Since the later years of the eighteenth century geographical knowledge has been extended in the manner of a great railway system. The main lines of exploration will provide the subject of this and following chapters; with the ramification of branch lines we can hardly concern ourselves here. Taking one consideration with another, Africa may be termed the most important area of geographical conquest during this latest period of our history. The opening of the interior of that continent was long delayed for geographical reasons which have often been insisted upon. The difficulty of inland communication, the fact that the rivers do not offer uninterrupted highways, the barrier of the tropical forests, the unhealthiness of many parts both of the coast lands and of the interior, which modern science is only now fighting—such are the disabilities against which exploration had to contend, to which must be added the lack of commercial instinct in many of the native peoples, and their unhappy experiences of the early slave-trading, and the labour-recruiting which has in some instances provided its modern counterpart.

During the larger part of the eighteenth century hardly any progress was made with the exploration of Africa. The west coast was still a resort of traders for slaves and gold, but very little attempt was made even to acquire further territory. In the middle of the century, however, the Turkish dislike of intruders was somewhat allayed, owing partly to the growth of the coffee trade, and it became more easy for travellers to enter Egypt. In 1770 James Bruce started on the task, which he had been anxious to undertake for many years, of searching for the Nile sources. He was courteously received by the ruler of Abyssinia, and after finding and mapping the source of the Blue Nile, he traced it to its junction with the White Nile at Khartum. On his return he was disgusted when it was proved to him by D’Anville (whose map, based on a critical judgment of data, was considerably more correct than Bruce’s) that he had been anticipated by the Portuguese Jesuits. He delayed the publication of his results for seventeen years, and when they appeared, though they constitute a remarkable description of Abyssinia and its inhabitants, they were universally disbelieved.

Towards the end of the century two causes operated for the revival of interest in African affairs—firstly, the foundation of the African Association in 1788, and, secondly, the removal by Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt of the obstacles placed in the way of travellers by Moslem fanatics. In 1795 Mungo Park, a Scotchman, started under the auspices of the African Association to explore the Niger. He travelled up the Gambia River, and after extraordinary difficulties reached the Niger at Sebu, and traced its course for three hundred miles. He had been so long away that he had been given up for dead, and his exploits, carried through with such success, aroused great enthusiasm. Unhappily, his second journey, undertaken in 1805, ended in disaster; he and all who were with him except one guide perished, after descending the Niger for about one thousand miles towards the coast, and only just failing to solve the problem of its outflow. In 1798 Francisco de Lacerda, a Portuguese explorer, lost his life on the Zambezi, and early in the nineteenth century Africa was actually crossed for the first time (so far as is known), by two Portuguese traders, from Mozambique to the west coast.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, when the European nations had been roused first to protest against and then to abolish the slave trade, a great deal of valuable work was done to increase the knowledge of Africa, especially by Englishmen. In 1823 W. Oudney, who was sent out as consul to Bornu, and H. Clapperton penetrated to Lake Chad, previously unvisited by any white man, and Clapperton afterwards explored the flourishing civilization of Bornu and Hausaland. He died on a second journey undertaken to open up trade with the Sultan of Sokoto; but in 1830 his servant on this last journey, Richard Lander, succeeded in solving one of the many problems which were beginning to present themselves to students of the continent—the question of the outlet of the Niger. He started from the Guinea coast, and followed the course of the river from Bussa to its mouth in canoes. Much good work was done also by A.G. Laing, who was the first European to visit Timbuktu (in 1826), but was killed there. R. CailliÉ, who succeeded in reaching the city in 1828, was the first to return from it in safety, which he did by crossing the Sahara to Tangier. H. Barth, who had already travelled all through North Africa, and had ascended the Nile to Wady Halfa, started in 1850 on a trading mission under the auspices of the British Government to the states of Central Africa; both his companions died, but Barth carried through alone a brilliant journey, in the course of which he travelled from Lake Chad to Timbuktu, and studied minutely many of the ancient civilized states of the region. Thus the geography of Senegal and the Niger had been largely cleared up by 1850. The great questions which remained untouched were those of the sources of the Nile and the Congo. By 1850 Abyssinia and the greater tributaries of the Nile were pretty well known, through the work of naturalists and travellers, the efforts of Austrian missionaries, who had established stations down to Gondokoro on the Nile, and the interest taken in exploration by Mahomed Ali, ruler of Egypt under the Turks. But the seventy miles of rapids above Gondokoro, and the fierce people of the Bari tribe who lived there, had prevented the acquisition of any but the most meagre knowledge of the upper reaches of the Nile beyond that point. The problem was now approached from a different direction. For some time missionaries had been working at Zanzibar, finding the natives there more tractable than in Abyssinia, the original field of their labours; and two of their number, L. Krapf and T. Redmann, had seen and sent home accounts of snow-mountains under the Equator—Kilimanjaro and Kenya—and also of the great lakes, which they imagined to be all parts of an enormous inland sea. Since the annexation of Aden by the British Government in 1839, moreover, officers of the English army stationed there had shown an interest in the exploration of the African coast opposite them; and in 1854 R.F. Burton got permission to try to reach the centre of Africa through Somaliland, with T.H. Speke. Burton first made a courageous and successful journey to the walled city of Harar in Abyssinia; but the more important stage of the expedition was unsuccessful owing to the suspicions of the Somalis. For thirty years after this Somaliland remained unexplored, and Burton and Speke, inspired by the accounts of the Zanzibar missionaries, devoted themselves to the discovery of the source of the Nile. They arrived at Zanzibar in 1856, and penetrated without much difficulty to the great plateau of Unyamwezi, where the Arab traders received them kindly, and thence to Lake Tanganyika. Burton was forced through illness to allow Speke to continue the work without him, and the latter saw, though from a distance, the waters of the Victoria Nyanza. Though he underestimated its size, he was convinced that here was the answer to the question of the Nile source; but Burton, jealous of his success, refused to credit it, and endeavoured to prove that the Victoria Nyanza was nothing but a great swamp. In 1860, however, Speke set out again, with J.A. Grant, and verified and enlarged his previous discoveries. In face of immense difficulties due to mutinous porters and suspicious and warlike chiefs, he succeeded in making a rapid survey of the Victoria Nyanza, in exploring the unknown country of Uganda, and in finding the Ripon Falls, where the Victoria Nile leaves the lake. In spite of the great gaps in Speke’s knowledge, his ideas on the relative importance of the Nile tributaries and of the geography of the lakes were very accurate, and the honour of settling the old question of its source must be given to him. Speke and Grant were met on their return at Gondokoro on the Nile by Samuel Baker, who had come with help and reinforcements for them, and he took up the work of definitely locating the Albert Nyanza, of which Speke had heard various accounts. Though he and his wife passed through terrible dangers and difficulties, they completed their task, finding the Albert Nyanza, and journeying along the Victoria Nile as far as the Murchison Falls. The importance of Baker’s discovery, however, was somewhat vitiated by his erroneous judgment of the size of the Albert Nyanza, which he made far too large; he, like the other explorers who had gone before him, saw nothing of the great snow-range.

In other parts of Africa valuable work was being done. David Livingstone was always a missionary first, but his explorations form a nobler memorial than those of any other African traveller. He had been working in Africa since 1840; in 1849 he crossed the Kalahari desert, and reached Lake Ngami; and in 1852 he started on a great journey up the Zambezi, discovering the Victoria Falls, and crossing to the west coast; and returning followed the Zambezi to its mouth on the east coast, thus taking the first steps to fill a great blank which had previously existed on the map of Africa. Between 1858 and 1864 he did much good work in the exploration of Lake Nyasa and the lower Zambezi, and incidentally made splendid efforts to stop the trade in slaves which was still carried on in that region. But it is his last journey, which took the form of an expedition to discover the watershed between Lake Nyasa and Lake Tanganyika, that is of paramount interest from the geographical standpoint. He started from Zanzibar in 1866; and, in spite of continual and serious illness, he travelled from Lake Nyasa to Lake Tanganyika, discovered lakes Mweru, Mofwa, and Bangweulu, and also the river Lualaba, which he took for the upper part of the Nile. He was cheered and encouraged by meeting with H.M. Stanley in 1871, who had been sent out to him with money and servants; but in 1873 he died, worn out by his constant travels, and still searching for the “fountains” which he believed to form the ultimate source of the Nile.

In 1874 Stanley undertook and carried through in the face of terrible difficulties one of the most remarkable and valuable journeys in the history of African exploration. He settled the question as to the relative importance of the Albert Nyanza and the Victoria Nyanza, discovered the Mwuta Nzige (Lake Albert Edward), and crossed Africa from east to west, starting from Zanzibar and travelling down the Lualaba from the point where Livingstone had left it to its mouth, thus proving it to be the upper level of the Congo. This great journey opened up the hitherto unknown country in the centre of Africa, and led directly to the formation of the Congo Free State. Stanley had been preceded at Nyangwe, the point of departure for the voyage down the Congo, by Lovett Cameron, who failed, however, to follow the river throughout its course, and reached the coast to the south of its mouth. In 1884 Joseph Thomson supplemented Stanley’s work by his journey to Mounts Kilimanjaro and Kenya through Masailand to Victoria Nyanza. Wissmann and other German explorers (1881–6) did much for a knowledge of the great southern tributaries of the Congo, while Wissmann in 1881–2 crossed the continent from west to east. It has been frequently crossed since. Stanley’s expedition up the Congo to rescue Emin Pasha (1887–89) opened up the great Central Africa forest with its pigmies, extended our knowledge of Lake Albert Edward and its outlet the Semliki, which flowed into the Albert Nyanza, and revealed the great snowy range of Ruwenzori, which was ascended and mapped by the Duke of the Abruzzi in 1906.

While the problems of Central Africa were thus being elucidated, the exploration of the nine great rivers which form the Bahr-el-Ghazal, the chief tributary of the Nile, was attracting much attention, the most valuable work being done by Georg SchweinfÜrth, who mapped the river with high accuracy. The Nile above Gondokoro was also surveyed by English officers; the Sahara and the Sudan were widely explored by G. Rohlfs and G. Nachtigal between 1860 and 1875, and the connection of the river Welle with the Congo system was established by W. Junker, who also travelled in the Sudan from 1875 to 1886. The British during this period were pushing their way northward from South Africa, and emigrants were flocking to the goldfields and diamond mines. The French have spread their explorations over the Sahara and their territories in the Sudan and West Africa. From the date of Stanley’s return African history underwent a rapid change. The period of driving the main lines of exploration through the continent was over, and a new era began in which branch lines could be laid down, and colonial expansion could take place along them. The continent is now partitioned among the European Powers, and has been more or less provisionally mapped; but it will take long years of survey and scientific investigation before its features, its resources, its peoples, and its possibilities are adequately known.