_OPENING UP THE WAY TO THE NIGER._
With Leo Africanus the Arab period in the history of African
exploration practically closed. Even in that traveller’s day the
incurable diseases so characteristic of the Mohammedan states of our
time were rapidly developing. Learning and the arts were no longer
encouraged. Liberality of thought and missionary enterprise were
replaced by Fanaticism, hatred of the stranger, and isolation from all
outside genial influences. A blight was falling over everything that
had made the Arab name great and glorious in the world’s history.
Happily for the cause of progress, while the Crescent thus waned
and lost its lustre in the rising mephitic fogs, the Cross was
ever gathering to itself new glories, and proving the herald and
morning-star of a brighter and greater era. Under its inspiring
influences the western nations were emerging from the gloom and
ignorance in which they had been enshrouded, and were feeling the
throbs of new heroic impulses.
Among the Christian nations thus awakening Portugal was taking the
lead. Facing the Atlantic, it was ever looking over the wild waste
of waters, picturing the possible beyond on the blank expanse, and
rearing a hardy race of navigators all unconscious of the great mission
that was yet to be theirs. Southward, too, their thoughts were ever
turning, following their soldiers as they fought against the Moors
and planted their most Christian flag along the entire coast-line
of Morocco. Echoes there were which came to them of the vast wealth
of Inner Africa, of the power of Prester John and the riches of far
Cathay, till the imaginations of kings, soldiers, merchants, and
priests were alike inflamed with a desire to share them. With it
all the vaguest ideas were current as to the extent of the African
continent. The northern coast-line was well enough known, but at the
beginning of the fifteenth century no one had ventured southward beyond
the western termination of the Atlas Mountains, and how much further
south the land extended no one pretended to know. This ignorance,
however, did not last through the century.
Under its energetic and far-seeing kings, John and Immanuel, Portugal
set itself to penetrate behind the veil and attain the honour and the
more substantial rewards secured, as was believed, to those who should
first reach the sources of the gold supply of Inner Africa, the capital
of Prester John, or the countries of the Far East.
Extensive voyages were then unthought of. Sailing was very much a
matter of feeling one’s way along the shore. Hence it was not by any
one extensive voyage, but by many successive expeditions, that the
shore-line of Africa was gradually mapped out. In this way greater
courage, confidence, experience, and skill were gained with each
successful addition to the limits of the known, and a spirit of
emulation was aroused which irresistibly carried the new knight errants
of commerce and science further and further south in search of the
promised land.
In 1433 Cape Bojador was reached by Gilianez, and the Island of Arguin
by Nuno Tristan ten years later. So far deserts and burning suns, a
repellent coast-line and a meagre population of wild nomads, were what
they found--no news of Prester John, no evidence of the vast riches
they had taught themselves to expect. But nothing was allowed to damp
their eager spirit or quash their sanguine expectations.
In 1446 Fernandez passed Cape Verd, and in the following year the
fertile region of Senegambia was reached by Lancelot.
It now seemed as if the bold adventurers were to have their reward.
They had at last arrived at a fertile region abounding in gold and
ivory, and, better still, they began to hear of a great kingdom named
Melli, not then absorbed in the rapidly rising empire of Songhay. This,
they thought, must be the country of Prester John.
These important discoveries, and all the glowing hopes they developed,
gave a new impetus to the course of Portuguese discovery. With renewed
enterprise and persistence adventurous navigators pursued the path
of exploration. By 1471 they had reached the Gold Coast, and before
the close of the century the Cape had been rounded, and, under the
leadership of Almeida and Albuquerque, some of their magnificent dreams
of wealth and power realised in the foundation of their Indian Empire.
But though the Portuguese had thus revealed to the world the Senegal
and the Gambia, and apparently thrown open a door to the kingdom of
the Niger basin, nothing came of it. From the writings of De Barros we
gather that embassies from the King of Portugal were despatched to the
rulers of Melli and Mosi, and even, it is said, to that of Songhay.
Of these missions, however, nothing more has come down to us. They
added seemingly nothing to our knowledge of the interior. Factories
were established along the coast, and even some distance up the rivers
Senegal and Gambia, but the thirst for gold and slaves evidently
swamped all other considerations with the agents in charge, for not an
iota of information do we gather from them--or at least none is now on
record--of the geography of the far interior.
The magnificent enterprise of Portugal in the fields of maritime
discovery was destined to be of the most transient character. Evil days
speedily came upon it, and between Philip II. of Spain on land and the
Dutch at sea, it seemed for a time as if it would lose its place among
the independent nations of Europe.
From the time of its conquest by Spain its course was backward, and its
history became a record of shrinking empire and gradual loss of all
spirit that tends to national greatness and progress. As far as we are
concerned the work of the Portuguese ended with the exploration of the
Senegambian Coast, the discovery of the rivers Senegal and Gambia--then
thought to be branches of the Niger--and the revelation to Europe of
the future route to the Niger and Timbuktu.
The work of exploration so well begun, so magnificently carried on,
though so disastrously closed, began now to fall into other hands.
Contemporaneously with the dwindling of the Portuguese into the
background the English came to the front. It was then the Elizabethan
period, that era of glorious memory, the dawn of Greater Britain. Bold
mariners, like the world has never seen, sprang up on all sides,
and made England the mistress of the seas. A spirit of commercial
enterprise and adventurous daring was developed which nothing could
dismay, nothing withstand. Before the close of that eventful period
Drake had led his countrymen to the rich spoil of the Spanish Main,
Raleigh had laid the foundation of English rule in North America,
Baffin and Hudson had cleared the way for Arctic exploration, and Davis
had not only started the series of heroic expeditions connected with
the North-west Passage, but had led English ships to the Indian Seas.
With these, however, we have nothing to do. Of more importance is it to
us to note that Hawkins had made his first voyage to the West African
Coast, and inaugurated that horrid traffic in human flesh and blood
which has left such an indelible stain on British commerce.
But it was not only the slave trade which drew the attention of English
merchants to Africa. To them as to the Portuguese the Niger and
Timbuktu were words to conjure with. Both were believed to be veritable
mines of wealth. To the imagination of the time the one was pictured as
flowing over golden sands, the other as almost paved with the precious
metal. It was believed that the Senegal and the Gambia constituted the
Niger mouths, and accordingly that to ascend either river would bring
the traveller direct to the source of so much wealth. To accomplish
this now became the dream of nations, so that it may well be said that
the Niger and its fancied treasures were the magnet which drew men on
to the exploration of the interior of the Dark Continent.
It had been the mission of Portugal to draw a girdle round Africa; it
was now to be the _rôle_ of Britain to take up the work and penetrate
inland with more lasting results than had followed Portuguese embassies
and missionary and commercial enterprises.
The year 1618 saw the commencement of this noble work. A company was
formed to explore the Gambia, with the object of reaching the rich
region of the Niger.
[Map: O. DAPPER. NIGRITARUM REGIO. 1671.]
The honour of being Britain’s pioneer in African exploration fell to
the lot of one Richard Thompson, described as being a man of spirit and
enterprise. He left England in the _Catherine_, of 120 tons, with a
cargo worth nearly £2000, and reached the Gambia towards the end of the
year. Here he found the Portuguese still in power, ruling the nations
with grinding tyranny, though rapidly sinking into the commercial and
national apathy which has made them a byword in the nineteenth century.
[Map: O. DAPPER, 1671.]
Thompson’s enterprise, like so many which succeeded it, was doomed to
suffer sad disaster. First the Portuguese fell upon and massacred a
large part of the crew while its captain was exploring up the river.
Undismayed he stuck to his post, and demanded reinforcements and
supplies. His employers were of like metal to himself, and promptly
sent another vessel to his assistance. The climate proved as formidable
an enemy as the Portuguese, and most of the crew of the new ship
succumbed to the deadly miasma.
Still another vessel was fitted out, its owners undaunted by loss
of men and goods, and sanguine as ever of the glorious prize to be
achieved.
This time one Richard Jobson took command. He arrived in the Gambia in
1620, only to hear of a new calamity and a new and even more paralysing
source of danger--Thompson’s men had mutinied and murdered him.
Portuguese hostility, a deadly climate, and mutiny in the camp were all
arrayed against the hoped for advance into the country. But those old
mariners were made of stern unyielding stuff, which only death itself
could break, and undismayed Jobson defied all dangers and started
on his quest. With each succeeding mile new difficulties beset the
gallant band. No pilots could be got to show the way. For a time this
proved no serious obstacle. Soon, however, the current grew stronger,
and threatened to drive them back. They were in hourly peril from
hidden rocks, and falls and rapids raised a foaming barrier to further
progress. Sand-banks there were, too, on which they grounded, and
crocodiles had to be braved in getting clear of them, while sea-horses
snorted angrily and threatened to swamp the boats. Unprovided with the
mosquito-nets of modern times, their days of overpowering fatigue under
a melting sun were followed by nights of maddening torture under the
stings of myriad mosquitoes and sandflies. But everything was new and
wonderful to them. They were like children bursting into a new world
full of undreamed of marvels, a veritable land of enchantment. The
voracious crocodiles and the monstrous hippos in the river, elephants
in troops crashing irresistibly through the dense forest, leopards
watching cat-like for their prey, and lions disturbing the silence of
night with their awe-inspiring roars, were some of the elements of this
new wonderland. There, too, were monkeys among the trees--their gambols
a never failing source of delight; and baboons trooping through the
underbush in enormous herds, filling the air with strange outcries,
except when “one great voice would exalt itself, and the rest were
hushed.”
Not less astonishing was the insect life of the tropic forest--the
fireflies in myriad numbers flashing with iridescent colours in the
gloom of night, the crickets raising their deafening chorus, the
strange beetles, and the many-coloured butterflies.
How marvellous, too, must the tropic foliage have appeared to the
explorers, fresh as they were from England. The immense grasses, the
almost impenetrable undergrowth, the beauties of the palm tribe, the
majesty of the silk-cotton tree. Last, not least, how passing strange
the appearance of the natives, their comparative absence of dress,
their simple habits and rudimentary ideas about all things under
heaven. The modern traveller, _blasé_ with the rich heritage of a
hundred predecessors, cannot but envy the sensations of such an one
as Jobson on seeing for the first time all the marvels, beauties, and
novelties of Africa.
But while we vainly try to realise the feelings inspired in the mind
of this pioneer, we are not oblivious of the terrible earnestness and
determination, the indomitable courage and dogged perseverance of the
man. The very devil himself has no terrors for Jobson. Hearing certain
remarkable sounds, and being told by the natives that it is the voice
of the devil, the intrepid sailor seizes his gun and rushes forth to do
battle with his Satanic Majesty, who, on our hero’s appearance, changes
his terrible roars into notes of terror, and shows himself as a huge
negro grovelling in the dust in an agony of fear.
On the 26th January 1621, Jobson had reached a place called Tenda,
where he heard of a city four months’ journey into the interior, the
roofs of which were covered with gold. Unhappily, however much his
appetite might be whetted by such wonderful stories, it had to remain
unsatisfied. The dry season soon began to tell upon the volume of water
in the river, making advance daily more difficult, till within a few
days of a town called Tombaconda, some 300 miles from the sea, he was
compelled to desist from further attempts, although he believed that
Tombaconda was Timbuktu itself, in reality distant about 1000 miles.
On the 10th February he commenced his return, hoping to go back and
complete his work with the rising of the waters, a project he however
never executed.
Quarrels broke out between the merchants on the river and the Company,
and the enterprise for the time being collapsed.
It was not till nearly a century later that a new attempt was made
to prosecute the task of reaching the Niger and the wealth of Inner
Africa. In 1720, the Duke of Chandos, acting as chairman of the African
Company, instigated a new expedition by way of the Gambia to the land
of promise.
This time the enterprise was placed under the leadership of one
Captain Bartholomew Stibbs, who left England in 1723, and arrived in
the Gambia in October of that year. His experiences were identical with
those of Jobson, though he did not reach the latter’s highest point.
Between them, however, it was made quite clear that the Gambia had no
connection with the Niger, and as little with the Senegal.
With Stibbs ended the English commercial attempts to open up the way to
the interior of Africa.
The addition to our knowledge of its geography amounted to the
exploration of the navigable part of the Gambia, and the determination
of the fact that it had no connection with the Niger.
The French meanwhile were doing for the Senegal what the British were
accomplishing in the sister river. Six years after Thompson had entered
the latter, the French had established themselves at the mouth of
the Senegal and founded the town of St. Louis. Their first exploring
trip was made in 1637, when they penetrated some distance along the
navigable part of the river.
More important, however, was the expedition in 1697 of one Sieur
Brue, director-general of the French African Company, which achieved
considerable success. This expedition was backed up by a second voyage
up the river two years later, when the fort of St. Joseph was founded,
and trade opened with merchants from Timbuktu.
Sieur Brue’s experiences were in every respect similar to those of
Jobson and Stibbs on the Gambia, though commercially more fortunate,
inasmuch as he had to do with more advanced races, and contrived to
reach the frontiers of a rich gold-bearing district (Bambuk) on the one
hand, and of an equally profitable gum region on the other.
He also heard much of the Niger and Timbuktu, and seemingly satisfied
himself that the Senegal had no connection with the famous river of
the interior, and that the latter flowed east, not west, as it was the
tendency of his day to believe, since we find the French maps of the
eighteenth century showing the Niger flowing towards the interior and
an uncertain bourne.