What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the NileSpeke, John Hanning
History
What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile
Speke, John Hanning
Horn of Africa -- Description and travel; Nile River; Tanganyika, Lake
These fertile regions have been hitherto unknown from the same cause
which Dr Livingstone has so ably explained in regard to the western
side of Africa--the jealousy of the shortsighted people who live on
the coast, who, to preserve a monopoly of one particular article
exclusively to themselves (ivory), have done their best to keep
everybody away from the interior. I say shortsighted; for it is
obvious that, were the resources of the country once fairly opened,
the people on the coast would double or triple their present incomes,
and Zanzibar would soon swell into a place of real importance. All
hands would then be employed, and luxury would take the place of
beggary.
I must now (after expressing a fervent hope that England especially,
and the civilised world generally, will not neglect this land of
promise) call attention to the marked fact, that the missionaries,
residing for many years at Zanzibar, are the prime and first promoters
of this discovery. They have been for years past doing their utmost,
with simple sincerity, to Christianise this negro land, and promote a
civilised and happy state of existence among these benighted beings.
During their sojourn among these blackamoors, they heard from Arabs
and others of many of the facts I have now stated, but only in a
confused way, such as might be expected in information derived from an
uneducated people. Amongst the more important disclosures made by the
Arabs was the constant reference to a large lake or inland sea, which
their caravans were in the habit of visiting. It was a singular thing
that, at whatever part of the coast the missionaries arrived, on
inquiring from the travelling merchants where they went to, they one
and all stated to an inland sea, the dimensions of which were such
that nobody could give any estimate of its length or width. The
directions they travelled in pointed north-west, west, and south-west,
and their accounts seemed to indicate a single sheet of water,
extending from the Line down to 14° south latitude--a sea of about 840
miles in length, with an assumed breadth of two to three hundred
miles. In fact, from this great combination of testimony that water
lay generally in a continuous line from the equator up to 14° south
latitude, and from not being able to gain information of there being
any land separations to the said water, they very naturally, and I may
add fortunately, put upon the map that monster slug of an inland sea
which so much attracted the attention of the geographical world in
1855-56, and caused our being sent out to Africa. The good that may
result from this little, yet happy accident, will, I trust, prove
proportionately as large and fruitful as the produce from the
symbolical grain of mustard-seed; and nobody knows or believes in this
more fully than one of the chief promoters of this exciting
investigation, Mr Rebmann. From these late explorations, he feels
convinced, as he has oftentimes told me, that the first step has been
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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