Three Years in Savage Africa ... With an introduction by H. M. Stanley, M.P. With 100 illustrations and 5 maps, etc

Introduction

BY H. M. STANLEY, M.P. WITH ioo ILLUSTRATIONS AND 5 MAPS FROM ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS, SKETCHES, AND SURVEYS BY THE AUTHOR METHUEN & CO. 36, ESSEX STREET, STRAND LONDON TO CECIL JOHN RHODES TO WHOM WE OWE THE OPENING OUT OF THE FAIREST PROVINCES OF AFRICA TO THE TRADE AND CIVILIZATION OF ALL NATIONS Œbis JBoof* is 2>edicate£> AS A TRIBUTE OF ADMIRATION AND GRATITUDE TO THE MOST CREATIVE OF STATESMEN AND THE MOST GENEROUS OF MEN

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MR. LIONEL DECLE, the author of this book, has conferred upon me the honour of introducing him to the British public. During the last three years he has been heard from repeatedly. After his return from his great African journey he came into notice as the cham pion of the cause of Mr. Stokes, that unfortunate trader who, it will be remembered, was so summarily hanged by an official of the Congo State. He then became attached to the Pall Mall Gazette, for which he wrote several vigorous articles upon African events and politics, and afterwards he represented the journal in Russia during the last days of the late Czar and the wedding of the present Emperor. To students of African travels and geography he is not so well known as this book shows he deserves to be. Mr. Decle, though domiciled in England, is a French man by birth and parentage, and comes from a good family.

From his earliest youth he exhibited an aptitude for travel. At nine years old he was taken to Italy, and a year later his parents took him to Egypt and up the Nile. In successive years he accompanied his people to Belgium, Holland, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, until he had almost gone the round of Europe. When he was fourteen he first became fascinated with mountain climb ing, and by the time he was eighteen he had accomplished several first ascents and climbed many of the highest peaks of the Alps. It was during this period that he acquired the art of observing, through his father's insist-

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ence that he should carefully describe his impressions and note down every incident of his rambles and excursions. Between 1881 and 1885 he made the grand tour of the world on a more extended scale than is usually followed by the ordinary globe-trotter. He visited the whole of India, up to the frontier of Thibet. He penetrated into Burmah, Cochin-China, Cambodia, China, and Japan besides paying visits to the Straits Settlements, Java, and the Pescadore Islands. After the traverse of America, he returned home ripe with knowledge, having seen many lands and many cities. Finally, after performing several minor journeys, Mr. Decle, in 1890, was entrusted by the French Government with one of those scientific missions, about which we have heard rather frequently from Continental travellers. Mr. Deck's mission was to proceed to South and East Africa, to study their ethnology and anthropology, for which he was peculiarly well qualified by his training during years of travels, and a lengthened practice of observation.

The results of his researches are embodied in the narrative of Three Years in Savage Africa. Oh his return from Africa, however, Mr. Decle was received with marked coldness by both the French Government and the French Press. He was reproached with having been too partial towards the British Adminis trations in the various countries he had travelled, and especially with having been too biassed against the French padres in Uganda, and having charged them with political intrigue. Another cause of the censoriousness of the French was his staunch support of Mr. Cecil Rhodes' African policy. The British, on the other hand, received him most kindly, and paid him high compliments for his brilliant feat of African travel, and, as I have said, he ultimately became a contributor and special correspondent of an English newspaper. After his trip to Russia he was offered by the Times and Pall Mall Gazette a commission to represent them during the late French campaign in

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Madagascar, but as the French Government was anxious to have him organize the native transport of the expedi tion, he accepted that office instead. In July, 1895, this duty terminated, and on coming to England he joined the staff of the Pall Mall once more. On the dismissal of his friend Mr. Cust from the editorship he also resigned and a little later he accompanied Mr. Cust on a nine months' tour in South Africa. It should be mentioned that as Mr. Decle was brought up by an English nurse he speaks our language as well as his own, perfectly, and almost without an accent. He is also proficient in German and Portuguese, and has a sufficient knowledge of Hindustani and Kiswahili for colloquial purposes. After these preliminary remarks about our author's personality, it is time for me to try and describe, as briefly as I may, his great African journey, the methods of his travels, and the results obtained from them.

This journey extended over 7000 miles, between Cape Town, at the extremity of Africa, and Mombasa on the eastern coast, a little south of the equator. It cuts across four different zones of exploration ; first, the South African, with which scores of explorers from Livingstone to Selous are associated ; second, the Nyasa zone which gave fame to such men as Livingstone, Kirk, Bishop Mackenzie, and lastly Sir H. H. Johnston ; third, the Tanganika zone, which recalls the names of Burton, Speke, Livingstone, and others ; and fourthly, the Equatorial zone, which reminds us of the exploits of Speke, Grant, Emin Pasha, Mackay, and many a C. M. S. missionary. His object was to study the ethnology and anthropology of the interior tribesand nations of Inner Africa, as has been already said, and to achieve this he united these zones by one continuous journey.

Notwithstanding these ex tensive travels he modestly disclaims being an explorer, denies having any financial interest to gain, and states that he had no political mission or was attached to any X

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administration, and that France had no claims to any portion of Africa that he visited. The journey grew to such a length solely through trifling circumstances. Frequently he was tempted to return through illness, or finding himself at advantageous points for easily reaching the coast, but again and again he was led to turn his face away from the sea — and so he continued his wanderings until finally he reached Uganda, whence, after a time, failing health obliged him to make his way to Mombasa. Despite the necessity of paying due regard to the principal objects of his mission, it is too clear that Mr. Decle was possessed with an innate love of adventure, as well as a very laudable curiosity to see as much of Africa as possible. South Africa was attracting public attention at that period by its treasures of diamonds and gold, and its politics as represented by the names of Rhodes and Kruger.

It is rather significant of the effect of his political studies that the record of his travels is dedicated to Mr. Rhodes " as a tribute of admiration and gratitude to the most creative of statesmen, and the most generous of men." The dedication fitly includes the chief reasons for the esteem with which all South Africans regard Mr. Rhodes, since there is no doubt that his munifi cence as evinced at Cape Town, Kimberley, Johannesburg, Bulawayo, and Salisbury, and to numberless individuals, has stirred the hearts of the people as much as his bold and successful projects for aggrandizing the empire have won their admiration. When Mr. Decle commenced his journey, the Great South African trunk railway had only reached Vryburg, the Chartered Company was but just then in possession of Mashonaland ; Lobengula was still in his kraal at Bulawayo ; Mr. Rhodes was heavily subsidizing British Central Africa ; the Germans had not yet advanced to Lake Tanganika ; and Uganda was being nursed by Sir W. Mackinnon : consequently all the regions he visited

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were still somewhat benighted, though the dawn was breaking and the sounds foretelling the changes so soon to come were in the air. Therefore a last look around at the countries destined to be awakened out of their long sleep cannot fail to be interesting. The traveller reached Cape Town in May, 1891, by one of the Castle steamers. By the few remarks he makes upon this fine seaport he reveals the fact that Africa was a terra incognita to him. He imagined it to be a kind of Bombay or Calcutta and is sadly disappointed. He does not find it picturesque, because the savages he expected to meet are mere " black-looking villains " dressed in European clothes, who drink hard, hate work, and speak Dutch. From this kind of plain speaking, in which he indulges at the outset, we are led to believe that whatever he thinks worth telling, will be told in as clear idiomatic English as he can com mand, and we gather that his whole aim is to honestly describe all that he sees.

His real African experiences begin at Vryburg, the terminus of the railway. He there invests in buck waggons and becomes the owner of thirty-six draught oxen, and starts across the veld on the 25th of June. His first trek and the night following are described in vivid words. His camp is deluged by rain, the lightning is terrific, the thunder crashes are appalling, the canvas is stripped off the waggons, the wind and rain extinguishes the lanterns, and drenched to the skin and in utter darkness his little expedition passes the first night. This misadventure is ominous — it seems to us calamitous occurrences are frequent. His waggons stick in the sand, thirty-four oxen are hitched to one waggon, but despite tremendous tugging and frantic yelling, shrieking, and whipping, it is immovable. They dig out the sand from before the wheels and try again without success, until at last they are obliged to unload, and then only can they move it. On the next trek they have to pass a morass, into which one of the waggons sinks four feet, and the

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united efforts of thirty-four oxen cannot budge it. Night is falling, the traveller is " dying " of hunger, but as the provisions are in the vehicle behind he must make an effort to reach them. The first step he takes sinks him to the knees in muck. He recovers himself, remounts the waggon, and has to sit caged in it all night with famishing vitals. This rough baptism of the traveller ends in a rheumatic fever, and while suffering from its effects, he comes across an English farm. The owner is affable, gives him milk, and shows him where to outspan. This is in such contrast to the treatment he received from a Cape Boer, that we are not surprised at his abuse of the Cape Dutchmen in general, whose intelligences he says are "dull and dry," like the country of their birth. On the fifteenth day from Vryburg he reached Mafeking, which is now a considerable town on the open and treeless prairie, 4194 feet above the sea, and 870 miles from Cape Town.

Mr. Decle found it to consist of a few "buildings, chiefly of corrugated iron, grouped around the market square. Since then it has become famous as the starting place of the young lads who followed Jameson into the Transvaal. We lately made the journey from Vryburg to Mafeking in a few hours in a comfortable railway carriage, and the touch of an electric bell brought us a meal, five o'clock tea, or a mint julep whenever it was needed. At night we slept between snowy sheets, during the day we wrote our letters or read novels. But Mr. Decle had to undergo veritable torture during his journey. Sleep was impossible while the waggons were moving, as he was pitched continually from one side to the other, and narrowly escaped fracturing his head against the hard wooden walls of his vehicle. Added to which the monotony was terrible.

" Nothing," he says, " is more tiring to the sight and depressing to the spirits than these limitless plains for days and weeks at a stretch." The dust was also blinding, for the red sand was kicked up by the feet of

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the oxen, and the waggon moved through a moving cloud of fine sand. But notwithstanding these unpleasantnesses, the traveller by ox-waggon has greater opportunities of studying nature than the rail tourist. He has daily talks with chiefs and people, and becomes familiar with their nature and lives, hears their local traditions, discovers their vices and their virtues. We, flying by rail at twenty - five miles an hour, get but mere glimpses of brown faces and scantily costumed bodies, a momentary peep at clusters of huts, and a passing glance at the top of an uniform bush. Those who are not students of primitive humanity will not care to be banged against rocks in a springless buck -waggon, or jerked against boulders with the waggon bed at an angle of 40°, or stuck in fetid mud for hours ; nor would they like to be sub jected to tropical downpours, or to be baked in the sun, and, when they want to wash, be charged a shilling for a basin of water or a sovereign for helping one out of the mud ; and they certainly would object when just going to sleep to have their tent or waggon canvas whipped off by a tornado and to have the trouble of outspanning and inspanning every six miles of a thousand mile journey.

How many of us would like to be devoured by anxiety about our cattle, who must needs stray far to get nourish ment, and are therefore exposed to lions and other feral creatures ; who sicken from eating poisonous plants, or the badness of the water, fatigue, and thirst? Men like Mr. Decle must, however, suffer all these horrors, and worse. He risked catching typhoid by drinking from tainted pools and wells, nay, sometimes he had to quench his thirst with liquid manure. At Palapshwe, a town of 15,000 people, typhoid epi demics raged from the refuse being thrown near the drinking water. While he was there more than forty people died daily from typhoid. It was also one of the worst places for horse sickness, and hundreds of oxen

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perished daily from lung disease, and the heaps of carcases increased the insanitation. Mr. Decle confesses to have had enjoyments during his troublous waggon journey, but with the horrors above mentioned — the great heat, the gnats, stingy Boers, tiresome natives, mud, dust and flies, which harassed and aged him — these must have been very rare, or we should have heard more of them. His reflections are such as belong to a forgiving disposition. " After all," he says, " a journey to Central Africa is not so very terrible. It is very monotonous. One must be endowed with an inexhaustible fund of patience and a good stomach, bear many things without disgust, be able to drink putrid water, eat no matter what, be without meat, sugar, or salt for days, sleep whole nights in water, remain long without washing ; for if one only makes up his mind to endure the mean, degrading life, there will be no disappointment."

But, alas ! how many of us could endure all these things ? Every few pages or so we have a bold sketch of a native chief, who is stripped of all romance. Men like Ikaneng — who is jet black, six feet high, with a full grey beard, and dressed in European clothes — who is unkind to our traveller because he has no letter for him from the Colonial Government ; or, like Khantura, who was once half-executed by Lobengula and subsequently became an independent chief, and now passes his time in smoking bhang ; or, like Khama, who is presented in such an unpleasant light, and appears to be too good to please South Africans. Missionaries do not seem to have taken kindly to Mr. Decle. His experiences with them cause us to imagine that in hospitality they are inferior to the natives. Their houses, for instance, contain no guest-room, while the native village always contains a " lekothla," or guest house, for the reception of the stranger, and possesses a " king's field," the produce of which is devoted to a visitor's wants.

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Within four months Mr. Decle reached the Zambezi. He crossed the river, and for two months lived among the Barotse people. His remarks upon this nation are full of interest, and despite his gift of condensation, the notes he gives of them prove him excellently qualified for the investigation of native manners and customs, and show his genius for making dry matter agreeable reading. In December, 1891, he starts on his return from the Zambezi, with only two tins of sardines, an ounce of salt, and ten pounds of coffee for provisions, while his kit is reduced to two flannel shirts, two under vests, three pairs of stockings, a patched pair of knickerbockers, and a hat without any crown to it. His barter stores are extremely limited — for they consist of only six yards of sheeting and a pound of beads.

His means of defence are a revolver and a rifle with five cartridges. Awful as his experiences were from Vryburg to the Zambezi, they are tame compared to those he meets on his return journey. Misery in one shape or another haunts him continually, and such startling adventures happen to him, that we expect every minute to read that one of them has been his last, and wonder to what other hand is due the rest of the book. Fortunately he passes through his many perils safely, and arrives at Palapshwe again. Though woe-begone and terribly emaciated, he has no sooner recovered a little strength, than he abandons his purpose of going home and prepares to visit Lobengula at Bulawayo. The troubles along the road to Bulawayo are principally at the crossing of the flooded rivers. They are described in a vivid style, which makes us realize his danger and fills us with anxiety for him ; but while we constantly expect a final catastrophe, good fortune rescues him from every predicament.

We who have just seen Bulawayo preening itself for the great destiny which awaits it, and entertaining 300 guests at the Palace Hotel, can relish the description of the place

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as it appeared to Mr. Decle in February, 1892. " Imagine a huge plain, extending for miles, with only two or three trees rising above a short, miserable-looking grass, all over which were strewn human bones, the remnants of Lo Ben's victims. In the distance rose a flat-topped hill, Thaba Induna— the Hill of the Induna— so named because a number of induna (generals) were once put to death there. On the left was a rise, on the top of which could be seen the tips of a stockade, Lobengula's kraal. In the middle of the plain were three groups of miserable tumble down native huts, half a dozen of which stood together surrounded by a reed fence. These were the habitations of the only three European settlers in the place." At Hope Fountain Mission, 12 miles from Bulawayo, he receives such hospitality from a missionary that amply makes amends for any unkindness shown to him by other reverend gentlemen.

During a whole month he enjoys the delights of a Christian home, and is nursed until health and strength are recovered. In his remarks upon the Matabele, he exhibits his aptitude for observation and study of the natives, and is always felicitous in his description of their character. In the latter part of April, 1892, he leaves Hope Fountain and endeavours to discover a better watered route to the Victoria Falls ; but after varying difficulties he returns a third time to Palapshwe in Khama's territory, intending to go back to Cape Town. However, meeting a party of officers at that place, he becomes animated with a desire to visit the Zimbabwe ruins, and in July he starts for Mashonaland. The first sign of the coming civilization he meets is a frontier bar, at which an English profligate who has run through £ 100,000 deals out drinks at the small wage of ,£20 per mensem.

The patrons of the bar are of all classes, from the British peer to the Yankee cowboy. Among the Company's police he is astonished to find brilliant conversationalists, men who have been intimate with the best club society in London,

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naval and military officers, who appear to be sufficiently happy with £g a month, and rejoice in their outdoor life. After his visit to the ancient ruins Mr. Decle returns to Fort Victoria, disposes of his waggons and cattle, and travels by mail cart to Fort Salisbury. His chapter on Mashonaland is remarkable for its good sense, its happy forecasts, and its appreciation of the agricultural value of the soil. The tone is excellent, and shows unmistakable evidence of ripening judgment. He has not only the knack of getting at valuable facts, but he has a retentive memory, and charmingly relates what he hears. Such faults as may be here and there in the book professional critics may be left to deal with, and therefore I confine myself to pointing out the undeniable merits of book and author. I think, however, some of the strictures on the Congo Free State might have been omitted, at least until he had visited it.

In October Mr. Decle begins what we may call the second stage of his journey, that which takes him across the Zambezi through Nyasaland to Ujiji on Lake Tan ganika. Among the numerous incidents of travel at the outset of this stage are his meeting with a man called Sagamuga, who has strong inclinations to murder him, a visit to the great caves of Sinoia, his experiences with a real Portuguese, who has a white skin but a black heart, whose glib welcome ends in curses loud and deep, his travels with a Governor and a doctor, and the pitiful condition in which the three pass a night. The historical chapters on the Portuguese of the Zambezi and British occupation in Nyasaland are most entertaining, because Mr. Decle is always so frank, genuine, and faultlessly simple in his diction. He is never ambiguous or dull, and every sentence, despite the fact that he writes in a language foreign to him, runs smooth, as though he were to the manner born. At Zomba he meets with Sir H. H. Johnston, the b

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Commissioner of Nyasaland. After a stay of several days-,- during which he enjoyed unstinted hospitality, he fears he is outstaying his time, and meditates going down the Zambezi and home, but consulting his host new ideas are furnished to him. "Why not," said Sir Harry, "go to Nyasaland, cross to Lake Tanganika, and thence to Ujiji? From there you could reach the Victoria Nyanza, and thus get to Uganda. Then perhaps you would find Sir Gerald Portal and march down to the coast with him." Needless to say, he eventually accepted the suggestion and accomplished it to the letter. He took passage in the steamer Domira in March, 1893, as she was bound for Karonga at the north end of Nyasa Lake. The voyage he calls a heart-breaking one. He was stranded in the mud for nine days while racked with fever, diarrhœa, and stomachic pains.

Getting freed finally, the steamer ran for ten minutes and plunged again into a sand-bar, which held her for three days longer. Freed a second time, a day was spent in cutting fuel and replacing one of her twin screws which had been smashed. Then came perils from storms, as the boat was terribly overcrowded. The cabin was a mere " cupboard with two bunks, while the fare consisted largely of cockroaches, bugs, flies, fleas, and ants." The unpleasant lake voyage lasted twenty-six days — the lake being 360 miles in length. Reaching terra firma, he started with a caravan of sixty-seven men on his march overland between the Nyasa and Tanganika. On the fourth day he was on the uplands, which he likens to the plateaus of Mashona land. Our traveller meets with the usual troubles that beset the white who depends upon black porters for his transport.

One of the men is caught stealing and is flogged, presently the porters desert in a body because they think they are underpaid ; but as he hates reciting commonplace annoyances, he stops further mention of them to find room for the odd bits of information which he gathers about native pests, diseases, superstition,

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wars, &c. He is clever in lightening his paragraphs, and before we are aware of it we arrive with Mr. Decle at Lake Tanganika, though the march has consumed the best part of a month. At Kituta, at the south end -of the lake, he chartered an arab dhow, by which after nine days' sail he reached Ujiji, " more dead than alive." When Captains Burton and Speke, in February, 1858, came to Ujiji as the discoverers of Lake Tanganika, the bazaar was some hundred yards from the edge of the lake. When thirteen years later I met Livingstone at this place, the market-place was just about the same distance from the water. At present it is about half a mile, which shows how much the Lukuga outlet has emptied the lake. From this town Mr. Decle proceeds to give us a view of East Africa as it existed in 1893, some twenty one years later than when I first saw it.

We may there fore call Ujiji the terminus of the third stage of our traveller's journey. After a running commentary on the Arab slavers, the slave trade, and the aborigines, and giving his usual dig at the Congo State, Mr. Decle adapts himself to the habits of the Central African traveller, engages a caravan of porters, and starts for Urambo, so named after the famous Mirambo. In blackmailing Uhha he meets with various difficulties, which are tided over with his customary good luck. At Mtali's he encounters the van of the Germans who are going to occupy and Germanize the lake port. With the commanders he settles a quarrel between Mtali and his brother, though the peace did not long continue. Soon after his departure he heard the boom of the German cannon, and came near being involved in a war with the Wahha in consequence.

Though Mr. Decle sometimes imprudently mixes himself with local questions, he passed through without bloodshed, and safely reached Urambo, where, according to him, he was " petted and spoiled " by another missionary. The mission was founded in 1881, and since then its moderating XX

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influence on the turbulent, war-loving Wanyamwezi has been most marked. Tuga Moto, Mirambo's son, now reigns in his father's place, and received Mr. Decle with perfect courtesy and in a way most unusual to natives. One of the curiosities of this place is a necklace of human teeth, all of which have been extracted from the heads of Arabs slain by Mirambo in the war 1872-76. In remarking upon the characteristics and customs of the Wanyamwezi, Mr. Decle again shows his talents for stringing together ethnological facts in a pleasing manner. His sentences are not clogged with native names and words, consequently such chapters look clean and attractive, and invite perusal. Of his march to Tabora, the once great entrepot of the Arabs in Central Africa, Mr. Decle remembers little, as nearly the whole time he was lying in a hammock in a semi-conscious state.

This settlement will be remembered by readers of African books as the refitting place of many African explorers, such as Burton and Speke, Speke and Grant, Livingstone and Stanley, Cameron and Dillon, &c. Since the advance of the Belgians up the Congo it has lost its importance, and only a few Arabs cling to it. At the latter end of August, 1893, Mr. Decle struck northward to gain the shores of the Victoria Nyanza. The traveller has often been the victim of misadventures at every stage of his journey. He has suffered greatly from thirst and starvation, he has oft been in danger from wild beasts and wild men, but on this stage we find him tortured by jiggers and ticks, put to flight by swarms of wild bees, and much disturbed by vermin. It is wonderful how the jiggers have spread across the continent.

In the sixties they were first brought to St. Paul de Loanda along with some lumber from Brazil. In the eighties the Congo Expeditions carried them up the Congo. The Emin Relief Expedition conveyed them through the Great Forest to Kavalli. In 1891-2 the Soudanese of Emin brought them to Uganda, and just about the same

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time Tippu Tib's Manyema carried them to Ujiji and East Africa, and the Arabs of Ujiji imported them to Nyasaland. During this journey Mr. Decle had opportunities of viewing the German military stations at Muanza, Bukoba and Ukerewe, and reflects severely on the German methods of civilizing as pursued by the non-commissioned officers. He cites several instances of excessive abuse of authority, and according to him the worst practices of the aboriginal chiefs, or slave-trading Arabs, were innocent compared to the barbarities perpetrated by Germans intoxicated with power. Fortunately about the time that the whipping business which he daily witnessed was beginning to pall on him, the expected boats arrived, and he was enabled to depart across Lake Victoria. The description of the fourth stage of his journey embraces nearly a half of Mr. Decle's book.