We speak now of the three largest——there are six others in this group,

and twenty-seven more throughout the Nile valley. They are perfectly

adjusted to points of the compass——north, south, east and west. Modern

investigators have found in the construction, proportions and position of

the “Great Pyramid” especially, many things which point to a marvellous

knowledge of science on the part of their builders. If the half they

say is true of them, there are a vast number of lost arts to discredit

modern genius. Some go so far as to trace in their measurements and

construction, not only prophecy of the coming of Christ, but chart of

the events which have signalized the world’s history and are yet to make

it memorable. They base their reasoning on the fact that there was no

architectural model for them and no books extant to teach the science

requisite for their construction, that their height and bases bear

certain proportions to each other, and to the diameter of a great circle,

that they are on the line of a true meridian, that certain openings point

to certain stars, and so on till ingenuity is exhausted.

[Illustration: SECTION OF THE GREAT PYRAMID, SHOWING ITS INTERIOR.]

The three large pyramids measure thus

Height Breadth of base

Khufu (Cheops), Great Pyramid 450.75 feet 746 feet

Khafra, Second “ 447.5 “ 690.75 “

Menkara, Third “ 203. “ 352.88 “

As soon as a Pharaoh mounted the throne he gave orders to a nobleman,

master of all the buildings, to plan the work and cut the stone. The

kernel of the future edifice was raised on the limestone rock of

the desert in the form of a small pyramid built in steps. Its well

constructed and finished interior formed the king’s eternal dwelling,

with his stone sarcophagus lying on the stone floor. Let us suppose this

first building finished while the king still lived. A second covering was

added on the outside of the first; then a third; then a fourth; and so

the mass of the giant building grew greater the longer the king lived.

Then at last, when it became almost impossible to extend the area of the

pyramid further, a casing of hard stone, polished like glass, and fitted

accurately into the angles of the steps, covered the vast mass of the

king’s sepulchre, presenting a gigantic triangle on each of its four

faces. More than seventy of such pyramids once rose on the margin of the

desert, each telling of a king, of whom it was at once the tomb and the

monument.

At present the Great Pyramid is, externally, a rough, huge mass of

limestone blocks, regularly worked and cemented. The top is flattened.

The outside polished casing, as well as the top, has been removed by the

builders of Cairo, for mosques and palaces, as have many of the finest

ruins on the Nile.

The Sphinx was sculptured at some time not far removed from the building

of the three great pyramids. Recent discoveries have increased the

astonishment of mankind at the bulk of this monstrous figure and at the

vast and unknown buildings that stood around it and, as it were, lay

between its paws. It is within a few years that the sand has been blown

away and revealed these incomprehensible structures. In a well near by

was found a finely executed statue of Khafra, builder of the second

pyramid.

There are other sphinxes, but this at the base of the Great Pyramid is

the largest. It has a man’s head and a lion’s body, and is supposed to

represent the kingly power of the sun god. Its length is 140 feet, and

height 30 feet. Between its paws is an altar, to which you ascend by a

long flight of steps. The Arabs call it “the fatherly terror.”

In the middle “chamber of the dead” of Menkara’s pyramid was found his

stone sarcophagus and its wooden cover, both beautifully adorned in the

style of a temple. They were taken out and shipped for England, but the

vessel was wrecked, and the sarcophagus now lies at the bottom of the

Mediterranean. The lid was saved and is now in the British Museum. On it

is carved a text or prayer to Osiris, king of the gods: “O Osiris, who

hast become king of Egypt, Menkara living eternally, child of heaven, son

of the divine mother, heir of time, over thee may she stretch herself and

cover thee, thy divine mother, in her name as mystery of heaven. May she

grant that thou shouldst be like god, free from all evils, king Menkara,

living eternally.”

[Illustration: SPHINX.]

The prayer is not uncommon, for parts of it have been found on other

monuments. Its sense is, “Delivered from mortal matter, the soul of the

dead king passes through the immense spaces of heaven to unite itself

with god, after having overcome the evil which opposed it on its journey

through earth.”

The entrance to the great pyramid was formerly quite concealed, only

the priests knowing where to find the movable stone that would admit

them. But now the opening is plain, and is about forty-five feet from

the ground on the north side. Thence there is a descent through a narrow

passage for 320 feet into the sepulchral chamber. The passage is much

blocked and difficult. The great red granite sarcophagus is there, empty

and broken, mute receptacle of departed greatness, for which the relic

hunter has had quite too little respect.

With the end of the fifth dynasty pyramid building ceased. The glory of

Memphis departed and went to Thebes, where kingly vanity seems to have

sought outlet in the temple architecture whose ruins are the wonder of

the world.

Above the old site of Memphis, is Toora, and out on its desert side are

the pyramids of Sakkarah, eleven in number. The most remarkable is the

Step Pyramid, believed to be more ancient than those of Ghiseh. But there

is something even more wonderful here——the Temple of Serapis, which it

took four years to disengage from the sands of the desert after its site

was discovered. It seems to have been dedicated to Serapis, the sacred

bull of Egypt. Beneath it is a great catacomb where once laid the remains

of thousands of sacred bulls. Their stone coffins are still there, cut

out of solid blocks of granite, and measuring fourteen feet long by

eleven feet high.

Further up the Nile are the high limestone cliffs of Gebel-et-Teyr, on

which perches the Coptic “Convent of the Pulley.” The monks who live here

are great beggars. They let themselves down from the cliff and swim off

to a passing boat to ask alms in the name of their Christianity.

The next town of moment is Siout, capital of Upper Egypt. It stands on

the site of ancient Lycopolis, “wolf city,” and is backed in by lofty

cliffs, from which the views are very fine. Further up is Girgeh, whence

you must take journey on the back of donkeys to Abydos, off eastward on

the edge of the desert. Here was the most ancient city of This, or Tini,

where Mena reigned, on whose ruins Abydos was built, itself an antiquity

and wonder. Here is the great temple begun by Seti I. and completed

by his son Rameses II., 1333 B.C. Rameses II., was the Pharaoh of the

Exodus. Its roof, pillars and walls are all preserved and the chiselling

on the latter is something marvellous. What renders it doubly interesting

is, the name of the sculptor is preserved. His name was Hi, and he must

have been a man of decided genius, for his picture of the king and son

taming the bull is quite spirited. In this temple is also the celebrated

sculpture called the “Table of Abydos,” which gives a list of sixty-five

kings, from Menes down to the last king of the twelfth dynasty, a period

of 2166 years. It is a most invaluable record and has done much to throw

light on Egyptian history. It was discovered in 1865. Abydos then, or

Tini, was the starting point of Egyptian power and civilization, as we

now know it. Here was the first dynasty of the Pharaohs, transferred

afterwards to Memphis where the pyramids became their monuments,

re-transferred to Thebes where the temples chronicled their greatness and

grandeur. Old as Thebes is, Abydos is older, and Tini older still. Most

carefully has the temple at Abydos been exhumed from the sand which has

preserved it for three thousand years, most of the time against the hands

of those who, knowing better, would have spoiled its fair proportions

and its great historic value. Abydos seems to have been a city of tombs,

and it is possible that the greatness of all Egypt sought it as a burial

place.

The most powerful of these Theban Kings, were those of the twelfth

dynasty and on, beginning 2466 B.C., though Thebes can be traced back to

the sixth dynasty as a city. It was a period in which strong monarchs

ruled, and the arts were cultivated with magnificent results. Thebes

was the capital, and on its temples and palaces the most enormous labor

and expense were lavishly bestowed. And this not in Thebes alone, but

in all the cities of Egypt; and they all make history too, impressive,

invaluable history.

Siout owes its present importance to the caravan trade with Darfur

and Nubia. Passing on toward Thebes, the river banks get more and

more bluffy. You soon come to Dendera on the west bank. Its ruins are

magnificent, and by many regarded as the finest in Egypt. The portico

of its ancient temple is inconceivably grand. Its length is 265 feet and

height 60 feet. It is entirely covered with mystic, varied and fantastic

sculptures, hieroglyphics, groups, figures of deities, sacred animals,

processions of soldiers——in short the manners and mythology of all Egypt.

The workmanship is elaborate and finished. The interior is no less

beautiful. The roof contained a sculptured representation of the twelve

signs of the Zodiac. It has been taken down and is now in the museum at

Paris.

A few miles further on in this bewildering region of solid rock bluffs,

immense quarries, deep sculptured caverns, you come to Thebes itself,

“City of the hundred gates,” lying on both sides of the Nile, the

reports of whose power and splendor we would regard as fabulous, were

its majestic ruins not there still to corroborate every glowing account.

Whatever of Egyptian art is older than that of the Theban era lacked

the beauty which moves to admiration. Beginning with the Theban kings

of the twelfth dynasty, the harmonious form of beauty united with truth

and nobleness meets the eye of the beholder as well in buildings as in

statues. The great labyrinth and the excavation for the artificial lake

Mœris, at Alexandria, were made during this period. In Tanis, at the

mouth of the Nile, was erected a temple whose inscriptions show not only

the manners of the country with great historic accuracy, but tell the

tale of frequent trade with the people from Arabia and Canaan.

The site of Thebes is an immense amphitheatre with the Nile in the

centre. At first you see only a confusion of portals, obelisks and

columns peeping through or towering above the palm trees. Gradually you

are able to distinguish objects, and the first that strikes you is the

ruins of Luxor on the eastern bank. They overlook the Arab village at

their base, and consist of a long row of columns and the huge gateway

of the Temple of Luxor. The columns are those of an immense portico,

and by them stood two beautiful obelisks, one of which is now in the

Place de la Concorde, Paris. The columns are monoliths, fully ten feet

in diameter, and many of them in a perfect state. All are covered with

inscriptions of various signification. This temple was built by Rameses

II., and is therefore not one of the oldest in Egypt, though not the

least interesting. On the westward or opposite side of the Nile is Memnon

and the temple home of Rameses II. There is little or nothing of the

temple there, but twin colossal statues stand in lonely desolation on the

plain, and these once guarded the temple entrance. One is perfect, the

other broken. Both measured sixty-four feet in height. They are sitting

giants carved from solid stone. They represented King Amenhotep, in whose

honor the temple was built. At their feet are small sitting statues, one

of his wife Thi, the other of his mother Mutem-ua, each carved out of

red sandstone mixed with white quartz, and each a marvellous exhibition

of skill in treating the hardest and most brittle materials. They stand

twenty-two feet apart. The northern, or broken one, is that which the

Greeks and Romans celebrated in poetry and prose as the “vocal statue

of Memnon.” Its legs are covered with inscriptions of Greek, Roman,

Phœnician and Egyptian travelers, written to assure the reader that they

had really visited the place or had heard the musical tones of Memnon at

the rising of the sun.

[Illustration: THE COLOSSI.]

In the year 27 B.C. the upper part of this statue was removed from its

place and thrown down by an earthquake. From that time on, tourists began

to mutilate it by cutting into it their befitting or unbefitting remarks.

The assurances that they had heard Memnon sing or ring ceased under the

reign of Septimius Severus who completed the wanting upper part of the

body as well as he could with blocks of stone piled up and fastened

together. It is a well known fact that split or cracked rocks, after

cooling during the night, at the rising of the sun or as soon as the

stone becomes warm, may emit a prolonged ringing note. After the statue

was restored in the manner above described, the sound, if ever it emitted

any, naturally ceased. The crack was covered by the masonry.

[Illustration: THE RAMESEION OF THEBES AND COLOSSAL STATUE OF RAMESES.]

The story of the architect of this temple is told in the hieroglyphics.

That part which relates to these two memorable statues tells how he

conceived them without any order from the king, cut them out of solid

rock, and employed eight ships to move them from the quarries down

the Nile to Memphis. Even in our highly cultivated age, with all its

inventions and machines which enable us by the help of steam to raise and

transport the heaviest weights, the shipment and erection of the mammoth

statues of Memnon remain an insoluble riddle. Verily the architect,

Amenhotep the son of Hapoo, must have been not only a wise but a

specially ingenious man of his time.

Back of the Memnon Statues and the ruins of the “Palace Temple,”

which they guarded, and 500 yards nearer the Lybian desert, stood the

Rameseion. It was both palace and temple. It is finely situated on the

lowest grade of the hills as they begin to ascend from the plain, and

its various parts occupy a series of terraces, one rising above the

other in a singularly impressive and majestic fashion. Its outer gateway

is grandly massive. Sculptures embellish it, very quaint and vivid.

It formed the entrance to the first court, whose walls are destroyed.

Some picturesque Ramessid columns remain, however; and at their foot

lie the fragments of the hugest statue that was ever fashioned by

Egyptian sculptor. It was a fitting ornament for a city of giants; such

an effigy as might have embellished a palace built and inhabited by

Titans. Unhappily, it is broken from the middle; but when entire it must

have weighed about 887 tons, and measured 22 feet 4 inches across the

shoulders, and 14 feet 4 inches from the neck to the elbow. The toes are

from 2 to 3 feet long. The whole mass is composed of Syene granite; and

it is offered as a problem to engineers and contractors of the present

day,——How were nearly 900 tons of granite conveyed some hundreds of

miles from Syene to Thebes? It is equally difficult to imagine how,

in a country not afflicted by earthquakes, so colossal a monument was

overthrown.

Such was the Rameseion. It looked towards the east, facing the

magnificent temple at Karnak. Its propylon, or gateway, in the days

of its glory, was in itself a structure of the highest architectural

grandeur, and the portion still extant measures 234 feet in length.

The principal edifice was about 600 feet in length and 200 feet in

breadth, with upwards of 160 columns, each 30 feet in height. A wall of

brick enclosed it; and a dromos, fully 1600 feet long, and composed of

two hundred sphinxes, led in a northwesterly direction to a temple or

fortress, sheltered among the Libyan hills.

This period of temple building and ornamentation which makes Thebes as

conspicuous in Egyptian history as pyramid building had made Memphis,

extended over several dynasties, and practically ended with the twentieth

(1200 B.C. to 1133 B.C.) which embraced the long line of Rameses, except

Rameses I. and II. This was the time of the Hebrew captivity and of the

Exodus.

[Illustration: THE GREAT COURT AND OBELISK OF KARNAK.]

The most illustrious of all these kings——the Alexander the Great of

Egyptian history——was Thutmes III., who reigned for 53 years, and carried

Egyptian power into the heart of Africa as well as Asia. Countless

memorials of his reign exist in papyrus rolls, on temple walls, in tombs

and even on beetles and other ornaments. These conquests of his brought

to Egypt countless prisoners of every race who, according to the old

custom, found employment in the public works. It was principally to

the great public edifices, and among those especially to the enlarged

buildings of the temple at Amon (Ape) near Karnak, that these foreigners

were forced to devote their time.

Though Karnak is several miles further up the Nile, and on the same side

as Luxor, it is in the same splendid natural amphitheatre, and is a part

of the grand temple system of Thebes and its suburbs. Let us visit its

magnificent ruins before stopping to look in upon Thebes proper.

[Illustration: SPHINX OF KARNAK.]

The Karnak ruins surpass in imposing grandeur all others in Egypt and

the world. The central hall of the Grand Temple is a nearly complete

ruin, but a room has been found which contained a stone tablet on which

Thutmes III. is represented as giving recognition to his fifty-six royal

predecessors. This valuable historic tablet has been carried away and

is now in Paris. This temple was 1108 feet long and 300 wide. But this

temple was only a part of the gorgeous edifice. On three sides were other

temples, a long way off, yet connected with the central one by avenues

whose sides were lined with statuary, mostly sphinxes. Many of the latter

are yet in place, and are slowly crumbling to ruin. Two colossal statues

at the door of the temple now lie prostrate. Across the entire ruins

appear fragments of architecture, trunks of broken columns, mutilated

statues, obelisks, some fallen others majestically erect, immense halls

whose roofs are supported by forests of columns, and portals, surpassing

all former or later structures. Yet when the plan is studied and

understood, its regularity appears wonderful and the beholder is lost in

admiration. Here are two obelisks, one 69 feet high, the other 91 feet,

the latter the highest in Egypt, and adorned with sculptures of perfect

execution. One hundred and thirty-four columns of solid stone, each

seventy feet high and eleven in diameter, supported the main hall of the

temple which was 329 feet by 170 feet. The steps to the door are 40 feet

long and 10 wide. The sculptures were adorned with colors, which have

withstood the ravages of time. Fifty of the sphinxes remain, and there is

evidence that the original number was six hundred.

[Illustration: GATEWAY AT KARNAK.]

All who have visited this scene describe the impression as superior

to that made by any earthly object. Says Denon, “The whole French

army, on coming in sight of it, stood still, struck as it were with an

electric shock.” Belzoni says: “The sublimest ideas derived from the

most magnificent specimens of modern architecture, cannot equal those

imparted by a sight of these ruins. I appeared to be entering a city of

departed giants, and I seemed alone in the midst of all that was most

sacred in the world. The forest of enormous columns adorned all round

with beautiful figures and various ornaments, the high portals seen at

a distance from the openings to this vast labyrinth of edifices, the

various groups of ruins in the adjoining temples——these had such an

effect as to separate me in imagination from the rest of mortals, and

make me seem unconscious whether I was on earth or some other planet.”

And Karnak, like all Nile scenes, is said to be finer by moonlight than

sunlight. But you must go protected, for the wild beast does not hesitate

to make a lair of the caverns amid these ruins. Human vanity needs no

sadder commentary.

This temple was the acme of old Egyptian art. Its mass was not the

work of one king, but of many. It therefore measures taste, wealth and

architectural vigor better than a book. But its founder, Thutmes III.,

left similar monuments to his power. They have been traced in Nubia, in

the island of Elephantine, in various cities of northern Egypt, and even

in Mesopotamia.

[Illustration: A MUMMY.]

In Central Thebes you meet with ruins of the home palace or dwelling

place of Rameses III. The king’s chamber can be traced by the character

of the sculptures. You see in these the king attended by the ladies of

his harem. They are giving him lotus flowers and waving fans before him.

In one picture he sits with a favorite at a game of draughts. His arm

is extended holding a piece in the act of moving. And so the various

domestic scenes of the old monarch appear, reproducing for us, after

a period of 3500 years, quite a history of how things went on in the

palaces of royalty upon the Nile.

The tombs of Thebes surpass all others in number, extent and splendor.

They are back toward the desert in the rocky chain which bounds it.

Here are subterranean works which almost rival the pyramids in wonder.

Entrance galleries cut into the solid rock lead to distant central

chambers where are deposited the sarcophagi which contained the bodies

of the dead. The walls everywhere, and the sarcophagi, or stone coffins,

are elaborately sculptured with family histories, prayers, and all the

ornaments which formed the pride of the living. Festivals, agricultural

operations, commercial transactions, hunts, bullfights, fishing and

fowling scenes, vineyards, ornamental grounds, form the subject of

these varied, interesting and truly historic sketches. The chambers

and passages which run in various directions contain mummies in that

wonderful state of preservation which the Egyptians alone had the art of

securing. They are found wrapped in successive folds of linen, saturated

with bitumen, so as to preserve to the present the form and even the

features of the dead. Alas! how these sacred resting places have been

desecrated. The sarcophagi have been broken and carried away, and the

mummified remains that rested securely in their niches for thousands of

years have been dragged out to gratify the curiosity of sight seers in

all quarters of the globe.

[Illustration: TEMPLE AT EDFOU.]

[Illustration: TEMPLE COURT AT PHILÆ.]

Beyond Thebes, the Nile enters a narrow sand-stone gorge. But just before

you enter this you pass the very wonderful temple of Edfou, in almost a

perfect state of preservation, further testimonial to the wealth, power

and art of those old Theban kings. Entering the gorge, the rocks overhang

the river for miles on miles. You are now in the midst of the sandstone

quarries whence were drawn the material for many a statue and temple.

At the head of the gorge is Assouan, trading point for the Soudan and

Central Africa. It is the ancient Syene, and is the real quarrying ground

of Egypt. The red granite from the steps of Syene is in the pyramids and

all the mighty monuments of the Nile valley. Entering the vast quarries

here, you can see a large obelisk not entirely detached from the solid

rock, lying just as it was left by the workmen thousands of years ago.

There are also half finished monuments of other forms still adhering to

their mother rock, and a monstrous sarcophagus which had for some reason

been discarded ere it was quite finished.

In the river opposite Assouan is the Island of Elephantine or “Isle of

Flowers,” on which are the ruins of two temples of the Theban period.

Three miles above is the first cataract of the Nile, which was reckoned

as the boundary of Upper Egypt.

You are now 580 miles south of Cairo and 730 from the Mediterranean, on

the borders of Nubia. Assouan is a border town now, with 4000 people, but

in the time of old Theban kings, Syene was not on the margin of their

empire and glory, nor did the wonders of the Nile valley cease here. A

short way above Assouan is the beautiful island of Philæ, the turning

point of tourists on the Nile, crowned with its temples, colonnades and

palms and set in a framework of majestic rocks and purple mountains. The

island was especially dedicated to the worship of Isis, and her temple

is yet one of the most beautiful of Egyptian ruins, as much of the

impressive coloring of the interior remains uninjured. The ruins of no

less than eight distinct temples exist here, some of which are as late as

the Roman occupation of Egypt.

One hundred and twenty miles above, or south of, the first cataract

of the Nile, thirty-six miles north of the last, and quite within the

borders of Nubia, the traveller, struck hitherto with the impoverished

aspect of the country, suddenly pauses with astonishment and admiration

before a range of colossal statues carved out of the rocky side of a hill

of limestone, the base of which is washed by the famous river.

For centuries the drifting sands of the desert had accumulated over the

architectural wonders of Ipsambul, and no sign of them was visible except

the head of one gigantic statue.

No traveler seems to have inquired what this solitary landmark meant;

whether it indicated the site of a city, a palace, or a tomb; until, in

1717, the enthusiastic Belzoni undertook the work of excavation. His

toil was well rewarded; for it brought to light a magnificent specimen

of the highest Egyptian art; a specimen which, with Champollion, we may

confidently attribute to the palmiest epoch of Pharaonic civilization.

[Illustration: TEMPLE OF ISIS, ISLAND OF PHILÆ.]

Every voyager who visits Ipsambul seems inspired with more than ordinary

feelings of admiration.

Here, exclaims Eliot Warburton, the daring genius of Ethiopian

architecture ventured to enter into rivalry with Nature’s greatness, and

found her material in the very mountains that seemed to bid defiance to

her efforts.

You can conceive nothing more singular and impressive, says Mrs. Romer,

than the façade of the Great Temple; for it is both a temple and a cave.

Ipsambul, remarks Sir F. Henniker, is the _ne plus ultra_ of Egyptian

labor; and in itself an ample recompense for the labor of a voyage up

the Nile. There is no temple, of either Dendera, Thebes, or Philæ, which

can be put in competition with it; and one may well be contented to

finish one’s travels with having seen the noblest monument of antiquity

in Nubia and Egypt.

There are two temples at Ipsambul——one much larger than the other; but

each has a _speos_, or cavern, hewn out of the solid rock. Let us first

visit the more considerable, consecrated by Rameses II. to the sun-god

Phrah, or Osiris, whose statue is placed above the entrance door. An

area of 187 feet wide by 86 feet high is excavated from the mountain,

the sides being perfectly smooth, except where ornamented by relievos.

The façade consists of four colossal statues of Rameses II. seated, each

65 feet high, two on either side of the gateway. From the shoulder to

the tiara they measure 15 feet 6 inches; the ears are 3 feet 6 inches

long; the face 7 feet; the beard 5 feet 6 inches; the shoulders 25 feet 4

inches across. The moulding of each stony countenance is exquisite.

[Illustration: FACADE OF TEMPLE OF PHRAH-IPSAMBUL.]

The beauty of the curves is surprising in stone; the rounding of the

muscles and the flowing lines of the neck and face are executed with

great fidelity.

Between the legs of these gigantic Ramessids are placed four statues of

greatly inferior dimensions; mere pigmies compared with their colossal

neighbors, and yet considerably larger than ordinary human size. The

doorway is twenty feet high. On either side are carved some huge

hieroglyphical reliefs, while the whole façade is finished by a cornice

and row of quaintly carved figures underneath a frieze of 21 monkeys,

each eight feet high and six feet across the shoulders. Passing the

doorway you enter a vast and gloomy hall. Here is a vast and mysterious

aisle whose pillars are eight colossal giants on whom the rays of heaven

never shone. They stand erect, with hands across their stony breasts;

figures of the all-conquering Rameses, whose mitre-shaped head dresses,

each wearing in front the serpent, emblem of royal power, nearly touch

the roof. They are all perfectly alike; all carry the crosier and

flail; every face is characterized by a deep and solemn expression. How

different from the grotesque and often unclean monsters which embody

the Hindoo conception of Divine attributes! They are the very types of

conscious power, of calm and passionless intellect; as far removed from

the petty things of earth as the stars from the worm that crawls beneath

the sod.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE OF OSIRIS.]

These images of the great king are supported against enormous pillars,

cut out of the solid rock; and behind them run two gorgeous galleries,

whose walls are covered with historical bas-reliefs of battle and

victory, of conquering warriors, bleeding victims, fugitives, cities

besieged, long trains of soldiers and captives, numerous companies of

chariots, all combined in a picture of great beauty and impressive effect.

This entrance chamber is 57 feet by 52 feet. It opens into a cellar 35

feet long, 25-1/2 feet wide and 22 feet high, and is supported in the

centre by four pillars each three feet square. Its walls are embellished

by fine hieroglyphs in an excellent state of preservation. Behind is

a smaller chamber where, upon thrones of rock, are seated the three

divinities of the Egyptian trinity Ammon-Ra, Phrah and Phtah, accompanied

by Rameses the Great, here admitted on an equality with them. On either

side of the outer entrance are doors leading to rooms hewn out of solid

rock. They are six in number and each is profusely ornamented with lamps,

vases, piles of cakes and fruits and other offerings to the Gods. The

lotus is painted in every stage of its growth, and the boat is a frequent

symbol. These bas-reliefs seem to have been covered with a stucco which

was painted in various colors. The ground color of the ceiling is blue

and covered with symbolic birds. Well may Champollion exclaim: “The

temple of Ipsambul is in itself worthy a journey to Nubia;” or Lenormant

say, “It is the most gigantic conception ever begotten by the genius of

the Pharaohs.” It is a temple of Rameses II., of the nineteenth Theban

dynasty, who figures as the Sesostris of the Greeks.

Hardly less interesting is the Little Temple of Ipsambul, dedicated to

Athor, or Isis, the Egyptian Venus, by the queen of Rameses the Great.

Either side of its doorway is flanked by statues thirty feet high,

sculptured in relief on the compact mass of rock, and standing erect with

their arms by their sides. The centre figure of each three represents the

queen as Isis, her face surmounted by a moon within a cow’s horns. The

other images are intended for King Rameses himself. Beneath the right

hand of each are smaller statues representing the three sons and three

daughters of the king and queen.

A portion of the rock, measuring one hundred and eleven feet in length,

has been excavated to make room for the façade of the temple. The devices

begin on the northern side with an image of Rameses brandishing his

falchion, as if about to strike.

[Illustration: TEMPLE OF ATHOR IPSAMBUL.]

Athor, behind him, lifts her hand in compassion for the victim; Osiris,

in front, holds forth the great knife, as if to command the slaughter.

He is seated there as the judge, and decides the fate of the peoples

conquered by the Egyptian king. The next object is a colossal statue

of about thirty feet high, wrought in a deep recess of the rock: it

represents Athor standing, and two tall plumes spring from the middle of

her head-dress, with the symbolic crescent on either side. Then comes

a mass of hieroglyphics, and above them are seated the sun-god and the

hawk-headed deity Anubis. On either side of the doorway, as you pass into

the pronaos, offerings are presented to Athor,——who holds in her hand

the lotus-headed sceptre, and is surrounded with a cloud of emblems and

inscriptions. This hall is supported by six square pillars, all having

the head of Athor on the front face of their capitals; the other three

faces being occupied with sculptures, once richly painted, and still

exhibiting traces of blue, red, and yellow coloring. The shafts are

covered with hieroglyphs, and emblematical representations of Osiris,

Athor, Kneph, and other deities.

If these sacred edifices inspire a feeling of awe in the spectator, while

in ruin, what must their effect have been when their shrines contained

their mystics’ images; when the open portals revealed their sculptures

and the walls their glowing colors to the worshipping multitudes; when

the roofs shone with azure and gold; when the colossal forms represented

the deities in whom they reposed their faith; when processions of kings,

nobles and priests marched along their torch lit aisles; when incense

filled the air and the vaults resounded with the music of ten thousand

voices; when every hieroglyph and emblem had a meaning to the kneeling

votary, now forgotten or never known?

Numerous other Nubian temples bear witness to Egyptian prowess, wealth,

patience and religious sentiment. That at Derr is cut out of the solid

rock to a depth of 110 feet, and its grand entrance chamber is supported

by six columns representing Osiris. It was built in honor of the great

Rameses. At Ibrim are four rock temples, all of the time of the Theban

kings. And so the traveler up the Nile, and into the domains of far off

Nubia, is continually meeting with these vast rock temples, monuments of

the Egyptian kings on the one hand, tombs of the nobility on the other,

and worshiping halls for all.

Returning to Egypt and passing down the eastern arm of the Nile to Tanis,

or Beni-Hassan, where the Hebrews and Arabs were wont to trade with the

Egyptians, we find one of the oldest authentic monuments, except the

pyramids, and certainly the most interesting to us. It is the tomb of a

nobleman under Usurtasen II. B.C. 2366. The rich paintings on the walls

of this tomb are of inestimable value as showing the arts, trades, and

domestic, public and religious institutions of the Egyptians at this

period. They are still more valuable in an historic view, for they relate

to the arrival of a family of thirty-seven persons from the Hebrew or

Semitic nation, who had come to fix their abode on the blessed banks of

the Nile. The father of the family is represented as offering a gift to

the king. Behind him are his companions, bearded men, armed with lances,

bows and clubs. The women are dressed in the lively fashion of the Amu

tribe, to which the family belongs. The children and asses are loaded

with baggage. A companion of the party is standing by with a lyre of very

old form. The gift of the father, or patriarch, was the paint of Midian,

an article highly prized by the Egyptians. Many persons have been eager

to associate this inscription, or sculpture, with the arrival of the sons

of Jacob in Egypt, to implore the favor of Joseph; but it antedates that

event so far that there can be no possible connection between them. It

does show however that arrivals in Egypt from Arabia and Palestine, for

purposes of trade and even permanent residence, were not confined by any

means to the scriptural period.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ROCK TOMB——BENI-HASSAN.]

But where in Egypt do these wonders of monument, of sculpture, of sacred

writing, not exist? We find them everywhere, telling of a people full of

genius and the germs of all civilization. You read as you could not read

from a book, for there is no conflict of sentiment, no odd statements to

reconcile. And what do you read? That the art of writing was familiar

to priest and scribe. That they had ships, for their inscriptions show

handsome nautical designs. There are glass blowers, flax dressers,

spinners, weavers, and bales of cloth. There are potters, painters,

carpenters, and statuaries. There is a doctor attending a patient and a

herdsman physicking cattle. The hunters employ arrows, spears and the

lasso. There is the Nile full of fish and a hippopotamus among the ooze.

There is the bastinado for the men and the flogging of a seated woman.

There are games of ball and other amusements for men and women. And then

the luxuries! There are harpers, costly garments, patterns of every

design, fashions for the hair, costly spices and perfumes. They have

portrayed every type of life and business with a faithfulness which is

astonishing.

[Illustration: EGYPTIAN BRICK FIELD.]

The most mysterious of Egyptian monuments is “The Caves of the

Crocodiles,” or Grottoes of Samoun, in Upper Egypt. They are not often

visited because travelers are repelled at the outset by their difficulty

and gloom. They are filled with an incalculable number of human mummies,

and those of the crocodile, birds and reptiles. Whence they came is

not known, but, it is supposed, from Monfalout and Hermenopolis on the

opposite side of the Nile. An English traveler, M. A. Georges, penetrated

them after great trouble, and was horrified to find within the dark

grottoes the remains of a traveler who had been overcome by famine and

exhaustion. He says,

“On raising our eyes we perceived a horrid spectacle. A corpse still

covered with its skin was seated on the rounded fragment of a rock. Its

aspect was hideous. Its arms were outstretched, its head thrown back. His

neck was bent with the death agony. His emaciated body, eyes enlarged,

chin contracted, mouth twisted and open, hair erect on his head, every

feature distorted by suffering——these gave him a horrible appearance.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF GROTTOES OF SAMOUN.]

“It made one shudder; involuntarily one thought of one’s-self. His

shrunken hands dug their nails into the flesh; the chest was split open,

displaying the lungs and tracheal artery; on striking the abdomen, it

resounded hoarsely, like a cracked drum.

“Undoubtedly this man had been full of vital force when seized by death.

Undoubtedly he had lost himself in these dark galleries, and his lantern

having flickered out, he had vainly sought the track leading to the upper

air, shouting in frenzied tones which none could hear; hunger, thirst,

fatigue, terror, must have driven him nearly mad; he had seated himself

on this stone, and howled despairingly until death had mercifully come

to his relief. The warm humidity and the bituminous exhalations of the

cavern had so thoroughly interpenetrated his body, that now his skin was

black, tanned, imperishable, like that of a mummy. It was eight years

since the poor wretch had been lost.

“On quitting this spot of mournful memory, we turned to the left through

a corridor whose roof and walls were blackened by bituminous vapors, and

in which it was possible to walk upright. Thousands of bats, attracted

by the torches, assailed us with a whirr of wings, and considerably

impeded our progress. We then arrived at the most interesting part of

the grottoes: the soil, which gave way beneath our feet, was composed of

the débris of mummies and their swathings; at every step arose a black,

acrid, nauseating dust, as bitter as a compound of soot and aloes. An

enormous number of crocodiles of all sizes encumber the galleries. Some

are black, some corpulent, some gigantic, some not larger than lizards.

The human mummies and those of birds are side by side with them.” The

travelers did not reach the end of these interminable galleries. The heat

was intense, and they grew tired of sickening impressions.

The mystery of the Nile regions above Kartoum were unlocked to geography

and the scientific world more largely by Colonel Baker’s armed expedition

than by any other. We shall soon have the pleasure of following him

to Lake Albert Nyanza in company with his faithful wife, on a journey

of exploration, but before doing so let us see what he did in the

Upper Nile valley in an armed way and in the name of humanity and that

civilization of which we all are justly proud, and thus complete our

story of the wonderful river on which Egypt depends for its sustenance.

Colonel Baker, on his trip to Albert Nyanza found that at least 15,000

Arabs, subjects of the Khedive of Egypt, were engaged in the African

slave trade, with head-quarters at Kartoum, and mostly in the pay of

merchants there. They were nothing but cruel brigands, well armed and

officered, and equal to any outrage on the natives to secure slaves and

other booty. They sowed the seeds of anarchy throughout Africa, and

contributed to the suspicion, treachery, black-mailing, and every evil

that cropped out in the chiefs of the African tribes.

He determined to attack this moral cancer by actual cautery at the very

root of the evil. These brigands were cowardly, and, he thought, could

be crushed by a show of force, provided it emanated from the Khedive,

the only sovereign they acknowledge. Therefore the Khedive was asked for

authority, which he conferred, and Baker started having full power to

suppress the slave trade, to reduce the countries south of Gondokoro,

to annex them, to open navigation to the lakes under the equator, to

establish military stations, to mete out death to all opponents, to

govern all countries south of Gondokoro.

He took Lady Baker and a goodly number of English assistants along,

contracted for provisions for four years, supplied himself with money,

trinkets, tools, and a total of 36 vessels, six of which were small

steamers, to be increased to 55 vessels and 9 steamers at Kartoum. The

armed force consisted of 1,645 troops, 200 of which were cavalry, and two

batteries of artillery. The troops were of the forces of the Khedive,

half Egyptians and half natives of Soudan, the latter colored and by far

the best warriors. There is something to be admired in these Soudanese

soldiers. They are active, willing, brave and perfectly submissive to

kind discipline. They have taste, skill and are acclimated. In their

tribes they perpetuate traits which must have come down from old Egyptian

times. Among the wives, especially of chiefs a favorite head dress is

one which is supposed to reflect the appearance of the honored sphinxes,

and it is, to say the least, very becoming.

[Illustration: CHIEF’S WIFE IN SPHINX HEAD DRESS.]

Every precaution was taken to have all assemble at Kartoum, but the

expedition was not popular in Egypt, the boats could not be gotten over

the Nile cataracts, and months rolled away before the Colonel got ready

to start. The fleet of thirty-three vessels in which he did start were

nearly all prepared at Kartoum. On these he embarked 1400 men for his

voyage of 1450 miles to Gondokoro. His cavalry was dismissed as useless,

and his body guard was made up of a corps of picked men, forty-six

in all, half of whom were white and half black, that there might be

no conspiracy among them, and that the one might stimulate the other.

This guard was put into perfect drill, armed with the Snider rifle, and

named “The Forty Thieves,” on account of the propensity they at first

manifested. They afterwards became models of military discipline.

[Illustration: THE FORTY THIEVES.]

On February 8, 1870, two small steamers and thirty-one sailing vessels

started up the White Nile from Kartoum, with 850 soldiers and six months’

provisions. The rest were to follow as fast as transports could be

supplied. In five days they were at Fashoda, in the Shillook country, 118

miles from Kartoum. On February 16 they reached the mouth of the Sobat,

684 miles from Kartoum. This stream was then sending down a volume of

muddy water much larger than the White Nile itself.

They were now in the region of immense flats and boundless marshes

through which the White Nile soaks and winds for 750 miles from

Gondokoro. The river proper is almost wholly obstructed by compressed

vegetation known as “sponge,” and at points this is so thick as to defy

the passage of boats without cutting. But the slavers had discovered

another route through an arm or bayou called the Bahr Giraffe, and this

Baker determined to take. The Bahr Giraffe proved to be winding, but deep

enough at first. Like the White Nile, its waters and banks abounded in

game, the first specimen of the larger kind of which proved to be a lion,

which bounded off to cover on the approach of the boats.

By February 25, they were in a mass of floating vegetation through which

a canal had to be cut. These obstructions now became frequent and could

only be pierced by means of canals and dams. On March 5, the Colonel was

roused from a nap on the steamer’s deck by a shock, followed by a cry

“The ship’s sinking!” A hippopotamus had charged the steamer from the

bottom, and then had attacked her small boat, cutting two holes through

her iron plates with his tusks. The diah-beeah was only kept from sinking

by the aid of the steamer’s pumps.

Obstructions became thicker and canal cutting almost continuous. The men

got sick with fever. The grass swarmed with snakes and poisonous ants.

The black troops proved hardier and more patient than the Egyptians.

There were some ducks but not enough to supply meat for all. The Colonel

discovered a hippopotamus some distance off and ordered a boat to pull

for him. He disappeared on its approach, but soon reappeared about thirty

yards away. The Colonel planted a bullet in his head. The animal sank,

but was found floating near the fleet the next morning. The men speedily

cut him up and were delighted with their supply of fresh meat.

On March 21, while the men were digging out the steamers which had become

blocked by the floating masses of vegetation, they felt something

struggling beneath their feet. Scrambling away, they beheld the head of

a crocodile protruding through the sudd. The black soldiers, armed with

swords and bill-hooks, attacked him, and soon his flesh gladdened the

cooking pots of the Soudan regiment.

[Illustration: A CROCODILE MOBBED IN THE SUDD.]

In thirteen days the fleet only made twelve miles through the sudd,

although a thousand men were at work all the time cutting and tugging.

The Egyptians fell sick by scores, and many died. On March 27, another

hippopotamus was killed, which gave the men a supply of fresh meat.

Several buffaloes were also killed.

After having wasted fifty-one days since leaving Kartoum, it was

discovered that the Bahr Giraffe became too shallow for further venture.

Return was therefore compulsory, much to the disgust of the officers but

to the great satisfaction of the troops. The whole season was lost, for

no other route was practicable till there should come a flush of waters.

And the return was hardly less difficult than the upward progress. The

canals they had cut were filled with vegetable masses and had to be

re-opened. But they finally reached the White Nile again and in time

to intercept a Turkish slave party who had been raiding the Shillooks.

Seventy-one slaves were found closely stowed away in their boat and

eighty-four concealed on shore, under guard. These were liberated, and

both slaves and captors informed that slavery had been abolished by the

Khedive’s order.

The party sailed down the White Nile to its junction with the Sobat and

there, on high, hard ground, prepared a permanent camp——really a little

town with houses and workshops. The acquaintance of the Shillooks was

made and cordial relations established. They brought their vegetables to

camp to sell, and proved very kind and useful. But they had been greatly

demoralized by the Arab kidnappers, as had all the tribes on both sides

of the river.

Soon after they were stationed here a sail was observed bearing down the

river. It proved to be that of the boat from which the slaves had been

liberated up near the mouth of the Bahr Giraffe. It was ordered to stop

and found to be loaded with corn. But there was an awkward smell about

the forecastle. An officer drew a ramrod from a rifle and began to poke

the corn. A cry came from beneath and a wooly head protruded. A woman

was dragged forth by the arm. Then the planking was broken and the hold

found full of slaves, packed like sardines in a barrel. Orders were given

to immediately unload the vessel. One hundred and fifty slaves, many of

them manacled, were taken out of that small, stench-ridden place. The

slaves were released and the officers and crew of the boat put in irons.

The former consisted of men and women. All were given freedom papers,

and allowed the privilege of returning home. Those who did not wish to

go might remain and they would be treated well. The women might marry

the soldiers if they chose. Strange to say they all selected soldier

husbands, and there would have been a grand wedding day after the African

fashion, if Colonel Baker had not limited the engagements to a few at a

time.

[Illustration: RELEASE OF THE SLAVES.]

Land was cleared around the encampment, and all hands kept to work at

mechanics, farming, hunting, etc. Meanwhile Colonel Baker went to Kartoum

with his steamers and a fleet of sail boats for a supply of corn. He then

returned and prospected up the White Nile only to find it hopelessly

obstructed, unless a special expedition were sent up to cut away “the

sponge” and other vegetable obstructions. He also found out that most

of the leaders of the very brigands he was sent out to capture were in

league with the home authorities, and that they had territory assigned

them in which to operate, for which privilege they paid good round sums

annually. He was therefore in the dilemma of openly serving a government

which was secretly opposing him.

[Illustration: NIGHT ATTACK ON THE BOATS BY A HIPPOPOTAMUS.]

By December 1, 1870, at which time the Upper Nile would be in flood

and the season propitious, he expected to start again from his camp at

Tewfikeeyah for Gondokoro. But it was December 11 before his full fleet

of twenty-six vessels got off. Not daring to risk the White Nile, he

turned off again through the Bahr-Giraffe, which he found more open.

Nevertheless canals had to be frequently cut through the vegetable

obstructions, and nearly the same incidents as the year before were

repeated. When they arrived at the shallows, there was not water enough

and the boats had to be dragged over the bars, after discharging part of

their cargoes.

Finally the White Nile was reached again, and all were thankful. Their

last adventure in the Bafr Giraffe was with a hippopotamus which, in the

night, dashed furiously on the small boats. The zinc boat was loaded with

flesh. With one blow he demolished this. In another instant he seized

the dingy in his immense jaws, and the crash of splintered wood told of

its complete destruction. He then attacked, with a blind fury, the steam

launch, and received shot after shot. Retreating for a time, he returned

to the attack with even greater fury, when he received a ball in the

head which keeled him over. He was evidently a character of the worst

description for his body was literally covered with scars and wounds

received in fights with bulls of his own species.

By March 10, all the vessels were afloat on the White Nile, and their

further upward journey began. In a month (April 15) they were all

safely at Gondokoro, 330 miles from Bahr Giraffe junction and 1400

from Kartoum. Gondokoro was much broken up and nearly depopulated. The

Austrian Missionaries were gone and the place given over to raiders and

kidnappers. The Bari tribes, great fighters and hunters, were in the

employ of the Arab slave dealers, and Gondokoro was their headquarters.

They received Colonel Baker coldly, for though they did not want to be

slaves themselves, they had no objections to lending their aid to the

Arab brigands to take slaves from other tribes, provided they were well

paid for it.

A military station was founded at Gondokoro, on high ground, and as

the river was now too low to proceed further, Baker’s army went into

permanent quarters. Ground was planted in vegetables and corn, houses

were built, boats were repaired, and an air of business pervaded the

place. The Bari never fully reconciled themselves to Baker’s presence,

preferring no government at all. They are a pastoral people, possessing

large herds of cattle and living well. The men are tall and powerful, and

the women not unprepossessing. But they have been so badly demoralized

by the slave dealers as to be hostile to white men and to every form

of restraint. They were clearly in with the brigands to starve Baker’s

expedition out and force it to return to Kartoum.

[Illustration: A SOUDAN WARRIOR.]

Baker formally annexed all this country to Egypt, and promulgated a code

of laws for its government. This brought him into actual war with all

the Bari tribes and collisions were frequent, in which the natives were

generally worsted. There were enemies in the water too, for the Nile at

Gondokoro literally swarms with crocodiles. One of these animals tore an

arm off a sailor, and another seized and devoured a washer woman who went

into the water to do her washing. Many were killed by the men. Once the

Colonel shot a very large one, measuring twelve feet six inches long. It

was supposed to be dead and the men, having fastened a rope around its

neck, began to pull it up the bank. It suddenly came to life and opened

its huge jaws. The men ran off in fright, and could not be induced to

return till another bullet was lodged in its skull.

The “Forty Thieves” were now a most efficient part of Colonel Baker’s

forces. The Egyptians had been gradually eliminated, so that now nearly

all were blacks from the Soudan. They had ceased to steal, and were

models of bravery and soldierly drill and obedience. They became good

shots and grew to know their superiority over the native spearmen. The

entire force at Gondokoro numbered 1100 soldiers and 400 sailors. They

were constantly menaced by the Bari, and never slept except under guard.

At length the various hostile tribes formed a coalition and, inflamed

by the slave dealers, made a combined night attack. They were received

so hotly that they soon dispersed, with the loss of many men. In this

instance the fire of the “Forty Thieves” was most effective, and the

natives declared they were more afraid of them than all the rest of the

army. Watching from this time on was unceasing, and various offensive

expeditions were fitted out whose business was to subdue the tribes by

piece meal and make them acquainted with the new authorities and with the

fact that dealing in slaves could no longer be tolerated on the White

Nile nor in any country which might be annexed to Egypt.

Baker had found out to his regret that he could not establish monthly

boat service between Gondokoro and Kartoum, as he had intended, owing to

the formidable obstacles in the White Nile. Disease carried off his men

and horses. A drought blighted the gardens and fields around his camp. By

October, 1871, a conspiracy to desert and return to Kartoum cropped out,

which involved all his troops except the “Forty Thieves.” To prevent

this the vessels were run up the river on a prospecting tour. They made

the discovery that corn in plenty existed in the Bari regions beyond. But

it could not be bought. Whom these cunning natives could not drive out

they were bound to starve out. The corn had therefore to be taken. It was

a great relief to the garrison to know that they were not far from a land

of abundance.

[Illustration: NIGHT ATTACK ON GONDOKORO STATION.]

Still Colonel Baker thought it prudent to weed out his discontented

forces and especially to get rid of the long list of women, children and

sick who were now a burden. He therefore sent thirty vessels back to

Kartoum in November. Besides a goodly supply of corn, they took along

1100 persons, leaving him with a force of about 550 soldiers and sailors.

With this small force he was left to subdue hostile tribes, suppress

the slave trade and annex the country. It seemed to him that the slave

dealers had gained their point and defeated the object of the expedition.

[Illustration: ELEPHANTS IN TROUBLE.]

Yet he persisted. Small land and river expeditions were sent out in all

directions for the purpose of subjugating natives and crushing slave

parties. It was on one of these that a herd of eleven bull elephants was

seen from the deck of the vessel. Men were landed who surrounded them

and drove them into the river. They swam to the opposite side, but the

banks were high and the water deep. They were within rifle range from

the vessel, and began tearing down the banks with their tusks in order

to climb up. Fire was opened on them, which kept them in a state of

confusion. At one time several mounted the bank, but it gave way and

precipitated them all into the water. At last one got on firm ground and

exposed his flank. A ball struck him behind the shoulder which sent him

into the river. His struggles brought him within twenty yards of the

vessel. Another bullet went crashing through his brain and despatched

him. Another one was killed before the ammunition was exhausted. The

carcasses of both became the prize of the men, and strange to say, many

of the hostile natives, attracted to the spot by the firing, professed to

be very friendly in order that they might share the rich elephant steaks.

They preferred this meat to that of their own cattle, of which they had

plenty.

By November, Colonel Baker called in all his expeditions. He had

established peace throughout a wide section, and set free the slaves

captured by several large parties. The war with the Baris was virtually

over. But the slave dealers had only changed their base of operations.

They had gone further south and would there stir up the same trouble they

had incited among the Bari.

When all had re-assembled at Gondokoro, preparations were set on foot for

a movement further south, the general course to be the line of the White

Nile. While these were going on, those who had leisure devoted themselves

to hunting, and studying the animal, mineral and vegetable resources.

It was a country of great natural wealth. Iron and salt abounded.

Tobacco, beans, corn, hemp and cotton could easily be raised. Nearly

every tropical fruit was found in abundance. There was good fishing in

the rivers, and plenty of ducks and other small game in the lakes and

ponds. Every now and then the hunters had an adventure with hippopotami,

whose attacks were always dangerous. Elephants were very plenty in all

the region about Gondokoro. They saw them singly and in herds, and had

fine opportunity to study their habits. They are fond of the fruit of the

“Keglik” tree, which resembles a date. If the tree be small they quickly

tear it up by the roots and eat the fruit at leisure. If it be large——and

they frequently grow to a diameter of three feet——the animal butts his

forehead against the tree till it quivers in every branch and showers

its fruit down upon the delighted animal.

[Illustration: SHAKING FRUIT.]

On January 23, 1872, the expedition was off, a garrison having been

left at Gondokoro. Its final destination was the Unyoro country, just

north of Victoria Nyanza and east of Albert Nyanza. We will hear of

all these names again and become familiar with them. The expedition

started under excellent auspices, except as to numbers. The “Forty

Thieves” were staunch and brave, and all the Sudani soldiers were in

good spirits. The Colonel’s light steamer led the way, followed by the

heavier vessels. This gave him fine opportunity to prospect the country

and enjoy occasional hunts. The mountains of Regiaf abut on the White

Nile, about fifty or sixty miles above Gondokoro. In their midst is a

fine cataract and much beautiful scenery. The geological formation is

very peculiar. One curiosity was noted in the shape of an immense Syenite

slab, forty-five feet long and as many wide, resting like a table on a

hard clay pedestal. This stone is reverenced by the Baris, and they think

that any person who sleeps under it will surely die.

[Illustration: TABLE ROCK AT REGIAF.]

The vessels could not go beyond the Regiaf cataract, and a journey

overland to the Laboré country was projected. But all attempts to employ

native carriers failed. The soldiers of Baker’s own force refused to

draw the loaded carts. There was nothing left but to organize a small,

light-armed and light-loaded force, and try the land journey in this way.

This force started in February. The guide was old Lokko, a rainmaker of

Laboré. Mrs. Baker went along, accompanied by a train of female carriers.

They drove a herd of 1000 cows and 500 sheep. The country was thickly

populated and teeming with plenty. The Laboré country was reached, after

a sixty mile tramp, and they were in the midst of friends——the hated

and hostile Baris having been left behind. Carriers could now be had in

abundance and the journeys were rapid to the Asua, the largest tributary

of the White Nile.

[Illustration: NATIVE DANCE.]

Here was a grand country. There were high mountains and fertile valleys,

fine forests and plenty of game. The march now lay toward Fatiko, the

capital of the Shooli. It lies at the base of the Shooa mountains,

amid the most picturesque scenery, 85 miles from Laboré and 185 from

Gondokoro. A grand entry into the town was made. The “Forty Thieves”

and the rest of the troops were put into complete marching order. The

band was ordered to play. There was a kind of dress parade and sham

fight, mingled with drum and bugle sounds and the blare of the band. The

manœuvres pleased the natives very much. They are fond of music, and as

the troops reached a camping spot, the women of the village clustered

around, assumed dancing attitudes, and in nature’s costume indulged in

one of their characteristic fandanges, the old women proving even more

inveterate dancers than the young.

Baker established a military station at Fatiko, leaving a detachment

of 100 out of his 212 men. On March 18, 1872, he started for Unyoro.

Though the intermediate country is rich in vegetation, it is uninhabited

except by tropical animals, and is a common hunting ground for the tribes

on either side. The Unyoros live east and north of Victoria Nyanza

Lake. They are a numerous people, but not so stalwart as the Laborés

or Schooli. Their soil is rich, and tobacco grows to an immense size.

Their town of Masindi, twenty miles east of lake Albert Nyanza, whose

waters can be seen from the summits of the mountains, was reached by

the expedition on April 25. The country was placed under the protection

of the Khedive, and the chief Kabba-Rega, son of Kamrasi, was made

acquainted with the fact that hereafter slavery was prohibited.

This tribe had been at times heavily raided by slave hunters, and

their pens in different parts of the country were even then full of

captives——probably 1000 in all. The natives themselves, as is usual with

African tribes, only saw harm in this when the captives were of their own

tribe. “Steal from everybody but from _me_,” seems to be their idea of

the eighth commandment.

The expedition remained for some time in Masindi and attempted to

establish a permanent military station. But the slave hunters seemed to

have more power over the natives than Baker with his drilled forces and

show of Egyptian authority. The chief and his subjects grew suspicious

and finally hostile. They attacked Baker, and the result of the fight

was their defeat and the destruction of their town by fire. Such an

atmosphere was not congenial to peace and regular authority. Therefore a

retreat was ordered toward Rionga on the Victoria Nile. But how to make

it? Every surrounding was hostile. Porters could be had with difficulty.

Worst of all, provisions were exhausted. At this critical moment Mrs.

Baker came to the rescue with a woman’s wit and prudence. She had been

laying up a reserve of flour when it was plenty, and now she brought

forth what was deemed a supply for several days.

[Illustration: ATTACK BY AMBUSCADE.]

On June 14, 1872, the station at Masindi was destroyed, and the

expedition started on its backward journey amid hostile demonstrations by

the natives. The journey was almost like a running battle. Day attacks

were frequent, and scarcely a night passed without an attempt at a

surprise. The “Forty Thieves” became the main-stay of the expedition.

They were ever on the alert, and proved very formidable with their trusty

Snider rifles. They grew to know where ambuscades were to be expected,

and were quick to dispose themselves so as to make defence complete or

first attack formidable. They never fired without an object, and only

when they had dead aim. And they knew the value of cover against the

lances of the enemy. Their losses were therefore small, while they played

havoc with the enemy, seldom failing to rout them, or to conduct an

honorable retreat.

At length they struck the Victoria Nile at Foweera, fifteen miles below

Rionga Islands. Here they built a stockade, and began to build canoes

with which to cross the river which was 500 yards wide. Word was sent up

to Rionga. The chief came and proved friendly. He informed the Colonel of

the plot between Kabba Rega and the Arab slave hunters to drive him out

of the country, and declared that he would be faithful to the Khedive’s

authority. Whereupon Baker declared him chief instead of Kabba, and

endowed him with full authority over the natives, in the name of the

Khedive. Unyoro thus had a new king. He was left with a complement of

Baker’s small army as a guard and nucleus, and the Colonel started down

the river in canoes for his post at Fatiko. His small garrison, left

there, received him gladly, but scarcely was the reception over when an

attack was made upon it by the slave hunters. They were well prepared and

determined. From behind huts and other places of safety they began to

pick off the soldiers, and a charge of the “Forty Thieves” was ordered.

It was brilliantly executed, and resulted in the dislodgment of the enemy

and their pursuit for many miles with great slaughter and the capture of

many prisoners, among whom were some 135 of their slaves.

This battle resulted in the driving out of Abou Saood, the leader of the

slave hunters, and the man who had rented the whole country from the

authorities at Kartoum for the purpose of brigandage. He went to Cairo

to complain of the treatment he had received at the hands of Baker and

his party, and actually circulated the report that he and Mrs. Baker had

been killed on the head-waters of the Nile.

[Illustration: DRIVING A PRAIRIE WITH FIRE.]

A strong fortification was built at Fatiko, which was finished by

December, and reinforcements were sent for from Gondokoro. It was the

hunting season, and many expeditions were organized for the capture

of game, in which the natives joined with a hearty good will. Besides

the rifle in skilled hands, the net of the natives for the capture of

antelope and smaller game was much relied on, and once all enjoyed the

magnificent sight of a tropical prairie on fire, with its leaping game of

royal proportions, to be brought down almost at will, provided the hunter

was not demoralized with its number and size.

[Illustration: AFFECTIONATE RESULTS OF FREEDOM.]

While at Fatiko, an embassy came from King Mtesa of the Uganda

professing friendship and offering an army of 6000 men for,——he did not

know what, but to punish any natives who might appear to be antagonistic,

especially Kabba Rega.

By March, 1873, reinforcements from Gondokoro arrived in pitiable plight.

Baker’s forces were now 620 strong. He re-inforced his various military

stations. Then he liberated the numerous slaves the upward troops had

taken from the slave hunters. Most of these were women and back in their

native country. They accepted liberty with demonstrations of joy, rushed

to the officers and men on whom they lavished hugs and kisses, and danced

away in a delirium of excitement.

Colonel Baker’s time would expire in April. Therefore he timed his return

to Gondokoro so as to be there by the first of the month, 1873. The whole

situation was changed. There was scarcely a vestige of the neat station

he had left. The slave dealers had carried things with a high hand, and

had demoralized the troops. Filth and disorder had taken the place of

cleanliness and discipline. Things were put to rights by May, and on the

25 of that month Baker started down the Nile, leaving his “Forty Thieves”

as part of the Gondokoro garrison.

On June 29, Colonel Baker, Mrs. Baker and the officers of this celebrated

expedition arrived at Kartoum, and reached Cairo on August 24, whence

they sailed for England.

He concludes his history thus:——“The first steps in establishing

the authority of a new government among tribes hitherto savage and

intractable were of necessity accompanied by military operations. War

is inseparable from annexation, and the law of force, resorted to in

self-defence, was absolutely indispensable to prove the superiority of

the power that was eventually to govern. The end justified the means.

“At the commencement of the expedition I had felt that the object of the

enterprise——‘the suppression of the slave trade’——was one for which I

could confidently ask a blessing.

“A firm belief in Providential support has not been unrewarded. In the

midst of sickness and malaria we had strength; from acts of treachery we

were preserved unharmed; in personal encounters we remained unscathed. In

the end, every opposition was overcome: hatred and subordination yielded

to discipline and order. A paternal government extended its protection

through lands hitherto a field for anarchy and slavery. The territory

within my rule was purged from the slave trade. The natives of the great

Shooli tribe, relieved from their oppressors, clung to the protecting

government. The White Nile, for a distance of 1,600 miles from Kartoum to

Central Africa, was cleansed from the abomination of a traffic which had

hitherto sullied its waters.

[Illustration: GORDON AS MANDARIN.]

“Every cloud had passed away, and the term of my office expired in peace

and sunshine. In this result, I humbly traced God’s blessing.”

Baker’s picture is much overdrawn. The situation in the Soudan has never

been promising. In 1874, Colonel James Gordon was made Governor General

of all these equatorial provinces which Baker had annexed to Egypt.

Gordon was a brave enthusiast, who had acquired the title of “Chinese”

Gordon, because he had organized an army at Shanghai, and, as Brigadier,

helped the Chinese Government to put down a dangerous rebellion. He

had received the order of Mandarin, had infinite faith in himself, and

a wonderful faculty for controlling the unruly elements in oriental

countries. He did some wonderful work in the Soudan in suppressing the

slave-trade, disarming the Bashi-Bazouks, reconciling the natives, and

preventing the Government at Cairo from parcelling out these equatorial

districts to Arab slave dealers. He worked hard, organized quite an army,

and had a power in the Soudan which was imperial, and which he turned to

good uses. But in 1879, he differed with the Khedive and resigned. Then

England and France deposed the Khedive, Ismial, and set up Tewfik, under

pretext of financial reform. But these two countries could not agree as

to a financial policy. France withdrew, and left England to work out the

Egyptian problem. The problem is all in a nutshell. English ascendancy

in Egypt is deemed necessary to protect the Suez Canal and her water

way to India. For this she bombarded and reduced Alexandria in 1882 and

established a suzerainty over Egypt——Turkey giving forced assent, and

France refusing to join in the mix.

The new Khedive was helpless——purposely so. England planted within Egypt

an army of occupation and took virtual directorship of her institutions.

But the provinces all around, especially those newly annexed by

Baker, revolted. Their Moslem occupants would not acknowledge English

interference and sovereignty. Soudan was in rebellion both east and west

of the Nile. England sent several small armies toward the interior and

fought many doubtful battles. At length the project of reducing the

Soudan was given over. But how to get the garrisons out of the leading

strongholds in safety became a great problem. That at Kartoum was the

largest, numbering several hundred, with a large contingent of women and

children. It would be death for any of these garrisons to leave their

fortifications and try boats down the Nile, or escape by camel back

across the desert. Yet England was committed to the duty of relieving

them.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF GORDON.]

The rebellion was under the lead of the Mahdi, a Moslem prophet, who

claimed to be raised up to save his people and religion. His followers

were numerous and desperate. Gordon thought the old influence he had

acquired over these people when Governor General of the Soudan, would

avail him for the purpose of getting the forlorn garrisons away in

safety. He was therefore re-appointed Governor General in 1884, and

started with Colonel Stewart for Kartoum. There they were besieged for

ten months by the Mahdi’s troops, and there Gordon was killed (January

27, 1885) by the enemy, and all his garrison surrendered or were killed.

The English sent an army of 8,000 men up the Nile to rescue Gordon, and

part of it got nearly to Kartoum, when word of the sad fate that had

befallen the garrison reached it. The expedition retreated, and since

then the Soudan and Upper Nile have been given over to the old Arab and

slave stealing element.

SOURCES OF THE NILE.

By reversing the map of North America——turning it upside down——you get

a good river map of Africa. The Mississippi, rising in a lake system

and flowing into the gulf of Mexico, becomes the Nile flowing into the

Mediterranean——both long water-ways. The St. Lawrence, rising in and

draining the most magnificent lake system in the world, from Huron to

Ontario, will represent the Congo, rising in and draining a lake system

which may prove to be of equal extent and beauty. Both are heavy,

voluminous streams, full of rapids and majestic falls. The Columbia River

will represent the Zambesi, flowing into the Indian Ocean.

Civilized man has, perhaps, known the African Continent the longest,

yet he knows it least. Its centre has been a mystery to him since the

earliest ages. If the Egyptian geographer traced the first chart, and the

astronomer there first noted the motion of sun, moon and stars; if on the

Nile the first mariner tried his bark on water; it was but yesterday that

the distant and hidden sources of the great stream were revealed, and it

is around these sources that the geographer and naturalist have now the

largest field for discovery, and in their midst that the traveller and

hunter have the finest fields for romance and adventure.

The Mississippi has in three centuries become as familiar as the Rhine.

The Nile, known always, has ever nestled its head in Africa’s unknown

Lake Region, safe because of mangrove swamp and arid waste. But now

that the secret of its sources is out, and with it the fact of a high

and delightful inner Africa, full of running streams and far stretching

lakes, of rich tropical verdure and abundant animal life, is the dream a

foolish one that here are the possibilities of an empire whose commerce,

agriculture, wealth and enlightenment shall make it as powerful and

bright as its past has been impotent and dark?

We have known Africa under the delusion that it was a desert, with a

fringe of vegetation on the sea coast and in the valley of the Nile.

“Africs burning sands” and her benighted races are the beginning and end

of our school thoughts of the “Dark Continent.” True, her Sahara is the

most unmitigated desert in the world, running from the Atlantic Ocean

clear to the Tigris in Asia——for the Red Sea is only a gulf in its midst.

True, there is another desert in the far South, almost as blank. These,

with their drifting sands, long caravans, ghastly skeletons, fierce

Bedouin wanderers, friendly oases, have furnished descriptions well

calculated to interest and thrill. But they are by no means the Africa of

the future. They are as the shell of an egg, whose life and wonder are in

the centre.

There are many old stories of African exploration. One is to the effect

that a Phœnician vessel, sent out by Pharaoh Necho, left the Red

Sea and in three years appeared at the Straits of Gibraltar, having

circumnavigated the Continent. But it required the inducement of

commercial gain to fix its boundaries exactly, to give it place on the

map of the world. Not until a pathway to the east became a commercial

necessity, and a short “North West Passage” a brilliant hope, did the

era of Arctic adventure begin. The same necessity, and the same hope for

a “South East Passage,” led the Portuguese to try all the western coast

of Africa for a short cut to the Orient. For seventy years they coasted

in vain, till in 1482 Diaz rounded the “Cape of Storms,” afterwards

called Cape of Good Hope. Twelve years later Vasco de Gama ran the first

European vessel into the ports of India.

The first permanent stream found by the Portuguese on going down the

Atlantic, or west, coast of Africa was the Senegal River. They thought

it a western outlet of the Nile. Here Europe first saw that luxuriant,

inter-tropical Africa which differed so much from the Africa of

traditions and school books. They knew that something else than a sandy

waste was necessary to support a river like the Senegal. They had been

used to seeing and reading of the tawny Bedouin wanderers, but south

of this river they found a black, stout, well made people, who in

contradistinction to the thin, tawny, short Moors of the desert, became

Black Moors——“black-a-moors.” And in contrast with the dry, sandy,

treeless plains of Sahara they actually found a country verdant, woody,

fertile and rolling.

Unhappily the wrongs of the negro began with his first contact with

Europeans. The Portuguese took him home as a specimen. He then became a

slave. The moral sense of Europe was still medieval. Her maritime nations

fastened like leeches on the west coast of Africa and sucked her life

blood. Millions of her children were carried off to Brazil, the West

Indies, the Spanish Main, and the British colonies in North America and

elsewhere. Much as we abhor the slave system of Africa as carried on at

present by Turkish dealers, it is no more inhuman than that practiced for

three hundred years by the Christian nations of Europe.

This slave trade was fatal to discovery and research in Africa, such as

was warranted by the knowledge which the Portuguese brought, and which

is now warranted, and being realized too, by the recent revelations of

Stanley, Livingstone and others. The slaver could not, because he dared

not, venture far from his rendezvous on the river or in the lagoon where

his victims were collected. He kept his haunts a secret, and closed

the doors on all who would be likely to interfere with his gains. Not

until slavery received its death blow among civilized nations did they

begin to set permanent feet, in a spirit of scientific and christian

inquiry, on the interior soil of Africa, and to map out its blank spaces

with magnificent lakes and rivers. Then began to come those stirring

narratives of travel by Mungo Park, Landers and Clapperton, who tracked

the course of the Niger River. Then began that northern march of sturdy

and permanent Dutch and English colonists who are carrying their

cultivation and civilization from the Southern Cape to the Kalihari

Desert, the southern equivalent of the Sahara. Then also a Liberian Free

State became possible, founded and ruled by the children of those who had

been ruthlessly stolen from their happy equatorial homes and sold into

bondage in the United States.

Between the two sterile tracts of Africa lies the real Continent. All

the coast lands are a shell. Egypt is but a strip on either side the

Nile. Central Africa——the Lake regions which feed the Nile, Congo and

Zambesi——is a great and grand section, where nature has been prodigal

in all her gifts, and which invites a civilization as unique and strong

as its physical features. We may wonder at the strange things revealed

by Arctic research, but here are unrivalled chains of lake and river

communication, and powerful states with strange peoples and customs, of

which the last generation never dreamed. No spot of all the earth invites

to such adventure as this, and none profiteth so much in the revelations

which add to science and which may be turned to account in commerce and

the progress of civilization.

We have read the roll of names rendered immortal by efforts to reach the

two Poles of the earth. Africa’s list of explorers contains the names of

Livingstone, Gordon, Cameron, Speke, Grant, Burton, Baker, Schweinfurth,

Stanley, Kirk, Van der Decken, Elton, Pinto, Johnston, and others, some

of whom have laid down their lives in the cause of science, and every one

recalling memories of gigantic difficulties grappled with, of dangers

boldly encountered, of sufferings bravely borne, of great achievements

performed, and all within the space of twenty years.

Before entering these Lake Regions of Africa to see what they contain,

it is due to the past to recall the fact that an old chart of the

African Continent was published at Rome in 1591, which contains a

system of equatorial lakes and rivers. It shows the Blue Nile coming

out of Abyssinia, and the White Nile taking its rise in two great lakes

under the equator——the Victoria Nyanza of Speke, and the Albert Nyanza

of Baker. Due south from Albert Nyanza is another lake which is the

equivalent of Tanganyika, and this is not only connected with the Congo

but with the Nile and Zambesi. Cameron and Stanley have both shown that

Tanganyika sends its surplus waters, if any it has, to the Congo, and

Livingstone has proven that the head waters of these two mighty rivers

are intimately connected. Is this ancient map a happy guess, or does it

present facts which afterwards fell into oblivion? Ere the slave trade

put its ban between the coast traders and the dwellers of the interior,

ere Portuguese influence ceased in Abyssinia, and the missions of the

Congo left off communications with Rome, did these unknown regions yield

their secrets to the then existing civilization? May not this geographic

scrap, dug from among the rubbish of the Vatican library, be the sole

relic now extant of a race of medieval explorers the fame of whose

adventures has fallen dumb, and whose labors have to be gone over again?

The map of Africa, used in our school days, had a blank centre. No

geographer had soiled its white expanse with lines and figures. It was

the “happy hunting ground” of conjecture and fancy. The Zambesi and Congo

were short stumps of rivers, with perhaps a dotted line to tell what was

not known. When two traders——the Pombeiros——passed from Angola on the

west to the Pacific, in the beginning of the present century, and wrote

how they had crossed a hundred rivers, visited the courts of powerful

negro kings, traversed countries where the people had made considerable

progress in the industries and arts, their story, like that of other

pioneers, was discredited and their information treated with contemptuous

neglect.

But about thirty years ago the modern world was startled and gratified

with its first glimpse at the Lake Regions of Africa. In 1849,

Livingstone, Oswell and Murray, after weary marching across the Kalihari,

or southern, desert, stood on the margin of Lake Ngami, the most

southerly and first discovered of the great chain of equatorial lakes.

They expected to find only a continuation of desert sands and desert

hardships, but, lo! a mighty expanse of waters breaks on their vision,

worth more as a discovery than a dozen nameless tribes or rivers. What

could it mean? Was this the key to that mysterious outpour of rivers

which, flowing north, east, and west, blended their waters with the

Mediterranean, the Pacific and Atlantic? The discoverer could go no

further then, but fancy was excited with the prospect of vague and

limitless possibilities and speculation became active in every scientific

centre. Back again into the wilderness the discoverer is drawn, and a

score of others plunge into the unknown to share his fame.

From the discovery of Ngami, a broad sheet into which the Cubango, south

of the Zambesi and parallel with it, expands ere it plunges into the

great central Salt Pan (a Great Salt Lake), may be dated the revival of

modern curiosity in the secrets of the African Continent.

In the Portuguese colonies of Abyssinia, there were rumors that a great

lake existed north of the Zambesi, called Maravi or Nyassa. Its outflow

was unknown, and the theory was that it was one of a long chain which

fed the Nile. They thought no other stream was worthy of such a source,

but they did not ask, whence then the mightier volumes that pour through

the Congo and Zambesi? Others said the Nile finds ample sources in the

“Mountains of the Moon.” Nobody had seen these, but old Ptolemy, the

geographer, had said so two thousand years ago, and hundreds of years

before, Herodotus had written, in obedience to the dictates of two

Egyptian priests, that “two conical hills, Crophi and Mophi, divided the

unfathomable waters of the Nile from those which ran into Ethiopia.”

This is all the information we had of the sources of the Nile down to

1863——at least of the White, or Eastern, branch of the Nile. Then it was

that Speke and Grant, coming from the south, and Baker following the

valley of the river toward the equator, almost met on the spot which

contains its true sources. Poor Livingstone could not be made to see the

merit of their discovery. He clung to the story of Herodotus, amplified

by that of Ptolemy, which fixed the head of the great river in two lakes

some ten degrees south of the Equator. Livingstone believed that the high

water-shed between the Zambesi and Congo would pass for the Mountains

of the Moon, and that in the Lualaba, flowing northward (the Lualaba

afterwards turned out to be the Congo, as Stanley showed) he had the

track of the true Nile. Following this will-o-the-wisp into the swamps of

Lake Bangweolo, he met a lonely and lingering death.

To look on the sources of the Nile was ever a wish and dream. The

conquerors of Egypt, at whatever time and of whatever nation, longed

to unravel the problem of its fountains. In the days when a settled

population extended far into Nubia and a powerful state flourished at

Meroë, near the junction of the White and Blue Nile, the tramp of armed

hosts in search of the “mythical fountains,” favorite haunt of Jove

himself when he wished seclusion, often resounded in the deep African

interior. Sesostris, the first king who patronized map making, made

attempts to discover these springs. Alexander the Great, Cambyses the

Persian, and the Roman Cæsars, were inspired with the same wish. Julius

Cæsar said he would give up civil war could he but look on the sources of

the Nile. Nero sent out a vast exploring party who told of cataracts and

marshes which compelled their return. These expeditions were formidable.

They returned empty handed as to science, but generally loaded with

spoils of conquest. The idea of a solitary explorer, with his life in his

hand and good will toward all in his heart, encountering all the perils

and privations of African travel for pure love of knowledge, is wholly a

modern conception.

Let mention be made here of Ismail Pasha, ex-viceroy of Egypt. To the

practices of an oriental despot he added the spirit of a man of modern

science. To him, more than to any other man, do we owe a complete

solution of the mystery of the Nile. He plunged Egypt into inextricable

debt, he ground his people with taxes, but he introduced to them the

light of western knowledge, he granted the concessions which built

the Suez Canal, he sought out and annexed the sources of the Nile.

For twenty years European pioneers and explorers, in his pay or under

his protection, worked their way southward, mapping lakes and rivers,

founding settlements, capturing slave gangs, until the entire Nile Valley

either acknowledges Egypt or is open to commerce and civilization, unless

forsooth the recent Soudanese protest, made by the fanatical El Mahdi and

his followers, should prove to be more persistent and better sustained

than now seems probable.

Our trip up the Nile to Assouan, or the first cataract, past the silent

shapes of the temples, sphinxes and pyramids, surrounded by sights and

sounds of Oriental life, was as pastime. But now the holiday journey

ends, and we are face to face with the realities and hardships of a

Nubian desert. The Nile is no longer verdant on either side. The sands,

dry and barren, form its shores. But that is not all. You skirt it to

Korosko amid difficulties, and there you are at its great bend. If you

followed it now to the next place of importance, Abu-Hammed, you would

have to travel nearly 600 miles. The waters are broken by falls and the

country is desolate. No one thinks of the journey, unless compelled to

make it. The course is that of the caravans across the Korosko desert to

Abu-Hammed. It is 400 miles of dreary waste, and calculated to burn out

of the traveller any romance he may have entertained of Nubian adventure.

Day marching over this desert is impossible at certain seasons. Night

is given up to the uneasy motion of camel riding and the monotony of a

desert tramp.

Do not think the ground is even. Here and there it is broken by wady’s or

gulches, and as you descend into these the eye may be relieved with sight

of vegetation. Perhaps a gazelle dashes away in fright to the nearest

sand hills, or it may be you catch a glimpse of a naked Arab youth

tending his flock of goats, for even desert wastes are not utterly void

of plant and animal life.

These deserts are not even rainless, though as much as four years have

been known to pass without a shower. A rain storm is watched with

breathless hope by the nomad Arab tribes. They see the clouds drifting

up from the distant Indian Ocean and pitching their black tents on

the summits of the mountains that divide the Nile Valley from the Red

Sea. A north wind may blow during the night and sweep them back whence

they came. But more likely they burst into thunderstorm, as if all the

storms of a season were compressed into one. The dry wadys of yesterday

are roaring torrents by morning, bearing to the Nile their tribute of

a single day, and for a day or a week, the desert air is pure and the

desert sand shoots a tender vegetation, only to be withered, like Jonah’s

gourd, in fewer hours than it sprang.

The Arab camel driver, however, knows well a few spots where are

running water and green turf the year round. These are the oases, or

stepping stones, by means of which the burning wilderness may be crossed.

Sometimes the wells fail, or have been poisoned or filled, or are in the

possession of a hostile predatory band. Then the unfortunate traveller

has to face death by thirst or exhaustion as he hurries on to the next

halting place. At any rate he is profoundly thankful when the welcome

waters of the Nile come into view again at Abu-Hammed, and he knows he is

within safe navigable distance of Kartoum, at the junction of the White

and Blue Nile.

And now, in passing from Abu-Hammed to Kartoum, we have a grand secret of

the Nile. For twelve hundred miles above its mouth that mysterious river

receives no tributary on the right hand nor on the left. It may be traced

like a ribbon of silver with a narrow fringe of green, winding in great

folds through a hot and thirsty desert and under the full blaze of a sun

that drinks its waters but returns nothing in the shape of rain. And

man also exacts a heavy tribute for purposes of irrigation. Whence its

supply? Look for a partial answer to the Atbara, whose mouth is in the

east bank of the Nile, half way from Abu-Hammed to Kartoum. Here light

begins to break on the exhaustless stores of the Nile. During the greater

part of the year the Atbara is dry. Not a hopeful source of supply, you

say at once. The sources of the Atbara are away off to the east in the

mountains of Abyssinia, whose great buttresses are now visible from the

Nile Valley, and whose projections push to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.

There also are a Lake Region and Nile sources, whose discovery by Bruce a

century ago gave the scientific world quite a stir. His account of this

Abyssinian country, so unique in physical features, social life, history,

religion and ancient remains, read so much like romance that it was not

believed. But Beke, De Cosson, James Bruce and the great Livingstone,

have since verified all and given him his proper place among accurate

observers and intrepid travellers.

But it was Sir Samuel Baker, on his first journey up the Nile in 1861,

who pointed out the importance of the Abyssinian rivers as Nile

tributaries. He turned aside from his southward route and followed

the dry bed of the Atbara for a double purpose. First, to watch the

great annual flooding of this Nile feeder. Second, to enjoy the sport

of capturing some of the big game, such as the elephant, rhinoceros,

hippopotamus, giraffe and lion, known to abound in the thick jungles

covering the lower slopes of the adjacent hills.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF BAKER.]

The Atbara, or “Black Nile,” was simply a vast wady or furrow, thirty

feet deep and 400 yards to half a mile across, plowed through the heart

of the desert, its edges marked by a thin growth of leafless mimosas and

dome palms. The only trace of water was here and there a rush-fringed

pool which the impetuous torrent had hollowed out in the sudden bends

in the river’s course, and where disported themselves hippopotami,

crocodiles, and immense turtles, that had long ago adjusted their

relations on a friendly footing on the discovery that none of them

could do harm to the others. On the 23 of June, the simoom was blowing

with overpowering force; the heat was furnace-like, and the tents of

travellers were covered with several inches of drifted sand. Above, in

the Abyssinian mountains, however, the lightnings were playing and the

rains were falling as if the windows of heaven had been opened. The

monsoon had set in; the rising streams were choking their narrow channels

in their frantic rush to the lowlands, and were tearing away huge masses

of the rich dark soil, to be spread a month hence over the flat plains of

Egypt. The party encamped on the Atbara heard through the night a sound

as if of distant thunder; but it was “the roar of the approaching water.”

Wonder of the desert! Yesterday there was a barren sheet of glaring sand

with a fringe of withered bush and tree. All nature was most poor. No

bush could boast a leaf. No tree could throw a shade. In one night there

was a mysterious change——wonders of the mighty Nile! An army of waters

was hastening to the wasted river. There was no drop of rain, no thunder

cloud on the horizon to give hope. All had been dry and sultry. Dust and

desolation yesterday; to-day a magnificent stream five hundred yards wide

and twenty feet deep, dashing through a dreary desert. Bamboos, reeds,

floating matter of all kinds, hurry along the turbid waters. Where are

all the crowded inhabitants of the pools? Their prison-doors are open,

the prisoners are released, and all are rejoicing in the deep sounding

and rapid waters of the Atbara.

Here is the clue to one part of the Nile mystery——its great annual

inundations, source of fertilizing soil and slime. The Blue Nile, further

on, and with its sources in the same Abyssinian fastnesses, contributes

like the Atbara, though in a secondary degree, to the annual Nile flood

and to Egypt’s fertility, with this difference, that it flows all the

year round.

At Kartoum, as already seen, we reach the junction of the White and Blue

Nile, the frontier of two strongly contrasted physical regions, and the

dividing line between the nomadic barbarism of the north and the settled

barbarism of the south. The secret that has still to be unveiled is the

source of that unfailing flow of water which perpetually resists the

influences of absorption, evaporation and irrigation, and carries a life

giving stream through the heart of Egypt at all seasons of the year.

Kartoum has ingrafted all the vices of its northern society on the

squalor and misery of its southern. A more miserable, filthy and

unhealthy spot can hardly be imagined. Yet it is not uninteresting, for

here, up to a recent period, was the “threshold of the unknown.” It has

been the starting point of numberless Nile expeditions since the days of

the Pharaohs. Mehemet Ali, first viceroy of Egypt, pushed his conquest

of the Soudan, a little south of it in 1839. He found the climate so

unhealthy that he established a penal colony a little way up the White

Nile, banishment to which was considered equivalent to death.

Says Sir Samuel Baker of Kartoum, on his second visit in 1869: “During

my first visit in 1861, the population was 30,000. It is now reduced

one-half, and nearly all the European residents have disappeared. And

the change in the country between Berber and Kartoum is frightful.

The river’s banks, formerly verdant with heavy crops, have become a

wilderness. Villages, once crowded, have entirely disappeared. Irrigation

has ceased. The nights, formerly discordant with the croaking of

waterwheels, are now silent as death. Industry has vanished. Oppression

has driven the inhabitants from the soil. It is all due to the Governor

General of Soudan who, like a true Mohammedan, left his government to

Providence while he increased the taxes. The population of the richest

province of Soudan has fled oppression and abandoned the country. The

greater portion have taken to the slave trade of the White Nile where, in

their turn, they might trample on the rights of others, where, as they

had been plundered, they might plunder.”

[Illustration: MADEMOISELLE TINNE.]

The wilderness of fever-stricken marshes that line the White Nile long

baffled the attempts of the most determined explorers to penetrate to

the southward. At length “dry land” was reached again at Gondokoro, only

five degrees from the equator. It in turn became an advanced position

of Egyptian authority, a centre of mission enterprise, a half-way house

where the traveller rested and equipped himself for new discoveries.

From the base of Gondokoro, Petherick pursued his researches into the

condition of the negro races of the Upper Nile; the Italian traveller,

Miani, penetrated far towards the southwest, into the countries occupied

by the Nyam-Nyam tribes, that singular region of dwarfs and cannibals;

and Dr. Schweinfurth, Colonel Long, and Mdlle. Tinné followed up the

search with magnificent results. Mdlle. Tinné, a brave Dutch lady,

deserves special notice as having been perhaps the first European woman

who encountered the terrible hardships and perils of the explorer’s

life in the cause of African discovery. She is far, however from being

the last. The wives of two of the greatest pioneers in the work——Mrs.

Livingstone and Lady Baker——accompanied with a noble-minded resolution

the steps of their husbands, the one along the banks of the Zambesi, and

the other on the White Nile. Mdlle. Tinné and Mrs. Livingstone paid with

their lives for their devotion, and are buried by the streams from whose

waters they helped to raise the veil. Lady Baker has been more fortunate.

Only a girl of seventeen when she rode by her husband’s side from

Gondokoro, she lived to return to Europe where her name is inseparably

linked with two great events of African history——the discovery of one of

the great lakes of the Nile and the suppression of the slave traffic.

[Illustration: MRS. BAKER.]

As already intimated, the Egyptian conquest and annexation of the Soudan

country, and the bad government of it which followed, made the region

of the White Nile the great man-hunting ground of Africa. The traffic

was general when the modern travellers began their struggle to reach the

equatorial lakes. Arab traders were the chief actors in these enterprises

and they were joined by a motley crew of other races, not excepting most

of the white and Christian races. If they were not directly under the

patronage of the Egyptian authorities at Kartoum, they made it worth

while for those authorities to keep a patronizing silence, by throwing

annually into their treasury something handsome in the shape of cash.

Kartoum marks pretty distinctly the limit of the Arab races and the

influence of the Mohammedan religion. Beyond, and toward the equator

and Nile sources, are the negro and pagan. Fanaticism and race hatred,

therefore, helped to inflame the evil passions which the slave trade

invariably arouses. The business of the miscreants engaged in this

detestable work was simply kidnapping and murder. The trade of the

White Nile was purely slave-hunting. The trifling traffic in ivory and

gums was a mere deception and sham, intended to cover the operations

of the slaver. A marauding expedition would be openly fitted out at

Kartoum, composed of some of the most atrocious ruffians in Africa

and south-western Asia, with the scum of a few European cities. Their

favorite mode of going to work was to take advantage of one of those wars

which are constantly being waged between the tribes of Central Africa.

If a war were not going on in the quarter which the slave-hunters had

marked out for their raid, a quarrel was purposely fomented——at no time a

difficult task in Africa. At dead of night the marauders with their black

allies would steal down upon the doomed village. At a signal the huts

are fired over the heads of the sleeping inmates, a volley of musketry

is poured in, and the gang of desperadoes spring upon their victims. A

scene of wild confusion and massacre follows, until all resistance has

been relentlessly put down, and then the slave-catcher counts over and

secures his human spoils. This is the first act of the bloody drama.

Most probably, if the kidnappers think they have not made a large enough

“haul,” they pick a quarrel with their allies, who are in their turn

shot down, or overpowered and, manacled to their late enemies, are soon

floating down the Nile in a slave dhow, on their way to the markets of

Egypt or Turkey. The waste of human life, the stoppage of industry and

honest trade, the demoralization of the whole region within reach of the

raiders, the detestable cruelties and crimes practised on the helpless

captives on the journey down the river, on the caravan route across the

desert, or in the stifling dens where they are lodged at the slave depots

and markets, represent an enormous total of human misery.

[Illustration: SLAVE HUNTER AND VICTIMS.]

Many will remember the efforts of Colonel Gordon, whom the Khedive made a

Pasha, and also a Governor General of the Soudan, at the capital Kartoum,

to suppress this nefarious traffic. And it will also be remembered how

in the late revolt against Egyptian authority, led by El Mahdi, Colonel

Gordon again headed a forlorn hope to Kartoum, with the hope that he

could stay the rising fanatical tide, or at least control it, so as to

prevent a fresh recognition of slave stealers. He fell a victim to his

philanthropic views, and was murdered in the streets of the city he went

to redeem.

We have already made the reader acquainted with the heroic and more

successful efforts of Colonel Baker, Pasha, in the same direction. He

was not so much of a religious enthusiast as Colonel Gordon, did not

rely on fate, but thought an imposing, organized force the best way to

strike terror into these piratical traders, and at the same time inspire

the negro races with better views of self protection. In the long and

brilliant record which Colonel Baker made in Africa, the honors he

gathered as a military hero bent on suppressing the slave trade will

ever be divided evenly with those acquired as a dauntless traveller and

accurate scientific observer.

Let it not be thought that slave catching and selling is now extinct.

True, the care exercised in the waters of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean,

makes it difficult to run slave cargoes into Arabia and the further east.

True, Baker’s expedition broke up a force of some two thousand organized

kidnappers on the Upper White Nile, but these piratical adventurers are

still abroad in more obscure paths and compelled to rely more on guile

and cunning than on force for securing their prey.

But let us pursue our journey from Kartoum toward the “Springs of the

Nile.” We do not take the Blue Nile. That comes down from the east, and

the Abyssinian mountains. We take the White Nile, which is the true Nile,

and comes up from the south or southwest. And we must suppose we are

going along with Colonel Baker on his first journey, which was one in

search of the Nile sources. It was a scientific tour, and not an armed

one like his second expedition.

Entering the White Nile, we plunge into a new world——a region whose

climate and animal and vegetable life, in brief, whose whole aspect and

nature, are totally unlike those of the desert which stretches up to

the walls of Kartoum. We are within the zone of regular rainfall, an

intermediate region that extends to the margin of the great lakes, where

we meet with the equatorial belt of perennial rains. Henceforth we have

not only heat but moisture acting upon the face of nature.

[Illustration: SWAMPS OF THE WHITE NILE.]

One may determine which of the two climates is the more tolerable

by considering whether he would prefer to be roasted or stewed. The

traveller would find it hard to decide whether the desert or the swamp is

the greater bar to his advance. Every mile of progress marks an increase

of dampness and of warmth. First of all, we pass through the great mimosa

forest, which extends, belt-like, almost across the continent, marking

the confines of the Sahara and the Soudan. The reader must not imagine

a dense girdle of tall trees and tangled undergrowth, but a park-like

country, with wide glades between clumps and lines of thorny shrubbery.

The mimosa, or Arabian acacia——the tree from which the gum-arabic of

commerce is extracted——has assigned to it the out-post duty in the

struggle between tropical luxuriance and desert drought. By and by it

gives place to the ambatch as the characteristic tree of the Nile. The

margin of the river becomes marshy and reedy. The water encroaches

on the land and the land on the water. The muddy stream rolls lazily

along between high walls of rank vegetation, and bears whole islands of

intertwisted leaves, roots and stems on its bosom, very much as an Arctic

strait bears its acres of ice floes. It breaks up into tortuous channels

that lead everywhere and nowhere. A nearly vertical sun shines down on

the voyager as he slowly toils up stream. Scarcely a breath of air stirs

to blow away the malarious mists or fill a drooping sail. Mosquitoes are

numerous, and insatiate for blood.

Day thus follows day with nothing to break the monotony except now and

then the appearance of a hippopotamus, rising snortingly to the surface,

a crocodile with his vicious jaws, or, where the land is solid, a buffalo

pushing his head through the reeds to take a drink. The true river margin

is invisible except from the boat’s masts over the head of the tall

papyrus. Even could we reach it, we would wish ourselves back again,

for of all the growth of this dismal swamp man is the most repulsive.

The Dinka tribes of the White Nile are among the lowest in the scale of

human beings. They are naked, both as to clothing and moral qualities.

The Shillooks are a finer race physically, but inveterate pirates and

murderers.

In the midst of this swampy region the Nile receives another important

tributary from the mountains of Southern Abyssinia. It is the Sobat

which, Speke says, “runs for a seven days’ journey through a forest so

dense as to completely exclude the rays of the sun.”

Above its mouth we must be prepared to meet the greatest of all the

obstructions of the Nile. Here are many small affluents from both east

and west, and here is a vast stretch of marsh through which the waters

soak as through a sponge. In the centre of this “sponge” tract is a small

lake——Lake No. But to reach it or emerge from it again, by means of

the labyrinthine channels, is a work of great difficulty. The “sponge”

is a thick coating of roots, grasses and stems matted together so as to

conceal the waters, yet open enough for them to percolate through. It

may be ventured upon by human feet, and in many places supports quite a

vegetation. But the traveller is in constant danger of falling through,

to say nothing of the danger from various animals. It was through this

“sponge” that Colonel Baker, in his second Nile expedition, managed

to cut a canal, through which was dragged the first steamer that ever

floated on the head waters of the great river.

[Illustration: CROSSING A SPONGE.]

Having passed this obstacle the journey is easier to Gondokoro, where

the land is firm. Twenty-three years ago Gondokoro was a collection of

grass huts in the midst of an untrodden wilderness, and surrounded by

barbarous and hostile tribes. It has since been made an Egyptian military

station and named Ismailia.

Though the spot is not inviting except as it affords you rest after your

hardships, yet it is the scene of an interesting episode in the history

of African exploration. Speke and Grant had started on their memorable

trip from Zanzibar in 1861. Colonel Baker and his wife had started up the

Nile for its sources in the same year. Now it is February, 1863. A travel

stained caravan, with two white men at its head, comes down the high

ground back of the station. They quicken their pace and enter the village

with shouts, waving of flags and firing of musketry. It is Speke and

Grant on their return trip, with the secret of the Nile in their keeping.

On their long tramp they had visited strange peoples and countries, and

by courage and tact had escaped unharmed from a number of difficulties

and perils. They had traced the one shore of that vast reservoir of fresh

water under the Equator which Speke had sighted on a previous expedition,

and had named Victoria Nyanza. They had seen this beautiful equatorial

reservoir discharging its surplus waters northward over the picturesque

Ripon Falls, and knew that they were in possession of the secret which

all the world had sought from the beginning.

Lower down, at the Karuma Falls, they were compelled to leave the stream,

which they now felt sure was the Nile. Crossing to the right bank, they

struck across the country, northward, and in a direct line for Gondokoro.

Here they caught sight of the furthest outpost of Egyptian exploration,

and again gladly looked on the river that was to bear them down to the

Mediterranean.

By a curious coincidence, the first Englishman who had penetrated so far

to the southward, was at that moment in Gondokoro. Samuel Baker and his

wife were interrupted in their preparations for their journey to the Nile

sources by the noise of the approaching party, and they rode out to see

what all the hubbub meant. Four people from a distant nook of Europe met

in the heart of Africa; and as they clasped hands, the hoary secret of

the Nile was unriddled! All of them had numberless difficulties before

as well as behind them; but their hearts were undismayed, and swelled

only with pride at what had been accomplished for science and for their

native land. The travellers from Zanzibar bore the marks of their long

journey——“battered and torn, but sound and seaworthy.” “Speke,” Baker

tells us, “appeared the more worn of the two; he was excessively lean,

but in reality in good tough condition. He had walked the whole way

from Zanzibar, never having once ridden during the weary march. Grant

was in honorable rags, his bare knees projecting through the remnants

of trousers that were an exhibition of rough industry in tailor-work.

He was looking tired and feverish, but both men had a fire in the eye

that showed the spirit that had led them through.” The first greetings

over, Baker’s earliest question was: Was there no leaf of the laurel

reserved for him? Yes; there was. Below the Karuma Falls, Speke and Grant

had been informed the stream from the Victoria Nyanza fell into and

almost immediately emerged again from another lake, the Luta Nzigé. This

therefore might be the ultimate reservoir of the Nile waters. No European

had ever seen or heard of this basin before. Baker determined it should

be his prize.

But now we meet a new class of obstacles as we undertake a land journey

into intertropical Africa. There is no longer, as in the desert, danger

from thirst and starvation, for game abounds, and we are in some degree

out of the interminable swamps of river navigation. But a small army of

porters must be got together. They must be drilled, and preparations must

be made for feeding them. True, some explorers have gone well nigh alone.

But it is not best. Stanley always travelled with one to two hundred

natives, and quite successfully.

And these natives are by no means easy to handle. They are ready to make

bargains, but are panicky and often desert, or, what is worse, take

advantage of any relaxation of discipline to rise in mutiny. Their leader

must be stern of will, yet kind and good-natured, wise as a serpent and

watchful as a hawk. When a start is made, difficulties accumulate. You

must expect incredible rainfalls, and an amazing growth of vegetation.

Then in the dry season, which is hardly more than two to three months in

a year, the shrubs and grasses are burned up far and wide.

[Illustration: PREPARATIONS FOR THE START.]

Everywhere there is jungle of grass, reeds and bamboos, when the

rivers are at their height; and amid the forests the great stems of

the pandanus, banana and boabab are covered to their tops with a

feathery growth of ferns and orchids, and festooned with wild vines and

creeping plants. The native villages are almost smothered under the dark

luxuriance of plant life, and lions and other beasts of prey can creep up

unseen to the very doors of the huts. The whole country becomes a tangled

brake, with here and there an open space, or a rough track marking where

an elephant, rhinoceros or buffalo has crushed a way in the high grass.

Then ahead of us, and between Gondokoro and the lakes we seek, the

country has been so raided by slave hunters, that every native can be

counted on as an enemy. Or a native war may be in progress, and if so,

great care must be taken to avoid siding with either party. We must

retreat here and push on there, avoiding perils of this class as we value

our lives. There is no road through Africa of one’s own choice, and none

that may not entail an entire backward step for days, and perhaps forever.

At Gondokoro we are in the midst of the Bari tribe. Pagans before,

contact with the Arab wanderers and slave stealers has made them savages.

They live in low thatched huts, rather neat in appearance, and surrounded

by a thick hedge to keep off intruders. The men are well grown and

the women not handsome, but the thick lips and flat nose of the negro

are wanting. They tattoo their stomachs artistically, and smear their

bodies with a greasy pigment of ochre. Their only clothing is a bunch of

feathers stuck in the slight tuft of hair which they permit to grow on

their heads, and a neat lappet around the loins, of about six inches in

depth, to which is appended a tail piece made of shreds of leather or

cotton.

Every man carries his weapons, pipe and stool. The former are chiefly

the bow and arrows. They use a poisoned arrow when fighting. The effect

of the poison in the system is not to kill but to corrode the flesh and

bone, till they drop away in pieces. The bows are of bamboo, not very

elastic, and the archers are not dexterous.

It was while in Gondokoro, on this his first Nile journey, that Baker had

opportunity to study, and occasion to feel, the enormities of the slave

traffic. The Moslem traders regarded him as a spy on their nefarious

operations. They manacled their slaves more closely and stowed them

away securely in remote and secret stockades. Their conduct as citizens

was outrageous, for they kept the town in a continual uproar by their

drinking bouts, their brawls with the natives, and promiscuous firing of

guns and pistols. One of their bullets killed a boy of Baker’s party. It

was evident that these marauders were intent on compelling him to make a

hasty departure, for they incited trouble among his men, and inflamed

the natives against his presence.

As an instance of the trouble which grew out of this, his men asked the

privilege of stealing some cattle from the natives for a feast. He denied

their request. A mutiny was the result. Baker ordered the ringleader

to be bound and punished with twenty-five lashes. The men refused to

administer the punishment and stood by their ringleader. Baker undertook

to enforce the order himself, when the black leader rushed at him with

a stick. Baker stood his ground and knocked his assailant down with his

fist. Then he booted him severely, while his companions looked on in

amazement at his boldness and strength. But they rallied, and commenced

to pelt him with sticks and stones. His wife saw his danger. She ordered

the drums to be beaten and in the midst of the confusion rushed to the

rescue. The clangor distracted the attention of the assailants, and a

parley ensued. The matter was settled by a withdrawal of the sentence on

the condition that the leader should apologize and swear fealty again.