UNLUCKY EXPLORERS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 256, 4 December 1909, Page 3

UNLUCKY EXPLORERS

HEROES WHOSE STOIiIES IIAVE BEEN DOUBTED,

It seems lo be the fate of great explorers to quarrel over their discoveries and to have their right to credit for them disputed. In lighting over the honor of having discovered the North Pole, Cook and Peary are but following ill the footsteps of Spcke and Burton, whose fight over the discovery of the source of the Nile embroiled the scientific world for many years. The mislortuiie of Cook (if his exploit is after all genuine) in having his statements questioned is but that of Bruce. Had there been telegraphers and newspapers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, an imaginative American declares, the papers would have been filled with angry columns over tlie rival claims of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci to have discovered America, and as to whether Verrazzano or Hudson first discovered the Hudson river.

James" Brucc's fate was enough to ci bitter almost any man. After accent ing the Blue Nile to its source in ll> ltuwenzori Mountains, of Mountain* <. the Muun, in 1700, he reached Marseille in 1773, and there met D'Anvike, I great French geographer, who told Im that what he. had discovered was inn-: esting but not new, in proof ot wmi-li iishowed him a map which i>-.uiviUe hai published in the preceding year, baset upon sketch maps made by the Port.u gucsc Jesuit priests, Father Paez } win. had explored litis; very ground in 101*5 and Father Lobo, who had gone over it in 10-J5. Pacz's map had been publisher in 1052 ami hobo's in 1070. Jt warather a shook 10 Bruce to lind that instead of discovering what had neon sought for H'imirios lie was merely an '•also ran." Tin-; solium of Tin-: nil!-:. But \\u)-'.' was yet to come, lie -published an eximnejy interesting account of his travels in Abyssinia and Central Africa, and in it he described many ol the extraordinary customs of the people including their fondness for live bee! ?teak, cut from the living animal ami jaten before the flesh had cooled oi :-ojised to quiver from the pain of the <nife. His book was hailed with derision i h<' was compared to Herodotus is a writer of more imagination than Lru'th. J)r. Johnstn denounced him wiu "unscrupulous romancer.'' and Ilomei Walpole said his book was Mull am lear." But Brucc's statements" hav< jeen vcriiied, and his book is as goo< •eading to day as it was one hundreii tnd thirty years ago. The Nile lias two branches, the Bliu ind tlie White, 'lhc sources of the for ner settled, explorers turned their at cution to the latter. It was not unti he middle of the last century that tin nobh-m was attacked in a seientilii nanncr. How the real source was dw ovcred and what a disagreeable quarre irose from the discovery is told by Sii larry Johnston in his book ''J he Xili >iuist." Sir Kichard Burton and Join lanning Speke together discovered Laki Tanganyika in 1850, and surmised i vas the source of the Xile } but vw lativcs told them that no river ran on f that lake. The river P.usizi, however an into it. Then Burton became ill nd Spoke determined to explore std urthcr. "Burton yielded liis consent reluctant y" saysi Sir Harry Johnston, "and aj ■cars to have given but grudging assist ncc in the way of men and guidefull of energy, however. Speke gathered ogether a caravan, which ciossed Jnyamwezi and Usukuma, and oa the tOtli of July, 1858, he saw the Mwnnza >eek, one of the southernmost gulfs of ;he Victoria Xvanza. Travelling northwards along this creek, on 3rd August. 1858, early in the morning, Spoke saw the open waters of a groat, lake with a sea horizon to the north. Much of tlie horizon "was a'hut in by great and small islands, hut Speke detected through their interstices the vasfc extent of open

'water which stretched to the north. I "He realised to the full tin* wonder 01 his discovery and the obvious probability that this mighty lake would prove I to be the main head waters of the White Nile. . . . BURTON'S BITTER CHAUKiN. "Unablo to delay longer m his exploration of the southern shores of the Victoria Nyanza, as he had promised to. rejoin Burton by a certain date, Spcke j returned to Kaze in Unyanyeinbe, to ; find his companion vexed at the great discovery whic hhe had made. ISpekej did not pursue the argument as to the Victoria Nyanza being the main source | af the Nile. The two men journeyed to-! gether o i more or less liad terms to Zanzibar, where Burton remained to wind up the affairs of the expedition, Spekc returning direct to England. . . "Burton returned to England in 185!), Vit chagrined to hear of the en* ti: • ism which Speke's discovery of the "Victoria Nyanza had been received—an entluisia-m which to some extent had put the revelation of Lake Tanganyika iiu the shade., Burton, nevertheless, was. awarded, in 18(H), the gold medal of the' I lloyal Geographical Sorietv, and in returning thanks for the honor he uttered' a handsome acknowledgment of Speke's services ns surveyor on tne expedition to the great lakes. But th' two men were "evidently on bad term-, and tuough the fault of' their disatvor.i i,.-iy have teen with Burton's conduct. .-u world knew it first through the writings Speke in Blackwood's .Magazine, and later (in 18U4) in the lTprodn.tjun of these Blackwood articles with additions I under the title of "Wnat Led to the j Discovery of the Source of the Nile.' l<n . these words Spcke makes some stinging references to Burton. ... .

"Burton's own attacks on Speke scarcely appeared in a public form until four years after Spcke lufiT returned to Africa. . . , Burton's chief revenge lay in endeavoring for many years to prove that Speke had made no very great discovery, and that Ins Victoria Nyanza was not the greatest lake in .Africa and the main source of the Mile, but a network of swamps and lakelets." This controversy was waged for years'. In 1802 Speke verilied his theory that ■ Victoria Xyanza was the source of the Nile by discovering itipon Falls, the spot at which the river leaves the lake. On his return to England in 1864, the British Association arranged that lie and Burton should debate their different views aa to the Nile sources 011 31st September, at Bath. But this 1 debate never took place, for the very morning ol the day set Speke was killed while out partridge-shooting. Stumbling over a stile with his gun at full-cocK, the gun was discharged and the contents ol both barrels entered his bodv.

It was not until 1875 that Henry M. Stanley settled the point by exploring tlie Victoria Nyanza and proving that Speke was right in asserting it to be tic greatest lake in Africa and the source of the main branch of the River Nile. IRONY OF A NAME. It is the irony of fate that, though (Vilnius discovered America, that con1 1....at should be called not after him, but after Amerigo Vespucci. ('nluinlms' discovery was what started Amerigo Vespucci to voyage westerly. . e urn. in which he was a partner fitted out Columbus' later expeditions, and it was with one of these that Vespucci sailed, just as it was with Peary that Cook first sailed to the Arctic. However, the new continent was named America and not Columbia,

Another notable instance of a real discoverer losing credit for his achievement is that of Verrazzano. That lie really discovered the Hudson river in 1324 is a historical fact, proved by his log and by letters of his which arc still extant, llow fur up the river lie sailed is a matter of doubt, but it is certain that lie sailed into New York Bay sufficiently fur to see and describe Manhattan Island. Hudson explored the river that bears his lianie eighty-five years later, in llil)!). The reason that Hudson received I the credit for it is to be found in the i fact that the early settlers were Dutch 'and English. *Tlicy knew all about [ln Ison; few, af any oftliem, had ever heard' of Verrazzano. -Eager to claim eredii for a man of their own race, historians dismissed verrazzano with a line, while they told the full story of Hudson's dis covery. If the Italian had got his dues, there would have been no need fnf Ihe Hudson centenary celebrations which have been putting the Americans inio hysterics for some time back.