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BAIKIE, WILLIAM BALFOUR,
M.D. (1825-1864), naturalist, traveller, and philologist, eldest son of
Captain John Baikie, R.N., was born at Kirlcwall, Orkney, on 27 Aug.
1825, and educated privately and at the grammar school there. After
taking his degree in medicine at Edinburgh, he entered the royal navy in
1848 as assistant surgeon. He served on her majesty’s ships Volage,
Vanguard, Ceylon, Medusa, and Hibernia in the Mediterranean, and then
became assistant surgeon at the Haslar Hospital from 1851 to 1854, when
the influence of Sir Roderick Murchison procured him the post of surgeon
and naturalist to the Niger expedition of 1854, and on the death of the
captain at Fernando Po, Baikie succeeded to the command of the Pleiad,
the exploring vessel. This first successful voyage, penetrating 250
miles higher up the Niger than had before been reached, is described by
Baikie in his ‘Narrative of an Exploring Voyage up the Niger and Isadda,’
London, 1856. After spending some months in arranging his African
collections, and again serving at the Haslar Hospital, Baikie left
England in 1857 on a second expedition, in which the Pleiad was wrecked,
and the other explorers returned to England, and left him to carry on
the exploration alone. He bought a site—Lukoja—at the confluence of the
Quorra and Benue, and soon collected a considerable native settlement,
over which he held sway and where he officiated in every capacity. He
explored the country around, entered into relations with the King of
Nupe, the next powerful sovereign to the Sultan of Sokoto, and induced
him to open out roads for the passage of caravans, traders, and canoes ’
to Lukoja. Before five years were over he had opened up the navigation
of the Niger, made roads, established a regular market for native
produce, collected vocabularies of numerous African dialects, and
translated parts of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer into Hausa. He
died on his way home, on a well-earned leave of absence, at Sierra Leone
on 12 Dec. 1864, aged 30. A monument to his memory was erected in the
cathedral of St. Magnus, Kirkwall. His earliest works related to Orkney:
‘Historia Naturalis Orcadensis: Zoology, Part I. Mammalia and Birds
observed in the Orkney Islands,’ by W. B. Baikie, M.D., and 11. Heddle,
Edinburgh, 1848; and ‘List of Books and Manuscripts relating to Orkney
and Zetland,’ &c., by W. B. Baikie, Kirkwall, 1847. His ‘Observations on
the Hausa and Fulfulde Languages’ were privately printed in 1861; his
translation of the Psalms into Hausa (‘Letafi ta Zabura’) was
posthumously published by the Bible Society in 1881; and other
translations were incorporated in lleichardt’s ‘Grammar of the Fulde
Language’ (1876). Dr. Baikie was also a contributor to the transactions
of various learned societies.
[Information received
(September 1883) from Miss Eleanor Baikie, of Kirkwall, sister of Dr.
Baikie; Gent. Mag., March 1865.] S. L.-P. |
