Beni River

“ At noon we passed a place where some thousands of camel, cattle, sheep, and goats were being watered. Of course, at this time of the year, all the river-courses are dry, and the water has to be drawn up from deep wells. The Beni-Amirs, and other neighbouring tribes, are a pastoral people, and owners of enormous herds, on which they wholly subsist. They produce [296] nothing, and seem to require nothing, except a few yards of cotton. Their mode of watering the herds is a very laborious one. ”

“ This last is called the Maya-tata by the Bolivians.
It is a beautiful stream, overhung by hill and forest, and rises fully two hundred miles southward and west from a thousand little rivulets that drain the marvellous mountains of Karavaya.
The Beni joins this river about ten or twelve miles above the banks of the Madeira. It lies farther to the south and the east, and may be said to rise in the La Paz district itself, where it is called the Rio de la Paz. ”

“ Of the early history of the races inhabiting the coast lands little is known. The Beni appear to have been the most powerful race at the time of the discovery of the coast by the Portuguese in the 15th century, and the kings of Benin in the 17th century ruled a large part of the south-western portion of the existing British protectorate (see Benin) . The Benin influence does not seem to have reached east of the Forcados mouth of the Niger. In the greater part of the delta region each town owned a different chief and there was no one dominant tribe. ”

“ It may be described as bounded W. by Lagos, S. by the territory of the Jakri and other tribes of the Niger delta, E. by the Niger river, and N. by Yorubaland. The coast-line held by Benin had passed out of its sovereignty by the middle of the 19th century. In physical characteristics, climate, flora and fauna, Benin in no way differs from the rest of the southern portion of Nigeria (q.v.) . The coast is low, intersected by creeks, and forms one huge mangrove swamp; on the rising ground inland are dense forests in which the cotton and mahogany trees are conspicuous. ”

“ The changes which a lapse of nearly two thousand years may be supposed to have occasioned on the northern coast of Africa, are fully sufficient to have reduced the river Lathon to the spring which now flows into the Lake of Bengazi.
The lake itself is salt, and in the summer is nearly dry; while the small stream in question takes its rise within a few yards of the lake, and running along a channel of inconsiderable breadth, bordered with reeds and rushes, might be mistaken by a common observer for an inroad of the lake into the sandy soil which bounds it. ”

“ It lies on the southern side of the Benue, some 850 m. by river from the sea and at an altitude of 600 ft. Here the width of the stream increases at flood time to 1000 or 1500 yds., and though it narrows at the somewhat dangerous rapids of Rumde Gilla to 150 or 180 yds., it soon expands again. About 50 m. below Yola the Benue receives, on the right bank, the Gongola, which rises in the Bauchi highlands and after a great curve north-east turns southward. It is over 300 m. long, and at flood time is navigable for about half of its course. ”

“ The Bani River is navigable to Djenné, 100 kilometres distant, and even at times to the town of Sikasso. Djenné is not actually on the Bani, but a navigable creek connects the town with the stream. Lighters and launches can use that river as long as they can navigate the Niger; canoes can use it during all the months of the year without difficulty. The future of this province seems to be assured, for the increasing population will give a great impetus to rice and millet growing; in the course of time irrigation is certain to be introduced, and the revenue will go up by leaps and bounds. ”

“ Some geographers still believed thirty years ago that all the waters of its upper basin might be tributary to the Nile. Map-makers have been kept very busy recording discoveries on the Congo. About one hundred explorers, some of them missionaries and many employees of the Congo Free State, have mapped the whole basin along its water-courses, and discovered the ultimate source of its main stream. Our ideas of the hydrography of this great basin have been revolutionized since Stanley, second only to Livingstone among the great African explorers, in 1877 revealed the course of the main river. ”

“ Land-locked to every wind that blows, with only a narrow channel open to the sea, the navies of the world could lie peacefully together in its sheltered waters. The coast that environs the harbour abounds in natural beauties, but of all the wooded creeks—fair stretches of undulating downs—or stately curves of winding river, none surpasses the little bay formed by the turn of Benita, the northern postern of the Golden Gates. ”

“ After the British occupation, an extensive trade developed in oil, kernels, timber, ivory, rubber, &c. In the rubber and timber industries great strides have been made. The chiefs and people have shown considerable aptitude in adapting themselves to the new order of things. Among the articles prized by the Beni is coral, of which the chiefs wear great quantities as ornaments.
History.—Benin was discovered by the Portuguese about the year 1485, and they carried on a brisk trade in slaves, who were taken to Elmina and sold to the natives of the Gold Coast. ”

“ Although Beni Suef is no better built than any other town or village that we had passed, yet it interests by its extent; it is the most considerable place we had yet seen since our leaving Cairo. It has a cacheff and a mosque, with three large steeples, and is a market-town.
The country all around is well cultivated, and seems to be of the utmost fertility; the inhabitants are better cloathed, and seemingly less miserable, and oppressed, than those we had left behind in the places nearer Cairo.
The Nile is very shallow at Beni Suef, and the current strong. ”

“ All the public buildings are in an efficient state, a large extent of flat, stinking shore has been filled up and embanked, ruins of churches and monasteries cleared away, walks and squares laid out and planted, a large new market is being built, and good shops and stores are now abundantly supplied with every description of European goods; and if a good supply of water were brought to the city from the River Bengo, there would certainly not be a finer place to live in on the whole Western Coast of Africa. ”

“ We swung along downwards, dropped under the lee of the hill, and our path skirted the fringe of the green oasis. It [245] was not many acres in extent; it was covered with short scant grass; it would have made an ideal polo-ground.
Water lay over a small corner of it, and beyond a shadow of doubt it had once been the bottom of a lake; indeed, the Beni Salam tribe believe that water still lies underneath the turf. Here the first sign of humanity showed itself: two goatherds drove their flock down to the water, and one of them carried in the hood of his brown jellab a few hours' old kid ”

“ No man’s life was safe, and Benin city, the capital, was a place of abominations. The priesthood were rightly broken, but the authority of the chiefs maintained, and despite one single administrative error, which, if not repaired, may occasion trouble later on, the Binis have become one of the most prosperous and law-abiding people in the Protectorate. They have co-operated so efficiently with the Forestry Department that throughout the Benin territory no tree can be unlawfully felled without the Forest Officer being informed. They are planting up their forest land with valuable timber trees. ”

“ The Nile, Niger and Congo rivers have their origin on the interior slopes of the highlands, and therefore discharge into the Atlantic Ocean, while the Zambezi drainage basin, lying largely on the outer slopes, falls off toward the Indian Ocean. The longest river system is that of the Nile, which rises in the lake region of Equatorial Africa and flows northward through the mountainous divide to the plateau region of eastern Sudan, where it receives an important affluent from the west in the Bahr-el-Ghazal. ”

“ At length a real river greeted the gaze of our travellers, and, by the enormous ant-hills seen in its vicinity, the doctor recognized the Benoué, one of the great tributaries of the Niger, the one which the natives have called “The Fountain of the Waters.”
“This river,” said the doctor to his companions, “will, one day, be the natural channel of communication with the interior of Nigritia. Under the command of one of our brave captains, the steamer Pleiad has already ascended as far as the town of Yola. You see that we are not in an unknown country.” ”

“ We see a cluster of wonders, from the hot springs of Agua Caliente post-house to the frozen peaks of the Sorata; extremes of heat and cold, large mountains, and small streams, dry winds, and lakes of water, in the richest gold region of South America.
The Beni creeps along the ridge of mountains as though seeking an outlet to the north. A passage letting the water through into the Amazon basin at the base of the Andes would probably make the Beni a tributary of the Madre-de-Dios, as it is erroneously laid down on some maps. ”

“ The port of Bengazi is formed by rocks, that project from the castle, and Juliana point; and is rendered very secure by a reef that extends across at a short distance from the mouth of it, leaving a narrow channel on either side: both these passages are very difficult, and upon an average the depth of water in the harbour will be found greater by a foot and a half, or two feet, in winter, than in summer. But we must not always depend upon this, or upon a rise with the winds that may be blowing at Bengazi at the moment; as they may be confined to a short distance only from the coast ”

“ If Ngami rises by means of its inflow, the current is down the Cubango toward the “Salt Pans.” If however the “Pans” overflow, by means of their other tributaries, the current is up the Cubango toward Lake Ngami. So that among the other natural wonders of Africa we have not only a system of great rivers pouring themselves into an inland sea with no outlet except the clouds, but also a great river actually flowing two ways for a distance of over a hundred miles, as the one or the other lake on its course happens to be fullest. ”

“ Landers, as is well known, descended a large river from the interior of Africa to the sea, at what is called the Bite of Benin, where the river loses itself by flowing in divided streams through a delta created by the deposit of alluvial debris, brought down from the highlands by the force of its own current. ”

“ This ensemble describes a curve towards the interior, and leaves on the coast a level plain of about 110 miles in breadth.
In Benguela the plains are healthy and cultivated. More to the north, one encounters nothing but monotonous savannahs and forests with gigantic trees. The soil, at a great number of points, is saturated with water, and, so to speak, enveloped in a shroud of pestilential vapour, which the breeze never scatters.
The low plains of Biafra and Benin, and especially the Delta of the Niger, are unwholesome, rank, and foul-smelling marshes. ”

“ Indeed, people at home can have no conception of the natural difficulties under which the administrator, the merchant, and, for that matter, the native also, labour in carrying out their respective tasks and avocations in the deltaic and forest regions of Nigeria. For six months in the year a very large portion of the Central and Eastern Provinces is partially submerged. The Niger overflows its banks, every forest rivulet becomes a river, the creeks and channels spread their waters upon the land, the forest is flooded over an enormous area, and the pathways intersecting it are impassable. ”

“ The drainage from the low hills on the Peninsula of Ras Benas, except for a small portion which joins Wadi Mukhit, reaches the sea by a multitude of small wadis, none of which bear special names. The hills being nearer to the south side of the peninsula than to the north, the wadis draining southwards are on the whole much shorter and steeper than those draining northwards, and the latter cross a sloping plain two or three kilometres wide to reach the sea. ”

“ It extends on each side of the Mamore, and is chiefly inhabited by warlike and wandering tribes of Indians, who forbid access to its interior. This country contains the lake Rogagualo, a large body of water of an oval figure, formed by an arm of the Rio Beni, which rises near La Paz on the west side of the Andes, in 18° south latitude, and flowing north, enters the Ucayale, their united streams joining the Apurimac. The banks of the Beni have many settlements of the missionaries. ”

“ Reeds and water-plants grew on its margin, and its smooth surface reflected the rugged outline of the hills beyond. The Waterless River is about two miles in breadth, and appears to have been at one time the bed of a large stream. [179] It crosses all the caravan routes in the desert, and is supposed to extend from the Nile to the Red Sea. It may have been the outlet for the river, before its waters forced a passage through the primitive chains which cross its bed at Assouan and Kalabshee. A geological exploration of this part of Africa could not fail to produce very interesting results. ”

“ All these streams are interrupted by rapids as they descend from the highlands to the plain and are unnavigable by steamers save for a few miles from their mouths. The rivers named all drain to the Gulf of Guinea; the rivers in the extreme north of the colony belong to the Niger system, being affluents of the Bani or Mahel Balevel branch of that river. The watershed runs roughly from 9° N. in the west to 10° N. in the east, and is marked by a line of hills rising about 650 ft. above the level of the plateau. The climate is in general very hot and unhealthy, the rainfall being very heavy. ”