Baker, Sir Samuel

Sir Samuel (1821-1893), an English traveler. He was a native of London. He was educated as an engineer. In 1845 he was sent out to Ceylon to supervise the founding of an agricultural settlement and a sanitarium. Later he entered the Turkish railway service. In 1861, with Mrs. Baker, he left Cairo on a journey of exploration up the Nile. The first year he spent exploring the Blue Nile region. He then started across the country from Khartum and discovered Lake Albert Nyanza, March 14, 1864. From 1869 to 1873 he commanded an Egyptian expedition in central Africa, charged with the suppression of the slave trade and the annexation of territory to Egypt. He traveled extensively in Cyprus, Syria, and India. He wrote a number of works of more than ordinary interest, among others, The Rifle and the Hound in Ceylon, The Albert Nyanza, The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, Cyprus as I Saw It in 1879, and a book for boys, Wild Beasts and Their Ways. See Nyanza; Nile; Livingstone; Africa