. Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian Institution; Smithsonian Institution. Archives; Discoveries in science. 418 GEOGRAPHIC CONQUESTS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. powers of Europe, while the possession of India and the Americas cost thousands and tons of thousands of lives lost in ])attle. The hist(jry of the exploration of Africa centers in the discovery of the sources of the four great rivers of the continent, the Nig-er, the Zambezi, the Nile, and the Kongo. In a mighty torrent they swept into the Atlantic and Indian oceans on the west and east a
. Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian Institution; Smithsonian Institution. Archives; Discoveries in science. 418 GEOGRAPHIC CONQUESTS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. powers of Europe, while the possession of India and the Americas cost thousands and tons of thousands of lives lost in ])attle. The hist(jry of the exploration of Africa centers in the discovery of the sources of the four great rivers of the continent, the Nig-er, the Zambezi, the Nile, and the Kongo. In a mighty torrent they swept into the Atlantic and Indian oceans on the west and east and into the Mediterranean on tlie north, but of the four, the Nile only was known for any coiisid('ra])h' distance. Bruce, in the last half of the eighteenth century, had penetrated from the Red Sea to the head waters of the Blue Nile in Abyssinia and had followed tin- hitter to its junction with the Nile near Ber})er, and then down the Nile to Cairo; but he had not solved the secret of that evei'liowing stream whose waters had for thou- sands and thousands of years made the valley of Egyi)t the granary and garden of the world. To-day the Nile has ]»een scientitically <'xplored for its entire length of 8,400 miles; the Niger, with the excep- tion of a small portion of its middle course, for 2,H00 miles; the Zambezi, foi-1,500 miles; and the Kongo, which in volume is exceeded onl}^ by the Aniazon, for nearly 8,0UO miles. The course of the Niger was determined earl}- in the nineteenth century and is the record of one man's work and life. Mungo Park, a Scottish surgeon, then but 24 years of age, but aln^ady well-known for his discovery of several new tishes in Sumatra, in LT05 undertook to determine for the African Association of London the course of the Niger. Starting from Gambia in December, he reached Segu on the Niger in the summer of 1796, and sm^ceeded in ascending it for several hundred miles as far as Bamaku. Ten years later, , he returned to Bamaku, resolved thi
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