FOOTNOTES
1 A superior type of dark-haired white man allied with Circassian and Persian, and perhaps a direct development from the Dravidian.
2 The Kudu, which is a tragelaph rather than an antelope, exists at the present day in the eastern part of the Egyptian Sudan, between Abyssinia and the Nile, and its remains are found fossil in Algeria. It may therefore have extended even within the historical period to near the shores of the Mediterranean.
3 This word is the origin of the Arabised Fayūm, a name given to the remains of a curious Nile reservoir, or backwater-lake, to the west of the Nile, in the Libyan Desert.
4 The Biblical Yeôr. The Hebrews also called the Nile Shikhor, or the “Black.” The earliest Greek name for the river and country is Aiguptos (the origin of “Egypt”). Later the name Neilos (Nile) was given to the river. This became the later Arab and European Nilus, Nil, Nile, etc. The origin of the Greek names Aiguptos and Neilos is unknown, but Neilos may be derived from the Persian word nil = blue.
5 Needless to say, in all cases the iris of these eyes is actually gray; but the gray almost verges on blue in some instances, while the absence or presence of a dark rim round the eyes gives or withholds the violet tinge to the gray.
6 Ptolemy’s original maps have disappeared, and we only know them through the well-nigh innumerable copies that were made by Greek monks between 600 and 900 A.D., by Arabs in the Islamic Renaissance, by Latin monks and pilgrims, by Venetian and Catalan sailors, and Flemish or German geographers. Latterly many of these copyists imported into Ptolemy’s maps of the Nile much recent and modern information.
7 Even to-day the local (unofficial) name of Berber or any of the districts round Berber is Ibrim.
8 This mistake is hardly surprising, seeing that at Matama, in the country of Galabat, the most southern affluent of the Atbara approaches to within five miles of the most eastern affluent of the Blue Nile. See Chapter XXVI.
9 Ptolemy Philadelphus’ chief inducement to establish stations in Abyssinia was to procure war elephants. Thus to these Egyptian Greeks and Ethiopians the African elephant did not appear too intractable.
10 Dongola, the accepted name for the Nubian country north of Kordofan, appears at one time to have been inhabited by a race speaking a Hamitic rather than a Nubian language. Dongola (originally Dankala), or its plural, Danagla, may be etymologically connected with Danākil of the north Somali coast.
11 Gala and Somali are almost convertible terms. But in this book Somali is used to indicate that section of the Gala peoples who have become Muhammadans, and Gala is reserved as a general term for the whole race or for its non-Islamite tribes.
12 The Arabic and Turkish name for Venice is, or was, Bunduq. This was a clumsy rendering of the German Venedig, which again was a corruption of the Latin Veneticum. Although the Arab q (a very strong k) is almost unpronounceable by most Europeans, it is nevertheless constantly used by Arabs for translating the k-sound in European words.
13 By “Dravidian” I mean that very early and little differentiated, dark-coloured Caucasian of India who is only a few degrees, physically, above the Australian race.
14 At the time of these exploits Oporto, now the second town of Portugal, was of little account; the great port at the mouth of the Douro was called in Latin Portus Calis, or, in the local dialect, Portucal. This place, being the most important port in the district recovered from the Moors by Count Henry, gave its name to the little principality which he founded.
15 Algarve is simply a Portuguese softening of the Arabic words Al Gharb, the Extreme West or place of sun-setting. At that time Morocco, across the Straits, was also called Al Gharb for the same reason. Therefore, after these conquests, the kings of Portugal styled themselves “Kings of the Algarves, on this side and on the other side of the sea.” The after-triumphs of the Portuguese in the path of exploration, conquest, and colonisation were finally summed up in the grandiose titles of their monarchs, which endure to the present day, and which may well be allowed to endure with respect, seeing what the world’s knowledge owes to the Portuguese navigators and conquistadores. The titles run, “Rey de Portugal e dos Algarves, alem e aquem do Mar na Africa; Senhor da Guiné e da conquista e da navegaçao d’Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia e India” (King of Portugal and of the Algarves, on this side and on the other side of the Sea in Africa; Lord of Guinea, and of the conquest and navigation of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India).
16 Prester John.
17 It may be interesting to some to know that Vasco is a contraction of Velasco, meaning “hairy,” and was a nickname often given to Portuguese in early days.
18 In Lobo’s book the date is given as 1613, but Bruce shows with some likelihood that, according to the native Abyssinian chronicles, the date of Paez’ visit to the sources of the Blue Nile was probably 1615. In the Latin version of Paez’ account of his travels, published at Rome in 1652 by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, the date given is the 21st of April, 1618.
20 Probably, from the description given, Equus grevyi; so that this, the largest, rarest, and the latest described of all the zebras, was probably the first example of the striped horse to receive that name at the hands of the Portuguese, and become known to Europe. The name is spelt “zevra” in Father Lobo’s account, in some versions “zeura.”
21 The modern term, Gala or Galla, used to denominate that section of the Hamite people closely akin to the Somalis yet heathen and dwelling inland, is derived through the Portuguese from an Abyssinian cant term meaning “wild,” “savage.” It is unrecognized by the “Gallas” themselves.
22 Father Lobo gives an excellent description of the coasts of the Red Sea as known to the Portuguese at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Among other places that are probably mentioned for the first time is Suakin, which is written “Suaquem.”
23 Fremona, the first and principal seat of the Jesuits, was nine or ten miles from Axum. It was originally called Maigoga, but the name Fremona was given to it by the Portuguese Jesuits as being the Abyssinian version of Frumentius, who was the so-called Apostle of Abyssinia, and converted the rulers of that country to the Greek Church in the fourth century.
24 Lake Tsana is usually styled by Lobo and the earlier Portuguese travellers Dambia (Dembea); but they also give it the name of Sena, which is obviously the same as Bruce’s version of Tsana.
25 Some of the blame undoubtedly must be laid on the shoulders of the Dutch and Saxon map-makers, who used and distorted Portuguese information.
26 Habsh, Habshi is the name given to Negroes at the present day in Hindustani.
27 A Description of the East and some other countries, Vol. I., by Richard Pococke, LL.D., F. R. S. London, 1743.
28 He filled many posts between 1725 and his death in 1771. He desired to be made Secretary of State for the West Indies, but George II. refused. His efforts to foster British trade and colonial expansion were much appreciated by merchants and colonials, and Halifax, in Nova Scotia, is named after him.
29 Algeria was then practically a dependency of Turkey, governed by Turks.
30 Though it is so stated, the delay was apparently caused by the complete breakdown of Bruce’s health, a breakdown which obliged him to spend some time at Italian sulphur baths (Poretta). Bruce, before leaving Sennar and the regions of the Blue Nile, had received into his system the germ of the Guinea worm. This creature developed in the usual way. One day when Bruce was reading on a sofa at Cairo he felt an itching on his leg, and soon afterwards through the pimple thus raised appeared the head of the worm. Three inches of this parasite were wound off round a piece of silk, but on the ship which conveyed Bruce from Alexandria to Marseilles the surgeon clumsily broke off the portion of the worm extruding from the body. The remainder of the worm still in the leg caused the most terrible agony for thirty-five days, which Bruce had to spend in the lazaretto at Marseilles. Here, however, he received better surgical treatment. Nevertheless, for some time afterwards his leg gave him considerable trouble, and apparently, in 1774, he had to visit Italian sulphur baths.
31 All except, perhaps, some of his stories of Nubia and Sennar.
32 It is curious to read of his using a “rifle” in Abyssinia and thereby astonishing the princes.
33 The name of this notable African city is said to mean, in the local Arabic, “elephant’s trunk,” as the long spit of sand on which it was erected was supposed to resemble that feature. Other etymologies are quoted. Apparently the name was that of a small fishing village of grass huts which was selected by Ibrahim Pasha as a camp commanding both the White and Blue Niles and easily defended. Khartum, from its situation, rapidly became the metropolis of the Sudan. It was taken and destroyed by the Mahdi in 1885. Its site was reoccupied by Lord Kitchener’s victorious force in 1898. Khartum has since been rebuilt, and will probably become one of the greatest cities of Africa.
34 The son of a Swiss soldier in the Swiss corps subsidised by England in the Napoleonic wars.
35 Afterwards absorbed by the Royal Geographical Society.
36 As this journey was financed by the African Association, it may be regarded as a British contribution to Nile exploration.
37 The name Muhammad is affectedly pronounced by the Turks Mehemet, but is of course written by them Muhammad.
38 Afterwards for nearly forty years French consular agent at Khartum.
39 Mainly supported by the Archduchess Sophia.
40 The names of the principal members of this Austrian Roman Catholic Mission, which finally abandoned its labors about 1862, owing to the terribly unhealthy climate of the Upper Nile, were Knoblecher, Beltrame, Morlang, Ueberbacher, Ryllo, and Dorvak. Of their numbers (seventeen in all) fifteen died of fever or dysentery, and only two returned to Europe. Beltrame wrote important works in Italian on the Dinka language. Knoblecher, Ueberbacher, and Morlang collected materials for the illustration of the Bari language, which were put together by Mitterrützner.
41 Glamorgan.
42 It may be mentioned here that throughout the Sudan, from the Albert Nyanza to Khartum, the Egyptians, as distinct from their Sudanese soldiers, are always spoken of as Turki or Turūk. Kordofan, once the home of the Nubians and of Negro races, was overrun by Arabs for several centuries, and more than a hundred years ago formed part of the half-Ethiopian kingdom of Sennar. It was then subdued by the mailed horsemen of Darfur, and held by them until conquered by the Egyptian army under Ibrahim Pasha in 1820.
43 Petherick in his last book writes in eulogistic terms of the behaviour of this mere boy (so far as age went) throughout all the trying experiences that the Pethericks underwent in their journeys up and down the White Nile and the rivers of the Bahr-al-Ghazal. It would be interesting to know what became of Foxcroft after so promising a début in African travel.
44 Many of these tribes are known to us at the present day by foolish nicknames. For instance, the Kamasia people, who dwell in the western part of the Baringo district, really call themselves El Tūkan. Turkana seems often pronounced Tukana.
45 Amabile, tried and sentenced to imprisonment by Petherick for slave-trading, and Andrea de Bono, who, though ostensibly an ivory-trader, was very unscrupulous in his methods. De Bono, however, was the first European to explore the countries to the east of the Mountain Nile, i.e., between the main Nile and the basin of Lake Rudolf.
46 Near the confluence of the Asua River.
47 Down to about 1860 the Arab ruler over East Africa was the Imam of Maskat, the sovereign of the principality of Oman on the Persian Gulf. For more than a hundred years, however, the Imam of Maskat deputed one of his sons or kinsmen to be Sayyid of Zanzibar.
48 By its own people this country is called Wu-nya-mwezi. Wu- is a degenerate form of the Bantu bu- prefix, which is often used to indicate a country. Nya is a particle, meaning “of,” or “concerning,” and mwezi = the moon. Unyamwezi is, however, so far away from Ruwenzori on the one hand or Kilimanjaro on the other that it is difficult to associate its name (which so far as we know has been in existence for about four centuries) with that of the snow-mountains.
49 Speke and others are of opinion that there was a considerable civilisation in Somaliland at one time, which completely disappeared after the Muhammadanising of the country. The Somali (except those of the far interior) were converted to Islam by Arab immigrants in the fifteenth century. Prior to this they had been Christian to some extent, a much degraded type of Christianity having penetrated southwards from Abyssinia. It is hardly necessary to point out that the Somali and Gala are practically one people in race and language. Gala is only apparently a cant term originating in Abyssinia and unknown to the people whom we call by that name. It is also interesting to note that Speke and other explorers heard in Somaliland, in the “early fifties,” of the existence of a great lake far in the interior which was in all probability the Victoria Nyanza. The present writer has endeavoured to show, in his book on the Uganda Protectorate, that in ancient times considerable trading intercourse was kept up between Somaliland and the northeast shores of the Victoria Nyanza.
50 Victoria Nyanza. Often so called in earlier days by the Arabs, from Bukerebe, a large island near the south shore.
51 Though Burton subsequently recanted this opinion in order to embarrass Speke’s theories, and declared that the Rusizi was the outlet of Tanganyika.
52 After his Somersetshire home, and the Indian word for a creek—ălla.
53 Walter L’Espec, in the reign of Henry I., founded three abbeys,—Kirkham, Rivaulx, and Warden. In the thirteenth century the L’Especs altered the spelling of their name to Speke. One Speke lost property by faithfulness to Charles I.; another got into (and out of) trouble in the reign of Charles II. by advocating the claims to the succession of the Duke of Monmouth.
54 In one of his books Speke shows us how Burton and himself managed to communicate with the natives. Neither of them—not even Burton—had a sufficient knowledge of Kiswahili during their journey to Tanganyika to talk direct with their porters. They conversed with “Bombay,” their Swahili interpreter, in Hindustani. Burton also was able to speak Arabic with the Arab traders. Both, perhaps, are a little too inclined to overlook this language difficulty in describing their conversations with native chiefs. In all cases these must have been carried on in the following manner: The chief would probably speak in his native language, which would be translated by somebody else into Swahili, and this again would be translated by Bombay, or Frij, or some other interpreter, into Hindustani or English; or, again, Burton’s information might be rendered by some Arab in Arabic. Direct communications no doubt were sometimes made by both parties in broken Swahili.
55 Mr. T. Douglas Murray, who afterwards became Baker’s biographer. This letter was written near the close of Sir Samuel Baker’s life, on the 22d of August, 1893.
56 See his “Discovery of the Source of the Nile.”
57 Discovery of the Source of the Nile, p. 31.
58 Worthy of mention here as being the southernmost extension of “Nilotic” influence among the East African races.
59 Gazella granti, the horns of which are far longer than is the case with any other gazelle, the animal itself being about the size of a fallow deer.
60 A Hima state, lying to the west of the Victoria Nyanza.
61 This, of course, was Lake Albert, the waters of which are slightly brackish. But it is often called the Salt Lake by the Arabs, from the large deposits of salt on its shores.
62 They meant, of course, the Rukuga, which flows through Marungu.
63 Hima or Huma is the commonest name applied locally to the Gala aristocracy in East Equatorial Africa.
64 Journal of the Discovery of the Sources of the Nile.
65 Throughout the writings of Burton, Speke, and Stanley, this race is called Wahuma. The most common term, however, by which they are known and know themselves is Bahima (hima being the root and Ba- the plural prefix).
66 This is the more curious because, on page 276 in the “Discovery of the Source of the Nile,” Speke writes of “a long range of view of the lake, and of the large island or group of islands called Sese, where the king of Uganda keeps one of his fleets.”
67 According to the traditions of the natives, syphilis and smallpox entered Uganda about the same time, and came originally from Unyoro. Unyoro received these plagues from the first Nubian slave- and ivory-trading caravans, which were the pioneers of Egyptian rule in the forties of the last century. Syphilis and smallpox were also brought by the Zanzibar trading caravans from Unyamwezi not many years later.
68 This, indeed, long before the British Protectorate, Gordon Pasha meditated, and was only restrained therefrom by the intervention of Sir John Kirk.
69 It is a question whether all these spirits were not in origin deified chiefs or medicine-men, who after death were supposed to become controllers of the lake, of the rain supply, of certain diseases, or of certain functions. Speke considers that a small element of phallic worship was mixed up with the old Uganda religion.
70 Muzungu, i.e., “White-man.”
71 This word is really a mis-hearing on Speke’s part for Bwana, which, again, is a corruption of Abuna, the Arab word for “our father.” Bwana is the respectful term, meaning “master,” which is applied in the Swahili language to all persons of superior position. It was the name by which Speke was known throughout his stay in Uganda, though it has long since been discarded for “Sapiki.”
72 Since, by the unspeakable barbarism of the British Administration, cut down!
73 Albert Nyanza.
74 Speke and Baker had met before in India.
75 Florence Ninian von Sass. Lady Baker survives her husband.
76 For something like twelve hundred miles, from the mouth of the Atbara to the sea, the Nile receives no further contribution of water.
77 Cycloderma, the Leathery Fresh-water Turtle.
78 This great lake was in reality nothing but the lake-like course of the Upper Congo. The words for river and lake in almost all African languages are the same.
79 She usually signed herself Alexine. Her full name was Alexandrina Petronella Francina Tinne. The name is spelt without an accented e, and is pronounced as it would be in German.
80 Her nephew, Mr. John Tinne, however, informs the present writer that his aunt once wrote to him saying that “ever since she was a little girl doing lessons she had longed to see what there was on the great blank spot on the map of Africa.”
81 This account of the death of Miss Tinne is derived from information very kindly supplied to the author by her nephew, Theodore F. S. Tinne, Esq., of Hawkhurst, Kent.
82 She was only thirty-three at the time of her death.
83 France was dogged with continual ill-luck in her attempts to open up and explore the Nile basin. Expedition after expedition and explorer after explorer, despatched directly or indirectly under French auspices, failed (generally by death from fever) in grasping the great discoveries which fell to more fortunate Germans and Englishmen.
84 They were, however, first mentioned by Piaggia.
85 Heuglin forestalled him, perhaps, as regards the Gray Parrot.
86 These people do not call themselves by the designation. It is one applied to them by the Arabs as a nickname, indicating the gusto with which they eat human flesh. They themselves acknowledge several names, such as Azande and Makarka.
87 Pierced by the ants so that they become whistles played on by the wind.
88 First of all revealed to our notice by the Italian explorer, Piaggia, who succeeded Miani and preceded Dr. Schweinfurth.
89 A gifted French explorer who attempted to forestall other expeditions in discovering the Central African lakes. He was murdered about a hundred miles inland from Zanzibar.
90 Younger brother of Adolphe Linant, an early Nile explorer of 1827 and 1828.
91 In a pamphlet written in conjunction with Mr. Kerry Nichols and Colonel J. A. Grant, published in 1876, by William Clowes.
92 Romolo Gessi was a Levantine Italian, born at Constantinople in 1831, who had gradually drifted into the employment of the Egyptian government. He became a Pasha after Gordon’s departure from the Sudan in 1880.
93 Now Colonel Watson, R.E. In 1874–1875 Lieutenant C. M. Watson, accompanied by Lieutenant Chippendall, made an admirable survey of the main Nile from Khartum to Gondokoro, and later assisted Gordon in completing this survey up to Lake Albert.
94 A portion of this is often called Makarka.
95 During this struggle Gessi was hard put to it for food, but he quaintly notes that “Of all our troops only the Makarka and Nyam-nyam remained healthy, owing to their feeding on human flesh. Directly after a battle they cut off the feet of the dead, and consumed these, together with their brains.”
96 Whose encyclopædic work on the Galas will soon be published. Mr. Wakefield died in 1902.
97 Dweru, like Nyanza, is a very common Bantu word which is applied equally to lake and river. It simply means “whiteness.” With different prefixes it becomes Mweru, Jeru, and so forth.
98 In giving extracts from this as from other works of Nile explorers the present writer often summarises. He also employs sometimes more modern spelling in scientific nomenclature to avoid puzzling the reader habituated to the most recent descriptions.
99 Vide chap. ix. p. 107.
100 This stream, joining others from farther east, enters the Mountain Nile near the bifurcation of the Giraffe River.—H. H. J.
101 Khor Kos flows into the Oguelokur, and thus into the Bahr-az-Ziraf. See chap. xxvi.
102 The distribution of the branching Hyphæne Fan palm is very peculiar. It is found right across the Sahara, south of latitude 25°, to the vicinity of the Atlantic. It avoids the better watered regions of Nigeria and the Bahr-al-Ghazal, but on the east extends across Somaliland and down the coast to Mombasa.—H. H. J.
103 Probably Emin refers to the lanky Cercopithecus patas.
104 Really a plantain-eater—Schizorhis or Gymnoschizorhis.—H. H. J.
105 The white-eared Kob antelope.—H. H. J.
106 The Kafuru. This was re-examined by the author of this book. It is a narrow winding channel passing between high banks. In spite of the author’s delineation of this feature in his book, “The Uganda Protectorate,” map-makers still continue to draw it as a lake-like straight arm connecting the Albert Edward with Dweru.
107 Dweru, as already explained, merely means a white surface or sheet of water.
108 This word is the name of one of the tributaries of the Kagera.
109 M. Dècle travelled overland from the Cape of Good Hope to the Victoria Nile in 1892–1894.
110 Dr. Kandt (who first correctly mapped Lake Kivu) traced the course of the important Nyavarongo and Akanyaru tributaries of the Kagera. This learned explorer died in 1901.
111 Lugard mapped much of the country between Uganda and Ruwenzori and discovered Lake Wamala in western Uganda.
112 Mr Jackson’s magnificent zoölogical collections, especially in mammals, birds, and butterflies, have, with those of Mr. Oscar Neumann, done much to illustrate the fauna of southern Nileland.
113 It is said that the contribution to the Nile waters from the great Victoria Nyanza is not more considerable than the maximum discharge of one of the great canals in Egypt. Much of the volume of the Victoria Nile is spread out to waste and evaporate in the Kioga-Kwania Lake, which also receives the heavy rainfall of north and west Elgon.
114 I should again like to point out how frequent amongst Nilotic Negroes is the word Kir for a big river. This name is frequently applied to the main Nile, and appears even to crop up again in the Bantu languages of the Victoria Nyanza, for in Luganda the Nile is also called Kiira.
115 Piaggia was originally an Italian mechanic, born at Alexandria. He drifted to the Sudan in 1856, and generally attached himself as a sort of caravan leader to the traders in the Bahr-al-Ghazal. In this capacity he explored (quite unscientifically) the Nyam-nyam country in 1863–1865, and in 1876 he visited Lake Kioga and the Victoria Nile.
116 For various reasons not all Captain Marchand’s officers could be brought away from the Nile immediately. Lieutenant Tanguedec was left for some two years entirely isolated on the White Nile near Bor.
117 A name very suggestive of the Bantu languages.
118 Negroes of the Semliki valley and forest.
119 This lake is at present one of the unsolved African problems as regards its history and affinities. Unlike other lakes of Central Africa, its fauna has marine affinities, and would seem indeed to be actually of marine origin. It is at the present day connected somewhat intermittently with the Congo drainage, and therefore with the Atlantic Ocean; and one assumption to explain the existence of its sponges, shrimps, and jelly-fishes is that in Jurassic times it was connected with a vast inlet of the Atlantic Ocean which occupied the northern half of the low-lying Congo basin. Yet, when a relief map of Africa is looked at, it strikes one at a glance that Tanganyika lies within the same rift valley as Lakes Kivu, Albert Edward, Albert Nyanza, and the Albertine Nile. Its southern end may also have been connected through Lake Rukwa, with the rift valley of Lake Nyasa. It would be easy to imagine the occurrence of a recent and slight upheaval which detached this lake from the Nile system and sent its overflowing waters in the direction of the Congo, but for the aforementioned marine fauna of its waters. Its history, therefore, remains at the present moment an unsolved problem.
120 With a bifurcated rift up Tanganyika.
121 See “L’Omo,” by L. Vannutelli and C. Citerni.
122 A small and very interesting lake which lies about sixty miles to the north of Tanganyika, and communicates with that lake by the river Rusizi.
123 Some rising as far south as Lat. 3° 50′ S. and within ten miles of Tanganyika.
124 Bahr-al-Jabl, so called by the Turks and early French and German explorers, because by following it up stream they came at last to mountains after the thousand miles of marsh between Khartum and Bor.
125 “River of gazelles,” i.e., antelopes, the name given to it by the Sudanese Arabs from the dense herds of game which were formerly to be seen on its marshy shores.
126 The Ruzi River, which rises to the west of Lake Rudolf, under the fourth degree of north latitude, was considered by the late Captain Wellby to be the southernmost source of the Sobat, but this supposition has not been verified.
The Ruzi or the two Ruzis probably join the three big streams—the Oguelokur, Tu, and Kos—which enter the Giraffe River.
127 This name means “the terrible,” from the violence with which it sweeps down a winding chasm from an altitude of 7,000 feet in Abyssinia to 2,500 feet in the Nubian plains.
128 Who transmitted the rumour to Greek travellers and merchants visiting the coasts of the Red Sea and East Africa. These again handed on the information to Greek and Roman geographers.
129 A corruption of Runsororo.
130 Wosho Mountain, approximately sixteen thousand feet.
131 Snow may perhaps occasionally lie for a few days on the highest points of the volcanic Mfumbiro peaks (Sabinzi and Karisimbi), which are over thirteen thousand feet and lie almost within the limits of the Nile basin, to the south of Lake Albert Edward; and there may be a little permanent snow perhaps on the peaks over eleven thousand feet in height on the southeast of Basutoland in South Africa.
132 A little less perhaps than Dr. A. Bludan’s estimate.