THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: AFRICAN RESEARCH
Since the later years of the eighteenth century geographical knowledge
has been extended in the manner of a great railway system. The main
lines of exploration will provide the subject of this and following
chapters; with the ramification of branch lines we can hardly concern
ourselves here. Taking one consideration with another, Africa may be
termed the most important area of geographical conquest during this
latest period of our history. The opening of the interior of that
continent was long delayed for geographical reasons which have often
been insisted upon. The difficulty of inland communication, the fact
that the rivers do not offer uninterrupted highways, the barrier of
the tropical forests, the unhealthiness of many parts both of the
coast lands and of the interior, which modern science is only now
fighting--such are the disabilities against which exploration had to
contend, to which must be added the lack of commercial instinct in
many of the native peoples, and their unhappy experiences of the early
slave-trading, and the labour-recruiting which has in some instances
provided its modern counterpart.
During the larger part of the eighteenth century hardly any progress
was made with the exploration of Africa. The west coast was still a
resort of traders for slaves and gold, but very little attempt was
made even to acquire further territory. In the middle of the century,
however, the Turkish dislike of intruders was somewhat allayed, owing
partly to the growth of the coffee trade, and it became more easy for
travellers to enter Egypt. In 1770 James Bruce started on the task,
which he had been anxious to undertake for many years, of searching
for the Nile sources. He was courteously received by the ruler of
Abyssinia, and after finding and mapping the source of the Blue Nile,
he traced it to its junction with the White Nile at Khartum. On his
return he was disgusted when it was proved to him by D’Anville (whose
map, based on a critical judgment of data, was considerably more
correct than Bruce’s) that he had been anticipated by the Portuguese
Jesuits. He delayed the publication of his results for seventeen years,
and when they appeared, though they constitute a remarkable description
of Abyssinia and its inhabitants, they were universally disbelieved.
Towards the end of the century two causes operated for the revival of
interest in African affairs--firstly, the foundation of the African
Association in 1788, and, secondly, the removal by Napoleon’s conquest
of Egypt of the obstacles placed in the way of travellers by Moslem
fanatics. In 1795 Mungo Park, a Scotchman, started under the auspices
of the African Association to explore the Niger. He travelled up the
Gambia River, and after extraordinary difficulties reached the Niger
at Sebu, and traced its course for three hundred miles. He had been so
long away that he had been given up for dead, and his exploits, carried
through with such success, aroused great enthusiasm. Unhappily, his
second journey, undertaken in 1805, ended in disaster; he and all who
were with him except one guide perished, after descending the Niger
for about one thousand miles towards the coast, and only just failing
to solve the problem of its outflow. In 1798 Francisco de Lacerda, a
Portuguese explorer, lost his life on the Zambezi, and early in the
nineteenth century Africa was actually crossed for the first time (so
far as is known), by two Portuguese traders, from Mozambique to the
west coast.
During the first half of the nineteenth century, when the European
nations had been roused first to protest against and then to abolish
the slave trade, a great deal of valuable work was done to increase the
knowledge of Africa, especially by Englishmen. In 1823 W. Oudney, who
was sent out as consul to Bornu, and H. Clapperton penetrated to Lake
Chad, previously unvisited by any white man, and Clapperton afterwards
explored the flourishing civilization of Bornu and Hausaland. He died
on a second journey undertaken to open up trade with the Sultan of
Sokoto; but in 1830 his servant on this last journey, Richard Lander,
succeeded in solving one of the many problems which were beginning to
present themselves to students of the continent--the question of the
outlet of the Niger. He started from the Guinea coast, and followed
the course of the river from Bussa to its mouth in canoes. Much good
work was done also by A. G. Laing, who was the first European to visit
Timbuktu (in 1826), but was killed there. R. Caillié, who succeeded in
reaching the city in 1828, was the first to return from it in safety,
which he did by crossing the Sahara to Tangier. H. Barth, who had
already travelled all through North Africa, and had ascended the Nile
to Wady Halfa, started in 1850 on a trading mission under the auspices
of the British Government to the states of Central Africa; both his
companions died, but Barth carried through alone a brilliant journey,
in the course of which he travelled from Lake Chad to Timbuktu, and
studied minutely many of the ancient civilized states of the region.
Thus the geography of Senegal and the Niger had been largely cleared up
by 1850. The great questions which remained untouched were those of the
sources of the Nile and the Congo. By 1850 Abyssinia and the greater
tributaries of the Nile were pretty well known, through the work of
naturalists and travellers, the efforts of Austrian missionaries,
who had established stations down to Gondokoro on the Nile, and the
interest taken in exploration by Mahomed Ali, ruler of Egypt under
the Turks. But the seventy miles of rapids above Gondokoro, and the
fierce people of the Bari tribe who lived there, had prevented the
acquisition of any but the most meagre knowledge of the upper reaches
of the Nile beyond that point. The problem was now approached from a
different direction. For some time missionaries had been working at
Zanzibar, finding the natives there more tractable than in Abyssinia,
the original field of their labours; and two of their number, L. Krapf
and T. Redmann, had seen and sent home accounts of snow-mountains
under the Equator--Kilimanjaro and Kenya--and also of the great lakes,
which they imagined to be all parts of an enormous inland sea. Since
the annexation of Aden by the British Government in 1839, moreover,
officers of the English army stationed there had shown an interest
in the exploration of the African coast opposite them; and in 1854
R. F. Burton got permission to try to reach the centre of Africa
through Somaliland, with T. H. Speke. Burton first made a courageous
and successful journey to the walled city of Harar in Abyssinia; but
the more important stage of the expedition was unsuccessful owing to
the suspicions of the Somalis. For thirty years after this Somaliland
remained unexplored, and Burton and Speke, inspired by the accounts of
the Zanzibar missionaries, devoted themselves to the discovery of the
source of the Nile. They arrived at Zanzibar in 1856, and penetrated
without much difficulty to the great plateau of Unyamwezi, where the
Arab traders received them kindly, and thence to Lake Tanganyika.
Burton was forced through illness to allow Speke to continue the
work without him, and the latter saw, though from a distance, the
waters of the Victoria Nyanza. Though he underestimated its size, he
was convinced that here was the answer to the question of the Nile
source; but Burton, jealous of his success, refused to credit it, and
endeavoured to prove that the Victoria Nyanza was nothing but a great
swamp. In 1860, however, Speke set out again, with J. A. Grant, and
verified and enlarged his previous discoveries. In face of immense
difficulties due to mutinous porters and suspicious and warlike
chiefs, he succeeded in making a rapid survey of the Victoria Nyanza,
in exploring the unknown country of Uganda, and in finding the Ripon
Falls, where the Victoria Nile leaves the lake. In spite of the great
gaps in Speke’s knowledge, his ideas on the relative importance of the
Nile tributaries and of the geography of the lakes were very accurate,
and the honour of settling the old question of its source must be given
to him. Speke and Grant were met on their return at Gondokoro on the
Nile by Samuel Baker, who had come with help and reinforcements for
them, and he took up the work of definitely locating the Albert Nyanza,
of which Speke had heard various accounts. Though he and his wife
passed through terrible dangers and difficulties, they completed their
task, finding the Albert Nyanza, and journeying along the Victoria Nile
as far as the Murchison Falls. The importance of Baker’s discovery,
however, was somewhat vitiated by his erroneous judgment of the size
of the Albert Nyanza, which he made far too large; he, like the other
explorers who had gone before him, saw nothing of the great snow-range.
In other parts of Africa valuable work was being done. David
Livingstone was always a missionary first, but his explorations form a
nobler memorial than those of any other African traveller. He had been
working in Africa since 1840; in 1849 he crossed the Kalahari desert,
and reached Lake Ngami; and in 1852 he started on a great journey up
the Zambezi, discovering the Victoria Falls, and crossing to the west
coast; and returning followed the Zambezi to its mouth on the east
coast, thus taking the first steps to fill a great blank which had
previously existed on the map of Africa. Between 1858 and 1864 he did
much good work in the exploration of Lake Nyasa and the lower Zambezi,
and incidentally made splendid efforts to stop the trade in slaves
which was still carried on in that region. But it is his last journey,
which took the form of an expedition to discover the watershed between
Lake Nyasa and Lake Tanganyika, that is of paramount interest from the
geographical standpoint. He started from Zanzibar in 1866; and, in
spite of continual and serious illness, he travelled from Lake Nyasa to
Lake Tanganyika, discovered lakes Mweru, Mofwa, and Bangweulu, and also
the river Lualaba, which he took for the upper part of the Nile. He was
cheered and encouraged by meeting with H. M. Stanley in 1871, who had
been sent out to him with money and servants; but in 1873 he died, worn
out by his constant travels, and still searching for the “fountains”
which he believed to form the ultimate source of the Nile.
In 1874 Stanley undertook and carried through in the face of terrible
difficulties one of the most remarkable and valuable journeys in the
history of African exploration. He settled the question as to the
relative importance of the Albert Nyanza and the Victoria Nyanza,
discovered the Mwuta Nzige (Lake Albert Edward), and crossed Africa
from east to west, starting from Zanzibar and travelling down the
Lualaba from the point where Livingstone had left it to its mouth,
thus proving it to be the upper level of the Congo. This great journey
opened up the hitherto unknown country in the centre of Africa, and
led directly to the formation of the Congo Free State. Stanley had
been preceded at Nyangwe, the point of departure for the voyage down
the Congo, by Lovett Cameron, who failed, however, to follow the river
throughout its course, and reached the coast to the south of its mouth.
In 1884 Joseph Thomson supplemented Stanley’s work by his journey to
Mounts Kilimanjaro and Kenya through Masailand to Victoria Nyanza.
Wissmann and other German explorers (1881–6) did much for a knowledge
of the great southern tributaries of the Congo, while Wissmann in
1881–2 crossed the continent from west to east. It has been frequently
crossed since. Stanley’s expedition up the Congo to rescue Emin Pasha
(1887–89) opened up the great Central Africa forest with its pigmies,
extended our knowledge of Lake Albert Edward and its outlet the
Semliki, which flowed into the Albert Nyanza, and revealed the great
snowy range of Ruwenzori, which was ascended and mapped by the Duke of
the Abruzzi in 1906.
While the problems of Central Africa were thus being elucidated, the
exploration of the nine great rivers which form the Bahr-el-Ghazal,
the chief tributary of the Nile, was attracting much attention, the
most valuable work being done by Georg Schweinfürth, who mapped the
river with high accuracy. The Nile above Gondokoro was also surveyed
by English officers; the Sahara and the Sudan were widely explored by
G. Rohlfs and G. Nachtigal between 1860 and 1875, and the connection
of the river Welle with the Congo system was established by W. Junker,
who also travelled in the Sudan from 1875 to 1886. The British during
this period were pushing their way northward from South Africa, and
emigrants were flocking to the goldfields and diamond mines. The French
have spread their explorations over the Sahara and their territories in
the Sudan and West Africa. From the date of Stanley’s return African
history underwent a rapid change. The period of driving the main lines
of exploration through the continent was over, and a new era began in
which branch lines could be laid down, and colonial expansion could
take place along them. The continent is now partitioned among the
European Powers, and has been more or less provisionally mapped; but
it will take long years of survey and scientific investigation before
its features, its resources, its peoples, and its possibilities are
adequately known.