Henry Stanley

Atlantic Monthly/October, 1897

A full account of the extraordinary advances made in Africa during the last twenty-five years would require volumes, and in a single magazine article I can give but a resume of the progress which has taken place in the equatorial portion of the continent. I begin with 1872, for in July of that year I returned to England with the six years’ journals and latest news of Dr. Livingstone.

If the reader will take the trouble to lay a sheet of tracing-paper on the now crowded map of Africa, mark out a track from Zanzibar to Lake Tanganyika, and from about the center of that line another running north to the Victoria Nyanza, then draw a curving line of march through the intra-lake region to the outlet of the lake on the north side and add the eastern coast of Lake Albert, he will realize far better than from any verbal description how little of Equatorial Africa was known at that time. He will see that nine-tenths of inner Africa remained unexplored. The tracks drawn will illustrate what Burton and Speke, Speke and Grant, and Sir Samuel Baker had accomplished in seven years, 1857-64.

In September, 1872, I was requested to meet the British Association at Brighton, to tell its geographical section what new discoveries Livingstone had made during his six years’ absence between Lakes Nyassa, Mweru, and Tanganika, and along the Lualaba River. At that meeting one geographer insisted that, since domestic swine were unknown in Africa, the “Old Traveler” must have lost his wits when he declared that he had found natives who kept tame pigs. The president observed that it was his duty to “veto” stories of that kind, because a geographical society discussed facts, not fictions. Sir Henry Rawlinson was inclined to believe that the great river discovered by Livingstone, if not the Congo, emptied into some vast marsh or swamp. The kindly way in which Livingstone had referred to the amiable Manyuemas was suspected by some of those present to be an attempt on his part to create a favorable impression of the people, from among whom, it was said by Captain Burton, he had taken a princess for a wife. When the audience filed out from the hall, I was mobbed by persons who were curious to know if Zanzibar was an island!

But the way in which Americans received the news of Livingstone’s achievements was the most amusing of all. They did not resort to personal detraction of Livingstone, but turned their powers of raillery upon me. Every humorous expression in the Old Traveler’s letters to the New York Herald was taken to be a proof that I must have concocted the fables about “winsome Manyuema girls,” and so on. One journalist went so far as to assert that he had reason to know I had never left New York City, and that I was a married man with a large family, who occasionally relieved my imagination by attempts to rival Defoe. Mark Twain dealt me the worst stroke of all. He wrote in the Hartford Courant, with the most perfect assurance, that when I found Livingstone, I was urged by him to relate first what great national events had happened during the long years in which he had been wandering, and that after describing how the Suez Canal had been opened, reporting the completion of the American transcontinental railway, the election of General Grant to the presidency, and the Franco – German war, I began to tell how Horace Greeley had become a candidate for the presidential honor, whereupon Livingstone exclaimed suddenly, “Hold on, Mr. Stanley! I must say I was inclined to believe you at first, but when you take advantage of my guilelessness and tell me that Horace Greeley has been accepted as a candidate by the American people, I’ll be – if I can believe anything you say now.” The English papers reprinted this solemn squib, and asked “if Mr. Stanley could be surprised that people expressed doubt of his finding Livingstone when he attributed such profanity to a man so noted for his piety”!

All this seems to me to have occurred ages ago. It will be incredible to many in this day that my simple story was received with such general unbelief. But such was the obscurity hanging over the centre of Africa in 1872 that, befogged by stay-at-home geographers, the public did not know whom to believe. Nine-tenths of Equatorial Africa, as we have seen, were unknown, and the tenth that was known had required fifteen years for Burton, Speke, Baker, and Livingstone to explore. At such a rate of progress it would have taken 135 years to reveal inner Africa. Several things had conspired to keep Africa dark. In the first place, the public appeared to consider that the exploration of continents and oceans should be reserved for governments or for wealthy societies. Then geographical associations regarded private enterprises with suspicion, or as impertinent intrusions upon their domain. The maps of Africa were generally accepted as drawn from authentic surveys and accurate observations, whereas in reality they were mere inferences based upon native reports and exaggerated estimates of distances. Traditions of disastrous expeditions also discouraged pioneers. Mungo Park’s violent death on the Niger closed that river for over forty years. The fatalities attending Tuckey’s expedition on the Congo in 1816 prejudiced everyone against that river for sixty-two years. The failure of Macgregor Laird’s mission at Lukoja, on the Lower Niger, in 1841 turned men’s thoughts away from that river for another forty years. The misfortunes which followed Bishop Mackenzie’s mission to the Zambesi in 1863-64 suspended mission work inland for twelve years. The singularly bad repute of the West Coast, the murders of Van der Decken and Le Saint on the East Coast, contributed to make Africa a terror to explorers. Another strong deterrent, I think, was the impression, derived from the books of travelers, that Africa had a most deadly climate, which only about six per cent of those who braved it could survive. Burton’s book, The Lake Regions of Central Africa, was enough to inspire horror in any weak mind. To him the aspect of the interior “realized every preconceived idea at once hideous and grotesque, so that the traveler is made to think a corpse lies hidden behind every bush, and the firmament a fitting frame to the picture of miasma.”

My experience during the search for Livingstone had proved to me that these were morbid and puerile stories, and when Livingstone’s death occurred, in 1873, I was easily induced to undertake a second journey to Africa.

It was during this journey to the unexplored Victoria Nyanza, in 1874, that it first dawned upon me that Africa had been sadly neglected, and deserved a better future than to be kept as a continental reserve for the benefit of explorers and geographical societies; and once this idea became fixed in my mind I found myself regarding the land and people with kindlier eyes. Ebullitions of temper from a few tribes, chance accidents and misadventures in a savage land, did not prejudice me against the region, for balm soon succeeded bane, and the next view and the next experience generally compensated me for past sufferings. During the voyage around Lake Victoria the ever-varying shores and the character of the natives developed this considerate judgment, and by the time I had completed the survey of the fountain head of the Nile, I was possessed by the belief that Africa should be explored for its purely human interest as much as for its geographical features.

In 1876 I came at last to “Livingstone’s farthest” on the mighty Lualaba. The first glance at the magnificent stream fascinated me, and I felt that I had before me a problem the solution of which would settle once and for all time whether the heart of Africa was to remain forever inaccessible.

The nine months occupied in descending 1800 miles to the ocean gave me ample time to consider the question from every point of view, and when I reached the Atlantic my conclusions were suggested in the last sentence of the last letter I wrote to the journals which had dispatched the expedition. “I feel convinced,” I then wrote, “that this mighty waterway will become an international question someday. It is bound to be the grand highway of commerce to Central Africa. A word to the wise is sufficient.”

In pursuit of this idea, I devoted the greater part of 1878 to addressing English commercial communities upon the necessity of taking possession of this “No Man’s Land” before it should be too late. But my connection with journalism was invariably associated by businessmen with a “want of ballast” and general impracticableness. Geographers were also wanting in breadth of mind in their estimates of the value of the river. One day in April of that year Colonel Grant and Lord Houghton visited my rooms, and after exchanging some general remarks the latter asked, “How many years will elapse before another traveler will see Stanley Falls?”

“Two, perhaps,” I answered.

“Two!” he exclaimed. “I should have thought fifty years would have been nearer the mark.”

“Ah, Lord Houghton,” I said, “you may be sure that twenty-five years hence there will scarcely be one hundred square miles left unexplored.”

“What!” cried Colonel Grant. “I would like to make a small bet on that.”

“Done!” I said. “What do you say to making a note of it, and letting ten pounds be the forfeit?”

The bet was accepted, and we both laughingly recorded it.

Nineteen years have passed since that date, and we have still six years before us. Meantime, sixteen travelers have crossed Africa; the Congo basin has been thoroughly explored; the horn of East Africa from the Red Sea to Masai Land has been several times traversed; countless travelers have been up and down the Masai region; the intra-lake region has been fairly mapped out, and military stations have been founded in it; the Germans know their East African colony thoroughly; Mozambique Africa is almost as well known as Massachusetts; and French explorers have repeatedly crossed the Congo-Shari watershed to Lake Chad. To-day there is scarcely a thousand-square-mile plot of inner Africa left unpenetrated, and considering that there are over 2800 white men in the central Africa which in 1877 contained only myself, I think I shall be able to claim my forfeit.

The process of waking Europe to the value of Africa was slow at first, and had it not been for the king of the Belgians it might have lasted fifty years longer. As probably I should not have returned to Africa after the finding of Livingstone but for the universal skepticism, so this-new and general unbelief contributed to induce me to accept the commission of King Leopold by which I was to prove, by actual practice, that African lands were habitable, their cannibal aborigines manageable, and legitimate commerce possible. The reports of our steady progress during the first six years so stimulated the European nations that, in 1884, they were at fever-heat, and the scramble for African territory began. At the close of the Congo Conference in February, 1885, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and finally Great Britain, were prepared to imitate the example of King Leopold, in conformity with the regulations laid down by that great assembly of ambassadors.

Yet, outside of Angola and a thin fringe of coast, Livingstone and myself were the only whites within this territory between 1866 and 1872; between 1874 and 1876 there were only Cameron and myself within it; in 1877 I was the sole white there; between 1877 and 1884 our own expedition and some missionaries had increased the number to one hundred Europeans.

The first body to move toward Africa in answer to my appeals was the Church Missionary Society, which sent five English missionaries to Uganda. A year later, these were followed by the French Fathers. The third expedition was sent by the International Association; the fourth, by the Belgian Societe d’Etudes du Haut Congo; the fifth was the English Baptist mission; the sixth was M. de Bruzza’s political mission to what is now Congo Francaise, after which numerous religious societies followed, and European powers began the work of annexation.

The honor of first mention must be accorded to the Uganda mission, not only because it preceded the army of missionaries now at work, but for the splendid perseverance shown by its members, and the marvelous success which has crowned their efforts. The story of the Uganda missionary enterprise is an epic poem. I know of few secular enterprises, military or otherwise, deserving of greater praise. I am unable to view it with illusions, for I am familiar with the circumstances attending the long march to Uganda, the sordid pagans who harassed it at every camp, the squalid details of African life, the sinister ambitions of its rivals, the atmosphere of wickedness in which it labored; when I brush these thoughts aside, I picture to myself band after band of missionaries pressing on to the goal, where they are to be woefully tried, with their motto of “Courage and always forward,” each face imbued with the faith that though near to destruction “the gates of hell shall not prevail” against them. For fifteen years after they had landed in Uganda we heard frequently of their distress: of tragedy after tragedy, of deaths by fever, of horrible persecution, the murder of their bishop, the massacre of their followers, the martyrdom of their converts, and finally of their expulsion. Still a glorious few persevered and wrestled against misfortune, and at last, after twenty years’ work, their achievements have been so great that the effect of them must endure.

The letter which invited this mission was written by me April 14, 1875, and was published on the following 15th of November in the London Daily Telegraph. The editor, in commenting upon it, was almost prophetic when he said: “It may turn out that the letters which bring this strange and earnest appeal to Christendom, saved from oblivion by a chance so extraordinary, had this as their most important burden; and that Mr. Stanley may have done far more than he knew.” My letter had been committed to Colonel Linant de Bellefonds, who with his entire company of thirty-six Soudanese soldiers was murdered by the Baris. Near the body of the colonel it was found by General Gordon, blood-stained and tattered. The care of the message from Uganda, as well as the wonderful results which followed its publication, was wholly due to another.

Eight days after the appearance of my appeal in the Telegraph the Church Missionary Society was stimulated by an offer of $25,000 to undertake the enterprise. A few days later the fund was increased to $75,000. In the following March the mission left England, and on the 30th of June, 1877, while I was yet six weeks from the Atlantic Ocean, the missionaries entered Uganda. For five years they labored with poor results. In the seventh year twenty-one converts partook of the Lord’s Supper, and seventy-five had been baptized. In the eighth year the baptized numbered 108. After eleven years’ work the missionaries were expelled from Uganda by the young Nero, the son of King Mtesa who had received them. In 1890 they reoccupied it, and by January, 1891, the Christians here numbered 2000. By January, 1897, Uganda contained twenty-three English Protestant clergymen, 699 native teachers, 6905 baptized Christians, 2591 communicants, 57,380 readers, 372 churches, and a cathedral which can hold 3000 worshipers.

These figures do not represent the whole of what has been achieved by the zealous missionaries, for the church of Uganda imitates the example of the parent church in England, and dispatches native missionaries to all the countries round about. Nasa in Usukuma, south of Lake Victoria, has become a centre of missionary effort. In Usoga, east of the Nile, native teachers impart instruction at nine stations. Unyoro, to the north of Uganda, has been invaded by native propagandists. Toro, to the west, has been so moved that it promises to become as zealous as Uganda; and Koki witnesses the power of native eloquence and devotion to the cause. What is most noticeable among all these people around the lake is their avidity for instruction. Every scrap of old paper, the white margins of newspapers, the backs of envelopes, and parcel wrappers are eagerly secured for writing purposes. Books and stationery find ready purchasers everywhere. The number of converts has become so formidable that it would task the powers of a hundred white missionaries to organize, develop, and supervise them properly.

The French Roman Catholics in Buddu, west of the lake, have also been most successful, but the statistics of their operations are not so accessible. The number of their proselytes is estimated at 20,000. The Catholic field is just emerging from the transitional stage consequent upon the transfer of the diocese to the English. Under French superintendence there existed a constant soreness between them and the Protestants, owing to the inclination of the Fathers for politics; but since the arrival of the English Roman Catholic bishop the natives have become tranquilized.

The line of stations founded by the International Association is in German East Africa, and need not be alluded to here.

The next to be mentioned is, therefore, the Congo Free State. In August, 1879,1 began operations at the mouth of the Congo with thirteen European officers and sixty-eight Zanzibaris. At the date of my departure in 1884, my force had increased to 142 European officers, 780 colored troops, and 1500 native carriers. There were also twenty-two missionaries occupying seven stations.

Between the years 1884 and 1897 the state has made such rapid progress in every branch that, for brevity’s sake, I must be statistical only. When I surrendered my command to my successor we had launched three steamers and three barges on the Upper Congo, one large stern wheeler was a third of the way on the overland route, and one mission steamer was on the stocks at Stanley Pool. It will be remembered, of course, that the Lower Congo is separated from the Upper Congo by a 230-mile stretch of rapids and cataracts which make a land transport past the rapids inevitable. Everything, therefore, destined for the upper river must be conveyed by porters in loads not exceeding sixty pounds in weight. Since there are now forty-five steamers and twice as many barges, or rowboats of steel, afloat on the Upper Congo, these represent, with their fittings, a total of nearly one hundred thousand porter loads. Of these steamers, twenty belong to the Congo State, four to France, eight to the Belgian Commercial Company, four to the Dutch Company, one to an Anglo-Belgian Company, four to Protestant missions, and three to Roman Catholic missions. The length of navigable rivers above Stanley Pool exceeds eight thousand miles. Being a region remarkable for its natural produce of gums, oils, rubber, ivory, and timber of the finest description, the Upper Congo must, a few years hence, present such a sight of steamboat navigation as the Mississippi used to exhibit before the civil war.

Until 1890 the Congo State had very little commerce, but by December, 1896, the value of its imports and exports amounted to $6,226,302. The principal exports were groundnuts, coffee, rubber, gum copal, palm-oil, nuts, and ivory. Since 427,491 coffee plants and 87,896 cocoa plants are now thriving, a great forest of 400,000 square miles has scarcely been tapped for its rubber or timber, and a vast area has not been searched for its gums, It is probable that, after the completion of the railway past the rapids, the chief exports will consist of coffee, cocoa, gum, rubber, and timber.

The revenue in 1896 had increased to $1,873,860, of which $600,000 consists of subsidies given by King Leopold and Belgium. The expenditure naturally exceeds the revenue annually, for a new country requires to be developed. The frontiers which stretch to a length of 4500 miles must be policed, as well as the main avenues of commerce. England, France, and Germany need be under no anxiety as to their African frontiers: their power commands sufficient respect for their possessions. But a state which is a dependency of the king of the Belgians must vindicate its ability to meet its obligations according to the rules of the Brussels Conference, and therefore the sovereign must have an observant eye against possible trespassers.

The supreme power of the state is vested in the sovereign, King Leopold II. He is assisted by a secretary of state, a chief of cabinet, a treasurer-general, and three secretaries – general, who conduct foreign affairs, finances, and internal matters. The local government has its seat at Boma, the principal town on the Lower Congo. It is administered by a governor-general, an inspector of state, a secretary-general, and several directors general. The state is divided into fourteen administrative divisions, guarded by 115 military stations or small forts and seven camps of instruction. The army at present consists of 8000 Congolese militia, 4000 native volunteers, and 2000 soldiers from other African countries. There are, besides, a special force raised for the defense of the railway line, and three special police corps for the security of public order at Matadi, Boma, and Leopoldville. Post-offices are established at fifty-one stations, and the number of letters which passed through them last year aggregated 227,946. The telegraph line extends from Boma, the capital, to the head of the railway. It crosses the Congo where the river is but 877 yards wide. A cable to connect the Congo with St. Thomas Island is about to be constructed at a cost of $350,000.

The white population of the Congo State, which in 1884 consisted of 142 officials and twenty-two missionaries, had increased by December, 1896, to 1277 officials and traders, and 223 missionaries representing fifteen different missionary societies. In 1895 there were 839 Belgians, eighty-eight British, eighty-three Portuguese, seventy-nine Swedes and Norwegians, forty-nine Italians, forty-five Americans, forty-two French, thirty-nine Dutch, twenty-one Germans, and forty of other nationalities. The missionaries are established at sixty-seven stations, the larger number belonging to the Catholics, through whom about 5000 children receive instruction. The Protestants have also been singularly successful, and have made a greater number of converts. From results in East and West Africa one is inclined to think that a mission makes scarcely any serious impression on the native mind before the sixth year of work, but there have been several remarkable instances of wholesale conversion in a later period.

In 1878 I began agitating for a railway to connect the Lower with the Upper Congo, but although I nearly succeeded that year in forming a company, it was deemed best to defer its organization until my expedition of 1879-84 had demonstrated more clearly the practicability of the project. After the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 I renewed the attempt, and by the spring of 1886 I was so far advanced that a charter was drawn up, and over a million dollars were subscribed. There was, however, one article in the charter which was pronounced inadmissible by the capitalists, and since the king was inflexible the idea was abandoned. Subsequently the success of the Emin Relief Expedition revived interest in the project, and soon after my return from Africa in 1890 a Belgian company was formed, and a surveying party was sent out. In 1891 the first twenty kilometres of the railway were laid. The line is to be 247 miles long, extending from Matadi on the Lower Congo to the port at Stanley Pool. At the piers at Matadi the ocean steamers will discharge their freight, and at the terminus on the Pool, well above the Cataracts, the Upper Congo steamers will receive their cargoes. At last accounts the line was in running order for 165 miles, and it is confidently stated that by June, 1898, the entire line will be opened for traffic. I had estimated the cost of construction at $25,000 a mile, and I find that the actual cost of the 247 miles will not exceed $6,000,000, a little under my estimate. In some parts the difficulties have been so great that a mile has cost nearly $50,000, but the many stretches of level plateau between the various gorges and rocky defiles were railed at comparatively slight expense.

Congo Francaise did not exist before the advent of M. le Comte de Brazza on the river in 1880. He had been commissioned by the International Association to form a line of stations from the Ogowai River to Stanley Pool, but his method differed from mine. He took with him a number of French officers, whom he distributed along the route, and delegating to them the task of building, he marched lightly to his destination, making treaties with the natives as he went. Since these treaties were made on behalf of France, it was only then discovered that the International Association had no control over the territory acquired by De Brazza, and on this basis Congo Francaise was founded. It has now expanded to an area covering half a million square miles, and has become a confirmed possession of the French by treaties with Germany and the Congo Free State.

The white population of the territory numbers today over 300, exclusive of the coast garrisons. The Gaboon portion, however, was settled as early as 1842, and in 1862 the mouth of the Ogowai was occupied by the administration. Twenty-seven stations are established in the interior, eleven of which are along the Ogowai. The seat of government is at Brazzaville, at Stanley Pool. Although France has not been over-liberal toward her new colony, the settlement exhibits the aptitudes of the French for giving a civilized appearance to whatever they touch. From all accounts, the houses are better built and the gardens and avenues are finer than those on the Belgian side, although the practical results are not so favorable.

The French missionaries have established twenty schools, which contain nearly one thousand pupils. There are thirty-one post-offices in the territory. The revenue of Congo Française for 1895 was $618,109, while the expenditure was only $439,572. The surplus shows the difference of method pursued by the French as compared with that of the Belgians. The name of France is a sufficient bulwark against aggression, while the poor Congo State must possess substantial defenses. The French expect their colonies to remunerate them for their outlay, while the Belgians are bent more upon stimulating development.

In considering the progress of Portuguese Africa we must not include that made in Angola and Mozambique, for both these colonies are comparatively old. Yet it is undoubted that the neighborhood of the Congo State to Angola has given the latter a great impetus, just as the proximity of Nyassa Land to Mozambique has added thousands to the revenue of that colony. For until the eighties the condition of Angola and Mozambique was deplorable. They were hedged around by high protective duties which stifled enterprise; their officials were so meanly paid that the administration was corrupt. Of late, however, the examples furnished to these colonies by their progressive neighbors have materially changed them for the better. Within seven years the trade of Angola has doubled, and it is now valued at $7,650,000. Its revenue amounts to $2,050,000, while the expenditure is only $1,920,000. Mozambique north of the Zambesi, stimulated by the enterprise of the British Lakes Company, shows now a trade worth $1,520,000, a remarkable showing when it is considered that seven years ago it reached scarcely a third of that amount.

German East Africa dates from the Berlin Conference of 1885. The advent of Germany into the Dark Continent would have been hailed with more pleasure had she appeared with less violence. East Africa became German by the simple process of Bismarck’s laying his hands on the map and saying, “This shall be mine.” He was not challenged, because France had not recovered from her terror, and England was paralyzed by Gladstonism. Of such moral right as exploration, discovery, protection of natives, establishment of religious missions, or philanthropic sympathy gives, Germany had none. Might was right in her case. But, indirectly, this forcible acquisition of the territory first made known to the world by Burton, Speke, and myself had a beneficial influence on England; for without this determined aggressiveness of Germany it is doubtful whether Great Britain would have stirred at all in Equatorial Africa. She had absolutely refused to move in the matter of the Congo; she had turned a deaf ear to the reproaches of her pioneers in East Africa, and she had miserably equivocated in Southwest Africa, although for forty-four years she had patrolled the two coasts, had been the protector of Zanzibar for nearly fifty years, had explored the interior, and had planted all the missions in Equatorial Africa. Fortunately, before it was too late. Lord Salisbury was roused to write a few dispatches which saved for England a small portion of East Africa, and it may be that we are indebted for this small mercy as much to admiration of Germany’s energy as to the entreaties of Englishmen. We ought, certainly, to be grateful that Germany is our neighbor, for she is likely to be as stimulative in the future as she has been since 1890. Indeed, without the influence of her example, I doubt if England would have treated Uganda any better than Portugal has treated Angola.

The Germans in East Africa now number 378. In the Tanga district there are 151, who are engaged in cultivation; in the Kilimanjaro district there are twenty-six; on the shores of the Victoria Nyanza eighteen; in Kilossa twelve; and there are 171 officials in the constabulary force. The troops number about 2000, with fifty-eight pieces of artillery. In the Christianizing of the natives seven Protestant and three Roman Catholic missions are engaged. Thirty miles of railway have been laid from Tanga to the interior, and it is asserted that this line will be continued as far as the lakes.

Ujiji, now the principal port on Lake Tanganika, is the place where I met Livingstone in November, 1871. Accounts received from it as late as last March state that the place has quite a civilized appearance. The government buildings are of stone, pointed with lime, and two stories high. One long, wide street runs through the entire length of the town, and a large number of mango trees serve to beautify and shade it. The population is about 20,000, and order is maintained by a garrison of 200 soldiers.

The trade of German East Africa is valued at $2,907,500. The revenue reaches the sum of $1,092,600, while the expenditure is $1,517,450.

The Cameruns, also German, which ought to be included in Equatorial Africa, has a white population of 236, and a trade which figures up to $2,419,220. Of the British territories we must first consider the British Central African Protectorate, which has a native population of 845,000, and covers an area of 285,900 square miles. It has sprung mainly from the reverence which Scotchmen bear the memory of Livingstone. In the year 1856 the British government confided to Livingstone the task of opening the region about the Nyassa Lake to trade, and at the same time the universities sent out a mission under Bishop Mackenzie to avail itself of Livingstone’s experience in missionary work, in which he had spent sixteen years in South Africa. The region at that time was very wild, owing to slave raids and internecine wars. Through overzeal the missionaries were soon drawn into strife with the natives, and what with fatal fevers and other accidents due to their ignorance of African habits, few survived long. Accordingly, Livingstone was withdrawn, and the Universities mission was transferred to Zanzibar. In 1881 Bishop Steere undertook a journey to Nyassa Lake, and, being more practical than his two predecessors, saw enough to justify him in reestablishing the Universities mission in Nyassa Land. The Livingstonia Free Church mission planted itself at Blantyre as early as 1875; the Church of Scotland mission followed in 1876; then came the Dutch Reformed Church in 1889, the Zambesi industrial mission in 1892, and the Baptist industrial mission the same year. Altogether, there are now thirty-six white clergy and five white women teachers, who, with 129 native teachers, conduct fifty-five schools in which 6000 children are taught.

Meantime commercial Scotchmen had not been idle. Led by a worthy gentleman named James Stevenson, they had founded the African Lakes Company to assist the secular business of the missions and the development of trade generally. The company has been eminently successful, and is now the mainstay of the Protectorate. The British government took charge of the region in 1891, with the assistance of an annual subsidy of $50,000 from the famous Cecil Rhodes. Although the administration has been only six years at work, principally under Sir H. H. Johnston, the signs of prosperity are numerous. The white population numbers 289, the British Indians 263. Twenty post-ofiices have been established, through which 29,802 letters and parcels have passed. The exports for 1895-96 reached $99,340, while the imports amounted to $512,140.

The Protectorate possesses, on Lake Tanganika, one steamer and one boat; on Lake Nyassa, five steamers and one boat; on the Upper Shire, two steamers and fifteen boats; on the Lower Shire and Zambesi, sixteen steamers and forty-five boats: altogether, twenty-four steamers and sixty-two steel boats or barges. The public force of the administration is composed of two hundred Sikh soldiers from India, and five hundred native police.

British East Africa extends along the Indian Ocean from German territory to the Juba River, and inland as far as the Victoria Nyanza and Usoga. It is divided into four administrative districts, under the chief control of the consul-general at Zanzibar. Mombasa, an old Arabo-Portuguese town, situated on an island in the midst of a deep bay which forms an excellent natural harbor, is the capital. Its beginning as a British African territory dates from a trifling concession granted to Sir H. H. Johnston by the African chief of Taveta. Upon this as a basis, Sir William Mackinnon, Mr. J. F. Hutton, and I formed a small limited liability company in December, 1885. Its utility is proved by the agreement of December 3,1886, which marks out the line of demarcation between the German district of Chagga and the British district of Taveta. Two years later, this small district was merged in the East African concessions obtained by Mackinnon from the Sultan of Zanzibar, upon which the Imperial British East African Company was formed with a capital of $5,000,000. Between 1889 and 1892 this chartered company expended enormous sums in expanding its possessions. By 1892 the British sphere of influence included all the native lands from the Indian Ocean to Lake Albert Edward and the Semliki River, and from the German frontier to north latitude eight degrees; and it covered an area of about 750,000 square miles. In that year the Radical administration of Lord Rosebery came into power, and the operations of the “I . B. E. A.,” as the company was called, received a check. The company had already spent about $2,000,000 in rescuing this territory from the grasp of the Germans, and had neglected its own duties of developing its concessions in its zeal for furthering the imperial cause. Convinced by parliamentary criticism that the Rosebery administration did not intend to support it, the company made the fact known that it intended to withdraw from the interior, and devote itself to its own proper commercial business. Hence began an agitation throughout England for the retention of Uganda under imperial protection, to prevent the utter collapse of the missionary work, which, under the company’s rule, had made such striking progress. Large subscriptions from the public prolonged for a year the occupation of Uganda by the company’s troops, but at the end of March, 1893, the final withdrawal was made, and shortly after Uganda became an imperial protectorate. In the middle of 1895 the government assumed entire control of the company’s territory, at an expense of only $250,000 to the British nation.

The region acquired by the Mackinnon company now forms the two protectorates of British East Africa and Uganda. The customs revenue of the first is about $86,000, while the trade is valued at $1,093,750. During the session of 1895 the Unionist Parliament voted $15,000,000 for the construction of a railway from the port of Mombasa to Lake Victoria, of which, at last accounts (May 18,1897), fifty-eight miles have been laid.

Since July, 1896, the Uganda protectorate has included all that intermediate country lying between Lakes Victoria, Albert Edward, and Albert, with Usoga. The administration is supported by a subsidy from the British government, which last year amounted to $250,000. The trade for 1896, despite the fact that the produce and goods had to be transported by porters a thousand miles overland, amounted to nearly $150,000. Although the commerce is meagre, Uganda being the youngest and most distant protectorate, the results from a moral and Christian point of view exceed those obtained from all the rest of Equatorial Africa. Until Uganda is connected with civilization by the railway there can be no great expansion of trade; but I believe that its unique geographical position, coupled with the remarkable intelligence of the people, will make it, upon the completion of the line, as brilliant commercially as it was renowned in pagan days for its martial prowess, and is to-day remarkable for its Christian zeal. Uganda is preeminently the Japan of Africa.

I do not think I need mention the Italian possessions in Equatorial Africa, for since the disaster at Adowa a blight seems to have fallen upon them, which will probably soon result in their complete abandonment.

It is only about twenty-five years ago that Monteiro said he could see no hope of the negro ever attaining to any considerable degree of civilization, and that it was impossible for the white race to people his country sufficiently to enforce his civilization. Burton wrote, a few years before, that the negro united the incapacity of infancy with the unpliancy of age, the futility of childhood with the skepticism of the adult and the stubbornness of the old. As soon as travelers returned from Africa they either joined the Burtonian clique or ranged themselves on the side of Livingstone, who held a more favorable opinion of the African. The old Athenians employed similar language regarding all white barbarians beyond Attica, and the Roman exquisites in the time of Claudius as contemptuously underrated our British ancestors. We know to-day how grossly mistaken they were.

When I think of the cathedral church of Blantyre, which, without exaggeration, would be a credit to any provincial town in New England, and which has been built by native labor; or of the stone and brick mission buildings on the shores of Lake Tanganika, or of the extensive establishments in brick erected on the Upper Congo by the Bangalas, who so late as 1883 were mere ferocious cannibals; or of the civilized-looking town of Ujiji; or of Brazzaville’s neat and picturesque aspect; or of the shipbuilding yards and foundries of Leopoldville, where natives have turned out forty-five steel steamers, — when I contemplate such achievements, I submit that Burton and Monteiro must have been somewhat prejudiced in their views of Africa and her dark races.

Twenty-five years ago the outlook for Africa was dark indeed. Its climate was little understood, and inspired terror in the white pioneer. But to-day travelers go and return by fifties, and they have ceased to generalize in a bitter style. The white men retain kindly memories of the Africans among whom they have lived and labored, and their dearest wish is to return, at the end of their furloughs, to the land once so dreaded. The postbags are weighted with the correspondence which they maintain with their dark friends. It is only the new and casual white who speaks of the African as a “nigger,” and condemns the climate of the tropics. The whites have created valuable interests in the land; they understand the dialects of their workmen; and they know that the black who distinguished himself in his village, by his self-taught art and industry, in fashioning his fetish god, his light canoe, his elegant assegai or sword, may be taught to turn a screw at the lathe, to rivet a boiler-plate, to mould bricks, to build a stone wall or a brick arch. No one now advocates, like Monteiro, the introduction of coolies, or Chinese or European “navvies,” to show the native African how to work. There are 7200 native navvies on the Congo railway, and all the stone piers and long steel structures which bridge the ravines and rivers, and the gaps cleft in the rocky hills, have been made by them.

Twenty-five years ago, the explorer might land on any part of east or west Equatorial Africa, unquestioned by any official as to whither he was bound and what baggage he possessed. To-day, at every port there are commodious customhouses, where he must declare the nature of his belongings, pay duties, and obtain permits for traveling. In 1872, the whole of Central Africa, from one ocean to the other, was a mere continental slavepark, where the Arab slave-raider and Portuguese half-caste roamed at will, and culled the choicest boys and girls, and youths of both sexes, to be driven in herds to the slave-marts of Angola and Zanzibar. To-day, the only Arabs in Africa, excepting some solitary traders who observed the approach of civilization in time, are convicts, sentenced to hard labor for their cruel devastations.

Twenty-five years ago it took me eight months to reach Ujiji from the coast, whereas now it takes a caravan only three months. Up to four years ago it required five months to reach Uganda from the coast, but to-day loaded porters do the journey in less than ninety days, while bicyclists have performed it in twenty-one days. Fourteen years ago the voyage from Stanley Pool to Stanley Falls was made by me, in the first steamer that was floated in the Upper Congo, in 379 hours. Now steamers accomplish the distance in 120 hours. In 1882-83 I was forty-six days going from Europe to Stanley Pool. The ordinary passenger in these times requires but twenty-five days; and two years hence the trip will take only twenty days.

Throughout the region now known as the Congo State death raged in every form, twenty-five years ago. Once a month, on an average, every village, of the hundred thousand estimated to be in the state, witnessed a fearful tragedy of one kind or another. In each case of alleged witchcraft, upon the death of a chief, a sudden fatality, the outbreak of a pest, the evil effects of debauch or gluttony, the birth of twins, a lightning stroke, a bad dream, the acquisition of property, a drought or a flood, ill luck or any mischance, native superstition demanded its victims according to savage custom. The Mganda, or witch-doctor, had but to proclaim his belief that expiation was necessary, and the victims were soon haled to the place of death. I should not be far wrong if I placed these public murders at a million a year for the state, and two millions for the whole of Equatorial Africa. Added to these was the fearful waste of human life caused by intertribal wars, the wholesale exterminations under such sanguinary chiefs as Mtesa, Kabba Rega, Mirambo, Nyungu, Msidi, the destructive raids of such famous slavers as Said bin Habib, Tagamoyo, Tippu-Tib, Abed bin Salim, Kilonga-Longa, and hundreds of others. In fact, every district was a battlefield, and every tribe was subject to decimation.

I do not say that the awful slaughters resulting from native lawlessness and superstition have ceased altogether, but the 540 missions, schools, and churches, and as many little military forts that have been planted across the continent with the aid of the steam flotillas of the Congo and the swift cruisers which navigate the great lakes, have completely extirpated the native tyrants and the Arab freebooters; and wherever military power has established itself or religion has lent a saving hand, the murderous witch doctor can no longer practice the cruel rites of paganism. But although in parts of the far interior there yet remains many a habitation of cruelty awaiting the cleansing light of civilization, there is every reason for believing confidently that the time is not far distant when Africa, neglected for so long, shall as fully enjoy the blessings of freedom, peace, and prosperity as any of her sister continents.