Africa

by Samuel White Baker

Kamrasi, thus freed from his invaders, was almost stupefied with astonishment. He immediately paid me a visit, and as he entered the courtyard he stopped to look at the flag that was gaily fluttering above him, as though it were a talisman. He inquired "why the Turks were awed by an apparent trifle." I explained that the flag was well known, and might be seen in every part of the world; wherever it was hoisted it was respected, as he had just witnessed, even at so great a distance from home and unsupported, as in Unyoro.

In the history of the Nile there was a void: its Sources were a mystery. The Ancients devoted much attention to this problem; but in vain. The Emperor Nero sent an expedition under the command of two centurions, as described by Seneca. Even Roman energy failed to break the spell that guarded these secret fountains. The expedition sent by Mehemet Ali Pasha, the celebrated Viceroy of Egypt, closed a long term of unsuccessful search.

It was the middle of November - not the wretched month that chills even the recollection of Old England, but the last of the ten months of rain that causes the wonderful vegetation of the fertile soil in Equatorial Africa. The Turks were ready to return to Shooa, and I longed for the change from this brutal country to the still wilder but less bloody tribe of Madi, to the north.

The primary object of geographical exploration is the opening to general intercourse such portions of the earth as may become serviceable to the human race. The explorer is the precursor of the colonist; and the colonist is the human instrument by which the great work must be constructed - that greatest and most difficult of all undertakings - the civilization of the world.

by Samuel White Baker

Condensed by E.J.W From "The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia"
and "The Albert N'yanza Great Basin of the Nile."

by Henry M. Stanley

"If there is love between us, inconceivably delicious, and profitable will our intercourse be; if not, your time is lost, and you will only annoy me. I shall seem to you stupid, and the reputation I have false. All my good is magnetic, and I educate not by lessons, but by going about my business." - Emerson's 'Representative Men'.

by Richard Harding Davis

1907

TO CECIL CLARK DAVIS, MY FELLOW VOYAGER ALONG THE COASTS OF AFRICA

by Richard F. Burton