|
The aerial line which Dr. Ferguson counted upon following had not been
chosen at random; his point of departure had been carefully studied, and it was
not without good cause that he had resolved to ascend at the island of
Zanzibar. This island, lying near to the eastern coast of Africa, is in the
sixth degree of south latitude, that is to say, four hundred and thirty
geographical miles below the equator.
From this island the latest expedition, sent by way of the great lakes
to explore the sources of the Nile, had just set out.
But it would be well to indicate what explorations Dr. Ferguson hoped to
link together. The two principal ones were those of Dr. Barth in 1849, and of
Lieutenants Burton and Speke in 1858.
Dr. Barth is a Hamburger, who obtained permission for himself and for
his countryman Overweg to join the expedition of the Englishman Richardson. The
latter was charged with a mission in the Soudan.
This vast region is situated between the fifteenth and tenth degrees of
north latitude; that is to say, that, in order to approach it, the explorer
must penetrate fifteen hundred miles into the interior of Africa.
Until then, the country in question had been known only through the
journeys of Denham, of Clapperton, and of Oudney, made from 1822 to 1824.
Richardson, Barth, and Overweg, jealously anxious to push their investigations
farther, arrived at Tunis and Tripoli, like their predecessors, and got as far
as Mourzouk, the capital of Fezzan.
They then abandoned the perpendicular line, and made a sharp turn
westward toward Ghat, guided, with difficulty, by the Touaregs. After a
thousand scenes of pillage, of vexation, and attacks by armed forces, their
caravan arrived, in October, at the vast oasis of Asben. Dr. Barth separated
from his companions, made an excursion to the town of Aghades, and rejoined the
expedition, which resumed its march on the 12th of December. At length it
reached the province of Damerghou; there the three travellers parted, and Barth
took the road to Kano, where he arrived by dint of perseverance, and after
paying considerable tribute.
In spite of an intense fever, he quitted that place on the 7th of March,
accompanied by a single servant. The principal aim of his journey was to
reconnoitre Lake Tchad, from which he was still three hundred and fifty miles
distant. He therefore advanced toward the east, and reached the town of
Zouricolo, in the Bornou country, which is the core of the great central empire
of Africa. There he heard of the death of Richardson, who had succumbed to
fatigue and privation. He next arrived at Kouka, the capital of Bornou, on the
borders of the lake. Finally, at the end of three weeks, on the 14th of April,
twelve months after having quitted Tripoli, he reached the town of Ngornou.
We find him again setting forth on the 29th of March, 1851, with
Overweg, to visit the kingdom of Adamaoua, to the south of the lake, and from
there he pushed on as far as the town of Yola, a little below nine degrees
north latitude. This was the extreme southern limit reached by that daring
traveller.
He returned in the month of August to Kouka; from there he successively
traversed the Mandara, Barghimi, and Klanem countries, and reached his extreme
limit in the east, the town of Masena, situated at seventeen degrees twenty
minutes west longitude.
On the 25th of November, 1852, after the death of Overweg, his last companion,
he plunged into the west, visited Sockoto, crossed the Niger, and finally
reached Timbuctoo, where he had to languish, during eight long months, under
vexations inflicted upon him by the sheik, and all kinds of ill-treatment and
wretchedness. But the presence of a Christian in the city could not long be
tolerated, and the Foullans threatened to besiege it. The doctor, therefore,
left it on the 17th of March, 1854, and fled to the frontier, where he remained
for thirty-three days in the most abject destitution. He then managed to get
back to Kano in November, thence to Kouka, where he resumed Denham’s
route after four months’ delay. He regained Tripoli toward the close of
August, 1855, and arrived in London on the 6th of September, the only survivor
of his party.
Such was the venturesome journey of Dr. Barth.
Dr. Ferguson carefully noted the fact, that he had stopped at four
degrees north latitude and seventeen degrees west longitude.
Now let us see what Lieutenants Burton and Speke accomplished in Eastern
Africa.
The various expeditions that had ascended the Nile could never manage to
reach the mysterious source of that river. According to the narrative of the
German doctor, Ferdinand Werne, the expedition attempted in 1840, under the
auspices of Mehemet Ali, stopped at Gondokoro, between the fourth and fifth
parallels of north latitude.
In 1855, Brun-Rollet, a native of Savoy, appointed consul for Sardinia
in Eastern Soudan, to take the place of Vaudey, who had just died, set out from
Karthoum, and, under the name of Yacoub the merchant, trading in gums and
ivory, got as far as Belenia, beyond the fourth degree, but had to return in
ill-health to Karthoum, where he died in 1857.
Neither Dr. Penney—the head of the Egyptian medical service, who,
in a small steamer, penetrated one degree beyond Gondokoro, and then came back
to die of exhaustion at Karthoum—nor Miani, the Venetian, who, turning
the cataracts below Gondokoro, reached the second parallel— nor the
Maltese trader, Andrea Debono, who pushed his journey up the Nile still
farther—could work their way beyond the apparently impassable limit.
In 1859, M. Guillaume Lejean, intrusted with a mission by the French
Government, reached Karthoum by way of the Red Sea, and embarked upon the Nile
with a retinue of twenty-one hired men and twenty soldiers, but he could not
get past Gondokoro, and ran extreme risk of his life among the negro tribes,
who were in full revolt. The expedition directed by M. d’Escayrac de
Lauture made an equally unsuccessful attempt to reach the famous sources of the
Nile.
This fatal limit invariably brought every traveller to a halt. In
ancient times, the ambassadors of Nero reached the ninth degree of latitude,
but in eighteen centuries only from five to six degrees, or from three hundred
to three hundred and sixty geographical miles, were gained.
Many travellers endeavored to reach the sources of the Nile by taking
their point of departure on the eastern coast of Africa.
Between 1768 and 1772 the Scotch traveller, Bruce, set out from Massowah,
a port of Abyssinia, traversed the Tigre, visited the ruins of Axum, saw the
sources of the Nile where they did not exist, and obtained no serious result.
In 1844, Dr. Krapf, an Anglican missionary, founded an establishment at
Monbaz, on the coast of Zanguebar, and, in company with the Rev. Dr. Rebmann,
discovered two mountain-ranges three hundred miles from the coast. These were
the mountains of Kilimandjaro and Kenia, which Messrs. de Heuglin and Thornton
have partly scaled so recently.
In 1845, Maizan, the French explorer, disembarked, alone, at Bagamayo,
directly opposite to Zanzibar, and got as far as Deje-la-Mhora, where the chief
caused him to be put to death in the most cruel torment.
In 1859, in the month of August, the young traveller, Roscher, from
Hamburg, set out with a caravan of Arab merchants, reached Lake Nyassa, and was
there assassinated while he slept.
Finally, in 1857, Lieutenants Burton and Speke, both officers in the
Bengal army, were sent by the London Geographical Society to explore the great
African lakes, and on the 17th of June they quitted Zanzibar, and plunged
directly into the west.
After four months of incredible suffering, their baggage having been
pillaged, and their attendants beaten and slain, they arrived at Kazeh, a sort
of central rendezvous for traders and caravans. They were in the midst of the
country of the Moon, and there they collected some precious documents
concerning the manners, government, religion, fauna, and flora of the region.
They next made for the first of the great lakes, the one named Tanganayika,
situated between the third and eighth degrees of south latitude. They reached
it on the 14th of February, 1858, and visited the various tribes residing on
its banks, the most of whom are cannibals.
They departed again on the 26th of May, and reentered Kazeh on the 20th
of June. There Burton, who was completely worn out, lay ill for several months,
during which time Speke made a push to the northward of more than three hundred
miles, going as far as Lake Okeracua, which he came in sight of on the 3d of
August; but he could descry only the opening of it at latitude two degrees
thirty minutes.
He reached Kazeh, on his return, on the 25th of August, and, in company
with Burton, again took up the route to Zanzibar, where they arrived in the
month of March in the following year. These two daring explorers then
reembarked for England; and the Geographical Society of Paris decreed them its
annual prize medal.
Dr. Ferguson carefully remarked that they had not gone beyond the second
degree of south latitude, nor the twenty-ninth of east longitude.
The problem, therefore, was how to link the explorations of Burton and
Speke with those of Dr. Barth, since to do so was to undertake to traverse an
extent of more than twelve degrees of territory.
|