Status Updates From The White Nile

"And here, in almost a haphazard way, there occurred the beginning of a chain of incidents which was to set this journey apart from all others in Central Africa and lead on through endless bitterness and tragedy to the solution of the problem of the Nile...Speke wanted to go off and investigate the reports they had heard from the Arabs of the 'N'yanza'...Burton willingly let him go" (30).

"Burton, despite the plethora of books that have been written either by or about him, still remains beyond the range of ordinary definition. Above all else he was a romantic and an Arabist; he belongs decidedly to that small perennial group of English men and women who are born with something lacking in their lives; a hunger, a nostalgia, that can be set at rest only in the deserts of the East" (14).

"In 1845 the Sultan of Zanzibar had declared that the export of slaves was forbidden...British & French men-of-war patrolled the coast in search of Arab dhows bringing Negroes from the mainland. But none of this had made any real difference. With a tradition of at least 2,000 years of slaving behind them none of the east coast Arab dealers had as yet dreamed of giving up the trade" (6-7).

Excellent writing and organization on a fascinating (now unfashionable) subject. Makes one want to travel the Nile from source to sea themselves, and it's humbling to know that unadvisable as that is today, it was vastly more dangerous to the men and women who braved that trek 150 years ago. Really astonishing Moorehead manages to put so much into a mere 300 pages, yet I never felt like anything was hurried over.