Transcriber’s Note: Italics are enclosed in _underscores_. Additional
notes will be found near the end of this ebook.
THE STORY OF EXPLORATION
EDITED BY
J. SCOTT KELTIE, LL.D., SEC. R.G.S.
THE NILE QUEST
BY
SIR HARRY JOHNSTON, G.C.M.G., K.C.B.
[Illustration:
[_Frontispiece_
SPEKE (from a Drawing by the Author).]
THE NILE QUEST
A RECORD OF
THE EXPLORATION OF THE
NILE AND ITS BASIN
BY
SIR HARRY JOHNSTON, G.C.M.G., K.C.B.
(PRESIDENT OF THE AFRICAN SOCIETY)
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS AND
PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR AND OTHERS_
WITH MAPS BY J. G. BARTHOLOMEW
[Illustration]
LONDON
ALSTON RIVERS, LIMITED
ARUNDEL STREET, W.C.
1906
THE STORY OF EXPLORATION
Probably few of the stories that tell of the achievements due to the
curiosity of humanity have a wider or more lasting interest than that
which is concerned with the exploration of the lands and seas, which
give feature to the face of the earth. It is a long story, and would
be longer still, if the men in the remote past had left any record of
their wanderings. Even as it is, in the scanty and perplexing records
left behind them by ancient Egyptians, Phœnicians, Carthaginians,
Hebrews, and even Chinese, the story begins more than three thousand
years ago and, so far as the pioneer work of exploration is concerned,
may be taken to have practically concluded with the end of the
nineteenth century. It seems, therefore, an opportune time to recount
the leading episodes in this long record of incessant human effort, in
a manner which will appeal to, and interest, all intelligent readers.
In the series of volumes, which will be issued under the general title
“The Story of Exploration,” it will be sought to make the narrative
circle round the personality of the men who had the leading share in
carrying on the adventurous work.
Beginning with the earliest journeys of which we have any record, the
story will be carried down stage by stage to the present day, and it
is believed that, when complete, it will form what may be called a
biographical history of exploration. While the work of geographical
research in all parts of the globe will be seriously and adequately
treated, the adventures incident to such research, which add human
interest to it, will have due prominence given to them. In all cases
it will be sought to obtain the co-operation of men who are recognized
as authorities on the particular subjects with which they deal. Each
volume will be profusely illustrated, the illustrations being selected
for their appropriateness to the text, while every assistance will be
given to the reader by means of carefully executed maps.
J. SCOTT KELTIE.
PREFATORY NOTE
When the author of this book was composing his recent work on the
Uganda Protectorate, he was led through the history of its discovery
into the general consideration of Nile exploration, since it was in the
search for the Nile sources that the territories now forming the Uganda
Protectorate were laid bare to the gaze of the civilised world. But as
anything like a detailed review of the exploration of the Nile basin
by the Caucasian race would have unduly extended a book dealing more
particularly with Uganda, he gladly took advantage of the suggestion
made by Dr. Scott Keltie (Editor of this series) that these studies
should be applied to the present volume, which is one of a series on
the history of great geographical discoveries.
It is not for the author to say that his book on the Nile Quest will
prove interesting; but he has striven to make it as accurate as
possible, and he hopes it may be permanently useful as a faithful
record of the names and achievements of those who solved the greatest
geographical secret, after the discovery of America, which remained for
the Caucasian’s consideration.
H. H. JOHNSTON.
LONDON, 1903.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Editor and the Author desire to acknowledge, with thanks, the loan
of photographs, letters, or maps for the illustration of this book,
from Sir John Kirk, G.C.M.G., Mrs. Murdoch (_née_ Speke), Mr. J. F.
Cunningham, Mr. W. G. Doggett, Mr. Theodore Tinne, Mr. T. Douglas
Murray, Lady Baker, Mr. Oscar Neumann, Mr. J. E. S. Moore, Major Gwynn,
Major Austin, Mr. J. Thomson, The African Society, Mr. S. Crispin, and
Mr. Warry.
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. The Dawn of Nile Exploration 1
II. The Greeks interest Europe in the Nile Question 14
III. Abyssinians and Jews 30
IV. Islamites and Italians 37
V. A Summary of the Ancients’ Knowledge of the Nile 42
VI. Portugal and Abyssinia 45
VII. French Inquiries and D’Anville’s Maps 65
VIII. Bruce and the Nile: Sonnini, Browne, and Bonaparte 73
IX. Muhammad Ali opens up the White Nile 91
X. Missionaries and Snow-Mountains 111
XI. Burton and Speke 115
XII. Speke and the Nile Quest 125
XIII. Speke in Uganda 150
XIV. From the Victoria Nyanza to Alexandria 160
XV. Samuel Baker and the Albert Nyanza 174
XVI. Alexandrine Tinne and Theodor von Heuglin 192
XVII. Schweinfurth and the Basin of the Bahr-al-Ghazal 201
XVIII. Schweinfurth’s Achievements and Descriptions 216
XIX. Stanley confirms Speke 223
XX. Gordon and his Lieutenants.--Junker and the Nile-Congo
Water-parting 230
XXI. Joseph Thomson, Mt. Elgon, and Kavirondo Bay 246
XXII. Emin Pasha 250
XXIII. Stanley discovers the Mountains of the Moon and Lake
Albert Edward.--The End of Emin 259
XXIV. German Explorers determine the Southern Limits of the
Nile Basin 265
XXV. Geographical Work in the Uganda Protectorate 269
XXVI. The Eastern Basin of the Nile 276
XXVII. Conclusion 293
XXVIII. The Geography of the Nile Basin 299
APPENDIX I. The Roll of Fame of those who started on the Nile
Quest 319
APPENDIX II. Bibliography 322
INDEX 329
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SPEKE (from a drawing by the author) _Frontispiece_
_Page_
1. The Nile and the Pyramids 4
2. The Mountains of the Moon 23
3. The Course of the Nile according to Ptolemy 24
4. An Arab Trader (Maskati) 40
5. Dapper’s Map (Amsterdam: 1686) giving the falsified results
of Portuguese explorations 58
6. D’Anville’s Map of the Nile Basin 70
7. The Branching _Hyphæne_ Palm 75
8. Bruce’s Map of the Nile Sources 80
9. Portrait of James Bruce 86
10. Map of Africa by Williamson, London, 1800 90
11. Blue Nile, twenty miles east of Fazokl 93
12. Ferdinand Werne 96
13. Whale-headed Stork (_Balæniceps rex_) 100
14. John Petherick 102
15. Map published in Penny Magazine of 1852 108
16. The River Sobat 111
17. Rev. Dr. J. Ludwig Krapf 112
18. A Swahili Arab Trader 117
19. Sketch Map by Burton and Speke, 1858 123
20. John Hanning Speke, at the age of 17 126
21. Burton’s idea of the Nile Sources, December, 1864 127
22. James Augustus Grant 132
23. A Mnyamwezi Porter 135
24. A Hima of Mpororo near Karagwe 144
25. Speke’s Tragelaph 146
26. The Ripon Falls, from the west bank 151
27. A View in Uganda 152
28. The Nile at the Isamba Rapids, looking North 160
29. Ripon Falls, from Bugunga 162
30. View of Napoleon Gulf, from Jinja 163
31. The last Map issued to illustrate Speke’s Theories, 1865 170
32. Speke’s Handwriting 172
33. Samuel Baker, 1865 176
34. A Native of Unyoro 184
35. Alexandrine Tinne 192
36. On the Jur River: Sudd blocking the Channel 195
37. Letter of Miss Tinne to her nephew 198
38. Georg Schweinfurth, 1875 203
39. Shiluks 211
40. “Papyrus, fifteen feet high” 218
41. A Path through the Forest 220
42. Schweinfurth’s Map 223
43. The Victoria Nyanza 226
44. Stanley’s idea of the Victoria Nyanza, 1880 228
45. The Victoria Nile flowing towards Lake Kioga 232
46. Nuërr Village, Sobat River 241
47. Joseph Thomson and Wilhelm Junker 242
48. A Stern-wheel Steamboat forcing its way up the Jur (Sue)
or main affluent of the Bahr-al-Ghazal 245
49. N.E. corner of Victoria Nyanza (with Samia Hills in
distance) 247
50. Joseph Thomson 248
51. Emin Pasha 252
52. Raphia Palms by a Central African stream 257
53. Sir Henry Stanley, G.C.B. 261
54. Shores of the Victoria Nyanza near Emin Pasha Gulf 262
55. Dr. Franz Stuhlmann 264
56. A Native of Unyamwezi from near south shores of Victoria
Nyanza 267
57. Sir Frederic D. Lugard 269
58. G. F. Scott-Elliott 271
59. Dr. Donaldson-Smith 272
60. Cutting the Sudd 274
61. Dr. C. Beke 281
62. Natives of the Baro (Upper Sobat) 284
63. Colonel J. B. Marchand 286
64. Gorge of the River Baro (Upper Sobat) 287
65. Berta Negroes 289
66. A Berta Village in the Matongwe Mountains 291
67. The Nile in Egypt 293
68. Nubia: a “Washout” on the Sudan Railway 294
69. Tropical Forest at Entebbe, on the northwest shores of the
Victoria Nyanza 295
70. Napoleon Gulf, looking South 302
71. The Birth of the Victoria Nile, at the Ripon Falls 304
72. On Lake Albert Edward (North-west Coast) 305
73. In the Libyan Desert 315
74. Orographical Features of the Nile Basin 328
75. Land Surface Features of the Nile Basin 328
THE NILE QUEST
CHAPTER I
THE DAWN OF NILE EXPLORATION
The first men who entered Egypt and travelled up the valley of the
Nile came, almost unquestionably, from the east, and were part of
those radiations from the central focus of humanity, India. It is
possible that the first men who entered the valley of the Nile from
this direction may have been of so primitive, simian, and undetermined
a type--so “Neanderthaloid”--as not to belong definitely to any one
of the three main species of humanity. At that distant time, however
(let us say at the end of the Pleistocene period or beginning of the
Quaternary Epoch), there was undoubtedly a land connection over the
south as well as over the north end of the Red Sea, joining Arabia to
Ethiopia as well as to Egypt; and across this bridge came many types
of Asiatic mammals, also man,--possibly in the form of a low Negroid,
a type represented to-day (much changed and modified, of course) by
the Congo Pygmies and South African Bushmen. As regards the history
of humanity, however, the valley of the Nile has been divided into
two very distinct parts. The southern half of its basin--in common
with all Africa south of the Sahara and the fifteenth degree of north
latitude--was peopled from the east, through southern Arabia, and by
the Negro species in the main. Egypt proper and the adjoining regions
of Arabia once lay within the domain of the Negroid Pygmies, but
these indigenes were overwhelmed at a relatively early period by more
or less “negrified” branches of the Caucasian stock coming from the
direction of Syria or from Libya. Before the dawn of the historical
epoch--say nine thousand years ago--an element in the population of
Lower Egypt certainly showed Bushmen affinities. These steatopygous
Bushmen were perhaps Proto-negroes, who may have branched off from
the Nigritic stock when first that species reached the Mediterranean
regions. This Bushman element in Egypt was for some time distinct,
prior to the historical period, as the characteristic type of the
servile class. Following on these dwarfish people came races bearing
some slight resemblance to the Dravidians of India or the Brahuis of
Baluchistan,--a somewhat Australoid stock which has left traces in
Elam and around the shores of the Persian Gulf. Then came an aquiline
type of nearly pure Caucasian stock, usually known by Egyptologists as
the “Khafra” race. This probably arrived from Syria or Cyprus. But the
men of the northern half of the Nile basin who fathered the principal,
dominating type of ancient and modern Egyptian emigrated seemingly
from the direction of Galaland, Somaliland, or Abyssinia. In these
countries, or originally perhaps in southern Arabia, there was formed a
handsome race mainly of Caucasian stock, but which had mingled somewhat
considerably with the Proto-negroes and Dravidians in Arabia and in
northeast Africa, and so had acquired darker skins, and hair with
more or less tendency to curl. The men of this race, like the modern
Somali or Gala, and the inhabitants of southern Arabia, grew thin and
wedge-shaped beards. Their lips were full, their noses straight and
finely shaped. Their degenerate descendants continue to exist with but
little altered facial type in the Danākil, Somali, and Gala of the
present day; but in the northern half of the Nile valley they became
in time the main stock of the Egyptian population. They also, it would
seem, profoundly modified Negro Africa; for while on the one hand
they started out by a series of race movements and conquests from the
direction of Abyssinia to invade and mould Egypt, on the other (though
more faint-heartedly) they advanced in a southwesterly direction to
influence Negro Africa. They have formed aristocracies in the countries
round the head-waters of the White Nile. Their influence on the Negro
races has been widespread, permeating, even though faintly, in a
handsome physical type and remarkable form of language, to Zululand
on the south and perhaps westward across the continent to the Congo,
the Cross River, and the Atlantic coast. This Hamitic race (as it is
called for want of a better word), which made its first home--and
retains as its last--the highlands of Abyssinia and the plateaux and
arid coastlands of Afar, Somaliland, and the Gala countries, has
been the mainstay of Ancient Egypt, and also, together with its not
distantly related Libyan brethren, the main human agent in saving the
Negro from slipping back into the life of the anthropoid ape.
[Illustration: THE NILE AND THE PYRAMIDS.]
The valley of the Lower Nile, however, attracted many invasions from
Europe and Asia, and from Libya (northwest Africa), where the dominant
race was mainly of Iberian stock.[1] Dynasties rose and fell, often
coincident with the invasion of Egypt by one race of conquerors after
another. All these races (with the exception perhaps of the Hittites)
belonged to various types of the Caucasian species. The Hittites
possibly may have introduced a slight element of the Mongolian. In
the earliest historical period Egypt and the lower valley of the
Nile does not seem to have been markedly severed in its interracial
relations from the far greater portion of the Nile basin which lies
to the south of the fifteenth degree of north latitude. Egyptians
penetrated no doubt without much difficulty up the Nile valley into
and among the Negro tribes of the Central Sudan and Equatoria. The
Ancient Egyptians may have had--must have had--a certain proportion of
Negro or Negroid in their composition; beside the drop of Negro blood
in their Hamitic ancestors, they must have absorbed the earlier
Negroid population of their country and have imported and intermarried
with Negro slaves. But they were fully Caucasian in the vivid interest
they took in nature, and in their desire to depict all the striking
forms of life around them, especially when such forms had anything of
novelty. Prof. Flinders Petrie has, I believe, recently discovered a
vase of immeasurable antiquity of the “Pre-Dynastic” period in Lower
Egypt which is incised with a delineation of the Kudu antelope.[2]
Other and later relics would seem to show that the Egyptians were
acquainted with the chimpanzee of the Bahr-al-Ghazal regions, the
Pygmies who once inhabited the western part of the Upper Nile basin,
and many forms of the Tropical African fauna. But after these early
historical times there appears to have come about a severance of
relations between Egypt and the Upper Nile, though an overland route
to the Land of Punt (Somaliland) either through Abyssinia or to the
west of that elevated region nearly always existed unclosed to traffic.
It is noteworthy that the Ancient Egyptians themselves do not appear
ever to have penetrated up the main stream of the Nile much above its
junction with the Bahr-al-Ghazal, no doubt owing to the obstruction
of the sudd. Their traders may have travelled into many parts of the
Bahr-al-Ghazal region, and possibly even westward in the direction
of Lake Chad,--westward, it may be, even across the western Sudan
to the Niger,--yet there is not the slightest indication of their
ever having journeyed up the main White Nile to the snow-mountains
and the equatorial lakes. But they traded for thousands of years
with the men of Punt (Somaliland) by sea and by land; and there is
evidence to show that the peoples of Somaliland and Galaland (who had
by repeated prehistoric invasions permeated the Upper Nile basin and
left aristocracies behind them) traded anciently--say, in pre-Islamic
times--southwestward to Lake Rudolf, and round Lake Rudolf to the
present Turkana country, the neighbourhood of Mount Elgon, and even to
the northeastern shores of the Victoria Nyanza.
The Ancient Egyptians seem to have known the main Nile as far as
Khartum, and the Blue Nile up to its source in Lake Tsana. They
exercised intermittently some kind of rule over the northern and
western escarpment of Abyssinia, and are said to have sent criminals
and political exiles to die of cold on the snowy heights of the Samien
range. But they appear to have displayed little knowledge or curiosity
concerning the ultimate source of the _White_ Nile. No doubt the vast
marshes and obstructions of the sudd which characterised the course of
the Nile above its confluence with the Bahr-al-Ghazal, the generally
hopeless nature of this country with its utter absence of anything
like high land, of minerals, or of a trading population, discouraged
the practical-minded Egyptians from pursuing their researches in that
direction. The Nile itself they called _Hapi_, which was also the name
of the Nile God. It was sometimes spoken of as _Pi Yuma_, or “the
River.”[3] Its valley they called Atr, Atur, Aur (Modern Coptic =
_Eiōr_).[4]
Several foreign dynasties ruled over Ancient Egypt,--Arabian and
Libyan,--and for centuries at a time the energies of Egypt were mainly
concentrated on domestic work under these foreign task-masters or
insurrections to expel the hated rulers. The original civilisation of
Egypt rose rapidly to a great and wonderful height at a period which
may be as remote, historically, as about seven thousand years ago. The
main source of their civilisation seems to have been the introduction
into the country of copper implements instead of and in addition to
those of improved stone and flint manufacture. A wonderful development
of pictorial art occurred concurrently with this brilliant rise in
civilisation, and this early Egyptian art is of a realistic character
from which all subsequent Egyptian pictorial or sculptured art has been
a degeneration. At this time they easily impressed the Negroes of
the south and the Libyans of the west with their power, and it was no
doubt a matter of ease for Egyptian expeditions to penetrate into the
Sudan from the countries of Abyssinia and Galaland. Gold and precious
or gaudy stones were sought for in the east and southeast. Ivory,
slaves, gums, perfumes, and strange beasts were obtained from the south
and southwest. But no doubt Ancient Egyptians in their extensions of
political or commercial influence introduced amongst the Negro tribes
the knowledge of working metals. They also gave to them all those
domestic animals and cultivated plants now existing in Tropical Africa
which are not of a far later American or Indian origin (that is,
introduced by the Portuguese and Arabs). By instructing the Negroes
in this indirect manner in the arts of civilisation, and by spreading
among them, no doubt, the use of metal weapons (which were probably
as good as those used by the Egyptians themselves), there came a time
when--to use a term once much employed by the European pioneer--the
black men became “saucy” and objected to be harried, bullied, assessed,
and exploited by the lordly Egyptian. The Negro race at this time, too,
was becoming infiltrated by the same splendid stock--the Hamites--as
had so largely composed the ruling population of Egypt. Here and
there, no doubt, Negro tribes submitted willingly to be governed by
Hamitic princes (as has been the case in Uganda and Unyoro), and, thus
ruled, offered sharp opposition to Egyptian encroachments. Egyptian
interest, therefore, in the sources of the Nile died away, especially
as in the revival of native Egyptian power and in the expulsion of
foreign dynasties the thoughts of Egypt were all bent on the conquest
and retention of Syria, Asia Minor, and Cyprus. These lands were more
desirable in their eyes than the appalling wastes of the Sahara, the
sun-smitten Sudan, the cold mountains of Abyssinia, or the fetid
marshes of the Nile Negroes.
Almost older than the civilisation of Egypt was that of Mesopotamia,
the reflex action of which on the Hamites of western Arabia and
Abyssinia and on the inhabitants of the Nile Delta may have provoked
the civilisation of Egypt. Empires rose, declined, fell, and were
revived in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and their
influence over Arabia and Syria produced in those countries a stirring
of commerce and invention and a desire for distant enterprise. The
Phœnicians, who were originally an Arab people of the Persian Gulf,
forced their way across the barren wastes of northern Arabia to the
coasts of Syria, leaving behind, however, colonies of bold navigators
at the northern end of the Persian Gulf. The Phœnicians, by the
building of more seaworthy boats, and probably by the development of
sails, soon traversed the Mediterranean in all directions, passed
out through the Straits of Gibraltar, and even found their way to
Britain long before Julius Cæsar. Their most noteworthy action in
connection with Africa perhaps was the founding of Utica in 1100 B.C.
and Carthage in 820 B.C., these settlements being made at no great
distance from each other in that projection of North Africa which
constitutes the modern state of Tunis. The Carthaginian successors of
the Phœnicians carried on the work of discovery along the north and
west coasts of Africa until, in the memorable voyage of Hanno, they
had penetrated as far south in that direction as the existing colony
of Sierra Leone. The Phœnicians as bold navigators were enlisted in
the service of one of the last Egyptian sovereigns of a real Egyptian
dynasty,--Neku, son of Psametik I., who succeeded to the throne of
Egypt in 611 B.C. Evidently by this time the overland routes to the
regions of the Upper Nile and even to Somaliland had been closed by
hostilities with the Ethiopians and Negroes. A Phœnician expedition
was directed to sail down the Red Sea and along the coast to the Land
of Punt and the unknown territory beyond. According to tradition,
this expedition sailed round the whole continent of Africa and passed
through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean, reaching Egypt
from that direction.
Egypt, in her several thousand years of history, had been many times
conquered by foreign races or the leaders of foreign armies, and had
sometimes endured the domination of strangers for five hundred years at
a time, though Egyptian art, tradition, and religion either survived
concurrently alongside the habits and customs of the less civilised
rulers, or ended by Egyptianising the stranger. But there was to
come a time when the independence of Egypt was to disappear, when the
Egyptian language was to cease to be dominant, when, in fact, the Egypt
of the Pharaohs and the Pyramids, of the Hieroglyph and the Mummy,
of Ra and Aphis, Osiris, Isis, and Horus was to disappear--perhaps
for ever; for the potent race that had so long held aloft a
brightly-lighted lamp of civilisation has been so changed and degraded
by the infusion of Persian, Arab, Greek, Italian, Negro, Circassian,
Turkish, French, and Maltese blood, so often decimated by wars,
famines, and diseases, and renewed with the tainted blood of mercenary
armies, that, though the residuum of the population may still offer
great facial resemblances to the vanished Egyptian type, the majesty of
demeanour, the brilliant mental endowments of the old race have gone,
and the rulers of Egypt to-day under the indifferent English are the
descendants of Slavs and Turks, Arabs, Armenians, and Circassians.
A ruler of Egypt, a usurper named Aahmes, had been raised to the
kingship over Egypt by a soldier’s mutiny. He had legitimised his
position by marrying a granddaughter of Psametik I. Carrying out a
series of successful expeditions, he once more opened a way to the
commerce of Nubia and the Upper Nile. He intervened in the affairs of
Asia Minor to support a small state there against encroachments by
the Persian conqueror Cyrus. The son of Cyrus the Great, whom we know
as Cambyses, but whose real name was probably in Persian Kambujiya,
resolved to punish Egypt for this interference. Aahmes, whom the
Greeks called Amasis, died before he could resist the invasion, and
his son, Psametik III., lost his throne and the independence of
Egypt in the battle of Pelusium. Cambyses became the conqueror, and
was crowned the legitimate King of Egypt. He seems to have been an
erratic and cruel conqueror, but, like Nero, somewhat fantastically
interested in science and exploration. He sent one great expedition
into the Libyan Desert which was never heard of again, and is supposed
to have perished in the sand; and he led a great army himself up the
Nile with some vague intention of conquering the Ethiopians. His
soldiers, however, had marched only a small distance into the desert
when their commissariat failed, and many perished, while others became
cannibals in their mad hunger. This disaster put a stop to any further
efforts on the part of the Persian Overlords of Egypt. For nearly
two hundred years Persia maintained her hold over Egypt, though for
brief intervals native dynasties arose in this part and that part and
flickered for a time in a state of semi-independence. Then happened
one of the great events in the history of Egypt and of the development
of Africa,--an event which may be paralleled by the descent on Egypt
of Napoleon Bonaparte two thousand one hundred and thirty-one years
later: Alexander the Great, continuing his war against the Persian
Empire, attacked that power in Egypt and won the day. Alexander left
in charge in Egypt one of his generals (who was perhaps also his
illegitimate half-brother), Ptolemy. After his death Ptolemy refused to
acknowledge the claims of Alexander’s posthumous son, and made himself
King of Egypt. He thus founded a Greek dynasty in that country which
lasted till the advent of the Cæsars and expired in the person of the
world-famed Cleopatra.