We follow Park from his first discovery of the Niger at Sego, look with him on the breadth at that spot of its stream, realize his disappointment at having to return to England; his joy at coming for the second time to Bambarra, and then his voyage in the little craft bearing his country’s flag down to the devious waters of the unexplored river; past Kabara, from whose hill-top he might have seen Timbuktu had he but known and had he not been attacked there by the people on trying to land. Next we sail with Park past Birni, close to the capital of the former Songhay Empire, past Say, up the stream to Boussa, the capital of Borgu, 650 miles from the sea; and here on that memorable day of 1806 we see poor Park meet his death, and I hope it may not be long ere some worthy obelisk at the spot shall set forth indelibly the great record of his mission.
We come now to Richard Lander, and in like manner I take you over the route of this famous voyager, from Badagry (whence he struck inland) to Boussa, where he found the relics of Park, and then in his boats down stream past Mount Jebba--standing midway in the river, with an elevation above sea level of some 300 feet--past Rabbah--then the largest city on the Niger--to Egga, where the great ferry of the Kano-Ilorin traffic makes prosperous the chief port of Nupé, and now--in the distance--appears the table-topped Mount Patteh, rising 1,300 feet from the right bank, and as we sail with Lander under its shadow there opens out before us the noble confluence at Lokoja, where the Benué, the Niger’s mighty tributary, pours its mile-broad current into this great West African river. Next Lander passes between the jagged and stunted peaks of the Nigretian Alps, and nearing Idda, sees its bold precipices of red sandstone rear themselves on the left bank, and admires the giant baobab trees, the clustered round-roofed huts, and the busy throngs of Igara people passing to and fro from the riverside. But our explorer has vowed to follow the great Niger to its outflow, and we are still some 280 miles from the sea.
So Lander passes on in his boats, and nearing Asaba--now the seat of English government on the river--he notes that the native houses are now all of rectangular shape, and the people of Eboe type, and soon he is at Abo, and the tidal waters are recognized just as the ruffians of the Brass slaving fleet rush upon him and--capsizing his craft--Lander barely escapes with his life to find his brother drowning also. Rescued at last, John Lander is brought prisoner, together with Richard to the Brass mouth of the Niger, and their sufferings whilst waiting release and subsequently until landed at Fernando Po may well have made them dread the name of Brassmen. It may be that some day at Brass, or Akassa, English hands will raise a fitting and permanent memorial to this modest, uncultured and sterling character, who solved for all mankind the greatest geographical problem of his time, and opened the door for European commerce and civilization into West Central Africa. It must not be forgotten that MacQueen had all along contended that the Niger would be found to issue into the Atlantic through the swamps of the Bights of Benin and Biafra, nor are the reasons now obscure that account for that long hiding of geographical truth in the Gulf of Guinea. The Niger Delta is one covering 14,000 square miles; the Delta rivers creep into the sea almost unperceived through the low-level mangrove swamp; the whole region reeks with fevers and dysentery, and at the time of Lander’s discovery the only trade to be done in that “God-forgotten Guinea” was the slave-trade. Such white men as ventured to the Delta, therefore, were bent on secrecy rather than on discovery; and this had been the state of things for centuries. No wonder that the Niger had been a mystery, but it was a mystery no more.
The next step for its exploration was taken by Liverpool. Macgregor Laird raised a large fund among his merchant friends on the exchange, and added thereto a large part of his own fortune, built and equipped two steamships--the _Quorra_ and _Alburka_--and (with but little aid from the Government) took charge personally of this bold expedition, and in 1832 sailed for the Niger. Now, look at these banks forty feet at least above the river level, and remember that for three to four months of the year the villages lining them are simply floating in the vast waste of the Niger inundations. Mr. Laird found by a bitter experience that it was all very well to steam up the Niger when the stream was at flood, but when your crew were all down with fever and the river began to fall at the rate of a foot per day, the least accident--such as the stranding of the little _Quorra_--locked you up bag and baggage for a whole twelve months, and brought you face to face with terrible dangers. The mortality on board the steamers was awful, but Laird kept the expedition well in hand; he explored a great part of the upper middle Niger, a considerable distance up the Benué, and established the first English trading factories, 350 miles from the mouth of the Niger, ere his return to Liverpool. Like all other travellers who have seen the Benué, Laird was greatly impressed with the volume and purity of its waters, the beauty of its landscape on either bank, and the rich promise of development in its already quickened commerce. Look at the woodland beauty at Ribago, for instance; or the fine cultivated plain at Yola; and the impressive rock-fortress at Imaha. And see these fine Hausa peoples who inhabit the Sokoto and Bornu countries of the inter-riverine plateau. They are an ancient race, grave and industrious, of fine physique and highly intellectual phrenological type.
Centuries ago Macrisi--the Egyptian historian--told of their gourd-ferries, and the world laughed at such a “traveller’s tale”; but here you see them for yourselves. Centuries ago men wrote of the vast city of Timbuktu, but what is Timbuktu to Kano, the Hausa capital? Look at this wall surrounding Sokoto City, and think of the wall of Kano being as high as that and fifteen miles round! The Fulah aristocracy live at Sokoto, and their Sultan bears spiritual rule over the greater part of Hausaland; his temporal power is no myth, either, for in 1891 he raised an army of 40,000 men--half of whom were cavalry--under the eyes of Monteil. But the crumbling houses of Sokoto tell their own tale of a city that has long passed its zenith, and like Timbuktu, whose population has fallen from 200,000 to 7,000, like Katsena, whose population has fallen from 100,000 to 6,000, so Sokoto is daily yielding its temporal sceptre to Kano, the city of markets and manufactures, the centre of literature as well as of prosperous agriculture, the starting-point of the Soudan caravans, the central slave market, cloth market, metal market and the busy focus of all industries. See the great market square in which 30,000 people assemble for commercial exchange every week; these fourteen gates, through which the hosts of organized caravans are ever issuing, most of them 600 or 800 strong at the very least, and twenty of which go every year to Salaga for Kola-nut alone! Think of the Mecca pilgrims who all assembled here to form their great cavalcades yearly; of the 60,000 artificers and cultivators living in this Kano, with its enclosed fields of rich crops, its leather factories, shoe and sandal factories, dyeing works, cotton spinning and weaving, basket making, brass manufacture and ornamentation, etc. And remember that, thanks to our English chartered companies, this Kano, and these fine Hausa people--whose language has long been the key-tongue of all trade in Central Africa--are brought securely under the flag and influence of Great Britain. It is, from our point of view, a drawback that Kano lies at an unhealthy level, and its people defy every sanitary decency in their abbatoir and cemetery arrangements, but that is their way of being happy. Katsena is much more salubrious, having 1,500 feet of elevation.
Ere long, under British tutelage, and freed from dread of the Fulah slave-raider, the rascal who raids his own people for the mere joy of it, freed from this curse, the Hausa States will rise to preëminence through the aptitude and capacity for discipline inherent in that virile people.
I must pass over Bornu and its great chief city of Kuka, but would like to dwell for a moment on the deeply interesting fact that here--in the Chartered State of British Nigretia--we tread upon the dust of empires. At the time of our Heptarchy this very Bornu was the seat of a Negro empire covering a million and a half square miles, and extending from the Niger to the Nile. And Sokoto and Gandu--our Treaty states--formed but part of the Negro empire of Songhay, having its capital at Gogo on the Niger, and extending westward and northward as far as the Atlantic and Morocco.
THE AMAZON
JOSEPH JONES
The main stream of the Amazon is about 4,000 miles long--long enough that is to go in a circle twice round the British Isles, or 600 miles longer than the voyage from Liverpool to New York. For the lowest 250 miles of its course it is fifty miles wide, or if the Island of Marajo in its mouth be regarded as a huge sand bank, which is what it really is, then it is 200 miles wide at its mouth. In other words, one might take the whole of Scotland, push it into the mouth of this river and leave only a small piece projecting. The Amazon has nineteen very large tributaries, each of which is really a gigantic river in itself, and through these tributaries it is connected with the Orinoco and the River Plata. The Amazon rises near the west coast of South America, about sixty miles from Lima in Peru, and runs into the Atlantic, traversing nearly the whole width of the widest part of South America in its course. Its depth in places is twenty fathoms or 120 feet. It drains an area nearly the size of all Europe, and is the largest body of fresh water in the world. Its average speed of flow is two and a half miles per hour. Hence in going up-stream a boat hugs the bank to avoid the current, whilst in descending it sails in mid-stream in order to obtain full advantage of the same. As may be guessed, progress is quicker down-stream than up. The influence of its flow can be felt 150 miles from the shore. On one occasion the mess-room steward filled the filter direct from the sea when the ship was long out of sight of land, yet the water was only very slightly brackish. The inland navigation of the Amazon and its branches extends over 20,000 miles. The name is supposed to be derived from “Amassona,” the Indian word for “boat-destroyer,” on account of the tidal wave which rages in the channel to the north of the Island of Marajo, and on account of which boats enter by the south channel.