Henry M. Stanley
Century Magazine/February, 1896
The publishers of this magazine lately celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary, and in an interesting review of its various enterprises reminded us of the efforts they have made in the field of intellectual activity, by which THE CENTURY has become endeared and familiar to millions of readers. The mention of this anniversary reminds me that it is just twenty-five years ago this month (November) that I was on my way to Zanzibar, as an emissary of an American newspaper, to search for David Livingstone; and as Mr. B. J. Glave’s late researches among the haunts of the slave-traders are shortly to be published in THE CENTURY, perhaps a rapid review of progress in Equatorial Africa since I first set foot on that continent may not be out of place as a proem to the articles of my lamented young lieutenant.
In 1870 there were only two white men in all Equatorial Africa, from the Zambesi to the Nile. These were Dr. Livingstone and Sir Samuel Baker. The first had for years been absent from men’s knowledge in the far interior, and no man knew what had become of him. The second had but just arrived in the White Nile regions to suppress the slave trade. Newspaper editors sometimes appear to regret the change that has come over Africa during the last quarter of a century. They say the romance is all gone out of it, and that it is becoming too well known. But it must not be forgotten, by Americans at least, that the change began on the day when James Gordon Bennett the younger undertook to do what hitherto had been exclusively the business of a geographical society. Had he not conceived the idea of sending one of his correspondents in search of Livingstone, it is just possible that Africa might still have been a terra incognita. When the press, whose broad sheets are found everywhere, began to diffuse an intimate knowledge of the continent among civilized peoples, the first streaks of the dawning light that should wake Africa out of its sleep of ages became visible. The Dark Continent had remained long enough as a byword for all that was degraded and savage. Ever since the art of ocean navigation had been acquired, the crews of ships that sailed by its stern and silent shores had shivered as they gazed far off on the loom of the land. For there, according to them, dwelt the Anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, the Cynocephali, and those who used their feet as umbrellas and their ears as blankets, and many other curious tribes, the list of which may be found in Ogilvie’s and other old geographies. If through any accident or stress of weather these ancient sailors approached the shores, they saw full confirmation of their fears; for the people were naked and fierce, and as black as coal, and preyed upon one another like wild beasts.
Soon after the Portuguese navigator Da Gama had outlined the southern half of the continent, which was only a few years before Columbus sighted America, the European sailors took another view of the African savages, which was about as reasonable as that which their fathers had. They thought it a pity that the wretched blacks should destroy each other like the feral creatures, and accordingly proceeded with right good will to catch them and make slaves of them to work for white people. Sir John Hawkins and his imitators could cite Scripture to prove that it was their duty to teach them the rudiments of civilization in this rude way. From that period until about a century ago the white slave-trader flourished on the gains of his terrible traffic, and then gradually the calling came to be regarded as a crime, until finally, a little before the middle of the century, it ceased altogether.
For some time after the suppression of the slave-trade by sea there appeared to be no use for Africa to the mercantile world. A little ivory, some palm-oil, gold-dust, and ebony were all that it could export, and the risk of murder and malaria was too great for the trader to meditate any enterprise in the interior. Even such bold travelers as ventured inland seldom returned. They were either killed and eaten, or they succumbed to the deadly influence of the climate. Fortunately, the Christian sentiment of England was strong, and it was believed that though mercantile gain from trade with Africa was impossible, an abundant harvest of converts ought to be obtained from among the countless millions of pagans on the continent.
In the «forties» the missionary enterprise and success of Dr. Moffat and his son-in-law David Livingstone in the interior of southern Africa became widely known. Travelers and hunters like Gordon-Cumming, Murray, Oswell, and Webb had always something pleasing to say about Livingstone. In their chase of lions and elephants, and other adventures, they had frequently to pass by the door of Livingstone’s mission-house at Kolobeng, where they were always hospitably received and assisted, and they were not ungrateful when they returned to their own homes and related their travels.
Between Livingstone and his Boer neighbors, however, there was little love. He accused the Boer farmers of cruelty to the natives, and they resented his interference and threatened to drive him out of the country. He published their misdeeds in the Cape newspapers, and in revenge for his strictures they finally set fire to his house and burned him out.
This it was which first induced Livingstone to travel to the north, in hopes of finding a land where he could follow in peace his vocation as missionary, and where the Boer farmers could no longer molest him. In his search for the ideal territory he had in view he entered regions utterly unknown to the best-informed geographer, and made many discoveries of importance. It was then that he discovered Lake Ngami and the southern feeders of the Zambesi. It was from this motive that he was led to continue his journey across the Zambesi, to follow its course to its head waters, and to make his way to San Paul de Loanda in Angola; and this was why he retraced his steps and followed the Zambesi to the eastern ocean, where his first series of remarkable adventures terminated after sixteen years of travel.
Just as the Boer persecution had started him on his explorations and diverted him from his cherished missionary work, so the great reputation he obtained by these brilliant feats of travel and valuable discoveries of great lakes and rivers tended to separate him still further from his true role. He had revealed the existence of a tropical world, of luxuriant savannas and extensive forests, where animal life was prolific and the vegetation was of marvelous variety and growth. The Zambesi River was 2000 miles long, the lakes were full of sweet water, the soil was fertile and well repaid cultivation, the native products were varied and useful, and as for the natives, when let alone by the roving Arab and unmolested by the Portuguese half-caste, the account of his long residence among them and his many adventures with them proved that they were a good deal better than English people had any notion of. However, the slave-trade was rampant in the interior, whole districts were being devastated, and thousands of human beings were annually perishing through the bloody violence adopted by the Arabs. The sights in the slave-ship’s hold were not to be compared in horror to what he had seen in African kraal and camp.
Livingstone was much occupied with delivering addresses in the principal British cities, and after warming his audiences with his glowing pictures of African lands, he would make their flesh creep by telling them of the wholesale murders perpetrated by the Arab and Portuguese marauders, and then close with an appeal for the help of Christian England to stop these horrid inhumanities.
In time the sympathy he sought was freely given, and the government, responding to the general wish, commissioned him to return to the Zambesi and operate in that region with the object of suppressing the slave-raiding and testing the capabilities of the country for legitimate commerce and civilization. His second expedition occupied Livingstone six years. The cost of it, I believe, was about $400,000, a sum then regarded as prodigious. Many caviled at this expensive philanthropy, and the missionary-traveler was eventually recalled, with his reputation somewhat clouded by events over which he had no control.
The geographical results of these six years of labor were the discoveries of Lakes Nyassa and Shirwa, the Shire tributary of the Zambesi, and of a new watershed some portion of the streams of which flowed north, and which evidently belonged to another river, which was supposed to be the Nile. The discovery of these northerly streams was the cause of his third and final expedition. In 1866 he set out for Lake Nyassa with the object of ascertaining what great river received them; for Murchison, the president of the Royal Geographical Society, would give him no rest until he consented to depart on the quest.
A few months after Livingstone had disappeared on his third and last journey into the interior several of his followers returned to the coast, reporting that he had been murdered by a blow from a hatchet, which had cleft his skull. The report gained almost universal credence by the graphic details furnished by British Consul Seward, who had obtained them from the chief of the band. A few friends disbelieved the report, and insisted on sending Mr. Young to Lake Nyassa to settle their doubts. Within a few months Mr. Young found ample evidence to prove the whole story to be an invention of deserters to hide their ungrateful desertion.
But as nearly four years passed without any direct intelligence from the traveler, the majority of the public were inclined to believe that he must be dead. Hitherto they had never been so long without a letter from him, and this long-continued silence was inexplicable and ominous. The newspapers of the period gave frequent expression to the public anxiety, and it was this general anxiety which induced the manager of the New York Herald to send me in search of him.
In the beginning of January, 1871, I reached the island of Zanzibar. I had come from Bombay via Mauritius and the Seychelles—a terribly roundabout course; but at that time Zanzibar was almost unknown, and difficult to reach.
I am not going to relate my journeyings over again, for I have many subjects to touch upon. Naturally, being a newspaper correspondent, I was bound to secrecy upon the subject of my business in that out-of-the-way part of the world; but I managed to extract information that Livingstone had entered Africa at a point nearly 500 miles south of the island, and that he had the intention of proceeding to Lake Nyassa and then tracing the northern streams of the new watershed, and it might be that he would proceed as far as Lake Albert and perhaps join Baker; but where he was, or whether he was alive or dead, not a soul knew.
Meager as this information was, it sufficed for me to arrange a definite plan of procedure. I resolved to march to Lake Tanganyika, almost straight west from Zanzibar, in the belief that if any white man had passed to the north, such an event would be long remembered by thousands of natives.
After coming to this decision, it only remained for me to organize an expedition and conduct it with what patience and skill I could toward the lake. We set out in April, and early in November, after a march of nearly 1000 miles, we saw the waters of Lake Tanganyika, and its principal port only a few hundred yards distant. A few minutes later we entered the town of Ujiji, and there we came, most miraculously as I thought at the time, face to face with David Livingstone. He had reached Ujiji only ten days before me, from a far country to the west of the lake, where he had left the river he had been tracing for so many years, still flowing northerly. He held to the opinion that it was the Nile, though a misgiving now and then would enter his mind that it must be the Congo; for it was so voluminous and vast that he could scarcely believe it could be the Nile. At Nyangwe, the farthest point reached by him, the river was a mile wide.
We traveled over four months together, during which time it was discovered by us that the rivers to the north of the lake were feeders of the Tanganyika, and that the outlet of the lake, if it had any, must be sought elsewhere. At a place called Unyanyembe, nearly midway between Ujiji and Zanzibar, Livingstone and I parted, he to pursue his investigations to the southwest, and I bound east, and homeward.
Fourteen months afterward, Livingstone, having reached Lake Bangweolo, fell a victim to dysentery, and the men I had sent to him embalmed his body and returned with it to the coast. About the same time that I was returning from the Ashantee expedition the body was on its way to England. I arrived in time to attend the funeral, and saw the coffin containing the remains deposited in a vault of Westminster Abbey.
The task which my friend had left unfinished now devolved upon me. The geographical world was anxious to know what was this mysterious river the quest of which had occupied Livingstone’s declining years. The London Daily Telegraph joined with the New York Herald in defraying the cost of this second expedition. The story of how I set out a second time from Zanzibar, circumnavigated the Victoria Nyanza, discovered Lake Albert Edward, voyaged around Lake Tanganyika, and reached Livingstone’s farthest point—Nyangwe—on the banks of the Lualaba, has been told in detail in my book Through the Dark Continent. It also relates how, after a tedious land journey parallel with the river, I made ready my English boat, collected about a score of native canoes, embarked my followers, and how, after a course of nearly 1800 miles, we reached the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the Congo. By this river voyage the question which had puzzled Livingstone for eleven years was solved. It is a noticeable fact that when I began my descent of the Congo I was the only white man—excepting my companion, Frank Pocock—to be found between the Zambesi and the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and between Zanzibar and the Lower Congo.
It may easily be understood why, on returning from the discovery of the great African waterway, I should be anxious that England should avail herself of it. In 1816 England had dispatched a naval expedition under Captain Tuckey to ascend the Congo, but it terminated disastrously 200 miles inland. In 1873, Captain Grandy, another English officer, had attempted the task. In 1876 Admiral Hewitt’s expedition had suppressed the pirates of the Lower Congo. For over sixty years England had kept watch over the Congo slavers. Half of the expenses of my expedition had been contributed in England. She was also rich, tender and just toward the natives, and her people were the best colonizers in the world. All these facts were, in my opinion, claims that might justify England in stepping forward and taking possession.
During my descent of the Congo I had revolved over and over in my mind the question of the destiny of the river. Seated at the prow of my boat, which led our flotilla, and daily watching the river developing itself, I was preoccupied with these thoughts every leisure moment. There was, it seemed to me, no other power but England that could interest itself with this part of Africa; and, as I said, there was not a single white man in possession of any portion of the equatorial belt, except at the mouth of the Congo, where a few traders had gathered. But despite numerous addresses in England upon this subject, I failed to awaken more than a geographical interest in Equatorial Africa. The terror of the African climate in general was too strong upon everybody.
Elsewhere, however, the reports of my addresses in the English newspapers were taking effect. After nearly nine months’ busy life in England, the King of the Belgians invited me to visit him, and I was then informed of his strong inclination to undertake for Africa what I had been so strenuously advising Englishmen to do. He was already president of the African International Association, which was about to set on foot a humanitarian enterprise from the east coast, and he led me to understand that if I were free from other engagements he would like to employ me in opening the Congo basin to European influence and civilization.
It was my opinion that the best way of setting about the work was to construct a light surface railway which should skirt the cataracts of the Lower Congo, and then to launch steamers on the upper waters, which I estimated would furnish about 6000 miles of navigation. We argued about this matter from August to December, 1878. The best Belgian engineers were consulted, but after the most elaborate calculations as to cost, it was finally decided that, as the expense would be great, we should content ourselves with making wagon-roads past the cataracts, and build a series of military stations for the protection of caravans, and that the annual expenditure should not exceed $60,000.
I set out on this third expedition in the early part of 1879, and by a certain date in August of that year the personnel and material for the work were all ready for operations at the mouth of the Congo. By December, 1881, we had hauled two steamers and steel barges to Stanley Pool, and the stations of Vivi Isangila, Manyanga, and Leopoldville had been established. A large weekly caravan came and went regularly and safely. There were periodical markets for the sale of food and produce along the road. Reports of the progress of the stations came frequently to hand, by which I was assured of the general tranquility, and encouraged to persevere in extending the system up the Congo.
During 1882 we built Kimpoko and Gobila stations, explored the Kwa and Mfini rivers, and discovered Lake Leopold II; but on returning from this voyage I was attacked by a violent fever. It was my second experience of the dangerous hematuric type. I was unconscious for days, and on recovering my senses found that my legs had swollen to an immense size. For a month afterward it appeared to me as if a quarter of a hundredweight of mercury had been injected into each leg. Under these circumstances I surrendered my authority to Dr. Pechuel-Loesche, and returned to Europe. The long sea voyage somewhat restored me, and after a stay of six weeks in England I was on my way back to resume my work, with a large following of officers, and a steamer cargo of goods, tools, and new boats for the Congo. The pitiful sum of $60,000 a year was no longer sufficient for our magnified projects. The expenditure was now over $200,000 a year, and the more we extended our operations into the heart of the continent the greater grew the expense.
Early in 1883 I was back in Stanley Pool with an additional steamer and barge. Leopoldville was growing in extent, and was a comparatively large settlement. A large number of officers were awaiting orders there. Five new stations were required for the Upper Congo, and over fifteen were wanted for the basin of the Kwilu. Captain Grant Elliott was appointed chief of the Kwilu division. Captain Hansons took charge of the Manyanga district, Baron von Danckelman of the Lower Congo, Lieutenant Valcke of the Stanley Pool division, while I supervised the Upper Congo.
Among the young officials who were waiting appointments at Leopoldville was Mr. E. J. Glave. He appeared to be a slim, tall boy of eighteen or nineteen; but during the few days I remained at Leopoldville I saw that he was a man in character, well educated, fond of sketching, and eager for active service. I was always on the lookout for willing spirits. Every European seemed willing enough when he first landed on the river, but very few, after an experience of the fever, long retained that willingness. However, Glave condemned his inaction, and when offered a chance of proving his mettle and ability at Lukolela, became aglow with animation.
The steamers ascended the river with many officers for the up-river stations. Two were put ashore at Bolobo. About eighty miles higher up we dropped Glave on the site of his future station, and halted only to mark out his clearing in the woods and to arrange a few details. At Equator Station we set ashore a few other officers, purchased land, and built a store for their goods. At Bangala we made almost similar arrangements, after which we continued on our way to Stanley Falls, our ultimate destination at this period.
As we approached the Falls we saw that the river-banks had been depopulated and the villages were in ashes. We passed dead bodies floating in the river. Canoes were standing on end like hollowed columns, crowds of fugitives were afloat and hiding among the reedy islands. These were all signs of a general terror, but we could get no information of its character. Vague ideas of an invasion from some savage tribe came to our minds, and now and then we had a misgiving that there must be Arab slavers in the neighborhood.
Continuing our ascent, on the third day we came in sight of a huge Arab camp on the right bank, and before very long we discovered that the Arabs of Nyangwe (Livingstone’s farthest point), having heard the most exaggerated reports of our successful descent of the Congo in 1877, had hastened after us to reap a harvest of ivory and slaves. They had been too successful. Over 118 villages had been destroyed below Stanley Falls alone, a rich plunder of ivory was in their camp, and several hundred slaves, old and young, were herded like goats and heavily fettered in the slave-pen.
It then appeared that while we had been negotiating with the negro chiefs along the river, making roads, building stations, and hauling steamers overland, the Arabs of Nyangwe had been coming down the river, laying the country waste. We had at last met, about fifty miles below the Falls. A glance at the scenes of the camp was sufficient to reveal what a future awaited the Congo valley had we not conceived the project of opening the river to civilizing influences. There was not a moment to lose. We had no authority to open fire on the miscreants. They were subjects of the Prince of Zanzibar, who was a protege of England, and to plunge into hostilities with them might possibly involve us in serious complications. But while we dared not use force, we believed that by continuing the same system we had found so successful with the native chiefs, we could check the audacity of the slavers by our mere presence among them. After some days spent in cautious and friendly negotiation with the Arabs, we were permitted to establish a station at the Falls; and after seeing it well advanced, we turned the prows of our steamers down-river toward Leopoldville. The line of garrisoned stations along the Congo was now 1400 miles in length, while along the course of the Kwilu was another line 300 miles in length. We had over 150 European officers and 1200 colored men, of whom about 600 were from Zanzibar, in our employment. The steamers Belgique, Ville d’Anvers, and Jeune Africaine navigated the Lower Congo; the En Avant, Royal, and A. I. A. navigated the Upper Congo; the big steamer Stanley was on her way to the Pool; and besides the steamers, there were about a dozen steel rowing-barges.
In addition to the officials of the Association Internationale, there were twenty-four English and six French missionaries scattered between Glave’s station and the Atlantic, so that the white population of Equatorial Africa in May, 1884, was about 180.
At Leopoldville news awaited me that General Gordon was coming out to assist me, and I was instructed to meet and consult with him about the best measures to be adopted for the extirpation of the slave-trade within the Congo area. But on reaching the Lower Congo there was later information that Gordon had been induced to proceed to Khartoum, and a substitute for him had been found in Colonel Sir Francis de Winton.
Six years of arduous labors and anxieties in torrid Africa, with only a brief six weeks in Europe between, will sap the best constitutions, and the hematuric form of fever is not a trifling disease. Few recover from it, in fact, and the pioneer who must brave the heat and rain is peculiarly liable to it. Besides, the special work for which I had been engaged was completed, for regular communication between the Atlantic and Stanley Falls, and the means of its continuance, were now established. So, after initiating Sir Francis in his new duties as my successor, I sailed for Europe.
On my return the questions which agitated those who had observed our operations in Africa were, What would be the probable outcome of this vast expenditure by King Leopold, and what would be the effect of maintaining a military force in the interior of Africa, and the natural expansion and development of the enterprise? There were already two claimants in the field for a portion of the territory over which the blue flag of the African Association waved. Portugal laid claim to the Lower Congo by right of discovery in 1484. France laid claim to another goodly portion from the Gaboon to Stanley Pool, because of De Brazza’s treaties with native chiefs, made while he was in the service of the association. The other European powers were rather perplexed as to the true status of this company of philanthropists which had the king of a neutral state as its president, and which now exercised almost despotic authority over such a vast extent of African territory.
The British chambers of commerce were much averse to the claims of Portugal, because of her terrible tariff, and the vexatious system in vogue among her officials of delaying business and extorting fees. France, also, invariably favored her own subjects, and this partiality and her love of militarism were objections which demanded consideration as to whether diplomacy could not arrange some other substitute. Germany had also shown a disposition to interest herself in Africa, for our success in the Congo had imbued her people with a desire for exploration and commercial enterprise. Now here were Great Britain, France, Portugal, Germany, and Belgium involved in these questions, and the more they were discussed in the newspapers, the more it appeared necessary that they should be settled by common consent of the powers. Therefore a conference of ambassadors was held in Berlin to discuss the fate of the Congo, Niger, and Zambesi, commercial basins, rights of powers, and rules by which claims to African territories should be recognized as valid. Seventeen nations were represented at the conference, which lasted from December, 1884, to the end of February, 1885. On February 25 the act of the Berlin Conference was signed and sealed, and from that date we have had set forth in clear and distinct words the laws and methods by which territorial acquisitions in Africa must be obtained to deserve recognition. On this date, also, the Congo Free State came into being, with King Leopold of Belgium as sovereign.
It is unnecessary to enter into details of the subsequent expansion and steady development of the young state. One of the first duties of the sovereign was to frame a code of laws for its government, and I may briefly say that all the methods of a civilized government, with courts of justice, custom-houses, collection of taxes, record offices, and police and military forces, were put into operation as quickly as they could be designed.
This year is the tenth of its existence as an organized state. Its present extent is about 900,000 square miles, while its population is between 15,000,000 and 18,000,000, according to the most careful estimate. The whites of all nations within its limits now exceed 1400, two-thirds probably being Belgian. There is an armed police force numbering 8600, divided into 16 companies, officered by 289 European officers, commissioned and non-commissioned. The revenue of the state amounts to nearly $1,000,000, to which, however, King Leopold contributes $200,000, and Belgium $400,000. The remainder is derived from customs, taxes, postage, and sales of lands and rights.
Last year about 700 vessels entered the ports of the state—Banana, at the mouth; Boma, 50 miles higher up the river; and Mataddi, 100 miles from the sea. The commerce, imports and exports, amounts to nearly $4,000,000 in value. The exports at present consist principally of coffee, ivory, rubber, gum, palm-oil, kernels, and groundnuts. There are ten post-offices in the state, through which passed last year 49,544 letters from the interior, and 119,784 letters from abroad. The state owns twenty-three steamers, besides barges and boats, while the missionaries and commercial companies own as many more. Inclusive of those possessed by the French, there are now over forty steamers on the Upper Congo, all of which have been carried plate by plate by porters past the cataracts. In the transportation of goods and produce, and material for boat-building, there are 75,000 natives engaged.
But to me one of the most gratifying items of news from the Congo is that the railway is advancing at an increased rate toward the Upper Congo. At this time last year there were open for traffic only forty-four miles of railway, which had occupied four years in building. I believe there are now ninety-two miles in operation, and in three years more we ought to hear of the completion of the line from Mataddi to Stanley Pool. The railway is destined to change very materially the conditions of European life on the Congo.
Until the Berlin Conference no European nation appeared to take any special interest in the fate of the Dark Continent; but the three-months’ sitting under the auspices of Bismarck was a splendid school for Europe. The daily telegrams and editorial comments on the sayings and doings of many celebrities regarding river-basins and delimitations, and the products and possibilities of Africa, were just what was wanted to instruct and start into energy the slumbering ambitions of nations as well as of individuals. What King Leopold, De Brazza, and the writer had done, others could do; and the scramble for Africa was the consequence, with all its jealousies, spites, newspaper banter, and menace. Thoughts of the period from 1885 to 1890 remind me of the way my black followers used to rush with gleaming knives for slaughtered game during our travels.
Foremost among the countries whose lust for territory was awakened by the Berlin Conference were Germany, France, and Italy. I do not blame them at all; on the contrary, I think it admirable, necessary, and inevitable. The starving white man must be satisfied, or he will become ugly. Before these nations was revealed a huge continent with many millions of square miles undeveloped. In possession were several millions of black men, divided into minute fragments of tribes, each of which was isolated on its ten-square-mile plot, upholding with tooth, spear, and arrow its singular African Monroe doctrine—Ugogo for the Wagogo, Uganda for the Waganda, Uguhha for the Waguhha, Unyoro for the Wanyoro, and so on throughout all the thousands of ten-square-mile sections of Equatorial Africa. And a fine mess these tribal fragments had made of themselves and their lands after some fifty centuries or thereabouts of occupation! Murder in every conceivable shape rioted throughout their territories. Naked and bestial they had lived from prehistoric time. It was death to any unarmed stranger to come among them, and death to any member of their communities who showed the least sign of capacity or genius. From the Hottentot to the Shilluk, the Masai to the Bakongo, they were all alike; and so long as they excluded outside influences they would continue to deteriorate morally and physically until they would become as degraded as the Pygmies and the Bushmen.
Therefore it was not harm, but the highest good, that was coming to the savage African by the advent of civilizing white men among them. He was to be protected from the black-haired, yellow-faced Arab, who was incapable of pity. He would be saved from himself, than whom there was nothing more deadly. He was to be taught how to be human, and how in time he would become the equal of the white. Talk about the emancipation of the American negroes and the Russian serfs! They were mere commonplaces compared to the emancipation of Africa from herself that dates from 1885.
Within the scope of a magazine article it is impossible to describe the steps which France, Germany, and Italy severally took. A sufficient idea, however, may be gained by the casual reader of what has been done when I say that within the last ten years France has acquired of Equatorial Africa about 300,000 square miles, in which there are now 300 Europeans; Germany, 400,000 square miles; Italy, 547,000 square miles; and Portugal has now a defined territory extending over 710,000 square miles. France, moreover, has been active farther north, in the Sahara and in west Africa, and claims rights over 1,600,000 square miles; while Germany, in southwest Africa and the Cameroons, asserts her rule over 540,000 square miles.
England was the last European power to engage in the rush for African territory. Her efforts for some years after the Berlin Conference had been confined to reserving spheres of influence, rather than to violent annexation, and to moderating the passion for African land manifested by Germany, France, and Italy.
If any power had the moral right to interfere with this fierce lust for annexation, it must be admitted that, after policing the African coasts for over half a century, exploring the interior, and establishing Christian missions in East Africa, Nyassa Land, and Uganda, England was fairly entitled to it. Between 1886 and 1890 Englishmen began to stir, and succeeded in forming the famous South African Company, the African Lakes Company, and the I.B.E.A. Company. The Royal Niger Company had obtained a charter in 1886, and in October, 1889, a somewhat similar one was granted to the South African, with administrative power over 750,000 square miles. In 1891 it absorbed the African Lakes Company, and thus British Central Africa, with 500,000 square miles, was formed. To the British East African Company was given authority over 700,000 square miles.
By placing these statistics in a tabular form the reader may best see the subdivision which has taken place since February 25, 1885:
To the Congo State, by consent of the powers 900,000
France annexed 1,900,000
Germany 940,000
Italy 547,000
Portugal 710,000
Great Britain
South African Company 750,000
British Central Africa 500,000
British East Africa 700,000
Total 6,947,000
As mentioned above, I was the only white man during 1876 in Equatorial Africa, but in 1877, when only a short distance from the Atlantic, the first missionaries landed on the east coast in response to an appeal that I had written in 1875 from Uganda. During the years from 1879 to 1884 missionaries followed closely my tracks up the Congo, and as a hundred influences were in the course of a few years enlisted in the cause of Africa, Nyassa Land and the eastern and southern part of central Africa began to be studded with Christian missions, and missionaries have continued to enter Africa ever since, until now there must be about 300 of them, and the number is still increasing. They are not all reputed to be first-class men, but it is wonderful what earnestness and perseverance will do. We have only to think of Uganda, with its 200 churches and cathedral and its 50,000 native Christians, read the latest official reports from Nyassa Land, and glance at the latest map of Africa, to be convinced of the zeal, devotion, and industry of the missionaries.
Mission-houses do not grow of themselves. Gospels are not translated into African tongues, nor are converts spontaneous products of human nature. I am somewhat familiar with African facts, and to me these things represent immense labor, patience, and self-sacrifice; but others expect Africans to fall in love with the missionary’s eyes.
It is true, though strange, that for the first six years or so very little visible effect is produced by missionary teaching and influence. The mind of a pagan descendant of innumerable centuries of pagans appears to be for some time impenetrable to the Christian doctrine, and no matter how zealously a missionary may strive with him, he continues to present a wooden dullness, until by and by there is a gleam of interest; he catches the idea, as it were; and the interest becomes infectious and spreads from family to family, and converts multiply rapidly. “Cast thy bread upon the waters; for thou salt find it after many days.”
I have in my mind, as I write, the examples furnished by the Waganda, Wanyassa, and Bakongo. At the town of Banza Manetka, for instance, one day 900 natives came to Mr. Richards, the missionary, and requested to be baptized by him. He had labored among them many years, but hitherto converts had been few. The missionary imposed conditions on them. He said that they must first assemble their fetishes, idols, and stores of gin, and destroy all in the marketplace. And they went forthwith, and did it.
I estimate that there are at present 300 Europeans, inclusive of missionaries, in French Congo; 150 in British east Africa; 350 in British central Africa; 250 in German east Africa; and 1400 in Belgian Congo—altogether, say 2500 Europeans between the Zambesi and the Nile. The railways about to be constructed in British east and central Africa and the German possessions will be the means of attracting several hundred more, just as the Congo Railway has been the cause of the greater European population in the Congo State; and since roadless Africa during the last ten years has attracted so many whites, it needs no prophet to predict that where one white traveled during its primitive state, a hundred will travel by railway. There are now only about 130 miles of railway within the limits of Equatorial Africa; but at the end of ten years from now we shall have the Congo Railway, 250 miles long; the Stanley Falls Railway, 30 miles; the Mombasa-Nyanza Railway, 660 miles; the Shire Nyassa Railway, 70 miles; the German Usambara Railway, 120 miles; and probably the Nyassa-Tanganyika Railway, 220 miles, in complete working order.
On July 13 last the Geographical Congress discussed the development of Africa by white races. Soon after the reading of Sir John Kirk’s sensible paper, the discussion took a decidedly pessimistic tone. Count Pfeil, who succeeded Sir John, was understood by me to say that colonization in Africa was impossible without a knowledge of science, and I made a note of the extraordinary statement at the time; while Mr. Silva White asserted that tropical Africa was unsuited for colonization and capable of only a limited degree of development, and that to attain even this restricted development it was essential that imported labor should be introduced—in other words, coolies. Mr. Ravenstein, the famous London map-maker, had a controversial paper ready, but he amiably postponed it for delivery before the British Association.
The close of an article is no place for controversy, and I think that what I have written above tends to prove sufficiently that there is a phenomenal development of Africa now in progress. If anyone will take the trouble to read Parkman’s story of the early days in America, and reflect upon what little advance was made in New South Wales during the first twenty years after its discovery, and compare both with what has taken place in the Congo region after only eighteen years’ knowledge of its river and basin, he will need no words from me.
As for the word “colonization,” it is a misnomer as applied to what the British, Germans, and French are doing at present in Equatorial Africa. I know of only one attempt that has been made to colonize central Africa, and that was by the Freelanders lately; and my opinion of that was broadly expressed when I said I hoped the socialistic colonists had not forgotten to take their return tickets. In fact, no one except the speakers above mentioned has associated the word “colonization” with the equatorial region of Africa. It is the term “civilization” that I used in all public addresses when referring to present and future operations in the torrid zone of the Dark Continent. Yet to say that tropical Africa is unsuited for colonization and capable of only a limited degree of development is exaggeration. It is partly true; the rest is an expression of individual opinion on the part of one who, not having seen Africa, can form no just idea of his subject, and who is unable to project his vision beyond the day. Deliberately to assert that imported labor must be introduced before there can be even a partial development of Africa is an absurdity.
I understand what Count Pfeil and Mr. Silva White meant to say, but they have both been unhappy in expressing themselves. The count, no doubt, intended to say that Europeans who propose to live in Africa should observe the laws of hygiene applicable to that tropic climate, which is as true as saying that the naked negro who proposes to make his home in northern Europe must learn how to protect himself against the inclemencies of its climate. As yet, however, there is no indication that any Europeans intend to create permanent homes in tropical Africa; but during the last ten years about 2500 have made a temporary residence in that country for the purposes of business or for the practice of their professions; and the number of these must steadily increase as the means of transport are improved, and new businesses are created, until fifty years from now there will probably be found between two and three millions engaged in various African enterprises. Scattered over a territory of five million square miles, this number will not be in excess of what may be required. Meantime, among these will be tens of thousands who will have found the African climate to be as suitable for their constitutions as their own, and who after experimenting upon high plateaus, lake islands, and lofty mountains, will certainly have found healthy localities. For by that time to a thousand centers of industrial and mercantile activity the railways will have brought all the comforts of civilization, and will have conveyed these Europeans to their destinations without the privations, and wear and tear of strength and energy, the sad results of which have been taken by such men as Messrs. Silva White and Ravenstein as indicative of what must always happen in Africa.
With regard to Mr. Silva White’s demand that labor should be imported into Africa, it appears to me unmitigated nonsense, if he means coolie labor. What imported labor could be so effective as native labor for that Congo porterage wherein 75,000 Bakongo are now engaged? Three years hence these porters, having tasted the sweets of payment in coin and bank-notes, will, upon the completion of the Congo Railway, require some other work. Some will become soldiers, others police, while still others will offer themselves as mechanics, house-servants, plantation laborers, house-builders, wood-cutters, and follow a hundred other employments suited to their capacities. The Bangala, who were cannibals eighteen years ago, are already engaged in these occupations. On the Nyassa the natives have erected a handsome brick cathedral, which would be an ornament to any provincial town in England or the United States. In South Africa the Kafirs do most of all the manual labor required. I can find no use in Africa for imported coolies; for what can they do that native Africans cannot be taught to do? True, white men now crowd into Africa faster than the continent can supply trained labor. I could have found use for 5000 coolies when I began operations on the Congo in 1879, for the natives could not understand my object in digging into the clay and making an even road; but after eighteen years of teaching they are found as navvies along the line of the Congo Railway, and building steel steamers at Stanley Pool! As white employers of labor will persist in going into Africa before the natives are quite ready for them, there will be for many years yet a scarcity of labor, not through unwillingness, but through want of time to train a sufficient number to meet the demand.
As for the climate, it is no worse than that found elsewhere in tropic lands. The heat is not so great as in India, or as it is sometimes in New York in summer. Fortunately, the coast-belt on both sides of Africa, where the heat is greatest, and where the climate is most unhealthy, is narrow. In four hours a railway train at ordinary speed would enable us to cross it, and so avoid the debilitating temperature. Ascending the sides of the coast-range by the same means of conveyance, we should in two hours reach a rolling plain which gradually rises in height from 2500 to 3500 feet above the sea. Here the climate is sensibly cooler, and the white man can safely work six hours of the day in the open without fear of sunstroke, though he must not count on immunity from fever. In from ten to twelve hours the traveler by train would meet another steep rise, and would find himself from 5000 to 8000 feet above the sea, on the broad central plateau of the continent, which varies from 600 to 1000 miles across. It is in this section that the great lakes, snowy mountains, and tallest hills are found. Here we have cold nights and a hot sun when the skies are not clouded, though the air in the shade is frequently cool enough for an overcoat; and it is on this immense upland that the white man, when compelled by circumstances, may find a home.
Of course, Messrs. Silva White and Ravenstein differ with me. They have studied books, and I have studied the possibilities by actual experience. However, no one’s experience is worth much about this higher region, because travelers have reached it after infinite labor, anxiety, and months of bad diet, and we cannot tell as yet whether we imported the sickness we sometimes suffered in it, or whether we contracted it in the region itself. I am inclined to think that, given a railway to enable a man to reach it speedily and without effort from the sea, it is fit for permanent settlers. We lived nearly three months near Lake Albert, at an altitude of 5600 feet above the sea, and not one of my white companions suffered from an attack of fever; but as soon as we descended to a lower level of 2000 feet we were attacked with violent sickness, and even Emin Pasha and Captain Casati suffered. This proves little, I am aware; but my memory always reverts with pleasure to the glorious immunity from sickness and the buoyant feeling of health and energy that we enjoyed at Kavalli. Had we had the means of still bettering our condition of existence by the facilities which railway transport affords, and could we have reached that locality safely and expeditiously from the sea, I am persuaded that life would have been still more pleasant there.
However, no amount of preaching against the climate will retard the development of Africa. Civilization has grasped the idea that it must enter and take possession, and now that it thoroughly realizes the fact that the sine qua non for securing that possession is the railway, I can conceive of nothing that will prevent the children of Europe finding out for themselves whether they can permanently reside there or not. Henry M. Stanley
The Archive 