COLUMBIA PRESENTING STANLEY TO EUROPEAN SOVEREIGNS.

STANLEY

IN

AFRICA.

INTRODUCTION.

A volume of travel, exploration and adventure is never without instruction and fascination for old and young. There is that within us all which ever seeks for the mysteries which are bidden behind mountains, closeted in forests, concealed by earth or sea, in a word, which are enwrapped by Nature. And there is equally that within us which is touched most sensitively and stirred most deeply by the heroism which has characterized the pioneer of all ages of the world and in every field of adventure.

How like enchantment is the story of that revelation which the New America furnished the Old World! What a spirit of inquiry and exploit it opened! How unprecedented and startling, adventure of every kind became! What thrilling volumes tell of the hardships of daring navigators or of the perils of brave and dashing landsmen! Later on, who fails to read with the keenest emotion of those dangers, trials and escapes which enveloped the intrepid searchers after the icy secrets of the Poles, or confronted those who would unfold the tale of the older civilizations and of the ocean’s island spaces.

Though the directions of pioneering enterprise change, yet more and more man searches for the new. To follow him, is to write of the wonderful. Again, to follow him is to read of the surprising and the thrilling. No prior history of discovery has ever exceeded in vigorous entertainment and startling interest that which centers in “The Dark Continent” and has for its most distinguished hero, Henry M. Stanley. His coming and going in the untrodden and hostile wilds of Africa, now to rescue the stranded pioneers of other nationalities, now to explore the unknown waters of a mighty and unique system, now to teach cannibal tribes respect for decency and law, and now to map for the first time with any degree of accuracy, the limits of new dynasties, make up a volume of surpassing moment and peculiar fascination.

All the world now turns to Africa as the scene of those adventures which possess such a weird and startling interest for readers of every class, and which invite to heroic exertion on the part of pioneers. It is the one dark, mysterious spot, strangely made up of massive mountains, lofty and extended plateaus, salt and sandy deserts, immense fertile stretches, climates of death and balm, spacious lakes, gigantic rivers, dense forests, numerous, grotesque and savage peoples, and an animal life of fierce mien, enormous strength and endless variety. It is the country of the marvelous, yet none of its marvels exceed its realities.

And each exploration, each pioneering exploit, each history of adventure into its mysterious depths, but intensifies the world’s view of it and enhances human interest in it, for it is there the civilized nations are soon to set metes and bounds to their grandest acquisitions—perhaps in peace, perhaps in war. It is there that white colonization shall try its boldest problems. It is there that Christianity shall engage in one of its hardest contests.

Victor Hugo says, that “Africa will be the continent of the twentieth century.” Already the nations are struggling to possess it. Stanley’s explorations proved the majesty and efficacy of equipment and force amid these dusky peoples and through the awful mazes of the unknown. Empires watched with eager eye the progress of his last daring journey. Science and civilization stood ready to welcome its results. He comes to light again, having escaped ambush, flood, the wild beast and disease, and his revelations set the world aglow. He is greeted by kings, hailed by savants, and looked to by the colonizing nations as the future pioneer of political power and commercial enterprise in their behalf, as he has been the most redoubtable leader of adventure in the past.

This miraculous journey of the dashing and intrepid explorer, completed against obstacles which all believed to be insurmountable, safely ended after opinion had given him up as dead, together with its bearings on the fortunes of those nations who are casting anew the chart of Africa, and upon the native peoples who are to be revolutionized or exterminated by the last grand surges of progress, all these render a volume dedicated to travel and discovery, especially in the realm of “The Dark Continent,” surprisingly agreeable and useful at this time.

MARCHING THROUGH EQUATORIAL AFRICA. Larger.

5

CONTENTS.

11

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

CENTRAL AFRICA AND THE CONGO BASIN. Larger: A. B. C. D. E. F.

HENRY M. STANLEY.

19

HENRY M. STANLEY.

The news rang through the world that Stanley was safe. For more than a year he had been given up as lost in African wilds by all but the most hopeful. Even hope had nothing to rest upon save the dreamy thought that he, whom hardship and danger had so often assailed in vain, would again come out victorious.

The mission of Henry M. Stanley to find, succor and rescue Emin Pasha, if he were yet alive, not only adds to the life of this persistent explorer and wonderful adventurer one of its most eventful and thrilling chapters, but throws more light on the Central African situation than any event in connection with the discovery and occupation of the coveted areas which lie beneath the equatorial sun. Its culmination, both in the escape of the hero himself and in the success of his perilous errand, to say nothing of its far-reaching effects upon the future of “The Dark Continent,” opens, as it were, a new volume in African annals, and presents a new point of departure for scientists, statesmen and philanthropists.

Space must be found further on for the details of that long, exciting and dangerous journey, which reversed all other tracks of African travel, yet redounded more than all to the glory of the explorer and the advancement of knowledge respecting hidden latitudes. But here we can get a fair view of a situation, which in all its lights and shadows, in its many startling outlines, in its awful suggestion of possibilities, is perhaps the most interesting and fateful now before the eyes of modern civilization.

It may be very properly asked, at the start, who is this wizard of travel, this dashing adventurer, this heroic explorer and rescuer, this20 pioneer of discovery, who goes about in dark, unfathomed places, defying flood and climate, jungle and forest, wild beast and merciless savage, and bearing a seemingly charmed life?

Who is this genius who has in a decade revolutionized all ancient methods of piercing the heart of the unknown, and of revealing the mysteries which nature has persistently hugged since “the morning stars first sang together in joy?”

The story of his life may be condensed into a brief space—brief yet eventful as that of a conqueror, moved ever to conquest by sight of new worlds. Henry M. Stanley was born in the hamlet of Denbigh, in Wales, in 1840. His parents, who bore the name of Rowland, were poor; so poor, indeed, that the boy, at the age of three years, was virtually on the town. At the age of thirteen, he was turned out of the poor-house to shift for himself. Fortunately, a part of the discipline had been such as to assure him the elements of an English education. The boy must have improved himself beyond the opportunities there at hand, for in two or three years afterwards, he appeared in North Wales as a school-teacher. Thence he drifted to Liverpool, where he shipped as a cabin-boy on a sailing-vessel, bound for New Orleans. Here he drifted about in search of employment till he happened upon a merchant and benefactor, by the name of Stanley. The boy proved so bright, promising and useful, that his employer adopted him as his son. Thus the struggling John Rowland became, by adoption, the Henry M. Stanley of our narrative.

Before he came of age, the new father died without a will, and his business and estate passed away from the foster child to those entitled at law. But for this misfortune, or rather great good fortune, he might have been lost to the world in the counting-room of a commercial city. He was at large on the world again, full of enterprise and the spirit of adventure.

The civil war was now on, and Stanley entered the Confederate army. He was captured by the Federal forces, and on being set at liberty threw his fortunes in with his captors by joining the Federal navy, the ship being the Ticonderoga, on which he was soon promoted to the position of Acting Ensign. After the war, he developed those powers which made him such an acquisition on21 influential newspapers. He was of genial disposition, bright intelligence, quick observation and surprising discrimination. His judgment of men and things was sound. He loved travel and adventure, was undaunted in the presence of obstacles, persistent in every task before him, and possessed shrewd insight into human character and projects. His pen was versatile and his style adapted to the popular taste. No man was ever better equipped by nature to go anywhere and make the most of every situation. In a single year he had made himself a reputation by his trip through Asia Minor and other Eastern countries. In 1866 he was sent by the New York Herald, as war correspondent, to Abyssinia. The next year he was sent to Spain by the same paper, to write up the threatened rebellion there. In 1869 he was sent by the Herald to Africa to find the lost Livingstone.

A full account of this perilous journey will be found elsewhere in this volume, in connection with the now historic efforts of that gallant band of African pioneers who immortalized themselves prior to the founding of the Congo Free State. Suffice it to say here, that it took him two years to find Livingstone at Ujiji, upon the great lake of Tanganyika, which lake he explored, in connection with Livingstone, and at the same time made important visits to most of the powerful tribes that surround it. He returned to civilization, but remained only a short while, for by 1874 he was again in the unknown wilds, and this time on that celebrated journey which brought him entirely across the Continent from East to West, revealed the wonderful water resources of tropical Africa and gave a place on the map to that remarkable drainage system which finds its outlet in the Congo river.

Says the Rev. Geo. L. Taylor of this march: “It was an undertaking which, for grandeur of conception, and for sagacity, vigor, and completeness of execution, must ever rank among the marches of the greatest generals and the triumphs of the greatest discoverers of history. No reader can mentally measure and classify this exploit who does not recall the prolonged struggles that have attended the exploration of all great first-class rivers—a far more difficult work, in many respects, than ocean sailing. We must remember the wonders and sufferings of Orellana’s voyages (though in a brigantine,22 built on the Rio Napo, and with armed soldiers) down that “Mediterranean of Brazil,” the Amazon, from the Andes to the Atlantic, in 1540. We must recall the voyage of Marquette and Joliet down the Mississippi in 1673; the toils of Park and Landers on the Niger, 1795-1830; and of Speke and Baker on the Nile, 1860-1864, if we would see how the deed of Stanley surpasses them all in boldness and generalship, as it promises also to surpass them in immediate results.

The object of the voyage was two-fold: first, to finish the work of Speke and Grant in exploring the great Nile lakes; and, secondly, to strike the great Lualaba where Livingstone left it, and follow it to whatever sea or ocean it might lead.”

And again:—“The story of the descent of the great river is an Iliad in itself. Through hunger and weariness; through fever, dysentery, poisoned arrows, and small-pox; through bellowing hippopotami, crocodiles, and monsters; past mighty tributaries, themselves great first-class rivers; down roaring rapids, whirlpools, and cataracts; through great canoe-fleets of saw-teethed, fighting, gnashing cannibals fiercer than tigers; through thirty-two battles on land and river, often against hundreds of great canoes, some of them ninety feet long and with a hundred spears on board; and, at last, through the last fearful journey by land and water down the tremendous cañon below Stanley Pool, still they went on, and on, relentlessly on, till finally they got within hailing and helping distance of Boma, on the vast estuary by the sea; and on August 9, 1877, the news thrilled the civilized world that Stanley was saved, and had connected Livingstone’s Lualaba with Tuckey’s Congo! After 7,000 miles’ wanderings in 1,000 days save one from Zanzibar, and four times crossing the Equator, he looked white men in the face once more, and was startled that they were so pale! Black had become the normal color of the human face. Thus the central stream of the second vastest river on the globe, next to the Amazon in magnitude, was at last explored, and a new and unsuspected realm was disclosed in the interior of a prehistoric continent, itself the oldest cradle of civilization. The delusions of ages were swept away at one masterful stroke, and a new world was discovered by a new Columbus in a canoe.”

23

THE BELLOWING HIPPOPOTAMI. Larger.

24

It was on that memorable march that he came across the wily Arab, Tippoo Tib, at the flourishing market-town of Nyangwe, who was of so much service to Stanley on his descent of the Lualaba (Congo) from Nyangwe to Stanley Falls, 1,000 miles from Stanley Pool, but who has since figured in rather an unenviable light in connection with efforts to introduce rays of civilization into the fastnesses of the Upper Congo. This, as well as previous journeys of Stanley, established the fact that the old method of approaching the heart of the Continent by desert coursers, or of threading its hostile mazes without armed help, was neither expeditious nor prudent. It revolutionized exploration, by compelling respect from hostile man and guaranteeing immunity from attack by wild beast.

For nearly three years Stanley was lost to the civilized world in this trans-continental journey. Its details, too, are narrated elsewhere in this volume, with all its vicissitude of 7,000 miles of zigzag wandering and his final arrival on the Atlantic coast—the wonder of all explorers, the admired of the scientific world.

Such was the value of the information he brought to light in this eventful journey, such the wonderful resource of the country through which he passed after plunging into the depths westward of Lake Tanganyika, and such the desirability of this new and western approach to the heart of the continent, not only for commercial but political and humanitarian purposes, that the cupidity of the various colonizing nations, especially of Europe, was instantly awakened, and it was seen that unless proper steps were taken, there must soon be a struggle for the possession of a territory so vast and with such possibilities of empire. To obviate a calamity so dire as this, the happy scheme was hit upon to carve out of as much of the new discovered territory as would be likely to embrace the waters of the Congo and control its ocean outlet, a mighty State which was to be dedicated for ever to the civilized nations of the world.

In it there should be no clash of foreign interests, but perfect reciprocity of trade and free scope for individual or corporate enterprise without respect to nationality. The king of Belgium took a keen interest in the project, and through his influence other powers of Europe, and even the United States, became enlisted. A25 plan of the proposed State was drafted and it soon received international ratification. The new power was to be known as the Congo Free State, and it was to be, for the time being, under control of an Administrator General. To the work of founding this State, giving it metes and bounds, securing its recognition among the nations, removing obstacles to its approach, establishing trading posts and developing its commercial features, Stanley now addressed himself. We have been made familiar with his plans for securing railway communication between the mouth of the Congo and Stanley Pool, a distance of nearly 200 miles inland, so as to overcome the difficult, if not impossible, navigation of the swiftly rushing river. We have also heard of his successful efforts to introduce navigation, by means of steamboats, upon the more placid waters of the Upper Congo and upon its numerous affluents. Up until the year 1886, the most of his time was devoted to fixing the infant empire permanently on the map of tropical Africa and giving it identity among the political and industrial powers of earth.

In reading of Stanley and studying the characteristics of his work one naturally gravitates to the thought, that in all things respecting him, the older countries of Europe are indebted to the genius of the newer American institution. We cannot yet count upon the direct advantages of a civilized Africa upon America. In a political and commercial sense our activity cannot be equal to that of Europe on account of our remoteness, and because we are, as yet, but little more than colonists ourselves. Africa underlies Europe, is contiguous to it, is by nature situated so as to become an essential part of that mighty earth-tract which the sun of civilization is, sooner or later, to illuminate. Besides Europe has a need for African acquisition and settlement which America has not. Her areas are small, her population has long since reached the point of overflow, her money is abundant and anxious for inviting foreign outlets, her manufacturing centres must have new cotton and jute fields, not to mention supplies of raw material of a thousand kinds, her crowded establishments must have the cereal foods, add to all these the love of empire which like a second nature with monarchical rulers, and the desire for large landed estates which is a characteristic of titled nobility, and26 you have a few of the inducements to African conquest and colonization which throw Europe in the foreground. Yet while all these are true, it is doubtful if, with all her advantages of wealth, location and resource, she has done as much for the evangelization of Africa as has America. No, nor as much for the systematic and scientific opening of its material secrets. And this brings us to the initial idea of this paragraph again. Though Stanley was a foreign waif, cast by adverse circumstances on our shores, it seemed to require the robust freedom and stimulating opportunities of republican institutions to awaken and develop in him the qualities of the strong practical and venturesome man he became. Monarchy may not fetter thought, but it does restrain actions. It grooves and ruts human energy by laws of custom and by arbitrary rules of caste. It would have repressed a man like Stanley, or limited him to its methods. He would have been a subject of some dynasty or a victim of some conventionalism. Or if he had grown too large for repressive boundaries and had chosen to burst them, he would have become a revolutionist worthy of exile, if his head had not already come to the block. But under republican institutions his energies and ambitions had free play. Every faculty, every peculiarity of the man grew and developed, till he became a strong, original and unique force in the line of adventure and discovery. This out-crop of manhood and character, is the tribute of our free institutions to European monarchy. The tribute is not given grudgingly. Take it and welcome. Use it for your own glory and aggrandizement. Let crowned-heads bow before it, and titled aristocracy worship it, as they appropriate its worth and wealth. But let it not be forgotten, that the American pioneering spirit has opened Africa wider in ten years than all the efforts of all other nations in twenty.

27

CONGO FREE STATE.

In 1877, Stanley wrote to the London Daily Telegraph as follows:—

“I feel convinced that the question of this mighty water-way (the Congo) will become a political one in time. As yet, however, no European power seems to have put forth the right of control. Portugal claims it because she discovered its mouth; but the great powers, England, America, and France, refuse to recognize her right. If it were not that I fear to damp any interest you may have in Africa, or in this magnificent stream, by the length of my letter, I could show you very strong reasons why it would be a politic deed to settle this momentous question immediately. I could prove to you that the power possessing the Congo, despite the cataracts, would absorb to itself the trade of the whole enormous basin behind. This river is and will be the grand highway of commerce to West Central Africa.”

When Stanley wrote this, with visions of a majestic Congo Empire flitting through his brain, he was more than prophetic; at least, he knew more of the impulse that was then throbbing and permeating Europe than any other man. He had met Gambetta, the great French statesman, who in so many words had told him that he had opened up a new continent to the world’s view and had given an impulse to scientific and philanthropic enterprise which could not but have material effect on the progress of mankind. He knew what the work of the International Association, which had his plans for a Free State under consideration, had been, up to that hour, and were likely to be in the future. He was aware of the fact that the English Baptist missionaries had already pushed their way up the Congo to a point beyond the Equator, and that the American Baptists were working side by side with their English brethren. He29 knew that the London and Church Missionary Societies had planted their flags on Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika, and that the work of the Free Kirk of Scotland was reaching out from Lake Nyassa to Tanganyika. He had seen Pinto and Weissman crossing Africa and making grand discoveries in the Portuguese possessions south of the Congo. De Brazza had given France a West African Empire; Germany had annexed all the vacant territory in South-west Africa, to say nothing of her East African enterprises; Italy had taken up the Red Sea coast; Great Britain had possessed the Niger delta; Portugal already owned 700,000 square miles south of the Congo, to which no boundaries had been affixed.

SCENE ON LAKE TANGANYIKA.

Stanley knew even more than this. His heroic nature took no stock in the “horrible climate” of Africa, which he had tested for so many years. He was fully persuaded that the plateaus of the Upper Congo and the central continent were healthier than the lands of Arkansas, which has doubled its population in twenty-five years. He treated the coast as but a thin line, the mere shell of an egg, yet he saw it dotted with settlements along every available water-way—the Kwanza, Congo, Kwilu, Ogowai, Muni, Camaroon, Oil, Niger, Roquelle, Gambia and Senegal rivers. He asked himself, What is left? And the answer came—Nothing, except the basins of the four mighty streams—the Congo, the Nile, the Niger and the Shari (Shire), all of which require railways to link them with the sea. His projected railway from Vivi, around the cataracts of the Congo, to Stanley Pool, 147 miles long, would open nearly 11,000 miles of navigable water-way, and the trade of 43,000,000 people, worth millions of dollars annually.

The first results of Stanley’s efforts in behalf of a “Free Congo State” were, as already indicated, the formation of an international association, whose president was Colonel Strauch, and to whose existence and management the leading powers of the world gave their assent. It furnished the means for his return to Africa, with plenty of help and with facilities for navigating the Congo, in order to establish towns, conclude treaties with the natives, take possession of the lands, fix metes and bounds and open commerce—in a word, to found a State according to his ideal, and firmly fix it among the recognized empires of the world.

30

In January, 1879, Stanley started for Africa, under the above auspices and with the above intent. But instead of sailing to the Congo direct, he went to Zanzibar on the east coast, for the purpose of enlisting a force of native pioneers and carriers, aiming as much as possible to secure those who had accompanied him on his previous trips across the Continent and down the river, whose ascent he was about to make. Such men he could trust, besides, their experience would be of great avail in so perilous an enterprise. A second object of his visit to Zanzibar was to organize expeditions for the purpose of pushing westward and establishing permanent posts as far as the Congo. One of these, under Lieut. Cambier, established a line of posts stretching almost directly westward from Zanzibar to Nyangwe, and through a friendly country. With this work, and the enlistment of 68 Zanzibaris for his Congo expedition, three-fourths of whom had accompanied him across Africa, he was engaged until May, 1879, when he sailed for the Congo, via the Red Sea and Mediterranean, and arrived at Banana Point at the mouth of the Congo, on Aug. 14, 1879, as he says, “to ascend the great river with the novel mission of sowing along its banks civilized settlements, to peacefully conquer and subdue it, to mold it in harmony with modern ideas into national States, within whose limits the European merchant shall go hand in hand with the dark African trader, and justice and law and order shall prevail, and murder and lawlessness and the cruel barter of slaves shall forever cease.”

Once at Banana Point, all hands trimmed for the tropical heat. Heads were shorn close, heavy clothing was changed for soft, light flannels, hats gave place to ventilated caps, the food was changed from meat to vegetable, liquors gave place to coffee or tea—for be it known a simple glass of champagne may prove a prelude to a sun-stroke in African lowlands. The officers of the expedition here met—an international group indeed,—an American (Stanley), two Englishmen, five Belgians, two Danes, one Frenchman. The steamer Barga had long since arrived from Europe with a precious assortment of equipments, among which were building material and a flotilla of light steam launches. One of these, the En Avant was the first to discover Lake Leopold II, explore the Biyeré and reach Stanley Falls.

31

GATHERING TO MARKET AT NYANGWE. Larger.

32

In seven days, August 21st, the expedition was under way, braving the yellow, giant stream with steel cutters, driven by steam. The river is three miles wide, from 60 to 900 feet deep, and with a current of six miles an hour. On either side are dark walls of mangrove and palm, through which course lazy, unknown creeks, alive only with the slimy reptilia of the coast sections. For miles the course is through the serene river flood, fringed by a leafy, yet melancholy nature. Then a cluster of factories, known as Kissinga, is passed, and the river is broken into channels by numerous islands, heavily wooded. Only the deeper channels are now navigable, and selecting the right ones the fleet arrives at Wood Point, a Dutch trading town, with several factories. Up to this point, the river has had no depth of less than 16 feet, increased to 22 feet during the rainy season. The mangrove forests have disappeared, giving place to the statelier palms. Grassy plains begin to stretch invitingly down to the water’s edge. In the distance high ridges throw up their serrated outlines, and seemingly converge toward the river, as a look is taken ahead. Soon the wonderful Fetish Rocks are sighted, which all pilots approach with dread, either through superstition or because the deep current is broken by miniature whirlpools. One of these granite rocks stands on a high elevation and resembles a light-house. It is the Limbu-Li-Nzambi—“Finger of God”—of the natives.

Boma is now reached. It is the principal emporium of trade on the Congo—the buying and selling mart for Banana Point, and connected with it by steamers. There is nothing picturesque hereabouts, yet Boma has a history as old as the slave trade in America, and as dark and horrible as that traffic was infamous. Here congregated the white slave dealers for over two centuries, and here they gathered the dusky natives by the thousand, chained them in gangs by the dozen or score, forced them into the holds of their slave-ships, and carried them away to be sold in the Brazils, West Indies and North America. Whole fleets of slave-ships have anchored off Boma, with their loads of rum, their buccaneer crews and blood-thirsty officers, intent on human booty. Happily, all is now changed and the Arab is the only recognized slave-stealer in Africa. Boma has several missions, and her traders are on good terms with the surrounding tribes. Her market is splendid, and here may be found34 in plenty, oranges, citrons, limes, papaws, pine-apples, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, onions, turnips, cabbage, beets, carrots and lettuce, besides the meat of bullocks, sheep, goats and fowls.

A SLAVE-STEALER’S REVENGE.

After establishing a headquarters at Boma, under the auspices of the International Commission, the expedition proceeded to Mussuko, where the heavier steamer, Albion, was dismissed, and where all the stores for future use were collected. This point is 90 miles from the sea. River reconnoissances were made in the lighter steamers, and besides the information picked up, the navigators were treated to a hippopotamus hunt which resulted in the capture of one giant specimen, upon whose back one of the Danish skippers mounted in triumph, that he might have a thrilling paragraph for his next letter to Copenhagen.

Above Boma the Congo begins to narrow between verdure-clad hills rising from 300 to 1100 feet, and navigation becomes more difficult, though channels of 15 to 20 feet in depth are found. Further on, toward Vivi is a splendid reach of swift, deep water, with an occasional whirlpool, capable of floating the largest steamship. Vivi was to be a town founded under the auspices of the International Commission—an entrepôt for an extensive country. The site was pointed out by De-de-de, chief of the contiguous tribe, who seemed to have quite as keen a commercial eye as his European visitors. Hither were gathered five of the most powerful chiefs of the vicinity, who were pledged, over draughts of fresh palm-juice, to recognize the newly established emporium. It is a salubrious spot, surrounded by high plateaus, affording magnificent views. From its lofty surroundings one may sketch a future, which shall abound in well worn turnpike roads, puffing steamers, and columns of busy trades-people. As Vivi is, the natives are by no means the worst sort of people. They wear a moderate amount of clothing, take readily to traffic, keep themselves well supplied with marketing, and use as weapons the old fashioned flint-lock guns they have secured in trade with Europeans. At the grand assemblage of chiefs, one of the dusky seniors voiced the unanimous sentiment thus:—“We, the big chiefs of Vivi are glad to see the mundelé (trader). If the mundelé has any wish to settle in this country, as Massala (the interpreter) informs us, we will welcome35 him, and will be great friends to him. Let the mundelé speak his mind freely.”

Stanley replied that he was on a mission of peace, that he wanted to establish a commercial emporium, with the right to make roads to it and improve the surrounding country, and that he wanted free and safe intercourse with the people for all who chose to come there. If they would give guarantees to this effect, he would pay them for the right. Then began a four hour’s chaffer which resulted in the desired treaty. Apropos to this deal Stanley says:—“In the management of a bargain I should back the Congo native against Jew or Christian, Parsee, or Banyan, in all the round world. I have there seen a child of eight do more tricks of trade in an hour than the cleverest European trader on the Congo could do in a month. There is a little boy at Bolobo, aged six, named Lingeuji, who would make more profit out of a pound’s worth of cloth than an English boy of fifteen would out of ten pound’s worth. Therefore when I write of the Congo natives, Bakougo, Byyanzi or Bateke tribes, I associate them with an inconceivable amount of natural shrewdness and a power of indomitable and untiring chaffer.”

Thus Vivi was acquired, and Stanley brought thither all his boats and supplies. He turned all his working force, a hundred in number, to laying out streets to the top of the plateau, where houses and stores were erected. The natives rendered assistance and were much interested in the smashing and removal of the boulders with the heavy sledges. They called Stanley Bula Matari—Rock Breaker—a title he came to be known by on the whole line of the Congo, up to Stanley Falls. Gardens were planted, shade trees were set out, and on January 8, 1880, Stanley wrote home that he had a site prepared for a city of 20,000 people, at the head of navigation on the lower Congo, and a center for trade with a large country, when suitable roads were built. He left it in charge of one of his own men, as governor, or chief, and started on his tedious and more perilous journey through the hills and valleys of the cataract region. This journey led him through various tribes, most of whom lived in neat villages, and were well supplied with live animals, garden produce and cotton clothing. They were friendly and disposed to encourage him in his enterprise of making a good commercial road36 from Vivi, around the cataracts, to some suitable station above, provided they were well paid for the right of way. A melancholy fact in connection with many of these tribes is that they have been decimated by internecine wars, mostly of the olden time, when the catching and selling of slaves was a business, and that thereby extensive tracts of good land have been abandoned to wild game, elephants, buffaloes, water-buck and antelopes, which breed and roam at pleasure. It was nothing unusual to see herds of half a dozen elephants luxuriously spraying their sunburnt backs in friendly pools, nor to startle whole herds of buffaloes, which would scamper away, with tails erect, for safety—cowards all, except when wounded and at bay, and then a very demon, fuller of fight than a tiger and even more dangerous than the ponderous elephant.

Owing to the fact that the Congo threads its cataract section with immense falls and through deep gorges, this part of Stanley’s journey had to be made at some distance from its channel, and with only glimpses of its turbid waters, over lofty ridges, through deep grass-clothed or densely forested valleys, and across various tributaries, abounding in hippopotami and other water animals. Many fine views were had from the mountains of Ngoma. He decided that a road could be made from Vivi to Isangila, a distance of 52 miles, and that from Isangila navigation could be resumed on the Congo. And this road he now proceeded to make, for, though years before in his descent of the river he had dragged many heavy canoes for miles overland, and around similar obstructions, he now had heavier craft to carry, and objects of commerce in view. He had 106 men at his disposal at Vivi, who fell to work with good will, cutting down the tall grass, removing boulders, corduroying low grounds, bridging streams, and carrying on engineering much the same as if they were in a civilized land—the natives helping when so inclined. The workmen had their own supplies, which were supplemented by game, found in abundance, and were molested only by the snakes which were disturbed by the cutting and digging; of these, the spitting snake was the most dangerous, not because of its bite, but because it ejects its poison in a stream from a distance of six feet into the face and eyes of its enemy. The ill effects of such an injection lasts for a week or more. The tall grass was infested38 with the whip-snake, the bulky python was found near the streams, while a peculiar green snake inhabited the trees of the stony sections and occasionally dangled in unpleasant proximity to the faces of the workmen.

BUFFALO AT BAY.

As this road-making went on, constant communication was kept up with Vivi. The steamers were mounted on heavy wagons, and were drawn along by hand-power as the road progressed. Stores and utensils of every kind were similarly loaded and transported. The mules and asses, belonging to the expedition, were of course brought into requisition, but in nearly all cases their strength had to be supplemented by the workmen. Accidents were not infrequent, but fatal casualties were rare. Some died of disease, yet the general health was good. One of the coast natives fell a victim to an enraged hippopotamus, which crushed him and his bark as readily as an egg-shell.

Thus the road progressed to Makeya Manguba, a distance of 22 miles from Vivi, and after many tedious trips to and fro, all the equipments of the expedition were brought to that point. The time consumed had been about five months—from March to August. Here the steel lighters were brought into requisition, and the equipments were carried by steam to a new camp on the Bundi river, where road making was even more difficult, because the forests were now dense and the woods—mahogany, teak, guaiacum and bombax—very hard. Fortunately the natives kept up a fine supply of sweet potatoes, bananas, fowls and eggs, which supplemented the usual rice diet of the workmen. It was with the greatest hardship that the road was completed between the Luenda and Lulu rivers, so thick were the boulders and so hard the material which composed them. The Europeans all fell sick, and even the natives languished. At length the Bula river was reached, 16 miles from the Bundi, where the camp was supplied with an abundance of buffalo and antelope meat.

The way must now go either over the steep declivities of the Ngoma mountains, or around their jagged edges, where they abut on the roaring Congo. The latter was chosen, and for days the entire force were engaged in cutting a roadway along the sides of the bluffs. This completed, a short stretch of navigable water brought40 them to Isangila, 52 miles from Vivi. It was now January 2, 1881. Thither all the supplies were brought, and the boats were scraped and painted, ready for the long journey to Manyanga. Stanley estimated that all the goings and comings on this 52 miles of roadway would foot up 2,352 miles of travel; and it had cost the death of six Europeans and twenty-two natives, besides the retirement of thirteen invalids. Verily, it was a year dark with trial and unusual toil. But the cataracts had been overcome, and rest could be had against further labors and dangers.

FIGHT WITH AN ENRAGED HIPPOPOTAMUS.

The little steel lighters are now ready for their precious loads. In all, there has been collected at Isangila full fifty tons of freight, besides wagons and the traveling luggage of 118 colored carriers and attendants and pioneers. It is a long, long way to Manyanga, but if the river proves friendly, it ought to be reached in from seventy to eighty days. The Congo is three-quarters of a mile wide, with rugged shores and tumultuous currents. The little steamers have to feel their way, hugging the shores in order to avoid the swift waters of the outer channels, and starting every now and then with their paddles the drowsy crocodiles from their habitat. The astonished creatures dart forward, at first, as if to attack the boats, but of a sudden disappear in the flood, to rise again in the rear and give furious chase at a distance they deem quite safe. This part of the river is known as Long Reach. These reaches, or stretches, some of them five miles long, are expansions of the river, between points of greater fall, and are more easily navigable than where the stream narrows or suddenly turns a point. The cañon appearance of the shores now begins to disappear, and extensive grass-grown plains stretch occasionally to the water’s edge.

At the camp near Kololo Point, where the river descends swiftly, the expedition was met by Crudington and Bentley, two missionaries, who were fleeing in a canoe from the natives of Kinshassa, where they had been surrounded by an armed mob and threatened with their lives. They were given protection and sent to Isangila. Stanley had now to mourn the loss of his most trustworthy messenger, Soudi. He had gone back to Vivi for the European mail and on the way had met a herd of buffaloes; selecting the finest, he discharged his rifle at it and killed it, as he thought. But when he41 rushed up to cut its jugular vein, the beast arose in fury, and tossed and mangled poor Soudi so that he died soon after his companions came to his rescue.

Stretch after stretch of the turbulent Congo is passed, and camp after camp has been formed and vacated. At all camps, where practicable, the natives have been taken into confidence, and the intent of the expedition made known. With hardly an exception they fell into the spirit of the undertaking, and gladly welcomed the opportunity to open commerce with the outer world. The Nzambi rapids now offer an obstacle to navigation, but soon a safe channel is found, and a magnificent stretch of water leads to a bay at the mouth of the Kwilu river, a navigable stream, with a depth of eight feet, a width of forty yards and a current of five miles an hour. The question of food now became pressing. Each day the banks of the river were scoured for rations, by gangs of six men, whose duty it was to purchase and bring in cassava, bread, bananas, Indian corn, sweet potatoes, etc., not forgetting fowls, eggs, goats, etc., for the Europeans. But these men found it hard work to obtain fair supplies.

By April 7th the camp was at Kimbanza opposite the mouth of the Lukunga and in the midst of a land of plenty, and especially of crocodiles, which fairly infest the river and all the tributaries thereof. Here, too, are myriads of little fish like minnows, or sardines, which the natives catch in great quantities, in nets, and prepare for food by baking them in the sun. The population is quite dense, and of the same amiable mood, the same desire to traffic, and the same willingness to enter into treaties, as that on the river below.

Further up are the Ndunga people and the Ndunga Rapids, where the river is penned in between high, forbidding walls and where nature has begrudged life of every kind to the scene. But out among the villages all is different. The people are thrifty and sprightly. Their markets are full of sweet potatoes, eggs, fish, palm-wine, etc., and the shapely youths, male and female, indulge in dances which possess as much poetry of motion as the terpsichorean performances of the more highly favored children of civilization.

42

The next station was Manyanga, a destination indeed, for here is a formidable cataract, which defies the light steamers of the expedition, and there will have to be another tedious portage to the open waters of Stanley Pool. It was now May 1, 1881. Manyanga is 140 miles from Vivi. The natives were friendly but adverse to founding a trading town in their midst. Yet Stanley resolved that it should be a station and supply point for the 95 miles still to be traversed to Stanley Pool. He fell sick here, of fever, and lay for many days unconscious. Such was his prostration, when he returned to his senses, that he despaired of recovery, and bade his attendants farewell.

In the midst of hardship which threatened to break his expedition up at this point, he was rejoiced to witness the arrival of a relief expedition from below, other boats, plenty of provisions and a corps of workmen. Then the site of the town of Manyanga was laid out, and a force of men was employed to build a road around the cataract and haul the boats over it. This point is the center of exchange for a wide territory. Slaves, ivory, rubber, oil, pigs, sheep, goats and fowls are brought in abundance to the market, and it is a favorite stopping-place for caravans from the mouth of the Congo to Stanley Pool. But the natives are crusty, and several times Stanley had to interfere to stop the quarrels which arose between his followers and the insolent market people. At length the town was fortified, provisioned and garrisoned, and the expedition was on its way to Stanley Pool, around a portage of six miles in length, and again into the Congo; then up and up, with difficult navigation, past the mouths of inflowing rivers, around other tedious portages, through quaint and curious tribes, whose chiefs grow more and more fantastic in dress and jealous of power, till they even come to rival that paragon of strutting kingliness, the famed Mtesa of Uganda. Though not hostile, they were by no means amiable, having made a recent cession of the country on the north of the Congo to French explorers. King Itsi, or Ngalyema, was among the most powerful of them and upon him was to turn the fortune of the expedition in the waters of the upper Congo. Stanley made the happy discovery that this Ngalyema was the Itsi, of whom he had made a blood brother on his descent of the river,44 and this circumstance soon paved the way to friendship and protection, despite the murmurs and threats of neighboring chiefs.

ROUNDING A PORTAGE. Larger.

The last king of note, before reaching Stanley Pool, was Makoko, who favored the breaking of rocks and the cutting down of trees in order to pass boats over the country, but who wanted it understood that his people owned the country and did not intend to part with their rights without due consideration. Scarcely had a treaty been struck with him when Stanley was informed that Ngalyema was on his track with two hundred warriors, and determined to wipe out his former negotiations with blood. Already the sound of his war-drums and the shouts of his soldiers were heard in the distance. Stanley ordered his men to arm quickly and conceal themselves in the bush, but to rush out frantically and make a mock attack when they heard the gong sounding. Ngalyema appeared upon the scene with his forces and informed Stanley that he could not go to Kintamo, for Makoko did not own the land there. After a long talk, the stubborn chief left the tent in anger and with threats of extermination on his lips; but as he passed the inclosure, he was attracted by the gong, swinging in the wind.

“What is this?” he asked.

“It is fetish,” replied Stanley.

“Strike it; let me hear it,” he exclaimed.

“Oh, Ngalyema, I dare not; it is the war fetish.”

“No, no, no! I tell you to strike.”

“Well, then!”

Here Stanley struck the gong with all his force, and in an instant a hundred armed men sprang from the bush and rushed with demoniac yells upon the haughty chief and his followers, keeping up all the while such demonstrations as would lead to the impression that the next second would bring an annihilating volley from their guns. The frightened king clung to Stanley for protection. His followers fled in every direction.

“Shall I strike the fetish again?” inquired Stanley.

“No, no! don’t touch it!” exclaimed the now subdued king; and the broken treaty was solemnized afresh over a gourd of palm-wine. Makoko was jolly over the discomfiture of his powerful rival.

45

A NARROW ESCAPE.

46

These Kintamo people, sometimes called the Wambunda, now gave to Stanley some 78 carriers and greatly assisted him in making his last twelve miles of roadway and in conveying his boats and wagons over it. The expedition was now in sight of Stanley Pool, beyond the region of the cataracts, and at the foot of navigation on the upper Congo. It was now Dec. 3, 1881, the boats were all brought up and launched in smooth water, a station was founded, and the expedition prepared for navigation on that stupendous stretch of water between Stanley Pool and Stanley Falls.

The Kintamo station was called Leopoldville, in honor of king Leopold of Belgium, European patron of the Congo Free State, and to whose generosity more than that of any other the entire expedition was due. It was the most important town thus far founded on the Congo, for it was the center of immense tribal influence, a base of operations for 5000 miles of navigable waters, and a seat of plenty if the chiefs remained true to their concessions. It was therefore well protected with a block-house and garrison, while the magazine was stocked with food and ammunition. Gardens were laid out and planted, stores were erected in which goods were displayed, and soon Stanley had the pleasure of seeing the natives bringing ivory and marketing for traffic. The stay of the expedition at Leopoldville was somewhat lengthy and it was April, 19, 1882, before it embarked for the upper Congo, with its 49 colored men, four whites, and 129 carrier-loads of equipments.

The boats passed Bamu Island, 14 miles in length, which occupies the center of Stanley Pool, the stream being haunted by hippopotami and the interior of the island by elephants and buffaloes, adventures with which were common. The shores are yet bold and wooded, monkeys in troops fling themselves from tree to tree, white-collared fish eagles dart with shrill screams across the wide expanse of waters, and crocodiles stare wildly at the approaching steamers, only to dart beneath them as they near and then to reappear in their wake. Says Stanley, of this part of the river:

“From the Belize to Omaha, on the line of the Mississippi, I have seen nothing to excite me to poetic madness. The Hudson is a trifle better in its upper part. The Indus, the Ganges, the Irrawaddy, the Euphrates, the Nile, the Niger, the La Platte, the48 Amazon—I think of them all, and I can see no beauty on their shores that is not excelled many fold by the natural beauty of this scenery, which, since the Congo highlands were first fractured by volcanic caprice or by some wild earth-dance, has remained unknown, unhonored and unsung.”

WHITE-COLLARED FISH EAGLES.

From Stanley Pool to Mswata, a distance of 64 miles, the river has a width of 1500 yards, a depth sufficient to float the largest steamer, and heavily wooded banks. The people are of the Kiteké tribes and are broken into many bands, ruled by a high class of chieftains, who are not averse to the coming of the white man. The Congo receives an important tributary near Mswata, called the Kwa. This Stanley explored for 200 miles, past the Holy Isle, or burial place of the Wabuma kings and queens, through populous and pleasantly situated villages and onward to a splendid expanse of water, which was named Lake Leopold II.

It was during his exploration of the Kwa that Stanley fell sick; and on his return to Mswata, was compelled to return to Leopoldville and so back to Manyanga, Vivi, and the various stations he had founded, to the coast, whence he sailed for Loando, to take a steamer for Europe. The three-year service of his Zanzibaris was about to expire; and when he met at Vivi, the German, Dr. Peschnel-Loeche, with a large force of men and a commission to take charge of the expedition, should anything happen to him (Stanley), he felt that it was in the nature of a reprieve.

On August 17, 1882, he sailed from Loando for Lisbon. On his arrival in Europe, he laid before the International Association a full account of the condition of affairs on the Congo. He had founded five of the eight stations at first projected, had constructed many miles of wagon road, had left a steamer and sailing vessels on the Upper Congo, had opened the country to traffic up to the mouth of the Kwa, a distance of 400 miles from the coast, had found the natives amiable and willing to work and trade, and had secured treaties and concessions which guaranteed the permanency of the benefits sought to be obtained by the expedition and the founding of a great Free State. Yet with all this he declared that “the Congo basin is not worth a two-shilling piece in its present state, and that to reduce it to profitable order a railroad must be built from the lower to the49 upper river.” Such road must be solely for the benefit of Central Africa and of such as desire to traffic in that region. He regarded the first phase of his mission as over—the opening of communication between the Atlantic and Upper Congo. The second phase he regarded as the obtaining of concessions from all the chiefs along the way, without which they would be in a position to force an abandonment of every commercial enterprise.

The International Association heard him patiently and offered to provide funds for his more extensive work, provided he would undertake it. He consented to do so and to push his work to Stanley Falls, if they would give him a reliable governor for the establishments on the Lower Congo. Such a man was promised; and after a six weeks’ stay in Europe, he sailed again for Congo-land on November 23, 1882.

He found his trading stations in confusion, and spent some time in restoring order, and re-victualling the empty store-houses. The temporary bridges on his hastily built roads had begun to weaken and one at the Mpalanga crossing gave way, compelling a tedious delay with the boats and wagons he was pushing on to the relief of Leopoldville. Here he found no progress had been made and that under shameful neglect everything was going to decay. Even reciprocity with the natives had been neglected, and garrison and tribes had agreed to let one another severely alone. To rectify all he found wrong required heroic exertion. He found one source of gratification in the fact that two English religious missions had been founded on the ground of the Association, one a Baptist, the other undenominational. Dr. Sims, head of the Baptists, was the first to navigate the waters of the Upper Congo, and occupy a station above Stanley Pool, but soon after the Livingstone, or undenominational mission, established a station at the Equator. Both missions now have steamers at their disposal, and are engaged in peaceful rivalry for moral conquest in the Congo Basin.

A TEMPORARY CROSSING.

The relief of Leopoldville accomplished, Stanley started in his steam-launches, one of which was new (May 9, 1883), for the upper waters of the Congo, with eighty men. Passing his former station at Mswata, he sailed for Bolobo, passing through a country with few villages and alive with lions, elephants, buffaloes and antelopes,51 proof that the population is sparse at a distance from the river. Beyond the mouth of the Lawson, the Congo leaves behind its bold shores and assumes a broader width. It now becomes lacustrine and runs lazily through a bed carved out of virgin soil. This is the real heart of equatorial Africa, rich alluvium, capable of supporting a countless population and of enriching half a world.

WEAVER-BIRD’S NEST.

The Bolobo country is densely populated, but flat and somewhat unhealthy. The villages arise in quick succession, and perhaps 10,000 people live along the river front. They are peaceful, inclined to trade, but easily offended at any show of superiority on the part of white men. Ibaka is the leading chief. He it was who conducted negotiations for Gatula, who had murdered two white men, and who had been arraigned for his double crime before Stanley,

52

The latter insisted upon the payment of a heavy fine by the offending chief—or war. After long deliberation, the fine was paid, much to Stanley’s relief, for war would have defeated the whole object of his expedition. Ibaka’s remark, when the affair was so happily ended, was: “Gatula has received such a fright and has lost so much money, that he will never be induced to murder a man again. No, indeed, he would rather lose ten of his women than go through this scene again.” A Bolobo concession for the Association was readily obtained in a council of the chiefs.

And this station at Bolobo was most important. The natives are energetic traders, and have agents at Stanley Pool and points further down the river, to whom they consign their ivory and camwood powder, very much as if they were Europeans or Americans. They even acquire and enjoy fortunes. One of them, Manguru, is a nabob after the modern pattern, worth fully $20,000, and his canoes and slaves exploit every creek and affluent of the Congo, gathering up every species of merchandise available for the coast markets. Within two hours of Bolobo is the market place of the By-yanzi tribe. The town is called Mpumba. It is a live place on market days, and the fakirs vie with each other in the sale of dogs, crocodiles, hippopotamus meat, snails, fish and red-wood powder.

Negotiations having been completed at Bolobo, and the station fully established, Stanley started with his flotilla, May 28th, on his way up the river. The natives whom he expected to confront were the Uyanzi and Ubangi. He was well provided with guides from Bolobo, among whom were two of Ibaka’s slaves. The shores of the river were now densely wooded, and the river itself spread out to the enormous width of five miles, which space was divided into channels by islands, miles in length, and covered with rubber trees, tamarinds, baobab, bombax, red-wood, palms and date palms, all of which were interwoven with profuse creepers, making an impenetrable mass of vegetation, royal to look upon, but suggestive of death to any one who dared to lift the verdant veil and look behind.

Slowly the tiny steamers push against the strong currents and make their way through this luxuriant monotony, broken, to be sure, every now and then, by the flit of a sun-bird, the chirp of a53 weaver, the swish of a bamboo reed, the graceful nodding of an overgrown papyrus, the scurrying of a flock of parrots, the yawn of a lazy hippopotamus, the plunge of a crocodile, the chatter of a disturbed monkey colony, the scream of the white-collared fish eagle, the darting of a king-fisher, the pecking of wag-tails, the starting of jays and flamingoes. Yet with all these appeals to eye and ear, there is the sepulchral gloom of impervious forest, the sad expanse of grassy plain, the spectral isles of the stream, the vast dome of tropical sky, and the sense of slowness of motion and cramped quarters, which combine to produce a melancholy almost appalling. It is by no means a Rhine journey, with gay steamers, flush with food and wine. The Congo is one-and-a-half times larger than the Mississippi, and with a width which is majestic in comparison with the “Father of Waters.” It shows a dozen varieties of palm. Its herds of hippopotami, flocks of gleeful monkeys, troops of elephants standing sentry at forest entrances, bevies of buffaloes grazing on its grassy slopes, swarms of ibis, parrots and guinea-fowl fluttering everywhere—these create a life for the Congo, surpassing in variety that of the Mississippi. But the swift-moving, strong, sonorous steamer, and the bustling river town, are wanting.

At last night comes, and the flotilla is twenty miles above Bolobo. Night does not mean the end of a day’s work with the expedition, but rather the beginning of one, for it is the signal for all hands to put ashore with axes and saws to cut and carry a supply of wood for the morrow’s steaming. A great light is lit upon the shore, and for hours the ringing of axes is heard, varied by the woodman’s weird chant. The supply is borne back in bundles, the tired natives eat their cassava bread and boiled rice suppers, the whites partake of their roast goat’s meat, beans, bananas, honey, milk and coffee, and then all is silence on the deep, dark river. The camp is Ugende, still in the By-yanzi country. The natives are suspicious at first, but are appeased by the order that every member of the expedition shall make up his reedy couch in close proximity to the steamers.

The next day’s steaming is through numerous villages, banana groves, palm groups, and an agreeable alternation of bluff and vale. The Levy Hills approach the water in the airy red projections of54 Iyumbi. The natives gaze in awe upon the passing flotilla, as much as to say, “What does it all mean?” “Has doom indeed dawned for us?” Two hours above Iyumbi the steamers lose their way in the multitude of channels, and have to put back. On their return, twenty canoes are sighted in a creek. Information must be had, and the whale-boat is launched and ordered to visit the canoes. At sight of it, the occupants of the canoes flee. Chase is given, and five miles are passed before the whale-boat catches up. The occupants of the canoes are found to be women, who jump into the water and escape through the reeds to the shore. They prove dumb to all inquiries as to the river courses, and might as well have been spared their fright.

On May 31st the journey was against a head wind, and so slow that two trading canoes, each propelled by twenty By-yanzi paddles, bound for Ubangi, kept pace with the steamers all day. Provisions were now running low. Since leaving Bolobo, the eighty natives and seven Europeans had consumed at the rate of 250 pounds of food daily. It was therefore time to prepare for barter with the settlement which came into view on June 1st, and which the guides called Lukolela.

Lukolela is a succession of the finest villages thus far seen on the Congo. They are composed of substantial huts, built on a bold shore, and amid a primeval forest, thinned of its trees to give building spaces. The natives are still of the Wy-yanzi tribe, and whether friendly or not, could not be ascertained on first approach. Stanley took no chances with them, but steaming slowly past their five mile of villages, he ordered all the showy calicoes and trinkets to be displayed, and placed his guides and interpreters in the bows of the boats to harangue the natives and proclaim his desire to trade in peace. Though the throng gradually increased on the shore and became more curious as each village was passed, it gave no response except that the country had been devastated by frightful disease and was in a state of starvation. Horrid indeed was the situation, if they spoke the truth! But what of the fat, well-to-do looking people on the banks? Ah! there must be something wrong somewhere! The steamers passed above the villages and put up for the night. Soon the natives came trooping from the villages, bearing56 loads of fowls, goats, plantains, bananas, cassava, sweet-potatoes, yams, eggs, and palm-oil, and all eager for a trade. Barter was brisk that night, and was resumed the next morning, when canoe after canoe appeared, loaded down with rations. A supply of food for eight days was secured. They excused their falsehoods of the previous day to the fear they had of the steamers. On finding that they were not dangerous, their cowardice turned into admiration of a craft they had never seen before.

NATIVES’ CURIOSITY AT SIGHT OF A WHITE MAN.

The Congo now ran through banks 100 feet high and a mile and a half apart, clothed with magnificent timber. Between these the flotilla sailed on June 2d, being visited occasionally by native fishermen with fish to sell. The camp this night was in a deserted spot, with nothing to cheer it except dense flocks of small birds, followed by straggling armies of larger ones resembling crows. On the evening of June 3d the steamers reached a point a few miles below Ngombé. Here Stanley was surprised to hear his name called, in good English, by the occupants of two canoes, who had fish and crocodiles to sell. He encouraged the mongers by making a purchase, and on inquiry found that the natives here carry on quite a brisk trade in young crocodiles, which they rear for the markets. They procure the eggs, hatch them in the sand, and then secure the young ones in ponds, covered with nets, till they are old enough to market.

Ngombé was now sighted, on a bank 40 feet above the river, amid a wealth of banana groves and other signs of abundance. Above and below Ngombé the river is from four to five miles wide, but here it narrows to two miles and flows with a swift current. The sail over the wide stretch above Ngombé was through the land of the Nkuku, a trading people. At Butunu the steamers were welcomed with delight, and the shores echoed with shouts of “Malamu!” Good! But it remained for the Usindi to greet the travelers with an applause which was ridiculously uproarious. Hundreds of canoes pushed into the stream, followed and surrounded the steamers, their occupants cheering as though they were frantic, and quite drowning every counter demonstration. At length a dozen of them sprang aboard one of the steamers, shook hands with all the crew, and gratified their curiosity by a close inspection of the machinery and58 equipments. Then they would have the steamers put back to their landing at Usindi, where the welcome was continued more obstreperously than ever. The secret of it all was that these people were great river traders, and many of them had been to Leopoldville and Kintamo, 300 miles below, where they had seen houses, boats and wagons. They were a polished people, not given to show of their weapons for purposes of terrorizing their visitors, and kindly in the extreme. Iuka, their king, besought Stanley to make a station at Usindi and enter into permanent trade relations with his people.

CAPTURING A CROCODILE.

A very few miles above Usindi the flotilla entered a deep channel of the Congo, which seemed to pass between fruitful islands, whose shores were lined with people. They were ominously quiet till the steamers passed, when they gave pursuit in their canoes. The steamers stopped, and the pursuers made the announcement that they bore an invitation from King Mangombo, of Irebu, to visit him. Mention of the Irebu was enough to determine Stanley. They are the champion traders of the Upper Congo, and are equalled only by the powerful Ubanzi who live on the north side of that great flood. The Irebu have, time and again, borne down upon the Lukolela, Ngombé, Nkuku, Butunu and Usindi, and even the fierce Bengala, and taught them all how to traffic in peace and with credit.

When the steamers came to anchor at Mangambo’s village, the aged king headed a procession of his people and welcomed Stanley by shaking his hand in civilized fashion. There were cheers, to be sure, but not the wild vociferations of those who looked upon his flotilla as something supernatural. There was none of that eager curiosity which characterizes the unsophisticated African, but a dignified bearing and frank speech. They had an air of knowledge and travel which showed that their intercourse with the trading world had not been in vain. They know the Congo by heart from Stanley Pool to Upoto, a distance of 600 miles; are acquainted with the military strength and commercial genius of all the tribes, and can compute the value of cloth, metals, beads and trinkets, in ivory, livestock and market produce, as quickly as the most skillful accountant. Blood brotherhood was made with Mangombo, valuable gifts were interchanged, and then the chief, in a long speech, asked Stanley59 to intercede in his behalf in a war he was waging with Magwala and Mpika,—which he did in such a way as to bring about a truce.

The large tributary, Lukanga, enters the Congo near Irebu, with its black waters and sluggish current. The flotilla left the mouth of the Lukanga on June 6th, and after a sail of 50 miles, came to Ikengo on June 8th. The route had been between many long islands, heavily wooded, while the shores bore an unbroken forest of teak, mahogany, gum, bombax and other valuable woods. At Ikengo the natives came dashing into the stream in myriad of canoes shouting their welcomes and praising the merits of their respective villages. Here it was, “Come to Ikengo!” There it was, “Come to Itumba!” Between it was, “Come to Inganda!” With all it was, “We have women, ivory, slaves, goats, sheep, pigs,” etc. It was more like a fakir scene in Constantinople or Cairo than a pagan greeting in the heart of the wilderness. Perhaps both their familiarity and importunity was due in great part to the fact they remembered Stanley on his downward trip years before.

Having, in 1877, been royally received at Inganda, Stanley landed there, and stopped temporarily among those healthy, bronze-colored denizens, with their fantastic caps of monkey, otter, leopard or goat skin, and their dresses of grassy fibre. From this point Stanley made a personal exploration to the large tributary of the Congo, called the Mohindu, which he had mapped on his trip down the Congo. He found what he had conceived to be an affluent of 1,000 yards wide, to be one of only 600 yards wide, with low shores, running into extensive timber swamps. He called it an African Styx. But further up it began to develop banks. Soon villages appeared, and by and by came people, armed, yellow-bodied, and dancing as if they meant to awe the occupants of the boat. But the boat did not stop till it arrived at a cheerful village, 80 miles up the river, where, on attempting to stop, it was warned off with the threat that a landing would be a sure signal for a fight. Not wishing to tempt them too far, the steamer put back, receiving as a farewell a volley of sticks and stones which fell far short of their object.

On the return of the steamer to Inganda, preparation was made for the sail to the next station up the Congo, which being in the60 latitude of only one minute north of the Equator, or, in other words, as nearly under it as was possible, was called Equator Station. This station was made a permanent one by the appointment of Lieut. Vangele as commander, with a garrison of 20 men. Lieut. Coquilhat, with 20 men, was also left there, till reinforcements and supplies should come up from Leopoldville. After remaining here long enough to prepare a station site and appease the neighboring chiefs with gifts, the balance of the expedition returned down the river to Inganda, or rather to Irebu, for it had been determined that Inganda was too sickly a place for a station. Yet how were these hospitable people to be informed of the intended change of base without giving offence? Stanley’s guide kindly took the matter in hand, and his method would have done credit to a Philadelphia lawyer. Rubbing his eyes with pepper till the tears streamed down his cheeks, and assuming a broken-hearted expression, he stepped ashore among the assembled natives, as the boat touched at Inganda, and took a position in their midst, utterly regardless of their shouts of welcome and their other evidences of hearty greeting. To all their anxious inquiries he responded nothing, being wholly engaged in his role of sorrow. At last, when their importunity could not be further resisted, he told them a pitiful story of hardship and death in an imaginary encounter up the river, and how Mangombo’s boy, of Irebu, had fallen a victim, beseeching them to join in a war of redress, etc., etc. The acting of the native guide was complete, and all Inganda was so deceived by it and so bent on a war of revenge that it quite forgot to entertain any ill-feeling at the departure of the steamer and the abandonment of the station. So Stanley sailed down to Irebu, where he found his truce broken and Mangombo plunged again into fierce war with his neighbors—Mpika and Magwala.

Once more Stanley interceded by calling a council of the chiefs on both sides. After an impressive speech, in which he detailed the horrors of war and the folly of further slaughter over a question of a few slaves, he induced the hostile chiefs to shake hands and exchange pledges of peace. They ratified the terms by firing a salute over the grave of the war, and disbanded. Irebu is a large collection of villages extending for fully five miles along the Congo and Lukanga,62 and carrying a depth of two miles into the country. These closely knitted villages contain a population of 15,000 people, with as many more in the immediate neighborhood.

LIONS DRAGGING DOWN A BUFFALO.

The Lukanga was now explored. Its sluggish, reed-obstructed mouth soon brought the exploring steamer into a splendid lake with village-lined shores. This was Lake Mantumba, 144 miles in circumference. The inhabitants are experts in the manufacture of pottery and camwood powder and carry on a large ivory trade with the Watwa dwarfs.

Stanley then returned to the Congo and continued his downward journey, rescuing in one place the occupants of a capsized canoe; at another giving aid to a struggling Catholic priest on his way to the mouth of the Kwa to establish a mission; trying an ineffectual shot at a lion crouching on the bank and gazing angrily at the flotilla, pursuing its fleeing form, only to stumble on the freshly-slain carcass of a buffalo which the forest-king had stricken down while it was drinking, and at length arriving at Leopoldville, after an absence of 57 days, to find there several new houses, erected by the commandant, Lieut. Valcke, who had also founded the new station of Kinshassa. Where two months before all was wilderness, now fully 500 banana-trees were flourishing, terms of peace had been kept with the whimsical Ngalyema, and the store-rooms of the station were regular banks, that is, they were well stocked with brass rods, the circulating medium of the country.

Stanley remained at Leopoldville for some time, rectifying mischiefs which had occurred at Vivi and Manyanga, and dispatching men and supplies up to Bolobo. Here incidents crowded upon him. Having commissioned a young continental officer to establish a station on the opposite side of the river, the fellow no sooner arrived on the ground than he developed a homicidal mania and shot one of his own sergeants. He was brought back in a tattered and dazed condition and dismissed down the river. Word came of the destruction of a canoe by a gale near the mouth of the Kwa, and the drowning of Lieut. Jansen and twelve people, among whom was Abbé Guyot, the Catholic priest above mentioned. From Kimpoko station came word that a quarrel had broken out there with the natives and that relief must be had. A visit showed the station to have been63 deserted, and it was destroyed and abandoned. More and more awful grew the situation. A canoe courier brought the harrowing word that Bolobo had been burned, with all the freshly dispatched goods.

This news spurred Stanley to a hasty start for the ill-fated station on August 22d. Arriving opposite Bolobo, Stanley’s rear steamers were fired upon from an ambush on the shore, and forced to administer a return fire. His steamers had never been fired upon before. He effected a landing at Bolobo, only to find a majority of the villages hostile to him, and bent on keeping up a desultory fire from the bush. So, unloading one of the steamers, he sent it back to Leopoldville to bring up quickly a Krupp cannon and ammunition. Despite his endeavors to bring about a better feeling, Stanley’s men were fired upon daily, and they returned it as best they could, occasionally killing a native, and doing damage to their banana trees, beer pots and chicken coups. At length the wounding of a chief brought about a parley and offers of peace tokens, but Stanley replied that since they seemed to be so fond of fighting, and were not doing him any particular harm, he proposed to keep it up from day to day till his monster gun arrived from Stanley Pool, when he would blow them all sky-high. This awful threat was too much for them. A nine days’ palaver ensued, which resulted in their payment of a fine and renewed peace. But when the great gun arrived, they saw, in the absence of trigger, stock and ramrod, so little likeness to a gun, that they claimed Stanley had deceived them, and refused to be propitiated till he proved it to be what he had represented. The Congo at Bolobo is 4,000 yards wide. Stanley ordered the cannon to be fired at a range of 2,000 yards, and when they saw a column of water thrown up by the striking of the charge at that distance, and witnessed the recoil of the piece, they began to think it was indeed a terrible weapon. They were still further convinced of the truth of his representations by a second shot, which carried the charge to a distance of 3,000 yards.

It was by such manœuvres as these that Stanley established fresh relations with these Wy-yanzi tribes. They are naturally wild and turbulent. A dispute over a brass rod, or a quarrel over a pot of beer, is a signal for war. Superstition rules them, as few tribes are64 ruled. A bad dream by a chief may lead to the suspicion that he is bewitched, and some poor victim is sure to suffer burning for witchcraft. Ibaka caused a young girl to be strangled because her lover had sickened and died. At an upper village forty-five people were slaughtered over the grave of their chief—a sort of propitiatory sacrifice.

After all matters had been settled, Stanley read them a lecture on the folly of fighting friendly white men, who had never done them an injury, and did not intend to. To show his appreciation of the situation, he made them a present of cloth and brass rods, and offered to pay for a treat of beer. They went out and held a palaver, and then returned with a request that the gifts be duplicated. “Never!” shouted Stanley. “Ibaka, this land is yours. Take it. I and my people depart from Bolobo forever!”

To this all the chiefs remonstrated, saying they had no intention of driving him away, and explaining that their demand was only according to the custom of the Wy-yanzi to always ask for twice as much as was offered them. Despite this rather surprising commercial spirit, they are not a vindictive people—simply superstitious and quarrelsome.

After these difficulties, Stanley resumed his up-river journey for Lukolela, passing on the way the mouths of the Minkené river, of the Likuba, and of the larger river Bunga, whose banks are thickly strewn with villages. Once at Lukolela, a station was formed by clearing away the tall forest trees. Though the forests were magnificent, and capable of furnishing timber for generations, the soil was hard, stony and forbidding, and Stanley despaired of ever getting a garden of sufficient dimensions and fertility to support a garrison. He, however, left a Mr. Glave, a young Englishman, in charge, who seemed to think he could force nature to promise subsistence and comfort.

On September 22d Stanley started for Usindi, having on board Miyongo, of that place, and his shipwrecked crew. On their safe arrival, there was no show of gratitude for the favor done, but blood-brotherhood was made with Miyongo. This provoked the jealousy of the senior chief, Iuka, a dirty old fellow, of wicked mien, whose grievance seemed to be that Miyongo was too popular66 in the community. A short palaver reconciled him to the situation, and Stanley departed with the assurance that Usindi might be counted on as a safe stopping-place in the future. Miyongo favored him with a guide who was well acquainted with the upper waters of the Congo.

A FUNERAL DANCE. Larger.

Irebu was now passed, and then the mouth of the Bauil, whose people are a piratical crew, dreaded by all their neighbors. By September 29th the flotilla was at Equator Station again, after an absence of one hundred days. What a transformation! The jungle and scrub had disappeared, and in their stead was a solid clay house, roomy, rain-proof and bullet-proof, well lighted and furnished. Around it were the neat clay huts of the colored carriers and soldiers, each the centre of a garden where grew corn, sugar-cane, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, cucumbers, etc. Then there was a grand garden, full of onions, radishes, carrots, beans, peas, beets, lettuce, potatoes and cabbages, and also a servants’ hall, goat-houses, fowl-houses and all the et-ceteras of an African plantation. It was Stanley’s ideal of a Congo station, and sight of it gave him greater heart for his enterprise than any thing he had yet seen. The native chief, Ikengé, was at first disposed to be troublesome, but was soon appeased. On October 11th Stanley congratulated himself that he had passed so much of the river limit, leaving peace behind him with all the nations, and stations abounding in means of support, if they exerted themselves in the right direction.

Equator Station is 757 miles from the Atlantic Ocean and 412 miles above Leopoldville, on Stanley Pool. Stanley’s initial work was really done here, but in response to earnest wishes from Brussels, he continued it in the same spirit and for the same purpose for 600 miles further, with a view of making a permanent station at Stanley Falls. With 68 colored men and 5 Europeans on board, and with his steamers well freighted with necessaries, he left Equator Station on October 16th. The first place of moment passed was at Uranga, near the confluence of the Lulunga with the Congo. The country around is flat, densely wooded, and the villages close together. The Uranga people were anxious for a landing and palaver, but the steamers pushed on to Bolombo, where a famine prevailed, and where the natives were peaceable and anxious to make blood-brotherhood.

67

STANLEY’S FIGHT WITH THE BENGALA IN 1877. Larger.

68

Above Bolombo the steamers were met by a fleet of canoes, whose occupants bore the news that the Bengala were anxious for a stop and palaver. These were the terrible fighters who harassed Stanley so sorely on his descent of the Congo in 1877. He had heard further down the river that they had threatened to dispute every inch of water with the white man if ever he came that way again. But he had also heard from Mangombo, of Irebu, that the lesson they had learned was so severe that all the white men would have to do would be to shake a stick at them. Still Stanley approached anxiously. The Bengala villages stretch for miles along the Congo. He did not stop his steamers, which were soon surrounded by hundreds of canoes, but kept slowly moving past the countless villages for fully five hours. The canoe-men seemed impelled wholly by curiosity, and no sign of hostility appeared. The guide held frequent talks with the natives, none of which evoked other than friendly replies. They are a tall, broad-shouldered, graceful people, shading off from a dark bronze to a light complexion. The steamers came to a halt for the night at an island, two hours’ sail from the upper end of the villages, and 500 yards from the shore, and thither the guide came in the evening with a young chief, Boleko, who invited a landing the next day. In the morning he came with an escort of canoes and took Stanley to his village, through the identical channel whence had issued the hostile canoes in 1877. Here trading was carried on briskly and satisfactorily, till a message came from old Mata Bwyki to the effect that he regarded it as an insult on the part of a boy like Boleko to be extending the tribal honors in that way. The only way out of this was for the steamers to drop back two miles and spend a day opposite the village of the old chief—Lord-of-many-guns. Old Mata was found to be a Herculean fellow, nearly eighty years old, and walking with a staff that resembled a small mast. By his side appeared seven sons, all fine-looking fellows, but the gray shock of the old man towered above them all when he straightened himself up. Around them was a throng which numbered thousands. The assembly place and place of welcome was laid with grass mats. Stanley and his men marched into it, ogled on every side, and not knowing whether the end would be peace or war. The guide presented them with a speech which described Stanley’s69 work and objects—all he had done below them on the river, the advantages it would be to treat and trade with him, winding up with an intimation that it might be dangerous, or at least useless, to prove unfriendly, for his steamers were loaded with guns and ammunition sufficient for the extermination of the entire people. The result was a treaty, sealed with blood-brotherhood, and a promise on the part of Stanley to return at no distant day and establish a permanent station among the Bengala. This village was Iboko.

The Congo here is literally filled with islands which render a passage from one shore to the other almost impossible. These islands are all richly verdure-clad and present a scene of rare loveliness, draped in a vegetable life that finds a parallel no where else in nature. It took the steamers thirteen hours to work their way across to the left, or Mutembo side. But Mutembo was deserted. The steamers made Mkatakura, through channels bordered with splendid copal forests, whose tops were covered with orchilla—fortunes for whole civilized nations, if possessed and utilized. Mkatakura was also deserted. Where were these people? Their places had been populous and hostile in 1877. Had they fallen a prey to stronger tribes? Alas! such must have been their fate in a country where wars never end, and where provocations are the slightest.

Many deserted settlements were now passed, when Mpa, ruled by Iunga, was reached, 744 miles from Leopoldville. The people were peaceful and disposed to make all necessary concessions. The next day brought them to Nganza, ruled by old Rubanga, who had received Stanley with cordiality in 1877. The people were exceedingly anxious to trade, and offered their wares, especially their ivory, of which they had plenty, at ridiculously low figures. The people are known as the Langa-langa—the upper country—and they go almost entirely naked. Their bodies are cross-marked and tattooed. The country is regarded as a paradise for ivory traders, owing to the ignorance of the natives as to the real commercial value of the article. Here is the turning-point in African currency. The cloth and brass-rods of the Atlantic coast no longer hold good, but the Canton bead and the cowry of Ujiji are the measure of exchange. Langa-langa is therefore the commercial water-shed which divides the Atlantic and Pacific influence.

70

On November 4th Ikassa was passed, whose people fled on the approach of the steamers. It was the same at Yakongo. Then came a series of deserted villages. Presently appeared the newly-settled towns of Ndobo and Ibunda, with their wattled huts. Bumba came next, with whose chief, Myombi, blood-brotherhood was made amid a throng of curious sight-seers. It was the fiftieth time Stanley’s arm had been punctured for treaty purposes since he entered upon his journey. There was little opportunity for trading here owing to the curiosity of the people over the steamers. They could hardly be persuaded that the dreaded Ibanza—devil—did not live down in the boats. It must be he who required so much wood for food and gave such groans. If not, what was it that lived in that great iron drum and made those wheels spin round so rapidly? In this mood they forgot the art of exchange so natural with African natives. Their curiosity was such that the crowds about and upon the steamers became not only a drawback to exchange, but to work. At length one of the cabin-boys tried the effect of a practical joke. He opened the cabin door and pushed forward the form of a splendid Bengal tiger, as Ibanza, which was creating all the noise and trouble in the boat. The frightened natives shrieked and ran at glance of the terrible figure, and the river bank was cleared in a moment. Yells of laughter followed them from the boat’s crew. Being assured by this that nothing harmful was intended, they began to cluster back, and really joined heartily in the merriment, as they saw that the source of their terror was only a tiger skin hurriedly stuffed for the purpose of giving them a scare. Trade was more active after that, and provisions were plenty.

Above Bomba the steamers neared the equally populous town of Yambinga. The chief was Mukuga, who wore an antelope-skin cap adorned with cock’s feathers, a broad shoulder-belt with leopard-skin attachment, and strings of tags, tassels and fetish mysteries. He was a timid chief, notwithstanding his gaudy apparel, and quite willing to make blood brotherhood. All of these later villages were plentifully supplied with war-canoes, the count being 556 at Lower and Upper Yambinga, and 400 at Buruba.

Above Yambinga the flotilla got lost in an affluent of the Congo and had to put back to the main stream. The stream was supposed71 to be the Itimbiri. For many days both shores of the Congo had not appeared at once. But on the 12th both sides could be seen, and on the right was a wide plain once inhabited by the Yalulima, a tribe of artisans skilled in the manufacture of iron, including swords, spears, bells and fetishes of various devices. On an island above dwelt the Yambungu, who were disposed to trade and who brought fine sweet-potatoes, fowls, eggs, and a species of sheep with broad, flat tails.

AFRICAN BLACKSMITHS.

The districts were now very populous, and the affluents frequent and very complicated as to name and direction of flow. The Basaka, Bahamba and Baru villages were passed without a stop. At all of these there were canoe demonstrations, but whether for hostile purpose or not was not inquired after. The flotilla was now nearing the great Congo affluent, the Aruwimi, out of whose mouth issued the enormous72 canoe-fleet which so nearly annihilated Stanley in 1877. He gave orders to be on the alert, but to resort to hostilities only when all hope of self-preservation otherwise had failed. Scarcely had these orders passed when a stream of long, splendid-looking war-canoes, filled with armed men, dashed out from behind an island, and began to reconnoitre the steamers. They pushed over to the right bank, and kept an upward course, without show of resistance and at a safe distance. The steamers plunged ahead, and soon the mouth of the Aruwimi opened its spacious jaws to receive them. High on the bank appeared the town of Mokulu, whose Basoko inmates had fought the battle with Stanley years before. He knew their disposition then, but what was it now? Was the meeting to be one of war or friendship?

The Congo has a majestic flow where it receives its great tributary, the Aruwimi. Rounding a point, the steamers entered the affluent, to find the villagers in force, dressed in war-paint, armed with spear and shield, beating their war-drums, and disporting themselves fantastically on the banks. The canoes of observation were speedily joined by others. The three steamers were put across to a clearing on the divide between the Congo and Aruwimi, and two of them brought to anchor. The Eu Avant was then steamed up the Aruwimi past Mokulu. Then her head was turned down stream, and the guide was stationed on the cabin to proclaim the words of peace and friendship as the steamer slowly returned. The drums on shore ceased to beat. The battle-horns were hushed. The leaping forms were still. The guide was eloquent in his speech and dramatic in his action. He had the ear of all Mokulu. At length a response came that if all the steamers anchored together, the Basoko would soon come as friends. The canoes hovered about, but could not be persuaded to come within 250 yards. Hours elapsed before they mustered up sufficient courage to approach the shore within hailing distance of the camps at the anchorage. Thither the guide and three companions went, and the ceremony of blood-brotherhood was performed. The town of Mokulu heard the shouts of satisfaction at this result, and a response came in the shape of drum-beats and horn-toots. Intercourse with the fierce Basoko was a possibility.

AFRICAN HEADDRESSES.

These Basokos received Stanley’s guide, Yumbila, first and loaded74 him with presents. They then told him of Stanley’s former approach and battle, also of a second visitation far worse than Stanley’s, which must have been one by an Arab gang of slave-stealers, judging from its barbarity. They were averse to a journey up the Aruwimi, though willing that the expedition should proceed up the Congo. It was impossible to get information from them respecting their river. They proved to be willing traders, and possessed products in abundance. Their spears, knives, paddles and shields showed remarkable workmanship, being delicately polished, and carved with likenesses of lizards, crocodiles, canoes, fish and buffaloes. Their headdresses were of fine palm materials, decorated, and a knit haversack formed a shoulder-piece for each man. Physically they are a splendid people, industrious after their style, fond of fishing, and not given to that ignorant, childish curiosity so common among other tribes. They are adepts at canoe construction, and some of their vessels require a hundred stout warriors to propel them in a fight.

Notwithstanding opposition, Stanley determined to explore the Aruwimi, which is 1,600 yards wide at its mouth, and narrows to 900 yards above Mokula. He found in succession the Umaneh, the Basongo, the Isombo, all populous, timid, and friendly. After passing Yambua and Irungu, he came to the quite populous metropolis of Yambumba, on a bluff 40 feet high, containing 8,000 people living in steeply conical huts, embowered by bombax, palms, banana-trees and fig-trees. The puffing of the steamers put the whole town to flight. Further on came the rapids of the river and the Yambuya people and town. These shrewd people declined to trade on the plea of poverty, and even refused to give the correct name of their village. Their appearance belied their assertions. Stanley found the rapids of the Aruwimi a bar to steam navigation. They are 96 miles from the mouth of the river, which runs nearly westward thus far. It was this brief exploration of the river which determined him to use it as a route to Albert Nyanza on his search for Emin Pasha. Should it keep its course and continue its volume, it could not but find a source far to the east in the direction of the lake, and very near to its shores. As one of the fatalities which overhang explorers, Stanley mistook it for the Welle, described by Schweinfurth, just as Livingstone mistook the Lualaba for the Nile.

75

This Welle, or Wellemakua, river about which Stanley indulges in surmises, is the celebrated river brought into notice by Schweinfurth’s discoveries, and over which a geographical controversy raged for seventeen years. The question was whether it was the Shari river, which emptied into Lake Tchad, or whether its mysterious outlet was further south. Stanley’s last journey in search of Emin Pasha pretty definitely settled the controversy by ascertaining that the Welle is the upper course of the Mobangi, a tributary of the Congo.

ORNAMENTED SMOKING-PIPE.

And while speaking of Schweinfurth, we must use him as authority to settle any misapprehension likely to arise respecting the nature of the dwarfs which Stanley encountered on the waters of the Upper Aruwimi. He calls them Monbuttus, thereby giving the impression that the tribe is one of dwarfs. It was Schweinfurth’s province to set at rest the long disputed question of the existence of a dwarf race in Central Africa. He proved, once for all, that Herodotus and Aristotle were not dealing with fables when they wrote of the pygmies of Central Africa. One day he suddenly found himself surrounded by what he conjectured was a crowd of impudent boys, who pointed their arrows at him, and whose manner betokened intentional disrespect. He soon learned that these hundreds of little fellows were veritable dwarfs, and were a part of the army of Munza, the great Monbuttu king. These are the now famous Akka, who, so far as we know, are the smallest of human beings. It is these same Akka who, wandering in the forest a little south of Schweinfurth’s route, picked off many a carrier in Stanley’s late expedition, using arrows whose points were covered with a deadly poison, and refusing all overtures of friendship.

76

Schweinfurth’s description of the Niam-Niams (Great-Eaters) and of their southern neighbors, the Monbuttus, is the best that has yet appeared in print. He approached the country through the powerful Dinka tribes on the north, whom he found rich in cattle, experts in iron-working and highly proficient in the art of pottery ornamentation, especially as to their smoking-pipes. Competent authorities agree with his opinion that the ornamental designs upon their potteries and iron and copper wares, now exhibited in the Berlin Museum of Ethnology, would not discredit a European artist, and among these people, so far advanced in some respects, Schweinfurth discovered the first evidences of cannibalism which is said to prevail, on very doubtful authority, however, in a very large part of the Congo Basin. It is a noteworthy fact that, in all his travels, Livingstone never saw evidence of this revolting practice except on one or two occasions, and in all his voluminous writings he hardly refers to the topic. Dr. Junker, however, draws a distinction between the Niam-Niam and Monbuttu cannibals which Schweinfurth in his briefer visit failed to observe. Junker says the Niam-Niam use human flesh as food only because they believe that in this way they acquire the bravery and other virtues with which their victims may have been endowed. The Monbuttu, on the other hand, make war upon their neighbors for no other purpose than to procure human flesh for food, because they delight in it as a part of their cuisine. With methodical care they dry the flesh they do not immediately use, and add it to their reserve supplies of food.

NIAM-NIAM HAMLET ON THE DIAMOONOO. Larger.

Schweinfurth’s journey into Niam-Niam was through a prairie land covered with the tallest grasses he had yet seen in Africa. The people are given to cattle-raising and the chase. They are not of stalwart size, and their color is dark-brown rather than black. What they lack in stature they make up in athletic qualities. They took a keen interest in showing the traveler their sights, and in the evening regaled his camp with music, dispensed by a grotesque singer, who accompanied his attenuated voice with a local guitar of thin, jingling sound. The drums and horns of the Niam-Niams are used only for war purposes. Everything testified to the fruitfulness of the soil. Sweet potatoes and yams were piled up in the farmsteads,78 and circular receptacles of clay for the preservation of corn were erected upon posts in the yards. The yards are surrounded by hedges of paradise figs; back of these are the plantations of manioc and maize, and beyond their fields of eleusine. The women are modest and retiring in the presence of white men, and their husbands hold them in high respect. The people are great believers in magic. The best shots, when they have killed an unusual number of antelopes or buffaloes, are credited with having charmed roots in their possession. The Niam-Niam country is important as being the water-shed between the Nile and the rivers which run westward into the Congo, the Welle79 being the largest, which runs nearly parallel with the recently discovered Aruwimi. The Niam-Niam are great ivory traders and take copper, cloth, or trinkets at a cheap figure for this valuable ware. The southern and western part of their country becomes densely wooded and the trees are gigantic. Here the shape of the huts change, becoming loftier and neater, the yards having posts in them for displaying trophies of war and the chase. The characteristics of the Niam-Niam are pronounced and they can be identified at once amidst the whole series of African races.

NIAM-NIAM MINSTREL.

NIAM-NIAM WARRIORS.

Every Niam-Niam soldier carries a lance, trumbash, and dagger, made by their own smiths. Wooing is dependent on a payment exacted from the suitor by the father of the intended bride. When81 a man resolves on matrimony, he applies to the sub-chieftain who helps him to secure his wife. In spite of the practice of polygamy, the marriage bond is sacred, and unfaithfulness is generally punished with death. The trait is paramount for this people to show consistent affection for their wives. Schweinfurth doubts the charge of cannibalism brought against this people, and thinks their name “Great Eaters” might have given rise to the impression that they were “man-eaters.”

RECEIVING THE BRIDE. Larger.

The festivities that occur in case of marriage are a bridal procession, at the head of which the chieftain leads the bride to the home of her future husband, accompanied by musicians, minstrels and jesters. A feast is given, of which all partake in common, though in general the women are accustomed to eat alone in their huts. This marriage celebration, with slight variations, is usual with the tribes of Central Africa. Livingstone describes one among the Hamees of the Lualaba river, in which the bride is borne to the home of her husband on the shoulders of her lover or chieftain. The domestic duties of a Niam-Niam wife consist mainly in cultivating the homestead, preparing the daily meals, painting her husband’s body and dressing his hair. Children require very little care in this genial climate, being carried about in a band or scarf till old enough to walk, and then left to run about with very little clothing on.

They are lovers of music, as are their neighbors, especially the Bongo people, who possess a variety of quaint instruments capable of producing fairly tuneful concerts. Their language is an up-shoot of the great root which is the original of every native tongue in Africa north of the Equator. They always consult auguries before going to war. In grief for the dead they shave their heads. A corpse is adorned for burial in dyed skins and feathers. They bury the dead with scrupulous regard to the points of the compass, the men facing the east and the women the west.

Stanley now steamed back to the Congo, and once more breasted its yellow flood. He was now in the true heart of Africa, 1,266 miles from the sea and 921 from Leopoldville, and upon a majestic flood capable of carrying a dozen rivers like the Aruwimi. It was a region of deep, impenetrable forests, fertile soil, and few villages,82 for the fierce Bahunga seemed to have terrorized and devastated all the shores. The river abounds in large, fertile islands, the homes of fishermen and stalwart canoemen, who carry their products to clearings on the shores, and there exchange them for the inland products. This makes the shore clearings kind of market-places—sometimes peopled and sometimes deserted.

A BONGO CONCERT.

In the distance a fleet of canoes is sighted, bearing down on the steamers. Are they the hostile Bahunga? The En Avant is sent forward on a reconnoissance, and soon makes out the fleet to consist of a thousand canoes, extending a mile and a half in length. Five men to a canoe gave a force of 5,000 men, an army of sufficient size to overwhelm a hundred such tiny steamers as composed the Stanley flotilla. A storm arose, accompanied by vivid lightning and heavy thunder shocks. The elements cleared the river of all fragile barks and left the steamers to their course.

The old town of Mawembé came into view. It was not such as Stanley had mapped it, but a burned and nearly deserted spot. The83 Arab slave merchant had evidently penetrated thus far, and these ashes were the marks of his cruelty. Another town, higher up, and entirely in ashes, proved the sad conjecture to be true, for before it sat at least 200 woe-begone natives, too abject in their desolation to even affect curiosity at the approaching steamers. On being hailed, they told the pitiful tale of how a strange people, like those in the steamers, and wearing white clothes, had come upon them in the night, slaughtered their people, and carried off their women and children. The fleet of canoes, seen among the islands below, contained their own people, gathered for protection, forced to live on the islands in the day-time and to go ashore at night for food. All this had happened but eight days before, and the marauders had retreated up the river in the direction of Stanley Falls.

A few miles above, the charred stakes, upright canoes, poles of huts, scorched banana groves and prostrate palms indicated the ruins of the site of Yavunga, the twelfth devastated town and eighth community passed since leaving the mouth of the Aruwimi. Opposite Yavunga were the Yaporo, a populous tribe, but now stricken by fire, sword and famine as were their brothers. These had charged on Stanley six years before, but they were now in no mood to dispute his way.

Floating by is an object which attracts attention. A boat-hook is thrown over, and to it clings the forms of two women bound together by a cord. The ghastly objects are raised, and a brief inspection shows that they could not have been drowned more than twelve hours before. The steamers push on, round a point, and in the distance appear white objects. A glass is brought to bear, and they prove to be the tents of the Arab thieves. They are from Nyangwé, above the Falls, the capital of Tippoo Tib’s empire, unholy conquest from the Manyuema people, founded in flame, murder and kidnapping. The camp was palisaded and the banks were lined with canoes, evidence that the marauders had managed somehow to pass the Falls in force. The first impulse of Stanley was to attempt a rescue and wreak a deserved vengeance on these miscreants. But on second thought, his was a mission of peace, and he was without authority to administer justice. He represented no constituted government, but was on a mission to found a government. To play the84 rolé of judge or executioner in such an emergency might be to defeat all his plans and forever leave these wretches without a strong arm to cling to in time of future need. Had he come upon an actual scene of strife and burning, it would have been his to aid the weaker party, but now the law of might must have its way, till a sturdier justice than was at his disposal could come to tread in majesty along those dark forest aisles.

And now what a meeting and greeting there was! The steamers signalled the arrival of strangers. A canoe put out from the shore and hailed in the language of the Eastern coast. Both sides understood that the meeting was one of peace. The steamers made for shore below the tents, and a night encampment was formed. Soon Stanley’s Zanzibaris were shaking hands with the Manyuema slaves of Abed bin Salim, who constituted the band that had been ravaging the country to obtain slaves and ivory. They had been out for sixteen months, and for eleven months had been raiding the Congo. The extent of country they had plundered was larger than Ireland, and contained a population of 1,000,000 souls. They numbered 300 men, armed with shot-guns and rifles, and their retinue of domestic slaves and women doubled their force. Their camp, even then, was on the ruins of the town of Yangambi, which had fallen before their torches, and many of whose people were prisoners on the spot where they were born.

Stanley took a view of the stockade in which they had confined their human booty. This is the horrible story as he writes it:

“The first general impressions are that the camp is much too densely peopled for comfort. There are rows upon rows of dark nakedness, relieved here and there by the white dresses of the captors. There are lines or groups of naked forms upright, standing or moving about listlessly; naked bodies are stretched under the sheds in all positions; naked legs innumerable are seen in the perspective of prostrate sleepers; there are countless naked children, many were infants, forms of boyhood and girlhood, and occasionally a drove of absolutely naked old women, bending under a basket of fuel, or cassava tubers, or bananas, who are driven through the moving groups by two or three musketeers. In paying more attention to details, I observe that mostly all are fettered; youths with iron85 rings around their necks, through which a chain like one of our boat-anchor chains is rove, securing the captives by twenties. The children over ten are secured by three copper rings, each ringed leg brought together by the central ring, which accounts for the apparent listlessness of movement I observed on first coming in presence of the curious scene. The mothers are secured by shorter chains, around whom their respective progeny of infants are grouped, hiding the cruel iron links that fall in loops or festoons over mamma’s breasts. There is not one adult man-captive amongst them.

“Besides the shaded ground strewn over so thickly by the prostrate and upright bodies of captives, the relics of the many raids lie scattered or heaped up in profusion everywhere, and there is scarcely a square foot of ground not littered with something, such as drums, spears, swords, assegais, arrows, bows, knives, iron ware of native make of every pattern, paddles innumerable, scoops and balers, wooden troughs, ivory horns, whistles, buffalo and antelope horns, ivory pestles, wooden idols, beads of wood, berries, scraps of fetishism, sorcerers’ wardrobes, gourds of all sizes, nets, from the lengthy seine to the small hand-net; baskets, hampers, shields as large as doors (of wood or of plaited rattan), crockery, large pots to hold eight gallons, down to the child’s basin; wooden mugs, basins, and mallets; grass cloth in shreds, tatters and pieces; broken canoes, and others half-excavated; native adzes, hatchets, hammers, iron rods, etc., etc. All these littering the ground, or in stacks and heaps, with piles of banana and cassava peelings, flour of cassava, and sliced tubers drying, make up a number of untidy pictures and details, through all of which, however, prominently gleam the eyes of the captives in a state of utter and supreme wretchedness.

“Little perhaps as my face betrayed my feelings, other pictures would crowd upon the imagination; and after realizing the extent and depth of the misery presented to me, I walked about as in a kind of dream, wherein I saw through the darkness of the night the stealthy forms of the murderers creeping towards the doomed town, its inmates all asleep, and no sounds issuing from the gloom but the drowsy hum of chirping cicadas or distant frogs—when suddenly flash the light of brandished torches; the sleeping town is involved in flames, while volleys of musketry lay low the frightened and86 astonished people, sending many through a short minute of agony to that soundless sleep from which there will be no waking. I wished to be alone somewhere where I could reflect upon the doom which has overtaken Bandu, Yomburri, Yangambi, Yaporo, Yakusu, Ukanga, Yakonda, Ituka, Yaryembi, Yaruche, populous Isangi, and probably thirty scores of other villages and towns.

“The slave-traders admit they have only 2,300 captives in this fold, yet they have raided through the length and breadth of a country larger than Ireland, bearing fire and spreading carnage with lead and iron. Both banks of the river show that 118 villages and 43 districts have been devastated, out of which is only educed this scant profit of 2,300 females and children, and about 2,000 tusks of ivory! The spears, swords, bows, and the quivers of arrows show that many adults have fallen. Given that these 118 villages were peopled only by 1,000 each, we have only a profit of two per cent.; and by the time all these captives have been subjected to the accidents of the river voyage to Kirundu and Nyangwé, of camp-life and its harsh miseries, to the havoc of small-pox and the pests which miseries breed, there will only remain a scant one per cent. upon the bloody venture.

“They tell me, however, that the convoys already arrived at Nyangwé with slaves captured in the interior have been as great as their present band. Five expeditions have come and gone with their booty of ivory and slaves, and these five expeditions have now completely weeded the large territory described above. If each expedition has been as successful as this, the slave-traders have been enabled to send 5,000 women and children safe to Nyangwé, Kirundu and Vibondo, above the Stanley Falls. Thus 5,000 out of an assumed million will be at the rate of a half per cent., or five slaves out of 1,000 people.

“This is poor profit out of such large waste of life, for originally we assume the slaves to have mustered about 10,000 in number. To obtain the 2,300 slaves out of the 118 villages they must have shot a round number of 2,500 people, while 1,300 more died by the wayside, through scant provisions and the intensity of their hopeless wretchedness. How many are wounded and die in the forest or droop to death through an overwhelming sense of their calamities,87 we do not know; but if the above figures are trustworthy, then the outcome from the territory with its million of souls is 5,000 slaves obtained at the cruel expense of 33,000 lives! And such slaves! They are females, or, young children who cannot run away, or who with youthful indifference, will soon forget the terrors of their capture! Yet each of the very smallest infants has cost the life of a father and perhaps his three stout brothers and three grown-up daughters. An entire family of six souls would have been done to death to obtain that small, feeble, useless child!

“These are my thoughts as I look upon the horrible scene. Every second during which I regard them the clink of fetters and chains strikes upon my ears. My eyes catch sight of that continual lifting of the hand to ease the neck in the collar, or as it displays a manacle exposed through a muscle being irritated by its weight or want of fitness. My nerves are offended with the rancid effluvium of the unwashed herds within this human kennel. The smell of other abominations annoys me in that vitiated atmosphere. For how could poor people, bound and riveted together by twenties, do otherwise than wallow in filth? Only the old women are taken out to forage. They dig out the cassava tuber, and search for the banana, while the guard, with musket ready, keenly watches for the coming of the vengeful native. Not much food can be procured in this manner, and what is obtained is flung down in a heap before each gang, to at once cause an unseemly scramble. Many of these poor things have been already months fettered in this manner, and their bones stand out in bold relief in the attenuated skin, which hangs down in thin wrinkles and puckers. And yet who can withstand the feeling of pity so powerfully pleaded for by those large eyes and sunken cheeks?

“What was the cause of all this vast sacrifice of human life—of all this unspeakable misery? Nothing but the indulgence of an old Arab’s ‘wolfish, bloody, starved and ravenous instincts.’ He wished to obtain slaves to barter away to other Arabs, and having weapons—guns and gunpowder—enough, he placed them in the hands of three hundred slaves, and despatched them to commit murder wholesale, just as an English nobleman would put guns in the hands of his guests and permit them to slaughter the game upon his estate. If88 we calculate three quarts of blood to each person who fell during the campaign of murder, we find that this one Arab caused to be shed 2,850 gallons of human blood, sufficient to fill a tank measurement of 460 cubic feet, quite large enough to have drowned him and all his kin!”

Nyangwé, above mentioned, is an important market-town on the Congo, some distance above Stanley Falls, and the capital of the undefined possessions of which Tippoo Tib holds sway. Livingstone says he has seen fully 3,000 people at the Nyanwe market of a clear day, anxious to dispose of their fish, fruits, vegetables and fowls. Many of them had walked twenty-five miles, bearing their baskets, heavily laden with produce, and some had come even further in canoes. On one occasion a riot broke out, instigated either by jealousy among the surrounding tribes or by the Arab slave-dealers for the purpose of making captures. Three burly fellows began to fire their guns into the throng of women, who hastily abandoned their wares and dashed for the canoes. The panic was so great that the canoes could not be manned and pushed into the river. The frantic women, fired into continually from the rear, leaped and scrambled over the boats and jumped wildly into the river, preferring the chances of a long swim to an island rather than inevitable destruction on the shore. Many of the wounded wretches threw up their hands in despair ere they reached mid-stream, and sank to rise no more. Rescuing canoes put out into the water, and many were thus saved; but one poor woman refused to be rescued, saying she would take her chances of life in the water rather than return to be sold as a slave. The Arabs estimate the slaughter that day at 400 souls.

Stanley now fully understood the meaning of all he had heard below of the terrible visitations of these banditti—of the merciless character of the Bahunga, which name they had misunderstood, and of the desire of the dwellers on the lower waters that he should ascend the Congo, thereby hoping that all the whites would destroy one another in the clash which seemed inevitable. After an exchange of gifts with these cut-throats and the loan of an interpreter to speak with the people at the Falls, the steamers departed from a scene which nature had made beautiful, but which the hand of man had90 stained with crime and blood. The Congo here has bluffy, picturesque shores on the one side, and on the other lowlands adapted for sugar-cane, cotton, rice and maize.

THE MASSACRE AT NYANGWE. Larger.

Some critics of Stanley have expressed wonder at his failure to assert his usual heroism when made to witness these Arab barbarities while ascending the Congo. They think he should have attacked and driven off these thieves and murderers, no matter what the result might have been to himself and his enterprise. The same, or a similar class of critics, think that when he was making his last journey up the Congo and the Aruwimi in search of Emin Pasha, he showed entirely too much consideration for the Arab marauders, and especially for that cunning and depraved official, Tippoo Tib, whom he recognized as governor at Nyangwé.

Despite what are regarded by some impulsive people as the higher claims of humanitarianism, we are perfectly willing to trust to Mr. Stanley’s sense of right as modified by the exigencies of a situation about which no one else can know as much as himself. That situation was altogether new and peculiar on both his ascents of the Congo in behalf of the Congo Free State, and in search of Emin Pasha. In the first instance he bore a commission from a higher power, the International Commission, whose agent he was. He had instructions to do certain things and to leave others undone. To provoke hostilities with those he met, to quarrel and fight, except in self-preservation, were not only things foreign to his mission, as being sure to defeat it, but were expressly forbidden to him. Conquest was no part of the new policy of the Congo Free State, but its foundation was peace and free concession by all the tribes within its boundaries. Time will vindicate his leniency in the midst of such scenes as he was forced to witness at the mouth of the Aruwimi and on the Congo above, during his first ascent of the river.

And the same will prove true of his second ascent. To be sure, he was on a different mission and had greater freedom of action, but he knew well, from former experience, the character of the peoples upon the two great rivers near their jurisdiction. And if any events ever proved the wisdom of the steps which a man took, those surely did which clustered about and composed the eventful, if melancholy, history of Stanley’s “Rear Guard” on the Aruwimi. Several correspondents,91 some of whom accompanied Stanley on his two up-river journeys, and others who have been over the ground, have written fully of the Aruwimi situation, and their views are valuable, though space forbids more than a condensation of them here.

A fatal river, say they all, was the Aruwimi for Stanley. It was so in 1877. 1883 served to recall regretful memories of his canoe descent, and introduced him to sadder scenes than he had ever occasioned or witnessed. The details of the deserted and blackened camp of his “Rear Guard” on the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition will prove to be more tragic than any which went before. It was close to the confluence of the Aruwimi with the Congo, as narrated elsewhere in this volume, that Stanly was compelled, in 1877, to storm a native village; and, as we have just seen, when he passed the spot again in 1883, what wonder that the dusky warriors reassembled to receive him! Round the bend “where the great affluent gaped into view,” the river was thronged with war-canoes, and on the banks stood the villages of Basongo and Mokulu, where Stanley’s ancient foes resided. In fantastic array appeared long lines of fully armed warriors—a land force supporting the fighting men afloat. How, aided by a picturesque and showy interpreter, with a voice as powerful as his eloquence, Stanley, on this latter occasion, appeased their warlike ardor and made them friends, has just been told in these pages.

The reader will understand, however, from the number of the force against him and the ferocious character of the tribes, why Stanley was so careful when forming his latest camp on the Aruwimi, to have it well stockaded and efficiently sentinelled. The local natives had not only the incentive of their previous defeat by Stanley to keep their hostility alive, but they had had meanwhile some bitter experiences of the Arab raider. They are splendid races of men, the tribes of the Mokulu and the Basoko, picturesque in their yellow war-paint, their barbaric shields and decorative headdresses. They are skilled workmen. Their paddles are beautifully carved, their spears and knives artistic and of dexterous shapeliness. They have also broadswords, and in a general way their weapons are of wonderful temper and sharpness. Now and then the Arab raiders find their work of massacre and plunder a hot business among92 such natives as these; but the advantage of the rifle is, of course, tremendous, and can only have one result. The Arabs do not, however, always have it entirely their own way. They leave both dead and wounded sometimes in the hands of the enemy, who frequently condemn both to the pot, and make merry, no doubt, over their grilled remains.

Among the many hardships of the Aruwimi camp, established by Stanley for his “Rear Guard,” on his latest upward trip, and left under Major Barttelot, was the uncontrollable character of the Manyema carriers and escort. These people have for many years been the slave-hunting allies of the Arabs—their jackals, their cheetahs; and the Stanley camp had actually to be spectators of the attack and raiding of a native village, opposite their own quarters, on the other side of the river. It was towards night when the onslaught began. The sudden sound of the warlike drums of the surprised natives came booming across the water, followed by the fierce rattle of the Arab musketry. Dark figures and light were soon mixed together in the fray. The natives fought bravely—but they fell rapidly before the rifle. Pelted with the deadly hail of shot, they were soon vanquished. Then from hut to hut the flames of ruin began to spread, and in the lurid light women and children were marched forth to the slave-hunter’s stockade—some to be ransomed next day by the remainder of the ivory the natives had successfully hidden; others probably to be passed on from hand to hand until they eventually reached a slave-dealing market. And all this the officers and comrades of Mr. Stanley had the humiliation to witness without daring to interfere—not from any fear of losing their lives in the defence of the weaker—a death which has been courted by thousands of brave men on land and sea—but for reasons of policy. They were not there to protect the natives of the Aruwimi from Arab raiders, but to follow Mr. Stanley with the stores necessary for the success of his expedition. Nor is it likely that the force under Major Barttelot would have obeyed him if he had desired to intervene. Mr. Stanley himself more than once in his African experience has had to shut his eyes to Arab aggression and cruelty, although his influence with Tippoo Tib has no doubt paved the way for the realization of his humane ambition in the matter of slavery. From their stockade93 and on board their launch at Yambuya, Barttelot and his comrades could see the woefully unequal warfare on the raided village, and there is no need of the assurance that their hearts beat high with indignation and a desire to take a hand in it. Moreover, these lawless brutalities practiced upon the natives made the difficulties of the camp all the greater, not only affecting the dangers of the advance, but increasing the perils of the way to the Falls, as was experienced by Ward on his travels to and fro—his “aimless journeys” Mr. Stanley has called them, but undertaken nevertheless by order of Ward’s superior officer, Major Barttelot.

Whether or not the Arabs of the camp or the Manyuemas had a share in the tragedy on the other side of the river is a question perhaps of no serious moment; but confessions were made to Ward which rather tend to show that the Arabs, while waiting for the expected advance, fulfilled other engagements on the river. “I went to Selim’s camp to-day,” writes Mr. Ward in one of his private letters, “and they told me that two more of their men (Arabs) had been caught and eaten by the natives whose village they had raided and burnt some weeks ago.” The same correspondent again writes: “This morning some of the raiders came down from up-river with news of the defeat of ten of their number, cut to pieces by the natives, who sought refuge in their canoes above the rapids.” Selim and his men started off in pursuit, and returned at night lamenting that they had killed only two of the natives. On the next day he told Ward that where his men had fallen he found their fingers tied in strings to the scrub of the river-bank, and some cooking-pots containing portions of their bones. What a weary time it was waiting, and with only this kind of incident to ruffle the monotony of it—waiting for the promised carriers that did not come—waiting for news of Stanley that only came in suggestions of disaster! It is hardly a matter of surprise that the camp began to fear the worst. Their own experiences of the broken word of Tippoo Tib and the utter unreliability and ferocity of a portion of their force might well give a pessimistic tone to their contemplation of the awful possibilities of Stanley’s march. Every omen of the Aruwimi was unfavorable to success; and they must have been terribly impressed by such a scene as that which cast its murderous light upon the river not94 long previously to the forward march, with the assassination of the commander and the eventual dispersion of the rear-guard.

The above refers to Stanley’s Emin Pasha expedition, details of which are given further on. But it is introduced here as showing what he had to contend with every time he struck the confluence of the two great rivers, and how difficult it was for him to pursue any other policy than he did, as it is a bewildering spot in nature, and in its human forces, so it is in its diplomancy.

One of the writers above mentioned goes on to discuss the question of cannibalism whose existence on the Upper Congo, and in other parts of Africa, has been asserted by correspondents. He says his own description of these practices on the Aruwimi and the Congo are in no way connected with the reports which are criticised in Mr. Stanley’s letter from Msalala, on Lake Victoria, in August 1889. Mr. Ward in none of his letters has ever mentioned or suggested that the Manyuemas were cannibals, or in any way justified the extraordinary statement of the Rev. William Brooke in the Times to the effect that it was common in the Manyuema camp to see “human hands and feet sticking out of cooking-pots.” This is evidently a canard. Perhaps it would be well for Mr. Brooke to give his authorities, since Mr. Stanley asks who they are that have seen these extraordinary sights. The Manyuemas are a fierce race; but, personally, Mr. Stanley has found them loyal and true to his service, and they are not cannibals, so far as I can learn. The instances of cannibalism mentioned in letters from the Aruwimi camp refer to the natives of the district outside the camp, and against whom the camp was fortified. But if Mr. Brooke has been misled, so also has Mr. Stanley in regard to the report he seems to have found in his bundles of newspaper cuttings to the effect that an execution of a woman was delayed by Jameson or Barttelot in order that a photographer might make ready his apparatus for taking a negative of the incident. This gruesome anecdote does not belong to Africa at all; it comes from a different part of the world altogether; was discussed in Parliament as an allegation made against an English Consul; and turned out to be either untrue or a gross exaggeration. When Mr. Stanley has learnt all that was said and conjectured about his doings in the long intervals of the silence and mystery that95 enshrouded him he will find less and less material for serious criticism in the other packets of press extracts he may yet have to unfold: but he need hardly be told that those who knew him and those who have trusted him would not, whatever happened, be led into thinking for a moment that he would break his promise or neglect his duty.

Stanley’s upward bound steamers now pass several devastated districts which in 1877 were peopled by ferocious beings ready with their canoes to sweep down upon his descending flotilla. At length the island tribe of the Wenya is reached. These are expert fishermen, and had been left unharmed by the Arabs,—and for policy sake too, since their acquaintance with Stanley Falls had been turned to practical account. Their knowledge of the intricate channels had enabled them to pilot the Arab canoes down over the obstructions and return them in the same way, the owners making the portage afoot.

Here the steamers were at the foot of Stanley Falls. These Falls consist of seven distinct cataracts extending over a distance of fifty-six miles. The lower or seventh cataract is simply a rough interruption to navigation for a distance of two miles. Above this is a navigable stretch of twenty-six miles, when the sixth cataract is reached. This, on the left side, is an impassable fall, but on the right is a succession of rapids. From the sixth to the fifth cataract is a twenty-two mile stretch of navigable water. The fifth, fourth, third, second and first cataracts come in quick succession, and within a space of nine miles. They appear to be impassable, but the fact that the natives manage to pass the Arab canoes up and down them proves that there are channels which are open to light craft when dexterously handled.

The width of the Congo at the seventh cataract is 1330 yards, divided into several broken channels by islands and rocks. The inhabitants of the islands above and below are skillful fishermen belonging to two or three different tribes. They obstruct even the swiftest channels with poles from which are appended nets for catching fish and these are visited daily in their canoes, over waters of clashing swiftness and ever threatening peril. Portions of their catch they use for food, the rest is converted into smoked food with which they buy women and children slaves, canoes and weapons. They96 are impregnably situated as to enemies. Their villages are scenes of industry. Long lines of fish-curers may be seen spreading fish on the platforms; old men weave nets and sieves; able-bodied men are basket makers and implement makers of various fantastic designs; the women prepare meal and bread, etc., or make crockery; the watermen are skillful canoe builders.

1: KNIFE-SHEATH. 2: BASKET. 3: WOODEN BOLSTER. 4: BEE-HIVE.

This was the spot upon which Stanley desired to erect a trading station and these were the people with whom he was to negotiate for a possession. He had no fears of the result, for it was evident that the Arabs and the half-castes of Nyangwe, beyond, would find advantage in a station at which they could obtain cloth, guns, knives and all articles of European manufacture at a much cheaper rate than from the Eastern coast. A palaver was opened with the assembled chiefs, in which Stanley was formally received and stated his object. Receptions by African chiefs are always very formal. Altogether, they are not uninteresting. Livingstone mentions one with King Chitapangwa, in which he was ushered into an enormous97 hut where the dignitary sat before three drummers and ten more men with rattles in their hands. The drummers beat fearfully on their drums, and the rattlers kept time, two of them advancing and retreating in a stooping posture, with their rattles near the ground, as if doing the chief obeisance, but still keeping time with the others. After a debate of three days duration the chiefs came to terms and ceded sovereignty over the islands and adjacent shores, with the right to build and trade. The large island of Wané Rusari was selected as the site of the station and a clearing was made for building. The question of a supply of vegetable food was settled by Siwa-Siwa, an inland chief, who promised to make the garrison his children and guaranteed them plenty of garden products. Binnie, engineer of the Royal, a plucky little Scotchman of diminutive stature, was appointed chief of the new Stanley Falls Station, and left in full authority. The boat’s crews cleared four acres of ground for him, and furnished him with axes, hoes, hammers, nails, flour, meats, coffee, tea, sugar, cloths, rods, beads, mugs, pans, and all the etceteras of a mid-African equipment. He was given thirty one armed men and plenty of ammunition. Then with full instructions as to his duty he was left to the care of Providence.

On December 10th the steamers began their return journey, having reached the full geographic limit marked out by the Brussels Committee. The return was to be signalized by obtaining the protectorship of the districts intervening between the stations thus far established on the Congo, so that the authority of the new State should be unbroken from Vivi to Stanley Falls. But this work, on second thought, could well be left to others with more time at their disposal than had Stanley. Therefore the steamers, taking advantage of the current, and bearing ten selected men of the native tribes about Stanley Falls, each in possession of three ivory tusks, made a speedy downward trip.

Tribe after tribe was passed, some of which had not been seen on the ascent, because the steamers were constantly seeking out new channels. Whenever it was deemed politic, stops were made and treaties entered into. All on board suffered much from the river breezes, heightened by the velocity of the steamers. These breezes checked perspiration too suddenly, and some severe prostrations99 occurred. By Christmas the flotilla was back to Iboko, where thieving was so rampant as to necessitate the seizure of one of the offenders and his imprisonment in a steamer. The chief, Kokoro, came alongside in a canoe to commend Stanley for ridding the tribe of a fellow who could bring such disgrace upon it; and he was really very earnest in his morality till he looked in upon the prisoner and found it was his son. Then there was lamentation and offers to buy the boy back. Stanley’s terms were a restitution of the stolen articles, and these not being met, he sailed away with the offender, promising to return in ten days to insist upon his conditions.

RECEPTION BY AN AFRICAN KING. Larger.

The populous districts of Usimbi and Ubengo were passed. At Ukumiri the whole population came out to greet the steamers, as it did at Bungata and Uranga. As many of these places had not been visited on the upward journey, it was manifest that word of the treaties and the impression made were being gradually and favorably disseminated by the canoe-traders. Equator Station was found in a flourishing condition. It was January 1st, 1884, when the steamers began an upward journey again to Iboko, in order to keep faith with Kokoro by returning his son. The old chief, Mata Bwyki, was indignant at the seizure of one of his subjects, but seeing that Stanley had returned and was acquainted with the tribal custom that a thief could be held till the stolen goods were restored, he fell in with his idea of justice, and went so far as to insist on a return of the stolen articles, or else the imprisonment which Stanley had inflicted. This attitude resulted in a restoration of the property and the temporary shame of the culprits.

Again the steamers arrived at Equator Station, where the commandant had a harrowing tale to tell of how the neighboring Bakuti had lost their chief and had come to the station to buy the soldier laborers to the extent of fifty, thinking they were slaves, in order that they might sacrifice them over the dead chieftain’s grave. It is needless to say that they were driven out of the station and given to understand that rites so horrid were not sanctioned by civilized people. But they succeeded in getting fourteen slaves elsewhere, and had them ready for execution on the day of burial. Some of the garrison went out to witness the cruel rite. They found the doomed men kneeling,100 with their arms bound behind them. Near by was a tree with a rope dangling from it. One of the captives was selected, and the rope was fastened round his neck. The tree, which had been bent down by the weight of several men, was permitted to assume its natural position, and in doing so it carried the victim off his feet. The executioner approached with a short, sharp falchion, and striking at the neck, severed the head from the body. The remaining captives were dispatched in similar manner. Their heads were boiled and the skin was taken off, in order that the skulls might ornament the poles around the grave. The soil saturated with their blood was buried with the dead chief, and the bodies were thrown into the Congo. Revolting as it all was, there was no preventive except the rifles, and they would have meant war.

On January 13th the steamers left Equator Station and soon arrived at Usindi, where the guide, Yumbila, was paid and dismissed. The next day Lukolela was reached, where some progress at station building had gone on, and a healthy condition prevailed. Bolobo was the next station but arrival there revealed only a wreck. It had been burned a second time, with all the guns, and a terrific explosion of the ammunition. The firing was due to the freak of a man delirious with fever, who imagined that a conflagration would provide him with a burial-scene far more honorable than the butchery of slaves indulged in by native African potentates. Stanley had his suspicions of the story, and could with difficulty believe that the destruction was not due to some sinister influences which pervaded the Bolobo atmosphere.

SACRIFICE OF SLAVES.

By January 20th the flotilla was back at Kinshassa, in Stanley Pool, where much progress had been made. In two hours they were at Leopoldville, after an absence of 146 days and a sail of 3,050 miles. Here everything was flourishing. The houses stood in comfortable rows, and the gardens were bringing forth vegetables in abundance. The natives were peaceable and ready to trade, the magazines were full, and as a depot it was adequate for the supply of all the up-river stations. Not so, however, with the down river stations. They were confused and required attention. Stanley therefore prepared a caravan for Vivi. Good-byes were given to the friends at Leopoldville, and the huge caravan started on its long101 journey over hills and prairie stretches, through dales and across streams, skirting forests here and piercing them there, past happy, peaceful villages, too far from the Congo to be annoyed by its ravines. The promising uplands of Ngombe are passed, ruled by Luteté, he who in 1882 requested the gift of a white man that he might have the pleasure of cutting his throat! But Luteté has been transformed from a ferocious chief into quite a decent citizen. Ngombe Station is a peaceable one, and Luteté furnishes the servants and carriers for it, besides sending his children to the Baptist school. The caravan then passes the Bokongo and Iyenzi people, noted for their good behaviour. All the land is fertile and the valleys exceedingly rich. Manyanga is reached. The station has not advanced, but is confused and ruinous, though probably a cool $100,000 has been expended upon it by the Association of the Congo.

Again the caravan takes up its march through the Ndunga people and thence down into the broad valley of the Lukunga, where Stanley is hospitably received by Mr. and Mrs. Ingham of the Livingstone Mission, at their pretty little cottage and school, surrounded by a spacious and well tended garden. Westward of the Lukunga are plateau lands, like the American prairies, covered with tall grass, and capable of raising the richest crops of wheat and corn. The plateaus passed, a descent is made into the valley of the Kwilu, and then into those of the Luima and Lunionzo, where the Station of Banza Manteka is reached, close by which is a Livingstone Mission house. The prospect from the hilltops here is a grand, embracing sight of nearly a dozen native villages whose dwellers are devoted to the cultivation of ground-nuts.

In six hours the caravan is at Isangila, sight of which station filled Stanley with grief, so backward had improvement been. Hundreds of bales of stock were rotting there through neglect of the commandant to keep the thatched roofs of the houses in repair. The country now becomes broken and rugged, and the way obstructed with large boulders. All nature here is a counterpart of that rough tumultuous channel where thunders the Congo in its last furious charges to the sea. It is now five miles to Vivi. The height is 1700 feet above the sea. The air is cool and delicious. The natives are102 peaceful and industrious. There is an English mission on those highlands, in the midst of peace and plenty.

Once at Vivi, Stanley is again grieved, for the commandants had done nothing to make it either ornamental or useful. All is barren, like the surrounding hills. Not a road had been cut, not a cottage thatched. The gardens were in waste, the fences broken. The twenty-five whites there were lazily indifferent to their surroundings, and without any energy or vivacity except that inspired by European wine. The native sick list was fearfully large and there was a general demand for medicines, till Stanley made an inspection and found that they were only feigning sickness as an excuse for idleness. Shocked at all this Stanley resolved to move the station up and away to the larger plateau. He did so, and left it with a reorganized staff and force, writing home, meanwhile, an account of his work. The old and new Vivi stations were connected by a railroad, and by June 1884, the new station had five comfortable houses, surrounded by a freshly planted banana orchard.

On June 6th Stanley left Vivi for Boma, and took passage on the British and African steamer Kinsembo, on the 10th, for an inspection of the West African coast. The steamer stopped at Landana, a factory town, with a French mission peeping out of a banana grove on an elevation. It next touched at Black Point to take on produce, and then at Loango and Mayumbo. It then entered the Gaboon country, and stopped off at the town of that name, which is the seat of government of the French colony. At Gaboon are several brick buildings, stores, hotels, a Catholic and American Protestant mission, ten factories and a stone pier. It is a neat place, and almost picturesque with its hill-dotted houses and tropical vegetation.

The steamer then passed the Spanish town of Elobey, on an island of that name, off the mouth of the Muni river. Rounding Cape St. Juan, it next touched at the celebrated island of Fernando-Po, whose centre is a peak 10,000 feet high. The country of the Cammaroons now begins—a people even more degraded than those of the Congo. Skirting this country, Duke Town, or old Calabar, was reached on June 21st. This is the “Oil river” region of Africa and 300 barrels of palm-oil awaited the Kinsembo. Stanley took a trip103 inland to Creek Town, where is a Scottish mission. He was struck with the similarity of what he saw to scenes on the Congo—the same palms, density of forest, green verdure, reddish loam, hut architecture. Only one thing differed, and that was that the residences of the native chiefs were of European manufacture. Palm-oil has brought them luxurious homes, modernly furnished. The ivory, oil, rubber, gum, camwood powder, orchilla, beeswax, grains and spices would do the same for Congo at no distant day.

The steamer next anchored in Bonny river, off the town of Bonny, where there is a well-to-do white population and an equally well-to-do native population, with many factories and a large traffic. These people seem to have solved the difficult problem of African climate, and to have dissipated much of the fear which clung to a residence on and about the rivers which find their way to the sea in the Bight of Benin. Passing New Calabar, anchor is cast off the Benin river, in a roadstead where clustered ships from all the principal ports of Europe. The Kinsembo is now fully loaded and makes for Quettah and then Sierra Leone. Thence sail was set for London. Stanley got off at Plymouth on July 29th, 1884, and four days later presented a report of his expedition and his mission to the king of Belgium at Ostend.

Some part of the work of founding the Congo Free State had now been done. Stanley and his expedition had been instrumental in clearing ground, leveling sites, reducing approaches, laying foundations and building walls. The Bureau of the Association had contributed means and supplied tools and mortar. But windows were now to be placed and roofs put on. Then the fabric must be furnished and equipped within. The finishing work could only be done through the agency of its royal founder. He took it up where Stanley laid it down, and applied to the Governments of Europe and America for recognition of what had been done, and for a guarantee of such limits as were foreshadowed by the new State. The border lands were those of France and Portugal. Treaties, fixing boundaries, were made with these countries. Precedents were formed in the case of the Puritan Fathers, the New Hampshire Colonists, the British East India Company, the Liberian Republic, the Colonists of Borneo, establishing the right of individuals to build States upon104 cessions of territory and surrenders of sovereignty by chiefs and rulers who hold as original owners.

Stanley’s present to the Association was a series of treaties duly ratified by 450 independent African chiefs, who held land by undisturbed possession, ancient usage and divine right. They had not been intimidated or coerced, but of their own free will and for valuable considerations had transferred their sovereignty and ownership to the Association. The time had now come for cementing these grants and cohering these sovereignties, so that they should stand forth as a grand entirety and prove worthy of the name of solid empire.

And just here occurs one of the most interesting chapters in the founding of the Congo Free State. As it was to the Welsh-American Stanley, that the initial work of the grand enterprise was due, so it was to his country, the United States of America, that that work was preserved and its results turned to the account of the world. England, with her usual disregard of international sentiment, and in that spirit which implies that her ipse dixit is all there is of importance in diplomacy, had made a treaty with Portugal, signed February 26th, 1884, recognizing the mouth of the Congo as Portuguese territory, and this in the face of the fact that the mouth of that great river had been regarded as neutral territory, and of the further fact that for half a century England herself had peremptorily refused to recognize Portuguese claims to it.

This action on the part of England awakened emphatic protest on the part of France and Germany, and commercial men in England denounced it through fear that Portuguese restrictions on trade would destroy Congo commerce entirely. It remained for the United States to speak. Her Minister to Belgium, General H. S. Sanford, had all along been a faithful coadjutor of the Committee of the International Association, and he began to call attention to the danger of the step just taken by England. He also reminded the American people that to their philanthropy was due the Free States of Liberia, founded at a cost of $2,500,000, and to which 20,000 Colored Americans had been sent. He also reminded them that one of their citizens had rescued Livingstone and thereby called the attention of the world to the Congo basin and Central African enterprise. By means105 of these and other arguments he induced on Congress to examine thoroughly the subject of the Congo Free State and Anglo-Portuguese treaty.

The Committee on Foreign relations reported to the Senate as follows:—

“It can scarcely be denied that the native chiefs have the right to make the treaties they have made with Stanley, acting as the representative of the International Association. The able and exhaustive statements of Sir Travis Twiss, the eminent English jurist, and of Prof. Arntz, the no less distinguished Belgian publicist, leave no doubt upon the question of the legal capacity of the African International Association, in view of the law of nations, to accept any powers belonging to these native chiefs and governments, which they may choose to delegate or cede to them.

“The practical question to which they give an affirmative answer, for reasons which appear to be indisputable, is this: Can independent chiefs of several tribes cede to private citizens the whole or part of their State, with the sovereign rights which pertain to them, conformably to the traditional customs of the country?

“The doctrine advanced in this proposition, and so well sustained by these writers, accords with that held by the Government of the United States, that the occupants of a country, at the time of its discovery by other and more powerful nations, have the right to make the treaties for its disposal, and that private persons when associated in such a country for self protection, or self government, may treat with the inhabitants for any purpose that does not violate the laws of nations.”

After a patient investigation of all the facts bearing upon the Congo question, the United States Senate passed a resolution, April 10th, 1884, authorizing the President to recognize the International African Association as a governing power on the Congo River. This recognition by the United States was a new birth for the Association, whose existence had been menaced by England’s treaty with Portugal. The European powers, whose protest had thus far been impotent, now ably seconded the position taken by this country, and the result was a re-action in English sentiment, which bade fair to secure such modification or interpretation of the Portuguese106 treaty as would secure to the Congo Free State the outlet of the Congo River.

A conference of the nations interested in the new State, and the trade of the Congo, was called at Berlin, November 15, 1884. The German Empire, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, France, Great Britain, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Sweden and Norway, Turkey and the United States, were represented. Prince Bismarck formally opened the Conference by declaring that it had met to solve three problems.

(1) The free navigation, with freedom of trade on the River Congo.

(2) The free navigation of the River Niger.

(3) The formalities to be observed for valid annexation of territory in future on the African continent.

The above propositions opened up a wide discussion. It was wonderful to see the development of sentiment respecting the power of the International Association and its territorial limits in Africa. England could not stand discussion of her rights on the Niger, and the better to protect them, or rather to withdraw them from the arena of debate, she gave full recognition to the International Association. Germany and Austria both recognized the flag of the Association. France treated with the Association respecting the boundaries of her possessions on the north. Portugal followed with a treaty by which the Association obtained the left, or south bank of the Congo from the sea to the Uango-Ango. All the other powers present recognized the Association and signed the Convention with it.

Now for the first time in history there was a Congo Free State de jure and de facto. It had legal recognition and rights, and took its place among the empires of the world. Geographically it had bounds, and these are they:

A strip of land at the mouth of the Congo, 22 miles long, extending from Banana Point to Cabo Lombo.

All of the north or right bank of the Congo as far as the Cataract of Ntombo Mataka, three miles above Manyanga Station, with back country inland as far as the Chilonga river.

All of the south bank of the Congo to the Uango-Ango rivulet.

From the said rivulet to the latitude of Nokki, thence east along107 that parallel to the Kwa river, thence up the Kwa to S. Lat. 6°, thence up the affluent of the Kwa, Lubilash, to the water-shed between the Congo and Zambesi, which it follows to Lake Bangweola.

From the eastern side of Bangweola the line runs north to Lake Tanganyika, and follows its western shore to the Rusizi affluent, then up this affluent to E. long. 30°, as far as the water-shed, between the Congo and Nile.

Thence westward to E. long. 17°, and along that meridian to the Likona Basin.

The Berlin conference not only created a mighty State and sanctioned its powers and boundaries, but it confirmed unto France a noble territory on the north of the Congo equal to any in Africa for vegetable production and mineral resources, having an Atlantic coast line of 800 miles, giving access to eight river basins, with 5,200 miles of navigable water, and a total area of 257,000 square miles.

It also settled the boundaries of Portugal on the Atlantic coast, giving to her possessions a frontage of 995 miles, and an area larger than France, Belgium, Holland and Great Britain combined, rich in pastoral lands, oil and rubber forests, minerals and agricultural resources, enough to give each one of her people a farm of 33 acres.

The territory embraced in the Congo Free State, and dedicated to free commerce and enterprise, is equal to 1,600,000 square miles. The same privileges were extended to within one degree of the East Coast of Africa, subject to rights of Portugal and Zanzibar. This would make a privileged commercial zone in Central Africa of 2,400,000 square miles in extent.

While there are at present but few legitimate traders within this vast area to be benefited by these liberal endowments of the Congo Free State, the wisdom of setting the territory apart and dedicating it to international uses is already apparent. The European powers are in hot chase after landed booty in Central Africa. England is flying at the throat of Portugal, is jealous of France and Germany, is snubbing Italy and is ready to rob Turkey. It is surely one of the grandest diplomatic achievements to have rescued so important108 and imposing a portion of a continent from the turmoil which has ever characterized, and is now manifest in European greed for landed possessions.

If the European powers had been permitted to seize all the coasts of the Continent, and the Continent itself, and to levy contributions on trade according to their respective wills, they would have forever strangled commercial development, except as suited their selfish ends. On the other hand the guarantee of the Association that its large and productive areas should be free from discrimination and oppression, would naturally tempt enterprising spirits to venture inland and win a continent from barbarism. The Courts of Law of the Association would be everywhere and always open, there would be no charges on commerce except those necessary to support the government, the liquor traffic might not be abused, a positive prohibition would rest on the slave trade, the missionary, without respect to denomination, would have special protection, scientific development would be encouraged, to all these, the powers present at the Berlin Conference gave a pledge, with these they endowed the Congo Free State.

Stanley was one of the most conspicuous figures in this memorable Conference. He was not a debater, nor even a participant in the ordinary acceptation of the term, but he was questioned and cross-questioned on every matter relating to African climatology, geography, anthropology, mineralogy, geology, zoology, and resources, and many a point of controversy turned on his information or judgment.

The International Association, which has in its keeping the Free Congo State, ratified, through its President, Col. Strauch, the General Act of the Berlin Conference, and thus made it the Constitution of the new State in Central Africa. To the terms of this constitution the new State as well as the powers represented at the Conference stand bound as against the world.

The Company of the Congo, for laying and operating a railway around the Congo cataracts, was formed under French auspices in February 1887, and by June, the first and second contingent of engineers had left for the Congo. When completed, the staff consisted of one director, twelve engineers and one surgeon. A number109 of Houssas, from the Gold Coast, were engaged for the mechanical work, and the whole were divided into gangs, each with its special work to do, following each other along the route. The work went on speedily, and the final observation was taken at Stanley Pool, in November, 1888.

The proposed railway is to extend from a little below Vivi (Matadi), up to which large vessels may be taken, past the long series of cataracts to Stanley Pool. The total length of the line is to be 275 miles. On leaving Matadi it bends away from the Congo to the southeast, and keeps at a distance of several miles from the river till it approaches Stanley Pool. The first sixteen miles of the route will be attended with considerable difficulties, while the remainder of the line will be laid under exceptionally easy conditions. It is in the first sixteen miles that there will be any serious rock cutting and embankments, and the expense of the construction in this part is estimated at $11,548 a mile, while those on the remainder of the line will cost much less. In addition to this, there will be the cost of erecting aqueducts, building bridges, etc., all of which, it is stated, will be much greater in the first few miles, than subsequently. On the first few miles, also, there are a few steep inclines, but for the rest of the route the inclines are reported to be insignificant. There are only three bridges of any size—across the Mkesse, the Mpozo and the Kwilu—ranging from 250 feet to 340 feet; half a dozen others from 130 feet to 190 feet; with a number very much smaller. The fact is, the engineering difficulties in the construction of the proposed railway are insignificant. One of the chief considerations will be the climate. The route is situated within the rainiest region of Africa, and unless special precautions are taken the road, especially in the first section, will be liable to be swept away. From this point of view alone it is very doubtful if a railway suitable for the region could be built, so as to last, for less than $5,000,000.

The railway will be built on the narrow gauge system. The locomotives, when loaded, will weigh thirty tons, and drag at the rate of eleven miles per hour, an average of fifty tons. Thus one train per day each way would, if fully loaded, represent a total of 36,000 tons per annum—far in excess of any traffic likely to be available for110 many years. The railway, if built, would tap about 7,000 miles of navigable rivers.

Evidence of the strides forward made by the Congo Free State is just now furnished by Mr. Taunt, Commercial Agent of the United States at Boma, in his report for 1889 to the Department of State. He says in substance that within the last two years the Congo Free State has made a wonderful advancement. Here is now found, where for ages has been a jungle, inhabited only by wild beasts and wilder men, a well-equipped government. It has its full corps of officials, its courts of law, post offices, custom stations, a standing army of 1,500 men, well officered and drilled, a currency of gold, silver, and copper and all the appliances of a well-ordered government.

Boma, the seat of Government of the Congo Free State, is situated upon the Congo, about ninety miles from its mouth. Here are the residences of the Governor and of the lesser officials, and here are established the Courts and the Governmental departments. The army is well distributed at different stations along the banks of the river, and does excellent service in policing the stream against the incursions of the Arabs.

The port of entry of the Congo Free State, is Banana settlement at the mouth of the Congo. Four lines of steamers, British, German, Portuguese, and French, make frequent connection between the settlements and European ports. A Dutch line also runs a steamer to the Congo in infrequent trips. Cable communication is already established between Europe and two points easily accessible from the mouth of the Congo, and telegraphic connection will doubtless, soon be made with Banana.

All these arrangements are, of course, only auxiliaries to the great trading interests already established in the region of the Congo. In this trade the merchants of Rotterdam lead, having stations established for hundreds of miles both north and south of the river. During the last two years they have penetrated even to the Upper Congo and established trading stations at Stanley Falls, a point 1,500 miles distant from the mouth of the river. This Company employs a large force of white agents, and is largely interested in the raising of coffee, tobacco, cocoa, and other products of the tropics.

111

Holland alone has not been allowed to occupy this rich field. French, English, Portuguese, and Belgian capitalists have seen the advantages to be derived from this occupation of a new soil, and have not been slow to seize their opportunities. The last named, especially, are making preparations for the investment of a large amount of capital in this new and productive field.

In the Congo Free State, as thus opened to the trade of the world, is supplied a market in which American manufacturers should be able successfully to compete. There is a great demand for cotton goods, canned food, cutlery, lumber, and ready-built frame houses. Manchester has already monopolized the trade in cotton goods, which, in the further extension of trading posts, is capable of almost indefinite expansion. Birmingham and Sheffield supply brass wire, beads and cutlery, and England and France now supply the demand for canned foods. It would seem that the markets of the United States should supply a portion at least of this great demand for manufactured articles. In the items of lumber and canned foods surely we should be able to compete successfully with Europe, although it would seem probable that the establishment of saw mills upon the Congo should soon serve to do away with the demand for the first named of these articles.

The one desideratum, without which our manufacturers cannot hope to open up a prosperous trade with the Congo Free State, is a direct line of steamships from Boma to some American port. Without this, the added freights from this country to Europe for transshipment to the Congo would, it would seem, be an insurmountable bar to a profitable trade, however desirable such trade might be.

As has been already observed, in order to insure from the natives a loyal observance of their promises, Stanley made a treaty with each chief along the course of the Congo, to the general effect that, in consideration of certain quantities of cloth to be paid them monthly, they should abstain from acts of aggression and violence against their neighbors. The design of these treaties was to insure peace among the tribes themselves. Other agreements and treaties were also made, designed to secure such transfers of their sovereignty to the International Commission, as would enable it to organize the Congo Free State.

112

As these forms are novel, we give such of them as will enable a reader to understand the preliminary steps toward the formation of this new State.

We, the undersigned chiefs of Nzungi, agree to recognize the sovereignty of the African International Association, and in sign thereof, adopt its flag (blue, with a golden star). We declare we shall keep the road open and free of all tax and impost on all strangers arriving with the recommendation of the agents of the above Association.

All troubles between ourselves and neighbors, or with strangers of any nationality, we shall refer to the arbitration of the above Association.

We declare that we have not made any written or oral agreement with any person previous to this that would render this agreement null and void.

We declare that from henceforth we and our successors shall abide by the decision of the representatives of the Association in all matters affecting our welfare or our possessions, and that we shall not enter into any agreement with any person without referring all matters to the chief of Manyanga, or the chief of Léopoldville, or act in any manner contrary to the tenor or spirit of this agreement.

Witnesses:

Dualla (his x mark), of Chami, Pard.

Mwamba (his x mark), of Makitu’s.

Keekuru (his x mark), Chief of Nzungi.

Nseka (his x mark), Chief of Banza Mbuba.

Nzako (his x mark), of Banza Mbuba.

Insila Mpaka, (his x mark), of Banza Mbuba.

Isiaki (his x mark), Chief of Banza Mbuba.

Henry M. Stanley, commanding the Expedition on the Upper Congo, acting in the name and on behalf of the “African International113 Association,” and the king and chiefs Ngombi and Mafela, having met together in conference at South Manyanga, have, after deliberation, concluded the following treaty, viz:—

Article I.—The chiefs of Ngombi and Mafela recognize that it is highly desirable that the “African International Association” should, for the advancement of civilization and trade, be firmly established in their country. They therefore now, freely of their own accord, for themselves and their heirs and successors forever, do give up to the said Association the sovereignty and all sovereign and governing rights to all their territories. They also promise to assist the said Association in its work of governing and civilizing this country, and to use their influence with all the other inhabitants, with whose unanimous approval they make this treaty, to secure obedience to all laws made by said Association, and assist by labor or otherwise, any works, improvements, or expeditions, which the said Association shall cause at any time to be carried out in any part of the territories.

Art. II.—The chief of Ngombi and Mafela promise at all times to join their forces with those of the said Association, to resist the forcible intrusion or repulse the attacks of foreigners of any nationality or color.

Art. III.—The country thus ceded has about the following boundaries, viz: The whole of the Ngombi and Mafela countries, and any other tributary to them; and the chiefs of Ngombi and Mafela solemnly affirm that all this country belongs absolutely to them; that they can freely dispose of it; and that they neither have already, nor will on any future occasion, make any treaties, grants or sales of any parts of these territories to strangers, without the permission of the said Association. All roads and waterways running through this country, the right of collecting tolls on the same, and all game, fishing, mining, and forest rights, are to be the absolute property of the said Association, together with any unoccupied lands as may at any time hereafter be chosen.

Art. IV.—The “African International Association” agrees to pay to the chiefs of Ngombi and Mafela the following articles of merchandise, viz: One piece of cloth per month, to each of the undersigned chiefs, besides presents of cloth in hand; and the said114 chiefs hereby acknowledge to accept this bounty and monthly subsidy in full settlement of all their claims on the said Association.

Art. V.—The “African International Association” promises:—

1. To take from the natives of this ceded country no occupied or cultivated lands, except by mutual agreement.

2. To promote to its utmost the prosperity of the said country.

3. To protect its inhabitants from all oppression or foreign intrusion.

4. It authorizes the chiefs to hoist its flag; to settle all local disputes or palavers; and to maintain its authority with the natives.

Agreed to, signed and witnessed, this 1st day of April, 1884.

Henry M. Stanley,

Witnesses to the signatures:

E. Spencer Burns.

D. Lehrman.

Dualla.

Sonki (his x mark), Senior Chief of Ngombi.

Mamynpa (his x mark), Senior Chief of Mafela.

We, the undersigned chiefs of the districts placed opposite our names below, do hereby solemnly bind ourselves, our heirs and successors for the purpose of mutual support and protection, to observe the following articles:—

Article I.—We agree to unite and combine together, under the name and title of the “New Confederacy,”—that is, our respective districts, their homes and villages shall be embraced by one united territory, to be henceforth known as the New Confederacy.

Art. II.—We declare that our objects are to unite our forces and our means for the common defence of all the districts comprised within said territory; to place our forces and our means under such organization as we shall deem to be best for the common good of the people and the welfare of the Confederacy.

Art. III.—The New Confederacy may be extended by the admission of all such districts adjoining those mentioned before, when their chiefs have made application, and expressed their consent to the articles herein mentioned.

115

Art. IV.—We, the people of the New Confederacy, adopt the blue flag with the golden star in the centre for our banner.

Art. V.—The confederated districts guarantee that the treaties made between them shall be respected.

Art. VI.—The public force of the Confederacy shall be organized at the rate of one man out of every two men able to bear arms; of native or foreign volunteers.

Art. VII—The organization, the armament, equipment, subsistence of this force, shall be confided to the chief agent in Africa of the “Association of the Upper Congo.”

To the above articles, which are the result of various conventions held between district and district, and by which we have been enabled to understand the common wish, we, sovereign chiefs and others of the Congo district hereby append our names, pledging ourselves to adhere to each and every article.

[Names of Signers.]

The Berlin Conference.

The Berlin Conference which settled the contributions of the Congo Free State, and secured for it the recognition of the principal civilized nations of the world, commenced its sitting at half past two o’clock, on the 26th of February, 1885, under the Presidency of His Highness, Prince Bismarck. The Prince opened the closing session Conference by saying:—

“Our Conference, after long and laborious deliberations, has reached the end of its work, and I am glad to say that, thanks to your efforts and to that spirit of conciliation which had presided over our proceedings, a complete accord has been come to on every point of the programme submitted to us.

“The resolutions which we are about to sanction formally, secure to the trade of all nations free access to the interior of the African Continent. The guarantees by which the freedom of trade will be assured in the Congo basin, and the whole of the arrangements embodied in the rules for the navigation of the Congo and the Niger, are of such a nature as to afford the commerce and industry116 of all nations the most favorable conditions for their development and security.

“In another series of regulations you have shown your solicitude for the moral and material welfare of the native population, and we may hope that those principles, adopted in a spirit of wise moderation, will bear fruit, and help familiarize those populations with the benefit of civilization.

“The particular conditions under which are placed the vast regions you have just opened up to commercial enterprise, have seemed to require special guarantee for the preservation of peace and public order. In fact, the scourge of war would become particularly disastrous if the natives were led to take sides in the disputes between civilized Powers. Justly apprehensive of the dangers that such event might have for the interest of commerce and civilization, you have sought for the means of withdrawing a great part of the African Continent from the vicissitudes of general politics, in confining therein the rivalry of nations to peaceful emulation in trade and industry.

“In the same manner you have endeavored to avoid all misunderstanding and dispute to which fresh annexations on the African coast might give rise. The declaration of the formalities required before such annexation can be considered effective, introduces a new rule, into public law, which in its turn will remove many a cause of dissent and conflict from our international relations.

“The spirit of mutual good understanding which has distinguished your deliberations has also presided over the negotiations that have been carried on outside the Conference, with a view to arrange the difficult question of delimitation between the parties exercising sovereign rights in the Congo basin, and which, by their position, are destined to be the chief guardians of the work we are about to sanction.

“I cannot touch on this subject without bearing testimony to the noble efforts of His Majesty, the King of the Belgians, the founder of a work which now has gained the recognition of almost all the Powers, and which, as it grows, will render valuable service to the cause of humanity.

117

“Gentlemen, I am requested by His Majesty, the Emperor and King, my august Master, to convey to you his warmest thanks for the part each of you has taken in the felicitous accomplishment of the work of the Conference.

“I fulfil a final duty in gratefully acknowledging what the Conference owes to those of its members who undertook the hard work of the Commission, notably to the Baron de Courcel and to Baron Lambermont. I have also to thank the delegates for the valuable assistance they have rendered us, and I include in this expression of thanks the secretaries of the Conference, who have facilitated our deliberations by the accuracy of their work.

“Like the other labors of man, the work of this Conference may be improved upon and perfected, but it will, I hope, mark an advance in the development of international relations and form a new bond of union between the nations of the civilized world.”

Article I.—The trade of all nations shall be entirely free:

1. In all territories constituting the basin of the Congo and its affluents. The basin is bounded by the crests of adjoining basins—that is to say, the basins of the Niari, of the Ogowé, of the Shari, and of the Nile towards the north; by the line of the eastern ridge of the affluents of Lake Tanganyika towards the east; by the crests of the basin of the Zambesi and the Logé towards the south. It consequently embraces all the territories drained by the Congo and its affluents, comprising therein Lake Tanganyika and its eastern tributaries.

118

2. In the maritime zone extending along the Atlantic Ocean from the parallel of 2° 30′ south latitude to the mouth of the Logé. The northern limit will follow the parallel of 2° 30′ from the coast until it reaches the geographical basin of the Congo, avoiding the basin of the Ogowe, to which the stipulations of the present Act do not apply.

The southern limit will follow the course of the Logé up to the source of that river, and thence strike eastwards to its junction with the geographical basin of the Congo.

3. In the zone extending eastwards from the basin of the Congo as limited above herein, to the Indian Ocean, from the fifth degree of north latitude to the mouth of the Zambesi on the south; from this point the line of demarcation will follow the Zambesi up stream to a point five miles beyond its junction with the Shire, and continue by the line of the ridge dividing the waters which flow towards Lake Nyassa from the tributary waters of the Zambesi, until it joins the line of the water-parting between the Zambesi and the Congo. It is expressly understood that in extending to this eastern zone the principle of commercial freedom, the Powers represented at the Conference bind only themselves, and that the principle will apply to territories actually belonging to some independent and sovereign state only so far as that state consents to it. The Powers agree to employ their good officers among the established Governments on the African coast of the Indian Ocean, to obtain such consent, and in any case to ensure the most favorable conditions to all nations.

Article II.

All flags, without distinction of nationality, shall have free access to all the coast of the territories above enumerated; to the rivers which therein flow to the sea; to all the waters of the Congo and its affluents, including the lakes; to all the canals that in the future may be cut with the object of uniting the water-courses or the lakes comprised in the whole extent of the territories described in Article I. They can undertake all kinds of transport, and engage in maritime and fluvial coasting, as well as river navigation, on the same footing as the natives.

119

Article III.

Goods from every source imported into these territories, under any flag whatever, either by way of the sea, the rivers, or the land, shall pay no taxes except such as are equitable compensation for the necessary expenses of the trade, and which can meet with equal support from the natives and from foreigners of every nationality.

All differential treatment is forbidden both with regard to ships and goods.

Article IV.

Goods imported into these territories will remain free of all charges for entry and transit.

The Powers reserve to themselves, until the end of a period of twenty years, the right of deciding if freedom of entry shall be maintained or not.

Article V.

Every Power which exercises, or will exercise, sovereign rights in the territories above mentioned, cannot therein concede any monopoly or privilege of any sort in commercial matters.

Foreigners shall therein indiscriminately enjoy the same treatment and rights as the natives in the protection of their persons and goods, in the acquisition and transmission of their property, movable and immovable, and in the exercise of their professions.

Article VI.

PROVISIONS RELATIVE TO THE PROTECTION OF THE NATIVES, TO MISSIONARIES AND TRAVELERS, AND TO RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

All the Powers exercising sovereign rights, or having influence in the said territories, undertake to watch over the preservation of the native races, and the amelioration of the moral and material conditions of their existence, and to co-operate in the suppression of slavery, and, above all, of the slave trade; they will protect and encourage, without distinction of nationality or creed, all institutions and enterprises, religious, scientific, or charitable, established and organized for these objects, or tending to educate the natives and lead them to understand and appreciate the advantages of civilization.

120

Christian missionaries, men of science, explorers and their escorts and collections, to be equally the object of special protection.

Liberty of conscience and religious tolerations are expressly guaranteed to the natives as well as to the inhabitants and foreigners. The free public exercise of every creed, the right to erect religious buildings and to organize missions belonging to every creed, shall be subjected to no restriction or impediment whatever.

Article VII.

POSTAL ARRANGEMENTS.

The Convention of the Postal Union, revised at Paris, on June 1, 1878, shall apply to the said basin of the Congo.

The Powers which there exercise, or will exercise, rights of sovereignty or protectorate, undertake, as soon as circumstances permit, to introduce the necessary measures to give effect to the above resolutions.

Article VIII.

RIGHT OF SURVEILLANCE CONFERRED ON THE INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION FOR THE NAVIGATION OF THE CONGO.

In all parts of the territory embraced in the present Declaration, where no Power shall exercise the rights of sovereignty or protectorate, the International Commission for the navigation of the Congo, constituted in accordance with Article XVII, shall be intrusted with the surveillance of the application of the principles declared and established in this Declaration.

In all cases of difficulties arising, relative to the application of the principles established by the present Declaration, the Governments interested shall agree to appeal to the good offices of the International Commission, leaving to it the examination of the facts which have given rise to the difficulties.

In conformity with the principles of the right of natives as recognized by the signatory Powers, the slave trade being forbidden, and121 operations, which on land or sea supply slaves for the trade, being equally held to be forbidden, the Powers, which exercise or will exercise rights of sovereignty or influence in the territories forming the basin of the Congo, declare that these territories shall serve neither for the place of sale, nor the way of transit for traffic in slaves of any race whatsoever. Each of the Powers undertakes to employ every means that it can to put an end to the trade and to punish those who engage in it.

CHAPTER III.

DECLARATION RELATING TO THE NEUTRALITY OF THE TERRITORIES COMPRISED IN THE SAID BASIN OF THE CONGO.

Article X.

In order to give a new guarantee of security for commerce and industry, and to encourage by the maintenance of peace the development of civilization in the countries mentioned in Article I, or placed under the system of free trade, the High Parties signatory to the present Act, and those who will accept the same, hereby undertake to respect the neutrality of the territories or parts of the territories dependent on the said countries, comprising therein the territorial waters, for so long as the Powers, which exercise, or will exercise, the rights of sovereignty or protectorate over the territories, avail themselves of the right to proclaim them neutral, and fulfill the duties that neutrality implies.

Article XI.

In cases where a Power exercising the rights of sovereignty or protectorate in the countries as mentioned in Article I, and placed under the system of free trade, shall be involved in war, the High Parties signatory to the present Act, and those who will accept the same, hereby engage to use their good officers so that the territories belonging to that Power, and comprised within the said boundaries where free trade exists, shall, by the mutual consent of that Power and of the other, or others, of the belligerent parties, be held to be neutral, for so long as the war lasts, and considered as belonging to a non-belligerent state, the belligerent parties will122 then abstain from extending hostilities into such neutralized territories as well as from using them as a base for operations of war.

Article XII.

In the event of a serious disagreement originating on the subject, or arising within the limits of the territories mentioned in Article I and placed under the system of freedom of trade, between Powers signatory to the present Act, or Powers accepting the same, these Powers undertake, before appealing to arms, to have recourse to the mediation of one or several of the friendly Powers.

Under the said circumstances the said Powers reserve to themselves the option of proceeding to arbitration.

CHAPTER IV.

ACT OF THE NAVIGATION OF THE CONGO.

Article XIII.

The navigation of the Congo, without any exception of any branches or issues of the river, is to remain entirely free for merchant shipping of all nations in cargo or ballast, for the carriage of cargo or the carriage of passengers. It shall be in accordance with the provisions of the present Act of navigation, or of the regulations established in execution of the said Act.

In the exercise of that navigation, the subjects and flags of all nations, shall, under all circumstances, be treated on a footing of absolute equality, as well as regards the direct navigation from the open sea towards the interior parts of the Congo, and vice versa, as for grand and petty coasting, and boat and river work all along the river.

Consequently, throughout the Congo’s course and mouth, no distinction shall be made between the subjects of the river-side States, and those not bordering on the river, and no exclusive privilege of navigation shall be granted either to societies, corporations or individuals.

These provisions are recognized by the signatory Powers, as henceforth forming part of public international law.

123

Article XIV.

The navigation of the Congo shall not be subjected to any restraints or imposts which are not expressly stipulated for in the present Act. It shall not be burdened with any duties for harborage stoppages, depots, breaking bulk, or putting in through stress of weather.

Throughout the length of the Congo, ships and merchandise passing along the stream shall be subject to no transit dues, no matter what may be their origin or destination.

There shall not be established any tolls, marine or river, based on the fact of navigation alone, nor shall any duty be imposed on the merchandise on board the vessels. Such taxes and duties only shall be levied, as are of the character of remuneration for services rendered, to the said navigation. That is to say:—

(1) Taxes of the port for the actual use of certain local establishments, such as wharves, warehouses etc. The tariff of such taxes to be calculated on the expenses of construction and support of the said local establishments, and in its application to be independent of the origin of the vessels and their cargo.

(2) Pilotage dues on sections of the river, or where it appears necessary to establish stations of certificated pilots.

The tariff of these dues to be fixed and proportionate to the services rendered.

(3) Dues in respect of the technical and administrative expenses, imposed in the general interest of the navigation, and comprising light-houses, beacon, and buoyage dues.

Dues of the last description to be based on the tonnage of the ships, according to the papers on board, and to be conformable to the regulations in force on the Lower Danube.

The tariffs of the taxes and dues mentioned in the three preceding paragraphs are not to admit of any differential treatment, and are to be officially published in each port.

The Powers reserve to themselves the right, at the end of five years, by mutual agreement, to inquire into the above-mentioned tariffs in case they require revision.

Article XV.

The affluents of the Congo shall, under all circumstances, be subject to the same regulations as the river of which they are the tributaries.

124

The same regulations shall apply to the lakes and canals as to the rivers and streams in the territories defined in Article I, paragraphs 2 and 3.

Nevertheless the Powers of the International Commission of the Congo shall not extend over the said rivers, lakes and canals, unless with the assent of the States under whose sovereignty they are placed. It is also understood that for the territories mentioned in Article I, paragraph 3, the consent of the sovereign States on whom these territories are dependent remains reserved.

Article XVI.

The roads, railways, or lateral canals, which shall be established for the special object of supplementing the innavigability or imperfections of the water-way in certain sections of the Congo, of its affluents and other water-courses held to be like unto them by Article XV, shall be considered in their capacity as means of communication as dependencies of the river, and shall be likewise open to the traffic of all nations.

And as on the river, there shall be levied on these roads, railways and canals only tolls calculated on the expenses of construction, maintenance and administration, and on the profits due to the promoters.

In the assessment of these tolls, foreigners and the inhabitants of the respective territories shall be treated on a footing of perfect equality.

Article XVII.

An International Commission is instituted and appointed to ensure the execution of the provisions of the present Act of Navigation.

The Powers signatory to this Act, as well as those who afterwards accept it, shall at all times be represented on the said Commission, each by a delegate. No delegate shall have more than one vote, even in the event of his representing several governments.

This delegate shall be paid by his own government direct. The salaries and allowances of the agents and servants of the International Commission shall be charged to the proceeds of the dues levied conformably to Article XIV, paragraphs 2 and 3.

125

The amounts of said salaries and allowances, as well as the number, position and duties of the agents and servants, shall appear in the account rendered each year to the Governments represented on the International Commission.

Article XVIII.

The members of the International Commission, as well as the agents nominated by them, are invested with the privilege of inviolability in the exercise of their functions. The same guarantee shall extend to the offices, premises and archives of the Commission.

Article XIX.

The International Commission for the navigation of the Congo, shall be constituted as soon as five of the signatory Powers of the present General Act shall have nominated their delegates. Pending the constitution of the Commission, the nomination of the delegates shall be notified to the Government of the German Empire, by whom the necessary steps will be taken to manage the meeting of the Commission.

The Commission will draw up, without delay, the arrangements for the navigation, river police, pilotage and quarantine.

These regulations, as well as the tariffs, instituted by the Commission, before being put in force, shall be submitted to the approbation of the Powers represented on the Commission. The powers interested, shall declare their opinion therein with the least possible delay.

Offences against these regulations shall be dealt with by the agents of the International Commission, where it exercises its authority direct, and in other places by the river-side Powers.

In case of abuse of power or injustice on the part of an agent or servant of the International Commission, the individual considering himself injured in his person or his rights, shall apply to the consular agent of his nation. He will inquire into his complaint, and if prima facié, he finds it reasonable, he shall be entitled to report it to the Commission. On his initiative, the Commission, represented by three or fewer of its members, shall join with him in an inquiry touching the conduct of its agent or servant. If the Consular126 agent considers the decision of the Commission as objectionable in law, he shall report to the Government, who shall refer to the Powers represented on the Commission, and invite them to agree as to the instructions to be given to the Commission.

The International Commission of the Congo, entrusted under the terms of Article XVII, with insuring the execution of the present Act of Navigation, shall specially devote its attention to:—

(1.) The indication of such works as are necessary for insuring the navigability of the Congo, in accordance with the requirements of international trade.

On sections of the river where no Power exercises rights of sovereignty, the international Commission shall itself take the measures necessary for insuring the navigability of the stream.

On sections of the river occupied by a sovereign Power, the International Commission shall arrange with the river-side authority.

(2.) The fixing of the tariff for pilotage, and of the general tariff of navigation dues, provided for in the second and third paragraphs of Article XIV.

The tariffs mentioned in the first paragraph of Article XIV, shall be settled by the territorial authority within the limits provided for in that article.

The collection of these dues shall be under the care of the international or territorial authority, on whose account they have been established.

3. The administration of the revenues accruing from the application of the foregoing paragraph 2.

4. The surveillance of the quarantine establishment instituted in compliance with Article XXIV.

5. The nomination of agents for the general service of the navigation and its own particular servants.

The appointment of sub-inspectors shall belong to the territorial authority over sections occupied by a Power, and to the International Commission over the other sections of the river.

The river-side Power will notify to the International Commission the nomination of its sub-inspectors which it shall have appointed, and this Power shall pay their salaries.

127

In the exercise of its duties, as defined and limited above, the International Commission shall not be subject to the territorial authority.

In the execution of its task, the International Commission shall have recourse, in case of need, to the vessels of war belonging to the signatory Powers of this Act, and to those which in the future shall accept it, if not in contravention of the instructions which shall have been given to the commanders of those vessels by their respective governments.

The vessels of war of the Powers signatory to the present Act which enter the Congo are exempt from the payment of the navigation dues provided for in paragraph 3 of Article XIV; but they shall pay the contingent pilotage dues as well as the harbor dues, unless their intervention has been demanded by the International Commission or its agents under the terms of the preceding Article.

With the object of meeting the technical and administrative expenses which it may have to incur, the International Commission, instituted under Article XVII, may in its own name issue loans secured on the revenues assigned to the said Commission.

The resolutions of the Commission regarding the issue of a loan must be carried by a majority of two-thirds of its votes. It is understood that the Governments represented on the Commission shall not, in any case, be considered as assuming any guarantee nor contracting any engagement or joint responsibility with regard to said laws, unless special treaties are concluded amongst them to that effect.

The proceeds of the dues specified in the third paragraph of Article XIV shall be in the first place set aside for the payment of interest and the extinction of said loans, in accordance with the agreements entered into with the lenders.

At the mouths of the Congo there shall be founded, either at the initiation of the river-side Powers, or by the intervention of the128 International Commission, a quarantine establishment, which shall exercise control over the vessels entering and departing.

It shall be decided later on by the Powers, if any, and under what conditions, sanitary control shall be exercised over vessels navigating the river.

Article XXV.

The provisions of the present Act of Navigation shall remain in force during times of war. Consequently, the navigation of all nations, neutral and belligerent, shall at all times be free for the purposes of trade on the Congo, its branches, its affluents, and its mouths, as well as on the territorial waters fronting the mouths of the river.

The traffic shall likewise remain free, notwithstanding the state of war, on its roads, railways, lakes and canals, as mentioned in Articles XV and XVI.

The only exception to this principle shall be in cases in connection with the transport of articles intended for a belligerent, and held in accordance with the law of nations to be contraband of war.

All the works and establishments instituted in execution of the present Act, particularly the offices of collection and their funds, the same as the staff permanently attached to the service of such establishments, shall be treated as neutral, and shall be respected and protected by the belligerents.

The navigation of the Niger, without excepting any of the branches or issues, is, and shall continue free for merchant vessels of all nations, in cargo or ballast, conveying goods or conveying passengers. It shall be conducted in accordance with the provisions of the present Act of Navigation, and with the regulations established in execution of the same Act.

In the exercise of that navigation, the subjects and flags of every nation shall be treated, under all circumstances, on a footing of perfect129 equality, as well in the direct navigation from the open sea to the interior ports of the Niger, and vice versa, as for grand and petty coasting, and in boat and river work throughout its course.

Consequently throughout the length and mouths of the Niger, there shall be no distinction between the subjects of the riverside States, and those of States not bordering on the river, and there shall be conceded no exclusive privilege of navigation to any society, or corporation or individual.

These provisions are recognised by the signatory Powers as henceforth forming part of public international law,

Article XXVII.

The navigation of the Niger shall not be subjected to any obstacle nor duty based only on the fact of the navigation.

It shall not be subject to any duties for harborage, stoppages, depots, breaking bulk, or putting into port through stress of weather.

Throughout the length of the Niger, vessels and goods passing along the stream shall not be subject to any transit dues, whatsoever may be their origin or destination.

There shall be established no sea or river toll, based on the sole fact of navigation, nor any duty on the goods which happen to be on board the ships. Only such taxes and dues shall be levied as are of the nature of a payment for services rendered to the said navigation. The tariff of these taxes or dues shall admit of no differential treatment.

Article XXVIII.

The affluents of the Niger shall in every respect be subject to the same regulations as the river of which they are the tributaries.

Article XXIX.

Roads, railways or lateral canals, which shall be established with the special object of supplementing the innavigability or other imperfections of the waterway, in certain sections of the course of the Niger, its affluents, its branches, and its issues, shall be considered, in their capacity of means of communication, as dependencies of the river and shall be open similarly to the traffic of all nations,

130

As on the river, there shall be levied on the roads, railways and canals, only such tolls as are calculated on the expenses of construction, maintenance and administration, and on the profits due to the promoters.

In the assessment of these tolls, foreigners and the inhabitants of the respective territories, shall be treated on a footing of perfect equality.

Article XXX.

Great Britain undertakes to apply the principles of freedom of navigation annunciated in Articles XXVI., XXVII., XXVIII., XXIX., to so much of the waters of the Niger and its affluent branches and issues as are or shall be under her sovereignty or protectorate.

The regulations she will draw up for the safety and control of the navigation, shall be designed to facilitate, as much as possible, the passage of merchant shipping.

It is understood that nothing in the engagements thus accepted shall be interpreted as hindering or likely to hinder Great Britain from making any regulations whatever as to the navigation which shall not be contrary to the spirit of such engagements.

Great Britain undertakes to protect foreign traders of every nation engaged in commerce in those parts of the course of the Niger, which are or shall be under her sovereignty or protectorate, as if they were her own subjects, provided that such traders conform to the regulations which are or shall be established in accordance with the foregoing.

Article XXXI.

France accepts, under the same reservations and identical terms, the obligations set forth in the preceding articles, so far as they apply to the waters of the Niger, its affluents, its branches and its issues, which are or shall be under her sovereignty or protectorate.

Article XXXII.

Each of the other Signatory Powers similarly undertake, that they will similarly act in such cases as they exercise or may hereafter exercise, rights of sovereignty or protectorate, in any part of the Niger, its affluent branches or issues.

131

Article XXXIII.

The provisions of the present Act of Navigation shall remain in force during times of war. Consequently, the navigation of all nations, neutral or belligerant, shall at all times be free for the purpose of trade on the Niger, its branches, affluents, mouths and issues, as well as on the territorial waters fronting the mouths and issues of the river.

The traffic shall likewise remain free, notwithstanding the state of war, on its roads, its railways and canals mentioned in Article XXIX.

The only exception to this principle shall be in cases in connection with the transport of articles intended for a belligerent, and held, in accordance with the laws of nations, to be contraband of war.

The Power, which in future takes possession of a territory on the coast of the African Continent, situated outside of its actual possessions, or which, having none there, has first acquired them, and the power which assumes a protectorate, shall accompany either act by a notification addressed to the other Powers signatory to the present Act, so as to enable them to protest against the same, if there exist any grounds for their doing so.

Article XXXV.

The Powers signatory to the present Act, recognize the obligation to insure in the territories occupied by them on the coasts of the African Continent, the existence of an adequate authority to enforce respect for acquired rights, and for freedom of trade and transit wherever stipulated.

132

The Powers signatory to the present general Act reserve to themselves the right of eventually, by mutual agreement, introducing therein modifications or improvements, the utility of which has been shown by experience.

Article XXXVII.

The Powers who may not have signed the present Act shall accept its provisions by a separate Act.

The adhesion of each Power shall be notified in the usual diplomatic manner to the Government of the German Empire, and by it to those of all the signatory and adherent States.

The adhesion shall imply the full right of acceptance of all the obligations, and admission to all the advantages stipulated for in the present general Act.

Article XXXVIII.

The present general Act shall be ratified with as short a delay as possible, and in no case shall that delay exceed a year.

It shall come into force for each Power on the date of its ratification by that Power.

Meanwhile the Powers signatory to the present Act bind themselves to adopt no measure that shall be contrary to the provisions of the said Act.

Each Power shall send its ratification to the Government of the German Empire, which undertakes to ratify the same to all the signatory Powers of the present general Act.

The ratifications of all the Powers shall remain deposited in the archives of the Government of the German Empire. When all the ratifications shall have been produced, a deed of deposit shall be drawn up in a protocol, which shall be signed by the Representatives of all the Powers that have taken part in the Berlin Conference, and a certified copy of it shall be sent to each of those Powers.

133

In consideration of which, the respective Plenipotentiaries have signed the present general Act, and hereto affix their seals.

Done at Berlin, February 26th, 1885.

Inasmuch as the Congo Free State starts with the sanction of all the leading powers of civilization, it assumes a dignity, at its very inception, which attaches to no other African dynasty. It is, or ought to be, beyond those jealousies which have torn, and are tearing, other possessions in Africa to pieces, and retarding their colonization and development. Further, the terms of its creation ought to assure it the united sympathy and combined energy of its patrons and founders, and these ought to be invincible within its magnificent boundaries for overcoming every obstacle to permanent sovereignty and commercial, industrial and moral development.

But the spirit of comity, which has made a Congo Free State possible, might as well have rescued Equatorial Africa, from ocean to ocean, from the rapacious grasp of the jealous and contending powers of Europe. True, something like a free belt has been recognized, extending to within a few miles of the Eastern coast, and intended to secure an outlet for products which can be more advantageously marketed in that direction; yet this is of no avail against projects designed to appropriate and control, politically and commercially, the immense sweep of country between the Congo Free State and Indian Ocean; it is rather an incentive to these powers to make haste in their work of appropriation and reduction, and they are at it with an earnestness which savors of the days when two Americas furnished the flesh for picking, and the bone for angry contention. Great Britain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, are in clash about East African areas, protectorates, sovereignties, commercial interests, with the likelihood of further trouble, and such deep complications as arms only can simplify and relieve.

Looking but a little into the future, one can catch a glimpse of the fate in store for East Africa. It is to be the grand political offset to the Congo Free State. This has been resolved upon by Great Britain, and its outlines are already mapped in her foreign policy. As matters stand, there is nothing to prevent the consummation of her designs. She has virtual possession of the Eastern coast from Cape Colony to the mouth of the Zambezi. She has Egypt in her134 grasp, which means the Nile valley from Alexandria to the head lakes, Victoria, Albert and Edward Nyanza, with their drainage systems.

On the ocean side the power of the Sultan has been already limited to Zanzibar and adjacent islands, and it is now like the last flicker of a wasted candle. On the Zambezi, and north of it, up the Shire to Lake Nyassa, come the claims of Portugal. Portugal is weak, and a poor colonizer at that. She can be ousted by diplomacy or sat down upon by force. The German and Italian interests will eventually blend with those of Great Britain, or shape themselves into well-defined states, pledged to peace and anxious to be let alone.

England is well equipped for this gigantic undertaking. She has an extensive South African and Egyptian experience. She has her experience in India, which she need but repeat in Africa to realize her dreams, or at least achieve more than would be possible with any other power. And then India is over-populated. It might be that thousands, perhaps millions, of her people would swarm to African shores, where they would find a climate not unlike their own, and resources which they could turn to ready account. At any rate, England could enlist in India an army for the occupation of East Africa. Her Indian contingent in Egypt answered an excellent purpose, and redeemed the otherwise fatal campaign toward Khartoum.

The business of establishing an internal economy in this new empire is easier for Great Britain than any other country. Her prestige means as much with native tribes as with the petty sovereignties of Europe, or the islands of the Pacific. Her shows of force are impressive, her methods of discipline effective. In the midst of opposition her hand is hard and heavy. A string of fortifications from the Zambezi to Cairo, with native garrisons, under control of English army officers, would inspire the natives with fear and assure their allegiance. The tact of her traders and the perseverance of her missionaries would bring about all else that might be necessary to create a thrifty and semi-Christian State.

Our posterity will watch with interest the development of Africa through the agency of its Congo Free State on the west, and its135 Imperial State on the east; the one contributing to the glory of all civilized nations, the other to that of a single nation; the one an enlargement of sovereignty, the other a concentration of it. One has for its inspiration the genius of freedom, the other the genius of force. One is a dedication to civilizing influences, the other is a seizure and appropriation in the name of civilization. We can conceive of the latter, under the impetus of patronage and of concentrated energy, supplemented by arbitrary power, taking the lead for a time, and maintaining it till its viceroyalties become centers of corruption and its subjects helpless peons. But in the end, the former will bound to the front, lifted by internal forces, which are free and virile, buoyed by a spirit of self-helpfulness and independence, sustained from without by universal sympathy and admiration, and from within by beings who have voluntarily consented and contributed to their progress and enlightenment, and are proud participants in their own institutions.

The historian of a century hence will confirm or deny the above observations. If he confirms them, he will add that long experience proved the inutility of forcing our governments, usages and peoples on those of Africa without modification, and to the utter subordination of those which were native; but that, on the contrary, the best civilizing results were obtained by recognition of native elements, their gradual endowment with sovereignty, their elevation to the trusts which commerce and industry impose. It is time that our boasted civilization should show a conquest which is not based on the inferiority, wreck and extermination of the races it meets with in its course. It has careered around the globe in temperate belts, stopping for nothing that came in its way, justifying everything by its superiority. Nature calls a halt in mid-Africa, and practically says: “The agents of civilization are already here. Use them, but do not abuse. You can substitute no other that will prove either permanent or profitable.”

136

FRONT. TIPPOO TIB’S GRAND CANOES GOING DOWN THE CONGO.

137

REAR. TIPPOO TIB’S GRAND CANOES GOING DOWN THE CONGO.

138

HENRY M. STANLEY, FROM A LATE PORTRAIT.

139

THE RESCUE OF EMIN.

In the fall of 1886, Stanley was summoned from the United States by the King of Belgium to come and pay him a visit. That monarch seems to have remembered what others had forgotten, that a European adventurer and a European project lay buried somewhere beneath the Equator and in the very heart of the “Dark Continent.” Stanley responded to the King’s invitation, and out of the interview which followed sprang a reason for his late and most memorable journey across equatorial Africa. But it was deemed wise to interest other agencies, and so the British Geographical Society was consulted and induced to lend a helping hand. In order to further nationalize the projected journey a commission was formed under whose auspices it was to take place. This enlisted for the moment the sympathies of the German peoples, for the lost one was a German. So grew up what came to be known as the “Emin Bey Relief Committee,” with head-quarters at London, and with Sir William Mackinnon as its secretary.

And now, who is Emin Bey, or as he appears most frequently, Emin Pasha? What is there about his disappearance in the wilds of Africa that makes knowledge of his whereabouts and his rescue so desirable? What, of more than humanitarian moment, can attach to a journey planned as this one was? These questions are momentous, for they involve far more than mere men or mere projects of rescue. They involve the aims and ambitions of empires, the policies of dynasties, the destinies of future African States and peoples. That these things are true will appear from the answers which history makes to the above queries—a history which is aglow with events and attractive in its details, however little it may serve140 to reveal of the present plans of those who contribute most to its making. Emin Pasha was born in the Austrian province of Silesia, and the town of Opplen, in 1840, the same year as Henry M. Stanley. He studied medicine at Breslau, Königsberg and Berlin, and entered upon the world as a regular M.D. with a diploma from the Berlin University. Sometime before the Russian-Turkish war he went to Constantinople and entered the Turkish army with the title of Bey, or Colonel. A taste for travel took him to the East where he acquired the oriental languages. On his return we find him attached to the Imperial Ministry of Turkey, but only during part of the incumbency of Midhat Pasha, who, finding his ministry opposed to his ultra hatred of Russia, dismissed it.

Up to this time he was known as Dr. Eduard (Edward) Schnitzer, that being the name of his parents, with the prefix of Colonel, or Bey as an affix. This was all as to outside knowledge of him. On his dismissal from the Court at Constantinople he fled to Asia, and after many wanderings turned up at Suakim and finally at Khartoum, in Africa, where he made the acquaintance of that ill-starred and fatalistic English adventurer, General Gordon, then Governor General of the Soudan, under English auspices. The General finding him an adventurer of attainments made him a storekeeper of his army, and upon ascertaining that he was an M.D., promoted him to the position of surgeon. In 1877 he was a practitioner of medicine at Lado, in southern Soudan. He afterwards became Surgeon-General of Gordon’s staff. In this capacity he served for four years. During this time he was engaged in making many valuable scientific researches and collections and in contributing interesting papers to European learned societies. He was also of great use to Gordon, who sent him to Uganda and Unyoro on diplomatic missions.

In 1878, when General Gordon was made Governor-General of the Soudan by the British Government, he raised Col. Schnitzer to the rank of Governor of the province of Hat el Seva in Southern Soudan. By this time the Mahdi had risen in the Soudan, and was confronting Gordon with his Mohammedan followers. To identify himself more fully with the Mohammedan people among which he had to live, Col. Schnitzer abandoned his German name and took the Arabic one of Emin (the faithful one) and the full title of Pasha142 (General or Governor). The scheme on the part of Gordon was to seize and hold the equatorial provinces of the Soudan, in the rear of the Mahdi’s forces, and thus introduce a military menace as well as make a political and moral diversion in favor of the cause he represented. Gordon gave him part of his own army, augmented by a large native force, and with this Emin Pasha took possession of his provinces far toward the Equator, and abutting on the central lake system of the continent.

EMIN PASHA IN HIS TENT.

For a time all went well with him. He proved a most indefatigable traveler, and showed special fitness to govern. He was familiar with the language of the Turks, Arabs, Germans, French and Italians, and acquired readily the dialects of the heathen tribes. On every side he displayed suavity, tact and genius. In 1879, he made an excursion to the western shore land of the Mwutan, which till then had not been visited by white men. In 1880 he visited Makralla-land, and planted many trading stations, thus enlarging his territory geographically and politically. In this expedition he located many important rivers, chief of which was the Kibali. In 1881 he pushed his explorations westward into the land of the powerful Niam Niams, and southward into the lands of the Monbuttus, which tribes are types of the best physical and political strength in that part of Africa, west of the Nile sources.

Thus Emin kept on increasing the extent and importance of his territory, and it came to be recognized as the best governed of any in the vast undefined domain of the Soudan. He found it infested with Arab slave-dealers, who practiced all the barbarities of their kind, and much of his time was occupied in suppressing the nefarious traffic. He became the recognized foe of those who penetrated his domains to barter in human flesh, or if cupidity dictated, to burn, pillage and kill, in order that they might freight their dhwos with trophies of their cruelty.

Though undefined east and west, his kingdom came to recognize Lado as its northern capital, and Wadelai, on Lake Albert Nyanza, as its southern. The work of organizing his territory extended from 1878 to 1882. He had practically driven out the slave-traders and converted a deficient revenue into a surplus for his government, conducting everything on the basis laid down by his superior, General143 Gordon, and carrying out with the most marked success the plans of that noble enthusiast. He was fast making his territory semi-civilized when the Mahdi arose, led his hosts northward, massacred the army of Gordon, and finally made himself master of Khartoum and a great part of the Soudan. This was in 1882. The Egyptian garrisons throughout the Southern Soudan were then abandoned to their fate, and the last attempt to save Khartoum ended with the death of General Gordon.

During the years of bloodshed that followed, Emin remained at his post, his provinces entirely cut off from the world, and he himself neglected and left entirely to his own resources. He held at the time about four thousand native and Egyptian troops under his command. He was completely surrounded by hostile tribes, but it is generally admitted that if he had chosen to leave behind him the thousands of helpless women and children and abandon the province to the merciless cruelties of the slave traders, he could easily have effected his escape either to the Congo or to the Zanzibar coast. But he determined to stay and to keep the equatorial provinces for civilization, if possible.

The great work done by this brave and indefatigable German cannot be told here in detail. But he organized auxiliary forces of native soldiers; he was constantly engaged in warfare with surrounding tribes; he garrisoned a dozen river stations lying long distances apart. His ammunition ran low and he lacked the money needed for paying his small army; but in the face of manifold difficulties and dangers he maintained his position, governed the country well, and taught the natives how to raise cotton, rice, indigo and coffee, and also how to weave cloth and to make shoes, candles, soap and many articles of commerce. He vaccinated the natives by the thousand in order to stamp out small-pox; he opened the first hospital known in that quarter; he established a regular post-route, with forty offices; he made important geographical discoveries in the basin of the Albert Nyanza Lake, and in many ways demonstrated his capacity for governing barbarous races by the methods and standards of European civilization.

Murder, war and slavery were made things of the past, so that at last “the whole country became so safe that only for the wild beasts144 in the thickets, a man could have gone from one end of the province to the other, armed with nothing more than a walking-stick.” A German writer said of him at the time: “In his capital, Lado, where Dr. Schnitzer earlier resided, he arose every day before the sun. His first work was to visit the hospitals and care for the health of the people and the troops. After a day devoted to executive labors, a great part of the night would be spent in writing those essays on anthropology, ethnology, geography, botany, and the languages of the people dwelling in his province which have made his name famous as a scientific explorer.”

Tn 1885 Emin had ten fortified stations along the Upper Nile, the most northern one being Lado, and the most southern one Wadelai. The latter place he made his capital for some time. His command at Wadelai then consisted of 1500 soldiers, ten Egyptians and fifteen negro officers. The rest were at the various stations on the Nile. He had ammunition to hold out until the end of 1886, and longer, he wrote, “if the wild tribes did not make the discovery that he would be then entirely out of it.” In 1887 he wrote: “I am still holding out, and will not forsake my people.” After that, letters were received from him in which he described his position as hopeful. In one of the last of these letters he wrote:

“The work that Gordon paid for with his blood I will strive to carry on according to his intentions and his spirit. For twelve long years I have striven and toiled and sown the seeds for future harvests, laid the foundation stones for future buildings. Shall I now give up the work because a way may soon open to the coast? Never!”

The successes of the Mahdi had isolated him entirely on the north. To the west and south were powerful tribes which, though not unfriendly, could offer him no avenue of escape. To the east were still more powerful peoples, once friendly but now imbued with the Mahdi’s hatred of white men and their commercial and political objects. Chief of these were the Uganda, whose King, Mtesa, had died in 1884, and had been succeeded by his son Mwanga, a thorough Mahdist and bitter against European innovation. Emin was therefore a prisoner. This was known in Europe in 1886, but how critical his situation was, no one could tell. It was natural to regard it as146 perilous, and it was hoped that the Egyptian Government would take measures for his relief. The Cairo Government did nothing except to give him the title of Pasha and to offer £10,000 to any expedition that might be sent to him. Many relief expeditions were then planned, but nothing came of them till the one at whose head Stanley was placed took shape.

NIAM-NIAM VILLAGE.

Where should such an expedition go? What should it do? It did not take long for the “wizard of equatorial travel” to decide. Here might be opened a whole volume of controversy as to whether Stanley’s mission in search of Emin was really humanitarian or not. The Germans who had the greatest interest in the safety of their fellow countryman, refused to look on the expedition as other than a scheme to rid the Southern Soudan of a Teutonic ruler in the interest of England. They regarded Emin as abundantly able to take care of himself for an indefinite time, and the event of his withdrawal as amounting to a confession that Germanic sovereignty was at an end in the lake regions of Central Africa. It cannot be ascertained now that Stanley entered upon the expedition for the relief of Emin Pasha in other than a humanitarian spirit, though he was backed by English capital. It is fair to presume that since he was invited to the ordeal by the Belgian King, whose exchequer was responsible for the greater part of the outlay, he went with perfectly disinterested motives. But be that as it may, he felt the delicacy of his task and, after having discovered the lost one, his interviews with him are models of diplomatic modesty and patience.

On being placed in charge of the expedition by its projectors, Stanley naturally chose the Congo route into the heart of Africa, because he was familiar with it by his recent efforts to found the Congo Free State, and because it would give him a chance to review and refresh his labors in that behalf. If all things were as he had left them, he knew that a water-way traversable by steam was open for him to a point on the Congo opposite the habitation of Emin and distant but a few hundred miles. So May 11, 1887, found Stanley on the west coast of Africa ready to start inland. He did not collect his force and equipments at the mouth of the Congo, but made his way around the cataracts to Stanley Pool. There, at the station called Kinchassa everything was gathered for the up-river147 journey. Thence, the expedition embarked in three steamers, Le Stanley, the large stern-wheeler belonging to the Congo Free State, towing the Florida which had just been put together by sections. Le Stanley and Florida had on board about 300 men, mostly trained and armed natives, among whom were four English officers and several scientific gentlemen, besides a cargo of ammunition, merchandise and pack animals. The next steamer was the Henry Reid, a launch belonging to the American Baptist Missionary Union, and kindly loaned to Stanley for the purpose of transporting part of his force and equipments from Stanley Pool to his proposed camp on the Aruwimi. The other steamer was the Peace, placed at Stanley’s disposal by the Rev. Holman Bentley, of the English Baptist Missionary Society, and of which a young missionary named Whitely had charge.

On their passage up the Congo, and after a sail of ten days a camp was formed at Bolobo, and left in charge of Captain Ward, who was deemed a proper person for the command on account of his previous knowledge of the natives, always inclined to be more or less hostile at that point. Captain Ward had met Stanley below Stanley Pool and while he was performing his tedious journey around the cataracts. He thus describes the expedition on its march at the time of the meeting.

In the front of Stanley’s line was a tall Soudanese warrior bearing the Gordon Bennett yacht flag. Behind the soldier, and astride a magnificent mule, came the great explorer. Following immediately in his rear were his personal servants, Somalis, with their braided waistcoats and white robes. Then came Zanzibaris with their blankets, water-bottles, ammunition-belts and guns; stalwart Soudanese soldiery, with great hooded coats, their rifles on their backs, and innumerable straps and leather belts around their bodies; Wagawali porters, bearing boxes of ammunition, to which were fastened axes, shovels and hose lines, as well as their little bundles of clothing, which were invariably rolled up in old threadbare blankets. At one point the whale-boat was being carried in sections, suspended from poles, which were each borne by four men. Donkeys laden with sacks of rice were next met, and a little further back were the women of Tippoo Tib’s harem, their faces concealed and149 their bodies draped in gaudily-colored clothes. Here and there was an English officer. A flock of goats next came along, and then the form of Tippoo Tib came into view as he strutted majestically along in his flowing Arab robes and large turban, carrying over his right shoulder a jewel-hilted sword, the emblem of office from the Sultan of Zanzibar. Behind him followed several Arab sheiks, whose bearing was quiet and dignified.

CUTTING WOOD AT NIGHT FOR THE STEAMERS.

It was not the intention to hurry over the long stretch of water between Stanley Pool and the Aruwimi, but to make the trip by easy stages. Yet it was a trip involving great labor, for there being no coal, and the steamers being small, the work of wood-cutting had to be done every night. The launches required as much wood for twelve hours steaming as thirty or forty men, laboring at night, could cut with their axes and cross-cut saws. In some portions of the upper Congo where the shores are swampy for miles in width, the men were often compelled to wade these long distances before striking the rising forest land, and of course they had to carry the wood back to the steamers over the same tedious and dangerous routes.

As has been stated, Stanley’s objective was the mouth of the large river Aruwimi, which enters the Congo, a short distance below Stanley Falls, in Lat. 1° N., and whose general westward direction led him to think that by following it he would get within easy marches of Lake Albert Nyanza and thus into Emin’s dominions.

On the arrival of the expedition at the mouth of the Aruwimi, an armed camp was formed at Yambungi and left in charge of the unfortunate Major Barttelot, and here a conference was awaited with the dual-hearted Arab, Tippoo Tib, whom Stanley had recognized as ruler at Nyangwe, on the Congo, above Stanley Falls, and who was bound to him by the most solemn treaties. The wily chieftain came up in due time, and the interview was such as to engender serious doubts of his further friendship, notwithstanding his protestations.

INTERVIEW OF MAJOR BARTTELOT AND MR. JAMESON WITH TIPPOO TIB.

The occasion was a palaver, at the request of Major Barttelot, with a view to obtain some definite understanding as to the providing of the Manyema porters whom Tippoo Tib had promised Stanley he would supply in order that the rearguard might follow151 him up from the Aruwimi River to Wadelai. How the porters did not come up to time; how the commander of the rearguard was hampered with new conditions as to weight when the men did appear; and how the dreadful business ended in the assassination of Major Barttelot and the breaking up of the camp, will appear further on. The death of Mr. Jameson soon afterwards, at Ward’s Camp, on the Congo, a distressing sequel to the former tragedy, was in somber tone with the reports of Stanley’s death which came filtering through the darkness at about the same time. The cloud which fell upon the Aruwimi camp seemed to spread its dark mantle over the entire expedition. Mr. Werner, in his interesting volume “A Visit to Stanley’s Rear Guard,” gives a characteristic sketch of the Arab chief; and Mr. Werner was the engineer in charge of the vessel which took Major Barttelot part of the way on his last journey to the Falls. “After the light complexion of the other Arabs,” he says, “I was somewhat surprised to find Mr. Tippoo Tib as black as any negro I had seen; but he had a fine well-shaped head, bald at the top, and a short, black, thick beard thickly strewn with white hairs. He was dressed in the usual Arab style, but more simply than the rest of the Arab chiefs, and had a broad, well-formed figure. His restless eyes gave him a great resemblance to the negro’s head with blinking eyes in the electric advertisements of somebody’s shoe polish which adorned the walls of railway-stations some years ago—and earned him the nickname of ‘Nubian blacking.’”

AN AMBUSCADE.

In June, 1887, Stanley started on his ascent of the unknown Aruwimi, and through a country filled with natives prejudiced against him by the Arab traders and friends of the Mahdi. His force now comprised 5 white men and 380 armed natives. His journey proved tedious and perilous in the extreme, and though he persevered in the midst of obstacles for two months, he was still 400 miles from Albert Nyanza. It was now found that the river route was impracticable for the heavier boats. At this point their troubles thickened. The natives proved hostile, and ingenious in their means of opposing obstructions to the further progress of the expedition. They refused to contribute provisions, and starvation stared the travelers in the face. For weeks their only food was wild fruit153 and nuts. To forage was to invite death, and to engage in open war was to court annihilation. Disease broke out, and it must have swept them all away but for the precautions which Stanley took to head off its ravages. As it was, the number was greatly reduced, and the men were weak, emaciated, in a state of panic, amid surrounding dangers and without spirit for further trials. Writing of this critical period, his letters say:

“What can you make of this, for instance? On August 17, 1887, all the officers of the rear column are united at Yambuya. They have my letter of instructions before them, but instead of preparing for the morrow’s march, to follow our track, they decide to wait at Yambuya, which decision initiates the most awful season any community of men ever endured in Africa or elsewhere.

“The results are that three-quarters of their force die of slow poison. Their commander is murdered and the second officer dies soon after of sickness and grief. Another officer is wasted to a skeleton and obliged to return home. A fourth is sent to wander aimlessly up and down the Congo, and the survivor is found in such a fearful pest-hole that we dare not describe its horrors.

“On the same date, 150 miles away, the officer of the day leads 333 men of the advance column into the bush, loses the path and all consciousness of his whereabouts, and every step he takes only leads him further astray. His people become frantic; his white companions, vexed and irritated by the sense of the evil around them, cannot devise any expedient to relieve him. They are surrounded by cannibals and poison tipped arrows thin their numbers.

“Meantime I, in command of the river column, am anxiously searching up and down the river in four different directions; through forests my scouts are seeking for them, but not until the sixth day was I successful in finding them.”

Having now brought his different marching columns closer together, and loaded his sick in light canoes, he started on, intercepted continually by wild native raiders who inflicted considerable loss on his best men, who had to bear the brunt of fighting as well as the fatigue of paddling. Soon progress by the river became too tedious and difficult, and orders were given to cast off the canoes.154 The land course now lay along the north bank of the Itura, amid dense forests, and through the despoiled lands which had been a stamping ground for Ugarrowa and Kilingalango raiders. No grass land, with visions of beef, mutton and vegetables, were within a hundred miles of the dismal scene.

For two weeks the expedition threaded the unknown tangle, looking out for ambuscades, warding off attacks, and braving dangers of every description. At length the region of the Dwaris was reached and a plantain patch burst into view. The hungry wayfarers plunged into it and regaled themselves with the roasted fruit, while the more thoughtful provided a store of plantain flour for the dreaded wilderness ahead. Another plunge was made into the trackless forest and ten days elapsed before another plantation was reached, during which time the small-pox broke out, with greater loss of life than any other enemy had as yet inflicted. Meanwhile they had passed the mouth of the Ihuru, a large tributary of the Itura, and were on the banks of the Ishuru. As there was no possibility of crossing this turbulent tributary, its right bank was followed for four days till the principal village of the Andikuma tribe was reached. It was surrounded by the finest plantation of bananas and plantains, which all the Manyemas’ habit of spoliation and destruction had been unable to destroy. There the travelers, after severe starvation during fourteen days, gorged themselves to such excess that it contributed greatly to lessen their numbers. Every twentieth individual suffered from some complaint which entirely incapacitated him for duty.

From Andikuma, a six days’ march northerly brought them to a flourishing settlement, called Indeman. Here Stanley was utterly nonplussed by the confusion of river names. The natives were dwarfs. After capturing some of them and forcing answers, he found that they were on the right branch of the Ihuru river and that it could be bridged. Throwing a bridge across, they passed into a region wholly inhabited by dwarfs who proved very hostile. They are the Wambutti people, and such were their number and ferocity that Stanley was forced to change his north-east into a south-east course and to follow the lead of elephant tracks.

155

They had now to pass through the most terrible of all their African experiences. Writing further of this trying ordeal, Stanley says:

“On the fifth day, having distributed all the stock of flour in camp, and having killed the only goat we possessed, I was compelled to open the officers’ provision boxes and take a pound pot of butter, with two cupfuls of my flour, to make an imitation gruel, there being nothing else save tea, coffee, sugar, and a pot of sage in the boxes. In the afternoon a boy died, and the condition of the majority of the rest was most disheartening. Some could not stand, falling down in the effort to do so. These constant sights acted on my nerves until I began to feel not only moral but physical sympathy, as though the weakness was contagious. Before night a Madi carrier died. The last of our Somalis gave signs of collapse, and the few Soudanese with us were scarcely able to move. When the morning of the sixth day dawned, we made broth with the usual pot of butter, an abundance of water, a pot of condensed milk, and a cupful of flour for 130 people. The chiefs and Bonny were called to a council. At my suggesting a reverse to the foragers of such a nature as to exclude our men from returning with news of the disaster, they were altogether unable to comprehend such a possibility. They believed it possible that these 150 men were searching for food, without which they would not return. They were then asked to consider the supposition that they were five days searching food, and they had lost the road, perhaps, or, having no white leader, had scattered to shoot goats, and had entirely forgotten their starving friends and brothers in the camp. What would be the state of the 130 people five days hence? Bonny offered to stay with ten men in the camp if I provided ten days’ food for each person, while I would set out to search for the missing men. Food to make a light cupful of gruel for ten men for ten days was not difficult to procure, but the sick and feeble remaining must starve unless I met with good fortune; and accordingly a stone of buttermilk, flour, and biscuits were prepared and handed over to the charge of Bonny. In the afternoon of the seventh day we mustered everybody, besides the garrison of the camp, ten men. Sadi, a Manyema chief, surrendered fourteen of his men to their doom.157 Kibboboras, another chief, abandoned his brother; and Fundi, another Manyema chief, left one of his wives and her little boy. We left twenty-six feeble and sick wretches already past all hope unless food could be brought them within twenty-four hours. In a cheery tone, though my heart was never heavier, I told the forty-three hunger-bitten people that I was going back to hunt for the missing men. We traveled nine miles that afternoon, having passed several dead people on the road, and early on the eighth day of their absence from camp we met them marching in an easy fashion, but when we were met the pace was altered, so that in twenty-six hours from leaving Starvation Camp we were back with a cheery abundance around us of gruel and porridge, boiling bananas, boiling plantains, roasting meat, and simmering soup. This had been my nearest approach to absolute starvation in all my African experience. Altogether twenty-one persons succumbed in this dreadful camp.”

ELEPHANTS DESTROYING VEGETATION.

After twelve days journey the party on November 12th, reached Ibwiri. The Arab devastation, which had reached within a few miles of Ibwiri, was so thorough that not a native hut was left standing between Urgarrava and Ibwiri. What the Arabs did not destroy the elephants destroyed, turning the whole region into a horrible wilderness.

Stanley continues:—“Our sufferings terminated at Ibwiri. We were beyond the reach of destroyers. We were on virgin soil, in a populous region, abounding with food. We, ourselves, were mere skeletons—reduced in number from 289 to but little more than half that number. Hitherto our people were skeptical of what we told them. The suffering had been so awful, the calamities so numerous, and the forests so endless, that they refused to believe that by and by we would see plains and cattle, the Nyanza, and Emin Pasha. They had turned a deaf ear to our prayers and entreaties for, driven by hunger and suffering, they sold their rifles and equipments for ears of Indian corn, deserted with their ammunition and became generally demoralized. Perceiving that mild punishment would be of no avail, I resorted to the death penalty, and two of the worst cases were hanged in the presence of all. We halted 13 days at Ibwiri, revelling on fowls, goats, bananas, corn, yams, etc. The159 supplies were inexhaustible and our people glutted themselves with such effect that our force increased to 173 sleek robust men—one had been killed with an arrow.”

THE CAPTURED BUFFALO.

AFRICAN WARRIORS.

On November 24th the expedition started for Albert Nyanza, 126 miles distant. Given food, the distance seemed nothing. On December 1st an open country was sighted from the top of a ridge which was named Mt. Pisgah. On the 5th the plains were reached and the deadly, gloomy forest left behind. The light of day now beamed all around, after 160 days of travel. They thought they had never161 seen grass so green or a country so lovely. The men could not contain themselves but leaped and yelled for joy, and even raced over the ground with their heavy burdens.

ATTACK ON THE ENCAMPMENT.

On Nov. 9, 1887, Stanley says, “We entered the country of the powerful Chief Mazamboni. The villages were scattered so thickly that no road except through them could be found. The natives sighted us, but we were prepared. We seized a hill as soon as we arrived in the center of a mass of villages, and built a zareba as fast as billhooks could cut the brushwood. The war cries were terrible from hill to hill, pealing across the intervening valleys. The people gathered in hundreds at every point, war horns and drums announcing the struggle. After a slight skirmish, ending in our capture of a cow, the first beef we had tasted since we left the ocean, the night passed peacefully, both sides preparing for the morrow.

“Here Mr. Stanley narrates how negotiations with natives failed, Mazamboni declining a peace offering, and how a detachment of 40 persons, led by Lieutenant Stairs, and another of 30, under command of Mr. Jephson, with sharpshooters, left the zareba and assaulted and carried the villages, driving the natives into a general rout. The march was resumed on the 12th and here were constant little fights.

“On the afternoon of the 13th,” says Mr. Stanley, “we sighted the Nyanza, with Kavalli, the objective point of the expedition. Six miles off I had told the men to prepare to see the Nyanza. They murmured and doubted, saying, “Why does the master continually talk this way? Nyanza indeed.” When they saw the Nyanza below them, many came to kiss my hands. We were now at an altitude of 5,200 feet above the sea, with the Albert Nyanza 2,900 feet below, in one degree twenty minutes. The south end of the Nyanza lay largely mapped for about six miles south of this position and right across to the eastern shore. Every dent in its low, flat shore was visible, and traced like a silver snake on the dark ground was the tributary Lanilki, flowing into the Albert Nyanza from the south-west.

“After a short halt to enjoy the prospect, we commenced the rugged and stony descent. Before the rear guard had descended 100 feet the natives from the plateau poured after them, keeping the rear guard busy until within a few hundred feet of the Nyanza plain.162 We camped at the foot of the plateau wall, the aneroids reading 2,500 feet above the sea level. A night attack was made, but the sentries sufficed to drive our assailants off.

“We afterwards approached the village of Kakongo, situated at the south-west corner of Albert Lake. Three hours were spent by us in attempting to make friends, but we signally failed. They would not allow us to go to the lake, because we might frighten their cattle. They would not exchange the blood of brotherhood, because they never heard of any good people coming from the west side of the lake. They would not accept any present from us, because they did not know who we were; but they would give us water to drink, and would show us the road up to Nyam-Sassi. From these singular people we learned that they had heard that there was a white man at Unyoro, but they had never heard of any white men being on the west side, nor had they ever seen any steamers on the lake. There was no excuse for quarrelling. The people were civil enough, but they did not want us near them. We therefore were shown the path and followed it for miles. We camped about half a mile from the lake, and then began to consider our position with the light thrown upon it by conversation with the Kakongo natives.”

But, now he was in more of a quandary than ever. The lake was before him, but no sign of Emin nor any of his officials. Could he have failed to hear of Stanley’s sacrifices in his behalf? The famished expedition looked in vain on that expanse of water for evidence of friendly flag or welcome steamer. It had left all its own boats behind, a distance of 190 miles, and was therefore helpless for further search. This should not be, and so with his accustomed heroism, Stanley resolved on a return march to Kilinga for boats. It was a hard, quick journey, occupying weeks, for the distance was great.

Writing of his fatigue and disappointment on his arrival at Lake Albert Nyanza, Stanley says:

“My couriers from Zanzibar had evidently not arrived, or Emin Pasha, with his two steamers, would have paid the south-west side of the lake a visit to prepare the natives for our coming. My boat was at Kilingalonga, 190 miles distant, and there was no canoe163 obtainable. To seize a canoe without the excuse of a quarrel, my conscience would not permit. There was no tree anywhere of a size sufficient to make canoes. Wadelai was a terrible distance off for an expedition so reduced. We had used five cases of cartridges in five days fighting on the plain.

“A month of such fighting must exhaust our stock. There was no plan suggested that was feasible, except to retreat to Ibwiri, build a fort, send the party back to Kalingalonga for a boat, store up every load in the fort not conveyable, leave a garrison in the fort to hold it, march back to Albert Lake, and send a boat in search of Emin Pasha. This was the plan which, after lengthy discussions with the officers, I resolved upon.”

The most pathetic part of this eventful history is the fact that Emin had really received Stanley’s messages, had been surprised at his coming to rescue him, and had made an effort to meet him on some likely point on the lake, but having failed had returned to his southern capital, Wadelai, on the Nile outlet of the lake.

During the time so spent by the expedition the outside world was filled with rumors of the death of Stanley, either by disease or at the hands of the natives. These reports would always be followed by some favorable report from the expedition, not authentic, but enough to give hope that the hardy explorers were safe and continuing their way across the continent. Occasionally, too, during the first part of the trip, couriers would arrive at the coast from Stanley announcing progress, but, as they advanced, no further communications were received, and the expedition was swallowed up in the jungles and vast forests of Central Africa.

Putting his plans for a return into execution, Stanley had to fight his way from the shores of the lake to the top of the plateau, for the Kakongo natives were determined he should not pass back the way he had come. He was victorious with a loss of one man killed and one wounded. The plateau gained, he plunged westward by forced marches, and by January 7, 1888, was back at Ibwiri. After a few days rest there, he dispatched Lieut. Stairs with 100 men to Kilinga to bring up the boats. On his return with the boats, he was sent to Ugarrowas to bring up the convalescents. Stanley now fell sick and only recovered after a month of careful nursing.

164

It was now April 2d, and he again started for the lake, accompanied by Jephson and Parke, Nelson being left in command at the post, now Fort Bodo, with a garrison of 43 men. On April 26, he was again in Mazamboni’s country, who, after much solicitation was induced to make blood brotherhood with Stanley. Strange to say every other chief as far as the lake followed his example, and every difficulty was removed. Food was supplied in abundance and gratis, and the gracious natives, expert in the art of hut building, prepared in advance the necessary shelter for night.

BEGINNING A HUT.

When within a day’s march of the lake, natives came up from Kavalli saying that a white man had given their chief a note done up in a black packet and that they would lead Stanley to him if he would follow. He replied, “he would not only follow but make them rich,” for he did not doubt that the white man was Emin Pasha. The next day’s march brought them to Chief Kavalli, who handed Stanley a note from Emin Pasha done up in black American oil cloth. It was to the effect that as there had been a native rumor that a white man had been seen at the south end of165 the lake, he (Emin) had gone thither in a steamer but had been unable to obtain reliable information. The note further begged Stanley to remain where he was till Emin could communicate with him.

STANLEY’S FIRST SIGHT OF EMIN’S STEAMER.

THE SECOND STAGE.

The next day, April 23d, Stanley sent Jephson with a strong force to take the boat of the expedition to Lake Nyanza. On the 26th the boat crew sited Mawa Station, the southernmost station in Emin’s boundaries. There Jephson was hospitably received by the Egyptian garrison. On April 29th, Stanley and his party again reached the bivouac ground on the plateau overlooking the lake, where they had encamped before, and at 5 P.M., they sighted the Khedive steamer, seven miles away on the lake, steaming up towards them. By 7 P.M., the steamer arrived opposite the camp, and shortly afterwards, Emin Pasha, Signor Carati and Jephson came to Stanley’s head-quarters where they were heartily welcomed. The next day Stanley moved his camp to a better place, three miles above Nyamsassi, and Emin also moved his camp thither. The two leaders were together, in frequent consultation, till May 25th. The Pasha was surrounded by two battalions of regulars, besides a respectable force of irregulars, sailors, artisans, clerks and servants. How different, in many respects, was the situation from what Stanley expected!

166

He found Emin Pasha in the midst of plenty and unwilling to be rescued. He found his own forces jaded with travel, on the eve of starvation, and anxious to be rescued. He found, moreover, a prince in his own equatorial empire, who looked with jealous eyes on the relief expedition. In one of his (Emin’s) letters dated April 17, 1888, he declared that he had no intention to give up his work in Africa and had determined to await Stanley’s coming at Wadelai. In another letter he expressed himself very decidedly to the effect that he did not wish his province to come under English suzerainty. He was evidently of the opinion that the British Government in sending out Stanley had its eyes on his province with a view to eventually incorporating it with the Soudan, should the Anglo-Egyptians succeed in re-establishing authority at Khartoum. The same idea gradually forced itself to acceptance in Europe, and, as we know, the German Government later became no less anxious to get into communication with Emin in the hope of preventing him from making any arrangement with England.

HUT COMPLETED IN AN HOUR.

It was not therefore such a meeting as took place years before between Stanley and Livingstone, at Ujiji on the banks of Lake Tanganyika.

Long interviews followed which did not impress Stanley with the fact that his expedition was to be a success, so far as getting Emin out of the country was concerned. “Altogether,” said Emin,167 “if I consent to go away from here we shall have 8000 people with us.” His principal desire seemed to be that Stanley should relieve him of about 100 of his Egyptian soldiers, with their women and children. He said he was extremely doubtful of the loyalty of the first and second battalions. It was this interview which Stanley announced to the world of civilization by way of the Congo route. The situation was most delicate. He could not urge upon the ruler of an empire to flee from his dominions, he could not even ask one who seemed to be in the midst of peace and plenty, to desert them for the hardships of a long journey to the coast. He could only impress on him in a modest way the objects of the expedition and the propriety of his taking advantage of its presence to effect an escape from dangers which were thickening every hour, and which must ere long take shape in a descent upon him by the ever increasing hordes of the Mahdi.

These representations were of no avail and Stanley left him on May 25th, leaving with him Jephson and five of his carriers. In return Emin gave Stanley 105 of his regular Mahdi native porters. In fourteen days Stanley was back at Fort Bodo, where he found Captain Nelson and Lieut. Stairs. The latter had come up from Ugarrowas, twenty-two days after Stanley had set out for the lake, bringing along, alas! only 16 out of 56 men. All the rest had perished on the journey. Stairs brought along the news that Stanley’s 20 couriers, by whom he had sent word to Barttelot at Yambuna, had passed Ugarrowas on their way to their destination, on March 16th. Fort Bodo was in excellent condition on Stanley’s arrival, and enough ground had been placed under cultivation to insure a sufficient amount of corn for food.

On June 16th he left Fort Bodo with 111 Zanzibaris and 101 of Emin’s Soudanese, for Kilonga, where he arrived on June 24th. Pushing on, he arrived at Ugarrowas on July 19th. While this backward journey was performed rapidly and without serious hindrance, it was to end in sorrow. Ugarrowas was found deserted, its occupants having gathered as much ivory as they could, and passed down the river in company with Stanley’s couriers. Stanley made haste to follow, and on August 10th came up with the Ugarrowa people in a flotilla of 57 canoes. His couriers, now reduced to 17 in168 number, related awful stories of hair-breadth escapes and tragic scenes. Besides the three which had been slain, two were down with wounds, and all bore scars of arrow wounds.

A week later they were all down to Bunalyla, where Stanley met his friend, Dr. Bonney, at the stockade, and inquired for Major Barttelot, who, it will be recollected, was left in charge of Stanley’s rear guard at Yambuna, with orders to secure food and carriers from Tippoo Tib. Stanley asked:

“Well, my dear Bonney where’s the Major?”

“He is dead, sir; shot by a Manyuema, about a month ago,” replied Bonney.

“Good God,” I cried, “and Jamieson!”

“He has gone to Stanley Falls to try to get more men from Tippoo Tib.”

“And Troup?”

“Troup has gone home invalided.”

“Well, were is Ward?”

“Ward is at Bangala.”

“Heaven alive! Then you are the only one here?”

“Yes, sir.”

Without loss of further time, Stanley hastened down to Yambuna, only to find the sad story too, too, true. Barttelot and his entire caravan had been destroyed, and the officers left in charge of the station had fled panic stricken down the river with all the supplies of the station. Stanley complained greatly of this desertion, yet proceeded to do the best he could to re-provision the fort and recuperate his men. He remained long enough to study the situation, and it was sad in the extreme as it gradually unfolded in his mind. His governor of Stanley Falls and the Congo beyond, the Arab Tippoo Tib, was evidently working in the interest of the Mahdi, in violation of his oath and most solemn covenants. Though proof of his open hostility was wanting, Stanley strongly suspected him of conspiring to bring about the massacre of Barttelot’s caravan, in July, 1888, with a view of preventing his (Stanley’s) return to the Albert Nyanza. Evidence of a wide spread conspiracy to rid the entire equatorial section of its European occupants was also found in the fact that the destruction of Barttelot’s caravan ante-dated but a170 month the uprising in Emin Pasha’s provinces, the desertion of him by his army and his deposition from power and final imprisonment, the details of which are given hereafter.

CAMP AT KINSHASSA, ON THE CONGO, WITH TIPPOO TIB’S HEADQUARTERS.

Yet with these fierce fires of conspiracy crackling about him in the depths of the African forest, Stanley thought more of others than himself. He resolved to hasten back to the lake to rescue Emin from a danger which must by this time have become plain to him, even if it had not already crushed him. He worked his force by relays till the Ituri ferry was reached. Here he expected to hear from Emin. Disappointment increased his fears, and he resolved to rid himself of all incumbrance and resort to forced marches. He therefore established a camp at the Ituri ferry and left Stairs in command with 124 people. With the rest he forced his way across the plains, the natives being the same as those with which he had engaged in desperate conflict on previous journeys. But now they were quite changed in spirit, and instead of offering him opposition they were anxious to make blood brotherhood with him. They even constructed the huts of his camps, and brought food, fuel and water as soon as the sites were pitched upon.

With all this kindness and sociability of the natives, not a word could be gathered from them of the state of affairs on the Albert Nyanza. At length, January 16, 1889, at a station called Gaviras, a message was received from Kavalli, on the south-west side of the lake. It was a letter from Jephson, with two confirmatory notes from Emin, and conveyed the startling intelligence, that a rebellion had broken out, in the previous August, in Emin’s dominions, and that the Pasha had been made a prisoner. The rebellion had been gotten up by some half dozen of the Egyptian officers, and had been augmented by the soldiers at Laboré, though those of other stations had remained faithful. Then the letter goes on to warn Stanley to be careful on his arrival at Kavalli, and continues in the following pitiful strain:

To this letter were appended two postscripts, the first dated November 24th, 1888. It ran:

Jephson in a second postscript, dated December 18th, says:

Imagine the effect of such word as this on one who stood almost alone in the midst of a continent, without power to face the disciplined forces of the Mahdi, and with no open line of retreat. The best he could do for the moment was write an assuring letter and dispatch it to the Nyanza as quickly as possible, pushing on after it to Kavalli.

With Stanley, to resolve was to act. He accordingly sent word to Jephson that he need have no anxiety on his (Stanley’s) account for he was in the midst of natives who were not only friendly but ready to fight for him; that on his arrival at Kavalli he would be in a condition to rescue Emin and his attendants; and that every inducement must be brought to bear on him to come southward on the lake with his command, if not still held prisoners.

On Stanley’s arrival at Kavalli, he again wrote, under date of January 18th, 1889. And this letter, together with those which followed, reveals a situation quite as embarrassing as the former one had been, for still Emin seemed to be unaware of his danger. Stanley’s letter read:

“KAVALLI, January 18, 3 o’clock P.M.—My dear Jephson: I now send thirty rifles and three Kavalli men down to the lake with my letters with my urgent instructions that a canoe should be sent off and the bearers be rewarded. I may be able to stay longer than six days here, perhaps ten days. I will do my best to prolong my stay until you arrive without rupturing the peace.

173

“Our people have a good store of beads and couriers cloth, and I notice that the natives trade very readily, which will assist Kavalli’s resources should he get uneasy under our prolonged visit. Should we get out of this trouble I am his most devoted servant and friend but if he hesitates again I shall be plunged in wonder and perplexity. I could save a dozen Pashas if they were willing to be saved. I would go on my knees and implore the Pasha to be sensible of his own case. He is wise enough in all things else, even for his own interests. Be kind and good to him for his many virtues, but do not you be drawn into the fatal fascination the Soudan territory seems to have for all Europeans in late years. As they touch its ground they seem to be drawn into a whirlpool which sucks them in and covers them with its waves. The only way to avoid it is to blindly, devotedly, and unquestioningly obey all orders from the outside. The Committee said:

“Relieve Emin with this ammunition. If he wishes to come out the ammunition will enable to do so. If he elects to stay it will be of service to him. The Khedive said the same thing and added that if the Pasha and his officers wished to stay, they could do so on their own responsibility. Sir Evelin Baring said the same thing in clear, decided words, and here I am after 4,100 miles travel with the last instalment of relief. Let him who is authorized to take it, take it and come. I am ready to lend him all my strength and will assist him, but this time there must be no hesitation, but positive yea or nay, and home we go. Yours sincerely, Stanley.”

In the course of his correspondence Mr. Stanley says: “On February 6th Jephson arrived in the afternoon at our camp at Kavalli. I was startled to hear Jephson, in plain, undoubting words, say: “Sentiment is the Pasha’s worst enemy. No one keeps Emin back but Emin himself.” This is the summary of what Jephson learned during the nine months from May 25th, 1888, to February 6th, 1889. I gathered sufficient from Jephson’s verbal report to conclude that during nine months neither the Pasha, Casati, nor any man in the province had arrived nearer any other conclusion than what was told us ten months before. However, the diversion in our favor created by the Mahdists’ invasion and the dreadful slaughter they made of all they met inspired us with hope that we could get a definite174 answer at last. Though Jephson could only reply: ‘I really can’t tell you what the Pasha means to do. He says he wishes to go away, but will not move. It is impossible to say what any man will do. Perhaps another advance by the Mahdists will send them all pell-mell towards you, to be again irresolute and requiring several weeks’ rest.’”

Stanley next describes how he had already sent orders to mass the whole of his forces ready for contingencies. He also speaks of the suggestions he made to Emin as to the best means of joining him, insisting upon something definite, otherwise it would be his (Stanley’s) duty to destroy the ammunition and march homeward.

It seems that Stanley’s letters were beginning to have weight with Emin, and that he was coming to think it cruel to subject his followers to further danger, whatever opinion he entertained of his own safety. So on the morning of February 13th, 1889, Stanley was rejoiced to receive in his camp on the plateau above Kavalli, at the hands of a native courier, a letter from Emin Pasha himself, which announced his arrival at Kavalli. But let the letter speak for itself:

“Sir: In answer to your letter of the 7th inst., I have the honor to inform you that yesterday I arrived here with my two steamers, carrying a first lot of people desirous to leave this country under your escort. As soon as I have arranged for a cover for my people, the steamers have to start for Mswa Station to bring on another lot of people. Awaiting transport with me are some twelve officers, anxious to see you, and only forty soldiers. They have come under my orders to request you to give them some time to bring their brothers from Wadelai, and I promised them to do my best to assist them. Things having to some extent now changed, you will be able to make them undergo whatever conditions you see fit to impose upon them. To arrange these I shall start from here with officers for your camp, after having provided for the camp, and if you send carriers I could avail me of some of them. I hope sincerely that the great difficulties you had to undergo and the great sacrifices made by your expedition on its way to assist us may be rewarded by full success in bringing out my people. The wave of insanity which overran the country has subsided, and of such people175 as are now coming with me we may be sure. Permit me to express once more my cordial thanks for whatever you have done for us.

“Yours, Emin.”

Thus the two heroes of African adventure came together on the west shore of the lake which marked the southern boundary of Emin Pasha’s influence. It was a trying meeting for both. Stanley was firm in his views and true to the objects of his mission. Emin was still divided between his desire to save all of his followers who were willing to go, and his sense of obligation to those who chose to remain behind. In a modified form his convictions, expressed in April, 1887, still held. He then said:

“The work that Gordon paid for with his blood I will strive to carry on, if not with his energy and genius, still according to his intentions and in his spirit. When my lamented chief placed the government of this country in my hands, he wrote to me: “I appoint you for civilization and progress sake.” I have done my best to justify the trust he had in me, and that I have to some extent been successful and have won the confidence of the natives is proved by the fact that I and my handful of people have held our own up to the present day in the midst of hundreds of thousands of natives. I remain here as the last and only representative of Gordon’s staff. It therefore falls to me, and is my bounden duty, to follow up the road he showed us. Sooner or later a bright future must dawn for these countries; sooner or later these people will be drawn into the circle of the ever advancing civilized world. For twelve long years have I striven and toiled, and sown the seeds for future harvest—laid the foundation stones for future buildings. Shall I now give up the work because a way may soon open to the coast? never!”

As if anticipating the end, Stanley had already begun to call in the detachments of his expedition. On February 18th Lieut. Stairs arrived at Kavalli with his strong column from the remote Ituri. Meanwhile negotiations were going on daily with Emin. The force he had brought up the lake consisted of himself, Selim Bey, seven other officers, and sixty-five people. Selim Bey became the spokesman for both Stanley and Emin. He had just achieved a victory over the Madhi’s forces by recapturing Duffle, killing 250 of the enemy and lifting the restraints from Emin, himself. At length, on176 February 18th, the date of the arrival of Lieut. Stairs, Selim, at the head of a deputation, announced to Stanley a request on the part of Emin that he (Stanley) allow all the equatorial troops and their families to assemble at Kavalli.

In reply Stanley explained fully the object of his expedition, and offered to remain at Kavalli for a reasonable time in order to give Emin’s forces an opportunity to join him. Selim and his deputation retired satisfied, saying they would proceed at once to Wadelai and begin the work of transportation. They started on February 26th. On the 27th, Emin returned to Kavalli with his little daughter, Ferida, and a caravan of 144 men. He and Stanley agreed that twenty days would be a reasonable time in which to gather all the people and movables at Kavalli. These twenty days were necessary to Stanley’s comfort, too, for much sickness had prevailed among his forces, and now, under the ministrations of Surgeon Parke, his active force had been raised from 200 to 280 men.

The refugees from Wadelai soon began to pour into Kavalli. They were a mixture of soldiers, their wives and children, loaded with promiscuous camp effects, most of which was practically rubbish, entailing great labor in handling, and nearly all of which would have to be abandoned on the subsequent march. Stanley saw the result of all this accumulation and on March 16th issued orders to stop bringing the stuff to his camp. But 1355 loads had already arrived, enough to embarrass the march of ten times such a force as was then in camp. At this time Stanley was gratified by a report from Selim announcing that the rebellious soldiers and officers at Wadelai, and all of the people there, were anxious to depart for Egypt under his escort. But while this was true of Wadelai, it was not true of Kavalli, for Stanley discovered a conspiracy among the promiscuous gathering there, which took the shape of a concerted attempt on the part of Emin’s Egyptian soldiers to steal the arms of Stanley’s Zanzibaris, and stir up general mutiny. Knowing that while Emin had been praised for personal bravery and at the same time condemned for laxity of discipline, and seeing that such a state of affairs would be fatal, both in getting a start and in prosecuting a long march, Stanley decided on immediate and resolute action. Forming his own men, armed with rifles, into a square on the plateau,177 he ordered all of the Pasha’s people into it. Those who refused to go, he arrested and forced in, or had them placed in irons and flogged. They were then questioned as to their knowledge of the conspiracy, but all denied having had anything to do with it. Then all who desired to accompany Stanley were asked by Emin to stand aside. They were told that the condition upon which they could go was that of perfect obedience to Stanley’s orders as their leader, and that extermination would speedily follow the discovery of any further tricks. They promised a most religious obedience. This muster revealed the fact that Emin’s followers numbered 600 people, necessitating the enlistment of 350 new carriers. The entire number now ready for the march was 1500 persons.

But on May 7th, Stanley received an intercepted letter from Selim Bey which stated that the rebels at Wadelai had changed their mind, risen in mutiny, and robbed the loyal forces of all their ammunition. They also asked with the greatest effrontery that Stanley be called before them and questioned as to his future objects before they consented to go with him. The letter in addition contained hints of a plot to attack and capture his expedition in case he started without giving them satisfaction. Instantly Stanley assembled all the officers in his camp and asked them if they felt he would be justified in remaining there after April 10th. They all replied in the negative. Going to Emin, he said, “There Pasha, you have your answer. We march on the 10th.” Emin asked whether they could acquit him in their consciences for abandoning his people, alluding to those who had not yet arrived from Wadelai. Stanley replied that they could most certainly do so, as to all who had not arrived by the 10th. All of Stanley’s accounts of this part of his expedition bear evidence of trouble with Emin. He still trusted the rebellious soldiers, even those who had agreed to leave for Egypt. He mistrusted Stanley’s ability to reach Zanzibar with so numerous a caravan, on account of a lack of food. He had left many valuable servants behind, whom he desired to take along, but he said, “They are unwilling to accompany me.” This opened Stanley’s eyes. He says, “It now became clear that the Pasha had lost his authority at Wadelai, however obstinately he clung to his belief in his forces there.”

178

May 10th came and Stanley started with his immense expedition for the sea, his objective being Zanzibar, on the east coast of Africa. He had promised Emin to march slowly for a few days in order to give Selim, with such servants and stragglers as he might bring along, an opportunity to overtake them, but he never saw them more. To pursue a route eastward from Albert Nyanza was impracticable, for the powerful Unyoro and Uganda tribes lay in that direction. These and other tribes had been infected with the Mahdi spirit, and would therefore prove hostile. He therefore chose a route in a southerly direction, till the extreme southern waters of Victoria Nyanza had been rounded, when he would be on the natural lines running from Zanzibar into the interior. Besides, this would bring him through nearly 400 miles of practically undiscovered country.

Zanzibar, the objective point of the journey, is on an island of the same name, twenty miles from the east coast of Africa, and in latitude 6° South. It is a Mohammedan town of 30,000 people, with many good houses and mosques. Though the soil is excellent and prolific of fruits and vegetables, the town depends for its prosperity on trade and commerce. When the slave trade was driven from the Atlantic coast of Africa, it found its way to the eastern, or Pacific coast, and flourished in a manner never before known. Zanzibar, always notorious as a slave depot, became the recognized headquarters of the horrid traffic, and rapidly rose to a position of great wealth and influence. Her slave market attracted the notice and excited the disgust and indignation of strangers of every creed and country. Nothing could be more revolting than sight of the Arabic purchasers of slaves examining the build, the eyes, the teeth, and all the physical qualities of the victims offered for sale in the marts. Tens of thousands of slaves were known to pass through Zanzibar annually on their way to various parts of Egypt and Turkey. On the appearance of British cruisers on the coast, with orders to capture and condemn all slave dhows, the Sultan of Turkey prohibited the traffic at Zanzibar. But this only diverted its course. The next step was to induce the Sultan to issue a general proclamation, prohibiting the trade in all places on the coast, under his authority. This was done in 1876. The result has180 been a considerable diminution of the infamous traffic, which can now only be carried on by a system of smuggling, which incurs much risk. Zanzibar is the most important starting point for travelers and missionaries destined for Central Africa, and is a depot for such supplies as may be needed from time to time.

SLAVE MARKET.

From every point of view his route was well chosen. Skirting the Unyoro country, he fell under their displeasure and became the victim of a fierce attack, which he parried successfully. This opened his way for a considerable distance along the ranges of mountains which pass under the general name of the Baleggas These mountains rise to the immense height of 18,000 to 19,000 feet, and their summits are capped with snow. The huts of the natives were visible on their sides at altitudes of 8,000 feet. During their nineteen marches along the base of these ranges, their severest obstacle was the Semliki river, a bold stream, 100 yards wide, whose crossing was rendered doubly difficult by the Warasmas natives. They formed an ambuscade, from which they delivered a single volley at the travelers, but fortunately it proved ineffective. It did not take much of a demonstration to put them to flight.

After a march of 113 days the southern waters of Victoria Nyanza were reached. From this point Stanley sent letters to the coast stating that his objective was now Mpwapwa, 230 miles inland, whither provisions should be sent. This was done, and an armed escort was furnished him by German officials thence to the coast, at Bagamoyo, opposite Zanzibar, where the expedition arrived about December 1, 1889. Thence steamer was taken to Zanzibar, where the hero of the expedition, together with Emin Pasha, and all the officials, were received with open arms, fetes and acclamations. Telegrams of congratulations poured in from crowned heads, and all parts of the world. A sample from Queen Victoria types them all. London, December 12th:

“My thoughts are after you and your brave followers, whose hardships and dangers are at an end. I again congratulate you all, including the Zanzibaris, who displayed such devotion and fortitude during your marvelous expedition. I trust Emin Pasha is making favorable progress.”

181

One drawback to all these exultations at Zanzibar was the fact that Emin Pasha, after escaping all the tribulations of the wilderness, had fallen from the piazza of his hotel at Bagamoyo, on December 5th, and received injuries of an alarming nature. The sad announcement of this clouded the occasion somewhat, and gave a tone of melancholy to what would have been unmixed gratulation.

In reply to a cablegram from the Emperor of Germany, Stanley said, December 7th:

“Imperator et rex. My expedition has now reached its end. I have had the honor to be hospitably entertained by Major Weismann and other of your Majesty’s officers under him. Since arriving from Mpwapwa our travels have come to a successful conclusion. We have been taken across from Bagamoyo to Zanzibar by your Majesty’s ships Sperber and Schwalbe, and all honors coupled with great affability, have been accorded us. I gratefully remember the hospitality and princely affability extended to me at Potsdam; and profoundly impressed with your Majesty’s condescension, kindness and gracious welcome. With a full and sincere heart I exclaim, long live the noble Emperor William.”

And writing for the general public, he says:

“Over and above the happy ending of our appointed duties, we have not been unfortunate in geographical discoveries. The Aruwimi is now known from its source to its bourne. The great Congo forest, covering as large an area as France and the Iberian Peninsula, we can now certify to be an absolute fact. The Mountains of the Moon this time, beyond the least doubt, have been located, and Ruwenzori, “The Cloud King” robed in eternal snow, has been seen and its flanks explored, and some of its shoulders ascended, Mounts Gordon Bennett and Mackinnon cones being but giant sentries warding off the approach to the inner area of ‘The Cloud King.’

“On the south-east of the range the connection between Albert Edward Nyanza and the Albert Nyanza has been discovered, and the extent of the former lake is now known for the first time. Range after range of mountains has been traversed, separated by such tracts of pasture land as would make your cowboys out West mad with envy.

182

“And right under the burning Equator we have fed on blackberries and bilberries, and quenched our thirst with crystal water fresh from snow beds. We have also been able to add nearly six thousand square miles of water to Victoria Nyanza.

“This has certainly been the most extraordinary expedition I have ever led into Africa. A veritable divinity seems to have hedged us while we journeyed. I say it with all reverence. It has impelled us whither it would, effected its own will, but nevertheless guided and protected us.

“I gave as much good will to my duties as the strictest honor would compel. My faith that the purity of my motive deserved success was firm, but I have been conscious that the issues of every effort were in other hands.

“Not one officer who was with me will forget the miseries he has endured, yet everyone that started from his home destined to march with the advance column and share its wonderful adventures is here to-day, safe, sound and well.

“This is not due to me. Lieutenant Stairs was pierced with a poisoned arrow like others, but others died and he lives. The poisoned tip came out from under his heart eighteen months after he was pierced. Jephson was four months a prisoner, with guards with loaded rifles around him. That they did not murder him is not due to me.

“These officers have had to wade through as many as seventeen streams and broad expanses of mud and swamp in a day. They have endured a sun that scorched whatever it touched. A multitude of impediments have ruffled their tempers and harassed their hours.

“They have been maddened with the agonies of fierce fevers. They have lived for months in an atmosphere that medical authority declared to be deadly. They have faced dangers every day, and their diet has been all through what legal serfs would have declared to be infamous and abominable, and yet they live.

“This is not due to me any more than the courage with which they have borne all that was imposed upon them by their surroundings or the cheery energy which they bestowed to their work or the hopeful voices which rang in the ears of a deafening multitude of blacks and urged the poor souls on to their goal.

183

“The vulgar will call it luck. Unbelievers will call it chance, but deep down in each heart remains the feeling, that of verity, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in common philosophy.

“I must be brief. Numbers of scenes crowd the memory.

“Could one but sum them into a picture it would have grand interest. The uncomplaining heroism of our dark followers, the brave manhood latent in such uncouth disguise, the tenderness we have seen issuing from nameless entities, the great love animating the ignoble, the sacrifice made by the unfortunate for one more unfortunate, the reverence we have noted in barbarians, who, even as ourselves, were inspired with nobleness and incentives to duty—of all these we would speak if we could, but I must end with, thanks be to God forever and ever!”

This letter is characteristic of Stanley. The hardships of his journey will fade from memory, but its successes will become historic. He has made the “Dark Continent” dark no longer. To him and his undaunted comrades the world owes a debt of gratitude it will be difficult to repay. The vast tracts of hitherto unknown wilderness through which he traveled will stimulate the enterprise of the pioneer, and the day is not far distant—within the lifetime of our children’s children, perhaps—when the shrill echo of the engine’s whistle will be heard on the rugged sides of snow capped mountains which Stanley has explored; when those illimitable forests will resound with the woodman’s axe, and when the law of commerce will change the tawny native from a savage into a self-respecting citizen. Barbarism will retire from its last stronghold on the planet, as the darkness disappears when the sun rises over the hilltops.

The dire distresses of his long journey, begun two and a-half years ago, are beyond the reach of language. He merely hints at some of them and leaves the rest to the imagination. We ponder his pathetic references to the sturdy loyalty of companions and followers, “maddened with the agonies of fierce fevers,” falling into their graves through the subtle poison with which the natives tipped their arrows and spears, bravely fighting their way through interminable swamps only to succumb at last, and the conviction184 steals over us that such a story has never been told before and may never be told again. He rescued Emin and his comrades, who were “in daily expectation of their doom,” then turned his face southward, made various and important explorations on his way, and at last came within speaking distance of the millions who followed him from the hour he entered the mouth of the Congo with a solicitude which no other man of our time has commanded.

It would not do to close any account of Stanley’s brilliant career without noting the fact that Emin Pasha, in one of his last published letters, written after he was beyond all danger from Mahdi vengeance and African climate, fully acknowledges the value of the aid sent him, and makes it clear that his hesitation at availing himself of it was due to that high sense of duty which had gained him the name of Emin, or the Faithful One. The last and most trusted of Gordon’s lieutenant’s, he regarded it as his “bounden duty” to follow up the road the General showed him; and it must have been a wrench to tear himself away from the life-work to which he had in a measure consecrated himself—to see the labors of years thrown away, and all his endeavors come to naught. But it could not be helped under the circumstances, and Emin, like many before him, has had to succumb to the force of fate. And so ends for the present the attempt to civilize the equatorial Provinces of Egypt. The ruler of Egypt has formally renounced them, Gordon is dead, and his trusted lieutenant has at last thrown up the sponge. It has been a strange and eventful story, in which the heroes have been of the race which has done so much for the regeneration of the dark places of the world. For a time the dark and turbid waves of ignorance, of slavery, and of cruelty will roll back over this part of the Dark Continent and pessimists will say that nothing more can be done. But it is only for a time. The day will surely come when the dreams of Gordon and of Emin will become actual realities; and when that time comes we may be sure that the name of Henry M. Stanley will be remembered and honored.

185

EGYPT AND THE NILE.

The historic approach to “The Dark Continent” is by way of storied Egypt and its wonderful river, the Nile. In making this approach we must not forget the modern commercial value of the route from Zanzibar, pursued by Stanley (1871-72) while hastening to the rescue of Dr. Livingstone, the great English explorer, nor of that other, by way of the Congo, which bids fair to prove more direct and profitable than any thus far opened.

LIVINGSTONE AND STANLEY AT UJIJI.

186

It was an enterprise as bold as any of those undertaken by hardy mariners to rescue their brother sailors who had met shipwreck while striving to unfold the icy mysteries which surround the North Pole. And, unlike many of these, it was successful. The two great explorers shook hands in October 1871, at Ujiji, on the banks of Lake Tanganyika, in the very heart of the great forest and river system of Africa, and amid dark skinned, but not unkind, strangers, who constitute a native people as peculiar in all respects as their natural surroundings.

We mention this because it was a great achievement in the name of humanity. Livingstone had started on this, his last, exploring tour in 1866, and had been practically lost in African wilds for nearly four years. But it was a greater achievement in the name of science and civilization, for it not only proved that “The Dark Continent” was more easily traversable than had been supposed, but it may be set down as the beginning of a new era in African exploration.

In all ages Africa has been a wonderland to the outside world. As the land of Cush, in Bible story, it was a mystery. It had no bounds, but was the unknown country off to the south of the world where dim legend had fixed the dark races to work out a destiny under the curse laid upon the unfortunate Ham.

Even after Egypt took somewhat definite meaning and shape in Hebrew geography as “The Land of Mizriam,” or the “Land of Ham,” all else in Africa was known vaguely as Ethiopia, marvellous in extent, filled with a people whose color supported the Hamitic tradition, wonderful in animal, vegetable and mineral resources. Thence came Sheba’s queen to see the splendors of Solomon’s court, and thence emanated the long line of Candaces who rivalled Cleopatra in wealth and beauty and far surpassed her in moral and patriotic traits of character.

In olden times the gateway to Africa was Egypt and the Nile. As an empire, history furnishes nothing so curious as Egypt; as a river nothing so interesting as her Nile. We may give to the civilization of China and India whatever date we please, yet that of Egypt will prove as old. And then what a difference in tracing it. That of China and India rests, with a187 few exceptions, on traditions or on broken crockery tablets and confused shreds of ruins. That of Egypt has a distinct tracery in monuments which have defied the years, each one of which is a book full of grand old stories. We can read to-day, by the light of huge pillar and queer hieroglyphic, back to Menes, the first Egyptian King, and to Abydos, the oldest Egyptian city, and though the period be 4500 years before Christ, scarcely a doubt arises about a leading fact. There was wealth then, art, civilization, empire, and one is ever tempted to ascribe to Egypt the motherhood of that civilization which the Hebrew, Indian, Etruscan, Persian, Roman, Greek and Christian, carved into other shapes.

Says the learned Dr. Henry Brugsch-Bey, who has spent thirty years among Egyptian monuments and who has mastered their inscriptions, “Literature, the arts, and the ideas of morality and religion, so far as we know, had their birth in the Nile valley. The alphabet, if it was constructed in Phœnicia, was conceived in Egypt, or developed from Egyptian characters. Language, doubtless, is as old as man, but the visible symbols of speech were first formulated from the hieroglyphic figures. The early architecture of the Greeks, the Doric, is a development of the Egyptian. Their vases, ewers, jewelry and other ornaments, are copies from the household luxury of the Pharaohs.”

The influence of Egypt on the Hebrew race has a profound interest for the whole Christian world. Let the time of Abraham be fixed at 1900 B.C. The Great Pyramid of Egypt, built by the first Pharaoh of the fourth dynasty, had then been standing for 1500 years. Egypt had a school of architecture and sculpture, a recorded literature, religious ceremonies, mathematics, astronomy, music, agriculture, scientific irrigation, the arts of war, ships, commerce, workers in gold, ivory, gems and glass, the appliances of luxury, the insignia of pride, the forms of government, the indices of law and justice, 2000 years before the “Father of the Faithful” was born, and longer still before the fierce Semitic tribes of the desert gave forth their Hebrew branch, and placed it in the track of authentic history.

In the Bible we read of the “God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob.” In the prayer of King Khunaten, dating long188 before any biblical writing, we find a clear recognition of one God, and a reaching out of the soul after him, embraced in a language without parallel for beauty of expression and grandeur of thought. Ages before the giving of the law on Sinai and the establishment of the Hebrew ceremonial worship, the “Book of the Dead,” with its high moral precepts, was in the possession of every educated Egyptian.

The Jews went out of Egypt with a pure Semitic blood, but with a modified Semitic language. They carried with them in the person of their great leader, Moses, “all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” This is shown by their architecture, religious customs, vestments, persistent kindred traditions. Both Moses and Jesus were of the race whose early lessons were received with stripes from Egyptian masters. The hieroglyphical writings of Egypt contained the possibilities of Genesis, the Iliad, the Psalms, the Æneid, the Inferno, and Paradise Lost. In the thought that planned the Hall of Columns upon the Nile, or sculptured the rock temple of Ammon, was involved the conception of Solomon’s Temple, the Parthenon, St. Peters, Westminster Abbey and every sacred fane of Europe and America.

Therefore, travel and exploration in this wonderful land, the remote but undoubted source of letters, morals, sciences and arts, are always interesting. Thebes, Memphis, Zoan-Tanis, Pitom, Tini, Philæ, Bubastis, Abydos, are but as fragments of mighty monuments, yet each discloses a story abounding in rich realities and more striking in its historic varieties than ever mortal man composed. But for the powerful people that made the Nile valley glow with empire, but for the tasteful people that made it beautiful with cities and monuments, but for the cultured people that wrote on stone and papyrus, were given to costly ceremonies, and who dreamed of the one God, the Israelites would have recrossed the Isthmus of Suez, or the Red Sea, without those germs of civilization, without those notions of Jehovah, which made them peculiar among their desert brethren, and saved them from absorption by the hardy tribes of Arabia and Syria.

ROSETTA STONE.

In going from Europe across the Mediterranean to Egypt, you189 may think you can sail directly into one of the mouths of the Nile, and ascend that stream till the first cataract calls a halt. But neither of the great mouths of the Nile give good harbors. Like those of our own Mississippi, they are narrow and exposed by reason of the deposits they continually carry to the sea. The two main mouths of the Nile—it has had several outlets in the course of time—are over a hundred miles apart. The190 Western, or Rosetta, mouth was once the seat of a famed city from whose ruins were exhumed (1799) the historic “Rosetta Stone,” now in the British Museum. It was found on the site of a temple dedicated by Necho II. to Tum, “The Setting Sun;” and the inscription itself, written in three kinds of writing, Greek, hieroglyphic, and enchorial, or running hand, was a decree of the Egyptian Priests assembled in synod at Memphis in favor of Ptolomy Epiphanes, who had granted them some special favor. Its great value consisted in the fact that it afforded a safe key to the reading of the hieroglyphical writings found on all Egyptian monuments.

M. DE LESSEPS.

The Eastern, or Damietta, mouth of the Nile gives a better harbor, but the boats are slow. Beyond this is Port Said, where you can enter the ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez and pass to the Red Sea. But you are not now in the Egypt191 you seek. There are no verdant meadows and forests of date palms and mulberry, which give to the interior of Lower Egypt—covered with numerous villages and intersected by thousands of canals—the picturesque character of a real garden of God. You only see a vast sandy plain, stretching on either side of the canal. It is a sea of sand with here and there little islands of reeds or thorny plants, white with salty deposits. In spite of the blue sky, the angel of death has spread his wings over this vast solitude where the least sign of life is an event.

CLEOPATRA.

Speaking of canals, reminds one that this Suez Canal, 100 miles long, and built by M. de Lesseps, 1858-1869, was not the first to connect the waters of the Red Sea with the Mediterranean. One was projected B.C. 610 by Pharaoh Necho, but not finished till the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, which ran from the Red Sea to one of the arms of the Nile. It was practically out of use in the time of Cleopatra.

The best Mediterranean port of Egypt is Alexandria, the glory of which has sadly departed. It is far to the west of the Rosetta mouth of the Nile, but is connected by rail with Cairo. Though founded 330 B.C., by Alexander the Great, conqueror of Egypt, as a commercial outlet, and raised to a population, splendor and wealth unexcelled by any ancient city, it is now a modern place in the midst of impressive ruins. Its mixed and unthrifty population is about 165,000.

As you approach it you are guided by the modern light house, 180 feet high, which stands on the site of the Great Light of Pharos, built by Ptolemy II., 280 B.C., and which192 weathered the storms of sixteen centuries, lighting the sea for forty miles around. It was of white marble and reckoned as one of the “Seven Wonders of the World.”

Standing in the streets of Alexandria, what a crowd of historic memories rush upon you. You are in Lower Egypt, the Delta of the Nile, the country of the old Pharaohs whose power was felt from the Mediterranean to the Mountains of the Moon, whose land was the “black land,” symbol of plenty among the tribes of Arabia and throughout all Syria, land where the Hebrews wrought and whence they fled back to their home on the Jordan, land of the Grecian Alexander, the Roman Cæsar, the Mohammedan Califf.

PHAROS LIGHT.

No earthly dynasty ever lasted longer than that of the Pharaohs. We hardly know when time began it, but Brugsch dates it from Menes, B.C. 4400. It fell permanently with Alexander’s Conquest, 330 B.C., and was held by his successors, the Greek Ptolemeys, for three hundred years, or until the Romans took it from Cleopatra, whose name is perpetuated in the famous Cleopatra’s Needles, which for nearly 2000 years stood as companion pieces to Pompey’s Pillar.

193

The Pillar of Pompey, 195 feet high, still stands on high ground southeast of the city, near the Moslem burial place. But the Needles of Cleopatra are gone. Late investigations have thrown new light on these wonders. They were not made nor erected in honor of Cleopatra at all, but were historic monuments erected by the Pharaoh, Thutmes III., 1600 B.C., at Heliopolis, “City of the Sun.” The two largest pair were, centuries ago, transported, one to Constantinople, the other to Rome. The two smaller pair were taken to Alexandria by Tiberius and set up in front of Cæsar’s Temple, where they obtained the well known name of “Cleopatra’s Needles.” One fell down and, after lying prostrate in the sand for centuries, was taken to London in 1878 and set up on the banks of the Thames. It is 68 feet high, and was cut out of a single stone from the quarries of Syene. The other was taken down and transported to New York, where it is a conspicuous object in Central Park. They bear nearly similar inscriptions, of the time of Thutmes III. and Rameses II.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT.

Egypt fell into the hands of the Saracen invaders in A.D. 625, and has ever since been under Mohammedan or Turkish rule. The Alexandria of the Ptolemeys with its half million people, its magnificent temples, its libraries and museums, its learning and art, its commerce for all the world, has lost all its former importance, and is to-day a dirty trading town filled with a mixed and indolent people.

A CLEOPATRA NEEDLE IN ALEXANDRIA.

There is no chapter in history so sweeping and interesting as that which closed the career of Alexandria to the Christian world. It was the real centre of Christian light and influence. Its bishops were the most learned and potential, its schools of Christian thought the most renowned. It was in commerce with all the world and could scatter influences wider than any other city. It had given the Septuagint version of the Bible to the nations. All around, it had made converts of the194 Coptic elements, which were native, and Egypt’s natural defenders in case of war. But these it had estranged. Therefore the Saracen conquest was easy. Pelusium and Memphis fell. Alexandria was surrounded, and fell A.D. 640. “I have taken,” says Amrou, “the great city of the west with its 4000 palaces,195 4000 baths, 400 theatres, 12,000 shops, and 40,000 Jews.” Amrou would have spared the great library of 700,000 volumes. But the Califf’s (Omar’s) answer came, “These books are useless if they contain only the word of God; they are pernicious if they contain anything else. Therefore destroy them.”

Aside from the monuments above mentioned, there is little else to connect it with a glorious past except the catacombs on the outskirts, which are of the same general character as those at Rome. These catacombs possess a weird interest wherever they exist. They abound in one form or another in Egypt, and are found in many other countries where, for their extent and curious architecture, they rank as wonders.

IN THE SERAPEION.

Those lately unearthed in the vast Necropolis of Memphis, and called the Serapeion, were the burial place of the Egyptian God Apis, or Serapis, the supreme deity represented by the bull Apis. This sacred bull was not allowed to live longer than twenty-five years. If he died before that age, and of natural196 causes, he was embalmed as a mummy and interred in the Serapeion with great pomp. Otherwise, he was secretly put to death and buried by the priests in a well. In the Serapeion are some magnificent sarcophagi in granite, and inscriptions which preserve the Egyptian chronology from 1400 B.C. to 177 B.C.

BRONZES OF THE EGYPTIAN GOD APIS.

ROMAN CATACOMBS.

The great catacombs at Rome were the burial places of the early Christians. It was supposed they were originally the quarries from which the building stone of the city had been taken. But while this is true of the catacombs of Paris, it is now conceded that those of Rome were cut out for burial purposes only, less perhaps to escape from the watchfulness of despotic power, than in obedience to a wish to remain faithful to the traditions of the early church which preserved the Jewish custom of rock or cave sepulture. These catacombs are of immense and bewildering proportions. Their leading feature is long galleries, the sides of which are filled with niches to receive the remains. At first these galleries were on a certain level, twenty to thirty feet below the surface. But as space was required, they were cut out on other levels, till some of the galleries got to be as much as three hundred feet below the surface. There are some attempts at carving and statue work about the remains of illustrious persons, and many inscriptions of great historic value, but in general they have been much abused and desecrated, and we are sorry to say chiefly by Christian peoples, mostly of the time of the Crusades, who found, or supposed they197 would find, rich booty, in the shape of finger rings and other precious things laid away with the dead. MacFarlane, in his book upon the catacombs, tells of a company of gay young officers of the French army who entered them on a tour of inspection. They had plenty of lights, provisions, wine and brandy, and their exploration became a revel. They finally began to banter one another198 about venturing furthest into the dark labyrinthine recesses. One, as impious as he was daring, refused to leave the crypts till he had visited all. Darting away, torch in hand, he plunged into gallery after gallery, until his torch began to burn low and the excitement of intoxication left him. With great difficulty he found his way back to the chapel where he had left his companions. They were gone. With still greater difficulty he reached the entrance to the catacomb. It was closed. He shouted frantically, and madly beat upon the railings with a piece of tombstone. But it was night and no one could hear. In desperation he started back for the chapel. He fell through a chasm upon crackling, crumbling bones. The shock to his nerves was terrible. Crawling out, he reached the chapel, amid intolerable fear. He who had many a time marched undauntedly on gleaming lines of bayonets and had schooled himself to look upon death without fear, was not equal to the trials of a night in a charnel house. His thirst became intolerable. He stumbled upon a bottle left by his companions and, supposing it contained water, drank eagerly of its contents. In a few moments the drink acted with violence and, in his delirium, he became the victim of wild visions. Spectres gathered around him. The bones of the dead rose and clattered before him. Fire gleamed in eyeless skulls. Fleshless lips chattered and shrieked till the caves echoed. Death must soon have been the result of this fearful experience had not morning come and brought fresh visitors to the catacombs, who discovered the young officer in a state of stupor and took him to the hospital. For months he lay prostrate with brain fever. He had been taught the weakness of man in that valley of the shadow of death, and ever after gave over his atheistic notions, and lived and died a christian.

You may leave Alexandria by canal for the Nile, and then sail to Cairo. You will thus see the smaller canals, the villages, the peasantry, the dykes of the Nile, the mounds denoting ruins of ancient cities. You will see the wheels for raising water from the Nile by foot power, and will learn that the lands which are not subject to annual overflow must be irrigated by199 canals or by these wheels. You will see at the point where the Nile separates into its Damietta and Rosetta branches, the wonderful Barrage, or double bridge, intended to hold back the Nile waters for the supply of Lower Egypt without the need of water wheels. It is a mighty but faulty piece of engineering and does not answer its purpose. From this to Cairo the country gets more bluffy and, ere you enter the city, you may catch glimpses of the Pyramids off to the right.

THE MASSACRE OF THE MAMELUKES.

But the speediest route from Alexandria is by rail. You are soon whirled into the Moslem city. Cairo is not an ancient city, though founded almost on the site of old Egyptian Memphis. It is Saracen, and was then Kahira (Cairo) “City of Victory,” for it was their first conquest under Omar, after they landed and took Pelusium. It was greatly enlarged and beautified by Saladin after the overthrow of the Califfs of Bagdad. It dates from about A.D. 640.

It is a thickly built, populous (population 327,000) dirty, noisy, narrow streeted, city on the east bank of the Nile. Its mosques,200 houses, gardens, business, people, burial places, manners and customs, tell at a glance of its Mohammedan origin. Its mosques are its chief attraction. They are everywhere, and some of them are of vast proportions and great architectural beauty. The transfer of the Mameluke power in Egypt to the present Khedives was brought about by Mohammed Ali, an Albanian. The Mamelukes were decoyed into the citadel at Cairo and nearly all murdered. One named Emim Bey escaped by leaping on horseback from the citadel. He spurred his charger over a pile of his dead and dying comrades; sprang upon the battlements; the next moment he was in the air; another, and he released himself from his crushed and bleeding horse amid a shower of bullets. He fled; took refuge in the sanctuary of a mosque; and finally escaped into the deserts of the Thebaid. The scene of this event is always pointed out to travelers.

VEILED BEAUTY.

It is a city divided into quarters—the European quarter, Coptic quarter, Jewish quarter, water carriers’ quarters, and so on. The narrow streets are lined with bazaars—little stores or markets, and thronged by a mixed populace—veiled ladies, priests in robes, citizens with turbaned heads, peddlers with trays on their heads, beggars without number, desert Bedouins, dervishes, soldiers, boatmen and laborers.

Abraham sent Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac. Matrimonial agents still exist in Cairo in the shape of Khatibehs, or betrothers. They are women, and generally sellers of cosmetics, which business gives them opportunity to get acquainted with both marriageable sons and daughters. They get to be rare matchmakers, and profit by their business in a country where a man may have as many wives as he can support.

Your sleep will be disturbed by the Mesahhar who goes201 about the city every morning to announce the sunrise, in order that every good Moslem may say his prayers before the luminary passes the horizon.

There is no end to the drinking troughs and fountains. Joseph’s well, discovered and cleaned out by Saladin, is one of the leading curiosities. It is 300 feet deep, cut out of the solid rock, with a winding staircase to the bottom.

West of the Nile and nearly opposite Cairo, is the village of Ghiseh, on the direct road to the pyramids, mention of which introduces us to ancient Egypt and the most wonderful monuments in the world.

Menes, “the constant,” reigned at Tini. He built Memphis, on part of whose site Cairo now stands, but whose centre was further up the Nile. The Egyptian name was Mennofer, “the good place.” The ruins of Memphis were well preserved down to the thirteenth century, and were then glowingly described by an Arab physician, Latif. But the stones were gradually transported to Cairo, and its ruins reappeared in the mosques and palaces of that place.

Westward of the Nile, and some distance from it, was the Necropolis of Memphis—its common and royal burying ground, with its wealth of tombs, overlooked by the stupendous buildings of the pyramids which rose high above the monuments of the noblest among the noble families who, even after life was done, reposed in deep pits at the feet of their lords and masters. The contemporaries of the third (3966 B.C. to 3766 B.C.), fourth (3733 B.C. to 3600 B.C.) and fifth (3566 B.C. to 3333 B.C.) dynasties are here buried and their memories preserved by pictures and writings on the walls of their chambers above their tombs. This is the fountain of that stream of traditions which carries us back to the oldest dynasty of that oldest country. If those countless tombs had been preserved entire to us, we could, in the light of modern interpretation, read with accuracy the genealogies of the kings and the noble lines that erected them. A few remaining heaps enable us to know what they mean and to appreciate the loss to history occasioned by their destruction.

202

They have served to rescue from oblivion the fact that the Pharaohs of Memphis had a title which was “King of Upper and Lower Egypt.” At the same time he was “Peras,” “of the great house”—written Pharaoh in the Bible. He was a god for his subjects, a lord par excellence, in whose sight there should be prostration and a rubbing of the ground with noses. They saluted him with the words “his holiness.” The royal court was composed of the nobility of the country and servants of inferior rank. The former added to dignity of origin the graces of wisdom, good manners, and virtue. Chiefs, or scribes carried on the affairs of the court.

The monuments clearly speak of Senoferu, of the third dynasty, B.C. 3766. A ravine in the Memphian Necropolis, where are many ancient caverns, contains a stone picture of Senoferu, who appears as a warrior striking an enemy to the ground with a mighty club. The rock inscriptions mention his name, with the title of “vanquisher of foreign peoples” who in his time inhabited the cavernous valleys in the mountains round Sinai.

The Pharaohs of the fourth dynasty were the builders of the hugest of the pyramids. The tables discovered at Abydos make Khufu the successor of Senoferu. Khufu is the Cheops of the historian Herodotus. His date was 3733 B.C.

No spirited traveler ever sets foot on the black soil of Egypt, without gazing on that wonder of antiquity, the threefold mass of the pyramids on the steep edge of the desert, an hour’s ride over the long causeway extending out from Ghiseh. The desert’s boundless sea of yellow sand, whose billows are piled up around the gigantic pyramids, deeply entombing the tomb, surges hot and dry far up the green meadows and mingles with the growing grass and corn. From the far distance you see the giant forms of the pyramids, as if they were regularly crystalized mountains, which the ever-creating nature has called forth from the mother soil of rock, to lift themselves up towards the blue vault of heaven. And yet they are but tombs, built by the hands of men, raised by King Khufu (Cheops) and two other Pharaohs of the same family and dynasty, to be the admiration and astonishment of the ancient and modern world.

203

PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT.

204

We speak now of the three largest—there are six others in this group, and twenty-seven more throughout the Nile valley. They are perfectly adjusted to points of the compass—north, south, east and west. Modern investigators have found in the construction, proportions and position of the “Great Pyramid” especially, many things which point to a marvellous knowledge of science on the part of their builders. If the half they say is true of them, there are a vast number of lost arts to discredit modern genius. Some go so far as to trace in their measurements and construction, not only prophecy of the coming of Christ, but chart of the events which have signalized the world’s history and are yet to make it memorable. They base their reasoning on the fact that there was no architectural model for them and no books extant to teach the science requisite for their construction, that their height and bases bear certain proportions to each other, and to the diameter of a great circle, that they are on the line of a true meridian, that certain openings point to certain stars, and so on till ingenuity is exhausted.

SECTION OF THE GREAT PYRAMID, SHOWING ITS INTERIOR.

The three large pyramids measure thus

205

As soon as a Pharaoh mounted the throne he gave orders to a nobleman, master of all the buildings, to plan the work and cut the stone. The kernel of the future edifice was raised on the limestone rock of the desert in the form of a small pyramid built in steps. Its well constructed and finished interior formed the king’s eternal dwelling, with his stone sarcophagus lying on the stone floor. Let us suppose this first building finished while the king still lived. A second covering was added on the outside of the first; then a third; then a fourth; and so the mass of the giant building grew greater the longer the king lived. Then at last, when it became almost impossible to extend the area of the pyramid further, a casing of hard stone, polished like glass, and fitted accurately into the angles of the steps, covered the vast mass of the king’s sepulchre, presenting a gigantic triangle on each of its four faces. More than seventy of such pyramids once rose on the margin of the desert, each telling of a king, of whom it was at once the tomb and the monument.

At present the Great Pyramid is, externally, a rough, huge mass of limestone blocks, regularly worked and cemented. The top is flattened. The outside polished casing, as well as the top, has been removed by the builders of Cairo, for mosques and palaces, as have many of the finest ruins on the Nile.

The Sphinx was sculptured at some time not far removed from the building of the three great pyramids. Recent discoveries have increased the astonishment of mankind at the bulk of this monstrous figure and at the vast and unknown buildings that stood around it and, as it were, lay between its paws. It is within a few years that the sand has been blown away and revealed these incomprehensible structures. In a well near by was found a finely executed statue of Khafra, builder of the second pyramid.

There are other sphinxes, but this at the base of the Great Pyramid is the largest. It has a man’s head and a lion’s body, and is supposed to represent the kingly power of the sun god. Its length is 140 feet, and height 30 feet. Between its paws is an altar, to which you ascend by a long flight of steps. The Arabs call it “the fatherly terror.”

206

In the middle “chamber of the dead” of Menkara’s pyramid was found his stone sarcophagus and its wooden cover, both beautifully adorned in the style of a temple. They were taken out and shipped for England, but the vessel was wrecked, and the sarcophagus now lies at the bottom of the Mediterranean. The lid was saved and is now in the British Museum. On it is carved a text or prayer to Osiris, king of the gods: “O Osiris, who hast become king of Egypt, Menkara living eternally, child of heaven, son of the divine mother, heir of time, over thee may she stretch herself and cover thee, thy divine mother, in her name as mystery of heaven. May she grant that thou shouldst be like god, free from all evils, king Menkara, living eternally.”

SPHINX.

The prayer is not uncommon, for parts of it have been found on other monuments. Its sense is, “Delivered from mortal matter, the soul of the dead king passes through the immense spaces of heaven to unite itself with god, after having overcome the evil which opposed it on its journey through earth.”

207

The entrance to the great pyramid was formerly quite concealed, only the priests knowing where to find the movable stone that would admit them. But now the opening is plain, and is about forty-five feet from the ground on the north side. Thence there is a descent through a narrow passage for 320 feet into the sepulchral chamber. The passage is much blocked and difficult. The great red granite sarcophagus is there, empty and broken, mute receptacle of departed greatness, for which the relic hunter has had quite too little respect.

With the end of the fifth dynasty pyramid building ceased. The glory of Memphis departed and went to Thebes, where kingly vanity seems to have sought outlet in the temple architecture whose ruins are the wonder of the world.

Above the old site of Memphis, is Toora, and out on its desert side are the pyramids of Sakkarah, eleven in number. The most remarkable is the Step Pyramid, believed to be more ancient than those of Ghiseh. But there is something even more wonderful here—the Temple of Serapis, which it took four years to disengage from the sands of the desert after its site was discovered. It seems to have been dedicated to Serapis, the sacred bull of Egypt. Beneath it is a great catacomb where once laid the remains of thousands of sacred bulls. Their stone coffins are still there, cut out of solid blocks of granite, and measuring fourteen feet long by eleven feet high.

Further up the Nile are the high limestone cliffs of Gebel-et-Teyr, on which perches the Coptic “Convent of the Pulley.” The monks who live here are great beggars. They let themselves down from the cliff and swim off to a passing boat to ask alms in the name of their Christianity.

The next town of moment is Siout, capital of Upper Egypt. It stands on the site of ancient Lycopolis, “wolf city,” and is backed in by lofty cliffs, from which the views are very fine. Further up is Girgeh, whence you must take journey on the back of donkeys to Abydos, off eastward on the edge of the desert. Here was the most ancient city of This, or Tini, where Mena reigned, on whose ruins Abydos was built, itself an antiquity and wonder. Here is the great temple begun by Seti I.208 and completed by his son Rameses II., 1333 B.C. Rameses II., was the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Its roof, pillars and walls are all preserved and the chiselling on the latter is something marvellous. What renders it doubly interesting is, the name of the sculptor is preserved. His name was Hi, and he must have been a man of decided genius, for his picture of the king and son taming the bull is quite spirited. In this temple is also the celebrated sculpture called the “Table of Abydos,” which gives a list of sixty-five kings, from Menes down to the last king of the twelfth dynasty, a period of 2166 years. It is a most invaluable record and has done much to throw light on Egyptian history. It was discovered in 1865. Abydos then, or Tini, was the starting point of Egyptian power and civilization, as we now know it. Here was the first dynasty of the Pharaohs, transferred afterwards to Memphis where the pyramids became their monuments, re-transferred to Thebes where the temples chronicled their greatness and grandeur. Old as Thebes is, Abydos is older, and Tini older still. Most carefully has the temple at Abydos been exhumed from the sand which has preserved it for three thousand years, most of the time against the hands of those who, knowing better, would have spoiled its fair proportions and its great historic value. Abydos seems to have been a city of tombs, and it is possible that the greatness of all Egypt sought it as a burial place.

The most powerful of these Theban Kings, were those of the twelfth dynasty and on, beginning 2466 B.C., though Thebes can be traced back to the sixth dynasty as a city. It was a period in which strong monarchs ruled, and the arts were cultivated with magnificent results. Thebes was the capital, and on its temples and palaces the most enormous labor and expense were lavishly bestowed. And this not in Thebes alone, but in all the cities of Egypt; and they all make history too, impressive, invaluable history.

Siout owes its present importance to the caravan trade with Darfur and Nubia. Passing on toward Thebes, the river banks get more and more bluffy. You soon come to Dendera on the west bank. Its ruins are magnificent, and by many regarded209 as the finest in Egypt. The portico of its ancient temple is inconceivably grand. Its length is 265 feet and height 60 feet. It is entirely covered with mystic, varied and fantastic sculptures, hieroglyphics, groups, figures of deities, sacred animals, processions of soldiers—in short the manners and mythology of all Egypt. The workmanship is elaborate and finished. The interior is no less beautiful. The roof contained a sculptured representation of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. It has been taken down and is now in the museum at Paris.

A few miles further on in this bewildering region of solid rock bluffs, immense quarries, deep sculptured caverns, you come to Thebes itself, “City of the hundred gates,” lying on both sides of the Nile, the reports of whose power and splendor we would regard as fabulous, were its majestic ruins not there still to corroborate every glowing account. Whatever of Egyptian art is older than that of the Theban era lacked the beauty which moves to admiration. Beginning with the Theban kings of the twelfth dynasty, the harmonious form of beauty united with truth and nobleness meets the eye of the beholder as well in buildings as in statues. The great labyrinth and the excavation for the artificial lake Mœris, at Alexandria, were made during this period. In Tanis, at the mouth of the Nile, was erected a temple whose inscriptions show not only the manners of the country with great historic accuracy, but tell the tale of frequent trade with the people from Arabia and Canaan.

The site of Thebes is an immense amphitheatre with the Nile in the centre. At first you see only a confusion of portals, obelisks and columns peeping through or towering above the palm trees. Gradually you are able to distinguish objects, and the first that strikes you is the ruins of Luxor on the eastern bank. They overlook the Arab village at their base, and consist of a long row of columns and the huge gateway of the Temple of Luxor. The columns are those of an immense portico, and by them stood two beautiful obelisks, one of which is now in the Place de la Concorde, Paris. The columns are monoliths, fully ten feet in diameter, and many of them in a perfect state. All are covered with inscriptions of various210 signification. This temple was built by Rameses II., and is therefore not one of the oldest in Egypt, though not the least interesting. On the westward or opposite side of the Nile is Memnon and the temple home of Rameses II. There is little or nothing of the temple there, but twin colossal statues stand in lonely desolation on the plain, and these once guarded the temple entrance. One is perfect, the other broken. Both measured sixty-four feet in height. They are sitting giants carved from solid stone. They represented King Amenhotep, in whose honor the temple was built. At their feet are small sitting statues, one of his wife Thi, the other of his mother Mutem-ua, each carved out of red sandstone mixed with white quartz, and each a marvellous exhibition of skill in treating the hardest and most brittle materials. They stand twenty-two feet apart. The northern, or broken one, is that which the Greeks and Romans celebrated in poetry and prose as the “vocal statue of Memnon.” Its legs are covered with inscriptions of Greek, Roman, Phœnician and Egyptian travelers, written to assure the reader that they had really visited the place or had heard the musical tones of Memnon at the rising of the sun.

THE COLOSSI.

In the year 27 B.C. the upper part of this statue was removed from its place and thrown down by an earthquake. From that time on, tourists began to mutilate it by cutting into it their befitting or unbefitting remarks. The assurances that they had heard Memnon sing or ring ceased under the reign of Septimius Severus who completed the wanting upper part of the body as well as he could with blocks of stone piled up and fastened211 together. It is a well known fact that split or cracked rocks, after cooling during the night, at the rising of the sun or as soon as the stone becomes warm, may emit a prolonged ringing note. After the statue was restored in the manner above described, the sound, if ever it emitted any, naturally ceased. The crack was covered by the masonry.

THE RAMESEION OF THEBES AND COLOSSAL STATUE OF RAMESES.

The story of the architect of this temple is told in the hieroglyphics. That part which relates to these two memorable statues tells how he conceived them without any order from the king, cut them out of solid rock, and employed eight ships to move them from the quarries down the Nile to Memphis. Even in our highly cultivated age, with all its inventions and machines which enable us by the help of steam to raise and transport the heaviest weights, the shipment and erection of the mammoth statues of Memnon remain an insoluble riddle. Verily the architect, Amenhotep the son of212 Hapoo, must have been not only a wise but a specially ingenious man of his time.

Back of the Memnon Statues and the ruins of the “Palace Temple,” which they guarded, and 500 yards nearer the Lybian desert, stood the Rameseion. It was both palace and temple. It is finely situated on the lowest grade of the hills as they begin to ascend from the plain, and its various parts occupy a series of terraces, one rising above the other in a singularly impressive and majestic fashion. Its outer gateway is grandly massive. Sculptures embellish it, very quaint and vivid. It formed the entrance to the first court, whose walls are destroyed. Some picturesque Ramessid columns remain, however; and at their foot lie the fragments of the hugest statue that was ever fashioned by Egyptian sculptor. It was a fitting ornament for a city of giants; such an effigy as might have embellished a palace built and inhabited by Titans. Unhappily, it is broken from the middle; but when entire it must have weighed about 887 tons, and measured 22 feet 4 inches across the shoulders, and 14 feet 4 inches from the neck to the elbow. The toes are from 2 to 3 feet long. The whole mass is composed of Syene granite; and it is offered as a problem to engineers and contractors of the present day,—How were nearly 900 tons of granite conveyed some hundreds of miles from Syene to Thebes? It is equally difficult to imagine how, in a country not afflicted by earthquakes, so colossal a monument was overthrown.

Such was the Rameseion. It looked towards the east, facing the magnificent temple at Karnak. Its propylon, or gateway, in the days of its glory, was in itself a structure of the highest architectural grandeur, and the portion still extant measures 234 feet in length. The principal edifice was about 600 feet in length and 200 feet in breadth, with upwards of 160 columns, each 30 feet in height. A wall of brick enclosed it; and a dromos, fully 1600 feet long, and composed of two hundred sphinxes, led in a northwesterly direction to a temple or fortress, sheltered among the Libyan hills.

This period of temple building and ornamentation which makes Thebes as conspicuous in Egyptian history as pyramid213 building had made Memphis, extended over several dynasties, and practically ended with the twentieth (1200 B.C. to 1133 B.C.) which embraced the long line of Rameses, except Rameses I. and II. This was the time of the Hebrew captivity and of the Exodus.

THE GREAT COURT AND OBELISK OF KARNAK.

The most illustrious of all these kings—the Alexander the Great of Egyptian history—was Thutmes III., who reigned for 53 years, and carried Egyptian power into the heart of Africa as well as Asia. Countless memorials of his reign exist in papyrus rolls, on temple walls, in tombs and even on beetles and other ornaments. These conquests of his brought to Egypt countless prisoners of every race who, according to the old custom, found employment in the public works. It was principally to the great public edifices, and among those especially to the enlarged buildings of the temple at Amon (Ape) near Karnak, that these foreigners were forced to devote their time.

Though Karnak is several miles further up the Nile, and on214 the same side as Luxor, it is in the same splendid natural amphitheatre, and is a part of the grand temple system of Thebes and its suburbs. Let us visit its magnificent ruins before stopping to look in upon Thebes proper.

SPHINX OF KARNAK.

The Karnak ruins surpass in imposing grandeur all others in Egypt and the world. The central hall of the Grand Temple is a nearly complete ruin, but a room has been found which contained a stone tablet on which Thutmes III. is represented as giving recognition to his fifty-six royal predecessors. This valuable historic tablet has been carried away and is now in Paris. This temple was 1108 feet long and 300 wide. But this temple was only a part of the gorgeous edifice. On three sides were other temples, a long way off, yet connected with the central one by avenues whose sides were lined with statuary, mostly sphinxes. Many of the latter are yet in place, and are slowly crumbling to ruin. Two colossal statues at the door of the temple now lie prostrate. Across the entire ruins appear fragments of architecture, trunks of broken columns, mutilated statues, obelisks, some fallen others majestically erect, immense halls whose roofs are supported by forests of columns, and portals, surpassing all former or later structures. Yet when the plan is studied and understood, its regularity appears wonderful and the beholder is lost in admiration. Here are two obelisks, one 69 feet high, the other 91 feet, the latter the highest in Egypt, and adorned with sculptures of perfect execution. One hundred and215 thirty-four columns of solid stone, each seventy feet high and eleven in diameter, supported the main hall of the temple which was 329 feet by 170 feet. The steps to the door are 40 feet long and 10 wide. The sculptures were adorned with colors, which have withstood the ravages of time. Fifty of the sphinxes remain, and there is evidence that the original number was six hundred.

GATEWAY AT KARNAK.

All who have visited this scene describe the impression as superior to that made by any earthly object. Says Denon, “The whole French army, on coming in sight of it, stood still, struck as it were with an electric shock.” Belzoni says: “The sublimest ideas derived from the most magnificent specimens of modern architecture, cannot equal those imparted by a sight of these ruins. I appeared to be entering a city of departed giants, and I seemed alone in the midst of all that was most sacred in the world. The forest of enormous columns adorned all round with beautiful figures and various ornaments, the high portals seen at a distance from the openings to this vast labyrinth216 of edifices, the various groups of ruins in the adjoining temples—these had such an effect as to separate me in imagination from the rest of mortals, and make me seem unconscious whether I was on earth or some other planet.”

And Karnak, like all Nile scenes, is said to be finer by moonlight than sunlight. But you must go protected, for the wild beast does not hesitate to make a lair of the caverns amid these ruins. Human vanity needs no sadder commentary.

This temple was the acme of old Egyptian art. Its mass was not the work of one king, but of many. It therefore measures taste, wealth and architectural vigor better than a book. But its founder, Thutmes III., left similar monuments to his power. They have been traced in Nubia, in the island of Elephantine, in various cities of northern Egypt, and even in Mesopotamia.

A MUMMY.

In Central Thebes you meet with ruins of the home palace or dwelling place of Rameses III. The king’s chamber can be traced by the character of the sculptures. You see in these the king attended by the ladies of his harem. They are giving him lotus flowers and waving fans before him. In one picture he sits with a favorite at a game of draughts. His arm is extended holding a piece in the act of moving. And so the various domestic scenes of the old monarch appear, reproducing for us, after a period of 3500 years, quite a history of how things went on in the palaces of royalty upon the Nile.

The tombs of Thebes surpass all others in number, extent and splendor. They are back toward the desert in the rocky chain which bounds it. Here are subterranean works which217 almost rival the pyramids in wonder. Entrance galleries cut into the solid rock lead to distant central chambers where are deposited the sarcophagi which contained the bodies of the dead. The walls everywhere, and the sarcophagi, or stone coffins, are elaborately sculptured with family histories, prayers, and all the ornaments which formed the pride of the living. Festivals, agricultural operations, commercial transactions, hunts, bullfights, fishing and fowling scenes, vineyards, ornamental grounds, form the subject of these varied, interesting and truly historic sketches. The chambers and passages which run in various directions contain mummies in that wonderful state of preservation which the Egyptians alone had the art of securing. They are found wrapped in successive folds of linen, saturated with bitumen, so as to preserve to the present the form and even the features of the dead. Alas! how these sacred resting places have been desecrated. The sarcophagi have been broken and carried away, and the mummified remains that rested securely in their niches for thousands of years have been dragged out to gratify the curiosity of sight seers in all quarters of the globe.

TEMPLE AT EDFOU.

218

TEMPLE COURT AT PHILÆ.

Beyond Thebes, the Nile enters a narrow sand-stone gorge. But just before you enter this you pass the very wonderful temple of Edfou, in almost a perfect state of preservation, further testimonial to the wealth, power and art of those old Theban kings. Entering the gorge, the rocks overhang the river for miles on miles. You are now in the midst of the sandstone quarries whence were drawn the material for many a statue and temple. At the head of the gorge is Assouan, trading point for the Soudan and Central Africa. It is the ancient Syene, and is the real quarrying ground of Egypt. The red219 granite from the steps of Syene is in the pyramids and all the mighty monuments of the Nile valley. Entering the vast quarries here, you can see a large obelisk not entirely detached from the solid rock, lying just as it was left by the workmen thousands of years ago. There are also half finished monuments of other forms still adhering to their mother rock, and a monstrous sarcophagus which had for some reason been discarded ere it was quite finished.

In the river opposite Assouan is the Island of Elephantine or “Isle of Flowers,” on which are the ruins of two temples of the Theban period. Three miles above is the first cataract of the Nile, which was reckoned as the boundary of Upper Egypt.

You are now 580 miles south of Cairo and 730 from the Mediterranean, on the borders of Nubia. Assouan is a border town now, with 4000 people, but in the time of old Theban kings, Syene was not on the margin of their empire and glory, nor did the wonders of the Nile valley cease here. A short way above Assouan is the beautiful island of Philæ, the turning point of tourists on the Nile, crowned with its temples, colonnades and palms and set in a framework of majestic rocks and purple mountains. The island was especially dedicated to the worship of Isis, and her temple is yet one of the most beautiful of Egyptian ruins, as much of the impressive coloring of the interior remains uninjured. The ruins of no less than eight distinct temples exist here, some of which are as late as the Roman occupation of Egypt.

One hundred and twenty miles above, or south of, the first cataract of the Nile, thirty-six miles north of the last, and quite within the borders of Nubia, the traveller, struck hitherto with the impoverished aspect of the country, suddenly pauses with astonishment and admiration before a range of colossal statues carved out of the rocky side of a hill of limestone, the base of which is washed by the famous river.

For centuries the drifting sands of the desert had accumulated over the architectural wonders of Ipsambul, and no sign of them was visible except the head of one gigantic statue.

No traveler seems to have inquired what this solitary landmark220 meant; whether it indicated the site of a city, a palace, or a tomb; until, in 1717, the enthusiastic Belzoni undertook the work of excavation. His toil was well rewarded; for it brought to light a magnificent specimen of the highest Egyptian art; a specimen which, with Champollion, we may confidently attribute to the palmiest epoch of Pharaonic civilization.

TEMPLE OF ISIS, ISLAND OF PHILÆ.

Every voyager who visits Ipsambul seems inspired with more than ordinary feelings of admiration.

Here, exclaims Eliot Warburton, the daring genius of Ethiopian architecture ventured to enter into rivalry with Nature’s greatness, and found her material in the very mountains that seemed to bid defiance to her efforts.

You can conceive nothing more singular and impressive, says Mrs. Romer, than the façade of the Great Temple; for it is both a temple and a cave. Ipsambul, remarks Sir F. Henniker, is the ne plus ultra of Egyptian labor; and in itself an ample221 recompense for the labor of a voyage up the Nile. There is no temple, of either Dendera, Thebes, or Philæ, which can be put in competition with it; and one may well be contented to finish one’s travels with having seen the noblest monument of antiquity in Nubia and Egypt.

There are two temples at Ipsambul—one much larger than the other; but each has a speos, or cavern, hewn out of the solid rock. Let us first visit the more considerable, consecrated by Rameses II. to the sun-god Phrah, or Osiris, whose statue is placed above the entrance door. An area of 187 feet wide by 86 feet high is excavated from the mountain, the sides being perfectly smooth, except where ornamented by relievos. The façade consists of four colossal statues of Rameses II. seated, each 65 feet high, two on either side of the gateway. From the shoulder to the tiara they measure 15 feet 6 inches; the ears are 3 feet 6 inches long; the face 7 feet; the beard 5 feet 6 inches; the shoulders 25 feet 4 inches across. The moulding of each stony countenance is exquisite.

FACADE OF TEMPLE OF PHRAH-IPSAMBUL.

The beauty of the curves is surprising in stone; the rounding of the muscles and the flowing lines of the neck and face are executed with great fidelity.

Between the legs of these gigantic Ramessids are placed four statues of greatly inferior dimensions; mere pigmies compared with their colossal neighbors, and yet considerably larger than ordinary human size. The doorway is twenty feet high. On either side are carved some huge hieroglyphical reliefs, while the whole façade is finished by a cornice and row of quaintly222 carved figures underneath a frieze of 21 monkeys, each eight feet high and six feet across the shoulders. Passing the doorway you enter a vast and gloomy hall. Here is a vast and mysterious aisle whose pillars are eight colossal giants on whom the rays of heaven never shone. They stand erect, with hands across their stony breasts; figures of the all-conquering Rameses, whose mitre-shaped head dresses, each wearing in front the serpent, emblem of royal power, nearly touch the roof. They are all perfectly alike; all carry the crosier and flail; every face is characterized by a deep and solemn expression. How different from the grotesque and often unclean monsters which embody the Hindoo conception of Divine attributes! They are the very types of conscious power, of calm and passionless intellect; as far removed from the petty things of earth as the stars from the worm that crawls beneath the sod.

INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE OF OSIRIS.

These images of the great king are supported against enormous pillars, cut out of the solid rock; and behind them run two gorgeous galleries, whose walls are covered with historical bas-reliefs of battle and victory, of conquering warriors, bleeding victims, fugitives, cities besieged, long trains of soldiers and captives,223 numerous companies of chariots, all combined in a picture of great beauty and impressive effect.

This entrance chamber is 57 feet by 52 feet. It opens into a cellar 35 feet long, 25¹⁄₂ feet wide and 22 feet high, and is supported in the centre by four pillars each three feet square. Its walls are embellished by fine hieroglyphs in an excellent state of preservation. Behind is a smaller chamber where, upon thrones of rock, are seated the three divinities of the Egyptian trinity Ammon-Ra, Phrah and Phtah, accompanied by Rameses the Great, here admitted on an equality with them. On either side of the outer entrance are doors leading to rooms hewn out of solid rock. They are six in number and each is profusely ornamented with lamps, vases, piles of cakes and fruits and other offerings to the Gods. The lotus is painted in every stage of its growth, and the boat is a frequent symbol. These bas-reliefs seem to have been covered with a stucco which was painted in various colors. The ground color of the ceiling is blue and covered with symbolic birds. Well may Champollion exclaim: “The temple of Ipsambul is in itself worthy a journey to Nubia;” or Lenormant say, “It is the most gigantic conception ever begotten by the genius of the Pharaohs.” It is a temple of Rameses II., of the nineteenth Theban dynasty, who figures as the Sesostris of the Greeks.

Hardly less interesting is the Little Temple of Ipsambul, dedicated to Athor, or Isis, the Egyptian Venus, by the queen of Rameses the Great. Either side of its doorway is flanked by statues thirty feet high, sculptured in relief on the compact mass of rock, and standing erect with their arms by their sides. The centre figure of each three represents the queen as Isis, her face surmounted by a moon within a cow’s horns. The other images are intended for King Rameses himself. Beneath the right hand of each are smaller statues representing the three sons and three daughters of the king and queen.

A portion of the rock, measuring one hundred and eleven feet in length, has been excavated to make room for the façade of the temple. The devices begin on the northern side with an image of Rameses brandishing his falchion, as if about to strike.

224

TEMPLE OF ATHOR IPSAMBUL.

Athor, behind him, lifts her hand in compassion for the victim; Osiris, in front, holds forth the great knife, as if to command the slaughter. He is seated there as the judge, and decides the fate of the peoples conquered by the Egyptian king. The next object is a colossal statue of about thirty feet high, wrought in a deep recess of the rock: it represents Athor standing, and two tall plumes spring from the middle of her head-dress, with the symbolic crescent on either side. Then comes a mass of hieroglyphics, and above them are seated the sun-god and the hawk-headed deity Anubis. On either side of the doorway, as you pass into the pronaos, offerings are presented to Athor,—who holds in her hand the lotus-headed sceptre, and is surrounded with a cloud of emblems and inscriptions. This hall is supported by six square pillars, all having the head of Athor on the front face of their capitals; the other three faces being occupied with sculptures, once richly painted, and still225 exhibiting traces of blue, red, and yellow coloring. The shafts are covered with hieroglyphs, and emblematical representations of Osiris, Athor, Kneph, and other deities.

If these sacred edifices inspire a feeling of awe in the spectator, while in ruin, what must their effect have been when their shrines contained their mystics’ images; when the open portals revealed their sculptures and the walls their glowing colors to the worshipping multitudes; when the roofs shone with azure and gold; when the colossal forms represented the deities in whom they reposed their faith; when processions of kings, nobles and priests marched along their torch lit aisles; when incense filled the air and the vaults resounded with the music of ten thousand voices; when every hieroglyph and emblem had a meaning to the kneeling votary, now forgotten or never known?

Numerous other Nubian temples bear witness to Egyptian prowess, wealth, patience and religious sentiment. That at Derr is cut out of the solid rock to a depth of 110 feet, and its grand entrance chamber is supported by six columns representing Osiris. It was built in honor of the great Rameses. At Ibrim are four rock temples, all of the time of the Theban kings. And so the traveler up the Nile, and into the domains of far off Nubia, is continually meeting with these vast rock temples, monuments of the Egyptian kings on the one hand, tombs of the nobility on the other, and worshiping halls for all.

Returning to Egypt and passing down the eastern arm of the Nile to Tanis, or Beni-Hassan, where the Hebrews and Arabs were wont to trade with the Egyptians, we find one of the oldest authentic monuments, except the pyramids, and certainly the most interesting to us. It is the tomb of a nobleman under Usurtasen II. B.C. 2366. The rich paintings on the walls of this tomb are of inestimable value as showing the arts, trades, and domestic, public and religious institutions of the Egyptians at this period. They are still more valuable in an historic view, for they relate to the arrival of a family of thirty-seven persons from the Hebrew or Semitic nation, who had come to fix their abode on the blessed banks of the Nile. The father226 of the family is represented as offering a gift to the king. Behind him are his companions, bearded men, armed with lances, bows and clubs. The women are dressed in the lively fashion of the Amu tribe, to which the family belongs. The children and asses are loaded with baggage. A companion of the party is standing by with a lyre of very old form. The gift of the father, or patriarch, was the paint of Midian, an article highly prized by the Egyptians. Many persons have been eager to associate this inscription, or sculpture, with the arrival of the sons of Jacob in Egypt, to implore the favor of Joseph; but it antedates that event so far that there can be no possible connection between them. It does show however that arrivals in Egypt from Arabia and Palestine, for purposes of trade and even permanent residence, were not confined by any means to the scriptural period.

INTERIOR OF ROCK TOMB—BENI-HASSAN.

But where in Egypt do these wonders of monument, of sculpture, of sacred writing, not exist? We find them everywhere, telling of a people full of genius and the germs of all civilization. You read as you could not read from a book, for there is no conflict of sentiment, no odd statements to reconcile. And what do you read? That the art of writing was familiar to priest and scribe. That they had ships, for their inscriptions show handsome nautical designs. There are glass blowers, flax dressers, spinners, weavers, and bales of cloth. There are potters, painters, carpenters, and statuaries. There is a doctor attending a patient and a herdsman physicking cattle. The hunters employ arrows,227 spears and the lasso. There is the Nile full of fish and a hippopotamus among the ooze. There is the bastinado for the men and the flogging of a seated woman. There are games of ball and other amusements for men and women. And then the luxuries! There are harpers, costly garments, patterns of every design, fashions for the hair, costly spices and perfumes. They have portrayed every type of life and business with a faithfulness which is astonishing.

EGYPTIAN BRICK FIELD.

The most mysterious of Egyptian monuments is “The Caves of the Crocodiles,” or Grottoes of Samoun, in Upper Egypt. They are not often visited because travelers are repelled at the228 outset by their difficulty and gloom. They are filled with an incalculable number of human mummies, and those of the crocodile, birds and reptiles. Whence they came is not known, but, it is supposed, from Monfalout and Hermenopolis on the opposite side of the Nile. An English traveler, M. A. Georges, penetrated them after great trouble, and was horrified to find within the dark grottoes the remains of a traveler who had been overcome by famine and exhaustion. He says,

“On raising our eyes we perceived a horrid spectacle. A corpse still covered with its skin was seated on the rounded fragment of a rock. Its aspect was hideous. Its arms were outstretched, its head thrown back. His neck was bent with the death agony. His emaciated body, eyes enlarged, chin contracted, mouth twisted and open, hair erect on his head, every feature distorted by suffering—these gave him a horrible appearance.

INTERIOR OF GROTTOES OF SAMOUN.

“It made one shudder; involuntarily one thought of one’s-self.229 His shrunken hands dug their nails into the flesh; the chest was split open, displaying the lungs and tracheal artery; on striking the abdomen, it resounded hoarsely, like a cracked drum.

“Undoubtedly this man had been full of vital force when seized by death. Undoubtedly he had lost himself in these dark galleries, and his lantern having flickered out, he had vainly sought the track leading to the upper air, shouting in frenzied tones which none could hear; hunger, thirst, fatigue, terror, must have driven him nearly mad; he had seated himself on this stone, and howled despairingly until death had mercifully come to his relief. The warm humidity and the bituminous exhalations of the cavern had so thoroughly interpenetrated his body, that now his skin was black, tanned, imperishable, like that of a mummy. It was eight years since the poor wretch had been lost.

“On quitting this spot of mournful memory, we turned to the left through a corridor whose roof and walls were blackened by bituminous vapors, and in which it was possible to walk upright. Thousands of bats, attracted by the torches, assailed us with a whirr of wings, and considerably impeded our progress. We then arrived at the most interesting part of the grottoes: the soil, which gave way beneath our feet, was composed of the débris of mummies and their swathings; at every step arose a black, acrid, nauseating dust, as bitter as a compound of soot and aloes. An enormous number of crocodiles of all sizes encumber the galleries. Some are black, some corpulent, some gigantic, some not larger than lizards. The human mummies and those of birds are side by side with them.” The travelers did not reach the end of these interminable galleries. The heat was intense, and they grew tired of sickening impressions.

The mystery of the Nile regions above Kartoum were unlocked to geography and the scientific world more largely by Colonel Baker’s armed expedition than by any other. We shall soon have the pleasure of following him to Lake Albert Nyanza in company with his faithful wife, on a journey of exploration, but230 before doing so let us see what he did in the Upper Nile valley in an armed way and in the name of humanity and that civilization of which we all are justly proud, and thus complete our story of the wonderful river on which Egypt depends for its sustenance.

Colonel Baker, on his trip to Albert Nyanza found that at least 15,000 Arabs, subjects of the Khedive of Egypt, were engaged in the African slave trade, with head-quarters at Kartoum, and mostly in the pay of merchants there. They were nothing but cruel brigands, well armed and officered, and equal to any outrage on the natives to secure slaves and other booty. They sowed the seeds of anarchy throughout Africa, and contributed to the suspicion, treachery, black-mailing, and every evil that cropped out in the chiefs of the African tribes.

He determined to attack this moral cancer by actual cautery at the very root of the evil. These brigands were cowardly, and, he thought, could be crushed by a show of force, provided it emanated from the Khedive, the only sovereign they acknowledge. Therefore the Khedive was asked for authority, which he conferred, and Baker started having full power to suppress the slave trade, to reduce the countries south of Gondokoro, to annex them, to open navigation to the lakes under the equator, to establish military stations, to mete out death to all opponents, to govern all countries south of Gondokoro.

He took Lady Baker and a goodly number of English assistants along, contracted for provisions for four years, supplied himself with money, trinkets, tools, and a total of 36 vessels, six of which were small steamers, to be increased to 55 vessels and 9 steamers at Kartoum. The armed force consisted of 1,645 troops, 200 of which were cavalry, and two batteries of artillery. The troops were of the forces of the Khedive, half Egyptians and half natives of Soudan, the latter colored and by far the best warriors. There is something to be admired in these Soudanese soldiers. They are active, willing, brave and perfectly submissive to kind discipline. They have taste, skill and are acclimated. In their tribes they perpetuate traits which must have come down from old Egyptian times. Among the wives, especially of231 chiefs a favorite head dress is one which is supposed to reflect the appearance of the honored sphinxes, and it is, to say the least, very becoming.

CHIEF’S WIFE IN SPHINX HEAD DRESS.

Every precaution was taken to have all assemble at Kartoum, but the expedition was not popular in Egypt, the boats could not be gotten over the Nile cataracts, and months rolled away before the Colonel got ready to start. The fleet of thirty-three vessels in which he did start were nearly all prepared at Kartoum. On these he embarked 1400 men for his voyage of 1450 miles to Gondokoro. His cavalry was dismissed as useless, and232 his body guard was made up of a corps of picked men, forty-six in all, half of whom were white and half black, that there might be no conspiracy among them, and that the one might stimulate the other. This guard was put into perfect drill, armed with the Snider rifle, and named “The Forty Thieves,” on account of the propensity they at first manifested. They afterwards became models of military discipline.

THE FORTY THIEVES.

On February 8, 1870, two small steamers and thirty-one sailing vessels started up the White Nile from Kartoum, with 850 soldiers and six months’ provisions. The rest were to follow as fast as transports could be supplied. In five days they were at Fashoda, in the Shillook country, 118 miles from Kartoum. On February 16 they reached the mouth of the Sobat, 684233 miles from Kartoum. This stream was then sending down a volume of muddy water much larger than the White Nile itself.

They were now in the region of immense flats and boundless marshes through which the White Nile soaks and winds for 750 miles from Gondokoro. The river proper is almost wholly obstructed by compressed vegetation known as “sponge,” and at points this is so thick as to defy the passage of boats without cutting. But the slavers had discovered another route through an arm or bayou called the Bahr Giraffe, and this Baker determined to take. The Bahr Giraffe proved to be winding, but deep enough at first. Like the White Nile, its waters and banks abounded in game, the first specimen of the larger kind of which proved to be a lion, which bounded off to cover on the approach of the boats.

By February 25, they were in a mass of floating vegetation through which a canal had to be cut. These obstructions now became frequent and could only be pierced by means of canals and dams. On March 5, the Colonel was roused from a nap on the steamer’s deck by a shock, followed by a cry “The ship’s sinking!” A hippopotamus had charged the steamer from the bottom, and then had attacked her small boat, cutting two holes through her iron plates with his tusks. The diah-beeah was only kept from sinking by the aid of the steamer’s pumps.

Obstructions became thicker and canal cutting almost continuous. The men got sick with fever. The grass swarmed with snakes and poisonous ants. The black troops proved hardier and more patient than the Egyptians. There were some ducks but not enough to supply meat for all. The Colonel discovered a hippopotamus some distance off and ordered a boat to pull for him. He disappeared on its approach, but soon reappeared about thirty yards away. The Colonel planted a bullet in his head. The animal sank, but was found floating near the fleet the next morning. The men speedily cut him up and were delighted with their supply of fresh meat.

On March 21, while the men were digging out the steamers which had become blocked by the floating masses of vegetation,234 they felt something struggling beneath their feet. Scrambling away, they beheld the head of a crocodile protruding through the sudd. The black soldiers, armed with swords and bill-hooks, attacked him, and soon his flesh gladdened the cooking pots of the Soudan regiment.

A CROCODILE MOBBED IN THE SUDD.

In thirteen days the fleet only made twelve miles through the sudd, although a thousand men were at work all the time cutting and tugging. The Egyptians fell sick by scores, and many died. On March 27, another hippopotamus was killed, which gave the men a supply of fresh meat. Several buffaloes were also killed.

After having wasted fifty-one days since leaving Kartoum, it was discovered that the Bahr Giraffe became too shallow for235 further venture. Return was therefore compulsory, much to the disgust of the officers but to the great satisfaction of the troops. The whole season was lost, for no other route was practicable till there should come a flush of waters. And the return was hardly less difficult than the upward progress. The canals they had cut were filled with vegetable masses and had to be re-opened. But they finally reached the White Nile again and in time to intercept a Turkish slave party who had been raiding the Shillooks. Seventy-one slaves were found closely stowed away in their boat and eighty-four concealed on shore, under guard. These were liberated, and both slaves and captors informed that slavery had been abolished by the Khedive’s order.

The party sailed down the White Nile to its junction with the Sobat and there, on high, hard ground, prepared a permanent camp—really a little town with houses and workshops. The acquaintance of the Shillooks was made and cordial relations established. They brought their vegetables to camp to sell, and proved very kind and useful. But they had been greatly demoralized by the Arab kidnappers, as had all the tribes on both sides of the river.

Soon after they were stationed here a sail was observed bearing down the river. It proved to be that of the boat from which the slaves had been liberated up near the mouth of the Bahr Giraffe. It was ordered to stop and found to be loaded with corn. But there was an awkward smell about the forecastle. An officer drew a ramrod from a rifle and began to poke the corn. A cry came from beneath and a wooly head protruded. A woman was dragged forth by the arm. Then the planking was broken and the hold found full of slaves, packed like sardines in a barrel. Orders were given to immediately unload the vessel. One hundred and fifty slaves, many of them manacled, were taken out of that small, stench-ridden place. The slaves were released and the officers and crew of the boat put in irons. The former consisted of men and women. All were given freedom papers, and allowed the privilege of returning home. Those who did not wish to go might remain236 and they would be treated well. The women might marry the soldiers if they chose. Strange to say they all selected soldier husbands, and there would have been a grand wedding day after the African fashion, if Colonel Baker had not limited the engagements to a few at a time.

RELEASE OF THE SLAVES.

Land was cleared around the encampment, and all hands kept to work at mechanics, farming, hunting, etc. Meanwhile Colonel Baker went to Kartoum with his steamers and a fleet of sail boats for a supply of corn. He then returned and prospected up the White Nile only to find it hopelessly obstructed, unless a special expedition were sent up to cut away “the sponge” and other vegetable obstructions. He also found out that most of the leaders of the very brigands he was sent out to capture were in league with the home authorities, and that they had237 territory assigned them in which to operate, for which privilege they paid good round sums annually. He was therefore in the dilemma of openly serving a government which was secretly opposing him.

NIGHT ATTACK ON THE BOATS BY A HIPPOPOTAMUS.

By December 1, 1870, at which time the Upper Nile would be in flood and the season propitious, he expected to start again from his camp at Tewfikeeyah for Gondokoro. But it was December 11 before his full fleet of twenty-six vessels got off. Not daring to risk the White Nile, he turned off again through the Bahr-Giraffe, which he found more open. Nevertheless canals had to be frequently cut through the vegetable obstructions, and nearly the same incidents as the year before were repeated. When they arrived at the shallows, there was238 not water enough and the boats had to be dragged over the bars, after discharging part of their cargoes.

Finally the White Nile was reached again, and all were thankful. Their last adventure in the Bafr Giraffe was with a hippopotamus which, in the night, dashed furiously on the small boats. The zinc boat was loaded with flesh. With one blow he demolished this. In another instant he seized the dingy in his immense jaws, and the crash of splintered wood told of its complete destruction. He then attacked, with a blind fury, the steam launch, and received shot after shot. Retreating for a time, he returned to the attack with even greater fury, when he received a ball in the head which keeled him over. He was evidently a character of the worst description for his body was literally covered with scars and wounds received in fights with bulls of his own species.

By March 10, all the vessels were afloat on the White Nile, and their further upward journey began. In a month (April 15) they were all safely at Gondokoro, 330 miles from Bahr Giraffe junction and 1400 from Kartoum. Gondokoro was much broken up and nearly depopulated. The Austrian Missionaries were gone and the place given over to raiders and kidnappers. The Bari tribes, great fighters and hunters, were in the employ of the Arab slave dealers, and Gondokoro was their headquarters. They received Colonel Baker coldly, for though they did not want to be slaves themselves, they had no objections to lending their aid to the Arab brigands to take slaves from other tribes, provided they were well paid for it.

A military station was founded at Gondokoro, on high ground, and as the river was now too low to proceed further, Baker’s army went into permanent quarters. Ground was planted in vegetables and corn, houses were built, boats were repaired, and an air of business pervaded the place. The Bari never fully reconciled themselves to Baker’s presence, preferring no government at all. They are a pastoral people, possessing large herds of cattle and living well. The men are tall and powerful, and the women not unprepossessing. But they have been so badly demoralized by the slave dealers as to be hostile239 to white men and to every form of restraint. They were clearly in with the brigands to starve Baker’s expedition out and force it to return to Kartoum.

A SOUDAN WARRIOR.

Baker formally annexed all this country to Egypt, and promulgated a code of laws for its government. This brought him into actual war with all the Bari tribes and collisions were frequent, in which the natives were generally worsted. There were enemies in the water too, for the Nile at Gondokoro literally swarms with crocodiles. One of these animals tore an240 arm off a sailor, and another seized and devoured a washer woman who went into the water to do her washing. Many were killed by the men. Once the Colonel shot a very large one, measuring twelve feet six inches long. It was supposed to be dead and the men, having fastened a rope around its neck, began to pull it up the bank. It suddenly came to life and opened its huge jaws. The men ran off in fright, and could not be induced to return till another bullet was lodged in its skull.

The “Forty Thieves” were now a most efficient part of Colonel Baker’s forces. The Egyptians had been gradually eliminated, so that now nearly all were blacks from the Soudan. They had ceased to steal, and were models of bravery and soldierly drill and obedience. They became good shots and grew to know their superiority over the native spearmen. The entire force at Gondokoro numbered 1100 soldiers and 400 sailors. They were constantly menaced by the Bari, and never slept except under guard.

At length the various hostile tribes formed a coalition and, inflamed by the slave dealers, made a combined night attack. They were received so hotly that they soon dispersed, with the loss of many men. In this instance the fire of the “Forty Thieves” was most effective, and the natives declared they were more afraid of them than all the rest of the army. Watching from this time on was unceasing, and various offensive expeditions were fitted out whose business was to subdue the tribes by piece meal and make them acquainted with the new authorities and with the fact that dealing in slaves could no longer be tolerated on the White Nile nor in any country which might be annexed to Egypt.

Baker had found out to his regret that he could not establish monthly boat service between Gondokoro and Kartoum, as he had intended, owing to the formidable obstacles in the White Nile. Disease carried off his men and horses. A drought blighted the gardens and fields around his camp. By October, 1871, a conspiracy to desert and return to Kartoum cropped out, which involved all his troops except the “Forty241 Thieves.” To prevent this the vessels were run up the river on a prospecting tour. They made the discovery that corn in plenty existed in the Bari regions beyond. But it could not be bought. Whom these cunning natives could not drive out they were bound to starve out. The corn had therefore to be taken. It was a great relief to the garrison to know that they were not far from a land of abundance.

NIGHT ATTACK ON GONDOKORO STATION.

Still Colonel Baker thought it prudent to weed out his discontented forces and especially to get rid of the long list of women, children and sick who were now a burden. He therefore sent thirty vessels back to Kartoum in November. Besides a goodly supply of corn, they took along 1100 persons, leaving him with a force of about 550 soldiers and sailors. With this242 small force he was left to subdue hostile tribes, suppress the slave trade and annex the country. It seemed to him that the slave dealers had gained their point and defeated the object of the expedition.

ELEPHANTS IN TROUBLE.

Yet he persisted. Small land and river expeditions were sent out in all directions for the purpose of subjugating natives and crushing slave parties. It was on one of these that a herd of eleven bull elephants was seen from the deck of the vessel. Men were landed who surrounded them and drove them into the river. They swam to the opposite side, but the banks were high and the water deep. They were within rifle range from the vessel, and began tearing down the banks with their tusks in order to climb up. Fire was opened on them, which kept243 them in a state of confusion. At one time several mounted the bank, but it gave way and precipitated them all into the water. At last one got on firm ground and exposed his flank. A ball struck him behind the shoulder which sent him into the river. His struggles brought him within twenty yards of the vessel. Another bullet went crashing through his brain and despatched him. Another one was killed before the ammunition was exhausted. The carcasses of both became the prize of the men, and strange to say, many of the hostile natives, attracted to the spot by the firing, professed to be very friendly in order that they might share the rich elephant steaks. They preferred this meat to that of their own cattle, of which they had plenty.

By November, Colonel Baker called in all his expeditions. He had established peace throughout a wide section, and set free the slaves captured by several large parties. The war with the Baris was virtually over. But the slave dealers had only changed their base of operations. They had gone further south and would there stir up the same trouble they had incited among the Bari.

When all had re-assembled at Gondokoro, preparations were set on foot for a movement further south, the general course to be the line of the White Nile. While these were going on, those who had leisure devoted themselves to hunting, and studying the animal, mineral and vegetable resources. It was a country of great natural wealth. Iron and salt abounded. Tobacco, beans, corn, hemp and cotton could easily be raised. Nearly every tropical fruit was found in abundance. There was good fishing in the rivers, and plenty of ducks and other small game in the lakes and ponds. Every now and then the hunters had an adventure with hippopotami, whose attacks were always dangerous. Elephants were very plenty in all the region about Gondokoro. They saw them singly and in herds, and had fine opportunity to study their habits. They are fond of the fruit of the “Keglik” tree, which resembles a date. If the tree be small they quickly tear it up by the roots and eat the fruit at leisure. If it be large—and they frequently grow to a diameter of three feet—the animal butts his forehead against the tree till244 it quivers in every branch and showers its fruit down upon the delighted animal.

SHAKING FRUIT.

On January 23, 1872, the expedition was off, a garrison having been left at Gondokoro. Its final destination was the Unyoro country, just north of Victoria Nyanza and east of Albert Nyanza. We will hear of all these names again and become familiar with them. The expedition started under excellent auspices, except as to numbers. The “Forty Thieves” were staunch and brave, and all the Sudani soldiers were in good spirits. The Colonel’s light steamer led the way, followed by the heavier vessels. This gave him fine opportunity to prospect the country and enjoy occasional hunts. The mountains of Regiaf abut on the White Nile, about fifty or sixty miles245 above Gondokoro. In their midst is a fine cataract and much beautiful scenery. The geological formation is very peculiar. One curiosity was noted in the shape of an immense Syenite slab, forty-five feet long and as many wide, resting like a table on a hard clay pedestal. This stone is reverenced by the Baris, and they think that any person who sleeps under it will surely die.

TABLE ROCK AT REGIAF.

The vessels could not go beyond the Regiaf cataract, and a journey overland to the Laboré country was projected. But all attempts to employ native carriers failed. The soldiers of Baker’s own force refused to draw the loaded carts. There was nothing left but to organize a small, light-armed and light-loaded force, and try the land journey in this way. This force started in February. The guide was old Lokko, a rainmaker246 of Laboré. Mrs. Baker went along, accompanied by a train of female carriers. They drove a herd of 1000 cows and 500 sheep. The country was thickly populated and teeming with plenty. The Laboré country was reached, after a sixty mile tramp, and they were in the midst of friends—the hated and hostile Baris having been left behind. Carriers could now be had in abundance and the journeys were rapid to the Asua, the largest tributary of the White Nile.

NATIVE DANCE.

Here was a grand country. There were high mountains and fertile valleys, fine forests and plenty of game. The march now lay toward Fatiko, the capital of the Shooli. It lies at the base of the Shooa mountains, amid the most picturesque scenery, 85 miles from Laboré and 185 from Gondokoro. A grand entry247 into the town was made. The “Forty Thieves” and the rest of the troops were put into complete marching order. The band was ordered to play. There was a kind of dress parade and sham fight, mingled with drum and bugle sounds and the blare of the band. The manœuvres pleased the natives very much. They are fond of music, and as the troops reached a camping spot, the women of the village clustered around, assumed dancing attitudes, and in nature’s costume indulged in one of their characteristic fandanges, the old women proving even more inveterate dancers than the young.

Baker established a military station at Fatiko, leaving a detachment of 100 out of his 212 men. On March 18, 1872, he started for Unyoro. Though the intermediate country is rich in vegetation, it is uninhabited except by tropical animals, and is a common hunting ground for the tribes on either side. The Unyoros live east and north of Victoria Nyanza Lake. They are a numerous people, but not so stalwart as the Laborés or Schooli. Their soil is rich, and tobacco grows to an immense size. Their town of Masindi, twenty miles east of lake Albert Nyanza, whose waters can be seen from the summits of the mountains, was reached by the expedition on April 25. The country was placed under the protection of the Khedive, and the chief Kabba-Rega, son of Kamrasi, was made acquainted with the fact that hereafter slavery was prohibited. This tribe had been at times heavily raided by slave hunters, and their pens in different parts of the country were even then full of captives—probably 1000 in all. The natives themselves, as is usual with African tribes, only saw harm in this when the captives were of their own tribe. “Steal from everybody but from me,” seems to be their idea of the eighth commandment.

The expedition remained for some time in Masindi and attempted to establish a permanent military station. But the slave hunters seemed to have more power over the natives than Baker with his drilled forces and show of Egyptian authority. The chief and his subjects grew suspicious and finally hostile. They attacked Baker, and the result of the fight was their defeat and the destruction of their town by fire. Such an atmosphere248 was not congenial to peace and regular authority. Therefore a retreat was ordered toward Rionga on the Victoria Nile. But how to make it? Every surrounding was hostile. Porters could be had with difficulty. Worst of all, provisions were exhausted. At this critical moment Mrs. Baker came to the rescue with a woman’s wit and prudence. She had been laying up a reserve of flour when it was plenty, and now she brought forth what was deemed a supply for several days.

ATTACK BY AMBUSCADE.

On June 14, 1872, the station at Masindi was destroyed, and the expedition started on its backward journey amid hostile demonstrations by the natives. The journey was almost like a running battle. Day attacks were frequent, and scarcely a night passed without an attempt at a surprise. The “Forty Thieves”249 became the main-stay of the expedition. They were ever on the alert, and proved very formidable with their trusty Snider rifles. They grew to know where ambuscades were to be expected, and were quick to dispose themselves so as to make defence complete or first attack formidable. They never fired without an object, and only when they had dead aim. And they knew the value of cover against the lances of the enemy. Their losses were therefore small, while they played havoc with the enemy, seldom failing to rout them, or to conduct an honorable retreat.

At length they struck the Victoria Nile at Foweera, fifteen miles below Rionga Islands. Here they built a stockade, and began to build canoes with which to cross the river which was 500 yards wide. Word was sent up to Rionga. The chief came and proved friendly. He informed the Colonel of the plot between Kabba Rega and the Arab slave hunters to drive him out of the country, and declared that he would be faithful to the Khedive’s authority. Whereupon Baker declared him chief instead of Kabba, and endowed him with full authority over the natives, in the name of the Khedive. Unyoro thus had a new king. He was left with a complement of Baker’s small army as a guard and nucleus, and the Colonel started down the river in canoes for his post at Fatiko. His small garrison, left there, received him gladly, but scarcely was the reception over when an attack was made upon it by the slave hunters. They were well prepared and determined. From behind huts and other places of safety they began to pick off the soldiers, and a charge of the “Forty Thieves” was ordered. It was brilliantly executed, and resulted in the dislodgment of the enemy and their pursuit for many miles with great slaughter and the capture of many prisoners, among whom were some 135 of their slaves.

This battle resulted in the driving out of Abou Saood, the leader of the slave hunters, and the man who had rented the whole country from the authorities at Kartoum for the purpose of brigandage. He went to Cairo to complain of the treatment he had received at the hands of Baker and his party, and actually251 circulated the report that he and Mrs. Baker had been killed on the head-waters of the Nile.

DRIVING A PRAIRIE WITH FIRE.

A strong fortification was built at Fatiko, which was finished by December, and reinforcements were sent for from Gondokoro. It was the hunting season, and many expeditions were organized for the capture of game, in which the natives joined with a hearty good will. Besides the rifle in skilled hands, the net of the natives for the capture of antelope and smaller game was much relied on, and once all enjoyed the magnificent sight of a tropical prairie on fire, with its leaping game of royal proportions, to be brought down almost at will, provided the hunter was not demoralized with its number and size.

AFFECTIONATE RESULTS OF FREEDOM.

While at Fatiko, an embassy came from King Mtesa of the252 Uganda professing friendship and offering an army of 6000 men for,—he did not know what, but to punish any natives who might appear to be antagonistic, especially Kabba Rega.

By March, 1873, reinforcements from Gondokoro arrived in pitiable plight. Baker’s forces were now 620 strong. He re-inforced his various military stations. Then he liberated the numerous slaves the upward troops had taken from the slave hunters. Most of these were women and back in their native country. They accepted liberty with demonstrations of joy, rushed to the officers and men on whom they lavished hugs and kisses, and danced away in a delirium of excitement.

Colonel Baker’s time would expire in April. Therefore he timed his return to Gondokoro so as to be there by the first of the month, 1873. The whole situation was changed. There was scarcely a vestige of the neat station he had left. The slave dealers had carried things with a high hand, and had demoralized the troops. Filth and disorder had taken the place of cleanliness and discipline. Things were put to rights by May, and on the 25 of that month Baker started down the Nile, leaving his “Forty Thieves” as part of the Gondokoro garrison.

On June 29, Colonel Baker, Mrs. Baker and the officers of this celebrated expedition arrived at Kartoum, and reached Cairo on August 24, whence they sailed for England.

He concludes his history thus:—“The first steps in establishing the authority of a new government among tribes hitherto savage and intractable were of necessity accompanied by military operations. War is inseparable from annexation, and the law of force, resorted to in self-defence, was absolutely indispensable to prove the superiority of the power that was eventually to govern. The end justified the means.

“At the commencement of the expedition I had felt that the object of the enterprise—‘the suppression of the slave trade’—was one for which I could confidently ask a blessing.

“A firm belief in Providential support has not been unrewarded. In the midst of sickness and malaria we had strength; from acts of treachery we were preserved unharmed; in personal encounters we remained unscathed. In the end, every opposition253 was overcome: hatred and subordination yielded to discipline and order. A paternal government extended its protection through lands hitherto a field for anarchy and slavery. The territory within my rule was purged from the slave trade. The natives of the great Shooli tribe, relieved from their oppressors, clung to the protecting government. The White Nile, for a distance of 1,600 miles from Kartoum to Central Africa, was cleansed from the abomination of a traffic which had hitherto sullied its waters.

GORDON AS MANDARIN.

254

“Every cloud had passed away, and the term of my office expired in peace and sunshine. In this result, I humbly traced God’s blessing.”

Baker’s picture is much overdrawn. The situation in the Soudan has never been promising. In 1874, Colonel James Gordon was made Governor General of all these equatorial provinces which Baker had annexed to Egypt. Gordon was a brave enthusiast, who had acquired the title of “Chinese” Gordon, because he had organized an army at Shanghai, and, as Brigadier, helped the Chinese Government to put down a dangerous rebellion. He had received the order of Mandarin, had infinite faith in himself, and a wonderful faculty for controlling the unruly elements in oriental countries. He did some wonderful work in the Soudan in suppressing the slave-trade, disarming the Bashi-Bazouks, reconciling the natives, and preventing the Government at Cairo from parcelling out these equatorial districts to Arab slave dealers. He worked hard, organized quite an army, and had a power in the Soudan which was imperial, and which he turned to good uses. But in 1879, he differed with the Khedive and resigned. Then England and France deposed the Khedive, Ismial, and set up Tewfik, under pretext of financial reform. But these two countries could not agree as to a financial policy. France withdrew, and left England to work out the Egyptian problem. The problem is all in a nutshell. English ascendancy in Egypt is deemed necessary to protect the Suez Canal and her water way to India. For this she bombarded and reduced Alexandria in 1882 and established a suzerainty over Egypt—Turkey giving forced assent, and France refusing to join in the mix.

The new Khedive was helpless—purposely so. England planted within Egypt an army of occupation and took virtual directorship of her institutions. But the provinces all around, especially those newly annexed by Baker, revolted. Their Moslem occupants would not acknowledge English interference and sovereignty. Soudan was in rebellion both east and west of the Nile. England sent several small armies toward the interior and fought many doubtful battles. At length the project of reducing255 the Soudan was given over. But how to get the garrisons out of the leading strongholds in safety became a great problem. That at Kartoum was the largest, numbering several hundred, with a large contingent of women and children. It would be death for any of these garrisons to leave their fortifications and try boats down the Nile, or escape by camel back256 across the desert. Yet England was committed to the duty of relieving them.

PORTRAIT OF GORDON.

The rebellion was under the lead of the Mahdi, a Moslem prophet, who claimed to be raised up to save his people and religion. His followers were numerous and desperate. Gordon thought the old influence he had acquired over these people when Governor General of the Soudan, would avail him for the purpose of getting the forlorn garrisons away in safety. He was therefore re-appointed Governor General in 1884, and started with Colonel Stewart for Kartoum. There they were besieged for ten months by the Mahdi’s troops, and there Gordon was killed (January 27, 1885) by the enemy, and all his garrison surrendered or were killed. The English sent an army of 8,000 men up the Nile to rescue Gordon, and part of it got nearly to Kartoum, when word of the sad fate that had befallen the garrison reached it. The expedition retreated, and since then the Soudan and Upper Nile have been given over to the old Arab and slave stealing element.

257

SOURCES OF THE NILE.

By reversing the map of North America—turning it upside down—you get a good river map of Africa. The Mississippi, rising in a lake system and flowing into the gulf of Mexico, becomes the Nile flowing into the Mediterranean—both long water-ways. The St. Lawrence, rising in and draining the most magnificent lake system in the world, from Huron to Ontario, will represent the Congo, rising in and draining a lake system which may prove to be of equal extent and beauty. Both are heavy, voluminous streams, full of rapids and majestic falls. The Columbia River will represent the Zambesi, flowing into the Indian Ocean.

Civilized man has, perhaps, known the African Continent the longest, yet he knows it least. Its centre has been a mystery to him since the earliest ages. If the Egyptian geographer traced the first chart, and the astronomer there first noted the motion of sun, moon and stars; if on the Nile the first mariner tried his bark on water; it was but yesterday that the distant and hidden sources of the great stream were revealed, and it is around these sources that the geographer and naturalist have now the largest field for discovery, and in their midst that the traveller and hunter have the finest fields for romance and adventure.

The Mississippi has in three centuries become as familiar as the Rhine. The Nile, known always, has ever nestled its head in Africa’s unknown Lake Region, safe because of mangrove swamp and arid waste. But now that the secret of its sources is out, and with it the fact of a high and delightful inner Africa, full of running streams and far stretching lakes, of rich tropical verdure and abundant animal life, is the dream a foolish one that here are the possibilities of an empire whose commerce, agriculture, wealth and enlightenment shall make it as powerful and bright as its past has been impotent and dark?

258

We have known Africa under the delusion that it was a desert, with a fringe of vegetation on the sea coast and in the valley of the Nile. “Africs burning sands” and her benighted races are the beginning and end of our school thoughts of the “Dark Continent.” True, her Sahara is the most unmitigated desert in the world, running from the Atlantic Ocean clear to the Tigris in Asia—for the Red Sea is only a gulf in its midst. True, there is another desert in the far South, almost as blank. These, with their drifting sands, long caravans, ghastly skeletons, fierce Bedouin wanderers, friendly oases, have furnished descriptions well calculated to interest and thrill. But they are by no means the Africa of the future. They are as the shell of an egg, whose life and wonder are in the centre.

There are many old stories of African exploration. One is to the effect that a Phœnician vessel, sent out by Pharaoh Necho, left the Red Sea and in three years appeared at the Straits of Gibraltar, having circumnavigated the Continent. But it required the inducement of commercial gain to fix its boundaries exactly, to give it place on the map of the world. Not until a pathway to the east became a commercial necessity, and a short “North West Passage” a brilliant hope, did the era of Arctic adventure begin. The same necessity, and the same hope for a “South East Passage,” led the Portuguese to try all the western coast of Africa for a short cut to the Orient. For seventy years they coasted in vain, till in 1482 Diaz rounded the “Cape of Storms,” afterwards called Cape of Good Hope. Twelve years later Vasco de Gama ran the first European vessel into the ports of India.

The first permanent stream found by the Portuguese on going down the Atlantic, or west, coast of Africa was the Senegal River. They thought it a western outlet of the Nile. Here Europe first saw that luxuriant, inter-tropical Africa which differed so much from the Africa of traditions and school books. They knew that something else than a sandy waste was necessary to support a river like the Senegal. They had been used to seeing and reading of the tawny Bedouin wanderers, but south of this river they found a black, stout, well made people,259 who in contradistinction to the thin, tawny, short Moors of the desert, became Black Moors—“black-a-moors.” And in contrast with the dry, sandy, treeless plains of Sahara they actually found a country verdant, woody, fertile and rolling.

Unhappily the wrongs of the negro began with his first contact with Europeans. The Portuguese took him home as a specimen. He then became a slave. The moral sense of Europe was still medieval. Her maritime nations fastened like leeches on the west coast of Africa and sucked her life blood. Millions of her children were carried off to Brazil, the West Indies, the Spanish Main, and the British colonies in North America and elsewhere. Much as we abhor the slave system of Africa as carried on at present by Turkish dealers, it is no more inhuman than that practiced for three hundred years by the Christian nations of Europe.

This slave trade was fatal to discovery and research in Africa, such as was warranted by the knowledge which the Portuguese brought, and which is now warranted, and being realized too, by the recent revelations of Stanley, Livingstone and others. The slaver could not, because he dared not, venture far from his rendezvous on the river or in the lagoon where his victims were collected. He kept his haunts a secret, and closed the doors on all who would be likely to interfere with his gains. Not until slavery received its death blow among civilized nations did they begin to set permanent feet, in a spirit of scientific and christian inquiry, on the interior soil of Africa, and to map out its blank spaces with magnificent lakes and rivers. Then began to come those stirring narratives of travel by Mungo Park, Landers and Clapperton, who tracked the course of the Niger River. Then began that northern march of sturdy and permanent Dutch and English colonists who are carrying their cultivation and civilization from the Southern Cape to the Kalihari Desert, the southern equivalent of the Sahara. Then also a Liberian Free State became possible, founded and ruled by the children of those who had been ruthlessly stolen from their happy equatorial homes and sold into bondage in the United States.

260

Between the two sterile tracts of Africa lies the real Continent. All the coast lands are a shell. Egypt is but a strip on either side the Nile. Central Africa—the Lake regions which feed the Nile, Congo and Zambesi—is a great and grand section, where nature has been prodigal in all her gifts, and which invites a civilization as unique and strong as its physical features. We may wonder at the strange things revealed by Arctic research, but here are unrivalled chains of lake and river communication, and powerful states with strange peoples and customs, of which the last generation never dreamed. No spot of all the earth invites to such adventure as this, and none profiteth so much in the revelations which add to science and which may be turned to account in commerce and the progress of civilization.

We have read the roll of names rendered immortal by efforts to reach the two Poles of the earth. Africa’s list of explorers contains the names of Livingstone, Gordon, Cameron, Speke, Grant, Burton, Baker, Schweinfurth, Stanley, Kirk, Van der Decken, Elton, Pinto, Johnston, and others, some of whom have laid down their lives in the cause of science, and every one recalling memories of gigantic difficulties grappled with, of dangers boldly encountered, of sufferings bravely borne, of great achievements performed, and all within the space of twenty years.

Before entering these Lake Regions of Africa to see what they contain, it is due to the past to recall the fact that an old chart of the African Continent was published at Rome in 1591, which contains a system of equatorial lakes and rivers. It shows the Blue Nile coming out of Abyssinia, and the White Nile taking its rise in two great lakes under the equator—the Victoria Nyanza of Speke, and the Albert Nyanza of Baker. Due south from Albert Nyanza is another lake which is the equivalent of Tanganyika, and this is not only connected with the Congo but with the Nile and Zambesi. Cameron and Stanley have both shown that Tanganyika sends its surplus waters, if any it has, to the Congo, and Livingstone has proven that the head waters of these two mighty rivers are intimately connected.261 Is this ancient map a happy guess, or does it present facts which afterwards fell into oblivion? Ere the slave trade put its ban between the coast traders and the dwellers of the interior, ere Portuguese influence ceased in Abyssinia, and the missions of the Congo left off communications with Rome, did these unknown regions yield their secrets to the then existing civilization? May not this geographic scrap, dug from among the rubbish of the Vatican library, be the sole relic now extant of a race of medieval explorers the fame of whose adventures has fallen dumb, and whose labors have to be gone over again?

The map of Africa, used in our school days, had a blank centre. No geographer had soiled its white expanse with lines and figures. It was the “happy hunting ground” of conjecture and fancy. The Zambesi and Congo were short stumps of rivers, with perhaps a dotted line to tell what was not known. When two traders—the Pombeiros—passed from Angola on the west to the Pacific, in the beginning of the present century, and wrote how they had crossed a hundred rivers, visited the courts of powerful negro kings, traversed countries where the people had made considerable progress in the industries and arts, their story, like that of other pioneers, was discredited and their information treated with contemptuous neglect.

But about thirty years ago the modern world was startled and gratified with its first glimpse at the Lake Regions of Africa. In 1849, Livingstone, Oswell and Murray, after weary marching across the Kalihari, or southern, desert, stood on the margin of Lake Ngami, the most southerly and first discovered of the great chain of equatorial lakes. They expected to find only a continuation of desert sands and desert hardships, but, lo! a mighty expanse of waters breaks on their vision, worth more as a discovery than a dozen nameless tribes or rivers. What could it mean? Was this the key to that mysterious outpour of rivers which, flowing north, east, and west, blended their waters with the Mediterranean, the Pacific and Atlantic? The discoverer could go no further then, but fancy was excited with the prospect of vague and limitless possibilities and speculation became active in every scientific centre. Back again into the262 wilderness the discoverer is drawn, and a score of others plunge into the unknown to share his fame.

From the discovery of Ngami, a broad sheet into which the Cubango, south of the Zambesi and parallel with it, expands ere it plunges into the great central Salt Pan (a Great Salt Lake), may be dated the revival of modern curiosity in the secrets of the African Continent.

In the Portuguese colonies of Abyssinia, there were rumors that a great lake existed north of the Zambesi, called Maravi or Nyassa. Its outflow was unknown, and the theory was that it was one of a long chain which fed the Nile. They thought no other stream was worthy of such a source, but they did not ask, whence then the mightier volumes that pour through the Congo and Zambesi? Others said the Nile finds ample sources in the “Mountains of the Moon.” Nobody had seen these, but old Ptolemy, the geographer, had said so two thousand years ago, and hundreds of years before, Herodotus had written, in obedience to the dictates of two Egyptian priests, that “two conical hills, Crophi and Mophi, divided the unfathomable waters of the Nile from those which ran into Ethiopia.”

This is all the information we had of the sources of the Nile down to 1863—at least of the White, or Eastern, branch of the Nile. Then it was that Speke and Grant, coming from the south, and Baker following the valley of the river toward the equator, almost met on the spot which contains its true sources. Poor Livingstone could not be made to see the merit of their discovery. He clung to the story of Herodotus, amplified by that of Ptolemy, which fixed the head of the great river in two lakes some ten degrees south of the Equator. Livingstone believed that the high water-shed between the Zambesi and Congo would pass for the Mountains of the Moon, and that in the Lualaba, flowing northward (the Lualaba afterwards turned out to be the Congo, as Stanley showed) he had the track of the true Nile. Following this will-o-the-wisp into the swamps of Lake Bangweolo, he met a lonely and lingering death.

To look on the sources of the Nile was ever a wish and dream. The conquerors of Egypt, at whatever time and of263 whatever nation, longed to unravel the problem of its fountains. In the days when a settled population extended far into Nubia and a powerful state flourished at Meroë, near the junction of the White and Blue Nile, the tramp of armed hosts in search of the “mythical fountains,” favorite haunt of Jove himself when he wished seclusion, often resounded in the deep African interior. Sesostris, the first king who patronized map making, made attempts to discover these springs. Alexander the Great, Cambyses the Persian, and the Roman Cæsars, were inspired with the same wish. Julius Cæsar said he would give up civil war could he but look on the sources of the Nile. Nero sent out a vast exploring party who told of cataracts and marshes which compelled their return. These expeditions were formidable. They returned empty handed as to science, but generally loaded with spoils of conquest. The idea of a solitary explorer, with his life in his hand and good will toward all in his heart, encountering all the perils and privations of African travel for pure love of knowledge, is wholly a modern conception.

Let mention be made here of Ismail Pasha, ex-viceroy of Egypt. To the practices of an oriental despot he added the spirit of a man of modern science. To him, more than to any other man, do we owe a complete solution of the mystery of the Nile. He plunged Egypt into inextricable debt, he ground his people with taxes, but he introduced to them the light of western knowledge, he granted the concessions which built the Suez Canal, he sought out and annexed the sources of the Nile. For twenty years European pioneers and explorers, in his pay or under his protection, worked their way southward, mapping lakes and rivers, founding settlements, capturing slave gangs, until the entire Nile Valley either acknowledges Egypt or is open to commerce and civilization, unless forsooth the recent Soudanese protest, made by the fanatical El Mahdi and his followers, should prove to be more persistent and better sustained than now seems probable.

Our trip up the Nile to Assouan, or the first cataract, past the silent shapes of the temples, sphinxes and pyramids, surrounded by sights and sounds of Oriental life, was as pastime.264 But now the holiday journey ends, and we are face to face with the realities and hardships of a Nubian desert. The Nile is no longer verdant on either side. The sands, dry and barren, form its shores. But that is not all. You skirt it to Korosko amid difficulties, and there you are at its great bend. If you followed it now to the next place of importance, Abu-Hammed, you would have to travel nearly 600 miles. The waters are broken by falls and the country is desolate. No one thinks of the journey, unless compelled to make it. The course is that of the caravans across the Korosko desert to Abu-Hammed. It is 400 miles of dreary waste, and calculated to burn out of the traveller any romance he may have entertained of Nubian adventure. Day marching over this desert is impossible at certain seasons. Night is given up to the uneasy motion of camel riding and the monotony of a desert tramp.

Do not think the ground is even. Here and there it is broken by wady’s or gulches, and as you descend into these the eye may be relieved with sight of vegetation. Perhaps a gazelle dashes away in fright to the nearest sand hills, or it may be you catch a glimpse of a naked Arab youth tending his flock of goats, for even desert wastes are not utterly void of plant and animal life.

These deserts are not even rainless, though as much as four years have been known to pass without a shower. A rain storm is watched with breathless hope by the nomad Arab tribes. They see the clouds drifting up from the distant Indian Ocean and pitching their black tents on the summits of the mountains that divide the Nile Valley from the Red Sea. A north wind may blow during the night and sweep them back whence they came. But more likely they burst into thunderstorm, as if all the storms of a season were compressed into one. The dry wadys of yesterday are roaring torrents by morning, bearing to the Nile their tribute of a single day, and for a day or a week, the desert air is pure and the desert sand shoots a tender vegetation, only to be withered, like Jonah’s gourd, in fewer hours than it sprang.

The Arab camel driver, however, knows well a few spots265 where are running water and green turf the year round. These are the oases, or stepping stones, by means of which the burning wilderness may be crossed. Sometimes the wells fail, or have been poisoned or filled, or are in the possession of a hostile predatory band. Then the unfortunate traveller has to face death by thirst or exhaustion as he hurries on to the next halting place. At any rate he is profoundly thankful when the welcome waters of the Nile come into view again at Abu-Hammed, and he knows he is within safe navigable distance of Kartoum, at the junction of the White and Blue Nile.

And now, in passing from Abu-Hammed to Kartoum, we have a grand secret of the Nile. For twelve hundred miles above its mouth that mysterious river receives no tributary on the right hand nor on the left. It may be traced like a ribbon of silver with a narrow fringe of green, winding in great folds through a hot and thirsty desert and under the full blaze of a sun that drinks its waters but returns nothing in the shape of rain. And man also exacts a heavy tribute for purposes of irrigation. Whence its supply? Look for a partial answer to the Atbara, whose mouth is in the east bank of the Nile, half way from Abu-Hammed to Kartoum. Here light begins to break on the exhaustless stores of the Nile. During the greater part of the year the Atbara is dry. Not a hopeful source of supply, you say at once. The sources of the Atbara are away off to the east in the mountains of Abyssinia, whose great buttresses are now visible from the Nile Valley, and whose projections push to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. There also are a Lake Region and Nile sources, whose discovery by Bruce a century ago gave the scientific world quite a stir. His account of this Abyssinian country, so unique in physical features, social life, history, religion and ancient remains, read so much like romance that it was not believed. But Beke, De Cosson, James Bruce and the great Livingstone, have since verified all and given him his proper place among accurate observers and intrepid travellers.

But it was Sir Samuel Baker, on his first journey up the Nile in 1861, who pointed out the importance of the Abyssinian266 rivers as Nile tributaries. He turned aside from his southward route and followed the dry bed of the Atbara for a double purpose. First, to watch the great annual flooding of this Nile feeder. Second, to enjoy the sport of capturing some of the big game, such as the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, giraffe and lion, known to abound in the thick jungles covering the lower slopes of the adjacent hills.

PORTRAIT OF BAKER.

The Atbara, or “Black Nile,” was simply a vast wady or furrow, thirty feet deep and 400 yards to half a mile across, plowed through the heart of the desert, its edges marked by a thin growth of leafless mimosas and dome palms. The only trace of water was here and there a rush-fringed pool which the impetuous torrent had hollowed out in the sudden bends in the river’s course, and where disported themselves hippopotami, crocodiles, and immense turtles, that had long ago adjusted their relations on a friendly footing on the discovery that none of them could do harm to the others. On the 23 of June, the simoom was blowing with overpowering force; the heat was furnace-like, and the tents of travellers were covered with several inches of drifted sand. Above, in the Abyssinian mountains, however, the lightnings were playing and the rains were falling as if the windows of heaven had been opened. The monsoon had set in; the rising streams were choking their narrow channels in their frantic rush to the lowlands, and were tearing away huge masses of the rich dark soil, to be spread a month hence over the flat plains of Egypt. The party encamped on the Atbara heard267 through the night a sound as if of distant thunder; but it was “the roar of the approaching water.”

Wonder of the desert! Yesterday there was a barren sheet of glaring sand with a fringe of withered bush and tree. All nature was most poor. No bush could boast a leaf. No tree could throw a shade. In one night there was a mysterious change—wonders of the mighty Nile! An army of waters was hastening to the wasted river. There was no drop of rain, no thunder cloud on the horizon to give hope. All had been dry and sultry. Dust and desolation yesterday; to-day a magnificent stream five hundred yards wide and twenty feet deep, dashing through a dreary desert. Bamboos, reeds, floating matter of all kinds, hurry along the turbid waters. Where are all the crowded inhabitants of the pools? Their prison-doors are open, the prisoners are released, and all are rejoicing in the deep sounding and rapid waters of the Atbara.

Here is the clue to one part of the Nile mystery—its great annual inundations, source of fertilizing soil and slime. The Blue Nile, further on, and with its sources in the same Abyssinian fastnesses, contributes like the Atbara, though in a secondary degree, to the annual Nile flood and to Egypt’s fertility, with this difference, that it flows all the year round.

At Kartoum, as already seen, we reach the junction of the White and Blue Nile, the frontier of two strongly contrasted physical regions, and the dividing line between the nomadic barbarism of the north and the settled barbarism of the south. The secret that has still to be unveiled is the source of that unfailing flow of water which perpetually resists the influences of absorption, evaporation and irrigation, and carries a life giving stream through the heart of Egypt at all seasons of the year.

Kartoum has ingrafted all the vices of its northern society on the squalor and misery of its southern. A more miserable, filthy and unhealthy spot can hardly be imagined. Yet it is not uninteresting, for here, up to a recent period, was the “threshold of the unknown.” It has been the starting point of numberless Nile expeditions since the days of the Pharaohs.268 Mehemet Ali, first viceroy of Egypt, pushed his conquest of the Soudan, a little south of it in 1839. He found the climate so unhealthy that he established a penal colony a little way up the White Nile, banishment to which was considered equivalent to death.

Says Sir Samuel Baker of Kartoum, on his second visit in 1869: “During my first visit in 1861, the population was 30,000. It is now reduced one-half, and nearly all the European residents have disappeared. And the change in the country between Berber and Kartoum is frightful. The river’s banks, formerly verdant with heavy crops, have become a wilderness. Villages, once crowded, have entirely disappeared. Irrigation has ceased. The nights, formerly discordant with the croaking of waterwheels, are now silent as death. Industry has vanished. Oppression has driven the inhabitants from the soil. It is all due to the Governor General of Soudan who, like a true Mohammedan, left his government to Providence while he increased the taxes. The population of the richest province of Soudan has fled oppression and abandoned the country. The greater portion have taken to the slave trade of the White Nile where, in their turn, they might trample on the rights of others, where, as they had been plundered, they might plunder.”

MADEMOISELLE TINNE.

The wilderness of fever-stricken marshes that line the White Nile long baffled the attempts of the most determined explorers to penetrate to the southward. At length “dry land” was reached again at Gondokoro, only five degrees from the equator. It in turn became an advanced position of Egyptian authority, a centre of mission enterprise, a half-way house where the traveller rested and equipped himself for new discoveries. From the base of Gondokoro, Petherick pursued his researches into the condition of the negro races of the Upper Nile; the Italian traveller, Miani, penetrated far towards the southwest, into the countries occupied by the Nyam-Nyam tribes, that singular region of dwarfs and cannibals; and Dr. Schweinfurth, Colonel Long, and Mdlle. Tinné followed up the search with magnificent results. Mdlle. Tinné, a brave Dutch lady, deserves special notice as having been perhaps the first European woman269 who encountered the terrible hardships and perils of the explorer’s life in the cause of African discovery. She is far, however from being the last. The wives of two of the greatest pioneers in the work—Mrs. Livingstone and Lady Baker—accompanied270 with a noble-minded resolution the steps of their husbands, the one along the banks of the Zambesi, and the other on the White Nile. Mdlle. Tinné and Mrs. Livingstone paid with their lives for their devotion, and are buried by the streams from whose waters they helped to raise the veil. Lady Baker has been more fortunate. Only a girl of seventeen when she rode by her husband’s side from Gondokoro, she lived to return to Europe where her name is inseparably linked with two great events of African history—the discovery of one of the great lakes of the Nile and the suppression of the slave traffic.

MRS. BAKER.

As already intimated, the Egyptian conquest and annexation of the Soudan country, and the bad government of it which followed, made the region of the White Nile the great man-hunting ground of Africa. The traffic was general when the modern travellers began their struggle to reach the equatorial lakes. Arab traders were the chief actors in these enterprises and they were joined by a motley crew of other races, not excepting most of the white and Christian races. If they were not directly under the patronage of the Egyptian authorities at Kartoum, they made it worth while for those authorities to keep a patronizing silence, by throwing annually into their treasury something handsome in the shape of cash.

Kartoum marks pretty distinctly the limit of the Arab races and the influence of the Mohammedan religion. Beyond, and toward the equator and Nile sources, are the negro and pagan. Fanaticism and race hatred, therefore, helped to inflame the271 evil passions which the slave trade invariably arouses. The business of the miscreants engaged in this detestable work was simply kidnapping and murder. The trade of the White Nile was purely slave-hunting. The trifling traffic in ivory and gums was a mere deception and sham, intended to cover the operations of the slaver. A marauding expedition would be openly fitted out at Kartoum, composed of some of the most atrocious ruffians in Africa and south-western Asia, with the scum of a few European cities. Their favorite mode of going to work was to take advantage of one of those wars which are constantly being waged between the tribes of Central Africa. If a war were not going on in the quarter which the slave-hunters had marked out for their raid, a quarrel was purposely fomented—at no time a difficult task in Africa. At dead of night the marauders with their black allies would steal down upon the doomed village. At a signal the huts are fired over the heads of the sleeping inmates, a volley of musketry is poured in, and the gang of desperadoes spring upon their victims. A scene of wild confusion and massacre follows, until all resistance has been relentlessly put down, and then the slave-catcher counts over and secures his human spoils. This is the first act of the bloody drama. Most probably, if the kidnappers think they have not made a large enough “haul,” they pick a quarrel with their allies, who are in their turn shot down, or overpowered and, manacled to their late enemies, are soon floating down the Nile in a slave dhow, on their way to the markets of Egypt or Turkey. The waste of human life, the stoppage of industry and honest trade, the demoralization of the whole region within reach of the raiders, the detestable cruelties and crimes practised on the helpless captives on the journey down the river, on the caravan route across the desert, or in the stifling dens where they are lodged at the slave depots and markets, represent an enormous total of human misery.

SLAVE HUNTER AND VICTIMS.

Many will remember the efforts of Colonel Gordon, whom the Khedive made a Pasha, and also a Governor General of the Soudan, at the capital Kartoum, to suppress this nefarious traffic. And it will also be remembered how in the late revolt against273 Egyptian authority, led by El Mahdi, Colonel Gordon again headed a forlorn hope to Kartoum, with the hope that he could stay the rising fanatical tide, or at least control it, so as to prevent a fresh recognition of slave stealers. He fell a victim to his philanthropic views, and was murdered in the streets of the city he went to redeem.

We have already made the reader acquainted with the heroic and more successful efforts of Colonel Baker, Pasha, in the same direction. He was not so much of a religious enthusiast as Colonel Gordon, did not rely on fate, but thought an imposing, organized force the best way to strike terror into these piratical traders, and at the same time inspire the negro races with better views of self protection. In the long and brilliant record which Colonel Baker made in Africa, the honors he gathered as a military hero bent on suppressing the slave trade will ever be divided evenly with those acquired as a dauntless traveller and accurate scientific observer.

Let it not be thought that slave catching and selling is now extinct. True, the care exercised in the waters of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, makes it difficult to run slave cargoes into Arabia and the further east. True, Baker’s expedition broke up a force of some two thousand organized kidnappers on the Upper White Nile, but these piratical adventurers are still abroad in more obscure paths and compelled to rely more on guile and cunning than on force for securing their prey.

But let us pursue our journey from Kartoum toward the “Springs of the Nile.” We do not take the Blue Nile. That comes down from the east, and the Abyssinian mountains. We take the White Nile, which is the true Nile, and comes up from the south or southwest. And we must suppose we are going along with Colonel Baker on his first journey, which was one in search of the Nile sources. It was a scientific tour, and not an armed one like his second expedition.

Entering the White Nile, we plunge into a new world—a region whose climate and animal and vegetable life, in brief, whose whole aspect and nature, are totally unlike those of the desert which stretches up to the walls of Kartoum. We are274 within the zone of regular rainfall, an intermediate region that extends to the margin of the great lakes, where we meet with the equatorial belt of perennial rains. Henceforth we have not only heat but moisture acting upon the face of nature.

SWAMPS OF THE WHITE NILE.

One may determine which of the two climates is the more tolerable by considering whether he would prefer to be roasted or stewed. The traveller would find it hard to decide whether the desert or the swamp is the greater bar to his advance. Every mile of progress marks an increase of dampness and of warmth. First of all, we pass through the great mimosa forest, which extends, belt-like, almost across the continent, marking the confines of the Sahara and the Soudan. The reader must not imagine a dense girdle of tall trees and tangled undergrowth, but a park-like country, with wide glades between clumps and275 lines of thorny shrubbery. The mimosa, or Arabian acacia—the tree from which the gum-arabic of commerce is extracted—has assigned to it the out-post duty in the struggle between tropical luxuriance and desert drought. By and by it gives place to the ambatch as the characteristic tree of the Nile. The margin of the river becomes marshy and reedy. The water encroaches on the land and the land on the water. The muddy stream rolls lazily along between high walls of rank vegetation, and bears whole islands of intertwisted leaves, roots and stems on its bosom, very much as an Arctic strait bears its acres of ice floes. It breaks up into tortuous channels that lead everywhere and nowhere. A nearly vertical sun shines down on the voyager as he slowly toils up stream. Scarcely a breath of air stirs to blow away the malarious mists or fill a drooping sail. Mosquitoes are numerous, and insatiate for blood.

Day thus follows day with nothing to break the monotony except now and then the appearance of a hippopotamus, rising snortingly to the surface, a crocodile with his vicious jaws, or, where the land is solid, a buffalo pushing his head through the reeds to take a drink. The true river margin is invisible except from the boat’s masts over the head of the tall papyrus. Even could we reach it, we would wish ourselves back again, for of all the growth of this dismal swamp man is the most repulsive. The Dinka tribes of the White Nile are among the lowest in the scale of human beings. They are naked, both as to clothing and moral qualities. The Shillooks are a finer race physically, but inveterate pirates and murderers.

In the midst of this swampy region the Nile receives another important tributary from the mountains of Southern Abyssinia. It is the Sobat which, Speke says, “runs for a seven days’ journey through a forest so dense as to completely exclude the rays of the sun.”

Above its mouth we must be prepared to meet the greatest of all the obstructions of the Nile. Here are many small affluents from both east and west, and here is a vast stretch of marsh through which the waters soak as through a sponge. In the centre of this “sponge” tract is a small lake—Lake No.276 But to reach it or emerge from it again, by means of the labyrinthine channels, is a work of great difficulty. The “sponge” is a thick coating of roots, grasses and stems matted together so as to conceal the waters, yet open enough for them to percolate through. It may be ventured upon by human feet, and in many places supports quite a vegetation. But the traveller is in constant danger of falling through, to say nothing of the danger from various animals. It was through this “sponge” that Colonel Baker, in his second Nile expedition, managed to cut a canal, through which was dragged the first steamer that ever floated on the head waters of the great river.

CROSSING A SPONGE.

Having passed this obstacle the journey is easier to Gondokoro, where the land is firm. Twenty-three years ago Gondokoro was a collection of grass huts in the midst of an untrodden277 wilderness, and surrounded by barbarous and hostile tribes. It has since been made an Egyptian military station and named Ismailia.

Though the spot is not inviting except as it affords you rest after your hardships, yet it is the scene of an interesting episode in the history of African exploration. Speke and Grant had started on their memorable trip from Zanzibar in 1861. Colonel Baker and his wife had started up the Nile for its sources in the same year. Now it is February, 1863. A travel stained caravan, with two white men at its head, comes down the high ground back of the station. They quicken their pace and enter the village with shouts, waving of flags and firing of musketry. It is Speke and Grant on their return trip, with the secret of the Nile in their keeping.

On their long tramp they had visited strange peoples and countries, and by courage and tact had escaped unharmed from a number of difficulties and perils. They had traced the one shore of that vast reservoir of fresh water under the Equator which Speke had sighted on a previous expedition, and had named Victoria Nyanza. They had seen this beautiful equatorial reservoir discharging its surplus waters northward over the picturesque Ripon Falls, and knew that they were in possession of the secret which all the world had sought from the beginning.

Lower down, at the Karuma Falls, they were compelled to leave the stream, which they now felt sure was the Nile. Crossing to the right bank, they struck across the country, northward, and in a direct line for Gondokoro. Here they caught sight of the furthest outpost of Egyptian exploration, and again gladly looked on the river that was to bear them down to the Mediterranean.

By a curious coincidence, the first Englishman who had penetrated so far to the southward, was at that moment in Gondokoro. Samuel Baker and his wife were interrupted in their preparations for their journey to the Nile sources by the noise of the approaching party, and they rode out to see what all the hubbub meant. Four people from a distant nook of Europe met in the heart of Africa; and as they clasped hands, the hoary278 secret of the Nile was unriddled! All of them had numberless difficulties before as well as behind them; but their hearts were undismayed, and swelled only with pride at what had been accomplished for science and for their native land. The travellers from Zanzibar bore the marks of their long journey—“battered and torn, but sound and seaworthy.” “Speke,” Baker tells us, “appeared the more worn of the two; he was excessively lean, but in reality in good tough condition. He had walked the whole way from Zanzibar, never having once ridden during the weary march. Grant was in honorable rags, his bare knees projecting through the remnants of trousers that were an exhibition of rough industry in tailor-work. He was looking tired and feverish, but both men had a fire in the eye that showed the spirit that had led them through.” The first greetings over, Baker’s earliest question was: Was there no leaf of the laurel reserved for him? Yes; there was. Below the Karuma Falls, Speke and Grant had been informed the stream from the Victoria Nyanza fell into and almost immediately emerged again from another lake, the Luta Nzigé. This therefore might be the ultimate reservoir of the Nile waters. No European had ever seen or heard of this basin before. Baker determined it should be his prize.

But now we meet a new class of obstacles as we undertake a land journey into intertropical Africa. There is no longer, as in the desert, danger from thirst and starvation, for game abounds, and we are in some degree out of the interminable swamps of river navigation. But a small army of porters must be got together. They must be drilled, and preparations must be made for feeding them. True, some explorers have gone well nigh alone. But it is not best. Stanley always travelled with one to two hundred natives, and quite successfully.

And these natives are by no means easy to handle. They are ready to make bargains, but are panicky and often desert, or, what is worse, take advantage of any relaxation of discipline to rise in mutiny. Their leader must be stern of will, yet kind and good-natured, wise as a serpent and watchful as a hawk. When a start is made, difficulties accumulate. You must expect279 incredible rainfalls, and an amazing growth of vegetation. Then in the dry season, which is hardly more than two to three months in a year, the shrubs and grasses are burned up far and wide.

PREPARATIONS FOR THE START.

Everywhere there is jungle of grass, reeds and bamboos, when the rivers are at their height; and amid the forests the great stems of the pandanus, banana and boabab are covered to their tops with a feathery growth of ferns and orchids, and festooned with wild vines and creeping plants. The native villages are almost smothered under the dark luxuriance of plant life, and lions and other beasts of prey can creep up unseen to the very doors of the huts. The whole country becomes a tangled brake, with here and there an open space, or a rough track marking where an elephant, rhinoceros or buffalo has crushed a way in the high grass.

280

Then ahead of us, and between Gondokoro and the lakes we seek, the country has been so raided by slave hunters, that every native can be counted on as an enemy. Or a native war may be in progress, and if so, great care must be taken to avoid siding with either party. We must retreat here and push on there, avoiding perils of this class as we value our lives. There is no road through Africa of one’s own choice, and none that may not entail an entire backward step for days, and perhaps forever.

At Gondokoro we are in the midst of the Bari tribe. Pagans before, contact with the Arab wanderers and slave stealers has made them savages. They live in low thatched huts, rather neat in appearance, and surrounded by a thick hedge to keep off intruders. The men are well grown and the women not handsome, but the thick lips and flat nose of the negro are wanting. They tattoo their stomachs artistically, and smear their bodies with a greasy pigment of ochre. Their only clothing is a bunch of feathers stuck in the slight tuft of hair which they permit to grow on their heads, and a neat lappet around the loins, of about six inches in depth, to which is appended a tail piece made of shreds of leather or cotton.

Every man carries his weapons, pipe and stool. The former are chiefly the bow and arrows. They use a poisoned arrow when fighting. The effect of the poison in the system is not to kill but to corrode the flesh and bone, till they drop away in pieces. The bows are of bamboo, not very elastic, and the archers are not dexterous.

It was while in Gondokoro, on this his first Nile journey, that Baker had opportunity to study, and occasion to feel, the enormities of the slave traffic. The Moslem traders regarded him as a spy on their nefarious operations. They manacled their slaves more closely and stowed them away securely in remote and secret stockades. Their conduct as citizens was outrageous, for they kept the town in a continual uproar by their drinking bouts, their brawls with the natives, and promiscuous firing of guns and pistols. One of their bullets killed a boy of Baker’s party. It was evident that these marauders were intent on compelling him to make a hasty departure, for281 they incited trouble among his men, and inflamed the natives against his presence.

As an instance of the trouble which grew out of this, his men asked the privilege of stealing some cattle from the natives for a feast. He denied their request. A mutiny was the result. Baker ordered the ringleader to be bound and punished with twenty-five lashes. The men refused to administer the punishment and stood by their ringleader. Baker undertook to enforce the order himself, when the black leader rushed at him with a stick. Baker stood his ground and knocked his assailant down with his fist. Then he booted him severely, while his companions looked on in amazement at his boldness and strength. But they rallied, and commenced to pelt him with sticks and stones. His wife saw his danger. She ordered the drums to be beaten and in the midst of the confusion rushed to the rescue. The clangor distracted the attention of the assailants, and a parley ensued. The matter was settled by a withdrawal of the sentence on the condition that the leader should apologize and swear fealty again.

Before Baker could complete his preparations for starting, the fever broke out in Gondokoro, and both he and his wife fell sick. In order to escape the effluvium of the more crowded village, he moved his tents and entire encampment to the high ground above the river. While the animals were healthy, the donkeys and camels were attacked by a greenish brown bird, of the size of a thrush, with a red beak and strong claws. It lit on the beasts to search for vermin, but its beak penetrated the flesh, and once a hole was established, the bird continually enlarged it to the great annoyance of the animal which could neither eat nor sleep. The animals had to be watched by boys continually till their wounds were healed.

An Arab guide, named Mohammed, had been engaged, and the expedition was about to move. Mrs. Baker had brought a boy along from Kartoum, by the name of Saat. He had become quite attached to her, as had another servant named Richarn. The guide, Mohammed, said he had seventy porters ready and that a start could be made on Monday. But the fellow was in282 a conspiracy to start on Saturday without Baker. Mrs. Baker found it out through Saat and Richarn. She ordered the tents to be struck and a start to be made on the moment. This nonplussed Mohammed. He wavered and hesitated. She brought his accusers face to face with him when, to Baker’s astonishment, the plot came out, that the entire force of porters had conspired to desert as soon as they got the arms and ammunition in their hands, and to kill Baker in case resistance was offered.

Nothing was left but to disarm and discharge the whole force. He gave them written discharges, with the word “mutineer” beneath his signature, and thus the fellows, none of whom could read, went about bearing the evidences of their own guilt. Baker now tried in vain to enlist a new party of porters. The people had been poisoned against him. He applied to Koorschid, a Circassian chief, for ten elephant hunters and two interpreters, but the wily chief avoided him. It looked as if he would have to give over his contemplated journey for the season. But by dint of hard work he managed to gather seventeen men, whom he hoped to make true to him by kind treatment. At this juncture a party of Koorschid’s people arrived from the Latooka country with a number of porters. Their chief, Adda, a man of magnificent proportions, took a fancy to Baker and invited him to visit the Latookas. He was given presents, and his picture was taken, which pleased him greatly. His followers came and were similarly treated and delighted. They agreed to accompany Baker back to their country, but a body of Turkish traders were also going thither. They not only declared that Baker should not have the escort of these people, but actually pressed them into their own service. And then, to make things worse, they threatened to incite the tribes through which they had to pass against him should he dare to follow.

Baker thought he could meet any mischief of this kind by dealing liberally in presents, and so resolved to follow the traders. He loaded his camels and donkeys heavily, and started with his seventeen untried men. Mrs. Baker was mounted on a283 good Abyssinian horse, carrying several leather bags at the pommel of the saddle. Colonel Baker was similarly mounted and loaded. They had neither guide nor interpreter. Not one native was procurable, owing to the baleful influence of the traders. Their journey began about an hour after sunset, and Colonel Baker, taking the distant mountains of Balignan as his landmark, led the way.

If we are now amid the hardships of an African journey, we are also amid its excitements. Can we outstrip the Turkish traders? If so it will be well, for then they cannot stir up the tribes against us. We will try. But our camels are heavily loaded, and their baggage catches in the overhanging bramble. Every now and then one of those most heavily top laden is swung from his path, and even rolls into a steep gulch, when he has to be unpacked and his load carried up on to the level before being replaced. It is tantalizing for those in a hurry. But the traders are also travelling slowly for they are buying and selling.

Presently two of their Latookas come to us, having deserted. They are thirsty, and direct us to a spot where water can be had. While we are drinking, in comes a party of natives with the decayed head of a wild boar, which they cook and eat, even though the maggots are thick in it. The health of these people does not seem to be affected by even the most putrid flesh.

These Latooka deserters now become guides. They lead the way, with Colonel and Mrs. Baker. The country is that of the Tolloga natives. While we halt under a fig tree to rest and await the rearward party with the laden animals, the Tollogas emerge from their villages and surround us. There are five or six hundred of them, all curious, and especially delighted at sight of our horses. They had never seen a horse before. We inquire for their chief, when a humped-backed little fellow asked in broken Arabic who we were.

Colonel Baker said he was a traveller.

“Do you want ivory?” asked the hunchback.

“We have no use for it.”

“Ah, you want slaves?”

284

“No we do not want slaves.”

At this there was a shout of laughter, as though such thing could not be. Then the hunchback continued:

“Have you got plenty of cows?”

“No, but plenty of beads and copper.”

“Where are they?”

“With my men. They will be here directly.”

“What countryman are you?”

“An Englishman.”

He had never heard of such a people.

“You are a Turk,” he continued.

“All right; anything you like.”

“And that is your son?” pointing to Mrs. Baker.

“No, that is my wife.”

“Your wife! What a lie! He is a boy.”

“Not a bit of it. This is my wife who has come along with me to see the women of your country.”

“What a lie!” he again exclaimed.

Mrs. Baker was dressed precisely like her husband, except that her sleeves were long while the Colonel’s arms were bare.

Soon Tombe, the chief of the tribe, put in an appearance. He is propitiated with plenty of beads and copper bracelets and drives his importunate people away. The hunchback is employed as interpreter, and now our party is away over a rough road, determined to beat the Turks through the Ellyrian tribe beyond. But it is too late. Their advance is ahead. Their centre passes us in disdain. Their leader, Ibrahim, comes up, scowls and passes on. Mrs. Baker calls to the Colonel to stop him and have a friendly talk. He does so, tells him they need never clash as they are after two entirely different objects. Then he shows him how he could either punish or befriend him once they were back at Kartoum. The old villain listens, and is moved. Baker then gives him a double-barreled gun and some gold. Both parties now march into Ellyria together, glad to escape the rocky defiles which had to be threaded on the last stages of the journey, where many a trader has lost his life.

We here meet with Legge, the chief, who demands blackmail.285 Baker gives liberally of beads and bracelets, but Legge gives nothing in return, except some honey. Our men have to draw for food on the reserve stores of rice, which they no sooner boil and mix with the honey than along comes Legge and helps himself, eating like a cormorant till he can hold no more. We can only stay here one day, for the people are very annoying and will part with nothing except their honey. So we leave these bullet-headed natives, and start again toward Latooka, over a level country and an easier road.

Old Ibrahim and Colonel and Mrs. Baker now lead the way.

The wily old Arab gets confidential, and informs the Colonel that his men intend to mutiny as soon as they get to Latooka. This news gives the Colonel time to prepare. In two days we enter the Wakkula country, rich in pasturage and abundant in water, literally filled with big game, such as elephants, rhinoceri, buffalo, giraffes, wild boars and antelope. A buffalo is found in a trap, and partly eaten by a lion. The men make a feast of the remainder. It is the first meat they have eaten since they left Gondokoro, and it is a great relish. A hunt by the Colonel brings in several fine antelope, enough to last till Latooka is reached.

And now we are among the Latooka villages. There are Turkish traders there already, for they are gathered in Latome, a border village. They fire off guns, and forbid Ibrahim and his party to pass, claiming an exclusive right to trade there. There is a row between the Moslem traders, in which poor Ibrahim is almost strangled to death. The Colonel observes a strict neutrality, as the time had not come for him to take sides.

After wrangling for hours all retired to sleep. The next morning he calls his men to resume the march. Four of them rise in mutiny, seize their guns and assume a threatening attitude. Belaal, the leader, approaches and says:—

“Not a man shall go with you. Go where you will with Ibrahim, but we won’t move a step. You may employ niggers to load the camels, but not us.”

“Lay down your gun, and load the camels!” thunders the Colonel.

286

“I won’t,” was the defiant reply.

“Then stop right here!” As quick as a flash the Colonel lands a blow on his jaw, and the ringleader rolls in a heap among the luggage, the gun flying in the opposite direction. There is a momentary panic, during which the Colonel seizes a rifle and rushes among the mutineers, insisting on their going to work and almost dragging them to their places. They obey mechanically. The camels are soon loaded and we are off again. But Ibrahim and his party have been gone for some time.

Belaal and four others soon after desert. The Colonel declares the vultures will soon pick their bones. Four days after, word comes that the deserters have been killed by a party of savages. The rest of the party think it came about in accordance with the Colonel’s prophecy, and credit him with magical powers.

Thirteen miles from Latome is Tarrangolle, the largest Latooka village, where Moy, the chief, resides. Here Ibrahim stopped to collect his ivory and slaves. Crowds came out of the village to meet us, but their chief attraction was Mrs. Baker and the camels. These Latookas are, doubtless, the finest made savages in all Africa. They are tall, muscular and beautifully proportioned. They have high foreheads, large eyes, high cheek bones, small mouths, and full, but not thick lips. Their countenances are pleasing, their manners civil. They are frank but warlike, merry yet always ready for a fight. Tarrangolle has 3000 houses, surrounded by palisades; and each house is fortified by a stockade. The houses are very tall and bell shaped. They are entered by a low door not over two feet high. The interior is clean but unlighted by windows. Their cattle are kept in kraals and are very carefully tended. Their dead, who are killed in war, are allowed to lie on the field as food for vultures. Those who die at home are lightly buried for a time. Then they are exhumed, the flesh stripped off, and the bones put into an earthen jar, which is deposited in the common pile or mound outside of the village. Every village has its burial pile, which is a huge collection of jars. They wear no clothes, but bestow great287 attention on their hair. Their weapons are the lance, an iron-head mace, a long bladed knife, and an ugly iron bracelet armed with knife blades four inches long. The women are not as finely shaped as the men. They are large, heavy limbed creatures, used to drudgery.

Chief Moy visits us and looks for the first time on a white person. The Colonel makes presents of beads, bracelets, and a necklace of pearls for Bokke, the chief’s favorite wife. “What a row there will be in the family when my other wives see Bokke’s present,” says the wily old chief. The Colonel takes the hint and gives him three pounds of beads to be divided between his wives. Next day, Bokke comes to the Colonel’s hut, all covered with beads, tatooed on her cheeks, and with a piece of ivory hanging in her lower lip. She is not bad looking, and her daughter is as comely a savage as you ever saw.

Horrid word comes that a party of Turkish traders have been massacred in a Latooka village which they had tried to destroy and to make slaves of the inhabitants. All is now excitement. Ibrahim’s party and our own are in imminent danger. But Moy intercedes for his white guests and appeases the angry natives. Though rich in cattle, our party cannot get a pound of beef from these Latookas. But ducks and geese are plenty in a stream close by, and we are allowed to kill all we want.

Let us look in upon a Latooka funeral dance in honor of a dead warrior. What grotesque dresses the dancers appear in! Ostrich feathers adorn their helmets of hair, leopard and monkey skins hang from their shoulders, bells dangle at a waist belt, an antelope horn is hung round the neck, which is blown in the midst of the excitement. The dancers rush round and round in an “infernal galop,” brandishing lances and maces, and keeping pretty fair time. The women keep outside the lines, dance awkwardly and scream like catamounts. Beyond them are the children, greasy with red ochre and ornamented with beads, keeping time with their feet to the inward movement. One woman runs into the midst of the men and sprinkles ashes promiscuously on all from a gourd. She is fat and ugly, but evidently an important part of the occasion.

288

These people are bright, and argue in favor of their materialistic belief with great shrewdness. The Colonel tried to illustrate his belief by placing a grain of corn in the ground and observing:—“That represents you when you die.” Covering it with earth, he continued, “The grain will decay, but from it will arise a plant that will reproduce it again in its original form.”

“Precisely,” said old Comorro, brother of Moy, “that I understand. But the original grain does not rise again; it rots like the dead man and is ended; so I die, and am ended; but my children grow up like the fruit of the grain. Some have no children; some grains perish; then all is ended.”

Here we remain for two weeks, waiting till Ibrahim comes back from Gondokoro, whither he had gone with ivory, and whence he has promised to bring a supply of ammunition. Meanwhile we must enjoy a hunt, for evidences of game are plenty. We are soon out among the long grasses, when suddenly a huge rhinoceros bolts from the copse close at hand. The Colonel calls on his companions to bring a gun, but instead of obeying they set up a cry, which is to call attention to a herd of bull elephants in the forest at the end of the grassy plain. Two of the herd spy him and come bearing down upon him. He dismounts to get a shot, but the beasts see the dusky Latookas and rush off again to join their companions. The Colonel quickly mounts and dashes after them, but his horse falls into a buffalo hole and throws him. Mounting again, he pursues, but his game has gotten well into the forest. On he goes after the herd, to find himself in close quarters with a huge beast that comes tearing along, knocking down everything in his track. Firing unsteadily from the saddle, he lodges a bullet in the animal’s shoulder. It turns and makes directly for its assailant, bellowing like a demon. The Colonel puts spurs to his horse, and makes his escape. Arming himself with a heavier gun, he returns to the attack and soon sees the herd again, moving toward him. One princely fellow has a splendid pair of tusks. This he singles out for his game. The elephants at first flee on his approach, but on finding themselves pursued they turn and289 give battle. There is no safety there, and again he retreats. A third trial brings him upon the beast he has wounded. It is maddened with pain and dashes at him. Trusting to his horse he rushes out of the tangle. The beast does not give up pursuit but follows on. His horse is jaded, and the riding is dangerous owing to the buffalo holes. The beast gains, and the Colonel’s cowardly companions give no help. A moment more and the beast will be on him. He suddenly wheels his horse, and hears the swish of the elephant’s trunk past his ears, as the monster beast plunges on in its direct course. It gives over the chase, and keeps on up the hill. It is found dead next morning from the effects of the bullet wound. Elephant meat is highly prized by the natives, and the fat also. With the latter they mix the pigments for their bodies. Their favorite method of capturing the animal is by pits, dug very deep in the animal’s path and covered over with light brambles and grasses. They seldom attack with spears, except when they fire the grasses. Then they take advantage of the panic which ensues and attack at close quarters.

Ibrahim returns with plenty of ammunition and reports that he is going to the Obbo country. We are delighted, for it is directly on our way to the “Lakes of the Nile.” So we all go together. The country between Latooka and Obbo, a distance of forty miles, is very beautiful. It abounds in mountains on whose impregnable peaks native villages are seen, and in green valleys filled with game. Wild fruit and nuts are also found in plenty. The journey is easy and quick. The chief of Obbo is Katchiba, an old clownish man who did not beg, for a wonder. He gives a dance in our honor, which is really an artistic affair. The dusky dancers kept excellent time to their drums and sang a wild chorus with considerable effect. The Obbo men wear dresses of skin slung around their shoulders, but the women are nearly naked—the unmarried girls entirely so.

The secret of Chief Katchiba’s power over his tribe is sorcery.

When his people displease him he threatens to curse their goats or wither their flocks. Should rain fail to fall, he tells them he is sorry they have behaved so badly toward him as290 to merit such a punishment. Should it rain too much, he threatens to pour lightning, storm and rain on them eternally, if they don’t bring him their contribution of goats, corn and beer. They always receive his blessing before starting on a journey, believing it will avert evil. In sickness he is called to charm away the disease. And the old fellow receives so many presents of daughters that he is able to keep a harem in every village of his tribe. He counts 116 living children. Each village is ruled by a son, so that the whole government is a family affair.

The fine old fellow treats us like princes, and gives us much information about the country to the south. The Colonel leaves his wife in the old chief’s care, and we take a little trip, with eight men, to test the accuracy of the old chief’s story about the high water in the river Ashua. We pass through a magnificent country and find the river a roaring torrent. The chief’s story was true. We return to find Mrs. Baker in excellent health and spirits having been kindly cared for during our absence. But the old chief has fared rather badly. He wanted some chickens to present to Mrs. Baker. His people proved stingy, and Katchiba, who could not walk much on account of his infirmities, the chief of which was a head always befuddled with beer, came to ask for the loan of a horse, that he might appear on his back among his people and thus strike terror into them. His former method of travel had been to mount on the back of his subjects, and thus make his state journeys, followed by one of the strongest of his wives, bearing the inevitable beer pitcher.

Though warned by Mrs. Baker of the danger attending such an experiment as he proposed, he persisted, and one of the blooded Abyssinian animals was brought out equipped for a ride. The old chief mounted and told his horse to go. The animal did not understand and stood still. “Hit him with your stick,” said one of the attendants. Thwack! came the chief’s staff across the animal’s shoulders. Quick as lightning a pair of heels flew into the air, and the ancient specimen of African royalty shot over the horse’s head and lay sprawling on the ground. He picked himself up, considerably bruised and291 sprained, took a wondering look at the horse, and decided that riding a beast of that kind, where one had so far to fall, was not in his line.

A ROYAL JOURNEY.

Since we cannot go on with our journey till the rivers to292 the south of us fall, it is best to go back to Latooka, where supplies are more abundant. Katchiba sends us off amid a noisy drum ceremony and with his blessing, his brother going along as a guide. There is a new member of the party, one Ibrahimawa, who had been to all the ends of the earth, as soldier and adventurer. He was of Bornu birth, but had been captured when a boy, and taken into the service of the Sultan of Turkey. Even now he was connected with the Turkish garrison, or squad of observation, at Latooka. He got the whole party into a pretty mess the second day after starting back for Latooka, by bringing in a basketful of fine yams, which happened to be of a poisonous variety. On eating them, all got sick, and had to submit to the penalty of a quick emetic, which brought them round all right.

We now journey easily through the great Latooka, where game is so abundant. In sight is a herd of antelope. The Colonel dismounts to stalk them, but a swarm of baboons spy him and at once set up such a chattering and screeching that the antelope take the alarm and make off. One of the baboons was shot. It was as large as a mastiff and had a long brown mane like a lion. This was taken by the natives for a body ornament. That same evening the Colonel goes out in quest of other game. A herd of giraffes appear, with their long necks stretched up toward the leaves of the mimosa trees, on which they are feeding. He tries to stalk them, but the wary beasts run away in alarm. He follows them for a long way in vain chase. They were twice as fleet as his horse.

We are back again at Latooka. But how changed the scene. The small pox is raging among both natives and Turks. We cannot encamp in the town. Mrs. Baker falls sick with fever. Two horses, three camels and five donkeys die for us. King Moy had induced the Turks to join him in an attack on the Kayala tribe, and the combined forces had been beaten. Thus more enemies had been made. It was no place to stay. So we must back to Obbo, and the old chief Katchiba.

But here things are even worse. The small pox is there ahead of us, carried by careless natives or dirty, unprincipled293 Moslem traders, and the whole town is in misery. A party of roving traders had raided it and carried off nearly the whole stock of cows and oxen. Our horses all die, and most of our other animals, under the attacks of the dreadful tsetse fly. Both the Colonel and Mrs. Baker fall sick with fever, and the old chief comes in to cure them by enchantment. It rains nearly all the time, and rats and even snakes seek the huts out of the wet. Our stay of two months here is dreary enough, and the wonder is that any of us ever get away.

As soon as the Colonel and Lady Baker can go out they pay a visit to Katchiba, which he appreciates, and invites them into his private quarters. It is only a brewery, where his wives are busy preparing his favorite beer. The old chief invites them to a seat, takes up something which passes for a harp, and asks if he may sing. Expecting something ludicrous, they consent, but are surprised to hear a really well sung and neatly accompanied air. The old fellow is evidently as expert in music as in beer drinking.

Waiting is awful in any African village during the rainy or any other season, and especially if the low fevers of the country are in your system. We have really lost from May to October, on account of the fullness of the streams south of us. Our stock of quinine is nearly gone; our cattle are all dead. Shall we go on? If so, it must be afoot. And afoot it shall be, for we have met an Unyoro slave woman who tells as well as she can about a lake called Luta N’Zige, very nearly where we expect to find the Albert Nyanza.

Now the rains have ceased. Wonderful country! Crops spring up as if by magic, especially the tullaboon, or African corn. But the elephants like it and play havoc by night in the green fields. The Colonel, all ague shaken as he is, determines to have a night’s sport and to bring in some meat which he knows the natives will relish. Starting with a servant and a goodly supply of heavy rifles—among them is “The Baby,” which carries a half pound explosive shell—he digs a watch hole near a corn field. Into this they creep, and are soon notified of the presence of a herd of elephants by the crunching of the294 crisp grain. It is dark, but by and by one approaches within twelve paces. Taking the range of the shoulder as well as he can, the contents of “Baby” are sent on their murderous errand. It was then safe to beat a retreat. Next morning the elephant is found near the pit. He is still standing, but soon drops dead. The shot was fatal, but not for several hours. And now such a time as there is among the natives. Three hundred of them gather, and soon dispose of the carcass with their knives and lances. The huge beast was ten feet six inches in height.

By January, the waters in the rivers and gulches have subsided enough to admit of travel. Katchiba gives us three oxen—two for pack animals, and one for Mrs. Baker to ride upon. With these, and a few attendants, we start for the south. But Ibrahim precedes us with an armed body of Turks. He is penetrating the country further in search of ivory and booty. It is well for us to follow in his trail, unless forsooth he should get into a fight.

The Colonel walks eighteen miles to Farajoke where he purchases a riding ox. On January 13, Shooa is reached. It is a veritable land of plenty. There are fowls, goats, butter, milk, and food of all kinds. The natives are delighted to see us, and are greedy for our beads and trumpery. They bring presents of flour and milk to Mrs. Baker, who showers upon them her trinkets in return. The people are not unlike the Obbo’s, but their agriculture is very superior. Our five days here are days of real rest and refreshment.

We make an eight mile march to Fatiko, where the natives are still more friendly. But they insist on such vigorous shaking of hands and such tiresome ceremonies of introduction, that we must hasten away. And now our march is still through a beautiful country for several days. We gradually approach the Karuma Falls, close to the village of Atada, on the opposite side of the river. It is the Unyoro country whose king is Kamrasi.

The natives swarm on their bank of the river, and soon a fleet of canoes comes across. Their occupants are informed that Col. Baker wishes to see the king, in order to thank him for295 the kindness he had extended to the two Englishmen, Speke and Grant on their visit. The boatmen are suspicious, for only a short time before a party of Arab traders had allied themselves with Kamrasi’s enemies and slain 300 of his people. It takes two whole days to overcome the king’s suspicions, and many gifts of beads and trinkets. Finally we are ferried across, but oh! the tedious wait to get a royal interview! And then the surprise, when it did come.

There sits the king on a copper stool placed on a carpet of leopard skins, surrounded by his ten principal chiefs. He is six feet tall, of dark brown skin, pleasing countenance, clothed in a long rich robe of bark-cloth, with well dressed hands and feet, and perfectly clean. Baker explains his object in calling and gives rich presents, among which is a double barrelled gun. The king takes to the gun and orders it to be fired off. The attendants run away in fright, at which the king laughs heartily, as though he had discovered a new test for their courage or played a capital joke. He then makes return presents, among which are seventeen cows.

Thus friendship is established. The king asks for our help against the Riongas, his bitterest enemies. We decline, but in turn ask for porters and guides. The king promises heartily, but as often breaks his promises, for his object is to keep us with him as long as we have presents to give.

These chiefs, or kings, of the native tribes are the greatest nuisances in Africa—not even excepting the mosquitoes. They make the traveller pay court at every stage of his journey, and they know the value of delay in granting a hearing. The wrongs of the humble negro are many. His faults are as many, and among them are his careless good humor and light heartedness—things that in northern climes or under other circumstances might be classed as redeeming traits. But the faults of the average African king—there are exceptions to the rule—are such to try our patience in the extreme. He is as ignorant as his subjects, yet is complete master of their lives. His cruelty, rapacity and sensuality are nurtured in him from birth, and there is no antic he will not play in the name of his authority.296 In his own eyes he is a demi-god, yet he is seen by visitors only as a dirty, freakish, cruel, tantalizing savage, insisting upon a court which has no seriousness about it.

Accomplished and friendly as King Kamrasi seems to be, he is full of duplicity, cruelty, and rapacity. Speke and Grant complained of his inordinate greed, and we have just seen for what motive he delayed us for three weeks. And scarcely have we gone ten miles when he overtakes us, to ask for other presents and the Colonel’s watch, for which he had taken a great fancy. On being refused this, he coolly informs the Colonel that he would send his party to the lake according to promise, but that he must leave Mrs. Baker behind with him. The Colonel draws his revolver and, placing it at the breast of the king, explains the insult conveyed in such a proposition in civilized countries, and tells him he would be warranted in riddling him on the spot, if he dared to repeat the request, or rather command. Mrs. Baker makes known her horror of the proposition, and the crafty king, finding his cupidity has carried him too far, says he has no intention of offending. “I will give you a wife if you want one,” he continued, “and I thought you might give me yours. I have given visitors many pretty wives. Don’t be offended. I will never mention the matter again.” To make further amends he sends along with our party several women as luggage carriers, as far as to the next village.

To show how prankish and pitiable royalty is among even a tribe like the Unyoro’s, who dress with some care, and disdain the less intelligent tribes about them, it turned out that this Kamrasi was not the real king at all, but only a substitute, and that the regularly annointed Kamrasi was in a fit of the sulks off in his private quarters, all the time of our visit.

The march is now a long one of eighteen days through the dense forests and swamps of the Kafoor River. Mrs. Baker is sick with fever incident to a sun-stroke, and has to be borne upon a litter most of the way. In crossing the Kafoor upon the “sponge,” it yields to the weight of the footmen, and she is saved from sinking beneath the treacherous surface by the Colonel, who orders the men to quickly lay their burden down297 and scatter. The “sponge” proves strong enough to bear the weight of the litter alone, and it is safely hauled on to a firmer part by her husband and an attendant.

We are now near our goal and all the party are enthusiastic. Ascending a gentle slope, on a beautiful clear morning, the glory of our prize suddenly bursts upon us. There, like a sea of quicksilver, lays far beneath us the grand expanse of waters—the Luta Nzigé then, but soon to be christened the Albert Nyanza. Its white waves break on a pebbly beach fifteen hundred feet below us. On the west, fifty or sixty miles distant, blue mountains rise to a height of 7000 feet. Northward the gleaming expanse of waters seem limitless. Here is the reward of all our labor. It is a basin worthy of its great function as a gathering place of the headwaters of the Nile, which issue in a full grown stream from its northern end.

Using Colonel Baker’s own language,—“Long before I reached the spot I had arranged to give three English cheers in honor of the discovery, but now that I looked down upon the great inland sea lying nestled in the very heart of Africa, and thought how vainly mankind had sought these sources throughout so many ages, and reflected that I had been the humble instrument permitted to unravel this portion of the great mystery when so many greater than I had failed, I felt too serious to vent my feelings in vain cheers for victory, and I sincerely thanked God for having guided and supported us through all dangers to the good end. As I looked down from the steep granite cliffs upon those welcome waters, on that vast reservoir which nourished Egypt and brought fertility where all was wilderness, on that great source so long hidden from mankind; that source of bounty and of blessings to millions of human beings; and as one of the greatest objects in nature, I determined to honor it with a great name. As an imperishable memorial of one loved and mourned by our gracious Queen and deplored by every Englishman, I called the great lake ‘the Albert Nyanza.’ The Victoria and the Albert Lakes are the two sources of the Nile. My wife, who had followed me so devotedly, stood by my side, pale and exhausted—a wreck upon298 the shores of the great Albert Lake that we had so long striven to reach. No European foot had ever trod upon its sand, nor had the eyes of a white man ever scanned its vast expanse of water. We were the first; and this was the key to the great secret that even Julius Cæsar yearned to unravel, but in vain.”

And now the lake is christened. We rush down to the shores and bathe our feet in its clear fresh waters. Then we prepare a frail canoe, large enough to carry our party of thirteen and manned with twenty oarsmen. In this we skirt the lake northward from where we first touch it at Vacovia. The journey is full of novelty. Every now and then we get a shot at a crocodile, or a hippopotamus, and herds of elephants are seen along the shores. Thunder storms are frequent, making the navigation dangerous. The heat at midday drives us into the shade. Our work hours are in the mornings and evenings. Here we pass under beetling precipices that line this eastern shore, down which jets of water—each a Nile source—are seen plunging from the height of a thousand feet. There we float through flat wastes of reeds, and water plants and floating rafts of vegetable matter in every stage of growth and decay.

On the thirteenth day we reach the point where the waters from Lake Victoria Nyanza enter the Albert Nyanza. They pour in through the Victoria River, or as some call it, the Somerset River. Now arises a momentous question. Shall we go further. If we are not back in Gondokoro in a few weeks we may leave our bones in Central Africa. We are a fatigued, even a sick party, and the season is approaching when a white man had better be away from under the Equator. The Colonel proposes to forego further navigation and return. Lady Baker, with a fervor the Colonel seems to have lost, proposes to go to the other end of the lake in order to make sure that it is an ultimate reservoir of the Nile.

THE MURCHISON FALLS.

Away off northward from where we are, some thirty miles, can be seen with the glasses the outlet of the lake—the Nile. It is settled that the inflow from Victoria Nyanza and the outlet northward are thus close together. But is that outlet the299 Nile after all? Lady Baker wants to settle this question too, and she proposes, after circumnavigating the lake and proving300 that it is an ultimate source, to descend the Nile through the northern outlet. But the Colonel urges want of time. The attendants tell horrible stories of dangerous falls and hostile natives. So we decide against Mrs. Baker, and, taking the Colonel’s advice, begin to ascend the Victoria Nile toward lake Victoria Nyanza, that being in the direction of our homeward march. We go but a few miles till a new marvel greets us—the Murchison Falls. On either side of the river are beautiful wooded cliffs 300 feet high. Bold rocks jut out from an intensely green foliage. Rushing through a gap in the rock directly ahead of us, the river, contracted from a broad stream above, grows narrower and narrower, till where the gorge is scarcely fifty yards wide, it makes one stupendous leap over a precipice 120 feet high, into the dark abyss below. The river then widens and grows sluggish again. Anywhere can be seen numberless crocodiles. While the Colonel is sketching the Falls, one of these animals comes close to the boat. He cannot resist a shot at it. The canoemen are disturbed and allow the boat to get an ugly swing on them. It strikes into a bunch of reeds, when out rushes a huge hippopotamus in fright and bumps against the canoe, almost oversetting it.

There are cataracts innumerable on the Nile, but this is its greatest water fall, and a majestic picture it is. Our return journey to Gondokoro repeats many of our former experiences. We revisit the same tribes and meet with the same adventures. Kartoum is reached in May, 1865. Then we go by boat to Berber, and thence by caravan across the desert to Sonakim on the Red Sea, where a steamer is taken for England, and where the Colonel receives the medal bestowed on him by the Royal Geographical Society.

In concluding this long journey we must ever regret that Colonel Baker did not do more to make sure of the honors of his discovery. Since then Gordon Pasha and M. Gessi have navigated Albert Nyanza. They curtailed the proportions it showed on first maps, and proved that, as Lady Baker supposed, it had a southern inlet, which was traced for a hundred miles till it ended in a mighty ambatch swamp, or collection of301 stagnant waters, which may be counted as the Lake Nzige of the natives, and of which Colonel Baker so often heard.

These travellers also settled forever one of the delusions under which Livingstone ever labored, and that was, that the sources of the Nile must be sought as far south as the great Lake Tanganyika, and even further.

Since then, other travellers have traced the whole course of the Victoria Nile to Lake Victoria Nyanza, discovering on their way a new lake, Ibrahim. And this brings us to Victoria Nyanza again, which must be studied more fully, for after all we may not have seen in Albert Nyanza, so much of an ultimate Nile reservoir as we thought. It is hard too, of course, to rob our travels of their glory, but we cannot bear laurels at the expense of after discovered truth.

It was in 1858 that Speke and Grant, pushing their perilous way westward from Zanzibar on the east coast of Africa, discovered and partly navigated Lake Tanganyika, probably the greatest fresh water reservoir in Central Africa. On their return journey, and while resting at Unyanyembe, Speke heard from an Arab source of a still larger lake to the north. Grant was suspicious of the information, and remained where he was, while Speke made a trial. After a three weeks march over an undulating country, intersected by streams flowing northward, he came in view (July 30, 1858) of the head of a deep gulf expanding to the north. Pursuing his journey along its eastern cliffs, he saw that it opened into an ocean-like expanse of water, girted by forests on the right and left, but stretching eastward and northward into space. He felt that he stood on a Nile source, but could not inquire further then.

When he returned to England and made his discovery known, powerful arguments sprang up about these Nile sources. Speke and one school contended the Nile reservoirs were under the equator and that Victoria Nyanza was one of them, if not the only one. Burton and others contended that Tanganyika, and perhaps a series of lakes further south, must be the true sources. So in 1860 Speke and Grant were back in Africa, determined to solve the mystery. They were kept back by302 delays till 1862, when, as we have seen, they caught sight of the lake they sought. Keeping on high ground, they followed it northward to Uganda where they fell in with Mtesa, the king. Mtesa has been painted in all sorts of colors by different explorers. Speke and Grant formed the worst possible opinion of him, but they passed through his dominions safely, till they came to the northern outlet of the lake—the Victoria Nile. Taking for granted that this was the real Nile, they cut across the country to Gondokoro, where they met Baker on his southern march, as we have already seen.

This unsatisfactory journey did not set controversy at rest. Speke’s opponents ridiculed the idea of a body of water, 250 miles long and 7000 feet above the sea level, existing right under the Equator. Moreover they denied that its northern outlet was the Nile, or if so, that there must be a southern inlet. All the old maps located the sources of the stream further south. Colonel Baker heard a native story, in 1869, to the effect that boats had gone from Albert Nyanza to Ujiji on lake Tanganyika. Livingstone held firmly to the opinion that all these equatorial lakes were one with Tanganyika—till he disproved it himself. He never was convinced that Victoria Nyanza existed at all as Speke had mapped it, nor that it had any connection with the Nile River.

Thus what Baker and Speke and Grant had been glorying in as great discoveries, but which they failed to establish by full research, was still a puzzle. They are not to be robbed of any honors, but it is not claiming too much to say that the real discoverer of the true Nile reservoir is due to the American Stanley. At least he resolved to solve the problem finally and set discussion at rest. He would establish the claims of Victoria Nyanza to vastness and to its functions as a Nile source, or show it up as a humbug.

Henry M. Stanley is no ordinary figure among African explorers. In tenacity of purpose, courage and endurance, he is second only to Livingstone. In originality, insight and crowning effort, he is ahead of all. He introduced a new method of African travel and brought a new power at his back. Already he had, under303 the auspices of the New York Herald, made a successful Central African journey and “discovered Livingstone.” On his present expedition he was accredited to both American and English papers, and bore the flags of the two countries. He travelled in a half scientific and half military fashion.

HENRY M. STANLEY.

He started from Zanzibar November 17, 1874. Let the reader keep in mind that this was his second exploring trip into Africa—the first having been made a few years before under the auspices of the New York Herald for the rescue of Livingstone, if alive. Here, in his own words, is the gallant young leader’s order of march:—

304

STANLEY ON THE MARCH.

305

“Four chiefs, a few hundred yards in front; next, twelve guides, clad in red robes of Jobo, bearing coils of wire; then a long file, two hundred and seventy strong, bearing cloth, wire, beads, and sections of the Lady Alice; after them, thirty-six women and ten boys, children of the chiefs, and boat-bearers, followed by riding-asses, Europeans, and gun-bearers; the long line closed by sixteen chiefs, who act as rearguard: in all, three hundred and fifty-six souls connected with the Anglo-American expedition. The lengthy line occupies nearly half a mile of the path.”

Mr. Stanley did not mean to be stopped on the route he had chosen by the objections of any native chief to the passage of the little army through his territory. If the opposition were carried to the extent of a challenge of battle, the American explorer was prepared to accept it and fight his way through. In this way he counted on avoiding the long delays, the roundabout routes, and the fragmentary results which had marked the efforts of previous travellers. It is an admirable method, if your main object is to get through the work rapidly, if you are strong enough to despise all assaults, and if you have no prospect of travelling the same road again. Its wisdom and justifiableness need not be discussed; but it may simply be remarked that this conjunction of campaigning and exploration gives an extra spice of danger and an exciting variety to the narrative, which carries us back to the time when the Conquistadors of Spain and Portugal carved their rich conquests into the heart of Mexico and South America.

He carried with him the sections of a boat, forty feet long, with which to explore the Victoria Nyanza, or any other lake or stream he might discover. It was named the “Lady Alice.” He had only three English assistants—two Thames watermen by the name of Francis and Edward Pocock, and a clerk named Frederick Barker—none of whom emerged alive from the African wilds into which they plunged so light heartedly.

Unyanyembe is the half-way station between Zanzibar and the lakes of interior Africa. It is simply a headquarters for slave stealers and a regular trading den for land pirates. Stanley306 turned to the northwest before reaching this place, and in about the fifth degree south latitude came upon the water shed which separates the waters trending northward from those running southward. Here in a plain 5000 feet above the sea, and 2500 miles in a straight line from the Mediterranean, seemed clearly to be the most southerly limit of the Nile basin.

And here Stanley’s real difficulties began. The party suffered from want of food and lost their way. Sickness fell upon the camp, and Edward Pocock died. The natives themselves were hostile, and Mirambo, chief of the Ruga-Rugas, a noted freebooter, was in the neighborhood with his band of cut-throats. By and by the storm clouds burst in war, not with the bandits however, but with the Ituru tribe. The battle was fought for three days against great odds. It resulted in the complete discomfiture of the foe, but with a loss to Stanley of twenty-four killed and wounded. The weakened expedition moved on bearing twenty-five men on the sick list.

They were now in the valley of the Shimeeyu, an affluent of Victoria Nyanza from the south. It was followed through dense forests over which loomed enormous bare rocks like castles, and hillocks of splintered granite and gneiss, and then through fine rolling plains, rich in pasture lands, hedge inclosed villages and herds of wild and tame animals. Compared with what he had passed through it was a grand and glorious country.

Provisions could be had readily and cheaply—corn, potatoes, fruit, goats and chickens. The half starved men indulged in feasting and marched with recovered strength and confidence. Murmuring and doubt died away. The native attendants who had shown unmistakable proofs of faithfulness in the midst of trial were specially rewarded.

The lake was near at hand. As they dipped through the troughs of land, mounted ridge after ridge, crossed water courses and ravines, passed cultivated fields and through villages smelling of cattle, a loud hurrahing in front told that the great Lake Victoria Nyanza had been sighted. It was February 27, 1875. The spot was Kagehyi, not far from where Speke had struck it.307 Six hundred feet beneath them, and three miles away, lay a long broad arm of water shining like silver in the bright sunshine, bordered by lines of green waving rushes, groves of trees and native huts.

No time was lost in getting the “Lady Alice” ready, and on March 8 she was launched and her prow turned northward. Her occupants were Stanley, a steersman, and ten oarsmen or sailors. Frank Pocock and Barker were left at Kagehyi in charge of the remainder of the party.

Now began a journey full of thrilling events. Almost every day brought its danger from storm, shoal, animal or hostile natives. For weeks the shores of the Nyanza stretched on, promontory behind promontory, and still the tired mariners toiled along the margin of the unknown lands on their lee, and out and in among the numerous islands. From the starting point round the eastern shore, the coast shows a succession of bold headland and deep bay, at the head of which is generally a river draining the highlands behind. Sometimes a dark mountain mass, covered with wood, overhangs the waters, rising abruptly to a height of three thousand feet or more; and then again there will intervene between the hills and the lake an open plain, grazed over by herds of zebras, antelopes, and giraffes. There is great diversity also in the islands. Many of them are bare masses of rock, supporting no green blade; others are swathed to the summit in masses of rank intertwisted vegetation that excludes the perpendicular rays of the sun. Some of the smallest are highly cultivated, and occupied by a dense population; one or two of the largest, such as Ugingo, betray no sign of human beings inhabiting their dismal shades.

Generally the region is rocky, broken, hilly, and intensely tropical in character. Behind the coast ranges absolutely nothing is known beyond a few vague reports picked up from native sources. The rivers are not large, and it is not probable that they have their sources so far off as the great snowy range that runs down midway between the lake and the east coast of Africa. Some geographers have chosen to call this chain by the old name of “Mountains of the Moon,” throwing the old308 land mark from the southern borders of Sahara to a point quite south of the equator and at right angles with their former direction. Between the lake and these snow-capped mountains roam the Mdai, a fierce pastoral tribe that subsists by plundering its weaker neighbors.

Stanley heard of hills that smoked in these ranges, and probably they contain active volcanoes. He also heard of the mythical Lake Baringo further north. This lake has appeared almost everywhere on African maps. If it is ever found, it may prove to be the reservoir of the Ashua, an important Nile tributary, after the stream leaves both Victoria and Albert Nyanza.

Before reaching the northernmost point of the lake the “Lady Alice” had passed through several disastrous storms and escaped many perilous shoals. She had also met the fierce opposition of the Victoria hippopotamus. This behemoth of an animal abounds here, as it does in all the waters of tropical Africa; but while in most other places it refrains from attacking man, unless provoked, it was found on the Victoria Lake to be of a peculiarly bellicose disposition. A few hours after starting on his voyage, Stanley was driven off the land and put to ignominious flight by a herd of savage hippopotami sallying out towards him open-mouthed. On another occasion, the rowers had to pull for bare life to escape the furious charge of a monster whose temper had been ruffled by the boat coming in contact with his back as he was rising to the surface to breathe. Probably the hippopotamus of the Victoria would be no more courageous than his neighbors if he were met with on land. There he always cuts a ridiculous figure, as he waddles along with his short legs and bulky body in search of the grass on which he feeds. He seems to know that he is at a disadvantage on terra firma, which, he seldom visits except by night. When interrupted, he makes the best of his way back to the water, where his great strength always makes him a formidable antagonist. On the Victoria Nyanza the inhabitants do not seem to have discovered the methods of killing him practised by the natives of the Zambesi, by capturing him in pit falls, or setting traps that bring a heavy log, armed with a long iron spike, down on his stupid skull.

309

But these were not the only ugly customers the crew of the “Lady Alice” had to contend with on the Victoria Nyanza. Frequently when the boat neared the shore, lithe figures could be seen flitting between the trees and savage eyes peering at her through the dense foliage. If an attempt were made to land a wild looking crowd would swarm upon the shore, poising their spears threateningly or placing their arrows in their bows. Though these forms are not so terrible as the Red Indian in war paint or the wild Papuan with his frizzly mop of hair, their natural hideousness is pretty well increased by tattooing and greasy paint. They are treacherous, cruel, vindictive, and one cast away on their shores would stand a poor chance of telling his own story.

At a point near the northeastern extremity of the lake Mr. Stanley was induced to come close to shore by the friendly gestures of half-a-dozen natives. As the boat was pulled nearer, the group on the shore rapidly increased, and it was thought prudent to halt. Instantly there started out of the jungle a forest of spears, and a crowd of yelling savages rushed down in hot haste to the margin, lest their hospitable intentions towards the strangers should be balked. The boat, however, to the astonishment of these primitive black men, hoisted a great sail to the favoring land breeze, which carried it out to an island where the crew could camp and sleep in safety for the night. A little further on, while off the island of Ugamba, a large native canoe, manned by forty rowers and adorned with a waving mane of long grasses, was pulled confidently towards the mysterious craft. After reconnoitering it for a little, they edged up alongside, half of the occupants of the canoe standing up and brandishing their tufted spears. These visitors had been drinking freely of pombe to keep up their courage. They were noisy, impudent, and obstreperous; and finding that the white man and his companions remained quiet and patient, they began to reel tipsily about the boat, shout out their drunken choruses, and freely handle the property and persons of the strangers. Gradually they grew still more unpleasantly aggressive. One drunken rascal whirled his sling over Stanley’s head and, cheered310 by his companions, seemed about to aim the stone at the white man. Suddenly Stanley, who had his revolver ready in his hand, fired a shot into the water. In an instant the boat was clear of the intruders, every one of whom had plunged into the water at sound of the pistol, and was swimming lustily for the shore. With some little trouble their fears were allayed and the humbled roisterers, sobered by their dip, came meekly back for their abandoned canoe. Presents were exchanged and all parted good friends.

He did not fare so well with the Wavuma tribe. They attracted Stanley’s attention by sending out a canoe loaded with provisions and gifts. But shoreward suddenly appeared a whole fleet of canoes, evidently bent on surrounding the “Lady Alice.” As her crew bent to their oars in order to escape, a storm of lances came upon them from the first canoe, whose captain held up a string of beads in a tantalizing manner which he had stolen from the white man’s boat. Stanley fired upon him and doubled him up in his boat. Then using his larger rifle he punctured the foremost of the other canoes with heavy bullets below the water line, so that they had enough to do to keep them from sinking. They ceased to give chase and the “Lady Alice” escaped.

Directly north of Victoria Nyanza is Uganda or the country of the Waganda,[1] over which King Mtesa presides. Stanley struck the country on the next day after his adventure with the Wavuma. It was a revelation to him. He fancied he had, in a night, passed from Pagan Africa to Mohammedan Europe or Asia. Instead of the stones and spear thrusts of the Wavuma he met with nothing save courtesy and hospitality. In place of naked howling savages he now saw bronze-colored people, clean, neatly clad, with good houses, advanced agriculture, well adapted industry, and considerable knowledge of the arts.

311

The village chief approached attired in a white shirt, and a fine cloak of bark-cloth having over it a monkey skin fur. On his head was a handsome cap, on his feet sandals. His attendants were clothed in the same style, though less costly. He smilingly bade the strangers welcome, spread before them a feast of dressed kid, ripe bananas, clotted milk, sweet potatoes and eggs, with apologies for having been caught unprepared for his guests.

Stanley looked on in wonder. It was a land of sunshine and plenty—a green and flowery Paradise set between the brilliant sky and the pure azure of the lake. Care and want seem never to have intruded here. There was food and to spare growing wild in the woods or in the cultivated patches around the snug homesteads. Every roomy, dome-shaped hut had its thatched portico where the inhabitants chatted and smoked. Surrounding them were court-yards, with buildings which served as barns, kitchens and wash-houses, all enclosed in trimly kept hedges. Outside was the peasants’ garden where crops of potatoes, yams, pease, kidney-beans and other vegetables grew of a size that would make a Florida gardner envious. Bordering the gardens were patches of tobacco, coffee, sugar-cane, and castor oil plant, all for family use. Still further beyond were fields of maize and other grains, and plantations of banana, plantain, and fig. Large commons afforded pasturage for flocks of goats and small, white, harmless cattle.

The land is of inexhaustible fertility. The sunshine is unfailing; drought in this moist climate is unknown; and the air is cooled and purified by the breezes from the lake and from the mountains. Within his own inclosure the peasant has enough and to spare for himself and his household, both of luxuries and necessaries. His maize fields furnish him with the staff of life, and the fermented grain yields the “pombe,” which he regards almost as much a requisite of existence as bread itself. The grinding of flour and the brewing of beer are all performed under his own eye by his family. The fig-tree yields him the bark out of which his clothes are made; but the banana is, perhaps, the most indispensable of the gifts of nature312 in these climes. It supplies him, says Stanley, with “bread, potatoes, dessert, wine, beer, medicine, house and fence, bed, cloth, cooking-pot, table-cloth, parcel-wrapper, thread, cord, rope, sponge, bath, shield, sun-hat, and canoe. With it, he is happy, fat, and thriving; without it, a famished, discontented, woe-begone wretch.” The banana grows to perfection in Uganda; groves of it embower every village, and the Waganda in addition to being fat and prosperous have plenty of leisure for the arts of war and peace.

They are unfortunately inclined to war, though they make cloth, tan skins, work in metals, and build houses and canoes. Even literature is not unknown among them. Well might Speke have said of Ripon Falls at the outlet of the Nile, with “a wife and family, a yacht and a gun, a dog and a rod, one might here be supremely happy and never wish to visit the haunts of civilization again.”

Word is sent to the king of the arrival of the strangers. An escort comes inviting them to the court. The new comer quite eclipsed the village chiefs in the gorgeousness of his apparel. A huge plume of cock’s feathers surmounted an elaborately worked head-dress. A crimson robe hung about him with a grace worthy an ancient Roman, while over it was hung a snow-white goat-skin. The progress to the headquarters of the court was conducted with due pomp and circumstance. Every step Stanley’s wonderment and admiration increased; each moment he received new proofs that he had fallen among a people as different from those whom his previous wanderings had made him acquainted with as are white Americans from Choctaws. Emerging from the margin of dense forests and banana and plantain groves on the lake shores, the singular beauty of the land revealed itself to him. Wherever he turned his eyes there was a brilliant play of colors, and a boldness and diversity of outline such as he had never before seen. Broad, straight, and carefully-kept roads led through a rolling, thickly-peopled country clad in perennial green. Now the path would dive down into a hollow, where it was shaded by the graceful fronds of plantains and other tropical trees, where a314 stream murmured over the stones, and the air was filled with the fragrance of fruit; and then again it would crest a ridge, from whence a magnificent prospect could be obtained of the sea-like expanse of the lake, with its wooded capes and islands, the dim blue lines of the distant hills, and the fruitful and smiling country lying between, its soft, undulating outline of forest-covered valley and grassy hill sharply broken by gigantic table-topped masses of gray rocks and profound ravines.

RUBAGA. Larger.

At length crowning the summit of a smooth hill appeared King Mtesa’s capital, Rubaga. A number of tall huts clustered around one taller than the rest from which waved the imperial standard of the Uganda. A high cane fence surrounds the court with gates opening on four broad avenues that stretch to the bottom of the hill. These are lined with fences and connected with paths shaded with groves of banana, fig and other fruit trees, and amid these groves are the houses of the commonalty. After due delay—court etiquette is even more tedious and ceremonious in Africa than Europe—Stanley is ushered into the presence of the king, seated in his great audience hall, and surrounded by a host of chiefs, warriors, pages, standard-bearers, executioners, drummers, fifers, clowns, dwarfs, wizards, medicine men, slaves and other retainers.

And here we have a fine opportunity to compare the notes of two observers of the king’s receptions. Stanley had a second interview at the “royal palace,” on which occasion the king received also M. Linant De Bellefonds, sent by Gordon Pasha on a mission to Uganda. The monarch prepared a surprise for him by having Stanley by his side. But let De Bellefonds speak.

“On entering the court I am greeted with a frightful uproar. A thousand instruments produce the most discordant and deafening sounds. Mtesa’s bodyguard, carrying guns, present arms on my appearance. The king is standing at the entrance to the reception hall. I approach and bow like a Turk. We shake hands. I perceive a sun-burned European by the king’s side, whom I take to be Cameron. We all enter the reception room—a room 15 feet wide by 60 feet long, its roof supported by315 two rows of light pillars, making an aisle, which is filled with chief officers and guards, the latter armed. Mtesa takes his seat on the throne, which is like a wooden office chair. His feet rest on a cushion. The whole is in the centre of a leopard skin spread upon a Smyrna rug. Before him is a highly polished elephant’s tusk, at his feet two boxes containing fetishes, on either side a lance of copper and steel. At his feet are two scribes. The king behaves dignifiedly and does not lack an air of distinction. His dress is faultless—a white couftan finished with a red band, stockings, slippers, vest of black and gold, a turban with a silver plate on top, a sword with an ivory hilt and a staff. I show my presents, but royal dignity forbids him to show any curiosity. I say to the traveller on his left ‘Have I the honor to address Mr. Cameron?’ He says, ‘No sir; Mr. Stanley.’ I introduce myself. We bow low, and our conversation ends for the moment.”

Who is this singular Mtesa and how has his more singular fabric of empire been built up in the heart of savage Africa?

All around is the night of Pagan darkness, ignorance, and cruelty. Here, in the land of the Waganda, if there is, as yet, no light to speak of, there is a ruddy tinge in the midst of the blackness that seems to give promise of approaching dawn. If the people are still blood-thirsty, revengeful, and fond of war and pillage, they have learned some lessons in observing law and order; they practice some useful arts; they observe many of the decencies of life, and in the cleanliness of their houses and persons they are examples to some European countries. The Waganda themselves have a high opinion of their own importance; and their legends carry back their origin to what, for an African tribe, is a remote past. The story, as related by them to Captain Speke, is as follows:—

“Eight generations ago a sportsman from Unyoro, by name Uganda, came with a pack of dogs, a woman, a spear, and a shield, hunting on the left bank of the Katonga Valley, not far from the lake. He was but a poor man, though so successful in hunting that vast numbers flocked to him for flesh, and became so fond of him as to invite him to be their king. At316 first Uganda hesitated. Then the people, hearing his name, said, ‘well at any rate let the country between the Nile and the Katonga be called Uganda and let your name be Kimera the first king of Uganda.’ The report of these proceedings reached the ears of the king of Unyoro, who merely said, ‘The poor creature must be starving, allow him to feed where he likes.’

“Kimera assumed authority, grew proud and headstrong, punished severely and became magnificent. He was content with nothing short of the grandest palace, a throne to sit on, the largest harem, the smartest officers, the best dressed people, a menagerie for pleasure and the best of everything. Armies were formed and fleets of canoes built for war. Highways were cut from one end of the country to the other and all the rivers were bridged. No house could be built without its necessary out buildings and to disobey the laws of cleanliness was death. He formed a perfect system of paternal government according to his own ideas, and it has never declined, but rather improved.”

Stanley heard from Sabadu, the court historian of Uganda, a somewhat different story. According to him Kimera did not found the government but was only one of a long list of thirty-five monarchs. He however first taught his countrymen the delight of sport. He was, in fact, the Nimrod of Uganda genealogy, and a mighty giant to boot, the mark of whose enormous foot is still pointed out on a rock near the lake, where he had slipped while hurling a spear at an elephant. The first of the Waganda was Kintu, a blameless priest, who objected to the shedding of blood—a scruple which does not seem to have been shared by any of his descendants—and who came into this Lake Region when it was absolutely empty of human inhabitants. From Kintu, Sabadu traced the descent of his master through a line of glorious ancestry,—warriors and legislators, who performed the most astounding deeds of valor and wisdom,—and completely proved that, whatever may be the condition of history, fiction, at least, flourishes at the court of Mtesa. Passing over a hero who crushed hosts of his enemies by flying up into the air and dropping great rocks upon their heads, and a doughty champion who took his stand on a hill317 and there for three days withstood the assaults of all comers, catching the spears thrown at him and flinging them back, until he was surrounded by a wall of two thousand slain, we come to Suna, the father of Mtesa, who died only a little before Speke and Grant’s visit to the country. Suna, by all accounts, was a gloomy monarch, who sat with his eyes broodingly bent on the ground, only raising them to give the signal to his executioners for the slaughter of some of his subjects. It is told of this sanguinary despot that one day he caused 800 of his people to be killed in his sight, and that he made a ghastly pyramid of the bodies of 20,000 Wasoga prisoners, inhabitants of the opposite shore of the Victoria Nile.

The chiefs rejected his eldest son as his successor and chose the mild-eyed Mtesa. The “mild-eyed” signalized his election by killing all his nearest relatives and his father’s best counsellors. He was drunk with power and pombe. It was now that Speke and Grant saw him. They describe him as a wretch who was peculiarly liable to fits of frenzy, during which he would order the slaughter of those who were his best friends an hour before, or arming himself with a bundle of spears would go into his harem and throw them indiscriminately among his wives and children.

It is said a change came over him by being converted to Mohammedanism. He gave up his drinking and many Pagan practices of his fathers, though still believing in wizards and charms. The Moslem Sabbath is observed and Arabic literature has been introduced.

Stanley describes him as a tall slim man of thirty years, with fine intelligent features and an expression in which amiability is blended with dignity. His eyes are “large lustrous and lambent.” His skin is a reddish brown and wonderfully smooth. In council, he is sedate and composed; in private, free and hilarious. Of his intelligence and capacity there can be no question. Nor can it be doubted that he has a sincere liking for white men. His curiosity about civilized peoples, their customs, manufactures and inventions is insatiable, and he seems to have once entertained the idea of modeling his kingdom after a civilized pattern.318 He showed “Stamlee” (Stanley) and other white visitors the greatest hospitality. Yet there was something cat-like in his caressing and insinuating ways. His smiles and attentions could not be relied on any more than the fawning of the leopard, which the kings of Uganda take for their royal badge.

Stanley tried to convert him from his Moslem faith to Christianity. He got so far as to have him write the Ten Commandments for daily perusal and keep the Christian along with the Moslem Sabbath. This was on his first visit. But on his return to Rubaga he found the king had gone to war with the Wavuma. He went along and had excellent opportunity to notice the king’s power.

His estimate of Mtesa’s fighting strength on this occasion was an army of 150,000 men, and as many more camp followers in the shape of women and children. There were not less than 500 large canoes, over seventy feet in length, requiring 8500 paddlers. The whole population of his territory he estimated at 3,500,000, and its extent at 70,000 square miles.

The Wavuma could not muster over 200 canoes, but they were more agile on the water than the Uganda, so that the odds were not so great after all. Day after day they kept Mtesa’s fleet at bay, and readily paddled out of reach of his musketry and howitzers planted on a cape which extended into the lake. Mtesa got very mad and began to despair. He applied to all his sorcerers and medicine men, and at length came to Stanley, who suggested the erection of a causeway from the point of the cape to the enemy’s shore. It proved to be too big a task, and was given over. But the American pushed his project of converting the king, now that he stood in the position of adviser. He succeeded, as he thought. But a few days later the Uganda fleet suffered a reverse, and the newly fledged Christian was found running around in a frenzy, shouting for the blood of his enemies and giving orders for the roasting alive of a prisoner who had been taken. Stanley gave his pupil a well-deserved scolding; and thinking it was time to interfere in the war, which was hindering him from continuing his journey, he put into operation a little project he had conceived, and which is319 worthy of being placed beside the famous device of the “horse” by which the Greeks captured Troy town. Joining three canoes together, side by side, by poles lashed across them, he constructed on this platform a kind of wicker-work fort, which concealed a crew and garrison of two hundred men. This strange structure, covered by streamers, and with the drums and horns giving forth a horrible din, moved slowly towards the enemy’s stronghold, propelled by the paddles working between the canoes. The Wavuma watched with terror the approach of this awful apparition, which bore down upon them as if moved by some supernatural force. When it had advanced to within hailing distance, a voice was heard issuing from the mysterious visitant, which called on the Wavuma to submit to Mtesa or destruction would come on them. The bold islanders were awestruck. A council of war was held, when a chief stepped to the shore and cried, “Return, O Spirit; the war is ended!” A peace was sealed with the usual tribute of ivory and female slaves for the king’s harem.

The next morning the king’s war drums suddenly sounded the breaking up of his immense encampment on the shore, and Stanley discovered it to be on fire in a hundred places. All had to flee for their lives, and he thinks hundreds must have perished in the confusion. The king denied that he was responsible for an order which resulted in such a horror, but Stanley thought he was guilty of a piece of unwarranted cruelty, which illy became his new profession of faith. From that time on, his views began to change. Ingenious, enterprising, intelligent he found them, above any other African tribe he had met with. Their scrupulous cleanliness, neatness, and modesty cover a multitude of faults; but for the rest, “they are crafty, fraudful, deceiving, lying, thievish knaves, taken as a whole, and seem to be born with an uncontrollable love of gaining wealth by robbery, violence and murder.” Notwithstanding first impressions to the contrary, they are more allied to the Choctaw than the Anglo-Saxon, and are simply clever savages, whom prosperity and a favorable climate have helped several stages on the long, toilsome road towards civilization. There is no call upon us after320 all to envy their luxurious lives of ease and plenty under the shade of their bowers of vine, fig, and plantain trees—

Nevertheless, Uganda, from its fertility and its situation at the outlet of the great fresh-water sea of the Nyanza, must be regarded as one of the most hopeful fields of future commercial enterprise, and its people as among the most promising subjects for missionary and philanthropic efforts in Central Africa.

As for the mighty Mtesa, little has been seen or heard of him since his friend “Stamlee” parted from him. Colonel Chaille Long, late of the Confederate Army, afterwards in the service of Egypt, who had seen him a few months before, did not think he would ever turn out to be a humane monarch. But that he has not lost his interest in his white friends and in the marvels of civilization was shown in the spring of 1880, when a deputation of four of his chiefs appeared in London on a tour of observation.

De Bellefonds, mentioned above as meeting Stanley at King Mtesa’s court, was murdered, with all his party, by the Unyoro, when on his way back to Gondokoro. Colonel Long went down the Victoria Nile from Lake Victoria Nyanza, and midway between the Victoria and Albert Nyanza discovered another great lake which he called Lake Ibrahim.

The last white visitors to the Nile reservoirs were an English party sent out to establish a Christian mission on Lake Victoria Nyanza. It consisted of Lieutenant Smith, and Messrs. Wilson and O’Neil. They took a small steamer along in sections from Zanzibar, and successfully floated the first steam craft on the bosom of the great lake. Wilson established himself at the court of King Mtesa. Smith and Wilson, while exploring the lake, were driven by a storm on the island of the Ukerewe, whose chief, Lukongeh, had been kind to Stanley. But no faith can be put in African princes. On December 7, 1877, Lukongeh attacked the missionary camp and massacred Smith and Wilson with all their black attendants. With this dismal321 incident the history of the exploration of Victoria Nyanza closes for the present, except as we shall have to follow Stanley after leaving the court of King Mtesa on his trip down the western shore of the lake. It must be remembered that he was twice to see the king, once on his tour of circumnavigation, and then after he had completed it.

After he rounded the northern end of the lake and was well on his way down its western shores, he met with the most perilous of his adventures. The voyagers were nearly out of provisions. They had passed days of weary toil under the blistering tropical sun, and dismal nights of hunger on shelterless, uninhabited islands, when the grassy slopes of Bumbireh hove in sight. Numerous villages were seen in the shelter of the forest, with herds of cattle, maize fields, and groves of fruit trees, and altogether the island seemed to offer a haven of rest and plenty to the weary mariners. There was no food left in the boat, and a landing had to be attempted at all risks. The look of the Bumbireh natives was not so prepossessing as that of their land. They rushed down from their villages, shouting war-songs and brandishing their clubs and spears. No sooner had the boat reached shallow water, than they seized upon her, and dragged her, crew and all, high up on the rocky beach. “The scene that ensued,” says the traveller, “baffles description. Pandemonium—all the devils armed—raged around us. A forest of spears was levelled; thirty or forty bows were drawn taut; as many barbed arrows seemed already on the wing; knotty clubs waved above our heads; two hundred screaming black demons jostled each other, and struggled for room to vent their fury, or for an opportunity to deliver one crushing blow or thrust at us.”

In point of fact, no thrust was delivered, and possibly none was intended; but the situation was certainly an unpleasant one. The troop of gesticulating, yelling savages increased every second; and the diabolical noise of a number of drums increased the hub-bub. The islanders began to jostle their guests, to pilfer, and at last they seized upon the oars. Stanley put his companions on their guard and fired his double-barreled elephant322 rifle into the crowd. Two men fell. He increased the panic among them, by two rounds of duck shot, and in the midst of the confusion the “Lady Alice” was run down the bank and pushed far into the water. But this scarcely improved the position. The enemy swarmed on the shore and threw stones and lances at the crew. Canoes were making ready to pursue. Stanley ordered the crew to tear up the bottom boards for paddles and to pull away with all their might. All were doing the best they could, but a paralysis seized them when they discovered they were directly in the track of two huge hippopotami which had been started up by the noises of the melee, and enraged to the attacking point. The elephant rifle was again brought into requisition and the course cleared by planting an explosive bullet in each animal’s head.

Four of the canoes of the natives were now upon them. They meant war in earnest. The elephant rifle was used with effect. Four shots killed five of the natives and sank two canoes. The other two stopped to pick up their companions. They shouted in their rage, as they saw their prize escape, “go, and die in the Nyanza!”

Dismal days of famine and hardship followed. A storm overtook them and tossed them for hours, drenched with spray and rain. They had but four bananas on board. Happily another island was sighted and reached, which proved to be uninhabited. There they obtained food, shelter and much needed rest. Most travellers would have given Bumbireh a wide berth in the future. Not so Stanley. He pursued his course to Kagehyi, his starting point, having circumnavigated the lake in 60 days. There he assembled his own forces, and added recruits loaned by King Mtesa. With 230 spearmen and 50 musketeers he put back to the offending island determined to punish the two or three thousand natives they found ranged along the shores. They held their own with slings and arrows against the approach of the boats for an hour. But at length they were put to flight and Stanley considered he had wiped out the insult, though they appear to have been pretty well punished before.

323

During his two months’ absence Frederick Barker died at Kagehyi. This sad event was one of the items of heavy cost attending great feats of exploration. It left Stanley with but one English companion.

Stanley’s exploration of Victoria Nyanza confirmed in part, Speke’s discovery and theories. It showed that it was a Nile reservoir, though not an ultimate source, 21,000 square miles in extent. Excellent havens, navigable streams and fertile islands were revealed for the first time. Rich and beautiful countries are romantically pictured to us.

After having paid court to King Mtesa a second time, as already described, the time came for Stanley to extend his journey. He chose to follow the line of the Equator westward with the hope of striking a southern extension of Baker’s Albert Nyanza. He departed from Mtesa’s old capital, Ulagalla, laden with presents and food, and accompanied by a hundred Uganda warriors. Stanley, in turn, gave bountiful parting presents, and even remembered the chief Lukongeh of Ukerewë, who showed his appreciation of this kindness by murdering the very next white visitors—Smith and O’Neill, as above narrated.

Further on, near the boundary between Uganda and Unyoro, a body of 2000 Waganda spearmen joined Stanley, making a force of nearly 3000 souls—quite too large for practical exploration as the sequel proved. The path led through scenes of surpassing beauty and fertility, and of a character that changed from soft tropical luxuriance to Alpine magnificence.

After getting away from the forest covered lowlands of the lake shore, they emerge into a rolling country dotted with ant hills and thinly sprinkled with tamarisks and thorny acacias. Then come rougher ways and wilder scenes. The land-swells are higher, the valleys deeper. Rocks break through the surface, and the slopes are covered with splintered granite. The streams that were warm and sluggish, are now cold and rapid. By and by mountains set in, at first detached masses and then clearly defined ranges, rising 9000 to 10,000 feet on the right hand and the left. Cutting breezes and chilly mists take the place of intense tropical heats. At length the monarch of mountains in324 this part of Africa comes into view and is named Mount Gordon Bennett. It lifts its head, at a distance of 40 miles north of their route, to a height of 15,000 feet, and seems to be a detached mass which overlooks the entire country. Its bases are inhabited by the Gambaragara, who have regular features, light complexions, and are the finest natives Mr. Stanley saw in Africa. Sight of them brought up the old question, whether an indigenous white race exists in Africa, as both Pinto and Livingstone seemed inclined to believe. But their wooly, or curly, hair was against them. They are a pastoral people and safe in their mountain fastnesses against attack. Snow often covered the top of their high mountain, which they said was an extinct crater and now the bed of a beautiful lake from whose centre rises a lofty column of rocks. The whole country is filled with hot springs, lakes of bubbling mud and other evidences of volcanic action.

These mountains Stanley thought to be the dividing ridge between Victoria Nyanza, 120 miles east, and the southern projection of Albert Nyanza. But what was his astonishment to find that he had no sooner rose to the summit of his dividing ridge than he stood on a precipice, 1500 feet high, which overlooked the placid waters of the traditional Muta, or Luta, Nzigé. What a prize was here in store for the venturesome American! Something indeed which would rob Baker of his claim to the discovery of an ultimate Nile source in Albert Nyanza. Something which would set at rest many geographic controversies. And, strange to say, something which not only supported the truth of native accounts but seemed to verify the accuracy of an old Portuguese map dating back nearly 300 years.

But fortune was not in favor of the American. His large force had scared the Unyoro people, and they had mysteriously disappeared. The Waganda warriors, who formed his escort, looked ominously on this situation. Samboozi, the leader of the escort, had gained his laurels fighting the Unyoro, and he feared a trap of some kind was being laid for him. His fears demoralized his own men and Stanley’s as well. They decided to retreat. Stanley remonstrated, and asked them to remain till he could325 lower his boat and explore the lake. He asked for but two days grace. But expostulation was vain. They would all have deserted in a body.

There was nothing left but to return. When they arrived at Mtesa’s capital, which they did without accident, the king was frightfully mad at his men. He ordered the faithless Samboozi to be imprisoned and all his wives and flocks to be confiscated. Then he offered Stanley his great general Sekebobo with an army of a hundred thousand men to carry him back to the Muta Nzigé. Stanley declined his munificent offer, and determined that in the future none should guide and govern his own force except himself. So, with very much modified impressions of Uganda faithfulness, and somewhat angrily, he started off in a southerly direction, intending to see what lay westward of Victoria Nyanza.

This route of Stanley southward was that of Speke and Grant northward, fourteen years before. It is a well watered, thickly peopled, highly cultivated country, diversified by hill and hollow, and rich in cattle. Its water courses all drain into the Victoria Nyanza. Their heads are rushing streams, but as they approach the lake they become reedy, stagnant lakelets hard to cross. The largest of these, at the southwest corner of Victoria Nyanza, is Speke’s Kitangule, which Stanley named the Alexandra Nile. Will we never have done with these Nile rivers? These continuations of the great river of Egypt?

It seems then that Victoria Nyanza is but a resting place for more southern Nile waters. That this is so, seems clear from the fact that the Alexandra Nile really contributes more water than flows out of the lake at its northern outlet. It has been discovered also that Albert Nyanza sends off another affluent to the north, besides that which flows past Gondokoro and which has been regarded as the true Nile. Further it seems that Lake Ibrahim, half way between Victoria and Albert Nyanza, on the Victoria Nile, dispatches an unknown branch into the wilderness. Whether these branches find their way back to the parent stream or go off to form new lakes, no one can exactly say.

326

But in the Alexandra Nile Stanley claims he has discovered a new ramification of this wonderful river system leading to other lakes and lake mysteries. The natives call the Alexandra the “Mother of the waters of Uganda,” that is, the Victoria Nyanza or Victoria Nile. Be this as it may, the Alexandra Nile is interesting both for its own sake and that of the people who live upon it. Stanley struck it far up from the lake where it was a quarter of a mile wide, with a dark central current 100 yards wide and fifty feet deep, which below became a rush covered stream whose banks were crowded with villages and herds of cattle. Still further on, it narrows between rocks over which it rushes in a cataract, and then it broadens to lake proportions, being from four to fifteen miles wide. In this expanse of reedy lagoons and green islands it merges into Victoria Nyanza Lake.

Crossing the Alexandra Nile to the south, we are in the Karagwe country, ruled by King Rumanika. Here is a haven of peace and rest. Speke and Grant staid many weeks with Rumanika. Stanley stopped for a considerable while to rest and recruit. He is gentle and reasonable, hospitable and friendly. He is a vassal of King Mtesa of Uganda, but the two are wholly different, except in their admiration of white men. Rumanika has no bursts of temper, but is serene, soft of voice and placid in manner. Stanley calls him a “venerable and aged Pagan,” a tall man, six feet six inches high, gorgeously dressed, attended by a multitude of spearmen, drummers and fifers, bearing a cane seven feet long. He has a museum in which he delights, and is an insatiable gatherer of news from those who come from civilized countries. He is not to be outdone by the stories of strangers, but has always one in response ever fuller of marvel. When Stanley told him of the results of steam power and of the telegraph by which people could talk for thousands of miles, he slily asked “Whether or not the moon made different faces to laugh at us mortals on earth?”

He proved full of traditions and, if there was any foundation for them, Stanley left with a rare fund of geographic knowledge on hand. The mountain sixty miles northward, rising in triple cone and called M’Fumbiro, he said was in the country of the327 Ruanda, a powerful state governed by an empress, who allows no stranger to enter. Her dominions stretch from the Muta Nzigé to Tanganyika. They contain another great lake, forty by thirty miles, out of which the Alexandra Nile flows. It is possible to ascend this channel into another sheet of water—Lake Kivu, out of which at its southern end flows another stream, the Rusizi, which flows into the north end of Tanganyika.

What wonderful information this was, and if all true, we should have the most bewildering river system, by all odds in the world. We should find the old Portuguese map of three hundred years ago reproduced and verified, and the anomaly of three mighty streams draining a continent mingling their parent waters, and even permitting the passage of a boat at high water, so that in the end it might go to the Mediterranean, the Atlantic or Indian Oceans.

Further, Rumanika stated that Ruanda is peopled by demons, and that beyond, on a lake called Mkinyaga, are a race of cannibals, and also pigmies, not two feet high. Stanley verified the king’s story by a visit to the Ruanda folks, who gnashed their teeth like dogs and otherwise expressed their objections to his visit; and Dr. Schweinfurth found, a little nearer the western coast, evidences of a tribe of dwarfs who are supposed to be the aboriginal people of the continent. But the hardest of Rumanika’s stories was of a tribe who had ears so long that one answered for a blanket to lie on and another as a cover for the sleeper. Stanley began to think his civilized wonders were too tame to pit against those of the African king.

The larger African animals abound in the Karagwe country. Stanley was much interested in the accounts of white elephants and rhinoceri. He had the good fortune to find one of the former animals, which he shot, but found it only a dirty grey brute, just as we find the advertised white elephants of the menagerie. The elephant is the most unpleasant neighbor of the rhinoceros. If they meet in a jungle the rhinoceros has to squeeze his ponderous body into the thicket or prepare for a battle royal. In such a quarrel his tusk is an ugly weapon but no match for the tusks of the elephant. The elephant sometimes treats328 him like a school boy and, breaking off a limb, belabors the unlucky rhinoceros till he beats a retreat. At other times the elephant will force him against a tree and pin him there with his tusks, or throw him down and tramp him till the life is out of him. Perhaps these were more of Rumanika’s yarns, but certain it is both beasts are formidable in a forest path, especially when alone and of surly temper.

SHOOTING A RHINOCEROS.

On the southern borders of Karagwe is a ridge 5000 feet high. Beyond this the waters trend southward and toward Tanganyika. And beyond this ridge the people change. There are no more stately kings, but petty, lying, black-mailing chiefs, just as we found about Gondokoro. Here Stanley encountered Mirambo, whose name is a word of terror from the Victoria Lake to the Nyassa, and from Tanganyika to Zanzibar.329 To the explorer’s astonishment he found this notorious personage—

in short “a thorough African gentleman.”

He had difficulty in believing that this “unpresuming, mild-eyed man, of inoffensive exterior, so calm of gesture, so generous and open-handed,” was the terrible man of blood who wasted villages, slaughtered his foes by the thousand, and kept a district of ninety thousand square miles in continual terror. Incontinently, the impulsive explorer resolved to swear “blood brother-hood” with the other wandering warrior, and the ceremony was gone through with all due solemnity. The marauding chief presented his new brother with a quantity of cloth, and the explorer gave him in return a revolver and a quantity of ammunition; and then, mutually pleased with each other, they parted—Mirambo and his merry men to the gay greenwood, where, doubtless, they had a pressing engagement to meet some other party of travellers, and Stanley for Ujiji.

Ujiji is on Lake Tanganyika. Here we have to leave Stanley, for he is now done with the sources of the Nile, and midway on that wonderful journey which revealed the secrets of the Congo. We will follow him thence and see what he discovered and how he lifted the fog amid which Livingstone died, but that will have to be under the head of the “Congo Country” whose mystery he solved more clearly even than that of the “Nile Reservoirs.”

330

PORTRAIT OF LIVINGSTONE.

331

THE ZAMBESI.

The great river Zambesi runs eastward across Southern Africa and empties, by many mouths, into the Indian Ocean. It is an immense water system, with its head far toward the Atlantic Ocean, yet draining on its north side that mysterious lake region which occupies Central Africa, and on its south side an almost equally mysterious region.

Its lower waters have been known for a long time, but its middle waters and its sources have been shrouded in a cloud of doubts as dense as that which overhung the reservoirs of the Nile. Livingstone has contributed more than any other explorer to the lifting of these doubts.

He was born in Glasgow, March 19, 1813, and was self-educated. He studied medicine and became attached to the London Missionary Society as medical missionary. In 1840, at the age of twenty-seven years, he was sent to Cape Town at the southern terminus of Africa, whence he went 700 miles inland to the Kuruman Station, established by Moffat on the southern border of the Kalihari desert. Here and at Kolobeng, on the Kolobeng River, he acquired the language of the natives, principally Bechuana. On a return trip from Kolobeng to Kuruman he came near losing his life by an adventure with a lion. The country was being ravaged by a troop of these beasts. When one of their number is killed, the rest take the hint and leave. It was determined to dispatch one, and a hunt was organized in company with the natives. They found the troop on a conical hill. The hunters formed a circle around the hill and gradually closed in. Meblawe, a native schoolmaster, fired at one of the animals which was sitting on a rock. The bullet struck the rock. The angered beast bit the spot where the bullet struck and then bounded away. In a few moments Livingstone himself got a shot at another beast. The ball took effect but did not kill. The enraged beast dashed at his assailant before he could re-load,332 and sprang upon him. He was borne to the ground beneath the lion’s paws and felt his hot breath on his face. Another moment must have brought death. But the infuriated beast saw Mebalwe, who had snapped both barrels of his rifle at him. He made a dash for him and lacerated his thigh in a terrible manner. The natives, who had hitherto acted in a very cowardly manner, now came to the rescue with their spears. One of their number was pounced upon and badly torn. The beast now began to weaken from the effect of Livingstone’s shot, and with a quiver throughout his huge frame rolled over on his side dead. After the excitement was over Dr. Livingstone found333 eleven marks of the lion’s teeth on his left arm, which was broken close to the shoulder and the bone crushed into splinters.

THE LION ATTACKS LIVINGSTONE.

Livingstone married Moffat’s daughter in 1844. She had been born in the country and was a thorough missionary. He made Kolobeng a beautiful station and produced an excellent impression on the natives—all except the Boer tribes to the south and east, who had become much incensed against the English, owing as they thought, to the particularly harsh treatment they had received down in their former homes south of the Vaal River.

At Kolobeng, Livingstone first heard of Lake Ngami, north of the Kalihari Desert. He resolved to visit it, and started in May 1849, in company with his wife and children, several English travellers and a large party of Bechuana attendants. They rather skirted than crossed the desert, yet they found it to consist of vast salt plains, which gave a constant mirage as if the whole were water. Though destitute of water, there are tufts of dry salt-encrusted grass here and there, which relieve it of an appearance of barrenness, but which crumble at the touch.

In July they struck the river Cubango, or Zonga, flowing eastward and, as far as known, losing itself in a great central salt-lake, or Dead Sea. They were told that the Zonga came out of Lake Ngami, further west. Ascending the river sixty miles they struck the lake, and were the first Europeans to behold this fine sheet of water. The great tribe about and beyond the lake is the Makololo, whose chief is Sebituane, a generous hearted and truly noble character. They could not see him on this trip. So they returned, making easy journeys down the Zonga, admiring its beautiful banks, which abounded in large game, especially elephants.

The next year (1850), Livingstone and his family started again for Lake Ngami, accompanied by the good chief Sechele, who took along a wagon, drawn by oxen. While this means of locomotion gave comfort to the family, it involved much labor in clearing roads, and the animals suffered sadly from attacks by the tsetse fly, whose sting is poisonous. But the lake was reached in safety. The season proved sickly, and a return journey became compulsory, without seeing Sebituane. But the chief334 had heard of Livingstone’s attempts to visit his court, and he sent presents, and invitations to another visit. He set out on a third journey, and this time directly across the desert, where they suffered much for want of water.

CUTTING A ROAD.

This time they found the chief. His headquarters were on an island in the river, below the lake. He received the party with the greatest courtesy, and appeared to be the best mannered and frankest chief Livingstone ever met. He was about forty-five years old, tall and wiry, of coffee-and-milk complexion, slightly bald, of undoubted bravery, always leading his men in battle, and by far the most powerful warrior beyond Cape Colony. He had reduced tribe after tribe, till his dominions extended far into the desert on the south of the Zonga, embraced both sides of that stream, and ran northward to, and beyond, the great Zambesi River.

335

Chief Sebituane died while Livingstone was visiting him, and was succeeded by his daughter Ma-Mochisane. She extended the privileges of the country to the travellers, and Livingstone went north to Sesheke to see her. Here in June, 1851, he discovered the great Zambesi in the centre of the continent of Africa where it was not previously known to exist—all former maps being incorrect.

Though the country was not healthy, he was so impressed with the beauty of the Zambesi regions, and the character of the Makololo people, that he resolved to make a permanent establishment among them. But before doing so he returned to Cape Colony and sent his family to England. Then he went back, visiting his old stations on the way. He arrived at Linyanti, where he found that the new queen had abdicated in favor of her brother, on May 23, 1853. The new king Sekelutu was not unlike his father in stature and color, was kindly disposed toward white people, but could not be convinced that their religious notions were suited to him.

Livingstone remained a month at Linyanti, on the Chobe, or Cuando River, above its junction with the Zambezi. He then started on a further exploration of the latter river, and was gratified to find that Sekelutu determined to accompany him with 160 attendants. They made royal progress down the Chobe to its mouth. Then they began to ascend the Zambesi in thirty-three canoes. The river was more than a mile broad, dotted with large islands and broken with frequent rapids and falls. The banks were thickly strewn with villages. Elephants were numerous. It was the new king’s first visit to his people and everywhere the receptions were grand. Throughout this Barotse valley hunger is not known, yet there is no care exercised in planting.

The spirit of exploration had such full possession of Livingstone that, on the return of the royal party to Linyanti, he organized an expedition to ascend the Zambesi and cut across to Loanda on the Atlantic coast. This he did in 1854. It was on this journey that he discovered Lake Dilolo. It is not much of a lake, being only eight miles long by three broad. But it336 was a puzzle to Livingstone, and has ever since been a curiosity. It is the connecting link between two immense water systems—that of the Congo and Zambesi.

When he struck it on his westward journey toward Loanda, he found it sending out a volume into the Zambesi. “Head-waters of a great river!” he naturally exclaimed. And there was the elevation above the sea, the watershed, to prove it, for soon after all the waters ran northward and westward instead of eastward and southward.

But in a few months he was making his return journey from Loanda to the interior, to fulfil his pledge to bring back his Makololo attendants in safety. He then approached this lake from the north. What was his surprise to find another slow moving, reed-covered stream a mile wide, flowing from this end of the mysterious lake and sending its waters toward the Congo.

Though ill with fever both times, he was able to conquer disease sufficiently to satisfy himself that this little lake, Dilolo, four thousand feet above the sea level, is located exactly on the watershed between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and distributes its contents impartially between the two seas. A drop of rain blown by the wind to the one or the other end of the lake may re-enforce the tumbling floods that roar through the channels of the Congo and rush sixty miles out into the salt waters of the Atlantic, or may make with the Zambesi the dizzy leap through the great Victoria Falls and mingle with the Indian ocean. No similar phenomenon is known anywhere. Lake Kivo may form a corresponding band of union between the Congo and the Nile, but this we do not know. Apart from the eccentric double part it plays, the physical features of Dilolo are tame and ordinary enough. It has, of course, hippopotami and crocodiles as every water in Central Africa has, and its banks are fringed with marshes covered with profuse growth of rushes, cane, papyrus, and reeds. Around it stretch wide plains, limitless as the sea, on which for many months of the year the stagnant waters rest, balancing themselves, as it were, between the two sides of a continent, unable to make up their mind whether to favor the east coast or the west with their tribute.

337

No trees break the horizon. The lands in the fens bear only a low growth of shrub, and the landscape is dismal and monotonous in the extreme. “Dilolo means despair,” and the dwellers near it tell a story curiously resembling the tale of the “Cities of the plain,” and the tradition handed down regarding some of the lakes in Central Asia, of how a venerable wanderer came to this spot near evening and begged for the charity of shelter and food, how the churlish inhabitants mocked his petition, with the exception of one poor man who gave the stranger a nook by his fire and the best his hut afforded, and how after a terrible night of tempest and lightning the hospitable villager found his guest gone and the site of his neighbor’s dwellings occupied by a lake. When the rains have ceased and the hot sun has dried up the moisture the outlook is more cheerful. A bright golden band of flowers of every shade of yellow stretches across the path, then succeeds a stripe of blue, varying from the lightest tint to purple, and so band follows band with the regularity of the stripes on a zebra.

The explorer is glad, however, to escape these splendid watersheds and to pass down into the shadows of the forests of the Zambesi, where, at least, there will be a change of discomforts, and a variety of scenery. There are four methods of travel familiar in Southern Africa. One is the bullock-wagon, convenient and pleasant enough in the Southern Plains, but hardly practicable in the rude wilderness adjoining the Zambesi. Riding on bullock back is a mode of travel which Livingstone frequently adopted from sheer inability to walk from weakness. Marching on foot is, of course, the best of all plans when a thorough and minute acquaintance with the district traversed is desired. But for ease and rapid progress there is nothing like “paddling your own canoe,” or better still, having it paddled for you by skilled boatmen down the deep gorges and through the rushing shallows of the third of the great African rivers. Before the main stream of the Zambesi is reached, the forest shadows of the Lotembwa and the Leeba have to be threaded. These dark moss-covered rivers flow between dripping banks of overgrown forests and jungle with frequent clearings, where the338 villagers raise their crops of manihoc, the plant that yields the tapioco of commerce, and which here furnishes the chief food of the natives.

Fetisch worship flourishes in these dark and gloomy woods. In their depths a fantastically carved demon face, staring from a tree, will often startle the intruder, or a grotesque representation of a lion or crocodile, or of the human face made of rushes, plastered over with clay and with shells or beads for eyes, will be found perched in a seat of honor with offerings of food and ornaments laid on the rude altar. Whether human sacrifices are offered at these shrines cannot positively be said, but the most simple and trifling acts are “tabooed,” and unless the traveller is exceedingly wary in all that he does or says, he is likely to be met with heavy fines or looked upon as a cursed man, who will bring misfortune on all who aid or approach him. The medicine man has a terrible power which he often exercises over the lives and property of his fellows, and a sentence of witchcraft is often followed by death. A great source of profit is weather-making but, unlike the prophets in the arid deserts on the south, the magicians of this moist, cool region devote their energies to keeping off rain and not to bringing it down from Heaven. Of course if they persevere long enough the rain ceases to fall, and the credulous natives believe that this has been produced by the medicine they have purchased so dearly, just as the Bechuana of the desert believe in the ability of their rain-makers, when handsomely paid, to bring showers down on the thirsty ground by virtue of drumming and dancing.

A BANYAN TREE.

The behavior of the inhabitants of these villages, on the appearance among them of a white man, is apt to shake the notion of the latter that the superior good looks of his own race are universally acknowledged. Their standard of beauty is quite different from ours. Sometimes a wife is measured by the number of pounds she weighs, sometimes by her color, often by the peculiarities of ornamentation, or by special style of head-dress or some disfigurement of the nose, lips or ears, on which the female population mainly rely for making themselves attractive. The wearing of clothes is regarded as a practice fairly provocative339 of laughter, and as improper as the want of them would be in America. Nothing could be more hideous to them than the long hair, shaggy beard and whiskers, like the mane of a lion, which strangers wear. If the stranger have blue eyes and red whiskers he is regarded as a hob-goblin, before whom the village girls run away screaming with terror, and the children hide trembling behind their mothers. At the village of the Shinte, the principal tribe on the Leeba River, Livingstone was very kindly treated by the chief. He received him seated in state under the shade of a banyan tree, with his hundred wives seated behind him, and his band of drummers performing in front. Out340 of gratitude, the Doctor treated the distinguished party to an entertainment with the magic-lantern. The subject was the death of Isaac, and the party looked on with awe as the gigantic figures with flowing Oriental robes, prominent noses, and ruddy complexions appeared upon the curtain. But when the Patriarch’s up-lifted arm, with the dagger in hand, was seen descending, the ladies, fancying that it was about to be sheathed in their bosoms instead of Isaac’s, sprang to their feet with shouts of “Mother! Mother!” and rushed helter-skelter, tumbling pell-mell after each other into corners or out into the open air, and it was impossible to bring them back to witness the Patriarch’s subsequent fortunes.

On the lower part of the Leeba the scenery becomes very beautiful and richly diversified. The alternation of hill and dale, open glade and forest, past which the canoe bears us swiftly, reminds one of a carefully kept park. Animal life becomes more plentiful with every mile of southward progress, and the broad meadows bordering the stream are pastured by great herds of wild animals—buffaloes, antelopes, zebras, elephants, and rhinoceri,—all of which may be slaughtered in scores before they take alarm.

Below the confluence of the Leeba with the Zambesi, the abundance of game on the banks of the river is more remarkable. The air is found darkened by the flight of innumerable water fowl, fish-hawks, cranes, and waders of many varieties. The earth teems with insect life and the waters swarm with fish life. As an instance of the prodigious quantity and exceeding tameness of wild animals here, Livingstone mentions that “eighty-one buffaloes marched in slow procession before our fire one evening within gun shot, and herds of splendid deer sat by day without fear at two hundred yards distance, while all through the night the lions were heard roaring close to the camp.” In the heat of the day sleek elands, tall as ordinary horses, with black glossy bodies and delicately striped skins, browsed or reclined in the shade of the forest trees. Troops of graceful, agile antelopes, of similar species, scour across the pasture lands to seek the cool retreat of some deep dell in the woods, or a341 solitary rhinoceros comes grunting down to the bank in search of some soft place where he can roll his horny hide in the mud. The trees themselves have a variety and beauty which the sombre evergreen foliage of higher latitudes lacks, and which is equally wanting in the dust colored groves of the desert further south.

The voyage down the stream is by no means without incident. The river swarms with hippopotami and crocodiles. The former lead a lazy sleepy life by day in the bottom of the stream, coming now and then to the surface to breathe and exchange a snort of recognition with their acquaintances, and are only too well pleased to let the passer by go in peace, if he will but let them alone. In districts where they are hunted, they are wary and take care to push no more than the tip of their snouts out of the water, or lie in some bed of rushes where they breathe so softly that they cannot be heard. But in a place where they have not been disturbed, they can be seen swimming about, and sometimes the female hippopotamus can be seen with the little figure of her calf floating on her neck. Certain elderly males who are expelled from the herd become soured in temper and are dangerous to encounter, and so also is a mother if robbed of her young. Such a one made an attack on Livingstone’s boat, when descending the Zambesi in 1855, butting it from beneath until the fore end stood out of water, and throwing one of the natives into the stream. By diving and holding on to the grass at the bottom, while the angry beast was looking for him on the surface, he escaped its vengeance and, the boat being fortunately close to the shore, the rest of the crew got off unharmed. The alligators of this part of the Zambesi are peculiarly rapacious and aggressive, and the chances are that anybody unlucky enough to fall into the river will find his way into the mouth of a watchful crocodile. Every year these ferocious reptiles carry off hundreds of human victims, chiefly women, while filling their water jars, or men whose canoes are accidently upset, and the inhabitants in their turn make a prey of the beast, being extremely fond of its flesh and eggs. The crocodile attacks by surprise. He lurks behind the bank of rushes, or lies in wait343 at the bottom of a pool, and dashes out as soon as he sees a human limb in the water. Sometimes, however, when hungry and where favorable opportunity occurs, he will haul his body ashore and waddle up the bank on his stumpy legs. If, while disporting himself on shore, his wicked green eyes fall on some likely victim in the stream, he will dash rapidly through the rushes, plunge into the river and make a bound for his prey. The young crocodiles show their vicious temper almost as soon as they are out of the shell, and one savage little wretch about two feet long made a snap at Dr. Livingstone’s legs, while walking along the side of a stream in the Zambesi region, that made the explorer jump aside with more agility than dignity.

ANIMAL LIFE ON THE ZAMBESI.

Some distance below the junction of the Leeba, the Zambesi enters the valley of the Barotse. This is one of the most fertile, yet the most unhealthy, districts in the interior of Africa. It is stocked with great herds of domestic cattle of two varieties. One very tall with enormous horns, nearly nine feet between the tips, and the other a beautifully formed little white breed. The country could grow grain enough to support ten times the inhabitants it has at present. Like the lower valley of the Nile, the Barotse country is inundated every year, over its whole surface, by the waters of the river, which deposit a layer of fertilizing slime. The banks of the Zambesi, for some distance above and below this district, are high and cliffy, presenting ridge after ridge of fine rock and pleasing scenery, while the stream runs swiftly over its stony bed. For a hundred miles through the Barotse valley the stream has a deep and winding course and the hills withdraw to a distance of fifteen miles from either bank. To the foot of these hills the waters extend in flood time, and the valley becomes temporarily one of the lake regions of Central Africa.

At the lower end of the valley the rocky spurs again approach each other, and the river forces its way through a narrow defile in which, in flood time, the water rises to a height of sixty feet above its original level. Here are situated the Gonye Falls which are a serious impediment to the navigation of the Upper Zambesi. But there is no such danger or difficulty344 here for canoes as poor Stanley met with on the Congo. Practice has made the natives, living near the falls, experts in the work of transporting these canoes over the rocky ground and, as soon as a boat approaches the rapids from above or below, it is whisked without difficulty by a pair of sturdy arms to the quiet water beyond. Below the Gonye Falls, the water bounds and rolls and bounces from bank to bank and chafes over the boulders in an alarming manner, their breadth being contracted to a few hundred yards. But these swollen rapids might all be ascended, Livingstone thinks, when the river is full. After many leagues of this mad gamboling, the Zambesi settles down again for a hundred miles to sober flow, and opens out into a magnificent navigable river a mile or two from bank to bank.

THE GONYE FALLS.

Still more grand, however, are its dimensions after it receives a great deep, dark colored, slow flowing river, the Cuando, or345 Chobe, before mentioned. The Chobe empties through several mouths with winding channels fringed with beds of papyrus, the stems of which are plaited and woven together into an almost solid mass of vines, and by grass with keen, sharp, serrated edges, which cut like razors. Even the hippopotamus has no little ado in forcing a way through this forest, and less weighty personages have to walk humbly in his track. So wide is the Zambesi below the entrance of the Chobe, that even the practiced native eye cannot tell from the bank whether the land, dimly seen beyond, is an island or opposite shore, and the stream flows placidly past with no sign that it is almost within sight of a tremendous downfall.

The only traveller who has explored the upper waters of the Chobe is Major Serpa Pinto, on his recent journey from Benguela to Natal. But we shall learn more of his travels hereafter. It is, however, interesting now to note that he found a spot on this river also, where he could almost have placed his cap on the point of junction between streams draining toward the Atlantic, the Zambesi, the Indian Ocean, and the Kalihari Desert.

Livingstone has already made us familiar with Lake Ngami and the banks of the lower Cuando. These are the furthest outposts of equatorial moisture toward the south, just as Lake Chad and the White Nile mark its northern limits. Once, it is supposed—and indeed the fact seems beyond dispute—the Zambesi, and all its upper branches, flowed down into this southern basin and formed a goodly inland sea, until some great cataclysm happened, that diverted it and its waters toward the eastern coast, leaving the central lake to be dried up into the shallow Ngami, and the streams of this region to wander about haphazard and uncertain whether to keep in the old tracks or follow in the new direction.

HUNTING THE ELEPHANT.

The discovery of the Cuando River by Livingstone in 1849 demolished the theory of a burning desert occupying the interior of Africa from the Mediterranean to the Cape, and went far to prove, what has since been completely established, that the fabulous torrid zone of Africa, and its burning sands, is a well watered347 region, resembling North America in its mountains and lakes, and India in its hot humid plains, thick jungles, and cool highlands. We have already seen that the South African desert is not without vegetation, but its pride and glory are herds of big and small game—antelopes, gnues, zebras, ostriches, elands, gemsbocks, gazelles, various species of deer—that roam over its spacious plains. Great deeds of slaughter have been done with the rifle, and told over and over again in many a stirring book of African sport by Gunning, Anderson, and other Nimrods, who were among the first of the army of hunters who now annually go in search of hides, tusks, and horns, which every year become more difficult to obtain. The lion is practically the only animal of the cat tribe which they have to encounter, the tiger being unknown in Africa, and the leopard comparatively rare. The lion seem to be more at home in these salt deserts than in the rank forests further north, probably because he finds food more plentiful. Livingstone had no great opinion of this beast. He describes him as “about the size of a donkey and only brave at roaring,” even the talk of his majestic roar he regards as “majestic twaddle,” and he says he could never tell the voice of the lion from the voice of an ostrich, except from knowing that the quadruped made a noise by night and the bird by day. The lion would never dream of putting himself against a noble elephant, though he will tear an elephant calf if he finds one unprotected, and he would still less engage in a contest with the thick skinned rhinoceros. Even a buffalo is more than a match for the “King of Beasts.” Major Oswald once came across three lions who were having much trouble in pulling a mortally wounded buffalo to the ground.

Both the elephant and rhinoceros are hunted here by the natives with packs of dogs. The yelping curs completely bewilder their heavy game, and while he is paying attention to them and making attempts to kill them, the native creeps up and plants his bullet or poisoned spear in a vital spot. English sportsmen prefer to go out against the elephant on foot or on horseback or, as Anderson, upon the back of a trained ox. In former times as many as twenty have been killed on a single348 excursion. The chase of the huge animal, which attains a maximum height of twelve feet on the Zambesi, becomes really exciting and dangerous work, for the African variety, owing to the formation of its skull, cannot be brought down by a forehead shot like the Indian variety. The giraffe and ostrich are also hunted on horseback, and the plan adopted by hunters is to press them at a hard gallop from the first, which causes them to lose their wind and sometimes to drop dead from excitement. The ostrich, when at the top of his speed, has been known to run at the rate of thirty miles an hour, so that there is no hope of overtaking him in a direct chase, but the stupid bird often delivers itself into the hands of its pursuers by running in curves instead of speeding straight ahead.

The people of the Kalihari Desert are as characteristic of the soil and climate as its vegetable life and four-footed beasts. They are of two kinds, first Bushmen, who are true sons of the wilderness, wild men of the desert, who live by the chase. They are of diminutive stature and, like the dwarfs further north, are supposed to represent the real aborigines of Africa. The second are remnants of the Bechuana tribes. These have been driven into the desert by the pressure of stronger peoples behind. They are a people who cling to their original love for domestic animals, and watch their flocks of lean goats and meagre cattle with great care. On the edges of the desert are the Boers, emigrant Dutch farmers, who have fled from British rule in the Transvaal, as their fathers fled from Cape Colony and Natal. The coming of these always betokens trouble with the natives, and as gold miners and diamond diggers are penetrating into the Kalihari Desert, we may expect to see British authority close on their heels, and perhaps at no distant day fully established on the banks of the Zambesi, unless forsooth, some other nations should see fit to interfere.

IN THE RAPIDS.

In his trip to Loanda, Livingstone had been seeking an outlet to the Atlantic for the Makalolo people. On his return, they were dissatisfied with his route and preferred an outlet eastward toward the Indian Ocean. He therefore resolved to explore a path in this direction for them. With all his wants350 abundantly supplied by the friendly chief Sekelutu, he set out for this great journey and after a fortnight’s laborious travel reached the Zambesi at the mouth of the Chobe, in November 1855. Sailing down the Zambesi, Livingstone saw rising high into the air before him, at a distance of six miles, five pillars of vapor with dark smoky summits. The river was smooth and tranquil, and his boat glided placidly over water clear as crystal, past lovely islands, densely covered with tropical vegetation, and by high banks with red cliffs peering through their back-ground of palm trees. The traveller was not altogether unprepared for the marvels that lay ahead. Two hundred miles away he had heard of the fame of the great gorge Mozi-oa-Tunia—“the sounding smoke,” where the Zambesi mysteriously disappeared. As the falls were approached the pulse of the river seemed to quicken. It was still more than a mile wide, but it hurried over rapids, and chafed around points of rocks, and the most careful and skillful navigation was needed, lest the canoe should be dashed against a reef, or hurried helplessly down the chasm. The mystery in front became more inexplicable the nearer it was approached, for the great river seemed to disappear suddenly under ground, leaving its bed of hard black rock and well defined banks. By keeping the middle of the stream and cautiously paddling between the rocks, he reached a small island on the tip of the Victoria Falls—a spot where he planted some fruit trees, and for the only time on his travels carved his initials on a tree in remembrance of his visit.

It could not be seen what became of the vast body of water, until the explorer had crept up the dizzy edge of the chasm from below, and peeped over into the dark gulf. The river, more than a mile in width, precipitated itself sheer down into a rent extending at right angles across its bed. The walls of the precipice were as cleanly cut as if done by a knife, and no projecting crag broke the sheet of falling waters. Four rocks, or rather small islands, on the edge of the falls divide them into five separate cascades, and in front of each fall rises one of the tall pillars of smoke which are visible in time of flood at a distance of ten miles. Only at low water can the island on which351 Livingstone stood be approached, for when the river is high any attempt to reach it would result in a plunge into the abyss below. Against the black wall of the precipice opposite the falls two, three, and sometimes four rainbows, each forming three fourths of an arc, are painted on the ascending clouds of spray, which continually rush up from the depths below. A fine rain is constantly falling from these clouds, and the cliffs are covered with dense, dripping vegetation. But the great sight is the cataract itself. The rent in the rocks seems to be of comparatively recent formation, for their edges are worn back only about three feet.

VICTORIA FALLS, OR MOZI-OA-TUNIA.

Since Livingstone’s first visit, the falls have been more minutely examined by other explorers, so that we now know more accurately their dimensions and leading features. The breadth of the river at the falls has been ascertained to be352 over 1860 yards, and the depth of the precipice below the island 360 feet, or twice that of Niagara. At the bottom of the rent, all the waters that have come over the falls rush together in the centre of the gulf immediately beneath the island where, confined in a space of twenty or thirty yards, they form a fearful boiling whirlpool. From this a stream flows through the narrow channel at right angles to the course above and, turning a sharp corner, emerges into another chasm parallel with the first; then through another confined gap to a third chasm; and so backward and forward in wild confusion through forty miles of hills, until it breaks out into the level country of the lower Zambesi. The rush of the river through this inaccessible ravine is not so turbulent as might be imagined from its being pent in between walls less than forty yards apart. It pushes its way with a crushing, grinding motion, sweeping around the sharp corners with a swift resistless ease that indicates plainly a great depth of water. It was through this gap, caused by some unrecorded convulsion of the earth, that the great lake which must have at one time occupied South Central Africa, has been drained, and it forms undoubtedly the most wonderful natural feature in Africa, if not in the world.

At the great falls of the Zambesi, named the Victoria Falls in honor of the Queen of England, we are still a thousand miles from the sea, and hundreds of miles from the first traces of civilization, such as appear in the Portuguese possessions of eastern Africa.

Nature has been exceedingly lavish of her gifts in the Lower Zambesi Valley, giving it a fertile soil, a splendid system of river communication, and great stores of mineral and vegetable wealth, everything indeed, that is necessary to make a prosperous country, except a healthy climate, and industrious population. Here as upon the borders of the Nile, war and slave hunting have cursed the country with an apparently hopeless blight. Around the falls themselves are the scenes of some of the most noteworthy events in Central African warfare. The history of what are called the “Charka Wars,” has not yet and never will be written, nevertheless they extended over as great an area and353 shook as many thrones and dominions as those of Bonaparte himself. Charka was a chief of the now familiar Zulu tribe, and grandfather of that celebrated Cetywayo, whose ill-starred struggle with the English cost him his country and his liberty, and whom we read of the other day as a royal captive in the streets of London. It is said that he had heard of the feats of the first Napoleon, and was smitten with a desire to imitate his deeds. He formed his tribes into regiments, and these became the famous Zulu bands which immediately began to make war on all their neighbors. Conquered armies were incorporated into the Zulu army, and Charka went on making conquests in Natal, Caffaria, and Southern Africa, leaving the lands waste and empty. He spread the fame of the Zulus far into the possessions of the English and Portuguese.

Turning north, he occupied the country as far as the Zambesi. Crossing this stream, he moved into the regions between the Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika, then he carried his power to the westward as far as the Victoria Falls, where he was met by the Makalolos, with whom Livingstone has just made us familiar. In this people, under their chief, Sebituane, he found an enemy worthy of his steel. This tribe could not be conquered so long as their chief lived, but at his death their kingdom began to go to pieces under Sekelutu, though he was not less brave and intelligent than his father. It was over the smouldering embers of these wars that Livingstone had to pass in his descent of the Zambesi.

As he descended the Zambesi and approached the Indian Ocean, the stream gathered breadth and volume from great tributaries which flow into it on either side. The Kafue, hardly smaller than the Zambesi itself, comes into it from the north. Its course has still to be traced and its source has yet to be visited. Further down, the Loangwa, also a mighty river, enters it, and its banks, like those of the Kafue, are thickly populated, and rich in mineral treasures. The great Zambesi sweeps majestically on from one reach of rich tropical scenery to another. On its shores are seen the villages of native fisherman. Their huts and clearings for cotton and tobacco are girded about by dense354 jungles of bamboo, back of which rise forests of palm. Behind the forests the grand hills slope up steeply, diversified with clumps of timber and fringed with trees to their summits. Behind, extend undulated plains of long grass to the base of a second range of hills, the outer bank of the Zambesi Valley. Now and then, on either bank, a river valley opens, whose sides are thickly overgrown with jungle, above which rise the feathery tops of the palms and the stately stems of the tamarind; on their margins, or on the slopes above, herds of buffaloes, zebras, roebucks and wild pigs may be seen peacefully grazing together, with occasionally a troop of elephants or a solitary rhinoceros. Dr. Livingstone says, nowhere in all his travels has he seen such an abundance of animal life as in this portion of the Zambesi.

Yet it is possible even here to be alone. The high walls of grass on either side of the jungle path seem to the traveller to be the boundaries of the world. At times a strange stillness pervades the air, and no sound is heard from bird or beast or living thing. In the midst of this stillness, interruptions come like surprises and sometimes in not a very pleasant form. Once while Dr. Livingstone was walking in a reverie, he was startled by a female rhinoceros, followed by her calf, coming thundering down along the narrow path, and he had barely time to jump into a thicket in order to escape its charge. Occasionally a panic stricken herd of buffaloes will make a rush through the centre of the line of porters and donkeys, scattering them in wild confusion into the bush and tossing perhaps the nearest man and animal into the air. Neither the buffalo nor any other wild animal, however, will attack a human being except when driven to an extremity. The lion or leopard, when watching for their prey, will perhaps spring on the man who passes by. The buffalo, if it thinks it is being surrounded, will make a mad charge to escape, or the elephant, if wounded and brought to bay, or in defense of its young, will turn on its pursuers. A “rogue” elephant or buffalo, who has been turned out of the herd by his fellows for some fault or blemish, and has become cross and ill-natured by his solitary life, has been known to make an unprovoked attack on the first creature, man or beast, that presents itself to his355 sight. Thus, one savage “rogue” buffalo, furiously charged a native of Livingstone’s party, in the ascent of the Zambesi in 1860, and the man had barely time to escape into a tree when the huge head of the beast came crashing against the trunk with a shock fit to crack both skull and tree. Backing again, he came with another rush, and thus continued to beat the tree until seven shots were fired into him.

CHARGE OF A BUFFALO.

But as a rule, every untamed creature flees in terror on sighting red-handed man.

356

NATIVE SLAVE HUNTERS.

The only real obstacle to a descent of the Zambesi by steamer between Victoria Falls and the sea, is what are called Kebrabesa Rapids, and even the navigation of these is believed to be possible in time of flood, when the rocky bed is smoothed over by deep water. In the ordinary state of the river these rapids cannot be passed, although the inhuman experiment has been tried of fastening slaves to a canoe and flinging them into the river above the rapids. Dr. Kirk had here an accident which nearly cost him his life. The canoe in which he was seated was caught in one of the many whirlpools formed by the cataract, and driven broadside toward the vortex. Suddenly a great upward boiling of the water, here nearly one hundred feet357 deep, caught the frail craft, and dashed it against a ledge of rock, which the doctor was fortunately able to grasp, and thus save himself, though he lost all his scientific instruments. When Livingstone’s boat, which was immediately behind the doctor’s reached the spot, the yawning cavity of the whirlpool had momentarily closed up and he passed over it in safety. All along the line of the Lower Zambesi we find traces of Portuguese colonies, and also of the slave trade. Nowhere in all Africa has this traffic been more flourishing or ruinous in its effects, than in the colony of Mozambique. Here too, Livingstone was the champion who, almost single handed, marched out and gave battle to this many headed monster. Like Baker in the north, he inflicted upon it what we must hope is a fatal wound. As with the Egyptian authorities in the north, so the Portuguese authorities in the south, seem to have been actively concerned with the slave dealers. They not only connived at it, but profited by it. At one time, before slave trading became a business, European influence and Christian civilization under the auspices of the Jesuit missionaries extended far into the interior. At the confluence of the Loangwa and Zambesi is still to be seen a ruined church of one of the furthest outposts of the Jesuit fathers, its bell half buried in the rank weeds. The spot is the scene of desolation now. Livingstone bears generous testimony to the zeal, piety and self abnegation of these Jesuit priests. Their plans and labors hindered the slave-gatherers’ success, and it became necessary to get rid of them by calumny and often worse weapons. With the failure of their mission perished all true progress and discovery, and when Livingstone visited the Portuguese colonies on the Zambesi, he found complete ignorance of the existence of the Victoria Falls and only vague rumors of the existence of Lake Nyassa from which the Shiré, the last of the great affluents of the Zambesi, was supposed to flow.

Only ninety miles from the mouth of the great Zambesi, empties the Shiré from the north. It is a strong, deep river, and twenty years ago was unknown. It is navigable half way up, when it is broken by cataracts which descend 1200 feet in thirty-five miles. If this river is always bounded by sedgy358 banks, magnificent mountains are always in view on either side. No vegetation could be richer than that found in its valley, and its cotton is equal to our own Sea Island. The natives have both the skill and the inclination to work. It is not a healthy region along the river, for often the swamps are impenetrable to the base of the mountains. Animal life abounds in all tropical forms. The glory of the marshes is their hippopotami and elephants. Livingstone, in 1859, counted 800 of these animals in sight at once. But they have been greatly thinned out by hunters.

From the cataracts of the Shiré, Livingstone made several searches for lakes spoken of by the natives. He found Lake Shirwa amid magnificent mountain scenery. But the great feature of the valley is Lake Nyassa, the headwaters of the stream. It was discovered by Livingstone, September 16, 1859. It is 300 miles long and 60 wide. It resembles Albert Nyanza and Tanganyika, with which it was formerly supposed to be connected. Its shores are overhung by tall mountains, down which cascades plunge into the lake. But once on the tops of these mountains, there is no precipitous decline; only high table land stretching off in all directions. The inhabitants are the wildest kind of Zulus, who carry formidable weapons and paint their bodies in fiendish devices. They are the victims of the slave traders to an extent which would shock even the cruel Arab brigands of the White Nile.

Lake Nyassa is a “Lake of Storms.” Clouds are often seen approaching on its surface, which turn out to be composed of “Kungo” flies, which are gathered and eaten by the natives. The ladies all wear lip rings. Some of the women have fine Jewish or Assyrian features, and are quite handsome. The fine Alpine country north of Nyassa has not been explored, except slightly by Elton and Thompson, who found it full of elephants, and one of the grandest regions in the world for sublime mountain heights, deep and fertile valleys, and picturesque scenery. The mountains rise to a height of 12,000 to 14,000 feet, and are snow capped.

In the valley of the Shiré lie the bones of many an African359 explorer. Bishop Mackensie is buried in its swamps. Thornton found a grave at the foot of its cataracts. A few miles below its mouth, beneath a giant baobab tree repose the remains of Mrs. Livingstone, and near her is the resting place of Kirkpatrick, of the Zambesi Survey of 1826.

HUAMBO MAN AND WOMAN.

Yet the thirst for discovery in the Zambesi country has not abated. Nor will it till Nyassa, Tanganyika, and even Victoria and Albert Nyanza, are approachable, for there can be no doubt that the Zambesi is an easier natural inlet to the heart of Africa than either the Nile or Congo.

SAMBO WOMAN.

GANGUELA WOMEN.

No account of the Zambesi can be perfect without mention of Pinto’s trip across the continent of Africa. He started from Benguela, on the Atlantic, in 1877, under the auspices of the360 Portuguese Government and in two years reached the eastern coast. He was a careful observer of the people, and his journey was through the countries of the Nano, Huambo, Sambo, Moma, Bihé, Cubango, Ganguelas, Luchazes and others till he struck the Zambesi River. His observations of manners and customs are very valuable to the student and curious to the general reader. His work abounds in types of African character, and in descriptions of that art of dressing hair which Christian ladies are ever willing to copy but in which they cannot excel their dusky sisters. It takes sometimes two or three days to build up, for African ladies, their triumphs of barbers’ art, but they last for as many months. The Huambo people, male and female, enrich their hair with coral beads in a way that sets it off with much effect. The Sambo women, though not so pretty in the face, affect a louder style of head dress, and one which may pass as more artistic. But Pinto was prepared to wonder how human361 hair could ever be gotten into the various artistic shapes found on the heads of the Ganguela women. Their skill and patience in braiding seemed to be without limit. The Bihé head dress was more flaunting but not a whit less becoming. Indeed there seemed in all the tribes to be a special adaptation of their art to form and features, but whether it was the result of study or accident, Pinto could not of course tell, being a man and not up in ladies’ toilets. The Quimbande girls wore their hair comparatively straight, but their heads were covered with cowries bespangled with coral beads. The Cabango women have a happy knack of thatching their heads with their hair in such a way as to give the impression that you are looking on an excellent job of Holland tiling, or on the over-lapping scales of a fish.

BIHE HEAD DRESS.

QUIMBANDE GIRLS.

CABANGO HEAD DRESS.

The Luchaze women evidently take their models from the grass covers of their huts. They make a closely woven mat of their hair which has the appearance of fitting the scalp like a cap. The Ambuella head dress is as neatly362 artistic as any modern lady could desire. Indeed there is nothing in civilized countries to approach it in its combination of beauty and adaption for the purposes intended.

LUCHAZE WOMAN.

AMBUELLA WOMAN.

Pinto’s journey across Africa was one of comparative leisure. He was well equipped, and was scarcely outside of a tribe that had not heard of Portuguese authority, which extends inland a great ways from both the east and west sides of the Continent. He did not however escape the ordinary hardships of African travel, even if he had time to observe and make record of many things which escaped the eye of other explorers.

The high carnival, or annual festival, of the Sova Mavanda was a revelation to him. He had seen state feasts and war dances, but in this the dancing was conducted with a regularity seldom witnessed on the stage, and the centre of attraction was the Sova chief, masked after the fashion of a harlequin, and seemingly as much a part of the performance as a clown in a circus ring.

The rivers of this part of Africa are a prominent obstacle in a traveller’s path. Even where they are bordered by wide, sedgy swamps, there is in the centre a deep channel, and nearly always an absence of canoes. But the natives are quick to find out fording places which are generally where the waters run swiftly over sand-bars. Pinto’s passage of the Cuchibi was affected at a fording where the bar was very narrow, the water on either side 10 to 12 feet deep, and the current running at the rate of 65 yards a minute. It was a difficult task, but was completed363 in less than two hours by his whole party, and without accident.

MASKED CHIEF AND SOVA DANCE.

FORDING THE CUCHIBI.

After striking the tributaries of the Zambesi, he followed them to their junction with the main stream in the very heart of Africa. Then he descended the Zambesi in canoes to the mouth of the Cuango, or Chobe, in the country of the Makalolos. He passed by the Gonye Falls, and down through the Lusso Rapids, where safety depends entirely on the skill of the native canoemen. After passing these rapids, which occupy miles of the river’s length, he came into the magnificent Barotze364 region where the river waters a finer plain than the Nile in any of its parts. But Livingstone has already made us familiar with the Zambesi throughout all these parts. Yet it is due to Pinto to say he made, with the instruments at his command, more careful observations of the great Victoria Falls (Mozi-oa-tunia) than any previous explorer, especially from below. He could not get a height of over 246 feet, owing to the difficulty of seeing to the bottom of the gorge, and found the verge broken into three sections, one of a width of 1312 feet, another of 132 feet, and the remainder a saw-like edge over which the waters poured smoothly only when the stream was full.

365

VICTORIA FALLS FROM BELOW.

366

“These falls,” says Pinto, “can be neither properly depicted nor described. The pencil and the pen are alike at fault, and in fact, save at their western extremity, the whole are enveloped in a cloud of vapor which, perhaps fortunately, hides half the awfulness of the scene. It is not possible to survey this wonder of nature without a feeling of terror and of sadness creeping over the mind. Up at the Gonye Falls everything is smiling and beautiful, here at Mozi-oa-tunia everything is frowning, and awful.”

Pinto’s journey was now southward across the great Kalihari Desert, and thence to the eastern coast. We must go with him to the centre of this desert, for he unravels a secret there in the shape of “The Great Salt Pan.”

We remember Livingstone’s discovery of Lake Ngami, into which and out of which pours the Cubango river, to be afterwards lost in the central Salt Pan of the desert. Pinto discovered that this “Salt Pan” received, in the rainy season, many other large tributaries, and then became an immense lake, or rather system of pans or lakes, ten to fifteen feet deep and from 50 to 150 miles long. This vast system, he says, communicates with Lake Ngami by means of the Cubango, or Zonga River, on nearly the same level. If Ngami rises by means of its inflow, the current is down the Cubango toward the “Salt Pans.” If however the “Pans” overflow, by means of their other tributaries, the current is up the Cubango toward Lake Ngami. So that among the other natural wonders of Africa we have not only a system of great rivers pouring themselves into an inland sea with no outlet except the clouds, but also a great river actually flowing two ways for a distance of over a hundred miles, as the one or the other lake on its course happens to be fullest.

367

THE CONGO.

Lake Tanganyika had been known to the Arab slave hunters of the east coast of Africa long before the white man gazed upon its bright blue waters. These cunning, cruel people had good reasons for guarding well the secret of its existence. Yet popular report of it gave it many an imaginary location and dimension. What is remarkable about it is that since it has been discovered and located, it has taken various lengths and shapes under the eye of different observers, and though it has been circumnavigated, throughout its 1200 miles of coast, no one can yet be quite positive whether it has an outlet or not.

It is 600 miles inland from Zanzibar, or the east coast of Africa, and almost in the centre of that wonderful basin whose reservoirs contribute to the Nile, Zambesi and Congo. The route from Zanzibar half way to the lake is a usual one, and we need not describe it. The balance of the way, through the Ugogo and Unyamwezi countries, is surrounded by the richest African verdure and diversified by running streams and granitic slopes, with occasional crags. At length the mountain ranges which surround the lake are reached, and when crossed there appear on the eastern shore the thatched houses of Ujiji, the rendezvous of all expeditions, scientific, commercial and missionary, that have ever reached these mysterious waters.

Burton and Speke were the white discoverers of Tanganyika. It seemed to them the revelation of a new world—a sight to make men hold their breath with a rush of new thoughts, as when Bilboa and his men stood silent on that peak in Darien and gazed upon the Pacific Ocean.

Fifteen years later Cameron struck it and could not believe that the vast grey expanse was aught else than clouds on the distant mountains of Ugoma, till closer observation proved the contrary.

368

Livingstone struck it from the west side. It was on his last journey through Africa, he had entered upon that journey at Zanzibar, in April 1866, and made for Lake Nyassa and its outlet the Shiré River, both of which have been described in connection with the Zambesi.

BURTON AND SPEKE ON TANGANYIKA.

Then began that almost interminable ramble to which he fell a victim. He was full of the theory that no traveller had yet seen the true head waters of the Nile—in other words that neither Victoria nor Albert Nyanza were its ultimate reservoirs, but that they were to be found far below the equator in that bewildering “Lake Region” which never failed to reveal wonderful secrets to such as sought with a patience and persistency like his own.

He was supported in this by the myths of the oldest historians,369 by the earliest guesses which took the shape of maps, by the traditions of the natives that boats had actually passed from Albert Nyanza into Tanganyika, but above all by the delusion that the great river Lualaba, which he afterwards found flowing northward from lakes far to the south of Tanganyika, could not be other than the Nile itself.

On his way westward from Lake Nyassa, he came upon the Loangwa River, a large affluent of the Zambesi from the north. Crossing this, and bearing northwest, he confronted the Lokinga Mountains, from whose crests he looked down into the valley of the Chambesi. It was clear that these mountains formed a shed which divided the waters of the central basin, or lake region, of Africa from those which ran south into the Zambesi. Had he discovered the true sources of the Nile at last? Where did those waters go to, if not to the Mediterranean? The journal of his last travels is full of soliloquies and refrains touching the glory of a discovery which should vindicate his theory and set discussion at rest.

And what was he really looking down upon from that mountain height? The Chambesi—affluent of Lake Bangweola? Yes. But vastly more. He was looking on the head waters of the northward running Lualaba, which proved his ignis fatuus and led him a six year dance through the wilderness and to his grave. The Lualaba has been christened Livingstone River, in honor of the great explorer. Then again it was only the Lualaba in name, which he was pursuing, with the hope that it would turn out to be the Nile. It was really the great Congo, for after the Lualaba runs northeast toward Albert Nyanza, and to a point far above the equator, it makes a magnificent sweep westward, and southwestward, and seeks the Atlantic at a point not ten degrees above the latitude of its source.

Thus was Livingstone perpetually deceived. But for all that we must ever admire his enthusiasm for research and his heroism under extreme difficulties. When he plunged down the mountain side into the depths of the forests that lined the Chambesi, it was to enter a night of wandering which had no star except the meeting of Stanley at Ujiji in 1871, and no370 morning at all. What a story of heroic adventure lies in those years!

Ere his death, his followers had deserted him, carrying back to the coast lying stories of his having been murdered. Trusted servants ran away with his medicine chest, leaving him no means of fighting the deadly diseases which from that hour began to break down his strength. The country ahead had been wasted and almost emptied of inhabitants by the slave-traders. Hunger and thirst were the daily companions of his march. Constant exposure to wet brought on rheumatism and ague; painful ulcers broke out in his feet; pneumonia, dysentery, cholera, miasmatic fever, attacked him by turns; but still, so long as his strength was not utterly prostrated, the daily march had to be accomplished. Still more trying than the fatigue were the vexatious delays, extending sometimes over many months, caused by wars, epidemics, or inundation, that frequently compelled him to retrace his steps when apparently on the verge of some great discovery. Often, in order to make progress, he had no alternative but to attach his party to some Arab expedition which, under pretence of ivory-trading, had come out to plunder, to kidnap, and to murder. The terrible scenes of misery and slaughter of which he was thus compelled to be the witness, had perhaps a stronger and more depressing effect on his mind than all the other trials that fell to his lot. “I am heart-broken and sick of the sight of human blood,” he writes, as he turns, baffled, weary, and broken in health from one line of promising exploration to another.

He has left us only rough jottings of this story of wild adventure and strange discovery. For weeks at a time no entries are found in his journal. The hand that should have written them was palsied with fever, the busy brain stunned into unconsciousness, and the tortured body borne by faithful attendants through novel scenes on which the eager explorer could no longer open his eyes. His letters were stolen by Arabs—both those going to and coming from him. Yet his disjointed notes, written on scraps of old newspapers with ink manufactured by himself out of the seeds of native plants, tell a371 more affecting tale of valuable discovery than many a carefully written narrative.

He gives us glimpses into the Chambesi jungles, whose population has been almost swept away by the slave dealers. Fires sweep over the virgin lands in the dry season. A single year restores to them their wonted verdure. Song birds relieve the stillness of the African forests, but those of gayest plumage are silent. The habits of bees, ants, beetles and spiders are noted, and of the ants, found in all parts of Africa, those in these central regions build the most palatial structures. The most ferocious enemy of the explorer is not the portentous weapon of lion’s claw, rhinoceros’ horn, or elephant’s tusk, but a small fly—the notorious tsetse, whose bite is death to baggage animals, whose swarms have brought ruin to many a promising expedition, and whose presence is a more effectual barrier to the progress of civilization than an army of a million natives.

ANT HILL 13 FEET HIGH.

Then he is full of quaint observations on the lion, for which he had little respect, and on the more lordly elephant and rhinoceros. A glade suddenly opens where a group of shaggy buffaloes are grazing, or a herd of startled giraffes scamper away through the foliage with their long necks looking like “locomotive obelisks.” Then comes a description of a hippopotamus hunt—“the bravest thing I ever saw.”

TOP: GIBBON. LEFT: CHIMPANZEE. RIGHT: ORANG. BOTTOM: GORILLA.

Again the night is often made hideous by the shrieks of the soko—probably the gorilla of Du Chaillu, and of which Cameron373 heard on Tanganyika and Stanley on the Lualaba. But only Livingstone has given us authentic particulars of it. Its home is among the trees, but it can run on the ground with considerable speed, using its long fore-arms as crutches, and “hitching” itself along on its knuckles. In some respects it behaves quite humanly. It makes a rough bed at night among the trees, and will draw a spear from its body and staunch the wound with grass. It is a pot-bellied, wrinkled-faced, human-featured animal with incipient whiskers and beard. It will not attack an unarmed man or woman but will spring on a man armed with a spear or stick. In attack it will seize the intruder in its powerful arms, get his hand into its mouth, and one by one bite off his fingers and spit them out. It has been known to kidnap babies, and carry them up into the trees, but this seems to be more out of sport than mischief. In his family relations the male soko is a model of affection—assisting the mother to carry her young and attending strictly to the proprieties of soko society. A young soko which was in the doctor’s possession had many intelligent and winning ways, showed great affection and gratitude, was careful in making its bed and tucking itself in every night, and scrupulously wiped its nose with leaves. In short, it must be allowed, that the native verdict, that the “soko has good in him,” is borne out by the known facts, and that in some respects he compares not unfavorably, both in character and manners, with some of the men we make acquaintance with in our wanderings through Africa.

It was in April 1867, one year after his start from Zanzibar, that Livingstone crossed the Chambesi, and soon afterwards found himself on the mountains overlooking Lake Liemba, which proved to be none other than the southern point of our old friend Lake Tanganyika. Thence he zigzagged westward over sponge covered earth till he struck Lake Moero, with a stream flowing into its southern end—really the Lualaba, on its way from Lake Bangweola—and out at its northern—again the Lualaba—into other lakes which the natives spoke of. Now, more than ever before, he was persuaded that he was on the headwaters of the Nile, and he would have followed his river up374 only to surprise himself by coming out into the Atlantic through the mouth of the great Congo, if it had not been for native wars ahead.

Then he put back to examine a great lake of this river system, which the natives said existed south of Lake Moero. After a tramp of weeks through wet and dry, he found himself on the marshy banks of Lake Bangweola. Close by where he struck it, was its outlet, the Lualaba, here known as Luapula. It is a vast reservoir, 200 miles long by 130 broad, and has no picturesque surroundings, but is interspersed with many beautiful islands.

A SOKO HUNT.

Confident now that he had the true source of the Nile—for the water-shed to the south told him that every thing below it ran into the Zambesi—nothing remained but for him to return375 to where he had left off his survey of the Lualaba, far to the north, and to follow that stream till he proved the truth of his theory. In going thither he would take in Lake Tanganyika. It was a terrible journey. For sixteen days he was carried in a litter under a burning sun, through marshy hollows and over rough hills. Sight of Tanganyika revived his drooping spirits, but he feared he must die before reaching Ujiji. It was March 1869, before he reached the coveted resting place, but he found awaiting him no aid, no medicines, no letters. He had been dead to the world for three long years. King Mirambo was off on the war-path against the Arabs, and Livingstone had to wait, undergoing slow recovery for many months.

At length, following in the trail of Arab slave dealers who had never before penetrated so far westward of the lake, and frequent witness of their barbarities, he reached a point on the Lualaba as far north as Nyangwe, where the river already began to take the features of cliff and cañon which Stanley found to belong to the lower Congo, and where the natives showed the prevalence of those caste ideas which prevail on the western coast but are unknown on the eastern. The region was also one of gigantic woods, into which the sun’s rays never penetrated, and beneath which were pools of water which never dried up. The river flats were a mass of luxuriant jungle, abounding in animal life. Livingstone was greatly annoyed at one of his halting places by the depredations of leopards on his little flock of goats. A snare gun was set for the offenders. It was heard to go off one night, and his attendants rushed to the scene with their lances. The prize had been struck and both its hind legs were broken. It was thought safe to approach it, but when one of the party did so, the stricken beast sprang upon the man’s shoulder and tore him fearfully before being killed. He was a huge male and measured six feet eight inches from nose to tail.

A DANGEROUS PRIZE.

Nyangwe, the furthest point of his journey up, or rather down, the Lualaba, or Congo, is in the country of the Manyuema, the finest race Livingstone had seen in Africa. The377 females are beautiful in feature and form. The country is thickly peopled, and they have made considerable progress in agriculture and the arts. Villages appear at intervals of every two or three miles. The houses are neatly built, with red painted walls, thatched roofs, and high doorways. The inhabitants are clever smiths, weavers and tanners, and all around are banana groves and fields tilled in maize, potatoes and tapioca. The chiefs are important personages, who exercise arbitrary authority and dress regally. Livingstone suspected they practised cannibalism, but could not prove it. Stanley noticed a row of 180 skulls decorating one of their village streets. He was told they were soko skulls, but carrying two away, he presented them to Prof. Huxley, who pronounced them negro craniums of the usual type.

378

NYANGWE MARKET.

One of their great institutions is the market, held in certain villages on stated days. People come to these from great distances to exchange their fish, goats, ivory, oil, pottery, skins, cloth, ironware, fruit, vegetables, salt, grain, fowls, and even slaves. There is a great variety of costume, loud crying of wares, much bargaining and no inconsiderable hilarity. The market at Nyangwe is held every four days, and the assemblage numbers as many as 3000 people. Even in war times market people are allowed to go to and fro without molestation.

The Arab slave traders are fast demoralizing these people. They set the different tribes to fighting and then step in and carry off multitudes of slaves. One fine market day these miscreants suddenly appeared among the throng of unsuspecting people and began an indiscriminate firing. They fled in all directions, many jumping into the river. The sole object of the slave stealers was to strike terror into the hearts of the inhabitants by showing the power of a gun. Livingstone witnessed this unprovoked massacre and thought that five hundred innocent lives were lost in it.

He found the Lualaba a full mile wide at Nyangwe, and still believed it to be the Nile. In this firm belief he ceased to follow the stream further and turned his weary feet back to Ujiji on Tanganyika. It will always be a mystery how Livingstone could have nursed his delusion that he was on the Nile, for so long a time. The moment Cameron set his eyes on the Lualaba, he saw that it could not be the Nile, for its volume of water was many times larger than that of the Nile, and moreover its level was many hundred feet lower than the White Nile at Gondokoro. And though Stanley had the profoundest respect for the views of the great explorer, he hardly doubted that in descending the Lualaba he would emerge into the Atlantic through the mouth of the great Congo.

Now while Livingstone is struggling foot-sore, sick, dejected, almost deserted, back to Ujiji on the Lake Tanganyika, for rest, for medicine, for news from home, after he has been lost for five long years, and after repeated rumors of his death had been sent from Zanzibar to England, what is taking place in the outside world?

379

On October 16, 1869, Henry M. Stanley, a correspondent of the New York Herald, was at Madrid in Spain. On that date he received a dispatch from James Gordon Bennett, owner of the Herald, dated Paris. It read, “Come to Paris on important business.”

With an American correspondent’s instinct and promptitude, Mr. Stanley knocked at Mr. Bennett’s door on the next night.

“Who are you?” asked Bennett.

“Stanley,” was the reply.

“Yes; sit down. Where do you think Livingstone is?”

“I do not know sir.”

“Well, I think he is alive and can be found. I am going to send you to find him.”

“What! Do you really think I can find Livingstone? Do you mean to send me to Central Africa?”

“Yes, I mean you shall find him wherever he is. Get what news you can of him. And, may be he is in want. Take enough with you to help him. Act according to your own plans. But—find Livingstone.”

By January, 1871, Stanley was at Zanzibar. He hired an escort, provided himself with a couple of boats, and in 236 days, after an adventurous journey, was at Ujiji on Tanganyika.

It was November, 1871. For weary months two heroes had been struggling in opposite directions in the African wilds—Livingstone eastward from Nyangwe on the Lualaba, to find succor at Ujiji on Tanganyika Lake, Stanley westward from Zanzibar to carry that succor and greetings, should the great explorer be still alive.

Providence had a hand in the meeting. Livingstone reached Ujiji just before Stanley. On November 2, Stanley, while pushing his way up the slopes which surrounded Tanganyika met a caravan. He asked the news, and was thrilled to find that a white man had just reached Ujiji, from the Manyuema.

“A white man?”

“Yes, a white man.”

“How is he dressed?”

“Like you.”

380

“Young, or old?” “Old; white hair, and sick.”

“Was he ever there before?”

STANLEY’S FIRST SIGHT OF TANGANYIKA.

“Yes; a long time ago.”

“Hurrah!” shouted Stanley, “it is Livingstone. March quickly my men. He may go away again!”

381

They pressed up the slopes and in a few days were in sight of Tanganyika. The looked for hour was at hand.

“Unfurl your flags and load your guns!” he cried to his companions.

“We will, master, we will!”

“One, two, three—fire!”

MEETING OF LIVINGSTONE AND STANLEY.

A volley from fifty guns echoed along the hills. Ujiji was awakened. A caravan was coming, and the streets were thronged to greet it. The American flag was at first a mystery, but the crowd pressed round the new comers. Stanley pushed his way eagerly, all eyes about him.

“Good morning, sir!”

“Who are you?” he startlingly inquired.

“Susi; Dr. Livingstone’s servant.”

“Is Livingstone here?”

382

“Sure, sir; sure. I have just left him.”

“Run, Susi; and tell the Doctor I am coming.”

Susi obeyed. Every minute the crowd was getting denser. At length Susi came breaking through to ask the stranger’s name. The doctor could not understand it all, and had sent to find out, but at the same time in obedience to his curiosity, had come upon the street.

Stanley saw him and hastened to where he was.

“Dr. Livingstone, I presume.”

“Yes,” said he with a cordial smile, lifting his hat.

They grasped each other’s hands. “Thank God!” said Stanley, “I have been permitted to see you!”

“Thankful I am that I am here to welcome you,” was the doctor’s reply.

They turned toward the house, and remained long together, telling each other of their adventures; hearing and receiving news. At length Stanley delivered his batch of letters from home to the doctor, and he retired to read them.

Then came a long and happy rest for both the explorers. Livingstone improved in health and spirits daily. His old enthusiasm was restored and he would be on his travels again. But he was entirely out of cloth and trinkets, was reduced to a retinue of five men, and had no money to hire more.

One day Stanley said, “have you seen the north of Tanganyika yet?”

“No; I tried to get there, but could not. I have no doubt that Tanganyika as we see it here is really the Upper Tanganyika, that the Albert Nyanza of Baker is the Lower Tanganyika, and that they are connected by a river.”

Poor fellow! Did ever mortal man cling so to a delusion, put such faith in native stories and old traditions.

Stanley proposed to lend his assistance to the doctor, to settle the question of Tanganyika’s northern outlet. The doctor consented; and now began a journey, which was wholly unlike the doctor’s five year tramp. He was in a boat and had a congenial and enthusiastic companion.

LIVINGSTONE AND STANLEY ON TANGANYIKA.

Tanganyika, like the Albert Nyanza which pours a Nile384 flood, and Nyassa which flows through the Shiré into the Zambesi, is an immense trough sunk far below the table-land which occupies the whole of Central Africa. Its surrounding mountains are high. Its length is nearly 500 miles, its waters deep, clear and brackish. Whither does it send its surplus waters?

We have seen that Livingstone was sure it emptied through the Nile. This was what he and Stanley were to prove. In November 1871, three weeks after the two had so providentially met at Ujiji, they were on their voyage in two canoes. They coasted till they came to what Burton and Speke supposed to be the end of the lake, which turned out to be a huge promontory. Beyond this the lake widens and stretches for sixty miles further, overhung with mountains 7000 feet high. At length they reached the northern extremity where they had been assured by the natives that the waters flowed through an outlet. No outlet there. On the contrary seven broad inlets puncturing the reeds, through which the Rusizi River poured its volume of muddy water into the lake, from the north. Here was disappointment, yet a revelation. No Nile source in Tanganyika—at least not where it was expected to be found. Its outlet must be sought for elsewhere. Some thought it might connect eastward with Nyassa. But what of the great water-shed between the two lakes? Others thought it might have its outpour this way and that. Livingstone, puzzled beyond propriety, thought it might have an underground outlet into the Lualaba, and even went so far as to repeat a native story in support of his notion, that at a point in the Ugoma mountains the roaring of an underground river could be heard for miles.

Nothing that Livingstone and Stanley did, helped to solve the mystery of an outlet, except their discovery of the Rusizi, at the north, which was an inlet. After a three weeks cruise they returned to Ujiji, whence Stanley started back for Zanzibar, accompanied part way by Livingstone. After many days’ journey they came to Unyanyembe where they parted forever, Stanley to hasten to Zanzibar and Livingstone to return to the wilds to385 settle finally the Nile secret. Stanley protested, owing to the doctor’s physical condition. But the enthusiasm of travel and research was upon him to the extent that he would not hear.

Stanley had left ample supplies at Unyanyembe. These he divided with the doctor, so that he was well off in this respect. He further promised to hire a band of porters for him at Zanzibar and send them to him in the interior. They parted on March 13, 1872.

“God guide you home safe, and bless you, my friend,” were the doctor’s words.

“And may God bring you safe back to us all, my dear friend! Farewell!”

“Farewell!”

This was the last word Doctor Livingstone ever spoke to a white man. They wrung each other’s hands. Stanley was overcome, and turned away. He cried to his men, “Forward March!” and the sad scene closed.

Livingstone waited at Unyanyembe for the escort Stanley had promised to send. They came by August, and on the 14 of the month (1872) he started for the southern point of Tanganyika, which he rounded, to find no outlet there. Then he struck for Lake Bangweolo, intending to solve all its river mysteries. That lake was to him an ultimate reservoir for all waters flowing north, and if the Lualaba should prove to be the Nile, then he felt he had its true source.

This journey was a horrible one in every respect. It rained almost incessantly. The path was miry and amid dripping grass and cane. The country was flat and the rivers all swollen. It was impossible to tell river from marsh. The country was not inhabited. Food grew scarce. The doctor became so weak that he had to be carried across the rivers on the back of his trusty servant Susi. One stream, crossed on January 24, 1873, was 2000 feet wide and so deep that the waters reached Susi’s mouth, and the doctor got as wet as his carrier.

These were the dark, dismal surroundings of Lake Bangweolo. Amid such hardships they skirted the northern side of the lake, crossed the Chambesi at its eastern end, where the river is 300386 yards wide and 18 feet deep, and turned their faces westward along the south side.

The doctor was now able to walk no further. When he tried to climb on his donkey he fell to the ground from sheer weakness. His faithful servants took him on their shoulders, or bore him along in a rudely constructed litter. On April 27, 1873, his last entry reads, “Knocked up quite, and remain—recover—sent to buy milch goats. We are on banks of the R. Molilamo.”

THE STREAM CAME UP TO SUSI’S MOUTH.

His last day’s march was on a litter through interminable marsh and rain. His bearers had to halt often, so violent were his pains and so great his exhaustion. He spoke kindly to his388 humble attendants and asked how many days’ march it was to the Lualaba.

LIVINGSTONE’S LAST DAY’S MARCH.

Susi replied that “it was a three days’ march.”

“Then,” said the dying man, “I shall never see my river again.” The malarial poison was already benumbing his faculties. Even the fountains of the Nile had faded into dimness before his mind’s eye.

He was placed in a hut in Chitambo’s village, on April 29, after his last day’s journey, where he lay in a semi-conscious state through the night, and the day of April 30. At 11 P.M. on the night of the 30, Susi was called in and the doctor told him he wished him to boil some water, and for this purpose he went to the fire outside, and soon returned with the copper kettle full. Calling him close, he asked him to bring his medicine-chest, and to hold the candle near him, for the man noticed he could hardly see. With great difficulty Dr. Livingstone selected the calomel, which he told him to place by his side; then, directing him to pour a little water into a cup, and to put another empty one by it, he said in a low, feeble voice, “All right; you can go out now.” These were the last words he was ever heard to speak.

It must have been about 4 A.M. when Susi heard Majwara’s step once more. “Come to Bwana, I am afraid; I don’t know if he is alive.” The lad’s evident alarm made Susi run to arouse Chuma, Chowperé, Matthew, and Muanuaséré, and the six men went immediately to the hut.

Passing inside, they looked toward the bed. Dr. Livingstone was not lying on it, but appeared to be engaged in prayer, and they instinctively drew backward for the instant. Pointing to him, Mujwara said, “When I lay down he was just as he is now, and it is because I find that he does not move that I fear he is dead.” They asked the lad how long he had slept. Majwara said he could not tell, but he was sure that it was some considerable time: the men drew nearer.

A candle, stuck by its own wax to the top of the box, shed a light sufficient for them to see his form. Dr. Livingstone was kneeling by the side of his bed, his body stretched forward,389 his head buried in his hands upon the pillow. For a minute they watched him: he did not stir, there was no sign of breathing; then one of them, Matthew, advanced softly to him and placed his hands to his cheeks. It was sufficient; life had been extinct some time, and the body was almost cold: Livingstone was dead.

DEATH OF LIVINGSTONE.

His sad-hearted servants raised him tenderly up and laid him full length on the bed. They then went out to consult together, and while there they heard the cocks crow. It was therefore between midnight and morning of May 1, 1873, his spirit had taken its flight. His last African journey began in 1866.

The noble Christian philanthropist, the manful champion of the weak and oppressed, the unwearied and keen-eyed lover of nature, the intrepid explorer whose name is as inseparably connected with Africa as that of Columbus is with America, had390 sunk down exhausted in the very heart of the continent, with his life-long work still unfinished. His highest praise is that he spent thirty years in the darkest haunts of cruelty and savagery and yet never shed the blood of his fellow-man. The noblest testimony to his character and his influence is the conduct of that faithful band of native servants who had followed his fortunes so long and so far, and who, embalming his body, and secretly preserving all his papers and possessions, carried safely back over the long weary road to the coast all that remained of the hero and his work.

Cameron was on his way toward Ujiji to rescue Livingstone when he heard of his death. He pursued his journey and reached Lake Tanganyika, determined to unravel the mystery of its outlet. He started on a sailing tour around the lake in March 1874. His flag boat was the “Betsy.” He only got half way round, but in this distance he counted the mouths of a hundred rivers, and found the shores constantly advancing in bold headlands and receding in deep bays. Both land and water teem with animal life. Elephants abounded in the jungles, rhinoceri and hippopotami were frequently seen, and many varieties of fish were caught. In one part the cliffs of the shores were sandstone, in another they were precipices of black marble, here were evidences of a coal formation, there crags of chalk whose bases were as clearly cut by the waves as if done with a knife. In many places cascades tumbled over the crags showing that the table land above was like a sponge filled with moisture.

The native boatmen were lazy and full of superstitions. Every crag and island seemed to be the resort of a demon of some kind, whose power for harm had no limit in their imaginations. Never but once, and that in the country of King Kasongo, had he seen the natives fuller of credulity nor more subject to the powers of witchcraft and magic. Their stories of the various forms of devils which dwelt in out of the way places were wilder than any childish fiction, and their magicians had unbridled control of their imaginations.

KING KASONGO’S MAGICIANS.

Cameron’s course was southward from Ujiji. He turned the391 southern end of the lake and found no outlet there. But he saw some of the most extraordinary examples of rock and tree scenery in the world. There were magnificent terraces of rock392 which looked as if they had been built by the hands of man, and scattered and piled in fantastic confusion were over-hanging blocks, rocking stones, obelisks, and pyramids. All were overhung with trees whose limbs were matted together by creepers. It was like a transformation scene in a pantomime rather than a part of Mother Earth, and one seemed to await the opening of the rocks and the appearance of the spirits. Not long to wait. The creepers sway and are pulled apart. An army of monkeys swing themselves into the foreground and, hanging by their paws, stop and chatter and gibber at the strange sight of a boat. A shout from the boatmen, and they are gone with a concerted scream which echoes far and wide along the shores.

The inhabitants are not impressive or numerous on the shores, yet they show art in dress, and in manufactures. They have been terribly demoralized by the slave traders, and many sections depopulated entirely. While sailing up the western shore of the lake, Cameron thought he found what was the long sought for outlet of Tanganyika—the traditional connecting link between it and Lakes Ngami and Albert Nyanza. Of a sudden the mountains broke away and a huge gap appeared in the shores. There was evidently a river there, and his boat appeared to be in a current setting toward it. The natives said it was the Lukuga, and that it flowed out of the lake westward toward the Lualaba.

But alas for human credulity. Cameron ran into the Lukuga for seven or eight miles, found it a reedy lagoon, without current, stood up in his boat and looked seven or eight miles further toward a break in the hills, beyond which he was told the river ran away in a swift current from the lake, and then he returned home to tell the wondrous story. Tanganyika had an outlet after all. The wise men all said, “I told you so; the lake is no more mysterious than any other.” Why Cameron should have stopped short on the eve of so great a discovery, or why he should have palmed off a native story as a scientific fact, can only be accounted for by the fact that he was sick during most of his cruise and at times delirious with fever. While it was thought that he had clarified the Tanganyika393 situation, it was really more of a mystery than when Burton and Speke, or Livingstone and Stanley, left it.

We here strike again the track of our own explorer Stanley. We have already followed him on his first African journey to Ujiji to find Livingstone, in 1871-72. We have seen also in our article on “The Sources of the Nile,” how he started on his second journey in 1874, determined to complete the work of Livingstone, by clearing up all doubts about the Nile sources. This involved a two-fold duty, first to fully investigate the Lakes Victoria Nyanza and Albert Nyanza; second the outlets of Tanganyika and the secret of the great Lualaba, which had so mystified Livingstone.

In pursuit of this mission we followed him to Victoria Nyanza, on his second journey, and saw how he was entertained by King Mtesa, and what adventures he had on the Victoria Nyanza. He settled it beyond doubt that the Victoria was a single large lake, with many rivers running into it, the chief of which was the Alexandra Nile. This done, he had hoped to visit Albert Nyanza, but the hostility of the natives prevented. He therefore turned southwestward toward Tanganyika, and on his way fell in with the old King Mirambo with whom he ratified a friendship by the solemn ceremony of “blood brotherhood.” The American and African sat opposite each other on a rug. A native chief then made an incision in the right leg of Mirambo and Stanley, drew a little blood from each, and exchanged it with these words:—“If either of you break this brotherhood now established between you, may the lion devour him, the serpent poison him, bitterness be his food, his friends desert him, his gun burst in his hands and everything that is bad do wrong to him until his death.”

On May 27, 1876, Stanley reached Ujiji, where he had met Livingstone in 1871. Sadly did he recall the fact that the “grand old hero” who had once been the centre of absorbing interest in that fair scene of water, mountain, sunshine and palm, was gone forever. He came equipped to circumnavigate the lake. He had along his boat, the “Lady Alice,” built lightly and in sections for just this kind of work. Leaving the bulk394 of his extensive travelling party at Ujiji, well provided for, he took along only a sufficient crew for his boat, under two guides, Para, who had been Cameron’s attendant in 1874, and Ruango who had piloted Livingstone and Stanley in 1871.

Once again the goodly “Lady Alice” was afloat, as she had been on Victoria Nyanza. He cruised along the shores for 51 days, travelled a distance of 800 miles, or within 125 miles of the entire circumference of the lake, and got back without serious sickness or the loss of a man. He found it a sealed lake everywhere—that is, with waters flowing only into it—none out of it.

What then became of Cameron’s wonderful story about the outlet of the Lukuga? Stanley looked carefully into this. He found a decided current running down the river into the lake. He pushed up the river to the narrow gorge in the mountains, beyond which the natives said the Lukuga ran westward toward the Lualaba. There he found a true and false story. In this ancient mountain gap was a clear divide of the Lukuga waters. Part ran by a short course into Tanganyika; part westward into the Lualaba. Stanley was of the opinion that the waters of the lake were rising year by year, and that in the course of time there would be a constant overflow through the Lukuga and into the Lualaba, as perhaps there had been long ages ago. Even now there is not much difference between the level of the lake and the marshes found in the mountain gap beyond, and Mr. Hore, who has since visited the Lukuga gap, says he found a strong current setting out of the lake westward, so that the time may have already come which Stanley predicted.

This Lukuga gap probably represents the fracture of an earthquake through which the waters of the lake escaped in former ages and which has been its safety-valve at certain times since. When it is full it may, therefore, be said to have an outlet. When not full its waters pass off by evaporation. It is only a semi-occasional contribution—if one at all—to the floods of the great Congo, and in this respect has no counterpart in the world. All of which settles the point of its connection with the Nile, and leaves the sources of that river to the north. Had395 Livingstone known this he could have saved himself the last two years of his journey and the perils and sickness which led to his death in the wilderness.

A WEIR BRIDGE.

And now Stanley had clarified the situation behind him, which stretched over 800 miles of African continent. But looking396 toward the Atlantic, there lay stretched a 1000 miles of absolutely unknown country. Into this he plunged, and pursued his course till he struck the great northward running river—the Lualaba.

The path was broken and difficult. Rivers ran frequent and deep, and crossing was a source of delay, except where, occasionally, ingeniously constructed bridges were found, which answered the double purpose of crossing and fish-weir. These are built of poles, forty feet long, driven into the bed of the stream and crossing each other near the top. Other poles are laid lengthwise at the point of junction, and all are securely tied together with bamboo ropes. Below them the nets of the fishermen are spread, and over them a person may pass in safety.

Stanley’s party had been greatly thinned out, but it still consisted of 140 men. Cameron had found it impossible to follow the Lualaba. Livingstone had tried it again and again, to meet a more formidable obstacle in the hostility of the natives than in the forests, fens and animals. Could Stanley master its secret?

He was better equipped than any of his predecessors, just as earnest, and not averse to using force where milder means could not avail. He had settled so many knotty African problems, that this the greatest of all had peculiar fascination for him. He would “freeze to this river” and see whether it went toward the Nile, or come out, as he suspected it would, through the Congo into the Atlantic.

It was a mighty stream where he struck it, at the mouth of the Luama—“full 1400 yards wide and moving with a placid current”—and close to Nyangwe which was the highest point Livingstone had reached. Here he marshalled his forces for the unknown depths beyond. He had only one of his European attendants left—Frank Pocock. Not a native attendant faltered. It would have been death to desert, in that hostile region.

Such woods, so tall, dense and sombre, the traveller had never before seen. Those of Uganda and Tanganyika were mere jungle in comparison. Even the Manyuema had penetrated but a little their depths. They line the course of the Lualaba for 1500 miles from Nyangwe. At first Stanley’s party397 was well protected, for ahead of it went a large group of Arab traders. It was the opinion of these men that the “Lualaba flowed northward forever.” Soon the Arabs tired of their tramp through the dark dripping woods, and Stanley found it impracticable to carry the heavy sections of the “Lady Alice.” It was resolved to take to the river and face its rapids and savage cannibal tribes, rather than continue the struggle through these thorny and gloomy shades.

The river was soon reached and the “Lady Alice” launched. From this on, Stanley resolved to call the river the “Livingstone.” He divided his party, so that part took to the boat, and part kept even pace on the land. The stream and the natives were not long in giving the adventurers a taste of their peculiarities. A dangerous rapid had to be shot. The natives swarmed out in their canoes. The passage of the river was like a running fight.

On November 23, 1877, while the expedition was encamped on the banks of the river at the mouth of the Ruiki, thirty native canoes made a determined attack, which was only repulsed by force. On December 8, the expedition was again attacked by fourteen canoes, which had to be driven back with a volley. But the fiercest attack was toward the end of December, when a fleet of canoes containing 600 men bore down upon them with a fearful din of war-drums and horns, and the battle cry “Bo-bo, Bo-bo, bo-bo-o-o-oh!” Simultaneously with the canoe attack a terrible uproar broke out in the forest behind and a shower of arrows rained on Stanley and his followers.

There were but two courses for the leader, either to fight the best he knew how in defense of his followers, or meet a surer death by surrender. The battle was a fierce one for half an hour, for Stanley’s men fought with desperation. At length the canoes were beaten back, and thirty-six of them captured by an adroit ruse. This gave Stanley the advantage and brought the natives to terms. Peace was declared.

Here the Arab traders declared they could go no further amid such a country. So they returned, leaving Stanley only his original followers, numbering 140. The year 1877 closed in398 disaster. No sooner had he embarked all his force in canoes, for the purpose of continuing his journey, than a storm upset some of them, drowning two men and occasioning the loss of guns and supplies.

But the new year opened more auspiciously. It was a bright day and all were happily afloat on the broad bosom of the Lualaba, where safety lay in keeping in mid-stream, or darting to opposite shores when attacked. What a wealth of affluents the great river had and how its volume had been swelled! The Lomame had emptied through a mouth 600 yards wide.

On the right the Luama had sent in its volume through 400 yards of width, the Lira with 300 yards, the Urindi with 500 yards, the Lowwa with 1200 yards, the Mbura with two branches of 200 yards each, and 200 miles further on, the Aruwimi, 2000 yards from shore to shore.

The Lualaba (Livingstone) had now become 4000 yards wide and was flowing persistently northward. The equator has been reached and passed. Can it be that all these waters are the floods of the Nile and that Livingstone was right? There was little time for reflection. The natives were ever present and hostile, and the waters themselves were full of dangers.

But we have ran ahead of our party. Just after the mouth of the Lomame was passed the expedition reached that series of cataracts, which have been named Stanley Falls. Their roar was heard long before the canoes reached them, and high above the din of waters were heard the war-shouts of the Mwana savages on both sides of the stream. Either a way must be fought through these dusky foes, or the cataract with its terrors must be faced.

STANLEY FIGHTING HIS WAY. Larger.

To dare the cataract was certain death. The canoes were brought to anchor, and a battle with the natives began. They were too strong, and Stanley retraced his course a little way, where he landed and encamped. Another trial, a fierce surge through the ranks armed with lances and poisoned arrows, gave them headway. The first cataract was rounded, and now they were in the midst of that wonderful series of waterfalls, where the Lualaba cuts its way for seventy miles through a range of400 high hills, with seven distinct cataracts, in a channel contracted to a third of its ordinary breadth, where the stream tumbles and boils, flinging itself over ledges of rock, or dashing frantically against the walls that hem it in, as if it were struggling with all its giant power to escape from its prison. Within the gorge the ear is stunned with the continual din of the rushing waters, and the attention kept constantly on the strain to avoid the perils of rock, rapid, whirlpool, and cataract with which the course is strewn. With extreme caution and good-luck the rapids may be run in safety; but how are frail canoes to survive the experiment of a plunge over a perpendicular ledge, in company with millions of tons of falling water, into an abyss of seething and gyrating foam?

Ashore, the cannibal natives lie in wait to oppose a landing, or better still, to slay or capture victims for their sport or larder. A toilsome ascent has to be made to the summit of the bluffs forming the river banks over rough boulders and through tangled forest. In places where the fall of the stream is slight it may be possible to lower down the boats, by means of strong hawsers of creepers, to the pool below; but in other cases the canoes have to be dragged painfully up the cliffs, and launched again with almost equal toil where the current seems a little calmer. All this while the poisoned arrows are hissing through the air, spears are launched out of every thicket, and stones are slung or thrown at the unlucky pioneers from each spot of vantage. Only by van and rear guards and flanking parties, and maintaining a brisk fire can the assailants be kept at bay. The vindictive foe are as incessant in their attacks by night as by day; and the whiz of the flying arrow, the hurtling of lances through the temporary stockade and the sharp crack of the rifle, mingle with the dreams of the sleeper.

The descent of Stanley Falls was not made without loss of life and property. In spite of every precaution, canoes would be dragged from their moorings and be sucked down by the whirlpools or swept over the falls; or the occupants would lose nerve in the presence of danger, and allow their craft to drift into the powerful centre current, whence escape was hopeless.

401

During their passage occurred one of the most thrilling scenes in all this long journey through the Dark Continent. The canoes were being floated down a long rapid. Six had passed in safety. The seventh, manned by Muscati, Uledi Muscati, and Zaidi, a chief, was overturned in a difficult piece of the water. Muscati and Uledi were rescued by the eighth canoe; but Zaidi, clinging to the upturned canoe, was swept past, and seemed on the point of being hurled over the brink of the fall. The canoe was instantly split in two, one part being caught fast below the water, while the other protruded above the surface. To the upper part Zaidi clung, seated on the rock, his feet in the water. Below him leapt and roared the fall, about fifty yards in depth; above him stretched fifty feet of gradually sloping water.

Mr. Stanley and a part of the expedition were at this time on the banks. No more strange and perilous position than that of Zaidi can be imagined. A small canoe was lowered by means of a cable of ratans; but the rope snapped and the canoe went over the falls. Poles tied to creepers were thrown toward him but they failed to reach. The rock was full fifty yards from the shore. Stanley ordered another canoe, fastened by cables, to be lowered. Only two men could be found to man it—Uledi, the coxswain of the “Lady Alice,” and Marzouk, a boat boy. “Mamba Kwa Mungu,” exclaimed Uledi, “My fate is in the hands of God.”

The two men took their places in the canoe and paddled across the stream. The cables which held the boat against the current were slackened, and it dropped to within twenty yards of the falls. A third cable was thrown from the boat toward Zaidi, but he failed to catch it till the sixth throw. Just as he grasped it the water caught him and carried him over the precipice. All thought him lost, but presently his head appeared, and he seemed still to have hold of the cable. Stanley ordered the canoemen to pull. They did so, but the upper cables of the canoe broke and it was carried toward the falls. Fortunately it caught on a rock, and Uledi and Marzouk were saved. They still had hold of the cable which Zaidi clung to. By dint of hard pulling they were enabled to save, for they dragged him403 back up the falls to their own perilous position. There were three now on the rock instead of one. Twenty times a cable loaded with a stone was thrown to them before they caught it. They drew it taut and thus had frail communication with the shore. But it was now dark and nothing more could be done till light came. In the morning it was decided that the cable was strong enough to hold the men if they would but try to wade and swim to shore. Uledi dared it, and reached land in safety. The others followed, and terminated an anxious scene.

RESCUE OF ZAIDI.

Stanley was in the midst of these falls for twenty-two days and nights. On January 28, 1878, his peril and hardship ended by passing the last fall. By February 8, Rubanga, a village of the Nganza was reached, where he found friendly natives. And not a moment too soon, for his men were fainting for want of food. This was encouraging, but his heart was further rejoiced that the Lualaba had not only assumed its wide, placid flow, but had suddenly changed its northern direction to one almost westward toward the Atlantic. He was then not going toward the Nile. No, it was not a Nile water, but must be the Congo. What a rare discovery was then in store for him!

And the natives verified the thought. For the Rubanga chief, on being questioned, first mentioned the Congo. “Ikutu ya Kongo,” said he, “that is the river’s name.” The words thrilled Stanley. The Lualaba had ceased to flow, the Congo had taken up its song and would witness the further adventures of the brave explorer. It was a mile and a half wide, with a magnificent bosom. Green, fertile islands sprinkled its glassy surface. The party enjoyed needed rest, in this paradise, and then February 10, the boats pulled down stream again, the rowers bending gleefully and hopefully to their arduous task.

On the 14 the mouth of the Aruwimi was passed and they were in the Bangala country. Here they suffered from the most formidable attack yet made. It was the thirty-first struggle through which the party had passed on the Lualaba, or Congo, or Livingstone, though the latter name now seems out of place since we know that all is Congo, clear to Bangweolo, on whose shores Livingstone perished.

404

The shores of both the Congo and Aruwimi resounded with the din of the everlasting war-drums, and from every cove and island swarmed a crowd of canoes, that began forming into line to intercept and attack the travellers. These crafts were larger than any that had yet been encountered. The leading canoe of the savages was of portentous length, with forty paddlers on each side, while on a platform at the bow were stationed ten redoubtable young warriors, with crimson plumes of the parrot stuck in their hair, and poising long spears. Eight steersmen were placed on the stern, with large paddles ornamented with balls of ivory; while a dozen others, apparently chiefs, rushed from end to end of the boat directing the attack. Fifty-two other vessels of scarcely smaller dimensions followed in its wake. From the bow of each waved a long mane of palm fibre; every warrior was decorated with feathers and ornaments of ivory; and the sound of a hundred horns carved out of elephants’ tusks, and a song of challenge and defiance chanted from two thousand savage throats, added to the wild excitement of the scene. Their wild war-cry was “Yaha-ha-ha, ya Bengala.”

The assailants were put to flight after a series of charges more determined and prolonged than usual. This time, however, the blood of the strangers was fully up. They were tired of standing everlastingly on the defensive, of finding all their advances repelled with scorn and hatred. They carried the war into the enemy’s camp, and drove them out of their principal village into the forest. In the centre of the village was found a singular structure—a temple of ivory, the circular roof supported by thirty-three large tusks, and surmounting a hideous idol, four feet high, dyed a bright vermillion color, with black eyes, beard and hair. Ivory here was “abundant as fuel,” and was found carved into armlets, balls, mallets, wedges, grain pestles, and other articles of ornament and use; while numerous other weapons and implements of iron, wood, hide, and earthenware attested the ingenuity of the people. Their cannibal propensities were as plainly shown in the rows of skulls that grinned from poles, and the bones and other grisly remains of human feasts scattered about the village streets.

405

ATTACK BY THE BANGALA. Larger.

406

They had now a peaceful river for a time, or rather they were enabled to float in its middle, or dodge from shore to shore, without direct attack. But food became scarce. On February 20, they got a supply from natives whom they propitiated. On the 23, Amima, wife of the faithful Kacheche died. Her last words to Stanley were, “Ah, master, I shall never see the sea again. Your child Amima, is dying. I have wished to see the cocoa-nuts and the mangoes, but, no, Amima is dying, dying in a Pagan land. She will never see Zanzibar again. The master has been very good to his children, and Amima remembers it. It is a bad world master, and you have lost your way in it. Good bye, master, and do not forget poor little Amima.” The simple pathos of this African girl sweetened a death-bed scene as much as a Christian’s prayer could have done.

For a distance of 1000 miles from Stanley Falls the river is without cataracts, flowing placidly here, and there widening to ten miles, with numerous channels through reedy islands. Every thing was densely tropical—trees, flowers, plants, birds, animals. Crocodiles were especially plenty in the water, and all the large land animals of the equatorial regions could be seen at intervals. There were few adventures with these, for the party clung rigidly to their boats; but once in a while, a coterie, organized for a hunting bout, would come back with such stirring tales of attack and escape as we are accustomed to read of in connection with the eastern coasts of the continent where hunting the elephant, rhinoceros, lion, hippopotamus, is more of a regular business, and where spicy stories of adventure are accepted without question.

After a treacherous attack by the people of King Chumbiri—Stanley’s thirty-second battle—the natives showed a more peaceable disposition. They had heard of western coast white men and knew something of their ways. So there was a pleasant flow of water and a safe shore, for many days. But now the river was about to change. It received the Ikelemba, a powerful stream of tea-colored water, 1000 yards wide. Its waters flowed along in the same bed, unmixed with those of the Congo, for 150 miles. This immense tributary and that of407 the Ibari, were reported to come from great lakes, 800 miles to the south, and probably the same that Livingstone and Cameron both mention in their travels.

For 900 miles the Congo has had a fall of only 364 feet, or a third of a foot to the mile. We are now within 400 miles of the Atlantic, yet 1150 feet above it, and on the edge of the great table lands of Central Africa. The days of smooth sailing are at an end. The mountains come close to the stream, and the channel narrows. The white chalky cliffs remind Frank Pocock of the coasts of Dover in his own England. A roar is heard in advance. The cataracts have begun again, and they sound as ominously as the war-cry of the natives hundreds of miles back in the woods and jungles.

We have now been over four months on this river, and the next two hundred miles are to be the most tedious, laborious and disastrous of all. The terrors of Stanley Falls are here duplicated a thousand times. Bluffs rise 1500 feet high. Between them the river rushes over piles of boulders, or shoots with frightful velocity past the bases of impending crags, up which one must quickly scramble or else be carried into the boiling whirlpools below.

These falls we shall call the “Livingstone Falls.” In their general features they are not like Niagara, or Victoria on the Zambesi, but a succession of headlong rushes, as if the river were tearing down a gigantic rock stairway.

Of the Great Ntamo Fall, Stanley says: “Take a strip of sea, blown over by a hurricane, four miles in length by half a mile in breadth, and a pretty accurate conception of its rushing waves may be obtained. Some of the troughs were one hundred yards in length, and from one to another the mad river plunged. There was first a rush down into the middle of an immense trough, and then, by sheer force, the enormous volume would lift itself upwards steeply until, gathering itself into a ridge, it suddenly hurled itself twenty or thirty feet straight upwards before rolling down into another trough. The roar was deafening and tremendous. I can only compare it to the thunder of an express train through a rock tunnel.”

408

In this vast current, rushing along at the rate of thirty miles an hour, the strongest steamer would be as helpless as a cockle-shell, and as for frail canoes, they had to be dragged from rock to rock, or taken clear from the water and borne by land around the obstructions. Frequently canoes were wrecked and then a halt had to be ordered till new ones were hewn from trees. Yet amid trial, sickness and sore distress they had to pause at times in wonder before the imposing sights that opened on them. One was that of the Edwin Arnold River which flings itself with a single bound of 300 feet into the Congo, clearing the base of its cliff by ten yards. Still more wonderful is the cascade of the Nkenke, which is a plunge of a 1000 feet; and near by another with a fall of 400 feet.

Many gaps were made in the ranks of Stanley’s companions through this “Valley of Shadow.” In one day (March 28) he saw eleven of his men swept over a cataract and disappear in the boiling waters below. First a boat, in which was Kalulu, an attendant of Stanley in all his journeys, was sucked within the power of a fall and plunged into the abyss. Hardly had the eye turned from this horror when another canoe was seen shooting down the stream toward what appeared to be certain death. By almost a miracle it made an easy part of the cataract and the occupants succeeded in reaching the shore in safety. Close behind came a third with a single occupant. As the boat made its plunge the occupant rose and shouted a farewell to his companions on the shore. Then boat and man disappeared. A few days afterwards he re-appeared like an apparition in camp. He had been tossed ashore far below and held a prisoner by the natives, who had picked him up more dead than alive.

THE LADY ALICE IN THE CONGO RAPIDS.

On April 12, the “Lady Alice” herself, with her crew, came to the very verge of destruction. The boat was approaching a bay in which the camp for the night was to be made, when a noise like distant thunder fell on the ears of the crew. The river rose before them into a hill of water. It was a whirlpool, at its full. All hands bent to their paddles and the boat was plunged into the hill of water before it broke. They thus410 escaped being sucked into a vortex which would have sunk the boat and drowned all. As it was, the boat was whirled round and round through a succession of rapids, before the crew could bring her under control again.

Fortunately the natives were still friendly and of superior type. They had many European manufactures, which pass from tribe to tribe in regular traffic, and enjoyed a higher civilization than those of the Central African regions. Stanley rested with these people for several days while his carpenter made two new canoes.

On June 3, he lost his servant, comrade and friend, last of the Europeans, the brave and faithful Frank Pocock. All the boats had been taken from the water and carried past the Massase Falls, except the canoe “Jason,” in which were Pocock, Uledi and eleven others. This had gotten behind on account of Frank’s ulcerated feet. Chafing at the delay he urged Uledi to “shoot the falls,” against the latter’s judgment, and even taunted the crew with cowardice.

“Boys,” cried Uledi, addressing the crew, “our little master is saying that we are afraid of death. I know there is death in the cataract; but come, let us show him that black men fear death as little as white men.”

“A man can die but once!” “Who can contend with his fate?” “Our fate is in the hands of God,” were the various replies of the men.

“You are men,” exclaimed Frank.

The boat was headed for the falls. They were reached, and in another moment the canoe had plunged into the foaming rapid. Spun round like a top in the furious waters, the boat was whirled down to the foaming pit below. Then she was sucked below the surface and anon hurled up again with several men clinging to her, among them Uledi. Presently the form of the “little master” was seen floating on the surface. Uledi swam to him, seized him, and both sunk. When the brave Uledi appeared again he was alone. Poor Pocock’s tragic death was a blow to the whole expedition. Most of the party gave way to superstitious dread of the river and many deserted, but quickly returned, after a trial of the dreary woods.

411

DEATH OF FRANK POCOCK.

On June 23, the carpenter of the expedition was swept over the Zinga Falls, in the canoe, “Livingstone,” and drowned. Stanley’s food supply was frequently very short amid the difficulties of Livingstone Falls. Not that there was not plenty on the412 shores, but his means of buying were exhausted, and such a thing as charity is not common to the African tribes. Even where most friendly, they are always on the lookout for a trade, and a bargain at that. It is a great hardship for them to give, without a consideration.

The appearance of his attendants cut Mr. Stanley to the heart every day—so emaciated, gaunt, and sunken-eyed were they; bent and crippled with weakness who had once been erect and full of manly vigor. And the leader’s condition was no better. Gone now was all the keen ardor for discovery, the burning desire to penetrate where no white man had yet penetrated which animated his heart at the outset of his journey. Sickness that had drained his strength, anxiety that had strained to its utmost pitch the mind, sorrow for loss and bereavement that had wearied the spirit—these had left Mr. Stanley a very different man from that which he was when he set out full of hope and ardor from Zanzibar. All his endeavor now was to push on as fast as possible, to reach the ocean with as little more of pain and death to his followers as possible.

At last Stanley struck a number of intelligent tribes who gave much information about the rest of the river and the coast. There were three great falls still below them, and any number of dangerous rapids. It would be folly to risk them with their frail barks. Moreover, he learned that the town of Boma, on the Atlantic coast, could be reached by easy journeys across the country. His main problem, as to whether the Lualaba and the Congo were the same, had long since been solved. He had been following the Congo all the time, had seen its splendid forests and mighty affluents, its dashing rapids and bewildering whirlpools and falls, had even, through the spectacles of Livingstone, seen its head waters in Lake Bangweolo, amid whose marshes the veteran explorer laid down his life.

What need then to risk life further at this time, and in his very poor condition. He resolved to leave the river and make direct for the coast at Boma. When he assembled his followers to make this welcome announcement to them, they were overcome with joy. Poor Safeni, coxswain of the “Lady Alice,” went413 mad with rapture and fled into the forest. Three days were spent in searching for him, but he was never seen more.

Relinquishing his boat and all unnecessary equipage at the cataract of Isangila, the party struck for Boma, but only to give out entirely when still three days distant. A messenger was sent in advance for aid. He came back in two days with a strong band of carriers and abundance of food. The perishing party was thus saved, and was soon receiving the care of the good people of Boma. Here all forgot their toils and perils amid civilized comforts and the pardonable pride aroused by their achievements. Stanley’s exploit is unparalleled in the history of African adventure. Though not the first to cross the Continent, he hewed an unknown way and every step was a startling revelation. He did more to unravel African mysteries and settle geographic problems than any other explorer.

And, August 12, 1877, three years after his start from Zanzibar on the Indian Ocean, and eight months after setting out from Nyangwe to follow the Lualaba, he stood on the Atlantic shores at Boma and gazed on the mouth of the Congo, whose waters shot an unmixed current fifty miles out to sea. Though he had proved it to be so, he could still hardly believe that this vast flood pouring 2,000,000 cubic feet of water a second into the ocean, through a channel ten miles wide and 1300 feet deep, was the same that he had followed through wood and morass, rapid and cataract, rock bound channel and wide expanse, for so long a time, and that it was the same which Diego Cam discovered by its color and reedy track four hundred years before, while sailing the ocean out of sight of land.

In the journey of 7200 miles, one hundred and fourteen of Stanley’s original party had perished. Many had fallen in battle or by treachery, more were the victims of disease, and some had succumbed to toil or been “washed down by the gulfs.” But a goodly remnant survived. These were returned, according to contract, to their Zanzibar home. Stanley went with them by steamer around the Cape of Good Hope.

It needs not to tell the joy with which the people again beheld their home; how they leaped ashore from the boat; how414 their friends rushed down to the beach to welcome back the wanderers; how wives and husbands, children and parents, “literally leaped into each other’s arms,” while “with weeping and with laughter” the wonderful story of the long and terrible journey is told to the eager listeners.

Stanley, having paid his followers in full, according to the terms of his contract, and rewarded some over and above their lawful claims, so that not a few of the men were able to purchase neat little houses and gardens with their savings, prepared to quit Zanzibar forever.

The scene on the beach on the day of Stanley’s departure was a strange and an affecting one. The people of the expedition pressed eagerly around him, wrung his hand again and again, and finally, lifting him upon their shoulders, carried him through the surf to his boat. Then the men, headed by Uledi the coxswain, manned a lighter and followed Mr. Stanley’s boat to the steamer, and there bade their leader a last farewell.

Stanley’s own feelings at this moment were no less keen. As the steamer which bore him home left the shore of Zanzibar behind, his thoughts were busy with the past; he was living once again in retrospect the three strange, eventful years, during which these simple black people had followed him with a fidelity at once simple and noble, childlike and heroic. For him, his comrades in travel through the Dark Continent must ever remain heroes; for it was their obedient and loyal aid that had enabled him to bring his expedition to a successful and noble issue, to accomplish each of the three tasks he had set himself to do,—the exploration of the great Victoria Nyanza Lake, the circumnavigation of Tanganyika, and the identification of Livingstone’s Lualaba River with the Congo.

Ever since this memorable journey, Mr. Stanley has been enthusiastically working to found a great Congo free Government and commercial empire, which all the nations shall recognize and to which all shall contribute. He has projected a steamer system, of heavy draught vessels, from the mouth of the river to the first cataracts. Here a commercial emporium is to be founded. A railway is to start thence and lead to the415 smooth waters above. This would open 7000 miles of navigable waters on the Upper Congo and a trade of $50,000,000 a year. It would redeem one of the largest fertile tracts of land on the globe and bring peace, prosperity and civilization to millions of human beings. Only climate seems to be against his plans, for it is undoubtedly hostile to Europeans. But if native energies can be enlisted sufficiently to make a permanent ground work for his ideal state, he may yet rank not only as the greatest of discoverers but as the foremost of statesmen and humanitarians. The possibilities of the Congo region are boundless.

A missionary just returned from the Congo country thus writes of it:

“The bounds of this ‘Congo Free State’ are not yet defined, but they will ultimately embrace the main stream and its immense system of navigable tributaries, some of which are 800 miles long. The Congo itself waters a country more than 900 miles square, or an area of 1,000,000 square miles. These rivers make access to Equatorial Africa and to the Soudan country quite easy.

“The resources of this fine region are exhaustless. The forests are dense and valuable. Their rubber wealth is untouched, and equal to the world’s supply. Everywhere there is a vast amount of ivory, which lies unused or is turned into the commonest utensils by the natives. There are palms which yield oil, plantains, bananas, maize, tobacco, peanuts, yams, wild coffee, and soil equal to any in the world for fertility. Europeans must guard against the climate, but it is possible to get enured to it, with care. In the day-time the temperature averages 90° the year round, but the average of the night temperature is 70° to 75°. Rain falls frequently, and mostly in the night. The natives are hostile, only where they have suffered from invasion by Arab slave dealers.

“Already there are some 3000 white settlers in the heart of the Congo country—Portuguese, English, Belgians, Dutch, Scandinavians and Americans, and their influence is being felt for good. The completion of Stanley’s railroad around the Congo rapids will give fresh impetus to civilization and lay the basis of permanent institutions in this great country.”

416

THE CAPE OF STORMS.

The little Portuguese ship of Bartholomew Diaz was the first to round the “Cape of Storms” in 1486. When King John II. of Portugal, heard of his success he said it should thereafter be called Cape of Good Hope. The passage of this southermost point of Africa meant a route to India, on which all hearts were set at the time.

Nearly two hundred years later, in 1652, the Dutch settled at the Cape. They called the Quaique, or natives, Hottentots—from the repetition of one of the words used in their dances.

The Colony became a favorite place for banished Huguenots—from France and Peidmont. It grew, got to be strong, and at length tyrannical. The more liberal members left it and pushed into the interior, where they drove back the Kaffirs, and redeemed much valuable territory. The parent Colony tried to force its government on these pioneers, who were called “Boers”—the Dutch word for “farmers.” A rebellion ensued. The Prince of Orange asked England to help suppress it (1795). She did so, and with characteristic greed, kept it till 1803. It then passed to the Dutch, but was retaken by England in 1806.

Settlement marched rapidly up the eastern coast of Africa, and a great agricultural section was opened. The Kaffir tribes protested and five fierce wars were fought, with the loss of all Kaffraria to the natives. The Boers were never reconciled to British authority. They murmured, rebelled, and kept migrating northward, till north of the Orange River they founded the Natal, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal Republic.

The high promontory of Cape of Good Hope—Table Mountain—is visible a long distance from the sea, owing to the dry, light atmosphere. On its spurs are many ruins of block-houses, used by the early settlers. Over it, at times, hangs a veil of cloud, called the “Table Cloth,” which, when dispersed by the sun, the inhabitants say is put away for future use.

417

The town of Cape Colony, or Cape Town, is now perfectly modern, and very pretty. It was here that the great missionary Robert Moffat began his African career in 1816; here that Pringle started to found his ideal town Glen Lynden.

In 1867 all Cape Colony was thrown into excitement by the discovery that diamond fields existed inland near the Kalihari Desert. There was a rush like that in our own country in 1849 when gold was discovered in California. Exaggerated stories of finds of diamonds by natives, valued at $50,000 a piece, were eagerly listened to, and in a few weeks there was a population of 10,000 in a hitherto unknown region, with the road thither, for hundreds of miles, literally alive with wagons, oxen, pack mules and footmen.

The diamond territory is Griqualand, on the headwaters of the Orange and Vaal Rivers and close to the desert—partly in it. The region is 16,000 square miles in extent and 3000 feet above the ocean. In the diamond fields the diamonds are found in the sand by washing. This is the native method of getting them, and also that adopted by thousands of people who have no capital.

But it was soon found that they could be had in larger numbers and of greater size and purity by digging. This brought capital, machinery, and regular mining tracts, called “Claims.”

At first the mining towns were made up of tents, filled with a mixed people, toiling willingly all day, and dancing, gambling, drinking and rioting at night. At one time there were 60,000 persons in these diamond fields, but now not more than 40,000.

The Kimberley mine is the favorite. It has been excavated to a depth of 250 feet and has proved very rich. It is now surrounded by quite a town, and the people—mostly native diggers—are orderly and industrious. The diggers delve with spade and pick in the deep recesses of the mine, and the sand, rock and earth are pulled to the surface in buckets, where they are sorted, sieved, and closely examined for diamonds.

Formerly the “claims” sold for fabulous prices. Many, only thirty by sixteen feet, brought $100,000. And some rare finds418 have been made. The great diamond, found a few years ago, and called the “Star of South Africa,” was sold, before cutting, for $55,000. And while we are writing, one is undergoing the process of cutting in Paris which is a true wonder. It arrived from South Africa in August, 1884, and was purchased by a syndicate of London and Paris diamond merchants. It weighs in the rough 457 carats and will dress to 200 carats. The great Koh-i-noor, weighs only 106 carats, the Regent of France 136³⁄₄ carats, the Star of South Africa 125 carats, the Piggott 82¹⁄₄ carats, and the Great Mogul 279 carats. But the latter is a lumpy stone, and if dressed to proper proportions, would not weigh over 140 carats.

ZULUS.

The Kaffraria country, lying between Cape Colony and Natal, is rich in beautiful scenery and abounds in animal life. While419 the larger animals, as the elephant and lion, have retreated inland, there are still many beasts of prey, and the forests have not given over their troops of chattering baboons. Its greatest scourge is periodical visits of immense flights of locusts, which destroy all vegetation wherever they light. The natives make them into cakes and consider them a great delicacy. These natives are a brave, fine people, and have been conquered and held with difficulty. As they yield to civilization they make an industrious and attractive society.

Natal was so named, in honor of our Saviour, more than 300 years ago by Vasco de Gama. It was the centre of the Zulu tribes, whom King Charka formed into an all-conquering army, until the invasion of the country by the Boers. It became a British colony in 1843, and has been held with the greatest difficulty, for the Zulu warriors showed a bravery and method in their warfare which made them formidable enemies even against forces with superior arms and discipline. It was in the English wars with the Zulus that the Prince Imperial, of France, lost his life. A writer describes the Zulus “as a race of the most handsome and manly people found among savages; tall, muscular, and of remarkable symmetry, beauty and strength. Their carriage is upright, and among the chiefs, majestic.”

The Drackenberg Mountains, many of whose peaks are 10,000 feet high, shut off Natal from the Transvaal Republic. This Transvaal region was, as already seen, redeemed from the natives by the Boers, who are mostly devoted to farming, but many to a pastoral life like that of the old patriarchs, living in wagons or tents and leading, or rather following, about immense herds of cattle and sheep. They are a hardy, strong, brave people, and in subduing them and annexing their beautiful and fertile country, it is very doubtful whether Great Britain has done herself credit or humanity benefit. Boers may not be all that modern civilization could desire. In their contact with the natives they may have retrograded to a certain extent. But it is very probable they have made larger and more beneficial conquests over nature than any other more highly endowed and uncompromising people could have done in the same length of time. There is hardly420 a product of the soil that does not grow in the Transvaal—corn, tobacco, apricots, figs, oranges, peaches—two and sometimes three crops a year. It is finely watered with noble mountain streams, and is rich in iron, tin, copper, lead, coal and gold. The capital, Pretoria, is the centre of a rich trade in ostrich feathers.

MY CATTLE WERE SAVED.

Ostrich farming is a large industry in these South African States. Farmers buy and sell these animals like cattle. They fence them in, stable them, tend them, grow crops for them, study their habits, and cut their precious feathers, all as a421 matter of strict business. The animals begin to yield feathers at eight months old, and each year they grow more valuable. They are nipped or cut off, not plucked. The ostrich feather trade of South Africa is of the value of $1,000,000 a year. The birds are innocent and stupid looking, but can attack with great ferocity, and strike very powerfully with their feet. The only safe posture under attack by them is to lie down. They then can only trample on you.

BUFFALO HUNTERS.

The Transvaal region is a paradise for hunters. The elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, buffalo, giraffe, zebra, springbok, gnu, lion, and indeed every African animal, finds a home amid its deep woody recesses and sparkling waters. As he entered its borders from the desert, Pinto’s camp was attacked by two lions, who scented his desert pony and herd of cattle. The422 natives became demoralized, and Pinto himself could do little toward saving his property on account of the darkness. Fortunately he got his hand on a dark lantern, in which was a splendid calcium light. Placing this in the hand of a native, he ordered him to go as near to the growling intruders as was safe, Pinto following with a double-barreled rifle. The glare of the light was then turned full in the faces of the beasts. They were dazed by it, and cowered for a moment. That moment was fatal. Pinto gave both a mortal wound and saved his cattle. And it was here that Cummings lost one of his guides, who was pounced upon by a lion as he lay asleep before a camp fire. Here also Lieutenant Moodie and his party got the ill-will of a herd of elephants, which charged upon them and gave furious chase, knocking the Lieutenant down and tramping him nearly to death. One of his companions was killed outright by the charging beasts and his body tossed angrily into the jungle with their tusks.

But the finest sport is hunting the buffalo. He is stealthy, cunning and swift. It requires a long shot or a quick ingenious chase to bag him. He never knows when he is beaten and will continue to charge and fight though riddled with bullets or pierced with many lances. Gillmore was once intent on an elephant track when suddenly his party was charged by five buffaloes. His horse saved him by a tremendous leap to one side, but one of his attendants was tossed ten feet in the air, and another landed amid the branches of a tree, one of which he fortunately caught.

423

NYASSALAND.

Threats of war between England and Portugal bring into prominence that portion of Central Africa which is embraced in the title “Nyassaland.” While ordinarily it might be embraced in the Zambesi system, it is a land quite by itself, especially as to its topography and the position it occupies in the commercial and political world, and is in many respects the most interesting part of East Central Africa. It is a back-ground to Portugal’s Mozambique possessions, but at the same time the very heart of the British effort to cut a magnificent water way inland from the mouths of the Zambesi to the mouths of the Nile. Hence the conflict of interest there, a conflict which must go on by arbitration or by war, till Great Britain secures what she wants—control of the Shiré river and Lake Nyassa. The navigation of the Lower Zambesi is already open to all nations.

The river Shiré, which we are now about to ascend, falls into the Zambesi from the left, only some ninety miles from its mouth. Twenty years ago its course was unknown, and its banks were wildernesses untrodden by the foot of a white man. Now the stream is one of the best-known and most frequented of the highways to the Lake Regions. The Shiré is much narrower than the Zambesi, but of deeper channel, and in the upper and lower portions more easily ascended by steamers. Midway in its course, however, we meet a great impediment to the navigation of the river, and consequently to the civilization and commercial development of the regions beyond. In thirty-five miles the stream descends twelve hundred feet in a series of rapids and cataracts over a rock-encumbered bed and between sheer walls of cliff.

Beauty and use are badly adjusted on the Shiré. The scenery of the unnavigable portion of the river is full of singular and romantic424 beauty. In the picturesque diversity of its charms of crag and forest and rushing water it is scarcely equalled by any other part of Africa. Monotony, on the other hand, has set its stamp on the banks of the useful, slow-flowing river beneath and above. Yet the ascent of one hundred and fifty miles from the Zambesi to the cataracts is not without its attractions. The landscape is intensely and characteristically African. If the river is fringed on either shore by tall and sombre reeds, the majestic mountains that bound the Shiré valley are always in sight. A dense tropical vegetation covers these hills to the very tops, except that patches of lighter tint show where the hands of the natives have cleared the ground for the cultivation of crops of cotton, sorghum, or maize; for these healthy uplands, above the reach of the mosquito and the deadly marsh fog, and safe also, in some degree, from the ravages of the kidnapper, are inhabited by an industrious race, the Manganjas, who have made no small progress in agriculture and native iron and metal manufactures.

This whole country is favorable for the raising of cotton, which here grows a larger and finer staple, it is said, even than in Egypt. Every Manganja village has its cotton patch, where sufficient is grown for the use riot only of the community but of neighboring tribes. The demand certainly is not large, the requirements of Africans in the matter of clothing being modest—or immodest, if you will. There is a tribe, for instance, on the Lower Zambesi, whose name, being interpreted, means the “Go-Nakeds.” The full costume of a “Go-Naked” is a coat—of red ochre. Livingstone met one of their men of rank once, and found his court suit represented by a few beads and a pipe two feet long. Unfortunately the Manganja, along with their ingenuity and industry as weavers, blacksmiths, and farmers, are inordinately fond of beer and smoking, and are great in the arts of brewing and tobacco-manufacturing. With all these disadvantages, however, it is pleasant to find, in one corner at least of Africa, a race with both the skill and the inclination to work, and a native industry ready to spring up into large proportions so soon as it receives a little encouragement.

After the Zambesi has been left behind, a great mountain called Morumbala, four thousand feet in height, bounds for many miles the425 view on the right as we ascend the Shiré. Beyond it we reach one of the marshes or old lake-beds which form one of the features of this valley. The bounding lines of hills make each a semicircular curve, and inclose a vast morass, through the centre of which the river drains slowly between dripping walls of sedge and mud. No human inhabitant can dwell in these impenetrable swamps; but they are far from empty of life. Great flights of wild geese, ducks, waders, and other water-fowl abound here in prodigious numbers, and rise from the brake at the noise of the passing boat or steamer—for already steamers now ply on the waters of the river below and the great lake above.

The discovery of the lake was due to Livingstone who had heard of the “Great Water” somewhere to the north of the Zambesi and far amid the mountains of the Shiré. His first attempt to reach it was a failure, through reticence of the people respecting it and the natural difficulties he encountered. But his worst enemy was his guide who misled him until all were completely lost. The party were in a desperate strait. Suspicion of treachery filled every bosom except Livingstone’s. One of his faithful Makololos came up to him, and remarked, in a matter-of-fact way, “That fellow is taking us into mischief. My spear is sharp. There is no one here. Shall I cast him into the long grass?” A gesture of assent, or even silence, and the unlucky guide would have been run through the body; but Livingstone was not the man to permit blood to be spilt, even on an apparently well-grounded suspicion of treachery. After all, it turned out to be merely a blunder, and no treachery. The party were led safely to the margin of the “great lake” of the district—the elephant marsh that they had passed some time before while ascending the river!

The second trip resulted in a discovery of an inland sea, though not the one they were in search of. Climbing over the shoulder of the high mountains east of the Shiré, the party came in sight of Lake Shirwa, lying in an isolated, pear-shaped basin, nearly two thousand feet above sea-level. Magnificent mountain scenery surrounds the lake, the waters of which, contrary to the rule in Central Africa, are salt, or rather brackish. Although the area of Shirwa is large, it is but a mill-pond compared with Nyassa and some of426 the other African lakes. Yet, girt in though it is with hills, it shows to one standing near its southern end a boundless sea-horizon towards the north. Opposite on the eastern shore a lofty range rises to a height of eight thousand feet above sea-level, while behind, the table-topped Mount Zomba, only one thousand feet lower, dominates the Shiré valley.

All this mountainous mass seems habitable, and, in fact, is inhabited to its very summits; and its temperate climate, healthful breezes, and freedom from malaria and mosquitoes, have led to its being chosen as the site of the Church of Scotland mission to the Nyassa country—their station, Blantyre, being named after the Scottish village where Livingstone first saw the light.

In ascending to the Nyassa, the opposite or western side of the Shiré is generally chosen, and travellers prefer to make a wide détour into the healthy Manganja uplands to struggling through the rocky, broken, and wooded country through which the river tears its impetuous way. It is delightful to breathe the bracing air of these high plains after escaping from the humid, stifling atmosphere of the valley. The change of scenery and climate puts a new life into the veins of the traveller. Many novel views of African life come under his notice among the Manganja highlands. The path up the long ascent is toilsome, but the eye is cheered by the glorious views of the deep valley lying below and the blue domes and peaks that rise ahead. The country is open and park-like, full of grand forest trees and flowing streams.

VILLAGE SCENE ON LAKE NYASSA.

In the evening we halt at a Manganja village and receive a hearty—perhaps an uproarious—welcome. The villages are surrounded by thick-set hedges of the poisonous euphorbia; and however busy at work or at feasting the inhabitants are inside, a guard is always kept on vigilant watch at the entrance, to give warning if a foraging band of Mazitu heave in sight in the mountains, or the white robes of a party of Arab slave-hunters are seen ascending the valley. When it is known that it is friends who are approaching, the villagers are not long in making amends for the shyness of their first greetings. Mats of reeds and bamboo are spread for the wayfarers under the shade of the banian tree at the “boalo,” an open space for the public entertainment of strangers at one end of the428 village, the favorite spot for lounging and smoking, and where on moonlight nights the young people indulge in singing and dancing and their elders in hard drinking bouts. The whole community troop out to see the white visitors, who are regarded with just such a mixture of curiosity and fear as a company of Red Indians would be looked upon by English rustics. Presents are exchanged with the chief, and then a brisk trade sets in, the villagers bartering food and articles of native manufacture for beads, looking-glasses, cloth, and other surprising products of Europe. Generally there follow dancing, pombe-drinking, and serenading in honor of the visitor, a homage which the latter is often glad to escape from by strolling out for a night-hunt for elephant or other game, or to note down by the clear light of the moon his observations for the day.

Soon it is time to descend into the valley, where the Shiré is found again flowing deep and slow, as below the falls, and opening up into a marshy lakelet, Pamalombe, with a strong family resemblance to the swamps of the lower river. It ought to be recorded, in justice to African honesty, that when the Ilala, the first steamer that floated on the Nyassa, was conveyed in pieces from the Lower to the Upper Shiré by a band of some hundreds of porters, under Captain Young’s leadership, it was found, on putting the little craft together, that not a single bolt or screw had been mislaid or stolen, though the temptation to fling away or decamp with their burdens must have sorely tried the carriers.

Even when almost within sight of the Nyassa. Livingstone could hear nothing of the goal of which he was in search. The chief of the “Great Lake” village on the Shiré told him that the river stretched on for “two months’ journey,” and then emerged from two rocks that towered perpendicularly to the skies. “We shall go and see these wonderful rocks,” said the doctor. “And when you see them,” objected his Makololo companions, “you will just want to see something else.” Next day they continued their march, and before noon came in sight of the lake.

Like the Tanganyika and Albert Lakes, Nyassa is a long and comparatively narrow body of water lying in a deep depression of the plateau of Central Africa. From the outlet of the Shiré one can sail on its waters for more than three hundred miles towards429 the equator; but it is nowhere more than sixty miles in width, and in some places less than half that distance across. It resembles the more northerly lakes, the Albert Nyanza and the Tanganyika, but especially the latter, in its general shape and direction; and it was for many years a favorite theory with “closet geographers” that the three lakes formed one continuous sheet of water. Such an attenuated “river-sea,” fifteen hundred miles in length and with no breadth to speak of, would have been a new thing in nature, and would, besides, have been an extremely useful factor in opening up Africa. Unfortunately, like other pretty theories, it did not stand the test of actual examination; and we have seen that the three lakes form parts of three different though not disconnected systems.

The shores of Nyassa seem to be overhung on all sides by tall mountains, although near the southern end there is generally a margin of more level country between the bases of the hills and the lake. As we proceed northwards, the distinctive features of the lake shores become more pronounced and majestic. The strip of plain narrows until it disappears. The range increases in altitude and approaches nearer, the rocky buttresses spring directly from the water, and the torrents that rush down their sides plunge in cascades into the lake; and the extreme northern end is encircled by dark mountains, whose frowning tops are ten thousand feet or more above sea-level. But when we ascend from the sweltering western margin of the lake to the cool and breezy heights that look down on it, we find that instead of being on the summit of a range of mountains we are only on the edge of a wide table-land. There is no steep slope corresponding to that which we have ascended so toilsomely, only a gentle incline towards the Zambesi.

On his last great expedition to Africa, Dr. Livingstone passed round the southern end of the lake, and, ascending the table-land, traced the water-shed between the lake and the streams flowing to the westward, until he descended into the valley of the Chambesi, and began that investigation of the Congo which is hereafter more fully described. The contour of the country reminded him strongly of that of Southern India. There was the flat country covered with thick jungle and tiger-grass, succeeded by dense forest, gradually thinning away to clumps of evergreens as the430 higher levels are reached, the scattered masses of boulders, the deeply-trenched “nullahs” or water-courses, and all the other familiar features of the fine scenery of the Ghauts, while the tableland above resembled closely the high plains of the Deccan. But what a contrast in the social and industrial condition of the two countries! Instead of seeing at every step, as in India, the traces of a long-founded civilization and a race of industrious tillers of the soil dwelling in peace and security under the strong arm of the law, we meet only with anarchy, misery, and barbarism.

The whole of this region is a hunting-ground of the Mazitu or Mavitu Zulus, whose only business is war and pillage. The wretched inhabitants of these hills dwell in constant apprehension of their raids. On no night can they sleep even within the shelter of their well-guarded stockades with the assurance that the Mavitu will not be upon them ere morning. Originally weak in numbers, this tribe has gathered strength by amalgamating with themselves the clans they have conquered. The terror which their deeds have inspired has been heightened by their wild and fantastic dress and gestures as they advance to battle, and by their formidable weapons. They carry the long Zulu shield and both the flinging and the stabbing assegai. Their hair is plumed with feathers, and their bodies painted in fiendish devices with red and white clay. So abject is the fear entertained for these redoubtable champions among the surrounding tribes, that the mere mention of their name is enough to make a travelling party take to their heels. Livingstone found this a constant source of annoyance and delay. Twice it was the cause of reports of his death being brought home. On the last occasion, the Johanna men—natives of the Comoro Isles—who formed his escort, were seized with the infectious panic, and, abandoning him in a body, brought down to the coast the story of the explorer having been murdered in the interior. The falsity of their report was only ascertained after Mr. Edward Young had made a special expedition to the Nyassa, and learned on the spot that the intrepid missionary, in spite of the cowardly desertion of his followers, was safe and well, and still pushing forward towards his goal.

In one respect, if in no other, the Zulu “Rob Roys” of these hills have a feeling in common with the travellers and missionaries who431 have found their way to the Nyassa countries—they are the inveterate enemies of the slave-hunters, and will not permit these gentry to practice the arts of kidnapping and murder within reach of their spears. The eastern side of the Nyassa basin, on the other hand, is one of the principal scenes of the slave-traders’ operations. In conjunction with predatory negro tribes, such as the Ajawa on the left bank of the Shiré, they have made a wilderness of all the country between the Nyassa and the Indian Ocean. Nothing can exceed the waste and havoc they have wrought in this beautiful and fruitful land. The books of the explorers are full of details of almost incredible atrocities committed under their eyes, and which they were powerless to prevent. Whole populations have been swept into the slave-gangs and hurried down to the coast, leaving the country behind them a desert, and their path marked by the skeletons of those who have succumbed to exhaustion or the cruelty of their brutal drivers. The miserable remnant of the population roost in trees, or seek shelter in the deepest recesses of the forest: while the jungle overruns the fields of maize, cotton, manioc, and sorghum and the charred ruins of their villages.

In Livingstone’s Journals we come upon such entries as: “Passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body; a group, looking on, said an Arab had done it that morning in anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was unable to walk.” “Found a number of slaves with slave sticks (logs six feet long with a cleft at one end in which the head of the unfortunate is fastened) abandoned by their master from want of food; they were too weak to speak or say where they had come from.” “It was wearisome to see the skulls and bones scattered about everywhere; one would fain not notice them, but they are so striking as one trudges along the sultry path that it cannot be avoided.” This evidence is abundantly supported by the statements of other observers. Consul Elton describes passing a caravan of three hundred slaves from the Nyassa, while travelling through the clove and gum-copal forests on the Mozambique coast. “All,” he says, “were in wretched condition. One gang of lads and women, chained together with iron neck-rings, was in a horrible state, their lower extremities coated with dry mud and torn with thorns, their432 bodies mere frameworks, and their skeleton limbs slightly stretched-over with parchment-like skin. One wretched woman had been flung against a tree for slipping her rope, and came screaming to us for protection, with one eye half out, and her face and bosom streaming with blood. We washed her wounds, and that was the only piece of interference on our part with the caravan, although the temptation was strong to cast all adrift, and give them at any rate a chance of starving to death peaceably in the woods.” Can it be wondered at that the pioneers of civilization and Christianity in these regions have sometimes been carried away by their feelings, and at the risk of ruining their whole plans have forcibly interfered between these Arab miscreants and their victims?

During the period to which Consul Elton’s accounts apply, it was computed that the Lake Nyassa region supplied some fifteen thousand slaves annually to the markets of Kilwa and other coast towns. Dr. Livingstone is convinced from his own observations, that, so far as regards the Shiré country, not a tenth of those who are captured survive the horrors of the land journey. It may be wondered how this waste of human life can go on and the country not to be completely depopulated. In spite, however, of their terrible losses, there is still a large population settled on the Nyassa. They have been chased down from the hills by the Mavitu and the slaver, and are huddled together on the lake margin, where their enemies can swoop down and make them an easy prey.

This dense population is, however, only found towards the southern end of Nyassa. Further north, the Mavitu have taken possession of the shore as well as the hills, and practice with equal success the vocation of pirates on the water and of robbers on land. An expedition in this direction was, till lately, certain to be attended with no small excitement and clanger. If the journey were made by land, the travellers were liable to be surprised at some point where the road was more rocky and difficult than usual, by the apparition of a wild-looking crew starting up from behind boulder or tree, and advancing with brandished spears and unearthly yells. White explorers are not accustomed to turn and flee at the first alarm. They stand, quietly awaiting the attack; and the Mavitu disconcerted at conduct so utterly unlike what they had calculated434 upon, run away themselves instead. If the excursion is made by water, a crowd of boats, pulled by swift rowers, will perhaps be seen putting out from a secluded bight, or from behind a wooded promontory, and giving chase to the strangers, with loud outcries to stop. The navigators of this inland sea, however, are missionaries, merchants and men of peace. They have no desire to do harm to their savage pursuers, and, secure in the speed of their little steamer and the superior range of their guns, they can afford to laugh at the attempts to capture them.

STORM ON LAKE NYASSA.

Much more serious is the danger arising from the sudden and furious storms that sweep down upon the lake from the gullies of its encircling hills. Livingstone narrowly escaped shipwreck on its waters, and from his experiences of it proposed to have Nyassa named the “Lake of Storms.” An old seaman of his party, who had been over the world, and at home had spent many a squally night off the wild coasts of Connaught and Donegal, said he had never encountered such waves as were raised in a few minutes by the tornadoes on the Nyassa. Succeeding voyagers—Young, Elton, Cotterill, Drs. Laws and Stewart, of the Scottish missions—report similar experiences. Mr. Cotterill’s little craft, the Herya, a present from the Harrow boys, was driven ashore on the western coast, June 1877, and he lost his journals, goods, and medical stores, saving only one bottle of quinine, which, remembering the fate of Livingstone and Mackenzie, he threw ashore as he neared the breakers in the darkness. The most dreaded waves on the Nyassa come rolling on in threes, “with their crests,” says Livingstone, “streaming in spray behind them.” A short lull follows each charge; and then another white-maned trio come rushing on and threaten to ingulf the voyagers and their frail bark.

A curious natural phenomenon has been noticed by most observers on the Nyassa. A light blue cloud will be observed floating for many miles over the surface of the lake, like the trailing smoke of some distant fire. When it is reached, we discover that it consists of nothing else but myriads of insects, of a species peculiar to the region, and known as the “kungo fly.” So dense is the mass that immense quantities of them are caught by the natives and pounded into cakes, resembling in size and shape a “Tam o’Shanter”435 bonnet. They are not particular as to what they eat, these hunger-bitten natives of the Nyassa shores. Neither are they unreasonably extravagant in the matter of dress, some of the tribes absolutely dispensing with clothes. Their notion of making up for their scanty attire by liberally anointing their bodies with rancid fish oil and hippopotamus fat, and smearing themselves with fancy designs in red and white clay, does not recommend them to the European eye and nostril. From our point of view, too, their attempts at decoration by means of tattooing are in nowise improvements, the result being to give their faces and limbs the appearance of being thickly studded with pimples. The most hideous device of all, however, is the “pelele,” or lip ring, an ornament without which no Nyassa belle would dream of appearing in public. This consists of a broad ring of tin or stone, an inch or more in diameter, inserted by slow degrees into the upper lip, causing it to stand out at right angles to its natural direction, and revealing beneath the rows of teeth sharpened to fine points like those of a saw. The native ladies of rank sometimes have a corresponding ring in the under lip, with the result that while the wearers of the single “pelele” can only lisp, the ladies of fashion are scarcely able to speak at all. Considering that these poor people have not been lavishly endowed with natural charms, the effect of their duck-like mouths may be imagined. Some handsome faces may, however, be seen among the natives of the Nyassa, and many of them, it has been observed, have regular Jewish or Assyrian features. Dr. Livingstone saw one man who bore a striking resemblance to a distinguished London actor in the part of the “Moor of Venice,” while another was the exact counterpart, in black, of the late Lord Clyde.

The magnificent alpine country at the north end of the lake is, as yet, comparatively unknown. The sole spot where there is any level ground is a great elephant marsh. Here Elton and his companions counted no fewer than three hundred of these noble animals standing knee-deep in the swamp, the elders lazily swinging their trunks and fanning themselves with their huge ears; while the juniors of the herd disported themselves in their elephantine way,436 rolling luxuriously in the mud, or tearing down branches of trees in the riotous enjoyment of their enormous strength.

Elton’s party enjoyed several days of most exciting elephant-stalking in the neighboring hills. Sallying out one morning into a part of the forest where the great brutes were known to abound, the herd was at length sighted; two or three of the elephants dozing under the shade of some trees, others engaged in munching branches, or shaking the boughs and picking up one by one with their trunks the berries that were scattered below. They were soon aroused from this delightful Elysium of rest and enjoyment by the hunters, who had crept up to within ten or fifteen yards unseen. Singling out the biggest elephant, a huge tusker, who stood blinking contemplatively under the shadow of a tree, Elton and his companion, Mr. Rhodes, each planted a bullet behind his shoulder. He trumpeted, staggered forward, tripped over into the rocky bed of a “nullah,” scrambled out on the other side, and there receiving another two shots, crashed down lifeless into a second dry water-course.

AN ELEPHANT CHARGE.

Chase was then given up a mountain gorge to the next largest elephant which deliberately charged back at Elton, the nearest of her pursuers. Allowing her to approach to within about three yards, he gave her a forehead shot, which turned her round; and then Rhodes “doubled her over like a rabbit.” The retreating herd were pursued to the top of the pass, where the last of the line, a big bull elephant, receiving a shot, stumbled and fell, while Elton, with “the pace on,” nearly fell on the top of him; “and,” he says, “holding my Henry rifle like a pistol, I shot him again at the root of the tail. The shock was irresistible; over the edge of the ravine he went, head foremost, the blood gushing out of his trunk, and his fall into space only broken by a stout acacia, in which he hung suspended, his fore and hind legs on either side—dead.” Still the hunt was continued, and on a second rocky slope a wounded elephant was found laboring up, supported and helped on by a friend on either side, while a fourth urged him on from behind with his forehead. This last faced round, and stood defiantly at bay, his ears “spread-eagled.” Elton’s last cartridge missed fire; Rhodes shot; a tremendous report followed; the elephant, with a groan, plunged over a cliff, and hung suspended by a438 thorn-tree in mid-air, like his predecessor; while Mr. Rhodes, casting his gun from him, ran down the declivity to the river, his face streaming with blood; and the survivors of the herd, toiling painfully up the mountain-side, disappeared over the sky-line, “uttering loud grumblings of disapprobation and distress.” The chamber of the rifle had burst, cutting Mr. Rhodes severely in the face; and his companion endeavored to console him by telling him that many a man at home would have given one thousand pounds for such a day’s sport, and suffered the cut in the forehead into the bargain.

Such sport is, however, getting every day more difficult to obtain; for this lordly animal, the true “king of beasts,” is retreating before the march of civilization, and becoming gradually more scarce even in the African solitudes. This is not to be wondered at, considering the vast numbers—probably from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand—that are killed annually for the sake of their ivory.

It may be remarked that Elton’s escape from the elephant’s charge was a remarkably close one. There is only one other instance known of the “forehead shot” being effectual in stopping the course of an African elephant. This adventure happened in the Abyssinian highlands to Sir Samuel Baker. That mighty hunter was at the time new to African sport, and imagining that planting a bullet in the forehead, the favorite method with hunters of the wild elephant of India and Ceylon, would be equally effectual in the case of his big-eared kinsman of Central Africa, he awaited the charge of an elephant until she was within five yards of the muzzle of his rifle. The bullet happened to strike a vulnerable spot in the skull, and dropped the animal dead; but the lookers-on for several moments regarded the hunter as a dead man.

In both these cases the elephant shot was a female, which possesses in a less marked degree than the male the solid structure of skull that, along with their immense ears, convex foreheads, and greater size, distinguish the African from the Asiatic variety. When not struck in a vital spot, the elephant is remarkably tenacious of life; and Livingstone tells how he fired twelve bullets into one that had fallen into a hole, and had about a hundred native439 spears sticking in him, and next morning found that the animal had scrambled out and escaped into the forest. Perhaps the most perilous experience that ever befell a white hunter when after elephants occurred to Mr. Oswell, far to the southward, on the banks of the Zouga. Chasing an elephant through a thorny thicket on horseback, he suddenly found the animal had wheeled round and was bearing straight down upon him. Attempting to turn his horse, he was thrown, face downwards, before the elephant. Twisting round, he saw the huge fore foot about to descend on his legs, parted them, and drew in his breath, expecting the other foot to be planted on his body; but saw the whole of the “under-side” of the huge creature pass over him, and rose unhurt to his feet, saved almost by miracle.

But this has carried us far away from the elephant marsh, from the borders of which Messrs. Elton, Cotterill, Rhodes, and Hoste made their ascent of the mountain barrier of Nyassa. The lowest pass over the Konde, or Livingstone range, is eight thousand eight hundred feet above sea-level; and the ascent embraces every variety of climate and scenery, from stifling tropical swamp to breezy moorlands of fern and bracken, carpeted with wild thyme, daisies, dandelions, and buttercups, like our hills at home. From the top a magnificent landscape is viewed. Elton says: “The country we have passed through is without exception the finest tract in Africa I have yet seen. Towards the east we were walled in with mountains rising to a height of from twelve to fourteen thousand feet, inclosing undulating, well-watered valleys, lovely woodland slopes, hedged-in fields, and knolls dotted with native hamlets. There is nothing to equal it either in fertility or in grazing land in Natal, the reputed ‘garden of South Africa.’ It is the most exceptionally favorable country for semi-tropical cultivation I have ever seen.”

A serious obstacle to the development of this beautiful highland region is probably the exceptionally deadly climate of the country through which it must be approached. Already many precious lives have been sacrificed in the attempt to open up the Nyassa. Livingstone got here his “death-sentence.” The German Roscher, who, travelling in the guise of an Arab from the east coast, viewed the lake only two months later than the great missionary, was440 basely murdered at a little village near its shores. Bishop Mackenzie is buried in the Shiré swamps; and near him lie nearly the whole staff of the University Mission to this region, all stricken down with marsh fever. Thornton, the intrepid companion of Livingstone on his first visit to the Nyassa, after having ascended half-way up the snow-capped mountain Kilimandjaro, far to the northward, returned to this quarter, only to die at the foot of the Murchison Rapids. Mrs. Livingstone, the devoted wife of the missionary, rests under a gigantic baobab tree a little way below the Shiré mouth; and near her grave is that of Kirkpatrick, of the Zambesi Survey Expedition of 1826. Another baobab, in Ugogo, shades the resting-place of Consul Elton, whom we have just seen full of life and hope, at the head of the pass overhanging the north end of the lake. Only a few marches to the northward of the pass, while toiling across a droughty plain, and weak from hunger and fever, he succumbed to sunstroke, and a most useful and promising career closed at the early age of thirty-seven. Still younger was Mr. Keith Johnston, who died from dysentery, while leading an expedition from Zanzibar territory to Nyassa. Dr. Black is buried on Cape Maclear, the rocky promontory cleaving the southern end of the lake, where the Free Church of Scotland Mission Station of Livingstonia has been planted; and the little cemetery contains many other graves of white persons.

The Scottish mission stations on the Shiré and Lake Nyassa are not the only outposts which Christianity has planted in the far interior of the “Dark Continent.” Similar colonies, for the moral improvement and industrial training of the natives of Africa, have been placed on the shores of the Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyika by the London and University Missionary Societies. The example is being followed by similar associations in France and America; and the Zambesi country has been mapped out for a renewal of the long-abandoned work of the Jesuit fathers. Science, commerce, and philanthropy have enlisted by the side of religion in the task of opening up Africa. The chief outlets of the slave-trade have at length, it is hoped, been closed, thanks mainly to the efforts of England, and the hearty co-operation of the government of Portugal, Egypt and Zanzibar.

441

AFRICAN RESOURCES.

Though the coasts of Africa lie within sight of the most civilized countries, its depths are still mysteries. Though the valley of the Nile was, in the earliest ages of history, the seat of commerce, the arts and sciences, it is only now that we read of a new source for that sacred stream in Lake Edward Nyanza.

This wonderful continent, the Negroland of our school books, the marvel of modern times as the light of exploration pierces its forests and reveals its lakes, rivers and peoples, is a vast peninsula, triangular in shape, containing 12,300,000 square miles. This vast area renders a conception of its geographic details difficult, yet by taking several plain views of it, the whole may be brought out so that one can grasp it with a fair degree of intelligence. One way to look at it is to regard the entire seacoast as the rind of the real Africa. Follow its Mediterranean boundary on the north, its Red Sea and Indian Ocean boundary on the east, its Atlantic Ocean boundary on the south and west, and the lowland rind is always present, in some places quite thin, in others many miles thick.

This rind, low, swampy, reedy, channeled by oozy creeks, or many mouthed rivers, is the prelude to something wholly different within. On the north, north-east and north-west, we know it introduces us to the barren Sahara. In all other parts it introduces us to an upland Africa, which, for height and variety of plateaus, has no equal in the world. These plateaus are variegated with immense mountain chains, like those of the Atlas, the Moon, the Kong, the Gupata, and those just revealed by Stanley extending between the two great lakes Albert Nyanza and Victoria Nyanza, and to a height of 18,000 feet, fully 6,000 of which are clad in perpetual snow, even442 though lying under the Equator. Here too are those vast stretches of water which vie in size and depth with the lake systems of any other continent, and which feed mighty rivers, even though evaporation be constantly lifting their volume into the tropical air. No traveler has ever looked with other than awe upon those superb lakes Albert Nyanza, Edward Nyanza, Victoria Nyanza, Tanganyika, Leopold II., Nyassa, Bangweola, and dozens of smaller ones whose presence came upon him like a revelation. And then out of these plateaus, thousands of feet high, run all those mighty rivers which constitute the most unique and mightiest water system in the world—the Zambezi, the Congo, the Niger, the Senegal and the Nile.

This would be Africa in a general sense. But in view of the importance of this opening continent, we must get a fuller view of it. The Africa of antiquity and of the Middle Ages extended from the Red Sea to the Atlantic and from the Mediterranean to the land of the Berbers, and other strange, if not mythical peoples. It embraced Egypt, Nubia and Abyssinia on the east. On the north it was skirted by the Barbary States. But its great, appalling feature was the great desert of Sahara, forbidden to Greek or Roman, Persian or Egyptian, till the Arab came on his camel, and with the flaming sword of Mohammed in hand, to pierce its waste places and make traffic possible amid its sandy wastes.

South of the Western Sahara is a fairly defined section extending from Timbuctoo to the Gulf of Guinea, or in other words nearly to the Equator. It is divided by the Kong chain of mountains, and embraces the water systems of the Senegal and Niger Rivers. This was the part of Africa which first drew European enterprise after Portugal and Spain became the world’s sailors, and began to feel their way toward the Cape of Good Hope. Three hundred years ago it was what Central Africa is to-day, a wonderland full of venturesome travelers, a source of national jealousy, a factor in European politics, a starting point for a thousand theories respecting colonization and of as many enterprises having for their object the introduction of commerce, the arts and Christianity among the natives, who were by no means as peaceably inclined as in the present day. As other natives came to find out something of the commercial443 value of the Senegal and Niger countries, they stepped in to get their share of the honor and profit of possession, and so this part of Africa was partitioned, till we find on the Atlantic, south of the Niger, the British colony of Sierra Leone, the kingdoms of Ashantee and Dahomey, the republic of Liberia, the coast towns of the Bight of Benin, and the strong French possessions lying just north of the Congo and extending indefinitely inland.

Back of this section, and extending south of the Sahara, to the head-waters of the Nile, is the great central basin whose waters converge in the vast estuary known as Lake Tchad. It may be somewhat vaguely termed the Soudan region, which is divided into Northern and Equatorial Soudan, the former being the seat of the recent uprising of the Mahdi, and the latter the center of the kingdom which Emin Pasha sought to wrest from Mohammedan grasp. Along the Indian Ocean coast, from Cape Guardafui to Mozambique, is a lowland stretch from two to three hundred miles wide, watered by small, sluggish rivers which find their way into the Indian Sea.

Passing down the eastern side of the continent, we come to the immense basin of the Zambezi, second only in extent to that of the Congo, stretching almost to the Atlantic coast, seat of mighty tribes like the Macololos, teeming with commercial possibilities, and even now a source of such envy between England and Portugal as to raise a question of war. South of the Zambezi comes the great Kalahari desert as a balance to the northern Sahara, and then that fringe of civilization embraced in Transvaal, the Orange Free State, Cape Colony, and so around till the Portuguese kingdoms of Benguela and Angola are reached, all of whose waters run by short courses to the sea. These great natural divisions comprise the entire area of the African continent except that vast equatorial basin drained by the Congo.

This mighty region, the Central Africa of to-day, is now largely embraced in the new Congo Free State. To the south of the mouth of the Congo is the State of Angola, and to the north, the State of Congo, claimed by the French. The great river was originally called the Zaire, and by some the Livingstone. Its first, or ocean, section extends from Banana Point to Boma, a distance of 70 miles, and is in fact an arm of the sea. Thence, upward to Vivi, a distance of 40444 miles, there is a deep, broad channel, with a moderate current. Vivi is the head of the lower river navigation, being at the foot of the cataracts, which extend for over 200 miles through a system of cañons, with more than fifty falls of various heights. They are known as Livingstone Falls, and have stretches of navigable water between them. After the cataracts are passed, Stanley Pool is reached, where are the towns of Leopoldville, Kinshassa and others, founded recently as trading or missionary stations. The vertical descent of the river from the broad, tranquil expanse of Stanley Pool to the level at Vivi, is about 1,000 feet, and from thence to the sea fully 250 feet more. Stanley Pool, or basin, is about 20 miles long and nearly 10 broad, and is filled with low wooded islands, natural homes for hippopotami, crocodiles, elephants, and all tropical animals. From Leopoldville to Stanley Falls there is uninterrupted navigation, and the distance is 1,068 miles, with a comparatively straight course and a vertical descent of four inches to the mile. Stanley Falls 1,511 feet above the sea level. The affluents of the river below Stanley Falls present a navigable surface estimated at 4,000 miles. In the wide and elevated portion of the river above Stanley Falls it is known as the Lualaba. Its course is now nearly north, and it was this fact that deceived Livingstone into the belief that he was on the Nile. This portion, though abounding in vast lake stretches and rich in affluents, is navigable only for shallow craft. It drains a fertile country whose centre is Nyangwe, the best-known market town of Central Africa and the capital of Tippoo Tib’s dominions, the conqueror of the Manyuema, and the craftiest of all the Arab potentates in Central Africa.

To the east of the Upper Congo, or Lualaba, is a magnificent stretch of grass country, extending to Lake Tanganyika, whose waters flow into the Congo, making a descent of 1,200 feet in 200 miles. As the western shores of that lake rise fully 2,500 feet, this region becomes a sort or Switzerland in tropical Africa. North and east of Tanganyika, are the Nile sources, in Lakes Albert, Edward and Victoria Nyanza—a fertile and populous region, fitted by nature for her thriftiest and best peoples. Thus we have Africa again mapped, and her grandest portion embraced in the Congo State, with its 1,500,000 square miles, its countless population, its abundance of446 navigable streams, its remarkably fertile soil, its boundless forests, all its requisites for the demands of an advanced civilization.

NATIVE HUNTERS KILLING SOKOS.

To the naturalist Africa opens a field for research equalled by no other continent. The whole organic world offers no such number of giant animal and plant forms. It unfolds five times as many quadrupeds as Asia, and three times as many as the Americas. Its colossal hippopotami, huge giraffes, infinite variety of antelopes, and water-bucks, the curious diving sheep, or goat, called the Quichobo, long armed apes, fierce sokos, and swarms of sprightly monkeys, excel those of Asia in size. That mammoth bird, the ostrich, whose feathers delight our modern slaves of fashion, is exclusively indigenous to Africa. The Arab may have brought the camel from the deserts of Sinai, but Africa has made a home for it. Africa is the habitat of the rhinoceros, elephant, lion, panther, leopard, ounce, jackal, hyena, wolf, fox, dog, cat, bat, rat, hare, rabbit, bear, horse, ass, zebra, sheep, with wool and without, goat, buffalo, gazelle, cattle of all kinds, some of them the finest specimens in nature, deer of the fallow type, which put to shame the sleek breeds of European parks.

AFRICAN ANT-EATER.

TERRIFIC FIGHT OF JUNGLE MONARCHS.

AFRICAN QUICHOBO.

The birds are equally numberless as to variety. There are eagles, hawks, flamingoes, kingfishers, many varieties of parrots, peacocks, partridges, pheasants, widow and cardinal birds, weavers, cuckoos, doves, pigeons, ducks, geese, and crown-birds, the plumage of the last being the most beautiful of the feathered tribe. The448 reptilia embraces crocodiles, the python, the boa and hundreds of smaller snakes, some harmless and some highly venomous. The rivers and lakes swarm with fish, though the variety is not so great as in more northern waters. The forests and the earth swarm with termites and ants of great variety, which draw after them a host of ant-eaters of the armadillo type; and at times spiders, caterpillars, and armies of locusts infest the trees or darken the sun. Insect life knows no limit in Africa—some the most beautiful, some the most horrid. The tsetse fly is no less a torment to cattle than the “devil of the road” is to the woe-begone traveler. And everywhere, especially in tropical Africa, vegetation has a force and vigor peculiar to450 that continent. Nature seems to rejoice in unfolding her strength through the seeds deposited in the soil. “Some fifty and some an hundred fold” is the law of increase, when the least care is given to planting and cultivation. Maize produces two crops a year. Tree life is gigantic, and the variety of wood infinite. Of the picturesque trees, the boabab, or monkey bread-fruit tree, whose crown of green sometimes forms a circle of over 100 feet, takes a front rank, followed by the ceiba, with its stem of 60 feet and its rich crown of foliage extending fully 60 feet further.

THE “DEVIL OF THE ROAD” AND OTHER AFRICAN WASPS, WITH CATERPILLAR NESTS.

BUSH-BUCKS OF RIVER CHOBE.

All of torrid Africa revels in plants and fruits of the most nutritious and medicinal quality, suited to the wants and well-being of the people. There is both food and medicine in the fruits of the palm, banana, orange, shaddock, pine-apple, tamarind, and the leaves and juice of the boabab. The butter-tree gives not only butter, but a fine medicine. The ground-nut yields in six weeks from the planting. The natives produce for eating, wheat, corn, rice, barley, millet, yams, lotus berries, gum, dates, figs, sugar, and various spices, and for drink, coffee, palm-wine, cocoanut milk and Cape wine. No less than five kinds of pepper are known, and the best indigo is produced, along with other valuable dyes. Cotton, hemp and flax are raised for clothing.

It has always been a fiction that Africa contained more gold than any other continent. The “gold coast” was a temptation to venturesome pioneers for a long time. Precisely how rich in minerals the “dark continent” is, remains to be proved. But it is known that iron abounds in many places, that saltpetre and emery exist in paying quantities, that amber is found on the coasts, and that diamonds are plenty in the Kimberly region. That the continent is rich in useful minerals may be taken for granted, but as these things are not perceptible to the naked eye, time must bring the proof.

Various estimates have been put upon the population of Africa. Stanley estimated the population of the Congo basin at 50,000,000. The Barbary States we know are very populous. Africa has in all probability contributed twenty-five millions of slaves to other countries within two-hundred and fifty years without apparent diminution of her own population.

451

So she must be not only very populous but very prolific. It would be safe to estimate her people at 200,000,000, counting the Ethiopic or true African race, and the Caucasian types, which embrace the Nubians, Abyssinians, Copts and Arabs. The Arabs are not aborigines, yet have forced themselves, with their religion, into all of Northern and Central Africa, and their language is the leading one wherever they have obtained a foot-hold. The Berber and Shelluh tongues are used in the Barbary States. The Mandingo speech is heard from the Senegal to the Joliba. On the southwestern coast there is a mixture of Portuguese. Among the true natives the languages spoken are as numerous as the tribes themselves. In the Sahara alone there are no less than forty-three dialects. Mr. Guinness, of London, president of the English Baptist Missionary Society operating in Africa, says there are 600 languages spoken in Africa, belonging principally to the great Soudanese group.

Of the human element in Africa, we present the summary given by Rev. Geo. L. Taylor. He says:—“Who and what are the races occupying our New Africa? The almost universally accepted anthropology of modern science puts Japheth (the Aryans), Shem (the Semites), and Ham (the Hamites), together as the Caucasian race or variety (not species) of mankind; and makes the Ugrians, the Mongols, the Malays and the Negroes (and some authorities make other divisions also) each another separate variety of the one common species and genus homo, man.

NATIVE TYPES IN SOUTHERN SOUDAN.

“Leaving the radical school of anthropology out of the question, it cannot be denied that the vast preponderance of conservative scientific opinion is, at least, to this effect, namely: While the Berbers (including the Twareks, Copts and Tibbus) are Hamitic, but differentiated toward the Semitic stock, the true Negroes are also probably Hamitic, but profoundly differentiated in the direction of some other undetermined factor, and the Ethiopians or Abyssinians are an intermediate link between the Caucasian Hamite and the non-Caucasian Negro, with also a prehistoric Semite mixture from southern Arabia. Barth, whose work is a mine of learning on the Soudan, concededly the best authority extant on the subject, says that while the original population of the Soudan was Negro,452 as was all the southern edge of the Sahara, nevertheless the Negro has been crowded southward along the whole line by the Moor (a mixt Arab) in the west, by the Berber (including both Twareks and Tibbus) in the centre, and by the Arab in the east. Timbuctoo is a city of Berber, not of Negro origin, founded before the Norman conquest of England, since conquered by Moors, and now ruled by the Fulbé, or Fellatah, who are neither Moor, Berber, Arab, nor Negro but a distinct race between the Arab and Berber on the one side and the Negro stock on the other, and whose language and physiognomy, and only semi-woolly hair, are more Mongoloid or Kaffir than Negro; but who are the most intelligent, energetic and rapidly becoming the most powerful people in the Soudan, and whose influence is now felt from Senegambia to Baghirmi, through half a dozen453 native states. In all the Niger basin only the Mandingo and the Tombo countries about the head of the Joliba, or Niger, are now ruled by pure Negro dynasties, the former being a splendid and capable jet-black people, probably the finest purely Negro race yet known to Europeans. In the central Soudan the Kanuri of Kanem and Bornu came to Kanem as a conquering Tibbu-Berber stock over 500 years ago, and are now Negroid. Farther east Tibbu and Arab are the ruling elements. Haussa, Sokoto and Adamawa are now Fellatah States. The southward pressure of Moor, Twarek, Tibbu and Arab is still going on; and the Fulbé, in the midst of the native states, is rapidly penetrating them, subverting the few native Negro dynasties still existing, and creating a new and rising race and power that is, at any rate, not Negro. Thus ancient Nigritia is rapidly ceasing to be “Negroland,” the races being more and more mixt, and newer and ruling elements of Moor, Berber and Arab constantly flowing in. This is the testimony of a long line of scholars from Barth down to Prof. A. H. Keane, author of the learned article on “Soudan,” in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

“The people commonly considered Negro, in Africa, consist mainly of three great stocks—the Nigritians of the Soudan, the great Bantu stock reaching from the southern bounds of the Soudan to the southern rim of the Zambesi basin, and the great Zulu stock. All these differ widely from each other in physiology, languages, arts and customs. The Nigritians are declining under Arab and Berber pressure; the Zulus, a powerful and semi-Negro race, are rapidly extending their conquests northward beyond the Zambesi into east central Africa. The Bantus are mainly agriculturists. They fill the Congo basin, and extend eastward to the Indian Ocean, between Uganda (which is Bantu) and Unyanyembé. They have only recently been discovered, and are not yet much studied by Europeans.

BARI OF GONDOKORO.

“But not all so-called Negroes are true Negroes. As for the eastern highland regions of the two Niles, and thence southward from the Abyssinians and the Shillooks at Khartoum to the Bari of Gondokoro and the Waganda of Uganda—the Niam-Niam of Monbuttoo, the Manyuema of the Lualaba, and the Makololo on the Zambesi—the ruling and paramount native tribes are Negroid, but455 not Negro, unless our ordinary conception of the Negro is a good deal revised. As Livingstone says of the Makololo, so of all these, they are a “coffee-and-milk color;” or we may say all these peoples are from a dark coffee-brown to brownish-white, like coffee, depending on the amount of milk added. They are mostly tall, straight, leanish, wiry, active, of rather regular features, fair agriculturists and cattle-raisers, with much mechanical capacity, born merchants and traders, and almost everywhere hold darker and more truly negro tribes in slavery to themselves, where any such tribes exist. Where they have none or few domestic animals for meat, they are frequently cannibals. In the middle Congo basin the tribes are more truly Negro, and here the true Negroes are freemen, independent and capable, though in a somewhat low state of development. But, so far as now known, the true Negro, in an independent condition, holds and rules but a comparatively small part of Africa. As to capability for improvement these peoples—the Negroid races at least and probably the Negroes—are as apt and civilizable as any Caucasian or Mongolian people have originally been, if we consider how their geographical and climatic isolation has hitherto cut them off from the rest of the world and the world from them. We know that if we leave Revelation out of the account, all Caucasian civilization, whether Aryan, Semitic, or Hamitic, can be traced backward till, just on the dawn of history, it narrows down to small clans or families, with whom the light began and from whom it spread. We know the same, also, as to the non-Caucasian Chinese and Nahua civilizations of Asia and America. Had the spread of the germs of these civilizations been prevented by conditions like those in Africa, who shall say that the stage of development might not be about the same to-day? There seems to be but one uncivilizable race—if, indeed, they are such—in Africa; and that is the dwarfs. The Akka, found by Schweinfurth south of the Welle, called themselves “Betua,” the same word as the “Batua” on the Kassai. The dwarfs of the upper Zambesi call themselves by a similar word, and so with the Bushmen in South Africa. Many things go to prove that these dwarf nations are all one race, the diminutive remnants of a primeval stock of one of the lowest types of man, who have never risen above456 the hunter stage of life. They have been scattered, and almost exterminated, by the incoming of the powerful Bantu stock, that is now spread from the Soudan to Zululand. These dwarfs are the best living examples of similar races once scattered over Europe and Asia, whose real existence lies at the bottom of all the lore of fairies, brownies, elfs, gnomes, etc. They constitute one of the most pregnant subjects of study in all anthropology. They are seemingly always uncivilizable.”

In his “Africa in a Nutshell,” Rev. Geo. Thompson thus sketches the country, especially the central belt:—

“The Central Belt of Africa—say from 15° north to 15° south of the equator, about 2,000 miles in width—is, heavily-timbered, of the jungle nature. There are numerous large trees (one to six feet through, and 50 to 150 feet high) with smaller ones, and bushes intermingled, while vines of various kinds intertwine, from bottom to top, making progress through them, except in paths, very difficult. Only experience can give a realizing idea of an African forest—of the tangle, and the density of its shade.

“While traveling through them, even in the dry season, when the sun shines brightest, one cannot see or feel the warming rays. The leaves drip with the dews of the night, and the traveler becomes chilled, and suffers exceedingly.

“But the whole country is not now covered with such forests. They are found in places, from ten to twenty-five miles in extent, where the population is sparse, but the larger portion of the country has been cleared off and cultivated; and, while much of it is in crops all the time, other large patches are covered with bushes, of from one to three years’ growth—for they clear off a new place every year. The farm of this year is left to grow up to bushes two or three years, to kill out the grass, and then it is cleared off again. Thus, in thickly settled portions of the country, but little large timber is found, except along rivers, or on mountains. Such is the country north of the Gulf of Guinea, to near the Desert.

“The people are numerous, and the cities larger (the largest cities in Africa; they are from one to six miles through), and much of the country is under cultivation. And so of the central portion of Africa, in the vicinity of Lake Tchad.

457

CHASING GIRAFFES.

458

“But in that portion of Africa lying 500 miles south and north of the Equator, and from the Atlantic Coast, 1,000 miles eastward, the jungle and heavy forests are the most extensive, and towns farther between, and not so large.

“This is the home of the gorilla, which grows from five to six feet high, of powerful build, and with arms that can stretch from seven to nine feet; a formidable enemy to meet. It is also the home of that wonderfully varied and gigantic animal life—elephants, lions, leopards, zebras, giraffes, rhinoceri, hippopotami, crocodile etc., which distinguishes African Zoology from that of every other continent.

“This central belt of Africa is capable of sustaining a vast population. It can be generally cultivated, and its resources are wonderful. The soil is productive. The seasons are favorable, and crops can be kept growing the year through.

“Rice, of three or four kinds and of excellent quality, Indian corn, three kinds of sweet potatoes, beans, peanuts, melons, squashes, tomatoes, ginger, pepper, arrowroot, coffee, sugar cane, yams, cocoa, casada, and other grains and vegetables, besides all tropical fruits, are cultivated.

“The coffee is a wild forest tree, growing seventy-five feet high and eighteen inches through. It is also cultivated largely in Liberia. Many of the people have from 100 to 1,000 acres of coffee trees.

“The Liberian coffee is of such superior quality and productiveness, that millions of plants have been sent to Java and old coffee countries, for seed. Its fame is already world-wide. The wild coffee is as good as any, but the bean is smaller. And new settlements soon become self-supporting by the culture of coffee. Sugar cane is also raised, and much sugar is made in this colony. Many steam sugar mills are in operation on St. Paul’s River and at other places.

“On the Gulf of Guinea the people are quite generally raising cotton and shipping it to England. Hundreds of cotton presses and gins have been bought, and used by them, and Africa will yet be the greatest cotton, coffee and sugar country in the world. All nations can be supplied therefrom.

“Cotton is cultivated, in small quantities, in widely-extended portions of Africa, and manufactured into cloth which is very durable. They also make leather of a superior quality.

459

“Gold, copper, coal, the richest iron ore in the world, and other valuable metals are abundant; from them the natives manufacture their tools, ornaments and many things of interest. Ivory, hides, gums, rubber, etc., are abundant. It is said that 50,000 elephants are killed yearly, for their ivory, in Africa.

“The country only needs development; and the many exploring parties from Europe, who are penetrating every part, seeking trade, will aid in opening its boundless treasures. Gold-mining companies are operating on the Gulf of Guinea, with paying results.

“And the natives secure and sell to the merchants large amounts of gold, in form of rough, large rings. They make fine gold ornaments, and wear vast quantities.

“This trade with Interior Africa, so eagerly sought, will soon lead to railroads, in different directions—from Liberia to the Niger, and across to Zanzibar from South Africa; and in other directions. The work is begun, and will not stop.

“The French and the English are planning for railroads in different directions. The former are building one from Senegal to Timbuctoo.

“The nations of Europe are, to-day, in a strife to secure the best locations for trade with this rich country. And soon there will be no more ‘unexplored regions.’

“The coasts on the west and east are generally low and unhealthy. But the interior is higher, and will be more suited to the white man.

“It is, in the main, an elevated table-land, from 1,000 to 6,000 feet above the sea, variegated with peaks and mountains, from 3,000 to 20,000 feet high, snow-capped, and with valleys and broad plains, hot springs, and salt pans, and innumerable springs, inlets and streams.

“In some regions, for a distance often to twenty miles, there is a scarcity of water in the dry season. Other places are flat plains, which are overflowed in the rainy season, so they cannot be inhabited or cultivated, except in the dry season. And such localities are unhealthy.

“But by far the greater part of the country is capable of being inhabited and cultivated—with an abundance of timber of many kinds, suitable for all the purposes of civilization, for boats, houses,460 wagons, furniture and implements—but all different from anything in America. Some kinds are equal to fine mahogany.

“This central portion of Africa is blessed with numerous large lakes, three large rivers, and many smaller.

“The Niger rises 200 miles back of Liberia, runs northeasterly, to near Timbuctoo, then southward to the Gulf of Guinea. It is already navigated for hundreds of miles by English steamers.

“In fourteen years the exports have increased from $150,000 to $10,000,000; trading factories from two to fifty-seven; and steamers from two to twenty, and other boats.

“The Binué is a large branch coming in from the eastward.

“And the Congo, rising nearly 15° south of the equator, runs through various lakes, making a northward course for more than 1,000 miles, to 2¹⁄₂° north of the equator, then bends westward and southwesterly to the Atlantic; being from one to sixteen miles wide, and very deep; filled with inhabited islands and abounding in magnificent scenery. The banks along the rapids rise from 100 to 1,200 feet high. It freshens the ocean for six miles from land, and its course can be seen in the ocean for thirty-six miles.

“There are two series of rapids in it—a great obstacle to navigation—but the desire for trade will overcome these.

“The first series of rapids commences about 100 miles from the sea, and extends some 200 miles in falls and cascades—with smoother stretches between—to Stanley Pool. There are thirty-two of these falls. From thence is a broad, magnificent river, with no obstruction for nearly 1,000 miles, to the next series of rapids at Stanley Falls. From this, again, is another long stretch of navigable river. It pours nearly five times the amount of water of the Mississippi.

“Between Lake Bangweola and Stanley Pool, the Congo falls 2,491 feet; between the pool and ocean, 1,147 feet, making 3,638 feet in all.

“The Nile falls over 1,200 feet between Victoria and Albert Lakes, and 2,200 from Albert to the sea.

“Most of the rivers which rise in the interior of Africa have heavy fall.

“Then there are numerous large rivers emptying into the Congo,461 on each side, which can be ascended far into the interior. Those on the north can be easily connected with the head waters of the Gaboon River, and those on the south with the head waters of the Zambesi, emptying into the Indian Ocean; and on the east, with Lake Tanganyika.

“It will be seen that the Congo River will be of vast importance in the development of Africa. A railroad will soon be built around the falls, to connect with the steamers above.

“The soil of Upper Congo is very rich, the forests are exceedingly valuable, the climate quite favorable, and the people numerous and kind.

“A few years ago the trade of the Congo was only a few thousand dollars yearly. It is now, so soon, from $10,000,000 to $20,000,000 a year. Trading houses and steamers are multiplying.

“The Congo Valley contains over 5,000 miles of navigable river and lake. The nations can be supplied from this region with cotton, coffee, sugar, gum copal, ivory, rubber, valuable dyes, iron, gold, copper, and many other things—when it shall be civilized and a market formed.

“Many are running to and fro, and knowledge is being rapidly increased in those parts.

“Then there are the rivers Senegal, Gambia (navigable for 200 miles), Sierra Leone, Calabar, etc.

“The lakes are numerous, from the size of Lake Michigan, or larger, to those covering only a few square miles.

“Lake Tchad, in the centre of the continent, is nearly the size of Lake Michigan, with marshy surroundings, from which as yet no outlet has been discovered, though the Tshaddi, or River Binué, may be found to be the outlet of this lake.

“In Central East Africa is a lake system of vast extent. Victoria Nyanza is about 250 miles long, surrounded mostly with hills and mountains, from 300 to 6,000 feet high. It contains many islands, and numerous large rivers empty into it. It is nearly 4,000 feet above the sea, and, with its rivers, constitutes the principal and most southern source of the Nile. The equator crosses its northern end. It is nearly as large as Lake Superior.

“West of this, about 200 miles, is the Albert Nyanza, 400 miles462 long, and 2,720 feet above the level of the sea. This receives the outlet of the Victoria; and from this the Nile bursts forth, a large river, and runs its course of nearly 3,000 miles to the Mediterranean Sea.

“Albert is nearly three times as large as Lake Erie.

“South and west of these two lakes are numerous smaller ones—some of them very beautiful—all emptying into the Victoria Nyanza, or “Big Water.”

“South of these, and separated by a mountain ridge, is Lake Tanganyika, 380 miles long and very deep, from twelve to forty miles wide, surrounded by mountains 2,000 to 5,000 feet high. It is 2,756 feet above the sea. Till about 1875 it was an internal sea, receiving large rivers, but having no outlet, as proven by Stanley, who circumnavigated it on purpose to settle this point. But near midway, on the west, was a low place, where the bank was only three feet above the water. And here, after steadily rising for ages, it broke over, and cut a channel to the Congo, into which it now empties, in a deep, rapid stream.

“West and south of this is a series of lakes, connected with the great Congo River. The most southerly, in latitude 13° or 14°, is Bangweola, about 175 miles long and sixty wide. (Dr. Livingstone, in his last journey, crossed this from the north and died in the marsh on its southern border, May 4, 1873.) This empties into Lake Moero, nearly 3,000 feet above the sea.

“North and west of this are a number of other lakes, all emptying into and swelling the mighty Congo.

“Northeast of Victoria are other large lakes, as reported by the natives, but not yet accurately delineated. Thomson has lately discovered one 6,000 feet above the sea.

“Southeast of Tanganyika, about 250 miles, is Nyassa Lake, 300 miles long, first definitely described by Dr. Livingstone. This is 1,800 feet above the sea. There is a small steamer on this lake—as also on Victoria and Tanganyika. And steamers are briskly plying up and down the Congo.

“Ere many years there will be a railroad from Nyassa to Tanganyika—an easy route—and from Zanzibar to the great lakes—a more difficult route. The pressing demands of trade insure these results.463 A wagon road is already partly constructed between the two lakes, making a speedier, safer and easier route to the interior via Zambesi and Shiré Rivers, Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika, with a land carriage of only seventy-five miles between the rapids on the Shiré and Lake Nyassa.”

That portion of Africa below the tropics, and known in general as South Africa, has resources of animal, forest, soil, climate, water and mineral which have proved inviting to Europeans, though there is nothing to render them any more acceptable than similar features as found in other sub-tropical or temperate latitudes, excepting, perhaps, the peculiar mineral deposits in the Kimberly section, which yield diamonds of great value, and a richness of animal life which formerly proved fascinating to the hunter and adventurer.

NATIVE RAT TRAP.

The belt extending clear across the continent from Angola and Benguela, south of the Congo, to the mouth of the Zambesi, and which is a water shed between the Congo basin and rivers running southward, till the great valley of the Zambesi is reached, has all the peculiarities of soil, climate, forest and people found in the Congo basin. Its tribes, according to Pinto, are of the same general type as those further north. The rivers abound in hippopotami and crocodiles, the forests in antelope and buffaloes, elephants, lions and wild birds. There is the same endless succession of wooded valleys and verdure clad plains, and the same products under cultivation. The natives are if anything better skilled in the uses of464 iron, and are more ingenious in turning it to domestic account, as in the manufacture of utensils, traps and other conveniences. They are natural herdsmen, dress better, at least more fantastically, perpetuate all of the native superstitions, and are more confirmed traders, having for a longer time been in remote contact with the Portuguese influence penetrating the Zambesi, and extending inland from Loanda and Benguela.

We therefore turn to Equatorial, or Central Africa, in quest of those resources which are distinguishing, and which give to the continent its real value in commercial eyes. And in so doing, there is no authority superior to that of Stanley, whose opportunity for observation has been greatest. We can readily detect in his narrative the enthusiasm of a pioneer, but at the same time must feel persuaded that fuller and more exact research, and, especially the supreme trial to which commercial development puts all things natural, will far more than verify his first impressions.

AFRICAN HATCHET.

This Africa is typed by the Congo Basin, which stretches practically across Africa, interweaving with the Zambesi water system on the south and the Nile system on the north. The Congo is the feature of its basin, and the kernel of the greatest commercial465 problem of the age. To understand it, is to understand more of African resource than any other natural object furnishes. It has its maritime region, which is the African rind before alluded to. This region extends from Banana Point at the mouth of the great river to Boma, seventy miles from the sea, and the river passes through it in the form of a broad deep estuary. At Boma the hilly, mountainous region commences, the groups of undulations rising gradually to a height of 2000 feet above the sea. The river is still navigable in this region, up to Vivi, 110 miles from the sea, though the channel is reduced to a width of 1500 yards. From Vivi to Isangila, a distance of fifty miles, is the lower series of Livingstone Falls. From Isangila to Manyanga is a navigable stretch of eighty-eight miles. Then comes the upper series of Livingstone Falls, extending for eighty-five miles, from Manyanga to Leopoldville, on Stanley Pool. This practically brings the mighty flood through the mountainous region of 240 miles in width, and opens a navigable stretch of 1068 miles, extending from Stanley Pool to Stanley Falls. From Stanley Falls to Nyangwe, in the fruitful country of the Manyuema, a nation in themselves, and notorious in Central Africa for their valor and cruelty in war, is a course of 385 miles, navigable for light craft. From Nyangwe to Lake Moero the river course is 440 miles. This lake is sixty-seven miles long. Thence is a river stretch of 220 miles to Lake Bangweola which is 161 miles long. It then begins to lose itself in its head waters in the Chibalé Hills, though its main affluent here, the Chambesi, has a length of 360 miles. This gives a total length of main stream equal to 3034 miles. It divides itself into five geographic sections; the maritime section, from the sea to Leopoldville; the Upper Congo section, extending from Leopoldville to Stanley Falls; the Lualaba (so called by Livingstone) section from Stanley Falls to the Chambesi; the Chambesi, or head water section; and the Tanganyika section.

The first section, which includes the really maritime and the mountainous, is, in its lower part next to the sea, but thinly populated, owing to the slave trade and the effect of internal wars. But the natives are, as a rule, tractable and amenable to improvement and discipline. They are industrious and perfectly willing to hire466 themselves as porters. In its mountainous part, the country is composed of swells of upland separated by gorges and long, winding water courses, showing that the land has been gradually stripped for centuries of its rich loam by the tropical rains. On the uplands are groves of palm and patches of tropical forest. In the hollows are rich vegetable products, so thick as to be impenetrable. The round-nut, palm-nut, rubber, gum-copal, orchilla, and various other articles of commerce, are natural products of this section.

NATIVES RUNNING TO WAR.

Through the second section the Congo sweeps in the shape of an ox-bow, 1068 miles, crossing the Equator twice. Here is that467 mighty system of tributaries which more than double the navigable waters of the great basin. On the south are the Kwa, navigable up to Lake Leopold II, a distance of 281 miles; the Lukanga with its shores lined with shrewd native traders; the Mohindu, navigable for 650 miles; the Ikelemba, seat of the Bakuti tribe, navigable for 125 miles; the Lulungu, reported to be more populous than the Congo, navigable for 800 miles; the Lubiranzi, navigable for twenty-five miles.

On the north side is the Lufini, navigable for thirty miles; the Alima, navigable for fifty miles; the Likuba, with fifty miles of navigation; the Bunga, 150 miles; the Balui, 350, the Ubanga and Ngala, 450 miles, together; the Itimbiri, 250 miles; the Nkukù, sixty miles; the Biyerre ninety-six miles; the Chofu, twenty-five miles.

This section alone, therefore, gives a direct steam mileage of 5250 miles, and the rivers drain an area of over 1,000,000 square miles. Stanley says the wealth of Equatorial Africa lies in this section. It is cut by the Equator, whose rain-belt discharges showers for ten months in the year. North and south from the Equator, the dry periods are longer. The population of the section, Stanley estimates to be 43,500,000. His observations were, of course, confined to the river districts, but other travelers confirm his estimates. Weissman says of the Lubilash country, “It is densely peopled and some of the villages are miles in length. They are clean, with commodious houses shaded by oil-palms and bananas, and surrounded by carefully divided fields in which, quite contrary to the usual African practice, man is seen to till the fields while women attend to household offices. From the Lubilash. to the Lumani there stretches almost uninterruptedly a prairie region of great fertility, the future pasture grounds of the world. The reddish loam, overlying the granite, bears luxuriant grass and clumps of trees, and only the banks are densely wooded. The rain falls during eight months of the year, from September to April, but they are not excessive. The temperature varies, from 63° to 81°, but occasionally, in the dry season, falls as low as 45°.”

The southeastern portion of this section is, on the authority of Tippoo Tib, who doubtless ranged it more extensively than any468 other man, dotted with villages, some of which took him two hours to pass through. The country is a succession of prairies and parks, of rare fertility and beauty. On the north and northeast of this section is the residence of the Monbuttus, Niam-Niams and Dinkas, all powerful tribes, living in comparative peace, having neat villages surrounded by fruitful plantations, lovers of the chase, rich in herds of fine cattle, skilled in the manufacture of spears and utensils of iron, experts in pottery making and ornamentation, light of form but wonderfully agile, a copper rather than black color, and very numerous. Says Sweinfurth, “From the Wellé river to the residence of the Monbuttu king, Munza, the way leads through a country of marvellous beauty, an almost unbroken line of the primitively simple dwellings extending on either side of the caravan route.” The Niam-Niam country alone he estimates at 5400 square miles in extent, with a population of 2,000,000 which would give the extraordinary rate of 370 to the square mile.

Stanley’s own observation on the Mohindu and Itimbiri river fully confirmed the story of Miyongo respecting the Lulungu, that the further he traveled from the banks of the river the thicker he would find the population.

All of this immense section is capable of the richest and most varied vegetable productions. True, until intercourse comes about by steam, or otherwise, but little use can be made of these products, yet there they are in abundance now, and susceptible of infinite additions under the care of intelligent tillage. There is an almost infinite variety of palms, the most useful of which is the oil-palm, whose nut supplies the dark-red palm oil, which has proved such a source of wealth in the Oil-river regions of the Niger country and on the west coast in general. The kernel of these nuts makes an oil-cake which is excellent for fattening and conditioning cattle. This palm towers in every forest grove and beautifies every island in the rivers. In many places it constitutes the entire forest, to the exclusion of trees of harder wood and sturdier growth. As each tree yields from 500 to 1000 nuts, some idea of the commercial value of each can be gathered.

Another valuable plant in commerce and one which abounds in this section is the India rubber plant. It is of three kinds, all of469 them prolific, and all as yet untouched. Stanley estimates that enough india rubber could be gathered on the islands of the Congo and in the adjacent forests on the shores, in one year, to pay for the construction of a Congo railway. Then there are other gums, useful for varnishes, as the white and red opal. These are gathered and treasured by the natives of the fishing villages, and used as torches while fishing, but they know nothing of their value in the arts. Vegetable oils are extracted from the ground-nut, the oil-berry and the castor plant. The ground-nut oils are used by the natives for lights, the extract of the oil-berry is used for cooking, while the castor-oils are used as medicine, just as with civilized people.

UBANGI BLACKSMITHS.

Whole areas of forest are covered with dense canopies of orchilla, useful as a dye, and every village has a supply of red-wood powder. But in nothing are the forests and plains of this immense section so remarkable as in the variety and quality of the vegetation capable of producing commercial fibres. Here are endless supplies of paper material, rope material, material for baskets, mattings and all kinds of cloths, such as we now make of hemp and jute.

The more industrious and ingenious tribes run to specialties in turning luxuriant nature into account. The red-wood powder of Lake Mantamba is counted the best. Iboco palm-fibre matting470 ranks as the jute textiles of Scotland. The Irebu are the Japanese sun-shade and floor-mat makers. The Yalulima are artists in the manufacture of double bells. The Ubangi are the Toledo sword-makers of Africa. How bountiful their supply of iron is remains to be ascertained, but it is presumably a plentiful mineral, and its use among these people, not to say numerous other tribes, is evidence that the stone age of Africa was past, long before the heathen of Europe and America had ceased to strike fire by flints in their chilly caverns, or crush one another’s skulls with granite tomahawks. The iron spears and swords of some of these African tribes are models in their way, keen as Damascus blades and bright as if mirrored on Sheffield emery wheels.

One of the comforts of civilization, the buffalo robe, is fast becoming a thing of the past. Africa may yet furnish a supply, or at least a valuable skin for tanning purposes, out of the numerous herds of buffalo which are found everywhere in this great central section. The kings and chiefs of the African tribes affect monkey skin drapery as royal dresses. If they knew the favor in which similar dresses were held upon our boulevards, they might take contracts to supply the fashionable outside world for generations, and thereby enrich themselves. Our tanneries, furrier-shops and rug-makers would go wild with delight over African invoices of goat-skins, antelope hides, lion and leopard skins, if annual excursions of traders and hunters could be sent to the Upper Congo country, at the cost of a through passage on an express train. And how our milliners would rejoice over the beauty and variety of bonnet decorations if they could reduce to possession even a tithe of the gorgeous plumage which flits incessantly through the forest spaces of tropical Africa.

Then where in Africa is there not honey, sweet as that of Hybla or Hymettus, with its inseparable product, bees-wax? Not all the perfumes of Arabia nor of the Isles of the Sea can equal in volume and fragrance the frankincense and myrrh of the Congo region. As to ivory, Stanley estimates the elephant herds of the Congo basin at 15,000 in number, each herd numbering twelve to fifteen elephants—a total of 200,000 giants, each one walking about with fifty pounds of ivory in his head, or 10,000,000 pounds in all,472 worth in the rough $25,000,000, or when manufactured, a sum sufficient to enrich a kingdom. Nor does he consider this estimate too large, for he had met travelers who had seen as many as 300 elephants in a single herd, and who had killed so many that their carcasses blocked the stream they were crossing. Major Vetch had killed twenty in one locality, and a missionary, Mr. Ingham, had, more in a self-supporting than in a sporting spirit, shot twenty-five and turned their tusks into money. For a century, the ivory trade has been an important one on the eastern coast of Africa, yet the field of supply has only been skirted.

NATIVES KILLING AN ELEPHANT.

But civilization must tap and destroy this source of wealth, unless parks could be preserved and elephants reared for the sake of their ivory. Wonderful as are his figures respecting this resource, Stanley regards it as of little moment in comparison with other resources of the great basin. It would not equal in commercial value the pastime of the idle warriors of the basin, if each one were to find such in the picking of a third of a pound of rubber a day for a year, or in the melting of two-thirds of a pound of palm-oil, for then the aggregate of either would exceed $25,000,000 in value, and nature would be none the poorer for the drain upon her resources. The same could be said if each warrior picked half a pound of gum-copal per day, collected half a pound of orchilla, or ground out half a pound of red-wood powder.

Stanley, and indeed all explorers of Central Africa, are convinced that iron ore abounds. It must be that the iron formations are manifest, for the natives are not given to mining, yet most of the tribes are iron-workers, patient and skillful, according to the unanimous testimony of travelers, and as the trophies sent home testify. Near Phillipville are copper mines which supply a large portion of Western Africa with copper ingots. Among the Manyanga tribes, copper ingots are a commodity as common as vegetables and fowls. To the southeast of the Upper Congo section are copper supplies for the numerous caravans that find ingress and egress by way of the Zambesi. Both Livingstone and Pinto found tribes on the Upper Zambesi who were skillful copper-smiths. It is known that black-lead exists in the Congo region. It has ever been a dream that Africa possessed rich gold fields. Though this473 dream was early dispelled as to the Gold Coast, it appertains as to other regions, for the roving Arabs are accustomed to return from their inland visits bearing bottles filled with gold dust, which they say they have filled from the beds of streams which they crossed.

Every observer can inform himself as to the agricultural resources of Central Africa. It is an exception on the Upper Congo, and for that matter anywhere in Central Africa, to find a village without its cleared and cultivated plats for maize and sugarcane, and some of these plats have the extent and appearance of well-ordered plantations. Everywhere the banana and plantain flourish, and yield a bountiful supply of wholesome, nourishing food. Millet is grown among some tribes for the sake of the flour it yields; but everywhere on the main river the chief dependence for a farinaceous diet is on the manioc plant, which yields the tapioca of commerce. The black bean grows almost without cultivation, and yields prolifically.

There is hardly anything in the vegetable line that does not find a home in tropical Africa. The sweet-potato grows to immense size, as do cucumbers, melons of all kinds, pumpkins, tomatoes, while cabbages, the Irish potato, the onion and other garden vegetables introduced from the temperate zone thrive in a most unexpected manner.

Wherever the Arab traders and settlers have struck this section from the east they have introduced the cultivation of rice and wheat with success, and they have carried along the planting of the mangoe, lime, orange, lemon, pine-apple and guava, all of which take hold, grow vigorously and produce liberally. All of these last have been tried on the Congo with the greatest encouragement.

Then there is practically no limit to the spice plants found growing naturally in the Congo section and capable of introduction. Ginger and nutmeg are quite common amid the rich plant growth of the entire section. As the immense prairie stretches of the Upper Congo and the Lake regions may at no distant day become the grazing ground for the world’s cattle supply, or the granary of nations, so the river bottoms, and the uplands as well, may become the cotton producing areas of the manufacturing world. Cotton is indigenous and grows everywhere. It is especially fond of the474 cleared spots which mark the site of deserted villages, and asserts itself to the exclusion of other vegetation. It has neither frost nor drought to contend with, and nature has given it a soil in which it may revel, without the requirement of sedulous cultivation.

It may well be asked in connection with this section, what is there which civilization demands, or is used to, for its table, its factory, or store-house, that it does not produce, or cannot be made to produce? If it supports a population almost equal to that of Europe, a population without appliances for farming and manufacturing, a population of comparative idlers, what a surplus it might produce under intelligent management and with a moderate degree of industry. The native energy of Africa, even with the most advanced tribes, is sadly misdirected, or rather, not directed at all. The best muscle of every tribe is diverted to warlike pursuits or to the athleticism of the chase. Whilst it is not a rule that it is undignified for a full grown male to work, the customs are such as to attract him into other channels of effort, so that the burden of work is thrown upon the women. They are the vegetable gardeners, the raisers of fowls and goats, and in the cattle regions of the Upper Congo and Zambesi, they are the milk-maids, the calf-raisers and herd attendants. Therefore, African labor is today like African vegetation; it is labor run wild. It is a keen, excellent labor under the spur of reward, just as the African commercial sense is alive to all the tricks of trade. What it requires is instruction and proper direction, and with these one may find in tropical Africa a resource of far more value, both at home and abroad, than all the untold wealth of forest, soil or mine.

We see and hear too little of the human resources of Africa. By this we do not mean that religion does not regard the African as a fit subject for conversion, nor that ethnology does not seek to study him as a curiosity, nor that commerce fails to use him as a convenience, nor that the lust of the Orient has ceased to discuss him as a source of gratification, but we do mean that with all the writing about African resources and possibilities, the fertility of soil, the luxuriance of forest, the plenitude of minerals, the exuberance of animal life, there is but meagre discussion of the place the native himself is to fill, considered also in the light of a natural475 resource. While we grow infatuated with descriptions of African wealth and possibility, we almost skip the mightiest problem Africa can reveal, the relationship its own people are to bear to its material development, their status as factors in unfolding the inner continent to the outer world. The eyes of commercial and manufacturing Europe are so set upon the main advantage, to wit, that of grabbing African lands and appropriating at a cheap rate whatever is accessible, as to overlook the future of the native. Our own eyes have been so dimmed by the melancholy sight of the North American Indian fading away before our boasted civilization, or by sight of the sons of Africa forced into degradation at the behest of hard-hearted greed, as that they are actually blind to the human factor in African enterprise. With all our respect for civilization, it must be confessed that it has failed signally to use to advantage what it found God-made and at hand, when it struck new continents and islands. It has destroyed and supplanted, as on the American continents, the Pacific islands, in Southern Africa, in the East Indies. Is that to be the role of civilization in Central Africa? Does not that continent present a higher and more humanitarian problem? Driven to desperation by a baffling climate, yet spurred by an inordinate cupidity, will not the civilization of the white man be compelled to the exercise of a genius which shall embrace the native populations, classify them as an indispensable resource, lift them to a plain of intelligent energy, look upon them as things of equality, and ultimately regard them as essentials in the art of progress and the race for development? We regard extinction of the African races as fatal to African development. There is no place in the world where the civilized commercial instinct crosses so directly the natural laws of the universe as in Africa. There is no place in the world where the ordinary forces of colonization are so nonplussed as in Africa. If we are to go ahead with our humanitarian and commercial and political problems in Africa, in the old fashioned, uncompromising, brutal way; if Africa is to be civilized by the rejection of Africans, by their extinction or degradation; then will civilization commit a graver mistake and more heinous crime than when it forced the Indian into the lava-bed, the Aztec into the Pacific or the Inca into bondage, and death in476 the mine. America has its race problem on hand, to be solved more by blacks than whites. Africa presents the same problem to the world. Whatever the white man may make out of African resource by following the usual formula of civilization, reduction, extirpation and so on, on the unchristian plea that the end justifies the means, that result can be safely increased a thousand times if only it is not forgotten that the native is the true, the natural, factor in any rational and permanent scheme of development.

The next section of Central Africa which comes under observation is that which is watered by the Lualaba, or in other words, the Congo, from Stanley Falls to Lake Bangweola. This is an immense section, embracing 246,000 square miles, or a length of 1260 miles. This section comprehends the several lakes on the Lualaba and the drainage system on both sides of that river, but excluding Tanganyika, and that part of the reservoir system known as the Muta Nzigé. Lake Bangweola covers 10,000 square miles; Lake Moero, 2,700 square miles; and Lake Kassali, 2,200 square miles. From Stanley Falls to Nyangwé is 327 miles, all navigable, except the six miles below Nyangwé. On the right side, going up, the Lualaba receives the Leopold river, navigable for thirty miles; the Lowa, navigable for an unknown distance; the Ulindi, 400 yards wide, and navigable; the Lira, a deep, clear stream, 300 yards wide; the Luama, 250 miles long; the Luigi, and Lukuga, the latter being the outlet of Lake Tanganyika.

On the left side, the Lualaba receives the Black River, the Lumani, and the Kamolondo. Above Nyangwé, the main stream is again navigable to Moero Lake. Altogether there are 1,100 miles of navigable water in this section. It has, for twenty years, been a favorite stamping ground for slave traders, and its population has therefore been greatly decimated, yet Stanley estimates it at 6,000,000, embraced in nine principal and many subordinate tribes. On the Lower Lualaba are four important trading points, long used by the Arabs for their nefarious purposes, and all readily accessible to the eastern coast of Africa, over well defined routes. These points are Kasongo, Nyangwé, Vibondo, and Kirundu. They are even more accessible from the west coast by way of the Congo, and Stanley regards them as valuable points for the gathering477 and dissemination of trade, since their populations have had twenty years of experience in traffic with outsiders. With their assistance the fine herds of cattle reared by the tribes of the plains east of the Lualaba might be brought to that river, and distributed along the entire length of the Congo, or even carried to European markets. This section is just as rich in natural products as that of the Upper Congo, and of the same general character.

The Chambesi is the main stream pouring into Lake Bangweola. Stanley makes it give a name to the section which embraces the head-waters of the Congo. It is a basin, walled in by high mountains whose sides and ravines furnish the springs of the Congo, and whose heights form the water-shed between the Congo and Zambesi. The Chambesi is a large, clear, swift stream, with several important affluents. It runs through a country, overgrown with papyrus, rushes, and tall grasses, which are most wearisome to the traveler. The country abounds in food, and the people are “civil and reasonable,” as Livingstone says. The interminable prairies are broken only by occasional rows of forest, indicative of a stream or ravine. Much of the land is inundated during the rainy season, giving rise to swamps of great extent and of difficult passage. Where this is not the case, the land affords rich pasturage for the herds of the Babisa and other tribes engaged in stock raising. This remote but interesting section is not over 46,000 miles in extent, with a population of 500,000.

As Stanley depends on Livingstone for his description of the Chambesi and Upper Lualaba country, and as this region was the object of a special journey by Livingstone—unfortunately for science and humanity, his last journey—it is proper to get an impression of it from the great explorer himself.

He started for it from Delagoa Bay, by way of the Rovuma river, which empties into Delagoa Bay, on the east coast nearly half way between the mouth of the Zambesi and Zanzibar. This river has its source well inland toward Lake Nyassa, and hence its ascent would bring him into the Lake region. All this ground has now become historic through the English and Portuguese struggle for its permanent possession.

Though the last of Livingstone’s journeys it was his most hopeful.478 Says he:—“The mere animal pleasure of traveling in a wild, unexplored country is very great. When on lands of a couple of thousand feet elevation, brisk exercise imparts elasticity to the muscles, fresh and healthy blood circulates through the brain, the mind works well, the eye is clear, the step is firm, and the day’s exertion always makes the evening’s repose thoroughly enjoyable. We have usually the stimulus of remote chances of danger from man or beast. Our sympathies are drawn out toward our humble, hardy companions by a community of interests, and it may be of perils, which make us all friends. Nothing but the most pitiable puerility would lead any manly heart to make their inferiority a theme for self-exaltation. However, that is often done, as if with the vague idea that we can, by magnifying their deficiencies, demonstrate our own perfections. The effect of travel on a man whose heart is in the right place is, that the mind is made more self-reliant. It becomes more confident of its own resources—there is greater presence of mind. The body is soon well knit. The muscles of the limbs grow as hard as a board, and seem to have no fat. The countenance is bronzed and there is no dyspepsia. Africa is a most wonderful country for the appetite, and it is only when one gloats over marrow bones or elephants’ feet that indigestion is possible. No doubt much toil is involved, and fatigue of which travelers in the more temperate climes can form but a faint conception. But the sweat of one’s brow is no longer a curse when one works for God. It proves a tonic to the system and is actually a blessing. No one can truly appreciate the charm of repose unless he has undergone severe exertion.”

Thus buoyantly he started for the interior, employing a retinue of human carriers and servants, and supplementing them with camels, mules and trained buffaloes. It was, in some respects, the most unique caravan of exploration that ever entered an unknown land. As to camels for carriers, away from the desert and through trackless jungle and forest, it was in the nature of an experiment which soon grew tiresome and ended in failure. As to the mules, they soon fell a prey to the tsetse fly. As to the buffaloes, which, together with the native oxen, had stood him in good stead through all his wanderings in the Kalahari desert, where they are in daily use as480 beasts of burden and the saddle by the natives, these too fell a victim to the merciless attack of the tsetse. He was therefore left with his two faithful attendants, Chuma and Susi, and his retinue of native carriers.

ON A JOURNEY IN THE KALAHARI DESERT.

Passing through the wonderful country which borders the Rovuma, a country of peaceful tribes and plentiful products, with nothing more than the usual adventures of an African traveler, he at last arrived at Lake Nyassa. At this lake, Livingstone was on the west side of what is now known as the Mozambique territory, though it is more familiar as Nyassaland. The lake is part of the northern Zambesi water system, and its outlet into that stream is through the river Shiré. On account of the absence of boats, which were all in the hands of suspicious Arab slave merchants, he was forced to pass down the east side of the lake and cross over its outlet, the Shiré. It was by the waters of this beautiful river and the Zambesi that Livingstone always hoped to secure an easy access to Central Africa. The only obstacles then were the foolish policy of the Portuguese with regard to custom duties at the mouth of the Zambesi, and the falls on the Shiré which obstruct its navigation for seventy miles. Had he lived a few more years he would have seen both of these obstacles in part overcome, and the mission work of Bishop Steere, supplementing that of Bishop Mackenzie, so far forward as to girdle the lake with prosperous mission stations. As Livingstone rounded the southern end of the lake, he could not help recalling the fact that far down the Shiré lay in its last sleep the body of the lamented Mackenzie, and that further down on the right bank of the Zambesi slept the remains of her whose death had changed all his future prospects. His prophecy that at no distant day civilization and the Gospel would assert itself in this promising land is now meeting with fulfillment in the claims of England to a right of way into Central Africa through this very region, at the expense of Portugal, whose older right has been forfeited by non-use.

In striking westward from the lake, Livingstone found the people to be a modification of the great Waiyau branch, which extends from the lake to Mozambique. He was also impressed with the fact that but one stock inhabited all the country on the Zambesi,481 Shiré, Lake Nyassa and Lake Tanganyika, owing to the slight difference in their dialects. The first tribe he came in contact with were both pastoral and agricultural. Their cattle ranged over grassy, fertile plains, and were characterized by the large hump on the shoulders, which seemed, in some instances, to weigh as much as a hundred pounds. They cultivated very fine gardens, and all seemed to work, though the burden of labor fell on the slaves. Wild animals were plenty, and during Livingstone’s stay in the village a woman was carried away and wholly devoured by a lion.

WOMEN CARRIERS.

In passing westward to the next village, his escort consisted of a large party of Waiyau, accompanied by six women carriers, who bore supplies for their husbands, a part of which consisted of native beer. His course brought him upon that peculiarity of soil which characterizes all the head streams of the Shire county, the Zambesi and the Congo. He designates it as earth sponge. The vegetation483 about the streams falls down, but is not incorporated with the earth. It forms a rich, black loamy mass, two or three feet thick which rests on the sand of the streams. When dry it cracks into gaps of two or three inches in width, but when wet it is converted into a sponge, which presents all the obstacles of a swamp or bog to the foot of the traveler.

On this journey, he witnessed a native method of hunting with dogs and the basket trap. The trap is laid down in the track of some small animal and the dogs are put on the trail. The animal in its flight runs into the open mouth of the trap, and through a set of converging bamboo splits which prevent its return. Mice and rats are caught in similarly constructed traps, which are made of wire instead of wood. A similar method of catching wild animals of larger growth was formerly in vogue in the southern Zambesi section. Long leads of wattled palisading were erected, open at the base and gradually narrowing to an apex, in which a pit was dug covered over with a layer of grass. Hunters scoured the plains in extended circles, beating in all the game within the circles. The frightened beasts, pushed by the gradually closing hunters and demoralized by their antics and noises, rush into the trap prepared for them and fall helplessly into the pit, where they are captured. This method of hunting is called “hopo.”

DRIVING GAME INTO THE HOPO. Larger.

PIT AT END OF HOPO. Larger.

The village he reached was inhabited by the Manganza, who are extremely clever in the art of manufacture. Their looms turn out a strong serviceable cotton cloth. Their iron weapons show a taste for design not equalled by any of their neighbors, and it is the same with all implements relating to husbandry. Though far better artisans than the more distinctive Waiyau, they are deficient in dash and courage. He was now at an elevation of 4,000 feet above the sea, in the midst of a very fine country, where the air was delightfully clear and delicious. The cultivation was so general, and the fields so regularly laid out, that it required but little imagination to picture it as an English scene. The trees were only in clumps, and marked the tops of ridges, the sites of villages or the places of sepulture. The people go well armed with bows and arrows, and fine knives of domestic manufacture, and being great hunters they have pretty well rid their section of game. The women485 wear their hair long, dress in reasonably full clothing, and have somewhat the appearance of the ancient Egyptians.

The westward journey brought him to the Kanthunda people, partly plain-dwellers and partly mountaineers. They are very pompous and ceremonious. Food was found in plenty, raised by their own hands, since game was well nigh extinct. The villages were now very frequent, mostly situated in groves composed of large trees. The country was broken into high ranges of hills with broad valley sweeps between. The thermometer frequently sank to 64° at night, but the sun was intolerably hot during the day, necessitating short journeys.

All this time Livingstone had been passing westward through the system which drains either into Lake Nyassa or directly into the Zambesi. His objective being the basin which supplies the head streams of the Congo, he turned his journey northward in the direction of the mountains which divide the two great river systems.

The tribes he now struck were greatly harassed by the Mazuti, who stole their corn annually and made frequent raids for the capture of slaves. Yet they were hospitable and prosperous, being skillful weavers and iron-workers. The country was mountainous, for he was on the divide between the waters which drain into Lake Nyassa and those which flow into the Loangwa on the west, the latter being an important affluent of the Zambesi. Striking the head-waters of the Lokushwa, a tributary of the Loangwa, he followed its course to the main stream, through a country of dwarf forests, and peoples collected in stockades, who were the smiths for a large region, making and selling hoes and other iron utensils.

He crossed the Loangwa at a point where it is 100 yards wide, and in a country abounding in game. It was here that he indulged in those regretful thoughts respecting the gradual passing away of the magnificent herds of wild animals—zebras, elands, buffaloes, giraffes, gnus, and numerous species of deer and antelope—which once roamed all over Central and South Africa, down to the Cape of Good Hope, which are every year being thinned away, or driven northwards. The lion—the boasted king of animals—makes a poor figure beside the tsetse fly in travellers’ records. The general impression about him is that, in spite of his formidable strength,487 his imposing roaring, and his majestic mane, he is a coward and a skulker. Livingstone had a hearty contempt for the brute, though in his time he had been severely mauled and bitten by him. The lion, however, when sore pressed by hunger, has been known to pluck up sufficient courage to tear off the flimsy roof of a native hut and leap down upon the sleeping inmates. The elephant—a much grander animal in every respect—occasionally performs a similar feat, his motive being curiosity, or perhaps mischief, if one of his periodical fits of ill-nature is upon him. A sight may now and again be got of a roaming rhinoceros tramping stolidly with surly gruntings through the depths of the thicket: a glade will be suddenly opened up where a group of shaggy buffaloes are grazing; or a herd of startled giraffes will break away in a shambling gallop, their long necks swinging ungracefully to and fro, as they crash their way through the forest, like “locomotive obelisks.” Now and then a shot may be got at a troop of zebras, pallahs, wild beeste, or other big-game animals, and the scanty larder be replenished for a time; but the traveler must often lay his account with being absolutely in want of food, and be fain, like Livingstone, to draw in his belt an inch or two in lieu of dinner.

CAPSIZED BY A HIPPOPOTAMUS.

But the most gallant sport in these regions—excelling in danger and excitement even elephant-hunting—is the chase of the hippopotamus. On the Loangwa Livingstone met an entire tribe, the Makomwe, devoted exclusively to hippopotamus hunting. They reside in temporary huts on the islands, and when game gets scarce in one place they move to another. The flesh of the animals they kill is exchanged for grain brought to the river by the more settled tribes. In hunting, two men have charge of a long, shapely canoe. The men, one in the bow and one in the stern, use short, broad paddles, and as they guide the canoe down the river upon the sleeping hippopotamus, not a ripple is seen on the water. The paddlers seem to be holding their breaths and communicate by signs only. As they near their prey, the harpooner in the bow, lays down his paddle, rises slowly up, with his harpoon poised in his hand, and at the right moment plunges it into the animal near the heart. His companion in the stern now backs the canoe. At this stage there is little danger, for the beast remains for a time at the bottom of the488 river. But soon his surprise is over, the wound begins to smart, he feels the need of air, through exhaustion. The strong rope attached to the harpoon has a float fastened to one end, and this float designates the spot occupied by the beast. It is known that he will soon come to the surface, and the canoe now approaches the float, the harpooner having another harpoon poised in hand ready for a second throw. The situation is full of danger. Perhaps the second lunge is successful, but the beast generally comes up with an angry bellow and is ready to smash the canoe in his enormous jaws. Woe betide the occupants, unless they seek safety in the water. This they are often forced to do, but even then are not safe, unless they swim below the surface. Other canoes now come up and each one sends an harpoon into the body of the prey. Then they all begin to pull on the connecting ropes, dragging the beast hither and thither, till it succumbs through loss of blood. Swarms of crocodiles invariably crowd about the scene, attracted by the scent of the bleeding carcass.

The people he met with after passing the Loangwa were less civil, yet by no means hostile. The forests were of larger growth and more extensive. Animal life was rich in variety, as much so as on the Zambesi itself, and it was nothing unusual to bring down a gnu, an eland, and other royal animals in the same day. The country was a wide valley stretch, clothed with vegetation and very fertile. It reached to the Lobemba country, whose people are crafty and given to falsehoods. They are fond of hunting and attack the elephant with dogs and spears. The land is beautiful and fruitful, but the tribes have been torn by slave-raiders and intestinal wars.

The Babisa people, further north, are franker and better off. They trade without urging, and are given to much social gaiety. Livingstone witnessed in their midst the performance of the rain dance by four females, who appeared with their faces smeared, with war hatchets in their hands, and singing in imitation of the male voice. These people degenerate as the northern brim of the Loangwa valley is approached, and are dependent for food on wild fruits, roots and leaves.

HUNTER’S PARADISE.

Passing further up among the head-streams of the Loangwa, the490 country becomes a succession of enormous earth waves, sustaining a heavy growth of jungle, without traces of paths. Marks of elephant and buffalo feet are frequent in the oozy soil about the streams, but the animals are shy. Serpents are plenty, and every now and then cobras and puff-adders are seen in the trails. The climate is delightful, bordering on cool, for now it must be understood, the elevation is high, the traveller being well up on the water-shed between the Congo and Zambesi.

At length the mountain ranges are scaled, and the streams begin to run westward into the Chambesi, the main head stream of the Congo. The wet season dawns and all the rivulets are full. The sponge which composes their banks is soggy, so that the feet slip and are constantly wet. All around is forest, deep and luxuriant. The low tribes of the Babisa extend over the mountain tips and partly down the western slopes, carrying along their mean habits and showing the wreck occasioned by the Arab slave merchants. They could furnish only mushrooms and elephants to Livingstone, and these at fancy prices.

It was here that Livingstone met with that mishap which contributed to his untimely end. His two Waiyau guides deserted, taking along his medicine chest. He felt as if he had received his death sentence, like poor Bishop Mackenzie, for the forest was damp and the rain almost incessant. From this time on, Livingstone’s constitution was continually sapped by the effect of fever-poison, which he was powerless to counteract.

Livingstone was now clearly on the Congo water-shed and was making his way toward the Chambesi. The people were shrewd traders, but poorly off for food. Camwood and opal trees constituted the forests. There was an abundance of animal life. Pushing his way down the Movushi affluent, he at length reached the Chambesi, wending its way toward Lake Bangweola, in a westerly direction. It is a full running stream, abounding in hippopotami, crocodiles and lizards. A crossing was made with difficulty, and the journey lay through extensive flooded flats. The villages were now mostly in the lowlands and surrounded by stockades as a protection against wild beasts. Elephants and buffaloes were plenty. Lions frequently picked off the villagers, and two men were thus492 killed at the village of Molemba the day before Livingstone’s arrival. Forests were still deep and dark, but the gardens were large. At Molemba he met King Chitapangwa, who gave him the royal reception described elsewhere in this volume, and presented him with a cow, plenty of maize and calabashes and a supply of hippopotamus flesh. The king was one of the best natured men Livingstone had met. The huts literally swarmed with a bird, like the water wag-tail, which seemed to be sacred, as in the Bechuana country. Here too the boys were of a lively type and fond of sport. They captured smaller game and birds, but were not as skillful as the young people of Zulu and Bechuana land, where the kiri weapon is handled with so much skill. This kiri is made of wood or rhinoceros horn, and varies from a foot to a yard in length, having at one end a knob as large as a hen’s egg. It is often used in hand to hand conflicts, but is the favorite weapon of the hunter, who hurls it, even at game on the wing, with marvellous precision.

BATLAPIN BOYS THROWING THE KIRI.

Livingstone did not descend into the lowlands on the lower Chambesi and about Lake Bangweola, but kept heading northward on the skirts of the Congo water-shed, in the direction of Tanganyika. He found about all the streams the spongy soil which so impeded his steps, the same alternations of hill and plain, forest and jungle. Everywhere were evidences of that gigantic and plentiful animal life which characterizes tropical Africa. To this wonderful exuberance was now added herds of wild hogs, whose leaders were even more formidable looking than the boars of the German forests.

PURSUIT OF THE WILD BOAR.

In his course toward Tanganyika he passed the people of Moamba who import copper from Kantanga and manufacture it into a very fine wire for ornaments and animal traps. The Babemba villages were passed, a tribe living within close stockades, and more warlike than those to the south. The banana now begins to flourish, and herds of cattle denote a pastoral life. Tobacco is grown in quantities sufficient for a home supply. Hunting is carried on by means of the hopo hedges, within whose bounds the wild beasts are frightened by circles of hunters.

In the Balungu country, Livingstone found Lake Liemba, amid494 a beautiful landscape. The chief, Kasongo, gave him a royal reception. He was gratified here to find men from Tanganyika. The lake is at the bottom of a basin whose sides are nearly perpendicular but tree-covered. Down over the rocks pour beautiful cascades, and buffaloes, elephants and antelopes wander on the more level spots, while lions roar by night. The villages are surrounded by luxuriant palm-oil trees, whose bunches of fruit grow so large as to require two men to carry them. The Balungu are an excessively polite people, but chary of information and loth to trade. This is because they have been so much raided by the Arabs and native Mazitu. The waters of this lake appeared to drain to the north into Tanganyika, but more probably by some other outlet to the Congo. Livingstone had never seen elephants so plenty as in this section. They came all about his camp and might be seen at any time eating reachable foliage, or grubbing lustily at the roots of small trees in order to prostrate them so as to get at their stems and leaves.

At Mombo’s village were found cotton fields and men and women skilled in weaving. Elephants abounded and did much damage to the sorghum patches, and corn-safes. Leopards were destructive to the goat-herds. Bird life was even more various than on the Zambesi.

Though weakened by fever, Livingstone determined to deflect westward toward Lake Moero, on the line of the Lualaba, and in the heart of the basin which gathers the Congo waters. The route lay through a prairie region, well watered by brisk streams. The Wasongo people have herds of cattle, which they house with care, and a plentiful supply of milk, butter and cheese. But they were frequently disturbed by Arab slave stealers, and their supplies of cattle were often raided by hostile neighbors.

RAIDING THE CATTLE SUPPLY.

It was here that Livingstone came upon the caravan of Tippoo Tib, who even at that date seems to have been a marauding genius, greatly feared by the natives for his craftiness and cruelty. The tribe of King Nsama proved to be an interesting one. “The people are regular featured and good looking, having few of the lineaments of their darker coast brethren. The women wear their hair in tasteful fashion and are of comely form.” King Nsama seemed to497 have been a Napoleon in the land, till about the time of Livingstone’s visit when he had received a Waterloo at the hand of the Arabs.

HUNTING ZEBRAS.

Livingstone now came to the Chisera river, a mile wide, and flowing into Lake Moero. The land on both sides of the stream sloped down to the banks in long, fertile stretches over which roamed elephants, buffaloes and zebras. The people were numerous and friendly. They find plenty of food in the large game which inhabits their district. There was the same plenty of zebras, buffalo and hippopotami over the flat stretch which brought him to the Kamosenga river. Crossing this stream he was in the country of the Karungu, who live in close stockades and are by nature timid. They were chary traders, though they had abundance of ivory and their granaries were filled with corn. It was all the result of intimidation by the Arab slavers; and, it must be remembered that Livingstone was following in the track of one of their caravans.

Bending a little to the southwest the country was well wooded and peopled. Large game was still plenty and the natives captured an abundant supply of food. The Choma river was reached, abounding in hippopotami and crocodiles. The natives fled on the approach of the party and it was with difficulty that a supply of food could be bought. Beyond, and over a long line of hills, the natives became less timid. Here the party met a large herd of buffaloes from which a supply of meat was obtained.

Their course now bore them to the Luao, flanked by granite hills which continue all the way to Moero. All the valleys in this part of the Congo basin are beautiful, reminding one of English or American scenery. The soil is very rich. The people live amid plenty, procured from their gardens and the chase. They would be friendly if left alone, but they can hardly be said to lead natural lives owing to the frequency and cruelty of Arab raids.

As the lake is neared, the villages become more frequent. The lake is reached at last. It is a large body of water flanked by mountains on the east and west. The immediate banks are sand, skirted by tropical vegetation, in the midst of which the fishermen build their huts. There are many varieties of fish in the waters,498 and some of them are large and fine. At the north end is the outflow of the lake into the Lualaba river, whose continuation becomes the Congo. The inflow at the south end, Livingstone calls the Luapula, which name, he says, it keeps up to Lake Bangweola. Beyond that it is the Chambesi whose head-waters he had already crossed. West of the lake is the Rua country. The people about the lake are Babemba, timid to a fault and hard to trade with.

Though reduced by fever, the infatuation of travel was so strong in Livingstone, that he turned southerly along the lake and struck for the unknown regions, about its southern end. He crossed an important tributary, the Kalongosi, whose waters were literally alive with fish, from the lake, seeking places to spawn. South of this stream the people are the Limda, not friendly disposed, yet not hostile. They are of the true negro type, and are great fishermen and gatherers of salt on the lake. The forests are not of rank growth, and the wood is chiefly bark-cloth and gum-opal, the latter exuding its gum in large quantities, which enters the ground and is preserved in large cakes for the use of future generations.

The streams are now very frequent, and difficult to cross when swollen. After crossing the Limda he was in the Cassembe country, which is very rich and populous, growing the finest of palm-oil and ground-nuts. The capital village is in the centre of a plain, and is more a Mohammedan than a native town. As neither goats, sheep nor cattle thrive, the people depend on fish and vegetables for food. Every hut had a cassava garden about it, and honey and coffee were plenty, as were maize, beans and nuts.

The Cassembe, take their name from the chief or ruler, who is a Pharaoh, or general, called the “Cassembe,” the ninth generation of which was on the throne when Livingstone was there. He gave him a royal reception, differing in many respects from all others which he had received. Cassembe had a dwarf, captured from some of the northern tribes, who figured as clown of the occasion. Then his wife appeared as a conspicuous mistress of ceremonies, preceded by men brandishing battle axes, beating on hollow instruments, and yelling at the crowd to clear the way. She was a comely looking personage of light color and regular features. In her hand were two enormous pipes filled ready for smoking. This499 procession was followed by the Cassembe, whose smile of welcome would have been captivating but for the fact that he was accompanied by his executioner, bearing a broad Limda sword and a large pair of scissors for cropping the ears of offenders. The queen is a thorough agriculturist, and pays particular attention to her fields of cassava, sweet-potatoes, maize, sorghum, millet, ground-nuts and cotton. The people as a whole are rough mannered and positively brutal among themselves. Livingstone spent a month among them, before he could get an escort to take him through the swamps to the southern end of Moero, which he was anxious to explore further.

The Cassembe, like many other tribes on the head waters of the Congo, procure copper ore from Kantanga, on the west, and work it into bracelets, anklets and fine wire for baskets and traps. They have been visited time and again by the Portuguese. By and by Livingstone bade Cassembe farewell and pushed for the southern and western shores of the lake. He took views from many points on the Rua mountains and approached its shores at many points. At every shore approach there was a profusion of moisture and of tropical forests abounding in buffaloes and elephants, while the open spaces gave views of pasturing zebras. The latter had not yet become an object of chase as in the lands south of the Zambesi, where they give great sport to both native and foreign hunters and where so much of the larger game has been swept away by inconsiderate sportsmen. Lions and leopards were also plenty, and the camps had to be guarded nightly against them. The population about the lake is everywhere dense, and the fish supply limitless. Livingstone found the lake, at his various points of observation from the Rua heights, to be from 30 to 60 miles wide, and the natives claimed that it was larger than Tanganyika. They do not pretend to cross the lake in boats, deeming it too long and dangerous a journey, in a country where storms are frequent and the waters are apt to be lashed into fury by the winds.

The circuit of Lake Moero, the almost continuous wading of swamps and crossing of swollen streams, the arrival at Cassembe again and the expression of a determination to go still further south into the swampy regions, to discover Lake Bemba, or Bangweola,500 instead of back to Tanganyika, where rest and medicine could be had, caused the desertion of Livingstone’s entire traveling force except his always faithful Chuma and Susi. But having attained the consent of Cassembe to proceed, and having re-equipped himself as best he could, he started for Bangweola, keeping parallel with the Luapula, but a day’s march away from its swamps. Even then, the crossing of the frequent tributaries made his journey tedious and dangerous. It was through a region of hill and vale, forest and plain, of varied geological formation. At many points he came upon developments of iron ore, which the natives worked and he had no doubt that this valuable mineral existed in abundance in this region. It ought to be remembered that the Kantanga copper region, whence all the eastern coast draws a supply, lies but a few days’ journey west of the Luapula, and in this part of the Congo basin.

The people were the Banyamwezi, smart traders and given to lying like Greeks. They are populous, but having been raided by the Mazitu, many of their villages were deserted. Passing through their country, the land becomes flat and forest covered, and so continues all the way to Bangweola. The streams are all banked by the juicy sponge, before described, which make traveling so treacherous and tiresome. All the forests are infested with lions and leopards, necessitating the greatest care at night.

It was January 18th, 1868, when Livingstone first set eyes on Lake Bangweola. The country around the lake is all flat and free from trees, except the mosikisi, which is spared for its dense foliage and fatty oil. The people have canoes and are expert fishermen. They are numerous, especially on the large islands of the lake. The variety of fish is numerous and some are taken which measure four feet in length. The bottom of the lake is sandy, and the shores reedy. During windy weather the waters become quite rough and dangerous. The islanders have herds of goats and flocks of fowls, and are industrious and peaceable, not given to curiosity, but sitting unconcernedly and weaving their cotton or knitting their nets, as a stranger passes by. According to Livingstone’s estimate this splendid body of water is some 150 miles long by 80 broad. The Lokinga mountains, extending from the southeast to501 the southwest are visible, and this range joins the Mokone range, west of Kantanga, which range is the water-shed between the Zambesi and Congo basins.

The people are still the Banyamwezi. Besides being skilled in weaving cotton and in net-making, they are expert copper workers. In forging they use a cone-shaped hammer, without a handle. They use bellows, made of goat skin and wood. With these they smelt large ingots of copper in a pot, and pour it into moulds, which give a rough shape to the article they wish to forge.

Livingstone’s observations in this section taught him that there was no such thing as a rainy zone, to account for the periodical rise of rivers like the Nile and Congo. From May to October is a comparatively dry season, and from October to May almost every day gave a thunder shower, but there is no such continuous down pour as has been imagined by meteorologists in Europe. He accounts for the humidity of both the Congo and Zambesi watersheds, by the meeting of the easterly and westerly winds in that section, thus precipitating the evaporations of both oceans in mid-Africa. It is certain that the Congo does not get its yellow hue from its head waters, for all the streams run clear even when swollen. The sponges, or bogs, which are so frequent are accounted for by the fact that some six to eight feet beneath the surface is a formation of sand which cakes at the bottom, thus holding up the saturated soil above and preventing the escape of the water. The same is true of large sections on the Zambesi, and especially in the Kalahari Desert, though the vegetable mould is wanting on the top. In that desert wells must be dug only so deep. If water does not come, they must be dug in another place. To puncture the substratum of caked sand is to make an escape for the water, and create a dearth in an entire drainage system. A peculiarity of the sponge everywhere is that it absorbs so much water as to keep the streams from flooding till long after the shower. Then they assume what would be an unaccountable flow, but for knowledge of the fact that it has taken several hours for the rain-fall to penetrate them. When traveling on the Limda, Livingstone had great trouble with his ox teams, which became invariably bogged in the sponges, and when they saw the clear503 sand in the centre of the streams, they usually plunged headforemost for it, leaving nothing in sight but their tails.

DANGEROUS FORDING.

Livingstone’s return from Bangweola to Cassembe gave him no opportunity for observation, owing to the fact that the tribes were at war with one another, instigated by the Arabs, who were gathering a rich crop of slaves. Yet this misfortune was compensated in part by a return of his deserters to his service, on his arrival at Cassembe, thereby enabling him to continue his northward journey more comfortably, and to run the gauntlet of the contending tribes with greater safety.

His journey to Tanganyika, arrival at Ujiji, sickness there, receipt of welcome stores from the coast, slow recovery, make a sad history, but does not add to our knowledge of the natural features and resources of the Congo region. However, our interest is again awakened in this heroic adventurer when we find him once more on his feet and resolved to visit the land of the Manyuema, off to the west and on the Lualaba, in the very heart of the Upper Congo valley, and the stamping ground of the now celebrated Tippoo Tib. The Manyuema country was then unknown, and Livingstone went in the trail of the first of those Arab hordes which ever visited it, but whose repeated visits in quest of ivory and slaves have carried murder, fire, theft and destruction to a once undisturbed, if not happy people.

The journey lay from Kasenge, on the west coast of Tanganyika, near its middle, in a north-west direction to the great market town of Nyangwe, on the Lualaba, or Upper Congo. He found the route hilly but comparatively open. Villages were frequent and the natives friendly, till the Manyuema themselves were reached. There was an abundance of elephants and buffaloes, which kept them supplied with meat. Where forests grew, the trees were of gigantic proportions, and very dense, affording a complete escape for wild animals when exhausted or crippled in the chase. The native huts were of a superior kind, with sleeping apartments raised from the ground. The soil was fertile, and the cultivation of vegetables was general. On the route they came into the region of the oil-palm, which does not flourish eastward of this, but assumes a more gigantic growth as the western coast is approached.

504

A little more than midway between Tanganyika and Nyangwe, is Bambarre, a flourishing village, surrounded by gardens, which the men help to cultivate, though all the other duties of farm and house are imposed upon the women, who are actual “hewers of wood and drawers of water” for the tribe. They made willing carriers, and are of comely form. Here the soko is believed to be a charm for rain. One was caught for meteorological purposes, with the result that the captor had the ends of two fingers and toes bitten off. Livingstone saw the nest of a soko, or gorilla, and pronounced it a poor architectural contrivance. A young soko, however, he regarded as the most wonderful object in nature, so ugly as to excite astonishment, yet so quaint as to stimulate curiosity. Like the kangaroo, it leaves one in doubt whether repulsion or attraction is uppermost in the mind when viewing it. In the vicinity are hot springs, and earthquakes are common, passing from east to west. The tribes of Bambarre hold the Manyuema in great fear, regarding them as of man eating propensity.

Leaving Bambarre, Livingstone was soon in the extensive country of the famed Manyuema, a tribe, or rather an entire people, hardly surpassed for size and power by even the Zulus, Macololos, Ugandas or Niam-Niams, a tribe whose name is one of terror far below Stanley Falls and far above Nyangwe, and whose unamiable qualities have of late years been greatly increased by the hold which Tippoo Tib, the Arab imperator on Lualaba, has gotten upon them.

Livingstone’s journey toward their capital was through the most remarkable country he had seen in Central Africa. He had elephant and rhinoceros meat of his own shooting, and plenty to trade to the natives for other dainties. The land is a beautiful succession of hills and dales. The villages are frequent and perched on the slopes so as to secure quick drainage. The streets run east and west in order that the blazing sun may lick up the moisture. The dwellings are in perfect line, with low thatched roofs, and every here and there are larger establishments with grounds, which answer for public assemblages. The walls are of beaten clay, and the insides are cosy and clean. The clay walls are so compact as to stand for ages, and frequently men return, after a site has been deserted for generations, to repair and re-occupy their ancestral506 abodes. The people practice the rite of circumcision, after the manner of the Abyssinians or Hebrews. The women are good housekeepers, and preserve their food from the ants, which are in great numbers and of many varieties, by slinging it from the ceiling of their huts in earthen pots or neatly made baskets.

A YOUNG SOKO.

Palms crown the heights of all the mountains and hills, and the forests, usually of a width of five miles between the groups of villages, are indescribable for their luxuriance and beauty. Climbers fold themselves gracefully over the gigantic trees, wild fruit abounds, and monkeys and brilliant birds skip and flit from bough to bough, with continuous chatter and chirp. The soil is excessively rich and the people cultivate largely, even though they are much separated by feuds and dense forest reaches. Their maize bends its fruit stalk round like a hook. They insert poles in the ground for fences, and these soon sprout making substantial and impervious hedges. Climbing plants are trained from pole to pole, and to these are suspended the ears of corn to dry. This upright granary forms a wall around the entire village, and the women take down corn at their will and distribute it to the men. The women are very naked. They are thrifty, however, and may be seen on any market day carrying their produce to the villages on their heads, or slung in receptacles over their shoulders. No women could be fonder of beads and ornaments than they, and Livingstone found them easy to trade with, when at all friendly.

The receptions Livingstone met with in the various villages, as he neared the Lualaba, were as various as the humors of the people. Some received him gladly, others with suspicion, and still others with rudeness, saying, “If you have food at home, why come you so far and spend your beads to buy it here?” On the Luamo, a tributary of the Lualaba, two hundred yards broad and very deep, the chiefs proved so hostile as to refuse to lend their canoes to the party to cross over. The women were particularly outspoken, and claimed that the party were identical with the cruel strangers (Arabs) who had lately robbed them. At length the warriors of the place surrounded the party, with their spears and huge wooden shields, and marched them bodily out of the district.

Wherever the wood has been cleared in this section, the soil507 immediately brings a crop of gigantic grasses. These are burned annually. Livingstone’s way now deflected to the north, through kindlier villages, separated by damp forests. The rainy season was on and the streams were all swollen. Evidences of large game were all around him. He passed an elephant trap, which was made of a log of heavy wood twenty feet long, with a hole at one end through which a vine passed to suspend it. At the other end a lance of wood, four feet long, is inserted. A latch string runs to the ground, which, when touched by the animal’s foot, causes the log to fall, and its great weight drives the lance into the animal’s body.

The people here were more friendly and very curious as they never had seen a white man before. They have a terrible dread of the Arabs, and strange to say the Arabs feared them as much, for nothing could convince an Arab that the Manyuema are not cannibals. It must be remembered that Livingstone wrote some years ago and before the Arabs acquired supremacy over these natives. It is a peculiarity of African tribes that nothing can exceed the terror inspired by a reputation in another tribe for cannibalism. It was a common thing on the Shiré and Zambesi, for Livingstone to hear the natives there speak of tribes far away to the north—like diseases, they are always far away—who eat human bodies, and on every occasion the fact was related with the utmost horror and disgust. Livingstone never took stock in these stories, nor in the wilder ones of the Arabs, and he mentions no authenticated case of cannibalism in all his volumes. It is more than likely that African cannibalism exists only in the imagination of persons who prefer sensation to fact.

Livingstone seems to have become bewildered on this northward journey, and crossed his track with the intention of making more directly for the Lualaba. Though he found the people kind and the country indescribably rich in vegetation, the way was difficult owing to the softness of the ground and the swollen streams. He however succeeded, with much hardship, in getting back to the route direct from Bambarre to the river. On this route the villages were almost continuous, as many as nine being passed in a single day. The people were kindly disposed and very curious. They brought food willingly, traded eagerly, preferring bracelets to508 beads, and in one village he was received by a band, composed of calabashes. Goat and sheep herds were plenty, tended mostly by children, who lived among and loved their charges as if they were human beings.

A grass burning resulted in the capture of four sokos by the natives, besides other animals. The full grown soko would do well to stand for a picture of the devil. One of them, it appears, was a young one which gave Livingstone an opportunity for study. His light-yellow face showed off his ugly whiskers and faint apology for a beard. The forehead, villainously low, with high ears, was well in the back-ground of a great dog mouth. The teeth were slightly human but the canines showed the beast by their large development. The hands, or rather fingers, were like those of the natives. The flesh of the feet was yellow. The eagerness with which the Manyuema devoured it left the impression that eating sokos was a good way to get up a reputation for cannibalism.

The soko sometimes kills the leopard by seizing both paws and biting them, but often gets disemboweled in the attempt. Lions kill sokos with a bound, tear them to pieces, but seldom eat them. They live in communities of about ten, each male having a single wife. Interference with a wife is visited by the resentment of all the other males, who catch and cuff the offender till he screams for mercy.

Livingstone was now sorely detained by sickness and the desertion of his carriers. The delay gave him opportunity to note the characteristics of the Manyuema country with more particularity. It is not a healthy country, not so much from fever as from debility of the whole system induced by damp, cold and indigestion. This general weakness is ascribed by some to the free use of maize as food, which produces weakness of the bowels and choleraic purging. Rheumatism is common and cuts the natives off. The Arabs fear this disease, and when attacked come to a stand-still till it is cured. Tape worm is frequent, and the natives know no remedy for it.

The natives have wonderful stores of ivory which the Arabs are eager for. They cultivate the ground with the hoe, but their hoeing is little better than scraping the ground, and cutting through509 the roots of the grasses. This careless husbandry leaves the roots of maize, ground-nuts, sweet-potatoes and sorghum to find their way into the rich, soft soil, which they succeed in doing. The ground-nuts and cassava hold their own against the grasses for years. Bananas grow vigorously on the cleared spaces.

The great want of the Manyuema is national life. Of this they have none. Each head man is independent of each other. Of industry they have no lack and the villagers are orderly toward each other, but they go no further. If a man of another district ventures among them, he is not regarded with more favor as a Manyuema than one of a herd of buffaloes is by the rest, and on the slightest provocation he is likely to be killed. They buy their wives from one another. A pretty girl brings ten goats. The new wife is led to the new home by the husband, where five days are spent, then she is led back to her home for five days, after which she comes to her new home permanently. Many of the women are handsome, having perfect forms and limbs. The conviction of Livingstone, after his experience with these people, was that if a man goes with a good-natured and civil tongue, he may pass through the worst people in Africa unharmed. He also draws a fine line between the unmixed and mixed African races, by a narrative of experience on the Shiré river. One of a mixed race stepped into the water to swim off to a boat, and was seized by a crocodile. The poor fellow held up his hands and screamed for help. Not a man went to his help, but allowed him to perish. When at Senna, in the Makololo country, a woman was seized by a crocodile. Instantly four natives rushed unbidden and rescued her, though they knew nothing about her. These incidents are typical of the two races. Those of mixed blood possess the vices of both races and the virtues of neither.

The fact that there is no supreme chief among the Manyuema, makes it difficult to punish murder except by war, and the feud is made worse, being transmitted from generation to generation. This state of affairs, when it came to be understood by such a crafty statesman as Tippoo Tib, contributed to his victory over the people, and that peculiar sovereignty which he exercises.

Livingstone got away from this place of confinement, and crossed the Mamohela, on his journey to Nyangwe. The country510 was a fine grassy plain watered by numerous rills, and skirted by mountains on either side, on which perched the neat villages of the natives. Then forests intervene of even more luxuriant growth than before, to be again succeeded by plains. The people seem to grow more stately and shapely, the women being singularly perfect in hands, feet and limbs, and of light brown color, but all with the orifices of their noses enlarged by excessive snuff taking. The humor of the villagers depended on how lately they had been raided by the Arabs. They seemed also to grow more clever in art, for now many forges were seen in active operation where iron was being shaped into spears and utensils.

MANYUEMA WOMEN.

At length the Lualaba is reached at Nyangwe, the capital of the Manyuema country, and the greatest market town in Central Africa.511 Long before Livingstone reached it he met upon the route hundreds of women wending their way thither with their marketing in baskets on their heads or slung in receptacles on their shoulders. As they trudged cheerfully along full of thought as to what they would receive in exchange or what they would buy, he could not help contrasting their condition with that of the women bent on a like errand in his own country, where the labor might be the same, but where there was happy exemption from such scenes of bloodshed as he was forced to witness while there. But as these have been already narrated the reader is here spared their horrible review.

The Manyuema prefer to do all their business in open market. If one says, “Come, sell me that fowl, or cloth,” the reply is, “Come to the market place.” The values there are more satisfactory and the transaction is open. The people had a fear of Livingstone, because they could not disassociate him from the Arab half-castes who had brought upon them untold misery.

He found the Lualaba at Nyangwe to be twenty feet deep in mid stream and subject to annual overflow just like the Nile—a mighty river, he says, three thousand yards wide, with steep banks and full of islands. The current runs at the rate of two miles an hour. His greatest trouble was to get a canoe to take him across the river. The natives thought his request for a large canoe, with which he intended to explore the river, meant war upon them, so they sent only small ones, capable of carrying two or three men, and which were entirely unfit for his purposes. The Manyuema on the left bank of the Lualaba, opposite Nyangwe, are called Bagenya. There are salt springs in their district, and they manufacture the salt for the Nyangwe market, by boiling the brine.

The salutations of the Manyuema are the same as those of the Bechuana people of the Kalihari desert, and indeed many of their customs reminded Livingstone of what he had seen south of the Zambesi, among the respective tribes. The natives of Nyangwe denied to Livingstone the stories of cannibalism that had been circulated about them. They never eat human flesh, unless it be the bodies of enemies killed in war, and not then through any liking for the flesh, which is salty and unpalatable, but because it makes them “dream of the dead man,” and, as it were, kill them512 over in their sleep. This a very comfortable way of getting a second vengeance, and is nearly allied to the reasoning which is at the bottom of cannibalism in the South Sea Islands, to wit, belief that the blood of a brave and fallen enemy transplants his bravery to the veins of him who partakes of it. Cannibalism, for the sheer love of eating human flesh, don’t exist in the world. It is a creation of the imagination, a product of the tale telling spirit, and is not fair to the pagan races.

Livingstone seems never to tire of praising the physical proportions of the Manyuema and says, he would back a company of them, for shape of head and physical form, male and female, against the whole Anthropological Society. He was surprised at the extent of country embraced in the Arab incursions. On questioning the slaves brought to Nyangwe by these marauders, he found them members of tribes far up and down the Lualaba, and westward of it many days’ journey. The copper of Kantanga reaches the Nyangwe market, and is readily bought up at high figures, in barter.

The great market of Nyangwe is held every third day. It is a busy scene, and every trader is in dead earnest. Venders of fish run about with potsherds full of snails and small fishes, or with smoked fishes strung on twigs, to exchange for cassava, potatoes, grain, bananas, flour, palm-oil, fowls, salt, pepper, and various vegetables. Each is bent on exchanging food for relishes, and the assertions of quality are as strong as in a civilized mart. The sweat stands out on their faces, cocks crow briskly from the baskets, and pigs squeal from their inclosures. Iron utensils, traps and cages are exchanged for cloth, which is put away for carriage in their capacious baskets. They deal fairly, and when differences arise, they appeal to each other and settle things readily on a basis of natural justice. With so much food changing hands among a throng which frequently numbers 3,000 souls, much benefit is derived, for some of them come twenty-five miles afoot. The men flaunt about in a nervous and excited way, but the women are the hardest workers. The potters hold up their wares and beat them with their knuckles to prove their quality by the sound. It is all a scene of fine natural acting—the eagerness with which they assert the value of their wares, and the withering looks of disgust when the buyer sees fit to513 reject the proffered article. Little girls run about selling cups of water to the thirsty traders, just as lemonade or ice-water boys ply their art in London during a procession. They are close buyers and sellers, prone to exaggerate the merits of their articles, yet satisfied when a bargain is clinched. Honesty is a rule, and when anything is stolen among the Manyuema, they know that it is the work of the Arab slaves.

The Manyuema children do not creep as white children do, but begin by putting forward one foot and using one knee. The fish of the Lualaba are of the same variety as in Lake Nyassa. Cakes made of ground-nuts are a common fare, as on the west coast. All Livingstone’s persuasions could not induce the natives to hire him a canoe large enough to navigate the river with. The Arabs had inflamed their imaginations by painting him as an enemy in disguise, but their real purpose was to keep control of all the larger boats themselves to assist in their river forays. Baffled by both natives and Arabs, and after waiting for many weary weeks at Nyangwe, he resolved to return to Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika.

His return journey was a repetition of the sights and scenes already described, varied of course by new opportunities for observing natural features and events. On nearing the Mamohela, he passed through a most populous region, with well constructed villages, abounding in goats, fowls, dogs, and pigs, with vegetable food of every tropical variety in plenty, while palm toddy, tobacco and bangue (Indian hemp) furnished them the dainties. The soil was so fruitful that a mere scraping with a hoe rendered a generous return. The forests afforded elephants, zebras, buffaloes and antelopes, and in the streams were abundance of fish. The antelope species in Africa is rich in variety, stalwart in form, and heavy horned. Those of the Chobe river are dappled in color and very beautiful. The quichobo is a rare species, and is more of a goat than an antelope. It has amphibious qualities, and when frightened will jump into the water and remain beneath the surface till danger has passed. At this point Livingstone was given a secret which would have been worth a fortune to him had he possessed it in time to have saved the camels, mules and buffaloes with which he started on this journey from the coast. It was to the effect that lion’s fat515 was a cure for the bite of the tsetse fly. As he had never seen a fat lion, he was incredulous, till assured that the Basango lions, in common with all other beasts, actually took on fat. A vial of the precious stuff was handed him, a proof of the fact that such a thing as lion fat did really exist. The cattle raising tribes of the plains west of Tanganyika, know the virtue of this ointment, and use it when they drive their herds toward the markets on the eastern coast.

TYPES OF AFRICAN ANTELOPES.

Sickness on the rest of the route to Tanganyika impaired his powers of observation and description. In general he found the country beautiful and fertile, but much disturbed by raiders. On his arrival at Tanganyika he was ferried across to Ujiji. Sick and in despair, his faithful Susi came rushing at the top of his speed one morning and gasped out, “An Englishman!” This was Stanley, on his mission of rescue. This meeting, and how the two explorers navigated Tanganyika, together with other things that went to make up one of the most remarkable interviews in history, are described elsewhere in this volume.

One would have thought that Livingstone could not fail to accompany Stanley home. But he did not, and, weakened as he was by disease, proclaimed to his rescuer a programme which embraced a journey round the south end of Tanganyika, southward across the Chambesi, round the south end of Lake Bangweola, due west to the mythical ancient fountains and thence to the copper-mines of Kantanga. All this, he says, “to certify that no other sources of the Nile can come from the south without being seen by me.” What heroism was here, yet in his condition, what infatuation! Poor man, deluded, self-sacrificial traveler, illy-advised adventurer! All this long journey, from the time he struck the Chambesi, months and months before, to Moero, to Tanganyika, to Bambare, to the Lualaba and Nyangwe, had been through the water system of the Upper Congo, and had nothing at all to do with the Nile sources, and now, going back to Bangweola and to the Chambesi for the purpose of contributing further to knowledge of the ultimate Nile sources, discovery of which he regarded as worth the sacrifice of his life, he was but stamping through the Congo basin again, and revealing the sources of a river which found an outlet516 in the Atlantic. But such were the uncertainties which confronted all these early African explorers. Even Stanley was uncertain whither the Lualaba would lead when he embarked on its waters, and although is volume furnished proof that it could not be the Nile, he was still prepared, from its northern course, to accept it as such, till it took its westward turn and straightened out for its Atlantic exit.

Writing on African beliefs, he says: “The African’s idea seems to be that they are under control of a power superior to themselves—apart from and invisible; good, but frequently evil and dangerous. This may have been the earliest religious feeling of dependence on Divine power, without any conscious feeling of its nature. Idols may have come in to give definite ideas of superior power, and the primitive faith or impression obtained by Revelation seems to have mingled with their idolatry, without any sense of incongruity. The origin of the primitive faith in Africans and others seems always to have been a Divine influence on their dark minds, which has proved persistent in all ages. One portion of primitive belief—the continued existence of departed spirits—seems to have no connection whatever with dreams, or, as we should say, with ‘ghost seeing,’ for great agony is felt in prospect of bodily mutilation, or burning of the body after death, as that is believed to render a return to one’s native land impossible. They feel as if it would shut them off from all intercourse with relatives after death. They would lose the power of doing good to those once loved, and evil to those who deserved their revenge. Take the case of the slaves in the yoke, singing songs of hate and revenge against those who sold them into slavery. They thought it right so to harbor hatred, though most of the party had been sold for crimes—adultery, stealing etc,—which they knew to be sins.”

In Central Africa one is struck with the fact that children have so few games. Life is a serious business, and amusement is derived from imitating the vocations of their parents—hut building, making little gardens, bows and arrows, shields and spears. In Southern Africa boys are very ingenious little fellows and have several games. They shoot birds with bows and arrows, practice with the kiri, and teach linnets to sing. They are expert at making guns and traps518 for small animals, and in making and using bird-lime. They make play guns with a trigger which go off with a spring and have cotton fluff as smoke. They shoot locusts very cleverly with these toy guns.

DINKA CATTLE HERD. Larger.

Desperate as Livingstone’s last undertaking seemed, he was well equipped for it by the receipt of fifty-seven porters sent up from Zanzibar by Stanley and a supply of cattle and donkeys. He found that much cotton was cultivated on the shores of Tanganyika, that the highlands surrounding the lake are cut into deep ravines, and that game was plenty everywhere, elephants, buffaloes, water buck, rhinoceri, hippopotami, zebras. The lake puts off numerous arms or bays into the mountains, some of which are of great width, cutting off travel entirely except at a distance from its shores.

Even before he had rounded the southern end of Tanganyika, he was out of heart with the experiment of using donkeys as carriers. He had all along contended that this hardy animal could be taken through regions infested with the deadly tsetse fly, even though horses, mules, dogs and oxen might perish. But he, for a second time, witnessed the death of one donkey after another from the bites of the African pest-fly. His cattle fared somewhat better, this time, but even they proved a poor means of keeping up a food supply, being apt to wander, subject to swellings from fly-stings, and a constant invitation to raiders. True, he escaped this last calamity, but other travelers in different parts of Africa have been less fortunate, as their accounts show.

As he passed down into the section which furnishes the head-streams of Lake Moero, the rains descended in volumes, the streams were swollen, the people were unkind, and travel became dismal and difficult, beyond any former experience. He was troubled with sickness and the desertion of his men. A leopard broke into his camp, at night, and attacked a woman carrier. Her screams frightened his last donkey and it ran away. The slave traders had stirred up the villages, so that trade for the necessaries of life was always difficult. He found the country a succession of hills and plains, forests and high grasses, with every evidence of great fertility. Dura, or the flour of sorghum seed, furnishes the staple food. His narrative of the streams he crossed is bewildering, but519 it shows the great plentitude of these Congo sources and quite reconciles one to the mighty volume of that magnificent river. With such an abundance of lively sources it must very largely defy active Equatorial evaporation and be at all seasons a surely navigable and valuable commercial water-way.

The sponges were now all full from the continuous rains, so that a stream 100 feet wide, had to be approached through a bog of twice that width. His last cow died, and he was wholly dependent on the natives for food. Pushing on, and bearing gently westward, he came into the immediate region of Bangweola. All around was flat, water-covered plain, alive with elephants and other large game. Every camping place was infested with ants. Life was miserable for the entire party, and Livingstone himself was so weak as to be incapable of passing the river and swamps, except by being carried.

He entered the lake with canoes, and pushed off to one of its numerous islands, or at least what he supposed to be an island, though it afterwards turned out to be only a rise in the plain which surrounds the true lake, and which was then entirely water-covered. The Basiba people occupy the northern shore of the lake. They proved to be hospitable and supplied plenty of fish and fowls with an occasional sheep. At every village a party of male and female drummers and dancers turned up, who gave music and exhibitions in dancing.

Crossing the mouth of the Chambesi in canoes, and entering the Kabinga country, he found a cattle raising section, though the cattle are wild. Elephants were plenty and very destructive of crops. The entire country about the lake was reedy and flooded. Many of the depressions in the plain were now arms of the lake, extending for twenty or thirty miles and so wide as to be seen across with difficulty. The journey now was mostly by canoes, and the camps were on elevations in the plain, which were now islands. Lions made the night hideous with their roaring. Fish and other food was abundant. The mouth of river after river was passed as it debouched into the lake. Livingstone grows weaker with every days’ exertion. It is only by the most herculean effort that he reaches Chitambo on the south side of the lake.520 His ability to observe and note has passed away. His power as a traveler and explorer is gone. Death seized him in Chitambo’s village, and his faithful Chuma and Susi bore his remains to the coast for transport to England.

We know of the Chambesi, of Lake Bangweola, of the Luapula, of Lake Moero, of the Lualaba, and of this magnificent section of the Upper Congo basin, from Livingstone. True, we know little of it, because the heroic traveler was sick unto death while threading the mazes of forest and plain which give character to the section. But he has given such an inkling of its wonderful resources of soil, animal life and people as to create fresh interest in the region and furnish supplementary evidence to all that has been said or dreamed of the wealth of the Congo basin.

The last of the sections into which Stanley divides the Congo basin is that of Tanganyika. This great lake is 391 miles long and 24 broad, with an area of 9400 square miles. The territory about the lake, belonging to the Congo water system, embraces 93,000 square miles. It is thickly populated, and contains probably 2,500,000 persons. The lake itself is 2750 feet above the sea, and it is bounded by mountains, north and south, which rise from 1500 to 2500 feet above its surface. The slopes of these mountains lead to lofty plateaus, which are fertile, densely peopled, and well covered with cattle herds. The natives are of a superior type, peaceably inclined and much attached to their pastoral occupations, and to the raising of sorghum, millet and maize. At various towns on the lake are large communities of Arab traders, the most noted being at Ujiji, where Stanley met Livingstone on his celebrated journey of rescue. The International Association supports a flourishing mission on the east side of the lake, and others have been recently founded.

In general this section supports the natural products indigenous to the Congo basin, though the oil-palm is not seen east of Ujiji. Around the lake the natives make a larger use of the cereals, than further west, where the banana and manioc grow more luxuriantly. There is hardly any finer market in Africa than that of Ujiji, where may be seen for sale an intermixture of products such as would do credit to a first-class city, were it not for the fact that human beings521 often constitute one of the articles of merchandise. On any propitious market day may be seen a full supply of maize, millet, beans, ground-nuts, sugar-cane, wild-fruit, palm-oil, bananas, plantains, honey, ivory, goats, sheep, cattle, fowls, fish, tobacco, nets, copper and iron ware, cloth, barks, hoes, spears, arrows, swords, etc., etc. On the northwest side of this section, at Uvira, are iron works of no mean proportions, whose products are iron wire and various iron utensils for both household and agricultural purposes.

In his recapitulation of resources, Stanley estimates the Congo basin to contain as follows:—

The ownership of the great basin, as determined at the Berlin conference, is as follows:—

Inquiring, exacting commerce is ever ready with practical questions. When it has listened with attentive ear to Stanley’s bewildering estimates, astounding calculations and captivating statements, it coldly asks what return shall we find for our wares and for the expense and trouble of landing them in these tropical markets? He boldly replies, you cannot shut your eyes to the fact that Western Africa is already contributing her half of a trade with Europe, which already exceeds $150,000,000 a year. This comes almost exclusively from a coast line 2900 miles long. Enlarge this line, by adding the 6000 miles of navigable waters which are embraced in the Congo basin, and this trade by the products which would thereby find an outlet, and you would have a traffic equal to $500,000,000 annually. Improve this inland navigation by a railroad522 around the cataracts of the Congo, enlist the sympathies and energies of the 43,000,000 of people who inhabit the basin, or even of the 4,483,000 who dwell on navigable banks of the water-ways, give them some idea of the incomputable wealth that is over, around and under them, and which may be had by simply reaching for it, regard them as men and deal with them as such, and then you will soon realize that the Congo banks are worth far more to commerce, mile for mile, than the ocean shores. And well might he say this, for the banks of the Congo are a succession of villages, alive with people imbued with the trading spirit, well acquainted with the value of oils, rubber, dye-woods and gums, anxious for cloth, brass-rods, beads and trinkets. This cannot be said of all places on the sea-coast. Stanley narrates that eager natives have followed him for miles offering ivory and red wood powder for cloth, and that when they failed to effect a trade, they would ask in despair, “Well, what is it you do want? Tell us and we will get it for you.”

So sanguine was Stanley of the commercial situation on the Congo and in tropical Africa that he ventured to tell the practical merchantmen of Manchester how they could triple the commerce of the entire west coast of Africa by building two sections of narrow gauge railway, each 52 and 95 miles long, connected by steamboat navigation, or a continuous railway of 235 miles long, around Livingstone Falls, and thereby opening the Upper Congo to steamboats. Such a step would insure the active coöperation of more than a million of native traders who are waiting to be told what they can furnish out of their inexhaustible treasures, besides those they have already set a value on, as iron, oil ground-nuts, gum, rubber, orchilla, camwood, myrrh, frankincense, furs, skins, feathers, copper, fibres, beeswax, nutmegs, ginger, etc.

Stanley showed how a few factories at available points for the conversion of cruder articles into those of smaller bulk, and how the trading posts which were sure to spring up on the site of every important village, would gather in sufficient wares to tax the capacity of such a railroad as he contemplated to the uttermost, and realize a handsome income on the investment. He even gave estimates of the cost of the enterprise, which have523 been borne out by the practical engineers who have since taken the work of building it in hand.

He showed further how human and animal carriers had failed to solve the problem of porterage around Livingstone Falls, although the interests beyond, identified with the work of the International Association and with Christian missions, were expending annually a sum equal to 5¹⁄₂ per cent. on the estimated cost of a railway.

He eloquently concludes his survey of tropical African resources thus: “Until the latter half of the nineteenth century the world was ignorant of what lay beyond the rapids of Isangila, or how slight was the obstacle which lay between civilization and the broad natural highway which cleared the dark virgin regions of Africa into two equal halves, and how nature had found a hundred other navigable channels by which access could be gained to her latest gift to mankind. As a unit of that mankind for which nature reserved it, I rejoice that so large an area of the earth still lies to be developed by the coming races; I rejoice to find that it is not only high in value, but that it excels all other known lands for the number and rare variety of precious gifts with which nature has endowed it.

“Let us take North America for instance, and the richest portion of it, viz: the Mississippi basin, to compare with the Congo basin, previous to its development by that mixture of races called modern Americans. When De Soto navigated the Father of Waters, and the Indians were undisputed masters of the ample river basin, the spirit of enterprise would have found in the natural productions some furs and timber.

“The Congo basin is, however, much more promising at the same stage of undevelopment. The forests on the banks of the Congo are filled with precious red-wood, lignum vitæ, mahogany and fragrant gum trees. At their base may be found inexhaustible quantities of fossil gum, with which the carriages and furnitures of civilized countries are varnished; their foliage is draped with orchilla, useful for dye. The red-wood when cut down, chipped and rasped, produces a deep crimson colored powder, giving a valuable coloring; the creepers which hang in festoons from the trees524 are generally those from which India rubber is produced, the best of which is worth fifty cents a pound in a crude state; the nuts of the oil palm give forth a butter which is a staple article of commerce; while the fibres of others will make the best cordage. Among the wild shrubs are frequently found the coffee-plant. In its plains, jungles and swamps, luxuriate the elephants, whose teeth furnish ivory worth from two to three dollars a pound in an unworked condition; its waters teem with numberless herds of hippopotami, whose tusks are also valuable; furs of the lion, leopard, monkey, otter; hides of the antelope, buffalo, goat and cattle, may also be obtained. But what is of more value, it possesses over 40,000,000 of moderately industrious and workable people, which the red Indians never were. And if we speak of prospective advantages and benefits to be derived from this late gift of nature, they are not much inferior in number or value to those of the well developed Mississippi valley. The copper of Lake Superior is rivalled by that of the Kwilu valley and of Bembé. Rice, cotton, tobacco, maize, coffee, sugar and wheat thrive equally well on the broad plains of the Congo. This is only known after the superficial examination of a limited line which is not much over fifty miles wide. I have heard of gold and silver, but the fact of their existence requires confirmation and I am not disposed to touch upon what I do not personally know.

“For climate, the Mississippi valley is superior, but a large part of the Congo basin, at present inaccessible to the immigrant, is blessed with a temperature under which Europeans may thrive and multiply. There is no portion of it where the European trader may not fix his residence for years, and develop commerce to his own profit with as little risk as is incurred in India.

“It is specially with a view to rouse the spirit of trade that I dilate upon the advantages possessed by the Congo basin, and not as a field for the pauper immigrant. There are over 40,000,000 of native paupers within the area described, who are poor and degraded already, merely because they are compassed round by hostile forces of nature and man, denying them contact and intercourse with the elements which might have ameliorated the unhappiness of their condition. European pauperism planted amongst them would soon525 degenerate to the low level of aboriginal degradation. It is a cautious trader who advances, not without the means of retreat; the enterprising mercantile factor who with one hand receives the raw produce from the native, in exchange for the finished product of the manufacturer’s loom—the European middleman who has his home in Europe but his heart in Africa—is the man who is wanted. These are they who can direct and teach the black pauper what to gather of the multitude of things around him and in his neighborhood. They are the missionaries of commerce, adapted for nowhere so well as for the Congo basin, where are so many idle hands, and such abundant opportunities all within a natural “ring fence.” Those entirely weak-minded, irresolute and servile people who profess scepticism, and project it before them always as a shield to hide their own cowardice from general observation, it is not my purpose to attempt to interest in Africa. Of the 325,000,000 of people in civilized Europe, there must be some surely to whom the gospel of enterprise I preach will present a few items of fact worthy of retention in the memory, and capable of inspiring a certain amount of action. I am encouraged in this belief by the rapid absorption of several ideas which I have promulgated during the last few years respecting the Dark Continent. Pious missionaries have set forth devotedly to instil in the dull mindless tribes the sacred germs of religion; but their material difficulties are so great that the progress they have made bears no proportion to the courage and zeal they have exhibited. I now turn to the worldly wise traders for whose benefit and convenience a railway must be constructed.”

526

THE WHITE MAN IN AFRICA.

On the bright, accessible side of Africa the Pharaohs built their temples, obelisks, pyramids and sphinxes. When history dawned the seats of Egyptian learning and splendor were already in decay. In her conquest and plunder of a thousand years, victorious Rome met her most valiant antagonists in Africa, and African warriors carried their standards to the very gates of the capitol on the Tiber. In later days the Italian republics which dotted the northern coasts of the Mediterranean found their commercial enterprise and their ascendency on the sea challenged by the Moorish States which comprised the Barbary coast. Still later, when Spain was intent on conquest in America, and the establishment of colonies which would insure the spread of the Catholic religion, Portugal, in a kindred spirit, was pushing her way down the western coast of Africa, acquiring titles by virtue of discovery, establishing empires of unknown extent, founding Catholic missions and churches, striving for commercial exaltation, till her mariners rounded the Cape of Good Hope, turned northward on the eastern shores, and again took up the work of colonizing, from Mozambique to the outlet of the Red Sea.

We never tire of reading the old stories of Portuguese discovery and colonization, and our sympathies are aroused for a people who struggled so heroically to open a new world to the civilization of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But Portuguese effort came to naught, when measured by any modern standard of success. It was baffled by a thousand undreamt of forces. Its failure, however, rendered conspicuous the problem, now more pressing than ever: has the white man a natural mission in Africa? Has not God designed527 it as the natural home of the dark race? Are not all our visions of conquest and permanent redemption, through and by means of the white races, but idle outcrops of the imagination, or worse, but figments born of our desire to subdue and appropriate? Can compensation come, in the form of commercial, moral or spiritual advantage, adequate to the great sacrifice to be entailed on humanity by substitution of white energy for that which is native to African soil and climate?

It is not worth while to try to answer these questions in the affirmative by appeals to old historic Egypt, to Greek or Roman occupancy, to Arab and Mohammedan ascendancy, to Portuguese conquest and missionary enterprise, to the weird adventures and sad fates of the school of intrepid explorers which preceded and followed the redoubtable Scotchman, Mungo Park, nor to the long role of efforts and enterprises made by the respective nations of Europe to acquire rich slices of African territory, after Portugal began to lose her commercial grip, and after foreign colonization became a European ambition. No, for as yet nothing appears to show that the white man had a mission in Africa, except to gratify his home ambitions, cater to his European pride, satisfy his desire to pilfer, burn and murder. There is no thought yet manifest that the redemption of Africa involved more than the subjugation of her people and the forcible turning to foreign account of her resources. The question has not as yet been asked by the ethnologist, by the grave student of causes and effects, nor even by the calculating adventurer,—“Is there an African destiny which admits the white races as fair and permanent participants, or one which implies universal good when the seeming laws of God respecting the home of nations are reversed?”

Nor does an affirmative answer to any of the above questions arise out of England’s theft of the Cape of Good Hope, and of that sovereignty she now maintains over the Kimberly diamond diggings and the Vaal river sections. National greed or political finesse may excuse much, as the dark science of diplomacy goes, but they do not make clear how far the natural order of things can be changed with benefit to all concerned. This section of Africa is, however, below the tropics, and perhaps does not involve the problem of races so deeply as the equatorial regions.

528

Let us therefore turn to the real Africa, for further inquiry—that Africa against which Islamism has dashed itself so repeatedly in its efforts to reach the Equator; that Africa whose climate has beaten back Christianity for three centuries; that Africa amid which science has reveled, but before which legitimate trade has stood appalled—the tropical, the new Africa.

In this connection we come upon an order of events, not to say an era, which favors an affirmative answer to the above questions, which plainly point, not to white encroachment, but to white existence and possibilities in the very midst of a continent apparently destined for other purposes. The very fact that new discoveries in Central Africa have revealed vast populations untouched by civilization has opened the eyes of the world to the usual processes of nation-making afresh. Have any people ever risen out of barbarism without external help? What is civilized Europe to-day but a grand intermingling of Greek, Roman, Vandal, Hun, Goth, Celt, and Saracen? Had even North African influence, in some of its better moods, succeeded in crossing the Equator, who knows whether the savagery of the tropics might not have been extinct to-day, or at least wholly different from what it is?

Again, the order of events have brought forth whole masses of data for comparison, for experiment, for substantial knowledge. Who could separate fiction from fact when running over the old, fantastic chronicles? Until within the last fifty years the light of true scientific knowledge and of keener commercial knowledge had not been shed on the Central African situation. It began to dawn when Laird, in 1841, came home to England from the Niger, more of an adventurer than any predecessor, yet with no wild, discrepant tales, but only hard, practical truths, which commerce welcomed and business enterprise could rely on. Legitimate traffic sprang into line, and British trading houses, doing business on honorable terms and for cash values, planted their agents on the Gambia, the Roquelle, the Gold Coast, the Oil Rivers, at Gaboon and Kabinda, along thousands of miles of coast. German houses sprang up, in honorable rivalry, throughout the same extent, and Hamburg and Bremen steamers fairly outstripped those of Liverpool and Glasgow. France, too, came into competition, took permanent529 hold of territory, cultivated reciprocity with the natives, studied tribal characteristics, encouraged agential responsibility, and brought quite to the surface the problem of white occupancy and development.

Out of all this has grown something which is better than theory respecting the destiny of the respective races in Africa, superior far to all former strifes at mere land-grabbing, and empire building, and sovereignty enrichments. European commerce with the west and southern coast of Africa is now carried on by several regular lines of steamers, besides those owned by numerous large trading firms. The British and African Steam Navigation Company is a modern corporation, and employs 22 steamers. Its older rival, the West African Steamship Company, employs 9 steamers. They dispatch at least one ship a week from Liverpool to West African ports. The Woerman line of steamers runs regularly from Hamburg, the Portuguese line from Lisbon, and the French line from Havre. Then there are two London lines—the Union and Donald Curry. These lines go out heavily freighted with miscellaneous merchandise suitable for the African peoples, among which is, unfortunately, a large per cent. of gin and other intoxicants, and their return cargoes consist of rubber, gum copal, palm-oil, palm kernels, ivory, ground-nuts, beeswax, cocoa, coffee, dye-woods, mahogany, etc., gathered up at their various stopping points. All these are indigenous African products, but it will be observed that those which spring from a cultivated soil figure as next to nothing in the list.

Side by side with these practical sea-going and commercial movements went the unfolding of the interior by those indomitable men who sacrificed personal comfort and risked life that inner Africa might be brought to outer view. This volume is, in part, a record of their adventures and pioneering efforts. Their names—the Bakers, Barths, Schweinfurths, Spekes, Grants, Du Chaillus, Pintos, Livingstones, Stanleys, and others—form a roll which for honor outranks that of the world’s greatest generals. They have built for themselves monuments which shall outlast those dedicated to military conquest, because on them the epitaphs will speak of unselfish endeavor in the name of a common humanity.

What immense problems they had in hand! How heroically530 they struggled with them, through tangled jungle, dark forest, dense swamps, over plain and mountain, up, down and across unknown lakes and rivers, amid beasts of prey and hostile peoples, in the face of rain, wind and unkind climates! And all the while that they were toiling and dying, what weird and wonderful revelations came, now from the Nile, with its impenetrable sudds, its strange animal life, its teeming populations; now from the magnificent plateaus of the centre with their mighty and enchanting lakes, filled with strange fishes, on whose banks reveled peoples keen for trade or war, happy, if left alone, in smiling gardens and comfortable homes; now from the swift rolling Zambesi, shaded with mighty forests alive with troops of monkeys, vocal with bird songs, swarming with beasts, whose waters dashed here against curved and rocky banks, and there headlong over rocks higher than Niagara, bearing everywhere a burden of life in the shape of savage crocodiles, bellowing hippopotami and ponderous rhinoceri; now from Kalihari, the great desert of the south which balances that of the north, with stunted yet energetic populations, its troops of zebras, ostriches, giraffes, buffaloes, elephants, lions, leopards, making a paradise for hunters, with its salt pans, its strange grasses and incomprehensible geology; now from the great plain regions between the lakes and the water system of the western ocean, where are prairies that vie in extent and fertility with those of the Mississippi valley, where the numerous Dinkas dwell, brave in chase, rich in splendid herds of cattle, with cosy homes, surrounded by plantations of maize and sorghum and bananas; where also the Niam-Niams dwell, equally brave and rich and kind, yet savage when stirred, and formidable with their home-made iron spears and bright battle axes and swords; where too the Monbuttus dwell, rivals of their northern neighbors in agriculture, architecture and art, rich in corn and cattle, protected from intruders by a standing army of agile dwarfs, who know no fear and who make unerring use of their poisoned arrows in cunning ambuscade and in open fields; and now from the Congo itself, stream of African streams, island variegated in one stretch, cataract angered in another, draped with forest foliage everywhere, bounded by fertile shores backed by endless plains, pouring along through riches of gum, dyes, hard-woods such as would enrich kingdoms, supporting a531 water life as varied and gigantic as any other African lake or river, sustaining a population of incomputable numbers, opening a water way into the very heart of the continent for steamers, inviting the civilized world to come and go, partake and enjoy.

As all these surprising revelations were given to the outer world, by the pioneers of civilization who were struggling within Africa, we began to get new conceptions of situations whose existence never dawned on those who were skimming the ocean’s shores and fighting the battles of commerce. A new world had been brought to light, not only geographically, but as to its soil, water, vegetation, animals, people, climate, and every physical aspect. It was a world to be envied, possessed and reclaimed, because it was one which could be made to contribute to the wealth and happiness of all outside of it. Moreover, it was one to which all could contribute, not only of their better material things, but of their better social and moral things. Commerce decided at once that there was a demand for Africa. Politics cried out for its possession. Humanity and Christianity found a new and solemn duty in Africa.

It was not the province of the first traveler and explorer to argue questions which belong to others and to the future. He could state what he saw and felt—how hot the sun was, what the rain-fall, the quantity and nature of the resources. But when he revealed and mapped a new world, and created a desire for its possession and civilization by others, there was no fighting shy of the problems involved in the proposed new destiny. A thousand and one things would come up which had never arisen before. Many of these problems are of minor moment, many momentous. Some involve others, some are sweeping. There is one which overshadows all. Some would ask, “How shall we go about colonizing and civilizing Africa?” This question is the rind of an apple. At the core is another. Can the proposed colonizers and civilizers exist in Africa? After that is determined, we shall know pretty well how to do the rest.

Of all African explorers, Stanley has made this vital question the most conspicuous, because he, almost alone, has coupled pioneering effort with state building and the colonizing and civilizing process. He has been forced to face the climatic situation since it532 came squarely across his industrial and commercial plans and involved the question of capital, which is far more sensitive and cowardly than even human life.

Stanley’s personal career in Africa, as well as his extensive experience with others, goes far to establish the fact that the white race cannot transfer itself bodily and permanently to tropical African soil, with the hope of survival. The difficulty is not because it is white, but because its customs and environment are at variance with those which perpetuate life and conduce to labor under the Equator.

In the north temperate zone a man may believe himself capable of persistent effort and heroic work. He may think he has intelligence, valor and strength sufficient to sustain him under the greatest privations. But land him in Africa and he is both witless and nerveless. He has never learned the art of living the life that is required there. He is not the same being he was when he started out so hopefully and valorously. He finds he lacks equipment for his new existence, mental, moral and physical. A sacrifice is demanded. It is the sacrifice of an almost perfect transformation, or else the confession of failure must conclude his career.

Stanley’s most melancholy chapters are those which narrate the oozing out of ambitions, the confessions of cowardice, and the shirking away of his white companions, on the discovery that their civilized lives had been no school of preparation for healthful, energetic and useful existence in Equatorial Africa. It was a painful study to note how in the face of tropical realities, the fervid imaginations and exaggerated anticipations which had led them heroically on took flight, leaving them hapless malingerers, hopeless despondents, and unfit for anything but retreat. He had no fault to find where brave men fell through actual physical weakness, but the general fault, the grave, almost unpardonable mistake, was the terrible one of not knowing what they were at home and what they were to be in Africa. He says:—“The influence of the wine or beer, which at the first offset from Europe had acted on their impulses like the effect of quinine on weakened nerves, soon evaporated in a wineless land, and with their general ignorance of adaptation to foreign circumstances, and a steady need of the exhilarating534 influence of customary stimulants, an unconquerable depression usurped the high-blown courage it inspired, which some called nostalgia (home-sickness) and some hypochondria. Many had also, as they themselves confessed, come out merely to see the great river. Their imaginations had run riot amid herds of destructive elephants, rapacious lions, charging buffaloes, bellowing hippopotami, and repugnant rhinoceri, while the tall lithe-necked giraffe and the graceful zebra occupied the foreground of those most unreal pictures. Their senses had also been fired by the looks of love and admiration cast on them by their sweethearts, as they declared their intention to ‘go out to the Congo regions,’ while many a pleasant hour must have been spent together as they examined the strange equipments, the elephant-rifles, the penetrative ‘Express,’ and described in glowing terms their life in the far off palmy lands watered by the winding Ikelemba or the mighty Congo. Thus they had deluded themselves as well as the International Committee, whose members looked with eyes of commendation as the inspired heroes delivered with bated breath their unalterable resolution to ‘do or die.’

AFRICAN RHINOCEROS.

“But death was slow to attack the valorous braves while the doable lay largely extended before them. The latter was always present with its exasperating plainness, its undeniable imperativeness which affronted their ‘susceptibilities,’ and ignored their titles and rights to distinction. The stern every-day reality, the meagre diet and forbidding aspect, humbled their presumption. When they hear that in this land there is neither wine nor beer, as they have known them, nor comfortable cognac to relieve the gnawing, distressful hankering they suffered for their usual beverages, their hearts beat more feebly. They begin to see that those bright African images and beautiful dreams of tropical scenery and excitement are replaced by unknown breadths of woodless regions, exuberant only with tall spear grass and jungly scrub. The hot sun dares them to the trial of forcing a way through such scarcely penetrable growth. Distance and fatigue, seeming to be immense beyond any former conception, masters their resolution; and, alas! and alas! there are no fair maidens with golden hair to admire their noble efforts at doing and dying.

535

“Conscience, or the prickings of shame, may whisper to a few not quite lost in despondency, that there is brave work to be performed, and that they may experience the colonist’s pleasure of seeing the vegetables, fruit-trees and plants grow instead of that cane-grass and jungle now covering the broad acreage. But some answer, ‘Bah! I did not come to work; I came to hunt, to play, to eat, and to receive a big salary from the Commission.’

“‘Do you feel fatigued? Try some hot tea or coffee.’

“‘What!’ shriek they. ‘Try Congo water! No, thank you; my stomach was made for something better than to become a nest for young crocodiles.’”

In all the foregoing Stanley speaks of the white help that was furnished him for his mission to found the Congo Free State. The help was of a high grade, being composed of men who came recommended to the Commission. They were selected for their valor and skill at home and for their professed willingness to brave African climate and all the dangers of exploration and colonization. They were for the most part educated men and well qualified to engineer roads, build comfortable homes, establish trading and military stations, carry on just commerce and exercise wise government over consenting tribes and contiguous territories. They were young, ambitious men, who had their fames and fortunes to make and to whom failure at home would have been a misfortune and disgrace. Indeed, if one had been going to pick out a body of men for the express purpose of testing the question whether it is possible for the white races to exist and thrive in tropical Africa, establish civilized governments, cultivate the soil, carry on manufactures and commerce, redeem the natives, and introduce institutions such as are found at home, these would have been the men.

But let us see how they fared. Stanley takes one as a sample—he does not fail to make honorable exceptions of those who behaved differently,—and this one perhaps, the loudest professor, at the start, of heroic zeal in his undertaking. He is conducted to the site of a newly established station and endowed with full authority. He is given an army of forty disciplined blacks, and two or three of his own color are left with him as companion and assistants. He is made a rich banker for the surrounding tribes by heaps of cloth536 bales, bags of beads, and bundles of brass-rods, the bank notes of the country, with full liberty to circulate them to the best advantage. The river at his feet swarms with fish of edible varieties, which he may catch in plenty, if he chooses to imitate the industry and ingenuity of the natives. The surrounding villages are full of fowls, and eggs are plenty. Sheep and goats can always be had, if the slightest attention is paid to their grazing and to their protection against wild beasts. In the west, goat’s milk, and in the centre and east, cow’s milk, can be had with little trouble. The natives, almost everywhere, raise sweet potatoes in abundance and sell them cheaply. Most villages have their fields of cassava, whose root yields a wholesome food, which can be prepared in a variety of agreeable ways. All of the ordinary garden vegetables, as tomatoes, beans, pumpkins, and onions can be grown with easy tillage. In his commissariat are stores of rice, canned vegetables, wheat flour, fish, meats, and soups from Europe, together with tea, coffee, butter, jam, condensed-milk, and in fact everything to tempt a palled palate or a weak stomach. The question of food is therefore settled in such a manner as to require very little exertion or sacrifice to make the supply permanent, varied and wholesome.

What else is required? A strong block house is built, and this is surrounded by a comfortable dwelling, erected after the manner of the neatly thatched huts of the natives, or even after the more approved architecture of civilization, if time permits and the proper materials are at hand. A palaver is called and whites and natives put themselves on political and also commercial equality, with as much of social relationship as suits the tastes of either party. The solemn treaty is approved and promulgated, and the commandant of the station, governor of a province, official of a great state, arbiter of the destiny of tribes, custodian of the welfare of peoples, minister, judge, doctor, commercial agent, the man to whom civilization is looking as founder, teacher and exemplar; this wonderful man, so full of pride and responsibility, so exalted with a sense of duty, so endowed with grand opportunity, is ready for his instructions and commission. His domain is pointed out and the fact is impressed on him that it has been acquired with the sanction of the civilized world and that of the only parties on African soil capable537 of giving consent. He is left as master and sole arbiter of all questions that may arise, and only asked by the power that institutes him to be just in his dealings with the peoples he is to govern, to extend kindness to those for whom he has been made a protector, to prove that the authority imposed has not been misplaced. He is furnished with a written draft of instructions which is to be his code of laws, his state constitution, his plan for founding and developing his little empire. Could anything be more flattering to one’s ambitions? What greater inducement could one want to exercise every latent energy, to found deeply, build well and rule wisely? Visions of a future state, crowded with obedient, industrious subjects, crowned with wealth and prosperity, shedding lustre on its ruler, proclaiming to the world the success of a first and glorious experiment, ought to stimulate even the most indifferent to sublime endeavor.

But a few months passes, during which the embryo potentate is left to himself. Then along comes Stanley, from an up-river journey, on a tour of inspection. Where he expects to see his block-house and cottages expanded into a substantial village, he witnesses only roofless structures, exposed goods and every evidence of decay. Rank weeds grow where a site had been cleared for a vegetable garden, and the forest is asserting itself on the ground prepared for a banana orchard. Perhaps the natives have been angered, for they hold the capital in a state of siege, the stores are empty and grim famine stalks where plenty should have reigned. Or else, not being bloody-minded, they withhold their help and presence, and leave a trading mart to perish through sheer disinclination to traffic. He who was to have been a ruler is worse off than a subject. Where ambition should have stimulated, indifference prevails. Industry has been lost in idleness. Glory has ended in shame. One word of comment, one look of reproach, brings a resignation and an abandonment, and the once proud adventurer who went out to see and conquer strange worlds, beats a hasty retreat to his comfortable European home to curse his folly and denounce the spirit that sought to sacrifice him. Failure is written between every line of the long story with which he regales his friends as he drops back into his old haunts and resumes the538 thread of civilized life, once so willingly broken by dreams of glory, wealth and humanitarian good.

It may seem a surprise to the reader that Africa could so disillusion enthusiasts of the character above described. But he has only to follow Stanley along the line of the Congo, from one station to the other, and witness his disappointment on his return journey, to ascertain how frequent the failures were to improve opportunity or make even the slightest show of progress in building and cultivating. Nay more, since nothing could stand still, the signs of retrogression were still more frequent, and ruin marked the spots which he had dedicated to enterprise and prosperity. Why were these men so radically transformed? This is a mighty question. Was it the fault of Africa or of Europe?

Stanley reasons thus: “The conditions of a healthy enjoyment of life in Africa are very little understood by men of this class. It is a difficult thing to impart to them the rudiments of the lesson of life. It is a most thankless task, and the effort to do so is so ungraciously received that I have often been repelled by the visible signs of non-appreciation. Rarely have I been encouraged to proceed by those to whom counsel was addressed. They do not seem to take any interest in what concerns their own health. They duly acknowledge that it is a duty they owe to themselves to be as careful as possible; they are civil with replies and ready with promises of amendment. But they do not practice what they promise, and that active zeal and watchful prudence which would seem to govern one who loves his own life and welfare I rarely see exhibited. The performance appears to be too irksome, and neither their intelligence nor their conscience is provoked to assist them. I remember Frank Pocock, who must (almost as the sound of my voice died away) have been meditating on that step by which he lost his life, and which caused me, for months, a pang of sorrow, each time I thought of his sad end.

“I have observed also that not only in matters of self-preservation is this apathy evident, but that it is present in the every day duty of the expedition, which they are pledged to perform and for which they receive compensation. Any single order they will perform well and creditably, but if I accompany it with the expression539 of a hope that they will consider it a daily duty, the order becomes at once inoperative and is never observed. I have observed that such an order is too general to be followed; but a particular order will be mechanically obeyed. A promise of promotion, or higher pay, or a display of tender solicitude, creates no impression, and as yet I know of no motive powerful enough to excite a European or West African aborigine to distinguish himself by an assiduous interest in general work. The only people on whom my words created a prolonged impression were the foreign colored employes. Now to what may I attribute this absence of intelligent interest in their work which is characteristic of the European and the west coast native? Is it to the climate? Then why did it not affect all alike? Why did it not affect myself?

“But of all the rabid absurdities I have encountered in the tropics, the preaching of a young fool on the merits of intoxicants, who has heard it from an old fool that there is nothing like whiskey, astonishes me most. Mr. Puffyface, while in a semi-maudlin state, has been heard declaring, in the hearing of a youthful enthusiast, that ‘after fourteen years’ experience with the African fever, despite all that may be said against it, there is nothing like whiskey for curing it,’ For the benefit of after-comers let me prick this bloated bubble. Show me one of those old bloaters on the west coast of Africa and I will show you a sham and delusion. A few hours’ hard work in the interior would lay the lazy lion as low as a dead donkey. Gin and whiskey topers have lived long elsewhere than on the Niger and Congo, but if you meet him on the African coast a glance at his shirt will tell you the whole truth. If it is free from stains of bodily exudation, then he has simply been ‘sojering,’ and it will be difficult to say how long a time must elapse before the liver shows a deadly abscess or becomes indurated. But if you want to do humanity a kindness, trot him out on a ten-mile march through the African wilderness, and note the result.

“On the Congo, where men must work and bodily movement is compulsory, the very atmosphere seems to be fatally hostile to men who pin their faith on whiskey, gin and brandy. They invariably succumb and are a constant source of anxiety and expense. Even if they are not finally buried out of sight and memory, they are so540 utterly helpless, diseases germinate in them with such frightful rapidity, symptoms of insanity are so frequent, mind-vacancy and semi-paralysis are so common, that they are hurried homeward, lest they draw down a few more curses on Africa which apply only to themselves.

“The evils of brandy and soda in India need only be remembered to prove how pernicious is the suicidal habit of indulgence in alcoholic liquors in hot climates. The west coast of Africa is also too much indebted to the ruin effected by intemperance.

“But it is my belief that the other extreme is unwise. To abstain entirely from drinking wine because intemperance is madness, is not what I inculcate, nor do I even recommend drinking in what is called moderation. I do not advocate ‘liquoring up’ at any time, provided the drinker keeps within the limits of sobriety. I advise no one, in the tropics, to touch liquor during the hours of daylight, unless prescribed by a medical man. Wine, good red or white wine, should be taken only after sunset at dinner. Then it should be watered and taken in moderate quantities, that it may sooth the nerves and conduce to early sleep. After a full night’s rest, one will rise with a clear head and clean tongue, and can as easily do a full day’s work in the tropics as in the temperate latitudes.”

ELEPHANT UPROOTING A TREE.

Stanley then goes on to correct misapprehensions about African climate and lay down rules of conduct which, if followed, would go far to insure a healthful condition. He takes a young European adventurer to the Congo, full of health and of the spirit of adventure. As soon as the anchor drops at Banana Point, the young man feels the perspiration exuding till his flannels, comfortable at sea, become almost unendurable. On stepping ashore the warmth increases and the flannels absorb perspiration till they cling to the body and oppress him with their weight. The underclothing is saturated, and he resembles a water-jug covered with woolen cloth. The youth makes an escape from this melting heat of 100° to 115° by going to the veranda of some friendly quarters. Here he does not observe that the temperature is 25° cooler, but mops his brow, fans himself, lolls in his easy chair, and sighs at the oppressiveness. Presently some one recommends the reviving quality of wine.542 Anything to lift him out of the condition he is in! One drink gives him freshness and courage. Another reconciles him to the strange situation. A third produces conviviality, and then, in the midst of story-telling companions, who spin rare old yarns of coast fevers, elephant adventures, crocodile attacks, hippo-escapades, “nigger” sensations, evening draws on. There is dinner and more wine. Then comes the veranda again. It is now cool, delicious, inviting. He has forgotten his damp clothing. Bed-time comes. He retires to toss till morning, or to sleep in the midst of horrid dreams. When he rises, he is unwell. His tongue is furred and a strange lassitude pervades his body. Nausea sets in. In a few hours his face is flushed, his eyes water, his pulse runs high. The doctor is called, and he pronounces it a case of African fever. He is given a kind native nurse. The battle of sickness is fought to an end. Death may ensue, but the chances are always in favor of recovery, though convalescence is slow.

Of a score who have witnessed this sight, each will have a theory. One will say, “What a pity he left his mother!” Another, “It must have been some organic weakness.” Another, “It was hereditary.” Another will cry out, “One more African victim!” The last one, and he as if in doubt and in an undertone, may venture to surmise that too much Portuguese wine may have been at the bottom of it—which is as bad as brandy.

The truth of the matter is, ignorance was at the bottom of it all. The young man may not have thought he was sitting in a cool night air, according to his European notions of temperature, but an evening in Africa, or a draught of air, presents as dangerous a contrast with midday heat, or as insidious a cause for congestion, as in any other country. Stanley suffered with 120 attacks of fever, great and slight, and endured fully 100 of them before he began to suspect that other causes existed for them besides malaria and miasma, or that he had within himself a better preventive than quinine. His observations, directed toward the last to this one point, utterly astounded him with the fact that the most sickness might have been witnessed at those stations which were not surrounded by putrifying vegetation, but had been selected so as to secure the highest degree of health. Old Vivi is one of these spots,543 situated on a rocky platform, with steep drainage, and with the majestic river dashing off between the slopes of high mountains for a distance of forty miles. Yet Old Vivi is, with the exception of Manyanga, the sickliest spot in all the Congo Free State, according to his observations. If all preconceived notions of health had been correct, Old Vivi should be the healthiest spot on the Congo, certainly far more so than scores of the Upper Congo stations, situated within ten feet of the water’s edge and surrounded by hundreds of square miles of flat, black loam covered with dense, damp forests. Yet to dispatch the fever-stricken and emaciated sojourners of Old Vivi, Manyanga or Leopoldville to some one of these upper, isolated and shaded stations, proved to be like sending them to a sanitarium in the pine-woods or by the sea shore. The change is simply astounding. The patient takes on flesh, grows ruddy, healthful, pliant and hopeful.

Stanley had much anxiety about the station at Kinshassa, because it was so low-lying, though in every other way convenient. But, strange to say, one of his commandants who was always feverish at Vivi, Manyanga and Leopoldville, escaped without an attack of fever, or any other indisposition, for eighteen months, when stationed at Kinshassa. He was equally anxious about Equator Station, situated as it was directly under the Equator. But the commandants all praise the climate as capital, with plenty of native products at hand, and no need of anything foreign except a little tea and coffee. Of the 29 Europeans in the service of the Congo Free State above Leopoldville, all served their three year term of service except two who were drowned, one who died of sickness and one who resigned on account of severe illness. The inference from these facts is that the nearer the coast the stations are and the more accessible they are by steamers, the better the facilities are for stores of whiskey, brandy and wines, whose free use is an invitation to African sickness. Also, that the further inland one goes the more experience he acquires as to the means of preserving health. Every day’s march inland is a species of acclimatization and a removal from temptation. It is a putting off of ignorance and a putting on of knowledge. Again, the farther up the Congo one goes the more he is freed from the draughts which haunt the544 cañons of the lower streams. While Vivi is an ideal spot so far as every visible hygienic consideration goes, it is at the top of an immense funnel with its wide end toward the sea, and the sea breezes sweep up the channel with cumulative vigor, producing a difference of temperature between day and night, or shade and sunshine, which is fatal to the overheated toiler. And the same may be said of Manyanga and Leopoldville. But the wide, lacustrine stretches of Stanley Pool dissipate this deadly draught and equalize the day and night and sunshine and shade temperatures. Thus inner Central Africa becomes even healthier than the coast rind, as it were by natural laws. From which arises the strange anomaly that at the Equator it is not African heat a foreigner need dread so much as African cold.

Yet no precaution against the oppressive heat must be neglected. And this precaution must become a law of life. It must not be spasmodic and remitting, but must be daily and hourly, in fact must be persisted in till the whole habit conforms to the environment, just as at home amid civilization. Captain Benton, after his visit to the Congo, proclaimed beef and beer as the true fortifying agents against the climate. Stanley says nay. Beef, he admits to be all right, in the sense of good, nourishing food. But, not beef alone, so much as that wholesome variety found in well cooked beef, mutton, game, fish and fowl, intermixed with potatoes, turnips, cabbages, beets, carrots, bread, butter, tea and coffee. Beers of civilization are too bilious for Africa, and the distilled spirits are fatally stimulating, leading up to a false courage which may tempt one to too much effort or to dangerous exposure to the sun’s rays. The Duke of Wellington’s health receipt for India is equally good in Africa: “I know of but one receipt for good health in this country, and that is to live moderately, drink little or no wine, use exercise, keep the mind employed, keep in a good humor with the world. The last is the most difficult, for I have often observed, there is scarcely a good-tempered man in India.”

Moderation is the key to health in central Africa. It must be moderation in action, food and drink. Yet there must be engagement of body and mind, great good humor, contentment with surroundings. A lesson in these respects might be learned from the545 natives. It is often and truthfully said, that they are the happiest and freest from care of any people on the face of the globe. “Take no thought of the morrow, for ye know not what a day may bring forth,” is the gospel of health among Africans. Prodigal nature helps them to a philosophy, which we may call shiftless ease, happy-go-lucky-effort, or go-as-you-please contentment, but it, nevertheless, is only a crude modification of our more deliberately framed and higher sounding hygienic codes for the preservation of health when we are in their land and subject to their climate and conditions of living and working.

Stanley exemplifies the effect of African cold in another way. In ascending the Congo in his steamers, the entire party enjoyed excellent health, notwithstanding the confinement to the stream and the almost continuous passage through reedy islands and along low, swampy shores. But on the descent, the swifter passage of the boats in the face of the prevailing west winds, and river draughts, produced a chill, during moments of inaction, which prostrated many of the crew, and resulted in serious cases of sickness. Anywhere under shelter, the body continued to perspire insensibly, but the moment it was struck by the wind, there resulted a condition which invariably ended in low fever.

For the ill-health due to African cold, especially where the situation is like that at Vivi, the rainy season is a corrective, because then the cold winds cease and the temperature is uniform. But at the same time, the rainy season is the prelude to sickness in the lower and better protected situations. The Livingstone Congo Mission at Manteka is in a snug nest between high hills, entirely cut off from winds, and surrounded by beautiful gardens of bananas and papaws. Ordinarily it is a healthful spot, and ought to be so always, if freedom from exposure is a law of health. But after the rainy season it is unhealthy. A peculiarly clear atmosphere and a correspondingly hot sun follow the African rains. These cause rapid earth exhalations which rise up around the body like a cloud, and soon deluge the person with perspiration. These exhalations bear the odors of decaying vegetation and become as pernicious as the effluvia from a dung-heap, unless resort is had to the heat of stoves or fire-places to counteract their deadly effects.546 Due care in this respect is all that is required to insure immunity from sickness caused by these evaporations.

Even the plateaus are not exempt from fevers. But they for the most part are covered with long grass. Vegetation so luxuriant, falling and decaying, constantly fermenting and fertilizing, would be a source of sickness anywhere. When once they are cleared and planted to corn, wheat or vegetables, this source of sickness will disappear. A well ventilated home, in the midst of a cleared and cultivated plateau, is as healthful in Africa as in any other part of the world. The lessons of health taught daily by the natives ought to be a constant study for foreigners. They fight entirely shy of the cañons of the Congo, whereas at Stanley Pool there is an army of ivory-traders. Then the immediate banks of the river are comparatively deserted, except where the spaces are open. The gorges, and deep valleys of tributaries, are by no means favorite dwelling places, though they are too often the sites of mission-houses and trading posts. The fetishes of the natives could not prevail against disease in the hollows and shaded nooks of their land, nor can the drugs of the white races. The native seeks a cleared space, open to sunshine, elevated so as to insure circulation of air, and for the most part, he looks down on the less favorable abodes of the foreigner.

Stanley summarizes the causes of ill-health in Africa, and arranges them in the order of effectiveness. He gives as the most serious (1) cold draughts. (2) Malarious hollows. (3) Intemperate living. (4) Lack of nourishing food. (5) Physical weakness, indolence of mind and body, general fool-hardiness. One source of encouragement became manifest as years rolled by, and that was the constant diminution of illness among the officials of the Congo Free State. This was in some degree due to the doctrine of “survival of the fittest,” looked upon from a constitutional standpoint, but in the main to the willingness of the survivors to learn, and their learning consisted in putting away the habits they had formed abroad and the assumption of those which fitted their new estate.

Owing to the formation of the African continent, with its fringe of low land and its miles of slope up to the central plateau, the prevailing winds sweep inland from the ocean, over the pestilential547 lowlands, bearing the seeds of disease. This meteorological law must be met by the inland dwellers, in order to secure immunity from disease. And it can be met very readily, as experience proves, by the planting of tree barriers on the ocean side of residences and plantations.

Stanley’s observations thus far relate to the climatology of central Africa as affecting the health of the white resident. He next discusses the question of tropical heat as it affects the effort of the white races. The intensity of the Congo heat is by no means such as the casual reader would suspect. An average of the highest temperatures in the year gives a mean of only 90°, while that of the lowest gives a mean of 67°. Clad in suitable clothes a European or American can do as much work in a day in Africa as at home, provided he works under an awning or roof. In the sun, the temperature is, of a clear day, as much as 115°, which would be fatal to one standing still. The ill-effects of such a heat are seldom apparent on a march, though for the comfort of all concerned Stanley usually limited his marching hours to from 6 A.M. to 11 A.M., thus giving ample time to prepare evening camps and to rest, feed and recuperate.

In tropical Africa there is manifest coolness for three months of the year. During the other nine months there is so much cloud and such an abundance of tempering breezes, as to prevent that intense heat which one would expect under the Equator or within the tropics. The nights are seldom oppressive, and though in temperate latitudes one might not feel the need of a blanket, such an article becomes an indispensable luxury in Africa.

At any point where facilities offer, as at a factory, trading station or mission, there is no need of exposure to the sun during work hours. Awnings are, or should be, a part of the equipment of every white African sojourner, but if these are wanting the trees are plenty, and their gracious shade will answer as a substitute. Few craftsmen in any country are compelled to work without cover, and it requires but an extension of the rule to make labor safe in Africa.

Exercise of any kind in Africa induces copious perspiration, and it should never be forgotten that between a state of action in the548 sun, or even under cover, and a state of rest in the shade, means a difference in temperature equal to 25°. This is a sure cause of congestion and other bodily derangements. It is the one invariable climatic law in Africa, and is wholly different from that at Para, where the variations are only 9°, thus insuring immunity from all diseases which have a cause in sudden or radical changes of temperature. Climatic inequality is deadlier in Equatorial Africa than its malaria. Yet it can be guarded against, and that too by the simplest precautions.

The early explorers, pioneers and commercial agents in Africa, especially on the west coast, were ignorant of the foregoing facts. Hence so many of them lost their lives needlessly. Hence the terrible stories borne home of the deadly effect of African heat and climate. They had never studied the law of adaptation, and instead of helping to solve the problem of white occupancy they only contributed to its defeat. In the wiser experience of Stanley a secret has been brought forth which, in its bearing upon the future of the country, is not even surpassed in importance by the opening of the Congo itself.

Tropical food is of as much moment to a foreigner as climate. It is clear that alcoholic stimulants are dangerous. Tea has a depressing tendency and the same may be said of coffee, though both are grateful, for a time at least. Cocoa tends to biliousness. Milk is hard to obtain on the west coast, though it may be had in the cattle producing sections of the centre and east. Soup implies fresh meat, and is therefore limited to the broth of the goat, sheep or chicken, unless it come in canned shape. Palm-wine, except when fresh, injures the kidneys and stomach. All taste is soon lost for the canned goods of civilization. Flour, rice and the native fruits and vegetables are wholesome standards.

Stanley’s code of health for the white sojourner in Africa would be as follows:—

Never build a house, factory or mission in a ravine or valley which may serve as a wind channel. Air must diffuse itself generally and gently. Points near the sea, plateaus and open plains are the safest localities for homes. All lower stories should be clear of the ground. In grassy sections the first floor should be elevated to the height of a second story.

549

Avoid all unnecessary exposure to the sun.

Guard against fogs, dews, exhalations, and night chills, by kindling fires.

Preserve a generous diet, avoiding oily and fatty foods.

Meats should not be eaten in large quantities at breakfast.

Take an early dinner, say at 11 o’clock, and let it be of meats, fish and vegetables. Cease work till 1 P.M.

Quit work at 6 P.M., and eat a second dinner, boiled fish, roast fowl or mutton, with plenty of vegetables. A glass of watered wine will not hurt then.

Seek amusement in social conversation, reading or games, till 9 P.M., and then retire.

Sleep on blankets, and cover with a blanket.

If marching, rise at 5 A.M., march at 6, and halt for the day at 11 A.M. When halted, seek shelter and put on a heavier coat.

Observe the strictest temperance. Don’t indulge in tonics or nostrums. A little quinine is the safest tonic. If thirsty drop an acid powder in your drinking water, or take a sip of cold tea.

Use an umbrella when in the sun. The best head dress is a cork helmet, or Congo cap.

If in a perspiration when wetted by rain or at a river crossing, change your dress immediately.

Go on a march in very light clothing, and let it be of flannel, with light russet shoes for the feet.

When permanently stationed, wear light clothing in order to avoid excessive perspiration when called on for sudden duty.

Don’t fail to exercise freely. Have certain hours for it, morning and evening, if your work is in doors.

Do not bathe in cold water, especially after you are in the country for a time. Water below 85° in temperature is dangerous.

Tropical fruits should be eaten only at breakfast.

Medicines specially prepared for tropical diseases can always be had of European druggists, and a supply should be on hand.

The diseases of central Africa are simple, consisting of dysentery and three kinds of fever, ague, remittent, and bilious.

Common ague is never fatal. It may be prevented, if one observes the symptoms.

550

The remittent fever is simply aggravated ague, it may last for several days.

The bilious fever is often pernicious. Its severity depends on the habits of the patient, the amount of exposure which produced it, and the strength of the constitution. It is preventable, but not by brandy or excessive smoking, as many foolish people think.

Dr. Martin, in his work on the “Influences of Tropical Climates,” also lays down a code which is both interesting and valuable.

1. Care in diet, clothing and exercise are more essential for the preservation of health than medical treatment.

2. The real way to escape disease is by observing strict temperance, and to moderate the heat by all possible means.

3. After heat has morbifically predisposed the body, the sudden influence of cold has the most baneful effect on the human frame.

4. The great physiological rule for preserving health in hot climates is to keep the body cool. Common sense points out the propriety of avoiding heating drinks.

5. The cold bath is death in the collapse which follows any great fatigue of body or mind.

6. Licentious indulgence is far more dangerous and destructive than in Europe.

7. A large amount of animal food, instead of giving strength, heats the blood, renders the system feverish, and consequently weakens the whole body.

8. Bread is one of the best articles of diet. Rice and split vetches are wholesome and nutritious. Vegetables are essential to good health, as carrots, turnips, onions, native greens, etc.

9. Fruit, when sound and ripe, is beneficial rather than hurtful.

10. The same amount of stimulant undiluted, is much more injurious than when mixed with water.

11. With ordinary precaution and attention to the common laws of hygiene, Europeans may live as long in the tropics as anywhere else.

Stanley’s final observation on the existence of the white race in Africa does not smack of the confidence he has thus far striven to inspire. Yet it does not suggest an impossibility, nor anything difficult to carry out, since the continent is so contiguous to Europe.551 He recommends a change of scene to the African denizen for at least three months in a year, because the constant high temperature assisted by the monotony and poverty of diet, is enervating and depressing. The physical system becomes debilitated by the heat, necessitating after a few years such recuperation as can be found only in temperate latitudes. Even with persons who retain health, this enervating feeling begins to dawn at the end of eighteen mouths; hence traders, missionaries, planters and agriculturists, who hope to keep up buoyancy of spirit and such a condition of body as will resist the climate through a lifetime, should seek the periodical relaxation to be found in trips to higher latitudes.

While this may not be giving his whole case away, or indeed suggesting nothing more than such change of scene as our own physicians recommend to overtaxed business men, it, nevertheless, brings up the ultimate question of natural and permanent fitness. Suppose that all fear of African climate is eliminated from the mind of the white man. Suppose it is settled that he can survive there to a good old age, by using the precautions herein laid down. Will any traveler, climatologist or ethnologist arise and tell us that the white man can escape physical degeneracy in the tropics? As his African offspring come and go for a few generations, will there not be a gradual loss of the hardihood which temperate climates encourage, and a gradual growth of that languor and effeminacy which equatorial climates engender? The presence of the white races in Africa can neither reverse the laws of their existence and growth, nor the laws which God has given to a tropical realm. Living nature, including man, is simply obedience to an environment. We agree to this in the vegetable world. The oak of our forest is the puny lichen of the arctic regions. The palm of the tropics withers before northern frost. Reverse the order, and the lichen dries up beneath a tropical sun. The oak finds nothing congenial in African soil. As to the lower animals, it is the same. Stanley found both mule and donkey power ineffective on the Congo. Livingstone’s mules were bitten by the tsetse fly on Nyassa and died a miserable death from ulcers. The horse dwindles away within the tropics. The camel fared no better than the mule with Livingstone, though the Arab may be said to have conquered the Great Sahara with it, and553 Col. Baker used it to overcome Nile distances which defied his boats. Even the native and trained buffalo was a failure with Livingstone when he attempted to make it a beast of burden through Nyassaland and into the Upper Congo section, notwithstanding the fact that it had been invaluable to him below the tropics, and in the form of the native ox is in daily use as a beast of burden and travel in the Kalihari regions. So take the elephant, lion, leopard, hippopotamus, alligator, soko, monkey, the birds, the fishes, and transport them north; how quickly they cease to propagate, and in the end perish! Thus far living nature seems to obey the immutable law of environment. It is equally so with the higher animal life which we find in man. The negroes, who were torn from their native soil by the cruel hand of slavery, could not be transplanted with success in latitudes remote from the tropics. It cannot yet be proved that the white races will deteriorate and grow effeminate in tropical Africa, but as to other tropical countries it is established that white energy is gradually lost in effeminacy wherever it persists in the unnatural attempt to face the eternal blaze of the equatorial sun.

COL. BAKER’S WAY OF REACHING BERBER.

It is well to study these things amid the glowing imagery of African vegetation, soil and resource, the unseemly scamper of the nations for African possessions, the enthusiasm over Christian conquest and heathen redemption. The real transforming power of the continent may not be at all in white occupancy; it cannot be, if such occupancy means white degeneracy, or such a sacrifice as the situation does not warrant. But it may lie, more wholly than any one living suspects, in the natives themselves, assisted and encouraged by the leaven of civilization, gradually introduced. They are there naturally and for a purpose. God will not alter his laws, and man cannot, brave as the latter may be, fond as he may be of possession and power, lustful as he may be of wealth, boastful as he may be of his civilization, proud as he may be of his humanitarianism, desirous as he may be to convert and Christianize. Africa means 200,000,000 of people, backed by a peculiar climate, fortified by an environment which is as old as the beginning of things. Let the civilization which is foreign to it all beware how it strikes it, lest, in the end, the effort prove a sad confession of failure. The554 good which is to come out of African elevation should be reciprocal. It is not good if it presupposes white occupancy followed by white degeneracy.

Centuries ago the brave, enthusiastic Saracen, propagandist of a faith, warrior for the sake of Mohammed, left his Arabian home and went forth into pagan Africa on a mission of conquest and conversion. Granting that Egypt, the Barbary States and the Oases of the Sahara are better off to-day than they were when they first caught sight of the victorious banners of the crescent, which is admitting all the truth will allow, how much superior to the chivalrous Saracen is the bigoted Mahdi, his depraved Soudan follower, or the Arab slave stealer, who is ubiquitous in east-central Africa to-day? There is a wonderful, a sad, descent from the Saracen conqueror to a benighted Mahdist. The contrast between a chief of Arabian troopers and such a chief as Tippoo Tib is enough to show degeneracy of the most ultra type. The brave, fiery Saracen, sweeping along the coasts and through the deserts, was a being infinitely superior to anything he came in contact with. His progeny, after centuries of acclimatization and intercourse with the native populations, is a lazy, inferior being, a curse to his surroundings, not half such a man as the native whom he plunders and carries off as human booty. He has failed to lift Africa to the height of a Mohammedan civilization, and has descended to a level even lower than the paganism with which he came in contact. Do not forget that in many respects he had adaptation superior to that any European or American can claim. He was contiguous to Africa. He had been reared under a burning sun. His color was dark. His heath was sandy like the sands of Egypt and Sahara. His ship was the camel which became the courser of the African wastes and by means of which he could connect the Nile bends more swiftly than we can do to-day with steamers. He had all the enthusiasm and persistency of a Christian missionary, all the ardor of an English merchant, all the vigor of a civilized pioneer, all the desire for possession of a monarchical potentate. Yet he degenerated into a thief of men and a murderer of innocence. The least respected, the crudest and most useless man on the face of the globe to-day is an Arab slave catcher. The chivalry of his fathers555 has no place in his bosom. The industry and the sense of beauty and refinement which the Moor carried northward into Spain were utterly lost in the swing toward the tropics. The Allah and Koran of Mecca are profane mummery in the Soudan, at Zanzibar, and on the banks of Tanganyika. It is not necessary to inquire what inherent causes helped to contribute to this deplorable result. We know that vital defects existed in the Mohammedan system, and that these defects were in part to blame. The only inquiry we make is, how much of that result was due to the African climate, the impact with tropical peoples and customs, the equatorial environment? For some cause, or better still, for all causes combined, the last end of the Arab in Africa is worse than the first.

If we study the impact on Africa of the Christian civilization of Portugal and even that of England, in its earlier stages, the result is not encouraging. The ruins of both trading and mission posts are sad witnesses of a misunderstanding of the true situation, or else monuments of a surrender to climatic difficulties which had not been anticipated. Our civilization was called off from a mad chase after the impossible, and it required years, even centuries, of consideration, before it dared a second attempt. In the meantime it learned much and in various ways. Inert, supine Portugal taught valuable lessons by her very incapacity. Patient Holland gave a valuable object lesson by peaceable conquests and her amalgamation with the South African peoples. All-conquering, commercial and Christian England afterwards came along to gather the harvests which others had sowed, yet to prove that something valuable in the shape of permanent colonization could be effected south of the tropics, and with mutual advantage. The pioneering spirit broke out as it had never done before, and out of it came lesson after lesson, of which certainly none were more valuable than those furnished by Stanley’s brave experiences.

Whatever may be the future of the white race in Africa, it is certain that, just now, no consideration of climate, distance or inaccessibility, weighs to cool the enthusiasm of Christianity as it marches to a conquest of heathenism in equatorial wilds. It is face to face with all the problems above stated and may be the means of solving many of them favorably. It deserves a better fate than556 any that has hitherto befallen it. But the fate of all former outbursts and experiments should prove a standing warning. Missionaries are only men. The cause of God, as well as that of commerce, agriculture, science and art, may be best subserved by using God’s natural forces and observing his immutable laws.

In a political sense, the mission of the white races in Africa has ever been a failure, and there is little transpiring at this hour, except the small beginnings of order and independence in the Congo Free State, but what is ominous of confusion and defeat. Greed for African possessions, jealousy of one another’s territorial thefts, threatened wars on account of undefined boundaries, petty usurpations of authority, these render unseemly the scramble for African acres, and bode no good to native Africans, whose allegiance is thereby rendered doubtful, whose fears are constantly at fever heat, who become as ready to train their spears and rush forth in battle array against one side or the other, as they are when their villages and gardens are invaded by neighboring tribes or marauding Arabs. They make colonization a farce, and reduce white dominancy to the level of cruel interference. The cold-blooded effrontery of this deliberate theft and partition of a continent, in a political sense, has nothing in morals to recommend it at any rate. There is nothing at the bottom of it except the aggrandizement of the Powers who commit the theft. Selfishness is the motive, however it may be glossed by the plea of a superior civilization. It regards no native rights, consults no native good, but in obedience to a spirit of tyranny and greed walks incontinently into the lands of a weak and helpless race, and appropriates them in true free-booting style, hoists its flag, and says to all comers, “Avaunt, this is mine!”

The almost hopeless entanglement of foreign Powers in Africa to-day may be seen from a glance at the following “political sections” on the west, or Atlantic coast:

Some of these claims are old, some new; some are confirmed, some vapid; some are direct political claims, some indirect, as where a protectorate only exists, and the real power is vested in a trading company, as in the British West African Company, with powers to occupy and develop the Niger country.

Passing to the east coast of Africa we find the entanglement still worse. There are pretty well defined ownerships beyond the Trans-vaal, then comes Portugal’s general claim of the Zambesi, Mozambique and Delagoa Bay, interfered with and overlapped by England and Germany. North of this, the Sultan of Zanzibar, who claimed sovereignty indefinitely north, south and west, has been cramped into a few island spaces along the coast, and graciously permitted to retain the Island of Zanzibar, because no person can live on it except Arabs and natives. Germany extends a protectorate and the country back of Zanzibar, and inland indefinitely, though England is by her side with a similar claim, and taking care that such protectorate shall be as nominal as possible and shall not interfere with her claims upon the lake sections. Italy claims all between the German possessions and Abyssinia and has even invaded that State. These claims are made under the veneering of trading companies, whose acquired rights, vague as they may be, the parent country is bound to back up. Not one of them have well defined metes and bounds for operations. All are confused and confusing, and liable to provoke misunderstanding and blood-shed at558 any moment, and the consequent disgrace of our boasted civilization, in the eyes of all simple minded Africans at least.

As a sample of the latest methods of land acquisition in Africa, and the consequences, one has but to study the recent bout between England and Portugal. The latter country claims the Delagoa Bay section, Mozambique and the Zambesi, indefinitely inland, and this though her rule has been limited to two or three isolated spots. On the Zambesi she established two or three trading and missionary stations which were used for a long time, but gradually fell into disuse. There is no dispute about her claims to the Zambesi section, though the Zulus south of the river do not recognize allegiance to her. The Zambesi, to a point five miles above the mouth of the Shiré, was declared a free river by the Berlin conference, so that there can be no dispute about that. So, there is no disposition to interfere with her claims to Mozambique or Delagoa, except as to their western boundary. To permit her to extend her claim to these territories westward till they met the boundaries of the Congo Free State, would be to give her possession of the Shiré River, Lake Shirwah and Lake Nyassa. Now starting at the Ruo affluent of the Shiré, England claims the entire Nyassa section, both by right of discovery—Livingstone discovered the lake—and occupation. Its non-native people are British subjects. She may not have taken the precaution to acquire rights of the natives by treaties, but neither has Portugal. Portugal never expanded, so to speak, beyond the coast on the line of the Zambesi, never did anything for the natives, and is charged with conniving with the slave trade. On the contrary, the established church of Scotland has many missionaries, teachers and agents in the Shiré Highlands. The Free Church of Scotland has several missionaries, teachers and artisans on Lake Nyassa. The Universities Mission has a steamer on the lake and several missionary agents. The African Lakes Company, chartered in England, has steamers on the Shiré river and Lake Nyassa, with twelve trading stations, manned by twenty-five agents. British capital invested in Nyassaland will equal $1,000,000. In his “Title Deeds to Nyassaland,” Rev. Horace Waller says: “Dotted here and there, from the mangrove swamps of the Kongone mouth of the Zambesi to the farthest extremity of559 Lake Nyassa, we pass the graves of naval officers, of brave ladies, of a missionary bishop, of clergymen, of foreign representatives, doctors, scientific men, engineers and mechanics. All these were our countrymen. They lie in glorious graves. Their careers have been foundation stones, and already the edifice rises. British mission stations are working at high pressure on the Shiré Highlands and upon the shores of Nyassa. Numbers of native Christians owe their knowledge of the common faith to their efforts. Scores of future chiefs are being instructed in schools spread over hundreds of miles. Commerce is developing by sure and steady steps. A vigorous company is showing to the tribes and nations that there are more valuable commodities in their country than their sons and daughters.”

In view of all these things, and perhaps spurred to activity by them, Portugal, following the fashion of England, organized a South African Company with the intention of consolidating her African possessions, by operating from the east coast, with a base at Delagoa Bay, Mozambique and the mouth of the Zambesi. The announcement, lately made, that Mapoonda, chief of the natives in the Shiré River District—the Shiré River flows into the Zambesi from the north, and is the outlet of Lake Nyassa—had accepted Portuguese sovereignty, was a distinctive victory for the Portuguese in their contest with the British for the control of that section of the Dark Continent. In July, 1889, Mr. H. H. Johnston, an experienced African traveller and naturalist, and British consul at Mozambique, took passage with several British naval officers on a gunboat, which went up the Chinde mouth of the Zambesi and entered the Shiré river. At a point 100 miles north of its mouth, where the Ruo enters the Shiré, Consul Johnston on the 12th of August “performed the significant act of hoisting the British flag at the Ruo station, henceforth marking the limit of Portuguese authority.” This was intended to close Portugal out of Lake Nyassa, the extreme southern point of which is 150 miles north of Ruo. By securing Mapoonda, however, Portugal took actual possession of the territory immediately to the south of Lake Nyassa. The English expedition in going up the river passed Major Serpa Pinto, the Portuguese leader, with a force of about 700 Zulus under560 his command. Serpa Pinto was on his way to take possession of Nyassaland. Consul Johnston protested, and assured him that, if he persisted in his purpose, he would bring about a rupture between Portugal and England. Serpa Pinto finally promised to turn back, but as soon as Consul Johnston had moved forward the Portuguese commander resumed his march to Lake Nyassa, and when he reached Mapoonda, which commands the southern entrance to the lake, threw up fortifications there and began preparations for a battle with the neighboring Makololo, in which the latter were routed with great slaughter. This battle appears to have been decisive, and to have led the native chiefs to transfer their nominal allegiance from the British to the Portuguese with alarming rapidity. By securing Mapoonda as an ally, the Portuguese cut off England’s communications with Lake Nyassa via the Zambesi and Shiré rivers, and precipitated the crisis which was threatened by the recent Portuguese proclamation which assumed to annex the whole Zambesi region.

This controversy which has already ended in the defeat of Portuguese designs, and which could have ended in no other way, because England is the stronger and more rapacious power, brings into play all the old arguments respecting colonial ambitions and enterprises. It will be remembered that for nearly two hundred years after the discovery of America, the European powers were a unit over the doctrine that first discovery gave a title to the discoverer. But when Great Britain awoke to the fact that this doctrine, if rigidly applied, would virtually dispossess her of American soil, notwithstanding the additional fact that she was proving to be the best permanent colonizer in Europe, she originated the new doctrine that actual possession of and settlement in a newly discovered country created a higher title than that of first discovery. This was a safe doctrine to adopt respecting America, for even then the English grip was now so strong as to be unshakable, and it was equally safe as to any other British claim, for the ocean supremacy of France, Spain and Portugal, her real rivals, was on the wane and hers was on the increase.

So now, notwithstanding the claim of Portugal to her territory on both the African coasts, by right of discovery, England does not561 hesitate to enter the Nyassa and Shiré region, hoist her flag and claim the rights of sovereignty, on the ground that she is the first permanent occupant. The fact that she has tangible interests to protect—invested property, missions etc., serves to strengthen her attitude with other European powers. But aside from this she does not intend to let Portugal establish a permanent possession clear across Africa from the Atlantic, at Angola and Benguella, to the mouth of the Zambesi. Such a possession would simply cut the continent in two, and erect a barrier on the east coast to that union of the British African possessions which her foreign diplomacy designs. Moreover, it is fully settled in the mind of Great Britain that the Nile water-way and its extensions through Lakes Albert and Edward Nyanza, Tanganyika, Nyassa, and the Shiré and Zambesi rivers, are hers, even if force has to be applied to make them actually hers.

But it must be said on behalf of Portugal, that she is not resting her rights on the ancient fiction of discovery alone. Her occupancy of the Zambesi region has, of late, become quite distinct and her vested rights have assumed impressive proportions. The management of her affairs are in the hands of Major Alberto da Rocha Serpa Pinto, whose exertions have greatly strengthened the Portuguese claims. His achievements in the way of African exploration give him high rank as a traveler, explorer, scientist and organizer. He was born in 1845 and educated for the Portuguese military service. In 1869 he first went to Africa, where he took part in the campaign against the rebellious chief Bonga, in the region of the Zambesi. He acquitted himself with distinction on the field of battle, and acquired wide repute as an explorer, by ascending the river as far as the Victoria Falls, making many important discoveries on the way, and crossing the African continent from one side to the other.

Upon his return to Portugal, Serpa Pinto was received personally by the King, who was first to greet him when entering the harbor; Lisbon and Oporto were brilliantly illuminated in his honor, and he received many honors and marks of distinction from the sovereign and public bodies.

In November, 1877, Serpa Pinto was again sent to Africa by the562 Portuguese Government and the Lisbon Geographical Society in conjunction. He organized a force of fourteen soldiers and fifty-seven carriers, and, starting from Benguella, he penetrated to the interior, traversing the districts of Dombe, Guillenguez, and Caconda, reaching Bihé in March of the following year. He was finally laid low with fever and carried by his faithful followers to the coast. Two of his subordinates, Brito Capello and Ivens, who have since become eminent as explorers, left the expedition in the interior, journeying to the northward to explore the river Quanza, while Serpa Pinto went to the eastward. On his return to Lisbon he was received with evidences of great esteem by the King, and was the object of popular adulation in all quarters. He described the sources of four great rivers heretofore unknown. His discovery of the river Coando, navigable for 600 miles and flowing into the Zambesi, alone placed Major Pinto in the rank of the great African explorers. After remaining in Portugal a few years, Serpa Pinto again returned to Africa, where he has since remained. In 1884, he made another extended journey of exploration, the results of which fully entitled him to the title of the Portuguese Stanley.

Following his discoveries the Portuguese have built a short railroad inland from Delagoa, and have established a system of steam navigation on the Zambesi and Shiré rivers, and opened a large and prosperous trading establishment. The activity recently displayed by the British in southeast Africa has led them to push forward their advantages and seize everything they can lay their hands on while the opportunity offers.

Commenting on this situation the London Times calls it “Major Serpa Pinto’s gross outrage on humanity and intolerable affront to England,” to which an American paper very appropriately replies:—

“Nothing would suit the English better than to have some excuse for wrenching away from little Portugal her possessions on the Dark Continent. England has played the cuckoo so many times with impunity that now it is believed a quickened public conscience will call a halt.

“The merits of this particular case will hardly exert much influence in determining the fate of Portugal in Africa. Left to themselves, England would dispossess Portugal in the twinkling of an563 eye, for if Turkey is the sick man of Eastern Europe, Portugal is the national personification of senility in the West. Four or five hundred years ago it was the foremost nation of Europe in point of commercial enterprise. The ships of Portugal were the most adventuresome of any that ploughed the ocean. As long ago as 1419 a bold Portuguese tar, Zarco, skirted along Western Africa, far below the Equator, and later, Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Like Columbus, he sought the most direct route to India, and what the Genoese missed he found. The country which England is now impatiently eager to steal from Portugal is a part of the reward of that enterprise which revolutionized Oriental trade, and was second in importance to the world only to the discovery of America. It was as if both sought a silver mine, and the one who failed to find what they were after came upon a gold mine. Portugal may not have made very much use of her discovery for herself and her people, but mankind has been immeasurably benefited, and England incalculably enriched. For the latter to now turn around and rob Portugal of her African possessions, in whole or in part, would be poetic injustice. It would be the old fable over again of the farmer who warmed a snake in his bosom only to be bitten by it.”

564

AFRICAN METHODIST CONFERENCE, 1888.565 1: Bishop Wm. Taylor. 2: Chas. A. Pitman. 3: Jas. H. Deputie. 4: H. B. Capeheart. 5: Jas. W. Draper. 6: Riding Boyce. 7: A. L. Sims. 8: Gabriel W. Parker. 9: J. E. Clarke. 10: Anthony H. Watson. 11: Edwd. Brumskine. 12: Jno. W. Early. 13: J. Wood (L. P.). 14: Josiah Artis. 15: A. S. Norton (?) L. P. 16: Dan’l Ware. 17: C. B. McLain. 18: Jos. W. Bonner. 19: Wm. P. Kennedy, Jr. 20: Benj. K. McKeever. 21: Benj. J. Turner. 22: Frank C. Holderness. 23: Wm. T. Hagar. 24: Jas. W. Cooper. 25: Thos. A. Sims. Larger.

MISSIONARY WORK IN AFRICA.

It is not alone as a commercial, scientific and political field that Africa attracts attention. No country presents stronger claims on the attention of Christian philanthropists. The Arabs entered Africa as propagandists of Islamism. The Portuguese advent was signalized by the founding of Catholic missions. When they arrived off the mouth of the Congo, in 1490, the native king, “seated on a chair of ivory, raised on a platform, dressed in glossy, highly colored skins and feathers, with a fine head-dress made of palm fibre, gave permission to the strangers to settle in his dominions, to build a church, and to propagate the Christian religion. The King himself and all his Chiefs were forthwith baptised, and the fullest scope was allowed to the Roman Catholic missionaries who accompanied the expedition to prosecute their appointed work.”

Thus runs an old chronicle. It is valuable as showing the antiquity of Christian interest in Africa, as well as showing the fine opportunity then presented for introducing the gospel into benighted lands. We say fine opportunity, because Portugal was then a power, able and willing to second every effort of the church, and the church itself was well equipped for missionary work. Its zeal was untiring. Its formula was calculated to impress the African mind. The regalia of its priesthood was captivating. Its music was pleasing and inspiring. But the sequel proved that something was wrong. The priesthood laboured arduously, establishing missions, baptizing the natives by the thousand, adapting their ceremonies and processions to heathen rites and superstitions. The process was not that of lifting pagan souls to a high Christian level, so much as a566 lowering of Christian principles to a heathen level. Then the church was too dependent on, too intimate with, the state. Even Portuguese historians admit that physical force was frequently employed to bring the natives more completely under the will of the priests. The accounts given of some of the floggings which took place, both of males and female, would be alternately shocking and ludicrous, but for the fact that they were associated with the propagation of religion. Also, both church and state countenanced the crime of slavery, and fattened on the infernal traffic. The ultimate result of such a system might have been easily foreseen. After a long career of so-called missionary success, during which hundreds of mission stations were founded on the entire western and on a great part of the eastern coast of Africa, and many even far inland, the priests fell under the jealousy of the chiefs, clashed with them respecting polygamy and various other customs, and were finally forced back with the receding wave of European influence, when the power of Portugal began to wane. Within one hundred years of the above described arrival of the Portuguese missionaries off the mouth of the Congo, no trace of the labors of Catholic missionaries could be found and no tradition among the natives that they had ever been there. The finest mission stations elsewhere had fallen into ruins, and only those remained which were near ports of entry and fortified commercial points.

It may be truthfully said that missionary work in Africa lay as if dead till the spirit of African discovery was revived in England by the formation of the British African Association, in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Even its first pioneers were not missionaries, but rather explorers in a commercial and scientific sense. They were, however, philanthropic Christian men, and the problem of evangelizing Africa was ever present in their minds. Among them were Leyard, Major Houghton, Mungo Park who met his death on the Upper Niger, Frederic Horeman, Mr. Nicholls, Prof. Roentgen, Mr. James Riley, Captain Tuckey who manned the first Congo expedition in 1816, Captain Gray and Major Laing, Richie and Lyon, Denham and Clapperton who pierced Bornou and visited Lake Tchad, Laing and Caillié whose glowing descriptions of Timbuctoo were read with delight.

567

These were followed at a later period by Richard and John Lander who really solved the problem of the Niger, and by Laird and Oldfield and Coulthurst and Davidson. Now came a time, 1841, when broader sympathies were enlisted. An expedition was organized under the direction and at the expense of the British Government which was not merely to explore the interior of the vast Continent, promote the interests of art and science, but check the slave trade, introduce legitimate commerce, advance civilization and social improvement, and thus prepare the way for the introduction of Christianity. For this purpose, treaties were to be formed with native princes, agriculture was to be encouraged, and Christian missions were to be established. Two missionaries went along, Rev. Messrs. Muller and Schon. The expedition began the ascent of the river Niger, but was soon forced to return. Failure was written over the enterprise, and the cause was the deadly climate, which had been too little studied in advance. African enterprise in the north again fell back on pioneering exploits, and we have the splendid researches of Barth, Krapf and Rebman in 1849, and in 1857 those still more brilliant efforts of Burton and Speke, who entered the continent from Zanzibar, on the east, and brought to light the mystery of Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyika. Following these came Baker, and then the immortal Livingstone, who united the pioneer and the missionary.

Livingstone entered Africa in 1840, under the auspices of the London Missionary Society, and founded a missionary station at Kolobeng, South Africa, 200 miles north of the Moffat station at Kuruman. He married Rev. Robert Moffat’s daughter, and was thus doubly fortified for missionary work. He labored earnestly and faithfully in his field till driven by the hostility of the Boers to provide himself another mission further north and beyond the great Kalahari desert. After suffering untold hardships in his trip across the desert, he discovered Lake Ngami, decided that it would be a good base for further missionary work, and then returned for his wife. A third time he crossed the desert, which had been regarded as impassable, and this time with his family. It was the year 1851. He reached the river Chobe after a hard struggle, his animals having perished under the bites of the poisonous tsetse fly. Here he entered568 the kingdom of Sebituane, the renowned warrior, whose favor he had previously secured. But that chieftain had died, and his successor detained Livingstone for a time. When a permit was obtained to go where he pleased, he pushed on 130 miles to Sesheke, and thence to the Zambesi, in the center of the continent, in the country of the famed Macololos. But finding the country too unhealthy for a permanent mission, he returned to Cape Town, whence he planned and carried to success a journey back to the Zambezi, and westward, through the Macololos and other tribes, to Loanda in Angola, quite across the continent. This was in 1852. This journey came about because, when at Cape Town, he learned of the total destruction of his parent mission station at Kolobeng by the Boers. This left him without a pastoral charge, but it proved a turning point in his life. Henceforth the field of adventure and exploration was his, and he easily became the most noted of African travelers, till Stanley established for himself a greater fame. What the Church lost a whole world gained. His further travels, how he lost and buried his faithful wife on the banks of the Shiré, his own sad death in the swamps of Lake Bangweola, the return of his dead body to Zanzibar, borne by his faithful servants Chuma and Susi, have all been described elsewhere in this volume.

The recent advance of the Portuguese toward the head-waters of the Zambesi, and their reduction of the Macololo territory to a Portuguese possession, together with the complications with other ambitious nations of Europe, likely to grow out of it, bring that strange Central African people again into prominence. The region was made known, in olden times, by the Portuguese traveler, Silva Porto, who described it as fertile, and the people as of divided tribes. But Livingstone describes the section as the empire of the Macololos, and gives many glowing descriptions of the people, their rulers, products and possessions. He was well received by them, liked their country, and left a profound impression among them, for Major Serpa Pinto, in his visit many years afterwards, found Livingstone’s name mentioned everywhere among the then detached and demoralized tribes with respect.

CHUMA AND SUSI.

KING LOBOSSI.

According to Livingstone, the powerful Basuto tribe, south of the Zambesi, crossed to the north side under the lead of their chief,570 Chibitano, and reduced the numerous tribes who inhabited the vast stretches of country as far as the river Cuando. Chibitano gave to his army, formed of different elements, and to his conquered peoples, made up of a variety of origins, the name of Cololos, hence the word Macololos, so well known throughout Africa. This powerful warrior and legislator held his conquered tribes as brethren in one common interest till his death, when they began to set up independent empires. In this disintegration the Luinas, under King Lobossi, came to the front, and are yet the most powerful of the Macololos. Pinto says that the Macololo empire is now composed of a mongrel crew—Calabares, Luinas, Ganguellas, and Macalacas—all given to drunkenness and moral brutishness. They are polygamous and deep in the slave traffic. Their country—200 miles long and over 50 wide—is full of villages and fine plantations. The Luina herds571 cover the plains of the upper Zambesi, and no finer cattle are to be found in Africa. Lakes abound, and while they contribute to malarial diseases, they give a rich variety of fish. The men do not take readily to farming, but the women are wonderful milkmaids and vegetable raisers. As a people, they are skillful iron-workers and wood-carvers, and expert at pottery work. They cultivate tobacco for snuff, but smoke only bangue. They dress fuller and better than most Central African people, and some of their garbs are quite fantastic.

Prof. Henry Drummond, of Glasgow, in a lecture on “The Heart of Africa,” gives a vivid description of the perils which beset missionary life in the Zambesi regions:

As his boat swept along the beautiful lake Nyassa, he noticed in the distance a few white objects on the shore. On closer inspection, they were found to be wattle and daub houses, built in English style and whitewashed. Heading his boat for the shore, he landed and began to examine what seemed to be the home of a little English colony. The first house he entered gave evidence of recent occupancy, everything being in excellent order; but no human form was to be seen or human voice to be heard. The stillness of death reigned. He entered the school-house. The benches and desks were there, as if school had been but recently dismissed; but neither teachers nor scholars were to be seen. In the blacksmith shop the anvil and hammer stood ready for service, and it seemed as if the fire had just gone out upon the hearth; but no blacksmith could be found. Pushing his investigations a little further, he came upon four or five graves. These little mounds told the whole story and explained the desolation he had seen. Within them reposed the precious dust of some of the missionaries of Livingstonia, who one by one had fallen at their post, victims of the terrible African fever. Livingstonia was Scotland’s answer in part to the challenge which Henry M. Stanley gave to the Christian world to send missionaries to eastern equatorial Africa. When that intrepid explorer, after untold hardship, had found David Livingstone, and during months of close companionship had felt the power of that consecrated life, he blew the trumpet with no uncertain sound to rouse the church to her privilege and responsibility in central Africa. But it was not572 till the death of the great missionary explorer, that the land which gave him birth resolved to send a little army of occupation to the region which he had opened to the Christian world. On the 18th of January, 1875, at a public meeting held in the city of Glasgow, the Free, the Reformed, and the United Presbyterian churches of Scotland founded a mission, to be called Livingstonia, and which was to be located in the region of Lake Nyassa, the most southern of the three great lakes of central Africa, with a coast of eight hundred miles. Although founded by the churches just named, it was understood that it was to be regarded as a Free Church mission, the others co-operating with men and means as opportunity offered or necessity required.

The choice of location was most appropriate, not only because Dr. Livingstone had discovered that beautiful sheet of water, but because he had requested the Free Church to plant a mission on its shores. The first company of missionaries, which included also representatives of the Established Church, who were to found a separate mission in the lake region, after immense toil and severe hardship, reached the lake, via the Zambesi and Shiré rivers, October 12th, 1875. They selected a site near Cape Maclear as their first settlement, and as soon as possible put into operation the various parts of the mission work they had been commissioned to prosecute—industrial, educational, medical and evangelistic. From the first the mission met with encouraging success, becoming not only a center of gospel light to that benighted region, but also a city of refuge to which the wretched natives fled to escape the inhuman cruelties of the slave traders. As the years rolled on, however, it was found necessary to remove the main work of the mission to a more healthful region on the lake—hence the desolation seen by Prof. Drummond—the work at Cape Maclear being now mainly evangelistic and carried on by native converts. The mission still lives and comprises four stations, one of which is situated on the Stevenson Road, a road constructed at a cost of $20,000 by an English philanthropist, and intended to promote communication between Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika.

After this diversion, forced upon the reader by reason of Livingstone’s dual missionary and pioneering work, we turn again to the573 north of Africa, and to historic Egypt. Comparatively little has been done in this land by Christendom for the evangelization of its degraded population. Wesleyan missionaries were stationed at Alexandria in the early part of the century, but the field proved unpropitious and they were removed to a more promising sphere of labor. Even the Church of England, now most in favor there, has not achieved much in the way of Christianizing the people. Perhaps the American United Presbyterians have been most successful in this uninviting field. They have several missionaries there, numerous lay agents, over a score of stations and schools, and quite a following of converts and pupils. The Khedive has granted them toleration and valuable concessions. The Church of Scotland sustains one mission and several prosperous schools at Cairo, in Egypt.

In Nubia, the Mohammedan religion is so firmly fixed, that missionary effort has been almost entirely discouraged.

The Abyssinians boast of their relationship to King Solomon, resulting from the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Jerusalem. They also claim to have received their Christianity from its fountain head in Judæa, on the return of the Ethiopian eunuch to the Court of Queen Candace, after his conversion to the faith of the Gospel by Philip, the Evangelist. Whatever truth there may be in these traditions, it is a fact that the religion of the country is a species of Christianity, combined with certain Judaic observances, as circumcision, abstinence from meat, keeping of Saturday as the Sabbath, and also with many Catholic forms, as reverence for the Virgin, the calendar of saints, etc. As a missionary field the Catholics were the first to enter Abyssinia in 1620, and they succeeded in persuading the king to declare Catholicism to be the religion of the State. This bold step, however, occasioned civil wars which ended in their expulsion from the country. Jesuit missionaries from France came later, but they were also banished.

The Church of England Missionary Society in 1829 sent out two missionaries. Others followed, but little was accomplished. The well known German missionary, Herr Flad, has accomplished quite a work in recent times. The defeat and murder of the Abyssinian king was one of the sad events of 1888. It followed successful574 invasions of the country and the slaughter and enslavement of large numbers of Abyssinians in 1885 and 1886 by the Mahdists, and their defeat by King John in 1887. Herr Flad transmitted a letter to the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society from Christian Abyssinians, which is a most earnest and pathetic appeal for help from their fellow Christians and such help as will prevent their enslavement and the entire desolation of their country. Very pertinently these people, whose liberties and lives are in such imminent danger, inquire of Christians in other lands, after depicting the desolation of their own, the selling of thousands of people into slavery, and the cruel butchery of other thousands, “Why should fanatic and brutal Moslems be allowed to turn a Christian land like Abyssinia into a desert, and to extirpate Christianity from Ethiopia?” They close with this earnest plea: “For Christ’s sake make known our sad lot to our brethren and sisters in Christian lands, who fear God and love the brethren.” While Abyssinian Christianity may not be without spot, Abyssinians are God’s men and women.

Later missionary letters to the London Anti-Slavery Society say that the Mahdists have made Western Abyssinia a desert. Whole flocks and herds have been destroyed, thousands of Christians have been thrown into slavery, thousands of others have been butchered, and hundreds of the noblest inhabitants have been taken to Mecca as slaves in violation of treaties.

The English gunboat Osprey recently captured three cargoes of slaves off the island of Perim, which guards the Aden entrance to the Red Sea. When brought to the Admiralty Court at Aden they proved to be about 217 in number, chiefly Abyssinian boys and girls from 10 to 20 years of age, captured by the fierce Mohammedan Gallas, and run across to Mocha to be sold to the Mohammedans. The Foreign Missionary Committee in Scotland appeal for a special Rescued Slaves’ Fund for the support and Bible education of these captives.

In Barca, Tripoli, Fezzan, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco, known as the Barbary States, owing to the exclusive character of the Moslem faith, all missionary effort for the evangelization of the general population has been precluded until recently. A note from575 Edward H. Slenny, secretary of the North Africa Mission, says Jan. 26, 1889: “I have just returned from visiting most of the missionaries connected within the North Africa Mission in Morocco, Algeria and Tunis. The prospect among the Mohammedans is encouraging and we are hoping to send out more laborers. There are now forty-one on our staff, and two more leave us in a week. We are now proposing to take up work among the Europeans as well as the Mohammedans, and also establish a station in Tripoli, which is quite without the Gospel.”

Algeria was occupied in some measure in 1881, Morocco in 1884, Tunis in 1885 and in 1889. Mr. Michell, who has been working in Tunis, accompanied by Mr. Harding, who left England February 1, landed in Tripoli the 27th. Thus far they are getting on well. They find the people more bigoted than in Tunis. Besides the work they may be able to do in the city and neighborhood, they will be able to send some Scriptures by the caravans leaving for the Soudan which, with the blessing of God, will spread the light around Lake Tchad.

A correspondent of The Christian, (London) writing from Gibraltar, says: “We have had very cheering news from Morocco. A wonderful work has sprung up among the Spanish and Jewish people of Tangier. Meetings, commenced two or three months ago, have been held in Spanish, addressed through an interpreter by some brethren of the North African Mission, and there has been an intense eagerness to hear the truth. The Holy Spirit has carried home the Gospel message with conviction to many hearts, and a few days ago the brethren informed me that seventeen Jewish and Spanish converts were baptized, and others were waiting for baptism. The meetings have been crowded night after night, so much so that the friends in Tangier contemplate hiring a music-hall, at present used for midnight revelry and sin. This revival has aroused the enmity of both rabbi and priest, consequently bitter persecution has followed. Several Jewish inquirers have been beaten in the synagogue, converts have been dismissed from their employment, and the priests have offered bribes and made threats to the Spanish converts to induce them to cease attending the meetings, but so far the converts are holding firm.”

576

E. F. Baldwin is meeting with great success in Morocco. He writes from Tangier:

“We have had great encouragement in the work here. For some two months we have had nightly meetings for inquirers and young converts, attended by from ten to twenty. Many have received Christ as their personal Saviour and have been at once baptized. For some weeks most of my time was occupied from morning until night talking with interested ones who visited me, and daily there would be natives in my room much of the time. At times conversions occurred daily. All of them are brought out of Mohammedan darkness. They all renounce that false religion formally at their baptism. Almost all are young men, some of good position, but most of them from among the poor. There is not one who has not prayed and spoken in our meetings from the day of his conversion.

“Two of the earliest converts are in the mountains traveling on foot without purse, scrip or pay, preaching in both Arabic and Shillah. They have been away now several weeks. Others, whose faces we have never seen, have been converted in distant places through one from here, and write us of many others believing through their word. We have reason to believe the Gospel has taken root in several places in Southern Morocco within these few weeks. Two others of our number are arranging to start at once to preach in another direction. Mr. Martain and I are also leaving as soon as we can get away, and will travel also as Christ commanded, on foot and without purse or scrip.”

Later he writes from Mogador: “For upwards of a year new accessions have been constant, and every one baptized has renounced Mohammedanism. For a time the work was seemingly much hindered by severe persecution, imprisonment, beating, disowning, banishment—these are all too familiar to the converts here in Southern Morocco. But when it was impossible to work longer here in Mogador we travelled and preached, going literally on the methods laid down in Matthew X, which we hold with, we find, increasing numbers of God’s children, to be of perpetual obligation. We have found them to contain the deep and matchless wisdom of God for missionary effort. Several others besides myself, including577 recently converted natives, are so travelling. The natives knowing no other methods, have gone gladly forth, without purse or scrip, on foot, taking nothing, and marvellous blessing in the way of conversion has followed the step of their simple faith. They go with no thought of pay or salary. The Father makes their simple needs His care. My own position as an unattached missionary, dependent only on God for temporal supplies (which, blessed be His name, He ceaselessly supplies), enables one to consistently instruct these native Christians in the principles and methods of Mathew x, and encourage them to go forth upon them.

“It is to this return to these first principles of mission work I attribute the constant flow of blessing we are having, and which is so exceptional in Mohammedan fields. I earnestly recommend them to others who may have the faith and are so circumstanced as to practice them. I say this without any reflection upon the more ordinary and accepted lines of mission endeavor. The field is vast and the need great, and by all and every means let the Gospel be preached.

“Just now the vigilance of our persecutors and adversaries has somewhat relaxed, and our frequent meetings (sixteen in Arabic and eight in English per week,) are well attended and we are cheered by more conversions. Several are just presenting themselves for baptism. Last night one of the most intelligent and best educated Moors I have ever met, publicly confessed Christ for the first time—both speaking and praying (as all the native Christians do from the hour of their conversion) in our meeting before many witnesses. He is one of the few ‘honorable’ ones who have been won. We trust he may become a veritable Paul. He was some months since arrested and thrown into prison on the suspicion of being a Christian, which at that time he was not. His feet, like Joseph’s, ‘they hurt with fetters,’ the scars of which he will never cease to carry. Poor fellow! He was then without the comfort that comes to a child of God in affliction, and yet enduring reproach for Christ. But God blessed his dreary sojourn in prison to his soul, and it contributed to his conversion.

“Some from among the few resident Europeans and from among578 the Jews also have turned to the Lord and confessed Him in baptism.

“Tidings from different places in the interior, where the word of life has been carried from here, tell us of many turning from Mohammed’s cold, hard, false faith, to the love and light the Gospel brings them. May not all this encourage the zeal and faith of scattered workers toiling in these hard Moslem fields?

“Some new workers, all committed to Mathew X lives, have just joined us. There are now six of us here, all men of course, with our lives given up to toil for Christ under his primitive instructions. A band is forming in Ayrshire, Scotland, of others who will come to us soon, we trust. Others in different places are greatly interested. We hope to have many natives together here in the summer months for training in the Word, that they may afterwards go forth two by two, without purse or scrip.”

Alfred S. Lamb writes as follows:

“Within four days’ journey of Britain one may land on African soil and find a large field—almost untouched—for Christian labor among the natives of Algeria, the Kabyles. Visiting recently among these people, and making known to them, for the first time, the glad tidings of salvation, I was much struck with the attention given to the message. Doubtless the novelty of an Englishman speaking to them in their own unwritten language, and delivering such a message as a free salvation without works, was sufficient of itself to call forth such attention. Seated one evening in a Kabyle house, I was greatly delighted with the readiness to listen to the Gospel. The wonderful story of the resurrection of Lazarus was being read, when my host announced that supper was ready, and when I liked I could have it brought up. Having expressed a desire to finish the narrative, the little company of Mohammedans continued to give the utmost attention to the words read and spoken. Supper ended, the conversation was renewed. One of our company, an honorable Marabout or religious Mohammedan, who, because of having made a pilgrimage to Mecca, was called Elhadj, entertained us while he read from an Arabian tract. The man showed us, with evident pride, a book in Arabic (I presume a portion of Scripture,) given him two years ago in Algiers579 by a Christian English lady who was distributing tracts among the people. Frequently during that evening’s conversation, my statements were met by the words, ‘You are right,’ ‘Truly.’ That night I had two sharing the sleeping apartment with me. Having seen me bow the knee in prayer, one of them asked me afterward if I had been praying. Replying that I had, he added, ‘May God answer your prayer!’”

The north of Africa, so long neglected by the missionaries, seems now to share in the interest that has been awakened in the whole continent.

WEST AFRICAN MUSSULMAN.

We come now to the west coast. Western Africa is divided into numerous petty States, in all of which the most degrading superstition and idolatry, with their usual concomitants of lawlessness and cruelty, are the outstanding features. The entire population was no doubt pagan at no very remote period; but in modern times the religion of Mohammed has extensively prevailed, having been jealously propagated with fire and sword by northern tribes of Arab descent. But there is not so much difference between the Mohammedanism and paganism of the negroes as many suppose. The distinction is rather nominal than real, so far as the moral conduct of the people is concerned. All profess to believe in the existence of God, if a confused notion of a higher power may be so designated; but all are entirely ignorant of the character and claims of the Divine Being, and exceedingly superstitious. The African Mussulman repeats the prayers, and observes the feasts and ceremonies prescribed in the Koran, but he has quite as much, if not more faith, in his charms and amulets, or greegrees.

580

Paganism in West Africa is known by the name of “fetishism.” It assumes different forms in the various tribes. It is to a large extent a system of devil worship, in connection with which the belief in witchcraft plays an important part. Not only are the deities themselves called “fetishes,” but the religious performances of acts of worship, and the offerings presented are also spoken of as “fetish,” or sacred, because they are performed and offered in honor of those deities. In the daily household worship, in every domestic and public emergency, in seasons of public calamity, when preparing for and engaged in war, in the taking of oaths, at births and deaths and funerals, and, indeed in connection with every event in life, the “fetish” superstition holds the people in the most slavish, degrading, and cruel bondage. When a death occurs a solemn assembly is held in a palaver house to inquire into its cause; and as witchcraft is the one often assigned it results in death to some unfortunate individual suspected of the crime.

To be suspected of witchcraft is the worst thing that can overtake a man or woman in Africa, and at every death it is the priests’ business to make out who has been the cause of the death. On such occasions a brother, sister, father, nay, in many cases even a mother, may be accused of the unnatural crime of having occasioned the death of their dearest. Against such a charge there exists no defense. Free room has been left to the priesthood for the execution of its malicious plottings and selfish designs, as they mostly are. It is hard to say which men dread the most, the effects of witchcraft or being themselves accused of practicing it. People avoid with the utmost carefulness and solicitude every look, every word, every act, which is in the slightest measure open to misinterpretation. If any one is seriously ill, care is taken not to be too cheerful, lest it should appear as if one was rejoicing over the expected decease. But, again, one does not dare to seem too solicitous, lest it should be surmised that he is concealing his guilt under a mantle of hypocrisy. And yet, with all these precautions, one is never secure. If such a suspicion has once been uttered against any one, neither age, nor rank, nor even known nobility of character defends him from the necessity of submitting to the ordeal of poison, the issue of which is held infallible.

581

The people through belief in this doctrine, are the victims of the priests and priestesses—the “fetish” men and women—who constitute a large class. The most incredible atrocities resulting from this belief form one of the darkest chapters in the history of this dark land.

Some of the superstitious rites and ceremonies of the negro race partake more of the nature of open idolatry than any of those which have yet been mentioned. For instance, they pay homage to certain lakes, rivers and mountains, which they regard as sacred, believing them to be the special dwelling places of the gods. They also adore various animals and reptiles, which they believe to be animated by the spirits of their departed ancestors. In some places large serpents are kept and fed, in houses set apart for the purpose, by the “fetish” priests. To these ugly creatures sacrifices are presented and divine homage is paid by the people at stated periods—a liberal present being always brought for the officiating priest on all such occasions.

The ruling people of the Niger delta, at Bross, New Calabar, Bonny and Opobo, are the Ijos. Every community of them had formerly its “totem,” or sacred animal, in whose species the ancestral Spirit of the tribe was supposed to dwell. So profound was this belief that the English traders in the Oil River region—the Oil Rivers embrace the tributaries of the Niger, and are so called in general because the commerce in palm-oil is large upon them—were forbidden to kill the sacred lizard of Bonny, and the more sacred python of Bross. One agent of a large trading firm at Bross found a python in his house and inconsiderately killed it. On learning of it, the Bross natives destroyed the firm’s factory and store, dragged the agent to the beach and inflicted indignities on him. The British consul considered the case, but such was the sentiment against the sacrilegious conduct of the agent, that the consul, as a matter of trade polity, was forced to decide that redress was impossible, in as much as he had brought the punishment on himself.

This “totem” worship made the monster lizard at Bonny a nuisance. They grew in number and impudence, till it was nothing unusual to see their six feet of slimy length stretched across paths and upon doorways, and to feel the lash of their serrated tails582 on your legs as you passed along. If one were wounded or killed, there was no end of trouble, for the irate natives were sure to carry the case to the consul on board ship, where they secured the judgment of a fine, or else taking the law into their own hands, they insulted, or assaulted the slayer till their anger was appeased.

In other parts of the delta, a shark became the tribe “totem,” or a crocodile, or water-bird, but in no part was Zoölatry—animal worship—carried to a greater extent than at Bonny and Bross, where the lizard and python were favorites. In 1884, the Church Missionary Society took the matter in hand, and finally succeeded in doing what consuls and the war-ships had failed to accomplish. The society screwed the courage of the native converts up to the sticking point and finally proclaimed the destruction of the lizards in Bonny on one Easter Sunday morning. Men and boys, armed with hatchets and sticks went about killing the ugly beasts, and so complete was their work that the day ended with their extermination. But the sickening smell which pervaded the air for days, came near producing a pestilence. It was a hard blow to native superstitions, but the riddance soon came to be acquiesced in. A change equally abrupt put an end to the python worship at Bross, and so there has been of late years, a gradual giving up of this “totem” observance among the Niger tribes, thanks to missionary rather than commercial enterprise.

Here, surely, if anywhere on the face of the earth, the Gospel, with its enlightening, purifying, and ennobling influence, was needed. What then has been done to carry it to these degraded people, and what have been the results of missionary labor among them? Take a glance first at Sierra Leone, as it was the earliest visited by the missionaries. It is situated in the southern part of Senegambia. It has an area of 319 square miles, and a population of over 80,000, nearly all blacks. Formerly it was one of the chief emporiums of the slave trade. In 1797 the British African Company purchased land from the native princes with the view of forming a settlement for the emancipated negroes who had served in British ships during the American Revolution, and who on the conclusion of peace were found in London in a most miserable condition. In 1808 this land was transferred to the British Crown, additional tracts of country583 being subsequently acquired. The colony has since served as an asylum for the wretched victims rescued from the holds of slave ships.

The history of missionary enterprise, in this land of sickness and death, is a chequered one. Colonial chaplains were appointed at different times, from the beginning, to minister to the government functionaries and others; but owing to frequent deaths and absences from illness, the office was often vacant. The first effort of a purely missionary character for the benefit of West Africa was made by the Baptist Missionary Society in 1795. Efforts of other societies followed in rapid succession; but it was not until after the commencement of the present century, when the Church and Wesleyan Missionary Societies undertook the work of evangelization in Western Africa, that the cause took a permanent and progressive form.

The Church Missionary Society in 1804 sent out to Sierra Leone Mr. Renner, a German, and Mr. Hartwig, a Prussian, to instruct the people in a knowledge of Divine things. In 1806 Messrs. Nylander, Butscher, and Prasse—all of whom had been trained at the Berlin Missionary Seminary, and ordained according to the rites of the Lutheran church—embarked at Liverpool to strengthen the mission. In 1816 Wm. A. B. Johnson went out as a schoolmaster to this colony. “He was a plain German laborer, having but a very limited common-school education and no marked intellectual qualifications, but he was trained in the school of Christ and was a good man, full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. It became obvious that he was called of God to preach the Gospel, and he was ordained in Africa. His period of service was brief, but marvelous in interest and power, and he raised up a native church of great value. Into the midst of these indolent, vicious, violent savages he went. He found them devil worshipers, and at first was very much disheartened. But though William Johnson distrusted himself, he had faith in Christ and his Gospel. Like Paul, he resolved to preach the simple Gospel, holding up the cross, show them plainly what the Bible says of the guilt of sin, the need of holiness, and the awful account of the Judgment Day. He simply preached the Gospel and left results with God, confident that his Word would not return to584 him void. For nearly a year he pursued this course. And he observed that over that apparently hopeless community a rapid and radical change was coming. Old and young began to show deep anxiety for their spiritual state and yearning for newness of life. If he went for a walk in the woods, he stumbled over little groups of awakened men and women and children, who had sought there a place to pour out their hearts to God in prayer; if he went abroad on moonlight evenings, he found the hills round about the settlement echoing with the praises of those who found salvation in Christ, and were singing hymns of deliverance. His record of the simple experiences of these converts has preserved their own crude, broken, but pathetically expressive story of the Lord’s dealings with them, and the very words in which they told of the work of grace within them. No reader could but be impressed with their deep sense of sin, their appreciation of grace, their distrust of themselves and their faith in God, their humble resolves, their tenderness of conscience, their love for the unsaved about them, and their insight into the vital truth of redemption.”

The improvement in the appearance and habits and social condition of the people that followed was nothing short of a transformation. Their chapel was five times enlarged to accommodate the ever increasing numbers who attended. “Seventy years ago, if you had gone to what was afterward known as the Regent’s Town, you would have found people, taken at different times from the holds of slave-ships, in the extreme of poverty and misery, destitution and degradation. They were as naked and as wild as beasts. They represented twenty-two hostile nations or tribes, strangers to each other’s language, and having no medium of communication, save a little broken English. They had no conception of a pure home, they were crowded together in the rudest and filthiest huts, and, in place of marriage, lived in a promiscuous intercourse that was worse than concubinage. Lazy, bestial, strangers to God, they had not only defaced his image, but well-nigh effaced even the image of humanity, and combined all the worst conditions of the most brutal, savage life, plundering and destroying one another. Here it pleased God to make a test of his grace in its uplifting and redeeming power.”

585

When Johnson was under the necessity of leaving for England, hundreds of both sexes accompanied him a distance of five miles to the ship and wept bitter tears at the thought of being separated from their best earthly friend. “Massa, suppose no water live here, we go with you all the way, till no feet more move.”

Similar success attended the work at other stations, so that we find Sir Charles M’Arthy, the governor, reporting in 1821 as follows in regard to the villages of these recaptured negroes: “They had all the appearance and regularity of the neatest village in England, with a church, a school, and a commodious residence for the missionaries and teachers, though in 1817 they had not been more than thought of.” In 1842 a committee of the House of Commons thus testified to the state of the colony. “To the invaluable exertions of the Church Missionary Society more especially—as also, to a considerable, as in all our African settlement, to the Wesleyan body—the highest praise is due. By their efforts nearly one-fifth of the whole population—a most unusually high proportion in any country—are at school; and the effects are visible in considerable intellectual, moral and religious improvement.”

The bishopric of Sierra Leone was founded in 1851, and some idea may be formed of the trying nature of the climate from the fact that no fewer than three bishops died within three years of their consecration. In 1862 the Native Church having been organized on an independent basis, undertook the support of its own pastors, churches, and schools, aided by a small grant from the society.

In a work entitled “The English Church in Other Lands,” it is stated that “in the first twenty years of the existence of the mission, 53 missionaries, men and women, died at their post;” but these losses seemed to draw out new zeal, and neither then, nor at any subsequent period, has there been much difficulty in filling up the ranks of the Sierra Leone Mission, or of the others established on the same coast. The first three bishops—Vidal, Weeks and Bowen—died within eight years of the creation of the See, and yet there has been no difficulty in keeping up the succession.

The present results are a sufficient reward for all the self-sacrificing devotion. There is now at Sierra Leone a self-sustaining and586 self-extending African church. The only white clergyman in the colony is Bishop Ingram; the whole of the pastoral work being in the hands of native clergymen. Many native missionaries, both clerical and lay, have been furnished for the Niger and Yoruba missions.

An outline of the proceedings of the Wesleyan Missionary Society in this part of the wide field may be compressed into a few sentences. Among the negroes who were conveyed from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone in 1791, there were several who had become partially enlightened and otherwise benefited by attending services of the Methodist ministers in America. Some of these having made repeated applications to Dr. Coke for preachers of their own denomination to be sent from England, in the year 1811 the society responded to their request by the appointment of the Rev. G. Warren as their first missionary to Western Africa. He was accompanied by three English schoolmasters. They found about a hundred of the Nova Scotia settlers who called themselves “Methodists.” These simple minded people had built a rude chapel in which they were in the habit of meeting together to worship God from Sabbath to Sabbath, a few of the most intelligent among them conducting the services and instructing the rest according to the best of their ability. They received the missionary from England with the liveliest demonstrations of gratitude and joy; and to them, as well as to the poor afflicted liberated Africans, who were from time to time rescued from bondage by British cruisers and brought to Sierra Leone, his earnest ministrations were greatly blessed. But the missionary career of Mr. Warren was of short duration. He was smitten with fever and finished his course about eight months after his arrival—being the first of a large number of Wesleyan missionaries who have fallen a sacrifice to the climate of Western Africa since the commencement of the work. Other devoted missionaries followed who counted not their lives dear unto them if they could only be made instrumental in winning souls for Christ. No sooner did the intelligence arrive in England that missionaries and their wives had fallen in the holy strife, than others nobly volunteered their services, and went forth in the spirit of self-sacrifice—in many instances to share the same fate. This has been going on for three587 quarters of a century; and although the mortality among the agents of the society is appalling to contemplate, the social, moral, and spiritual results of the mission are grand beyond description. Congregations have been gathered, places of worship erected, native churches organized, and Christian schools established, not only in Free Town, but in most of the villages and towns in the colony. High schools have, moreover, been established for the training of native teachers and preachers, and to give a superior education to both males and females. The advancement of the people, most of whom have been rescued from slavery, in religious knowledge, general intelligence, moral conduct, and, indeed, in everything which goes to constitute genuine Christian civilization, is literally astonishing. In addition to the Church and Wesleyan Missionary Societies, who took the lead in the work of religious instruction in Sierra Leone, other agencies have been advantageously employed. The census of 1881 showed 39,000 evangelical Christians, about equally divided between the Wesleyans and the Church of England. Some reports give the nominal Christian population as high as 80,000.

In the Gambia district the inhabitants on both sides of the river are chiefly Mandingoes and Jalloffs, most of whom are Mohammedans, with a few pagans here and there. A large number of “liberated Africans,” as they are technically called, have, however, been brought to the Gambia from time to time, and located on St. Mary’s and McCarthy’s islands and in the neighboring districts, as thousands before had been taken to Sierra Leone. These are poor negro slaves of different nations and tribes who have been rescued from bondage, and landed from slave ships taken by British cruisers while in the act of pursuing their unlawful trade.

AN AFRICAN CHIEF.

No provision had been made for the moral and religious instruction of the colonists (British,) or the native tribes of this part of Africa, when the Wesleyan Missionary Society commenced its labors in 1821. The first missionary sent out was the Rev. John Morgan. He was soon afterwards joined by the Rev. John Baker from Sierra Leone, when these two devoted servants of God began to look about for the most eligible site for a mission station. Their object being chiefly to benefit the surrounding native tribes, they were anxious if possible to establish themselves on the mainland.588 Accordingly they went to visit the chief of Combo, on the southern bank of the Gambia. Having offered their presents, they were graciously received by his sable majesty, who signified his consent for the strangers to settle in any part of the country which they might select as most suitable for their object. They fixed upon a place called Mandanaree, about eight miles from St. Mary’s. Although considerably elevated it was far from healthy; and when the rainy season set in both were prostrated with fever, and were obliged to move to St. Mary’s where they could have medical aid. Before the end of the year, however, Mr. Baker proceeded to the West Indies by direction of the Missionary Committee, his health589 having become so impaired by his long residence in West Africa, as to render a change absolutely necessary.

Mr. Morgan had recovered from his attack of fever and was pursuing his work alone, when he had the pleasure of receiving as his colleague the Rev. Wm. Bell, who had been sent from England by the committee to reinforce the mission. This devoted young missionary appeared well adapted for the enterprise upon which he had entered; but he was soon called away to the “better country.” He died of fever at St. Mary’s forty-six days after his arrival. For a time his place was taken by the Rev. Geo. Lane, from Sierra Leone, but his health also failing he was obliged to return, and he shortly afterwards finished his course. On the 14th of April, 1824, Mr. Morgan was relieved by the arrival from England of the Rev. Robert and Mrs. Hawkins, who entered upon their work at once.

By this time it had become evident that the proper place for the principal station was St. Mary’s island, and arrangements were forthwith made for the erection of a mission-house and place of worship in Bathurst, the principal town. A number of native converts were soon after united in church fellowship as the result of the faithful preaching of the Gospel; schools were organized for boys and girls, and the machinery of a promising mission station was fairly put in motion. Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins suffered much from sickness during their period of service, but they labored well and successfully, and were spared to return home in 1827, the Rev. Samuel and Mrs. Dawson being appointed to take their place. Mrs. Dawson was smitten with fever and died at Sierra Leone, on her way to the Gambia, and her sorrowful and bereaved husband proceeded to his station alone. On the 18th of November, 1828, Rev. Richard and Mrs. Marshall arrived at the Gambia from England to relieve Mr. Dawson; and the school being once more favored with the supervision of a Christian lady, and the station with an energetic missionary, the work prospered in a very pleasing manner. Mr. Marshall had labored with acceptance and success for nearly two years, when he fell a sacrifice to the climate, and finished his course with joy at Bathurst on the 19th of August, 1830. Two days after the funeral of her lamented husband, Mrs. Marshall embarked with her infant son for England. They arrived at Bristol590 on the first of October; and worn out with mental and bodily suffering, the lonely widow sank into the arms of death about forty-eight hours after she landed on the shores of her native country. Gambia Station was thus left without a missionary or teacher, but six months later, on the 10th of March, Rev. W. Moister and wife arrived at St. Mary’s and set to work at once to recommence the mission schools and public services. Their labors were crowned with success; and native preachers having been trained to take a part in the work, they felt that the time had come when some effort should be made to carry the Gospel to the regions beyond. With this object in view Mr. Moister made three successive journeys into the interior; and with much toil and exposure succeeded in establishing a new station at McCarthy’s Island, nearly 300 miles up the Gambia,—a station which from that day to this, a period of over half a century, has been a centre of light and influence to all around, and the spiritual birthplace of many souls. Mr. Moister was relieved in 1833 by the arrival from England of a noble band of laborers. The Rev. Wm. and Mrs. Fox took charge of St. Mary’s and Rev. Thomas and Mrs. Dove were appointed to take charge of the new station at McCarthy’s Island. They labored long and successfully in this trying portion of the mission field, and some of them fell a sacrifice to the deadly climate. They were succeeded by others in subsequent years, many of whom shared the same fate; but whilst God buried His workmen, He carried on His work. A rich harvest has been already reaped, and the work is still going on. A commodious new chapel and schoolrooms have been built at Bathurst, and a high school established for the training of native teachers and others; whilst large congregations, attentive and devout, meet together for worship.

“The Gold Coast” is the significant name given to a maritime country of Guinea, in Western Africa, in consequence of the quantity of gold dust brought down from the interior by the natives for barter with the European merchants. The Wesleyan Missionary Society commenced its labors on the “Gold Coast” in 1834. Their first station was at Cape Coast Town, and though the missionaries died in rapid succession, the station was never without a missionary for any considerable time. As the work advanced native laborers592 were raised up; and in succeeding years stations were established, places of worship built, congregations gathered, and Christian churches and schools organized, not only in Cape Coast Town, but also at Elmina, Commenda, Dix Cove, Appolonia, Anamabu, Domonasi, Accra, Winnibab, and other places along the coast and in the far distant interior. In 1889 they had 21,000 Christians.

PORT AND TOWN OF ELMINA. Larger.

The Basle and North German Missionary Societies have also several important stations on the “Gold Coast,” at Accra, Christianburg, Akropong, and other places. During the last century the attention of Count Zinzendorf was drawn toward the propagation of the Gospel on the “Gold Coast.” Three times (1736, 1768 and 1769) missionaries were sent to Christianburg and Ningo; but all died after a short stay, without seeing any fruit of their work. They are buried, eleven in number, at Christianburg and Ningo. Upwards of half a century elapsed ere this “white man’s grave” was taken possession of again. At length in 1827, the Basle German Evangelical Mission sent out four missionaries, J. P. Henke, C. F. Salbach, J. G. Schmid, and G. Holzwarth. They arrived on the 18th of December, 1828, at Christianburg, then and until 1851 a possession of the Danish Crown. From Governor Lind they received a cordial welcome. Within nine months after their arrival three of them succumbed to the climate, two of them dying on the same day. Two years later the fourth (Henke) was removed. Three new laborers arrived in March, 1832, but in the course of four months two of them had died. The third, A. Rüs, having been raised up from the very gates of death, labored for several years, and afterwards removed to Akropong, the capital of Aquapim, a more healthful region in the interior. The Aquapims and their king proved very friendly. The reports from this new region had the effect of infusing fresh life into the society, and two missionaries, along with Miss Wolter, who became the wife of Rüs and was the first missionary lady on the “Gold Coast,” were forthwith sent to his aid. Two years thereafter, Rüs and his wife were left alone, the remorseless climate having again done its deadly work. The mission had now been in existence for ten years, and within that period no fewer than eight missionaries had died. Rüs returned in broken health to Basle in 1840. The directors of the593 society were greatly perplexed, as well they might be. The prevailing feeling was in favor of the abandonment of the mission, but a new inspector, the Rev. W. Hoffman, came into office. Fired with missionary zeal he proceeded in 1843 to Jamaica in order to enlist Christian emigrants for the work in Africa. Twenty-four members of the Moravian congregation there responded. They arrived in Christianburg in April of that year. Henceforth Akropong became as a city set on a hill. Rüs returned to Africa but was compelled to retire altogether from the field in 1845, his health having again completely broken down. But reinforcements were sent out by the society from time to time.

The mission now assumed a more encouraging aspect. Between 1838 and 1848 only one missionary had died, and by the close of the latter year forty natives had been gathered into the church. Ten years later the society was able to report that no fewer than eighteen missionaries, with nine married and three unmarried ladies, besides twenty-six catechists and teachers, had been settled at the stations already named and at various other places. The church members at the close of 1858 were 385. The next decade showed still more gratifying results, the numbers being 31 missionaries, 19 ladies, 25 native catechists, 15 native male, and 12 native female teachers, and 1581 church members. Out-stations were largely multiplied.

During this last period the work was developed in other directions. The Mission Trade Society had begun operations, its object being to prepare the way by means of trade based on Christian principles. Elders had been appointed to assist the missionaries in their work, and to settle minor cases of jurisdiction. Besides the day schools, boarding schools for boys and girls, a teachers’ training school, and a theological school had been established. Industrial departments too had been added at Christianburg. These are now self-supporting and are proving an important means of promoting the moral and social well-being of the natives. In these industrial schools may now be seen native shoe-makers, tailors, carpenters, and other craftsmen, busy at work plying their respective avocations, and preparing themselves for useful positions in life. Some of the missionaries have, moreover, rendered good service to literature,594 and to those who may succeed them in the field, by the useful dictionaries, grammars, and vocabularies which they have compiled of native languages, and the translations which they have made of Scripture into the dialects of the people among whom they labor. The entire Bible has been translated into two of the various languages—viz, in the Gâ or Akra, by the late Rev. J. Zimmerman; and in the Tshi by the Rev. Christaller—the latter language being spoken by at least a million of negroes on the “Gold Coast,” and far into the interior. During the Ashanti war in 1874 Captain Glover bore the following emphatic testimony to the piety and general good conduct of the native converts who joined the British army from some of the stations mentioned above: “Two companies of Christians, one of Akropong, and the other of Christianburg, numbering about a hundred each, under two captains, accompanied by Bible-readers of the Basle Mission, attended a morning and evening service daily, a bell ringing them regularly to prayers. In action with the enemy at Adiume, on Christmas day, they were in the advance, and behaved admirably, since which they have garrisoned Blappah. Their conduct has been orderly and soldier-like, and they have proved themselves the only reliable men of the large native force lately assembled on the Volta.”

In 1875 they sent out for the Ashanti Mission a staff of six men for two new stations—Mr. and Mrs. Ramseyer among them. One of these stations, Begorro, is not in the Ashanti territory, but is a frontier town, and a connecting link between their former “Gold Coast” Mission and Ashanti proper. It is the healthiest of all the African stations of the society. The other station, Abetifi, is the capital of Okwao, a former province of Ashanti, which gained its independence after the victory of the British army over the Ashantis. The chief of the capital, Abetiffi, told the missionaries to settle wherever they liked.

COOMASSIE THE CAPITAL OF ASHANTI. Larger.

Early in 1881 two of the missionaries, accompanied by several native preachers and the necessary bearers, undertook a journey to Coomassie, the capital, in order to ascertain the disposition of the people and the prospect of establishing a mission among them. During their stay they preached regularly morning and evening, with the king’s permission, to large audiences. But the king did596 not desire a mission established there, and they deferred attempting to commence missionary operations in Coomassie.

One beneficial result of the war with Ashanti has been the abolition of domestic slavery in the “Gold Coast” colony.

The work of the society (Basle) generally on the west coast of Africa has been very gratifying. In 1882 under the care of the 34 European missionaries and upwards of a hundred other agents, there were some 4,000 natives, from whose minds the darkness of night has been dispelled, besides about 1,500 pupils under instruction who may be expected to do good work in the future. Many of the churches on the “Gold Coast” have attained to a position of self-support.

One single fact may be mentioned, as indicating the influence of the mission here. The king of Cape Coast in early life was the means of getting it established. He forsook the “fetish” of his country. In consequence he was cut off from the succession to the chieftainship, and publicly flogged. But after thirty years’ profession of Christianity, he was elected chief or king, and, on the occasion of the anniversary in 1864, he publicly acknowledged his obligations to the mission.

Lagos, a considerable island in the Bight of Benim, was in former times one of the most notorious slave depots on the western coast of Africa. It is situated at the mouth of a river, or rather, a large lagoon, which runs parallel with the sea for several miles, and affords water communication with the interior in the direction of Badagry, Dahomi, Abeokuta, and other parts of the Yoruba country. It is now a British settlement, with its resident lieutenant governor and staff of officers.

The population of Lagos and the neighboring native towns, both in the Yoruba and Popo countries, is of a similar character to that which is found on other parts of the coast. Perhaps it became somewhat more mixed several years ago, by the emigration from Sierra Leone of a large number of “liberated Africans,” who ventured thus to return to the countries from which they had been dragged as poor slaves, when they heard that the slave trade was abolished. Some of these emigrants had the happiness to find parents, brothers, sisters or other relatives and friends still living,597 who received them as alive from the dead; whilst others sought in vain for any one who could recognize them. There were many touching and affecting meetings, and great was the surprise of the natives of Lagos, Abeokuta, and other places in Yoruba and Popo countries, to see the change which had passed upon their friends and relatives by the residence of a few years in a free British colony. They all appeared decently clothed in European apparel, many of them had learned to read and write in the mission schools, and a few of them had become the happy partakers of the great salvation, which they had heard proclaimed in all its simplicity and power in the land of their exile.

It was the extensive emigration of civilized “liberated Africans” from Sierra Leone to Lagos and the neighboring towns in the Yoruba country, that led to the vigorous efforts of the Church and Wesleyan Missionary Societies to evangelize the natives of this part of Africa. The Christian emigrants who had been connected with these organizations in Sierra Leone, on reaching their destination reported to their respective ministers the state in which they found the country and earnestly requested that their friends and countrymen might be favored with the proclamation of the Gospel which had made them so happy. These appeals were cheerfully responded to by the parties concerned, and a work was commenced which for prosperity and blessing has had few parallels in the history of missions.

The Church Missionary Society was happy in the selection of the Rev. Samuel Crowther, an educated and ordained native minister, as the leader of the enterprise. The history of Mr. Crowther is equal in interest to any romance that was ever written. Torn away from his native land and sold as a slave when a mere boy in 1821, he was rescued from a Portugese slaver by a British cruiser and brought to Sierra Leone, where he was educated in the mission school, and being specially bright was sent to England. He completed his education in Islington Training Institution and was ordained by the Bishop of London. He returned to Sierra Leone and was afterwards in 1846 appointed as a missionary to Abeokuta, to labor among the Sierra Leone emigrants and others. It was here, to his inexpressible delight, he met his mother, twenty-five years598 after he had been snatched from her by the slave dealers; and in 1848 he had the further unspeakable joy of seeing her admitted, along with four others, into the membership of the Christian church. They were the first fruits of the mission. In 1864 he was consecrated at Canterbury Cathedral, Bishop of the Niger territory and superintendent of all the stations in the Yoruba and adjoining countries. Making the island of Lagos his headquarters, Bishop Crowther, assisted by a noble band of native missionaries, has succeeded in establishing stations, erecting churches and organizing Christian schools, not only in Lagos and Abeokuta, where the work was first commenced, but also in various towns and villages in Yoruba and Popo countries, and in several centres of population on the banks of the Niger. The principal stations on the Niger are Bonny and Bross at the mouth of the river, and Onitsha, Lokoja, New Calabar, and Egan, higher up. The last named is 350 miles from the mouth of the river. In 1877 a steamer named the Henry Venn was supplied to the mission, thus doing away with the hard labor and slow navigation by means of the old fashioned canoe in vogue on the river. An exploratory voyage made up the Binue in 1879 revealed the existence of numerous tribes ready to receive teachers.

At Bross and Bonny there has lately been a remarkable movement in the direction of Christianity, hundreds of people throwing away their idols and attending the church services, which are thronged every Sabbath. The famous Juju temple, studded with human skulls, is going to ruin. A village opposite Bonny has been named “The Land of Israel” because there is not an idol to be found in it. At an important market town thirty miles in the interior, the chiefs and people, influenced by what they had seen at Bonny, and without ever having been visited by a Christian teacher, spontaneously built a church with a galvanized iron roof, and benches to seat 300 worshipers, got a school-boy from Bross to read the church services on Sundays, and then sent to ask the Bishop to give them a missionary.

CANOE TRAVEL ON THE NIGER.

Rev. W. Allan writing from Bonny in 1889 says: “The worship of the iguana is overthrown, the priest is a regular attendant at the house of God, and the iguana itself converted into an article of600 food. The Juju temple, which a few years ago was decorated with 20,000 skulls of murdered victims, I found rotting away in ruin and decay. I passed through the grove which was formerly the receptacle of so many murdered infants, and I found it had become the regular highway from the town to the church, and that the priest was now a baptized Christian. At 11 o’clock I went ashore and addressed 885 worshipers, including the king, the three former heathen priests, chiefs, and a multitude of slaves, and was thankful to ascertain that the work of conversion was still going on; for, in addition to 648 persons already baptized, of whom 265 are communicants, there are over 700 at Bonny alone who are now under instruction.”

Bishop Crowther has now about 10,000 Christians under his care. He lately opened at Bonny a new church built of iron, with sittings for 1,000.

The agents of the Wesleyan Missionary Society have been as zealous and successful, in a somewhat more limited sphere, as those of the Church of England, with whom they have generally lived and labored in harmony and love. Among the emigrants from Sierra Leone there were many Wesleyans who preferred their own ministers, whilst the domain of heathendom, on every hand, was sufficiently extensive to occupy the agents of both societies. At an early period a commodious Wesleyan Mission-house and chapel were erected at Lagos, where the work has progressed in a very satisfactory manner from the beginning. Many have been converted from time to time and united in church fellowship, some of whom have gone out to make known the good news to their fellow-countrymen. To provide for the training of native preachers and teachers, as well as to give a better education to those who are in a position to need it, a Wesleyan high school has been erected and opened at Lagos, which promises to be a most useful institution. Common day-schools are also taught in connection with all the out-stations of the Lagos circuit, and the Gospel is preached to the people in two or three different languages. They have about 6,000 adherents. The drink traffic is one of the great hindrances to missionary work in this section.

Says Rev. W. Allan: “In Africa we have to contend against601 the devil’s missionary agency. The liquor traffic is increasing, and it is a gigantic evil—greater, even, than the slave trade—debasing the people and ruining legitimate commerce. In West Africa it has deepened the degradation of the negro instead of civilizing him. Over 180,000,000 gallons of spirits had been imported last year in the district of Sierra Leone, and in Lagos it was far larger, while all the land was strewn with demijohns. The Niger Company imported 220,000 gallons during the last two years, and 500 cases of gin and 500,000 gallons of rum were landed by the Caliban, in which I sailed from Liverpool. The selling price of rum is less than a penny a gallon, and the gin sold at three-pence a bottle. The liquor so sold was of the most execrable character.”

A lurid picture of the western part of this region has lately been presented by the English district commissioner. He says: “The population, which has been recruited for many years past by a constant influx of refugees from the surrounding tribes, falls roughly into three divisions. These are: the Popos, chiefly engaged in fishing, forestry, and farming, but averse to steady work of any sort, and much addicted to theft; the Yombas, the most enterprising people in the district; and the Houssas, who are farmers and palm-nut gatherers. The Mohammedans among them are more enterprising and industrious than the fetish worshipers; while the Christians, though few in number, form a fairly thriving community. But all are alike in ‘intense and obtuse conservatism, so long as they are left to their own devices, and in a keen spirit of petty trading.’ The sole article of their moral code is ‘to do to your neighbor as you hope to avoid being done to by him.’ It is useless to appeal to any higher motive, and it is certain that without European influence to urge them on commerce must decline. Fishing is carried on wholly in the lagoons, the people never having had the enterprise to build surf-boats, which would enable them to engage in sea-fishing. Some progress has been made in agriculture, owing to the efforts of the Roman Catholic Mission at Badagry, the administrative centre. In the Frah Kingdom, also, the local British officer has succeeded in inducing the people to plant a considerable area of fertile land with corn, so that villages which were almost starving two years ago on smoked fish are now supplying large quantities of grain to the local602 markets. But this increased prosperity has only increased the drunken habits of the people, who exchange for vile imported spirits the products of their labor. Katamu, the Frah capital, is rapidly falling into a ruinous state of disrepair. Every fourth or fifth house is a rum shop, and the so-called palm-wine sheds are filled every night with drunken men and women. The evils of the drink traffic are so apparent to the people themselves that they have petitioned the Governor to put an end to the sale of liquor altogether. If this were done the fertile flood lands of Frah might become a source of food supply for the whole colony. In spite of the valuable resources of the forests, nothing is done to develop them save the collection and treatment of the palm-nuts. Trading is the African’s special delight, but until quite recently the markets of Lagos were not in a prosperous condition. Now that a British firm has established a branch at Badagry, and made the place a market town, it is estimated that 5,000 persons with every variety of native produce assemble there every market day, and in eight months the monthly export has increased from £30 to £1,878. Cocoanut planting, road making, corn-growing, and the cessation of the drink traffic appear to be the official methods for civilizing the West African negro.”

An extensive district on the western coast of Africa, between Sierra Leone and Cape Coast Castle received the name of Liberia, from the circumstance of its being colonized by liberated slaves and free persons of color from America. On the 22d of November, 1888, the secretary of the Manchester Geographical Society read an interesting paper contributed by the Hon. G. B. Gudgeon, consul-general for Liberia in London. The following is an extract: “It was stated that the famous negro republic of Liberia was founded by the American Colonization Society in 1822. The work of civilizing and Christianizing the inhabitants of that almost unknown country was entirely carried on for more than twenty years by this society. The missions established along the coast and at various points inland had developed into Liberia’s prosperous towns and settlements. It became an independent state in 1847. Nearly 2,000,000 souls were subject to the rule of the Liberian Republic, consisting of about 40,000 freed slaves and their descendants, the remainder belonging to numerous aboriginal tribes.603 While the state possessed a seaboard of 500 miles and an interior extending over 200 miles, she had acquired no territory except by treaty, purchase, exchange, or barter. Bishop Taylor had described the country as healthy and its climate salubrious and enjoyable, without a plague of flies and with few mosquitoes. Many travelers had confirmed the bishop’s testimony. The Republic of Liberia stood before the world as the realization of the dreams of the founders of the American Colonization Society, and in many respects more than the realization. Far beyond the recognized limits of the country, and hundreds of miles away from the coast, the effects of American civilization were to be witnessed. Men of color entirely governed the republic, and if any proof were wanting of the capacity of freedmen to govern, Liberia was an interesting illustration. The ability, learning, and skill of many of Liberia’s citizens were found in their code of laws, which for humanity, justice, and morality no other country could excel. The English tongue is spoken throughout the republic except among the native tribes not yet civilized; but among these too it is making good progress.”

Rev. S. L. Johnson, who recently visited Liberia, says: “The scenery along the coast of Liberia, from Cape Mount to the Gulf of Guinea, a distance of about 600 miles, is exceedingly grand. A few miles from the coast the country rises to hills, with gigantic trees, presenting a panorama that can only be described by a skilful artist.

“Monrovia is the capital of the republic. It rests on a beautiful hill overlooking the sea, surrounded by trees. There are many fine buildings in the city, which are creditable to the Monrovian people. The president’s house is built of brick, as are also many of the buildings; others are built of stone. The wharves face the sea, where there are colored firms doing business with England, Germany, and America.

“Mr. Sherman does a large business with England and America. After my return to England I wrote to Mr. Sherman for information regarding the articles of trade. This is the answer:—‘The articles of trade are palm-oil, palm kernels, coffee, ivory, camwood, ginger, and rubber. Many of our merchants do a business of $100,000604 to $150,000 a year. A vessel left here for New York on the 7th inst., with a cargo of $50,000 worth, collected within two months. In this cargo were 118,000 pounds of coffee.’

“The soil of Liberia is extremely fertile, and produces all kinds of tropical fruits, sugar-cane, indigo, Indian corn, rice, cotton, cocoa, peanuts, and coffee, the latter the finest in the world. Vegetables are cultivated with great success. There are to be found the finest dye-woods, ebony, gum plant, and the gigantic palm-trees, which produce the palm-oil. On my way to England from Africa 1,500 casks were shipt on the same steamer to Liverpool, a good share of it being from the coast of Liberia. Goats, swine, sheep, cattle, and fowls, all thrive in Liberia.

“This republic has a glorious work to accomplish in the future. It will undoubtedly be in time, the most prosperous state on the west coast of Africa. With the civil, social, and religious advantages she enjoys, she must succeed. The annexation of the kingdom of Medina, with five hundred thousand inhabitants, and her wide and fertile domain, extending over two hundred miles into the interior, will no doubt inspire renewed energy in giving fuller opportunities for the advancement of the Gospel, as well as an open door for civilization and commerce.

“Much zeal and perseverance have been displayed throughout the republic. Fine churches, school buildings, and a college are to be seen in Monrovia.

“At Nifou, on the coast of Liberia, I counted forty-nine canoes, with two or three men in each, going out fishing. At twenty-five minutes to ten we stopt at Grand Cess, Liberia. Here fifteen canoes came out, with from three to twenty men in each. These belong to the Kru tribe, the aborigines of a part of Liberia. They are a fine-looking people, and very industrious. But for this class of people I do not know what the European traders of the African steamship companies would do. All the steamers reaching Sierra Leone and the coast of Liberia take on board a gang of ‘Kru-men’ to do the work of the ship. One hundred and thirty men were taken on board our steamer to go down the coast to work. Many of them speak broken English well.”

LIBERIA. Larger.

As might be expected, this territory, extending upwards of606 300 miles along the coast to Cape Palmas, has been occupied by the American churches—viz. the Baptist, Methodist Episcopal, Protestant Episcopal, and Presbyterian Church (north). Much zeal and perseverance have been displayed in connection with all these agencies, and the result is seen in the parsonages, and places of worship, colleges and school buildings which have been erected in most of the towns and villages in the settlements, and in the improved morals of the people.

METHODIST PARSONAGE OF AFRICA.

For some years past the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church has been gradually reducing the appropriations for the carrying on of the missions from $37,000 to $2,500—a procedure that has been regarded by the conference in Liberia as inconsistent with the general spirit of the church and the growing interest felt of late years in the evangelization of Africa, and which for a time threatened to result in a severance of the ecclesiastical relations subsisting between the conference and the society. The action of the latter has been dictated solely by an earnest desire to secure in the native churches “the development of a spirit of self-reliance and independence—elements indispensable to a self-perpetuating church in any land.” The General Conference of 1888 changed the name and boundaries of the “Liberian Conference” to the “African Annual Conference” embracing the entire continent of Africa. In the other missions in Liberia there seems also a disposition to rely on foreign aid.

607

Fernando Po is one of the most important islands on the western coast of Africa, and enjoys many advantages from its peculiar position. It is situated in the Gulf of Guinea, about seventy miles from the coast of Benim. It is thirty miles long and twenty broad; and in its general aspect it is rugged and mountainous in the extreme, though there are some fertile valleys between the mountains, and several promising tracts of land along the shore.

Among the settlers and aborigines of Fernando Po some really useful missionary work has been done at different times, which deserves a passing notice. The first in the field were the agents of the Baptist Missionary Society. They labored for several years among the settlers of all classes with very good results, whilst the English had possession of the island; but when it was given over to the Spaniards, Roman Catholicism was proclaimed to be the established religion of the settlement, and the harshness and persecution with which the Baptist missionaries were treated by the government authorities ended in their removal to the continent. In 1870—some improvement having taken place in the Spanish government—the Primitive Methodists were induced to commence a mission in Fernando Po, the Rev. Messrs. Burnett and Roe being the first missionaries sent out. They and their successors labored for several years very successfully. In 1879, in consequence of some misunderstanding, the missionaries were again banished from the island. An appeal was at once made to the home authorities, and in the course of a few months they were allowed to return.

This question of conflict between Protestant and Catholic mission work in Africa has, at certain times and in certain places, been serious, and is greatly to be regretted, for it destroys the efficacy of both Churches, and proves a stumbling block to the natives. Pinto speaks of it with amazement, in his trip across the continent. He found places where the natives had been utterly demoralized by the spirit of contention indulged by the two Churches, and where their final answer to his advice to live at peace and deal justly with one another was, that white people might talk that way, but their actions proved that they did not mean what they said.

In former times—notably in the Spanish, French and Portuguese provinces of Africa—the Catholic mission was a part of the political608 establishment, and it was expected to use its influence to extend and perpetuate the power which protected it. This was equivalent to warning off all competitors as intruders. Happily this condition is undergoing rapid modification.

Similarly, the Protestant mission of other countries was treated as part of the commercial establishment, under the protection of the consul, and of the trading company, to whom the territory was allotted. Its business was therefore, in part, to cultivate the trading spirit and make its success contribute to the wealth of the parent country. This notion, too, is undergoing modification.

All of which is directly in the line of that Christian enterprise so much needed for the conversion of the African heathen.

On the mainland opposite Fernando Po, and on into the interior, good work has been done. We will speak first of the Old Calabar Mission.

Old Calabar, on an affluent of the Cross river, is a recognized centre of the trade of the Oil river sections. It has a population of 15,000 natives and 150 white. An insight into the characteristics of the natives beyond Old Calabar can best be gotten from the journey of Mr. Johnson up the Cross river in 1888. His object in making an ascent of the river was to treat with the natives and at the same time settle an old quarrel between the Union people and the tribes about Calabar. Stopping, merely to observe that the Kruboys, of whom Mr. Johnson speaks, are the Krumen—Kroomen—of the Liberian coast, among whom Bishop Taylor has, in his four years of African labors, established more than twenty missions, we let the adventurer tell his own story. He says: “Having decided to ascend the Cross river and having no steam launch at my disposal, I was obliged to make the journey in native canoes, of which I hired three, and fitted the largest with a small house in the centre for my lodging. I took with me about thirty Kruboys. These invaluable native workers come from the Liberian coast. Without their aid European enterprise on the west coast of Africa would be at a standstill; for, invariably, the negroes who are indigenous will not undertake any persistent work. The Kruboy is a strong, good tempered, faithful creature; able to row, paddle, carry, dig, wash clothes, or turn his hand to anything—in fact, he609 is a great deal sharper and more industrious than the average English navvy. My first object in going up the Cross river was to settle an outstanding quarrel between the people of a district called Umon and the natives of Old Calabar. Union is at a distance of about a hundred miles from the sea. The people speak a language quite distinct from the Calabar language. They were, till lately, terribly priest-ridden. Their life was a burden to them, with its load of cruel superstitious practices. The last few years, however, since they have come into contact with the missionaries, the state of affairs has greatly improved. As I appeared in the light of a mediator, I was most warmly welcomed. An imposing fleet of eighty large Calabar canoes reached Umon soon after I arrived, and formed a really pretty sight, as they were all painted in brilliant, but tasteful combinations of color, their little houses hung with bright carpets or leopard skins, each canoe being decorated with gaudy banners. The crews were most fantastically dressed in gorgeous clothes. The beating of drums, blowing of horns, and the firing of guns made a clamor most disturbing to my comfort, which I promptly stopped. I need hardly say that I had the Calabar people all under my control, for there was not only a personal attachment between us, but they knew that I was working in their interest, and the Umon people were much impressed by the way in which my shabby little despatch canoe, with two of my Kruboys in it, could marshal the imposing Calabar fleet.

“As both sides were longing to have their quarrel at an end, and were fully prepared to accept my decision, the conference was a brief one. I decided that it was six of one and half a dozen of the other. I made the Calabar people surrender the Umon captives, and the Umon surrender their Calabar prisoners. Peace was reestablished, trade was resumed, and I was free to continue my journey.

“We next visited the important Akuna-Kuna country, very populous, and inhabited by friendly, industrious people, whose chiefs very promptly and willingly concluded a treaty with the British Government, and loaded me with such an abundance of provisions—bullocks, goats, sheep, fowls, ducks, yams, and Indian corn—that611 our progress was seriously impeded, our canoes nearly capsized, and my Krumen suffered severely from indigestion.

AFRICAN VILLAGE AND PALAVER TREE.

“Some distance up the river we had rather a ticklish task to perform. Another quarrel, and that a bitter one, had to be settled between the people of Akuna-Kuna and the inhabitants of Iko-Morut. Here I was awkwardly situated. Had I been enabled to travel in a steam-launch, I could have gone safely up the river, or in any direction where there was sufficient water; but traveling simply in native canoes, the inhabitants of these wild countries in the interior, who look on every stranger as an enemy, had no idea that a white man was visiting them, and often proceeded to attack us before I could make myself seen.

“As soon as we came in sight of the stockaded villages of Iko-Morut, many excited chocolate-colored natives could be seen hurrying along the banks of the stream and posting themselves in ambush behind the trees. Then first one gun, then two, three, four guns went off; then there was a regular hail of slugs and stones, whipping up the surface of the water, and, in one or two cases, whizzing over our canoes. In the face of this warm reception, it would have been impossible to proceed, for, at any moment, a shot might strike our canoes and send them to the bottom. As to returning the fire of these poor, stupid savages, nothing was further from my thoughts. It was always open to me to retreat, and, unless I could proceed peacefully and with a friendly reputation preceding me, it was futile to continue my ascent of the Cross river. So I had the canoes steered to an unoccupied sand-bank in the center of the stream, and as soon as the natives saw that we stopt, they ceased firing. Then I got into my small despatch canoe, with two interpreters, hoisted my white umbrella, and assuming my smile, quietly landed on the crowded beach, to the silent amazement of the natives, who were armed to the teeth. I was conducted to the chief, who, for a long time, could not be prevailed on to see me, on account of my presumed powers to bewitch him; but a little friendly conversation through the red screen of his apartment, and the hint that I had brought a pretty present, reassured him, and we soon made excellent friends.

“To make a long story short; the result of my stay at Iko-Morut612 was equally satisfactory to that of Umon. I made peace between Akuna-Kuna and Iko-Morut, and the chiefs of the latter place concluded a treaty with me.

“Then on, beyond Iko-Morut, day after day, we paddled up the beautiful stream, sometimes received by the natives in a gush of friendliness, sometimes sullenly avoided, sometimes boisterously attacked. At length, in the heart of the cannibal country, on the outskirts of Atam, where the Cross river attains its furthest reach to the north, our journey came forcibly to an end. I had several times been captured and released, several times fired at and then hugged by those who had attacked me, but the strain was becoming too great for the nerves of my Kruboys.

“As we approached one village, a shot, better directed than usual, went through the roof of my little ark, and though no doubt our ultimate reception at the village would have been the same as at the preceding ones—first sullen hostility, then timid inquiry, and lastly a cordial hand-shaking and hugging, and the giving of presents—still, before this happy consummation should come about, some of us might have been accidentally killed, or our canoes—our only means of regaining civilization—sunk or disabled; consequently I decided to turn back. Then ensued an awful afternoon, when for miles and miles we had to run the gauntlet past populous villages of cannibals, whom we had much difficulty in avoiding on our ascent of the river; and who, taking our retreat for a flight, seemed bent on capturing us or plundering our canoes and eating the wretched Kruboys, who turned blue with fright at the prospect of being eaten, as they desperately paddled down the river past shrieking natives, who waded out into the shallows, or pursued us in canoes. Every now and again we would stick on a sand bank, and the shouts of the natives would come nearer and nearer; then we would get off again, and paddle for our lives; then stick again, and so on, till at last we were out of this savage district. I hesitate to say hostile, for, wherever I landed, or was captured, I was always well treated as soon as they found out what I was like and what my objects were in visiting their country. At length we arrived in the delightful district of Apiapum, where we put up for a week at the clean and comfortable town of Ofurekpe, whose chief and people613 were some of the nicest, kindliest, most friendly folk I have ever seen in Africa, though they were in their practical way cannibals, like their neighbors—that is to say, they were given to eating the flesh of all whom they might catch in war. I did not here observe that other kind of cannibalism which I have occasionally met on the Upper Cross river, which is of a sentimental character, namely, where the old people of that tribe, when they become toothless and useless, are knocked on the head, smoke-dried, pounded into paste, and re-absorbed into the bosom of the family.”

The Old Calabar Mission originated with the Jamaica Presbytery of what is now the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The first band of missionaries, led by Mr. Hope Waddell, a member of the Jamaica Presbytery, reached their field of labor on the Old Calabar river on April 10th, 1846. They were cordially welcomed by King Eyamba and the chiefs of Duke Town, as also by King Eyo of Creek Town and his chiefs. Suitable sites for mission stations were readily granted. Mr. Waddell held a service with Eyamba and his chiefs the first Sunday after his arrival, and presented the former with a Bible.

Mission houses and schools were in due time erected at both stations, a printing press being also usefully employed in scattering the seeds of Divine truth. At Creek Town the first sermon was preached in the court yard of King Eyo’s palace, the king himself acting as interpreter.

The mission was reinforced in July, 1847, by the arrival of additional missionaries from Jamaica.

In May previous King Eyamba died. It was the occasion of one of those scenes of cruelty, too common in heathen lands.

Notwithstanding the efforts of the missionaries, no fewer than a hundred victims were sacrificed, among whom were thirty of the king’s wives. Here is the account given of the burial: “The people dug a large hole in one of King Eyamba’s yards, and having decked him in his gayest apparel, with the crown on his head, placed him between two sofas, and laid him in the grave. They killed his personal attendants, umbrella carrier, snuff box bearer, etc., (these the king was supposed to need in the world of spirits), by cutting off their heads, and with their insignia of office threw614 them in above the body; and after depositing a quantity of chop and of coppers, they cover all carefully up, that no trace of a grave could be seen. Over this spot a quantity of food is daily placed.”

In February, 1850, an Egbo law was passed abolishing the inhuman practice of sacrificing human beings when a king or chief died. It is spoken of as “A good day for Calabar”—“One memorable in the annals of the land.” About the same time the marriage ceremony was introduced—King Eyo having witnessed the first regular marriage.

On the suggestion of Mr. Waddell, their domestic idol, which consisted of a stick surmounted by a human skull and adorned with feathers, was expelled from every house.

The death of King Eyo in December, 1858, put the Egbo law to the test. Much excitement prevailed. Fears were entertained that the old superstition would triumph. Happily no such dreaded result followed. Other heathen practices were one by one abandoned through the influence of the mission.

The mission extended its sphere of operations from time to time—Ikunetu, situated on the Great Cross river, about twenty miles above Creek Town, being occupied in 1856, and Ikorofiong, also on the Cross river, about twenty miles above Ikunetu, in 1858. The Presbytery of Old Calabar was established September 1st, 1858, under the designation of the Presbytery of Biafra.

In 1878 Mr. Thomas Campbell, the European evangelist at Old Town, accompanied by a number of natives, explored in two directions—first in Oban, up the Qua river, and then beyond Nyango, on the Calabar river. Everywhere he was well received by the chiefs and people. On September 6th, 1880, there was an agreement entered into between D. Hopkins, Esq., British consul, and the kings and chiefs of Calabar, in accordance with which a number of superstitious and cruel customs are held as criminal and punishable by law. These include the murder of twin children, human sacrifices, the killing of people accused of witchcraft, the giving of the esere or poison bean, the stripping of helpless women in the public streets, etc., etc.

In the Missionary Record, June, 1881, appears the following intelligence: “The mission which seemed so long fruitless, is now615 one of the most fruitful in the whole earth. The increasing number and activity of the communicants, the increasing number of students in training as teachers and evangelists, and the manifestations of a Christian liberality not yet reached at home, tell of the changes which the Gospel has wrought. We ploughed in hope: we sowed in tears: and now already we reap in joy. The most recent tidings are the most heart-stirring. A new tribe, which had long resisted our approach, has been visited. They had never seen among them a white man till they looked on the face of the devoted Samuel Edgerly. They invite teachers to settle among them. They offer us suitable sites. The country is far beyond the swamps; it is high and healthy. This favorable entrance was greatly aided by the wise and good King Eyo, who sent a prince to accompany Mr. Edgerly beyond Umon to Akuna Kuna. When the expedition returned and the king heard the result, he gave utterance to one of the noblest of sentiments. ‘God,’ said he, when Mr. Edgerly had told his tale, ‘has unlatched the door, and wishes us to push it open.’”

Such results as have been achieved at the Old Calabar Mission are worth all the money and toil and sacrifice of health and even of life which they have cost.

The mission to the Cameroons was established in 1845 by the Baptist Missionary Society. When the missionaries of that society were expelled from the neighboring island of Fernando Po, where they had been laboring since 1841, they settled among the Isubus at Bimbia, where a mission had previously been projected. The mission was afterwards extended to King Bell’s Town in an easterly direction, the people inhabiting that region being the Dualas. The entire New Testament has been translated into the languages of both tribes.

The Gaboon Mission was called into existence by the American Board in 1842. Baraka was the first station occupied. It was transferred in 1870 to the Mission Board of the American Presbyterian Church (north.) The Mpongwes on the coast, and the Shekanis, Bakalais, and Pangwes in the interior, are the tribes embraced in the field of operation. Not much progress has been made owing to the opposition of the Roman Catholics. In all the616 French possessions on the west coast of Africa the Roman Catholics predominate and very little has been accomplished. Recently the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society has been doing a good work at Senegal and other settlements.

We come now to Angola. Angola was discovered by European mariners long before Christopher Columbus had given to the world another continent, yet many years passed before the value of the discovery was recognized and the country taken possession of and occupied by the Portuguese, at that period when Portugal was made remarkable by the commercial enterprise and maritime prowess of its people, more than three hundred years ago.

For several years before the occupation of Angola, the king of Congo had been doing a large and lucrative trade with the Portuguese in slaves. The sources from which were drawn victims to keep alive this nefarious barter were never failing. The superstitions of the people, their customs and habits, a season of drouth, a failure of crops, in fact anything, even the least trivial happenings, were all factors giving Congo’s king excuse for the selling of his subjects to securing wealth; wealth represented by many wives, granaries filled to bursting with manioc, and wooded hills and fertile valleys stocked to overrunning with flocks of sheep and droves of lowing kine; wealth which enabled Congo to dominate and overawe all contemporary tribes, and which naturally incited the jealousy of other kings and chiefs who ruled over the natives of other districts in this country of Congoland.

Among the savage rulers who were envious of the power of their rival, was Nmbea, king of Angola, autocrat of a large and densely populated country. Holding at his disposal millions of helpless and superstitious subjects, Nmbea soon recognized that by copying the practices of his powerful neighbor he, with but little difficulty, would also become chief and powerful. So, moved by this desire, he opened a correspondence with the Portuguese. He sent one of the rich men of his tribe, with presents of slaves, ivory and strangely wrought curios, as ambassadors to the Portuguese court at Lisbon, with instructions to endeavor to have the Portuguese establish trading relations between the two kingdoms.

At this time the attention of the Portuguese queen and the617 people generally was attracted towards Brazil. Enterprising colonists, venturesome explorers and wealth seekers of all classes saw in this South American district a new Cathay. Thousands from among the patrician, as well as other thousands from more humble circles, rushed into that new land, necessarily causing large sums of money to follow in their wake. The enthusiasm with which this American opportunity was cultivated and the resultant drain from the royal treasury and from the coffers of the people caused Queen Catherine to receive with indifference all stories of African wealth. Thus obstacles were formed which prevented Nmbea from carrying out his plans until several years had passed, when the growing demands for slaves, needed to supply labor in Brazilian mines and on East Indian coffee farms, had become a matter of great importance. Then the request of Angola’s king was considered, and a party of Portuguese were landed at a place in his kingdom which they called St. Paul de Loanda.

In the selection of this place these adventurers were most fortunate, for it was not long before trade, in ever-increasing volume, flowed towards the sea coast at this point. The growth of the city was rapid and, despite wars with native tribes and trouble with marauding Dutch, it grew wealthy and powerful. Large and beautiful cathedrals were built, imposing palaces were erected as were many important public buildings, and dotted here and there about the suburbs, were fruitful farms and valuable plantations. So with the moving years the city waxed strong and mighty, thriving on its traffic in human flesh. But a time came when this trade was shaken to its base and the prosperity of its citizens brought to a temporary end.

The inhabitants of the civilized world began to look with disfavor upon the slave traffic, and were induced to attempt its suppression. This, for Loanda, was the writing on the wall, for it meant the placing of an embargo upon the trade which was the only source from which the city derived revenue for its support. Philanthropy succeeded, and as a consequence Loanda’s glory faded. The palaces passed away, the stately cathedrals crumbled into ruins and the large and costly slave barracoons became useless except as fuel for the poor.

618

ST. PAUL DE LOANDA. Larger.

619

Then for years death-like quiet reigned in the city, and all signs of commerce ceased. But this stagnation was not to last forever. England and other commercial nations of Europe, in their efforts to find markets for the sale of the products of their mills and workshops, had established depots for trade at almost every important place in the world. The eyes of European merchants were turned towards the prolific field of southwest Africa.

Stories which told how great wealth was to be gained in African trade began to be chronicled in the exchanges of all the great commercial centres, and a wave of commercial endeavor was put in motion, which carried with it many richly freighted barks to again fill the harbor of the African city of St. Paul de Loanda. Since then Loanda has improved beyond all expectation, and now the vessels of four lines of steamers as well as many sailing craft are constantly in the harbor loading and discharging their cargoes. Many large public buildings have been built. Acres of flat and swampy shore have been reclaimed and are now utilized for docks and wharfs. Ruins of churches and monasteries have been cleared away and walks and squares have been laid out and planted. There are many shops supplied with all kinds of European goods. Pipes have been laid, through which flows into the city sweet water from the river Bengo, nine miles away, and when the railway, now in course of construction, is in operation to bring the products of the farms, plantations and rich forests of the interior to the city, Loanda will have become a fair specimen of a thriving tropical town.

The city is situated on the shore of a large and beautiful bay and is divided into a lower and an upper town. The “Cidade Buixa,” or lower town, which is built on the flat shore which fringes the water of the bay, nestles at the base of a hill and straggles up its rising sides until it joins the “Cidade Alto.” The upper town stretches along the brow of the elevation and sweeps outward towards the ocean until it ends at a bold and rocky precipice where Fort St. Miguels, a frowning sentinel, watches over the safety of the port.

The harbor is a bay where a thousand ships might at one time ride at anchor and find secure protection from the severest storm. A long, low and narrow neck of land, called Isle of Palms, leaves621 the mainland about twelve miles to the south and runs north until it reaches a point opposite the city, where it flattens out its surface of sunlit sands to give protection to the harbor of which it forms the southern boundary.

FOREST SCENE IN ANGOLA.

This spit of land is partly covered with groves of cocoa palms, among which the residents of the city have erected many small houses where they visit daily to enjoy surf bathing. On other parts of this sandy breakwater are numerous villages occupied by native fishermen, who make an easy living.

Loanda contains a population of nearly 20,000 people, about one-third of whom are white. The houses, as a rule, are built of stone and roofed with tile, and are large and commodious. The houses all have spacious yards attached, in which are situated the stores, kitchens, wells and habitations of the slaves and servants. Arranged in this manner, and with wide and spacious streets, the city is very open and comparatively healthy. It covers a large expanse of ground. The principal business street contains a number of fine structures. On it are situated the buildings of the Banco da Ultra Marenho, the barracks of the military police, the custom-house and the offices of the foreign consuls. There are also three hotels, many stores and warerooms, several billiard rooms and cafés. In the middle of the street rows of banyan trees have been planted, making a shady walk, where the natives gather to buy and sell.

These open-air sales, called in Bunda talk “Quitanda” market, are well patronized. Four uprights, a few “Loandas” mats for a shed, a stone-bowled pipe and a wooden pillow, are all the furnishings needed to make comfortable the colored women merchants. On the ground and all around the booths are laid out pieces of cotton, cheap calico, brilliantly colored handkerchiefs, native-made baskets containing balls and reels of cotton, beads, needles, pins, etc., cheap crockery and cutlery, empty bottles and balls of different colored clay. Suspended from the uprights and resting against the trees are stacks of native tobacco, plaited into rolls or wound about sticks and sold by inches. The venders at these open sales are always women, and as a rule are clean and comely. They are shrewd sellers and close buyers, and in a few years become, from622 a native’s point of view, quite wealthy. When conducting the business of the day, they squat or lie down upon the sand and indulge in quip and joke, and gossip with one another and their customers.

Covering a whole square in the center of the lower town is the general market. It is a large, square, uncovered enclosure made of terra cotta and brick, built in excellent taste. All the public buildings of Loanda are under the direct control of the military police and are well conducted.

At break of day one hears the loud sound of many horns, trumpets and beating drums. Down through the flower scented streets, in soldierly order moving, with burnished guns and glistening bayonets, 100 blacks, all dressed in spotless white, come marching until they reach the market gates. Here good Father Anselmo, of the Ursulines, pours out a benediction upon the market and the awaiting people. When the gates are opened the police take their stations and the market is ready to receive the buyers and sellers of the day. Through the open portals into the market flows a stream of laughing, singing men and women. One carries upon her head a large basket, from whose open top protrudes the heads of cackling geese and scolding hens. Another has a pot of neichineas (water oil). Some bring meat and others vegetables. Millions of fleas and “jiggers” are always present, and in and out among the wares run countless naked and dirty children. The buyers and sellers shout aloud in boisterous tone.

Besides this market there is another given up entirely to the sale of fish. In the haze of early morning, far out upon the ocean, hundreds of black spots are seen bobbing up and down upon the water. They are the canoes of the fishermen who are hastening towards the land with the fruit of their night’s labor. In a little time they reach the shore and their scaly cargoes are tumbled out upon the sands. The women and children at once proceed to clean the fish. In one spot they arrange the fish for drying, while others salt and pack them in barrels for shipment. Others, again, fry, boil and roast the fish and all are eating raw or half-cooked fish, interspersing everything with shouting, singing, dancing and grunts of satisfaction.

623

During the period when the city’s prosperity was interrupted, its streets were left uncared for and their beautiful pavements became covered with a bed of loose red sand, which was washed by the rain down from the surrounding hills. This drifting still continues, rendering walking so very difficult that it is indulged in only by the convicts and natives. The better classes have resource to the “maxilla.” The “maxilla” is a flat frame of canework with one or two arms at the side and a low back provided with a cushion. This frame is hung by cords to a hook on a palm pole, about eighteen feet long, and is carried upon the shoulders of two blacks, who travel with it easily at the rate of three or four miles an hour. It is covered with an awning of oiled cloth and has silk curtains hung all around it.

Loanda is a convict settlement, but, contrary to what might be expected, its people are remarkably law-abiding. This may arise from the fact that discovered law-breakers are punished most severely, often dying under the lash. The convicts, as a rule, are store-keepers and farmers. They are prosperous, and soon become contented with their lot and rarely return to Europe. Ignorant and unrefined, they assimilate readily with the native classes, and take part in all their pleasures.

The “batuco,” country dance, is the popular form of amusement. A “batuco” is danced in the following fashion: A large ring is formed of men and women. On the outside several fires are kept burning, near which are assembled the musicians with horns, drums and the twanging “maremba.” Others clap their hands and sing a kind of chorus. Two dancers, a man and a woman, jump with a yell into the ring, shuffle their feet with great rapidity, passing backwards and forwards. Then facing one another, suddenly advance and bring their breasts together with a whack. These dances are not in great favor with the better class of free blacks, but this does not prevent them from occurring every night. Although the abolition of slavery is supposed to have taken place in 1878, almost all servants are slaves. They are well treated, however, as public opinion condemns harshness and quite a rivalry exists in having household slaves well dressed and happy looking.

The city has no places of public amusement except a theatre, but624 this for some time has not been used on account of a social war between the married women and those who do not consider the marriage ceremony essential to their welfare. There is a fair military band, however, which plays twice a week in the park in the upper town, and there is hardly a night that there is not something going on at some of the private homes. A dance at the Governor’s palace is certain to be given once a mouth.

The aborigines of Loanda owe much to the Catholic Church. Its priests have taught the natives many trades and industries. There are four newspapers published in the city, but they deal mainly in unpleasant personalities.

Even more important than Angola, in a commercial and political sense, is the Portuguese province to the south, known as Benguella, with Benguella as the capital. The town is an old one and has not shared the decay incident to the early Portuguese settlements on the western coast. The harbor is excellent, and is the entrepôt to the celebrated Bihé section, through a series of tribes which Pinto visited and which he describes as of superior physique and intelligence. Benguella was once the seat of an active slave trade, and Monteiro says, in his volume published in 1875, that he has seen caravans of 3,000 blacks coming into Benguella from Bihé, fully 1,000 of which were slaves. The white settlers cleared many fine plantations about Benguella, which they stocked with slaves and upon which large crops of cotton were formerly raised. The contiguous tribe is the Mundombe, wild and roving, dirty and selfish, little clothed and living in low round-roofed huts. Cattle are their principal riches, yet they seldom partake of their flesh, except upon feast days, when the whole tribe assembles, and as many as 300 head of fine cattle are dispatched in a single day.

It is only within the last few years that this region has been entered by the Protestant missionaries. In 1880 the American Board sent out three missionaries to Benguella, the port of the Bihé country. They were Rev. Walter W. Bagster, grandson of Samuel Bagster, publisher of the Polyglot Bible, and the leader of the expedition; the Rev. Wm. H. Sanders, son of a missionary in Ceylon; and Mr. Samuel T. Miller, both of whose parents were slaves. The kings of Bailunda and Bihé showed themselves friendly, and the626 missionaries, since reinforced, entered hopefully upon their work. On February 22, 1882, Mr. Bagster died from malarial fever. Bishop Taylor has opened up a number of stations in Angola, of which mention will be made when we come to speak of his work in establishing self-supporting missions in Africa.

MUNDOMES AND HUTS.

A wonderful field has been opened up along the mighty Congo for missionary effort. Ten years ago the king of Belgium entered upon the development of the Congo region and the establishment of a new African State. An official report of the progress attained has just been rendered, giving these facts: The Lower Congo has been opened up to navigation by large vessels as far as Boma, soundings having been made and the course marked out by buoys; a cadastral survey of the Lower Congo has been made as a step towards the preparation of a general map of the entire region; justice is regularly administered in the Lower Congo, and a trustworthy and cheap postal service has been established. At Banana, Boma, and Leopoldville medical establishments, under the direction of Belgian doctors, have been founded, and a considerable armed force of blacks, officered by Europeans, has been called into existence. The caravan route between Matadi and Leopoldville is as free from danger as a European road, and a complete service of porterage by natives has been established. A railway has been projected and the route almost entirely surveyed. The state has established herds of cattle at various stations, and in the very heart of Africa; on the waters of the Upper Congo there is a fleet of steamers every year increasing in number. A loan of 150,000,000 francs has been authorized and the first issue subscribed. Many of the more intelligent natives from the country drained by the Upper Congo have taken service with the State, and numerous trading factories have been established as far up the river as Bangala and Leuebo. In addition several private companies have been formed for developing the country, and finally geographical discoveries of the greatest importance have been made, either by the officers of the State or by travelers who received great assistance in their work from the State.

Speaking of the Congo Mission Dr. Pierson in the Missionary Review says: “A grand open door is that which God has set before627 our Baptist brethren in the Congo basin! a million square miles in the heart of equatorial Africa, made accessible by the great Congo and its tributaries.

“The great lakes, Nyassa, Victoria, Tanganyika, are comparatively isolated; but the Congo and its branches present from 4,000 to 6,000 miles of river roadway, needing only steamers or canoes to give access to these teeming millions. One starts at the mouth of this imperial stream and ascends 125 miles of navigable river, then for 185 miles encounters rapids and cataracts; but beyond that for over 1,000 miles, from Stanley Pool to Stanley Falls, is one grand stretch of navigable river, with branches running each way navigable from 100 to 800 miles, and leading into the heart of this rich and populous territory.

“The people from the river-mouth up to Stanley Pool and the Equator line are being civilized by contact with white traders, and their pagan customs largely modified. They speak one language, musical, of large capacity of expression and easy of acquisition, and along this line the seven Congo stations are already planted. Beyond the point where the Congo crosses the Equator, lies another vast population, more degraded, less civilized, and needing at once the full array of Christian institutions, but yet entirely destitute.

“Their moral and spiritual state is hardly conceivable without contact with them. With no idea of God or immortality, they worship fetish charms; sickness is not brought about by natural causes, but is the result of enchantment; hence the medicine-man must trace disease and death to some unhappy human victim or victims, who must suffer the witch’s penalty. One death therefore means another—it may be a dozen. Here runaway slaves are crucified, robbers buried alive, young men cruelly decapitated, and human beings are even devoured for meat.

“And yet this people, after centuries of virtual seclusion, are now both literally and morally accessible. They welcome missionaries, come to the chapels, and prove teachable. Even now cruel customs and superstitious notions are giving way before patient, humble, scriptural instruction. The walls are down, and the hosts of God have but to march straight on and take what Dr. Sims calls ‘the last stronghold of Paganism,’

628

“Wonderfully indeed has God linked Protestant, Greek, Roman Catholic, and even Moslem nations in the administration of the Congo Free State. Never was such a highway open for the Gospel since our Lord ascended.

“The Arabs from Zanzibar and the coast are moving toward Stanley Falls and the north country, establishing themselves in large villages to capture slaves and carry on nefarious traffic, while the Protestant forces slowly move upward from the west. The question is, Who is to occupy the Congo Basin? and the question is to be settled at once. This great highway of rivers means traffic and travel; this rich and splendid tropical country invites trade and settlement. Into whose hands shall such a heritage be surrendered? The Christian Church must give prompt answer by action, her reply must be a taking possession, and the old law is the new one: ‘Every place that the sole of your feet shall tread upon shall be yours,’ the resolutions of enthusiastic missionary conventions, the prayers of all Christendom, the planting of the banner of the cross at a few commanding points—all this will not do. We must send out enough Christian laborers to measure off that soil with their own feet.

“‘But it is unhealthy?’ So are all tropical and especially equatorial climes to those who are not accustomed to the intense and steady heat, and do not use common sense in adapting their clothing, eating and drinking, and habits of life, to these peculiar surroundings. One must not go from temperate to torrid zone, and wear the garments, eat the heating food, use the stimulating drinks, risk the exhausting labors, or even live in the same unventilated houses which are permissible in cooler latitudes. A trip to New Orleans or Florida has proved fatal to many a fool who would not take advice. Even the heroism of the Gospel does not demand needless exposure or careless venture.

“Here is a grand opportunity. It may be doubted whether there has been anything like it since the clarion voice of our Great Captain trumpeted forth the last commission. Ethiopia is stretching forth her hands unto God. On those hands are the marks of manacles which England and America helped to rivet there. There is but one atonement we can make for Africa’s wrongs—it629 is to lay down our lives, if need be, to redeem her sable sons from the captivity of sin.

NATIVE GRASS HOUSE ON THE CONGO.

“We ought to turn this Congo into a river of life, crowd its waters with a flotilla of Henry Reeds, line its banks with a thousand chapel spires, plant its villages with Christian schools, let the Congo Free State mark its very territory with the sign of Christian institutions, so that to cross its border will be to pass from darkness into light. Where is our Christian enterprise, that such a work, with such a field and such promise, should wait for workmen and for money! What do our converted young men want, as a chance to crowd life with heroic service, that the Congo Basin does not attract them! Here what a century ago would have taken fifty630 years to accomplish, may be done in five. The unexplored interior is open, the ‘Dark Continent’ waits to be illuminated. Nature has cast up her highway of waters, and there is no need to gather out the stones. Give us only the two-wheeled chariot, with steam as the steed to draw it, and the men and women to go in it bearing the Gospel, and from end to end of this highway we can scatter the leaves of that tree which are for the healing of the nations.

“Where are the successors of Moffatt and Livingstone! What a hero was he who dared forty attacks of fever and then died on his knees beside Lake Bangweolo, that he might open up the dark recesses of Africa to the missionary! Let us pour men and money at the feet of our Lord. We have not yet paid our debt to Simon the Cyrenean and the Eunuch of Ethiopia!”

The Baptist church has for years carried on energetic mission work in Africa. The English Baptist Missionary Society, working in co-operation with American Baptists, has pushed its way, by means of flourishing stations far up the Congo and into the interior. In 1885, it presented a steamer, on the Upper Congo, to the American missionaries, and then proceeded to build another for its own use. Dr. Guinness, the president of this large and prosperous society, on a visit to the United States in 1889, spoke thus of the missionary field in Africa: “Stanley was three years in discovering the source of the Congo, and though he met hundreds of strange tribes in that journey of 1000 miles, he never saw a mission station. He found difficulty in coming down this region, but our missionaries sent out to evangelize this country found their difficulty in going up. We found it comparatively easy to found a station near the mouth, and as far as a hundred miles up. After years of labor we reached Stanley Pool, which is the key to the interior, but not without the loss of hundreds of lives.

“The mission in Africa is in its infancy. Africa is a world in itself. The languages spoken would take more than ten hours to enumerate, as there are over 600. They are principally the great Soudanese groups. I gave a year to making the first grammar of the Congo language that was ever prepared. More than 1000 natives have been converted. In this work there is the stage of pure indifference, succeeded by one of inquiry, then hostility, and631 finally acquiescence. The natives themselves become in many cases messengers of the Gospel.

“I don’t know under Heaven, unless it be in China, a more hopeful mission than that Congo field, and here it is for you. You have now water-way to the whole of it. It is healthy, notwithstanding all statements to the contrary. The interior is healthy, because it is high land, well watered, richly wooded, moderate in its climate, and rich in population. The trouble with missionaries has been that they stick to the coast line, which is malarious. Instead of keeping up in the ordinary way in red-tape style a particular station with a few missionaries, you want to make an advance into this great interior parish. It is no use for your people in this country to say: ‘This is the colored men’s work, let them do it,’ They are not suited to be the explorers and controllers of such movements. White men must be the leaders and lay the foundation, when the colored men will be the helpers.”

Mr. Guinness is maturing plans for a grand advance of three columns of missionaries to go simultaneously up the three branches of the Congo—northern, central and southern. The central one may be considered as started a fortnight since, by the departure of eight missionaries from London, to work as an English auxiliary to the American Baptist Missionary Union.

Mr. Richards, of the American Baptist Missionary Union, reports that the work at Banza Manteke, the place where so many converts have been baptized, is still prospering. The young church has been greatly tried by persecution as well as by sickness and death. Not less than twenty of those baptized have died, and the fatality has been a great stumbling-block to the heathen, who have asserted that the sickness was sent by their gods because they have been neglected. This has prevented many from accepting the Christian faith. The heathen are bitterly opposed, and would take the lives of the Christians if they could. Recently 17 were baptized, and others are asking for the ordinance, and the knowledge of the truth is spreading far and wide.

Those who become intimately acquainted with the negro race as found in various parts of Africa bear testimony to its good qualities. The coast negro who has learned some of the vices of civilization632 is undoubtedly a sorry specimen of humanity; but where native tribes can be found uncontaminated by contact with foreigners, they exhibit sterling qualities. Rev. George Grenfell, who has visited all the tribes along the Congo, says that the negro would stand his ground before the white man. “There is a vitality of race and power about him that is going to make him take his place some day among the nations of earth.” In support of this opinion, he gives several incidents showing the vigor and fidelity of the natives, and especially mentioned an incident which he witnessed at Banza Manteka, the station at which the American Baptists have recently received so many converts. Three years ago their place was a stronghold of grossest superstitions, and there seemed no hope of a spiritual harvest; but as Mr. Grenfell was coming down the river, on his way to England, he met a band of native evangelists going forth on an evangelistic tour. They had set out of their own accord, without even the knowledge of the missionary, evidently taking upon themselves the Lord’s command to go and preach the Gospel. They had not only forsaken their own superstitions, but were vigorously seeking to propagate their new faith.

We have thus given in brief outline a sketch of the work done on the west coast of Africa and some of the countries in Central Africa which are reached through the west coast. In no part of the world has the Gospel achieved more signal triumphs than here, among this barbarous people. When the present century opened, the slave trade, with its untold horrors, held everywhere undisputed sway. Human sacrifices and other cruelties were fearfully prevalent. Revellings and abominable idolatries, with the other works of the flesh described in the fifth chapter of Galatians, were indulged in to a frightful extent and without the slightest restraint. There was then not one ray of light to relieve the dense darkness that universally prevailed. It is otherwise now. Though little has been done compared with what remains to be done, still the slave trade and many other cruel practices have received their death blow. The standard of the Cross has been planted all along the western shores, and even far into the interior of that great continent. In all West Africa, called “The White Man’s Grave,” from Senegambia on the north, where the Paris Society is laboring, to633 Benguella on the south, where the American Board has begun to work, there are more than a hundred stations and over 200 English, German, French and native missionaries, belonging to sixteen societies, with 120,000 converts. And were it not for the evils of civilization, which are so much easier for the poor barbarians to learn than the virtues, there would be nothing to prevent the universal spread of the Gospel in Western Africa, for the people there are willing to receive the simple proclamation of Divine truth, and the Christian church is awaking to the glorious privilege of making it known unto them.

Little mention has been made of the work of Bishop Taylor in this sketch of the missions of Western Africa. His work is of such recent date, and of so unique a character that we deemed it of sufficient importance to warrant a fuller treatment than could be given in connection with the other missions. By this method also we can give a much clearer idea of what he has done. As his mission stations are confined to Western Africa, and regions entered by way of the west coast, this is the proper place to speak of his enterprise.

Perhaps the most notable missionary movement of the age is that started by Bishop Wm. Taylor of the Methodist Episcopal Church, on the continent of Africa. Bishop Taylor is of Scotch-Irish parentage, his grand parents having immigrated from County Armah, Ireland, to Virginia about 130 years ago. They were Revolutionary patriots and so hostile to slavery that they set all slaves free, belonging to the family. His father, Stuart Taylor, married Martha A. Hickman, and they settled in Rockbridge County in 1819. They were Presbyterians, but eventually became converts to Methodism. The son, William, was born May 21, 1821. In 1843 he was attached to the Baltimore Conference. He came into notice as a Methodist street preacher, of extraordinary power, in San Francisco, in 1849. He established a church there and continued to preach till 1856. Being a natural pioneer in the mission field, full of pluck and original ideas, he visited other parts of the United States and went into Canada and England. Then he went to the West Indies and into British Guiana, preaching and founding churches. Next, he visited Australia, where he met with a success which may well be635 called phenomenal. The same success attended his trip to Tasmania and New Zealand. With a foot that never tired, he went to South Africa and then to the Island of Ceylon, awakening the people by his eloquence and earnestness. He returned through India, arousing the sleeping nations, and leaving as a permanent monument to his fame the fully organized South India Methodist Conference.

SOME OF BISHOP TAYLOR’S MISSIONARIES. 1: Rev. B. F. Kephart, St. Paul, Minn. 2: Mrs. Kephart. 3: Agnes McAllister, Troy, Ohio. 4: Barbara Millard, Hemmingford, Quebec. 5: Eddy H. Greely, Fostoria, Ohio. 6: Georgina Dean, Des Moines, Iowa. 7: Clara Binkley, Bristol, Ontario. 8: K. Val. Eckman, Fulda, Minn. 9: Robt. C. Griffith, Gotland, Sweden.

He was now in the midst of his powers, and with well defined aims as to the plan and scope of mission establishments. As to himself, personal work was what was required; as to the missions, a sense of independence which would conduce to their growth and perpetuity. No mission was to be an asylum for lazy, superannuated men and women, drawing on a home fund for support, but each was to be self-supporting as far as possible, after its period of juvenility was over. Full of this impression he entered the Brazilian country, or for that matter, South America at large, and began a work of founding missions which astounded his church and the world by its success. Schools and churches sprang up as if by magic, right in the midst of populations wedded to the old Catholic creeds and forms, and the effect of his evangelism is as far reaching as time.

After this he turned his attention to Africa, as a field calling most loudly for civilization and Christianity; and more, as the field best suited to his evangelizing methods. He was elected Bishop of Africa by the General Conference of the Methodist Church, in May, 1884, and sailed for his new and limitless parish in December, 1884. After four years of heroic struggle, with successes which in every way justified his labors and plans, he returned to the United States in April, 1888, and sailed again for Africa in December of the same year, having equipped and sent in advance, November 13, 1888, twenty new missionaries.

His Transit and Building Fund bore the expense, and it was well supplied for the emergency by voluntary contributions from the United States and Canada. Fifteen homes in Africa became a requisite for these Christian workers, together with at least a year’s sustenance. Still the fund failed not, but had to spare for the Bishop’s personal comfort. Thus at one end of the Christian line work inured to the supply of necessities which should lead up to636 self-support in the missionary field, and at the other end it shaped for the development of those indigenous resources which should establish independence.

The characteristics of his work, aside from his individual energy, wonderful ingenuity, and magnetic power, are:

(1) Self-supporting Missions. Missionaries are provided with a suitable outfit, have their passage paid, are provided with a home and seeds for planting. They are expected to do the best with the first year’s equipment, and to take such steps as will put them on an independent footing by the second year. This is not more a test of their own industry and efficiency, than an example to the natives to live in peace and adopt civilized means of obtaining a livelihood. It is an invitation to heroic spirits to enter the mission field, and is an earnest of tact and endurance which must prove of infinite value to those with whom they are in contact. It is the nearest approach any church has ever made to the thought, that a spiritual avenue to the heathen, and especially the shrewd African heathen, is most direct when it leads up through his business and work-a-day instincts to his heart.

(2) Native Coöperation. This is best assured by appearing to be on an equality with them. The missionary who is backed by a home exchequer and who is not compelled to resort to ordinary means of subsistence, is apt to grow exclusive and become a source of envy and suspicion. He is far more potential when he is as much one of his people as circumstances will allow, and like them dependent on the ordinary laws of industry for subsistence. There is but little risk in this to the man of energy, skill and health, where climate and soil are favorable for production, and all nature conspires to reward industry. It attracts the natives, secures their confidence and coöperation, and adapts them for the almost unconscious receipt of enlightenment and Christianity. Nothing so disarms them of suspicion, or serves better to silence controversy, than this quiet show of permanent settlement in their midst and the atmosphere of thrifty contentment which surrounds a newly-made mission home and vegetable garden.

(3) Elements of a Pure Civilization. The school goes with the mission, the garden and field with the school. Sermons there are,637 but not to the neglect of school work. School-hours there are, but not to the neglect of soil cultivation. Practical education is paramount. The seeds, the trees, the plants, which are fitted for the climate, are planted and tended, and the natives are asked to come and work by the side of the missionary and to learn the art of turning the earth to account. Thus a primitive Industrial School is started in every mission, and the laws of thrift and self-dependence go hand in hand with those of morality and spirituality. As things have gone, it is surely a novel, and perhaps a hard, life for a missionary, but in that it is an effective means of conversion and enlightenment, the sacrifice does not seem too great. After all, does it not entirely meet the objections of those who so vehemently urge that the only way to make missionary work successful among African natives is to wait until commerce has reconciled them to contact with the outer world?

(4) Not Confined to the Ordinary Ministry. It opens the field of missionary endeavor to earnest, moral men of every occupation. Teachers, artisans, laborers in every branch of industry, become invaluable servants of the Lord, under this system. Children as well as parents may share the honors of introducing Christ in this practical way, the key to which is example. What so inspiring as the confidence of equality and co-labor! To be like a teacher in what appertains to material welfare, is father to a wish to be like him or her in what appertains to spiritual welfare.

(5) Coast-Line Missions. These are practicable and necessary at first. But they are only evangelical bases for the more numerous and grander structures soon to be erected within the continent.

In support of his system the Bishop brings to bear an experience wider than that of any living missionary, to which must be added a special study of the African natives and the entire African situation.

He says that the untutored heathen of Africa have no vain philosophy by which to explain away their perception of God as a great personal being. They have their “greegrees,” “charms” and “armulets,” but they never pray to them, they cry to God in the day of trouble. In the extreme south God’s name is “Dahlah,” “Tixo” and “Enkosi.” In south central Africa His name is “En Zambe.”638 The Zambesi river is called after God. On the west coast his name is “Niswah.” All these words express clear perceptions of one great God of heaven and earth.

He further relates that one day he was preaching to King Damassi of the Ama Pondo nation, about the resurrection. One of the king’s counsellors expressed dissent from the Bishop’s doctrine. The king, a giant in physique, frowned at him and said: “Hold your tongue you scoundrel! You know well our fathers believed in the resurrection of the dead, and so do we.”

When a Kaffirman dies they dig a grave about two feet wide and five deep and let the corpse down in a squatting position. But before it is lowered they seat him beside the grave, to allow anyone who wishes to talk with it. This is consequence of their belief that though the spirit has left the body it still lingers near for a last communication with friend or foe. If any present has an unadjusted quarrel with the hovering spirit, he approaches and makes his peace, and then begs that the shade will not return to bewitch his children or cattle. Others come and send messages of peace to their fathers by means of the departing spirit, and still others send word very much as if the departure of a spirit were a sure means of communication between this and the final home of good people. When analyzed, their belief is supreme that the body returns to dust at death, but that the spirit is immortal; that the spirit retains all its faculties and forces, and has independent senses corresponding with the bodily senses; that good spirits dwell with God in happiness and that those who follow will commune with them. These things they have never learned from books, nor teachers. They are intuitions.

In February, 1888, Bishop Taylor visited a dead chief, near Tataka on the Cavalla river. He had been a prominent man, a giant in size, and had given leave to found a mission in his tribe. But he knew no language but his own and had never heard the Gospel preached. He was found sleeping tranquilly in death, and inquiry revealed the fact that he had talked all through the night of his death with “Niswah”—God—and had called on Him repeatedly—“Niswah I am your man!” “Niswah, I trust you!”639 “Niswah, I accept you!” Belief, even unto salvation, could not have been seemingly stronger.

To translate the Christian Bible into the languages spoken by those among whom missionary effort is put forth, has always been regarded as a necessary step to successful apostolic work. It would be an herculean, if not impossible task in a country where languages are so numerous and dialects so diverse as in Africa. Even if not so, the task requires scholarship of a high order, patience such as few mortals possess, time which might count for much if otherwise employed, and an exchequer which can be drawn upon indefinitely. Bishop Taylor has reversed the old procedure in his missionary contact with the African natives. Still recognizing the necessity for learning their languages in order to facilitate communication, he, however, insists that they shall learn ours, as a means of fuller expression of ideas, and especially of those ideas which represent newly acquired knowledge and quickened spiritual emotions. But how should he overcome the formidable obstacle our language presents, in its complicated grammar and orthography, to all foreigners? Especially, how should the African boy and girl, in the mission school, be taught what our own more favored boys and girls find so appallingly difficult? The Bishop’s way out of it was to introduce the phonetic, or natural sound, element into his mission schools. It proved, in common parlance, a hit from the start. Here is a sample of his English, as phonetically adapted for his African pupils:

“Bishop Taylor findz our English mod ov speling wun ov the gratest drabaksin teching the nativz; and also wun ov the gratist obstiklz in redusing the nativ languajez to riting. Mishunarez evri whar hav kompland ov thez dificultez. Bishop Taylor haz kut the Gordian not; or at lest haz so far swung los from komun uzaj az to adopt Pitman’z fonetik stil ov reding, riting and teching.

“Just rit a fu pajz, speling az we do her; and then, ‘just for the fun ov it,’ rit a few letrz to frendz in the sam stil. Bi the tim u hav dun so, u wil be enamrd with its ez, and son will pronouns it butiful az wel az ezi. Tech it to sum children and se how qikli tha wil mastr it.”

Probably no better description can be given of what has already640 been accomplished, than that found in his report to the Missionary Committee, which we give in full, and in extracts from his recent letters.

“Dear Brethren and Fellow-laborers in the work of the Lord:

“I respectfully submit the following report of our new missions in Africa. The report of the African Conference I sent, as usual, to the missionary secretaries immediately after its adjournment last February. I might repeat the same here, but did not retain a copy, and leaving Liberia in April, and ever since moving on, I have not received a copy of the printed minutes.

“I will, in this report, note the stations in the order in which I visited them this year, and not in the order of time in which they were founded.

“West Coast Stations.—Most of these stations commenced, with mission-houses erected on them, two years ago, when a portion of them were supplied with missionaries, a portion not till March of this year; and two or three remain to be supplied. Miss Dingman and Miss Bates have gone out since I left Liberia, and I have not heard where Brother Kephart has stationed them. It was understood from the beginning that we could not take boarding-scholars, nor open our school-work regularly till we could produce from the soil plenty of native food for their sustenance, and build school-houses. I arranged for building fourteen houses in our missions on the west coast this year for chapel and school purposes. I have received no general report since I left in April; hence, I cannot say how many of these houses have been completed. They were to be good frame and weather-boarded and shingle-roofed houses, 18×25 feet, and will, I doubt not, be all finished before the end of this year.

“Cavalla River District.—B. F. Kephart, P. E.

“(1) Wissikah Station, about forty miles up from the mouth of the river. Its king, chiefs and people received a missionary, built him a good native house and supported him for several months, when he was removed to supply a larger station vacated by one who withdrew from our work; so Wissikah remains to be supplied.641 Probable value of our land and improvements on Wissikah Station, $500.

“(2) Yubloky, ascending the stream, also on the west bank of Cavalla river. Missionary, J. R. Ellery. A good basis of self-sustentation already laid. Probable value, $1,000.

“(3) Yorkey.—Andrew Ortlip, missionary. Regular preaching in both of these stations, and some progress in teaching. Probable value, $1,000.

“(4) Tataka, on the east bank of the river, Miss Rose Bowers and Miss Annie Whitfield, missionaries. These are very earnest missionaries, and have done an immense amount of hard work, teaching, talking of God and salvation to the people in their own houses and growing most of their own food. Probable value of land improvements, $1,000.

“(5) Beabo.—H. Garwood, missionary. Brother Garwood was appointed to Beabo last March, and will, I trust, make a success, which was but limited under the administration of his predecessor, who is a good man but not a self-supporting success, and has hence returned home. Beabo is on the west bank of the river, and has adequate resources of self-support, and of opportunities for usefulness. Probable value, $900.

“(6) Bararobo, on the east bank. Chas. Owens and E. O. Harris, missionaries. This station, with two energetic young men to develop its capabilities, will, I hope, in the near future prove a success. Probable value, $900.

“(7) Gerribo, west bank. A mission-house built two years ago, but the station remains to be supplied. Probable value, $800.

“(8) Wallaky is the big town of the Gerribo tribe, twelve miles west of Gerribo town, on west bank of the river. Our missionary at Wallaky is Wm. Schneidmiller, a zealous young man from Baltimore. Having been brought up in a city, he has much to learn to become an effective backwoods pioneer; but he has faith, love, push, and patience and is succeeding. Probable value, $900.

“We have traveled nearly a hundred miles up the river, almost equal to the Hudson, and then west twelve miles to Wallaky. Now we go south by a narrow path over rugged mountain, hills and dales, a distance of about forty miles to—

642

“(9) Plebo.—Wm. Yancey and wife, missionaries. A hopeful young station of good possibilities. Probable value, $900.

“Nine miles walking westerly we reach

“(10) Barreky.—Wm. Warner and wife, missionaries. They are hard workers, and are bound to make self-support. Brother Warner is mastering the native language, and when ready to preach in it, will have open to him a circuit of eleven towns belonging to the Barreky tribe. Probable value, $900.

“On eight of the ten stations just named, we have frame, weather-boarded, shingle-roofed houses, the floors elevated about six feet above ground; the whole set on pillars of native logs from the forest. In all these places, also, school-houses, as before intimated, are being built. Each station is in a tribe entirely distinct and separate from every other tribe, and each river town represents a larger population far back in the interior of the wild country.

“Cape Palmas District.—B. F. Kephart, P. E. Brother Kephart is Presiding Elder of Mt. Scott and Tubmantown Circuit. Sister Kephart is a grand helper. They are teaching the people the blessedness of giving adequately to support their pastors. These people are confronted by two formidable difficulties, their old-established habits of being helped, and their poverty and lack of ability to help themselves; but they are being blest in giving like the Widow of Serepta, and will, I hope, work their way out.

“Clarence Gunnison, our missionary carpenter, and Prof. E. H. Greely. B. A., to be principal of our academy and missionary training-school in Cape Palmas, as soon as we shall get the seminary repaired, have their headquarters at Cape Palmas, but are engaged in building school-houses, and will then (D.V.) repair the seminary buildings, both in Cape Palmas and in Monrovia. We had unexpected detention in getting suitable lumber for repairs, but can now get the best Norway pine delivered on the ground at a cheap rate.

“(11) Pluky, across Hoffman River, from Cape Palmas, is the beginning of our Kru coast line of stations. Miss Lizzie McNeal is the missionary. Though two years in the station, we have not yet built a mission-house in Pluky. Miss McNeal teaches school in a native house in the midst of the town, and preaches on Sabbath days under the shade of a bread-fruit tree. Her school-house is643 crowded, and she has six of her boys and three girls converted to God, who testify for Jesus in her meetings, and help her in her soul-saving work. Probable value, $800, in land. Miss Barbara Miller assists her temporarily, but her specialties are kindergarten and music, awaiting the opening of the academy.

GARAWAY MISSION HOUSE.

“(12) Garaway, twenty miles northwest of Cape Palmas. Miss Agnes McAllister is in charge of the station, and Miss Clara Binkley has special charge of our educational department, both working successfully as missionaries. Aunt Rachel, a Liberian widow woman, runs the farm, and produces indigenous food enough to feed two or three stations. This is a station of great promise. Probable value, $1,200. We have a precious deposit in a little cemetery on the plain, in sight of the mission-house, of the consecrated blood and bones of dear Brother Gardner and dear Sister Meeker.

“(13) Piquinini Ses.—Miss Anna Beynon is in special charge of the household department. Miss Georgianna Dean has charge of the school-work, and Victor Hugo, a young German missionary, has charge of the school farm. Mrs. Nelson, a Liberian widow, is chief cook. They are succeeding hopefully for beginners. This644 station is about thirty miles northwest of Cape Palmas. Probable value, $1,100.

“(14) Grand Ses.—Jas. B. Robertson, assisted by Mr. Hanse, a Congo young man, who was saved at a series of meetings I conducted in Cape Palmas, in 1885. They are just getting started in their work, but already see signs of awakening among the people. Probable value, $1,100.

“(15) Sas Town.—Missionaries, K. Valentine Eckman, R. C. Griffith. I spent a month in Sas Town last spring, and we have there a church organization of probationers, numbering twenty-five Krumen. Probable value, $1,400.

“(16) Niffu. To be supplied. Probable value, $1,000.

“(17) Nanna Kru.—Henry Wright appointed last April, not heard from since. Probable value, $1,000.

“(18) Settra Kru.—B. J. Turner and wife. A fair promise of success in farming, teaching and preaching. Probable value, $1,100.

“On each of these Kru stations named, except Pluky, we have a mission-house of frame, elevated on pillars, six feet above ground; floors of boards from the saw-pits of Liberia, siding and roofing of galvanized iron; each house measuring in length thirty-six feet, breadth twenty-two feet, beside veranda, providing space for a central hall, 12x22 feet, and two rooms at each end, 11x12 feet. There is not a Liberian or foreigner of any sort in any of the stations named on Cavalla River or Kru Coast, except our missionaries, all heathens, as nude as any on the Congo, except a few men of them who ‘follow the sea,’ hence, our houses, which would not be admired in New York City, are considered to be ‘houses of big America for true.’

“(19) Ebenezer, west side of Sinou River, nearly twenty miles from Sinou. New house just completed. Z. Roberts in charge. A school of over twenty scholars opened. The king of the tribe has proclaimed Sunday as God’s, and ordered his people not to work on God’s day, but go to his house and hear his Word. This mission supersedes Jacktown, on the east bank of Sinou River, where we proposed last spring to found a mission, but did not. Ebenezer is worth to us $800 at least.

645

“(20) Benson River.—Missionary, Dr. Dan Williams. This is in Grand Bassa Country, difficult of access; hence, in my hasty voyages along the coast I have not yet been able to visit the Doctor, and cannot report definitely. He is holding on, and will, I hope, hold out and make a success in all his departments of work. The station ought to be worth $800.

“The Benson River Station is in the bounds of Grand Bassa District. We arranged for building on two other stations in Grand Bassa Country at the same time that I provided for Benson River; namely, King Kie Peter’s big town, and Jo Benson’s town; but at last account the houses were not built, so for the time we drop them off our list. They are on a great caravan trail to the populous interior. We will take them up or better ones by and by.

“From the west coast we proceed by steamer to the great Congo country. Two days above Congo mouth we land at Mayumba, and proceed in boats seventeen miles up an inland lake to Mamby, where Miss Martha E. Kah is stationed, and where our Brother A. I. Sortore sleeps in Christ. When we settled there it was in the bounds of the ‘Free State of Congo,’ but later the published decrees of the Berlin Conference put it under the wing of the French Government. The French authorities have recognized and registered our native title to 100 acres of good land, and are not unfriendly to us by any means, but ‘by law’ forbid us to teach any language but French. Good has been done at Mamby, and is being done. Owing to this disability we have proposed to abandon it, but Martha Kah is entirely unwilling to leave, and as it is our only footing in French territory, and as they hold a vast region, peopled by numerous nations of African heathen, we have thought it best thus far to hold on to Mamby. Probable value, $1,000.

“(21) Kabinda, near the Congo mouth. I never have had time to make the acquaintance of any person at Kabinda. Having full confidence in J. L. Judson as a man of superior ability and integrity, I gave him letters to the Portuguese governor of Kabinda, requesting the consent and co-operation of his excellency, to enable Judson to found a mission there. His excellency received him most cordially, gave him a public dinner, the merchants of the place being guests. For a year he reported extraordinary success in every646 department of his work. He went in by a dash, and went out like a flash—by sudden death.

“I called at Kabinda last May, and learned from a merchant there that King Frank, of whom Judson bought our mission premises, held the property for nonpayment, which Judson had reported all settled, conveyed, and deed recorded. King Frank, at the time of my call, was absent away up the coast, so that I could not reach the exact facts. I have written to the merchant whom I met, requesting him to find out the facts, but have as yet received no reply. So things at Kabinda are in a tangle at present. I have not yet found time to go and unravel it. To recover it or lose it will neither make nor break us, but we shall regret to lose it.

“Passing the mouth of the Congo River, we proceed by steamer over 300 miles to the beautiful land-locked harbor of St. Paul de Loanda. This Portuguese town has many massive buildings, including churches in ruins, dating back over 300 years. It has an estimated population of 5,000, a few hundred of whom are Portuguese (one English house of business), the rest being negroes. From the beginning we have had adequate self-supporting resources in Loanda from the Portuguese patronage of our schools, and have now, but at present we lack the teaching corps requisite.

“Wm. P. Dodson, who succeeded C. M. McLean, who returned home last May on account of sickness, is our minister at Loanda. He is a holy young man, a good linguist in Portuguese and Kimbundu, and is doing a good work. He has one fine young native man saved, whom I baptized during my recent visit. I learn since that he is leading a new life, and becoming a valuable helper in our work. Our mission property in Loanda is worth at least $10,000. It is quite unnecessary for Loanda or for any other station we have in Africa to add ‘and no debts,’ for we have none.

“We are trying to find just the right man and wife for our school in Loanda, but would rather wait for years than to get unsuitable persons.

“From Loanda we proceed by steamer sixty miles south by sea, and cross the bar into the mouth of Coanza River, as large as the Hudson, and ascend 180 miles to Dondo, at the head of steamboat647 navigation. Dondo is a noted trading centre, and has a population of about 5,000, mostly negroes.

“We had good property in Dondo, worth about $5,000. A great deal of hard work, successful preparatory work, has been done in Dondo. Its school-work and machine-shop were self-supporting when manned, but is now in the same position as Loanda, awaiting good workers to man it.

MAP OF ANGOLA. Larger.

“Our Presiding Elder, E. A. Withey, of Angola District, and his daughter Stella, a rare linguist in Portuguese and Kimbundu, and of great missionary promise, were holding the fort at Dondo when I recently visited that region. Their home was at Pungo Andongo, eighty-nine miles distant. Stella and I walked a mile or more to visit the graves of Sister Cooper, and of our grandest Dondo worker, Mrs. Mary Myers Davenport, M.D., in the cemetery, which is inclosed by a high stone wall. Her last words are inscribed on her tombstone. They were addressed to Him who was nearest and dearest to her in that lone hour—to Jesus: ‘I die for Thee, here in Africa.’ She would have died for Jesus anywhere, but had consecrated her all to him ‘for Africa.’ In about a month from that time our dear Stella, so ripe for heaven, but so greatly needed in648 Africa, was laid by her side. So that three of our missionary heroines sleep in Jesus at Dondo. Their ashes are among the guarantees of our ultimate success in giving life to millions in Africa, who are ‘dead in trespasses and sins.’

“From Dondo, we ‘take it afoot’ fifty-one miles over hills, mountains and vales, by the old caravan trail of the ages to Nhanguepepo Mission Station. Our property there is worth about $6,000. It was designed to be a receiving station, in which our new-comers might be acclimatized, taught native languages and prepared for advance work. Under the superintendency of Brother Withey a great preparatory work has been done at this station. It has, however, become specially a training school for native agency, under the leadership of one young man of our first party from America, Carl Rudolph. We already have an organized Methodist Episcopal Church at this station, composed of thirteen converted native men and boys, who are giving good proof of the genuineness of the change wrought in them by the Holy Spirit. From 5 to 6 o’clock every morning they have a meeting for worship, Scripture reading and exposition by Carl, singing, prayers and testimony for Jesus by all in English, Portuguese and Kimbundu, intermingled with hallelujah shouts of praise to N’Zambi the God of their fathers and of our fathers.

“The forenoon is devoted to manual labor by all hands, then school and religious exercises in the afternoon. The work of each day is distributed; two of our boys, called “pastors,” have the care of about 100 head of cattle belonging to the mission. Several boys are taught to yoke and work oxen in sled or plow; several boys have learned to be stone-masons, and when I was there last were engaged in building a stone wall round the cattle corral. One boy is trained to business in the little store belonging to the mission. One very trusty fellow is the man-of-all work about the house and the cook. All these varieties of work are done by our own converted people, and not by heathen hirelings. This station yields ample sustentation for all these workers. The brethren are making improvements continually, and paying for them out of their net profits. In building a chapel next summer they may need a little help, but probably not.

649

“Dear Nellie Mead, one of ‘our children’ of 1885, natural musician and lovely Christian, died at the age of about 16 at this station. A tomb of rude masonry marks the sacred spot, near the caravan trail, where Nellie and baby Willie Hicks will wait till Jesus comes.

“A march of thirty-eight miles easterly along the same old path brings us to Pungo Andongo, a great place for trade, a town of probably 1,200 or 1,500 population. It is wedged in between stupendous mountains, in solid blocks of conglomerate of small stones of basalt and flint, perpendicular for a thousand feet on all sides. We have a large adobe-house, including chapel and store-room, and nearly an acre of ground with fruit-bearing trees in the town, and a good farm of about 300 acres a mile out, worth probably altogether about $4,000.

“That is the residence of A. E. Withey and Mrs. Withey. Their son Bertie, in his seventeenth year, tall and commanding, speaks fluently the languages of the country and has in him the making of a grand missionary. His two little sisters, Lottie and Flossie, are among the Lord’s chosen ones. The developed stand-by of this station is Charles A. Gordon. He is a young man of marvelous ability, adapted to every variety of our work. In preaching power in all the languages of that region he is second to none. Withey and Gordon are our principal merchants, and while doing a good business, in the meantime, by truth, honesty and holy living and faithful testimony for Jesus in different languages are bringing the Gospel into contact with a large class of traders from the far interior, who could not be reached by ordinary methods.

“Pungo Andongo Station has crossed the lines of sustentation and of absolute self-support, and is making money to open new stations in the regions beyond. We have two missionary graves at Pungo Andongo, one of Henry Kelley, a noble missionary apprentice from the Vey Tribe of Liberia, and the other of dear Sister Dodson (formerly Miss Brannon, from Boston). They both ‘sleep in Jesus,’ and will rise quickly to his call in the morning.

“An onward march of sixty-two miles brings us to Malange, a town of probably 2,000 population, and noted for its merchandise. Our people there are Samuel J. Mead, P. E., his wife Ardella,650 refined, well educated and a fine musician, at the head of our school-work. Willie Mead is head of the mechanical department; his wife is especially engaged in teaching missionaries. They are all noble specimens of vigorous minds, holy hearts, healthy bodies and superior linguists and workers. Robert Shields, a young missionary from Ireland, who was brought up at home for a merchant, runs a small mission store at Malange, preaches in the Kimbundu, and has a growing circuit extending among the villages of the surrounding country. Our Kimbundu teacher in the school was Bertha Mead, niece of Samuel J. Mead. She was one of ‘our children’ in 1855. She was wholly devoted to God and his work. On the first Sabbath of my visit to Malange, last June, she was united in marriage to Robert Shields. Immediately after her marriage she put my sermon for the occasion into Kimbundu, without hesitation, in distinct utterances, full of unction, which stirred a crowded audience, a number of whom were from the kingdom of Lunda, about 600 miles further east. In Sunday-school of the afternoon of that memorable day I heard Bertha put forty-one questions from the No. 1 Catechism of our church, and the school together answered the whole of them promptly; first in English and then in Kimbundu. The native people of that country are known by the name of the Umbunda people. Kimbundu is the name of their language. An interesting episode occurred while the forty-one questions were being asked and answered. The old king, who lived nineteen miles distant from Malange, was present, and manifested great interest in the proceedings, and interjected a question, of course, in his own language, which was: ‘Why did not the first man and his wife go right to God, and confess their sins, and get forgiveness?’ Bertha answered him, of course, in his own language, to this effect: ‘They were not guilty simply of a private offense against their Father, but a crime against the government of the great King of all worlds. The penalty involved was death and eternal banishment to a dreadful place prepared for the devil and all his followers, called ‘Inferno.’ God had to break his own word, dishonor his government, and destroy the legal safeguards he had established to protect the rights of his true and loyal subjects, or execute the penalty of law on that guilty man and his wife.651 Moreover, the devil-nature had struck clear through that man and his wife. They had become so full of lies and deceit that they had no desire to repent, so that all the Judge could righteously do was to pass sentence on them and turn them over to the executioners of justice.’ The heathen king leaned over and listened with great attention, and his countenance was like that of a man awaiting his sentence to be hung. Bertha went on and pictured the guilty pair standing at the bar of justice, each holding the saswood cup of death in hand, awaiting the order to drink it and die. ‘Then the Son of God was very sorry for the man and his woman, and talked with his Father about them, and made a covenant with his Father to redeem them. He would at a day agreed on unite himself with a son descended from the guilty woman, and drink their cup of death, and provide for them his ‘cup of salvation,’ and would protect God’s truth, righteousness and government, and provide deliverance, purity and everlasting happiness for the guilty man and his wife, and for all their family—the whole race of mankind.’ As Bertha went on to describe how Jesus did, according to his covenant, come into the world and teach all people the right way for them to walk in, and did die for man the most awful of all deaths—‘even the death of the cross’—and did arise from the dead and is now our law-giver in God’s Court, and our doctor to heal and purify us, and invites all to come to him, ‘and he will give them rest,’ the old chief seemed to take it all in through open eyes, ears and mouth till he could no longer restrain his feelings, and broke out and cried and laughed immoderately, and yelled at the top of his voice, and clapt his hands for joy. He had never heard the ‘good news’ before. I, meantime, quietly wept and prayed, and then thanked God. I remember how Bertha and our other dear missionary children used to ramble with me over the hills of Loanda. I was the only big playmate they had, and they used to wait anxiously for the shades of evening in which to have a stroll with their big brother; and now to see my tall, modest Bertha with perfect ease breaking the bread of life to the heathen fathers, I have no remembrance of ever before quietly weeping so much in one day as I did that day.

“Brother Samuel Mead has adopted eight native boys and girls, and652 is bringing them up in the way they should go. His hour for morning family worship is from 4 to 5 o’clock. The alarm clock rouses them all at 4 A.M. In fifteen minutes they are all washed and dressed. The services vary and are full of life and interest: Scripture reading and explanation, singing of a number of different hymns in three different languages. None are called on to pray, but voluntarily they all lead in turn, some in English, some in Portuguese and some in Kimbundu. I kept account one morning and found that sixteen different ones led in prayer at that meeting. From 11 A.M. to 12 M., Sam Mead joins Willie’s family in a similar service. No family worship in the evenings, as many of them are taken up by public meetings in the chapel.

“Our church, organized at Malange at the time of my visit, contained twenty-one natives, all probationers, of course, but baptized and saved. The tide is rising.

“Our property at Malange is worth probably $6,000. Samuel J. Mead has charge of a big farm and is making it pay. Brother Willie trained four native men to run two pit-saws, and in the last year has turned out $1,500 worth of lumber, which sells for cash at the saw-pits. These men are also preachers, and preach several times each week in the Portuguese language. In labor, money and building material they have recently completed a new two-story mission-house and other mission improvements, amounting to an aggregate cost of $1,200, without any help from home. Men who are making money and attending to all their duties as missionaries have a legal right, under the Decalogue and Discipline, to a fair compensation from their net earnings; but all the missionaries we have still abiding in our Angola Missions, go in with the self-sacrificing, suffering Jesus under the ‘new Commandment.’ They invest their lives with all they possess, including all the money they have or can make in his soul-saving work in Africa, and have no separate purse which they call their own. If on this line of life they should suffer lack, or bring the Lord in debt to them, it would indeed be ‘a new thing under the sun.’

“We have graves at Malange also. Mrs. Dr. Smith, an estimable Christian lady, sleeps there. Dear Edna Mead, one of ‘our children’ of 1885, a lovely Christian, perhaps of 12 years, sleeps653 in our own cemetery on our mission farm. While I was there last June, we buried a Libolo young man—brought up and saved in our mission—in our cemetery; and six weeks after her marriage, our dear Bertha, our grand missionary Bertha, was smitten down and laid there to rest.

“A great many good people in the Church on earth do not believe in my missions, but God means that the Church above all shall think well of us: hence, he has not taken from us a single dwarfish, shabby specimen, but from the beginning has selected from the front ranks of the very best we had, so that we are not ashamed of our representative missionaries in heaven. Nearly all of our present force in Angola have made a marvelous achievement in the mastery of the Portuguese and Kimbundu languages. Prof. H. Chatelain has printed them in the form of a grammar, beside a primer and the Gospel by John in the Kimbundu. The rest of our people there, the same as himself, learned the vernacular by direct and daily contact with the natives, but Brother Chatelain’s books are of great value to them, both in advance study and in teaching.

“Our Angola Missions were commenced a little over four years ago. They have furnished many useful lessons from the school of experience, and demonstrated the possibilities of success in the three great departments of our work, educational, industrial and evangelical, and of early self-sustentation later, absolute self-support and then self-propagation—founding new missions without help from home. Our work has to be run mainly along the lines of human impossibilities, combining rare human adaptabilities with Divine power and special providences under the immediate administration of the Holy Spirit. Hence, our greatest difficulty is to find young men and women possessing these rare adaptabilities. We have them now in Angola, and also on the Congo and west coast, but the sifting at the front required to get them is too big a contract for me. I can only do the best I can, and commit and intrust all the issues to God. He works out his will patiently and kindly. The people he sends home are good Christians, but on account of personal disabilities, or family relationship and responsibilities, find themselves disqualified for this peculiar style of work and not able to make self-support, and hence quietly leave for home.654 Many of such would gladly stay if we would pay them a salary, which we cannot do, though we don’t question their natural rights. Thus we lose numbers and gain unity and strength.

“From Malange, a tramp of 1,000 miles northeast will bring us to Luluaburg, in the Bashalange Country, discovered by Dr. Pogge and Lieut. Wissmann, in 1883. The Governor-General of the Independent State of Congo, at my request, gave to Dr. Summers, one of our men from Malange, permission to found a station for our mission at Luluaburg, which he did, and built two houses on it, and was making good progress when he became worn out by disease and died. I hope soon to send a successor to dear Dr. Summers.

“I have arranged at the land office in Boma for the completion of their conveyance of title by deed to our mission property at Luluaburg, on my return to Boma in April next (D.V.). Those vast countries of the Upper Kasai and Sankuru Rivers are immensely populous. By the will of God we shall hold our footing and a few years hence shall (D.V.) plant a conference in that county.

“From Luluaburg, a week of foot traveling northwest will bring us to Lueba, at the junction of the Lulua and Kasai Rivers. Thence, in a little steamer descending the Kasai River about 800 miles, we sweep through ‘Qua mouth’ into the Congo, descending which seventy miles we will tie up at Kimpoko, near the northeast angle of Stanley Pool. We opened this station in 1886, designed as a way-station for our transportation to the countries of the Upper Kasai. The Lord is by delay preparing us the better to go up and possess the land in his set time. He meantime approves of our good intentions. We have now stationed at Kimpoko, Bradley L. Burr, Dr. Harrison, Hiram Elkins and his wife Roxy. At Kimpoko, we made an irrigating ditch a mile long, drawing from a bold mountain creek an abundant supply of water to insure good crops at all seasons. We have there about ten acres under cultivation, and grow in profusion all the indigenous food that we can use. To provide good beef in abundance and ready money, Brother Burr goes out for a few hours and kills a hippopotamus or two. They are in demand among the traders and the natives for food. Brother Burr recently sold three in Kimpoko for $80. Brother Burr, who is our655 Presiding Elder at Kimpoko, writes that the station has been nearly self-sustaining from the beginning, but entirely so since the beginning of this year. They are building a new mission-house this dry season, about 15x80 feet. In this work they may require a little help—a few bales of cloth from home. At a low estimate, our property in Kimpoko is worth at least $1,000.

“From Kimpoko we go by oars or steamer twenty miles to the lower end of Stanley Pool—Leopoldville. Thence by foot 100 miles to South Manyanga (which is called the North Bank route; by the south route we walk from Leopoldville 231 miles to Matadi or Lower Congo). From Manyanga we go by a launch of three or four tons capacity, propelled by oars and sails and currents, eighty-eight miles to Isangala. We have had a station at Isangala for over two years, on which we have built good native houses, but had not bought the site of the Government till my last visit to the land office at Boma. The site, containing seven and one-half acres, cost us nearly $80. A good garden spot. Our brethren dug a yam from their garden in Isangala when I was there, a few weeks ago, which weighed twenty-two pounds—more wholesome and delicious, if possible, than Irish potatoes. Our paying industry there will be in the transport line of business. As our Vivi Station is at the highest point of small steamer navigation, so Isangala is the lowest point of the middle passage of the Congo from Isangala, eighty-eight miles to Manyanga. Our site at Isangala, with improvements, is worth $300. We would refuse the offer of five times that amount on account of prospective value.

“Our missionaries at Isangala are Wm. O. White and Wm. Rasmussen. Both have made good progress in the mastery of the Fiot or Congo language; but Rasmussen is a prodigy in language. He interpreted for me with great fluency and force and is preaching in many contiguous villages. He has been out two and a half years, and (D.V.) will soon be an able envangelist to go forth among the native nations and receive from them a support. A journey over the mountains and vales of fifty-five miles will bring us to Vivi Mission Station. We bought this site—the seat of government before it was settled at Boma—over two years ago, for $768. We have there but twelve acres of land, but can procure656 more if needed. It is a high plateau and seems so dry that I did not think we could farm to advantage. We needed the place for a receiving and transport station; but to my agreeable surprise on my recent visit, I find that J. C. Teter, our Preacher-in-Charge and transport agent, has near the end of the dry season an acre and a half of green growing manioc, an orchard of young palm and mango trees, and plantains and yams growing in a profusion of life and fruitfulness. In the way of live-stock he has twenty-five goats, eight sheep, two head of young cattle, half a dozen muscovy-ducks and 100 chickens, and when short of meat he takes his gun and goes out and kills a deer or a buffalo. While I was with him, a few weeks ago, he killed two koko bucks. The koko is a species of deer, but as big as a donkey. So in every place we settle, we find that God has resources of self-support of some kind waiting to be developed. Vivi will be self-supporting in the near future, and the most beautiful station on the Congo. At any rate, J. C. Teter and Mary Lindsay, his wife, can make it such if the Lord shall continue to them life and health. Probable value, $2,000.

“One hundred miles by steamer down the Congo to Banana brings us within an hour and a half by oars of our mission-station at Matumba. Miss Mary Kildare, a superior teacher, linguist and missionary, is our sole occupant of the station at Matumba. I bought of the Government nearly ten acres of good ground there for nearly $120, having previously bought the native title. We have a comfortable little house of galvanized iron, 22x24 feet, set on pillars six feet above ground. The house is divided into two rooms, 12x12 feet, and a veranda, 12x124 feet, inclosed by a balustrading and a gate, and is used for a school-room. She has now a school of twenty scholars. She does her preaching mostly in the village; the house is in an inclosure of nearly an acre, surrounded by a high fence, with strong gate, which is locked up at 9 P.M. daily. So Mary, the dear lady, is perfectly contented, and is doing good work for God. She is an Irish lady, and paid her own passage to go to Africa to work for nothing. I took her recently a box of Liberian coffee-seed, which she has in a nursery growing beautifully, and she has a fruit orchard coming on.

“Our property at Matumba is worth $1,000. Two years ago, we657 started three stations between Vivi and Isangala—Vumtomby Vivi, Sadi Kabanza and Matamba. We built pretty good houses at a total cost of $30, not counting our labor. One of the noblest young missionaries we had, John A. Newth, of London, sleeps all alone in his station at Sadi Kabanza. Dear Brother Newth!—I was with him much and under a great variety of circumstances, and highly prized his lovable character and great versatility of practical talent. He loved his field of labor and would have made a success if the Master had not called him from labor to reward. This was in 1888, but belongs to this chapter of unreported history. The people I appointed to work Vumtomby Vivi and Matumba Stations became dissatisfied with their work and huddled together at Vivi with others of kindred spirit and worked against us.

“‘Then they went out from us, but were not of us; for if they had been of us they would no doubt have continued with us,’

“Since that, Brother Reed and wife and Brother Bullikist, very good people, sent out by Dr. Simpson, of New York, have opened a station nearly midway between Vumtomby Vivi and Sadi Kabanza, so when we get ready to go out to found new stations we shall prefer, instead of resuming work at those vacated, to go into the more populous regions of the interior. The Congo State has a strip of country densely populated, 100 miles from the north bank of the Congo and extending from Banana 250 miles to Manyanga, all unoccupied and open to us, except a few new stations near the Congo. So God is opening a vast field for us on the Lower Congo, as well as on the Upper Congo and Kasai. I did not set out to found any new stations this year, and have not, except to consent to the birth of Ebenezer Station on Sinou River. Our business this year was to find out or to put in the guarantees of self-support for658 each station. We have found out that most of those founded in the short period of the work are self-supporting in the main. In our new Liberian stations, beside abundance of fruit and vegetables for food, our principal or most reliable resource in marketable value is coffee. So I provided, before leaving Liberia last April, that every station having men who can utilize oxen and plow, should be furnished with a plow and a yoke of cattle and that every occupied station should be supplied with as many coffee scions as they can plant and cultivate up to 1,000 plants for each station and provided each station with a bushel of coffee-seed to be planted in nursery, from which to enlarge each coffee orchard as fast as the ground can be cleared and the coffee scions set out up to 5,000 or 6,000 trees. Coffee means money, and it is only a question of industry, patience and time. It requires about five years to make a coffee orchard productive, but with a little attention it will yield a plentiful annual crop—two crops in Liberia—for fifty years without resetting. We ought to give all the stations a good start in cattle, (say) a dozen head for each one. God is manifestly with us along the lines of our work, and success is certain, and the glory will be wholly his.

“The teaching force of all the facts in the case, as we now see them, leads us clearly to the conclusion that we need our steamer on the Lower Congo much more than on the Upper. So, the Lord permitting, we will put her together at the base of the hill on which Vivi Mission is located, during the next dry season. She will carry goods from the side of ocean steamers at Banana 100 miles up to her berth, in the mouth of a little creek in which she will be constructed, the highest point of steamer navigation. This will save us exorbitant rates of freight up the river and land our goods where we want them, and give other missions a chance to reduce their heavy leakage of the same sort. The price for carrying to Stanley Pool is twice as large now as two years ago. We can’t pay such prices and found the stations in the Upper Kasai. That we feel (D.V.) bound to do; but with our steamer on the Lower Congo and a steel boat of our own, of three or four tons, to be worked by oars and sails on the middle passage, to carry freights from Isangala to Manyanga, will give us the inside track of the freight business to those upper countries, and cut down our expenses more than a half659 of the present rate, and do work for other missions as well. Except in leadership and superintendency, all this heavy work will be done by natives, whom we wish to employ and train to habits of industry—one of the auxiliaries of our mission work.

STEAM WAGONS FOR HAULING AT VIVI.

“The steamers on the Upper Congo water-ways have multiplied from four or five to a dozen in the past three years, so that we can get passage for the few missionaries we want to put in to hold our Kasai pre-emption claim till we can work up from our lease, and by and by send up a small steamer of our own for our enlarged Kasai work. I am on my way now to make final arrangements with the builder of our steamer to put her up and launch her at the earliest practicable moment, and will, the Lord permitting, be back to660 Liberia in December. I will ask Richard Grant to furnish a statement of the total expenditures.

“In regard to appropriations, I remark: (1) That if the Committee wish to enlarge the appropriation to the African (Liberia) Conference, I make no objection, but I ask at least for the continuance of the usual amount of $2,500, sent altogether as it was last year, and have the distribution at Conference for the whole year.

“(2) If the Committee are pleased to order $500 subject to my call, all right. I did not draw it last year, because I had not time to use it for the purpose I had in mind.

“(3) If the Committee will appropriate $10,000 or $5,000 for the establishment of self-supporting schools for the principal countries of Liberian population, for the education alike of the Liberian and the heathen children, I will administer it as carefully as possible and report progress. It would take five or six years to grow marketable values adequate to self-support, but quantities of food can be produced from the first or second year.—October 4, 1889.”

Writing in June 1889, Bishop Taylor speaks as follows concerning his Angola Missions:

“I left Dondo last Thursday morning. Brother Withey walked with me about a mile. Four carriers—who brought cargoes from Nhanguepepo, arriving in Dondo on Tuesday, and taking a day for rest—were ready to start on their return trip on Thursday. I employed two of them, one to carry my bed and the other my food, and half a cargo for Brother Withey. We spent the first night at Mutamba, thirteen miles out, stopping about eight miles out for lunch, and four hours of rest.

“Four years ago, after waiting four or five days in Dondo trying in vain to get carriers, we depended on half-a-dozen Kabindas, whom we hired in Loanda, on good recommendations, as a standby in case we should fail. We were repeatedly told by men of long experience in Angola, that ‘it would be impossible for us, as strangers, especially as we would neither drink nor sell, nor give661 rum, gin nor wine, to get any carriers for the interior.’ ‘The traders, with their long and widely extended experience, facilities and free rations of grog, can’t get more than half the carriers required at this time.’ ‘One gentleman of my acquaintance,’ said, ‘I had 5,000 bags of coffee at Kazengo, thirty-six miles from Dondo, and could not put it into the market for want of carriers.’

“So, a part of our pioneer party, viz: myself, Willie Mead, W. P. Dodson, Joseph Wilks, Henry Kelley, the Vey boy from Liberia, determined to make a start on Friday night (about June 1, 1885,) even if we should have to do our own carrying, for the Kabindas whom he had hired refused to carry for us; and they had a lot of their own luggage, twice as much as regular carriers take with them.

“I learned from an old trader, who had thirty years of observation along our contemplated line of work in Angola, that Nhanguepepo was the best site for a mission between Dondo and Pungo Andongo. So we aimed to reach this first and best place. About 9 o’clock, on that night, we succeeded in getting six Kabindas to shoulder each a load of our luggage and food for the trip, leaving one Kabinda with Dr. Summers and C. M. McLean, in care of a large amount of our stuff at Dondo, stored in our tents, inside of a stone wall enclosure, said to have been a slave pen in the dark days of old. I and my little party of missionaries each took a load of stuff, and struggled up the mountain range four miles to Pambos, arriving about midnight. We spread our bed on the ground and got a little sleep. Before sunrise I had carried wood and made a fire, and had on the tea-kettle. The Kabindas looked grimly on, but declined to help with the camp work. Breakfast over, we made a move for our march, but the K.’s refused to pick up their loads. All my kind talk, and Brother M.’s scolding, failed to move them, so we ‘were stuck in the mud.’ We got the men through the English house in Loanda, and about 9 P.M. I saw Mr. N., the head of the English house, coming in his ‘tipoia,’ carried by men from his farm at Kazengo. So I went a little way from our camp, and met him, and explained to him the situation.

“He said: ‘The trouble is the Kabindas are not carriers. They are sailors and porters and gentlemen’s servants. They were represented662 to you as good for any service to which you might want to put them, but they have not been trained to work of this sort.’

“I replied: ‘Well, Mr. N., if you can prevail on the fellows to carry till we can reach an interior village we can pick up all the carriers we need.’

“‘Yes; I’ll try.’ He had a palaver with the men, and they agreed to carry till we could find natives who would do it. Then we cleared the camp and marched about four miles, and stopped at a small hamlet for our lunch, and there we hired half-a-dozen men to carry the loads of the K.’s to Nhanguepepo, and we transferred our knapsack to the K.’s.

“The price quoted in Dondo for carriers to Nhangue was ‘sixty-four makutas’ ($1.92) per man. We offered that, but could not get a man. The price asked by these country fellows was but ‘twenty-five makutas’ (seventy-five cents), confirming the theory I had advanced, ‘If we can get to the country villages inland, we can get all the carriers we may require.’ So with our new team we went on about five miles and camped at Mutamba, and rested on the Sabbath. Many villagers called to see the show, the sight of white men, and exhibited great interest in us. We had our worship and a good day of rest. On Monday morning the K.’s refused to carry unless we would hire another carrier, which we did, and soon found that they overloaded the carriers by tying their luggage to our cargoes. We could not speak their language, and they knew but little of ours, so it was of no avail to try to reason with them about their oppressions; but soon after I reached Nhanguepepo, I settled with them, and sent them back to the sea where they belonged.

“On my trip last week I had no trouble with carriers. I started from Mutamba at 6 A.M., walked twelve miles to Kasoki, took lunch and rested till 2.30 P.M.; marched seven miles further to Ndanji a Menia on the divide of a range of mountains, and camped without a tent, just where we pitched our tent four years ago, and I was reminded of the trouble we then had with our carriers. The villagers we had hired complained of the bad treatment they had received from the Kabindas, besides overloading them with their luggage, and refused, to go any further. I quietly offered to give them extra663 pay, and thus induced them to proceed with their big load to Nhanguepepo.

“I had a refreshing sleep at Ndanji a Menia last Friday night, took lunch on Saturday at Endumba, and reached Nhangue—nineteen miles—at 5 P.M., and was joyously received by our dear Brother Rudolph.

“I have tramped the fifty-one miles between this and Dondo, back and forth many times, but never with less fatigue than on my trip last week. I don’t purpose to give a history of all those journeys through the mountains, but simply note a few points of contrast between my first trip, and the one of last week. We arrived in the midst of drought and ‘famine’ four years ago. We came through from Dondo dry-shod, but last Friday I doffed my boots and waded the pools and streams seven times, and on Saturday five times, and I found it to be pleasant and healthful to my feet.

“Till railroads shall be built through this country, the best mode of traveling, and the most healthful, is to walk, and ‘wade.’ As for speed in a journey of a few hundred miles, a man on foot will out-travel a bull, or even a good horse. Persons who travel in a ‘tipoia,’ amid the rattle of sleigh bells, and the shouts of their carriers, are not in a position to receive my statement, but I base it, not on a theory, but on facts from the field of action.

“When we were here four years ago, we lived in tents near the Caravansary for about three months. We had been invited by the Governor-General, Sr. Amaral, to settle on Government land wherever we chose, and the Government would make us a grant of any amount required up to 2,400 acres. Having explored the Nhanguepepo region pretty thoroughly, we concluded that the Lord would have us open a mission here. Our families and a number of our young men were waiting—in Loanda at a heavy expense—for us to open fields for them; and the dry season was passing away, so we had to proceed as expeditiously as possible.

“I opened a mortar bed for making adobes (sun-dried brick) preparatory to the erection of a mission house near the Caravansary, where crowds of carriers, many of whom were from a distance of five or six hundred miles east of us, camped every night. Having made inquiry I believed the site I had selected was Government land, but664 was notified by the “Commandante,” before I had proceeded with my adobe-making, that all the land about the Caravansary was private property. He was very kind to us, but wanted to sell us the house in which he lived, a roomy, substantial building, with adjoining roofless walls of solid masonry of much larger extent. I saw on examination that the property would be suitable for our purposes of residence for our large families, and for a receiving and training station for new recruits from home in coming time, being a high, breezy, healthful region; but we had no money. However, firmly believing that the God of Abraham would lead us, and provide for us, I wrote to our people in Loanda to come on as quickly as they could. Owing to the continued illness of a large proportion of them, and the difficulty and delay in getting steamer passage up the Coanza on account of the drought and low state of the river, our people came in groups in July and August. I was notified at the time of their transit that our money in Loanda was all used up. As strangers, we could not ask for ‘credit,’ and as servants of God, doing business solely for Him, and not for ourselves, I did not think it necessary, nor feel at liberty to try to put His credit on the market, so I worked and waited.

“My people could not travel inland without money to pay their carriers, and we had no place in which to shelter them, even if they could get in. Our cloth was all of one kind—white cotton, which became popular and marketable months later, but at that time was declared to be entirely unsuitable for the market, and hence could not be passed off at any price. Money was the thing required, and without it our people in transit could neither travel beyond Dondo, nor stop and pay expenses. I did not doubt that I was working in the order of God’s providence, hence could not and did not doubt that He would lead us, and provide for these demands on us, outside of our abundant home supplies which He had already provided. The fact is, I brought into the country, in money, only the small sum of about $1,200, and $1,000 of that had been handed to me by dear Brother Critchlow to meet ’emergencies’ in Loanda. Heavy duties, house-rent for forty persons with high rates for wood, water, etc., soon swallowed that amount. But just in our665 extremity, Mr. J. T., a Church of England man in the City of London, gave us £250—over $1,200.

“The Lord thus tided us over that bar. So in our extremity of need, as before described, the God of ‘the Church of England’ as well as of our own, through His servant J. T. of London, gave us £250 more. With that we bought the Nhanguepepo property of the Commandante, and settled our people here, also at Pungo Andongo, and Malange.

“I proposed that our Nhangue Station should bear the name of our London brother, but when I spoke to him about it, he replied, ‘No, Bishop Taylor, no! that is an honor I do not deserve. I live at home in comfort. Call it after somebody who has suffered and done something for God among the heathen.’

“All the members of the families, and young men appointed to Nhanguepepo four years ago, are still at the front making a record for God and heaven, save Nellie and Edna Mead, who have gone to represent us in the home country of our King. Brother Carl Rudolph, however, is the only one who remains at Nhangue, and is at present in sole charge of the station, and is breaking in native workers, and is likely to make this a training station of native, rather than an American agency. If such should turn out to be in the line of God’s wisdom, and gracious leading, all the better. These are acclimatized, know the languages, and the life of the people, and have many advantages over foreign agency. The foreign missionary is sent by the Holy Spirit ‘to prepare the way of the Lord,’ but the sooner he can train and trust the native-born men and women whom God shall call to be heralds and witnesses of the truth, the better.

“The station buildings that were in good repair when we took possession, remain so; some portions not entirely furnished with ant-proof rafters, need repairs. Many of the walled rooms have been roofed and utilized.

“A walled room we have, 18x40 feet, would answer for a chapel and school-room. We hope to have it covered and fitted up this dry season. We are also building this season a new stone wall around our corral, and must have a shed for milking the cows.

“A new house, 18x40 feet, of adobe bricks, has been put up near666 our main building, and a farm house of adobe brick, 20x40 feet, a mile distant, at the mission farm.

“A great deal of material work has thus been done in the four years. I provided for putting in a herd of cattle here before I left, nearly four years ago. The herd increased and went up to a total of 144 head, including calves. To protect them from thieves and from wolves they have to be carefully guarded by two boys by day and secured within heavy stone walls by night. One night, about two years ago, the herd got out of the ‘corral’ and went to their grazing ground, and a pack of wolves killed and partly devoured one of the cows. Later, a couple of wolves managed to get hold of a calf that seemed to have laid near the gate. Some natives heard their barking and raised an alarm, which frightened the wolves away. Brothers Withey and Rudolph went out with a light, and found the calf outside the gate, and one of its legs broken. It appeared to have been dragged through an opening in the gate, caused by a broken bar, and thus got its leg broken. It was midnight, but Brother Rudolph at once slaughtered and dressed the calf for food. Meantime he preached to the crowd of natives thus drawn together about the devil-wolves which were in pursuit of them, and said their only refuge is in the fold of Jesus; that they should not go outside, nor lie down to sleep too near the gate.

“The crowding together of so large a herd of cattle proved to be unwholesome for them, especially in the wet season, when they could not keep the corral clean. Many of them became afflicted with an itchy, festering skin disease, though otherwise healthy and fat. Such were separated from the main herd to prevent possible contagion, and were gradually slaughtered and used to meet the demand for beef, fresh or dried; others proved to be ‘lean kine,’ which greatly ran down in weight during the dry season, when the grass was short; some milk cows were poor in the quantity and quality of their milk; others would not yield to kind treatment; all these varieties, noted as unprofitable stock to keep, were sold or slaughtered, so that now of ‘the survival of the fittest’ we have left a herd of eighty-four head, including calves; beside selected seed for a herd at our Pungo Andongo Mission, which now numbers twenty head, old and young.

667

“Brothers Withey and Gordon were both merchants for years at home; hence very proficient in that line, but not so well adapted to farming or mechanics; so the Lord is giving them success in establishing a commercial business, both at Nhanguepepo, and at Pungo Andongo. It was contemplated from the start that when such men should be put down by the Lord in a good place, and shall so be led by His Spirit and Providence, that trading posts should constitute one branch of our school industries. These give ample support now to the two stations named, but are still assisted from home in taxes, repairs and new additions to church properties.

“The foundation industry, however, is farming, fruit, coffee-growing, etc., (1) because of its intrinsic value, present and future. (2) That we may thus train boys and girls for industrial pursuits, by which, when grown, they may secure good homes of their own and form Christian communities as a basis of self-supporting churches and schools.

“The soil of Nhangue is abundant, rich and ready for the plow, but thus far, owing to the great attention given to building, to the stock, and to merchandizing, and the departure of so many who ran well for a season, our farming interest has suffered; but Brother Rudolph will give the farming and industrial school-boys and girls to help and to be helped, a fair trial, as soon as we supply him with an assistant, and, by the blessing of God, he will, I am sure, make a success which will demonstrate grand possibilities on that line. This is essential, even if the stores should far exceed absolute self-support, which they will do if kept solely in charge of such men as we have named; but all the boys we train can’t be merchants. The school work commenced with promise nearly four years ago, has not made decided progress, for the same reasons named in regard to farming, but good results are manifest from the educational work, especially in some of the boys trained by our good brother, Wm. P. Dodson, who give evidence of their genuine conversion to God. In spite of all discouragements, which, among ourselves, have not been small nor few, God is at the front and will lead all who abide there with Him to early and glorious successes on all the lines of our movement, especially in the salvation of the heathen around668 us. I am so assured of this that I am praising Him now for the coming work of salvation among the heathen. Glory to God! Glory to God! Wm. Taylor.”

“Arrived in Nhanguepepo by a walk of fifty-one miles from Dondo, on Saturday, June 1, 1889. At present we have but one missionary on this station, Brother Carl Rudolph, but he is doing the work of two or three by breaking in the native boys. He has a self-supporting store of varieties, a large herd of cattle, is building a stone wall for enlarged corral for the cattle, teaching and preaching daily, and preparing to put in a large crop of corn, beans, manioc, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, etc.

“This was designed for a receiving and training station for our newly arriving recruits from America, but instead it has become a training station for native boys who are acclimatized, who know the language of the country and the life of the people, and have many points of adaptability which a foreigner must spend years to acquire, and meantime is likely to get sick—home sick, and skip out. Yet native agency can’t be trained without competent men of God to train them. God has developed such from our first force whom we settled in Angola four years ago, who will do a wonderful and widely extended work, even if no more should come. If we can get more from home, who, like these, will stick, and do and die for Jesus in Africa, well; but otherwise, Angola, already self-supporting, except some help in repairing and enlarging our mission properties, will be worked by our present force of Americans and the natives themselves. We have the nucleus of a Methodist Episcopal Church in Nhanguepepo, now consisting of half-a-dozen saved boys, and others are seeking.

“On Sabbath, the 2d inst., I was late in rising from bed, just off a journey; indeed, I wished, at any rate, to spend part of the day in Sabbatic rest in that way. But, I was going to say, as I lay in bed, a blind man, whom I met here four years ago, came to see me. He is a native of Dondo, and learned there to read and write in Portuguese, and speaks that language as well as his own Kimbundu, but669 for years he has been blind, and lives alone in a hut not far from our house. His name is Esessah. He expressed great pleasure in meeting me again, and Brother Rudolph gave him a seat by my bedside, and sat down near him. After the compliments of the occasion I said to myself: ‘This is my chance for Sunday morning preaching, which has been the habit of my life for the last forty-seven years. If the Holy Spirit will use me this morning we can get this poor man saved. He has groped in the dark a long time; to walk in the light for the remaining time of his pilgrimage, and then leap into the joyous brightness of eternal day, will be a blessed gain for this poor man.’ So I said: ‘Brother Ruldolph, I want to preach to this man, and have you put it in plain Portuguese or Kimbundu.’ Brother Carl is perfect in love to God and man, and his whole soul and life are devoted to such work, and he is well up in those languages. So I gave him my Gospel Short Cut to the mind, conscience and heart of the heathen. The Spirit of God put Divine electric fire into it, which broke us down with weeping again and again. At the close of the discourse, the three of us went on our knees. I was led to pray that the Divine Spirit would make his repentance so deep and expressive, and his conversion to God so clear and distinctive, as to leave no ground for doubt in his mind, nor ours, and which would give point and force to his testimony to his heathen neighbors. So I and Carl led in prayer, then the blind heathen broke out in audible prayer, and wept, prayed and wept, till finally he submitted to treatment and received the Lord Jesus, the Great Physician, and was straightway pardoned and healed, and gave a clear testimony to the facts in his case.

“We did not call to see him on Monday. I thought it was well to leave him alone with God for a season, but on Tuesday, yesterday, Brother Carl and I went to his hut, and he received us joyfully. He is not at all a noisy man, but courteous, unobtrusive and very sensible, and in low, distinct articulation, he is a fluent talker. We had a long teaching talk with him, and heard his most clear and distinct testimony to the saving power of God in his head and heart. I led in vocal prayer, Carl followed and then Esessah prayed intelligently and earnestly. As we were leaving, Carl and he embraced each other and wept, and held each other and wept on670 for some time: meantime, I was waiting in the path, and tearfully thanking God for such a sight in the midst of heathendom. Glory to God! The big rain drops are falling on us. A thunder-gust of glory will sweep through these mountains, soon followed by the regular ‘former and latter rains’ in this season. Glory to God! My eyes shall not dim much with age till I shall see these things. Let all the people who have been praying for us, praise God for the glory to be revealed. Wm. Taylor.”

“Thursday, June 6, 1889.—I left Nhangue at 6.30 this morning, with my two carriers, whom I seldom see on the path, being usually ahead of them. Two miles out I called to see the Assistant Commandante. He and the Commandante called to see me the other day, and of course I returned their call. A Commandante, appointed by the Portuguese Provincial Government, has charge of a detachment of soldiers, and is also a magistrate of a certain district of the Province. Some of them are Portuguese. The others, probably the larger proportion, are Africans, who have had some advantages of education. They have been courteous and kind to me and to my missionaries almost invariably, and we reciprocate cordially.

“Three miles on my way I called to pay my respects to Sr. Jacintho, a Portuguese trader, whom we used to call ‘the honeyman,’ because he occasionally, when we were strangers in a strange land, presented us with a bottle of honey to sweeten us up a bit. We bought of him some of our best cattle in starting to form our herd.

“In the forenoon I walked fourteen miles to Sangue. On my first trip over this path, to settle Joseph Wilks in Pungo Andongo, we spent a night at the house of the Commandante at Sangue.

“I had been overworked at Nhangue, and was not in good condition for walking that day, and, on reaching Sangue, soon found a corduroy bedstead in a private room, and laid me down to rest. I heard Brother Wilks say to our host, “Bispo doente, muito doente”—Bishop sick, very sick. I said to myself: “If my kind Father671 will give me a refreshing night’s rest across these rough irregular poles, we will see before to-morrow night who will be the delicate brother.”

“In due time our host sent me a basin of delicious native soup, which refreshed me very much, and though I spent much of the night in turning over, I slept well in the intervals, and was up with the day-dawn and ready for a march of twenty-four miles. We waded through long reaches of sand in the path, which made wearisome walking for us. Wilks was good for a long pull, but he had no more to say about “Bisbo doente,” as the walk that day put him up for all he could do to keep up, and to hold out till we reached Pungo Andongo, a little before sunset. We were kindly received and entertained at the trading ‘factory’ of Sanza Laurie & Co.

“Marcus Zagury, a member of this firm, had visited us at Nhangue a few days before, and gave us full information and encouragement in regard to Pungo Andongo, as the place for planting a mission, and tendered us the hospitality of their house. The evening of our arrival had been set for an entertainment—a big dinner—for the Government officials and traders of the town at this house; so we made somewhat the acquaintance of those gentlemen, also of a Catholic priest, who was an East Indian. All spoke encouraging words to us, but of course did not engage to paddle our canoe for us. Next day we rented from Sr. Zagury, at a cheap rate, a pretty good house for a school and for residence of the mission family, and I left Brother Wilks in charge and returned to Nhangue.

“These are some of the remembrances that crowd on me today, as I lay down on the leaves for noon rest and lunch at Sangue. In the afternoon of to-day I walked nine miles further to ‘Queongwa’ (Kaongwa), not a town, but a camping-ground for carriers and travelers, and a house for upper-class natives, with some villages contiguous and a running stream of water the year round, which is of great utility in this country. Brother Withy, our Superintendent, has bought a sight here for planting a mission school for the towns of this vicinity.

“A resident here, who has always shown kindness to my missionaries,672 Sr. Candanga, met me in the path and gave me a welcome to his house of ‘wattle and daub.’ It is 60x18 feet, divides into two large end rooms and a central hall.

“One of these seemed to be reserved for strangers, furnished with a table, two or three chairs, and a European double bedstead with mattress and spread, which he put at my disposal. I had a good portable bed which I preferred to any other, but to honor his hospitality I spread my bedding on his bedstead and enjoyed a night of balmy sleep.

“I had walked twenty-three miles during the day, waded the waters eight times, and verified the truth—the ‘rest of a laboring man is sweet.’

“On Friday, June 7th, I was up at peep ‘o day, rolled up my bedding, took my lunch in my hand, and was on the path long before the sunshine struck the tops of the mountains, and walked to Pungo, about fourteen miles distant, by 11 A.M.

“My second tramp over this path was in company with Sister Wilks and Agnes, in August, 1889, on their way to join Brother Wilks at Pungo. Such was the immense avoirdupois of Sister W. that at Dondo we spent a week in trying to get carriers to take her thence to Nhangue. All our men travel on foot, but the ladies are carried by a couple of strong men—two also as alternates—in a hammock suspended from a long pole. We could find no carriers for her at Nhangue, so she walked fourteen miles to Sangue. On the way that day, we met Brother Wilks coming to meet wife and daughter. Agnes was carried and took a fever; the mother walking, and perspiring freely and sluicing the sewerage of her system, was in no danger of fever. When we reached Sangue, I hired a native to get four strong men to carry her next day to Pungo. He succeeded, but it was 8 A.M. before we could get them on to the path. We stopped at Queongwa for lunch. At 2 P.M., when we were ready and anxious to proceed on our journey, we found our carriers had just hung on the pot for boiling their breakfast. It was Saturday, and fourteen weary miles between us and Pongo, so Brother Wilks ordered them to their burdens: ‘No time now for cooking. You should have done that an hour ago, and we can’t wait any longer. We must be off now.’ The carriers replied: ‘We can’t673 go any further to-day; we will camp right here, and rest till tomorrow.’

“I waited till their temper abated, and went to them, and said: ‘You have had a heavy load, boys, and I know you must be very tired and hungry; so, cook away, and eat a good breakfast, and then come on. I and this lady whom you have engaged to carry through to Pungo Andongo to-day, will walk on till you overtake us,’ Then without waiting for a reply, we took the path, and in about an hour afterward they overtook us and shouldered the ‘mulker grande’—woman large—and struggled on. We reached the mission house about 10 P.M., when the poor fellows were relieved of a heavy load from their shoulders, and I from my mind.

“On this day, June 7, 1889, when about a mile short of our mission house in Pungo, I was met by Bertie Withey, a wholly consecrated lad of sixteen and one half years. He was a boy of twelve when he, with his parents and three sisters younger than himself, enlisted for this work. These children, like their parents, walk humbly before God on the line of supreme loyalty and love. They are well up in the use of the Portuguese language, and in the Kimbundu. The native people here bear the name of ‘Umbunda’ plural, Mubunda singular. Kimbundu with them means language. So with them it would be tautology to say Kimbundu language.

“Our missionary occupants here at present are Chas. W. Gordon, Sister Withey, Bertie, Lottie and Flossie; the eldest sister, Stella, being with her father at Dondo. Sister Withey is quite unwell just now. She has passed through the fiery ordeal of bilious fever in this country a number of times, but lives in the light and love of holiness, and carries no anxious care of any sort a bit longer than the casting of ‘all her cares on Jesus who careth for her.’ Her husband and she came to this work under a conscious call from God, and consecrated themselves and their children to it for life. One of the stipulations was that, if either should be struck down by the hand of Death, the other should remain in the work and train the children to stick to it to the end of their lives.

“Now, while I write I hear Lottie and Flossie quietly conversing with each other in the Kimbundu, seemingly oblivious of the English language.

674

“Brother Gordon is one of the forty who came with me four years and four months ago. He is slender but symmetrical in his build, blue eyes, pleasant countenance, gentle and courteous, firmly adhering to the principles of truth and righteousness. He was rather delicate in health at first, but has grown strong and healthy by all sorts of hard work in the radius of our mission industries. He has a clear head, is a good school-teacher, a good wayside preacher of the Gospel to a crowd, or to one poor native, or to any dignitary of the Provincial Government, and walks in love, perfect love to God, and is in profound sympathy with men. Brother Withey and he, from years of experience in Massachusetts, are our trained merchants. With the surplus of their earnings, in that line during the past year, above self-support of this station, they have bought and paid for the new mission property, before mentioned, at Queongwa, and a mission farm of probably three hundred acres of good land, bounded on one side by an ever-running stream of water, with many valuable fruit trees and a substantial adobe house, 55x18 feet, divided into three rooms. They are this dry season putting on a new roof, and will put the whole premises under good repair. This is the industrial school farm of the Pungo Andongo mission, and is sixty yards short of a mile west of it.

“In competent hands, suitably located, a store, like the one here, constitutes an important branch of our industries. Conducted, as it is, on strict principles of truth and honesty, it sheds light into the commercial sphere of this country, and brings our missionary traders into personal contact with native carriers and merchants from a radius east and south, covering the countries of the Lundas, Kiokos, Bilundas, Libolas and still others, 500 or 600 miles distant from this place.

“The traders are of different European nationalities, and, in the main, are smooth and gentlemanly in their bearing toward their neighbors, and we always get on pleasantly with them; but they are free to say our ‘principles are entirely impracticable in this country and can’t succeed.’

“The popular method of business here is: On the arrival of a caravan, laden with rubber, beeswax, ivory, etc., (1) to serve its traders and carriers with free rations of rum; (2) free rations of676 food. With that they usually pass the first night in a large, well-covered shed built for their accommodation. Camp-fires, cooking, eating and drinking is the order in every direction. After the feasting, comes the dancing, with clapping of hands, and singing and shouting at the top of their stentorian voices. This is kept up through most of the night. (3) From the traders further, a free distribution of cheap fancy goods, dressing up the head men of the caravan in broadcloth coats and pants, highly-colored silk sashes and umbrellas, and in a display of these, with music, they march through the town and back to the camp.

REED DANCE BY MOONLIGHT.

“Then (4) comes the weighing of the rubber, wax, ivory, etc., and payment in cloth of various kinds and colors, flint-lock guns, powder, beads, knives and fancy goods in variety, and rum in huge bottles encased in willow wicker-work. In the ‘Mohamba’ of the carriers—a kind of long basket—five of these demijohns are placed, weighing from seventy to eighty pounds, to be carried often 500 or 600 miles.

“(5) ‘The dispatch,’ just before the departure of the caravan, which consists of throwing out into the crowd, caps, hats and toys in variety for a grab game of the carriers. I once saw two fellows grab a cap, who pulled and hauled and quarreled till a third fellow ran up with his knife and cut the cap in two, and stopt the strife.

“Our Christian traders provide some accommodations for shelter and comfort for native carriers and traders. Those who come for the first time call for rum.

“‘We don’t sell rum; don’t use, nor keep it in the store.’ Some fellows here, the other day, disputed Brother Gordon’s statement, saying, ‘Don’t I see it there,’ pointing to some cans of kerosene.

“‘Well, do you want to try some of that?’

“‘Yes; that is what we want.’

“So he drew some and passed it to them, saying, ‘Now, you had better put it to your nose first.’ One or two of them smelled it, and passed it back with a look of surprise and horror.

“‘Well, we want some tobacco.’

“‘We don’t use tobacco; don’t sell it; don’t keep it to sell.’

“‘Do you want to buy rubber?’

“‘Yes, I am ready to buy your rubber,’

677

“‘What will you give us in exchange for our rubber?’

“‘I will give you money, if you like; or give you cloth, rice, fish, sugar, soap, anything you want, except rum, tobacco, beads and trinkets—such things as can do you no good. We sell nothing but what will be useful to you.’

“‘How much you give us for our rubber?’

“‘When I examine to see its quality I will show you whatever you want, and how much I will give you for each ‘arroba’ (thirty-two pounds). We give you no ‘matebeesh’—gifts—like other traders, and can afford to give you a good price for your rubber. If you, then, think that you can do better elsewhere, you can take your rubber away to the best market you can find. We want you to do the best you can for yourselves; remember, the men who give you things so freely, cannot afford to do it out of their own pockets; they must therefore take it out of you in their prices of purchase or sale.’

“Some leave us quietly, but many remain, and see, and confess to a fair deal. Then comes a free friendly talk about their country, and their people, and a Gospel talk about ‘Nzambi’—God.

“The people who thus trade with us go away in every direction, telling their friends they have become acquainted with ‘another people,’

“Thus our holy brethren are making more than a missionary self-support, and business increasing daily, and not only have their regular Sabbath services in the Kimbundu, but are talking six days a week beside; from morning till night they are talking in the Kimbundu of Jesus and Salvation to people who listen attentively, and repeat with great accuracy and earnestness any new thing that comes into their ears.

“All this talk, which I have indicated through the English language, transpired in the Kimbundu, so that our missionary traders are daily learning the vernacular of the country much more rapidly and accurately than they could if confined to their libraries, especially as there was but a single fragmentary grammar, till one of our missionaries, Hèli Chatelain, learned from the people who speak accurately, and has since printed a grammar and the Gospel by John; but as these are just from the press, our people have become familiar678 with the Kimbundu by direct and daily contact with the people without the aid of books.

“On Saturday, June 8th, Brother Gordon and Bertie slept alternately night after night at the farm-house, and in the morning see that the hired men get early to work, and look after the cattle and send them out to pasture, and then return in time for breakfast.

“I went to the farm-house early this morning and found Brother Gordon reading and explaining Scripture truth to the hired men in their own Kimbundu. When one grasped a new thought, he repeated it to the rest, with a glowing face.

“Our cattle herd here is not large, but growing, and of choice stock. They require daily attention. Any fresh wounds on any of them will soon mortify if not properly attended to. I saw Brother Gordon lasso a couple of young bullocks this morning, almost as dexterously as I used to see the Spaniards do it in California. It took him about a minute to lasso one, throw him, tie his legs, and put a bar across his neck, so that the animal was entirely helpless. The object was, daily to clean and dress a wound till fully healed.

“A wild plant grows plentifully in this country, called by the natives ‘Lukange,’ a decoction of which applied hot—not to scald—appears to be more effective than carbolic acid. First, a cleansing of the wound with soap and warm water; second, an application of the lukange by means of a syringe. Then, to prevent ‘flyblow’ and its consequences, a preparation of salt and baked tobacco, pulverized, is applied. The nicotine of tobacco, boiled out, is the great remedy used by Australian sheep growers for killing a bad breed of lice, which would otherwise destroy their flocks. Tobacco is certainly a very poisonous, destructive weed, and death to vermin.

“On Sabbath, 9th, Brother Gordon had a teaching and preaching meeting in the chapel at 10 A.M., then I preached a short discourse, and he interpreted into the Kimbundu. We had first and last about thirty native hearers. Some of them were greatly interested, and repeated to the rest the new thought that had just struck him.

“At the close, a soldier, who was among the most attentive of679 the hearers, said, ‘I want to turn to God, and receive Jesus and be saved.’

“Brother Gordon questioned him about giving up all his sins, and let Jesus take them all away.

“He said, ‘Yes, I’ll give up everything that is wrong, and let Jesus save me,’

“Then Brother Gordon asked if he had more than one wife?

“‘Yes, I have two; but I am willing to give up either the one or the other; but I want you to tell me which one I should give up?’ Then, just as we were hoping to help him to come to Jesus, he had to respond to a call to duty as a soldier, and left, and we have not seen him since. Brother Gordon knows him, and will seek opportunity to help him.

“Our mission house here, of solid adobe walls, 3 feet thick, is about 100 feet front by 20 wide, for 82 feet, and the remaining 18 feet forms an L extension back about 50 feet, which is the chapel; the 82 feet being divided into four apartments, one of which is the room for trade. Back of the house is an abundant supply of oranges, mangoes in their season, and some other varieties, the whole covering about half an acre of ground; ‘the best site in town’ for all our purposes. Our committee bought it, and paid for it over three years ago.

“On Monday, 10th, I again visited Brother Gordon at the farm this morning, and visited on the premises, near a large tree, the grave of dear Sister Dodson—Miss Brannon. They had been united in marriage but about six months. She had on her wedding garment when called by the Master, and went quickly into the royal guest chamber of the King. Her short and sure way from Boston to heaven was through Angola in Africa.

“To-day Brother Gordon and I took breakfast with Sr. Coimbra—“Costa & Coimbra,” the largest business firm in Pungo Andongo. We took breakfast with Sr. Coimbra, seven miles this side of Malange, nearly four years ago. He is a kind, social man of the world.

“On Tuesday, 11th, preparing for an early start to-morrow morning for Malange. Will go alone, of course, except the occasional sight of my two carriers, yet in ‘blessed fellowship divine,’ never alone nor lonely. Wm. Taylor.”

680

“On Wednesday, 7 A.M., June 12th, I started from Pungo. My two carriers, engaged yesterday, had not reported at 7 A.M., so I started on my journey, leaving orders for them to join me at Korima, ten miles out.

“I waited at Korima nearly an hour when they arrived, so we lunched and rested till 1.30 P.M. I walked that P.M. fifteen miles, and lodged at Kalunda Quartel. Quartel is not a hotel, but nevertheless a lodging place for travelers who carry their own bed and provisions. It is a rude barracks, for a small detachment of soldiers, under a Commandante, who lives in his own residence contiguous. I meant to stop at the house of the Commandante, who attended our preaching at Pungo last Sabbath, and dined with us, and who expressed a strong desire to have us establish a mission at Kalunda. It was, however, an hour after dark when I arrived at the Quartel, and the soldiers said it was a long distance to the house of the Commandante, so I waited about an hour for my carriers, and then took my cold lunch, put up my bed in a room without doors, and slept well. Was up and off at 6.15 in the morning, having rolled up my bedstead and bedding, and taken my breakfast in the early dawn. I walked thirteen miles, and waited three hours for my carriers, which put my dinner off till 3, so I walked but six miles that evening, and lodged in a rude construction of poles, with roof, but sides not covered with mortar or grass. It gave shelter from dew and afforded fresh outdoor air, which is always my preference in this country. I found several native travelers, with a camp-fire blazing when I arrived, among whom was a woman, husband and little girl of about 6 years. I spoke kindly to the naked little thing, and the parents were delighted. After I retired I was entertained till I lost consciousness in sleep, by the singing of the little six-year-old, who never heard a Christian hymn or tune in her life. She sang the words and tunes of about half-a-dozen native songs, and when she seemed to run out of words she sang on, ‘La, la, la, la,’ I thought of the countless millions of little children in Africa, all heirs of ‘the free gift which is unto the justification of life,’ and as susceptible of being ‘trained up in the681 way they should go,’ as the children of England or America; but, I said, with tears, Where are the trainers? O thou Creator and Redeemer of mankind, how long, how long?

“Friday, 14th, I walked thirteen miles, lunched and rested a couple of hours, and six miles farther landed me in Malange. Just as I crossed the Malange River, I met Brothers Samuel J. and William H. Mead, and Robert Shields, accompanied by Mrs. Ardella and Miss Bertha Mead, mounted on bull backs, with portable organ, base viol, cornet, etc., on their way to Kolamosheeta, where I had lunched that day, to hold religious services.

“The people of that town are hungry for the truth of God. I begged them not to stop for me, but to go on to their appointment, but they replied that the people would not assemble till their arrival was announced, and said they ‘were going out at this time, thinking they might meet me there.’ So they returned and I accompanied them to the mission-house in Malange. Malange is sixty-two miles distant from Pungo Andongo.

“The fifty-one miles of travel from Dondo to Nhanguepepo is mainly through a region of rugged mountains and precipitous cliffs of solid rock, opening out into the long and widening grassy plateaus of Nhanguepepo. The thirty-eight miles from Nhangue to Pungo extend through and mainly across a series of ridges and hollows sparsely covered with scrubby timber. The soil not so rich, hence grass not so heavy and grass fires not so hot; therefore there is half a chance for trees to grow, with no chance at all from Dondo to Nhangue, except some very sappy varieties of but little value.

“From Pungo on for twenty miles the ridges are much broader and not so high as those described; there is more sand, less grass and heavier, but still scrub-timber. Then for eight or ten miles we cross low, beautifully rounded grassy ridges, with a little streams of water near the surface, about half a mile apart between the ridges. Then, for most of the way to Malange we cross ridges less fertile, much higher, with an ascent of from two to four miles. The whole line of march bears southeasterly. All appears to be a good grazing country, with many herds of cattle, but not a tithe of the number required to keep the grass down, and thus keep up682 good short grass pasturage the year round, and preclude the great ‘prairie fires,’ which destroy the young timber and prevent the growth of forests. For many miles around Malange, there is a fair supply of good hard-wood timber in variety.

“Sam Mead, Ardella his wife, and Bertha his niece, and I came together to Malange, nearly four years ago. Sr. J. Preitas was then in charge of the long established business house of Sanza Laurie & Co., in Malange, and gave us the temporary use of a house for our missionaries. After a day or two here, he informed me that Sanza Laurie & Co. intended soon to close out their business in Malange, and that I had better buy their house and town lot on which it stood, containing an acre of land and some banana trees. The house was an extension of house added to house joined into solid walls, about one-third of wattle and earth, and the rest of adobe brick. The last one added, forty feet in length, was new, consisting simply of walls with no roof. The frontage of the whole was about 165 feet, by a width of 18 feet. I inquired: ‘What is the price of the whole property, house and land?’

“He replied: ‘You can have it for two hundred milreis, $214.’

“I said: ‘I’ll give that amount,’ and the bargain was closed in about as few words as I have written. It is worth four times that amount now. The plates, girders and timbers are nearly all of ant-proof, and almost everlasting hard-wood, most of which are as solid to-day apparently as when new. One of them has a fire-proof covering by means of a double roof. On the lower is a heavy layer of cement of adobe clay, precluding rats, rain and fire. Over this is a thatch roof of long native grass. On the sunny side it has kept dry and sound, but on the north side our brethren have put on new thatch, cleaned and whitewashed the rooms, and finished the new forty-foot room, and fitted it up for a school-room and chapel, which is the seventh room in the building.

“In the few days I was here, four years ago, Brother Sam and I selected and stept off a mission-farm adjoining our mission-house. He and Brother Gordon fenced, cleared and planted several acres in corn, beans, manioc, sweet potatoes, etc., and everything grew beautifully, but the brethren were kept indoors by illness for a few days, and just what an old Portuguese settler predicted came to683 pass, their fencing was all stolen for firewood, and the cattle and hogs devoured every green thing from the premises. Bad outlook for self-support. It was in the midst of a ‘three years’ drought,’ which precluded the growth of supplies at our other Angola stations, but our farm was not far from the ‘laguna,’ a lake, a few hundred yards wide, and perhaps a mile long, occasioned by the spread of the Malange River over a plain, which gave moisture to the soil for a considerable distance from its shore. We did not seek to get nearer to the lake for fear of malaria, being warned of that peril by old residents.

“A fair share of the supplies for the first year of food, tools, and a little money, came to Malange for six missionaries, including Bertha, in her thirteenth year, with fresh supplies for the second year, and seven new missionaries to help to use them up, but all that was but to keep the wolf away, and afford means for the development of self-support. Sister Ardella’s health was so far gone, for months, that it was believed her life depended on her having apartments in a second story. But there were none in town, so a two-story house must be built. In the changes that were one way and another rapidly occurring, for the most part by attacks of home-sickness, that carried them off and clear out of the country, most of the work devolved on Brother Sam Mead, till two years ago his cousin, Brother Willie H. Mead and family moved hither from Nhangue, preceded by Brother Robert Shields, sent out by our Committee from Ireland. These have all stuck to the work here to which God called them, except that Edna Mead, a ripe Christian of about 12 years of age, at the call of God went up to join her sister, Nellie, in their heavenly home.

“The results of this unpromising attempt at self-support I will sketch in my next letter. Wm. Taylor.”

“Malange Station received, at the beginning, its proportion of cloth, provisions, tools and a little money to tide a small band of workers—Sam Mead, Ardella his wife, and Bertha Mead, of 13, his684 niece, and two young men—through the first year, which proved to be the second of a ‘three years’ drought and famine.’

“So a partial supply was sent for the ensuing year to prevent suffering from want. Meantime, the ‘tent-making’ by the missionaries, to ‘make ends meet,’ would have sufficed in a pinch, but the subsidy was salutary and safe, for they were not of the sort to be surfeited and suffocated even by an excess of supplies if they had had them, taking real pleasure in ‘scratching’ for themselves. Two years were required for apprenticeship, experimenting in many things, with everything to learn essential to self-support.

“About the beginning of the third year, after various changes by the coming and going of new workers, the coming of Willie H. Mead, with his family from Nhanguepepo, to join his cousin, Sam—about the beginning of the third year, marked the period when self-support really began to abound.

“Minnie Mead, Willie’s wife, turned in $40 by her sewing machine. Hèli Chatelain an equal sum by teaching languages to some traders. Robert Shields, from his private purse, put in $22. Willie has put in $80 per year from the rents of some property he has in Vermont, his old home, and, within a few months after arrival, put in $200 from pit-sawing and selling lumber. Most of these sums, with about $100 worth of goods sent as a present from Ireland to Brother Shields, were used to stock a little store for a small commercial business, as one branch of industry which was felt to be specially needful.

“Most of the business of the labor market of Angola is transacted through copper coin currency. It is so difficult to procure and keep a supply of it on hand that to purchase it, even with gold, ten per cent. premium has to be paid. The patrons of a variety shop bring in for the purchase of things they require a good supply of the copper coin.

“Robert Shields, having served a regular apprenticeship to the grocery business in Ireland, with an additional experience in it of a year and a half, was appointed to take charge of this industry, and work it in connection with his studies, and special evangelizing among the villagers adjacent to Malange.

“The farm selected at the beginning was found to be too near the685 town, and the whole work of ‘a season’ on it having been destroyed in a night, there was no ground of hope for anything better by a repetition of the experiment of fencing and farming there. So Sam Mead, in a state of semi-desperation, mounted one of his bulls and managed to struggle through grass as high as his head to explore the lake shore, along which he found a neglected farm, on which were growing many valuable fruit trees; he also discovered that the farm, save its lake-side boundary, was enclosed by a strong growing hedge, and contained a body of about 300 acres of black clay and loam of the most productive quality. He immediately sought for the owner—the heir to the man deceased, who had spent so much time, toil and money on it, and he bought and paid for it with money belonging to Ardella, his wife. He then went to work with a will, under a new inspiration of hope, assisted for a time by Brothers Rudolph and Gordon, and produced abundantly a variety of tropical and temperate zone products for food.

“The mechanical industries were under the special charge of Wm. H. Mead. His sons—Johnnie and Sammy, the former about 12, and the latter nearly 11—out of school-hours are valuable helpers in each department, alternating where needed most.

“Willie’s two pit-saws, in the two years he has been in Malange, have turned out $1,500 worth of planks and scantling, about half of which he sold, and used up the other half on improvements of mission property. To haul the logs from the forest, Sam had the oxen and Willie bought a huge Portuguese cart, with wheels of hard-wood, about four feet in diameter, and a hard-wood frame to match, all very strong and durable.

“The outlay of the earnings of these workers, for the past two years, over and above self-supporting subsistence, may be seen in the following exhibit:

“(1) The roofing and fitting up for school and chapel purposes of the unfinished hall, 18x40 feet, belonging to the block of buildings first bought for the mission. The girders, plates, rafters and collar beams are all of enduring hard-wood. The roof is double; the nether is covered with fire-proof clay; the upper with thatch grass. The shutters and doors, and frames for both, are of sawn hard-wood. Its slab benches, without backs, give quite a ‘rise’ to people always686 accustomed to sit on the ground. The cost of these improvements in material, labor and money is estimated to have been $300.

“(2) The farm-house, 15x20 feet; corn crib, about 6x11 feet, set on posts, capt with inverted tin-pans, to prevent the rats from getting up; and two out-houses, about 10x10 feet, and a corral of heavy logs for the cattle, cost a total of $100.

“(3) Willie Mead’s saw-pits, a shed, workshop and appliances, located in the mission yard, cost about $100.

“(4) A new mission-house on the same lot on which stands the old one. It is 24x30 feet, two stories high. The lower story is built of dressed stone, the upper of adobe brick, solid walls, below and above, three and one-half feet thick, with a second-story, veranda front and rear of the building. Double fire-proof roof—as the chapel roof before described. Doors, window shutters, and frames of both, together with the verandas and upper-story floors, are all sawn hard-wood. The lower floor and walks outside are of flag-stones. It is the only two-story house in Malange, and believed to be the only house in Angola furnished with a chimney and fireplace, which adds greatly to its comfort in the really cold weather of Malange at this season of the year. The upper story is used by Sam and Ardella, and about half a dozen of their adopted native children. The lower story has also sleeping accommodations, but is the dining-room for Sam, Ardella, Robert Shields and Bertha, and the school ‘internoes.’ The house is not large, but most symmetrical and substantial, and is prophetic of progress, and bears from the veranda facing the street a tall flag-staff from which floats the flag of our home country—the stars and stripes.

“The brethren estimate the cost of this building, in materials, money and labor, at $800. To buy all the materials, and depend on hiring workmen, it could not be done for that amount. It will be observed that the aggregate outlay for these improvements amounts to $1,300, not a dollar of which was furnished by our Transit and Building Fund Society; the brethren preferring to do it themselves than to ask for or receive aid from home. They are now engaged in building a wall round our Malange Mission premises 1,000 feet long.

687

“(5) The farm Brother Sam bought, with its field of sugar cane, so thickly set as to defy anything short of an elephant a passage through it; its fruit orchard; its live stock of twenty herd of cattle, including three yoke of oxen; and eleven breeding sows and male, and chickens, is worth in the market one thousand dollars.

“As soon as Sam began to inquire for the owner, others began to compete with him as bidders for it, so, to avoid the peril of delay, he bought it at the earliest possible moment, and had it deeded to himself, and has held it in good faith for the mission. During my recent visit to Malange, I offered to refund Ardella’s money with interest.

“Sam and Ardella laid the subject before the Lord, and returned answer, that, having given themselves and all they have to God for his self-supporting missions in Africa, they refuse a refund; but will immediately deed the farm and all the appurtenances thereunto belonging to the Transit and Building Fund Society, to be held in trust for the self-supporting missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church. I put the matter into the hands of Brother C. W. Gordon, our legal attorney, and the conveyance will be made, no doubt, before this MS. can be printed.

“The building of the new house has absorbed a large proportion of the stock in trade of their little store. They were quite disinclined to allow me to help them stock it up a bit, but I prevailed on them to accept the small amount of $214.

“As Willie Mead is a noted mechanical genius, on the short-cut-cheap-line, adapted to a country like this, and as Malange has greatly the advantage of any of our other Angola missions in timber supply, and the farthest inland, he should have an outfit of tools and machinery for a few branches of industry well adapted to that locality. This need has been in part provided for. Our Committee has sent a new supply of farming implements and carpenter’s tools for Malange, soon to arrive.

“I have, on my return trip to the sea, ordered them a turning lathe from Nhangue; also a farmer’s outfit, the gift of Thomas Walker & Sons, of England; and have sent from Dondo a blacksmith’s anvil, vice, tongs, etc. What Malange yet needs is a small steam-engine, of four or five horse-power, with ‘arbor’ and belting,688 and other appliances, and a thousand feet of small piping for pumping water, to run by steam, (1) their sugar cane crushing mill; (2) their corn meal grinding mill; (3) their turning lathe; (4) a small circular saw of eighteen or twenty inches diameter, also a small circular cross-cut saw, the saw to be sent from home with the engine, belting, and water-piping. We don’t want for Malange a saw mill, big engine, or anything costly or too heavy for easy transport on the heads of natives 150 miles from Dondo to Malange. Willie Mead did not ask for these things, but needs them for mission industrial teaching, in connection with his powerful preaching in the Portuguese language. He was proposing to sell his little property in Vermont, to use the money derivable from the sale of his homestead, to buy the engine, etc., as above, for Malange Mission, but I protest against that. Such men as the Meads are just the men we can afford to help with certainty of broad self-supporting missionary independency and wide-spread efficiency, without danger of dependency. Wm. Taylor.”

“I was planning to leave Malange, Monday, 24th of June, but ‘Magady was dying,’ so I yielded to the request of our brethren and sisters, and postponed till Wednesday, the 26th. Magady was a ‘Labola boy,’ who, as a little fellow, gave himself to Sam and Arda, nearly four years ago. He was very black, but pronounced by some as ‘the most beautiful boy they ever saw.’ The people on the south side of the Coanza, from its mouth up for 250 miles, are called Kasamas; thence on for 200 or 300 miles, a similar people are called the Libólos. Neither will allow the Portuguese people to travel through their country.

“Magady’s story was that his parents were dead, and that his uncle treated him so badly he ran away from his country, and became cook for the Malange mission. He was taught to know, to fear and to love the Lord, and to sing our hymns. For about two years he was a consistent Christian. Then, through the intrigues of an influential, designing, bad man, he was enticed into bad company, and forsook the Lord. Then he was visited by a disease of689 his head. He would be walking along, and fall as suddenly as if shot by a Remington rifle, and lie some time in a state of insensibility, but that was as nothing compared with severe and sudden pains in his head that caused him to scream aloud at all hours, day and night. None but himself attempted to diagnose his case. He said ‘Gan N’Zambi’ sent it on him for his wicked departure from Him, and would destroy his body, but had forgiven him, and washed his spirit, and that he was sure he would soon go to live with God, and was anxiously waiting for the call of the King. About 2 P. M. Monday, June 24th, he died. Willie Mead made him a hard-wood coffin, and lined and covered it with white cotton cloth, and he was laid in a grave six feet deep in our own mission burial-ground, where dear Edna Mead sleeps. I conducted the funeral service, about thirty persons being present—a ‘brand snatched from the burning,’ our first Angola representative in heaven.

“During my sojourn in Malange, this trip, I slept in my own bed, as usual, set up in the second-story veranda of our new house, overlooking the street. The nights were very cold and the winds very high, but I rested sweetly, and improved the tone of my health. For two years I had endured an unmitigated high pressure of care and anxiety, on account of the combinations against the success of my work, within and without, front and rear, threatening the life of my missions. But for the great kindness and care of my gracious God and Father it would have killed me. Viewing the blessed harmony and efficiency of our workers from Loanda, and on for 390 miles to Malange, I set up my Ebenezer, and wept, wept, and praised God softly, softly. Then I rested my weary spirit on the bosom of Jesus, and resigned my way-worn body to sleep. There, in the breezes of the high veranda, days and nights together, I slept and slept, and waked, only to say ‘thank God,’ and slept again. Then I got up feeling as fresh as the morning. I bade adieu to my kindred dear in Malange, and left at a quarter to eight Wednesday morning, June 26th, and Friday P.M. reached Pungo Andongo, and had a blessed two days’ sojourn with Brother Gordon, Sisters Withey, Bertha, Lottie and Flossie—holy, lovely people. Brother Gordon is a master in the Portuguese and Kimbundu. We preached an hour Sunday A.M. I knew his rendering into Kimbundu was690 clear and forcible, by its manifest effect on the hearers. It was their regular chapel service for each Sabbath. The soldier who was awakened on my way out has been called away on duty, so that we can’t report progress in his case, but half-a-dozen men, or more, came forward on this occasion as seekers of pardon, and prayed audibly, but did not appear to enter into life.

“I left for Nhangue, Monday morning, July 1st. Brother Gordon accompanied me fourteen miles to Queongwa, to show me a mission farm Brother Withey recently bought there, of probably 250 acres. We went through it that afternoon, from end to end. It is bounded on the west by a bold running stream, and on the north by the caravan path, stretching across a ridge of fertile soil over 200 rods wide. The former owner was with us, and wanted to sell us the lower end of the same ridge, extending from this path about 200 rods to the hollow, northward, where it is bounded by another little river, till it flows into the one that bounds the whole tract on the west side, and has another shallow stream flowing through the addition near its eastern boundary. So, as this new survey, of about 200 acres, was offered to us at a very small figure, we bought it. The former purchase from self-supporting earnings, has already been conveyed to the T. and B. F. Soc. for the M. E. Church, and this will be, or is by this time.

“Brother Gordon is a symmetrical, lovely character, and efficient in everything he takes hold of. When Brother Withey and he took hold of our little store in Pungo a little over a year ago, its assets were $200, now over $1,000, and the preaching done across the counter in all holy conversation and honest dealing, is a power for God in that centre of far-reaching influence.

“I reached Nhangue on Tuesday P.M., and rested Wednesday till 4 P.M. We had a preaching and baptismal service. Brother Rudolph has had several young natives converted during my absence. Here, as at Malange, many candidates for baptism we had to put off for better preparation. We baptized none of responsible years who were not well recommended by missionaries who had been training them for many months, and who were assured, from their profession and lives, of real conversion to God, and declined to baptize any children whose parents were not prepared691 publicly to pledge themselves to teach or have their children taught their baptismal relation and obligations to God, and to trust Him for His baptismal pledges to them. Those rejected were disappointed. However, on Wednesday P.M., I baptized twenty-one little children, and several converted lads, and five new probationers were added to our native church, making thirteen natives at Nhanguepepo, and twenty-one at Malange.

“On Thursday morning, Brother Karl accompanied me as far as Nellie Mead’s grave, under a shade tree, about two rods from the caravan trail. A construction of solid masonry, about 5x8 feet, and two feet high, covers her consecrated bones, all given to God before she left America, and laid at the front, according to her covenant, to live and die for Jesus in Africa. She was a natural musician, and has gone to take lessons where ‘the new song’ is attuned to the ‘harpers’ of the melody of heaven. She was one of our children, of the same age, but less stature, of Bertha Mead. Dear little Willie Hicks sleeps beside her, and will, with her, wake up at the first call, early in the morning.

“I bade dear Karl adieu, and walked that day twenty-six miles, and camped at Kasoki, and next day, July 5th, walked twenty-five miles, and put up with dear Brother Withey and Stella, at our mission-house at Dondo. I thus completed my walk of 300 miles with less weariness than the same route cost me nearly four years ago. Glory to God, my patient loving Father in heaven and here in the mountains and vales in Africa! Wm. Taylor.”

Writing in September, 1889, Bishop Taylor says of his Congo missions:

“Vivi is about 100 miles from the ocean, on the north side of the Congo River.

“Old Vivi, founded by Mr. Stanley, is reached by climbing a steep ascent of half a mile or more from the steamboat landing and Government warehouses at the river-side. It is now entirely deserted. Proceeding by the same road along the slope of the ridge on which old Vivi stands, and thence across a deep glen and up another steep hill, we reach ‘Vivi Top,’ the site of the first capital of the State. It is located on a broad and beautiful plateau, commanding a full view of several miles of the river with its whirlpools and sweeping692 currents. The villages of Matadi, Tundua, the site of Underhill Mission of the English Baptists, and several trading stations, all dressed in white paint and lime, stand out and grace the scene on the south bank of the great river.

“The Government imported and built several large houses of wood and iron at Vivi. One of the houses, I was informed, cost the Governor-General $17,000. We could have bought it for $9,000, but had to decline the generous offer for lack of means.

MISSION HOUSE AT VIVI.

“The large houses were taken down and shipt to Boma, the present capital, about fifty miles below Vivi, and were reconstructed on Boma plateau.

“We bought the site of the old capital, comprising about twelve693 acres of land and a few small buildings, sufficiently capacious for our needs for a few years, for $768.

“The plateau being so high and dry, I did not apply for much land, considering it unsuitable for profitable cultivation. We require the site for a receiving station for the transport of supplies for our contemplated industrial stations in the interior north of the Congo, and the great Upper Congo, and Kasai countries.

“I now perceive that under the judicious management of my Preacher-in-Charge, J. C. Teter, Vivi will become, in the near future, a self-supporting station, and the most beautiful mission premises on either bank of the river. On my recent arrival in Vivi, about the 8th of August, with the dry season far advanced, I was delighted to find, on the high and dry soil of Vivi, a field of manioc, beautifully green and growing. The mango and palm trees on the place when we came into possession have made a remarkable growth during my absence, and are full of fruit; a young orchard of choice varieties of tropical fruits are getting a fine start, and in the garden plenty of yams as large as my head. I also find a promising start in the production of live stock. We already have at Vivi eight choice African sheep; twenty-five goats, which multiply like rabbits; 100 chickens, and a male and a female calf. Brother Teter built a house for the sheep, another for the goats, and a corral for the calves. These are not in care of keepers or dogs during the day, and they return to their houses in the evenings and are shut in from the leopards. One of those dangerous customers reached his paw in through a slight opening in the wall of the goat house, and tore a fine female goat so that it was necessary to kill her. The morning after my arrival I went with Brother Teter to see the goats come out of their fortress. As they came rushing through the door, I was surprised and amused to see three monkeys mounted on the backs of goats, as pompously riding out to the grazing grounds as if the flock belonged to them. They lodge with the goats by night, and spend most of their time with them through the day, and are often seen riding as erect as a drill sergeant of cavalry. They spend many of their leisure hours in picking bugs and burrs off the goats, and playing with694 the kids. Their indescribable antics are enough to make a dog laugh, and to relieve a confirmed dyspeptic of the blues.

“Brother Teter is building of stone a snake-proof chicken-house. A lesson of sad experience led him to build of solid masonry. Some months ago, Sister Teter went into the chicken-house, then in use, to look after a sitting hen. While stooping over the nest, which she thought was occupied by the hen, she felt something like a jet of spray come into her face, and this was quickly repeated two or three times, filling her eyes with the poison of a “spitting snake,” which lay coiled in the nest. All that night she suffered, in total blindness, indescribable agony of pain. By the prompt application of powerful remedies her life was saved, and her sight restored, but her health was injured by the poison. The dear woman was quite unwell on my recent arrival, but seemed quite restored before I left.

“I have furnished a glimpse of the sunny side of Vivi, produced by the genius and industry of our faithful Preacher-in-Charge. Our Vivi Station and our cause have suffered temporarily by the disaffection and departure of those who were numbered with us; but their departure has left us in peace and harmony, with the possibility and certainty of success in the work to which God has called us. ‘They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us,’ There are many not very good, and many who are very good, who are ‘not of us’ and not ‘with us’ in our Self-Supporting Mission movement. When such of either class, by mistake, get into our list of workers, the best thing for all concerned is for them to get out, as quietly and as quickly as possible. We are sorry for them, and cease not to love them and to pray for them.

“On Wednesday afternoon, the 14th of August, accompanied by Lutete, a native man, employed to carry my blankets and food, I took the path for Isangala; distant, ’tis said, fifty-five miles from Vivi. We walked twelve miles, and put up for the night at a new mission just being opened by Mr. and Mrs. Reed and Mr. Bullikist, recently sent out as missionaries by Dr. Simpson, of New York.

“They seem to be earnest Christians, and will, I trust, make a soul-saving success. They are having three native houses built,695 each about 12x18 feet, which will give shelter for three or four years. Their faithful dog shared in their tent lodgings, till one night, a few weeks since, a leopard or panther scented him, took ‘a fancy to him,’ and carried him off. Brother Reed is expert in the use of a gun, and supplies his table with venison from the prairies. Soon after his arrival, he went out and killed a deer, and a native king and some of his people came and claimed and clamored for it. Reed got their attention, and, leveling his rifle at a tree, he put an explosive bullet into a knot and tore it to pieces. He then drew his revolver, and discharged it a few times in the air. His argument had its effect on their minds, and they quietly retired.

“At 7 o’clock next day, having disposed of a good breakfast, I took the trail, and walked seventeen miles, to Matamba Creek, by 3 P.M. I was quite disinclined to camp so early, but there being no available water for seven miles beyond, I made my pallet on the ground and turned in for the night. I usually have my very comfortable portable bedstead, but going only for a short stay at Isangala, I took but one carrier instead of two, my usual number.

“Passing through Bunde Valley to-day, I saw a herd of nine or ten koko—a huge deer as big as a donkey, with longer legs. They bounded away a few rods, and at the distance of about a hundred yards stood and looked at us till we passed out of sight. My Winchester would have brought one of them down if it had been with me, instead of at Vivi.

“Twice, later in the day, we were within easy shot of large red deer. On my return, in the same valley, which is about eight miles long, stretching between mountains or high hills north and south of it, and abounding in game, I was within easy shot of a koko, which stood and looked at me without moving. We also heard buffalo in a jungle of grass and bushes, not thirty yards from us. I saw plenty of game when I traveled this path over two years ago, but I don’t carry a gun in traveling, having enough to do to carry myself, and no time for curing and packing the meat, if taken.

“I went out from Vivi with Brother Teter, the other day, to get696 meat for use. Our hunting-ground was about ten miles from home. The first day we got no meat, but saw many koko and deer. The second day at noon, we had nothing, and were getting into a position to sympathize with a hungry hunter of the olden time who sold his birthright for a pot of soup with no venison in it. Teter was becoming desperate, for he is a noted hunter, hungry for meat, and withal had a reputation to sustain. As soon as we got our lunch of all we had, he took my Winchester and set off alone. When he had gone half a mile from camp, he ‘stalked’ a small herd of koko, and shot a young buck through the neck and killed him, and then emptied the gun-chamber of its dozen cartridges in trying to bring down another buck. He shot off its right fore leg, and shot off the sinews of the left one, and put a bullet into its hip, but he would not down. Teter, having no more cartridges, left the gun and pursued the wounded deer and stoned him to death. We had with us two Liberia boys. We camped near by for the night, and before the morning dawn, we had the larger buck cut into thin slices and cured by the fire. The younger one, about a year and a half old, was carried whole to Vivi, by a hired native. Our Liberia boys, with a good supply of fresh meat, were so refreshed in their minds that they sang the songs of Moody and Sankey, almost incessantly, for days. The deer of this section are smaller than the antelope and gemsbock varieties which we read of in other sections, and which offer such royal sport for those who go equipped for hunting.

HUNTING THE GEMBOCK.

“On Friday, we walked from Matamba Creek, twenty-three miles to Isangala. By my usual speed of three miles an hour, I made the distance from Vivi to Isangala, fifty-two miles instead of fifty-five, as per Mr. Stanley. I was, however, in fine condition for walking, and may have overstept my ordinary gait. Arriving at Isangala, I came first to the station of the State, and by invitation of Mons. C. La Jeune, the Government Chief of Isangala, I stopt for half an hour in pleasant conversation, and then proceeded a few hundred yards to our Isangala Mission Station.

“I found our faithful missionaries, Brothers White and Rasmussen, in good heath, and happy in the Lord.

“They have built a cheap but comfortable house, about 15x40698 feet, also a kitchen and warehouse for storing our stuff. They have made a garden also, which yields a goodly portion of their support. A single yam, dug while I was there, weighed twenty-two pounds. Beside vegetables, they have a large flock of chickens. These brethren both belong to our transport corps, but have done this station work beside, and have made good progress toward the mastery of the Fiot or Congo language.

“Brother Rasmussen, though but two and a half years in this country, speaks the Fiot fluently, and preaches in it in the villages contiguous. I remained with those dear brethren from Friday evening till Tuesday, the 20th. We had Blessed Communion with the Holy Trinity and with each other. On Sabbath, I preached to a company of natives, and Brother Rasmussen interpreted without hitch or hesitation. In another year or two this dear brother, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, can go forth as an apostle among the nations of Congo.

“One part of my business was to advise with these brethren on the possible solution of our steamer problem. I had talked up all the points with Brother Teter, and he was so sure these brethren would concur in our conclusions, he thought it quite sufficient for me to write them, and thus save myself the labor of a rough walk of over a hundred miles. I said: ‘Nay, brother, I will walk it, and get the unbiased decisions of their own judgment, and enlist the free good-will and effective co-operation of the brethren in the work before us under a new impulse which personal contact would communicate.’

“Before intimating the conclusions reached at Vivi, I drew out the candid opinions and judgment of these brethren, and found they were of exactly the same mind with us. When by mistake we take the ‘wrong road,’ and travel a long distance in it, it seems a grievance to us to face about and trudge our weary way back to the ‘cross-roads,’ but however much it may go against the grain, that is the thing to do. It seems to lighten the task a little, if some unfortunate fellow can be branded as ‘the scape-goat’ to bear the blame of the mistake, for we all are of kin to that dear lady we read about, who tried to make a scape-goat of the devil; and to the unmanly man, who had the honor to be her husband, and tried699 to make a scape-goat of his wife. But our well-intentioned mistake was not a sin and we have no need of a scape-goat.

“Well, without enumerating the sources of clearer light, and the new conditions and changes which have intervened in the last two years, our unanimous judgment is that the Lord wants our present steamer for the Lower Congo,—and a much lighter one for the Upper Congo and Kasai water-ways two or three years hence. We will, as soon as the Lord will help us, occupy our station at Luluaburg, vacant since the death of Dr. Summers, and hold our footing in that vast and populous region.

BISHOP TAYLOR’S MISSIONS ON THE LOWER CONGO. (underlined) Larger.

“I believe the Lord has a special providential purpose to fulfil in settling us on the north side of the Lower Congo. He wants us to occupy a densely populated, and utterly neglected region, so far as missionaries are concerned, belonging to the Free State of Congo, extending 230 miles, from Banana to Manyanga, and 100 miles wide. So that, while we shall, the Lord willing, carry out our plan of planting missions in the countries of the Upper Kasai and Sankuru Rivers, we will also provide for these vast regions so near us. Our steamer will be available for the supply of all these vast fields.700 Beside all this, if our time and space will permit, we can carry for our neighbors any variety of freights, except intoxicating liquors. Our plan, from the beginning, was in connection with books and Gospel preaching, to establish industries to employ the natives, and prepare them for usefulness. So, if it shall please the Lord to give us a money-saving and a money-making transport service, direct from Banana to the regions before-named, it will be in perfect accord with our plan of missionary work for this country, and furnish us means for its more rapid extension.

“Much of the work will be done by natives, whom we shall train, and our own missionaries engaged in it will not be throwing away either time or opportunity. Associating daily with the people, mastering their languages, visiting their homes, employing them in business, bettering their condition, exhibiting to them in all our words and ways the loving spirit of Christ, and unfolding to them the hidden treasures of Divine light and life is the kind of missionary work specially adapted to these nations. There is no personal money-making motive nor purpose in it. ‘We are workers together with God.’ We can trust Him for board and lodging while in His service, and trust Him for reward when the work is done.

“During my absence from Congo of over a year and a half, Brother Teter, in charge at Vivi, has had to stand firmly in defense of me, my Committee, and my cause of Self-Supporting Missions, and having a few sets of my books, he is continually lending them to the traders and State officials stationed along the river from Vivi to Banana. Among these was Mons. C. La Jeune, who became so interested in them, that at our recent meeting in Isangala, he asked me to allow him to translate and print some of them into the French language, for circulation in Belgium. He said he was soon going home for at least six months, and would in that time make the translations and arrangements for their sale. I had the pleasure of giving him a written permission to do as he desired.

“The officers of the Congo State, from the Governor-General down, are extremely polite and obliging, but the amount of Governmental tape that belongs essentially to the administration of an old701 European Government is a means of grace, especially the grace of patience to an American pioneer.

“On Sunday, 25th, I preached in the open to twenty-six seated, attentive English-speaking negroes from Liberia, Acra and Lagos, and a crowd that stood and looked on. There are many scores of such people employed at Boma, and their numbers are increasing. A great deal of missionary money has been expended in civilizing and Christianizing these people, especially those from the missions of the coast of Guinea, by the Lutheran, Church of England and Wesleyan Methodists. They are very anxious for a place of worship in Boma, it being the capital of the State in which, by the will of God, we will plant hundreds of mission stations in the near future. We ought to have a mission-school and church in Boma. To accomplish all this next year we really lack but one thing, and that is, the money. The cheap stations we establish in the wild regions of the heathen are not of the style required for Boma. A plain, substantial building for residence, school and preaching services would cost about $5,000. Wm. Taylor.”

South Africa next engages our attention. Passing by its natural scenery, soil, productions, climate, its cities, towns and villages, manners and customs of its many native tribes, and the character of its colonists, we will confine ourselves strictly to what has been done for the moral and religious welfare of the inhabitants. And first of the Western Province of Cape Colony.

The Dutch Reformed church being that of the original colonists is the strongest religious denomination, and it is numerously represented in most of the towns and villages throughout the country. Formerly it was regarded as the church of the white people alone. It was not till the advent of the missionaries that the Dutch church awoke to the necessity of doing something for the natives. Lately they have nobly redeemed their character and in connection with many of their churches a large amount of missionary work is done. The same was true of the Church of England. Now, with the aid of funds from home, they have been erecting churches and school702 buildings in the towns and villages and appointing ministers and teachers to labor among all classes. Lutherans, Presbyterians and Baptists were also represented by churches in Cape Town but they did nothing for the masses of the people.

Cape Colony, in common with other parts of South Africa, is chiefly indebted to the missionary societies for the moral and religious instruction of the masses.

The Moravians had the honor of being the first in the field, the Rev. Geo. Schmidt having gone out to the Cape as early as 1737. A writer in the Missionary Review in 1889 says:

“Foremost in the fight with ignorance and evil in South Africa stands the figure of George Schmidt, prepared for the hardships of his missionary life by six years of imprisonment for conscience’ sake in Bohemia, during which his brother in tribulation, Melchior Nitschmann, died in his arms. Whence came the zeal which moved Schmidt to make his way alone to South Africa in 1737, and to dwell among his little colony of Hottentots in Bavianskloof, until in 1743 the persecutions of the Dutch settlers and clergy drove him from the country, and their intrigues prevented his return? Whence came the ardent heart’s desire, which led him day by day to a quiet spot near his German home, and there poured itself out in prayers for his orphaned flock far away, until, like Livingstone, he died on his knees pleading for Africa? Such burning love and such persistent prayer are not of man, they are of God. And though the answer tarried long—yes, fifty years—it came before this century commenced. George Schmidt was no longer on earth to hear the reports of the three men upon whom his mantle fell—how they found the spot which he had cultivated, the ruins of his hut yet visible, the whole valley a haunt of wild beasts; and, better, how they found one surviving member of that little congregation of 47 who had long waited and hoped for the return of the beloved teacher. This was an aged blind Hottentot woman, who welcomed them as Schmidt’s brothers with “Thanks be to God,” and unrolled from two sheep-skins her greatest treasure, a Dutch New Testament which he had given her. Soon this so-called Bavianskloof (i.e. Baboon’s Glen) was changed into “The Vale of Grace” (in Dutch, Genadendal), and where Schmidt’s poor hut703 stood there is now a large settlement, with a congregation of more than 3,000 members. From this center the work has spread over Cape Colony, and beyond its borders into independent Kaffaria. Now its two provinces include 16 stations with their filials, where 60 missionary agents have charge of 12,300 converts.”

The Evangelical French Missionary Society has stations at Wallington and Waggonmaker’s Valley, but its principal field is in the interior. The Berlin Missionary Society are also represented in the Riversdale district. The Rhenish Missionary Society also occupies many important stations. The London Missionary Society began its work in 1799, and has made its influence to be felt for good in various parts of the country. The Wesleyan Missionary Society commenced its labors in 1814. They were hindered for a few years by the government authorities, but in the course of time they made great progress in building churches and mission premises, and in organizing schools all over the Colony.

The Eastern Province of Cape Colony is also indebted to the missionary societies for religious instruction. Prosperous stations of the Moravian, Berlin, Rhenish, French Evangelical, Presbyterian, London, and Wesleyan Missionary Societies have been established in various places. The two societies last mentioned, however, have been most extensively engaged in purely missionary work. The London Society began in 1799 by sending out Dr. Vanderkemp and the Wesleyan in 1820, the Rev. William Shaw being the pioneer missionary. The temporal and spiritual benefits resulting from the labors of these two societies to the people of different tribes and languages in the Eastern Province of the Cape Colony were very marked.

In Kaffaria most of the religious denominations and missionary societies at work in the Eastern Province of Cape Colony are at work here also.

In Natal, the Church of England has been unfortunate in the part it has taken in the work there. As early as 1838 a missionary, a teacher and a doctor, were sent out by the Church Missionary Society. Soon afterwards others were sent to evangelize the natives, but war breaking out the work was entirely relinquished. In 1853 Natal was constituted a diocese and Dr. Colenso was consecrated704 the first bishop; but, according to his own confession, instead of converting the natives to Christianity, he was himself converted by a Zulu Kaffir, and proceeded at once to encourage polygamy and other heathen practices. Another bishop was appointed, but Dr. Colenso determined not to be superseded, and a scene of wrangling and litigation ensued, painful to contemplate. Churches have been built in several towns for the benefit of the settlers, but not much has been done for the religious instruction of the natives by the Church of England.

The American Board of Foreign Missions sent out missionaries in 1834. They were men of superior learning and intelligence. They have labored chiefly among the natives. By their literary ability and persevering efforts they have rendered good service to the cause of God by the part they have taken in the translation of the Scriptures and their remonstrances with Bishop Colenso. The Berlin, Hermannsburg, Swedish, Norwegian, London and Wesleyan Missionary Societies have representatives in Natal. The Dutch Reformed Church and the Scotch Presbyterians have a few ministers and churches as have also the Free Church of Scotland and the Independents.

The Rev. James Scott of Impolweni, Natal, writes to the Free Church Monthly in reference to an interesting work among the Dutch Boers, and extending to the Zulus in the northern portion of Natal about Greytown. Most of the Boers belong to the Dutch Reformed Church, and while they have attended outwardly to Christian ordinances, they have heretofore cared little for the native population. Three years ago a religious awakening began among these Boers, and the genuineness of this interest was shown by their desire to reach the Zulus, whom they had regarded as little better than animals. There are now fifteen preaching places where the Gospel is proclaimed, and which Mr. Scott says are simply the farmhouses of the Boers. He speaks of seeing eighty Boers and three or four hundred Zulus gather together for worship. The Zulus come from kraals and villages, both old and young, some clothed, but most of them heathen in their blankets. Over one hundred in Greytown have been formed into a native church in connection with the Dutch church. This work is now being carried706 forward under the direction of a committee of the Dutch farmers, employing three native Evangelists. One of these evangelists is the son of the Zulu warrior who in 1836, at the signal from Dingaan, the cruel tyrant, fell upon the Dutch leader Retief and his party of about seventy men, murdering them all in cold blood. This father still lives, and is a member of the Christian church and listens gladly to his son as he preaches the gospel of peace.

NATIVE WARRIOR.

The Orange Free State is an independent Dutch republic. The whites, Dutch, English, and other Europeans greatly outnumber the colored persons, who are of different tribes, but chiefly half-castes. The religious instruction of these people is fairly provided for by the different agencies now at work among them. The Dutch Reformed church of course takes the lead, and they have erected places of worship, appointed ministers, and gathered congregations in all the towns and villages and in many of the rural districts. The Berlin and Wesleyan Missionary Societies are also doing a good work especially among the wandering tribes of Bechuanas, Baralongs, and Korannas. In Zululand, previous to the war in 1879, the Propagation Society of the Church of England, and the Hermannsburg and Norwegian Missionary Societies, had established stations, and attempted the evangelization of the natives, but with very slender results. On the breaking out of hostilities, all the missionaries and teachers had to leave the country. They have since returned and gone to work under more favorable auspices.

It is stated that a nephew of the late King Cetewayo, after six years in Sweden in theological and other studies has gone back to carry on mission work in his native land.

No people in South Africa have benefited more by missionary labor than those in Basutoland. The agents of the French Evangelical Society have taken the lead in the work, having entered the field in 1833. They have many flourishing stations, and their efforts have been very successful in converting the heathen and in diffusing among the people general knowledge calculated to promote their civilization and social elevation. The Wesleyan missionaries have also established important and prosperous stations. By the presence and influence of the missionaries, industrious habits have707 become the distinctive characteristics of the Christian Basutos. The commercial relations of the country have been facilitated. A great impulse has been given to agriculture, in so much that the general aspect of the country, even in those parts that have not come under the influence of the Gospel, has been transformed. This has been strongly testified to by Mr. Griffiths, the British commissioner.

One of the most pleasing incidents in Pinto’s narrative is his meeting with the Coillard missionary family at Luchuma, on the Cuando. They were French missionaries, and the family was composed of Mr. and Mrs. Coillard and a niece, Elise. At the time of the meeting, Mr. Coillard was on his way to King Lobossi, to receive his reply to a request to enter his country for missionary purposes—a request which, by the way, was denied. This failure made it necessary for Mr. Coillard to return to Bamanguato, so the family and Pinto joined resources and took up the line of march together.

More than fifty years ago the land of the Basutos, whose boundaries touch the colonies of the Cape and of Natal on the south and of the Orange Free State on the west, became the abode of numerous French Protestant missionaries. They worked so faithfully that the native sense of savagery disappeared and the Basutos came to be the most civilized of the South African tribes. Now the Christian schools of Basuto number thousands of pupils. After a time the missionaries extended their field of work, but were finally headed off by the Boers and forced back to Pretoria. It was then that François Coillard was placed in charge of the Leribe Mission. He pushed his way north amid hardships and danger, till made a prisoner by the Matebelis and dragged before their chief, Lo-Bengula. What the missionary and the ladies of his family suffered during the time they remained in the power of that terrible chief is a sad and painful story. They were at length released and ordered to leave the country. On reaching Shoshong, the capital of Bamanguato, Coillard determined to renew his efforts in another direction. So he struck out for the Baroze region, having first sent a request to King Lobossi for admission and countenance. It was while on this mission to the Upper Zambesi that Pinto met him and his family. Pinto says of him: “He and his wife had resided in709 Africa for twenty years. He is warmly attached to the aborigines, to whose civilization he has devoted his life. He is the best and kindest man I ever came across. To a superior intelligence he unites an indomitable will and the necessary firmness to carry out any enterprise, however difficult.”

INTERIOR OF THE COILLARD CAMP.

On the south side of the Zambesi and north of latitude 24°, Africa is divided from sea to sea into three distinct races. On the east are the Vatuas; between are the Matebelis, or Zulus; westward are the Bamanguatos. They are all sworn enemies. The king of the latter, at the time of Pinto’s visit was Khama, a Christian convert, educated by the English, a civilized man of intelligence and superior good sense. True, he usurped the throne, but he treated his family with leniency, and became the idol of his people. Unlike every other native governor in Africa, Khama was unselfish. He spent his wealth for his people, and encouraged all to labor, that they might grow rich in herds and flocks. And they were not only rich in cattle, but were fine agriculturists; fond, too, of out-door sports, being experts in the hunting of game, as the antelope, ostrich, giraffe, elephant, etc. Though a Portuguese and influenced by the Latin church, Pinto gives this account of missionary work in South Central Africa: “How is it that in the midst of so many barbarous peoples there should be one so different from the others? It is due, I firmly believe, to the English missionaries. If I do not hesitate to aver that the labors of many missionaries, and especially of many African missionaries, are sterile, or even worse, I am just as ready to admit, from the evidence of my own senses, that others yield favorable, or apparently favorable results.

“Man is but fallible, and it is easy to conceive that when far removed from the social influences by which he has been surrounded from his infancy, lost, so to speak, amid the ignorant peoples of Africa, and inhabiting an inhospitable clime, his mind should undergo a remarkable change. This must be the general rule, which has, of course, its exceptions. The exceptions are the men who rest their faith on those ‘blossoms of the soul’ which give comfort to the wrecked mariner and aid the monk to suffer martyrdom at the hands of those to whom he brings the blessings711 of civilization. They who possess these inestimable treasures may, if left to themselves, pursue their way and attain to a sublime end, but such are veritable exceptions. Flesh is weak, and weaker still is human spirit. Were it otherwise, we might dispense with laws and governments, and society would be organized on a different basis. The ‘blossoms of the soul’ would suffice to govern the world.

AT HOME AFTER THE HUNT.

“The passions to which man is subject will often lead the missionary—but a man and with all a man’s weakness—to pursue a wrong course. The strife between Catholics and Protestants in the African missions is an example of this. The Protestant missionaries (I mean, of course, the bad ones) say to the negro. ‘The Catholic missionary is so poor he cannot even afford to buy a wife,’ and thus seek to injure him, for it is as great a crime to be poor in Africa as in Europe. On the other hand the Catholics leave no stone unturned to throw discredit on the Protestants. From this strife springs revolt, the real cause of mission barrenness, where so many beliefs are struggling for mastery. To the south of the tropics the country swarms with missionaries, and to the south of the tropics England is engaged in perpetual war with the native populations. It is because the evil labors of many undo the good labors of some.

“Let us however, put aside the evil ones and speak only of the good. I have spoken of King Khama and his Bamanguato people. The king’s work was well done, but those who made it possible deserve more credit. The first workman in that field was Rev. Mr. Price, recently charged with the mission at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika. The second was Rev. Mr. Mackenzie, the Kuruman missionary. The third was the Rev. Mr. Eburn, now among these people. It is with the utmost pleasure I cite these worthy names, and put them forward as noble examples to all workers in the fields of African civilization.”

The above named Rev. Mr. Mackenzie took charge of the Kuruman mission in the Crown Colony of Bechuanaland in 1876, and his first work was to found and build a memorial institution to his predecessor, the lamented Dr. Moffat, for the education of native ministers. A fund of $100,000 was subscribed in England for this713 purpose and soon a substantial set of structures arose as a witness to Dr. Wm. Mackenzie’s zeal and the profound respect in which Dr. Moffat was held.

MOFFAT INSTITUTION—KURUMAN.

Says the Rev. A. Boegner: “Basutoland has frequently been saved from the destruction of its nationality by the intervention of the missionaries, and the natives blessed their name. The result in respect to education is that we have 80 elementary schools, having together 4,666 pupils, besides the normal school and the higher girls’ school, with 30 or 40 pupils, and 15 industrial, biblical, and theological school stations, 94 out-stations, 19 missionaries, 176 native workers, 6,029 communicants and 3,412 catechumens.”

In Bechuanaland many of the tribes, especially the Batlapins and the Baralongs, have for several years past been favored with the means of religious instruction by the agents of the London and Wesleyan Missionary Societies. It was among these people that the celebrated Dr. Moffat achieved his greatest success, and it was into their language that he succeeded in translating the Scriptures. And it was from a station among them that Dr. Livingstone started on his first adventurous journey of discovery. Thousands of these people have been to a considerable extent civilized, evangelized, and many have been taught to read the word of God for themselves. The earliest attempt to carry the Gospel to the Bechuanas was made in 1800 by Messrs. Edwards and Kok, agents of the Dutch Missionary Society in Cape Town. It proved unsuccessful. They were succeeded by the travellers Lichenstein in 1805, and Burchell in 1812, and during the latter year by the well-known Rev. John Campbell, who may be regarded as the earliest pioneer missionary to the Bechuanas, the two agents of the Cape Town Society being known among the Batlapins rather as traders than missionaries. In accordance with a request made to Mr. Campbell by the chief Mothibi, who said, “Send missionaries, I will be a father to them,” the London Missionary Society appointed Messrs. Evans and Hamilton to Lallakoo, which they reached in 1816. Their hopes of a welcome were, however, doomed to disappointment. The Bechuanas, with Mothibi’s, consent, reyoked the wagons of the missionaries and sent them away, hooting after them in genuine heathen fashion. They did not want “the teaching,” fearing it would be with them714 as with the people of Griqua Town, “who” they said “once wore a ‘kaross’ but now wear clothes; once had two wives but now only one.” Mr. Robert Moffat made the next attempt to introduce the Gospel among these people and was more successful. We have not space to give even an outline of the career of this wonderful man. One illustration, however, will suffice to show at once his character and that of the people among whom he labored so long and well. During a time of severe drought when the heavens were as brass and the earth as iron, the cattle were dying rapidly, and the emaciated people were living on roots and reptiles. The rainmakers were consulted. They attributed the cause of the drought to the prayers of the missionaries, and to the bell of the chapel, which they said frightened the clouds! The chief soon appeared at the missionaries’ door, spear in hand, with twelve attendants, and ordered them to leave the country, threatening violent measures if they refused. Mrs. Moffat stood at her cottage door with a baby in her arms watching the result at this crisis. Looking the chief straight in the face, Moffat calmly replied: “We were unwilling to leave you. We are now resolved to stay at our post. As for your threats we pity you; for you know not what you do. But although we have suffered much, we do not consider that it amounts to persecution, and are prepared to expect it from those who know no better. If resolved to get rid of us you must take stronger measures to succeed, for our hearts are with you. You may shed my blood, or you may burn our dwelling; but I know you will not touch my wife and children. As for me, my decision is made. I do not leave your country.” Then throwing open his coat, he stood erect and fearless. “Now then,” he proceeded, “if you will, drive your spears to my heart; and when you have slain me, my companions will know that the hour is come for them to depart.” Turning to his attendants the chief said, “These men must have ten lives. When they are so fearless of death, there must be something of immortality.” All danger was now past. The intrepid missionary had got access to their hearts, and they were, for the time at least, subdued.

The country long known as Griqualand is situated beyond the Orange river, and around its junction with the Vaal.

715

MOFFAT’S COURAGE.

716

The Griquas are a mixed race, of which there are several clans vulgarly called “Bastards,” being the descendants of Dutch Boers and their Hottentot slaves. They are a tall, athletic, good looking race, of light olive complexion. They speak a debased patois of the Dutch language, as do most of the colored inhabitants of South Africa. About the year 1833 the Griquas began to collect and settle in the country which bears their name, and to rally round a leader or chief named Adam Kok, who displayed considerable tact and skill in governing the people who acknowledged his chieftainship. Some time after, a part of the clan separated themselves from the rest, and gathered round a man named Waterboer, who became their captain or chief. Both of these chiefs, for many years, received annual grants from the Colonial Government on condition of their loyalty and good conduct. They and their people were ultimately removed by an arrangement with the government authorities to a region known as “No Man’s Land;” and of late years have become scattered. In all their locations they are generally now regarded as British subjects, and they have gradually advanced to a pleasing state of civilization and general knowledge. They are largely indebted to the missionaries for the respectable position to which they have attained among the native tribes. The honored instruments in their moral and social elevation have chiefly been the agents of the London Missionary Society who have labored among them for many years with remarkable energy, zeal and success. The Wesleyan Missionary Society have also some prosperous stations in some of the Griqua settlements where no other agencies are at work, and the results of their labors have been very encouraging.

In Namaqualand, under circumstances of peculiar trial and privation the Wesleyan and Rhenish Societies have labored with commendable zeal and diligence. Some time ago the Wesleyan stations were by a mutual arrangement transferred to the German missionaries.

In Damaraland missionaries have labored earnestly for many years, but the results thus far have been meagre.

What has been the sum total accomplished by the missionary societies in South Africa?

The Wesleyan Missionary Society began work there in 1814.717 Extending its operations by degrees from the Cape Colony to Kaffaria, Natal, and the Bechuana regions, it now numbers forty stations, sixty missionaries, and more than 6,000 members. The Rhenish Society which commenced operations in this field in 1829, now numbers more than 10,000 members; and the Berlin, which commenced in 1833 and has 8,000 members. The American Board which entered the field in 1834, has grown into three missions, the Zulu, the East African and the West African, and now numbers 30 stations, 48 laborers from America, more than 40 native assistants, about 2,000 under instruction and 7,000 adherents. Besides these the French Society is doing a great work among the Bechuana and other tribes. The Norwegians are laboring among the Zulus, the Scotch among the Kafirs, the Hanoverians and the Church of England in Natal and Zululand.

These with a few other organizations make more than a dozen societies at work in South Africa, occupying more than 200 stations, and employing about 500 foreign laborers, besides a much larger force of native helpers. Of the success and value of these labors we get some idea when we find it estimated that not less than 40,000 souls have been brought in this way into Christ’s kingdom, 50,000 children gathered into Christian schools, and 100,000 men and women blessed with the direct teaching of the Gospel.

Leaving South Africa we will now consider briefly what has been done by the missionaries in Eastern Africa and that part of Central Africa reached by way of the east coast. Here there seemed to be less opposition to the entrance of the Gospel than in some other parts of Africa. Dominant superstitions do not stand so much in the way of its reception. There is less idolatry or fetish worship, such as is found on the western coast, and there are fewer barbarous or unnatural rites. The greatest hindrance has been the Arab slave trade, which, driven from the west coast had established itself on the east coast. The unwise course of the Germans who established a commercial enterprise there in 1889 has led to Arab hostilities719 that appear disastrous in the extreme to missionary work for the present, especially among the Ugandas.

LARI AND MADI NATIVES.

There are very extensive missionary interests in East Africa. No less than thirteen societies are at work on the coast or in the interior. It will be more convenient, in considering what has been accomplished, to note the work done by each society separately, rather than to follow our usual order of treatment by tribe or locality.

As the Church Missionary Society was first in the field we will notice its efforts first.

The first missionary was Dr. Krapff, a zealous and devoted German. He had previously labored for several years among the Lari and Madi natives of the province of Shoa, and when the Abyssinian government prohibited his longer residence there he removed to Mombasa, where he laid the foundation of a new station under promising circumstances. When the way appeared to open up for usefulness among the Gallas and other important tribes, Dr. Krapff was joined by four additional laborers who were sent out by the society to aid him in his work. Their headquarters were at Kisulidini and the mission had every promise of success. But death soon thinned the ranks and disappointed many hopes. Only one of the missionary band, Mr. Rebmann, had strength to hold out against the climate. He remained at his solitary post of duty several years after the Doctor had been obliged to embark for Europe; but in 1856 he was driven by the hostile incursions of savage native tribes to take refuge in the island of Mombasa, and for two years the mission on the mainland seemed to be at an end. Mr. Rebmann resolved not to lose sight of its ruins, however, and employed his waiting time in preparing a translation of the Bible into the language of the people among whom he labored. At length the desire of the lonely missionary was gratified by a cordial invitation to return to Kisulidini, and the hearty welcome he received on going there proved that there was further work for him to do among this people. For years he labored single-handed among this people and managed to keep alive the spark of light which Dr. Krapff had been the means of kindling. After long and patient waiting relief came. The deep interest called forth by Dr.720 Livingstone’s last despatches and death, stirred up the church at home to fresh efforts on behalf of the African race, and a much needed reinforcement was sent out to strengthen the mission on the eastern coast, including Mr. Price and Jacob Wainwright, Livingstone’s faithful negro servant. When they arrived at Kisulidini they found Mr. Rebmann aged and feeble, and almost blind, but still the centre of a little band of native converts at the old mission premises. This mission now comprises eight stations with Mombasa as its base. The constituency at these stations is composed chiefly of liberated slaves, who are rescued by British cruisers from slave dhows and handed over to the mission, now living in comfort as free men, cultivating their own little plots of ground, building their own little huts on the society’s land, enjoying the rest of the Lord’s day, seeing their children taught to read and write like the white man, and having access at all times for counsel and guidance to patient and sympathizing Englishmen.

Recently, their former masters combined and threatened to destroy the stations if their slaves were not given up. How this catastrophy was averted by the tact and generosity of Mr. Mackenzie the following will tell: “At Mombasa, Frere Town and Rabai, on the east coast of Africa, the English Church Missionary Society has for some time been carrying on a work similar to that which has been so greatly blessed at Sierra Leone and other places on the west coast. The natives who have been rescued from the Arab slave vessels by the British cruisers have been taken to the first-named towns, where they have been cared for and instructed by the missionaries of the society, and a large number of them have become new creatures in Christ Jesus, and are now diligent in tilling the soil or in following other industrial pursuits.

“For several years fugitive slaves from the adjoining country have sought refuge at the mission stations from the oppressions of their Mohammedan masters. Every effort has been made by the missions to prevent mere runaways from settling around the stations; but it has lately been found that many who came and placed themselves under Christian teaching, and who were supposed to be free natives, were really fugitive slaves. Many of them have embraced721 Christianity, been baptized, and are leading ‘quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty.’

“Suddenly the former Mohammedan masters of the fugitives combined and threatened destruction to the missions unless they were given up again to slavery. It has been a time of great anxiety to the missionaries, and in this crisis they could only commit all to the Lord. Happily the danger has been averted by the wise and timely action of Mr. Mackenzie, the chief agent of the new Imperial British East Africa Company, whose headquarters are at Mombasa. Mr. Mackenzie saw that if the régime of this politico-commercial company began with the restoration of a thousand escaped slaves to the slave owners, its influence would be seriously injured. He has, therefore, undertaken to compensate the Arab slave-owners, on condition that the whole of this fugitive slave population, a large portion of which is Christian, are declared free forever. This arrangement has delighted all parties. A grand feast has been given by the Mohammedans to Mr. Mackenzie, while the slaves are set free and the missions are saved.”

This society had also a line of stations stretching from Zanzibar to Uganda. They were nine in number, beginning with Mambola and Mpwapwa, nearly due west from Zanzibar, and including Usambiro, Msalala and Nasa, south of Victoria Nyanza, and Rubaga, in Uganda, north of the great lake. The origin of the mission in Uganda was on this wise: “When Stanley went away from Uganda, Mtesa, the king, said to him, ‘Stamee, say to the white people, when you write to them, that I am like a man sitting in darkness, or born blind, and that all I ask is that I may be taught how to see, then I shall continue a Christian while I live.’ Mtesa’s appeal, through Stanley, to English Christians, had its response. The Church Missionary Society sent several missionaries, who were heartily welcomed by Mtesa, and protected as long as he lived.”

As public attention has recently, and for different reasons, been very generally directed to Uganda, it may not be amiss to give a more detailed account of the situation and prospects there.

Near the shores of those majestic lakes—Albert and Victoria Nyanza—which give rise to the Nile, are large tribes, akin to one another in speech and habit, and quite advanced in civilization, as722 things go in Africa. They are the Baganda, Luganda and Uganda, all of which have been visited and described by Stanley and other well-known travellers. Of these, the Uganda are the most numerous and advanced. This region was for a long time looked upon as a fair field for missionary enterprise, irrespective of the fact that it had been an old and favorite stamping ground for Arab traders and slave dealers, whose influence would naturally be against Christian intervention. But in 1876, missionaries went out from England, and founded several missions, mostly in the Uganda country. They proved to be prosperous, and fast became the centres of Christian communities, whose influence was felt from one lake to the other. But after over ten years of prosperity, a civil war broke out, instigated by the Arabs, which resulted in the enthronement of Mwanga, who was hostile to the missionaries and their Christian converts. He signalized the first year of his reign by the murder of Bishop Hannington and the massacre of many of his Christian subjects. By 1889, all but one of this missionary band had perished either through disease or royal cruelty, and their converts were forced to become refugees. The survivor, Mr. Mackay, after being held as a hostage for months, was finally released, and made his escape to Usambiro, where he took up work with the hope that at no distant day he might be able to extend it back into the abandoned lake regions.

In his “Emin Pasha in Central Africa,” Mr. R. W. Felkin thus sketches the character of the two great Uganda kings, Mtesa and Mwanga:

“Mtesa was first heard of in Europe from Speke and Grant, who visited Uganda in 1862. He professed to trace back his descent to Kintu (or Ham) the founder of the dynasty. When I visited him in 1879 he was about 45 years of age, a splendid man, some six feet high, well formed and strongly built. He had an oval face, and his features were well cut.

“He had large, mild eyes, but if roused by anger or mirth they were lit up by a dangerous fire. He had lost the pure Mhuma features through admixture of Negro blood, but still retained sufficient characteristics of that tribe to prevent all doubt as to his origin. All his movements were very graceful; his hands were723 slender, well formed, and supple; he was generally dressed in a simple white Arab kaftan. It is somewhat difficult to describe his character; he was intensely proud, very egotistical, and, until near the end of his life, he thought himself to be the greatest king on earth. In his youth, and in fact until 1878, there is no doubt that he was cruel, but an illness from which he suffered certainly softened him.

“His chiefs often said to me, ‘Oh, if Mtesa were well, there would be plenty of executions.’ It has been said that he was extremely changeable and fickle, and to superficial observers he was so; that is to say, as far as his intercourse with Europeans went. If, however, one looks a little deeper into his character, he finds that his apparent vacillation was overruled by a fixed idea, which was to benefit his people, increase his own importance, and to get as much as possible out of the strangers who visited his court. This explains his being one day a friend to the Arabs, on another to the Protestants, and on a third to the Catholics. A newcomer, especially if he had a large caravan, was always the favorite of the hour. It is not difficult for any one to enter Uganda, but to get away again is no easy task, unless he is going for a fresh supply of goods. Mtesa liked Europeans and Arabs to be present at his court; it gave him prestige, and he also wished his people to learn as much as they could from the white men, for he well knew and appreciated their superior knowledge. In manners he was courteous and gentlemanly, and he could order any one off to execution with a smile on his countenance. His mental capacity was of a very high order. He was shrewd and intelligent; he could read and write Arabic, and could speak several native languages. He had a splendid memory, and enjoyed a good argument very keenly. If he could only get Protestants, Catholics and Arabs to join in a discussion before him, he was in his element, and although apparently siding with one or other, who might happen to be at the time his especial favor, he took care to maintain his own ground, and I do not believe that he ever really gave up the least bit of belief in his old Pagan ideas. While too shrewd and intelligent to believe in the grosser superstitions which find credit among his people, he was yet so superstitious that if he dreamt of any of the gods of his724 country he believed it to be an ill omen, and offered human sacrifices to appease the anger of the offended deity. Shortly after I left Uganda, he dreamt of his father, and in consequence had 500 people put to death. He also believed that if he dreamt of any living person it was a sign that they meditated treachery, and he condemned them forthwith to death. This supposed power of divination is said to be hereditary in the royal race. In concluding my remarks about Mtesa, I may say that he denied his Wahuma origin; not only, however, did his features betray him, but many of the traditions he held regarding his ancestors, especially his descent from Ham, point conclusively to an origin in the old Christianity of Abyssinia.

“When I was in Uganda, Mtesa had 200 or 300 women always residing at his court. He did not know exactly how many wives he had, but said that they certainly numbered 700. He had seventy sons and eighty-eight daughters.

“Mwanga is the present king of Uganda, having been chosen by the three hereditary chiefs at the death of his father, Mtesa, and it is certainly to be attributed to the influence of the missionaries in Uganda, that the usual bloodshed which attends the succession to the throne in Uganda, did not take place. On ascending the throne he was about 16 years of age, and up to that time had been a simple, harmless youth, but his high position soon turned his head, and he became suspicious, abominably cruel and really brutal. He began to drink and to smoke bang, and up to the present time his rule has been characterized by tyranny and bloodshed, far surpassing anything that happened in his father’s time. Nor does he appear to possess those good characteristics which certainly caused his father to deserve some respect. A number of Christians, Protestants and Catholics have been tortured and burned at the stake by his orders, and Bishop Hannington was murdered by his command at Lubwa, on the borders of Uganda.”

A writer in the N. Y. Evangelist observes further:

“Of course, Mwanga was a coward as well as a cruel and bloodstained despot. Because he made Uganda impenetrable, no direct news from Wadelai about the movements of Stanley or Emin Pasha could reach Zanzibar. Very naturally he was obliged to face725 an insurrection. To save his worthless life he fled from his kingdom, and his older brother, Kiwewa, succeeded him. Because under his rule the missionaries were again in favor, Kiwewa was soon forced to abdicate before an insurrection incited by the Arabs, whom the policy of his brother had brought into the kingdom, and in which such of his own subjects who opposed the missionaries cheerfully participated. While about a score of missionaries escaped unharmed, all missionary property was destroyed, many native missionaries were murdered, the Arabs became dominant in Uganda, and the kingdom, it may be for several years, is closed against Christianity. The living missionaries have quite recently been ransomed.

“What is to be the influence of this new Arab kingdom in Central Africa? This, with many, is a pressing question. In answering it we must remember that these so-called Arabs really have in their veins no Arab blood. They are coast Arabs of the lowest classes, and the proud and strong Uganda chiefs will not submit for any considerable length of time to the rule of any such men. They may use such men; they will never become their slaves. The country is more likely to be broken up into hostile sections. These may wear themselves out in wars against each other, and thus may be realized the hope that the British East African Company, from their new territory between Victoria Nyanza and the coast, would push its influence and its operations over Uganda, and the whole lake region of Central Africa. These Arab slave-traders are certainly not the men to construct or reconstruct an empire. Those who know them best see no prospect that they will be able by intrigue, which is their only agency, to sustain themselves in Uganda.

“The character and habits of the Uganda people seem to forbid their enslavement. They are the only people in Central Africa that clothe themselves from head to foot. Besides their own ingenious utensils for housekeeping, the chase and war, thousands of European weapons and implements are found in their possession, and being ready workers in iron, they immediately imitate what they import. They are apt linguists, and their children have rapidly acquired the French and English languages from the missionaries. They have neither idols nor fetishes. They have no affiliations726 with Mohammedanism, and are not likely to become its subjects for any considerable time. There is still good reason to hope for a better future for Uganda.”

TINDER-BOX, FLINT AND STEEL.

The London Missionary Society has ever been forward to enter new fields of labor. On Livingstone’s return to England, after his great journey across the continent of Africa in 1856, he urged this society, in whose service he had previously been engaged, to establish a mission on the banks of the Zambesi, with a tribe of natives known as the Makololo, with the view of reaching other tribes in the interior through them. A mission was organized accordingly, which was to start from the Cape of Good Hope direct for the interior. This journey was to be made in the usual South African style, namely, in wagons drawn by long teams of oxen. Livingstone himself went round by the eastern coast, purposing to meet the missionaries in the valley of the Zambesi, and to introduce them to the chiefs with whom he was personally acquainted. The missionaries selected for this purpose were Revs. Helmore and Price, the first of whom was a middle-aged minister, with a wife and family,728 and had labored in South Africa for several years previously, whilst Mr. Price was a young man recently married, and was entering upon mission work for the first time. The incidents of the journey, as well as the issue of this mission were the most afflictive and distressing. The mission wagons had scarcely passed the boundary of the Cape Colony when water and grass for the oxen became scarce, and their progress was accordingly slow and dreary. Many of their oxen died and their places were supplied with difficulty by cattle purchased from the natives. When they came to cross the outskirts of the desert of Kalahara their sufferings were terrible. They at length reached the valley of the Zambesi where they had an ample supply of grass and water; but they soon found themselves in a low, swampy, unhealthy country, and when they reached their destination in the Makololo country, they did not meet with the cordial reception from the chief and his people which they expected. Dr. Livingstone, who was engaged in exploring the lower branches of the Zambesi was moreover unable to meet them as he intended. They naturally became discouraged; and before they got anything done of consequence in the way of teaching the people, the chief still withholding his consent to their movements, the country fever broke out among them with fearful violence. Mr. Helmore’s four children, who suffered so much from thirst in the desert, were smitten down one after another and died. They were buried but a short time when graves were made beside them for both their parents. Mr. and Mrs. Price began to think of retracing their steps to the Cape Colony, and at length with heavy hearts they yoked the oxen to the wagons and started toward civilization. But in crossing the desert Mrs. Price also died, so that Mr. Price was left to return alone.

BOUND FOR THE INTERIOR DURING THE RAINY SEASON.

In 1877 in response to an application made by the son and successor of the chief in Makololo, the Rev. J. D. Hepburn, of Shoshong, and outpost of the Bechuana mission, commenced a mission on Lake Ngami, two native evangelists who had completed their studies at Kuruman were settled there and are doing good work.

The London Society goes further west than any of the other societies and plants two stations on Lake Tanganyika, and one at729 Urambo in the Unyamwezi, south of the Victoria Nyanza and near the stations of the Church Missionary Society.

The Universities’ Mission has twelve stations, one in Zanzibar, four in the Usambara country north of Zanzibar, four on or near the river Rovuma and three on the east shore of Lake Nyassa.

The mission of the Free Church of Scotland on the shores of Lake Nyassa was founded in 1861 by Rev. Dr. James Stewart. Reinforcements were sent out in 1875. They took with them the steam launch Llala to be used upon the waters of Lake Nyassa. In 1876 Dr. Wm. Black, an ordained medical missionary, an agriculturist, an engineer, and a weaver, joined them. In 1879 Miss Watterston joined the staff, as female medical missionary and superintendent of the girls’ boarding and training school. In 1880 they met with a great loss in the death of their agriculturist, John Gunn, who had proved himself helpful in every department of work.

The Free Church of Scotland has recently opened a new mission at Malinda, on the high plain north of Lake Nyassa. The station is surrounded by seventeen villages, embosomed in gardens of magnificent bananas. At Karonga two services are held every Sabbath, and the congregation numbers 600 natives. Dr. Cross attempted to push his work into the highlands, but was driven back, and compelled to rely on Capt. Lugard’s armed force of 150 natives. These aggressive movements against the missions in Nyassaland, as elsewhere, are attributable to Arab slave traders, who are the worst enemies Christianity has to contend with in Africa. They now have five stations on Lake Nyassa.

The Established Church of Scotland Mission was founded in 1875 by Mr. Henry Henderson. The staff comprised a medical missionary, an agriculturist, a blacksmith, a carpenter, a joiner and a seaman and boatbuilder. To Mr. Henderson belongs the credit of having selected an incomparable site. It was originally intended that the mission should be planted in the neighborhood of Lake Nyassa; but he found a more suitable locality in the highlands above the Shiré, east of the cataracts, and midway between Magomero and Mount Soché. The ground rises from the river in a succession of terraces. It is about 3,000 feet above the sea, and extends from twelve to fifteen miles in breadth. Gushing springs730 and flowing streams abound. The scenery is beautiful and picturesque. The soil is fertile. There is abundance of good timber and iron ore. The chiefs are friendly and the people are willing to receive instruction. And, what is an essential requisite, the climate is in a high degree salubrious. In the words of Livingstone, “it needs no quinine.”

The settlement, which is named Blantyre, after Livingstone’s birth-place, was planned and laid out under the superintendence of Dr. Stewart and Mr. James Stewart. On the farm and gardens surrounding, over 500 natives of both sexes are employed. Mr. Henderson having returned, on the completion of the special work for which he was appointed, Rev. Duff Macdonald and wife were sent out in 1878. They were soon after recalled on account of difficulties arising from the mission’s claim to exercise civil jurisdiction over the settlement. Rev. David Clement Scott was appointed to take their place.

One of the most important works in connection with Livingstonia, the name of the Free Church of Scotland’s Mission, and Blantyre Mission, was the formation of a road, projected by Dr. Stewart and surveyed by Mr. J. Stewart. It varies from six to ten feet in width, and extends from the Upper Shiré, at the head of the cataracts, for a distance of about thirty-five miles to Blantyre, and thence for nearly an equal distance through a steep and rugged country to Ramakukan’s, at the foot of the cataract. Facilities are thus afforded for communication with the coast. The expense of its construction was borne equally by the two missions. A traveller who has frequently visited this region writes as follows:

“The outlet for the waters of Lake Nyassa is the river Shiré which flows into the Zambesi. Except for a short distance in one part, this river is navigable throughout its course; and at about sixty or seventy miles after it leaves the lake it takes a bend westward, and here below Matope, a station of the African Lakes Company, it becomes unnavigable by reason of the Murchison Cataracts. Below these is another station of the African Lakes Company at Katunga’s, and from here there is no further difficulty in navigating the river. All goods, therefore, and passengers bound for Nyassa, are landed from the African Lakes Company’s steamer at731 Katunga’s, and after a journey of some seventy miles across a ridge of high ground are put on the river again at Matope. About half-way between Katunga’s and Matope is the African Lakes Company’s store and settlement at Mandala, and little more than a mile from it the flourishing mission village of Blantyre of the Established Church of Scotland. It is wonderful to see this village, with its gardens, schools, and houses, in the midst of Africa. The writer has twice, within the last three years, when visiting Nyassa, experienced the generous hospitality of Mandala and Blantyre, and so can speak from his own personal observation. Being situated on such high ground, the climate is much more favorable to Europeans than at most mission stations in that region. It is easier also, for the same reason, to grow fruits and vegetables imported from Europe. It is difficult to overestimate the effect of such a settlement as a civilizing agency in the country. Mr. Hetherwick, who was in charge of the station for some time in Mr. Scott’s absence, has mastered the language of the great Yao tribe, and has lately published a translation of St. Matthew’s Gospel, which shows a wonderful grasp of the genius of the language. Mr. Hetherwick has now returned to his mission station, some fifty miles to the northeast, under Mount Zomba. Mr. Scott is said to be equally a master of Chinyanja, the language of the Nyassa tribes. The English government have recognized the important influence these settlements are likely to have by appointing a consul on Nyassa, who has lately built a house close to the flourishing coffee and sugar plantations of Mr. Buchanan under Mount Zomba, about forty miles from Blantyre, and near Lake Kilwa or Shirwa. Mr. Buchanan is also a good Yao scholar, and takes care to teach the people, who come to him in considerable numbers for employment. Situated high up on the slope of Mount Zomba, which rises precipitously above it, the streams which rush down from its summit are diverted and distributed so as to form a system of irrigation. Mr. Buchanan’s plantation is a picture of beauty and prosperity, and offers every prospect of health and permanence.

“When we come to Lake Nyassa, we find missions established on each side of the lake. On the west side are the stations at Cape Maclear and Bandawe, while connected with the latter are sub-stations,732 among which is an important mission to the Angoni, a marauding tribe of Zulu origin. Dr. Laws, at Bandawe, has been a long time in the country, and has thoroughly won the confidence of the people. On one occasion, when the writer visited him, some five or six hundred people assembled in his schools, in which large numbers of children are taught daily. The Universities’ Missions are on the east side of the lake.”

The United Methodist Free Churches in 1863 began a mission at Ribé, about eighteen miles north of Mombasa. The ministers selected for this service were the Revs. New and Wakefield. For several years they were engaged in preparatory work, erecting buildings, cultivating garden grounds, exploring the country, learning the native language, preparing translations, teaching school, and preaching as they had opportunity. Their difficulties were numerous and their progress slow. The unhealthy character of the climate here, as on the western coast, is the greatest hindrance to the progress of the work. Rev. C. New fell a sacrifice to its fatal influence in 1876, and Mrs. Wakefield died later, but others have taken their places. They now have two stations in the Mombasa District, Ribé and Joursee and one in Gallaland.

Several German societies are also represented in East Africa. The New Kirchen Society has had since 1887 a station at Ngao, on the Tana in the Suabali country, with two missionaries. The Evangelical Lutheran Missionary Society of Bavaria has stations at Junba, and at Mbangu among the Wakamba, six hours inland, with three missionaries. The Berlin Society have stations at Zanzibar and Dar-es-Salam where one of the massacres took place.

The Roman Catholics—French and German—have several stations in East Africa. The French have three stations on or near Lake Victoria Nyanza, the most important of which is the one in Uganda under Pere Lourdel; two at Lake Tanganyika; one at Bagamoya, west of Zanzibar, and one or two others. The Jesuits have also a few stations, and the German Catholics have one at Dar-es-Salam. These are all the societies at work in East Africa. As we look at their achievements, to human ken they do not appear commensurate with what they have cost. We do not mean of course in money, though that has been great, one society alone733 having spent $500,000, but in the sacrifice of human health and human lives. Four bishops, Mackenzie, Steere, Hannington, Parker, and a great army of missionaries, some of them nobly and highly-gifted men, have given up their lives for East Africa. We can but reverence the heroism which has led them forth to die in a strange land. The apparent results are meagre and even some of these seem likely to be destroyed; but we dare not say their lives have been needlessly wasted. In human warfare when a fortress has to be stormed, does the knowledge of the fact that many of the flower of his army will perish in the attempt, cause the general to hesitate? Do the soldiers refuse to obey the command, because the undertaking is fraught with danger? Were they to do so they would be branded as cowards. East Africa is a part of the world and Christ’s command surely includes the taking of such almost impregnable fortresses as frown upon his soldiers in that dark region. Then, too, the time has been short; great results may follow in the future the work that has already been done.

We have not written anything concerning missionary work in the Soudan simply because nothing has been done in that vast region. Dr. Guinness says of it: “The Soudan is the true home of the negro, a vaster region than the Congo, which is 4,000 miles across, with its twelve nations, and not a mission station. It is the last region of any magnitude unpenetrated by the Gospel.” Through Dr. Guinness’ influence a number of the most active workers in the Y. M. C. A., in Kansas, Nebraska and Minnesota have decided to be pioneers in this densely populated part of Africa. They propose to enter, by the way of Liberia and the Kong mountains, the Soudan of the Niger and Lake Tchad, where are nearly 100,000,000 of people without a missionary. They mean to form a living tie between that region and their associations and churches at home.

We have followed the footsteps of the missionaries over all the Dark Continent only stopping to note the most important of their achievements. Their sacrifices have been recorded and will not be forgotten. Though their sufferings have been great, they have been of short duration, for Africa seems to be the “short cut” to the skies.

We close our account of missionary work in Africa with the following734 from Mr. Grant: “The successes of the past, the openings of the present, and the demand for the future, should awaken a redoubled devotion to the blessed work. In no age of the world, in no history of continents, can anything be found so surprising as the discoveries and developments made in Africa since the days of those pioneer missionaries, Schmidt and Vanderkemp. It would take long to tell how her bays have been sounded since their time, how her plains have been spanned, her mountains scaled, her rivers threaded, lakes discovered, diamonds found, and a goodly number of grand highways projected into even the remotest parts of that, till of late little known, yet most marvelous land of the sun; and all under the gracious ordering of the Lord, that men freighted with the blessings of the Gospel of God’s own dear Son might enter and occupy. Ethiopia, all Africa, is on tiptoe of expectancy, only waiting to know who God is, that she may stretch out her hands to Him, and be lifted into His truth and grace.”

735

AFRIC’S LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.

ARNOT IN CENTRAL AFRICA.

“My idea of Africa had been that of a land very much desert, or else marshy and almost uninhabitable. But here was a region rich, fertile and beautiful, well watered, and, better still, with many people living all along the banks of the rivers. Of course, we had varied kinds of receptions. At one place, among the Bakuti, it was very remarkable how the people seemed to open their ears and hearts and gave their time. I spent ten days among them. The first five I went among their villages, having large meetings. As I could speak a dialect which many of them understood, I could explain myself quite freely to them. They became very much interested in what they heard me say, and they said among themselves: ‘We are only tiring the white man out by coming day after day to our villages; we will go to him.’ So, for the last five days they gathered together, and we had all-day meetings—a most extraordinary time, I might say, for Africa. They kept up the discussions among themselves, and before I left at least two of the men stood up in the midst of their tribe and declared for Jesus before all their friends, in their own simple language.

“We had to leave these people, and went on traveling from day to day. At one point we had rather a different reception. We had pitched our camp in the midst of long grass. Toward evening, as we were getting things in order, we found the grass round our camp was on fire. As soon as the men succeeded in extinguishing the flames eight of them were missing. Then we understood an enemy had surrounded us, set the grass on fire, and carried off all the stragglers. There was nothing to do but to find their trail and follow them up. After a ten-miles’ journey we reached a little village in the forest where they were resting. They thought we had736 come to fight with them, and they rushed out with their guns, bows and arrows, and spears, to receive us. My men, thirty or forty in number, being only Africans, got into fighting order and began to load their guns for action. I was a little way behind, and did not take in the situation at once. Seeing how things were going, I ran forward, seized a little stool, and held it up in the air as a signal of peace. This arrested the enemy, and at last two of them came forward to hear what I had to say. After a little talk it turned out that the whole thing was a mistake. They thought we had come to their country to rob and plunder them, and quite naturally, in self-defense, they wished to have the first hit at us. Next day we spent the time in receiving presents and telling them of the things we had been speaking to the people all along the road.

“At another point on the journey there was a chief who had heard about the things of God. He was intensely interested in the reports, and he came himself, to see me. Before we had time to settle down to speak, he said: ‘All the huntsmen have been called in; the women are in from the fields; we are all here, and we want you at once to begin your conversation with us about the Great Spirit and those things you have been talking of along the road.’ After talking with them for some hours, the chief asked me to go with him to their village. He said there were some old people there who could not come down to hear me with the others, he wanted me very much to go and see them. I went up to the village and conversed with these poor old broken-down people, one after another, and it was most touching. They shook hands with me and looked me in the face with such a look! Some of them were too old to understand the things I had been telling to the younger people; they could only look wistfully at me and shake me by the hand. It reminded me of an old man I had spoken with on the upper Zambesi. After leaving my hut he came back to the door and said: ‘It is so strange for me to hear these things for the first time, and I so old.’ Truly, it must strike them strangely. There are many physical difficulties connected with travel in Africa, and I would be the last to urge any particular individual to go out there. But there are no difficulties in the preaching of the Word. As soon as you learn a little of the language you can have all the737 attention of the people and all their time. I may say, in going among them, it is important to get some standing at their native courts. I have always taken the place of an ambassador from another country, and have demanded from them a hearing. This is the surest way of getting the attention, not only of the chief, but of all the people.”

KILLED BY AN ELEPHANT.

“A sad termination of an heroic defender of a righteous cause, was the death of Mr. Deane, the recent chief of Stanley Falls Station, Congo State. Capt. Coquilhat, one of Mr. Stanley’s faithful coadjutors in founding the State of Congo, gives, in his official report, the following statement: ‘In August last (1887), a female slave escaped from the Arab camp at Stanley Falls, and sought refuge in the Congo State Station there. Her surrender was demanded and refused. The Arabs were very angry, and made threats of war, which Mr. Deane disregarded. The slave-hunters had about 2,000 troops, while the garrison of the station numbered about fifty. The steamer Stanley then arrived, and the Arabs kept quiet till she left; but, the day after her departure, they attacked the station without warning, and, in course of three days, made four attacks, which were repulsed, the garrison losing two men and the Arabs sixty. At the end of the third day, the Haussa soldiers and the Bangalas refused to fight longer, as their rifle ammunition was spent.’ [The Haussas are native soldiers hired by the Congo State. They come from near Acra, on the Gulf of Guinea. The Bangalas belong to a desperate and warlike tribe, that fought Stanley on his first trip down the Congo.] ‘So these native soldiers took to their canoes at nightfall on the 26th of August, and went down the river. Mr. Deane and Mr. Dubois, the only white men in the garrison, remained behind with eight men to fire the buildings and destroy the stores. This they did, blowing up the two cannon and the remaining gunpowder, and then escaped themselves from the island, on which the station was located, to the north bank of the Congo, and made their way along its bank on foot, in the dark. On their way, the banks being very738 steep, Dubois fell into the river. Mr. Deane jumped in after him, and succeeded in getting him on to a rock; but poor Dubois was drowned in attempting to get from the rock to the mainland. Deane sought refuge among the natives, and found them most friendly. They showed him great devotion, taking him from one place of shelter to another, hiding him from the Arabs, supplying him with food, and keeping him till he was rescued.’ The Haussas and Bangalas arrived in their canoes at Bangala Station, where Capt. Coquilhat was stationed as Commander-in-Chief of that department, on September 7th. The captain at once went up in the steamer Henry Reed, then in the service of the Congo Government, and, finding the Stanley Falls Station in ruins and in the hands of the Arabs, he went in search of Mr. Deane, and after three days of diligent inquiry, found him, and rescued him from the fury of the Arabs.

“It is sad to relate, as I learn from Bradley L. Burr, our chief missionary at Kimpoko, Stanley Pool, that recently Mr. Deane, in an elephant hunt, was charged and killed by an Upper Congo elephant.

“Those who brave the perils of Africa ought always to be prepared to die. The destruction of the Arab slave trade, and the redemption of Africa, will cost the lives of more than 1,000 missionary heroes and heroines. People who want to run home from Africa before they see the elephant had better go to Barnum’s show and stay at home.” Wm. Taylor.

THE AFRICAN PUFF ADDER.

“It is essentially a forest animal, its true habitat being among the fallen leaves in the deep shade of the trees by the banks of streams. Now, in such a position, at the distance of a foot or two, its appearance so exactly resembling the forest bed as to be almost indistinguishable from it. I was once just throwing myself under a tree to rest, when stooping to clear the spot, I noticed a peculiar pattern among the leaves. I started back in horror to find a puff adder of the largest size, its thick back only visible and its fangs only a few inches from my face as I stooped. It was lying concealed739 among fallen leaves so like itself that but for the exceptional caution which in African travel becomes a habit, I should certainly have sat down on it, and to sit down on a puff adder is to sit down for the last time. I think this semi-somnolent attitude is not always the mere attitude of repose. This reptile lay lengthwise concealed, all but a few inches, among the withered leaves. Now, the peculiarity of the puff adder is that he strikes backward. Lying on the ground, therefore, it commands as it were, its whole rear, and the moment any part is touched the head doubles backward with inconceivable swiftness, and the poison fangs close on their victim. The puff adder in this way forms a sort of horrid trap set in the woods, which may be altogether unperceived till it shuts with a sudden spring on its prey.” Henry Drummond.

THE KASAI REGION.

“I have been here a month, and I am far from regretting my new residence. Luluaburg resembles none of the other State stations. This is the country of plantations, of cattle, of large undulated hills covered with short grass. We lead here rather the life of the Boers (farmers) than that of the Congo.

“We break bulls to ride, and they are as valuable as horses. They are sometimes vicious enough, but one becomes accustomed to that. Nevertheless, a horse could never do what a bull does: swim the rivers, climb the most rugged hills, and descend the steepest slopes with an admirable surety of foot and peerless vigor.

“I have broken for my service a huge chestnut bull; he travels very well, and you would be astonished to see me on that beast overleap obstacle at a gallop, as easily as the best horse of the course.

TRAVEL ON BULL-BACK TO NATIVE ESCORT.

“We have already thirty animals at the station. Every day we have butter and cheese. Mr. Puissant has charge of the dairy, and he performs his work well.

“As to the natives of the region, they are much the best negroes I know. In short, I am greatly pleased here, and am never sick.”

Mr. Legat, who sends this news, is the veteran of the Congo State741 agents. He was of the party of 1881, and has not left the country since that epoch.

A LITTLE CONGO HERO.

On the Congo, near the equator, live the Bengala, with whom the explorer, Stanley, had his hardest battle when he floated down the great river. They are the most powerful and intelligent of the Upper Congo natives, and since Capt. Coquilhat, four years ago, established a station in their country they have become good friends of the whites. A while ago an exciting event occurred in one of their many villages, and Essalaka, the chief, went to Capt. Coquilhat to tell him about it.

“You know the big island near my town,” he said. “Well, yesterday, soon after the sun came up, one of my women and our little boy started for the island in a canoe. The boy is some dozen of moons old. (Capt. Coquilhat says about twelve years old.) He said that while his mother was paddling she saw something in the water, and leaned over to look at it. Then he saw a crocodile seize his mother and drag her out of the canoe. Then the crocodile and the woman sank out of sight.

“The paddle was lying in the canoe. The boy picked it up to paddle back to the village. Then he thought, ‘Oh, if I could only scare the crocodile and get mother back!’ He could tell by the moving water where the crocodile was. He was swimming under the surface toward the island. Then the boy followed the crocodile just as fast as he could paddle. Very soon the crocodile reached the island and went out on land. He laid the woman’s body on the ground. Then he went back into the river and swam away. You know why he did this. He wanted his mate and started out to find her.

“Then the little boy paddled fast to where his mother was lying. He jumped out of the boat and ran to her. There was a big wound in her breast. Her eyes were shut. He felt sure she was dead. He is strong, but he could not lift her. He dragged her to the canoe. He knew the crocodile might come back at any moment and kill him, too. He used all his strength. Little by little he742 got his mother’s body into the canoe. Then he pushed away from the shore and started home.

“We had not seen the boy and his mother at all. Suddenly we heard shouting on the river, and we saw the boy paddling as hard as he could. Every two or three strokes he would look behind. Then we saw a crocodile swimming fast toward the canoe. If he reached it you know what he would do. He would upset it with a blow, and both the boy and his mother would be lost.

“Eight or nine of us jumped into canoes and started for the boy. The crocodile had nearly overtaken the canoe, but we reached it in time. We scared the crocodile away, and brought the canoe to the shore. The boy stepped out on the ground and fell down. He was so frightened and tired. We carried him into one of my huts, and took his mother’s body in there, too. We thought she was dead.

“But after a little while she opened her eyes. She could whisper only two or three words. She asked for the boy. We laid him beside her on her arm. She stroked him two or three times with her hand. But she was hurt so badly. Then she shut her eyes and did not open them or speak again. Oh! how the little boy cried. But he had saved his mother’s body from the crocodile.”

As Essalake told this story the tears coursed down his cheek. “I have seen in this savage tribe,” writes Capt. Coquilhat, “men and their wives who really love each other, and veritable honeymoons among young couples. The child feels for his father the fear and respect which his authority inspires, but he truly loves his mother and has a tender interest in her even after he becomes a man.”

FORMER OBSTACLES REMOVED.

“Missionaries who go to Africa now, may think they have a hard time, but they can know but little of the obstacles in the way of the pioneers, and it will be profitable to notice a few of the things which hindered the marked success of missionaries fifty years ago, that are now largely removed.

“(1) The terrible slave trade prevailed all along the western coast, from the Gambia to Loanda. These foreign traders hated743 the missionary and did all they could to keep him out, well knowing that the two could not dwell together. They said to the kings where I labored, respecting my predecessor who began the mission in a nest of slave traders: ‘If you do not drive that man from the country, we will have to leave,’

“They prejudiced the natives against the missionary, by lies and misrepresentation; they demoralized them by the rum, guns and powder, which they paid for slaves. They induced and encouraged internal wars for the purpose of securing prisoners to be sold as slaves.

“By these means, large districts of the country were devastated (as I have seen), a disregard of human rights and life fostered, and a prevailing desire for rum and self-indulgence generally created.

“Thus, when the missionaries came they did not appreciate them, or their work. They only cared for what slave-traders brought them.

“And as they held the coasts, the missionaries could not reach the interior. They must begin on the low, sickly coasts, amid such unfavorable surroundings, or do nothing. My predecessor desired and planned to locate in the interior, but the way was thus blockaded. And so all along the coast.

“But now that obstacle is removed; the country is open, and missionaries can go where they chose a field, and find a people ready to receive them.

“(2) The ignorance of the people was a bar to progress. They did not understand the objects of the missionary, nor the difference between missionaries and traders. So, when missionaries went to Ujiji, the people began to bring them slaves to sell, knowing of no other motive they could have in coming to their country.

“And, in other places, they have welcomed a mission because it brought trade to their country. And, looking upon missionaries as traders, they once had to pay rent for the privilege of living in the country as traders. Thus my predecessor had to agree to pay $100 a year (in gold) that he might have a place to preach and teach their children. And he had to feed, clothe and provide everything for the children. And this I did for six years after him. We were willing to do this till they learned the value of education and the744 Gospel, and that we might prepare native teachers. And, besides, we had to make many presents, because we had their children!

“So it was forty years ago; but not now. They have learned that the missionaries bring only blessings to their country, and they are anxious to have their children ‘learn books,’ and be ‘taught white man’s way.’ They also wish to learn about God and how to be saved. And to obtain these blessings they are willing to give something—willing to give land for missionaries to build school-houses, and help the missionary build his house, and pay tuition for the children, and help the preacher.

“In very many places they are begging for a missionary. At a point on the Niger, where the steamers landed, the people ran to the wharf to meet every boat, saying, ‘Has the teacher come?’ (No one had promised a teacher.) ‘If the teacher will come, and teach us white man’s book, we will give him plenty to eat and take good care of him!’

“Another king said: ‘I do not wish to die till I can see a school house built, where my children can be taught; and a church, where my people may learn about God.’

“Another king came from the country to Liberia to obtain a missionary for his people.

“I have had chiefs come from the interior to beg for a mission, and after giving them one, I have seen them become followers of Jesus.

“Thus from many places they cry: ‘Come over and help us!’ Very different from fifty years ago!

“(3) The lack of written languages and books was a great obstacle. While the nations had regular languages (nearly 700 in Africa), they were all unwritten, and, of course, they had no books and no knowledge of the world or the way of salvation through Christ. This universal ignorance was the mother of gross superstition and horrible cruelties.

“To learn the language and prepare school books, and translate the Bible, was a slow process.

“To-day, over fifty of these languages are reduced to writing. The Bible is printed in ten of them, and portions of it in over745 thirty more. And many of them have school books, papers, and some literature.

“Here is a great advance, the benefit of which modern laborers can take advantage.

“And this same work is widely and continually going on. Light is spreading and desire increasing.

“Along the western coast, English is extensively taught, as also the French, German and Portuguese, where these nations have colonies and trading posts.

“(4) Lack of native help, at first, made progress slow. The white man was alone amid millions. His ways were all strange and inimitable. He was dressed, while they were naked. He read books, while they had none. He worshiped God, while they trusted in idols and charms. He seemed far above them and the idea of reaching his plane, hopeless.

“But, with great patience and unwearied perseverance, the pioneers toiled on, teaching, preaching, learning languages, writing elementary books, instructing children and youth, to prepare native helpers.

“To-day, there are about 8,000 ordained and unordained native preachers, and thousands of teachers and hundreds of thousands of pupils who are being prepared for future helpers—an army of native workers—and many are running to and fro and knowledge is being increased.

“Modern missionaries can now obtain interpreters for almost all parts of Africa, and this is a great help, which calls for heartfelt thanksgiving and praise to God who has wrought these favorable changes.

“I will mention but one more obstacle: (5) The sickly climate. During the first fifty years of missionary life in West and East Africa, the mortality was fearful. Probably 500 missionaries have died in the missions on the west coast. Nearly twenty died in the Mendi Mission where I labored. The Church Missionary Society lost fifty-three in the first twenty years. Three English Bishops died within eight years.

“In the Basle Mission, on the Gold Coast, in fifty-eight years, ninety-one missionaries died. And so it has been in Liberia, in746 Lagos, Gaboon, and in many other places. All societies have lost many, so that a book written by an Englishman was entitled “The White Man’s Grave.” The last three years I was in Africa I buried four white missionaries.

“But, thank God, it is different now. They have better houses and more comforts and have learned better how to take care of their health, so that the mortality in these same places is not half so much as it used to be.

“And missionaries can now reach the healthy high lands where they can live as well as here. So we will ‘Thank God and take courage.’

“In the same line more might be mentioned, but enough has been noted to show that there is no good cause for discouragement in the glorious work of saving Africa, to whom we owe such an unspeakable debt.

“With so many obstacles removed, and so many helps now prepared to our hand, while vast fields are opening and loud calls are wafted to us on every breeze, we may well be encouraged to put forth more vigorous efforts to give the Gospel to that people in this generation.” Rev. Geo. Thompson.

STANLEY ON THE GOMBE.

On his way to Ujiji to rescue Livingstone, Stanley passed through the lands of the Manyara, which are plains stretching for a distance of 135 miles, well cultivated, thickly strewn with villages, and abounding in game, which finds a haunt amid the tall grasses. He had never seen such a hunter’s paradise as that on the river Gombe, which waters the country. Buffaloes, zebras, giraffes and antelope, roamed through the magnificent parks of the section, affording excellent sport for the natives, and inviting the traveler to halt for a time in order to enjoy the thrill of a hunt.

The antelope of this section is large and powerful. It goes by name of “springbock,” because it takes tremendous leaps of ten to twelve feet when running. When pursued, it is pleasing and curious to see the whole herd leaping over each other’s heads, and looking back while they are in the air. They are exceedingly747 swift, and cannot be overtaken by a horse. They migrate annually from the interior toward the coast, and after remaining in the lowlands for two to three months, begin a gradual journey toward the interior. During these inward journeys their gregarious instincts are in full sway, and herds of hundreds may be seen on the grassy plains.

When travelling thus in large herds, they are the victims of beasts of prey, as lions, leopards and hyenas, which attack them at every favorable opportunity and seldom fail to secure rich feasts. Their flesh is excellent eating, and the springbock, together with other varieties of the antelope species, furnishes the venison of the African continent.

As he continued his way along the course of the Gombe, feasting his vision upon the beautiful scenes before him, he came suddenly upon a scene which he says “delighted the innermost recesses” of his soul. Just before him were “ten zebras switching their beautiful striped bodies, and biting one another.” Of these he succeeded in killing one, and then, content with the result of the hunt, he retired to camp. Before doing so, however, he thought he would take a bath in the placid waters of the river. He says: “I sought out the most shady spot under a wide-spreading mimosa, from which the ground sloped, smooth as a lawn, to the still, clear water. I ventured to undress, and had already stepped to my ankles in the water and had brought my hands together for a glorious dive, when my attention was attracted by an enormously long body which shot into view, occupying the spot beneath the surface which I was about to explore by a ‘header.’ Great heavens! it was a crocodile! I sprang back instinctively, and this proved my salvation, for the monster turned away with a disappointed look, and I was left to congratulate myself upon my narrow escape from his jaws, and to register a vow never to be tempted again by the treacherous calm of an African river.”

LEOPARD ATTACKING A SPRINGBOCK.

CHRISTIAN HEROES IN AFRICA.

“My subject is not so much Africa, its people, its customs and its misfortunes, as the Christian pioneers and their work. The United Moravian brethren at Herrnhut in Germany, more than a749 century and a half ago, were stirred up to send out a missionary to the poor Hottentots, who were treated as dogs by the Dutch colonists. George Schmidt at once offered himself to go out, and suffered hardship with a persecuted race, and, having been blessed by the conversion of a few, was forbidden to baptize them, and summarily sent back to Europe by men who called themselves Protestants, and who were jealous of their own liberty. Fifty years later (1792), the United Brethren sent out three more missionaries, who founded the illustrious mission of Genádendál, or Vale of Grace, on the very walls of the ruined house of George Schmidt, seven years after the great patriarch of African missions had been called to his reward, dying, like Livingstone and Krapf, on his knees.

“The London and Wesleyan societies, the Established Church of England, the Free Church of Scotland, and the American Board of Foreign Missions, took up a share in the blessed work amidst other races of South Africa, and out of their ranks by faith Moffat undertook to translate the Bible into the language of the Be-Chuána, Wilder into the language of the Zulu, and Boyce, Appleyard, and others, into the language of the Ama-Xosa, or Káfir—languages deemed at the time to be incapable of expressing simple ideas, but which, deftly handled, proved to be apt exponents of every variety of human thought, with an unlimited vocabulary, and an unsurpassed symmetry of structure.

“Moffat’s son-in-law, Livingstone, abandoned his home, his chapel, and his school, and started off on his great missionary progress, which was destined to illuminate all Africa south of the Equator. By faith he bore up under the perils, the fatigues, the opposition and the bereavement of his dear wife, who sleeps on the shore of the Zambesi. He worked his way to Benguéla, on the west coast, Kilimáni on the east, and Nyangwé on the River Congo to the north, discovering new rivers, new lakes, new tribes, and new languages. From the drops of sweat which fell from his limbs in those great travels have sprung up, like flowers, Christian missions, founded by men of different denominations and different views of church government, but united in the fear of God, love of Africa, and veneration for Livingstone. To the impulse, given by this great apostle, must be attributed the missions of the Established750 Church of Scotland at Blantyre, the Free Church of Scotland at Livingstonia, the London Society on Lake Tangányika, and the Universities Mission at Zanzibar. But to this servant of God it was not conceded to see one single fruit of his labors. He saw no mission spring up; like Moses, he only beheld the promised land from Pisgah; he died without knowing of the secret of the source of the Nile and the Congo.

“Krapf and Rebman sat year after year at the watch-tower of Mombása, waiting till the day should dawn, calling to each other: ‘Watchman, what of the night?’ writing home descriptions of vast lakes, and snow-capped mountains on the Equator, causing themselves to be derided, both as missionaries and geographers; yet they lived to be honored in both capacities, they lived to see the day dawn at last, to hear of Frere-Town being established as a station for released slaves at Mombása, to hear of those internal seas being navigated, and that snow-capped mountain being visited. In his old age Krapf in tearful gratitude read Henry Stanley’s challenge, which rang with trumpet-sound from the capital of Uganda, and was gallantly answered by the Church Missionary Society, and he lived to hear of the great Apostle’s Street, which by faith he had suggested, being carried out from Zanzibar to the Great Lakes, to be extended westward down the Congo, until hands are shaken with the Baptist missionaries working up that river from the west.

“The good Baptist Society established themselves in the island of Fernando Po, and, driven thence by the intolerance of the Spaniards, they crossed over to the mainland, and found what seemed once, but, alas! is no longer, a more enduring inheritance in the Kamerún Mountains. By faith here Saker lived, labored and died, translating the Holy Scriptures into the language of the Dualla, but leaving his work to be revised by his young daughter, opening out a new field for the talent and zeal of women. Hence in fullness of time by faith Comber started to conquer new kingdoms of the Congo, making, alas! the heavy sacrifice of the life of his wife at San Salvador, before he reached Stanley Pool, with the great heart of Africa open to his assault; for in their hands the Baptist missionaries had carried gentle peace, and their vessel with751 that name still carries them onward on their blessed and peaceful enterprise.

“Our good brethren in North America were among the first to send out their agents to West and South Africa, to pay back the debt which they owed, and to atone for the wrong which their forefathers had inflicted. The sun was thus taken back to the east, to lighten those sitting in darkness. Each and every one of their churches have vied in the desire to found strong missions, translate the Holy Scriptures, and to press forward the work of freedom, education, civilization and evangelization.

“The holy and humble-hearted Protestant churches on the continent of Europe, less amply endowed in material resources, but more richly in intellect, industry and self-consecration, have sent forth a golden stream of missionaries from the centers of Basle and Canton de Vaud in Switzerland; of Barmen, Breman, Berlin, Herrnhut and Hermannsburg in Germany; from Norway, Sweden, Finland and France, to hold the fort in the most exposed situations, to suffer imprisonment, to achieve great literary works, to found living churches, and attract to themselves the affections of the African.

“Samuel Crowther was rescued from the captivity into which he, like Joseph, had been sold by his brethren, was restored to his country, to be no longer a slave, but a teacher, a leader, a benefactor, and an example; he was set apart to give the lie to the enemies of the African, to stultify the idle taunt, that a negro is incapable, by his nature, of culture, piety, honesty, and social virtues; he was raised up to mark an epoch in the sad chronicle of his persecuted race, and to be the first fruit of the coming harvest of African pastors and evangelists. His son Dandison, Henry Johnson and James Johnson were blessed with the great grace of being allowed to tread in his footsteps.

“If any of my readers desire to know the real worth of the African missionary, let them read the lives of Mrs. Hinderer at Ibadán, and Mrs. Wakefield at Ribé, and of many other noble men and women, of whom this self-seeking world was not worthy, who left comforts at home to labor among the Africans; who, in spite of overpowering maladies, have been, like Hannington, unwilling to752 leave the country of their choice, and determined to return in spite of the warning voice of their doctor, or who, like him, have died as good confessors.

“Time would fail me to tell of Schlenker, and Reichardt, and Schön; of Goldie and Edgerley; of Casálls, Mabille and Coillard; of James Stewart, of Lovedale, and his namesake on the Nyassa; of Grant and Wilson; of Ramseyer and Christaller; of Mackensie, the Bishop who died on the River Shiré; and of Steere the Bishop who sealed up the translation of the last chapter of Isaiah ready for the printer, and then fell asleep at Zanzibar; of Parker, the Bishop, wise and gentle, holy and self-restrained, who was called to his rest on the southern shores of Victoria Nyanza; of Wakefield and New; of Stern, Mayer and Flad; of Southon, the medical missionary, who died at Urambo; of dear Mullens, who could not hold himself back from the fight, and who sleeps in Usagára; of many a gentle ladies’ grave—for women have never been found wanting to share the honor and the danger of the Cross.” Robert N. Cust, L. L. D.

THE BOILING POT ORDEAL.

Mr. Arnot says of the Zambesi Valley: “A small company gathered in front of my hut, and began an animated discussion, which grew hotter and hotter, and shortly a large fire was kindled, and a pot of water set on it. I was told that this was a trial for witchcraft, and that the two persons charged had to wash their hands in the water, and if after twenty-four hours the skin came off, the victims were to be burnt alive. First one, then the other, dipt his hands into the fiercely-boiling water, lifting some up and pouring it over the wrist. Twenty-four hours told its tale, and I saw the poor fellows marched off to be burned before a howling, cursing crowd. Such scenes, I afterward found, were almost of daily occurrence.

“I proposed to the king to require both the accuser and the accused to put their hands into the boiling water. The king is strongly in favor of this proposal, and would try any means to stop this fearful system of murder, which is thinning out many of his best men, but the nation is so strongly in favor of the practice that753 he can do nothing. An old friend of mine, Wizini, who took quite a fatherly care and interest in me, was charged with witchcraft. He pleaded earnestly to be spared the terrible trial, and was reprieved because of his years, but he was banished from his people and country for life, for no other reason than that a neighbor had an ill-feeling against him. Had he been first to the king with his complaint, he might have seen his neighbor burned or banished instead of himself. I much missed this old man.

“When manners and customs are referred to, the particular district must be borne in mind. Africa is an immense continent, and there is as much variety in the customs of the different tribes as in their languages. Certain tribes take delight in cruelty and bloodshed; others have a religious fear of shedding human blood, and treat aged people with every kindness to secure their good-will after death. By other tribes the aged would be cast out as mere food for wild animals.”

THE ADVENTURES OF A SLAVE.

A lad who was recently baptized at the Baptist mission on the Congo, relates a strange story of his adventures. His name is Kayembe. When he was 10 years old an Arab caravan passed through the district in which he lived with his parents. His people lived in terror for nearly two months, part of the time in the jungle. One morning, the slavers came with drums and singing. Kayembe’s father, after throwing a spear at an assailant, was shot dead, and his hand cut off as a trophy. Kayembe fled to the jungle, but was caught by some Nyangwe men, who took him with them and went from town to town killing men and little children and catching the women. Children who tried to follow their mothers were beaten back. Finally Kayembe was taken to Stanley Falls, where he was sold to a state soldier, a Zanzibari. This man, when he was taken sick, sold him to a Hausa soldier, who, when his time was up, took him to Leopoldville, at Stanley Pool, and the lad fell into the hands of the mission as the personal boy of Mr. Biggs. After Mr. Biggs died, Kayembe manifested great grief and came under Mr. Bentley’s care, and a year ago professed to have given his heart to the Savior. He was not more than thirteen years old then, and754 his baptism was delayed, but both by his words and his life he has shown himself to be a Christian, and in March last he was baptized. His capture and the death of his father are a terrible memory to him, though he is full of thankfulness that he has come to learn of the Savior. He has chosen a small town, about an hour from Wathen, which he regards as his field for Christian work; thither he often goes to find an audience of fifteen or twenty.

ARAB CRUELTIES IN AFRICA.

Letters to the secretary of the Free Church Missionary Society, from East Central Africa show that the power of the Arabs in the region is rather decreasing, but they still continue formidable. Many of the native supporters of the Arabs are deserting to the missionaries. These latter and the agents of the African Lakes Company, with the assistance of friendly negroes, have been successful in keeping the Arabs somewhat in check, but the Arabs still destroy a number of the negroes. Many instances are recorded of the Arabs lying in ambush and shooting down natives as they make their way to and from their gardens. About three months ago the slavers, assisted by the Chief Merere, made a raid and destroyed a number of native villages at Ukume, killing, burning and plundering wherever they went. Many of the inhabitants escaped to the hills. Some thirty young women were taken captive, and afterward sold, the children crying for their murdered parents. Some of them were clubbed and others thrown into the flames from the burning huts. Much anxiety is felt regarding the fate of the white men on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.

A LION HUNT.

Col. Baker thus describes a lion hunt in the Shooli country: “The grass had been set on fire by the natives, but as the wind was light the game advanced at an easy pace. Presently I saw a splendid buck antelope advancing toward me. Just as I was going to fire, a long yellow tail suddenly rose, and an instant later a fine lion flashed into view, disturbed by the approaching flames. The lion and antelope crossed paths. Both seemed startled, but soon the755 antelope bounded away, leaving the lion with his head toward my position.

“Not wishing a closer acquaintance, I aimed directly at his chest and fired. The lion rolled completely over, roared tremendously, and turned three successive somersaults, but to my astonishment appeared to recover. I immediately fired my left-hand barrel. Quick as a flash he bounded toward me, and charged on my two native companions. I quickly snatched one of their guns and stepped out from behind the ant-hill which I had used for a cover. The beast appeared to be diverted from his charge by the suddenness of my movement, and turned as if to retreat. I let him have a full charge of back-shot in his hind-quarters, and he continued his retreat into the high grass.

“Groans now issued from the grass, and the natives proposed to attack the beast with spears if I would back them up with my rifle. We approached the spot and soon found the beast within the grass. I would not let the natives approach near enough to use their spears, but fired the right barrel of my rifle, at a distance of twenty yards. The immediate reply was a determined charge, and the infuriated beast came bounding toward us with mouth agape and roaring furiously. The natives threw their spears, but missed. I fired my left-hand barrel, but nothing was equal to the task of stopping that deadly charge. We all had to run for our lives, back to the protection of the ant-hill, where our reserve fire arms were. Snatching up a rifle, I fired directly into his heart, just as he had one of the natives fairly within reach. This sent him reeling backwards, and he beat a retreat to his original cover.

“I now quickly reloaded, and, ordering every one to keep out of the way, I walked cautiously toward his cover. There I saw him sitting on his haunches, and glaring savagely in a direction opposite to the one in which I was approaching. I aimed directly for his neck, at a distance of twelve yards, and must have broken it, for the beast fell over stone dead. It was a fine specimen, and had certainly afforded enough excitement for one day’s hunt. On cutting the beast open we discovered in its stomach the freshly eaten remains of an antelope calf, simply torn into lumps of two or three pounds757 each. The natives regarded this as too dainty a morsel to let escape, and so divided it among themselves for supper.”

A LION HUNT.

MOHAMMEDAN INFLUENCE.

Lieutenant Wissmann’s contribution to the “Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society,” throws light on the question of Mohammedanism and missions in West Central Africa. The writer’s experience of Mohammedan influences upon the native populations is in direct contrast with the assertion that the creed of Islam is that best suited to their needs. He gives a graphic account of two visits to Bagna Pesihi, and certain villages of the Bene Ki, a division of the Basonge, in Central Africa, before and after the arrival of a gang of Arab traders on the scene.

On the first occasion, he was welcomed by a prosperous and contented tribe, whose condition and occupations bore ample evidence to the existence of its villages for decades in peace and security, free from the disturbing elements of war and slave-hunts, pestilence and superstition. The huts of the natives were roomy and clean, fitted with shady porches, and surrounded by carefully kept fields and gardens, in which were grown all manner of useful plants and fruits including hemp, sugar, tobacco, sweet potatoes, maize, manioc and millet. A thicket of bananas and plantains occupied the back of each homestead, and shady palm groves supplied their owners with nuts, oils, fibers and wine. Goats, sheep and fowls abounded, and no one seemed afraid of thieves. The people all had a well-fed air, and were anxious to trade, their supplies being plentiful and extremely cheap. A fowl could be purchased for a large cowrie shell, and a goat for a yard of calico. Everywhere the visitors found a cheerful, courteous and contented population, uncontaminated by the vices of civilization, and yet not wholly ignorant of its arts.

Four years later Lieutenant Wissmann chanced to be in the same district, and after the privations of a toilsome march through dense, inhospitable forests, rejoiced as he drew near to the palm groves of the Bagna Pesihi. A dense growth of grass covered the formerly well-trimmed paths.

758

“As we approach the skirt of the groves we are struck by the dead silence which reigns. No laughter is to be heard, no sign of a welcome from our old friends. The silence of death breathes over the lofty crowns of the palms, slowly waving in the wind. We enter, and it is in vain we look to the right and left for the happy homesteads and the happy old scenes. Tall grass covers everything, and a charred pole here and there, and a few banana trees are the only evidences that a man once dwelt here. Bleached skulls by the roadside, and the skeletons of human hands attached to poles tell the story of what has happened here since our last visit.”

It appeared that the notorious Tippoo Tib had been there to “trade,” and in the course of that process had killed all who offered resistance, carried off the women, and devastated the fields, gardens and banana groves. Bands of destroyers from the same gang had returned again and again, and those who escaped the sword perished by the small-pox and famine, which the marauders left in their train. The whole tribe of the Bene Ki ceased to exist, and only a few remnants found refuge in a neighboring state.

Such must be counted amongst the results of Arab “trading” in Africa, and if it is at such cost that the blessings of Mohammedan civilization are purchased by the native races, it is no wonder that they are not considered a desirable acquisition. Even if it be true that Christianity is sometimes tardy of operation in its beneficent effects upon the blacks, Christian missionaries and Christian traders can at least boast that they have not wittingly acted otherwise than beneficently towards them.

A VICTIM OF SUPERSTITION.

The following incident is related by Bishop Crowther: “A slave who lived at Alenso was decoyed to a neighboring village under the pretence that he was appointed to offer a goat as a sacrifice to a dead man. On arrival at the house where the corpse was laid out, the goat was taken from the slave, and he was at once pounced on by two stalwart men and bound fast in chains. The poor man saw at once that he himself, not the goat, was to be the victim. He calmly addressed the people around, saying he was759 quite willing to die and need not be put in chains. A pipe was brought to him, which he smoked, a new cloth replaced his rags, and while he was having his last smoke the daughter of the deceased chief stood before him and began to eulogize her dead father, telling of his former greatness and achievements. The address was directed to the victim, that he might repeat the same to the inhabitants of the spirit world when he arrived there.

“The news of the intended sacrifice was soon circulated. It reached the ears of the missionary, Rev. J. Buck, who, with some Sierra Leone friends, hastened to the spot. A large hole had been already dug; the poor man was led into it, and ordered to lie on his back with his arms spread out. The missionary and his friends used all possible arguments, entreaties, and pleadings for his release, but in vain. They offered to give bullocks for sacrifice instead of the man, but these were flatly refused; and while they stood entreating, the corpse was brought and placed on the poor slave. He was then ordered to embrace it, and obeyed. The missionary and his friends turned away from the horrible sight as the grave was being filled, burying the living as a sacrifice with the dead.”

HEROIC WOMEN.

While great praise has been bestowed on certain heroic missionaries and explorers who have braved the dangers of Africa, little has been said concerning the women who have endured equal hardships amid the same hostile tribes and inhospitable climates. Mrs. Livingstone laid down her life while accompanying her husband on his second great tour in Africa. Mrs. Hore made her home for several years on an island in Lake Tanganyika. Mrs. Holub was with her husband when he was attacked by the natives and robbed of everything, and endured with him the hunger and fatigue of which they both well-nigh perished. Mrs. Pringle traveled in a canoe several hundred miles up the Zambesi and Shiré rivers to Lake Nyassa. Lady Baker was travelling companion to her husband when he discovered Albert Nyanza. And now we are told that three ladies will accompany Mr. Arnot and his wife as missionaries to Garenganze, and to accomplish the journey they will have760 to be carried in hammocks for hundreds of miles. Women who accompanied Bishop Taylor have shown a degree of courage in venturing into the perils of Africa which promise well for their heroic enterprise. “White women have certainly had their full share of the hardships and sufferings of pioneer work in Africa.”

MARY MOFFAT’S FAITH.

In the life of Robert Moffatt, first edited by their son, we are reminded that for ten years the early mission in Bechuana Land was carried on without one ray of encouragement for the faithful workers. No convert was made. The directors at home, to the great grief of the devoted missionaries, began to question the wisdom of continuing the mission. A year or two longer the darkness reigned. A friend from England sent word to Mrs. Moffat, asking what gift she should send out to her, and the brave woman wrote back: “Send a communion service, it will be sure to be needed.” At last the breath of the Lord moved on the hearts of the Bechuanas. A little group of six were united into the first Christian church, and that communion service from England, singularly delayed, reached Kuruman just the day before the appointed time for the administration of the Lord’s Supper.

TATAKA, LIBERIA.

“A word from Tataka Mission, this beautiful June day (June 6, 1889), may be interesting. A shower of rain has just fallen and everything looks refreshed, and as I sit on our veranda and look around I wish I could have some of my friends look at the fair picture. All nature is beautiful, but these darkened minds, as dark as their skins, can see no beauty in it. They never gather flowers, for their beauty; at times they bring in a few leaves and roots for medicine.

“At my right hand is a woman cutting wood. This is part of the women’s work, and they have learned the art of using their cutlasses so well, that, in a short time, they cut and carry on their heads more than I can raise from the ground.

“At this season the sounds of drum and dancing can be heard761 most every night in merry-making. After crops have been gathered, these poor creatures, to whom enough to eat is their all, spend their strength in dancing out their joy.

“The people recognize there is a God, but only in severe illness do they call on Him. Then their pitiful wail of ‘Oh, Niswa! Oh, Niswa!’ is touching. The devil is really their god and to him they pay rites and ceremonies and of him they are terribly afraid. We talk to them of God and heaven, of wrong and right, and they say: ‘Yes, it be good, but that be white man’s ‘fash,’ we be devil-men.’ They haven’t a desire beside their pot of rice and palm butter and mat to sleep on.

“Our little farm looks nicely now; 500 coffee trees just set out, a new lot of edoes and sweet potatoes and yams coming on, with plenty of rice in the house. Meat we seldom see, fish occasionally can be bought from the natives, but they catch but few and want them for their own ‘chop.’

“The laws and customs of this land are very loose. A man has just done another a foul wrong. He found he was to be called to account, and ran to another town to beg some of the ‘big’ men to go to his town and beg him off. As they say in English: ‘Please, I beg you, do your heart good; I beg you let it pass.’ And they are so persistent with their ‘m-ba-ta’s’ (I beg you), that you are glad to let them go. Thus evil goes unpunished.

“Another custom, that of buying women, is the most dreadful to us. A girl is chosen for a boy when he is still a growing lad. When he is a man and she about 15 to 17 he wants to take her to his house as his woman. He has to pay the whole price settled on: usually two bullocks, two goats, with some cloth, pots, etc. Then if he does not have the means to pay he goes to any man in his family, that is a ‘head man,’ and demands pay for his woman. Just this week one of our big men had to sell his little five-year-old daughter to get money to give his nephew to pay for his wife. Sometimes this is very hard for the parents to do, but their country fash demands it. Some one had to do the same for them. A second or third woman is bought by their own earnings or comes to them by the death of their brothers. When a man dies his women are divided among the nearest relatives, and are their762 women thereafter. The first one is head woman, and occupies the big house; each of the others has a small house.

“Every day’s experience shows us how difficult it is to do any real good among this Taboo people. They will shake you by the hand and smile in your face, but behind your back do all they can to overthrow the mission. The green-eyed monster jealousy lives here. A man cannot come out and say, I will do this or that; if he did, he would soon die.

“They will tell you with a good deal of pride, ‘We be devil-men.’” Rose A. Bower.

A NATIVE WAR DANCE.

When Baker arrived in the Obbo country, he found the people in a great state of excitement owing to the presence of a marauding band of Arabs who had announced a raid on the neighboring Madi people. While it was plain that the proposed raid was wholly for booty in slaves and ivory, the Obbo people were easily influenced, and found in it an opportunity to revenge themselves for some old or imaginary grievance.

They are a fine, athletic people, and somewhat fantastic, as things go in Central Africa. As nothing is ever done among them without a grand palaver, the chief called the tribe into consultation, which turned out to be a very formal affair. The warriors all appeared fully armed with spear and shield, and their bodies painted in various patterns with red ochre and white pipe clay. Their heads were ornamented with really tasteful arrangements of cowrie shells and ostrich feathers, the latter often hanging down their backs in graceful folds.

The consultation proceeded for some time with due regard to forms and with an apparent desire to get at a majority sentiment, when of a sudden it ended with an outburst from the warriors, and then filing away into sets or lines, each line indulging in pantomimic charges upon an imaginary enemy, and going through all the manœuvers of a fierce contest. Their activity was simply wonderful, and if they could have brought that show of vigorous athleticism and that terrible determination of countenance to bear upon their Madi enemies they must have carried consternation into764 their ranks. The exhilarating and ostentatious ceremony proved to be the national war-dance of the tribe, which takes place as a ratification of the results of a tribal palaver, when the sentiment has been unanimous for war.

NATIVE WAR-DANCE.

It was a pity to see these fine fellows so imposed upon by the wily Arabs, but they seemed to be wholly under their influence, for no sooner had the war-dance ended, which it did more through the exhaustion of the participants than through a desire to stop, than the chief arose and delivered a most voluble and vehement address, urging upon his warriors to assist the Arabs in their proposed raid and to beat the Madi people at all hazards. Several other speakers talked in a similar strain, with the effect of arousing the greatest enthusiasm. The result was that the Arab leader started on his raid with 120 of his own armed followers, surrounded and supported by the entire warlike force of the Obbos.

AFRICAN GAME LAWS.

Eastward of Lake Albert Nyanza is the Shooli country. In the midst of this tribe Col. Baker established Fort Fatiko. While awaiting reinforcements, he cultivated the friendship of the natives and soon found himself on excellent terms with them. The grass was fit to burn and the hunting season had fairly commenced. All the natives devote themselves to this important pursuit, for the chase supplies the Shooli with clothing. Though the women are naked, every man wears an antelope skin slung across his shoulders, so arranged as to be tolerably decent.

All the waste tracts of the Shooli and Unyoro country are claimed by individual proprietors who possess the right to hunt game therein by inheritance. Thus in Africa the principle of the English game preserve exists, though without definite metes and bounds. Yet a breach of their primitive game laws would be regarded by the public as a disgrace to the guilty individual, precisely as poaching is a disgrace in England.

The rights of game are among the first rudiments of property. Man in a primitive state is a hunter, depending for his clothing upon the skins of wild animals, and upon their flesh for his subsistence;765 therefore the beast that he kills upon the desert must be his property; and in a public hunt, should he be the first to wound a wild animal, he will have gained an increased interest or share in the flesh by having reduced the chance of its escape. Thus public opinion, which we must regard as the foundation of equity, rewards him with a distinct and special right, which becomes law.

It is impossible to trace the origin of game laws in Central Africa, but it is nevertheless interesting to find that such rights are generally acknowledged, and that large tracts of uninhabited country are possessed by individuals which are simply manorial. These rights are inherited, descending from father to the eldest son.

When the grass is sufficiently dry to burn, the whole thoughts of the community are centered upon sport. Baker, being a great hunter, associated with them. Their favorite method of hunting is with nets, each man being provided with a net, some 30 feet long and 11 feet deep. A council was called and it was decided that the hunt should take place on the manors of certain individuals whose property was contiguous.

At length the day of the hunt arrived, when several thousand people collected at a certain rendezvous, about nine miles distant from Fatiko, the best neighborhood for game. “At a little before 5 A.M.,” says Baker, “I started on my solitary but powerful horse, Jamoos. Descending the rocky terrace from the station at Fatiko, we were at once in the lovely, park-like glades, diversified by bold granite rocks, among which were scattered the graceful drooping acacias in clumps of dense foliage. Crossing the clear, rippling stream, we clambered up the steep bank on the opposite side, and, after a ride of about a mile and a half, we gained the water-shed, and commenced a gradual descent towards the west. We were now joined by numerous people, both men, women, and children, all of whom were bent upon the hunt. The men carried their nets and spears; the boys were also armed with lighter weapons, and the very little fellows carried tiny lances, all of which had been carefully sharpened for the expected game. The women were in great numbers, and upon that day the villages were quite deserted. Babies accompanied their mothers, strapped upon their766 backs with leathern bands, and protected from the weather by the usual tortoise-like coverings of gourd-shells. Thus it may be imagined that the Shooli tribe were born hunters, as they had accompanied the public hunts from their earliest infancy.

“As we proceeded, the number of natives increased, but there was no noise or loud talking. Every one appeared thoroughly to understand his duties. Having crossed the beautiful Un-y-Amé river, we entered the game country. A line of about a mile and a half was quickly protected by netting, and the natives were already in position.

“Each man had lashed his net to that of his neighbor and supported it with bamboos, which were secured with ropes fastened to twisted grass. Thus the entire net resembled a fence, that would be invisible to the game in the high grass, until, when driven, they should burst suddenly upon it.

“The grass was as dry as straw, and several thousand acres were to be fired up to windward, which would compel the animals to run before the flames, until they reached the netting placed a few paces in front, where the high grass had been purposely cleared to resist the advance of the fire. Before each section of net, a man was concealed both within and without, behind a screen, simply formed of the long grass tied together at the top.

“The rule of sport decided that the proprietor of each section of netting of twelve yards length would be entitled to all game that should be killed within these limits, but that the owners of the manors which formed the hunt upon that day should receive a hind-leg from every animal captured.

“This was fair play; but in such hunts a breach of the peace was of common occurrence, as a large animal might charge the net and receive a spear from the owner of the section, after which he might break back, and eventually be killed in the net of another hunter; which would cause a hot dispute.

“The nets had been arranged with perfect stillness, and the men having concealed themselves, we were placed in positions on the extreme flanks with the rifles.

“Everything was ready, and men had already been stationed at regular intervals about two miles to windward, where they waited767 with their fire-stick for the appointed signal. A shrill whistle disturbed the silence. This signal was repeated at intervals to windward. In a few minutes after the signal, a long line of separate thin pillars of smoke ascended into the blue sky, forming a band extending over about two miles of the horizon.

“The thin pillars rapidly thickened, and became dense volumes, until at length they united, and formed a long black cloud of smoke that drifted before the wind over the bright yellow surface of the high grass. The natives were so thoroughly concealed, that no one would have supposed that a human being besides ourselves was in the neighborhood. The wind was brisk, and the fire travelled at about four miles an hour. We could soon hear the distant roar, as the great volume of flame shot high through the centre of the smoke.

“Presently I saw a slate-colored mass trotting along the face of the opposite slope, about 250 yards distant. I quickly made out a rhinoceros, and I was in hopes that he was coming towards me. Suddenly he turned to my right, and continued along the face of the inclination.

“Some of the beautiful leucotis antelope, here known as gemsbock, being of a small variety, now appeared and centered towards me, but halted when they approached the stream, and listened. The game understood the hunting as well as the natives. In the same manner that the young children went out to hunt with their parents, so had the wild animals been hunted together with their parents ever since their birth.

“The leucotis now charged across the stream; at the same time a herd of hartebeest dashed past. I knocked over one, and with the left-hand barrel I wounded a leucotis. At this moment a lion and lioness, that had been disturbed by the fire in our rear, came bounding along. I was just going to take a shot, when, as my finger was on the trigger, I saw the head of a native rise out of the grass exactly in the line of fire; then another head popped up from a native who had been concealed, and rather than risk an accident I allowed the lions to pass. In one magnificent bound they cleared the stream, and disappeared in the high grass.

“The fire was advancing rapidly, and the game was coming up768 fast. A small herd of leucotis crossed the brook, and I killed another, but the smoke had become so thick that I was nearly blinded. It was at length impossible to see; the roar of the fire and the heat were terrific, as the blast swept before the advancing flames, and filled the air and eyes with fine black ashes. I literally had to turn and run hard into fresher atmosphere to get a gasp of cool air, and to wipe my streaming eyes. Just as I emerged from the smoke, a leucotis came past, and received both the right and left bullets in a good place, before it fell.

“The fire reached the stream and at once expired. The wind swept the smoke on before, and left in view the velvety black surface, that had been completely denuded by the flames.

“The natives had killed many antelopes, but the rhinoceros had gone through their nets like a cobweb. Several buffaloes had been seen, but they had broken out in a different direction. I had placed five antelopes to my credit in this day’s sport.”

VIVI, ON THE CONGO.

“Vivi could be made a beautiful place, if we only had water, but this is a big if, and yet I think not impossible. Last Sabbath I went to the villages and preached to one king and some of his people. He seemed interested and said I must come again. Then we went to another village, where they were having a palaver over a sick man. There were many men, women, boys, and even babies present.

“Their ngongo (or doctor) was seated in the midst, with the sick man near by. The doctor had a cloth spread out in front of him on the ground, that contained nearly everything—vegetable, mineral, animal, birds’ claws, chickens’ feet, goats’ feet and hides, teeth and claws of wild animals. There were also roots, nuts, dirt and many other things. There were some leaves lying on top of this collection, with something on them that reminded me of a cow’s cud, half-chewed, which he fixt up as a dose.

“He divided the cud in three parts, placing one part in a wooden dish with some leaves. Then he cut off bits of roots or something, and put in each of these three piles, taking at the same time a769 little of each in his mouth. After chewing it quite thoroughly, he spit several times on each pile. After water had been poured on it, the dish was surrounded by the women. Then he squeezed the juice out of the little heaps in the dish. At two different times the sick man took a swallow of the juice. Then the doctor took a sharp knife and cut his own tongue, till it bled freely. The blood ran down on a staff and a green leaf that lay in front of him; then he took up the leaf and staff and rubbed the blood on different parts of his body. This, with much more nonsense, was carried on, when I tried to get a hearing, but nothing of this kind could be done till the palaver was over, and the sick man was finished.

“I like Vivi, and as we must have a receiving and transport station here, I am doing what I can to make it a success. In addition to repairing the buildings already here, I am going to put up some stone buildings. They will not be expensive, as stone is abundant, and much more durable than wood for building, being fire and ant-proof. I am also trying to do something in the way of self-support by getting around me some cattle, sheep, goats, ducks, chickens, pigeons, etc.; and growing such native fruits and produce as do well here at Vivi. This will be convenient in the event of war, smallpox or famine—I mean such famine as might occur from not being able to get supplies from home or here, at the time we need them. Mr. McKitrick, a gentleman of the A. B. M. U. Mission, called a few days ago, saying they could not buy a goat or chicken on the south side of the river. In the past few days the Baptists and traders have been over here buying chickens. Soon, unless some one turns his attention to raising these things, there will be none to buy. They bring now one piece and a half (thirty to fifty cents) for one fowl.

“The chief wanted to buy 100 fowls from me a few days ago. With a ready sale for all the sheep, goats, ducks, chickens, etc., can you not see self-support in the future for Vivi?

“Nearly every steamer brings many Europeans, State men, and missionaries, and they are paid salaries, and expect to buy their living instead of producing it. They cannot depend on the natives for supplies; they must be raised by some one else or770 be imported. Now these are my reasons why I think self-support should not be lost sight of.

“All our live stock is doing well, though this is the hard pull for them, if there is any; for we have had no rain for about four months, and will have none for about three months more. Sheep and goats do well here. This is no experiment. The calves, I may soon say cattle, are doing finely. If two will do well here, twenty or thirty will do the same, as there is an immense range for them to graze over.

“My father keeps a herd of nice wild cattle about a half day’s walk from here. He has already given me two whole bullocks since I came to Vivi, and also two large deer as big as mules, and a good deal better. I really think shipping meat from America or England will soon be a thing of the past.

“The buffalo and deer here are likely to last a good while, for though they are frequently shot at, few are killed. A buffalo I killed a few days ago had in it two slugs, shot by the natives, I suppose. They are a sturdy animal, willing to defend themselves and their young to the death, and desperate when at bay.

BUFFALO DEFENDING HER YOUNG.

“This country will produce an abundance, but white men must show the natives how to do it. It is here now as it used to be in California. The last ten years of my life were spent on the Pacific Coast, when thousands of people returned from there, abusing the people and the country. I have met train after train of returning emigrants, who said: “Go back! go back! go back to God’s country! People are starving; all are lies about California and Oregon being good countries; on all the Pacific Coast there are no places for poor people.”

“But all this did not stop the emigration west, and the Pacific slope has proved a rich country. Persons come to Africa, and return giving bad reports; still they come, and will come, for this country has great advantages.” Rev. J. C. Teter.

RUM ON THE CONGO.

Bishop Newman has presented to Congress a memorial from the World’s W. C. T. U. praying that immediate and decisive steps be772 taken to suppress the liquor traffic in the Congo Free State and the basin of the Niger. The memorial shows that during 1885 more than 10,000,000 gallons of the cheapest and vilest spirits ever manufactured were sent from the United States, Germany, Holland, England, France, and Portugal to the natives of Africa. The quantities contributed by the different nations were:

United States, 737,650 gallons; Germany, 7,823,000 gallons; the Netherlands, 1,099,146 gallons; France (“pure alcohol”), 406,000 gallons; England, 311,400 gallons; Portugal, 91,524 gallons.

The memorial, continuing, says that abundant evidence proves that this deadly rum has developed in the natives an alcoholic passion almost without parallel, and has sunk them into a state of degradation lower than they occupied before they had contact with our commerce and civilization. The march of commerce will soon place the rum traders in communication with over 50,000,000 of savages, and unless the traffic is totally suppressed, the result will be most disastrous to the cause of humanity, a reproach to the Christian nations who supply it, and an outrage second only to the slave trade itself.

The purposes of the memorial and of the arguments made by Bishop Newman and Mr. Hornady are to bring about such a revision of the General Act of the Berlin Conference as shall completely suppress the liquor traffic in the territory in question; to obtain a law from Congress prohibiting the exportation of liquor from this country to any part of Africa, and to persuade the United States Government to use its influence to induce other governments to co-operate.

PALAVERING.

The council, consultation, or palaver, is one of Africa’s fixed institutions. We have unfortunately, and unfairly, adopted the word “palaver” to express our notion of what the natives regard with all seriousness, and what is, in their polity, as necessary as an American deliberative body or a treaty-making power are to us. A “palaver” is an idle talk. An African palaver may appear to be very idle to us, and considering its length—sometimes days and even weeks—it is a terrible bore to white people who have to wait till it ends.

773

The palaver is universal in Africa. Every village has its council place, its assembly hut or its palaver tree. Palaver proceedings are always formal and deliberate. There must be a palaver in order to declare war and make peace. When one tribe, or chief, asks anything of another, it must be granted or refused, through a palaver. Visits of white people to a tribe, the right to remain, to trade, to build, to preach, and to go away again, are all subjects requiring a palaver. Bishop Taylor has found it to be a capital way of making a Christian impression on the minds of his African auditors, to call them together in sacred palaver, and he secures their assent to such doctrines as they accept, as results of a palaver rather than as individual professions.

When parties of native travelers meet in desert, plain or forest, there is always a consultation, or palaver. Notes are compared in this way, intentions are expressed, views are made known. The palaver, or council, is thus the parliament and newspaper of Africa. It runs all through the country, just as do the traveling paths, which extend from ocean to ocean. You meet it in Bechuanaland, on the Zambesi, at Bihè, on Nyassa, Tanganyika, Victoria Nyanza, the Nile, Congo, Niger, Gambia. Sekhomo of Kalihari, squats with his council on burning sands. Mtesa of Uganda, holds a council as lordly as the Shah of Persia. Iboko of the Congo, palavers for nine days over the landing of a little steamer.

Irksome as the palaver must prove to white people, it ought not to be forgotten that natives enjoy it, and its sessions are valves for the escape of passions which otherwise might result in great harm.

EMIN PASHA AT ZANZIBAR.

For weeks after the arrival of Stanley and his rescuing party at Zanzibar, the life of Emin Pasha, on account of his severe accident, was despaired of. Indeed, not until a very late period has he been able to communicate with any one. Meanwhile, rumors of difference between him and Stanley became current, and the opinion was entertained that Emin would not go to Europe at all, but only awaited an opportunity to return again to his abandoned provinces.

774

SEKHOMO AND HIS COUNCIL.

775

One of his first visitors, after his illness, was an American journalist, who secured the following points:

“The American people would very much like you to say, in plain language, Pasha, so that all may fully understand, why you left your post and came out with Mr. Stanley?”

“Well, you see,” replied Emin, “Mr. Stanley brought orders from the Khedive of Egypt for me to return with him. I am an Egyptian officer, and have no option but to obey the Khedive’s orders. I did not wish to leave, and if the Khedive should order me back again to-morrow, and would provide me with men and means to maintain my position, I would return with the greatest pleasure.”

“Do you wish the American public to understand, then, Pasha, that you could have maintained your position and were under no necessity of coming away with Mr. Stanley, had you not received orders from the Khedive to do so?”

“I think if Mr. Stanley would have consented to wait, much could have been done. Things had got to be very bad, however, and Mr. Stanley would not wait. He seemed only anxious that I and my people, the Egyptians, should go as quickly as we could with him to the coast.”

“Were you and your people in great need of assistance when Mr. Stanley reached you, Pasha?”

“We were very glad to have Mr. Stanley come to our relief, of course, and we all feel very grateful to the people of England for the great interest they have taken in us; but we were in no great need of anything but ammunition. Food was very plenty with us.

“The soldiers had gardens, cows, wives, and plenty of everything to eat. They were much better off than they ever had been in Egypt or the Soudan. They had come to regard the province as their home and had no wish to ever return to Egypt. They considered that they were fighting for their homes, and so fought well and bravely so long as there was a chance of success and the hope of assistance from our friends without. It was only when there was no longer anything to hope for, and when we read to them the message that they must leave with Mr. Stanley or never expect any more assistance from the Egyptian Government, that they began to waver in their allegiance to me. Poor fellows, what could they do?776 They didn’t wish to leave; the Khalifa’s forces were advancing up the Nile, they now had everything to gain and nothing to lose by turning against me. I do not blame them; they are but Africans, and nothing else was to be expected of them.

“Mr. Stanley was in such haste to go, he would not wait. If Mr. Stanley had consented to wait we might have pushed forward stations to the northeast corner of the Victoria Nyanza, and there we could have met the English Company’s caravans. I do not know Mr. Stanley’s reasons for being in such a hurry to leave. Perhaps he himself will tell you this.” (Mr. Stanley had already said that after getting Emin and as many of his people who wanted to go, together, at Kavalis, his great concern was to get them safely to the coast. As for attempting to open new roads with a crowd of helpless women and children in his charge, he couldn’t think of such a thing, etc.)

“It was rumored that you had vast stores of ivory in hand, Pasha; what of that?”

“Ivory! I had collected for the Government more than 6,000 fine large tusks since our communication had been cut off. I had ivory enough, if I could have got it to market, to have paid off all the back salaries of my people, and have had a handsome surplus besides.” (Six thousand fine large tusks would weigh in the neighborhood of 200 American tons, worth in Zanzibar about $6,000 per ton. The value in Emin’s stations would, of course, in no wise approach this great sum of value—$1,200,000. Emin told the writer that he valued his stores of ivory, as they lay in his stations, at about £70,000.)

“We couldn’t bring it with us,” the Pasha continued, “so I threw most of it into the Nile to prevent the enemy from getting it. Some, however, in outlying stations I intrusted to the care of friendly native chiefs, not knowing what chances and what opportunities time might bring.”

THE SAS TOWN TRIBE OF WEST AFRICA.

“The officers of this tribe are as follows:

“The ‘town master’ is really emperor, as in him is vested the power of life and death. If the tribe wishes to disobey a town777 master’s commands, they must kill him first. This is done in so many instances that few town masters die a natural death.

“The ‘ground king’ is their weather prophet, and he is supposed to manufacture the weather. He may be king for only a month or two, seldom long, as the weather he makes may not suit.

“Their ‘soldier king’ answers to our general in the army.

“They have three ‘butchers,’ who do all the killing for the feasts.

“Their ‘town lawyer’ answers to our attorney-general.

“The duty of their ‘peace-maker’ is what his name indicates.

“They have thirty old men or chiefs, whose duties are to watch the town and people, and to act as the king’s cabinet.

“The laws of the tribe are made by the king and his cabinet. Some of them are curious, and sometimes severe. For instance, one law forbids the town master and the butchers from ever leaving the town, on pain of death. Another is that when a person is accused of witchery, he or she must drink the deadly saswood, or have their brains knocked out. This tea is a potion from the saswood tree, which grows all over this country and is a deadly poison. To make sure of its full effect, the suspected person is made to drink a copious draft. As this is likely to produce emesis, the large quantity is often their salvation.

“These people are so superstitious that they will not leave a hole in their house open at night for fear of being witched.

“Here polygamy has all the evils of that life. If a wife is dissatisfied with her husband, she can run away to any man she chooses, and he must receive her, and pay to her former husband the price he paid for her. This may put the second man to quite a disadvantage, often giving him more wives than he can pay for. The lot of a wife is very hard. She must make the farm, grow all the rice, carry all the wood, seven or eight miles, on her head, and do all the cooking. Besides this she must stand all the ill-temper of her jealous husband, and this, perhaps, with a baby strapped on her back.

“When a man thinks one of his wives is unchaste, he gets a pan of palm-oil, and heating it as hot as he can, he makes the wife put her hand in and pick up a stone from the bottom of the pan; his778 theory being, that, if his charge be true, the oil will catch fire and burn her hand. If this does not satisfy him, the poisonous draught of the saswood is resorted to.

“These people eat nearly everything that grows, animal or vegetable. I have seen them eat elephant lungs, green ants, chicken heads and intestines. When they kill a bullock, they eat all of him, even cooking the hide with the hair on. As I said, everything goes for food, even rotten bananas. But with all of their rotten chop, they are healthy, strong and vigorous men, women and children.

“Their only garment is about four feet of cloth, for all those above sixteen years of age; those younger go entirely naked.

“They all sleep on the bare ground with a stick for a pillow, and of course, skin diseases are quite prevalent.

“They are a kind people to one another. I have stood at the spring, when the women were coming after water, which they carry in four-gallon pots on the top of their head, and one always helps the other to lift her load up, and so it is in everything. If a party of natives are together, and you give them a banana, it is divided between every one of them. I very seldom hear a baby cry; and I must say that here babies have a chance to live, as they are not weaned for two years, and are humored in every way.

“The Sas-Town tribes work hard for the white man, for very little pay. I have seen a woman carry a box, weighing 120 pounds, two and a half miles for two leaves of tobacco, worth one and one-eighth cents.

“These people are ignorant, but willing and quick to learn. They have some natural orators among them, as I have seen at their ‘palavers.’” C. E. Gunnison.

AN INTERRUPTED JOURNEY.

When Livingstone was marching down the valley of the Zambezi, and had crossed its great northern affluent, the Loangwe, he found himself and party of carriers in the midst of a dense forest. All of his riding oxen had been killed by the tsetse fly, except one, and this had been so reduced in strength as to be unable to carry779 the traveler more than half the time. Therefore such a thing as forced journeys were out of the question. There was nothing to do but to proceed leisurely, and this the party were doing,—pushing now through thick clumps of forest, and now through tangled bush, as best they might.

While thus threading their way through a forest clump, there was a rush and a roar off to the left, and almost instantly three huge buffaloes made their appearance, running as if they been badly frightened in the direction whence they came. As the bush was thick and high, they evidently did not see that their course was directly athwart that of the traveling party, and so they rushed right into the midst of the carriers, before they had time to clear the way. Livingstone’s ox, frightened at the unexpected dash, made a plunge forward, nearly throwing its rider off, but thereby escaping the fury of the charging buffaloes. When he turned, he saw one of his carriers flying through the air at a height of twenty feet, having been tossed by the foremost of the animals, whose fright seems to have been turned into rage at sight of human beings.

AN INTERRUPTED JOURNEY.

The buffaloes rushed by and Livingstone hastened to his carrier, expecting to find him dead or badly gored. But strange to say he was only bruised and frightened, and was quickly able to resume his load. On inquiry, Livingstone found that the carrier had drawn his misfortune on himself. Instead of doing as the others had done, making for a friendly tree, he had thrown down his load, and as the leading buffalo was dashing by, he had given it a vicious stab in the side, whereupon the beast had savagely turned upon him and sent him high into the air.

IN MONROVIA.

“The heathen that leap out of the vices and degradation and superstition and the deep darkness of their former lives, into active, working, intelligent Christians, are, I am inclined to think, the product of a facile pen from an overhopeful brain. It is not easy to shake off lifetime habits, customs hoary, and to them venerable, because their ancestors as far back as can be traced, have practiced781 them, and at once ascend into the region of a sublime faith, and from visible objects and ceremonies whereby wrath of the great demon power is averted, and his favor propitiated, turn to the King, invisible, immortal.

“The cerements of old superstition enwrap them. Neither can we ‘loose him and let him go’ the moment the new desires are born in him. His efforts are something like a child that is just learning to walk; he takes a step or two, wavers and drops back into some past habit, but like a child he is helped up and put on his feet again. I went down to Krutown last week to school. I heard tom-toms and saw the people on one street out for a gala day—all ‘dressed up,’ The women were painted with different kinds of clay, and had a great quantity of leopard teeth around their wrists and neck, plenty of brass anklets and armlets, and a towel or breakfast shawl thrown loosely and gracefully over one shoulder. Quite a number had on a cloth extending nearly to their feet, but all their bodies were bare to the hips; a great many held silk umbrellas over their heads, and all had a self-conscious air of being ‘well dressed.’ I went on and opened school. One of my Bible scholars was absent, a man of 40 or 45, who had learned to read, and showed such a meek and quiet spirit. I named him Fletcher. I asked where Fletcher was. ‘Him got a new wife, you no see that big play? Well that be him friends making for him.’ Next day he was in his place as usual. I asked why he took another wife. ‘Mammy, the woman done run away from him husband and come to me, and I no fittee send him back; I take him.’ That was all there was, no feeling of having done wrong. Polygamy is the greatest obstacle one meets in this part of Africa. The women are ashamed to belong—yes, belong, for the man buys her—to a man who is so poor he cannot buy more than one or two wives. It is not the patriarchal system some think, for the women are every now and then running away to some other man. Some never say a word, but let the man have his wife, others demand the amount the husband paid for her, others again make a big palaver. A court is called and after several hearings, which sometimes last two and three weeks, the wife is restored or returned to her husband, and both seem satisfied. It is almost impossible to do any teaching or782 evangelistic work when one man’s wife runs away to another man—the latter’s friends make merry by beating tom-toms, singing, dancing and drinking rum.

“These are some of the things that a missionary has to meet, and which greatly retard the work. Then time has no value to them. Plenty of chop, and not a desire and not an emotion beyond that. Like the prostrate figure in Peale’s Court of Death, the head and feet touch the waters of oblivion. So with the heathen here; the past and the future are alike impenetrable, incomprehensible.” Mary Sharp.

A SAMPLE SERMON.

The following is a sample sermon in Kru English which has been found well adapted for the comprehension of the Cavalla river natives:

Niswa make many worlds. Most of the stars are worlds much larger than this world, and I believe Niswa has plenty good people in all of them. The devils once had “their habitation” in one of those great worlds. They were good spirits then, and very strong, but they live for make bad and fight against Niswa, and were driven away from their home, and “fell like lightning from heaven,” and they hide away in the dark caves of our world. They be fit to live in this world till it finish. Then all the devils that come down from their great world, and all the bad people of this world will be condemned at Niswa’s judgment seat and be sent down to hell—“the place prepared for the devil” and all his followers. There they will all be locked in forever.

This world is one of the little worlds that Niswa made, and for people for this world he made one man and one woman, and join them together as man and wife. The man and his wife were clean and pure like Niswa.

One fine day the chief devil of all the army of them came and make palaver with the woman, and she make palaver with her husband, and the man and woman got bad, and join the devil in his rebellion against Niswa. As soon as they turned against Niswa and joined the devil’s army to fight against Him, the devil-nature struck right through them. Then they were called to783 answer at the bar of justice before the great King, and were found guilty and condemned to die. Their bodies be fit to rot in the ground, and their spirits to be turned with all the devils into hell forever. The Saswood cup of death and hell was put into the hands of the man and woman to drink. Niswa has one Son just like himself. Not a son born of a mother. Niswa no be born of a woman. He be Niswa without “beginning of days or end of life.” So His Beloved Son, just like Him, be without “beginning of days or end of life.” Niswa and his Son look at the man and woman and their cup of death and feel very sorry for them. Then the Son pray, “O Father, let me ransom this man and woman and all their seed.” Then Niswa and his Beloved Son have palaver, and make agreement about the man and woman. The Father agree to give His Son a ransom for them. The Son agree at a set time to join himself to a son born from “the seed of the woman” and live with her children, and show them the mind, the light, the love of Niswa; and teach them all Niswa’s good ways, and then drink their Saswood cup of death—to die for them, and the third day after to rise again from the dead, to be forever their living redeemer, their lawyer in Niswa’s court, and their doctor to heal them.

THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA.

The extent of European territorial annexation of Africa, provisional, protective or positive, is quite surprising even to those who have kept pretty close watch of it. Of the eleven millions of square miles in Africa, six and one-half millions are attached to some European power; and of the four and a half unattached parts, half lie within the desert of Sahara.

That, therefore, is to say that all the continent of Africa that is habitable, except about two million square miles, is under European domination. Europe has annexed Africa. The “British East African Company” is practically another European State in Africa, for it is granted full powers to levy taxes and customs and to maintain an armed force. Whether another generation will look upon all this as civilized brigandage, or whether it is any better than free-booting of any other type, does not materially affect the facts784 in the case. The British government, through its colonial or foreign office, nevertheless has authorized this company (new State) to carry on high piracy of much of the finest land in Central Africa filled with an industrious population, said to number about Lake Nyanza alone twelve millions of people. We are told that the company is composed of philanthropic gentlemen in London, and we have no doubt but that the ultimate result will be good—“the Earth will help the woman”—but it is nevertheless difficult to detect any under-lying moral principle above

And while the lion and the lamb in this millennial reign lie down together in peace, it is because the lamb is inside of the lion.

But Great Britain is not alone in this missionary zeal that “out of the eater shall come forth meat and out of the strong shall come forth sweetness,” though her “sphere of influence” is a million square miles of the Dark Continent. France exercises the sweet charities of modern politics over 700,000 square miles, and Germany seeks to convert, en bloc, if not to Christianity, at least to modern German trade-gain, 200,000 square miles, about which she now disputes, to add to the 740,000 she has without debate already. Meanwhile the king of Portugal takes “military occupation” of a tract of land north of Loanda and creates an “attachment” for it to the king of Portugal; and the British government “annexes” that part of the Gold Coast between Cape Coast Castle and the delta of the Niger; and what with treaties, “military operations” and “protectorates,” Africa becomes rapidly a sort of “country store” run by European merchants.

Barring the radical ethical question in the case, perhaps we may rejoice in the bare hope that all this is “casting up the highway for the progress of Christianity;” but if what with rum and gunpowder these races are to be “civilized off the face of the Earth,” as we have done with our native American races, it would seem that there must nevertheless be a great reckoning day with the Christian powers, that they could find no better way of developing Africa than by fertilizing her soil with the carcasses of her sons.

785

LIONS AND A GIRAFFE.

The lions of Africa are night prowlers. Very few have ever seen them seize their prey in the day-time. Capt. Anderson once witnessed such a scene. Late one evening he badly wounded a lion, and on the following morning set out with his attendants to track the game and complete the capture. “Presently,” he writes, “we came upon traces of a troop of lions and a giraffe. The tracks were thick and confusing, and while we were trying to pick out those of the wounded lion, I observed my native attendants suddenly rush forward, and the next instant the jungle resounded with their shouts of triumph.

“Thinking they had discovered the object of our search, I hurried forward; but imagine my surprise when, emerging into an opening in the jungle, I saw, not the dead lion, as I had expected, but five living lions—two males and three females—two of whom were engaged in pulling down a splendid giraffe, the other three watching close at hand, and with devouring look, the deadly strife.

“The scene was of so unusual and exciting a nature that for the moment I quite forgot I carried a gun. The natives, however, in expectation of a glorious feast, dashed madly forward with the most piercing shrieks, and their yells compelled the lions to beat a hasty retreat. When I reached the giraffe, now stretched at full length on the ground, it made a few ineffectual attempts to raise its head, fell over, heaving and quivering throughout its entire body, and at length straightened itself out in death. An examination showed several deep gashes about the breast and flanks, made by the claws of the fierce assailants. The strong and tough muscles of the elongated neck were also bitten through in many places. All thought of further pursuit of the wounded lion was now out of the question. The natives now gathered about the dead giraffe, and did not desist from feasting upon it till its entire carcass had been devoured. A day or two afterwards, however, I came upon the bloody tracks of my royal antagonist, and had the pleasure of finishing him with a well directed bullet from my rifle.”

786

LIONS PULLING DOWN A GIRAFFE.

787

KILIMANJARO.

In passing southward from Lake Albert Nyanza, Stanley and the rescued Emin, together with their large party, skirted a lofty range of mountains, whose highest peak is Kilimanjaro, which has lately been ascended for the distance of 16,500 feet, to the snow line, by two German scientists and explorers, thus giving it a distinct place in geography, and setting it forth as one of the most interesting of natural objects.

The region is south of the great Uganda and Unyoro tribes, and had, up to Stanley’s trip through it, never been visited by a traveler of note except Thomas Stevens and Dr. Abbott, who thus narrate what they saw:—

“First we determined to pay a visit to the chief of Machawe in order to make purchases of food, and besides, we anticipated much pleasure in visiting a chief who had never yet set eyes on a white man. Our way led through a very charming plain country, very African in its appearance. The gently undulating plains were dotted with small cones of a hundred feet, or thereabout, in height, so small, symmetrical and uniform in shape as to suggest bubbles floating on the green waves of the plain. Rhinoceri, giraffes, antelopes, buffalo and zebra abounded in great numbers, roaming over the free, broad plains like herds of cattle. Whenever we knocked over any of these, it was very refreshing and soothing to the spirits to see the very men who but yesterday had declared ‘the nyama was not food’ fling down their loads and quarrel violently over big chunks of that very article. As we neared the approaches to Machawe, we came upon a party of Masai women and donkeys, wending their way towards Sigarari with loads of vegetable food, which they had purchased at the former place or at Kibonoto. These were the first real Masai women we had seen. They were not such as to give us a very favorable idea of their sex in Sigarari. All were old and atrociously ugly, it being customary, for obvious reasons, to send the ancient dames of the clan on these food-purchasing expeditions, rather than the possessors of youth and beauty.

“Even though the Masai and their agricultural neighbors may be at war, and the men of either side would, if caught, be brutally788 speared, it is the custom to let the women pass back and forth unmolested to trade. Africans, even the Masai, who are supposed to be chiefly devoted to war and raiding for cattle, are above all else commercial in their instincts. It appears that, with all their savagery, choice scraps of wisdom are to be picked up among these people here and there. Who could imagine the armies of two European countries proceeding against each other while the trade across the frontier flourished unimpaired in the care of their women?

“We camped near a swamp, in which we found abundant signs of elephants, but saw none of them, and in the morning proceeded to Machawe. Machawe is the largest and most populous of the Kilimanjaro States, and, with its neighbor, Kibonoto, occupies the western extremity of the cultivatable plateau that distinguishes the mountain on its southern slopes. Though the largest, it is the least known to Europeans, and so we looked forward to a novel and interesting visit to its Sultan and people.

“The approaches to Machawe consist of the usual narrow, tortuous paths, leading through dense thickets of scrubby and thorny vegetation, and instead of gates the defenses by this route are deep, narrow ravines, which have been trimmed down and deepened into big trenches. A pole thrown across one of these ditches forms a bridge, which the natives, sure of foot as monkeys, cross over and, in times of war, remove.

“Crossing these obstacles with no little difficulty, we at once found ourselves in the proximity of banana groves, and objects of more than usual interest to swarms of bronze-skinned warriors who had in a remarkably short time collected on the adjacent ridges. We wondered where they had all come from so quickly. They were by no means certain of our intentions, and for some time held aloof, watching us with the keenest interest. At length we managed to make them understand that our intentions were commercial only, and a few of the more venturesome individuals came and pointed out a place for us to camp. After much talkee-talkee with an ancient and exceedingly peaceful-looking savage in a greasy goat-skin toga and anklets of the same material, we sent off a present to the Sultan and stated our intention of paying him a visit next day.

“Our delegation was hospitably entertained by the chief, with a789 goat and big jars of pombe, but the men were kept in the royal boma until our appearance next day; this as a guarantee, so we afterwards understood, that we would keep our promise and come to see him. He was most anxious to receive us, and particularly requested that the entire caravan might be brought to his residence.

“We had no idea how far it was nor how difficult might be the way. It turned out to be up hill and down dale for many trying miles, through banana plantations of astonishing area and across clear, cold mountain streams that nearly swept us off our feet.

“The country was lovely, a chaotic jumble of narrow hills and dales and the whole sloping gently up towards Kibo and clothed with luxuriant vegetation of every shade of green. Everywhere could be heard the music of mountain streams coursing over rocky beds at the bottom of the cañons or leaping and tumbling over cataracts or down rapids. Between the banana plantations stood little patches of primeval forest, and about them, so characteristic of Chaga, were the charming little parks we have noted in Marangu. The groves are believed to be peopled with the shades of their ancestors, and native offerings are placed before the trees. Troops of big reddish baboons also make the groves and the little parks their homes.

“Irrigating ditches were everywhere, and narrow lanes of dracæna hedges divided the plantations. At length we came to a halt on a strip of sward, at the brink of a formidable cañon several hundred feet deep, down which coursed one of the largest streams we had yet encountered. Our guides wanted to conduct us across this, but we had grown tired of the interminable slippery paths and the ascending and descending steep ravines, and so decided to form camp on this extremely interesting spot. No more charming situation could be imagined. Five hundred feet below us a torrent, clear as crystal, cold and fresh from the glaciers of Kibo, tumbled and foamed over the rocks or raced along with gurgling tones. Immediately beyond the chasm a broad table-land of parks and groves and banana plantations stretched away with a slope of one in twenty. The variegated shades of green in the irregular patchwork of forest, park and field, made a most delightful study in colors. Nor was this all nature had to show our wondering eyes790 in Machawe. Hundreds of warriors, with spear and shield, their naked forms the only dark objects in the landscape, showed out in bold contrast and picturesque relief against the green ground-work of their surroundings as they stood and squatted in dense groups or stretched in long, irregular lines along the opposite brink of the cañon. Beyond all this was a dense mass of cloud that rested on the farther reaches of the green table-land and hid almost the whole of Kilimanjaro. But not all, for the higher strata of the clouds sometimes broke and revealed the eternal wreath of snow on Kibo, at whose very base we now seemed to be standing. Some day an artist will come and paint this picture I have feebly attempted to describe and make himself famous.

“Our first impression of the Sultan, or chief, was not very favorable. He was a young man of medium stature, under thirty, but he looked like a drunkard and debauchee and a decided expression of brutishness marked his face. His voice was thick and husky, but whether from extreme indulgence in pombe, or from an attack of laryngitis, was not then apparent. There was, however, small room for doubt about his being a constant worshiper at the shrines of the twin deities, before which every chief in Chaga, and well-nigh everyone in Africa, bows the knee. But whatever he might ordinarily be, he seemed determined to make as good an impression as he knew how upon his rare visitors, and before we left Machawe we voted him, notwithstanding first impressions, a very good sort of a fellow.

“Knowing that we had visited Miljali and intended visiting Mandara, both of whom were to the native mind possessed of many wondrous things from Europe, the Sultan of Machawe, ashamed of his poverty, seemed reluctant to take us inside his boma. He seemed bewildered and over-awed by the importance of the occasion. Anxious to do anything he could think of to please his visitors, he and all his elders were too ignorant of the white man’s character and requirements to know just what to do. The whole assembly appeared to be in a profound puzzle. We, on our part, made him the customary present of cloth, beads and wire. We showed him his own bloated features for the first time in a mirror, and amazed him with the ticking of a Waterbury watch.791 After much discussion among themselves, he and his elders seemed to make up their minds that the proper thing would be to take us into the royal boma, poverty or no poverty. The boma itself was a poor affair. It consisted of a small stockade of planks set on end, which had been laboriously hewn from big logs with native tools. Inside the stockade were several houses of very neat construction and of a pattern that is peculiar to Machawe. Instead of the bee-hive houses of Marangu and Taveta, the Machawe hut is of an exaggerated bell-shape.

“Just outside this boma was an inclosure of quite another sort—the kraal in which were kept the royal cattle. This was a remarkable affair, and strong enough to be a pretty good sort of a fort. Young trees had been planted in a ring to form a fence. They were planted in such numbers, and so close together, that as they grew up, they formed a living wall of tree trunks several feet thick, and so compact that one could not see through it.

“To our astonishment the king’s boma seemed to contain no women, a most extraordinary state of affairs, and when we asked the question as to the number of wives he had—always a complimentary piece of curiosity at an African court—he smiled and shook his head.

“‘What, none!—why. Miljali, of Marangu, has fourteen, and Mandara, of Moschi, many more than that.’

“Our looks of surprise and incredulity set the chief and all his elders to laughing. There was evidently a ‘nigger in the fence’ somewhere. This full-blown, sensuous-faced young potentate without a harem? Impossible. And then one of us remembered that, contrary to our experience elsewhere in the country, the fair sex in Machawe had kept themselves well out of sight as our caravan passed their houses. They were too timid and superstitious to let themselves be seen by the white strangers, who might, for all they knew, take it into their heads to assail them with their mysterious powers of ichawi (black magic) which everybody knew they possessed to an alarming degree. The Sultan had wives, then—a goodly number, no doubt—but all had scampered off and hid themselves at our approach, fearful of ichawi.

“Bacchus seemed to have rather the upper hand at Ngamini’s primitive court. I doubt if anything weaker than millet pombe is792 ever drunk inside the royal boma. During our visit that beverage flowed as freely as beer in a brewery. A huge jar of it was lugged in and placed in the middle of the assembly, and men ladled it out and passed around the gourds continually.

“The Sultan was opulent enough in the matter of pombe, if not in European goods, and so did his best to win our approval of his immense resources in that product. He took us into his brewery, a smaller inclosure that formed an annex to his resident kraal, and enjoyed immensely our astonishment at the vast size of the vats. These were earthenware jars, of bulbous shape, eight in number, and each capable of holding two hundred gallons or more of liquor. I had seen wine jars as large, though of different shape, in Persia, but never expected to find such giant pottery in a Chaga state.

“In brewing pombe the millet, or wimbi, is first pounded with stones to break the grain, then boiled in earthen kettles until it resembles thin cereal soup; the whole is then emptied into the big jars, covered with a cowhide and allowed to ferment. When dipped out for use the sediment is stirred up from the bottom, as also when dipped from smaller vessels to be passed around. Pombe in this condition is a solid tipple, which comes as near being both food and drink as anything of an intoxicating nature can be, and many an African chief all but lives on it. It has a pleasant twang to it, and the European soon comes to like it almost as well as the native boozer does. It goes to the head, too. A pint puts a white man in a joyous frame of mind and sets a negro, who effervesces easier than his white brother, to singing and whooping. The chiefs, however, are as a general thing animated pombe sponges, constantly soaked and with the gourd seldom out of reach.”

A HUNT ON THE ZAMBESI.

The accounts of all African travelers agree, that both vegetable and animal life in Africa is rankest and noblest on the banks of the Zambesi. Volumes might be written of thrilling adventures in this extensive region. “One night,” says a noted traveler, “while journeying up the Zambesi, and just as we had fixed our tents for a good night’s rest, a native came rushing in with the news that two lions had been seen in the vicinity. The men wanted to794 go out and look for them immediately, but I dissuaded them from encountering the dangers of a night hunt, and promised that I would accompany them on the morrow.

HUNTING LIONS.

“Early next morning the men were astir and busy with their preparations for a grand hunt. We had dogs with us, and when all was ready, these were let loose. A guide led the way to where he had seen the lions on the previous evening, but long before we had gone so far, and while making our way up a ridge, a noise like muttering thunder reached our ears from the valley beyond the ridge. The guide stopped, listened for a moment, and then, half in fear and half in astonishment, gasped, “The lions!”

“He refused to pilot us further, but sought the nearest tree and took refuge amid its branches. The rest of the party pushed on, and on peering over the top of the ridge saw an immense lion lying in the edge of a jungle. Our dogs scented him and made a dash toward him. The beast arose with a bound, and rushed out into the open. This was too much for the dogs, and they beat a hasty retreat.

“In a moment more the lion was joined by his mate, and both were now in plain sight, both crouching and beating the ground with their tails, as if about to make an attack. I took a position a few steps in advance of our party, aimed deliberately from a kneeling posture, and sent a bullet into the side of the male lion just behind the foreleg. Being so close and so deliberate in my aim, and my weapon being of a superior kind, I expected to see the beast turn over in the agonies of death. But instead, he made two or three desperate bounds toward our party, and in his last leap, which was a dying spasm, fell directly on the body of Shumi, one of our native employes. The poor fellow was frightened almost to death, and shrieked as though the lion’s fangs and claws were actually rending his flesh. But in a moment we all saw that no harm was coming to Shumi, for the lion had simply made his last supreme effort, and had fallen in a quivering, helpless mass upon the object of his attack.

“We now turned our attention to the lioness. Two shots were fired at her, which sent her wounded and growling into the jungle. Our party formed a front, and marched cautiously toward the jungle, prepared to fire, at first sight of the game. Our precautions795 proved to be unnecessary, for we soon discovered the beast too far advanced in her dying throes to be capable of harm to us. Both shots had taken effect in mortal parts. We secured, that day, two of the handsomest lion’s skins I ever saw.”

OPENING A KRU-COAST MISSION.

“At Sas Town, Monday morning, April 11, 1887, we had a big palaver. It broke up abruptly in a storm of passion amid the thunder of stentorian voices—a half a hundred big men all talking at once and shouting ‘batyeo! batyeo!’—same as ‘suno! suno!’ in Hindustani—or in English, ‘listen! attention! attention!’ all shouting for a hearing and no listeners.

“So the king said, ‘We will go away, and when they cool down I will call them together again.’

“When we met again I re-stated our proposals to found a school for book-study and hard work with the hands of teachers and scholars, and to make mission for God palaver, according to the terms of our agreement, as stated in our written articles.

“They responded with great unanimity, ‘Yes, we want you to come and make school and mission, and when your carpenters come we help them to make house.’

“I suspected a reservation in their minds in regard to the no-pay condition, so I asked Nimly to re-state and explain, so they could not misunderstand our terms. He made a clear explanation and an eloquent speech in the Kru language—a commanding, fluent speaker is Nimly.

“The king replied, ‘Our people won’t work without pay.’

“‘That is right,’ I replied, ‘and we give them big pay. Instead of a few leaves of tobacco, which they would burn the first day, I give them missionaries, and make school and mission which will be of great value to you, to your children, grand-children, and on through all the generations of coming years. But if you are not willing to carry lumber and help us, you can wait a year till I come again and we will have another palaver.’

“They shouted unanimously, ‘No! no! we want school and mission now, and we will do all that you have said and written,’796 So the kings and chiefs, by their mark, signed the articles of agreement.

“Their names were all hard, yet much easier to get on with than the men they represented. Only one of the long list of kings and chiefs came up to his contract, and he very kindly supplemented his labor by that of his wives. The mission house was built, and in 1889 contained twenty-five native worshipers.” Wm. Taylor.

A DESPERATE SITUATION.

Henry Drummond, while pushing his way from Lake Nyassa toward Tanganyika, thus writes: “Buffalo fever still on me. Sallied forth early with Moolu, a large herd being reported at hand. We struck the trail after a few miles, but the buffaloes had moved away, passing up a deep valley to the north. I followed for a time, till the heat became too oppressive. Moolu with one other native, kept up the pursuit.

“They returned in a few hours announcing that they had dropped two bulls, but not being mortally wounded they had escaped. Late in the afternoon, two more of my men came rushing in, saying, that one of the wounded buffaloes had attacked their party and wounded two of them severely. They wanted assistance to bring them home.

“It seems that five of the men, on hearing Moolu’s report about the wounded buffaloes, and being tempted by the thought of fresh meat, had gone off without permission to try to secure the game. It was a foolhardy trick, as they had only spears with them, and a wounded buffalo bull is the most dangerous animal in Africa. It charges blindly at anything, and even after receiving its mortal wound has been known to kill its assailant.

“The would-be hunters soon overtook one of the creatures, a huge bull, lying in a hollow, and apparently wounded unto death. They walked unsuspectingly up to it, and when quite close the brute suddenly roused itself and dashed headlong toward them. They ran for their lives, but were quickly overtaken, and one of them was trampled in a twinkling beneath the feet of the enraged brute. A second man was caught up a few paces further on and was literally impaled on the animal’s horns.

797

A DESPERATE SITUATION.

798

“The first man was able to hobble into camp, but the second had to be carried in, more dead than alive. He had two frightful wounds, one through the shoulder, the other beneath the ribs. I dressed them, and set two natives to watch him through the night, lest he should bleed to death. When I came in, on my last visit before retiring, I found the nurses busy blowing on the wound. Their conception of pain was that it is due to evil spirits, and they were exorcising them by blowing. As they were doing no harm, I permitted them to indulge in their work through the night. The patient had a hard siege of it, but finally got well. He did not readily forget his adventure with the buffalo bull.”

STANLEY AND EMIN.

The London Spectator brings Henry M. Stanley and Emin Pasha into strong contrast in its discussion of the celebrated rescue. It chooses to regard the rescue as of greater psychological than of historic or scientific interest to the world, and says. “The revelation it affords is the radical difference in character between the two great African adventurers. For years past, Emin Pasha has seemed to be the greater of the two, a man who actually ruled, and in a degree civilized, great African provinces, who had by his character alone maintained his ascendency over a body of successful Mohammedan troops, and who had earned, if not the love, at least the respect and regard, of millions of black subjects. It now appears that some part of all this success must have been accidental. The trusted troops revolted on their first great opportunity—as, we must in justice remember, did also our own Sepoys—the obedient blacks proved equally obedient to the new Arab authority; and Emin himself stood revealed as a thoughtful man of science, patient and unfearing, but with little either of the energy or the decision which make the true man of action. It may be that in his long sojourn at Wadelai, surrounded by Egyptians and blacks, possibly taking native wives, for we hear of a young daughter named Ferida, and conforming to the ritual of an Asiatic faith, Emin may have become Africanized; but no change of conditions could deprive him of the power of recognizing men, had he originally possessed800 it. That he erred in his judgment of his agents is clear, for they mutinied against and imprisoned him; his hope that they would follow him to the coast, and thence to Egypt, turned out as baseless as the hope of many an old Sepoy officer that his ‘children’ at least would never mutiny; and to the last, one native officer, if Stanley’s account may be trusted, deluded the experienced Viceroy like a child.

“One suspects, though perhaps the suspicion may be unfair, that he owed much of his apparent success to his profession of Mohammedanism—which up to the very last induced his followers to draw a distinction between the Pasha, who was only led away, and Jephson and Casati, who are called wicked Christians, and suspected of designs against their own Egyptian soldiers—and of his reputation in Europe to his feeling for science and civilization, a cause which also produced the much too favorable estimate of the Emperor of Brazil. On the other hand, the more the true man of action is tried, the stronger he appears. Perhaps no man that ever lived had his energy and endurance more taxed than Henry M. Stanley, who for years on end has suffered all that any great African explorer has suffered, with the addition of heavy responsibility to and for others, and who through it all has steadily grown greater in himself as well as in the world’s eyes. Statesmen would now trust the lad from the Welsh workhouse with African kingdoms to govern, and the new sovereign companies, who claim such immense districts, will compete with each other for his aid. He has the qualities which make rulers, and it is in the end on these, and not on amiability and feeling for science, or even a perplexed devotion to doubtful duty, that statesmen must rely. We shall do nothing in Africa by passing and repassing through its endless forests. We must govern, organize, and above all train its people, before anything is accomplished; and for that work we need the service of men who, like Stanley, know that the one cure for savagery is discipline, and can enforce it to the end.”

DINING ON THE BANKS OF THE UPPER SHIRE.