Jeff Ragan’s Reviews > The White Nile > Status Update

"Barghash was with some difficulty restrained by Kirk from capturing the ship, and instead he handed over the coal to the Egyptians with a polite note for McKillop: 'I send you the coal you desire, also fruit. The latter may serve to keep you in good health, the former to take you away from my country. Go, and peace be with you'" (178).

"[Zanzibar] was a complex little beehive of widely differing manners, religions and politics, the East struggling against the West, Islam against Christianity, the worst of poverty surviving under the utmost luxury, and it was all too fragile and too disordered to last" (163).

"...the local tribes had worked out a Stone Age system of life which was perfectly valid despite its brutality, uncertainty and suffering...By 1870 this primitive Eden had become soiled, debauched & finally vile. To Baker...it seemed that it was a moral duty for civilized governments to restore order once again, to throw out the ruthless foreign slavers & to teach the natives to live in peace..." (148).

"Baker accepted the commission and threw himself into the arrangements with method and gusto - and, it may be added, without much regard to the cost. His first journey up the Nile had turned him from a big game hunter into an explorer. Now the explorer was to develop into the soldier and the administrator" (142).

"A curious combination of hatred and love drew the explorers back to Africa...Africa kills them...most of them rail against the country and its inhabitants, declaring them to be ugly, brutal, scheming, debauched and finally hopeless. It is extraordinary in the accounts of their journeys how seldom they are touched by the beauty or the grandeur of the landscape...to the explorers it is all basically hostile (120).

"...the New York Herald had summoned [Stanley] to an interview...and had said: 'I want you to attend the opening of the Suez Canal & then proceed up the Nile. Send us detailed descriptions of everything likely to interest American tourists. Then go to Jerusalem...as far as India. After that you can start looking round for Livingstone...' Stanley...had accomplished this programme in fourteen months" (110).

"'Selim said to me, "I see the Doctor, sir. Oh what an old man!"...So I did that which I thought was most dignified. I pushed back the crowds, and...walked down a living avenue of people, until I came in front of..."the white man"...and said, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"'...This then is the story...which has been more frequently recalled than any other single event in African exploration" (108-9).

"'Selim said to me, "I see the Doctor, sir. Oh, what an old man!"...So I did that which I thought was most dignified. I pushed back the crowds, and...walked down a living avenue of people, until I came in front of...'the white man...' and said, 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?'...This then is the story...which has been more frequently recalled than any other single event in African exploration" (108-9).

"[Baker's] books were much more than adventure stories and his journeys had an importance that went far beyond their popular interest. He had imported something quite new into the Central African scene; he had made it comprehensible. He formed a kind of bridge between the original myths and legends and the reality of what was actually to be found in the country" (94).

"Baker is a kind of fulcrum in African exploration. He stands in the centre of all theories, emotions & moral attitudes, never deviating too far one way or the other...he is a practical, down-to-earth man, who knows precisely what he wants & where he is going to go. One feels with him...things will calm down in the end & everyone will come round to his sober & sensible way of thinking" (76).