Gold Medallist of the Royal Geographical Society.
To Her Most Gracious Majesty
THE QUEEN
I dedicate, with Her permission,
THIS BOOK,
Containing the Story of the Discovery of the Great Lake
From which the NILE ultimately flows,
And which,
As connected so intimately,
As a NILE SOURCE, with the VICTORIA LAKE,
I have ventured to name
"THE ALBERT N'YANZA,"
In Memory of the Late Illustrious and Lamented
PRINCE CONSORT.
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.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I.
THE EXPEDITION.
Programme - Start from Cairo - Arrive at Berber - Plan of Exploration -
The River Atbara - Abyssinian Affluents - Character of Rivers - Causes
of Nile Inundations - Violence of the Rains - Arrival at Khartoum -
Description of Khartoum - Egyptian Authorities - Taxes - The Soudan -
Slave-Trade of the Soudan - Slave-Trade of the White Nile - System of
Operations - Inhuman Proceedings - Negro Allies - Revelations of
Slave-Trade - Distant Slave Markets - Prospects of the Expedition -
Difficulties at the Outset - Opposition of the Egyptian Authorities -
Preparations for Sailing - Johann Schmidt - Demand for Poll-Tax -
Collision before starting - Amiable Boy! - The Departure - The Boy Osman
- Banks of White Nile - Change in Disposition of Men - Character of the
River - Misery of Scene - River Vegetation - Ambatch Wood - Johann's
Sickness - Uses of Fish-skin - Johann Dying - Johann's Death - New Year
- Shillook Villages - The Sobat River - Its Character - Bahr Giraffe -
Bahr el Gazal - Observations - Corporal Richarn - Character of Bahr el
Gazal - Peculiarity of River Sobat - Tediousness of Voyage - Bull
Buffalo - Sali Achmet killed - His Burial - Ferocity of the Buffalo -
"The Clumsy" on the Styx - Current of White Nile - First View of Natives
- Joctian and his Wife - Charming Husband - Natron - Catch a
Hippopotamus - "Perhaps it was his Uncle" - Real Turtle is Mock
Hippopotamus - Richarn reduced to the Ranks - Arrival at the Zareeba -
Fish Spearing - The Kytch Tribe - White Ant Towers - Starvation in the
Kytch Country - Destitution of the Natives - The Bull of the Herd - Men
and Beasts in a bad Temper - Aboukooka - Austrian Mission Station - Sale
of the Mission-House - Melancholy Fate of Baron Harnier - The Aliab
Tribes - Tulmuli of Ashes - The Shir Tribe - The Lotus Harvest - Arrival
at Gondokoro - Discharge Cargo
CHAPTER II.
