History of Egypt From 330 B.C. To the Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12)Rappoport, A. S. (Angelo Solomon)
History
History of Egypt From 330 B.C. To the Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12)
Rappoport, A. S. (Angelo Solomon)
Egypt -- History
The death-dealing hardships to the slaves were for the most part
endured on the long journey to Cairo, or, when the trade was suppressed
there, to points north of the Sudan, such as Tripoli, or certain ports
on the Red Sea. Those who were hardy enough to reach the slave-markets
were usually well treated by their Muhammedan masters. During the time
of Baker Pasha's administration, while he was pursuing the slave-traders
and establishing Egyptian outposts, the whole course of the Nile from
the Great Lakes became well known to the civilised world, though after
this period Baker Pasha did not make any further voyages of discovery
into unknown parts.
During the years of 1859 and 1860, an adventurous Dutch lady of fortune,
Miss Alexandrine Tinne, journeyed up the Nile as far as Gondokoro, and
in 1861 she commenced to organise a daring expedition to find the source
of the Bahr-el-Ghazel, and explore the territory between the Nile basin
and Lake Chad. She started from Khartum, and ascended the Bahr-el-Ghazel
as far as the affluent Bahr-el-Hamad. She then crossed overland as far
as the Jur and Kosango Rivers, and reached the mountains on the outlying
districts of the Nyam-Nyam country. Here the members of the expedition
suffered from black-water fever, and only with the greatest difficulty
were they able to return to Khartum, where they arrived in July, 1864.
In 1868 Miss Tinne, nothing-daunted, started for Lake Chad from Tripoli,
with the intention of closing in upon the Nile from the eastern sources
of the affluents of the Bahr-el-Ghazel. On reaching Wadi-Aberjong,
however, this brave-hearted woman was waylaid by the fierce Tuaregs, and
was beheaded August 1, 1868.
In the sixties, Georg Schweinfurth, a native of Riga, in the Baltic
provinces of Russia, set out to explore Nubia, Upper Egypt, and
Abyssinia for botanical purposes. Subsequently the Royal Academy of
Science in Berlin equipped him for an expedition to explore the region
of the Bahr-el-Ghazel. He entered the Sudan by Suakin on the Red Sea,
and crossed the desert to Berber, reaching Khartum on November 1, 1868.
The following January he set out along the course of the White Nile,
passed Getina, and examined the vegetation (sudd) which had drifted
down from all the affluents of the White Nile. He prolonged his stay
for three years on the Bahr-el-Ghazel, solely absorbed in scientific
studies, and, unlike his predecessors, he was unconcerned with reforms
and attempts to suppress the slave-trade.
Schweinfurth penetrated so far into the heart of Africa that he reached
the Congo basin and explored the upper waters of the Welle River, and on
his return to Europe he published a work, in 1873, called "The Heart
of Africa." In this book he tried to demonstrate that the area of the
Victoria Nyanza was taken up by a chain of five lakes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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