The Story of Geographical Discovery: How the World Became Known Part 6

But still more important discoveries were made in 1642 by an expedition sent out from Batavia under ABEL JANSSEN TASMAN to investigate the real extent of the southern land. After the voyages of the _Leeuwin_ and De Nuyts it was seen that the southern coast of the new land trended to the east, instead of working round to the west, as would have been the case if Ptolemy's views had been correct.

Tasman's problem was to discover whether it was connected with the great southern land a.s.sumed to lie to the south of South America.

Tasman first sailed from Mauritius, and then directing his course to the south-east, going much more south than Cape Leeuwin, at last reached land in lat.i.tude 43.30 and longitude 163.50. This he called Van Diemen's Land, after the name of the Governor-General of Batavia, and it was a.s.sumed that this joined on to the land already discovered by De Nuyts. Sailing farther to the eastward, Tasman came out into the open sea again, and thus appeared to prove that the newly discovered land was not connected with the great unknown continent round the south pole.

But he soon came across land which might possibly answer to that description, and he called it Staaten Land, in honour of the States-General of the Netherlands. This was undoubtedly some part of New Zealand. Still steering eastward, but with a more northerly trend, Tasman discovered several islands in the Pacific, and ultimately reached Batavia after touching on New Guinea. His discoveries were a great advance on previous knowledge; he had at any rate reduced the possible dimensions of the unknown continent of the south within narrow limits, and his discoveries were justly inscribed upon the map of the world cut in stone upon the new Staathaus in Amsterdam, in which the name New Holland was given by order of the States-General to the western part of the "terra Australis." When England for a time became joined on to Holland under the rule of William III., William Dampier was despatched to New Holland to make further discoveries. He retraced the explorations of the Dutch from Dirk Hartog's Bay to New Guinea, and appears to have been the first European to have noticed the habits of the kangaroo; otherwise his voyage did not add much to geographical knowledge, though when he left the coasts of New Guinea he steered between New England and New Ireland.

As a result of these Dutch voyages the existence of a great land somewhere to the south-east of Asia became common property to all civilised men. As an instance of this familiarity many years before Cook's epoch-making voyages, it may be mentioned that in 1699 Captain Lemuel Gulliver (in Swift's celebrated romance) arrived at the kingdom of Lilliput by steering north-west from Van Diemen's Land, which he mentions by name. Lilliput, it would thus appear, was situated somewhere in the neighbourhood of the great Bight of Australia. This curious mixture of definite knowledge and vague ignorance on the part of Swift exactly corresponds to the state of geographical knowledge about Australia in his days, as is shown in the preceding map of those parts of the world, as given by the great French cartographer D'Anville in 1745 (p. 157).

These discoveries of the Spanish and Dutch were direct results and corollaries of the great search for the Spice Islands, which has formed the main subject of our inquiries. The discoveries were mostly made by s.h.i.+ps fitted out in the Malay archipelago, if not from the Spice Islands themselves. But at the beginning of the eighteenth century new motives came into play in the search for new lands; by that time almost the whole coast-line of the world was roughly known. The Portuguese had coasted Africa, the Spanish South America, the English most of the east of North America, while Central America was known through the Spaniards. Many of the islands of the Pacific Ocean had been touched upon, though not accurately surveyed, and there remained only the north-west coast of America and the north-east coast of Asia to be explored, while the great remaining problem of geography was to discover if the great southern continent a.s.sumed by Ptolemy existed, and, if so, what were its dimensions. It happened that all these problems of coastline geography, if we may so call it, were destined to be solved by one man, an Englishman named JAMES COOK, who, with Prince Henry, Magellan, and Tasman, may be said to have determined the limits of the habitable land.

His voyages were made in the interests, not of trade or conquest, but of scientific curiosity; and they were, appropriately enough, begun in the interests of quite a different science than that of geography. The English astronomer Halley had left as a sort of legacy the task of examining the transit of Venus, which he predicted for the year 1769, pointing out its paramount importance for determining the distance of the sun from the earth. This transit could only be observed in the southern hemisphere, and it was in order to observe it that Cook made his first voyage of exploration.

There was a double suitability in the motive of Cook's first voyage.

The work of his life could only have been carried out owing to the improvement in nautical instruments which had been made during the early part of the eighteenth century. Hadley had invented the s.e.xtant, by which the sun's elevation could be taken with much more ease and accuracy than with the old cross-staff, the very rough gnomon which the earlier navigators had to use. Still more important for scientific geography was the improvement that had taken place in accurate chronometry. To find the lat.i.tude of a place is not so difficult--the length of the day at different times of the year will by itself be almost enough to determine this, as we have seen in the very earliest history of Greek geography--but to determine the longitude was a much more difficult task, which in the earlier stages could only be formed by guesswork and dead reckonings.

But when clocks had been brought to such a pitch of accuracy that they would not lose but a few seconds or minutes during the whole voyage, they could be used to determine the difference of local time between any spot on the earth's surface and that of the port from which the s.h.i.+p sailed, or from some fixed place where the clock could be timed. The English government, seeing the importance of this, proposed the very large reward of 10,000 for the invention of a chronometer which would not lose more than a stated number of minutes during a year. This prize was won by John Harrison, and from this time onward a sea-captain with a minimum of astronomical knowledge was enabled to know his longitude within a few minutes.

Hadley's s.e.xtant and Harrison's chronometer were the necessary implements to enable James Cook to do his work, which was thus, both in aim and method, in every way English.

James Cook was a practical sailor, who had shown considerable intelligence in sounding the St. Lawrence on Wolfe's expedition, and had afterwards been appointed marine surveyor of Newfoundland.

When the Royal Society determined to send out an expedition to observe the transit of Venus, according to Halley's prediction, they were deterred from entrusting the expedition to a scientific man by the example of Halley himself, who had failed to obtain obedience from sailors on being entrusted with the command. Dalrymple, the chief hydrographer of the Admiralty, who had chief claims to the command, was also somewhat of a faddist, and Cook was selected almost as a _dernier ressort_. The choice proved an excellent one.

He selected a coasting coaler named the _Endeavour_, of 360 tons, because her breadth of beam would enable her to carry more stores and to run near coasts. Just before they started Captain Wallis returned from a voyage round the world upon which he had discovered or re-discovered Tahiti, and he recommended this as a suitable place for observing the transit.

Cook duly arrived there, and on the 3rd of June 1769 the main object of the expedition was fulfilled by a successful observation. But he then proceeded farther, and arrived soon at a land which he saw reason to identify with the Staaten Land of Tasman; but on coasting along this, Cook found that, so far from belonging to a great southern continent, it was composed of two islands, between which he sailed, giving his name to the strait separating them.

Leaving New Zealand on the 31st of March 1770, on the 20th of the next month he came across another land to the westward, hitherto unknown to mariners. Entering an inlet, he explored the neighbourhood with the aid of Mr. Joseph Banks, the naturalist of the expedition.

He found so many plants new to him, that the bay was termed Botany Bay.

He then coasted northward, and nearly lost his s.h.i.+p upon the great reef running down the eastern coast; but by keeping within it he managed to reach the extreme end of the land in this direction, and proved that it was distinct from New Guinea. In other words, he had reached the southern point of the strait named after Torres.

To this immense line of coast Cook gave the name of New South Wales, from some resemblance that he saw to the coast about Swansea. By this first voyage Cook had proved that neither New Holland nor Staaten Land belonged to the great Antarctic continent, which remained the sole myth bequeathed by the ancients which had not yet been definitely removed from the maps. In his second voyage, starting in 1772, he was directed to settle finally this problem. He went at once to the Cape of Good Hope, and from there started out on a zigzag journey round the Southern Pole, poking the nose of his vessel in all directions as far south as he could reach, only pulling up when he touched ice. In whatever direction he advanced he failed to find any trace of extensive land corresponding to the supposed Antarctic continent, which he thus definitely proved to be non-existent.

He spent the remainder of this voyage in rediscovering various sets of archipelagos which preceding Spanish, Dutch, and English navigators had touched, but had never accurately surveyed. Later on Cook made a run across the Pacific from New Zealand to Cape Horn without discovering any extensive land, thus clinching the matter after three years' careful inquiry. It is worthy of remark that during that long time he lost but four out of 118 men, and only one of them by sickness.

Only one great problem to maritime geography still remained to be solved, that of the north-west pa.s.sage, which, as we have seen, had so frequently been tried by English navigators, working from the east through Hudson's Bay. In 1776 Cook was deputed by George III. to attempt the solution of this problem by a new method. He was directed to endeavour to find an opening on the north-west coast of America which would lead into Hudson's Bay. The old legend of Juan de Fuca's great bay still misled geographers as to this coast. Cook not alone settled this problem, but, by advancing through Behring Strait and examining both sides of it, determined that the two continents of Asia and America approached one another as near as thirty-six miles. On his return voyage he landed at Owhyee (Hawaii), where he was slain in 1777, and his s.h.i.+ps returned to England without adding anything further to geographical knowledge.

Cook's voyages had aroused the generous emulation of the French, who, to their eternal honour, had given directions to their fleet to respect his vessels wherever found, though France was at that time at war with England. In 1783 an expedition was sent, under Francois de la Perouse, to complete Cook's work. He explored the north-east coast of Asia, examined the island of Saghalien, and pa.s.sed through the strait between it and j.a.pan, often called by his name. In Kamtschatka La Perouse landed Monsieur Lesseps, who had accompanied the expedition as Russian interpreter, and sent home by him his journals and surveys. Lesseps made a careful examination of Kamtschatka himself, and succeeded in pa.s.sing overland thence to Paris, being the first European to journey completely across the Old World from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. La Perouse then proceeded to follow Cook by examining the coast of New South Wales, and to his surprise, when entering a fine harbour in the middle of the coast, found there English s.h.i.+ps engaged in settling the first Australian colony in 1787. After again delivering his surveys to be forwarded by the Englishmen, he started to survey the coast of New Holland, but his expedition was never heard of afterwards. As late as 1826 it was discovered that they had been wrecked on Vanikoro, an island near the Fijis.

We have seen that Cook's exploration of the eastern coast of Australia was soon followed up by a settlement. A number of convicts were sent out under Captain Philips to Botany Bay, and from that time onward English explorers gradually determined with accuracy both the coast-line and the interior of the huge stretch of land known to us as Australia. One of the s.h.i.+ps that had accompanied Cook on his second voyage had made a rough survey of Van Diemen's Land, and had come to the conclusion that it joined on to the mainland.

But in 1797, Ba.s.s, a surgeon in the navy, coasted down from Port Jackson to the south in a fine whale boat with a crew of six men, and discovered open sea running between the southernmost point and Van Diemen's Land; this is still known as Ba.s.s' Strait. A companion of his, named Flinders, coasted, in 1799, along the south coast from Cape Leeuwin eastward, and on this voyage met a French s.h.i.+p at Encounter Bay, so named from the _rencontre_. Proceeding farther, he discovered Port Philip; and the coast-line of Australia was approximately settled after Captain P. P. King in four voyages, between 1817 and 1822, had investigated the river mouths.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE EXPLORATION OF AUSTRALIA.]

The interior now remained to be investigated. On the east coast this was rendered difficult by the range of the Blue Mountains, honeycombed throughout with huge gullies, which led investigators time after time into a cul-de-sac; but in 1813 Philip Wentworth managed to cross them, and found a fertile plateau to the westward.

Next year Evans discovered the Lachlan and Macquarie rivers, and penetrated farther into the Bathurst plains. In 1828-29 Captain Sturt increased the knowledge of the interior by tracing the course of the two great rivers Darling and Murray. In 1848 the German explorer Leichhardt lost his life in an attempt to penetrate the interior northward; but in 1860 two explorers, named Burke and Wills, managed to pa.s.s from south to north along the east coast; while, in the four years 1858 to 1862, John M'Dowall Stuart performed the still more difficult feat of crossing the centre of the continent from south to north, in order to trace a course for the telegraphic line which was shortly afterwards erected. By this time settlements had sprung up throughout the whole coast of Eastern Australia, and there only remained the western desert to be explored. This was effected in two journeys of John Forrest, between 1868 and 1874, who penetrated from Western Australia as far as the central telegraphic line; while, between 1872 and 1876, Ernest Giles performed the same feat to the north. Quite recently, in 1897, these two routes were joined by the journey of the Honourable Daniel Carnegie from the Coolgardie gold fields in the south to those of Kimberley in the north. These explorations, while adding to our knowledge of the interior of Australia, have only confirmed the impression that it was not worth knowing.

[_Authorities:_ Rev. G. Grimm, _Discovsry and Exploration of Australia_ (Melbourne, 1888); A. F. Calvert, _Discovery of Australia_, 1893; _Exploration of Australia_, 1895; _Early Voyages to Australia_, Hakluyt Society.]

CHAPTER XI

EXPLORATION AND PARt.i.tION OF AFRICA: PARK--LIVINGSTONE--STANLEY

We have seen how the Portuguese had slowly coasted along the sh.o.r.e of Africa during the fifteeenth century in search of a way to the Indies. By the end of the century mariners _portulanos_ gave a rude yet effective account of the littoral of Africa, both on the west and the eastern side. Not alone did they explore the coast, but they settled upon it. At Amina on the Guinea coast, at Loando near the Congo, and at Benguela on the western coast, they established stations whence to despatch the gold and ivory, and, above all, the slaves, which turned out to be the chief African products of use to Europeans. On the east coast they settled at Sofala, a port of Mozambique; and in Zanzibar they possessed no less than three ports, those first visited by Vasco da Gama and afterwards celebrated by Milton in the sonorous line contained in the gorgeous geographical excursus in the Eleventh Book--

"Mombaza and Quiloa and Melind."

--_Paradise Lost_, xi. 339.

It is probable that, besides settling on the coast, the Portuguese from time to time made explorations into the interior. At any rate, in some maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth century there is shown a remarkable knowledge of the course of the Nile. We get it terminated in three large lakes, which can be scarcely other than the Victoria and Albert Nyanza, and Tanganyika. The Mountains of the Moon also figure prominently, and it was only almost the other day that Mr. Stanley re-discovered them. It is difficult, however, to determine how far these entries on the Portuguese maps were due to actual knowledge or report, or to the traditions of a still earlier knowledge of these lakes and mountains; for in the maps accompanying the early editions of Ptolemy we likewise obtain the same information, which is repeated by the Arabic geographers, obviously from Ptolemy, and not from actual observation. When the two great French cartographers Delisle and D'Anville determined not to insert anything on their maps for which they had not some evidence, these lakes and mountains disappeared, and thus it has come about that maps of the seventeenth century often appear to display more knowledge of the interior of Africa than those of the beginning of the nineteenth, at least with regard to the sources of the Nile.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DAPPER'S MAP OF AFRICA, 1676.]

African exploration of the interior begins with the search for the sources of the Nile, and has been mainly concluded by the determination of the course of the three other great rivers, the Niger, the Zambesi, and the Congo. It is remarkable that all four rivers have had their course determined by persons of British nationality. The names of Bruce and Grant will always be a.s.sociated with the Nile, that of Mungo Park with the Niger, Dr. Livingstone with the Zambesi, and Mr. Stanley with the Congo. It is not inappropriate that, except in the case of the Congo, England should control the course of the rivers which her sons first made accessible to civilisation.

We have seen that there was an ancient tradition reported by Herodotus, that the Nile trended off to the west and became there the river Niger; while still earlier there was an impression that part of it at any rate wandered eastward, and some way joined on to the same source as the Tigris and Euphrates--at least that seems to be the suggestion in the biblical account of Paradise. Whatever the reason, the greatest uncertainty existed as to the actual course of the river, and to discover the source of the Nile was for many centuries the standing expression for performing the impossible. In 1768, James Bruce, a Scottish gentleman of position, set out with the determination of solving this mystery--a determination which he had made in early youth, and carried out with characteristic pertinacity. He had acquired a certain amount of knowledge of Arabic and acquaintance with African customs as Consul at Algiers. He went up the Nile as far as Farsunt, and then crossed the desert to the Red Sea, went over to Jedda, from which he took s.h.i.+p for Ma.s.sowah, and began his search for the sources of the Nile in Abyssinia. He visited the ruins of Axum, the former capital, and in the neighbourhood of that place saw the incident with which his travels have always been a.s.sociated, in which a couple of rump-steaks were extracted from a cow while alive, the wound sewn up, and the animal driven on farther.

Here, guided by some Gallas, he worked his way up the Blue Nile to the three fountains, which he declared to be the true sources of the Nile, and identified with the three mysterious lakes in the old maps. From there he worked his way down the Nile, reaching Cairo in 1773. Of course what he had discovered was merely the source of the Blue Nile, and even this had been previously visited by a Portuguese traveller named Payz. But the interesting adventures which he experienced, and the interesting style in which he told them, aroused universal attention, which was perhaps increased by the fact that his journey was undertaken purely from love of adventure and discovery. The year 1768 is distinguished by the two journeys of James Cook and James Bruce, both of them expressly for purposes of geographical discovery, and thus inaugurating the era of what may be called scientific exploration. Ten years later an a.s.sociation was formed named the African a.s.sociation, expressly intended to explore the unknown parts of Africa, and the first geographical society called into existence. In 1795 MUNGO PARK was despatched by the a.s.sociation to the west coast. He started from the Gambia, and after many adventures, in which he was captured by the Moors, arrived at the banks of the Niger, which he traced along its middle course, but failed to reach as far as Timbuctoo.

He made a second attempt in 1805, hoping by sailing down the Niger to prove its ident.i.ty with the river known at its mouth as the Congo; but he was forced to return, and died at Boussa, without having determined the remaining course of the Niger.

Attention was thus drawn to the existence of the mysterious city of Timbuctoo, of which Mungo Park had brought back curious rumours on his return from his first journey. This was visited in 1811 by a British seaman named Adams, who had been wrecked on the Moorish coast, and taken as a slave by the Moors across to Timbuctoo. He was ultimately ransomed by the British consul at Mogador, and his account revived interest in West African exploration. Attempts were made to penetrate the secret of the Niger, both from Senegambia and from the Congo, but both were failures, and a fresh method was adopted, possibly owing to Adams' experience in the attempt to reach the Niger by the caravan routes across the Sahara. In 1822 Major Denham and Lieutenant Clapperton left Murzouk, the capital of Fezzan, and made their way to Lake Chad and thence to Bornu.

Clapperton, later on, again visited the Niger from Benin. Altogether these two travellers added some two thousand miles of route to our knowledge of, West Africa. In 1826-27 Timbuctoo was at last visited by two Europeans--Major Laing in the former year, who was murdered there; and a young Frenchman, Rene Caillie, in the latter.

His account aroused great interest, and Tennyson began his poetic career by a prize-poem on the subject of the mysterious African capital.

It was not till 1850 that the work of Denham and Clapperton was again taken up by Barth, who for five years explored the whole country to the west of Lake Chad, visiting Timbuctoo, and connecting the lines of route of Clapperton and Caillie. What he did for the west of Lake Chad was accomplished by Nachtigall east of that lake in Darfur and Wadai, in a journey which likewise took five years (1869-74). Of recent years political interests have caused numerous expeditions, especially by the French to connect their possessions in Algeria and Tunis with those on the Gold Coast and on the Senegal.

The next stage in African exploration is connected with the name of the man to whom can be traced practically the whole of recent discoveries. By his tact in dealing with the natives, by his calm pertinacity and dauntless courage, DAVID LIVINGSTONE succeeded in opening up the entirely unknown districts of Central Africa.

Starting from the Cape in 1849, he worked his way northward to the Zambesi, and then to Lake Dilolo, and after five years' wandering reached the western coast of Africa at Loanda. Then retracing his steps to the Zambesi again, he followed its course to its mouth on the east coast, thus for the first time crossing Africa from west to east. In a second journey, on which he started in 1858, he commenced tracing the course of the river s.h.i.+re, the most important affluent of the Zambesi, and in so doing arrived on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Nya.s.sa in September 1859.

Meanwhile two explorers, Captain (afterwards Sir Richard) Burton and Captain Speke, had started from Zanzibar to discover a lake of which rumours had for a long time been heard, and in the following year succeeded in reaching Lake Tanganyika. On their return Speke parted from Burton and took a route more to the north, from which he saw another great lake, which afterwards turned out to be the Victoria Nyanza. In 1860, with another companion (Captain Grant), Speke returned to the Victoria Nyanza, and traced out its course. On the north of it they found a great river trending to the north, which they followed as far as Gondokoro. Here they found Mr. (afterwards Sir Samuel) Baker, who had travelled up the White Nile to investigate its source, which they thus proved to be in the Lake Victoria Nyanza.

Baker continued his search, and succeeded in showing that another source of the Nile was to be found in a smaller lake to the west, which he named Albert Nyanza. Thus these three Englishmen had combined to solve the long-sought problem of the sources of the Nile.

The discoveries of the Englishmen were soon followed up by important political action by the Khedive of Egypt, Ismail Pasha, who claimed the whole course of the Nile as part of his dominions, and established stations all along it. This, of course, led to full information about the basin of the Nile being acquired for geographical purposes, and, under Sir Samuel Baker and Colonel Gordon, civilisation was for a time in possession of the Nile from its source to its mouth.

Meanwhile Livingstone had set himself to solve the problem of the great Lake Tanganyika, and started on his last journey in 1865 for that purpose. He discovered Lakes Moero and Bangweolo, and the river Nyangoue, also known as Lualaba. So much interest had been aroused by Livingstone's previous exploits of discovery, that when nothing had been heard of him for some time, in 1869 Mr. H.

M. Stanley was sent by the proprietors of the _New York Herald_, for whom he had previously acted as war-correspondent, to find Livingstone. He started in 1871 from Zanzibar, and before the end of the year had come across a white man in the heart of the Dark Continent, and greeted him with the historic query, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Two years later Livingstone died, a martyr to geographical and missionary enthusiasm. His work was taken up by Mr. Stanley, who in 1876 was again despatched to continue Livingstone's work, and succeeded in crossing the Dark Continent from Zanzibar to the mouth of the Congo, the whole course of which he traced, proving that the Lualaba or Nyangoue were merely different names or affluents of this mighty stream. Stanley's remarkable journey completed the rough outline of African geography by defining the course of the fourth great river of the continent.

But Stanley's journey across the Dark Continent was destined to be the starting-point of an entirely new development of the African problem. Even while Stanley was on his journey a conference had been a.s.sembled at Brussels by King Leopold, in which an international committee was formed representing all the nations of Europe, nominally for the exploration of Africa, but, as it turned out, really for its part.i.tion among the European powers. Within fifteen years of the a.s.sembly of the conference the interior of Africa had been parcelled out, mainly among the five powers, England, France, Germany, Portugal, and Belgium. As in the case of America, geographical discovery was soon followed by political division.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EXPLORATION AND PARt.i.tION OF AFRICA.]

The process began by the carving out of a state covering the whole of the newly-discovered Congo, nominally independent, but really forming a colony of Belgium, King Leopold supplying the funds for that purpose. Mr. Stanley was despatched in 1879 to establish stations along the lower course of the river, but, to his surprise, he found that he had been antic.i.p.ated by M. de Brazza, a Portuguese in the service of France, who had been despatched on a secret mission to antic.i.p.ate the King of the Belgians in seizing the important river mouth. At the same time Portugal put in claims for possession of the Congo mouth, and it became clear that international rivalries would interfere with the foundation of any state on the Congo unless some definite international arrangement was arrived at. Almost about the same time, in 1880, Germany began to enter the field as a colonising power in Africa. In South-West Africa and in the Cameroons, and somewhat later in Zanzibar, claims were set up on behalf of Germany by Prince Bismarck which conflicted with English interests in those districts, and under his presidency a Congress was held at Berlin in the winter of 1884-85 to determine the rules of the claims by which Africa could be part.i.tioned. The old historic claims of Portugal to the coast of Africa, on which she had established stations both on the west and eastern side, were swept away by the principle that only effective occupation could furnish a claim of sovereignty. This great principle will rule henceforth the whole course of African history; in other words, the good old Border rule--

"That they should take who have the power.

And they should keep who can."

Almost immediately after the sitting of the Berlin Congress, and indeed during it, arrangements were come to by which the respective claims of England and Germany in South-West Africa were definitely determined. Almost immediately afterwards a similar process had to be gone through in order to determine the limits of the respective "spheres of influence," as they began to be called, of Germany and England in East Africa. A Chartered Company, called the British East Africa a.s.sociation, was to administer the land north of Victoria Nyanza bounded on the west by the Congo Free State, while to the north it extended till it touched the revolted provinces of Egypt, of which we shall soon speak. In South Africa a similar Chartered Company, under the influence of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, practically controlled the whole country from Cape Colony up to German East Africa and the Congo Free State.

The winter of 1890-91 was especially productive of agreements of demarcation. After a considerable amount of friction owing to the encroachments of Major Serpa Pinto, the limits of Portuguese Angola on the west coast were then determined, being bounded on the east by the Congo Free State and British Central Africa; and at the same time Portuguese East Africa was settled in its relation both to British Central Africa on the west and German East Africa on the north. Meanwhile Italy had put in its claims for a share in the spoil, and the eastern horn of Africa, together with Abyssinia, fell to its share, though it soon had to drop it, owing to the unexpected vitality shown by the Abyssinians. In the same year (1890) agreements between Germany and England settled the line of demarcation between the Cameroons and Togoland, with the adjoining British territories; while in August of the same year an attempt was made to limit the abnormal pretensions of the French along the Niger, and as far as Lake Chad. Here the British interests were represented by another Chartered Company, the Royal Niger Company. Unfortunately the delimitation was not very definite, not being by river courses or meridians as in other cases, but merely by territories ruled over by native chiefs, whose boundaries were not then particularly distinct. This has led to considerable friction, lasting even up to the present day; and it is only with reference to the demarcation between England and France in Africa that any doubt still remains with regard to the western and central portions of the continent.

Towards the north-east the problem of delimitation had been complicated by political events, which ultimately led to another great exploring expedition by Mr. Stanley. The extension of Egypt into the Equatorial Provinces under Ismail Pasha, due in large measure to the geographical discoveries of Grant, Speke, and Baker, led to an enormous acc.u.mulation of debt, which caused the country to become bankrupt, Ismail Pasha to be deposed, and Egypt to be administered jointly by France and England on behalf of the European bondholders. This caused much dissatisfaction on the part of the Egyptian officials and army officers, who were displaced by French and English officials; and a rebellion broke out under Arabi Pasha. This led to the armed intervention of England, France having refused to co-operate, and Egypt was occupied by British troops. The Soudan and Equatorial Provinces had independently revolted under Mohammedan fanaticism, and it was determined to relinquish those Egyptian possessions, which had originally led to bankruptcy. General Gordon was despatched to relieve the various Egyptian garrisons in the south, but being without support, ultimately failed, and was killed in 1885. One of Gordon's lieutenants, a German named Schnitzler, who appears to have adopted Mohammedanism, and was known as Emin Pasha, was thus isolated in the midst of Africa near the Albert Nyanza, and Mr. Stanley was commissioned to attempt his rescue in 1887. He started to march through the Congo State, and succeeded in traversing a huge tract of forest country inhabited by diminutive savages, who probably represented the Pigmies of the ancients. He succeeded in reaching Emin Pasha, and after much persuasion induced him to accompany him to Zanzibar, only, however, to return as a German agent to the Albert Nyanza. Mr. Stanley's journey on this occasion was not without its political aspects, since he made arrangements during the eastern part of his journey for securing British influence for the lands afterwards handed over to the British East Africa Company.