Explorers and Travellers Part 18

Du Chaillu made his first visit to an Obongo encampment with three Ashango guides, and with great precaution they silently entered a village of twelve huts to find it long since deserted. Fortune was more favorable at the second village, where, however, no one was to be seen on entrance. The curling smoke, calabashes of fresh water, and a half-cooked snake on living coals indicated that the alarmed inhabitants had fled on their approach. A search of the huts resulted in disclosing the presence of three old women, a young man, and several children, who were almost paralyzed with fear at the sight of an unknown monster--a white man. By judicious distribution of bananas, and especially of beads, Du Chaillu succeeded in allaying their fears, and later made several visits, but confidence was never firmly established, and it was impossible to see the men except as they fled at his approach, or at a distance when they visited the Ashango village for purposes of barter.

During his several visits he carefully measured six dwarf women, whose average height proved to be four feet six and one-eighth inches; the shortest was four feet four and one-half inches, and the tallest five feet and one-quarter of an inch; the young man, possibly not full grown, measured four feet six inches in height.

Du Chaillu says: "The color of these people was a dirty yellow, and their eyes had an untamable wildness that struck me as very remarkable.

In appearance, physique, and color they are totally unlike the Ashangos, who are very anxious to disown kinship with them. They declare that the Obongos intermarry among themselves, sisters with brothers. The smallness and isolation of their communities must necessitate close interbreeding; and I think it very possible this may cause the physical deterioration of their race."

Their foreheads were very low and narrow, cheek-bones prominent, legs proportionately short, palms of hands quite white, and their hair short, curly tufts, resembling little b.a.l.l.s of wool, which, according to the young man seen by Du Chaillu, grew also, in plentiful, short, curly tufts on his legs and breast, a peculiarity which the Ashangos declared was common to the Obongo men.

These dwarfs feed partly on roots, berries, and nuts gathered in the forest, and partly on flesh and fish. They are very expert in capturing wild animals by traps and pitfalls, and in obtaining fish from the streams; and the surplus of flesh is exchanged for plantains and such simple manufactured articles as they stand in need of.

Concerning their settlements and range of migration Du Chaillu adds: "The Obongos never remain long in one place. They are eminently a migratory people, moving whenever game becomes scarce, but they do not wander very far. These Obongos are called the Obongos of the Ashangos; those who live among the Njavi are called Obongo-Njavi, and the same with other tribes. Obongos are said to exist very far to the east, as far as the Ashangos have any knowledge."

In his "Journey to Ashango Land" Du Chaillu gives quite a number of words of the Obongo language; he considers their dialect to be a mixture of their original language with that of the tribe among whom they reside. It appeared that none of the dwarf women could count more than ten, probably the limit of their numerals. Their weapons of offence and defence were usually small bows and arrows, the latter at times poisoned.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Dwarf Prisoner.]

Leaving Mobano, 1 53' S. lat.i.tude, and about 12 27' E. longitude, by dead reckoning, Du Chaillu pa.s.sed due east to the village of Mouaou Kombo, where, by accident, while firing a salute, one of his body-guard unfortunately killed a villager. An effort to atone for the accident by presents would doubtless have been successful, but, most unfortunately, and despite Du Chaillu's strict orders, his body-guards and porters had already irritated the Ashangos by offensive conduct. Overtures for "blood-money" were interrupted by an offended chief denouncing the exploring party. Almost instantly the natives commenced beating their war-drums, and Du Chaillu, realizing the danger and loading his men with his most valuable articles, retreated westward toward the coast. Before they reached the forest he and one of his men were wounded by poisoned arrows. Pursued by the infuriated savages Du Chaillu restrained his men from shooting, when, demoralized by the situation, many of his porters threw away their loads, which consisted of note-books, maps, instruments, photographs, and natural history collections. Curiously enough the instruments and goods thus abandoned by Du Chaillu in 1864, were found in 1891, by an African trader, in the jungle where they had been thrown down by the retreating carriers, having remained all these years untouched by the Ashangos, who believed they were fetich and so regarded them with superst.i.tious dread.

After retreating a few miles and finding that inactivity and self-restraint meant self-destruction, Du Chaillu took the offensive, and drawing up his men in a favorable position, repelled his pursuers with considerable loss. The wounds from poisoned arrows being external, if subjected to immediate treatment, healed in a few weeks.

Further explorations under these circ.u.mstances were impossible, for Du Chaillu depended entirely for his success on friendly relations with the natives; in consequence he returned to the sea-coast, and on September 27, 1865, quitted the sh.o.r.es of Western Equatorial Africa.

Although the second voyage of Du Chaillu into the unknown regions of Western Equatorial Africa rehabilitated his reputation as a reliable observer, as far as related to geography and natural history, yet his description of the Obongo dwarfs gave rise to further discussion and aspersions. It is needless to say that the discoveries of Stanley in his last African expedition have definitely settled this question in Du Chaillu's favor, and that the studies of Lenz, Marche, and Bastian, in and near the region visited by Du Chaillu, confirm the accuracy of his descriptions. Indeed the Obongos of Ashango Land rise in proportion to undersized negroes when compared with the dwarf queen found by Stanley on the eastern edge of the great equatorial forest, who measures only two feet nine inches in height.

Thus in time has come complete vindication of all of Du Chaillu's statements as to the wonders of the Ashira and Ashango Lands, which portions of Western Equatorial Africa he was the first to explore. If the geographical extent of his explorations give way to that of other African travellers, yet it must be admitted that he stands scarcely second to any in the number, importance, and interest of his contributions and collections in connection with ethnography and natural history of Equatorial Africa.

In later years Du Chaillu has devoted his attention to the northern parts of Sweden, Norway, Lapland, and Finland, and although his travels in these regions had no important geographical outcome, yet they resulted in lately placing the general public in possession of many interesting details of these countries, as given in his book called "The Land of the Midnight Sun." His important work, "The Viking Age," is an elaborate presentation of his theory that the ancestors of the English-speaking races were Vikings and not Anglo-Saxons, and has awakened much comment in the scientific world. "Ivar the Viking," his latest book, is a popular account of Viking life and manners in the third and fourth centuries.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Arrows of the African Pigmies.]

XIV.

STANLEY AFRICa.n.u.s AND THE CONGO FREE STATE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Henry M. Stanley.]

The largest, the richest, and the least known of the great continents is Africa. Despite its vast area, numerous tribes, and complicated interests it may be said that its potential influences as regards the rest of the world have been alternately r.e.t.a.r.ded and advanced through the efforts of four individuals. The jealousy of Rome, excited to its highest pitch by the eloquence of the elder Cato, resulted, 146 B.C., in the annihilation of Carthage, an industrial centre whence for five centuries had radiated toward the interior of Africa peaceful and commercial influences. Eight centuries later the hordes of the Arabian Caliph Omar in turn overwhelmed the Roman colony at Alexandria, destroying forever its literary influence by the burning of its great library.

Conversely the missionary labors of David Livingstone, from 1849 to 1873, inculcated peaceful methods and cultivated moral tendencies destined to introduce Christianity and develop civilization. Not only did Livingstone, in the eloquent words of Stanley, "weave by his journeys the figure of his Redeemer's cross on the map of Africa, but, scattering ever his Master's words and patterning his life after the Master stamped the story of the cross on the hearts of every African tribe he visited."

Initiating routes of travel, suggesting new commercial fields, and organizing stable forms of government, came a man of harder metal, of indomitable will and courage, Henry M. Stanley, who merits the t.i.tle of Stanley Africa.n.u.s.

A Welshman by nativity, born near Denbigh, in 1840, he came to the United States at the age of sixteen and thenceforth cast his lot with America, and as a citizen of this country made his explorations under its flag. It is reputed that he exchanged his natal name of Rowlands for that of Henry M. Stanley, for a merchant of New Orleans who adopted him; but in any event his early life was pa.s.sed without the loving and modifying influences of a home, his youth almost equally dest.i.tute of those advent.i.tious surroundings that properly mould the character and insure opportunities for success to young men. Thus he stands forth a self-made man to whom strength has been accorded to develop the manhood that G.o.d implanted in his soul.

Stern experiences in the American civil war, brief life in the far West, and special service in Turkey had shaped Stanley into a reliant, self-contained man when his first African journey came to him, in 1868, through a.s.signment as newspaper correspondent to accompany the British army in its invasion of Abyssinia. He partic.i.p.ated in this wonderful campaign, which led him four hundred miles through a country of indescribable wildness and grandeur, across rugged mountains, along deep valleys, up to the fortress-crowned crest of Magdala, ten thousand feet above the sea.

Difficult as were the mountains of Abyssinia, they were less dangerous than the African region later to be traversed by him; a journey unsought, but which came to him as the fittest man for the time and service.

A telegram and five hours' preparation carried Stanley from the blood-red fields of revolutionary Spain into the famous search journey that gave to an anxious world news of the long-lost Livingstone. For twenty years this great Scotch missionary had carried the gospel of Christ and its civilizing influences from one end of Africa to the other; once he had crossed the continent in its greatest breadth, and now, vanished from the sight of the civilized world in his renewed missionary labors, for two years his very existence had been problematical.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Hut where Livingstone Died.]

The search expedition owed its inception and maintenance to James Gordon Bennett, Jr., whose brief orders to Stanley were: "Find Livingstone and bring news of his discoveries or proofs of his death, regardless of expense." The personnel, methods, and arrangements devolved entirely on Stanley, but his preliminary route was to lie through certain countries.

It thus occurred that between Madrid, his starting point, and Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, the camp of Livingstone, he saw the gayties of Paris; was present at the eventful opening of the Suez Ca.n.a.l that revolutionized Eastern commerce; ascended the Lower Nile to scrutinize with interested eye Baker's prospective expedition to the Soudan; divined under the mosques of the Bosphorus the political riddles of Sultan and Khedive; examined the uncovered foundations of Solomon's Temple in the Holy City; meditated over the historic battle-grounds of the Crimea; penetrated the Caucasus to Tiflis for news of the Russian expedition to Khiva; and, traversing Persia through the Euphratan cradle of the human race, entered India, whence his route lay to Zanzibar and the dark beyond. What a contrast those preliminary journeys afforded, across effete countries whose varying and recorded phases of civilization are contemporaneous with the history of the human race, to the threshold of a vast region whose barbaric freshness is such that its entire history lies within the memory of living man.

Stanley landed at Zanzibar, January 10, 1871, and, fortunately, was at once impressed with his ignorance of outfitting, which he thought he had learned from books. Resorting to the Arab traders he proved such an apt pupil and skilful organizer that he enlisted twenty-seven soldiers, gathered one hundred and fifty-seven carriers and five special employees, which, with two white a.s.sistants, Farquhar and Shaw, made his aggregate force one hundred and ninety-two. He had his African money--beads as copper coins, cloth as silver, and bra.s.s rods as gold; canvas-covered boats for navigation; a.s.ses and horses for special work; fine cloth for tribute to local chiefs, which, with tentage, medicine, etc., made some six tons of freight.

March 21, 1871, the rear guard marched out of Bagamoyo, the town on the mainland opposite Zanzibar, and taking a route never before travelled by a white man, Stanley reached Simbamwenni in fourteen marches, the journey of one hundred and nineteen miles having occupied twenty-nine days, during which the commander came to fully realize the difficulty of his undertaking, the inefficiency of unpractised subordinates, and the uncertain loyalty of carriers.

The onward march resembled all in Africa: thorns and jungle to wound the naked carriers, rivers to be forded or crossed on almost impracticable bridges, swamps many miles in length and so miry as to tax the utmost strength and energy of man and a.s.s, insolence and exactions of local potentates, thefts by natives, desertions of carriers, the oft-recurring fever, and occasionally a death.

The 20th of May, Stanley was at Mpwapwa (Mbambwa), delighted physically at its fair aspect and upland picturesqueness, but mentally anxious over Farquhar, whom he left here sick, and the loss of his a.s.ses, which he fortunately was able to replace by twelve carriers. He reached, on June 22d, Unyanyembe, after a devious journey of five hundred and twenty miles to cover an air-line distance of one hundred and fifty. Here had just arrived a relief caravan for Livingstone, which had left Zanzibar four months prior to Stanley's. Near by, at Tabora, the chief Arabian town of central Africa, Stanley was surprised to find the Arabs at war with a savage chief, Mirambo, thus barring the usually travelled road to Ujiji.

Here Stanley lost three months, and partic.i.p.ated in an unsuccessful campaign with the Arabs against Mirambo, vainly hoping that thus his road would be opened. Five of his men were killed in the war, others deserted, so that only eleven carriers remained, and altogether his prospects of success steadily diminished.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map showing Position and Boundaries of the Congo State.]

Despairing of the old route, Stanley, having with great difficulty recruited his force of carriers, decided to try a circuitous trail to the south in order to reach Ujiji, which lay to the northwest. Failure and destruction were predicted, but with confidence in himself Stanley, on September 20th, marched on with Shaw and fifty-six others. Illness caused him to soon send back Shaw, his only white companion; frequent desertions weakened his force; an incipient mutiny of his panic-stricken men on the Gombe River threatened complete destruction to the party; insolent chiefs exacted extortionate tribute; desert marches without water and scant food discouraged and weakened the men; but the leader pushed on with unflagging energy despite every obstacle. His route lay through Igonda, Itende, the beautiful country of Uvinsa, across rocky Uhha to the Malagarazi River, where his heart was gladdened by rumors from the natives that a white man had lately arrived at Ujiji from Manyuema.

Pushing on with feverish haste, on November 9, 1871, he had the indescribable joy of looking down on magnificent Lake Tanganyika, and on the following day, with his gigantic guide, Asmani, proudly striding in advance with the Stars and Stripes as his standard, Stanley marched into Ujiji, and there accomplished his mission by meeting Livingstone and ascertaining the results of his late labors. Livingstone's primary mission--the suppression of the slave trade by means of civilizing influences--had not materially progressed, but he had strong hopes of the future. Geographically, however, he had been most successful, having made important discoveries in the water-sheds of Lakes Tanganyika and the Nyanzas, and found an unknown river, the Lualaba, which in a later exploration Stanley proved to be the Upper Congo.

Stanley found Livingstone with only five carriers and without means of trade. Supplying all deficiencies from his own stores, he a.s.sisted Livingstone in his exploration of Lake Tanganyika, and the twain returned together to Unyanyembe. In the meantime both Farquhar and Shaw died, and Stanley, turning over his surplus stores to Livingstone, bade him farewell and G.o.dspeed, and started for Zanzibar. On March 14, 1872, eight weeks later, Stanley was again enjoying civilization at Bagamoyo, while Livingstone was awaiting means of returning to his life-task, soon to be ended by his death among the tribes he loved, for "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Over four months of intercourse with Livingstone steadily increased Stanley's admiration for this great man. He describes him as a high-spirited, brave, impetuous, and enthusiastic man, with these qualities so tempered by his deep, abiding spirit of religion as to make him a most extraordinary character. In all his relations with his servants, with the natives, and with Mohammedans, Christianity appeared in its loveliest and most potent forms, constant, sincere, charitable, loving, modest, and always practical. It was this abiding faith in G.o.d which made Livingstone a man of unfailing devotion to his sense of present duty, of wondrous patience, unvarying gentleness, constant hopefulness, and unwearied fidelity--qualities which made his missionary work in Africa unprecedentedly successful.

Abuse, misrepresentation, and incredulity from geographic societies, critics, and press greeted Stanley's account of his discovery of Livingstone, and only gradually did his traducers yield to the convincing evidences of his astonishing success.

Turning to his old work, Stanley, in the winter of 1873-74, again entered Africa, accompanying as newspaper correspondent the British army, which invaded to a distance of one hundred and forty miles the deadly marshes of the Ashantee Kingdom, and destroyed its capital city, Cooma.s.sie.

When the death of Livingstone brought Africa into prominence again, Stanley, believing he could complete so much of the missionary's work as concerned exploration, turned thither at the head of an expedition under the auspices of the London _Telegraph_ and the New York _Herald_, the object being the survey of the lacustrine system at the head of the White Nile and a journey thence westward across the continent.

Leaving Bagamoyo, November 17, 1874, Stanley reached Lake Victoria Nyanza in March, 1875, his journey of seven hundred and twenty miles being marked by pestilential fevers, struggles through th.o.r.n.y jungles, and scant food and water. Circ.u.mnavigating the lake, he found it to be over four thousand feet above the ocean, while its proportions--nearly twenty-two thousand miles in area and in places over five hundred feet deep--a.s.sumed those of an inland sea. Here Mtesa, a powerful and able negro king, of Mohammedan faith, proved most friendly and greatly aided him, furnishing an escort, which enabled Stanley to explore a part of the adjacent mountain region. From Ujiji he then explored Lake Tanganyika, finding it to be about half the size of Victoria, with an elevation of about twenty-seven hundred feet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tippu-Tib.]

Important as were these discoveries they paled before others, made in following the Lualaba River of Livingstone, which changed the map of Central Africa and altered the destiny of that vast and untraversed region. The journey to Nyangwe, Livingstone's "farthest," entailed horrible hardships on the carriers. This Arab village was reached via the Luama, which, of hitherto unknown course, was found by Stanley to be an affluent of the Lualaba. At Nyangwe Stanley felt that his accomplished journey of over eight hundred miles from the east coast promised well for his coming voyage to a known point on the other coast, nine hundred miles due west. He made an agreement with an Arab, Tippu-Tib, trader in human flesh or ivory as chance offered, to escort the expedition about six hundred miles west through the unknown regions.

The country proved to be primeval forest, almost trackless, its tropical undergrowth a veritable jungle of thorns and vines. Game was scanty and other food equally so. Finally, progress was so slow and the path so devious that Stanley, yielding to his appeals, discharged Tippu-Tib and decided to descend the river by canoes and his frame boat. He embarked at Vinya Njara, with one hundred and fifty in his party, on December 28, 1876, intrusting himself with sublime audacity to a river flowing no one knew whither, save it was away from civilization, and with the knowledge that the country they were entering was peopled by tribes entirely hostile and intractable, as the slave-traders said. Day after day they drifted steadily to the north. Was it or was it not the Nile of Livingstone's prediction? Then day by day the course trended to the east. Yes, it could only be the Nile. After two hundred and forty miles the trend was to the northwest, whither, week after week, for about three hundred miles it kept its puzzling flow toward a point of the compa.s.s where it could join no river known to man. It had, too, a.s.sumed proportions and volume truly Amazonic, filled with islands and swollen from one to seven miles in width. All efforts to gain a knowledge of its final course were then fruitless, for the few barbarous natives they could win to speech answered in uncouth jargon, scarcely intelligible to the interpreters: "It is the river--the river!" The terrors of the silent stream in its majestic solitude were almost preferable to the presence of populous villages, which here and there lined its banks, for the inhabitants, ferociously hostile for the greater part, refused trade and boldly a.s.saulted them. Skilful canoemen and good archers, the savages slaughtered unwary stragglers, hara.s.sed the rear and attacked the front, while their horrible threats that the bodies of the slain should serve as food at their cannibalistic repasts instilled terror in the minds of many of Stanley's followers. Skirmishes were frequent, and now and then a severe fight which taxed Stanley's forces to the utmost.

Again the river had here and there series of cataracts which caused no end of trouble, delay, and danger to the party, nine men being drowned in one day.

Fortunately the river had turned to the south, and then to southwest, where, after another thousand miles, it flowed through a narrow gorge, one hundred and fifty miles from the sea, so that no doubt longer obtained as to it being the Congo. The terrible falls near the gorge entailed enormous labor to pa.s.s them, and barely failed of destroying the party. In all twenty-eight cataracts were pa.s.sed, and finally the river became so precipitous, the falls so high, that they had to abandon their boats and march overland to Boma, an English trading-post, five days' journey distant. Fatigue, famine, and exposure further enfeebled them and now made daily inroads among the ranks of those who had so far survived, and the entire party would have perished on the very threshold of civilization and plenty had not Stanley's messengers, sent on with urgent appeals, obtained help at Boma, where the expeditionary force arrived August 12, 1877. They had made a river journey of seven thousand miles, proved the Congo to be second only to the Nile, and crossed Africa.

When Stanley, in 1877, intrusting his life and fortunes to a mighty and unknown stream, voyaged toward the very heart of the Dark Continent, even his wildest dreams could not have foreshadowed results equal to the reality of a near future. His voyage in its potentiality was second only to that of Columbus, as the outcome of the succeeding five years plainly indicates. All Europe, alive to the commercial importance of the Congo Basin, hastened to reach its borders or encroach on its limits by means of enlarged dependent colonies; commerce and religion, hand in hand, traversed its rivers by steam and lined its banks with beneficent settlements, while the merciless Arab devastated its villages and dragged its decimated natives into slavery. Then came a political wonder--the peaceful creation of a vast tropical empire more than a million square miles in area, the Congo Free State, erected and admitted into the community of nations by act of an international conference, in which partic.i.p.ated fourteen European powers and the United States, our own country being fittingly the first to officially acknowledge the existence of the new state its adventurous citizen had given to the world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Emin Pasha.]