In spite of an intense fever, he quitted that place on the 7th of
March, accompanied by a single servant. The principal aim of his
journey was to reconnoitre Lake Tchad, from which he was still three
hundred and fifty miles distant. He therefore advanced toward the east,
and reached the town of Zouricolo, in the Bornou country, which is the
core of the great central empire of Africa. There he heard of the death
of Richardson, who had succumbed to fatigue and privation. He next
arrived at Kouka, the capital of Bornou, on the borders of the lake.
Finally, at the end of three weeks, on the 14th of April, twelve months
after having quitted Tripoli, he reached the town of Ngornou.
We find him again setting forth on the 29th of March, 1851, with
Overweg, to visit the kingdom of Adamaoua, to the south of the lake,
and from there he pushed on as far as the town of Yola, a little below
nine degrees north latitude. This was the extreme southern limit
reached by that daring traveller.
He returned in the month of August to Kouka; from there he successively
traversed the Mandara, Barghimi, and Klanem countries, and reached his
extreme limit in the east, the town of Masena, situated at seventeen
degrees twenty minutes west longitude.
On the 25th of November, 1852, after the death of Overweg, his last
companion, he plunged into the west, visited Sockoto, crossed the
Niger, and finally reached Timbuctoo, where he had to languish, during
eight long months, under vexations inflicted upon him by the sheik, and
all kinds of ill-treatment and wretchedness. But the presence of a
Christian in the city could not long be tolerated, and the Foullans
threatened to besiege it. The doctor, therefore, left it on the 17th of
March, 1854, and fled to the frontier, where he remained for
thirty-three days in the most abject destitution. He then managed to
get back to Kano in November, thence to Kouka, where he resumed
Denham’s route after four months’ delay. He regained Tripoli toward the
close of August, 1855, and arrived in London on the 6th of September,
the only survivor of his party.
Such was the venturesome journey of Dr. Barth.
Dr. Ferguson carefully noted the fact, that he had stopped at four
degrees north latitude and seventeen degrees west longitude.
Now let us see what Lieutenants Burton and Speke accomplished in
Eastern Africa.
The various expeditions that had ascended the Nile could never manage
to reach the mysterious source of that river. According to the
narrative of the German doctor, Ferdinand Werne, the expedition
attempted in 1840, under the auspices of Mehemet Ali, stopped at
Gondokoro, between the fourth and fifth parallels of north latitude.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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