Abstract
AFRICA is overrun with explorers of all nationalities. Too often of late have we had to read of failures, of abortive attempts on the part of expensively-equipped expeditions to reach the field of their work, or of deaths by fever or assassination after the first difficulties were overcome. In spite of all, however, the unprecedented activity of recent years in this favourite field of exploration has pretty well filled up, with the leading features at least, that great blank space in the heart of the continent which in the rude maps of our schoolboy days was marked “unexplored.” In the very centre of that space there is still however a blank, giving ample scope for work for the numerous Belgian expeditions that have hitherto done so little. It was to fill up this blank to some extent that the Geographical Society, about two years ago, obtained subscriptions to send out an expedition under young Keith Johnston, who had inherited an enthusiasm for geographical work quite worthy of the name he bore. As his subordinate and as geologist to the expedition, the Society appointed another young Scotchman, Mr. Joseph Thomson, a pupil of Prof. Geikie, who recommended him to the Geographical Society. To him, we grieve to say, it has been left to tell the story of the expedition, which he did, and did well, on Monday night at the opening meeting of the Geographical Society. This expedition is remarkable in many respects, in some points more remarkable than any other African expedition that we know of. The outline of its story is soon told. With 150 of the best men that could be found in and around Zanzibar Keith Johnston left that place in May, 1879, and striking at once to the south-west, made for the north end of Lake Nyassa, which was the real starting-point for fresh work. Little more than a month after the start, young Johnston, who seemed to have the nerve and stamina of an athlete, succumbed to the malarious influences of the coast region, and was buried by his companion at Behobeho, to the north of the Lufiji river. Mr. Thomson, inexperienced youth of twenty-two though he was, was equal to the emergency. With admirable tact and nerve he took his place as the sole leader of the expedition, and accomplished even more than the work which the Society had chalked out for it. By an unexplored route, through barren wastes and over lofty mountains, through the sneaking Wakhutu and the warlike Mahenge, he and his followers made their way till their eyes were gladdened and their weary spirits refreshed by the sight of the waters of Nyassa. Thence, after brief rest, they resumed their march over the lofty and undulating plateau, which they found occupied the region between the north end of Nyassa and the south shore of Tanganyika. Leaving here the bulk of his followers, Mr. Thomson, with a handful of men, trudged his way over the rugged western shores of Lake Tanganyika, to visit the Lukuga and settle the question whether it was an outlet or an affluent of the lake, a question, which, one would think, could be easily solved, but on which Stanley and Cameron published diametrically opposite statements. After visiting the missionary station near the mouth of the river, and running across to Ujiji, Mr. Thomson returned to the Lukuga and traced it for some miles of its downward course. After barely escaping from the murderous Warua with their lives, the party sailed down the lake, and rejoining their companions made the return journey to Zanzibar along the usual caravan route with unprecedented rapidity, in about a year after the expedition set out under their late chief. Mr. Thomson declared with just pride that all this was accomplished without the shedding of a drop of blood for either offensive or defensive purposes; with one exception he brought all his men back “in the best of health and condition”; he has collected certain information about a considerable region which no white man had previously visited; he has solved one of the few remaining great problems of African geography; and he has located with certainty a great salt lake (Hikwa) whose existence previously had only been based on native rumour. Mr. Thomson is a trained geologist, and as such he has doubtless seen more than almost any previous explorer. He tells us of the metamorphic schists and gneiss which compose the mountains of the great central plateau; of the many extinct volcanic cones that lie around the north-west end of Lake Nyassa, and of the metamorphic clay slates, felspathic rocks and volcanic porphyries and tuffs that look down on the lake from the north and north-east. His further geological insight may dispel some of the illusions that seem to be abroad as to the abounding wealth of the African interior. Much of the country between the coast and Nyassa is barren waste; and the chief characteristic of the region between Nyassa and Tanganyika he found to be “utter barrenness and the absence of anything worth trading for.” Instead of the mountains of iron and the miles of surface coal, nowhere did he see a single metal in a form which a white man would for a moment look at as a profitable or workable speculation; there is very little more iron, he maintains, than is sufficient to supply the simple wants of the natives. Coal he saw none, and he does not believe that such a thing exists over the wide area embraced in his route. This may be discouraging, but it is wholesome, and may prove a check to the wild schemes sometimes broached by speculators for opening up the African interior. From the Chimboya Mountains to the southeast of Tanganyika Mr. Thomson found numerous streamlets flowing southwards, doubtless to join the Chambeze, which, after passing through many a lake and levying tribute from a region one million square miles in extent, pours its almost Amazonian volume, as the Congo, 3000 miles below, into the bosom of the broad Atlantic. The much-debated Lukuga he found, as Mr. Hore had found shortly before him, to be a broad and rapid river, flowing westwards from the Tanganyika Lake to the Lualaba, as the Congo here is called; and Lake Hikwa he saw was a fine sheet of water with no outlet, lying among the lofty mountains, which stretch away east from Southern Tanganyika. What may be the extent and value of the purely geographical observations obtained by Mr. Thomson we have no means of knowing; doubtless in this respect the expedition suffered in the death of Mr. Johnston, who was a trained geographer. But in other respects, in information as to the structure of the country, the nature of its products, and the character of its varied peoples, the expedition under Mr. Thomson has been fruitful to a high degree; altogether it is one of the best pieces of original work which our not too energetic Geographical Society has ever done. Mr. Thomson's well-written and well-read paper was received with enthusiasm by an unusually distinguished audience. We trust to be able very shortly to give details concerning both the geography and geology of the Central Plateau from Mr. Thomson's own hands.
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A Successful African Expedition . Nature 23, 38–39 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/023038a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/023038a0