Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure

545 Pages·2011·8.16 MB·English

by  Tim Jeal

Explorers of the Nile
by the same author
non-fiction
Livingstone
Baden-Powell
Stanley
Swimming with my Father
fiction
Somewhere Beyond Reproach
Cushing’s Crusade
The Missionary’s Wife
Deep Water
Explorers of the Nile
The Triumph and Tragedy of a
Great Victorian Adventure
tim jeal
New Haven & London
First published 2011 in the United States
by Yale University Press and in Great Britain
by Faber and Faber Limited.
Copyright © 2011 by Tim Jeal.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in
whole or in part, including illustrations, in any
form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107
and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except
by reviewers for the public press), without
written permission from the publishers.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in
quantity for educational, business, or promotional use.
For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S.
office) or [email protected] (U.K. office).
Typeset by Donald Sommerville.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011933872
ISBN 978-0-300-14935-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of
ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my daughters,
Jessica, Lucy and Emily
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Contents
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Illustrations ix
Plates xiii
Maps xvii
Introduction 1
part 1 Solving the Mystery
1 Blood in God’s River 13
2 A Great Misalliance 36
3 A Rush of Men Like a Stormy Wind 45
4 About a Rotten Person 56
5 Everything Was to be Risked for This Prize 65
6 Promises and Lies 95
7 A Blackguard Business 112
8 Our Adventurous Friend 122
9 As Refulgent as the Sun 145
10 An Arrow into the Heart 156
11 Nothing Could Surpass It! 166
12 The Nile is Settled 178
13 A Hero’s Aberrations 190
14 Death in the Afternoon 199
15 The Doctor’s Dilemma 209
16 The Glory of Our Prize 215
17 A Trumpet Blown Loudly 241
18 Almost in Sight of the End 246
19 Never to Give Up the Search Until I
Find Livingstone 257
20 The Doctor’s Obedient and Devoted Servitor 270
21 Threshing Out the Beaten Straw 279
22 Nothing Earthly Will Make Me Give Up
My Work 285
23 Where Will You Be? Dead or Still
Seeking the Nile? 294
24 The Unknown Half of Africa Lies Before Me 310
part 2 The Consequences
25 Shepherds of the World? 329
26 Creating Equatoria 335
27 An Unheard of Deed of Blood 345
28 Pretensions on the Congo 352
29 An Arabian Princess and a German
Battle Squadron 359
30 ‘Saving’ Emin Pasha and Uganda 365
31 The Prime Minister’s Protectorate 376
32 To Die for the Mahdi’s Cause 385
33 Equatoria and the Tragedy of
Southern Sudan 395
34 A Sin not Theirs: The Tragedy of
Northern Uganda 406
coda Lacking the Wand of an Enchanter 422
appendix Fifty Years of Books on the Search for the
Nile’s Source 438

Acknowledgements 443
Sources 445
Notes 458
Index 494
List of Illustrations
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An Arab-Swahili slave trader murders a sick slave, an engraving
in The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa
edited by Horace Waller 21
Massacre of the Manyema women in Nyangwe, an engraving
in The Last Journals 32
‘A large spear . . . stuck firmly into the soil’, an engraving in
The Last Journals 35
Speke’s escape from his captors, the frontispiece of Speke’s
What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile 54
Naval vessels at Zanzibar, an engraving in Stanley’s How I
Found Livingstone in Central Africa [HIFL] 69
Sidi Mubarak Bombay, a photograph at the Royal
Geographical Society 71
Burton’s drawings of the heads of Africans, in his The Lake
Regions of Central Africa 76
The Ladies’ Smoking Party, an engraving in Lake Regions 77
Kazeh, an engraving in Lake Regions 82
African village scenes, in Speke’s Journal of the Discovery of the
Source of the Nile [Journal] 97
Sir Roderick Murchison. National Portrait Gallery, London 113
John Blackwood, frontispiece of Annals of a Publishing House
(Vol. III John Blackwood), ed. Mrs Gerald Porter (1898) 122
Captain James Grant, in Harry Johnston’s The Nile Quest
(1903) 127
Speke and Grant present Rumanika with a rhinoceros’ head,
an engraving in Speke’s Journal 142
The road to the kabaka’s palace, an engraving in J. W.
Harrison’s The Story of the Life of Mackay of Uganda 148
Mutesa’s musicians, in Speke’s Journal 150
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