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- The Geographic and Cartographic work of the American Mission to Egypt, 1870-1878
The Geographic and Cartographic work of the American Mission to Egypt, 1870-1878
- By The Map Collector
- Published 1 March 1989
- Maps
- Unrated
The Map Collector
The Map Collector, initiated by Peter Scott and Valerie G. Newby, was a journal on historical cartography published every quarter. The first issue appeared in 1997 and continued for nearly 20 years. After 74 issues the last copy appeared in Spring 1996. Mrs. Valerie G. Newby, is presently editor of the IMCoS Journal.
www.imcos.org
By David Icenogle
The author is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, Auburn University, Alabama, USA. This article is based on a paper he presented at the Tenth International Conference on the History of Cartography held in Dublin in 1983, and olltlines the story of the first military survey mission to Egypt from America led by the colourful and, already at that time discredited, former officer of the Union army, General Charles P. Stone.
DURING THE DECADE of the 1870’s a continual stream of American tourists. including such literary and political luminaries as Mark Twain. William T. Sherman. and Ulysses S. Grant. passed through Egypt. taking in the sights from Abu Simbel to Alexandria. In fact. the number of American tourists during that period was exceeded only by the British. One group of Americans, however, came to Egypt to live and to work. These were the members of what may be called the first American Military Mission to Egypt, led by a disgraced and discredited former officer of the Union army, General Charles P. Stone.
Stone was born in Massachusetts in 1824, graduated from West Point Military Academy in 1845, and served in the Mexican War which began in April the following year. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was regarded as one of the most competent generals on the Union side, but became an unfortunate victim of the spy and treason mania which swept the country in 1861. Stone was accused of collusion with the enemy and even of plotting to kidnap President Lincoln. After spending six months without trial in the military prison on Governor's Island in New York harbour, he sat out the Civil War at a desk job in the War Department, in a state of disgrace and with his career in ruins."
In 1869 Stone was working as a mining engineer in West Virginia, when his old friend, West Point classmate, and commander of the U.S. army, General William T. Sherman, contacted him and informed him that Ismail, the Khedive of Egypt, was discharging the French officers who had formerly trained the Egyptian army, and was interested in hiring American ex-Civil War officers in place of the French. Stone contacted Ismail's recruiting agent in New York, and in due course was appointed Chief-of-Staff of the Egyptian Army with the rank of Fariq (Major General), a position he held until the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. Stone, an armchair geographer who was much interested in the geographical exploration of Africa, also served as the leader of the American Military Mission from 1870-1878 when the mission was dissolved due to the bankruptcy of the Egyptian government. During that period a total of fifty ex-Civil War officers, about evenly distributed between Union and Confederate backgrounds, served in the Egyptian army. From his spacious headquarters in Cairo's medieval citadel, Stone was soon directing a series of reconnaissance expeditions that gradually spread their tentacles across Ismail's growing empire in the Sudan. Uganda. and the Ethiopian borderlands.'
Although Stone published relatively little himself, he enabled the results of the expeditions conducted by members of the mission to be published by establishing a private press and issuing a series of publications entitled Publications of the Egyptian General Staff These reports must have been printed in very limited editions, since they are quite rare today. He was also instrumental in the foundation of the Societe Khediviale de Geographie (1875), and articles by several members of the American mission are to be found in the Bulletin of that Society. These little-known expeditions and the results of the cartographic work accomplished by Stone's group are the subject of this article.
The Colston-Prout Expedition
Raleigh Edward Colston was born in France in 1825, the son of an American medical student and the Duchess of Valmy, exwife of Napoleon's Marshall Kellerman. He lived in France until 1842 when the family returned to Virginia. Consequently, Colston spoke and wrote excellent French. one of the official languages of the Egyptian administration. Colston had been a Brigadier-General in the Confederate army, but, unable to find remunerative employment following the Civil war. and necding to provide financial support for his wife who was an inmate of a mental asylum in North Carolina (her mind had apparently been unhinged by some of the experiences she had endured during the Civil War), he joined Stone's American mission with the rank of Colonel in 1873.
Colston conducted two topographic and geological expeditions. The first, in 1874, surveyed the Nubian Desert between Qena and Berber. On this expedition he was accompanied by two ex-Union officers, Major Eugene O. Fechet and Colonel E. S. Purdy. The second, and more significant, expedition in 1875 was from Debba on the Nile to EI-Obeid in Kordofan, where he was seriously injured in a fall from a camel.
Colston made the following comment on the rigours of this expedition: 'The German doctor [Dr. Johann Pfund] assigned to me died. and my own liver turned into a nutmeg before we were halfway to EI-Obeid.' Believing that he was going to die in the hot waste of the Sudanese desert, he wrote his will and sent it to Charles Beardsley. the American Consul in Cairo. 'By the time this reaches you', he wrote, 'my mortal remains will be entombed in a lonely grave in the desert'. But, as example of Colston's incredibly high standards of honour and duty, he added, .... it also grieves me that I am unable to be of further service to His Highness, the Khedive.'
However, Colston did not die in the Sudanese desert. but in the Confederate Old Soldier's Home in Richmond. Virginia in 1896. Colonel Henry G. Prout (1845-1927). an ex/union officer from New York. was sent out to relieve him and Colston returned to Cairo by way of Khartoum. Prout continued into the province of Darfur, a formerly independent sultanate which had recently been conquered by a Sudano-Egyptian army. Prout and Colston each wrote reports on the results of the expedition which were printed in the Publications of the Egyptian General StafI5 Prout then served as Governor of Equatoria province for a short period in 1876 after the first resignation of GOI'don from that post.
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COPYRIGHT Spring 1989 The Map Collector, All rights reserved.
No portion of this article nor the accompanying illustrations can or may be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
The author is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography, Auburn University, Alabama, USA. This article is based on a paper he presented at the Tenth International Conference on the History of Cartography held in Dublin in 1983, and olltlines the story of the first military survey mission to Egypt from America led by the colourful and, already at that time discredited, former officer of the Union army, General Charles P. Stone.
DURING THE DECADE of the 1870’s a continual stream of American tourists. including such literary and political luminaries as Mark Twain. William T. Sherman. and Ulysses S. Grant. passed through Egypt. taking in the sights from Abu Simbel to Alexandria. In fact. the number of American tourists during that period was exceeded only by the British. One group of Americans, however, came to Egypt to live and to work. These were the members of what may be called the first American Military Mission to Egypt, led by a disgraced and discredited former officer of the Union army, General Charles P. Stone.
Stone was born in Massachusetts in 1824, graduated from West Point Military Academy in 1845, and served in the Mexican War which began in April the following year. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was regarded as one of the most competent generals on the Union side, but became an unfortunate victim of the spy and treason mania which swept the country in 1861. Stone was accused of collusion with the enemy and even of plotting to kidnap President Lincoln. After spending six months without trial in the military prison on Governor's Island in New York harbour, he sat out the Civil War at a desk job in the War Department, in a state of disgrace and with his career in ruins."
In 1869 Stone was working as a mining engineer in West Virginia, when his old friend, West Point classmate, and commander of the U.S. army, General William T. Sherman, contacted him and informed him that Ismail, the Khedive of Egypt, was discharging the French officers who had formerly trained the Egyptian army, and was interested in hiring American ex-Civil War officers in place of the French. Stone contacted Ismail's recruiting agent in New York, and in due course was appointed Chief-of-Staff of the Egyptian Army with the rank of Fariq (Major General), a position he held until the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. Stone, an armchair geographer who was much interested in the geographical exploration of Africa, also served as the leader of the American Military Mission from 1870-1878 when the mission was dissolved due to the bankruptcy of the Egyptian government. During that period a total of fifty ex-Civil War officers, about evenly distributed between Union and Confederate backgrounds, served in the Egyptian army. From his spacious headquarters in Cairo's medieval citadel, Stone was soon directing a series of reconnaissance expeditions that gradually spread their tentacles across Ismail's growing empire in the Sudan. Uganda. and the Ethiopian borderlands.'
Although Stone published relatively little himself, he enabled the results of the expeditions conducted by members of the mission to be published by establishing a private press and issuing a series of publications entitled Publications of the Egyptian General Staff These reports must have been printed in very limited editions, since they are quite rare today. He was also instrumental in the foundation of the Societe Khediviale de Geographie (1875), and articles by several members of the American mission are to be found in the Bulletin of that Society. These little-known expeditions and the results of the cartographic work accomplished by Stone's group are the subject of this article.
The Colston-Prout Expedition
Raleigh Edward Colston was born in France in 1825, the son of an American medical student and the Duchess of Valmy, exwife of Napoleon's Marshall Kellerman. He lived in France until 1842 when the family returned to Virginia. Consequently, Colston spoke and wrote excellent French. one of the official languages of the Egyptian administration. Colston had been a Brigadier-General in the Confederate army, but, unable to find remunerative employment following the Civil war. and necding to provide financial support for his wife who was an inmate of a mental asylum in North Carolina (her mind had apparently been unhinged by some of the experiences she had endured during the Civil War), he joined Stone's American mission with the rank of Colonel in 1873.
Colston conducted two topographic and geological expeditions. The first, in 1874, surveyed the Nubian Desert between Qena and Berber. On this expedition he was accompanied by two ex-Union officers, Major Eugene O. Fechet and Colonel E. S. Purdy. The second, and more significant, expedition in 1875 was from Debba on the Nile to EI-Obeid in Kordofan, where he was seriously injured in a fall from a camel.
Colston made the following comment on the rigours of this expedition: 'The German doctor [Dr. Johann Pfund] assigned to me died. and my own liver turned into a nutmeg before we were halfway to EI-Obeid.' Believing that he was going to die in the hot waste of the Sudanese desert, he wrote his will and sent it to Charles Beardsley. the American Consul in Cairo. 'By the time this reaches you', he wrote, 'my mortal remains will be entombed in a lonely grave in the desert'. But, as example of Colston's incredibly high standards of honour and duty, he added, .... it also grieves me that I am unable to be of further service to His Highness, the Khedive.'
However, Colston did not die in the Sudanese desert. but in the Confederate Old Soldier's Home in Richmond. Virginia in 1896. Colonel Henry G. Prout (1845-1927). an ex/union officer from New York. was sent out to relieve him and Colston returned to Cairo by way of Khartoum. Prout continued into the province of Darfur, a formerly independent sultanate which had recently been conquered by a Sudano-Egyptian army. Prout and Colston each wrote reports on the results of the expedition which were printed in the Publications of the Egyptian General StafI5 Prout then served as Governor of Equatoria province for a short period in 1876 after the first resignation of GOI'don from that post.
Read Full Article >>
[Acrobat Reader required]
COPYRIGHT Spring 1989 The Map Collector, All rights reserved.
No portion of this article nor the accompanying illustrations can or may be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
