SCHWEINFURTH’S ACHIEVEMENTS AND DESCRIPTIONS
Dr. Schweinfurth spent three years exploring the regions of the
Bahr-al-Ghazal, and returned to Europe in the autumn of 1871. During
the course of his journeys he took no observation of latitude or
longitude, but kept a most accurate dead reckoning. He laid down with
astonishing accuracy much of the Bahr-al-Ghazal, of the courses of the
Rōl, the Roah and its affluents, the Dogoru and Tondi, the Jur, Nyenam,
Ji, Biri, Kuru, and Dembo tributaries of the Bahr-al-Ghazal, the upper
waters of the Sue and Yabongo; lastly, he crossed the Nile watershed
and entered that of the Congo, thus discovering the upper waters of the
Welle River and its many affluents. Here he thought that he had entered
the basin of the Shari River, but, as we know now, he had discovered
the head streams of that most important affluent of the Congo, the
Welle-Ubangi.
Dr. Schweinfurth gave the first true and particular account of the
Congo Pygmies under the name of Akka, whom he found in the thickly
forested region on the northern limits of the Congo watershed; he drew
our attention to those remarkable “gallery” forests,[84] and to the
existence in the Nile basin of the chimpanzee, the gray parrot,[85]
and other West African types. He discovered a slightly civilised race
on this Congo-Nile water-parting--the Mangbettu--speaking a language
which has no known relations, but leading a life singularly similar to
that of the other semi-civilised Negro states of Unyoro and Uganda.
The Mangbettu and their chiefs exhibit traces of former intermixture
with Hamitic people. Dr. Schweinfurth also told us much we did not know
before as to the Nyam-nyam,[86] the Bongo, and the Dinka tribes.
Schweinfurth possessed many qualifications for writing a book on
African exploration. He was a scientific botanist, and knew a great
deal of zoölogy. He had a quick ear for languages, and wrote down
vocabularies of the important dialects. He collected invaluable
notes on ethnology and anthropology. Although he was unable to do
much photography, he was a skilled draughtsman, and his beautiful
drawings are apt illustrations of his book. As regards the value of the
information he collected, no such book as Schweinfurth’s had appeared
before, with the exception of Barth’s classical work on the Western
Sudan; but Schweinfurth’s book was far ahead of Barth’s in the matter
of illustrations. These are as accurate as photographs, and yet much
clearer. More than any previous traveller who had written on Africa,
Schweinfurth is able to bring to our mental vision the different
aspects of vegetation. He describes the tree-lilies (_Dracænæ_),
with their bouquets of leaves like bayonets and their short, woody
stems, the Candelabra euphorbias, the coral red aloes, the dragon-like
_Bucerosia_, the leathery _Sanseviera_, and the gigantic clumps of the
grass-green _Salvadora_, which characterise the northern flanks of
Abyssinia.
[Illustration: “PAPYRUS, FIFTEEN FEET HIGH.”]
In another place he describes acacia groves on the right bank of the
White Nile above Khartum, with their enormous white bulbous thorns,[87]
and their oozy lumps of amber-coloured gum. He notes the remarkable
fact that little, if any, of the floating vegetation of the Upper
Nile reaches Egypt. He describes the jungles of papyrus, “fifteen
feet high,” the floating grass barriers and the sudd (which he calls
_sett_); the _suf_ reeds, the water-ferns, the floating _Pistia
stratiotes_ (like a pale-green lettuce), the duck-weeds, the beautiful
white and blue waterlilies. When he reached the vicinity of the
water-parting between the Nile and the Congo, he had entered the forest
region of West-Central Africa. This mighty tropical forest has no great
reverence for geographical boundaries, but overlaps in several places
the watershed of the Nile, while of course it exists in patches in
the basins of the Shari, the Benue, the Niger, and on the coast belt
of Upper and Lower Guinea. Perhaps the most marked feature of it, the
clearest indication of its West African nature, is the existence of the
climbing _Calamus_ palm, which is never found in typical East Africa.
The wonderful “gallery”[88] forests are described as follows:--
“Trees with immense stems, and of a height surpassing all that we
had elsewhere seen (not even excepting the palms of Egypt), here
stood in masses which seemed unbounded, except where at intervals
some less towering forms rose gradually higher and higher beneath
their shade. In the innermost recesses of these woods one would
come upon an avenue like the colonnade of an Egyptian temple,
veiled in the leafy shade of a triple roof above. Seen from
without, they had all the appearance of impenetrable forests, but,
traversed within, they opened into aisles and corridors which
were musical with many a murmuring fount. Hardly anywhere was
the height of these less than seventy feet, and on an average it
was much nearer one hundred; yet, viewed from without, they very
often failed to present anything of that imposing sight which was
always so captivating when taken from the brinks of the brooks
within. In some places the sinking of the ground along which the
gallery-tunnels ran would be so great that not half the wood
revealed itself at all to the contiguous steppes, while in that
wood (out of sight as it was) many a ‘gallery’ might still exist.”
Most of these gigantic trees, the size of whose stems exceeds any
European forest growth, belong to the order of the _Sterculiæ_,
_Boswelliæ_, _Papilionaceæ_, _Rosaceæ_, or _Cæsalpiniæ_; to the
_Ficaceæ_, the _Artocarpeæ_, the _Euphorbiaceæ_, and the varied order
of the _Rubiaceæ_. Amongst the trees of second and third rank are a
few _Araliacea_, large-leaved figs, brilliant-flowered Spathodeas,
Combretums, and Mussændas, as well as innumerable other rubiaceous or
papilionaceous plants. There is no lack of thorny shrubberies; “and
the _Oncoba_, the _Phyllanthus_, the _Celastrus_, and the _Acacia
ataxacantha_, cluster after cluster, are met with in abundance.”
“Thick creepers climbed from bough to bough, the _Modecca_ being the
most prominent of all; but the _Cissus_, with its purple leaf, the
_Coccinea_, the prickly _Smilax_, the _Helmiæ_, and the _Dioscoreæ_,
had all their part to play. Made up of these, the whole underwood
spread out its ample ramifications, its great twilight made more
complete by the thickness of the substance of the leaves themselves.”
[Illustration: A PATH THROUGH THE FOREST.]
Down upon the very ground, again, there were masses, all but
impenetrable, of plants (mainly _Zingeberaceæ_ or else Arums) growing
large gorgeously painted leaves which contributed to fill up the gaps
left in this mazy labyrinth of foliage. First of all there were the
extensive jungles of the _Amomum_ and the _Costus_, rising full fifteen
feet high, and of which the rigid stems (like those of stout reeds)
either bar out the progress of a traveller altogether, or admit
him, if he venture to force his way among them, only to fall into the
sloughs of muddy slime from which they grow.
“And then there was the marvellous world of ferns, destitute
indeed of stems, but running in their foliage to some twelve feet
high. Boundless in the variety of the feathery articulations of
their fronds, some of them seemed to perform the graceful part of
throwing a veil over the treasures of the wood; and others lent a
charming contrast to the general uniformity of the leafy scene.
High above these there rose the large, slim-stemmed _Rubiaceæ_
(_Coffeæ_), which by regularity of growth and symmetry of leaf
appeared to imitate, and in a measure to supply the absence of, the
arboraceous ferns. Of all the other ferns the most singular which
I observed was that which I call the elephant’s ear. This I found
up in trees at a height of more than fifty feet, in association
with the _Angræcum_ orchis and the long gray beard of the hanging
_Usnea_.”
Whenever the stems of the trees failed to be thickly overgrown by some
of these different ferns, they were rarely wanting in garlands of the
crimson-berried pepper. Far as the eye could reach, it rested solely
upon green which did not admit a gap. The narrow paths that wound
themselves partly through and partly around the growing thickets were
formed by steps consisting of bare and protruding roots which retained
the light, loose soil together. Mouldering stems, thickly clad with
moss, obstructed the passage at wellnigh every turn. “The air was no
longer that of the sunny steppe, nor that of the shady grove; it was
stifling as the atmosphere of a palm-house. Its temperature might vary
from 70° to 80° Fahr., but the air was so overloaded with an oppressive
moisture exhaled by the rank foliage that the traveller could not feel
otherwise than relieved to escape.”
* * * * *
In the second volume of his work Schweinfurth adds:--
“The cumbrous stems are thickly overgrown with wild pepper, and
the spreading branches are loaded with bead moss (_Usnea_) and
with that remarkable lichen which resembles an elephant’s ear.
High among the boughs are the huge dwellings of the tree-termites
(white ants). Some stems already decayed serve as supports for
immense garlands of _Mucuna_ (a bean), and overhung by impenetrable
foliage, form roomy bowers, where dull obscurity reigns supreme.
Such is the home of the chimpanzee.”
Schweinfurth might have extended his researches further into the
unknown but for a disastrous campfire in the Dyur country, which
destroyed the greater part of his collections, journals, drawings, and
instruments. Eventually, with such of his collections as he was able to
save from the conflagration, Schweinfurth turned his steps northward
again, and reached Europe in 1871. He subsequently did much to increase
our knowledge of the botany of Abyssinia and Arabia, but never resumed
the rôle of African explorer.
[Illustration: SCHWEINFURTH’S MAP.]