BAIKIE, WILLIAM BALFOUR Scottish explorer, naturalist, and philologist, eldest son of Captain John Baikie, R.N., was born at Kirkwall, Orkney. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, and, on obtaining his M.D. degree, joined the royal navy in 1848. He early attracted the notice of Sir Roderick Murchison, through whom he was appointed surgeon and natur alist to the Niger expedition sent out in 1854 by Macgregor Laird with government support. On the death of the senior officer (Consul Beecroft) at Fernando Po, Baikie succeeded to the com mand. Ascending the Benue about 25om. beyond the point reached by former explorers, the little steamer "Pleiad" returned and reached the mouth of the Niger, after a voyage of 118 days, without the loss of a single man. The expedition had been in structed to endeavour to afford assistance to Heinrich Barth (q.v.), who had in 1851 crossed the Benue in its upper course, but Baikie was unable to gain any trustworthy information con cerning him. Returning to England, Baikie gave an account of his work in his Narrative of an Exploring Voyage up the Rivers Kwora and Binue . . . (1856). In March 1857 Baikie—with the rank of British consul—started on another expedition in the "Pleiad." Af ter two years spent in exploring the Niger, the navi gating vessel was wrecked in passing through some of the rapids of the river, and Baikie was unable longer to keep his party to gether. All returned home but himself ; in no way daunted, he determined single-handed to carry out the purposes of the expe dition. Landing from a small boat, with one or two native follow ers, at the confluence of the Niger and Benue, he chose Lokoja as the base of his future operations, it being the site of the model farm established by the expedition sent by the British govern ment in 1841, and abandoned within a year on the death of most of the white settlers. See Capt. W. Allen, R.N., and T.R.H. Thomson, M.D., A Narrative of the Expedition . . . to the River Niger in 1841 (1848) . After purchasing the site, and concluding a treaty with the Fula amir of Nupe, he proceeded to clear the ground, build houses, form enclosures, and pave the way for a future city. Numbers flocked to him from all neighbouring dis tricts, and in his settlement were representatives of almost all the tribes of west-central Africa. To the motley commonwealth thus formed he acted not merely as ruler, but also as physician, teacher, and priest. In less than five years he had opened up the navigation of the Niger, made roads, and established a mar ket to which the native produce was brought for sale and barter. He had also collected vocabularies of nearly 5o African dialects, and translated portions of the Bible and prayer book into Hausa. Once only during his residence had he to employ armed force against the surrounding tribes. He died at Sierra Leone while on his way home, on leave of absence. After his death the British government abolished the consulate (1866), and it was through private enterprise that some 20 years later the district where Baikie had worked so successfully was finally secured for Great Britain (see NIGERIA).
Baikie's Observations on the Hausa and Ful f ulde (i.e., Fula) Languages was privately printed in 1861, and his translation of the Psalms into Hausa was published by the Bible Society in 1881.