BURTON AND SPEKE
Nile exploration from the north had stopped in 1851 at the rapids south
of Gondokoro. It was now felt that the problem should be attacked
from other directions. In 1839 the British government had formally
annexed Aden at the southwestern corner of Arabia as a coaling station
for ships plying between Suez and India. Aden is opposite the Somali
coast, and has been for many centuries the outpost of civilisation
with which the Somali have traded. It was impossible to possess Aden
long without desiring to become acquainted with the character of the
African coast across the gulf, especially as Aden depended so much
on Somaliland for its supplies of meat, grain, and fodder, and the
ostrich feathers, ivory, and skins sold in the Aden bazaars. Aden
was, and is still, under the government of India, and officers of the
Indian army soon found their way across to Somaliland on authorised
or unauthorised surveys. Among these was Lieutenant Cruttenden, who
collected some new information about the sterile country beyond the
coast. In 1854 a remarkable man came to Aden as an officer in the
Indian garrison,--Lieutenant Richard Francis Burton, fresh from
his wonderful journey as a pilgrim to Mecca. Burton induced the
authorities to support him in a project for entering inner East Africa
through Somaliland, and thus perhaps striking at the sources of the
Nile. Another explorer in the bud, Lieutenant John Hanning Speke,
reached Aden soon afterwards, and obtained permission to join Burton’s
expedition.
Whilst waiting for a time thought to be favourable for travelling
southwards into the Ogadein country, Burton went off alone on a
remarkably plucky journey to the mysterious city of Harrar, to-day a
frontier town of Abyssinia. Harrar, lying to the south of that Rift
valley, which can be traced after a few interruptions from the Gulf of
Tajurra right down into British and German East Africa, was a walled
city inhabited by a Semitic people, or rather a people still retaining
the use of a Semitic dialect akin to those of Abyssinia and South
Arabia.
Speke did a good deal to increase our knowledge of the remarkable fauna
of Somaliland, but the Burton-Speke expedition into that country got no
great distance inland, and ended in disaster, owing to the suspicions
of the Somali. The expedition was attacked close to the seashore at
Berbera. One of the party, Lieutenant Stroyan, was killed. Speke was
severely, and Burton slightly wounded. Speke is of opinion that much
of this disaster was due to the mismanagement of Burton. He considers
that if, when the expedition was first organised, instead of fussing
about mysterious visits to Harrar and waiting for this thing and that
thing, the whole expedition had started off boldly for the interior,
the Somali would have had no time to cultivate suspicion, and would
have opposed no resistance. It is quite conceivable that Speke was
right, and that if the expedition had started with promptitude it might
have reached the confines of Shoa or the Gala country in the direction
of modern British East Africa. As it was, the attack on Burton’s
expedition closed for some thirty years any attempt at penetrating the
mysterious country of the Somali, with its remarkable mammalian fauna
and its as yet unexplained ruins.[49]
[Illustration: A SWAHILI ARAB TRADER.]
Burton’s attention was now drawn to the stories of the Mombasa
missionaries. With some difficulty he obtained from the Foreign Office,
the East India Company, and the Royal Geographical Society funds to
equip an expedition which should start from the Zanzibar coast in
search of the great lake. As Speke had lost over five hundred pounds
worth of private property in the disaster which fell on the Somali
expedition, Burton invited him to join this new expedition as his
lieutenant. Burton had been distracted for a time from this idea by
the Crimean War, but when peace was declared, he obtained the sanction
of the Geographical Society to his plans, and started with Speke for
India to smooth the difficulties placed in his way by the Indian
government. At the very end of 1856 the explorers reached Zanzibar.
While the expedition was being organised at Zanzibar, Burton and Speke
visited Pemba, Mombasa, and the mission station ten miles in the
interior. Fired by the stories of the snow-mountains and the rumour
of the great lake of Ukerewe,[50] Speke proposed that they should
bring their expedition to Mombasa and start for the lake by way of
Kilimanjaro. The Masai, however, were raiding the country right up
to within ten miles of Mombasa, and in consequence Burton was afraid
to take this route. The explorers visited the mountainous country of
Usambara, which is close to the coast, and then returned to Zanzibar.
The original instructions, however, of the Royal Geographical Society
(which had found the bulk of the funds) had been: “The great object
of the expedition is to penetrate inland, from Kilwa or some other
place on the East Coast of Africa, and make the best of its way to
the reputed Lake of Nyasa.” Burton found, however, that the Arabs of
Kilwa were strongly opposed to white men penetrating the interior
in that direction. He therefore decided to choose the line of least
resistance at Bagamoyo, and go along the now beaten track of the Arabs
to Ujiji. When Burton and Speke reached Unyamwezi (Kaze) at the close
of 1857, they were received with much kindness and courtesy by the
Zanzibar Arabs established there, especially by Sheikh Snay, who had
been the first Arab to reach Uganda. Snay promptly cleared up the
mystery of the missionaries’ great lake, telling the explorers that
it was three different lakes (Nyasa, Tanganyika, and Victoria) rolled
into one. The Arabs had also heard through the Banyoro rumours of
European vessels travelling up the White Nile to the Bari country.
Burton was continually prostrated with fever during this stay in
Unyamwezi, so that the command of the expedition and the solution of
its difficulties temporarily devolved on Speke. The main trouble, as
on all these expeditions, was with the question of transport. It was
very difficult to obtain porters to proceed in any direction north or
west of Unyamwezi. At last they induced a number of their paid-off men
who had accompanied them through the coast lands to rejoin and convey
the loads as far as Ujiji. In that way Burton and Speke discovered
Lake Tanganyika, and Speke thought (wrongly) that in the great tilted
plateau which they ascended on the east, and from which they looked
down on the beautiful blue waters of the lake, he had discovered the
Mountains of the Moon.
After a somewhat half-hearted exploration of the northern portion
of Tanganyika in an Arab dau, during which they heard and partially
verified the fact that no river flowed out of Tanganyika on the north,
but that the Rusizi flowed _into_ the lake[51] in that direction, they
returned to Ujiji, and from this point made their way back to Kaze in
Unyamwezi. Here Burton again became ill. Speke with some difficulty
obtained from him permission to travel northwards in search of the Lake
of Bukerebe. Burton yielded his consent reluctantly, and appears to
have given but grudging assistance in the shape of men and guides. Full
of energy, however, Speke gathered together a caravan, which crossed
Unyamwezi and Usukuma, and on the 30th of July, 1858, he saw the Mwanza
creek, one of the southernmost gulfs of the Victoria Nyanza. The
extremity of this he named “Jordans Nullah.”[52] Travelling northwards
along this creek, on August 3d (1858), early in the morning, Speke
saw the open waters of a great lake with a sea horizon to the north.
Much of the horizon was shut in by great and small islands, but Speke
detected through their interstices the vast extent of open water which
stretched to the north.
He realised to the full the wonder of his discovery, and the obvious
probability that this mighty lake would prove to be the main
headwaters of the White Nile. Even Speke, however, failed to appreciate
then or subsequently the full extent of the Nyanza’s area. He only
guessed its breadth at over one hundred miles, and its length from
north to south at under two hundred. Speke inquired from the natives
the name of this freshwater sea, and they replied “Nyanza,” which in
varying forms such as Nyanja, Nyasa, Mwanza, Kianja, Luanza (according
to prefix), is a widespread Bantu root for a large extent of water,--a
river or a lake. To this term Speke added the name of Victoria after
the Queen of England. The following extract from his book, “What Led to
the Discovery of the Source of the Nile,” gives his first impressions
of the great lake:--
“The caravan, after quitting Isamiro, began winding up a long but
gradually inclined hill [which, as it bears no native name, I shall
call Somerset] until it reached its summit, when the vast expanse
of the pale blue waters of the Nyanza burst suddenly upon my gaze.
It was early morning. The distant sea-line of the north horizon
was defined in the calm atmosphere between the north and the west
points of the compass; but even this did not afford me any idea
of the breadth of the lake, as an archipelago of islands, each
consisting of a single hill, rising to a height two hundred or
three hundred feet above the water, intersected the line of vision
to the left; while on the right the western horn of the Ukerewe
Island cut off any further view of its distant waters to the
eastward of north. A sheet of water--an elbow of the sea, however,
at the base of the low range on which I stood--extended far away
to the eastward, to where, in the dim horizon, a hummock-like
elevation of the mainland marked what I understood to be the south
and east angle of the lake. The important islands of Ukerewe and
Mzita, distant about twenty or thirty miles, formed the visible
north shore of this firth. The name of the former of these islands
was familiar to us as that by which this long-sought lake was
usually known. It is reported by the natives to be of no great
extent, and though of no considerable elevation, I could discover
several spurs stretching down to the water’s edge from its central
ridge of hills. The other island, Mzita, is of greater elevation,
of a hog-backed shape, but being more distant its physical features
were not so distinctly visible.
“In consequence of the northern islands of the Bengal Archipelago
before-mentioned obstructing the view, the western shore of the
lake could not be defined: a series of low hill-tops extended in
this direction as far as the eye could reach; while below me, at
no great distance, was the _débouchure_ of the creek which enters
the lake from the south, and along the banks of which my last
three days’ journey had led me. This view was one which even in a
well-known and explored country would have arrested the traveller
by its peaceful beauty. The islands, each swelling in a gentle
slope to a rounded summit, clothed with wood between the rugged,
angular, closely-cropping rocks of granite, seemed mirrored in the
calm surface of the lake, on which I here and there detected a
small black speck,--the tiny canoe of some Muanza fisherman. On the
gently shelving plain below me blue smoke curled among the trees,
which here and there partially concealed villages and hamlets,
their brown thatched roofs contrasting with the emerald-green of
the beautiful aloes, the coral flower-branches of which cluster in
such profusion round the cottages, and form alleys and hedgerows
about the villages as ornamental as any garden shrub in England.
But the pleasure of the mere view vanished in the presence of those
more intense and exciting emotions which are called up by the
consideration of the commercial and geographical importance of the
prospect before me.
“I no longer felt any doubt that the lake at my feet gave birth to
that interesting river, the source of which has been the subject
of so much speculation, and the object of so many explorers.
The Arabs’ tale was proved to the letter. This is a far more
extensive lake than the Tanganyika; ‘so broad that you could not
see across it, and so long that nobody knew its length.’ I had now
the pleasure of perceiving that a map I had constructed on Arab
testimony, and sent home to the Royal Geographical Society before
leaving Unyanyembe, was so substantially correct in its general
outlines I had nothing whatever to alter. Further, as I drew that
map after proving their first statements about the Tanganyika,
which were made before my going there, I have every reason to feel
confident of their veracity relative to their travels north through
Karagwe, and to Kibuga in Uganda.”
[Illustration: SKETCH MAP BY BURTON AND SPEKE, 1858.
From the Original in the possession of the Royal Geographical Society.]
Unable to delay longer in his exploration of the southern shores of
the Victoria Nyanza, as he had promised to rejoin Burton by a certain
date, Speke returned to Kaze in Unyanyembe, to find his companion vexed
at the great discovery which he had made. Speke did not pursue the
argument as to the Victoria Nyanza being the main source of the Nile.
The two men journeyed together on more or less bad terms to Zanzibar,
where Burton remained to wind up the affairs of the expedition, Speke
returning direct to England. Here the wonderful news he brought
prompted the Royal Geographical Society to gather together the funds
for a fresh expedition, which was to enable Speke to make good his
discovery of the lake, and to prove to the satisfaction of the
scientific world that this sheet of water was the ultimate source of
the White Nile.