On the bright, accessible side of Africa the Pharaohs built their temples, obelisks, pyramids and sphinxes. When history dawned the seats of Egyptian learning and splendor were already in decay. In her conquest and plunder of a thousand years, victorious Rome met her most valiant antagonists in Africa, and African warriors carried their standards to the very gates of the capitol on the Tiber. In later days the Italian republics which dotted the northern coasts of the Mediterranean found their commercial enterprise and their ascendency on the sea challenged by the Moorish States which comprised the Barbary coast. Still later, when Spain was intent on conquest in America, and the establishment of colonies which would insure the spread of the Catholic religion, Portugal, in a kindred spirit, was pushing her way down the western coast of Africa, acquiring titles by virtue of discovery, establishing empires of unknown extent, founding Catholic missions and churches, striving for commercial exaltation, till her mariners rounded the Cape of Good Hope, turned northward on the eastern shores, and again took up the work of colonizing, from Mozambique to the outlet of the Red Sea.

We never tire of reading the old stories of Portuguese discovery and colonization, and our sympathies are aroused for a people who struggled so heroically to open a new world to the civilization of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But Portuguese effort came to naught, when measured by any modern standard of success. It was baffled by a thousand undreamt of forces. Its failure, however, rendered conspicuous the problem, now more pressing than ever: has the white man a natural mission in Africa? Has not God designed it as the natural home of the dark race? Are not all our visions of conquest and permanent redemption, through and by means of the white races, but idle outcrops of the imagination, or worse, but figments born of our desire to subdue and appropriate? Can compensation come, in the form of commercial, moral or spiritual advantage, adequate to the great sacrifice to be entailed on humanity by substitution of white energy for that which is native to African soil and climate?

It is not worth while to try to answer these questions in the affirmative by appeals to old historic Egypt, to Greek or Roman occupancy, to Arab and Mohammedan ascendancy, to Portuguese conquest and missionary enterprise, to the weird adventures and sad fates of the school of intrepid explorers which preceded and followed the redoubtable Scotchman, Mungo Park, nor to the long role of efforts and enterprises made by the respective nations of Europe to acquire rich slices of African territory, after Portugal began to lose her commercial grip, and after foreign colonization became a European ambition. No, for as yet nothing appears to show that the white man had a mission in Africa, except to gratify his home ambitions, cater to his European pride, satisfy his desire to pilfer, burn and murder. There is no thought yet manifest that the redemption of Africa involved more than the subjugation of her people and the forcible turning to foreign account of her resources. The question has not as yet been asked by the ethnologist, by the grave student of causes and effects, nor even by the calculating adventurer,—“Is there an African destiny which admits the white races as fair and permanent participants, or one which implies universal good when the seeming laws of God respecting the home of nations are reversed?”

Nor does an affirmative answer to any of the above questions arise out of England’s theft of the Cape of Good Hope, and of that sovereignty she now maintains over the Kimberly diamond diggings and the Vaal river sections. National greed or political finesse may excuse much, as the dark science of diplomacy goes, but they do not make clear how far the natural order of things can be changed with benefit to all concerned. This section of Africa is, however, below the tropics, and perhaps does not involve the problem of races so deeply as the equatorial regions.

Let us therefore turn to the real Africa, for further inquiry—that Africa against which Islamism has dashed itself so repeatedly in its efforts to reach the Equator; that Africa whose climate has beaten back Christianity for three centuries; that Africa amid which science has reveled, but before which legitimate trade has stood appalled—the tropical, the new Africa.

In this connection we come upon an order of events, not to say an era, which favors an affirmative answer to the above questions, which plainly point, not to white encroachment, but to white existence and possibilities in the very midst of a continent apparently destined for other purposes. The very fact that new discoveries in Central Africa have revealed vast populations untouched by civilization has opened the eyes of the world to the usual processes of nation-making afresh. Have any people ever risen out of barbarism without external help? What is civilized Europe to-day but a grand intermingling of Greek, Roman, Vandal, Hun, Goth, Celt, and Saracen? Had even North African influence, in some of its better moods, succeeded in crossing the Equator, who knows whether the savagery of the tropics might not have been extinct to-day, or at least wholly different from what it is?

Again, the order of events have brought forth whole masses of data for comparison, for experiment, for substantial knowledge. Who could separate fiction from fact when running over the old, fantastic chronicles? Until within the last fifty years the light of true scientific knowledge and of keener commercial knowledge had not been shed on the Central African situation. It began to dawn when Laird, in 1841, came home to England from the Niger, more of an adventurer than any predecessor, yet with no wild, discrepant tales, but only hard, practical truths, which commerce welcomed and business enterprise could rely on. Legitimate traffic sprang into line, and British trading houses, doing business on honorable terms and for cash values, planted their agents on the Gambia, the Roquelle, the Gold Coast, the Oil Rivers, at Gaboon and Kabinda, along thousands of miles of coast. German houses sprang up, in honorable rivalry, throughout the same extent, and Hamburg and Bremen steamers fairly outstripped those of Liverpool and Glasgow. France, too, came into competition, took permanent hold of territory, cultivated reciprocity with the natives, studied tribal characteristics, encouraged agential responsibility, and brought quite to the surface the problem of white occupancy and development.

Out of all this has grown something which is better than theory respecting the destiny of the respective races in Africa, superior far to all former strifes at mere land-grabbing, and empire building, and sovereignty enrichments. European commerce with the west and southern coast of Africa is now carried on by several regular lines of steamers, besides those owned by numerous large trading firms. The British and African Steam Navigation Company is a modern corporation, and employs 22 steamers. Its older rival, the West African Steamship Company, employs 9 steamers. They dispatch at least one ship a week from Liverpool to West African ports. The Woerman line of steamers runs regularly from Hamburg, the Portuguese line from Lisbon, and the French line from Havre. Then there are two London lines—the Union and Donald Curry. These lines go out heavily freighted with miscellaneous merchandise suitable for the African peoples, among which is, unfortunately, a large per cent. of gin and other intoxicants, and their return cargoes consist of rubber, gum copal, palm-oil, palm kernels, ivory, ground-nuts, beeswax, cocoa, coffee, dye-woods, mahogany, etc., gathered up at their various stopping points. All these are indigenous African products, but it will be observed that those which spring from a cultivated soil figure as next to nothing in the list.

Side by side with these practical sea-going and commercial movements went the unfolding of the interior by those indomitable men who sacrificed personal comfort and risked life that inner Africa might be brought to outer view. This volume is, in part, a record of their adventures and pioneering efforts. Their names—the Bakers, Barths, Schweinfurths, Spekes, Grants, Du Chaillus, Pintos, Livingstones, Stanleys, and others—form a roll which for honor outranks that of the world’s greatest generals. They have built for themselves monuments which shall outlast those dedicated to military conquest, because on them the epitaphs will speak of unselfish endeavor in the name of a common humanity.

What immense problems they had in hand! How heroically they struggled with them, through tangled jungle, dark forest, dense swamps, over plain and mountain, up, down and across unknown lakes and rivers, amid beasts of prey and hostile peoples, in the face of rain, wind and unkind climates! And all the while that they were toiling and dying, what weird and wonderful revelations came, now from the Nile, with its impenetrable sudds, its strange animal life, its teeming populations; now from the magnificent plateaus of the centre with their mighty and enchanting lakes, filled with strange fishes, on whose banks reveled peoples keen for trade or war, happy, if left alone, in smiling gardens and comfortable homes; now from the swift rolling Zambesi, shaded with mighty forests alive with troops of monkeys, vocal with bird songs, swarming with beasts, whose waters dashed here against curved and rocky banks, and there headlong over rocks higher than Niagara, bearing everywhere a burden of life in the shape of savage crocodiles, bellowing hippopotami and ponderous rhinoceri; now from Kalihari, the great desert of the south which balances that of the north, with stunted yet energetic populations, its troops of zebras, ostriches, giraffes, buffaloes, elephants, lions, leopards, making a paradise for hunters, with its salt pans, its strange grasses and incomprehensible geology; now from the great plain regions between the lakes and the water system of the western ocean, where are prairies that vie in extent and fertility with those of the Mississippi valley, where the numerous Dinkas dwell, brave in chase, rich in splendid herds of cattle, with cosy homes, surrounded by plantations of maize and sorghum and bananas; where also the Niam-Niams dwell, equally brave and rich and kind, yet savage when stirred, and formidable with their home-made iron spears and bright battle axes and swords; where too the Monbuttus dwell, rivals of their northern neighbors in agriculture, architecture and art, rich in corn and cattle, protected from intruders by a standing army of agile dwarfs, who know no fear and who make unerring use of their poisoned arrows in cunning ambuscade and in open fields; and now from the Congo itself, stream of African streams, island variegated in one stretch, cataract angered in another, draped with forest foliage everywhere, bounded by fertile shores backed by endless plains, pouring along through riches of gum, dyes, hard-woods such as would enrich kingdoms, supporting a water life as varied and gigantic as any other African lake or river, sustaining a population of incomputable numbers, opening a water way into the very heart of the continent for steamers, inviting the civilized world to come and go, partake and enjoy.

As all these surprising revelations were given to the outer world, by the pioneers of civilization who were struggling within Africa, we began to get new conceptions of situations whose existence never dawned on those who were skimming the ocean’s shores and fighting the battles of commerce. A new world had been brought to light, not only geographically, but as to its soil, water, vegetation, animals, people, climate, and every physical aspect. It was a world to be envied, possessed and reclaimed, because it was one which could be made to contribute to the wealth and happiness of all outside of it. Moreover, it was one to which all could contribute, not only of their better material things, but of their better social and moral things. Commerce decided at once that there was a demand for Africa. Politics cried out for its possession. Humanity and Christianity found a new and solemn duty in Africa.

It was not the province of the first traveler and explorer to argue questions which belong to others and to the future. He could state what he saw and felt—how hot the sun was, what the rain-fall, the quantity and nature of the resources. But when he revealed and mapped a new world, and created a desire for its possession and civilization by others, there was no fighting shy of the problems involved in the proposed new destiny. A thousand and one things would come up which had never arisen before. Many of these problems are of minor moment, many momentous. Some involve others, some are sweeping. There is one which overshadows all. Some would ask, “How shall we go about colonizing and civilizing Africa?” This question is the rind of an apple. At the core is another. Can the proposed colonizers and civilizers exist in Africa? After that is determined, we shall know pretty well how to do the rest.

Of all African explorers, Stanley has made this vital question the most conspicuous, because he, almost alone, has coupled pioneering effort with state building and the colonizing and civilizing process. He has been forced to face the climatic situation since it came squarely across his industrial and commercial plans and involved the question of capital, which is far more sensitive and cowardly than even human life.

Stanley’s personal career in Africa, as well as his extensive experience with others, goes far to establish the fact that the white race cannot transfer itself bodily and permanently to tropical African soil, with the hope of survival. The difficulty is not because it is white, but because its customs and environment are at variance with those which perpetuate life and conduce to labor under the Equator.

In the north temperate zone a man may believe himself capable of persistent effort and heroic work. He may think he has intelligence, valor and strength sufficient to sustain him under the greatest privations. But land him in Africa and he is both witless and nerveless. He has never learned the art of living the life that is required there. He is not the same being he was when he started out so hopefully and valorously. He finds he lacks equipment for his new existence, mental, moral and physical. A sacrifice is demanded. It is the sacrifice of an almost perfect transformation, or else the confession of failure must conclude his career.

Stanley’s most melancholy chapters are those which narrate the oozing out of ambitions, the confessions of cowardice, and the shirking away of his white companions, on the discovery that their civilized lives had been no school of preparation for healthful, energetic and useful existence in Equatorial Africa. It was a painful study to note how in the face of tropical realities, the fervid imaginations and exaggerated anticipations which had led them heroically on took flight, leaving them hapless malingerers, hopeless despondents, and unfit for anything but retreat. He had no fault to find where brave men fell through actual physical weakness, but the general fault, the grave, almost unpardonable mistake, was the terrible one of not knowing what they were at home and what they were to be in Africa. He says:—“The influence of the wine or beer, which at the first offset from Europe had acted on their impulses like the effect of quinine on weakened nerves, soon evaporated in a wineless land, and with their general ignorance of adaptation to foreign circumstances, and a steady need of the exhilarating influence of customary stimulants, an unconquerable depression usurped the high-blown courage it inspired, which some called nostalgia (home-sickness) and some hypochondria. Many had also, as they themselves confessed, come out merely to see the great river. Their imaginations had run riot amid herds of destructive elephants, rapacious lions, charging buffaloes, bellowing hippopotami, and repugnant rhinoceri, while the tall lithe-necked giraffe and the graceful zebra occupied the foreground of those most unreal pictures. Their senses had also been fired by the looks of love and admiration cast on them by their sweethearts, as they declared their intention to ‘go out to the Congo regions,’ while many a pleasant hour must have been spent together as they examined the strange equipments, the elephant-rifles, the penetrative ‘Express,’ and described in glowing terms their life in the far off palmy lands watered by the winding Ikelemba or the mighty Congo. Thus they had deluded themselves as well as the International Committee, whose members looked with eyes of commendation as the inspired heroes delivered with bated breath their unalterable resolution to ‘do or die.’

“But death was slow to attack the valorous braves while the doable lay largely extended before them. The latter was always present with its exasperating plainness, its undeniable imperativeness which affronted their ‘susceptibilities,’ and ignored their titles and rights to distinction. The stern every-day reality, the meagre diet and forbidding aspect, humbled their presumption. When they hear that in this land there is neither wine nor beer, as they have known them, nor comfortable cognac to relieve the gnawing, distressful hankering they suffered for their usual beverages, their hearts beat more feebly. They begin to see that those bright African images and beautiful dreams of tropical scenery and excitement are replaced by unknown breadths of woodless regions, exuberant only with tall spear grass and jungly scrub. The hot sun dares them to the trial of forcing a way through such scarcely penetrable growth. Distance and fatigue, seeming to be immense beyond any former conception, masters their resolution; and, alas! and alas! there are no fair maidens with golden hair to admire their noble efforts at doing and dying.

“Conscience, or the prickings of shame, may whisper to a few not quite lost in despondency, that there is brave work to be performed, and that they may experience the colonist’s pleasure of seeing the vegetables, fruit-trees and plants grow instead of that cane-grass and jungle now covering the broad acreage. But some answer, ‘Bah! I did not come to work; I came to hunt, to play, to eat, and to receive a big salary from the Commission.’

“‘Do you feel fatigued? Try some hot tea or coffee.’

“‘What!’ shriek they. ‘Try Congo water! No, thank you; my stomach was made for something better than to become a nest for young crocodiles.’”

In all the foregoing Stanley speaks of the white help that was furnished him for his mission to found the Congo Free State. The help was of a high grade, being composed of men who came recommended to the Commission. They were selected for their valor and skill at home and for their professed willingness to brave African climate and all the dangers of exploration and colonization. They were for the most part educated men and well qualified to engineer roads, build comfortable homes, establish trading and military stations, carry on just commerce and exercise wise government over consenting tribes and contiguous territories. They were young, ambitious men, who had their fames and fortunes to make and to whom failure at home would have been a misfortune and disgrace. Indeed, if one had been going to pick out a body of men for the express purpose of testing the question whether it is possible for the white races to exist and thrive in tropical Africa, establish civilized governments, cultivate the soil, carry on manufactures and commerce, redeem the natives, and introduce institutions such as are found at home, these would have been the men.

But let us see how they fared. Stanley takes one as a sample—he does not fail to make honorable exceptions of those who behaved differently,—and this one perhaps, the loudest professor, at the start, of heroic zeal in his undertaking. He is conducted to the site of a newly established station and endowed with full authority. He is given an army of forty disciplined blacks, and two or three of his own color are left with him as companion and assistants. He is made a rich banker for the surrounding tribes by heaps of cloth bales, bags of beads, and bundles of brass-rods, the bank notes of the country, with full liberty to circulate them to the best advantage. The river at his feet swarms with fish of edible varieties, which he may catch in plenty, if he chooses to imitate the industry and ingenuity of the natives. The surrounding villages are full of fowls, and eggs are plenty. Sheep and goats can always be had, if the slightest attention is paid to their grazing and to their protection against wild beasts. In the west, goat’s milk, and in the centre and east, cow’s milk, can be had with little trouble. The natives, almost everywhere, raise sweet potatoes in abundance and sell them cheaply. Most villages have their fields of cassava, whose root yields a wholesome food, which can be prepared in a variety of agreeable ways. All of the ordinary garden vegetables, as tomatoes, beans, pumpkins, and onions can be grown with easy tillage. In his commissariat are stores of rice, canned vegetables, wheat flour, fish, meats, and soups from Europe, together with tea, coffee, butter, jam, condensed-milk, and in fact everything to tempt a palled palate or a weak stomach. The question of food is therefore settled in such a manner as to require very little exertion or sacrifice to make the supply permanent, varied and wholesome.

What else is required? A strong block house is built, and this is surrounded by a comfortable dwelling, erected after the manner of the neatly thatched huts of the natives, or even after the more approved architecture of civilization, if time permits and the proper materials are at hand. A palaver is called and whites and natives put themselves on political and also commercial equality, with as much of social relationship as suits the tastes of either party. The solemn treaty is approved and promulgated, and the commandant of the station, governor of a province, official of a great state, arbiter of the destiny of tribes, custodian of the welfare of peoples, minister, judge, doctor, commercial agent, the man to whom civilization is looking as founder, teacher and exemplar; this wonderful man, so full of pride and responsibility, so exalted with a sense of duty, so endowed with grand opportunity, is ready for his instructions and commission. His domain is pointed out and the fact is impressed on him that it has been acquired with the sanction of the civilized world and that of the only parties on African soil capable of giving consent. He is left as master and sole arbiter of all questions that may arise, and only asked by the power that institutes him to be just in his dealings with the peoples he is to govern, to extend kindness to those for whom he has been made a protector, to prove that the authority imposed has not been misplaced. He is furnished with a written draft of instructions which is to be his code of laws, his state constitution, his plan for founding and developing his little empire. Could anything be more flattering to one’s ambitions? What greater inducement could one want to exercise every latent energy, to found deeply, build well and rule wisely? Visions of a future state, crowded with obedient, industrious subjects, crowned with wealth and prosperity, shedding lustre on its ruler, proclaiming to the world the success of a first and glorious experiment, ought to stimulate even the most indifferent to sublime endeavor.

But a few months passes, during which the embryo potentate is left to himself. Then along comes Stanley, from an up-river journey, on a tour of inspection. Where he expects to see his block-house and cottages expanded into a substantial village, he witnesses only roofless structures, exposed goods and every evidence of decay. Rank weeds grow where a site had been cleared for a vegetable garden, and the forest is asserting itself on the ground prepared for a banana orchard. Perhaps the natives have been angered, for they hold the capital in a state of siege, the stores are empty and grim famine stalks where plenty should have reigned. Or else, not being bloody-minded, they withhold their help and presence, and leave a trading mart to perish through sheer disinclination to traffic. He who was to have been a ruler is worse off than a subject. Where ambition should have stimulated, indifference prevails. Industry has been lost in idleness. Glory has ended in shame. One word of comment, one look of reproach, brings a resignation and an abandonment, and the once proud adventurer who went out to see and conquer strange worlds, beats a hasty retreat to his comfortable European home to curse his folly and denounce the spirit that sought to sacrifice him. Failure is written between every line of the long story with which he regales his friends as he drops back into his old haunts and resumes the thread of civilized life, once so willingly broken by dreams of glory, wealth and humanitarian good.

It may seem a surprise to the reader that Africa could so disillusion enthusiasts of the character above described. But he has only to follow Stanley along the line of the Congo, from one station to the other, and witness his disappointment on his return journey, to ascertain how frequent the failures were to improve opportunity or make even the slightest show of progress in building and cultivating. Nay more, since nothing could stand still, the signs of retrogression were still more frequent, and ruin marked the spots which he had dedicated to enterprise and prosperity. Why were these men so radically transformed? This is a mighty question. Was it the fault of Africa or of Europe?

Stanley reasons thus: “The conditions of a healthy enjoyment of life in Africa are very little understood by men of this class. It is a difficult thing to impart to them the rudiments of the lesson of life. It is a most thankless task, and the effort to do so is so ungraciously received that I have often been repelled by the visible signs of non-appreciation. Rarely have I been encouraged to proceed by those to whom counsel was addressed. They do not seem to take any interest in what concerns their own health. They duly acknowledge that it is a duty they owe to themselves to be as careful as possible; they are civil with replies and ready with promises of amendment. But they do not practice what they promise, and that active zeal and watchful prudence which would seem to govern one who loves his own life and welfare I rarely see exhibited. The performance appears to be too irksome, and neither their intelligence nor their conscience is provoked to assist them. I remember Frank Pocock, who must (almost as the sound of my voice died away) have been meditating on that step by which he lost his life, and which caused me, for months, a pang of sorrow, each time I thought of his sad end.

“I have observed also that not only in matters of self-preservation is this apathy evident, but that it is present in the every day duty of the expedition, which they are pledged to perform and for which they receive compensation. Any single order they will perform well and creditably, but if I accompany it with the expression of a hope that they will consider it a daily duty, the order becomes at once inoperative and is never observed. I have observed that such an order is too general to be followed; but a particular order will be mechanically obeyed. A promise of promotion, or higher pay, or a display of tender solicitude, creates no impression, and as yet I know of no motive powerful enough to excite a European or West African aborigine to distinguish himself by an assiduous interest in general work. The only people on whom my words created a prolonged impression were the foreign colored employes. Now to what may I attribute this absence of intelligent interest in their work which is characteristic of the European and the west coast native? Is it to the climate? Then why did it not affect all alike? Why did it not affect myself?

“But of all the rabid absurdities I have encountered in the tropics, the preaching of a young fool on the merits of intoxicants, who has heard it from an old fool that there is nothing like whiskey, astonishes me most. Mr. Puffyface, while in a semi-maudlin state, has been heard declaring, in the hearing of a youthful enthusiast, that ‘after fourteen years’ experience with the African fever, despite all that may be said against it, there is nothing like whiskey for curing it,’ For the benefit of after-comers let me prick this bloated bubble. Show me one of those old bloaters on the west coast of Africa and I will show you a sham and delusion. A few hours’ hard work in the interior would lay the lazy lion as low as a dead donkey. Gin and whiskey topers have lived long elsewhere than on the Niger and Congo, but if you meet him on the African coast a glance at his shirt will tell you the whole truth. If it is free from stains of bodily exudation, then he has simply been ‘sojering,’ and it will be difficult to say how long a time must elapse before the liver shows a deadly abscess or becomes indurated. But if you want to do humanity a kindness, trot him out on a ten-mile march through the African wilderness, and note the result.

“On the Congo, where men must work and bodily movement is compulsory, the very atmosphere seems to be fatally hostile to men who pin their faith on whiskey, gin and brandy. They invariably succumb and are a constant source of anxiety and expense. Even if they are not finally buried out of sight and memory, they are so utterly helpless, diseases germinate in them with such frightful rapidity, symptoms of insanity are so frequent, mind-vacancy and semi-paralysis are so common, that they are hurried homeward, lest they draw down a few more curses on Africa which apply only to themselves.

“The evils of brandy and soda in India need only be remembered to prove how pernicious is the suicidal habit of indulgence in alcoholic liquors in hot climates. The west coast of Africa is also too much indebted to the ruin effected by intemperance.

“But it is my belief that the other extreme is unwise. To abstain entirely from drinking wine because intemperance is madness, is not what I inculcate, nor do I even recommend drinking in what is called moderation. I do not advocate ‘liquoring up’ at any time, provided the drinker keeps within the limits of sobriety. I advise no one, in the tropics, to touch liquor during the hours of daylight, unless prescribed by a medical man. Wine, good red or white wine, should be taken only after sunset at dinner. Then it should be watered and taken in moderate quantities, that it may sooth the nerves and conduce to early sleep. After a full night’s rest, one will rise with a clear head and clean tongue, and can as easily do a full day’s work in the tropics as in the temperate latitudes.”

Stanley then goes on to correct misapprehensions about African climate and lay down rules of conduct which, if followed, would go far to insure a healthful condition. He takes a young European adventurer to the Congo, full of health and of the spirit of adventure. As soon as the anchor drops at Banana Point, the young man feels the perspiration exuding till his flannels, comfortable at sea, become almost unendurable. On stepping ashore the warmth increases and the flannels absorb perspiration till they cling to the body and oppress him with their weight. The underclothing is saturated, and he resembles a water-jug covered with woolen cloth. The youth makes an escape from this melting heat of 100° to 115° by going to the veranda of some friendly quarters. Here he does not observe that the temperature is 25° cooler, but mops his brow, fans himself, lolls in his easy chair, and sighs at the oppressiveness. Presently some one recommends the reviving quality of wine. Anything to lift him out of the condition he is in! One drink gives him freshness and courage. Another reconciles him to the strange situation. A third produces conviviality, and then, in the midst of story-telling companions, who spin rare old yarns of coast fevers, elephant adventures, crocodile attacks, hippo-escapades, “nigger” sensations, evening draws on. There is dinner and more wine. Then comes the veranda again. It is now cool, delicious, inviting. He has forgotten his damp clothing. Bed-time comes. He retires to toss till morning, or to sleep in the midst of horrid dreams. When he rises, he is unwell. His tongue is furred and a strange lassitude pervades his body. Nausea sets in. In a few hours his face is flushed, his eyes water, his pulse runs high. The doctor is called, and he pronounces it a case of African fever. He is given a kind native nurse. The battle of sickness is fought to an end. Death may ensue, but the chances are always in favor of recovery, though convalescence is slow.

Of a score who have witnessed this sight, each will have a theory. One will say, “What a pity he left his mother!” Another, “It must have been some organic weakness.” Another, “It was hereditary.” Another will cry out, “One more African victim!” The last one, and he as if in doubt and in an undertone, may venture to surmise that too much Portuguese wine may have been at the bottom of it—which is as bad as brandy.

The truth of the matter is, ignorance was at the bottom of it all. The young man may not have thought he was sitting in a cool night air, according to his European notions of temperature, but an evening in Africa, or a draught of air, presents as dangerous a contrast with midday heat, or as insidious a cause for congestion, as in any other country. Stanley suffered with 120 attacks of fever, great and slight, and endured fully 100 of them before he began to suspect that other causes existed for them besides malaria and miasma, or that he had within himself a better preventive than quinine. His observations, directed toward the last to this one point, utterly astounded him with the fact that the most sickness might have been witnessed at those stations which were not surrounded by putrifying vegetation, but had been selected so as to secure the highest degree of health. Old Vivi is one of these spots, situated on a rocky platform, with steep drainage, and with the majestic river dashing off between the slopes of high mountains for a distance of forty miles. Yet Old Vivi is, with the exception of Manyanga, the sickliest spot in all the Congo Free State, according to his observations. If all preconceived notions of health had been correct, Old Vivi should be the healthiest spot on the Congo, certainly far more so than scores of the Upper Congo stations, situated within ten feet of the water’s edge and surrounded by hundreds of square miles of flat, black loam covered with dense, damp forests. Yet to dispatch the fever-stricken and emaciated sojourners of Old Vivi, Manyanga or Leopoldville to some one of these upper, isolated and shaded stations, proved to be like sending them to a sanitarium in the pine-woods or by the sea shore. The change is simply astounding. The patient takes on flesh, grows ruddy, healthful, pliant and hopeful.

Stanley had much anxiety about the station at Kinshassa, because it was so low-lying, though in every other way convenient. But, strange to say, one of his commandants who was always feverish at Vivi, Manyanga and Leopoldville, escaped without an attack of fever, or any other indisposition, for eighteen months, when stationed at Kinshassa. He was equally anxious about Equator Station, situated as it was directly under the Equator. But the commandants all praise the climate as capital, with plenty of native products at hand, and no need of anything foreign except a little tea and coffee. Of the 29 Europeans in the service of the Congo Free State above Leopoldville, all served their three year term of service except two who were drowned, one who died of sickness and one who resigned on account of severe illness. The inference from these facts is that the nearer the coast the stations are and the more accessible they are by steamers, the better the facilities are for stores of whiskey, brandy and wines, whose free use is an invitation to African sickness. Also, that the further inland one goes the more experience he acquires as to the means of preserving health. Every day’s march inland is a species of acclimatization and a removal from temptation. It is a putting off of ignorance and a putting on of knowledge. Again, the farther up the Congo one goes the more he is freed from the draughts which haunt the caÑons of the lower streams. While Vivi is an ideal spot so far as every visible hygienic consideration goes, it is at the top of an immense funnel with its wide end toward the sea, and the sea breezes sweep up the channel with cumulative vigor, producing a difference of temperature between day and night, or shade and sunshine, which is fatal to the overheated toiler. And the same may be said of Manyanga and Leopoldville. But the wide, lacustrine stretches of Stanley Pool dissipate this deadly draught and equalize the day and night and sunshine and shade temperatures. Thus inner Central Africa becomes even healthier than the coast rind, as it were by natural laws. From which arises the strange anomaly that at the Equator it is not African heat a foreigner need dread so much as African cold.

Yet no precaution against the oppressive heat must be neglected. And this precaution must become a law of life. It must not be spasmodic and remitting, but must be daily and hourly, in fact must be persisted in till the whole habit conforms to the environment, just as at home amid civilization. Captain Benton, after his visit to the Congo, proclaimed beef and beer as the true fortifying agents against the climate. Stanley says nay. Beef, he admits to be all right, in the sense of good, nourishing food. But, not beef alone, so much as that wholesome variety found in well cooked beef, mutton, game, fish and fowl, intermixed with potatoes, turnips, cabbages, beets, carrots, bread, butter, tea and coffee. Beers of civilization are too bilious for Africa, and the distilled spirits are fatally stimulating, leading up to a false courage which may tempt one to too much effort or to dangerous exposure to the sun’s rays. The Duke of Wellington’s health receipt for India is equally good in Africa: “I know of but one receipt for good health in this country, and that is to live moderately, drink little or no wine, use exercise, keep the mind employed, keep in a good humor with the world. The last is the most difficult, for I have often observed, there is scarcely a good-tempered man in India.”

Moderation is the key to health in central Africa. It must be moderation in action, food and drink. Yet there must be engagement of body and mind, great good humor, contentment with surroundings. A lesson in these respects might be learned from the natives. It is often and truthfully said, that they are the happiest and freest from care of any people on the face of the globe. “Take no thought of the morrow, for ye know not what a day may bring forth,” is the gospel of health among Africans. Prodigal nature helps them to a philosophy, which we may call shiftless ease, happy-go-lucky-effort, or go-as-you-please contentment, but it, nevertheless, is only a crude modification of our more deliberately framed and higher sounding hygienic codes for the preservation of health when we are in their land and subject to their climate and conditions of living and working.

Stanley exemplifies the effect of African cold in another way. In ascending the Congo in his steamers, the entire party enjoyed excellent health, notwithstanding the confinement to the stream and the almost continuous passage through reedy islands and along low, swampy shores. But on the descent, the swifter passage of the boats in the face of the prevailing west winds, and river draughts, produced a chill, during moments of inaction, which prostrated many of the crew, and resulted in serious cases of sickness. Anywhere under shelter, the body continued to perspire insensibly, but the moment it was struck by the wind, there resulted a condition which invariably ended in low fever.

For the ill-health due to African cold, especially where the situation is like that at Vivi, the rainy season is a corrective, because then the cold winds cease and the temperature is uniform. But at the same time, the rainy season is the prelude to sickness in the lower and better protected situations. The Livingstone Congo Mission at Manteka is in a snug nest between high hills, entirely cut off from winds, and surrounded by beautiful gardens of bananas and papaws. Ordinarily it is a healthful spot, and ought to be so always, if freedom from exposure is a law of health. But after the rainy season it is unhealthy. A peculiarly clear atmosphere and a correspondingly hot sun follow the African rains. These cause rapid earth exhalations which rise up around the body like a cloud, and soon deluge the person with perspiration. These exhalations bear the odors of decaying vegetation and become as pernicious as the effluvia from a dung-heap, unless resort is had to the heat of stoves or fire-places to counteract their deadly effects. Due care in this respect is all that is required to insure immunity from sickness caused by these evaporations.

Even the plateaus are not exempt from fevers. But they for the most part are covered with long grass. Vegetation so luxuriant, falling and decaying, constantly fermenting and fertilizing, would be a source of sickness anywhere. When once they are cleared and planted to corn, wheat or vegetables, this source of sickness will disappear. A well ventilated home, in the midst of a cleared and cultivated plateau, is as healthful in Africa as in any other part of the world. The lessons of health taught daily by the natives ought to be a constant study for foreigners. They fight entirely shy of the caÑons of the Congo, whereas at Stanley Pool there is an army of ivory-traders. Then the immediate banks of the river are comparatively deserted, except where the spaces are open. The gorges, and deep valleys of tributaries, are by no means favorite dwelling places, though they are too often the sites of mission-houses and trading posts. The fetishes of the natives could not prevail against disease in the hollows and shaded nooks of their land, nor can the drugs of the white races. The native seeks a cleared space, open to sunshine, elevated so as to insure circulation of air, and for the most part, he looks down on the less favorable abodes of the foreigner.

Stanley summarizes the causes of ill-health in Africa, and arranges them in the order of effectiveness. He gives as the most serious (1) cold draughts. (2) Malarious hollows. (3) Intemperate living. (4) Lack of nourishing food. (5) Physical weakness, indolence of mind and body, general fool-hardiness. One source of encouragement became manifest as years rolled by, and that was the constant diminution of illness among the officials of the Congo Free State. This was in some degree due to the doctrine of “survival of the fittest,” looked upon from a constitutional standpoint, but in the main to the willingness of the survivors to learn, and their learning consisted in putting away the habits they had formed abroad and the assumption of those which fitted their new estate.

Owing to the formation of the African continent, with its fringe of low land and its miles of slope up to the central plateau, the prevailing winds sweep inland from the ocean, over the pestilential lowlands, bearing the seeds of disease. This meteorological law must be met by the inland dwellers, in order to secure immunity from disease. And it can be met very readily, as experience proves, by the planting of tree barriers on the ocean side of residences and plantations.

Stanley’s observations thus far relate to the climatology of central Africa as affecting the health of the white resident. He next discusses the question of tropical heat as it affects the effort of the white races. The intensity of the Congo heat is by no means such as the casual reader would suspect. An average of the highest temperatures in the year gives a mean of only 90°, while that of the lowest gives a mean of 67°. Clad in suitable clothes a European or American can do as much work in a day in Africa as at home, provided he works under an awning or roof. In the sun, the temperature is, of a clear day, as much as 115°, which would be fatal to one standing still. The ill-effects of such a heat are seldom apparent on a march, though for the comfort of all concerned Stanley usually limited his marching hours to from 6 A.M. to 11 A.M., thus giving ample time to prepare evening camps and to rest, feed and recuperate.

In tropical Africa there is manifest coolness for three months of the year. During the other nine months there is so much cloud and such an abundance of tempering breezes, as to prevent that intense heat which one would expect under the Equator or within the tropics. The nights are seldom oppressive, and though in temperate latitudes one might not feel the need of a blanket, such an article becomes an indispensable luxury in Africa.

At any point where facilities offer, as at a factory, trading station or mission, there is no need of exposure to the sun during work hours. Awnings are, or should be, a part of the equipment of every white African sojourner, but if these are wanting the trees are plenty, and their gracious shade will answer as a substitute. Few craftsmen in any country are compelled to work without cover, and it requires but an extension of the rule to make labor safe in Africa.

Exercise of any kind in Africa induces copious perspiration, and it should never be forgotten that between a state of action in the sun, or even under cover, and a state of rest in the shade, means a difference in temperature equal to 25°. This is a sure cause of congestion and other bodily derangements. It is the one invariable climatic law in Africa, and is wholly different from that at Para, where the variations are only 9°, thus insuring immunity from all diseases which have a cause in sudden or radical changes of temperature. Climatic inequality is deadlier in Equatorial Africa than its malaria. Yet it can be guarded against, and that too by the simplest precautions.

The early explorers, pioneers and commercial agents in Africa, especially on the west coast, were ignorant of the foregoing facts. Hence so many of them lost their lives needlessly. Hence the terrible stories borne home of the deadly effect of African heat and climate. They had never studied the law of adaptation, and instead of helping to solve the problem of white occupancy they only contributed to its defeat. In the wiser experience of Stanley a secret has been brought forth which, in its bearing upon the future of the country, is not even surpassed in importance by the opening of the Congo itself.

Tropical food is of as much moment to a foreigner as climate. It is clear that alcoholic stimulants are dangerous. Tea has a depressing tendency and the same may be said of coffee, though both are grateful, for a time at least. Cocoa tends to biliousness. Milk is hard to obtain on the west coast, though it may be had in the cattle producing sections of the centre and east. Soup implies fresh meat, and is therefore limited to the broth of the goat, sheep or chicken, unless it come in canned shape. Palm-wine, except when fresh, injures the kidneys and stomach. All taste is soon lost for the canned goods of civilization. Flour, rice and the native fruits and vegetables are wholesome standards.

Stanley’s code of health for the white sojourner in Africa would be as follows:—

Never build a house, factory or mission in a ravine or valley which may serve as a wind channel. Air must diffuse itself generally and gently. Points near the sea, plateaus and open plains are the safest localities for homes. All lower stories should be clear of the ground. In grassy sections the first floor should be elevated to the height of a second story.

Avoid all unnecessary exposure to the sun.

Guard against fogs, dews, exhalations, and night chills, by kindling fires.

Preserve a generous diet, avoiding oily and fatty foods.

Meats should not be eaten in large quantities at breakfast.

Take an early dinner, say at 11 o’clock, and let it be of meats, fish and vegetables. Cease work till 1 P.M.

Quit work at 6 P.M., and eat a second dinner, boiled fish, roast fowl or mutton, with plenty of vegetables. A glass of watered wine will not hurt then.

Seek amusement in social conversation, reading or games, till 9 P.M., and then retire.

Sleep on blankets, and cover with a blanket.

If marching, rise at 5 A.M., march at 6, and halt for the day at 11 A.M. When halted, seek shelter and put on a heavier coat.

Observe the strictest temperance. Don’t indulge in tonics or nostrums. A little quinine is the safest tonic. If thirsty drop an acid powder in your drinking water, or take a sip of cold tea.

Use an umbrella when in the sun. The best head dress is a cork helmet, or Congo cap.

If in a perspiration when wetted by rain or at a river crossing, change your dress immediately.

Go on a march in very light clothing, and let it be of flannel, with light russet shoes for the feet.

When permanently stationed, wear light clothing in order to avoid excessive perspiration when called on for sudden duty.

Don’t fail to exercise freely. Have certain hours for it, morning and evening, if your work is in doors.

Do not bathe in cold water, especially after you are in the country for a time. Water below 85° in temperature is dangerous.

Tropical fruits should be eaten only at breakfast.

Medicines specially prepared for tropical diseases can always be had of European druggists, and a supply should be on hand.

The diseases of central Africa are simple, consisting of dysentery and three kinds of fever, ague, remittent, and bilious.

Common ague is never fatal. It may be prevented, if one observes the symptoms.

The remittent fever is simply aggravated ague, it may last for several days.

The bilious fever is often pernicious. Its severity depends on the habits of the patient, the amount of exposure which produced it, and the strength of the constitution. It is preventable, but not by brandy or excessive smoking, as many foolish people think.

Dr. Martin, in his work on the “Influences of Tropical Climates,” also lays down a code which is both interesting and valuable.

1. Care in diet, clothing and exercise are more essential for the preservation of health than medical treatment.

2. The real way to escape disease is by observing strict temperance, and to moderate the heat by all possible means.

3. After heat has morbifically predisposed the body, the sudden influence of cold has the most baneful effect on the human frame.

4. The great physiological rule for preserving health in hot climates is to keep the body cool. Common sense points out the propriety of avoiding heating drinks.

5. The cold bath is death in the collapse which follows any great fatigue of body or mind.

6. Licentious indulgence is far more dangerous and destructive than in Europe.

7. A large amount of animal food, instead of giving strength, heats the blood, renders the system feverish, and consequently weakens the whole body.

8. Bread is one of the best articles of diet. Rice and split vetches are wholesome and nutritious. Vegetables are essential to good health, as carrots, turnips, onions, native greens, etc.

9. Fruit, when sound and ripe, is beneficial rather than hurtful.

10. The same amount of stimulant undiluted, is much more injurious than when mixed with water.

11. With ordinary precaution and attention to the common laws of hygiene, Europeans may live as long in the tropics as anywhere else.

Stanley’s final observation on the existence of the white race in Africa does not smack of the confidence he has thus far striven to inspire. Yet it does not suggest an impossibility, nor anything difficult to carry out, since the continent is so contiguous to Europe. He recommends a change of scene to the African denizen for at least three months in a year, because the constant high temperature assisted by the monotony and poverty of diet, is enervating and depressing. The physical system becomes debilitated by the heat, necessitating after a few years such recuperation as can be found only in temperate latitudes. Even with persons who retain health, this enervating feeling begins to dawn at the end of eighteen mouths; hence traders, missionaries, planters and agriculturists, who hope to keep up buoyancy of spirit and such a condition of body as will resist the climate through a lifetime, should seek the periodical relaxation to be found in trips to higher latitudes.

While this may not be giving his whole case away, or indeed suggesting nothing more than such change of scene as our own physicians recommend to overtaxed business men, it, nevertheless, brings up the ultimate question of natural and permanent fitness. Suppose that all fear of African climate is eliminated from the mind of the white man. Suppose it is settled that he can survive there to a good old age, by using the precautions herein laid down. Will any traveler, climatologist or ethnologist arise and tell us that the white man can escape physical degeneracy in the tropics? As his African offspring come and go for a few generations, will there not be a gradual loss of the hardihood which temperate climates encourage, and a gradual growth of that languor and effeminacy which equatorial climates engender? The presence of the white races in Africa can neither reverse the laws of their existence and growth, nor the laws which God has given to a tropical realm. Living nature, including man, is simply obedience to an environment. We agree to this in the vegetable world. The oak of our forest is the puny lichen of the arctic regions. The palm of the tropics withers before northern frost. Reverse the order, and the lichen dries up beneath a tropical sun. The oak finds nothing congenial in African soil. As to the lower animals, it is the same. Stanley found both mule and donkey power ineffective on the Congo. Livingstone’s mules were bitten by the tsetse fly on Nyassa and died a miserable death from ulcers. The horse dwindles away within the tropics. The camel fared no better than the mule with Livingstone, though the Arab may be said to have conquered the Great Sahara with it, and Col. Baker used it to overcome Nile distances which defied his boats. Even the native and trained buffalo was a failure with Livingstone when he attempted to make it a beast of burden through Nyassaland and into the Upper Congo section, notwithstanding the fact that it had been invaluable to him below the tropics, and in the form of the native ox is in daily use as a beast of burden and travel in the Kalihari regions. So take the elephant, lion, leopard, hippopotamus, alligator, soko, monkey, the birds, the fishes, and transport them north; how quickly they cease to propagate, and in the end perish! Thus far living nature seems to obey the immutable law of environment. It is equally so with the higher animal life which we find in man. The negroes, who were torn from their native soil by the cruel hand of slavery, could not be transplanted with success in latitudes remote from the tropics. It cannot yet be proved that the white races will deteriorate and grow effeminate in tropical Africa, but as to other tropical countries it is established that white energy is gradually lost in effeminacy wherever it persists in the unnatural attempt to face the eternal blaze of the equatorial sun.

It is well to study these things amid the glowing imagery of African vegetation, soil and resource, the unseemly scamper of the nations for African possessions, the enthusiasm over Christian conquest and heathen redemption. The real transforming power of the continent may not be at all in white occupancy; it cannot be, if such occupancy means white degeneracy, or such a sacrifice as the situation does not warrant. But it may lie, more wholly than any one living suspects, in the natives themselves, assisted and encouraged by the leaven of civilization, gradually introduced. They are there naturally and for a purpose. God will not alter his laws, and man cannot, brave as the latter may be, fond as he may be of possession and power, lustful as he may be of wealth, boastful as he may be of his civilization, proud as he may be of his humanitarianism, desirous as he may be to convert and Christianize. Africa means 200,000,000 of people, backed by a peculiar climate, fortified by an environment which is as old as the beginning of things. Let the civilization which is foreign to it all beware how it strikes it, lest, in the end, the effort prove a sad confession of failure. The good which is to come out of African elevation should be reciprocal. It is not good if it presupposes white occupancy followed by white degeneracy.

Centuries ago the brave, enthusiastic Saracen, propagandist of a faith, warrior for the sake of Mohammed, left his Arabian home and went forth into pagan Africa on a mission of conquest and conversion. Granting that Egypt, the Barbary States and the Oases of the Sahara are better off to-day than they were when they first caught sight of the victorious banners of the crescent, which is admitting all the truth will allow, how much superior to the chivalrous Saracen is the bigoted Mahdi, his depraved Soudan follower, or the Arab slave stealer, who is ubiquitous in east-central Africa to-day? There is a wonderful, a sad, descent from the Saracen conqueror to a benighted Mahdist. The contrast between a chief of Arabian troopers and such a chief as Tippoo Tib is enough to show degeneracy of the most ultra type. The brave, fiery Saracen, sweeping along the coasts and through the deserts, was a being infinitely superior to anything he came in contact with. His progeny, after centuries of acclimatization and intercourse with the native populations, is a lazy, inferior being, a curse to his surroundings, not half such a man as the native whom he plunders and carries off as human booty. He has failed to lift Africa to the height of a Mohammedan civilization, and has descended to a level even lower than the paganism with which he came in contact. Do not forget that in many respects he had adaptation superior to that any European or American can claim. He was contiguous to Africa. He had been reared under a burning sun. His color was dark. His heath was sandy like the sands of Egypt and Sahara. His ship was the camel which became the courser of the African wastes and by means of which he could connect the Nile bends more swiftly than we can do to-day with steamers. He had all the enthusiasm and persistency of a Christian missionary, all the ardor of an English merchant, all the vigor of a civilized pioneer, all the desire for possession of a monarchical potentate. Yet he degenerated into a thief of men and a murderer of innocence. The least respected, the crudest and most useless man on the face of the globe to-day is an Arab slave catcher. The chivalry of his fathers has no place in his bosom. The industry and the sense of beauty and refinement which the Moor carried northward into Spain were utterly lost in the swing toward the tropics. The Allah and Koran of Mecca are profane mummery in the Soudan, at Zanzibar, and on the banks of Tanganyika. It is not necessary to inquire what inherent causes helped to contribute to this deplorable result. We know that vital defects existed in the Mohammedan system, and that these defects were in part to blame. The only inquiry we make is, how much of that result was due to the African climate, the impact with tropical peoples and customs, the equatorial environment? For some cause, or better still, for all causes combined, the last end of the Arab in Africa is worse than the first.

If we study the impact on Africa of the Christian civilization of Portugal and even that of England, in its earlier stages, the result is not encouraging. The ruins of both trading and mission posts are sad witnesses of a misunderstanding of the true situation, or else monuments of a surrender to climatic difficulties which had not been anticipated. Our civilization was called off from a mad chase after the impossible, and it required years, even centuries, of consideration, before it dared a second attempt. In the meantime it learned much and in various ways. Inert, supine Portugal taught valuable lessons by her very incapacity. Patient Holland gave a valuable object lesson by peaceable conquests and her amalgamation with the South African peoples. All-conquering, commercial and Christian England afterwards came along to gather the harvests which others had sowed, yet to prove that something valuable in the shape of permanent colonization could be effected south of the tropics, and with mutual advantage. The pioneering spirit broke out as it had never done before, and out of it came lesson after lesson, of which certainly none were more valuable than those furnished by Stanley’s brave experiences.

Whatever may be the future of the white race in Africa, it is certain that, just now, no consideration of climate, distance or inaccessibility, weighs to cool the enthusiasm of Christianity as it marches to a conquest of heathenism in equatorial wilds. It is face to face with all the problems above stated and may be the means of solving many of them favorably. It deserves a better fate than any that has hitherto befallen it. But the fate of all former outbursts and experiments should prove a standing warning. Missionaries are only men. The cause of God, as well as that of commerce, agriculture, science and art, may be best subserved by using God’s natural forces and observing his immutable laws.

In a political sense, the mission of the white races in Africa has ever been a failure, and there is little transpiring at this hour, except the small beginnings of order and independence in the Congo Free State, but what is ominous of confusion and defeat. Greed for African possessions, jealousy of one another’s territorial thefts, threatened wars on account of undefined boundaries, petty usurpations of authority, these render unseemly the scramble for African acres, and bode no good to native Africans, whose allegiance is thereby rendered doubtful, whose fears are constantly at fever heat, who become as ready to train their spears and rush forth in battle array against one side or the other, as they are when their villages and gardens are invaded by neighboring tribes or marauding Arabs. They make colonization a farce, and reduce white dominancy to the level of cruel interference. The cold-blooded effrontery of this deliberate theft and partition of a continent, in a political sense, has nothing in morals to recommend it at any rate. There is nothing at the bottom of it except the aggrandizement of the Powers who commit the theft. Selfishness is the motive, however it may be glossed by the plea of a superior civilization. It regards no native rights, consults no native good, but in obedience to a spirit of tyranny and greed walks incontinently into the lands of a weak and helpless race, and appropriates them in true free-booting style, hoists its flag, and says to all comers, “Avaunt, this is mine!”

The almost hopeless entanglement of foreign Powers in Africa to-day may be seen from a glance at the following “political sections” on the west, or Atlantic coast:

Some of these claims are old, some new; some are confirmed, some vapid; some are direct political claims, some indirect, as where a protectorate only exists, and the real power is vested in a trading company, as in the British West African Company, with powers to occupy and develop the Niger country.

Passing to the east coast of Africa we find the entanglement still worse. There are pretty well defined ownerships beyond the Trans-vaal, then comes Portugal’s general claim of the Zambesi, Mozambique and Delagoa Bay, interfered with and overlapped by England and Germany. North of this, the Sultan of Zanzibar, who claimed sovereignty indefinitely north, south and west, has been cramped into a few island spaces along the coast, and graciously permitted to retain the Island of Zanzibar, because no person can live on it except Arabs and natives. Germany extends a protectorate and the country back of Zanzibar, and inland indefinitely, though England is by her side with a similar claim, and taking care that such protectorate shall be as nominal as possible and shall not interfere with her claims upon the lake sections. Italy claims all between the German possessions and Abyssinia and has even invaded that State. These claims are made under the veneering of trading companies, whose acquired rights, vague as they may be, the parent country is bound to back up. Not one of them have well defined metes and bounds for operations. All are confused and confusing, and liable to provoke misunderstanding and blood-shed at any moment, and the consequent disgrace of our boasted civilization, in the eyes of all simple minded Africans at least.

As a sample of the latest methods of land acquisition in Africa, and the consequences, one has but to study the recent bout between England and Portugal. The latter country claims the Delagoa Bay section, Mozambique and the Zambesi, indefinitely inland, and this though her rule has been limited to two or three isolated spots. On the Zambesi she established two or three trading and missionary stations which were used for a long time, but gradually fell into disuse. There is no dispute about her claims to the Zambesi section, though the Zulus south of the river do not recognize allegiance to her. The Zambesi, to a point five miles above the mouth of the ShirÉ, was declared a free river by the Berlin conference, so that there can be no dispute about that. So, there is no disposition to interfere with her claims to Mozambique or Delagoa, except as to their western boundary. To permit her to extend her claim to these territories westward till they met the boundaries of the Congo Free State, would be to give her possession of the ShirÉ River, Lake Shirwah and Lake Nyassa. Now starting at the Ruo affluent of the ShirÉ, England claims the entire Nyassa section, both by right of discovery—Livingstone discovered the lake—and occupation. Its non-native people are British subjects. She may not have taken the precaution to acquire rights of the natives by treaties, but neither has Portugal. Portugal never expanded, so to speak, beyond the coast on the line of the Zambesi, never did anything for the natives, and is charged with conniving with the slave trade. On the contrary, the established church of Scotland has many missionaries, teachers and agents in the ShirÉ Highlands. The Free Church of Scotland has several missionaries, teachers and artisans on Lake Nyassa. The Universities Mission has a steamer on the lake and several missionary agents. The African Lakes Company, chartered in England, has steamers on the ShirÉ river and Lake Nyassa, with twelve trading stations, manned by twenty-five agents. British capital invested in Nyassaland will equal $1,000,000. In his “Title Deeds to Nyassaland,” Rev. Horace Waller says: “Dotted here and there, from the mangrove swamps of the Kongone mouth of the Zambesi to the farthest extremity of Lake Nyassa, we pass the graves of naval officers, of brave ladies, of a missionary bishop, of clergymen, of foreign representatives, doctors, scientific men, engineers and mechanics. All these were our countrymen. They lie in glorious graves. Their careers have been foundation stones, and already the edifice rises. British mission stations are working at high pressure on the ShirÉ Highlands and upon the shores of Nyassa. Numbers of native Christians owe their knowledge of the common faith to their efforts. Scores of future chiefs are being instructed in schools spread over hundreds of miles. Commerce is developing by sure and steady steps. A vigorous company is showing to the tribes and nations that there are more valuable commodities in their country than their sons and daughters.”

In view of all these things, and perhaps spurred to activity by them, Portugal, following the fashion of England, organized a South African Company with the intention of consolidating her African possessions, by operating from the east coast, with a base at Delagoa Bay, Mozambique and the mouth of the Zambesi. The announcement, lately made, that Mapoonda, chief of the natives in the ShirÉ River District—the ShirÉ River flows into the Zambesi from the north, and is the outlet of Lake Nyassa—had accepted Portuguese sovereignty, was a distinctive victory for the Portuguese in their contest with the British for the control of that section of the Dark Continent. In July, 1889, Mr. H. H. Johnston, an experienced African traveller and naturalist, and British consul at Mozambique, took passage with several British naval officers on a gunboat, which went up the Chinde mouth of the Zambesi and entered the ShirÉ river. At a point 100 miles north of its mouth, where the Ruo enters the ShirÉ, Consul Johnston on the 12th of August “performed the significant act of hoisting the British flag at the Ruo station, henceforth marking the limit of Portuguese authority.” This was intended to close Portugal out of Lake Nyassa, the extreme southern point of which is 150 miles north of Ruo. By securing Mapoonda, however, Portugal took actual possession of the territory immediately to the south of Lake Nyassa. The English expedition in going up the river passed Major Serpa Pinto, the Portuguese leader, with a force of about 700 Zulus under his command. Serpa Pinto was on his way to take possession of Nyassaland. Consul Johnston protested, and assured him that, if he persisted in his purpose, he would bring about a rupture between Portugal and England. Serpa Pinto finally promised to turn back, but as soon as Consul Johnston had moved forward the Portuguese commander resumed his march to Lake Nyassa, and when he reached Mapoonda, which commands the southern entrance to the lake, threw up fortifications there and began preparations for a battle with the neighboring Makololo, in which the latter were routed with great slaughter. This battle appears to have been decisive, and to have led the native chiefs to transfer their nominal allegiance from the British to the Portuguese with alarming rapidity. By securing Mapoonda as an ally, the Portuguese cut off England’s communications with Lake Nyassa via the Zambesi and ShirÉ rivers, and precipitated the crisis which was threatened by the recent Portuguese proclamation which assumed to annex the whole Zambesi region.

This controversy which has already ended in the defeat of Portuguese designs, and which could have ended in no other way, because England is the stronger and more rapacious power, brings into play all the old arguments respecting colonial ambitions and enterprises. It will be remembered that for nearly two hundred years after the discovery of America, the European powers were a unit over the doctrine that first discovery gave a title to the discoverer. But when Great Britain awoke to the fact that this doctrine, if rigidly applied, would virtually dispossess her of American soil, notwithstanding the additional fact that she was proving to be the best permanent colonizer in Europe, she originated the new doctrine that actual possession of and settlement in a newly discovered country created a higher title than that of first discovery. This was a safe doctrine to adopt respecting America, for even then the English grip was now so strong as to be unshakable, and it was equally safe as to any other British claim, for the ocean supremacy of France, Spain and Portugal, her real rivals, was on the wane and hers was on the increase.

So now, notwithstanding the claim of Portugal to her territory on both the African coasts, by right of discovery, England does not hesitate to enter the Nyassa and ShirÉ region, hoist her flag and claim the rights of sovereignty, on the ground that she is the first permanent occupant. The fact that she has tangible interests to protect—invested property, missions etc., serves to strengthen her attitude with other European powers. But aside from this she does not intend to let Portugal establish a permanent possession clear across Africa from the Atlantic, at Angola and Benguella, to the mouth of the Zambesi. Such a possession would simply cut the continent in two, and erect a barrier on the east coast to that union of the British African possessions which her foreign diplomacy designs. Moreover, it is fully settled in the mind of Great Britain that the Nile water-way and its extensions through Lakes Albert and Edward Nyanza, Tanganyika, Nyassa, and the ShirÉ and Zambesi rivers, are hers, even if force has to be applied to make them actually hers.

But it must be said on behalf of Portugal, that she is not resting her rights on the ancient fiction of discovery alone. Her occupancy of the Zambesi region has, of late, become quite distinct and her vested rights have assumed impressive proportions. The management of her affairs are in the hands of Major Alberto da Rocha Serpa Pinto, whose exertions have greatly strengthened the Portuguese claims. His achievements in the way of African exploration give him high rank as a traveler, explorer, scientist and organizer. He was born in 1845 and educated for the Portuguese military service. In 1869 he first went to Africa, where he took part in the campaign against the rebellious chief Bonga, in the region of the Zambesi. He acquitted himself with distinction on the field of battle, and acquired wide repute as an explorer, by ascending the river as far as the Victoria Falls, making many important discoveries on the way, and crossing the African continent from one side to the other.

Upon his return to Portugal, Serpa Pinto was received personally by the King, who was first to greet him when entering the harbor; Lisbon and Oporto were brilliantly illuminated in his honor, and he received many honors and marks of distinction from the sovereign and public bodies.

In November, 1877, Serpa Pinto was again sent to Africa by the Portuguese Government and the Lisbon Geographical Society in conjunction. He organized a force of fourteen soldiers and fifty-seven carriers, and, starting from Benguella, he penetrated to the interior, traversing the districts of Dombe, Guillenguez, and Caconda, reaching BihÉ in March of the following year. He was finally laid low with fever and carried by his faithful followers to the coast. Two of his subordinates, Brito Capello and Ivens, who have since become eminent as explorers, left the expedition in the interior, journeying to the northward to explore the river Quanza, while Serpa Pinto went to the eastward. On his return to Lisbon he was received with evidences of great esteem by the King, and was the object of popular adulation in all quarters. He described the sources of four great rivers heretofore unknown. His discovery of the river Coando, navigable for 600 miles and flowing into the Zambesi, alone placed Major Pinto in the rank of the great African explorers. After remaining in Portugal a few years, Serpa Pinto again returned to Africa, where he has since remained. In 1884, he made another extended journey of exploration, the results of which fully entitled him to the title of the Portuguese Stanley.

Following his discoveries the Portuguese have built a short railroad inland from Delagoa, and have established a system of steam navigation on the Zambesi and ShirÉ rivers, and opened a large and prosperous trading establishment. The activity recently displayed by the British in southeast Africa has led them to push forward their advantages and seize everything they can lay their hands on while the opportunity offers.

Commenting on this situation the London Times calls it “Major Serpa Pinto’s gross outrage on humanity and intolerable affront to England,” to which an American paper very appropriately replies:—

“Nothing would suit the English better than to have some excuse for wrenching away from little Portugal her possessions on the Dark Continent. England has played the cuckoo so many times with impunity that now it is believed a quickened public conscience will call a halt.

“The merits of this particular case will hardly exert much influence in determining the fate of Portugal in Africa. Left to themselves, England would dispossess Portugal in the twinkling of an eye, for if Turkey is the sick man of Eastern Europe, Portugal is the national personification of senility in the West. Four or five hundred years ago it was the foremost nation of Europe in point of commercial enterprise. The ships of Portugal were the most adventuresome of any that ploughed the ocean. As long ago as 1419 a bold Portuguese tar, Zarco, skirted along Western Africa, far below the Equator, and later, Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Like Columbus, he sought the most direct route to India, and what the Genoese missed he found. The country which England is now impatiently eager to steal from Portugal is a part of the reward of that enterprise which revolutionized Oriental trade, and was second in importance to the world only to the discovery of America. It was as if both sought a silver mine, and the one who failed to find what they were after came upon a gold mine. Portugal may not have made very much use of her discovery for herself and her people, but mankind has been immeasurably benefited, and England incalculably enriched. For the latter to now turn around and rob Portugal of her African possessions, in whole or in part, would be poetic injustice. It would be the old fable over again of the farmer who warmed a snake in his bosom only to be bitten by it.”