Stanley in Africa

All of torrid Africa revels in plants and fruits of the most nutritious and medicinal quality, suited to the wants and well-being of the people. There is both food and medicine in the fruits of the palm, banana, orange, shaddock, pine-apple, tamarind, and the leaves and juice of the boabab. The butter-tree gives not only butter, but a fine medicine. The ground-nut yields in six weeks from the planting. The natives produce for eating, wheat, corn, rice, barley, millet, yams, lotus berries, gum, dates, figs, sugar, and various spices, and for drink, coffee, palm-wine, cocoanut milk and Cape wine. No less than five kinds of pepper are known, and the best indigo is produced, along with other valuable dyes. Cotton, hemp and flax are raised for clothing.

It has always been a fiction that Africa contained more gold than any other continent. The “gold coast” was a temptation to venturesome pioneers for a long time. Precisely how rich in minerals the “dark continent” is, remains to be proved. But it is known that iron abounds in many places, that saltpetre and emery exist in paying quantities, that amber is found on the coasts, and that diamonds are plenty in the Kimberly region. That the continent is rich in useful minerals may be taken for granted, but as these things are not perceptible to the naked eye, time must bring the proof.

Various estimates have been put upon the population of Africa. Stanley estimated the population of the Congo basin at 50,000,000. The Barbary States we know are very populous. Africa has in all probability contributed twenty-five millions of slaves to other countries within two-hundred and fifty years without apparent diminution of her own population.

So she must be not only very populous but very prolific. It would be safe to estimate her people at 200,000,000, counting the Ethiopic or true African race, and the Caucasian types, which embrace the Nubians, Abyssinians, Copts and Arabs. The Arabs are not aborigines, yet have forced themselves, with their religion, into all of Northern and Central Africa, and their language is the leading one wherever they have obtained a foot-hold. The Berber and Shelluh tongues are used in the Barbary States. The Mandingo speech is heard from the Senegal to the Joliba. On the southwestern coast there is a mixture of Portuguese. Among the true natives the languages spoken are as numerous as the tribes themselves. In the Sahara alone there are no less than forty-three dialects. Mr. Guinness, of London, president of the English Baptist Missionary Society operating in Africa, says there are 600 languages spoken in Africa, belonging principally to the great Soudanese group.

Of the human element in Africa, we present the summary given by Rev. Geo. L. Taylor. He says: – “Who and what are the races occupying our New Africa? The almost universally accepted anthropology of modern science puts Japheth (the Aryans), Shem (the Semites), and Ham (the Hamites), together as the Caucasian race or variety (not species) of mankind; and makes the Ugrians, the Mongols, the Malays and the Negroes (and some authorities make other divisions also) each another separate variety of the one common species and genus homo, man.

“Leaving the radical school of anthropology out of the question, it cannot be denied that the vast preponderance of conservative scientific opinion is, at least, to this effect, namely: While the Berbers (including the Twareks, Copts and Tibbus) are Hamitic, but differentiated toward the Semitic stock, the true Negroes are also probably Hamitic, but profoundly differentiated in the direction of some other undetermined factor, and the Ethiopians or Abyssinians are an intermediate link between the Caucasian Hamite and the non-Caucasian Negro, with also a prehistoric Semite mixture from southern Arabia. Barth, whose work is a mine of learning on the Soudan, concededly the best authority extant on the subject, says that while the original population of the Soudan was Negro, as was all the southern edge of the Sahara, nevertheless the Negro has been crowded southward along the whole line by the Moor (a mixt Arab) in the west, by the Berber (including both Twareks and Tibbus) in the centre, and by the Arab in the east. Timbuctoo is a city of Berber, not of Negro origin, founded before the Norman conquest of England, since conquered by Moors, and now ruled by the Fulbé, or Fellatah, who are neither Moor, Berber, Arab, nor Negro but a distinct race between the Arab and Berber on the one side and the Negro stock on the other, and whose language and physiognomy, and only semi-woolly hair, are more Mongoloid or Kaffir than Negro; but who are the most intelligent, energetic and rapidly becoming the most powerful people in the Soudan, and whose influence is now felt from Senegambia to Baghirmi, through half a dozen native states. In all the Niger basin only the Mandingo and the Tombo countries about the head of the Joliba, or Niger, are now ruled by pure Negro dynasties, the former being a splendid and capable jet-black people, probably the finest purely Negro race yet known to Europeans. In the central Soudan the Kanuri of Kanem and Bornu came to Kanem as a conquering Tibbu-Berber stock over 500 years ago, and are now Negroid. Farther east Tibbu and Arab are the ruling elements. Haussa, Sokoto and Adamawa are now Fellatah States. The southward pressure of Moor, Twarek, Tibbu and Arab is still going on; and the Fulbé, in the midst of the native states, is rapidly penetrating them, subverting the few native Negro dynasties still existing, and creating a new and rising race and power that is, at any rate, not Negro. Thus ancient Nigritia is rapidly ceasing to be “Negroland,” the races being more and more mixt, and newer and ruling elements of Moor, Berber and Arab constantly flowing in. This is the testimony of a long line of scholars from Barth down to Prof. A. H. Keane, author of the learned article on “Soudan,” in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

“The people commonly considered Negro, in Africa, consist mainly of three great stocks – the Nigritians of the Soudan, the great Bantu stock reaching from the southern bounds of the Soudan to the southern rim of the Zambesi basin, and the great Zulu stock. All these differ widely from each other in physiology, languages, arts and customs. The Nigritians are declining under Arab and Berber pressure; the Zulus, a powerful and semi-Negro race, are rapidly extending their conquests northward beyond the Zambesi into east central Africa. The Bantus are mainly agriculturists. They fill the Congo basin, and extend eastward to the Indian Ocean, between Uganda (which is Bantu) and Unyanyembé. They have only recently been discovered, and are not yet much studied by Europeans.

“But not all so-called Negroes are true Negroes. As for the eastern highland regions of the two Niles, and thence southward from the Abyssinians and the Shillooks at Khartoum to the Bari of Gondokoro and the Waganda of Uganda – the Niam-Niam of Monbuttoo, the Manyuema of the Lualaba, and the Makololo on the Zambesi – the ruling and paramount native tribes are Negroid, but not Negro, unless our ordinary conception of the Negro is a good deal revised. As Livingstone says of the Makololo, so of all these, they are a “coffee-and-milk color;” or we may say all these peoples are from a dark coffee-brown to brownish-white, like coffee, depending on the amount of milk added. They are mostly tall, straight, leanish, wiry, active, of rather regular features, fair agriculturists and cattle-raisers, with much mechanical capacity, born merchants and traders, and almost everywhere hold darker and more truly negro tribes in slavery to themselves, where any such tribes exist. Where they have none or few domestic animals for meat, they are frequently cannibals. In the middle Congo basin the tribes are more truly Negro, and here the true Negroes are freemen, independent and capable, though in a somewhat low state of development. But, so far as now known, the true Negro, in an independent condition, holds and rules but a comparatively small part of Africa. As to capability for improvement these peoples – the Negroid races at least and probably the Negroes – are as apt and civilizable as any Caucasian or Mongolian people have originally been, if we consider how their geographical and climatic isolation has hitherto cut them off from the rest of the world and the world from them. We know that if we leave Revelation out of the account, all Caucasian civilization, whether Aryan, Semitic, or Hamitic, can be traced backward till, just on the dawn of history, it narrows down to small clans or families, with whom the light began and from whom it spread. We know the same, also, as to the non-Caucasian Chinese and Nahua civilizations of Asia and America. Had the spread of the germs of these civilizations been prevented by conditions like those in Africa, who shall say that the stage of development might not be about the same to-day? There seems to be but one uncivilizable race – if, indeed, they are such – in Africa; and that is the dwarfs. The Akka, found by Schweinfurth south of the Welle, called themselves “Betua,” the same word as the “Batua” on the Kassai. The dwarfs of the upper Zambesi call themselves by a similar word, and so with the Bushmen in South Africa. Many things go to prove that these dwarf nations are all one race, the diminutive remnants of a primeval stock of one of the lowest types of man, who have never risen above the hunter stage of life. They have been scattered, and almost exterminated, by the incoming of the powerful Bantu stock, that is now spread from the Soudan to Zululand. These dwarfs are the best living examples of similar races once scattered over Europe and Asia, whose real existence lies at the bottom of all the lore of fairies, brownies, elfs, gnomes, etc. They constitute one of the most pregnant subjects of study in all anthropology. They are seemingly always uncivilizable.”

In his “Africa in a Nutshell,” Rev. Geo. Thompson thus sketches the country, especially the central belt: —

“The Central Belt of Africa – say from 15° north to 15° south of the equator, about 2,000 miles in width – is, heavily-timbered, of the jungle nature. There are numerous large trees (one to six feet through, and 50 to 150 feet high) with smaller ones, and bushes intermingled, while vines of various kinds intertwine, from bottom to top, making progress through them, except in paths, very difficult. Only experience can give a realizing idea of an African forest – of the tangle, and the density of its shade.

“While traveling through them, even in the dry season, when the sun shines brightest, one cannot see or feel the warming rays. The leaves drip with the dews of the night, and the traveler becomes chilled, and suffers exceedingly.

“But the whole country is not now covered with such forests. They are found in places, from ten to twenty-five miles in extent, where the population is sparse, but the larger portion of the country has been cleared off and cultivated; and, while much of it is in crops all the time, other large patches are covered with bushes, of from one to three years’ growth – for they clear off a new place every year. The farm of this year is left to grow up to bushes two or three years, to kill out the grass, and then it is cleared off again. Thus, in thickly settled portions of the country, but little large timber is found, except along rivers, or on mountains. Such is the country north of the Gulf of Guinea, to near the Desert.

“The people are numerous, and the cities larger (the largest cities in Africa; they are from one to six miles through), and much of the country is under cultivation. And so of the central portion of Africa, in the vicinity of Lake Tchad.

“But in that portion of Africa lying 500 miles south and north of the Equator, and from the Atlantic Coast, 1,000 miles eastward, the jungle and heavy forests are the most extensive, and towns farther between, and not so large.

“This is the home of the gorilla, which grows from five to six feet high, of powerful build, and with arms that can stretch from seven to nine feet; a formidable enemy to meet. It is also the home of that wonderfully varied and gigantic animal life – elephants, lions, leopards, zebras, giraffes, rhinoceri, hippopotami, crocodile etc., which distinguishes African Zoology from that of every other continent.

“This central belt of Africa is capable of sustaining a vast population. It can be generally cultivated, and its resources are wonderful. The soil is productive. The seasons are favorable, and crops can be kept growing the year through.

“Rice, of three or four kinds and of excellent quality, Indian corn, three kinds of sweet potatoes, beans, peanuts, melons, squashes, tomatoes, ginger, pepper, arrowroot, coffee, sugar cane, yams, cocoa, casada, and other grains and vegetables, besides all tropical fruits, are cultivated.

“The coffee is a wild forest tree, growing seventy-five feet high and eighteen inches through. It is also cultivated largely in Liberia. Many of the people have from 100 to 1,000 acres of coffee trees.

“The Liberian coffee is of such superior quality and productiveness, that millions of plants have been sent to Java and old coffee countries, for seed. Its fame is already world-wide. The wild coffee is as good as any, but the bean is smaller. And new settlements soon become self-supporting by the culture of coffee. Sugar cane is also raised, and much sugar is made in this colony. Many steam sugar mills are in operation on St. Paul’s River and at other places.

“On the Gulf of Guinea the people are quite generally raising cotton and shipping it to England. Hundreds of cotton presses and gins have been bought, and used by them, and Africa will yet be the greatest cotton, coffee and sugar country in the world. All nations can be supplied therefrom.

“Cotton is cultivated, in small quantities, in widely-extended portions of Africa, and manufactured into cloth which is very durable. They also make leather of a superior quality.

“Gold, copper, coal, the richest iron ore in the world, and other valuable metals are abundant; from them the natives manufacture their tools, ornaments and many things of interest. Ivory, hides, gums, rubber, etc., are abundant. It is said that 50,000 elephants are killed yearly, for their ivory, in Africa.

“The country only needs development; and the many exploring parties from Europe, who are penetrating every part, seeking trade, will aid in opening its boundless treasures. Gold-mining companies are operating on the Gulf of Guinea, with paying results.

“And the natives secure and sell to the merchants large amounts of gold, in form of rough, large rings. They make fine gold ornaments, and wear vast quantities.

“This trade with Interior Africa, so eagerly sought, will soon lead to railroads, in different directions – from Liberia to the Niger, and across to Zanzibar from South Africa; and in other directions. The work is begun, and will not stop.

“The French and the English are planning for railroads in different directions. The former are building one from Senegal to Timbuctoo.

“The nations of Europe are, to-day, in a strife to secure the best locations for trade with this rich country. And soon there will be no more ‘unexplored regions.’

“The coasts on the west and east are generally low and unhealthy. But the interior is higher, and will be more suited to the white man.

“It is, in the main, an elevated table-land, from 1,000 to 6,000 feet above the sea, variegated with peaks and mountains, from 3,000 to 20,000 feet high, snow-capped, and with valleys and broad plains, hot springs, and salt pans, and innumerable springs, inlets and streams.

“In some regions, for a distance often to twenty miles, there is a scarcity of water in the dry season. Other places are flat plains, which are overflowed in the rainy season, so they cannot be inhabited or cultivated, except in the dry season. And such localities are unhealthy.

“But by far the greater part of the country is capable of being inhabited and cultivated – with an abundance of timber of many kinds, suitable for all the purposes of civilization, for boats, houses, wagons, furniture and implements – but all different from anything in America. Some kinds are equal to fine mahogany.

“This central portion of Africa is blessed with numerous large lakes, three large rivers, and many smaller.

“The Niger rises 200 miles back of Liberia, runs northeasterly, to near Timbuctoo, then southward to the Gulf of Guinea. It is already navigated for hundreds of miles by English steamers.

“In fourteen years the exports have increased from $150,000 to $10,000,000; trading factories from two to fifty-seven; and steamers from two to twenty, and other boats.

“The Binué is a large branch coming in from the eastward.

“And the Congo, rising nearly 15° south of the equator, runs through various lakes, making a northward course for more than 1,000 miles, to 21⁄2° north of the equator, then bends westward and southwesterly to the Atlantic; being from one to sixteen miles wide, and very deep; filled with inhabited islands and abounding in magnificent scenery. The banks along the rapids rise from 100 to 1,200 feet high. It freshens the ocean for six miles from land, and its course can be seen in the ocean for thirty-six miles.

“There are two series of rapids in it – a great obstacle to navigation – but the desire for trade will overcome these.

“The first series of rapids commences about 100 miles from the sea, and extends some 200 miles in falls and cascades – with smoother stretches between – to Stanley Pool. There are thirty-two of these falls. From thence is a broad, magnificent river, with no obstruction for nearly 1,000 miles, to the next series of rapids at Stanley Falls. From this, again, is another long stretch of navigable river. It pours nearly five times the amount of water of the Mississippi.

“Between Lake Bangweola and Stanley Pool, the Congo falls 2,491 feet; between the pool and ocean, 1,147 feet, making 3,638 feet in all.

“The Nile falls over 1,200 feet between Victoria and Albert Lakes, and 2,200 from Albert to the sea.

“Most of the rivers which rise in the interior of Africa have heavy fall.

“Then there are numerous large rivers emptying into the Congo, on each side, which can be ascended far into the interior. Those on the north can be easily connected with the head waters of the Gaboon River, and those on the south with the head waters of the Zambesi, emptying into the Indian Ocean; and on the east, with Lake Tanganyika.

“It will be seen that the Congo River will be of vast importance in the development of Africa. A railroad will soon be built around the falls, to connect with the steamers above.

“The soil of Upper Congo is very rich, the forests are exceedingly valuable, the climate quite favorable, and the people numerous and kind.

“A few years ago the trade of the Congo was only a few thousand dollars yearly. It is now, so soon, from $10,000,000 to $20,000,000 a year. Trading houses and steamers are multiplying.

“The Congo Valley contains over 5,000 miles of navigable river and lake. The nations can be supplied from this region with cotton, coffee, sugar, gum copal, ivory, rubber, valuable dyes, iron, gold, copper, and many other things – when it shall be civilized and a market formed.

“Many are running to and fro, and knowledge is being rapidly increased in those parts.

“Then there are the rivers Senegal, Gambia (navigable for 200 miles), Sierra Leone, Calabar, etc.

“The lakes are numerous, from the size of Lake Michigan, or larger, to those covering only a few square miles.

“Lake Tchad, in the centre of the continent, is nearly the size of Lake Michigan, with marshy surroundings, from which as yet no outlet has been discovered, though the Tshaddi, or River Binué, may be found to be the outlet of this lake.

“In Central East Africa is a lake system of vast extent. Victoria Nyanza is about 250 miles long, surrounded mostly with hills and mountains, from 300 to 6,000 feet high. It contains many islands, and numerous large rivers empty into it. It is nearly 4,000 feet above the sea, and, with its rivers, constitutes the principal and most southern source of the Nile. The equator crosses its northern end. It is nearly as large as Lake Superior.

“West of this, about 200 miles, is the Albert Nyanza, 400 miles long, and 2,720 feet above the level of the sea. This receives the outlet of the Victoria; and from this the Nile bursts forth, a large river, and runs its course of nearly 3,000 miles to the Mediterranean Sea.

“Albert is nearly three times as large as Lake Erie.

“South and west of these two lakes are numerous smaller ones – some of them very beautiful – all emptying into the Victoria Nyanza, or “Big Water.”

“South of these, and separated by a mountain ridge, is Lake Tanganyika, 380 miles long and very deep, from twelve to forty miles wide, surrounded by mountains 2,000 to 5,000 feet high. It is 2,756 feet above the sea. Till about 1875 it was an internal sea, receiving large rivers, but having no outlet, as proven by Stanley, who circumnavigated it on purpose to settle this point. But near midway, on the west, was a low place, where the bank was only three feet above the water. And here, after steadily rising for ages, it broke over, and cut a channel to the Congo, into which it now empties, in a deep, rapid stream.

“West and south of this is a series of lakes, connected with the great Congo River. The most southerly, in latitude 13° or 14°, is Bangweola, about 175 miles long and sixty wide. (Dr. Livingstone, in his last journey, crossed this from the north and died in the marsh on its southern border, May 4, 1873.) This empties into Lake Moero, nearly 3,000 feet above the sea.

“North and west of this are a number of other lakes, all emptying into and swelling the mighty Congo.

“Northeast of Victoria are other large lakes, as reported by the natives, but not yet accurately delineated. Thomson has lately discovered one 6,000 feet above the sea.

“Southeast of Tanganyika, about 250 miles, is Nyassa Lake, 300 miles long, first definitely described by Dr. Livingstone. This is 1,800 feet above the sea. There is a small steamer on this lake – as also on Victoria and Tanganyika. And steamers are briskly plying up and down the Congo.

“Ere many years there will be a railroad from Nyassa to Tanganyika – an easy route – and from Zanzibar to the great lakes – a more difficult route. The pressing demands of trade insure these results. A wagon road is already partly constructed between the two lakes, making a speedier, safer and easier route to the interior via Zambesi and Shiré Rivers, Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika, with a land carriage of only seventy-five miles between the rapids on the Shiré and Lake Nyassa.”

That portion of Africa below the tropics, and known in general as South Africa, has resources of animal, forest, soil, climate, water and mineral which have proved inviting to Europeans, though there is nothing to render them any more acceptable than similar features as found in other sub-tropical or temperate latitudes, excepting, perhaps, the peculiar mineral deposits in the Kimberly section, which yield diamonds of great value, and a richness of animal life which formerly proved fascinating to the hunter and adventurer.

The belt extending clear across the continent from Angola and Benguela, south of the Congo, to the mouth of the Zambesi, and which is a water shed between the Congo basin and rivers running southward, till the great valley of the Zambesi is reached, has all the peculiarities of soil, climate, forest and people found in the Congo basin. Its tribes, according to Pinto, are of the same general type as those further north. The rivers abound in hippopotami and crocodiles, the forests in antelope and buffaloes, elephants, lions and wild birds. There is the same endless succession of wooded valleys and verdure clad plains, and the same products under cultivation. The natives are if anything better skilled in the uses of iron, and are more ingenious in turning it to domestic account, as in the manufacture of utensils, traps and other conveniences. They are natural herdsmen, dress better, at least more fantastically, perpetuate all of the native superstitions, and are more confirmed traders, having for a longer time been in remote contact with the Portuguese influence penetrating the Zambesi, and extending inland from Loanda and Benguela.