Stanley in Africa

Preserve a generous diet, avoiding oily and fatty foods.

Meats should not be eaten in large quantities at breakfast.

Take an early dinner, say at 11 o’clock, and let it be of meats, fish and vegetables. Cease work till 1 P.M.

Quit work at 6 P.M., and eat a second dinner, boiled fish, roast fowl or mutton, with plenty of vegetables. A glass of watered wine will not hurt then.

Seek amusement in social conversation, reading or games, till 9 P.M., and then retire.

Sleep on blankets, and cover with a blanket.

If marching, rise at 5 A.M., march at 6, and halt for the day at 11 A.M. When halted, seek shelter and put on a heavier coat.

Observe the strictest temperance. Don’t indulge in tonics or nostrums. A little quinine is the safest tonic. If thirsty drop an acid powder in your drinking water, or take a sip of cold tea.

Use an umbrella when in the sun. The best head dress is a cork helmet, or Congo cap.

If in a perspiration when wetted by rain or at a river crossing, change your dress immediately.

Go on a march in very light clothing, and let it be of flannel, with light russet shoes for the feet.

When permanently stationed, wear light clothing in order to avoid excessive perspiration when called on for sudden duty.

Don’t fail to exercise freely. Have certain hours for it, morning and evening, if your work is in doors.

Do not bathe in cold water, especially after you are in the country for a time. Water below 85° in temperature is dangerous.

Tropical fruits should be eaten only at breakfast.

Medicines specially prepared for tropical diseases can always be had of European druggists, and a supply should be on hand.

The diseases of central Africa are simple, consisting of dysentery and three kinds of fever, ague, remittent, and bilious.

Common ague is never fatal. It may be prevented, if one observes the symptoms.

The remittent fever is simply aggravated ague, it may last for several days.

The bilious fever is often pernicious. Its severity depends on the habits of the patient, the amount of exposure which produced it, and the strength of the constitution. It is preventable, but not by brandy or excessive smoking, as many foolish people think.

Dr. Martin, in his work on the “Influences of Tropical Climates,” also lays down a code which is both interesting and valuable.

1. Care in diet, clothing and exercise are more essential for the preservation of health than medical treatment.

2. The real way to escape disease is by observing strict temperance, and to moderate the heat by all possible means.

3. After heat has morbifically predisposed the body, the sudden influence of cold has the most baneful effect on the human frame.

4. The great physiological rule for preserving health in hot climates is to keep the body cool. Common sense points out the propriety of avoiding heating drinks.

5. The cold bath is death in the collapse which follows any great fatigue of body or mind.

6. Licentious indulgence is far more dangerous and destructive than in Europe.

7. A large amount of animal food, instead of giving strength, heats the blood, renders the system feverish, and consequently weakens the whole body.

8. Bread is one of the best articles of diet. Rice and split vetches are wholesome and nutritious. Vegetables are essential to good health, as carrots, turnips, onions, native greens, etc.

9. Fruit, when sound and ripe, is beneficial rather than hurtful.

10. The same amount of stimulant undiluted, is much more injurious than when mixed with water.

11. With ordinary precaution and attention to the common laws of hygiene, Europeans may live as long in the tropics as anywhere else.

Stanley’s final observation on the existence of the white race in Africa does not smack of the confidence he has thus far striven to inspire. Yet it does not suggest an impossibility, nor anything difficult to carry out, since the continent is so contiguous to Europe. He recommends a change of scene to the African denizen for at least three months in a year, because the constant high temperature assisted by the monotony and poverty of diet, is enervating and depressing. The physical system becomes debilitated by the heat, necessitating after a few years such recuperation as can be found only in temperate latitudes. Even with persons who retain health, this enervating feeling begins to dawn at the end of eighteen mouths; hence traders, missionaries, planters and agriculturists, who hope to keep up buoyancy of spirit and such a condition of body as will resist the climate through a lifetime, should seek the periodical relaxation to be found in trips to higher latitudes.

While this may not be giving his whole case away, or indeed suggesting nothing more than such change of scene as our own physicians recommend to overtaxed business men, it, nevertheless, brings up the ultimate question of natural and permanent fitness. Suppose that all fear of African climate is eliminated from the mind of the white man. Suppose it is settled that he can survive there to a good old age, by using the precautions herein laid down. Will any traveler, climatologist or ethnologist arise and tell us that the white man can escape physical degeneracy in the tropics? As his African offspring come and go for a few generations, will there not be a gradual loss of the hardihood which temperate climates encourage, and a gradual growth of that languor and effeminacy which equatorial climates engender? The presence of the white races in Africa can neither reverse the laws of their existence and growth, nor the laws which God has given to a tropical realm. Living nature, including man, is simply obedience to an environment. We agree to this in the vegetable world. The oak of our forest is the puny lichen of the arctic regions. The palm of the tropics withers before northern frost. Reverse the order, and the lichen dries up beneath a tropical sun. The oak finds nothing congenial in African soil. As to the lower animals, it is the same. Stanley found both mule and donkey power ineffective on the Congo. Livingstone’s mules were bitten by the tsetse fly on Nyassa and died a miserable death from ulcers. The horse dwindles away within the tropics. The camel fared no better than the mule with Livingstone, though the Arab may be said to have conquered the Great Sahara with it, and Col. Baker used it to overcome Nile distances which defied his boats. Even the native and trained buffalo was a failure with Livingstone when he attempted to make it a beast of burden through Nyassaland and into the Upper Congo section, notwithstanding the fact that it had been invaluable to him below the tropics, and in the form of the native ox is in daily use as a beast of burden and travel in the Kalihari regions. So take the elephant, lion, leopard, hippopotamus, alligator, soko, monkey, the birds, the fishes, and transport them north; how quickly they cease to propagate, and in the end perish! Thus far living nature seems to obey the immutable law of environment. It is equally so with the higher animal life which we find in man. The negroes, who were torn from their native soil by the cruel hand of slavery, could not be transplanted with success in latitudes remote from the tropics. It cannot yet be proved that the white races will deteriorate and grow effeminate in tropical Africa, but as to other tropical countries it is established that white energy is gradually lost in effeminacy wherever it persists in the unnatural attempt to face the eternal blaze of the equatorial sun.

It is well to study these things amid the glowing imagery of African vegetation, soil and resource, the unseemly scamper of the nations for African possessions, the enthusiasm over Christian conquest and heathen redemption. The real transforming power of the continent may not be at all in white occupancy; it cannot be, if such occupancy means white degeneracy, or such a sacrifice as the situation does not warrant. But it may lie, more wholly than any one living suspects, in the natives themselves, assisted and encouraged by the leaven of civilization, gradually introduced. They are there naturally and for a purpose. God will not alter his laws, and man cannot, brave as the latter may be, fond as he may be of possession and power, lustful as he may be of wealth, boastful as he may be of his civilization, proud as he may be of his humanitarianism, desirous as he may be to convert and Christianize. Africa means 200,000,000 of people, backed by a peculiar climate, fortified by an environment which is as old as the beginning of things. Let the civilization which is foreign to it all beware how it strikes it, lest, in the end, the effort prove a sad confession of failure. The good which is to come out of African elevation should be reciprocal. It is not good if it presupposes white occupancy followed by white degeneracy.

Centuries ago the brave, enthusiastic Saracen, propagandist of a faith, warrior for the sake of Mohammed, left his Arabian home and went forth into pagan Africa on a mission of conquest and conversion. Granting that Egypt, the Barbary States and the Oases of the Sahara are better off to-day than they were when they first caught sight of the victorious banners of the crescent, which is admitting all the truth will allow, how much superior to the chivalrous Saracen is the bigoted Mahdi, his depraved Soudan follower, or the Arab slave stealer, who is ubiquitous in east-central Africa to-day? There is a wonderful, a sad, descent from the Saracen conqueror to a benighted Mahdist. The contrast between a chief of Arabian troopers and such a chief as Tippoo Tib is enough to show degeneracy of the most ultra type. The brave, fiery Saracen, sweeping along the coasts and through the deserts, was a being infinitely superior to anything he came in contact with. His progeny, after centuries of acclimatization and intercourse with the native populations, is a lazy, inferior being, a curse to his surroundings, not half such a man as the native whom he plunders and carries off as human booty. He has failed to lift Africa to the height of a Mohammedan civilization, and has descended to a level even lower than the paganism with which he came in contact. Do not forget that in many respects he had adaptation superior to that any European or American can claim. He was contiguous to Africa. He had been reared under a burning sun. His color was dark. His heath was sandy like the sands of Egypt and Sahara. His ship was the camel which became the courser of the African wastes and by means of which he could connect the Nile bends more swiftly than we can do to-day with steamers. He had all the enthusiasm and persistency of a Christian missionary, all the ardor of an English merchant, all the vigor of a civilized pioneer, all the desire for possession of a monarchical potentate. Yet he degenerated into a thief of men and a murderer of innocence. The least respected, the crudest and most useless man on the face of the globe to-day is an Arab slave catcher. The chivalry of his fathers has no place in his bosom. The industry and the sense of beauty and refinement which the Moor carried northward into Spain were utterly lost in the swing toward the tropics. The Allah and Koran of Mecca are profane mummery in the Soudan, at Zanzibar, and on the banks of Tanganyika. It is not necessary to inquire what inherent causes helped to contribute to this deplorable result. We know that vital defects existed in the Mohammedan system, and that these defects were in part to blame. The only inquiry we make is, how much of that result was due to the African climate, the impact with tropical peoples and customs, the equatorial environment? For some cause, or better still, for all causes combined, the last end of the Arab in Africa is worse than the first.

If we study the impact on Africa of the Christian civilization of Portugal and even that of England, in its earlier stages, the result is not encouraging. The ruins of both trading and mission posts are sad witnesses of a misunderstanding of the true situation, or else monuments of a surrender to climatic difficulties which had not been anticipated. Our civilization was called off from a mad chase after the impossible, and it required years, even centuries, of consideration, before it dared a second attempt. In the meantime it learned much and in various ways. Inert, supine Portugal taught valuable lessons by her very incapacity. Patient Holland gave a valuable object lesson by peaceable conquests and her amalgamation with the South African peoples. All-conquering, commercial and Christian England afterwards came along to gather the harvests which others had sowed, yet to prove that something valuable in the shape of permanent colonization could be effected south of the tropics, and with mutual advantage. The pioneering spirit broke out as it had never done before, and out of it came lesson after lesson, of which certainly none were more valuable than those furnished by Stanley’s brave experiences.

Whatever may be the future of the white race in Africa, it is certain that, just now, no consideration of climate, distance or inaccessibility, weighs to cool the enthusiasm of Christianity as it marches to a conquest of heathenism in equatorial wilds. It is face to face with all the problems above stated and may be the means of solving many of them favorably. It deserves a better fate than any that has hitherto befallen it. But the fate of all former outbursts and experiments should prove a standing warning. Missionaries are only men. The cause of God, as well as that of commerce, agriculture, science and art, may be best subserved by using God’s natural forces and observing his immutable laws.

In a political sense, the mission of the white races in Africa has ever been a failure, and there is little transpiring at this hour, except the small beginnings of order and independence in the Congo Free State, but what is ominous of confusion and defeat. Greed for African possessions, jealousy of one another’s territorial thefts, threatened wars on account of undefined boundaries, petty usurpations of authority, these render unseemly the scramble for African acres, and bode no good to native Africans, whose allegiance is thereby rendered doubtful, whose fears are constantly at fever heat, who become as ready to train their spears and rush forth in battle array against one side or the other, as they are when their villages and gardens are invaded by neighboring tribes or marauding Arabs. They make colonization a farce, and reduce white dominancy to the level of cruel interference. The cold-blooded effrontery of this deliberate theft and partition of a continent, in a political sense, has nothing in morals to recommend it at any rate. There is nothing at the bottom of it except the aggrandizement of the Powers who commit the theft. Selfishness is the motive, however it may be glossed by the plea of a superior civilization. It regards no native rights, consults no native good, but in obedience to a spirit of tyranny and greed walks incontinently into the lands of a weak and helpless race, and appropriates them in true free-booting style, hoists its flag, and says to all comers, “Avaunt, this is mine!”

The almost hopeless entanglement of foreign Powers in Africa to-day may be seen from a glance at the following “political sections” on the west, or Atlantic coast:

Some of these claims are old, some new; some are confirmed, some vapid; some are direct political claims, some indirect, as where a protectorate only exists, and the real power is vested in a trading company, as in the British West African Company, with powers to occupy and develop the Niger country.

Passing to the east coast of Africa we find the entanglement still worse. There are pretty well defined ownerships beyond the Trans-vaal, then comes Portugal’s general claim of the Zambesi, Mozambique and Delagoa Bay, interfered with and overlapped by England and Germany. North of this, the Sultan of Zanzibar, who claimed sovereignty indefinitely north, south and west, has been cramped into a few island spaces along the coast, and graciously permitted to retain the Island of Zanzibar, because no person can live on it except Arabs and natives. Germany extends a protectorate and the country back of Zanzibar, and inland indefinitely, though England is by her side with a similar claim, and taking care that such protectorate shall be as nominal as possible and shall not interfere with her claims upon the lake sections. Italy claims all between the German possessions and Abyssinia and has even invaded that State. These claims are made under the veneering of trading companies, whose acquired rights, vague as they may be, the parent country is bound to back up. Not one of them have well defined metes and bounds for operations. All are confused and confusing, and liable to provoke misunderstanding and blood-shed at any moment, and the consequent disgrace of our boasted civilization, in the eyes of all simple minded Africans at least.

As a sample of the latest methods of land acquisition in Africa, and the consequences, one has but to study the recent bout between England and Portugal. The latter country claims the Delagoa Bay section, Mozambique and the Zambesi, indefinitely inland, and this though her rule has been limited to two or three isolated spots. On the Zambesi she established two or three trading and missionary stations which were used for a long time, but gradually fell into disuse. There is no dispute about her claims to the Zambesi section, though the Zulus south of the river do not recognize allegiance to her. The Zambesi, to a point five miles above the mouth of the Shiré, was declared a free river by the Berlin conference, so that there can be no dispute about that. So, there is no disposition to interfere with her claims to Mozambique or Delagoa, except as to their western boundary. To permit her to extend her claim to these territories westward till they met the boundaries of the Congo Free State, would be to give her possession of the Shiré River, Lake Shirwah and Lake Nyassa. Now starting at the Ruo affluent of the Shiré, England claims the entire Nyassa section, both by right of discovery – Livingstone discovered the lake – and occupation. Its non-native people are British subjects. She may not have taken the precaution to acquire rights of the natives by treaties, but neither has Portugal. Portugal never expanded, so to speak, beyond the coast on the line of the Zambesi, never did anything for the natives, and is charged with conniving with the slave trade. On the contrary, the established church of Scotland has many missionaries, teachers and agents in the Shiré Highlands. The Free Church of Scotland has several missionaries, teachers and artisans on Lake Nyassa. The Universities Mission has a steamer on the lake and several missionary agents. The African Lakes Company, chartered in England, has steamers on the Shiré river and Lake Nyassa, with twelve trading stations, manned by twenty-five agents. British capital invested in Nyassaland will equal $1,000,000. In his “Title Deeds to Nyassaland,” Rev. Horace Waller says: “Dotted here and there, from the mangrove swamps of the Kongone mouth of the Zambesi to the farthest extremity of Lake Nyassa, we pass the graves of naval officers, of brave ladies, of a missionary bishop, of clergymen, of foreign representatives, doctors, scientific men, engineers and mechanics. All these were our countrymen. They lie in glorious graves. Their careers have been foundation stones, and already the edifice rises. British mission stations are working at high pressure on the Shiré Highlands and upon the shores of Nyassa. Numbers of native Christians owe their knowledge of the common faith to their efforts. Scores of future chiefs are being instructed in schools spread over hundreds of miles. Commerce is developing by sure and steady steps. A vigorous company is showing to the tribes and nations that there are more valuable commodities in their country than their sons and daughters.”

In view of all these things, and perhaps spurred to activity by them, Portugal, following the fashion of England, organized a South African Company with the intention of consolidating her African possessions, by operating from the east coast, with a base at Delagoa Bay, Mozambique and the mouth of the Zambesi. The announcement, lately made, that Mapoonda, chief of the natives in the Shiré River District – the Shiré River flows into the Zambesi from the north, and is the outlet of Lake Nyassa – had accepted Portuguese sovereignty, was a distinctive victory for the Portuguese in their contest with the British for the control of that section of the Dark Continent. In July, 1889, Mr. H. H. Johnston, an experienced African traveller and naturalist, and British consul at Mozambique, took passage with several British naval officers on a gunboat, which went up the Chinde mouth of the Zambesi and entered the Shiré river. At a point 100 miles north of its mouth, where the Ruo enters the Shiré, Consul Johnston on the 12th of August “performed the significant act of hoisting the British flag at the Ruo station, henceforth marking the limit of Portuguese authority.” This was intended to close Portugal out of Lake Nyassa, the extreme southern point of which is 150 miles north of Ruo. By securing Mapoonda, however, Portugal took actual possession of the territory immediately to the south of Lake Nyassa. The English expedition in going up the river passed Major Serpa Pinto, the Portuguese leader, with a force of about 700 Zulus under his command. Serpa Pinto was on his way to take possession of Nyassaland. Consul Johnston protested, and assured him that, if he persisted in his purpose, he would bring about a rupture between Portugal and England. Serpa Pinto finally promised to turn back, but as soon as Consul Johnston had moved forward the Portuguese commander resumed his march to Lake Nyassa, and when he reached Mapoonda, which commands the southern entrance to the lake, threw up fortifications there and began preparations for a battle with the neighboring Makololo, in which the latter were routed with great slaughter. This battle appears to have been decisive, and to have led the native chiefs to transfer their nominal allegiance from the British to the Portuguese with alarming rapidity. By securing Mapoonda as an ally, the Portuguese cut off England’s communications with Lake Nyassa via the Zambesi and Shiré rivers, and precipitated the crisis which was threatened by the recent Portuguese proclamation which assumed to annex the whole Zambesi region.

This controversy which has already ended in the defeat of Portuguese designs, and which could have ended in no other way, because England is the stronger and more rapacious power, brings into play all the old arguments respecting colonial ambitions and enterprises. It will be remembered that for nearly two hundred years after the discovery of America, the European powers were a unit over the doctrine that first discovery gave a title to the discoverer. But when Great Britain awoke to the fact that this doctrine, if rigidly applied, would virtually dispossess her of American soil, notwithstanding the additional fact that she was proving to be the best permanent colonizer in Europe, she originated the new doctrine that actual possession of and settlement in a newly discovered country created a higher title than that of first discovery. This was a safe doctrine to adopt respecting America, for even then the English grip was now so strong as to be unshakable, and it was equally safe as to any other British claim, for the ocean supremacy of France, Spain and Portugal, her real rivals, was on the wane and hers was on the increase.

So now, notwithstanding the claim of Portugal to her territory on both the African coasts, by right of discovery, England does not hesitate to enter the Nyassa and Shiré region, hoist her flag and claim the rights of sovereignty, on the ground that she is the first permanent occupant. The fact that she has tangible interests to protect – invested property, missions etc., serves to strengthen her attitude with other European powers. But aside from this she does not intend to let Portugal establish a permanent possession clear across Africa from the Atlantic, at Angola and Benguella, to the mouth of the Zambesi. Such a possession would simply cut the continent in two, and erect a barrier on the east coast to that union of the British African possessions which her foreign diplomacy designs. Moreover, it is fully settled in the mind of Great Britain that the Nile water-way and its extensions through Lakes Albert and Edward Nyanza, Tanganyika, Nyassa, and the Shiré and Zambesi rivers, are hers, even if force has to be applied to make them actually hers.