about three-quarters of a mile from the town. They are five in number,
surrounded by high walls of sun-dried clay, and each from four to five
acres in extent. Entering one of them, our traveller discovered that it
was neatly laid out and trimly kept. The fruit trees, arranged in long
avenues, were carefully cut and pruned; apple, pear, and cherry trees
abounded. In the spring melons are grown on a large scale; and in the
summer trellis-work arbours of vines, loaded with grapes, afford a
delightful shelter from the sun’s fierce glare. In a small summer-palace
here, the Khan holds his court in June and July, and on a raised stone
daïs outside sits to administer justice.
Returning to Khiva, Burnaby visited the prison and the principal
school—the invariable accompaniments of civilization, however imperfect.
But may we not hope that, some day, the school will destroy the gaol, and
relieve civilization from the reproach of barbarism that still attaches
to it? Meanwhile, Nazar was preparing for the Major’s contemplated
expedition to Bokhara, his tour to Merv and Meshed, and his journey from
Persia into India, and so back to England. It was the 27th of January,
and he had determined to spend only one more day in Khiva. But his plans
were upset by an unexpected incident. On the morning of the 28th, just
after his return from a ride through the market, he was “interviewed” by
two strangers, who presented him with a letter from the commandant of
Petro-Alexandrovsky, the Russian fort he had so determinedly avoided. It
was to the effect that a telegram, which had been forwarded _viâ_
Tashkent, awaited him at the fort, whither he must be pleased to repair
to receive it. How or why any person should consider him of importance
enough to despatch a telegram so many thousands of miles, and should go
to the expense a sending it from Tashkent where the telegraph ends, to
Khiva, a distance of nine hundred miles, by couriers with relays of
horses, Burnaby could not understand. But there was no help for it. He
must hasten to Petro-Alexandrovsky, where he did not want to go, and
abandon his trip to Bokhara and Merv, where he very much wished to go.
So he paid a visit to the bazar, and afterwards took leave of the Khan,
who bestowed upon him the honourable gift of a khalat, or dressing-gown,
and on the 29th bade adieu to Khiva.
He reached Petro-Alexandrovsky on the second day, and found that the
important telegram which had travelled so far was one from the Duke of
Cambridge, Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief, requiring his immediate
return to European Russia. He found also that the Russian Government had
given orders for his return by the shortest route to Kasala. All hope of
further exploration and adventure in Central Asia had to be abandoned.
Before leaving Petro-Alexandrovsky, the disappointed traveller had an
opportunity of accompanying a coursing party, and sharing in a day’s
novel sport. There were horses and men of all kinds and shapes,
Russians, Bokharans, Kirghiz, short-legged men on giant steeds, and
long-legged men on short-legged horses. A short colonel, said to be well
versed in the pastime, acted as master of the hunt. Behind him were led
seven or eight greyhounds in couples; while a stalwart Khivan bore on his
elbow a hooded falcon, graceful enough to have figured in Mr. Tennyson’s
poetical little drama. Amid a storm of cries and shouts and yells, the
hunters rode forward at a rattling pace, crossing a flat open country,
intersected by a ditch or two; until, after an eight miles’ run, they
arrived at the cover, a narrow tract of bush and bramble-covered ground
stretching down to the bank of the frozen Oxus. Forming in a line, at a
distance of twenty yards from one another, the horsemen rode through bush
and bramble. A sharp yell from a Kirghiz, and after a startled hare,
which had left its covert, dashed Russians, Bokharans, Englishman, and
hounds. On they went, down the slippery river bank, across the shining
ice, towards a dense bit of copse, where it looked as if poor puss might
find an asylum from her pursuers. But at this moment the falcon was
launched into the air. A swift swooping flight, and whir of wings, and
in a second it was perched on its victim’s back, while around it gathered
the well-trained dogs, with open mouths and lolling tongues, not daring
to approach the quarry. The master galloped up, seized the prize, and in
a few minutes more the hunt was resumed; nor did the horsemen turn their
faces homeward until five hares had rewarded their chivalrous efforts.
In company with two Russian officers, and an escort of ten Cossacks,
Major Burnaby, after a pleasant sojourn at Petro-Alexandrovsky, set out
on his return to Kasala. As the weather was warmer, and the snow had
begun to melt, the three officers travelled in a tarantass, drawn by six
Kirghiz horses; the said tarantass closely resembling a hansom cab which,
after its wheels have been removed, has been fastened in a brewer’s dray.
It has no springs, and it runs upon small but solid wooden wheels. They
had gone but a few miles before they came again into a land of snow; the
horses had to be taken out, and a couple of camels substituted. At night
they bivouacked, resuming their journey before daybreak. It was a
picturesque sight:—“First, the Cossacks, the barrels of their carbines
gleaming in the moonlight, the vashlik of a conical shape surmounting
each man’s low cap, and giving a ghastly appearance to the riders. Their
distorted shadows were reflected on the snow beneath, and appeared like a
detachment of gigantic phantoms pursuing our little force. Then the
tarantass, drawn by two large camels, which slowly ploughed their way
through the heavy track, the driver nodding on his box but half awake,
the two officers in the arms of Morpheus inside, and the heavy woodwork
creaking at each stride of the enormous quadrupeds. In the wake of this
vehicle strode the baggage camels. The officers’ servants were fast
asleep on the backs of their animals, one man lying with his face to the
tail, and snoring hard in spite of the continued movement; another fellow
lay stretched across his saddle, apparently a good deal the worse for
drink. He shouted out at intervals the strains of a Bacchanalian ditty.
Nazar, who was always hungry, could be seen walking in the rear. He had
kept back a bone from the evening meal, and was gnawing it like a dog,
his strong jaws snapping as they closed on the fibrous mutton. I
generally remained by our bivouac fire an hour or so after the rest of
the party had marched, and seated by the side of the glowing embers,
watched the caravan as it vanished slowly in the distance.”
At mid-day, on the 12th of February, Burnaby and his companions galloped
across the frozen highway of the Syr-Daria, and into the streets of
Kasala, having ridden three hundred and seventy one miles in exactly nine
days and two hours. He remained at Kasala for a few days, endeavouring
to obtain permission to return to European Russia _viâ_ Western Siberia;
but his application failed, and he was informed that the authorization he
had received to travel in Russian Asia had been cancelled. There was
nothing to be done, therefore, but to complete the necessary preparations
for his journey to Orenburg. A sleigh was hired, and amid a chorus of
farewells from his Russian acquaintances, who showed themselves more
friendly than their Government, he started on his homeward route, having
undergone some novel experiences, and seen Khiva, but gathered no
information of any value to geographers or men of science. In fact, the
chief interest attaching to Major Burnaby’s expedition is personal: it
shows that he was a man of much energy, resolution, and perseverance, and
he may fairly be complimented on the good use he made of these qualities
in his bold but unsuccessful Ride to Khiva. {364}
SIR SAMUEL BAKER,
AND THE SOURCES OF THE NILE.
I.
OF late years the Lake Regions of Central Africa have offered a fertile
and attractive field to the explorer. The interest of the public in
African discovery, which had for some time been dormant, was revived in
1849, by the achievements of Dr. Livingstone, who, starting from the
south, crossed the tropic of Capricorn, and penetrated to the shores of
Lake Ngami. In 1853 to 1856 the same great traveller traced the course
of the river Leeambye or Zambési, and traversed the entire breadth of the
“black continent” from Angola on the west coast to Zanzibar on the east.
In 1865 he resumed his labours, striking into the very heart of Africa,
with the view of tracing out the Sources of the Nile, and entering into a
fertile country, the resources of which he found to be capable of immense
development. For the first two or three years of his absence his letters
and despatches reached England with some degree of regularity, but at
length a veil of silence fell across his path, and it began to be feared
that he, like other explorers, had fallen a victim to his enthusiasm. An
expedition in search of the missing traveller was equipped by Mr. Gordon
Bennett, proprietor of the _New York Herald_, in 1871, and placed in
charge of Mr. Henry M. Stanley, who had the good fortune to find
Livingstone at Ujiji, near Unyanyembé, on the 10th of November. He
remained with him until the 14th of March, 1872, when he returned to
England with his diary and other documents. Dr. Livingstone at this time
reported that, in his belief, the Nile springs up about six hundred miles
to the south of the southernmost point of Lake Victoria Nyanza. In
November, 1872, a relief or auxiliary expedition, under Lieutenant V.
Lovett Cameron, started from Zanzibar; but in October, 1873, while at
Unyanyembé, its leader received the intelligence of Livingstone’s death,
which had taken place at Ujiji, and soon afterwards the corpse arrived in
charge of his faithful followers. Cameron then took up the work of
exploration, and in spite of immense difficulties, great mental and
physical suffering, and obstacles of every kind, he made his way to Lake
Tanganyika, thence to Nyangwé, and after identifying the Lualaba with the
Kongo, struck to the southward, and passing through regions hitherto
unexplored, struck the west coast at Benguela. As a result of his
observations, Lieutenant Cameron thus sketches the river system of
Africa:—
“The basin of the Nile is probably bounded on the south-west by the
watershed reached by Dr. Schweinfurth; on the south of the Albert Nyanza,
by the high lands between that lake and the Tanganyika, whence the
watershed pursues a tortuous course to Unyanyembé (where, I believe, the
basins of the Nile, Kongo, and Lufiji approach each other), and then
follows a wave of high land running east till it turns up northwards
along the landward slopes of the mountains dividing the littoral from the
interior. Passing by Mounts Kilima Njaro and Kenia, it extends to the
mountains of Abyssinia, where the sources of the Blue Nile were
discovered by Bruce [1770], and so on to the parched plains bordering the
Red Sea, where no rains ever fall. The western boundary of the Nile
basin is, of course, the eastern portion of the desert.
“The basins of the Niger and the Ogowai cannot yet be defined with any
degree of exactitude, and the northern boundary of the basin of the Kongo
has still to be traced.
“The Zambési drains that portion of the continent south of the Kongo
system, and north of the Kalahari desert and the Limpopo, the northern
boundary of the Transvaal Republic; some of its affluents reaching to
within two hundred and fifty miles of the west coast.
“The mighty Kongo, king of all the African rivers, and second only to the
Amazon (and perhaps to the Yang-tse-Kiang) in the volume of its waters,
occupies a belt of the continent lying on both sides of the equator, but
most probably the larger area belongs to the southern hemisphere. Many
of its affluents fork into those of the Zambési on a level tableland,
where the watershed is so tortuous that it is hard to trace it, and
where, during the rainy season, floods extend right across between the
head-waters of the two streams.
“The Kelli, discovered by Dr. Schweinfurth, may possibly prove to be the
Lowa, reported to me as a large affluent of the Lualaba [or Kongo] to the
west of Nyangwé; or, if not an affluent of the Lualaba, it most probably
flows either to the Ogowai or the Tchadda, an affluent of the Niger.”
In 1874 another expedition of discovery was fitted out, at the joint
expense of the proprietors of the London _Daily Telegraph_ and the _New
York Herald_, and Mr. H. M. Stanley was appointed to the command. In
1875 he reached Lake Victoria Nyanza, and through the good offices of
Mtesa, King of Uganda, obtained a flotilla of canoes, with which he
circumnavigated the lake. It proved to be the largest basin of fresh
water in the world, occupying the immense area of sixty thousand square
miles. Mr. Stanley next pushed on to Lake Albert Nyanza; afterwards
circumnavigated the northern half of Lake Tanganyika; struck westward to
the Lualaba at Nyangwé (1876), and thence descended the Lualaba as far as
the Isangila Falls (June, 1877), whence he crossed the country to
Kalinda, on the west coast.
* * * * *
But we must now return to 1857, when Captains Burton and Speke, under the
auspices of the Royal Geographical Society of London, started from
Zanzibar to explore the inland lacustrine region; and discovered, to the
south of the equator, Lake Tanganyika, which they partially explored in a
couple of canoes. Captain Burton being taken ill, Speke pushed on to the
north alone, and discovered the immense basin now known as the Victoria
Nyanza, which he immediately conceived to be the great reservoir and
head-waters of the Nile. To ascertain the truth of this supposition, he
started again from the east coast in October, 1860, accompanied by
Captain Grant; crossed the great equatorial table-land of the interior;
reached the Victoria Nyanza; skirted its shores until they discovered its
main outlet, which proved to be the Nile, and then traced the course of
the famous river to Gondokoro, whence, by way of Assouan, Thebes, and
Cairo, they proceeded to Alexandria. Their well-directed energy had to a
great extent solved the geographical problem of ages, and dispelled the
cloud-land in which the Nile springs had so long been hidden:—
“The mystery of old Nile was solved; brave men
Had through the lion-haunted inland past,
Dared all the perils of desert, gorge, and glen,
Found the far Source at last.”
With heroic patience they had accomplished on foot their journey of
thirteen hundred miles, and shown that the parent stream of the Nile,
even in its earliest course a considerable river, was fed by the vast
reservoir of the “Victorian Sea.” What remained to be discovered was the
feeders of this vast basin, and which among them was indeed the primary
source of the Nile. Some fresher light was thrown on the subject by Sir
Samuel Baker, {369} who, with his wife, underwent some remarkable
experiences in Central Africa, and earned a right to be included among
our Heroes of Travel. Let us now follow him “through scorching deserts
and thirsty sands; through swamp and jungle and interminable morass;
through difficulties, fatigues, and sickness,” until we stand with him on
that high cliff where the great prize burst upon his view, and he saw
before him one of the chief sources of the Nile in the Luta N’zige, or
Albert Lake.
* * * * *
Accompanied by his courageous and devoted wife, who insisted upon sharing
his labours and his perils, he sailed up the Nile from Cairo on the 15th
of April, 1861. In twenty-six days they arrived at Kousko, whence they
crossed the Nubian desert, so as to cut off the western bend of the
river, touching it again at Aboù Hamed. Eight days more and they reached
Berber, where they remained until the 11th of June. A year was spent in
exploring the Abyssinian frontier and the Abyssinian tributaries of the
Nile; and the travellers made their appearance at Khartûm on the 11th of
June, 1862. Khartûm is a densely populated, unclean, and pestiferous
town, in lat. 15° 29′, at the junction point of the White and Blue Nile;
it is the capital of the Soudan, and the seat of a governor-general.
Twenty years ago it was also the centre of a cruel and desolating
slave-trade, but the exertions of Sir Samuel Baker and Colonel Gordon
have done much to lessen its proportions.
Having engaged a Nile boat, or dahabeeyah, and two larger noggens or
sailing barges, with an escort of forty armed men, and forty sailors, and
accumulated four months’ supplies of provisions, Sir Samuel set sail from
Khartûm on the 18th of December, 1862. On Christmas Day he was slowly
ascending the river, the banks of which were fringed with immense
forests. These trees are the soont (_Acacia Arabica_), which produce an
excellent tannin; the fruit is used for that purpose, and yields a rich
brown dye. The straight smooth trunks are thirty-five feet high, and
about eighteen inches in diameter. When in full foliage they look well
from a distance, but on a closer approach the forest is seen to be a
desolate swamp, completely overflowed; “a mass of fallen dead trees
protruding from the stagnant waters, a solitary crane perched here and
there upon the rotten boughs; floating water-plants massed together, and
forming green swimming islands, hitched generally among the sunken trunks
and branches; sometimes slowly descending with the sluggish stream,
bearing, spectre-like, storks thus voyaging on nature’s rafts to freer
lands unknown.” This kind of scenery—depressing enough, no
doubt—continues for a considerable distance, and so long as it lasts
deprives the Nile of that romance with which it has been invested by the
imagination of poets. There is neither beauty nor interest in it; and
one is surprised to see the low flat banks studded with populous
villages. The flooded plains, however, afford abundant pasture for the
herds of the Shillooks, who in their choice of a locality are governed by
considerations of utility, and not by the principles of æstheticism.
The junction of the Sobat takes place in lat. 9° 21′. This tributary, at
the point of confluence, is a hundred and twenty yards broad, and flows
at the rate of two miles and a half per hour. Still the Nile valley
presents the same characteristics—broad tracts of marsh and grasses;
dull, monotonous levels, unrelieved by any vividness of colour. After
receiving the Bahr-el-Ghazal, the White Nile turns abruptly to the
south-east, and winds upward through a flat country, which, in the rainy
season, is resolved into a system of extensive lakes. Its highway is
half choked with floating vegetation, which nurtures innumerable clouds
of mosquitoes. The people on its banks belong to the Nuehr tribe; the
women pierce the upper lip, and wear an ornament about four inches long,
of beads upon a iron wire, which projects like the horn of a rhinoceros.
The men are both tall and robust, and armed with lances. They carry
pipes that will hold nearly a quarter of a pound of tobacco; when the
supply of “the weed” fails, they substitute charcoal.
The monotony of the voyage was broken one day by the appearance of a
hippopotamus close to Sir Samuel’s boat. He was about half grown, and in
an instant a score of men jumped into the water to seize him. The
captain caught him by the hind-leg; and then the crowd rushed in, and,
with ropes thrown from the vessel, slipped nooses over his head. A grand
struggle ensued, but as it seemed likely to result in a victory for the
hippopotamus, Sir Samuel slew him with a rifle ball. The Arab seamen,
who have an extraordinary appetite, like the old school-men, for the most
trivial arguments, observing that the animal had been “bullied” and
scarred by some other and stronger hippopotamus, plunged into a fierce
contention on the point whether he had been misused by his father or his
mother. As they could not agree, they referred the question to the
arbitration of Sir Samuel, who pacified both parties by the felicitous
suggestion that perhaps it was his uncle! They set to work at once with
willing vigour to cut up the ill-treated hippopotamus, which proved to be
as fat as butter, and made most excellent soup.
Continuing their “up-river” course, the voyagers came to the country of
the Kegtah tribe. Such savages as they saw were equally uncivilized and
emaciated. The young women wore no clothing, except a small piece of
dressed hide across the shoulders; the men, instead of the hide, assumed
a leopard-skin. There was greater appearance of intelligence in the
termites, or white ant, than in these poor half-starved wretches. The
white-ant hills here rise like castle-towers above the water of the
marshes. Their inmates build them ten feet high in the dry season, and
when the rains come, live high and dry in the upper stories. Humanity,
meanwhile, sickens in the stagnant swamp, and lingers out a miserable
existence. The Bohr and Aliab tribes are a degree higher in the scale of
civilization, but the Shir go beyond them. They are armed with well-made
ebony clubs, two lances, a bow and arrows; they carry upon their backs a
neatly made miniature stool, along with an immense pipe. The females are
not absolutely naked; they wear small lappets of tanned leather as broad
as the hand; at the back of the belt which supports this apron is a tail,
depending to the lower portions of the thighs—a tail of finely cut strips
of leather, which has probably given rise to the Arab report that a tribe
in Central Africa had tails like horses. The huts here, and all along
the Nile, are circular, with entrances so low that the inmates creep in
and out on hands and knees. The men decorate their heads with tufts of
cock’s feathers; their favourite attitude, when standing, is on one leg,
while leaning on a spear, the uplifted leg reposing on the inside of the
other knee.
All the White Nile tribes are quick to collect their harvest of the
lotus, or water-lily, seed, which they grind into flour, and make into a
kind of porridge. The seed-pod of the white lotus resembles an unblown
artichoke, and contains a number of light red grains about the size of
the mustard-seed, but in shape like those of the poppy, and like them in
flavour. The ripe pods are strung upon reeds about four feet long,
formed into large bundles, and carried from the river to the villages, to
be dried in the sun, and stored away until wanted.