CHAPTER XIX

STANLEY CONFIRMS SPEKE

Dr. Schweinfurth evidently shared Burton’s opinions on the subject of the Victoria Nyanza. Speke’s great discovery may be said to have reached its low-water mark of depreciation in the map issued in 1873 to illustrate Schweinfurth’s book, “The Heart of Africa.” On this map a fairly correct estimate of the shape and area of the Albert Nyanza is given, together with some hint of the abrupt commencement of the Congo watershed west of Lake Albert. But the mountainous character of Unyoro is greatly exaggerated, and the area of the great Victoria Nyanza is taken up by five lakes and lakelets. Speke was dead, and Grant was tired of asseverating that the Victoria Nyanza was one huge continuous sheet of water.

In 1873, just as Dr. Schweinfurth’s book was being published, Henry Moreton Stanley, an Americanised Welshman, had returned to London from the discovery and relief of Dr. Livingstone. Soon after his return arrived the news of Livingstone’s death. The sorrow over this loss, and enthusiasm at the half-finished discoveries on the great mysterious river which Livingstone believed to be the Nile and everyone else the Congo, caused the “Daily Telegraph” and the “New York Herald” to unite in furnishing funds for a great expedition which should attempt to clear up many African problems. This expedition Stanley (who therefrom rose to be the greatest of African explorers) commanded.

Starting from the coast opposite Zanzibar, whence so many expeditions had set forth since Maizen[89] and Burton had made the first attempts, Stanley travelled by the Unyamwezi route to the Victoria Nyanza, the south shore of which he reached at the end of February, 1875. On the 8th of March in that year Stanley (having put together a boat which he brought in sections, and which he named the _Lady Alice_) started--accompanied by eleven of his men--on a most adventurous voyage along the eastern and northern shores of the lake. He coasted and named the important southeastern arm of the Victoria Nyanza, which is known as Speke Gulf. Passing rather hurriedly along the northeast coast of the lake, he made one great blunder, in that he overlooked the very narrow entrance to Kavirondo Bay (which is almost a separate lake), and created instead a broad northern gulf which he called Ugowe Bay. Ugowe Bay actually is the native name of quite a small shallow inlet on the Uyoma coast. Stanley skirted at some distance the much indented shores of Busoga, passed through what is now known as Rosebery Channel, and so on up Murchison Gulf to the native capital of Uganda, then called Rubaga (now known as Mengo). Here he had a splendid reception from Mutesa, and here he met Édouard Linant de Bellefonds,[90] a Belgian in the Egyptian government, who had been sent by Gordon Pasha to report on the state of affairs in Uganda.

Mutesa having agreed to send a large fleet of canoes to transport all Stanley’s expedition to Uganda, Stanley then resumed his circumnavigation of the lake, following the western shore. Passing between the mainland of Karagwe and the little island of Bumbiri, he was fiercely and unprovokedly attacked by the natives of that island, who were a savage people ruled over by light-coloured Bahima chiefs. Narrowly escaping disaster, he rushed through the opposing savages, got into the _Lady Alice_, and his men paddled off with boards which they tore up from the bottom of the boat. Having rejoined his expedition, which he had left at a place called Kagehi, near to the modern German station of Muanza, Stanley made one more blunder in his configuration of the lake (which he was the first to set right years afterwards). Deceived by a chain of islands, he curtailed the Victoria Nyanza of its southwestern gulf, which extension of the lake Stanley subsequently named after Emin Pasha.

Reinforced by Mutesa’s fleet of canoes, Stanley’s entire expedition was saved the long march through the Hima kingdoms to the west of the Victoria Nyanza. But on his return journey to Uganda he was obliged to stop and give a severe lesson to the Bumbiri islanders. These warlike people barred the passage with their canoes. Stanley had been warned of this opposition by the natives of Iroba on the mainland. Stanley seized the king and two chiefs of Iroba as hostages, who should negotiate a peace between himself and the king of Bumbiri. These hostages caught for him the king’s son. At this moment a large reinforcement of Baganda canoes arrived, and volunteered to go to Bumbiri and negotiate. But they were attacked, and driven off with some loss. Stanley, therefore, was obliged to inflict punishment. On the 4th of August, 1875, he attacked Bumbiri, and drove its natives to the interior of the island. The expedition then pursued its way along the west and north coasts until they entered Napoleon Gulf and arrived at the Ripon Falls, where the Nile leaves the lake. Here they found Mutesa encamped with a large army, engaged in one of his periodical wars with Unyoro.

Stanley not only ascertained the approximate area and shape of the Victoria Nyanza, but he was able to define with some approach to accuracy its principal islands and archipelagoes. After his journey there was no longer any doubt as to Speke’s great discovery. The question was settled once and for ever.

[Illustration: THE VICTORIA NYANZA: UGANDA GOVERNMENT STEAMER IN THE OFFING.]

Leaving Uganda in December, 1875, Stanley accompanied an expedition sent by Mutesa to the countries then governed by the Banyoro at the base of Ruwenzori. Amazing to relate, Stanley was actually encamped under the Ruwenzori range (called, by the Baganda, Gambaragara), and yet was unaware of the importance of his discovery. He guessed that the mountain in front of him might be from fourteen to fifteen thousand feet high, and he called it Mount Edwin Arnold. What is so extraordinary about the matter is that he relates (as though he disbelieved them) the stories of the natives to the effect that white stuff and intense cold characterised the upper parts of this mountain range, yet he evinced little or no curiosity to ascertain the truth of these statements. Of course at the time of his visit all the thirty miles of snow and glaciers were concealed under heavy clouds.

From the vicinity of Ruwenzori the party made its way to Lake Dweru, which Stanley named Beatrice Gulf. This he learned from the natives was (as it is) but a loop of a much larger lake. Years afterwards Stanley was to realise that he had discovered a portion of Lake Albert Edward. Quitting these regions of mysterious lakes and mountains, he journeyed much more prosaically past the volcanoes of Mfumbiro and the Hima kingdoms of Karagwe to Lake Tanganyika, which he reached at Ujiji on its northeast coast. On this portion of the journey Stanley added a good deal to our information regarding the ultimate source of the Nile, the Kagera, though he was somewhat misled by native information, and perhaps by exaggerated swamps, into the creation of a non-existing lake, which he called the Alexandra Nyanza. His subsequent route across Africa from Tanganyika to the mouth of the Congo does not concern the present narrative.

One interesting result of Stanley’s explorations of the Victoria Nyanza, Uganda, and Unyamwezi was that Mr. (now Sir Edwin) Arnold[91] was inspired to propose a Cape-to-Cairo overland telegraph wire to pass via the Zambezi, Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika, to Uganda and the Egyptian Sudan, thereby forestalling both Cecil Rhodes and the author of this book in the advocacy of a continuous line of British communications between South Africa and Egypt.

[Illustration: STANLEY’S IDEA OF THE VICTORIA NYANZA.. 1880.]

It has been mentioned that Stanley’s letter to the “Daily Telegraph,” summoning missionaries to the court of Mutesa, decided the fate of Uganda. This letter met with an immediate response, and in 1876 two parties of English missionaries were sent out by the Church Missionary Society. The Rev. G. Lichfield, Mr. C. W. Pearson, and Dr. R. W. Felkin were despatched by the Nile route. They travelled from Suakin to Khartum, and thence, by the help of Gordon Pasha, to the Albert Nyanza and Uganda. The other half of the missionary party (Lieutenant Shergold Smith, R.N., the Rev. C. T. Wilson, and, amongst others, Alexander Mackay, a Scottish engineer) made the journey by way of Zanzibar and Unyamwezi. Some of these missionaries were detained at the south end of the Victoria Nyanza. Lieutenant Shergold Smith--a man of great promise--journeyed across the lake in a boat and reached Uganda; but soon after his return to the south end of the lake he was killed in an attack made by the natives of Ukerewe (Bukerebe) on the Arab traders. Leaving Mackay, Lichfield, and O’Neil in Uganda, C. T. Wilson and R. W. Felkin decided to return to Europe, taking with them envoys whom Mutesa wished to send to England. On their return journey they were greatly troubled by the sudd, which then--as frequently before and since--practically blocked the navigation of the main Nile. They therefore made a very interesting overland journey through Darfur and Kordofan, and thence back into Egypt.