Jeff Ragan’s Reviews > The White Nile > Status Update
Jeff Ragan
is on page 39 of 432
"By 1860 three separate kingdoms were established, Bunyoro in the north, Buganda in the centre & Karagwe to the south, on the western shore of the lake [Victoria]...these three little states had a certain coherency in the midst of a wilderness of utter barbarity; they formed...a tiny capsule of semi-civilization in the centre of the continent, and the outside world knew hardly anything at all about them" (39).
— Aug 22, 2026 01:05PM
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Jeff Ragan
is on page 39 of 432
"These scenes are very beautiful, & yet there is a mysterious[ness]...about the lake [Victoria]. One feels here...the primitiveness of Africa, its overwhelming multiplicity in emptiness. At dusk the water tends to become still...& yet it conjures up notions of...witchcraft & superstition, of plotting & of ambushes in the dark, & all this is made worse because there is no definite object for one's fear" (32).
— Aug 16, 2026 08:01AM
Jeff Ragan
is on page 31 of 432
"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).
— Aug 10, 2026 09:48AM
Jeff Ragan
is on page 21 of 432
"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).
— Aug 05, 2026 06:55AM
Jeff Ragan
is on page 11 of 432
"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).
— Aug 01, 2026 07:35AM