THE EASTERN BASIN OF THE NILE
We will now turn to the eastern part of the Nile basin--the first to
be explored, the last to be finished. It has been already related
how, alarmed at the rapid successes of the Portuguese in India, the
Persian Gulf, and East Africa, the Abyssinians resolutely ejected the
Portuguese missionaries from their country during the seventeenth
century, and how the attempts of Louis XIV. to supplant the Portuguese
by French influence resulted disastrously. Bruce had broken the spell
which rested on this strange country, so fascinating to Europeans,
because while being absolutely “Africa” it was ruled, and for the most
part inhabited, by more or less Caucasian races, its rulers having a
Semitic history which attached them to the fountains of civilisation.
Our previous review of exploration in Abyssinia ended with Bruce’s
journey, and with the attempts on the part of French and German
explorers during the early part of the nineteenth century to enter
Abyssinia up the course of the Blue Nile. Meantime the overland route
to the East had been conceived by Lieutenant Waghorn, the British
government had seized Aden in 1839, and a much greater interest than
heretofore was taken in the navigation of the Red Sea, which was
rapidly becoming the main route to India. Although Abyssinia then as
now had no acknowledged political control over any part of the Red
Sea littoral, it was early recognised that Abyssinia was an important
factor in the political problems governing the control of the Red Sea.
Even before the safety of the British route to India became a matter
of urgent importance, we had sought to enter into direct relations
with Abyssinia. In 1805 a British mission under Lord Valentia and
Consul Henry Salt was sent to conclude an alliance with Abyssinia
and obtain a port on the Danakil coast by means of which Britain
could, if necessary, convey troops to Abyssinia, and so take a French
Egypt in the rear. The writings of Henry Salt added greatly to our
knowledge of the peoples, languages, and fauna of Abyssinia and of the
Zanzibar coast, but did not contribute materially to the elucidation
of Nile problems. During the first part of the nineteenth century
Abyssinia was in the throes of civil war caused by the struggles
for supremacy between the ruler of Tigre (the northern province)
and the Ras or Governor of Amhara (the central province). The Ras
of Tigre--Sabagadis--threw open northern Abyssinia to the English,
cordially inviting missionaries, mechanics, and explorers to enter
his dominions. In this way the Church Missionary Society’s missions
to eastern Africa started by the despatch of Protestant missionaries
(mostly Germans in the pay of the Society) to Tigre. On the other
hand, the war between Tigre and Amhara having resulted in the death
of both the chiefs, a third potentate, the ruler of the lofty Samien
Mountains, annexed Tigre, and out of opposition to his predecessor’s
policy invited Frenchmen to develop the country. Captains Galinier and
Ferret accepted the commission to survey Tigre and Samien by careful
triangulation. This task was accomplished in 1842, and resulted in the
correct mapping of the affluents of the Atbara. Meantime the British
Protestant missionaries had penetrated into Amhara, while Tigre and
Samien came under French Roman Catholic influence. In fact, the history
of Uganda was given here on a larger scale. Simultaneously the southern
province of Ethiopia, Shoa, under the enlightened ruler Selasié had
attracted the attention of Europeans. Major (afterwards Sir William)
Harris was sent by the Indian government in 1841 to conclude a treaty
with Shoa, as it was thought that this country might eventually extend
its influence over Somaliland, and so come into direct contact with
the Indian government at Aden. This British mission was naturally
followed by a French one, and a French envoy applied to the Pope for
the starting of a Roman Catholic mission in Shoa.
The work of Monseigneur Massaja, who was despatched by Pope Pius IX.,
though it throws much interesting light on the structure of the Gala
language, hardly comes within the sphere of Nile exploration. Meantime
an adventurer named Kasa had arisen in Amhara, and had gradually made
himself master of the northern and western provinces of Abyssinia.
He had himself crowned King of Kings of Ethiopia under the name of
Theodore, and then proceeded to annex the province of Shoa to his
dominions.
During the early part of Theodore’s reign the two brothers d’Abbadie
were at work surveying Abyssinia and collecting invaluable information
regarding the languages, literature, coins, inscriptions, and religions
of that assemblage of Semitic, Hamitic, and Negro states. Antoine
Thomson d’Abbadie and his brother Arnaud Michel were actually born in
Dublin, their father being French and their mother Irish. They were
however educated in France. Their bent for scientific exploration
was early recognised, for the French Academy sent the elder of the
two on a scientific mission to Brazil at the age of twenty-five. The
younger d’Abbadie explored Algeria. This leading his thoughts in the
direction of Abyssinia, he proposed to his brother a joint mission
of exploration, which commenced in 1838 by their landing at Masawa.
Besides carefully surveying the northern and central provinces of
Abyssinia they did work of special novelty and interest in the south.
Until the journeys of Cecchi and other Italians twenty years ago the
d’Abbadies’ information concerning the countries lying to the south
of Abyssinia represented all that we knew of Kaffa and Enarea,--names
indeed which had been cited by the Portuguese, but names unsupported
by geographical information. Antoine d’Abbadie penetrated the furthest
into Kaffa. He collected an immense amount of information regarding
the languages spoken in the vague south and southwest districts
inhabited mainly by races of Hamitic origin. The d’Abbadies closed
their survey of Abyssinia in 1848, though the younger brother paid the
country another short visit in 1853. They were in no hurry to give the
results of their explorations to the world; in fact, the “Géographie
de l’Éthiopie” (of which only one volume was published) did not appear
till 1890. Their actual surveys of Abyssinia were published between
the years 1860 and 1873. Their Ethiopian manuscripts came out also
during that period, but Antoine’s Dictionary of the Amharic tongue
was published no further back than 1881. Their twelve years’ work
in Abyssinia was the greatest contribution that has ever been made
to our knowledge of that country, but most of their labours do not
lie sufficiently within the field of Nile exploration to admit of an
adequate description in this book. Antoine d’Abbadie lived to the age
of eighty-seven (he died in 1897). About 1859 he found himself involved
in a somewhat acrid conflict of opinion with another Abyssinian
explorer, Dr. C. T. Beke, who visited Abyssinia in the forties of the
last century. D’Abbadie was naturally prejudiced in favour of the Blue
Nile being the main Nile, since that river and its southern affluents
had been the special object of his researches during twelve years.
On the other hand, Dr. Beke was hotly in favour of the White Nile,
especially after Speke’s discovery of the Victoria Nyanza. Dr. Beke was
right in his main contentions, but seems to have thrown unnecessary
aspersions on the genuineness of Antoine d’Abbadie’s explorations in
southern Abyssinia. We now know d’Abbadie’s work to have been perfectly
accurate.
[Illustration: DR. C. BEKE.]
Mansfield Parkyns, an Englishman, visited Abyssinia from 1843 to 1846,
wrote interestingly on the country in confirmation or correction of
Bruce’s statements, but did not add materially to our geographical
knowledge, though his book is still often quoted in regard to habits
and customs now dying out.
Amongst the Protestant missionaries first despatched to the country
by the Church Missionary Society of London was the celebrated Krapf,
already alluded to in Chapter XI. as the joint discoverer of the East
African snow-mountains. Krapf penetrated far south into Shoa, and gave
considerable information, both interesting and true, regarding the
dwarfish Negro tribes found to the southwest of the Abyssinian Empire.
Lij Kasa, who had become King of Kings of Ethiopia under the name of
Theodore III., showed himself, when he had consolidated his power,
very fond of the English, and encouraged English missionaries and
consuls to go to his court. He seems, however, to have pursued this
policy more with the idea of strengthening his prestige and improving
his kingdom by the spread of mechanical appliances and the manufacture
of superior arms and ammunition, than from any desire to encourage
missionary work. In the early sixties he became offended at a supposed
slight on the part of the British government, which left unanswered a
letter addressed to it by Theodore in 1863. His subsequent proceedings
in regard to the imprisonment of the consul and missionaries
eventually brought about the British expedition of 1868. A force of
sixteen thousand British and Indian soldiers under Sir Charles Napier
(afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala) marched from Masawa up and along
the eastern escarpment of the Abyssinian plateau, and captured the
citadel of Magdala, which is situated within the basin of the Nile,
close to the northeasternmost tributary of that river. This expedition
was accompanied by Dr. W. T. Blanford, who compiled a valuable work on
the geology and zoölogy of Abyssinia, which was published in 1870.
For ten years after the withdrawal of the British expedition,
in 1869, little advance was made in our knowledge of Abyssinian
geography. Theodore was succeeded by another adventurer, also called
Kasa,--a native of Tigre,--who afforded considerable help to the
British. By means of our indirect support he succeeded in getting
himself crowned as Yohannes (John), King of Kings of Ethiopia. Shoa
alone, where Menelik (the present emperor) was slowly recovering the
power of his father (who had lost the country to Theodore), was not
actually conquered by the Emperor John; for just as he was starting
to subdue Menelik, he himself was attacked by the Egyptian army
under Munzinger, the Swiss Governor of Masawa. Munzinger was urging
the Khedive’s government to occupy and annex Abyssinia, and Egypt
had, as a preliminary, seized the Bogos country, the greater part of
which still remains Egyptian. But in 1875 John inflicted a tremendous
defeat on the Egyptian army near the river Mareb, and in 1876 a second
defeat, still more disastrous to the Egyptian power. This brought
about the intervention of General Gordon, who, in 1876 and 1879, made
two attempts to come to a friendly understanding with Abyssinia. His
journeys added a little to our knowledge of the affluents of the Blue
Nile and the Atbara.
In 1879 the Earl of Mayo (who subsequently travelled with the writer of
this book in southwest Africa) made an interesting journey along the
Takaze River, which is the upper waters of the Atbara. His sporting
expedition was followed by that of the brothers W. and F. L. James
(who subsequently explored Somaliland). The Italians began to take
an interest in Abyssinia at the end of the seventies, but the first
expeditions undertaken by their explorers have no connection with the
Nile basin.
In 1839 or 1840 one of the most important affluents of the Nile was
discovered by the expedition of Turks and Europeans despatched by
Muhammad Ali to explore the White Nile. This was the Sobat (as it was
named by the Nile Arabs), which enters the White River under the ninth
degree of latitude. The word Sobat was evidently an ancient Nubian or
Ethiopian term which was in existence two thousand years ago, when it
was applied to the White Nile (Asta Sobas), in contradistinction to the
Blue Nile (Ast’apos). At the present day the Sobat is known by the
name of Kir[114] on its lower portion, and Baro on its upper course.
In subsequent years steamers ascended the Sobat from the Nile as far
as it was navigable, namely, to a point called Nasr. Johann Maria
Schuver, a Dutch traveller in the seventies of the last century, and
several Europeans in the service of the Egyptian government, collected
a little more information about the Sobat and its tributaries above
Nasr, but this river long remained one of the unsolved problems of
Nile geography. Schuver did much to explore the western Gala countries
between the Sobat and the Blue Nile. On some of these journeys he was
accompanied by the Italian explorer Piaggia[115] (who had discovered
Lake Kioga on the Victoria Nile). Piaggia, in endeavouring once more to
force his way towards the Sobat, died at Karkoj, on the Blue Nile, in
1882.
[Illustration: NATIVES OF THE BARO (UPPER SOBAT) SKINNING HIPPOPOTAMUS.]
The surcease of the Nile exploration which followed on the Mahdi’s
revolt in 1882, closed for a time the exploration of the Sobat and its
affluents. But one result of this revolt was to urge European inquirers
more and more towards Abyssinia, especially the southern provinces
of that empire. A French explorer, Jules Borelli, made remarkable
journeys to the south and southwest of Abyssinia at the close of the
eighties of the last century, and, besides discovering the river Omo,
which flows into Lake Rudolf, he gave much new information regarding
the source of the Sobat. The book which he published in 1890--“Ethiopie
Méridionale”--is one of the best and most beautifully illustrated works
which have appeared on Africa.
Italy having assumed an unacknowledged protectorate over Abyssinia,
subsidised expedition after expedition, nominally for scientific
research. Among the best equipped of these undertakings, and the most
fruitful in geographical results, was an expedition under Vittorio
Bottego, L. Vannutelli, and C. Citerni, which explored the head-waters
of the Sobat (Baro, Akobo, etc.) in the southern Abyssinian highlands,
and also the waters of the Didessa (Dabessa), which is the southernmost
tributary of the Blue Nile.
In 1898 the celebrated Captain (now Colonel) J. B. Marchand, who
had made a most remarkable journey across the Nyam-nyam country in
the western Nile basin from the Mbomu (a northern affluent of the
Welle-Ubangi), across the Nile watershed to the Sue River, and down the
Sue to the Bahr-al-Ghazal and Fashoda, left Fashoda[116] in consequence
of the agreement between France and Great Britain, and travelled to
Abyssinia more or less along the course of the Sobat River, thus,
first of all Europeans, practically connecting the southern provinces
of Abyssinia with the White Nile by a direct journey up the valley of
the Sobat or Baro. Marchand’s explorations were supplemented by those
of MM. de Bonchamps and Michel.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Pierre Petit & Fils._]
COLONEL J. B. MARCHAND.]
These explorers were soon followed in the same direction by the late
Captain M. S. Wellby. Captain Wellby also made a most interesting
journey from Abyssinia to Lake Rudolf, down the east coast of Lake
Rudolf to Lake Baringo and the Uganda Protectorate, and then northwest
through the Turkana country, which lies to the west of Lake Rudolf.
Here Captain Wellby found himself on the Nile-Rudolf water-parting.
To the west of the Turkana, in the Karamojo country, he crossed an
important stream named the Ruzi,[117] which was flowing in a general
way northwest. Farther north he encountered another river also named
Ruzi, which might or might not be the same, but which in doubt he
called Ruzi II. From the second of these Ruzis he eventually reached
the main Sobat. Thenceforth he believed that in one or other of the
Ruzis he had discovered the southernmost affluent, or perhaps the
headwaters of the Sobat River. His theory, however, was strongly
contested by Major H. H. Austin, who, in company with Major R. G. T.
Bright, travelled over the greater part of the Sobat system in
1900–1901, giving us for the first time a fairly accurate survey of
that river, and of its southern affluents, especially the Pibor-Akobo,
which for length of course, though not in volume, might lay claim to
be the main Sobat River. The Akobo rises in the mountains to the north
of Lake Rudolf, its source being very close to the stream of the Omo,
the principal feeder of Lake Rudolf. It does receive an affluent from
the south, which is named by Major Austin “Neubari,” but this stream
is at present unexplored in its lower course. It might turn out to be
one of the rivers named by Captain Wellby “Ruzi.” At the same time Dr.
Donaldson-Smith, who crossed this region in 1900, does not appear to
have encountered running water where the junction of the Ruzi and the
Neubari should have taken place. Probably the two Ruzis discovered
by Captain Wellby are two different streams, one of which flows
northwestward into the Nile and the other into the northwest corner of
Lake Rudolf. The countries to the south of Akobo and northwest of Lake
Rudolf are described by the few travellers who have visited them as
being a region of appalling drought.
[Illustration: GORGE OF THE RIVER BARO (UPPER SOBAT).]
Mr. Weld Blundell had succeeded the Bonchamps-Michel expedition
as an explorer of the Blue Nile, and of its interesting southern
affluent, the Didessa. Mr. Blundell made several interesting changes
in the delineation of the course of the Blue Nile westward of Gojam.
Blundell’s work was succeeded by the remarkable surveys of Major C. W.
Gwynn and Lieutenant L. C. Jackson, who contributed a map of the Blue
Nile from Roseires up stream to the Gubba country, on the frontiers of
Abyssinia. They also threw a little more light on the course of the
Didessa and Yabus affluents of the Blue Nile, and the upper waters of
the Rahad, which also flows (somewhat intermittently) into the Blue
Nile. From the Rahad they crossed the tiny stretch of mountainous
country (Galabat) to the Atbara. Here they showed that only a distance
of about five miles of mountains separates the affluents of the Atbara
from the affluents of the Rahad, which is a tributary of the Blue
Nile. But for this intervening ridge of five miles in breadth, the
systems of the Atbara and the Blue Nile would (as the ancients and
Arabs formerly believed) have turned the whole country of Sennar into a
huge island, in which form it was represented by most travellers down
to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Major Gwynn also explored
the head-waters of the river Garre, which is the northernmost affluent
of the Baro-Sobat, and also the Pibor. As to the country between the
Baro or the main upper Sobat and the Pibor, Major Gwynn describes it
as “a dried-up marsh covered with a thick choking layer of black ash
resulting from the burning of the grass.” The Nuers, one of the eastern
tribes of the Nilotic Negroes, he describes as a wonderfully fine
race physically, averaging nearly six feet in height. Of the work of
the earliest European pioneer in western Galaland Major Gwynn gives a
generous estimate:--
“Up to this point (the Lega-Gala country) we had been traversing
a land which had to a certain extent been explored by Schuver,
and his work had, on the whole, been found to be very accurate in
detail, though in the southern portions of his map a considerable
error in latitude had appeared.... Schuver was much liked and
respected throughout the country, and a great impression had been
produced by his dog, which must have been a big Newfoundland. (He
is still always spoken of by the Galas as Abu Sari, ‘the Father of
the Dog.’)”
[Illustration: BERTA NEGROES.]
On the middle of the Blue Nile, north of the country of Fazokl, the
aboriginal inhabitants are purely Negro--Berta and Barun. These Negro
races were probably first mentioned by Cailliaud, the French explorer,
and Ferdinand Werne, the German, who travelled on the Blue Nile between
1829 and 1843. Major Gwynn describes them as “a very black race, large,
well made, but slothful and stupid to a degree. Going up to their
villages in the hills, one finds them stretched out, sunning themselves
on the rocks, looking for all the world like great black snails. Funny
little black pigs and stringy fowls share the huts on equal terms.”
An interesting journey was made by Mr. Oscar T. Crosby across southern
Abyssinia and down the Blue Nile in 1900. In an article by Mr. Crosby
in the “Geographical Journal” of July, 1900, an interesting description
is given of the deep gorge of the Blue Nile in the Gomar country
of Gojam. The level of the river at this point is 4,725 feet above
sea-level. The edge of the plateau above the river is 9,650 feet, and
this plateau descends nearly five thousand feet in a series of abrupt
steps or “benches.”
At the beginning of 1900 Mr. Oscar Neumann, a German, already noted
for his explorations of the eastern part of the Uganda Protectorate,
reached Abyssinia by the now well-trodden route from Zeila to Harar,
and after visiting the Blue Nile in Gojam, explored the northern part
of the Rudolf basin, and then reached the Galo, which is one of the
rivers that might claim to be the head-waters of the Sobat, a river
rising in those lofty, snow-patched highlands to the southwest of
Enarea. From the Galo, Neumann crossed to the Akobo, and followed this
stream down to its confluence with the Pibor. At this confluence he
makes the Pibor such an important stream that it may well be Captain
Wellby’s Ruzi. In the country immediately to the south of Kaffa and
on the water-parting between the systems of the Nile and Lake Rudolf
Mr. Neumann claims to have discovered Negro races of the Bantu stock.
Apparently he means merely in physical type,--in other words, Negroes
of more or less West African affinities; but if he or any other
traveller should be able to support this statement by specimens of
the language of these Sheko and Binesho peoples which actually showed
affinities with the Bantu family, he would have thrown a remarkable new
light on the unsolved problem concerning the source of this interesting
family of African languages. The present writer has been able to show
that Bantu languages of the most archaic type exist at the present
day on the northwest slopes of Mount Elgon. This is the furthest
point to the northeast to which the Bantu family has been traced.
Thence southwards and westwards it spreads as the dominating family of
languages as far as Cape Colony and Fernando Po.
[Illustration: A BERTA VILLAGE IN THE MATONGWE MOUNTAINS.]
Almost the only large white spot now remaining unexplored in the
Nile basin is the district occupied by Nilotic Negroes (Dinka, Nuēr,
Shiluk), lying between the Sobat River on the northeast and the main
White Nile on the west and southwest. This region appears to be a flat
country of alternate marsh and arid steppe, producing few or no great
rivers of its own. On the west it is watered by the affluents of an
important river, vaguely known as the Oguelokur, some of which (such as
the Tu and Kos) rise in those high mountains of the Lotuka country in
the northernmost parts of the Uganda Protectorate. Mr. Ewart Grogan,
accompanied part of the way by Mr. Sharp, in 1899 and 1900, made a
remarkable journey, literally from the Cape to Cairo. He travelled from
the north end of Lake Tanganyika by way of lakes Kivu and Albert Edward
to the Albert Nyanza, and thence down the Nile to the sudd barriers
beyond Bor. After which, taking to the land, he traversed the unknown
country along that branch of the White Nile called Bahr-az-Ziraf or
the Giraffe River. He discovered another branch of the Mountain Nile
which joins the Bahr-az-Ziraf, and at the junction of these rivers he
notes the entry of a powerful tributary from the southeast, doubtless
the Oguelokur. It is sometimes supposed that the southernmost of the
Ruzi rivers discovered by Captain Wellby also joins the Oguelokur, and
not the Sobat, though the more northern Ruzi may be the head-waters of
the Pibor. Some distance to the west of the Pibor is a river called in
Sudanese Arabic “Khor Felus.” This river was practically discovered by
Captain H. H. Wilson in 1902. Starting southwards from the Sobat, not
far from its confluence with the main Nile, Captain Wilson followed
the Khor Felus up stream for a distance of some eighty-five miles in
a direct line due south. He describes the country traversed by this
winding river as being flat and uninteresting,--nothing but a vast
grassy plain, with hardly a tree to be seen. The river or khor was
not traced to its source, which indeed was said by the natives to be
the White Nile itself. If this be true, another branch of the White
Nile would start from near Bor and flow northeastwards into the Sobat;
further, more natural canals seem to connect the Khor Felus with the
Pibor or the Upper Sobat. If this is the case, then in that vast plain
lying between the Sobat and the Nile, which was once a portion of the
“Lake of Fashoda,” we have still remains of many old channels of the
Nile which, as the lake drained off to the northwards, meandered over
its drying bed.
[Illustration: THE NILE IN EGYPT.]