ery of the Nile.
Baker's administration of the Soudan was the first great
effort to arrest the slave trade in the Nile Basin, and
also the first step towards the establishment of the
British Protectorate of Uganda and Somaliland. Baker died
on December 30, 1893. He was a voluminous writer, and his
books had immense popularity. "The Albert N'yanza" may be
regarded as the most important of his works of travel by
reason of the exploration which it records rather than on
account of any exceptional literary merit. Here his story
is one of such thrilling interest that even a dull writer
could scarce have failed to hold the attention of any
reader by its straightforward narration.
In March, 1861, I commenced an expedition to discover the sources of the
Nile, with the hope of meeting the East African Expedition of Captains
Speke and Grant that had been sent by the English Government from the
south, via Zanzibar, for that object. From my youth I had been inured to
hardships and endurance in wild sports in tropical climates; and when I
gazed upon the map of Africa I had the hope that I might, by
perseverance, reach the heart of Africa. Had I been alone it would have
been no hard lot to die upon the untrodden path before me; but my wife
resolved, with woman's constancy, to leave the luxuries of home and
share all danger, and to follow me through each rough step in the wild
life in which I was about to engage. Thus accompanied, on April 15,
1861, I sailed up the Nile from Cairo to Korosko; and thence, by a
forced camel march across the Nubian desert, we reached the river of
Abou Hamed, and, still on camels, though within view of the palm-trees
that bordered the Nile, we came to Berber. I spent a year in learning
Arabic, and while doing so explored the Atbara, which joins the Nile
twenty miles south of Berber, and the Blue Nile, which joins the main
stream at Khartoum, with all their affluents from the mountains of
Abyssinia. The general result of these explorations was that I found
that the waters of the Atbara when in flood are dense with soil washed
from the fertile lands scoured by its tributaries after the melting of
the snows and the rainy season; and these, joining with the Blue Nile in
full flood, also charged with a red earthy matter, cause the annual
inundation in Lower Egypt, the sediment from which gives to that country
its remarkable fertility.
I reached Khartoum, the capital of the Soudan,
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