Before Baker could complete his preparations for starting, the fever

broke out in Gondokoro, and both he and his wife fell sick. In order to

escape the effluvium of the more crowded village, he moved his tents and

entire encampment to the high ground above the river. While the animals

were healthy, the donkeys and camels were attacked by a greenish brown

bird, of the size of a thrush, with a red beak and strong claws. It lit

on the beasts to search for vermin, but its beak penetrated the flesh,

and once a hole was established, the bird continually enlarged it to the

great annoyance of the animal which could neither eat nor sleep. The

animals had to be watched by boys continually till their wounds were

healed.

An Arab guide, named Mohammed, had been engaged, and the expedition was

about to move. Mrs. Baker had brought a boy along from Kartoum, by the

name of Saat. He had become quite attached to her, as had another servant

named Richarn. The guide, Mohammed, said he had seventy porters ready and

that a start could be made on Monday. But the fellow was in a conspiracy

to start on Saturday without Baker. Mrs. Baker found it out through Saat

and Richarn. She ordered the tents to be struck and a start to be made

on the moment. This nonplussed Mohammed. He wavered and hesitated. She

brought his accusers face to face with him when, to Baker’s astonishment,

the plot came out, that the entire force of porters had conspired to

desert as soon as they got the arms and ammunition in their hands, and to

kill Baker in case resistance was offered.

Nothing was left but to disarm and discharge the whole force. He gave

them written discharges, with the word “mutineer” beneath his signature,

and thus the fellows, none of whom could read, went about bearing the

evidences of their own guilt. Baker now tried in vain to enlist a new

party of porters. The people had been poisoned against him. He applied

to Koorschid, a Circassian chief, for ten elephant hunters and two

interpreters, but the wily chief avoided him. It looked as if he would

have to give over his contemplated journey for the season. But by dint of

hard work he managed to gather seventeen men, whom he hoped to make true

to him by kind treatment. At this juncture a party of Koorschid’s people

arrived from the Latooka country with a number of porters. Their chief,

Adda, a man of magnificent proportions, took a fancy to Baker and invited

him to visit the Latookas. He was given presents, and his picture was

taken, which pleased him greatly. His followers came and were similarly

treated and delighted. They agreed to accompany Baker back to their

country, but a body of Turkish traders were also going thither. They not

only declared that Baker should not have the escort of these people, but

actually pressed them into their own service. And then, to make things

worse, they threatened to incite the tribes through which they had to

pass against him should he dare to follow.

Baker thought he could meet any mischief of this kind by dealing

liberally in presents, and so resolved to follow the traders. He loaded

his camels and donkeys heavily, and started with his seventeen untried

men. Mrs. Baker was mounted on a good Abyssinian horse, carrying several

leather bags at the pommel of the saddle. Colonel Baker was similarly

mounted and loaded. They had neither guide nor interpreter. Not one

native was procurable, owing to the baleful influence of the traders.

Their journey began about an hour after sunset, and Colonel Baker, taking

the distant mountains of Balignan as his landmark, led the way.

If we are now amid the hardships of an African journey, we are also amid

its excitements. Can we outstrip the Turkish traders? If so it will be

well, for then they cannot stir up the tribes against us. We will try.

But our camels are heavily loaded, and their baggage catches in the

overhanging bramble. Every now and then one of those most heavily top

laden is swung from his path, and even rolls into a steep gulch, when he

has to be unpacked and his load carried up on to the level before being

replaced. It is tantalizing for those in a hurry. But the traders are

also travelling slowly for they are buying and selling.

Presently two of their Latookas come to us, having deserted. They are

thirsty, and direct us to a spot where water can be had. While we are

drinking, in comes a party of natives with the decayed head of a wild

boar, which they cook and eat, even though the maggots are thick in it.

The health of these people does not seem to be affected by even the most

putrid flesh.

These Latooka deserters now become guides. They lead the way, with

Colonel and Mrs. Baker. The country is that of the Tolloga natives.

While we halt under a fig tree to rest and await the rearward party with

the laden animals, the Tollogas emerge from their villages and surround

us. There are five or six hundred of them, all curious, and especially

delighted at sight of our horses. They had never seen a horse before.

We inquire for their chief, when a humped-backed little fellow asked in

broken Arabic who we were.

Colonel Baker said he was a traveller.

“Do you want ivory?” asked the hunchback.

“We have no use for it.”

“Ah, you want slaves?”

“No we do not want slaves.”

At this there was a shout of laughter, as though such thing could not be.

Then the hunchback continued:

“Have you got plenty of cows?”

“No, but plenty of beads and copper.”

“Where are they?”

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

“What countryman are you?”

“An Englishman.”

He had never heard of such a people.

“You are a Turk,” he continued.

“All right; anything you like.”

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

“No, that is my wife.”

“Your wife! What a lie! He is a boy.”

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

women of your country.”

“What a lie!” he again exclaimed.

Mrs. Baker was dressed precisely like her husband, except that her

sleeves were long while the Colonel’s arms were bare.

Soon Tombe, the chief of the tribe, put in an appearance. He is

propitiated with plenty of beads and copper bracelets and drives his

importunate people away. The hunchback is employed as interpreter, and

now our party is away over a rough road, determined to beat the Turks

through the Ellyrian tribe beyond. But it is too late. Their advance is

ahead. Their centre passes us in disdain. Their leader, Ibrahim, comes

up, scowls and passes on. Mrs. Baker calls to the Colonel to stop him

and have a friendly talk. He does so, tells him they need never clash as

they are after two entirely different objects. Then he shows him how he

could either punish or befriend him once they were back at Kartoum. The

old villain listens, and is moved. Baker then gives him a double-barreled

gun and some gold. Both parties now march into Ellyria together, glad to

escape the rocky defiles which had to be threaded on the last stages of

the journey, where many a trader has lost his life.

We here meet with Legge, the chief, who demands blackmail. Baker gives

liberally of beads and bracelets, but Legge gives nothing in return,

except some honey. Our men have to draw for food on the reserve stores

of rice, which they no sooner boil and mix with the honey than along

comes Legge and helps himself, eating like a cormorant till he can

hold no more. We can only stay here one day, for the people are very

annoying and will part with nothing except their honey. So we leave these

bullet-headed natives, and start again toward Latooka, over a level

country and an easier road.

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

The wily old Arab gets confidential, and informs the Colonel that his

men intend to mutiny as soon as they get to Latooka. This news gives the

Colonel time to prepare. In two days we enter the Wakkula country, rich

in pasturage and abundant in water, literally filled with big game, such

as elephants, rhinoceri, buffalo, giraffes, wild boars and antelope. A

buffalo is found in a trap, and partly eaten by a lion. The men make a

feast of the remainder. It is the first meat they have eaten since they

left Gondokoro, and it is a great relish. A hunt by the Colonel brings in

several fine antelope, enough to last till Latooka is reached.

And now we are among the Latooka villages. There are Turkish traders

there already, for they are gathered in Latome, a border village. They

fire off guns, and forbid Ibrahim and his party to pass, claiming an

exclusive right to trade there. There is a row between the Moslem

traders, in which poor Ibrahim is almost strangled to death. The Colonel

observes a strict neutrality, as the time had not come for him to take

sides.

After wrangling for hours all retired to sleep. The next morning he calls

his men to resume the march. Four of them rise in mutiny, seize their

guns and assume a threatening attitude. Belaal, the leader, approaches

and says:——

“Not a man shall go with you. Go where you will with Ibrahim, but we

won’t move a step. You may employ niggers to load the camels, but not us.”

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

“I won’t,” was the defiant reply.

“Then stop right here!” As quick as a flash the Colonel lands a blow

on his jaw, and the ringleader rolls in a heap among the luggage, the

gun flying in the opposite direction. There is a momentary panic,

during which the Colonel seizes a rifle and rushes among the mutineers,

insisting on their going to work and almost dragging them to their

places. They obey mechanically. The camels are soon loaded and we are off

again. But Ibrahim and his party have been gone for some time.

Belaal and four others soon after desert. The Colonel declares the

vultures will soon pick their bones. Four days after, word comes that the

deserters have been killed by a party of savages. The rest of the party

think it came about in accordance with the Colonel’s prophecy, and credit

him with magical powers.

Thirteen miles from Latome is Tarrangolle, the largest Latooka village,

where Moy, the chief, resides. Here Ibrahim stopped to collect his

ivory and slaves. Crowds came out of the village to meet us, but their

chief attraction was Mrs. Baker and the camels. These Latookas are,

doubtless, the finest made savages in all Africa. They are tall, muscular

and beautifully proportioned. They have high foreheads, large eyes,

high cheek bones, small mouths, and full, but not thick lips. Their

countenances are pleasing, their manners civil. They are frank but

warlike, merry yet always ready for a fight. Tarrangolle has 3000 houses,

surrounded by palisades; and each house is fortified by a stockade. The

houses are very tall and bell shaped. They are entered by a low door

not over two feet high. The interior is clean but unlighted by windows.

Their cattle are kept in kraals and are very carefully tended. Their

dead, who are killed in war, are allowed to lie on the field as food for

vultures. Those who die at home are lightly buried for a time. Then they

are exhumed, the flesh stripped off, and the bones put into an earthen

jar, which is deposited in the common pile or mound outside of the

village. Every village has its burial pile, which is a huge collection of

jars. They wear no clothes, but bestow great attention on their hair.

Their weapons are the lance, an iron-head mace, a long bladed knife,

and an ugly iron bracelet armed with knife blades four inches long. The

women are not as finely shaped as the men. They are large, heavy limbed

creatures, used to drudgery.

Chief Moy visits us and looks for the first time on a white person. The

Colonel makes presents of beads, bracelets, and a necklace of pearls

for Bokke, the chief’s favorite wife. “What a row there will be in the

family when my other wives see Bokke’s present,” says the wily old chief.

The Colonel takes the hint and gives him three pounds of beads to be

divided between his wives. Next day, Bokke comes to the Colonel’s hut,

all covered with beads, tatooed on her cheeks, and with a piece of ivory

hanging in her lower lip. She is not bad looking, and her daughter is as

comely a savage as you ever saw.

Horrid word comes that a party of Turkish traders have been massacred in

a Latooka village which they had tried to destroy and to make slaves of

the inhabitants. All is now excitement. Ibrahim’s party and our own are

in imminent danger. But Moy intercedes for his white guests and appeases

the angry natives. Though rich in cattle, our party cannot get a pound

of beef from these Latookas. But ducks and geese are plenty in a stream

close by, and we are allowed to kill all we want.

Let us look in upon a Latooka funeral dance in honor of a dead warrior.

What grotesque dresses the dancers appear in! Ostrich feathers adorn

their helmets of hair, leopard and monkey skins hang from their

shoulders, bells dangle at a waist belt, an antelope horn is hung round

the neck, which is blown in the midst of the excitement. The dancers rush

round and round in an “infernal galop,” brandishing lances and maces,

and keeping pretty fair time. The women keep outside the lines, dance

awkwardly and scream like catamounts. Beyond them are the children,

greasy with red ochre and ornamented with beads, keeping time with their

feet to the inward movement. One woman runs into the midst of the men and

sprinkles ashes promiscuously on all from a gourd. She is fat and ugly,

but evidently an important part of the occasion.

These people are bright, and argue in favor of their materialistic belief

with great shrewdness. The Colonel tried to illustrate his belief by

placing a grain of corn in the ground and observing:——“That represents

you when you die.” Covering it with earth, he continued, “The grain will

decay, but from it will arise a plant that will reproduce it again in its

original form.”

“Precisely,” said old Comorro, brother of Moy, “that I understand. But

the original grain does not rise again; it rots like the dead man and is

ended; so I die, and am ended; but my children grow up like the fruit of

the grain. Some have no children; some grains perish; then all is ended.”

Here we remain for two weeks, waiting till Ibrahim comes back from

Gondokoro, whither he had gone with ivory, and whence he has promised

to bring a supply of ammunition. Meanwhile we must enjoy a hunt, for

evidences of game are plenty. We are soon out among the long grasses,

when suddenly a huge rhinoceros bolts from the copse close at hand. The

Colonel calls on his companions to bring a gun, but instead of obeying

they set up a cry, which is to call attention to a herd of bull elephants

in the forest at the end of the grassy plain. Two of the herd spy him and

come bearing down upon him. He dismounts to get a shot, but the beasts

see the dusky Latookas and rush off again to join their companions. The

Colonel quickly mounts and dashes after them, but his horse falls into a

buffalo hole and throws him. Mounting again, he pursues, but his game has

gotten well into the forest. On he goes after the herd, to find himself

in close quarters with a huge beast that comes tearing along, knocking

down everything in his track. Firing unsteadily from the saddle, he

lodges a bullet in the animal’s shoulder. It turns and makes directly

for its assailant, bellowing like a demon. The Colonel puts spurs to

his horse, and makes his escape. Arming himself with a heavier gun, he

returns to the attack and soon sees the herd again, moving toward him.

One princely fellow has a splendid pair of tusks. This he singles out for

his game. The elephants at first flee on his approach, but on finding

themselves pursued they turn and give battle. There is no safety there,

and again he retreats. A third trial brings him upon the beast he has

wounded. It is maddened with pain and dashes at him. Trusting to his

horse he rushes out of the tangle. The beast does not give up pursuit but

follows on. His horse is jaded, and the riding is dangerous owing to the

buffalo holes. The beast gains, and the Colonel’s cowardly companions

give no help. A moment more and the beast will be on him. He suddenly

wheels his horse, and hears the swish of the elephant’s trunk past his

ears, as the monster beast plunges on in its direct course. It gives

over the chase, and keeps on up the hill. It is found dead next morning

from the effects of the bullet wound. Elephant meat is highly prized by

the natives, and the fat also. With the latter they mix the pigments for

their bodies. Their favorite method of capturing the animal is by pits,

dug very deep in the animal’s path and covered over with light brambles

and grasses. They seldom attack with spears, except when they fire the

grasses. Then they take advantage of the panic which ensues and attack at

close quarters.

Ibrahim returns with plenty of ammunition and reports that he is going to

the Obbo country. We are delighted, for it is directly on our way to the

“Lakes of the Nile.” So we all go together. The country between Latooka

and Obbo, a distance of forty miles, is very beautiful. It abounds in

mountains on whose impregnable peaks native villages are seen, and in

green valleys filled with game. Wild fruit and nuts are also found in

plenty. The journey is easy and quick. The chief of Obbo is Katchiba,

an old clownish man who did not beg, for a wonder. He gives a dance in

our honor, which is really an artistic affair. The dusky dancers kept

excellent time to their drums and sang a wild chorus with considerable

effect. The Obbo men wear dresses of skin slung around their shoulders,

but the women are nearly naked——the unmarried girls entirely so.

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

When his people displease him he threatens to curse their goats or wither

their flocks. Should rain fail to fall, he tells them he is sorry they

have behaved so badly toward him as to merit such a punishment. Should

it rain too much, he threatens to pour lightning, storm and rain on them

eternally, if they don’t bring him their contribution of goats, corn and

beer. They always receive his blessing before starting on a journey,

believing it will avert evil. In sickness he is called to charm away

the disease. And the old fellow receives so many presents of daughters

that he is able to keep a harem in every village of his tribe. He counts

116 living children. Each village is ruled by a son, so that the whole

government is a family affair.

The fine old fellow treats us like princes, and gives us much information

about the country to the south. The Colonel leaves his wife in the old

chief’s care, and we take a little trip, with eight men, to test the

accuracy of the old chief’s story about the high water in the river

Ashua. We pass through a magnificent country and find the river a

roaring torrent. The chief’s story was true. We return to find Mrs.

Baker in excellent health and spirits having been kindly cared for

during our absence. But the old chief has fared rather badly. He wanted

some chickens to present to Mrs. Baker. His people proved stingy, and

Katchiba, who could not walk much on account of his infirmities, the

chief of which was a head always befuddled with beer, came to ask for

the loan of a horse, that he might appear on his back among his people

and thus strike terror into them. His former method of travel had been

to mount on the back of his subjects, and thus make his state journeys,

followed by one of the strongest of his wives, bearing the inevitable

beer pitcher.

Though warned by Mrs. Baker of the danger attending such an experiment as

he proposed, he persisted, and one of the blooded Abyssinian animals was

brought out equipped for a ride. The old chief mounted and told his horse

to go. The animal did not understand and stood still. “Hit him with your

stick,” said one of the attendants. Thwack! came the chief’s staff across

the animal’s shoulders. Quick as lightning a pair of heels flew into the

air, and the ancient specimen of African royalty shot over the horse’s

head and lay sprawling on the ground. He picked himself up, considerably

bruised and sprained, took a wondering look at the horse, and decided

that riding a beast of that kind, where one had so far to fall, was not

in his line.

[Illustration: A ROYAL JOURNEY.]

Since we cannot go on with our journey till the rivers to the south

of us fall, it is best to go back to Latooka, where supplies are more

abundant. Katchiba sends us off amid a noisy drum ceremony and with his

blessing, his brother going along as a guide. There is a new member of

the party, one Ibrahimawa, who had been to all the ends of the earth,

as soldier and adventurer. He was of Bornu birth, but had been captured

when a boy, and taken into the service of the Sultan of Turkey. Even now

he was connected with the Turkish garrison, or squad of observation, at

Latooka. He got the whole party into a pretty mess the second day after

starting back for Latooka, by bringing in a basketful of fine yams, which

happened to be of a poisonous variety. On eating them, all got sick, and

had to submit to the penalty of a quick emetic, which brought them round

all right.

We now journey easily through the great Latooka, where game is so

abundant. In sight is a herd of antelope. The Colonel dismounts to stalk

them, but a swarm of baboons spy him and at once set up such a chattering

and screeching that the antelope take the alarm and make off. One of

the baboons was shot. It was as large as a mastiff and had a long brown

mane like a lion. This was taken by the natives for a body ornament.

That same evening the Colonel goes out in quest of other game. A herd of

giraffes appear, with their long necks stretched up toward the leaves of

the mimosa trees, on which they are feeding. He tries to stalk them, but

the wary beasts run away in alarm. He follows them for a long way in vain

chase. They were twice as fleet as his horse.

We are back again at Latooka. But how changed the scene. The small pox is

raging among both natives and Turks. We cannot encamp in the town. Mrs.

Baker falls sick with fever. Two horses, three camels and five donkeys

die for us. King Moy had induced the Turks to join him in an attack on

the Kayala tribe, and the combined forces had been beaten. Thus more

enemies had been made. It was no place to stay. So we must back to Obbo,

and the old chief Katchiba.

But here things are even worse. The small pox is there ahead of us,

carried by careless natives or dirty, unprincipled Moslem traders, and

the whole town is in misery. A party of roving traders had raided it and

carried off nearly the whole stock of cows and oxen. Our horses all die,

and most of our other animals, under the attacks of the dreadful tsetse

fly. Both the Colonel and Mrs. Baker fall sick with fever, and the old

chief comes in to cure them by enchantment. It rains nearly all the time,

and rats and even snakes seek the huts out of the wet. Our stay of two

months here is dreary enough, and the wonder is that any of us ever get

away.

As soon as the Colonel and Lady Baker can go out they pay a visit to

Katchiba, which he appreciates, and invites them into his private

quarters. It is only a brewery, where his wives are busy preparing his

favorite beer. The old chief invites them to a seat, takes up something

which passes for a harp, and asks if he may sing. Expecting something

ludicrous, they consent, but are surprised to hear a really well sung and

neatly accompanied air. The old fellow is evidently as expert in music as

in beer drinking.

Waiting is awful in any African village during the rainy or any other

season, and especially if the low fevers of the country are in your

system. We have really lost from May to October, on account of the

fullness of the streams south of us. Our stock of quinine is nearly gone;

our cattle are all dead. Shall we go on? If so, it must be afoot. And

afoot it shall be, for we have met an Unyoro slave woman who tells as

well as she can about a lake called Luta N’Zige, very nearly where we

expect to find the Albert Nyanza.

Now the rains have ceased. Wonderful country! Crops spring up as if by

magic, especially the tullaboon, or African corn. But the elephants like

it and play havoc by night in the green fields. The Colonel, all ague

shaken as he is, determines to have a night’s sport and to bring in some

meat which he knows the natives will relish. Starting with a servant and

a goodly supply of heavy rifles——among them is “The Baby,” which carries

a half pound explosive shell——he digs a watch hole near a corn field.

Into this they creep, and are soon notified of the presence of a herd of

elephants by the crunching of the crisp grain. It is dark, but by and

by one approaches within twelve paces. Taking the range of the shoulder

as well as he can, the contents of “Baby” are sent on their murderous

errand. It was then safe to beat a retreat. Next morning the elephant is

found near the pit. He is still standing, but soon drops dead. The shot

was fatal, but not for several hours. And now such a time as there is

among the natives. Three hundred of them gather, and soon dispose of the

carcass with their knives and lances. The huge beast was ten feet six

inches in height.

By January, the waters in the rivers and gulches have subsided enough to

admit of travel. Katchiba gives us three oxen——two for pack animals, and

one for Mrs. Baker to ride upon. With these, and a few attendants, we

start for the south. But Ibrahim precedes us with an armed body of Turks.

He is penetrating the country further in search of ivory and booty. It is

well for us to follow in his trail, unless forsooth he should get into a

fight.

The Colonel walks eighteen miles to Farajoke where he purchases a riding

ox. On January 13, Shooa is reached. It is a veritable land of plenty.

There are fowls, goats, butter, milk, and food of all kinds. The natives

are delighted to see us, and are greedy for our beads and trumpery. They

bring presents of flour and milk to Mrs. Baker, who showers upon them

her trinkets in return. The people are not unlike the Obbo’s, but their

agriculture is very superior. Our five days here are days of real rest

and refreshment.

We make an eight mile march to Fatiko, where the natives are still more

friendly. But they insist on such vigorous shaking of hands and such

tiresome ceremonies of introduction, that we must hasten away. And now

our march is still through a beautiful country for several days. We

gradually approach the Karuma Falls, close to the village of Atada, on

the opposite side of the river. It is the Unyoro country whose king is

Kamrasi.

The natives swarm on their bank of the river, and soon a fleet of canoes

comes across. Their occupants are informed that Col. Baker wishes to

see the king, in order to thank him for the kindness he had extended

to the two Englishmen, Speke and Grant on their visit. The boatmen are

suspicious, for only a short time before a party of Arab traders had

allied themselves with Kamrasi’s enemies and slain 300 of his people. It

takes two whole days to overcome the king’s suspicions, and many gifts of

beads and trinkets. Finally we are ferried across, but oh! the tedious

wait to get a royal interview! And then the surprise, when it did come.

There sits the king on a copper stool placed on a carpet of leopard

skins, surrounded by his ten principal chiefs. He is six feet tall, of

dark brown skin, pleasing countenance, clothed in a long rich robe of

bark-cloth, with well dressed hands and feet, and perfectly clean. Baker

explains his object in calling and gives rich presents, among which is

a double barrelled gun. The king takes to the gun and orders it to be

fired off. The attendants run away in fright, at which the king laughs

heartily, as though he had discovered a new test for their courage or

played a capital joke. He then makes return presents, among which are

seventeen cows.

Thus friendship is established. The king asks for our help against the

Riongas, his bitterest enemies. We decline, but in turn ask for porters

and guides. The king promises heartily, but as often breaks his promises,

for his object is to keep us with him as long as we have presents to give.

These chiefs, or kings, of the native tribes are the greatest nuisances

in Africa——not even excepting the mosquitoes. They make the traveller

pay court at every stage of his journey, and they know the value of

delay in granting a hearing. The wrongs of the humble negro are many.

His faults are as many, and among them are his careless good humor

and light heartedness——things that in northern climes or under other

circumstances might be classed as redeeming traits. But the faults of

the average African king——there are exceptions to the rule——are such to

try our patience in the extreme. He is as ignorant as his subjects, yet

is complete master of their lives. His cruelty, rapacity and sensuality

are nurtured in him from birth, and there is no antic he will not play in

the name of his authority. In his own eyes he is a demi-god, yet he is

seen by visitors only as a dirty, freakish, cruel, tantalizing savage,

insisting upon a court which has no seriousness about it.

Accomplished and friendly as King Kamrasi seems to be, he is full of

duplicity, cruelty, and rapacity. Speke and Grant complained of his

inordinate greed, and we have just seen for what motive he delayed us

for three weeks. And scarcely have we gone ten miles when he overtakes

us, to ask for other presents and the Colonel’s watch, for which he had

taken a great fancy. On being refused this, he coolly informs the Colonel

that he would send his party to the lake according to promise, but that

he must leave Mrs. Baker behind with him. The Colonel draws his revolver

and, placing it at the breast of the king, explains the insult conveyed

in such a proposition in civilized countries, and tells him he would be

warranted in riddling him on the spot, if he dared to repeat the request,

or rather command. Mrs. Baker makes known her horror of the proposition,

and the crafty king, finding his cupidity has carried him too far, says

he has no intention of offending. “I will give you a wife if you want

one,” he continued, “and I thought you might give me yours. I have given

visitors many pretty wives. Don’t be offended. I will never mention the

matter again.” To make further amends he sends along with our party

several women as luggage carriers, as far as to the next village.

To show how prankish and pitiable royalty is among even a tribe like the

Unyoro’s, who dress with some care, and disdain the less intelligent

tribes about them, it turned out that this Kamrasi was not the real king

at all, but only a substitute, and that the regularly annointed Kamrasi

was in a fit of the sulks off in his private quarters, all the time of

our visit.

The march is now a long one of eighteen days through the dense forests

and swamps of the Kafoor River. Mrs. Baker is sick with fever incident

to a sun-stroke, and has to be borne upon a litter most of the way. In

crossing the Kafoor upon the “sponge,” it yields to the weight of the

footmen, and she is saved from sinking beneath the treacherous surface

by the Colonel, who orders the men to quickly lay their burden down and

scatter. The “sponge” proves strong enough to bear the weight of the

litter alone, and it is safely hauled on to a firmer part by her husband

and an attendant.

We are now near our goal and all the party are enthusiastic. Ascending

a gentle slope, on a beautiful clear morning, the glory of our prize

suddenly bursts upon us. There, like a sea of quicksilver, lays far

beneath us the grand expanse of waters——the Luta Nzigé then, but soon

to be christened the Albert Nyanza. Its white waves break on a pebbly

beach fifteen hundred feet below us. On the west, fifty or sixty miles

distant, blue mountains rise to a height of 7000 feet. Northward the

gleaming expanse of waters seem limitless. Here is the reward of all our

labor. It is a basin worthy of its great function as a gathering place of

the headwaters of the Nile, which issue in a full grown stream from its

northern end.

Using Colonel Baker’s own language,——“Long before I reached the spot I

had arranged to give three English cheers in honor of the discovery, but

now that I looked down upon the great inland sea lying nestled in the

very heart of Africa, and thought how vainly mankind had sought these

sources throughout so many ages, and reflected that I had been the humble

instrument permitted to unravel this portion of the great mystery when so

many greater than I had failed, I felt too serious to vent my feelings in

vain cheers for victory, and I sincerely thanked God for having guided

and supported us through all dangers to the good end. As I looked down

from the steep granite cliffs upon those welcome waters, on that vast

reservoir which nourished Egypt and brought fertility where all was

wilderness, on that great source so long hidden from mankind; that source

of bounty and of blessings to millions of human beings; and as one of the

greatest objects in nature, I determined to honor it with a great name.

As an imperishable memorial of one loved and mourned by our gracious

Queen and deplored by every Englishman, I called the great lake ‘the

Albert Nyanza.’ The Victoria and the Albert Lakes are the two sources of

the Nile. My wife, who had followed me so devotedly, stood by my side,

pale and exhausted——a wreck upon the shores of the great Albert Lake

that we had so long striven to reach. No European foot had ever trod upon

its sand, nor had the eyes of a white man ever scanned its vast expanse

of water. We were the first; and this was the key to the great secret

that even Julius Cæsar yearned to unravel, but in vain.”

And now the lake is christened. We rush down to the shores and bathe our

feet in its clear fresh waters. Then we prepare a frail canoe, large

enough to carry our party of thirteen and manned with twenty oarsmen. In

this we skirt the lake northward from where we first touch it at Vacovia.

The journey is full of novelty. Every now and then we get a shot at a

crocodile, or a hippopotamus, and herds of elephants are seen along the

shores. Thunder storms are frequent, making the navigation dangerous.

The heat at midday drives us into the shade. Our work hours are in the

mornings and evenings. Here we pass under beetling precipices that line

this eastern shore, down which jets of water——each a Nile source——are

seen plunging from the height of a thousand feet. There we float through

flat wastes of reeds, and water plants and floating rafts of vegetable

matter in every stage of growth and decay.

On the thirteenth day we reach the point where the waters from Lake

Victoria Nyanza enter the Albert Nyanza. They pour in through the

Victoria River, or as some call it, the Somerset River. Now arises a

momentous question. Shall we go further. If we are not back in Gondokoro

in a few weeks we may leave our bones in Central Africa. We are a

fatigued, even a sick party, and the season is approaching when a white

man had better be away from under the Equator. The Colonel proposes to

forego further navigation and return. Lady Baker, with a fervor the

Colonel seems to have lost, proposes to go to the other end of the lake

in order to make sure that it is an ultimate reservoir of the Nile.

[Illustration: THE MURCHISON FALLS.]

Away off northward from where we are, some thirty miles, can be seen

with the glasses the outlet of the lake——the Nile. It is settled that

the inflow from Victoria Nyanza and the outlet northward are thus close

together. But is that outlet the Nile after all? Lady Baker wants to

settle this question too, and she proposes, after circumnavigating the

lake and proving that it is an ultimate source, to descend the Nile

through the northern outlet. But the Colonel urges want of time. The

attendants tell horrible stories of dangerous falls and hostile natives.

So we decide against Mrs. Baker, and, taking the Colonel’s advice, begin

to ascend the Victoria Nile toward lake Victoria Nyanza, that being

in the direction of our homeward march. We go but a few miles till a

new marvel greets us——the Murchison Falls. On either side of the river

are beautiful wooded cliffs 300 feet high. Bold rocks jut out from an

intensely green foliage. Rushing through a gap in the rock directly ahead

of us, the river, contracted from a broad stream above, grows narrower

and narrower, till where the gorge is scarcely fifty yards wide, it

makes one stupendous leap over a precipice 120 feet high, into the dark

abyss below. The river then widens and grows sluggish again. Anywhere

can be seen numberless crocodiles. While the Colonel is sketching the

Falls, one of these animals comes close to the boat. He cannot resist a

shot at it. The canoemen are disturbed and allow the boat to get an ugly

swing on them. It strikes into a bunch of reeds, when out rushes a huge

hippopotamus in fright and bumps against the canoe, almost oversetting it.

There are cataracts innumerable on the Nile, but this is its greatest

water fall, and a majestic picture it is. Our return journey to Gondokoro

repeats many of our former experiences. We revisit the same tribes and

meet with the same adventures. Kartoum is reached in May, 1865. Then we

go by boat to Berber, and thence by caravan across the desert to Sonakim

on the Red Sea, where a steamer is taken for England, and where the

Colonel receives the medal bestowed on him by the Royal Geographical

Society.

In concluding this long journey we must ever regret that Colonel Baker

did not do more to make sure of the honors of his discovery. Since then

Gordon Pasha and M. Gessi have navigated Albert Nyanza. They curtailed

the proportions it showed on first maps, and proved that, as Lady Baker

supposed, it had a southern inlet, which was traced for a hundred miles

till it ended in a mighty ambatch swamp, or collection of stagnant

waters, which may be counted as the Lake Nzige of the natives, and of

which Colonel Baker so often heard.

These travellers also settled forever one of the delusions under which

Livingstone ever labored, and that was, that the sources of the Nile must

be sought as far south as the great Lake Tanganyika, and even further.

Since then, other travellers have traced the whole course of the Victoria

Nile to Lake Victoria Nyanza, discovering on their way a new lake,

Ibrahim. And this brings us to Victoria Nyanza again, which must be

studied more fully, for after all we may not have seen in Albert Nyanza,

so much of an ultimate Nile reservoir as we thought. It is hard too, of

course, to rob our travels of their glory, but we cannot bear laurels at

the expense of after discovered truth.

It was in 1858 that Speke and Grant, pushing their perilous way westward

from Zanzibar on the east coast of Africa, discovered and partly

navigated Lake Tanganyika, probably the greatest fresh water reservoir in

Central Africa. On their return journey, and while resting at Unyanyembe,

Speke heard from an Arab source of a still larger lake to the north.

Grant was suspicious of the information, and remained where he was,

while Speke made a trial. After a three weeks march over an undulating

country, intersected by streams flowing northward, he came in view (July

30, 1858) of the head of a deep gulf expanding to the north. Pursuing

his journey along its eastern cliffs, he saw that it opened into an

ocean-like expanse of water, girted by forests on the right and left, but

stretching eastward and northward into space. He felt that he stood on a

Nile source, but could not inquire further then.

When he returned to England and made his discovery known, powerful

arguments sprang up about these Nile sources. Speke and one school

contended the Nile reservoirs were under the equator and that Victoria

Nyanza was one of them, if not the only one. Burton and others contended

that Tanganyika, and perhaps a series of lakes further south, must be the

true sources. So in 1860 Speke and Grant were back in Africa, determined

to solve the mystery. They were kept back by delays till 1862, when,

as we have seen, they caught sight of the lake they sought. Keeping on

high ground, they followed it northward to Uganda where they fell in

with Mtesa, the king. Mtesa has been painted in all sorts of colors by

different explorers. Speke and Grant formed the worst possible opinion of

him, but they passed through his dominions safely, till they came to the

northern outlet of the lake——the Victoria Nile. Taking for granted that

this was the real Nile, they cut across the country to Gondokoro, where

they met Baker on his southern march, as we have already seen.

This unsatisfactory journey did not set controversy at rest. Speke’s

opponents ridiculed the idea of a body of water, 250 miles long and 7000

feet above the sea level, existing right under the Equator. Moreover they

denied that its northern outlet was the Nile, or if so, that there must

be a southern inlet. All the old maps located the sources of the stream

further south. Colonel Baker heard a native story, in 1869, to the effect

that boats had gone from Albert Nyanza to Ujiji on lake Tanganyika.

Livingstone held firmly to the opinion that all these equatorial lakes

were one with Tanganyika——till he disproved it himself. He never was

convinced that Victoria Nyanza existed at all as Speke had mapped it, nor

that it had any connection with the Nile River.

Thus what Baker and Speke and Grant had been glorying in as great

discoveries, but which they failed to establish by full research, was

still a puzzle. They are not to be robbed of any honors, but it is not

claiming too much to say that the real discoverer of the true Nile

reservoir is due to the American Stanley. At least he resolved to solve

the problem finally and set discussion at rest. He would establish the

claims of Victoria Nyanza to vastness and to its functions as a Nile

source, or show it up as a humbug.

Henry M. Stanley is no ordinary figure among African explorers. In

tenacity of purpose, courage and endurance, he is second only to

Livingstone. In originality, insight and crowning effort, he is ahead

of all. He introduced a new method of African travel and brought a new

power at his back. Already he had, under the auspices of the New York

_Herald_, made a successful Central African journey and “discovered

Livingstone.” On his present expedition he was accredited to both

American and English papers, and bore the flags of the two countries. He

travelled in a half scientific and half military fashion.

[Illustration: HENRY M. STANLEY.]

He started from Zanzibar November 17, 1874. Let the reader keep in mind

that this was his second exploring trip into Africa——the first having

been made a few years before under the auspices of the New York _Herald_

for the rescue of Livingstone, if alive. Here, in his own words, is the

gallant young leader’s order of march:——

[Illustration: STANLEY ON THE MARCH.]

“Four chiefs, a few hundred yards in front; next, twelve guides, clad

in red robes of Jobo, bearing coils of wire; then a long file, two

hundred and seventy strong, bearing cloth, wire, beads, and sections of

the _Lady Alice_; after them, thirty-six women and ten boys, children

of the chiefs, and boat-bearers, followed by riding-asses, Europeans,

and gun-bearers; the long line closed by sixteen chiefs, who act as

rearguard: in all, three hundred and fifty-six souls connected with the

Anglo-American expedition. The lengthy line occupies nearly half a mile

of the path.”

Mr. Stanley did not mean to be stopped on the route he had chosen by

the objections of any native chief to the passage of the little army

through his territory. If the opposition were carried to the extent of

a challenge of battle, the American explorer was prepared to accept it

and fight his way through. In this way he counted on avoiding the long

delays, the roundabout routes, and the fragmentary results which had

marked the efforts of previous travellers. It is an admirable method,

if your main object is to get through the work rapidly, if you are

strong enough to despise all assaults, and if you have no prospect of

travelling the same road again. Its wisdom and justifiableness need

not be discussed; but it may simply be remarked that this conjunction

of campaigning and exploration gives an extra spice of danger and an

exciting variety to the narrative, which carries us back to the time when

the Conquistadors of Spain and Portugal carved their rich conquests into

the heart of Mexico and South America.

He carried with him the sections of a boat, forty feet long, with which

to explore the Victoria Nyanza, or any other lake or stream he might

discover. It was named the “Lady Alice.” He had only three English

assistants——two Thames watermen by the name of Francis and Edward Pocock,

and a clerk named Frederick Barker——none of whom emerged alive from the

African wilds into which they plunged so light heartedly.

Unyanyembe is the half-way station between Zanzibar and the lakes of

interior Africa. It is simply a headquarters for slave stealers and a

regular trading den for land pirates. Stanley turned to the northwest

before reaching this place, and in about the fifth degree south latitude

came upon the water shed which separates the waters trending northward

from those running southward. Here in a plain 5000 feet above the sea,

and 2500 miles in a straight line from the Mediterranean, seemed clearly

to be the most southerly limit of the Nile basin.

And here Stanley’s real difficulties began. The party suffered from want

of food and lost their way. Sickness fell upon the camp, and Edward

Pocock died. The natives themselves were hostile, and Mirambo, chief of

the Ruga-Rugas, a noted freebooter, was in the neighborhood with his

band of cut-throats. By and by the storm clouds burst in war, not with

the bandits however, but with the Ituru tribe. The battle was fought for

three days against great odds. It resulted in the complete discomfiture

of the foe, but with a loss to Stanley of twenty-four killed and wounded.

The weakened expedition moved on bearing twenty-five men on the sick list.

They were now in the valley of the Shimeeyu, an affluent of Victoria

Nyanza from the south. It was followed through dense forests over which

loomed enormous bare rocks like castles, and hillocks of splintered

granite and gneiss, and then through fine rolling plains, rich in pasture

lands, hedge inclosed villages and herds of wild and tame animals.

Compared with what he had passed through it was a grand and glorious

country.

Provisions could be had readily and cheaply——corn, potatoes, fruit, goats

and chickens. The half starved men indulged in feasting and marched with

recovered strength and confidence. Murmuring and doubt died away. The

native attendants who had shown unmistakable proofs of faithfulness in

the midst of trial were specially rewarded.

The lake was near at hand. As they dipped through the troughs of land,

mounted ridge after ridge, crossed water courses and ravines, passed

cultivated fields and through villages smelling of cattle, a loud

hurrahing in front told that the great Lake Victoria Nyanza had been

sighted. It was February 27, 1875. The spot was Kagehyi, not far from

where Speke had struck it. Six hundred feet beneath them, and three

miles away, lay a long broad arm of water shining like silver in the

bright sunshine, bordered by lines of green waving rushes, groves of

trees and native huts.

No time was lost in getting the “Lady Alice” ready, and on March 8 she

was launched and her prow turned northward. Her occupants were Stanley, a

steersman, and ten oarsmen or sailors. Frank Pocock and Barker were left

at Kagehyi in charge of the remainder of the party.

Now began a journey full of thrilling events. Almost every day brought

its danger from storm, shoal, animal or hostile natives. For weeks the

shores of the Nyanza stretched on, promontory behind promontory, and

still the tired mariners toiled along the margin of the unknown lands

on their lee, and out and in among the numerous islands. From the

starting point round the eastern shore, the coast shows a succession of

bold headland and deep bay, at the head of which is generally a river

draining the highlands behind. Sometimes a dark mountain mass, covered

with wood, overhangs the waters, rising abruptly to a height of three

thousand feet or more; and then again there will intervene between

the hills and the lake an open plain, grazed over by herds of zebras,

antelopes, and giraffes. There is great diversity also in the islands.

Many of them are bare masses of rock, supporting no green blade; others

are swathed to the summit in masses of rank intertwisted vegetation that

excludes the perpendicular rays of the sun. Some of the smallest are

highly cultivated, and occupied by a dense population; one or two of the

largest, such as Ugingo, betray no sign of human beings inhabiting their

dismal shades.

Generally the region is rocky, broken, hilly, and intensely tropical in

character. Behind the coast ranges absolutely nothing is known beyond

a few vague reports picked up from native sources. The rivers are not

large, and it is not probable that they have their sources so far off

as the great snowy range that runs down midway between the lake and the

east coast of Africa. Some geographers have chosen to call this chain

by the old name of “Mountains of the Moon,” throwing the old land mark

from the southern borders of Sahara to a point quite south of the equator

and at right angles with their former direction. Between the lake and

these snow-capped mountains roam the Mdai, a fierce pastoral tribe that

subsists by plundering its weaker neighbors.

Stanley heard of hills that smoked in these ranges, and probably they

contain active volcanoes. He also heard of the mythical Lake Baringo

further north. This lake has appeared almost everywhere on African maps.

If it is ever found, it may prove to be the reservoir of the Ashua, an

important Nile tributary, after the stream leaves both Victoria and

Albert Nyanza.

Before reaching the northernmost point of the lake the “Lady Alice”

had passed through several disastrous storms and escaped many perilous

shoals. She had also met the fierce opposition of the Victoria

hippopotamus. This behemoth of an animal abounds here, as it does in

all the waters of tropical Africa; but while in most other places it

refrains from attacking man, unless provoked, it was found on the

Victoria Lake to be of a peculiarly bellicose disposition. A few hours

after starting on his voyage, Stanley was driven off the land and put to

ignominious flight by a herd of savage hippopotami sallying out towards

him open-mouthed. On another occasion, the rowers had to pull for bare

life to escape the furious charge of a monster whose temper had been

ruffled by the boat coming in contact with his back as he was rising to

the surface to breathe. Probably the hippopotamus of the Victoria would

be no more courageous than his neighbors if he were met with on land.

There he always cuts a ridiculous figure, as he waddles along with his

short legs and bulky body in search of the grass on which he feeds. He

seems to know that he is at a disadvantage on _terra firma_, which, he

seldom visits except by night. When interrupted, he makes the best of

his way back to the water, where his great strength always makes him a

formidable antagonist. On the Victoria Nyanza the inhabitants do not seem

to have discovered the methods of killing him practised by the natives of

the Zambesi, by capturing him in pit falls, or setting traps that bring a

heavy log, armed with a long iron spike, down on his stupid skull.

But these were not the only ugly customers the crew of the “Lady Alice”

had to contend with on the Victoria Nyanza. Frequently when the boat

neared the shore, lithe figures could be seen flitting between the trees

and savage eyes peering at her through the dense foliage. If an attempt

were made to land a wild looking crowd would swarm upon the shore,

poising their spears threateningly or placing their arrows in their bows.

Though these forms are not so terrible as the Red Indian in war paint or

the wild Papuan with his frizzly mop of hair, their natural hideousness

is pretty well increased by tattooing and greasy paint. They are

treacherous, cruel, vindictive, and one cast away on their shores would

stand a poor chance of telling his own story.

At a point near the northeastern extremity of the lake Mr. Stanley was

induced to come close to shore by the friendly gestures of half-a-dozen

natives. As the boat was pulled nearer, the group on the shore rapidly

increased, and it was thought prudent to halt. Instantly there started

out of the jungle a forest of spears, and a crowd of yelling savages

rushed down in hot haste to the margin, lest their hospitable intentions

towards the strangers should be balked. The boat, however, to the

astonishment of these primitive black men, hoisted a great sail to the

favoring land breeze, which carried it out to an island where the crew

could camp and sleep in safety for the night. A little further on, while

off the island of Ugamba, a large native canoe, manned by forty rowers

and adorned with a waving mane of long grasses, was pulled confidently

towards the mysterious craft. After reconnoitering it for a little,

they edged up alongside, half of the occupants of the canoe standing up

and brandishing their tufted spears. These visitors had been drinking

freely of pombe to keep up their courage. They were noisy, impudent, and

obstreperous; and finding that the white man and his companions remained

quiet and patient, they began to reel tipsily about the boat, shout out

their drunken choruses, and freely handle the property and persons of the

strangers. Gradually they grew still more unpleasantly aggressive. One

drunken rascal whirled his sling over Stanley’s head and, cheered by

his companions, seemed about to aim the stone at the white man. Suddenly

Stanley, who had his revolver ready in his hand, fired a shot into the

water. In an instant the boat was clear of the intruders, every one of

whom had plunged into the water at sound of the pistol, and was swimming

lustily for the shore. With some little trouble their fears were allayed

and the humbled roisterers, sobered by their dip, came meekly back for

their abandoned canoe. Presents were exchanged and all parted good

friends.

He did not fare so well with the Wavuma tribe. They attracted Stanley’s

attention by sending out a canoe loaded with provisions and gifts. But

shoreward suddenly appeared a whole fleet of canoes, evidently bent on

surrounding the “Lady Alice.” As her crew bent to their oars in order

to escape, a storm of lances came upon them from the first canoe, whose

captain held up a string of beads in a tantalizing manner which he had

stolen from the white man’s boat. Stanley fired upon him and doubled him

up in his boat. Then using his larger rifle he punctured the foremost of

the other canoes with heavy bullets below the water line, so that they

had enough to do to keep them from sinking. They ceased to give chase and

the “Lady Alice” escaped.

Directly north of Victoria Nyanza is Uganda or the country of the

Waganda,[1] over which King Mtesa presides. Stanley struck the country

on the next day after his adventure with the Wavuma. It was a revelation

to him. He fancied he had, in a night, passed from Pagan Africa to

Mohammedan Europe or Asia. Instead of the stones and spear thrusts of

the Wavuma he met with nothing save courtesy and hospitality. In place

of naked howling savages he now saw bronze-colored people, clean, neatly

clad, with good houses, advanced agriculture, well adapted industry, and

considerable knowledge of the arts.

[Footnote 1: NOTE:——In Eastern and Central Africa, from the Lakes of the

Nile to Hottentotland the native races belong to the Bantu division of

the African stock. They are not so dark as, and in many respects differ

from, the true negroes of the Western or Atlantic coast. Throughout this

entire Bantu division the prefix “U” means a country. Thus U-ganda is the

country of Ganda. So “Wa,” or in some places “Ba,” “Ma” or “Ama,” means

people. Thus Wa-ganda means the people of Uganda. So would Ba-ganda,

Ma-ganda, or Ama-ganda. “Ki” means the language. Ki-ganda is the language

of the Uganda. “Mena” means the prince of a tribe. By recollecting these,

the reader will be much assisted.]

The village chief approached attired in a white shirt, and a fine cloak

of bark-cloth having over it a monkey skin fur. On his head was a

handsome cap, on his feet sandals. His attendants were clothed in the

same style, though less costly. He smilingly bade the strangers welcome,

spread before them a feast of dressed kid, ripe bananas, clotted milk,

sweet potatoes and eggs, with apologies for having been caught unprepared

for his guests.

Stanley looked on in wonder. It was a land of sunshine and plenty——a

green and flowery Paradise set between the brilliant sky and the pure

azure of the lake. Care and want seem never to have intruded here. There

was food and to spare growing wild in the woods or in the cultivated

patches around the snug homesteads. Every roomy, dome-shaped hut had its

thatched portico where the inhabitants chatted and smoked. Surrounding

them were court-yards, with buildings which served as barns, kitchens

and wash-houses, all enclosed in trimly kept hedges. Outside was the

peasants’ garden where crops of potatoes, yams, pease, kidney-beans

and other vegetables grew of a size that would make a Florida gardner

envious. Bordering the gardens were patches of tobacco, coffee,

sugar-cane, and castor oil plant, all for family use. Still further

beyond were fields of maize and other grains, and plantations of banana,

plantain, and fig. Large commons afforded pasturage for flocks of goats

and small, white, harmless cattle.

The land is of inexhaustible fertility. The sunshine is unfailing;

drought in this moist climate is unknown; and the air is cooled and

purified by the breezes from the lake and from the mountains. Within his

own inclosure the peasant has enough and to spare for himself and his

household, both of luxuries and necessaries. His maize fields furnish

him with the staff of life, and the fermented grain yields the “pombe,”

which he regards almost as much a requisite of existence as bread itself.

The grinding of flour and the brewing of beer are all performed under

his own eye by his family. The fig-tree yields him the bark out of which

his clothes are made; but the banana is, perhaps, the most indispensable

of the gifts of nature in these climes. It supplies him, says Stanley,

with “bread, potatoes, dessert, wine, beer, medicine, house and fence,

bed, cloth, cooking-pot, table-cloth, parcel-wrapper, thread, cord, rope,

sponge, bath, shield, sun-hat, and canoe. With it, he is happy, fat, and

thriving; without it, a famished, discontented, woe-begone wretch.” The

banana grows to perfection in Uganda; groves of it embower every village,

and the Waganda in addition to being fat and prosperous have plenty of

leisure for the arts of war and peace.

They are unfortunately inclined to war, though they make cloth, tan

skins, work in metals, and build houses and canoes. Even literature is

not unknown among them. Well might Speke have said of Ripon Falls at the

outlet of the Nile, with “a wife and family, a yacht and a gun, a dog

and a rod, one might here be supremely happy and never wish to visit the

haunts of civilization again.”

Word is sent to the king of the arrival of the strangers. An escort

comes inviting them to the court. The new comer quite eclipsed the

village chiefs in the gorgeousness of his apparel. A huge plume of cock’s

feathers surmounted an elaborately worked head-dress. A crimson robe

hung about him with a grace worthy an ancient Roman, while over it was

hung a snow-white goat-skin. The progress to the headquarters of the

court was conducted with due pomp and circumstance. Every step Stanley’s

wonderment and admiration increased; each moment he received new proofs

that he had fallen among a people as different from those whom his

previous wanderings had made him acquainted with as are white Americans

from Choctaws. Emerging from the margin of dense forests and banana and

plantain groves on the lake shores, the singular beauty of the land

revealed itself to him. Wherever he turned his eyes there was a brilliant

play of colors, and a boldness and diversity of outline such as he had

never before seen. Broad, straight, and carefully-kept roads led through

a rolling, thickly-peopled country clad in perennial green. Now the

path would dive down into a hollow, where it was shaded by the graceful

fronds of plantains and other tropical trees, where a stream murmured

over the stones, and the air was filled with the fragrance of fruit; and

then again it would crest a ridge, from whence a magnificent prospect

could be obtained of the sea-like expanse of the lake, with its wooded

capes and islands, the dim blue lines of the distant hills, and the

fruitful and smiling country lying between, its soft, undulating outline

of forest-covered valley and grassy hill sharply broken by gigantic

table-topped masses of gray rocks and profound ravines.

[Illustration: RUBAGA.]

At length crowning the summit of a smooth hill appeared King Mtesa’s

capital, Rubaga. A number of tall huts clustered around one taller than

the rest from which waved the imperial standard of the Uganda. A high

cane fence surrounds the court with gates opening on four broad avenues

that stretch to the bottom of the hill. These are lined with fences and

connected with paths shaded with groves of banana, fig and other fruit

trees, and amid these groves are the houses of the commonalty. After due

delay——court etiquette is even more tedious and ceremonious in Africa

than Europe——Stanley is ushered into the presence of the king, seated in

his great audience hall, and surrounded by a host of chiefs, warriors,

pages, standard-bearers, executioners, drummers, fifers, clowns, dwarfs,

wizards, medicine men, slaves and other retainers.

And here we have a fine opportunity to compare the notes of two

observers of the king’s receptions. Stanley had a second interview at

the “royal palace,” on which occasion the king received also M. Linant

De Bellefonds, sent by Gordon Pasha on a mission to Uganda. The monarch

prepared a surprise for him by having Stanley by his side. But let De

Bellefonds speak.

“On entering the court I am greeted with a frightful uproar. A thousand

instruments produce the most discordant and deafening sounds. Mtesa’s

bodyguard, carrying guns, present arms on my appearance. The king is

standing at the entrance to the reception hall. I approach and bow like

a Turk. We shake hands. I perceive a sun-burned European by the king’s

side, whom I take to be Cameron. We all enter the reception room——a room

15 feet wide by 60 feet long, its roof supported by two rows of light

pillars, making an aisle, which is filled with chief officers and guards,

the latter armed. Mtesa takes his seat on the throne, which is like a

wooden office chair. His feet rest on a cushion. The whole is in the

centre of a leopard skin spread upon a Smyrna rug. Before him is a highly

polished elephant’s tusk, at his feet two boxes containing fetishes, on

either side a lance of copper and steel. At his feet are two scribes.

The king behaves dignifiedly and does not lack an air of distinction.

His dress is faultless——a white _couftan_ finished with a red band,

stockings, slippers, vest of black and gold, a turban with a silver plate

on top, a sword with an ivory hilt and a staff. I show my presents, but

royal dignity forbids him to show any curiosity. I say to the traveller

on his left ‘Have I the honor to address Mr. Cameron?’ He says, ‘No sir;

Mr. Stanley.’ I introduce myself. We bow low, and our conversation ends

for the moment.”

Who is this singular Mtesa and how has his more singular fabric of empire

been built up in the heart of savage Africa?

All around is the night of Pagan darkness, ignorance, and cruelty. Here,

in the land of the Waganda, if there is, as yet, no light to speak of,

there is a ruddy tinge in the midst of the blackness that seems to give

promise of approaching dawn. If the people are still blood-thirsty,

revengeful, and fond of war and pillage, they have learned some lessons

in observing law and order; they practice some useful arts; they observe

many of the decencies of life, and in the cleanliness of their houses

and persons they are examples to some European countries. The Waganda

themselves have a high opinion of their own importance; and their legends

carry back their origin to what, for an African tribe, is a remote past.

The story, as related by them to Captain Speke, is as follows:——

“Eight generations ago a sportsman from Unyoro, by name Uganda, came with

a pack of dogs, a woman, a spear, and a shield, hunting on the left bank

of the Katonga Valley, not far from the lake. He was but a poor man,

though so successful in hunting that vast numbers flocked to him for

flesh, and became so fond of him as to invite him to be their king. At

first Uganda hesitated. Then the people, hearing his name, said, ‘well

at any rate let the country between the Nile and the Katonga be called

Uganda and let your name be Kimera the first king of Uganda.’ The report

of these proceedings reached the ears of the king of Unyoro, who merely

said, ‘The poor creature must be starving, allow him to feed where he

likes.’

“Kimera assumed authority, grew proud and headstrong, punished severely

and became magnificent. He was content with nothing short of the grandest

palace, a throne to sit on, the largest harem, the smartest officers, the

best dressed people, a menagerie for pleasure and the best of everything.

Armies were formed and fleets of canoes built for war. Highways were

cut from one end of the country to the other and all the rivers were

bridged. No house could be built without its necessary out buildings and

to disobey the laws of cleanliness was death. He formed a perfect system

of paternal government according to his own ideas, and it has never

declined, but rather improved.”

Stanley heard from Sabadu, the court historian of Uganda, a somewhat

different story. According to him Kimera did not found the government

but was only one of a long list of thirty-five monarchs. He however

first taught his countrymen the delight of sport. He was, in fact, the

Nimrod of Uganda genealogy, and a mighty giant to boot, the mark of

whose enormous foot is still pointed out on a rock near the lake, where

he had slipped while hurling a spear at an elephant. The first of the

Waganda was Kintu, a blameless priest, who objected to the shedding of

blood——a scruple which does not seem to have been shared by any of his

descendants——and who came into this Lake Region when it was absolutely

empty of human inhabitants. From Kintu, Sabadu traced the descent of his

master through a line of glorious ancestry,——warriors and legislators,

who performed the most astounding deeds of valor and wisdom,——and

completely proved that, whatever may be the condition of history,

fiction, at least, flourishes at the court of Mtesa. Passing over a hero

who crushed hosts of his enemies by flying up into the air and dropping

great rocks upon their heads, and a doughty champion who took his stand

on a hill and there for three days withstood the assaults of all comers,

catching the spears thrown at him and flinging them back, until he was

surrounded by a wall of two thousand slain, we come to Suna, the father

of Mtesa, who died only a little before Speke and Grant’s visit to the

country. Suna, by all accounts, was a gloomy monarch, who sat with his

eyes broodingly bent on the ground, only raising them to give the signal

to his executioners for the slaughter of some of his subjects. It is told

of this sanguinary despot that one day he caused 800 of his people to be

killed in his sight, and that he made a ghastly pyramid of the bodies

of 20,000 Wasoga prisoners, inhabitants of the opposite shore of the

Victoria Nile.

The chiefs rejected his eldest son as his successor and chose the

mild-eyed Mtesa. The “mild-eyed” signalized his election by killing all

his nearest relatives and his father’s best counsellors. He was drunk

with power and _pombe_. It was now that Speke and Grant saw him. They

describe him as a wretch who was peculiarly liable to fits of frenzy,

during which he would order the slaughter of those who were his best

friends an hour before, or arming himself with a bundle of spears would

go into his harem and throw them indiscriminately among his wives and

children.

It is said a change came over him by being converted to Mohammedanism.

He gave up his drinking and many Pagan practices of his fathers, though

still believing in wizards and charms. The Moslem Sabbath is observed and

Arabic literature has been introduced.

Stanley describes him as a tall slim man of thirty years, with fine

intelligent features and an expression in which amiability is blended

with dignity. His eyes are “large lustrous and lambent.” His skin is

a reddish brown and wonderfully smooth. In council, he is sedate and

composed; in private, free and hilarious. Of his intelligence and

capacity there can be no question. Nor can it be doubted that he has a

sincere liking for white men. His curiosity about civilized peoples,

their customs, manufactures and inventions is insatiable, and he seems to

have once entertained the idea of modeling his kingdom after a civilized

pattern. He showed “Stamlee” (Stanley) and other white visitors the

greatest hospitality. Yet there was something cat-like in his caressing

and insinuating ways. His smiles and attentions could not be relied on

any more than the fawning of the leopard, which the kings of Uganda take

for their royal badge.

Stanley tried to convert him from his Moslem faith to Christianity. He

got so far as to have him write the Ten Commandments for daily perusal

and keep the Christian along with the Moslem Sabbath. This was on his

first visit. But on his return to Rubaga he found the king had gone to

war with the Wavuma. He went along and had excellent opportunity to

notice the king’s power.

His estimate of Mtesa’s fighting strength on this occasion was an army of

150,000 men, and as many more camp followers in the shape of women and

children. There were not less than 500 large canoes, over seventy feet in

length, requiring 8500 paddlers. The whole population of his territory he

estimated at 3,500,000, and its extent at 70,000 square miles.

The Wavuma could not muster over 200 canoes, but they were more agile on

the water than the Uganda, so that the odds were not so great after all.

Day after day they kept Mtesa’s fleet at bay, and readily paddled out

of reach of his musketry and howitzers planted on a cape which extended

into the lake. Mtesa got very mad and began to despair. He applied to

all his sorcerers and medicine men, and at length came to Stanley, who

suggested the erection of a causeway from the point of the cape to the

enemy’s shore. It proved to be too big a task, and was given over. But

the American pushed his project of converting the king, now that he

stood in the position of adviser. He succeeded, as he thought. But a few

days later the Uganda fleet suffered a reverse, and the newly fledged

Christian was found running around in a frenzy, shouting for the blood

of his enemies and giving orders for the roasting alive of a prisoner

who had been taken. Stanley gave his pupil a well-deserved scolding; and

thinking it was time to interfere in the war, which was hindering him

from continuing his journey, he put into operation a little project he

had conceived, and which is worthy of being placed beside the famous

device of the “horse” by which the Greeks captured Troy town. Joining

three canoes together, side by side, by poles lashed across them, he

constructed on this platform a kind of wicker-work fort, which concealed

a crew and garrison of two hundred men. This strange structure, covered

by streamers, and with the drums and horns giving forth a horrible din,

moved slowly towards the enemy’s stronghold, propelled by the paddles

working between the canoes. The Wavuma watched with terror the approach

of this awful apparition, which bore down upon them as if moved by some

supernatural force. When it had advanced to within hailing distance, a

voice was heard issuing from the mysterious visitant, which called on the

Wavuma to submit to Mtesa or destruction would come on them. The bold

islanders were awestruck. A council of war was held, when a chief stepped

to the shore and cried, “Return, O Spirit; the war is ended!” A peace was

sealed with the usual tribute of ivory and female slaves for the king’s

harem.

The next morning the king’s war drums suddenly sounded the breaking up

of his immense encampment on the shore, and Stanley discovered it to be

on fire in a hundred places. All had to flee for their lives, and he

thinks hundreds must have perished in the confusion. The king denied

that he was responsible for an order which resulted in such a horror,

but Stanley thought he was guilty of a piece of unwarranted cruelty,

which illy became his new profession of faith. From that time on, his

views began to change. Ingenious, enterprising, intelligent he found

them, above any other African tribe he had met with. Their scrupulous

cleanliness, neatness, and modesty cover a multitude of faults; but for

the rest, “they are crafty, fraudful, deceiving, lying, thievish knaves,

taken as a whole, and seem to be born with an uncontrollable love of

gaining wealth by robbery, violence and murder.” Notwithstanding first

impressions to the contrary, they are more allied to the Choctaw than

the Anglo-Saxon, and are simply clever savages, whom prosperity and a

favorable climate have helped several stages on the long, toilsome road

towards civilization. There is no call upon us after all to envy their

luxurious lives of ease and plenty under the shade of their bowers of

vine, fig, and plantain trees——

“For we hold the gray Barbarian lower than the Christian child.”

Nevertheless, Uganda, from its fertility and its situation at the outlet

of the great fresh-water sea of the Nyanza, must be regarded as one of

the most hopeful fields of future commercial enterprise, and its people

as among the most promising subjects for missionary and philanthropic

efforts in Central Africa.

As for the mighty Mtesa, little has been seen or heard of him since his

friend “Stamlee” parted from him. Colonel Chaille Long, late of the

Confederate Army, afterwards in the service of Egypt, who had seen him a

few months before, did not think he would ever turn out to be a humane

monarch. But that he has not lost his interest in his white friends

and in the marvels of civilization was shown in the spring of 1880,

when a deputation of four of his chiefs appeared in London on a tour of

observation.

De Bellefonds, mentioned above as meeting Stanley at King Mtesa’s court,

was murdered, with all his party, by the Unyoro, when on his way back to

Gondokoro. Colonel Long went down the Victoria Nile from Lake Victoria

Nyanza, and midway between the Victoria and Albert Nyanza discovered

another great lake which he called Lake Ibrahim.

The last white visitors to the Nile reservoirs were an English party

sent out to establish a Christian mission on Lake Victoria Nyanza. It

consisted of Lieutenant Smith, and Messrs. Wilson and O’Neil. They took a

small steamer along in sections from Zanzibar, and successfully floated

the first steam craft on the bosom of the great lake. Wilson established

himself at the court of King Mtesa. Smith and Wilson, while exploring the

lake, were driven by a storm on the island of the Ukerewe, whose chief,

Lukongeh, had been kind to Stanley. But no faith can be put in African

princes. On December 7, 1877, Lukongeh attacked the missionary camp and

massacred Smith and Wilson with all their black attendants. With this

dismal incident the history of the exploration of Victoria Nyanza closes

for the present, except as we shall have to follow Stanley after leaving

the court of King Mtesa on his trip down the western shore of the lake.

It must be remembered that he was twice to see the king, once on his tour

of circumnavigation, and then after he had completed it.

After he rounded the northern end of the lake and was well on his way

down its western shores, he met with the most perilous of his adventures.

The voyagers were nearly out of provisions. They had passed days of

weary toil under the blistering tropical sun, and dismal nights of

hunger on shelterless, uninhabited islands, when the grassy slopes of

Bumbireh hove in sight. Numerous villages were seen in the shelter of the

forest, with herds of cattle, maize fields, and groves of fruit trees,

and altogether the island seemed to offer a haven of rest and plenty to

the weary mariners. There was no food left in the boat, and a landing

had to be attempted at all risks. The look of the Bumbireh natives was

not so prepossessing as that of their land. They rushed down from their

villages, shouting war-songs and brandishing their clubs and spears. No

sooner had the boat reached shallow water, than they seized upon her, and

dragged her, crew and all, high up on the rocky beach. “The scene that

ensued,” says the traveller, “baffles description. Pandemonium——all the

devils armed——raged around us. A forest of spears was levelled; thirty

or forty bows were drawn taut; as many barbed arrows seemed already on

the wing; knotty clubs waved above our heads; two hundred screaming black

demons jostled each other, and struggled for room to vent their fury, or

for an opportunity to deliver one crushing blow or thrust at us.”

In point of fact, no thrust was delivered, and possibly none was

intended; but the situation was certainly an unpleasant one. The troop of

gesticulating, yelling savages increased every second; and the diabolical

noise of a number of drums increased the hub-bub. The islanders began to

jostle their guests, to pilfer, and at last they seized upon the oars.

Stanley put his companions on their guard and fired his double-barreled

elephant rifle into the crowd. Two men fell. He increased the panic

among them, by two rounds of duck shot, and in the midst of the confusion

the “Lady Alice” was run down the bank and pushed far into the water. But

this scarcely improved the position. The enemy swarmed on the shore and

threw stones and lances at the crew. Canoes were making ready to pursue.

Stanley ordered the crew to tear up the bottom boards for paddles and to

pull away with all their might. All were doing the best they could, but

a paralysis seized them when they discovered they were directly in the

track of two huge hippopotami which had been started up by the noises of

the melee, and enraged to the attacking point. The elephant rifle was

again brought into requisition and the course cleared by planting an

explosive bullet in each animal’s head.

Four of the canoes of the natives were now upon them. They meant war

in earnest. The elephant rifle was used with effect. Four shots killed

five of the natives and sank two canoes. The other two stopped to pick

up their companions. They shouted in their rage, as they saw their prize

escape, “go, and die in the Nyanza!”

Dismal days of famine and hardship followed. A storm overtook them

and tossed them for hours, drenched with spray and rain. They had but

four bananas on board. Happily another island was sighted and reached,

which proved to be uninhabited. There they obtained food, shelter and

much needed rest. Most travellers would have given Bumbireh a wide

berth in the future. Not so Stanley. He pursued his course to Kagehyi,

his starting point, having circumnavigated the lake in 60 days. There

he assembled his own forces, and added recruits loaned by King Mtesa.

With 230 spearmen and 50 musketeers he put back to the offending island

determined to punish the two or three thousand natives they found ranged

along the shores. They held their own with slings and arrows against the

approach of the boats for an hour. But at length they were put to flight

and Stanley considered he had wiped out the insult, though they appear to

have been pretty well punished before.

During his two months’ absence Frederick Barker died at Kagehyi. This

sad event was one of the items of heavy cost attending great feats of

exploration. It left Stanley with but one English companion.

Stanley’s exploration of Victoria Nyanza confirmed in part, Speke’s

discovery and theories. It showed that it was a Nile reservoir, though

not an ultimate source, 21,000 square miles in extent. Excellent havens,

navigable streams and fertile islands were revealed for the first time.

Rich and beautiful countries are romantically pictured to us.

After having paid court to King Mtesa a second time, as already

described, the time came for Stanley to extend his journey. He chose

to follow the line of the Equator westward with the hope of striking a

southern extension of Baker’s Albert Nyanza. He departed from Mtesa’s

old capital, Ulagalla, laden with presents and food, and accompanied

by a hundred Uganda warriors. Stanley, in turn, gave bountiful parting

presents, and even remembered the chief Lukongeh of Ukerewë, who showed

his appreciation of this kindness by murdering the very next white

visitors——Smith and O’Neill, as above narrated.

Further on, near the boundary between Uganda and Unyoro, a body of

2000 Waganda spearmen joined Stanley, making a force of nearly 3000

souls——quite too large for practical exploration as the sequel proved.

The path led through scenes of surpassing beauty and fertility, and

of a character that changed from soft tropical luxuriance to Alpine

magnificence.

After getting away from the forest covered lowlands of the lake shore,

they emerge into a rolling country dotted with ant hills and thinly

sprinkled with tamarisks and thorny acacias. Then come rougher ways and

wilder scenes. The land-swells are higher, the valleys deeper. Rocks

break through the surface, and the slopes are covered with splintered

granite. The streams that were warm and sluggish, are now cold and rapid.

By and by mountains set in, at first detached masses and then clearly

defined ranges, rising 9000 to 10,000 feet on the right hand and the

left. Cutting breezes and chilly mists take the place of intense tropical

heats. At length the monarch of mountains in this part of Africa comes

into view and is named Mount Gordon Bennett. It lifts its head, at a

distance of 40 miles north of their route, to a height of 15,000 feet,

and seems to be a detached mass which overlooks the entire country.

Its bases are inhabited by the Gambaragara, who have regular features,

light complexions, and are the finest natives Mr. Stanley saw in Africa.

Sight of them brought up the old question, whether an indigenous white

race exists in Africa, as both Pinto and Livingstone seemed inclined to

believe. But their wooly, or curly, hair was against them. They are a

pastoral people and safe in their mountain fastnesses against attack.

Snow often covered the top of their high mountain, which they said was

an extinct crater and now the bed of a beautiful lake from whose centre

rises a lofty column of rocks. The whole country is filled with hot

springs, lakes of bubbling mud and other evidences of volcanic action.

These mountains Stanley thought to be the dividing ridge between Victoria

Nyanza, 120 miles east, and the southern projection of Albert Nyanza.

But what was his astonishment to find that he had no sooner rose to the

summit of his dividing ridge than he stood on a precipice, 1500 feet

high, which overlooked the placid waters of the traditional Muta, or

Luta, Nzigé. What a prize was here in store for the venturesome American!

Something indeed which would rob Baker of his claim to the discovery of

an ultimate Nile source in Albert Nyanza. Something which would set at

rest many geographic controversies. And, strange to say, something which

not only supported the truth of native accounts but seemed to verify the

accuracy of an old Portuguese map dating back nearly 300 years.

But fortune was not in favor of the American. His large force had scared

the Unyoro people, and they had mysteriously disappeared. The Waganda

warriors, who formed his escort, looked ominously on this situation.

Samboozi, the leader of the escort, had gained his laurels fighting the

Unyoro, and he feared a trap of some kind was being laid for him. His

fears demoralized his own men and Stanley’s as well. They decided to

retreat. Stanley remonstrated, and asked them to remain till he could

lower his boat and explore the lake. He asked for but two days grace. But

expostulation was vain. They would all have deserted in a body.

There was nothing left but to return. When they arrived at Mtesa’s

capital, which they did without accident, the king was frightfully mad

at his men. He ordered the faithless Samboozi to be imprisoned and all

his wives and flocks to be confiscated. Then he offered Stanley his great

general Sekebobo with an army of a hundred thousand men to carry him back

to the Muta Nzigé. Stanley declined his munificent offer, and determined

that in the future none should guide and govern his own force except

himself. So, with very much modified impressions of Uganda faithfulness,

and somewhat angrily, he started off in a southerly direction, intending

to see what lay westward of Victoria Nyanza.

This route of Stanley southward was that of Speke and Grant northward,

fourteen years before. It is a well watered, thickly peopled, highly

cultivated country, diversified by hill and hollow, and rich in cattle.

Its water courses all drain into the Victoria Nyanza. Their heads are

rushing streams, but as they approach the lake they become reedy,

stagnant lakelets hard to cross. The largest of these, at the southwest

corner of Victoria Nyanza, is Speke’s Kitangule, which Stanley named the

Alexandra Nile. Will we never have done with these Nile rivers? These

continuations of the great river of Egypt?

It seems then that Victoria Nyanza is but a resting place for more

southern Nile waters. That this is so, seems clear from the fact that the

Alexandra Nile really contributes more water than flows out of the lake

at its northern outlet. It has been discovered also that Albert Nyanza

sends off another affluent to the north, besides that which flows past

Gondokoro and which has been regarded as the true Nile. Further it seems

that Lake Ibrahim, half way between Victoria and Albert Nyanza, on the

Victoria Nile, dispatches an unknown branch into the wilderness. Whether

these branches find their way back to the parent stream or go off to form

new lakes, no one can exactly say.

But in the Alexandra Nile Stanley claims he has discovered a new

ramification of this wonderful river system leading to other lakes and

lake mysteries. The natives call the Alexandra the “Mother of the waters

of Uganda,” that is, the Victoria Nyanza or Victoria Nile. Be this as it

may, the Alexandra Nile is interesting both for its own sake and that of

the people who live upon it. Stanley struck it far up from the lake where

it was a quarter of a mile wide, with a dark central current 100 yards

wide and fifty feet deep, which below became a rush covered stream whose

banks were crowded with villages and herds of cattle. Still further on,

it narrows between rocks over which it rushes in a cataract, and then it

broadens to lake proportions, being from four to fifteen miles wide. In

this expanse of reedy lagoons and green islands it merges into Victoria

Nyanza Lake.

Crossing the Alexandra Nile to the south, we are in the Karagwe country,

ruled by King Rumanika. Here is a haven of peace and rest. Speke and

Grant staid many weeks with Rumanika. Stanley stopped for a considerable

while to rest and recruit. He is gentle and reasonable, hospitable and

friendly. He is a vassal of King Mtesa of Uganda, but the two are wholly

different, except in their admiration of white men. Rumanika has no

bursts of temper, but is serene, soft of voice and placid in manner.

Stanley calls him a “venerable and aged Pagan,” a tall man, six feet six

inches high, gorgeously dressed, attended by a multitude of spearmen,

drummers and fifers, bearing a cane seven feet long. He has a museum in

which he delights, and is an insatiable gatherer of news from those who

come from civilized countries. He is not to be outdone by the stories of

strangers, but has always one in response ever fuller of marvel. When

Stanley told him of the results of steam power and of the telegraph by

which people could talk for thousands of miles, he slily asked “Whether

or not the moon made different faces to laugh at us mortals on earth?”

He proved full of traditions and, if there was any foundation for

them, Stanley left with a rare fund of geographic knowledge on hand.

The mountain sixty miles northward, rising in triple cone and called

M’Fumbiro, he said was in the country of the Ruanda, a powerful state

governed by an empress, who allows no stranger to enter. Her dominions

stretch from the Muta Nzigé to Tanganyika. They contain another great

lake, forty by thirty miles, out of which the Alexandra Nile flows. It is

possible to ascend this channel into another sheet of water——Lake Kivu,

out of which at its southern end flows another stream, the Rusizi, which

flows into the north end of Tanganyika.

What wonderful information this was, and if all true, we should have

the most bewildering river system, by all odds in the world. We should

find the old Portuguese map of three hundred years ago reproduced and

verified, and the anomaly of three mighty streams draining a continent

mingling their parent waters, and even permitting the passage of a boat

at high water, so that in the end it might go to the Mediterranean, the

Atlantic or Indian Oceans.

Further, Rumanika stated that Ruanda is peopled by demons, and that

beyond, on a lake called Mkinyaga, are a race of cannibals, and also

pigmies, not two feet high. Stanley verified the king’s story by a visit

to the Ruanda folks, who gnashed their teeth like dogs and otherwise

expressed their objections to his visit; and Dr. Schweinfurth found, a

little nearer the western coast, evidences of a tribe of dwarfs who are

supposed to be the aboriginal people of the continent. But the hardest of

Rumanika’s stories was of a tribe who had ears so long that one answered

for a blanket to lie on and another as a cover for the sleeper. Stanley

began to think his civilized wonders were too tame to pit against those

of the African king.

The larger African animals abound in the Karagwe country. Stanley was

much interested in the accounts of white elephants and rhinoceri. He had

the good fortune to find one of the former animals, which he shot, but

found it only a dirty grey brute, just as we find the advertised white

elephants of the menagerie. The elephant is the most unpleasant neighbor

of the rhinoceros. If they meet in a jungle the rhinoceros has to squeeze

his ponderous body into the thicket or prepare for a battle royal. In

such a quarrel his tusk is an ugly weapon but no match for the tusks of

the elephant. The elephant sometimes treats him like a school boy and,

breaking off a limb, belabors the unlucky rhinoceros till he beats a

retreat. At other times the elephant will force him against a tree and

pin him there with his tusks, or throw him down and tramp him till the

life is out of him. Perhaps these were more of Rumanika’s yarns, but

certain it is both beasts are formidable in a forest path, especially

when alone and of surly temper.

[Illustration: SHOOTING A RHINOCEROS.]

On the southern borders of Karagwe is a ridge 5000 feet high. Beyond this

the waters trend southward and toward Tanganyika. And beyond this ridge

the people change. There are no more stately kings, but petty, lying,

black-mailing chiefs, just as we found about Gondokoro. Here Stanley

encountered Mirambo, whose name is a word of terror from the Victoria

Lake to the Nyassa, and from Tanganyika to Zanzibar. To the explorer’s

astonishment he found this notorious personage——

“The mildest-mannered man

That ever cut a throat”——

in short “a thorough African gentleman.”

He had difficulty in believing that this “unpresuming, mild-eyed man, of

inoffensive exterior, so calm of gesture, so generous and open-handed,”

was the terrible man of blood who wasted villages, slaughtered his foes

by the thousand, and kept a district of ninety thousand square miles in

continual terror. Incontinently, the impulsive explorer resolved to swear

“blood brother-hood” with the other wandering warrior, and the ceremony

was gone through with all due solemnity. The marauding chief presented

his new brother with a quantity of cloth, and the explorer gave him

in return a revolver and a quantity of ammunition; and then, mutually

pleased with each other, they parted——Mirambo and his merry men to the

gay greenwood, where, doubtless, they had a pressing engagement to meet

some other party of travellers, and Stanley for Ujiji.

Ujiji is on Lake Tanganyika. Here we have to leave Stanley, for he is

now done with the sources of the Nile, and midway on that wonderful

journey which revealed the secrets of the Congo. We will follow him

thence and see what he discovered and how he lifted the fog amid which

Livingstone died, but that will have to be under the head of the “Congo

Country” whose mystery he solved more clearly even than that of the “Nile

Reservoirs.”

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF LIVINGSTONE.]

THE ZAMBESI.

The great river Zambesi runs eastward across Southern Africa and empties,

by many mouths, into the Indian Ocean. It is an immense water system,

with its head far toward the Atlantic Ocean, yet draining on its north

side that mysterious lake region which occupies Central Africa, and on

its south side an almost equally mysterious region.

Its lower waters have been known for a long time, but its middle waters

and its sources have been shrouded in a cloud of doubts as dense as that

which overhung the reservoirs of the Nile. Livingstone has contributed

more than any other explorer to the lifting of these doubts.

He was born in Glasgow, March 19, 1813, and was self-educated. He studied

medicine and became attached to the London Missionary Society as medical

missionary. In 1840, at the age of twenty-seven years, he was sent to

Cape Town at the southern terminus of Africa, whence he went 700 miles

inland to the Kuruman Station, established by Moffat on the southern

border of the Kalihari desert. Here and at Kolobeng, on the Kolobeng

River, he acquired the language of the natives, principally Bechuana. On

a return trip from Kolobeng to Kuruman he came near losing his life by

an adventure with a lion. The country was being ravaged by a troop of

these beasts. When one of their number is killed, the rest take the hint

and leave. It was determined to dispatch one, and a hunt was organized

in company with the natives. They found the troop on a conical hill.

The hunters formed a circle around the hill and gradually closed in.

Meblawe, a native schoolmaster, fired at one of the animals which was

sitting on a rock. The bullet struck the rock. The angered beast bit the

spot where the bullet struck and then bounded away. In a few moments

Livingstone himself got a shot at another beast. The ball took effect but

did not kill. The enraged beast dashed at his assailant before he could

re-load, and sprang upon him. He was borne to the ground beneath the

lion’s paws and felt his hot breath on his face. Another moment must have

brought death. But the infuriated beast saw Mebalwe, who had snapped both

barrels of his rifle at him. He made a dash for him and lacerated his

thigh in a terrible manner. The natives, who had hitherto acted in a very

cowardly manner, now came to the rescue with their spears. One of their

number was pounced upon and badly torn. The beast now began to weaken

from the effect of Livingstone’s shot, and with a quiver throughout his

huge frame rolled over on his side dead. After the excitement was over

Dr. Livingstone found eleven marks of the lion’s teeth on his left

arm, which was broken close to the shoulder and the bone crushed into

splinters.

[Illustration: THE LION ATTACKS LIVINGSTONE.]

Livingstone married Moffat’s daughter in 1844. She had been born in the

country and was a thorough missionary. He made Kolobeng a beautiful

station and produced an excellent impression on the natives——all except

the Boer tribes to the south and east, who had become much incensed

against the English, owing as they thought, to the particularly harsh

treatment they had received down in their former homes south of the Vaal

River.

At Kolobeng, Livingstone first heard of Lake Ngami, north of the Kalihari

Desert. He resolved to visit it, and started in May 1849, in company

with his wife and children, several English travellers and a large party

of Bechuana attendants. They rather skirted than crossed the desert,

yet they found it to consist of vast salt plains, which gave a constant

mirage as if the whole were water. Though destitute of water, there are

tufts of dry salt-encrusted grass here and there, which relieve it of an

appearance of barrenness, but which crumble at the touch.

In July they struck the river Cubango, or Zonga, flowing eastward and,

as far as known, losing itself in a great central salt-lake, or Dead

Sea. They were told that the Zonga came out of Lake Ngami, further west.

Ascending the river sixty miles they struck the lake, and were the first

Europeans to behold this fine sheet of water. The great tribe about and

beyond the lake is the Makololo, whose chief is Sebituane, a generous

hearted and truly noble character. They could not see him on this trip.

So they returned, making easy journeys down the Zonga, admiring its

beautiful banks, which abounded in large game, especially elephants.

The next year (1850), Livingstone and his family started again for Lake

Ngami, accompanied by the good chief Sechele, who took along a wagon,

drawn by oxen. While this means of locomotion gave comfort to the family,

it involved much labor in clearing roads, and the animals suffered sadly

from attacks by the tsetse fly, whose sting is poisonous. But the lake

was reached in safety. The season proved sickly, and a return journey

became compulsory, without seeing Sebituane. But the chief had heard

of Livingstone’s attempts to visit his court, and he sent presents, and

invitations to another visit. He set out on a third journey, and this

time directly across the desert, where they suffered much for want of

water.

[Illustration: CUTTING A ROAD.]

This time they found the chief. His headquarters were on an island in the

river, below the lake. He received the party with the greatest courtesy,

and appeared to be the best mannered and frankest chief Livingstone ever

met. He was about forty-five years old, tall and wiry, of coffee-and-milk

complexion, slightly bald, of undoubted bravery, always leading his men

in battle, and by far the most powerful warrior beyond Cape Colony. He

had reduced tribe after tribe, till his dominions extended far into the

desert on the south of the Zonga, embraced both sides of that stream, and

ran northward to, and beyond, the great Zambesi River.

Chief Sebituane died while Livingstone was visiting him, and was

succeeded by his daughter Ma-Mochisane. She extended the privileges of

the country to the travellers, and Livingstone went north to Sesheke

to see her. Here in June, 1851, he discovered the great Zambesi in the

centre of the continent of Africa where it was not previously known to

exist——all former maps being incorrect.

Though the country was not healthy, he was so impressed with the beauty

of the Zambesi regions, and the character of the Makololo people, that he

resolved to make a permanent establishment among them. But before doing

so he returned to Cape Colony and sent his family to England. Then he

went back, visiting his old stations on the way. He arrived at Linyanti,

where he found that the new queen had abdicated in favor of her brother,

on May 23, 1853. The new king Sekelutu was not unlike his father in

stature and color, was kindly disposed toward white people, but could not

be convinced that their religious notions were suited to him.

Livingstone remained a month at Linyanti, on the Chobe, or Cuando River,

above its junction with the Zambezi. He then started on a further

exploration of the latter river, and was gratified to find that Sekelutu

determined to accompany him with 160 attendants. They made royal progress

down the Chobe to its mouth. Then they began to ascend the Zambesi in

thirty-three canoes. The river was more than a mile broad, dotted with

large islands and broken with frequent rapids and falls. The banks were

thickly strewn with villages. Elephants were numerous. It was the new

king’s first visit to his people and everywhere the receptions were

grand. Throughout this Barotse valley hunger is not known, yet there is

no care exercised in planting.

The spirit of exploration had such full possession of Livingstone

that, on the return of the royal party to Linyanti, he organized an

expedition to ascend the Zambesi and cut across to Loanda on the Atlantic

coast. This he did in 1854. It was on this journey that he discovered

Lake Dilolo. It is not much of a lake, being only eight miles long by

three broad. But it was a puzzle to Livingstone, and has ever since

been a curiosity. It is the connecting link between two immense water

systems——that of the Congo and Zambesi.

When he struck it on his westward journey toward Loanda, he found it

sending out a volume into the Zambesi. “Head-waters of a great river!”

he naturally exclaimed. And there was the elevation above the sea, the

watershed, to prove it, for soon after all the waters ran northward and

westward instead of eastward and southward.

But in a few months he was making his return journey from Loanda to the

interior, to fulfil his pledge to bring back his Makololo attendants

in safety. He then approached this lake from the north. What was his

surprise to find another slow moving, reed-covered stream a mile wide,

flowing from this end of the mysterious lake and sending its waters

toward the Congo.

Though ill with fever both times, he was able to conquer disease

sufficiently to satisfy himself that this little lake, Dilolo, four

thousand feet above the sea level, is located exactly on the watershed

between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and distributes its contents

impartially between the two seas. A drop of rain blown by the wind to the

one or the other end of the lake may re-enforce the tumbling floods that

roar through the channels of the Congo and rush sixty miles out into the

salt waters of the Atlantic, or may make with the Zambesi the dizzy leap

through the great Victoria Falls and mingle with the Indian ocean. No

similar phenomenon is known anywhere. Lake Kivo may form a corresponding

band of union between the Congo and the Nile, but this we do not know.

Apart from the eccentric double part it plays, the physical features

of Dilolo are tame and ordinary enough. It has, of course, hippopotami

and crocodiles as every water in Central Africa has, and its banks

are fringed with marshes covered with profuse growth of rushes, cane,

papyrus, and reeds. Around it stretch wide plains, limitless as the sea,

on which for many months of the year the stagnant waters rest, balancing

themselves, as it were, between the two sides of a continent, unable to

make up their mind whether to favor the east coast or the west with their

tribute.

No trees break the horizon. The lands in the fens bear only a low growth

of shrub, and the landscape is dismal and monotonous in the extreme.

“Dilolo means despair,” and the dwellers near it tell a story curiously

resembling the tale of the “Cities of the plain,” and the tradition

handed down regarding some of the lakes in Central Asia, of how a

venerable wanderer came to this spot near evening and begged for the

charity of shelter and food, how the churlish inhabitants mocked his

petition, with the exception of one poor man who gave the stranger a nook

by his fire and the best his hut afforded, and how after a terrible night

of tempest and lightning the hospitable villager found his guest gone and

the site of his neighbor’s dwellings occupied by a lake. When the rains

have ceased and the hot sun has dried up the moisture the outlook is

more cheerful. A bright golden band of flowers of every shade of yellow

stretches across the path, then succeeds a stripe of blue, varying from

the lightest tint to purple, and so band follows band with the regularity

of the stripes on a zebra.

The explorer is glad, however, to escape these splendid watersheds and

to pass down into the shadows of the forests of the Zambesi, where, at

least, there will be a change of discomforts, and a variety of scenery.

There are four methods of travel familiar in Southern Africa. One is the

bullock-wagon, convenient and pleasant enough in the Southern Plains,

but hardly practicable in the rude wilderness adjoining the Zambesi.

Riding on bullock back is a mode of travel which Livingstone frequently

adopted from sheer inability to walk from weakness. Marching on foot is,

of course, the best of all plans when a thorough and minute acquaintance

with the district traversed is desired. But for ease and rapid progress

there is nothing like “paddling your own canoe,” or better still, having

it paddled for you by skilled boatmen down the deep gorges and through

the rushing shallows of the third of the great African rivers. Before the

main stream of the Zambesi is reached, the forest shadows of the Lotembwa

and the Leeba have to be threaded. These dark moss-covered rivers flow

between dripping banks of overgrown forests and jungle with frequent

clearings, where the villagers raise their crops of manihoc, the plant

that yields the tapioco of commerce, and which here furnishes the chief

food of the natives.

Fetisch worship flourishes in these dark and gloomy woods. In their

depths a fantastically carved demon face, staring from a tree, will

often startle the intruder, or a grotesque representation of a lion or

crocodile, or of the human face made of rushes, plastered over with

clay and with shells or beads for eyes, will be found perched in a seat

of honor with offerings of food and ornaments laid on the rude altar.

Whether human sacrifices are offered at these shrines cannot positively

be said, but the most simple and trifling acts are “tabooed,” and unless

the traveller is exceedingly wary in all that he does or says, he is

likely to be met with heavy fines or looked upon as a cursed man, who

will bring misfortune on all who aid or approach him. The medicine man

has a terrible power which he often exercises over the lives and property

of his fellows, and a sentence of witchcraft is often followed by death.

A great source of profit is weather-making but, unlike the prophets in

the arid deserts on the south, the magicians of this moist, cool region

devote their energies to keeping off rain and not to bringing it down

from Heaven. Of course if they persevere long enough the rain ceases to

fall, and the credulous natives believe that this has been produced by

the medicine they have purchased so dearly, just as the Bechuana of the

desert believe in the ability of their rain-makers, when handsomely paid,

to bring showers down on the thirsty ground by virtue of drumming and

dancing.

[Illustration: A BANYAN TREE.]

The behavior of the inhabitants of these villages, on the appearance

among them of a white man, is apt to shake the notion of the latter that

the superior good looks of his own race are universally acknowledged.

Their standard of beauty is quite different from ours. Sometimes a wife

is measured by the number of pounds she weighs, sometimes by her color,

often by the peculiarities of ornamentation, or by special style of

head-dress or some disfigurement of the nose, lips or ears, on which

the female population mainly rely for making themselves attractive.

The wearing of clothes is regarded as a practice fairly provocative

of laughter, and as improper as the want of them would be in America.

Nothing could be more hideous to them than the long hair, shaggy beard

and whiskers, like the mane of a lion, which strangers wear. If the

stranger have blue eyes and red whiskers he is regarded as a hob-goblin,

before whom the village girls run away screaming with terror, and the

children hide trembling behind their mothers. At the village of the

Shinte, the principal tribe on the Leeba River, Livingstone was very

kindly treated by the chief. He received him seated in state under

the shade of a banyan tree, with his hundred wives seated behind him,

and his band of drummers performing in front. Out of gratitude, the

Doctor treated the distinguished party to an entertainment with the

magic-lantern. The subject was the death of Isaac, and the party looked

on with awe as the gigantic figures with flowing Oriental robes,

prominent noses, and ruddy complexions appeared upon the curtain. But

when the Patriarch’s up-lifted arm, with the dagger in hand, was seen

descending, the ladies, fancying that it was about to be sheathed in

their bosoms instead of Isaac’s, sprang to their feet with shouts of

“Mother! Mother!” and rushed helter-skelter, tumbling pell-mell after

each other into corners or out into the open air, and it was impossible

to bring them back to witness the Patriarch’s subsequent fortunes.

On the lower part of the Leeba the scenery becomes very beautiful

and richly diversified. The alternation of hill and dale, open glade

and forest, past which the canoe bears us swiftly, reminds one of a

carefully kept park. Animal life becomes more plentiful with every mile

of southward progress, and the broad meadows bordering the stream are

pastured by great herds of wild animals——buffaloes, antelopes, zebras,

elephants, and rhinoceri,——all of which may be slaughtered in scores

before they take alarm.

Below the confluence of the Leeba with the Zambesi, the abundance of game

on the banks of the river is more remarkable. The air is found darkened

by the flight of innumerable water fowl, fish-hawks, cranes, and waders

of many varieties. The earth teems with insect life and the waters swarm

with fish life. As an instance of the prodigious quantity and exceeding

tameness of wild animals here, Livingstone mentions that “eighty-one

buffaloes marched in slow procession before our fire one evening within

gun shot, and herds of splendid deer sat by day without fear at two

hundred yards distance, while all through the night the lions were heard

roaring close to the camp.” In the heat of the day sleek elands, tall as

ordinary horses, with black glossy bodies and delicately striped skins,

browsed or reclined in the shade of the forest trees. Troops of graceful,

agile antelopes, of similar species, scour across the pasture lands to

seek the cool retreat of some deep dell in the woods, or a solitary

rhinoceros comes grunting down to the bank in search of some soft place

where he can roll his horny hide in the mud. The trees themselves have a

variety and beauty which the sombre evergreen foliage of higher latitudes

lacks, and which is equally wanting in the dust colored groves of the

desert further south.

The voyage down the stream is by no means without incident. The river

swarms with hippopotami and crocodiles. The former lead a lazy sleepy

life by day in the bottom of the stream, coming now and then to the

surface to breathe and exchange a snort of recognition with their

acquaintances, and are only too well pleased to let the passer by go in

peace, if he will but let them alone. In districts where they are hunted,

they are wary and take care to push no more than the tip of their snouts

out of the water, or lie in some bed of rushes where they breathe so

softly that they cannot be heard. But in a place where they have not been

disturbed, they can be seen swimming about, and sometimes the female

hippopotamus can be seen with the little figure of her calf floating on

her neck. Certain elderly males who are expelled from the herd become

soured in temper and are dangerous to encounter, and so also is a mother

if robbed of her young. Such a one made an attack on Livingstone’s boat,

when descending the Zambesi in 1855, butting it from beneath until the

fore end stood out of water, and throwing one of the natives into the

stream. By diving and holding on to the grass at the bottom, while the

angry beast was looking for him on the surface, he escaped its vengeance

and, the boat being fortunately close to the shore, the rest of the

crew got off unharmed. The alligators of this part of the Zambesi are

peculiarly rapacious and aggressive, and the chances are that anybody

unlucky enough to fall into the river will find his way into the mouth

of a watchful crocodile. Every year these ferocious reptiles carry off

hundreds of human victims, chiefly women, while filling their water

jars, or men whose canoes are accidently upset, and the inhabitants in

their turn make a prey of the beast, being extremely fond of its flesh

and eggs. The crocodile attacks by surprise. He lurks behind the bank of

rushes, or lies in wait at the bottom of a pool, and dashes out as soon

as he sees a human limb in the water. Sometimes, however, when hungry

and where favorable opportunity occurs, he will haul his body ashore and

waddle up the bank on his stumpy legs. If, while disporting himself on

shore, his wicked green eyes fall on some likely victim in the stream, he

will dash rapidly through the rushes, plunge into the river and make a

bound for his prey. The young crocodiles show their vicious temper almost

as soon as they are out of the shell, and one savage little wretch about

two feet long made a snap at Dr. Livingstone’s legs, while walking along

the side of a stream in the Zambesi region, that made the explorer jump

aside with more agility than dignity.

[Illustration: ANIMAL LIFE ON THE ZAMBESI.]

Some distance below the junction of the Leeba, the Zambesi enters the

valley of the Barotse. This is one of the most fertile, yet the most

unhealthy, districts in the interior of Africa. It is stocked with great

herds of domestic cattle of two varieties. One very tall with enormous

horns, nearly nine feet between the tips, and the other a beautifully

formed little white breed. The country could grow grain enough to support

ten times the inhabitants it has at present. Like the lower valley of

the Nile, the Barotse country is inundated every year, over its whole

surface, by the waters of the river, which deposit a layer of fertilizing

slime. The banks of the Zambesi, for some distance above and below this

district, are high and cliffy, presenting ridge after ridge of fine rock

and pleasing scenery, while the stream runs swiftly over its stony bed.

For a hundred miles through the Barotse valley the stream has a deep and

winding course and the hills withdraw to a distance of fifteen miles from

either bank. To the foot of these hills the waters extend in flood time,

and the valley becomes temporarily one of the lake regions of Central

Africa.

At the lower end of the valley the rocky spurs again approach each

other, and the river forces its way through a narrow defile in which, in

flood time, the water rises to a height of sixty feet above its original

level. Here are situated the Gonye Falls which are a serious impediment

to the navigation of the Upper Zambesi. But there is no such danger

or difficulty here for canoes as poor Stanley met with on the Congo.

Practice has made the natives, living near the falls, experts in the

work of transporting these canoes over the rocky ground and, as soon as

a boat approaches the rapids from above or below, it is whisked without

difficulty by a pair of sturdy arms to the quiet water beyond. Below the

Gonye Falls, the water bounds and rolls and bounces from bank to bank

and chafes over the boulders in an alarming manner, their breadth being

contracted to a few hundred yards. But these swollen rapids might all be

ascended, Livingstone thinks, when the river is full. After many leagues

of this mad gamboling, the Zambesi settles down again for a hundred miles

to sober flow, and opens out into a magnificent navigable river a mile or

two from bank to bank.

[Illustration: THE GONYE FALLS.]

Still more grand, however, are its dimensions after it receives a great

deep, dark colored, slow flowing river, the Cuando, or Chobe, before

mentioned. The Chobe empties through several mouths with winding channels

fringed with beds of papyrus, the stems of which are plaited and woven

together into an almost solid mass of vines, and by grass with keen,

sharp, serrated edges, which cut like razors. Even the hippopotamus has

no little ado in forcing a way through this forest, and less weighty

personages have to walk humbly in his track. So wide is the Zambesi below

the entrance of the Chobe, that even the practiced native eye cannot

tell from the bank whether the land, dimly seen beyond, is an island or

opposite shore, and the stream flows placidly past with no sign that it

is almost within sight of a tremendous downfall.

The only traveller who has explored the upper waters of the Chobe is

Major Serpa Pinto, on his recent journey from Benguela to Natal. But we

shall learn more of his travels hereafter. It is, however, interesting

now to note that he found a spot on this river also, where he could

almost have placed his cap on the point of junction between streams

draining toward the Atlantic, the Zambesi, the Indian Ocean, and the

Kalihari Desert.

Livingstone has already made us familiar with Lake Ngami and the banks

of the lower Cuando. These are the furthest outposts of equatorial

moisture toward the south, just as Lake Chad and the White Nile mark its

northern limits. Once, it is supposed——and indeed the fact seems beyond

dispute——the Zambesi, and all its upper branches, flowed down into this

southern basin and formed a goodly inland sea, until some great cataclysm

happened, that diverted it and its waters toward the eastern coast,

leaving the central lake to be dried up into the shallow Ngami, and the

streams of this region to wander about haphazard and uncertain whether to

keep in the old tracks or follow in the new direction.

[Illustration: HUNTING THE ELEPHANT.]