and the pioneer of Africa, he went on his way without fear, without
egotism, without desire of reward. He proved that the white man may
travel safely through many years in Africa. He observed richness of soil
and abundance of natural products, the guarantees of commerce. He
foretold the truth that the African tribes would be brought into the
community of nations. The logical result of the work he began and
carried so far was the downfall of the African slave-trade, which he
denounced as "the open sore of the world." What eulogy is too great for
such a work and such a man?
In 1898, twenty-one journeys had been made by explorers from sea to sea.
Livingstone completed the first journey, from Loanda to the mouth of the
Zambesi, in one year, seven months, and twenty-two days. Nineteen years
elapsed before Central Africa was crossed again, when Cameron gave two
years and nearly eight months to the journey. It took Stanley two years
and eight months to cross Africa, when he solved the great mystery, the
course of the Congo; and when he went to the relief of Emin Pasha, in
1887, he was almost exactly the same time on the road. When Trivier
crossed from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, in 1888-89, in nine days
less than a year, the event was held as a remarkably rapid performance.
A little later the journey was made by several travellers in from twelve
to fifteen months. In 1898, the Englishman, Mr. Lloyd, crossed from Lake
Victoria to the mouth of the Congo in three months, about thirteen
hundred miles of the journey being by Congo steamboat and railroad. In
1902, the journey from the Indian Ocean to Lake Victoria is made by rail
in two and one-half days,--a journey that occupied Speke for nine, and
Stanley for eight months. With the present facilities, the continent may
be crossed by way of the lake region and the Congo in about three
months. The era of long and weary foot-marches has nearly ended; now
succeeds travel by steam.
No influence has been so potent in improving the art of the explorer, or
in raising the standard of the work required of him, as the enormous
interest that for thirty years past has centred in African exploration.
The larger part of the best achievements of the explorers of the present
generation in scientific investigation, and in an approach to scientific
map-making, are found in tropical Africa. Many of the hundreds of the
route surveys are not unworthy to be compared with those of Pogge and
Wissmann, when they laid down on their map every cultural and
topographic feature for two miles on both sides of their route, from
Angola to the Upper Congo. The extreme care with which some of the best
explorers have performed their tasks is illustrated by the remarkable
achievement of the late Dr. Junker along the Mobangi River. After years
of service, his scientific equipment had become practically worthless.
He started on his four-hundred-mile journey down the river through the
jungle, with absolutely no instrument except a compass to aid him in
determining his positions. Endeavoring, by the most scrupulous care, to
make up as far as possible for his lack of scientific outfit, he trudged
through the grass, compass in hand, counting every step. Every fifteen
minutes he jotted in his notebook the distance and the mean direction
travelled. At night he used these accumulated data to lay down on his
route map the journey of the day. For many weeks he kept up this trying
routine till he reached his furthest west, and again till he had
returned to his starting-point, whose latitude and longitude he had
previously determined. When he returned to Europe, Dr. Hassenstein and
he made a map from the data Junker had collected, and fixed the position
of his furthest west. This position was found later by the astronomical
observations of Lieutenant Le Marinel to be less than two miles out
of the way.
One of the latest to win a large prize in African discovery is Dr. A.
Donaldson Smith, a young physician of Philadelphia, in the northeastern
region known as Somaliland and Gallaland. His method may be mentioned
here as an illustration of the kind of work that geographers now
require. Before he began his explorations, he took a thorough course in
the use of surveying instruments and the methods of accurately laying
down his positions and making a route map. Many a cartographer, burning
with desire to draw a good map of a newly explored region, has been
driven to despair by the inadequacy of the route surveys in his hands.
Not a few of these surveys have been unworthy of reproduction in the
books of the explorers who made them, and the best that could be done
was to generalize their information on maps of comparatively small
scale. But Donaldson Smith's route-maps appear in his book on the
comparatively large scale of 1:1,000,000 (about sixteen statute miles to
the inch), and they are worthy of that treatment, for his surveys and
observations for geographical positions were recorded in such a way
that their value might be easily ascertained by any one familiar with
such computations. His route-maps have been found to be admirable
map-making material; thus, he has not only traversed a new region of
great extent, but has given in his map ample materials which may be
employed by any atlas-maker in the production of good maps of all the
territory that came under his observation. When Sir Clements Markham
presented to Dr. Smith the Patrons' Medal of the Royal Geographical
Society, he said: "You have not, like an ordinary explorer, made a
common route survey, but you have made a scientific survey, a
triangulation frequently checked by astronomical observations with
theodolite and chronometer."
Most African explorers have been painstaking, conscientious workers,
eager in their quest for the truth, desirous to report nothing but the
truth, and treating the lowly and ignorant they have met as men, with
sensibilities like their own, capable of gratitude for a kindness and
keenly sensitive to an outrage. The world has recognized and applauded
such heroes of discovery,--the men who faced hardship and peril,
enduring and sacrificing much that knowledge might grow; who had to
conquer not only unkind Nature, but to overcome the ignorant violence of
man. And not a few of the leaders in this work have carried it out with
a degree of tactfulness, humanity, gentleness, and kindliness of spirit
amounting to genius. Some of them spent months in disguise, collecting
facts of the highest scientific value among fanatical Mohammedans who
would have killed them if they had known their secret. Such men were
Burton in Harrar, Dr. Lenz in Timbuctoo, and De Foucauld and Harris in
Morocco, who, in stained skins and borrowed costumes, personated
merchants and devotees and doctors and Jews; and most of whom have
enriched the literature of discovery with valuable books. Men also such
as Dr. Junker, who, rich as he was, left his home to spend eight years
alone among the savages of the Welle Makua basin in Central Africa,
living on their food and in their huts that he might minutely study the
people in their country; or Grenfell, who has travelled far more widely
in the Congo basin than Stanley or any of his followers except
Delcommune, and revealed to the world more river systems and unknown
peoples than they, and who, in his long career as an explorer, never
fired a shot upon a native, though his life was often threatened. These
men, and others like them, have exemplified the manysidedness of human
resources against a great variety of peril and obstacle, as no other
explorers in any other part of the world have had an opportunity to do
in equal measure. Their work, with its environment of almost
overwhelming difficulty, should be known to our youth as most forceful
illustrations of what good men may dare and do in good causes and in a
worthy manner.
There have been some exceptions to this rule. A few men have been less
anxious to perform useful service than to figure in the newspapers and
pose before their public. One day a man stood on the north shore of
Victoria Nyanza, and looking south he saw land. When he returned to
London he published a sensational book, in which he said it was
ridiculous for Speke to assert that he had discovered a lake as large as
Scotland, one of the greatest lakes in the world. "Why," said the
writer, "I have stood on the north shore of the Victoria Nyanza and
looked south and seen the southern shore. Lake Victoria is only an
insignificant sheet of water, after all the talk of its being second
only to Lake Superior."
What he really saw was the chain of the Sesse Islands extending far out
into the lake. His book was scarcely off the press when the letters
describing Stanley's boat journeys around the shores of Victoria Nyanza
began to be published in London and New York; and the foolish fellow was
compelled to recall all the copies of his book that had not passed
beyond his reach, and eliminate the statements that made him so
ridiculous. Fortunately, there are not many explorers of this stripe.
All who watched the progress of African discovery were constantly
reminded that geographical progress is usually made only by slow and
painful steps. They saw an explorer emerge from the unknown with his
notebooks and route maps replete with most interesting facts for the
student and the cartographer. Then another explorer would enter the same
region, discover facts that had escaped the notice of the pioneer,
correct blunders his predecessor had made and perpetrate blunders of his
own; so explorer followed explorer, each adding something to
geographical knowledge, each correcting earlier misconceptions, till the
total product, well sifted by critical geographers, gave the world a
fair idea of the region explored; but not the best attainable idea, for
scientific knowledge of a region comes only with its detailed
exploration by trained observers, equipped with the best appliances for
use in their special fields of research. This is the advanced stage of
geographical study, which is now being reached in many parts of Africa.
It was Livingstone's task, in 1859, to inform us that there was a great
Lake Nyassa. It was Rhoades's task, in 1897-1901, to make a careful and
accurate survey of its coast-lines, and to sound its depths, so that we
now have an excellent idea of the conformation of the lake bottom.
Between Livingstone and Rhoades came many explorers, each adding
important facts to our knowledge of this great sheet of water nearly
twice as large as New Jersey.
As each explorer came from the wilds, our maps were corrected to conform
with the new information he supplied; and if we should examine the maps
of Africa in school geographies, atlases, and wall maps, from the time
of Livingstone to the present day, we should see that, as relates to
nearly every part of Africa, they have been in a continual state of
transition.
For years our only map of Victoria Nyanza was that which Speke made on
his second journey to the lake, in 1860-62; but Speke saw the great lake
only at one point on its south shore, and along its northwest and north
central coasts. His map, being based very largely upon native
information, was in many respects most incomplete and erroneous.
Then came Stanley's survey of the lake, made in a boat journey around
its coasts, and for years his map supplanted that of Speke. But he was
not able to follow the shore-line in all its intricate details. His
mapping was a great advance upon that of Speke, but it was necessarily
rough and imperfect. He missed entirely the deep indentation of Baumann
Gulf and the southwestern prolongation of the lake, surveyed by Father
Schynse, in 1891. Stanley's map, modified by the partial surveys of
various explorers, is still our mapping of the lake; but if the reader
will watch the maps for the next year or so, he will doubtless observe
important changes in the contours of Victoria Nyanza; for all the maps,
from Speke to those of 1902, will be placed on the shelf to serve only
as the historical record of the good, honest work which a number of
explorers have done. Commander Whitehouse has recently spent thirteen
months surveying with infinite pains these coasts and islands. "I seem
to see," writes Stanley of this important service, "the sailor, with his
small crew and his little steel boat, wandering from point to point,
crossing and recrossing, going from some island to some headland, taking
his bearings from that headland back again to the island, and to some
point far away."
Commander Whitehouse has made a new delineation of the entire 2,200
miles of coasts, and the results of his survey will be used in making
all the maps of the lake. His map in turn will undoubtedly be replaced
some day by detailed topographic surveys of the best quality, such as
the British already contemplate making of that entire region.
A wall map recently in use in one of the public schools of New York City
was a curious example of ignorant compilation. It exhibited the Victoria
Nyanza of Speke, the Bangweolo of Livingstone, and the Upper Congo of
Stanley, all obsolete for practical purposes years before this map was
printed. Most of our home map-makers were very slow in availing
themselves of the rich materials constantly supplied for the maps by the
army of explorers in Africa. But the most alert cartographers,
particularly between 1880 and 1895, could not keep their maps abreast
of the news of discovery as it came to Europe. More men and energy and
money were utilized in those fifteen years of African discovery than in
the first century and a half of American exploration. The route or
mother-maps, some covering a wide extent of country, others devoted to a
small area, or a short line of travel, were going to Europe for the
improvement of atlas sheets by nearly every steamer. Father Schynse's
chart of the southwest extension of Victoria Nyanza had hardly been
utilized in European map-houses before it was replaced by Dr. Baumann's
more accurate survey. Mr. Wauters of Belgium withdrew his large map of
the Congo Basin from the printer four times, in order to include fresh
information before it was finally issued to the public.
This process is still going on, though more slowly. The mapping we see
of Lake Tanganyika, one of the longest lakes in the world, has been in
use for seventeen years since missionary Hore made his boat journey of
one thousand miles around its coasts, but the new map of the Moore
expedition now being introduced gives the main axis of the lake a more
northeast and southwest direction. The Hore map has met the fate that
usually overtakes the early surveys of every region. It rendered good
service as long as it was the best map; but the Moore expedition had
first-rate appliances for computing longitudes, and as Captain Hore
lacked these, it is not strange that his map has been found to be
defective.
The world has been treated to many geographical surprises in the course
of this incessant transformation of the map of the continent. Many of us
may remember in our school geographies, the particular blackness and
prominence of the Kong Mountains, extending for two hundred miles
parallel with the Gulf of Guinea. They were accepted on the authority of
Mungo Park, Caillié, and Bowditch, all reputable explorers who had not
seen the mountains, but believed from native information that they
existed. The French explorer, Binger, in 1887 sought in vain for them.
Later explorers have been unable to find them. They are, in fact, a
myth, and will be remembered chiefly as a conspicuous instance of
geographic delusion. It had long been supposed that the navigation of
the Niger River, the third largest river in Africa, was permanently
impaired by the Bussa Rapids, about one hundred miles in length, where
Mungo Park was wrecked and drowned. But Major Toutée, a few years ago,
when assailed by hostile natives, made a safe journey with his boats
through the rapids; and Captain Lenfant, in 1901, carried 500,000 pounds
of supplies up the river and through the rapids to the French stations
between Bussa and Timbuktu. He had a small, flat-bottomed steamboat and
a number of little boats propelled by fifty black paddlers. He says
that by the land route he would have required 12,000 porters, and they
would have been one hundred and thirty days on the road.
It was believed that a land portage would always be necessary between
the sea and the Zambesi, above the delta, till 1889, when Mr. Rankin
discovered the Chinde branch of the delta, so broad and so deep that
ocean vessels may ascend it and exchange freight with the river craft.
It has been found that more water pours into the ocean through the
Congo's mouth, which is six miles wide, than from all the other rivers
in Africa together. It is second among the world's rivers, and the dark
detritus it carries to the Atlantic has been distinctly traced on the
ocean bed for six hundred miles from the land. Some geographers still
believed thirty years ago that all the waters of its upper basin might
be tributary to the Nile. Map-makers have been kept very busy recording
discoveries on the Congo. About one hundred explorers, some of them
missionaries and many employees of the Congo Free State, have mapped the
whole basin along its water-courses, and discovered the ultimate source
of its main stream. Our ideas of the hydrography of this great basin
have been revolutionized since Stanley, second only to Livingstone among
the great African explorers, in 1877 revealed the course of the
main river.
On his map, for example, he showed the southern tributaries as probably
flowing nearly due north; but all except one of these rivers rise in the
east and flow far to the west. When Wissmann was sent to the Upper
Kassai to follow it to the Congo, he was greatly surprised to find
himself floating westward week after week. When he reached the Congo a
steamboat was waiting for him at Equatorville, two hundred miles further
up the river, where he was expected to emerge. Schweinfurth believed the
Welle Makua flowed north to Lake Chad on the edge of the Sahara;
seventeen years later, after six or seven explorers had tried to solve
the problem, the river was found to be the upper part of the Mobangi
tributary of the Congo, larger than any rivers of Europe, excepting the
Volga and Danube. While Stanley was for five years planting his stations
on the Congo, he knew nothing of this great tributary, 1,500 miles long,
whose mouth was hidden by a cluster of islands which his steamers
repeatedly passed. Missionary Grenfell, on his little steamer, was
ascending the Congo one day, when accidentally he got into the mouth of
the Mobangi and went on for one hundred miles before he discovered that
he had left the main river. Few explorers have unwittingly stumbled upon
so rich a geographical prize.
While exploratory enterprises have been centred largely in tropical
Africa, no part of the continent has been neglected. We now know that
large areas of the Sahara are underlaid by waters which need only be
brought to the surface to cover the desert around them with verdure;
that most of the rain falling on the south slopes of the Atlas Mountains
sinks into the earth to impermeable strata of rock, along which it makes
its way far out into the desert; that where the surface is depressed so
that these waters come near to it, there are wells for the refreshment
of the camel caravans, and oases, blooming islands of green, in the
sterile wastes; and that artesian wells bring inexhaustible supplies of
water within reach, so that millions of date palms have been planted
along the northern edge of the desert in southern Algiers and Tunis,
making these regions the largest sources of the world's supply of dates.
It has also been discovered why there are very large areas of dry or
desert lands in Africa. The Sahara and the southwest of Africa are
deserts because the prevailing winds, the carriers of moisture, blow
towards the sea instead of away from it, and consequently are always
dry. The winds from the Indian Ocean crossing the highlands of Abyssinia
are wrung nearly dry while passing the mountains, and so Somaliland and
the lowlands to the south of Abyssinia are parched.
It has been found that the most of South Africa stands so high above the
sea that the influences of a temperate climate are projected far
towards the Equator; so that many white men, women, and children are
living and thriving on farms in Mashonaland, seven degrees of latitude
nearer the equator than the south end of Florida. This fact will
profoundly influence the development of South Africa. It is to be the
home of millions of the white race, the seat of a highly civilized
empire, whose business relations with the rest of the world will be to
the advantage of every trading nation. The presence of these millions of
toilers will vitally affect the work of developing tropical Africa which
is now absorbing such enormous treasure and energy; for South Africa is
to be brought by railroads to the very doors of the tropical zone.
It is hoped that such facts as these, even though very briefly stated,
may convey broadly a correct impression of the magnitude of African
exploration, since its revival about the time that Livingstone died. It
is impossible in brief space to signalize the good work that many of the
most conspicuous pioneers have done. The world rendered tardy tribute to
the notable achievements of some of them. When Rebmann discovered
Kilimanjaro, not far from the equator, and told of the snows that crown
the loftiest of African summits, it was decided by British geographers
that Rebmann's snow was probably an imaginary aspect. The snow was
there, and plenty of it, but Rebmann died before justice was done to
his faithful labors. When Paul du Chaillu described the Obongo dwarfs of
West Africa, his narrative was discredited; but four or five groups of
dwarfs, probably numbering many thousands, are now known to be scattered
from the lower border of Abyssinia to the Kalahara desert in the far
south. The ancients had heard of the dwarfs, but the geographers of the
eighteenth century expunged from the maps of Africa about all that the
geographers of Greece and Rome, as well as those of later times, placed
on them; and the nineteenth century was slow in crediting the early
investigators even with statements that were wholly or approximately
accurate.
A curious history is connected with the discovery of the northeastern
group of pygmies, a little south of Abyssinia. No white man had ever
seen them, but about fifteen years ago Dr. Henry Schlichter, of the
British Museum, collected all the information which natives had given to
missionaries, traders, and explorers of the existence of these little
people some hundreds of miles from the sea. Sifting all this evidence,
he concluded that these dwarfs really existed, and that they lived in a
region which he marked on the map north of Lake Stefanie. Donaldson
Smith had not heard of Schlichter's paper, and knew nothing of these
dwarfs, but he found them in 1895 in the region which Schlichter had
indicated as their probable habitat.
The broadest generalization with regard to the African tribes is that
which separates most of the peoples south of the Sahara Desert into two
great groups,--the Negro tribes, whose habitat may be roughly indicated
as extending between the Atlantic and Gallaland in East Africa, with the
Sahara as their northern, and the latitude of the Cameroons as their
southern, boundaries; and the Bantu tribes, occupying nearly all of
Africa south of the Negroes. The distinction between these two great
groups is not based upon special differences as to physical structure,
mental characteristics, habits, or development, but depends solely upon
philological considerations, the languages of the Negroes and the Bantus
forming two distinct groups. Most of the slaves who were brought to our
country were Negroes, while most of those transported to Latin America
were from the Bantu tribes.