Stanley's "Congo" and "Dark Continent."
By Rev. F. Vinton
IN a journey of a thousand days (Aug. 15, 1874, to Aug. 9, 1877), Henry M. Stanley crossed Africa where it is two thousand miles wide, but by a track seven thousand miles long. His starting point was Zanzibar, and his terminus the mouth of the Congo. It is not meant that the transit needed to be so long; for he traced the whole shore of the Victoria Nyanza, and he circumnavigated the immense line of Tanganyika. He was lost to civilization three years together; he fought a daily and deadly fight with hunger and sickness, treachery among his men, and ferocity among natives, intolerable fatigues by land, and uncommon perils of navigation. When he looked on white faces again, his original troop of 224 Zanzibaris had dwindled to 115. Quitting Nyangwé, the ultimate western post of Arab traders, he plunged into the forest of Central Africa, marching along the banks of a river called by him the Livingstone, of which it was only known that it flowed "north, north, north." The forest was dense, dark, impenetrable, permitting a progress of only six to fourteen miles a day; towering so high as utterly to hide the sun; while "the terrible undergrowth" below, oppressed every mind with gloom and despair. An Arab chief, allured by the promise of six thousand dollars to lead seven hundred men as a convoy sixty marches forward, abandoned the road when only twenty had been accomplished. Left alone in the heart of Africa, Stanley hewed a fleet of canoes, and committed himself to the stream. Beyond the forest he encountered the hostility of man. The fierce savages, armed with bows and spears, and accustomed to cannibal feasts, thronged about him in splendid canoes, refusing all overtures for peace and the supply of food. In a series of thirty-two battles, sometimes against two thousand assailants, he compelled them to yield to European arms, and allow him to pass them to the sea. But nature herself seemed to fight for her ancient reign of paganism and night. She barred the mighty river with a hundred wild rapids and awful cataracts, compelling him to quit the stream, and drag his heavy boats over steep cliffs, and through tangled woods, till a few miles of quiet water could be found. Thirty-seven days in one region gave him only thirty-four miles of advance. By degrees, the ample stock of beads and trinkets with which he expected to buy food from the natives dwindled away; and before he could reach the frontiers of civilization, he was destitute and starving. By letters sent forward, addressed to whomsoever would take pity on the perishing, he drew supplies for the moment, and the hospitable Portuguese came forth to welcome him to their homes. Nothing in the annals of geography equals the heroism or the pathos of this tale. After generously accompanying to their home at Zanzibar, the helpless relics of his perilous expedition, Stanley was returning to Europe in January, 1878, that he might seek in rest and nutrition, balm for his half-ruined constitution. But he was met at Marseilles by messengers from Leopold, king of Belgium, soliciting his return to Africa as agent of an international association. The intolerable thought could not then be entertained. But the air of Switzerland did for him what other means could not effect; and in May, 1879, he returned to the Congo. There, his mission was to form at successive cataracts a series of stations, connected by well-made roads, each garrisoned by employés of the association. That he might have reliable allies, he drew from Zanzibar sixty-eight of his former followers, while Kroomen and natives were added as they could be found. Seven small steamers formed his flotilla of exploration, and they reached the first rapid one hundred and sixty miles from the sea. And now began the mighty work of forming a road around it, practicable for heavy wagons, bearing his fleet through the woods and over the hills. In order to pass at once several neighboring obstructions, it was necessary to make this road fifty-two miles in length; and this was accomplished, after a year's exertion, by February, 1881. Grass twelve feet high had to be torn away; thick forests of teak and mahogany to be felled; rocks to be blasted or removed; hills to be graded, bridges to be built. Of course the good-will of the natives had to be won, that they might not hinder, but co-operate in all these enterprises, and cede lands for the successive towns to be built. From Isangila, where this road ended, eighty-eight miles of navigable river succeeded, terminating at Manyanga. The like experience had to be renewed in constructing another wagon road of ninety-five miles length to Stanley Pool. But now the constitution which had endured so much yielded to the African fever. In May, 1881, Stanley was very near to death; and again in June, 1882, after an exploratory voyage to Lake Leopold II., five hundred and fifty miles from the sea, the fever returned with symptoms so menacing that he resolved to return to Europe. Again, however, before the end of the year, he returned to his post, and ascended the river to Stanley Falls, 1,400 miles from the sea. In this expedition he necessarily passed again along those parts of the river where he had experienced the inveterate hostility of the natives in 1877. But little of it now appeared; for his peaceful conquest of the good-will of those below, and his demonstration that he could improve their condition by introducing manufactures from Europe, had disarmed their ferocity; and he heard his name pronounced with glad applause as "Tanley," or "Tandelay," by the very tribes which had fought him vigorously six years before. As Stanley was thus tracing the upper course of the Congo, he came upon village after village deserted by its late inhabitants, and observed everywhere the marks of conflagration. Occasionally a few miserable old men narrated that their towns had been lately ravaged at night by murderous invaders, who shot the males as they rushed from their burning habitations, while women and children had been dragged up the river in chains. The melancholy spectacle was repeated for days, till at length he overtook the slave-hunters' camp. There he found twenty-three hundred women and children fastened together by twenties, in the extreme of misery, not one able-bodied man being seen. He computed that the wretched survivors who might finally reach the markets of the Nile would be only one per cent. of the population sacrificed at their homes or on the march. Such is the blessing which Islam pronounces on equatorial Africa. Four main results have flowed from Stanley's residence on the Congo. He has established a series of trading posts, connected, where necessary, by well-built roads, and has opened most friendly relations with the natives. He has combined their chiefs by hundreds into a confederacy, and has induced the civilized States of the world to recognize as a nation the African Association, with whom those chiefs have entered into commercial engagements. He has gathered a vast body of facts respecting the Congo region and its inhabitants. Those facts let us now examine in detail. The Congo River is one of the largest in the world. Stanley says it is equal to the Nile, the Zambesi, and the Niger combined. He calls it once and a half more than the Mississippi. Here he refers not to mere length, but to volume. In much of its course the Congo is three miles broad. In the dry season, 333 miles from the sea, he ascertained that it pours down a million and a half cubic feet of water in a second, and two millions and a half in the rainy season. In the lower part of its course, it flows through an uninviting gorge, cheerless and forbidding. But above the cataracts, he describes the soil as "wonderfully fertile." "In all the Mississippi Valley there is no soil to equal it." He speaks of "this immense waste of fat earth;" and of "bountiful and unparalleled richness of soil." The ordinary products of this soil are "grass fifteen feet high," "sugar cane of gigantic height," "teak, mahogany, guiacum, and bombax;" "cotton grows wild everywhere," and the India rubber plant, and the orchilla creeper, yielding the precious dye. The richness of the soil may also be inferred from the animal life which abounds. To say nothing of antelopes and buffaloes, leopards, lions, and elephants inhabited the forest, crocodiles and hippopotami swarmed in the river. Far enough from being savages, the people of the lower Congo were "uniformly amiable." It was easy to enter into treaties with them, binding them to friendly intercourse and trade; and in trade they were exceedingly sharp at a bargain. He speaks of "an air of worldly knowledge and travel" as characterizing them. They furnished abundance of laborers, working on Stanley's roads and transportation. "The utmost cordiality" was manifested by the natives three hundred miles above Stanley Pool, six hundred from the sea. He speaks of their "wonderful industry," and its products in the working of iron and copper. Deep in the great forest of the upper Congo, Stanley found a native smithy in which his own instruments were repaired; and in the hands of his assailants upon that river were iron spear heads six feet long, and eight inches broad. He enumerates scores of instruments of iron and of copper which he had seen them use, or had found in their houses. At the same time, their manufactures from wood and wool, in skin and in pottery, were numerous and ingenious. Stanley describes "a thick, round cap of knit wool, into which a native artist had worked red, yellow, and white twist;" "a collar of many coiled fine brass wire;" "and abundant and various manufactures of ivory." Native ferry boats are repeatedly spoken of; and at one point, near Stanley Pool, a ferry is said to convey a thousand passengers a week across the river, where it is two miles wide.445 These things, as well as the possession of great wealth by some of the native traders, show a society already beginning to be peaceful and strong. Such nationalities are prepared to perceive the advantages of a higher civilization, to welcome European commerce, and to receive with favorable feeling the wisdom and goodness of Christian missionaries. It cannot be doubted that the Congo region is far more favorable to missions than South Africa with its Bushmen and Zulus, or North Africa, full already of Islam and intolerance. It has long been thought that Western and Central Africa were barred by climate against European and American missions. The experience of Stanley and his coadjutors proves that it is not so. No great mortality ever attended his enterprise. "The heat was seldom intolerable; the highest mean was 90°; the nights were cool and sometimes cold." He elaborates at much length and reiteration his argument for the healthfulness of Africa, declaring that the fevers and mortality sometimes experienced are attributable to the want of proper food, to the use of stimulants, to imprudent exertions in the heat of the day, and to careless exposures to draughts of cold air, by night or by day. The importance of this last circumstance he shows by relating that after a healthful voyage up the Congo, far beyond the equator, no sooner did his return begin than the cool breezes up stream, unfelt while they accompanied the steamer, now doubled in force by the speed of the boat and of the current, brought on dangerous diseases in men long accustomed to the African air. Stanley's information respecting the fertility, the populousness, the productiveness of Africa, and the commercial spirit of its people, will certainly attract western enterprise into its interior, and railroads will be built to pass the cataracts. Christian missions ought to rush in where commerce is sure to pierce. For, side by side with the pleasing pictures given above, traces appear of the idolatry, the ignorance and superstition of the natives; of their cruel sports, of their proneness to warfare; of the cheapness of human life among them. When a chief died, fourteen slaves were slaughtered to accompany his spirit into the other world. Stanley's allusions to missionaries are uniformly respectful; and he celebrates the comfort, neatness, and elegance introduced by a missionary's wife, in contrast with the indolence, disarray, and negligence manifested at some stations established by his own men. His own spirit is manly, sober, and reverent. Veneration and love for Livingstone seem to have filled his mind, and perhaps have affected his character; for he pressed upon Mtesa the duty and excellence of forgiveness, and his own conduct toward the natives showed a Christian spirit.—Rev. F. Vinton, in Missionary Review.