‘Drink with me from the Source of the Nile’
BAKER, Samuel White.
The Albert N’yanza, great basin of the Nile, and explorations of the Nile sources.
Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott and London, Macmillan & Co, 1868.
2 vols, 8vo, I: pp. xxx, 371, [1]; II: pp. x, [2], 372; with frontispieces, 31 illustrations both plates and in text, 2 coloured maps, 1 of which is folding; occasional light spotting; a good copy in original brown cloth with gilt lettering and printer’s device to spine, brown endpapers; some wear to spine ends and corners; ink inscription ‘Benj. O’Fallon Woodstock’ to recto of vol. 1 frontispiece.
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The Albert N’yanza, great basin of the Nile, and explorations of the Nile sources.
Third edition, recounting Samuel White Baker’s discovery of Lake Albert - ‘the great reservoir of the equatorial waters, the ALBERT N’YANZA, from which the river issues as the entire White Nile’ – in 1864. ‘After a year spent on the Sudan-Abyssinian border, during which time he learnt Arabic, explored Atbara and other Nile tributaries, and proved that the Nile sediment came from Abyssinia, [Baker] arrived at Khartoum, leaving the city in December 1862 to follow up the course of the White Nile. Two months later at Gondoroko he met Speke and Grant, who, after discovering the source of the Nile, were following the river to Egypt. Their success made him fear that there was nothing left for his own expedition to accomplish; but the two explorers generously gave information which enabled him, after separating from them, to achieve the discovery of the Albert Nyanza, of whose existence credible assurance had already been given to Speke and Grant. Baker first sighted the lake on 14th March 1864. After some time spent in the exploration of the neighbourhood, during which Baker demonstrated that the Nile flowed through the Albert Nyanza . . . he started upon his return journey, and reached Khartum after many checks in May 1865. In the following October he returned to England with his wife, who had accompanied him throughout the whole of the perilous and arduous journey’ (EB).
‘Baker is a kind of fulcrum in African exploration. He stands in the centre of all theories, emotions and moral attitudes . . . . He had imported something quite new into the Central African scene; he had made it comprehensive. He formed a kind of bridge between the original myths and legends and the reality of what was actually to be found in the country. Central Africa now was no longer a fantasy or a blank space on the map’ (Moorehead).
Baker’s travel narrative was first published in 1866 and was swiftly translated into French and German. A second edition was published by Macmillan in 1867, and this, the third edition, was published the following year.
Alan Moorehead, The White Nile, pp. 77 & 95; Ibrahim-Hilmy I, p. 49; PMM 357.
