THE HEART OF AFRICA AND THE SLAVE-TRADE.[1]
In order to have a clear conception of the vast regions of which the works of Dr. Schweinfurth and Sir Samuel Baker treat, it is necessary that the reader should master the physical features of the country which forms what is commonly called the Basin of the Nile. Below Khartoum, situated at about 16° north lat., the stream of the Nile is a very simple matter. But at Khartoum itself the perplexities of its course at once begin, and the questions arise at that very spot which is the true main channel of that mighty river, and which are merely its affluents? The town to which we refer lies, as is well known, at the junction of the Blue Nile, the Nile of Bruce and Abyssinia flowing from the east, and the White Nile which joins its sister stream from the west. For a long period the Blue Nile was considered by geographers the true Nile, but as the horizon of knowledge was extended the White Nile was raised to that dignity, and after receiving another affluent from the eastward in the Sobat, was supposed, and is still supposed by most geographers, to be the main stream, flowing from the south-east by the name of the Bahr-el-Gebel, and traced by the recent discoveries of Baker and Speke and others as issuing from the Albert Nyanza Lake, into which, again, a stream flows from the Victoria Nyanza, called by Speke the White Nile. So much will be sufficient as to the course of the eastern stream of the Nile, the White Nile, and its affluents, and these are the rivers which traverse those south-eastern regions of the Nile Basin through which Baker travelled and campaigned. But besides the eastern or White Nile, there are a number of western affluents, which unite in the Gazelle River, which joins the White Nile just at the point where that stream is greatly impeded by great barriers and masses of weeds, which so choke the channel as to render it for some portion of the year almost impassable. This blocking of the White Nile, together with the force and volume of those western affluents which unite in the Gazelle, have lately revived discussion as to the main stream of the Nile; and some, among whom, though he does not positively say so, we think we can reckon Dr. Schweinfurth, have recently thought that the Djoor, which flows into the Gazelle at a spot called the Meshera or the Landing-Place in the Dinka territory, may, after all, be the main stream and the true Nile. On this vexed question we do not presume to offer an opinion: all that we wish to impress upon the reader is the fact that besides the White Nile and its eastern affluents, there are numerous streams flowing from the west, as the Bahr-el-Arab, the Tondy, the Rohl, and, though last not least, the Djoor, which, uniting in the short channel known as the Gazelle, find their way into the grass-grown stream of the White Nile, which, if its course becomes a little more blocked and choked by that luxuriant water vegetation, is threatened with extinction as a river, and with transformation into a series of lakes. As Baker's line of march lay along the eastern stream of the Nile, so Schweinfurth's discoveries were towards the west, and through the regions watered by the western affluents of the river which we have named above. It adds immensely to the importance and interest of those discoveries that in the course of his travels he passed out of the Nile Basin, and crossing its watershed, arrived the first of travellers from the north in a region where the streams flowed south to the shores of the Atlantic.
Having thus briefly explained the geographical features, so far as the Nile is conserned of the countries visited by each of our authors, we proceed to say that the two works which stand at the head of this article were the result of expeditions which traversed neighbour-
- ↑ 1. The Heart of Africa. Three Years' Travels and Adventures in the Unexplored Regions of Central Africa, from 1868 to 1871. By Dr. George Schweinfurth. Translated by Ellen E. Frewer, with an Introduction by Winwood Reade. In 2 vols. London: 1873.
2. Ismailia. A Narrative of the Expedition to Central Africa for the Suppression of the Slave-Trade. By Sir Samuel W. Baker, Pacha, &c. In 2 vols. 1874.
