Some African Highways

Front matter

A JOURNEY OF TWO AMERICAN WOMEN TO UGANDA AND THE TRANSVAAL

BY CAROLINE KIRKLAND

With an Introduction by

Chapter 1

Some African Highways

CHAPTER I

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF EAST AFRICA AND UGANDA

Said Solomon of old: "There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after." So, from the time of Homer down to the middle of the last century, the sources of the Nile have been discovered and lost, and rediscovered and lost again with each new era of enlightenment. Speke, in 1858, had the same thrill on his first sight of the great lake, which now is known as Victoria Nyanza, as the original discoverer who wrote his book, probably on papyrus, either in Greek or Phoenician. He, that Greek or Phoenician, together with his writings and maps, has long since, with those that came after, treading unknowing in his footsteps, disappeared in that vast darkness which envelops and absorbs all human endeavor. Mr. Stanley, however, in his invaluable work, "In Darkest Africa," gives a curious and noteworthy collection of maps from ancient times down to his own in which the Nile is traced to its sources, all including various distortions of the great interior African lakes, and of those contributing factors, the classic mountains of the moon.

Speke's first view of the Victoria Nyanza was from the southern shores. He was then exploring in a subordinate capacity, having left his superior, Richard Burton, ill of a variety of African maladies, many days' journey to the south. The story of Speke's subsequent return to England, and of his claiming and wearing the laurels for his discovery is too well known to bear repetition here. Four years later he came back with Grant, and by a devious approach, via the south end and west shore of the lake, made his way to the capital of Uganda, Mengo (now generally known as Kampala). The then King of Uganda, M’tesa, sent him to the north outlet of the lake, where these two explorers were the first modern white men to see that great initial swirl of the Nile over the lip of the lake, as the famous river starts on its way northward. They named this drop the Falls of Ripon, though it can hardly be considered as more than a cataract. The native name for the river was Kivira, while the lake was called Ukéréwé.

It was a lucky leap in the dark on the part of Speke and Grant to say that this was the real beginning of the Nile. They did little to verify their theory, but subsequent discoveries proved them right, and so they get the credit for it. They, and all those early explorers, however, deserve much praise and respect for the dangers, trials, and discomforts which they met and overcame. The footsteps which they made with such pains and labor in the jungles and forests, and on the plains of tropical Africa, have since been trodden down and out by so many other adventurous explorers of diverse nationalities that the road has become a broad highway, with well equipped trains and steamers to convey an ever-increasing throng to those once forbidding and inaccessible regions.

Because we have not a continuous record in European languages of the vast territory of East and Central Africa does not mean that it has not had a progressing history. It is far older in obtainable chronicle than either of the American continents. The navigators of ancient times came in their galleys down this East Coast. Solomon’s mines are by common consent placed in this region. While his illustrious guest, the Queen of Sheba, is supposed by many to have come from this same part of the world to do him homage.

Fer centuries the Arabs have controlled the fortunes and trade of this enormously rich territory. The influences of their language, customs, and traditions are to-day to be observed on every hand in studying the natives of East Africa.

The principal tribe there are the Swahilis, descendants of Arabs, Persians and Africans. The very name is from the Arab "sahel," meaning "of the coast." The language of these Swahilis is the common intermediary speech of the natives from Zanzibar to Uganda—though each tribe has its own tongue. The Arabs have done much to plant and foster Mohammedanism in North and Central Africa. According to reports from the Christian missions the converts to Christianity far outnumber the converts to Mohammedanism. I have not seen the reports from the Arabs. If a tree is to be judged by its fruit, however, I should say that the latter form of religion evolves as decent an African as the former. To a certain limited degree the teachings of Mahomet are better adapted to that extremely elementary creature, the African native, than is our more abstract and ethical faith. A religion of many forms and ceremonies, which also includes much ablution, and a total abstaining from alcoholic beverages, and which permits a plurality of wives, fits excellently certain conditions of a tropical climate and a savage people.

The Christian missions, Catholic and Protes- tant, have, however, done a great work in East and Central Africa. Their converts number two hundred thousand, and at their headquarters in Kampala churches, schools, and various industries testify to their excellent work. The principal Protestant organization is The Church Missionary Society, which has been for many years under the administration of Bishop Tucker; while the Roman Catholic Church is represented by the White Fathers (a French mission with headquarters in Algiers), and the Mill Hill Fathers, an offshoot of an organization of the same name in England.

The introduction of Christian missionaries into this part of Africa is connected with a curious tragedy worth recording here. When, in 1875, Stanley reached Uganda, he found M’tesa, the king, pondering the question of a desirable religion for his people. Stanley’s presentment of the doctrines of christianity impressed M’tesa profoundly. Just at that moment a messenger from General Gordon, who had been sent to investigate Uganda to see whether it was a desirable territory to annex, appeared at Mengo. This was a Belgian, one Linant de Bellefonds. By him Stanley sent his famous letter to the Daily Telegraph urging English missionaries to start on the conversion of Uganda. The unfortunate Belgian was set upon by the Bari tribe on his return journey to Khartoum and was killed in the neighborhood of Gondokoro. His body was found by a punitive expedition sent out by the government, and on removing the long knee-boots he wore at the time of his death Stanley's letter was found where de Bellefonds had tucked it—probably at the moment of attack. The blood-stained missive was forwarded to its destination with an explanation of its adventures and delays, and its publication brought immediate answer. In less than a year the Anglican missionaries of the Church Missionary Society had started in two divisions—one via the Nile and one via the East Coast—for Uganda.

In 1879 the White Fathers also established themselves in that country, and have now a great and flourishing institution which has branches all over Uganda.

To return to the history of this region: when in 1480 Vasco da Gama circumnavigated Africa he sailed into the harbor of Mombasa, then known as Mvita, an Arab and African settlement. Narrowly escaping disaster on the cruel reefs that menace the entrance of this harbor, he found on drifting into the port, a charming inland shelter where, as they still do to-day, tranquil waters lapped white coral sands shaded by groves of rustling palms. Doubtless before this Mombasa, or Mvita, had seen much bloodshed and strife. Certainly after this the town did.

In 1500 the Portuguese returned and took it by storm. It was retaken later by the Arabs and changed hands in violence fifteen times down to the carly part of the nineteenth century. Its position and harbors made it the most important port after Zanzibar on the whole East Coast.

In 1827 it fell into the hands of the Sultan of Zanzibar. From that time its prestige and importance diminished until the beginning of this century, when a new, strong lease of life was given to it by making it the coast terminus of the wonderful Uganda Railway.

The old Portuguese fort, built in 1594, and restored in 1635, is one of the principal landmarks of the town, and after its centuries of many strife is now not unfitly used by the English as a prison. On its turreted battlements turbaned Sihks from India do sentinel duty to-day, and their chief occupation seems to be to watch the tennis played daily by the British residents on the glaring clay courts under those frowning, windowless walls.

The town is situated on an island three miles long, one and a half miles broad, whose greatest altitude is only seventy feet above the encircling sea. On the west it is connected with the mainland by a causeway. Its two harbors, one to the northeast and a deeper one to the southwest, make it a fine port for vessels of varying size. The largest steamers unload in the latter haven at a settlement called Kilindini. A winding, well-buoyed channel leads to it.

There is much old Arab and Portuguese architecture in the narrow twisting streets of the town. Camoens, who spent some time here before going to India in the fifteenth century, sings of its "noble edifices fairly planned on the seaboard." It exports from the neighboring mainland sugar cane, tobacco, hides, rubber, sesame, copra, chilis, and other tropical products. It is the chief entrance to the vast territory known as British East Africa.

From the "Handbook of British East Africa," published in 1892 by the Intelligence Division of the English War Office, I will endeavor to give an idea of the boundaries of this territory, also a slight suggestion as to its configuration and its inhabitants. Since the publication of this handbook Uganda has been separated from the administration of British East Africa and has been given a commissioner (or governor) and a judiciary of its own. But this is merely an internal difference. It does not affect the outlines of the English holdings in Central and East Africa. These possessions include the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba and on the mainland a stretch of four hundred miles of coast between the rivers Juba on the north, and Umba on the south. With this coast, as the basic line, the territory spreads out to the northwest, including 900 miles on the equator, an east and west measurement of course; while its greatest breadth north and south is seven hundred and fifty miles on the 39th meridian. Its area is seven hundred thousand square miles. On the north the parallel of 6° north and the river Juba, from its intersection by that parallel to the sea, separate it from Italian Africa. On the south it is divided from German East Africa by a line drawn along the parallel of 1° south latitude from Congo Free State to the east coast of Victoria Nyanza and thence to the mouth of the Umba on the coast. This line is diverted to give Great Britain the Mfumbiro Mountain on the west and to Germany Mount Kilimanjaro on the east. The western boundary is limited by the Congo Free State, north of which it merges into the region above the Nile basin formerly part of the dominions of Egypt, now known as the Soudan. This part eastward to Victoria Nyanza includes the Protectorate of Uganda, and it is the opinion of some (generally English officials in the Soudan) that Uganda should be included in the Soudan government. Various authorities, among whom is Sir Harry Johnston, think that one administration should be made of Uganda and British East Africa. Uganda officials do not look favorably on either amalgamation. Certain it is that it is likely to be only a short time before the northern outlet of Uganda via the Nile region will be more travelled and more serviceable to this potentially rich country than its present eastern outlet.

A step in this direction was the opening in 1906 of Port Sudan on the Red Sea. While the Cape to Cairo Railway is daily pushing up from the south and down from the north, and will before long meet in Uganda, completing this gigantic and wonderfully interesting achievement.

But “this is another story.” Great Britain has, with her usual acumen, got the choice morsels in the subdivision of Africa among the European powers. British East Africa is a plateau rising gradually from the Indian Ocean. Its ordinary level in the interior varies from three thousand to six thousand feet above the sea. A curious feature of this vast plateau is the existence of detached, quite unrelated mountain masses rising from it. "These are of enormous dimension, both in height and area," says the Handbook.

Mounts Kenia and Kilimanjaro lie between the lake and the sea and both rise eighteen thousand feet above the sea. They are two hundred miles apart and in clear weather both are visible from the Uganda Railway; Kilimanjaro the first day and Mount Kenia the second. The latter is plainly an extinct volcano, having the unmistakable conformation of the world's chimneys.

West and somewhat north of Lake Victoria Ruwenzori, nearly twenty thousand feet in height, veils its massive head for three hundred days a year in impenetrable fogs. The effect when it does burst forth must, to judge from Stanley’s account of it, be one of the great spectacles of the earth. Its flanks, clothed in the lower parts with dense tropical forests, rise gradually to stupendous peaks and snow fields of enormous sweep, which probably gained for it the ancient and classical name of Mountains of the Moon.

One hundred miles south rises the volcanic shape of Mfumbiro to over fourteen thousand feet, and to the north of the lake Mount Elgon towers to a similar height.

Besides these detached mountains, each of which rises like a monarch from the African plateau, there are mountain ranges running north and south and attaining a height of ten thousand feet.

One of the most curious of the geographic phenomena which individualize Africa is a gigantic gash in the earth’s crust that runs along meridian 36° east for some seven hundred miles from latitude 4° south to 6° north. Where the Uganda Railway crosses this the west lip is known as the Nandi Escarpment, and as the train zigzags swiftly down the face of the east lip, the Mau Escarpment, the scene in looking across the "Rift Valley," as it is called, is one of unforgettable splendor. But my impression of this effect comes later in this narrative. The floor of this depression varies from six thousand feet above the sea at Lake Elmenteita to fifteen hundred feet at Lake Rudolf. In it are many "self-contained" lakes, that is, not having outlet or inlet. Many of them are salt. In English territory are Lakes Elmenteita, Naivasha, Nakuro, and Baringa, and further north the great Lakes Rudolf and Stephanie.

From the east side of this rift the rivers flow into the Indian Ocean; while from the west they flow to Victoria Nyanza and thence, via the Nile, to the Mediterranean. The principal of the rivers flowing east are the Juba, mentioned before and rising in the Abyssinian highlands, the Tana, rising under Mount Kenia, and the Sabaki, formed by the junction of the Athi and the Tsavo Rivers.

As the distance between the west lip of the rift and Lake Victoria is not very great, no rivers of any notable size flow westward. But the waters of all the streams that drain that side eventually flow into the Nile and thence to the Mediterranean.

Sir Harry Johnston, in his excellent work, “The Uganda Protectorate,” divides the natives of East and Central Africa into those descended from the Bantu stock (which is the chief origin for many varying tribes from the equator to the Cape) and the Nilotic tribes. The chief of the Nilotic tribes in East Africa are the Masai (a very superior race living east of the lake) and the Kavirondos, and many of the tribes living north and west of Uganda. Some authorities include the Baganda, or inhabitants of Uganda. Aside from the uniformity in speech, the descendants of the Nile tribes are distinguished by a simplicity of attire rivalling that of Adam and Eve before the fall. They may don skins or draperies for warmth or to be dressy, but never for decency. As the Baganda have always been quite the contrary and wear many and most classical draperies, and are most scrupulous in regard to decency, this makes a great gulf between them and their more primitive neighbors, to whom they are apt to refer in scorn as the Ukedi ("the naked"). Their speech and features both ally them, however, with the Nile negroes.

The Bantu stock is widespread and includes the natives of West and South Africa and many of the tribes of East and Central Africa, but its offshoots do not seem to be equal, either physically or mentally, to the descendants of the Nile negroes, although they far outnumber them.

There is among the natives in Uganda a system of land tenure which is carefully guarded by the English authorities. This makes it difficult for Great Britain to make big land grants similar to those which have been made in British East Africa to such great landholders as the British East Africa Company, or to such individuals as Lord Hindlip, Lord Delamere, and others.

Among the principal tribes living between the Indian Ocean and Lake Victoria besides the Masai and Kavirondo, are the Kikuyu, the Nandis, the Wanyenwezi, the Suks, and the Turkanas. The generic term for these East African tribes is Wanyika.

North and west of the lake the Usoga, the Unyoro, Ankole, Toro, and Usongora tribes compose what is now known as the Kingdom of Uganda, but was formerly a great empire called Kittara. This also included the Ruanda and Karagwe people, who live beyond the present British frontiers.

The little King of Uganda, Daudi Chwa, now sits at Kampala, the native capital of the state, and holds nominal rule with a royal court, soldiers, and civil officials.

There is outward harmony, but that all is not as serene as it appears is manifested by little signs here and there, while the murder of Harry Galt, which is related later, is a serious manifestation of an inward tendency to revolt to which the English are somewhat oblivious. They are too apt to take it for granted that because they establish and maintain a better rule they are entirely acceptable to an alien and savage people. This belief in their superiority has before this led the English into trouble, which, with more insight and foresight, might have been avoided or minimized. They are courageous and just, but are apt to be over-confident.

The immediate predecessors of the present king were M'tesa, who welcomed the first white men in 1858 and was always friendly to them, and Mwanga, who succeeded him and nearly ruined his people by the gross immorality he introduced and fostered among them, and by his bloody ferocity.

The chronicles of his doings make grewsome reading in the writings of the travellers of that part of Africa in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Among his crimes is the historic murder of Bishop Hannington in 1886.

The great moment in the history of East Africa and Uganda came when the Uganda Railway, begun in 1896, was completed and opened for traffic in 1903. Then indeed was that part of the Dark Continent flooded with light. Of this as an engineering feat I am not competent to write, except to call attention to that part of the route when the train drops down the eastern lip to the floor of the great Rift Valley in an incredibly short space of time, which cannot fail to impress the veriest tyro in railway engineering. But from the point of view of the tourist I can say that it is probably the most wonderful and interesting railway journey in the world. Where else can you look from the car windows and see herds of zebras, gnus, and gazelles of many kinds grazing within easy gunshot? Where else can you behold wild ostriches teetering across the plains, and giraffes aux naturelles awkwardly scampering away, or hyenas tearing undisturbed at carrion left by some beast of prey? Or where will your train be arrested to hunt a lion crouched in plain sight not seventy feet away? Or from what other car windows will you see a lioness and four cubs loping peacefully by the track? While in what other railway journey will you see so many types of savages as those which line the way from Mombasa to the lake, varying from the lightly clad coast tribes to the clay-plastered Kikuyus and the stark naked Kavirondos?

A fuller account of this wonderful trip comes in a later chapter, where I leave generalities and embark on the more personal narrative which is the main part of this book. My wish now is to give a slight idea of this wonderfully interesting country, so that some of my compatriots may have the inestimable delight of visiting these regions before the extraordinary panorama has changed; before the wild animals have retired to remote regions; before missionaries have clad the savages in custom-made trousers and petticoats; before Cook is escorting chattering flocks of New England school-ma'ams to the whilom lairs and jungles of fierce savagery.

Oh, you who have health and money and energy, hasten to see the great spectacle before the inevitable change comes!

Namirembe Cathedral (Protestant) Uganda

Ripon Falls, from Usoga side

Masai Women

Kavirondo Warrior

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II

FROM NAPLES TO MOMBASA

The wind blew hard the night before we sailed from Naples on the Prinzregent for Mombasa in British East Africa, in October, 1905, so we were not unprepared for the choppy seas that met us in the bay, and broke against the frowning cliffs of Capri as we ploughed along under the ruins of Villa Jove. The breaking waves dashed high on the stern and rock-bound coast of Calabria when we steamed across the Gulf of Salerno. They beat against the cliffs of lovely Amalfi and flung themselves in great white legions on the more sloping shores of Minori and Maori. The wind trailed and twisted the low-lying clouds across the face of the mountains and sent many of the frailer passengers on the ship below.

When the shores quite disappeared in mist we went to our cabin to arrange ourselves and our belongings in the contracted space that was to be our abode for the next sixteen days. We were fortunate in having one of the largest cabins on the ship, but even so it takes some ingenuity to adjust two women, three steamer trunks, and accompanying hampers and suit-cases to an accommodation measuring perhaps ten feet by fourteen. In a voyage on tropical seas one needs more clothes than in cooler climes. A frequent change of light frocks for women and linen or duck suits for men is necessary for comfort. And while it is possible to have laundry work done on almost any steamer making long, hot voyages, it is better to be independent of such work. There is never a blanchisseuse de fin on these boats, and clothes arc hung to dry in an interior dark drying room, which, for some reason, seers usually to drip with iron rust, as demonstrated by the much spotted linen that emerges from the process. Furthermore, it is the pleasant and comfortable custom on these ships sailing tropical seas to dress for dinner in some frock or habit of a festive effect. Which means more changes, more luggage, and more room needed.

We (which "we" means my mother and myself) were taking down to my sister in Central Africa an Italian maid, a young girl from Capri, and here let me digress to say that for the kind of unexpected service required, for the vicissitudes of such a journey and the inconveniences and trials of life in those newly settled regions, an Italian girl, if you can get just the right one, is the best kind to take. She is not used to any comfort or luxury in her own country. She is, as a rule, adaptable, and if she be of that right kind specified, she will be amiable, docile, strong, and sympathetic. Nannina was all these and proved to be a treasure. Although she is in a far-away land, among a strange people, who do not speak her language, in a settlement where she is the only white servant, she has never complained or been anything but cheerful. I should say that it might be hard to find another like her had I not had a similar experience with a maid whom I took down to South Africa with me in 1899.

Returning to the decks, we established ourselves in our long chairs and took a survey of our fellow passengers. We found them to be about half and half English and German— an un-malleable lot, each looking askance at his neighbor. Except for Countess von Goetzen, the American-born wife of the governor of German East Africa, my mother and I were the only Americans on the ship.

The German passengers were generally officials, who with their families were returning to their posts in German East Africa. Among the English there was a greater variety of object. Some were officials, some were people who had taken up land out there in the wilderness of British East Africa, or had concessions they were anxious to develop. Others were after big game; while still others were officers hurrying to their posts in the interior on account of an outbreak of the warlike Nandis. As a rule the passengers were an interesting gathering of people, with the commercial element, so pronounced on the African West Coast route and on the North Atlantic steamers, strongly absent. When the strangeness of the first few days wore off the hours passed very pleasantly, and the evenings, after we reached the warmer southern seas, were especially charming. Men and women in evening dress sat about in gay groups on the decks taking their after-dinner coffee, while many of the women, following the English custom, joined the men in smoking cigarettes. In the brilliantly lighted saloon, whose windows opened on the deck, there would be music, while, later in the evening, tables, both indoors and out, would be set for cards or chess. And each night the air grew warmer and softer and the sea smoother. But this is anticipating.

When we first sailed from Naples, there was great uncertainty as to when we should get through the Suez canal. The English steamer, the Chatham, carrying dynamite, had been sunk in the channel some three weeks before to prevent its cargo blowing up the whole canal in a fire which occurred on the steamer. It had been partially dislodged, allowing one relay of ships to pass; but a second attempt to clear the channel had been made a few days previous to our sailing date, and the way was not yet open.

As we drew near Port Said we noticed an ominous absence of approaching steamers, so we were in a measure prepared for the news we received there that the canal was still closed. The outer and inner harbors were both filled with ships from all quarters of the globe, the accumulation of ten days of waiting. When we woke up on the morning after our arrival we found ourselves, nose out into the stream, aligned with a waiting host. Next us was a Russian ship, carrying back to Eastern Siberia the inhabitants who had been driven away by the war. The decks seemed crowded with women and children, who were evidently to restore domestic life to that devastated region.

Port Said is much improved since I was there in 1899, when it seemed the jumping-off place for the West and the East. It has a more law-abiding appearance now. Its main streets have some decent-looking hotels, while the shops, with their ostrich-feather fans and boas, Maltese lace, Indian silver and ivory, and Chinese and Japanese curios, are quite alluring. The highways and byways are filled with specimens of many of the strange tribes of Africa and Asia, draped in all colors of the rainbow and varying in skin tint from the pale chocolate of some inland Arabs to the luminous black of the Nubians.

Those of the ship’s passengers who were not already so provided bought here the indispensable pith helmet with which to fortify themselves against the deadly tropical sun. The especial point to be protected is the nape of the neck, the base of the brain. This properly sheltered, there is little danger to Europeans in the tropics, but there is still room for much discomfort.

As the canal was to be opened a day or so later, and as the ships carrying the mails were allowed precedence of all others, we, being of this class, moved up the line, passing our less fortunate neighbors, and took our place in the stately procession a few miles or so outside of Port Said. For a day we lay with the desert on either side of us, though here it does not look like the desert, as vast tracts of shallow water menace the canal’s banks.

An occasional camel loped along the road that runs by the canal; queer African cranes trailed across the sunset sky; and by the time a day and a night of silent waiting had passed we were once more on our way. It was a unique and memorable sight, the seventy-five or more steamers bearing the world’s commerce gliding slowly down the narrow waterway. By day as far as one could see in either direction was a line of masts, spars, and funnels; by night to the rear was a glittering trail of the fierce bow-lights with which each ship illumines its way down the canal.