Volume Ii Part 6 (2/2)
Leake (loc. cit.) holds all conjecture useless. Not so the Rev.
M. Tristram, whose geography is of the ornithological or bird's- eye order. In ”The Great Sahara” (pp. 362-4, Appendix I.), he asks, ”May not the name Giris or Gir be connected with Djidi?” i.
e. the Wadi Mzi, a mean sink in El Areg, south of Algeria.
Graberg (”Morocco”) had already identified it with the Ghir, which flows through Sagelmessa; Burckhardt with the Jir, ”a large stream coming from about north lat.i.tude 10, and flowing north- west through the Wadai, west of the borders of Dar-Fur.” No wonder that some geographers are disposed to believe Gir, Giris, Ger, and Geir to be ”a general native name for a river, like Ba”
(Bahr), ”Bi” (in many Central African tongues a river, Schweinfurth, ii. 241), ”Quorra (Kwara), Gulbi and Gambaru (the Yeou), Shadda, and Enzaddi.”
It is still interesting to consider the circ.u.mstances which gave rise to Captain Tuckey's disastrous expedition. As any map of Africa during the early quarter of the present century, Bowdich or Dupuis for instance, may prove, the course of the Niger was laid down, now according to the ancients, then after Arab information. The Dark Continent, of which D'Anville justly said that writers abused, ”pour ainsi dire, de la vaste carriere que l'interieur y laissait prendre” (”Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions,” xxvi. 61), had not been subjected to scientific a.n.a.lysis; this was reserved for the Presidential Address to the Royal Geographical Society by the late Sir R. I. Murchison, 1852.
Geographers did not see how to pa.s.s the Niger through the” Kong Mountains, which, uniting with the Jebel Komri, are supposed to run in one unbroken chain across the continent;” and these Lunar Mountains of the Moslems, which were ”stretched like a chaplet of beads from east to west,” undoubtedly express, as M. du Chaillu contends, a real feature, the double versant, probably a mere wave of ground between the great hydrographic basins of the Niger and the Congo, of North Africa and of Central Africa. Men still wasted their vigour upon the Nigritis Palus, the Chelonides waters, the Mount Caphas, and the lakes of w.a.n.gara, variously written Vancara and Vongara, not to mention other ways. Maps place ”w.a.n.gara”to the north-west of Dahome, where the natives utterly ignore the name. Dupuis (”Ashantee,” 1824) suggests that, like ”Takrur,” it is an obsolete Moslem term for the 660 miles of maritime region between Cape Lahu and the Rio Formoso or the Old Calabar River. This would include the three despotisms, Ashanti, Dahome, and Benin, with the tribes who, from a distance of twenty-five days, bring gold to Tinbuktu (the Tungubutu of De Barros, i. 220). Thus the lakes of w.a.n.gara would be the lagoons of the Slave-coast, in which the Niger may truly be said to lose itself.
At length M. Reichard, of Lobenstein (”Ephemerides Geographiques,” Weimar, 1802), theoretically discovered the mouth of the Niger, by throwing it into the Bight of Benin. He was right in essentials and wrong in details; for instance, he supposed the Rio Formoso or Benin River and the Rio del Rey to join in one great stream beyond the flat alluvial delta: whereas the former is indirectly connected through the Wari with the Niger, and the latter has no connection with it at all. The truth was received with scant courtesy, and the hypothesis was p.r.o.nounced to be ”worthy of very little attention.” There were, however, honourable exceptions. In 1813, the learned Malte-Brun (”Precis de la Geographie Universelle,” vol. iv. 635) sanctioned the theory hinted at by Mungo Park, and in 1828 the well-abused Caillie, a Frenchman who had dared to excel Bruce and Mungo Park, wrote these remarkable words: ”If I may be permitted to hazard an opinion as to the course of the River Dhioliba, I should say that it empties itself by several mouths into the Bight of Benin.” In 1829, fortified by Clapperton's opinion, my late friend, James Macqueen, who to immense industry added many qualifications of a comparative geographer, recommended a careful examination of the estuaries between the Rio Formoso and Old Calabar. The question was not finally set at rest till 1830 (November 15th), when Richard and John Lander entered Yoruba via Badagry and, triumphantly descending the lower Niger, made the sea by the ”Nun” and Bra.s.s embouchures.
Meanwhile, Mr. George Maxwell, a Scotchman who had long traded in the Congo, and who subsequently published a chart of the lower river proposed, at the end of the last century, to take from England six supernumerary boats for rowing and sailing, which could be carried by thirty people and portaged round the cataracts. This gave rise to Captain Tuckey's first error, depending upon labour and provisions, which were not to be had ”for love or money” anywhere on the Congo above the Yellala. With thirty or forty black rowers, probably Cabinda men, Maxwell advised navigating the river about May, when the Cacimbo or dry season begins; and with arms, provisions, and merchandize he expected to reach the sources in six weeks. The scheme, which was rendered abortive by the continental war of 1793, had two remarkable results. It caused Mungo Park's fatal second journey, and it led to the twin expeditions of Tuckey and Peddie.
In July, 1804, the ardent and irrepressible Scot wrote from Prior's Lynn, near Longtown, to a friend, Mr. William Kier, of Milholm, that the river ”Enzaddi” was frequented by Portuguese, who found the stream still as large as near the mouth, after ascending 600 miles. It is useful to observe how these distances are obtained. The slave-touters for the Liverpool and other dealers used, we are told, to march one month up country, and take two to return. Thirty days multiplied by twenty miles per diem give 600 miles. I need hardly point out that upon such a mission the buyer would be much more likely to travel 60 miles than 600 in a single month, and I believe that the natives of the lower river never went beyond Nsundi, or 215 indirect miles from Point Padro.
With truly national tenacity and plausibility Perfervidum Ingenium contended that the Congo or Zaire was the Nigerian debouchure. Major Rennell, who had disproved the connection of the Niger and the Egyptian Nile by Bruce's barometric measurements on the course of the mountain-girt Bahr el Azrak, and by Brown's alt.i.tudes at Darfur, condemned the bold theory for the best of reasons.
Mungo Park, after a brief coldness and coquetting with it, hotly adopted to the fullest extent the wild scheme. Before leaving England (Oct. 4, 1804), he addressed a memoir to Lord Camden, explaining the causes of his conversion. It is curious to note his confusion of ”Zad,” his belief that the ”Congo waters are at all seasons thick and muddy,” and his conviction that ”the annual flood,” which he considered perpetual, ”commences before the rains fall south of the equator.” The latter is to a certain extent true; the real reason will presently be given. Infected by the enthusiasm of his brother Scot, he adds, ”Considered in a commercial point of view, it is second only to the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope; and, in a geographical point of view, it is certainly the greatest discovery that remains to be made in this world.”
Thereupon the traveller set out for the upper Niger with the conviction that he would emerge by the Congo, and return to England via the West Indies. From the fragments of his Journal, and his letters to Lord Camden, to Sir Joseph Banks, and to his wife, it is evident that at San-sanding he had modified his theories, and that he was gradually learning the truth. To the former he writes, ”I am more and more inclined to think that it (the Niger) can end nowhere but in the sea;” and presently a guide, who had won his confidence, a.s.sured him that the river, after pa.s.sing Kashna, runs directly to the right hand, or south, which would throw it into the Gulf of Guinea.
The fatal termination of Park's career in 1805 lulled public curiosity for a time, but it presently revived. The geographical mind was still excited by the mysterious stream which evaporation or dispersion drained into the Lake-swamps of w.a.n.gara, and to this was added not a little curiosity concerning the lamented and popular explorer's fate. We find instructions concerning Mungo Park issued even to cruizers collecting political and other information upon the East African coast; e.g., to Captain Smee, sent in 1811 by the Bombay Government. His companion, Lieutenant Hardy, converted Usagara, west of the Zanzibar seaboard, into ”w.a.n.garah,” and remarks, ”a white man, supposed to be Park, is said to have travelled here twenty years ago” (”Observations,”
&c.).
About ten years after Mungo Park's death, two expeditions were fitted out by Government to follow up his discovery. Major Peddie proceeded to descend the Niger, and Captain Tuckey to ascend the Congo. We have nothing to say of the former journey except that, as in the latter, every chief European officer died--Major Peddie, Captain Campbell, Lieutenant Stokoe, and M. k.u.mmer, the naturalist. The expedition, consisting of 100 men and 200 animals, reached Kakundy June 13, 1817, and there fell to pieces.
Concerning the Zaire Expedition, which left Deptford on February 16, 1816, a few words are advisable.
The personnel was left to the choice of the leader, Commander J.
K. Tuckey, R. N. (died). There were six commissioned officers-- Lieutenant John Hawkey, R.N. (died); Mr. Lewis Fitz-maurice, master and surveyor; Mr. Robert Hodder and Mr. Robert Beecraft, master's mates; Mr. John Eyre, purser (died); and Mr. James McKerrow, a.s.sistant surgeon. Under these were eight petty officers, four carpenters, two blacksmiths, and fourteen able seamen. The marines numbered one sergeant, one corporal, and twelve privates. Grand total of combatants, forty-nine. To these were added five ”savants”: Professor Chetien Smith, a Norwegian botanist and geologist (died); Mr. Cranch, collector of objects of natural history (died); Mr. Tudor, comparative anatomist (died); Mr. Galway, Irishman and volunteer naturalist (died); and ”Lockhart, a gardener” (of His Majesty's Gardens, Kew). There were two Congo negroes, Benjamin Benjamins and Somme Simmons; the latter, engaged as a cook's mate, proved to be a ”prince of the blood,” which did not prevent his deserting for fear of the bushmen.
The allusions made to Mr. Cranch, a ”joined methodist,” and a ”self-made man,” are not complimentary. ”Cranch, I fear,” says Professor Smith, ”by his absurd conduct, will diminish the liberality of the captain towards us: he is like a pointed arrow to the company.” And, again, ”Poor Cranch is almost too much the object of jest; Galway is the princ.i.p.al banterer.”In the Professor's remarks on the” fat purser,”we can detect the foreigner, who, on such occasions, should never be mixed up with Englishmen.
Sir Joseph Banks had suggested a steamer drawing four feet, with twenty-four horse-power; an admirable idea, but practical difficulties of construction rendered the ”Congo” useless. Of the fifty-four white men, eighteen, including eleven of the ”Congo”
crew, died in less than three months. Fourteen out of a party of thirty officers and men, who set out to explore the cataracts via the northern bank, lost their lives; and they were followed by four more on board the ”Congo,” and one at Bahia. The expedition remained in the river between July 6th and October 18th, little more than three months; yet twenty-one, or nearly one-third, three of the superior officers and all the scientific men, perished. Captain Tuckey died of fatigue and exhaustion (Oct.
4th) rather than of disease; Lieutenant Hawkey, of fatal typhus (which during 1862 followed the yellow fever, in the Bonny and New Calabar Rivers); and Mr. Eyre, palpably of bilious remittent.
Professor Smith had been so charmed with the river, that he was with difficulty persuaded to return. Prostrated four days afterwards by sickness on board the transport, he refused physic and food, because his stomach rejected bark, and, preferring cold water, he became delirious; apparently, he died of disappointment, popularly called a ”broken heart.” Messrs. Tudor and Cranchalso fell victims to bilious remittents, complicated, in the case of the latter, by the ”gloomy view taken of Christianity by that sect denominated Methodists.” Mr. Galway, on September 28th, visited Sangala, the highest rapid (”Narrative,”
p. 328). In the Introduction, p. 80, we are wrongly told that he went to Banza Ninga, whence, being taken ill on August 24th, he was sent down stream. He, like his commander, had to sleep in the open, almost without food, and he also succ.u.mbed to fever, fatigue, and exhaustion.
The cause of this prodigious mortality appears in the records of the expedition. Officers and men were all raw, unseasoned, and unacclimatized. Captain Tuckey, an able navigator, the author of ”Maritime Geography and Statistics,” had served in the tropics; his biographer, however, writes that a long imprisonment in France and ”residence in India had broken down his const.i.tution, and at the age of thirty (ob. aet. thirty-nine) his hair was grey and his head nearly bald.” The men perished, exactly like the missionaries of old, by hard work, insufficient and innutritious food, physical exhaustion, and by the doctor. At first ”immediate bleeding and gentle cathartics” are found to be panaceas for mild fevers (p. 46): presently the surgeon makes a discovery as follows: ”With regard to the treatment I shall here only observe that bleeding was particularly unsuccessful. Cathartics were of the greatest utility, and calomel, so administered as speedily to induce copious salivation, generally procured a remission of all the violent symptoms.” The phlebotomy was inherited from the missioners, who own almost to have blinded themselves by it. When one was ”blooded” fifteen times and died, his amateur Sangrado said, ”It had been better to have bled him thirty times:” the theory was that in so hot a climate all the European blood should be replaced by African. One of the entries in Captain Tuckey's diary is, ”Awaking extremely unwell, I directly swallowed five grains of calomel”--a man worn out by work and sleeping in the open air! The ”Congo” sloop was moored in a reach surrounded by hills, instead of being anch.o.r.ed in mid stream where the current of water creates a current of air; those left behind in her died of palm wine, of visits from native women, and of exposure to the sun by day and to the nightly dews. On the line of march the unfortunate marines wore pigtails and c.o.c.ked hats; stocks and cross-belts; tight-fitting, short-waisted red coats, and knee- breeches with boots or spatter-dashes--even the stout Lord Clyde in his latest days used to recall the miseries of his march to Margate, and declare that the horrid dress gave him more pain than anything he afterwards endured in a life-time of marching.
None seemed capable of calculating what amount of fatigue and privation the European system is able to support in the tropics.
And thus they perished, sometimes of violent bilious remittents, more often of utter weariness and starvation. Peace to their manes!--they did their best, and ”angels can no more.” They played for high stakes, existence against fame--
”But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life.”
”The Narrative of an Expedition to Explore the River Zaire”
(London, John Murray, 1818), published by permission of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, was necessarily a posthumous work. The Introduction of eighty-two pages and the General Observations (fifty-three pages) are by anonymous hands; follow Captain Tuckey's Narrative, Professor Smith's Journal, and an Appendix with seven items; 1, vocabularies of the Malemba and Embomma (Fiote or Congo) languages; 2, 3, and 4, Zoology; 5, Botany; 6, Geology; and 7, Hydrography. The most valuable is No.
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