BURTON AND SPEKE IN CENTRAL AFRICA
Livingstone had just left Loanda and was making his way across Africa
from west to east, when an English expedition set forth to find the
Great Lakes still lying solitary and undiscovered, although they were
known to exist. If we turn to the oldest maps of Africa, we find, rudely
drawn and incorrectly placed, large inland waters, that may
nevertheless be recognised as these lakes just about to be revealed
to a wondering world. Ptolemy knew of them, the Arabs spoke of them,
Portuguese traders had passed them, and a German missionary had caught
sight of the Mountains of the Moon and brought back strange stories
of a great inland lake.
The work of rediscovering the lakes was entrusted to a remarkable man
named Richard Burton, a man whose love of adventure was well known.
He had already shown his metal by entering Mecca disguised as a Persian,
and disguised as an Arab he had entered Harar, a den of slave traders,
the "Timbuktu of Eastern Africa." On his return he was attacked by
the Somalis; one of his companions was killed, another, Speke, escaped
with terrible spear-wounds, and he himself was badly wounded.
Such were the men who in 1856 were dispatched by the Royal Geographical
Society for the exploration of the mysterious lakes in the heart of
central Africa. Speke gives us an idea of the ignorance prevailing
on this subject only fifty-six years ago: "On the walls of the Society's
rooms there hung a large diagram constructed by two missionaries
carrying on their duties at Zanzibar. In this section map, swallowing
up about half of the whole area of the ground included in it, there
figured a lake of such portentous size and such unseemly shape,
representing a gigantic slug, that everybody who looked at it
incredulously laughed and shook his head--a single sheet of sweet
water, upwards of eight hundred miles long by three hundred broad,
equal in size to the great salt Caspian."
It was April 1857 before Burton and Speke had collected an escort and
guides at Zanzibar, the great slave market of East Africa, and were
ready to start for the interior. "We could obtain no useful information
from the European merchants of Zanzibar, who are mostly ignorant of
everything beyond the island," Burke wrote home on 22nd April.
At last on 27th June, with thirty-six men and thirty donkeys, the party
set out for the great malarious coast-belt which had to be crossed
before Kaze, some five hundred miles distant, could be reached. After
three months' arduous travelling--both Burton and Speke were badly
stricken with fever--they reached Kaze. Speke now spread open the map
of the missionaries and inquired of the natives where the enormous
lake was to be found. To their intense surprise they found the
missionaries had run three lakes into one, and the three lakes were
Lake Nyassa, Tanganyika, and Victoria Nyanza. They stayed over a month
at Kaze, till Burton seemed at the point of death, and Speke had him
carried out of the unhealthy town. It was January before they made
a start and continued their journey westward to Ugyi.
"It is a wonderful thing," says Drummond, "to start from the
civilisation of Europe, pass up these mighty rivers, and work your
way alone and on foot, mile after mile, month after month, among strange
birds and beasts and plants and insects, meeting tribes which have
no name, speaking tongues which no man can interpret, till you have
reached its sacred heart and stood where white man has never trod
before."
[Illustration: BURTON IN A DUG-OUT ON LAKE TANGANYIKA. After a drawing
by Burton.]
As the two men tramped on, the streams began to drain to the west and
the land grew more fertile, till one hundred and fifty miles from Kaze
they began to ascend the slope of mountains overhanging the northern
half of Lake Tanganyika. "This mountain mass," says Speke, "I consider
to be the True Mountains of the Moon." From the top of the mountains
the lovely Tanganyika Lake could be seen in all its glory by Burton.
But to Speke it was a mere mist. The glare of the sun and oft-repeated
fever had begun to tell on him, and a kind of inflammation had produced
almost total blindness. But they had reached the lake and they felt
sure they had found the source of the Nile. It was a great day when
Speke crossed the lake in a long canoe hollowed out of the trunk of
a tree and manned by twenty native savages under the command of a
captain in a "goatskin uniform." On the far side they encamped on the
opposite shore, Speke being the first white man to cross the lake.
Having retired to his hut for the night, Speke proceeded to light a
candle and arrange his baggage, when to his horror he found the whole
interior swarming with black beetles. Tired of trying to brush them
away, he put out his light and, though they crawled up his sleeves
and down his back, he fell asleep. Suddenly he woke to find one crawling
into his ear, and in spite of his frantic efforts it crept in farther
and farther till it reached the drum, which caused the tired explorer
intense agony. Inflammation ensued, his face became drawn, he could
with difficulty swallow a little broth, and he was quite deaf. He
returned across the lake to find his companion, Burton, still very
ill and unfit for further exploration.
So Speke, although still suffering from his ear, started off again,
leaving Burton behind, to find the great northern lake spoken of as
the sea of Ukerewe, where the Arabs traded largely in ivory. There
was a great empire beyond the lake, they told him, called Uganda.
But it was July 1858 when the caravan was ready to start from Kaze.
Speke himself carried Burton's large elephant gun. "I commenced the
journey," he says, "at 6 p.m., as soon as the two donkeys I took with
me to ride were caught and saddled. It was a dreary beginning. The
escort who accompanied me were sullen in their manner and walked with
heavy gait and downcast countenance. The nature of the track increased
the general gloom.
"For several weeks the caravan moved forward, till on 3rd August it
began to wind up a long but gradually inclined hill, until it reached
its summit, when the vast expanse of the pale blue waters of the Nyanza
burst suddenly upon my eyes! It was early morning. The distant sea-line
of the north horizon was defined in the calm atmosphere, but I could
get no idea of the breadth of the lake, as an archipelago of islands,
each consisting of a single hill rising to a height of two or three
hundred feet above the water, intersected the line of vision to the
left. A sheet of water extended far away to the eastward. The view
was one which even in a well-known country would have arrested the
traveller by its peaceful beauty. But the pleasure of the mere view
vanished in the presence of those more intense emotions called up by
the geographical importance of the scene before me. I no longer felt
any doubt that the lake at my feet gave birth to that interesting river
(Nile), the source of which has been the subject of so much speculation
and the object of so many explorers. This is a far more extensive lake
than Tanganyika; it is so broad that you could not see across it, and
so long that nobody knew its length. This magnificent sheet of water
I have ventured to name Victoria after our gracious sovereign."
[Illustration: BURTON AND HIS COMPANIONS ON THE MARCH TO THE VICTORIA
NYANZA. From a humorous sketch by Burton.]
Speke returned to Kaze after his six weeks' eventful journey, having
tramped no less than four hundred and fifty-two miles. He received
a warm welcome from Burton, who had been very uneasy about his safety,
for rumours of civil war had reached him. "I laughed over the matter,"
says Speke, "but expressed my regret that he did not accompany me,
as I felt quite certain in my mind I had discovered the source of the
Nile."
Together the two explorers now made their way to the coast and crossed
to Aden, where Burton, still weak and ill, decided to remain for a
little, while Speke took passage in a passing ship for home.
When he showed his map of Tanganyika and Victoria Nyanza to the
President of the Royal Geographical Society in London, Sir Roderick
Murchison was delighted.
"Speke, we must send you there again," he said enthusiastically.
And the expedition was regarded as "one of the most notable discoveries
in the annals of African discovery."