I had intended this record of personal adventure to appear immediately
after my return to Europe, in May 1859. The impaired health, the
depression of spirits, and worse still the annoyance of official
correspondence, which to me have been the sole results of African
Exploration, may be admitted as valid reasons for the delay.
In April, 1860, the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain honoured
me by publishing a detailed paper, forming the XXIXth Volume of their
Journal, from which the topographical descriptions contained in the
following pages have, with their kind permission, been extracted. I have
now attempted to combine with geography and ethnology, a narrative of
occurrences and an exposition of the more popular and picturesque points
of view which the subject offers.
When I communicated to my friends the publishers certain intentions of
writing an exclusively “light work,” they protested against the project,
stating that the public appetite required the addition of stronger meat.
In compliance, therefore, with their suggestion, I have drawn two
portraits of the same object, and mingled the gay with the graver
details of travel, so as to produce an antipathetic cento.
Modern “hinters to travellers” direct the explorer and the missionary to
eschew theory and opinion. We are told somewhat peremptorily that it is
our duty to gather actualities not inferences--to see and not to think,
in fact, to confine ourselves to transmitting the rough material
collected by us, that it may be worked into shape by the professionally
learned at home. But why may not the observer be allowed a voice
concerning his own observations, if at least his mind be sane and his
stock of collateral knowledge be respectable?
I have not attempted to avoid intruding matters of a private and
personal nature upon the reader; it would have been impossible to avoid
egotism in a purely egotistical narrative. The official matter, however,
has been banished into Appendix II. In publishing it, my desire is to
avoid the possibility of a charge being concealed in the pigeon-holes of
the India House, to be produced, according to custom, with all the
effect of a surprise whenever its presence is convenient. I know the
conditions of appealing from those in office to a higher tribunal--the
Public. I well know them and I accept them. _Avant tout, gentilhomme!_
I have spoken out my feelings concerning Captain Speke, my companion in
the Expedition which forms the subject of these pages. The history of
our companionship is simply this:--As he had suffered with me in purse
and person at Berberah, in 1855, I thought it but just to offer him the
opportunity of renewing an attempt to penetrate into Africa. I had no
other reasons. I could not expect much from his assistance; he was not a
linguist--French and Arabic being equally unknown to him--nor a man of
science, nor an accurate astronomical observer. The Court of Directors
officially refused him leave of absence; I obtained it for him by an
application to the local authorities at Bombay. During the exploration
he acted in a subordinate capacity; and as may be imagined amongst a
party of Arabs, Baloch, and Africans, whose languages he ignored, he was
unfit for any other but a subordinate capacity. Can I then feel
otherwise than indignant, when I find that, after preceding me from Aden
to England, with the spontaneous offer, on his part, of not appearing
before the Society that originated the Expedition until my return, he
had lost no time in taking measures to secure for himself the right of
working the field which I had opened, and that from that day he has
placed himself _en evidence_ as the _primum mobile_ of an Expedition, in
which he signed himself “surveyor,”--_cujus pars minima fuit_?
With deference to the reader’s judgment, I venture to express a hope
that whatever of unrefinement appears in these pages, may be charged to
the subject. It has been my duty to draw a Dutch picture, a
cabaret-piece which could not be stripped of its ordonnance, its boors,
its pipes, and its pots. I have shirked nothing of the unpleasant
task,--of recording processes and not only results; I have entered into
the recital of the maladies, the weary squabbles, and the vast variety
of petty troubles, without which the _coup d’œil_ of African adventure
would be more like a Greek Saint in effigy--all lights and no
shade--than the chapter of accidents which it now is.
The map and the lists of stations, dates, &c., have been drawn upon the
plan adopted by Mr. Francis Galton, F.R.G.S. The outline of Africa, the
work of Mr. Weller, F.R.G.S., contains the latest and the best
information concerning the half-explored interior of the Continent. The
route-map has been borrowed by permission from the laborious and
conscientious compilation of Mr. Findlay, F.R.G.S., accompanying the
paper forwarded by me to the Royal Geographical Society. The latter
gentleman has also kindly supplied a profile of the country traversed,
showing the Eastern limits of the Great Depression, and the
“elevated-trough formation” of Central Africa.
In conclusion, I would solicit forbearance in all that concerns certain
errors of omission and commission scattered through these pages. The
migratory instinct is now hurrying me towards the New World: I have,
therefore, been obliged to content myself with a single revise.
10th April,
E.I.U.S. Club, 14 St. James’s Square.