Henry Stanley
Harpers Monthly/March, 1893
“It is desirable that accurate information on the enormities of the slave trade should be spread at home and abroad, and that to slave-holding states all evidence proving the superior advantages of free labor should be freely supplied,” was a sentiment uttered by his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales at the jubilee meeting of the Antislavery Society. His vast and influential audience cordially responded to it.
It seems to mc that the same sentiment should also be published for the benefit of all those in America or England who are or may become interested in the welfare and progress of the negro races, and of their advancement towards civilization. With that view, I shall endeavor in this article to lay before you the present actual condition of Africa in respect to slavery, the slave trade, and slave-raiding, and the efforts which are being made to remedy their destructive effects and to extirpate the causes by opening the continent to the influences of legitimate trade.
The maritime exploration of the African coasts by the Portuguese navigators in the fifteenth century was the direct cause of the inception of the traffic in negroes.
From the year when Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope (1497), to the year 1807, when the British government prohibited the exportation of slaves over the high seas, is a period of 310 years. During all this time Africa was surrendered to the cruelty of the slave-hunter and the avarice of the slave-trader. While its people were thus subject to capture and expatriation, it was clearly impossible that any intellectual or moral progress could be made by them. The greater number of those accessible from the coast were compelled to study the best methods of avoiding the slaver and escaping his force and his wiles; the rest only thought of the arts of kidnapping their innocent and unsuspecting fellow-creatures. Yet, ridiculous as it may appear to us, there were not wanting zealous men who devoted themselves to Christianizing the savages who were moved by such an opposite spirit. In Angola, Congo, and Mozambique, and far up the Zambezi, missionaries erected churches and cathedrals; bishops and priests were appointed, who converted and baptized, while at the mouths of the Niger, the Congo, and the Zambezi their countrymen built slave-barracoons and anchored their murderous slave-ships. European governments legalized and sanctioned the slave trade, the public conscience of the period approved it, the mitred heads of the Church blessed the slave gangs as they marched to the shore, and the tax-collector received the levy per head as lawful revenue.
But here and there during these guilty centuries words of warning are not wanting. Queen Elizabeth, upon being informed of the forcible capture of Africans for the purposes of sale, exclaims solemnly that “such actions are detestable, and will call down vengeance on the perpetrators.” When Las Casas, in his anxiety to save his Indians, suggests that Africans be substituted for them, the Pope, LeoX, declares that “not only the Christian religion but Nature herself cried out against such a course.”
One hundred and sixty-five years after the discovery of the Cape, Sir John Hawkins pioneers the way for England to participate in the slave trade, hitherto carried on by the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the Dutch.
A century later a king of England, Charles II, heads an English company which undertakes to supply the British West Indies yearly with 30,000 negroes.
After the Asiento Contract, under which for thirty years England secured the monopoly of supplying the Spanish West Indies with slaves, as many as 192 ships were engaged every year in the transportation of slaves from the African coast. The countries which suffered most from the superior British method of slave capturing and trading and slave-carrying were Congo land, the Niger Valley, the Guinea and Gold coasts, the Gambia, Cross, and Calabar lands.
The system adopted by the British crews in those days was very similar to that employed by the Arabs today in inner Africa. They landed at night, surrounded the selected village, and then set fire to the huts, and as the frightened people issued out of the burning houses, they were seized and carried to the ships; or sometimes the skipper, in his hurry for sea, sent his crew to range through the town he was trading with, and, regardless of rank, to seize upon every man, woman, and child they met. Old Town, Creek Town, and Duke Town, in Old Calabar, have often witnessed this summary and high-handed proceeding.
Boswell, the biographer of Dr. Johnson, called the slave trade “an important and necessary branch of commerce’”; and probably the largest section of the British public, before those antislavery champions Clarkson and Wilberforce succeeded in persuading their countrymen to reflect a little, shared Boswell’s views, as well as his surprise and indignation, when it became known that there were English people who talked of suppressing it.
That the slave trade must have been a lucrative commerce there can be no doubt, when we consider that from 1777 to 1807 upwards of 3,000,000 Africans had been sold in the West Indies. All those forts which may be seen lining the west coast of Africa today were constructed principally by means of the revenue derived from the slave tax.
In 1833 slavery was abolished throughout the British dominions, and the government agreed to pay the slave-owners of the West Indies £20,000,000 redemption money for 1,000,000 of slaves. On the 1st of August, 1834, the famous Act of Emancipation came into operation. Ten years later, the abolition of the legal status of slavery in India freed 9,000,000 of slaves. Then, little by little, the nations implicated in slavery gravitated to the side of the emancipators. In 1846 the Bey of Tunis, through British influence, decreed that all slaves touching his territory should become free. The French Republic in 1848 declared by a brief act that no more slaves should be admitted into French territory. In 1861 the autocrat of Russia decreed the emancipation of 20,000,000 serfs. The history of the great struggle in the United States is too recent for it to be forgotten that it occasioned the proclamation of freedom on January 1,1863, by which 6,000,000 of slaves were admitted to the rights of freemen. Finally, and only four years ago, Brazil, after long and laborious efforts of her most enlightened men, heard that the law of abolition of slavery had passed through her Senate—and thus the cruel and inhuman system of man holding fellow-man as a chattel and barterable property was extinguished throughout all America.
It therefore required eighty-two years to extirpate slavery within lands professing to be civilized. Africa in the mean time was not neglected. Her burdens and pains were gradually but surely being reduced. The cruising squadrons sailing up and down the eastern and western coasts made it extremely difficult for slave-ships to break through the close blockade, and after the introduction of steam it was rendered impossible. Education had also greatly spread, and it became a universal conviction that slave-trading was as wicked as piracy.
Now let us see what has already been done, or may in the near future be done, in Africa, which has been during historic time the nursery of slaves. I have before me an autograph letter of Dr. David Livingstone, written in 1872, wherein he concludes a long exposé of the evils of the slave trade which he had met in his travels thus: “The west coast slave trade is finished, but it is confidently hoped, now that you have got rid of the incubus of slavery [in America], the present holders of office will do what they can to suppress the infamous breaches of the common law of mankind that still darken this eastern coast, and all I can add in my loneliness is, may Heaven’s rich blessings descend on whoever lends a helping hand!”
It was this and other letters from Livingstone which provoked that earnest attention to Africa which I feel convinced will not abate until it will be as impossible to kidnap a slave there as in England. The traveler’s death, which occurred a few months later, stirred his countrymen into action. At a great meeting held at the Mansion House the necessity for vigorously grappling with the slave trade on the east coast was unmistakably expressed. It resulted in Sir Bartle Frere being sent to Zanzibar to engage the Sultan’s co-operation. For that prince derived a considerable revenue from the duty on imported slaves; his subjects were the people against whom Livingstone had written those terrible indictments; the British Indian merchants residing in his capital furnished the means whereby the Arabs were equipped for their marauding expeditions. But with all Sir Bartle’s tact, discretion, and proverbial suavity, the mission entrusted to him narrowly approached failure. Fortunately, in Dr. (now Sir) John Kirk, the consul-general, the British government possessed an official of rare ability, and who from long acquaintance with the Sultan knew him thoroughly. Through his assistance, and the opportune appearance of Admiral Gumming with a powerful fleet, a treaty was finally concluded, and the Zanzibar prince was enlisted on the side of the antislavery cause.
Those, however, who expected too much from the treaty were greatly disappointed when, a few months later, reports reached England that the slave trade was as flourishing as ever. No suspicion was entertained of the sincerity of the Zanzibar prince, for upon every occasion involving the punishment of the slavers he proved his honesty by permitting the law, without protest, to be applied. The objects of the treaty were being, however, evaded by the enterprising Arabs on the mainland, who marched their caravans northward along the coast to points whence at favorable opportunities they could ship their captives to ports in southern Arabia or in the Egyptian protectorate.
To counteract these new proceedings of the Arabs, another large meeting “was convened at Stafford House in May, 1874, for the consideration of other means of suppression of the trade. I suggested at that meeting that commissioners should be appointed at various ports along the coast whose duty it would be to keep a record of the number of persons attached to all caravans bound for the interior, as well as of the material of their equipment; that each caravan leader, before receiving permission to set out, should be compelled to bind himself not to engage in the slave trade, and that such leader on returning to the coast should, upon being convicted of having evaded or broken his obligations, forfeit his bond and be fined $5000; that each captain of a slave-vessel, upon conviction that he was engaged in the transport of slaves, should receive capital punishment; that trading depots should be established on Lakes Nyassa and Tanganika to encourage legitimate commerce in the natural products of the interior; and that the lake coasts should be patrolled by flotillas of steam-launches. The above were the main features of a plan which I still believe would have been adequate in meeting the wishes of the principal speakers in that assembly. Those who know what has since been done by the imperial German government along that same coast and on the lakes will perceive how closely the suggestions are paralleled today by the actions of the German commissioners and the trading depots on the lakes belonging to the African Lakes Company. No caravan is permitted to leave without search; gunpowder and arms are confiscated; slave-traders are tried, and hanged after conviction (the chief judge on the German coast lately sentenced seventeen Arabs to be hanged at Lindi). The trading depots of the African Lakes Company are pre-eminently successful in subserving the antislavery cause by suppressing the odious trade in slaves. Had the British done then what is being done now, no other power could have usurped her rights in the immense territory lately abandoned to the Germans.
The history of events at Zanzibar for some years following consists principally of relations of capture of slave – dhows and the confiscation of the vessels, the visit of the Zanzibar prince to England, the appointment of a number of viceconsuls to the principal ports along the coast, the departures of explorers for inner Africa, the gradual but steady increase of missionaries in the interior, and the establishment of Christian missions at Usambara, Mombasa, and Nyassa.
Meanwhile the Arabs in the far interior had discovered a new field for bolder operations in a country west of Lake Tanganika, called Manyuema, and the enormous forested area adjoining it to the north, which has lately been discovered to be about 400,000 square miles in extent. Nyangwe, the principal town of Manyuema, is situated but a few miles south of the vast forest, on the right bank of the Lualaba. It was the furthest point of Livingstone’s explorations. Manyuema is surpassingly beautiful, the soil is exceedingly fertile, and the people, though troubled by tribal feuds, are industrious cultivators. By the time Livingstone had penetrated the country the Arabs had assumed lordship over it, and each chief was compelled to pay tribute to them in ivory. The Arabs not only monopolized the ivory, but the fear of them was so great among the Manyuema that, to protect themselves from too many masters, they elected to serve some one powerful Arab, to whom they surrendered themselves, their liberties, as well as their properties of all kinds. In a few years Manyuema was emptied of its elephant teeth. The Arabs then began to extend their operations into the forest, suffering many a disaster and mishap as they advanced. But continuous practice enabled them in the end to thwart the craft of the forest natives, and to acquire that experience by which eventually they easily became masters of every country they entered. The success attending the ventures of such men as Dugumbi, Mtagamoyo, Mohammed bin-Nasur, and Abed-bin-Salim, and scores of lesser leaders, increased the avarice and excited the ardor of younger and more daring spirits. An apprenticeship with men who had grown gray in the arts of slave-catching and ivory-raiding had taught them that it was a waste of time to pretend to barter cloth and beads as practiced in lands east of Lake Tanganika, They had realized how complete was the isolation of the forest aborigines, how the little settlements buried in the recesses of the forest were too weak to resist their trained battalions, and how the natives shrank from facing the muzzles of their thundering- guns, and how they might range at will and pillage to their heart’s content through an unlimited area without let or hindrance.
Having become experts in the science of tracking, ambuscades, and surprises, they became anxious to win fame and fortune after a manner never dreamed of by the earlier traders. The verb “to buy” was to be banished from the vernacular. All that was bestial and savage in the human heart was given fullest scope, unchecked and unreproved. Hence followed the most frightful barbarities and massacres, which spared no age and regarded no sex; fire, spear, arrow, and iron bullet preluded furious loot and pitiless seizure.
Among the earliest to put into practice the terrible knowledge they had gained during their tentative incursions into the forest were Abed-bin-Salim, Tippu Tib, Sayid-bin-Habib, Muini Muliala Rashid (the nephew of Tippu), Nasur-bin-Suliman, and others. Abed-bin-Salim’s case is typical. Among the young Swahili who followed his fortunes were four youthful squires. or apprentices, named Karema, Kiburuga, Kilonga-Longa, and Kibonge. The last of these has given his name to an important Arab station just above Stanley Falls; the other three have since become famous among the central African rapparees and slave thieves. The names under which they have severally become notorious, and for which they exchanged those derived from their parents, are synonymes given by the bush natives for rapine, lust, murder, arson.
In 1878 Abed-bin-Salim dispatched coastward a caravan consisting of Manyuema slaves bearing 350 tusks. At Zanzibar the ivory was sold and the proceeds invested in double-barrelled guns, Minie rifles, and carbines, gunpowder, percussion-caps, buckshot, and bar lead. Within twenty months the new weapons and war munitions reached Nyangwe. Kibonge soon after was sent by his master Abed down the Lualaba as supercargo and storekeeper at a station to be strategically chosen, and his three confederates became leaders of three divisions of booty-gatherers, and to draw all slaves, ivory, and flocks of goats into the slavehold of Kibongé. A native village near the confluence of the Leopold with the Lualaba River was taken, and without loss of time was palisaded as a measure of security. Canoe after canoe was added to their flotilla, in order that detachments might make simultaneous attacks at various points along the Leopold, Lufu, Lowwa, Lira, and Ulindi rivers.
Ivory was the first object of the raiders, women the second, children the third. Ivory was now rapidly rising in value, for the slaughter of fifty thousand elephants in a year makes it scarce. In this region, hitherto unexploited, it was abundant. The natives frequently used it to chop wood upon, or to rest their idols while shaping them with the adze. Being so heavy, two tusks were used to keep their bedding of phrynia leaves from being scattered. They made ivory into pestles to pound their corn, or they stood the tusks on end round their idols, or employed them as seats for their elders in the council-house. Women were needed as wives and servants for the marauders; the little girls could be trained to housework, and bide the growth of the little boys, with whom eventually they would wive, and who in the meantime would be useful as field hands or for domestic duties.
In a village there would probably be found, on an average, ten tusks, good, bad, and indifferent, thirty full-grown women, and fifty children above five years old, besides a few infants. At the first alarm, a scream from a child or a woman, the warriors and their families dash frantically and pell-mell out of their huts. Then from the ambuscade a volley is fired, and a score fall dead or wounded to the ground, whereat the unseen foes leap out of their coverts to dispatch the struggling and groaning victims with knife and spear, and some make mad rushes at a group of terrified children; others dart for a likely-looking woman; a few leap in pursuit of a girl who is flying naked from the scene; some chase a lad who bounds like an antelope over the obstructions. Those not engaged in the fierce chase enter the village and collect to argue over the rights to this or that child. When four or five hundred men rise upon a village whose inhabitants are numerically inferior to them, the event is followed by much fierce discussion of the kind which is not always amicably or easily settled, even when the matter is submitted to the arbitration of the leaders. The rest of the band scatter wildly through the village, and begin collecting the frightened fowls and the bleating goats, rummaging roofs, insides of gourds, and every imaginable place where a poor savage might be likely to hide his little stock of curios and valuables; others manacle the captives and question them harshly about their neighbors, or indulge in barbarous fun with some decrepit whitehead. When the results of these pillaging expeditions became known in Nyangwe, and the laden canoes disembarked their ivory, slaves, and fat goats of the famous forest breed, it kindled the envy and cupidity of even Tippu Tib and Sayid-bin Habib.
Up to 1876, Tippu Tib had been the acknowledged leader of the slavers, on account of his marvelous success. His career had been romantic. From a poor coast slaver, involved in debt to the usurers and money-lenders of Zanzibar, he had grown wealthy and famous. By the storming and capture of Nsama’s stronghold (May, 1867) he had become possessed of a fortune in ivory and slaves. He had relieved himself as soon as possible of his embarrassing store by sending his brother Mohammed in charge of his plunder to Unyanyembée, and, with five hundred guns, continued a triumphant and unchecked course from the south of Tanganika, through the heart of Hua, to Nyangwe. As he marched, he ravaged to the right and left of his route, gathered ivory, and made slaves by hundreds. Not far from a district called Mtotila he learned from a captive that the king had disappeared mysteriously many years before, and that though frequent search had been made for him, nothing was known of his whereabouts. Tippu Tib artfully conceived the plan of representing himself as his son, and accordingly schooled himself in all the local knowledge necessary for the deception he intended to practise. By the time he approached Mtotila, Tippu Tib could rehearse the long line of the king’s ancestry, the names of his living relatives, and the elders of the land, and was familiar with the events, traditions, and customs of Mtotila. He dispatched messengers into the country to announce his arrival, and to tell the wondering people the news of his father’s fate, and of his intention to assume his father’s rights. The people accepted the story without difficulty, as it harmonized so well with their own conceptions and expectations. The elders were deputed to go and meet their prince. They brought rich presents of ivory and abundance of food, and offered to escort him with honor to his father’s land, which Tippu Tib courteously accepted. At every stage of his journey he was welcomed and feasted. On reaching the town of Mtotila he received the chiefs and elders in a grand barzali, at which he told the story of his father’s disappearance, with a wealth of fictitious details of love and marriage with a king’s daughter, of honors showered upon his father, and of the reluctance to his departure which the natives manifested; of his own birth and life; of his recollections of his father’s conversations with him respecting Mtotila country, his relatives, and local events — until all were thoroughly persuaded that this able and affable stranger was no other than their lost king’s son. He was at once formally accepted and installed as their king; and to ingratiate himself still more, he distributed liberal largess of showy beads and copper and brass trinkets. Before many days had passed the people of Mtotila understood that ivory was very acceptable to their king, and as the article was abundant, and of little value to them, the entire country was ransacked for it, and heaps of it were daily laid before him, until his store of ivory became prodigious. Breaches of the peace between his subjects were compounded by payment in ivory; his favors were sold for ivory; in every imaginable way he augmented his treasure. Finally, when he had depleted Mtotila of elephants’ teeth, he sought occasion to embroil Mtotila with the surrounding countries, and his myrmidons were dispatched with the native forces to despoil them. Within fifteen months he had gathered nine hundred tusks. He proposed now to the Mtotilas that they should muster carriers to convey his treasure to Kasongo, another country which, according to his reports, he owned, where he had great houses and great estates. In this manner he succeeded in obtaining vast wealth, and the Arabs of the Manyuema settlements, when they viewed his vast store of ivory and innumerable retinue, hailed him as a genius, and recognized his superiority.
The general admiration which had been excited by his genius had greatly subsided by the time I reached Nyangwé in 1876. He was then induced to escort my trans-African expedition a few marches north of Nyangwé, and on his return he undertook the transport of his immense collections of ivory to Zanzibar, where it is said that he realized the large sum of £30,000 by its sale. Out of these lucrative returns he was able to pay the usurers of Zanzibar the advances of money he had received, with the heavy interest accruing, and with the residue he equipped his large force with the best weapons procurable. In 1881 he was back again in Manyuema, and witnessed with his own eyes the disembarkation of the ivory and slaves obtained by Abed-biu-Salim’s agents. Fired at the sight, he lost no time in making his preparations for a second great campaign, which should excel in results his own previous exploits and surpass Abed’s successes.
He divided his forces into two divisions. The land force he dispatched under his nephew Rashid to the Lutnami; the flotilla descending the Lualaba he led himself, assisted by his brother and son. The vessels were navigated by the Wenya fishermen, whom during his long residence in Manyuema he had protected and propitiated. These people numbered several thousands, and were scattered along the left bank of the river from the confluence of the Luama to Stanley Falls. The cataracts were therefore no interruption to Tippu Tib’s progress or his projects. On a large island just above the lowest of the Stanley Falls, called Wané Sironga (Sons of Sironga), Tippu halted and established his headquarters, whence he was to operate on the left bank as far as the Lumami in conjunction with his nephew Rashid. But for some months before his arrival Abed-bin-Salim’s agents had extended their depredations below the Falls along the right bank, leaving a broad desolate track as a witness of their crimes.
It may be true that the development of a country can only take place after a drastic purgation of some sort, but it is also true, fortunately, that there always is some cause to arrest total ruin. In this instance the Arabs themselves had aided the cause. The enslaving bands which escorted me from Nyangwée consisted of trained and educated boy slaves from Manyuema and Unyamuezi and Zanzibar. Many a trusted slave was in the ranks of the expedition which descended the Lualaba to the Atlantic, through whose means a watery highway into the heart of the continent was discovered, and by whom the course of the westward-rolling waves of fire and slaughter was destined to be arrested.
Seven years after we had parted from Tippu Tib in 1876 a small flotilla of steamers was advancing towards Stanley Falls, which was barely sixty miles off, and this is what we saw, as entered in a journal at the time:
“Surely there had been a great change. As we moved slowly up the stream, a singular scene attracted our gaze. This was two or three long canoes standing on their ends, like split hollow columns, upright on the verge of the bank. What freak was this, and what did it signify? To have tilted and raised such weights argued numbers and union. It could never have been the work of a herd of chattering savages. They are Arabs who have performed this feat of strength, and these upright columnar canoes betray the advent of the slave-traders in the region below the Falls. We learned later that on this now desolate spot once stood the town of Yomburri.”
A few miles higher on the same bank we came abreast of another scene of desolation, where a whole town had been burnt, the palm-trees cut down, the bananas scorched, and many acres of them laid level with the ground, and the freak of standing canoes on end repeated.
“We continued on our journey, advancing as rapidly as our steamers could breast the stream. Every three or four miles we came in view of the black traces of the destroyers. The charred stakes, poles of once populous settlements, scorched banana groves, and prostrate palms, all betokened ruthless ruin.
“On the morning of the 27th November (1883) we detected some object of a slaty color floating down stream. The man in the bow turned it over with a boat-hook. We were shocked to discover the bodies of two women bound together with cord.
“A little later we came in sight of the Arab camp, and discovered that this horde of banditti—for in reality they were nothing else—was under the leadership of several chiefs, but principally under Karema and Kiburuga. They had started sixteen months previously from Wane Kirundu, about thirty miles below Vinya Njara. For eleven months the band had been raiding successfully between the Congo and Lubiranzi. They had then undertaken to perform the same cruel work between the Aruwimi and the Falls. On looking at my map I find that the area of such a territory as described above would measure 16,200 square geographical miles on the left of the Lualaba, and 10,500 square geographical miles on the right of it, the total of which would be equal in statute mileage to 34,570 miles, an area a little larger than the whole of Ireland, and which, according to a rough estimate, was inhabited by about one million people.
“The slave-traders admit they have only 2300 captives in their fold. The banks of the river prove that 118 villages and 43 tribal districts have been devastated, out of which they have only this scant profit of 2300 females and children and about 2000 tusks of ivory. Given that these 118 villages contained only 118,000 people, we have only a profit of two per cent; and by the time all these captives have been subjected to the accidents of the long river voyage before them, of camp life and its harsh miseries, to the havoc of smallpox, and the pests which misery breeds, there will only remain a scant one per cent, upon the bloody ventures.”
If the pitiless course of the slave-hunters were not soon checked, it was easy to perceive that the main Congo, with its 2000 miles of shores, would have soon become a prey to these marauders, that in a little while the scope and incentives to daring enterprise held out by the defenceless river-banks would have emptied Manyuema and Ujiji and Unyanyembe, to extend devastation as far as Stanley Pool, and that the great tributaries, with their 14,000 miles of shores, would have been next visited, until the best portions of Africa would have been depopulated. The Arabs were not pursuing any fixed scheme, but pushed forward according to their means, and would continue to do so in increasing numbers until they met a barrier of some kind. The barrier fortunately had advanced to meet them, and was to be established at Stanley Falls, 1400 miles from the Atlantic. Along the course of the noble river were a series of military stations, which, with the aid of the steamers, could furnish a very strong defensive force. As, however, the stations were but newly planted, and the natives as yet were not familiar with their purposes, time was needed for their education and the consolidation of the infant state.
On February 25. 1885, the powers of Europe and America gave their cordial recognition to the Congo Free State, and sanctioned the employment of all civilized means for the preservation of order, the introduction of civilization and lawful commerce, for the guarantees of the safety of its people and efficient administration. It was markedly stipulated that the new state should watch over the preservation of the native races and the moral and material conditions of their existence, should suppress slavery, and, above all, the slave trade, and punish those engaged in it; that it should protect and encourage without distinction of nationality or creed all institutions and enterprises, religious, scientific, or charitable, organized for this object.
In time to come the regenerated peoples of central Africa will point to the acts of the Berlin Conference as their charters of freedom from the civilized world. For not only did this world-wide recognition hearten the sovereign of the new state and founder of the association which fathered it to continue his benevolent work, but the principles formulated during the sitting of the Conference suggested to ambitious powers the possibilities of immediate expansion of territory, after the example of King Leopold II. The exigencies of diplomacy, even during the Conference, had forced the powers to recognize immense concessions of territory to France and Portugal, so that without the expenditure of a copper French Gaboon was extended to the Congo, and Portuguese Angola was amplified northward until its shores faced the only sea-port of the young state. These political distributions disposed of over one million and a half square miles of African territory.
In February, 1885, when the fate of this section of Africa was being decided by Europe and America in Berlin, there were only three steam-launches and three steel row-boats on the waters of the upper Congo. They had been conveyed in pieces of sixty pounds weight, or hauled on wagons past the cataracts after an enormous expenditure of money and labor. But now that the new state was fairly launched into existence, it was necessary to increase the flotilla, and provide means commensurate with the long list of duties which it had accepted. The revenue which hitherto had solely been the bounty of King Leopold was increased by an export tax on the commercial shipments from the Congo. King Leopold also guaranteed the continuation of his bounty to the year 1900 of £40,000 annually. Belgium granted the annual subsidy of £80,000. From all sources there was an assured revenue of about £150,000. The government, mission societies, and mercantile companies hastened to provide means for the utilization of the long stretches of navigable water above the cataracts. Steamer after steamer, boat after boat, have been sent up, until now on the waters of the upper river there are over thirty steamers and forty steel boats. The banks of the main river are now free from danger of invasion, even were all the numerous bands and slavers south of the equator united in array against the state.
The banks of the great tributaries, Aruwimi, Welle-Mobangi, Lumami, and Kassai, are equally protected against the incursions of the destroying bands. But though the efforts of the young state, after straining its resources to the utmost, have been marked by signal and unexpected success, a great deal more has to be accomplished before it can proclaim that the slave hunts and ivory raids have altogether ceased.
Wheresoever exploration has revealed a slave-hunter’s route, wherever the pioneer has indicated the objective of the raider, wherever it has been supposed danger might arise from northern or eastern Arab, the state has done its best to put a barrier in the shape of a military station; but there is an extent of country 500 miles in length between the sources of the Aruwimi and the Lukuga affluent, and an area of 200,000 square miles, wholly at the mercy of the Arabs of the east coast, and southwestern Tanganika and Rua are not yet under surveillance.
Meantime every event that is occurring in that part of Africa tends to the early extirpation of slave hunting and trading.
Close upon this progressive and silent governmental opposition to barbarism another important and valuable element comes into operation. I mean the influence of Christianity, as efficacious and necessary in its way as the other. There are now Roman Catholic missions at Boma, Kwamouth, New Antwerp in the Bangala country, and New Bruges at the confluence of the Kwango and Kassai, and at New Ghent nearly opposite Bangala. The English Baptists are stationed at Ngombe, Ntundwa, Kinshassa, Lukolela, Bolobo, Lutete’s, Lukungu, Bangala. and Upoto, and the Congo Bololo Mission is at Molongo. The American Baptist Missionary Union have their establishments at Palaballa, Banza Manteka, Lukungu, Leopoldville, Chumbiri, Mossembo, Irebu, and Equatorville; Bishop Taylor’s mission is represented by missions at Vivi, Ntombe, and Kimpoko, and the Evangelical Alliance at Ngangelo. while the Swedes are at Mukinbungu. These twenty-eight mission stations represent about a hundred Roman Catholic priests and Protestant clergy, who have volunteered in the good work of Christianizing the natives and improving their moral conditions. In 1887 I saw indisputable proofs of the value of their instruction and example. As a late report from the Congo states, “slowly but surely the negro is being transformed; his intellectual horizon is becoming enlarged, his feelings are being refined.” Many natives now volunteer as readily as the Zanzibari for service at remote ports for a term of years. They are to be found in military uniform in the seaport of Banana, as well as at the most northern line of the state, waiting in little fortlets for opportunities to prove their mettle against roving Mahdists. Their children attend the mission schools, and are proving their aptitude in acquiring elementary education, and in workmanly skill in various trades. While parents may still fondly remember many an atrocious feast, their sons affect the manners and customs of civilized men, and become attached to honorable and useful employments, as mechanics, warehousemen, clerks, postmen, brick-makers, boatbuilders, navvies, etc.
A wonderfully encouraging evidence to my mind that the labor and thoughtfulness of good men in behalf of Africa are not in vain may be found in the vast army of carriers now employed in the transport of European goods to Stanley Pool, past the cataract region. Ocean steamers ascend the lower Congo for over a hundred miles, and discharge their miscellaneous cargoes at Mataddi. The loads for transport overland are of sixty and seventy pounds weight. As they are discharged by the ships, they are stacked in warehouses until the human burden-bearers demand their freight. These apply in companies from ten to two hundred strong, under their respective headmen. The price for carrying a man’s load from Mataddi to the Pool is a sovereign’s worth of barter stuffs, according to each carrier’s personal selection. The distance of portage between the two points is about 230 miles, and is performed in between fifteen and twenty days. Though a trying work for natives unaccustomed to it, the Bakongo, who have been carriers for generations, handle their burdens with ease.
In 1884, when I left the Congo, the total number of carriers thus employed did not exceed 300. But such has been the rapid progress of events, and the favor with which the carrier profession has been regarded by the natives, that the total number of carriers furnished by an area of not more than 30,000 square miles is now about 75.000. Yet this immense army is wholly insufficient to transport the vast quantity of material discharged every month from the ships.
It was calculated by the promoters of the Congo Railway now in process of construction that one train a week would be sufficient for some years for the necessities of the upper Congo, but the crowded magazines of Mataddi and the increasing demands for transport prove that a daily train will scarcely suffice. I have lately received a large supply of photographs of the railway cuttings and bridge-work, and one glance at them shows the serious nature of the undertaking. The engineers are still engaged in the rocky defiles, slowly laboring up the slopes to gain the altitude of the ancient plateau. Fifteen miles of the track, I have been told, are in running order, and the embankments extend for twenty-five miles further. When the rails have been laid thus far, the progress will be much more rapid, and the engineers will be able to state with precision how long a time must elapse before its completion. It is scarcely necessary to add that the arrival of the railway at Stanley Pool will insure the salvation of two-thirds of the Congo basin. After that, attention will have to be drawn to Stanley Falls, 1100 miles higher, and a railway of thirty-two miles in length will enable us to pass the series of cataracts in that region, and to command the river for about 1700 miles of its course.
We must not omit to mention, that while Livingstone was making his terrible disclosures respecting the havoc wrought by the slave-trader in east central Africa, Sir Samuel Baker was striving to effect in north central Africa what has been so successfully accomplished in the Congo State. During his expedition for the discovery of the Albert Nyanza, his explorations led him through one of the principal man-hunting regions, wherein murder and spoliation were the constant occupations of powerful bands from Egypt and Nubia. These revelations were followed by diplomatic pressure upon the Khedive Ismail, and through the personal influence of an august personage lie was finally induced to delegate to Sir Samuel the task of arresting the destructive careers of the slavers in the region of the upper Nile. In his book Ismailia we have the record of his operations by himself. The firman issued to him was to the effect that he “was to subdue to the Khedive’s authority the countries to the south of Goudokoro, to suppress the slave trade, to introduce a system of regular commerce, to open to navigation the great lakes of the equator, and to establish a chain of military stations and commercial depots throughout central Africa.” This mission began in 1869, and continued until 1874.
On Baker’s retirement from the command of the equatorial Soudan the work was entrusted to Colonel C. G. Gordon—commonly known as Chinese Gordon. Where Baker had broken ground, Gordon was to build; what his predecessor had commenced, Gordon was to perfect and to complete. If energy, determination, and self-sacrifice received their due, then had Gordon surely won for the Soudan that peace and security which it was his dear object to obtain for it. But slaving was an old institution in this part of the world. Every habit and custom of the people had some connection with it. They had always been divided from prehistoric time into enslavers and enslaved. How could two Englishmen, accompanied by only a handful of officers, removed 2000 miles from their base of supplies, change the nature of a race within a few years? Though much wrong had been avenged, many thousands of slaves released, many a slaver’s camp scattered, and many striking examples made to terrify the evil-doers, the region was wide and long; and though within reach of the Nile waters there was a faint promise of improvement, elsewhere, at Kordofan, Darfoor, and Sennaar, the trade flourished. After three years of wonderful work, Gordon resigned. A short time afterwards, however, he resumed his task, with the powers of a dictator, over a region covering 1,100,000 square miles. But the personal courage, energy, and devotion of one man opposed to a race can effect but little. His peculiar qualities shone forth conspicuously. He underwent the same trials as formerly. He signalized his detestation of the slavers by severe punishments, by summary dismissals of implicated pashas and mudirs, by disbandment of the suspected soldiery; but the land still suffered from waste, the roads in the interior were still being strewn with bones, and after another period of three years he again resigned.
Then followed a revulsion. The Khedivial government reverted to the old order of things, Gordon’s decrees were rescinded, the dismissed officers were reinstated, venality and oppression and demoralization displaced justice and equity and righteousness, until the sum of the enormities was so great that it provoked the great revolution in the Soudan. Then ended the attempt to suppress slavery in north central Africa. All traces of the work of Baker and Gordon have long ago been completely obliterated.
Attention has been given of late to Morocco. This near neighbor of England is just twenty years behind Zanzibar. The sentiments which the English people expressed at the Mansion House and Stafford House in regard to the slave trade at Zanzibar in 1873-4 are remarkably like those which are uttered today respecting Morocco. But it will require something more than diplomatic missions to the court of the Sultan to suppress the Moorish slave trade. Sir John D. Hay, who during his long stay in that country won the titles of the “Mussulman’s Friend” and “Counsellor of the Throne,” was accustomed to make periodical journeys to the Moorish court, and the Sultan used to meet his representations with promises of reform and amendment, but as soon as he set out on his return to Tangier, the native officials would set themselves to undo the good caused by Sir John’s visit. Sir William Kirby Green, his successor, was also successful in eliciting assurances that the trade would be stopped, and now Sir Charles Euan-Smith lately paid a visit, but unfortunately the results have been nil. It is doubtful whether England alone can induce the Sultan and his ministers to press the needed reforms in the face of national opposition, or that anything less than the concerted action of England, France, Germany, and Spain can succeed. A demonstration by England alone, without the cordial assent of the other powers, would doubtless be regarded as a step towards annexation rather than expression of the hostility of the British nation to the slave trade. But meantime the importation of negroes from the Nigritian basin and southwestern Soudan into the public slave markets of Morocco will continue until for very shame it will irritate Europe into taking more decided steps in the name of humanity to force the ever-maundering authorities to decree the abolition of the slave trade, and to carry the decree into immediate effect. It is surely high time that the “China of the West,” as it has been called, should be made to feel that its present condition is a standing reproach to Europe. While the heart of Africa responds to the civilizing influences moving from the east and the west and the south, Morocco remains stupidly indifferent and inert, a pitiful example of senility and decay.
The remaining portion of North Africa which still fosters slavery is Tripoli. The occupation of Tunis by France has diverted such traffic in slaves as it maintained to its neighbor. Though the watchfulness of the Mediterranean cruisers renders the trade a precarious one, the small lateen boats are frequently able to sail from such ports as Benghazi, Derna, Solum, etc., with living freight, along the coast to Asia Minor. In the interior, which is inaccessible to travelers, owing to the fanaticism of the Senoussi sect, caravans from Darfoor and Wadai bring large numbers of slaves for the supply of Tripolitan families and Senoussian sanctuaries. The country is of course under Turkish authority, and vizirial letters and firmans have been frequently issued since 1848 forbidding the importation of slaves and all traffic in them, but we might as well expect the Bedouins of Arabia to cease their nomadic life at the bidding of the Pasha of Haleb as the fanatical Mussulmans of the Fezzan to abstain from slavery at the mere command of the Governor of Tripoli.
The descent of the Congo to the Atlantic in 1877 suggested to King Leopold the foundation of a state. The Berlin Conference was a consequence of the success attained by the King. The partition of Southwest Africa among France, Portugal, and Belgium inspired the Germans to seek territorial possessions in the Dark Continent, and the movement of Germany excited Great Britain to action, and thus public attention was once more diverted to eastern Africa.
From the Abyssinian frontier as far as the Portuguese possessions, and stretching inland to a line which may roughly be said to be about east longitude 30°, was an area covering about 1,500,000 square miles which belonged to no power. It was agreed that it should be divided into three spheres of influence. The Germans fixed upon the southernmost, the Italians upon the most northern; the British chose the central. Each power contracted to confine its operations within its own sphere, and to proceed to organize and administer it as opportunity offered upon a civilized basis. There was no intention to launch out into any enterprise of conquest, but each power proposed to make its title good by renting or leasing tracts within its sphere from the native princes or tribal chiefs, by making treaties with them for the sovereignty of their lands, in return for annual subsidies and protection from violence, meanwhile being certain of immunity from all interference or opposition from its neighbor.
The Germans were the earliest to commence work. Through the agency of a company they made a treaty with the Sultan of Zanzibar for his long strip of coast land, undertaking to pay him a certain sum per annum for the right of collecting the customs. But the imprudent conduct of the officers, their imperious and peremptory manner of proceeding, impelled the Arabs to attempt to drive them from the coast. At Kilwa, Dar Salaam, Bagamoyo, and Saadani the officers of the German company were attacked; some had to fly, others were massacred, and innocent British missionaries returning home after a long residence in the interior were waylaid and murdered by the excited natives; and the first attempts of German colonization ended disastrously. Naturally the imperial German government could not brook this humiliation, and Major Wissman, a well-known explorer, was appointed with full powers to suppress the revolt. Within two years the Arabs were crushed, but the German position in East Africa became completely changed in consequence. It had been originally proposed to hold the East African coast by lease from the Sultan, with the view of including the Hinterland as far as Lake Tanganika within the sphere of their colonizing operations when results would permit; but the Germans now claimed nearly the whole of the east coast and east central Africa. This led in 1890 to the Anglo-German Convention, by which the German frontier was drawn south of latitude 1° S., across the Victoria Nyanza, thence east to the Indian Ocean, skirting the northern base of Kilimanjaro to Wanga, a few miles south of the port of Mombasa. The British territory extended north from Wanga on the sea as far as the mouth of the Juba River, a distance of about 450 miles, thence inland as far as the Congo State. These two great divisions of Africa, now converted into British and German territory, included the major part of the area wherein the slave trade of the east central part of the continent so long flourished. The countries west of Lake Nyassa, extending westward to Portuguese territory and south to the Zaniljezi, conceded to the great South African Company, absorbed the remainder of the slavery area. These last are under the control of a British commissioner, Mr. H. H. Johnston, to whom is granted an annual subsidy of £10,000 from the South African Company, and who, with the aid of two British gunboats now on their way to Lake Nyassa, must shortly succeed in closing the interior of Africa in that direction to all slave caravans.
Since the Anglo-German Convention the Germans have shown themselves ready and willing to do their part towards the suppression of the slave trade in the same thorough manner that they met the rising of the Arabs. The coast towns are fortified and garrisoned; they are marking their advance towards Lake Tanganika by the erection of military stations; severe regulations have been issued against the importation of arms and gunpowder; the Reichstag has been unstinted in its supplies of money; an experienced administrator, Baron von Soden, has been appointed an imperial commissioner, and scores of qualified subordinates assist him. The Belgian Antislavery Society is sending a steamer, via the Congo, Kasai, Sankuru, and Lumami, to Lake Tanganika as a cruiser for that lake; the German Catholic African Society is sending another steamer, in charge of Major von Wissman, via the Zambezi, Shire, Lake Nyassa, and Stevenson Road to Tanganika. These two steamers will effectually prevent slaves being transported across the lake from the easte part of the Congo State. In German East Africa itself slave hunts have ceased for many years; but it is traversed in several places by slave caravans, principally from the southwest and west. These routes will be now closed by the cruisers on Lakes Nyassa and Tanganika, and the stations along the Stevenson Road. Henceforward we need have no concern about that part of Africa. The northern boundaries, a thousand miles in length, are not so well guarded, though the Germans are engaged in the transport of a steamer to Lake Victoria, and possess three stations along the southwestern shores; but between Lakes Tanganika and Victoria is a broad tract of country which will no doubt have to be watched, lest the slavers, finding this unguarded, may unite in making this a pathway to the coast.
These strategic efforts to the west and southwest of German East Africa, and the continuous upward advance of the stations and flotillas of King Leopold towards the east, limit the operations of the slave-traders to that narrowing and untraveled area lying between Stanley Falls and Lake Tanganika, and will have the effect of determining the Arabs to seek outlets eastward through British East Africa, which, in its present state, is most backward in fulfilling the objects of united Europe. Were it not for the condition that British East Africa is in to-day we could say that the slave trade in equatorial Africa was completely extinguished, and we could almost point to the period wherein even slavery would be extirpated.
The partition of Africa among the European powers, as will have been seen, was the first effective blow dealt to the slave trade in inner Africa. The east coast, whence a few years ago the slavers marched in battalions to scatter over the wide interior of the continent for pillage and devastation, is today guarded by garrisons of German and British troops. The island of Zanzibar, where they were equipped for their murderous enterprises, is under the British flag. Trading steamers run up and down the coast; the Tana and Juba rivers are being navigated by British steamers; two lines of stations secure communications inland for 300 miles from the sea. Major von Wissman is advancing upon Lake Tanganika; Herr Boorchert is marching upon La Victoria; Captain Williams is holding Uganda. These results have followed very rapidly the political partition of the continent.
The final blow has been given by the act of the Brussels Antislavery Conference, lately ratified by the powers, wherein modern civilization has fully declared its opinions upon the question of slavery, and no single power will dare remain indifferent to them, under penally of obloquy and shame.
The first article of the Brussels act is as follows:
“The powers declare that the most effective means for counteracting the slave trade in the interior of Africa are the following:
“1. Progressive organization of the administration judicial; religions and military services in the African territories placed under the sovereignty or protectorate of civilized nations.
“2. The gradual establishment in the interior by the responsible power in each territory of strongly occupied stations in such a way as to make their protective or repressive action effectively felt in the territories devastated by man-hnnters.
“3. The construction of roads, and in particular of railways connecting the advanced stations with the coast, and presenting easy access to the inland waters, and to the upper reaches of streams and rivers which are broken by rapids and cataracts, so as to substitute economical and speedy means of transport for the present means of portage by men.
“4. Establishment of steamboats on the inland navigable waters and on the lakes, supported by fortified posts established on the banks.
“5. Establishment of telegraphic lines, assuring the communication of the posts and stations with the coast and wihi administrative centers.
“6. Organization of expeditions and flying columns to keep up the communication of the stations with each other and with the coast, to support repressive action, and to assume the security of roadways.
“7. Restriction of the importation of firearms.”
The above articles concern three powers especially, Great Britain, Germany, and the Congo State, so far as regards the efficient counteraction of the slave trade. In examining them one by one, we find that Great Britain, which in the past was foremost in the cause of the slave, has done and is doing least to carry out the measures suggested by the great Anti-slavery Conference, We must also admit that as regards furthering the good cause, France is a long way ahead of England.
The Congo State devotes her annual subsidies of £120,000 and the export tax of £30,000 wholly to the task of securing her territory against the malign influences of the slave trade, and elevating it to the rank of self-protecting states.
The German government undertakes the sure guardianship of its vast African territory as an imperial possession, so as to render it inaccessible to the slave-hunter, and free from the terrors, the disturbances, the internecinal wars, and the distractions arising from the presence or visits of slavers. It has spent already large sums of money, and finds no difficulty in obtaining from Parliament the sums requisite for the defense and the thorough control and management of the territory as a colonial possession. So far the expenses, I think, have averaged over £100,000 annually.
The French government devotes £60,000 annually for the protection and administration of its Gaboon and Congo territory. These two objects include in brief all that the Antislavery Conference deemed necessary, for with due protection and efficient administration there can be no room for slave hunting or trading.
Now the question comes, what has England done in the extensive and valuable territory in East Africa which fell to her share as per Anglo-German agreement signed July 1, 1890? The answer must be that she has done less than the least of all those concerned in the extirpation of the slave trade.
The Germans have crushed the slave-traders, have built fortified stations in the interior, have supplied their portion of the east coast with a powerful flotilla of steamers, are engaged in transporting cruisers to the three great lakes on her borders, have surveyed and are extending surveys for several railways in the interior, have not lost time in discovering ways of evading the territorial wants, but have set about to supply these wants as indicated by the International Conference of Brussels; and were we able to obtain an instantaneous photograph of the present movements of the Germans throughout their territory, we should know how to fully appreciate the hearty spirit with which they are performing their duties.
And were we able to glance in the same way as to what is occurring on British soil, we should be struck by the earnestness of the Germans as compared with the British.
Both governments started with delegating their authority to chartered companies. Ou the part of the Germans, however, the imprudence of their agents imperiled their possessions, and the imperial government set itself the task of reducing malcontents to order, and settling the difficulties in its own masterful manner, and is engaged in providing against their recurrence before surrendering the territory again to the influences of the company.
The British East African Company, on the other hand, has been comparatively free to commence its commercial operations, undisturbed by armed opposition of aborigines or of Arab and Swahili residents. The welcome given to it has been almost universally cordial. The susceptibilities of the Arabs were not wounded, and the aborigines gratefully recognized that the new-comers were hostile to them. Concessions were obtained at a fair price, and on payment of the stipulated price the company entered into possession, and became, with the consent of all concerned, masters of the British East African territory—a territory far more ample than what the founders of the company had hoped for at first.
Had the British East African Company confined its transactions and operations to the coast, it is well known that the returns would have been most lucrative, for over and above the expenditure we see by their reports that there would have been a yearly net gain of over £6000 available for dividend, which by this time would have been trebled.
But the Berlin Conference of 1884-5 expressly stipulated (Article VI) that all powers exercising sovereign rights or having influence in the said territories (shall) undertake to watch over the preservation of the native races, and the amelioration of the moral and material conditions of their existence, and to cooperate in the suppression of slavery, and, above all, of the slave trade; (that) they will protect and encourage all institutions and enterprises, religions, etc., re-established or organized, which tended to educate the natives; and in Article XXXV it is stipulated that the power which in future takes possession of a territory, or assumes a protectorate, recognizes the obligation to insure in the territories occupied by it on the coasts of the African continent the existence of an adequate authority to enforce respect for acquired rights.
Therefore the back-land of British East Africa could not remain the theatre of slave raids, or unclaimed.
It devolved upon the occupants of the sea-frontage to exercise their sovereign rights, and in the due exercise of these to watch over the native races of the backlands, and to co-operate for the suppression of slavery and the slave trade. It was incumbent upon them also to protect and encourage the Christian missions, without distinction of nationality or creed, which were established in Uganda—the most important because most populous and most promising of these back-lands. And to ensure its acquired right to those countries it was necessary that the British company should be represented by adequate authority there, otherwise it would be in the power of any person, society, or power to bar its claim to them by actual occupation.
Following the declarations of the powers at the Berlin Conference in 1885 is the act of assembled civilization at Brussels in 1890, emphasizing and reiterating the conditions upon which sovereignty shall be recognized.
The British East African Company as a commercial company is unable with its own means to meet these conditions. What it can it will, and its ability is limited to a sacrifice of all the dividends available from its commercial operations on the coast for the benefit of the whole territory, and subscribing a few more thousands of pounds to postpone retreat. Yet as the delegate of the British government the company is bound not to neglect the interior. It is pledged to ensure the protection of British subjects in Uganda, to protect the Waganda from internecine and factional wars, to place steamers on Lake Victoria for the protection of the lake coasts, and to prevent the wholesale importation of firearms. But in the attempt to do what Europe expects to be done the company has been involved in an expense which has been disastrous to its interests. It has established adequate authority in Uganda, but the maintenance of the communication between Uganda and the coast is absolutely ruinous. It has to pay £300, or thereabouts, the ton for freight. Thus, to send 150,000 rounds of ammunition, which is equal to twelve tons, costs £3600. To send the cloth currency required for purchase of native provisions for the force costs £12,000. Add the cost of conveyance of miscellaneous baggage, European provisions and medicines, tools, utensils, tents, besides the first cost of these articles and the pay of the men, and we at once see that £40,000 per annum is but a small estimate of the expense thus entailed upon the company. Meantime the transportation of steamers to Lake Victoria, the erection of stations connecting the lake with the sea, and many other equally pressing duties, are utterly out of the question. The directors understand too well what is needed, but they are helpless. We must accept the will for the deed.
This much, however, is clear: Europe will not hold the British East African Company, but England, responsible for not suppressing the slave trade and slave hunt. The agreement with Europe was not made by the company, but by Great Britain through her official and duly appointed representatives. When her official representatives signed the act of the Brussels Antislavery Conference, they undertook in the name of Great Britain the important responsibilities and duties specified within the act. The representatives of all Europe and the United States were witnesses to the signing of the act. To repudiate the obligations so publicly entered into would be too shameful, and if the majority in Parliament represents the will of the people there is every reason to think that the railway to the Victoria Nyanza which is necessary for carrying into effect the suggestions of the Antislavery Conference will be constructed.
I have been often asked what trade will be benefited by this railway to the Nyanza, or what can be obtained from the interior of Africa to compensate for the expense—say £2,000,000—of building the railway. There is no necessity for me to refer to the commercial aspect of the question in such an article as this, but there are some compensating advantages specially relating to my subject-matter which may be mentioned.
First, England will prove to Europe and the world that she is second to no other power in the fulfilment of her obligations, moral or material.
Second. She will prove that she does not mean to be excelled by Germany, France, or Belgium in the suppression of the slave trade and the man hunt, nor is averse to do justice to the Africans whom she has taken under her wing.
Third. She will prove that the people on British territory shall not be the last to enjoy the mercies and privileges conceded to the negroes by civilization, that the preservation of the native races and their moral and material welfare are as dear to England as to any other power, that the lives of her missionaries shall not be sacrificed in vain, that the labors of her explorers are duly appreciated, that she is not deaf to the voices of her greatest and best, and, in brief—to use the words uttered lately by one of her ministers—she will prove that “her vaunted philanthropy is not a sham, and her professed love of humanity not mere hypocrisy.”
The objective point for the British East African Company, for the people and government of Great Britain, is the Victoria Nyanza, with 1400 miles of coast-line. So far as the British as a slavery-hating nation are concerned, their duties are simply shifted from the ocean coast to the Nyanza coast, 500 miles inland. The slave-trader has disappeared from the east coast almost entirely, and is to be found now on the lake coasts of the Victoria, or within British territory. The ocean cruiser can follow him no further; but the lake cruiser must not only debar the guilty slave-dhow from the privilege of floating on the principal fountain of the Nile, but she must assist to restrict the importation of firearms from German territory, from the byways of Arab traffic, from the unguarded west; she must prevent the flight of fugitives and rebels and offenders from British territory; she must protect the missionaries and British subjects in their peaceful passage to and fro across the lake; she must teach the millions on the lake shores that the white ensign waving from her masthead is a guarantee of freedom, life, and peace.
To make these great benefits possible, the Victorian lake must be connected with the Indian Ocean by a railway. That narrow iron track will command effectively 150,000 square miles of British territory. It is the one remedy for the present disgraceful condition of British East Africa.
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