SAMUEL BAKER AND THE ALBERT NYANZA
Samuel White Baker was born in London on the 8th June, 1821, and was
the second and eventually eldest son of Mr. Samuel Baker, a city
merchant, who possessed large properties and sugar plantations in
Jamaica and Mauritius. Samuel Baker, the elder, at one time maintained
a small fleet of sailing vessels. He also became one of the first
Directors of the Great Western Railway. His family and grandfather were
mainly settled at Bristol, and were much connected with the navy in
the eighteenth century. Further back still the Bakers were members of
Parliament and Court officials. They came originally from London, then
became a Kentish family, then moved to Dorsetshire, then to Bristol,
and finally back again to London. Samuel Baker, the younger, was a
typical English boy. His biographer, Mr. Douglas Murray, describes him
as having been “of the Saxon type; a noble-looking boy, of very fair
complexion, light hair, and fearless blue eyes.” He was “enterprising,
mischievous, for ever getting into scrapes, and leading others into
them; but he was never known to tell a lie or do a mean thing.” His
career was very nearly brought to a premature close when he was twelve
years old by an attempt to make fireworks. He ignited a small heap of
gunpowder on the kitchen table, and caused a terrible explosion, which
blew him to the far end of the room and burnt his arm severely.
He hated school, and received most of his education from a private
tutor and by a residence at Frankfurt in Germany. His father attempted
to put him in his London office; and this work, though excessively
irksome, was endured for a time, as he had early fallen in love with
the daughter of a Gloucestershire rector, whom he married when he was
only twenty-two. Soon after his marriage he went out to Mauritius
with his wife, to attempt the management of his father’s estates in
that island. But he was restless and dissatisfied with this career;
moreover, his three children, born in three years, all died. He
therefore started for Ceylon, to which island he was attracted by the
stories of big-game shooting. His interest was excited in the splendid
mountain region of the interior of Ceylon, which presents considerable
areas for European occupations between six thousand and eight thousand
feet in altitude. Here for nine years he worked at founding an English
settlement of planters, which exists to this day in a flourishing
condition, some of the land-owners being members of the Baker family.
But his wife, who bore him many children, suffered greatly in health.
In 1855 he returned to England, and wrote a book on Ceylon. At the
end of that year his wife died, and Baker, after leaving his young
children to be brought up in England, started for Constantinople, which
he reached at the close of the Crimean War. His idea was to travel in
Circassia, and see what advance in that direction Russia was making
towards India; but he spent several years in a rather objectless
fashion, shooting, fishing, and exploring in Asia Minor and Turkey in
Europe.
In 1859 he settled down as Manager-General of a British-made railway
from the Danube to the Black Sea. Whilst this railway was being made
he met in Hungary the lady who became his second wife.[75] The railway
was completed in 1860, and Baker once more became restless. Big-game
shooting in Asia Minor--splendid as it seems to have been at that
period, when he could shoot as many bears, boars, wolves, red deer, and
roe deer as he wished--did not content him; his thoughts turned towards
Africa and the Nile. He arrived at Cairo with Mrs. Baker in 1861, with
the idea of travelling up the Nile to meet Speke and Grant coming from
Zanzibar via the Victoria Nyanza.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Maull & Fox._]
SAMUEL BAKER, 1865.]
But Baker resolved, before attempting anything so difficult as the
exploration of the White Nile above Gondokoro, to learn something of
African travel and Sudanese Arabic. He therefore left the main Nile
at Berber and ascended the Atbara River, the last affluent which the
Nile receives on its way to the Mediterranean;[76] the first running
river encountered by the traveller ascending the Nile that can be said
to flow through tropical Africa,--the Africa with the typical Ethiopian
fauna and flora.
“After a scorching march of about twenty miles we arrived at
the junction of the Atbara River with the Nile [writes Baker];
throughout the route the barren sand stretched to the horizon
on the left, while on the right, within a mile of the Nile,
the soil was sufficiently rich to support a certain amount of
vegetation, chiefly dwarf mimosas and the _Asclepia gigantea_....
The Atbara has a curious appearance; in no part was it less than
four hundred yards in width, while in many places this breadth
was much exceeded. The banks were from twenty-five to thirty feet
deep: these had evidently been overflowed during floods, but at
the present time the river was dead, not only partially dry, but
so glaring was the sandy bed that the reflection of the sun was
almost unbearable. Great numbers of the _Dum_ palm (_Hyphæne
thebaica_) grew upon the banks.... The only shade there is afforded
by the evergreen Dum palms.... Many pools were of considerable
size and great depth. In flood time a tremendous torrent sweeps
down the course of the Atbara, and the sudden bends of the river
are hollowed out by the force of the stream to a depth of twenty
or thirty feet below the level of the bed. Accordingly, these
hollows become reservoirs of water when the river is otherwise
exhausted.... These pools are full of life, huge fish, crocodiles
of immense size, turtles, and occasionally hippopotami.... The
animals of the desert gazelles, hyaenas, and wild asses--are
compelled to resort to these crowded drinking places....
Innumerable doves, varying in species, throng the trees and seek
the shelter of the Dum palms; thousands of sand grouse arrive
morning and evening to drink and to depart.”
In the pools of the Atbara Baker for the first time shot
hippopotamuses. He also started fishing with a rod and line, and on one
occasion caught an enormous “turtle.”[77]
At the end of June they were nearly suffocated with the heat and dust
of the Sudan summer, but they were to experience the effects of the
melting of Abyssinian snows and of the descent of the tropical rains
on that African Switzerland. On the 24th of June Baker was lying half
asleep on his bed by the margin of the river when he fancied he heard a
rumbling sound like distant thunder. This roar increased in volume till
it awoke his Arabs, who rushed into the camp shouting, “The river! The
river!”
“We were up in an instant, and my interpreter in a state of intense
confusion exclaimed that the river was coming down, and that the
supposed distant thunder was the roar of approaching water....
Many of the people were sleeping on the clean sand of the river’s
bed, and were only just in time to reach the top of the steep
bank before the water was on them in the darkness.... The river
had arrived ‘like a thief in the night.’ When morning broke I
stood upon the banks of a noble river, the wonder of the desert!
Yesterday there was a barren sheet of glaring sand with a fringe of
withered bush and trees upon its borders.... No bush could boast
of a leaf, no tree could throw a shade: crisp gum crackled upon
the stems of the mimosas.... In one night there was a mysterious
change.... An army of water was hastening to the wasted river,
which had become a magnificent stream some five hundred yards
in width and fifteen to twenty feet in depth. Bamboos and reeds
with trash of all kinds were hurried along the muddy waters.... I
realised what had occurred: the rains were falling and the snows
were melting in Abyssinia. These were the main source of the Nile
floods.”
Baker left the Atbara in a land of wild asses and gazelles, and
travelled to Kassala,--a fortress of the eastern Sudan since rendered
famous by the struggle for its possession between Dervishes and
Italians. Kassala is situated on the right bank of the river Mareb,
which rises close to the Red Sea on the northern slopes of the
Abyssinian plateau. The Mareb has every intention of reaching the Nile,
or rather the Atbara, and no doubt did so in past epochs; but at the
present time northwards of Kassala it loses itself in the desert.
“There was an extraordinary change [writes Baker] in the appearance
of the river between Gozerajup and this spot. There was no longer
the vast sandy desert with the river flowing through its sterile
course on a level with the surface of the country, but after
traversing an apparently perfect flat of forty-five miles of rich
alluvial soil, we suddenly arrived upon the edge of a deep valley,
between five and six miles wide, at the bottom of which, about two
hundred feet below the general level of the country, flowed the
river Atbara. On the opposite side of the valley, the same vast
table-lands continued to the western horizon.
“We commenced the descent towards the river; the valley was a
succession of gullies and ravines, of landslips and watercourses;
the entire hollow of miles in width had evidently been the work of
the river. How many ages had the rains and the stream been at work
to scoop out from the flat tableland this deep and broad valley?
Here was the giant labourer that had shovelled the rich loam upon
the delta of lower Egypt! Upon these vast flats of fertile soil
there can be no drainage except through soakage. The deep valley
is therefore the receptacle not only for the water that oozes from
its sides, but subterranean channels bursting as land-springs
from all parts of the walls of the valley, wash down the more
soluble portions of the earth, and continually waste away the
soil. Landslips occur during the rainy season; streams of rich mud
pour down the valley’s slopes, and as the river flows beneath in
a swollen torrent, the friable banks topple down into the stream
and dissolve. The Atbara becomes the thickness of pea-soup, as its
muddy waters steadily perform the duty they have fulfilled from age
to age. Thus was the great river at work upon our arrival on its
banks at the bottom of the valley. The Arab name, ‘Bahr-al-Aswad’
(black river), was well bestowed. It was the black mother of Egypt,
still carrying to her offspring the nourishment that had formed the
Delta.
“At this point of interest the journey had commenced; the deserts
were passed, all was fertility and life; wherever the sources of
the Nile might be, the Atbara was the parent of Egypt! This was my
first impression, to be proved hereafter.”
Baker gives a fine description of the splendid type of Arab who is
still found in the regions of the Atbara:--
“He was the most magnificent specimen of an Arab that I have ever
seen. Although upwards of eighty years of age, he was as erect as
a lance, and did not appear more than between fifty and sixty; he
was of Herculean stature, about six feet three inches high, with
immensely broad shoulders and chest, a remarkably arched nose; eyes
like an eagle, beneath large, shaggy, but perfectly white eyebrows;
a snow-white beard of great thickness descended below the middle of
his breast. He wore a white turban, and a white cashmere abbai or
long robe, from the throat to the ankles. As a desert patriarch he
was superb, the very perfection of all that the imagination could
paint, if we would personify Abraham at the head of his people.”
This fine old Sheikh brought ten of his sons, most of them as tall
as himself. He seems to have been the father of many children,--a
fortunate circumstance for the country, though no doubt nearly all
of his stalwart descendants were extirpated in the miserable wars
following on the Mahdi’s revolt.
Baker ascended the Atbara to its upper waters, where it is known as the
Settit (higher up still as the Takaze). Here he had magnificent hunting
of big game amongst the Hamran Arabs, whose extraordinary prowess with
the sword he describes most vividly. They would follow up elephants and
hamstring them with a single blow of their long weapons, which were
like those of the Crusaders. (As a matter of fact, the generality of
the Hamran swords were manufactured at Sollingen in Germany.) In this
land Baker saw innumerable giraffes, and most of the big antelopes of
Central Africa, including Kudu and Oryx. The country about the Upper
Atbara below the Abyssinian highlands was exactly like an English park,
though the trees were mainly acacias. Here and there was a gigantic
baobab. In the waters of the river was found the now well-known
Lung-fish, the _Protopterus_.
From the upper waters of the Atbara and its many tributaries Baker,
skirting the western terraces of Abyssinia, reached the river
Rahad,--an Egyptian affluent of the Blue Nile which flows nearly
parallel to the river Dinder. These two streams rise on the western
flanks of the Abyssinian tableland, and enter the Blue Nile about one
hundred miles southeast of Khartum. On his way down this river Baker,
in the country of Galabat, met two German lay missionaries proceeding
to Abyssinia in spite of the objection expressed to their presence by
King Theodore. “One of these preachers was a blacksmith, whose iron
constitution had entirely given way, and the little strength that
remained he exhausted in endless quotations of texts from the Bible,
which he considered applicable to every trifling event or expression.”
In June, 1862, the Bakers reached Khartum. After a long stay at the
Pethericks’ house, Baker decided, as already related, to go in search
of Speke. His wife, the present Lady Baker, accompanied him. As already
related, she was a Hungarian lady of great beauty, and possessed of
extraordinary courage. Her fame as “_the_ Lady” (Es-sitt) still lingers
among the Nile Negroes.
It has already been shown that Baker succeeded in being the first
European to greet Speke and Grant. He received from these travellers
the legacy to complete their task of ascertaining definitely the
existence of the western Nile lake (Albert), of which Speke had heard
under the name of Luta Nzige. On the 26th of March, 1863, the Bakers
left Gondokoro on this errand.
Muhammad Wad-al-Mek, De Bono’s agent, and all the other Nubian Nile
traders, did their very utmost to prevent Baker returning along Speke’s
route through the Bari country. They incited his Khartum men to mutiny.
Baker, being unable to obtain porters, owing to the excessive hostility
of the slave-traders, employed the camels he had brought with him
from Khartum for his transport. As the slave-traders had threatened,
if he followed in their footsteps, to raise the natives about him, he
determined to reach the back country of Lotuka first, and therefore
deliberately strewed some of his goods in the way so as to delay the
slave-traders, who stopped to pick them up. He was outdone at his own
game, for a large caravan of “Turks” reached the Elliria country nearly
as soon as he did. The leader of this expedition was one Ibrahim. Mrs.
Baker resolved to see what could be done by a direct appeal to whatever
the man might possess of generosity. The Bakers threatened that if
he did them harm he would probably be hung at Khartum, while if he
assisted them to see this lake, they would see he was well rewarded.
The result was that a truce was patched up between the slave-traders
and Baker’s small expedition. Nevertheless, a mutiny happened among
Baker’s camel-men in the vicinity of Lotuka. Some of these men ran away
and joined a slave-trading party, which, however, was massacred by the
Lotuka. Henceforth Baker’s few men stuck to him faithfully, in terror
of what might happen to them from his evil eye.
Baker journeyed southward through the splendid Lotuka country,--a
land of which we know even now scarcely more than he told us forty
years ago. The Lotuka people are a splendid race of Negroids, with a
good deal more Gala blood in their veins than is the case with the
Masai, to whom they are closely allied in language, but who dwell
very much farther to the east and south. Since the days of Baker’s
adventure some of the Lotuka have become Muhammadans, and they are
no longer completely nude in consequence. Their country is a very
mountainous one, and on the whole well watered. It will probably play
a considerable part in the future of the Uganda Protectorate. Working
steadily south through the Madi and Acholi countries, the Bakers forded
the Asua, the great southeastern tributary of the Mountain Nile. Here
nearly all their porters deserted, and as their camels had died in the
Madi country, they were obliged to abandon all loads which were not
absolutely necessary,--such as ammunition, and presents for Kamurasi.
[Illustration: A NATIVE OF UNYORO.]
At length they arrived at the Karuma Falls on the Victoria Nile,
and entered Unyoro. Their first reception in Unyoro was hostile,
because Muhammad Wad-al-Mek had preceded them, and had made the worst
impression by his treatment of the Banyoro. At first Baker desired to
follow the Nile down stream till it entered the Albert Nyanza, but the
Banyoro would not allow him to do anything of the kind, or to make
any journey off the main road along the Victoria Nile to Kamurasi’s
capital. Contrary to their anticipations, Kamurasi received the Bakers
well; and this was the more fortunate, as Mr. Baker was very nearly
dead with fever. But Kamurasi soon showed his evil nature. He refused
to allow Baker to proceed due west to the Albert Nyanza, declaring
that lake was distant a six months’ journey. Ibrahim, the slave and
ivory trader, had purchased all the goods he required, and had left
Unyoro. All Baker’s porters, except thirteen, had deserted. Finding,
however, there was nothing more to be got out of Baker, Kamurasi
relented, accepted a double-barrelled gun, and sent off the explorer
and his wife with two guides and an escort of three hundred men. This
escort, however, was soon sent back, owing to their unruly behaviour.
Somehow or other, with such porters as could be procured from village
to village, they managed, in the teeth of fearful misfortunes, to
reach the Albert Nyanza at a place called Mbakovia, on the southeast
coast. On this journey Mrs. Baker nearly died from sunstroke, and
Baker himself was frightfully ill. But on the 16th of March, 1864,
they had discovered a great lake “with a boundless sea-horizon to the
southwards,” which they named the Albert Nyanza.
At the time of Baker’s visit no doubt (though he does not say so)
there was a good deal of mist about this lake,--a common feature.
The mist and the clouds seem to have prevented the travellers from
getting any glimpse of the mass of the Ruwenzori snow-range which lay
not many miles distant from them to the south. They also believed
(though they were then a day’s journey from the end of the lake) that
there was a boundless sea-horizon to the south. Their misapprehension
of the geography of this lake has often caused surprise; but apart
from a natural tendency to exaggerate the importance of their own
particular lake, in looking to the southward they were looking up the
broad valley of the Semliki, which was undoubtedly at one time--at any
rate for a distance of some fifty miles--a southern extension of the
Albert Nyanza. This valley was bordered on either side by cliff-like
mountains--plateau edges--continued northwards along the coasts of the
Albert Lake. To the west of Lake Albert the plateau tilts westwards
towards the Congo basin. Baker called the western cliffs and the
foothills of Ruwenzori the Blue Mountains,--a name they might very well
continue to bear, as there is no native designation for these heights,
which separate so abruptly and by only a few miles the basin of the
Congo from the basin of the Nile.
After a short stay at Mbakovia, the Bakers got into canoes and coasted
along the Albert Nyanza to Magungo, where the lake is entered by the
Victoria Nile. They ascended the Victoria Nile and discovered the
Murchison Falls, “where the river drops in one leap one hundred and
twenty feet into a deep basin, the edge of which literally swarms with
crocodiles.” On their overland journey in the direction of the Karuma
Falls, their porters again deserted, and for two months they were
stranded, almost at death’s door, living with difficulty on wild herbs
and mouldy flour; occasionally, but rarely, obtaining fowls from the
natives. Once more they came within the persecution of Kamurasi, who
pestered Baker for his assistance in a war he was carrying on against
his relation, Fowuka. Whilst Baker was hesitating, the Nile was crossed
by one of De Bono’s caravans of ivory-traders, who had entered into an
alliance with Fowuka. They were just about to attack Kamurasi’s army
(and with their one hundred and fifty guns would have easily defeated
it) when Baker planted the British flag in Kamurasi’s camp, and
warned De Bono’s soldiers that the Unyoro king was now under British
protection. Overawed by Baker’s threats, the ivory-traders withdrew
to the north side of the Nile. The only return that he received from
Kamurasi for this service was that the latter placed every obstacle
in his way to prevent his leaving Unyoro. At the same time Mutesa of
Uganda, having heard of a white man’s arrival in Unyoro, and imagining
that Kamurasi was stopping his further journey to Uganda, sent a large
army to ravage Unyoro. Kamurasi fled to some islands in the Nile,
and left Baker to shift for himself, without provisions or beasts
of burden, at the Karuma Falls. From this point he managed to send
messages to Ibrahim, the slave and ivory trader, and the latter came
to his assistance. With the aid of Ibrahim, the Bakers, who had lost
everything except guns and ammunition, eventually managed to return
to Gondokoro, though they were nearly killed on the way by the Bari
tribe, which had risen against the slave-raiders. At Gondokoro their
troubles were not ended, for the sudd had begun to form, and obstructed
the passage of the White Nile. Plague also had broken out in Khartum.
But the travellers fought through all obstacles, any one of which
might have wrecked an expedition conducted by less intrepid people,
and reached Khartum in May, 1865. Here they remained two months to
recuperate, and during this time they managed to secure the banishment
of one of the slave-traders who had incited the mutiny of their men at
Gondokoro in 1863.
From Khartum they travelled to Berber down the Nile, and then started
on camels to cross the desert to Suakin. They reached England in the
autumn of 1865. By this time perhaps African exploration had become
more interesting to the British government, for Baker received for his
discoveries a well-earned knighthood,--a distinction which might very
well have been accorded to Speke or to Grant. As a matter of fact, the
only reward given to the last-named traveller was a C.B., which was
awarded, not for his marvellous “Walk across Africa,” but for the
inconspicuous services which he rendered some years later in connection
with the Abyssinian War.
As the result of the Speke and Baker explorations, so far as published
maps were concerned, our knowledge of the Nile basin in 1865 was
as follows: The shape and area of the Victoria Nyanza were roughly
indicated, together with the outlet of the Victoria Nile at the Ripon
Falls. The course of the Victoria Nile was mapped (with a good many
blanks) from the Ripon Falls to the north end of Lake Albert Nyanza.
Baker was able to show that there was a widening of the Victoria Nile
opposite the eastern frontier of Unyoro, but it was some years later
before this widening was discovered to consist of two large lakes
(Kioga and Kwania). Baker had given an extremely exaggerated size to
the Albert Nyanza. Speke, on the other hand, had sketched this lake
with remarkable accuracy merely from hearsay. The course of the Nile
from the north end of Lake Albert to its junction with the Asua River
was quite unexplored. The rest of the course of the Mountain Nile was
mapped as far as its junction with the Bahr-al-Ghazal, but very little
was known about one of its branches, the Giraffe River. No further
researches beyond those made by the Turks had taken place on the Sobat
River.
As for Sir Samuel Baker, we take leave of him here as one of the great
explorers of the Nile. He returned to the regions of the great lakes in
1869, having been appointed for four years in charge of an expedition
to subdue and annex to the Egyptian Empire the equatorial regions of
the Nile basin. This object involved him in incessant fighting in
Unyoro, with the slave-traders between Unyoro and Gondokoro, and with
the Bari. Some of these conflicts were forced on him; others, it is
to be feared, he precipitated by his determination to enlarge the
territories of the Egyptian Sudan. His time would seem to have been
passed mainly in warfare with one enemy or another, or in laying very
solidly the foundations of a civilised administration. His stay in
Equatoria resulted in but little addition to our knowledge of the Nile
and its affluents. A good many of his efforts for the welfare of the
country were thwarted by the Egyptian Governor-General at Khartum,
and after his departure, in 1873, some of his worst enemies among the
slave-traders were reinstated. This much must always be recorded to
the credit of Sir Samuel Baker’s work on the Upper Nile: he inspired
universal respect among the fair-dealing natives; he, first of all,
broke the back of the immense slave-trading industry which had sprung
up on the Mountain Nile, in Unyoro, and in the Acholi countries;
throughout these regions the natives can remember but one great and
good administrator before the present régime, and that is Sir Samuel
Baker. “Gordoom” Pasha is but a name, and represents little to their
minds; Emin they only remembered as an enthusiastic naturalist, who
did but little to check the rapine and wrong-doing of his Sudanese
soldiers; but “Baker Basha” is, in the remembrance of the old
people, the one heroic White man they have known: terrible in battle,
scrupulously just, at all times kind and jovial in demeanour amongst
friends; a born ruler over a savage people.