Kitabı oku: «Stanley in Africa», sayfa 47

THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA

The extent of European territorial annexation of Africa, provisional, protective or positive, is quite surprising even to those who have kept pretty close watch of it. Of the eleven millions of square miles in Africa, six and one-half millions are attached to some European power; and of the four and a half unattached parts, half lie within the desert of Sahara.

That, therefore, is to say that all the continent of Africa that is habitable, except about two million square miles, is under European domination. Europe has annexed Africa. The “British East African Company” is practically another European State in Africa, for it is granted full powers to levy taxes and customs and to maintain an armed force. Whether another generation will look upon all this as civilized brigandage, or whether it is any better than free-booting of any other type, does not materially affect the facts in the case. The British government, through its colonial or foreign office, nevertheless has authorized this company (new State) to carry on high piracy of much of the finest land in Central Africa filled with an industrious population, said to number about Lake Nyanza alone twelve millions of people. We are told that the company is composed of philanthropic gentlemen in London, and we have no doubt but that the ultimate result will be good – “the Earth will help the woman” – but it is nevertheless difficult to detect any under-lying moral principle above

“He may take who has the power

And he may keep who can.”

And while the lion and the lamb in this millennial reign lie down together in peace, it is because the lamb is inside of the lion.

But Great Britain is not alone in this missionary zeal that “out of the eater shall come forth meat and out of the strong shall come forth sweetness,” though her “sphere of influence” is a million square miles of the Dark Continent. France exercises the sweet charities of modern politics over 700,000 square miles, and Germany seeks to convert, en bloc, if not to Christianity, at least to modern German trade-gain, 200,000 square miles, about which she now disputes, to add to the 740,000 she has without debate already. Meanwhile the king of Portugal takes “military occupation” of a tract of land north of Loanda and creates an “attachment” for it to the king of Portugal; and the British government “annexes” that part of the Gold Coast between Cape Coast Castle and the delta of the Niger; and what with treaties, “military operations” and “protectorates,” Africa becomes rapidly a sort of “country store” run by European merchants.

Barring the radical ethical question in the case, perhaps we may rejoice in the bare hope that all this is “casting up the highway for the progress of Christianity;” but if what with rum and gunpowder these races are to be “civilized off the face of the Earth,” as we have done with our native American races, it would seem that there must nevertheless be a great reckoning day with the Christian powers, that they could find no better way of developing Africa than by fertilizing her soil with the carcasses of her sons.

LIONS AND A GIRAFFE

The lions of Africa are night prowlers. Very few have ever seen them seize their prey in the day-time. Capt. Anderson once witnessed such a scene. Late one evening he badly wounded a lion, and on the following morning set out with his attendants to track the game and complete the capture. “Presently,” he writes, “we came upon traces of a troop of lions and a giraffe. The tracks were thick and confusing, and while we were trying to pick out those of the wounded lion, I observed my native attendants suddenly rush forward, and the next instant the jungle resounded with their shouts of triumph.

“Thinking they had discovered the object of our search, I hurried forward; but imagine my surprise when, emerging into an opening in the jungle, I saw, not the dead lion, as I had expected, but five living lions – two males and three females – two of whom were engaged in pulling down a splendid giraffe, the other three watching close at hand, and with devouring look, the deadly strife.

“The scene was of so unusual and exciting a nature that for the moment I quite forgot I carried a gun. The natives, however, in expectation of a glorious feast, dashed madly forward with the most piercing shrieks, and their yells compelled the lions to beat a hasty retreat. When I reached the giraffe, now stretched at full length on the ground, it made a few ineffectual attempts to raise its head, fell over, heaving and quivering throughout its entire body, and at length straightened itself out in death. An examination showed several deep gashes about the breast and flanks, made by the claws of the fierce assailants. The strong and tough muscles of the elongated neck were also bitten through in many places. All thought of further pursuit of the wounded lion was now out of the question. The natives now gathered about the dead giraffe, and did not desist from feasting upon it till its entire carcass had been devoured. A day or two afterwards, however, I came upon the bloody tracks of my royal antagonist, and had the pleasure of finishing him with a well directed bullet from my rifle.”

KILIMANJARO

In passing southward from Lake Albert Nyanza, Stanley and the rescued Emin, together with their large party, skirted a lofty range of mountains, whose highest peak is Kilimanjaro, which has lately been ascended for the distance of 16,500 feet, to the snow line, by two German scientists and explorers, thus giving it a distinct place in geography, and setting it forth as one of the most interesting of natural objects.

The region is south of the great Uganda and Unyoro tribes, and had, up to Stanley’s trip through it, never been visited by a traveler of note except Thomas Stevens and Dr. Abbott, who thus narrate what they saw: —

“First we determined to pay a visit to the chief of Machawe in order to make purchases of food, and besides, we anticipated much pleasure in visiting a chief who had never yet set eyes on a white man. Our way led through a very charming plain country, very African in its appearance. The gently undulating plains were dotted with small cones of a hundred feet, or thereabout, in height, so small, symmetrical and uniform in shape as to suggest bubbles floating on the green waves of the plain. Rhinoceri, giraffes, antelopes, buffalo and zebra abounded in great numbers, roaming over the free, broad plains like herds of cattle. Whenever we knocked over any of these, it was very refreshing and soothing to the spirits to see the very men who but yesterday had declared ‘the nyama was not food’ fling down their loads and quarrel violently over big chunks of that very article. As we neared the approaches to Machawe, we came upon a party of Masai women and donkeys, wending their way towards Sigarari with loads of vegetable food, which they had purchased at the former place or at Kibonoto. These were the first real Masai women we had seen. They were not such as to give us a very favorable idea of their sex in Sigarari. All were old and atrociously ugly, it being customary, for obvious reasons, to send the ancient dames of the clan on these food-purchasing expeditions, rather than the possessors of youth and beauty.

“Even though the Masai and their agricultural neighbors may be at war, and the men of either side would, if caught, be brutally speared, it is the custom to let the women pass back and forth unmolested to trade. Africans, even the Masai, who are supposed to be chiefly devoted to war and raiding for cattle, are above all else commercial in their instincts. It appears that, with all their savagery, choice scraps of wisdom are to be picked up among these people here and there. Who could imagine the armies of two European countries proceeding against each other while the trade across the frontier flourished unimpaired in the care of their women?

“We camped near a swamp, in which we found abundant signs of elephants, but saw none of them, and in the morning proceeded to Machawe. Machawe is the largest and most populous of the Kilimanjaro States, and, with its neighbor, Kibonoto, occupies the western extremity of the cultivatable plateau that distinguishes the mountain on its southern slopes. Though the largest, it is the least known to Europeans, and so we looked forward to a novel and interesting visit to its Sultan and people.

“The approaches to Machawe consist of the usual narrow, tortuous paths, leading through dense thickets of scrubby and thorny vegetation, and instead of gates the defenses by this route are deep, narrow ravines, which have been trimmed down and deepened into big trenches. A pole thrown across one of these ditches forms a bridge, which the natives, sure of foot as monkeys, cross over and, in times of war, remove.

“Crossing these obstacles with no little difficulty, we at once found ourselves in the proximity of banana groves, and objects of more than usual interest to swarms of bronze-skinned warriors who had in a remarkably short time collected on the adjacent ridges. We wondered where they had all come from so quickly. They were by no means certain of our intentions, and for some time held aloof, watching us with the keenest interest. At length we managed to make them understand that our intentions were commercial only, and a few of the more venturesome individuals came and pointed out a place for us to camp. After much talkee-talkee with an ancient and exceedingly peaceful-looking savage in a greasy goat-skin toga and anklets of the same material, we sent off a present to the Sultan and stated our intention of paying him a visit next day.

“Our delegation was hospitably entertained by the chief, with a goat and big jars of pombe, but the men were kept in the royal boma until our appearance next day; this as a guarantee, so we afterwards understood, that we would keep our promise and come to see him. He was most anxious to receive us, and particularly requested that the entire caravan might be brought to his residence.

“We had no idea how far it was nor how difficult might be the way. It turned out to be up hill and down dale for many trying miles, through banana plantations of astonishing area and across clear, cold mountain streams that nearly swept us off our feet.

“The country was lovely, a chaotic jumble of narrow hills and dales and the whole sloping gently up towards Kibo and clothed with luxuriant vegetation of every shade of green. Everywhere could be heard the music of mountain streams coursing over rocky beds at the bottom of the cañons or leaping and tumbling over cataracts or down rapids. Between the banana plantations stood little patches of primeval forest, and about them, so characteristic of Chaga, were the charming little parks we have noted in Marangu. The groves are believed to be peopled with the shades of their ancestors, and native offerings are placed before the trees. Troops of big reddish baboons also make the groves and the little parks their homes.

“Irrigating ditches were everywhere, and narrow lanes of dracæna hedges divided the plantations. At length we came to a halt on a strip of sward, at the brink of a formidable cañon several hundred feet deep, down which coursed one of the largest streams we had yet encountered. Our guides wanted to conduct us across this, but we had grown tired of the interminable slippery paths and the ascending and descending steep ravines, and so decided to form camp on this extremely interesting spot. No more charming situation could be imagined. Five hundred feet below us a torrent, clear as crystal, cold and fresh from the glaciers of Kibo, tumbled and foamed over the rocks or raced along with gurgling tones. Immediately beyond the chasm a broad table-land of parks and groves and banana plantations stretched away with a slope of one in twenty. The variegated shades of green in the irregular patchwork of forest, park and field, made a most delightful study in colors. Nor was this all nature had to show our wondering eyes in Machawe. Hundreds of warriors, with spear and shield, their naked forms the only dark objects in the landscape, showed out in bold contrast and picturesque relief against the green ground-work of their surroundings as they stood and squatted in dense groups or stretched in long, irregular lines along the opposite brink of the cañon. Beyond all this was a dense mass of cloud that rested on the farther reaches of the green table-land and hid almost the whole of Kilimanjaro. But not all, for the higher strata of the clouds sometimes broke and revealed the eternal wreath of snow on Kibo, at whose very base we now seemed to be standing. Some day an artist will come and paint this picture I have feebly attempted to describe and make himself famous.

“Our first impression of the Sultan, or chief, was not very favorable. He was a young man of medium stature, under thirty, but he looked like a drunkard and debauchee and a decided expression of brutishness marked his face. His voice was thick and husky, but whether from extreme indulgence in pombe, or from an attack of laryngitis, was not then apparent. There was, however, small room for doubt about his being a constant worshiper at the shrines of the twin deities, before which every chief in Chaga, and well-nigh everyone in Africa, bows the knee. But whatever he might ordinarily be, he seemed determined to make as good an impression as he knew how upon his rare visitors, and before we left Machawe we voted him, notwithstanding first impressions, a very good sort of a fellow.

“Knowing that we had visited Miljali and intended visiting Mandara, both of whom were to the native mind possessed of many wondrous things from Europe, the Sultan of Machawe, ashamed of his poverty, seemed reluctant to take us inside his boma. He seemed bewildered and over-awed by the importance of the occasion. Anxious to do anything he could think of to please his visitors, he and all his elders were too ignorant of the white man’s character and requirements to know just what to do. The whole assembly appeared to be in a profound puzzle. We, on our part, made him the customary present of cloth, beads and wire. We showed him his own bloated features for the first time in a mirror, and amazed him with the ticking of a Waterbury watch. After much discussion among themselves, he and his elders seemed to make up their minds that the proper thing would be to take us into the royal boma, poverty or no poverty. The boma itself was a poor affair. It consisted of a small stockade of planks set on end, which had been laboriously hewn from big logs with native tools. Inside the stockade were several houses of very neat construction and of a pattern that is peculiar to Machawe. Instead of the bee-hive houses of Marangu and Taveta, the Machawe hut is of an exaggerated bell-shape.

“Just outside this boma was an inclosure of quite another sort – the kraal in which were kept the royal cattle. This was a remarkable affair, and strong enough to be a pretty good sort of a fort. Young trees had been planted in a ring to form a fence. They were planted in such numbers, and so close together, that as they grew up, they formed a living wall of tree trunks several feet thick, and so compact that one could not see through it.

“To our astonishment the king’s boma seemed to contain no women, a most extraordinary state of affairs, and when we asked the question as to the number of wives he had – always a complimentary piece of curiosity at an African court – he smiled and shook his head.

“‘What, none! – why. Miljali, of Marangu, has fourteen, and Mandara, of Moschi, many more than that.’

“Our looks of surprise and incredulity set the chief and all his elders to laughing. There was evidently a ‘nigger in the fence’ somewhere. This full-blown, sensuous-faced young potentate without a harem? Impossible. And then one of us remembered that, contrary to our experience elsewhere in the country, the fair sex in Machawe had kept themselves well out of sight as our caravan passed their houses. They were too timid and superstitious to let themselves be seen by the white strangers, who might, for all they knew, take it into their heads to assail them with their mysterious powers of ichawi (black magic) which everybody knew they possessed to an alarming degree. The Sultan had wives, then – a goodly number, no doubt – but all had scampered off and hid themselves at our approach, fearful of ichawi.

“Bacchus seemed to have rather the upper hand at Ngamini’s primitive court. I doubt if anything weaker than millet pombe is ever drunk inside the royal boma. During our visit that beverage flowed as freely as beer in a brewery. A huge jar of it was lugged in and placed in the middle of the assembly, and men ladled it out and passed around the gourds continually.

“The Sultan was opulent enough in the matter of pombe, if not in European goods, and so did his best to win our approval of his immense resources in that product. He took us into his brewery, a smaller inclosure that formed an annex to his resident kraal, and enjoyed immensely our astonishment at the vast size of the vats. These were earthenware jars, of bulbous shape, eight in number, and each capable of holding two hundred gallons or more of liquor. I had seen wine jars as large, though of different shape, in Persia, but never expected to find such giant pottery in a Chaga state.

“In brewing pombe the millet, or wimbi, is first pounded with stones to break the grain, then boiled in earthen kettles until it resembles thin cereal soup; the whole is then emptied into the big jars, covered with a cowhide and allowed to ferment. When dipped out for use the sediment is stirred up from the bottom, as also when dipped from smaller vessels to be passed around. Pombe in this condition is a solid tipple, which comes as near being both food and drink as anything of an intoxicating nature can be, and many an African chief all but lives on it. It has a pleasant twang to it, and the European soon comes to like it almost as well as the native boozer does. It goes to the head, too. A pint puts a white man in a joyous frame of mind and sets a negro, who effervesces easier than his white brother, to singing and whooping. The chiefs, however, are as a general thing animated pombe sponges, constantly soaked and with the gourd seldom out of reach.”

A HUNT ON THE ZAMBESI

The accounts of all African travelers agree, that both vegetable and animal life in Africa is rankest and noblest on the banks of the Zambesi. Volumes might be written of thrilling adventures in this extensive region. “One night,” says a noted traveler, “while journeying up the Zambesi, and just as we had fixed our tents for a good night’s rest, a native came rushing in with the news that two lions had been seen in the vicinity. The men wanted to go out and look for them immediately, but I dissuaded them from encountering the dangers of a night hunt, and promised that I would accompany them on the morrow.

“Early next morning the men were astir and busy with their preparations for a grand hunt. We had dogs with us, and when all was ready, these were let loose. A guide led the way to where he had seen the lions on the previous evening, but long before we had gone so far, and while making our way up a ridge, a noise like muttering thunder reached our ears from the valley beyond the ridge. The guide stopped, listened for a moment, and then, half in fear and half in astonishment, gasped, “The lions!”

“He refused to pilot us further, but sought the nearest tree and took refuge amid its branches. The rest of the party pushed on, and on peering over the top of the ridge saw an immense lion lying in the edge of a jungle. Our dogs scented him and made a dash toward him. The beast arose with a bound, and rushed out into the open. This was too much for the dogs, and they beat a hasty retreat.

“In a moment more the lion was joined by his mate, and both were now in plain sight, both crouching and beating the ground with their tails, as if about to make an attack. I took a position a few steps in advance of our party, aimed deliberately from a kneeling posture, and sent a bullet into the side of the male lion just behind the foreleg. Being so close and so deliberate in my aim, and my weapon being of a superior kind, I expected to see the beast turn over in the agonies of death. But instead, he made two or three desperate bounds toward our party, and in his last leap, which was a dying spasm, fell directly on the body of Shumi, one of our native employes. The poor fellow was frightened almost to death, and shrieked as though the lion’s fangs and claws were actually rending his flesh. But in a moment we all saw that no harm was coming to Shumi, for the lion had simply made his last supreme effort, and had fallen in a quivering, helpless mass upon the object of his attack.

“We now turned our attention to the lioness. Two shots were fired at her, which sent her wounded and growling into the jungle. Our party formed a front, and marched cautiously toward the jungle, prepared to fire, at first sight of the game. Our precautions proved to be unnecessary, for we soon discovered the beast too far advanced in her dying throes to be capable of harm to us. Both shots had taken effect in mortal parts. We secured, that day, two of the handsomest lion’s skins I ever saw.”