The Cassembe, take their name from the chief or ruler, who is a Pharaoh,

or general, called the “Cassembe,” the ninth generation of which was on

the throne when Livingstone was there. He gave him a royal reception,

differing in many respects from all others which he had received.

Cassembe had a dwarf, captured from some of the northern tribes, who

figured as clown of the occasion. Then his wife appeared as a conspicuous

mistress of ceremonies, preceded by men brandishing battle axes, beating

on hollow instruments, and yelling at the crowd to clear the way. She was

a comely looking personage of light color and regular features. In her

hand were two enormous pipes filled ready for smoking. This procession

was followed by the Cassembe, whose smile of welcome would have been

captivating but for the fact that he was accompanied by his executioner,

bearing a broad Limda sword and a large pair of scissors for cropping

the ears of offenders. The queen is a thorough agriculturist, and pays

particular attention to her fields of cassava, sweet-potatoes, maize,

sorghum, millet, ground-nuts and cotton. The people as a whole are rough

mannered and positively brutal among themselves. Livingstone spent a

month among them, before he could get an escort to take him through the

swamps to the southern end of Moero, which he was anxious to explore

further.

The Cassembe, like many other tribes on the head waters of the Congo,

procure copper ore from Kantanga, on the west, and work it into

bracelets, anklets and fine wire for baskets and traps. They have been

visited time and again by the Portuguese. By and by Livingstone bade

Cassembe farewell and pushed for the southern and western shores of the

lake. He took views from many points on the Rua mountains and approached

its shores at many points. At every shore approach there was a profusion

of moisture and of tropical forests abounding in buffaloes and elephants,

while the open spaces gave views of pasturing zebras. The latter had not

yet become an object of chase as in the lands south of the Zambesi, where

they give great sport to both native and foreign hunters and where so

much of the larger game has been swept away by inconsiderate sportsmen.

Lions and leopards were also plenty, and the camps had to be guarded

nightly against them. The population about the lake is everywhere dense,

and the fish supply limitless. Livingstone found the lake, at his various

points of observation from the Rua heights, to be from 30 to 60 miles

wide, and the natives claimed that it was larger than Tanganyika. They do

not pretend to cross the lake in boats, deeming it too long and dangerous

a journey, in a country where storms are frequent and the waters are apt

to be lashed into fury by the winds.

The circuit of Lake Moero, the almost continuous wading of swamps and

crossing of swollen streams, the arrival at Cassembe again and the

expression of a determination to go still further south into the swampy

regions, to discover Lake Bemba, or Bangweola, instead of back to

Tanganyika, where rest and medicine could be had, caused the desertion of

Livingstone’s entire traveling force except his always faithful Chuma and

Susi. But having attained the consent of Cassembe to proceed, and having

re-equipped himself as best he could, he started for Bangweola, keeping

parallel with the Luapula, but a day’s march away from its swamps.

Even then, the crossing of the frequent tributaries made his journey

tedious and dangerous. It was through a region of hill and vale, forest

and plain, of varied geological formation. At many points he came upon

developments of iron ore, which the natives worked and he had no doubt

that this valuable mineral existed in abundance in this region. It ought

to be remembered that the Kantanga copper region, whence all the eastern

coast draws a supply, lies but a few days’ journey west of the Luapula,

and in this part of the Congo basin.

The people were the Banyamwezi, smart traders and given to lying like

Greeks. They are populous, but having been raided by the Mazitu, many

of their villages were deserted. Passing through their country, the

land becomes flat and forest covered, and so continues all the way

to Bangweola. The streams are all banked by the juicy sponge, before

described, which make traveling so treacherous and tiresome. All the

forests are infested with lions and leopards, necessitating the greatest

care at night.

It was January 18th, 1868, when Livingstone first set eyes on Lake

Bangweola. The country around the lake is all flat and free from trees,

except the mosikisi, which is spared for its dense foliage and fatty

oil. The people have canoes and are expert fishermen. They are numerous,

especially on the large islands of the lake. The variety of fish is

numerous and some are taken which measure four feet in length. The bottom

of the lake is sandy, and the shores reedy. During windy weather the

waters become quite rough and dangerous. The islanders have herds of

goats and flocks of fowls, and are industrious and peaceable, not given

to curiosity, but sitting unconcernedly and weaving their cotton or

knitting their nets, as a stranger passes by. According to Livingstone’s

estimate this splendid body of water is some 150 miles long by 80 broad.

The Lokinga mountains, extending from the southeast to the southwest are

visible, and this range joins the Mokone range, west of Kantanga, which

range is the water-shed between the Zambesi and Congo basins.

The people are still the Banyamwezi. Besides being skilled in weaving

cotton and in net-making, they are expert copper workers. In forging

they use a cone-shaped hammer, without a handle. They use bellows, made

of goat skin and wood. With these they smelt large ingots of copper in

a pot, and pour it into moulds, which give a rough shape to the article

they wish to forge.

Livingstone’s observations in this section taught him that there was

no such thing as a rainy zone, to account for the periodical rise of

rivers like the Nile and Congo. From May to October is a comparatively

dry season, and from October to May almost every day gave a thunder

shower, but there is no such continuous down pour as has been imagined

by meteorologists in Europe. He accounts for the humidity of both the

Congo and Zambesi watersheds, by the meeting of the easterly and westerly

winds in that section, thus precipitating the evaporations of both oceans

in mid-Africa. It is certain that the Congo does not get its yellow hue

from its head waters, for all the streams run clear even when swollen.

The sponges, or bogs, which are so frequent are accounted for by the fact

that some six to eight feet beneath the surface is a formation of sand

which cakes at the bottom, thus holding up the saturated soil above and

preventing the escape of the water. The same is true of large sections on

the Zambesi, and especially in the Kalahari Desert, though the vegetable

mould is wanting on the top. In that desert wells must be dug only so

deep. If water does not come, they must be dug in another place. To

puncture the substratum of caked sand is to make an escape for the water,

and create a dearth in an entire drainage system. A peculiarity of the

sponge everywhere is that it absorbs so much water as to keep the streams

from flooding till long after the shower. Then they assume what would be

an unaccountable flow, but for knowledge of the fact that it has taken

several hours for the rain-fall to penetrate them. When traveling on the

Limda, Livingstone had great trouble with his ox teams, which became

invariably bogged in the sponges, and when they saw the clear sand in

the centre of the streams, they usually plunged headforemost for it,

leaving nothing in sight but their tails.

[Illustration: DANGEROUS FORDING.]

Livingstone’s return from Bangweola to Cassembe gave him no opportunity

for observation, owing to the fact that the tribes were at war with one

another, instigated by the Arabs, who were gathering a rich crop of

slaves. Yet this misfortune was compensated in part by a return of his

deserters to his service, on his arrival at Cassembe, thereby enabling

him to continue his northward journey more comfortably, and to run the

gauntlet of the contending tribes with greater safety.

His journey to Tanganyika, arrival at Ujiji, sickness there, receipt of

welcome stores from the coast, slow recovery, make a sad history, but

does not add to our knowledge of the natural features and resources of

the Congo region. However, our interest is again awakened in this heroic

adventurer when we find him once more on his feet and resolved to visit

the land of the Manyuema, off to the west and on the Lualaba, in the

very heart of the Upper Congo valley, and the stamping ground of the

now celebrated Tippoo Tib. The Manyuema country was then unknown, and

Livingstone went in the trail of the first of those Arab hordes which

ever visited it, but whose repeated visits in quest of ivory and slaves

have carried murder, fire, theft and destruction to a once undisturbed,

if not happy people.

The journey lay from Kasenge, on the west coast of Tanganyika, near its

middle, in a north-west direction to the great market town of Nyangwe, on

the Lualaba, or Upper Congo. He found the route hilly but comparatively

open. Villages were frequent and the natives friendly, till the Manyuema

themselves were reached. There was an abundance of elephants and

buffaloes, which kept them supplied with meat. Where forests grew, the

trees were of gigantic proportions, and very dense, affording a complete

escape for wild animals when exhausted or crippled in the chase. The

native huts were of a superior kind, with sleeping apartments raised from

the ground. The soil was fertile, and the cultivation of vegetables was

general. On the route they came into the region of the oil-palm, which

does not flourish eastward of this, but assumes a more gigantic growth as

the western coast is approached.

A little more than midway between Tanganyika and Nyangwe, is Bambarre,

a flourishing village, surrounded by gardens, which the men help to

cultivate, though all the other duties of farm and house are imposed upon

the women, who are actual “hewers of wood and drawers of water” for the

tribe. They made willing carriers, and are of comely form. Here the soko

is believed to be a charm for rain. One was caught for meteorological

purposes, with the result that the captor had the ends of two fingers

and toes bitten off. Livingstone saw the nest of a soko, or gorilla,

and pronounced it a poor architectural contrivance. A young soko,

however, he regarded as the most wonderful object in nature, so ugly as

to excite astonishment, yet so quaint as to stimulate curiosity. Like

the kangaroo, it leaves one in doubt whether repulsion or attraction is

uppermost in the mind when viewing it. In the vicinity are hot springs,

and earthquakes are common, passing from east to west. The tribes of

Bambarre hold the Manyuema in great fear, regarding them as of man eating

propensity.

Leaving Bambarre, Livingstone was soon in the extensive country of the

famed Manyuema, a tribe, or rather an entire people, hardly surpassed for

size and power by even the Zulus, Macololos, Ugandas or Niam-Niams, a

tribe whose name is one of terror far below Stanley Falls and far above

Nyangwe, and whose unamiable qualities have of late years been greatly

increased by the hold which Tippoo Tib, the Arab imperator on Lualaba,

has gotten upon them.

Livingstone’s journey toward their capital was through the most

remarkable country he had seen in Central Africa. He had elephant and

rhinoceros meat of his own shooting, and plenty to trade to the natives

for other dainties. The land is a beautiful succession of hills and

dales. The villages are frequent and perched on the slopes so as to

secure quick drainage. The streets run east and west in order that the

blazing sun may lick up the moisture. The dwellings are in perfect

line, with low thatched roofs, and every here and there are larger

establishments with grounds, which answer for public assemblages. The

walls are of beaten clay, and the insides are cosy and clean. The clay

walls are so compact as to stand for ages, and frequently men return,

after a site has been deserted for generations, to repair and re-occupy

their ancestral abodes. The people practice the rite of circumcision,

after the manner of the Abyssinians or Hebrews. The women are good

housekeepers, and preserve their food from the ants, which are in great

numbers and of many varieties, by slinging it from the ceiling of their

huts in earthen pots or neatly made baskets.

[Illustration: A YOUNG SOKO.]

Palms crown the heights of all the mountains and hills, and the forests,

usually of a width of five miles between the groups of villages, are

indescribable for their luxuriance and beauty. Climbers fold themselves

gracefully over the gigantic trees, wild fruit abounds, and monkeys

and brilliant birds skip and flit from bough to bough, with continuous

chatter and chirp. The soil is excessively rich and the people cultivate

largely, even though they are much separated by feuds and dense forest

reaches. Their maize bends its fruit stalk round like a hook. They insert

poles in the ground for fences, and these soon sprout making substantial

and impervious hedges. Climbing plants are trained from pole to pole,

and to these are suspended the ears of corn to dry. This upright granary

forms a wall around the entire village, and the women take down corn at

their will and distribute it to the men. The women are very naked. They

are thrifty, however, and may be seen on any market day carrying their

produce to the villages on their heads, or slung in receptacles over

their shoulders. No women could be fonder of beads and ornaments than

they, and Livingstone found them easy to trade with, when at all friendly.

The receptions Livingstone met with in the various villages, as he neared

the Lualaba, were as various as the humors of the people. Some received

him gladly, others with suspicion, and still others with rudeness,

saying, “If you have food at home, why come you so far and spend your

beads to buy it here?” On the Luamo, a tributary of the Lualaba, two

hundred yards broad and very deep, the chiefs proved so hostile as to

refuse to lend their canoes to the party to cross over. The women were

particularly outspoken, and claimed that the party were identical with

the cruel strangers (Arabs) who had lately robbed them. At length the

warriors of the place surrounded the party, with their spears and huge

wooden shields, and marched them bodily out of the district.

Wherever the wood has been cleared in this section, the soil immediately

brings a crop of gigantic grasses. These are burned annually.

Livingstone’s way now deflected to the north, through kindlier villages,

separated by damp forests. The rainy season was on and the streams were

all swollen. Evidences of large game were all around him. He passed an

elephant trap, which was made of a log of heavy wood twenty feet long,

with a hole at one end through which a vine passed to suspend it. At the

other end a lance of wood, four feet long, is inserted. A latch string

runs to the ground, which, when touched by the animal’s foot, causes the

log to fall, and its great weight drives the lance into the animal’s body.

The people here were more friendly and very curious as they never had

seen a white man before. They have a terrible dread of the Arabs, and

strange to say the Arabs feared them as much, for nothing could convince

an Arab that the Manyuema are not cannibals. It must be remembered

that Livingstone wrote some years ago and before the Arabs acquired

supremacy over these natives. It is a peculiarity of African tribes that

nothing can exceed the terror inspired by a reputation in another tribe

for cannibalism. It was a common thing on the Shiré and Zambesi, for

Livingstone to hear the natives there speak of tribes far away to the

north——like diseases, they are always far away——who eat human bodies,

and on every occasion the fact was related with the utmost horror and

disgust. Livingstone never took stock in these stories, nor in the wilder

ones of the Arabs, and he mentions no authenticated case of cannibalism

in all his volumes. It is more than likely that African cannibalism

exists only in the imagination of persons who prefer sensation to fact.

Livingstone seems to have become bewildered on this northward journey,

and crossed his track with the intention of making more directly for the

Lualaba. Though he found the people kind and the country indescribably

rich in vegetation, the way was difficult owing to the softness of the

ground and the swollen streams. He however succeeded, with much hardship,

in getting back to the route direct from Bambarre to the river. On this

route the villages were almost continuous, as many as nine being passed

in a single day. The people were kindly disposed and very curious. They

brought food willingly, traded eagerly, preferring bracelets to beads,

and in one village he was received by a band, composed of calabashes.

Goat and sheep herds were plenty, tended mostly by children, who lived

among and loved their charges as if they were human beings.

A grass burning resulted in the capture of four sokos by the natives,

besides other animals. The full grown soko would do well to stand for

a picture of the devil. One of them, it appears, was a young one which

gave Livingstone an opportunity for study. His light-yellow face showed

off his ugly whiskers and faint apology for a beard. The forehead,

villainously low, with high ears, was well in the back-ground of a great

dog mouth. The teeth were slightly human but the canines showed the beast

by their large development. The hands, or rather fingers, were like those

of the natives. The flesh of the feet was yellow. The eagerness with

which the Manyuema devoured it left the impression that eating sokos was

a good way to get up a reputation for cannibalism.

The soko sometimes kills the leopard by seizing both paws and biting

them, but often gets disemboweled in the attempt. Lions kill sokos with a

bound, tear them to pieces, but seldom eat them. They live in communities

of about ten, each male having a single wife. Interference with a wife is

visited by the resentment of all the other males, who catch and cuff the

offender till he screams for mercy.

Livingstone was now sorely detained by sickness and the desertion of his

carriers. The delay gave him opportunity to note the characteristics

of the Manyuema country with more particularity. It is not a healthy

country, not so much from fever as from debility of the whole system

induced by damp, cold and indigestion. This general weakness is ascribed

by some to the free use of maize as food, which produces weakness of the

bowels and choleraic purging. Rheumatism is common and cuts the natives

off. The Arabs fear this disease, and when attacked come to a stand-still

till it is cured. Tape worm is frequent, and the natives know no remedy

for it.

The natives have wonderful stores of ivory which the Arabs are eager

for. They cultivate the ground with the hoe, but their hoeing is little

better than scraping the ground, and cutting through the roots of the

grasses. This careless husbandry leaves the roots of maize, ground-nuts,

sweet-potatoes and sorghum to find their way into the rich, soft soil,

which they succeed in doing. The ground-nuts and cassava hold their own

against the grasses for years. Bananas grow vigorously on the cleared

spaces.

The great want of the Manyuema is national life. Of this they have none.

Each head man is independent of each other. Of industry they have no lack

and the villagers are orderly toward each other, but they go no further.

If a man of another district ventures among them, he is not regarded

with more favor as a Manyuema than one of a herd of buffaloes is by the

rest, and on the slightest provocation he is likely to be killed. They

buy their wives from one another. A pretty girl brings ten goats. The new

wife is led to the new home by the husband, where five days are spent,

then she is led back to her home for five days, after which she comes to

her new home permanently. Many of the women are handsome, having perfect

forms and limbs. The conviction of Livingstone, after his experience

with these people, was that if a man goes with a good-natured and civil

tongue, he may pass through the worst people in Africa unharmed. He also

draws a fine line between the unmixed and mixed African races, by a

narrative of experience on the Shiré river. One of a mixed race stepped

into the water to swim off to a boat, and was seized by a crocodile.

The poor fellow held up his hands and screamed for help. Not a man went

to his help, but allowed him to perish. When at Senna, in the Makololo

country, a woman was seized by a crocodile. Instantly four natives rushed

unbidden and rescued her, though they knew nothing about her. These

incidents are typical of the two races. Those of mixed blood possess the

vices of both races and the virtues of neither.

The fact that there is no supreme chief among the Manyuema, makes it

difficult to punish murder except by war, and the feud is made worse,

being transmitted from generation to generation. This state of affairs,

when it came to be understood by such a crafty statesman as Tippoo Tib,

contributed to his victory over the people, and that peculiar sovereignty

which he exercises.

Livingstone got away from this place of confinement, and crossed the

Mamohela, on his journey to Nyangwe. The country was a fine grassy plain

watered by numerous rills, and skirted by mountains on either side, on

which perched the neat villages of the natives. Then forests intervene

of even more luxuriant growth than before, to be again succeeded by

plains. The people seem to grow more stately and shapely, the women being

singularly perfect in hands, feet and limbs, and of light brown color,

but all with the orifices of their noses enlarged by excessive snuff

taking. The humor of the villagers depended on how lately they had been

raided by the Arabs. They seemed also to grow more clever in art, for now

many forges were seen in active operation where iron was being shaped

into spears and utensils.

[Illustration: MANYUEMA WOMEN.]

At length the Lualaba is reached at Nyangwe, the capital of the Manyuema

country, and the greatest market town in Central Africa. Long before

Livingstone reached it he met upon the route hundreds of women wending

their way thither with their marketing in baskets on their heads or slung

in receptacles on their shoulders. As they trudged cheerfully along full

of thought as to what they would receive in exchange or what they would

buy, he could not help contrasting their condition with that of the women

bent on a like errand in his own country, where the labor might be the

same, but where there was happy exemption from such scenes of bloodshed

as he was forced to witness while there. But as these have been already

narrated the reader is here spared their horrible review.

The Manyuema prefer to do all their business in open market. If one

says, “Come, sell me that fowl, or cloth,” the reply is, “Come to the

market place.” The values there are more satisfactory and the transaction

is open. The people had a fear of Livingstone, because they could not

disassociate him from the Arab half-castes who had brought upon them

untold misery.

He found the Lualaba at Nyangwe to be twenty feet deep in mid stream

and subject to annual overflow just like the Nile——a mighty river, he

says, three thousand yards wide, with steep banks and full of islands.

The current runs at the rate of two miles an hour. His greatest trouble

was to get a canoe to take him across the river. The natives thought his

request for a large canoe, with which he intended to explore the river,

meant war upon them, so they sent only small ones, capable of carrying

two or three men, and which were entirely unfit for his purposes. The

Manyuema on the left bank of the Lualaba, opposite Nyangwe, are called

Bagenya. There are salt springs in their district, and they manufacture

the salt for the Nyangwe market, by boiling the brine.

The salutations of the Manyuema are the same as those of the Bechuana

people of the Kalihari desert, and indeed many of their customs

reminded Livingstone of what he had seen south of the Zambesi, among

the respective tribes. The natives of Nyangwe denied to Livingstone

the stories of cannibalism that had been circulated about them. They

never eat human flesh, unless it be the bodies of enemies killed in

war, and not then through any liking for the flesh, which is salty and

unpalatable, but because it makes them “dream of the dead man,” and, as

it were, kill them over in their sleep. This a very comfortable way of

getting a second vengeance, and is nearly allied to the reasoning which

is at the bottom of cannibalism in the South Sea Islands, to wit, belief

that the blood of a brave and fallen enemy transplants his bravery to

the veins of him who partakes of it. Cannibalism, for the sheer love of

eating human flesh, don’t exist in the world. It is a creation of the

imagination, a product of the tale telling spirit, and is not fair to the

pagan races.

Livingstone seems never to tire of praising the physical proportions of

the Manyuema and says, he would back a company of them, for shape of head

and physical form, male and female, against the whole Anthropological

Society. He was surprised at the extent of country embraced in the

Arab incursions. On questioning the slaves brought to Nyangwe by these

marauders, he found them members of tribes far up and down the Lualaba,

and westward of it many days’ journey. The copper of Kantanga reaches the

Nyangwe market, and is readily bought up at high figures, in barter.

The great market of Nyangwe is held every third day. It is a busy scene,

and every trader is in dead earnest. Venders of fish run about with

potsherds full of snails and small fishes, or with smoked fishes strung

on twigs, to exchange for cassava, potatoes, grain, bananas, flour,

palm-oil, fowls, salt, pepper, and various vegetables. Each is bent on

exchanging food for relishes, and the assertions of quality are as strong

as in a civilized mart. The sweat stands out on their faces, cocks crow

briskly from the baskets, and pigs squeal from their inclosures. Iron

utensils, traps and cages are exchanged for cloth, which is put away

for carriage in their capacious baskets. They deal fairly, and when

differences arise, they appeal to each other and settle things readily

on a basis of natural justice. With so much food changing hands among a

throng which frequently numbers 3,000 souls, much benefit is derived,

for some of them come twenty-five miles afoot. The men flaunt about

in a nervous and excited way, but the women are the hardest workers.

The potters hold up their wares and beat them with their knuckles to

prove their quality by the sound. It is all a scene of fine natural

acting——the eagerness with which they assert the value of their wares,

and the withering looks of disgust when the buyer sees fit to reject

the proffered article. Little girls run about selling cups of water to

the thirsty traders, just as lemonade or ice-water boys ply their art in

London during a procession. They are close buyers and sellers, prone to

exaggerate the merits of their articles, yet satisfied when a bargain

is clinched. Honesty is a rule, and when anything is stolen among the

Manyuema, they know that it is the work of the Arab slaves.

The Manyuema children do not creep as white children do, but begin by

putting forward one foot and using one knee. The fish of the Lualaba are

of the same variety as in Lake Nyassa. Cakes made of ground-nuts are a

common fare, as on the west coast. All Livingstone’s persuasions could

not induce the natives to hire him a canoe large enough to navigate the

river with. The Arabs had inflamed their imaginations by painting him

as an enemy in disguise, but their real purpose was to keep control of

all the larger boats themselves to assist in their river forays. Baffled

by both natives and Arabs, and after waiting for many weary weeks at

Nyangwe, he resolved to return to Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika.

His return journey was a repetition of the sights and scenes already

described, varied of course by new opportunities for observing natural

features and events. On nearing the Mamohela, he passed through a most

populous region, with well constructed villages, abounding in goats,

fowls, dogs, and pigs, with vegetable food of every tropical variety in

plenty, while palm toddy, tobacco and bangue (Indian hemp) furnished

them the dainties. The soil was so fruitful that a mere scraping with a

hoe rendered a generous return. The forests afforded elephants, zebras,

buffaloes and antelopes, and in the streams were abundance of fish. The

antelope species in Africa is rich in variety, stalwart in form, and

heavy horned. Those of the Chobe river are dappled in color and very

beautiful. The quichobo is a rare species, and is more of a goat than

an antelope. It has amphibious qualities, and when frightened will jump

into the water and remain beneath the surface till danger has passed. At

this point Livingstone was given a secret which would have been worth

a fortune to him had he possessed it in time to have saved the camels,

mules and buffaloes with which he started on this journey from the coast.

It was to the effect that lion’s fat was a cure for the bite of the

tsetse fly. As he had never seen a fat lion, he was incredulous, till

assured that the Basango lions, in common with all other beasts, actually

took on fat. A vial of the precious stuff was handed him, a proof of

the fact that such a thing as lion fat did really exist. The cattle

raising tribes of the plains west of Tanganyika, know the virtue of this

ointment, and use it when they drive their herds toward the markets on

the eastern coast.

[Illustration: TYPES OF AFRICAN ANTELOPES.]

Sickness on the rest of the route to Tanganyika impaired his powers of

observation and description. In general he found the country beautiful

and fertile, but much disturbed by raiders. On his arrival at Tanganyika

he was ferried across to Ujiji. Sick and in despair, his faithful Susi

came rushing at the top of his speed one morning and gasped out, “An

Englishman!” This was Stanley, on his mission of rescue. This meeting,

and how the two explorers navigated Tanganyika, together with other

things that went to make up one of the most remarkable interviews in

history, are described elsewhere in this volume.

One would have thought that Livingstone could not fail to accompany

Stanley home. But he did not, and, weakened as he was by disease,

proclaimed to his rescuer a programme which embraced a journey round the

south end of Tanganyika, southward across the Chambesi, round the south

end of Lake Bangweola, due west to the mythical ancient fountains and

thence to the copper-mines of Kantanga. All this, he says, “to certify

that no other sources of the Nile can come from the south without

being seen by me.” What heroism was here, yet in his condition, what

infatuation! Poor man, deluded, self-sacrificial traveler, illy-advised

adventurer! All this long journey, from the time he struck the Chambesi,

months and months before, to Moero, to Tanganyika, to Bambare, to the

Lualaba and Nyangwe, had been through the water system of the Upper

Congo, and had nothing at all to do with the Nile sources, and now, going

back to Bangweola and to the Chambesi for the purpose of contributing

further to knowledge of the ultimate Nile sources, discovery of which

he regarded as worth the sacrifice of his life, he was but stamping

through the Congo basin again, and revealing the sources of a river which

found an outlet in the Atlantic. But such were the uncertainties which

confronted all these early African explorers. Even Stanley was uncertain

whither the Lualaba would lead when he embarked on its waters, and

although is volume furnished proof that it could not be the Nile, he was

still prepared, from its northern course, to accept it as such, till it

took its westward turn and straightened out for its Atlantic exit.

Writing on African beliefs, he says: “The African’s idea seems to be that

they are under control of a power superior to themselves——apart from and

invisible; good, but frequently evil and dangerous. This may have been

the earliest religious feeling of dependence on Divine power, without

any conscious feeling of its nature. Idols may have come in to give

definite ideas of superior power, and the primitive faith or impression

obtained by Revelation seems to have mingled with their idolatry, without

any sense of incongruity. The origin of the primitive faith in Africans

and others seems always to have been a Divine influence on their dark

minds, which has proved persistent in all ages. One portion of primitive

belief——the continued existence of departed spirits——seems to have no

connection whatever with dreams, or, as we should say, with ‘ghost

seeing,’ for great agony is felt in prospect of bodily mutilation, or

burning of the body after death, as that is believed to render a return

to one’s native land impossible. They feel as if it would shut them off

from all intercourse with relatives after death. They would lose the

power of doing good to those once loved, and evil to those who deserved

their revenge. Take the case of the slaves in the yoke, singing songs of

hate and revenge against those who sold them into slavery. They thought

it right so to harbor hatred, though most of the party had been sold for

crimes——adultery, stealing etc,——which they knew to be sins.”

In Central Africa one is struck with the fact that children have so

few games. Life is a serious business, and amusement is derived from

imitating the vocations of their parents——hut building, making little

gardens, bows and arrows, shields and spears. In Southern Africa boys

are very ingenious little fellows and have several games. They shoot

birds with bows and arrows, practice with the kiri, and teach linnets to

sing. They are expert at making guns and traps for small animals, and in

making and using bird-lime. They make play guns with a trigger which go

off with a spring and have cotton fluff as smoke. They shoot locusts very

cleverly with these toy guns.

[Illustration: DINKA CATTLE HERD.]

Desperate as Livingstone’s last undertaking seemed, he was well equipped

for it by the receipt of fifty-seven porters sent up from Zanzibar by

Stanley and a supply of cattle and donkeys. He found that much cotton was

cultivated on the shores of Tanganyika, that the highlands surrounding

the lake are cut into deep ravines, and that game was plenty everywhere,

elephants, buffaloes, water buck, rhinoceri, hippopotami, zebras. The

lake puts off numerous arms or bays into the mountains, some of which are

of great width, cutting off travel entirely except at a distance from its

shores.

Even before he had rounded the southern end of Tanganyika, he was out

of heart with the experiment of using donkeys as carriers. He had all

along contended that this hardy animal could be taken through regions

infested with the deadly tsetse fly, even though horses, mules, dogs and

oxen might perish. But he, for a second time, witnessed the death of one

donkey after another from the bites of the African pest-fly. His cattle

fared somewhat better, this time, but even they proved a poor means of

keeping up a food supply, being apt to wander, subject to swellings from

fly-stings, and a constant invitation to raiders. True, he escaped this

last calamity, but other travelers in different parts of Africa have been

less fortunate, as their accounts show.

As he passed down into the section which furnishes the head-streams of

Lake Moero, the rains descended in volumes, the streams were swollen,

the people were unkind, and travel became dismal and difficult, beyond

any former experience. He was troubled with sickness and the desertion

of his men. A leopard broke into his camp, at night, and attacked

a woman carrier. Her screams frightened his last donkey and it ran

away. The slave traders had stirred up the villages, so that trade for

the necessaries of life was always difficult. He found the country a

succession of hills and plains, forests and high grasses, with every

evidence of great fertility. Dura, or the flour of sorghum seed,

furnishes the staple food. His narrative of the streams he crossed is

bewildering, but it shows the great plentitude of these Congo sources

and quite reconciles one to the mighty volume of that magnificent river.

With such an abundance of lively sources it must very largely defy active

Equatorial evaporation and be at all seasons a surely navigable and

valuable commercial water-way.

The sponges were now all full from the continuous rains, so that a stream

100 feet wide, had to be approached through a bog of twice that width.

His last cow died, and he was wholly dependent on the natives for food.

Pushing on, and bearing gently westward, he came into the immediate

region of Bangweola. All around was flat, water-covered plain, alive with

elephants and other large game. Every camping place was infested with

ants. Life was miserable for the entire party, and Livingstone himself

was so weak as to be incapable of passing the river and swamps, except by

being carried.

He entered the lake with canoes, and pushed off to one of its numerous

islands, or at least what he supposed to be an island, though it

afterwards turned out to be only a rise in the plain which surrounds the

true lake, and which was then entirely water-covered. The Basiba people

occupy the northern shore of the lake. They proved to be hospitable and

supplied plenty of fish and fowls with an occasional sheep. At every

village a party of male and female drummers and dancers turned up, who

gave music and exhibitions in dancing.

Crossing the mouth of the Chambesi in canoes, and entering the Kabinga

country, he found a cattle raising section, though the cattle are wild.

Elephants were plenty and very destructive of crops. The entire country

about the lake was reedy and flooded. Many of the depressions in the

plain were now arms of the lake, extending for twenty or thirty miles

and so wide as to be seen across with difficulty. The journey now was

mostly by canoes, and the camps were on elevations in the plain, which

were now islands. Lions made the night hideous with their roaring. Fish

and other food was abundant. The mouth of river after river was passed

as it debouched into the lake. Livingstone grows weaker with every

days’ exertion. It is only by the most herculean effort that he reaches

Chitambo on the south side of the lake. His ability to observe and note

has passed away. His power as a traveler and explorer is gone. Death

seized him in Chitambo’s village, and his faithful Chuma and Susi bore

his remains to the coast for transport to England.

We know of the Chambesi, of Lake Bangweola, of the Luapula, of Lake

Moero, of the Lualaba, and of this magnificent section of the Upper

Congo basin, from Livingstone. True, we know little of it, because the

heroic traveler was sick unto death while threading the mazes of forest

and plain which give character to the section. But he has given such an

inkling of its wonderful resources of soil, animal life and people as to

create fresh interest in the region and furnish supplementary evidence to

all that has been said or dreamed of the wealth of the Congo basin.

The last of the sections into which Stanley divides the Congo basin is

that of Tanganyika. This great lake is 391 miles long and 24 broad, with

an area of 9400 square miles. The territory about the lake, belonging

to the Congo water system, embraces 93,000 square miles. It is thickly

populated, and contains probably 2,500,000 persons. The lake itself is

2750 feet above the sea, and it is bounded by mountains, north and south,

which rise from 1500 to 2500 feet above its surface. The slopes of these

mountains lead to lofty plateaus, which are fertile, densely peopled,

and well covered with cattle herds. The natives are of a superior type,

peaceably inclined and much attached to their pastoral occupations, and

to the raising of sorghum, millet and maize. At various towns on the lake

are large communities of Arab traders, the most noted being at Ujiji,

where Stanley met Livingstone on his celebrated journey of rescue. The

International Association supports a flourishing mission on the east side

of the lake, and others have been recently founded.

In general this section supports the natural products indigenous to the

Congo basin, though the oil-palm is not seen east of Ujiji. Around the

lake the natives make a larger use of the cereals, than further west,

where the banana and manioc grow more luxuriantly. There is hardly any

finer market in Africa than that of Ujiji, where may be seen for sale an

intermixture of products such as would do credit to a first-class city,

were it not for the fact that human beings often constitute one of the

articles of merchandise. On any propitious market day may be seen a full

supply of maize, millet, beans, ground-nuts, sugar-cane, wild-fruit,

palm-oil, bananas, plantains, honey, ivory, goats, sheep, cattle, fowls,

fish, tobacco, nets, copper and iron ware, cloth, barks, hoes, spears,

arrows, swords, etc., etc. On the northwest side of this section, at

Uvira, are iron works of no mean proportions, whose products are iron

wire and various iron utensils for both household and agricultural

purposes.

In his recapitulation of resources, Stanley estimates the Congo basin to

contain as follows:——

Area in square Length of

Sections. miles. Population. Navigation.

Lower Congo, 33,000 297,000 110

Upper Congo, 1,090,000 43,884,000 5,250

Lualaba, 246,000 4,920,000 1,100

Chambesi, 46,000 460,000 400

Tanganyika, 93,000 2,325,000 391

————————— —————————— —————

1,508,000 51,886,000 7,251

The ownership of the great basin, as determined at the Berlin conference,

is as follows:——

Countries. Areas. Population.

French Territory, 62,400 2,121,600

Portuguese Territory, 30,700 276,300

Unclaimed, 349,700 6,910,000

Congo Free State, 1,065,200 42,608,000

Inquiring, exacting commerce is ever ready with practical questions. When

it has listened with attentive ear to Stanley’s bewildering estimates,

astounding calculations and captivating statements, it coldly asks what

return shall we find for our wares and for the expense and trouble of

landing them in these tropical markets? He boldly replies, you cannot

shut your eyes to the fact that Western Africa is already contributing

her half of a trade with Europe, which already exceeds $150,000,000 a

year. This comes almost exclusively from a coast line 2900 miles long.

Enlarge this line, by adding the 6000 miles of navigable waters which

are embraced in the Congo basin, and this trade by the products which

would thereby find an outlet, and you would have a traffic equal to

$500,000,000 annually. Improve this inland navigation by a railroad

around the cataracts of the Congo, enlist the sympathies and energies of

the 43,000,000 of people who inhabit the basin, or even of the 4,483,000

who dwell on navigable banks of the water-ways, give them some idea of

the incomputable wealth that is over, around and under them, and which

may be had by simply reaching for it, regard them as men and deal with

them as such, and then you will soon realize that the Congo banks are

worth far more to commerce, mile for mile, than the ocean shores. And

well might he say this, for the banks of the Congo are a succession

of villages, alive with people imbued with the trading spirit, well

acquainted with the value of oils, rubber, dye-woods and gums, anxious

for cloth, brass-rods, beads and trinkets. This cannot be said of all

places on the sea-coast. Stanley narrates that eager natives have

followed him for miles offering ivory and red wood powder for cloth,

and that when they failed to effect a trade, they would ask in despair,

“Well, what is it you do want? Tell us and we will get it for you.”

So sanguine was Stanley of the commercial situation on the Congo and in

tropical Africa that he ventured to tell the practical merchantmen of

Manchester how they could triple the commerce of the entire west coast of

Africa by building two sections of narrow gauge railway, each 52 and 95

miles long, connected by steamboat navigation, or a continuous railway of

235 miles long, around Livingstone Falls, and thereby opening the Upper

Congo to steamboats. Such a step would insure the active coöperation of

more than a million of native traders who are waiting to be told what

they can furnish out of their inexhaustible treasures, besides those

they have already set a value on, as iron, oil ground-nuts, gum, rubber,

orchilla, camwood, myrrh, frankincense, furs, skins, feathers, copper,

fibres, beeswax, nutmegs, ginger, etc.

Stanley showed how a few factories at available points for the conversion

of cruder articles into those of smaller bulk, and how the trading posts

which were sure to spring up on the site of every important village,

would gather in sufficient wares to tax the capacity of such a railroad

as he contemplated to the uttermost, and realize a handsome income on the

investment. He even gave estimates of the cost of the enterprise, which

have been borne out by the practical engineers who have since taken the

work of building it in hand.

He showed further how human and animal carriers had failed to solve the

problem of porterage around Livingstone Falls, although the interests

beyond, identified with the work of the International Association and

with Christian missions, were expending annually a sum equal to 5-1/2 per

cent. on the estimated cost of a railway.

He eloquently concludes his survey of tropical African resources thus:

“Until the latter half of the nineteenth century the world was ignorant

of what lay beyond the rapids of Isangila, or how slight was the obstacle

which lay between civilization and the broad natural highway which

cleared the dark virgin regions of Africa into two equal halves, and how

nature had found a hundred other navigable channels by which access could

be gained to her latest gift to mankind. As a unit of that mankind for

which nature reserved it, I rejoice that so large an area of the earth

still lies to be developed by the coming races; I rejoice to find that

it is not only high in value, but that it excels all other known lands

for the number and rare variety of precious gifts with which nature has

endowed it.

“Let us take North America for instance, and the richest portion of it,

viz: the Mississippi basin, to compare with the Congo basin, previous to

its development by that mixture of races called modern Americans. When

De Soto navigated the Father of Waters, and the Indians were undisputed

masters of the ample river basin, the spirit of enterprise would have

found in the natural productions some furs and timber.

“The Congo basin is, however, much more promising at the same stage of

undevelopment. The forests on the banks of the Congo are filled with

precious red-wood, lignum vitæ, mahogany and fragrant gum trees. At

their base may be found inexhaustible quantities of fossil gum, with

which the carriages and furnitures of civilized countries are varnished;

their foliage is draped with orchilla, useful for dye. The red-wood when

cut down, chipped and rasped, produces a deep crimson colored powder,

giving a valuable coloring; the creepers which hang in festoons from

the trees are generally those from which India rubber is produced, the

best of which is worth fifty cents a pound in a crude state; the nuts of

the oil palm give forth a butter which is a staple article of commerce;

while the fibres of others will make the best cordage. Among the wild

shrubs are frequently found the coffee-plant. In its plains, jungles and

swamps, luxuriate the elephants, whose teeth furnish ivory worth from two

to three dollars a pound in an unworked condition; its waters teem with

numberless herds of hippopotami, whose tusks are also valuable; furs of

the lion, leopard, monkey, otter; hides of the antelope, buffalo, goat

and cattle, may also be obtained. But what is of more value, it possesses

over 40,000,000 of moderately industrious and workable people, which the

red Indians never were. And if we speak of prospective advantages and

benefits to be derived from this late gift of nature, they are not much

inferior in number or value to those of the well developed Mississippi

valley. The copper of Lake Superior is rivalled by that of the Kwilu

valley and of Bembé. Rice, cotton, tobacco, maize, coffee, sugar and

wheat thrive equally well on the broad plains of the Congo. This is only

known after the superficial examination of a limited line which is not

much over fifty miles wide. I have heard of gold and silver, but the fact

of their existence requires confirmation and I am not disposed to touch

upon what I do not personally know.

“For climate, the Mississippi valley is superior, but a large part of the

Congo basin, at present inaccessible to the immigrant, is blessed with a

temperature under which Europeans may thrive and multiply. There is no

portion of it where the European trader may not fix his residence for

years, and develop commerce to his own profit with as little risk as is

incurred in India.

“It is specially with a view to rouse the spirit of trade that I

dilate upon the advantages possessed by the Congo basin, and not as a

field for the pauper immigrant. There are over 40,000,000 of native

paupers within the area described, who are poor and degraded already,

merely because they are compassed round by hostile forces of nature

and man, denying them contact and intercourse with the elements which

might have ameliorated the unhappiness of their condition. European

pauperism planted amongst them would soon degenerate to the low level

of aboriginal degradation. It is a cautious trader who advances, not

without the means of retreat; the enterprising mercantile factor who

with one hand receives the raw produce from the native, in exchange

for the finished product of the manufacturer’s loom——the European

middleman who has his home in Europe but his heart in Africa——is the

man who is wanted. These are they who can direct and teach the black

pauper what to gather of the multitude of things around him and in his

neighborhood. They are the missionaries of commerce, adapted for nowhere

so well as for the Congo basin, where are so many idle hands, and such

abundant opportunities all within a natural “ring fence.” Those entirely

weak-minded, irresolute and servile people who profess scepticism, and

project it before them always as a shield to hide their own cowardice

from general observation, it is not my purpose to attempt to interest in

Africa. Of the 325,000,000 of people in civilized Europe, there must be

some surely to whom the gospel of enterprise I preach will present a few

items of fact worthy of retention in the memory, and capable of inspiring

a certain amount of action. I am encouraged in this belief by the rapid

absorption of several ideas which I have promulgated during the last few

years respecting the Dark Continent. Pious missionaries have set forth

devotedly to instil in the dull mindless tribes the sacred germs of

religion; but their material difficulties are so great that the progress

they have made bears no proportion to the courage and zeal they have

exhibited. I now turn to the worldly wise traders for whose benefit and

convenience a railway must be constructed.”

THE WHITE MAN IN AFRICA.

On the bright, accessible side of Africa the Pharaohs built their

temples, obelisks, pyramids and sphinxes. When history dawned the seats

of Egyptian learning and splendor were already in decay. In her conquest

and plunder of a thousand years, victorious Rome met her most valiant

antagonists in Africa, and African warriors carried their standards to

the very gates of the capitol on the Tiber. In later days the Italian

republics which dotted the northern coasts of the Mediterranean found

their commercial enterprise and their ascendency on the sea challenged

by the Moorish States which comprised the Barbary coast. Still later,

when Spain was intent on conquest in America, and the establishment

of colonies which would insure the spread of the Catholic religion,

Portugal, in a kindred spirit, was pushing her way down the western coast

of Africa, acquiring titles by virtue of discovery, establishing empires

of unknown extent, founding Catholic missions and churches, striving for

commercial exaltation, till her mariners rounded the Cape of Good Hope,

turned northward on the eastern shores, and again took up the work of

colonizing, from Mozambique to the outlet of the Red Sea.

We never tire of reading the old stories of Portuguese discovery and

colonization, and our sympathies are aroused for a people who struggled

so heroically to open a new world to the civilization of the fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries. But Portuguese effort came to naught, when

measured by any modern standard of success. It was baffled by a thousand

undreamt of forces. Its failure, however, rendered conspicuous the

problem, now more pressing than ever: has the white man a natural mission

in Africa? Has not God designed it as the natural home of the dark race?

Are not all our visions of conquest and permanent redemption, through

and by means of the white races, but idle outcrops of the imagination,

or worse, but figments born of our desire to subdue and appropriate?

Can compensation come, in the form of commercial, moral or spiritual

advantage, adequate to the great sacrifice to be entailed on humanity by

substitution of white energy for that which is native to African soil and

climate?

It is not worth while to try to answer these questions in the affirmative

by appeals to old historic Egypt, to Greek or Roman occupancy, to

Arab and Mohammedan ascendancy, to Portuguese conquest and missionary

enterprise, to the weird adventures and sad fates of the school of

intrepid explorers which preceded and followed the redoubtable Scotchman,

Mungo Park, nor to the long role of efforts and enterprises made by the

respective nations of Europe to acquire rich slices of African territory,

after Portugal began to lose her commercial grip, and after foreign

colonization became a European ambition. No, for as yet nothing appears

to show that the white man had a mission in Africa, except to gratify

his home ambitions, cater to his European pride, satisfy his desire

to pilfer, burn and murder. There is no thought yet manifest that the

redemption of Africa involved more than the subjugation of her people and

the forcible turning to foreign account of her resources. The question

has not as yet been asked by the ethnologist, by the grave student of

causes and effects, nor even by the calculating adventurer,——“Is there

an African destiny which admits the white races as fair and permanent

participants, or one which implies universal good when the seeming laws

of God respecting the home of nations are reversed?”

Nor does an affirmative answer to any of the above questions arise out of

England’s theft of the Cape of Good Hope, and of that sovereignty she now

maintains over the Kimberly diamond diggings and the Vaal river sections.

National greed or political finesse may excuse much, as the dark science

of diplomacy goes, but they do not make clear how far the natural order

of things can be changed with benefit to all concerned. This section of

Africa is, however, below the tropics, and perhaps does not involve the

problem of races so deeply as the equatorial regions.

Let us therefore turn to the real Africa, for further inquiry——that

Africa against which Islamism has dashed itself so repeatedly in its

efforts to reach the Equator; that Africa whose climate has beaten

back Christianity for three centuries; that Africa amid which science

has reveled, but before which legitimate trade has stood appalled——the

tropical, the new Africa.

In this connection we come upon an order of events, not to say an

era, which favors an affirmative answer to the above questions, which

plainly point, not to white encroachment, but to white existence and

possibilities in the very midst of a continent apparently destined for

other purposes. The very fact that new discoveries in Central Africa

have revealed vast populations untouched by civilization has opened

the eyes of the world to the usual processes of nation-making afresh.

Have any people ever risen out of barbarism without external help? What

is civilized Europe to-day but a grand intermingling of Greek, Roman,

Vandal, Hun, Goth, Celt, and Saracen? Had even North African influence,

in some of its better moods, succeeded in crossing the Equator, who knows

whether the savagery of the tropics might not have been extinct to-day,

or at least wholly different from what it is?

Again, the order of events have brought forth whole masses of data for

comparison, for experiment, for substantial knowledge. Who could separate

fiction from fact when running over the old, fantastic chronicles? Until

within the last fifty years the light of true scientific knowledge and

of keener commercial knowledge had not been shed on the Central African

situation. It began to dawn when Laird, in 1841, came home to England

from the Niger, more of an adventurer than any predecessor, yet with no

wild, discrepant tales, but only hard, practical truths, which commerce

welcomed and business enterprise could rely on. Legitimate traffic sprang

into line, and British trading houses, doing business on honorable terms

and for cash values, planted their agents on the Gambia, the Roquelle,

the Gold Coast, the Oil Rivers, at Gaboon and Kabinda, along thousands of

miles of coast. German houses sprang up, in honorable rivalry, throughout

the same extent, and Hamburg and Bremen steamers fairly outstripped

those of Liverpool and Glasgow. France, too, came into competition, took

permanent hold of territory, cultivated reciprocity with the natives,

studied tribal characteristics, encouraged agential responsibility,

and brought quite to the surface the problem of white occupancy and

development.

Out of all this has grown something which is better than theory

respecting the destiny of the respective races in Africa, superior far

to all former strifes at mere land-grabbing, and empire building, and

sovereignty enrichments. European commerce with the west and southern

coast of Africa is now carried on by several regular lines of steamers,

besides those owned by numerous large trading firms. The British and

African Steam Navigation Company is a modern corporation, and employs 22

steamers. Its older rival, the West African Steamship Company, employs 9

steamers. They dispatch at least one ship a week from Liverpool to West

African ports. The Woerman line of steamers runs regularly from Hamburg,

the Portuguese line from Lisbon, and the French line from Havre. Then

there are two London lines——the Union and Donald Curry. These lines go

out heavily freighted with miscellaneous merchandise suitable for the

African peoples, among which is, unfortunately, a large per cent. of

gin and other intoxicants, and their return cargoes consist of rubber,

gum copal, palm-oil, palm kernels, ivory, ground-nuts, beeswax, cocoa,

coffee, dye-woods, mahogany, etc., gathered up at their various stopping

points. All these are indigenous African products, but it will be

observed that those which spring from a cultivated soil figure as next to

nothing in the list.

Side by side with these practical sea-going and commercial movements went

the unfolding of the interior by those indomitable men who sacrificed

personal comfort and risked life that inner Africa might be brought to

outer view. This volume is, in part, a record of their adventures and

pioneering efforts. Their names——the Bakers, Barths, Schweinfurths,

Spekes, Grants, Du Chaillus, Pintos, Livingstones, Stanleys, and

others——form a roll which for honor outranks that of the world’s greatest

generals. They have built for themselves monuments which shall outlast

those dedicated to military conquest, because on them the epitaphs will

speak of unselfish endeavor in the name of a common humanity.

What immense problems they had in hand! How heroically they struggled

with them, through tangled jungle, dark forest, dense swamps, over

plain and mountain, up, down and across unknown lakes and rivers, amid

beasts of prey and hostile peoples, in the face of rain, wind and unkind

climates! And all the while that they were toiling and dying, what weird

and wonderful revelations came, now from the Nile, with its impenetrable

sudds, its strange animal life, its teeming populations; now from the

magnificent plateaus of the centre with their mighty and enchanting

lakes, filled with strange fishes, on whose banks reveled peoples

keen for trade or war, happy, if left alone, in smiling gardens and

comfortable homes; now from the swift rolling Zambesi, shaded with mighty

forests alive with troops of monkeys, vocal with bird songs, swarming

with beasts, whose waters dashed here against curved and rocky banks,

and there headlong over rocks higher than Niagara, bearing everywhere a

burden of life in the shape of savage crocodiles, bellowing hippopotami

and ponderous rhinoceri; now from Kalihari, the great desert of the south

which balances that of the north, with stunted yet energetic populations,

its troops of zebras, ostriches, giraffes, buffaloes, elephants, lions,

leopards, making a paradise for hunters, with its salt pans, its strange

grasses and incomprehensible geology; now from the great plain regions

between the lakes and the water system of the western ocean, where are

prairies that vie in extent and fertility with those of the Mississippi

valley, where the numerous Dinkas dwell, brave in chase, rich in splendid

herds of cattle, with cosy homes, surrounded by plantations of maize

and sorghum and bananas; where also the Niam-Niams dwell, equally brave

and rich and kind, yet savage when stirred, and formidable with their

home-made iron spears and bright battle axes and swords; where too the

Monbuttus dwell, rivals of their northern neighbors in agriculture,

architecture and art, rich in corn and cattle, protected from intruders

by a standing army of agile dwarfs, who know no fear and who make

unerring use of their poisoned arrows in cunning ambuscade and in open

fields; and now from the Congo itself, stream of African streams, island

variegated in one stretch, cataract angered in another, draped with

forest foliage everywhere, bounded by fertile shores backed by endless

plains, pouring along through riches of gum, dyes, hard-woods such as

would enrich kingdoms, supporting a water life as varied and gigantic as

any other African lake or river, sustaining a population of incomputable

numbers, opening a water way into the very heart of the continent for

steamers, inviting the civilized world to come and go, partake and enjoy.

As all these surprising revelations were given to the outer world, by

the pioneers of civilization who were struggling within Africa, we began

to get new conceptions of situations whose existence never dawned on

those who were skimming the ocean’s shores and fighting the battles of

commerce. A new world had been brought to light, not only geographically,

but as to its soil, water, vegetation, animals, people, climate, and

every physical aspect. It was a world to be envied, possessed and

reclaimed, because it was one which could be made to contribute to the

wealth and happiness of all outside of it. Moreover, it was one to which

all could contribute, not only of their better material things, but of

their better social and moral things. Commerce decided at once that there

was a demand for Africa. Politics cried out for its possession. Humanity

and Christianity found a new and solemn duty in Africa.

It was not the province of the first traveler and explorer to argue

questions which belong to others and to the future. He could state what

he saw and felt——how hot the sun was, what the rain-fall, the quantity

and nature of the resources. But when he revealed and mapped a new world,

and created a desire for its possession and civilization by others,

there was no fighting shy of the problems involved in the proposed new

destiny. A thousand and one things would come up which had never arisen

before. Many of these problems are of minor moment, many momentous.

Some involve others, some are sweeping. There is one which overshadows

all. Some would ask, “How shall we go about colonizing and civilizing

Africa?” This question is the rind of an apple. At the core is another.

Can the proposed colonizers and civilizers exist in Africa? After that is

determined, we shall know pretty well how to do the rest.

Of all African explorers, Stanley has made this vital question the most

conspicuous, because he, almost alone, has coupled pioneering effort with

state building and the colonizing and civilizing process. He has been

forced to face the climatic situation since it came squarely across his

industrial and commercial plans and involved the question of capital,

which is far more sensitive and cowardly than even human life.

Stanley’s personal career in Africa, as well as his extensive experience

with others, goes far to establish the fact that the white race cannot

transfer itself bodily and permanently to tropical African soil, with the

hope of survival. The difficulty is not because it is white, but because

its customs and environment are at variance with those which perpetuate

life and conduce to labor under the Equator.

In the north temperate zone a man may believe himself capable of

persistent effort and heroic work. He may think he has intelligence,

valor and strength sufficient to sustain him under the greatest

privations. But land him in Africa and he is both witless and nerveless.

He has never learned the art of living the life that is required there.

He is not the same being he was when he started out so hopefully and

valorously. He finds he lacks equipment for his new existence, mental,

moral and physical. A sacrifice is demanded. It is the sacrifice of an

almost perfect transformation, or else the confession of failure must

conclude his career.

Stanley’s most melancholy chapters are those which narrate the oozing out

of ambitions, the confessions of cowardice, and the shirking away of his

white companions, on the discovery that their civilized lives had been

no school of preparation for healthful, energetic and useful existence

in Equatorial Africa. It was a painful study to note how in the face of

tropical realities, the fervid imaginations and exaggerated anticipations

which had led them heroically on took flight, leaving them hapless

malingerers, hopeless despondents, and unfit for anything but retreat.

He had no fault to find where brave men fell through actual physical

weakness, but the general fault, the grave, almost unpardonable mistake,

was the terrible one of not knowing what they were at home and what they

were to be in Africa. He says:——“The influence of the wine or beer, which

at the first offset from Europe had acted on their impulses like the

effect of quinine on weakened nerves, soon evaporated in a wineless land,

and with their general ignorance of adaptation to foreign circumstances,

and a steady need of the exhilarating influence of customary stimulants,

an unconquerable depression usurped the high-blown courage it inspired,

which some called nostalgia (home-sickness) and some hypochondria. Many

had also, as they themselves confessed, come out merely to see the

great river. Their imaginations had run riot amid herds of destructive

elephants, rapacious lions, charging buffaloes, bellowing hippopotami,

and repugnant rhinoceri, while the tall lithe-necked giraffe and the

graceful zebra occupied the foreground of those most unreal pictures.

Their senses had also been fired by the looks of love and admiration cast

on them by their sweethearts, as they declared their intention to ‘go out

to the Congo regions,’ while many a pleasant hour must have been spent

together as they examined the strange equipments, the elephant-rifles,

the penetrative ‘Express,’ and described in glowing terms their life in

the far off palmy lands watered by the winding Ikelemba or the mighty

Congo. Thus they had deluded themselves as well as the International

Committee, whose members looked with eyes of commendation as the inspired

heroes delivered with bated breath their unalterable resolution to ‘do or

die.’

[Illustration: AFRICAN RHINOCEROS.]

“But death was slow to attack the valorous braves while the doable lay

largely extended before them. The latter was always present with its

exasperating plainness, its undeniable imperativeness which affronted

their ‘susceptibilities,’ and ignored their titles and rights to

distinction. The stern every-day reality, the meagre diet and forbidding

aspect, humbled their presumption. When they hear that in this land there

is neither wine nor beer, as they have known them, nor comfortable cognac

to relieve the gnawing, distressful hankering they suffered for their

usual beverages, their hearts beat more feebly. They begin to see that

those bright African images and beautiful dreams of tropical scenery

and excitement are replaced by unknown breadths of woodless regions,

exuberant only with tall spear grass and jungly scrub. The hot sun dares

them to the trial of forcing a way through such scarcely penetrable

growth. Distance and fatigue, seeming to be immense beyond any former

conception, masters their resolution; and, alas! and alas! there are no

fair maidens with golden hair to admire their noble efforts at doing and

dying.

“Conscience, or the prickings of shame, may whisper to a few not quite

lost in despondency, that there is brave work to be performed, and that

they may experience the colonist’s pleasure of seeing the vegetables,

fruit-trees and plants grow instead of that cane-grass and jungle now

covering the broad acreage. But some answer, ‘Bah! I did not come to

work; I came to hunt, to play, to eat, and to receive a big salary from

the Commission.’

“‘Do you feel fatigued? Try some hot tea or coffee.’

“‘What!’ shriek they. ‘Try Congo water! No, thank you; my stomach was

made for something better than to become a nest for young crocodiles.’”

In all the foregoing Stanley speaks of the white help that was furnished

him for his mission to found the Congo Free State. The help was of a high

grade, being composed of men who came recommended to the Commission.

They were selected for their valor and skill at home and for their

professed willingness to brave African climate and all the dangers of

exploration and colonization. They were for the most part educated men

and well qualified to engineer roads, build comfortable homes, establish

trading and military stations, carry on just commerce and exercise wise

government over consenting tribes and contiguous territories. They were

young, ambitious men, who had their fames and fortunes to make and to

whom failure at home would have been a misfortune and disgrace. Indeed,

if one had been going to pick out a body of men for the express purpose

of testing the question whether it is possible for the white races to

exist and thrive in tropical Africa, establish civilized governments,

cultivate the soil, carry on manufactures and commerce, redeem the

natives, and introduce institutions such as are found at home, these

would have been the men.

But let us see how they fared. Stanley takes one as a sample——he does not

fail to make honorable exceptions of those who behaved differently,——and

this one perhaps, the loudest professor, at the start, of heroic zeal

in his undertaking. He is conducted to the site of a newly established

station and endowed with full authority. He is given an army of forty

disciplined blacks, and two or three of his own color are left with him

as companion and assistants. He is made a rich banker for the surrounding

tribes by heaps of cloth bales, bags of beads, and bundles of

brass-rods, the bank notes of the country, with full liberty to circulate

them to the best advantage. The river at his feet swarms with fish of

edible varieties, which he may catch in plenty, if he chooses to imitate

the industry and ingenuity of the natives. The surrounding villages

are full of fowls, and eggs are plenty. Sheep and goats can always be

had, if the slightest attention is paid to their grazing and to their

protection against wild beasts. In the west, goat’s milk, and in the

centre and east, cow’s milk, can be had with little trouble. The natives,

almost everywhere, raise sweet potatoes in abundance and sell them

cheaply. Most villages have their fields of cassava, whose root yields

a wholesome food, which can be prepared in a variety of agreeable ways.

All of the ordinary garden vegetables, as tomatoes, beans, pumpkins, and

onions can be grown with easy tillage. In his commissariat are stores

of rice, canned vegetables, wheat flour, fish, meats, and soups from

Europe, together with tea, coffee, butter, jam, condensed-milk, and in

fact everything to tempt a palled palate or a weak stomach. The question

of food is therefore settled in such a manner as to require very little

exertion or sacrifice to make the supply permanent, varied and wholesome.

What else is required? A strong block house is built, and this is

surrounded by a comfortable dwelling, erected after the manner of the

neatly thatched huts of the natives, or even after the more approved

architecture of civilization, if time permits and the proper materials

are at hand. A palaver is called and whites and natives put themselves

on political and also commercial equality, with as much of social

relationship as suits the tastes of either party. The solemn treaty is

approved and promulgated, and the commandant of the station, governor of

a province, official of a great state, arbiter of the destiny of tribes,

custodian of the welfare of peoples, minister, judge, doctor, commercial

agent, the man to whom civilization is looking as founder, teacher and

exemplar; this wonderful man, so full of pride and responsibility, so

exalted with a sense of duty, so endowed with grand opportunity, is ready

for his instructions and commission. His domain is pointed out and the

fact is impressed on him that it has been acquired with the sanction

of the civilized world and that of the only parties on African soil

capable of giving consent. He is left as master and sole arbiter of all

questions that may arise, and only asked by the power that institutes him

to be just in his dealings with the peoples he is to govern, to extend

kindness to those for whom he has been made a protector, to prove that

the authority imposed has not been misplaced. He is furnished with a

written draft of instructions which is to be his code of laws, his state

constitution, his plan for founding and developing his little empire.

Could anything be more flattering to one’s ambitions? What greater

inducement could one want to exercise every latent energy, to found

deeply, build well and rule wisely? Visions of a future state, crowded

with obedient, industrious subjects, crowned with wealth and prosperity,

shedding lustre on its ruler, proclaiming to the world the success

of a first and glorious experiment, ought to stimulate even the most

indifferent to sublime endeavor.

But a few months passes, during which the embryo potentate is left to

himself. Then along comes Stanley, from an up-river journey, on a tour of

inspection. Where he expects to see his block-house and cottages expanded

into a substantial village, he witnesses only roofless structures,

exposed goods and every evidence of decay. Rank weeds grow where a site

had been cleared for a vegetable garden, and the forest is asserting

itself on the ground prepared for a banana orchard. Perhaps the natives

have been angered, for they hold the capital in a state of siege, the

stores are empty and grim famine stalks where plenty should have reigned.

Or else, not being bloody-minded, they withhold their help and presence,

and leave a trading mart to perish through sheer disinclination to

traffic. He who was to have been a ruler is worse off than a subject.

Where ambition should have stimulated, indifference prevails. Industry

has been lost in idleness. Glory has ended in shame. One word of comment,

one look of reproach, brings a resignation and an abandonment, and the

once proud adventurer who went out to see and conquer strange worlds,

beats a hasty retreat to his comfortable European home to curse his

folly and denounce the spirit that sought to sacrifice him. Failure is

written between every line of the long story with which he regales his

friends as he drops back into his old haunts and resumes the thread of

civilized life, once so willingly broken by dreams of glory, wealth and

humanitarian good.

It may seem a surprise to the reader that Africa could so disillusion

enthusiasts of the character above described. But he has only to follow

Stanley along the line of the Congo, from one station to the other,

and witness his disappointment on his return journey, to ascertain how

frequent the failures were to improve opportunity or make even the

slightest show of progress in building and cultivating. Nay more, since

nothing could stand still, the signs of retrogression were still more

frequent, and ruin marked the spots which he had dedicated to enterprise

and prosperity. Why were these men so radically transformed? This is a

mighty question. Was it the fault of Africa or of Europe?

Stanley reasons thus: “The conditions of a healthy enjoyment of life in

Africa are very little understood by men of this class. It is a difficult

thing to impart to them the rudiments of the lesson of life. It is a most

thankless task, and the effort to do so is so ungraciously received that

I have often been repelled by the visible signs of non-appreciation.

Rarely have I been encouraged to proceed by those to whom counsel was

addressed. They do not seem to take any interest in what concerns

their own health. They duly acknowledge that it is a duty they owe to

themselves to be as careful as possible; they are civil with replies and

ready with promises of amendment. But they do not practice what they

promise, and that active zeal and watchful prudence which would seem to

govern one who loves his own life and welfare I rarely see exhibited. The

performance appears to be too irksome, and neither their intelligence nor

their conscience is provoked to assist them. I remember Frank Pocock, who

must (almost as the sound of my voice died away) have been meditating on

that step by which he lost his life, and which caused me, for months, a

pang of sorrow, each time I thought of his sad end.

“I have observed also that not only in matters of self-preservation is

this apathy evident, but that it is present in the every day duty of the

expedition, which they are pledged to perform and for which they receive

compensation. Any single order they will perform well and creditably,

but if I accompany it with the expression of a hope that they will

consider it a daily duty, the order becomes at once inoperative and is

never observed. I have observed that such an order is too general to be

followed; but a particular order will be mechanically obeyed. A promise

of promotion, or higher pay, or a display of tender solicitude, creates

no impression, and as yet I know of no motive powerful enough to excite a

European or West African aborigine to distinguish himself by an assiduous

interest in general work. The only people on whom my words created a

prolonged impression were the foreign colored employes. Now to what may

I attribute this absence of intelligent interest in their work which is

characteristic of the European and the west coast native? Is it to the

climate? Then why did it not affect all alike? Why did it not affect

myself?

“But of all the rabid absurdities I have encountered in the tropics, the

preaching of a young fool on the merits of intoxicants, who has heard it

from an old fool that there is nothing like whiskey, astonishes me most.

Mr. Puffyface, while in a semi-maudlin state, has been heard declaring,

in the hearing of a youthful enthusiast, that ‘after fourteen years’

experience with the African fever, despite all that may be said against

it, there is nothing like whiskey for curing it,’ For the benefit of

after-comers let me prick this bloated bubble. Show me one of those old

bloaters on the west coast of Africa and I will show you a sham and

delusion. A few hours’ hard work in the interior would lay the lazy lion

as low as a dead donkey. Gin and whiskey topers have lived long elsewhere

than on the Niger and Congo, but if you meet him on the African coast a

glance at his shirt will tell you the whole truth. If it is free from

stains of bodily exudation, then he has simply been ‘sojering,’ and it

will be difficult to say how long a time must elapse before the liver

shows a deadly abscess or becomes indurated. But if you want to do

humanity a kindness, trot him out on a ten-mile march through the African

wilderness, and note the result.

“On the Congo, where men must work and bodily movement is compulsory, the

very atmosphere seems to be fatally hostile to men who pin their faith

on whiskey, gin and brandy. They invariably succumb and are a constant

source of anxiety and expense. Even if they are not finally buried out of

sight and memory, they are so utterly helpless, diseases germinate in

them with such frightful rapidity, symptoms of insanity are so frequent,

mind-vacancy and semi-paralysis are so common, that they are hurried

homeward, lest they draw down a few more curses on Africa which apply

only to themselves.

“The evils of brandy and soda in India need only be remembered to prove

how pernicious is the suicidal habit of indulgence in alcoholic liquors

in hot climates. The west coast of Africa is also too much indebted to

the ruin effected by intemperance.

“But it is my belief that the other extreme is unwise. To abstain

entirely from drinking wine because intemperance is madness, is not

what I inculcate, nor do I even recommend drinking in what is called

moderation. I do not advocate ‘liquoring up’ at any time, provided the

drinker keeps within the limits of sobriety. I advise no one, in the

tropics, to touch liquor during the hours of daylight, unless prescribed

by a medical man. Wine, good red or white wine, should be taken only

after sunset at dinner. Then it should be watered and taken in moderate

quantities, that it may sooth the nerves and conduce to early sleep.

After a full night’s rest, one will rise with a clear head and clean

tongue, and can as easily do a full day’s work in the tropics as in the

temperate latitudes.”

[Illustration: ELEPHANT UPROOTING A TREE.]

Stanley then goes on to correct misapprehensions about African climate

and lay down rules of conduct which, if followed, would go far to insure

a healthful condition. He takes a young European adventurer to the Congo,

full of health and of the spirit of adventure. As soon as the anchor

drops at Banana Point, the young man feels the perspiration exuding

till his flannels, comfortable at sea, become almost unendurable. On

stepping ashore the warmth increases and the flannels absorb perspiration

till they cling to the body and oppress him with their weight. The

underclothing is saturated, and he resembles a water-jug covered with

woolen cloth. The youth makes an escape from this melting heat of 100°

to 115° by going to the veranda of some friendly quarters. Here he does

not observe that the temperature is 25° cooler, but mops his brow, fans

himself, lolls in his easy chair, and sighs at the oppressiveness.

Presently some one recommends the reviving quality of wine. Anything to

lift him out of the condition he is in! One drink gives him freshness

and courage. Another reconciles him to the strange situation. A

third produces conviviality, and then, in the midst of story-telling

companions, who spin rare old yarns of coast fevers, elephant adventures,

crocodile attacks, hippo-escapades, “nigger” sensations, evening draws

on. There is dinner and more wine. Then comes the veranda again. It

is now cool, delicious, inviting. He has forgotten his damp clothing.

Bed-time comes. He retires to toss till morning, or to sleep in the

midst of horrid dreams. When he rises, he is unwell. His tongue is

furred and a strange lassitude pervades his body. Nausea sets in. In a

few hours his face is flushed, his eyes water, his pulse runs high. The

doctor is called, and he pronounces it a case of African fever. He is

given a kind native nurse. The battle of sickness is fought to an end.

Death may ensue, but the chances are always in favor of recovery, though

convalescence is slow.

Of a score who have witnessed this sight, each will have a theory. One

will say, “What a pity he left his mother!” Another, “It must have been

some organic weakness.” Another, “It was hereditary.” Another will cry

out, “One more African victim!” The last one, and he as if in doubt and

in an undertone, may venture to surmise that too much Portuguese wine may

have been at the bottom of it——which is as bad as brandy.

The truth of the matter is, ignorance was at the bottom of it all. The

young man may not have thought he was sitting in a cool night air,

according to his European notions of temperature, but an evening in

Africa, or a draught of air, presents as dangerous a contrast with

midday heat, or as insidious a cause for congestion, as in any other

country. Stanley suffered with 120 attacks of fever, great and slight,

and endured fully 100 of them before he began to suspect that other

causes existed for them besides malaria and miasma, or that he had within

himself a better preventive than quinine. His observations, directed

toward the last to this one point, utterly astounded him with the fact

that the most sickness might have been witnessed at those stations which

were not surrounded by putrifying vegetation, but had been selected so

as to secure the highest degree of health. Old Vivi is one of these

spots, situated on a rocky platform, with steep drainage, and with the

majestic river dashing off between the slopes of high mountains for a

distance of forty miles. Yet Old Vivi is, with the exception of Manyanga,

the sickliest spot in all the Congo Free State, according to his

observations. If all preconceived notions of health had been correct, Old

Vivi should be the healthiest spot on the Congo, certainly far more so

than scores of the Upper Congo stations, situated within ten feet of the

water’s edge and surrounded by hundreds of square miles of flat, black

loam covered with dense, damp forests. Yet to dispatch the fever-stricken

and emaciated sojourners of Old Vivi, Manyanga or Leopoldville to some

one of these upper, isolated and shaded stations, proved to be like

sending them to a sanitarium in the pine-woods or by the sea shore. The

change is simply astounding. The patient takes on flesh, grows ruddy,

healthful, pliant and hopeful.

Stanley had much anxiety about the station at Kinshassa, because it was

so low-lying, though in every other way convenient. But, strange to

say, one of his commandants who was always feverish at Vivi, Manyanga

and Leopoldville, escaped without an attack of fever, or any other

indisposition, for eighteen months, when stationed at Kinshassa. He was

equally anxious about Equator Station, situated as it was directly under

the Equator. But the commandants all praise the climate as capital,

with plenty of native products at hand, and no need of anything foreign

except a little tea and coffee. Of the 29 Europeans in the service of the

Congo Free State above Leopoldville, all served their three year term of

service except two who were drowned, one who died of sickness and one who

resigned on account of severe illness. The inference from these facts is

that the nearer the coast the stations are and the more accessible they

are by steamers, the better the facilities are for stores of whiskey,

brandy and wines, whose free use is an invitation to African sickness.

Also, that the further inland one goes the more experience he acquires as

to the means of preserving health. Every day’s march inland is a species

of acclimatization and a removal from temptation. It is a putting off of

ignorance and a putting on of knowledge. Again, the farther up the Congo

one goes the more he is freed from the draughts which haunt the cañons

of the lower streams. While Vivi is an ideal spot so far as every visible

hygienic consideration goes, it is at the top of an immense funnel with

its wide end toward the sea, and the sea breezes sweep up the channel

with cumulative vigor, producing a difference of temperature between

day and night, or shade and sunshine, which is fatal to the overheated

toiler. And the same may be said of Manyanga and Leopoldville. But the

wide, lacustrine stretches of Stanley Pool dissipate this deadly draught

and equalize the day and night and sunshine and shade temperatures. Thus

inner Central Africa becomes even healthier than the coast rind, as it

were by natural laws. From which arises the strange anomaly that at the

Equator it is not African heat a foreigner need dread so much as African

cold.

Yet no precaution against the oppressive heat must be neglected. And

this precaution must become a law of life. It must not be spasmodic and

remitting, but must be daily and hourly, in fact must be persisted in

till the whole habit conforms to the environment, just as at home amid

civilization. Captain Benton, after his visit to the Congo, proclaimed

beef and beer as the true fortifying agents against the climate. Stanley

says nay. Beef, he admits to be all right, in the sense of good,

nourishing food. But, not beef alone, so much as that wholesome variety

found in well cooked beef, mutton, game, fish and fowl, intermixed

with potatoes, turnips, cabbages, beets, carrots, bread, butter, tea

and coffee. Beers of civilization are too bilious for Africa, and the

distilled spirits are fatally stimulating, leading up to a false courage

which may tempt one to too much effort or to dangerous exposure to the

sun’s rays. The Duke of Wellington’s health receipt for India is equally

good in Africa: “I know of but one receipt for good health in this

country, and that is to live moderately, drink little or no wine, use

exercise, keep the mind employed, keep in a good humor with the world.

The last is the most difficult, for I have often observed, there is

scarcely a good-tempered man in India.”

Moderation is the key to health in central Africa. It must be moderation

in action, food and drink. Yet there must be engagement of body and

mind, great good humor, contentment with surroundings. A lesson in these

respects might be learned from the natives. It is often and truthfully

said, that they are the happiest and freest from care of any people on

the face of the globe. “Take no thought of the morrow, for ye know not

what a day may bring forth,” is the gospel of health among Africans.

Prodigal nature helps them to a philosophy, which we may call shiftless

ease, happy-go-lucky-effort, or go-as-you-please contentment, but it,

nevertheless, is only a crude modification of our more deliberately

framed and higher sounding hygienic codes for the preservation of health

when we are in their land and subject to their climate and conditions of

living and working.

Stanley exemplifies the effect of African cold in another way. In

ascending the Congo in his steamers, the entire party enjoyed excellent

health, notwithstanding the confinement to the stream and the almost

continuous passage through reedy islands and along low, swampy shores.

But on the descent, the swifter passage of the boats in the face of the

prevailing west winds, and river draughts, produced a chill, during

moments of inaction, which prostrated many of the crew, and resulted in

serious cases of sickness. Anywhere under shelter, the body continued

to perspire insensibly, but the moment it was struck by the wind, there

resulted a condition which invariably ended in low fever.

For the ill-health due to African cold, especially where the situation

is like that at Vivi, the rainy season is a corrective, because then the

cold winds cease and the temperature is uniform. But at the same time,

the rainy season is the prelude to sickness in the lower and better

protected situations. The Livingstone Congo Mission at Manteka is in a

snug nest between high hills, entirely cut off from winds, and surrounded

by beautiful gardens of bananas and papaws. Ordinarily it is a healthful

spot, and ought to be so always, if freedom from exposure is a law of

health. But after the rainy season it is unhealthy. A peculiarly clear

atmosphere and a correspondingly hot sun follow the African rains. These

cause rapid earth exhalations which rise up around the body like a

cloud, and soon deluge the person with perspiration. These exhalations

bear the odors of decaying vegetation and become as pernicious as the

effluvia from a dung-heap, unless resort is had to the heat of stoves or

fire-places to counteract their deadly effects. Due care in this respect

is all that is required to insure immunity from sickness caused by these

evaporations.

Even the plateaus are not exempt from fevers. But they for the most

part are covered with long grass. Vegetation so luxuriant, falling and

decaying, constantly fermenting and fertilizing, would be a source of

sickness anywhere. When once they are cleared and planted to corn, wheat

or vegetables, this source of sickness will disappear. A well ventilated

home, in the midst of a cleared and cultivated plateau, is as healthful

in Africa as in any other part of the world. The lessons of health taught

daily by the natives ought to be a constant study for foreigners. They

fight entirely shy of the cañons of the Congo, whereas at Stanley Pool

there is an army of ivory-traders. Then the immediate banks of the river

are comparatively deserted, except where the spaces are open. The gorges,

and deep valleys of tributaries, are by no means favorite dwelling

places, though they are too often the sites of mission-houses and trading

posts. The fetishes of the natives could not prevail against disease in

the hollows and shaded nooks of their land, nor can the drugs of the

white races. The native seeks a cleared space, open to sunshine, elevated

so as to insure circulation of air, and for the most part, he looks down

on the less favorable abodes of the foreigner.

Stanley summarizes the causes of ill-health in Africa, and arranges

them in the order of effectiveness. He gives as the most serious (1)

cold draughts. (2) Malarious hollows. (3) Intemperate living. (4) Lack

of nourishing food. (5) Physical weakness, indolence of mind and body,

general fool-hardiness. One source of encouragement became manifest as

years rolled by, and that was the constant diminution of illness among

the officials of the Congo Free State. This was in some degree due to the

doctrine of “survival of the fittest,” looked upon from a constitutional

standpoint, but in the main to the willingness of the survivors to learn,

and their learning consisted in putting away the habits they had formed

abroad and the assumption of those which fitted their new estate.

Owing to the formation of the African continent, with its fringe of low

land and its miles of slope up to the central plateau, the prevailing

winds sweep inland from the ocean, over the pestilential lowlands,

bearing the seeds of disease. This meteorological law must be met by the

inland dwellers, in order to secure immunity from disease. And it can be

met very readily, as experience proves, by the planting of tree barriers

on the ocean side of residences and plantations.

Stanley’s observations thus far relate to the climatology of central

Africa as affecting the health of the white resident. He next discusses

the question of tropical heat as it affects the effort of the white

races. The intensity of the Congo heat is by no means such as the casual

reader would suspect. An average of the highest temperatures in the year

gives a mean of only 90°, while that of the lowest gives a mean of 67°.

Clad in suitable clothes a European or American can do as much work in a

day in Africa as at home, provided he works under an awning or roof. In

the sun, the temperature is, of a clear day, as much as 115°, which would

be fatal to one standing still. The ill-effects of such a heat are seldom

apparent on a march, though for the comfort of all concerned Stanley

usually limited his marching hours to from 6 A.M. to 11 A.M., thus giving

ample time to prepare evening camps and to rest, feed and recuperate.

In tropical Africa there is manifest coolness for three months of the

year. During the other nine months there is so much cloud and such an

abundance of tempering breezes, as to prevent that intense heat which

one would expect under the Equator or within the tropics. The nights are

seldom oppressive, and though in temperate latitudes one might not feel

the need of a blanket, such an article becomes an indispensable luxury in

Africa.

At any point where facilities offer, as at a factory, trading station

or mission, there is no need of exposure to the sun during work hours.

Awnings are, or should be, a part of the equipment of every white African

sojourner, but if these are wanting the trees are plenty, and their

gracious shade will answer as a substitute. Few craftsmen in any country

are compelled to work without cover, and it requires but an extension of

the rule to make labor safe in Africa.

Exercise of any kind in Africa induces copious perspiration, and it

should never be forgotten that between a state of action in the sun, or

even under cover, and a state of rest in the shade, means a difference in

temperature equal to 25°. This is a sure cause of congestion and other

bodily derangements. It is the one invariable climatic law in Africa, and

is wholly different from that at Para, where the variations are only 9°,

thus insuring immunity from all diseases which have a cause in sudden

or radical changes of temperature. Climatic inequality is deadlier in

Equatorial Africa than its malaria. Yet it can be guarded against, and

that too by the simplest precautions.

The early explorers, pioneers and commercial agents in Africa, especially

on the west coast, were ignorant of the foregoing facts. Hence so many

of them lost their lives needlessly. Hence the terrible stories borne

home of the deadly effect of African heat and climate. They had never

studied the law of adaptation, and instead of helping to solve the

problem of white occupancy they only contributed to its defeat. In the

wiser experience of Stanley a secret has been brought forth which, in

its bearing upon the future of the country, is not even surpassed in

importance by the opening of the Congo itself.

Tropical food is of as much moment to a foreigner as climate. It is clear

that alcoholic stimulants are dangerous. Tea has a depressing tendency

and the same may be said of coffee, though both are grateful, for a time

at least. Cocoa tends to biliousness. Milk is hard to obtain on the west

coast, though it may be had in the cattle producing sections of the

centre and east. Soup implies fresh meat, and is therefore limited to

the broth of the goat, sheep or chicken, unless it come in canned shape.

Palm-wine, except when fresh, injures the kidneys and stomach. All taste

is soon lost for the canned goods of civilization. Flour, rice and the

native fruits and vegetables are wholesome standards.

Stanley’s code of health for the white sojourner in Africa would be as

follows:——

Never build a house, factory or mission in a ravine or valley which may

serve as a wind channel. Air must diffuse itself generally and gently.

Points near the sea, plateaus and open plains are the safest localities

for homes. All lower stories should be clear of the ground. In grassy

sections the first floor should be elevated to the height of a second

story.

Avoid all unnecessary exposure to the sun.

Guard against fogs, dews, exhalations, and night chills, by kindling

fires.

Preserve a generous diet, avoiding oily and fatty foods.

Meats should not be eaten in large quantities at breakfast.

Take an early dinner, say at 11 o’clock, and let it be of meats, fish and

vegetables. Cease work till 1 P.M.

Quit work at 6 P.M., and eat a second dinner, boiled fish, roast fowl or

mutton, with plenty of vegetables. A glass of watered wine will not hurt

then.

Seek amusement in social conversation, reading or games, till 9 P.M., and

then retire.

Sleep on blankets, and cover with a blanket.

If marching, rise at 5 A.M., march at 6, and halt for the day at 11 A.M.

When halted, seek shelter and put on a heavier coat.

Observe the strictest temperance. Don’t indulge in tonics or nostrums.

A little quinine is the safest tonic. If thirsty drop an acid powder in

your drinking water, or take a sip of cold tea.

Use an umbrella when in the sun. The best head dress is a cork helmet, or

Congo cap.

If in a perspiration when wetted by rain or at a river crossing, change

your dress immediately.

Go on a march in very light clothing, and let it be of flannel, with

light russet shoes for the feet.

When permanently stationed, wear light clothing in order to avoid

excessive perspiration when called on for sudden duty.

Don’t fail to exercise freely. Have certain hours for it, morning and

evening, if your work is in doors.

Do not bathe in cold water, especially after you are in the country for a

time. Water below 85° in temperature is dangerous.

Tropical fruits should be eaten only at breakfast.

Medicines specially prepared for tropical diseases can always be had of

European druggists, and a supply should be on hand.

The diseases of central Africa are simple, consisting of dysentery and

three kinds of fever, ague, remittent, and bilious.

Common ague is never fatal. It may be prevented, if one observes the

symptoms.

The remittent fever is simply aggravated ague, it may last for several

days.

The bilious fever is often pernicious. Its severity depends on the

habits of the patient, the amount of exposure which produced it, and the

strength of the constitution. It is preventable, but not by brandy or

excessive smoking, as many foolish people think.

Dr. Martin, in his work on the “Influences of Tropical Climates,” also

lays down a code which is both interesting and valuable.

1. Care in diet, clothing and exercise are more essential for the

preservation of health than medical treatment.

2. The real way to escape disease is by observing strict temperance, and

to moderate the heat by all possible means.

3. After heat has morbifically predisposed the body, the sudden influence

of cold has the most baneful effect on the human frame.

4. The great physiological rule for preserving health in hot climates is

to keep the body cool. Common sense points out the propriety of avoiding

heating drinks.

5. The cold bath is death in the collapse which follows any great fatigue

of body or mind.

6. Licentious indulgence is far more dangerous and destructive than in

Europe.

7. A large amount of animal food, instead of giving strength, heats the

blood, renders the system feverish, and consequently weakens the whole

body.

8. Bread is one of the best articles of diet. Rice and split vetches are

wholesome and nutritious. Vegetables are essential to good health, as

carrots, turnips, onions, native greens, etc.

9. Fruit, when sound and ripe, is beneficial rather than hurtful.

10. The same amount of stimulant undiluted, is much more injurious than

when mixed with water.

11. With ordinary precaution and attention to the common laws of hygiene,

Europeans may live as long in the tropics as anywhere else.

Stanley’s final observation on the existence of the white race in Africa

does not smack of the confidence he has thus far striven to inspire. Yet

it does not suggest an impossibility, nor anything difficult to carry

out, since the continent is so contiguous to Europe. He recommends a

change of scene to the African denizen for at least three months in a

year, because the constant high temperature assisted by the monotony

and poverty of diet, is enervating and depressing. The physical system

becomes debilitated by the heat, necessitating after a few years such

recuperation as can be found only in temperate latitudes. Even with

persons who retain health, this enervating feeling begins to dawn at

the end of eighteen mouths; hence traders, missionaries, planters and

agriculturists, who hope to keep up buoyancy of spirit and such a

condition of body as will resist the climate through a lifetime, should

seek the periodical relaxation to be found in trips to higher latitudes.

While this may not be giving his whole case away, or indeed suggesting

nothing more than such change of scene as our own physicians recommend

to overtaxed business men, it, nevertheless, brings up the ultimate

question of natural and permanent fitness. Suppose that all fear of

African climate is eliminated from the mind of the white man. Suppose

it is settled that he can survive there to a good old age, by using

the precautions herein laid down. Will any traveler, climatologist or

ethnologist arise and tell us that the white man can escape physical

degeneracy in the tropics? As his African offspring come and go for a

few generations, will there not be a gradual loss of the hardihood which

temperate climates encourage, and a gradual growth of that languor and

effeminacy which equatorial climates engender? The presence of the white

races in Africa can neither reverse the laws of their existence and

growth, nor the laws which God has given to a tropical realm. Living

nature, including man, is simply obedience to an environment. We agree

to this in the vegetable world. The oak of our forest is the puny lichen

of the arctic regions. The palm of the tropics withers before northern

frost. Reverse the order, and the lichen dries up beneath a tropical sun.

The oak finds nothing congenial in African soil. As to the lower animals,

it is the same. Stanley found both mule and donkey power ineffective on

the Congo. Livingstone’s mules were bitten by the tsetse fly on Nyassa

and died a miserable death from ulcers. The horse dwindles away within

the tropics. The camel fared no better than the mule with Livingstone,

though the Arab may be said to have conquered the Great Sahara with it,

and Col. Baker used it to overcome Nile distances which defied his

boats. Even the native and trained buffalo was a failure with Livingstone

when he attempted to make it a beast of burden through Nyassaland and

into the Upper Congo section, notwithstanding the fact that it had been

invaluable to him below the tropics, and in the form of the native ox is

in daily use as a beast of burden and travel in the Kalihari regions. So

take the elephant, lion, leopard, hippopotamus, alligator, soko, monkey,

the birds, the fishes, and transport them north; how quickly they cease

to propagate, and in the end perish! Thus far living nature seems to obey

the immutable law of environment. It is equally so with the higher animal

life which we find in man. The negroes, who were torn from their native

soil by the cruel hand of slavery, could not be transplanted with success

in latitudes remote from the tropics. It cannot yet be proved that the

white races will deteriorate and grow effeminate in tropical Africa,

but as to other tropical countries it is established that white energy

is gradually lost in effeminacy wherever it persists in the unnatural

attempt to face the eternal blaze of the equatorial sun.

[Illustration: COL. BAKER’S WAY OF REACHING BERBER.]

It is well to study these things amid the glowing imagery of African

vegetation, soil and resource, the unseemly scamper of the nations for

African possessions, the enthusiasm over Christian conquest and heathen

redemption. The real transforming power of the continent may not be at

all in white occupancy; it cannot be, if such occupancy means white

degeneracy, or such a sacrifice as the situation does not warrant. But

it may lie, more wholly than any one living suspects, in the natives

themselves, assisted and encouraged by the leaven of civilization,

gradually introduced. They are there naturally and for a purpose. God

will not alter his laws, and man cannot, brave as the latter may be, fond

as he may be of possession and power, lustful as he may be of wealth,

boastful as he may be of his civilization, proud as he may be of his

humanitarianism, desirous as he may be to convert and Christianize.

Africa means 200,000,000 of people, backed by a peculiar climate,

fortified by an environment which is as old as the beginning of things.

Let the civilization which is foreign to it all beware how it strikes it,

lest, in the end, the effort prove a sad confession of failure. The good

which is to come out of African elevation should be reciprocal. It is not

good if it presupposes white occupancy followed by white degeneracy.

Centuries ago the brave, enthusiastic Saracen, propagandist of a faith,

warrior for the sake of Mohammed, left his Arabian home and went forth

into pagan Africa on a mission of conquest and conversion. Granting that

Egypt, the Barbary States and the Oases of the Sahara are better off

to-day than they were when they first caught sight of the victorious

banners of the crescent, which is admitting all the truth will allow,

how much superior to the chivalrous Saracen is the bigoted Mahdi, his

depraved Soudan follower, or the Arab slave stealer, who is ubiquitous in

east-central Africa to-day? There is a wonderful, a sad, descent from the

Saracen conqueror to a benighted Mahdist. The contrast between a chief

of Arabian troopers and such a chief as Tippoo Tib is enough to show

degeneracy of the most ultra type. The brave, fiery Saracen, sweeping

along the coasts and through the deserts, was a being infinitely superior

to anything he came in contact with. His progeny, after centuries of

acclimatization and intercourse with the native populations, is a lazy,

inferior being, a curse to his surroundings, not half such a man as the

native whom he plunders and carries off as human booty. He has failed to

lift Africa to the height of a Mohammedan civilization, and has descended

to a level even lower than the paganism with which he came in contact.

Do not forget that in many respects he had adaptation superior to that

any European or American can claim. He was contiguous to Africa. He had

been reared under a burning sun. His color was dark. His heath was sandy

like the sands of Egypt and Sahara. His ship was the camel which became

the courser of the African wastes and by means of which he could connect

the Nile bends more swiftly than we can do to-day with steamers. He had

all the enthusiasm and persistency of a Christian missionary, all the

ardor of an English merchant, all the vigor of a civilized pioneer, all

the desire for possession of a monarchical potentate. Yet he degenerated

into a thief of men and a murderer of innocence. The least respected,

the crudest and most useless man on the face of the globe to-day is an

Arab slave catcher. The chivalry of his fathers has no place in his

bosom. The industry and the sense of beauty and refinement which the

Moor carried northward into Spain were utterly lost in the swing toward

the tropics. The Allah and Koran of Mecca are profane mummery in the

Soudan, at Zanzibar, and on the banks of Tanganyika. It is not necessary

to inquire what inherent causes helped to contribute to this deplorable

result. We know that vital defects existed in the Mohammedan system, and

that these defects were in part to blame. The only inquiry we make is,

how much of that result was due to the African climate, the impact with

tropical peoples and customs, the equatorial environment? For some cause,

or better still, for all causes combined, the last end of the Arab in

Africa is worse than the first.

If we study the impact on Africa of the Christian civilization of

Portugal and even that of England, in its earlier stages, the result is

not encouraging. The ruins of both trading and mission posts are sad

witnesses of a misunderstanding of the true situation, or else monuments

of a surrender to climatic difficulties which had not been anticipated.

Our civilization was called off from a mad chase after the impossible,

and it required years, even centuries, of consideration, before it dared

a second attempt. In the meantime it learned much and in various ways.

Inert, supine Portugal taught valuable lessons by her very incapacity.

Patient Holland gave a valuable object lesson by peaceable conquests

and her amalgamation with the South African peoples. All-conquering,

commercial and Christian England afterwards came along to gather the

harvests which others had sowed, yet to prove that something valuable

in the shape of permanent colonization could be effected south of the

tropics, and with mutual advantage. The pioneering spirit broke out as it

had never done before, and out of it came lesson after lesson, of which

certainly none were more valuable than those furnished by Stanley’s brave

experiences.

Whatever may be the future of the white race in Africa, it is certain

that, just now, no consideration of climate, distance or inaccessibility,

weighs to cool the enthusiasm of Christianity as it marches to a

conquest of heathenism in equatorial wilds. It is face to face with all

the problems above stated and may be the means of solving many of them

favorably. It deserves a better fate than any that has hitherto befallen

it. But the fate of all former outbursts and experiments should prove a

standing warning. Missionaries are only men. The cause of God, as well as

that of commerce, agriculture, science and art, may be best subserved by

using God’s natural forces and observing his immutable laws.

In a political sense, the mission of the white races in Africa has ever

been a failure, and there is little transpiring at this hour, except the

small beginnings of order and independence in the Congo Free State, but

what is ominous of confusion and defeat. Greed for African possessions,

jealousy of one another’s territorial thefts, threatened wars on account

of undefined boundaries, petty usurpations of authority, these render

unseemly the scramble for African acres, and bode no good to native

Africans, whose allegiance is thereby rendered doubtful, whose fears

are constantly at fever heat, who become as ready to train their spears

and rush forth in battle array against one side or the other, as they

are when their villages and gardens are invaded by neighboring tribes

or marauding Arabs. They make colonization a farce, and reduce white

dominancy to the level of cruel interference. The cold-blooded effrontery

of this deliberate theft and partition of a continent, in a political

sense, has nothing in morals to recommend it at any rate. There is

nothing at the bottom of it except the aggrandizement of the Powers who

commit the theft. Selfishness is the motive, however it may be glossed

by the plea of a superior civilization. It regards no native rights,

consults no native good, but in obedience to a spirit of tyranny and

greed walks incontinently into the lands of a weak and helpless race, and

appropriates them in true free-booting style, hoists its flag, and says

to all comers, “Avaunt, this is mine!”

The almost hopeless entanglement of foreign Powers in Africa to-day may

be seen from a glance at the following “political sections” on the west,

or Atlantic coast:

Spain Claims Morocco.

France “ Morocco.

Spain “ Opposite the Canaries.

France “ French Senegambia.

Britain “ British Senegambia.

Portugal “ Portuguese Senegambia.

Britain “ Sierra Leone.

Liberia “ A Republic.

France “ The Gold Coast.

England “ The Gold Coast.

France “ Dahomey.

England “ Niger.

Germany “ Cameroons.

France “ French Congo.

Portugal “ Portuguese Congo.

International Commission Portuguese The Congo Free State.

Portugal “ Angola.

Portugal “ Benguela.

Germany “ Angra Pequena.

England “ Walvisch Bay.

Germany “ Orange River.

England “ Cape of Good Hope.

Some of these claims are old, some new; some are confirmed, some vapid;

some are direct political claims, some indirect, as where a protectorate

only exists, and the real power is vested in a trading company, as in the

British West African Company, with powers to occupy and develop the Niger

country.

Passing to the east coast of Africa we find the entanglement still worse.

There are pretty well defined ownerships beyond the Trans-vaal, then

comes Portugal’s general claim of the Zambesi, Mozambique and Delagoa

Bay, interfered with and overlapped by England and Germany. North of

this, the Sultan of Zanzibar, who claimed sovereignty indefinitely north,

south and west, has been cramped into a few island spaces along the

coast, and graciously permitted to retain the Island of Zanzibar, because

no person can live on it except Arabs and natives. Germany extends a

protectorate and the country back of Zanzibar, and inland indefinitely,

though England is by her side with a similar claim, and taking care that

such protectorate shall be as nominal as possible and shall not interfere

with her claims upon the lake sections. Italy claims all between the

German possessions and Abyssinia and has even invaded that State. These

claims are made under the veneering of trading companies, whose acquired

rights, vague as they may be, the parent country is bound to back up.

Not one of them have well defined metes and bounds for operations. All

are confused and confusing, and liable to provoke misunderstanding and

blood-shed at any moment, and the consequent disgrace of our boasted

civilization, in the eyes of all simple minded Africans at least.