Explorers of the Nile

After the 1850s, there were two holy grails to chase and challenge for the world’s greatest explorers — the discovery of the source of the Nile and the continuing search for the Northwest Passage, celebrated for the disappearance of Franklin, his ships and crew. Jeal’s epic and exceptional book deals with the African quest, unsurprisingly since he has already written about the less-than-saintly Livingstone and much-maligned Stanley in earlier books.

Here he is on the same ground — or, one might say, quicksand — in dealing with the explorers who set off into the African hinterland to uncover the mystery of the river that bedazzled the world since the time of Alexander.

Mid-century adventurers included the anti-slaver Livingstone, the arch-pioneer Stanley, the duelling army officers Burton and Speke, his companion James Grant and imperialist Samuel Baker and his young wife, bought in a Balkan slave market.

The great expeditions pitted the explorers against incredible terrain as well as hostile natives and rampant disease.

Burton and Speke were at each other’s throats, the former claiming the prize as Lake Tanganyika and the latter Lake Victoria. It was a brutal contest with Speke accidentally killed (claims Jeal) on a hunting trip just prior to a public battle between the two claimants.

Jeal works the magic of the journeys to the extent that we feel one with the explorers in their hopes and fears as they encounter danger on an enormous scale.

This is a story, however, of triumph and tragedy, as the book’s sub-title so aptly expresses it.

Livingstone was searching too far off the Nile map, while Speke was able to correctly define the source despite the desperate lies and arrogance of Burton.

There is romance, too, as Speke woos, with an “overflowing heart”, a beautiful African woman during his sojourn in Buganda.

Stanley’s journeys of sheer endurance are great to follow in themselves. He, of course, found the “lost” Livingstone, which made his reputation, and then went on to become the rogue King Leopold’s spearhead in the Congo.

But it is the grandfather of all these penetrating odysseys with whom we should have the most sympathy, trudging ever on into the interior, wracked by malaria and ulcers and paving the way for Christianity and colonialism.

Livingstone’s words, more than any other, modestly sum up the hardship behind the glory: “It is not all pleasure, this exploration”. If you are looking for adventure, this is a classic.