CHAPTER XXV

GEOGRAPHICAL WORK IN THE UGANDA PROTECTORATE

Stanley’s relief of Emin Pasha led to the withdrawal of the latter’s government from the equatorial regions, and after a brief interval of hesitation, to the foundation of a British Protectorate over Uganda and the adjoining territories. Preparations for this Protectorate were made by Captain (now General Sir Frederic) Lugard, who, in the course of his settlement of the disturbed country of Uganda, journeyed round Ruwenzori to Lake Albert Edward.[111] Shortly afterwards (as already related) Emin Pasha returned to this part of the world accompanied by Dr. Stuhlmann. Mr. Scott-Elliott, a Scottish naturalist, came out in 1893–1894 for the purpose of making natural history collections. He drew a very neat and truthful little map of the eastern and southern flanks of Ruwenzori,--a map which until quite recently has been somewhat overlooked by those who have compiled charts of this region. Scott-Elliott, Lugard, Stuhlmann, Grogan, J. E. Moore, Malcolm Fergusson, and several Belgian officers, such as the late Lieutenant Meura, were not slow to point out and correct serious errors on the part of Stanley in his rough delimitation of Lake Albert Edward. Lake Dweru or Beatrice Gulf was also redrawn with advantage. But curiously enough, all these travellers--Stanley included--omitted to point out that the connection between Lake Dweru and Lake Albert Edward was not a broad channel, but a narrow and winding river between high banks. It was left to the present writer to make this correction on the map. The author also, together with Lieutenant Meura, redrew with greater correctness the upper course of the Semliki River, and in 1900 added somewhat to our knowledge of the configuration of the Ruwenzori range.

The expedition of Sir Gerald Portal (especially through the work of his brother Raymond, who died after doing excellent service in pacifying Toro) added to the map of the countries between Ruwenzori on the west and Kavirondo on the east. In 1895 the late Colonel Seymour Vandeleur (when only a lieutenant in the army) made an excellent and systematic survey of the Kingdom of Uganda and of much of Unyoro. The wars against the Sudanese mutineers added to our geographical knowledge of these districts. Colonel John Evatt and Captain H. Maddox, amongst others, gave us for the first time something like the true shape of the marshy lakes of Kioga and Kwania, which, in some respects, are huge backwaters of the Victoria Nile. But the great addition to the geography of the southern extremities of the Nile basin was made by the expedition under Colonel J. R. L. Macdonald. This officer had accurately mapped the regions bordering on the northwest coasts of the Victoria Nyanza in 1894. About this period also Mr. F. J. Jackson,[112] Mr. C. W. Hobley, and Mr. Ernest Gedge were filling up the map as regards the configuration of the country along the northeastern watershed of Victoria Nyanza and the slopes of Mount Elgon. Mount Elgon was ascended to its highest peak (14,080 feet), for the first and only time, by Messrs. Jackson and Gedge in 1895.

[Illustration: G. F. SCOTT-ELLIOT.]

Colonel Macdonald was despatched more with a political than with a geographical object. He was to journey through the northeastern part of the British sphere of interest in East Africa and make for the Nile about Gondokoro, and so travel with the idea of forestalling any possible French competitors; whilst General (Lord) Kitchener should be defeating the Khalifa at Khartum with a view to recovering all the provinces of the Egyptian Sudan. But the mutiny of the Sudanese soldiers in Uganda and other causes threw great difficulties in the way of Colonel Macdonald’s expedition. He succeeded however in mapping himself, and with the aid of such officers on his staff as Majors Austin, Bright, Hanbury-Tracey, and others, the regions to the north of Mount Elgon. He filled up a considerable blank in the map between what was known east of the Mountain Nile and the actual coast-line of Lake Rudolf. Colonel Macdonald’s expedition first brought clearly to our knowledge the remarkable mountain-ranges of Chemorongi, Nakwai, Lobor, Lopala, Morongole, Agoro, and Harogo. He put on the map the upper waters of the Asua River (an important eastern contributary of the Mountain Nile) and its larger affluents. His work and that of the late Captain Welby has enabled us to define more clearly the separation between the waters of Lake Rudolf on the east and the Mountain Nile on the west. Colonel Macdonald discovered Lake Kirkpatrick on the upper Asua, and mapped more precisely Lake Salisbury and the northern slopes and streams of Mount Elgon.

Captain M. S. Wellby had travelled in 1899 round the east and south shores of Lake Rudolf, and thence had penetrated westwards through the Turkana and Karamojo countries to the Nile watershed, where he discovered two streams flowing north, both of which he named Ruzi. These he imagined to be the head-waters of the Sobat. Donaldson Smith and H. H. Austin showed his theory to be wrong [?]. The Ruzis probably flow into the rivers draining the Lotuka highlands and entering the Bahr-az-Ziraf or Giraffe Nile.

[Illustration: DR. DONALDSON-SMITH.]

Colonel J. R. L. Macdonald (assisted by Captain Pringle) had previously (1893), when first employed in Uganda, made an admirable survey of the British coasts of the Victoria Nyanza, from Port Victoria in northern Kavirondo, westwards to the German frontier at the Kagera River, and for the first time put on record all or nearly all the islands, bays, inlets, peninsulas, and rivers of the north and northwest coasts of the Victoria Nyanza. Here and there his work in this direction has been added to by Mr. C. W. Fowler and Commander Whitehouse. Whitehouse, as already related, was the surveyor who finally amended Stanley’s error of “Ugowe Bay,” and gave us for the first time the correct form of the great northeastern gulf of the Victoria Nyanza (Kavirondo Bay), together with the shape of the two large islands which mask its entrance. Commander Whitehouse also surveyed the east coast of the Victoria Nyanza down to the German frontier, and added a lot of new material to the delineation of this eastern coast-line. In this direction an interesting journey was made from Lake Naivasha to the coast of Kavirondo Bay by Major E. Gorges in 1900. Mr. C. W. Hobley, a Sub-Commissioner in the Uganda Protectorate, contributed a good deal of information to fill up the blank places of the map between Kavirondo Bay on the south and the northwestern flanks of Mount Elgon on the north. Captain Pringle had already mapped these countries on the railway survey.

In 1900 Dr. Donaldson-Smith, an American, traversed the countries which lie between the north end of Lake Rudolf and the Mountain Nile. He crossed several dry river-beds, in a region of appalling drought (extinct tributaries of the Sobat), and then reached the rivers Oguelokur, Tu, and Kos which flow in a northwesterly direction towards the Mountain Nile or its branch, the Giraffe River. The region between the Giraffe and the Sobat remains to-day the only unexplored part of the Nile Basin.

In 1900 and 1901 Major C. Delmé Radcliffe made the first completely accurate survey of the Nile from Lake Albert to Gondokoro, and put on the map for the first time many new details concerning the Asua River and its affluents, besides streams which rise in the hills of the Acholi and Madi countries and enter that portion of the Nile between Gondokoro and Lake Albert.

From the Cape to Cairo was a watchword that, as an idea, first emanated from the pen of Sir Edwin Arnold in 1876, and as a phrase took shape in writings by the author of this book in 1888 and 1890, and as a policy was finally adopted by Cecil Rhodes in 1892. The first person to carry this idea into practical execution was Mr. Ewart Grogan, who (accompanied part of the way by Mr. Sharp) travelled literally from the Cape to Cairo via Lake Albert Edward and the Uganda Protectorate. His contributions to Nile explorations are referred to in the next chapter. He was followed in 1900 by Major A. St. Hill Gibbons and later by M. Lionel Dècle. Between 1898 and 1902 Colonel E. A. Stanton surveyed the eastern part of the Bahr-al-Ghazal and the intricate channels of the lower Mountain Nile.

[Illustration: CUTTING THE SUDD.]

In the year 1900 a very notable achievement took place. The terrible obstruction of the sudd which had intermittently blocked the Nile navigation from the days of Nero’s two centurions (who could hardly force their way through it in the year 66 A.D.) to our own times was cut through resolutely by an expedition under Major Malcolm Peake. The government of the Egyptian Sudan has for the last two years continued to clear away this obstacle, and in all probability it will never be allowed to form again. In fact, in this direction man will probably do much to modify the subsequent history of the Nile. Sir William Garstin has recently explored Lake Tsana and the Blue Nile as well as the White Mountain Nile as far as Gondokoro, Lake Albert, and Lake Victoria, with a view to ascertaining which of the two rivers contributes the most valuable supply of water for the irrigation and fertilisation of Egypt. So far, he has decided for the Blue Nile, a fact which lends increased importance to the Empire of Abyssinia.[113] It may be, however, that with the clearing of the sudd on the Bahr-al-Ghazal and the Mountain Nile these branches of the great river may send down increasing supplies of water to Egypt. In any case the clearing of the sudd will permit of these waterways being used for penetrating in all directions into the heart of Equatorial Africa.