Kitabı oku: «Stanley in Africa», sayfa 21
THE CONGO
Lake Tanganyika had been known to the Arab slave hunters of the east coast of Africa long before the white man gazed upon its bright blue waters. These cunning, cruel people had good reasons for guarding well the secret of its existence. Yet popular report of it gave it many an imaginary location and dimension. What is remarkable about it is that since it has been discovered and located, it has taken various lengths and shapes under the eye of different observers, and though it has been circumnavigated, throughout its 1200 miles of coast, no one can yet be quite positive whether it has an outlet or not.
It is 600 miles inland from Zanzibar, or the east coast of Africa, and almost in the centre of that wonderful basin whose reservoirs contribute to the Nile, Zambesi and Congo. The route from Zanzibar half way to the lake is a usual one, and we need not describe it. The balance of the way, through the Ugogo and Unyamwezi countries, is surrounded by the richest African verdure and diversified by running streams and granitic slopes, with occasional crags. At length the mountain ranges which surround the lake are reached, and when crossed there appear on the eastern shore the thatched houses of Ujiji, the rendezvous of all expeditions, scientific, commercial and missionary, that have ever reached these mysterious waters.
Burton and Speke were the white discoverers of Tanganyika. It seemed to them the revelation of a new world – a sight to make men hold their breath with a rush of new thoughts, as when Bilboa and his men stood silent on that peak in Darien and gazed upon the Pacific Ocean.
Fifteen years later Cameron struck it and could not believe that the vast grey expanse was aught else than clouds on the distant mountains of Ugoma, till closer observation proved the contrary.
Livingstone struck it from the west side. It was on his last journey through Africa, he had entered upon that journey at Zanzibar, in April 1866, and made for Lake Nyassa and its outlet the Shiré River, both of which have been described in connection with the Zambesi.
Then began that almost interminable ramble to which he fell a victim. He was full of the theory that no traveller had yet seen the true head waters of the Nile – in other words that neither Victoria nor Albert Nyanza were its ultimate reservoirs, but that they were to be found far below the equator in that bewildering “Lake Region” which never failed to reveal wonderful secrets to such as sought with a patience and persistency like his own.
He was supported in this by the myths of the oldest historians, by the earliest guesses which took the shape of maps, by the traditions of the natives that boats had actually passed from Albert Nyanza into Tanganyika, but above all by the delusion that the great river Lualaba, which he afterwards found flowing northward from lakes far to the south of Tanganyika, could not be other than the Nile itself.
On his way westward from Lake Nyassa, he came upon the Loangwa River, a large affluent of the Zambesi from the north. Crossing this, and bearing northwest, he confronted the Lokinga Mountains, from whose crests he looked down into the valley of the Chambesi. It was clear that these mountains formed a shed which divided the waters of the central basin, or lake region, of Africa from those which ran south into the Zambesi. Had he discovered the true sources of the Nile at last? Where did those waters go to, if not to the Mediterranean? The journal of his last travels is full of soliloquies and refrains touching the glory of a discovery which should vindicate his theory and set discussion at rest.
And what was he really looking down upon from that mountain height? The Chambesi – affluent of Lake Bangweola? Yes. But vastly more. He was looking on the head waters of the northward running Lualaba, which proved his ignis fatuus and led him a six year dance through the wilderness and to his grave. The Lualaba has been christened Livingstone River, in honor of the great explorer. Then again it was only the Lualaba in name, which he was pursuing, with the hope that it would turn out to be the Nile. It was really the great Congo, for after the Lualaba runs northeast toward Albert Nyanza, and to a point far above the equator, it makes a magnificent sweep westward, and southwestward, and seeks the Atlantic at a point not ten degrees above the latitude of its source.
Thus was Livingstone perpetually deceived. But for all that we must ever admire his enthusiasm for research and his heroism under extreme difficulties. When he plunged down the mountain side into the depths of the forests that lined the Chambesi, it was to enter a night of wandering which had no star except the meeting of Stanley at Ujiji in 1871, and no morning at all. What a story of heroic adventure lies in those years!
Ere his death, his followers had deserted him, carrying back to the coast lying stories of his having been murdered. Trusted servants ran away with his medicine chest, leaving him no means of fighting the deadly diseases which from that hour began to break down his strength. The country ahead had been wasted and almost emptied of inhabitants by the slave-traders. Hunger and thirst were the daily companions of his march. Constant exposure to wet brought on rheumatism and ague; painful ulcers broke out in his feet; pneumonia, dysentery, cholera, miasmatic fever, attacked him by turns; but still, so long as his strength was not utterly prostrated, the daily march had to be accomplished. Still more trying than the fatigue were the vexatious delays, extending sometimes over many months, caused by wars, epidemics, or inundation, that frequently compelled him to retrace his steps when apparently on the verge of some great discovery. Often, in order to make progress, he had no alternative but to attach his party to some Arab expedition which, under pretence of ivory-trading, had come out to plunder, to kidnap, and to murder. The terrible scenes of misery and slaughter of which he was thus compelled to be the witness, had perhaps a stronger and more depressing effect on his mind than all the other trials that fell to his lot. “I am heart-broken and sick of the sight of human blood,” he writes, as he turns, baffled, weary, and broken in health from one line of promising exploration to another.
He has left us only rough jottings of this story of wild adventure and strange discovery. For weeks at a time no entries are found in his journal. The hand that should have written them was palsied with fever, the busy brain stunned into unconsciousness, and the tortured body borne by faithful attendants through novel scenes on which the eager explorer could no longer open his eyes. His letters were stolen by Arabs – both those going to and coming from him. Yet his disjointed notes, written on scraps of old newspapers with ink manufactured by himself out of the seeds of native plants, tell a more affecting tale of valuable discovery than many a carefully written narrative.
He gives us glimpses into the Chambesi jungles, whose population has been almost swept away by the slave dealers. Fires sweep over the virgin lands in the dry season. A single year restores to them their wonted verdure. Song birds relieve the stillness of the African forests, but those of gayest plumage are silent. The habits of bees, ants, beetles and spiders are noted, and of the ants, found in all parts of Africa, those in these central regions build the most palatial structures. The most ferocious enemy of the explorer is not the portentous weapon of lion’s claw, rhinoceros’ horn, or elephant’s tusk, but a small fly – the notorious tsetse, whose bite is death to baggage animals, whose swarms have brought ruin to many a promising expedition, and whose presence is a more effectual barrier to the progress of civilization than an army of a million natives.
Then he is full of quaint observations on the lion, for which he had little respect, and on the more lordly elephant and rhinoceros. A glade suddenly opens where a group of shaggy buffaloes are grazing, or a herd of startled giraffes scamper away through the foliage with their long necks looking like “locomotive obelisks.” Then comes a description of a hippopotamus hunt – “the bravest thing I ever saw.”
Again the night is often made hideous by the shrieks of the soko – probably the gorilla of Du Chaillu, and of which Cameron heard on Tanganyika and Stanley on the Lualaba. But only Livingstone has given us authentic particulars of it. Its home is among the trees, but it can run on the ground with considerable speed, using its long fore-arms as crutches, and “hitching” itself along on its knuckles. In some respects it behaves quite humanly. It makes a rough bed at night among the trees, and will draw a spear from its body and staunch the wound with grass. It is a pot-bellied, wrinkled-faced, human-featured animal with incipient whiskers and beard. It will not attack an unarmed man or woman but will spring on a man armed with a spear or stick. In attack it will seize the intruder in its powerful arms, get his hand into its mouth, and one by one bite off his fingers and spit them out. It has been known to kidnap babies, and carry them up into the trees, but this seems to be more out of sport than mischief. In his family relations the male soko is a model of affection – assisting the mother to carry her young and attending strictly to the proprieties of soko society. A young soko which was in the doctor’s possession had many intelligent and winning ways, showed great affection and gratitude, was careful in making its bed and tucking itself in every night, and scrupulously wiped its nose with leaves. In short, it must be allowed, that the native verdict, that the “soko has good in him,” is borne out by the known facts, and that in some respects he compares not unfavorably, both in character and manners, with some of the men we make acquaintance with in our wanderings through Africa.
It was in April 1867, one year after his start from Zanzibar, that Livingstone crossed the Chambesi, and soon afterwards found himself on the mountains overlooking Lake Liemba, which proved to be none other than the southern point of our old friend Lake Tanganyika. Thence he zigzagged westward over sponge covered earth till he struck Lake Moero, with a stream flowing into its southern end – really the Lualaba, on its way from Lake Bangweola – and out at its northern – again the Lualaba – into other lakes which the natives spoke of. Now, more than ever before, he was persuaded that he was on the headwaters of the Nile, and he would have followed his river up only to surprise himself by coming out into the Atlantic through the mouth of the great Congo, if it had not been for native wars ahead.
Then he put back to examine a great lake of this river system, which the natives said existed south of Lake Moero. After a tramp of weeks through wet and dry, he found himself on the marshy banks of Lake Bangweola. Close by where he struck it, was its outlet, the Lualaba, here known as Luapula. It is a vast reservoir, 200 miles long by 130 broad, and has no picturesque surroundings, but is interspersed with many beautiful islands.
Confident now that he had the true source of the Nile – for the water-shed to the south told him that every thing below it ran into the Zambesi – nothing remained but for him to return to where he had left off his survey of the Lualaba, far to the north, and to follow that stream till he proved the truth of his theory. In going thither he would take in Lake Tanganyika. It was a terrible journey. For sixteen days he was carried in a litter under a burning sun, through marshy hollows and over rough hills. Sight of Tanganyika revived his drooping spirits, but he feared he must die before reaching Ujiji. It was March 1869, before he reached the coveted resting place, but he found awaiting him no aid, no medicines, no letters. He had been dead to the world for three long years. King Mirambo was off on the war-path against the Arabs, and Livingstone had to wait, undergoing slow recovery for many months.
At length, following in the trail of Arab slave dealers who had never before penetrated so far westward of the lake, and frequent witness of their barbarities, he reached a point on the Lualaba as far north as Nyangwe, where the river already began to take the features of cliff and cañon which Stanley found to belong to the lower Congo, and where the natives showed the prevalence of those caste ideas which prevail on the western coast but are unknown on the eastern. The region was also one of gigantic woods, into which the sun’s rays never penetrated, and beneath which were pools of water which never dried up. The river flats were a mass of luxuriant jungle, abounding in animal life. Livingstone was greatly annoyed at one of his halting places by the depredations of leopards on his little flock of goats. A snare gun was set for the offenders. It was heard to go off one night, and his attendants rushed to the scene with their lances. The prize had been struck and both its hind legs were broken. It was thought safe to approach it, but when one of the party did so, the stricken beast sprang upon the man’s shoulder and tore him fearfully before being killed. He was a huge male and measured six feet eight inches from nose to tail.
Nyangwe, the furthest point of his journey up, or rather down, the Lualaba, or Congo, is in the country of the Manyuema, the finest race Livingstone had seen in Africa. The females are beautiful in feature and form. The country is thickly peopled, and they have made considerable progress in agriculture and the arts. Villages appear at intervals of every two or three miles. The houses are neatly built, with red painted walls, thatched roofs, and high doorways. The inhabitants are clever smiths, weavers and tanners, and all around are banana groves and fields tilled in maize, potatoes and tapioca. The chiefs are important personages, who exercise arbitrary authority and dress regally. Livingstone suspected they practised cannibalism, but could not prove it. Stanley noticed a row of 180 skulls decorating one of their village streets. He was told they were soko skulls, but carrying two away, he presented them to Prof. Huxley, who pronounced them negro craniums of the usual type.
One of their great institutions is the market, held in certain villages on stated days. People come to these from great distances to exchange their fish, goats, ivory, oil, pottery, skins, cloth, ironware, fruit, vegetables, salt, grain, fowls, and even slaves. There is a great variety of costume, loud crying of wares, much bargaining and no inconsiderable hilarity. The market at Nyangwe is held every four days, and the assemblage numbers as many as 3000 people. Even in war times market people are allowed to go to and fro without molestation.
The Arab slave traders are fast demoralizing these people. They set the different tribes to fighting and then step in and carry off multitudes of slaves. One fine market day these miscreants suddenly appeared among the throng of unsuspecting people and began an indiscriminate firing. They fled in all directions, many jumping into the river. The sole object of the slave stealers was to strike terror into the hearts of the inhabitants by showing the power of a gun. Livingstone witnessed this unprovoked massacre and thought that five hundred innocent lives were lost in it.
He found the Lualaba a full mile wide at Nyangwe, and still believed it to be the Nile. In this firm belief he ceased to follow the stream further and turned his weary feet back to Ujiji on Tanganyika. It will always be a mystery how Livingstone could have nursed his delusion that he was on the Nile, for so long a time. The moment Cameron set his eyes on the Lualaba, he saw that it could not be the Nile, for its volume of water was many times larger than that of the Nile, and moreover its level was many hundred feet lower than the White Nile at Gondokoro. And though Stanley had the profoundest respect for the views of the great explorer, he hardly doubted that in descending the Lualaba he would emerge into the Atlantic through the mouth of the great Congo.
Now while Livingstone is struggling foot-sore, sick, dejected, almost deserted, back to Ujiji on the Lake Tanganyika, for rest, for medicine, for news from home, after he has been lost for five long years, and after repeated rumors of his death had been sent from Zanzibar to England, what is taking place in the outside world?
On October 16, 1869, Henry M. Stanley, a correspondent of the New York Herald, was at Madrid in Spain. On that date he received a dispatch from James Gordon Bennett, owner of the Herald, dated Paris. It read, “Come to Paris on important business.”
With an American correspondent’s instinct and promptitude, Mr. Stanley knocked at Mr. Bennett’s door on the next night.
“Who are you?” asked Bennett.
“Stanley,” was the reply.
“Yes; sit down. Where do you think Livingstone is?”
“I do not know sir.”
“Well, I think he is alive and can be found. I am going to send you to find him.”
“What! Do you really think I can find Livingstone? Do you mean to send me to Central Africa?”
“Yes, I mean you shall find him wherever he is. Get what news you can of him. And, may be he is in want. Take enough with you to help him. Act according to your own plans. But —find Livingstone.”
By January, 1871, Stanley was at Zanzibar. He hired an escort, provided himself with a couple of boats, and in 236 days, after an adventurous journey, was at Ujiji on Tanganyika.
It was November, 1871. For weary months two heroes had been struggling in opposite directions in the African wilds – Livingstone eastward from Nyangwe on the Lualaba, to find succor at Ujiji on Tanganyika Lake, Stanley westward from Zanzibar to carry that succor and greetings, should the great explorer be still alive.
Providence had a hand in the meeting. Livingstone reached Ujiji just before Stanley. On November 2, Stanley, while pushing his way up the slopes which surrounded Tanganyika met a caravan. He asked the news, and was thrilled to find that a white man had just reached Ujiji, from the Manyuema.
“A white man?”
“Yes, a white man.”
“How is he dressed?”
“Like you.”
“Young, or old?” “Old; white hair, and sick.”
“Was he ever there before?”
“Yes; a long time ago.”
“Hurrah!” shouted Stanley, “it is Livingstone. March quickly my men. He may go away again!”
They pressed up the slopes and in a few days were in sight of Tanganyika. The looked for hour was at hand.
“Unfurl your flags and load your guns!” he cried to his companions.
“We will, master, we will!”
“One, two, three – fire!”
A volley from fifty guns echoed along the hills. Ujiji was awakened. A caravan was coming, and the streets were thronged to greet it. The American flag was at first a mystery, but the crowd pressed round the new comers. Stanley pushed his way eagerly, all eyes about him.
“Good morning, sir!”
“Who are you?” he startlingly inquired.
“Susi; Dr. Livingstone’s servant.”
“Is Livingstone here?”
“Sure, sir; sure. I have just left him.”
“Run, Susi; and tell the Doctor I am coming.”
Susi obeyed. Every minute the crowd was getting denser. At length Susi came breaking through to ask the stranger’s name. The doctor could not understand it all, and had sent to find out, but at the same time in obedience to his curiosity, had come upon the street.
Stanley saw him and hastened to where he was.
“Dr. Livingstone, I presume.”
“Yes,” said he with a cordial smile, lifting his hat.
They grasped each other’s hands. “Thank God!” said Stanley, “I have been permitted to see you!”
“Thankful I am that I am here to welcome you,” was the doctor’s reply.
They turned toward the house, and remained long together, telling each other of their adventures; hearing and receiving news. At length Stanley delivered his batch of letters from home to the doctor, and he retired to read them.
Then came a long and happy rest for both the explorers. Livingstone improved in health and spirits daily. His old enthusiasm was restored and he would be on his travels again. But he was entirely out of cloth and trinkets, was reduced to a retinue of five men, and had no money to hire more.
One day Stanley said, “have you seen the north of Tanganyika yet?”
“No; I tried to get there, but could not. I have no doubt that Tanganyika as we see it here is really the Upper Tanganyika, that the Albert Nyanza of Baker is the Lower Tanganyika, and that they are connected by a river.”
Poor fellow! Did ever mortal man cling so to a delusion, put such faith in native stories and old traditions.
Stanley proposed to lend his assistance to the doctor, to settle the question of Tanganyika’s northern outlet. The doctor consented; and now began a journey, which was wholly unlike the doctor’s five year tramp. He was in a boat and had a congenial and enthusiastic companion.
Tanganyika, like the Albert Nyanza which pours a Nile flood, and Nyassa which flows through the Shiré into the Zambesi, is an immense trough sunk far below the table-land which occupies the whole of Central Africa. Its surrounding mountains are high. Its length is nearly 500 miles, its waters deep, clear and brackish. Whither does it send its surplus waters?
We have seen that Livingstone was sure it emptied through the Nile. This was what he and Stanley were to prove. In November 1871, three weeks after the two had so providentially met at Ujiji, they were on their voyage in two canoes. They coasted till they came to what Burton and Speke supposed to be the end of the lake, which turned out to be a huge promontory. Beyond this the lake widens and stretches for sixty miles further, overhung with mountains 7000 feet high. At length they reached the northern extremity where they had been assured by the natives that the waters flowed through an outlet. No outlet there. On the contrary seven broad inlets puncturing the reeds, through which the Rusizi River poured its volume of muddy water into the lake, from the north. Here was disappointment, yet a revelation. No Nile source in Tanganyika – at least not where it was expected to be found. Its outlet must be sought for elsewhere. Some thought it might connect eastward with Nyassa. But what of the great water-shed between the two lakes? Others thought it might have its outpour this way and that. Livingstone, puzzled beyond propriety, thought it might have an underground outlet into the Lualaba, and even went so far as to repeat a native story in support of his notion, that at a point in the Ugoma mountains the roaring of an underground river could be heard for miles.
Nothing that Livingstone and Stanley did, helped to solve the mystery of an outlet, except their discovery of the Rusizi, at the north, which was an inlet. After a three weeks cruise they returned to Ujiji, whence Stanley started back for Zanzibar, accompanied part way by Livingstone. After many days’ journey they came to Unyanyembe where they parted forever, Stanley to hasten to Zanzibar and Livingstone to return to the wilds to settle finally the Nile secret. Stanley protested, owing to the doctor’s physical condition. But the enthusiasm of travel and research was upon him to the extent that he would not hear.
Stanley had left ample supplies at Unyanyembe. These he divided with the doctor, so that he was well off in this respect. He further promised to hire a band of porters for him at Zanzibar and send them to him in the interior. They parted on March 13, 1872.
“God guide you home safe, and bless you, my friend,” were the doctor’s words.
“And may God bring you safe back to us all, my dear friend! Farewell!”
“Farewell!”
This was the last word Doctor Livingstone ever spoke to a white man. They wrung each other’s hands. Stanley was overcome, and turned away. He cried to his men, “Forward March!” and the sad scene closed.
Livingstone waited at Unyanyembe for the escort Stanley had promised to send. They came by August, and on the 14 of the month (1872) he started for the southern point of Tanganyika, which he rounded, to find no outlet there. Then he struck for Lake Bangweolo, intending to solve all its river mysteries. That lake was to him an ultimate reservoir for all waters flowing north, and if the Lualaba should prove to be the Nile, then he felt he had its true source.
This journey was a horrible one in every respect. It rained almost incessantly. The path was miry and amid dripping grass and cane. The country was flat and the rivers all swollen. It was impossible to tell river from marsh. The country was not inhabited. Food grew scarce. The doctor became so weak that he had to be carried across the rivers on the back of his trusty servant Susi. One stream, crossed on January 24, 1873, was 2000 feet wide and so deep that the waters reached Susi’s mouth, and the doctor got as wet as his carrier.
These were the dark, dismal surroundings of Lake Bangweolo. Amid such hardships they skirted the northern side of the lake, crossed the Chambesi at its eastern end, where the river is 300 yards wide and 18 feet deep, and turned their faces westward along the south side.
The doctor was now able to walk no further. When he tried to climb on his donkey he fell to the ground from sheer weakness. His faithful servants took him on their shoulders, or bore him along in a rudely constructed litter. On April 27, 1873, his last entry reads, “Knocked up quite, and remain – recover – sent to buy milch goats. We are on banks of the R. Molilamo.”
His last day’s march was on a litter through interminable marsh and rain. His bearers had to halt often, so violent were his pains and so great his exhaustion. He spoke kindly to his humble attendants and asked how many days’ march it was to the Lualaba.
Susi replied that “it was a three days’ march.”
“Then,” said the dying man, “I shall never see my river again.” The malarial poison was already benumbing his faculties. Even the fountains of the Nile had faded into dimness before his mind’s eye.
He was placed in a hut in Chitambo’s village, on April 29, after his last day’s journey, where he lay in a semi-conscious state through the night, and the day of April 30. At 11 P.M. on the night of the 30, Susi was called in and the doctor told him he wished him to boil some water, and for this purpose he went to the fire outside, and soon returned with the copper kettle full. Calling him close, he asked him to bring his medicine-chest, and to hold the candle near him, for the man noticed he could hardly see. With great difficulty Dr. Livingstone selected the calomel, which he told him to place by his side; then, directing him to pour a little water into a cup, and to put another empty one by it, he said in a low, feeble voice, “All right; you can go out now.” These were the last words he was ever heard to speak.
It must have been about 4 A.M. when Susi heard Majwara’s step once more. “Come to Bwana, I am afraid; I don’t know if he is alive.” The lad’s evident alarm made Susi run to arouse Chuma, Chowperé, Matthew, and Muanuaséré, and the six men went immediately to the hut.
Passing inside, they looked toward the bed. Dr. Livingstone was not lying on it, but appeared to be engaged in prayer, and they instinctively drew backward for the instant. Pointing to him, Mujwara said, “When I lay down he was just as he is now, and it is because I find that he does not move that I fear he is dead.” They asked the lad how long he had slept. Majwara said he could not tell, but he was sure that it was some considerable time: the men drew nearer.
A candle, stuck by its own wax to the top of the box, shed a light sufficient for them to see his form. Dr. Livingstone was kneeling by the side of his bed, his body stretched forward, his head buried in his hands upon the pillow. For a minute they watched him: he did not stir, there was no sign of breathing; then one of them, Matthew, advanced softly to him and placed his hands to his cheeks. It was sufficient; life had been extinct some time, and the body was almost cold: Livingstone was dead.
His sad-hearted servants raised him tenderly up and laid him full length on the bed. They then went out to consult together, and while there they heard the cocks crow. It was therefore between midnight and morning of May 1, 1873, his spirit had taken its flight. His last African journey began in 1866.
The noble Christian philanthropist, the manful champion of the weak and oppressed, the unwearied and keen-eyed lover of nature, the intrepid explorer whose name is as inseparably connected with Africa as that of Columbus is with America, had sunk down exhausted in the very heart of the continent, with his life-long work still unfinished. His highest praise is that he spent thirty years in the darkest haunts of cruelty and savagery and yet never shed the blood of his fellow-man. The noblest testimony to his character and his influence is the conduct of that faithful band of native servants who had followed his fortunes so long and so far, and who, embalming his body, and secretly preserving all his papers and possessions, carried safely back over the long weary road to the coast all that remained of the hero and his work.
Cameron was on his way toward Ujiji to rescue Livingstone when he heard of his death. He pursued his journey and reached Lake Tanganyika, determined to unravel the mystery of its outlet. He started on a sailing tour around the lake in March 1874. His flag boat was the “Betsy.” He only got half way round, but in this distance he counted the mouths of a hundred rivers, and found the shores constantly advancing in bold headlands and receding in deep bays. Both land and water teem with animal life. Elephants abounded in the jungles, rhinoceri and hippopotami were frequently seen, and many varieties of fish were caught. In one part the cliffs of the shores were sandstone, in another they were precipices of black marble, here were evidences of a coal formation, there crags of chalk whose bases were as clearly cut by the waves as if done with a knife. In many places cascades tumbled over the crags showing that the table land above was like a sponge filled with moisture.
