The Great Explorers

Forty of the Greatest Men and Women Who Changed Our Perception of the World

Robin Hanbury-Tenison

• Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780500774304
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Geography
• Index: History

What inspires explorers to push back the boundaries of the known world? Why do they risk their lives in unforgiving conditions far from home? How do they survive at the limits of human endurance? Who are the great pioneers of land, sea and space? Where next? This book charts the great expeditions of forty of the worlds most intrepid explorers, from da Gama to Gagarin. Gertrude Bell plotted the desert sands, politics and poetry of Arabia; Francis Garnier was driven almost insane on the banks of the Mekong; Edward Wilson twice tried to reach the South Pole with Scott; Nain Singh mapped the vast spaces of Tibet, counting every step. Written by a host of distinguished travel writers, broadcasters and historians, here are journeys to savour from every corner of the earth and beyond.

RIVERS

A disproportionate amount of exploratory effort has been devoted to rivers. Their existence, pouring out of unknown lands, challenged men to discover their source and find out whether they might provide routes to undiscovered places or ways around terra incognita. This was especially the case in North America, where the compulsion to find a quick route to the Indies obsessed explorers for nearly 500 years. Samuel de Champlain was the man who opened up much of the territory that was to become Canada to colonization. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he recognized the skills of the indigenous tribes already living there and strove to learn from them and to emulate them. As a result, he was successful in achieving much settlement peacefully and without the usual bloodshed associated with the conquest of Amerindians. Two hundred years after Champlain, in 1793, a young Scotsman, Alexander Mackenzie, finally achieved the first crossing of the North American continent, while seeking a commercial route to trade with Russia. With a short portage over the watershed at the Rockies, he proved that there was a virtually continuous river route to the west, but it was never to be of any use commercially.

In Africa, two of the mysteries that preoccupied the gentlemen in London who sent explorers out into the world were where the fabled gold of Timbuktu came from and which way the River Niger flowed. Mungo Park attempted to find answers to these questions, but perished on his second expedition. However, most attention in Africa was devoted to seeking the source of the Nile. The first European to achieve this in 1770, although it was that of the Blue rather than the White Nile, was James Bruce, a formidable traveller blessed with great size and huge charm. These ensured his survival when most would have expired. Eighty years later, one of the most significant and oldest mysteries of geography remained unsolved and the search became frantic. Finding the true source of the Nile, for no other purpose than to establish its existence, became as important in its day as reaching the summit of Everest or sending a man to the moon. Richard Burton (p. 65), among his many adventures, was determined the glory would be his, but it was John Hanning Speke who found and named Lake Victoria and claimed, without actually proving it, that this was the fabled source, and one of the epic – and tragic – feuds of exploration was born.

David Livingstone is the epitome of African missionary explorers and the journeys he made in pursuit of his zeal, especially following the course of the Zambezi, equal or surpass any who came before or after him to the ‘dark continent’. Henry Morton Stanley is best known for his encounter with the missing Dr Livingstone. But he went on to undertake a series of major journeys and military exploits throughout the continent, many of which were by river, including the Congo, which he effectively opened up for commercial exploitation. His transformation from childhood in a Welsh workhouse to becoming a famous American newspaper reporter, then a legendary explorer and military leader and finally a Member of Parliament and a knight of the realm, is one of the most remarkable in the history of exploration.

In the Far East there were riverine mysteries to solve, as well. The Mekong, which flows down from the Himalayas through Indo-China was, in the 19th century, seen as a possible gateway to China for the French. Francis Garnier was obsessed by the possibilities this offered for French influence in the region and was the man who, although technically second-in-command, led the expedition which eventually ascended the river as far as China and then descended the Yangtze to the coast. Less recognized in his native France than in Britain, the RGS described him as ‘the century’s most gallant and talented explorer’.

CONRAD HEIDENREICH

Samuel de Champlain

Opening Up Canada’s Wilderness

mid-1570s–1635

All men are not suited to run risks; the toil and fatigue are great, but nothing is to be had without toil. That is what one must think in these affairs [exploration]; it will be when it pleases God. As for me, I will always prepare the way for those who will wish, after me, to carry it on.

SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN, 1632

Champlain was the first explorer in North America to conclude that exploration away from the Atlantic seaboard depended entirely on establishing good relations with the native peoples, and learning from them about the geography of the land and how to live off it. He was born during the mid-1570s at Brouage, on the Atlantic coast of France, where his father, Antoine Champlain, was a naval captain and pilot. Two uncles, George Camaret and Guillaume Allene, were also naval captains, and the latter was particularly influential on Champlain’s life. The Champlain family had the status and respectability that comes from such occupations in a small town where the harbour dominated the economy. In view of his maritime background it is no wonder that Champlain once wrote that he had been drawn to the sea from early youth.

It is probable that Champlain attended an academy for young men of respectable families known to have existed in Brouage. Graduates were suitable for careers in the army or service with a lord. His strengths in surveying and cartography, and his lack of polish and absence of classicisms in his written French are reflections of the academy’s curriculum. The first documentary evidence relating to Champlain comes from the pay records of Henri IV’s Brittany army during the ‘Wars of Religion’. In late February 1595 he arrived at the Quimper garrison as a fourrier and aide to Jean Hardy, maréchal de logis of the army. As a fourrier he was responsible for seeking accommodation for the royal retinue and officers, and as aide to the maréchal he would have worked on the sketches and surveys that were compiled for Hardy’s map Duche de Bretaigne. Although a fourrier was a low-ranking position, Champlain’s pay was that of a lieutenant: he received extra pay for delivering confidential memos between the king and his senior officers. In 1598, when he was demobilized, Champlain was an ensign.

After leaving the army, Champlain met his uncle Guillaume Allene in Blavet (now Port-Louis) on the south coast of Brittany, where the Spanish troops, allies of the Catholic League against Henri IV, were being evacuated. Allene had been hired to take the 500-tun ship San Julián with Spanish troops and armaments to Cadiz. Champlain joined the ship and stayed with it for a tour of the Spanish Caribbean for two and a half years. It was during that time that he learned the basic principles of navigation. Upon his return to France, Champlain gave a full report of his knowledge of the Spanish West Indies to Henri IV.

TO CANADA

Late in 1602 Champlain met Aymar de Chaste, Governor of Dieppe, who asked him if he would join his fact-finding expedition to Canada. Champlain was eager to go but thought it necessary first to get permission from the king, who had given him a pension and to whom he felt obligated ‘by birth’. Henri IV was determined to colonize Canada and sent an order through his Secretary of State that Champlain was to accompany the expedition to determine if the banks of the St Lawrence could be settled and whether it was possible to explore westwards across the Lachine Rapids. Champlain arrived at Tadoussac on the St Lawrence in May 1603, where he witnessed a treaty between the resident Montagnais and the court of Henri IV permitting French settlement in Canada in return for French help against their Iroquois enemies.

During the summer Champlain made a resource survey of the river from the Gaspé to Montreal Island and obtained three accounts, with maps, from Algonquin and Montagnais informants of the water routes westwards. His conclusions had a profound effect on the future exploration of Canada, which Champlain maintained was only possible with Native help, because of both their geographical knowledge and ability to live off the land, and their canoes. To explore and live in Canada meant that peaceful relations had to be developed between the Native inhabitants and the French, involving reciprocal obligations such as mutual aid in war and trade. Champlain again gave a full report, with a map, to Henri IV on his return late in the year, and published his first book Des Sauvages.

Between 1604 and 1607, Champlain was charged with a similar resource survey and detailed mapping of the Atlantic coast of North America, from Cape Breton Island to Cape Cod, and once more he dutifully reported to the king. In 1608 he was back on the St Lawrence, having been ordered to build a settlement at Quebec and initiate exploration westwards. In 1609, to fulfil France’s treaty obligations, he joined his Native allies on a raid against the Iroquois on Lake Champlain (named after him). This resulted in a last report to Henri IV, who was assassinated in 1610. In 1613 Champlain attempted to explore the Ottawa River without Native guides and was turned back by the Algonquin. Finally, in 1615 he made it to lakes Huron and Ontario by joining a Huron-Algonquin war party into Iroquois country, where he was severely wounded.

On his return to Quebec in 1616 Champlain ceased exploration and devoted himself to the settlement of Canada. In 1629 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Canada by Cardinal Richelieu, the most powerful man in France after the king. During his lifetime he published four substantial books and a number of documents, comprising some 1,300 printed pages, five folding maps, 22 small maps and 14 illustrations. Champlain died at Quebec of a stroke on 25 December 1635.

CHAMPLAIN’S LEGACY

Champlain’s appointments and successes were due not only to his personal qualities and abilities – an uncomplaining nature, tenacity, honesty, a capacity for hard work, a desire to improve himself, skill in surveying and description of observable facts – but also to his complete loyalty to his superiors and the trusting, active support of his monarch. Fundamental to Champlain as an explorer was his ability to free himself from European views of technological and social superiority. He was the first to see that only the adoption of many Native customs would make it possible to live in and explore the formidable physical environment of Canada. Supported by the Jesuits, he came to the conclusion that it was desirable to promote intermarriage between the Huron and the French: ‘that we be one people’. So successful were his policies that by 1685, when the first English–Dutch expedition reached Lake Ontario, the French had already explored and mapped the entire Great Lakes system, the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico and two of the major river systems to James Bay.

MILES BREDIN

James Bruce

Charm and Courage in Abyssinia

1730–1794

All who had attempted the same journey hitherto had met with disappointment, disgrace or death; for my part, although I underwent every sort of toil, danger, and all manner of hardship, yet these were not confined to myself. I suffered always honourably, and in common with the rest of the state; and when sun-shiny days happened (for sun-shiny days there were, and very brilliant ones too), of these I was permitted freely to partake.

JAMES BRUCE, TRAVELS TO DISCOVER THE SOURCE OF THE NILE, 1790

James Bruce was a true explorer. He did his exploring for the love of it, discovering things of value and recording them accurately. His great achievement was to solve one of the great conundrums of his age: the source of the Nile. The fact that it was the Blue Nile rather than the longer, but weaker, White one, and that very few believed him, brought out all the worst traits in his character when Bruce returned to Britain in 1774. It is the Bruce of the ‘sun-shiny days’ – when he was living in Africa, expanding the knowledge of humankind and having a glorious time – whom we should admire and be thankful for.

Today there are no remaining terrestrial records with which to compare finding the source of the Nile – even the wrong one. In Bruce’s own day, the fact that it was yet to be discovered was seen as an embarrassment and a failure – to such an extent that it was known as the ‘opprobrium of geographers’. In what historian Richard Holmes writes about as the Age of Wonder, intellectual discovery was of immense importance – voyages to the far side of the world and the finding of new planets and creatures were all followed with keen interest. Bruce not only discovered the source of the Blue Nile, he also charted the Red Sea, recovered the lost Book of Enoch and learnt a huge amount about Ethiopia and Sudan, their history, flora and fauna. He combined intellectual rigour with great physical stamina and raw courage. It is tragi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• About the Author
• Other titles of interest
• Contents
• Searching Beyond the Horizon
• The Oceans
• The Land
• Rivers
• Polar Ice
• Deserts
• Life on Earth
• New Frontiers
• Contributors
• Further Reading
• Sources of Quotations
• Sources of Illustrations
• Index
• Copyright