Stanley in Africa

The next morning the king’s war drums suddenly sounded the breaking up of his immense encampment on the shore, and Stanley discovered it to be on fire in a hundred places. All had to flee for their lives, and he thinks hundreds must have perished in the confusion. The king denied that he was responsible for an order which resulted in such a horror, but Stanley thought he was guilty of a piece of unwarranted cruelty, which illy became his new profession of faith. From that time on, his views began to change. Ingenious, enterprising, intelligent he found them, above any other African tribe he had met with. Their scrupulous cleanliness, neatness, and modesty cover a multitude of faults; but for the rest, “they are crafty, fraudful, deceiving, lying, thievish knaves, taken as a whole, and seem to be born with an uncontrollable love of gaining wealth by robbery, violence and murder.” Notwithstanding first impressions to the contrary, they are more allied to the Choctaw than the Anglo-Saxon, and are simply clever savages, whom prosperity and a favorable climate have helped several stages on the long, toilsome road towards civilization. There is no call upon us after all to envy their luxurious lives of ease and plenty under the shade of their bowers of vine, fig, and plantain trees —

“For we hold the gray Barbarian lower than the Christian child.”

Nevertheless, Uganda, from its fertility and its situation at the outlet of the great fresh-water sea of the Nyanza, must be regarded as one of the most hopeful fields of future commercial enterprise, and its people as among the most promising subjects for missionary and philanthropic efforts in Central Africa.

As for the mighty Mtesa, little has been seen or heard of him since his friend “Stamlee” parted from him. Colonel Chaille Long, late of the Confederate Army, afterwards in the service of Egypt, who had seen him a few months before, did not think he would ever turn out to be a humane monarch. But that he has not lost his interest in his white friends and in the marvels of civilization was shown in the spring of 1880, when a deputation of four of his chiefs appeared in London on a tour of observation.

De Bellefonds, mentioned above as meeting Stanley at King Mtesa’s court, was murdered, with all his party, by the Unyoro, when on his way back to Gondokoro. Colonel Long went down the Victoria Nile from Lake Victoria Nyanza, and midway between the Victoria and Albert Nyanza discovered another great lake which he called Lake Ibrahim.

The last white visitors to the Nile reservoirs were an English party sent out to establish a Christian mission on Lake Victoria Nyanza. It consisted of Lieutenant Smith, and Messrs. Wilson and O’Neil. They took a small steamer along in sections from Zanzibar, and successfully floated the first steam craft on the bosom of the great lake. Wilson established himself at the court of King Mtesa. Smith and Wilson, while exploring the lake, were driven by a storm on the island of the Ukerewe, whose chief, Lukongeh, had been kind to Stanley. But no faith can be put in African princes. On December 7, 1877, Lukongeh attacked the missionary camp and massacred Smith and Wilson with all their black attendants. With this dismal incident the history of the exploration of Victoria Nyanza closes for the present, except as we shall have to follow Stanley after leaving the court of King Mtesa on his trip down the western shore of the lake. It must be remembered that he was twice to see the king, once on his tour of circumnavigation, and then after he had completed it.

After he rounded the northern end of the lake and was well on his way down its western shores, he met with the most perilous of his adventures. The voyagers were nearly out of provisions. They had passed days of weary toil under the blistering tropical sun, and dismal nights of hunger on shelterless, uninhabited islands, when the grassy slopes of Bumbireh hove in sight. Numerous villages were seen in the shelter of the forest, with herds of cattle, maize fields, and groves of fruit trees, and altogether the island seemed to offer a haven of rest and plenty to the weary mariners. There was no food left in the boat, and a landing had to be attempted at all risks. The look of the Bumbireh natives was not so prepossessing as that of their land. They rushed down from their villages, shouting war-songs and brandishing their clubs and spears. No sooner had the boat reached shallow water, than they seized upon her, and dragged her, crew and all, high up on the rocky beach. “The scene that ensued,” says the traveller, “baffles description. Pandemonium – all the devils armed – raged around us. A forest of spears was levelled; thirty or forty bows were drawn taut; as many barbed arrows seemed already on the wing; knotty clubs waved above our heads; two hundred screaming black demons jostled each other, and struggled for room to vent their fury, or for an opportunity to deliver one crushing blow or thrust at us.”

In point of fact, no thrust was delivered, and possibly none was intended; but the situation was certainly an unpleasant one. The troop of gesticulating, yelling savages increased every second; and the diabolical noise of a number of drums increased the hub-bub. The islanders began to jostle their guests, to pilfer, and at last they seized upon the oars. Stanley put his companions on their guard and fired his double-barreled elephant rifle into the crowd. Two men fell. He increased the panic among them, by two rounds of duck shot, and in the midst of the confusion the “Lady Alice” was run down the bank and pushed far into the water. But this scarcely improved the position. The enemy swarmed on the shore and threw stones and lances at the crew. Canoes were making ready to pursue. Stanley ordered the crew to tear up the bottom boards for paddles and to pull away with all their might. All were doing the best they could, but a paralysis seized them when they discovered they were directly in the track of two huge hippopotami which had been started up by the noises of the melee, and enraged to the attacking point. The elephant rifle was again brought into requisition and the course cleared by planting an explosive bullet in each animal’s head.

Four of the canoes of the natives were now upon them. They meant war in earnest. The elephant rifle was used with effect. Four shots killed five of the natives and sank two canoes. The other two stopped to pick up their companions. They shouted in their rage, as they saw their prize escape, “go, and die in the Nyanza!”

Dismal days of famine and hardship followed. A storm overtook them and tossed them for hours, drenched with spray and rain. They had but four bananas on board. Happily another island was sighted and reached, which proved to be uninhabited. There they obtained food, shelter and much needed rest. Most travellers would have given Bumbireh a wide berth in the future. Not so Stanley. He pursued his course to Kagehyi, his starting point, having circumnavigated the lake in 60 days. There he assembled his own forces, and added recruits loaned by King Mtesa. With 230 spearmen and 50 musketeers he put back to the offending island determined to punish the two or three thousand natives they found ranged along the shores. They held their own with slings and arrows against the approach of the boats for an hour. But at length they were put to flight and Stanley considered he had wiped out the insult, though they appear to have been pretty well punished before.

During his two months’ absence Frederick Barker died at Kagehyi. This sad event was one of the items of heavy cost attending great feats of exploration. It left Stanley with but one English companion.

Stanley’s exploration of Victoria Nyanza confirmed in part, Speke’s discovery and theories. It showed that it was a Nile reservoir, though not an ultimate source, 21,000 square miles in extent. Excellent havens, navigable streams and fertile islands were revealed for the first time. Rich and beautiful countries are romantically pictured to us.

After having paid court to King Mtesa a second time, as already described, the time came for Stanley to extend his journey. He chose to follow the line of the Equator westward with the hope of striking a southern extension of Baker’s Albert Nyanza. He departed from Mtesa’s old capital, Ulagalla, laden with presents and food, and accompanied by a hundred Uganda warriors. Stanley, in turn, gave bountiful parting presents, and even remembered the chief Lukongeh of Ukerewë, who showed his appreciation of this kindness by murdering the very next white visitors – Smith and O’Neill, as above narrated.

Further on, near the boundary between Uganda and Unyoro, a body of 2000 Waganda spearmen joined Stanley, making a force of nearly 3000 souls – quite too large for practical exploration as the sequel proved. The path led through scenes of surpassing beauty and fertility, and of a character that changed from soft tropical luxuriance to Alpine magnificence.

After getting away from the forest covered lowlands of the lake shore, they emerge into a rolling country dotted with ant hills and thinly sprinkled with tamarisks and thorny acacias. Then come rougher ways and wilder scenes. The land-swells are higher, the valleys deeper. Rocks break through the surface, and the slopes are covered with splintered granite. The streams that were warm and sluggish, are now cold and rapid. By and by mountains set in, at first detached masses and then clearly defined ranges, rising 9000 to 10,000 feet on the right hand and the left. Cutting breezes and chilly mists take the place of intense tropical heats. At length the monarch of mountains in this part of Africa comes into view and is named Mount Gordon Bennett. It lifts its head, at a distance of 40 miles north of their route, to a height of 15,000 feet, and seems to be a detached mass which overlooks the entire country. Its bases are inhabited by the Gambaragara, who have regular features, light complexions, and are the finest natives Mr. Stanley saw in Africa. Sight of them brought up the old question, whether an indigenous white race exists in Africa, as both Pinto and Livingstone seemed inclined to believe. But their wooly, or curly, hair was against them. They are a pastoral people and safe in their mountain fastnesses against attack. Snow often covered the top of their high mountain, which they said was an extinct crater and now the bed of a beautiful lake from whose centre rises a lofty column of rocks. The whole country is filled with hot springs, lakes of bubbling mud and other evidences of volcanic action.

These mountains Stanley thought to be the dividing ridge between Victoria Nyanza, 120 miles east, and the southern projection of Albert Nyanza. But what was his astonishment to find that he had no sooner rose to the summit of his dividing ridge than he stood on a precipice, 1500 feet high, which overlooked the placid waters of the traditional Muta, or Luta, Nzigé. What a prize was here in store for the venturesome American! Something indeed which would rob Baker of his claim to the discovery of an ultimate Nile source in Albert Nyanza. Something which would set at rest many geographic controversies. And, strange to say, something which not only supported the truth of native accounts but seemed to verify the accuracy of an old Portuguese map dating back nearly 300 years.

But fortune was not in favor of the American. His large force had scared the Unyoro people, and they had mysteriously disappeared. The Waganda warriors, who formed his escort, looked ominously on this situation. Samboozi, the leader of the escort, had gained his laurels fighting the Unyoro, and he feared a trap of some kind was being laid for him. His fears demoralized his own men and Stanley’s as well. They decided to retreat. Stanley remonstrated, and asked them to remain till he could lower his boat and explore the lake. He asked for but two days grace. But expostulation was vain. They would all have deserted in a body.

There was nothing left but to return. When they arrived at Mtesa’s capital, which they did without accident, the king was frightfully mad at his men. He ordered the faithless Samboozi to be imprisoned and all his wives and flocks to be confiscated. Then he offered Stanley his great general Sekebobo with an army of a hundred thousand men to carry him back to the Muta Nzigé. Stanley declined his munificent offer, and determined that in the future none should guide and govern his own force except himself. So, with very much modified impressions of Uganda faithfulness, and somewhat angrily, he started off in a southerly direction, intending to see what lay westward of Victoria Nyanza.

This route of Stanley southward was that of Speke and Grant northward, fourteen years before. It is a well watered, thickly peopled, highly cultivated country, diversified by hill and hollow, and rich in cattle. Its water courses all drain into the Victoria Nyanza. Their heads are rushing streams, but as they approach the lake they become reedy, stagnant lakelets hard to cross. The largest of these, at the southwest corner of Victoria Nyanza, is Speke’s Kitangule, which Stanley named the Alexandra Nile. Will we never have done with these Nile rivers? These continuations of the great river of Egypt?

It seems then that Victoria Nyanza is but a resting place for more southern Nile waters. That this is so, seems clear from the fact that the Alexandra Nile really contributes more water than flows out of the lake at its northern outlet. It has been discovered also that Albert Nyanza sends off another affluent to the north, besides that which flows past Gondokoro and which has been regarded as the true Nile. Further it seems that Lake Ibrahim, half way between Victoria and Albert Nyanza, on the Victoria Nile, dispatches an unknown branch into the wilderness. Whether these branches find their way back to the parent stream or go off to form new lakes, no one can exactly say.

But in the Alexandra Nile Stanley claims he has discovered a new ramification of this wonderful river system leading to other lakes and lake mysteries. The natives call the Alexandra the “Mother of the waters of Uganda,” that is, the Victoria Nyanza or Victoria Nile. Be this as it may, the Alexandra Nile is interesting both for its own sake and that of the people who live upon it. Stanley struck it far up from the lake where it was a quarter of a mile wide, with a dark central current 100 yards wide and fifty feet deep, which below became a rush covered stream whose banks were crowded with villages and herds of cattle. Still further on, it narrows between rocks over which it rushes in a cataract, and then it broadens to lake proportions, being from four to fifteen miles wide. In this expanse of reedy lagoons and green islands it merges into Victoria Nyanza Lake.

Crossing the Alexandra Nile to the south, we are in the Karagwe country, ruled by King Rumanika. Here is a haven of peace and rest. Speke and Grant staid many weeks with Rumanika. Stanley stopped for a considerable while to rest and recruit. He is gentle and reasonable, hospitable and friendly. He is a vassal of King Mtesa of Uganda, but the two are wholly different, except in their admiration of white men. Rumanika has no bursts of temper, but is serene, soft of voice and placid in manner. Stanley calls him a “venerable and aged Pagan,” a tall man, six feet six inches high, gorgeously dressed, attended by a multitude of spearmen, drummers and fifers, bearing a cane seven feet long. He has a museum in which he delights, and is an insatiable gatherer of news from those who come from civilized countries. He is not to be outdone by the stories of strangers, but has always one in response ever fuller of marvel. When Stanley told him of the results of steam power and of the telegraph by which people could talk for thousands of miles, he slily asked “Whether or not the moon made different faces to laugh at us mortals on earth?”

He proved full of traditions and, if there was any foundation for them, Stanley left with a rare fund of geographic knowledge on hand. The mountain sixty miles northward, rising in triple cone and called M’Fumbiro, he said was in the country of the Ruanda, a powerful state governed by an empress, who allows no stranger to enter. Her dominions stretch from the Muta Nzigé to Tanganyika. They contain another great lake, forty by thirty miles, out of which the Alexandra Nile flows. It is possible to ascend this channel into another sheet of water – Lake Kivu, out of which at its southern end flows another stream, the Rusizi, which flows into the north end of Tanganyika.

What wonderful information this was, and if all true, we should have the most bewildering river system, by all odds in the world. We should find the old Portuguese map of three hundred years ago reproduced and verified, and the anomaly of three mighty streams draining a continent mingling their parent waters, and even permitting the passage of a boat at high water, so that in the end it might go to the Mediterranean, the Atlantic or Indian Oceans.

Further, Rumanika stated that Ruanda is peopled by demons, and that beyond, on a lake called Mkinyaga, are a race of cannibals, and also pigmies, not two feet high. Stanley verified the king’s story by a visit to the Ruanda folks, who gnashed their teeth like dogs and otherwise expressed their objections to his visit; and Dr. Schweinfurth found, a little nearer the western coast, evidences of a tribe of dwarfs who are supposed to be the aboriginal people of the continent. But the hardest of Rumanika’s stories was of a tribe who had ears so long that one answered for a blanket to lie on and another as a cover for the sleeper. Stanley began to think his civilized wonders were too tame to pit against those of the African king.

The larger African animals abound in the Karagwe country. Stanley was much interested in the accounts of white elephants and rhinoceri. He had the good fortune to find one of the former animals, which he shot, but found it only a dirty grey brute, just as we find the advertised white elephants of the menagerie. The elephant is the most unpleasant neighbor of the rhinoceros. If they meet in a jungle the rhinoceros has to squeeze his ponderous body into the thicket or prepare for a battle royal. In such a quarrel his tusk is an ugly weapon but no match for the tusks of the elephant. The elephant sometimes treats him like a school boy and, breaking off a limb, belabors the unlucky rhinoceros till he beats a retreat. At other times the elephant will force him against a tree and pin him there with his tusks, or throw him down and tramp him till the life is out of him. Perhaps these were more of Rumanika’s yarns, but certain it is both beasts are formidable in a forest path, especially when alone and of surly temper.

On the southern borders of Karagwe is a ridge 5000 feet high. Beyond this the waters trend southward and toward Tanganyika. And beyond this ridge the people change. There are no more stately kings, but petty, lying, black-mailing chiefs, just as we found about Gondokoro. Here Stanley encountered Mirambo, whose name is a word of terror from the Victoria Lake to the Nyassa, and from Tanganyika to Zanzibar. To the explorer’s astonishment he found this notorious personage —

“The mildest-mannered man

That ever cut a throat” —

in short “a thorough African gentleman.”

He had difficulty in believing that this “unpresuming, mild-eyed man, of inoffensive exterior, so calm of gesture, so generous and open-handed,” was the terrible man of blood who wasted villages, slaughtered his foes by the thousand, and kept a district of ninety thousand square miles in continual terror. Incontinently, the impulsive explorer resolved to swear “blood brother-hood” with the other wandering warrior, and the ceremony was gone through with all due solemnity. The marauding chief presented his new brother with a quantity of cloth, and the explorer gave him in return a revolver and a quantity of ammunition; and then, mutually pleased with each other, they parted – Mirambo and his merry men to the gay greenwood, where, doubtless, they had a pressing engagement to meet some other party of travellers, and Stanley for Ujiji.

Ujiji is on Lake Tanganyika. Here we have to leave Stanley, for he is now done with the sources of the Nile, and midway on that wonderful journey which revealed the secrets of the Congo. We will follow him thence and see what he discovered and how he lifted the fog amid which Livingstone died, but that will have to be under the head of the “Congo Country” whose mystery he solved more clearly even than that of the “Nile Reservoirs.”

THE ZAMBESI

The great river Zambesi runs eastward across Southern Africa and empties, by many mouths, into the Indian Ocean. It is an immense water system, with its head far toward the Atlantic Ocean, yet draining on its north side that mysterious lake region which occupies Central Africa, and on its south side an almost equally mysterious region.

Its lower waters have been known for a long time, but its middle waters and its sources have been shrouded in a cloud of doubts as dense as that which overhung the reservoirs of the Nile. Livingstone has contributed more than any other explorer to the lifting of these doubts.

He was born in Glasgow, March 19, 1813, and was self-educated. He studied medicine and became attached to the London Missionary Society as medical missionary. In 1840, at the age of twenty-seven years, he was sent to Cape Town at the southern terminus of Africa, whence he went 700 miles inland to the Kuruman Station, established by Moffat on the southern border of the Kalihari desert. Here and at Kolobeng, on the Kolobeng River, he acquired the language of the natives, principally Bechuana. On a return trip from Kolobeng to Kuruman he came near losing his life by an adventure with a lion. The country was being ravaged by a troop of these beasts. When one of their number is killed, the rest take the hint and leave. It was determined to dispatch one, and a hunt was organized in company with the natives. They found the troop on a conical hill. The hunters formed a circle around the hill and gradually closed in. Meblawe, a native schoolmaster, fired at one of the animals which was sitting on a rock. The bullet struck the rock. The angered beast bit the spot where the bullet struck and then bounded away. In a few moments Livingstone himself got a shot at another beast. The ball took effect but did not kill. The enraged beast dashed at his assailant before he could re-load, and sprang upon him. He was borne to the ground beneath the lion’s paws and felt his hot breath on his face. Another moment must have brought death. But the infuriated beast saw Mebalwe, who had snapped both barrels of his rifle at him. He made a dash for him and lacerated his thigh in a terrible manner. The natives, who had hitherto acted in a very cowardly manner, now came to the rescue with their spears. One of their number was pounced upon and badly torn. The beast now began to weaken from the effect of Livingstone’s shot, and with a quiver throughout his huge frame rolled over on his side dead. After the excitement was over Dr. Livingstone found eleven marks of the lion’s teeth on his left arm, which was broken close to the shoulder and the bone crushed into splinters.

Livingstone married Moffat’s daughter in 1844. She had been born in the country and was a thorough missionary. He made Kolobeng a beautiful station and produced an excellent impression on the natives – all except the Boer tribes to the south and east, who had become much incensed against the English, owing as they thought, to the particularly harsh treatment they had received down in their former homes south of the Vaal River.

At Kolobeng, Livingstone first heard of Lake Ngami, north of the Kalihari Desert. He resolved to visit it, and started in May 1849, in company with his wife and children, several English travellers and a large party of Bechuana attendants. They rather skirted than crossed the desert, yet they found it to consist of vast salt plains, which gave a constant mirage as if the whole were water. Though destitute of water, there are tufts of dry salt-encrusted grass here and there, which relieve it of an appearance of barrenness, but which crumble at the touch.

In July they struck the river Cubango, or Zonga, flowing eastward and, as far as known, losing itself in a great central salt-lake, or Dead Sea. They were told that the Zonga came out of Lake Ngami, further west. Ascending the river sixty miles they struck the lake, and were the first Europeans to behold this fine sheet of water. The great tribe about and beyond the lake is the Makololo, whose chief is Sebituane, a generous hearted and truly noble character. They could not see him on this trip. So they returned, making easy journeys down the Zonga, admiring its beautiful banks, which abounded in large game, especially elephants.