Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/703

 13, 1863.] himself in his boat, and after he has sighed over the change in its appearance, trimmed in his absence for the return voyage, he dwells upon the old, old question,—“What, then, is this river Nile? Whence does it come? How can such a channel be filled? And why does it overflow every year with such punctuality that its half-dozen failures since human history began are among the marvels of human calamity?”

These are the very same questions that were ancient to the Egyptian priests, when they talked the matter over with Herodotus, four centuries and a-half before our era. Among the old Greeks, who were upstarts in the eyes of the Egyptians, this was one of the first speculations in the course of their studies of Nature, by travel and research. No doubt Moses heard it treated when he was acquiring the learning of the Egyptians in his youth: and in Abraham’s time the subject must have been just as interesting as it could ever be afterwards. Up to this very year, there never was any proposal of a solution which the cultivated reason of society could receive. After leaving behind poetical notions of gods pouring out waters from urns, or creating inexhaustible springs for the occasion; and of mighty mountains, scaling heaven with their snowy peaks at the equator; and of the miraculous drop which yearly came down from heaven upon some place in Abyssinia;—after leaving this region of fable, there was nothing else to consider and judge of,—no theory, no hypothesis, which could be advanced a hair’s-breadth by study or reasoning, because there were no materials to proceed upon. Of old, the Egyptians pitied the Greeks on account of their liability to famine, because their crops depended on such an uncertainty as water from the fickle clouds: and the Greeks at the same time pitied the Egyptians on account of their liability to famine, because their crops depended on such an uncertainty as the mysterious overflow of a mysterious stream, of the origin of which nothing was known. Modern men have trusted, more wisely and humbly, to the action of natural laws: but, this being settled, they had nothing to say about the Nile. They could only encourage something being done. A good deal has been done accordingly in the way of exploration, further and further south, within the last forty years; but still the secret was not discovered by that course.

The first question was a very old one,—viz., which of three streams which meet at and below Khartoum afforded the best chance of turning out to be the true Nile? Ptolemy preferred the west; and most moderns have been of his mind. This was the stream explored by Linant Bey in 1827, as far as 132 geographical miles south of Khartoum (and nearly due east, we may observe, of the northern shore of Lake Tchad in the interior). Several expeditions, sent from Cairo, under the command of European scientific explorers, pursued the same track, advancing a little further and a little further: and of these Dr. Knoblecher, head of a Catholic mission at Khartoum, seems to have seen most. He penetrated to within five degrees of the equator, and saw mountains whereas the earlier explorers saw no appearance of high grounds. Dr. Krapf, who explored from the east, twelve years ago, heard from the natives an account which appears very striking now;—that a river (which he supposed to be the Nile) issued from a large lake at the foot of mountains, and flowed through another lake lying to the north, the body of water being altogether enormous. But there was no knowing how much to believe of this.

On the whole, men’s imagination had descended from the regions of fable, chiefly through the cultivation of geological and other science. It was a memorable day when Sir Roderick Murchison made known his opinion (prior to the recent explorations from the north), that the interior of Africa was not a parched desert of sand and rocks, but a great basin of habitable, and probably fertile land, watered by large rivers and lakes, and containing diversities of level, short of miraculous snowy mountains, in contrast with barren sands. If some of the awe about the infant Nile began to dissolve, the interest was stimulated by a fresh curiosity: and on Dr. Livingstone’s return, we all learned very quickly to picture the interior of Africa to ourselves as crowded with tropical vegetation, gleaming with waters, and all alive with men and animals, instead of dreaming of burning red granite mountains, or black basalt, or glaring white rocks and yellow sands, like those of Arabia.

There was some interest for us in the travels in Abyssinia of late years; but it was not of the same kind. Old Christian traditions hang about that region; and some modern missions have attracted attention towards it. There are some good commercial chances in that country; and a political interest is involved in the anxiety of the French to establish themselves in Abyssinia, so as to have a command of the Red Sea; but if we wanted discovery about the Nile, there seemed to be more promise in an expedition entering by way of Zanzibar.

Here we were, indeed, on the threshold of the discovery which all civilised races have longed for from time immemorial. The book by Captain Burton, which laid open to us the country from the coast to the great Lake Tanganyika, was as little attractive as such a book could be. Captain Burton has done great things, but he does not write pleasant books. His intrepid act of going through the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina as a Mohammedan has dispersed the mystery of these very exclusive sanctuaries; and his exploration towards Lake Tanganyika, and survey of a part of it, afford valuable additions to our knowledge of Africa. But his health suffered, as that of African explorers always does; and his temper seems to have suffered in consequence. It is impossible to overlook this fact, because his feelings vented themselves chiefly upon the man whom we are now all delighting to honour. Captain Speke was Burton’s comrade on that expedition which was Speke’s first stage in a journey which will be immortal. They parted at Kazeh, whence Speke went northward to see about the great lake reported to be there, and with a strong hope of standing at the source of the Nile, unconscious of any liberties that might be taken