1873, inculcated peaceful methods and cultivated moral tendencies
destined to introduce Christianity and develop civilization. Not only
did Livingstone, in the eloquent words of Stanley, "weave by his
journeys the figure of his Redeemer's cross on the map of Africa, but,
scattering ever his Master's words and patterning his life after the
Master stamped the story of the cross on the hearts of every African
tribe he visited."
Initiating routes of travel, suggesting new commercial fields, and
organizing stable forms of government, came a man of harder metal, of
indomitable will and courage, Henry M. Stanley, who merits the title of
Stanley Africanus.
A Welshman by nativity, born near Denbigh, in 1840, he came to the
United States at the age of sixteen and thenceforth cast his lot with
America, and as a citizen of this country made his explorations under
its flag. It is reputed that he exchanged his natal name of Rowlands for
that of Henry M. Stanley, for a merchant of New Orleans who adopted him;
but in any event his early life was passed without the loving and
modifying influences of a home, his youth almost equally destitute of
those adventitious surroundings that properly mould the character and
insure opportunities for success to young men. Thus he stands forth a
self-made man to whom strength has been accorded to develop the manhood
that God implanted in his soul.
Stern experiences in the American civil war, brief life in the far West,
and special service in Turkey had shaped Stanley into a reliant,
self-contained man when his first African journey came to him, in 1868,
through assignment as newspaper correspondent to accompany the British
army in its invasion of Abyssinia. He participated in this wonderful
campaign, which led him four hundred miles through a country of
indescribable wildness and grandeur, across rugged mountains, along deep
valleys, up to the fortress-crowned crest of Magdala, ten thousand feet
above the sea.
Difficult as were the mountains of Abyssinia, they were less dangerous
than the African region later to be traversed by him; a journey
unsought, but which came to him as the fittest man for the time and
service.
A telegram and five hours' preparation carried Stanley from the
blood-red fields of revolutionary Spain into the famous search journey
that gave to an anxious world news of the long-lost Livingstone. For
twenty years this great Scotch missionary had carried the gospel of
Christ and its civilizing influences from one end of Africa to the
other; once he had crossed the continent in its greatest breadth, and
now, vanished from the sight of the civilized world in his renewed
missionary labors, for two years his very existence had been
problematical.
[Illustration: The Hut where Livingstone Died.]
The search expedition owed its inception and maintenance to James Gordon
Bennett, Jr., whose brief orders to Stanley were: "Find Livingstone and
bring news of his discoveries or proofs of his death, regardless of
expense." The personnel, methods, and arrangements devolved entirely on
Stanley, but his preliminary route was to lie through certain countries.
It thus occurred that between Madrid, his starting point, and Ujiji, on
Lake Tanganyika, the camp of Livingstone, he saw the gayties of Paris;
was present at the eventful opening of the Suez Canal that
revolutionized Eastern commerce; ascended the Lower Nile to scrutinize
with interested eye Baker's prospective expedition to the Soudan;
divined under the mosques of the Bosphorus the political riddles of
Sultan and Khédive; examined the uncovered foundations of Solomon's
Temple in the Holy City; meditated over the historic battle-grounds of
the Crimea; penetrated the Caucasus to Tiflis for news of the Russian
expedition to Khiva; and, traversing Persia through the Euphratan cradle
of the human race, entered India, whence his route lay to Zanzibar and
the dark beyond. What a contrast those preliminary journeys afforded,
across effete countries whose varying and recorded phases of
civilization are contemporaneous with the history of the human race, to
the threshold of a vast region whose barbaric freshness is such that its
entire history lies within the memory of living man.
Stanley landed at Zanzibar, January 10, 1871, and, fortunately, was at
once impressed with his ignorance of outfitting, which he thought he had
learned from books. Resorting to the Arab traders he proved such an apt
pupil and skilful organizer that he enlisted twenty-seven soldiers,
gathered one hundred and fifty-seven carriers and five special
employees, which, with two white assistants, Farquhar and Shaw, made his
aggregate force one hundred and ninety-two. He had his African
money--beads as copper coins, cloth as silver, and brass rods as gold;
canvas-covered boats for navigation; asses and horses for special work;
fine cloth for tribute to local chiefs, which, with tentage, medicine,
etc., made some six tons of freight.
March 21, 1871, the rear guard marched out of Bagamoyo, the town on the
mainland opposite Zanzibar, and taking a route never before travelled by
a white man, Stanley reached Simbamwenni in fourteen marches, the
journey of one hundred and nineteen miles having occupied twenty-nine
days, during which the commander came to fully realize the difficulty of
his undertaking, the inefficiency of unpractised subordinates, and the
uncertain loyalty of carriers.
The onward march resembled all in Africa: thorns and jungle to wound the
naked carriers, rivers to be forded or crossed on almost impracticable
bridges, swamps many miles in length and so miry as to tax the utmost
strength and energy of man and ass, insolence and exactions of local
potentates, thefts by natives, desertions of carriers, the oft-recurring
fever, and occasionally a death.
The 20th of May, Stanley was at Mpwapwa (Mbambwa), delighted physically
at its fair aspect and upland picturesqueness, but mentally anxious over
Farquhar, whom he left here sick, and the loss of his asses, which he
fortunately was able to replace by twelve carriers. He reached, on June
22d, Unyanyembe, after a devious journey of five hundred and twenty
miles to cover an air-line distance of one hundred and fifty. Here had
just arrived a relief caravan for Livingstone, which had left Zanzibar
four months prior to Stanley's. Near by, at Tabora, the chief Arabian
town of central Africa, Stanley was surprised to find the Arabs at war
with a savage chief, Mirambo, thus barring the usually travelled road to
Ujiji.
Here Stanley lost three months, and participated in an unsuccessful
campaign with the Arabs against Mirambo, vainly hoping that thus his
road would be opened. Five of his men were killed in the war, others
deserted, so that only eleven carriers remained, and altogether his
prospects of success steadily diminished.
[Illustration: Map showing Position and Boundaries of the Congo State.]
Despairing of the old route, Stanley, having with great difficulty
recruited his force of carriers, decided to try a circuitous trail to
the south in order to reach Ujiji, which lay to the northwest. Failure
and destruction were predicted, but with confidence in himself Stanley,
on September 20th, marched on with Shaw and fifty-six others. Illness
caused him to soon send back Shaw, his only white companion; frequent
desertions weakened his force; an incipient mutiny of his panic-stricken
men on the Gombe River threatened complete destruction to the party;
insolent chiefs exacted extortionate tribute; desert marches without
water and scant food discouraged and weakened the men; but the leader
pushed on with unflagging energy despite every obstacle. His route lay
through Igonda, Itende, the beautiful country of Uvinsa, across rocky
Uhha to the Malagarazi River, where his heart was gladdened by rumors
from the natives that a white man had lately arrived at Ujiji from
Manyuema.
Pushing on with feverish haste, on November 9, 1871, he had the
indescribable joy of looking down on magnificent Lake Tanganyika, and on
the following day, with his gigantic guide, Asmani, proudly striding in
advance with the Stars and Stripes as his standard, Stanley marched into
Ujiji, and there accomplished his mission by meeting Livingstone and
ascertaining the results of his late labors. Livingstone's primary
mission--the suppression of the slave trade by means of civilizing
influences--had not materially progressed, but he had strong hopes of
the future. Geographically, however, he had been most successful, having
made important discoveries in the water-sheds of Lakes Tanganyika and
the Nyanzas, and found an unknown river, the Lualaba, which in a later
exploration Stanley proved to be the Upper Congo.
Stanley found Livingstone with only five carriers and without means of
trade. Supplying all deficiencies from his own stores, he assisted
Livingstone in his exploration of Lake Tanganyika, and the twain
returned together to Unyanyembe. In the meantime both Farquhar and Shaw
died, and Stanley, turning over his surplus stores to Livingstone, bade
him farewell and Godspeed, and started for Zanzibar. On March 14, 1872,
eight weeks later, Stanley was again enjoying civilization at Bagamoyo,
while Livingstone was awaiting means of returning to his life-task, soon
to be ended by his death among the tribes he loved, for "Greater love
hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."
Over four months of intercourse with Livingstone steadily increased
Stanley's admiration for this great man. He describes him as a
high-spirited, brave, impetuous, and enthusiastic man, with these
qualities so tempered by his deep, abiding spirit of religion as to make
him a most extraordinary character. In all his relations with his
servants, with the natives, and with Mohammedans, Christianity appeared
in its loveliest and most potent forms, constant, sincere, charitable,
loving, modest, and always practical. It was this abiding faith in God
which made Livingstone a man of unfailing devotion to his sense of
present duty, of wondrous patience, unvarying gentleness, constant
hopefulness, and unwearied fidelity--qualities which made his missionary
work in Africa unprecedentedly successful.
Abuse, misrepresentation, and incredulity from geographic societies,
critics, and press greeted Stanley's account of his discovery of
Livingstone, and only gradually did his traducers yield to the
convincing evidences of his astonishing success.
Turning to his old work, Stanley, in the winter of 1873-74, again
entered Africa, accompanying as newspaper correspondent the British
army, which invaded to a distance of one hundred and forty miles the
deadly marshes of the Ashantee Kingdom, and destroyed its capital city,
Coomassie.
When the death of Livingstone brought Africa into prominence again,
Stanley, believing he could complete so much of the missionary's work as
concerned exploration, turned thither at the head of an expedition under
the auspices of the London _Telegraph_ and the New York _Herald_, the
object being the survey of the lacustrine system at the head of the
White Nile and a journey thence westward across the continent.
Leaving Bagamoyo, November 17, 1874, Stanley reached Lake Victoria
Nyanza in March, 1875, his journey of seven hundred and twenty miles
being marked by pestilential fevers, struggles through thorny jungles,
and scant food and water. Circumnavigating the lake, he found it to be
over four thousand feet above the ocean, while its proportions--nearly
twenty-two thousand miles in area and in places over five hundred feet
deep--assumed those of an inland sea. Here Mtesa, a powerful and able
negro king, of Mohammedan faith, proved most friendly and greatly aided
him, furnishing an escort, which enabled Stanley to explore a part of
the adjacent mountain region. From Ujiji he then explored Lake
Tanganyika, finding it to be about half the size of Victoria, with an
elevation of about twenty-seven hundred feet.
[Illustration: Tippu-Tib.]
Important as were these discoveries they paled before others, made in
following the Lualaba River of Livingstone, which changed the map of
Central Africa and altered the destiny of that vast and untraversed
region. The journey to Nyangwe, Livingstone's "farthest," entailed
horrible hardships on the carriers. This Arab village was reached via
the Luama, which, of hitherto unknown course, was found by Stanley to
be an affluent of the Lualaba. At Nyangwe Stanley felt that his
accomplished journey of over eight hundred miles from the east coast
promised well for his coming voyage to a known point on the other coast,
nine hundred miles due west. He made an agreement with an Arab,
Tippu-Tib, trader in human flesh or ivory as chance offered, to escort
the expedition about six hundred miles west through the unknown regions.
The country proved to be primeval forest, almost trackless, its tropical
undergrowth a veritable jungle of thorns and vines. Game was scanty and
other food equally so. Finally, progress was so slow and the path so
devious that Stanley, yielding to his appeals, discharged Tippu-Tib and
decided to descend the river by canoes and his frame boat. He embarked
at Vinya Njara, with one hundred and fifty in his party, on December 28,
1876, intrusting himself with sublime audacity to a river flowing no one
knew whither, save it was away from civilization, and with the knowledge
that the country they were entering was peopled by tribes entirely
hostile and intractable, as the slave-traders said. Day after day they
drifted steadily to the north. Was it or was it not the Nile of
Livingstone's prediction? Then day by day the course trended to the
east. Yes, it could only be the Nile. After two hundred and forty miles
the trend was to the northwest, whither, week after week, for about
three hundred miles it kept its puzzling flow toward a point of the
compass where it could join no river known to man. It had, too, assumed
proportions and volume truly Amazonic, filled with islands and swollen
from one to seven miles in width. All efforts to gain a knowledge of its
final course were then fruitless, for the few barbarous natives they
could win to speech answered in uncouth jargon, scarcely intelligible to
the interpreters: "It is the river--the river!" The terrors of the
silent stream in its majestic solitude were almost preferable to the
presence of populous villages, which here and there lined its banks, for
the inhabitants, ferociously hostile for the greater part, refused trade
and boldly assaulted them. Skilful canoemen and good archers, the
savages slaughtered unwary stragglers, harassed the rear and attacked
the front, while their horrible threats that the bodies of the slain
should serve as food at their cannibalistic repasts instilled terror in
the minds of many of Stanley's followers. Skirmishes were frequent, and
now and then a severe fight which taxed Stanley's forces to the utmost.
Again the river had here and there series of cataracts which caused no
end of trouble, delay, and danger to the party, nine men being drowned
in one day.
Fortunately the river had turned to the south, and then to southwest,
where, after another thousand miles, it flowed through a narrow gorge,
one hundred and fifty miles from the sea, so that no doubt longer
obtained as to it being the Congo. The terrible falls near the gorge
entailed enormous labor to pass them, and barely failed of destroying
the party. In all twenty-eight cataracts were passed, and finally the
river became so precipitous, the falls so high, that they had to abandon
their boats and march overland to Boma, an English trading-post, five
days' journey distant. Fatigue, famine, and exposure further enfeebled
them and now made daily inroads among the ranks of those who had so far
survived, and the entire party would have perished on the very threshold
of civilization and plenty had not Stanley's messengers, sent on with
urgent appeals, obtained help at Boma, where the expeditionary force
arrived August 12, 1877. They had made a river journey of seven thousand
miles, proved the Congo to be second only to the Nile, and crossed
Africa.
When Stanley, in 1877, intrusting his life and fortunes to a mighty and
unknown stream, voyaged toward the very heart of the Dark Continent,
even his wildest dreams could not have foreshadowed results equal to the
reality of a near future. His voyage in its potentiality was second only
to that of Columbus, as the outcome of the succeeding five years plainly
indicates. All Europe, alive to the commercial importance of the Congo
Basin, hastened to reach its borders or encroach on its limits by means
of enlarged dependent colonies; commerce and religion, hand in hand,
traversed its rivers by steam and lined its banks with beneficent
settlements, while the merciless Arab devastated its villages and
dragged its decimated natives into slavery. Then came a political
wonder--the peaceful creation of a vast tropical empire more than a
million square miles in area, the Congo Free State, erected and admitted
into the community of nations by act of an international conference, in
which participated fourteen European powers and the United States, our
own country being fittingly the first to officially acknowledge the
existence of the new state its adventurous citizen had given to the
world.
[Illustration: Emin Pasha.]
The voyage through the Dark Continent was obviously potent of future
results, and Gambetta, in 1878, clearly forecast the effects of
Stanley's journey. The great French statesman said: "Not only have you
opened up a new continent to our view, but you have given influence to
scientific and philanthropic enterprises which will have its effect on
the progress of the world. What you have done has interested
governments--proverbially so difficult to move--and the impulse you have
imparted, I am convinced, will go on year after year."
Slowly recovering from the effects of famine and fatigue incident to
this arduous journey, Stanley returned to Europe in January, 1878, and
was met, as he stepped out of the express train at Marseilles, by two
commissioners of King Leopold of Belgium, who informed him that his
Majesty contemplated a new enterprise in Africa and desired his
assistance. While heartily indorsing the proposed work of Leopold his
physical condition was such that active co-operation was impossible, and
he was even unable to visit his Majesty. Five months later, with
physical energies renewed, after a visit to Leopold, Stanley eventually
agreed to the proposition which contemplated the establishment of a
grand commercial enterprise for controlling the trade of the valley of
the Congo. It involved the erection of commercial and military stations
along the overland route and the establishment of steam communication
wherever available. In short, a colony of Europeans was to be founded in
the Congo Basin, whose great fertility, healthy climate, and enormous
population seemed to especially favor the development of African
civilization. The action of Leopold evidently grew out of Stanley's
declarations that "the question of this mighty waterway (the Congo) will
become a political one in time," and his conviction that any power
possessing the Congo would absorb the whole enormous trade behind, as
this river was and must continue to be, the grand commercial highway of
West and Central Africa.
Stanley accepted the mission, visited Zanzibar, where he enlisted
sixty-eight Zanzibari, mostly his old soldiers, and by sea reached
Banana Point, on the west coast, August 14, 1879. Two years previous he
had reached this place after descending the newly discovered Congo; now
he was re-entering its fertile basin in order to establish civilized
settlements, with the intention of subduing Central Africa by peaceful
ways and to remould it into harmony with modern ideas, so that justice
and order should ever obtain, violence and the slave trade forever
cease.
[Illustration: Finding Nelson in Distress at Starvation Camp.]
He returned to Europe in 1882, his success far exceeding the
expectations of the committee. In this time, with the aid of sixty-eight
Zanzibari and a few Europeans, he had constructed three
trading-stations, launched a steamer on the Upper Congo, established
steam communication between Leopoldville and Stanley Pool, and also
constructed wagon-roads between Vivi and Isangila, Manyanga and Stanley
Pool. He pointed out to the committee the imperative necessity of a
railroad between the Lower and Upper Congo in order to preserve
uninterrupted communication, which scheme was approved by the committee
provided Stanley would take charge of the work. Although his health was
impaired, he agreed to return to the Congo and complete the
establishment of stations as far as Stanley Falls, which he duly
accomplished, not leaving Africa until there were five promising
trading-posts--Vivi, Leopoldville, Kinshassa (Stanley Pool), Equator,
and Stanley Falls, the last about two thousand miles inland from the
west coast.
On Stanley's return to Europe the question of organizing the basin of
the Congo into an independent state was agitated. As a result fourteen
of the European powers and the United States united in a conference at
Berlin and formally agreed, on February 26, 1885, that the entire Congo
Basin should be erected into a nation to be known as the Congo Free
State. Thus less than eight years after Stanley's famous journey he
beheld the country that his genius had rescued from oblivious darkness
erected into a new state and admitted into the community of nations.
The last journey of Stanley into Africa was for the rescue of the
Egyptian governor of Equatoria, Edward Schnitzer, a German by birth,
better known as Emin Pasha. On the death of General Gordon, by whom he
was appointed governor, Emin had been left to his fate at Wadelai by the
Egyptian authorities, from which point he wrote on December 31, 1885,
saying that for nineteen months he had been forgotten and abandoned. On
July 6, 1886, he wrote beseeching help. In this contingency the sum of
£21,500 was raised--£10,000 from the Egyptian Government, the rest
subscribed in England--for the expenses of a relief party, and all eyes
turned to Stanley as the natural leader. He was engaged in a very
profitable lecturing tour in the United States when the expedition was
finally decided on. Three days after the receipt of a cablegram that his
plans were accepted, Stanley sailed for Africa _via_ England, using such
despatch that he had his expedition of 680 men, 61 being Soudanese
soldiers, ready to leave Zanzibar on February 25, 1887.
Stanley decided to make the journey by vessel around the Cape of Good
Hope to the Congo, by which river he expected to get within 200 miles of
Lake Albert. The co-operation of the infamous Arab trader, Tippu Tib,
the most powerful trader in Africa, was obtained by making him governor
of Stanley Falls, in the Congo Free State.
Following the Congo to the Aruwimi, Stanley turned up that stream and
camped at Yambuya, about sixty miles above the mouth and over one
thousand three hundred miles from the sea. To this point he had lost 57
men, and now divided his forces as follows: Advance guard, under
himself, 389; Yambuya garrison, 129, under Major Barttelot; other
supporting guards in rear, 131; original force, 706.