Chapter III: Opening Up the Way to the Niger

With Leo Africanus the Arab period in the history of African exploration practically closed. Even in that traveller’s day the incurable diseases so characteristic of the Mohammedan states of our time were rapidly developing. Learning and the arts were no longer encouraged. Liberality of thought and missionary enterprise were replaced by Fanaticism, hatred of the stranger, and isolation from all outside genial influences. A blight was falling over everything that had made the Arab name great and glorious in the world’s history.

Happily for the cause of progress, while the Crescent thus waned and lost its lustre in the rising mephitic fogs, the Cross was ever gathering to itself new glories, and proving the herald and morning-star of a brighter and greater era. Under its inspiring influences the western nations were emerging from the gloom and ignorance in which they had been enshrouded, and were feeling the throbs of new heroic impulses.

Among the Christian nations thus awakening Portugal was taking the lead. Facing the Atlantic, it was ever looking over the wild waste of waters, picturing the possible beyond on the blank expanse, and rearing a hardy race of navigators all unconscious of the great mission that was yet to be theirs. Southward, too, their thoughts were ever turning, following their soldiers as they fought against the Moors and planted their most Christian flag along the entire coast-line of Morocco. Echoes there were which came to them of the vast wealth of Inner Africa, of the power of Prester John and the riches of far Cathay, till the imaginations of kings, soldiers, merchants, and priests were alike inflamed with a desire to share them. With it all the vaguest ideas were current as to the extent of the African continent. The northern coast-line was well enough known, but at the beginning of the fifteenth century no one had ventured southward beyond the western termination of the Atlas Mountains, and how much further south the land extended no one pretended to know. This ignorance, however, did not last through the century.

Under its energetic and far-seeing kings, John and Immanuel, Portugal set itself to penetrate behind the veil and attain the honour and the more substantial rewards secured, as was believed, to those who should first reach the sources of the gold supply of Inner Africa, the capital of Prester John, or the countries of the Far East.

Extensive voyages were then unthought of. Sailing was very much a matter of feeling one’s way along the shore. Hence it was not by any one extensive voyage, but by many successive expeditions, that the shore-line of Africa was gradually mapped out. In this way greater courage, confidence, experience, and skill were gained with each successful addition to the limits of the known, and a spirit of emulation was aroused which irresistibly carried the new knight errants of commerce and science further and further south in search of the promised land.

In 1433 Cape Bojador was reached by Gilianez, and the Island of Arguin by Nuno Tristan ten years later. So far deserts and burning suns, a repellent coast-line and a meagre population of wild nomads, were what they found--no news of Prester John, no evidence of the vast riches they had taught themselves to expect. But nothing was allowed to damp their eager spirit or quash their sanguine expectations.

In 1446 Fernandez passed Cape Verd, and in the following year the fertile region of Senegambia was reached by Lancelot.

It now seemed as if the bold adventurers were to have their reward. They had at last arrived at a fertile region abounding in gold and ivory, and, better still, they began to hear of a great kingdom named Melli, not then absorbed in the rapidly rising empire of Songhay. This, they thought, must be the country of Prester John.

These important discoveries, and all the glowing hopes they developed, gave a new impetus to the course of Portuguese discovery. With renewed enterprise and persistence adventurous navigators pursued the path of exploration. By 1471 they had reached the Gold Coast, and before the close of the century the Cape had been rounded, and, under the leadership of Almeida and Albuquerque, some of their magnificent dreams of wealth and power realised in the foundation of their Indian Empire.

But though the Portuguese had thus revealed to the world the Senegal and the Gambia, and apparently thrown open a door to the kingdom of the Niger basin, nothing came of it. From the writings of De Barros we gather that embassies from the King of Portugal were despatched to the rulers of Melli and Mosi, and even, it is said, to that of Songhay. Of these missions, however, nothing more has come down to us. They added seemingly nothing to our knowledge of the interior. Factories were established along the coast, and even some distance up the rivers Senegal and Gambia, but the thirst for gold and slaves evidently swamped all other considerations with the agents in charge, for not an iota of information do we gather from them--or at least none is now on record--of the geography of the far interior.

The magnificent enterprise of Portugal in the fields of maritime discovery was destined to be of the most transient character. Evil days speedily came upon it, and between Philip II. of Spain on land and the Dutch at sea, it seemed for a time as if it would lose its place among the independent nations of Europe.

From the time of its conquest by Spain its course was backward, and its history became a record of shrinking empire and gradual loss of all spirit that tends to national greatness and progress. As far as we are concerned the work of the Portuguese ended with the exploration of the Senegambian Coast, the discovery of the rivers Senegal and Gambia--then thought to be branches of the Niger--and the revelation to Europe of the future route to the Niger and Timbuktu.

The work of exploration so well begun, so magnificently carried on, though so disastrously closed, began now to fall into other hands. Contemporaneously with the dwindling of the Portuguese into the background the English came to the front. It was then the Elizabethan period, that era of glorious memory, the dawn of Greater Britain. Bold mariners, like the world has never seen, sprang up on all sides, and made England the mistress of the seas. A spirit of commercial enterprise and adventurous daring was developed which nothing could dismay, nothing withstand. Before the close of that eventful period Drake had led his countrymen to the rich spoil of the Spanish Main, Raleigh had laid the foundation of English rule in North America, Baffin and Hudson had cleared the way for Arctic exploration, and Davis had not only started the series of heroic expeditions connected with the North-west Passage, but had led English ships to the Indian Seas.

With these, however, we have nothing to do. Of more importance is it to us to note that Hawkins had made his first voyage to the West African Coast, and inaugurated that horrid traffic in human flesh and blood which has left such an indelible stain on British commerce.

But it was not only the slave trade which drew the attention of English merchants to Africa. To them as to the Portuguese the Niger and Timbuktu were words to conjure with. Both were believed to be veritable mines of wealth. To the imagination of the time the one was pictured as flowing over golden sands, the other as almost paved with the precious metal. It was believed that the Senegal and the Gambia constituted the Niger mouths, and accordingly that to ascend either river would bring the traveller direct to the source of so much wealth. To accomplish this now became the dream of nations, so that it may well be said that the Niger and its fancied treasures were the magnet which drew men on to the exploration of the interior of the Dark Continent.

It had been the mission of Portugal to draw a girdle round Africa; it was now to be the _rôle_ of Britain to take up the work and penetrate inland with more lasting results than had followed Portuguese embassies and missionary and commercial enterprises.

The year 1618 saw the commencement of this noble work. A company was formed to explore the Gambia, with the object of reaching the rich region of the Niger.

[Map: O. DAPPER. NIGRITARUM REGIO. 1671.]

The honour of being Britain’s pioneer in African exploration fell to the lot of one Richard Thompson, described as being a man of spirit and enterprise. He left England in the _Catherine_, of 120 tons, with a cargo worth nearly £2000, and reached the Gambia towards the end of the year. Here he found the Portuguese still in power, ruling the nations with grinding tyranny, though rapidly sinking into the commercial and national apathy which has made them a byword in the nineteenth century.

[Map: O. DAPPER, 1671.]

Thompson’s enterprise, like so many which succeeded it, was doomed to suffer sad disaster. First the Portuguese fell upon and massacred a large part of the crew while its captain was exploring up the river. Undismayed he stuck to his post, and demanded reinforcements and supplies. His employers were of like metal to himself, and promptly sent another vessel to his assistance. The climate proved as formidable an enemy as the Portuguese, and most of the crew of the new ship succumbed to the deadly miasma.

Still another vessel was fitted out, its owners undaunted by loss of men and goods, and sanguine as ever of the glorious prize to be achieved.

This time one Richard Jobson took command. He arrived in the Gambia in 1620, only to hear of a new calamity and a new and even more paralysing source of danger--Thompson’s men had mutinied and murdered him. Portuguese hostility, a deadly climate, and mutiny in the camp were all arrayed against the hoped for advance into the country. But those old mariners were made of stern unyielding stuff, which only death itself could break, and undismayed Jobson defied all dangers and started on his quest. With each succeeding mile new difficulties beset the gallant band. No pilots could be got to show the way. For a time this proved no serious obstacle. Soon, however, the current grew stronger, and threatened to drive them back. They were in hourly peril from hidden rocks, and falls and rapids raised a foaming barrier to further progress. Sand-banks there were, too, on which they grounded, and crocodiles had to be braved in getting clear of them, while sea-horses snorted angrily and threatened to swamp the boats. Unprovided with the mosquito-nets of modern times, their days of overpowering fatigue under a melting sun were followed by nights of maddening torture under the stings of myriad mosquitoes and sandflies. But everything was new and wonderful to them. They were like children bursting into a new world full of undreamed of marvels, a veritable land of enchantment. The voracious crocodiles and the monstrous hippos in the river, elephants in troops crashing irresistibly through the dense forest, leopards watching cat-like for their prey, and lions disturbing the silence of night with their awe-inspiring roars, were some of the elements of this new wonderland. There, too, were monkeys among the trees--their gambols a never failing source of delight; and baboons trooping through the underbush in enormous herds, filling the air with strange outcries, except when “one great voice would exalt itself, and the rest were hushed.”

Not less astonishing was the insect life of the tropic forest--the fireflies in myriad numbers flashing with iridescent colours in the gloom of night, the crickets raising their deafening chorus, the strange beetles, and the many-coloured butterflies.

How marvellous, too, must the tropic foliage have appeared to the explorers, fresh as they were from England. The immense grasses, the almost impenetrable undergrowth, the beauties of the palm tribe, the majesty of the silk-cotton tree. Last, not least, how passing strange the appearance of the natives, their comparative absence of dress, their simple habits and rudimentary ideas about all things under heaven. The modern traveller, _blasé_ with the rich heritage of a hundred predecessors, cannot but envy the sensations of such an one as Jobson on seeing for the first time all the marvels, beauties, and novelties of Africa.

But while we vainly try to realise the feelings inspired in the mind of this pioneer, we are not oblivious of the terrible earnestness and determination, the indomitable courage and dogged perseverance of the man. The very devil himself has no terrors for Jobson. Hearing certain remarkable sounds, and being told by the natives that it is the voice of the devil, the intrepid sailor seizes his gun and rushes forth to do battle with his Satanic Majesty, who, on our hero’s appearance, changes his terrible roars into notes of terror, and shows himself as a huge negro grovelling in the dust in an agony of fear.

On the 26th January 1621, Jobson had reached a place called Tenda, where he heard of a city four months’ journey into the interior, the roofs of which were covered with gold. Unhappily, however much his appetite might be whetted by such wonderful stories, it had to remain unsatisfied. The dry season soon began to tell upon the volume of water in the river, making advance daily more difficult, till within a few days of a town called Tombaconda, some 300 miles from the sea, he was compelled to desist from further attempts, although he believed that Tombaconda was Timbuktu itself, in reality distant about 1000 miles. On the 10th February he commenced his return, hoping to go back and complete his work with the rising of the waters, a project he however never executed.

Quarrels broke out between the merchants on the river and the Company, and the enterprise for the time being collapsed.

It was not till nearly a century later that a new attempt was made to prosecute the task of reaching the Niger and the wealth of Inner Africa. In 1720, the Duke of Chandos, acting as chairman of the African Company, instigated a new expedition by way of the Gambia to the land of promise.

This time the enterprise was placed under the leadership of one Captain Bartholomew Stibbs, who left England in 1723, and arrived in the Gambia in October of that year. His experiences were identical with those of Jobson, though he did not reach the latter’s highest point. Between them, however, it was made quite clear that the Gambia had no connection with the Niger, and as little with the Senegal.

With Stibbs ended the English commercial attempts to open up the way to the interior of Africa.

The addition to our knowledge of its geography amounted to the exploration of the navigable part of the Gambia, and the determination of the fact that it had no connection with the Niger.

The French meanwhile were doing for the Senegal what the British were accomplishing in the sister river. Six years after Thompson had entered the latter, the French had established themselves at the mouth of the Senegal and founded the town of St. Louis. Their first exploring trip was made in 1637, when they penetrated some distance along the navigable part of the river.

More important, however, was the expedition in 1697 of one Sieur Brue, director-general of the French African Company, which achieved considerable success. This expedition was backed up by a second voyage up the river two years later, when the fort of St. Joseph was founded, and trade opened with merchants from Timbuktu.

Sieur Brue’s experiences were in every respect similar to those of Jobson and Stibbs on the Gambia, though commercially more fortunate, inasmuch as he had to do with more advanced races, and contrived to reach the frontiers of a rich gold-bearing district (Bambuk) on the one hand, and of an equally profitable gum region on the other.

He also heard much of the Niger and Timbuktu, and seemingly satisfied himself that the Senegal had no connection with the famous river of the interior, and that the latter flowed east, not west, as it was the tendency of his day to believe, since we find the French maps of the eighteenth century showing the Niger flowing towards the interior and an uncertain bourne.