Chapter XV: Through the Dark Continent (2)

We pressed on along the river to the Arab colony of Mwana-Mamba, the chief of which was Tippu-Tib, a rich Arab, who possessed hundreds of armed slaves. He had given considerable assistance to Cameron. A heavy fee, I thought, would bribe him to escort me some distance, until the seductions of Nyangwe would be left far behind.

‘I suppose, Tippu-Tib, you would have no objections to help me, for a good sum?’

‘I don’t know about that,’ he said, with a smile; ‘I have not many men with me now. Many are at Imbarri, others are trading in Manyuema.’

‘How many men have you?’

‘Perhaps three hundred,--say two hundred and fifty.’

‘They are enough.’

‘Yes, added to your people, but not enough to return alone after you would leave me, through such a country as lies beyond Nyangwe.’

‘But, my friend, think how it would be with me, with half a continent before me.’

‘Ah, well, if you white people are fools enough to throw away your lives, that is no reason why Arabs should! We travel little by little, to get ivory and slaves, and are years about it. It is now nine years since I left Zanzibar.’

After a while, he called a man named Abed, son of Friday, who had penetrated further than any man, westward and northward.

‘Speak, Abed; tell us what you know of this river.’

‘Yes, I know all about the river. Praise be to God!’

‘In which direction does it flow, my friend?’

‘It flows north.’

‘And then?’

‘It flows north.’

‘And then?’

‘Still north. I tell you, sir, it flows north, and north, and north, and there is no end to it. I think it reaches the Salt Sea; at least, my friends say that it must.’

‘Well, point out in which direction this Salt Sea is.’

‘God only knows.’

‘What kind of a country is it to the north, along the river?’

‘Monstrous bad! There are fearfully large boa-constrictors, in the forest of Uregga, suspended by their tails, waiting to gobble up travellers and stray animals. The ants in that forest are not to be despised. You cannot travel without being covered by them, and they sting like wasps. There are leopards in countless numbers. Every native wears a leopard-skin cap. Gorillas haunt the woods in legions, and woe befall the man or woman they meet; they run and fasten their fangs in the hands, and bite off the fingers one by one, and spit them out one after another. The people are man-eaters. It is nothing but constant fighting. A party of three hundred guns started for Uregga; only sixty returned. If we go by river, there are falls after falls. Ah, sir, the country is bad, and we have given up trying to trade in that direction.’

But, despite the terrible news of Abed, the son of Friday, Tippu-Tib was not averse to earning a decent fee. Pending his definite acceptance of a proffered sum of a thousand pounds, I consulted my remaining companion, Frank Pocock.

While my little ebon page Mabruki poured out the evening’s coffee, I described the difficulty we were in. I said, ‘These Arabs have told such frightful tales about the lands north of here, that unless Tippu-Tib accepts my offer, the expedition will be broken up, for our men are demoralized through fear of cannibals and pythons, leopards and gorillas, and all sorts of horrible things. Canoes we cannot get; both Livingstone and Cameron failed. Now, what do you say, Frank, shall we go south to Lake Lincoln, Lake Kamalondo, Lake Bemba, and down to the Zambezi?’

‘Ah, that’s a fine trip, sir.’

‘Or shall we explore north-east of here until we strike the Muta Nzige, then strike across to Uganda, and back to Zanzibar?’

‘Ah, that would be a fine job, sir, if we could do it.’

‘Or shall we follow this great river, which for all these thousands of years has been flowing northward through hundreds, possibly thousands of miles, of which no one has ever heard a word? Fancy, by and by, after building or buying canoes, floating down the river, day by day, to the Nile, or to some vast lake in the far north, or to the Congo and the Atlantic Ocean! Think of steamers from the mouth of the Congo to Lake Bemba!’

‘I say, sir, let us toss up, best two out of three to decide it!’

‘Toss away, Frank; here is a rupee. Heads for the north and the Lualaba; tails for the south and Katanga.’

Frank, with beaming face, tossed the coin high up. It showed tails!

He tossed again, and tails won six times running! But despite the omen of the coin, and the long and short straws, I resolved to cling to the north and to the Lualaba.

Frank replied, ‘Sir, have no fear of me! I shall stand by you. The last words of my dear old father were, “Stick by your master,” and there is my hand, sir; you shall never have cause to doubt me.’ And poor Frank kept his word like a true man.

Tippu-Tib eventually agreed, and signed a contract, and I gave him a promissory note for one thousand pounds.

On the 5th of November, 1876, a force of about seven hundred people, consisting of Tippu-Tib’s slaves and my expedition, departed from the town of Nyangwe and entered the dismal forest-land north. A straight line from this point to the Atlantic Ocean would measure one thousand and seventy miles; another to the Indian Ocean would measure only nine hundred and twenty miles; we had not reached the centre of the continent by seventy-five miles.

Outside the woods blazed a blinding sunshine; underneath that immense and everlasting roof-foliage were a solemn twilight and the humid warmth of a Turkish bath. The trees shed continual showers of tropic dew. Down the boles and branches, massive creepers and slender vegetable cords, the warm moisture trickled and fell in great globes. The wet earth exhaled the moisture back in vapour, which, touching the cold, damp foliage overhung high above our heads, became distilled into showers. As we struggled on through the mud, the perspiration exuded from every pore. Our clothes were soon wet and heavy, with sweat and the fine vapoury rain. Every few minutes we crossed ditches filled with water, overhung by depths of leafage. Our usual orderly line was therefore soon broken; the column was miles in length. Every man required room to sprawl, and crawl, and scramble as he best could, and every fibre and muscle was required for that purpose.

Sometimes prostrate forest-giants barred the road with a mountain of twigs and branches. The pioneers had to carve a passage through for the caravan and the boat sections. If I was so fortunate as to gain the summit of a hill, I inhaled long draughts of the pure air, and looked out over a sea of foliage stretching to all points of the compass. I had certainly seen forests before, but all others, compared to this, were mere faggots. It appalled the stoutest heart; it disgusted me with its slush and reek, its gloom and monotony.

For ten days we endured it; then the Arabs declared they could go no further. As they were obstinate in this determination, I had recourse to another arrangement. I promised them five hundred pounds if they would escort us twenty marches only. It was accepted. I proposed to strike for the river. On our way to it, we came to a village, whose sole street was adorned with one hundred and eighty-six skulls, laid in two parallel lines. The natives declared them to be the skulls of gorillas, but Professor Huxley, to whom I showed specimens, pronounced them to be human.

Seventeen days from Nyangwe, we saw again the great river. Remembering the toil of the forest-march, and viewing the stately breadth and calm flow of the mighty stream, I here resolved to launch my boat for the last time.

While we screwed the sections together, a small canoe, with two Bagenya fishermen, appeared in front of our camp by the river.

‘Brothers!’ we hailed them, ‘we wish to cross the river. Bring your canoes and ferry us across. We will pay you well with cowries and bright beads.’

‘Who are you?’

‘We are from Nyangwe.’

‘Ah! you are Wasambye!’

‘No, we have a white man as chief.’

‘If he fills my canoe with shells, I will go and tell my people you wish to go over.’

‘We will give you ten shells for the passage of every man.’

‘We want a thousand for each man.’

‘That is too much; come, we will give you twenty shells for every man.’

‘Not for ten thousand, my brother. We do not want you to cross the river. Go back, Wasambye; you are bad. Wasambye are bad, bad, bad!’

They departed, singing the wildest, weirdest note I ever heard. I subsequently discovered it to be a kind of savage-telegraphy, which I came to dread, as it always preceded trouble.

About noon, the boat was launched for her final work. When we rowed across the river, the mere sight of her long oars, striking the water with uniform movement, alarmed the unsophisticated aborigines. They yielded at last, and the double caravan was transported to the left bank. We passed our first night in the Wenya land in quietness; but, in the morning, the natives had disappeared. Placing thirty-six of the people in the boat, we floated down the river with the current, close to the left bank, along which the land-party marched. But the river bore us down much faster than the land-party was able to proceed. The two divisions lost touch of one another for three days.

Nothing could be more pacific than the solitary boat gliding down on the face of the stream, without a movement of oar or paddle; but its appearance, nevertheless, was hailed by the weird war-cries of the Wenya. The villages below heard the notes, shivered with terror, and echoed the warning cry ‘to beware of strangers afloat.’

We came to the confluence of the Ruiki with the Lualaba. I formed a camp at the point to await our friends. I rowed up the Ruiki to search for them. Returning two hours later, I found the camp was being attacked by hosts of savages.

On the third day the land-column appeared, weary, haggard, sick, and low-spirited. Nevertheless, nothing was to be gained by a halt. We were in search of friendly savages, if such could be found, where we might rest. But, as day after day passed on, we found the natives increasing rather than abating in wild rancour, and unreasonable hate of strangers. At every curve and bend they ‘telephoned’ along the river the warning signals; the forests on either bank flung hither and thither the strange echoes; their huge wooden drums sounded the muster for fierce resistance; reed arrows, tipped with poison, were shot at us from the jungle as we glided by. To add to our distress, the small-pox attacked the caravan, and old and young victims of the pest were flung daily into the river. What a terrible land! Both banks, shrouded in tall, primeval forests, were filled with invisible, savage enemies; out of every bush glared eyes flaming with hate; in the stream lurked the crocodiles to feed upon the unfortunates; the air seemed impregnated with the seeds of death!

On the 18th of December, our miseries culminated in a grand effort of the savages to annihilate us. The cannibals had manned the topmost branches of the trees above the village of Vinya Njara; they lay like pards crouching amidst the garden-plants, or coiled like pythons in clumps of sugar-cane. Maddened by wounds, we became deadly in our aim; the rifle seldom failed. But, while we skirmished in the woods, the opposite bank of the river belched flotillas, which recalled us to the front, and the river-bank. For three days, with scarcely any rest, the desperate fighting lasted. Finally, Tippu-Tib appeared. His men cleared the woods; and by night I led a party across the river, and captured thirty-six canoes belonging to those who had annoyed us on the right bank. Then peace was made. I purchased twenty-three canoes, and surrendered the others.

Beyond Vinya Njara, the Arabs would not proceed, and I did not need them. We were far enough from Nyangwe. Its seductive life could no longer tempt my people. Accordingly, we prepared to part.

I embarked my followers in the canoes and boat. Tippu-Tib ranged his people along the bank. His Wanyamuezi chanted the mournful farewell. We surrendered ourselves to the strong flood, which bore us along to whatever Fate reserved in store for us.

Dense woods covered both banks and islands. Though populous settlements met our eyes frequently, our intercourse with the aborigines was of a fitfully fierce character. With an audacity sprung from ignorance, and cannibal greed, they attacked us with ever fresh relays. A few weak villages allowed our flotilla to glide by unmolested, but the majority despatched their bravest warriors, who assailed us with blind fury. Important tributaries, such as the Uruidi, the Loweva, the Leopold, and the Lufu, opened wide gaps in the dark banks, and lazy creeks oozed from amid low flats and swamps.

Armies of parrots screamed overhead as they flew across the river; aquatic birds whirred by us to less disturbed districts; legions of monkeys sported in the branchy depths; howling baboons alarmed the solitudes; crocodiles haunted the sandy points and islets; herds of hippopotami grunted thunderously at our approach; elephants bathed their sides by the margin of the river; there was unceasing vibration from millions of insects throughout the livelong day. The sky was an azure dome, out of which the sun shone large and warm; the river was calm, and broad, and brown. While we floated past the wilderness, we were cheered by its calm and restful aspect, but the haunts of the wild men became positively hateful.

Such were my experiences until I arrived at what is now known as the Stanley Falls. The savages gathered about us on the river, and lined the shore to witness the catastrophe, but I faced the left bank, drove the natives away, and landed. For twenty-two days I toiled to get past the seven cataracts--my left flank attacked by the ruthless and untiring natives, my right protected by the boiling and raging flood. On the 28th of January, my boats were safe below the Falls.

I was just twenty miles north of the Equator. Since I first sighted the mysterious Lualaba, I had only made about sixty miles of westing in a journey of nearly four hundred miles. Therefore its course had been mainly northward and Nileward, almost parallel with the trend of the Tanganyika.

I myself was still in doubt as to what river-system it belonged to. But below the Falls, the Lualaba, nearly a mile wide, curved northwest. ‘Ha! it is the Niger, or the Congo,’ I said. I had not much time to speculate, however. Every hour was replete with incidents. The varied animal life on the shores, the effervescing face of the turbid flood, the subtle rising and sinking of the greedy crocodile, the rampant plunge and trumpet snort of the hippos, the unearthly, flesh-curdling cry of the relentless cannibal--had it not been for these, which gave tone to our life, there was every disposition to brood, and dream, and glide on insensibly to eternal forgetfulness. Looked I ahead, I viewed the stern river streaming away--far away into a tremulous, vaporous ocean. If you followed that broad band of living waters, quick and alert as the senses might be at first, you soon became conscious that you were subsiding into drowsiness as the eyes rested on the trembling vapours exhaled by river and forest, which covered the distance as with silver gauze; then the unknown lands loomed up in the imagination, with most fantastic features, the fancy roamed through pleasing medleys,--

‘And balmy dreams calmed all our pains,
And softly hushed our woes.’

But see! we have arrived at the confluence of the Lualaba with a river which rivals it in breadth. Down the latter, a frantic host of feathered warriors urge a fleet of monstrous canoes. They lift their voices in a vengeful chorus, the dense forest repeats it, until it flies pealing from bank to bank. The war-horns are blown with deafening blasts, the great drums boom out a sound which fills our ears and deafens our sense of hearing. For a moment, we are aghast at the terrific view! The instinct of most of our party is to fly. Fly from that infuriate rush! Impossible! The rifles of our boat are directed against the fugitives. They are bidden to return, to form a line, to drop anchor. The shields which have been our booty from many a fight are lifted to bulwark the non-combatants, the women and the children; and every rifleman takes aim, waiting for the word. It is ‘neck or nothing’! I have no time to pray, or take sentimental looks around, or to breathe a savage farewell to the savage world!

There are fifty-four canoes. The foremost is a Leviathan among native craft. It has eighty paddlers, standing in two rows, with spears poised for stabbing, their paddles knobbed with ivory, and the blades carved. There are eight steersmen at the stern, a group of prime young warriors at the bow, capering gleefully, with shield and spear; every arm is ringed with broad ivory bracelets, their heads gay with parrot-feathers.

The Leviathan bears down on us with racing speed, its consorts on either flank spurting up the water into foam, and shooting up jets with their sharp prows; a thrilling chant from two thousand throats rises louder and louder on our hearing.

Presently, the poised spears are launched, and a second later my rifles respond with a ripping, crackling explosion, and the dark bodies of the canoes and paddlers rush past us. For a short time, the savages are paralyzed; but they soon recover. They find there is death in those flaming tubes in the hands of the strangers, and, with possibly greater energy than they advanced, they retreat, the pursued becoming the pursuers in hot chase.

My blood is up. It is a murderous world, and I have begun to hate the filthy, vulturous shoals who inhabit it. I pursue them up-stream, up to their villages; I skirmish in their streets, drive them pell-mell into the woods beyond, and level their ivory temples; with frantic haste I fire the huts, and end the scene by towing the canoes into mid-stream and setting them adrift!

Now, suspecting everything with the semblance of man, like hard-pressed stags, wearied with fighting, our nerves had become unstrung. We were still only in the middle of the continent, and yet we were being weeded out of existence, day by day, by twos and threes. The hour of utter exhaustion was near, when we should lie down like lambs, and offer our throats to the cannibal butchers.

But relief and rest were near. The last great affluent had expanded the breadth of the Lualaba to four miles. A series of islands were formed in mid-river, lengthy and narrow, lapping one another; and between each series there were broad channels. I sheered off the mainland, entered these channels, and was shut out from view.

‘Allah,’ as I cried out to my despairing people, ‘has provided these liquid solitudes for us. Bismillah, men, and forward.’

But, every two or three days, the channels, flowing diagonally, floated us in view of the wild men of the mainland. With drumming and horn-blowing, these ruthless people came on, ignoring the fact that their intended victims might hold their lives dear, might fight strenuously for their existence. The silly charms and absurd fetishes inspired the credulous natives with a belief in their invulnerability. They advanced with a bearing which, by implication, I understood to mean, ‘It is useless to struggle, you know. You cannot evade the fate in store for you! Ha, ha; meat, meat, we shall have meat to-day!’ and they dashed forward with the blind fury of crocodiles in sight of their prey, and the ferocious valour of savages who believe themselves invincible.

What then? Why, I answered them with the energy of despair, and tore through them with blazing rifles, leaving them wondering and lamenting.

I sought the mid-channel again, and wandered on with the current, flanked by untenanted islets, which were buried in tropical shade by clustered palms and the vivid leafage of paradise. Ostracised by savage humanity, the wilds embraced us, and gave us peace and rest. In the voiceless depths of the watery wilderness we encountered neither treachery nor guile. Therefore we clung to them as long as we could, and floated down, down, hundreds of miles.

The river curved westward, then south-westward. Ah, straight for the mouth of the Congo! It widened daily; the channels became numerous. Sometimes in crossing from one to another there was an open view of water from side to side. It might have been a sea for all we knew, excepting that there was a current, and the islands glided by us.

After forty days, I saw hills; the river contracted, gathered its channels one by one, until at last we floated down a united and powerful river, banked by mountains. Four days later we emerged out of this on a circular expanse. The white cliffs of Albion were duplicated by white sand-cliffs on our right, at the entrance, capped by grassy downs. Cheered at the sight, Frank Pocock cried out, ‘Why, here are the cliffs of Dover, and this singular expanse we shall call Stanley Pool!’

The stretch of uninterrupted navigation I had just descended measured one thousand and seventy statute miles. At the lower end of Stanley Pool, the river contracted again, and presently launched itself down a terraced steep, in a series of furious rapids.

Resolved to cling to the river, we dragged our canoes by land past the rapids, lowered them again into the river, paddled down a few miles with great rock-precipices on either hand. We encountered another rapid, and again we drew our canoes overland. It grew to be a protracted and fatal task. At Kalulu Falls six of my men were drowned. Accidents occurred almost every day. Casualties became frequent. Twice myself and crew were precipitated down the rapids. Frank Pocock, unwarned by the almost every-day calamity, insisted that his crew should shoot the Massassa Falls. The whirlpool below sucked all down to the soundless depths, out of which Frank and two young Zanzibaris never emerged alive.

But still resolute to persevere, I continued the desperate task, and toiled on and on, now in danger of cataracts, then besieged by famine, until, on the 31st of July, I arrived at a point on the Lower Congo, last seen by Captain Tuckey, an English Naval officer, in 1816. I knew then, beyond dispute of the most captious critic, that the Lualaba, whose mystery had wooed Livingstone to his death, was no other than the ‘lucid, long-winding Zaire,’ as sung by Camoens, or the mighty Congo.

Now, farewell, brave boat! seven thousand miles, up and down broad Africa, thou hast accompanied me! For over five thousand miles thou hast been my home! Now lift her up tenderly, boys, so tenderly, and let her rest!

Wayworn and feeble, we began our overland march, through a miserable country inhabited by a sordid people. They would not sell me food, unless for gin, they said. Gin! and from me! ‘Why, men, two and a half years ago I left the Indian Sea, and can I have gin? Give us food that we may live, or beware of hungry men!’ They gave us refuse of their huts, some pea-nuts, and stunted bananas. We tottered on our way to the Atlantic, a scattered column of long and lean bodies, dysentery, ulcers, and scurvy, fast absorbing the remnant of life left by famine.

I despatched couriers ahead. Two days from Boma, they returned with abundance. We revived, and, staggering, arrived at Boma on the 9th of August, 1877, and an international gathering of European merchants met me, and, smiling a warm welcome, told me kindly that I ‘had done right well.’

Three days later, I gazed upon the Atlantic Ocean, and I saw the puissant river flowing into the bosom of that boundless, endless sea. But, grateful as I felt to Him who had enabled me to pierce the Dark Continent from east to west, my heart was charged with grief, and my eyes with tears, at the thought of the many comrades and friends I had lost.

The unparalleled fidelity of my people to me demanded that I should return them to their homes. Accordingly, I accompanied them round the Cape of Good Hope to Zanzibar, where, in good time, we arrived, to the great joy of their friends and relatives, when father embraced son, and brother brother, and mothers their daughters, and kinsmen hailed as heroes the men who had crossed the continent.

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Only the inevitable limitations of space prevent a citation from the fuller account of this expedition in Stanley’s book, ‘Through the Dark Continent,’ of some passages illustrating the loyal and tender relations between him and his black followers. Nothing in the story exceeds in human interest the final scene, his conveying of his surviving force, from the mouth of the Congo, around the Cape, to their homes in Zanzibar, so removing their depression arising from the fear that, having found again his own people, he may leave them; their gladness at the re-assurance he gives; the arrival at

Zanzibar, after three weeks’ voyage; the astonishment and delight of the reunion with relatives and friends; the sorrowful parting with their master. When he went on board the steamer to sail for Europe, a deputation of the best followed him on board, to offer their help in reaching his home, if he needed it, and to declare that they would start for no new adventure on the continent until they heard that he had safely reached his own land.

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The second pay-day was devoted to hearing the claims for wages due to the faithful dead. Poor, faithful souls! With an ardour and a fidelity unexpected, and an immeasurable confidence, they had followed me to the very death! True, negro nature had often asserted itself; but it was, after all, but human nature. They had never boasted that they were heroes, but they exhibited truly heroic stuff while coping with the varied terrors of the hitherto untrodden, and apparently endless, wilds of broad Africa.

They were sweet and sad moments, those of parting. What a long, long and true friendship was here sundered! Through what strange vicissitudes of life had they not followed me! What wild and varied scenes had we not seen together! What a noble fidelity these untutored souls had exhibited! The chiefs were those who had followed me to Ujiji in 1871: they had been witnesses of the joy of Livingstone at the sight of me; they were the men to whom I entrusted the safe-guard of Livingstone on his last and fatal journey; who had mourned by his corpse at Muilla, and borne the illustrious dead to the Indian Ocean.

In a flood of sudden recollection, all the stormy period, here ended, rushed in upon my mind; the whole panorama of danger and tempest through which these gallant fellows had so staunchly stood by me--these gallant fellows now parting from me! Rapidly, as in some apocalyptic trance, every vision, every scene of strife with Man and Nature, through which these poor men and women had borne me company, and solaced me by the simple sympathy of common suffering, came hurrying across my memory; for each face before me was associated with some adventure, or some peril; reminded me of some triumph, or of some loss.

What a wild, weird retrospect it was, that mind’s flash over the troubled past! So like a troublous dream!

And for years and years to come, in many homes in Zanzibar, there will be told the great story of our journey, and the actors in it will be heroes among their kith and kin. For me, too, they are heroes, these poor ignorant children of Africa; for, from the first deadly struggle in savage Ituru, to the last struggling rush into Embomma, they had rallied to my voice like veterans; and in the hour of need they had never failed me. And thus, aided by their willing hands and by their loyal hearts, the expedition had been successful, and the three great problems of the Dark Continent’s geography had been fairly solved. LAUS DEO.

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