Chapter VII: General Provisions (13)

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.

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.’

“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.”

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.