The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-10-02 00:00:00

NEW AFRICAN EXPEDITION.

Under the headings of "Important Letters from Mr.
Stanley ; " "Severe Privations and Desperate Fighting;"
"Lake Victoria Nyanza Circumnavigated ; " the Daily 2 ele-
graph, of Monday, published the following :
"We have received two copious and deeply interest-
ing despatches from Mr. H. M. Stanley, the leader of
The Daily Telegraph and New York Herald Expedition,
dated respectively March 1 and May 15 of the present
year. By the beginning of March our gallant Com-
missioner had reached the shores of the Victoria Lake,
having accomplished the remarkable march of 720
miles in 103 days. He had passed through a
totally new country, much of it forest-jungle,
where great sufferings were endured from hunger,
and had been engaged for several days in
conflict with a fierce and treacherous people called the
Watura, in which he lost 21 of his followers. We
grieve to add that two of the Europeans accompanying
him, Edward Poccck and Frederick Barker, had suc-
cumbed to fever. Mr. Stanley speaks of them in terms
of unbounded praise and regret. With his diminished
force our undaunted Commissioner had made a com-
plete survey of the great Lake, the profoundly interest-
mg facts of which, with the description of the new
country to the southward, will be given to the public
as soon as they have arrived for simultaneous publica-
tion at New York."

In connection with the twegoing, the Daily Telegraph a
Tuesday has the following leader :--1

After a long and unbroken silence—characteristic
of the vast solitudes through which Mr. Stanley and
his followers have been making their way—despatches
have again reached us from this resolute and success-
ful explorer, and we were yesterday enabled to indi-
cate the heads of the extremely interesting tidings-
which have arrived. There cannot be a doubt but that
he public generally, together with the scientific world
and all enlightened persons who feel concern for the
regeneration of Africa, will share our satisfaction—
and that of the journal allied with us—at the good
news which has thus come to hand. Good news, in-
deed, it is to know that one of the most adventurous and
perilous journeysunderta.ken upon the surface of the dark
Continent has reached its first stage of triumph in the
safe transit through a totally unknown line of country,
and the careful survey of the shores of that magnificent
lake upon the waters of which Mr. Stanley has, after
all, been the first to launch an English-built vessel. It
is too true that we must qualify these epithets
" good " and " safe" so far as to acknowledge that
with all his courage, skill, caution, and forethought—
qualities now no longer denied in any quarter to this
gallant gentleman—our Commissioner has paid dear
for the splendid results which he has achieved. We
mentioned yesterday that two of the Europeans
accompanying him had succumbed to the deadly
breath of the jungle; and a tribute of honour
and respect is due, in the first place, to those young
Englishmen, Pocock and Barker, who have added
their names to the list of the many unpretending
martyrs who have perished for the sake of Africa.
Moreover, in the swift and resolute march which Mr.
Stanley has made since quitting Mpapwa on the
Unyanyembe road December, his force of soldiers
and porters will be found to have diminished terribly.
We shall so far anticipate the absorbing particulars
of that march as to state that by desertion, dysentery,
fever, and fierce fighting, as many as one hundred
and eighty-one of his followers were found missing
from the muster-roll read by the shores of Lake
Victoria at the beginning of March. There stood
around the brave leader only one hundred and sixty-
six men when he camped at Kagehyi, in Uchanabi • but
these were well seasoned by the swift progress which
Stanley had made, and his letters, public and private,
breathe the spirit of unswerving resolution and of a
just satisfaction at what had been achieved. He reports
himself amply provided with men, guns, and supplies
of all kinds, even at the close of this remarkable
march; for that it is most remarkable will be allowed
by all who know the conditions of African travel.
From Bagamoyo to the Victoria Lake is a distance of
nearly seven hundred and fifty miles, following
Stanley's route, and this was accomplished in one hun-
dred and three days. The last expedition which pro-
ceeded to Unyamyembe took seven months to cover
that five hundred and twenty-five miles of well-
known road, while the larger portion of Stanley's
lay through a perfectly unknown district, the extra-
ordinary hardships of which will be understood when
weare at liberty to lay the full details of this hardy
enterprise before the public. Through matted
jungle and waterless plains, through mountain
ranges and swamps, over rivers and wildernesses, and
with or without the leave of fierce tribes new to the
sight of the white man and his wonderful goods, our
Commissioner, during those first months of this year,
led his men unceasingly • carrying with him all the
way his little vessel, the unceasingly;
Alice, which was at last
triumphantlx put together and launched on the broad
bosom of tile Victoria Nyanza. Spite of all losses
and difficulties, he stood there on the first of March
last—as he writes—well-equipped for two years more
of good work, with men whom he could perfectly trust,
and one of the most dangerous portions of his toil ac-
complished. We feel confident that when the story
of this march to the Nyanza is read he will take a
place in public estimation worthy of the friend and
helper of Livingstone, as one of the most skilful,
daring, and successful of all modern travellers.
His first letter describes the journey from the VlETn-
yanyembe road to the Nyanza • his second comprises
a description of this splendid inland sea, written after
a voyage of upwards of a thousand miles made round
its shores and upon its surface. Geographers every-
where will naturally burn with anxiety to know what
is the truth about that Lake or Lakes, the character
of which was ever one of the main problems of African
research. Speke, the discoverer, with Grant of the
Victoria, always held the water to be one and un-
divided. He saw an immense extent of it from Muanza,
and caught once and again" distant prospects of its
western glitter as he journeyed towards Uganda;
while at the Ripon Falls he once more beheld what
he took to be the same great lake from the north-
ward. Livingstone, on the other hand, from hear-
say, judged the Victoria to consist of at least five
small bodies of watea ; and this idea, that it
was made up of separate lakelets, and could not be
compared with the other inland seas of Central Africa
for size or depth, has of late gained much ground,
especially as smaller sheets have been recently found
near it to the north. We must not anticipate the reve-
lations of Mr. Stanley's second letter; but we can
venture to assure geographers that they have deeply
interesting matters in store for them in the account of
the Lady Alice sailing upon these virgin waves, the
slow unfolding of the unvisited shores, and the dis-
covery of fair and rich islands of great size set in the
bosom of this queenly lake. It will be found, too, we
think, by the careful and, repeated observations which
Mr. Stanley trained himself to make before his departure,
that many ideas derived from measurements too blindly
accepted may have to suffer doubt. Stanley makes the
Victoria Nyanza much higher above the sea level than
Speke, just as Cameron corrected Burton and Speke
about the altitude of Tanganyika. It is, at least, evi-
dent from these differences that no theory can be
securely founded upon isolated observations until veri-
fied, and this has much significance for other regions
of the map besides those of the Nyanzas. Along with
the very important letter describing the passage of the
Lady Alice round and across the 'Victorian waters, we
have also received a sketch map of her voyage, which
included in its " periplus " a visit to King Mtesa.'s
capital in Uganda, close to the Victoria Nile. And
here it appears our very successful Commissioner met
and spent some time with Colonel .Linant de Belle.
fonds, of Gordon's staff, but the communication des-
cribing this happy encounter, and pourtraying the
northern shore of the lake has not arrived along with
the others. It is probable that the manuscript was
committed to Colonel Gordon's officer, and is now on its
way to us bytthe Upper Nile and Soudan, and it will, no
doubt, arrive to complete one of the most profoundly
interesting chapters of African discovery. Mean-
while the revelation made by the narrative in the two
letters is sufficiently plain to remove all doubts as to
the character of the Victoria Lake, and the public and
the geographers will see how generously King Mtesa
supplied our Explorer with men and boats, and how
he returned to Usukunsa and his camp at Uchambi
just in time to avert one of those disastrous panics
which the absent Commander has always to dread in
African travel. There are, we may safely promise, all
the ingredients of adventure in this double narrative—
arduous marching, fierce conflicts, perils by land and
water, novel scenery, marvellous reports of regions
peopled by dwarfs and giants, suppeta made on Hone'
meat, stories of a breed of clop as big as donkeys—in
fact, food for every taste, with that one high charm of
travel which fascinates universally—the picture of a
hidden world seen for the first time by him who
delineates the unvisited realms of Nature.
Strange too, in itself must be considered the man-
ner in which this marked addition to human know-
ledge comes to our hands. The letter whose contents
will for the first time unfold to science the true
character of the magnificent and mysterious Lake
was committed to the charge of one Sangoro, an
African trader coming down to Unyamyembe from
the Nilotic waters and thus these secrets of geography
have run a double gauntlet of dangers, coming
back through all the wildness and forest paths
of those seven or eight hundred miles, wrapped
in the cloth of a savage. Such are the contin-
gencies of African travel, where the hidden mys-
teries of the dark Continent must be won at the
price of constant risk, and then doubtfully entrusted
to such wild posts as the passing caravan affords.
Something more than ordinary emotion attaches to
communications thus almost providentially received
from the sombre depths of these African jungles. They
are bought for science at the cost of the lives of brave
and devoted men; they come to us through hairbreadth
escapes and untold anxieties; they are written by a
hand burned by fiery suns and composed by a brain
full of all the constant cares of an expedition which
demands the gifts of a soldier in unison with almost
every other quality which makes a man. Yet they
are worth this heavy price of life and this strenuous
labour, for they open the unread pages of the earth, and
let the light into its hidden places. Moreover, having,
so far accomplished a great task, our Commissioner
writes as one regarding it only as the beginning of
his work. He was busily preparing for a fresh
departure into regions whereon every step must bring
him nearer to momentous discoveries; and though he
is left alone now with only one white companion, we
feel a proud certainty that he will justify our confi-
dence, and reflect honour on those who-sent him forth,
if Heaven preserves an existence which has become so
valuable to humanity. The merit of this gallant young
American will, however, be best appreciated when his
letters are produced in full; and they will be given as
soon as we have communicated them to our allies in
the "New African Expedition."