natives, was the remarkable prevalence of cannibalism in the Congo
basin. In all his wanderings, Livingstone met only one cannibal
tribe,--the Manyema living between Tanganyika and the Upper Congo; but
though they are not found near the sources of the river, nor near its
mouth, they occupy about one-half of the Congo basin. They are regarded
with fear and abhorrence by all tribes not addicted to the practice.
They number several millions. Instead of being the most debased of
human creatures, many of them, in physical strength and courage, in
their iron work, carving, weaving, and other arts, are among the most
advanced of African tribes. The larger part of the natives in the
service of the Congo Free State are from the cannibal tribes. The laws
now impose severe penalties for acts of cannibalism, and the evil is
decreasing as the influence of the state is extended over wider areas. A
few isolated tribes along the Gulf of Guinea are also cannibals.
There is no doubt that the helpful influences of the Caucasian in every
part of Africa so far outweigh his harmful influences that the latter
are but a drop in the bucket in comparison. It is most unfortunate that
a certain admixture of blundering, severity, brutality, and wickedness
seems inseparable from the development of all the newer parts of the
world. The demoralizing drink traffic, the scandalous injustice and
cruelty of some of the agents of civilized governments, are not to be
belittled or condoned. But there is also a very bright side to the story
of the white occupancy of Africa.
The family of a deceased chief in Central Africa recently preserved his
body unburied for fourteen months, in the hope that they might prevail
upon the British Government to permit the sacrifice of women and slaves
on his grave, that he might have companions of his own household in the
other world. He was buried at last, without shedding a drop of blood.
Human sacrifices are now punishable with death throughout a large part
of barbarous Africa, and the terrible evil is being abated as fast as
the influence of the European governments is extended over new regions.
The practice of the arts of fetichism, a kind of chicanery, most
injurious in its effects upon the superstitious natives, is now
punishable throughout the Congo Free State and British Rhodesia. Arab
slave-dealers no longer raid the Congo plains and forests for slaves,
killing seven persons for every one they lead into captivity.
Slave-raiding has been utterly wiped out in all parts of Africa, except
in portions of the Sudan and other districts over which white rule has
not yet been asserted. The Arabs of the Congo, who went there from East
Africa solely that they might grow rich in the slave trade, are now
settled quietly on their rice and banana plantations. The sale of strong
drink has been restricted by international agreement to the coast
regions, where the traffic has long existed, and its evils are somewhat
mitigated there by the regulations now enforced. Fifty thousand Congo
natives who would not carry a pound of freight for Stanley in 1880, are
now in the service of the white enterprises, many of them working, not
for barter goods, but for coin. Many of the missionary fields are
thriving, and wonderful results have been achieved in some of them. In
Uganda, where Stanley in 1875 saw King Mtesa impaling his victims, there
are now ninety thousand natives professing Christianity, three hundred
and twenty churches, and many thousands of children in the schools.
Fifty thousand of the people can read. Between 1880 and 1882 Stanley
carried three little steamboats around 235 miles of rapids to the Upper
Congo. Eighty steamers are now afloat there, plying on nearly 8,000
miles of rivers, and connected with the sea by a railroad that has paid
dividends from the day it was opened. At the end of 1890 there were only
5,813 miles of railroad in Africa. About 15,000 miles are now in
operation, and the end of this decade is certain to see 25,000 miles of
railroads. Trains are running from Cairo to Khartum, the seat of the
Mahdist tyranny, in the centre of a vast region which, until recently,
had been closed for many years to all the world.
These wonderful results are the fruits of the partition of Africa among
the European states. With the exception of some waste regions in the
Libyan desert, which no one has claimed, Morocco, Abyssinia, and
Liberia, every square mile of African territory has been divided among
European powers, either as colonies or as spheres of influence. The
scramble of twenty years for African lands is at an end, there now being
no valuable areas that are not covered by the existing agreements. It
is no mere love of humanity that has impelled the European countries to
divide these regions among themselves. We can scarcely realize the
intensity of the struggle for existence in many of the overcrowded parts
of Europe. Their factories are enormously productive, but their people
will suffer for food unless they can export manufactures. The crying
need for new markets, for new sources of raw material, drove these
states into Africa. And we should be glad, for Africa's sake, that they
have gone there, even though the desire to make money is one of the most
powerful incentives.
It is under the protective aegis of these governments that explorers are
settling down in smaller areas to see what may be found between the
explored water-courses, to study the continent in detail, to give to our
knowledge of Africa the scientific quality now required. The greatest
geographical work there in recent years is the extension of a line of
stations across tropical Africa by Commander Lemaire, each position
astronomically fixed by the most careful methods, constituting a
base-line east and west through Africa to which the scientific mapping
of a very large area will be referred.
The day of the minuter study of the whole continent has now dawned, and
we are witnessing a most notable work. All the colonial powers, and the
Germans most conspicuously, are studying the economic questions relating
to their African possessions. The suitability of climates for
colonists, the essential rules of hygiene, the development of
agriculture, labor supplies, transportation and commercial facilities,
and many other problems are receiving the most careful attention.
Experiment stations are maintained in the colonies and colonial schools
at home, to fit young men for service in the field. The Germans have
already proved that cotton and tobacco are certain to become profitable
export crops.
The mine-owners of the Witwatersrand, on which Johannesburg stands, have
begun a movement which they hope will result in the immigration of
100,000 white laborers to the mining field. We may look for remarkable
development in South Africa, whose promise is larger than that of any
other part of the continent. Whatever may be said of some of the methods
by which the British have enlarged their empire, their rule has blessed
the barbarous peoples whose countries they have absorbed. The task of
improving the few millions of blacks in South Africa, and of developing
the large and in some respects wonderful resources of that region, will
be greatly assisted by the incoming of hundreds of thousands of
Europeans, bringing with them the arts and other blessings of
civilization. The future of none of the newer parts of the world is
brighter with the hope of great development than the region between the
Zambesi and the Cape of Good Hope.
In order to observe intelligently the progress of South Africa in
coming years, the limitations as well as the advantages of the country
must be kept in view. More than half of it, including the entire western
half, is deficient in rainfall and can never be the home of a dense
white population. Some mining will develop on those broad, dry plains
and sandy wastes; some agriculture where irrigation is possible; and
great wool-growing wherever thrive the nutritious grasses on which
13,000,000 sheep, scattered over the Karroo of Cape Colony, and
4,000,000 in the little Orange Free State, were grazing before the
recent war. Wool-growing will always be the greatest grazing industry,
though cattle and horses are raised in large numbers, and the fine, soft
hair of the Angora goat is second only to wool in export importance.
A narrow strip of fine farm lands across the south end of Africa,
another along the southern border of the former Boer republics, and a
large area among the highlands of Mashonaland, far towards the equator,
produce nearly all the crops of the temperate zones. It is not yet
certain, however, that South Africa will ever raise enough wheat for a
great white population. On the northern slopes of the hills, east and
northeast of Cape Town, are thousands of acres of grapes. Cape Colony is
becoming one of the important wine countries; and in February and March,
large quantities of grapes, peaches, nectarines, and plums are placed
in cool rooms on steamships and sent fresh to British markets almost
before English fruit trees are in bloom.
East of the grape region is an area peculiarly adapted for the
cultivation of tobacco; and east of the tobacco district, north of the
coastal belt of wheat in a region of sandy scrub, the bush country, are
the ostrich farms, in the hands mainly of men of considerable capital,
who supply nearly all the feathers derived from the domesticated
ostrich. The plumes are sometimes worth as much as $200 a pound, the
ordinary feathers bringing from $5 to $7 a pound. Natal is unique in two
of its agricultural industries, being the only colony that is producing
tea and important quantities of cane sugar.
But gold, widely scattered over the country on the interior plateau,
exceeds in value all the other exports together. The world never saw
such a development of gold mining in a small area as has occurred on the
Witwatersrand, where Johannesburg stands. The Witwatersrand (White River
Slope) is a slight elevation, the water parting between rivers, about
one and a half miles wide and 125 miles long. On twenty-five miles of
the rand, at and near Johannesburg, more gold was produced in the year
before the Boer war than was yielded by any other country in the world,
The other rich mining regions of the Transvaal and other parts of South
Africa have been completely dwarfed by the wonderful product of the
rand. The surveys in Matabeleland and Mashonaland show gold-bearing
areas 5,000 square miles in extent, which as yet have practically no
development. The mining companies on the rand and elsewhere are now
preparing for far larger operations than ever before.
The Kimberley diamond mines, turning out more than $20,000,000 worth of
rough stones a year, supply nearly all the diamonds of commerce. Two
other diamond centres in the Orange River Colony have scarcely been
touched, and diamonds are found on the Limpopo River and in other
regions where no mining has been undertaken. The minerals of South
Africa, including iron and coal, bid fair to be for many years the
largest sources of wealth; and in wool, hides, mohair, fresh fruits, and
some other products, South Africa may rival other parts of the world.
There are no good natural harbors except Delagoa Bay in Portuguese East
Africa, but by great expenditure the harbors of Cape Town, Port
Elizabeth, East London, and Durban have been adapted for great commerce.
Many persons mistakenly regard Cape Town as the chief commercial centre
of South Africa. It is so only in respect of the export of gold and
diamonds. As it is not centrally situated for business with the
interior, more of the things that South Africa sells to and buys from
the rest of the world, excepting gold and diamonds, pass through Port
Elizabeth than through any other port. Here is centred the largest
wholesale trade.
What South Africa needs is more railroads and more white labor.
Manufacturing industries on an important scale are yet to come, for as
yet the white population is too sparse to develop anything but the
natural products of the country.
The broad summing up of the future work in Africa is that the native
will be taught to help himself. The destiny of the continent depends
largely upon his development, for great parts of Africa may never be
adapted to become the home of many white men. The most powerful motives,
philanthropic and selfish, incite and will sustain the work of helping
these millions to rise to a higher plane of humanity. This work, now
well begun, is the great task which in the present century will call for
all the knowledge, patience, humanity, and justice that may be brought
to bear upon the problem of reclaiming Africa.
AUTHORITIES.
Livingstone's "Missionary Travels," "A Narrative of an Expedition to the
Zambesi," and "Last Journeys;" Blaikie's "Livingstone's Personal Life;"
Stanley's "How I found Livingstone."
Stanley's "Through the Dark Continent," "The Congo and the Founding of
its Free State," "In Darkest Africa;" Schweinfurth's "The Heart of
Africa;" Burton's "The Lake Regions of Central Africa;" Speke's "Journal
of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile;" Thomson's "To the Central
African Lakes and Back;" Barth's "Travels and Discoveries in Central
Africa;" Theal's "Compendium of South African History;" Greswell's
"Geography of Africa South of the Zambesi"; Noble's "The Redemption of
Africa" (A History of African Missions).
No comprehensive compendium of the history of African exploration has
yet been written. Our knowledge of the geography, peoples and resources
of Africa is treated with considerable detail in a number of works such
as Reclus's "Africa" (in "The Earth and Its Inhabitants") and Sievers's
"Afrika" (German). A very large part of the exploratory enterprises in
Africa have not been described in books, but only in the reports of the
explorers, printed with their original maps in the publications of many
geographical and missionary societies.
SIR AUSTEN HENRY LAYARD.
1817-1894.
MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY.
BY WILLIAM HAYES WARD, D.D., LL.D.
It was twenty-three long centuries ago that a Greek soldier of fortune,
who had the honor to be also a disciple of Socrates, was leading ten
thousand mercenaries back to their native land after their famous
failure to set the Younger Cyrus on the throne of Persia. Clearchus and
the other generals had been treacherously murdered. Dispirited, almost
hopeless, on their way to the longed-for Black Sea, in anticipation of
the perilous and tedious journey, past wild mountains and wilder Kurds,
they toiled up the valley of the Tigris River. Of one incident of their
journey their historian and leader makes no record. They reached the
spot where now stands the city of Mosul. On the bank of the river their
eyes fell on a bare and lofty hill. They did not know, they never
suspected,--Xenophon wrote no word of it,--that under that hill lay
buried the ruins of one of the mightiest conquering cities that had ever
ruled the world. From the palaces of that hill, Ninus and Semiramis and
Sardanapalus had led their conquering armies, all now covered
with silence.
Two centuries earlier, in 606 B.C., there had occurred one of the most
tremendous catastrophes recorded in all the grim annals of war. After a
thousand years of primacy in the East, but twenty years after the death
of Sardanapalus (the Greek name of Asshurbanapal), who had carried his
armies to Egypt and had made his capital the centre of the world's
culture and magnificence, as it was of its cruel and hated power,
Nineveh was captured, buried, and utterly desolated by a horde of savage
Scythians from the mountains of the north and east, such people as we
now call the Kurds. Its palaces had no lofty Greek columns to stand for
memorials, as at Palmyra or Persepolis; and when the outer casings of
brick and alabaster were cracked away, and the ashes of the upper
stories and the clay of the inner constructions, soaked by the rains,
covered the ruins of temple and palace, nothing was left to mark the
site but the grass-covered hill. No wonder that the learned scholar of
Socrates saw nothing, knew nothing of the city, most glorious and most
detested of all the cities of the earth. But in its day the overthrow of
Nineveh and the destruction of the Assyrian Empire had been the most
terrible event in the world's history. How the Hebrew prophets gloated
over it! "Where now is the den of the lions, and the feeding-place of
the young lions, where the lion and the lioness walked, the lion's
whelp, and none made them afraid? Wo to the bloody city; it is all full
of lies and rapine; the prey departeth not. The noise of the whip, and
the noise of the rattling of wheels, and prancing horses, and bounding
chariots, the horsemen mounting, and the flashing sword, and the
glittering spear, and a multitude of slain, and a great heap of corpses,
and there is no end of the bodies. There is no assuaging of the hurt;
thy wound is grievous; all that hear the report of thee clap their hands
over thee: for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually?"
And another prophet had uttered the curse: "The pelican and the
porcupine shall lodge in the capitals thereof; their voice shall sound
in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds; for he hath laid
bare the cedar-work. This is the joyous city that dwelt carelessly, that
said in her heart, 'I am, and there is none besides me!' How is she
become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! Every one that
passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand."
Thus fell Nineveh, amid the universal rejoicing of the nations, and
thus, seventy years later, fell Babylon also, which, in the short
interval, Nebuchadnezzar had made more magnificent than even Nineveh had
been, beautified for its capture by Cyrus. But before Babylon was the
capital of Chaldea, or Nineveh the capital of Assyria, the city of Calah
had been the seat of its kings, and a mighty mound--they call it Nimroud
now--"as high as St. Paul's steeple," old travellers loved to say--marks
the place on the east bank of the Tigris, twenty miles south of Nineveh;
and, before Calah, Assyria had an earlier capital forty miles still
nearer the Babylonian border, at Asshur, now Kalah-Shergat, on the west
of the Tigris; and each capital had its palaces and records, and all are
now equally buried in clay and utter oblivion. And before the Babylon of
Nebuchadnezzar, and long centuries before Nineveh or Calah or Asshur,
there had been mighty kingdoms in Babylonia, of which the world had
quite forgot the names, only vague rumors remaining in song or legend of
Nimrod and Chedorlaomer and Ur of the Chaldees,--only what was preserved
in the dimmest records of the Hebrew Scriptures. Empires were lost,
buried in chiliads of forgetfulness; would they ever be recovered?
And how much else was lost, what kingdoms, what empires buried before
Hebrew or Greek history began to take notice of the world outside and
put them in books, no one knew, no one knows even yet, although so much
has been found. The fame of Egypt was never quite forgotten, nor all its
history, for Egypt was the world's granary, and closely accessible to
the ships of Corinth and Rome; and Egypt never lost her civilization in
all her long succession of enslavement. But what memory had been kept of
the Ionia and Greece of the days before Homer? What of the early
civilization of Cyprus and Crete? Only the name of Minos, a judge in
Hell. What of Persia and Elam? Were they uninhabited before the times of
Xerxes and Cyrus? And who were these kings, Cyrus and Xerxes, whose
names burst upon us with dim light out of a black antiquity? Even they
were but shadows on a screen, just seen and disappearing. What kings and
kingdoms came before them and passed away? Has history no record? Not a
word. Only black vacuity has been left behind them. And there was that
other empire of the East, that of the Hittites, which we now know ruled
Asia Minor and Syria and contested the rule of the world with Assyria
and Egypt centuries before Agamemnon and Achilles, but so utterly buried
and forgotten that not a line of its history was left, not even enough
to let the sharpest scholar ask a question or suspect that it ever built
capitals and fought victories and produced a civilization the harvest of
which we still enjoy. Nothing was left of them but their names in a
Hebrew list of tribes,--"Amorites and Jebusites and Hivites and
Hittites."
Yet all these lost tribes, nay, lost nations, had left their records
behind them, only they were buried under ground and out of sight. What
a travesty it is on history and civilization, what an impeachment of the
glory of these later Christian centuries, that the lands which these old
empires crowded with a busy population should now be among the most
desolate and inaccessible on the face of the earth! There we see the
curse of the Moslem religion, and still more of the Turkish government.
Wherever the Turk has carried the sword and the Koran, there is blight
and death. Only as soldiers and scholars of Europe have forced their way
into these seats of ancient empires has it been possible to ask and
learn what is buried beneath their gray desolation.
The man who did more than any other to awaken the interest of the world
in the search for forgotten empires was Sir Henry Layard, the excavator
of Nineveh. But before his day another man had startled the world with
what we may call the discovery of Egypt. That man was Napoleon
Bonaparte, the man whose sword was a ploughshare turning up the fallow
fields of Europe, and sowing strange crops of tyranny and liberty, and
whose ambition it was to set up a new throne in the land of the Pharaohs
and Ptolemies. The mighty ruins of Karnak and the imperishable pyramids
filled him with amazement, and he set the scholars of France at work to
publish in massive folios the wonders of that most ancient land. Then
was found the Rosetta Stone, with its inscription in two
languages,--Greek, which any scholar could read, and the Egyptian
hieroglyphics, which no living man could read. But here was the key. The
words _Ptolemy_ and _Cleopatra_ were in the Greek text, and it was not
hard to find what were the combinations of characters that stood for
these words in the Egyptian. The letters _p, t_, and _l_ were in both
names. The hieroglyphic signs found in both names must be these three
letters. That beginning gave all the other signs in both words, and the
rest of the alphabet soon followed. Justly great is the fame of the
Frenchman Champollion, who has the honor of having first deciphered and
read this lost language, and opened to us the secret treasures of its
history and religion.
But with the exploration of Egypt the scholarship of the world was
satisfied for fifty years. No one seemed to think to ask what might be
hid under the soil of nearer Palestine and Syria and Asia Minor; much
less did they seek to uncover the buried capitals of Assyria and
Babylonia. Scholarship was devoted to books, to old manuscripts in
convent libraries, to recovering what the wise men of Greece and Rome
had written, and trying to wrest new facts out of their blundering old
compilations of ancient history. It did not occur to them that a hundred
kings and ten thousand merchants and priests might have left the stories
of their conquests or contracts or liturgies, unrotted in the wet soil,
imperishably preserved to be the record of commerce and empires as old
and as great as those of Egypt, but far deeper covered with oblivion.
But there they were, kept safe for twenty, thirty, fifty centuries,
until the man should come whose mission it was to find them.