost of the Portuguese. Livingstone was most kindly received by the governor, but fever again laid him low, and he had to remain here for three weeks before he was strong enough to start for the last stage of his journey to the coast. He left his Makololos here, promising to return some day to take them home again. They believed in him implicitly, and remained there three years, when he returned according to his word. Leaving Tete, he now embarked on the waters of the Zambesi, high with a fourth annual rise, which bore him to Sena in five days. So swift is the current at times that twenty-four hours is enough to take a boat from Tete to Sena, whereas the return journey may take twenty days.
"I thought the state of Tete quite lamentable," says Livingstone, but that of Sena was ten times worse. "It is impossible to describe the miserable state of decay into which the Portuguese possessions here have sunk."
Though suffering badly from fever, Livingstone pushed on; he passed the important tributary of the Zambesi, the Shire, which he afterwards explored, and finally reached Quilimane on the shores of the Indian Ocean. It was now 20th May 1856, just four years after he had left Cape Town on his great journey from west to east, since when he had travelled eleven thousand miles. After waiting six weeks on the "great mud bank, surrounded by extensive swamps and rice grounds," which form the site of Quilimane, Livingstone embarked on board a gunboat, the Frolic, for England. He had one Makololo with him—the faithful Sekwebu. The poor black man begged to be allowed to follow his master on the seas.
"But," said Livingstone, "you will die if you go to such a cold country as mine."
"Let me die at your feet," pleaded the black man.
He had not been to Loanda, so he had never seen the sea before. Waves were breaking over the bar at Quilimane and dashing over the boat that carried Sekwebu out to the brig. He was terribly alarmed, but he lived to reach Mauritius, where he became insane, hurled himself into the sea, and was drowned!
On 12th December 1856, Livingstone landed in England after an absence of sixteen years. He had left home as an obscure missionary; he returned to find himself famous. The Royal Geographical Society awarded him its gold medal; France and Scotland hastened to do him honour. Banquets and receptions were given for him, and finally this "plain, single-minded man, somewhat attenuated by years of toil, and with his face tinged by the sun of Africa," was received by the Queen at Windsor. The enthusiasm aroused by this longest expedition in the history of African travel was unrivalled, and the name of Livingstone was on every lip. But meanwhile others were at work in central Africa, and we must turn from the discoveries of Livingstone for the moment.
CHAPTER LXIII
BURTON AND SPEKE IN CENTRAL AFRICA
Livingstone had just left Loanda and was making his way across Africa from west to east, when an English expedition set forth to find the Great Lakes still lying solitary and undiscovered, although they were known to exist. If we turn to the oldest maps of Africa, we find, rudely drawn and incorrectly placed, large inland waters, that may nevertheless be recognised as these lakes just about to be revealed to a wondering world. Ptolemy knew of them, the Arabs spoke of them, Portuguese traders had passed them, and a German missionary had caught sight of the Mountains of the Moon and brought back strange stories of a great inland lake.
The work of rediscovering the lakes was entrusted to a remarkable man named Richard Burton, a man whose love of adventure was well known. He had already shown his metal by entering Mecca disguised as a Persian, and disguised as an Arab he had entered Harar, a den of slave traders, the "Timbuktu of Eastern Africa." On his return he was attacked by the Somalis; one of his companions was killed, another, Speke, escaped with terrible spear-wounds, and he himself was badly wounded.
Such were the men who in 1856 were dispatched by the Royal Geographical Society for the exploration of the mysterious lakes in the heart of central Africa. Speke gives us an idea of the ignorance prevailing on this subject only fifty-six years ago: "On the walls of the Society's rooms there hung a large diagram constructed by two missionaries carrying on their duties at Zanzibar. In this section map, swallowing up about half of the whole area of the ground included in it, there figured a lake of such portentous size and such unseemly shape, representing a gigantic slug, that everybody who looked at it incredulously laughed and shook his head—a single sheet of sweet water, upwards of eight hundred miles long by three hundred broad, equal in size to the great salt Caspian."
It was April 1857 before Burton and Speke had collected an escort and guides at Zanzibar, the great slave market of East Africa, and were ready to start for the interior. "We could obtain no useful information from the European merchants of Zanzibar, who are mostly ignorant of everything beyond the island," Burke wrote home on 22nd April.
At last on 27th June, with thirty-six men and thirty donkeys, the party set out for the great malarious coast-belt which had to be crossed before Kaze, some five hundred miles distant, could be reached. After three months' arduous travelling—both Burton and Speke were badly stricken with fever—they reached Kaze. Speke now spread open the map of the missionaries and inquired of the natives where the enormous lake was to be found. To their intense surprise they found the missionaries had run three lakes into one, and the three lakes were Lake Nyassa, Tanganyika, and Victoria Nyanza. They stayed over a month at Kaze, till Burton seemed at the point of death, and Speke had him carried out of the unhealthy town. It was January before they made a start and continued their journey westward to Ugyi.
"It is a wonderful thing," says Drummond, "to start from the civilisation of Europe, pass up these mighty rivers, and work your way alone and on foot, mile after mile, month after month, among strange birds and beasts and plants and insects, meeting tribes which have no name, speaking tongues which no man can interpret, till you have reached its sacred heart and stood where white man has never trod before."
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BURTON IN A DUG-OUT ON LAKE TANGANYIKA. After a drawing by Burton. |
As the two men tramped on, the streams began to drain to the west and the land grew more fertile, till one hundred and fifty miles from Kaze they began to ascend the slope of mountains overhanging the northern half of Lake Tanganyika. "This mountain mass," says Speke, "I consider to be the True Mountains of the Moon." From the top of the mountains the lovely Tanganyika Lake could be seen in all its glory by Burton. But to Speke it was a mere mist. The glare of the sun and oft-repeated fever had begun to tell on him, and a kind of inflammation had produced almost total blindness. But they had reached the lake and they felt sure they had found the source of the Nile. It was a great day when Speke crossed the lake in a long canoe hollowed out of the trunk of a tree and manned by twenty native savages under the command of a captain in a "goatskin uniform." On the far side they encamped on the opposite shore, Speke being the first white man to cross the lake.
Having retired to his hut for the night, Speke proceeded to light a candle and arrange his baggage, when to his horror he found the whole interior swarming with black beetles. Tired of trying to brush them away, he put out his light and, though they crawled up his sleeves and down his back, he fell asleep. Suddenly he woke to find one crawling into his ear, and in spite of his frantic efforts it crept in farther and farther till it reached the drum, which caused the tired explorer intense agony. Inflammation ensued, his face became drawn, he could with difficulty swallow a little broth, and he was quite deaf. He returned across the lake to find his companion, Burton, still very ill and unfit for further exploration.
So Speke, although still suffering from his ear, started off again, leaving Burton behind, to find the great northern lake spoken of as the sea of Ukerewe, where the Arabs traded largely in ivory. There was a great empire beyond the lake, they told him, called Uganda.
But it was July 1858 when the caravan was ready to start from Kaze. Speke himself carried Burton's large elephant gun. "I commenced the journey," he says, "at 6 p.m., as soon as the two donkeys I took with me to ride were caught and saddled. It was a dreary beginning. The escort who accompanied me were sullen in their manner and walked with heavy gait and downcast countenance. The nature of the track increased the general gloom.
"For several weeks the caravan moved forward, till on 3rd August it began to wind up a long but gradually inclined hill, until it reached its summit, when the vast expanse of the pale blue waters of the Nyanza burst suddenly upon my eyes! It was early morning. The distant sea-line of the north horizon was defined in the calm atmosphere, but I could get no idea of the breadth of the lake, as an archipelago of islands, each consisting of a single hill rising to a height of two or three hundred feet above the water, intersected the line of vision to the left. A sheet of water extended far away to the eastward. The view was one which even in a well-known country would have arrested the traveller by its peaceful beauty. But the pleasure of the mere view vanished in the presence of those more intense emotions called up by the geographical importance of the scene before me. I no longer felt any doubt that the lake at my feet gave birth to that interesting river (Nile), the source of which has been the subject of so much speculation and the object of so many explorers. This is a far more extensive lake than Tanganyika; it is so broad that you could not see across it, and so long that nobody knew its length. This magnificent sheet of water I have ventured to name Victoria after our gracious sovereign."
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BURTON AND HIS COMPANIONS ON THE MARCH TO THE VICTORIA NYANZA. From a humorous sketch by Burton. |
Speke returned to Kaze after his six weeks' eventful journey, having tramped no less than four hundred and fifty-two miles. He received a warm welcome from Burton, who had been very uneasy about his safety, for rumours of civil war had reached him. "I laughed over the matter," says Speke, "but expressed my regret that he did not accompany me, as I felt quite certain in my mind I had discovered the source of the Nile."
Together the two explorers now made their way to the coast and crossed to Aden, where Burton, still weak and ill, decided to remain for a little, while Speke took passage in a passing ship for home.
When he showed his map of Tanganyika and Victoria Nyanza to the President of the Royal Geographical Society in London, Sir Roderick Murchison was delighted.
"Speke, we must send you there again," he said enthusiastically.
And the expedition was regarded as "one of the most notable discoveries in the annals of African discovery."
CHAPTER LXIV
LIVINGSTONE TRACES LAKE SHIRWA AND NYASSA
Burton and Speke had not yet returned from central Africa, when Livingstone left England on another expedition into the interior, with orders "to extend the knowledge already attained of the geography of eastern and central Africa and to encourage trade." Leaving England on 10th March 1858, he reached the east coast the following May as British Consul of Quilimane, the region which lies about the mouth of the Zambesi. Livingstone had brought out with him a small steam-launch called by the natives the Ma-Robert after Mrs. Livingstone, the mother of Robert, their eldest child. In this little steam-launch he made his way up the Shire River, which flows into the Zambesi quite near its mouth. "The delight of threading out the meanderings of upwards of two hundred miles of a hitherto unexplored river must be felt to be appreciated," says Livingstone in his diary. At the end of this two hundred miles further progress became impossible because of rapids which no boat could pass. "These magnificent cataracts we called the Murchison Cataracts, after one whose name has already a world-wide fame," says Livingstone. Leaving their boat here, they started on foot for the Great Lake described by the natives. It took them a month of hard travelling to reach their goal. Their way lay over the native tracks which run as a network over this part of the world. "They are veritable footpaths, never over a foot in breadth, beaten as hard as adamant by centuries of native traffic. Like the roads of the old Romans, they run straight on over everything, ridge and mountain and valley."
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THE MA-ROBERT ON THE ZAMBESI. After a drawing in Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi. |
On 18th April, Lake Shirwa came into sight, "a considerable body of bitter water, containing leeches, fish, crocodiles, and hippopotami. The country around is very beautiful," adds Livingstone, "and clothed with rich vegetation, and the waves breaking and foaming over a rock, added to the beauty of the picture. Exceedingly lofty mountains stand near the eastern shore."
No white man had gazed at the lake before. Though one of the smaller African lakes, Shirwa is probably larger than all the lakes of Great Britain put together. Returning to Tete, the explorer now prepared for his journey to the farther Lake Nyassa. This was to be no new discovery. The Portuguese knew the locality of Lake Shirwa, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century Nyassa was familiar to them under another name. Landing at the same spot on the Shire banks as before, Livingstone, with thirty-six Makololo porters and two native guides, ascended the beautiful Shire Highlands, some twelve hundred feet above sea-level, and crossed the range on which Zomba, the residence of the British Commissioner for Nyassaland, now stands. When within a day's march of their goal they were told that no lake had ever been heard of in the neighbourhood, but, said the natives, the river Shire stretched on, and it would take two months to reach the end, which came out of perpendicular rocks which towered almost to the skies.
"Let us go back to the ship," said the followers; "it is no use trying to find the lake."
But Livingstone persevered, and he was soon rewarded by finding a sheet of water, which was indeed the beginning of Lake Nyassa. It was 16th September 1859.
"How far is it to the end of the lake?" he asked.
"The other end of the lake? Who ever heard of such a thing? Why, if one started when a mere boy to walk to the other end of the lake, he would be an old grey-headed man before he got there," declared one of the natives. Livingstone knew that he had opened up a great waterway to the interior of Africa, but the slave trade in these parts was terrible, gangs being employed in carrying the ivory from countries to the north down to the east coast. The English explorer saw that if he could establish a steamer upon this Lake Nyassa and buy ivory from the natives with European goods he would at once strike a deadly blow at the slave trade. His letters home stirred several missionaries to come out and establish a settlement on the banks of the Shire River. Bishop Mackenzie and a little band of helpers arrived on the river Shire two years later, and in 1862 Mrs. Livingstone joined them, bringing out with her a little new steamer to launch on the Lake Nyassa. But the unhealthy season was at its height, and "the surrounding low land, rank with vegetation and reeking from the late rainy season, exhaled the malarious poison in enormous quantities." Mrs. Livingstone fell ill, and in a week she was dead. She was buried under a large baobab tree at Shapunga, where her grave is visited by many a traveller passing through this once solitary region first penetrated by her husband.
The blow was a crushing one for Livingstone, and for a time he was quite bewildered. But when his old energy returned he superintended the launching of the little steamer, the Lady Nyassa. But disappointment and failure awaited him, and at last, just two years after the death of his wife, he took the Lady Nyassa to Zanzibar by the Rovuma River and set forth to reach Bombay, where he hoped to sell her, for his funds were low.
On the last day of April 1864 he started on his perilous journey. Though warned that the monsoon would shortly break, he would not be deterred. And after sailing two thousand five hundred miles in the little boat built only for river and lake, "a forest of masts one day loomed through the haze in Bombay harbour," and he was safe. After a brief stay here, Livingstone left his little launch and made his way to England on a mail-packet.
But no one realised at this time the importance of his new discoveries. No one foresaw the value of "Nyassaland" now under British protectorate. Livingstone had brought to light a lake fifteen hundred and seventy feet above the sea, three hundred and fifty miles long and forty broad, up and down which British steamers make their way to-day, while the long range of mountains lining the eastern bank, known as the Livingstone range, testify to the fact that he had done much, even if he might have done more.
CHAPTER LXV
EXPEDITION TO VICTORIA NYANZA
While Livingstone was discovering Lake Nyassa, Speke was busy preparing for a new expedition to find out more about the great sheet of water he had named Victoria Nyanza and to solve the vexed question: Was this the source of the Nile?
In April 1860, accompanied by Captain Grant, an old friend and brother sportsman, he left England, and by way of the Cape reached Zanzibar some five months later. The two explorers started for their great inland journey early in October, with some hundred followers, bound for the great lake. But it was January 1861 before they had covered the five hundred miles between the coast and Kaze, the old halting-station of Burton and Speke. Through the agricultural plains known as Uzarana, the country of Rana, where many negro porters deserted, because they believed the white men were cannibals and intended to eat them when safe away from the haunts of men; through Usagara, the country of Gara, where Captain Grant was seized with fever; through Ugogo's great wilderness, where buffalo and rhinoceros abounded, where the country was flooded with tropical rains, on to the land of the Moon, three thousand feet above sea-level, till the slowly moving caravan reached Kaze. Here terrible accounts of famine and war reached them, and, instead of following Speke's route of 1858, they turned north-west and entered the Uzinza country, governed by two chieftains of Abyssinian descent. Here Speke was taken desperately ill. His cough gave him no rest day or night; his legs were "reduced to the appearance of pipe-sticks." But, emaciated as he was, he made his way onwards, till the explorers were rewarded by finding a "beautiful sheet of water lying snugly within the folds of the hills," which they named the Little Windermere, because they thought it was so like "our own English lake of that name. To do royal honours to the king of this charming land, I ordered my men," says Speke, "to put down their loads and fire a volley."
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M'TESA, KING OF UGANDA. From Speke's Journey to Discover the Source of the Nile. |
The king, whom they next visited, was a fine-looking man, who, with his brother, sat cross-legged on the ground, with huge pipes of black clay by their sides, while behind them, "squatting quiet as mice," were the king's sons, six or seven lads, with little dream-charms under their chins! The king shook hands in true English fashion and was full of inquiries. Speke described the world, the proportions of land and water, and the large ships on the sea, and begged to be allowed to pass through his kingdom to Uganda. The explorers learnt much about the surrounding country, and spent Christmas Day with a good feast of roast beef. The start for Uganda was delayed by the serious illness of Grant, until at last Speke reluctantly decided to leave him with the friendly king, while he made his way alone to Uganda and the Lake Victoria Nyanza. It was the end of January 1861 when the English explorer entered the unknown kingdom of Uganda. Messengers from the king, M'tesa, came to him. "Now," they said, "you have really entered the kingdom of Uganda, for the future you must buy no more food. At every place that you stop for the day, the officer in charge will bring you plantains."
The king's palace was ten days' march; the way lay along the western coast of the Lake Victoria Nyanza, the roads were "as broad as our coach roads cut through the long grass straight over the hills and down through the woods. The temperature was perfect. The whole land was a picture of quiescent beauty, with a boundless sea in the background."
On 13th February, Speke found a large volume of water going to the north. "I took off my clothes," he says, "and jumped into the stream, which I found was twelve yards broad and deeper than my height. I was delighted beyond measure, for I had, to all appearance, found one of the branches of the Nile's exit from the Nyanza."
But he had not reached the Nile yet. It was not till the end of July that he reached his goal.
"Here at last," he says, "I stood on the brink of the Nile, most beautiful was the scene, nothing could surpass it—a magnificent stream from six hundred to seven hundred yards wide, dotted with islets and rocks, the former occupied by fishermen's huts, the latter by crocodiles basking in the sun. I told my men they ought to bathe in the holy river, the cradle of Moses."
Marching onwards, they found the waterfall, which Speke named the Ripon Falls, "by far the most interesting sight I had seen in Africa." The arm of the water from which the Nile issued he named "Napoleon Channel," out of respect to the French Geographical Society for the honour they had done him just before leaving England in presenting their gold medal for the discovery of Victoria Nyanza.
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THE RIPON FALLS ON THE VICTORIA NYANZA. From Speke's Journey to Discover the Source of the Nile. |
The English explorers had now spent six months in Uganda. The civilisation in this country of M'tesa's has passed into history. Every one was clothed, and even little boys held their skin-cloaks tightly round them lest their bare legs might by accident be seen! Everything was clean and orderly under the all-powerful ruler M'tesa. Grant, who arrived in the end of May, carried in a litter, found Speke had not yet obtained leave from the king to "open the country to the north, that an uninterrupted line of commerce might exist between England and Uganda by means of the Nile." But at last on 3rd July he writes with joy: "The moment of triumph has come at last and suddenly the road is granted."
The explorers bid farewell to M'tesa. "We rose with an English bow, placing the hand on the heart, whilst saying adieu; and whatever we did M'tesa in an instant mimicked with the instinct of a monkey."
In five boats of five planks each tied together and caulked with rags, Speke started with a small escort and crew to reach the palace of the neighbouring king, Kamrasi, "father of all the kings," in the province of Unyoro. After some fierce opposition they entered the palace of the king, a poor creature. Rumours had reached him that these two white men were cannibals and sorcerers. His palace was indeed a contrast to that of M'tesa. It was merely a dirty hut approached by a lane ankle-deep in mud and cow-manure. The king's sisters were not allowed to marry; their only occupation was to drink milk from morning to night, with the result that they grew so fat it took eight men to lift one of them, when walking became impossible. Superstition was rife, and the explorers were not sorry to leave Unyoro en route for Cairo. Speke and Grant now believed that, except for a few cataracts, the waterway to England was unbroken. The Karuma Falls broke the monotony of the way, and here the party halted a while before plunging into the Kidi wilderness across which they intended to march to save a great bend of the river. Their path lay through swampy jungles and high grass, while great grassy plains, where buffaloes were seen and the roar of lions was heard, stretched away on every side.
| CAPTAINS SPEKE AND GRANT. |
Suddenly they reached a huge rock covered with huts, in front of which groups of black men were perched like monkeys, evidently awaiting the arrival of the white men. They were painted in the most brilliant colours, though without clothes, for the civilisation of Uganda had been left far behind. Pushing on, they reached the Madi country, where again civilisation awaited them in the shape of Turks. It was on 3rd December that they saw to their great surprise three large red flags carried in front of a military procession which marched out of camp with drums and fifes playing.
"A very black man named Mohammed, in full Egyptian regimentals, with a curved sword, ordered his regiment to halt, and threw himself into my arms endeavouring to kiss me," says Speke. "Having reached his huts, he gave us two beds to sit upon, and ordered his wives to advance on their knees and give us coffee."
"I have directions to take you to Gondokoro as soon as you come," said Mohammed.
Yet they were detained till 11th January, when in sheer desperation they started off, and in two days reached the Nile. Having no boats, they continued their march overland till 15th February, when the masts of Nile boats came in sight, and soon after the two explorers walked into Gondokoro. Then a strange thing happened. "We saw hurrying on towards us the form of an Englishman, and the next moment my old friend Baker, famed for his sports in Ceylon, seized me by the hand. What joy this was I can hardly tell. We could not talk fast enough, so overwhelmed were we both to meet again. Of course we were his guests, and soon learned everything that could be told. I now first heard of the death of H.R.H. the Prince Consort. Baker said he had come up with three vessels fully equipped with armed men, camels, horses, donkeys, and everything necessary for a long journey, expressly to look after us. Three Dutch ladies also, with a view to assist us (God bless them!), had come here in a steamer, but were driven back to Khartum by sickness. Nobody had dreamt for a moment it was possible we could come through."
Leaving Baker to continue his way to central Africa, Speke and Grant made their way home to England, where they arrived in safety after an absence of three years and fifty-one days, with their great news of the discovery of Uganda and their further exploration of Victoria Nyanza. When Speke reached Alexandria he had telegraphed home: "The Nile is settled." But he was wrong. The Nile was not settled, and many an expedition was yet to make its way to the great lakes before the problem was to be solved.
CHAPTER LXVI
BAKER FINDS ALBERT NYANZA
Baker had not been long at Gondokoro when the two English explorers arrived from the south.
"In March 1861," he tells us, "I commenced an expedition to discover the sources of the Nile, with the hope of meeting the East African expedition of Captains Speke and Grant that had been sent by the English Government from the south via Zanzibar for that object. From my youth I had been innured to hardship and endurance in tropical climates, and when I gazed upon the map of Africa I had a wild hope that I might by perseverance reach the heart of Africa."
These are the opening lines of the published travels of Samuel Baker, famous as an elephant-hunter in Ceylon and engineer of the first railway laid down in Turkey. Like Livingstone, in his early explorations, Baker took his wife with him. "It was in vain that I implored her to remain, and that I painted the difficulties and perils still blacker than I supposed they really would be; she was resolved to share all dangers and to follow me through each rough footstep of the wild life before me."
On 15th April 1861, Baker and his wife left Cairo to make their way southward to join the quest for the source of the Nile. They reached Korosko in twenty-six days, and crossed the Nubian desert on camels, a "very wilderness of scorching sand, the simoon in full force and the thermometer in the shade standing at 114° Fahr." By Abu Hamed and Berber they reached Atbara. It now occurred to Baker that without some knowledge of Arabic he could do little in the way of exploration, so for a whole year he stayed in northern Abyssinia, the country explored by Bruce nearly ninety years before.
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BAKER AND HIS WIFE CROSSING THE NUBIAN DESERT. From Baker's Travels. |
It was therefore 18th December 1862 before he and Mrs. Baker left Khartum for their journey up the Nile through the slave-driven Sudan. It was a fifty days' voyage to Gondokoro. In the hope of finding Speke and Grant, he took an extra load of corn as well as twenty-two donkeys, four camels, and four horses. Gondokoro was reached just a fortnight before the two explorers returned from the south.
Baker's account of the historical meeting between the white men in the heart of Africa is very interesting: "Heard guns firing in the distance—report that two white men had come from the sea. Could they be Speke and Grant? Off I ran and soon met them; hurrah for Old England. They had come from the Victoria Nyanza from which the Nile springs. The mystery of ages solved! With a heart beating with joy I took off my cap and gave a welcome hurrah as I ran towards them! For the moment they did not recognise me; ten years' growth of beard and moustache had worked a change, and my sudden appearance in the centre of Africa appeared to them incredible. As a good ship arrives in harbour battered and torn by a long and stormy voyage, so both these gallant travellers arrived in Gondokoro. Speke appeared to me the more worn of the two. He was excessively lean; he had walked the whole way from Zanzibar, never having ridden once during that wearying march. Grant was in rags, his bare knees projecting through the remnants of trousers."
Baker was now inclined to think that his work was done, the source of the Nile discovered, but after looking at the map of their route, he saw that an important part of the Nile still remained undiscovered, and though there were dangers ahead he determined to go on his way into central Africa.
"We took neither guide nor interpreter," he continues. "We commenced our desperate journey in darkness about an hour after sunset. I led the way, Mrs. Baker riding by my side and the British flag following close behind us as a guide for the caravan of heavily laden camels and donkeys. And thus we started on our march in central Africa on the 26th of March 1863."
It would take too long to tell of their manifold misfortunes and difficulties before they reached the lake they were in search of on 16th March 1864. How they passed through the uncivilised country so lately traversed by Speke and Grant, how in the Obbo country all their porters deserted just a few days before they reached the Karuma Falls, how Baker from this point tried to follow the Nile to the yet unknown lake, how fever seized both the explorer and his wife and they had to live on the common food of the natives and a little water, how suddenly Mrs. Baker fell down with a sunstroke and was carried for seven days quite unconscious through swamp and jungle, the rain descending in torrents all the time, till Baker, "weak as a reed," worn out with anxiety, lay on the ground as one dead.
It seemed as if both must die, when better times dawned and they recovered to find that they were close to the lake.
Baker's diary is eloquent: "The day broke beautifully clear, and, having crossed a deep valley between the hills, we toiled up the opposite slope. I hurried to the summit. The glory of our prize burst suddenly upon me! There, like a sea of quicksilver, lay far beneath us the grand expanse of water, a boundless sea-horizon on the south and south-west, glittering in the noonday sun, while at sixty miles' distance, blue mountains rose from the lake to a height of about seven thousand feet above its level. It is impossible to describe the triumph of that moment; here was the reward for all our labour! England had won the sources of the Nile! I looked from the steep granite cliff upon those welcome waters, upon that vast reservoir which nourished Egypt, upon that great source so long hidden from mankind, and I determined to honour it with a great name. As an imperishable memorial of one loved and mourned by our gracious Queen, I called this great lake 'the Albert Nyanza.' The Victoria and the Albert Lakes are the two sources of the Nile."
Weak and spent with fever, the Bakers descended tottering to the water's edge. "The waves were rolling upon a white pebbly beach. I rushed into the lake and, thirsty with heat and fatigue, I drank deeply from the sources of the Nile. My wife, who had followed me so devotedly, stood by my side pale and exhausted—a wreck upon the shores of the great Albert Lake that we had long striven to reach. No European foot had ever trod upon its sand, nor had the eyes of a white man ever scanned its vast expanse of water."