CHAPTER VII

FRENCH INQUIRIES AND D’ANVILLE’S MAPS

Towards the close of the seventeenth century Louis XIV. of France had begun to make the influence of his country widely felt in the Mediterranean, though before his time Richelieu had cast an eye over the Levant with the idea of supporting French commerce. Louis XIV. even entered into an alliance with Turkey, in which he cut rather a foolish figure, but which at any rate enabled him to send Frenchmen to report on the trade of Egypt. It is stated that the result of these inquiries was a scheme for the conquering and colonising of Egypt which was laid before that monarch and remained in the archives of the French government until it caught the attention of Napoleon Bonaparte when he rose to power. Louis XIV. either did not notice the project or put it aside; but nevertheless, during half of the seventeenth and the whole of the eighteenth century Frenchmen were beginning to interest themselves in the exploration of Egypt, Abyssinia, and the Nile. When the Portuguese missionaries were irrevocably expelled from Abyssinia, or were slaughtered in that country by Abyssinians, or died under the hands of the Turks of Masawa or Suakin, it was suggested to the Pope that perhaps French missionaries might prove more acceptable to Ethiopia. Not a few Roman Catholic Abyssinians found their way to Rome during the seventeenth century, where, as we know, they imparted very valuable information to the learned Saxon philologist Ludolf. These Ethiopians seem to have conveyed the idea to the Papal Court that it was not so much Roman Christianity that was objected to as the political ambitions of the Portuguese. But later on in the seventeenth century _any_ missionaries teaching the Latin rite had become unacceptable to the Abyssinians, and the project of sending French Capuchins to take the place of the Portuguese Jesuits came to nothing. But the Emperor of Abyssinia had one reason for regretting the expulsion of the Jesuits,--an expulsion to which he personally was less favourable than were his powerful vassal chiefs of Tigre and Amhara,--he had relied on the Portuguese Jesuits for medical treatment.

At the close of the seventeenth century an agent of the then ruler of Abyssinia was suffering from stone, and stood in urgent need of a good surgeon. His agent in Egypt (Haji Ali) was instructed to inquire for the services of a European who could operate, and at first endeavoured to find one amongst the Franciscan missionaries, who were Italians. But the Consul of France at Alexandria, hearing of this, resolved to obtain the post for a French physician, and eventually Jacques Charles Poncet, a surgeon from the Franche Comté, was engaged, and it was decided that he should journey to Abyssinia accompanied by Father Brèvedent, a French Jesuit. They reached the country of Sennar in 1699. Soon afterwards Father Brèvedent died, but Poncet succeeded in reaching Abyssinia, and afforded medical assistance to the Emperor. But his arrival in the country, together with the rumour that he was being followed by French Jesuit priests (who as a matter of fact were massacred in Egypt), so aroused the animosities of the Abyssinian clerics that he was hurried out of the country, and returned to Europe (Rome) in 1700. Notwithstanding his experiences, he mixed himself up with the intrigues of an Abyssinian agent and a priest at Rome for the despatch of French missionaries to Abyssinia. The Pope was prudent in the matter, and determined to find out the truth by a Maronite priest, Gabriel, whom he despatched from Cairo. Poncet, however, returned to Egypt in 1703, was joined by a Jesuit, and set out for Jidda in Arabia, but the mission came to grief. He quarrelled with the Abyssinian envoy, Murat, whose pretensions to represent the Abyssinian government were probably mythical, but who had accompanied Poncet to Italy. Poncet never succeeded in returning to Abyssinia, but instead drifted away to Persia and died at Ispahan.

Louis XIV. now took the matter up, urged to interference in the affairs of Abyssinia by the French Consul at Alexandria. He decided to despatch a mission to Ethiopia to open up diplomatic relations with the Christian Emperor. Janus de Noir, le Sieur du Roule, was appointed envoy and placed at the head of this mission. The consent of the Turkish government was given to the passage through Egypt. The expedition left France at the end of 1703, and after a stormy voyage of four months (!) landed at Alexandria. Thence it pursued its way to Cairo, and so on up the Nile and the Blue Nile to the country of Sennar, a region at that time to a great extent under Abyssinian political influence. Here the cupidity and suspicion of the local chieftain were aroused. The mission was attacked, and M. du Roule was massacred. The Emperor of Abyssinia expressed perfunctory regrets, and then, to use a modern phrase, “the incident was closed,” Abyssinia being in such an unattackable position as to make any French reprisals impossible.

Here perhaps may be mentioned a curious attempt at Nile exploration which in an indirect way was connected with French enterprise at this period. The failure of M. du Roule to reach Abyssinia made a great impression on the mind of a Frenchman named Joseph le Roux, Count of Desneval. This nobleman had been in the Danish navy for many years, leaving that service in 1739 with the rank of Rear Admiral. All this time he had been giving his attention with laborious stupidity to the Nile problem, and was convinced that he “had found the proper key to enter these regions,” by studying in Denmark the reports of unsuccessful travellers. Accordingly, in 1739, he started with his wife for Cairo, accompanied by Lieutenant Norden, a Dane. None of the party knew a word of Arabic. The expedition first got into trouble at Cairo through the haughty manners of the Countess, who, becoming involved in a street row, slashed at the people right and left with a pair of scissors. Count Desneval penetrated some distance into Nubia, and his lieutenant, Norden, went as far (possibly) as Berber, which he mentions under its older name of Ibrim. But the Count was obliged to turn back, and Norden was imprisoned by the Turkish Governor, and barely escaped to Egypt with his life. The Count then resolved on an extraordinary expedition. He decided to obtain a commission from Spain and start with a fleet of ships to circumnavigate Africa, enter the Red Sea, and so proceed to Abyssinia. But becoming involved in the war which was then raging between Spain and England, his ship was captured by the British, and he was sent as a prisoner of war to Lisbon, where his projects of Nile exploration came to an end.

The Dutch in the seventeenth century, and some of the Rhenish geographers of western Germany, had published remarkable maps of Africa, but with the exception of the west and south, these maps, in so far as the Nile basin was concerned, were based on the information presented to the world by the Portuguese Jesuits Alvarez, Paez, and Lobo, and on the interesting information concerning the geography of Abyssinia collected by the Saxon philologist Ludolf when communing in Italy with the Abyssinian envoys. These maps, as already related, did injustice to the Portuguese by enormously exaggerating the area of Abyssinia. In fact, Abyssinian geography was extended by these Dutch interpreters of Portuguese travel notes far into the south and west of Africa, so that Abyssinian place names such as Gojam, Kaffa, Enarea, and the lakes and rivers of Abyssinia were pushed down to the vicinity of the Zambezi, and right across the Congo basin. These maps, however, continued to maintain European interest in African exploration, while the French consuls in Egypt and early British travellers in that country began to transmit information (derived for the most part from Copts and Circassians) regarding the main course of the Nile.

In 1772 a French cartographer of a much higher order than had hitherto appeared--D’Anville--published a notable map of Africa, in which he cleared away much of the fantastic geography which the Dutch and Germans had developed from the explorations of the Portuguese. D’Anville’s map of Africa marks an important stage in the exploration of the Nile basin, as it approaches the maps of to-day much more than any previous chart. The outline of the African coast is given more correctly than heretofore, while D’Anville brushes away the exaggerations of Dutch and Portuguese cartographers, who had gradually extended the geography of Abyssinia till they had connected with the Nile all the main rivers of Africa in an absurd system of natural canalisation.

[Illustration: D’ANVILLE’S MAP OF THE NILE BASIN.

(Published 1729; Revised 1772.)]

Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville was born at Paris in 1697. From his boyhood he devoted himself to the study of geography, and met with considerable encouragement from the learned societies of Paris and from the Court. D’Anville’s geography of Abyssinia was mainly based on the information collected by the Portuguese missionaries and by Ludolf. The result is so strikingly like the map subsequently constructed by Bruce as the result of his explorations, that it shows how very much information had already been collected by the Portuguese. The last edition of this map bears the date 1772, a date which is one year before Bruce could make the result of his explorations known. Were these dates not certain, it would almost have seemed as if D’Anville had obtained access to Bruce’s information and used it in his geography of Abyssinia. A great mistake in D’Anville’s map, however, is made in the delineation of the course of the Nile in its great Dongola bend. Here the Nile is made to approach the Red Sea at least a hundred miles nearer than is the case. There is a fairly correct suggestion of the Bahr-al-Ghazal (which is named) and the Bahr-al-Arab. The White Nile above the confluence of the Bahr-al-Ghazal is indicated more timidly. Its course passes through a somewhat vague lake, which may be due to a rumour of Lake Albert. Beyond this lake the sources of the White Nile are divided, and made to flow from two lakelets ten degrees north of the equator. To the south of these ultimate sources is the range of the Mountains of the Moon.

On D’Anville’s map may be seen for the first time several modern place and river names connected with the Nile, such as Shendi (spelled Shanedi) and Bahr-al-Ghazal. Such other terms as Sennar, the Boran Gala tribe, and the Shankala Negroes are also given; but these were first mentioned by the Portuguese and by the Abyssinian teachers of Ludolf one hundred years earlier. There is also a hint at the Unyamwezi country south of the Victoria Nyanza under the name of Moenemuji, though this also was first mentioned by the Portuguese.

D’Anville, who followed to some extent the Sicilian maps of the eleventh century in his delineation of the Nile and inner Africa, made the opposite mistake to Ptolemy and the Portuguese. They carried the main Nile and the geography of Abyssinia many degrees too far to the south. D’Anville placed the sources of the Nile and the Bahr-al-Ghazal something like ten degrees too far to the north. At the same time his map marked a considerable advance in the correct delineation of Nile geography as well as in that of the Niger and the Zambezi.