*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 68276 ***

[Illustration: IN THE REAR OF A CARAVAN]




  SLAVERY
  AND THE SLAVE TRADE IN AFRICA

  BY
  HENRY M. STANLEY

  ILLUSTRATED

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK
  HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
  1893




Harper’s “Black and White” Series.

Illustrated. 32mo, Cloth, 50 cents each.


 SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE IN AFRICA. By Henry M. Stanley.

 THE RIVALS. By François Coppée.

 THE JAPANESE BRIDE. By Naomi Tamura.

 WHITTIER: NOTES OF HIS LIFE AND OF HIS FRIENDSHIPS. By Annie Fields.

 GILES COREY, YEOMAN. By Mary E. Wilkins.

 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. An Address. By George William Curtis.

 COFFEE AND REPARTEE. By John Kendrick Bangs.

 SEEN FROM THE SADDLE. By Isa Carrington Cabell.

 A FAMILY CANOE TRIP. By Florence Watters Snedeker.

 A LITTLE SWISS SOJOURN. By William Dean Howells.

 A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION. A Farce. By William Dean Howells.

 IN THE VESTIBULE LIMITED. By Brander Matthews.

 THE ALBANY DEPOT. A Farce. By William Dean Howells.

PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.

_For sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by the publishers,
postage prepaid, on receipt of price._


Copyright, 1893, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

_All rights reserved._




ILLUSTRATIONS


  IN THE REAR OF A CARAVAN      _Frontispiece_

  CAPTURING SLAVES              _Facing p._ 28

  A SLAVE MARKET                     ”      40

  A SLAVER                           ”      50

  BOY SLAVE                          ”      62

  AN ARAB                            ”      74




SLAVERY

AND THE SLAVE TRADE IN AFRICA


“It is desirable that accurate information on the enormities of
the slave trade should be spread at home and abroad, and that to
slave-holding states all evidence proving the superior advantages
of free labor should be freely supplied,” was a sentiment uttered
by his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales at the jubilee meeting of
the Antislavery Society. His vast and influential audience cordially
responded to it.

It seems to me that the same sentiment should also be published for
the benefit of all those in America or England who are or may become
interested in the welfare and progress of the negro races, and of
their advancement towards civilization. With that view, I shall
endeavor in this article to lay before you the present actual condition
of Africa in respect to slavery, the slave trade, and slave-raiding,
and the efforts which are being made to remedy their destructive
effects, and to extirpate the causes, by opening the continent to the
influences of legitimate trade.

The maritime exploration of the African coasts by the Portuguese
navigators in the fifteenth century was the direct cause of the first
inception of the traffic in negroes, and first started the no less
inhuman system of slave-holding which this century has seen expiated by
one of the most sanguinary wars of which we have any full record.

The exploration of the interior of the continent, accompanied as it has
been by revelations respecting the appalling sufferings of innocent
peoples, of the wholesale destruction of tribal communities, and the
annihilation of their humble industries, has so cleared the way to the
right comprehension of the worst features of the slave trade that we
begin now to see pretty clearly the measures that must be adopted not
only for its thorough suppression in the continent, but to obliterate
all traces of its past horrors.

The excesses which were committed by the cupidity and hard
thoughtlessness of our forefathers have been atoned for to some extent
by their children by the immense sacrifices which they have made. They
have freely risked their lives on the battle-field, on board of the
cruisers along the unhealthy coasts of Africa during their long and
faithful service as the world’s maritime police, along the various
lines of exploration, in the many mission fields; they have also given
treasures of money towards freeing themselves from the shame of any
connection with the slave trade by moral or actual connivance, or by
countenancing its existence.

In regard to the suppression of the slave trade in little-known Africa
we have been, however, too apt to adopt pessimistic views; and as in
North and South America we were slow to perceive our duties, or to
appreciate the advantages that would result from relieving ourselves
from the odium attached to slavery, so after the event we are too apt
to remind ourselves of the immense trouble and treasure it cost us
to cast it off. Our impatience is excited at the portentously large
figures of expense, compared to which the figures of profit seem so
infinitesimal, and the rate of progress so insignificant. My endeavor
shall be to lessen this feeling of disappointment, and to show how we
have been steadily advancing, even in mid-Africa, to extinguish the
traffic, and what prospects we have of eventually seeing it abolished
altogether from the face of the earth.

From the year when Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope
(1497) to the year 1807, when the British government prohibited
the exportation of slaves over the high seas, is a period of 310
years. During all this time Africa was surrendered to the cruelty
of the slave-hunter, and the avarice of the slave-trader. While
its people were thus subject to capture and expatriation, it was
clearly impossible that any intellectual or moral progress could be
made by them. The greater number of those accessible from the coast
were compelled to study the best methods of avoiding the slaver and
escaping his force and his wiles--the rest only thought of the arts
of kidnapping their innocent and unsuspecting fellow-creatures. Yet
ridiculous as it may appear to us, there were not wanting zealous men
who devoted themselves to Christianizing the savages who were moved
by such an opposite spirit. In Angola, Congo, and Mozambique, and
far up the Zambezi, missionaries erected churches and cathedrals,
appointed bishops and priests, who converted and baptized, while at
the mouths of the Niger, the Congo, and the Zambezi their countrymen
built slave-barracoons and anchored their murderous slave-ships.
European governments legalized and sanctioned the slave trade, the
public conscience of the period approved it, the mitred heads of the
Church blessed the slave-gangs as they marched to the shore, and the
tax-collector received the levy per head as lawful revenue.

But here and there during these guilty centuries words of warning are
not wanting. Queen Elizabeth, upon being informed of the forcible
capture of Africans for the purposes of sale, exclaims solemnly that
“such actions are detestable, and will call down vengeance on the
perpetrators.” When Las Casas, in his anxiety to save his Indians,
suggests that Africans be substituted for them, the Pope, Leo X.,
declares that “not only the Christian religion but Nature herself cried
out against such a course.”

One hundred and sixty-five years after the discovery of the Cape, Sir
John Hawkins pioneers the way for England to participate in the slave
trade, hitherto carried on by the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the
Dutch.

A century later a king of England, Charles II., heads an English
company which undertakes to supply the British West Indies yearly with
30,000 negroes.

After the Asiento Contract, under which for thirty years England
secured the monopoly of supplying the Spanish West Indies with slaves,
as many as 192 ships were engaged every year in the transportation
of slaves from the African coast. The countries which suffered most
from the superior British method of slave capturing and trading and
slave-carrying were Congo land, the Niger Valley, the Guinea and Gold
coasts, the Gambia, Cross, and Calabar lands.

The system adopted by the British crews in those days was very similar
to that employed by the Arabs to-day in inner Africa. They landed at
night, surrounded the selected village, and then set fire to the huts,
and as the frightened people issued out of the burning houses, they
were seized and carried to the ships; or sometimes the skipper, in his
hurry for sea, sent his crew to range through the town he was trading
with, and, regardless of rank, to seize upon every man, woman, and
child they met. Old Town, Creek Town, and Duke Town, in Old Calabar,
have often witnessed this summary and high-handed proceeding.

Boswell, the biographer of Dr. Johnson, called the slave trade “an
important and necessary branch of commerce;” and probably the largest
section of the British public, before those antislavery champions
Clarkson and Wilberforce succeeded in persuading their countrymen to
reflect a little, shared Boswell’s views, as well as his surprise and
indignation, when it became known that there were English people who
talked of suppressing it.

That the slave trade must have been a lucrative commerce there can be
no doubt, when we consider that from 1777 to 1807 upwards of 3,000,000
Africans had been sold in the West Indies. All those forts which
may be seen lining the west coast of Africa to-day were constructed
principally by means of the revenue derived from the slave tax.

In 1833 slavery was abolished throughout the British dominions, and
the government agreed to pay the slave-owners of the West Indies
£20,000,000 redemption-money for 1,000,000 of slaves. On the 1st of
August, 1834, the famous Act of Emancipation came into operation.
Throughout the West Indies the eve of the great day was kept by watch
meetings, in acclamations of praise and thanksgiving. It is said
that when the hour of midnight began to strike, the singing and the
shouting ceased, and the congregations knelt down and listened with
bated breath to the solemn strokes of the bell which announced their
freedom, and ere the new day was a minute old the loud strains of
“Glory Allelujah!” burst from the now enfranchised people. They flung
themselves upon one another’s breasts, clapped their hands, cried and
laughed, but louder than all other sounds were the cries, “Praise God!
Glory! glory to God!”

Ten years later, the abolition of the legal status of slavery in
India freed 9,000,000 of slaves. Then, little by little, the nations
implicated in slavery gravitated to the side of the emancipators. In
1846 the Bey of Tunis, through British influence, decreed that all
slaves touching his territory should become free. The French Republic
in 1848 declared by a brief act that no more slaves should be admitted
into French territory. In 1861 the autocrat of Russia decreed the
emancipation of 20,000,000 serfs. The history of the great struggle
in the United States is too recent for it to be forgotten that it
occasioned the proclamation of freedom on January 1, 1863, by which
6,000,000 of slaves were admitted to the rights of freemen. Finally,
and only four years ago, Brazil, after long and laborious efforts of
her most enlightened men, heard that the law of abolition of slavery
had passed through her Senate--and thus the cruel and inhuman system
of man holding fellow-man as a chattel and barterable property was
extinguished throughout all America.

It therefore required eighty-two years to extirpate slavery within
lands professing to be civilized. Africa in the mean time was not
neglected. Her burdens and pains were gradually but surely being
reduced. The cruising squadrons sailing up and down the eastern and
western coasts made it extremely difficult for slave-ships to break
through the close blockade, and after the introduction of steam it was
rendered impossible. Education had also greatly spread, and it became
a universal conviction that slave-trading was as wicked as piracy.

It has since been attempted by more than one power to continue the
trade under the disguised form of cooly and contract labor. Were it
honestly conducted, and the contracts punctually executed on the part
of the employers, there can be no doubt that it would be a means of
elevating the benighted people into a higher standard by the contact
with and example of a superior or, rather, more advanced race. But it
requires a strong and enlightened government to act as umpire in such
cases, and governments, unless they find their influence remunerative,
do not care to take too much trouble. The ignorant islanders of the
South Seas have suffered terribly from this supineness, indifference,
or want of close scrutiny and rigid enforcement of every detail in
the contract by the Queensland government. They have been decoyed
on board the labor-ships under various pretences, and conveyed away
never to return; or they have been allowed to go to the Queensland
plantations uncared and unprovided for; or, after the term of contract
has expired, they have been landed on islands with which they were
totally unacquainted, and become food for savages or been made slaves.
That such things should be possible in a British colony argues a
woful ignorance of the uses of a government, inexcusable stupidity, a
shocking lack of feeling, and an incredible amount of ingratitude. It
would not be difficult to prove such a system worse than open slavery.

The Portuguese have also been until recently offenders against public
sentiment in the matter of exporting “colonials” from Angola for the
cocoa groves of Prince’s Island and the sugar estates of St. Thomas.
These colonials are natives collected from the interior, who, before
embarkation, are looked at by a government functionary, and then
have tin tickets slung around their necks, are given a blanket and
a few flimsy cottons, and are deported to the islands for a term
which to too many of them must be indefinite. The official declared
that all was fair and just, but no one with a fair mind on viewing
a barge-load of these unfortunates could possibly accept such a
statement from an underbred and illiterate official as a voucher.
It appears to me that if the colonials are absolutely required for
the islands by the Portuguese, or contract kanakas by Queensland
planters, their engagement might be made as honest as an agreement
with a number of English navvies for the Suakim-Berber Railway, or
Italians for the Congo Railway, or Jamaicans for the Panama Canal.
But it should be remembered that the lower, the more degraded, and
more ignorant the people from whom these labor gangs are drawn, the
greater are the responsibilities of the government sanctioning such
engagements. For in cases where the government authorizes “contract
labor” or “colonialism,” it should be prepared to supply to the
ignorant native that care, knowledge, prudence, and security which the
English, Italian, and Jamaican navvies possess by education, color, and
experience. And it is only in this way, and no other, that coolyism,
colonialism, and contract labor can be relieved of their objectionable
features.

We may now see that the progress of the world in philanthropic feeling
and sentiment has been continuous, and as satisfactory as its progress
in the adoption and use of the mechanical inventions of the age. It
has been comparatively slow, but the world is large and its nations
are many; but for an idea--born in the sympathetic heart of the humble
Fox--to be found permeating the minds of all the civilized peoples
of the world, until all authority is ranged on its side, is surely
wonderful. Wherefore we may go on hoping and working till no son of
Adam shall be found a slave to his fellow in all the world.

Now let us see what has already been done, or may in the near future
be done, in Africa, which has been during historic time the nursery of
slaves. I have before me an autograph letter of Dr. David Livingstone,
written in 1872, wherein he concludes a long exposé of the evils of
the slave trade which he had met in his travels thus: “The west coast
slave-trade is finished, but it is confidently hoped, now that you have
got rid of the incubus of slavery [in America], the present holders of
office will do what they can to suppress the infamous breaches of the
common law of mankind that still darken this eastern coast, and all I
can add in my loneliness is, may Heaven’s rich blessings descend on
whoever lends a helping hand!”

It was this and other letters from Livingstone which provoked that
earnest attention to Africa which I feel convinced will not abate
until it will be as impossible to kidnap a slave there as in England.
The traveller’s death, which occurred a few months later, stirred his
countrymen into action. At a great meeting held at the Mansion House
the necessity for vigorously grappling with the slave trade on the east
coast was unmistakably expressed. It resulted in Sir Bartle Frere being
sent to Zanzibar to engage the Sultan’s co-operation. For that prince
derived a considerable revenue from the duty on imported slaves; his
subjects were the people against whom Livingstone had written those
terrible indictments; the British Indian merchants residing in his
capital furnished the means whereby the Arabs were equipped for their
marauding expeditions. But with all Sir Bartle’s tact, discretion, and
proverbial suavity, the mission intrusted to him narrowly approached
failure. Fortunately, in Dr. (now Sir) John Kirk, the consul-general,
the British government possessed an official of rare ability, and who
from long acquaintance with the Sultan knew him thoroughly. Through
his assistance, and the opportune appearance of Admiral Cumming with a
powerful fleet, a treaty was finally concluded, and the Zanzibar prince
was enlisted on the side of the antislavery cause.

Those, however, who expected too much from the treaty were greatly
disappointed when, a few months later, reports reached England that the
slave trade was as flourishing as ever. No suspicion was entertained of
the sincerity of the Zanzibar prince, for upon every occasion involving
the punishment of the slavers he proved his honesty by permitting the
law, without protest, to be applied. The objects of the treaty were
being, however, evaded by the enterprising Arabs on the mainland, who
marched their caravans northward along the coast to points whence at
favorable opportunities they could ship their captives to ports in
southern Arabia or in the Egyptian protectorate.

To counteract these new proceedings of the Arabs, another large meeting
was convened at Stafford House in May, 1874, for the consideration
of other means of suppression of the trade. I suggested at that
meeting that commissioners should be appointed at various ports along
the coast whose duty it would be to keep a record of the number of
persons attached to all caravans bound for the interior, as well as
of the material of their equipment; that each caravan leader, before
receiving permission to set out, should be compelled to bind himself
not to engage in the slave trade, and that such leader on returning to
the coast should, upon being convicted of having evaded or broken his
obligations, forfeit his bond and be fined $5000; that each captain of
a slave-vessel, upon conviction that he was engaged in the transport
of slaves, should receive capital punishment; that trading depots
should be established on Lakes Nyassa and Tanganika to encourage
legitimate commerce in the natural products of the interior; and that
the lake coasts should be patrolled by flotillas of steam-launches.
The above were the main features of a plan which I still believe would
have been adequate in meeting the wishes of the principal speakers in
that assembly. Those who know what has since been done by the imperial
German government along that same coast and on the lakes will perceive
how closely the suggestions are paralleled to-day by the actions of
the German commissioners and the trading depots on the lakes belonging
to the African Lakes Company. No caravan is permitted to leave without
search; gunpowder and arms are confiscated; slave-traders are tried,
and hanged after conviction (the chief judge on the German coast lately
sentenced seventeen Arabs to be hanged at Lindi). The trading depots of
the African Lakes Company are pre-eminently successful in subserving
the antislavery cause by suppressing the odious trade in slaves. Had
the British done then what is being done now, no other power could have
usurped her rights in the immense territory lately abandoned to the
Germans.

The history of events at Zanzibar for some years following consists
principally of relations of capture of slave-dhows and the confiscation
of the vessels, the visit of the Zanzibar prince to England, the
appointment of a number of vice-consuls to the principal ports
along the coast, the departures of explorers for inner Africa, the
gradual but steady increase of missionaries in the interior, and the
establishment of Christian missions at Usambara, Mombasa, and Nyassa.

Meanwhile the Arabs in the far interior had discovered a new field for
bolder operations in a country west of Lake Tanganika, called Manyuema,
and the enormous forested area adjoining it to the north, which has
lately been discovered to be about 400,000 square miles in extent.
Nyangwé, the principal town of Manyuema, is situate but a few miles
south of the vast forest, on the right bank of the Lualaba. It was the
furthest point of Livingstone’s explorations. Manyuema is surpassingly
beautiful, the soil is exceedingly fertile, and the people, though
troubled by tribal feuds, are industrious cultivators. By the time
Livingstone had penetrated the country the Arabs had assumed lordship
over it, and each chief was compelled to pay tribute to them in
ivory. The Arabs not only monopolized the ivory, but the fear of them
was so great among the Manyuema that, to protect themselves from
too many masters, they elected to serve some one powerful Arab, to
whom they surrendered themselves, their liberties, as well as their
properties of all kinds. In a few years Manyuema was emptied of its
elephant teeth. The Arabs then began to extend their operations into
the forest, suffering many a disaster and mishap as they advanced.
But continuous practice enabled them in the end to thwart the craft
of the forest natives, and to acquire that experience by which
eventually they easily became masters of every country they entered.
The success attending the ventures of such men as Dugumbi, Mtagamoyo,
Mohammed-bin-Nasur, and Abed-bin-Salim, and scores of lesser leaders,
increased the avarice and excited the ardor of younger and more daring
spirits. An apprenticeship with men who had grown gray in the arts of
slave-catching and ivory-raiding had taught them that it was a waste of
time to pretend to barter cloth and beads as practised in lands east of
Lake Tanganika. They had realized how complete was the isolation of the
forest aborigines, how the little settlements buried in the recesses of
the forest were too weak to resist their trained battalions, and how
the natives shrank from facing the muzzles of their thundering guns,
and how they might range at will and pillage to their hearts’ content
through an unlimited area without let or hindrance.

Having become experts in the science of tracking, ambuscades, and
surprises, they became anxious to win fame and fortune after a manner
never dreamed of by the earlier traders. The verb “to buy” was to be
banished from the vernacular. All that was bestial and savage in the
human heart was given fullest scope, unchecked and unreproved. Hence
followed the most frightful barbarities and massacres, which spared no
age and regarded no sex; fire, spear, arrow, and iron bullet preluded
furious loot and pitiless seizure.

Among the earliest to put into practice the terrible knowledge they
had gained during their tentative incursions into the forest were
Abed-bin-Salim, Tippu Tib, Sayid-bin-Habib, Muini Muhala, Rashid (the
nephew of Tippu), Nasur-bin-Suliman, and others. Abed-bin-Salim’s
case is typical. Among the young Swahili who followed his fortunes
were four youthful squires, or apprentices, named Karema, Kiburuga,
Kilonga-Longa, and Kibongé. The last of these has given his name
to an important Arab station just above Stanley Falls; the other
three have since become famous among the Central African rapparees
and slave-thieves. The names under which they have severally become
notorious, and for which they exchanged those derived from their
parents, are synonymes given by the bush natives for rapine, lust,
murder, arson.

In 1878 Abed-bin-Salim despatched coastward a caravan consisting of
Manyuema slaves bearing 350 tusks. At Zanzibar the ivory was sold,
and the proceeds invested in double-barrelled guns, Minie rifles,
and carbines, gunpowder, percussion-caps, buckshot, and bar lead.
Within twenty months the new weapons and war munition reached Nyangwé.
Kibongé soon after was sent by his master Abed down the Lualaba as
supercargo and store-keeper at a station to be strategically chosen,
and his three confederates became leaders of three divisions of
booty-gatherers, and to draw all slaves, ivory, and flocks of goats
into the slave-hold of Kibongé. A native village near the confluence of
the Leopold with the Lualaba River was taken, and without loss of time
was palisaded as a measure of security. Canoe after canoe was added
to their flotilla, in order that detachments might make simultaneous
attacks at various points along the Leopold, Lufu, Lowwa, Lira, and
Ulindi rivers.

Ivory was the first object of the raiders, women the second, children
the third. Ivory was now rapidly rising in value, for the slaughter of
fifty thousand elephants in a year makes it scarce. In this region,
hitherto unexploited, it was abundant. The natives frequently used it
to chop wood upon, or to rest their idols while shaping them with the
adze. Being so heavy, two tusks were used to keep their bedding of
phrynia leaves from being scattered. They made ivory into pestles to
pound their corn, or they stood the tusks on end round their idols, or
employed them as seats for their elders in the council-house. Women
were needed as wives and servants for the marauders; the little girls
could be trained to house-work, and bide the growth of the little boys,
with whom eventually they would wive, and who in the mean time would be
useful as field hands or for domestic duties.

In a village there would probably be found, on an average, ten tusks,
good, bad, and indifferent, thirty full-grown women, and fifty
children above five years old, besides a few infants. At the first
alarm, a scream from a child or a woman, the warriors and their
families dash frantically and pell-mell out of their huts. Then from
the ambuscade a volley is fired, and a score fall dead or wounded
to the ground, whereat the unseen foes leap out of their coverts to
despatch the struggling and groaning victims with knife and spear;
and some make mad rushes at a group of terrified children; others
dart for a likely-looking woman; a few leap in pursuit of a girl who
is flying naked from the scene; some chase a lad who bounds like an
antelope over the obstructions. Those not engaged in the fierce chase
enter the village, and collect to argue over the rights to this or
that child. When four or five hundred men rise upon a village whose
inhabitants are numerically inferior to them, the event is followed
by much fierce discussion of the kind which is not always amicably or
easily settled, even when the matter is submitted to the arbitration of
the leaders. The rest of the band scatter wildly through the village,
and begin collecting the frightened fowls and the bleating goats,
rummaging roofs, insides of gourds, and every imaginable place
where a poor savage might be likely to hide his little stock of curios
and valuables; others manacle the captives, and question them harshly
about their neighbors, or indulge in barbarous fun with some decrepid
whitehead. When the results of these pillaging expeditions became known
in Nyangwé, and the laden canoes disembarked their ivory, slaves, and
fat goats of the famous forest breed, it kindled the envy and cupidity
of even Tippu Tib and Sayid-bin-Habib.

[Illustration: CAPTURING SLAVES]

Up to 1876, Tippu Tib had been the acknowledged leader of the
slavers, on account of his marvellous success. His career had been
romantic. From a poor coast slaver, involved in debt to the usurers
and money-lenders of Zanzibar, he had grown wealthy and famous. By
the storming and capture of Nsama’s stronghold (May, 1867) he had
become possessed of a fortune in ivory and slaves. He had relieved
himself as soon as possible of his embarrassing store by sending his
brother Mohammed in charge of his plunder to Unyanyembé, and, with
five hundred guns, continued a triumphant and unchecked course from
the south of Tanganika through the heart of Rua, to Nyangwé. As he
marched, he ravaged to the right and left of his route, gathered ivory,
and made slaves by hundreds. Not far from a district called Mtotila
he learned from a captive that the king had disappeared mysteriously
many years before, and that though frequent search had been made for
him, nothing was known of his whereabouts. Tippu Tib artfully conceived
the plan of representing himself as his son, and accordingly schooled
himself in all the local knowledge necessary for the deception he
intended to practise. By the time he approached Mtotila, Tippu Tib
could rehearse the long line of the king’s ancestry, the names of his
living relatives, and the elders of the land, and was familiar with the
events, traditions, and customs of Mtotila. He despatched messengers
into the country to announce his arrival, and to tell the wondering
people the news of his father’s fate, and of his intention to assume
his father’s rights. The people accepted the story without difficulty,
as it harmonized so well with their own conceptions and expectations.
The elders were deputed to go and meet their prince. They brought rich
presents of ivory and abundance of food, and offered to escort him with
honor to his father’s land, which Tippu Tib courteously accepted. At
every stage of his journey he was welcomed and feasted. On reaching
the town of Mtotila he received the chiefs and elders in a grand
_barzah_, at which he told the story of his father’s disappearance,
with a wealth of fictitious details of love and marriage with a king’s
daughter, of honors showered upon his father, and of the reluctance
to his departure which the natives manifested; of his own birth and
life; of his recollections of his father’s conversations with him
respecting Mtotila country, his relatives, and local events--until
all were thoroughly persuaded that this able and affable stranger was
no other than their lost king’s son. He was at once formally accepted
and installed as their king, and to ingratiate himself still more,
he distributed liberal largesses of showy beads and copper and brass
trinkets. Before many days had passed the people of Mtotila understood
that ivory was very acceptable to their king, and as the article
was abundant, and of little value to them, the entire country was
ransacked for it, and heaps of it were daily laid before him, until
his store of ivory became prodigious. Breaches of the peace between
his subjects were compounded by payment in ivory, his favors were
sold for ivory; in every imaginable way he augmented his treasure.
Finally, when he had depleted Mtotila of elephants’ teeth, he sought
occasion to embroil Mtotila with the surrounding countries, and his
myrmidons were despatched with the native forces to despoil them.
Within fifteen months he had gathered nine hundred tusks. He proposed
now to the Mtotilas that they should muster carriers to convey his
treasure to Kasongo, another country which, according to his reports,
he owned, where he had great houses and great estates. In this manner
he succeeded in obtaining vast wealth, and the Arabs of the Manyuema
settlements, when they viewed his vast store of ivory and innumerable
retinue, hailed him as a genius, and recognized his superiority.

The general admiration which had been excited by his genius had greatly
subsided by the time I reached Nyangwé in 1876. He was then induced to
escort my trans-African expedition a few marches north of Nyangwé, and
on his return he undertook the transport of his immense collections
of ivory to Zanzibar, where it is said that he realized the large sum
of £30,000 by its sale. Out of these lucrative returns he was able
to pay the usurers of Zanzibar the advances of money he had received,
with the heavy interest accruing, and with the residue he equipped his
large force with the best weapons procurable. In 1881 he was back again
in Manyuema, and witnessed with his own eyes the disembarkation of the
ivory and slaves obtained by Abed-bin-Salim’s agents. Fired at the
sight, he lost no time in making his preparations for a second great
campaign, which should excel in results his own previous exploits and
surpass Abed’s successes.

He divided his forces into two divisions. The land force he despatched
under his nephew Rashid to the Lumami; the flotilla descending the
Lualaba he led himself, assisted by his brother and son. The vessels
were navigated by the Wenya fishermen, whom during his long residence
in Manyuema he had protected and propitiated. These people numbered
several thousands, and were scattered along the left bank of the river
from the confluence of the Luama to Stanley Falls. The cataracts were
therefore no interruption to Tippu Tib’s progress or his projects.
On a large island just above the lowest of the Stanley Falls, called
Wané Sironga (Sons of Sironga), Tippu halted and established his
headquarters, whence he was to operate on the left bank as far as
the Lumami in conjunction with his nephew Rashid. But for some
months before his arrival Abed-bin-Salim’s agents had extended their
depredations below the Falls along the right bank, leaving a broad
desolate track as a witness of their crimes.

It may be true that the development of a country can only take
place after a drastic purgation of some sort, but it is also true,
fortunately, that there always is some cause to arrest total ruin. In
this instance the Arabs themselves had aided the cause. The enslaving
bands which escorted me from Nyangwé consisted of trained and
educated boy slaves from Manyuema and Unyamuezi and Zanzibar. Many a
trusted slave was in the ranks of the expedition which descended the
Lualaba to the Atlantic, through whose means a watery highway into
the heart of the continent was discovered, and by whom the course of
the westward-rolling waves of fire and slaughter was destined to be
arrested.

Seven years after we had parted from Tippu Tib in 1876 a small flotilla
of steamers was advancing towards Stanley Falls, which was barely sixty
miles off, and this is what we saw, as entered in a journal at the time:

“Surely there had been a great change. As we moved slowly up the
stream, a singular scene attracted our gaze. This was two or three long
canoes standing on their ends, like split hollow columns, upright on
the verge of the bank. What freak was this, and what did it signify?
To have tilted and raised such weights argued numbers and union. It
could never have been the work of a herd of chattering savages. They
are Arabs who have performed this feat of strength, and these upright
columnar canoes betray the advent of the slave-traders in the region
below the Falls. We learned later that on this now desolate spot once
stood the town of Yomburri.

“A few miles higher on the same bank we came abreast of another scene
of desolation, where a whole town had been burnt, the palm-trees cut
down, the bananas scorched, and many acres of them laid level with the
ground, and the freak of standing canoes on end repeated.

“We continued on our journey, advancing as rapidly as our steamers
could breast the stream. Every three or four miles we came in view of
the black traces of the destroyers. The charred stakes, poles of once
populous settlements, scorched banana groves, and prostrate palms, all
betokened ruthless ruin.

“On the morning of the 27th November (1883) we detected some object of
a slaty color floating down stream. The man in the bow turned it over
with a boat-hook. We were shocked to discover the bodies of two women
bound together with cord.

“A little later we came in sight of the Arab camp, and discovered that
this horde of banditti--for in reality they were nothing else--was
under the leadership of several chiefs, but principally under Karema
and Kiburuga. They had started sixteen months previously from Wané
Kirundu, about thirty miles below Vinya Njara. For eleven months the
band had been raiding successfully between the Congo and Lubiranzi.
They had then undertaken to perform the same cruel work between the
Aruwimi and the Falls. On looking at my map I find that the area
of such a territory as described above would measure 16,200 square
geographical miles on the left of the Lualaba, and 10,500 square
geographical miles on the right of it, the total of which would be
equal in statute mileage to 34,570 miles--an area a little larger than
the whole of Ireland, and which, according to a rough estimate, was
inhabited by about one million people.

“The slave-traders admit they have only 2300 captives in their fold.
The banks of the river prove that 118 villages and 43 tribal districts
have been devastated, out of which they have only this scant profit
of 2300 females and children and about 2000 tusks of ivory. Given
that these 118 villages contained only 118,000 people, we have only a
profit of two per cent.; and by the time all these captives have been
subjected to the accidents of the long river voyage before them, of
camp life and its harsh miseries, to the havoc of small-pox, and the
pests which misery breeds, there will only remain a scant one per cent.
upon the bloody ventures.”

If the pitiless course of the slave-hunters were not soon checked,
it was easy to perceive that the main Congo, with its 2000 miles of
shores, would have soon become a prey to these marauders, that in a
little while the scope and incentives to daring enterprise held out
by the defenceless river-banks would have emptied Manyuema and Ujiji
and Unyanyembé to extend devastation as far as Stanley Pool, and that
the great tributaries, with their 14,000 miles of shores, would have
been next visited, until the best portions of Africa would have been
depopulated. The Arabs were not pursuing any fixed scheme, but pushed
forward according to their means, and would continue to do so in
increasing numbers until they met a barrier of some kind. The barrier
fortunately had advanced to meet them, and was to be established at
Stanley Falls, 1400 miles from the Atlantic. Along the course of the
noble river were a series of military stations, which, with the aid of
the steamers, could furnish in case of need a very strong defensive
force. As, however, the stations were but newly planted, and the
natives as yet were not familiar with their purposes, time was needed
for their education and the consolidation of the infant state.

[Illustration: A SLAVE MARKET]

On February 25, 1885, the powers of Europe and America gave their
cordial recognition to the Congo Free State, and sanctioned the
employment of all civilized means for the preservation of order, the
introduction of civilization and lawful commerce, for the guarantees of
the safety of its people and efficient administration. It was markedly
stipulated that the new state should watch over the preservation of the
native races and the moral and material conditions of their existence,
should suppress slavery, and, above all, the slave trade, and punish
those engaged in it; that it should protect and encourage without
distinction of nationality or creed all institutions and enterprises,
religious, scientific, or charitable, organized for this object.

In time to come the regenerated peoples of central Africa will point
to the acts of the Berlin Conference as their charters of freedom from
the civilized world. For not only did this world-wide recognition
hearten the sovereign of the new state and founder of the association
which fathered it to continue his benevolent work, but the principles
formulated during the sitting of the Conference suggested to ambitious
powers the possibilities of immediate expansion of territory, after the
example of King Leopold II. The exigencies of diplomacy, even during
the Conference, had forced the powers to recognize immense concessions
of territory to France and Portugal, so that without the expenditure of
a copper French Gaboon was extended to the Congo, and Portuguese Angola
was amplified northward until its shores faced the only sea-port of
the young state. These political distributions disposed of over one
million and a half square miles of African territory.

In February, 1885, when the fate of this section of Africa was being
decided by Europe and America in Berlin, there were only three
steam-launches and three steel row-boats on the waters of the upper
Congo. They had been conveyed in pieces of sixty pounds weight, or
hauled on wagons past the cataracts, after an enormous expenditure of
money and labor. But now that the new state was fairly launched into
existence, it was necessary to increase the flotilla, and provide
means commensurate with the long list of duties which it had accepted.
The revenue which hitherto had solely been the bounty of King Leopold
was increased by an export tax on the commercial shipments from the
Congo. King Leopold also guaranteed the continuation of his bounty to
the year 1900 of £40,000 annually. Belgium granted the annual subsidy
of £80,000. From all sources there was an assured revenue of about
£150,000. The government, mission societies, and mercantile companies
hastened to provide means for the utilization of the long stretches
of navigable water above the cataracts. Steamer after steamer, boat
after boat, have been sent up, until now on the waters of the upper
river there are over thirty steamers and forty steel boats. The banks
of the main river are now free from danger of invasion, even were all
the numerous bands and slavers south of the equator united in array
against the state. At the mouth of the Aruwimi, 150 miles below Stanley
Falls, there is a garrison of 600 soldiers, and attached to the station
are steamers and boats of its own to convey immediate reinforcements
to the military outpost yet maintained at Stanley Falls. Three
hundred miles below is Bangala, which contains a still larger force.
This station would be no discredit to any part of the African coast.
The establishments are mostly built of brick manufactured on the
premises. Strong bastions, on which are mounted Krupp nine-pounders,
command the approaches. The military force of the state now numbers
4000 rifle-armed police. It is mostly recruited from the powerful and
warlike tribe of Bangala, which in 1877, during our descent of the
Congo, poured out in almost overpowering numbers to arrest our descent.

The banks of the great tributaries, Aruwimi, Wellé-Mobangi, Lumami, and
Kassai, are equally protected against the incursions of the destroying
bands. But though the efforts of the young state, after straining its
resources to the utmost, have been marked by signal and unexpected
success, a great deal more has to be accomplished before it can
proclaim that the slave hunts and ivory raids have altogether ceased.

Wheresoever exploration has revealed a slave-hunter’s route, wherever
the pioneer has indicated the objective of the raider, wherever
it has been supposed danger might arise from northern or eastern
Arab, the state has done its best to put a barrier in the shape of
a military station; but there is an extent of country 500 miles in
length between the sources of the Aruwimi and the Lukuga affluent, and
an area of 200,000 square miles, wholly at the mercy of the Arabs of
the east coast, and southwestern Tanganika and Rua are not yet under
surveillance.

Meantime every event that is occurring in that part of Africa tends
to the early extirpation of slave hunting and trading. Five years
ago no one could have anticipated that any measure devised by human
wisdom could have checked the destroying advance of the slavers. Yet
a more remarkable success has never been achieved before. It has been
effected solely by a continuously increasing and silent pressure from
civilization. There have been no bloody conflicts and no violence.
Tact mainly has guided the advance, and a constant pushing up of men
and supplies has obviated the necessity of retreat. Advantageous sites
near the camp of the slavers have been quietly occupied. Modest little
huts have been put up for temporary shelter; but with every voyage
of the river steamers new men and more supplies have been brought
up; the surroundings are more cleared; the officers continue their
amiable intercourse; there is no overstrenuous insistence, no imperious
mandate--until in a few months the camp imperceptibly has become a fort
and the little following has become a numerous garrison, and resistance
to the pressure is out of the question.

Close upon this progressive and silent governmental opposition to
barbarism another important and valuable element comes into operation.
I mean the influence of Christianity, as efficacious and necessary in
its way as the other. There are now Roman Catholic missions at Boma,
Kwamouth, New Antwerp in the Bangala country, and New Bruges at the
confluence of the Kwango and Kassai, and at New Ghent, nearly opposite
Bangala. The English Baptists are stationed at Ngombe, Ntundwa,
Kinshassa, Lukolela, Bolobo, Lutete’s, Lukungu, Bangala, and Upoto,
and the Congo Bololo Mission is at Molongo. The American Baptist
Missionary Union have their establishments at Palaballa, Banza Manteka,
Lukungu, Leopoldville, Chumbiri, Mossembo, Irebu, and Equatorville;
Bishop Taylor’s mission is represented by missions at Vivi, Ntombé, and
Kimpoko, and the Evangelical Alliance at Ngangelo, while the Swedes
are at Mukinbungu. These twenty-eight mission stations represent
about a hundred Roman Catholic priests and Protestant clergy, who
have volunteered in the good work of Christianizing the natives and
improving their moral conditions. In 1887 I saw indisputable proofs
of the value of their instruction and example. As a late report from
the Congo states, “slowly but surely the negro is being transformed;
his intellectual horizon is becoming enlarged, his feelings are being
refined.” Many natives now volunteer as readily as the Zanzibari
for service at remote posts for a term of years. They are to be
found in military uniform in the sea-port of Banana, as well as at
the most northern line of the state, waiting in little fortlets for
opportunities to prove their mettle against roving Mahdists. Their
children attend the mission schools, and are proving their aptitude
in acquiring elementary education, and in workmanly skill in various
trades. While parents may still fondly remember many an atrocious
feast, their sons affect the manners and customs of civilized men, and
become attached to honorable and useful employments, as mechanics,
warehouse-men, clerks, postmen, brick-makers, boat-builders, navvies,
etc.

A wonderfully encouraging evidence to my mind that the labor and
thoughtfulness of good men in behalf of Africa is not in vain may
be found in the vast army of carriers now employed in the transport
of European goods to Stanley Pool, past the cataract region. Ocean
steamers ascend the Lower Congo for over a hundred miles, and
discharge their miscellaneous cargoes at Mataddi. The loads for
transport overland are of sixty and seventy pounds weight. As they are
discharged by the ships, they are stacked in warehouses until the human
burden-bearers demand their freight. These apply in companies from ten
to two hundred strong, under their respective headmen. The price for
carrying a man’s load from Mataddi to the Pool is a sovereign’s worth
of barter stuffs, according to each carrier’s personal selection. The
distance of portage between the two points is about 230 miles, and is
performed in between fifteen and twenty days. Though a trying work for
natives unaccustomed to it, the Bakongo, who have been carriers for
generations, handle their burdens with ease. Travellers passing up
and down the road might expect to see a track travelled by so many
thousands marked by skeletons and littered with human bones. I have
never seen any such sinister objects along the route, nor have I ever
heard of any having been met with by later travellers. The way-bill,
with lists of the loads intrusted with the caravan, is given to the
headman, and all further care of them on the part of the consigners and
consignees ceases, until the loads arrive at their destination, and are
checked by the receiving officer, who then hands the signed receipt
which entitles the caravan to the stipulated payment. Frequently
there are burdens of baggage, ivory, rubber, etc., awaiting transport
down river, in which case they are re-engaged at the same rates for
Mataddi, and both checks are cashed at the main depot. Within less
than six weeks each carrier has gained two sovereign’s worth of trade
goods, which he conveys to his home for the benefit of his family,
or to store up until he possesses sufficient means to engage in trade
independently, or purchase some property he has long desired.

[Illustration: A SLAVER]

In 1884, when I left the Congo, the total number of carriers thus
employed did not exceed 300. But such has been the rapid progress
of events, and the favor with which the carrier profession has been
regarded by the natives, that the total number of carriers furnished by
an area of not more than 30,000 square miles is now about 75,000. Yet
this immense army is wholly insufficient to transport the vast quantity
of material discharged every month from the ships.

It was calculated by the promoters of the Congo Railway, now in process
of construction, that one train a week would be sufficient for some
years for the necessities of the upper Congo, but the crowded magazines
of Mataddi and the increasing demands for transport prove that a daily
train will scarcely suffice. I have lately received a large supply of
photographs of the railway cuttings and bridge-work, and one glance at
them shows the serious nature of the undertaking. The engineers are
still engaged in the rocky defiles, slowly laboring up the slopes to
gain the altitude of the ancient plateau. Fifteen miles of the track,
I have been told, are in running order, and the embankments extend
for twenty-five miles farther. When the rails have been laid thus
far, the progress will be much more rapid, and the engineers will be
able to state with precision how long a time must elapse before its
completion. It is scarcely necessary to add that the arrival of the
railway at Stanley Pool will insure the salvation of two-thirds of the
Congo basin. After that, attention will have to be drawn to Stanley
Falls, 1100 miles higher, and a railway of thirty-two miles in length
will enable us to pass the series of cataracts in that region, and to
command the river for about 1700 miles of its course.[1]

[1] Last December (1891) the foreign population of the Congo State was
as follows:

Belgians, 338; British, 72; Italians, 63; Portuguese, 56; Dutch, 47;
Swedes, 35; Danes, 32; French, 18; other nationalities, 83. Total, 744.

Their professions are as follows:

State officials, 271; merchants and clerks, 175; consuls, 2; doctors,
4; missionaries, 80; captains and sailors, 43; engineers, 12; artisans,
157. Total, 744.


We must not omit to mention that while Livingstone was making his
terrible disclosures respecting the havoc wrought by the slave-trader
in east central Africa, Sir Samuel Baker was striving to effect in
north central Africa what has been so successfully accomplished in
the Congo State. During his expedition for the discovery of the
Albert Nyanza, his explorations led him through one of the principal
man-hunting regions, wherein murder and spoliation were the constant
occupations of powerful bands from Egypt and Nubia. These revelations
were followed by diplomatic pressure upon the Khedive Ismail, and
through the personal influence of an august personage he was finally
induced to delegate to Sir Samuel the task of arresting the destructive
careers of the slavers in the region of the upper Nile. In his book
_Ismailïa_ we have the record of his operations by himself. The firman
issued to him was to the effect that he “was to subdue to the Khedive’s
authority the countries to the south of Gondokoro, to suppress the
slave trade, to introduce a system of regular commerce, to open to
navigation the great lakes of the equator, and to establish a chain of
military stations and commercial depots throughout central Africa.”
This mission began in 1869, and continued until 1874.

On Baker’s retirement from the command of the equatorial Soudan the
work was intrusted to Colonel C. G. Gordon--commonly known as Chinese
Gordon. Where Baker had broken ground, Gordon was to build; what his
predecessor had commenced, Gordon was to perfect and to complete. If
energy, determination, and self-sacrifice received their due, then had
Gordon surely won for the Soudan that peace and security which it was
his dear object to obtain for it. But slaving was an old institution
in this part of the world. Every habit and custom of the people had
some connection with it. They had always been divided from prehistoric
time into enslavers and enslaved. How could two Englishmen, accompanied
by only a handful of officers, removed 2000 miles from their base of
supplies, change the nature of a race within a few years? Though much
wrong had been avenged, many thousands of slaves released, many a
slaver’s camp scattered, and many striking examples made to terrify the
evil-doers, the region was wide and long; and though within reach of
the Nile waters there was a faint promise of improvement, elsewhere,
at Kordofan, Darfoor, and Sennaar, the trade flourished. After three
years of wonderful work, Gordon resigned. A short time afterwards,
however, he resumed his task, with the powers of a dictator, over a
region covering 1,100,000 square miles. But the personal courage,
energy, and devotion of one man opposed to a race can effect but
little. His peculiar qualities shone forth conspicuously. He underwent
the same trials as formerly. He signalized his detestation of the
slavers by severe punishments, by summary dismissals of implicated
pashas and mudirs, by disbandment of the suspected soldiery; but the
land still suffered from waste, the roads in the interior were still
being strewn with bones, and after another period of three years he
again resigned.

Then followed a revulsion. The Khedivial government reverted to the
old order of things, Gordon’s decrees were rescinded, the dismissed
officers were reinstated, venality and oppression and demoralization
replaced justice and equity and righteousness, until the sum of the
enormities was so great that it provoked the great revolution in the
Soudan. Then ended the attempt to suppress slavery in north central
Africa. All traces of the work of Baker and Gordon have long ago been
completely obliterated.

Attention has been given of late to Morocco. This near neighbor of
England is just twenty years behind Zanzibar. The sentiments which the
English people expressed at the Mansion House and Stafford House in
regard to the slave trade at Zanzibar in 1873-4 are remarkably like
those which are uttered to-day respecting Morocco. But it will require
something more than diplomatic missions to the court of the Sultan to
suppress the Moorish slave trade. Sir John D. Hay, who during his long
stay in that country won the titles of the “Mussulman’s Friend” and
“Counsellor of the Throne,” was accustomed to make periodical journeys
to the Moorish court, and the Sultan used to meet his representations
with promises of reform and amendment, but as soon as he set out on
his return to Tangier, the native officials would set themselves to
undo the good caused by Sir John’s visit. Sir William Kirby Green, his
successor, was also successful in eliciting assurances that the trade
would be stopped, and now Sir Charles Euan-Smith lately paid a visit,
but unfortunately the results have been _nil_. It is doubtful whether
England alone can induce the Sultan and his ministers to press the
needed reforms in the face of national opposition, or that anything
less than the concerted action of England, France, Germany, and Spain
can succeed. A demonstration by England alone, without the cordial
assent of the other powers, would doubtless be regarded as a step
towards annexation rather than as an expression of the hostility of
the British nation to the slave trade. But meantime the importation
of negroes from the Nigritian basin and southwestern Soudan into the
public slave markets of Morocco will continue until for very shame
it will irritate Europe into taking more decided steps in the name
of humanity to force the ever-maundering authorities to decree the
abolition of the slave trade, and to carry the decree into immediate
effect. It is surely high time that the “China of the West,” as it has
been called, should be made to feel that its present condition is a
standing reproach to Europe. While the heart of Africa responds to the
civilizing influences moving from the east and the west and the south,
Morocco remains stupidly indifferent and inert, a pitiful example of
senility and decay.

The remaining portion of North Africa which still fosters slavery is
Tripoli. The occupation of Tunis by France has diverted such traffic
in slaves as it maintained to its neighbor. Though the watchfulness
of the Mediterranean cruisers renders the trade a precarious one, the
small lateen boats are frequently able to sail from such ports as
Benghazi, Derna, Solum, etc., with living freight, along the coast to
Asia Minor. In the interior, which is inaccessible to travellers, owing
to the fanaticism of the Senoussi sect, caravans from Darfoor and Wadai
bring large numbers of slaves for the supply of Tripolitan families
and Senouissian sanctuaries. The country is of course under Turkish
authority, and vizirial letters and firmans have been frequently issued
since 1848 forbidding the importation of slaves and all traffic in
them, but we might as well expect the Bedouins of Arabia to cease their
nomadic life at the bidding of the Pasha of Haleb as the fanatical
Mussulmans of the Fezzan to abstain from slavery at the mere command of
the Governor of Tripoli.

The descent of the Congo to the Atlantic in 1877 suggested to King
Leopold the foundation of a state. The Berlin Conference was a
consequence of the success attained by the King. The partition of
Southwest Africa among France, Portugal and Belgium inspired the
Germans to seek territorial possessions in the Dark Continent, and the
movement of Germany excited Great Britain to action, and thus public
attention was once more diverted to eastern Africa.

[Illustration: BOY SLAVE]

From the Abyssinian frontier as far as the Portuguese possessions, and
stretching inland to a line which may roughly be said to be about east
longitude 30°, was an area covering about 1,500,000 square miles which
belonged to no power. It was agreed that it should be divided into
three spheres of influence. The Germans fixed upon the southernmost,
the Italians upon the most northern; the British chose the central.
Each power contracted to confine its operations within its own sphere,
and to proceed to organize and administer it as opportunity offered
upon a civilized basis. There was no intention to launch out into any
enterprise of conquest, but each power proposed to make its title good
by renting or leasing tracts within its sphere from the native princes
or tribal chiefs, by making treaties with them for the sovereignty
of their lands, in return for annual subsidies and protection from
violence, meanwhile being certain of immunity from all interference or
opposition from its neighbor.

The Germans were the earliest to commence work. Through the agency of
a company they made a treaty with the Sultan of Zanzibar for his long
strip of coast land, undertaking to pay him a certain sum per annum for
the right of collecting the customs. But the imprudent conduct of the
officers, their imperious and peremptory manner of proceeding, impelled
the Arabs to attempt to drive them from the coast. At Kilwa, Dar
Salaam, Bagamoyo, and Saadani the officers of the German company were
attacked; some had to fly, others were massacred, and innocent British
missionaries returning home after a long residence in the interior were
waylaid and murdered by the excited natives; and the first attempts
of German colonization ended disastrously. Naturally the imperial
German government could not brook this humiliation, and Major Wissmann,
a well-known explorer, was appointed with full powers to suppress
the revolt. Within two years the Arabs were crushed, but the German
position in East Africa became completely changed in consequence. It
had been originally proposed to hold the East African coast by lease
from the Sultan, with the view of including the Hinterland as far as
Lake Tanganika within the sphere of their colonizing operations when
results would permit; but the Germans now claimed nearly the whole
of the east coast and east central Africa. This led in 1890 to the
Anglo-German Convention, by which the German frontier was drawn south
of latitude 1° S., across the Victoria Nyanza, thence east to the
Indian Ocean, skirting the northern base of Kilima-Njaro to Wanga, a
few miles south of the port of Mombasa. The British territory extended
north from Wanga on the sea as far as the mouth of the Juba River, a
distance of about 450 miles, thence inland as far as the Congo State.
These two great divisions of Africa, now converted into British and
German territory, included the major part of the area wherein the slave
trade of the east central part of the continent so long flourished.
The countries west of Lake Nyassa, extending westward to Portuguese
territory and south to the Zambezi, conceded to the great South African
Company, absorbed the remainder of the slavery area. These last are
under the control of a British commissioner, Mr. H. H. Johnston, to
whom is granted an annual subsidy of £10,000 from the South African
Company, and who, with the aid of two British gunboats now on their way
to Lake Nyassa, must shortly succeed in closing the interior of Africa
in that direction to all slave caravans.

Since the Anglo-German Convention the Germans have shown themselves
ready and willing to do their part towards the suppression of the
slave trade in the same thorough manner that they met the rising
of the Arabs. The coast towns are fortified and garrisoned; they
are marking their advance towards Lake Tanganika by the erection of
military stations; severe regulations have been issued against the
importation of arms and gunpowder; the Reichstag has been unstinted
in its supplies of money; an experienced administrator, Baron von
Soden, has been appointed an imperial commissioner, and scores of
qualified subordinates assist him. The Belgian Antislavery Society is
sending a steamer, _viâ_ the Congo, Kasai, Sankuru, and Lumami, to
Lake Tanganika as a cruiser for that lake; the German Catholic African
Society is sending another steamer, in charge of Major von Wissman,
_viâ_ the Zambezi, Shiré, Lake Nyassa, and Stevenson Road to Tanganika.
These two steamers will effectually prevent slaves being transported
across the lake from the eastern part of the Congo State. In German
East Africa itself slave hunts have ceased for many years; but it is
traversed in several places by slave caravans, principally from the
southwest and west. These routes will now be closed by the cruisers
on Lakes Nyassa and Tanganika, and the stations along the Stevenson
Road. Henceforward we need have no concern about that part of Africa.
The northern boundaries, a thousand miles in length, are not so well
guarded, though the Germans are engaged in the transport of a steamer
to Lake Victoria, and possess three stations along the southwestern
shores; but between Lakes Tanganika and Victoria is a broad tract of
country which will no doubt have to be watched, lest the slavers,
finding this unguarded, may unite in making this a pathway to the coast.

These strategic efforts to the west and southwest of German East
Africa, and the continuous upward advance of the stations and
flotillas of King Leopold towards the east, limit the operations
of the slave-traders to that narrowing and untravelled area lying
between Stanley Falls and Lake Tanganika, and will have the effect of
determining the Arabs to seek outlets eastward through British East
Africa, which, in its present state, is most backward in fulfilling
the objects of united Europe. Were it not for the condition that
British East Africa is in to-day we could say that the slave trade in
equatorial Africa was completely extinguished, and we could almost
point to the period wherein even slavery would be extirpated.

The partition of Africa among the European powers, as will have been
seen, was the first effective blow dealt to the slave trade in inner
Africa. The east coast, whence a few years ago the slavers marched
in battalions to scatter over the wide interior of the continent for
pillage and devastation, is to-day guarded by garrisons of German
and British troops. The island of Zanzibar, where they were equipped
for their murderous enterprises, is under the British flag. Trading
steamers run up and down the coast; the Tana and Juba rivers are
being navigated by British steamers; two lines of stations secure
communications inland for 300 miles from the sea. Major von Wissman
is advancing upon Lake Tanganika; Herr Boorchert is marching upon
Lake Victoria; Captain Williams is holding Uganda. These results have
followed very rapidly the political partition of the continent.

The final blow has been given by the act of the Brussels Antislavery
Conference, lately ratified by the powers, wherein modern civilization
has fully declared its opinions upon the question of slavery, and no
single power will dare remain indifferent to them, under penalty of
obloquy and shame.

The first article of the Brussels act is as follows:

 “The powers declare that the most effective means for counteracting
 the slave trade in the interior of Africa are the following:

 “1. Progressive organization of the administration; judicial,
 religious, and military services in the African territories placed
 under the sovereignty or protectorate of civilized nations.

 “2. The gradual establishment in the interior by the responsible power
 in each territory of strongly occupied stations in such a way as to
 make their protective or repressive action effectively felt in the
 territories devastated by man-hunters.

 “3. The construction of roads, and, in particular, of railways
 connecting the advanced stations with the coast, and presenting easy
 access to the inland waters and to the upper reaches of streams and
 rivers which are broken by rapids and cataracts, so as to substitute
 economical and speedy means of transport for the present means of
 portage by men.

 “4. Establishment of steamboats on the inland navigable waters and on
 the lakes, supported by fortified posts established on the banks.

 “5. Establishment of telegraphic lines, assuring the communication of
 the posts and stations with the coast and with administrative centres.

 “6. Organization of expeditious and flying columns to keep up the
 communication of the stations with each other and with the coast, to
 support repressive action, and to assume the security of roadways.

 “7. Restriction of the importation of fire-arms.”

The above articles concern three powers especially, Great Britain,
Germany, and the Congo State, so far as regards the efficient
counteraction of the slave trade. In examining them one by one, we find
that Great Britain, which in the past was foremost in the cause of the
slave, has done and is doing least to carry out the measures suggested
by the great Antislavery Conference. We must also admit that as regards
furthering the good cause, France is a long way ahead of England.

The Congo State devotes her annual subsidies of £120,000 and the export
tax of £30,000 wholly to the task of securing her territory against the
malign influences of the slave trade, and elevating it to the rank of
self-protecting states.

The German government undertakes the sure guardianship of its vast
African territory as an imperial possession, so as to render it
inaccessible to the slave-hunter, and free from the terrors, the
disturbances, the internecinal wars, and the distractions arising from
the presence or visits of slavers. It has spent already large sums of
money, and finds no difficulty in obtaining from Parliament the sums
requisite for the defence and the thorough control and management of
the territory as a colonial possession. So far the expenses, I think,
have averaged over £100,000 annually.

The French government devotes £60,000 annually for the protection and
administration of its Gaboon and Congo territory. These two objects
include in brief all that the Antislavery Conference deemed necessary,
for with due protection and efficient administration there can be no
room for slave hunting or trading.

Now the question comes, what has England done in the extensive and
valuable territory in East Africa which fell to her share as per
Anglo-German agreement signed July 1, 1890? The answer must be that she
has done less than the least of all those concerned in the extirpation
of the slave trade.

The Germans have crushed the slave-traders, have built fortified
stations in the interior, have supplied their portion of the east coast
with a powerful flotilla of steamers, are engaged in transporting
cruisers to the three great lakes on their borders, have surveyed and
are extending surveys for several railways in the interior, have not
lost time in discovering ways of evading the territorial wants, but
have set about to supply these wants as indicated by the International
Conference of Brussels; and were we able to obtain an instantaneous
photograph of the present movements of the Germans throughout their
territory, we should know how to fully appreciate the hearty spirit
with which they are performing their duties.

And were we able to glance in the same way as to what is occurring on
British soil, we should be struck by the earnestness of the Germans as
compared with the British.

[Illustration: AN ARAB]

Both governments started with delegating their authority to chartered
companies. On the part of the Germans, however, the imprudence of their
agents imperilled their possessions, and the imperial government set
itself the task of reducing malcontentism to order, and settling the
difficulties in its own masterful manner, and is engaged in providing
against their recurrence before surrendering the territory again to the
influences of the company.

The British East African Company, on the other hand, has been
comparatively free to commence its commercial operations, undisturbed
by armed opposition of aborigines or of Arab and Swahili residents.
The welcome given to it has been almost universally cordial. The
susceptibilities of the Arabs were not wounded, and the aborigines
gratefully recognized that the new-comers were not hostile to them.
Concessions were obtained at a fair price, and on payment of the
stipulated value the company entered into possession, and became, with
the consent of all concerned, masters of the British East African
territory--a territory far more ample than what the founders of the
company had hoped for at first.

Had the British East African Company confined its transactions and
operations to the coast, it is well known that the returns would have
been most lucrative, for over and above the expenditure we see by their
reports that there would have been a yearly net gain of over £6000
available for dividend, which by this time would have been trebled.

But the Berlin Conference of 1884-5 expressly stipulated (Article VI.)
that all powers exercising sovereign rights or having influence in
the said territories (shall) undertake to watch over the preservation
of the native races and the amelioration of the moral and material
conditions of their existence, and to co-operate in the suppression of
slavery, and, above all, of the slave trade; (that) they will protect
and encourage all institutions and enterprises, religions, etc.,
re-established or organized, which tend to educate the natives; and
in Article XXXV. it is stipulated that the power which in future takes
possession of a territory, or assumes a protectorate, recognizes the
obligation to insure in the territories occupied by it on the coasts of
the African continent the existence of an adequate authority to enforce
respect for acquired rights.

Therefore the back-land of British East Africa could not remain the
theatre of slave raids, or unclaimed.

It devolved upon the occupants of the sea-frontage to exercise their
sovereign rights, and in the due exercise of these to watch over the
native races of the back-lands, and to co-operate for the suppression
of slavery and the slave trade. It was incumbent upon them also to
protect and encourage the Christian missions, without distinction
of nationality or creed, which were established in Uganda--the most
important because most populous and most promising of these back-lands.
And to insure its acquired right to those countries it was necessary
that the British company should be represented by adequate authority
there, otherwise it would be in the power of any person, society, or
power to bar its claim to them by actual occupation.

Following the declarations of the powers at the Berlin Conference
in 1885 is the act of assembled civilization at Brussels in 1890,
emphasizing and reiterating the conditions upon which sovereignty shall
be recognized. They point out in detail what ought, what indeed must
be done. They say that the responsible power _ought_--which is almost
equivalent to _must_ in this case--to organize administration, justice,
and the religious and the military services, to establish strongly
occupied stations, to make roads, particularly railroads, for the sake
of easy access to the inland waters, to inaugurate steamer service on
the lakes, erect telegraphic lines, and restrict the importation of
fire-arms.

The British East African Company as a commercial company is unable
with its own means to meet these conditions. What it can it will, and
its ability is limited to a sacrifice of all the dividends available
from its commercial operations on the coast for the benefit of the
whole territory, and subscribing a few more thousands of pounds to
postpone retreat. Yet as the delegate of the British government
the company is bound not to neglect the interior. It is pledged to
insure the protection of British subjects in Uganda, to protect the
Waganda from internecine and factional wars, to place steamers on
Lake Victoria for the protection of the lake coasts, and to prevent
the wholesale importation of fire-arms. But in the attempt to do what
Europe expects to be done the company has been involved in an expense
which has been disastrous to its interests. It has established adequate
authority in Uganda, but the maintenance of the communication between
Uganda and the coast is absolutely ruinous. It has to pay £300, or
thereabouts, the ton for freight. Thus, to send 150,000 rounds of
ammunition, which is equal to twelve tons, costs £3600. To send the
cloth currency required for purchase of native provisions for the force
costs £12,000. Add the cost of conveyance of miscellaneous baggage,
European provisions and medicines, tools, utensils, tents, besides the
first cost of these articles and the pay of the men, and we at once
see that £40,000 per annum is but a small estimate of the expense thus
entailed upon the company. Meantime the transportation of steamers to
Lake Victoria, the erection of stations connecting the lake with the
sea, and many other equally pressing duties, are utterly out of the
question. The directors understand too well what is needed, but they
are helpless. We must accept the will for the deed.

This much, however, is clear: Europe will not hold the British East
African Company, but England, responsible for not suppressing the
slave trade and slave hunt. The agreement with Europe was not made
by the company, but by Great Britain through her official and duly
appointed representatives. When her official representatives signed the
act of the Brussels Antislavery Conference, they undertook in the name
of Great Britain the important responsibilities and duties specified
within the act. The representatives of all Europe and the United States
were witnesses to the signing of the act. To repudiate the obligations
so publicly entered into would be too shameful, and if the majority in
Parliament represents the will of the people there is every reason to
think that the railway to the Victoria Nyanza, which is necessary for
carrying into effect the suggestions of the Antislavery Conference,
will be constructed.

I have been often asked what trade will be benefited by this railway
to the Nyanza, or what can be obtained from the interior of Africa to
compensate for the expense--say £2,000,000--of building the railway.
There is no necessity for me to refer to the commercial aspect of the
question in such an article as this, but there are some compensating
advantages specially relating to my subject-matter which may be
mentioned.

First. England will prove to Europe and the world that she is second to
no other power in the fulfilment of her obligations, moral or material.

Second. She will prove that she does not mean to be excelled by
Germany, France, or Belgium in the suppression of the slave trade and
the man hunt, nor is averse to do justice to the Africans whom she has
taken under her wing.

Third. She will prove that the people on British territory shall not be
the last to enjoy the mercies and privileges conceded to the negroes
by civilization, that the preservation of the native races and their
moral and material welfare are as dear to England as to any other
power, that the lives of her missionaries shall not be sacrificed in
vain, that the labors of her explorers are duly appreciated, that she
is not deaf to the voices of her greatest and best, and, in brief--to
use the words uttered lately by one of her ministers--she will prove
that “her vaunted philanthropy is not a sham, and her professed love of
humanity not mere hypocrisy.”

The objective point for the British East African Company, for the
people and government of Great Britain, is the Victoria Nyanza, with
1400 miles of coast-line. So far as the British as a slavery-hating
nation are concerned, their duties are simply shifted from the ocean
coast to the Nyanza coast, 500 miles inland. The slave-trader has
disappeared from the east coast almost entirely, and is to be found now
on the lake coasts of the Victoria, or within British territory. The
ocean cruiser can follow him no farther; but the lake cruiser must
not only debar the guilty slave-dhow from the privilege of floating on
the principal fountain of the Nile, but she must assist to restrict
the importation of fire-arms from German territory, from the byways of
Arab traffic, from the unguarded west; she must prevent the flight of
fugitives and rebels and offenders from British territory; she must
protect the missionaries and British subjects in their peaceful passage
to and fro across the lake; she must teach the millions on the lake
shores that the white ensign waving from her masthead is a guarantee of
freedom, life, and peace.

To make these great benefits possible, the Victorian lake must be
connected with the Indian Ocean by a railway. That narrow iron track
will command effectively 150,000 square miles of British territory.
It is the one remedy for the present disgraceful condition of British
East Africa. It will enable the company to devote the thousands now
spent wastefully upon porterage to stimulating legitimate traffic, and
to employ its immense caravans in more remunerative work than starving
and perishing on British soil; to grace the surroundings of its many
stations with cornfields and gardens; to promote life, interest, and
intellect, instead of being stupefied by increasing loss of brave men
and honest money. It will create trade in the natural productions of
the land, instead of letting Arabs traffic in the producers. Clarkson
long ago said that legitimate trade would kill the slave traffic;
Buxton repeated it. Wherever honest trade has been instituted and
fairly tried, as in the southern part of the United States, in Jamaica
and Brazil, as in Sierra Leone and Lagos, in Old Calabar, in Egypt and
the lower Congo, always and everywhere it has been proved that lawful
commerce is a great blessing to a land by the peace it brings, by its
power of creating scores of little channels for thrifty industry, by
the force of attraction it possesses to draw the marketable products
into the general mart. And this is what will surely happen upon the
completion of the Victoria Nyanza Railway, for the slave trade and
slavery will then be rendered impossible in British African territory.

  THE END




Transcriber’s Notes

Page 37: “peformed this feat of strength” changed to “performed this
feat of strength”

Page 38: “undertaken to peform” changed to “undertaken to perform”

Page 76: “over and above the expediture” changed to “over and above the
expenditure”

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 68276 ***