Somewhere in the Shire Highlands, in 1859, Livingstone saw a large
lake--Lake Shirwa--which is still almost unknown. It lies away to the
east, and is bounded by a range of mountains whose lofty summits are
visible from the hills round Blantyre. Thinking it might be a useful
initiation to African travel if I devoted a short time to its
exploration, I set off one morning, accompanied by two members of the
Blantyre staff and a small retinue of natives. Steering across country
in the direction in which it lay, we found, two days before seeing the
actual water, that we were already on the ancient bed of the lake.
Though now clothed with forest, the whole district has obviously been
under water at a comparatively recent period, and the shores of Lake
Shirwa probably reached at one time to within a few miles of Blantyre
itself. On reaching the lake a very aged female chief came to see us,
and told us how, long, long ago, a white man came to her village and
gave her a present of cloth. Of the white man, who must have been
Livingstone, she spoke very kindly; and indeed, wherever David
Livingstone's footsteps are crossed in Africa, the fragrance of his
memory seems to remain.
The waters of Shirwa are brackish to the taste, and undrinkable; but
the saltness must have a peculiar charm for game, for nowhere else in
Africa did I see such splendid herds of the larger animals as here.
The zebra was especially abundant; and so unaccustomed to be disturbed
are these creatures, that with a little care one could watch their
movements safely within a very few yards. It may seem unorthodox to
say so, but I do not know if among the larger animals there is
anything handsomer in creation than the zebra. At close quarters his
striped coat is all but as fine as the tiger's, while the form and
movement of his body are in every way nobler. The gait, certainly, is
not to be compared for gracefulness with that of the many species of
antelope and deer who nibble the grass beside him, and one can never
quite forget that scientifically he is an ass; but taking him all in
all, this fleet and beautiful animal ought to have a higher place in
the regard of man than he has yet received.
We were much surprised, considering that this region is almost
uninhabited, to discover near the lake shore a native path so beaten,
and so recently beaten, by multitudes of human feet, that it could
only represent some trunk route through the continent. Following it
for a few miles, we soon discovered its function. It was one of the
great slave routes through Africa. Signs of the horrid traffic became
visible on every side; and from symmetrical arrangements of small
piles of stones and freshly cut twigs, planted semaphore-wise upon the
path, our native guides made out that a slave caravan was actually
passing at the time. We were in fact between two portions of it, the
stones and twigs being telegraphic signals between front and rear. Our
natives seemed much alarmed at this discovery, and refused to proceed
unless we promised not to interfere--a proceeding which, had we
attempted it, would simply have meant murder for ourselves and slavery
for them. Next day from a hill-top we saw the slave encampment far
below, and the ghastly procession marshaling for its march to the
distant coast, which many of the hundreds who composed it would never
reach alive.
Talking of native foot-paths leads me to turn aside for a moment, to
explain to the uninitiated the true mode of African travel. In spite
of all the books that have been lavished upon us by our great
explorers, few people seem to have any accurate understanding of this
most simple process. Some have the impression that everything is done
in bullock wagons; an idea borrowed from the Cape, but hopelessly
inapplicable to Central Africa, where a wheel at present would be as
great a novelty as a polar bear. Others, at the opposite extreme,
suppose that the explorer works along solely by compass, making a
bee-line for his destination, and steering his caravan through the
trackless wilderness like a ship at sea. Now, it may be a surprise to
the unenlightened to learn that probably no explorer in forcing his
passage through Africa has ever, for more than a few days at a time,
been off some beaten track. Probably no country in the world,
civilized or uncivilized, is better supplied with paths than this
unmapped continent. Every village is connected with some other
village, every tribe with the next tribe, every State with its
neighbor, and therefore with all the rest. The explorer's business is
simply to select from this network of tracks, keep a general
direction, and hold on his way. Let him begin at Zanzibar, plant his
foot on a native foot-path, and set his face towards Tanganyika. In
eight months he will be there. He has simply to persevere. From
village to village he will be handed on, zig-zagging it may be,
sometimes, to avoid the impassable barriers of nature or the rarer
perils of hostile tribes; but never taking to the woods, never guided
solely by the stars, never in fact leaving a beaten track, till
hundreds and hundreds of miles are between him and the sea, and his
interminable foot-path ends with a canoe on the shores of Tanganyika.
Crossing the lake, landing near some native village, he picks up the
thread once more. Again he plods on and on, now on foot, now by canoe,
but always keeping his line of villages, until one day suddenly he
sniffs the sea-breeze again, and his faithful foot-wide guide lands
him on the Atlantic seaboard.
Nor is there any art in finding out these successive villages with
their intercommunicating links. He _must_ find them out. A whole army
of guides, servants, carriers, soldiers, and camp-followers accompany
him in his march, and this nondescript regiment must be fed. Indian
corn, cassava, mawere, beans, and bananas--these do not grow wild even
in Africa. Every meal has to be bought and paid for in cloth and
beads; and scarcely three days can pass without a call having to be
made at some village where the necessary supplies can be obtained. A
caravan, as a rule, must live from hand to mouth, and its march
becomes simply a regulated procession through a chain of markets. Not
however that there are any real markets--there are neither bazaars nor
stores in native Africa. Thousands of the villages through which the
traveler eats his way may never have victualed a caravan before. But
with the chief's consent, which is usually easily purchased for a
showy present, the villagers unlock their larders, the women flock to
the grinding-stones, and basketfuls of food are swiftly exchanged for
unknown equivalents in beads and calico.
The native tracks which I have just described are the same in
character all over Africa. They are veritable foot-paths, never over a
foot in breadth, beaten as hard as adamant, and rutted beneath the
level of the forest bed by centuries of native traffic. As a rule
these foot-paths are marvelously direct. Like the roads of the old
Romans, they run straight on through everything, ridge and mountain
and valley, never shying at obstacles, nor anywhere turning aside to
breathe. Yet within this general straightforwardness there is a
singular eccentricity and indirectness in detail. Although the African
foot-path is on the whole a bee-line, no fifty yards of it are ever
straight. And the reason is not far to seek. If a stone is
encountered, no native will ever think of removing it. Why should he?
It is easier to walk round it. The next man who comes that way will do
the same. He knows that a hundred men are following him; he looks at
the stone; a moment, and it might be unearthed and tossed aside, but
no--he also holds on his way. It is not that he resents the trouble,
it is the idea that is wanting. It would no more occur to him that
that stone was a displaceable object, and that for the general weal he
might displace it, than that its feldspar was of the orthoclase
variety. Generations and generations of men have passed that stone,
and it still waits for a man with an altruistic idea. But it would be
a very stony country indeed--and Africa is far from stony--that would
wholly account for the aggravating obliqueness and indecision of the
African foot-path. Probably each four miles, on an average path, is
spun out, by an infinite series of minor sinuosities, to five or six.
Now, these deflections are not meaningless. Each has some history--a
history dating back perhaps a thousand years, but to which all clue
has centuries ago been lost. The leading cause probably is fallen
trees. When a tree falls across a path no man ever removes it. As in
the case of the stone, the native goes round it. It is too green to
burn in his hut; before it is dry and the white ants have eaten it,
the new detour has become part and parcel of the path. The smaller
irregularities, on the other hand, represent the trees and stumps of
the primeval forest where the track was made at first. But whatever
the cause, it is certain that for persistent straightforwardness in
the general, and utter vacillation and irresolution in the particular,
the African roads are unique in engineering.
Though one of the smaller African lakes, Shirwa is probably larger
than all the lakes of Great Britain put together. With the splendid
environment of mountains on three of its sides, softened and distanced
by perpetual summer haze, it reminds one somewhat of the Great Salt
Lake simmering in the July sun. We pitched our tent for a day or two
on its western shore, among a harmless and surprised people who had
never gazed on the pallid countenances of Englishmen before. Owing to
the ravages of the slaver, the people of Shirwa are few, scattered,
and poor, and live in abiding terror. The densest population is to be
found on the small island, heavily timbered with baobabs, which forms
a picturesque feature of the northern end. These Wa-Nyassa, or people
of the lake, as they call themselves, have been driven away by fear,
and they rarely leave their lake dwelling unless under cover of night.
Even then they are liable to capture by any man of a stronger tribe
who happens to meet them, and numbers who have been kidnapped in this
way are to be found in the villages of neighboring chiefs. This is an
amenity of existence in Africa that strikes one as very terrible. It
is impossible for those at home to understand how literally savage man
is a chattel, and how much his life is spent in the mere safeguarding
of his main asset, _i. e._, himself. There are actually districts in
Africa where _three_ natives cannot be sent on a message, in case two
should combine and sell the third before they return.