THE BUSSA RAPIDS.
THE BUSSA RAPIDS.
Unconscious of the dangers ahead, Park left Yauri and continued his way south. Having no one acquainted with the river in his canoe, he unluckily struck upon theworst of the three channels, and rushed to his doom. Once in the sweep of the current to turn back was impossible. To land was equally out of the question even had it been possible, for to right and left the rocks and islands were crowded with natives in war array bent on stopping the intruders. The energy and attention of the handful of travellers was divided between the double danger—the rapids and rocks around and aheadof them, and the weapons hurtling through the air. Two of the slaves were speedily killed; for the rest there was no other course but to keep onward, alternately firing and paddling, ever hoping to make good their escape. A little more and they would be out of danger. Before they were aware, however, theJolibarushed into the grip of a hidden cleft rock and there stuck fast. With desperate energy each man seized his paddle, and mindful only of the supreme peril of the moment, plied it with the strength of one who works for dear life. In vain—theJolibawould not yield to their frantic efforts. With delighted yells the natives gathered on the neighbouring rocks, and sure of their prey, plied their weapons with renewed zeal.
The last resource was to lighten the canoe, and everything of weight was accordingly thrown into the river. That too proved useless, and now Park and his little band of followers knew they had reached the culminating point of their misfortunes. For a time they fought on as if determined to sell their lives dearly, but at length desisted, struck with the futility of their efforts. Their goods were gone—their number was reduced to four. To continue fighting was only further to enrage their enemies. What were the feelings of the hero at this supreme moment of disaster—what his last determination, who shall say?
Amadi tells us that in the end Park took hold of one white man and Martyn of the other, and thus united they all four jumped into the river, whether to die together, or with the intention of mutually assisting each other, will never be known. The latter supposition is the more probable, for with Park while there was life there was hope. In any case the result was the same. TheNiger claimed him as its own, and since to unlock its secrets was not to be his, what more fitting for him than death beneath its rushing waters.
Of the party only one slave remained alive. Of the contents of the canoe the sole articles left were a sword-belt, which the King of Yauri utilised as a horse-girth, and some books, one of which has reached England.
The guide did not escape scathless any more than the other members of the expedition. Scarcely had he taken leave of Park, when he was seized and loaded with chains, remaining in imprisonment for some months. His first business on obtaining his freedom was to find out the sole survivor of the expedition, and learn from him the manner of its leader’s death. Having satisfied himself as far as might be on this point, he returned home to Sansandig, from which rumour gradually carried his sad tale to the coast, and resulted in the mission of Isaaco.
To obtain the sword-belt, and otherwise substantiate Amadi’s story, Isaaco despatched a Fulah to Yauri. The Fulah succeeded in stealing the belt, and gathered confirmation of the tale of disaster, whereupon Isaaco set out for the coast with the melancholy tidings and solitary relic.
With the many the tragic story obtained immediate credence. A few there were, however, who refused to give up hope, though that hope was but the offspring of their love and ardent wishes. Among these was Mrs. Park, who to her dying day, thirty years after the above events, clung to the belief that her husband was yet alive, and would some day be found.
The Government, not unmindful of their duty to thefamily of such a heroic servant, granted Mrs. Park a small pension, which she continued to receive till her death in 1840.
Her children as they grew up speedily showed that they inherited much of the spirit of their father. Mungo, the eldest, obtained a commission in the Indian army. But he had not his father’s constitution, and he died ten days after landing at Bombay. His younger brother, Archibald, was more fortunate in the same field of honour, and rose to the rank of Colonel.
But it was the second son, Thomas, who seemed most largely to have inherited the adventurous nature of his father. He, like his mother, never lost belief in the idea that his father was somewhere a prisoner in the heart of Africa. Thither, in the ardent, impulsive days of youth, his thoughts perpetually turned, till the desire of ascertaining the truth possessed him as strongly as the solution of the mystery of the Niger had formerly possessed Park himself. But by this time the Parks were alone in their belief, and unsupported, the impetuous young fellow was next to helpless. In secret, however, he continued to scheme and plan all the more, ever with the one object in view.
At length in the year 1827 he embarked on board a vessel bound for the South Seas. In some way or other he contrived to leave the ship and reach the Gold Coast, determined now to carry out by himself his long cherished desire to discover his father’s fate.
The following letter, dated Accra, 1827, tells all we know of his plans:—
“My dearest Mother,—I was in hopes I should have been back before you were aware of my absence.I went off—now that the murder is out—entirely from fear of hurting your feelings. I did not write to you lest you should not be satisfied. Depend upon it, my dearest mother, I shall return safe. You know what a curious fellow I am, therefore don’t be afraid for me. Besides, it was my duty—my filial duty—to go, and I shall yet raise the name of Park. You ought rather to rejoice that I took it into my head. Give my kindest love to my sister. Tell her I think the boat would do very well for the Niger. I shall be back in three years at the most—perhaps in one. God bless you, my dearest mother, and believe me to be, your most affectionate and dutiful son,Thomas Park.”
“My dearest Mother,—I was in hopes I should have been back before you were aware of my absence.I went off—now that the murder is out—entirely from fear of hurting your feelings. I did not write to you lest you should not be satisfied. Depend upon it, my dearest mother, I shall return safe. You know what a curious fellow I am, therefore don’t be afraid for me. Besides, it was my duty—my filial duty—to go, and I shall yet raise the name of Park. You ought rather to rejoice that I took it into my head. Give my kindest love to my sister. Tell her I think the boat would do very well for the Niger. I shall be back in three years at the most—perhaps in one. God bless you, my dearest mother, and believe me to be, your most affectionate and dutiful son,
Thomas Park.”
Thereafter an ominous silence followed. Like the elder Park, the hot-headed young fellow, whom we cannot help loving for his folly—knowing as we do its mainspring—disappeared from sight in the Dark Continent, whence only vague rumours ever came back, sorrow-laden, telling of a speedy and bloody close to his wild yet heroic mission.
And so fatally ended the connection of the Park family with the exploration of the River Niger, and thus closed the first great chapter in the history of the opening up of Inner Africa.
Simultaneously with the commencement of Park’s work of exploration, an event of almost equal moment in the history of the Niger basin had begun to germinate. This was the phenomenal rise to a position of immense political and religious importance of the Fulahs—a people known among the Haussa as Fillani, and in Bornu as Fillatah.
As Park was the forerunner of Christian enterprise, so Othman dan Fodiyo, a simple Fulah Malaam or teacher, in raising the banner of Islam, marked the revival of the political and religious spirit of Mohammedanism in the Central and Western Sudan.
We have seen how the huge empire of Songhay crumbled into pieces before the musketeers of a Moorish sultan—how with its political influence went its civilising influence, and whole kingdoms and provinces fell back into the old idolatry and barbarism.
Similarly and almost contemporaneously, Bornu, largely though not so entirely, lost its old military power and progressive force. The Haussa States, left to themselves, showed a like degenerative tendency, and largely lapsed into the old heathen ways.
But in all the mass of idolatry was a leaven of quickening influence, which prevented it from becoming altogether dead and sodden. From Lake Chad to the Atlantic there was scattered one remarkable race who forgot not God, neither lapsed into the abominations of the infidel. Though without political status, and holding no better position than that of semi-serfs—being, moreover, spread broadcast in small groups as shepherds—they yet had in them a bond of union and an inspiring force which supported them in all their trials, and kept them from racial annihilation.
GROUP OF FULAHS.
GROUP OF FULAHS.
That race was the Fulah, and their bond of union was the religion of Islam.
Where they came from is unknown. Everything relating to them is a matter of conjecture, though in theSudanese chronicles we find various allusions to them extending back several centuries.
Their well-chiselled features, straight wiry hair, and copper-coloured skin, all distinctly mark them off as not African, and point towards the East as the cradle of their race. Still more, their well-developed skulls and high intellectual average place them on an altogether higher level in the scale of humanity than any of the negro or Bantu races among whom they settled.
At some remote period, we may safely conjecture, they immigrated from the East, and gradually moved westward—not as warrior-conquerors, but as peace-loving shepherds, whose knowledge of cattle, &c., made them welcome additions to every country they reached. Nomadic in habit, and depending for subsistence on their flocks and herds, it was impossible for them to settle in large numbers in any one place—the country being already occupied by the negro inhabitants. Accordingly it was ever necessary for them to move westward, leaving behind them only such numbers as could conveniently get a living.
By the fourteenth or fifteenth century the Fulahs had reached the watersheds of the Niger and the Gambia. Here the migratory tide was stopped by physical and other causes. The country beyond proved to be less adapted for pastoral pursuits, and possibly was already thickly populated.
There being no further outlet westward, the newcomers naturally accumulated as does the dammed back stream. They increased in numbers, and correspondingly in power, till they became of no small importance, and founded for themselves a kingdom which has been already mentioned under the name of Fulahdu.
When Islam crossed the desert and found its way in the ninth and tenth centuries into the Sudan, the Fulahs were the very first to become converts to the new religion. Their temperament, their higher intellectual development, made them more quickly susceptible to the new influences, and hence it was that while as yet the great mass of the aborigines were still infidel, the Fulahs with one voice were proclaiming their belief in Allah and His Prophet. Persecution, as in the case of other religions, had only the result of burning the tenets of Islam deeper into their souls, causing their faith to shine with a clearer and more spiritual light to the edification and instruction of the surrounding idolaters. In the Western Sudan, where they enjoyed, or came to enjoy, an independent existence, Islam spread among the Fulahs with special rapidity; and with the fall of Songhay and the crippling of the influence of Timbuktu, they became the chief propagators of Mohammedanism and the great encouragers of learning by means of mosques and schools—rarely by the power of fire and the sword. Not only did they and their co-religionists of neighbouring tribes, the Mandingoes and the Jolofs, thus spread a knowledge of the One God—they at the same time did an equally noble work in arraying themselves against the rapidly advancing flood of gin which Christian Europe was pouring into their country. With that traffic they would have nothing to do, and unlike so many of our Christian merchants, no consideration of profit would tempt them to a compromise between their conscience and the lust for gain.
Meanwhile the Fulahs of the kingdoms of the interior had much to do to hold their own among their Pagan masters. Their position was most galling to a racewhich knew themselves infinitely superior to those whom they were obliged to own as masters—more bitter still that they, the inheritors of the promises, should be ruled by idolaters and men whose portion was Gehenna. Broken up as they were into little groups scattered over an enormous area, what could they do? The answer to that question was speedily forthcoming. They had, as we have shown, the necessary bond of union and the inspiring spiritual force to make them fight as one man for a common end. They only needed the leader to utilise this force and bring it into action. Such a man is never wanting when the times demand him, and he in this case was forthcoming in the person of Othman, the Imam or religious sheik of the Fulah of Gober, the northern of the Haussa States.
Under the influence of this sheik the Fulah of that region were roused to a state of religious fervour such as they had never known before. His fiery eloquence touched their excitable and imaginative nature as he brought home to them the shame of their semi-enslaved position. The fires of discontent were thus set smouldering, and required but a little more fanning to cause them to blaze into the flames of rebellion.
Meanwhile their Haussa ruler, Bawa, was not blind to the dangerous ferment existing among them, and fearing the results, summoned Othman to his presence, and severely reprimanded him. This was sufficient for the proud and enthusiastic “Believer.” He left Bawa’s presence only to raise the standard of revolt—the sacred banner of Islam. The effect was electric. In response to his summons the Fulah at once gathered around him in an enthusiastic army.
But they were mostly shepherds—men of peace,unaccustomed to the use of arms; and they could not be at once transformed into successful warriors. Consequently at first they met with discomfiture and defeat in every encounter. Had they been fighting for themselves the movement would undoubtedly have collapsed at the first rude shock of arms. But happily for them they had a higher interest at heart. They fought for God and His Prophet, whose instruments they believed themselves to be. In such a warfare there could be no doubt in their minds as to whose would ultimately be the victory. With ever-growing zeal they returned to the charge, stimulated in their glorious crusade by their leader Othman’s religious songs and fiery words, which told them that theirs was a cause for which it was much to live and fight, but even more to die, if it should be God’s will.
Thus led and encouraged, the Fulah grew in experience of battle and the use of arms. The hordes of shepherds were gradually beaten into a disciplined army of warriors, and from defeat rose to victory.
Thus it was that Othman and his ever-victorious army burst forth from Gober on their irresistible career, filling the wild wastes of Central African heathendom with their cry of “None but the One God,” till the whole of the Western and Central Sudan, from Lake Chad to the Atlantic, acknowledged more or less temporarily the political supremacy of the Fulah. Yet it was no mere temporal power that Othman and his people sought to establish—theirs was a conquest for God. They acted but as His agents. Before them fetishism and all its degrading rites disappeared. No longer did the natives bow down to stocks and stones, but to Allah, the One God. Once more, as in thepalmy days of Songhay and Bornu, schools and mosques sprang up throughout the land, and the Greatness, the Compassionateness, and the All-embracing Mercy of the Ruler of the Universe were taught to natives released from the foul blight of idolatry in its worst form.
In this work of releasing the Faithful from their bondage to heathen taskmasters, and bringing new light in a forcible fashion to the barbarous and breechless natives, the Fulah did not stop till from every village of the Central Sudan there was heard in the grey dawn of the tropic morning the stentorian voice of the negro Mueddin, announcing that prayer was better than sleep—bringing from out the faintly illumined houses the devout Moslems to humble their faces in the dust, and acknowledge their utter faith in and dependence on Allah.
No less thoroughly was the material welfare of the people cared for. “The laws of the Koran were in his (Othman’s) time strictly put in force, not only among the Fillahtah (Fulah), but the negroes and the Arabs; and the whole country, when not in a state of war, was so well regulated, that it was a common saying that a woman might travel with a casket of gold upon her head from one end of the Fillahtah dominions to the other.” So wrote Clapperton a few years after the death of Othman, as eye-witness of the wonderful revolution effected by the Fulah.
Unhappily the religious fervour of the remarkable leader speedily developed into religious mania, and ended in his death in 1817.
On the death of Othman, the huge empire he had raised was divided between his sons Bello and Abd Allahi. To the former was given Sokoto and all theeast and south, while to the latter fell the western provinces along the Niger, with Gandu as capital. The countries to the west of the Niger, including Massina, became independent under Ahmed Lebbo, one of Othman’s lieutenants, who conquered that region immediately before the death of Othman.
As we have seen, Park’s second expedition was fruitful in nothing but disaster, and the legacy of experience that helps others to success.
The journal Isaaco brought back from the Niger did not add anything to our knowledge of the river, and so little did Amadi Fatuma’s narrative supplement it as to the results of the voyage down the stream to Bussa, that in the map attached to the published journal and biographical notice in 1816, Park’s furthest point is placed only some eighty miles to the E.S.E. of Timbuktu, instead of nearly 700 miles in a straight line S.E.
There was one geographer, however, more far-seeing than the others, who, though at the time unheeded, struck upon the real solution of the problem of the Niger’s termination. This was M. Richard, a German, who published his views on the subject in the “Ephemerides Geographique” as far back as 1808. These, briefly stated, were as follows. The Niger, after reaching Wangara, takes a direction towards the south, and being joined by other rivers from that part of Africa, makes a great turn thence towards the south-west, pursuing its course till it approaches the north-eastern extremity of the Gulf of Guinea, where it divides and discharges itself by different channels into the Atlantic, after having formedan immense delta, of which the Rio del Rey constitutes the eastern, and the Rio Formosa or Benin the western branch.
Never was a better instance of a mental discovery of a geographical fact. Richard’s hypothesis is a graphic description of the actual geography of the middle and lower Niger. This of course was not to be recognised by the world, before whose eyes the Kong Mountains ever loomed up as an impassable barrier running across the suggested line of drainage. Till these could be removed, turned aside, or broken up, no geographer was prepared to allow that the Niger could possibly discharge itself into the Gulf of Guinea.
Mungo Park had left one legacy of theory behind him, viz., that the Niger and the Congo were one. What was known of his last voyage in nowise helped to disabuse men of that idea—on the contrary, it obtained more widely than ever.
To set at rest once for all this important question, the Government, undeterred by the disastrous termination of the last expedition, determined to fit out another on an even larger scale, and in spite of the dire fate which had befallen Park and his companions, there were not wanting plenty of ardent spirits to risk all the dangers of a similar enterprise.
To ensure success the expedition was divided into two parts—one to follow Park’s route more or less closely and descend the Niger; the other to ascend the Congo, haply to meet half way, if the fates were propitious.
Captain Tuckey was the leader of the Congo section; and along with him went a botanist, a geologist, a naturalist, a comparative anatomist, a gentleman volunteer, and fifty of a crew.
The party left England on the 16th February 1816, and reached the mouth of the Congo in five months and a half. The impression they received on entering the river was one of disappointment, the river appearing as one of second class magnitude instead of the gigantic stream they had been taught to expect.
In vain, too, did they look for traces of the great kingdoms described by the early Portuguese explorers, or of the churches and cities founded by the Europeans in the early days of Portuguese national and Christian enterprise. For the most part they were met only by the dark depths of malarious mangrove swamps, and the profound stillness and impenetrable vegetation of the tropical forest, though here and there in the clearings were miserable villages, inhabited by idle, good-humoured natives, with a decided appetite for ardent spirits—seemingly the only legacy permanently left behind by the Europeans.
Pushing up the river, they at length reached the first cataracts of the Congo, which, instead of proving to be another Niagara, seemed to their jaundiced eyes “a comparative brook bubbling over its stony bed”—a description, needless to say, not confirmed by subsequent expeditions.
Unable to proceed further in their boats, Tuckey and his companions continued the exploration by land, and in spite of the extreme difficulties they had to encounter in cutting their way through pathless forests without a guide, they surmounted the first stretch of falls, and reached a point where the river widened and presented no difficulties to navigation. Unhappily, however, the old story of disease commenced. Three of the principal men had successively to return to the ship; and finallyTuckey and his companion Smith, the botanist, abandoned their projects, seeing their further progress hopeless in face of so many difficulties and their own helpless condition under the paralysing influence of disease. They reached the ship to find their three companions dead. Smith was the next victim. Finally, overcome by depression and mental anxiety, Captain Tuckey died also. How many sailors succumbed we are not told.
Meanwhile no better luck fell to the lot of the other section of the expedition.
On the 14th December, this party, consisting of 100 men and 200 animals, under the command of Major Peddie, landed at the mouth of the Rio Nunez, nearly midway between the Gambia and Sierra Leone. Major Peddie’s intention was to pass across the narrow part between the Ocean and the Niger. Hardly had he landed, however, before the fell demon of disease, which in its foul lair keeps watch and ward over the fair expanse of Inner Africa, laid its invisible hand upon him, and ere the march was begun he found a grave in the land he had come to explore.
Under Captain Campbell the expedition experienced only a succession of disasters. The donkeys rapidly perished under the hands of men unaccustomed to look after them. Food was only to be obtained with the utmost difficulty, and at ruinous prices.
Arrived near the frontiers of the Fulah country, they were detained for four months owing to the suspicions entertained towards them by the king and his people.
Everything they had began to melt away at an alarming rate. Soon not a beast of burden was left, and when, seeing advance hopeless, they turned seawards, their retreat became one continued story of plunder. Kumner, the naturalist, dieden route, and Campbell only reached Kakunda to add his name to the list of victims to African exploration. The final stroke was given to the unlucky fortunes of this evidently ill-conducted enterprise by the death of Lieutenant Stoker, a young naval officer who assumed command, and was about to make a new attempt to penetrate the country.
Clearly African exploration was no light matter, requiring the making of wills and the setting of earthly affairs in order for such as put their hand to the work. Yet strangely enough there was no halting—no dearth of volunteers. When one died, another was ready to take his place.
“Each stepping where his comrade stoodThe instant that he fell.”
“Each stepping where his comrade stoodThe instant that he fell.”
“Each stepping where his comrade stoodThe instant that he fell.”
“Each stepping where his comrade stood
The instant that he fell.”
In this spirit Captain Gray, a survivor of Peddie’s party, made an attempt to follow Park’s track, but got no further than Bondou, from which, after being detained for nearly a year, he managed to return to the coast.
But what all these various disastrous attempts were unable to achieve was meanwhile being once more accomplished by a stay-at-home geographer, James M‘Queen. The circumstances under which he was attracted to the subject are in harmony with the romantic character of African history. A copy of the narrative of Park’s first expedition found its way into the hands of M‘Queen while resident in the Island of Grenada, West Indies. Among the negroes under his charge were several Mandingoes from the banks of the Niger. One Haussa negro he came in contact with had actually rowed Park across the Niger.
Already imbued with pronounced geographical tastes,M‘Queen’s imagination was at once taken captive by the mystery of the Great River. With all the enthusiasm of an ardent temperament, he devoted himself to the solution of the question as thoroughly as Park himself, though in a very different manner. While, one after another, explorers toiled and struggled, sickened and died, with but small result to science, he set about collecting information from all the negroes and freemen he met who had come from or even set foot in West Africa. More especially did he study all the available materials supplied by Arabs who had travelled and traded in the Sudan, or by Europeans and natives who, bent on commerce or discovery, had penetrated to the interior from the West Coast.
With extraordinary genius and industry, and admirable clear-sightedness and judgment, he set in their true light and pieced together the various items thus collected relating to the course of the Niger, till he succeeded in mapping out for himself the broad geographical features of the whole region through which it runs. As far back as 1816 the first sketch of his views was given to the world in a small treatise, in which he pointed out, as had Richard before him, that the Niger certainly entered the ocean in the Bight of Benin. The treatise fell unheeded, however—at least by the world at large; but undiscouraged, M‘Queen continued his researches for five years more, and in 1821 produced a book, “Containing a Particular Account of the Course and Termination of the Great River Niger in the Atlantic Ocean.”
In this interesting work M‘Queen reviews all the various theories respecting the Niger. He demolishes Rennell’s opinion that it disappeared in some centralwastes of sand, or becomes evaporated in a series of swamps under the burning heats of a tropical sun. The view that it flows east and joins the Nile met a similar fate before his army of facts. The obstructing Kong barrier was cleft asunder with a Titan’s strength, and made to separate instead of join the Congo and the Niger.
But the writer was not merely destructive. He could build as well. With the very weapons with which he pulled down the theories of the past, he set about constructing a theory of his own. Laying together fact upon fact, gathered from every available source, he traced the course of the Niger in a southerly direction. Bussa, from being left near Timbuktu, he transported several hundred miles further south. From the kingdom of Bornu and adjacent states he gathered together the various drainage streams, and ran them into a common channel—the Gir or Nile of the Sudan; but instead of directing it to the true Nile, as had formerly been the case when it was believed to be the Niger itself, he gave it a westerly course south of the Haussa States and Nyffé (Nupé) to its junction with the Kwora or Main Niger. Here the Arab writers and traders failed him, though leaving him without a doubt as to the ultimate destination of the Central Sudanese waters.
For the termination, however, he had to seek information from the Atlantic side. Everything pointed to the Bight of Benin as the only possible place of discharge of such a huge river. Here was found an unknown extent of low flat country and fetid mangrove swamp, pierced by many-branched anastomosing creeks. From Calabar to Benin canoes could pass in all directions by means of these creeks, and it was knownthat they extended far into the interior. Though subject to the ebb and flow of the tide, there was no question as to the volume of fresh water which moved seaward, bearing floating islands on its discoloured floods.
Supported by a convincing array of facts such as these, M‘Queen could come to no other conclusion but that “in the Bights of Benin and Biafra, therefore, is the great outlet of the Niger, bearing along in his majestic stream all the waters of Central Africa from 10° west longitude to 28° east longitude, and from the Tropic of Cancer to the shores of Benin.”
Never was a piece of arm-chair geography worked out more admirably. In its broad outlines it was perfectly correct. To M‘Queen it was as much a certainty as if he had actually explored and mapped it on the spot.
Imbued with this faith, he proceeded to point out the importance of the Niger to the commerce of England and the future of Africa. With Fernando Po and the Niger in the hands of his countrymen, he saw Britain mistress of the fate of the continent. Bussa was to be the inner key of the situation. “Therefore,” he says, “on this commanding spot let the British standard be firmly planted, and no power on earth could tear it up.... Firmly planted in Central Africa, the British flag would become the rallying point of all that is honourable, useful, beneficial, just, and good. Under the mighty shade thereof the nations would seek security, comfort, and repose. Allies Great Britain would find in abundance. They would flock to her settlement, if it had the power and the means to protect them. The resources of Africa, and the energies of Africa, under a wise and vigorous policy, may be made to subdue and control Africa. LetBritain only form such a settlement, and give it that countenance, support, and protection which the wisdom and energy of British councils can give, and which the power and resources of the British empire can so well maintain, and Central Africa to future ages will remain a grateful and obedient dependency of this empire. The latter will become the centre of all the wealth, and the focus of all the industry, of the former. Thus the Niger, like the Ganges, would acknowledge Great Britain as its protector, our king as its lord.... A city built there under the protecting wings of Great Britain, and extended, enriched, and embellished by the industry, skill, and spirit of her sons, would ere long become the capital of Africa. Fifty millions of people, yea, even a greater number, would be dependent on it.”
These are brave words, truly, about what after all was merely a “mental discovery,” and taken alone, they might only evoke a smile, if we did not know that they are those of a man of no ordinary genius and power of insight. Looking back seventy years after he wrote, we can see how truly prophetic he was in most that he wrote, and that he was no more the blatant patriot than the geographical dreamer. His genius for looking ahead was as great as for looking around. Take, for instance, his warning of the danger of a French advance from the Senegal to the Niger, and its far-reaching consequence, if carried out, to our commercial and political position in West Central Africa. He it was who foresaw nearly seventy years before its accomplishment the necessity of a Chartered Company to take full advantage of our (then prospective) position on the Niger, and the results that would ensue without such a method of developing the resources of that region. Of these matters, however,we shall treat in their proper place. Enough for the moment if we show how thoroughly M‘Queen had made himself master of the geographical problems then before the public, as well as of the political and commercial situation that was to follow the opening up of the Niger to European intercourse. Only now, after more than half a century of gross and irreparable mismanagement in West Africa, we are waking up to the wisdom of his views, and striving in some measure to carry them into effect.
Unhappily for the stay-at-home geographer, no matter how skilfully he may set forth the discoveries made in his study, his triumph can only come after they have been demonstrated by actual travel, and even then the credit that falls to his share is small. The case of M‘Queen is one in point. We have no evidence that his theory regarding the Niger’s termination made any special impression upon the general opinion of the time. Unfortunately for him, too, his views were published immediately after several disastrous attempts from the West Coast to settle the question he had so ably worked out, so that Government and people alike were disposed to fight shy of the fatal region.
Yet with every succeeding failure the attraction of the mysterious river seemed ever to become greater, and a stubborn determination was evinced to break through the deadly belt which hedged in the countries of the interior. Conquered and rebuffed in one direction, there was nothing for it but to try another, and once more the Arab caravan route from Tripoli to the Sudan was thought of. As has been elsewhere shown, attempts in this direction had already been made by other travellers, and all had alike failed. Of these Horneman alone had penetrated beyond the northernborderland of the desert, only, however, to disappear for ever. In every other case these expeditions had failed at the outset through fatal fevers and Oriental obstructiveness—what, then, had the traveller to expect, who, surmounting these initial dangers, found himself face to face with the terrors of the great Sahara, where nature in its fiercest aspects reigned supreme, and man was represented only by wild roving tribes savage as their environment.
Nevertheless men there were ready and eager to try this route, as had been others before them to brave the dangers of the West Coast.
CAPTAIN CLAPPERTON.
CAPTAIN CLAPPERTON.
In 1820 Britain held an exceptionably favourable position in the councils of the Court of Tripoli, while at the same time the Basha, thanks to his guns, exercised a very marked influence over all the Arab, Berber, and Tibbu tribes lying between his country and the far-distant regions of the Sudan. Hence any one starting under the protection of the Basha had a fair guarantee of success, provided he could withstand the possible onslaughts of disease, and the terrible privations incidental to desert marches.
Encouraged by this favourable state of matters, the British Government determined to make another attempt to explore by the Arab route the regions which they had so signally failed to reach from the Atlantic.
Lieutenant Clapperton—like Park, a Scottish borderer—Dr. Oudney, and Major Denham, were selected for the task, and the 18th November 1821 saw them landed in Tripoli. Little time was lost in making their preparations and in setting forth for Murzuk in Fezzan, where they were to make their final arrangements before plunging into the dread Sahara. Here, though receivedkindly enough by the Sultan, they were threatened with the system of Oriental delays which had proved fatal to previous travellers. This, however, they were not the men to brook, and Major Denham promptly returned to Tripoli to lay a complaint before the Basha. As promptly he started for England on getting nothing but promises. This was sufficient to throw the Basha and his Court into consternation, and vessel after vessel was despatched to bring back the indignant traveller. They succeeded in catching him up at Marseilles, and induced him to return. On his arrival in Tripoli he was informed that already his escort awaited him at Sokna, on the borders of the Tripolitan desert.
Murzuk was triumphantly re-entered on the 30th October 1822. Clapperton and Oudney were found much reduced by the fevers, which were here so prevalent that even amongst the natives anything like a healthy-looking person was a rarity. To get away from this dangerously unhealthy place, Bu Khalum, the leader of the caravan, exerted himself with most unoriental and praiseworthy energy, though the task of gathering together the various elements of such a company as his was no small matter.
When ready, the party consisted of four Europeans, and servants to the number of ten, an Arab escort of 210, gathered from the most obedient tribes under the rule of Tripoli, and a number of merchants and freed slaves, who brought up the roll to about 300.
It was the 29th November before the whole party was ready for the road. The Europeans were in no very promising plight. They were all more or less down with fever, and Oudney and Hillman, a carpenter, were in a specially hopeless condition, considering whatwas before them. Nevertheless each one was eager and determined to go on, always hoping in the future, as is the manner of enthusiasts.
Almost with the disappearance of the walls, mosques, and date-trees of Murzuk in their rear, the desert rose up grim and terrible before them. The second day saw them among wild wastes of burning billowy sands, where was seen no living thing, nor other sound heard than the melancholy sweep of the wind over the endless tracts of sand. For some days, however, watering-places were not unfrequent, while here and there small oases gave a temporary relief to the monotonous landscape, and afforded a scanty subsistence to Tibbu or Berber inhabitants, who preferred to face the terror of the wilderness rather than live under the harsh rule of Arab masters. With the continued advance southward the wells grew more scarce, and it became a matter of congratulation when the day’s march ended beside one. With the wells went the date-trees and the cultivated oases, the prowling beast and the wandering native—only a great yellow expanse perpetually unrolled its vastness and monotony beneath the brazen canopy of a cloudless sky.
Into this realm of Desolation and Death the caravan now passed, their route marked out by the skeletons of human beings, ominously indicative of the dangers ahead and the horrors of the slave trade. As many as 107 such skeletons were counted by the wayside in a single march, and 100 were found around one well. At some places the numbers were beyond calculation. For days together now there was nothing but desert—hummocky mounds, painful stone-strewn stretches of barrenness, and shattered ribs of rock, grim, gaunt,and terrible. The wind came like blasts from a furnace, and from the cloudless sky the sun poured down its burning rays in a painful flood. Under the influences of heat, thirst, and fatigue, no word was spoken—even the camels uttered not a groan, as if conscious of the dire alternative to not pushing on. At times the horses’ hoofs crunched through the bones of human beings who had perished on the march. Night only brought relief from the hardships of the route. Then came the clear soothing darkness lit by a myriad stars, the cool refreshing breezes, and the soft couch of sand, so inexpressibly welcome to the weary, parched, and blinded wayfarers.
Thus the year passed away, and 1823 was ushered in, bringing promise of a successful issue to the enterprise. The explorers had now reached a scantily populated Tibbu country, where, in equal danger from drought, famine, sandstorms, and the murderous raids and plundering onslaughts of Berber tribes and passing caravans, men somehow contrived to wring from the flinty, almost arid, bosom of mother earth the wherewithal to keep body and soul together.
On leaving Bilma, the chief centre of this district, another desert tract had to be crossed, necessitating long and harassing marches, under the hardships of which as many as twenty camels would sink down exhausted in a single day. This dread region was at length also safely traversed, and infinite was the relief and thankfulness of all when towards the end of January the approach to more fertile tracts was indicated by the appearance of clumps of grass, and further on of a few scattered and stunted trees. This miserable and dingy vegetation looked delightful andrefreshing to travellers who for over two weary months had been in a land of death and desolation. Tibbu inhabitants, with their flocks and herds, reappeared with the vegetation, and fresh meat and camel’s milk were to be had in abundance.
The caravan had this time reached no mere oasis. With each day’s march south the country improved in appearance, till the party found themselves in charming valleys shaded by leafy trees, festooned with creeping vines of the Colocynth, while underneath the sheltering canopy the ground was aglow with many-hued and brilliantly-coloured flowers. Nor was there lack of animal life to give animation and variety to the scene. Hundreds of twittering birds fluttered from tree to tree, careless of the vultures and kites which gracefully circled far up in the heavens. From a distance shy gazelles watched the newcomers with their beautiful eyes wide-stretched, but ready, if alarmed, to bound away at a moment’s notice to their forest haunts. The very sky reflected the softer conditions of nature, and showed a brighter blue cloud-speckled; and the natives in their smiling faces and hospitality harmonised with the happier conditions under which they lived, though from time to time the ruthless acts of the Arab caravan sent them flying in terror.
There was no mistaking the fact that the Sudan—the country known by hearsay for over four centuries, but which so far had baffled all attempts to explore it—had at last been reached. On the 4th February 1823 the travellers’ eyes were greeted with a sight “so gratifying and inspiring that it would be difficult for language to convey an idea of its force. The great lake Chad, glowing with the golden rays of the sunin its strength, appeared within a mile of the spot on which we stood. My heart bounded within me at the prospect, for I believed this lake to be the key to the great object of our search (presumably the Niger), and I could not refrain from silently imploring Heaven’s continued protection, which had enabled us to proceed so far in health and strength even to the accomplishment of our task.”
Nine days later the river Yeou was discovered flowing from the west. The name given to it by the Arabs unlocked the secrets of many geographical misconceptions. But that it was neither the true Nile nor the Niger was soon made patent—for, on the one hand, its course ended in the Chad; and, on the other, its size, and the reports of the natives, made it clear that it drained only the eastern Haussa States.
February 17 was a momentous date in the history of the expedition, for on that day they reached Kuka, the capital of Bornu.
Their entry was made in great state, worthy the traditions of a powerful semi-civilised Sultan. Several thousand well equipped and marvellously caparisoned horsemen awaited the strangers outside the town, and on seeing them, charged as if with the intention of annihilating the little band. Suddenly, while at full gallop, they pulled up right in the faces of the newcomers, almost smothering them with clouds of dust, and putting them in some danger from the crowding of horses and clashing of spears.
The Sultan’s negroes, as they were called, were specially conspicuous, “habited in coats of mail composed of iron chain, which covered them from the throat to the knees, dividing behind and coming on each side of thehorse. Some of them had helmets, or rather skull caps, of the same metal, with china pieces all sufficiently strong to ward off the shock of a spear. Their horses’ heads were also defended by plates of iron, brass, and silver.”
It would be difficult to give the faintest idea of the strange sights and scenes which now opened up before our travellers in the centre of the ancient empire of Bornu. Nothing more remarkable had ever been seen by any European explorer—at least in Africa. From the Sultan and his much-robed courtiers down to the scantily-draped country people, all were alike interesting. The teeming life in all its varied forms—Arab, Berber, Fulah, and negro of twenty different tribes—made up a picture of strange attractiveness. Not less interesting were the curious customs, the industries, the mixture of a considerable degree of civilisation and religious elevation with the lowest depths of barbarism and degrading superstition. These were the more marked, inasmuch as when the English travellers saw Bornu and its remarkable court, it was just re-emerging from a temporary eclipse of its national glory. Only a short time before it had thrown off the temporary domination of the Fulahs, to whom it had succumbed in their first irresistible onrush.
The reception of Clapperton and Denham was exceedingly promising, and a bright career of discovery seemingly lay open to them.
Matters assumed a worse aspect, however, when differences of opinion arose among the Arabs of the caravan. They had been despatched as an escort to the travellers, it is true, but they were not placed directly under their command. To do absolutely nothingbut look after the safety of the Europeans was as alien to their conception of duty as the idea of travelling all the way to Bornu without turning the journey to profitable account. The majority of them not being merchants, and therefore not supplied with goods for barter, had only their weapons to depend upon to recoup them for their trouble. A slave raid was therefore determined on, in spite of the opposition and remonstrances of Bu Khalum and the Europeans. As the Arabs were not to be turned aside from their project, the leader reluctantly agreed to go with them, and Denham, finding himself helpless, resolved to join the party likewise in order to extend his knowledge of the region.
The mountains of Mandara, to the south of Bornu, were chosen as the most suitable spot for a slave hunt, and thither the raiders proceeded, accompanied by a considerable contingent of the Bornu army.
Leaving Kuka in the middle of April, they reached Mandara towards the end of the month, without any misadventure. Here they found themselves surrounded with mountain scenery, which could scarcely be exceeded for beauty and richness. On all sides interminable chains of hill closed in the view in rugged magnificence and picturesque grandeur. Here, too, nature revelled in its most luxuriant forms among giant trees almost masked under the wealth of creepers which wound around the trunks and branches, or hung in graceful festoons swaying responsive to the passing breeze. Native villages were everywhere to be seen perched airily, like eagles’ nests, far up on the rocks and mountain tops, or nestling in the valleys, hidden like the wild deer’s lair in the depths of the forest. Such was the lovely district into which the Arabs hadcome to bring death, ruin, and slavery. But for once they had miscalculated their powers, or depended too much on the co-operation of the Bornu contingent. At the first attack the invaders drove the natives before them, but soon they were outnumbered. Bu Khalum was severely wounded along with the leader of the Bornuese, and Denham received a wound in the face. Beaten on all sides, the only safety of the survivors lay in flight.
A frightful scene ensued. Denham passed through a series of the most marvellous escapes, but at last, unhorsed and unarmed, was seized and stripped, receiving several wounds from spear thrusts in the process. Seeing nothing but a cruel death before him, he resolved to make one more effort to escape, and putting the thought into action, he slipped below a horse, and started for the woods, pursued by two Fulah. Reaching the shelter of the trees, hope revived on his seeing a ravine opening in front of him, and offering a further chance of life. As he was on the point of letting himself down the cliff into the stream, a puff-adder raised its head to strike. He recoiled horror-stricken, and fell headlong into the ravine, his fall fortunately made harmless by a deep pool of water, where, recovering his presence of mind, three strokes of his arms sent him to the opposite side, and placed him in comparative safety among the dense vegetation.
Shortly after, he met the remnants of the defeated party, and six days later they re-entered Kuka, after enduring great hardships.
For the next few months little of importance was done to elucidate the geography of the Chad Region. An expedition westward to Manga was accomplished withless disastrous results than that to the Mandara mountains; and then the rainy season set in, threatening for a time to end the days of the European travellers by the fevers which accompanied it. With the return of the dry season came renewed health and renewed determination to add further to their discoveries.
On the 14th December, Clapperton and Oudney set forth to visit Kano and the Haussa States in the company of a trading caravan.
Two days later a Mr. Toole arrived at Kuka with fresh supplies for the expedition, at a moment when they were much needed.
In the beginning of the year 1824 Denham and Toole started for the district of Logun with the object of visiting the Shari River. The project was safely accomplished, and they found a majestic river 400 yards broad, flowing from the south and south-west into the Chad.
The difficulty of obtaining correct geographical information from the natives was well illustrated in their case, it being clear that they confounded with the Shari a great river (the Benué) they heard of as flowingfromthe south and south-west of Mandara, whereas in reality the latter flowstothe west. It is extremely probable, however, that some sort of connection exists between them in the wet season.
At Logun Mr. Toole died.
Meanwhile Clapperton and Oudney were travelling towards Kano, and giving shape and form to the confused and conflicting accounts over which geographers had quarrelled for a couple of centuries. Unfortunately on this journey, Oudney, who had never enjoyed good health from the day he left Tripoli, gradually becameworse, and died on the 12th January 1824. Left to himself, Clapperton passed on to Kano, which he found to be a town of 30,000 to 40,000 inhabitants, and chiefly important as a trading and industrial centre, it being famed as such from the most remote times.