< RIPON FALLS. angé!' (Oh, my lord!) Kbakka!' (My king!) Hai n'yawo!' (My mother!) at the top of her voice, in the utmost despair and lamentation ; and yet there was not a soul who dared lift hand to save any of them, though many might be heard privately commenting on their beauty." After a long detention in the strange land, exposed daily to the caprice of the king, the goal of so many struggles and dangers was attained on the 28th of July, 1862. The falls over which Father Nile escapes from the Lake Victoria N'Yanza was called the Ripon Falls, in honor of the President of the Royal Geographical Society. Then bidding adieu to the scene which had cost him so much labor to see, the explorer turned his face towards home, congratulating himself that his journey was almost ended. On the 15th February, 1863, the two friends arrived at Gondokoro, where, to their great delight, they met Baker-Sir Samuel Baker-who was en route to the land they were then in such a hurry to leave, determined to pluck one laurel leaf at least to deck his brow as a Nile Explorer. Eleven days later Speke and Grant floated down the Nile towards Cairo, which place they reached in safety, and where they parted finally with their devoted adherentsBombay and his party, who had clung to them with fidelity through all their troubles. They were received with great enthusiasm by the Royal Geographical Society, and by their countrymen. Speke published the record of his travels under the title, Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile; and Grant, who had been welcomed by Lord Palmerston on his return, with a "You have had a long walk, Captain Grant," adopted for his book the title of A Walk Across Africa. Both books are thoroughly readable, and they reflect the travelers' natures faithfully as amateur explorers, gentlemen hunters -nothing more. Poor Speke's travels are ended. He will charm us no more with his graphic descrip tions of hunting feats, or with accounts of strange African lands. Shortly after he had finished writing his book, and during the sitting of the British Association at Bath, he shot. himself, by accident, while out hunting birds. Grant's career has been prosperous since his advent in England as the companion of Speke in his discovery of the Nile's sources. He has married a wealthy lady, and lives at his ease in Scotland, near Inverness. The writer of this article saw him in Abyssinia, and was much charmed with his suavity and polished exterior. He will shortly publish an interesting book on the "Flora and Fauna of Central Africa," a book that is sadly needed upon a subject to which he can do ample justice. SIR SAMUEL AND LADY BAKER. Had Captains Speke and Grant thoroughly performed their work in Central Africa; had they not been in such a hurry to leave the region of the Nile's sources before they had explored that other lake they had heard of in Karagwah and Uganda, which lay to the west of their route as they marched toward Gondokoro and home, we doubt whether we should have heard of Baker as one of the White Nile explorers, or have received such an interesting work from the press as the Albert N' Yanza. not such a student of natural history as Grant, he certainly excels both Speke and Grant in the art of book-making. But Baker has the advantage over his predecessors in Africa-if it can be called an advantage of having a loving wife as his companion. Both may sicken of fever, suffer from famine, be menaced by belligerent natives, yet are they all in all to each other; true companions in misfortune or in pleasure; helpmates one to the other. No acridity can arise from such companionship, the interest of one cannot clash with the other's, enmity stands abashed, treachery avoids them, jealousy is unknown, suspicion may not hide between the close embrace of man and wife isolated from their species in the jungles of Central Africa. Sweet is the companionship of the lonely pair, and romance surrounds them with its halo. Perhaps it is this charm which makes Baker's books so attractive to the general reader. Baker in person truthfully embodies the ideal, which the writer of this article in common perhaps with other readers, has formed of him. Indeed, when I saw him at Cairo, in 1869, preparatory to his start on his present journey, I fancied I knew him well. There he stood, the burly, bearded incarnation of the hunter. who shot rhinoceroses with the Hamram A Sir Samuel Baker is a different person alto. gether from either Livingstone, Burton, Speke or Grant. While he lacks the silent, moral heroism and the lofty enthusiasm of Living-sword-hunters, had bagged elephants by the stone, he undoubtedly is a hero of the muscular and bold type. He does not seem to enter on the work of exploration for the sole sake of acquiring geographical knowledge, but because it furnishes him with the food his adventurous spirit requires. The dangers and excitements incidental to African exploration lend to it an alluring charm, which has been the inducement for Baker to visit Central Africa. As a man, Baker is singularly devoid of angularities of disposition. He is honest, warm-hearted, and impulsive, with a cheery, sunny temper, which, though apt to wax hot occasionally, has no malice in its grain, and this enables him to win the love of his people. He is, perhaps, too severe a disciplinarian, but he makes up for this severity by such an open-handed generosity that his people feel more than compensated for any severity they may be subjected to. In scholarship and erudition he is the inferior of Burton, but he is superior to him in the vim and energy requisite for a great explorer, and his style of writing is much more attractive. He is the equal of Speke in the hunting-field, and second to none, not even Gordon Cumming; and though he is dozen near the sources of the Atbara, and His wife a Hungarian lady whom he met, loved, and married at Cairo, in Egypt-is the feminine counterpart of himself-frank and hearty, with enough prettiness in her features to make her interesting at first sight; in short, a real woman, possessing womanly lovingness, strength of character, endurance, and every other virtue fit for an explorer's wife. Sir Samuel Baker prefaces his account of his journey to the Albert N'Yanza with the following: "I weighed carefully the chances of the undertaking. Before me, untrodden Africa; against me, the obstacles that had defeated the world since its creation; on my side, a somewhat tough constitution, perfect rather than submit to failure. I trusted that England would not be beaten; and although I hardly dared to hope that I could succeed where others greater than I had failed, I determined to sacrifice all in the attempt. Had independence, a long experience in savage life, and both time and means, which I intended to devote to the object without limit. England had never sent an expedition to the Nile sources previous to that under the command of Speke and Grant. Bruce, nine-I been alone, it would have been no hard lot ty years ago, had succeeded in tracing the source of the Blue or Lesser Nile-thus, the honor of that discovery belonged to Great Britain; Speke was on his road from the south; and I felt confident that my gallant friend would leave his bones upon the path SIR SAMUEL AND LADY BAKER. to die upon the untrodden path before me, but there was one who, although my greatest comfort, was also my greatest care; one whose life yet dawned at so early an age that womanhood was still a future. I shuddered at the prospect for her should she be left alone in savage lands at travels from Gondokoro southward, though they cover very little ground compared to the great march of Speke and Grant, are yet so full of incidents that it is a difficult task to give anything like a fair résumé of them in an article like this. Those who would like to know what Baker and his noble wife suffered and performed, had better read Bayard Taylor's abridgment of the travels of Burton, Speke and Grant, and Baker (The Lake Regions of Central Africa. Scribner, Armstrong & Co.), or else read Baker's Albert N' Yanza unabridged. It is impossible to give here more than a few leading points. The first portion of Baker's narrative, after leaving Gondokoro, treats of a conspiracy of his own men against him, and the method he took to crush it; of the symptoms of deeply-rooted hostility from the pudding-headed, slave-kidnapping TurcoArabs which was evinced towards him wherever he went; of a battle he witnessed between the Latookas and the Turks, which ended in the latter's signal defeat; of a treaty of friendship finally entered into between himself and the Turks, which enabled him to struggle on towards Unyoro, where he hoped to obtain the aid of King Kamrasi towards finding the great lake that was said to be west of that which Speke discovered. Of many curious manners and customs witnessed among the tribes of Illyria and Latooka; of fevers endured by himself and wife; of sketches of interesting scenery; with page after page enlivened with many a graphically described incident of adventure, and vivid portraitures of life in the far Central African region; of six months' detention at Obbo, during which time nearly all his carriage animals had died, and he himself was so reduced by illness that he appeared but a pale shadow of the former stout hunter. On the 12th February, 1864, Sir Samuel Baker stood in the presence of Kamrasi, King of Unyoro, whom he thus describes : "Upon my approach, the crowd gave way, and I was shortly laid on a mat at the king's feet. He was a fine-looking man, but with a peculiar expression of countenance, owing to his extremely prominent eyes; he was about six feet high, beautifully clean, and was dressed in a long robe of bark cloth most gracefully folded. The nails of his hands and feet were carefully attended, and his complexion was about as dark a brown as that of an Abyssinian. He sat upon a copper stool placed upon a carpet of leopard skins, and he was surrounded by about ten of his principal chiefs." Baker having described the object of his coming to Unyoro, he proceeded to present the king with a Persian carpet, an abbia (large white Cashmere mantle), a red silk netted sash, a pair of scarlet Turkish shoes, several pairs of socks, a double-barreled gun and ammunition, and a great heap of firstclass beads made up into gorgeous necklaces and girdles. The king, strangely enough, did not seem to care for any of these valuable things, but requested that the gun might be fired off. This was accordingly done, to the utter confusion of the large assenbly of savages, who rushed away in such haste that they tumbled over each other like rabbits, which so delighted the king, that, although startled at first, he was soon convulsed with laughter. But the gallant traveler soon found that though things. seemed auspicious enough at first, the nature of Kamrasi was so susceptible to suspicions, that excuses were daily furnished him which retarded his prosecution of the search for the Lake Luta Nzige. Finally, however, he was permitted to go, and towards the end of February, 1864, Baker and his wife set out westward in the direction of the lake. As they were about to bid fare well to Kamrasi, the king turned to Baker, and in the wife." A LION HUNT. coolest manner said, "I will send you | but fierce speech in Arabic. Mrs. Astonished by the outbreak of the white people's tempers, Kamrasi made haste to I didn't mean to say, "Don't be angry. offend you by asking you for your wife. I will give you a wife, if you want one, and I thought you might have no objection to give me yours. It is my custom to give my visitors pretty wives, and I thought you might exchange. Don't make a fuss about it; if you don't like it, there's an end to it." |