Writings

[6214]

The Catholic faith and Christian civilisation in Central Africa, that is our sublime apostolate in the great work of the Redemption of Africa. We are campaigning under this sacred and glorious banner, blessed by the Vicar of Christ and by the Holy Apostolic See. Faith and civilisation were never enemies of one another: and whatever earthly philosophy says about this, whatever those who cultivate the senses and materialism may think of it, whatever proud unbelievers may insinuate, it is a fact that Faith and Civilisation go hand in hand and the one will never go without the other. The Catholic faith, by the preaching of its dogmas, principles, teachings and its divine moral instructions always brings with it, generates and gives birth to true Christian civilisation. This in turn, embraced and followed by the pagan peoples, is, through a powerful and irresistible impulse, necessarily carried and impelled to bind itself to true faith, as to its centre, in which it recognises its indivisible friend, teacher and mother.

[6215]

This is why in our Annals we will also attempt to make known to our dear benefactors, together with the difficulties, work, successes and apostolate of the missionaries and Sisters of our African Institute in Verona, the material progress promoted by them, the discoveries, the scientific work and the results of true Christian civilisation in Central Africa. We intend by so doing to give glory to Jesus Christ, who is the only source of redemption and of life, the true source of civilisation and of the salvation of pagan peoples, the indestructible foundation of the true greatness and prosperity of the civilised nations of the world.
Many of our readers, even quite educated and learned ones, know nothing about Africa, its geography, its history, its customs and its peoples. Thus without an exact and precise idea of the field of our apostolic toils, they cannot have a right idea and judgement of the size, difficulties and details of our holy Mission.

[6216]

It is necessary for us to give an accurate account of the field, bristling with thorns, in which we sweat and toil. It is necessary for us to make Africa well known, especially Central Africa. This is why we are now going to speak of Africa, from the historical, physical and social points of view, and in this issue we shall begin by giving our dear readers a very brief outline of the history of African discoveries. Their great importance will brilliantly reveal the sublime spectacle we are witnessing: the religious and scientific movement that is directing the gaze of Christian Europe to Central Africa.

[6217]

Scientific inventions and geographical discoveries determined the passage from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era, and they continuously increased so much over four centuries that the mind boggles at the changes that they have already made and that they are about to make for humanity. Greek genius could not aspire to a more brilliant triumph. This progress, which I would call almost violent and which, like industry, is the fruit of the division and association of labour, would not inspire wonder but fear if it were focused only on the comforts of life and leading humanity to base materialism. But if it is pleasant to believe that the scientific inventions and the huge predominance of the positive sciences, rather than oppressing, actually help or promote the moral progress of peoples, no one can doubt that this good is mainly due to the development of our knowledge of the earth and its inhabitants.

[6218]

Geography that was born and grew through emigrations and the establishment of colonies, through the spirit of religion and the thirst for conquests, through scientific journeys on land and sea, both asks questions of and furnishes answers to scientific and moral sciences. It is as varied in character as the elements that compose it. The discoveries made in geography are important not only for science, but also for politics and religion.

[6219]

This is why we have witnessed in the capitals of the major states of Europe and America the appearance of Geographical Societies patronised by Governments, the inauguration of Academies, journals and publications in all formats which follow scientific progress, in which experts sometimes resolve problems that are later confirmed by the eye of the traveller. We saw the Holy Apostolic Missionary Societies and that army of Christ’s supporters penetrating with the Cross and the Gospel where neither the sword nor greed for money nor the noble love of science had been able to make any headway.

[6220]

Of all the corners of the world, Africa is the one which in the past has given rise to the most daring maritime explorations and in our day to the greatest and the most interesting discoveries. Since it is not rich in islands and inlets, and is more than three times the size of Europe, it does not offer navigators appropriate landing places or safe harbours. For those who dare to penetrate its interior which is as uniform as its coastline, there are difficulties and dangers which bear no comparison with the huge oceans or their rocky shores, the plains and forests of the New World, the ices of the polar seas, the high summits of the Andes and the Himalaya, or the deserts of Central Asia and their tribes. The maps of Asia and America are quite complete. The explorers of the polar seas endured 48 degrees of cold and, it is said, as low as 55 and 60 degrees Réaumur, crossed the glaciers and saw the spectacle of a sea without ice at the higher latitudes; and all this was achieved after few centuries of research and with few victims of science.

[6221]

In Africa, instead, the rivers themselves, unlike those on other continents, do not constitute the great routes for commerce and civilisation, but are very difficult and sometimes impossible to navigate, due at times to cataracts, sand banks and numerous islands, or at other times to the low river banks and shallow beds from which they overflow like lakes and form stagnant pools and marshes as they recede, or flow slowly with small and narrow channels which, often still far from the sea, disappear under the sands and salty dunes. But even if Europeans overcome all the obstacles, crossing the vast burning deserts of sand that separate Africa from the rest of the world and the fertile and well-populated regions from each other, even if they vanquish the fierce beasts that wander from the hills to the plains and live on the banks and deep in the beds of the rivers and lakes, even if they pass unharmed through the African tribes whose instincts are unrestrained by any civil or religious laws, they will still have the deadly climate as their enemy, with temperatures in the shade and in the north rising to 35 to 45 degrees Réaumur, and in the sun on the burning sands of the deserts they have to cross, rising sometimes to over 50, 55 and 60 degrees Réaumur above zero.

[6222]

The history of the discoveries of the African continent consists of a sad list of heroes who have died for religion or science. Gumprecht, from only the beginning of the last century until 1848, counted fifty-three illustrious European explorers who died in Africa: Monatsberichten of the Berlin Geographical Society, 1848. After so many generous victims, after so many explorations which began many centuries before the Christian era, we still do not know the system of the major rivers of Africa; and the most recent and most diligently prepared maps only give a satisfactory scientific representation of little more than two thirds of its huge surface area.

[6223]

This struggle of apostolic zeal and scientific investigation against all the obstacles which prevent one from penetrating the African interior regions, far from ceasing due to the seriousness of the sacrifices and the slight progress, was never pursued with more enterprising perseverance than in our day by the Catholic Church and civilisation as well as by the scientific world.
The progress of geographical discoveries, which has spread over Africa with admirable energy and perseverance from 1840 to this day, is one of the achievements most worthy of admiration and interest in the 19th century. It would seem that by giving it extraordinary extension and momentum, the nations of Europe are obeying, by tacit agreement, a single line of thought: to expose to the efforts of a civilising conquest a continent which, for no plausible reason, had remained the object of systematic neglect. For many centuries, it seemed that Africa was condemned to go backward, rather than advancing and progressing in this respect. And yet history records the capture of the capital of Ethiopia which happened about a hundred years before the departure of the tribe of Israel from Egypt. Joseph called it Saba, and said it was very strong and located on the river Astosabos; and asserted that Cambise, King of Persia, changed its name from Saba to that of Meroe, in honour of his sister Meroe.

[6224]

History also records the emigration of 240,000 Egyptian warriors who, under Psamtik, the first Egyptian king to have ruled after the final expulsion of the Ethiopian kings from Egypt, settled on an island to the south of Meroe, that is to the south of the modern Khartoum, between the rivers Astosabos (the Blue Nile) and Astapus (the White Nile, down to Sobat), and eight days’ journey from the Nubae, or Nubatae (perhaps the Nuba tribes of the south of Kordofan, which were then more widespread to the east). Herodotus, (II:30 and ff.). This likewise reminds us of the journey around Libya made by the Phoenicians, ordered by Necho in 609 B.C, as mentioned by Herodotus (IV:42); and also the journey of the Carthaginian Hanno, undertaken in about 500 B.C., as referred to by the minor Greek geographers edited by Froben in 1533, in accordance with a 10th century manuscript preserved in the Library of Heidelberg.

[6225]

Later, the Roman forces spread from these parts. Petronius, a Roman general under Augustus in 30 B.C., took and destroyed Napata, the ancient capital of Tirhaka located on the great northern bend of the Nile, at Mount Barkal where there are still vast ruins. It is certain that Meroe, the capital of Queen Candace, mentioned in the New Testament (Acts of the Apostles 8:27) fell to the Romans. Nero, at the start of his reign, sent quite a remarkable exploratory expedition under two centurions with a military force to explore the source of the Nile and the countries to the west of the river Astapo, or White Nile, which in those distant times was believed to be the real Nile. With the help of an Ethiopian sovereign, perhaps Candace, they crossed the region known as Upper Nubia to within 890 Roman miles of Meroe. In the last part of their journey they reached vast marshes, the extent of which nobody seemed to know, through which the channels were so narrow that even a small boat could hardly take a man through them. In spite of this they pursued their journey southwards until they saw the river cascading down or gushing from between the cliffs (perhaps beyond Gondokoro between Rejaf and Dufile, near Nyanza Albert). There they turned back, taking with them, for Nero’s use and information, the map of the regions through which they had passed. Later, Pliny, Strabo and other Roman authors came to know this part of the African interior, but without adding to it anything else that was important or new.

[6226]

Although history has handed down to us the record of these expeditions of so long ago, the ancients had no clear knowledge of the configuration of Africa, nor of the countries which the great Sahara Desert separates from Barbary. Egypt which, since the remotest times of antiquity, occupied such an eminent position in the world, and which spread to the south, propagating its institutions and customs over distances hardly reached today, seemed to have exhausted its mission. The rich and hard-working populations which antiquity saw establishing themselves on the Mediterranean coast, in Carthage, in Cyrenaica, in Numidia and in Mauritania, had disappeared leaving hardly any trace of their passage. Barbarianism had repossessed these fine provinces which Roman domination had carried to such a high degree of culture and civilisation. In the Middle Ages, Islam rushed like a torrent through north Africa from one end to the other, and pressed its incursions as far as the interior; and while it managed profoundly to modify states of mind, and to create ideas and customs which have lasted for centuries, it did not found in any of these parts any important or durable political establishment.

[6227]

One needs to move forward to the 15th century to see the dawn of a new era. Until that time there had only been a most imperfect idea of the configuration of Africa; and after Ptolemy, scientific notions had moved further away rather than closer to the truth. There was not even a vaguely precise idea except of the northern regions; and even the ancient maps of Sanudo, Bianco and Fra Mauro outrageously disfigured their outline. The maritime expeditions of the Portuguese, whose extraordinary initiative and perseverance immortalised the name of one of their greatest Princes, Henry the Navigator, discovered and revealed a new world. In 1434, Cape Baiador was identified; in 1482 the Gulf of Guinea was explored; in 1487 Bartolomeo Diaz reached and went beyond the Cape of Storms, later known as the Cape of Good Hope; and before the end of the century, between 1497 and 1499, Vasco da Gama passed this promontory and followed the eastern coast of Africa as far as Arabia.

[6228]

The map of Diego Ribera, published in 1529 at Seville in Spain and that of Dapper, which was published in 1676 at Amsterdam, were the first to give an exact profile of the African continent. Indeed, the latter seems to have surpassed, in several respects, the progress of modern geography.
Later, very many commercial establishments were founded on the coasts of Africa, and many attempts were made to establish colonies there. However, these never went beyond the coast, nor did they penetrate much into the interior. Indeed, the Portuguese made an early exploration of a large part of Central Africa, and in some way were a prelude on the banks of the Zambezi and in the Congo basin to the discoveries of Livingstone. After them, the French in Senegambia and the Dutch at the Cape of Good Hope touched parts of the African continent, but without considerably increasing the results achieved for science by the Portuguese efforts. The interior of this immense plateau, whose first slopes rise a few miles from the sea, still remained shrouded in impenetrable mystery, due both to the jealous policies of the government of Lisbon, which in accordance with the usage of the Phoenicians kept the state of its colonies and commercial enterprises secret from other peoples, and to the vagueness of the information provided by travellers and missionaries.

[6229]

D’Anville’s 1749 Map of Africa gives a precise picture of geographical knowledge of Africa in the mid-18th century.
However interesting the data and information may be that we owe to such worthy men as Battel, Lancaster, Keeling, Fernandez, Alvarez, Bonnaventura, Schouten, Le Maire, Brue, Barbot, Fr Krump, Kolbe, Atkins, Schaw, Smith, Moore, Norris, Sparman, Patterson, Le Vaillant, and a hundred others who between 1589 and 1790 dedicated themselves to exploring the African continent, the results of their travels are not up to the level of modern geographical science; and except for a few very rare cases, cannot be taken seriously.

[6230]

The institution which gave a scientific character to travels in general, and in particular to those in Africa, is the English association founded in London in 1788 for the progress of African discoveries, the British African Association. This gave rise to the great movement of exploration which has only reached its full extension in our day. Journeys grew more frequent and were organised in common. Africa was attacked from all sides; and the mysteries of its inner continent began to emerge from obscurity.

[6231]

The first traveller of the new period was the Englishman Browne, who from 1793 to 1796 travelled from Egypt to Darfur, crossing the Libyan desert on the eastern side. In 1794, the two Englishmen Watt and Winterbottom reached the land of the Fulbe. One year later, the Scot Mungo Park reached Joli-Ba. In 1798 and 1799 Federico Hornemann left from Cairo, crossed the oases of Siwa and Augila and reached Murzuk, where no European had ever been. From 1798 to 1800 Jacotin and Nouët, during General Bonaparte’s campaign, drew a map of Lower, Middle and Upper Egypt.

[6232]

During this 19th century yet more journeys were made to explore different parts of Africa, from the North East, from the North West, from the North and from the West.
In 1802 Denon explored Africa from Upper Egypt and gathered precious data on the western limits of the Libyan Desert. In 1803 Mohammed Ebn-Omar el-Tunsi, following the same route as Browne, crossed the Libyan desert and via Darfur went as far as the Wadai, where he gathered important ethnographic information; and in 1811, returning through the Libyan Desert, he progressed through the land of the Tibbu and reached Murzuk. Badia Aly Bey el Abbási explored the interior of Teli in Morocco, establishing the location of the main cities by means of astronomical observations. In 1810 Seetzen explored certain parts of the Libyan Desert, which were later explored in 1820–25, via Upper Egypt, by Minutoli, Ehrenberg, Hemprich, Scholtz, Gruoc, Soeltner after having visited the Oasis of Kiwa.

[6233]

In 1817–20 Caillaud explored the oases of Khargié and of Dâhhel, establishing their astronomical positions. Pacho, in 1826, explored the Maradi and Lech Erré oases as well as Cyrenaica and in 1832–33 Hoskyns made a complete map of the great Thebes oasis. Ritchie, leaving Tripoli in 1818, reached Murzuk where he died. The same route was covered by Lyon in 1819, and in 1821 Beechey made a map of the coast of the great Syrtis, and visited Cyrenaica; and in the same year Sultan Te i m a crossed the Libyan Desert to reach Darfur. In 1823 Belzoni from Padua, the great discoverer of the monuments of Egypt and Nubia, on his way to Timbuktu, was struck dead in the burning sands of the desert.

[6234]

In the Gulf of Guinea there is the estuary of a river which, by its vast dimension, by the complexity of its course and by the mystery of its origin offers a splendid comparison with the king of rivers, the Nile: it is the Niger. The efforts of travellers soon focused on solving this hydrographic problem. In the early years of this century, Mungo Park penetrated the Niger basin from Gambia. Faced with constant attacks by the natives, at the cost of enormous sacrifices and unheard of sufferings, he nonetheless followed the course of the river as far as Bussa where he died, after seeing most of his travelling companions perish. In 1810, Adams, after being shipwrecked on the west coast of Africa, was captured by a tribe of Mauri and taken into the interior. In 1816–20 Kutton reached Kumasi, capital of the Ashanti.

[6235]

In 1816–21, Peddie, Gray and Dochard explored the Rio Nuñez, and went to Bakel. In 1818, a French traveller, Mollieu, repeated the enterprise of Mungo Park and explored the basin of the Sénégal River and its tributaries, the Falémé and the Bafing. He did not reach the Niger, but he managed to find the sources of the Sénégal, the Gambia and the Rio Grande. In the same year, Bowdich explored a part of the Ashanti and of the Gold Coast. Laing explored the lands of Timami, Kuranko and Sulimana in southern Gambia. In 1823, John Adams explored Dahomey.

[6236]

In 1824–25 Grout de Beaufort made some important geographical observations on the Sénégal, the Falémé and the Gambia; and he explored the Bambuk and the Kaarta. In 1825–28 Riccardo Lander and Clapperton left Fort William on the Slave Coast to cross Dahomey and the Yoruba, and via Bussa and Zaria in the lands of the Fulbe. In 1826 Vidal surveyed the delta of the Niger and mapped it. In the same year Caillié, setting out from Kahandi on the west coast, went through Timbo, crossed the basins of the Sénégal and the Gambia, then cutting past the Mandinga territories, via Jinni, he became the first European to reach the mysterious city of Timbuktu on the Niger at the southern confines of the Sahara. From there he went on through Arawan, Taoudenni, Bel’Abbas and Tafilet to become the first European to explore the whole western part of the Sahara Desert.

[6237]

In 1829, Roussin explored and surveyed the whole coast of Senegambia. In 1830, the Lander brothers (Richard and John) went up the Niger as far as Sokoto; and Richard Lander, in 1832 for his third time in the Niger, searched for the confluence of the Benué. With Laird, Allen and Oldfield he navigated the lower reaches of the Niger, also known as Quorra, whose mouth had been the subject of so much discussion and research. He explored its estuary, and was the first to do so after Bussa in 1833. Between 1836 and 1845, Beecroft went up the great river three times, exploring the Wari effluent in the delta and mapping the river Efik, or Old Calabar. In 1839, Freeman explored a part of the Ashanti, and other parts were visited by Duncan in 1846, when he went to the interior of Dahomey. In 1841, Trotter, Allen and Thomson explored the lower reaches of the Niger in greater detail. In 1843–1844, Raffenel, Peyre-Ferry and Huard-Bessinières explored the Bambuk and the Falémé, and mapped an itinerary from the Sénégal to the Gambia. In 1846, Denham explored part of Dahomey and the Gold Coast, while Raffenel undertook a second exploratory journey in the Kaarta.

[6238]

Interesting works include those of: Irwing, and the explorations of Forbes who went to Dahomey in 1850; Hornberger and Brutschin, who in 1853 visited the Slave Coast and the Ew’é territory; Hutchinson, May, Crowther and Glover who in 1854 went up the Non branch of the Niger, and explored its course as well as the lower Benue. Equally well-known are the works of: Ecquard and Baikie on various parts of Guinea and the lower reaches of the Niger. The latter’s famous exploration, which took place in 1854, started from the Guinean coast and went up to the Benue, a mighty river, which he followed as far as Jola, the furthest point reached by Enrico Barth coming from the north. He mapped an itinerary from Lokoja to Nupe and to Kano.

[6239]

A few years later, under the initiative of General Faidherbe, the then Governor of Senegambia, several French naval officers (Lambert, who in 1860 went from Kakandi to Senù-Debù, crossing the Futa Giallon, and Mage and Quintin who in 1863 to 1866 went to Segù via the Kaarta) surveyed the upper reaches of the Niger. In 1869 Winwood Reade approached its source in the mountains near the sea, which define the border to the east with the establishment of Sierra Leone. In 1855, To w n s e n d went to Yoruba. In 1857, Scala reached Albeokuta from Lagos and visited the coastal area as far as the Old Calabar. In 1858, Anderson reached the city of Musardu in the interior via Sierra Leone; and Glover and May surveyed the lower reaches of the Niger and explored the Yoruba.

[6240]

In 1859, Vallon went at least twice from Waida to Abômé, the capital of Dahomey. In 1860, Pascal explored the Bambuk and the cataracts of Guïna on the Sénégal, and Jariez described the Rivers Siné and Salum. In 1861, Azan explored Walo, and Braouézec surveyed the Panié Ful lake and part of the Wolof territory. In 1862, Vallon explored the Casamance, and Martin and Bagay drew up a map of the Sérères states. The famous apostolic missionary, Fr Borghero from Genoa, studied and illustrated the kingdom of Dahomey after staying there many years and penetrating very far into the interior. Robins visited Lokoja on the Benue, and Gerard and Bonnat went to the mouths of the Niger and the New Calabar. In 1873, Buchholz, Lühder and Reichenow travelled the whole western coast; and Bonnat, in 1875, explored the River Volta as far as Salaga, a city that pays tribute to the Ashanti.

[6241]

In 1876, Dumaresq discovered in the Weme a river route linking Lagos with the interior of Dahomey; Crowther travelled from Lokoja as far as Lagos, and in 1877 Grenfell and Ross explored the wetlands of the lower reaches of the River Kamarun and drew up a geographical map of the area. Despite the gaps that still remain to be filled, these are important conquests in the African Interior; indeed, the Niger basin contains a series of densely populated tribes and states which are at least starting to have the beginnings of organisation. The recent expedition of the English against the Ashanti has, for its part, thrown new light on the neighbouring areas which are admirably fertile. So far the only constraints to the civilisation of these areas are the heat of the burning climate and the deadly miasmas of their marshes.

[6242]

To the north and to the west Algeria and Senegal in the hands of the French have become points of assault towards the great Sahara Desert which extends to the confines of these possessions. In this direction, they first encounter its most inhospitable part, the Sahel, a vast sandy and most arid plain with a few very rare oases, inhabited at various points by peoples formidable in their ferocity. Leopolde Panet, a French traveller who left from Senegal in 1852, explored its western extremity from St Louis of Mogador via Adrar and Wâd Nun. I shall not mention the explorations of the Algerian Sahara by Renou, Dr Cosson, Letourneux de la Perraudière, Fr Marês and De Colomb carried out between 1853 and 1861. In 1858, one of the most learned geographers of our time, H. Duveyrier, was fully successful in exploring the Sahara, that sea of sand where so many intrepid travellers have perished.

[6243]

He explored the central plateau of the Sahara between Gâbès, Gadâmes, Rhât, Murzùk and Tripoli, including the mountainous areas of Azgier. Also of great interest are the travels and scientific works of the explorers who between 1860 and 1879 explored the northern part of the African continent, among whom we should note here: Vincent, Bourrel, Colonieu, Burin, Abu-el-Moghdàd, Mircher, Vatonne, De-Polignac, De Colomb, Beaumier, Tissot, Muchez, Dournaux-Dupéré and Joubert (who were assassinated in the desert), Tirant and Rebatel, Roudaire, Parisot, Martin, Baudot, Fr Jaquemet, Le Châtelier, Largeau, Say, Masqueray, Des Portes and François.

[6244]

Scientific journeys were also made from Morocco and Tripoli to explore the northern part of the African continent. In 1829, Washington penetrated the interior of Morocco as far as Marrakesh, whose position he determined; G. Davidson, via Tangiers and western Morocco, went to Wàd-Nun, reached Wâdi Dhra’a and was assassinated at Suekeya in the Moroccan Sahara in 1836. In 1844–45, Barth explored the coasts of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Tripoli, Barca and Egypt. In 1845, Richardson went from Tripoli to Rhat via Ghedamis. In 1846–49, Fresnel gathered interesting information on Wadai and Darfur. In 1848, Prax made the first scientific journey from Tunis to Gerid, to Soûf and to Tugurt, returning via Biskra. Berbrugger, Dickson and Hamilton explored the Algerian Sahara, the lands of Tunis, Tripoli, Barca and a part of the Libyan Desert. In 1857, De Bonnemain travelled from Biskra to Gadames.

[6245]

In 1858, Abû-Derba crossed the region of the Areg between Laghuat and Rhat, and Mardohhaï Abi Surrur travelled several times between 1858 and 1863 through the Akka Desert, in Morocco, as far as Timbuktu, via Taodenni and Arawan. In 1862–64 Rolhfs explored Morocco in several directions as far as Wâdi Draà, reached the Atlas mountains, visited and explored the oases of Tafilêlt, touched on In-Shalah, Tuat and Tidikelt, and returned via Ghadâmes to Tripoli. The journeys undertaken between 1867 and 1878 by the travellers Balansa, De Wimpffen, Hooker (Joseph Dalton), Maw and Ball, Fritsch and Rein, Soleillet (who was the first to map the whole plateau from Tademaït and Wargla to In-Salah) and Von Bary are also remarkable; and another very interesting journey was that which Nachtigal made in 1869 via Tripoli, Murzuk and the Sahara Desert to reach Tu.

[6246]

It was on this route that an unfortunate woman we knew was assassinated in 1869 by her escort. She was Alessia Tinne, a Dutch woman from The Hague, who became famous for her long and numerous journeys in Central Africa. Further to the east, the aspect of the Sahara changes, the soil becomes rocky, the oases are more numerous and the peoples less scarce as far as the confines of Egypt, where the desert recovers its dominion. In the winter of 1873–74 Gerardo Rohlfs, already celebrated at that time for various most important enterprises at the opposite extremes of northern Africa, together with Jordan, undertook a scientific expedition in the Libyan Desert, the important results of which he has already published. After exploring the oases of Khazgiè, Dûkhel,
Farâfra, Siwa and Baharìye, he discovered that the Bahar Bêla Mâ (the river without water) indicated on previous maps does not exist.

[6247]

To the south of this region is the Sudan, which at many points blends with it and has recently already been the object of many noteworthy enterprises. This is the heart and the centre of Africa: where the land of the black or Ethiopian race begins and stretches south over the whole surface area of the great African plateau.
England and Germany, more than other nations, have recently contributed to the growth of scientific knowledge about these lands that were almost totally unknown until our time. In 1823, Oudney, Denham and Clapperton crossed the Sahara from Tripoli to Kuka, and penetrated as far as the border with Adamawa: they progressed through the delta of the Shari along the south-eastern bank of Lake Chad, and visited Wandala and the eastern provinces of the Sokoto empire. On this memorable journey, Clapperton and Denham discovered and mapped Lake Chad, the great internal basin which receives the waters of the whole vast depression, of which the central plateau and the Sahara form the edges.

[6248]

It is on the shores of this great lake that the most developed and populous states of the Sudan are to be found, especially the Bornù, the Kanem, the Baghermi and the Wadaï. These have borders with Darfur, which fell into the hands of Egypt in 1874. In 1822–26, Laing went from Tripoli and Ghadamês to In-Shalah, crossed Mabruk and reached Timbuktu. On his return, he was massacred near Arauàn.

[6249]

In 1849, there was the great expedition of Richardson, Overweg and Barth, who was the only one to return and who published a moving account of it in 1855. Leaving Tripoli for Marzuk, the expedition had crossed the great Sahara Desert by a completely new route, touching on Rhât, and exploring the region of Aïr, or Azben, and the territories of the Azgers and the Kel-Owi Tuaregs, and penetrated the Sudan to reach Lake Chad. Overweg was the first European to visit the Gober and to explore the Yedina islands on Lake Chad which had been unknown until then. After the unfortunate death of his companions, Barth headed west as far as the Niger, visited Timbuktu, which no European after him was ever able to reach and see again. This great traveller explored a large part of the Baghermi as far as Massegna, reached the Benue at its confluence with the Faro, visited Yola, crossed the Haussa states, where he stopped at Sokoto, Kanò and Katsena, and via Timbuktu, on his return followed the Niger as far as Saï and, crossing the Sahara again, reached Europe via Tripoli.

[6250]

His personal research and the precious information he gathered covered nearly half the whole area of the Muslim states of Africa. Vogel, following his footsteps through the Sahara Desert and Kuka, explored a part of Ba-Logomé and the swamps of Tuburi and in 1856 reached Wara in the Wadaï empire, where he was assassinated at the order of the Sultan of that state. Seven successive expeditions set off to find him. One of these, led by Beurmann, achieved its aim, but cost the life of its leader, after it had left Bengazi to explore Augéla, Morzuk, Mount Harug, Vao and Kuka. Other travellers who went in search of Vogel included Dr von Heugling, Steudner, Kinzelbach and Munzinger, who following the route via the Nubia explored part of the marshlands to the west of the Upper Nile.

[6251]

From 1865 to 1867, Gerard Rohlfs, who had previously attracted public attention with his perilous campaign from Morocco to Tripoli, via Talifet, Tuat and Ghadames, successfully undertook and led his great journey to Bornù, via Gebes Es-Sôda and the Hamâda el-Homra, and was fully successful in crossing the African continent from Tripoli on the Mediterranean to Lagos at the bottom of the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean. This memorable expedition, one of the most daring and fruitful of this century, was followed by that of Dr Nachtigal who in 1870 took gifts from the king of Prussia to the Sultan of Bornù to thank this sovereign for the services he had rendered to Barth, Vogel and Rohlfs.

[6252]

In the following years, Nachtigal continued his explorations in the different states bordering on the shores of Lake Chad: he surveyed the depressions of the Batélé and at Egaï; he visited Borkù, Gundi on the Shiari and explored the Ba-Logoné, the Balli and the Ba-Batshikam. Through his work the geography of these lands made significant progress. He was also the first European to have penetrated at great risk and with severe privations, via the route from Murzuk to Kuka, into the region of Tibbu Reschadé and to visit the Tib esti. He crossed the Wadaï empire, that inhospitable land where Vogel and Beurmann perished, and crossed Darfur to reach Kordofan and Khartoum, where he was festively received by us and proceeded to Egypt towards the end of 1874; thus linking his own important discoveries with those gathered by the explorers of the Nile valley.

[6253]

This expedition, which lasted a good five years, was one of the most remarkable to have been accomplished recently. It placed Dr Nachtigal at the highest rank among the explorers of Africa and opened new prospects for those who henceforth will be taking Egyptian possessions in the Sudan as their operational bases and points of departure for their enterprises.
After the reign of the great Mohammed Ali, Egypt acquired an exceptional position among the African states. In the presence of the incurable decrepitude of the Ottoman Empire in Europe, it made great progress in the direction of modern civilisation.

[6254]

General Bonaparte’s sword seems to have been that magic power which woke the genius of ancient Egypt from its thirty-centuries-old tomb. Thanks to the verve and initiative of his Viceroys, and especially of the first Khedive, Ismail Pasha, assisted by an army of first-rate administrators chosen from all the nations of Europe, the valley of the Nile has acquired a modern aspect. Steamship navigation has been organised to all points between Cairo and the first cataract, and Egyptian steamers sail up the great river from Berber to Khartoum, to the Blue Nile and to every navigable point on the White Nile and its gigantic affluents. Locomotives whistle at the foot of the Pyramids and will shortly be penetrating into the desert, thanks to the plan of Fozler, who has undertaken the construction of a railway from the second cataract of Wadi-Halfa to Dongola and from Dabba, through the Bayuda steppes, to Mothhamma (almost opposite Shendi) and Khartoum, stretching over a thousand kilometres.

[6255]

This rebirth of Egypt, with the territorial ambitions it inevitably aroused and stimulated, was of powerful assistance to the rich conquests of African geography. To the intrepid scientists who chose his lands as the point of departure for their explorations, the first Khedive, with sovereign munificence, lent his generous and effective assistance.

[6256]

The definition of the Nile basin and in particular the search for its sources were always the dominant purposes of these enterprises. These proceeded in two directions corresponding to the two branches of the Nile whose waters merge near the village of Omdurman, near Khartoum, the capital of the Egyptian possessions in the Sudan, trade metropolis of eastern Africa and crossroad, or point of communication between Egypt and Central Africa. This is to say the eastern branch, which was the Astosabos of the ancients, the Abbay of the Abyssinians or the Bahar-el-Azrek of the Arabs, that is, the Blue Nile, and the western branch, which was the Astapus of the ancients, or the Bahar-el-Abiad of the Arabs, that is, the White Nile.
Before speaking of the eastern system of the Nile, it is necessary briefly to mention the journeys and explorations that were undertaken this century to acquire a good knowledge of the Ethiopian lands to which this system refers.

[6257]

Henry Salt went twice to eastern Ethiopia, in 1805 and in 1809, and brought back precious and interesting data. From 1814 to 1817, Burckhardt explored Nubia and the north of ancient Ethiopia. In 1819, Caillaud discovered the ruins of the ancient city of Meroe, located to the east of the Nile between the Atbara (which comes from the Tecazze, the Astobaras of the ancients) and the Bahar-el-Azrek, and which I have visited, admiring its ancient pyramids. In 1827 Rüppel visited the area of the Abbay in eastern Nubia and recorded its astronomical positions and zoological discoveries. In the same year, Baron von Prokesch Osten visited the middle reaches of the Nile.

[6258]

Combes and Tamisier, after exploring in 1834 the steppes of Bayuda and the territories of the Abbàbda and of the Bisciarin, visited a part of Ethiopia. In 1836, Von Katte explored the north of Ethiopia. In 1838–39 Lefevre studied the mines of Fazoglo where, as I was told by several sheikhs, he received the personal assistance of Mohammed Ali himself, the Viceroy of Egypt. In 1840–41, D’Arnaud, Sabatier and Werne made the second expedition ordered by the Viceroy of Egypt and visited the lands of the Abbay. In 1841, Krapf and Isemberg travelled to Ethiopia and visited the Afar. Between 1839 and 1843, Lefevre, Petit and Quartin-Dillon explored the Sciré, the Goggiam and the Shoa. Between 1839 and 1844, Rochet d’Hericourt went twice to the Shoa and penetrated as far as the land of the Herèr.

[6259]

In 1842, Ferret, Galinier and Rouget explored the Tigray and the Simen, and brought back interesting data about the natural history, the physical, moral and political state of these countries, as well as their astronomical position. In 1844, Pallme visited Meroe and its surroundings. De Jacobis, Sapeto and the d’Abbadie brothers carried out some important studies on modern Abyssinia erected as a Prefecture Apostolic, describing its language and dialects. Montuori, a Neapolitan Vincentian, with one of his confrères, travelled via Galabat and Gadaref to the Blue Nile at Khartoum, where he exercises his ministry. Penay, as health inspector of the Egyptian possessions in the Sudan, at different times covered the provinces of Dongola, Berber, Sennar, Taka and Fazoglo, while residing mainly in Khartoum. Fr Ryllo, Knoblecher, Vonco, Pedemonte and Casolani went to Khartoum via Dongola and the Bayuda Desert in 1848. In 1852 Brehm went up the Bahar-el-Azrek as far as Rosères.

[6260]

In 1854, Munzinger went from Massaua to the land of Bilen. In 1864, Hamilton and C. Didier went from Suakin to Kassala and Gadaref. Burton, Speke, Herne and Stroyan explored the land of the Somalis in 1854–55. In 1855, Beltrame explored the country from Khartoum to Benishangol. In 1857–66 Fr Leon des Avancher explored the land of the Ilorma to the south of Shoa; and Wakefield, in 1870–1873, continued this exploration from the eastern coast.

[6261]

In 1859, Von Harnier went from Massaua to Rosères, Baron von Barmin and Hartmann explored the Sennar and the Fazoglo in 1860 and Von Heulin, Steudner and Kinzelbach visited the lands of the Bilen and the Beni-Amer. In 1864, De Pruyssenaere took different routes to cross the territories between the Nile and the Abbay. Schweinfurth explored the territory irrigated by the Atbara and its tributaries. In 1868, Otto Reil explored the territories of the Hadendoa, the Beni-Amer and the Habab. Rohlfs, a member of the English expedition crossed the region from the Red Sea to Magdala, where he gathered topographical material. Munzinger explored all the western shores of the Red Sea and the Afar territory. Carlo Piaggia several times explored the course of the Abbay and of the Tomat, the Bata and the Berta tribes and Abyssinia, especially the north, and became particularly acquainted with those peoples, above all with those living around Lake Dembea, or Tsana, near the source of the Blue Nile. In 1871, Miles visited the land of the Somali, previously explored by Burton; and in 1874–75 Haggenmacher went there from Barbera to Libahèli.

[6262]

In 1876, Mokhtar and Fauzi diligently drew the map from Zeila to Herrer. In 1871–72, Marno from Vienna explored all the lands and tribes from Khartoum to Fadassi thus becoming the second European after Monsignor Massaia to reach that point, of which he amply described the most interesting characteristics in a fine volume. In 1876–77, Antinori, Chiarini and Martini travelled on the Bay of Tujurra as far as Ankober in the kingdom of Shoa, diligently exploring these lands, and Chiarini died in that year at Gera as a prisoner of the prince. In 1878, Matteucci reached Fadassi by way of Benishangol, with the intention of proceeding and linking up with the Italian expedition led by Marchese Antinori in the kingdom of Kaffa. But it proved impossible for them to get beyond Fadassi; and they were forced to return to Khartoum.

[6263]

With these historical notions in mind, we shall discuss the two above-mentioned systems of the Nile. We shall not mention the various opinions of geographers from Herodotus to Klöden on its sources. Our aim, in these few lines, is to give a brief outline of how the great twenty-five-century-old problem of the discovery of the whole immense basin of the Nile and its sources was solved in recent times.

[6264]

The source of the eastern system of this great watershed, that is, the Blue Nile, is known to be at Mount Geisch in the Sakala district, 10° 50’ Latitude North to the south of Lake Tzana, which it then crosses. This was known to the Portuguese in the 17th century, and it was described at the end of the last century by Bruce, who thought that this was the true source of the Nile. This opinion held sway until the beginning of this century, when it was discovered that the Blue Nile is actually much smaller in volume of water than the White Nile which, until the 1820 Egyptian expedition, was known only by name.

[6265]

The Blue Nile watershed and the configuration of the Abyssinian plateau were later thoroughly surveyed by two Frenchmen, Lefebvre, whose journey took place between 1839 and 1843, and Leiean, who explored Abyssinia between 1862 and 1864. The English expedition captained by Sir Napier in 1867–68, which ended in the defeat of the Abyssinian army and the death of the emperor Theodoro, spread the commonly-held notions on this sort of African Switzerland where, thanks to the heroism and perseverance of the Abyssinians against twelve centuries of repeated assaults by the fanatical followers of Islam raiding from Mecca, Christianity has been preserved to our day, even if spoilt and corrupted by the heresy of Dioscorus of Alexandria, which invaded the Churches of Egypt and the Ethiopia of St Frumentius.

[6266]

Monsieur Antoine d’Abbadie, member of the Institut de France was the first European to discover and throw light on the vast territory of the Gallas tribes, which stretches from the Shoa to the Equator and, together with Abyssinia, constitutes the great Ethiopian plateau. In 1838, with his brother Arnaud and Sapeto, he penetrated into Abyssinia as far as Gondar and from there, via Gudrù and Nonno, reached Enerea. Having gained the friendship of that prince, who was to marry the daughter of the king of Kaffa (the country from which the best coffee in the world originated, and which gave it its name), he seized this propitious opportunity to visit that kingdom by accompanying as a marriage witness the committee sent by the prince of Enerea to Kaffa to fetch his bride-to-be.

[6267]

He stayed a fortnight in Bongo, the capital of that kingdom and, surrounded by all the attentions of the royal court, was able to carry out all his scientific research and gather accurate information on the powerful race of the Wa r à t a which inhabits the lands of Kullo, Gobbo, Walàmo, etc. He returned with the royal mission via Gera and Gomma to Erenea where he explored and studied a large part of the Gallas territories, of which he drew a magnificent map. He is the most knowledgeable scholar of these regions and peoples, whose languages and dialects he recorded. He carried out a great geodetic survey over a distance of one thousand kilometres from Massaua on the Red Sea to Bongo, the capital of Kaffa. He mapped the first tributary water courses of the Juba and carried out very fruitful studies on the physical characteristics of the globe, its meteorology, human races and their history.

[6268]

In 1844–45, when he reached Quaràta on Lake Tsana, he wrote to the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide to propose the foundation of a Mission to the Gallas. At that point, Gregory XVI erected in 1846 the Vicariate Apostolic of the Gallas, entrusting it to the Capuchins, and appointing as its head Monsignor Guglielmo Massaia, Bishop of Cassia. i.p.i. who, after having visited Abyssinia to ordain some indigenous priests and consecrate the holy and learned Vincentian De Jacobis as Bishop and Vicar Apostolic, he travelled for several years around his mission without being able to penetrate it. He was the first European to visit the Shangalla, going as far as Fadassi. Finally, in 1851, via Goggiam, he reached the principality of Enerea, and the kingdom of Kaffa.

[6269]

This valiant apostle of East Africa worked and strove defenceless for more than thirty-three years on behalf of the nations the Holy See had entrusted to him; and after suffering eight times the pain of exile with heroic courage, he accomplished his arduous and difficult mission and planted the banner of the Catholic faith and Christian civilisation among the Gallas peoples.

[6270]

The western system of the Nile, that is, of the White Nile, is far more important than the foregoing. The exploration of this great basin was begun this century by the Swiss traveller Burckhardt, who from 1812 to 1814 travelled through Nubia at the expense of the African Society of London, and died while attempting to reach the Libyan Desert, aiming to get to the Fezzan.
His immediate successor was the Frenchman, François Caillaud, who penetrated Upper Nubia, to almost as far as the 10th degree of Latitude North. This journey, from 1819 to 1822, gave a strong impetus to Egyptian studies and archaeology. The explorations of the White Nile gained momentum in 1821 when Ismail Pasha, son of the great Founder of the reigning dynasty of Egypt, subjugated the small Meleks, or independent kings of Nubia, Sennar and Kordofan, although he was burned alive by his enemies in the city of Shendi in 1822.

[6271]

In June 1825, G.B. Brocchi, the famous geologist from Bassano, arrived in Khartoum where he died on 25th September 1826, leaving a copious journal of scientific information. In 1827 the river was surveyed by Linant de Bellefont, a Frenchman, who for several decades was the minister of Mohammed Ali and his successors and a generous benefactor of ours, who ventured as far as El-Ais, two degrees from Khartoum. The mountaineering expedition led by the illustrious Josef Russegger, the Austrian minister-councillor, did not pass that point. However, accompanied by Kotschy, he ventured into the kingdom of Kordofan in 1837, and was the first European to visit the Takalé and the Dar-Nuba regions, where we founded a Catholic Mission a few years ago. The journeys he made from 1835–41 which he described in his Works published in Stuttgart, are a rich treasure for science and shed important light on questions concerning the geology and mineralogy of the districts he visited.

[6272]

In these journeys to the White Nile and Kordofan, Rusegger and Kotschy were preceded by Rüppel, who revealed their astronomical positions and made geological discoveries there from 1824 to 1833. These geographers were later followed by Charles Lambert, who in 1839 discovered the way from Khartoum to El Obeid and carried out the triangulation of the whole of the central part of Kordofan, while at the same time studying the wealth of its minerals. On the basis of the data provided by these geographers and the description of the Desert of Bayuda between Dongola and Kordofan, previously crossed by the Egyptian army led by Defterdar in 1821–22 and by Holroydin 1837, Pallme was able to make his interesting exploration of Kordofan in 1844, and published very important details and accounts of it; these were then useful for the subsequent journeys of Von Müller and Brehm in 1841, of Von Schliefen, who in 1853 gathered detailed information on the new routes followed by caravans between Dongola and Kordofan across the steppes of Bayuda, and of Count D’Escayrac de Lauture, who crossed Kordofan as far as the boundaries of Darfur and went on into Takalè.

[6273]

The surveying of Bahar-el-Abiad in the lands of the independent African tribes must have been made under the auspices of the great Mohammed Ali, who in 1839 gave the order for an exploratory expedition. Turkish officials, commanded by Captain Selim, sailed from Khartoum on 17th November 1839, and went as far as 6º 30’ Latitude North; they returned on 26th March 1840. The expedition consisted of eight dhows, or Nile boats with cabins, 10 cannons and 27 dinghies; it included 400 armed men, including two Frenchmen, M. d’Arnaud and M. Thibaut. A journal of that expedition was kept separately by the two travellers, and was later published. Shortly afterwards, Mohammed Ali got together a second expedition which left on 3rd November 1840 and returned to Khartoum on 18th April 1841. The above-mentioned Mr d’Arnaud, accompanied by Sabatier and the Prussian, Werne, was appointed head scientist of this expedition which went as far as Gondokoro at 4º 42’ Latitude North. They made a great number of scientific observations. D’Arnaud published the Map, and Werne compiled a report of the journey.

[6274]

Later, various expeditions were organised on the White Nile, and to the west, as far as Darfur and the Fertit. This is not the right moment to mention the journeys of Combes and Tamisier, Tremaux, Count Ferdinand de Lesseps, Penay, Johnson, Taylor, Gobat, Larfargue, Vauday, Dr Kuny, Duke d’Aumont, and the Russian Colonel Kovalevski who in 1848 made an expedition to the Sudan, after crossing the immense steppes of this land several times. I will nonetheless say that after the above-mentioned scientific and military explorations, Brun-Rollet, the Sardinian Consul, made a series of journeys in this vast territory, located between Khartoum and the 4th degree of Latitude North; he explored and made a detailed study of the various tribes that dwell to the west of the White Nile: the Hassanieh, the Abu-Rof, the Shilluk, the Dinka, the Janghè, the Nuer, the Kich, the Eliab, the Ghogh, the Arol, the Shir and a great many others.

[6275]

Several times he crossed the Bahar el Ghazal, which he called the Misselad, and the western reaches of the Upper Nile, and he penetrated the Banda; he provided important information about the countries he visited and helped introduce and facilitate European trading among the different tribes of the White Nile. Petherick, the English Vice Consul, made five journeys from Khartoum on the White Nile; he crossed the Niam-Aïth, or Bahar-el-Ghazal and the Bahar-el-Arab, travelled to the interior of the land of Jur and reached 4º of Latitude North. Cavaliere Martino Hansal, who had been a member of the Catholic mission since 1853 and for fifteen years Imperial Royal Austro-Hungarian Consul in Khartoum, was the author of many significant scientific reports on the lands between the Tropic and the Equator, especially after spending a few years at our Gondokoro Mission where he also studied the Bari language. In 1857 the Poncet Brothers (Ambroise and Jules) explored the Upper Nile as far as Rejaf, penetrated the interior lands of the Nuer and the Jur to Dar-Fertit, and collected information about the countries further South, as far as Bambura (Uelle). Alessandrina Tinne, Von Heuglin and Steudner explored the Niam-Aïth, and a large part of the territory to the west of the Upper Nile which extends to Gondokoro.

[6276]

Latif Effendi (the Maltese De Bono) undertook a long and exhausting exploration of the River Sobat in 1855–57, one of the largest tributaries of the Bahar-el-Abiad. This merchant, as he himself told me and according to what I picked up from his companions, had spent more than three years on this river; it is certain that no European had ventured further than he into the Sobat area. However, since his only aim was to trade in elephant tusks and thereby to enrich himself, he left no important written details. This is why the true course of the Sobat continued to remain shrouded in mystery. In 1859, Rev. Fr Beltrame, Fr Melotto and I, having during the previous year, with Dr G. Lanz, penetrated the lands of Ghogh to the west of the White Nile between the 6th and 7th degrees Latitude North, continued on the Sobat for 8 days as far as our boat would go, and diligently mapped that part of it, and published an account. Some, after us, followed this great and mysterious river further, but only for a few days and on foot; until in 1876 Junker explored its lower course as far as a certain point and mapped it.

[6277]

Finally, the Catholic Mission of Central Africa, created with a Papal Brief on 3rd April 1846 by Gregory XVI of happy memory, and first established in Khartoum in February 1848, made a substantial contribution with its works, its studies and its explorations to describing the geographical science of the western system of the Nile. In 1849 and 1850 Dr Ignazio Knoblecher of S. Canziano near Lubiana, Head of the Catholic Mission, Fr Angelo Vinco of the Mazza Institute of Verona and other missionaries, arrived at the extreme point reached by the Egyptian exhibition in 1841. Vinco was the first European to have stayed so long on the White Nile at that latitude; and during his stay in those parts he noted the climate and the nature of the country, travelled for a few days away from the river banks and visited the Beri, seeing new tribes and studying their languages, customs and character.

[6278]

It was Vinco who established the station of Gondokoro where the Pro-Vicar Knoblecher, to the utter amazement of those peoples, had the mission house built in European fashion with a very beautiful garden and a church dedicated to Our Lady. He contributed very important information about the unexplored stretch of the Nile, its tributaries and the peoples who inhabit the equatorial regions of its sought-after sources. In 1852 he embarked on an expedition among those peoples and to those sources with a group of Africans who held him in the greatest esteem: but constantly undermined by fevers, he was unable to complete his daring exploration. His constitution was feebler than his heart, and on 22nd January 1853 religion and science suffered an irreparable loss; he was the first martyr of faith and civilisation on the White Nile.

[6279]

One who deserved even greater merit than he for the science and Geography of the western system of the Nile was Mgr Knoblecher, Pro Vicar Apostolic of Central Africa.
Several times he marked out the great river from Khartoum to Gondokoro, traced its course, measured its breadth and depth, calculated the rapidity of the current, described the peoples and tribes who dwelled on its banks. Then he pushed forward a long way South to discover its mysteries there. On 16th January 1850, he reached 4º 9’ Latitude North; and in early June 1854, advanced to the 3rd degree of Latitude North, where the cataracts begin, beyond which the great river pours out from the vast basin of Albert Nyanza. No European before him had ever reached a point on the Upper Nile so far in the direction of the Equator. Mgr Knoblecher was first to introduce true Christian civilisation to Central Africa.

[6280]

He is known by the title of Abuna Soliman (Father Soliman) from Alexandria to Gondokoro. Abuna Soliman’s name is revered by the peoples of Nubia and of the White Nile. His apostolic works and the work of his missionaries including Gostner, Kirchner, Überbacher, Lanz and others who deserve mention, as well as the missionaries of the Mazza Institute of Verona, the splendours and efforts of the Mission of Central Africa and the study of the languages of the White Nile, especially those of the Dinka and the Bari, are recorded in the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith of Lyons and Paris, of Vienna and Cologne, in the bulletins of the Geographical Society of Vienna and in the works of the most learned Professor Mitterrutzner of Bressanone.

[6281]

These discoveries received an extraordinary impetus from another point in Africa. The marvellous picture I am about to describe and which was accomplished in only 25 years, has shed light on the greatest mysteries of African geography.
In 1848 and 1849 the two German travellers, Rebmann and Krapf, discovered to the north of Zanzibar and just below the Equator two high mountains, snow-capped all the year round, which they believed to be Ptolemy’s Mountains of the Moon and the principal site of the Nile’s sources. This discovery all at once stimulated explorers to the most extraordinary zeal. They foresaw that it would be possible to penetrate the southern part of the Nile Valley from that point, and on this route to succeed in finding the solution to the great problem.

[6282]

Two English Indian Army officials, Captains Burton and Speke, were appointed by the Geographical Society in London to attempt this great undertaking. In 1857, they left Zanzibar travelling in a straight line towards the interior and arrived on the shores of Lake Tanganika on 13th February 1858. This is a memorable date in the Annals of African explorations. After traversing the whole length of the lake, the two travellers separated. Burton was smitten with fevers and suffered badly. Speke continued on alone to the north, and in this direction reached the southern shore of a second vast lake, called by the natives Ukerewe but to which Speke gave the name of the Queen of England, Victoria Nyanza.

[6283]

Convinced that this time he had found the true source of the Nile, Speke soon set out on his journey accompanied by Captain Grant. In 1861 the expedition arrived near Lake Victoria and travelled around its circumference from the western side, without having the faintest idea that there was another great Lake in the vicinity; and Speke ventured into the country of Uganda, whose King, M’tesa, welcomed him festively, lavishing every favour upon him. On the northern shore of the lake, Speke and Grant discovered the outlet which from that moment they took to be the original branch of the Nile. Although they were unable to follow the whole of its course, the assertions of the two English travellers received the most dazzling confirmation from subsequent expeditions, and especially from that of the American Colonel Long in 1874, and from that of Stanley in 1875. On their return, Speke and Grant met Samuel Baker in Gondokoro. With his heroic female companion, he had undertaken the same exploration in the opposite direction. The conjunction of the two expeditions was an obvious indication that the solution of the great problem was at hand.

[6284]

Continuing his march to the south, at the price of incredible privations and sacrifices, Baker returned to the Nile at the cataracts of Karuma, the point at which the two captains who preceded him had left it; he realised that the river flowed out into a second vast basin, the Mwutan, which he named after the Queen of England’s august consort, Albert Nyanza. It was March 1864. Although Baker had only seen a small part of the shore of this lake and had definitely not discovered its outlet, yet from that moment the principal system of the Nile was virtually identified.

[6285]

These great discoveries, stirring and stimulating the enthusiasm of travellers and scientists, at the same time gave rise to vast political plans. The idea of concentrating under the sceptre of the Viceroy of Egypt all the territories that make up the immense basin of the Nile, became to Cairo a decreed and established plan, whose implementation rapidly passed into the realm of fait accompli. In 1870, Sir Samuel Baker, promoted to the rank of Ferik Pasha, set out from Cairo at the head of a small army, with the mission to extend the Khedive’s authority as far as the Nyanza Lakes and the avowed aim of abolishing the slave trade. This expedition, which cost the Egyptian treasury the enormous sum of more than twenty-six million francs, was not at all successful in its task.

[6286]

In 1874, Colonel Gordon, born in England and also appointed Ferik Pasha, was made responsible for taking it up again on a different basis. Gordon Pasha, who was already famous for his extraordinary courage in more than twenty tremendous battles in China where, in the service of the celestial emperor, he had tamed the rebels, was a man equal to this lofty mission. Endowed with heroic courage, a soldier’s steadfast endurance and a warm heart, staunchly determined to avoid any bloodshed he undertook his great task with brilliant results and hoisted the Egyptian flag not far from the residence of the great King M’tesa near the Equator, and not far from Victoria Nyanza.

[6287]

Gordon Pasha with his persevering courage dealt a great blow to the horrible scourge of the slave trade. But Gordon needed a strong arm, a man who would suit his views and execute his plans and ideas. The best man to give him powerful help in his challenging task was Captain Romolo Gessi, a native of Ravenna. He was very experienced in the military arts and endowed with invincible courage and sang-froid, of a lean but iron constitution and an utterly reliable constancy; and in the Crimean War he had followed the English army as interpreter, since he is fluent in English, German, French, Turkish, Greek, Armenian and other languages.

[6288]

Gessi needed Gordon; Gordon could not have succeeded in such a difficult undertaking without the arm, fidelity and persistence of Gessi, who was also raised to the rank of Pasha. I will speak elsewhere of the victories of Gessi, who tamed the fierce Soleiman Ziber and many other cruel slave drivers, merchants of human flesh, whom he executed on the Bahar-el-Ghazal. Thus he gave an effective blow to the horrible slave trade in the southern territory of the already subjugated empire of Darfur. I shall only mention that through the work of Gordon, assisted by Gessi, the domination of the Khedive acquired a more or less stable and secure base in the vast regions between the Sobat and the Nyanza; and due to Gessi, the attempt to transport a steamboat on the Nile to Nyanza was crowned by happy success. Having had the steamer dismantled, he succeeded after incredible difficulties in travelling overland from Rejaf to Dufile, where the river is navigable as far as Mwutan. He was the first of the explorers to follow the shores round Albert Nyanza which in the south are intersected by a mass of Ambage (aedemonia mirabilis); and his information about the whole expanse of that great basin was splendidly confirmed by those who visited it later, with a mandate from the Egyptian government.
Thus the course of the White Nile, that is, the whole of the western system of this king of rivers, was identified once and for all.

[6289]

Another traveller, renowned for his daring and for the successful outcome of his great undertakings is the American, Henry Stanley who, after circumnavigating Victoria Nyanza into which ten rivers flow and which has a circumference of more than 1,600 kilometres, also made these important and illuminating discoveries in another spot.
Indeed, on this side another enormous field of investigation was opened up. It was a matter of tracing to the west the line of peaks which constitute the demarcation of the great basin of the White Nile, and of discovering the system of its numerous tributaries. In this regard, moreover, he could have met travellers who were exploring the central part of the Sudan, and so merged the observations made by starting from two opposite points.

[6290]

Here we subsequently met: the Poncet brothers, who explored the lands of the Jur and Dar-Fertit and collected important information on the countries further south as far as Uelle; De Malzac and Vayssière who likewise in 1857–60 crossed Mareb, Namb-Aïth, the Ghogh, the Arol, the Jur and a large part of the west of the Upper Nile as far as Runga (I visited these two travellers in 1859 in their trading Stations among the Kich and De Malzac told me that among the Runga and the other tribes of the interior, he saw hundreds and thousands of human heads, enemies they had conquered, hanging on the trees along their way, and that this was the custom and practice of the victorious). Antinori, Miani, and Carlo Piaggia, who in 1860 explored the banks of the Bahar-el-Ghazal and the territory of the Jur, and the latter ventured to Fertit; Penay and De Bono who visited some of these same lands in the area of the White Nile in 1861 (Penay died there that same year); the English Consul Petherick, who from 1848 to 1863, in his repeated journeys and explorations for trade towards the South, penetrated the land of the Niam-Niam where our Carlo Piaggia stayed for two years, from 1863–1865.

[6291]

Two Germans: Theodor von Heuglin and the botanist Steudner (who died during this exploration) extended their expeditions beyond the Bahar-el-Ghazal and the Jur, as far as the African tribes of Dar-Fertit; and Leiean, who from Kordofan ventured to Bahar-el-Arab, and was the first European to identify the course of the Namb-Aïth, a tributary of the White Nile. All these expeditions prepared for the great and remarkable journey of Dr Schweinfurth who, having left Khartoum in 1869, reached the 3º 35’ of Latitude North, crossing the country of the Niam-Niam and the Mombùttu. He minutely described these people unknown until he discovered them, actually touched the line, otherwise little observed, which separates the Nile basin from that of Lake Chad, and on the western side discovered an as-yet-mysterious river which he called the Uelle. Having reached this point, the courage of the daring traveller had never lessened, but the lack of financial resources forced him to turn back. Had he had more ample funds available, he certainly would have involved the members of his escort in penetrating to the very heart of the Sudan, where he was hoping to meet Dr Nachtigal in Bormu, or other central regions.

[6292]

The courageous Venetian Miani, who in previous journeys had come very close to the Equator, accepted a monthly wage of one thousand Egyptian piastres (260 francs) from the excellent Jaffar Pasha, governor of the Egyptian Sudan, as a scientific traveller. He joined a commercial expedition of Mr Gattash, a Coptic trader, left from Khartoum and navigating on the White Nile as far as Abukuka, disembarked at Kich, and via the Gogh, Arol and Jur, went as far as Bakangoï on the Uelle; and worn out by privations, efforts and even more by the cruel vexations of his escort, he died in the land of the Mombottu in November 1872, leaving as a legacy a small collection of ethnographic objects, and two young Akka, to be handed over to the late King Victor Emmanuel II. These two boys were generously taken in by the noble family Miniscalchi, and with fatherly care established in the Catholic religion at the elementary schools of the good teacher Scarabello of Verona. Then Mr Marno in 1875 undertook a survey of the left bank of the White Nile in the direction of the region Schweinfurth had visited by another route; and with the American Colonel E. Long he explored the territory of Makraka, which was explored by Junker a year later.

[6293]

Kemp, Chippendall, Watson, Linant de Bellfond and Long, with the other members of the expedition led by Gordon Pasha drew up the Map of the true Nile as far as Nyanza Victoria, from Khartoum to Rejaf, Makedo, Dufli, Magungo, Sciôa-Moru, Foweira and M’ruli. Long explored the Makraka, advanced as far as Rubaga, the residence of King M’tesa. From there he left to discover the Lake of Kabeli (Lake Ibrahim), which was then explored by Carlo Piaggia; and Linant de Bellefond outlined a Map of the routes he had followed to King M’tesa’s capital. In 1876–77, the learned and valiant Emin Bey, (Dr Schnitzler), diligently explored the Kingdoms of Unyoro and of Uganda, and wrote very interesting accounts of the flora of Central Africa from the Sobat to the Equator.

[6294]

Here I should mention the paths the explorers marked from the Eastern coasts of Africa to the interior of this immense continent. In 1811 Smee visited the lower course of the Juba; from 1843 to 1855, Krapf, Rebmann and Erhard explored the country which extends at the foot of Mount Kenya and Kilimanjaro from the south East. In 1845 Maizan from Bagamoyo was the first to penetrate the Uzaramo, where he was killed. Rebmann explored the shores between Mombasa and Malindi in 1846, Guillain navigated the length of the Zanzibar coasts in 1846–48 and the country of Tuaheli, and did some interesting hydrographic work. In 1861 Rigby visited the Juba as far as Berdèra, where he was massacred with many of his travelling companions. In 1865–75 Wakefield and New made excursions on the eastern coast and collected reliable data on the ways to the great Lakes. Fr Horner in 1870 advanced from Bagamoyo as far as Kionlé, the capital of Ukami.

[6295]

In 1871 Brenner explored the country of the Ilmorna between the lower course of the Dana and the Juba. Wakefield continued this exploration from the eastern coast. New made two journeys to Kilimanjaro and Hildebrandt went from Mombasa to Kitui in 1806; and in the same year, Cotterit and Price traced the Quirimane River and the route from Sa’Adani to M’pwapwa. In 1876–78 the great Anglican expedition of the Society of Missionaries of London – called the Church Missionary Society – set out, well provided with vast material means and a large sum of money, and equipped with a signed letter from Queen Victoria addressed to M’tesa, King of Uganda, according to what I read in a French newspaper. From the Coast of Zanzibar they went to the great Equatorial Lakes to establish the Anglican mission there. There were about twenty English missionaries of whom the most important were Shergold Smith, Dr Wilson, Smith, Mackay, Hartnell, Clark, O’Neil and Robertson, who explored the Wami and the Kingami, walked from Bagamoyo to Nyanza and crossed this great basin from the South to the North.

[6296]

In addition to these, another three members of the same Society, that is the gentlemen Dr Felkin, Pearson, and Litchfield, travelled via Berber (where they stayed in our Mission house) and Khartoum, and in 1878 set out on the White Nile to Nyanza. However, some of them died of fever; Smith and O’Neil with their escort of 100 men were massacred on an island in Lake Victoria; and Dr Wilson stayed on for a while with a few companions in Rubaga, the capital of King M’tesa. Then in 1879 they were forced to leave their field of action and returned via the Nile to England.

[6297]

But the apostolic zeal which draws its strength from the highest heavens and the foot of the Cross, is not dismayed by whirlwinds or tempests. This sublime field, although prickly with so many thorns, was to be occupied by an army of true apostles, who received from God the legitimate mission of cultivating it. The illustrious Congregation of the Missionaries of Algiers founded by the eminent Archbishop, Mgr Charles Marciale Allemand Lavigerie, aiming to evangelise the as-yet-unbelieving regions of Algeria and the Sahara Desert, hastened, blessed by the vicar of Christ, to preach the faith to the peoples of Equatorial Africa. At least two expeditions of about thirty proclaimers of the Gospel gathered in Zanzibar in 1878–79; and they continued on different routes, some settling on Lake Tanganyka and some on Victoria Nyanza, where they were courteously received by King M’tesa who has since surrounded them with his assistance and lofty protection.

[6298]

In the meantime, a vast and utterly new field was opening up to research into African science and geography. It was the very centre of equatorial Africa which was already provoking and prompting the curiosity and courage of travellers as much as the apostolic zeal of missionaries.
These vast unknown regions of the central plateau whose northern boundaries, according to expeditions to the Sudan and the Nile Valley, varied between the 2nd and 10th degrees of Latitude North, had often been explored all round their lofty boundaries. In fairly remote times, the Portuguese expeditions had played an important role in this theatre, which is generally not sufficiently recognised. The great States of Kazembe and of Muata-Yamvo, which only today are beginning to emerge from darkness, were crossed and explored in the first half of this century by a whole series of travellers from Portugal and other nations who, from the west coast, reached the eastern boundary of this immense plateau.

[6299]

Setting out from Senna in 1793–1801, the Portuguese doctor, De Lacerda e Almeida, reached the Zambezi and arrived in Lusenda, the residence of Kazembe to the east of Lake Moreo. Science is indebted to De Lacerda for the first astronomical calculations of that part of Africa. In 1806–15, the Pombeiros brothers crossed the southern part of the African continent, from Luanda on the west coast to Sofale on the east coast, passing through the capital of Kazembe. Owen did some hydrographical work on the Lower Zambezi in 1826. Monteiro and Gamitto went up the Zambezi in 1831–35 and penetrated as far as the Empire of Ulunda. In 1843–46, Graça advanced from Baguela to the environs of Lake Moreo. In 1841, Livingstone, Oswell and Murray explored the territories to the west of the Republic of the Transvaal, reaching Seckek on the Zambezi and, in 1848, discovering Lake Ngami.

[6300]

Galton reached the edge of the Kalahari Desert in 1850–51 and arrived in the land of the Damara where he identified the astronomical positions. Anderson crossed the country of Nama-Kwa in 1851–53 and went as far as the lower course of the Kùméné.
Ladislao Anerigo Magyar, whose marriage to an indigenous princess of Bihé gave him a particular physiognomy among his imitators, explored a large part of the West of the Urùa, and touched Yah Quilem in the neighbourhood of Kasal. From 1847 to 1857, this great Hungarian traveller journeyed through the centre of West Africa, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean between the 4th and 22nd degrees of Latitude South, and visited twenty-six rivers and many countries which were not even known by name. After making a study of Angola in 1860, he died in 1864 at Kuya in Benguela.
In 1853–58 Silva Porto crossed Africa from Benguela to Delgrado Cape. Green and Wahiberg explored Lake Ngami in 1856 and the Tiogué, one of its tributaries, and the lands further to the west.

[6301]

In 1860, Roscher explored the course of the Kondutchi to Kilwa; from Kilwa and Mesulé and to Nusewa on Lake Nyasa; and finally from Nusewa to Kisunguni. In 1860–64, Von der Decken, Thornton and Kersten explored the eastern coast between Malindi and the River Ruvuma, the way from Kilwa to Mésulé, the Zambezi as far as the tributary of the Kafué, and the Kilimanjaro massif, whose triangulation was accomplished by Thornton. From 1873–75 Güssfeldt, Bastian and Pechnel Lösche surveyed, in the equatorial region, the shores of the Atlantic Ocean between the Zairo and the Kuilu. In 1876, Yung sailed on Lake Nyasa and noted that this basin extends to the 9th degree of Latitude South. Finally the gentlemen Von Homeyer, Pogge and Lux, members of the German expedition for the exploration of West Africa played a very active part in these great explorations. Von Hemeyer reached Kassangi. Pogge and Lux pushed ahead as far as Kibundu. Lastly, Lux advanced alone as far as Lussumba, the capital of Muata Yanvo.

[6302]

On the west coast of Africa, the English Captain Tuckey went up the Congo in 1816, without succeeding in passing the cataracts of Yellala, and succumbed to the pernicious effects of the climate. With him, Smith explored and surveyed the lower course of this great river as far as the cataracts mentioned above. At the end the Bay of Biafra, in 1860 Burton and Mann succeeded in climbing the gigantic peak of Mongo-Ma-Loba Camerum, visiting the lands of the Fan, and returned up the Congo to the above-mentioned cataracts of Yellala. In 1856 and 1864, Du Chaillu explored the mouths of the Gabon, the Muni and the Ogué in succession, and penetrated to the south of this last river, more than 200 kilometers into the interior of the continent.

[6303]

In 1859, Braouézec traced the rivers which flow out into the Gabon estuary. Serval, Griffon, du Bellay, Reade, Abigot and Genoyer, as well as Aymes explored the lower course of the Ogowai (Ogué); and the first two surveyed its surrounding territories and the Rhemboé shoreline. After them, the Englishman Walker and the great French travellers Marche and the Marquis de Compiègne, continued the exploration of the Ogué as far as its confluence with the River Ivindo. On a second journey, Walker explored the Ogawaï and the neighbouring territory as far as Lopé of which he fixed the astronomical position. The others identified in 1874, beyond the Falls of Bué, the extreme point reached by Europeans up to that year. In 1875, Lenz, a member of the above-mentioned German expedition, went up the Muni and the Ogué, as far as the confluence with the Scebe.

[6304]

Count Pietro Sarvognan di Brazzà, a Roman noble in the service of the French navy, Dr Ballay and Marche explored the Ogué from 1875–77, and mapped its course between Lupé and the confluence of the Bambi. However Count Brazzà accompanied by Ballay and Marche, forged ahead into the interior further than anyone between 1877–78 and undertook a most difficult and remarkable journey, at the price of unheard of privations and sacrifices, which shed much light and gave important information to African geographical science and earned him a gold medal from the Italian Geographical Society.

[6305]

Other most interesting expeditions left from southern Africa. From 1803–06, Dr Lichtenstein travelled through the colony of the Cape of Good Hope to its northern boundaries. In 1814 Barrow explored the interior of the Cape. Dr Kowan, setting out from the Cape in 1808, reached the Limpopo River. Burchell and Thomson crossed the Cape in all directions and explored the north. Philipp surveyed certain parts of the Cape, and in 1820 went as far as Natal. Halbeck explored the banks and the course of the Nu-Garlép or Orange River in 1827. In 1828 Cowie and Green travelled to the North of the Cape, crossing the Orange Free State and reaching the Bay of Lagoa. Alezander, reaching the west from the city of the Cape in 1837, crossed the land of the great Nama-Kwa, and Whale [Walvis] Bay; and that same year, Harris visited the Orange Free State and the Republic of the Transvaal. From 1841–44, Wahlberg explored the North of the Cape between Natal and the Limpopo and entered Whale Bay and Lake Ngami. Owselle Murray explored the territories of the west part of the Republic of Transvaal from 1841–48 and arrived in Schek on the Zambezi. Gordon Camming crossed the territories of the Transvaal in all directions and Macabe and Mahar, in 1852, explored the lands of the Ba-Rolong and visited the northern banks of the Ngami.

[6306]

In 1854, Moffat and Edwards explored the northern parts of the Cape Colony. Chapman that same year travelled all over the valley of the River Zuga in the basin of the great salt lake to the north-west of the Transvaal. Hahn and Rath explored the lands of the great Nama-Kwa in 1857. From 1861–63, Baines and Chapman, who had set out from Whale Bay travelling to the north of the Cape Colony, reached the eastern strip of the Kalahari Desert and ventured as far as Lake Ngami and the cataracts of the Zambezi. Moffat’s work on the lands of the Cape is significant. The German zoologist Fritsch spent three years, from 1864 to 1866, in the Republic of Orange and with the Betsciuana; and during his scientific journeys he compiled the elements of his learned work on the peoples of southern Africa. In 1869, Ed. Mohr made a journey to the great cataracts of the Zambezi. Ch. Mauch, at the same time, crossed the Transvaal and the kingdom of Mosilikatsé; he discovered the gold-producing situation of Tati, examined and criss-crossed the whole region of the south east in 1872, and at the 20th degree of Latitude South, discovering the remarkable ruins of Zimbabwe.

[6307]

From 1864–75, Raines devoted all his research on various journeys to acquiring a thorough knowledge of the Transvaal, the kingdoms of Matien and of Sekelletu and the territories located to the north of the Kalahari Desert. Hahn travelled through the land of Damara, and Krönlein part of those of the Nama-Kwa. In 1868, Erskine’s travels took him to the country of the Amazulu in the Republic of the Transvaal and the kingdom of Ünzila, and he followed the course of the Limpopo to its mouth, charting the astronomical positions and making some important geological discoveries. That same year, Bullo, Hübner and Elton explored in different directions the Orange Free State and the Republic of the Transvaal. In 1872, Erskine made his second journey to the Transvaal, to the country of the Zulu and on the lower course of the Limpopo River. From 1874–78, Dr Holub crossed the western part of the Republic of the Transvaal, explored the kingdom of the Matabele and the great salt lake on the northern boundaries of the Kalahari Desert, and advanced as far as Sechek on the Zambezi. Lastly, the recent English expedition against the Zulu or Amazulus, was a powerful help in providing the most exact and necessary information on part of the lands that make up West Africa.

[6308]

However one illustrious name among them all towers above the explorers who preceded him, his contemporaries and those who have succeeded him to this day. David Livingstone occupies a very special and brilliant place in the history of African discoveries. For more than thirty years, this admirable man with tireless zeal and extraordinary energy exercised the most splendid, sublime apostolate of science there. He crossed by himself, from south to north and from west to east, half the African continent, which became as it were his second homeland.

[6309]

Livingstone’s journeys of investigation began in 1840 at the Anglican mission of Kuruman among the Bechwana peoples. They led him and in 1845 guided him to the shores of Lake Ngami, the first of the inland seas to be discovered in Africa. His explorations at that time extended to the territories located to the North of the Cape of Good Hope, where the Republic of the Transvaal was later founded, and on the Zambezi to Sechek. From 1853 to 1856, Livingstone made the first of his great journeys. He ascended from the Northern part to the upper course of the Zambezi and discovered its magnificent waterfalls which are even more impressive than the river itself; travelling inland towards the West, he then ventured to Loanda on the Atlantic coast. From this point he returned, crossing the full depths of Africa to emerge at Quilimane on the Indian Ocean, discovering Lake Didolo and the sources of the Liba.

[6310]

From 1858 to 1861, he made a series of journeys which enabled him to undertake the demarcation of the Zambezi basin, he explored its lower course, went back up the tributary of the Sciré through a succession of cataracts, and proved to himself that this river is only the outlet of the immense basin that is Lake Nyasa. With his travelling companion, Mr Kirk, he also discovered the Lake Shirwa whose full expanse he explored.

[6311]

After a brief interruption during which he revisited England, Livingstone undertook his third and last expedition in 1866. He set out from the Mikindami Bay for the mouth of the Rovuma, skirted the south end of Nyasa, explored the lands of the Mazitù and reached Loangwa and Mount Urungù. Then through Itawa he penetrated the completely unknown areas that extend to the west of Nyasa. He then explored Ulunda and the capital of Kazembé, and visited the Islands of Mpabala in Lake Bangueolo. There he found a new series of lakes, Bangueolo, Mwero, Komolondo which join and link a powerful water course, the Luabala or Luapula, which Livingstone erroneously believed to be an original branch of the Nile, but which the latest discoveries have found belongs to the system of the Congo. In 1869 he reached Lake Tanganyka part of which he crossed; he then returned to his journey towards the West and arrived in Nyangwé, the northern limit of his explorations.

[6312]

He arrived back exhausted and ill in Ujiji, where in autumn 1871 he met Henry Stanley who had been sent to fetch him, since there had been rumours at various times in Europe that he was dead. While Stanley was returning to Aznaibar, Livingstone, recovered from his illness and provided with new resources, travelled along the eastern shore of Tanganyka and returned to the centre, and arrived via Ufipa at Lake Mwero where at different points he completed his investigations. But very soon the fever he had caught in those swamp-lands under heavy rain took hold of him again and never released its grip. At the beginning of 1873 he travelled round Lake Bangueolo and arrived in the southern part of Tscitambo, where he was forced to stop. There he died in the night of 1st May, beneath a straw shelter improvised by his servants. He was found in the morning, kneeling at the foot of his bed. The history of the geographical sciences contains no more moving or sublime pages than the simple tale of this solitary and silent death of a great man, a martyr for a great cause.

[6313]

That same year two expeditions left England in his footsteps. One, commanded by Grandy, a lieutenant in the English navy, took the banks of the Congo as operations base, but it had no positive outcome. The second, likewise led by a navy official, Lieutenant Cameron, achieved some very important results. Guided by the advice of an eminent figure, Sir Bartley Frère who had spent many years in India, extraordinary envoy of the Queen of England in Zanzibar, President of the Geographical Society of London and President of the English Committee for the abolition of the Cape of Good Hope – guided, I was saying, by the advice of this superior man, Cameron left Zanzibar towards the end of 1873. Half way to Tanganyka, in Kaseh he met the group of Livingstone’s servants bearing the mortal remains of their master, which were later buried in the magnificent church of Westminster in London. After taking all the measurements to ensure the conveyance of these relics and the preservation of the famous traveller’s precious maps and manuscripts, Cameron continued resolutely on his exploration.

[6314]

On 2nd February he reached Lake Tanganyka and traversed its full length which he mapped with precision. During his operations he found the lake’s outlet, the Lukuga, which veers west and reaches the Lualaba. This discovery made Cameron decide to travel down this shore and thus to continue Livingstone’s work. He reached Nyangwe; but at that point the hostility of a native chief forced him to divert his journey to the south-west. In that direction he explored the eastern part of the Urua (Lakes Nassali and Mohryal), crossed the basins of the Kassaï, the Kuangoy, the Zambezi and the densely populated states of Balunda; he identified and marked the system of the tributaries of the left bank of the Congo and in November 1875 emerged on the Atlantic Ocean not far from Benguela. This memorable expedition which enriched science with 85 demarcations for the identification of astronomical positions and with 3,718 measurements of altitude, was worthy of Livingstone whose idea had spurred him to undertake it. This brilliant success was hailed in England and in all Europe with a legitimate sentiment of admiration.

[6315]

Here is another gigantic and masterful name on the scene of African discoveries. Henry Stanley, one of the travel correspondents of the New York Herald, who in 1871 had been able to find Livingstone whom the whole world had believed to be lost, from 1874 to 1877 wrought a true miracle by crossing Equatorial Africa from East to West, following a new route, visiting countries absolutely unknown to the Europeans and in part even to the Arabs; and he was the first to trace by sight the whole course of the Lualaba or Congo, one of the greatest fluvial arteries in the world, which he baptised the Livingstone, from Lake Tanganyka to the Atlantic Ocean; and he achieved this amidst such difficulties that it was only with the help of God’s power that he was able to overcome them. Each day exhaustion, hunger, illnesses, poisoned arrows, or the cannons of Africans made gaps in the ranks of the troops that were accompanying him. Cannibals doggedly hunted the caravan, inviting one another to the feast of which he was supposed to be the most appetising and delicious dish.

[6316]

Three young Englishmen, the brothers Edward and Francis Pocock and Frederic Barker whom he had taken with him, perished one after the other. Only Stanley resisted all the trials, and by himself he was sufficient for the gigantic, sublime and oppressive task he had imposed upon himself. Whereas all the other explorers who had preceded him, including the heroic Livingstone, saw their attempts turn out to be vain, his courage sufficed to lead such an undertaking to success. The route he had followed was strewn with corpses, but he was undeterred. He carried on imperturbably, with indomitable tenacity; he and his men almost died of starvation, right at the moment when success was in reach. The man who led this Herculean undertaking to success is one who belongs to history.

[6317]

This memorable expedition was called the Anglo-American expedition, because it was organised and supported by the English paper the Daily Telegraph and by the American New York Herald. The instructions given to the great American explorer were to complete the discoveries of Speke and Grant, to circumnavigate Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyka and lastly to complete Livingstone’s discoveries.
He left London with the three above-mentioned young English men and collected his escort at Zanzibar. It consisted of 315, including some brave men who had accompanied Livingstone on his first journey to Ujiji. Having left Bagamoyo on 17th November 1874, he pitched camp in Shamba Gonera; and through Mpuapa, a region of Usaguru, departing from the Unyamyembé route taken by the caravans, he moved North through the lonely expanses of Mgunda Mkali and Ugogo which he reached on 31st December.

[6318]

In Mukalala in the Ikimbu his guides deserted; and he arrived in Suna by the Uveriveri route, where he found a well-cultivated land with a surprisingly beautiful people; and continuing as far as Tshiuiù, 400 miles from Bagamoyo according to the indications of the pedometer, he arrived in Mangara. He stayed near Vinyata on the banks of the Likumbu, and fought and won a fierce battle against the Watuuru, gathered his caravan together in Mgongo Tombo in Iramba, and realised that in less than three months he had lost 120 men and Edward Pocock. From there he reached the western strip of the Masai, and arrived in Kagheyi, a district of Ucclamby in Usukuma on Victoria Nyanza on 27th February 1875.

[6319]

Having bolted together the pieces of his boat, the Lady Alice, which had been built in London, he lowered her into the water; and with eleven sailors and one guide, sailing east through the strait separating the islands of Uruma from those of Bugayeya, he reached the Island of Kriva; after a brief stay on the Island of Kibiki, via Ukafu he came to Beyal in Murchison Bay, where he disembarked on 4th April amongst a crowd of two thousand and was solemnly received in Usavara by M’tesa, king of Uganda, Karagvé, Usugo and Usuni; an intelligent, courageous and respected person whose vast territory extends from 31º to 34º Longitude East and from the 1st degree of Latitude North to 3º 30’ of Latitude South, with about two million inhabitants. He had previously been idolatrous; but a rich and powerful Muslim, Khamis Ben Abdullah, converted him to Islam in 1871 with all his court.

[6320]

In Uraga or Ulagalla, then the capital and residence of M’tesa (which today, instead is in Rubaga), Stanley greeted the French colonel Linant de Bellefonds, the son of the celebrated minister of Mohammed Ali, founder of the present Egyptian dynasty, who had been sent by Gordon Pasha to the African monarch under the pretext of concluding a trade treaty between him and the Egyptian Government. A few months later, Linant de Bellefonds was killed.

[6321]

I shall not mention here Stanley’s exploration of the whole of Albert Nyanza, and his perilous adventures on this internal sea which he noted was a single large lake as Speke had thought, and not a group of lakes as Livingstone had believed. I shall say nothing of the obstacles, the ups and downs and the punishment inflicted upon him by the natives of Bambireh, and its results. I shall not describe the mountain chains of Equatorial Africa which he saw, the long-legged race that inhabits the lands to the west of Uganda and Karagvè and Ui and is mortally opposed to foreigners, the white race of Gambaragara, the queen of the mountains, which is thirteen to fifteen thousand feet above sea level, the hot springs of Mtagata and his many other important geographical discoveries. I shall briefly mention his fruitless journey towards Albert Nyanza, and his extraordinary pilgrimage through the black continent as far as the Atlantic Ocean.

[6322]

Having completed his exploration of Victoria Nyanza, Stanley left with 2,280 men guided by General Sambuzi whom King M’tesa had put at his disposal, to penetrate the hostile country of Unyoro, governed by King Kabba Rega [Kabalega] against whom Baker Pasha had fought in vain, and Gordon Pasha was still fighting. Stanley’s plan aimed to reach the shores of Albert Nyanza, and having put his steam boat the Lady Alice into the water with the dinghies necessary for embarkation, he carried out the exploration of the whole of this great lake and penetrated the region that extends to the west, intending to reach Nyangvé, and then to decide on his subsequent itinerary.

[6323]

In fact, he reached Albert Nyanza in January 1876, observed the latitude, the longitude and the altitude, and made all other preparations to cross it. But he was disappointed; for such a powerful force gathered against him, mustered by Kabba Rega, King of Unyoro and enemy of M’tesa, King of Uganda, that it forced him to make a precipitous retreat. Returning to Uganda, he rejected an army of ninety thousand men, that is fifty thousand commanded by General Sekibobo and forty thousand by Mquenda, whom king M’tesa had offered to him to escort him to Lake Albert; he set off with the members of his expedition towards the south, on a route parallel to Speke’s but further to the west, and arrived in Karagvè. He spent a month exploring that great basin which he baptised Alexandra Nyanza, in honour of the Bride of the Prince of Wales, the future King of England; and he marched south-west, to sail up the river to its source. But hunger forced him to abandon his plan to penetrate the southern territory of Muta n’Zige or Albert Nyanza, to the north of Tanganyka, and he went to Ujiji.

[6324]

He knew that it was here that Cameron had abandoned the Lualaba. Nevertheless, he made a tour of Tanganyka on the Lady Alice and disembarking in Ukangara, reached Kambarrè via Uguhta, where following the Luama until its confluence with the Lualaba, he travelled up this river as far as Nyangvé, which he reached forty days after leaving Tanganyka. He intended to penetrate the regions of the North to Mombuttu; then to cross Africa along the chain of mountains that separates the Niger and Congo basins. But in Mayema he saw the Arabs who had escorted his predecessor to Utotera, the land of King Kasongo, who gave him the most reliable proof that Cameron had gone south in the company of some Portuguese merchants. It was then that he resolved to attempt the great undertaking of crossing the black continent, following the course of the Lualaba to the Atlantic coasts.

[6325]

Stanley left Nyangvé with an escort of about 500 armed men on 5th November 1876, travelling on land through Uzimba and Uregga. Unable to continue his journey because of the density of the woods and forests infested with a very cruel people and ferocious beasts, he crossed the Lualaba, continuing north-west along its left bank through Ukusù. The natives blocked his way, pressing him night and day; and wounded and killed many of his men with their poisoned arrows that are always mortal. It was a desperate fight in this region of cannibals. He tried to tame them with gentleness and gifts; but they refused him and took his patient demeanour as proof of cowardliness. To make his position even worse, an escort of 140 men, enrolled at Nyanvé in Mayema, refused to accompany him any further.

[6326]

In such straits, the natives made a great effort to destroy him completely. He defended himself heroically; but he was left with no other alternative than to flee his fate and entrust himself to his dinghies, unless indeed he preferred to turn back and give up the enterprise. Although on the water he had an indisputable advantage over those barbarians, each day’s journey was only a repetition of the previous day. It was a desperate struggle the whole length of the river until, making an effort with weapons and oars at the same time he reached a series of five great cataracts, very close to one another, located to the North and South of the Equator. To pass them he had to carve himself a path through about thirteen miles of dense forest, dragging over land behind him the 18 dinghies, and the Lady Alice, his steamer for exploration and often exchanging his axe for a gun when he was attacked.

[6327]

Having passed these cataracts, he and his men rested for a few days to recover from their efforts. At 2º Latitude North, the great Lualaba changes its direction, southwards to that point, to turn north-west, then west, then south-west. It is a vast water course from two to ten miles wide, full and studded with islands. To dodge those constant struggles with so many tribes of ferocious cannibals which drained his strength, he had to row from island to island, until, desperate with hunger, having sometimes been without any kind of food for up to three days, he decided to land on the left bank of the river. Fortunately he found a tribe there which had some idea of trade. Those natives had four guns from the west coast of Africa and called the great river on which he was navigating Ikitu Ya Congo (or the River of the Congo). The heart of the great explorer was filled with joy, because he saw that he was not far from his goal. With those Africans he made a blood-brotherhood (letting the blood of one of the Africans and of Francis Pocock mingle, a sign of definitive peace and friendship among those peoples), he bought a quantity of provisions and then continued his journey on the left bank of the river.

[6328]

Three days later, he reached the territory of a powerful tribe whose inhabitants were armed with guns; and he predicted that he was not far from the west coast of the Atlantic. As soon as those individuals had seen the white man, they lowered fifty-four great canoes into the water and assaulted him. Only after seeing three of his men killed did Stanley cease to shout to those Africans that he was a friend. Then began the fiercest battle which had ever been fought on that terrible river, which extended for 12 miles. This was the second last of the thirty two battles fought on the Lualaba.

[6329]

After frequent changes of name, the stretch of this river as it approaches the Atlantic is called the Zaire or Kwango. While it winds across the great basin between the 26º and 17º of Longitude, it flows for more than 1,400 miles with magnificent tributaries from the North but especially the South, the most important of which are, to the north on the right bank the Riuki, the Liru, the Urindi, the Lovva, the Lulu, the Kankora, the Mbura and the Aruvimi which flow through the cannibals’ region, the Mongala, the Kunga and the Mpaha, the White River and the Ginemba; and to the south on the left bank, the Rumani, and Umba, the Sankuru, the Ikilemba or Uriki and the Nkutu. From there, bordering the high chain of mountains between the great basin and the Ocean, it descends through more than thirty cataracts and turbulent rapids to flow out into the great River between the falls of Yellala and the Atlantic.

[6330]

The Anglo-American expedition suffered immense losses. In addition to the three young Englishmen, one of whom, Francis Pocock, perished in the cataracts of Massassa, Stanley himself on 3rd June was nearly dragged into the whirlpool of the Mua falls and six weeks later he and the entire crew of the Lady Alice were thrown from the top of the raging falls of Mbelo from which they escaped only by a miracle of divine providence. Finally after thousands of
terrifying adventures and mishaps, in the heart of that dismal darkness and the mysteries of the unknown in order to return to the kingdom of life, after passing fifty-seven cataracts and fighting thirty-two battles, crossing one thousand eight hundred miles from Nyangvè to the western coast, Stanley, with the survivors of his intrepid escort, arrived through Emboma and Kabinda to S. Paul of Luanda on the Atlantic Ocean in early September 1877.

[6331]

From there, via the Cape of Good Hope he led his faithful champions to Zanzibar, paying them a generous and well-deserved reward; and via the Red Sea in January 1878 he arrived in Cairo where I was glad to make the most sincere and warm friendship with the great African hero, and to take part with my late lamented Vicar, D. Antonio Squaranti, in the festive banquet offered in his honour by the distinguished general, Stone Pasha, President of the renowned Egyptian Geographical Society of the Khedives. At the time of writing these lines, various undertakings are being carried out on the African continent to facilitate African discoveries; I limit myself to mentioning only the one which, under Stanley’s guidance, is being organised by the King of the Belgians along the course of the River Livingstone. I am also pleased to mention the interesting journey of young Prince Giovanni Borghese, a Roman noble, accompanied by Dr Matteucci and by Mr Massari who are already in Darfur close to the boundaries of the empire of Waday. The extraordinary movement of explorations in all the points of this great continent, is always continuing with the greatest passion and energy, and almost all the civilised nations of Europe are taking part.

[6332]

This short document on the HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF AFRICAN DISCOVERIES is only a sketch and summary of a more voluminous and complete work that, please God, I shall write later, which will be followed by the HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF THE CATHOLIC MISSIONS founded by the Holy Apostolic See in the Islands and in the great African continent.
The essential results of the expeditions and discoveries mentioned in this Memoir can be contemplated in a single glance in the interesting Map of Africa published in 1874 by the most learned German geographer H. Kiepert in volume VIII of the bulletin of the Geographical Society of Berlin.

[6333]

Even more complete is the Map of Africa drawn up in 1879 by Keith Johnston which is entitled: General Map of Africa, constructed from the most recent coast surveys, and embodying the results of all explorations to the present time, by Keith Johnston, F.R.G.S. 1879. A new world has certainly opened to human activity. There are doubtless many gaps yet to be filled, since there is still more than a quarter of Africa to be discovered, which continues to be shrouded in the deepest mystery. But the impetus given to research is so powerful that it will not take long to bring this immense task to conclusion.
The immortal work conceived of and organised by His Majesty Leopold II King of the Belgians and the great impulse he gave to African discoveries with the noble aim of abolishing de facto the infamous trade in Africans (for which people are working very effectively in England and Germany) and of promoting civilisation in Central Africa, will not fail to bear fruit.

[6334]

However, that prodigious power which will shine the full splendour of the light of true Christian civilisation on all the points of the great African continent, will be the Catholic Church with the preaching of the Gospel, because Jesus Christ alone is the way, the truth, and the life; and the faith of Jesus Christ, his maxims, his teaching and his divine morality are the beginning of true civilisation, the source of life, the foundation of the greatness and prosperity of all the peoples and all the nations in the world.

+ Daniel Comboni

[6335]

More than 12 years have passed since Your Most Reverend Eminence accepted from the most wonderful Pontiff Pius IX of holy memory the serious assignment of supporting my weakness and safeguarding and directing the most holy Work of the Redemption of Africa; and the important results which gladden the new-born Church of Central Africa are due to Your Eminence’s magnanimous, constant and fervent zeal, aided by my smallness and the co-operation of our good missionaries. Amongst them, not to mentioned the living, the most devout Priests Fr Alessandro Dalbosco, Fr Antonio Squaranti and Fr Salvatore Mauro of venerable memory distinguished themselves.

[6336]

Your firmness and courage never faltered, O Most Eminent Prince, nor were they shaken by the formidable array of all the difficult obstacles which the sublime Work had to overcome; nor did you ever lack steadfast trust in the certainty of its success, despite the frailty of the tools that divine Providence was obliged to use and the scarcity or lack of the financial and material means required by the gigantic undertaking. But heartened by the Lord’s Spirit and the infallible words of his glorious Vicar, you constantly deigned to reassure our hearts, to comfort us in our weakness, to point out the way to us and to bless our feeble efforts. Nor was your generous heart satisfied with covering the holy enterprise with your most powerful protection and patronage; you used the vast and weighty influence of your glorious name so that abundant donations and offers of the loftiest protection would flow in from many parts of Europe and from the most munificent Princes. Our weakness and smallness would hardly have succeeded without your effective and constant assistance. Since your charity was always so lavish with comfort, help, advice and encouragement, permit me, O most Eminent Prince, to dedicate to you this brief historical outline of the dreadful disaster of the Famine and Plague which struck and devastated an immense, boundless expanse of the Vicariate Apostolic of Central Africa in 1878–1879; by my account of it you will clearly see that the most holy work you have patronised is truly a work of God; and your undaunted spirit will find reasons to safeguard this sublime undertaking increasingly, for the greater glory of God, the merit of the Veronese Church and the salvation of our unfortunate but ever beloved Africa.

[6337]

The works of God must always be born at the foot of Calvary. The Cross, contradictions, obstacles and sacrifices are the ordinary sign of the holiness of a work; and it is on this path strewn with tribulations and thorns that God’s works develop, prosper and reach their perfection and victory. This is the loving and wise economy of God’s Providence, amply borne out by the history of the Church and of all the Apostolic Missions in the world. This demonstrates, as the most splendid of truths, that the true religion of Jesus Christ was never planted in any kingdom or place without the greatest of sacrifices, the fiercest of contradictions, and martyrdom. And the reason for this is very clear indeed: since all God’s works tend by their nature to destroy Satan’s rule in the world and replace them with the saving standard of the Cross, the prince of darkness must necessarily bestir himself, unleash his power and call up all the forces of his henchmen in the world, to strive against his formidable and eternal enemy, Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the human race; Satan wants to resist Christ, to triumph over him and vanquish him.

[6338]

Among all the activities of the Catholic apostolate to which the Church of Christ has given life, one of the most challenging, difficult, sublime and important in the world is certainly our Central African Mission. It covers an area far greater than the whole of Europe and is peopled, according to the Washington statistics, by more than one hundred million, on whom the bright, life-giving star of the faith has yet to shine, and has been entrusted by the Holy See to our humble Institute for Africa in Verona. Of all the furious storms which have been raging about this young Church of which I, though unworthy, am the first Bishop, the most fearful has been this disastrous Famine and Plague. This only recently came upon us and its results are still very much felt, painfully engraved upon this land and its peoples.

[6339]

But this is a work of God, and once it has been tried and purified in the crucible of suffering, of crosses and martyrdom, it will arise more vigorous and powerful than ever, full of a new strength to answer its high calling of redeeming and civilising the primitive tribes of Africa.

[6340]

The lack or scarcity of the annual rains in 1877 was the main cause that precipitated the dreadful famine and drought which ravaged a substantial part of our immense Vicariate; and the regions worst hit by this tremendous scourge were Lower Nubia, Upper Nubia from Dongola to the Red Sea, the lands bathed by the Blue and White Niles and by the Nile between Egypt and Sobat, the Kingdom of Kordofan, the provinces of Darfur, the tribes of Jebel Nuba, the Shelluk region, and all the regions extending from Bahar-el-Ghazal as far as Nyam-Nyam and Lake Albert Nyanza.

[6341]

As soon that fertile land had been sown and planted and the seeds had sprouted, they withered away. Grass, flowers and fields were scorched by the burning rays of the sun, so it was not long before those wretched inhabitants lacked their staple food and almost all the animals starved to death. Imagine, O Most Eminent Prince the scale and immensity of this scourge which struck all those poor people as well as our mission. The peoples who dwell along the rivers suffered a quite appalling famine and so did the desert Arabs. As a large number of their camels had died of starvation, our caravans which were obliged to cross those deserts cost the mission huge sacrifices and enormous expenses. The price of hiring the camels that had survived the universal extermination was quadrupled, as they were so weak and worn out by starvation that they could only carry a third or quarter of their normal load. Therefore the expenses of our expeditions also quadrupled until, as for some time the camels and their drivers were dead or broken by the lack of food, the expeditions so necessary to bring aid to the famine-stricken missions, either became either supremely difficult for us, or impossible.

[6342]

Consequently either almost all staple foodstuffs were lacking or they rocketed to fabulous prices, that is to ten or twelve and even twenty times and more than what had formerly been their usual price. For corn, for example, the Austro-Hungarian Consul himself, Cavaliere Hansal, paid about 72 thalers the Ardeb (a sack of about 100 kilograms), whereas previously it had cost only 5 thalers. Subsequently there was also a dearth of wheat in Khartoum and none was available at any price. In the kingdom of Kordofan, it would have cost even 500 francs the Ardeb; but none at all was to be found there. Durra (or maize), which is the principal food of the peoples of the Egyptian possessions in the Sudan which form a territory five times larger than the whole of Italy, and is also the staple food of our orphans and pupils of both sexes in the establishments in Nubia, durra, as I was saying, cost us up to 108 francs the Ardeb at the Khartoum markets, while its normal price previously was between four and five francs; and the Illustrious Royal Austro-Hungarian Consul assured me that he had paid up to three thalers a Rub for it, or about 336 francs an Ardeb.

[6343]

Dokhon (penicillaria) a kind of millet which is the food of the peoples of the Kingdom of Kordofan and the Empire of Darfur and the normal food of the pupils, orphans and slaves who have sought refuge in our three establishments in Kordofan, rose from its ordinary price of about three thalers to thirty-seven thalers and more the Ardeb, and in Darfur cost up to 140 thalers the Ardeb, that is, a price forty-six times as much as usual. The same happened with the very scrawny, tough and disgusting meat of animals emaciated by hunger and reduced to skeletons whose price soared to ten or twelve times as much as normal. The same and worse affected Jebel Nuba, where in addition there was no salt: and for a long time these unsavoury foods had to be eaten without salt for seasoning.
It is easy to guess the consequences of all this, since a large part of the African peoples of the poor classes were totally deprived of anything to live on. I saw with my own eyes the extreme wretchedness of countless localities in which whole villages decimated by hunger lived on herbs, hay seeds and even the excrement of camels and other animals.

[6344]

From this brief sketch, Your Eminence can easily imagine my anguish of mind and the serious trouble in which I found myself; for in addition to the Institutes of Verona and Cairo, I had to feed and support the many establishments which we have founded in the Vicariate, composed not only of local people but of European Sisters, Missionaries and Lay Brothers who also needed solid sustenance amidst their apostolic labours in that intolerable African climate. While the Superior of the Sisters of St Joseph in Kordofan lay groaning with fever, she thought she might feel better if she were to taste a little wheat bread dipped in water: we searched high and low for it in the city of El Obeid, and none was to be found. At last a generous Jewish shopkeeper brought some and the Sister ate it; but she then succumbed, overcome by her illness. To provide the establishments of Kordofan with wheat bread, the late Fr Antonio Squaranti bought 20 Ardebs of wheat at an exorbitant price and having had it ground in Khartoum, he hunted for camels to take it to Kordofan. I rushed around everywhere and involved first the traders and even the Governor General of the Sudan himself in the search for camels.

[6345]

It was impossible for us to be successful: either there were no camels or camel-drivers, for almost all had died, had fallen ill or were emaciated by hunger or burning with fever. The wheat stayed put in Khartoum; so our three establishments of Kordofan with the missionaries and Sisters were unable to taste wheat bread and, like all the indigenous in the land, were forced to eat dokhon for months on end.

[6346]

However all this is but a shadow of the extreme misery which had engulfed every one of these unfortunate districts. Thirst, a far more terrible scourge than hunger, came to devastate those boundless lands far from the great rivers, the Nile, the White Nile and the Bahar-el-Gazal, which are fed only by the annual rains that normally water those lands in July, August and September. The year 1877 was the driest ever recorded in the history of Central Africa. Hence the countryside was literally burnt up by the sweltering heat-wave and the fields scorched by the sun: hence all the water cisterns dried out, as well as virtually all the wells of Kordofan and Darfur, which are usually twenty, thirty and even forty metres deep and more; among these, the two large wells of our establishments in the capital of Kordofan ran dry. I shudder to think of the horrible massacre of animals caused by thirst and the drought, and of the peoples of Kordofan and the Empire of Darfur. I shall only skim over the drought suffered in El Obeid and Malbes, where we have three very important Mission establishments.

[6347]

However our missions were often helped by our Procurator, Giorgi Papa, by a few good Catholics including the excellent Mr Ibrahim Debbane of Syria, and even by several Muslims who appreciated our work and brought us water; nonetheless we too were forced to buy it at an exorbitant price, with great shock to our diminishing finances. We had to be very economical with drinking water and with water for cooking. At times, the missionaries were obliged to drink the water they had used for washing their faces in the morning in order to quench their thirst during the day. Water for our personal ablutions had to be strictly measured out in small doses; and we reached the point of no longer washing our faces in the morning so as to keep it for moments of great thirst during the day. For more than four months no laundry could be done because of the lack of water. Finally, since water in the capital of Kordofan was reduced to the minimum, we had to move most of the staff of those two large establishments to Malbes, the agricultural colony we had founded, where there was indeed still a little water but food was very scanty; as a result when we were able to take a little refreshment for breakfast in the morning, it was impossible to have lunch at midday, and when we had a midday meal, we had to do without dinner in the evening.

[6348]

You should note that the generous donations received from so many benefactors in Europe were not enough for us to purchase this scarce and mediocre food. I cannot find words to describe the great privations that the missionaries, sisters, and personnel of our missions had to bear. The children, the pupils and the girls would run to the missionaries and Sisters to beg them for a little water because they were parched with thirst; but since they had nothing to appease their craving, the poor little things would cry, and make even the stones sorry for them: they disputed with one another other in a brotherly way to drink, a sip each, the little dirty water left in the basin which the missionary or sister had used to wash. I would like to say more… but I cannot even hold my pen. God has written in the book of life the sacrifices and privations borne by our missionaries and Sisters in that torrid and debilitating climate.

[6349]

What our Sisters did is admirable in God’s eyes. At 3.30 a.m. Sr Arsenia Le Floch from Brittany, Superior of the female establishments, would leave the house with another young and very hard working Sister with several bormas (earthenware vessels which hold three to four litres); after walking for four to five hours under the relentless sun, they would reach the side of a distant well; and having awaited her turn with bitter disputes with those barbarous guardians of the well and sometimes even coming to threats, with an incredible effort she would succeed in obtaining some murky, muddy, dirty, brackish and revolting water, for which she paid three, four and even five francs a borma, that is, more than the cost of wine in Italy! Then returning the same way with great difficulty, the two Sisters would return to the mission where they were anxiously expected, to distribute it in small, strictly measured doses to everyone so that they could quench their thirst. At three or half-past three in the afternoon, the same journey on foot was often repeated, and frequently the water had to be loaded onto an exhausted donkey that fell down every minute; and they would reach the mission late at night, sometimes even at midnight.

[6350]

Some way from our agricultural colony, after a great many efforts the Missionaries and Sisters succeeded in digging a well that yielded a little dirty, muddy water. They set two robust African catechists there to guard it, otherwise thieves would come in the night; thirsty and violent, they would steal the water and take it away to sell for their own profit. The mission in Malbes had three cows which were given water to drink twice a week. But what happened? Since they were parched with thirst and extremely emaciated they ended by yielding no more milk: and even when they had been supplying milk, the share that everyone got was reduced to almost nothing.

[6351]

Some members of the Mission would frequently have to leave the agricultural colony of Malbes, which one could say was deprived of more or less everything save a little water, either to take water to our people in El Obeid or to provide those in Malbes with a few basic essentials. The journey takes seven hours and is gruelling; it often had to be made on foot either under the scorching sun or by night, when the route is infested with thieves, fierce animals and hyenas, and frequently approached by the lions that roar in the vicinity and cause travellers to tremble with fear. Here I could cite many appalling events which happened last year. I shall mention only one.

[6352]

One evening, since almost everyone in Malbes was either ill or utterly debilitated and deprived of everything necessary to recover and realising that the El Obeid mission was in desperate need of water, one of our very hard-working Sisters was moved to compassion by so much misfortune. Prompted by heroic charity, she insistently begged and obtained from the Superior permission to fetch water to take to El Obeid. There she would be able to go to the aid of the thirsty and then stock up with food and return to Malbes to help our people who lacked everything. After arriving at the well and bravely confronting those Africans, with a supreme effort she managed to acquire two gherbes (large leather bottles) of water at an exorbitant price. When she had loaded them onto a camel, she set off on foot, with a recently redeemed African in the direction of the capital. It was a seven-hour journey on a difficult path beset by fierce animals, thieves and assassins: but love vanquished all these obstacles. She went on her way with great courage but not without fear amidst the howling of the wild animals and dogs and the roaring of the lions that made her tremble. Having completed at least three-quarters or more of the journey, the camel, worn out by hunger which had sapped its strength, fell heavily to the ground.

[6353]

The Sister and the African tried everything, vigorously beating and lashing it with the korbash (1) to make it get up and continue the journey; but all their efforts were in vain. What could she do in such circumstances? If they were to spend the whole night there, they would risk being devoured by wild beasts or attacked by robbers; to leave the African there alone and have the Sister leave by herself for El Obeid, would be to expose the African to being robbed of the two skins of water, and the Sister to grave danger; and she was very frightened.

[6354]

For a quarter of an hour the Sister was perplexed and fearful; then, reflecting on the extreme need of our people in Malbes and El Obeid and trusting in the God of love who comforts the afflicted and in the Immaculate Virgin who is the refuge of the poor, she decided to leave the African looking after the water and set out alone to seek help. It was a dark night, lit only by the pale light of a young moon only three or four days old. After a while she heard the furious barking of dogs which told her of the existence of a village. She stopped, frightened because in approaching the village she risked being devoured by the dogs that are dangerous in those parts, although providential. On the other hand, she realised that she should call for help. Whereupon she started shouting as loudly as she could at that village encircled by dogs: Ja Nas taälu! Ja Nas taälu! O people, come! O People, come. After a few minutes she saw two robust and hairy Baqqarra (Arab herdsmen) appear. Hearing her desperate cries they exclaimed: “How is it, lady, that you are here at night all alone, with the danger of being devoured by wild beasts, robbed or killed?…” and showing great concern, at the Sister’s entreaties they accompanied her to the place where she had left the water. They found the collapsed camel and the African guarding it and after repeated and vigorous blows, managed to get it on its feet. Not satisfied with that, those good Africans accompanied the Sister, the African man and the camel to El Obeid, which they reached at midnight, more dead than alive.

[6355]

I shall say nothing to you, O Most Reverend Eminence, of the missionaries’ sorrow at being unable to obtain wine for the daily celebration of Holy Mass, the ineffable consolation for troubled souls. Wine was so scarce that only a little remained, just enough to celebrate the divine Sacrifice on Sundays and feast days. However, as there was no more wine for Holy Mass in the capital of Kordofan, I was obliged to send some in small bottles by post from Khartoum, so that Mass could be celebrated on Feast Days. What is more, neither missionaries nor Sisters had any wine to drink; they almost always drank that dirty, brackish, revolting water.

[6356]

In so wretched a state, O Most Eminent Prince, I must solemnly declare that neither Sisters nor Missionaries ever lacked courage or zeal for their demanding ministry: firm and steadfast in their difficult but holy vocation, all stuck to their position and, joyful and content amongst so many privations and sacrifices, they worked tirelessly to win souls for Christ. What best reveals the grace of their holy and very challenging apostolate is the fact that our missionaries and Sisters never hesitated, nor were they unnerved or despairing in the face of the storm, amidst the fiercest of diseases or confronting the death of so many of their brothers and sisters: they held out undaunted as the storm crashed around them, ever trusting in God who humbles and raises, who troubles and consoles, and in the divine Saviour who, after his agonising Passion and Death, rose in glory. Their self-denial is even more remarkable considering that they themselves were often afflicted by fevers in a stifling climate where they were also tormented by mosquito bites and stung by other insects that tormented them night and day. In brief, all were bearing the sweetest burden of the cross. They were totally deprived of every human comfort, but filled with strength, courage and hope in the Cross of Jesus Christ, which is the infallible sign of a work of the Lord.

[6357]

However, as well as all these deprivations and sacrifices common to all our missionaries and Sisters, another very heavy cross was added to my spirit and to the heart of our devout general administrator, Fr Antonio Squaranti: the heavy debt we found, that is, of 46,784 francs, which together with those of more than 14,000 francs which we ourselves were forced to incur to provide for the most urgent needs in the ever-growing famine to prevent the mission from perishing, and of a further 10,000 francs to purchase a steam engine to irrigate our garden in Khartoum. This was essential if we were to prevent it from drying out and so putting an end to our only productive establishment, the fruit of so much hard work and the effort of many years, which would have been to the great detriment of the mission; so we found ourselves facing the enormous burden of a debt of more than 70,000 francs.

[6358]

O Most Eminent Prince, without speaking of all the other crosses and disasters which flooded my heart with sorrow and pain, this will be enough to give you a pale idea of my critical and distressing position. But all this is still little. A far worse disaster was to come, to wring my heart with the deepest of sorrows.
Towards the end of July 1878, the sky began to fill with thick clouds; and thunder and flashes of lightening threatened to destroy those desolate lands. Very soon heavy rain fell in torrents from the sky; and it was so copious and abundant for at least two months that the oldest of the locals could not remember the like of it ever being seen. Hence the two great branches of the Nile, that is, the White and Blue Niles, rose so high above the level of the land that they overflowed and threatened to flood our great establishment in Khartoum as well as the capital of the Egyptian possessions in the Sudan. Therefore while the numerous garrison of a few thousand soldiers directed by military engineers were building great dykes all around the city to arrest the flow of the waters and prevent flooding, we built solid walls in front of the mission on the banks of the White Nile at enormous expense, with large blocks of wood and hundreds of tall date-palm trunks cut from our garden. As a result, after a good three weeks of continuous toil, the city and the mission were safe and the turbulent flow caused no appreciable damage.

[6359]

Hundreds and thousands of houses fell apart; but our establishments remained intact; and the dykes or barriers and embankments built will serve for many years to protect the mission from future floods.
Then with the few seeds they had been able to preserve during the previous disastrous year, the workers on the land and the fellahs set to, sowing wheat, durra, sesame, green vegetables and all the seeds they had; the peasants, although worn out, began to tend all those parched lands which the heavy rains had softened. The ground was fertile and in a very short time, watered by the torrential rains that had been emptied from the sky, they produced harvests of every kind in an abundance that had never before been seen. Everyone presumed that with the new harvests the terrible famine would be over, and that the abundance of the imminent victuals would wipe out even the traces of the tremendous wretchedness suffered until then.

[6360]

However this was not the case. Indeed, while the rains were falling, hundreds and thousands of the poor natives’ homes and huts collapsed as they were built only of sun-baked mud or very flimsy straw or cane; and the poor inhabitants suddenly found themselves out on the road, exposed night and day to the open air, whether there were torrential downpours or whether the sun beat down with its burning rays; consequently, exposed to all this bad weather, these unfortunates succumbed to a furious wave of very violent fevers, so virulent that in a short time a huge expanse of those lands was littered with bodies of both sexes and all ages; and the few survivors became walking corpses, wandering pale and wan through the streets and deserts, asking for help. Terror and fear spread everywhere; the tremendous, relentless epidemic rampaged through the cities, large villages and countryside so forcefully and with such intensity that it rapidly transformed a large part of those regions into a vast cemetery.

[6361]

We are eye-witnesses of the slaughter wrought by that tremendous epidemic in the regions bathed by the White and Blue Niles and by the Nile itself. In an hour, in half an hour, in ten minutes, we saw death strike individuals who had formerly enjoyed flourishing health. Many of our Catholics also died as it were unexpectedly, stricken by this inexplicable evil which became manifest with symptoms of nervous fever, sometimes typhoid, sometimes petechial; and we barely had the time to administer Extreme Unction and Absolution in articulo mortis. In many cities, towns and villages, an enormous number of the inhabitants and whole families who had suffered starvation the previous year, after eating the first-fruits of the abundant harvest fell dead beside the new heaps of provisions in the huts or courtyards of their homes; and trustworthy persons who returned to Khartoum from long wanderings through the regions of the Blue and White Niles assured me they had come across almost depopulated towns and villages, and found houses, public streets and the countryside full of putrefying corpses, stretched out near the fodder, durra, wheat, and sesame they had gathered; and that wafted by their deadly fumes, the epidemic had spread over vast territories, reaping victims everywhere.

[6362]

With our five Sisters from the Institute of the Devout Mothers of Africa whom I went to fetch in Berber to take to Khartoum on a steamer put at my disposal by H.E. Gordon Pasha, Governor General of the Egyptian possessions in the Sudan, I myself visited towns and villages between Berber and Khartoum which I had previously seen densely populated and abundantly provided with victuals and everything else, and I found them virtually depopulated and abandoned. The very few inhabitants who had survived death were so worn out and emaciated that they looked like walking corpses and were eating seeds, hay, grass, nabak and even camel dung. They no longer had the strength to sow or work in the surrounding countryside, whose fertile fallow land had already produced hay, plants and weeds of a luxuriance never hitherto seen, and stupendous vegetation. The huts and houses were almost all destroyed. Domestic animals of all kinds had practically all disappeared; the majestic city of Shendi, the ancient capital of the kings of Nubia and the extensive land of Temaniat were virtually depopulated and laid waste, etc., etc. Here and there we distributed grain and alms, and it goes without saying how grateful and obliged to us those unfortunates were.

[6363]

It is pointless, O Most Eminent Prince, for me to explain any further details of the heart-rending picture of the terrible famine and mortality in this very large part of our Vicariate. I should need many volumes. It is enough to mention to you briefly as a compendium these four points, for whose truth and exactitude I assume full responsibility. My very modest explanation is still inadequate to describe such an appalling situation.

[6364]

1. It proved impossible to gather in from the fields a large part of the abundant provisions of grain, wheat, sesame, etc. and a substantial quantity of the durra which those very fertile lands produced after the extraordinary rains mentioned, because of the lack of manpower among the landowners and farmers who had either died or were unfit for work; this is why, even with the new harvest, the famine continued in those lands although it was less acute. Many great land owners on the White Nile asked the Government to send men and soldiers to gather in these abundant quantities of grain and produce, offering them half of it and more in compensation. But although the Government was impoverished because it had been unable that year to obtain even a quarter of the land and personal taxes, and although it had been unable to pay its employees and the troops on duty (which is why a great many of them were forced to rob and pillage to obtain food), it was obliged to refuse this generous offer because of the lack of manpower and the sorry consequences of the famine and plague which had decimated the staff of the administration and military on a vast scale.

[6365]

2. In one part of our Vicariate, larger than the whole of Italy, from Khartoum in all directions, the Famine and Plague caused the death of half the entire population of both sexes, as well as more than half the animals.
3. In many other localities of the Vicariate, three quarters of the population and the animals perished.
4. In many villages and vast expanses to the south-east of Khartoum, as I was told by the government pharmacist, Mr Fahmi, who was the mission’s official doctor for a long time and skilled in treating typhoid and the other fevers prevalent in the Sudan, and according to what many eye-witnesses told me, not only the whole population of both sexes died, but also all the domestic animals, camels and even dogs, which are the providential guardians of public security in those unfortunate parts.

[6366]

Your Most Reverend Eminence can easily see from the little I have mentioned how seriously the finances of the whole Work were impaired by this terrible widespread famine and plague which raged last year throughout our beloved Vicariate, and how many privations and worries it caused our missionaries, our Sisters and the numerous personnel in our Mission establishments.

[6367]

But all this is still little. Above all, what flooded my mind with deep affliction and sorrow to the point that I almost died of anguish and pain, was the agony and extermination which the privations, disease and mortality caused the active staff on the mission and the tragic consequences, as it pleased the loving and ever adorable divine Providence, which derived from them; moreover, through divine grace, none of this succeeded in undermining our courage nor in sapping our resolve; indeed, all these terrible trials and appalling disasters were a great help in reassuring our minds, making us trust blindly in that God of mercies who preceded us on the way of the Cross and martyrdom, and in staying firm and constant in our arduous and holy vocation.

[6368]

Towards the end of September, as the rains diminished, very high fevers which degenerated into typhoid, the most virulent, deadly diseases and every kind of ailment struck almost all the mission’s members; and the evil smallpox and petechial typhoid extinguished many lives. All the sisters in Khartoum fell seriously ill; and even the most hard-working and tireless Sr Saverina from Normandy, who in at least three years of Khartoum’s deadly climate had never suffered even the shadow of an illness, was smitten with a most ferocious fever which brought her to the brink of the grave. Almost all the girl pupils and orphans in the female Institute were stricken and many fell to death’s scythe. All the priests except one, as well as all the European coadjutor brothers and almost all the members of the male establishment were the target of endless raging fevers and the most virulent diseases, and many met their end.

[6369]

Fr Policarpo Genoud, struck by the lightning pestilence of typhoid, breathed his last in less than twenty minutes; and Sr Enrichetta, the French flower of angelic habits and a true heroine of charity in the spring of her youth, was slain by the most virulent bout of petechial typhoid; she was the last of the nine sisters of the praiseworthy Congregation of St Joseph of the Apparition who were victims of charity, brought life through their sweat, sacrificing their lives for the redemption of unhappy Africa; six most devout and courageous European coadjutor brothers, including the excellent Ferdinando Bassanetti from the Diocese of Piacenza and the Veronese, Antonio Iseppi, died one after another in just a few days; thirteen of our best indigenous pupils of both sexes
also died; they had been well-trained and instructed in our most holy religion and in the crafts and skills; and in a short time the grand establishments of Khartoum were reduced to as many infirmaries, which rapidly ended by becoming one vast hospital.

[6370]

Some of the members of the male Institute recovered but were so weakened by the virulence and ferocity of their illnesses that I decided to send them for a change of air on a large steamer on the Nile to Temaniat and Jebel Taieb, accompanied by the only priest who had remained immune to the universal plague. Then I stayed on alone in the capital of the Sudan to administer the Sacraments and help in their extreme need both the numerous internal staff of the mission and those outside the city of Khartoum. I therefore I had the multiple offices of Bishop, parish priest, vicar, Superior, administrator, doctor and nurse all at once. But God was keeping a very powerful help for me in the two ablest Sisters, Sr Saverina and Sr Germana, although they too were worn out with the fiercest fevers. The former, who was almost always in bed or unwell and in her room, was constantly consulted about the illnesses as she was highly skilled in the diagnosis of fevers and typhoid, and expert in treating the sick.

[6371]

As soon as I found myself alone amidst so many disasters I thought I should have to assist at her death the other Sister, Sister Germana Assuad, a native of Aleppo and expert in her mother tongue, Arabic. But almost like a miracle, enlivened by a spirit of sublime charity she sprang from her bed of suffering and for a good four months sustained unspeakable efforts night and day, assisting the sick, treating them and preparing for a good death all the sick who spoke Arabic, Italian or French. I shared enormous efforts, atrocious sorrows, and unspeakable travails with this brave and unflagging daughter of charity, who made herself everything to everyone. Indeed, forgetful of her own ailments, she ran everywhere that others needed her.

[6372]

Not only was she ready to heal wounds, to wipe away the tears of the sad and help the dying as a highly skilled nurse; but further, she threw herself into treating the sick in spirit and with apostolic zeal by encouraging those on the way to perdition to repent and confess and instructing the catechumens to lead back every sort of person who had gone astray to the ways of eternal salvation, catechising the ignorant and kindling the flame of faith and love of God in those about to appear before the supreme Judge. Oh! What Sister Germana Assuad of Aleppo did! How many tears she shed, what a soothing balm of consolation did she pour into unhappy hearts! And what energetic help she gave me in the raging devastation that had befallen us! What anguish we felt together when we were unable to relieve our missionaries and Sisters and coadjutor brothers and refresh them with a little broth because we could not find the wherewithal to make it, even at a high price! What straits! What anguish! Only God can judge the enormous intensity of our suffering.

[6373]

But the most sorrowful anguish and the fiercest blow that oppressed me and plunged me into an ocean of sadness and mourning was the irreparable loss suffered by the mission of the incomparable Fr Antonio Squaranti, the right arm of the holy Work and my true angel of advice and comfort. In his inscrutable but ever loving ways God took him from my side to encircle him with the crown reserved for righteous souls. He was a man of unblemished loyalty, rectitude and fidelity beyond compare, pious, learned, prudent, sweet-natured, very humble, obedient, most zealous for the glory of God and the salvation of souls and burning with zeal for the redemption of Africa. This worthy priest who lives on in the memory of Verona and especially of the Parish of S. Paolo for the great benefits he brought them by his priestly zeal, had been generously granted to me by Your Eminence’s fervent zeal, to succeed pious Fr Alessandro Dalbosco as director of the African Institutes in Verona. In this important and sensitive office and for six consecutive years he showed the judgement and energy of his great soul and all the most beautiful virtues which adorned this flower of a priest.

[6374]

In 1877, after my Episcopal consecration, for many and serious reasons which it is pointless to mention here, I decided to take him back with me to Central Africa as general administrator of the temporal goods of the Vicariate. I was intending to make him my Vicar General and later, when all the desired conditions had been met, to have him appointed by the Holy See Bishop and my Coadjutor with the right to future succession in the governance of our beloved but challenging and difficult Mission. Although Fr Antonio Squaranti had worked hard and withstood great difficulties during the journey, he always retained his health and proved that he could rule firm and unshakeable in his demanding new ministry.

[6375]

In the stifling months of June and July he was overcome by the weakness and exhaustion which prostrate all Europeans, especially in their first year in Khartoum; but when the tropical rains appeared he began to regain his original strength.
However, with the new Kharif and the torrential rains which fell upon the ground that had been scorched and baked by the sun and the tremendous drought of the previous year, I clearly perceived that we would be in for a deadly season bringing terrible consequences and ferocious disasters. Therefore to protect this important person from the blows of the pernicious diseases I feared he might contract, since he was breathing that air for the first time, was already considerably weakened by his exhausting journeys. and had a tendency to succumb to gastro-enteric infections which obliged him to be very moderate and sober, I planned to give him a change of air and send him to Berber where he would be out of danger. So I ordered him to visit that station where the first five Sisters of the Verona Institute had been for six months and, with the help of a wise superior, had been trained in the spirit and apostolic life of Central Africa.

[6376]

He promptly obeyed my suggestion. With no inkling that I was taking him from the scene of the imminent plague to remove him from all danger of it, he left on a boat accompanied by a Syrian trader. In thirteen days he arrived at the Berber mission, on the Feast of St Michael Archangel. After a few days, he had completely recovered; indeed, in mid-October he announced to me in a letter that he felt so strong and vigorous and was in perfect health such as he had never enjoyed in Europe. He was supposed to stay there until I summoned him back to Khartoum.

[6377]

In the meantime, the scourge of the plague, which I have already mentioned in these pages, was raging, and he came to hear the sad news of the illnesses and deaths that had struck the Mission. He was also upset to learn that I was alone for a while in this tragic theatre to administer the Sacraments and to assist the dying, although after the return of the convalescents to Khartoum, Fr Carmino Loreto, a young Neapolitan priest who later went home, also lent his hand to the work.

[6378]

When our dear Squaranti was told of my acutely critical position and that there were so many unfortunates who had need of the priestly ministry in the capital of the Egyptian possessions of the Sudan, wasting no time he boarded the first Arab boat bound for Khartoum, with the priest Vannik. It was so laden with poor people that the two Missionaries could barely move. Here I shall not mention the hardships of this voyage which lasted fifteen days. On the eleventh day Fr Squaranti was smitten by a very high fever. Since both had been excited at their hasty departure, they had forgotten to take medicines and quinine with them as is the usual custom. Thus the fever recurred and attacked him ever more violently on the twelfth and thirteenth day until on the very last day the attack was so powerful and oppressive that it brought him close to death’s door. He had already made the full and total sacrifice of his life for the Lord and was preparing to take the great step when he arrived in Khartoum.

[6379]

I was thunderstruck to see him so emaciated and consumed by the deadly process and so undermined by only four days of fever and although he was so weak, the heartfelt hope of saving him cheered me, and we took every care to surround him with loving assistance, consulting doctors, applying the most salutary medicines and sparing nothing to bring him comfort and prolong his life; but in fact all the treatment and attention was in vain. Twelve days after arriving in Khartoum, comforted by all the gifts of our holy Religion, perfectly calm and resigned, with a happy expression and consumed by divine love, he flew to his Creator’s arms at 7.00 p.m. on 16th November 1878, to receive the reward for his sublime virtues. His heroic love in wanting to rush to my aid, to the scene of the most tremendous disasters, to sacrifice everything for the salvation of souls in such a difficult predicament had caused his death which submerged us all in a sea of sorrow and apprehension.

[6380]

This most serious loss of the mission’s right arm, the enormous efforts and the lightning cloud of so many afflictions and disasters of such anguish and heartbreak that many pages would not suffice to describe them, ended by ferociously attacking and undermining my own robust constitution and health. After spending several months under the frightful burden of so many crosses and worries, without ever sleeping a single hour in 24 by night or day, on the evening of 16th January 1879, after being called to the bedside of an unfortunate, wealthy heterodox merchant who, strong and robust in the morning, had attended to his commercial business, and in the evening was drawing his last breath, I succumbed to the fiercest of fevers which drained me of all my strength, reducing me to a deplorable condition.

[6381]

But should the heart of the apostolic missionary quail in the face of such an appalling disaster, or succumb beneath the weight of so many calamities?… No, never. The cross is the regal way that leads to triumph. The most Sacred Heart of Jesus also beat for the poor Africans.

[6382]

The true apostle never shrinks from the fiercest obstacles or the most violent contradictions, and unflinching he confronts the clouds of tribulation and the impact of the most ferocious storms: he marches to triumph on the path of martyrdom. Like our confrères in China who are undaunted in the face of death and the most terrible tortures, without fear we will face enormous efforts, dangerous journeys, frightful deprivations, the slow martyrdom of a torrid climate and burning fevers, the harshest sacrifices and death itself to win the peoples of Central Africa for the faith, so that they may all be gathered in the peaceful shade of Christ’s one fold.

[6383]

However while we, humble workers in unhappy Africa, will sustain unflinching the impetuous attack of the crosses and disasters of our most difficult and challenging apostolate, we must likewise imitate our venerable confrères and Vicars Apostolic in China, Mongolia and India, raising our voices to our generous benefactors to implore aid on behalf of our unfortunate and ever dear Africans, who still groan under the burden of so many misfortunes. Clamat penuria pauperum, clamant nudi, clamant famelici (St. Bernard, Epist. XLII).

[6384]

The famine, the plague! The hunger, the drought!… tremendous words, terrible evils, the harshest of scourges!… From David who pales and trembles at the threat of the Prophet Gad: veniet tibi fames in terra tua… erit pestilentia
in terra tua (Kings 24:13), I think that very seldom anyone, just hearing such words uttered, temperet a lacrymis (Virgil); and feeling their veins and pulses throbbing, would not have cried out with their naturally Christian souls: Libera nos Domine! What ever would happen if the famine, thirst and plague ferociously combined were to rage, to destroy and to sow squalor, desolation and death in the already squalid and devastated land of cursed Ham?

[6385]

Then would come the pandetur malum super omnes habitatores (Jer 1:14). My soul, for a while overwhelmed, still avoids recalling, as I have in these pages, the tragic story that deserves compassion and tears, because quod non audeo ego, audet et charitas, et cum fiducia charitas pulsat ad ostium amici, nequaquam putans pari se debere repulsam (St Bernard, Epist. XI). It is on behalf of the poor Africans that I speak, the starving children of interior Africa; and it is propter nomen Domini Dei nostri quaesivi bona tibi. Full of trust in that love bona mater charitas… diversis diversa exhibens, sicut filios diligit universos (St Bernard, Epist. II), for those poor Africans, and for the holy and sublime apostolate of Central Africa I will speak and weep at the same time.

[6386]

The civilised nations of Europe and America, and in particular the Episcopate and generous and fervent Catholics in France, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany, Italy, England and Belgium, etc., stirred themselves mightily at the news of the terrible scourge of the hunger and famine which for several years had afflicted many of the vast provinces of China, the Eastern Indies, Mongolia, Africa, and the other missions in the world; and through their most exquisite charity and the most tender compassion for so many unfortunate people, they vied to offer effective aid to their wretched brethren. We Bishops and Vicars Apostolic of the Foreign Missions in the regions occupied by those who do not yet believe in Christ will be eternally grateful to the venerable Catholic Episcopate and to our generous benefactors in Europe who have lavished so much aid upon us; and from our missions the fragrant incense of the fervent prayers of our dear children regenerated by the saving waters of holy Baptism will rise daily to heaven to dispel the clouds.

[6387]

Nonetheless, without changing any detail of this devastating picture of the famine and disasters that were destroying the above-mentioned remote districts and which have been accurately described by our venerable brothers, the Pastors of those important Missions and also by the Consuls and representatives of the civilised European nations accredited to the foreign governments, I have no hesitation whatsoever in voicing my humble opinion; and after mature and thorough reflection, I would like make the following serious assertion:
the famine and plague in Central Africa were far worse and more terrible than those in China, the Indies and all the other apostolic Missions in the world.
Here are the principal reasons:

[6388]

1. In the Indies and in China, along with the hunger and famine there is generally a gentle, tolerable climate, which in many of those provinces is healthier than that in Europe. Further, in those places one generally breathes exhilarating, pure air and drinks clear, delicious fresh water. The gentle climate, the pure fresh air and water are a delicious refreshment and a great resource for poor starving people.

[6389]

On the other hand, in most parts of Central Africa, together with hunger and the most distressing hardships there is a burdensome and unbearable climate; an excessive, suffocating heat prevails even inside the dwellings and huts where people shelter in the shade. Then in the endless deserts where missionaries have no shelter at all nor even a patch of shade, they travel in the dry heat under the burning rays from 11.00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m. There is nothing to be found but dry sand and a flaming sky in temperatures of 40, 50 and even 60 degrees; it is useless to seek relief and indeed impossible to find any of the above-mentioned resources which refresh the poor and starving in India and China.

[6390]

In addition, in the immense regions far from the great rivers, as in Kordofan, Darfur, Jebel Nuba or among the interior tribes of Africans, the scourge of hunger is linked with the even more terrible scourge of thirst; dirty, muddy, brackish and revolting water drawn from wells 30 or 40 metres deep, sometimes costs more than wine in Italy: and there have been days when it was impossible to obtain any at any price because there was none at all to be had. Who can estimate my sorrow, and the greatness of so many privations!
Nor should I omit to mention the equally serious case of the lack of salt to season food which we sometimes experienced. People should consider all these critical circumstances which in interior Africa aggravate the condition of the hungry. Then the truth of this first point of my above-mentioned assertion which describes and points out the gravity of the disasters of the hunger and famine of Central Africa, far greater and more appalling than that of the other missions in the world, will shine out clearly.

[6391]

2. I never happened to read or hear in the history and details of famines in the Indies, China and other parts of the world, that European missionaries, sisters and coadjutor brothers in those parts lacked the basic essentials; or that they could obtain them only at exorbitant and fabulous prices, up to ten, twenty and thirty times more than their ordinary price as I have mentioned in this account. Now all this occurred in Central Africa. Our Veronese missionaries, sisters and coadjutor brothers in Kordofan and in Jebel Nuba, as well as several traders and employees in Darfur and the regions of the White Nile and Bahar-el-Ghazal had no bread at all; for a long time they were forced to eat nauseous and repugnant dokhon, a sort of millet whose botanical name is penicillaria, which in Darfur cost up to 140 Megidi thalers the Ardeb, that is, 636 gold francs, while its normal price previously had been about 3 Megidi thalers the Ardeb, the equivalent of less than 15 gold francs; so that is, at a price forty-six times as much as usual. Oh! What heart-rending anguish I felt at seeing myself absolutely incapable of remedying such an appalling disaster! When I was afflicted by the thought of the extreme hardship in Kordofan which deprived generous Sister Arsenia Le Floch, Superior of El Obeid, of the modest comfort of a little wheat bread dipped in water as she lay groaning on her death bed and was hastening to take flight for heaven! Then the deprivations and hardship of most of the poor indigenous people surpass all calculations and estimates. There can be no doubt at all that there is no country in the world as wretched as a large part of Africa.

[6392]

3. Furthermore, I never heard or read in the newspapers and annals of the missions of the Indies, China or other parts of the world that the consequence of the hunger, thirst and plague was that terrible, dreadful mortality which I have recorded in this explicit report, whereas in some of the huge expanses of the Sudan the vast majority of those wretched peoples fell prey to death; and in some places not far from the capital of the Egyptian possessions in Africa, half, three quarters and even all the inhabitants died, and the same goes for the animals and even the dogs, which are endowed with such vigour and vitality, and in those lands are normally the providential guardians of public safety against ruffians, assassins and fierce beasts.

[6393]

4. In the Indies and China, industry is highly developed and their culture and civilisation are ancient. Not to mention any other argument, the great Universal and World Exhibitions, which for more than 25 years we have admired in London, Paris, Philadelphia and Vienna, give us a sublime idea of the great progress of the industry and culture of those empires in the Far East. In fact, from a certain perspective, Indian and Chinese mechanics and construction can be said in some ways to rival those of civilised Europe. There, beside the hunger and famine, as well as the gentle climate and the healthiness and freshness of the air and the water, comfortable houses and ingenious dwellings are built in which to shelter from the bad seasonal weather, the abundant rains and the sun’s burning rays.
This is not the case in the inhospitable districts and remote areas of Africa where human industry is all but unknown, and culture and civilisation still young; indeed it can be said with all truth that those lands are still primitive and many of them more backward in culture and civilisation than at the times of our first Parents, Adam and Eve after their fall…

[6394]

In the entire Vicariate of Central Africa, with the exception of the city of Khartoum which, since the Catholic Mission was founded, has a few houses built of stone and fired bricks, for example the mission buildings and our residence, which was the first in all Central Africa to be built in the European style in all Central Africa; as I was saying, there are no stone or brick houses as in Europe: the few houses of the great and well-off are built of sand, or mud baked in the sun, but they are so flimsy that do not last long and fall apart or disintegrate after a very few seasons of abundant rains during the kharif. These, as I said, belong to the privileged and opulent families of the important cities, in which a Pasha or Provincial governor resides.

[6395]

However, most of the middle-class dwellings in Central Africa are built of straw or mud; and a substantial proportion of the poor either have only a few rough huts in which to shelter during the night or in the season of the kharif (annual rains) or they huddle in caves or under the trees; and a great many are forced to live out, without any shelter in which to take refuge from the burning heat or the annual rains. To this should be added the gravest fact that almost all the people of interior Africa, with the exception of the chiefs or the well-off, always sleep on the bare ground; they lie on the hide of a cow or a tiger or some other animal; and most of them go completely naked without any kind of clothing and in this state remain, both under the burning darts of the sun and at night, which is sometimes rigidly cold, or when strong winds whistle round them, or in the wet and rainy seasons, which often causes them to catch the deadliest of fevers and fatal illnesses.

[6396]

However, it is not only the poor classes who lack shelter in those remote regions; but also the well-off, in the season of the kharif: for when the annual rains pour down many houses built of twigs, straw and mud or earth baked in the sun break up and melt like sugar or chocolate when they are soaked in water; so that most of the population of Central Africa are deprived of shelter in the rainy season and exposed to all the inclemency of the weather, the cold by night and the heat by day. Consequently large numbers of these unfortunates fall ill and contract virulent diseases, and their wretched life ends with an even more wretched and unfortunate death.

[6397]

Only think, Most Eminent Prince, of the great misfortune of so many deeply unhappy African peoples, assailed by hunger, thirst, the heat, the cold, exposed to all the bad weather of such varied and perilous seasons without a haven or shelter, and subject to so many and so dangerous diseases. Compare all these wretched conditions and circumstances with the far more gentle and advantageous ones enjoyed by the peoples of India and the Far East; and the truth of my above-mentioned assertion will shine out bright and clear before your eyes: the famine and plague of Central Africa were far worse and more dreadful than those of India, China, Mongolia, and all the other apostolic missions in the world.

[6398]

5. Lastly, the deadly and most pernicious error of fatalism of the sect of Islam, the extreme ignorance and most unfortunate normal conditions of the poor Africans groaning under the iron yoke of the cruellest and most abominable slavery, make the wretched state of the starving in Central Africa far worse than it is in the Indies, China and the world’s other missions. Islamic fatalism and the extreme ignorance of the poor Africans bent under the burden of slavery is one of the main reasons that the starving African pays no attention to his plight, to his miseries, to his hunger, to his thirst, to his deprivations, to his illnesses or to the dangers that threaten his life; and he is paid even less attention by the society of his African brethren, dominated by the superstition of fatalism, amongst whom he lives. The starving Mohammedan who does not possess or obtain more than the wherewithal to fill his stomach and keep alive, (and much more the African slave so trained by his master), convinced as he is of the fierce law of fatalism according to which he must suffer his destiny as willed by God, that is, that he absolutely has to die since God has so decreed, without rousing himself in the least or being dismayed; without a groan or a complaint, he is fully resigned to his lot; calm and serene, he does not bother about anything and makes not the slightest effort or attempt to find a remedy or to avoid this tremendous misfortune. Frequently, always prey to his fatalism, he sits outside his door, next to his dwelling, behind a hut or under a tree; and there passively and in cold blood he awaits death unperturbed, exclaiming with his prophet: Allah kerim, that is: God is worthy of honour!

[6399]

For this same principle and reason, his family, his brothers and sisters or his homeland, when threatened by a disaster which, by virtue of this same fatalism of theirs, they hold is established and destined by God, remain unmoved, do not utter a single lament nor lift a finger to avoid such misfortune; so it is not rare that in the same city or village, serious disasters occur unbeknown to the public or without their paying any attention, trying to prevent them or to find a remedy. On the other hand, in India, in China and in the other missions of the world, people are usually more sociable, cultured, civil, and hard-working. The hungry man who has some mishap rouses himself, does his best to make an effort and to examine the situation as best he can, in order to remedy it. He is joined by his family, relatives, friends and other citizens; a sentiment of humanity and philanthropy is kindled and prevails, and the unfortunate person is comforted by his own attempts and those of others to solve the problem.

[6400]

The plight of the hungry and unfortunate in those vast kingdoms and empires is therefore a far better one.
Moreover their governments, which from a certain standpoint can be called normal because they maintain diplomatic relations with the great European and American powers, have made immense sacrifices to come to the aid of their hungry. Even the Indian princes and princesses and the mandarins of China are lavish with their aid to them, and in particular, the government of the Queen of England and Empress of India comes to their rescue with huge donations; even the ministers plenipotentiary, consuls and representatives of the civilised nations accredited to those governments stir themselves and make energetic efforts.

[6401]

But in Central Africa local governments pay no heed to the disasters and calamities of their subjects. They are usually only concerned to squeeze and extort from them as many taxes and fines as possible and even resort to all kinds of violence. The only person endowed with noble sentiments and full of goodwill who could effectively have relieved these disasters would have been the most Excellent Gordon Pasha, Governor General of the Egyptian possessions in the Sudan. However, he was absent at the height of the scourge of the hunger and famine, and when he returned to his post in Khartoum, he found it utterly impossible to find the necessary substantial assistance because that year he had been unable to collect the numerous taxes in many of those provinces where they were due as there was no money or the necessary funds for the maintenance of the army and the various administrations of those vast and remote possessions. Indeed, amidst such hardship he was forced to dismiss many of his employees and to thin the ranks of the indigenous Egyptian army drastically, to avoid paying salaries. Consequently many of those dismissed and not paid up devoted themselves to theft and violence, under the pretext of managing to survive and not to die of starvation.

[6402]

Lastly in the Indies, China, Mongolia and the other missions, the horrible scourge of the famine did not strike so suddenly. The Bishops, Vicars Apostolic and missionaries raised their authoritative voices which rang out in the ears of generous European benefactors; and thanks to divine bounty, they were able to receive abundant aid. Instead, in Central Africa, I was the only Bishop and Vicar Apostolic; I could therefore only raise my voice later, at a time when all thoughts and minds were absorbed by the hungry of India, and all eyes turned to China, Mongolia and the world’s other suffering missions.

[6403]

My voice was weak and it was the only one; and my cries of misery rang out too late. Although many and timely contributions from very generous and devout benefactors arrived to sweeten my heart’s troubles and relieve extreme or great miseries, nonetheless they were unable to cover the most urgent needs. The missionaries, sisters, and coadjutor brothers and mission staff stood firm, and with indomitable constancy, courage and resignation bore the greatest deprivations and sacrifices. We have suffered deeply; and we are pleased and content with our lot, because the Lord has deigned to let us share in his passion and has powerfully helped us to bear his cross, the divine symbol of resurrection and life.

[6404]

And although the Vicariate of Central Africa is still suffering the consequences of those dreadful disasters, in our hearts we cherish the firmest hope that, helped even more effectively by the prayers and donations of our pious, generous and dearly beloved benefactors in Europe, our laborious and holy mission will emerge sound, pure and intact from the above-mentioned disasters and mortality, which have no equal in the history of Central Africa and by far exceed all the disasters borne by the Vicariate since its creation on 3rd April 1846.

[6405]

This is my humble and subordinate opinion on the famine and plague in Central Africa in 1878–1879, which were far worse and more dreadful than those in the Indies, China, Mongolia and all the other Apostolic Missions in the world.
From this simple outline of the terrible episode of the famine and plague in our Vicariate, it clearly appears that the Central African Mission is a divine work because it is marked by the adorable seal of the Cross; like God’s most holy works which from the early centuries of the Church came into being to gladden and embellish Christ’s venerable Bride.

[6406]

Most Eminent Prince, it therefore deserves your high and compassionate Patronage and is worthy of the magnanimous benefactors who to this day have effectively helped in its foundation, development and consoling growth. God’s hand in this great Work is manifest and can be clearly seen. The hour has struck for the redemption of the most unhappy peoples of Central Africa, who to this day have been lying shrouded in darkness and the shadows of death. It is true that this is the most difficult and challenging mission in the whole world; and this is why only today has apostolic zeal, inspired and supported by the grace and will of God, succeeded in making possible this tough and thorny apostolate which demands the most robust virtues, the harshest sacrifices and martyrdom.

[6407]

However, it is also true that zeal and love are still at their height in the heart of the Church to direct, maintain and foster divine works whose aim is the greatest glory of God and the salvation of the neediest and most forsaken souls in the world, despite all the efforts of the powers of hell which, with diabolical intentions, are striving to destroy the Catholic Religion and its marvellous apostolate in the world. No, the powers of hell will not succeed in destroying God’s work nor in extinguishing that spark of generous charity in Catholic breasts which gives life, supports it and endows it with growth and prosperity.

[6408]

It is a matter of uprooting from the midst of barbarities and infidelity a hundred million who still do not believe in Christ, on whom the tremendous curse of Ham still weighs. It is a matter of winning over this world of black people, groaning under the weight of the most horrible slavery. To bring about this great regeneration of Africa, it is my sacred duty as the first Pastor, Bishop and Vicar Apostolic of Central Africa to appeal to the faith and charity of all the world’s Catholics so that, trusting in the sure promises of the One who said:
petite, et accipietis; quaerite, et invenietis; pulsate, et aperietur vobis, I may address a fervent daily prayer to God with the twofold aim:

[6409]

1. That in the heart of the Church God will inspire fervent and holy Gospel workers and generous and devout sisters of charity, Mothers of Africa who, under the banner of the Vicar Apostolic of Central Africa will assist him and help him to win those souls for Christ and his divine Church.

[6410]

2. That God will also inspire in the heart of the Church and Christian civilisation generous benefactors who with holy and abundant open-handedness will help this great Work of the Apostolate of Central Africa to reach its lofty aim and to establish in those remote regions all the Catholic institutions necessary to maintain the faith and divine worship so that those peoples may enter and belong to Christ’s great flock.

[6411]

How many merits with God have acquired and will acquire those who have given and will give their effective help to this divine work! They have certainly all assured for themselves the important transaction of eternal salvation.
We implore from the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, from Our Lady of the Sacred Heart and from the illustrious Patriarch St Joseph, patron of the Church, to whom the Vicariate Apostolic of Central Africa is dedicated, all spiritual and temporal graces and blessings on our dear benefactors, as we remain firm and determined in our war cry: Africa or Death! for Jesus Christ, and for Central Africa.

+ Daniel Comboni

(1) A korbash is a whip of hippopotamus hide with which slaves are beaten and animals whipped up.

[6412]

On the advice of my Superior of the Mission in Khartoum, I hasten to send you an overview of the Holy Childhood. I will do all I can to organise this Work of my exhausting Vicariate, but I beg you insistently sir, as Director, to come to my aid. Central Africa which has never enjoyed the benefits of the faith must be conquered for the Child Jesus.

[6413]

In past years I asked you to send me the Holy Childhood’s subsidy through my banker, Mr Brown et Fils in Rome. This old man, alas, has gone bankrupt and many ecclesiastics (also monsignors and cardinals) have lost their money. Therefore do not send anything further to Mr Brown who has disappeared from Rome.

[6414]

Since I have no banker in Paris, please send the money for Central Africa to the Superior of my Cairo Institutes in Egypt, that is:
Rev. Fr Francesco Giulianelli Superior of the Institute of Africans for Central Africa Cairo, Egypt

[6415]

I have received the Pope’s magnificent Encyclical for the Holy Childhood. It will be my duty to write to all the bishops, cardinals, etc. (above all in Italy) with whom I am particularly acquainted to urge them to write their Pastoral Letters, etc. and to do all they can to develop the Holy Childhood. This Encyclical is providential and you, Mr Director, have great merit for it: you directly encouraged the Holy Father Leo XIII to issue this Act which will save millions of children. The most must be made of it immediately. The iron must be struck while it is still hot. The Bishops will act courageously, in spite of the evil times. With, etc.

+ Daniel Comboni
Bishop and Vicar Apostolic of Central Africa

Tomorrow I enter the desert (15 days to Berber) with 16 Missionaries and Sisters.


Translated from French.

[6416]

Here I am in the first oriental city of my Vicariate. I am sending you two small pictures for the next distribution of funds. You are missing my annual report which I think it appropriate not to write at the moment until I have completed part of my pastoral visit. In the meantime, I shall write as often as I can to make known the nature and details of the challenging apostolate of Central Africa, which is so little known to our dear benefactors and associates.

[6417]

Since it is hard to form a precise idea of our field of work without properly knowing what science and geography have done for this part of the world which is called Africa, is the closest to Europe, yet the least known (this is why the Church and her Catholic Missions have a very important role) I have decided to address a report to you entitled: Historical Outline on the African Discoveries, which will serve as a solid foundation for knowledge not only of the outreach and importance of the African Missions in Central and Equatorial Africa, but of all our Missions throughout Africa.

[6418]

However, I shall concentrate above all on the details of the interior Missions, the most important work necessary to establish a stable Mission among the primitive tribes, drawing on my experience. The apostolic works of interior Africa are very difficult and more challenging than those of the other Missions in the world; and this is what must be explained. In Rome I was urged by the worthy and venerable Mgr Masotti (who is an eminent and superior person) to write much and give explanations on Central Africa, and I will do so in my moments of leisure and as best I can.

[6419]

But I am in an awkward position due to my lack of resources which are far less than what is strictly necessary for the works we have in the Vicariate and for those it is absolutely essential to found in order to develop this difficult Mission as it requires.
Mr President, please help me. The most recent Stations of the Mission have the greatest need to be helped. Ah, I will do all that is possible to get these Missions running!

[6420]

I have just received Leo XIII’s magnificent Encyclical Letter on the Propagation of the Faith. It is a monument of love on the part of this great Pontiff who carries the Apostolic Missions in his heart, but you have great merit for having prompted the sovereign Pontiff to this act. Ah, his love, his dedication, his zeal are wonderful! We are tiny pygmies in comparison with the worthy members of the Central Councils of the Propagation of the Faith.

[6421]

It will be my duty to write to all the Bishops and Cardinals I know personally, especially in Italy, in the dioceses which have the most resources, to urge them to issue Pastoral Letters, to pray and to make recommendations in the churches for the Propagation of the Faith, which is the indispensable condition for the existence and development of the Missions throughout the world and especially in Africa, including the interior Missions.

[6422]

Tomorrow afternoon I shall leave Suakin for Berber with 50 camels, crossing the desert that separates the Nile from the Red Sea in 15 days, and I count on reaching Kordofan and Jebel Nuba via Khartoum by mid-March. I am taking with me a caravan of 16 members of the Mission, whose names I write on this sheet for the Missions Catholiques.
We never cease to pray and to have prayers said for you and for the Work of the Propagation of the Faith, and I remain ever
Your most grateful

+ Daniel Comboni
Bishop and Vicar Apostolic


Translated from French.