Kitobni o'qish: «The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile, And Explorations of the Nile Sources»
PREFACE
In the history of the Nile there was a void: its Sources were a mystery. The Ancients devoted much attention to this problem; but in vain. The Emperor Nero sent an expedition under the command of two centurions, as described by Seneca. Even Roman energy failed to break the spell that guarded these secret fountains. The expedition sent by Mehemet Ali Pasha, the celebrated Viceroy of Egypt, closed a long term of unsuccessful search.
The work has now been accomplished. Three English parties, and only three, have at various periods started upon this obscure mission: each has gained its end.
Bruce won the source of the Blue Nile; Speke and Grant won the Victoria source of the great White Nile; and I have been permitted to succeed in completing the Nile Sources by the discovery of the great reservoir of the equatorial waters, the ALBERT N'YANZA, from which the river issues as the entire White Nile.
Having thus completed the work after nearly five years passed in Africa, there still remains a task before me. I must take the reader of this volume by the hand, and lead him step by step along my rough path from the beginning to the end; through scorching deserts and thirsty sands; through swamp, and jungle, and interminable morass; through difficulties, fatigues, and sickness, until I bring him, faint with the wearying journey, to that high cliff where the great prize shall burst upon his view—from which he shall look down upon the vast ALBERT LAKE, and drink with me from the Sources of the Nile!
I have written "HE!" How can I lead the more tender sex through dangers and fatigues, and passages of savage life? A veil shall be thrown over many scenes of brutality that I was forced to witness, but which I will not force upon the reader; neither will I intrude anything that is not actually necessary in the description of scenes that unfortunately must be passed through in the journey now before us. Should anything offend the sensitive mind, and suggest the unfitness of the situation for a woman's presence, I must beseech my fair readers to reflect, that the pilgrim's wife followed him, weary and footsore, through all his difficulties, led, not by choice, but by devotion; and that in times of misery and sickness her tender care saved his life and prospered the expedition.
"O woman, in our hours of ease
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!"
In the journey now before us I must request some exercise of patience during geographical details that may be wearisome; at all events, I will adhere to facts, and avoid theory as much as possible.
The Botanist will have ample opportunities of straying from our path to examine plants with which I confess a limited acquaintance. The Ethnologist shall have precisely the same experience that I enjoyed, and he may either be enlightened or confounded. The Geologist will find himself throughout the journey in Central Africa among primitive rocks. The Naturalist will travel through a grass jungle that conceals much that is difficult to obtain: both he and the Sportsman will, I trust, accompany me on a future occasion through the "Nile tributaries from Abyssinia," which country is prolific in all that is interesting. The Philanthropist,—what shall I promise to induce him to accompany me? I will exhibit a picture of savage man precisely as he is; as I saw him; and as I judged him, free from prejudice: painting also, in true colours, a picture of the abomination that has been the curse of the African race, the SLAVE TRADE; trusting that not only the philanthropist, but every civilized being, will join in the endeavour to erase that stain from disfigured human nature, and thus open the path now closed to civilization and missionary enterprise. To the Missionary,—that noble, self-exiled labourer toiling too often in a barren field,—I must add the word of caution, "Wait"! There can be no hope of success until the slave trade shall have ceased to exist.
The journey is long, the countries savage; there are no ancient histories to charm the present with memories of the past; all is wild and brutal, hard and unfeeling, devoid of that holy instinct instilled by nature into the heart of man—the belief in a Supreme Being. In that remote wilderness in Central Equatorial Africa are the Sources of the Nile.
INTRODUCTION
The primary object of geographical exploration is the opening to general intercourse such portions of the earth as may become serviceable to the human race. The explorer is the precursor of the colonist; and the colonist is the human instrument by which the great work must be constructed—that greatest and most difficult of all undertakings—the civilization of the world.
The progress of civilization depends upon geographical position. The surface of the earth presents certain facilities and obstacles to general access; those points that are easily attainable must always enjoy a superior civilization to those that are remote from association with the world.
We may thus assume that the advance of civilization is dependent upon facility of transport. Countries naturally excluded from communication may, through the ingenuity of man, be rendered accessible; the natural productions of those lands may be transported to the seacoast in exchange for foreign commodities; and commerce, thus instituted, becomes the pioneer of civilization.
England, the great chief of the commercial world, possesses a power that enforces a grave responsibility. She has the force to civilize. She is the natural colonizer of the world. In the short space of three centuries, America, sprung from her loins, has become a giant offspring, a new era in the history of the human race, a new birth whose future must be overwhelming. Of later date, and still more rapid in development, Australia rises, a triumphant proof of England's power to rescue wild lands from barrenness; to wrest from utter savagedom those mighty tracts of the earth's surface wasted from the creation of the world,—a darkness to be enlightened by English colonization. Before the advancing steps of civilization the savage inhabitants of dreary wastes retreated: regions hitherto lain hidden, and counting as nothing in the world's great total, have risen to take the lead in the world's great future.
Thus England's seed cast upon the earth's surface germinates upon soils destined to reproduce her race. The energy and industry of the mother country become the natural instincts of her descendants in localities adapted for their development; and wherever Nature has endowed a land with agricultural capabilities, and favourable geographical position, slowly but surely that land will become a centre of civilization.
True Christianity cannot exist apart from civilization; thus, the spread of Christianity must depend upon the extension of civilization; and that extension depends upon commerce.
The philanthropist and the missionary will expend their noble energies in vain in struggling against the obtuseness of savage hordes, until the first steps towards their gradual enlightenment shall have been made by commerce. The savage must learn to WANT; he must learn to be ambitious; and to covet more than the mere animal necessities of food and drink. This can alone be taught by a communication with civilized beings: the sight of men well clothed will induce the naked savage to covet clothing, and will create a WANT; the supply of this demand will be the first step towards commerce. To obtain the supply, the savage must produce some article in return as a medium of barter, some natural production of his country adapted to the trader's wants. His wants will increase as his ideas expand by communication with Europeans: thus, his productions must increase in due proportion, and he must become industrious; industry being the first grand stride towards civilization.
The natural energy of all countries is influenced by climate; and civilization being dependent upon industry, or energy, must accordingly vary in its degrees according to geographical position. The natives of tropical countries do not progress: enervated by intense heat, they incline rather to repose and amusement than to labour. Free from the rigour of winters, and the excitement of changes in the seasons, the native character assumes the monotony of their country's temperature. They have no natural difficulties to contend with,—no struggle with adverse storms and icy winds and frost-bound soil; but an everlasting summer, and fertile ground producing with little tillage, excite no enterprise; and the human mind, unexercised by difficulties, sinks into languor and decay. There are a lack of industry, a want of intensity of character, a love of ease and luxury, which leads to a devotion to sensuality,—to a plurality of wives, which lowers the character and position of woman. Woman, reduced to that false position, ceases to exercise her proper influence upon man; she becomes the mere slave of passion, and, instead of holding her sphere as the emblem of civilization she becomes its barrier. The absence of real love engendered by a plurality of wives, is an absolute bar to progress; and so long as polygamy exists, an extension of civilization is impossible. In all tropical countries polygamy is the prevailing evil: this is the greatest obstacle to Christianity. The Mahommedan religion, planned carefully for Eastern habits, allowed a plurality of wives, and prospered. The savage can be taught the existence of a Deity, and become a Mussulman; but to him the hateful law of fidelity to one wife is a bar to Christianity. Thus, in tropical climates there will always be a slower advance of civilization than in more temperate zones.
The highest civilization was originally confined to the small portion of the globe comprised between Persia, Egypt, Greece, and Italy. In those countries was concentrated the world's earliest history; and although changed in special importance, they preserve their geographical significance to the present day.
The power and intelligence of man will have their highest development within certain latitudes, and the natural passions and characters of races will be governed by locality and the temperature of climate.
There are certain attractions in localities that induce first settlements of man; even as peculiar conditions of country attract both birds and animals. The first want of man and beast is food: thus fertile soil and abundant pasture, combined with good climate and water communication, always ensure the settlement of man; while natural seed-bearing grasses, forests, and prairies attract both birds and beasts. The earth offers special advantages in various positions to both man and beast; and such localities are, with few exceptions, naturally inhabited. From the earliest creation there have been spots so peculiarly favoured by nature, by geographical position, climate, and fertility, that man has striven for their occupation, and they have become scenes of contention for possession. Such countries have had a powerful influence in the world's history, and such will be the great pulses of civilization,—the sources from which in a future, however distant, will flow the civilization of the world. Egypt is the land whose peculiar capabilities have thus attracted the desires of conquest, and with whom the world's earliest history is intimately connected.
Egypt has been an extraordinary instance of the actual formation of a country by alluvial deposit; it has been CREATED by a single river. The great Sahara, that frightful desert of interminable scorching sand, stretching from the Red Sea to the Atlantic, is cleft by one solitary thread of water. Ages before man could have existed in that inhospitable land, that thread of water was at its silent work: through countless years it flooded and fell, depositing a rich legacy of soil upon the barren sand until the delta was created; and man, at so remote a period that we have no clue to an approximate date, occupied the fertile soil thus born of the river Nile, and that corner of savage Africa, rescued from its barrenness, became Egypt, and took the first rank in the earth's history.
For that extraordinary land the world has ever contended, and will yet contend.
From the Persian conquest to the present day, although the scene of continual strife, Egypt has been an example of almost uninterrupted productiveness. Its geographical position afforded peculiar advantages for commercial enterprise. Bounded on the east by the Red Sea, on the north by the Mediterranean, while the fertilizing Nile afforded inland communication, Egypt became the most prosperous and civilized country of the earth. Egypt was not only created by the Nile, but the very existence of its inhabitants depended upon the annual inundation of that river: thus all that related to the Nile was of vital importance to the people; it was the hand that fed them.
Egypt depending so entirely upon the river, it was natural that the origin of those mysterious waters should have absorbed the attention of thinking men. It was unlike all other rivers. In July and August, when European streams were at their lowest in the summer heat, the Nile was at the flood! In Egypt there was no rainfall—not even a drop of dew in those parched deserts through which, for 860 miles of latitude, the glorious river flowed without a tributary. Licked up by the burning sun, and gulped by the exhausting sand of Nubian deserts, supporting all losses by evaporation and absorption, the noble flood shed its annual blessings upon Egypt. An anomaly among rivers; flooding in the driest season; everlasting in sandy deserts; where was its hidden origin? where were the sources of the Nile?
This was from the earliest period the great geographical question to be solved.
In the advanced stage of civilization of the present era, we look with regret at the possession by the Moslem of the fairest portions of the world,—of countries so favoured by climate and by geographical position, that, in the early days of the earth's history, they were the spots most coveted; and that such favoured places should, through the Moslem rule, be barred from the advancement that has attended lands less adapted by nature for development. There are no countries of the earth so valuable, or that would occupy so important a position in the family of nations, as Turkey in Europe, Asia Minor, and Egypt, under a civilized and Christian government.
As the great highway to India, Egypt is the most interesting country to the English. The extraordinary fertility being due entirely to the Nile, I trust that I may have added my mite to the treasury of scientific knowledge by completing the discovery of the sources of that wonderful river, and thereby to have opened a way to the heart of Africa, which, though dark in our limited perspective, may, at some future period, be the path to civilization.
I offer to the world my narrative of many years of hardships and difficulties, happily not vainly spent in this great enterprise: should some un-ambitious spirits reflect, that the results are hardly worth the sacrifice of the best years of life thus devoted to exile and suffering, let them remember that "we are placed on earth for a certain period, to fulfil, according to our several conditions and degrees of mind, those duties by which the earth's history is carried on." (E. L. Bulwer's "Life, Literature, and Manners.")
CHAPTER I
THE EXPEDITION
In March, 1861, I commenced an expedition to discover the sources of the Nile, with the hope of meeting the East African expedition of Captains Speke and Grant, that had been sent by the English Government from the South via Zanzibar, for that object. I had not the presumption to publish my intention, as the sources of the Nile had hitherto defied all explorers, but I had inwardly determined to accomplish this difficult task or to die in the attempt. From my youth I had been inured to hardships and endurance in wild sports in tropical climates, and when I gazed upon the map of Africa I had a wild hope, mingled with humility, that, even as the insignificant worm bores through the hardest oak, I might by perseverance reach the heart of Africa.
I could not conceive that anything in this world had power to resist a determined will, so long as health and life remained. The failure of every former attempt to reach the Nile source did not astonish me, as the expeditions had consisted of parties, which, when difficulties occur, generally end in difference of opinion and retreat: I therefore determined to proceed alone, trusting in the guidance of a Divine Providence and the good fortune that sometimes attends a tenacity of purpose. I weighed carefully the chances of the undertaking. Before me—untrodden Africa; against me—the obstacles that had defeated the world since its creation; on my side—a somewhat tough constitution, perfect independence, a long experience in savage life, and both time and means which I intended to devote to the object without limit. England had never sent an expedition to the Nile sources previous to that under the command of Speke and Grant. Bruce, ninety years ago, had succeeded in tracing the source of the Blue or Lesser Nile: thus the honour of that discovery belonged to Great Britain; Speke was on his road from the South; and I felt confident that my gallant friend would leave his bones upon the path rather than submit to failure. I trusted that England would not be beaten; and although I hardly dared to hope that I could succeed where others greater than I had failed, I determined to sacrifice all in the attempt. Had I been alone it would have been no hard lot to die upon the untrodden path before me, but there was one who, although my greatest comfort, was also my greatest care; one whose life yet dawned at so early an age that womanhood was still a future. I shuddered at the prospect for her, should she be left alone in savage lands at my death; and gladly would I have left her in the luxuries of home instead of exposing her to the miseries of Africa.
It was in vain that I implored her to remain, and that I painted the difficulties and perils still blacker than I supposed they really would be: she was resolved, with woman's constancy and devotion, to share all dangers and to follow me through each rough footstep of the wild life before me. "And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest will I die; and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me."
Thus accompanied by my wife, on the 15th April 1861, I sailed up the Nile from Cairo. The wind blew fair and strong from the north, and we flew towards the south against the stream, watching those mysterious waters with a firm resolve to track them to their distant fountain.
On arrival at Korosko, in Lat. 22 degrees 44 minutes, in twenty-six days from Cairo, we started across the Nubian desert, thus cutting off the western bend of the Nile, and in seven days' forced camel march we again reached the river Abou Hamed. The journey through that desert is most fatiguing, as the march averages fifteen hours a day through a wilderness of scorching sand and glowing basalt rocks. The simoom was in full force at that season (May), and the thermometer, placed in the shade by the water skins, stood at 114 degrees Fahrenheit.
No drinkable water was procurable on the route; thus our supply was nearly expended upon reaching the welcome Nile. After eight days' march on the margin of the river from Abou Hamed through desert, but in view of the palm trees that bordered the river, we arrived at Berber, a considerable town in lat. 17 degrees 58 minutes on the banks of the Nile.
Berber is eight days' camel march from Khartoum (at the junction of the White and Blue Niles, in lat. 15 degrees 30 minutes), and is the regular caravan route between that town and Cairo.
From the slight experience I had gained in the journey to Berber, I felt convinced that success in my Nile expedition would be impossible without a knowledge of Arabic. My dragoman had me completely in his power, and I resolved to become independent of all interpreters as soon as possible. I therefore arranged a plan of exploration for the first year, to embrace the affluents to the Nile from the Abyssinian range of mountains, intending to follow up the Atbara river from its junction with the Nile in lat. 17 degrees 37 minutes (twenty miles south of Berber), and to examine all the Nile tributaries from the southeast as far as the Blue Nile, which river I hoped ultimately to descend to Khartoum. I imagined that twelve months would be sufficient to complete such an exploration, by which time I should have gained a sufficient knowledge of Arabic to enable me to start from Khartoum for my White Nile expedition. Accordingly I left Berber on the 11th June, 1861, and arrived at the Atbara junction with the Nile on the 13th.
There is no portion of the Nile so great in its volume as that part situated at the Atbara junction. The river Atbara is about 450 yards in average width, and from twenty-five to thirty feet deep during the rainy season. It brings down the entire drainage of Eastern Abyssinia, receiving as affluents into its main stream the great rivers Taccazy (or Settite), in addition to the Salaam and Angrab. The junction of the Atbara in lat. 17 degrees 37 minutes N. is thus, in a direct line from Alexandria, about 840 geographical miles of latitude, and, including the westerly bend of the Nile, its bed will be about eleven hundred miles in length from the mouth of its last tributary, the Atbara, until it meets the sea. Thus, eleven hundred miles of absorption and evaporation through sandy deserts and the delta must be sustained by the river between the Atbara junction and the Mediterranean: accordingly there is an immense loss of water; and the grandest volume of the Nile must be just below the Atbara junction.
It is not my intention in the present work to enter into the details of my first year's exploration on the Abyssinian frontier; that being so extensive and so completely isolated from the grand White Nile expedition, that an amalgamation of the two would create confusion. I shall therefore reserve the exploration of the Abyssinian tributaries for a future publication, and confine my present description of the Abyssinian rivers to a general outline of the Atbara and Blue Nile, showing the origin of their floods and their effect upon the inundations in Lower Egypt.
I followed the banks of the Atbara to the junction of the Settite or Taccazy river; I then followed the latter grand stream into the Abyssinian mountains in the Base country. From thence I crossed over to the rivers Salaam and Angrab, at the foot of the magnificent range of mountains from which they flow direct into the Atbara. Having explored those rivers, I passed through an extensive and beautiful tract of country forming a portion of Abyssinia on the south bank of the river Salaam; and again crossing the Atbara, I arrived at the frontier town of Gellabat, known by Bruce as "Ras el Feel." Marching due west from that point I arrived at the river Rahad, in about lat. 12 degrees 30 minutes; descending its banks I crossed over a narrow strip of country to the west, arriving at the river Dinder, and following these streams to their junction with the Blue Nile, I descended that grand river to Khartoum, having been exactly twelve months from the day I had left Berber.
The whole of the above-mentioned rivers—i.e. the Atbara, Settite, Salaam, Angrab, Rahad, Dinder, and Blue Nile—are the great drains of Abyssinia, all having a uniform course from southeast to northwest, and meeting the main Nile in two mouths; by the Blue Nile at Khartoum, 15 degrees 30 minutes, and by the Atbara, in lat. 17 degrees 37 minutes. The Blue Nile during the dry season is so reduced that there is not sufficient water for the small vessels engaged in transporting produce from Sennaar to Khartoum; at that time the water is beautifully clear, and, reflecting the cloudless sky, its colour has given it the well-known name of Bahr el Azrak, or Blue River. No water is more delicious than that of the Blue Nile; in great contrast to that of the White river, which is never clear, and has a disagreeable taste of vegetation. This difference in the quality of the waters is a distinguishing characteristic of the two rivers: the one, the Blue Nile, is a rapid mountain stream, rising and falling with great rapidity; the other is of lake origin, flowing through vast marshes. The course of the Blue Nile is through fertile soil; thus there is a trifling loss by absorption, and during the heavy rains a vast amount of earthy matter of a red colour is contributed by its waters to the general fertilizing deposit of the Nile in Lower Egypt.
The Atbara, although so important a river in the rainy season of Abyssinia, is perfectly dry for several months during the year, and at the time I first saw it, June 13, 1861, it was a mere sheet of glaring sand; in fact a portion of the desert through which it flowed. For upwards of one hundred and fifty miles from its junction with the Nile, it is perfectly dry from the beginning of March to June. At intervals of a few miles there are pools or ponds of water left in the deep holes below the general average of the river's bed. In these pools, some of which may be a mile in length, are congregated all the inhabitants of the river, who as the stream disappears are forced to close quarters in these narrow asylums; thus, crocodiles, hippopotami, fish, and large turtle are crowded in extraordinary numbers, until the commencement of the rains in Abyssinia once more sets them at liberty by sending down a fresh volume to the river. The rainy season commences in Abyssinia in the middle of May, but the country being parched by the summer heat, the first rains are absorbed by the soil, and the torrents do not fill until the middle of June.
From June to the middle of September the storms are terrific; every ravine becomes a raging torrent; trees are rooted up by the mountain streams swollen above their banks, and the Atbara becomes a vast river, bringing down with an overwhelming current the total drainage of four large rivers—the Settite, Royan, Salaam, and Angrab—in addition to its own original volume. Its waters are dense with soil washed from most fertile lands far from its point of junction with the Nile; masses of bamboo and driftwood, together with large trees, and frequently the dead bodies of elephants and buffaloes, are hurled along its muddy waters in wild confusion, bringing a rich harvest to the Arabs on its banks, who are ever on the look-out for the river's treasures of fuel and timber.
The Blue Nile and the Atbara receiving the entire drainage of Abyssinia, at the same time pour their floods into the main Nile in the middle of June. At that season the White Nile is at a considerable level, although not at its HIGHEST; and the sudden rush of water descending from Abyssinia into the main channel, already at a fair level from the White Nile, causes the annual inundation in Lower Egypt.
During the year that I passed in the northern portion of Abyssinia and its frontiers, the rains continued with great violence for three months, the last shower falling on the 16th September, from which date there was neither dew nor rain until the following May. The great rivers expended, and the mountain torrents dried up; the Atbara disappeared, and once more became a sheet of glaring sand. The rivers Settite, Salaam, and Angrab, although much reduced, are nevertheless perennial streams, flowing into the Atbara from the lofty Abyssinian mountains; but the parched, sandy bed of the latter river absorbs the entire supply, nor does one drop of water reach the Nile from the Atbara during the dry season. The wonderful absorption by the sand of that river is an illustration of the impotence of the Blue Nile to contend unaided with the Nubian deserts, which, were it not for the steady volume of the White Nile, would drink every drop of water before the river could pass the twenty-fifth degree of latitude.
The principal affluents of the Blue Nile are the Rahad and Dinder, flowing, like all others, from Abyssinia. The Rahad is entirely dry during the dry season, and the Dinder is reduced to a succession of deep pools, divided by sandbanks, the bed of the river being exposed. These pools are the resort of numerous hippopotami and the natural inhabitants of the river.
Having completed the exploration of the various affluents to the Nile from Abyssinia, passing through the Base country and the portion of Abyssinia occupied by Mek Nimmur, I arrived at Khartoum, the capital of the Soudan provinces, on the 11th June, 1862.
Khartoum is situated in lat. 15 degrees 29 minutes, on a point of land forming the angle between the White and Blue Niles at their junction. A more miserable, filthy, and unhealthy spot can hardly be imagined. Far as the eye can reach, upon all sides, is a sandy desert. The town, chiefly composed of huts of unburnt brick, extends over a flat hardly above the level of the river at high water, and is occasionally flooded. Although containing about 30,000 inhabitants, and densely crowded, there are neither drains nor cesspools: the streets are redolent with inconceivable nuisances; should animals die, they remain where they fall, to create pestilence and disgust. There are, nevertheless, a few respectable houses, occupied by the traders of the country, a small proportion of whom are Italians, French, and Germans, the European population numbering about thirty. Greeks, Syrians, Copts, Armenians, Turks, Arabs, and Egyptians, form the motley inhabitants of Khartoum.
