![]() ![]() Richard Francis Burton, a linguist (he spoke twenty-nine languages), previously had been the first Englishman to enter Mecca (he was disguised as a Muslim). Two of them were British, sent by the Royal Geographical Society. There are three main characters in this story. That proved to be quite perilous because, among other things, the local tribes were usually unfriendly to travelers. Financial constraints limited the English foray to a group of fewer than 150 men. Thus, the Royal Geographical Society reasoned that the most efficient route to its source was an overland westward trek from Zanzibar.Īrab slave traders had penetrated the interior of the “Dark Continent,” but they did so in rather large caravans in search of slaves. The river was not navigable much south of the equator for reasons the author does not explain. Central Africa remained terra incognita to Europeans. The Blue Nile (its eastern branch) had been traced to the mountains of Abyssinia (today’s Ethiopia), but no white man had been able to traverse the White Nile past southern Sudan. This saga recounts the story of the 19th-century search by a team of explorers, beginning in 1854, to find the source of the White Nile River, the longest river in the world. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |