Excerpt
One of the most striking, and perhaps the most intellectual advances of the age, is in the progress of geographical discovery. It is honourable to England, that this new impulse to a knowledge of the globe began with her spirit of enterprise, and it is still more honourable to her that that spirit was originally prompted by benevolence. Cook, with whose voyages this era may be regarded as originating, was almost a missionary of the benevolence of England, and of George III.; and the example of both the great discoverer and the good king has been so powerfully impressed on all the subsequent attempts of English adventurers, that there has been scarcely a voyage to new regions which has not been expressly devised to carry with it some benefit to their people.
When the spirit of discovery was thus once awakened, a succession of intelligent and daring men were stimulated to the pursuit; and the memorable James Bruce, who had begun life as a lawyer, grown weary of the profession, and turned traveller through the South of Europe at a period when the man who ventured across the Pyrenees was a hero; gallantly fixed his eyes on Africa, as a region of wonders, of which Europe had no other knowledge than as a land of lions, of men more savage than the lions, and of treasures of ivory and gold teeming and unexhausted since the days of Solomon. The hope of solving the old classic problem, the source of the Nile, pointed his steps to Abyssinia, and after a six years' preparation in his consulate of Algiers, he set forward on his dangerous journey, and arrived at the source of the Bahr-el-Azrek, (the Blue River,) one of the branches of the great river. Unluckily he had been misdirected, for the true Nile is the Bahr-el-Abiad, (the White River.)
His volumes, published in 1790, excited equal curiosity and censure; but the censure died away, the curiosity survived, and a succession of travellers, chiefly sustained by the African Association, penetrated by various routes into Africa.
The discovery of the course of the Niger was now the great object. And Mungo Park, a bold and intelligent discoverer, gave a strong excitement to the public feeling by his "Travels," published towards the close of the century. His adventures were told in a strain of good sense and simplicity which fully gratified the public taste. And on his unfortunate death, which happened in a second exploration of the Niger in 1805, another expedition was fitted out under Captain Tuckey, an experienced seaman, to ascertain the presumed identity of the Congo with the Niger. But the sea-coast of Africa is deadly to Europeans, and this effort failed through general disease.
The next experiment was made by land—from Tripoli across the Great Desert—under Denham, Clapperton, and Oudney. This effort was partially baffled by sickness, but still more by the arts of the native chiefs, who are singularly jealous of strangers. In a second attempt Clapperton, the only survivor of the former, died.
The problem of the course of the Niger was reserved for Richard Lander, who in 1830, sailed down the Niger from Baossa, and reached the Atlantic by the river Nun, one of its branches.
Other travellers, more highly accomplished, but less fortunate, had in the meantime explored the countries to the east and north of the Mediterranean. Of these, Burckhardt, a German, was among the most distinguished. After preparing himself for the most complete adoption of Mahometan life by a sojourn of two years at Aleppo, and even risking the pilgrimage to Mecca, he was on the point of travelling to Fezzan, when he died of a country fever. His works throw much light on the habits and literature of Syria and Palestine. The narratives of Hamilton, Leigh, Belzoni, and of Salt the consul in Egypt, largely increased the public interest in countries, universally known to have been the birth-places of religion, science, and literature; and Lane and Wilkinson have admirably availed themselves of those discoveries, and added important information of their own....