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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9398, 3 January 1894, Page 4

Sir Samuel Baker, who has just passed away at the venerable age of 72, was an admirable specimen of a type of Englishman that is, we are afraid, becoming rarer year by year. He united in himself the qualities of traveller, scholar, ruler, statesman, and scientist. His love of travel, indeed, amounted to a passion. He was never happier than when exploring remote &nd strange lands. Endowed by nature with a magnificent constitution, and possessed of great physical courage, he was able to endure hardships and overcome difficulties which would have appalled anyone less strong and brave. : His services in Central Africa in the cause of knowledge, of humanity, and of civilisation, at a time when the Dark Continentwasa terraincognita f ullof unknown dangers, established at once his reputation as a fearless explorer, and an able ruler of men. During the four years that he was virtually dictator in the Upper Nile he did splendid work is establishing something like settled i government in that disturbed region, !in destroying that devastating curse the slave traffic, and in opening up to civilisation and commerce the vast and fertile regions lying between the upper cataracts of the Nile and the great inland lakes. When lie left the Soudan it was, to use,his own words, "a perfect garden, thickly populated, and producing all that man could desire;" We all know what it has become since then, owing to circumstances which have become part of history, and need not therefore be recapitulated, in detail. England lost a golden opportunity nine years ago of again making , the Soudan blossom like a ne-r paradise. Sir Samuel Baker was then foremost among the opponents of the Gladstonian policy of scuttle. "To sacrifice the Soudan," he said, "is to fling away the granary of the world; to abandon Khartoum is to surrender what will be the richest commercial entrepot in the Old World." So strongly impressed were some by the -boundless possibilities which he showed to belong to the Soudan that a number of; Englishmen formed a syndicate and offered to place a million pounds at his disposal, to be spent as he pleased, provided h© would consent to go out to the Soudan and establish a settled government in their name. He refused, of course, and the Soudan to this day is without a settled government, although we believe with Sir Samuel Baker, that "the destiny of England will force her onwards in spite of Ministerial utterances, and the development of that important but unappreciated country beyond the Egyptian deserts will ultimately devolve upon that same Power which has peopled Australia, engrafted

i herself tjbn 4*P«riP»i established her { empire i&idia, And will by bee pro- . tectoratel Egypt assure prosperity, | ; a,p4 of the Canal to J the copjTOfc% oj the world," ' ; >