KAMPALA
Two days after I had arrived at Entebbe the Governor took me over to
Kampala. The distance between the ancient and the administrative
capital is about twenty-four miles. The road, although unmetalled,
runs over such firm, smooth sandstone, almost polished by the rains,
that, except in a few places, it would carry a motor-car well, and a
bicycle is an excellent means of progression. The Uganda Government
motor-cars, which are now running well and regularly, had not then,
however, arrived, and the usual method was to travel by rickshaw.
Mounted in this light bicycle-wheeled carriage, drawn by one man
between the shafts and pushed by three more from behind, we were able
to make rather more than six miles an hour in very comfortable style.
The rickshaw-boys, who were neatly dressed in white tunics and red
caps, were relieved every eight miles. They have their own way of
doing business. From the moment when the travellers are seated in the
rickshaw and their labour begins, they embark upon an ever-varying but
absolutely interminable antiphony, which, if it exhausts their breath,
serves undoubtedly to keep their spirits up. "Burrulum," cry the
pushers; "Huma," says the puller. "Burrulum," say the pushers again,
and so on over and over again for a very long time. All these chaunts
have their meanings, and if the traveller is found to be heavy or
known to be ignorant of the language, he would not always be
complimented by a correct translation. The phrase I have quoted means
"iron upon wood"; and its signification is that the iron of European
strength and skill, however superior, yet cannot get along without the
wood of native labour and endurance. With such unexceptionable
sentiments no one would quarrel. Yet even these lose their flavour by
repetition, and after half an hour of "Burrulum" and "Huma" I was
constrained to ask the singers whether they could not possibly manage
to convey us in silence. They tried their best, but I could see they
were unhappy, and after a while, out of compassion and to improve the
pace, I withdrew the ban, and the chorus was joyfully resumed in a new
and more elaborate form.
The manners of the Baganda are ceremonious to a degree. They well
deserve Sir Harry Johnston's description of them as "the Japanese of
Africa." If you say "Good morning" to a stranger on an English road,
it is as like as not that his surprise will throw him into a posture
of self-defence; but when two Baganda meet they begin to salute each
other as soon as they come within earshot. "How are you?" cries the
one. "Who am I that you should care to know?" replies the other.
"Humble though I be, yet I have dared," rejoins the first. "But say
first how are _you_," continues the second. "The better for the honour
you have done me," is the answer. By this they have already passed
each other, and there is only time for the Parthian affability, "The
honour is mine, and I shall treasure it," and a quavering of
delicately-modulated, long-drawn "A--a--a's" of contentment and
goodwill which gradually die away in the distance, leaving neither of
them the worse circumstanced, nor the better informed. I must add,
for the reader's caution, that the aforesaid dialogue is not an
invariable ritual. The phrases may be varied _ad infinitum_ to suit
the occasion; but it will suffice as an illustration of these roadside
courtesies.
[Illustration: BAGANDA WARRIORS AT KAMPALA.]
If you wish to make a Baganda perfectly happy, all you need to do is
to say, "Way wally," which means a sort of supremely earnest "Well
done." The moment this talismanic expression has left your lips, the
native to whom it is addressed will probably fall on his knees, and,
clasping his two hands together, will sway them from side to side, as
if he were playing a concertina, while all the time his face beams
with a most benignant and compulsive smile, and he purrs, "A--o, a--o,
a--o," as much as to say, "My cup of joy is overflowing." It is not in
accordance with our ideas that man should kneel to man, and one feels
uncomfortable to see it done. Yet it should not be thought that the
action, as performed by the Baganda, involves or implies any
servility. It is their good manners--and meant to be no more. Nor,
once you are used to it, do they seem to lose at all in dignity. Only
they win your heart.
The road from Entebbe to Kampala passes through delicious country.
Along its whole length a double avenue of rubber trees has just been
planted, and behind these on each side are broad strips of cotton
plants, looking beautiful with their yellow flowers or pinky-white
bolls. American upland cotton grown in Uganda actually commands a
higher price in the Manchester market than when it is grown in the
United States. There appears to be practically no natural difficulty
in its cultivation throughout the larger part of Uganda. A great
development is only a question of organization and--money.
But I have forgotten that we have been moving swiftly along the
Kampala road, and now we are almost in sight of the city. Almost, but
not quite; for, to tell the truth, no one has ever seen Kampala. The
traveller sees the Government buildings and residences neat and prim
on one hill; he sees the King's house and his Ministers' houses on
another. Upon a third, a fourth, or a fifth hill he may discern
successively the Protestant Cathedral, the Catholic Mission, and the
White Father's Monastery. But Kampala, the home of sixty thousand
persons, is permanently invisible. The whole town is buried under the
leaves of innumerable banana plantations, which afford shade and
food to its people, and amid which their huts are thickly scattered
and absolutely concealed.
[Illustration: KING DAUDI'S DRUMMERS AT KAMPALA.]
[Illustration: WATCHING THE WAR-DANCE AT KAMPALA.
(Major Jenkins, Mr. Churchill, King Daudi, Sir H. Hesketh Bell.)]
We were still three miles out of this "garden city" when the native
reception began, and we travelled for a quarter of a mile between
lines of white-robed Baganda, all mustered by their chiefs, and
clapping their hands in sign of welcome. At last our procession of
rickshaws reached a hillock by the roadside, at the top of which stood
a pavilion, beautifully constructed of stout elephant grass like thin
polished canes woven together with curious art. Down from this
eminence, over a pathway strewn with rushes, came to meet us the King
and his notables in a most imposing array. Daudi Chewa, the King or
Kabaka of Uganda, is a graceful, distinguished-looking little boy,
eleven years old. He was simply dressed in a flowing black robe edged
with gold, and a little white gold-rimmed cap. Around him were the
Council of Regency; and at his right hand stood the Prime Minister,
Sir Apolo Kagwar, a powerful, determined-looking man, wearing a
crimson, gold-laced robe, on which shone many decorations, several
British war medals, and the Order of St. Michael and St. George.
We all shook hands, and were then led up into the pavilion, where we
took our seats on wicker chairs and ate sweet jellies while we
conversed. The King, who is being most carefully educated by an
English tutor, understands and speaks English quite well, but on this
occasion he seemed too shy to say much more than "Yes" or "No," in a
low, sweet drawl, and this formal interview soon came to an end.
The afternoon was consumed in ceremony; for the Commissioner of Uganda
had to be sworn in the rank of Governor, to which he has been lately
raised; and there was a parade of troops, in which some five or six
hundred very smart-looking soldiers took part, headed by the Kampala
company of Sikhs. It was not until the shadows began to lengthen that
we visited the Kabaka on the Royal Hill. He received us in his
Parliament House. In this large and beautifully-constructed grass
building about seventy chiefs and Baganda notables were assembled. The
little Kabaka sat on his throne, and his subjects grouped themselves
around and before him. We were given seats at his side, and the
Prime Minister explained that the Baganda would show us the ceremony
of swearing a chief. One of the most portly and dignified of the
councillors thereupon advanced into the centre of the room, threw
himself face downward on the ground, and poured out a torrent of
asseverations of loyalty. After a few minutes he rose and began
brandishing his spears, chaunting his oath all the while, until he had
created an extraordinary appearance of passion. Finally he rushed from
the building to go and slay the King's enemies outside. It was not
until he returned a moment later, calm, sedate, and respectable, that
I realized, from the merry smile on his face and from the mirth of the
company, that he was "only pretending," and that the ceremony was
merely a representation given to interest us.
[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO KAMPALA.]
[Illustration: ROAD BETWEEN JINJA AND LAKE CHIOGA.]
The incident is remarkable because it illustrates the rapidity with
which the Baganda people are leaving their past behind them. Already
they laugh at their old selves. Ceremonies which twenty years ago had
a solemn and awful significance, are to-day reproduced by this
reflective people in much the same spirit as the citizens of Coventry
revive the progress of Lady Godiva. The same thing happened at the
war-dance the next day. Two or three thousand men, naked and painted
for war, rushed frantically to and fro to the beating of drums and
barbaric music, with every sign of earnestness and even frenzy. Yet a
few minutes later they were laughing sheepishly at one another, and
bowing to us like actors before the curtain, and the Prime Minister
was making a speech to explain that this was meant to be a pageant of
the bad old times reproduced for our benefit. Indeed, so unaccustomed
to carry arms had the warriors become that not one in ten could find a
spear to arm himself with, and they had to come with sticks and other
stage-properties.
Even a comic element was provided in the shape of a warrior painted
all over in a ridiculous manner, and held by two others with a rope
tied round his middle. This, we were told, was "the bravest man in the
army," who had to be restrained lest he should rush into battle too
soon. It is not easy to convey the air of honest fun and good humour
which pervaded these curious performances, or to measure the
intellectual progress which the attitude of the Baganda towards them
implied.
[Illustration: WAR DANCE AT KAMPALA.
"The bravest man in the army."]
[Illustration: WAR DANCE AT KAMPALA.]
The Kabaka gave us tea in his house. It is a comfortable European
building, quite small and modest, but nicely furnished, and adorned
with familiar English prints and portraits of Queen Victoria and King
Edward. Gradually he got the better of his shyness, and told me that
he liked football more than anything else, and that his mathematical
studies had advanced as far as "G.C.M.," initials which never fail to
stir disagreeable school-day memories in my mind. He can write a very
good letter in English, rides well on a nice pony, and will probably
become a well-educated and accomplished man. Altogether it is a very
pleasing spectacle to find in the heart of Africa, and amid so much
barbarism, squalour, and violence, this island of gentle manners and
peaceful civilization.
The next day was one unending pilgrimage. I have described how Kampala
lies under the leaves of the plantain groves about the slopes of many
hills. Each hill has its special occupants and purpose. Each of the
different Christian missions has a hill to itself, and in the bad old
days a Maxim gun was not thought at all an inappropriate aid to
Christian endeavour. It would, however, be very unfair to charge the
missionaries with having created the feuds and struggles which
convulsed Uganda twelve years ago. The accident that the line of
cleavage between French and British influence was also the line of
cleavage between Catholic and Protestant converts, imparted a
religious complexion to what was in reality a fierce political
dispute. These troubles are now definitely at an end. The arrival upon
the scene of an English Catholic mission has prevented national
rivalries and religious differences from mutually embittering one
another. The erection of a stable Government and the removal of all
doubts about the future of Uganda have led to an entire abatement of
strife among devoted men engaged in a noble work. Not only is there
peace among the different Christian missions themselves, but the
Government of Uganda, so far from watching missionary enterprise with
sour disfavour, is thoroughly alive to the inestimable services which
have been and are daily being rendered by the missions to the native
population, and excellent relations prevail.
[Illustration: THE WHITE FATHERS' MISSION AT KAMPALA.]
[Illustration: CHILDREN AT THE ENGLISH CATHOLIC MISSION, KAMPALA.]
In duty bound I climbed one hill after another and endeavoured to make
myself acquainted with the details of mission work in Kampala. It
comprises every form of moral and social activity. Apart from their
spiritual work, which needs no advocacy here, the missionaries have
undertaken and are now maintaining the whole educational system of the
country. They have built many excellent schools, and thousands of
young Baganda are being taught to read and write in their own
language. The whole country is dotted with subsidiary mission
stations, each one a centre of philanthropic and Christian effort.
There are good hospitals, with skilful doctors and nurses or sisters
of charity, in connection with all the missions. The largest of these,
belonging to the Church Missionary Society, is a model of what a
tropical hospital for natives ought to be. Technical education is now
being added to these services, and in this, it is to be hoped, the
Government will be able to cooperate. I do not know of any other part
of the world where missionary influence and enterprise have been so
beneficently exerted, or where more valuable results have been
achieved.
On Namirembe Hill, where the Church Missionary Society have their
head-quarters, a really fine cathedral, with three tall, quaint,
thatched spires, has been built out of very primitive materials; and
this is almost the only building in Uganda which offers the slightest
attempt at architectural display. Under the shadow of this I found
myself on the afternoon of the 20th of November engaged in opening a
high school for scholars who are more advanced than can be instructed
in the existing establishments. A large and well-dressed audience,
native and European, filled a good-sized room. The scholars crowded
together in a solid mass of white-dressed youths upon the floor. The
Kabaka and Sir Apolo Kagwar, who has himself five sons at the school,
were upon the platform. The Governor presided. The Bishop made a
speech. The schoolboys sang English songs and hymns in very good tune
and rhythm. It was astonishing to look at the map of the British
Empire hanging on the wall and to realize that all this was taking
place near the north-western corner of the Victoria Nyanza.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF NAMIREMBE CATHEDRAL.]
It is eight miles from Kampala to Munyonyo, its present port on the
lake, and this distance we covered in rickshaws over a shocking road.
Munyonyo is itself little more than a jetty and a few sheds, but it
affords a very good example of the salutary effects of cutting down
the bush and forest. Mosquitoes and tsetses have been absolutely
banished from the cleared area, and a place which a year ago was a
death-trap is now perfectly safe and healthy. Plans are now on foot to
make a new port a little farther along the coast at a point only five
miles away from Kampala; and when this has been connected with the
capital, as it must be, by a line of mono-rail tramway, there is every
reason to expect a substantial and growing trade.
The _Sir William Mackinnon_, a venerable vessel of the Uganda Marine,
awaited our party, and we steamed off on the smooth waters of the
lake, through an archipelago of beautiful islands--each one more
inviting than the other--and all depopulated by sleeping sickness. All
day long we voyaged in these sheltered waters, and in the evening the
lights of Jinja guided us to our destination. One cannot help admiring
the luck which led Speke to his thrilling discovery of the source of
the Nile. There are five hundred gulfs and inlets on the northern
shore of Lake Victoria, and nothing distinguishes this one from the
rest. No current is perceptible to the ordinary mariner until within a
few miles of the rapids, and although the presumption that so vast a
body of fresh water would have an overflow somewhere had behind it a
backing of strong probability, the explorer might have searched for a
year without finding the spot. Instead of which he drifted and paddled
gently along until all of a sudden the murmur of a distant cataract
and the slight acceleration in the pace of his canoe drew him to the
long-sought birthplace of the most wonderful river in the world.
It was dark when we landed at Jinja, and I could not properly see the
preparations made for our reception by the local chiefs and the Indian
traders, of whom there was a considerable crowd. The darkness,
otherwise a cause of disappointment, afforded the opportunity for just
the sort of brave act one so often finds a British officer ready to
do. As the baggage was being landed from the steamer on to the jetty,
a poor coolie slipped under his load, and in an instant was engulfed
in the deep black waters below. Whereupon, as a matter of course, a
young civilian in the Political Department jumped in after him in the
darkness and among the crocodiles, and fished him out safe and sound,
an act of admirable behaviour which has since received the recognition
of the Royal Humane Society. I am not quite sure that in all parts of
Africa so high a standard of honour and respect for the life of the
humble native would prevail.
Jinja is destined to become a very important place in the future
economy of Central Africa. Situated at the point where the Nile flows
out of the Great Lake, it is at once on the easiest line of water
communication with Lake Albert and the Soudan, and also where great
water-power is available. In years to come the shores of this splendid
bay may be crowned with long rows of comfortable tropical villas and
imposing offices, and the gorge of the Nile crowded with factories and
warehouses. There is power enough to gin all the cotton and saw all
the wood in Uganda, and it is here that one of the principal emporia
of tropical produce will certainly be created. In these circumstances
it is a pity to handicap the town with an outlandish name. It would be
much better to call it Ripon Falls, after the beautiful cascades which
lie beneath it, and from whose force its future prosperity will be
derived.
The Ripon Falls are, for their own sake, well worth a visit. The Nile
springs out of the Victoria Nyanza, a vast body of water nearly as
wide as the Thames at Westminster Bridge, and this imposing river
rushes down a stairway of rock from fifteen to twenty feet deep, in
smooth, swirling slopes of green water. It would be perfectly easy to
harness the whole river and let the Nile begin its long and beneficent
journey to the sea by leaping through a turbine. It is possible that
nowhere else in the world could so enormous a mass of water be held up
by so little masonry. Two or three short dams from island to island
across the falls would enable, at an inconceivably small cost, the
whole level of the Victoria Nyanza--over an expanse of a hundred and
fifty thousand square miles--to be gradually raised six or seven feet;
would greatly increase the available water-power; would deepen the
water in Kavirondo Bay, so as to admit steamers of much larger
draught; and, finally, would enable the lake to be maintained at a
uniform level, so that immense areas of swampy foreshore, now
submerged, now again exposed, according to the rainfalls, would be
converted either into clear water or dry land, to the benefit of
man and the incalculable destruction of mosquitoes.
[Illustration: THE RIPON FALLS (Source of the Nile).]
As one watches the surging waters of the Ripon Falls and endeavours to
compute the mighty energies now running to waste, but all within the
reach of modern science, the problem of Uganda rises in a new form on
the mind. All this water-power belongs to the State. Ought it ever to
be surrendered to private persons? How long, on the other hand, is a
Government, if not prepared to act itself, entitled to bar the way to
others? This question is raised in a multitude of diverse forms in
almost all the great dependencies of the Crown. But in Uganda the
arguments for the State ownership and employment of the natural
resources of the country seem to present themselves in their strongest
and most formidable array. Uganda is a native State. It must not be
compared with any of those colonies where there is a white population
already established, nor again with those inhabited by tribes of
nomadic barbarians. It finds its counterparts among the great native
States of India, where Imperial authority is exercised in the name and
often through the agency of a native prince and his own officers.
This combination of the external brain and the native hand results in
a form of government often highly acceptable to the general body of
the inhabitants, who are confronted with no sudden or arbitrary
changes in the long-accustomed appearances of things. But it involves
all the administration of affairs in a degree of complexity and
delicacy which is absent from simpler and cruder systems. In such
circumstances there cannot be much opening for the push and drive of
ordinary commercial enterprise. The hustling business man--admirably
suited to the rough and tumble of competitive production in Europe or
America--becomes an incongruous and even a dangerous figure when
introduced into the smooth and leisurely development of a native
State. The Baganda will not be benefited either morally or materially
by contact with modern money-making or modern money-makers. When a man
is working only for the profits of his company and is judged by the
financial results alone, he does not often under the sun of Central
Africa acquire the best method of dealing with natives; and all sorts
of difficulties and troubles will follow any sudden incursion of
business enterprise into the forests and gardens of Uganda. And even
if the country is more rapidly developed by these agencies, the
profits will not go to the Government and people of Uganda, to be used
in fostering new industries, but to divers persons across the sea, who
have no concern, other than purely commercial, in its fortunes. This
is not to advocate the arbitrary exclusion of private capital and
enterprise from Uganda. Carefully directed and narrowly controlled
opportunities for their activities will no doubt occur. But the
natural resources of the country should, as far as possible, be
developed by the Government itself, even though that may involve the
assumption of many new functions.
Indeed, it would be hard to find a country where the conditions were
more favourable than in Uganda to a practical experiment in State
Socialism. The land is rich; the people pacific and industrious. There
are no great differences between class and class. One staple article
of food meets the needs of the whole population, and produces itself
almost without the aid of man. There are no European vested interests
to block the way. Nowhere are the powers of the Government to
regulate and direct the activities of the people more overwhelming or
more comprehensive. The superiority of knowledge in the rulers is
commanding. Their control upon the natives is exerted through almost
every channel; and besides the secular authorities--native and
Imperial--there is the spiritual and educative influence of the
missionaries to infuse human sympathy and moral earnestness into the
regular machinery of State.
The first, and perhaps the greatest, difficulty which confronts the
European Socialist is the choosing of Governors to whom the positively
awful powers indispensable to a communistic society are to be
entrusted. If a race of beings could be obtained when and as required
from a neighbouring planet, whose practical superiority in virtue,
science, wisdom, and strength was so manifest as to be universally
acclaimed, this difficulty would disappear, and we might with
composure await the decision of popular elections with all their
defects and advantages. But in the absence of this dispensation the
problem of how rulers are to be selected, and how, having been
selected, they are to be controlled or changed, remains the first
question of politics, even in days when the functions of government
are, in general, restricted to the modest limits of _laissez-faire_.
In Uganda, however, this difficulty does not exist. A class of rulers
is provided by an outside power as remote from and, in all that
constitutes fitness to direct, as superior to the Baganda as Mr.
Wells's Martians would have been to us. The British administration is
in its _personnel_ absolutely disinterested. The officials draw their
salaries, and that is all. They have no end to serve, except the
improvement of the country and the contentment of its people. By that
test and that test alone are they judged. In no other way can they win
approbation or fame. They are furthermore controlled in the exercise
of their functions by a superior authority, specially instructed in
this class of administration, and itself answerable to a Parliament
elected on a democratic franchise. At no point in the whole chain of
command is there any room for corruption, usurpation, or gross
inefficiency.
It is clear that larger powers could be entrusted to the State in
regard to the labour of its citizens than would ever be accorded to
private employers. The subjects of every European Power have accepted
the obligation of military service to defend their respective
countries from external attack. The Baganda, relieved from this harsh
obsession, have no higher duty than to cultivate and develop the
beautiful land they live in. And if it were desired to organize
scientifically, upon a humane and honourable basis, the industry of an
entire population, and to apply the whole fruits of their labour to
their own enrichment and elevation, no better conditions are likely to
be discovered than those which now exist in Uganda.
It might at any rate be worth while to make such an experiment, if
only as a prelude to those more general applications of the principles
of Socialism which are held in some quarters to be so necessary.