CHAPTER IX

MUHAMMAD ALI OPENS UP THE WHITE NILE

In 1807 Jacotin published at Paris an “Atlas de l’Égypte,” which gave a fairly accurate survey of the Nile from the Delta to Assuan. This Atlas gave the results of the geographical work done by the French army of occupation. The splendid volumes which illustrated the other scientific results of Napoleon’s venture were not published until the Bourbons had been restored to the throne of France. They aroused, however, great interest in the valley of the Nile, especially by the account they gave of its remarkable fauna. This interest was felt as much in England as in France; one of the first English travellers to explore the Nile (as far as Korosko) after the close of the Napoleonic war was the Hon. Charles Leonard Irby, who, with James Mangles (both of them naval commanders), travelled in Egypt in 1817–1818. When Egypt had settled down under the iron rule of Muhammad Ali Pasha, the French, who had begun to conceive the idea of supporting the power of that adventurer, and so once more gaining control over Egypt, began to resume their interest in Nile exploration. In 1819 a Frenchman named Frederic Caillaud (of Nantes), who had been in Egypt under the Napoleonic régime, returned under the patronage of Louis XVIII. and explored the main Nile as far south as the present site of Khartum, and gave the first accurate account of one of the several Meroes, namely, that ancient Ethiopian capital which is situated on the right bank of the Nile about one hundred miles south of the confluence of the Atbara. Caillaud and his companion Letorzec also accompanied a military expedition under Ibrahim Pasha. This expedition (which resulted in the founding of Khartum[33] in 1823) explored the Blue Nile for a considerable distance,--as far as Fazokl. French interest in Nile exploration was to continue later on more merged in the service of the Egyptian government. But British efforts in this direction had not been lacking in the early part of the nineteenth century. A young Swiss, John Ludwig Burckhardt, born in French Switzerland in 1784,[34] and a student of two German universities, came to England in 1806 with a letter of introduction to Sir Joseph Banks and the African Association.[35] This Association accepted his proposals for African exploration. Burckhardt then set himself to study first in London and then at Cambridge, and during his residence in England attempted in the thoroughgoing Teutonic manner to inure himself to hardships by exposing himself to cold, fatigue, and hunger in many fashions. After his three years’ residence in England he left for Malta, and reached Aleppo in October, 1809. Here he thoroughly mastered Arabic, the contents of the Koran, and much else that appertained to the practice of the Muhammadan religion and the administration of its law. In 1812 he started from Cairo with the intention of journeying across the desert to Fezzan, but, changing his plans, followed the Nile to Korosko, and thence travelled across the Nubian Desert to Berber and Shendi. From this last place he travelled to Suakin and to Jiddah. From Jiddah he made (the first of all European Christians) the pilgrimage to Mecca. Returning again to Cairo and preparing once more to start for Fezzan and the Niger, he was seized with an illness of which he died at Cairo. His journeys had resulted in the collection of eight hundred volumes of Oriental manuscripts, all of which he sent to Cambridge University. All the works of this brilliant traveller and profound Orientalist were published after his death.

[Illustration: BLUE NILE, TWENTY MILES EAST OF FAZOKL.]

In 1827 Adolphe Linant (Bey), a Belgian, who subsequently called himself Linant de Bellefonds, took service under the British African Association,[36] ascended the White Nile (first of all Europeans, so far as we know, since Dalion the Greek), and reached a point (Al Ais) nearly one hundred and fifty miles south of Khartum.

But the next great blow at the Nile mystery was to be struck by the orders of the Pasha of Egypt. Muhammad[37] Ali was the native of a little Vlach (Wallach) town or settlement in Albania called Cavalla. In appearance he might at any time have been mistaken for a Frenchman of eastern France, a German, or an Englishman. He was born in 1768, and was adopted as a son by the Governor of the town, who, as a reward for his bravery as a soldier, gave him his daughter in marriage. His three eldest sons, Ibrahim, Tusun, and Ismail, were born in Albania. In 1801 he was sent to Egypt with the rank of a major, rising soon to be colonel. When the French had evacuated Egypt, the Turks endeavoured to gain direct control over the country by attacking the power of the Mameluks or Circassian soldiery who had really ruled in the name of the Turks. In 1803 the British evacuated Egypt, and gradually the situation resolved itself into a struggle for power between the Albanian soldiery under Muhammad Ali and the Turks. The Albanians allied themselves at first with the Mameluk or Circassian party, the former rulers. At length, after a civil war lasting for two years, the Turkish government appointed Muhammad Ali to be Governor of Egypt. In 1807 the British attempted to reoccupy Egypt, and took possession of Alexandria. This action temporarily united Muhammad Ali with his enemies, the Circassian Beys. The British expedition ended in disaster and withdrawal. At last, by means of treachery and an appalling massacre, Muhammad Ali got rid of the Circassian party and became the undisputed master of Egypt. He then assisted the Porte to put down the Wahabi revolt in Arabia. These expeditions resulting in many military successes, the ambition of Muhammad Ali grew, and he desired to create for himself a perfectly disciplined army. To this end he decided to employ his disaffected troops who were opposed to innovations in discipline in conquering the Sudan. He commenced with Nubia, Dongola, and Sennar. From the Sudan were brought back numbers of the sturdy Negroes, who were drilled into some kind of disciplined force by French officers at Assuan. Then came the war with Turkey, which nearly resulted in Muhammad Ali capturing Constantinople. But this led to the intervention of Europe, and the ambition of Muhammad Ali was confined within the limits of Egypt and the Sudan.

In 1839 the ruler of Egypt despatched the first important conquering and exploring expedition up the White Nile. It was accompanied by a French officer, Thibaut,[38] who had become a Muhammadan. This expedition reached as far south as north latitude 6° 30′. In 1841 a second expedition, which was accompanied by two Frenchmen (D’Arnaud and Sabatier), and by a German, Ferdinand Werne, reached the vicinity of Gondokoro in north latitude 4° 42′. Werne wrote an interesting and scientific account of this second expedition. His map of the White Nile from Khartum to Gondokoro is a remarkably good piece of work. A third expedition under the same Turkish commander (Selim Bimbashi), and accompanied by D’Arnaud, Sabatier, and Thibaut also reached Gondokoro. All these expeditions were made in sailing boats, and those that reached farthest were stopped by the same obstacles,--the rapids at Gondokoro.

As far back as 1820 steamers had been introduced onto the Nile between the Delta and the First Cataract, mainly through French enterprise. Some of these steamers even plied between Cairo and Korosko. In 1846 the first steamboat was put together on the White Nile above Khartum. In 1845 a Frenchman (Brun-Rollet) ascended the White Nile in a sailing vessel and founded a trading post in the Kich country.

[Illustration: FERDINAND WERNE.]

Between 1827 and 1830 a German, Prokesch von Osten, had made a correct survey of the Nile between Assuan and Wadi Halfa, and in the later forties this survey was continued under Baron von Müller as far south as Ambukol in Dongola. During the forties great interest concerning the Egyptian Sudan had arisen in Austria. Austria was not suspected of political views in the direction of Egypt, and therefore no doubt Muhammad Ali and his successors were more disposed to encourage Austrian missionaries than those of France or England. The Pope created a Bishop of Khartum in 1849, and Austrian missionaries[39] had founded stations on the White Nile as far distant as Gondokoro by 1850, in which year Dr. Ignatz Knoblecher, an Austrian missionary, extended his explorations a few miles beyond Gondokoro to Mount Logwek. A little, very little, information was collected as to the course of the Nile above that seventy miles of rapids which cuts off the navigation of the river between Nimule on the south and Gondokoro on the north. A vague story was collected from the Bari to the effect that this great river came from a considerable distance southwards and issued from a lake. This, no doubt, was a correct hint as to the existence of Lake Albert Nyanza. But at this point the information stopped.

In other directions progress had been made in Nile exploration. Besides the Austrian Roman Catholic Mission,[40] which established stations chiefly in the Kich and Bari countries on the White or Mountain Niles, the rapid opening up of the waterways into the heart of Africa soon attracted pioneers of exploration, traders, and adventurers of several European nationalities. Far ahead of the European and the Turk, however, went the Nubian (the native of Dongola) and the Arab of Upper Egypt. These men were the real pioneers of European exploration, since they served as guides and transport agents to the Europeans who followed along the routes they opened up. These Nubians started a far-reaching trade in slaves, and were guilty of many barbarities. They made such a deep impression on the minds of the Negroes in the Nile basin from the Bahr-al-Ghazal to Uganda that to this day the natives of the Egyptian Sudan are called “Nubi” or Nubian, even though they be black Negroes from the equatorial regions. The Nubian slave-traders laid the foundation of the Sudanese regiments which were to serve Egypt and England in subduing and controlling Eastern Equatorial Africa. As the Mountain Nile (thus the main stream is called, south of its junction with the Bahr-al-Ghazal) led through excessively swampy, despairing countries, and did not reach the habitable land until it entered the Bari country near the rapids of Gondokoro, most of the exploring enterprise for fifteen years, between 1840 and 1860, preferred to follow the more easily navigable streams which unite to form the Bahr-al-Ghazal, the great western tributaries of the Nile.

Among the pioneers in Nile exploration at this stage was the forerunner of the intelligent tourist, Mr. Andrew Melly, a member of a Liverpool family, though born at Geneva. Mr. Melly actually started for Khartum and the White Nile accompanied by his wife, two sons, and a daughter. His main object seems to have been that of natural history collecting. He took insufficient measures for living with health in a tropical climate; fever attacked him on his return journey, and he died near Shendi on his way back from Khartum. His son George wrote a book in two volumes describing Khartum and the Nile between that place and the First Cataract. This book was mainly based on the father’s journal. The expedition seems to have been well equipped. The provisions were furnished by Fortnum and Mason, who even in that early period (1849–1850) supplied tinned salmon.

The first of the long roll of European martyrs to African fever in the opening up of the Sudan was Herr Baumgarten, a Swiss mining engineer, educated in Austria, who died at Khartum in 1839 after returning with Muhammad Ali, who at that period had penetrated as far south as Al Ais, in the Shiluk country. Brun-Rollet, a Frenchman, was perhaps the first European trader to establish himself on the White Nile. He ceased trading, however, in 1850, after having established posts as far south as the Bari country.

In 1851 the mission station of Gondokoro was founded by Knoblecher and Vinci of the Austrian Mission. A short distance beyond Gondokoro, on the west bank of the Nile, near the modern Belgian station of Rejaf, is a little stony hill called by the Bari Logwek. This hill was the extreme point reached by the third expedition despatched from Khartum at the orders of Muhammad Ali in 1841, and afterwards by the Austrian missionary, Knoblecher, in 1848. Here the White Nile, approached from the north, became unnavigable owing to the rapids which obstruct the course of the stream during its thousand-feet fall from Dufile to Gondokoro. For a long time Logwek (remarkable as being the first high and stony land which is met with in ascending the White Nile after the many hundred miles’ journey through the marshes) formed the limit of European discovery coming from the north.

About 1843 or 1844 D’Arnaud, one of the Frenchmen who accompanied the exploring expeditions of the Egyptian government, published a map of the White Nile which carried the course of the river as far south as 4° 42′ north latitude. Towards the end of the forties further explorations were made from time to time west of the White Nile by a Frenchman, De Malzac, who at the time of his death at Khartum, in 1859 (?), was compiling a work on the Fauna of the White Nile.

[Illustration: THE WHALE-HEADED STORK (_Balæniceps rex_).]

In 1845 a Welsh[41] mining engineer named John Petherick entered the service of Muhammad Ali, the Pasha of Egypt. He was employed for some years in examining the countries of Upper Egypt, the coast of the Red Sea, and Kordofan for coal and other minerals, apparently with little or no success. In his interesting work, “Egypt, the Sudan, and Central Africa,” he has left us, amongst other things, a remarkably interesting account of Kordofan at the end of the forties of the last century, some twenty-five years after its conquest by the Turks from the mild rule of Darfur.[42] In 1848 Muhammad Ali died, and Petherick quitted the service of the Egyptian government. Trade in the Sudan had now ceased to be a government monopoly, partly owing to the efforts of the English Consul-General at that time. Petherick therefore resided at El Obeid in Kordofan for five years as a trader in gums and other produce. In 1853 he resolved to go in for the ivory trade on the White Nile and the Bahr-al-Ghazal. This great western feeder of the Nile was beginning to be opened up by the Nubian traders already referred to. For six years Petherick traded for ivory and explored some of the great rivers which flowed into the Bahr-al-Ghazal,--chiefly the Jur and the Yalo or Rōl. During the course of his explorations he was the first European (unless De Malzac preceded him) to reach the Nyam-nyam country (Mundo). He made some remarkable discoveries in natural history,--the splendid _Cobus maria_ or Mrs. Gray’s Waterbuck, and the _Balæniceps rex_ or Whale-headed Stork. Petherick’s skins of the _Balæniceps_ which he gave to the British Museum in 1859 were the only specimens in that collection for more than forty years, until they were reinforced by the first Whale-headed Storks obtained on the Victoria Nyanza, which were sent home by the author of this book. Petherick also captured and brought to Europe a young hippopotamus. [It is interesting to observe in his first book, “Egypt, the Sudan,” etc., published in 1859, that the classification of his bird collections is made by Dr. P. L. Sclater, then and until recently Secretary to the Zoölogical Society.] Petherick’s return to Europe with a recital of such wonders obtained for him considerable attention. He married in the early part of 1861, and was invited to take charge of a relief expedition to be sent up the Nile to meet Captain Speke and Grant, who were to attempt descending the Nile from its supposed source at the north end of the Victoria Nyanza.

[Illustration: John Petherick.]

During the latter period of Petherick’s experiences on the Nile (in 1858), he had been appointed consular agent for the British government at Khartum. In 1861, before starting to return to the Sudan, he was given the rank of consul. He left England in 1861 with his wife and with an English youth named Foxcroft, who accompanied him as bird-stuffer and natural history collector.[43] In 1861 he despatched to Gondokoro, to await the arrival of Speke and Grant, an expedition under the Turks and Arabs, with boats full of supplies. Petherick and his wife, accompanied by Dr. Murie (who had joined them from England) and by Foxcroft, then spent some years exploring the western affluents of the Nile which unite in the Bahr-al-Ghazal. In this way they revisited the Nyam-nyam country. Petherick seems to have been partly trading and partly collecting information on the slave-trade and prosecuting Maltese slave-traders; and these investigations seem to have rather taken his attention from one of the objects of his mission, which was to insure a proper relief to Speke and Grant. How far he was to blame in the matter it is difficult to determine. People in England seem to have doubted the effectiveness of his methods to insure this relief, and amongst others who thought it necessary to forestall Petherick was Mr. (afterwards Sir Samuel) Baker, who, in 1862–1863, got ahead of the Pethericks (then deciding to go in person to the relief of the explorers), and actually arrived at Gondokoro in time to afford much needed assistance to the exhausted travellers. Speke appears to have considered that Petherick had not acted up to the assurance he had given to the Royal Geographical Society, who intrusted him with the expenditure of the relief fund. This criticism, together with the bitter animosity aroused by Petherick’s prosecution of slave-traders and reports on the misgovernment of Egyptian officials, cost him the confidence of the Foreign Office, and in 1864 his consulate was abolished. It was actually alleged by some of his enemies that he himself carried on a trade in slaves,--an allegation for which there does not seem to have been the slightest foundation. In 1865 the Pethericks returned to England. Petherick’s second book (“Travels in Central Africa”) was not published until 1869. It is impossible, after careful observation and a more than thirty years’ interval, to avoid the impression that Petherick was treated by his country with some ingratitude. He did a great deal to increase our knowledge of the Nile basin and its remarkable fauna. His collections of beasts, birds, and fishes enriched the British Museum. He took a number of astronomical observations in order to fix important points on the White Nile and in the region of the Bahr-al-Ghazal. He died in 1882.

In 1840 a French Egyptian official, Clot Bey, engaged as private secretary a young French doctor of medicine, Alfred Peney. For something like fifteen years Dr. Peney carried on official medical work in Egypt. He was gradually led, however, towards Nile exploration through his official visits to Khartum, the Blue Nile, and Kordofan. He was intensely interested in ethnology and in the study of the Nile Negroes. French influence in Egypt during the fifties was in the ascendency. De Lesseps and the various officials who served France as agents and consuls-general at Cairo had known how to secure the concession for the Suez Canal. They became jealous that France should also secure for her citizens the glory of having discovered and traced the course and the sources of the Upper Nile. This blue ribbon of geographical discovery was already being sought for by Germans and Englishmen. Dr. Peney especially was continually urging his superiors in Cairo to organise, or induce the Viceroy Said to organise, a Nile research expedition under French auspices. But the choice by the French agent of a leader for this enterprise fell most unfortunately. Hanging about Cairo was a Frenchman of a type not infrequently met with at Levantine courts during the first eight decades of the nineteenth century. This was the Count d’Escayrac de Lauture. Men of this description were either Royalist refugees, or the sons of such, or they were Napoleonic noblemen who had got into financial or social difficulties. D’Escayrac, however, appears to have been an amiable dilettante, who had some pretensions to be an Egyptologist. But he was utterly unsuited to lead an expedition into Central Africa. He was elderly, vain, pompous, and extravagant. The viceroy, wishing that the expedition should not be too exclusively French, ordered d’Escayrac to recruit part of his personnel in England, Germany, and Switzerland. This was done, but the expedition never left Cairo for the Upper Nile. D’Escayrac made himself perfectly ridiculous by strutting about in a fantastic uniform, trailing a long sabre. His expensive scientific instruments were badly packed, and arrived at Cairo injured. The whole expedition was dissolved, owing to the bitter dislike which d’Escayrac inspired among his staff. The only incident in the whole of Count d’Escayrac’s preparations which shows him to have been in any way enterprising or intelligent, was his desire to secure good photographic views of the Upper Nile and its natives. He had provided the expedition with the best apparatus which could be obtained at that period (1856). It is curious to note that in the criticisms of his plans published at the time, the critics animadvert more bitterly on the extravagance of spending one hundred pounds on photography than on any other supposed mistake in d’Escayrac’s preparations.

Dr. Albert Peney was to have been medical officer to the expedition. When it was dissolved, he started off for the White Nile on his own account, attaching himself, whenever opportunity offered, to such caravans as those of Andrea de Bono, the Maltese. Peney made a remarkably good map (most interesting to place on record as showing subsequent changes in the course of the Nile) between Bor and a place which he calls Nieki, which was situated on the Mountain Nile very near to the present site of Fort Berkeley. Peney, hearing rumours of great rivers to the west, crossed the range of hills which flanks the western bank of the Mountain Nile in the Bari country, and thus reached the river Yie or Yeï. This river, as we know now, flows northwest nearly parallel to the main Mountain Nile, and joins that river some distance before its junction with the Bahr-al-Ghazal. But Peney exaggerated the importance of this stream, and confused it with the accounts he heard of the many great rivers that united to form the Bahr-al-Ghazal. On his map he actually makes the Yie an effluent of the White Nile, issuing from the main stream not far from the present post of Nimule, and flowing northwestwards until it enters the Bahr-al-Ghazal. He thus transformed the whole region of the Bahr-al-Ghazal into an enormous island encircled by two branches of the Nile. Peney further visited the country to the east of Gondokoro, and was probably the first explorer to mention the name Latuka. This country he rightly designates Lotuka. Latuka is the incorrect version given to the world by Emin Pasha. The _Lo_ in this word is really the masculine article met with in so many of the Masai group of languages to which the tongue of Latuka belongs. The root _tuka_ (which should be properly spelled and pronounced _tukă_) is evidently a racial name widespread among that Negroid group resulting from an ancient intermixture of the Gala with the Negro, from which groups the Latuka, Turkana, Masai, Nandi, and Elgumi descend.[44]

Dr. Peney died of blackwater fever in July, 1861, at a point on the Nile near Fort Berkeley. Andrea de Bono was with him at his death, and records the characteristics of the disease from which Dr. Peney died. Since the idea has been started that blackwater fever is quite a new disease in these regions, it is interesting to know that from all accounts several of the earliest European pioneers from 1848 to 1861 appear to have died of this malady whilst exploring the Upper Nile.

About the time that Peney was exploring the Mountain Nile, another Frenchman, Lejean, was surveying with some correctness the Bahr-al-Ghazal estuary, of which he published a map in 1862.

[Illustration: MAP PUBLISHED IN PENNY MAGAZINE OF 1852.

Which gives results of Nile exploration up to that date.]

Not only Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans, but Italians and Maltese had by this time appeared as explorers, traders, and naturalists on the White Nile and its tributaries.[45] Some of these came as members of the Austrian Roman Catholic Mission. Perhaps out of jealousy of Austria, or with the idea of spreading North Italian trade and influence, the then Kingdom of Sardinia appointed Signor Vaudet (apparently a Piedmontese trader) Sardinian proconsul at Khartum. Vaudet invited out his two nephews, the brothers Poncet (one of whom published a book on the White Nile in 1863). Vaudet was killed by the Bari tribe near Gondokoro about 1859. This Bari people, now so much diminished by famine and by the raids of the Sudanese slave-traders and Dervishes, was a far more serious bar to the prosecution of exploration up the Mountain Nile in the direction of the great lakes than the rapids above Gondokoro. The Bari, no doubt, were wronged by the Europeans and Nubians, but they were nevertheless responsible for the death of not a few European explorers. But for their determined hostility, there is little doubt that the earlier French, Italian, German, and English pioneers would have found their way to Lake Albert long before its discovery by Baker. Indeed Giovanni Miani, a Venetian, got as far south as Apuddo,[46] if not farther, in the prosecution of his search for the rumoured lake. Miani subsequently explored the regions of the Bahr-al-Ghazal and the headwaters of the streams rising in the Nyam-nyam country. He it was who, first of all explorers, brought back those rumours of a watershed beyond the Nile system, with a great river (the Welle) flowing to the west.

There seems to have been little, if any, international jealousy in this wonderful field of exploration between 1840 and 1860. Khartum was the rendezvous, the principal depot of the Europeans, and throughout all these years was under a Turkish governor. Life in Khartum between 1850 and 1860 was by no means devoid of attractions. Several of the Europeans who made it their headquarters brought out their wives with them. Others were married to handsome Abyssinian women. The houses of Egyptian style were comfortable and cool. The place swarmed with strange new beasts and birds; indeed, nearly every house included a menagerie in one of its yards. A great slave-market brought before the eyes of astonished and interested Europeans nearly all the principal Negro types from as far west as Wadai and Darfur, from the confines of Abyssinia on the east, from the lands of the naked Nile Negroes on the south; stalwart, lighter-coloured, bearded Nyam-nyam cannibals from the southwest, coal-black Madi, here and there an Akka Pygmy, thin-shanked Dinka and Shiluk, sturdy Bongo, and handsome Gala. “There ain’t no Ten Commandments” might with some justice have been said of society at Khartum. At any rate it was much untrammelled as regards the more wearisome conventions of civilised life. Nobody inquired if M. Dubois was legally married to Mme. Dubois, and perhaps the treatment of the doubtful Mme. Dubois as a respectable married woman by blue-eyed strait-souled Mrs. Jones ended by Mme. Dubois becoming legally united to her spouse later on at Cairo, and finishing the rest of her life as a happy and perfectly respectable person. The air was full of wonderment. Improvements made year by year in firearms resulted in marvellous big-game shooting. Though there were bad fevers to be got in the Bahr-al-Ghazal, the climate of Khartum itself was not necessarily unhealthy. The post seems to have arrived across the desert on camels at least once a month. The tyranny, social and administrative, of the British military officer and his dame was not to come for many years; the “smart” hotel was absent; provisions were good, plentiful, and cheap. Those are times that the African explorer of to-day looks back upon with something like a sigh.

[Illustration: THE RIVER SOBAT.]