CHAPTER XIV

FROM VICTORIA NYANZA TO ALEXANDRIA

On the 28th of July, 1862, Speke stood by the side of the Ripon Falls, where the Victoria Nile leaves the great Nyanza at the head of Napoleon Gulf. Grant had gone off with a portion of the expedition on the more direct route to Unyoro. Speke had reached the Victoria Nile first of all below its exit from the lake, and describes the scene as follows:--

“It was the very perfection of the effect aimed at in a highly kept park, with a magnificent stream of from six to seven hundred yards wide, dotted with islets and rocks,--the former occupied by fishermen’s huts, the latter by birds and crocodiles basking in the sun,--flowing between fine, high grassy banks, with rich trees and plantains in the background, where herds of topi and hartebeest could be seen grazing, while the hippopotami were snorting in the water and bustards and guineafowl were rising at our feet.”

[Illustration: THE NILE AT THE ISAMBA RAPIDS (looking North).

Where Speke first struck it.]

Marching up the left bank of the Nile towards the lake, he thus describes that river at the Isamba rapids:--

“The water ran deep between its banks, which were covered with fine grass, soft cloudy acacia, and festoons of lilac convolvuli, whilst here and there, where the land had slipped above the rapids, bared spaces of red earth could be seen, like that of Devonshire; there, too, the waters, impeded by a natural dam, seemed like a huge mill pond, sullen and dark, in which two crocodiles, lying about, were looking out for prey. From the high banks I looked down upon a line of sloping wooded islets lying across the stream, which divide its waters, and, by interrupting them, cause at once both dam and rapids. The whole was more fairy-like, wild, and romantic than--I must confess that my thoughts took that shape--anything I ever saw outside of a theatre. It was exactly the sort of place, in fact, where, bridged across from one side-slip to the other, on a moonlight night, brigands would assemble to enact some dreadful tragedy. Even the Wangwana (Zanzibaris) seemed spellbound at the novel beauty of the sight, and no one thought of moving till hunger warned us that night was setting in, and we had better look out for lodgings.”

Speke describes the Ripon Falls, where the Nile leaves the lake, as by far the most interesting sight he had ever seen in Africa. The falls are stemmed by rocky islands and crowned by magnificent trees.[72]

“It was a sight that attracted one to it for hours,--the roar of the waters, the thousands of passenger-fish, leaping at the falls with all their might, the Basoga and Baganda fishermen coming out in boats and taking post on all the rocks with rod and hook, hippopotami and crocodiles lying sleepily on the water, the ferry at work above the falls, and cattle driven down to drink at the margin of the lake. The scene made, in all, with the pretty nature of the country,--small hills, grassy-topped, with trees in the folds, and gardens on the lower slopes,--as interesting a picture as one could wish to see.”

This was Speke’s furthest point eastward in connection with Nile discovery. He confesses in his book that he has missed much by not going through Busoga to see the northeast corner of the lake. Had he done so, he might have cleared up at the very beginning the most disputed portion of that lake’s geography. At the northeast corner of the Victoria Nyanza is a long and narrow gulf which we now term Kavirondo Bay. This gulf figures on Speke’s map as a semi-independent Lake Baringo. Stanley, in his circumnavigation, wholly overlooked it, as its mouth is blocked by islands. Joseph Thompson read a quarter of the riddle. One-half was guessed by Mr. C. W. Hobley, and the remaining quarter was cleared up by an expedition under Commander Whitehouse.

[Illustration: RIPON FALLS, FROM BUGUNGA, WHERE SPEKE FIRST SAW THEM.]

These falls of the Nile were named after the Earl de Grey and Ripon, then President of the Royal Geographical Society; and the gulf of the Victoria Nyanza, from which the Nile issued, was called Napoleon Channel after the then Emperor of the French. Speke and his party, with their Baganda guides, got into canoes, and paddled some distance down the Nile north of the Isamba rapids. But just as they were nearing Lake Kioga (of whose existence Speke was ignorant) they passed an important town on the left bank of the Nile which was an outpost of Unyoro, under a semi-independent chief. Here the party was received with the greatest hostility, and obliged to give up the river route. Speke struck inland to the waters of the Luajali, which he wrongly believed to be another outlet of the Victoria Nyanza, and shortly afterwards met Grant, who was on his return journey from the capital of Unyoro. After some hesitation they decided to join forces and march on Unyoro overland. By this means they entirely lost count of the course of the Victoria Nile for some distance, and of the existence of the great lakes Kioga and Kwania. As they crossed the boundary line and entered Unyoro, Speke writes:--

“This first march was a picture of all the country to its capital: an interminable forest of small trees, bush, and tall grass, with scanty villages, low huts, and dirty-looking people clad in skins; the plantain, sweet potato, sesamum, and ulezi (millet) forming the chief edibles, besides goats and fowls; whilst the cows, which are reported to be numerous, were kept, as everywhere else where pasture-lands are good, by the wandering, unsociable Wahuma, and were seldom seen. No hills, except a few scattered cones, disturb the level surface of the land, and no pretty views ever cheer the eye. Uganda is now entirely left behind; we shall not see its like again; for the further one leaves the equator, and the rain-attracting influences of the Mountains of the Moon, vegetation decreases proportionately with the distance.”

[Illustration: VIEW OF NAPOLEON GULF, FROM JINJA.]

Speke had sent on, many months in advance, his head-man, Baraka, to await him in Unyoro, and possibly to convey letters to Petherick. But for this action in all probability a peaceful entry into Unyoro would have been refused, as the Baganda were much detested there for their predatory raids. Kamurasi, King of Unyoro, was very nearly as big a scoundrel and as inhospitable to strangers as his son Kabarega, who is now residing in the Seychelles Islands. After innumerable difficulties caused by the caprices of Mutesa and the jealousies subsisting between the Baganda and Banyoro, and the fierce suspicions of Kamurasi, they reached the capital of that monarch who considered himself to be the legitimate emperor over all the lands once ruled by the Bahima race. This capital was situated then on a peninsula between the Kafu River and the Nile, on what is now the soil of Uganda. The Kafu River, which is a broad, marshy stream rising not far from the Albert Nyanza, is the present boundary between the two kingdoms. Speke wrongly believed it to be another outlet of the Nile.

For nine days Speke and his companion were kept waiting before the suspicious king could make up his mind to see them. From the 9th of September to the 9th of November the whole expedition was detained at the Court of this greedy tyrant. At his Court they heard of the existence of a large lake, “Lutanzige,” to the west,[73] and asked permission to go and see it. This was refused, and thus another opportunity of adding an important piece of information to Nile discovery was denied to Speke, who could have travelled to and from the coast of Lake Albert in three weeks instead of wasting two months at Kamurasi’s Court. However, during this long stay Speke managed to send Bombay with some of Kamurasi’s men down the Nile and through the Lango and Acholi countries to Petherick’s outpost. After Bombay’s return with this cheering news, Speke was more than ever impatient to get away. Kamurasi attempted to delay the departure under one pretext or another, no doubt with the object of bleeding the expedition of more and more gifts. At last, on the 9th of November, they descended the Kafu River to its junction with the Nile, and found themselves on the broad Nile, still lake-like in extent, owing to the vicinity of Lake Kioga. In this manner, some travelling by canoe and some by land, they reached the Karuma Falls, from which point they left the Nile, marching across the marshy and then steppe-like countries of the Acholi, and came first into touch with the influence of Egypt at Faloro, on the borders of the Madi country. Here they met a Sudanese named Muhammad Wad-el-Mek,--quite black, but dressed like an Egyptian and talking Arabic. Muhammad was in command of some two hundred Sudanese, who, by their association with Egypt, were known as Turks by the natives. Muhammad Wad-el-Mek at first professed to be Petherick’s employé, and then confessed that he was really the head-man of a Maltese trader named De Bono. These were the men that Petherick had arranged with De Bono were to come into touch with Speke’s expedition.

Here, however, they met with some disappointment. Instead of being allowed to proceed directly to Gondokoro, Muhammad Wad-el-Mek sought to detain them by alleging that no boats would be waiting for them at Gondokoro at that season (December). The usual heart-breaking delays took place. Speke decided from this point (Faloro) to send back Kijwiga,--a fairly faithful Unyoro guide, who had been with him now, one way and the other, about a year, having originally been sent to greet him in Uganda. Meantime Muhammad, De Bono’s agent, went off to the southward with his men to fight one African chief on behalf of another so as to secure a large quantity of ivory.

Speke was shocked, during his stay in Unyoro, at the abominable way in which the “Turks” treated the inoffensive Madi natives. At last, on the 12th of January, 1863, Speke, disgusted and hopeless at the delay, started ahead to a village called Panyoro. He was followed up by Muhammad’s men, and they arrived at the Nile near the modern station of Afuddu (close to the junction of the river Asua and the Nile). At this place they found a tree with the letters M. I. inscribed on its bark. This was the remains of an attempt on the part of the Venetian traveller Miani to carve his name on a tree so as to give some information to Speke, who had long been expected in this direction. At this place there was another halt, which Speke and Grant employed in killing game, and giving a great deal of the meat thus acquired to the natives.

On the first of February they started again, Muhammad having procured porters by the most arbitrary methods. They followed the Nile down to the confluence of the Asua River. This stream Speke imagined to flow out of what we now call Kavirondo Bay. It is strange that so great a geographer should have had such elementary notions about hydrography. He gives the Victoria Nyanza something like four principal outlets, much as the Portuguese in earlier days provided lakes in the centre of Africa which fed impartially the Congo, the Nile, and the Zambezi. Crossing the Asua, they emerged along the Nile rapids until they arrived at the verge of the Bari country. One serious attack was made on them, but was met by the determined measures taken by Muhammad.

At last, on the 15th of February, 1863, they walked into Gondokoro. Here their first inquiry was for Petherick. “A mysterious silence ensued; we were informed that Mr. De Bono was the man we had to thank for the assistance we had received in coming from Madi.” Hurrying down through the ruins of the abandoned Austrian Mission to the bank of the river, where a line of vessels was moored, the explorers suddenly saw Mr. Samuel Baker marching towards them. “What joy this was I cannot tell. We could not talk fast enough, so overwhelmed were we both to meet again.”[74]

Mr. Samuel Baker had conceived the idea of going to meet Speke at the head waters of the Nile. He and his wife (the present Lady Baker) arrived at Khartum, and there received much information and assistance from Petherick in the furtherance of their work. As to Petherick himself, he arrived with his wife also a few days after Speke reached Gondokoro. Speke seems to have been rather hard on this man. We know that Petherick went up the river to Gondokoro in 1862, expecting to get news of Speke, and not imagining that he could have lost something like a year of travel by his delays in Unyamwezi, Uganda, and Unyoro. Being unable to remain indefinitely at Gondokoro without news of the travellers, he arranged with De Bono to send Muhammad and his men in the direction of Unyoro to found a post where Speke might be awaited. As we know, these orders were carried out. Petherick was naturally obliged to think of his own means of livelihood, for he was an unpaid consul. He therefore went on an ivory-trading expedition west of the Mountain Nile, knowing, of course, that Baker would be awaiting the travellers, and that runners from the direction of Gondokoro would keep him advised as to their approach. He and his wife reached Gondokoro only a few days after Speke had arrived there. Speke, however, refused all assistance at their hands, and decided to return to Khartum on Baker’s dahabiah. Speke’s adverse report on Petherick, combined with the intrigues of the Turks, who disliked his opposition to the slave-trade, practically ruined Petherick, as we have seen in a previous chapter.

The journey of this wonderful expedition from Gondokoro down the Nile (Speke mistaking the origin and course of its affluents as he went along, so that his map in this respect is very incorrect) was broken at Khartum, whence the Europeans and Negroes travelled across the desert to Egypt. Of the hundred-odd porters who left Zanzibar with this expedition in 1860, nineteen (including Bombay) reached Cairo with Speke and Grant, the remainder having deserted, died, or been sent back from various points. These survivors were generously treated by Speke, who gave them an extra year’s pay as a gratuity, and orders for land and marriage portions on their reaching Zanzibar. He also provided for their free passage from Suez to Zanzibar via the Seychelles Islands. Somehow or other they went on by mistake to Mauritius, where they were treated most generously by the little colony. Thence they were sent in safety to Zanzibar. From this point several of these men subsequently journeyed with Stanley and other African explorers. Bombay, “Captain of the Faithful,” died in 1886 (?), having been in receipt during the last years of his life of a regular pension from the Royal Geographical Society.

Speke and Grant returned to England in the spring of 1863. By December in that year Speke had finished his great book, the “Discovery of the Source of the Nile.” Speke, soon after his return, was received by the present king. In the autumn of 1863 he was given an ovation in the county of Somerset worthy of his achievements. “Punch” accorded him a cartoon drawn by Tenniel, but the British government did _nothing_ for him, unless there can be attributed to its influence the paltry satisfaction of granting to him through the Heralds College supporters and an additional motto to his coat of arms. By this grant his family is now entitled to add a hippopotamus and a crocodile as supporters to their shield, a crocodile to their crest, the flowing Nile to their coat of arms, and the additional motto, “Honor est a Nilo.”

[Illustration: THE LAST MAP ISSUED TO ILLUSTRATE SPEKE’S THEORIES, 1865.]

Meantime Burton had become a British consul on the West Coast of Africa, and was returning to England in 1864. Speke had published articles in “Blackwood” and a book which, as already related, made uncomplimentary references to his former companion. The two great travellers were invited to meet at the British Association at Bath in 1864 and discuss their different views as to the Nile sources; for Burton, as a tit-for-tat, had published a work in collaboration with Petherick, in which he sought to prove that Speke’s discovery of the Victoria Nyanza was unimportant. Taking advantage of the traveller’s admission that he had touched but seldom the shores of this great lake, he denied its existence, and reduced it to a mere assemblage of pools and swamps. Speke, before quitting Baker at Gondokoro, had told him much of the Luta Nzige or Western Lake which had some connection with the Nile, and Baker (as will be subsequently set forth) had followed Speke’s indications with success, and discovered and named the Albert Nyanza. His exaggeration of the length of this sheet of water had convinced Burton that Speke was altogether mistaken, and that he himself was wrong in having earlier stated that the Rusizi River flowed into and not out of the north end of Tanganyika. (Neither Speke nor Burton actually saw the Rusizi.) Burton therefore turned the Rusizi into an effluent of Tanganyika, and made it a connection between that lake and the Albert Nyanza. Had he had any glimmerings of lakes Kivu, Albert Edward, and the Semliki, he would no doubt have been still more certain of his hypothesis. As it was, Speke’s theories have been shown subsequently to have been very near the whole truth. The Victoria Nyanza is the main source of the Nile, though that river finds another reservoir in the great swampy lakes of Kioga and Kwania (which again receive much of the drainage of Mount Elgon), and a most important contribution from the Albert Nyanza; for this last lake is the receptacle of all the drainage of the Ruwenzori snow range. At the time, however, Speke’s theory was not sufficiently supported by evidence, and was certainly open to attack, the more so because he had blundered by giving the Victoria Nyanza so many outlets. The two great men were to meet and discuss their differences, and every one knew that underneath a mere dispute on geographical theories lay deep-seated bitterness of feeling. It was said that Speke, who hated quarrelling, and perhaps felt some compunction as to the frankness of his remarks concerning Burton, looked forward to this public meeting with great dislike, the more so as he was a poor and unready public speaker. But the intended conference was never to come off; on the 21st of September, 1864, Speke, whilst out partridge-shooting on his father’s land at Jordans, near Ilminster, was scrambling over a stile with his gun at full-cock. It was just one of those little imprudences that even the wariest of African travellers commits when he returns to civilisation. Both barrels of the gun were discharged into his body, and he died within a few hours. The news was received by the British Association at Bath just as the meeting was about to commence, and as Burton was seated awaiting the arrival of his old comrade. This terrible event hushed the difference between them. Burton’s wife, a gifted woman, who sometimes wrote very good poetry, inscribed some very beautiful lines to the memory of Speke.

[Illustration: SPEKE’S HANDWRITING.

(Letter to Laurence Oliphant.)]

We take leave here of one of the greatest of African explorers, the second greatest only, if Stanley is to be accounted the first. Only a man of extraordinary energy, determination, bravery, tact, and of iron constitution could have struggled through the difficulties which beset Speke on his route from Zanzibar to the Victoria Nyanza, and from the Victoria Nyanza to the navigable Nile. The purport of the expedition was wellnigh wrecked between Unyamwezi and the Victoria Nyanza; it ran many risks from the caprices of Mutesa; several times Kamurasi threatened it with failure in Unyoro; other dangers awaited it in the Madi and Bari countries, but it finally resulted in affording us the main solution of the Nile Quest. As the outcome of Speke’s journey, the Victoria Nyanza was placed on the map with some approximate correctness as to shape and area; the shape and size of Lake Albert Nyanza were guessed at with extraordinary accuracy, and the course of the White and Mountain Nile was foreshadowed with the same amount of truth as in the case of the Albert Nyanza. The remarkable Hima aristocracy of equatorial Africa and the barbaric court of Uganda were revealed to the world. Speke broke the back of the Nile mystery, just as Stanley did that of the Congo. It only remained henceforth to fill up the minor details of the map.