Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
On page 6, "full tale of steamers" should possibly be
"full tail of steamers."
MY AFRICAN JOURNEY
[Illustration: MR. CHURCHILL AND THE RHINOCEROS AT SIMBA.
_Frontispiece._]
MY AFRICAN JOURNEY
by
THE RIGHT HON.
WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL, M.P.
Author of "The Story of the Malakand Field Force,"
"The River War," "London to Ladysmith," "Ian Hamilton's March,"
"Savrola," "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill"
With Sixty-One Illustrations from Photographs by
the Author and Lieutenant-Colonel Gordon Wilson,
and Three Maps
Toronto
William Briggs
1909
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
Bread Street Hill, E.C., and
Bungay, Suffolk.
PREFACE
In so far as the collection of information is concerned, the
advantages of travel may often be over-stated. So much has been
written, so many facts are upon record about every country, even the
most remote, that a judicious and persevering study of existing
materials would no doubt enable a reader to fill himself with
knowledge almost to repletion without leaving his chair. But for the
formation of opinion, for the stirring and enlivenment of thought, and
for the discernment of colour and proportion, the gifts of travel,
especially of travel on foot, are priceless. It was with the design
and in the hope of securing such prizes, that I undertook last year
the pilgrimage of which these pages give account. I cannot tell
whether I have succeeded in winning them; and still less whether, if
won, they are transferable. I therefore view these letters with a
modest eye. They were written mainly in long hot Uganda afternoons,
after the day's march was done. The larger portion has already
appeared in the _Strand Magazine_, and what has been added was
necessary to complete the story.
They present a continuous narrative of the lighter side of what was to
me a very delightful and inspiring journey; and it is in the hope that
they may vivify and fortify the interest of the British people in the
wonderful estates they have recently acquired in the northeastern
quarter of Africa, that I offer them in a connected form to the
indulgence of the public.
WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL
_London_, 1908.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
THE UGANDA RAILWAY 1
CHAPTER II
AROUND MOUNT KENYA 19
CHAPTER III
THE HIGHLANDS OF EAST AFRICA 45
CHAPTER IV
THE GREAT LAKE 66
CHAPTER V
THE KINGDOM OF UGANDA 86
CHAPTER VI
KAMPALA 104
CHAPTER VII
'ON SAFARI' 127
CHAPTER VIII
MURCHISON FALLS 148
CHAPTER IX
HIPPO CAMP 168
CHAPTER X
DOWN THE WHITE NILE 188
CHAPTER XI
THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT RAILWAY 209
ILLUSTRATIONS
_To face page_
MR. CHURCHILL AND THE RHINOCEROS AT SIMBA _Frontispiece_
ON THE COW-CATCHER 7
THE RHINOCEROS AT SIMBA 12
GUARD OF HONOUR, KING'S AFRICAN RIFLES 20
BREAKDOWN ON THE WAY TO THIKA CAMP 22
SHOOTING PARTY AT THIKA CAMP 24
THE BANDA AT THIKA CAMP 28
COLONEL WILSON'S LION 28
"DURBAR" AT KIAMBU 30
THE RIFT VALLEY FROM THE KIKUYU ESCARPMENT 66
GOVERNMENT STOCK FARM AT NAIVASHA 68
THE LAIBON'S WIVES 71
RAILHEAD AT KISUMU 71
KAVIRONDO WARRIORS AT KISUMU 80
NANDI AND KAVIRONDO WARRIORS AT KISUMU 84
KISUMU 86
GOVERNMENT HOUSE, ENTEBBE 90
THE GOVERNOR WITH BAGANDA GROUP 102
BAGANDA WARRIORS AT KAMPALA 106
KING DAUDI'S DRUMMERS AT KAMPALA 108
WATCHING THE WAR-DANCE AT KAMPALA 109
ON THE WAY TO KAMPALA 110
ROAD BETWEEN JINJA AND LAKE CHIOGA 110
WAR DANCE AT KAMPALA--"THE BRAVEST MAN
IN THE ARMY" 112
WAR DANCE AT KAMPALA 112
THE WHITE FATHERS' MISSION AT KAMPALA 114
CHILDREN AT THE ENGLISH CATHOLIC MISSION,
KAMPALA 114
INTERIOR OF NAMIREMBE CATHEDRAL 116
THE RIPON FALLS (SOURCE OF THE NILE) 120
BETWEEN NIMULE AND GONDOKORO 128
FOREST SCENE NEAR RIPON FALLS 133
PALM TREE NEAR THE ASUA 134
BANDA WITH ESCORT OF KING'S AFRICAN RIFLES 134
AN ENCAMPMENT 136
LANDING AT MRULI 146
MURCHISON FALLS 159
FAJAO, WITH NATIVES ASSEMBLED TO WELCOME US 160
FLOTILLA AT FAJAO 162
THE TOP OF THE MURCHISON FALLS 164
UGANDA SCENERY 164
THE LANDING-PLACE AT FAJAO 169
EARLY MORNING ON THE NILE AT FAJAO 170
FAJAO 170
APPROACH TO LAKE ALBERT, WITH THE CONGO
HILLS IN THE DISTANCE 174
WADELAI 174
THE "KENIA," "JAMES MARTIN," AND "GOOD HOPE"
NEARING NIMULE 178
HIPPO CAMP 178
MR. CHURCHILL ON THE OBSERVATION LADDER AT
HIPPO CAMP 182
BANK OF THE VICTORIA NILE 182
MR. CHURCHILL AND BURCHELL'S WHITE RHINOCEROS 186
COLONEL WILSON'S ELEPHANT 187
THE "KENIA," "JAMES MARTIN," AND "GOOD HOPE"
ON THE WHITE NILE 187
FORDING THE ASUA 192
THE BELGIAN OFFICIALS AT LADO 196
GONDOKORO 196
REVIEW AT KHARTOUM 198
SOUDAN GOVERNMENT STEAMER "DAL" 198
A SHELUK AT KODOK (FASHODA) 202
THE PALACE, KHARTOUM 204
GEORGE SCRIVINGS 207
PHILAE 208
MAPS
EASTERN AFRICA 2
BRITISH EAST AFRICA 16
UGANDA 92
CHAPTER I
THE UGANDA RAILWAY
The aspect of Mombasa as she rises from the sea and clothes herself
with form and colour at the swift approach of the ship is alluring and
even delicious. But to appreciate all these charms the traveller
should come from the North. He should see the hot stones of Malta,
baking and glistening on a steel-blue Mediterranean. He should visit
the Island of Cyprus before the autumn rains have revived the soil,
when the Messaoria Plain is one broad wilderness of dust, when every
tree--be it only a thorn-bush--is an heirloom, and every drop of water
is a jewel. He should walk for two hours at midday in the streets of
Port Said. He should thread the long red furrow of the Suez Canal, and
swelter through the trough of the Red Sea. He should pass a day among
the cinders of Aden, and a week among the scorched rocks and stones of
Northern Somaliland; and then, after five days of open sea, his eye
and mind will be prepared to salute with feelings of grateful delight
these shores of vivid and exuberant green. On every side is
vegetation, moist, tumultuous, and varied. Great trees, clad in dense
foliage, shrouded in creepers, springing from beds of verdure, thrust
themselves through the undergrowth; palms laced together by flowering
trailers; every kind of tropical plant that lives by rain and
sunshine; high waving grass, brilliant patches of purple
bougainvillea, and in the midst, dotted about, scarcely keeping their
heads above the fertile flood of Nature, the red-roofed houses of the
town and port of Mombasa.
[Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF
"MY AFRICAN JOURNEY"]
The vessel follows a channel twisting away between high bluffs, and
finds a secure anchorage, land-locked, in forty feet of water at a
stone's throw from the shore. Here we are arrived at the gate of
British East Africa; and more, at the outlet and debouchment of all
the trade of all the countries that lap the Victoria and Albert Lakes
and the head-waters of the Nile. Along the pier now being built at
Kilindini, the harbour of Mombasa Island, must flow, at any rate for
many years, the main stream of East and Central African commerce.
Whatever may be the produce which civilized government and enterprise
will draw from the enormous territories between Southern Abyssinia and
Lake Tanganyika, between Lake Rudolf and Ruenzori, as far west as the
head-streams of the Congo, as far north as the Lado enclave; whatever
may be the needs and demands of the numerous populations comprised
within those limits, it is along the unpretentious jetty of Kilindini
that the whole traffic must pass.
For Kilindini (or Mombasa, as I may be permitted to call it) is the
starting-point of one of the most romantic and most wonderful railways
in the world. The two iron streaks of rail that wind away among the
hills and foliage of Mombasa Island do not break their smooth monotony
until, after piercing Equatorial forests, stretching across immense
prairies, and climbing almost to the level of the European snow-line,
they pause--and that only for a time--upon the edges of the Great
Lake. And thus is made a sure, swift road along which the white man
and all that he brings with him, for good or ill, may penetrate into
the heart of Africa as easily and safely as he may travel from London
to Vienna.
Short has been the life, many the vicissitudes, of the Uganda Railway.
The adventurous enterprise of a Liberal Government, it was soon
exposed, disowned, to the merciless criticism of its parents. Adopted
as a cherished foundling by the Conservative party, it almost perished
from mismanagement in their hands. Nearly ten thousand pounds a mile
were expended upon its construction; and so eager were all parties to
be done with it and its expense that, instead of pursuing its proper
and natural route across the plateau to the deep waters of Port
Victoria, it fell by the way into the shallow gulf of Kavirondo, lucky
to get so far. It is easy to censure, it is impossible not to
criticize, the administrative mistakes and miscalculations which
tarnished and nearly marred a brilliant conception. But it is still
more easy, as one traverses in forty-eight hours countries which ten
years ago would have baffled the toilsome marches of many weeks, to
underrate the difficulties in which unavoidable ignorance and
astonishing conditions plunged the pioneers. The British art of
"muddling through" is here seen in one of its finest expositions.
Through everything--through the forests, through the ravines, through
troops of marauding lions, through famine, through war, through five
years of excoriating Parliamentary debate, muddled and marched the
railway; and here at last, in some more or less effective fashion, is
it arrived at its goal. Other nations project Central African railways
as lightly and as easily as they lay down naval programmes; but here
is a railway, like the British Fleet, "in being"--not a paper plan or
an airy dream, but an iron fact grinding along through the jungle and
the plain, waking with its whistles the silences of the Nyanza, and
startling the tribes out of their primordial nakedness with
"Americani" piece goods _made in Lancashire_.
Let us, then, without waiting in Mombasa longer than is necessary to
wish it well and to admire the fertility and promise of the coastal
region, ascend this railway from the sea to the lake. And first, what
a road it is! Everything is in apple-pie order. The track is smoothed
and weeded and ballasted as if it were the London and North-Western.
Every telegraph-post has its number; every mile, every hundred yards,
every change of gradient has its mark; not in soft wood, to feed the
white ant, but in hard, well-painted iron. Constant labour has
steadily improved the grades and curves of the permanent-way, and the
train--one of those comfortable, practical Indian trains--rolls along
as evenly as upon a European line.
Nor should it be supposed that this high standard of maintenance is
not warranted by the present financial position of the line. The
Uganda Railway is already doing what it was never expected within any
reasonable period to do. It is paying its way. It is beginning to
yield a profit--albeit a small profit--upon its capital charge.
Projected solely as a political railway to reach Uganda, and to secure
British predominance upon the Upper Nile, it has already achieved a
commercial value. Instead of the annual deficits upon working expenses
which were regularly anticipated by those most competent to judge,
there is already a substantial profit of nearly eighty thousand pounds
a year. And this is but the beginning, and an imperfect beginning; for
at present the line is only a trunk, without its necessary limbs and
feeders, without its deep-water head at Kilindini, without its full
tale of steamers on the lake; above all, without its natural and
necessary extension to the Albert Nyanza.
[Illustration: ON THE COW-CATCHER.
(Mr. Currie, Mr. Marsh, Col. Wilson, Sir J. Hayes-Sadler, Mr.
Churchill.)]
We may divide the journey into four main stages--the jungles, the
plains, the mountains, and the lake, for the lake is an essential part
of the railway, and a natural and inexpensive extension to its length.
In the early morning, then, we start from Mombasa Station, taking our
places upon an ordinary garden seat fastened on to the cow-catcher of
the engine, from which position the whole country can be seen. For a
quarter of an hour we are still upon Mombasa Island, and then the
train, crossing the intervening channel by a long iron bridge,
addresses itself in earnest to the continent of Africa. Into these
vast regions the line winds perseveringly upon a stiff up-grade, and
the land unfolds itself ridge after ridge and valley after valley,
till soon, with one farewell glance at the sea and at the
fighting-tops of His Majesty's ship _Venus_ rising queerly amid the
palms, we are embraced and engulfed completely. All day long the train
runs upward and westward, through broken and undulating ground clad
and encumbered with super-abundant vegetation. Beautiful birds and
butterflies fly from tree to tree and flower to flower. Deep, ragged
gorges, filled by streams in flood, open out far below us through
glades of palms and creeper-covered trees. Here and there, at
intervals, which will become shorter every year, are plantations of
rubber, fibre, and cotton, the beginnings of those inexhaustible
supplies which will one day meet the yet unmeasured demand of Europe
for those indispensable commodities. Every few miles are little trim
stations, with their water-tanks, signals, ticket-offices, and
flower-beds complete and all of a pattern, backed by impenetrable
bush. In brief one slender thread of scientific civilization, of
order, authority, and arrangement, drawn across the primeval chaos of
the world.
In the evening a cooler, crisper air is blowing. The humid coast
lands, with their glories and their fevers, have been left behind. At
an altitude of four thousand feet we begin to laugh at the Equator.
The jungle becomes forest, not less luxuriant, but distinctly
different in character. The olive replaces the palm. The whole aspect
of the land is more friendly, more familiar, and no less fertile.
After Makindu Station the forest ceases. The traveller enters upon a
region of grass. Immense fields of green pasture, withered and
whitened at this season by waiting for the rains, intersected by
streams and watercourses densely wooded with dark, fir-looking trees
and gorse-looking scrub, and relieved by bold upstanding bluffs and
ridges, comprise the new panorama. And here is presented the wonderful
and unique spectacle which the Uganda Railway offers to the European.
_The plains are crowded with wild animals._ From the windows of the
carriage the whole zoological gardens can be seen disporting itself.
Herds of antelope and gazelle, troops of zebras--sometimes four or
five hundred together--watch the train pass with placid assurance, or
scamper a hundred yards farther away, and turn again. Many are quite
close to the line. With field-glasses one can see that it is the same
everywhere, and can distinguish long files of black wildebeeste and
herds of red kongoni--the hartebeeste of South Africa--and wild
ostriches walking sedately in twos and threes, and every kind of small
deer and gazelle. The zebras come close enough for their stripes to be
admired with the naked eye.
We have arrived at Simba, "The Place of Lions," and there is no reason
why the passengers should not see one, or even half-a-dozen, stalking
across the plain, respectfully observed by lesser beasts. Indeed, in
the early days it was the custom to stop and sally out upon the royal
vermin whenever met with, and many the lion that has been carried back
to the tender in triumph before the guard, or driver, or any one else
could think of timetables or the block system, or the other
inconvenient restrictions of a regular service. Farther up the line,
in the twilight of the evening, we saw, not a hundred yards away, a
dozen giraffes lollopping off among scattered trees, and at Nakuru six
yellow lions walked in leisurely mood across the rails in broad
daylight. Only the rhinoceros is absent, or rarely seen, and after one
of his species had measured his strength, unsuccessfully, against an
engine, he has confined himself morosely to the river-beds and to the
undisturbed solitudes which, at a distance of two or three miles,
everywhere engulf the Uganda Railway.
Our carriage stopped upon a siding at Simba Station for three days, in
order that we might more closely examine the local fauna. One of the
best ways of shooting game in this part of the world, and certainly
the easiest, is to get a trolly and run up and down the line. The
animals are so used to the passage of trains and natives along the one
great highway that they do not, as a rule, take much notice, unless
the train or trolly stops, when their suspicions are at once aroused.
The sportsmen should, therefore, slip off without allowing the vehicle
or the rest of the party to stop, even for a moment; and in this way
he will frequently find himself within two hundred and fifty or three
hundred yards of his quarry, when the result will be governed solely
by his skill, or want of skill, with the rifle.
There is another method, which we tried on the second day in the hopes
of finding a waterbuck, and that is, to prowl about among the trees
and undergrowth of the river-bed. In a few minutes one may bury
oneself in the wildest and savagest kind of forest. The air becomes
still and hot. The sun seems in an instant to assert his just
prerogative. The heat glitters over the open spaces of dry sand and
pools of water. High grass, huge boulders, tangled vegetation,
multitudes of thorn-bushes, obstruct the march, and the ground itself
is scarped and guttered by the rains into the strangest formations.
Around you, breast-high, shoulder-high, overhead, rises the African
jungle. There is a brooding silence, broken only by the cry of a bird,
or the scolding bark of baboons, and the crunching of one's own feet
on the crumbling soil. We enter the haunt of the wild beasts; their
tracks, their traces, the remnants of their repasts, are easily and
frequently discovered. Here a lion has passed since the morning. There
a rhinoceros has certainly been within the hour--perhaps within ten
minutes. We creep and scramble through the game paths, anxiously,
rifles at full cock, not knowing what each turn or step may reveal.
The wind, when it blows at all, blows fitfully, now from this quarter,
now from that; so that one can never be certain that it will not
betray the intruder in these grim domains to the beast he seeks, or to
some other, less welcome, before he sees him. At length, after two
hours' scramble and scrape, we emerge breathless, as from another
world, half astonished to find ourselves within a quarter of a mile of
the railway line, with its trolly, luncheon, soda-water, ice, etc.
[Illustration: THE RHINOCEROS AT SIMBA]
But if one would seek the rhinoceros in his open pastures, it is
necessary to go farther afield; and accordingly we started the next
morning, while the stars were still shining, to tramp over the
ridges and hills which shut in the railway, and overlook remoter
plains and valleys beyond. The grass grows high from ground
honeycombed with holes and heaped with lava boulders, and it was
daylight before we had stumbled our way to a spur commanding a wide
view. Here we halted to search the country with field-glasses, and to
brush off the ticks--detestable insects which infest all the resorts
of the game in innumerable swarms, ready to spread any poison among
the farmers' cattle. The glass disclosed nothing of consequence.
Zebra, wildebeeste, and kongoni were to be seen in troops and herds,
scattered near and far over the plains, but never a rhinoceros! So we
trudged on, meaning to make a wide circle. For an hour we found
nothing, and then, just as we were thinking of turning homewards
before the sun should get his full power, three beautiful oryx, great,
dark-coloured antelope with very long, corrugated horns, walked over
the next brow on their way to water. Forthwith we set off in pursuit,
crouching and creeping along the valley, and hoping to intercept them
at the stream. Two passed safely over before we could reach our point.
The third, seeing us, turned back and disappeared over the hill,
where, a quarter of an hour later, he was stalked and wounded.
It is always the wounded beast that leads the hunter into adventures.
Till the quarry is hit every one walks delicately, avoids going the
windward side of unexplored coverts, skirts a reed-bed cautiously,
notices a convenient tree, looks often this way and that. But once the
prize is almost within reach, you scramble along after it as fast as
your legs will carry you, and never trouble about remoter
contingencies, be they what they may. Our oryx led us a mile or more
over rocky slopes, always promising and never giving a good chance for
a shot, until at last he drew us round the shoulder of a hill--and
there, abruptly, was the rhinoceros. The impression was extraordinary.
A wide plain of white, withered grass stretched away to low hills
broken with rocks. The rhinoceros stood in the middle of this plain,
about five hundred yards away, in jet-black silhouette; not a
twentieth-century animal at all, but an odd, grim straggler from the
Stone Age. He was grazing placidly, and above him the vast snow dome
of Kilimanjaro towered up in the clear air of morning to complete a
scene unaltered since the dawn of the world.
The manner of killing a rhinoceros in the open is crudely simple. It
is thought well usually to select the neighbourhood of a good tree,
_where one can be found_, as the centre of the encounter. If no tree
is available, you walk up as near as possible to him from any side
except the windward, and then shoot him in the head or the heart. If
you hit a vital spot, as sometimes happens, he falls. If you hit him
anywhere else, he charges blindly and furiously in your direction, and
you shoot him again, or not, as the case may be.
Bearing all this carefully in mind, we started out to do battle with
Behemoth. We had advanced perhaps two hundred yards towards him, when
a cry from one of the natives arrested us. We looked sharply to the
right. There, not a hundred and fifty paces distant, under the shade
of a few small trees, stood two other monsters. In a few more steps we
should have tainted their wind and brought them up with a rush; and
suppose this had happened, when perhaps we were already compromised
with our first friend, and had him wounded and furious on our hands!
Luckily warned in time, to creep back to the shoulder of the hill, to
skirt its crest, and to emerge a hundred and twenty yards from this
new objective was the work of a few minutes. We hurriedly agree to
kill one first before touching the other. At such a range it is easy
to hit so great a target; but the bull's-eye is small. I fired. The
thud of a bullet which strikes with an impact of a ton and a quarter,
tearing through hide and muscle and bone with the hideous energy of
cordite, came back distinctly. The large rhinoceros started, stumbled,
turned directly towards the sound and the blow, and then bore straight
down upon us in a peculiar trot, nearly as fast as a horse's gallop,
with an activity surprising in so huge a beast, and instinct with
unmistakable purpose.
[Illustration: BRITISH EAST AFRICA]
Great is the moral effect of a foe who advances. Everybody fired.
Still the ponderous brute came on, as if he were invulnerable; as if
he were an engine, or some great steam barge impervious to bullets,
insensible to pain or fear. Thirty seconds more, and he will close. An
impalpable curtain seems to roll itself up in the mind, revealing a
mental picture, strangely lighted, yet very still, where objects have
new values, and where a patch of white grass in the foreground,
four or five yards away, seems to possess astonishing significance. It
is there that the last two shots that yet remain before the resources
of civilization are exhausted must be fired. There is time to reflect
with some detachment that, after all, we were the aggressors; we it is
who have forced the conflict by an unprovoked assault with murderous
intent upon a peaceful herbivore; that if there is such a thing as
right and wrong between man and beast--and who shall say there is
not?--right is plainly on his side; there is time for this before I
perceive that, stunned and dazed by the frightful concussions of
modern firearms, he has swerved sharp to the right, and is now moving
across our front, broadside on, at the same swift trot. More firing,
and as I reload some one says he is down, and I fire instead at his
smaller companion, already some distance off upon the plain. But one
rhinoceros hunt is like another, except in its details, and I will not
occupy the reader with the account of this new pursuit and death.
Suffice it to say that, in all the elements of neurotic experience,
such an encounter seems to me fully equal to half an hour's brisk
skirmish at six or seven hundred yards--and with an important
addition. In war there is a cause, there is duty, there is the hope
of glory, for who can tell what may not be won before night? But here
at the end is only a hide, a horn, and a carcase, over which the
vultures have already begun to wheel.