[Illustration: IN THE REAR OF A CARAVAN]
SLAVERY
AND THE SLAVE TRADE IN AFRICA
BY
HENRY M. STANLEY
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1893
Harper’s “Black and White” Series.
Illustrated. 32mo, Cloth, 50 cents each.
SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE IN AFRICA. By Henry M. Stanley.
THE RIVALS. By François Coppée.
THE JAPANESE BRIDE. By Naomi Tamura.
WHITTIER: NOTES OF HIS LIFE AND OF HIS FRIENDSHIPS. By Annie Fields.
GILES COREY, YEOMAN. By Mary E. Wilkins.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. An Address. By George William Curtis.
COFFEE AND REPARTEE. By John Kendrick Bangs.
SEEN FROM THE SADDLE. By Isa Carrington Cabell.
A FAMILY CANOE TRIP. By Florence Watters Snedeker.
A LITTLE SWISS SOJOURN. By William Dean Howells.
A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION. A Farce. By William Dean Howells.
IN THE VESTIBULE LIMITED. By Brander Matthews.
THE ALBANY DEPOT. A Farce. By William Dean Howells.
PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.
_For sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by the publishers,
postage prepaid, on receipt of price._
Copyright, 1893, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
ILLUSTRATIONS
IN THE REAR OF A CARAVAN _Frontispiece_
CAPTURING SLAVES _Facing p._ 28
A SLAVE MARKET ” 40
A SLAVER ” 50
BOY SLAVE ” 62
AN ARAB ” 74
SLAVERY
AND THE SLAVE TRADE IN AFRICA
“It is desirable that accurate information on the enormities of
the slave trade should be spread at home and abroad, and that to
slave-holding states all evidence proving the superior advantages
of free labor should be freely supplied,” was a sentiment uttered
by his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales at the jubilee meeting of
the Antislavery Society. His vast and influential audience cordially
responded to it.
It seems to me that the same sentiment should also be published for
the benefit of all those in America or England who are or may become
interested in the welfare and progress of the negro races, and of
their advancement towards civilization. With that view, I shall
endeavor in this article to lay before you the present actual condition
of Africa in respect to slavery, the slave trade, and slave-raiding,
and the efforts which are being made to remedy their destructive
effects, and to extirpate the causes, by opening the continent to the
influences of legitimate trade.
The maritime exploration of the African coasts by the Portuguese
navigators in the fifteenth century was the direct cause of the first
inception of the traffic in negroes, and first started the no less
inhuman system of slave-holding which this century has seen expiated by
one of the most sanguinary wars of which we have any full record.
The exploration of the interior of the continent, accompanied as it has
been by revelations respecting the appalling sufferings of innocent
peoples, of the wholesale destruction of tribal communities, and the
annihilation of their humble industries, has so cleared the way to the
right comprehension of the worst features of the slave trade that we
begin now to see pretty clearly the measures that must be adopted not
only for its thorough suppression in the continent, but to obliterate
all traces of its past horrors.
The excesses which were committed by the cupidity and hard
thoughtlessness of our forefathers have been atoned for to some extent
by their children by the immense sacrifices which they have made. They
have freely risked their lives on the battle-field, on board of the
cruisers along the unhealthy coasts of Africa during their long and
faithful service as the world’s maritime police, along the various
lines of exploration, in the many mission fields; they have also given
treasures of money towards freeing themselves from the shame of any
connection with the slave trade by moral or actual connivance, or by
countenancing its existence.
In regard to the suppression of the slave trade in little-known Africa
we have been, however, too apt to adopt pessimistic views; and as in
North and South America we were slow to perceive our duties, or to
appreciate the advantages that would result from relieving ourselves
from the odium attached to slavery, so after the event we are too apt
to remind ourselves of the immense trouble and treasure it cost us
to cast it off. Our impatience is excited at the portentously large
figures of expense, compared to which the figures of profit seem so
infinitesimal, and the rate of progress so insignificant. My endeavor
shall be to lessen this feeling of disappointment, and to show how we
have been steadily advancing, even in mid-Africa, to extinguish the
traffic, and what prospects we have of eventually seeing it abolished
altogether from the face of the earth.
From the year when Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope
(1497) to the year 1807, when the British government prohibited
the exportation of slaves over the high seas, is a period of 310
years. During all this time Africa was surrendered to the cruelty
of the slave-hunter, and the avarice of the slave-trader. While
its people were thus subject to capture and expatriation, it was
clearly impossible that any intellectual or moral progress could be
made by them. The greater number of those accessible from the coast
were compelled to study the best methods of avoiding the slaver and
escaping his force and his wiles--the rest only thought of the arts
of kidnapping their innocent and unsuspecting fellow-creatures. Yet
ridiculous as it may appear to us, there were not wanting zealous men
who devoted themselves to Christianizing the savages who were moved
by such an opposite spirit. In Angola, Congo, and Mozambique, and
far up the Zambezi, missionaries erected churches and cathedrals,
appointed bishops and priests, who converted and baptized, while at
the mouths of the Niger, the Congo, and the Zambezi their countrymen
built slave-barracoons and anchored their murderous slave-ships.
European governments legalized and sanctioned the slave trade, the
public conscience of the period approved it, the mitred heads of the
Church blessed the slave-gangs as they marched to the shore, and the
tax-collector received the levy per head as lawful revenue.
But here and there during these guilty centuries words of warning are
not wanting. Queen Elizabeth, upon being informed of the forcible
capture of Africans for the purposes of sale, exclaims solemnly that
“such actions are detestable, and will call down vengeance on the
perpetrators.” When Las Casas, in his anxiety to save his Indians,
suggests that Africans be substituted for them, the Pope, Leo X.,
declares that “not only the Christian religion but Nature herself cried
out against such a course.”
One hundred and sixty-five years after the discovery of the Cape, Sir
John Hawkins pioneers the way for England to participate in the slave
trade, hitherto carried on by the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the
Dutch.
A century later a king of England, Charles II., heads an English
company which undertakes to supply the British West Indies yearly with
30,000 negroes.
After the Asiento Contract, under which for thirty years England
secured the monopoly of supplying the Spanish West Indies with slaves,
as many as 192 ships were engaged every year in the transportation
of slaves from the African coast. The countries which suffered most
from the superior British method of slave capturing and trading and
slave-carrying were Congo land, the Niger Valley, the Guinea and Gold
coasts, the Gambia, Cross, and Calabar lands.
The system adopted by the British crews in those days was very similar
to that employed by the Arabs to-day in inner Africa. They landed at
night, surrounded the selected village, and then set fire to the huts,
and as the frightened people issued out of the burning houses, they
were seized and carried to the ships; or sometimes the skipper, in his
hurry for sea, sent his crew to range through the town he was trading
with, and, regardless of rank, to seize upon every man, woman, and
child they met. Old Town, Creek Town, and Duke Town, in Old Calabar,
have often witnessed this summary and high-handed proceeding.
Boswell, the biographer of Dr. Johnson, called the slave trade “an
important and necessary branch of commerce;” and probably the largest
section of the British public, before those antislavery champions
Clarkson and Wilberforce succeeded in persuading their countrymen to
reflect a little, shared Boswell’s views, as well as his surprise and
indignation, when it became known that there were English people who
talked of suppressing it.
That the slave trade must have been a lucrative commerce there can be
no doubt, when we consider that from 1777 to 1807 upwards of 3,000,000
Africans had been sold in the West Indies. All those forts which
may be seen lining the west coast of Africa to-day were constructed
principally by means of the revenue derived from the slave tax.
In 1833 slavery was abolished throughout the British dominions, and
the government agreed to pay the slave-owners of the West Indies
£20,000,000 redemption-money for 1,000,000 of slaves. On the 1st of
August, 1834, the famous Act of Emancipation came into operation.
Throughout the West Indies the eve of the great day was kept by watch
meetings, in acclamations of praise and thanksgiving. It is said
that when the hour of midnight began to strike, the singing and the
shouting ceased, and the congregations knelt down and listened with
bated breath to the solemn strokes of the bell which announced their
freedom, and ere the new day was a minute old the loud strains of
“Glory Allelujah!” burst from the now enfranchised people. They flung
themselves upon one another’s breasts, clapped their hands, cried and
laughed, but louder than all other sounds were the cries, “Praise God!
Glory! glory to God!”
Ten years later, the abolition of the legal status of slavery in
India freed 9,000,000 of slaves. Then, little by little, the nations
implicated in slavery gravitated to the side of the emancipators. In
1846 the Bey of Tunis, through British influence, decreed that all
slaves touching his territory should become free. The French Republic
in 1848 declared by a brief act that no more slaves should be admitted
into French territory. In 1861 the autocrat of Russia decreed the
emancipation of 20,000,000 serfs. The history of the great struggle
in the United States is too recent for it to be forgotten that it
occasioned the proclamation of freedom on January 1, 1863, by which
6,000,000 of slaves were admitted to the rights of freemen. Finally,
and only four years ago, Brazil, after long and laborious efforts of
her most enlightened men, heard that the law of abolition of slavery
had passed through her Senate--and thus the cruel and inhuman system
of man holding fellow-man as a chattel and barterable property was
extinguished throughout all America.
It therefore required eighty-two years to extirpate slavery within
lands professing to be civilized. Africa in the mean time was not
neglected. Her burdens and pains were gradually but surely being
reduced. The cruising squadrons sailing up and down the eastern and
western coasts made it extremely difficult for slave-ships to break
through the close blockade, and after the introduction of steam it was
rendered impossible. Education had also greatly spread, and it became
a universal conviction that slave-trading was as wicked as piracy.
It has since been attempted by more than one power to continue the
trade under the disguised form of cooly and contract labor. Were it
honestly conducted, and the contracts punctually executed on the part
of the employers, there can be no doubt that it would be a means of
elevating the benighted people into a higher standard by the contact
with and example of a superior or, rather, more advanced race. But it
requires a strong and enlightened government to act as umpire in such
cases, and governments, unless they find their influence remunerative,
do not care to take too much trouble. The ignorant islanders of the
South Seas have suffered terribly from this supineness, indifference,
or want of close scrutiny and rigid enforcement of every detail in
the contract by the Queensland government. They have been decoyed
on board the labor-ships under various pretences, and conveyed away
never to return; or they have been allowed to go to the Queensland
plantations uncared and unprovided for; or, after the term of contract
has expired, they have been landed on islands with which they were
totally unacquainted, and become food for savages or been made slaves.
That such things should be possible in a British colony argues a
woful ignorance of the uses of a government, inexcusable stupidity, a
shocking lack of feeling, and an incredible amount of ingratitude. It
would not be difficult to prove such a system worse than open slavery.
The Portuguese have also been until recently offenders against public
sentiment in the matter of exporting “colonials” from Angola for the
cocoa groves of Prince’s Island and the sugar estates of St. Thomas.
These colonials are natives collected from the interior, who, before
embarkation, are looked at by a government functionary, and then
have tin tickets slung around their necks, are given a blanket and
a few flimsy cottons, and are deported to the islands for a term
which to too many of them must be indefinite. The official declared
that all was fair and just, but no one with a fair mind on viewing
a barge-load of these unfortunates could possibly accept such a
statement from an underbred and illiterate official as a voucher.
It appears to me that if the colonials are absolutely required for
the islands by the Portuguese, or contract kanakas by Queensland
planters, their engagement might be made as honest as an agreement
with a number of English navvies for the Suakim-Berber Railway, or
Italians for the Congo Railway, or Jamaicans for the Panama Canal.
But it should be remembered that the lower, the more degraded, and
more ignorant the people from whom these labor gangs are drawn, the
greater are the responsibilities of the government sanctioning such
engagements. For in cases where the government authorizes “contract
labor” or “colonialism,” it should be prepared to supply to the
ignorant native that care, knowledge, prudence, and security which the
English, Italian, and Jamaican navvies possess by education, color, and
experience. And it is only in this way, and no other, that coolyism,
colonialism, and contract labor can be relieved of their objectionable
features.
We may now see that the progress of the world in philanthropic feeling
and sentiment has been continuous, and as satisfactory as its progress
in the adoption and use of the mechanical inventions of the age. It
has been comparatively slow, but the world is large and its nations
are many; but for an idea--born in the sympathetic heart of the humble
Fox--to be found permeating the minds of all the civilized peoples
of the world, until all authority is ranged on its side, is surely
wonderful. Wherefore we may go on hoping and working till no son of
Adam shall be found a slave to his fellow in all the world.
Now let us see what has already been done, or may in the near future
be done, in Africa, which has been during historic time the nursery of
slaves. I have before me an autograph letter of Dr. David Livingstone,
written in 1872, wherein he concludes a long exposé of the evils of
the slave trade which he had met in his travels thus: “The west coast
slave-trade is finished, but it is confidently hoped, now that you have
got rid of the incubus of slavery [in America], the present holders of
office will do what they can to suppress the infamous breaches of the
common law of mankind that still darken this eastern coast, and all I
can add in my loneliness is, may Heaven’s rich blessings descend on
whoever lends a helping hand!”
It was this and other letters from Livingstone which provoked that
earnest attention to Africa which I feel convinced will not abate
until it will be as impossible to kidnap a slave there as in England.
The traveller’s death, which occurred a few months later, stirred his
countrymen into action. At a great meeting held at the Mansion House
the necessity for vigorously grappling with the slave trade on the east
coast was unmistakably expressed. It resulted in Sir Bartle Frere being
sent to Zanzibar to engage the Sultan’s co-operation. For that prince
derived a considerable revenue from the duty on imported slaves; his
subjects were the people against whom Livingstone had written those
terrible indictments; the British Indian merchants residing in his
capital furnished the means whereby the Arabs were equipped for their
marauding expeditions. But with all Sir Bartle’s tact, discretion, and
proverbial suavity, the mission intrusted to him narrowly approached
failure. Fortunately, in Dr. (now Sir) John Kirk, the consul-general,
the British government possessed an official of rare ability, and who
from long acquaintance with the Sultan knew him thoroughly. Through
his assistance, and the opportune appearance of Admiral Cumming with a
powerful fleet, a treaty was finally concluded, and the Zanzibar prince
was enlisted on the side of the antislavery cause.
Those, however, who expected too much from the treaty were greatly
disappointed when, a few months later, reports reached England that the
slave trade was as flourishing as ever. No suspicion was entertained of
the sincerity of the Zanzibar prince, for upon every occasion involving
the punishment of the slavers he proved his honesty by permitting the
law, without protest, to be applied. The objects of the treaty were
being, however, evaded by the enterprising Arabs on the mainland, who
marched their caravans northward along the coast to points whence at
favorable opportunities they could ship their captives to ports in
southern Arabia or in the Egyptian protectorate.
To counteract these new proceedings of the Arabs, another large meeting
was convened at Stafford House in May, 1874, for the consideration
of other means of suppression of the trade. I suggested at that
meeting that commissioners should be appointed at various ports along
the coast whose duty it would be to keep a record of the number of
persons attached to all caravans bound for the interior, as well as
of the material of their equipment; that each caravan leader, before
receiving permission to set out, should be compelled to bind himself
not to engage in the slave trade, and that such leader on returning to
the coast should, upon being convicted of having evaded or broken his
obligations, forfeit his bond and be fined $5000; that each captain of
a slave-vessel, upon conviction that he was engaged in the transport
of slaves, should receive capital punishment; that trading depots
should be established on Lakes Nyassa and Tanganika to encourage
legitimate commerce in the natural products of the interior; and that
the lake coasts should be patrolled by flotillas of steam-launches.
The above were the main features of a plan which I still believe would
have been adequate in meeting the wishes of the principal speakers in
that assembly. Those who know what has since been done by the imperial
German government along that same coast and on the lakes will perceive
how closely the suggestions are paralleled to-day by the actions of
the German commissioners and the trading depots on the lakes belonging
to the African Lakes Company. No caravan is permitted to leave without
search; gunpowder and arms are confiscated; slave-traders are tried,
and hanged after conviction (the chief judge on the German coast lately
sentenced seventeen Arabs to be hanged at Lindi). The trading depots of
the African Lakes Company are pre-eminently successful in subserving
the antislavery cause by suppressing the odious trade in slaves. Had
the British done then what is being done now, no other power could have
usurped her rights in the immense territory lately abandoned to the
Germans.
The history of events at Zanzibar for some years following consists
principally of relations of capture of slave-dhows and the confiscation
of the vessels, the visit of the Zanzibar prince to England, the
appointment of a number of vice-consuls to the principal ports
along the coast, the departures of explorers for inner Africa, the
gradual but steady increase of missionaries in the interior, and the
establishment of Christian missions at Usambara, Mombasa, and Nyassa.
Meanwhile the Arabs in the far interior had discovered a new field for
bolder operations in a country west of Lake Tanganika, called Manyuema,
and the enormous forested area adjoining it to the north, which has
lately been discovered to be about 400,000 square miles in extent.
Nyangwé, the principal town of Manyuema, is situate but a few miles
south of the vast forest, on the right bank of the Lualaba. It was the
furthest point of Livingstone’s explorations. Manyuema is surpassingly
beautiful, the soil is exceedingly fertile, and the people, though
troubled by tribal feuds, are industrious cultivators. By the time
Livingstone had penetrated the country the Arabs had assumed lordship
over it, and each chief was compelled to pay tribute to them in
ivory. The Arabs not only monopolized the ivory, but the fear of them
was so great among the Manyuema that, to protect themselves from
too many masters, they elected to serve some one powerful Arab, to
whom they surrendered themselves, their liberties, as well as their
properties of all kinds. In a few years Manyuema was emptied of its
elephant teeth. The Arabs then began to extend their operations into
the forest, suffering many a disaster and mishap as they advanced.
But continuous practice enabled them in the end to thwart the craft
of the forest natives, and to acquire that experience by which
eventually they easily became masters of every country they entered.
The success attending the ventures of such men as Dugumbi, Mtagamoyo,
Mohammed-bin-Nasur, and Abed-bin-Salim, and scores of lesser leaders,
increased the avarice and excited the ardor of younger and more daring
spirits. An apprenticeship with men who had grown gray in the arts of
slave-catching and ivory-raiding had taught them that it was a waste of
time to pretend to barter cloth and beads as practised in lands east of
Lake Tanganika. They had realized how complete was the isolation of the
forest aborigines, how the little settlements buried in the recesses of
the forest were too weak to resist their trained battalions, and how
the natives shrank from facing the muzzles of their thundering guns,
and how they might range at will and pillage to their hearts’ content
through an unlimited area without let or hindrance.
Having become experts in the science of tracking, ambuscades, and
surprises, they became anxious to win fame and fortune after a manner
never dreamed of by the earlier traders. The verb “to buy” was to be
banished from the vernacular. All that was bestial and savage in the
human heart was given fullest scope, unchecked and unreproved. Hence
followed the most frightful barbarities and massacres, which spared no
age and regarded no sex; fire, spear, arrow, and iron bullet preluded
furious loot and pitiless seizure.
Among the earliest to put into practice the terrible knowledge they
had gained during their tentative incursions into the forest were
Abed-bin-Salim, Tippu Tib, Sayid-bin-Habib, Muini Muhala, Rashid (the
nephew of Tippu), Nasur-bin-Suliman, and others. Abed-bin-Salim’s
case is typical. Among the young Swahili who followed his fortunes
were four youthful squires, or apprentices, named Karema, Kiburuga,
Kilonga-Longa, and Kibongé. The last of these has given his name
to an important Arab station just above Stanley Falls; the other
three have since become famous among the Central African rapparees
and slave-thieves. The names under which they have severally become
notorious, and for which they exchanged those derived from their
parents, are synonymes given by the bush natives for rapine, lust,
murder, arson.
In 1878 Abed-bin-Salim despatched coastward a caravan consisting of
Manyuema slaves bearing 350 tusks. At Zanzibar the ivory was sold,
and the proceeds invested in double-barrelled guns, Minie rifles,
and carbines, gunpowder, percussion-caps, buckshot, and bar lead.
Within twenty months the new weapons and war munition reached Nyangwé.
Kibongé soon after was sent by his master Abed down the Lualaba as
supercargo and store-keeper at a station to be strategically chosen,
and his three confederates became leaders of three divisions of
booty-gatherers, and to draw all slaves, ivory, and flocks of goats
into the slave-hold of Kibongé. A native village near the confluence of
the Leopold with the Lualaba River was taken, and without loss of time
was palisaded as a measure of security. Canoe after canoe was added
to their flotilla, in order that detachments might make simultaneous
attacks at various points along the Leopold, Lufu, Lowwa, Lira, and
Ulindi rivers.
Ivory was the first object of the raiders, women the second, children
the third. Ivory was now rapidly rising in value, for the slaughter of
fifty thousand elephants in a year makes it scarce. In this region,
hitherto unexploited, it was abundant. The natives frequently used it
to chop wood upon, or to rest their idols while shaping them with the
adze. Being so heavy, two tusks were used to keep their bedding of
phrynia leaves from being scattered. They made ivory into pestles to
pound their corn, or they stood the tusks on end round their idols, or
employed them as seats for their elders in the council-house. Women
were needed as wives and servants for the marauders; the little girls
could be trained to house-work, and bide the growth of the little boys,
with whom eventually they would wive, and who in the mean time would be
useful as field hands or for domestic duties.
In a village there would probably be found, on an average, ten tusks,
good, bad, and indifferent, thirty full-grown women, and fifty
children above five years old, besides a few infants. At the first
alarm, a scream from a child or a woman, the warriors and their
families dash frantically and pell-mell out of their huts. Then from
the ambuscade a volley is fired, and a score fall dead or wounded
to the ground, whereat the unseen foes leap out of their coverts to
despatch the struggling and groaning victims with knife and spear;
and some make mad rushes at a group of terrified children; others
dart for a likely-looking woman; a few leap in pursuit of a girl who
is flying naked from the scene; some chase a lad who bounds like an
antelope over the obstructions. Those not engaged in the fierce chase
enter the village, and collect to argue over the rights to this or
that child. When four or five hundred men rise upon a village whose
inhabitants are numerically inferior to them, the event is followed
by much fierce discussion of the kind which is not always amicably or
easily settled, even when the matter is submitted to the arbitration of
the leaders. The rest of the band scatter wildly through the village,
and begin collecting the frightened fowls and the bleating goats,
rummaging roofs, insides of gourds, and every imaginable place
where a poor savage might be likely to hide his little stock of curios
and valuables; others manacle the captives, and question them harshly
about their neighbors, or indulge in barbarous fun with some decrepid
whitehead. When the results of these pillaging expeditions became known
in Nyangwé, and the laden canoes disembarked their ivory, slaves, and
fat goats of the famous forest breed, it kindled the envy and cupidity
of even Tippu Tib and Sayid-bin-Habib.
[Illustration: CAPTURING SLAVES]
Up to 1876, Tippu Tib had been the acknowledged leader of the
slavers, on account of his marvellous success. His career had been
romantic. From a poor coast slaver, involved in debt to the usurers
and money-lenders of Zanzibar, he had grown wealthy and famous. By
the storming and capture of Nsama’s stronghold (May, 1867) he had
become possessed of a fortune in ivory and slaves. He had relieved
himself as soon as possible of his embarrassing store by sending his
brother Mohammed in charge of his plunder to Unyanyembé, and, with
five hundred guns, continued a triumphant and unchecked course from
the south of Tanganika through the heart of Rua, to Nyangwé. As he
marched, he ravaged to the right and left of his route, gathered ivory,
and made slaves by hundreds. Not far from a district called Mtotila
he learned from a captive that the king had disappeared mysteriously
many years before, and that though frequent search had been made for
him, nothing was known of his whereabouts. Tippu Tib artfully conceived
the plan of representing himself as his son, and accordingly schooled
himself in all the local knowledge necessary for the deception he
intended to practise. By the time he approached Mtotila, Tippu Tib
could rehearse the long line of the king’s ancestry, the names of his
living relatives, and the elders of the land, and was familiar with the
events, traditions, and customs of Mtotila. He despatched messengers
into the country to announce his arrival, and to tell the wondering
people the news of his father’s fate, and of his intention to assume
his father’s rights. The people accepted the story without difficulty,
as it harmonized so well with their own conceptions and expectations.
The elders were deputed to go and meet their prince. They brought rich
presents of ivory and abundance of food, and offered to escort him with
honor to his father’s land, which Tippu Tib courteously accepted. At
every stage of his journey he was welcomed and feasted. On reaching
the town of Mtotila he received the chiefs and elders in a grand
_barzah_, at which he told the story of his father’s disappearance,
with a wealth of fictitious details of love and marriage with a king’s
daughter, of honors showered upon his father, and of the reluctance
to his departure which the natives manifested; of his own birth and
life; of his recollections of his father’s conversations with him
respecting Mtotila country, his relatives, and local events--until
all were thoroughly persuaded that this able and affable stranger was
no other than their lost king’s son. He was at once formally accepted
and installed as their king, and to ingratiate himself still more,
he distributed liberal largesses of showy beads and copper and brass
trinkets. Before many days had passed the people of Mtotila understood
that ivory was very acceptable to their king, and as the article
was abundant, and of little value to them, the entire country was
ransacked for it, and heaps of it were daily laid before him, until
his store of ivory became prodigious. Breaches of the peace between
his subjects were compounded by payment in ivory, his favors were
sold for ivory; in every imaginable way he augmented his treasure.
Finally, when he had depleted Mtotila of elephants’ teeth, he sought
occasion to embroil Mtotila with the surrounding countries, and his
myrmidons were despatched with the native forces to despoil them.
Within fifteen months he had gathered nine hundred tusks. He proposed
now to the Mtotilas that they should muster carriers to convey his
treasure to Kasongo, another country which, according to his reports,
he owned, where he had great houses and great estates. In this manner
he succeeded in obtaining vast wealth, and the Arabs of the Manyuema
settlements, when they viewed his vast store of ivory and innumerable
retinue, hailed him as a genius, and recognized his superiority.
The general admiration which had been excited by his genius had greatly
subsided by the time I reached Nyangwé in 1876. He was then induced to
escort my trans-African expedition a few marches north of Nyangwé, and
on his return he undertook the transport of his immense collections
of ivory to Zanzibar, where it is said that he realized the large sum
of £30,000 by its sale. Out of these lucrative returns he was able
to pay the usurers of Zanzibar the advances of money he had received,
with the heavy interest accruing, and with the residue he equipped his
large force with the best weapons procurable. In 1881 he was back again
in Manyuema, and witnessed with his own eyes the disembarkation of the
ivory and slaves obtained by Abed-bin-Salim’s agents. Fired at the
sight, he lost no time in making his preparations for a second great
campaign, which should excel in results his own previous exploits and
surpass Abed’s successes.
He divided his forces into two divisions. The land force he despatched
under his nephew Rashid to the Lumami; the flotilla descending the
Lualaba he led himself, assisted by his brother and son. The vessels
were navigated by the Wenya fishermen, whom during his long residence
in Manyuema he had protected and propitiated. These people numbered
several thousands, and were scattered along the left bank of the river
from the confluence of the Luama to Stanley Falls. The cataracts were
therefore no interruption to Tippu Tib’s progress or his projects.
On a large island just above the lowest of the Stanley Falls, called
Wané Sironga (Sons of Sironga), Tippu halted and established his
headquarters, whence he was to operate on the left bank as far as
the Lumami in conjunction with his nephew Rashid. But for some
months before his arrival Abed-bin-Salim’s agents had extended their
depredations below the Falls along the right bank, leaving a broad
desolate track as a witness of their crimes.
It may be true that the development of a country can only take
place after a drastic purgation of some sort, but it is also true,
fortunately, that there always is some cause to arrest total ruin. In
this instance the Arabs themselves had aided the cause. The enslaving
bands which escorted me from Nyangwé consisted of trained and
educated boy slaves from Manyuema and Unyamuezi and Zanzibar. Many a
trusted slave was in the ranks of the expedition which descended the
Lualaba to the Atlantic, through whose means a watery highway into
the heart of the continent was discovered, and by whom the course of
the westward-rolling waves of fire and slaughter was destined to be
arrested.
Seven years after we had parted from Tippu Tib in 1876 a small flotilla
of steamers was advancing towards Stanley Falls, which was barely sixty
miles off, and this is what we saw, as entered in a journal at the time:
“Surely there had been a great change. As we moved slowly up the
stream, a singular scene attracted our gaze. This was two or three long
canoes standing on their ends, like split hollow columns, upright on
the verge of the bank. What freak was this, and what did it signify?
To have tilted and raised such weights argued numbers and union. It
could never have been the work of a herd of chattering savages. They
are Arabs who have performed this feat of strength, and these upright
columnar canoes betray the advent of the slave-traders in the region
below the Falls. We learned later that on this now desolate spot once
stood the town of Yomburri.
“A few miles higher on the same bank we came abreast of another scene
of desolation, where a whole town had been burnt, the palm-trees cut
down, the bananas scorched, and many acres of them laid level with the
ground, and the freak of standing canoes on end repeated.
“We continued on our journey, advancing as rapidly as our steamers
could breast the stream. Every three or four miles we came in view of
the black traces of the destroyers. The charred stakes, poles of once
populous settlements, scorched banana groves, and prostrate palms, all
betokened ruthless ruin.
“On the morning of the 27th November (1883) we detected some object of
a slaty color floating down stream. The man in the bow turned it over
with a boat-hook. We were shocked to discover the bodies of two women
bound together with cord.
“A little later we came in sight of the Arab camp, and discovered that
this horde of banditti--for in reality they were nothing else--was
under the leadership of several chiefs, but principally under Karema
and Kiburuga. They had started sixteen months previously from Wané
Kirundu, about thirty miles below Vinya Njara. For eleven months the
band had been raiding successfully between the Congo and Lubiranzi.
They had then undertaken to perform the same cruel work between the
Aruwimi and the Falls. On looking at my map I find that the area
of such a territory as described above would measure 16,200 square
geographical miles on the left of the Lualaba, and 10,500 square
geographical miles on the right of it, the total of which would be
equal in statute mileage to 34,570 miles--an area a little larger than
the whole of Ireland, and which, according to a rough estimate, was
inhabited by about one million people.
“The slave-traders admit they have only 2300 captives in their fold.
The banks of the river prove that 118 villages and 43 tribal districts
have been devastated, out of which they have only this scant profit
of 2300 females and children and about 2000 tusks of ivory. Given
that these 118 villages contained only 118,000 people, we have only a
profit of two per cent.; and by the time all these captives have been
subjected to the accidents of the long river voyage before them, of
camp life and its harsh miseries, to the havoc of small-pox, and the
pests which misery breeds, there will only remain a scant one per cent.
upon the bloody ventures.”
If the pitiless course of the slave-hunters were not soon checked,
it was easy to perceive that the main Congo, with its 2000 miles of
shores, would have soon become a prey to these marauders, that in a
little while the scope and incentives to daring enterprise held out
by the defenceless river-banks would have emptied Manyuema and Ujiji
and Unyanyembé to extend devastation as far as Stanley Pool, and that
the great tributaries, with their 14,000 miles of shores, would have
been next visited, until the best portions of Africa would have been
depopulated. The Arabs were not pursuing any fixed scheme, but pushed
forward according to their means, and would continue to do so in
increasing numbers until they met a barrier of some kind. The barrier
fortunately had advanced to meet them, and was to be established at
Stanley Falls, 1400 miles from the Atlantic. Along the course of the
noble river were a series of military stations, which, with the aid of
the steamers, could furnish in case of need a very strong defensive
force. As, however, the stations were but newly planted, and the
natives as yet were not familiar with their purposes, time was needed
for their education and the consolidation of the infant state.
[Illustration: A SLAVE MARKET]
On February 25, 1885, the powers of Europe and America gave their
cordial recognition to the Congo Free State, and sanctioned the
employment of all civilized means for the preservation of order, the
introduction of civilization and lawful commerce, for the guarantees of
the safety of its people and efficient administration. It was markedly
stipulated that the new state should watch over the preservation of the
native races and the moral and material conditions of their existence,
should suppress slavery, and, above all, the slave trade, and punish
those engaged in it; that it should protect and encourage without
distinction of nationality or creed all institutions and enterprises,
religious, scientific, or charitable, organized for this object.
In time to come the regenerated peoples of central Africa will point
to the acts of the Berlin Conference as their charters of freedom from
the civilized world. For not only did this world-wide recognition
hearten the sovereign of the new state and founder of the association
which fathered it to continue his benevolent work, but the principles
formulated during the sitting of the Conference suggested to ambitious
powers the possibilities of immediate expansion of territory, after the
example of King Leopold II. The exigencies of diplomacy, even during
the Conference, had forced the powers to recognize immense concessions
of territory to France and Portugal, so that without the expenditure of
a copper French Gaboon was extended to the Congo, and Portuguese Angola
was amplified northward until its shores faced the only sea-port of
the young state. These political distributions disposed of over one
million and a half square miles of African territory.
In February, 1885, when the fate of this section of Africa was being
decided by Europe and America in Berlin, there were only three
steam-launches and three steel row-boats on the waters of the upper
Congo. They had been conveyed in pieces of sixty pounds weight, or
hauled on wagons past the cataracts, after an enormous expenditure of
money and labor. But now that the new state was fairly launched into
existence, it was necessary to increase the flotilla, and provide
means commensurate with the long list of duties which it had accepted.
The revenue which hitherto had solely been the bounty of King Leopold
was increased by an export tax on the commercial shipments from the
Congo. King Leopold also guaranteed the continuation of his bounty to
the year 1900 of £40,000 annually. Belgium granted the annual subsidy
of £80,000. From all sources there was an assured revenue of about
£150,000. The government, mission societies, and mercantile companies
hastened to provide means for the utilization of the long stretches
of navigable water above the cataracts. Steamer after steamer, boat
after boat, have been sent up, until now on the waters of the upper
river there are over thirty steamers and forty steel boats. The banks
of the main river are now free from danger of invasion, even were all
the numerous bands and slavers south of the equator united in array
against the state. At the mouth of the Aruwimi, 150 miles below Stanley
Falls, there is a garrison of 600 soldiers, and attached to the station
are steamers and boats of its own to convey immediate reinforcements
to the military outpost yet maintained at Stanley Falls. Three
hundred miles below is Bangala, which contains a still larger force.
This station would be no discredit to any part of the African coast.
The establishments are mostly built of brick manufactured on the
premises. Strong bastions, on which are mounted Krupp nine-pounders,
command the approaches. The military force of the state now numbers
4000 rifle-armed police. It is mostly recruited from the powerful and
warlike tribe of Bangala, which in 1877, during our descent of the
Congo, poured out in almost overpowering numbers to arrest our descent.
The banks of the great tributaries, Aruwimi, Wellé-Mobangi, Lumami, and
Kassai, are equally protected against the incursions of the destroying
bands. But though the efforts of the young state, after straining its
resources to the utmost, have been marked by signal and unexpected
success, a great deal more has to be accomplished before it can
proclaim that the slave hunts and ivory raids have altogether ceased.
Wheresoever exploration has revealed a slave-hunter’s route, wherever
the pioneer has indicated the objective of the raider, wherever
it has been supposed danger might arise from northern or eastern
Arab, the state has done its best to put a barrier in the shape of
a military station; but there is an extent of country 500 miles in
length between the sources of the Aruwimi and the Lukuga affluent, and
an area of 200,000 square miles, wholly at the mercy of the Arabs of
the east coast, and southwestern Tanganika and Rua are not yet under
surveillance.
Meantime every event that is occurring in that part of Africa tends
to the early extirpation of slave hunting and trading. Five years
ago no one could have anticipated that any measure devised by human
wisdom could have checked the destroying advance of the slavers. Yet
a more remarkable success has never been achieved before. It has been
effected solely by a continuously increasing and silent pressure from
civilization. There have been no bloody conflicts and no violence.
Tact mainly has guided the advance, and a constant pushing up of men
and supplies has obviated the necessity of retreat. Advantageous sites
near the camp of the slavers have been quietly occupied. Modest little
huts have been put up for temporary shelter; but with every voyage
of the river steamers new men and more supplies have been brought
up; the surroundings are more cleared; the officers continue their
amiable intercourse; there is no overstrenuous insistence, no imperious
mandate--until in a few months the camp imperceptibly has become a fort
and the little following has become a numerous garrison, and resistance
to the pressure is out of the question.
Close upon this progressive and silent governmental opposition to
barbarism another important and valuable element comes into operation.
I mean the influence of Christianity, as efficacious and necessary in
its way as the other. There are now Roman Catholic missions at Boma,
Kwamouth, New Antwerp in the Bangala country, and New Bruges at the
confluence of the Kwango and Kassai, and at New Ghent, nearly opposite
Bangala. The English Baptists are stationed at Ngombe, Ntundwa,
Kinshassa, Lukolela, Bolobo, Lutete’s, Lukungu, Bangala, and Upoto,
and the Congo Bololo Mission is at Molongo. The American Baptist
Missionary Union have their establishments at Palaballa, Banza Manteka,
Lukungu, Leopoldville, Chumbiri, Mossembo, Irebu, and Equatorville;
Bishop Taylor’s mission is represented by missions at Vivi, Ntombé, and
Kimpoko, and the Evangelical Alliance at Ngangelo, while the Swedes
are at Mukinbungu. These twenty-eight mission stations represent
about a hundred Roman Catholic priests and Protestant clergy, who
have volunteered in the good work of Christianizing the natives and
improving their moral conditions. In 1887 I saw indisputable proofs
of the value of their instruction and example. As a late report from
the Congo states, “slowly but surely the negro is being transformed;
his intellectual horizon is becoming enlarged, his feelings are being
refined.” Many natives now volunteer as readily as the Zanzibari
for service at remote posts for a term of years. They are to be
found in military uniform in the sea-port of Banana, as well as at
the most northern line of the state, waiting in little fortlets for
opportunities to prove their mettle against roving Mahdists. Their
children attend the mission schools, and are proving their aptitude
in acquiring elementary education, and in workmanly skill in various
trades. While parents may still fondly remember many an atrocious
feast, their sons affect the manners and customs of civilized men, and
become attached to honorable and useful employments, as mechanics,
warehouse-men, clerks, postmen, brick-makers, boat-builders, navvies,
etc.