An African Adventure Part 10

N'jube took the hint and the money and married the girl. Rhodes now sent the following telegram to the conspirator at Bulawayo:

"Your friend N'jube was divided between love and empire, but he has decided to marry the Fingo girl. It is better that he should settle down in Kimberley and be occupied in creating a family than to plot at Bulawayo to stab you in the stomach."

This ended the conspiracy, and N'jube lived happily and peacefully ever afterwards.

Rhodes was an incorrigible imperialist as this story shows. Upon one occasion at Bulawayo he was discussing the Carnegie Library idea with his friend and a.s.sociate, Sir Abe Bailey, a leading financial and political figure in the Cape Colony.

"What would you do if you had Carnegie's money?" asked Bailey.

"I wouldn't waste it on libraries," he replied. "I would seize a South American Republic and annex it to the United States."

Rhodes had great admiration for America. He once said to Bailey: "The greatest thing in the world would be the union of the English-speaking people. I wouldn't mind if Washington were the capital." He believed implicitly in the invincibility of the Anglo-Saxon race, and he gave his life and his fortune to advance the British part of it.

For the last I have reserved the experience that will always rank first in my remembrance of Rhodesia. It was my visit to the grave of Rhodes.

Most people who go to Rhodesia make this pilgrimage, for in the well-known tourist language of Mr. Cook, like Victoria Falls, it is "one of the things to see." I was animated by a different motive. I had often read about it and I longed to view the spot that so eloquently symbolized the vision and the imagination of the man I admired.

The grave is about twenty-eight miles from Bulawayo, in the heart of the Matopo Hills. You follow the road along which the body was carried nineteen years ago. You see the native hut where Rhodes often lived and in which the remains rested for the night on the final journey. You pa.s.s from the green low-lands to the bare frontiers of the rocky domain where the Matabeles fled after the second war and where the Father of Rhodesia held his historic parleys with them.

Soon the way becomes so difficult that you must leave the motor and continue on foot. The Matopos are a wild and desolate range. It is not until you are well beyond the granite outposts that there bursts upon you an immense open area,--a sort of amphitheatre in which the Druids might have held their weird ritual. Directly ahead you see a battlement of boulders projected by some immemorial upheaval. Intrenched between them is the spot where Rhodes rests and which is marked by a bra.s.s plate bearing the words: "Here Lie the Remains of Cecil John Rhodes." In his will he directed that the site be chosen and even wrote the simple inscription for the cover.

When you stand on this eminence and look out on the grim, brooding landscape, you not only realize why Rhodes called it "The View of the World," but you also understand why he elected to sleep here. The loneliness and grandeur of the environment, with its absence of any sign of human life and habitation, convey that sense of aloofness which, in a man like Rhodes, is the inevitable penalty that true greatness exacts.

The ages seem to be keeping vigil with his spirit.

For eighteen years Rhodes slept here in solitary state. In 1920 the remains of Dr. Jameson were placed in a grave hewn out of the rock and located about one hundred feet from the spot where his old friend rests.

It is peculiarly fitting that these two men who played such heroic part in the rise of Rhodesia should repose within a stone's throw of each other.

During these last years I have seen some of the great things. They included the British Grand Fleet in battle array, Russia at the daybreak of democracy, the long travail of Verdun and the Somme, the first American flag on the battlefields of France, Armistice Day amid the tragedy of war, and all the rest of the panorama that those momentous days disclosed. But nothing perhaps was more moving than the silence and majesty that invested the grave of Cecil Rhodes. Instinctively there came to my mind the lines about him that Kipling wrote in "The Burial":

It is his will that he look forth Across the world he won-- The granite of the ancient North-- Great s.p.a.ces washed with sun.

When I reached the bottom of the long incline on my way out I looked back. The sun was setting and those sentinel boulders bulked in the dying light. They seemed to incarnate something of the might and power of the personality that shaped Rhodesia, and made of it an annex of Empire.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A KATANGA COPPER MINE]

CHAPTER IV--THE CONGO TODAY

I

Unfold the map of Africa and you see a huge yellow area sprawling over the Equator, reaching down to Rhodesia on the south-east, and converging to a point on the Atlantic Coast. Equal in size to all Latin and Teutonic Europe, it is the abode of 6,000 white men and 12,000,000 blacks. No other section of that vast empire of mystery is so packed with hazard and hardship, nor is any so bound up with American enterprise. Across it Stanley made his way in two epic expeditions.

Livingstone gave it the glamour of his spiritualizing influence.

Fourteen nations stood sponsor at its birth as a Free State and the whole world shook with controversy about its administration. Once the darkest domain of the Dark Continent, it is still the stronghold of the resisting jungle and the last frontier of civilization. It is the Belgian Congo.

During these past years the veil has been lifted from the greater part of Africa. We are familiar with life and customs in the British, French, and to a certain degree, the Portuguese and one-time German colonies.

But about the land inseparably a.s.sociated with the economic statesmanship of King Leopold there still hangs a shroud of uncertainty as to regime and resource. Few people go there and its literature, save that which grew out of the atrocity campaign, is meager and unsatisfactory. To the vast majority of persons, therefore, the country is merely a name--a dab of colour on the globe. Its very distance lends enchantment and heightens the lure that always lurks in the unknown.

What is it like? What is its place in the universal productive scheme?

What of its future?

I went to the Congo to find out. My journey there was the logical sequel to my visit to the Union of South Africa and Rhodesia, which I have already described. It seemed a pity not to take a plunge into the region that I had read about in the books of Stanley. In my childhood I heard him tell the story of some of his African experiences. The man and his narrative were unforgettable for he incarnated both the ideal and the adventure of journalism. He cast the spell of the Congo River over me and I lingered to see this mother of waters. Thus it came about that I not only followed Stanley's trail through the heart of Equatorial Africa but spent weeks floating down the historic stream, which like the rivers that figured in the Great War, has a distinct and definite human quality. The Marne, the Meuse, and the Somme are the Rivers of Valour.

The Congo is the River of Adventure.

In writing, as in everything else, preparedness is all essential. I learned the value of carrying proper credentials during the war, when every frontier and police official const.i.tuted himself a stumbling-block to progress. For the South African end of my adventure I provided myself with letters from Lloyd George and s.m.u.ts. In the Congo I realized that I would require equally powerful agencies to help me on my way. Wandering through spa.r.s.ely settled Central Africa with its millions of natives, scattered white settlements, and restricted and sometimes primitive means of transport, was a far different proposition than travelling in the Cape Colony, the Transvaal, or Rhodesia, where there are through trains and habitable hotels.

I knew that in the Congo the State was magic, and the King's name one to conjure with. Accordingly, I obtained what amounted to an order from the Belgian Colonial Office to all functionaries to help me in every possible way. This order, I might add, was really a command from King Albert, with whom I had an hour's private audience at Brussels before I sailed. As I sat in the simple office of the Palace and talked with this shy, tall, blonde, and really kingly-looking person, I could not help thinking of the last time I saw him. It was at La Panne during that terrible winter of 1916-1917, when the Germans were at the high tide of their success. The Belgian ruler had taken refuge in this bleak, sea-swept corner of Belgium and the only part of the country that had escaped the invader. He lived in a little chalet near the beach. Every day the King walked up and down on the sands while German aeroplanes flew overhead and the roar of the guns at Dixmude smote the ear. He was then leading what seemed to be a forlorn hope and he betrayed his anxiety in face and speech. Now I beheld him fresh and buoyant, and monarch of the only country in Europe that had really settled down to work.

King Albert asked me many questions about my trip. He told me of his own journey through the Congo in 1908 (he was then Prince Albert), when he covered more than a thousand miles on foot. He said that he was glad that an American was going to write something about the Congo at first hand and he expressed his keen appreciation of the work of American capital in his big colony overseas. "I like America and Americans," he said, "and I hope that your country will not forget Europe." There was a warm clasp of the hand and I was off on the first lap of the journey that was to reel off more than twenty-six thousand miles of strenuous travel before I saw my little domicile in New York again.

Before we invade the Congo let me briefly outline its history. It can be told in a few words although the narrative of its exploitations remains a serial without end. Prior to Stanley's memorable journey of exploration across Equatorial Africa which he described in "Through the Dark Continent," what is now the Congo was a blank spot on the map. No white man had traversed it. In the fifties Livingstone had opened up part of the present British East Africa and Nya.s.saland. In the Luapula and its tributaries he discovered the headwaters of the Congo River and then continued on to Victoria Falls and Rhodesia. After Stanley found the famous missionary at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika in 1872, he returned to Zanzibar. Hence the broad expanse of Central Africa from Nya.s.saland westward practically remained undiscovered until Stanley crossed it between 1874 and 1877, when he travelled from Stanley Falls, where the Congo River actually begins, down its expanse to the sea.

As soon as Stanley's articles about the Congo began to appear, King Leopold, who was a shrewd business man, saw an opportunity for the expansion of his little country. Under his auspices several International Committees dedicated to African study were formed. He then sent Stanley back to the Congo in 1879, to organize a string of stations from the ocean up to Stanley Falls, now Stanleyville. In 1885 the famous Berlin Congress of Nations, presided over by Bismarck, recognized the Congo Free State, accepted Leopold as its sovereign, and the jungle domain took its place among recognized governments. The princ.i.p.al purposes animating the founders were the suppression of the slave trade and the conversion of the territory into a combined factory and a market for all the nations. It was largely due to Belgian initiative that the traffic in human beings which denuded all Central Africa of its bone and sinew every year, was brought to an end.

The world is more or less familiar with subsequent Congo history. In 1904 arose the first protest against the so-called atrocities perpetrated on the blacks, and the Congo became the center of an international dispute that nearly lost Belgium her only colonial possession. In the light of the revelations brought about by the Great War, and to which I have referred in a previous chapter, it is obvious that a considerable part of this crusade had its origin in Germany and was fomented by Germanophiles of the type of Sir Roger Cas.e.m.e.nt, who was hanged in the Tower of London. During the World War E. D. Morel, his princ.i.p.al a.s.sociate in the atrocity campaign, served a jail sentence in England for attempting to smuggle a seditious doc.u.ment into an enemy country.

With the atrocity business we are not concerned. The only atrocities that I saw in the Congo were the slaughter of my clothes on the native washboard, usually a rock, and the American jitney that broke down and left me stranded in the Kasai jungle. As a matter of fact, the Belgian rule in the Congo has swung round to another extreme, for the Negro there has more freedom of movement and less responsibility for action than in any other African colony. To round out this brief history, the Congo was ceded to Belgium in 1908 and has been a Belgian colony ever since.

We can now go on with the journey. From Bulawayo I travelled northward for three days past Victoria Falls and Broken Hill, through the undeveloped reaches of Northern Rhodesia, where you can sometimes see lion-tracks from the car windows, and where the naked Barotses emerge from the wilds and stare in big-eyed wonder at the pa.s.sing trains. Until recently the telegraph service was considerably impaired by the curiosity of elephants who insisted upon knocking down the poles.

While I was in South Africa alarming reports were published about a strike in the Congo and I was afraid that it would interfere with my journey. This strike was without doubt one of the most unique in the history of all labor troubles. The whole Congo administration "walked out," when their request for an increase in pay was refused. The strikers included Government agents, railway, telegraph and telephone employes, and steamboat captains. Even the one-time cannibals employed on all public construction quit work. It was a natural procedure for them. Not a wheel turned; no word went over the wires; navigation on the rivers ceased. The country was paralyzed. Happily for me it was settled before I left Bulawayo.

Late at night I crossed the Congo border and stopped for the customs at Sakania. At once I realized the potency that lay in my royal credentials for all traffic was tied up until I was expedited. I also got the initial surprise of the many that awaited me in this part of the world.

In the popular mind the Congo is an annex of the Inferno. I can vouch for the fact that some sections break all heat records. The air that greeted me, however, might have been wafted down from Greenland's icy mountain, for I was chilled to the bone. In the flickering light of the station the natives shivered in their blankets. The atmosphere was anything but tropical yet I was almost within striking distance of the Equator. The reason for this frigidity was that I had entered the confines of the Katanga, the most healthful and highly developed province of the Congo and a plateau four thousand feet above sea level.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LORD LEVERHULME]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBERT WILLIAMS]

The next afternoon I arrived at Elizabethville, named for the Queen of the Belgians, capital of the province, and center of the copper activity. Here I touched two significant things. One was the group of American engineers who have developed the technical side of mining in the Katanga as elsewhere in the Congo; the other was a contact with the industry which produces a considerable part of the wealth of the Colony.

There is a wide impression that the Congo is entirely an agricultural country. Although it has unlimited possibilities in this direction, the reverse, for the moment, is true. The 900,000 square miles of area (it is eighty-eight times the size of Belgium) have scarcely been sc.r.a.ped by the hand of man, although Nature has been prodigal in her share of the development. Wild rubber, the gathering of which loosed the storm about King Leopold's head, is nearly exhausted because of the one-time ruthless harvesting. Cotton and coffee are infant industries. The princ.i.p.al product of the soil, commercially, is the fruit of the palm tree and here Nature again does most of the ground work.

Mining is, in many respects, the chief operation and the Katanga, which is really one huge mine, princ.i.p.ally copper, is the most prosperous region so far as bulk of output is concerned. Since this area figures so prominently in the economic annals of the country it is worth more than pa.s.sing attention. Like so many parts of Africa, its exploitation is recent. For years after Livingstone planted the gospel there, it continued to be the haunt of warlike tribes. The earliest white visitors observed that the natives wore copper ornaments and trafficked in a rude St. Andrew's cross--it was the coin of the country--fashioned out of metal. When prospectors came through in the eighties and nineties they found scores of old copper mines which had been worked by the aborigines many decades ago. Before the advent of civilization the Katanga blacks dealt mainly in slaves and in copper.

The real pioneer of development in the Katanga is an Englishman, Robert Williams, a friend and colleague of Cecil Rhodes, and who constructed, as you may possibly recall, the link in the Cape-to-Cairo Railway from Broken Hill in Northern Rhodesia to the Congo border. He has done for Congo copper what Lord Leverhulme has accomplished for palm fruit and Thomas F. Ryan for diamonds. Congo progress is almost entirely due to alien capital.

Williams, who was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, went out to Africa in 1881 to take charge of some mining machinery at one of the Kimberley diamond mines. Here he met Rhodes and an a.s.sociation began which continued until the death of the empire builder. On his death-bed Rhodes asked Williams to continue the Cape-to-Cairo project. In the acquiescence to this request the Katanga indirectly owes much of its advance. Thus the constructive influence of the Colossus of South Africa extends beyond the British dominions.

In building the Broken Hill Railway Williams was prompted by two reasons. One was to carry on the Rhodes project; the other was to link up what he believed to be a whole new mineral world to the needs of man. Nor was he working in the dark. Late in the nineties he had sent George Grey, a brother of Sir Edward, now Viscount Grey, through the present Katanga region on a prospecting expedition. Grey discovered large deposits of copper and also tin, lead, iron, coal, platinum, and diamonds. Williams now organized the company known as the Tanganyika Concessions, which became the instigator of Congo copper mining.

Subsequently the Union Miniere du Haut Kantanga was formed by leading Belgian colonial capitalists and the Tanganyika Concessions acquired more than forty per cent of its capital. The Union Miniere took over all the concessions and discoveries of the British corporation. The Union Miniere is now the leading industrial inst.i.tution in the Katanga and its story is really the narrative of a considerable phase of Congo development.

Within ten years it has grown from a small prospecting outfit in the wilderness, two hundred and fifty miles from a railway, to an industry employing at the time of my visit more than 1,000 white men and 15,000 blacks. It operates four completely equipped mines which produced nearly 30,000 tons of copper in 1917, and a smelter with an annual capacity of 40,000 tons of copper. A concentrator capable of handling 4,000 tons of ore per day is nearing completion. This bustling industrial community was the second surprise that the Congo disclosed.

Equally remarkable is the mushroom growth of Elizabethville, the one wonder town of the Congo. In 1910, when the railway arrived, it was a geographical expression,--a spot in the jungle dominated by the huge ant-hills that you find throughout Central Africa, some of them forty feet high. The white population numbered thirty. I found it a thriving place with over 2,000 whites and 12,000 blacks. There are one third as many white people in the Katanga Province as in all the rest of the Congo combined, and its area is scarcely a fourth of that of the colony.

The father of Elizabethville is General Emile w.a.n.germee, one of the picturesque figures in Congo history. He came out in the early days of the Free State, fought natives, and played a big part in the settlement of the country. He has been Governor-General of the Colony, Vice-Governor-General of the Katanga and is now Honorary Vice-Governor.

In the primitive period he went about, after the Congo fashion, on a bicycle, in flannel shirt and leggins and he continued this rough-and-ready attire when he became a high-placed civil servant.