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THE

New Africa:

ITS

DISCOVERY AND DESTINY.

BY
GEORGE LANSING TAYLOR, D.D., L.H.D.

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THE

NEW AFRICA:

-ITS-

DISCOVERY AND DESTINY.

GEO. LANSING TAYLOR, D.D., L.H.D.

NEW YORK : PHILLIPS &° HUNT.
CINCINNATI: CRANSTON & STOWE.
1888.

PREFACE

Much of the substance of this volume has already appeared
in the pages of the Methodist Review for May, July, and Sep
tember of this current year. The matter was found to meet a
demand among intelligent people for a brief general survey of
the history and results of recent exploration and discovery in
Africa. Requests from good authorities called for the repub
lication of the articles in a convenient volume for reference.
Yielding to these requests the publishers decided to bring out
the book, and the author has made such changes in the pages
as the change of form required, embracing the opportunity at
the same time to introduce some new and interesting matter
not contained in the Review articles. No critical reader can
be more thoroughly aware than the author is how much of
what might to advantage be said on so large a theme a book
of tin's size must leave unsaid. But the aim has not been to
write exhaustively, but to stimulate and help the general
reader to understand the discovery of the New Africa, which,
with the unification of Germany and the emancipation in
America, must stand as the three great historic events of the
latter half of this nineteentli century. The great problem has
been to compress a good deal of the vast amount of desired
information into the least possible space, and yet have the
product a " live thing," not a mummy, as to style and read-
ableness. If these results are measurably achieved, the hope
for somewhat of usefulness for the book may be realized.
More maps would have delighted the author as well as the
reader, but the one given is at least the only correct one obtain
able down to date.
The manifest design of England and Germany to complete
the partition of the yet unappropriated portions of Africa
between themselves greatly enhances the interest of the sub
ject. They are the best powers in the Old World to occupy
and develop Africa, and the sooner they do so, in a Cliristian
way, the better for the world — and for Africa.

4 Preface.
As for Stanley — if Captain Yan Gele's encounters with the
natives in his recent expedition up the Mobange gave rise to
the rumors of a " white pasha " recently reported as in the
Soudan, as he himself believes they did, then the prospect for
Stanley's safety is at any rate a dark one.
A list of the principal authorities consulted in the prepara
tion of the matter of the volume is hereto appended. The
author especially acknowledges his obligations to the enterpris
ing firm of Harper & Brothers for many of these valuable
publications. Q. L. T.
Brooklyn, October 1888.

LIST OF AUTHORITIES USED IN THIS BOOK.

Discoveries in North and Central Africa. By Henry Barth, Ph.D., D.C.L.
3 vols. 8vo. Maps and Cuts. New York: Harper & Brothers.
The Heart of Africa. By Dr. Georg Schweinfurth. 2 vols. 8vo. "With
Maps and Illustrations. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Livingstone's Last Journals, etc. 1 vol. 8vo. Maps and Cuts. New York :
Harper & Brothers.
Personal Life of David Livingstone. By William G. Blackie. 1 vol. 8vo.
"With Portrait. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Across Africa. By Commander Cameron, R. N. 1 vol. 8vo. Maps and Cuts.
New York : Harper & Brothers.
Ttirough the Dark Continent. By Henry M. Stanley. 2 vols, 8vo. Maps and
Cuis. New York: Harper & Brothers.
The Congo, and the Founding of its Free State. A Story of Work and Explora
tion. By Henry M. Stanley. 2 vols. 8vo. Maps, Charts, and Cuts. New-
York : Harper & Brothers.
Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race. By Edward W. Blyden, LL.D., lata
Minister Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Liberia at the Court of St. James.
1 vol. 8vo. London : W. B. Whittingham & Co.
History of African Exploration and Adventure from Herodotus to Livingstone. By
Charles H. Jones. 1vol.. 8ro. Maps and Cuts. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Central Africa. By Colonel C. Chaillie Long, of the Egyptian Staff. 1 vol.
Small 8vo. Maps and Cuts. New York : Harper & Brothers.
Boy Travelers in Central Africa. By Colonel Thomas W. Knox. 1 vol. 8vo.
Maps & Cuts. New York : Harper & Brothers.
Boy Travelers in Egypt and the Holy Land. By Thomas W. Knox. 1 vol. 8vo.
Maps and Cuts. New York : Harper & Brothers.
Life of Chinese Gordon. 4to. Paper. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Encyclopedia Britannica. Ninth Edition. Articles, "Africa," " Nile," " Niger,1'
" Sudan," etc., etc., etc.
Journal Royal Geographical Society, 1853.
Proceedings of Royal Geographical Society, 1882, '83, '84, '85, '86, '87, '88.
Missionary Herald, London, (Baptist monthly), 1885, '86, '87.
Peterman's Mittheilungen. (Monthly.) Gotha, 1886, '87, '88.
Le Mouvement Geograpliique. (Fortnightly.) Brussels, 1886, '87, '88.
Science. (Weekly.) New York, 1887, 1888.

THE NE^W AFRICA.

CHAPTER I.— Its Discovery.
The sphinx is dying : the sphinx is dead. It was not by a club-
footed wit, like the CEdipus of Sophocles, as in the case of the
Theban sphinx of hoariest Grecian eld, that the riddle of this
sphinx was solved. It was by the sound feet and tireless tramp-
ings of the indomitable Germans, Barth and Burckhardt, the
dauntless Englishmen, Park, Baker, Burton, Speke, and Grant,
the plucky Scotchman, Cameron, the saintly Scotch-Englishman,
Livingstone, and the all-conquering Scotch- American, Stanley,
and others like them. This riddle is the geography and anthro
pology of Central Africa ; that continent of mystery of which
Egypt, the land of dateless mystery, with her still questioning
and still unanswered colossal sphinx is the immemorial symbol.
As the woman-faced but man-devouring monster at Thebes died
with a shriek when her riddle of the quadruped, biped, and
triped animal was solved, so the man-devouring mystery of
Africa, that has cost so many gallant lives, is at last ended,
or is fast ending, and the great " Dark Continent " will soon
become one of the grand and safe exploiting grounds of civil
ization and Christianity.
The modern ignorance concerning Africa has not always ex
isted. There is abundant evidence that the Greeks and Romans
knew a good deal more about Central Africa than our great
grandfathers knew. But even they knew nothing of the coun
try farther south than about 10° to 12° north latitude, if so far,
except as to the Nile sources, and of those they only knew from
native reports, not by exploration, and what they thus knew
Avas afterward lost. But of the vast and Avonderful Congo
basin, with its mighty rivers and fertile expanses, and of the
vast Zambesi basin also, there is no reason to believe that the
ancient civilized world ever had a glimmer of information. It
is almost as though this mighty realm— probably the newest,
geologically, on the globe — were so new that it had only yes
terday been created. Its discovery is like a revelation.

6 The New Africa.
One of the great first-class strides of human progress in the
knowledge and conquest of the globe has been mostly made in
the times of now-living men in the opening up of inner Africa.
It is a work for the repetition of which no other chance exists
or can exist; namely, the discovery of the interior of a conti
nent. Dull indeed must be the mind that has not thrilled with
a high enthusiasm as this last unexplored grand division of the
earth has yielded up its secrets, and its map is at last spread
before us : a very meager map, forsooth, Avith vast spaces yet
to be filled in with rivers and lakes and tribes of men ; and
yet a map that shows what the yet undiscovered must mainly
be, and that is itself the prophecy of a colossal future.
And how stupendous is that future ! Open your map of the
world and spread it out on the table. Take the dividers and
set one foot at New York, and then open them till the other
foot stands on San Francisco. Now turn the set-screw, and
carry them as they are to the map of Africa, and Avalk the
pointers from Gibraltar to Cape Town. The first stride
from Gibraltar carries you down into the negroid kingdoms of
the central Soudan. Another stride will carry you into the
basin of the Zambesi. Then shorten your span to touch the
cape, and carry it back to America, and, with one foot at New
York, the other stands on the Mississippi at St. Louis. Your
curved line through central Africa from Gibraltar to the cape is
5,000 miles long ! Then start at Cape Yerde, in Senegambia,
and run eastward to the point of the horn of east Africa at Cape
Guardafui, and you have 4,600 miles, enough to reach from
New York to the ancient city of Mexico twice, and a bit left
long enough to reach to Toledo, Ohio! Africa contains, with
its islands, 11,854,000 square miles, equal to three and one third
times the whole area of the United States and Territories !
And the best of it all, and one of the largest masses of contigu
ous fertile land on the globe, is the New Africa of the central
plateau and its Avatersheds. Instead of being occupied, as an
ciently conjectured, by the mythical " Mountains of the Moon,"
imagined to be the loftiest and most Alpine wastes on the
globe, and then another and more terrific Sahara to the south
of them, we behold one of the Arastest, noblest, best watered, and
richest plateaus on the globe ! Instead of Milton's compound
hell of ice and fire Ave behold a paradise, a region which, when

First Modern Explorers. 1
opened, surveyed, roaded, bridged, drained, irrigated (some of
it), cultivated, populated, civilized, and Christianized, is worth
more than all the rest of the continent together : more than all
Europe, as a happy and powerful home for mankind.
And then to think that all this vast area of fertility and
power lay there untouched and undreamed of, while men were
piercing arctic snows, and exploring boundless oceans, in search
of homes for liberty, religion, and human progress ! What was
the world about all this time ? Well, the Avorld was not idle ;
but it crept before it walked, in this as in other things. Some
pretty lusty creeping, too ! Let us take a glance at some of
these creepers, the pioneers of the modern blaze of exploring
success and glory in Africa. How many people know that all
the useful exploration and discovery in Central Africa has come
during the last hundred years 1 Here is the roll-call in part :
James Bruce, born in Scotland, 1730 ; University of Edin
burgh ; merchant; then consul at Algiers; then traveled in
Barbary States, Syria, up the Nile to Syene, in Arabia and
Abyssinia. November 14, 1770, thought he had found what he
sought — source of the Nile. Great exultation ; called himself
first white man ever to gaze on that mystery. But it proved
to be only the head spring of Lake Dembea, in Abyssinia — the
head of the Blue Nile, a much smaller branch than the mighty
White Nile — and even that had been found by a Portuguese
Jesuit, Pedro Paez, one hundred and fifty years before ! Pub
lished four costly volumes, principally valuable on Abyssinia.
Their correctness, much questioned at first, has been mainly
sustained by later researches, and they are now an accepted
authority. Mungo Park, Scotland, 1771 ; University of Edinburgh.
Explored from mouth of Gambia much of the Upper Niger in
1795-97," and went farther down the Niger in 1805, to Boussa,
the capital of Gando, 650 miles below Timbuctoo, where he
and his expedition were killed by the natives. Park's name
heads the list of West African explorers, as Brace's that of the
East, and is indissolubly Connected with the Niger. In piety
and gentleness of spirit Park resembled Livingstone. Park
thought the Niger was the Congo, discovered in 1485.
John Louis Burckhardt, Basle, Switzerland, 1794 ; University
of Leipsic. Studied the purest Arabic at Aleppo two years.

8 The New Africa.
In 1812, in guise of a poor Turkish trader, went up the Nile
to Shendy (corrupted from Candaoe), 3,000 years ago the capi
tal of the- famous ancient kingdom of Meroe, (the Old Testa
ment and classical ^Ethiopia), and a short distance below
Khartoum, Avhich lies at the junction of the White and Blue
Niles. In 1815 visited Sinai. Was so good an Arabic and
Moslem scholar that he passed for a very learned and orthodox
Mussulman, and received a splendid Moslem funeral at Cairo.
His scholarly works have permanent value.
James Kingston Tuckey, Ireland, 1778 ; British navy. Sur
veyed part of coast of Australia in 1805. Was appointed to
command British expedition to explore Congo River. Ascended
the estuary (on which he is still an authority), passed — with
great suffering and loss to his expedition — the Yellalla Falls,
at the lower canon of the great series found by Stanley, to a
distance of 172 miles from the sea, and died there in 1816.
Stanley speaks of one of the furious eddies, or whirlpools, of
the Congo, down which he was drawn in his boat, and so lost.
But his name abides as the first European who attempted the
exploration of the Congo, though his fate deferred further ex
ploration for sixty years.
Lieutenant-Colonel Dixon Denham, Captain Hugh Clapper-
ton and Dr. Oudney composed the Denham, Clapperton and
Oudney expedition which crossed the Sahara from Murzook,
the capital of the great oasis of Fezzan, to Lake Tsad, or Tchad,
in Central Soudan, in 1822-23. Denham's exploration of Lake
Tchad and its vicinity was the best fruit of this expedition.
Richard Lander was Clapperton's servant on a second expe
dition, in which Clapperton started from the Bight of Benin
and crossed the Niger, but died without effecting any thing
of value. But Lander proved himself a man of capacity and
enterprise, and on his return to England was sent by the gov
ernment, on a plan of his own, to explore the river. He took
his younger brother, John, and set out from his former starting-
point, Badagry, on the Bight of Benin, west of the Niger delta,
intending to go to Lake Tchad. But the natives took him pris
oner on the Niger, and, for a great ransom, brought him down
the hitherto unexplored lower course of the great river, to the
sea. Thus, by Park's perseverance and Lander's fortunate cap
tivity, the great Niger was at last explored, a work covering

Modern Explorers — Barth. 9
over twenty-five years. In 1825 Laing crossed the Western
Sahara on the caravan route from Tripoli to Tiinbuctoo, AA'hich
he reached, and near which he was treacherously murdered.
But by far the most valuable contribution to European
knowledge of the Central Sudan — Bilad es Sudan, " The
Country of the Blacks " — Nigritia (Negroland), was that made
by the great expedition of Richardson, Dr. Barth, and Overweg,_
in 1850-55. Barth did most of the useful work. Going south
from Tripoli to Murzook they then went south-west into the
desert, and visited the then unexplored oasis kingdoms of Air
and Agades, thence south across the remaining desert into the
Sudan. Barth visited the important city of Kano, capital of
Haussa, whence he went eastward to Kuta or Kukuwa, on Lake
Tchad (which Richardson never reached, having died near it
before Barth's arrival from Kano), and then went south and
east, and explored the hitherto nnvisited kingdoms of Adamawa
and Baghirmi. In Adamawa he came upon and crossed the
Tcbadda, or Benue (''Mother of Waters"), the great eastern
branch of the Niger. Where he crossed it was a majestic river
of clear water, 800 yards wide, 11 feet deep, with its imme
diate banks 20 feet high, and flowing, from east to Avest,
through an open plain country. Its greater inundations last
forty days, from August 20 to September 30, and bury its
valley under a rise of thirty to fifty feet of water. It was Avith-
out cataracts, and navigable for steamers, as has since been
proved by the voyage of the British steamer Pleiad, commanded
by Dr. Baikie, which, in 1854-57 ascended the river 400 miles
from the forks of the Niger, went beyond Barth's crossing, and
ffrand it still half a mile wide and ten feet deep. At their
junction the Kworra (Niger) is § mile, and the Benue 1\ miles
wide, and much the best for navigation.
In 1847-49 Messrs. Krapf and Rebman, German missionaries
at Mombas, on the eastern coast, a little north of Zanzibar, made
explorations ort the great interior highland of Eastern Africa,
south-east of Victoria Nyanza. Here they discovered— what
had been suspected, but unknown before— an Alpine region in
reality. Mont Blanc, the summit of Europe, is 15,750 feet
hio-h. But Baron von Decken's triangulations (1860-61) give
to Kilima-Njaro a height of 20,065 feet, and Kenia is thought
to be higher. Both are tipped with perpetual snow, though

10 The Neav Africa.
nearly under the Equator. The White Range, to which they
belong, has other peaks of similar height.
It was the intelligence which these missionaries (Krapf and
Rebman) brought of native reports of great lakes in the interior,
which led the British Royal Geographical Society to send the
two Indian army captains, Burton aud Speke, in 1857-59, on an
expedition to discover and explore the "Sea of Ujiji, or Un-
yamwezi Lake." They made the first march of Europeans
from Zanzibar to the great central plateau, and discovered and
explored Lake Tanganyika, which Burton thought to be 250
miles long (it is 412 miles long) with no affluents. (It is found
to have several important affluents, but they are not yet
explored). But they were astonished to learn that the river
Rusisi, or Lusize, at the north end of the lake, flows into, not
out of, the lake, thus confounding their hope that the lake was
the source of the Nile. Dr. Livingstone, Avith Stanley, had
the same surprise and disappointment at the same discovery.
The mere levels of the lake and the Nile should have taught
them better. Tanganyika Burton found only 2,850 (Cameron
.2,710) feet above the sea, which is only 1,170 feet higher than
the Nile at Gondokoro, not to speak of the long run needed to
.get there. A barometer at Ujiji should have told any man
who knew the levels of the Upper Nile that the Tanganyika
jnnst belong to some other great river system, which must go
/west, since every other direction is up hill.
Burton and Speke's successful expedition was followed, in
1861-62, by that of Speke and Grant, which resulted in the
.discovery of the great Victoria N'yanza, which Speke thought,
.larger than Lake Superior. He found it to be 3,750 feet above
the sea, 1,900 feet above Tanganyika, which therefore could
have no connection with it, but its altitude pointed to the
Nile, which at last he found flowing northwardly out of it in a
broad stream which was born full-grown, in a cataract, from the
lake. They followed the mighty river downward to Gondo
koro, where they met Colonel Baker governing the country as
an Egyptian Pacha, and thus another thousand miles Avere
.added to the Nile, and another great lake to the map of the
world. To this, however, Baker soon added his discovery of the
Luta N'Zige, which he named Albert N'yanza, three hun-

Modern Explorers — Livingstone. 11
dred miles long, one of the three or four largest bodies of fresh
water on the globe, into and then out of which the Nile flows,
at points eighteen miles apart. The lake lies 2,720 feet above
the sea, and 1,030 feet below Victoria Lake. It is a vast filter
and regulator for the Nile. Its own affluents were not explored.
Baker furnishes another illustration of how hard to die are
preconceived notions. He thought Lake Tanganyika must be
either a prolongation of his Albert Lake, (which Gessi, in 1876,
reduced by survey to one fourth of the extent Baker gave it),
or else tributary to it. But if it could get the chance his lake
would all run down hill into Tanganyika, and take all the Vic
toria Nile and lake with it. The little pocket thermo-barom-
eter, an old tomato can, and a box of matches are ugly things
among geographical fancies.
It Avas Dr. Livingstone's great work, however, that really
opened up Central Africa. His early explorations in South
Africa had prepared him for greater things. On May 31, 1854,
he astonished the world by arriving at St. Paul de Loanda, hav
ing discovered and explored the great Zambesi, and its wonder
ful Victoria Falls, and crossed the African Continent, the first
European to do so. It was a glorious pioneer exploit, pro
phetic of the conquest of the continent. On his return from
England, in March, 1858, with the small steam launch Ma
Robert, he entered the mouth of the Zambesi, finding its delta
reaching 100 miles inland. He discovered and navigated its
great northern affluent, the Shire, and its two great lakes, the
Shirwa, 60 miles long by 30 broad, land-locked and salt, and the
great Nyassa, 200 miles by 60, larger than Lake Ontario, and
with dark blue water, like the sea, indicating great depth.
But all previous African work was eclipsed by the last great
seven-years' march of Livingstone. Starting from Zanzibar
he sailed down the east coast and landed at Makindany Bay,
just north of the mouth of the great Rovuma River, whence
his march began on April 7, 1866. He passed up the north
bank of the Rovuma, Avhose lower course is over a mile wide,
and, crossing it, struck south-AvestAvard to the eastern shore of
the great Lake Nyassa, formerly discovered by him. The Arab
slavers refused him passage across the lake in their slave dhows,
and he was obliged to go around its southern end. Thence he
struck north-westwardly along the water-shed between the lake

12 The New Africa.
on the right and the affluents of the Upper CongOj and then of
Lake Bangweolo (not then known) on the left. In December,
1866, he crossed the Loangwa, a large tributary of the Zam
besi, here 300 feet wide, ferried by canoes, and making great
sand-banks like the Zambesi. On January 28, 1867, he crossed
the Chambeze, the head stream of the great Congo, flowing to
the west, its true channel 40 yards wide, but now at flood, and
always needing canoe ferriage. Here he heard that the river
flowed into a Lake Bemba, or Bangweolo.
April 1, 1867, he reached Lake Liemba, the southern bay of
Tanganyika. After a two-weeks' fever he followed the west
ern shore of the lake northward until May 14, and then struck
westward, a long march, until he found Lake Moero, in Novem
ber, 1867, and on March 17, 1868, saw the great Lualaba River,
flowing northward out of the lake, which he thought might
flow into Lake Tanganyika, which he had not yet visited, and
which, as to levels, was quite possible, as Moero lies 3,000
feet above the sea, and nearly 300 feet above Tanganyika.
This also shows that very great cataracts must exist, as yet
undiscovered, between Lake Moero and N'yangwe, the low
est point afterward reached by Li vingstone on another route.
But he thought Tanganyika itself to be an expansion of the
Nile, and so all this was Nile. While stopping at Lake Moero
Livingstone learned that this was the same river he had crossed
as the Chambeze\ which flowed into, and then out of, Lake Bem
ba, or Bangweolo (which they said was very large), and so came
down to Moero. He therefore resolved to visit the great lake,
and so marched southward up the connecting river Luapula,
though to the east of it, and on July 18, 1868, discovered the
great Lake Bangweolo, and navigated it, and estimated it 150
miles long by 80 broad, but not of great depth, as the water
was green, not deep blue, like Nyassa. He thought Miss
Tinne's expedition on the Nile might have gone up to this lake,
and then ascended the Chambeze in canoes, if Speke and Grant,
in their mistake about Victoria Lake being the Nile source,
had not turned her back at Gondokoro ! *
On December 11, Livingstone left Moero with an Arab
slave caravan, and reached Ujiji, on Tanganyika,»on March 14,
1869. On July 13 he was off from Ujiji with another slave-
* Last Journals, pp. 228 and 268.

Livingstone and Stanley. 13
hunting caravan of Arabs across Lake Tanganyika (which he
sounded 1,965 feet deep, when his line broke with no bot
tom), for the Manyuema country, on the lower Lualaba,
far to the north-west of Ujiji. He was detained by ulcer
ated feet at Bambarre, made many detours, and arrived at
N'yangwe, on the great Lualaba, on March 30, 1871. Here he
found a vast river 3,000 yards— more than 1£ miles— wide,
always deep, flowing "ever northward " about two miles an
hour. On July 20 he started back for Ujiji, where he arrived
October 23, to find his stores a second time plundered by the
unspeakable Arabs, and horrors staring him in the face, when
lo! on October 24, the very next day, Henry M. Stanley, flying
the American flag, arrived with the Herald's Relief Expedi
tion, and Livingstone was saved and rich in a moment !
November 16 Livingstone and Stanley started in great
canoes to explore the northern end of Lake Tanganyika.
December 5 they entered the Lusize River at the end, and
found it large, with a delta, and a strong current flowing
into the lake ! There went the Nile again, obstinately flowing
up-stream (compared with their notions), and they saw that the
lake must go westward to the Lualaba, — or nowhere ! March
14, 1872, Stanley started on his return trip to Zanzibar, and
Livingstone went with him as far as Unyanyembe, where he
awaited new men and supplies sent him by Stanley from
Zanzibar. On August 25, 1872, the old hero with his new equipment
set out from Unyanyembe on his last and fatal journey. He
took the usual caravan route back toward Ujiji until near where
it strikes Lake Tanganyika, and there he turned to the left,
southward, and followed the eastern bank of the great lake
for nearly 200 miles, bending to the west around its southern
end, going westward almost to Lake Moero, then turning
southward and south-eastward toward Lake Bangweolo, and
passing around its eastern end, Avhere he again crossed the
marshy and flooded Chambeze. Thence he followed the south
ern shore of the great lake westward for nearly half its length.
The exposures to constant rain and wet, causing feA-er and
dysentery, now broke him up completely, and at last the iron-
hearted explorer was found in the morning on his knees by his
bedside, dressed, and dead, where he had knelt for his last

14 The New Africa.
prayer before retiring the night before, and never risen again.
His faithful Chuma and Susi embalmed his body and bore it
to Zanzibar, and to the mighty abbey of Britain's fame, and by
their devotion to their dead friend they also embalmed them
selves in the heart of the whole civilized world.
Dr. Georg Schweinfurth, Ph.D., of Berlin University, an
eminent botanist and naturalist, did a good piece of work in
African exploration in 1869-71. With letters from the Egyp
tian government he went, by way. of Suez, the Red Sea, Sua-
kim, Berber, and the Upper Nile, to Khartoum, where his
exploring tour began. On January 5, 1869, he left Khartoum,
with a wealthy and powerful Coptic Christian ivory-trader
named Ghattas, with whom the governor of Khartoum had
made a strict contract for his conveyance, provision, and safe
conduct, and return, with the right to accompany, with his own
servants, every expedition Ghattas should send out, in whatever
direction. The expedition went up the White Nile in boats
to the " sudd " (" sod "), the great ambatch barrier, thence 220
miles up its great western branch, the Bahr-el-Gazal (Gazelle
River) to the similar barrier on that river, where they reached
the usual landing-place, or "Meshera," on February 24.
From this " head of navigation " they marched, by caravan,
two hundred miles southward to the principal seriba, or forti
fied depot village, of Ghattas, which they reached on March 30.
This was to the east of the Dyoor, a river 360 miles long, con
stituting the main southern branch of the Bahr-el-Gazal. The
seriba was 1,545 feet above the sea, but only 305 feet above the
level of Khartoum. Here he spent nearly a year, making many
short excursions, and doing much scientific work of many sorts,
part of which Avas the exploration of the Dyoor River and people,
the Bongo people, etc. On November 17, 1869, he started with
Aboo Sammat, a friendly rival merchant of Ghattas, and a very
intelligent man, on an expedition much farther southward, to
the Monbuttoo kingdom, passing through the country of the
splendid but cannibal Niam Niam on the way. He Avas intro
duced to Munza, the famous barbarous king of the Monbuttoo,
also cannibals, on March 22, 1870, where he spent a month,
and, after many detours, arrived back at Ghattas' seriba about
May 1, and at Khartoum July 21, 1S71.
The scientific fruits of Schweinfurth's work were exceed-

Sohaveinfurth— The Welle Problem. 15
ingly rich, and the loss of most of them by the burning of his
huts at Ghattas' seriba nearly broke his heart. But his most
important contributions to geography were the determining of
the contour of the great Avestern expanse of the Nile basin.
He considers the Bahr-el-Arab, which by native accounts runs
many hundred miles from due west before it joins the Bahr-el-
Gazal, to be really the main stream, of which the latter, with
the Dyoor and its other large branches, is only a branch. The
Bahr-el-Arab, he thinks, may be the large river which Barth's
expedition heard of as running away to the east, out of the
southern part of the Nigritian kingdom of Waday, lying east of
Lake Tchad. If so, this Bahr-el-Arab, he thinks, may contest with
the Bahr-el-Abiad (White RiA-er) the question of the headship
of the Nile. But this, of course, is a mistake, as there is no room
to gather such a river in that direction. In Monbuttoo he found
the "Akka," a nation of pygmies, thus proving another of He-
rodotns's old stories to have a fact at the bottom of it. Here
also he found the great river Keebaly lower down called the
Welle, which was more than 1,200 feet Avide and 10 to 15
feet deep, passing about 10,000 cubic feet of water per second,
and flowing straight west into the great unknown. This was
vastly larger than the Bahr-el-Gazal, and so could not go to the
Nile. He had passed the water-shed of the Nile ! The natives
all said it kept straight on north-west until so wide that trees
could not be seen across it, and that the people there wore long
white shirts and knelt down to pray. All of which pointed to
the Shari, Lake Tchad, and the Soudanese black Moslems. The
levels and volumes also point to the same conclusion. The
distance would be about 1,000 miles to the lower Shari, the fall
1,450 feet (showing cataracts on the way), and the volumes
10,000 to 20,000 for the Welle, and 85,000 (Denham) for the
lower Shari, after receiving the Serbuwel, the Logon, and other
great branches. The Welle might, by volumes and levels, be
the Benue, which Barth found at Yola in Adamaue, July 18,
1851, 1,200 feet wide, 11 feet deep, with 50 feet rise. But if
the Welle be the Benue, then where is the Avater-basin to col
lect the Shari, Avhose waters are ample enough to keep in exist
ence, on the edge of the desert, a fresh-water lake larger than
Belgium, with an area varying with its seasons from 10,000
to 60,000 square miles? But one other element tangles

16 The Neav Africa.
all these theories. The Welle, according to Schweinfnrth, floods
in April, but the Shari, 1,000 miles lower, as also the Benue,
have their great rise in September.
If, as Schweinfurth surmises, some great southern branch of
the Shari floods first, then that river must be large enough to
encroach on the basin of the Benue. Stanley* thinks his Aru-
wimi, a great northern branch of the Congo, is the Welle, and
volume and levels coincide for that theory also. As to flood sea
sons we are not informed. No great river, great enough to be
the Welle, reaches the Atlantic coast between the Congo and
the Niger. The OgoAve, now partially explored, is far too small
in its upper course. But one thing sheds light (and rain, too !)
on the whole question, The great south-western monsoon-rains,
from the South-Atlantic Ocean, sweep clear to Lake Tchad, and
they get there nearly a month before they reach the Nile at
Khartoum, in the same latitude. Hence there can be no Alpine
tract running east and west across the unexplored region north
of the Congo. Schweinfurth also found the chimpanzee plenty
in Monbuttoo, which belongs exclusively to the West African
fauna. Hence it is plain that there is — that there must be —
here a vast, moderately elevated, abundantly watered, warm,
and fertile plateau, Avith lakes and rivers, perhaps some low
mountains, the whole as yet unexplored by any European, and
possibly never yet reached by any Arab, either from the
Sud&o, Egypt, or Zanzibar. The copious rains on this plateau
give birth to the northern tributaries of the Congo, the
western branches of the Nile, and the whole Shari and Benue
systems. Perhaps the long disappearance of Stanley at this time
(April, 1888), and when he is reported to have not yet
reached and relieved Emin Bey, is to be accounted for by sur
mising that he has plunged into this greatest and most valu
able yet unexplored realm of Africa, or the world, to trace the
water-shed between the Congo, the Benue, the Shari, and the
Nile. Certainly the solution and mapping of this vast and
valuable region is the finest geographhical prize yet remaining
on the globe to be won. As Cameron's plucky trip across the
continent on the southern plateau r traced the water-shed be-
* Through the Dark Continent, vol. ii, pp. 275, 276; and The Congo Free State,
vol. ii, pp. 126-133.

Resume down to Stanley. 17
tween the Congo and the Zambesi, so the northern "divide" must
now be traced, and probably with far more interesting results.
as to both geographical features and commercial importance.
Then there will remain another great trip to be made: that
which shall go to the south and east of Victoria Lake and trace
the rim of the Nile basin in that direction, and the head rivers
that feed the vast lake, and the eastern slope of the Nile basin,
thence to Abyssinia, exploring the bead- waters of the great
river Jub, going to the Indian Ocean, and the Sobat, probably
the largest eastern tributary of the Nile. Long Bey ascended
this river by steamer 300 miles from the Nile, in 1874.
In this high eastern tract it is more than probable that, in
accordance with native reports, a partially salt and desert re
gion will be found under the north-western slope of the great
snowy range, which probably cuts off the monsoon from a con
siderable tract between its crest and the Nile waters. The
tierce hostility of these free mountaineer tribes to the Arab
slave-hunters has thus far defeated all thorough exploration
from the coast, while the Avant of water, the Arabs say, hos
kept them from entering from the west. They declare that
they know almost nothing about this country. Native reports,
locate here several lakes, some land-locke'd and salt, others-.
fresh, and fountains of the Nile and the Jub.
Stanley's great voyage around the Nile lakes and down the
Congo — greater in its manhood and nobler in its moral purpose
than Alexander's march from the Hellespont to the Hydaspes.
— and his work of founding a new nation on the vast river;.
will be treated in another article. Of the sportsmen explorers,,
the lion-hunters and gorilla discoverers, though some of their-
contributions to knowledge have not been small, Ave have no
space to write. We have, in this article, been looking over
the grand approaches to the final opening up of Africa to the
AA-orld. Bruce. Burckhardt, Baker and Schweinfurth on the
east and the Nile ; Park and Lander on the Niger ; Denham
and Clapperton, and then Barth, Overweg and Richardson on
the Shari and Benue and Lake Tchad basin ; Burton, Speke,
and Grant on the great highland lake region ; Livingstone on
the Zambesi, the Rovuma, and the Lnalaba-Congo ; these are
the chief names that have pioneered the great work — one of
the greatest of all the ages.

18 The New Africa.

CHAPTER II. — Its Discovery Completed.
Since the discovery and settlement of America, the next, and
last, and greatest remaining achievement in man's conquest of
the globe has been the discovery and opening up of inner
Africa. All Arctic and circumpolar exploration sinks into
insignificance cpmpared with this unfolding of a colossal neAv
realm for human development. We are to-day in the midst of
the march of this great event, and near its culmination. In a
previous paper Ave have glanced at some of the leading pioneer
.investigators of the great problem, and approached the great
.solution itself. But man, like nature, does nothing at a leap.
There is daAvn before day, spring before summer, childhood
ibefore manhood. Africa was like a " ring-cake." Many ex
plorers had nibbled all around its edges and chipped away
.some large slices here and there, but still the cake awaited the
bold, strong hand that should drive the knife through its center
and find the ring hidden there. And even then there were
three other rings left : one in each half of the cake, to the north
and the south of the central cut, which have since been found ;
and still another, on the plateau west of the great lakes, Avhere
Stanley was last heard from, yet remains to be discovered.
Traditional rivers and lakes lying to the east of the Camer-
oons Mountains, are yet to be looked after. The countries and
tribes around the sources of the Logon, the Ardhe, the Shary,
;and the Aukadebhe, forming the southern and south-eastern
Tim of the Tchad basin, are yet unknown. Cross RiA-er, Avhose
mouth at Old Calabar has been known for two hundred years, has
a large basin someAvhere south of Adamawa, which has never
been seen by Avhites, unless by the recent German expeditions
from ithat coast, the results of whose work are not yet known.
Great political, as well as geographical, interest attaches to this
region intermediate between the Tchad and Congo basins.
The Egyptians under Necho, as related by Herodotus, ex
plored both the eastern and the western coasts to the neighbor
hood of the equator ; to Avhere " their shadows fell to the south"
at summer noonday. And they went up the Nile as far as the
.Ethiopians ruled, and Ptolemy's map of the Nile lakes is aston-

The Interior — Livingstone— Cameron. 19
ishingly correct now. The Carthaginians apparently crossed the
desert to the Niger, or to Lake Tchad ; and their great Admiral
Hanno's voyage down the Atlantic coast to Guinea has left us
his log-book, the Penplas, the only complete and unquestion
able piece of Carthaginian literature which survives from that
once great people. The Persians under Cainbyses tried the
conquest of Ethiopia, but the mighty Ethiopian bows and the
mightier desert turned them back, after narrowly escaping de
struction. The two centurions of Nero led the world-conquering
Roman to Abyssinia and up the White Nile to the " Sudd ; "
and his sculptured arches stand to-day among the sands of Fez-
zan ; but he got no farther. The Portuguese at last circumnav
igated the continent, and held nearly all its coast from Cape
Verde far round to Mozambique, but only the coast. They knew
not the interior, or, if their traders knew it, their knowledge was
' not given to the world. At last the attack began on the interior,
and from Park to Barth and Nachtigal the Niger and Tchad
Avere explored, and from Bruce to Baker and Speke the Nile
was discovered. Livingstone gave the world Lake N'gami, the
Zambezi, and the Lualaba ; and set all the Avorld on edge to
solve the central mystery of the continent, the vestibule of
which he had entered, and shown where the locked door to the
adytum must be burst open and the secret altar found.
Lieutenant-Commander Cameron, of the Royal Navy, who,
as a skilled hydrographic surveyor had already explored and
mapped part of the Australian coast, was sent in 1873 to "find
Livingstone, or to finish his work." At Tabora, in Unyanyembe,
midway between Zanzibar and Ujiji, Cameron met the now
immortal Chuma and Susi bearing the embalmed body of the
great explorer to Zanzibar. He had found the hero's dust, and
inspired by his spirit Avent on to try to finish his work. At Ujiji
he made a closer survey of Lake Tanganyika, and then went on
to Nyangwe, on the great Lualaba, " Livingstone's farthest."
Here he found the great river only five hundred feet higher than
the Nile at Gondokoro (2,000 feet), and more than five times its
volume. Only one river in Africa could carry that A-ast flood
to the sea, and that Avas the Congo, with its 2,000,000 cubic
feet per second at lowest water. He tried to follow the vast
stream, but to do so required a little army and navy, such as
Stanley afterward had but he had not, and Stanley's experience

20 The New Africa.
and generalship thrown in. So he exchanged the vile slaving
Arabs from Zanzibar for the viler half-breed slaving Portu
guese from Loanda, and with them continued his march west-
Avard by land. Their caravan trail follows the water-shed
between the basin of the Congo, on the north, and that of the
Zambezi, on the south, which he Avas thus enabled to trace, and
which was an important contribution to African geography.
He came out at Benguela, on the Portuguese Atlantic, in
November, 1875, the first European who had crossed Africa in
that latitude, although the Portuguese Serpa Pinto and others
had crossed a little farther south than his line.
Cameron got across before Stanley, but he had not "finished
Livingstone's work." He had shown, however, by the con
stant succession of large and small rivers which he crossed,
nearly all floAving north, that there must be a great central line
of drainage farther to the north, and so had greatly increased
the probability that its final outlet was — indeed, must be — the
Congo. But his Avork formed no argument to affect the prob
lem for Stanley, for Stanley had been a year in Africa on his
march to the great solution before Cameron emerged to publish
his trying failure.
To Stanley's great voyage we noAV come ; an, undertaking
which, for grandeur of conception, and for sagacity, vigor, and
completeness of execution, must ever rank among the marches
of the greatest generals and the triumphs of the greatest discov
erers of history. No reader can mentally measure and classify
this exploit who does not recall the prolonged struggles that
have attended the exploration of all great first-class rivers — a far
more difficult work, in many respects, than ocean sailing. We
must remember the wonders and sufferings of Orellana's
voyage (though in a brigantine, built on the Rio Napo, and
with armed soldiers) down that "Mediterranean of Brazil," the
Amazon, from the Andes to the Atlantic, in 1540. We must
recall the voyage of Marquette and Joliet down the Mississippi
in 1673 ; the toils of Park and the Landers on the Niger, 1795-
1830 ; and of Speke and Baker on the Nile, 1860-1864, if Ave
would see Iioav the deed of Stanley surpasses them all in bold
ness and generalship, as it promises also to surpass them in
immediate results.
Tli* object of the voyage was twofold : first, to finish the

Stanley's Great Expedition. 21
work of Speke and Grant in exploring the great Nile lakes;
and, secondly, to strike the great Lualaba where Livingstone left
it, and follow it to whatever sea or ocean it mio-ht lead
On November 12, 1874, the great expedition sailed in six
Arab dhows from Zanzibar, and landed at Bagomoyo, the
nearest and usual port on the continent of Africa Bel ween
November 17, 1874, and February 27, 1875, in 70 marchino-
and 33 resting days— 103 days in all— they marched 700 miles,
from Bagomoyo to Kagehyi, on Speke Gulf, the south-eastern
arm of the great Victoria Lake. Here they explored the Shi-
meeyu river, the largest southern affluent of the lake, a river
300 miles long, but of too small volume to be the extension of
the Nile.
On March 8, 1875, leaving the greater part of his force in
an intrenched camp at Kagehyi, Stanley set sail in his famous
ten-oared sail-and-row-boat, the Lady Alice (which he had
brought overland in sections), to explore the great lake which
Captain Speke had discovered in 1858, but which doubt and
rival ambitions had nearly laughed out of existence, or reduced
to a mere "rush drain." He encountered many adventures as
he coasted the eastern and northern shores of the lake ; but he
found no great rivers entering from all this savage coast. On
March 29 they crossed "Napoleon Channel," the northern arm of
the lake which pours its waters over Ripon Falls, four hundred
yards Avide, where the great Victoria Nile is born. On April 5,
escorted by a convoy of royal canoes sent to meet them, they
entered Murchison Bay, landed at Usavara, and were hospitably
receiA'ed by M'Tesa, the renowned Kabaka (emperor) of Ugan
da, the country north-west of the lake. Soon afterward Stan
ley returned soutlnvard along the Avestern shore of the lake
and back to his camp on Speke Gulf, Avhence he transported
his Avhole expedition to Uganda. All his voyagings on the lake
amounted to two thousand miles.
In Uganda Stanley was amazed at the amount of civilization
which he found in the king and court, a great transformation
from the bloody savage he was Avhen Speke described him,
and which Stanley found to be in part the result of his conver
sion since then to Mohammedanism. Taking from this a hint
for liis further iinproA-einent, Stanley fell to work on him AA-ith
the Bible aud New Testament, and actually succeeded in fur-

22 The New Africa.
ther converting him and his leading courtiers into at least
nominal Christians.
While here, by a bloodless stratagem, he was enabled to give
M'Tesa the victory in a war in which he was already virtually
beaten. He then visited a great lake, the Muta N'Zige, lying
in a mountainous country far to the west of Uganda, but was
defeated from exploring either this or Baker's " Albert
N'Yanza," as he had hoped, by the war between M'Tesa and
Kabba Rega, King of Unyoro, the next country northward of
Ugandan He then returned through Uganda, and turned south
ward, by land, along the western shore of the great Victoria Lake.
Here he explored, in part, the greatest affluent of the lake, the
great Kagera, or Kitangule, River, which the natives all said was
"the mother of the river at Jinja" ("The Rocks"), Ripon Falls.
This river he named the "Alexandra Nile," and without doubt
it is ,the true southward extension of the Nile. It was only
450 feet wide at the mouth (there being no estuary) but 85 feet
deep, with a powerful iron-brown current which drives itself
several miles into the great lake ; and at freshet it fills its
whole valley, ten miles wide. It is a great lacustrine river,
connecting several riverine lakes into one system, and, without
the Shimeeyu, pours more water into the N'Yanza than the
Nile draws out. The balance of the water, and all that sup
plied by smaller streams, is disposed of by the vast evaporation
belonging to the high altitude and equatorial latitude of the
great lake. The largest lake on the Kagera (and Avhich he did
not reach), he named "Alexandra N'Yanza."
While at King Rumanika's, on the Kagera, Stanley heard that
this Kagera (the Alexandra Nile) Avas the outlet of the Muta
N'Zige. This, if true, gives from 500 to 800 miles more length
of channel, (not of latitude) to the Nile, and another large lake,
probably three, as the sources of the yet undiscovered river.*
* Stanley's interrupted visit to the lake gave no time for exact observations.
Later reports make the Muta N'Zige lie 960 feet lower than the Victoria, and so
¦ to belong, perhaps, to the Congo system, although Albert Lake is 480 feet lower
still, and it might, by levels, go to that, or to the Tanganyika, 444 feet lower.
Recent reports from Emin Bey indicate that it goes to Albert Lake by the
Kakibi, a river of great volume but full of cataracts, as the great difference in
level demands. If so, Ptolemy's map is verified, except as tolalitude. Emm also
reports the discovery on the Kakibi of exposed ledges of rock-salt, a matter of im
mense importance, on account of the scarcity of salt in Central Africa,

Stanley's Surveys of the Great Lakes. 23
It Avas with such bitterest disappointment as none but an
enthusiast in exploration can understand that Stanley was three
times turned back from his darling project of striking west and
south from Uganda, piercing all the unexplored country mirth
of Lake Tanganyika, and coming out on the great Lualaba at
" Livingston's farthest," Nyangwe. But it was not then to be.
Impracticable savagery drove him back then ; but probably his
present long disappearance (June, 1S88) is to be accounted for,
in part, at least, by the time required to complete this long-
intended work. But, thus turned from his course, he kept on
southward through western Unyanyembe, and on May 27, 1876,
a year and a half from Zanzibar, Stanley was again in Ujiji,
amid the memories of Livingstone. The first great stage of his
journey was accomplished, but the sublimer and more formida
ble part, the plunge down the great Lualaba into the vast west
ern unknown, yet lay before him.
On June 11, 1876, Stanley had his Lady Alice once more
afloat, this time on the great lake Tanga-Nika (as he explains it
should be spelled and pronounced), the " plain-like lake." *
With a great native canoe as consort, and two picked crews
from his men, and two veteran lake-guides from Ujiji —
Ruango, who had piloted himself and Livingstone in 1871, and
Para, who led Cameron in 1874— he set out to complete the
circumnavigation and exploration of the great lake. Having ex
plored the lake from Ujiji to its northern end with Livingstone
in 1871, they now turned southward, along the eastern shore.
The month of the Malagarazi River they found 600 yards wide
and over 50 feet deep. Off the lofty Kabogo headland Stanley
sounded the lake 1,800 feet, all his line, and found no bot
tom, thus corroborating Livingstone, whose line broke at over
1,900 feet, and had not yet found the bottom of this mighty
continental chasm. On July 3, the southmost bay of the lake
was reached in south latitude 8° 47'.
On July 15, midway of the western shore, they came to the
Lukuga creek or river, the much-disputed inlet or outlet of the
lake. " Stanley Avas so fortunate as to find here Kawe-Niangeh,
the same chief who had piloted Cameron in his visit to the
spot two years before. He found the Lukuga's mouth a mile
* But Commander Cameron-probably a better critical scholar-says it is Tango-,
N'Yika, the "mixing place," thai is. of the waters.-Aeross Africa,.?. 458.

24 The New Africa.
wide at the lake (though partly closed by sand-bars), and 400
yards wide two miles from the lake. It Avas formerly the
mouth of an inflowing river; but the rim of the lake here is so
Ioav and narrow and soft that the river has cut through its
own right bank to the westward, and now goes to the Lualaba,
and the Tanganyika receives only a small inflow from it, or
sends an outflow into it, according to the varying height of
the lake. The lake was then rapidly rising. A sandy beach
on which Livingstone and Stanley walked in 1871 at Ujiji was
then 200 feet from shore in the lake. At another place Stan
ley found a tree standing in nine feet of water, under which
his guides had once camped. The Lady Alice sailed over a
submerged village fence six feet high, with three feet of water
to spare under her keel. All the natives were fearing that the
lake would " eat up the land." Three feet -more rise and the
lake, fed by over one hundred rivers, will flow out of the
reedy and muddy bayou, the Luknga, and pour a vast flood into
and down the Lnindi River to Lake Lanji, an expansion
of the Lualaba. Then a great erosion of its channel is likely to
take place, until the lake is lowered again, and then the river
will flow into the lake again, and begin to silt up its mouth.
Then the lake will throw up sand bars, and turn the Lnindi
westward to the Lualaba again, and the dammed up lake waters
will begin to rise again. So we interpret Stanley's facts.
He gives a good chart of the bayou, and a minute record of
his investigations, but not a very satisfactory philosophy of the
phenomena, except that here is now a marshy bayou, where was
once a vast inlet, and is soon to be an outlet. This was the
principal problem to be solved in connection Avith the great
lake. It belongs not to the Nile, bnt to the Congo basin — by
spells! — that is, when it has more water than its home market
consumes, and has to export that fluid.* On July 31, the
expedition returned to Ujiji.
* These theories concerning the action of this outlet are now fully verified.
Rev. E. C. Hore, for five years an English missionary at Lake Tanganyika, in a
letter dated January 18, 1886, reported to the Royal Geographical Society {Tran
sactions for 1886, pp. 328, 329): " With the exception of a slight variation of a
few inches due to alternate heavy rains and evaporation in the -dry seasons, the
lake continues at the level secured to it by the waste-pipe, Luknga," (which was
then moderately overflowing). But the Austnan traveler, Dr. Lena, was at Mr.
Hore's station (which is on Cavala island, in the lake, close to the outlet), in

Stanley's Voyage Down the Congo. 25
On August 25, 1876, the bugles sounded to start westward,
to cross the lake, and push down to Nyangwe, on the great
Lualaba, which they reached on October 27, after a two-months'
march along the same Arab slaver's caravan route traversed by
Livingstone. Here the Arab settlement of ivory and slave
hunters dates only from 1868, yet it has already desolated
country enough for a State like Ohio, and is rapidly extending
its destroying and depopulating work of diabolism, and filling
up and settling the country with a permanent Arab population.
On November 5, 1876, having hired the Arab slaving nabob
Tippoo-Tib and his force as an escort, Stanley's expedition— in
the face of all possible opposition and terrible stories of warlike
tribes, cannibals, and cataracts ahead, all of which proved to be
only too true — resolutely set out to solve the problem of the
mighty unknown flood that was every second pouring (as Cam
eron figured*) one hundred and twenty-three thousand cubic
feet of water (more than five Niles at Gondokoro) past Ny
angwe into — what? They first made a fourteen-days' march
by land, through a terrible forest, down the country east of
the great river to avoid cataracts, and at last camped on the
mighty stream at Rukumbeh's crossing, in S. hit. 3° 35'. Here
there was almost a panic to return from the dread unknown be
fore them, but Stanley, shrewdly, bravely and eloquently, told
his wavering but fatalistic Moslem band : " My people, though
this river is so great, so Avide and deep, [yet] no man has ever
penetrated the distance lying between this spot on which we
stand and . . . the salt sea. Why? Because it was left for us
to do. I tell you, it has been left from the beginning of time
until to-day for us to do. . . . The one God has Avritten that this
year the river shall be knoAvn throughout its length ! . . . To-day
I shall launch my boat on that stream, and it shall never leave
it till I finish my work ! I swear it ! " f
And he did it ! His despairing heroes Avere reinspired, and
the expedition began the tremendous voyage down the Living-
the same year, seven months later. Mr. Horo then informed him that the Luknga
had " forced its way through obstructions and Hmved to the Congo." '¦ The current
is now exceedingly strong," and " the level of the lake has fallen fifteen feet."
Dr. Lenz observed the " old shore-lines " abandoned by the lake, corroborating this
testimony. (Transactions Royal Geographical Society, 1887, p. 241.)
* Across Africa, p. 269.
\Dark Continent, vol. ii, pp. 149, 150. See also pp. 180, 191.

26 The New Africa.
stone River. At Vinya N'jara (at 1,650 feet elevation), on
December 2S, 1876, Tippoo-Tib,* compelled by his followers,
broke his contract and turned back. But the expedition went
on and entered " the gleaming portal of the unknown " {Dark
Continent, ii, 197) ; the " vast shining river" still, still unknown,
beckoning them, onward. So they went on for nearly three
months,- nor could they hear or learn a word or sound that be
trayed any name by which they had ever heard of the stream
before until, on February 8, 1877, in its highest bend north of
the equator, just Avhere it begins to turn south-west toward the
Atlantic, the old chief Rubunga, in answer to their inquiry for
the name of the river, at last understood them and sent back the
thrilling shout, " Ikuta ya Kongo ! " Never was " QiiXarra / "
" edXarra ! " shouted with more joy by the 10,000 Greeks on
the shores of the Euxine of old than Avas that shout taken np
and re-echoed in the heart of Africa, " Ikuta ya Kongo ! "
The story of the descent of the great river is an Iliad in itself.
Through hunger and weariness ; through feA'er, dysentery, poi
soned arrows, and small-pox ; through bellowing hippopotami,
crocodiles, and monitors; past mighty tributaries, themselves
great first7class rivers; down roaring rapids, Avhirlpools, and
cataracts ; through great canoe-fleets of saw-teethed, fighting,
gnashing cannibals fiercer than tigers ; through thirty-two bat
tles on land and river, often against hundreds of great canoes,
some of them ninety feet long and Avith a hundred spears on
board ; and, at last, through the last fearful journey by land and
Avater down the tremendous canyon below Stanley Pool, still
they went on, and on, relentlessly on, until finally they got
within hailing and helping distance of Boma, on the vast estu
ary by the sea ; and on August 9, 1877, the news thrilled the
civilized world that Stanley Avas saved, and had connected Liv
ingstone's Lualaba Avith Tuckey's Congo ! After 7,000 miles'
wanderings in 1,000 days save one from Zanzibar, and four
times crossing the equator, he looked white men in the face
once more, and was startled that they were so pale ! Black
* This is the man whom Stanley has since made his lieut. -governor at Stanley
Falls. He is suspected of having a treacherous rlation to Stanley's progress in
his present expedition, for which he was to furnish re enforcements of benrers
and supplies. His dilatoriness has a natural explanation in his desire to set up
a kingdom of his own on the Upper Congo, under the name of the authority of
Zanzibar. And he certainly has the prior claim to the territory.

Two More Congos. 27
had become the normal color of the human face ! Thus the
central stream of the second vastest river on the globe, next to
the Amazon m magnitude, was at last explored, and a new and
unsuspected realm was disclosed in the interior of a prehistoric
continent, itself the oldest cradle of civilization. The delusions
of ages Avere swept away at one masterful stroke, and a new
world Avas discovered by a new Columbus in a canoe!
But the surprises of African exploration by no means ended
with btanley's great exploit. Stanley discovered one Conor, •
two more Congos have been discovered since, a ring in elch
half of the cake, each well-nigh as brilliant and valuable as the
central one. The one in the southern half was found first.
When Cameron and others traced the southern rim of the great
Congo basin they found the head-streams of what the natives
and traders told them were many great rivers flowing north
ward. When Stanley went down the Congo, keeping mostly
to the left (that is, the southern) bank, he^ found the mouths
of many great rivers flowing from the south into the main
stream. By a hasty theoretical construction, in violation of the
great left-hand-curve law that is found to rule with minor ex
ceptions this entire river system, these heads and tails were tied
together by long, straight, dotted lines running in nearly paral
lel courses away northward from Cameron's route to the Congo,
and the native names thought fittest were given to them ; and
so the vast blank was filled with these imaginary rivers, made -
mostly in London ! Now all this dotted, conjectural work, or
most of it, lias to be wiped off the slate of Africa. Stanley's
own actual observations stand as remarkably correct, consider
ing the trying circumstances under which most of them were
made. But the conjectural work is revolutionized or abolished,
another warning against undue theorizing. Instead of vast,
straight rivers running a thousand miles northward into the -
great loop of the Congo horseshoe, and thus making any pos
sible commerce on them go around two sides of a great triangle
to get to the ocean, the actual route, on the south, is by the
third side, straight to Stanley Pool. The territory inclosed
in the vast ox-bow is divided almost due east and Avest by an
other great line of drainage, a chord that subtends the arc and
makes an almost straight line of deep water navigation from
Stanley Pool to within 200 miles of Livingstone's Nyangwe, on

2§ The New Africa.
the Lualaba, 300 miles above Stanley Falls, and in exactly the
same south latitude as Stanley Pool. The intervening country,
west of Nyangwe, is level, rich, and populous, and practicable
for railways or canals ; and so here is the straight line across the
continent, from Zanzibar, by way of Nyangwe, to Stanley Pool.
This great waterway was discovered in 1885 by Lieutenant
Wissmann, Dr. Wolf, and others, sent out from Belgium as
" The Kassai Expedition," for the purpose of exploring the
course of the great southern affluents of the Congo. Dr. Paul
Pogge and Lieutenant Wissmann had previously, in 1883,
crossed the continent on a line a good deal to the north of
Cameron's route, and had found very highly intelligent and
friendly native tribes in the Bashilange and Baluba countries,
on the great Kassai and its eastern tributary, the Lulua. These
tribes had never been reached by slave-hunters from any direc
tion, and never saw white men before. When their fears were
quelled they became devoted to the explorers, who treated
them well and promised to return to them. This they now
did, in 1885, marching eastward 1,200 miles from St. Paul de
Loanda. They were hospitably received, and built a strong sta^
tion, Luluaburg, on the Lulua, east of the Kassai, on the sixth
parallel S. lat. They then launched the steel boat Paul Pogge,
which they had brought with them, and, leaving part of their
German force at the station, and accompanied by many natives,
including two chiefs, in a fleet of canoes, they set out to follow
the rivers to the Congo. They went north-west down the
Lulua, which soon received the large Luebo on the left, and
then, turning westward, entered the Kassai, coming from the
south but bending westward. This great river they followed
down, still going north-west. They passed the great Sankuru,
coming in on their right with a left-hand curve from the east
in two mouths, one 800 and the other 1,000 feet (an aggregate
of a third of a mile) wide, a vast river equal to the Kassai ; and
still they Avent on, to their constant amazement, not north, but
only a little north of due west. The Loange and other large
rivers came in from the south, for they were cutting across all
the imaginary rivers on Stanley's maps, and gathering them all
up, every one Avith the left-hand curve, into the Kassai, Avhich
had now become a vast lacustrine flood, like the Congo, five
miles wide, full of" large islands and sand-banks, and navigable

Discovery of the Kassai. 29
for large vessels. On they went, west by north, ever wondering,
until another great river, which came from the south, entered
the great Kassai, which now ran north a few miles, received
another great river flowing from the cast, and then itself turned
southwest/ the left-hand curve again ! Then suddenly they
entered the vast Congo, and saw the Congo flag flying on the
left, and knew that they had come out at Kwa-mouth, the junc
tion of the mighty Kwa with the Congo ; and only 75 miles lower
down they cast anchor at Leopoldville, on Stanley Pool. They
had discovered another Congo ! The new stern-wheel steamer
Stanley, 100 feet long, had just arrived, in sections, from En
gland. Sir Francis de Winton, Stanley's new representative as
governor, had also just come. Wissmann's Avord must be kept.
Those friendly natives and chiefs from Baluba must be taken
home again. They could never ascend that vast distance in their
canoes. Sir Francis ordered the work on the steamer hastened.
She was soon launched and tested, and Sir Francis himself took
command, and with over 250 souls on board the Stanley, ac
companied by the steam launch En Avant, steamed up the vast
Kassai and took the wondering and grateful Balubas back to
their own Lulua's shores again.
Dr. Wolf, with the En Avant, soon afterward descended the
Kassai to the mouth of the great Sankuru, and then ascended
that stream, finding it three miles wide and eighteen feet deep.
Between his Avork, Wissmann's before him, and that of Rev.
George Grenfell with the Baptist missionary steamer Peace
afterward, the folloAving is the result : The great river Lomami
comes from away south, and runs in a north-west course, par
allel to Livingstone's Lualaba, 200 miles to the west of Ny-
angAve, gathering up several other great rivers from its own
left shore. Then it turns west and becomes the Luecho, which
receives from the south the great Lubilash, and so goes on
west as the great Sankuru, until it joins, or is joined by, the
great Kassai, as already mentioned. The great river running
northAvard, which falls into the loAver Kassai, is the great Luan-
go, and the river coming from the right (east) is Stanley's
M'fini, or Black River, from Lake Leopold II., and these are all
now one, the Kwa, which pours into the Congo with a stream
of five miles an hour, and no soundings at 120 feet deep. The
Luango is the joint product of the Kwango, the Wambu, the In-

30 The Neav Africa.
shia, the Kwengo, and the Kwilu, all coming south from the coun
try next east of Loanda. The peculiarity of this river system
is, that it is not one main river starting from the East and flowing
Avest, but each river Hoavs, as a branch (generally with the left-
hand-curve), into the one rising next west of it, which, in turn,
becomes the main stream, until it joins the next, so that probably
tlie Sankuru is larger at their junction than the Kassai, which
gives its name to the Avhole system. To start, then, from the head
stream Avest of NyangAve and follow the main line of drainage,
the vast river is the Lomaini-Luecho-Lubilash-Sankuru-Kassai-
KAva, or now the " Kassai," a vast central river of about 800
miles of open steam navigation (not counting its great tribu
taries, mostly navigable also), tying the two ends of the great
Congo ox-boAV together between Nyangwe and Stanley Pool, a
river of vast population and resources, and whose shores, on
either side, have little, if ever, been harried by the slave-trader.
The table-land country north of this new Congo has also been
explored by Grenfell, who in his steamer has ascended every
one of its navigable streams from the Congo, five of them, mak
ing over a thousand miles more navigation here in all. The
Balolo language, a Bantu tongue, extends east and west entirely
across the equatorial belt of this ox-bow country of the Congo.
And now for the oldest and the newest, the Northern Congo,
so new that the news of the last link of discovery that deter
mined its existence lias only just reached the civilized world
during the writing of this article. What is it ? It is the great
Welle-Makua-Mobange, the great Congo north of the Congo.
In 1870 Dr. Schweinfurth, via Khartoum, discovered the neAV
Monbutoo country south of the great Bahr-el-Gazal expansion
of the Nile Basin, there found and navigated a neAV great river
flowing to the west and Avest-north-Avest into. the unknown realm
of Central Africa, as we have related in a previous article.
Twenty years previously, before Stanley Avas heard of, a very
learned Fellani traveler of Dar-foor had told Barth* of the
great "river of Kubanda," away to the south of the Shary basin,
a much larger river, as they thought, than the Shary, and Avhich
flowed west, but Avhence it came or Avhither it went they knew
not. The "kumba" tree greAv plentifully on that river, which
* Journal (not Proceedings) British Royal Geographical Society, 1853, pp.
120, 121.

^ The Welle Problem Again. 31
Schweinfurth found to be the Zandeh, name of the Malaghetti
pepper, abundant on his Welle. The people fought desperately
with the " kourbatsh," a terrible missile weapon or bill-hook of
iron or copper, with pointed prongs like daggers and toma
hawks standing out of all its edges, a weapon found plentif idly
in the South-Central Soudan by Barth, and on the Welle by
Schweinfurth, who gives cuts of flve styles of it in his Heart
of Africa (ii, 10); a weapon known nowhere else in the Avorld.
The route of the English consul, Petherick, from Khartoum,
through the Bahr-el-Gazal country in 1861-63 reached to within
a very few miles of the equator, directly across Schweinfurth's
Welle, but his announcing no such great river there made
either Schweinfurth's work or else his own uncertain. But D\:
Nachtigal, at Lake Tchad, in 1869-76, heard of the large river
" Bahr-Kuta," to the south of the Shary Basin, Avhich his ser
vant and interpreter, an intelligent Bornuman, had visited, at
Barusso. The Greek traveler Potagos had also been there in
1877. All these things pointed to one or more large rivers in
this unexplored region, and the curiosity of the scientific world
has been on the alert ever since, to find out whether this great
drainage Avent to the Shary and Tchad, as Schweinfurth
thought, but Barth seriously doubted; or to the Benue, (the
sources of Avhich in eastern Adamawa were not discovered by
Flegel until August, 1882), as seemed impossible; or to old
Calabar river in the Bight of Benin (as some thought, though
no adequate mouth for such a river had there been discov
ered) ; or to some great unknown inland lake, another Tchad,
as others thought ; or to Tnckey's old Congo, as Barth inti
mated (and as maps on his idea were correctly sketched before
Stanley's Congo Avas known); or to Stanley's Byerre (incdrrectly
Armvimi) branch of the Congo, as he himself thought and ar
gued. But meantime exploration Avent forward on the upper
Welle, by Emin Bey (Dr. Schneitzer) from Lado, (the former
seat of liis governorship on the upper Nile under Gordon at
Khartoum) ; by Lnpton Bey (Englishman), governor of the
Bahr-el-Gazal province; by Casati, an Italian; and most of
all by the scientific and indefatigable German, Dr. Junker, to
Avhom, after Schweinfurth, chiefly belongs the credit of open
ing up this great new AA'ater:shed. The result of all this work
was to prove that the Kuta. itself a great river with large

32 The New Africa.
navigable branches, was a northern branch of the far greater
Makua, and that the Makua (Barth's "River of Kubanda") was
a lower section of the Welle (which means river) and its Mon- ,
buttoo, and most proper name. This great river, by these
united explorations, was thus traced from its fountains on the
high mountain slope not fifty miles west of the Nile at the
foot of Albert Lake, westward through nine degrees of longi
tude, over 500 statute miles, or over 600 miles by its actual
course. During this course it receives an immense inflow of
branches, large and small, from both sides, until, at Ali-Kobbo's,
(Junker's farthest west), it swells to a vast lacustrine flood six
miles wide, full of populous islands, or wild islands forested
and full of elephants ; and like the Congo, is too wide to be
looked across or measured except scientifically. Junker was
preparing for a Stanley-like voyage down this great river, lead
ing he knew not whither, but knowing it ten times too large
to be the upper Shary, when the great Mahdi rebellion broke
out in the Egyptian Soudan, and the loyal forces, already weak
ened by the slave-hu liters' rebellion (instigated b}7Ziebehr from
Egypt against his own government on account of Gordon's
anti-slaving work), were driven out of this whole region, Lup-
ton was taken prisoner, and Junker found refuge with Emin
at Wadelai, just below Albert Lake, where Emin has held the
country for Egypt ever since, and whither Stanley is inarching
from the Congo to re-enforce or rescue him. . Junker, after ten
years in Africa, at last escaped through Uganda, across Victoria
Lake to Zanzibar, and England, where he has recently lived.
Thus ended the exploration of the great Makua- Welle, leaving
the riddle quadrupled in magnitude, the curiosity quadrupled
in intensity, and both unanswered. But some other things
had been solved. The Nepoko, a smaller (but large) river
reached by Junker nearly 200 miles south of the Welle, was of
the right volume and course to make Stanley's Byerre, and is
undoubtedly that river. Junker's last point on the Makua, at
' Ali-Kobbo's, was 300 miles north-Avest of and beyond the month
of the Byerre, and on a river far too large, also, to be that
stream, or any other then known tributary of all this part of the
Congo. , What could it be ? The Avorld Avaifeed and theorized.
But, meantime, the Rev. George Grenfell, the energetic and
scientific Baptist missionary explorer at Stanley Pool, whose

Grenfell Discovers the Mobange\ 33
name must forever rank next to that of Stanley as the explorer
of the Congo basin, had been boldly thrusting his seventy-foot
iron steamer, the Peace, up every tributary of the Congo until
he had surveyed and mapped almost every known stream to its-
head of navigation. But as yet no tributary had been found that
could bring down the colossal Makua into the Congo. But on
Stanley's first map, in his Dark Continent, he lays down the
conjectural stump of a river entering the Congo from the north
at a point a little south of the equator, and puts on the blank
space the words, " probably river here." On his second
" Congo Free State " ,map he makes a long dotted hearsay
river here, coming from far to the north, Avhich, on exploration,
might be expected to -follow the fate of the ilong straight " al
leged rivers" on the south side of the basin. But this has not
proved to be quite the ease. Stanley's voyages both kept mainly
the south (left) bank of the Congo, from which themorth (right) ,
bank is almost every- where invisible, on account of the seven to
ten miles breadth of the stream and the countless islands. Where
fore, neither Stanley nor any other explorer had seen the right
bank of the Congo at this spot. Grenfell, ascending and sur
veying this shore, one day found himself on strange Avaters and
among strange tribes, who fled in terror from the face of a
white man and hisenonnous fiery-dragon canoe, and at last dis
covered that he was a hundred miles horn the Congo, up another
•stream, itself so vast and so full of islands that he had not be
held its left bank (on his right) in ascending, and whose course
was so nearly parallel with that of this part of the Congo, and
so narrowly separated from it, that he had not detected the
variation. He Avas on the M'bange, or Mobange, whose stump
Stanley had conjectnrally located, and the Mobange Avas an
other Congo ! For more than four hundred miles he steamed
,up the vast flood, through tribes to whom he was everywhere
" Bedimo ! " " Bedimo-'! "— A ghost ! A ghost /—as they fledln
terror from their villages. His course was only a little east
of north, and almost a straight line, until he reached 4° SO'
N. lat., far beyond the most northern bend of the Congo ; Avhen
there the river broke.througli.au east-and west range of hills .in
a slight rapid, now known as the Zongo Rapid. But they steamed
through the gap and found it an elbow of the river, above
which° they saw through a broad valley the vast tide coming
3

34 The New Africa.
from the east and south- east, with nowhere less than twenty-
five feet depth in the channel. They would have gone on, but
there Avere more rapids above, and the now hostile natives shot
shoAvers of poisoned arrows at them, and they had to turn back.
But these river natives spoke no dialect of the great Bantu
stock, to which all the Congo languages belong, and not one of
the Congo boat-hands could converse with or understand them.
They \yere also abundantly armed with the kourbatsh, men
tioned on page 31, a characteristic weapon, entirely unknown
on the Congo, or south of it, and the ethnological significance
of which Avas at once apparent. Here, then, was a new realm,
a new river, new races (resembling the " Fan" tribes east of
the Gaboon and south of the Benue sources), and weapons that
told of either kinship or traffic with the Zandeh smiths of the
Niam-Niam, or the Soudanese of Musgu, on the upper Shary.
Grenfell had to return to Stanley Pool, but the learned Avorld
at once concluded that Sclrweinfurth's Welle, and Junker's
Makua, and Barth's " River of Kubanda " (which, with aston
ishing correctness, he had, from mere hearsay, located at 3° N.
lat.), and Grenfell's Mobange, were one and the same river.
How could it be otherwise when they Avere of the same vastness
.and character, with similar tribes, weapons, and productions,
on their banks, one going on west, the other coming out of the
¦east, and Junker 's farthest downstream only two hundred and
-fifty miles east of GrenfeWs farthest upstream, in the same
.latitude ?
The map makers of the great geographical societies at once
joined the two points. With two such giants Avithin two hun
dred and fifty miles of each other, and no other Avay out, they
must join — and they have joined, and Barth is again shown
.as one of the most sagacious travelers of all time. While this
article has been flowing from the pen, the neAvs comes in the
solid shape of editorial notes in the Royal Geographical So
ciety's doings for April and May, 1888, that Captain Van Gele,
a Belgian officer of the Congo Free State, has continued the
exploration of the Mobange, and reduced the gap between it
and the Makua to only one degree! The new Welle-Makua-
Mobang6, another great northern Congo, a river 300 miles
longer than the Ohio beloAV Pittsburg, with the Werre, the
JM'Bomu, and several other great navigable tributaries, takes

The Threefold Congo.

35

its place upon the map of the world. Our sketch map given
below, taken originally from the (London) Graphic, shows the
outlines of the great Congo river system down to the last dates ;

Map to illustrate the Congo Kiver system to latest dates, and also Stanley's route to
the relief of Emin Bey. Improved by J. D. Feltcr from the (London) Graphic's
recent map.

36 The New Africa..
and also Stanley's route to the relief of Emin Bey. Tire map
follows the French spelling — Oubange, etc.
Native reports say that a navigable natural canal, another
Cassiquiare (like that in South America connecting the
Orinoco river with the Rio Negro, the great Northern branch
of the' Amazon), unites the northern- branches of the Mobmige
with the southern arms of the Shary: and their close proxim
ity and the levelness of the region favor the story., If so,.tlie
world's highway to the central Soudan and the- upper Nile may
be by this new Congo. French explorers have also just dis
covered the Bounga, another great northern affluent of the
CongOj west of the Mobange, Avhich receives the Nana and the
Kadei from the southern mountain slopes of AdamaAva, and,
flowing southward, gathers the streams from the eastern slope of
the coast-range for 500 miles. This is, to all appearance, the last
great river'for which there is room on the map of Africa ; though
two German expeditions are just now pushing eastward from
the Ca-meroons, and the English Congo missionary, Brooke,
is working northwestwardly from the Zongo Rapids, all after
the last secret of this last remnant of the once vast " unex
plored region" of Central Africa. But the grand prizes are all
taken ; only the crumbs of the cake remain to be gathered up. -
We have sketched the discovery of the Ncav Africa! And so
all Central Africa, as though the' Avhole country had been
twisted by a vast seismic whirl, or grooved by the enormous
eddy of the outflowing water of the inland sea that once filled
this basin, now concentrates its water-courses A-ortically on
Stanley Pool, the predestined seat of a future great capital
city. The magnitude of Stanley's work looms in importance
every hour. The future empire of the African continent comes
from the West, not from the East or the desert. The Crescent
now curves around all this realm — north, northeast, and east,
from Niger to Nile and Zambezi. But the Cross is marching
in from the West, and theCrpss has the tremendous military
advantage of a convex front, with the most perfect inside lines
of riverine communication on the globe, and Avith Europe,
America, and Divine Destiny for re-enforcements. That Des
tiny we shall next consider.

The New Africa. 37

CHAPTER III.— Its Destiny.
With this article this series ends. By the generosity of the
editors of the Methodist Review the writer has been permitted
to lay before its readers these little sheaves of the fruits of his
studies in what is to him by far the most fascinating branch
of natural science, namely, Geography — the knowledge of the
surface of the earth as the home of man and the theater of his
history. It has taken man 6,000 years to explore his home
stead above ground, and he has hardly been into the cellar yet.
How absurd, in the light of this, is the fanaticism that fixes the
time as just at hand when man shall be done with the world
as a material possession ! It will take him a thousand years
more to find out what he has doAvn cellar, stored away in the
earth for his coming needs, and then untold millenniums to
work it up ! One of the globe's best continents civilized man
has only just looked into. We have followed its opening
• up for only the last century, and traced the discovery, or re
discovery, of what we have called, the New Africa, with its
principal geographical results, as shown in part by the map
with our July article, which see. But other elements must be
considered. Orography, potamography, chorography, ethnog
raphy, climate, productions, etc., are all powerful factors in the
problem of a continent's destiny. Statistics is the basis of
prophecy in material things. Statistics, anthropology, and re
ligion are prime factors of civilization,,and to these we now turn.
Here we shall necessarily be very superficial and unsystematic,
merely touching the tops of things, that we may reach a gen
eral estimate and summing up of the elements that foretell the
destiny of one of man's grandest inheritances on this planet.
With ancient and classical Africa we have here nothing to do.
Nor will the Portuguese factor amount to much. Diogo Cao,
the Portuguese navigator,, did indeed discover the mouth of the
Congo in 1485, seven years before Columbus discovered Amer
ica, and set up his stone pillar there, on Banana Point, as a
mark and claim of empire. But the mighty river was still
unknown. Two million cubic feet of fresh river-water run
ning out to sea every second past those stupid and brutal
slave-catchers, and not one of them with geographic sense

38 The New Africa.
enough to know that that river meant an inland empire worth
more than all Europe ! What business had such a people with
such an empire? None at all ; and an all-wise Providence kept
them out 6f it until the men should come " AA'hose right it is "
to reign, by the grandest of all rights, competency aud fitness.
Then only was this realm really discovered.
And now what is the destiny of this stupendous New Africa
to be? And here comes in a greater wonder, if possible,
than its discovery. North America lay a century after its last
discovery, and six centuries after its discovery by Leif, the son
of Eric the Red, before it was colonized by its true recreator,
the Anglo-Saxon. But before the telegraph and the steam
press are done telling the story of the discovery of New
Africa its explorer is back on its vast rivers with steamboats and
colonists; and European Congresses — nay, Europe and Amer
ica combined— are pushing order, law, civilization, missionaries,
and alas ! the rum destruction also ! on into the very heart
of the Continent. Capitalists, tourists, scientists, and mis
sionaries from the whole civilized world are fairly tumbling
over, one another in their ardor to grasp for trade, for knowl
edge, or for Christ, the grandest opening yet unoccupied on the
globe. With what a mighty heave and swing the tide of hu
man thought and energy is turning toward this new and stupen
dous opportunity ! " Africa ward ! " is just now the marching
order of civilization. What an exponent is this very movement
of the light, the tension, the forces, the velocities of the world,
of to-day, as compared with that of A. D. 1492 ! That Avas a
great age. It was like Joseph's wagons out of Egypt compared
with Jacob's donkey or staff. But this age is to that like a
lightning-express train to Joseph's ox-carts ! And this is the
age, these are the forces and velocities, that are to civilize Africa.
Fifty years ago our fathers built railroads that crept in zigzags
,from one old city to another, not daring to get beyond the cer
tainty of " immediate business." Now we run railroads through
trackless Avildernesses across great continents, in order to create
business by opening up and occupying the country. On such
principles is Africa to be civilized. Never was any other con
tinent civilized so swiftly, nor so economically as to life and
treasure, as Africa is destined to be.
Here are these two goodly volumes of Stanley's great voyage,

Physical Basis of Empire. 39
and the other two, prophetically put into a binding seATeral
shades lighter in tint, telling how he has built his roads and
strung his treaties and trading posts along the whole of that
vast river, and how the frightful cannibals who gnashed for his
blood have now mingled their OAvn blood with his in their
sacred rite of blood brotherhood, and so call him brother.
Prophetic omen ! The broad seal of the Congo Free State —
a beautiful negress crowning a rampant lion — adorns these
covers; and these maps, constantly corrected and improved,
are becoming part of the common school geography of Christen
dom. There is a mail service by 14 steamers from Stanley Pool
to Stanley Falls, over 1,000 miles of the great lake-like river ;
and the ecclesiastical Stanleys of the Christian world, the En
glish and American Baptists and our Bishop William Taylor,
have more missionary stations between St. Paul de Loanda and
the Kassai, and between Stanley Pool and Stanley Falls, than
the political founder has trading stations on the whole river
system. Europe and America have depopulated Africa in the
past. Now Europe and America are moving into Africa.
And now what is to be the outcome of all this? What do
the elements of the problem promise ? Let us glance at some
of those elements.
• First let us consider some of the physical and geographical
elements. We may roughly say that the New Africa extends
from the southern edge of the Sahara and Abyssinia to the
Kalahari Desert of South Africa. The small fringe of Euro
pean settlements on the west coast scarcely counts in the vast
problem (except as seed-corn counts) ; but the great Somali and
Swahili half-breed Arabic element on the east coast, from the
straits at Aden to Mozambique, is a highly important factor.
Look at the rivers, lakes, and land contours of this vast region.
The upper Nile region may be said to extend from Khar
toum southward. The entire area drained by the Nile is put
at 1,000,000 square miles. But it is only the length and area
above Khartoum (1,345 feet elevation) that now interest us.
That length is from 1,100 to 1,750 miles (with or without the
Alexandra Nile), about half of Avhich is navigable in sections,
and the rest furnishes one of the greatest water-powers in the
world. The country here is mostly on the highest great plateau
in Africa, very fertile and populous, considerably advanced in

40 The New Africa.
a barbaric civilization, furnishing a vast variety of useful prod
ucts of both temperate and tropical climates, healthful for
Europeans, and needing only easy access to the sea to make it
the seat of a great empire. Victoria Lake lies 4,000 feet above
the sea. and is 220 by 180 miles in extent, 600 feet (perhaps
much more) in;depth,and its area is 39,600 square miles, being
midway in area 'between Lake Michigan (24,000) and Lake
Superior (32,000 square miles). Baker's Albert Lake has 2,000
square miles area. There, are several other lakes in this region,
:but whether -.they .belong 'to the Nile is not yet certain. The
'upper White Nile region alone, including the Bahr-el-Gazal's
great fertile plain, has 600,000 square miles of well-watered
and populous land, equal to fifteen Ohios (of 40,000 square
miles each) — an empire in itself.
The great central Soudan region, though comparatively
ancient in settlement, belongs to the New Africa for Europeans.
It is a basin of inland drainage, and one of the lowest, levdlest,
and most fertile basins on the globe. The elevation of Lake
Tchad above :the sea is variously given at from 850 to 1,150
feet, and its area varies greatly, from 10,000 to 50,000 square
miles, with the seasons, as its shores are so very flat and low
that a slight rise in the lake doubles its extent. Only at a few
points can towns be built near its shores, the land not being
high enough to allow it. Its great affluent is the river Shary,
which has many large branches, and is never so loAvas to beunr
navigable ; and so of the Logon and other of its large tributaries.
' The perfect freshness of Lake Tchad, an anomaly among land
locked lakes, is now explained. Native report declared 'that
the Tchad had an outlet for its overflow, toward the north
east. Barth failed to find it, but -prints the full native ac
counts of it in his noble work, Discoveries in Africa (vol. -ii,
pp. 610, 611). According to natiA-e reports, only one man living,
and he very aged, had in his youth gone down the Bahr-el-Gazal
by water. At Barth's time its valley was full of forests, farms,
and towns. Dr. Nachtigal, in 1869, fonnd it, as a khor— that
is, in Arabic, an ^intermittent river — flowing north-eastwardly
for 300 miles, and fertilizing a great wady, before its Avaters
are finally absorbed by evaporation and by the marshes and ¦
sands of the desert in a vast basin, once the bed of an in
land sea, and, now only 400 feet above the sea-level. Lake

The Tchad and Niger Basins. 41
N'Gami, in southern Africa, in like manner overflows by the
Zuga River, which reaches far into the Kalahari Desert. So,
also, of the Seistan Lake, which receives the Ilelmund ; and
the Lob Nor, which receives the Tarim, in Asia; and the
Humboldt lake and river in Nevada. The Komadusm is an
inflowing khor on the west of Lake Tchad, sometimes fordable
or dry, at other times a navigable river for 200 miles. There
are hundreds of these Mors in Africa. This Tchad and
Shary country is one of the richest in soil, in rain-fall, and in
variety and value of natural productions on the globe, and it
is exceedingly populous, though far below the ability of the
country, under good cultivation, to support; and far below
what it was a century or two ago. But owing to the inunda
tions it is subject to fevers, and the camel is not yet acclimated
there, though horses and cattle abound.
The Niger basin occupies the western Soudan, from the
famous mediaeval city of Timbuctoo on the southern edge of
the Sahara to the Kong Mountains on the south. The Niger is
2,600 miles long; and nearly two miles wide, toward its mouths,
which are 200 miles apart, and inclose 14,000 square miles of
delta. But its navigation is several times interrupted by rapids,
and it has a region of divided channels and floating ambatch
swamp on its upper course, greater than that on the upper
White Nile. It has, however, about 700 miles of steamboat,
and as much more barge navigation, and drains a fertile and
populous country full of large cities. Its great eastern arm,
the Benue, has been ascended by steamer over 400 miles, Avhere
it was still half a mile wide and ten feet deep, a river of vast
value agriculturally and commercially, with populous cities on
its shores. The French have now a steamer on the upper river,
and the English have a large commerce on its lower course.
The Ogowai (Ogowee) proves, on exploration, to be a much
less important river than was anticipated, being navigable at
freshet for only about 300 miles.
The Coauza, in the Portuguese possessions south of the
Congo, has only about 140 miles' navigable length, and has a
bar at its mouth. The Cnnene, the Orange, and the Limpopo
are unnavigable. The Okavango, a large inland-flowing river
discovered by Anderson in 1854-59, a navigable stream, 600
feet wide, flows by the Teoghe into Lake N'Gami, and thence,
by the Zouga, into the salt-pans of the desert.

42 The New Africa.
The Zambezi is 1,800 to 2,000 miles long, reaching almost
across the continent at this part, and is the only navigable river
of Africa on the east coast. It has 10,000 square miles of delta,
is a mile wide above it, with 320 miles of navigation below Vic
toria Falls, and 150 miles more on its great northern branch,
the Shire. Above the falls it probably has a good deal more
navigation for small steamers and bai'ges. It has a great extent
of fertile land in its broad basin of 600,000 square miles area,
and has also the deep and splendid Lake Nyassa, of 9,000 square
miles extent. The general character of the country and its pop
ulation are not yet fully known, but it is not without great in
terest. The country between the Zambezi and the Limpopo is
both alluvia^ and mountainous, and is a rich gold field, and of
high historic interest. When the Portuguese discovered this
country, A. D. 1570 to 1600, they found here the flourishing and
powerful half-breed Arab kingdom of Monmotapa. But Avhat
was more strange, these Arabs were not Mohammedans — had
not a trace of Moslem theology in their ideas, but rather resem
blance to the pre-Mohammedan Sabean fire-worship which Islam
destroyed. The Arab traditions claim this as the kingdom of
Solomon's Queen of Sheba. The river Sabia seems to be a
reminiscence of Sabea, in Arabia; their seaport capital, Sofala,
has a suggestion of Ophir, and the extensive pre-historic ruins
of granite-built towers and citadels at Zimbaoe, 200 miles due
Avest of Sofala, have been set down as Ophir itself. Similar
vast ruins, impossible of construction for the African tribes, are
now found also at Zumbo, Manica, and Massapa, all in the same
country, now conquered and desolated by the Matabeles, a Zulu
race.* Mr. F. C. Selous, an elephant hunter, has just discov
ered f two new gold districts in this same region, the one an
alluvial " washing field ; " the other a prehistoric quartz rock
mine 100 feet deep. Gold diggers from the English Transvaal
gold fields are expected to be soon pouring into this region.
Antiquarians are strongly inclined to a common consent that
all indications point more strongly to this region as the ancient
Ophir than to any other yet known.
The Rovuma, Rnfiji, and Jub, and Haines River, on the east
African coast, are all large rivers, but, so far as known, all inca-
* See Capt. C. E. Haynes, R. E., in Journal of Manchester Geological Society, 1 887,
p. 244, et seqq. f Royal Geological Society's Proceedings, May, 1888.

Colossal " Land Grabbing." 43
pable of navigation. The latter does not even reach the sea, but
forms a land-locked lagoon several hundred miles long, behind
enormous maritime sand-dunes, some of them 600 feet high.
The whole eastern part of Africa, from the Straits to the
Zambezi, is a lofty plateau, rising steeply by successive terraces
from the Indian Ocean : it is scantily watered, and a good deal
of the northern and higher parts are arid, or watered only by
khors during six or eight months in the year. But this region
is not without great value. There is good reason to believe
that it is the botanical home of many of the most valuable
spices and aromatics now in cultivation in Arabia and else
where, and the place where many of them will thrive better in
the future than anywhere else on the globe. This is especially
true of the coffee shrub, which almost certainly went thence to
Arabia; and indeed much of the finest "Mocha" is still pro
duced there, and merely sent to Arabia for sale. There are
also reasons for believing that the granitic and quartzite tracts
found abundantly in this region Avill prove to be charged with
precious metals and gems.
The vast tract now seized by Germany here extends from
Victoria Lake on the north to the Rovuma river on the south,
and from the Indian Ocean on the east to Lake Nyassa on the
west. It completely absorbs the continental possessions of
Zanzibar and the Avhole Arab region here, and is an empire
equal to six Ohios. And now England takes the next slice to
the north, which undoubtedly means the whole Nile Basin.
Portugal already claims the south bank of the Rovuma. The
great tracts grasped by France north of the Congo mouth,
about five Ohios ; and the two tracts claimed by Germany on
the Atlantic coast, amounting to as much more, show how the
territory of Africa is being "grabbed" by European powers/
But the royal realm of Africa, the last uncovered and great
est of all, is the basin of the monarch river of the continent,
and of the entire Eastern hemisphere, the threefold Congo.
The world would like to call it the Livingstone, after its
heroic discoverer, but the name does not "stick" any more
than did Orellana's. to the Amazon. The old native name is
so short, so euphonious, so resonant and bell-like in the mouth,
and withal so African, that it has the right of way by every
reason, and will keep it; and ought to be spelled with the

44

The New Africa.

native sounds — Kongo. The following table, which have
compiled from various sources, compares the Congo with some
of the other principal rivers of the Avorld, so far as I can lay
hands oil the desired information. The statements queried are
such as, for want of satisfactory data, I have estimated ; and
those followed by the phis sign (+) are minimum estimates.
comparative table of great rivers.

Name of River.

AF"KICA -.
Nile (incl. Alex. Nile)

Niger.... Zambezi .
Congo . . .

INDIA: Ganges 
Indus 
Brahmaputra .

CHINA: Yang-tse-Kiang .

Hwang-ho . .
SIBERIA :
Aiuoor 
Lena 
Yenesei 

Obi..

IT. AMERICA :
Missouri-Mississippi .

Length of
main stteain
iu miles.

M'Kenzie 
St.. Lawrence & Lakes.
Yukon 

3,900
(Pelernmnu's
last, 4,000). 2,000 1,8003,034

1,6801,800
1,800

3,158
(Petermanii's
last.) 2,600

2,9203,0002,900
(iucl. Selenga.
3,500.) 2,530

i,300

2,868 2,2002,100

2,900
(in sections.) 1,200
(includ. Benue) 500 +
8,000

800800500?

S. AMERICA :
Plata-Parana-Uruguay
Orinoco 
Amazon 

Navigable length,
lucludmg broaches.

Volume, in cubic ft.
per second, at low
water.

61,500
(at Cairo.)

2.000,000
(At flood,
8,000,000.) 20T,000 40,857
146,188

2,550
1,600
4,000

1,200 500?

2,400 +
800 +
540+

9004

35,000
(Petermann's
last.) 4'666 1,200 %

20,000 l,uu0
50,000
(Exclusive of
the Tocantins,
or Araguay.)

675,000
(mean annual.)

Area of basin
diulued, in square
miles.

1,000,000

800,000 600,000
1,508,000
(38 Ohios of
40,000 sq. m.
each.) 432,480 372.700250:000 ?

748,000
400,000

785,000
1,0UU.0U01,380^000
(34J Ohios. )
1,315,000?

1 850,000
(34 Ohios.)

600,000350,000 %

1,200,000 366,000
2,100,000
(52J Ohios.)

. * The volume of many of these rivers Is not ascertained, but Professor McLaren, of Edinburgh!
says (Ency. Brit., i, p. t>74) : "The Amazon alone discharues mme waler than the eight tii-lncina
rivers of Asia, the Indus, Ganges, Yang-tse, Hwang-no, Amoor, Lena, Yenesei.-and Obi, combined."
These figures give us an idea of the comparative magnitude
and importance of the Congo. In length -of main stream it

Vastness of the Congo. 45
ranks sixth; in extent of navigable waters, fourth; and in
point of volume, and of area, the second, among the great
waterways of the globe. Its eight principal lakes thus far
known cover an aggregate of 32,000 square miles, just equal
to the area of Lake Superior. But nearly half the Nile basin
is hopeless desert, as is also the case with the Indus and the
Hwang-ho, and to a lesser extent with even the Ganges and the
Plata; while the great rivers of Siberia, with enormous volume
and great fertile areas on their upper courses, are in their lower
courses frozen solid half the year.
Stanley makes the Congo river, from the sources of the
Chambeze, between Lakes Tanganyika and Nyassa, to the
Atlantic, to be 3,034 miles long, including the lakes through
which it flows. The volume of water in its lower course, at
its lowest stage {Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. i, p. 254, ninth
edition), is over 2,000,000 cubit feet per second, and at flood
(Stanley) over 3,000,000. Do Ave know what that means ? It
is the product of breadth, depth, and velocity. Much of the
lower channel and estuary is from 300 to 600 feet deep ! It
has no delta, "Why not? Because it empties between bold
shores into a deep sea, after the water has been filtered by
"settling "in its lacustrine upper course; but still more be
cause the enormous " scouring" power of its mighty volume and
velocity carries most its remaining sediment out to the deep
sea, where the mound of its fresh water slopes off over the sea-
water for fifty miles. But what does 2.000,000 cubit feet per
second mean ? It means thirty-three Niles at Cairo !
As to climate, Stanley's experience, like that of Grenfell and
others, dissipates many delusions. With prudence and temper
ance whites can become acclimated there, as every-Avhere else.
Counting the added cost of winter to human living in colder
climates, the basin of the Congo can probably support a greater
population than that of the Mississippi, as it has more area, and
is equally fertile, or more so. In its present barbarous and
savage state, harried by slave-traders all around its rim, it now
supports an estimated population of 51,886,000, almost that of
the United States. The loAver river is thinly populated, but
the development of commerce and water power will pack it
with people ; and the upper Congo has now about forty souls
to the square mile, and on some of the great east and west

46 The New Afkica.
routes across the great southern tributaries, as found by
Pogge and "Wissman, there is almost one continual village,
teeming with cultivation and prosperity. Some of these
great tributaries are themselves vast rivers. The iron-charged
coffee-brown water of the great Euiki, Stanley's Ikelemba,
makes half the breadth of the milky Congo brown for 130
miles below their junction. The Kasai-Kwa and the Mobange
are Congos themselves. But compactness is another value of
this vast basin. The mighty northward, loop of the Congo,
whose curve is imitated in all its branches, makes its basin
almost circular, and so brings all parts nearest possible to the
center and outlet at Stanley Pool. It is claimed that no point
can be located in all this vast basin so as to be over 100 miles
from permanent navigation. And not one of these rivers is
spoiled for commerce by flowing, as in the case of our Tennes
see, hundreds of miles in the wrong direction. And, what is
more vital still, coal is already found on the Bovuma, on the
east shore ; at Tete on the Zambezi in the south, and on the
upper Kasai, in the Congo basin. Coal, petroleum, and Avhat-
ever things else are necessary to civilization, will undoubtedly
be found when they are looked for.
The lower course of the river, from Stanley Pool to the
head of the estuary, except at a few quiet stretches, is a tre
mendous canyon (cut by the overflow of the once vast fresh
inland sea, an enormous Tchad, of which Stanley Pool is the
last remnant), and down which the great river now rushes in a
series of low cataracts and Avild, tumbling rapids of vast depth
and resistless fury, between precipitous walls of craggy rock
like those beloAV Niagara Falls, and is wholly useless for navi
gation. But a trunk line of railway 235 miles long, now
being contracted for, where Stanley's turnpike is, will open
all this inland empire to the sea. And, furthermore, the im
measurable water-power of the loAver river (of which the inland
levels are destitute) must soon become the providential mill
through which the Avhole realm will send its raw material,
working it allnp here, on its way to the outside world. And
it must be borne in mind that the Congo is the anomaly of
geography, being the only great river on the globe that flows
westward. Divine Providence here reversed the plan of the
globe in order to finally bring Africa into communion Aviih

Resources of the Congo. 47
the Christian civilizations of Europe and America, rather than
with the dead systems of Asia.
And Avhat has the Congo basin to send to such a mill, that
Europe and the world wants? It has ivory, hippo teeth, palm
oil, rubber in boundless abundance, fossil gum copal enough to
varnish the world, orchilla Aveed, one of the finest dyes known,
redwood, camwood, honey, beeswax, skins, sesamum seed (for
oil), cassava, manioc, rice, ground-nuts, coffee, kola-nuts (a sub
stitute for coffee), ebony, teak, cotton, palm fibers, ginger,
spices, balsams, fragrant and medicinal gums and drugs, iron
and copper in abundance, with other things too numerous to
mention. Wheat and all the cereals of the temperate zones
will thrive on the high uplands. But at this very day a trunk
railroad to Stanley Pool, with a few steamers on the upper river,
could deliver on the docks at Boma a three times greater annual
collection of merchantable productions for exportation than is
now gathered by the entire coasting trade of Western Africa.
So says Stanley — {Congo, vol. ii, page 367). And there are
50,000,000 robust, quick-witted, moderately industrious natives,
the best " born traders " in the world, capable of rapid civiliza
tion, ready to help on the work, and so help themselves ; a
population infinitely superior to the few, diminutive, and imp
ish blow-gmi Indians that occupy the wildernesses of the Am
azon. And they are all of the one great Bantu stock, and their
dialects are all reducible to one written language that will unify
African speech from the Mobange to Lake N'Gami. So much
for the physical and commercial outlook.
But there is one important point more here. Barth found
(and subsequent explorations have confirmed it), that the
river Logon, the great south-western branch of the Shary,
which now goes to the Shary and so to Lake Tchad, once went
to the great Benue, and so to the Niger and the ocean. The
old channel is still there, knOAvn as the Mayo-Kebbi, a broad,
deep trough only 25 miles long, with a swampy bayou at its
bottom, which is only 50 feet above Lake Tchad ; and even
now, when either the Benue or the Logon are at flood the water
of the higher stream goes to the lower, either way, through
this natural canal. Moreover, according to Barth (vol. ii,
p. 202) the country between the southern tributaries of the
Shary and the northern feeders of the'Congo is probably a.

48 The New Africa.
level prairie or steppe, and there are reports of an anastomosis
between the two systems of rivers. At any rate there is an
easy route for canals and railways. Here, then, is another great
and open way for inland communication ; a route by water and
land from Stanley Pool to the Soudan and Khartoum.
The outcome of all our geographical studies is, therefore,
this: The entire central region of Africa, from the Sahara
to the Kalahari — the region drained by the upper Nile, the
' Logon-Shary, the Niger-Benue, the Zambezi, and the three
fold Congo — is the vastest, best watered, most fertile, most
accessible, most populous, richest in resources, most promis
ing for future greatness, of all the unciA'ilized regions on the
globe; and far more so than many regions now civilized and
famous originally were. The New Africa is the seat of the
coming New World of the Eastern Hemisphere, or, at any rate,
is physically capable of being such.
So much for the natural elements in the great problem of
Africa's destiny. Now, what about the human elements ; the
races of men, their civilization, religion, present status, capabil
ities for the future ? Who and Avhat are the races occupying
our New Africa ?
The almost universally accepted anthropology of modern sci
ence puts Japheth (the Aryans), Shem (the Semites), and Ham
(the Hamites), together as the Caucasian race or variety (not
species) of mankind ; and makes the Ugrians, the Mongols, the
Malays, and the Negroes (and some authorities make other
divisions also) each another separate variety of the one com
mon species and genus homo, man.
Leaving the radical school of anthropology out of the
question, it cannot be denied that the vast preponderance of
conservative scientific opinion is, at least, to this effect, namely :
While the Berbers (including the Twareks, Copts, and Tibbus)
are Hamitic, but differentiated toward the Semitic stock, the
true Negroes are also probably Hamitic, but profoundly differ
entiated in the direction of some other undetermined factor,
and the ^Ethiopians or Abyssinians are an intermediate link be-
tAveen the Caucasian Hamite and the non-Caucasian Negro, with
also a prehistoric Semite, mixture from southern Arabia. Barth,
whose work is a very mine of learning on the Soudan, conced-
edly the best authority extant on the subject, says that Avhile

Racial Changes in Nigritia. 49
the original population of the Soudan was Negro, as was all the
southern edge of the Sahara, nevertheless the Negro has been
crowded southward along the whole line by the Moor (a mixed
Arab) in the west, by the Berber (including both Twareks and
Tibbus) in the center, and by the Arab in the east. Timbuc-
too is a city of Berber, not Negro, origin, founded before the
Norman conquest of England, since conquered by Moors,
and now ruled by the Fulbe, or Fellatah, who are neither
Moor, Berber, Arab, nor Negro, but a distinct race between
the Arab and Berber on the one side and the Negro stock on the
other,* and Avhose language and physiognomy, and only semi-
woolly hair, are more Mongoloid or Kaffir than Negro ; but
Avho are the most intelligent, energetic, and rapidly becoming
the most powerful people, in the Soudan, and whose influ
ence is now felt from Senegambia to Baghirmi, through half
a dozen native States. In all the Niger basin only the Man-
dingo and the Tonibo countries about the head of the Joliba, or
Niger, are now ruled by pure Negro dynasties, the former be
ing a splendid and capable jet-black people, probably the finest
purely Negro race yet known to Europeans,! and the one upon
whom, as neighbors to Liberia, Dr. Blyden's opinions seem to
have been mostly founded. In the central Soudan the Kanuri
of Kanem and Bornu came to Kanem as a conquering Tibbu-
Berber stock over 500 years ago, and are now Negroid. Farther
east Tibbn and Arab are the ruling elements. Haussa, Sokoto,
and Adamawa are now Fellatah States. The soutliAvard pressure
of Moor, Twarek, Tibbu, and Arab, is still going on ; and the
Fulbe, in the midst of the native States, is rapidly penetrating
them, subverting the few native Negro dynasties still exist
ing, and creating a neAV and rising race and power that is, at
any rate, not Negro. Thus ancient Nigritia is rapidly ceasing
to be "Negroland," the races being more and more mixed, and
newer and ruling elements of Moor, Berber, and Arab constantly
flowing in. This is the testimony of a long line of scholars
from Barth down to Professor A. H. Keane, author of the
learned article on '' Soudan," in volume xxii. of the Encyela-
pcedia Britannica, ninth edition, published late in 1887. '
The people commonly considered Negro, in Africa, consist
mainly of three great stocks — the Nigritians of the Soudan, the
* Barth, ii , 132. \ Christianity, Islam, ana the Negro Race.
4

50 The New Africa.
great Bantu stock reaching from the southern bounds of the
Soudan to the southern rim of the Zambezi basin, and the
great Zulu stock. All these differ widely from each other in
physiology, languages, arts, and customs. The Nigritians are
declining under Aral) and Berber pressure; the Zulus, a pow
erful and semi-Negro race, are rapidly extending their con
quests northward beyond the Zambezi into east-central Africa.
The Bantns are mainly agriculturists. They fill the Congo
basin, and extend eastward to the Indian Ocean, between
Uganda (which is Bantu) and Unyanyembe. They have only
recently been discovered, and are not yet much studied by
Europeans. But not all so-called Negroes are true Negroes. As for the
eastern highland regions of the two Niles, and thence south
ward from the Abyssinians and the Shillooks at Khartoum
to the Waganda of Uganda — the Niain-Niam of Monbuttoo,
the Manyuema of the Lualaba, and' the Makololo on the Zam
bezi — the ruling and paramount native tribes are Negroid,
but not Negro, unless our ordinary conception of the Negro
is a good deal revised. As Livingstone says of the Makololo,
so of all these, they are a " coffee and milk color;" or we
iinay say all these peoples are from a dark coffee-brown to
brownish -white, like coffee, depending on the amount of milk
.added.* They are mostly tall, straight, leanish, wiry, active,
<of rather regular features, fair agriculturists and cattle-raisers,
with a good deal of mechanical capacity, born merchants and~
itraders, and almost every where hold darker and more truly
negro tribes in slavery to themselves, where any such tribes
exist. Where they have none or few domestic animals for
meat, they are frequently cannibals. In the middle Congo ba
sin the tribes are more truly Negro, and here the true Negroes
are freemen, independent and capable, though in a somewhat
low state of development. But, so far as now known, the
true Negro, in an independent condition, holds and rules but
a comparatively small part of Africa, or even of our New
Africa. As to capability for improvement these peoples —
* Prof. Drummond says, in his Tropical Africa, pp. 51, 58, " Talking of skins I
imay observe in passing that the highland African is not a Negro, nor is his skin
black. It is a deep, full toned brown. No one knows exactly who these. people
•are. Of course they belong to the; great Bantu race ; but their origin is obscure."
I believe the Bantu to be a moditied Ethiopian, but whence came his entirely
different language 1

Significance of Dwarf Races. 51
the Negroid races at least and probably the Negroes — are
as apt and civilizable as any Caucasian or Mongolian people
have originally been, if we consider how their geographical
and climatic isolation has hitherto cut them off from the
rest of the world and the world from them. We know
that if Ave leave Revelation out of the account, all Cau
casian civilization, whether Aryan, Semitic, or Hamitic, can
be traced backward until, just on the dawn of history, it
narrows down to small clans or families, with whom the light
began and from whom it spread. We know the same, also, as
to the non-Caucasian Chinese and Nahua civilizations of Asia
and America. Had the spread of the germs of these civiliza
tions been prevented by conditions like those in Africa, avIio
shall say that the stage of development might not be about the
same to-day? There seems to be but one uncivilizable race— if,
indeed, they are such — in Africa; and that is the dwarfs. The
Akka, found by Schweinfurth south of the Welle, called them
selves " Betua," the same word as the " Batua " on the Kassai.
The dwarfs of the upper Zambezi call themselves by a similar
word, and so with the Bushmen in South Africa. Many things
go to prove that these dwarf nations are all one race, the dimin
utive remnants of a primeval stock of one of the lowest types
of man, who have never risen above the hunter stage of life.
They have been scattered, and almost exterminated, by the in
coming of the powerful Bantu stock, that is now spread from
the Soudan to Zululand. These dwarfs are the best living ex
amples of similar races once scattered over Europe and Asia,
whose real existence lies at the bottom of all the lore of fairies,
brownies, elfs, gnomes, etc., etc. They constitute one of the
most pregnant subjects of study in all anthropology. They are
seemingly always uncivilizable.
But religion has every-where played a great part in the prog
ress of civilization, and Japheth's Avorshiping in the tabernacles
of Shem — that is, receiving a diA'ine revelation through Shem,
the prophet of humanity — has made him to fulfill Noah's pre
diction, and to " spread abroad," until to-day his arms encom
pass the earth. Ham, including the Negro, has also received
his religion (all above paganism) from Shem, but mainly not
the same religion, nor from the same family of Shem. He has
largely received, and is now rapidly receiving, the later and

52 The New Africa.
mongrel counterfeit religion which the Semitic Arab forged
in imitation of, and as a counterblast against, the true religion
of the Semite Jew and the Aryan Christian. This is the
matter which takes up so large a part of Professor Blyden's
volume, but in which he largely borrows from Professor R.
Bosworth Smith's Mohammed and Mohammedanism, of
which several of his papers are reviews or discussions, and to
which he gives frequent credit, and for which Mr. Smith
gives hiin laudatory indorsement in return. In fact, in any
elaborate discussion, we must deal with Mr. Smith, and not
Dr. Blyden.
It is the constant and rapid progress of Mohammedanism
in Africa, especially in the central and western Soudan,
where it has come to the very boundaries of the slender
Christianity along the coast, which so much occupies his
pages. Originally propagated here by jehad's, or proselyting
wars (which were generally slaving wars in reality) from
Morocco, from Fez, and from the eastern or Arabic Soudan,
it is now almost every-Avhere dominant, if not professed. I:
has its mosques and schools in all large towns, and is teach
ing Moslem letters and learning to millions of the Soudanese.
It has been doing this for some centuries. Of the many
millions of Soudanese between Senegambia and Abyssinia,
Islam can claim at least two thirds of the people, and has the
respect of the other third. In cities like Kano, of sixty thou
sand souls, and many more of similar size, the Moslem pontiffs
are more powerful, often, than the civil or military chiefs.
Among the common people Islam is the sign of freedom from
slavery, of culture, and almost of nobility. Mr. Blyden would
have us believe that, with its simple Monotheism, its end of
slavery to its professor (though he may forthwith enslave all
the pagans he can catch or buy, and carry on the horrid slaving
wars ad libitum against pagan tribes), and its leveling frater
nity of spirit (inside its pale !), Islam is a good preparation for
Christianity; and, indeed, one avIio did not know him to be a
Protestant Christian minister might almost think him so Jesu-
itically, " as it were," "free from prejudice " on this subject,
that, in his sublime candor,, he rather favors Islam ; " standing
so straight (to use a shrewd vulgarism) as to lean a leetle the
other Avay ! " ,

The Religious Problem. 53
But what say other authorities ? Barth, who was not bigoted
enough to rest from marching and exploring on Sunday (as
Stanley, to his honor, always does, since, as he modestly con
fesses, Livingstone converted him), declares that every-where
throughout the Mohammedan Soudan, from Timbuctoo, Sego,
Jenne, Gogha, and Kano to Kukuvva, Waday, and eastward,
the Soudan country is in a state not of prosperity and progress
but in a state of retrogression and chaotic decay. He gives
two reasons for this : first, the overthrow of the native powers
by Moorish, Berber, and Arab conquest, raid, and intrigue ;
aud then, in turn, the decay of the powers which these forces
built up by the petrifying, fossilizing spell of Islam, a religion
to which progress is only another name for heresy and infidelity.
Its proselyting energy is a mighty arouser of a pagan mind, but
its lack of regenerating inspiration and moral restraint and vital
transforming progressiveness makes its effect here, as in all
Semitic and Berber lands already, to freeze up the evolution
of the human mind and of faith, and so to teach its converts to
commit all affairs to blind fanaticism and fatalism. The ver
dict of Asia, of Africa, of history, of civilization is, that Islam
is no substitute for Christianity, and small help to its progress.
It proves over again the old German proverb, " The good [only
as compared with paganism in this case] is a great foe to the
better" — that is, by excluding the better.
And now our summing up, for this series of articles, is this :
After a century's struggle of exploration — illumed by the
names of Bruce, Park, Burckhardt, Tuckey, Denham, and
Clapperton, the Landers, Barth, Nachtigal, Burton, and Speke,
Petherick, Baker, Schweinfurth, Moffat, Livingstone, Cam
eron, Stanley, Junker, Grenfell, and many others — a century of
glorious achievement, the mighty problem is at last virtually
solved, and Africa is no longer an unknown world. Being
solved, instead of Alpine ice and pathless deserts, one of the
vastest fertile expanses on the globe is revealed as the curtain
of ages rises; one of earth's noblest seats for future empire.
The mountain rims, east and Avest, though somewhat arid, are
tractable to culture ; and, like a mighty molding, they frame
round a realm which needs only the finishing touches of art
to the colossal outlines of nature to make it a paradise of
the Avorld. Over this realm are now spread 'from 150,000,000

54 The New Africa.
to 175,000,000 of people ; not like the prehistoric Europeans,
the American Indians, or the Australians, so intractably and
constitutionally savage that their only possible destiny in the
presence of superior races is to be "civilized off from the face
of the earth," but races capable of rapidly forming part — and,
when Christianized, the main part — of a great, new, and pow
erful race-dominion over at least their own continent. We
see, too, that the religion nearest to their own level, with its one
great monotheistic truth, combines also so many errors of teach
ing and practice that, as already proved by its results, it cannot
there (as it never has anywhere) work out a great salvation
for man. And now we are seeing that wherever Christianity
has been pure, and fairly presented, it has already begun the
great uplifting, as in South Africa, 'in Liberia, in the good work
of black Bishop Crowther at the Niger-Benue junction, in
the recent mission fields in Uganda and on the Nyassa, and
lastly, in the already marvelous success of the Baptist missions
in the Congo basin. Dr. Blyden, Avith hundreds of other phi
lanthropists, thinks that the providential design of the enslave
ment of the African in America AAras to make him, in time,
the apostle of his native Africa. Dr. Blyden objects to the
present European movement on the Congo. He prophesies its
failure on his page 275, and on page 356 saj's: "And if the
present attempt of Europeans to take possession of the vast
regions of the Congo could succeed, but happily it cannot,"
etc. ! His race feeling is so strong that he seems to prefer
Islam when taught by blacks to Christianity when brought by
whites — though he may well oppose the rum ! He thinks the
American Negro must be colonized in Africa and become its
apostle there, until a native Church rises up and educates its
own apostles, as the natiAre Islam of the Soudan does already.
But who is to compel the American Negro to leave the land
where, now his oavii master, he prefers to stay and develop
(as he has a right to, if he so chooses), Dr. Blyden does
not say.
But with all sincerity of respect for those who hold this
view, and for the American Negro, Avho is doing magnificent
things for himself, we cannot accept either its facts or its faith.
All history shows that only races of high and inbred civiliza
tion, intellectual and moral, can stand the moral strain of the

Thoroughbreds for Missionaries. 55
presence and opportunities of surrounding heathenism, espe
cially of barbarous paganism, and not succumb to that strain.
The American Negro is not free and strong enough in soul
yet, not far enough removed from the effects of his own late
servitude, not sure enough of himself yet, to be trusted or to
trust himself, in any great numbers, on the slippery edge of
the moral mire-hole of unrestrained paganism. It takes the
moral stuff of men whose very race-stock has been through
the purifying fires and under the compacting hammers of ages
of Christian discipline to make the best material for great mis
sionaries. The American African needs the school of liberty,
manhood, culture, and religion in America a little longer, and
lie knows it, and is doing gloriously in it. The native African,
born free, " every man a king," as the Manyueina people told
Livingstone they were, such men, converted and educated in
the equality and superiority of their own countries, may soon
develop the stamina to become flaming apostles and great
ecclesiastics in their own country. The martyr spirit of those
already converted shows the stuff on which the future Church
of Africa can be built. And by and by the American Negro,
better matured and cultured than most are now, can go to
Africa as the foreign professor comes from Europe to America,
to find a school prepared for his higher instruction, Avhich he
brings from older seats of culture. But at present he neither
much wishes to go to Africa as a missionary, nor does the Afri
can native want him. Bishop William Taylor informed the
writer, while this article was unfinished, that he had found only
one or two native chiefs yet who were willing to have black
teachers, from America or elsewhere, sent them. They almost
invariably stipulate that their teachers and preachers shall be
white men ; and the white man gets along more smoothly and
more economically, and gets acclimated just as easily as the
imported Negro. This then remains : The white man, bring
ing the white woman Avith him, must apostle Africa until na
tive apostles are raised up. This is just the theory on which
our heioic Bishop William Taylor is now leading his invading
army of clerical and industrial missionaries — nearly all whites
— into the heart of the " Dark Continent."
But the Gospel and the school are already raising up hundreds
of promising converts, and terrible persecutions are bringing

56 The New Africa.
forth fire-tested martyrs by scores. In Uganda King M'Tesa,
the friend of Speke and Stanley, and by whom Christians were
protected, died on October 10, 1884, aged forty-seven, having
reigned twenty-seven years. King Mwanga, his successor, has,
under Moslem inspiration, proved himself as bloody a perse
cutor as history records. Bishop Hannington was deliberately
assassinated by his order, and thirty-two native Christians were
massacred in one lot, and the missionaries driven out of Ugan
da; and yet the native Christianity not only still lives, but is
secretly spreading all the time among the Waganda.* The
Bible and hymns are being printed in Kiganda, and the people
gather secretly by night to learn to read God's word in their
own tongue. On the Congo the Baptists at Stanley Pool are
printing the Bible in Bantu, and at more than one station con
verts are being made by scores and hundreds, with but little
persecution from pagans, and no Moslems there. God is mar-
velously raising up men and movements that are to take this
inland world for Christ. But it must be done by evangelical
Protestantism. Catholic Jesuitism is also there — on the west
coast and on the Congo — but it shows its im-Christly spirit by
not only selling imported rum to the natives, but by actually
having at least one extensi\re distillery of its own, for making
rum from mangoes, and so saving the importer's profits for
itself. And this as Christian missionary work ! Surely more
Crowthers and Hanningtons and Grenfells and Taylors are
needed, for rum and Rome have joined hands in Africa if
not also in America. But Christ shall reign there as every
where else, and Africa shall be one of his crown-jewels erelong.
The sentiment of the Christian world is speaking in thunder
tones against the alcoholization of Africa, as of other uncivil
ized regions. It must and will be heard and heeded ere long ;
and when we have had the grace and righteousness to save
feebler races from this curse, then, perhaps, we shall soon have
enough to save ourselves !
* U-ganda is the country, Wa-ganda the people, and Ki-ganda the language, man
ners, customs, etc. ; as we use the word English adjectively. These same prefixes,
with euphonic variations, extend through a great'range of cognate languages in
Central Africa, among the whole Bantu stock.

VALE