From the best-selling author of Stanley, a riveting account of the explorers who risked everything in their search for the source of the Nile Nothing obsessed explorers of the mid-nineteenth century more than the quest to discover the source of the White Nile. It was the planet's most elusive secret, the prize coveted above all others. Between 1856 and 1876, six larger-than-life men and one extraordinary woman accepted the challenge. Showing extreme courage and resilience, Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke, James Augustus Grant, Samuel Baker, Florence von Sass, David Livingstone, and Henry Morton Stanley risked their lives and reputations in the fierce competition. Award-winning author Tim Jeal deploys fascinating new research to provide a vivid tableau of the unmapped "Dark Continent," its jungle deprivations, and the courage—as well as malicious tactics—of the explorers.
On multiple forays launched into east and central Africa, the travelers passed through almost impenetrable terrain and suffered the ravages of flesh-eating ulcers, paralysis, malaria, deep spear wounds, and even death. They discovered Lakes Tanganyika and Victoria and became the first white people to encounter the kingdoms of Buganda and Bunyoro. Jeal weaves the story with authentic new detail and examines the tragic unintended legacy of the Nile search that still casts a long shadow over the people of Uganda and Sudan.
Tim Jeal is also the biographer of Henry Morton Stanley (National Book Critics' Circle Award in Biography and Sunday Times Biography of the Year 2007), and Robert Baden-Powell, which (like Livingstone) was chosen as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times and the Washington Post. In 2011 his Explorers of the Nile was a New York Times Editor's Choice and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week.
Table of Contents
Illustrations ix
Plates xiii
Maps xvii
Introduction 1
Part I Solving the Mystery
1 Blood In God's River 13
2 A Great Misalliance 36
3 A Rush of Men Like a Stormy Wind 45
4 About a Rotten Person 56
5 Everything Was to be Risked for This Prize 65
6 Promises and Lies 95
7 A Blackguard Business 112
8 Our Adventurous Friend 122
9 As Refulgent as the Sun 145
10 An Arrow into the Heart 156
11 Nothing Could Surpass It! 166
12 The Nile is Settled 178
13 A Hero's Abberrations 190
14 Death in the Afternoon 199
15 The Doctor's Dilemma 209
16 The Glory of Our Prize 215
17 A Trumpet Blown Loudly 241
18 Almost in Sight of the End 246
19 Never to Give Up the Search Until I Find Livingstone 257
20 The Doctor's Obedient and Devoted Servitor 270
21 Threshing Out the Beaten Straw 279
22 Nothing Earthly Will Make Me Give Up My Work 285
23 Where Will You Be? Dead or Still Seeking the Nile? 294
24 The Unknown Half of Africa Lies Before Me 310
Part 2 The Consequences
25 Shepherds of the World? 329
26 Creating Equatoria 335
27 An Unheard of Deed of Blood 345
28 Pretensions on the Congo 352
29 An Arabian Princess and a German Battle Squadron 359
30 'Saving' Emin Pasha and Uganda 365
31 The Prime Minister's Protectorate 376
32 To Die for the Mahdi's Cause 385
33 Equatoria and the Tragedy of Southern Sudan 395
34 A Sin not Theirs: The Tragedy of Northern Uganda 406
CODA Lacking the Wand of an Enchanter 422
Appendix: Fifty Years of Books on the Search for the Nile's Source 438
"Jeal recounts each perilous expedition to unlock the secrets of the Nile watershed with an astonishing clarity and depth that brings to life the hazardous environs of equatorial Africa." —-Booklist
Interviews
Praise for Tim Jeal’s Stanley, winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
"A magnificent new life. . . . There have been many biographies of Stanley, but Jeal's is the most felicitous, the best informed, the most complete and readable and exhaustive, profiting from his access to an immense new trove of Stanley material."—Paul Theroux, front page, New York Times Book Review "[An] impressive, revealing, and well written biography. . . . Tim Jeal has had both the good fortune to see [Stanley's] papers and the skill to construct a new interpretation around them. He recognizes Stanley's feats and views them in the context of his age rather than ours. Moreover, he adds new layers to his subject's character."—David Gilmour, New York Review of Books
"[T]his commanding, definitive biography . . . is an unalloyed triumph."—Jason Roberts, Washington Post Book World
“Sympathetic yet balanced, perceptive and full of perspective, this is biography at its best.”—Ross Leckie, The Times London
Named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2007 by the New York Times Book Review
Selected as one of the best books of 2008 by the Washington Post
Nominated for the 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography
