Eduard Vogel and Eduard Robert Flegel: The Experiences of Two Nineteenth-Century German Explorers in Africa

The Muri Mountain range is located in the area formed by the boundaries between the federal states of Bauchi, Taraba, and Adamawa in Northern Nigeria. Various small, linguistically, and partly culturally distinct ethnic groups inhabit this mountain region. The Muri Mountains may be counted among those regions of Africa about which academic knowledge was rather scarce until recent times. Here I shall recount the experiences of two nineteenth-century German explorers of Africa, Eduard Vogel and Eduard Robert Flegel, who played an important part in the history of research on the Muri Mountains. Approaching the region from different directions, Vogel and Flegel were the first Europeans to gain detailed knowledge of vthe area and its inhabitants. The Muri Mountains, in themselves, were not a focus of attention for the two travelers, but just an incidental issue on which they touched during their voyages.Most European travelers of that time bypassed the Muri Mountains. This becomes obvious when looking at contemporary maps, on which one can hardly find any geographical information on the area between present-day Gombe and the river Benue until the 1870s (compare the two maps in Rohlfs 1872). Previously, in 1851 Heinrich Barth had arrived at Yola, coming via the Mandara Mountains. After a short stay, however, he had to return to Borno. In the itineraries he collected at Yola, the names of Tangale and Chongom are mentioned as stations on the way from Yola to Dukku (cf. Barth 1857, 2: 701, 708-09, 601-02).