Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 125.djvu/83

Rh Baron von Barnim, who had fallen a victim to the climate while travelling on the tipper Nile, were brought home, they were placed in the young Schweinfurth's hands, and their examination roused in his mind what he well calls "the blameless avarice of a plant-hunter," and the hope that he too might one day make discoveries in his favourite science. To such a man where there is a will there is always a way, and in 1863 we find him in Egypt and penetrating as far as Khartoum after skirting the Highlands of Abyssinia. Thence he returned, with an empty purse indeed, but a splendid collection of plants, in 1866. He could not, however, remain at home. He soon submitted a plan to the Royal Academy of Science at Berlin for the botanical exploration of the equatorial regions lying west of the Nile. His proposals were accepted, and in 1868, with a grant from the Humboldt Institution, he landed in Egypt to pursue his researches. "During three years," says Mr. Winwood Reade in his Introduction, "he was absent in the heart of Africa," and even before he had returned, his name was famous in Europe and America. Travelling not in the footsteps of Baker, but in a more westerly direction, he reached the neighbourhood of Baker's lake, passing through the country of the Niam Niam, and visiting the unknown kingdom of Monbuttoo. As an explorer he stands in the highest rank, and deserves to be classed with Mungo Park, Denham, and Clapperton, Livingstone, Burton, Speke and Grant, Barth and Rohlfs. Two qualifications he possessed which no other African traveller can claim to have combined. He was a scientific botanist and an excellent draughtsman, while in these most necessary acquirements for a traveller others have been mere amateurs. If we are to sum up briefly the scientific results of his discoveries, we may say that by him the limits of the Nile Basin have been finally settled, the existence of a pigmy race in these regions, so much in dispute since the days of Herodotus, has been proved, while in the skin girdles of the Niam Niam and the Monbuttoo we see how the fable of a tail-bearing race in Central Africa has arisen. That he found not one but several tribes incorrigible cannibals was to be expected; but his evidence on this fact outweighs, by its authority and gravity, the confused accounts of Du Chaillu. These, together with a great mass of geographical and ethnological discoveries, are what the scientific world owes to the endurance and learning of this most accomplished naturalist.

If it be asked how it was that Schweinfurth accomplished so much, while others in these regions have had such small success, the answer is ready. He did at Khartoum as they do at Khartoum. It is true that while at Alexandria and Cairo he armed himself with special orders from the prime minister of the viceroy, by which the governor of Khartoum was to superintend any contracts he might make with the merchants, and to take care that any obligations undertaken by any member of that body should be fulfilled; but his former experience of that place and its atmosphere had convinced Schwelnfurth that if he was to penetrate into those regions west of the Nile, it must be by attaching himself to some one of those traders when proceeding on an ivory-expedition, who would then pass him on from tribe to tribe with which he had relations, and even accompany him himself on his adventurous journey. Government help might forward him just to the verge of the countries which he wished to explore, but beyond that point all travellers would be dependent on the merchants whose greed of gain led them as pioneers into those regions over which the regular government of Egypt had no control. The neglect of this alliance with the trading interest of Khartoum had caused the failure of many expeditions fitted out at a great sacrifice of life and money. We pass over the journey from Cairo to Khartoum, which was made like Baker by going by sea from Suez to Suakin on the Red Sea, and thence, cutting across the country to Berber on the Upper Nile. Suffice it to say that Schweinfurth reached Khartoum by boat on Nov. 1, 1868, and strong in his special recommendations of 