Part 28

The arrival of Sir Samuel Baker being made known to Kamrasi, he requested him to pay a visit to his capital, and sent a legion of porters to carry his baggage. Lady Baker suffered much from illness on the journey, which she performed in a litter; and Sir Samuel was also attacked by a debilitating fever. His first interview with “the king” took place on the 10th of February. He describes him as a fine-looking man, whose extremely prominent eyes gave a peculiar expression to his countenance; about six feet high; and dressed in a long robe of bark-cloth, draped in graceful folds. The nails of his hands and feet were carefully tended, and his complexion was about as dark a brown as that of an Abyssinian. He sat upon a copper stool, with a leopard-skin carpet spread around him, and was attended by about ten of his principal chiefs. Of his character as a man Sir Samuel Baker speaks in the most unflattering terms; he was grasping, mean, mendacious, and a coward. After some delay, and by dint of repeated bribes, Sir Samuel obtained from him a supply of natives to carry the baggage to the lake, where canoes were to be provided for the voyage to Magango, a village situated at the junction of the Somerset river. He went to take leave of the royal savage, and was astonished by the insolent demand that Lady Baker should be left with him! Sir Samuel drew his revolver; Lady Baker broke out into invectives in Arabic, which the woman, Bachuta, translated as nearly as she could, and with indignant emphasis, into the language of Unyoro; in short, “a scene” ensued! Kamrasi was completely cowed, and faltered out, “Don’t be angry! I had no intention of offending you by asking for your wife; I will give you a wife, if you want one, and I thought you might have no objection to give me yours; it is my custom to give my visitors pretty wives, and I thought you might exchange. Don’t make it fuss about it: if you don’t like it, there’s an end of it; I will never mention it again.” Sir Samuel received the apology very sternly, and insisted upon starting. Kamrasi did not feel in a position to interpose any further delay, and the march to the lake began.

On the road a very painful incident occurred. The expedition had reached Uafour river, which ran through the centre of a marsh, and, although deep, was so thickly covered with matted and tangled water grass and other aquatic plants, that a natural floating bridge, some two feet in thickness, was available for crossing. The men passed it quickly, sinking merely to the ankles, though beneath the tough vegetation was deep water. It was equally impossible to ride or be carried over this fickle surface; Sir Samuel therefore led the way, and begged his wife to follow on foot as quickly as possible, keeping exactly in his track. The river was about eighty yards wide, and Sir Samuel had scarcely accomplished a fourth of the distance, when, looking back, he was horrified to see her standing in one spot, and sinking gradually through the weeds, while her face was distorted and perfectly purple. She fell, as if stricken dead. Her husband was immediately by her side, and, with the help of some of his men, dragged her through the yielding vegetation, across to the other side. There she was tenderly laid beneath a tree, and her husband bathed her head and face with water, thinking she had fainted. But he soon perceived that she was suffering from a sunstroke; and, removing her to a miserable hut close at hand, he watched anxiously for some sign of returning consciousness. We shall quote his own words in all their pathetic simplicity:

“There was nothing to eat in this spot. My wife had never stirred since she fell by the _coup de soleil_, and merely respired about five times a minute. It was impossible to remain; the people would have starved. She was laid gently upon her litter, and we started forward on our funeral course. I was ill and broken-hearted, and I followed by her side through the long day’s march over wild park lands and streams, with thick forest and deep marshy bottoms; over undulating hills, and through valleys of tall papyrus rushes, which, as we brushed through them on our melancholy way, waved over the litter like the black plumes of a hearse. We halted at a village, and again the night was passed in watching. I was wet, and coated with mud from the swampy marsh, and shivered with ague; but the cold within was greater than all. No change had taken place; she had never moved. I had plenty of fat, and I made four balls of about half a pound, each of which would burn for three hours. A piece of a broken water-jar formed a lamp, several pieces of rag serving for wicks. So in solitude the still calm night passed away as I sat by her side and watched. In the drawn and distorted features that lay before me I could hardly trace the same form that for years had been my comfort through all the difficulties and dangers of my path. Was she to die? Was so terrible a sacrifice to be the result of my selfish exile?

“Again the night passed away. Once more the march. Though weak and ill, and for two nights without a moment’s sleep, I felt no fatigue, but mechanically followed by the side of the litter as though in a dream. The same wild country diversified with marsh and forest. Again we halted. The night came, and I sat by her side in a miserable hut, with the feeble lamp flickering while she lay, as in death. She had never moved a muscle since she fell. My people slept. I was alone, and no sound broke the stillness of the night. The ears ached at the utter silence, till the sudden wild cry of a hyæna made me shudder as the horrible thought rushed through my brain, that, should she be buried in this lonely spot, the hyæna would . . . disturb her rest.

“The morning was not far distant; it was past four o’clock. I had passed the night in replacing wet cloths upon her head, and moistening her lips, as she lay apparently lifeless on her litter. I could do nothing more; in solitude and abject misery in that dark hour, in a country of savage heathens, thousands of miles away from a Christian land, I beseeched an aid above all human, trusting alone to Him.

“The morning broke; my lamp had just burnt out, and, cramped with the night’s watching, I rose from my seat, and seeing that she lay in the same unaltered state, I went to the door of the hut to breathe one gasp of the fresh morning air. I was watching the first red streak that heralded the rising sun, when I was startled by the words, ‘Thank God,’ faintly uttered behind me. Suddenly she had awoke from her torpor, and with a heart overflowing I went to her bedside. Her eyes were full of madness! She spoke, but the brain was gone!”

II.

Happily, after suffering for some days from brain fever, Lady Baker recovered consciousness, and thenceforward her progress, though slow, was sure. After a brief rest, the march to the lake was resumed by the undaunted travellers; for the devoted wife would not allow any consideration of her comfort or safety to come between her husband and the accomplishment of the work he had undertaken. At a village called Parkani, the guides informed them that they were only a day’s journey from the lake. In the west rose a lofty range of mountains, and Sir Samuel Baker had conjectured that the N’zige lay on the other side of it, but he was told that it actually formed its western or further boundary. Only a day’s journey! That night Sir Samuel could hardly sleep; his brain was fired with the thought that he was within so short a distance of the Source of the Nile—that in a few hours he might drink of the waters of its mysterious fountain. He was up before sunrise on the 14th of March, and crossing a deep cool valley between the hills, ascended the slope, gained the summit, and there, before him, flashing in the light of morning like a sea of quick-silver or a huge mirror of polished steel, lay the long-sought lake! The height on which he stood was about fifteen hundred feet above its level, so that he could survey the entire expanse of those welcome waters which had created fertility in the heart of the desert, and made the fame and wealth and glory of Egypt. He resolved that thenceforth they should bear a great name, and as the eastern reservoir of the Nile had been named after the Queen of England, he determined that the western should commemorate her lost and lamented consort, Prince Albert. It is therefore now known as the Albert Lake.

With some difficulty, but with a grateful heart, he and his wife descended the steep to the shore of the silent, shining lake, and took up their quarters in a fishing village called Vacovia. It was a wretched place, and the soil was strongly impregnated with salt; but discomforts were forgotten in the joy of a great discovery. Sir Samuel proceeded to collect all the information he could relative to its position. The chief of the village told him that its breadth was immense, but that large canoes had been known to cross from the other side after four days and nights of hard rowing. That other side, the west, was included in the great kingdom of Malegga, governed by King Kajoro, who traded with Kamrasi from a point opposite to Magango, where the lake contracted to the width of one day’s voyage. South of Malegga was a country named Tori, and the lake extended into the kingdom of Karagwé, with whose sovereign, Rumanika, Speke and Grant had maintained a friendly intercourse. Karagwé partly bounded the lake on the eastern side, and next to it, towards the north, came Utumbi; then, in succession, came Uganda, Unyoro, Chopé.

The Albert Nyanza formed a vast basin of water, lying far below the general level of the country, and receiving all its drainage. It was surrounded by precipitous cliffs, which left but a narrow strip of sand between them and the swelling waves, and bounded on the west and south-west by huge mountain-ranges, from five to seven thousand feet in altitude. Sir Samuel Baker, after a careful survey, concluded that it was the one great reservoir which received everything, from the passing shower to the roaring mountain torrent that drained from Central Africa towards the north. Speke’s Victoria Nyanza was a reservoir situated at a considerable elevation, receiving the waters from the west of the Kitangulé river, its principal feeder; but as the Albert Lake extended much farther north than the Victoria, it took up the river from the latter, and monopolized the entire head-waters of the Nile. In Sir Samuel’s opinion the Albert was the great reservoir, while the Nile was the eastern source; the parent streams that created these lakes were from the same origin, and the Kitangulé poured its waters into the Victoria, to be eventually received by the Albert. The discoveries of Mr. Stanley, however, impose on geographers the necessity of considerably modifying Sir Samuel Baker’s hypothesis, without detracting from the importance of his discovery. The Albert Lake really holds an inferior position to the Victoria, which unquestionably receives the parent waters of the Nile; but it is not the less one of its great reservoirs.

Having obtained a canoe at Vacovia, Sir Samuel explored the north-eastern coast of the Albert, and after a voyage of thirteen days arrived at Magango, where the Nile, or Somerset river, after a winding course from the Victoria Nyanza, flows calmly into its basin, to quit it again a few miles further north, and make its way towards Egypt and the Mediterranean. At Magango the lake is about seventeen miles wide, but to the north it ends in a long strip or neck which a growth of tall green rushes almost conceals. After leaving the lake, the Nile smoothly descends its green valley, and is navigable for boats until it reaches Agunddo, where it dashes headlong over a precipice of thirty or forty feet.

Having completed his survey of the Albert, as far as his means admitted, Sir Samuel determined, instead of retracing his steps to Kamrasi’s residence at ’Mroolli, to trace the course of the Somerset or Nile river up to Karuma Falls, to which point Speke and Grant had followed it downwards. The canoes having been got ready, Baker and his wife began their river voyage. About two miles from Magango the width contracted from 500 to 250 yards. As they proceeded, the river gradually narrowed to about 180 yards, and when the men ceased paddling, they could distinctly hear the roar of water. Arriving at a point where the river made a slight turn, they saw the sandbanks covered with crocodiles; like logs of timber, they lay together. The cliffs on either side were steep and rugged, and the whole picture was rich in various colouring. Foliage of the intensest green clothed each rocky projection, and through a narrow cleft or gap in the precipices the river plunged down before them in one vast leap of about 120 feet. The fall of waters was white as snow, and contrasted magnificently with the dark walls that held it in, while the graceful palms of the tropics and wild plantains increased the beauty of the view. This noble cataract, the grandest on the Nile, Sir Samuel named the Murchison Falls, in honour of the famous geologist and geographer.

It was impossible, of course, to pass the cataract, and the voyagers made haste to land and collect their oxen and attendants in order to resume their journey. The route they took was parallel to the river, which continued to flow in a deep and picturesque ravine. From an island called Palooan, a succession of islets broke its course until near the Karuma Falls. These islets belonged to two chiefs, Rionza and Fowooka, who were bitter enemies of the King of Unyoro, Kamrasi. On arriving at this point, Sir Samuel found that they were at that very time engaged in hostilities, and that it would be impossible for him to continue along the bank of the river. Obstacles of every kind were thrown by the natives in the onward path of the travellers, but in spite of ill health, weakness, and weariness, they slowly pushed forward. Not the least of their troubles was the scarcity of suitable provisions, and they grew so feeble that at last even their brave hearts gave way, and they began to despair of reaching Gondokoro—to resign themselves to the thought of being buried in that inhospitable land. “I wrote instructions in my journal,” says Sir Samuel, “in case of death, and told my headman to be sure to deliver my maps, observations, and papers to the English consul at Khartûm; this was my only care, as I feared that all my labour might be lost should I die. I had no fear for my wife, as she was quite as bad as I, and if one should die, the other would certainly follow;—in fact, this had been agreed upon lest she should fall into the hands of Kamrasi at my death. We had struggled to win, and I thanked God that we had won; if death were to be the price, at all events we were at the goal, and we both looked upon death rather as a pleasure, as affording rest; there would be no more suffering; no fever, no long journey before us, that in our weak state was an infliction; the only wish was to lay down the burthen.”

From this wretched position Sir Samuel delivered himself, by undertaking to assist Kamrasi in his war against Fowooka. Whether this was a legitimate proceeding on the part of a scientific explorer, who had no interest in the quarrel of either party, may well be doubted, but the alliance led to his obtaining an immediate supply of provisions. Natives were sent to assist him and his wife in their journey to Kamrasi’s camp at Kisoona. But what was their surprise to find that the Kamrasi whom they had interviewed at ’Mrooli was not, after all, the real Kamrasi, the King of Unyoro, but his brother, M’Gami, whom Kamrasi had ordered to personate him, in an access of alarm as to the traveller’s possible designs. Sir Samuel was indignant at the deception, and it was with some difficulty that M’Gami could prevail upon him to forgive it. At last he consented to visit the king, and something like an amicable understanding was established between them. He was well supplied with provisions of all kinds, and both his wife and himself slowly recovered their health and spirits. By a dexterous use of the British flag he repelled an attempted invasion of Fowooka’s warriors; and he rendered various services to Kamrasi, which met, we need hardly say, with no adequate reward. It was the middle of November before, in company with a caravan of ivory-traders under his old friend Ibrahim, Sir Samuel was able to resume his return journey to Gondokoro. The caravan consisted of about seven hundred porters and eighty armed men, with women and children; in all, about one thousand people. To provision such a body was necessarily difficult, and there was no meat, although flour was abundant. Sir Samuel’s skill as a hunter was put into requisition to supply a little variety to the bill of fare; and his bringing down a fine hartebeest was an event which gave very general satisfaction.

Five days after leaving the Victoria Nile, the caravan arrived at Shooa, where Sir Samuel and his wife received a hearty welcome. Some months were spent in this pleasant locality, the Turks profiting by the opportunity to make razzias upon the neighbouring tribes, so that, for many miles around, the blackened ruins of villages and the desolated fields bore witness to their reckless cruelty; cattle were carried off in thousands, and a fair and fertile region was converted into a dreary wilderness. The captives made were detained to be sold as slaves. On one occasion, among the victims brought in to the Turkish camp was a pretty young girl of about fifteen. She had been sold by auction, as usual, the day after the return from the razzia, and had fallen to the lot of one of the men. A few days later, there appeared in the camp a native from the plundered village, intent upon ransoming the girl with a quantity of ivory. He had scarcely entered the gateway, when the girl, who was sitting at the door of her owner’s hut, descried him, and springing to her feet, ran with all the speed her chained ankles permitted, and flung herself into his arms, with the cry of “My father!” Yes; it was her father who, to rescue his child from degradation, had nobly risked his life in his brutal enemy’s camp.

The Turks who witnessed this particular incident, far from being touched by any emotion of pity, rushed on to the unfortunate native, tore him from his daughter, and bound him tightly with cords. At this time Sir Samuel was in his tent, assisting some of his men to clean his rifles. Suddenly, at a distance of less than a hundred paces, he heard three shots fired. The men exclaimed, “They have shot the abid (native)!” “What native?” inquired Sir Samuel; and his men replied by narrating the story we have just recorded. Sir Samuel at first refused to believe it, but it proved to be true in every detail, even in the last; for, bound to a tree, lay the wretched father, shot dead with three balls.

In the month of February the caravan started for Gondokoro. The route lay at first through a fertile and pleasant country, crossing twice the Un-y-Ami river, and touching at its point of junction with the Nile, in lat. 3° 32′ N. On the north bank of the Un-y-Ami, about three miles from its mouth, Sir Samuel saw the tamarind tree—the “Shadder-el-Sowar” (or “Traveller’s Tree”), as the trading parties called it—which indicated the limit of Signor Miani’s explorations from Gondokoro, and the furthest point reached by any traveller from the north prior to Sir Samuel Baker’s enterprise. The journey was continued through a fine park-like extent of verdant grass, covered with stately tamarind trees, which sheltered among their branches great numbers of the brilliant yellow-breasted pigeon. Ascending a rocky eminence by a laborious pass, Sir Samuel, from the summit, which was eight hundred feet high, saw before him the old historic river. “Hurrah for the old Nile!” he said, and contemplated with eager gaze the noble scene before him. Flowing from the westward, with many a curve and bend, was the broad sheet of unbroken water, four hundred yards wide, exclusive of the thick belt of reeds on either margin. Its source could be clearly traced for some scores of miles, and the range of mountains on the west bank was distantly visible that the travellers had previously sighted, when on the route from Karuma to Shooa, at a distance of sixty miles. This chain begins at Magango, and forms the Koshi frontier of the Nile. The country opposite to Sir Samuel’s position was Koshi, which extends along the _west_ bank of the river to the Albert Lake. The country which he was traversing extends, under the name of Madi, along the _east_ bank to the confluence of the Somerset Nile, opposite Magango.

The Nile here enters a rocky valley between Gebel Kookoo and the western mountains, and foams and frets around and against rock and island, until, suddenly contracting, it breaks into a roaring torrent, and dashes furiously onward in the shadow of perpendicular cliffs. Waterfall succeeds to waterfall, and it is difficult to identify the swollen, thunderous, angry river with the calm clear stream that brightens the fertile pastures of Shooa. In this part of its course it receives the Asua. Through dense thickets of bamboos, and deep ravines which, in the season of rains, pour their turbid tribute into the great river, the caravan made its way; but in passing through a gorge between two rocky hills it was attacked by a body of the Bari natives, who were lying in ambush. Their bows and arrows, however, proved ineffectual against the musketry of the Turks, and they retired discomfited. This was the last important incident of the journey to Gondokoro, where, after an absence of upwards of two years, Sir Samuel and Lady Baker arrived in safety.

But what was their disappointment to find there neither letters nor supplies! Their friends and agents had long since given them up as dead; never believing that travellers could penetrate into that far and savage south, and return alive. There was no news from home; no money; no conveyance provided to take them back to Khartûm. With characteristic energy Sir Samuel confronted his disappointment, and instead of wringing his hands and waiting for the help that would not come, he set actively to work, engaged a dahabeeyah for the sum of four thousand piastres (£40), removed his baggage on board, collected provisions, took friendly leave of Ibrahim and the traders, and, with the flag of Old England flying at his masthead, set sail from Gondokoro. There is very little to be said about the voyage to Khartûm. Sir Samuel shot some antelopes, and the progress of the dahabeeyah beyond the junction of the Bahr-el-Ghazal was considerably impeded by that natural dam of floating vegetation, intermingled with reeds, sunburnt wood, and mud that here forms so signal an obstruction to the navigation of the Upper Nile. To allow of the passage of boats a canal has been cut, about ten feet wide, but it requires constant clearance, and its transit is not accomplished without considerable difficulty. Two days’ hard work from morning till night carried the voyagers through it, and with feelings of relief and exultation they found themselves once more on the open Nile and beyond the dam. But as they floated past the Sobat junction, the terrible plague broke out on board their vessel, carrying off two of the crew, and the boy Saat, who had served them so long and so faithfully. It was a sad conclusion to an expedition which, though fraught with sufferings, trials, and dangers, had, on the whole, been crowned with complete success.