An Enquiry into M. Antoine d'Abbadie's Journey to Kaffa, in the years 1843 and 1844, to discover the source of the Nile

Preface

TO THE SECOND EDITION. Ohortly after the publication of the First Edition of the present work, I addressed the following letter to M. de la Roquette, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Geographical Society of France, and published it under the title of Reasons for returning the Gold Medal of the Geographical Society of France, and for with drawing from its Membership. " Sir. — On the 18th July last, I had the honour of transmitting to M. Poulain de Bossay, President of the Central Committee of the Geo graphical Society of France, a memoir entitled ' Examen Critique du Voyage a Kaffa de M. Antoine d'Abbadie, dans les Annies 1843 et 1844, pour chercher la Source du Nil,' containing also an answer to certain statements respecting me made by that traveller in the Bulletin of the Society (3rd Series, vol. xii. pp. 157, 158), with the request that it might, in like manner, be inserted in the Bulletin ,- in reply to which I was favoured with your letter of the 9th August, informing me that my memoir had been communicated to the Central Committee on the 2nd of the same month, and that its further consideration had been post poned till the first meeting of the Committee in the month of October. " I have now to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 24th November, communicating to me a minute of the proceedings of the

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Central Committee at their meeting on the 18th October, to the following effect : — 'The General Secretary brought to the notice of the Central Com mittee — 1st, the manuscript memoir which Dr. Beke had addressed to the Society respecting M. Antoine d'Abbadie's Journey to Kaffa ; Undly, the notes of MM. Daussy and Walckenaer relative to the same ; 3rdly, M. d'Abbadie's answer in detail to each of Dr. Beke's observations; 4thly, the minute of the letter which M. de la Roquette had addressed to Dr. Beke, acknowledging the receipt of his memoir. ' The General Secretary then gave a summary of the facts of the case, and suggested that the Central Committee should bring to a close a discussion which they could not but deplore, and which had already occupied them only too long ; and, with this object, he pro posed that the Central Committee should refer all the papers relating to the matter to three of the Members who had already specially directed their attention to it, to be named for that purpose, in order that they might again examine the whole question and submit to the Committee a definite resolution on the subject, which should not be open to discussion. ' After hearing the observations of several of the Members, the Central Committee, believing themselves to be sufficiently informed, passed purely and simply to the order of the day.' " When I consider the past acts of the Central Committee with re ference to M. d'Abbadie and myself, I must confess that, however I may regret their present conduct, I am not surprised at it.

On repeated occasions they permitted M. d'Abbadie to speak of me in the Society's Bulletin (vol. iii. pp. 346, 349, 350 ; vol. ix. pp. 107, 108 ; vol. xii. pp. 146, 157, 158, 228), in a way quite unsuited for the official organ of a scientific body ; — when I desired to vindicate myself from an unjust accusation brought by him against me in that work, they not only refused to admit my vindication, but allowed him to place on record (vol. xiii. pp. 333, 334) an additional explanation, which was virtually a further inculpation of myself; — more recently (vol. xiii. pp. 384-391) they volunteered, on behalf of M. d'Abbadie, a direct attack on me in the Bulletin, in a highly adverse criticism of a Paper of mine in Berghaus's Physikalischer Atlas ; — they next awarded to M. d'Abbadie the annual prize of the Society for the most important discovery in geography, on PREEACE.

V account of his travels in Abessinia, of which his pretended journey to Kaffa forms the most important part ; — and now that they are asked to do me the bare justice of letting me in my turn be heard, — the discus sion which you so much deplore having hitherto been, in the Bulletin, all on one side, — they pass over my representations in contemptuous silence. " Such conduct, even if it be charitably supposed to have originated in ignorance of the real facts, has now assumed the character of direct partisanship and of a determination to withhold justice in a matter, which, however it may affect me individually, concerns far more the cause of science and of truth. "That cause it is unnecessary for me to advocate : I leave it to the protection of the scientific world at large. But, as regards myself personally, I cannot quietly submit to treatment which I consider as insulting as it is unjust.

" In the year 1846, the Geographical Society of France conferred on me its gold medal for my travels in Abessinia ; and following, as it did, the award of the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, this additional token of the estimation in which my labours were held by the Geographers of Europe was received by me with feelings of more than ordinary gratification. But when I now see the same Society not merely refusing to do justice, but actually descending from the position of a judge to assume the character of a partisan and advocate ; and when I also see it conferring a distinction, which, to be appreciated, ought only to be the reward of undoubted merit, on one who clearly does not possess that merit ; I feel that it would ill become me to retain such a distinction any longer.

" I owe it therefore to myself to lose no time in transmitting to you, as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Geographical Society of France, the gold medal which was so awarded to me, with the request that you will, in my name, deliver it up to the Society at its next General Meeting. " I have further to notify to you, in your said capacity, my withdrawal from the Society, and to request that my name may be omitted from the list of its Correspondents perpetuels. " As, in the critique in the Bulletin, it was stated that the pages of that Journal were open to any observations I might think proper to make VI

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. thereon, I prepared a reply accordingly, but did not deem it advisable to forward it to you for publication till I had learned the decision of the Central Committee respecting my " Examen critique." Of course, after what has occurred, I do not look for the appearance of that reply in the Bulletin ; but I have appended it to the present letter,* in order that it may be seen how totally unfounded the strictures are to which the Com mittee have given their sanction. I have the honour, &c." "London, December 2nd, 1850." This letter was communicated by M. de la Roquette to the Central Committee on the 20th December, and the following minute of its reception was inserted in the Bulletin of the Society (3rd Series, vol. xiv. p. 449). "Dr. C. Beke writes from London to the General Secretary a letter dated the 2nd December instant, asking to be struck off the list of Perpetual Correspondents and Members of the Society: at the same time he returns the gold medal which was awarded to him in 1846.

" The Central Committee decides that the General Secretary shall, purely and simply, address to M. Beke an acknowledgement of receipt, announcing to him that his name has been struck off the list of Members of the Society." A letter to that effect was accordingly written to me by M. de la Roquette. On the occasion of now publishing a Second Edition my Enquiry, I have incorporated with it the Reasons for returning the Gold Medal, and feel myself further bound to notice a Report of the Committee on the Annual Prize for the most important Discovery in Geography, which was presented to the Geographical Society of France on the 26th July, 1850, and printed in the * The "Reply" here adverted to is printed in the Appendix (IV.) to the present Edition, pages 57-63.

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. VII fourteenth volume of the Society's Bulletin (3rd Series, pp. 10-28). That Report contains dates and circumstances respecting M. d'Abbadie's "Journey to Kaffa," which are quite irreconcileable with the previous statements of that traveller commented on in the present work ; and though it might almost seem a work of supererogation to notice such further discrepancies, still, as the Report in ques tion professes to be the result of the deliberate con sideration of five scientific men of distinction, — namely, MM. Daussy, Walckenaer, Jomard, de la Roquette, and de Froberville, — I feel myself imperatively called on, both in deference to their position in the scientific world and also in my own justification, to make the following observations on some of the statements which have thus received the sanction of their names.

M. d'Abbadie's alleged residence in Kaffa is pre cisely the point which has always been attended with the greatest difficulties and shrouded in the deepest mystery. It is therefore satisfactory to me at least, to see in the Report the explicit declaration (Bulletin, p. 19) that "he remained in that country fourteen days" only, and that " on the 19th December 1843, he, with his escort, re-entered the country of Abba Bogibo." But, unfortunately, this declaration rests on a moral as well as on a physical impossibility. For, after what has been said by M. d'Abbadie (page 30, post) respecting the "interminable formalities" to which he was subjected even on crossing the frontiers of Kaffa, it cannot be conceived that all the formalities con nected with taking away from her brother a princess,

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. whose hand the powerful king of Enarea had sought in vain during ten years, should have been completed and terminated within the brief period of fourteen days — to say nothing of the total insufficiency of that time for the satisfaction of the king of Kaffa's curiosity with regard to the " mysterious white stranger," on whose account he had at length consented to part with his much-loved sister. And, further, it was originally stated by M. d'Abbadie (pages 6 and 29, post), that on his way into Kaffa he crossed the river Godjeb by means of a suspension-bridge because the waters were high, but that on leaving that country in the dry season he waded across the stream ; yet now it appears from the Report, that there was an interval of only fourteen days between those two widely different states of the river, — states which could not have existed but at two different seasons of the year, separated by a considerable interval of time !

Compared with such glaring inconsistencies as these, the following one may well be looked on as a trifle. Still I cannot but express surprise at its having been allowed to appear in the Report (Bulletin, p. 19), that " the country which M. d'Abbadie passed through on his way to Bonga, the capital of Kaffa, reminded him by its rich vegetation of the beautiful forests of Brazil ;" seeing that, on a former occasion (page 38, -post) , he had expressly denied the existence of any such forest, and said that he " passed between both \i. e., Enarea and Kaffa] in a country open and pretty well cultivated." This extraordinary curtailment of the time of M.

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. IX d'Abbadie's alleged residence in Kaffa, has had the advantage of enabling him to allow a more reason able time for his return from Enarea to Godjam, and thus to meet the objection made on this score (pages 8— 9, post). The Report now states (Bulletin, p. 19) that he quitted the former kingdom on the 25th February, 1844, and entered Godjam on the 10th April following, and that "as he was now returning into a country where the name of M. Arnauld d'Abbadie possessed great authority, M. Antoine became an im portant personage in the caravan," and had it in his power to induce the merchants to leave their usual road, and, passing through regions inhabited by tribes with whom most probably they were not in alliance, (if not actually at war,) to enter Godjam by the distant ford of A'muru. But how is this turning aside from the usual route to be reconciled with the previous statement (page 7, post), that M. Arnauld d'Abbadie was anxiously awaiting his brother on the ordinary and direct caravan route, encamped with a well-armed troop, ready to retaliate on the merchants of Enarea for the detention of the latter?

And what becomes of M. Arnauld d'Abbadie's great authority, as well as of his said encampment near the ford of Guderu in Godjam, when, in the very next page of the Report (Bulletin, p. 20), we read that while An toine was thus absent in Enarea, Dedjach Goshu, from whom alone Arnauld derived whatever authority he might have possessed, had been defeated and taken prisoner by his powerful rival, Ras Ali, and that in consequence he (Arnauld) had quitted Godjam and gone X

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. to Gondar as a suppliant on behalf of his captive patron ? On a former occasion, M. d'Abbadie stated (Athenæum, No. 1041, p. 1056,) that on his second journey he had to place himself under the protection of a female, in order to get over the difficulty of passing the frontiers between the tribes of Giideru and Djimma, who were alleged to have been then at war : it is now asserted in the Report (Bulletin, p. 18), that it was on the first journey that the adventurous traveller met with this guardian angel. In the Resume' of his Travels sub mitted to the French Academy of Sciences (Comptes Rendus, vol. xxix. p. 656, and page 29, post), it is stated that it was the enduring love of Abba Bdgibo for the sister of the king of Kaffa, that enabled our traveller to make his extraordinary excursion to the latter country: now (Bulletin, p. 25), it is " une fan taisie " of the same Abba Bdgibo for a daughter of Ras Ali as his fourteenth wife, that so fortunately enabled the two brothers, after being subjected to every sort of detention, indignity, and annoyance, to quit Enarea the second time " with all possible honours."

The account which the Report gives of the second journey itself varies generally from that contained in the Athenæum of the 9th October, 1847 (see page 34, post), and especially in one remarkable particular. The quarrel in Djimma, in which Messrs. Bell and Plowden are alleged to have taken part, M. Arnauld d'Abbadie being present, is now stated (Bulletin, p. 24) to have occurred subsequently to the arrival of both the brothers in Enarea.

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. XI In pages 31 and 32 of the present work, we have three different versions given by M. d'Abbadie of the reasons for his second journey to Enarea, and of the circum stances under which that journey took place. It will not then be regarded as at all surprising that the Report should contain a fourth version differing materially from all the preceding ones. According to this statement, it would appear that M. d'Abbadie, after his return from his first journey, joined his brother at Gondar on the 30th July, 1844, and that there — " The two brothers discussed, with the most scrupulous attention, all the information they had been able to collect respecting the various streams which contribute to form the White Nile, in order to ascertain which of them ought to be regarded as the principal one, and as forming consequently the true source of that river.

After the most serious investigation, they were convinced that the Godjeb which flows round Kaffa in a sort of spiral, must, jointly with the Uma, form the eastern branch, which above the island of Jeanker is, according to M. d'Arnaud, the principal affluent of the White Nile. Consequently, it was the larger of those two streams, the Uma and the Godjeb, which ought to be considered as the true head of the Nile ; and they resolved there fore, in spite of the difficulties and dangers which such an enterprise presented, to undertake a second journey to Enarea, in order to deter mine definitively those famous sources * But before embarking on his perilous career, he [M. Antoine d'Abbadie] had once more to return to Massdwa, on the shores of the Red Sea, to obtain fresh means for pursuing his labours.

Leaving Gondar on the 28th September, 1844, he reached Adowa on the 10th October and Massowa on the 26th ; and he afterwards returned to Gondar, where he arrived on the 20th December."— Bulletin, pp. 20—23. That is to say, "the most serious investigation" on the part of the two brothers left the true source of the Nile so much a matter of doubt, as to render a second

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. XII journey necessary for deciding the question, and M. d'Abbadie went down to Massowa in October, 1844, to obtain means for the journey ; yet when there (see pages 14 and 3], post), he, without any " tormenting idea" of the consequences of such an act, deliberately " misled geographers in a matter of this importance," by sending off letters to Europe, wherein he " announced that [he] had proved by a variety of oral testimony that . . . the main branch of this mighty river is the Godjeb." After the contradictory accounts previously given by M. d'Abbadie to the French Geographical Society and Academy of Sciences and printed in their Bulletin and Comptes Rendus respectively, and which were, or should have been, well known to M. Daussy and his colleagues, it is with pain I see statements like the foregoing adopted by them without the slightest reservation.

It is for them to explain what to me is utterly unintelli gible, as indeed it will probably be to every one of my readers. Those savans have also to show on what authority they describe (Bulletin, p. 14) the mysterious " Ilmorma writing" (see page 59, post) as "coming from a people who appear to be composed of Jews, and who dwell in about the eighth degree of [north] latitude." As far as I am aware, this is the first time that such a Jewish people was ever heard of; and the writing in question is by M. d'Abbadie himself affirmed to be a proposal of marriage and friendly alliance addressed to Dedjach Goshu, the Christian ruler of Godjam, by Abba Bogibo, king of Enarea, who is a Mohammedan Galla. I can with difficulty bring myself to conceive that

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. XIII the Central Committee of the Geographical Society of France, deceived as they may have been in the first instance, can still continue to give credence to M. d'Abbadie's ever-changing representations. Should it however really be, that, in spite of all the contradictions, inconsistencies, improbabilities, nay, even impossibilities, of that traveller's various assertions, they still confide in him, — their right to do which I will not for a moment question, — it is surely due to science that they should avowedly advocate his cause and (if possible) refute my arguments, instead of allowing their Bulletin to be the medium of the repeated attacks on me which have been made in it during several years past, and which, no longer directed against me by name, have now (3rd Ser. vol. xiv. p. 443 ; 4th Ser. vol. i. pp. 237, 243, 407) assumed the form of covert innuendo or indirect allusion.

What has occasioned this treatment has been my determination not to let the public be deceived. In the course which I have thus adopted, I have not shrunk from encountering all the annoyances of a controversy, which may on the surface have too much the appear ance of being of a personal character. The main question, however, to which the personal one is merely ancillary, is the solution of a great geographical problem, namely, the true position of the sources of the Nile. On this subject my opinions are already sufficiently before the world. It is unnecessary therefore to enter into particulars now ; and I may content myself with repeating here what I recently had occasion to express in the Athenæum of the 29th of March last (No. 1222, p. 353), in answer to a misrepresentation made in the Bulletin : —

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. ''Whether the final discovery of the sources of the Nile in the Mountains of the Moon remains to be effected from the north or from the east, it is evidently not far distant ; and I feel confident that the substantial cor rectness of my views respecting that river will eventually be established." London, 5th August, 1851.

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TO THE FIRST EDITION. Upwards of three years ago, M. Antoine d'Abbadie became aware, through his friend Mr. Frederick Ayrton, that I entertained doubts respecting the reality of the journey which forms the subject of the following pages. Instead of meeting those doubts in an open and candid manner, either by calling on me to substantiate them or by showing them to be unfounded, M. d'Abbadie commenced, in the columns of the Athenæum, a series of attacks on me respecting matters, both scientific and personal, which have no relation whatever to the subject of my doubts. These attacks gave rise to a lengthened controversy; which controversy was, after M. d'Abbadie's return to Europe last year, transferred by him from the Athenæum to the Bulletin of the French Geographical Society, where it is not yet finally closed.

It might perhaps have been more prudent to have allowed M. d'Abbadie's attacks to remain unnoticed, and merely published the evidence on which my doubts respecting his journey were based. But had I adopted that course, many of the proofs which I can now lay

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. before the public would not have been at my com mand, as they have only been elicited by the controversy itself. It is now, however, time that the real question between M. d'Abbadie and myself should be brought prominently forward. I believe that the journey to Kaffa, alleged to have been performed by him in the years 1843 and 1844, did not take place; and the reasons for this belief are here submitted to the public, with the convic tion that they will be acknowledged to be conclusive. Being desirous of not keeping up the controversy in the Athenæum longer than was absolutely necessary, I refrained from noticing several of M. d'Abbadie's letters inserted in that Journal. Those letters are now given in an Appendix, together with my refutation of their contents ; which, while it will show that great forbearance has been exercised in allowing them to remain so long unanswered, will at the same time afford additional evidence of the little dependence to be placed on that traveller's statements respecting the countries which he professes to have visited.

C. B. St. Mildred's Court, London, October 10 th, 1850. AN ENQUIRY, &c. In the year 1837, MM. Antoine and Arnauld d'Abbadie left Europe, " with the express intention " — as the former has recently asserted, though he says that they at first " kept it a secret" — "of visiting the source of the White Nile, which [they] believed with Bruce to be situated in Kafl'a."1 From that time till very recently, with the exception of some brief intervals, the two brothers were resident in Eastern Africa ; and the reports of their proceedings, from time to time received in Europe from the elder of them, M. Antoine d'Abbadie, naturally attracted the attention of geographers and other men of science, and excited a well-founded desire to be made more fully acquainted with the results of so many years' observations and researches in that very interesting por tion of the globe.

In the beginning of the year 1845, letters were received, both in France and in England, from M. d'Abbadie, containing many particulars respecting the countries lying beyond Abessinia to the south, and, among them, of the kingdom of Kaffa.2 This country was described by him as being a peninsula surrounded by the river Godjeb, which river he said he had ascertained to be the upper course of the Bahr el Abyad, the direct stream of the Nile, recently explored by the Turco- Egyptian expeditions fitted out by command of the late Mohammed AH Pasha.3 311; Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, 1845, vol. i. pp. 260, 365 ; vol. ii. pp. 107, 218. 3 See D'Arnaud, in Bulletin, 2nd Series, vol. xviii. p. 367; vol.xix. pp. 89, 445 ; Werne, Reise zur Entdeck ung der Quellen des Weissen Nil (Berlin, 1848), passim. 1 See M. d'Abbadie's declaration to that effect in the Athenæum of January 27th, 1849, No. 1109, page 93. 2 See Athenæum, No. 906, p. 242; No. 911, p. 360; No. 918, p. 542 ; Bulletin de la Societe de O&ogra phie, 3rd Series, vol. iii. pp. 52, 133, B Had M. d'Abbadie's intelligence stopped here, it would have been but little more than a confirmation of what I myself had learned, while in Southern Abessinia in February, 1843, from an intelligent native merchant named 'Omar ibn Nedjat; whose map, giving a similar course to the Godjeb and making that river a tributary but not the head stream of the Bahr el Abyad, was exhibited by me to the Royal Geographical Society of London on the 13th of November of that year,1 and was subsequently published in that Society's Journal."

But M. d'Abbadie's announcement went much further. He stated that, in the year 1843, he had actually succeeded in penetrating to Enarea, and thence into Kafia by crossing the Godjeb — or Nile, as he asserted it to be — within only two days' journey, or about thirty miles distance, from its source.3 It is certainly not a little surprising that the traveller, when so near the interesting spot which he says he had then been up wards of six years in search of, should have neglected or abstained from visiting it, and should have contented himself with merely repeating to the scientific world the meagre details respecting it which he had picked up among the inhabitants of the country. From the information, however, thus obtained, the source of the Godjeb, which is held sacred by the natives of Kaffa and at which they yearly offer up a solemn sacrifice, is described as being " a small spring, issuing from the foot of a large tree of the sort which serves in Ethiopia for washing cotton cloths.

To the right and to the left are two high hills, wooded to the summit, called Boshi and Doshi,"4 in a district named Gandjes, in the country of Gimiro or Gamru, adjoining Kaffa. And in furnishing these particulars, M. d'Abbadie ex presses the opinion that, as " it is an historical fact that, prior to the sixteenth century, the Arabs were in constant communica tion with the countries of Harrargie and Dawaro, they probably derived from thence their information respecting the source of the Nile ; and that, in speaking of the two mountains of Gandjes, they may have said the mountains of Gamru (Djabal al Qamr) ; "5 and, inasmuch as the Arabic word gamr or qamr signifies moon, he conjectures that " hence arose the curious error of the Mountains of the Moon." 6 M. d'Abbadie's hypothesis respecting the Godjeb has already been discussed by me in various communications made to the 1 See Journal of the Royal Geo graphical Society, vol. xiii. p. 255 ; Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, 1846, vol. iii. p. 225. 3 Vol. xvii. part 1. 3 Bulletin, vol. iii. p. 313 ; Nottv.

Ann. 1845, vol. ii. p. 112. 4 Ibid. 1845, vol. ii. p. 112. 5 Ibid. p. 113. 6 Ibid. Bulletin, vol. iii. p. 315. scientific world ; and I believe I have demonstrated that this river is not the upper course of the Nile, or Bahr el Abyad, explored by the Turco-Egyptian expeditions, but merely that of the Sobat, Telfi, Bahr el Makadeh, or River of Habesh, one of the principal tributaries of the Nile, which joins the main stream in about 9° 20' north latitude ; and I have also adduced reasons for the opinion entertained by me, that the Nile itself comes from the unknown regions beyond the Equator, where Mr. Rebmann has lately discovered the snowy mountain, Kili mandjaro,1 — forming, as I conceive, a portion of the snow capped Mountains of the Moon, — to t!Jj SeAuW °poe — in which the sources of the Nile were placed, as early as the second century of our era, by the Alexandrian geographer, Ptolemy.2 I shall not, however, enter here into any investigation of the general subject; it being my intention to confine myself to an enquiry into the circumstances of the journey to Enarea and Kaffa, which M. d'Abbadie has publicly asserted he performed in the years 1843 and 1844.

When the news of this journey first reached Europe, I at once saw reason to entertain doubts as to the correctness of several points connected with it. These doubts, instead of becoming weaker, were much strengthened when, in the course of the year 1846, while engaged in preparing the materials for my "Essay on the Nile and its Tributaries,"3 I had occasion to examine the various details of this journey published both in England and France. And since that time M. d'Abbadie's further state ments, especially with reference to a second journey to Enarea alone said to have been performed by himself and his brother in the years 1845 and 1846, have supplied such a mass of evidence, as not only to satisfy me of the unreality of the for mer journey, but to warrant me in submitting to the judgement of the scientific world the objections to that journey which I now feel it to be my duty to make.