Stanley in Africa

The next year (1850), Livingstone and his family started again for Lake Ngami, accompanied by the good chief Sechele, who took along a wagon, drawn by oxen. While this means of locomotion gave comfort to the family, it involved much labor in clearing roads, and the animals suffered sadly from attacks by the tsetse fly, whose sting is poisonous. But the lake was reached in safety. The season proved sickly, and a return journey became compulsory, without seeing Sebituane. But the chief had heard of Livingstone’s attempts to visit his court, and he sent presents, and invitations to another visit. He set out on a third journey, and this time directly across the desert, where they suffered much for want of water.

This time they found the chief. His headquarters were on an island in the river, below the lake. He received the party with the greatest courtesy, and appeared to be the best mannered and frankest chief Livingstone ever met. He was about forty-five years old, tall and wiry, of coffee-and-milk complexion, slightly bald, of undoubted bravery, always leading his men in battle, and by far the most powerful warrior beyond Cape Colony. He had reduced tribe after tribe, till his dominions extended far into the desert on the south of the Zonga, embraced both sides of that stream, and ran northward to, and beyond, the great Zambesi River.

Chief Sebituane died while Livingstone was visiting him, and was succeeded by his daughter Ma-Mochisane. She extended the privileges of the country to the travellers, and Livingstone went north to Sesheke to see her. Here in June, 1851, he discovered the great Zambesi in the centre of the continent of Africa where it was not previously known to exist – all former maps being incorrect.

Though the country was not healthy, he was so impressed with the beauty of the Zambesi regions, and the character of the Makololo people, that he resolved to make a permanent establishment among them. But before doing so he returned to Cape Colony and sent his family to England. Then he went back, visiting his old stations on the way. He arrived at Linyanti, where he found that the new queen had abdicated in favor of her brother, on May 23, 1853. The new king Sekelutu was not unlike his father in stature and color, was kindly disposed toward white people, but could not be convinced that their religious notions were suited to him.

Livingstone remained a month at Linyanti, on the Chobe, or Cuando River, above its junction with the Zambezi. He then started on a further exploration of the latter river, and was gratified to find that Sekelutu determined to accompany him with 160 attendants. They made royal progress down the Chobe to its mouth. Then they began to ascend the Zambesi in thirty-three canoes. The river was more than a mile broad, dotted with large islands and broken with frequent rapids and falls. The banks were thickly strewn with villages. Elephants were numerous. It was the new king’s first visit to his people and everywhere the receptions were grand. Throughout this Barotse valley hunger is not known, yet there is no care exercised in planting.

The spirit of exploration had such full possession of Livingstone that, on the return of the royal party to Linyanti, he organized an expedition to ascend the Zambesi and cut across to Loanda on the Atlantic coast. This he did in 1854. It was on this journey that he discovered Lake Dilolo. It is not much of a lake, being only eight miles long by three broad. But it was a puzzle to Livingstone, and has ever since been a curiosity. It is the connecting link between two immense water systems – that of the Congo and Zambesi.

When he struck it on his westward journey toward Loanda, he found it sending out a volume into the Zambesi. “Head-waters of a great river!” he naturally exclaimed. And there was the elevation above the sea, the watershed, to prove it, for soon after all the waters ran northward and westward instead of eastward and southward.

But in a few months he was making his return journey from Loanda to the interior, to fulfil his pledge to bring back his Makololo attendants in safety. He then approached this lake from the north. What was his surprise to find another slow moving, reed-covered stream a mile wide, flowing from this end of the mysterious lake and sending its waters toward the Congo.

Though ill with fever both times, he was able to conquer disease sufficiently to satisfy himself that this little lake, Dilolo, four thousand feet above the sea level, is located exactly on the watershed between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and distributes its contents impartially between the two seas. A drop of rain blown by the wind to the one or the other end of the lake may re-enforce the tumbling floods that roar through the channels of the Congo and rush sixty miles out into the salt waters of the Atlantic, or may make with the Zambesi the dizzy leap through the great Victoria Falls and mingle with the Indian ocean. No similar phenomenon is known anywhere. Lake Kivo may form a corresponding band of union between the Congo and the Nile, but this we do not know. Apart from the eccentric double part it plays, the physical features of Dilolo are tame and ordinary enough. It has, of course, hippopotami and crocodiles as every water in Central Africa has, and its banks are fringed with marshes covered with profuse growth of rushes, cane, papyrus, and reeds. Around it stretch wide plains, limitless as the sea, on which for many months of the year the stagnant waters rest, balancing themselves, as it were, between the two sides of a continent, unable to make up their mind whether to favor the east coast or the west with their tribute.

No trees break the horizon. The lands in the fens bear only a low growth of shrub, and the landscape is dismal and monotonous in the extreme. “Dilolo means despair,” and the dwellers near it tell a story curiously resembling the tale of the “Cities of the plain,” and the tradition handed down regarding some of the lakes in Central Asia, of how a venerable wanderer came to this spot near evening and begged for the charity of shelter and food, how the churlish inhabitants mocked his petition, with the exception of one poor man who gave the stranger a nook by his fire and the best his hut afforded, and how after a terrible night of tempest and lightning the hospitable villager found his guest gone and the site of his neighbor’s dwellings occupied by a lake. When the rains have ceased and the hot sun has dried up the moisture the outlook is more cheerful. A bright golden band of flowers of every shade of yellow stretches across the path, then succeeds a stripe of blue, varying from the lightest tint to purple, and so band follows band with the regularity of the stripes on a zebra.

The explorer is glad, however, to escape these splendid watersheds and to pass down into the shadows of the forests of the Zambesi, where, at least, there will be a change of discomforts, and a variety of scenery. There are four methods of travel familiar in Southern Africa. One is the bullock-wagon, convenient and pleasant enough in the Southern Plains, but hardly practicable in the rude wilderness adjoining the Zambesi. Riding on bullock back is a mode of travel which Livingstone frequently adopted from sheer inability to walk from weakness. Marching on foot is, of course, the best of all plans when a thorough and minute acquaintance with the district traversed is desired. But for ease and rapid progress there is nothing like “paddling your own canoe,” or better still, having it paddled for you by skilled boatmen down the deep gorges and through the rushing shallows of the third of the great African rivers. Before the main stream of the Zambesi is reached, the forest shadows of the Lotembwa and the Leeba have to be threaded. These dark moss-covered rivers flow between dripping banks of overgrown forests and jungle with frequent clearings, where the villagers raise their crops of manihoc, the plant that yields the tapioco of commerce, and which here furnishes the chief food of the natives.

Fetisch worship flourishes in these dark and gloomy woods. In their depths a fantastically carved demon face, staring from a tree, will often startle the intruder, or a grotesque representation of a lion or crocodile, or of the human face made of rushes, plastered over with clay and with shells or beads for eyes, will be found perched in a seat of honor with offerings of food and ornaments laid on the rude altar. Whether human sacrifices are offered at these shrines cannot positively be said, but the most simple and trifling acts are “tabooed,” and unless the traveller is exceedingly wary in all that he does or says, he is likely to be met with heavy fines or looked upon as a cursed man, who will bring misfortune on all who aid or approach him. The medicine man has a terrible power which he often exercises over the lives and property of his fellows, and a sentence of witchcraft is often followed by death. A great source of profit is weather-making but, unlike the prophets in the arid deserts on the south, the magicians of this moist, cool region devote their energies to keeping off rain and not to bringing it down from Heaven. Of course if they persevere long enough the rain ceases to fall, and the credulous natives believe that this has been produced by the medicine they have purchased so dearly, just as the Bechuana of the desert believe in the ability of their rain-makers, when handsomely paid, to bring showers down on the thirsty ground by virtue of drumming and dancing.

The behavior of the inhabitants of these villages, on the appearance among them of a white man, is apt to shake the notion of the latter that the superior good looks of his own race are universally acknowledged. Their standard of beauty is quite different from ours. Sometimes a wife is measured by the number of pounds she weighs, sometimes by her color, often by the peculiarities of ornamentation, or by special style of head-dress or some disfigurement of the nose, lips or ears, on which the female population mainly rely for making themselves attractive. The wearing of clothes is regarded as a practice fairly provocative of laughter, and as improper as the want of them would be in America. Nothing could be more hideous to them than the long hair, shaggy beard and whiskers, like the mane of a lion, which strangers wear. If the stranger have blue eyes and red whiskers he is regarded as a hob-goblin, before whom the village girls run away screaming with terror, and the children hide trembling behind their mothers. At the village of the Shinte, the principal tribe on the Leeba River, Livingstone was very kindly treated by the chief. He received him seated in state under the shade of a banyan tree, with his hundred wives seated behind him, and his band of drummers performing in front. Out of gratitude, the Doctor treated the distinguished party to an entertainment with the magic-lantern. The subject was the death of Isaac, and the party looked on with awe as the gigantic figures with flowing Oriental robes, prominent noses, and ruddy complexions appeared upon the curtain. But when the Patriarch’s up-lifted arm, with the dagger in hand, was seen descending, the ladies, fancying that it was about to be sheathed in their bosoms instead of Isaac’s, sprang to their feet with shouts of “Mother! Mother!” and rushed helter-skelter, tumbling pell-mell after each other into corners or out into the open air, and it was impossible to bring them back to witness the Patriarch’s subsequent fortunes.

On the lower part of the Leeba the scenery becomes very beautiful and richly diversified. The alternation of hill and dale, open glade and forest, past which the canoe bears us swiftly, reminds one of a carefully kept park. Animal life becomes more plentiful with every mile of southward progress, and the broad meadows bordering the stream are pastured by great herds of wild animals – buffaloes, antelopes, zebras, elephants, and rhinoceri, – all of which may be slaughtered in scores before they take alarm.

Below the confluence of the Leeba with the Zambesi, the abundance of game on the banks of the river is more remarkable. The air is found darkened by the flight of innumerable water fowl, fish-hawks, cranes, and waders of many varieties. The earth teems with insect life and the waters swarm with fish life. As an instance of the prodigious quantity and exceeding tameness of wild animals here, Livingstone mentions that “eighty-one buffaloes marched in slow procession before our fire one evening within gun shot, and herds of splendid deer sat by day without fear at two hundred yards distance, while all through the night the lions were heard roaring close to the camp.” In the heat of the day sleek elands, tall as ordinary horses, with black glossy bodies and delicately striped skins, browsed or reclined in the shade of the forest trees. Troops of graceful, agile antelopes, of similar species, scour across the pasture lands to seek the cool retreat of some deep dell in the woods, or a solitary rhinoceros comes grunting down to the bank in search of some soft place where he can roll his horny hide in the mud. The trees themselves have a variety and beauty which the sombre evergreen foliage of higher latitudes lacks, and which is equally wanting in the dust colored groves of the desert further south.

The voyage down the stream is by no means without incident. The river swarms with hippopotami and crocodiles. The former lead a lazy sleepy life by day in the bottom of the stream, coming now and then to the surface to breathe and exchange a snort of recognition with their acquaintances, and are only too well pleased to let the passer by go in peace, if he will but let them alone. In districts where they are hunted, they are wary and take care to push no more than the tip of their snouts out of the water, or lie in some bed of rushes where they breathe so softly that they cannot be heard. But in a place where they have not been disturbed, they can be seen swimming about, and sometimes the female hippopotamus can be seen with the little figure of her calf floating on her neck. Certain elderly males who are expelled from the herd become soured in temper and are dangerous to encounter, and so also is a mother if robbed of her young. Such a one made an attack on Livingstone’s boat, when descending the Zambesi in 1855, butting it from beneath until the fore end stood out of water, and throwing one of the natives into the stream. By diving and holding on to the grass at the bottom, while the angry beast was looking for him on the surface, he escaped its vengeance and, the boat being fortunately close to the shore, the rest of the crew got off unharmed. The alligators of this part of the Zambesi are peculiarly rapacious and aggressive, and the chances are that anybody unlucky enough to fall into the river will find his way into the mouth of a watchful crocodile. Every year these ferocious reptiles carry off hundreds of human victims, chiefly women, while filling their water jars, or men whose canoes are accidently upset, and the inhabitants in their turn make a prey of the beast, being extremely fond of its flesh and eggs. The crocodile attacks by surprise. He lurks behind the bank of rushes, or lies in wait at the bottom of a pool, and dashes out as soon as he sees a human limb in the water. Sometimes, however, when hungry and where favorable opportunity occurs, he will haul his body ashore and waddle up the bank on his stumpy legs. If, while disporting himself on shore, his wicked green eyes fall on some likely victim in the stream, he will dash rapidly through the rushes, plunge into the river and make a bound for his prey. The young crocodiles show their vicious temper almost as soon as they are out of the shell, and one savage little wretch about two feet long made a snap at Dr. Livingstone’s legs, while walking along the side of a stream in the Zambesi region, that made the explorer jump aside with more agility than dignity.

Some distance below the junction of the Leeba, the Zambesi enters the valley of the Barotse. This is one of the most fertile, yet the most unhealthy, districts in the interior of Africa. It is stocked with great herds of domestic cattle of two varieties. One very tall with enormous horns, nearly nine feet between the tips, and the other a beautifully formed little white breed. The country could grow grain enough to support ten times the inhabitants it has at present. Like the lower valley of the Nile, the Barotse country is inundated every year, over its whole surface, by the waters of the river, which deposit a layer of fertilizing slime. The banks of the Zambesi, for some distance above and below this district, are high and cliffy, presenting ridge after ridge of fine rock and pleasing scenery, while the stream runs swiftly over its stony bed. For a hundred miles through the Barotse valley the stream has a deep and winding course and the hills withdraw to a distance of fifteen miles from either bank. To the foot of these hills the waters extend in flood time, and the valley becomes temporarily one of the lake regions of Central Africa.

At the lower end of the valley the rocky spurs again approach each other, and the river forces its way through a narrow defile in which, in flood time, the water rises to a height of sixty feet above its original level. Here are situated the Gonye Falls which are a serious impediment to the navigation of the Upper Zambesi. But there is no such danger or difficulty here for canoes as poor Stanley met with on the Congo. Practice has made the natives, living near the falls, experts in the work of transporting these canoes over the rocky ground and, as soon as a boat approaches the rapids from above or below, it is whisked without difficulty by a pair of sturdy arms to the quiet water beyond. Below the Gonye Falls, the water bounds and rolls and bounces from bank to bank and chafes over the boulders in an alarming manner, their breadth being contracted to a few hundred yards. But these swollen rapids might all be ascended, Livingstone thinks, when the river is full. After many leagues of this mad gamboling, the Zambesi settles down again for a hundred miles to sober flow, and opens out into a magnificent navigable river a mile or two from bank to bank.

Still more grand, however, are its dimensions after it receives a great deep, dark colored, slow flowing river, the Cuando, or Chobe, before mentioned. The Chobe empties through several mouths with winding channels fringed with beds of papyrus, the stems of which are plaited and woven together into an almost solid mass of vines, and by grass with keen, sharp, serrated edges, which cut like razors. Even the hippopotamus has no little ado in forcing a way through this forest, and less weighty personages have to walk humbly in his track. So wide is the Zambesi below the entrance of the Chobe, that even the practiced native eye cannot tell from the bank whether the land, dimly seen beyond, is an island or opposite shore, and the stream flows placidly past with no sign that it is almost within sight of a tremendous downfall.

The only traveller who has explored the upper waters of the Chobe is Major Serpa Pinto, on his recent journey from Benguela to Natal. But we shall learn more of his travels hereafter. It is, however, interesting now to note that he found a spot on this river also, where he could almost have placed his cap on the point of junction between streams draining toward the Atlantic, the Zambesi, the Indian Ocean, and the Kalihari Desert.

Livingstone has already made us familiar with Lake Ngami and the banks of the lower Cuando. These are the furthest outposts of equatorial moisture toward the south, just as Lake Chad and the White Nile mark its northern limits. Once, it is supposed – and indeed the fact seems beyond dispute – the Zambesi, and all its upper branches, flowed down into this southern basin and formed a goodly inland sea, until some great cataclysm happened, that diverted it and its waters toward the eastern coast, leaving the central lake to be dried up into the shallow Ngami, and the streams of this region to wander about haphazard and uncertain whether to keep in the old tracks or follow in the new direction.

The discovery of the Cuando River by Livingstone in 1849 demolished the theory of a burning desert occupying the interior of Africa from the Mediterranean to the Cape, and went far to prove, what has since been completely established, that the fabulous torrid zone of Africa, and its burning sands, is a well watered region, resembling North America in its mountains and lakes, and India in its hot humid plains, thick jungles, and cool highlands. We have already seen that the South African desert is not without vegetation, but its pride and glory are herds of big and small game – antelopes, gnues, zebras, ostriches, elands, gemsbocks, gazelles, various species of deer – that roam over its spacious plains. Great deeds of slaughter have been done with the rifle, and told over and over again in many a stirring book of African sport by Gunning, Anderson, and other Nimrods, who were among the first of the army of hunters who now annually go in search of hides, tusks, and horns, which every year become more difficult to obtain. The lion is practically the only animal of the cat tribe which they have to encounter, the tiger being unknown in Africa, and the leopard comparatively rare. The lion seem to be more at home in these salt deserts than in the rank forests further north, probably because he finds food more plentiful. Livingstone had no great opinion of this beast. He describes him as “about the size of a donkey and only brave at roaring,” even the talk of his majestic roar he regards as “majestic twaddle,” and he says he could never tell the voice of the lion from the voice of an ostrich, except from knowing that the quadruped made a noise by night and the bird by day. The lion would never dream of putting himself against a noble elephant, though he will tear an elephant calf if he finds one unprotected, and he would still less engage in a contest with the thick skinned rhinoceros. Even a buffalo is more than a match for the “King of Beasts.” Major Oswald once came across three lions who were having much trouble in pulling a mortally wounded buffalo to the ground.

Both the elephant and rhinoceros are hunted here by the natives with packs of dogs. The yelping curs completely bewilder their heavy game, and while he is paying attention to them and making attempts to kill them, the native creeps up and plants his bullet or poisoned spear in a vital spot. English sportsmen prefer to go out against the elephant on foot or on horseback or, as Anderson, upon the back of a trained ox. In former times as many as twenty have been killed on a single excursion. The chase of the huge animal, which attains a maximum height of twelve feet on the Zambesi, becomes really exciting and dangerous work, for the African variety, owing to the formation of its skull, cannot be brought down by a forehead shot like the Indian variety. The giraffe and ostrich are also hunted on horseback, and the plan adopted by hunters is to press them at a hard gallop from the first, which causes them to lose their wind and sometimes to drop dead from excitement. The ostrich, when at the top of his speed, has been known to run at the rate of thirty miles an hour, so that there is no hope of overtaking him in a direct chase, but the stupid bird often delivers itself into the hands of its pursuers by running in curves instead of speeding straight ahead.

The people of the Kalihari Desert are as characteristic of the soil and climate as its vegetable life and four-footed beasts. They are of two kinds, first Bushmen, who are true sons of the wilderness, wild men of the desert, who live by the chase. They are of diminutive stature and, like the dwarfs further north, are supposed to represent the real aborigines of Africa. The second are remnants of the Bechuana tribes. These have been driven into the desert by the pressure of stronger peoples behind. They are a people who cling to their original love for domestic animals, and watch their flocks of lean goats and meagre cattle with great care. On the edges of the desert are the Boers, emigrant Dutch farmers, who have fled from British rule in the Transvaal, as their fathers fled from Cape Colony and Natal. The coming of these always betokens trouble with the natives, and as gold miners and diamond diggers are penetrating into the Kalihari Desert, we may expect to see British authority close on their heels, and perhaps at no distant day fully established on the banks of the Zambesi, unless forsooth, some other nations should see fit to interfere.