CHAPTER III.

HOW THE NILE QUESTION STOOD IN THE YEAR OF GRACE 1856.

Αὐτὴ μεν ἤδε τῆς περιῤῥύτου χθονος. This is the finial of th’ encircling earth. SOPH. PHIL.

In this chapter I propose briefly to place before the reader the various shiftings of opinion touching the Nile Sources, and especially to show what had been done for Zanzibar and her coast by the theoretical and practical men of Europe between A.D. 1825 and the time of our landing on the Sawáhil, or East African shores.

The details given to Marinus of Tyre by the Arabian merchants, and their verification by the obscure Diogenes, together with the notices of the African lakes on the lower part of the Upper Nile, brought home about A.D. 60 by Nero’s exploring Centurions, were never wholly forgotten by Europe, which thus unlearned to derive with Herodotus the Nile from Western Africa.[12] As the pages of Marco Polo show, not to quote the voyage of ‘Sinbad the Sailor,’ Arabs and Persians still frequented these shores; and the Hindu Banyans, established from time immemorial upon the Zanzibar coast, had diffused throughout India some information touching the wealthy land. The veteran geographer of Africa, Mr James Macqueen, has commented upon the curious fact that the Padmavan of Lieut. Francis Wilford (vol. iii. of the old Asiatic Researches, ‘Course of the River Cali,’ as supposed to be derived from the Puranas) is represented by the beds of floating water-lilies crossed by Captains Speke and Grant, and upon the resemblance between the Amara, or Lake of the Gods, with the Amara people on the N. E. of the so-called Nyanza Lake. These, however, appear to be mere coincidences, or at best the results of tales learned upon the coast by the Hindu trader. Before leaving Bombay I applied to that eminent Sanskritist the Rev. J. Wilson, D.D., for any notices of East Africa which might occur in the sacred writings of the Hindus. He replied that there were none; and I had long before learned that Col. Wilford himself had acknowledged his pandit to have been an impudent impostor.

At the end of the 15th century came the Portuguese explorers, with Strabo, Pliny, and Ptolemy, in their hands, and followed by a multitude of soldiers, merchants, and missionaries, who invested the intertropical maritime regions of Africa, east and west. The first enthusiasm, however, soon passed away. The Portuguese were supplanted by the Dutch, by the English, and by the French; whilst Ptolemy and the Periplus were ousted by Pigafetta, Dapper, and other false improvers of their doctrines. The Ptolemeian Lakes were marched about and counter-marched in every possible way. The ‘Mountain of the Moon,’ prolonged across Africa under the name Jebel Kumri, really became ‘Lunatic Mountains.’ The change from good to bad geography is well illustrated by two charts published in 1860, by H. E. the Conde de Lavradio. The first is the fac- simile of a map in the British Museum, by Diogo Homem, in 1558. It makes the Nile spring from two great reservoirs. But the second, bearing the name of Antonio Sances (1623), already reduces these lakes to one central Caspian, which sends forth the Nile, the Congo, and the Zambeze, and which, greatly shrunken, still deforms our maps under the name of Marave. Similarly, the ‘Complete System of Geography,’ by Emanuel Bowen (1747), places the Zambre Lake in S. lat. 4°-11°, the ‘centre from which proceed all the rivers in this part of Africa,’ including the Nile.

How popular the subject continued to be may be guessed from the fact that Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), cast his African reading into a favourite form with him, the ‘Adventures of Captain Singleton.’ He lands his hero about March, 1701, a little south of Cape Delgado, causes him to cross several seas and rivers, the latter often flowing northwards, and after a year’s wandering, brings him out at the Dutch settlements on the Gold Coast.

Upon the general question of modern Nile literature the curious reader will consult the well-studied writings of M. Vivien de Saint-Martin. The valuable paper ‘On the Knowledge the Ancients possessed of the Sources of the Nile,’ by my friend W. S. W. Vaux (Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. viii., New Series), treats of exploration up the river, beginning from the Ionian colony, established in the upper river by Psammetichus (circa A.C. 600), and extending to the present day. The learned article by Mr John Hogg, ‘On some old Maps of Africa, in which certain of the Central and Equatorial Lakes are laid down in nearly their true positions,’[13] (Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. viii.), supplies a compendium of old cartography.

I proceed now to the practical part of this chapter, namely, the actual visits of inspection to Zanzibar, and their results. Until the end of the last century, our knowledge was derived almost entirely from those ‘domini Orientalis Africæ,’ the Portuguese. The few exceptions were Sir James Lancaster, who opened to the English the Orient seas. He wintered at the island in 1591; Captain Alexander Hamilton (new account of the East Indies, 1688-1723, Hakluyt’s Collection, viii. 258); and M. Saulnier de Mondevit, commanding the king’s Corvette, La Prévoyance. The latter, who, in 1786, visited the principal points of Zanzibar, published a chart with ‘Observations sur la côte du Zangueibar’ (Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, vol. vi.), and recommended a French establishment at ‘Mongalo.’

In February, 1799, Captain Bissel, R.N., commanding H. M.’s ship Orestes, with the Leopard carrying Admiral Blankett’s flag, touched at the island for refreshments when beating up against the N. E. monsoon towards the Red Sea. He briefly but faithfully described its geography, and he laid down sailing directions which to this day are retained in Horsburgh. Since then many coasting voyages have been made by naval officers and others, who collected from natives, with more or less fidelity, details concerning the inner country. As early as 1811, Captain Smee and Lieutenant Hardy were sent by the Bombay government to gather information on the eastern seaboard of Africa, and they brought back sundry novel details (Transactions Bombay Geographical Society, 1844, p. 23, &c.). Between the years 1822-1826 the whole coast line was surveyed by Captain (afterwards Admiral) W. F. Owen, and by his officers, Captains Vidal, Boteler, and others. Their charts and plans of the littoral, despite sundry inaccuracies, such as placing Zanzibar Island five miles west of its proper position, excited general attention, and were justly termed by a modern author miranda tabularum series. During this Herculean labour, which occupied three years, some 300 of the officers and crew fell victims to the climate of the Coast, to the hardships of boat-work, and to the ferocity of the natives. In 1822 Sir Robert Townsend Fairfax, Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Mauritius, after a crusade against the slave-trade in the dominions of Radáma, King of the Hovas, commissioned Captain (afterwards Admiral) Fairfax Moresby, of H. M.’s ship Menai, to draft a treaty between England and Maskat for limiting the traffic. The mission was successful. The sale of Somalis, a free people, was made piracy; and the Sayyid’s vessels were subject to seizure by the Royal, including the Company’s, cruizers, if detected carrying negroes ‘to the east of a line drawn from Cape Delgado, passing south of Socotra and on to Diu, the west point of the Gulf of Cambay.’[14] In 1822, the Sayyid’s assent having been formally accorded, Captain Moresby left the coast.

In January, 1834, Captain Hart, of H. M.’s ship Imogene, visited Zanzibar, and submitted to the Imperial government brief notes, appending a list of the Sayyid’s squadron then in the harbour, with their age, tonnage, armature, and other particulars. Still geographers declared that Zanzibar was a more mysterious spot to England and India than parts of Central Africa and the shores of the Icy Sea.[15] During the same year the energetic Mr W. Bollaert matured the plan of an expedition, to be conducted by himself, from Zanzibar across the continent. It was laid before the Geographical Society in 1837, but it was not carried out, funds being deficient. In 1835 the U. S. frigate Peacock visited the island during a treaty-making tour, and was supplied with all her wants gratis, the port officials declaring that ‘H. H. the Sultan of Muscat had forbidden them to take any remuneration.’ The surgeon, Dr Ruschenherger (Narrative of a Voyage round the World in 1835-1837), left a realistic description of the city in those its best days. He acknowledges the hospitalities of ‘Captain Hasan bin Ibrahim, of the Arab Navy,’ superintendent of the ‘Prince Said Carlid.’ The latter was the late Sayyid Khalid, then 16 years old. The book, being written by a ‘Dutch-American’ in 1835, is of course bitterly hostile to England. We are told that the keel of the Peacock, passing between Tumbatu Island and Zanzibar, scraped over coral reefs not in Owen’s charts—which may be true. Followed the American Captains Fisher, Drinker, Abbott, and Osgood, and Mr Ross Brown, then a young traveller in a trading-vessel. He also published a readable account of the rising settlement.

When Admiral Sir Charles Malcolm, a name endeared to eastern geographers, was giving energy and impulse to exploration in Western Asia, the late Lieut. W. Christopher, I. N., commanding the H. E. I. C.’s brig-of-war Tigris, was sent to Zanzibar; he made a practical survey of the coast, and he touched at many places now famous—Kilwa (Quiloa), Mombasah, Brava, Marka, Gob-wen (or the Jub River), and Makdishu, or Hanir, by the Portuguese called Magadoxo. He explored the lower waters of a large stream, the Webbe (River) Ganana, or Shebayli (Leopard), which he injudiciously named the Haines River; and he visited Giredi and other settlements till then unknown. He wrote (May 8, 1843) a highly interesting and comprehensive account of the seaboard, which was published in the Journal of the Geographical Society (vol. xiv. of 1844). His plans, charts, and other valuable memoranda were forwarded to the Bombay Government, and the enterprising traveller died in July, 1848, at the early age of 36, from the effects of a wound received before Multan.

The honour of having made the first systematic attempt to explore and to open up the Zanzibar interior, is due to the establishment popularly known as the ‘Mombas Mission;’ its energetic members proved that it was possible to penetrate beyond the coast, and their discoveries excited a spirit of inquiry which led to the exploration of the Lake Regions. In 1842 the Rev. Dr J. Lewis Krapf, being refused readmittance to Shoa, received a ‘Macedonian call’ to East Africa; in other words, he undertook in 1842, with the approbation of the Church Missionary Society, a coasting voyage to East Africa south of the line. Having visited Zanzibar Island he journeyed northwards (March 1844), and met with a kind reception at Mombasah where he accidentally landed; finally he established his head-quarters amongst the Wanyika tribe at Rabai Mpia near Mombasah, which then became the base of his operations. He was joined (June 1846) by the Rev. J. Rebmann of Gerlingen in Würtemberg, and by Messrs Erhardt and Wagner—the latter a young German mechanic, who died shortly after arrival. In June 2, 1851, came Messrs Conrad Diehlmann and Christian Pfefferle, who soon died. They were followed by three mechanics, Hagemann, Kaiser, and Metzler, who returned home, and by M. Deimler who retired to Bombay. M. Rebmann after visiting Kadiaro (Oct. 14, 1847) made in May 11, 1843 the first of three important journeys into the ‘Jagga’ highlands, and discovered, or rather rediscovered, the much vexed Kilima-njaro. The existence of this mountain bearing eternal snows in eastern intertropical Africa is thus alluded to in the Suma de Geographia of Fernandez de Enciso (1530): ‘West of this port (Mombasah) stands the Mount Olympus of Ethiopia, which is exceedingly high, and beyond it are the “Mountains of the Moon,” in which are the sources of the Nile.’ The discovery was confirmed by Dr Krapf, who after visiting (also in 1848) Fuga, the capital of Usumbara, made two journeys (in 1849 and 1851) into Ukambani. During the first he confirmed the position of Kilima-njaro, and he sighted another snowy peak, Kenia, Kegnia, or Kirenia.

The assertions of the missionaries were variously received. M. Vaux was thereby enabled to explain a statement in the Metereologica of Aristotle, where the first or main stream of the Nile is supposed to flow out of the mountain called Silver. Dr Beke accepted the meridional snowy range, and here placed his Mountains of the Moon, a hypothesis first advanced in 1846. The sceptics were headed by Mr W. D. Cooley, who in 1854 had published his ‘Claudius Ptolemy and the Nile.’ He had identified the mountain of Selene (σελήνη) with the snowy highland of ‘Semenai’ or ‘Samien’ in northern Abyssinia, and thus by adopting a mere verbal resemblance he had obtained a system of truly ‘lunatic mountains.’ Some years before (Journal Royal Geographical Society, vol. xv. 1845) appeared his paper entitled, ‘The Geography of N’yassi, or the great lake of Southern Africa investigated,’ a complicated misnomer. The article was written in a clear style and a critical tone, showing ample reading but lacking a solid foundation of fact. It began as usual with Pigafetta and de Barros, and it ended with Gamitto and Monteiro; the peroration, headed ‘Harmony of Authorities,’ was a self-gratulation, a song of triumph concerning the greatness of hypothetical discoveries, which were soon proved to be purely fanciful. Not one man in a million has the instincts of a good comparative geographer, and the author was assuredly not that exceptional man. His monograph did good by awaking the scientific mind, but it greatly injured popular geography. It unhappily asserted (p. 15) that ‘in every part of eastern Africa to which our inquiries have extended, snow is quite unknown.’ And the author having laid down his law bowed before it, and expected Fact as well as the Public to do the same; he even attacked the text of Ptolemy, asserting that the passages treating of the Nile sources and the Lunar Mountains were an interpolation of a comparatively recent date. In June and November 1863 the late Baron von der Decken, accompanied by Dr Kersten, an accomplished astronomical observer, ascended some 1300 feet, saw a clearly defined limit of perpetual snow at about 17,000 feet, and by a rough triangulation gave the main peak of Kilima-njaro an elevation of 20,065 feet. Still Mr Cooley, with singular want of candour, denied existence to the snow. It was the same with his ‘Single Sea,’ which under the meaningless and erroneous name ‘N’yassi’ again supplanted Ptolemy’s Lakes, and this want of acumen offered the last insult to African geography. Thus was revived the day when the Arab and Portuguese geographers made the three Niles (of Egypt, Magadoxo, and Nigritia) issue from one vast reservoir, and thus were the school maps of the world disfigured during half a generation. The lake also was painfully distorted, simply that it might ‘run parallel to the line of volcanic action drawn through the Isle de Bourbon, the north of Madagascar, and the Comoro Islands, and to one of the two lines predominating on the coasts of southern Africa wherever there are no alluvial flats.’ It abounded, moreover, in minor but significant errors, such as confounding ‘Zanganyika,’ a town or tribe, with Tanganyika, the name of the Lake. Of late years Mr Cooley has once more shifted his position, and has declared that he did not intend to provide central intertropical Africa between ‘Monomotapa’ and Angola with a single lake. The whole of his paper on the ‘Geography of N’yassi’ means that if it mean anything. He is not, however, the only Proteus—hard to find and harder to bind— amongst African geographers.

To conclude this notice of the ‘Mombas Mission,’ Dr Krapf again visited Fuga, where he was followed by Mr Erhardt, and finally the two missionaries ran down the coast, touched at Kilwa, and extended their course to Cape Delgado. In August 1855 Dr Krapf, after 18 years’ residence in Africa, bade it farewell; he did not revisit it except for a few months in 1867, when he acted dragoman to the Abyssinian Expedition. In January 1856 appeared what has been called the ‘Mombas Mission Map’ (Skizze nach J. Erhardt’s Original), the result of exploration and of notices collected from the natives. It was accompanied by a ‘Memoir of the Chart of East and Central Africa, compiled by J. Erhardt and J. Rebmann.’ This production was ‘remarked upon’ by Mr Cooley (Jan. 8, 1856), and in turn his remarks were remarked upon by Herr Petermann. The peculiar feature of the chart was a ‘monster slug’-like inland Sea extending from the line to S. Lat. 14°,—an impossible Caspian some 840 miles long × 200 to 300 in breadth. I have already explained that this error arose by the fact that the three chief caravan routes from the Zanzibar coast abut upon three several lakes which, in the confusion of African vocabulary—Nyassa being corrupted to N’yassi, and Nyanza also signifying water—were naturally thrown into one. It was, however, to ascertain the existence of this slug-shaped article that the East African Expedition of 1856-59 was sent out.

The most valuable results of Dr Krapf’s labours are his works on the Zanzibarian languages, and these deserve the gratitude of every traveller and student of African philology. The principal are,

Messrs Krapf’s and Isenberg’s imperfect outline of the Galla language (London, 1840).

Messrs Krapf and Isenberg, ‘Vocabulary of the Galla Language,’ London, 1840.

Tentamen imbecillum Translationis Evangelii Joannis in linguam Gallorum, London, 1841.

Messrs Krapf’s, Isenberg’s, and Mühleisen-Arnold’s Vocabulary of the Somali tongue (1843).

(Three chapters of Genesis translated into the ‘Soahilee’ language, with an introduction by W. W. Greenhough: printed in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1847, had appeared in the mean time.)

Gospel according to St Luke translated into Kinika, 12mo, Bombay, 1848.

Gospel according to St Mark translated into Kikamba, 8vo, Tübingen, 1850.

Outline of the elements of the Ki-suaheli language, 8vo, Tübingen, 1850.

Vocabulary of 6 East-African languages, small folio, Tübingen, 1850.

Mr Erhardt’s vocabulary of the Enguduk Iloigob or Masai tongue, 8vo, Ludwigburg, 1857.

Besides these there are (1860) in MSS., 1. the entire New Testament (Kisawahili). 2. A complete Dictionary of Ki-suahili. 3. The Gospel according to St Matthew (Kikamba). 4. Matthew and Genesis in Galla, &c., &c., &c.

Dr Krapf’s last work, a relation historique, appeared in 1860 (Travels, Researches, and Missionary Labours, &c., &c., with an Appendix by Mr P. G. Ravenstein, F.R.G.S. London, Trübner and Co.). I venture to suggest that he might reprint with great advantage to African students his various journals, scattered through the numbers of the ‘Church Missionary Intelligencer.’ We want them, however, printed textually, with explanatory notes embodying subsequent information.

Meanwhile the difficulties of East African exploration were complicated by a terrible disaster. M. Maizan, an Ensigne de Vaisseau, resolved to explore the inner lake regions viâ the Zanzibar coast, and in 1844 his projects were approved of by his government. After the rains of 1845 he landed at the little settlement Bagamoyo, and when barely three days from the seaboard, he was brutally murdered at the village of Dege la Mhora, by one P’hazi Mazungéra, chief of the Wakamba, a sub-tribe of the Wazaramo. The distinguished hydrographer Captain Guillain was sent in the brig of war Le Decouëdic, to obtain satisfaction for this murder, and the following sentence concludes his remarks upon the subject (Chap. 1, pp. 17-20); ‘Tout ce que je veux, tout ce que je dois me rappeler de Maizan, c’est qu’il était intelligent, instruit, courageux, et qu’il a péri misérablement à la fleur de l’âge (æt. 26) au début d’une enterprise ou il aurait pu rencontrer la gloire.’ I have also described (Lake Regions of Central Africa, 1. Chap. 3), from information collected on the spot, the young traveller’s untimely end; and it is still my opinion that the foul murder was caused more or less directly by the Christian merchants of Zanzibar. Dr Krapf’s account of the catastrophe (Travels, p. 421) abounds in errors. Captain Guillain was also sent on a kind of bagman’s tour, a hawker carrying echantillons of French cloth and other produce offered to the Arab market. Mayotta having been ceded in 1841 by the Sakalawa chief, Andrian Souli, to the French government, which occupied it militarily in 1843, the first idea was to make of it a second and a more civilized Zanzibar. The coasting voyages and a few short inland trips were thought worthy of being published in three bulky volumes (Documents sur l’Histoire, la Géographie, et la Commerce de l’Afrique Orientale, recuellis et rédigés par M. Guillain, &c.; publiés par ordre du Gouvernement. Paris, Bertrand). The additions to Captain Owen’s survey are unimportant, but the French officer has diligently collected ‘documents pour servir,’ which will be useful when a history of the coast shall be written. The worst part of the book is the linguistic; a sailor, however, passing rapidly through or along a country, can hardly be expected to learn much of the language.

Meanwhile an important theory concerning the Nile Sources was published by my friend, Dr Charles T. Beke. He had surveyed and explored (Nov. 1840-May 1843) the Abyssinian plateau and the lowlands near the Red Sea, and he had determined the water-parting of the streams which feed the Nile and the Indian Ocean (Journal Royal Geographical Society, vol. xii). Whilst Ritter (Erdkunde) and other geographers made the White River rise between N. lat. 7° and 8° and even 11°, whilst Messrs Antoine d’Abbadie and Ayrton were searching for the Coy Fountains in Enaria and Kaffa (N. lat. 7° 49′ and E. long. 36° 2′ 9″); and whilst Mr James Macqueen located ‘the sources of the chief branch of the Bahr-el-abiad in about N. lat. 3°’ (Preface xxiv. Geographical Survey of Africa, London, Fellowes, 1840), and ‘at no great distance from the equator’ (Ibid. 235), Dr Beke announced at the Swansea meeting of the British Association, that he would carry the Caput Nili to S. lat. 2°-3° and E. long. 34°; moreover that he would place it ‘at a comparatively short distance from the sea coast, within the dominions of the Imam of Maskat.’ Rightly judging the eastern coast to be the easiest road into central intertropical Africa, Dr Beke, then secretary to the Geographical Society of London, collected a subscription for exploring the Nile Sources, viâ Zanzibar, and sent out Dr Friedrich Bialloblotsky to attempt the discovery. This Professor of Hebrew and literary man presented in February 1849 his credentials to H. M. the Sayyid and to Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton. The latter, backed by Dr Krapf, sent back the explorer to Egypt, without allowing him even to set foot upon the East African shore, and he was justified in so doing. The recent murder of M. Maizan had thrown the coast into confusion, the assassin was at large, and the motives which prompted the deed were still actively at work within the Island of Zanzibar. Dr Bialloblotsky could speak no eastern tongue, at least none that was intelligible in S. Africa; he was completely untrained to travel, he collected ‘meteoric’ dust during a common storm at Aden—_magno cum risu_ of the Adenites; he did not know the difference between a sextant and a quadrant, and he asked Lieut.- Colonel Hamerton what a young cocoanut was.

Dr Beke, in his character of ‘Theoretical Discoverer of the Nile Sources,’ has published the following studies.

‘On the Nile and its Tributaries,’ a statement of his then novel views (Oct. 28, 1846, and printed in the Journal Royal Geographical Society, vols, xvii., xviii. of 1847-8). ‘The Sources of the Nile: being a General Survey of the Basin of that River, and of its Head-streams, with the History of Nilotic Discovery’ (London, Madden, 1860). The appendix contains a summary of Dr Bialloblotsky’s projected journey.

‘On the Mountains forming the eastern side of the Basin of the Nile, and the origin of the designation, “Mountains of the Moon,” applied to them.’ This paper, being refused by the Royal Geographical Society, was read (August 30, 1861) before the British Association at Manchester.

‘Who discovered the Sources of the Nile?’ A letter to Sir Roderick I. Murchison (Madden, Leadenhall-street, 1863).

‘On the Lake Kurá of Arabian Geographers and Cartographers.’ This paper argues that the equatorial Lake Kura-Kawar, drawn by an Arab, and published in Lelewel’s “Geographie du Moyen Age,” represents the lakes and marshes of N. lat. 9°.

Dr Beke, it appears, doubly deserves the title ‘Theoretical Discoverer of the Nile Sources.’ He has lately transferred the Caput from S. lat. 2°-3° to S. lat. 10° 30′-11°, and from E. long. 34° to E. long. 18°-19°, making the stream pass through 43° of latitude, and measuring diagonally one-eighth of the circumference of the globe. (‘Solution of the Nile Problem,’ Athenæum, Feb. 5, 1870). The Nile is thus identified with the Kasai, or Kassavi, the Casais of P. J. Baptista (the Pombeiro), the Casati of Douville, the Casasi of M. Cooley, the Cassabe of M. J. R. Graça, the Kasaby of Mr Macqueen, and the Kasye or Loke of Dr Livingstone. These ‘New Sources’ are in the ‘primæval forests of Olo- Vihenda and Djikoe or Kibokoe (the Quiboque of the Hungarian officer Ladislaus Magyar), in the Mossamba Mountains, about 300 miles from the coast of Benguela. Mr Keith Johnston, jun. believes that the Lufira- Luapula river is the lower course of the Kassavi or Kassabi, which is usually made to rise in S. lat. 12°, near the Atlantic seaboard, and after flowing N. E. and N. as far as about S. lat. 8°, to turn eastward instead of continuing to the N. W. and W. He makes it, however, the true head of the Congo, not of the Nile.

Amongst minor explorations, I may mention that of Mr Henry C. Arcangelo, who in 1847 ascended the Juba or Govind River. It is, however, doubtful how far his explorations extended. He was followed in 1849 by Captain Short. In November, 1851, a party of three Moors or Zanzibar Arabs landed at ‘Bocamoio’ (the Bagamoyo roadstead village where M. Maizan disembarked), travelled with 40 carriers to the Lake ‘Tanganna’ (Tanganyika), crossed it in a boat which they built, visited the Muata Cazembe, and reached, after six months, the Portuguese Benguela. The late Mr Consul Brand communicated, through the Foreign Office, this remarkable journey, in which Africa had been crossed, with few difficulties, from sea to sea, and it excited the attention of the Royal Geographical Society (Journal, vol. xxiv. of 1854).

In 1852 Sir Roderick I. Murchison propounded his theory of the basin- shaped structure of the African interior. This was an important advance upon the great plateau of Lacépède (Mémoire, etc., dans les Annales du Musée de l’Histoire Nat., vi. 284), and it abolished the gardens and terraces of Ritter (Erdkunde, le Plateau ou la Haute Afrique). About the same time Col. Sykes recommended that an expedition be sent from Mombasah to explore the ‘Arcanum Magnum,’ opining that the discovery of Kilima-njaro and Kenia had limited the area of the head-waters between S. lat. 2°-4° and E. long. (G.) 32°-36°, almost exactly the southernmost position of the Nyanza Lake. In March, 1855, Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton forwarded concise but correct notices, ‘On various points connected with the H.M. Imam of Muskat,’ which was published in the Bombay Selections (No. 24). In Dec. 10, 1855, followed Mr James Macqueen’s paper on the ‘Present state of the Geography of some parts of Africa (read at the Royal Geographical Society, April 8 and June 10, 1850), with ‘Notes on the Geography of Central Africa,’ taken from the researches of Livingstone, Monteiro, Graça, and others (Journal Royal Geographical Society, vol. xxvi. 109). They show great critical ability. The map accompanying the memoir separated the ‘Tanganyenka’ from the Nyassa Lake; moreover, it disposed the greater axes of these several waters as they should be, nearly upon a meridian. Maps still suffered from that incubus the N’yassi or Single Sea, stretching between S. lat. 7°-12°, and distorted by its ‘historien géographe’ from the N. S. position occupied by the half-dozen lakes which compose it[16] to a N. W. and S. E. rhumb. As afterwards appeared, Mr Macqueen had confused the Tanganyika and Nyanza waters by placing the centre of the former in long. (G.) 29°. This, however, was not suspected when my excellent and venerable friend gave me the rough proofs of his paper, which travelled with me into Central Africa. Mr Macqueen has also done good by editing (Journal Royal Geographical Society, vol. xxx.) the Journeys of Silva Porto with the Arabs from Benguela to Ibo and Mozambique, and by other labours too numerous to be specified.

A pause in East African exploration followed the departure of Dr Krapf. M. Erhardt, whose project of entering viâ Kilwa was not supported, had joined his brother missionaries in India. M. Rebmann alone remained at Rabai Mpia. And whilst under H. H. Abbas Pasha a large and complete Egypto-European expedition was, after the old fashion, organized to ascend the stream, ‘ad investigandum caput Nili’ (Seneca, Nat. Quæst. vi. 8), the new and practicable route from the Zanzibar coast seemed to have been clean forgotten.

During this lull we landed, as the reader has been told in the last chapter, upon the African isle ‘Menouthias.’

NOTE.

I may be excused in here alluding to an assertion often repeated by the ‘Geographer of N’gassi,’ in his Memoir on the ‘Lake Regions of East Africa reviewed’ (London, Stanford, 1864). He makes me ‘the easy dupe of the most transparent personal hostility, which wore the respectable mask of the Royal Geographical Society,’ and he assures me that I left England ‘indoctrinated’ as to what lake or lakes I should find in Central Africa, and so forth.

This fretfulness of mortified vanity would not have been noticed by me had it not been so unfair to the Royal Geographical Society. In the preface of my Memoir (pp. 4-8, Journal Royal Geographical Society, vol. xxix.), I was careful to print all the instructions of the Expeditionary Committee, and I only regretted that they were not more detailed. It is absurd to assert of a traveller that he ‘visited the lake regions with a confirmed inclination to divide the lake.’ What interest can he have in bringing home any but the fullest and most exact details? The petty differences between himself and the Royal Geographical Society, which Mr Cooley assumes all the world to know, were utterly unknown to me when I left England in 1856; and, greatly despising such things, I have never since inquired into the subject. Returning home in 1859, I learned with surprise that the Comparative Geographer’ still stood upon his ‘Single Sea,’ and considered any one who dared to make two or three of it his personal enemy. That such should be the mental state of a gentleman who has not, they say, taken leave of his wits, was a phenomenon which justified my wonder; nor could I believe it till the pages of the _Athenæum_ proceeded to give me proof positive. It is melancholy to see a laborious literary man, whose name might stand so high, thus display the caput mortuum of his intellect.

P.S. Another mortuary notice! My good old friend Mr Macqueen has also passed away at a ripe age, leaving behind him the memory of a laborious and useful life, especially devoted to the cause of Africa and the Africans.

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Footnote 12:

The ‘Father of History’ evidently held to the theory that the modern Bahr el Ghazal (explored of late by Mr Petherich and by the unfortunate Tinné family) was the head reservoir of the White Nile. Nor is it impossible that in long-past ages the lakes or waters in question were fed by a watershed whose eastern declivities still discharge themselves into the higher basin.

Footnote 13:

In 1859 I had written (Journal Royal Geographical Society, vol. xxix. 272) ‘The Nyanza, as regards name, position, and even existence, has hitherto been unknown to European geographers; but descriptions of this “sea” by native travellers have been unconsciously transferred by our writers to the Tanganyika of Ujiji, and even to the Nyassa of Kilwa.’ Mr Hogg proposes to show that such was not the case. But the map by John Senex (1711) throws into one three or at least two waters. Mercator (Kauffman) lays the ‘Garava’ lakelet almost parallel with the Zaflan (Zambeze) or Kilwa Lake. Walker (1811) and Lizars (1815) fit in the Tanganyika correctly, whilst the Nyassa is wholly incorrect.

Of the five maps one only, that of John Senex, deserves consideration. ‘This great lake placed here by report of the negroes,’ alludes, I believe, to legends of the Bahari-ngo (the ‘great sea,’ vulgarly, Baringo), of which many East African travellers have heard. One Rumu wa Kikandi, a native of Uemba, described the water to Dr Krapf as lying five days’ journey from Mount Kenia: in the Introduction to his last travels (p. xlviii.), however, the enterprising missionary identifies it with the so-called Nyanza or Ukerewe Lake. I was told of it by the Wakamba at Mombasah in 1857. The Père Léon d’Avanchers (Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, vol. xvii. 164) also collected, when travelling on the East African coast, in August, 1858, information concerning Baharingo, as he writes it. Senex finally disconnects it with the Nile, and indeed gives it no drainage at all.

I cannot but think that Mr Hogg’s learning and research have considerably strengthened my position, and that the so-called Nyanza Lake was, curious to say, the least known, and at the same time the nearest, to European geographers.

Footnote 14:

This ‘restrictive treaty’ was published in No. 24 of the Bombay Selection (1856), under the head of ‘Persian Gulf.’

Footnote 15:

We must not, however, forget that in ‘all-enlightened England’ Smollett could complain of the ‘people at the other end of the island knowing as little of Scotland as of Japan.’

Footnote 16:

The ‘Nyassi’ is, in fact, a general reservoir into which are thrown the Lakes Tanganyika, the Nyassa, the Shirwa, and the four smaller waters, the Liemba, the Bangweolo, the Moero of the great river Chambeze, and the Liemba drained by the Lufira-Luapula stream. The latter, lying between S. lat. 10°-12°, have lately been reported by Dr Livingstone (Map of the Lake Region of Eastern Africa), showing the Sources of the Nile recently discovered by Dr Livingstone, with notes, &c., by Keith Johnston, jun. (Johnston); and we have a Sketch Map of Dr Livingstone’s recent Explorations—Eine Kartenskizze, &c. From Dr Petermann’s Geographische Mittheilungen, Part V., for May, 1870 (Gotha, Perthes).