EMIN PASHA
Life Stories for Young People
EMIN PASHA
Translated from the German of
M. C. Plehn
BY
GEORGE P. UPTON
Translator of “Memories,” “Immensee,” etc.
WITH FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1912
Copyright
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1912
Published September, 1912
THE · PLIMPTON · PRESS
[W · D · O]
NORWOOD · MASS · U · S · A
Translator’s Preface
Emin Pasha, sometimes called “the father ofthe Equatorial Provinces,” is a notable figurein the records of African exploration. Hewas preëminently a scientist and was devotedlyfond of zoölogy and botany. Amid all his cares ofoffice, his sufferings from the hardships of Africanexploration, his neglect and ill-treatment at thehands of the Khedive and his ill-health and growingblindness, he pursued his scientific investigationswith passionate ardor.
No African explorer ever had the welfare of theSoudanese more at heart than he, and yet he met acruel fate at the hands of treacherous Arabs andwas murdered while studying his favorite plants andbirds. In all his long career he never injured anyone,but constantly strove for the welfare of thenatives and retained his confidence in them after itwas apparent to almost everyone else that they weretreacherously conspiring against him.
The German author now and then hints at frictionbetween Emin Pasha and Stanley, and is inclined toblame Stanley for indifference as to Emin’s fate afterhe had been sent to bring him relief. The friction, ifit existed, was probably due to the different temperamentsof the two men. Emin Pasha was conservative,blindly attached to the Soudanese, certainhe could govern them by mild measures, a quiet,reserved scholar passionately devoted to scientificpursuits and at home in Africa, rather than anexplorer. Stanley was a man of action, bold, anddashing, who, in the phrase of the day, might becalled “a hustler.” It is undoubtedly true that attimes he had little patience with Emin’s slownessand cautiousness and his scientific absorption whichsometimes rendered him oblivious to dangers besettinghim.
G. P. U.
Chicago, July, 1912