Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/269
left England for this purpose in 1849, accompanied by Drs Barth and Overweg. The expedition had already almost reached the scene of its labours when Richardson died; Overweg also fell victim to his exertions, but Dr Barth continued his explorations till 1856. During this time he traversed in many directions almost the whole of the northern Soudan, completing a series of journeys which must always remain most conspicuous in North African travel, and upon which we are still dependent for the greater part of our knowledge of the central negro states.
In the summer of 1849, Dr Livingstone, who, as an agent of the London Missionary Society, had laboured and travelled in the countries immediately north of the Cape Colony since 1840, began those remarkable journeys in the interior of Southern Africa, which have continued until the present time, and have given to him the first place among African discoverers. The finding of Lake Ngami, the central point of the continental drainage of South Africa, was the great discovery of the first year.
Two journeys from the west coast now claim attention. In 1846 a Portuguese trader named Graça succeeded in again reaching the country of the South African potentate, named the Muata Yanvo, from Angola; he was followed by a Hungarian named Ladislaus Magyar, who explored the central country in various directions from 1847 to 1851. Between 1851 and 1853 Livingstone made two journeys northward from his station in the land of the Bechuanas, and was the first European to embark upon the upper course of the Zambeze. From the Makololo country, in the central part of the river basin, he now led a party of natives westwards up-stream to the water-parting of the continent at the little Lake Dilolo, and thence to the western slope, reaching the Portuguese coast at Loanda in 1854.
During 1851 Galton explored a part of the south-western country inhabited by the Damaras and Ovampo, from Walfisch Bay to a point in lat. 17° 58' S., and long. 21° E., determining accurately a number of positions in this region. On the south-east, also, Gassiot made an interesting journey from Port Natal north-westward through the mountains to the river Limpopo.
Two most remarkable journeys across the whole continent now follow in order; the one, made by Silva Porto, a Portuguese trader, who leaving Benguela in 1853, took an eastward route, parallel to but considerably northward of the Zambeze, over perfectly unknown country. He then rounded the southern end of the Lake Nyassa (afterwards explored by Livingstone), and made his way across the east coast-land to the mouth of the Rovuma river, having spent a year and two months in his tedious march. The other was executed by Livingstone, who in returning (1855–56) by a somewhat more northerly route than that travelled over in going westward to Loanda, descended the Zambeze to its mouth at Quilimane, discovering the wonderful Victoria Falls of the river on his way.
In 1856 an important addition was made to the more exact geography of Africa, in a survey of the greater part of the course of the Orange river, by Mr Moffat, a son of the veteran South African missionary.
The following year was one of great activity in African exploration. Damara Land, in the south-west, was traversed by Messrs Hahn and Rath as far as the southern limit of the Portuguese territory at the Cunene river; Dr Bastian was exploring the interior of Congo and Angola, and Du Chaillu had begun his first journey in the forest country of the Fan tribes on the equatorial west coast. Under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society, Captains Burton and Speke, already distinguished by their perilous journey to Harar, a trading centre in the Somali and Galla country of the east African promontory, set out from Zanzibar, to ascertain the truth about the great inland lakes which had been reported by the Mombas missionaries. Their most successful journey (1857–59) resulted in the discovery of Lake Tanganyika, in a deep basin, between 3° and 8° S. lat., and of the southern portion of a perhaps greater lake northward, supposed by Speke, its discoverer, to be the head reservoir of the Nile.
In a new journey in the Zambeze region in 1859, Dr Livingstone, accompanied by Dr Kirk, traced the Shire river, a northern tributary of the Zambeze, to its outflow from the Nyassa, the most southerly of the great African chain of fresh lakes.
About this time also several travellers (Petherick (1858), Lejean, Miani, the Poncets, Antinori, Debono, Peney) were adding much to the existing knowledge of the Upper White Nile from the Egyptian side; and in the north the Algerian Sahara was being explored by the French scientific traveller Duveyrier.
In 1860 Captain Speke, anxious to extend knowledge of the great inland reservoirs which had been discovered in his former journey, and to connect them with the known countries to northward, accompanied by Captain Grant, again left Zanzibar. Reaching a point on the north-western shores of the great lake which he had previously made known, and which he now named the Victoria Nyanza, the traveller thence traced the outflowing river to the White Nile at Gondokoro, thus completing a great link on the chain of African discoveries, which binds the country known from the east coast to that explored side the side of Egypt.
Meanwhile Dr Livingstone had endeavoured to find a way to his newly-discovered Lake Nyassa from the mouth of the Rovuma, a large river which to the Indian Ocean near Cape Delgado, and which was also reported to take its rise in this lake, but the river proved to be unnavigable beyond a point not far from the sea. He returned then (in 1861) to the Shire river; and, carrying a boat past its rapids, launched out to explore the whole length of Lake Nyassa.
A series of important journeys by Gerhard Rohlfs had now (1861) begun in Marocco and in the Maroccan Sahara; and on the equatorial east coast region, Baron von der Decken had extended Rebmann's information in the region of the snowy mountain, Kilima-njaro.
In the south the artist Baines had crossed the Kalahari Desert from Damara Land to the falls of the Zambeze. In 1862 Petherick made an important journey of exploration in the Nile region west of Gondokoro.
The year 1864 was marked by the discovery of a second great reservoir lake of the Nile, near the latitude of the Victoria Nyanza, by Baker, pushing southerward from Gondokoro. This lake the discoverer named the Albert Nyanza. During this year also, Rohlfs extended his travels from Marocco to the oasis of Tuat, thence making his way to Ghadames and Tripoli; in Western Africa, the officers of the French marine stationed at the Gaboon explored the delta region of the great Ogowai river; and Du Chaillu, in a second journey (1864–65), entered the gorilla country of Ashango, south of this river; whilst, on the east coast, Baron von der Decken attempted the navigation of the Juba, but was destined to fall a martyr to the jealousies of the Galla and Somali tribes, whose territories the river divides.
After a short stay at Tripoli, the traveller Rohlfs again turned southward, and in a journey which lasted from 1865 to 1867, crossed the whole northern continent—first reaching Lake Chad by almost the same route as that formerly taken by Barth, and thence striking south-westward by a new path to the Bight of Benin.
In 1866 some progress was made in discovery in the west, by the navigation of the Ogowai river by Walker, for 200 miles from its mouth. Hahn and Rath also extended