Africa miscellanea

Sir Samuel White Baker (1821-1893), traveller and sportsman, was born on 8 June 1921 in London. He was educated at a private school at Rottingdean, at the College School, Gloucester, and privately at Tottenham, before completing his studies at Frankfurt in 1841. Baker visited Ceylon in 1846 and 1848, and established an English colony at Newera Eliya. He superintended the building of a railway connecting the Danube with the Black Sea in 1859, and travelled in Asia Minor, 1860-1861. In December 1862 Baker embarked on a journey up the Nile. He reached Mbakovia in March 1864, and named the lake there Albert Nyanza. He was knighted in 1866, and that year published an account of his African expedition. He travelled with the Prince of Wales to Egypt and the Nile in 1869, and was appointed Governor-General of the Equatorial Nile basin for four years. He died on 30 December 1893 at Sandford Orleigh, near Newton Abbot.

A letter to an unnamed correspondent concerning adding 'Victoria Nile or' before 'Somerset River' on a map shortly to be published, presumably in Baker's 'The Albert N'Yanza', originally published in 1864. The map in the original volume is marked 'R Somerset or Victoria Nile'. The recipient may have been Stephen William Silver (1819-1905), a friend of Baker's, to whom other letters given by Sir Harry Wilson to the R.C.S. in 1916 were addressed.

Presented by Sir Harry Wilson, 1916.

The R.C.S. Manuscripts Collection includes other material relating to Sir Samuel Baker, RCMS 113/6, 113/7 and 113/11.

Donald H. Simpson, ed., 'The manuscript catalogue of the library of the Royal Commonwealth Society' (London, 1975), p. 82. Indexed