The great eastern horn of Africa, Somaliland and Galaland, was long left unexplored after Burton and Speke’s journey to Harrar in the fifties. At the beginning of the eighties its exploration was again attempted. Messrs F. L. and W. D. James, with three companions, penetrated Somaliland as far south as the Webbe Shebeili River. They were succeeded in exploration by Révoil (a Frenchman), by Ruspoli, Bricchetti-Robecchi and Bottego (Italians), and by Borelli (a Frenchman). The last-named made a most important journey south from Abyssinia, and discovered the Omo River. His account of his travels, published by the French Government, is an almost perfect exemplar of what such a work should be. Mr W. Astor Chanler, an American, afterwards made an important rough survey of Galaland, north of the Tana River. Dr J. W. Gregory, of the British Museum, travelled to Lake Baringo and Kenya, which mountain he ascended higher than any preceding explorer. Dr Gregory’s journey was productive of much information regarding the geology of the countries traversed. Dr Donaldson Smith (an American) travelled in 1894-5 over these countries between Somaliland and Bantu East Africa, bringing back much new material for geography. Captain (now Colonel) H. G. C. Swayne explored the interior of Somaliland; Colonel Seymour Vandeleur surveyed Uganda and Unyoro; Colonel Sir J. R. L. Macdonald in 1897-9[185] conducted a most important expedition, which for the first time traversed the mountainous country between Mt Elgon, Lake Rudolf and the Mountain Nile, revealing much new geography and ethnology; and Mr H. S. H. Cavendish in 1897-8 made a remarkable journey across the eastern horn of Africa from the Gulf of Aden to Lake Rudolf and Mombasa.
In 1899, Mr H. Mackinder ascended the snow peak of Kenya to its highest summit. Nine years previously the great extinct volcano of Elgon (Equatorial East Africa) had been climbed to its highest point (14,000 ft.) by an expedition under Messrs F. J. Jackson and Ernest Gedge. C. W. Hobley also added a great deal of detail to our knowledge (geographical and ethnological) of inner East Africa, from Elgon to the German frontier in the south, between 1896 and 1912.
The main features of German East Africa had already been discovered before Germany took possession politically of the region between the Zanzibar Coast and the great Lakes; but in 1889, Dr Hans Meyer achieved the great feat of ascending the highest mountain in Africa—Kilima-njaro—to its summit (19,321 feet). Oskar Baumann (a Viennese) examined in some detail the northern parts of German East Africa between 1888 and 1893, visiting the ultimate sources of the Nile (the headwaters of the Kagera river) near the north-east coast of Tanganyika and discovering or describing for the first time tribes with puzzling linguistic affinities, such as the Sandawi. The journeys of Dr Franz Stuhlmann both alone and with Emin Pasha, especially in regard to the Tanganyika-Congo-Nile water-partings were of great interest both to geography and ethnology. Honourable mention must also be made of Captain Paul Kollmann, whose travels round the south shores of the Victoria Nyanza and its islands resulted in an admirable book on the people and languages of that district.
Between 1884 and 1900, much important exploring work was done in German South-west Africa by H. Schnitz, Dr von Passarge, Drs A. Schenk and Stromer von Reichenbach. Togoland in West Africa was explored during the early nineties by Dr R. Büttner (already known for his journeys in West Congoland), by L. von Bunnon and N. Seidel.
Renewed interest in Morocco was shown during the last quarter of the 19th century. Besides the bold journey of Joseph Thomson to the Atlas mountains in 1888, there was the really remarkable exploration of nearly the whole Moorish empire in 1883-6 by Charles de Foucauld, a Frenchman travelling in disguise. Walter B. Harris crossed the Atlas into Tafilalt in 1895. In Central Africa Colonel J. B. Marchand and his companions performed a wonderful journey in 1895-9. Entering French Congo from the Loango coast, Marchand travelled up the Congo and Mubangi Rivers till he paused for a further organization of his mission near the Congo-Nile water-parting. Then he transported his little steamer in sections to the Suë, a confluent of the Bahr-al-Ghazal, and thence navigated the western confluents of the Nile till he reached the main stream. Pursuing his journey east and north, he reached the old Egyptian station of Fashoda on the White Nile, where he established himself, and where he defeated a small body of Dervishes sent against him by the Khalifa of Omdurman. The advent of the British and Egyptians under Lord Kitchener rendered the evacuation of Fashoda by Marchand necessary. The gallant French explorer therefore continued his journey eastward by following up the Sobat River as far as it was navigable, and thence struck across hitherto unknown countries, and travelled through Shoa and Somaliland to the French port of Jibuti, on the Gulf of Aden. From the point of view of distance traversed, without great loss of men or material, Marchand deserves to rank as a hero of African adventure.
The only travellers in Madagascar who achieved important results in geography and physical science were the English missionary, the Rev. J. Sibree (1868-85), and above all Dr Alfred Grandidier (1875-1900), E. F. Gautier (1892-9), and Dr G. Grandidier (1898-1902). To the last-named is mainly due the recent discoveries of semi-fossil extinct lemurs described in the publications of the Zoological Society of London. To Alfred Grandidier we owe the magnificent work in 28 volumes which completely describes this strange island.
At the close of the 19th century France began to take definite possession of the Sahara; and several expeditions, scientific and political, traversed this desolate region and revealed all its leading physical characteristics. Prominent among French explorers was Fernand Foureau, who concluded ten years of varied explorations by a magnificent journey in 1898-9 from Algeria to Zinder and Lake Chad by way of Ahaggar, Air and Damerghu. G. B. M. Flamand explored the important oasis of Tuat in 1900. Much exploring work went on in the Niger Bend and the Ivory Coast hinterland; and the expedition (1898-1900) of M. Hostains and Captain d’Ollone revealed great mountains and the courses of numerous rivers in north-east Liberia.
This record brings us down to the beginning of the 20th century. The least-explored parts of Africa that then remained were: (1) the interior of Liberia; (2) the region between the Benue and Cameroons watersheds; (3) Lake Chad and the country between Lake Chad, the Shari, and the Nile; (4) the Western Sahara; (5) the Libyan Desert and Tibesti; (6) Wadai; (7) the region between the Shari, the Benue, and the Mubangi; (8) that between the Cameroons, the Sanga river, and the Mubangi; (9) South-west Congoland; (10) South-east Angola; (11) the Moςambique hinterland, between Moςambique and Lake Nyasa; (12) South-west Galaland and the region between the Sobat River and Lake Rudolf.
In regard to the first-named area, a good deal has been added to our knowledge by the Dutch survey officers, Naber and Moret, by Mr John Parkinson and Messieurs A. Chevalier and Maurice Delafosse; the last-named having accomplished a remarkable language survey of West Africa. In No. (2), must be recorded the journeys of Captain E. Lenfant (who proved the connection between the Upper Benue and the Shari system by way of the Tuburi marshes); of Colonel L. Jackson; of P. Amaury Talbot (Benue, Cross River, and Ekoi country); and of the German explorers F. Hutter, F. Bauer, and O. Zimmermann. As regards No. (3)—Lake Chad—this first-discovered of all African lakes was never properly investigated and mapped until the beginning of the 20th century, when this work was accomplished by the expeditions of Captain Lenfant, Colonel Destenave, Mons. A. Chevalier, and Captain Tilho. It was also examined with much minuteness by Lieutenant Boyd Alexander, whose Niger-Benue-Mubangi-Nile journey in 1905 greatly added to our knowledge of the Chad region. In No. (4), the Western Sahara and Southern Morocco, we have had the important explorations of the French officers or civilians, La Perrone, Arnaud, Paul Blanchet, Edmond Doutté, Cortier, Niéger, and Gautier (this last specially studied the rock-engravings and archaeology); and the noteworthy journey of the Englishman, Captain A. H. Haywood, who travelled from Sierra Leone to Algiers. No. (5), still remains one of the blankest parts of Africa, though the Eastern Sahara from Tripoli to Bilma was crossed by Mr Hanns Vischer of British Nigeria in 1906. The Libyan Desert is also being explored by W. Harding King and other British explorers coming from Egypt. In Wadai, which was traversed by Lieutenant Boyd Alexander in 1910 (he was killed on the Darfur border), the French military occupation will soon produce a detailed survey. In No. (7), there have been the detailed explorations of Captain E. Lenfant, and Messrs E. F. Gautier and R. Chudeau, on behalf of the French Government. The principal blanks in No. (8) have been filled up by an English traveller, Mr G. L. Bates (a remarkable field naturalist who has made very important discoveries of new vertebrates in West Equatorial Africa), by O. Zimmermann and other German explorers. In South-west Congoland a great explorer and anthropologist has come to the front, Mr Emil Torday, a Hungarian, whose admirable works on the Bushongo and the tribes of the Kwango, Kwilu, Kasai, and Sankuru rivers, have been published in English and French. Mention should also be made of the journeys through central and northern Congoland of an Austrian, Franz Thonner, which have been of great value in determining the intricate distribution of language families in that region. South-west Angola still remains very little known, though the work of the Lobito Bay-Katanga railway is gradually casting a light on the geography of this region; while in Barotseland and Northern Rhodesia there have been the first-class surveys of Major A. St Hill Gibbons, Frank Melland, and other officials of the British South Africa Company. A good deal of accurate surveying and geological investigation is needed in No. (11). In No. (12) (Southern Galaland and the Sobat to Lake Rudolf), there have been since 1900 the remarkable explorations and surveys of Oskar Neumann (a German), Captain M. S. Wellby, Captain H. H. Austen and Captain P. Maud—English officers travelling on their own behalf or on that of the British Government.
Dr Richard Kandt, a German, between 1901 and 1906, made a thorough and careful survey of Lake Kivu, of the plateaus at the northern end of Tanganyika, and of the Kagera (the ultimate Nile source) and its tributaries. Between 1900 and 1904, Commander B. Whitehouse mapped the entire coastline of the Victoria Nyanza Lake, making many new discoveries and remedying many old errors of delineation.
The long-talked-of journey from the Cape to Cairo was accomplished first in 1900 by Mr Ewart Grogan, followed soon afterwards by Mons. Lionel Décle. Many tourists and officials subsequently have repeated this feat, rendered comparatively easy now by the development of railways and river-steamboat navigation. A noteworthy journey however was that in 1911 of Mr Frank Melland and a companion on bicycles, from Rhodesia to Egypt. German officers have motored across Africa, from German East to German South-west Africa.
Noteworthy feats in exploration, though they may not have revealed much that was new in cartography, have been the journeys and studies of Lieut. P. H. G. Powell Cotton (Abyssinia, East Africa, Congoland and Portuguese Guinea—1900-11); Auguste Chevalier, the French botanist (Central Sudan, Upper Niger, West Congoland and Liberia—1898-1910); Alexander Whyte, a Scottish botanical collector (British Central Africa, East Africa, Uganda, and Liberia—1891-1904); Dr W. A. Cunnington (Tanganyika, 1904-5); H.R.H. the Duke of the Abruzzi, who in 1906 made the first complete survey of the Ruwenzori range and ascended all the highest peaks; A. Savage Landor, who crossed Africa at its broadest, mainly on foot, from Somaliland to Senegal (1906); Theodore Roosevelt (East Africa and Egyptian Sudan, 1909-10); and Sir David and Lady Bruce (Uganda, Nyasaland, and Northern Rhodesia—1903-11).
The heroic stage of African exploration finished with the 19th century; and it is impossible to record the names of all the military and civil officials who have since been quietly, painstakingly, and usefully filling in the details between the broad outlines drawn (at the cost of terrible fatigue, severe ill-health, and danger from savage natives) by the great explorers of the past. There are still many high mountains to be ascended—in the Atlas, in Tibesti, on the north Liberian border, on the south-eastern limits of the Niger basin, in the Cameroons, south-west Moçambique, south-east Angola and northern Galaland; there are lakes to be plumbed, geological formations to be determined, zones of vegetation and distribution of the rapidly-disappearing fauna to be defined. Archaeology in South-east Africa, in the Sahara, in Morocco and Somaliland, still has some surprises in store for us. The palaeontological exploration of Africa is merely beginning; and already in Algeria, Egypt, East and South Africa, and Madagascar research has produced evidence of an amazing vanished fauna of giant buffaloes, giant dinosaurs, giant birds, big horses, small dinotheriums, of the remote ancestors of the elephants, whales, sirenians, hippopotami, giraffes, monkeys, and anthropoid apes. A more careful search after living types has already revealed since 1900 the okapi in the north-east Congo forests, the big black pig of Equatorial Africa, and several new antelopes and monkeys. Botanical research has, since 1900, shown the existence in Africa of some thirty sources of good rubber, and of many valuable gums and oil-nuts. Gold has been found in the north-east Congo basin, tin in Nigeria, and diamonds in German South-west Africa, in south-west Congoland, and in Liberia. Africa will probably remain in the future, what it has seemed to the Caucasian since he began his historical colonization—the most interesting and mysterious of the continents, always producing something new.