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meOPICAL AFRICA

Penk Y DRUMMOND, F.R.S.E., F.G.S.

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WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

TENTH THOUSAND

London :
PooDpER AND STOUGHTON,
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DATE... MAY... .8. 196

MDCCCLXXXVIII

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UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

Peer AC E

Ir is the genial tax of literature upon Travel
that those who have explored the regions of
the uncivilised should open their bag of wonders
before the world and celebrate their return to
clothing in three or four volumes and a map.
This exaction, in the nature of things, must
shortly abolish itself; and meantime I would
compound with any possible creditors by the
reduced offer of three or four maps and a volume.

As a minor traveller, whose assets are few,
I have struggled to evade even this obligation,
but having recently had to lecture on African
subjects to various learned and _ unlearned
_ Societies in England and America, it has been
urged upon me that a few of the lecture-notes
thrown into popular form might be useful as a
general sketch of East Central Africa. Great
books of travel have had their day. But small

vi . PREFACE

books, with the larger features of a country
lightly sketched, and just enough of narrative to
make you feel that you are really there, have a
function in helping the imagination of those
who have not breath enough to keep up with
the great explorers.

The publication of “The White Ant” and
“Mimicry ” has been already forestalled by one
of the monthly magazines ; and the “ Geological
Sketch” is rescued, and duly dusted, from the
archives of the British Association. If the
dust of science has been too freely shaken from
the other chapters, the scientific reader will
overlook it for the sake of an overworked
public which has infinite trouble in getting
itself mildly instructed and entertained without
being disheartened by the heavy pomp of
technical expression.

If anything in a work of this class could
pretend to a serious purpose, I do not conceal
that, in addition to the mere desire to inform,
a special reason exists just now for writing
about Africa—a reason so urgent that I excuse

myself with difficulty for introducing so grave

PREFACE vii

a problem in so slight a setting. The reader
who runs his eye over the “ Heart-Disease of
Africa” will discover how great the need is
for arousing afresh that truer interest in the
Dark Continent which since Livingstone’s
time has almost died away. To many modern
travellers Africa is simply a country to be
explored; to Livingstone it was a land to be
pitied and redeemed. And recent events on
Lake N yassa have stirred a new desire in the
hearts of those who care for native Africa that
“the open sore of the world” should have a
last and decisive treatment at the hands of

England.
HENRY DRUMMOND.

Cerne EN FS

CRAPTER I

THE WATER-ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA: THE
RIVERS ZAMBESI AND SHIRE

CHAPTER: ti

THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY: LAKES SHIRWA
AND NYASSA

CHAPTER: ill

7B ASPECT OF THE HEART. OF AFRICA: THE
COUNTRY AND PEOPLE

CHAPTER IV

THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA: ITS PATHOLOGY
AND CURE .,

CEAPTER-V

WANDERINGS ON THE NYASSA-TANGANYVIKA PLATEAU :
A TRAVELLER’S DIARY

PAGE

x CONTENTS

CHAPTER VI

THE WHITE ANT: A THEORY .

CHAPTER ‘VII

MIMICRY: THE WAYS OF AFRICAN INSECTS

CHAPTER. Vil

A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH

CHAPTER 1X

A POLITICAL WARNING

CHAPTER X

A METEOROLOGICAL NOTE

PAGE
121

159

18I

201

223

VI.

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THE WATER-ROUTE TO THE HEART OF
APRICA:

THE ZAMBESI AND SHIRE

HREE distinct Africas are known to the
* modern world—North Africa, where men go
for health ; South Africa, where they go for money ;
and Central Africa, where they go for adventure.
The first, the old Africa of Augustine and Carthage,
every one knows from history; the geography of
the second, the Africa of the Zulu and the diamond,
has been taught us by two Universal Educators—
War and the Stock-Exchange ; but our knowledge
of the third, the Africa of Livingstone and Stanley,
is still fitly symbolised by the vacant look upon our
maps which tells how long this mysterious land has
kept its secret.
Into the heart of this mysterious Africa I wish to

take you with me now. And let me magnify my

4 WATER ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA

subject by saying at once that it is a wonderful
thing to see. It is a wonderful thing to start from
the civilisation of Europe, pass up these mighty
rivers, and work your way into that unknown land
—work your way alone, and on foot, mile after mile,
month after month, among strange birds and beasts
and plants and insects, meeting tribes which have no
name, speaking tongues which no man can interpret,
till you have reached its secret heart, and stood
where white man has never trod before. It is a
wonderful thing to look at this weird world of human
beings—half animal half children, wholly savage and
wholly heathen ; and to turn and come back again
to civilisation before the impressions have had time
to fade, and while the myriad problems of so strange
a spectacle are still seething in the mind. It is an
education to see this sight-—-an education in the
meaning and history of man. To have been here is
to have lived before Menes. It is to have watched
the dawn of evolution. It is to have the great
moral and social problems of life, of anthropology,
of ethnology, and even of theology, brought home to
the imagination in the most new and startling light.

On the longest day of a recent summer—mid-
winter therefore in the tropics—I left London. A

long railway run across France, Switzerland, and

THE ZAMBESI AND SHIRE 5

Italy brings one in a day or two to the Mediter-
ranean. Crossing to Alexandria, the traveller strikes
across Egypt, over the Nile, through the battlefield
of Tel-el-Kebir, to the Red Sea, steams down its
sweltering length to Aden, tranships, and, after three
lifetimes of deplorable humiliation in the south-west
Monsoons, terminates his sufferings at Zanzibar.
Zanzibar is the focus of all East African explora-
tion. No matter where you are going in the interior,
you must begin at Zanzibar. Oriental in its appear-
ance, Mohammedan in its religion, Arabian in its
morals, this cesspool of wickedness is a fit capital
for the Dark Continent. But Zanzibar is Zanzibar
simply because it is the only apology for a town on
the whole coast. An immense outfit is required to
penetrate this shopless and foodless land, and here
only can the traveller make up his caravan. The
ivory and slave trades have made caravaning a pro-
fession, and everything the explorer wants is to be
had in these bazaars, from a tin of sardines to a
repeating rifle. Here these black villains the porters,
the necessity and the despair of travellers, the scum
of old slave gangs, and the fugitives from justice from
every tribe, congregate for hire. And if there is one
thing on which African travellers are for once agreed,

it is that for laziness, ugliness, stupidness, and wicked-

6 WATER ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA

ness, these men are not to be matched on any con-
tinent in the world. Their one strong point is that
they will engage themselves for the Victoria Nyanza
or for the Grand Tour of the Tanganyika with as
little ado as a Chamounix guide volunteers for the
Jardin ; but this singular avidity is mainly due to
the fact that each man cherishes the hope of running
away at the earliest opportunity. Were it only to
avoid requiring to employ these gentlemen, having
them for one’s sole company month after month,
seeing them transgress every commandment in turn
before your eyes—you yourself being powerless to
check them except by a wholesale breach of the
sixth—it would be worth while to seek another
route into the heart of Africa.

But there is a much graver objection to the Zan-
zibar route to the interior. Stanley started by this
route on his search for Livingstone, two white men
with him; he came back without them. Cameron
set out by the same path to cross Africa with two
companions ; before he got to Tanganyika he was
alone. The Geographical Society’s late expedition,
under Mr. Keith Johnston, started from Zanzibar
with two Europeans; the hardy and accomplished
leader fell within a couple of months. These expe-

ditions have all gone into the interior by this one

THE ZAMBESI AND SHIRE 7

fatal way, and probably every second man, by fever
or by accident, has left his bones to bleach along
the road. Hitherto there has been no help for it.
The great malarious coast-belt must be crossed, and
one had simply to take his life in his hands and go
through with it.

But now there is an alternative. There is a rival
route into the interior, which, though it is not with-
out its dark places too, will probably yet become the
great highway from the East to Central Africa.
Let me briefly sketch it.

Africa, speaking generally, is a vast, ill-formed
triangle. It has no peninsulas; it has almost no
islands or bays or fjords. But three great inlets,
three mighty rivers piercing it to the very heart,
have been allocated by a kind Nature one to each
of its solid sides. On the north is the river of the
past, flowing through Egypt, as Leigh Hunt says,
“like some grave, mighty thought threading a
dream ”; on the west the river of the future, the not
less mysterious Congo; and on the east the little-
known Zambesi.

The physical features of this great continent are
‘easily grasped. From the coast a low scorched
plain, reeking with malaria, extends inland in

unbroken monotony for two or three hundred miles,

8 WATER ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA

This is succeeded by mountains slowly rising into a
plateau some 2000 or 3000 feet high; and this, at
some hundreds of miles distance, forms the pedestal
for a second plateau as high again. This last
plateau, 4000 to 5000 feet high, may be said to
occupy the whole of Central Africa. It is only on
the large scale, however, that these are to be reckoned
plateaux at all. When one is upon them he sees
nothing but mountains and valleys and plains of
the ordinary type, covered for the most part with
forest.

I have said that Nature has supplied each side
of Africa with one great river, By going some
hundreds of miles southward along the coast from
Zanzibar the traveller reaches the mouth of the
Zambesi. Livingstone sailed up this river once, and
about a hundred miles from its mouth discovered
another river twisting away northwards among the
mountains. The great explorer was not the man to
lose such a chance of penetrating the interior. He
followed this river up, and after many wanderings
found himself on the shores of a mighty lake. The
river is named the Shiré, and the lake—the exist-
ence of which was quite unknown before, is Lake
Nyassa. Lake Nyassa is 350 miles long; so that,
with the Zambesi, the Shiré, and this great lake, we

THE ZAMBESI AND SHIRE ees

have the one thing required to open up East Central
Africa—a water-route to the interior. But this is
not all. Two hundred and fifty miles from the end
of Lake Nyassa another lake of still nobler propor-
tions takes up the thread of communication. Lake
Tanganyika is 450 miles in length. Between the
lakes stands a lofty plateau, cool, healthy, accessible,
and without any physical barrier to interrupt the
explorer’s march. By this route the Victoria Nyanza
and the Albert Nyanza may be approached with
less fatigue, less risk, and not less speed, than by the
overland trail from Zanzibar. At one point also,
along this line, one is within a short march -of that
other great route which must ever be regarded as
the trunk-line of the African continent. The water-
shed of the Congo lies on this Nyassa-Tanganyika
plateau. This is the stupendous natural highway
on which so much of the future of East Central
Africa must yet depend.

Ten days languid steaming from Zanzibar brings
the traveller to the Zambesi mouth. The bar here
has an evil reputation, and the port is fixed on a
little river which flows into the Indian Ocean slightly
to the north, but the upper reaches of which almost
join the Zambesi at some distance inland. This port

is the Portuguese settlement of Quilimane, and here

IO WATER ROUTE T0 THE HEART OF AFRICA

I said good-bye to the steamer and to civilisation.
Some distance in the interior stands a solitary pioneer
Mission station of the Established Church of Scot-
land, and still farther in, on Lake Nyassa, another
outpost of a sister church. My route led past both
these stations, and I had the good fortune to pick
up on the way two or three young fellow-country-
men who were going up to relieve the mission staff.
For the latter part of my journey I was quite alone.
All African work, as a rule, is done single-handed.
It is not always easy to find a companion for such a
project, and the climate is so pestilential that when
two go, you and your friend are simply nursing each
other time about, and the expedition never gets on.
On the whole, however, the solitary course is not to
be commended. An unutterable loneliness comes
over one at times in the great still forests, and there
is a stage in African fever—and every one must
have fever—when the watchful hand of a friend may
make the difference between life and death.

After leaving Quilimane, the first week of our
journey up the Qua-qua was one long picnic. We
had two small row-boats, the sterns covered with a
sun-proof awning, and under these we basked, and
talked, and read and prospected, from dawn to sun-

set. Each boat was paddled by seven or eight

THE ZAMBESI] AND SHIRE 11

natives—muscular heathens, whose sole dress was
a pocket-handkerchief, a little palm oil, and a few
mosquitoes. Except at first the river was only a
few yards broad, and changed in character and
novelty every hour. Now it ran through a grove
of cocoa-nut palms—the most wonderful and beau-
tiful tree of the tropics. Now its sullen current
oozed through a fcetid swamp of mangroves—the
home of the crocodile and the hippopotamus, whose
slimy bodies wallowed into the pools with a splash
as our boats sped past. Again the banks became
green and graceful, the long plumed grasses bending
to the stream, and the whole a living aviary of birds
—the white ibis and the gaunt fish eagle, and the
exquisite blue and scarlet kingfisher watching its
prey from the overhanging boughs. The business-
like air of this last bird is almost comical, and some-
how sits ill on a creature of such gorgeous beauty.
One expects him to flutter away before the approach
of so material a thing as a boat, display his fairy
plumage in a few airy movements, and melt away in
the sunshine. But there he sits, stolid and impass-
ive, and though the spray of the paddles almost dashes
in his face, the intent eyes never move, and he refuses
to acknowledge the intruder by so much as a glance.
His larger ally, the black and white spotted king-

12 WATER ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA

fisher, if less beautiful, is much more energetic, and
darts about the bank incessantly, coquetting with the
boat from reach to reach, and seldom allowing an
inspection close enough to take in the details of his
piebald coat.

One interests oneself in these things more par-
ticularly because there is nothing at first especially
striking about the river scenery itself. Ten or
twenty feet of bank cuts off the view on either side,
and large and varied features are wanting. The
banks are lined with the densest jungle of mangroves
and aquatic grasses, while creepers of a hundred
kinds struggle for life among the interlacing stems.
We saw crocodiles here in such numbers that count
was very soon lost. They were of all sizes, from
the baby specimen which one might take home in a
bottle, to the enormous bullet-proof brute the size of
an 81-ton gun. These revolting animals take their
siesta in the heat of the day, lying prone upon the
bank, with their wedge-shaped heads directed
towards the water. When disturbed they scuttle
into the river with a wriggling movement, the pre-
cipitancy of which defies the power of sight. The
adjustment of the adult crocodile to its environment
in the matter of colour is quite remarkable. The

younger forms are lighter yellow, and more easily

7
J

THE ZAMBESI AND SHIRE 13

discoverable, but it takes the careful use of a good
pair of eyes to distinguish in the gnarled slime-
covered log lying among the rotting stumps the
living form of the mature specimen. Between the
African crocodiles and the alligators there is the
slightest possible external difference ; although the
longer head, the arrangement of scales, the fringed
feet with their webbed toes, the uniform teeth, and
the protrusion of the large canine, distinguish them
from their American allies.

Many of the ibises I shot as we moved along, for
food for the men, who, like all Africans, will do any-
thing for flesh in whatever form. For ourselves, we
lived upon emaciated fowls and tinned meats, cook-
ing them ata fire on the bank when the boat stopped.
Eggs are never eaten by the natives, but always set ;
although, if you offer to buy them, the natives will
bring you a dozen from a sitting hen, which they
assure you were laid that very morning. In the
interior, on many occasions afterwards, these protesta-
tions were tested, and always proved false. One time,
when nearly famished and far from camp, I was
brought a few eggs which a chief himself guaranteed
had that very hour been laid. With sincere hope
that he might be right, but with much misgiving, I
ordered the two freshest-looking to be boiled. With

14 WATER ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA

the despair of a starving man Iopened them. They
were cock and hen.

Breakfast and luncheon and dinner are all the
same in Africa. There is no beef, nor mutton, nor
bread, nor flour, nor sugar, nor salt, nor anything
whatever, except an occasional fowl, which an English-
man can eat. Hence the enormous outfit which he
must carry with him. No one has any idea of what
can be had in tins till he camps out abroad. Every
conceivable digestible and indigestible is to be had
tinned, every form of fish, flesh, fowl, and game,
every species of vegetable and fruit, every soup, sweet,
and extrée ; but after two or three months of this
sort of thing you learn that this tempting semblance
of variety is a gigantic imposition. The sole differ-
ence between these various articles lies, like the Rhine
wines, in the label. Plum pudding or kippered her-
ring taste just the same. Whether you begin dinner
with tinned calves-foot jelly or end with tinned
salmon makes no difference ; and after six months
it is only by a slight feeling of hardness that you do
not swallow the tins themselves.

At the end of a too short week we left our boats
behind. Engaging an army of shy natives at a few
huts near the bank, we struck across a low neck of

land, and after an hour’s walk found ourselves sud-

THE ZAMBES1 AND SHIRE 15

denly on the banks of the Zambesi. A solitary
bungalow was in sight, and opposite it the little
steamer of the African Lakes Company, which was
to take us up the Shiré. There is more in the asso-
ciation, perhaps, than in the landscape, to strike one
as he first furrows the waters of this virgin river.
We are fifty miles from its mouth, the mile-wide
water shallow and brown, the low sandy banks
fringed with alligators and wild birds. The great
deltoid plain, yellow with sun-tanned reeds and
sparsely covered with trees, stretches on every side ;
the sun is blistering hot; the sky, as it will be for
months, a monotonous dome of blue—not a frank
bright blue like the Canadian sky, but a veiled blue,
a suspicious and malarious blue, partly due to the
perpetual heat haze and partly to the imagination,
for the Zambesi is no friend to the European, and
this whole region is heavy with depressing memories.

This impression, perhaps, was heightened by the
fact that we were to spend that night within a few
yards of the place where Mrs. Livingstone died.
Late in the afternoon we reached the spot—a low
ruined hut a hundred yards from the river’s bank,
with a broad verandah shading its crumbling walls.
A grass-grown path straggled to the doorway, and
the fresh print of a hippopotamus told how neglected

16 WATER ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA

the spot is now. Pushing the door open, we found
ourselves in a long dark room, its mud floor broken
into fragments, and remains of native fires betraying
its latest occupants. Turning to the right, we entered
a smaller chamber, the walls bare and stained, with two
glassless windows facing the river. The evening sun,
setting over the far-off Morumballa mountains, filled
the room with its soft glow, and took our thoughts
back to that Sunday evening twenty years ago, when
in this same bedroom, at this same hour, Livingstone
knelt over his dying wife, and witnessed the great
sunset of his life.

Under a huge baobab tree—a miracle of vege-
table vitality and luxuriance—stands Mrs. Living-
stone’s grave. The picture in Livingstone’s book
represents the place as well kept and surrounded
with neatly-planted trees. But now it is an utter
wilderness, matted with jungle grass and trodden by
the beasts of the forest ; and as I looked at the for-
saken mound and contrasted it with her husband’s
tomb in Westminster Abbey, I thought perhaps the
woman’s love which brought her to a spot like this
might be not less worthy of immortality.

The Zambesi is the great river of Eastern Africa,
and after the Congo, the Nile, and the Niger, the most

important on the continent. Rising in the far

THE ZAMBESI AND SHIRE 17

interior among the marshes of Lake Dilolo, and
gathering volume from the streams which flow from
the high lands connecting the north of Lake Nyassa
with Inner Angola, it curves across the country for
over a thousand miles like an attenuated letter S, and
before its four great mouths empty the far-travelled
waters into the Indian Ocean, drains an area of
more than half a million square miles. As it cuts its
way down the successive steps of the central plateaux
its usually placid current is interrupted by rapids,
narrows, cascades, and cataracts, corresponding to the
plateau edges, so that like all the rivers of Africa it is
only navigable in stretches of one or two hundred miles
ata time. From the coast the Zambesi might be
stemmed by steam-power to the rapids of Kebrabasa ;
and from above that point intermittently, as far as the
impassable barrier of the Victoria Falls. Above this,
for some distance, again follow rapids and waterfalls,
but these are at length succeeded by an unbroken
chain of tributaries which together form an inland
waterway of a thousand miles in length. The broad
lands along the banks of this noble river are subject
to annual inundations like the region of the Nile, and
hence their agricultural possibilities are unlimited.
On the lower Zambesi, indigo, the orchilla weed, and
calumba-root abound, and oil-seeds and sugar-cane
Cc

18 WATER-ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA

_— SSSSSSSGSSGSese

could be produced in quantity to supply the whole
of Europe. At present owing to apathy and in-
different government these magnificent resources are
almost wholly undeveloped.

Next afternoon our little vessel left the Zambesi
in its wake and struck up a fine lake-like expansion
to the north, which represents the mouth of the Shiré.
Narrower and deeper, the tributary is a better stream
for navigation than the Zambesi. The scenery also
is really fine, especially as one nears the mountains
of the plateau, and the strange peoples and animals
along the banks occupy the mind with perpetual
interests. The hippopotami prowling round the boat
and tromboning at us within pistol-shot kept us
awake at night; and during the day we could see
elephants, buffaloes, deer, and other large game
wandering about the banks. To see the elephant at
home is a sight to remember. The stupendous
awkwardness of the menagerie animal, as if so large
a creature were quite a mistake, vanishes completely
when you watch him in his native haunts. Here he
is as nimble as a kitten, and you see how perfectly
this moving mountain is adapted to its habitat—how
such a ponderous monster, indeed, is as natural to
these colossal grasses as a rabbit to an English park.
We were extremely fortunate in seeing elephants at

THE ZAMBESI AND SHIRE 19

all at this stage, and I question whether there is any
other part of Africa where these animals may be
observed leisurely and in safety within six weeks of
London. Mr. Stanley in his Livingstone expedition
was ten months in the country before he saw any ;
and Mr. Joseph Thomson, during his long journey to
Tanganyika and back, never came across a single
elephant. It is said that the whale which all travel-
lers see in crossing the Atlantic is kept up by the
steamboat companies, but I vouch that these Shiré
valley elephants are independent of subsidy.

The question of the disappearance of the elephant
here and throughout Africa is, as every one knows,
only one of a few years. It is hard to think why
this kindly and sagacious creature should have to be
exterminated ; why this vast store of animal energy,
which might be turned into so much useful work,
should be lost to civilisation. But the causes are
not difficult to understand. The African elephant
has never been successfully tamed, and is therefore
a failure as a source of energy. As a source of
ivory, on the other hand, he has been but too great
a success. The cost of ivory at present is about
half-a-sovereign per pound. An average tusk weighs
from twenty to thirty pounds. Each animal has
two, and in Africa both male and female carry tusks.

20 WATER-ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA

The average elephant is therefore worth in pounds
sterling the weight in pounds avoirdupois of one of
his tusks. I have frequently seen single tusks turn-
ing the scale upon ninety pounds, the pair in this
case being worth nearly £100 sterling,—so that a
herd of elephants is about as valuable as a gold
mine. The temptation to sacrifice the animal for
his tusks is therefore great; and as he becomes
scarcer he will be pursued by the hunter with ever-
increasing eagerness, But the truth is, sad though
the confession be, the sooner the last elephant falls
before the hunter's bullet the better: for iivies
Ivory introduces into the country at present an
abnormal state of things. Upon this one article is
set so enormous a premium that none other among
African products secures the slightest general atten-
tion; nor will almost anyone in the interior con-
descend to touch the normal wealth, or develop the
legitimate industries of the country, so long as a
tusk remains. In addition to this, of half the real
woes which now exist in Africa ivory is at the
bottom. It is not only that wherever there is an
article to which a fictitious value is attached the
effect upon the producer is apt to be injurious; nor
that wherever there is money there is temptation,

covetousness, and war; but that unprincipled men,

THE ZAMBESI AND SHIRE 21

and especially Arabs, are brought into contact with
the natives in the worst relation, influence them only
in one and that the lowest direction, and leave them
always worse than they find them—worse in greed,
in knavery, in their belief in mankind, and in their
suspicion of civilisation. Further, for every tusk an
Arab trader purchases he must buy, borrow, or steal
a slave to carry it to the coast. Domestic slavery
is bad enough, but now begins the long slave-march
with its untold horrors—horrors instigated and per-
petuated almost solely by the traffic in ivory. The
extermination of the elephant, therefore, will mark
one stage at least in the closing up of the slave-
trade. The elephant has done much for Africa.
The best he can do now for his country is to dis-
appear for ever.

In books of travel great chiefs are usually called
kings, their wives queens, while their mud-huts are
always palaces. But after seeing my first African
chief at home, I found I must either change my
views of kings or of authors. The regal splendour
of Chipitula’s court—and Chipitula was a very great
. chief indeed, and owned all the Shiré district—may
be judged of by the fact that when I paid my
respects to his highness his court-dress consisted

almost exclusively of a pair of suspenders. I made

22 WATER-ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA

this king happy for life by the gift of a scarlet tennis-
cap and a few buttons. But poor Chipitula had not
long to enjoy his treasures,—and I mention the
incident to show what is going on every day in
Africa. When I came back that way, on my return
journey, I called again to receive a leopard skin
which this chief had promised to trap for me, and
for which he was to get in exchange certain dilapi-
dated remnants of my wardrobe. He gave me the
skin; I duly covered his, and we parted. A few
days after, another white man came that way ; he
was a trader—the only one who has yet plied this
hazardous calling in East Central Africa. He quar-
relled with Chipitula over some bargain, and in a
moment of passion drew his revolver and shot the
chief dead on the spot. Of course he himself was
instantly speared by Chipitula’s men; and all his
black porters, according to native etiquette, were
butchered with their master. There is absolutely
no law in Africa, and you can kill anybody and
anybody can kill you, and no one will ask any
questions.

Our next stoppage was to pay another homage—
truly this is a tragic region—at another white man’s
crave. A few years ago Bishop Mackenzie and

some other missionaries were sent to Africa by the

THE ZAMBESI AND SHIRE 23

English Universities, with instructions to try to
establish a Mission in the footsteps of Livingstone.
They came here; the climate overpowered them ;
one by one they sickened and died. With the death
of the Bishop himself the site was abandoned, and
the few survivors returned home. Among the hip-
popotamus-trampled reeds on the banks of the Shiré,
under a rough iron cross, lies the first of three brave
bishops who have already made their graves in
Equatorial Africa.

I have spoken of the Shiré as the great waterway
into the interior of Eastern Africa. It has one
defect. After sailing for five or six days we came
to rapids which no boat can pass. These rapids
were named by Livingstone the Murchison Cataracts,
and they extend for seventy miles. This distance,
accordingly, must be traversed overland. Half-way
up this seventy miles, and a considerable distance
inland from the river, stands the first white settle-
ment in East Central Africa—the Blantyre Mission.
Bribing about a hundred natives with a promise of
a fathom of calico each, to carry our luggage, we set
off on foot for Blantyre. The traditional character-
istics of African caravaning were displayed in full
perfection during this first experience, and darkness

fell when we were but half-way to our destination.

24 WATER ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA

It was our first night in the bush, and a somewhat
unusual introduction to African travelling marked it.
At midnight we were roused by startling cries from
our men, who lay sleeping on the ground around us.
The watch-fires must have burned down, for a lion
had suddenly sprung into the camp. Seizing the
man who lay nearest the forest, the animal buried its
claws in his breast, and was making off into the
darkness, when the shouting frightened it and made
it drop its prey. Twice during the night the lion
came back, and we whites had to keep watch by
turns till morning with loaded rifles. This is alto-
gether an exceptional case, for with a good fire one
can generally spread his mat anywhere in the tropics
without fear of midnight attack. This is a famous
place, however, for lions, and one can as certainly
depend on their gruesome concert in the early morn-
ing as on the sparrows’ chirp in England.

Towards sunset the following evening our caravan
filed into Blantyre. On the beauty and interest of
this ideal mission I shall not dwell. But if anyone
wishes to find out what can be done with the virgin
African, what can be done by broad and practical
missionary methods, let him visit the Rev. D.
Clement Scott and his friends at Blantyre. And if

he wishes to observe the possibilities of civilisation

THE ZAMBESI AND SHIRE 25

and colonisation among an average African tribe
living on an average African soil, let him examine
the mission plantations, and those of Mr. John and
Mr. Frederick Moir at Mandala, and of the Brothers
Buchanan at Zomba. And, further, if he desires to
know what the milk of human kindness is, let him
time his attack of fever so that haply it may coincide
with his visit to either of these centres of self-denying

goodness and hospitality.

II
mee EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY

LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA

OMEWHERE in the Shiré Highlands, in 1859,
Livingstone saw a large lake—Lake Shirwa—
which is still almost unknown. It lies away to the
East, and is bounded by a range of mountains whose
lofty summits are visible from the hills round
Blantyre. Thinking it might be a useful initiation
to African travel if I devoted a short time to its
exploration, I set off one morning accompanied by
two members of the Blantyre staff and a small
retinue of natives. Steering across country in the
direction in which it lay, we found, two days before
seeing the actual water, that we were already on the
ancient bed of the lake. Though now clothed with
forest, the whole district has obviously been under
water at a comparatively recent period, and the
shores of Lake Shirwa probably reached at one time

30 THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY

to within a few miles of Blantyre itself. On reach-
ing the lake a very aged female chief came to see
us, and told us how, long long ago, a white man
came to her village and gave her a present of cloth.
Of the white man, who must have been Livingstone,
she spoke very kindly ; and indeed, wherever David
Livingstone’s footsteps are crossed in Africa the
fragrance of his memory seems to remain.

The waters of Shirwa are brackish to the taste,
and undrinkable; but the saltness must have a
peculiar charm for game, for nowhere else in Africa
did I see such splendid herds of the larger animals
as here. The zebra was especially abundant; and
so unaccustomed to be disturbed are these creatures,
that with a little care one could watch their move-
ments safely within a very few yards. It may seem
unorthodox to say so, but I do not know if among
the larger animals there is anything handsomer in
creation than the zebra. At close quarters his
striped coat is all but as fine as the tiger’s, while the
form and movement of his body are in every way
nobler. The gait, certainly, is not to be compared
for gracefulness with that of the many species of
antelope and deer who nibble the grass beside him,
and one can never quite forget that scientifically he
is an ass; but taking him all in all, this fleet and

LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA 31

beautiful animal ought to have a higher place in the
regard of man than he has yet received.

We were much surprised, considering that this
region is almost uninhabited, to discover near the
lake shore a native path so beaten, and so recently
beaten, by multitudes of human feet, that it could
only represent some trunk route through the conti-
nent. Following it for a few miles, we soon discovered
its function. It was one of the great slave routes
through Africa. Signs of the horrid traffic soon
became visible on every side ; and from symmetrical
arrangements of small piles of stones and freshly-cut
twigs, planted semaphore-wise upon the path, our
native guides made out that a slave-caravan was
actually passing at the time. We were, in fact,
between two portions of it, the stones and twigs
being telegraphic signals between front and rear.
Our natives seemed much alarmed at this discovery,
and refused to proceed unless we promised not to
interfere—a proceeding which, had we attempted it,
would simply have meant murder for ourselves and
slavery for them. Next day, from a hill-top, we saw
the slave encampment far below, and the ghastly
procession marshalling for its march to the distant
coast, which many of the hundreds who composed it
would never reach alive.

32 THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY

Talking of native footpaths leads me to turn
aside for a moment to explain to the uninitiated
the true mode of African travel. In spite of all the
books that have been lavished upon us by our great
explorers, few people seem to have any accurate
understanding of this most simple process. Some
have the impression that everything is done in
bullock-waggons—an idea borrowed from the Cape,
but hopelessly inapplicable to Central Africa, where
a wheel at present would be as great a novelty as a
polar bear. Others at the opposite extreme suppose
that the explorer works along solely by compass,
making a bee-line for his destination, and steering
his caravan through the trackless wilderness like a
ship at sea. Now it may be a surprise to the unen-
lightened to learn that probably no explorer in forc-
ing his passage through Africa has ever, for more than —
a few days at a time, been off some beaten track,
Probably no country in the world, civilised or un-
civilised, is better supplied with paths than this
unmapped continent. Every village is connected
with some other village, every tribe with the next
tribe, every state with its neighbour, and therefore
with all the rest. The explorer’s business is simply
to select from this network of tracks, keep a general

direction, and hold on his way. Let him begin at

LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA 33

Zanzibar, plant his foot on a native footpath, and
set his face towards Tanganyika. In eight months
he will be there. He has simply to persevere. From
village to village he will be handed on, zigzagging
it may be sometimes to avoid the impassable barriers
of nature or the rarer perils of hostile tribes, but
never taking to the woods, never guided solely by
the stars, never in fact leaving a beaten track, till
hundreds and hundreds of miles are between him
and the sea, and his interminable footpath ends with
a canoe, on the shores of Tanganyika. Crossing the
lake, landing near some native village, he picks up
the thread once more. Again he plods on and on,
now on foot, now by canoe, but always keeping his
line of villages, until one day suddenly he sniffs the
sea-breeze again, and his faithful foot-wide guide
lands him on the Atlantic seaboard.

Nor is there any art in finding out these suc-
cessive villages with their intercommunicating links.
He must find them out. A whole army of guides,
servants, carriers, soldiers, and camp-followers accom-
pany him in his march, and this nondescript regiment
must be fed. Indian corn, cassava, mawere, beans,
and bananas—these do not grow wild even in Africa.
Every meal has to be bought and paid for in cloth
and beads; and scarcely three days can pass without

{

34 THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY

a call having to be made at some village where the
necessary supplies can be obtained. A caravan, as
a rule, must live from hand to mouth, and its march
becomes simply a regulated procession through a
chain of markets. Not, however, that there are any
real markets—there are neither bazaars nor stores in
native Africa. Thousands of the villages through
which the traveller eats his way may never have
victualled a caravan before. But, with the chief’s
consent, which is usually easily purchased for a showy
present, the villages unlock their larders, the women
flock to the grinding stones, and basketfuls of food
are swiftly exchanged for unknown equivalents in
beads and calico.

The native tracks which I have just described
are the same in character all over Africa. They are
veritable footpaths, never over a foot in breadth,
beaten as hard as adamant, and rutted beneath the
level of the forest bed by centuries of native traffic.
As a rule these footpaths are marvellously direct.
Like the roads of the old Romans, they run straight
on through everything, ridge and mountain and valley,
never shying at obstacles, nor anywhere turning aside
to breathe. Yet within this general straightforward-
ness there is a singular eccentricity and indirectness
in detail. Although the African footpath is on the

LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA 35

whole a bee-line, no fifty yards of it are ever straight.
And the reason is not far to seek. If a stone is
encountered no native will ever think of removing it.
Why should he? It is easier to walk round it. The
next man who comes that way will do the same. He
knows that a hundred men are following him; he
looks at the stone; a moment, and it might be un-
earthed and tossed aside, but no; he also holds on
his way. It is not that he resents the trouble, it is
the idea that is wanting. It would no more occur
to him that that stone was a displaceable object, and
that for the general weal he might displace it, than
that its feldspar was of the orthoclase variety.
Generations and generations of men have passed
that stone, and it still waits for a man with an
altruistic idea. But it would be a very stony
country indeed—and Africa is far from stony—that
would wholly account for the aggravating oblique-
ness and indecision of the African footpath. Prob-
ably each four miles, on an average path, is spun
out by an infinite series of minor sinuosities, to five
or six. Now these deflections are not meaningless.
Each has some history—a history dating back per-
haps a thousand years, but to which all clue has
centuries ago been lost. The leading cause probably

is fallen trees. When a tree falls across a path no

30 THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY

man ever removes it. As in the case of the stone,
the native goes round it. It is too green to burn in
his hut; before it is dry, and the white ants have
eaten it, the new detour has become part and parcel
of the path. The smaller irregularities, on the other
hand, represent the trees and stumps of the primeval
forest where the track was made at first. But what-
ever the cause, it is certain that for persistent
straightforwardness in the general, and utter vacilla-
tion and irresolution in the particular, the African
roads are unique in engineering.

Though one of the smaller African lakes, Shirwa
is probably larger than all the lakes of Great Britain
put together. With the splendid environment of
mountains on three of its sides, softened and distanced
by perpetual summer haze, it reminds one somewhat
of the Great Salt Lake simmering in a July sun. We
pitched our tent for a day or two on its western
shore among a harmless and surprised people who
had never gazed on the pallid countenances of
Englishmen before. Owing to the ravages of the
slaver the people of Shirwa are few, scattered and
poor, and live in abiding terror. The densest popu-
lation is to be found on the small island, heavily
timbered with baobabs, which forms a picturesque
feature of the northern end. These Wa-Nyassa, or

LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA 37

people of the lake, as they call themselves, have
been driven here by fear, and they rarely leave their
Lake-Dwelling unless under cover of night. Even
then they are liable to capture by any man of a
stronger tribe who happens to meet them, and
numbers who have been kidnapped in this way are
to be found in the villages of neighbouring chiefs.
This is an amenity of existence in Africa that strikes
one as very terrible. It is impossible for those at
home to understand how literally savage man is a
chattel, and how much his life is spent in the mere
safeguarding of his main asset, ze. himself. There
are actually districts in Africa where f¢hree natives
cannot be sent a message in case two should combine
and sell the third before they return.

After some time spent in the Lake Shirwa and
Shire districts, I set out for the Upper Shiré and
Lake Nyassa. Two short days’ walk from the
settlement at Blantyre brings one once more to
the banks of the Shiré. Here I found waiting
the famous little J//ala, a tiny steamer, little
bigger than a large steam launch. It belonged
originally to the missionaries on Lake Nyassa,
and was carried here a few years ago from
England in seven hundred pieces, and _ bolted
Seeetier On the river bank. No chapter in

38 THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY

romance is more interesting than the story of the
pioneer voyage of the J//a/a, as it sailed away for
the first time towards the unknown waters of Nyassa.
No keel had ever broken the surface of this mighty
lake before, and the wonderment of the natives as
the Big Canoe hissed past their villages is described
by those who witnessed it as a spectacle of indescrib-
able interest. The //a/a is named, of course, after
the village where David Livingstone breathed his
last. It indicates the heroic mission of the little ship
—to take up the work of Civilisation and Christianity
where the great explorer left it. The //a/a now plies
at intervals between the Upper Shiré—above the
cataracts—and the shores of Lake Nyassa, carrying
supplies to the handful of missionaries settled on the
western shore. Though commanded by a white man,
the work on board is entirely done by natives from
the locality. The confidence of the black people
once gained, no great difficulty seems to have been
found in getting volunteers enough for this novel
employment. Singularly enough, while deck hands
are often only enlisted after some persuasion, the
competition for the office of freman—a disagreeable
post at any time, but in the tropical heat the last to
be coveted—is so keen that any number of natives

are at all times ready to be frizzled in the stokehole.

LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA 39

Instead of avoiding heat, the African native every-
where courts it. His nature expands and revels in
it; while a breath of cold on a mountain slope, or a
sudden shower of rain, transforms him instantly into
a most woebegone object.

After leaving Matope, just above the Murchison
cataracts, the //a/a steams for a couple of days in the
river before Lake Nyassa is reached. The valley
throughout this length is very broad, bounded on
either side by distant mountains which at an earlier
’ period probably formed the shores of a larger Lake
Nyassa. The fact that Lake Nyassa is silting up at
its southern end becomes more apparent as one nears
the lake, for here one finds a considerable expanse
already cut off from the larger portion, and forming
a separate sheet of water. The smaller lake is Lake
Pomalombe, and it is already so shallow that in the
dry season the //ala’s screw stirs the gray mud at
the bottom. The friendship of the few villages along
the bank is secured by an occasional present ; although
the relations between some of them and the Big
Canoe are at times a little strained, and in bad
humours doubtless they would send it to the bottom
if they dared. It is to be remembered that this
whole region is as yet altogether beyond the limits,
and almost beyond the knowledge, of civilisation, and

40 THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY

few white men have ever been in the country, except
the few agents connected with the Lakes Company
and the Missions. Beyond an occasional barter of
cloth or beads for firewood and food, the //a/a has
no dealings with the tribes on the Upper Shiré, and
at present they are about as much affected by the
passing to and fro of the white man’s steamer as are
the inhabitants of Kensington by an occasional wild-
fowl making for Regent’s Park. One is apt to con-
clude, from the mere presence of such a thing as a
steamer in Central Africa, that the country through
which it is passing must be in some sense civilised,
and the hourly reminders to the contrary which one
receives on the spot are among the most startling
experiences of the traveller. It is almost impossible
for him to believe, as he watches the native life from
the cabin of the //a/a, that these people are altogether
uncivilised ; just as it is impossible for him to believe
that that lurch a moment ago was caused by the
little craft bumping against a submerged hippopo-
tamus. <A steel ship, London built, steaming six
knots ahead ; and grass huts, nude natives, and a
hippopotamus—the ideas refuse to assort themselves,
and one lives in a perpetual state of bewilderment
and interrogation.

It was a brilliant summer morning when the //ala

LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA 41

steamed into Lake Nyassa, and in a few hours we
were at anchor in the little bay at Livingstonia.
My first impressions of this famous mission-station
certainly will never be forgotten. Magnificent
mountains of granite, green to the summit with
forest, encircled it, and on the silver sand of a still
smaller bay stood the small row of trim white cottages.
A neat path through a small garden led up to the
settlement, and I approached the largest house and
entered. It was the Livingstonia manse—the head
missionary’s house. It was spotlessly clean ; English
furniture was in the room, a medicine chest, familiar-
looking dishes were in the cupboards, books lying
about, but there was no missionary in it. I went to
the next house—it was the school, the benches were
there and the blackboard, but there were no scholars
‘and no teacher. I passed to the next, it was the
blacksmith’s shop; there were the tools and the
anvil, but there was no blacksmith. And so on to
the next, and the next, all in perfect order, and all
empty. Then a native approached and led me a few
yards into the forest. And there among the mimosa
trees, under a huge granite mountain, were four or
five graves. These were the missionaries.

I spent a day or two in the solemn shadow of

that deserted manse. It is one of the loveliest spots

42 THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY

in the world; and it was hard to believe, sitting
under the tamarind trees by the quiet lake shore,
that the pestilence which wasteth at midnight had
made this beautiful spot its home. A hundred and
fifty miles north, on the same lake-coast, the remnant
of the missionaries have begun their task again, and
there, slowly, against fearful odds, they are carrying
on their work. Travellers have been pleased to say
unkind things of missionaries. That they are some-
times right, I will not question. But I will say of
the Livingstonia missionaries, and of the Blantyre
missionaries, and count it an honour to say it, that
they are brave, efficient, single-hearted men, who
need our sympathy more than we know, and are
equally above our criticism and our praise.

Malarial fever is the one sad certainty which every
African traveller must face. For months he may
escape, but its finger is upon him, and well for him
if he has a friend near when it finally overtakes him.
It is preceded for weeks, or even for a month or two,
by unaccountable irritability, depression, and weari-
ness. On the march with his men he has scarcely
started when he sighs for the noon-day rest. Putting
it down to mere laziness, he goads himself on by
draughts from the water-bottle, and totters forward a
mile or two more. Next he finds himself skulking

LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA 43

into the forest on the pretext of looking at a speci-
men, and, when his porters are out of sight, throws
himself under a tree in utter limpness and despair.
Roused by mere shame, he staggers along the trail,
and as he nears the mid-day camp puts on a spurt
to conceal his defeat, which finishes him for the rest
of the day. This is a good place for specimens he
tells the men—the tent may be pitched for the night.
This goes on day after day till the crash comes—
first cold and pain, then heat and pain, then every
kind of pain, and every degree of heat, then delirium,
then the life-and-death struggle. He rises, if he
does rise, a shadow ; and slowly accumulates strength
for the next attack, which he knows too well will
not disappoint him. No one has ever yet got to
the bottom of African fever. Its geographical dis-
tribution is still unmapped, but generally it prevails
over the whole east and west coasts within the

tropical limit, along all the river-courses, on the
- shores of the inland lakes, and in all low-lying and
marshy districts. The higher plateaux, presumably,
are comparatively free from it, but in order to reach
these, malarious districts of greater or smaller area
have to be traversed. There the system becomes
saturated with fever, which often develops long after
the infected region is left behind. The known facts

44 THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY

with regard to African fever are these: First, it is
connected in some way with drying-up water and
decaying vegetation, though how the germs develop,
or what they are, is unknown. Second, natives
suffer from fever equally with Europeans, and this
more particularly in changing from district to district
and from altitude to altitude. Thus, in marching
over the Tanganyika plateau, four or five of my
native carriers were down with fever, although their
homes were only two or three hundred miles off,
before I had even a touch of it. Third, quinine is
the great and almost the sole remedy ; and fourth,
no European ever escapes it.

The really appalling mortality of Europeans is a
fact with which all who have any idea of casting in
their lot with Africa should seriously reckon: None
but those who have been on the spot, or have fol-
lowed closely the inner history of African exploration
and missionary work, can appreciate the gravity of
the situation. The malaria spares no man; the
strong fall as the weak; no number of precautions
can provide against it; no kind of care can do more
than make the attacks less frequent ; no prediction
can be made beforehand as to which regions are
haunted by it and which are safe. It is not the
least ghastly feature of this invisible plague that the

LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA 45

only known scientific test for it at present is a
human life. That test has been applied in the
Congo region already with a recklessness which the
sober judgment can only characterise as criminal.
It is a small matter that men should throw away
their lives, in hundreds if need be, for a holy cause ;
but it is not a small matter that man after man, in
long and in fatal succession, should seek to overleap
what is plainly a barrier of Nature. And science has
a duty in pointing out that no devotion or enthusiasm
can give any man a charmed life, and that those who
work for the highest ends will best attain them in
humble obedience to the common laws. Transcend-
entally, this may be denied ; the warning finger may
be despised as the hand of the coward and the
profane. But the fact remains—the fact of an
awful chain of English graves stretching across
Africa. This is not spoken, nevertheless, to dis-
courage missionary enterprise. It is only said to
regulate it.

To the head of Lake Nyassa in a little steam
yacht is quite a sea-voyage. What with heavy seas,
and head-winds, and stopping to wood, and lying-to
at nights, it takes longer time than going from
England to America. The lake is begirt with

mountains, and storms are so incessant and so

46 THE EAST APRICAN LAKE COUNTRY

furious that Livingstone actually christened Nyassa
the “Lake of Storms.” The motion on anchoring
at night was generally so unpleasant that one pre-
ferred then to be set on shore. My men—for I had
already begun to pick up my caravan wherever I
could find a native willing to go—would kindle fires
all round to keep off beasts of prey, and we slept in
peace upon the soft lake sand.

Instead of being one hundred and fifty miles long,
as first supposed, Lake Nyassa is now known to have
a length of three hundred and fifty miles, and a
breadth varying from sixteen to sixty miles. It
occupies a gigantic trough of granite and gneiss, the
profoundly deep water standing at a level of sixteen
hundred feet above the sea, with the mountains rising
all around it, and sometimes sheer above it, to a
height of one, two, three, and four thousand feet.
The mountains along the west coast form an almost
unbroken chain, while the north-east and north are
enclosed by the vast range of the Livingstone
Mountains. The anchorages on the lake are neither
so numerous nor so sheltered as might be wished,
but the //a/a has picked out some fair harbours on
the west coast, and about half as many are already
known on the east.

I only visited one native village on the lake, and

LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA 47

I should hope there are none others like it—indeed
it was quite exceptional for Africa. I tumbled into
it early one morning, out of the J//a/a’s dingy, and
lost myself at once in an endless labyrinth of reek-
ing huts. Its filth was indescribable, and I met
stricken men, at the acute stage of smallpox,
wandering about the place at every turn, as if infec-
tion were a thing unknown. The chief is the great-
est slaver and the worst villain on the lake, and
impaled upon poles all round his lodge, their ghastly
faces shrivelling in the sun, I counted forty human
heads.

This village was not African, however. It was
Arab. The native villages on Nyassa are rarely so
large, seldom so compact, and never so dirty. Every-
where they straggle along the shore and through the
forest, and altogether there must be many hun-
dreds of them scattered about the lake. On the
western shore alone there are at least fifteen different
tribes, speaking as many different languages, and
each of them with dialects innumerable.

The bright spot on Lake Nyassa is Bandawé,
the present headquarters of the Scotch Livingstonia
Mission. The phrase “headquarters of a mission”
suggests to the home Christian a street and a square,

with its overshadowing church ; a decent graveyard ;

48 THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY

and a reverent community in its Sunday clothes.
But Bandawé is only a lodge or two in a vast
wilderness, and the swarthy worshippers flock to the
seatless chapel on M’lunga’s day dressed mostly in
bows and arrows. The said chapel, nevertheless,
is as great an achievement in its way as Cologne
Cathedral, and its worshippers are quite as much
interested, and some of them at least to quite as
much purpose. In reality no words can be a fit
witness here to the impression made by Dr. Laws,
Mrs. Laws, and their few helpers, upon this singular
and apparently intractable material. A visit to Ban-
dawé is a great moral lesson. And I cherish no
more sacred memory of my life than that of a com-
munion service in the little Bandawé chapel, when
the sacramental cup was handed to me by the bare
black arm of a native communicant—a communi-
cant whose life, tested afterwards in many an hour of
trial with me on the Tanganyika plateau, gave him

perhaps a better right to be there than any of us.

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3 HEART OF AFRICA

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III

Poe. HEART OF AFRICA

2HE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE

E are now far enough into the interior to

form some general idea of the aspect of the

heart of Africa. I shall not attempt to picture any

particular spot. The description about to be given

applies generally to Shirwa, the Shiré Highlands,

Nyassa, and the Nyassa - Tanganyika plateau —

regions which together make up one of the great
lobes of the heart of Africa.

Nothing could more wildly misrepresent the
reality than the idea of one’s school days that the
heart of Africa is a desert. Africa rises from its
three environing oceans in three great tiers, and the
general physical geography of these has been already
sketched—first, a coast-line, low and deadly ; farther
in, a plateau the height of the Scottish Grampians ;
farther in still, a higher plateau, covering the country

52 THE HEART 'OF AFRICA

for thousands of miles with mountain and valley.
Now fill in this sketch, and you have Africa before
you. Cover the coast belt with rank yellow grass,
dot here and there a palm; scatter through it a few
demoralised villages ; and stock it with the leopard,
the hyena, the crocodile, and the hippopotamus.
Clothe the mountainous plateaux next—both of
them—with endless forest,—not grand umbrageous
forest like the forests of South America, nor matted
jungle like the forests of India, but with thin, rather
weak forest,—with forest of low trees, whose half-
grown trunks and scanty leaves. offer no shade from
the tropical sun. Nor is there anything in these trees
to the casual eye to-remind you that you are in the
tropics. Here and there one comes upon a borassus
or fan-palm, a candelabra-like euphorbia, a mimosa
aflame with colour, or a sepulchral baobab. A close
inspection also will discover curious creepers and
climbers ; and among the branches strange orchids
hide their eccentric flowers. But the outward type
of tree is the same as we have at home—trees
resembling the ash, the beech, and the elm, only
seldom so large, except by the streams, and never
so beautiful Day after day you may wander

1 The more important of these trees are—/Vapaca Kirkiz,
Brachystegia longifolia, Vitex umbrosa, Erythrina speciosa,

THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 53

through these forests with nothing except the climate
to remind you where you are. The beasts, to be
sure, are different, but unless you watch for them
you will seldom see any; the birds are different, but
you rarely hear them ; and as for the rocks, they are
our own familiar gneisses and granites, with honest
basalt-dykes boring through them, and leopard-skin
lichens staining their weathered sides. Thousands
and thousands of miles, then, of vast thin forest,
shadeless, trackless, voiceless—forest in mountain
and forest in plain—this is East Central Africa.
The indiscriminate praise formerly lavished on
tropical vegetation has received many shocks from
recent travellers. In Kaffirland, South Africa, I have
seen one or two forests fine enough to justify the en-
thusiasm of armchair word-painters of the tropics; but
so far as the central plateau is concerned, the careful
judgment of Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace respecting the
equatorial belt in general—a judgment which has at
once sobered all modern descriptions of tropical lands,
and made imaginative people more content to stay at
home—applies almost to this whole area. The fairy
labyrinth of ferns and palms, the festoons of climbing
plants blocking the paths and scenting the forests

Ficus sycamorus, Khaya senegalensis, Nuxia congesta, Part-
narium mobola, and Erythrophleum guineensis.

54 THE HEART OF AFRICA

with their resplendent flowers, the gorgeous clouds of
insects, the gaily-plumaged birds, the paroquets, the
monkey swinging from his trapeze in the shaded
bowers—these are unknown to Africa. Once a
week you will see a palm; once in three months the
monkey will cross your path; the flowers on the
whole are few; the trees are poor; and to be honest,
though the endless forest-clad mountains have a
sublimity of their own, and though there are tropical
bits along some of the mountain-streams of exquisite
beauty, nowhere is there anything in grace and
sweetness and strength to compare with a Highland
glen. For the most part of the year these forests
are jaded and sun-stricken, carpeted with no moss or
alchemylla or scented woodruff, the bare trunks fres-
coed with few lichens, their motionless and unre-
freshed leaves drooping sullenly from their sapless
boughs. Flowers there are, small and great, in end-
less variety ; but there is no display of flowers, no
gorgeous show of blossom in the mass, as when the
blazing gorse and heather bloom at home. The
dazzling glare of the sun in the torrid zone has per-
haps something to do with this want of colour-effect
in tropical nature; for there is always about ten
minutes just after sunset, when the whole tone of the

landscape changes like magic, and a singular beauty

THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 55

steals over the scene. This is the sweetest moment
of the African day, and night hides only too swiftly
the homelike softness and repose so strangely grateful
to the over-stimulated eye.

Hidden away in these endless forests, like birds’
nests in a wood, in terror of one another, and of
their common foe, the slaver, are small native
villages; and here in his virgin simplicity dwells
primeval man, without clothes, without civilisation,
without learning, without religion—the genuine child
of nature, thoughtless, careless, and contented. This
man is apparently quite happy; he has practically
no wants. One stick, pointed, makes him a spear ;
two sticks rubbed together make him a fire; fifty
sticks tied together make him a house. The bark
he peels from them makes his clothes; the fruits
which hang on them form his food. It is perfectly
astonishing when one thinks of it what nature can
do for the animal-man, to see with what small capital
after all a human being can get through the world.
I once saw an African buried. According to the
custom of his tribe, his entire earthly possessions—
and he was an average commoner—were buried with
him. Into the grave, after the body, was lowered
the dead man’s pipe, then a rough knife, then a mud

bowl. and last his bow and arrows—-the bowstring

56 THE HEART OF AFRICA

cut through the middle, a touching symbol that its
work was done. This was all. Four items, as an
auctioneer would say, were the whole belongings for
half a century of this human being. No man knows
what a man is till he has seen what a man can be
without, and be withal a man. That is to say, no
man knows how great man is till he has seen how
small he has been once.

The African is often blamed for being lazy, but
it is a misuse of words. He does not need to work ;
with so bountiful a nature round him it would be
gratuitous to work. And his indolence, therefore, as
it is called, is just as much a part of himself as his
flat nose, and as little blameworthy as slowness in
a tortoise. The fact is, Africa is a snatiemiormens
unemployed.

This completeness, however, will be a sad draw-
back to development. Already it is found difficult
to create new wants; and when labour is required,
and you have already paid your man a yard of calico
and a string of beads, you have nothing in your
possession to bribe him to another hand’s turn.
Nothing almost that you have would be the slightest
use to him. Among the presents which I took for
chiefs, I was innocent enough to include a watch. I

might as well have taken a grand piano. For

THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 57

months I never looked at my own watch in that
land of sunshine. Besides, the mere idea of time has
scarcely yet penetrated the African mind, and forms
no element whatever in his calculations. I wanted
on one occasion to catch the little steamer on the
Shiré, and pleaded this as an excuse to a rather
powerful chief, whom it would have been dangerous
to quarrel with, and who would not let me leave his
village. The man merely stared. The idea of any
one being in a hurry was not only preposterous but
inconceivable, and I might as well have urged as
my reason for wishing away that the angles of a
triangle are equal to two right angles.

This difference in ideas is the real obstacle to
African travelling, and it raises all sorts of problems
in one’s mind as to the nature of ideas themselves.
I often wished I could get inside an African for an
afternoon, and just see how he looked at things; for
Iam sure our worlds are as different as the colour of
our skins.

Talking of skins, I may observe in passing that
the highland African is not a negro, nor is his skin
black. It is a deep full-toned brown, something like
the colour of a good cigar. The whole surface is
diced with a delicate pattern, which gives it great
richness and beauty, and I often thought how effect-

58 THE HEART OF APRICA

ive a row of books would be bound in native-
morocco.

No one knows exactly who these people are.
They belong, of course, to the great Bantu race ; but
their origin is obscure, their tribal boundaries are
unmapped, even their names are unknown, and their
languages—for there are many—are unintelligible.
A fine-looking people, quiet and domestic, their life-
history from the cradle to the grave is of the utmost
simplicity. Too ill armed to hunt, they live all but
exclusively on a vegetable diet. A small part of the
year they depend, like the monkeys, upon wild fruits
and herbs ; but the staple food is a small tasteless
millet-seed which they grow in gardens, crush in a
mortar, and stir with water into a thick porridge.
Twice a day, nearly all the year round, each man stuffs
himself with this coarse and tasteless dough, shovel-
ling it into his mouth in handfuls, and consuming
at a sitting a pile the size of an ant-heap. His one
occupation is to grow this millet, and his gardening
is a curiosity. Selecting a spot in the forest, he
climbs a tree, and with a small home-made axe lops
off the branches one by one. He then wades
through the litter to the next tree, and hacks it to
pieces also, leaving the trunk standing erect. Upon

all the trees within a circle of thirty or forty yards

THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 59

diameter his axe works similar havoc, till the ground
stands breast-high in leaves and branches. Next,
the whole is set on fire and burnt to ashes. ‘Then,
when the first rains moisten the hard ground and
wash the fertile chemical constituents of the ash into
the soil, he attacks it with his hoe, drops in a few
handfuls of millet, and the year’s work is over. But
-a few weeks off and on are required for these opera-
tions, and he may then go to sleep till the rains are
over, assured of a crop which never fails, which is
never poor, and which will last him till the rains
return again.

Between the acts he does nothing but lounge
and sleep; his wife, or wives, are the millers and
bakers ; they work hard to prepare his food, and are
rewarded by having to take their own meals apart,
for no African would ever demean himself by eating
with a woman. I have tried to think of something
else that these people habitually do, but their vacuous
life leaves nothing more to tell.

Apart from eating, their sole occupation is to
talk, and this they do unceasingly, emphasising their
words with a marvellous wealth of gesticulation.
Talking, indeed, is an art here—the art it must once
have been in Europe before the newspaper drove

it out of fashion. The native voices are sometimes

60 THE HEART OF AFRICA

highly musical, though in the strict sense the people
have no notion whatever of singing; and the lan-
guages themselves are full of melody. Every word,
like the Italian, ends in a vowel, and when well
spoken they are exceedingly effective and full of
character.

Notwithstanding their rudimentary estate, the
people of Africa have the beginnings of all the more
characteristic things that make up the life of civilised
man. They have a national amusement, the dance ;
a national musical instrument, the drum; a national
drink, pombé ; a national religion, the fear of evil
spirits. Their chamber of justice is a council of
head-men or chiefs ; their court of appeal the suavz,
or poison-cup. No new thing is found here that is
not in some form in modern civilisation ; no new
thing in civilisation but has its embryo and prophecy
in the simpler life of these primitive tribes. To the
ignorant these men are animals; but the eye of
evolution looks on them with a kindlier and more
instructed sense. They are what we were once;
possibly they may become what we are now.

What, then, is to become of this strange people
and their land? With the glowing figures of a very
distinguished traveller in our minds, are we to expect

that the Shiré and Congo routes have but to be con-

THEYCOUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 61

nected with New York and Manchester to cause at
once a revolution among the people of Africa and in
the commerce of the world? We hear two criticisms
upon that subject. One complains that while Mr.
Stanley emphasises in the most convincing way the
thousands of miles of cloth the African is waiting to
receive from Europe, he is all but silent as to what
Europe is to get in return. A second remark is
that Africa has nothing to give in return, and never
will have.

The facts of the case briefly, as it seems to me,
are these :—

First, The only thing of value the interior of
Africa produces at present in any quantity is ivory.
@neré is: still, undoubtedly, a supply of this precious
material in the country—a supply which may last
yet for fifteen or twenty years. But it is well to
frame future calculation on the certainty of this
abnormal source of wealth ceasing, as it must do, in
the immediate future.

Second, Africa already produces in a wild state
a number of vegetable and other products of con-
siderable commercial value; and although the soil
can only be said to be of average fertility, there is
practically no limit to the extent to which these
could be developed.

62 THE HEART OF AFRICA

Wild indigo—the true zzdigofera tinctoria—is
already growing on the hills of the interior. The
Londolphia, an indiarubber-bearing creeper, is to
be seen on most of the watercourses ; and a variety
of the /icus elastica, the well-known rubber plant,
abounds on Lake Nyassa. The orchilla weed is
common. The castor-oil plant, ginger, and other
spices, the tobacco-plant, the cotton-plant, and many
fibre-yielding grasses, are also found ; and oil-seeds
of every variety and in endless quantity are grown
by the natives for local use.

The fatal drawback, meantime, to the further
development of these comparatively invaluable pro-
ducts is the transit, carriage to the coast from Nyassa
or Tanganyika being almost prohibitive. Up till
very recently only two native products have ever
been exported from this region—indiarubber and
beeswax, and these in but trifling quantity. But
there is no reason why these products should not be
largely developed, and freights must become lower
and lower every year. In addition to the plants
named, the soil of Central Africa is undoubtedly
adapted for growing coffee ; and the Cinchona would
probably flourish well on the higher grounds of the
Tanganyika plateau.

I must not omit to mention in this connection

THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 63

that an attempt is now being-made, and so far with
marked success, to form actual plantations in the
interior of Africa ; and the result of the experiment
ought to be watched with exceptional interest. Mr.
Moir, on behalf of the African Lakes Company, and
the Brothers Buchanan on their own account, and
also Mr. Scott, with remarkable industry and enter-
prise have each formed at Blantyre a coffee planta-
tion of considerable size. The plants, when I saw
them, were still young, but very healthy and promis-
ing, and already a first crop of fine coffee-berries
hung from the trees, and has since been marketed.
These same gentlemen have also grown heavy crops
of wheat ; and Mr. Buchanan has succeeded well
with sugar-cane, potatoes and other English vege-
tables. The manual work here has been entirely
done by natives ; and an immense saving to resident
Europeans will be effected when the interior is able
to provide its own food supplies, for at present wheat,
coffee, and sugar, have all to be imported from home.

With so satisfactory an account of the possibilities
of the country, the only question that remains is this
—Can the African native really be taught to work ?

This question I answer unhesitatingly in the
affirmative. I have described Africa as a nation of

the unemployed. But the sole reason for the current

64 THE HEART OF AFRICA

impression that the African is an incorrigible idler is
that at present there is really nothing for him to do.
But that he can work and will work when the
opportunity and inducement offer has been proved
by experiment. The -coast native, as all. ‘must
testify who have seen him in the harbour of Zanzibar,
Mozambique, Delagoa Bay, Natal, or the other eastern
ports, is, with all allowances, a splendid worker ; and
though the experiment has seldom been tried in the
interior, it is well known that the capacity is there,
and wherever encouraged yields results beyond all
expectation. Probably the severest test to which
the native of Central Africa has ever been put is the
construction of the Stevenson road, between Lakes
Nyassa and Tanganyika. Forty-six miles of that
road—probably the only thing of the kind in Central
Africa—have already been made entirely by native
labour, and the work could not have been better
done had it been executed by English navvies, I
have watched by the day a party of seventy natives
working at a cutting upon that road. Till three or
four years ago none of them had ever looked upon
a white man; nor, till a few months previously, had
one of them seen a spade, a pickaxe, or a crowbar.
Yet these savages handled their tools to such purpose
that, with only a single European superintendent, they

THE COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE 65

have made a road, full of difficult cuttings and
gradients, which would not disgrace a railway con-
tractor at home. The workmen keep regular hours
—six in the morning till five at night, with a rest at
mid-day—work steadily, continuously, willingly, and
above all, merrily. This goes on, observe, in the heart
of the tropics, almost under the equator itself, where
the white man’s energy evaporates, and leaves him
so limp that he cannot even be an example to his
men. This goes on too without any compulsion; the
natives flock from far and near, sometimes from long
distances, to try this new sensation of work. These
men are not slaves, but volunteers; and though
they are paid by the fortnight, many will remain at
their post the whole season through. The only bribe
for all this work is a yard or two of calico per week
per man; so that it seems to me one of the greatest
problems of the future of Africa is here solved. In
capacity the African is fit to work, in inclination he
is willing to work, and in actual experiment he has
done it ; so that with capital enlisted and wise heads
to direct these energies, with considerate employers
who will remember that these men are but children,
this vast nation of the unemployed may yet be added
to the slowly growing list of the world’s producers.
Africa at this moment has an impossible access, a
F

66 THE HEART OF AFRICA

perilous climate, a penniless people, an undeveloped
soil. So once had England. It may never be done;
other laws may operate, unforeseen factors may inter-
fere; but there is nothing in the soil, the products,
the climate, or the people of Africa to forbid its
joining even at this late day in the great march of

civilisation.

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RT-DISEASE OF AFRICA

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Tracks of Slave Caravans and
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London: Hodder and Stoughton

iv
mare. HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA

frS PATHOLOGY AND CURE

HE life of the native African is not all idyll. It

is darkened by a tragedy whose terrors are
unknown to any other people under heaven. Of its
mild domestic slavery I do not speak, nor of its
revolting witchcraft, nor of its endless quarrels and
frequent tribal wars. These minor evils are lost in
the shadow of a great and national wrong. Among
these simple and unprotected tribes, Arabs—uninvited
strangers of another race and nature—pour in from
the North and East, with the deliberate purpose of
making this paradise a hell. It seems the awful
destiny of this homeless people to spend their lives
in breaking up the homes of others. Wherever they
go in Africa the followers of Islam are the destroyers
of peace, the breakers up of the patriarchal life, the
dissolvers of the family tie. Already they hold the

70 THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA

whole Continent under one reign of terror. They
have effected this in virtue of one thing — they
possess firearms; and they do it for one object—
ivory and slaves, for these two are one. The slaves
are needed to buy ivory with ; then more slaves have
to be stolen to carry it. So living man himself has
become the commercial currency of Africa. He is
locomotive, he is easily acquired, he is immediately
negotiable.

Arab encampments for carrying on a wholesale
trade in this terrible commodity are now established
all over the heart of Africa. They are usually con-
nected with wealthy Arab traders at Zanzibar and
other places on the coast, and communication is
kept up by caravans which pass, at long intervals,
from one to the other. Being always large and well
supplied with the material of war, these caravans
have at their mercy the feeble and divided native
tribes through which they pass, and their trail across
the Continent is darkened with every aggravation
of tyranny and crime. They come upon the scene
suddenly ; they stay only long enough to secure
their end, and disappear only to return when a new
crop has arisen which is worth the reaping.

Sometimes these Arab traders will actually settle

for a year or two in the heart of some quiet com- ,

ITS PATHOLOGY AND CURE 71

munity in the remote interior. They pretend perfect
friendship ; they molest no one ; they barter honestly.
They plant the seeds of their favourite vegetables
and fruits—the Arab always carries seeds with him
—as if they meant to stay for ever. Meantime they
buy ivory, tusk after tusk, until great piles of it are
buried beneath their huts and all their barter-goods
are gone. Then one day, suddenly, the inevitable
quarrel is picked. And then follows a wholesale
massacre. Enough only are spared from the slaughter
to carry the ivory to the coast; the grass-huts of
the village are set on fire; the Arabs strike camp ;
and the slave-march, worse than death, begins.

This last act in the drama, the slave-march, is
the aspect of slavery which, in the past, has chiefly
aroused the passions and the sympathy of the outside
world, but the greater evil is the demoralisation and
disintegration of communities by which it is neces-
sarily preceded. It is essential to the traffic that the
region drained by the slaver should be kept in per-
petual political ferment; that, in order to prevent
combination, chief should be pitted against chief ;
and that the moment any tribe threatened to assume
a dominating strength it should either be broken up
by the instigation of rebellion among its dependencies,

or made a tool of at their expense. The inter-relation

72 THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA

of tribe with tribe is so intricate that it is impossible
to exaggerate the effect of disturbing the equilibrium
at even a single centre. But, like a river, a slave-
caravan has to be fed by innumerable tributaries all
along its course—at first in order to gather a suffi-
cient volume of human bodies for the start, and
afterwards to replace the frightful loss by desertion,
disablement, and death. The Slave-Map, appended
by courteous permission of Mr. James Stevenson,
will give some idea of the extent of country cursed
and blighted to keep up this traffic. .
Many at home imagine that the death-knell of
slavery was struck with the events which followed
the death of Livingstone. In the great explorer’s
time we heard much of slavery; we were often
appealed to; the Government busied itself; some-
thing was really done. But the wail is already for-
gotten, and England hears little now of the open
sore of the world. But the tragedy I have alluded
to is repeated every year and every month—witness
such recent atrocities as those of the Upper Congo,
the Kassai and Sankaru region described by Wiss-
mann, of the Welle-Inakua district referred to by
Van Gele. It was but yesterday that an explorer,
crossing from Lake Nyassa to Lake Tanganyika,

saw the whole southern end of Tanganyika peopled

ITS PATHOLOGY AND CURE i

with large and prosperous villages. The next to
follow him found not a solitary human being—
nothing but burned homes and bleaching skeletons.
It was but yesterday—the close of 1887—that the
Arabs at the north end of Lake Nyassa, after
destroying fourteen villages with many of their
inhabitants, pursued the population of one village
into a patch of tall dry grass, set it on fire, sur-
rounded it, and slew with the bullet and the spear
those who crawled out from the more merciful flames.
The Wa-Nkonde tribe, to which these people be-
longed, were, until this event, one of the most pros-
perous tribes in East Central Africa. They occupied
a country of exceptional fertility and beauty. Three
rivers, which never failed in the severest drought,
run through their territory, and their crops were the
richest and most varied in the country. They
possessed herds of cattle and goats; they fished in
the lake with nets; they wrought iron into many-
patterned spear-heads with exceptional ingenuity
and skill; and that even artistic taste had begun to
develop among them was evident from the orna-
mental work upon their huts, which were them-
selves unique in Africa for clever construction and
beauty of design. This people, in short, by their

own inherent ability and the natural resources of

74 THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA

their country, were on the high road to civilisation.
Now mark the swift stages in their decline and fall.
Years ago an almost unnoticed rill from that great
Arab stream, which with noiseless current and ever-
changing bed has never ceased to flow through
Africa, trickled into the country. At first the Arab
was there on sufferance; he paid his way. Land
was bought from the Wa-Nkonde chiefs, and their
sovereignty acknowledged. The Arab force grew.
In time it developed into a powerful incursion, and
the Arabs began openly to assert themselves. One
of their own number was elevated to the rulership,
with the title of “Sultan of Nkonde.” The tension
became great, and finally too severe to last. After
innumerable petty fights the final catastrophe was
hurried on, and after an atrocious carnage the rem-
nant of the Wa-Nkonde were driven from their
fatherland. Such is the very last chapter in the
history of Arab rule in Africa.

The Germans, the Belgians, the English, and the
Portuguese, are crying out at present for territory in
Central Africa. Meantime humanity is crying out
for some one to administer the country ; for some one
to claim it, not by delimiting a frontier-line upon a
map with coloured crayons, but by seeing justice

done upon the spot ; for some one with a strong arm

ITS PATHOLOGY AND CURE 75

and a pitiful heart to break the Arab yoke and keep
these unprotected children free. It has been reserved
for a small company of English gentlemen to arrest
the hand of the raider in the episode I have just
described. While Germany covets Nyassa-land,
while Portugal claims it, while England has sent a
consul there, zwzthout protection, to safeguard British
missionary and trading interests, two agents of the
African Lakes Company, two missionaries, the
British Consul at Mozambique, with two com-
panions who happened to be in Nyassa-land on
scientific work, have, at the risk of their lives,
averted further war, and with their own rifles
avenged the crime.

But this fortuitous concourse of English rifles
cannot be reckoned upon every day; nor is it the
part of the missionary and the trader to play the
game of war. The one thing needed for Africa at
present is some system of organised protection to
the native, and the decisive breaking of the Arab
influence throughout the whole interior. These
events at Lake Nyassa have brought this subject
once more before the civilised world, and I may
briefly state the situation as it at present stands.

Five years ago the British cruisers which had

been for years engaged in suppressing the slave-trade

76 THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA

were tempted to relax their efforts. They had
done splendid service. The very sight of the great
hull of the Lozdon, as she rocked in the harbour of
Zanzibar, had a pacific influence; and as the cara-
vans from the interior came and went at intervals of
years and found the cruisers’ cannon still pointing to
their sultan’s palace, they carried the fear of England
over the length and breadth of Africa. The slave-
trade was seriously discouraged, and, so far as the
coast traffic was concerned, it was all but completely
arrested. What work, up to this point, was done,
was well done; but, after all, only half the task had
ever been attempted. It was not enough to stop
the sewer at its mouth; its sources in the heart of
Africa should have been sought out and purified.
But now that even the menace at Zanzibar no
longer threatened the slavers, their work was resumed
with redoubled energy. The withdrawal of the
London was interpreted to mean either that England
conceived her work to be done or that she had
srown apathetic and would interfere no more.

The consequences were almost immediately dis-
astrous. A new license to devastate, to murder, and
to enslave, was telegraphed all over Africa, and
speedily found expression, in widely-separated parts

of the country, in horrors the details of which can

ITS PATHOLOGY AND CURE 77

never be known to the civilised world. The dis-
turbances on Lake Nyassa undoubtedly belong,
though indirectly, to this new category of crime.
Already the Arabs have learned that there is no one
now to take them to task. In one district after
another they have played their game and won; and
with ample power, with absolute immunity from
retribution, and with the sudden creation of a new
demand for slaves in a quarter of which I dare not
speak further here, their offences can only increase in
number and audacity. It is remarkable in the Wa-
Nkonde episode that, for the first time probably in
Central Africa, the Mohammedan defiance to the
Christian power was open and undisguised. Hitherto
the Arab worked in secret. The mere presence of
a white man in the country was sufficient to stay his
hand. On this occasion the Arab not only did not
conceal his doings from the Europeans, nor flee
when he was remonstrated with, but turned and
attacked his monitors. The political significance of
this is plain. It is part of a policy. It is a challenge
to Europe from the whole Mohammedan power.
Europe in Africa is divided ; Mohammedanism is
one. No isolated band of Arabs would have ven-
tured upon such a line of action unless they were
perfectly sure of their ground. Nor is there any

78 THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA

reason why they should not be sure of their ground.
Europe is talking much about Africa; it is doing
nothing. This the Arab has discerned. It is one
of the most astounding facts in morals that England
should have kept the Arab at bay so long. But the
time of probation is over. And the plain issue is
now before the world—lIs the Arab or the European
henceforth to reign in Africa?

How the European could reign in Africa is a
simple problem. The real difficulty is as to who in
Europe will do it. Africa is claimed by everybody,
and it belongs to nobody. So far as the Nyassa
region is concerned, while the Portuguese assert their
right to the south and west, scarcely one of them has
ever set foot in it; and while the Germans claim the
north and east, their pretension is based neither-upon
right of discovery, right of treaty, right of purchase,
right of conquest, nor right of possession, but on the
cool audacity of some chartographer in Berlin, who,
in delimiting a tract of country recognised as Ger-
man by the London Convention of 1886, allowed
his paint-brush to colour some tens of thousands of
square miles beyond the latitude assigned. To
England it is a small matter politically who gets
Africa. But it is of moment that those who secure

the glory of annexation should not evade the duty

ITS PATHOLOGY AND CURE 79

of administration. The present condition of Africa
is too critical to permit so wholesale a system of
absentee landlordism ; and it is the duty of England,
so far at least as the Nyassa region is concerned,
to insist on the various claimants either being true
to their assumed responsibilities or abandoning a
‘nominal sovereignty.

It is well known,—it is certain,—that neither
Portugal nor Germany will ever administer this
region. If they would, the problem would be solved,
and England would gladly welcome the release ; the
release, for, although England has never aided this
country with a force of arms, she has for some time
known that in some way, direct or indirect, she
ought to do it. This country is in a special sense
the protégé of England. Since Livingstone’s death
the burden of it has never really left her conscience.
The past relation of England to Nyassa-land, and
her duty now, will be apparent from the following
simple facts :—

Lake Nyassa was discovered by David Living-
stone. At the time he was acting as Her Majesty’s
Consul, and was sent to Africa with a Government
Expedition, which was equipped not to perform an
exceptional and romantic piece of work, but in
accordance with a settled policy on the part of

80 THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA

England. “The main object of the Zambesi Expe-
dition,” says Livingstone, “as our instructions from
Her Majesty’s Government explicitly stated, was to
extend the knowledge already attained of the geo-
graphy, and mineral and agricultural resources, of
Eastern and Central Africa; to improve our acquaint-
ance with the inhabitants, and to endeavour to:
engage them to apply themselves to industrial
pursuits, and to the cultivation of their lands, with a
view to the production of raw material to be exported
to England in return for British manufactures; and
it was hoped that, by encouraging the natives to
occupy themselves in the development of the resources
of the country, a considerable advance might be
made towards the extinction of the slave-trade, as
they would not be long in discovering that the
former would eventually be a more certain source
of profit than the latter. The Expedition was sent
an accordance with the settled policy of the English
Government ; and the Earl of Clarendon being then
at the head of the Foreign Office, the Mission was
organised under his immediate care. When a
change of Government ensued we experienced the
same generous countenance and sympathy from the
Earl of Malmesbury as we had previously received

from Lord Clarendon ; and on the accession of Earl

ITS PATHOLOGY AND CURE 81

Russell to the high office he has so long filled we
were always favoured with equally ready attention
and the same prompt assistance. Thus ¢he conviction
was produced that our work embodied the trinciples
not of any one party, but of the hearts of the statesmen
and of the people of England generally.”

Encouraged by this national interest in Africa,
the churches of England and Scotland attempted to
follow up the work of Livingstone in one at least of
its aspects, by sending missionaries into the country.
These have already succeeded in establishing them-
selves in one district after another, and are daily
extending in numbers and influence.

In order to perpetuate a scarcely less important
branch of the movement initiated by Livingstone,
—a department specially sanctioned, as the above
extract shows, by the English Government—the
African Lakes Company was formed in 1878. Its
object was to open up and develop the regions of
East Central Africa from the Zambesi to Tangan-
yika ; to make employments for the native peoples,
to trade with them honestly, to keep out rum, and,
so far as possible, gunpowder and firearms, and to
co-operate and strengthen the hands of the mis-
sionary. It has already established twelve trading
stations, manned by a staff of twenty-five Europeans

82 THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA

and many native agents. The //a/a on Lake Nyassa
belongs to it; and it has just placed a new steamer
to supersede the Lady Nyassa on the river Shiré.
It has succeeded in starting a flourishing coffee
plantation in the interior, and new sources of wealth
are being gradually introduced. For the first time,
on the large scale, it has taught the natives the
meaning and the blessings of work. It has acted,
to some extent, as a check upon the slave-trade ; it
has prevented inter-tribal strife, and helped to protect
the missionaries in time of war. The African Lakes
Company, in short, modest as is the scale on which
it works, and necessarily limited as are its oppor-
tunities, has been for years the sole administering
hand in this part of Africa. This Company does
not exist for gain ;—or exists for gain only in the
sense that commercial soundness is the only solid
basis on which to build up an institution which can
permanently benefit others. A large amount of
private capital has been expended by this Company ;
yet, during all the years it has carried on its noble
enterprise, it has re-invested in Africa all that it has
taken from it.

All this British capital, all the capital of the
Missions, all these various and not inconsiderable

agencies, have been tempted into Africa largely in

ITS PATHOLOGY AND CURE 83

the hope that the old policy of England would not
only be continued but extended. England has never
in theory departed from the position she assumed
in the days of the Zambesi Expedition. On the
contrary, she has distinctly recognised the relation
between her Government and Africa. She has con-
tinued to send out British Consuls to be the succes-
sors of Livingstone in the Nyassa region. When
the first of these, Captain Foote, R.N., died in the
Shiré Highlands in 1884, the English Government
immediately sent another to take his place. But
this is the last thing that has been done. The Con-
sul is there as a protest that England has still her
eye on Africa. But Africa needs more than an eye.
And when, as happened the other day, one of Her
Majesty’s representatives was under Arab fire for
five days and nights on the shores of Lake Nyassa,
this was brought home to us in such practical fashion
as to lead to the hope that some practical measures
will now be taken.

I do not presume to bring forward a formal pro-
posal; but two things occur to one as feasible, and
I shall simply name them. The first is for England,
or Germany, or France, or some one with power and
earnestness, to take a firm and uncompromising

stand at Zanzibar. Zanzibar, as the Arab capital, is

84 THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA

one of the keys of the situation, and any lesson
taught here would be learned presently by the whole
Mohammedan following in the country.

The other key to the situation is the vast and
splendid water-way in the heart of Africa—the
Upper Shiré, Lake Nyassa, Lake Tanganyika, and
the Great Lakes generally. As a base for military
or patrol operations nothing better could be desired
than these great inland seas. A small steamer upon
each of them—or, to begin with, upon Nyassa and
Tanganyika—with an associated depdt or two of
armed men on the higher and healthier plateaux
which surround them, would keep the whole country
quiet. Only a trifling force of well-drilled men
would be needed for this purpose. They might be
whites, or blacks and whites; they might be Sikhs
or Pathans from India; and the expense is not to
be named considering the magnitude of the results
—the pacification of the entire equatorial region—
that would be achieved. That expense could be
borne by the Missions, but it is not their province
to employ the use of force ; it could be borne by the
Lakes Company, only they deserve protection from
others rather than that this should be added to the
large debt civilisation already owes them ; it could

be done by the Free Congo State,—and if no one

ITS PATHOLOGY AND CURE 85

else is shamed into doing it, this further labour of
love may fall into its hands. But whether alone,
or in co-operation with the few and overburdened
capitalists of the country, or in conjunction with
foreign powers, England will be looked to to take
the initiative with this or a similar scheme.

The barriers in the way of Government action
are only two, and neither is insurmountable. The
one is Portugal, which owns the approaches to the
country ; the other is Germany, which has inland
interests of her own. Whether England could pro-
ceed in the face of these two powers would simply
depend on how it was done. As a mere political
move such an occupation of the interior might at
once excite alarm and jealousy. But wearing the
aspect of a serious mission for the good of Africa,
instigated not by the Foreign Office but by the
people of England, it is impossible to believe that
the step could either be misunderstood or opposed.
It is time the nations looked upon Africa as some-
thing more than a chessboard. And even if it were
but a chessboard, the players on every hand are wise
enough to know that whatever is honestly done to
relieve this suffering continent will react in a
hundred ways upon the interests of all who hold

territorial rights within it.

86 THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA

A beginning once made, one might not be unduly
sanguine in anticipating that the meshes of a pacific
and civilising influence would rapidly spread through-
out the country. Already the missionaries are
pioneering everywhere, prepared to stay and do
their part ; and asking no more from the rest of the
world than a reasonable guarantee that they should
be allowed to live. Already the trading companies
are there, from every nationality, and in every
direction ready to open up the country, but unable
to go on with any confidence or enthusiasm till their
isolated interests are linked together and secured in
the presence of a common foe. The territories of the
various colonies are slowly converging upon the heart
of Africa,and to unite them in an informal defensive
alliance would not be impossible. With Emin Pasha
occupying the field in the north; with the African
Lakes Company, the British East African Association,
and the German Association, in the east; with the
Congo Free State in the west, and British Bechuana-
land in the south, a cordon is already thrown around
the Great Lakes region, which requires only to have
its several parts connected with one another and
with central forces on the Lakes, to secure the peace
of Africa.

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A TRAVELLER’S DIARY

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WANDERINGS ON THE NYASSA-
TANGANYIKA PLATEAU

A TRAVELLER’S DIARY

ITH a glade in the forest for a study, a bale

er Calico for a table, and the sun vertical
and something under a billion centigrade, diary-
writing in the tropics is more picturesque than
inspiring. To keep a journal, however, next to
keeping his scalp, is the one thing for which the
consistent traveller will go through fire and water ;
and the dusky native who carries the faded note-
books on the march is taught to regard the sacred-
ness of his office more than if he drove the car of
Juggernaut. The contents of these mysterious note-
_ books, nevertheless, however precious to those who
write them, are, like the photographs of one’s rela-
tions, of pallid interest to others, and I have there-

fore conscientiously denied myself the joy of exhibit-

90 WANDERINGS ON THE

ing such offspring of the wilderness as I possess to
my confiding reader.

But as the diary form has advantages of its own,
I make no apology at this stage for transcribing and
editing a few rough pages. Better, perhaps, than by
a more ordered narrative, they may help others to
enter into the traveller’s life, and to illustrate what
the African traveller sees and hears and does. I
shall disregard names, and consecutive dates, and
routes. My object is simply to convey some
impression of how the world wags in a land
unstirred by civilisation, and all but untouched by
time.

29th September—Left Karongas, at the north
end of Lake Nyassa, at 10.30, with a mongrel
retinue of seven Mandalla natives, twelve Bandawé
Atongas, six Chingus, and my three faithfuls—Jingo,
Moolu, and Seyid. Total twenty-eight. Not one
of my men could speak a word of English. They
belonged to three different tribes and spoke as many
languages ; the majority, however, knew something
of Chinanja, the lake language, of which I had also
learned a little, so we soon understood one another.
It is always a wise arrangement to have different
tribes in a caravan, for in the event of a strike, and

there are always strikes, there is less chance of con-

NYASSA-TANGANYIKA PLATEAU gI

certed action. Each man carried on his head a
portion of my purse—which in this region consists
solely of cloth and beads; while one or two of the
more dependable were honoured with the trans-
portation of the tent, collecting-boxes, provisions,
and guns.

The road struck into a banana grove, then
through a flat country fairly well wooded with a
variety of trees, including many palms and a few
baobabs. The native huts dotted over this rich
flat are the best I have seen in Africa. The roofs
are trimly thatched, and a rude carving adorns door-
post and lintel. After seven miles the Rukuru is
crossed—a fine stream rippling over the sand, with
large flakes of mica tumbling about in the current,
and sampling the rocks of the distant hills. The
men laid down their loads, and sprawled about like
crocodiles in the water as I waded across. <A few
yards off is a village, where a fire was quickly lit,
and the entire population turned out to watch the
white man nibble his lunch. The consumption at
this meal being somewhat slight, and the menu
strange to my audience, I saw that they regarded
the white man’s effort at nutrition with feelings of
contempt. “The M’sungu eats nothing,” whispered
one, “he must die.” The head man presently came

92 WANDERINGS ON THE

asking beads; but, as I had none unpacked, two
stray trinkets and a spoonful of salt more than
satisfied him. On getting the salt he deftly twisted
a leaf into a little bag, and after pouring all the salt
into it, graciously held out his hand to a troop of
small boys who crowded round, and received one lick
each of hisempty palm. Salt is perhaps the great-
est luxury and the greatest rarity the north-end
African can have, and the avidity with which these
young rascals received their homceopathic allowance
proved. the instinctiveness of the want. I have often
offered native boys the choice between a pinch of
salt and a knot of sugar, and they never failed to
choose the first. For return-present the chief made
over to me two large gourds filled with curds, of
which, of course, I pretended to drink deeply before
passing it on to the men.

Three miles of the same country, with tall bean-
plants about, castor oil, and maize, but no villages
in sight. Bananas unusually fine, and Borassus
everywhere. At the tenth or eleventh mile we
reached the fringe of hills bordering the higher
lands, and, taking advantage of a passage about
half a mile wide which has been cut by the river,
penetrated the first barrier—a low rounded hill of

conglomerate, fine in texture, and of a dark-red

NYASSA-TANGANYIKA PLATEAU 93

colour. Flanking this for two miles, we entered a
broad oval expansion among the hills, the site
apparently of a former lake. Winding along with
the river fora mile or two more, and passing through
a narrow and romantic glen, we emerged in a second
valley, and camped for the night on the banks of
the stream. On the opposite side stood a few native
huts, and the occupants, after much reconnoitring,
were induced to exchange some w#fa and sweet
potatoes for a little cloth.

Ist October.—Moolu peered into my tent with
the streak of dawn to announce a catastrophe.
Four of the men had run away during the night.
All was going so well yesterday that I flattered my-
self I was to be spared this traditional experience—
the most exasperating of all the traveller’s woes, for
the whole march must be delayed until fresh recruits
are enlisted to carry the deserters’ loads. The
delinquents were all Bandawé men. They had no
complaint. They stole nothing. It was a simple
case of want of pluck. They were going into a
strange land. The rainy season was coming on.
Their loads were full-weight. So they got home-
sick and ran. I had three more Bandawé men in
the caravan, and, knowing well that the moment

they heard the news they would go and do likewise,

94 WANDERINGS ON THE

I ordered them to be told what had happened and
then sent to my tent. In a few moments they
appeared ; but what to say to them? Their dialect
was quite strange to me, and yet I felt I must
impress them somehow. Like the judge putting on
the black cap, I drew my revolver from under my
pillow, and, laying it before me, proceeded to address
them. Beginning with a few general remarks on
the weather, I first briefly sketched the geology of
Africa, and then broke into an impassioned defence
of the British Constitution. The three miserable
sinners—they had done nothing in the world—quaked
like aspens. I then followed up my advantage by
intoning, in a voice of awful solemnity, the enuncia-
tion of the Forty-Seventh Proposition of Euclid, and
then threw my all into a blood-curdling Quod erat
demonstrandum. Scene two followed when I was
alone ; I turned on my pillow and wept for shame.
It was a prodigious piece of rascality, but I cannot
imagine anything else that would have done, and it
succeeded perfectly. These men were to the end the
most faithful I had. They felt thenceforth they owed
me their lives ; for, according to African custom, the
sins of their fellow-tribesmen should have been visited
upon them with the penalty of death.

Seyid and Moolu scoured the country at once for

NYASSA-TANGANYIKA PLATEAU 95

more carriers, but met with blank refusals on every
side. Many natives passed the camp, but they
seemed in unusual haste and something of local
importance was evidently going on. We were not
long in doubt as to its nature. It was war. The
Angoni were in force behind a neighbouring hill, and
had already killed one man. This might have been
startling, but I treated it as a piece of gossip, until
suddenly a long string of armed and painted men
appeared in sight and rushed past me at the double.
They kept perfect step, running in single file, their
feet adorned with anklets of rude bells which jingled
in time and formed quite a martial accompaniment.
The centre man held aloft a small red and white
flag, and each warrior carried a large shield and
several light barbed spears. The regiment was led
by a fantastic-looking creature, who played a hideous
slogan on a short pan-pipe. This main body was
followed at intervals by groups of twos and threes
who had been hastily summoned from their work,
and I must say the whole turnout looked very like
business. The last of the warriors had scarcely
disappeared before another procession of a different
sort set in from the opposite direction. It consisted
of the women and children from the threatened

villages farther up the valley. It was a melting

96 WANDERINGS ON THE

sight. The poor creatures were of all ages and sizes,
from the tottering grandmother to the week-old
infant. On their heads they carried a miscellaneous
collection of household gods, and even the little

children were burdened with a calabash, a grass-mat,

a couple of fowls, or a handful of sweet-potatoes.

Probably the entire effects of the villages were
represented in these loads. Amongst the fugitives
were a few goats and one or two calves, and a troop
of boys brought up the rear driving before them a
herd of cows. The poor creatures quickened their
pace as they passed my tent, and eyed me as
furtively as if I and my men had been a detachment
from the Angoni executing a flank movement. The
hamlet opposite our camp, across the river, which
had gladdened us the night before with its twinkling
fires, its inhabitants sitting peacefully at their doors
or fishing in the stream, was already deserted—the
men to fight, the women to flee for their lives they
knew not whither. This is a common chapter in
African history. Except among the very largest
tribes no man can call his home his own for a
month.

I was amazed at the way my men treated the
affair. They lounged about camp with the most

perfect indifference. This was accounted for by my

NYASSA-TANGANYIKA PLATEAU 97

presence. The mere presence of a white man is
considered an absolute guarantee of safety in remoter
Africa. It is not his guns or his imposing retinue ;
it is simply himself. He is not mortal, he is a spirit.
Had I not been there, or had I shown the white
feather, my men would have stampeded for Nyassa
ina body. I had learned to understand the feeling
so thoroughly that the events of the morning gave
me no concern whatever, and I spent the day col-
lecting in the usual way.

It was impossible to go on and leave the loads ;
it was equally impossible to get carriers at hand.
So I despatched Seyid with a letter to the station
on the Lake requesting six or eight natives to be
sent from there. This meant a delay of two or
three days at least, which, with the rains so near, was
serious for me

Made a “fly” for the tent; collected, and read.
One only feels the heat when doing nothing. As
the sun climbed to its zenith my men put up for
themselves the most enticing bowers. They were
ingeniously made with interlacing grasses and canes,
and densely thatched with banana leaves.

Tried twice to bake bread, with Jingo and Moolu
as assistant cooks. Both attempts dismal failures, so
I had to draw on the biscuit-tins. I have plenty of

98 WANDERINGS ON THE

fowls, bought yesterday for beads. Maraya down
with fever. One of the carriers, Siamuka, who had
been left behind sick, straggled into camp, looking
very ill indeed. Physicked him and gave him four
yards of cloth to wrap himself in. Towards sunset
I began to get anxious for news of battle. The
arrival of the armed- band which had passed in the
morning soon gratified me. There had been no
battle. There had been no Angoni. It was simply
a scare—one of those false alarms which people in
these unsettled circumstances are constantly liable to.
All evening the women and children were trooping
back to their homes ; and next morning our friends
opposite were smoking their pipes at the doors again,
as if nothing had happened.

Tuesday, 2a October.

a walk with my hammer to examine the sections in

After morning cocoa had

the valley. Back to a good breakfast, cooked with
all the art of Jingo, the real cook being at Karongas
with the flag of distress. Moolu ill: This is the
third man down with fever since we left the Lake.
Bought some ufa and beans. Dispensed needles, and
bent pins for fish-hooks, among the men. Held a
great washing with Jingo. Towards the afternoon
the reinforcements arrived from. Karongas. The chief

was drunk, it appeared, when my messenger reached

NYASSA-TANGANYIKA PLATEAU 99

him ; but Mr. Munro at the Lake kindly sent me a
number of his own men.

Another of my carriers begged leave to dissolve
our partnership, and produced two youths whom
he had beguiled into taking his load. His plea
was that he was in bad odour at Mweni-wanda, and
was afraid to go on. My own impression is that he
found the load which he carried—on his head, like
all Africans—was spoiling the cut of his hair. Even
Africa has its exquisites, and this man was the swell
all over. By “all over,” I mean, of course, all over
his head, for as his hair is his only clothing, except
the bark loincloth of which the cut cannot well be
varied, he had poured out the whole of his great soul
upon his coiffure. At the best the African’s hair is
about the length of a toy-shop poodle’s; but vanity
can make even a fool creative, and out of this scanty
material and with extraordinary labour he had com-
piled a masterpiece. First, heavily greased with
sround-nut oil, it was made up into small-sized balls
like black-currants, and then divided into symmetrical
patterns, diamonds, circles, and parterres, designed
with the skill of a landscape-gardener. To protect
this work of art from nightly destruction, this gentle-
man always carried with him a pillow of special
make. It was constructed of wood, and dangled

100 WANDERINGS ON THE

conspicuously from his spear-head on the march.
He sold it to me ultimately for a yard of calico—
and he certainly would not sleep after the transaction
till he had laid the foundations of another.

12¢i Octobeyr—Got under weigh at early dawn.
Much shirking and dodging among the men for light
loads. Formerly sudden and suspicious fevers used
to develop at this critical juncture—by a not unac-
countable coincidence among the men with the
heaviest loads; but my now well-known mixture, |
compounded of pepper, mustard, cold tea, citrate of
magnesia,.Epsom salts, anything else that might
be handy, and a flavouring pinch of cinchona, has
miraculously stayed the epidemic. But I forgive
these merry fellows everything for wasting none of
the morning coolness over toilet or breakfast. I
need not say the African never washes in the
morning ; but what is of more importance, he never
eats. He rises suddenly from the ground where he
has lain like a log all night, gives himself a shake,
shoulders his load, and is off. Even at the mid-day
halt he eats little; but, if he can get it, will regale
himself with a draught of water and a smoke. This
last is a perfunctory performance, and one pipe
usually serves for a dozen men. Each takes a whiff

or two from the great wooden bowl, then passes it

NYASSA-TANGANYIKA PLATEAU Io!

to his neighbour, and the pipe seldom makes a
second round.

I often wondered how the natives produced a
light when camping by themselves, and at last
resolved to test it. So when the usual appeal was
made to me for “motu,” I handed them my vesta-
box with a single match in it. I generally struck
the match for them, this being considered a very
daring experiment, and I felt pretty sure they would
make a mess of their one chance. It turned out as
anticipated, and when they handed back the empty
box, I looked as abstracted and unapproachable as
possible. After a little suspense, one of them slowly
drew from the sewn-up monkey skin, which served
for his courier-bag, a small piece of wood about
three inches long. With a spear-head he cut in it a
round hole the size of a threepenny-piece. Placing
his spear-blade flat on the ground to serve as a base,
he stretched over it a scrap of bark-cloth torn from
his girdle, and then pinned both down with the
perforated piece of wood, which a second native held
firmly in position. Next he selected from among
his arrows a slender stick of very hard wood, inserted
it vertically in the hole, and proceeded to twirl it
round with great velocity between his open palms.
In less than half a minute the tinder was smoking

102 WANDERINGS ON THE

sulkily, and after a few more twirls it was ready for
further treatment by vigorous blowing, when it broke
into active flame. The fire originates, of course, in
the small soft piece of wood, from which sparks fall
upon the more inflammable bark-cloth at the bottom
of the hole.

Our daily programme, on the march, was some-
thing like this. At the first streak of dawn my
tent was struck. There is no time for a meal, for
the cool early hour is too precious in the tropics to
waste over eating ; but a hasty coffee while the loads
were packing kept up the tradition of breakfast. In
twenty minutes the men were marshalled, quarrels
about an extra pound weight adjusted, and the pro-
cession started. At the head of the column I usually
walked myself, partly to see the country better,
partly to look out for game, and partly, I suppose,
because there was no one else to do it. Close

behind me came my own special valet-—a Makololo

—carrying my geological hammer, water-bottle, and -

loaded rifle) The white man, as a rule, carries
nothing except himself and a revolver, and possibly
a double-awned umbrella, which, with a thick pith
helmet, makes sunstroke impossible. Next Jingo
marched the cook, a plausible Mananja, who could

cook little, except his version of where the missing

NYVASSA-TANGANYIKA PLATEAU 103

victuals went to. After the cook came another
-gentleman’s gentleman carrying a. gun and the
medicine chest, and after him the rank and file, with
another gun-bearer looking out for deserters at the
rear. From half-past five I usually trudged on till
the sun made moving torture, about ten or eleven.
When I was fortunate enough to find shade and
water there was a long rest tiil three in the after-
noon, and an anomalous meal, followed by a second
march till sunset. The dreadful part of the day was
the interval. Then observations were made, and
specimens collected and arranged, each man having
to fill a collecting-box before sunset. When this
was over there was nothing else to do that it was
not too hot to do. It was too hot to sleep, there
was nothing to read, and no one to speak to; the
nearest post-office was a thousand miles off, and the
only amusement was to entertain the native chiefs,
who used occasionally to come with their followers
to stare at the white man. These interviews at first
entertained one vastly, but the humbling perform-
ances I had to go through became most intolerable.
Think of having to stand up before a gaping crowd
of savages and gravely button your coat—they had
never seen a coat; or, wonder of wonders, strike a

match, or snap a revolver, or set fire to somebody’s

104 WANDERINGS ON THE

bark clothes with a burning-glass. Three or four
times a day often I had to go through these miser-
able performances, and I have come home with a
new sympathy for sword-swallowers, fire-eaters, the
man with the iron jaw, and all that ilk.

The interview commenced usually with the
approach of two or three terror-stricken slaves, sent
by the chief as a preliminary to test whether or not
the white man would eat them. Their presents,
native grains of some kind, being accepted, they
concluded I was at least partly vegetarian, and the
great man with his courtiers, armed with long spears,
would advance and kneel down in a circle. A little
speechifying followed, and then my return presents
were produced—two or three yards of twopence-
halfpenny calico ; and if he was a very great chief
an empty Liebig pot or an old jam tin was also pre-
sented with great ceremony. None of my instruments,
I found, at all interested these people—they were
quite beyond them; and I soon found that in my
whole outfit there were not half a dozen things which
conveyed any meaning to them whatever. They did
not know enough even to be amazed. The greatest
wonder of all perhaps was the burning-glass. They
had never seen glass before, and thought it was mazz

or water, but why the masz did not run over when I

NYASSA-TANGANYIKA PLATEAU 105

put it in my pocket passed all understanding. When
the light focused on the dry grass and set it ablaze
their terror knew no bounds. “He is a mighty
spirit,” they cried, “and brings down fire from the
sun!” This single remark contains the key to the
whole secret of a‘white man’s influence and power
over all uncivilised tribes. Why a white man, alone
and unprotected, can wander among these savage
people without any risk from murder or robbery is
a mystery at home. But it is his moral power, his
education, his civilisation. To the African the white
man is a supreme being. His commonest acts are
miracles ; his clothes, his guns, his cooking utensils
are supernatural. Everywhere his word is law. He
can prevent death and war if he but speak the word.
And let a single European settle, with fifty square
miles of heathen round him, and in a short time he
will be their king, their lawgiver, and their judge.
I asked my men one day the question point blank—
“Why do you not kill me and take my guns and
clothes and beads?” “Qh,” they replied, “we would
never kill a spirit.’ Their veneration for the white
man indeed is sometimes most affecting. When war
is brewing, or pestilence, they kneel before him and
pray to him to avert it; and so much do they believe

in his omnipotence that an unprincipled man by

106 WANDERINGS ON THE

trading on it, by simply offering pins, or buttons or
tacks, or pieces of paper, or anything English, as
charms against death, could almost drain a country
of its ivory—the only native wealth.

The real dangers to a traveller are of a simpler
kind. Central Africa is the finest hunting country
in the world. Here are the elephant, the buffalo,
the lion, the leopard, the rhinoceros, the hippo-
potamus, the giraffe, the hyzena, the eland, the zebra,
and endless species of small deer and antelope.
Then the whole country is covered with traps to
catch these animals—deep pits with a jagged stake
rising up in the middle, the whole roofed over with
turf and grass, so exactly like the forest bed that
only the trained eye can detect their presence. I
have found myself walking unconsciously on a
narrow neck between two of these pits, when a
couple of steps to either side would almost certainly
have meant death. Snakes too, and especially the
hideous and deadly puff adder, may turn up at any
moment; and in bathing, which one eagerly does at
every pool, the sharpest lookout is scarcely a match
for the diabolical craft of the crocodile.

13th October.

some distance ahead of my men, I suddenly came

Walking through the forest to-day

upon a rhinoceros. The creature—the rhino is

NYASSA-TANGANYIKA PLATEAU 107

solitary in his habits—was poking about the bush
with its head down and did not see me, though not
ten yards separated us. My only arms were a
geological hammer and a revolver, so I had simply
to lie down and watch him. Presently my gun-
bearer crawled up, but unfortunately by this time
the pachyderm had vanished, and was nowhere to be
found. I broke my heart over it at the moment,
though why in the world I should have killed him
I do not in the least know now. In cold blood one
resents Mr. Punch’s typical Englishman—‘“ What a
heavenly morning! let’s go and kill something !”
but in presence of temptation one feels the veritable
savage. |

We are now at an elevation of about four thou-
sand feet, and steadily nearing the equator, although
the climate gives little sign of it. It is a popular
mistake that the nearer one goes to the equator the
temperature must necessarily increase. Were this
so, Africa, which is the most tropical continent in
the world, would also be the hottest; while the
torrid zone, which occupies so large a portion of it,
would be almost insupportable to the European.
On the contrary, the nearer one goes to the equator
in Africa it becomes the cooler. The reasons for

this are twofold—the gradual elevation of the con-

108 WANDERINGS ON THE

tinent towards the interior, and the increased amount
of aqueous vapour in the air. Central Africa is
from three to five thousand feet above the level of
the sea. Now for every three hundred feet of ascent
the thermometer falls one degree. It is immensely
cooler, therefore, in the interior than at the coast;
and the equatorial zone all over the world possesses
a climate in every way superior to that of the borders
of the temperate region. At night, in Equatorial
Africa, it is really cold, and one seldom lies down in
his tent with less than a couple of blankets and a
warm quilt. The heat of New York is often greater
than that of Central Africa; for while in America
a summer rarely passes without the thermometer
reaching three figures, in the hottest month in Africa
my thermometer never registered more than two on
a single occasion—the highest actual point reached
being 96°. Nowhere, indeed, in Africa have I experi-
enced anything like the heat of a summer in Malta,
or even of a stifling August in Southern Germany
or Italy. On the other hand, the direct rays of the
sun are necessarily more powerful in Africa; but so
long as one keeps in the shade—and even a good
umbrella suffices for this—there is nothing in the
climate to disturb one’s peace of mind or body.

When one really feels the high temperature is when

NYASSA-TANGANYIKA PLATEAU 109

down with fever ; or when fever, unknown to one, is
coming on. Then, indeed, the heat becomes madden-
ing and insupportable ; nor has the victim words to
express his feelings towards the glittering ball, whose
daily march across the burnished and veilless zenith
brings him untold agony.

15th to 22d October—This camp is so well situ-
ated that I have spent the week in it. The pro-
gramme is the same every day. At dawn Jingo
came to my tent with early coffee. Went out with
my gun for a morning stroll, and returned in an
hour for breakfast. Thereafter I sorted the speci-
mens captured the day before, and hung up the
fatter insects to dry in the sun. Routing the ants
from the boxes and provision stores was also an
important and vexatious item. Some ants are so
clever that they can break into everything, and
others so small that they will crawl into anything ;
and between the clever ones, and the small ones, and
the jam-loving ones, and the flour-eating ones, and
the specimen-devouring ones, subsistence, not to say
science, is a serious problem. The only things that
have hitherto baffled them are the geological speci-
mens ; but I overhaul these regularly every morning
along with the rest, in terror of one day finding some

precocious creature browsing off my granites. After

110 WANDERINGS ON THE

these labours I repaired to a natural bower in the
dry bed of a shaded streamlet, where I spent the
entire day. Here, even at high noon, was perfect
coolness, and rest, and solitude unutterable. I lay
among birds and beasts and flowers and insects,
watching their ways, and trying to enter into their
unknown lives. To watch uninterruptedly the same
few yards of universe unfold its complex history ;
to behold the hourly resurrection of new living
things, and miss no change or circumstance, even of
its minuter parts; to look at all, especially the
things you have seen before, a hundred times, to do
all with patience and reverence—this is the only
way to study nature.

Towards the afternoon the men began to drop
in with their boxes of insects, each man having to
collect a certain number every camp-day. If suff-
cient were not brought in the delinquent had to go
back to the bush for more. At five or six I went
back to my tent for dinner, and after an hour over
the camp-fire turned in for the night. The chatter-
ing of the men all round the tent usually kept me
awake for an hour or two. Their merriest time is
just after sunset, when the great ufa-feast of the day
takes place. The banter between the fires is kept
up till the small hours, and the chief theme of con-

aks

NYASSA-TANGANYIKA PLATEAU 111

versation is always the white man himself—what
the white man did, and what the white man said,
and how the white man held his gun, and every-
thing else the white man thought, looked, willed,
wore, ate, or drank. My object in being there was
an insoluble riddle to them, and for what witchcraft
I collected all the stones and insects was an unending
source of speculation.

That they entered to some extent into one at least
of these interests was proved that very night. I was
roused rather late by a deputation, who informed me
that they had just discovered a very uncommon object
crawling on a stick among the firewood. Going out
to the fire, and stirring the embers into a blaze, I was
shown one of the most extraordinary insects it has
been my lot to look upon. Rather over two inches
in length, the creature lay prone upon a branch,
adroitly shamming death, after the manner of the
Mantide, to which it obviously belonged. The
striking feature was a glittering coal-black spiral,
with a large central spot of the same colour, painted
on the middle of the back; the whole resembling
a gigantic eye staring out from the body, and
presenting the most vivid contrast to the lemon
yellows and greens of the rest of the insect. One
naturally sought a mimetic explanation of the singular

112 WANDERINGS ON THE

marking, and I at once recalled a large fringed lichen
which covered many of the surrounding trees, and of
which this whole insect was a most apt copy. That
it was as rare as it was eccentric was evident from
the astonishment of the natives, who declared that
they had never seen it before.

22d October —Water has been scarce for some
days, and this morning our one pool was quite dried
up, so I struck camp. Marching north-west, over
an undulating forest country, we came to a small
village, near which was a running stream. The
chief, an amiable old gentleman, after an hour spent
in suspicious prospecting, came to see the show, and
propitiated its leading actor with a present of flour.
In return I gave him some cloth and an empty
magnesia bottle to hold his snuff. The native snuff-
mull is a cylinder of wood profusely carved, and, in
the absence of a pocket, hangs tied round the neck
with a thong. Snuffing is universal hereabouts,

This is a hotter camp than the last, though the
elevation (4500 feet) is nearly the same. Paid the
men their fortnight’s wage in cloth, and as I threw
in an extra fathom they held high revelry till far on
in the night.

24th Octobeyr—Buffalo fever still on. Sallied
forth early with Moolu, a large herd being reported

ah.

NYASSA-TANGANYIKA PLATEAU II3

at hand. We struck the trail after a few miles, but
the buffaloes had moved away, passing up a steep
valley to the north and clearing a hill. I followed,
but saw no sign, and after one or two unsuccessful
starts gave it up as the heat had become terrific.
Breakfasted off wild honey, which one of the natives
managed to lay hands on, and sent for the camp to
come up. Moolu went on with one native, T’Shaula
—he of the great spear and the black feathers.
They returned about two o’clock announcing that
they had dropped two bull buffaloes, but not being
mortally wounded the quarry had made off. Late
in the afternoon two of my men rushed in saying
that one of the wounded buffaloes had attacked two
of their number, one severely, and that assistance
was wanted to carry them back. It seems that five
of the men, on hearing Moolu’s report about the
wounded buffaloes, and tempted by the thought of
fresh meat, set off without permission to try to secure
them. It was a foolhardy freak, as they had only
a spear with them, and a wounded buffalo bull is
' the most dangerous animal in Africa. It charges
blindly at anything, and even after receiving its mortal
wound has been known to kill its assailant. The
would-be hunters soon overtook one of the creatures,
a huge bull, lying in a hollow, and apparently 7
I

114 WANDERINGS ON THE

articulo mortis. They calmly walked up to it—the
maddest thing in the world—when the brute suddenly
roused itself and charged headlong. They ran for
their lives ; one was overtaken and trampled down
in a moment ; the second was caught up a few yards
farther on and literally impaled on the animal’s
horns. The first hobbled into camp little the worse,
but the latter was brought in half dead. He had
two frightful wounds, the less serious on the back
behind the shoulder-blade, the other a yawning gash
just under the ribs. I fortunately had a little lint
and dressed his wounds as well as I could, but I
thought he would die in my hands. He was quite
delirious, and I ordered a watch all night in case the
bleeding should break out afresh. His nurses un-
happily could not take in the philosophy of this, and
I had to turn out every hour to see that they were
not asleep. The native’s conception of pain is that
it is the work of an evil spirit, and the approved
treatment consists in blowing upon the wound and
suspending a wooden charm from the patient’s neck
to exorcise it. All this was duly done now, and the
blowing was repeated at frequent intervals through
the night.

25th October—Kacquia conscious, and suffering

much, It is impossible to go on, so the men have

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NYASSA-TANGANYIKA PLATEAU II5

rigged up a bower for me on the banks of a stream
near the camp. Read, wrote, physicked right and
left, and received the Chief of Something-or-other.
Bribed some of his retinue to search the district
for indiarubber, and bring specimens of the trees.
After many hours absence they brought me back two
freshly-made balls, but neglected to bring a branch,
which was what I promised to pay them for. From
their description I gather the tree is the Landolphia
vine. The method of securing the rubber is to
make incisions in the stem and smear the exuding
milky juice over their arms and necks. After it has
dried a little they scrape it off and roll it up into balls.

An instance of what the native will do for a scrap
of meat. Near camp this morning Moolu pointed
out to me a gray lump on the top of a very high
tree, which he assured me was an animal. It was a
kind of lemur, and very good to eat. I had only
my Winchester with me, and the ball ripped up the
animal, which fell at once, but leaving an ounce or
two of viscera on the branch. One of the men,
Makata, coming up at the sound of the shot, per-
ceived that the animal was not all there—it had
been literally “cleaned ””—immediately started to
climb the tree for the remainder. It was a naked

stem for a considerable height and thicker than

116 WANDERINGS ON THE

himself, but he attacked it at once native fashion, ze.
by walking up the trunk, his clasped hands grasping
the trunk on the opposite side from his doubled-up
body, and literally walking upward on his soles.
He soon came down with the precious mess, and in
a few minutes it was cooked and eaten.

To-night I thought my hour was come. Our
camp was right in the forest; it was pitch dark;
and I was sitting late over the smouldering fire with
the wounded man. Suddenly a terrific yell rang
out from the forest, and a native rushed straight at
me brandishing his spear and whooping at the
pitch of his voice. Sure that it was an attack,
I darted towards the tent for my rifle, and in
a second every man in the camp was huddling in
it likewise. Some dashed in headlong by the door,
others under the canvas, until there was not room to
crawl among their bodies. Then followed—nothing.
First an awful silence, then a whispering, then a
mighty laughter, and then the whole party sneaked
out of the fort and yelled with merriment. One of
my own men had crept out a few yards for firewood;
he had seen a leopard, and lost control of himself—
that was all. It is hard to say who was most
chaffed about it; but I confess I did not realise

before how simple a business it would have been for

NYASSA-TANGANYIKA PLATEAU 117

any one who did not approve of the white man to
exterminate him and his caravan.

Sunday, 28th October—My patient holding on;
will now probably pull through. As he has to be fed
on liquids, my own fowls have all gone in chicken
soup. owls are now very scarce, and my men,
taking advantage of the high premium and urgent
demand, have gone long distances to get them.
They will not supply them to the invalid, but sell
them to me to give him. Wishing to teach them a
lesson in philanthropy, I declined to buy any more
on these terms; and after seeing me go three days
dinnerless to give Kacquia his chance of life they
became ashamed of themselves, and handed me all
the fowls they had in a present. This was a pro-
-digious effort for a native, and proves him capable
of better things. The whole camp had been watch-
ing this byplay for a day or two, and the finish did
good all round—more especially as I gave a return
present, after a judicious interval, worth five times
what had been given me.

Held the usual service in the evening—a piece
of very primitive Christianity. Moolu, who had
learned much from Dr. Laws, undertook the sermon,
and discoursed with great eloquence on the Tower
of Babel. The preceding Sunday he had waxed

118 WANDERINGS ON THE

equally warm over the Rich Man and Lazarus; and
his description of the Rich Man in terms of native
ideas of wealth—‘“plenty of calico and plenty of
beads” ——was a thing to remember. “ Mission-
blacks,” in Natal and at the Cape, are a byword
among the unsympathetic; but I never saw Moolu
do an inconsistent thing. He could neither read
nor write; he knew only some dozen words of
English ; until seven years ago he had never seen a
white man ; but I could trust him with everything I
had. He was not “pious”; he was neither bright
nor clever; he was a commonplace black; but he
did his duty and never told a lie. The first night
of our camp, after all had gone to rest, I remember
being roused by a low talking. I looked out of my
tent; a flood of moonlight lit up the forest ; and
there, kneeling upon the ground, was a little group of
natives, and Moolu in the centre conducting evening
prayers. Every night afterwards this service was
repeated, no matter how long the march was nor
how tired the men. I make no comment. But
this I will say—Moolu’s life gave him the right
to do it. Mission reports are often said to be
valueless ; they are less so than anti-mission reports.
I believe in missions, for one thing, because I believe

in Moolu.

NYASSA-TANGANYIKA PLATEAU 119

But I need not go on with this itinerary. It is
very much the same thing over again. For some
time yet you must imagine the curious procession I
have described wandering hither and thither among
the wooded mountains and valleys of the table-land,
and going through the same general programme.
You might have seen its chief getting browner and
browner in the tropical sun, his clothes getting
raggeder and raggeder, his collecting-boxes becoming
fuller and fuller, and his desire to get home again
growing stronger and stronger. Then you might
have seen the summer end and the tropical rains
begin, and the whole country suddenly clothe itself
with living green. And then, as the season advanced,
you might have seen him plodding back to the Lake,
between the attacks of fever. working his way down
‘the Shiré and Zambesi, and so, after many days,
greeting the new spring in England.

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A THEORY

See tHe WHITE ANT

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THE WHITE. ANT

A THEORY

FEW years ago, under the distinguished

patronage of Mr. Darwin, the animal in vogue
with scientific society was the worm. At present
the fashionable animal is the ant. I am sorry, there-
fore, to have to begin by confessing that the insect
whose praises I propose to sing, although bearing
the honoured name, is not entitled to consideration
on account of its fashionable connections, since the
white ant, as an ant, is an impostor. It is, in fact,
not an ant at all, but belongs to a much humbler
family—that of the Zermztzd@—and so far from ever
having been the vogue, this clever but artful creature
is hated and despised by all civilised peoples.
Nevertheless, if I mistake not, there is neither among
the true ants, nor among the worms, an insect which

plays a more wonderful or important part in nature.

124 THE WHITE ANT

Fully to appreciate the beauty of this function, a
glance at an apparently distant aspect of nature will
be necessary as a preliminary.

When we watch the farmer at work, and think
how he has to plough, harrow, manure, and humour
the soil before even one good crop can be coaxed
out of it, we are apt to wonder how nature manages
to secure her crops and yet dispense with all these
accessories. The world is one vast garden, bringing
forth crops of the most luxuriant and varied kind
century after century, and millennium after millen-
nium. Yet the face of nature is nowhere furrowed by
the plough, no harrow disintegrates the clods, no lime
and phosphates are strewn upon its fields, no visible
tillage of the soil improves the work on the great
world’s farm.

Now, in reality, there cannot be crops, or succes-
sions of crops, without the most thorough agriculture ;
and when we look more closely into nature we dis-
cover a system of husbandry of the most surprising
kind. Nature does all things unobtrusively ; and it
is only now that we are beginning to see the magni-
tude of these secret agricultural operations by which
she does already all that man would wish to imitate,
and to which his most scientific methods are but

clumsy approximations.

A THEORY 125

In this great system of natural husbandry nature
uses agencies, implements, and tools of many kinds.
There is the disintegrating frost, that great natural
harrow, which bursts asunder the clods by the ex-
pansion during freezing of the moisture imprisoned
in their pores. There is the communistic wind which
scatters broadcast over the fields the finer soil in clouds
of summer dust. There is the rain which washes
the humus into the hollows, and scrapes bare the
feems aor further denudation. There is the air
which, with its carbonic acid and oxygen, dissolves
and decomposes the stubborn hills, and manufactures
out of them the softest soils of the valley. And
there are the humic acids, generated through decay,
which filter through the ground and manure and
enrich the new-made soils.

But this is not all, nor is this enough ; to prepare
a surface film, however rich, and to manure the soil
beneath, will secure one crop, but not a succession of
crops. There must be a mixture and transference of
these layers, and a continued mixture and transference,
kept up from age to age. The lower layer of soil,
exhausted with bringing forth, must be transferred to
the top for change of air, and there it must lie for a
long time, increasing its substance, and recruiting its

strength among the invigorating elements. The upper

126 THE WHITE ANT

film, restored, disintegrated, saturated with fertility
and strength, must next be slowly lowered down
again to where the rootlets are lying in wait for it,
deep in the under soil.

Now how is this last change brought about?
Man turns up the crust with the plough, throwing
up the exhausted earth, down the refreshed soil,
with infinite toil and patience. And nature does it
by natural ploughmen who, with equal industry, are
busy all over the world reversing the earth’s crust,
turning it over and over from year to year, only much
more slowly and much more thoroughly, spadeful
by spadeful, foot by foot, and even grain by grain.
Before Adam delved the Garden of Eden these
natural agriculturists were at work, millions and
millions of them in every part of the globe, at differ-
ent seasons and in different ways, tilling the world’s
fields.

According to Mr. Darwin, the animal which per-
forms this most important function in nature is the
earthworm. The marvellous series of observations
by which the great naturalist substantiated his
conclusion are too well known for repetition. Mr.
Darwin calculates that on every acre of land in
England more than ten tons of dry earth are passed

through the bodies of worms and brought to the

A THEORY 127

surface every year ; and he assures us that the whole
soil of the country must. pass and repass through
their bodies every few years. Some of this earth is
brought up from a considerable depth -beneath the
soil, for, in order to make its subterranean burrow,
the animal is compelled to swallow a certain quantity
of earth. It eats its way, in fact, to the surface, and
there voids the material in a little heap. Although
the proper diet of worms is decaying vegetable
matter, dragged down from the surface in the form
of leaves and tissues of plants, there are many occa-.
sions on which this source of aliment fails, and the
animal has then to nourish itself by swallowing
quantities of earth, for the sake of the organic sub-
stances it contains. In this way the worm has a
twofold inducement to throw up earth. First, to
dispose of the material excavated from its burrow ;
and second, to obtain adequate nourishment in times
of famine. “When we behold a wide, turf-covered
expanse,” says Mr. Darwin, “we should remember
that its smoothness, on which so much of its beauty
depends, is mainly due to all the inequalities having
been slowly levelled by worms. It is a marvellous
reflection that the whole of the superficial mould
over any such expanse has passed, and will again

pass, every few years, through the bodies of worms.

128 THE WHITE ANT

The plough is one of the most ancient and most
valuable of man’s inventions; but long before he
existed the land was, in fact, regularly ploughed by
earthworms. It may be doubted whether there are
many other animals which have played so important
a part in the history of the world as have these lowly
organised creatures.” *

Now without denying the very important contri-
bution of the earthworm in this respect, a truth
sufficiently endorsed by the fact that the most cir-
cumstantial of naturalists has devoted a whole book
to this one animal, I would humbly bring forward
another claimant to the honour of being, along with
the worm, the agriculturist of nature. While ad-
mitting to the fullest extent the influence of worms
in countries which enjoy a temperate and humid
climate, it can scarcely be allowed that the same
influence is exerted, or can possibly be exerted, in
tropical lands. No man was less in danger of taking
a provincial view of nature than Mr. Darwin, and in
discussing the earthworm he has certainly collected
evidence from different parts of the globe. He
refers, although sparingly, and with less than his

usual wealth of authorities, to worms being found in

1 Vegetable Mould and Earth Worms, p. 313.

A THEORY 129

Iceland, in Madagascar, in the United States, Brazil,
New South Wales, India, and Ceylon. But his
facts, with regard especially to the influence, on the
large scale, of the worm in warm countries, are few
or wholly wanting. Africa, for instance, the most
tropical country in the world, is not referred to at
all; and where the activities of worms in the tropics
are described, the force of the fact is modified by
the statement that these are only exerted during the
limited number of weeks of the rainy season.

The fact is, for the greater portion of the year in
the tropics the worm cannot operate at all. The
soil, baked into a brick by the burning sun, abso-
lutely refuses a passage to this soft and delicate
animal. All the members of the earthworm tribe,
it is true, are natural skewers, and though boring is
their supreme function, the substance of these skewers
is not hardened iron, and the pavement of a tropical
forest is quite as intractable for nine months in the
year as are the frost-bound fields to the farmer’s
ploughshare. During the brief period of the rainy
season worms undoubtedly carry on their function
in some of the moister tropical districts ; and in the
sub-tropical regions of South America and India,
worms, small and large, appear with the rains in
endless numbers. But on the whole the tropics

130 THE WHITE ANT

proper seem to be poorly supplied with worms. In
Central Africa, though I looked for them often, I

never saw a single worm. Even when the rainy

season set in, the closest search failed to reveal any

trace either of them or of their casts. Nevertheless,
so wide is the distribution of this animal, that in the
moister regions even of the equatorial belt one should
certainly expect to find it. But the general fact
remains. Whether we consider the comparative
poorness of their development, or the limited period
during which they can operate, the sustained per-
formance of the agricultural function by worms, over
large areas in tropical countries, is impossible.

Now as this agricultural function can never be
dispensed with, it is more than probable that nature
will have there commissioned some other animal to
undertake the task. And there are several other
animals to whom this difficult and laborious duty
might be entrusted. There is the mole, for instance,
with its wonderful spade-like feet, that natural navvy,
who shovels the soil about so vigorously at home ;
but against the burnt crust of the tropics even this
most determined of burrowers would surely turn the
edge of his nails. The same remark applies to those
curious little geologists the marmots and skipmunks,

which one sees throwing up their tiny heaps of sand

‘3? 7} ere

A THEORY 131

and gravel on the American prairies. And though
the torrid zone boasts of a strong-limbed and almost
steel-shod creature, the ant-bear, his ravages are
limited to the destruction of the nests of ants; and
however much this somewhat scarce animal contri-
butes to the result, we must look in another direction
for the true tropical analogue of the worm.

The animal we are in search of, and which I
venture to think equal to all the necessities of the
eases toe termite or white ant. It is ‘a small
insect, with a bloated, yellowish-white body, and a
somewhat large thorax, oblong-shaped, and coloured
a disagreeable oily brown. The flabby, tallow-like
body makes this insect sufficiently repulsive, but it
is for quite another reason that the white ant is the
worst abused ofall living vermin in warm countries.
The termite lives almost exclusively upon wood ;
and the moment a tree is cut or a log sawn for any
economical purpose, this insect is upon its track.
One may never see the insect, possibly, in the flesh,
for it lives underground; but its ravages confront
one at every turn. You build your house, perhaps,
and for a few months fancy you have pitched upon
the one solitary site in the country where there are
no white ants. But one day suddenly the door-post
totters, and lintel and rafters come down together

132 THE WHITE ANT

with a crash. You look at a section of the wrecked
timbers, and discover that the whole inside is eaten
clean away. The apparently solid logs of which the
rest of the house is built are now mere cylinders of
bark, and through the thickest of them you could
push your little finger. Furniture, tables, chairs,
chests of drawers, everything made of wood, is in-
evitably attacked, and in a single night a strong
trunk is often riddled through and through, and
turned into matchwood. There is no limit, in fact,
to the depredation by these insects, and they will
eat books, or leather, or cloth, or anything ; and in
many parts of Africa I believe if a man lay down to
sleep with a wooden leg it would be a heap of saw-
dust in the morning. So much feared is this insect

now, that no one in certain parts of India and Africa .

ever attempts to travel with such a thing as a wooden
trunk. On the Tanganyika plateau I have camped
on ground which was as hard as adamant, and as
innocent of white ants apparently as the pavement
of St. Paul’s, and wakened next morning to find a
stout wooden box almost gnawed to pieces. Leather
portmanteaus share the same fate, and the only sub-
stances which seem to defy the marauders are iron
and tin.

But what has this to do with earth or with agri-

A THEORY 133

culture? The most important point in the work of
the white ant remains to be noted. I have already
said that the white ant is never seen. Why he
should have such a repugnance to being looked at
is at first sight a mystery, seeing that he himself is
stone blind. But his coyness is really due to the
desire for self-protection, for the moment his juicy
body shows itself above ground there are a dozen
enemies waiting to devour it. And yet the white
ant can never procure any food until it comes above
ground. Nor will it meet the case for the insect to
come to the surface under the shadow of night.
Night in the tropics, so far as animal life is con-
cerned, is as the day. It is the great feeding time,
the great fighting time, the carnival of the carnivores,
and of all beasts, birds, and insects of prey from the
least to the greatest. It is clear then that darkness
is no protection to the white ant; and yet without
coming out of the ground it cannot live. How does
it solve the difficulty? It takes the ground out
along with it. I have seen white ants working on
the top of a high tree, and yet they were under-
ground. They took up some of the ground with
them to the tree-top ; just as the Esquimaux heap
up snow, building it into the low tunnel-huts in

which they live, so the white ants collect earth, only

134 THE WHITE ANT

in this case not from the surface but from some
depth underneath the ground, and plaster it into
tunnelled ways. Occasionally these run along the
ground, but more often mount in endless ramifica-
tions to the top of trees, meandering along every
branch and twig, and here and there debouching into
large covered chambers which occupy half the girth
of the trunk. Millions of trees in some districts are
thus fantastically plastered over with tubes, galleries,
and chambers of earth, and many pounds weight of
subsoil must be brought up for the mining of even a
single tree. The building material is conveyed by
the insects up a central pipe with which all the
galleries communicate, and which at the downward
end connects with a series of subterranean passages
leading deep into the earth. The method of building
the tunnels and covered ways is as follows :—At the
foot of a tree the tiniest hole cautiously opens in the
ground close to the bark. A small head appears
with a grain of earth clasped in its jaws. Against
the tree-trunk this earth-grain is deposited, and the
head is withdrawn. Presently it reappears with
another grain of earth, this is laid beside the first,
rammed tight against it, and again the builder de-
scends underground for more. The third grain is
not placed against the tree, but against the former

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A THEORY 137

grain ; a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth follow, and the
plan of the foundation begins to suggest itself as
soon as these are in position. The stones or grains
or pellets of earth are arranged in a semicircular
wall, the termite, now assisted by three or four
others, standing in the middle between the sheltering
wall and the tree, and working briskly with head and
mandible to strengthen the position. The wall in
fact forms a small moon-rampart, and as it grows
higher and higher it soon becomes evident that it is
going to grow from a low battlement into a long
perpendicular tunnel running up the side of the
tree. The workers, safely ensconced inside, are now
carrying up the structure with great rapidity, dis-
appearing in turn as soon as they have laid their
stone and rushing off to bring up another. The
way in which the building is done is extremely
curious, and one could watch the movement of these
wonderful little masons by the hour. Each stone as
it is brought to the top is first of all covered with
mortar. Of course, without this the whole tunnel
would crumble into dust before reaching the height
of half an inch; but the termite pours over the stone
a moist sticky secretion, turning the grain round and
round with its mandibles until the whole is covered

with slime. Then it places the stone with great

138 THE WHITE ANT

care upon the top of the wall, works it about vigor-
ously for a moment or two till it is well jammed
into its place, and then starts off instantly for
another load.

Peering over the growing wall, one soon discovers
one, two, or more termites of a somewhat larger
build, considerably longer, and with a very different
arrangement of the parts of the head, and especially
of the mandibles, These important-looking indi-
viduals saunter about the rampart in the most
leisurely way, but yet with a certain air of business,
as if perhaps the one was the master of works and
the other the architect. But closer observation
suggests that they are in no wise superintending
operations, nor in any immediate way contributing to
the structure, for they take not the slightest notice
either of the workers or the works. They are posted
there in fact as sentries, and there they stand, or
promenade about, at the mouth of every tunnel, like
sister Ann, to see if anybody is coming. Sometimes
somebody does come in the shape of another ant—
the real ant this time, not the defenceless Veur-
opteron, but some valiant and belted knight from the
warlike Formicide. Singly, or in troops, this rapa-

cious little insect, fearless in its chitinous coat of

mail, charges down the tree-trunk, its antennz waving

A THEORY 139

defiance to the enemy, and its cruel mandibles thirst-
ing for termite blood. The worker white ant is a
poor defenceless creature, and, blind and unarmed,
would fall an immediate prey to these well-drilled
banditti, who forage about in every tropical forest
in unnumbered legion. But at the critical moment,
like Goliath from the Philistines, the soldier termite
advances to the fight. With a few sweeps of its
scythe-like jaws it clears the ground, and while the
attacking party is carrying off its dead, the builders,
unconscious of the fray, quietly continue their work.
To every hundred workers in a white ant colony,
which numbers many thousands of individuals, there
are perhaps two of these fighting men. The division
of labour here is very wonderful, and the fact that
besides these two specialised forms there are in every
nest two other kinds of the same insect, the kings
and queens, shows the remarkable height to which
civilisation in these communities has attained.

But where is this tunnel going to, and what
object have the insects in view in ascending this
lofty tree? Thirty feet from the ground, across
innumerable forks, at the end of a long branch, are
a few feet of dead wood. How the ants know it is
there, how they know its sap has dried up, and that
it is now fit for the termites’ food, is a mystery.

140 THE WHITE ANT

Possibly they do not know, and are only prospecting
on the chance. The fact that they sometimes make
straight for the decaying limb argues in these in-
stances a kind of definite instinct ; but, on the other
hand, the fact that in most cases the whole tree,
in every branch and limb, is covered with termite
tunnels, would show perhaps that they work most
commonly on speculation, while the number of aban-
doned tunnels, ending on a sound branch in a cud de
sac, proves how often they must suffer the usual dis-
appointments of all such adventurers. The extent
to which these insects carry on their tunnelling is
quite incredible until one has seen it in nature with
his own eyes. The tunnels are perhaps about the
thickness of a small-sized gas-pipe, but there are
junctions here and there of large dimensions, and
occasionally patches of earthwork are found embrac-
ing nearly the whole trunk for some feet. The out-
side of these tunnels, which are never quite straight,
but wander irregularly along stem and_ branch,
resembles in texture a coarse sandpaper; and the
colour, although this naturally varies with the soil, is
usually a reddish brown. The quantity of earth and
mud plastered over a single tree is often enormous ;
and when one thinks that it is not only an isolated

specimen here and there that is frescoed in this way,

A THEORY 141

but often the whole of the trees of a forest, some idea
will be formed of the magnitude of the operations of
these insects and the extent of their influence upon
the soil which they are thus ceaselessly transporting
from underneath the ground.

In travelling through the great forests of the
Rocky Mountains or of the Western States, the
broken branches and fallen trunks strewing the
ground breast-high with all sorts of decaying litter
frequently make locomotion impossible. To attempt
to ride through these western forests, with their mesh-
work of interlocked branches and decaying trunks,
is often out of the question, and one has to dismount
and drag his horse after him as if he were clamber-
ing through a woodyard. But in an African forest
not a fallen branch is seen. One is struck at first
at a certain clean look about the great forests of the
interior, a novel and unaccountable cleanness, as if
the forest-bed was carefully swept and dusted daily
by unseen elves. And so, indeed, it is. Scavengers
of a hundred kinds remove decaying animal matter
—from the carcase of a fallen elephant to the broken
wing of a gnat—eating it, or carrying it out of sight,
and burying it on the deodorising earth. And these
countless millions of termites perform a similar
function for the vegetable world, making away with

142 THE WHITE ANT

all plants and trees, all stems, twigs, and tissues, the
moment the finger of decay strikes the signal. Con-
stantly in these woods one comes across what appear
to be sticks and branches and bundles of faggots,
but when closely examined they are seen to be mere
casts in mud. From these hollow tubes, which pre-

a, Tunnel. 4, Earth. c, Shreds of outer Bark.
d, Remains of Branch.

serve the original form of the branch down to the
minutest knot or fork, the ligneous tissue is often
entirely removed, while others are met with in all
stages of demolition. There is the section of
an actual specimen, which is not yet completely
destroyed, and from which the mode of attack may
be easily seen. The insects start apparently from
two centres. One company attacks the inner bark,

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A THEORY 145

which is the favourite morsel, leaving the coarse

outer bark untouched, or more usually replacing it

with grains of earth, atom by atom, as they eat it

away. The inner bark is gnawed off likewise as
they go along, but the woody tissue beneath is
allowed to remain to form a protective sheath for
the second company who begin work at the centre.
This second contingent eats its way outward and
onward, leaving a thin tube of the outer wood to
the last, as props to the mine, till they have finished
the main excavation. When a fallen trunk lying
upon the ground is the object of attack, the outer
cylinder is frequently left quite intact, and it is only
when one tries to drag it off to his camp-fire that
he finds to his disgust that he is dealing with a

mere hollow tube a few lines in thickness filled up
with mud.

But the works above ground represent only a
part of the labours of these slow-moving but most
industrious of creatures. The arboreal tubes are
only the prolongation of a much more elaborate
system of subterranean tunnels, which extend over
large areas and mine the earth sometimes to a depth
of many feet or even yards,

The material excavated from these underground
galleries and from the succession of domed chambers

146 THE WHITE ANT

—used as nurseries or granaries—to which they
lead, has to be thrown out upon the surface. And
it is from these materials that the huge ant-hills are
reared, which form so distinctive a feature of the
African landscape. These heaps and mounds are
so conspicuous that they may be seen for miles, and
so numerous are they and so useful as cover to the

sportsman, that without them in certain districts

hunting would be impossible. The first things,
indeed, to strike the traveller in entering the interior
are the mounds of the white ant, now dotting the
plain in groups like a small cemetery, now rising
into mounds, singly or in clusters, each thirty or forty
feet in diameter and ten or fifteen in height ; or,
again, standing out against the sky like obelisks,
their bare sides carved and fluted into all sorts of
fantastic shapes. In India these ant-heaps seldom

attain a height of more than a couple of feet, but in

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NESTS OF WHITE ANTS,

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A THEORY 149

Central Africa they form veritable hills, and contain
many tons of earth. The brick houses of the Scotch
mission-station on Lake Nyassa have all been built
out of a single ants’ nest, and the quarry from which
the material has been derived forms a pit beside the
settlement some dozen feet in depth. A supply of
bricks, as large again, could probably still be taken
from this convenient depdt ; and the missionaries on
Lake Tanganyika and onwards to Victoria Nyanza
have been similarly indebted to the labours of the
termites. In South Africa the Zulus and Kaffirs
pave all their huts with white-ant earth; and during
the Boer war our troops in Praetoria, by scooping
out the interior from the smaller beehive-shaped ant-
heaps, and covering the top with clay, constantly
used them as ovens. These ant-heaps may be said
to abound over the whole interior of Africa, and
there are several distinct species. The most peculiar,
as well as the most ornate, is a small variety from
one to two feet in height, which occurs in myriads
along the shores of Lake Tanganyika. It is built
in symmetrical tiers, and resembles a pile of small
rounded hats, one above another, the rims depending
like eaves, and sheltering the body of the hill from
rain. To estimate the amount of earth per acre
raised from the water-line of the subsoil by white

150 THE WHITE ANT

ants would not in some districts be an impossible
task ; and it would be found, probably, that the
quantity at least equalled that manipulated annually
in temperate regions by the earthworm.

These mounds, however, are more than mere
waste-heaps. Like the corresponding region under-
ground, they are built into a meshwork of tunnels,
galleries, and chambers, where the social interests of
the community are attended to. The most spacious
of these chambers, usually far underground, is very
properly allocated to the head of the society, the
queen. The queen-termite is a very rare insect, and
as there are seldom more than one, or at most two,
to a colony, and as the royal apartments are hidden
far in the earth, few persons have ever seen a queen,
and indeed most, if they did happen to come across
it, from its very singular appearance, would refuse to
believe that it had any connection with white ants.
It possesses, indeed, the true termite head, but there
the resemblance to the other members of the family
stops, for the size of the head bears about the same
proportion to the rest of the body as does the tuft
on his Glengarry bonnet to a six-foot Highlander.
The phenomenal corpulence of the royal body in the
case of the queen-termite is possibly due in part to
want of exercise, for once seated upon her throne

a fee

NEST OF THE WHITE ANT.
1, Male. 2, 4,5, Neuters. 3, Gravid Female. See fage 150.

A THEORY 153

she never stirs to the end of her days. She lies
there, a large, loathsome, cylindrical package, two or
three inches long, in shape like a sausage, and as
white as a bolster. Her one duty in life is to lay
eges, and it must be confessed she discharges her
function with complete success, for in a single day
her progeny often amounts to many thousands, and
for months this enormous fecundity never slackens.
The body increases slowly in size, and through the
transparent skin the long folded ovary may be
seen, with the eggs, impelled by a peristaltic motion,
passing onward for delivery to the workers who are
waiting to carry them to the nurseries where they
are hatched. Assiduous attention, meantime, is paid
to the queen by other workers, who feed her diligently,
with much self-denial stuffing her with morsel after
morsel from their own jaws. A guard of honour in
the shape of a few of the larger soldier-ants is also
in attendance as a last and almost unnecessary pre-
caution. In addition, finally, to the soldiers, workers,
and queen, the royal chamber has also one other
inmate—the king. He is a very ordinary-looking
insect, about the same size as the soldiers, but the
arrangement of the parts of the head and body is
widely different, and like the queen he is furnished
with eyes.

154 THE WHITE ANT

Let me now attempt to show the way in which >
the work of the termites bears upon the natural
agriculture and geology of the tropics. Looking at
the question from the large point of view, the general
fact to be noted is, that the soil of the tropics is in
a state of perpetual motion. Instead of an upper
crust, moistened to a paste by the autumn rains, and
then baked hard as adamant in the sun; and an
under soil, hermetically sealed from the air and light,
and inaccessible to all the natural manures derived
from the decomposition of organic matters—these
two layers being eternally fixed in their relation to
one another—we have a slow and continued trans-
ference of the layers always taking place. Not only
to cover their depredations, but to dispose of the
earth excavated from the underground galleries, the
termites are constantly transporting the deeper and
exhausted soils to the surface. Thus there is, so to
speak, a constant circulation of earth in the tropics,
a ploughing and harrowing, not furrow by furrow
and clod by clod, but pellet by pellet and grain by
grain.

Some idea of the extent to which the underlying
earth of the tropical forests is thus brought to the
surface will have been gathered from the facts

already described; but no one who has not seen it

A THEORY 155

with his own eyes can appreciate the gigantic
magnitude of the process. Occasionally one sees a
whole trunk or branch, and sometimes almost an
entire tree, so swathed in red mud that the bark is
almost completely concealed, the tree looking as if it
had been taken out bodily and dipped in some
crystallising solution. It is not only one tree here
and there that exhibits the work of the white ant,
but in many places the whole forest is so coloured
with dull red tunnels and patches as to give a
distinct tone to the landscape—an effect which, at
a little distance, reminds one of the abend-roth in
a pine forest among the Alps. Some regions are
naturally more favourable than others to the opera-
tions of the termites, and to those who have only
seen them at work in India or in the lower districts
of Africa this statement may seem an exaggeration.
But on one range of forest-clad hills on the great
plateau between Lake Nyassa and Tanganyika I
have walked for miles through trees, every one of
which, without exception, was ramified, more or less,
with tunnels. The elevation of this locality was
about 5000 feet above the sea, and the distance
from the equator some 9°; but nowhere else have I
seen a spot where the termites were so completely
masters of the situation as here. If it is the case

156 THE WHITE ANT

that in these, the most elevated regions of Central
Africa, the termite colonies attain their maximum
development, the fact is of much interest in connec-
tion with the geological and agricultural function
which they seem to serve; for it is here precisely,

TI il !

Wit

HTT

WHITE ANT HILL.

before the rivers have gathered volume, that alluvium
is most wanting ; it is here that the tiny headwaters
of these same rivers collect the earth for subsequent
distribution over the distant plains and coasts; and

though the white ant may itself have no power, in

THE WHITE ANT 157

the first instance, of creating soil, as a denuding and
transporting agent its ministry can scarcely be
exaggerated. If this is its function in the economy
of nature, it is certainly clear that the insect to which
this task is assigned is planted where, of all places,
it can most effectively fulfil the end.

The direct relation of the termites’ work to
denudation will still further appear if we try to
imagine the effect upon these accumulations of earth-
pellets and grains of an ordinary rainy season. For
two or three months in the tropics, though intermit-
tently, the rains lash the forests and soils with a fury
such as we, fortunately, have little idea of. And
though the earthworks, and especially the larger
ant-hills, have marvellous resisting properties, they
are not invulnerable, and must ultimately succumb
todenuding agents. The tunnels, being only required
for a temporary purpose, are made substantial enough
only to last the occasion. And in spite of the
natural glue which cements the pellets of earth
together, the structure, as a whole, after a little
exposure, becomes extremely friable, and crumbles
to pieces at a touch. When the earth-tubes crumble
into dust in the summer season the débris is scattered
over the country by the wind, and in this way tends
to increase and refresh the soil. During the rains,

158 THE WHITE ANT

again, it is washed into the rivulets and borne away
to fertilise with new alluvium the distant valleys, or
carried downward to the ocean, where, along the coast
line, it “sows the dust of continents to be.” Hero-
dotus, with equal poetic and scientific truth, describes
Egypt as “the gift of the Nile.’ Possibly had he
lived to-day he might have carried his vision farther
back still, and referred some of it to the labours of
the humble termites in the forest slopes about

Victoria Nyanza.

WHITE ANT HILLS.

ze Year
; xa | '

VIL

_ MIMICRY

S OF AFRICAN INSECTS

Vit

MIMICRY

foe WAYS OF AFRICAN INSECTS

IMICRY is imposture in nature. Carlyle in
his blackest visions of “shams and humbugs ”
among human kind never saw anything so finished
in hypocrisy as the naturalist now finds in every
tropical forest. There are to be seen creatures, not
singly, but in tens of thousands, whose very appear-
ance, down to the minutest spot and wrinkle, is an
affront to truth, whose every attitude is a fose for a
purpose, and whose whole life is a sustained lie.
Before these masterpieces of deception the most in-
genious of human impositions are vulgar and trans-
parent. Fraud is not only the great rule of life in
a tropical forest, but the one condition of it.
Although the extraordinary phenomena of mimicry
are now pretty generally known to science, few
workers have yet had the opportunity of studying
M

162 MIMICRY

them in nature. But no study in natural history
depends more upon observation in the field; for
while in the case of a few mimetic forms—the He/-
conide, for example—the imitated form is also an
insect, and the two specimens may be laid side by
side in the cabinet at home, the great majority of
mimetic insects are imitations of objects in the
environment which cannot be brought into com-
parison with them in the drawers of a museum.
Resides this, it is not only the form but the behaviour
of the mimetic insect, its whole habit and habitat,
that have to be considered ; so that mere museum
contributions to mimicry are almost useless without
the amplest supplement from the field naturalist. I
make no further apology, therefore, for transcribing
here a few notes bearing upon this subject from
journals written during a recent survey of a region
in the heart of Africa—the Nyassa-Tanganyika
plateau—which has not yet been described or visited
by any naturalist.

The preliminaries of the subject can be mastered
in a moment even by the uninitiated, and I may
therefore begin with a short preface on animal
colouring in general. Mimicry depends on resem-
blances between an animal and some other object in

its environment of which it is a practical gain to the

THE WAYS OF AFRICAN INSECTS 163

creature to be a more or less accurate copy. The
resemblance may be to any object, animate or inani-
mate. It may be restricted to colour, or it may
extend to form, and even to habit ; but of these the
first is by far the most important.

Apart from sexual selection, colour in animals
mainly serves two functions, It is either “ protective”
or “warning.” The object of the first is to render
the animal inconspicuous, the object of the second
is the opposite—to make it conspicuous. Why it
should be an object with some animals to be palpably
exposed will be apparent from the following familiar
instance of “warning” coloration. There are two
great families of butterflies, the Danazd@ and Acraiede,
which are inedible owing to the presence in their
bodies of acrid and unwholesome juices. Now to
swallow one of these creatures—and birds, monkeys,
lizards, and spiders are very fond of butterflies—
would be gratuitous. It would be disappointing to
the eater, who would have to disgorge his prey im-
mediately, and it would be an unnecessary sacrifice
of the subject of the experiment. These butterflies,
therefore, must have their disagreeableness in some
way advertised, and so they dress up with exceptional
eccentricity, distinguishing themselves by loud patterns

and brilliant colourings, so that the bird, the monkey,

164 MIMICRY

and the rest can take in the situation at a glance.
These animated danger-signals float serenely about
the forests with the utmost coolness in the broadest
daylight, leisureliness, defiance, and self-complacency
marking their every movement, while their duskier
brethren have to hurry through the glades in terror
of their lives. For the same reason, well-armed or
stinging insects are always conspicuously ornamented
with warning colours. The expense of eating a wasp,
for instance, is too great to lead to a second invest-
ment in the same insect, and wasps therefore have
been rendered as showy as possible so that they may
be at once seen and as carefully avoided. The same
law applies to bees, dragonflies, and other gaudy
forms ; and it may be taken as a rule that all gaily-
coloured insects belong to one or other of these two
classes: that is, that they are either bad eating or
bad-stingers. Now the remarkable fact is that all
these brilliant and unwholesome creatures are closely
imitated in outward apparel by other creatures not
themselves protected by acrid juices, but which thus
share the same immunity. That these are cases of
mimicry is certain from many considerations, not the
least striking of which is that frequently one of the
sexes is protectively coloured and not the other.

The brilliant colouring of poisonous snakes is

THE WAYS OF AFRICAN INSECTS 165

sometimes set down by naturalists to “warning,” but
the details of colouring among reptiles have never
been thoroughly worked out. The difficulty suggests
itself that if the vivid yellows and oranges of some
snakes are meant to warn off dangerous animals, the
same conspicuousness would warn off the animals on
which the venomous forms prey. Thus, while Jdeimg
hunted, a showy skin might be of advantage to the
snake ; in hunting it would be an equal disadvantage.
But when one watches on the spot the manner in
which snakes really do their hunting, it becomes
probable that the colouring, vivid and peculiar as it
is, in most cases is designed simply to aid conceal-
ment. One of the most beautiful and ornate of all
the tropical reptiles is the puff-adder. This animal,
the bite of which is certain death, is from three to
five feet long, and disproportionately thick, being in
some parts almost as thick as the lower part of the
thigh. The whole body is ornamented with strange
devices in green, yellow, and black, and lying in a
museum its glittering coils certainly form a most
striking object. But in nature the puff-adder has a
very different background. It is essentially a forest
animal, its true habitat being among the fallen leaves
in the deep shade of the trees by the banks of

streams. Now in such a position, at the distance of

166 MIMICRY

a foot or two, its appearance so exactly resembles
the forest bed as to be almost indistinguishable from
it. I was once just throwing myself down under a
tree to rest when, stooping to clear the spot, I noticed
a peculiar pattern among the leaves. I started back
in horror to find a puff-adder of the largest size, its
thick back only visible and its fangs within a few
inches of my face as I stooped. It was lying con-
cealed among fallen leaves so like itself that, but for
the exceptional caution which in African travel
becomes a habit, I should certainly have sat down
upon it, and to sit down upon a puff-adder is to sit
down for the last time. I think this coloration in
the puff-adder is more than that of warning, and that
this semi-somnolent attitude is not always the mere
attitude of repose. This reptile lay lengthwise, con-
cealed, all but a few inches, among the withered
leaves. Now the peculiarity of the puff-adder is that
it strikes backward. Lying on the ground, therefore,
it commands as it were its whole rear, and the moment
any part is touched, the head doubles backward with
inconceivable swiftness, and the poison-fangs close
upon their victim. The puff-adder in this way forms
a sort of horrid trap set in the woods which may be
altogether unperceived till it shuts with a sudden

spring upon its prey.

THE WAYS OF AFRICAN INSECTS 167

ee
'

But that the main function of colouring is pro-
tection may be decided from the simplest observation
of animal life in any part of the world. Even among
the larger animals, which one might suppose inde-
pendent of subterfuge and whose appearance any-
where but in their native haunts suggests a very
opposite theory, the harmony of colour with environ-
ment is always more or less striking. When we
look, for instance, at the coat of a zebra with its
thunder-and-lightning pattern of black and white
stripes, we should think such a conspicuous object
designed to court rather than to elude attention.
But the effect in nature is just the opposite. The
black and white somehow take away the sense of a
solid body altogether ; the two colours seem to blend
into the most inconspicuous gray, and at close quarters
the effect is as of bars of light seen through the
branches of shrubs. I have found myself in the
forest gazing at what I supposed to be a solitary
zebra, its presence betrayed by some motion due to

my approach, and suddenly realised that I was sur-
rounded by an entire herd which were all invisible
until they moved. The motionlessness of wild game
in the field when danger is near is well known; and
every hunter is aware of the difficulty of seeing even

the largest animals though they are just standing in

168 MIMICRY

front of him. The tiger, whose stripes are obviously
meant to imitate the reeds of the jungle in which it
lurks, is nowhere found in Africa; but its beautiful
cousin, the leopard, abounds in these forests, and its
spotted pelt probably conveys the same sense of
indistinctness as in the case of the zebra. The
hippopotamus seems to find the deep water of the
rivers—where it spends the greater portion of its
time—a sufficient protection; but the crocodile is
marvellously concealed by its knotted mud-coloured
hide, and it is often quite impossible to tell at a
distance whether the objects lying along the river
banks are alligators or fallen logs.

But by far the most wonderful examples of pro-
tective adjustments are found where the further
disguise of form is added to that of colour, and to
this only is the term mimicry strictly applicable.
The pitch of intricate perfection to which mimicry
has attained in an undisturbed and unglaciated
country like Central Africa is so marvellous and
incredible, that one almost hesitates to utter what
his eyes haveseen. Before going to Africa I was of
course familiar with the accounts of mimetic insects
to be found in the works of Bates, Belt, Wallace, and
other naturalists ; but no description prepares one in

the least for the surprise which awaits him when first

THE WAYS OF AFRICAN INSECTS 169

he encounters these species in nature, My introduc-
tion to them occurred on the borders of Lake Shirwa
—one of the smaller and less known of the great
African lakes—-and I shall record the incident
exactly as I find it in my notes. I had stopped
one day among some tall dry grass to mark a
reading of the aneroid, when one of my men
suddenly shouted “Chirombo!” “ Chirombo” means
an inedible beast of any kind, and I turned round
to see where the animal was. The native pointed
straight at myself. I could see nothing, but he
approached, and pointing close to a wisp of hay
which had fallen upon my coat, repeated “Chirombo!”
Believing that it must be some insect among the
hay, I took it in my fingers, looked over it, and told
him pointedly there was no “Chirombo” there.
He smiled, and pointing again to the hay, exclaimed
“ Moio !”—“ It’s alive!” The hay itself was the
Chirombo. I do not exaggerate when I say that
that wisp of hay was no more like an insect than
my aneroid barometer. I had mentally resolved
never to be taken in by any of these mimetic frauds;
I was incredulous enough to suspect that the descrip-
tions of Wallace and the others were somewhat
highly coloured ; but I confess to have been com-

pletely stultified and beaten by the very first mimetic

170 MIMICRY

form I met. It was one of that very remarkable
family the Pkhasmid@, but surely nowhere else in
nature could there be such another creature. Take
two inches of dried yellow grass-stalk, such as one
might pluck to run through the stem of a pipe;
then take six other pieces nearly as long and a
quarter as thick; bend each in the middle at any
angle you like, stick them in three opposite pairs,
and again at any angle you like, upon the first grass
stalk, and you have my Chirombo. When you
catch him, his limbs are twisted about at every angle,
as if the whole were made of one long stalk of the
most delicate grass, hinged in a dozen places, and
then gently crushed up into a dishevelled heap.
Having once assumed a position, by a wonderful
instinct he never moves or varies one of his many
angles by half a degree. The way this insect
keeps up the delusion is indeed almost as wonderful
as the mimicry itself; you may turn him about and
over and over, but he is mere dried grass, and
nothing will induce him to acknowledge the animal
kingdom by the faintest suspicion of spontaneous
movement. All the members of this family have
this power of shamming death ; but how such emaci-
ated and juiceless skeletons should ever presume to

be alive is the real mystery. These Phasmide look

THE WAYS OF AFRICAN INSECTS 17%

more like ghosts than living creatures, and so slim
are they that, in trying to kill them for the collecting-
box, the strongest squeeze between finger and thumb
makes no more impression upon them than it would
upon fine steel wire, and one has to half-guillotine
them against some hard substance before any little
life they have is sacrificed to science.

I examined after this many thousands of Phas-
midz, Mantidz, and other mimetic forms, and there
is certainly in nature no more curious or interesting
study. These grass-stalk insects live exclusively
among the long grass which occurs in patches all
over the forests, and often reaches a height of eight
or ten feet. During three-fourths of the year it is
dried by the sun into a straw-yellow colour, and all
the insects are painted to match. Although yellow
is the ground tong of these grasses, they are varie-
gated, and especially towards the latter half of the
year, in two ways. They are either tinged here and
there with red and brown, like the autumn colours
at home, or they are streaked and spotted with black
mould or other markings, painted by the finger of
decay. All these appearances are closely imitated
by insects. To complete the deception, some have
the antenne developed to represent blades of grass,

which are often from one to two inches in length,

172 MIMICRY

and stick out from the end of the body, one on
either side, like blades of grass at the end of a stalk.
The favourite attitude of these insects is to clasp a
grass-stalk, as if they were climbing a pole; then
the body is compressed against the stem and held in
position by the two fore-limbs, which are extended
in front so as to form one long line with the body,
and so mixed up with the stalk as to be practically
part of it. The four other legs stand out anyhow in
rigid spikes, like forks from the grass, while the
antennz are erected at the top, like blades coming
off from a node, which the button-like head so well
resembles. When one of these insects springs to a
new stalk of grass it will at once all but vanish
before your eyes. It remains there perfectly rigid,
a component part of the grass itself, its long legs
crooked and branched exactly lilee dried hay, the
same _in colour, the same in fineness, and quite
defying detection. These blades, alike with limbs
and body, are variously coloured according to season
and habitat. When the grasses are tinged with
autumn tints they are the same; and the colours
run through many shades, from the pure bright red,
such as tips the fins of a perch, to the deeper claret
colours or the tawny gold of port. But an even

more singular fact remains to be noted. After the

THE WAYS OF AFRICAN INSECTS 173

rainy season, when the new grasses spring up with
their vivid colour, these withered-grass insects seem
all to disappear. Their colour now would be no
protection to them, and their places are taken by
others coloured as green as the new grass. Whether
these are new insects or only the same in spring
toilets I do not know, but I should think they are
a different population altogether, the cycle of the
former generation being, probably, complete with
the end of summer.

Besides the insects which imitate grass, another
large class imitate twigs, sticks, and the smaller
branches of shrubs. The commonest of these is a
walking twig, three or four inches long, covered with
bark apparently, and spotted all over with mould
like the genuine branch. The imitation of bark
here is one of the most perfect delusions in nature ;
the delicate striation and the mould spots are repro-
duced exactly, while the segmentation of the body
represents node-intervals with wonderful accuracy.
On finding one of these insects I have often cut a
small branch from an adjoining tree and laid the
two side by side for comparison; and when both
are partly concealed by the hands so as to show
only the part of the insect’s body which is free from

limbs, it is impossible to tell the one from the other.

174 MIMICRY

The very joints of the legs in these forms are
knobbed to represent nodes, and the characteristic
attitudes of the insect are all such as to sustain the
deception.

A still more elaborate set of forms are those
which represent leaves. These belong mostly to the
Mantis and Locust tribes, and they are found in all
forms, sizes, and colours, mimicking foliage at every
stage of growth, maturity, and decay. Some have
the leaf stamped on their broadened wing-cases in
vivid green, with veins and midrib complete, and
with curious expansions over the thorax and along
all the limbs to imitate smaller leaves. I have
again and again matched these forms in the forest,
not only with the living leaf, but with crumpled,
discoloured, and shrivelled specimens, and indeed
the imitations of the crumpled autumn-leaf are even
more numerous and impressive than those of the
living form. Lichens, mosses, and fungi are also
constantly taken as models by insects, and there is
probably nothing in the vegetal kingdom, no knot,
wart, nut, mould, scale, bract, thorn, or bark, which
has not its living counterpart in some animal form.
Most of the moths, beetles, weevils, and especially
the larval forms, are more or less protected mime-

tically ; and in fact almost the entire population of

° THE WAYS OF AFRICAN INSECTS 175

the tropics is guilty of personation in ways known
or unknown. The lichen-mimicking insects even
go the length of imitating holes, by means of

mirror-like pools of black irregularly disposed on

the back, or interrupting the otherwise dangerous
symmetry of the fringed sides. The philosophy of
these coal-black markings greatly puzzled me for a
time. The first I saw was on a specimen of the

singular and rare Harfax ocellaria, which had been

176 MIMICRY

thrown on the camp fire clinging to a lichen-covered
log, and so well carried out was the illusion that
even the natives were deceived till the culprit betrayed
its quality by erecting its gauzy wings.

But it would be tedious to recount further the

divisive ways of these arch-deceivers, and I shall .

only refer to another mimetic form, which for cool
Pharisaism takes the palm from every creeping or
flying thing. I first saw this menteur a triple 4tage
on the Tanganyika plateau. I had lain for a whole
week without stirring from one spot—a boulder in
the dried-up bed of a stream, for this is the only
way to find-out what really goes on in nature. A
canopy of leaves arched overhead, the home of many
birds, and the granite boulders of the dry stream-
bed, and all along the banks, were marked with their
white droppings. One day I was startled to see one
of these droppings move. It was a mere white
splash upon the stone, and when I approached I saw
I must be mistaken ; the thing was impossible ; and
now it was perfectly motionless. But I certainly
saw it move, so I bent down and touched it. It was
an animal. Of course it was as dead as a stone the
moment I touched it, but one soon knows these
impostures, and I gave it a minute or two to become

alive—hastily sketching it meantime in case it

, a

THE WAYS OF AFRICAN INSECTS 177

should vanish through the stone, for in that land of
wonders one really never knows what will happen
next. Here was a bird-dropping suddenly become
alive and moving over a rock; and now it was a
bird-dropping again; and yet, like Galileo, I protest
that it moved. It would not come to, and I almost
feared I might be mistaken after all, so I turned it
over on its other side. Now should any sceptic
persist that this was a bird-dropping I leave him to
account for a bird-dropping with six legs, a head,
and a segmented body. Righting the creature,
which showed no sign of life through all this ordeal,
I withdrew a few paces and watched developments.
It lay motionless on the stone, no legs, no head, no
feelers, nothing to be seen but a flat patch of white
—just such a patch as you could make on the stone
in a second with a piece of chalk. Presently it
stirred, and the spot slowly sidled across the boulder
until I caught the impostor and imprisoned him for
my cabinet. I saw in all about a dozen of these
‘insects after this. They are about half the size of a
fourpenny-piece, slightly more oval than round, and
as white as a snowflake. This whiteness is due to
a number of little tufts of delicate down growing out
from minute protuberances all over the back. It is
a fringe of similar tufts round the side that gives the
N

178 MIMICRY
irregular margin so suggestive of a splash; and the
under surface of the body has no protection at all.
The limbs are mere threads, and the motion of the
insect is slow and monotonous, with frequent pauses
to impress surrounding nature with its moribund con-
dition. Now unless this insect with this colour and
habit were protectively coloured it simply would not
have a chance to exist. It lies fearlessly exposed on
the bare stones during the brightest hours of the
tropical day, a time when almost every other animal
is skulking out of sight. Lying upon all the stones
round about are the genuine droppings of birds ; and
when one sees the two together it is difficult to say
whether one is most struck with the originality of
the idea, or the extraordinary audacity with which
the véle is carried out.’

It will be apparent from these brief notes that
mimicry is not merely an occasional or exceptional
phenomenon, but an integral part of the economy of

nature. It is not a chance relation between a few

1 It is a considerable responsibility to be the sole witness
to this comedy—though I saw it repeated a dozen times subse-
quently—but fortunately for my veracity, I have since learned
from Mr. Kirby of the British Museum that there is an English
beetle, the Czonus Blattaria, the larval form of which “ oper-

ates” in a precisely similar way.

THE WAYS OF AFRICAN INSECTS 179

objects, but a system so widely authorised that prob-
ably the whole animal kingdom is more or less
involved in it; a system, moreover, which, in the
hands of natural selection, must ever increase in
intricacy and beauty. It may also be taken for
granted that a scheme so widespread and so success-
ful is based upon some sound utilitarian principle.
That principle, I should say, was probably its economy.
Nature does everything as simply as possible, and
with the least expenditure of material. Now con-
- sider the enormous saving of muscle and nerve, of
instinct and energy, secured by making an animal’s
lease of life to depend on passivity rather than
activity. Instead of having to run away, the creature
has simply to keep still; instead of having to fight,
it has but to hide. No armour is needed, no power-
ful muscle, no expanse of wing. A few daubs of
colour, a little modelling of thorax and abdomen,
a deft turn of antennz and limb, and the thing is
done.

At the first revelation of all these smart hypocrisies
one is inclined to brand the whole system as cowardly
and false. And, however much the creatures impress
you by their cleverness, you never quite get over the
feeling that there is something underhand about it ;

something questionable and morally unsound. The

180 MIMICRY

evolutionist, also, is apt to charge mimetic species in
general with neglecting the harmonious development
of their physical framework, and by a cheap and
ignoble subterfuge evading the appointed struggle
for life. But is it so? Are the zsthetic elements
in nature so far below the mechanical? Are colour
and form, quietness and rest, so much less important —
than the specialisation of single function or excel-
lence in the arts of war? Is it nothing that, while
in some animals the disguises tend to become more
and more perfect, the faculties for penetrating them,
in other animals, must continually increase in subtlety
and power? And, after all, if the least must be said,
is it not better to be a live dog than a dead lion?

OLOGICAL SKETCH

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VIII

mo oekOLOGICAL SKETCH

ROM the work of the various explorers who
have penetrated Africa, it is now certain that
the interior of that Continent is occupied by a vast
plateau from 4000 to 5000 feet above the level of
the sea. In five separate regions—in the North-
East, in Abyssinia, in the Masai country, on the
Tanganyika plateau, and in the district inland from
Benguela—this plateau attains a height of consider-
ably over 5000 feet; while towards the coasts,
throughout their entire length, both east and west,
it falls with great uniformity to a lower plateau,
with an elevation of from 1000 to 2000 feet. This
lower plateau is succeeded, also with much uniformity
along both coast lines, by littoral and deltoid plains,
with an average breadth from the sea of about 150
miles.
The section which I am about to describe,

entering Africa at the Zambesi and_ penetrating

184 A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH .

inwards to the Tanganyika plateau, traverses each
of these regions in turn—the coast-belt, the lower
fringing table-land, the great general plateau of the
country, and the third or highest elevation of the
Tanganyika table-land. To deal thoroughly with so
vast a region in the course of a single exploration
is out of the question; and I only indicate here a
few of the rough results of what was no more than a
brief and hasty reconnaissance.

The first and only geological feature to break the
monotony of mangrove-swamp and low grass plain
of the coast-belt is the débris of an ancient coral-
reef, studded with sponges and other organisms.
This reef is exposed on the Qua-qua River, a little
above Mogurrumba, and about fifty miles from the
sea. It is of small extent, at no great height above
the present sea-level, and, taken alone, can only
argue for a very inconsiderable elevation of the coast
region. Some twenty miles farther inland, and still
only a few yards above sea-level, an inconspicuous
elevation appears, consisting of sedimentary rocks.
This belt is traceable for some distance, both north
and south, and a poor section may be found in the
Zambesi River, a few miles above the grave of Mrs.
Livingstone at Shupanga. The rocks in question,

which are only visible when the Zambesi is very low,

A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH 185

consist of a few thin beds of red and yellow sand-
stones, with intercalated marly sandstones and fine
conglomerates. Sedimentary rocks, in a somewhat
similar relation, are found at least as far north as
Mombassa, above Zanzibar, and as far south as the
Cape ; and it seems probable that the whole of the
plateau of the interior is fringed by this narrow belt.
No organic remains have been found in this series
north of Natal, but the fossils of the Cape beds may
shed some light on its horizon. Associated probably
with these rocks are the great beds of coal which are
known to exist some distance up the river in the
neighbourhood of Tette.

A short distance above the junction of the River
Shiré with the Zambesi the first hills of the plateau
begin almost abruptly. They occur in irregular
isolated masses, mostly of the saddle-back order,
and varying in height from I00 or 200 to 2000
feet. Those I examined consisted entirely of a very
white quartzite—the only quartzite, I may say, I
ever saw in East Central Africa. At the foot of the
most prominent of those hills—that of Morumballa—
a hot-spring bubbles up, which Livingstone has
already described in his “ Zambesi.” Hot-springs
are not uncommon in other parts of the Continent,

and several are to be found on the shores of Lake

186 A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH

Nyassa. These are all of the simplest type; and
although the temperature is high they leave no
deposit anywhere to indicate their chemical char-
acter.
Two or three days’ journey north and west of
Morumballa, among the distant hills which border
the valley of the Shiré, Livingstone marks a spot in
his sketch-map where coal is to be found. After
examining the neighbourhood with some care, and
cross-examining the native tribes, I conclude that
Livingstone must, in this instance, have been either
mistaken or misinformed. A black rock certainly
occurs at the locality named, but after securing
specimens of this as well as of all the dark-coloured

rocks in the vicinity, I found them to be, without

exception, members of the igneous class. One very

dark diorite was probably the rock which, on a
distant view, had been mistaken for coal, for none of
the natives along the whole length of the lower
Shiré had ever heard of “a black rock which burned.”
Coal, however, as already mentioned, does certainly
occur farther inland on the Zambesi; while, farther
south, the Natal and Transvaal coalfields are now
well known. |

While speaking of coal I may best refer here to

a small coal-bed associated with an apparently differ-

“ A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH 187

ent series of rocks, and of special interest from its
occurrence in the far interior of the country. On
the western shore of Lake Nyassa, about 10° south
latitude, coal was reported a few years ago by a
solitary explorer, who penetrated that region pro-
specting for gold in the wake of Livingstone. The
importance of such a discovery—a coal-seam on the
borders of one of the great inland seas of Africa—
cannot be over-estimated ; and the late Mr. James
Stewart, C.E., who has done such important work for
the geography of Africa, made a special examination
of the spot. From his report to the Royal Geogra-
phical Society, I extract the following reference :—
“On the 29th we marched northwards along the
coast, reaching, after three miles, the stream in which
is the coal discovered by Mr. Rhodes. The coal lies
in a clay bank, tilted up at an angle of 45°, dip west.
It is laid bare over only some 30 feet, and is about
7 feet thick. It hardly looks as if it were in its
original bed. The coal is broken and thrown about
as if it had been brought down by a landslip, and
traces of clay are found in the interstices. Yet the
bed is compact, and full of good coal. I traced it
along the hillside for some 200 yards, and found it
cropping out on the surface here and there. It is

500 feet above the lake-level, and about a mile and

188 A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH

a half from the shore. I lit a good fire with it, which

burned up strongly. The coal softened and threw.

out gas bubbles, but gave no gas-jets. It caked
slightly, but not so as to impede its burning.” ——Pro-
ceedings, vol. 111. No. 5, p. 264.

I examined this section pretty carefully, and fear
I must differ slightly from Mr. Stewart in his geo-
logical and economical view of the formation. The
7-foot seam described by Stewart is certainly a
deception, the seam being really composed of a series
of thin beds of alternately carbonaceous and argilla-
ceous matter, few of the layers of coal being more
* than an inch in thickness. With some of the most
carefully selected specimens I lit a fire, but with
disappointing results. Combustion was slow, and
without flame. Although there were what can only
be called films of really good coal here and there,

the mineral, on the whole, seemed of inferior

quality, and useless as a steam-coal. From the |

general indications of the locality I should judge
that the coal existed only in limited quantity, while
the position of the bed at the top of a rocky gorge
renders the deposit all but inaccessible. On the
whole, therefore, the Lake Nyassa coal, so far as
opened up at present, can scarcely be regarded as

having any great economical importance, although

OS a

A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH 189

the geological interest of such a mineral in this
region is considerable. Sections of the coal have
already been prepared for the microscope, and Dr.
Carruthers of the British Museum has identified the
macrospores of Lycopodaceous plants, which are
identical with similar organisms found in the coal-
fields of England.

The Geology of the great African plateaux,
so far as my section from the Lower Shiré to the
Tanganyika plateau is any indication of their general
structure, is of such simplicity that it may almost be
dismissed in a sentence. The whole country from
the Shiré river, a hundred miles above its junction
with the Zambesi, embracing the lower and higher
central plateaux, the whole Shiré Highlands from
the river to the westward shores of Lake Shirwa,
the three hundred miles of rocky coast fringing the
western shore of Lake Nyassa, the plateau between
Nyassa and Tanganyika for at least half its length
—with one unimportant interruption—consists solely
of granite and gneiss. The character and texture of
this rock persist with remarkable uniformity through-
out this immense region. The granite, an ordinary
gray granite, composed of white rarely pink orthoclase
felspar, the mica of the biotitic or magnesian variety,

rarely muscovite, and neither fine nor coarse in

190 A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH

texture ; the gneiss, the same rock foliated. Of the
relation of these gneissose and granitic rocks to one
another I was unable to discover any law. Some-
times the gneiss would persist over a large area,
sometimes the granite; while frequently the two
would alternate perplexingly within a limited area.
Mr. Joseph Thomson’s section, drawn inland from
Zanzibar and joining mine at the northern end of
Lake Nyassa, and thence onwards by a more easterly
route towards Tanganyika, reveals a somewhat similar
petrographical structure ; and, from scattered refer-
ences in the journals of other explorers, it is plain
that this gneisso-granitic formation occupies a very
large area in the interior of- the African Continent.
Associated minerals with these rocks, as far as a
very general survey indicated, were all but wholly
wanting. At Zomba, on the Shiré Highlands, a little
tourmaline occurs, but of the precious metals I could
find no trace. Veins of any kind are also rare; and
even pegmatite I encountered in only one instance.
Intrusive dykes throughout the whole area were like-
wise absent except in a single district. This district
lies towards the southern border of the Shiré High-
lands, immediately where the plateau rises from the
river, and there the dykes occur pretty numerously.

They are seldom more than a few feet in breadth,

A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH 191

and consist of ordinary dolerite or basalt. The black
rock on the Lower Shiré, already mentioned in con-
nection with Livingstone’s supposed discovery of coal,
may possibly be one of these dykes; but that there
is any considerable development of igneous rocks in
this immediate locality I should doubt. Farther up
the Zambesi, however, coulées of basalt are met
with at more than one place, conspicuously in the
neighbourhood of the Victoria Falls. The only
distinct trace of volcanic action throughout my route
appeared towards the extreme northern end of Lake
Nyassa. One is warned beforehand by occasional
specimens of pumice lying about the lake shore as
one travels north; but it is not till the extreme end
of the lake is reached that the source is discovered in
the series of low volcanic cones which Thomson has
already described in this locality. The development
is apparently local, and the origin of the cones
probably comparatively recent.

Apart from this local development of igneous
rocks at the north end of Lake Nyassa, the only
other break in the granitic series throughout the area
traversed by my line of march occurs near the native
village of Karonga,on Lake Nyassa. About a dozen
miles from the north-western lake shore on the route

to Tanganyika, after following the Rukuru river

192 A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH

through a defile of granite rocks, I came, to my
great surprise, upon a well-marked series of stratified
beds. At .a-bend in -the river a Tine Sectiommms
exposed. They lie thrown against the granitic rocks,
which here show signs of disturbance, and consist of
thin beds of very fine light-gray sandstone, and blue
and gray shales, with an occasional band of gray
limestone. By camping at the spot for some days,
and working patiently, I was rewarded with the dis-
covery of fossils. This is, of course, the main interest
of these beds,—for these are, I believe, the only
fossils that have ever been found in Central Africa.
The shale, naturally, yielded the most productive
results, one layer especially being one mass of small
Lamellibranchiata. ‘Though so numerous, these fossils
are confined to a single species of the Zel/znzdae, a
family abundantly represented in tropical seas at the
present time, and dating back as far as the Oolite.
Vegetable remains are feebly represented by a few
reeds and grasses. Fish-scales abound; but I was
only able, and that after much labour, to unearth
two or three imperfect specimens of the fishes them-
selves. These have been put into the accomplished
hands of Dr. Traquair of Edinburgh, who has been
kind enough to furnish the following account of

them :—

; -

A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH 193

EDINBURGH, 23a April 1888.

DEAR PROFESSOR DRUMMOND —I have carefully
examined the six specimens of fossil fish-remains from
Central Africa, which you submitted to me, and though I
certainly would have wished them to have been less frag-
mentary, I shall do my best to give an opinion upon them.

No. 1, the largest, is the hinder portion of a fish of
moderate size, showing not only scales, but also the remains
of the dorsal, anal, and caudal fins. The caudal is strongly
heterocercal, and was probably deeply bifurcated, but the
rays of the lower lobe are very badly preserved: only the
posterior parts of the dorsal and anal are seen, nearly
opposite each other, and composed of fine, closely placed,
and closely articulated rays. The scales, displaced and
jumbled up, are osseous, thick, and rhomboidal, with a
strong blunt carina on the attached surface, while the
exposed part of the external surface is covered with ganoine,
and ornamented with rather sparsely scattered pits and
punctures.

Belonging to the Order Ganoidei, this fish is with equal
certainty referable to the family Palzoniscidz, but its genus
is more a matter of doubt owing to the fragmentary nature
of the specimen. Judging from the form and thickness
of the scales, I should be inclined to refer it to Acrolepis,
were it not that the dorsal and anal fins seem so close to
the tail, and so nearly opposite each other ; here, however,
it may be remarked that the disturbed state of the scales
affords room for the possibility that the original relations
of the parts may not be perfectly preserved. I have,
however, no doubt that, as a sfecies, it is new; and as
you have been the first to bring fossil fishes from those
regions of Central Africa, you will perhaps allow me to
name it Acrolepis (2?) Drummondt.

194 A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH

No. 2 is a piece of cream-coloured limestone, with
numerous minute, scattered, rhombic, striated, ganoid
scales, which I cannot venture to name, though I believe
them to be palzoniscid. Associated with these is a small
portion of the margin of a jaw, with numerous minute
sharp conical teeth. But also lying among these minuter
relics 1s a scale of a much larger size, and clearly belonging
to another fish. It measures } inch in height by the same
in breadth ; its shape is rhomboidal, having an extensive
anterior covered area, and a strong articular spine project-
ing from the upper margin. The free surface is brilliantly
ganoid, and marked with furrows separating feeble ridges,
which pass rather obliquely downwards and backwards
across the scale, and terminate in eight sharp denticulations
of the hinder margin. A little way off is the impression
of the attached surface of a similar scale, and there are
also two interspinous bones, probably belonging to the
same fish.

This is probably also a palzoniscid scale, resembling
in shape those of Acrolepis, but it is rather thinner than
is usually the case in this genus. It has also considerable
resemblance to some of those scales from the European
Trias, named by Agassiz Gyvolepis. Though it may be
rather venturesome to name a species from such slender
material, nevertheless we may, provisionally at least, re-
cognise the scale as Acrolepis (?) Africanus.

Nos. 3 and 4 are small pieces of the same limestone,
covered with the minute striated paleeoniscid scales referred
to above.

No. 5 is a piece of gray micaceous shale, with scales
of yet a fourth species of paleeoniscid fish. One con-
spicuous scale unfortunately, like all the rest, seen only
from the attached surface, is 4 inch in height by nearly +

A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH 195

in breadth ; it is tolerably rectangular in shape, having a
well-developed articular spine and fossette. Part of the
scale is broken away at the anterior margin, the impression
brought into view showing that the covered area is narrow,
and indicating that the free surface is striated with rather
sharp ridges passing obliquely across the scale. The
posterior margin is finely denticulated.

Though this scale is in my opinion specifically, and
possibly generically, distinct from those previously named,
the outer surface not being properly displayed renders it
impossible to give a sufficient diagnosis.

No. 6 is a piece of the same shale, having the clavicle
of a small paleeoniscid fish, which it is, however, impossible
to name.—I am, yours faithfully,

R. H. TRAgparr.

These fossiliferous beds seem to occupy a com-
paratively limited area, and have a very high dip in
a south-easterly direction. At the spot where my
observations were taken they did not extend over
more than half a mile of country, but it is possible
that the formation may persist for a long distance in
other directions. Indeed, I traced it for some miles
in the direction in which, some fifty or sixty miles
off, lay the coal already described, and to which it
may possibly be related.

With one or two general remarks upon surface
geology and physical geography I bring this note to
a close. First, regarding the Lakes Nyassa and

196 A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH

Shirwa,—there is distinct evidence, and especially in
the case of the latter, that they have formerly occu-
pied a considerably larger area than at present.
Shirwa is an extremely shallow lake; though the
eastern and southern shores are mountainous it is
suggestive rather of an immense bog than of a deep
inland sea. For many miles before reaching the
shore there are signs that one is traversing the site
of a former and larger Shirwa, which may possibly
at one time have been actually connected with the
lower extremity of Lake Nyassa. To substantiate
this conclusion, however, will require more detailed
examination of the Shiré Highlands than I was able
to give. The peculiarity of Shirwa is that the water
is brackish to the taste, while that of Nyassa and
of the other Central African lakes, with the excep-
tion of Lake Leopold, is fresh. The shallowness
of Shirwa, and the precariousness of its outlet through
Lake Cheuta to the Lujenda, amply account for this
difference; for the narrow waters of Nyassa and
Tanganyika are thoroughly drained and profoundly —
deep.

That Lake Nyassa is also slowly drying up is
evident from the most superficial examination of its
southern end. There it has already left behind a
smaller lake—Lake Pomalombé—a considerable ex- _

A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH 197

panse of water, through which the Shiré passes a few
miles after emerging from Lake Nyassa, but already so
shallow that nowhere in the dry season does the depth
exceed three fathoms. If the silting up of this lake
continues for a few years it will render this sheet of
water, which commands the entrance to Lake Nyassa,
totally unnavigable, and thus close the magnificent
water-highway at present open, with a portage of
seventy miles, from the top of Lake Nyassa to the
Indian Ocean at the mouth of the Zambesi.
Regarding the interesting question of the origin
of Lake Nyassa and its great sister-lakes in the
heart of Africa—the Victoria and Albert Nyanza
and Tanganyika—I do not presume to speak. No
follower of Ramsay in his theory of the glacial
origin of lakes could desire a more perfect example
of a rock-basin than that of Lake Nyassa. It is a
gigantic trough of granite and gneiss, three hundred
miles in length, nowhere over fifty miles in breadth,
and sixteen hundred feet above the level of the sea,
the mountains rising all around it, and sometimes
almost sheer above it, to a farther height of one,
two, and three thousand feet. The high Tangan-
yika plateau borders it on the northern shore, and
the greatest depth is precisely where the glacial

theory would demand, namely, towards the upper

198 A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH

portion of the lake. On the other hand, the physical
geology of the country in which these other lakes
are situated, as well as several features connected
with Lake Nyassa itself, lend no countenance to
such a view; and probably the suggestion of Mur-
chison and other geologists is correct, that all these

lakes, colossal though they still are, are the rem-

nants of a much vaster expanse of water which once
stretched over Central Africa.

The only other point to which I need allude is
the subject of glaciation itself. And I refer to this
pointedly, because I have lately encountered allu-
sions, and in quarters entitling them to respect, to
the presence of glacial phenomena in the Central
Lake district of Africa. I confess that my observa-
tions have failed to confirm these suggestions. It
has been my lot to have had perhaps exceptional
opportunities of studying the phenomena of glacia-
tion in Europe and Northern America, and I have
been unable to detect anywhere in the interior of
Africa a solitary indication of glacial action. In
Kaffirland, far to the south, there are features which
one would almost unhesitatingly refer to glaciation ;
but in East Central Africa not a vestige of boulder-
clay, nor moraine matter, nor strie, nor glaciated

surface, nor outline, is anywhere traceable. One

pay: =? oe eee eo. ee

A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH 199

would be curious to know to what extent the flora
and fauna of the inland plateau confirm or contradict
this negative evidence against the glaciation of this
region.

Finally, the thing about the geology of Africa
that strikes one as especially significant is, that
throughout this vast area, just opening up to science,
there is nothing new—no unknown force at work ;
no rock strange to the petrographer ; no pause in
denudation ; no formation, texture, or structure to
put the law of continuity to confusion. Rapid
radiation, certainly, replaces the effects of frost in
northern lands—-and the enormous denudation due
to this cause is a most striking feature of tropical
geology. The labours of the worm, again, in trans-
porting soil in temperate climates are undertaken
by the termite; but here, as elsewhere, every fresh
investigation tends to establish more and more the

oneness and simplicity of Nature.

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A POLITICAL WARNING

from, 1 reached the coast to embark for

England after my wanderings in the interior,
the Portuguese authorities at Quilimane presented
me with various official documents, which I was told
I must acknowledge with signatures and money
before being permitted to leave Africa. Having
already had to pay certain moneys to Portugal to
get into this country, it was a shock to find that I
had also to pay to get out; but, as no tax could be
considered excessive that would facilitate one’s leaving
even the least of the Portuguese East African colonies,
I cheerfully counted out the price of my release.
Before completing the conveyance, however, my eye
fell on six words prominently endorsed on one of
the documents, which instantly tightened my purse-
strings. The words were, “ TAX FOR RESIDING IN
THE INTERIOR”—so much. Now a day or two

spent in waiting for a steamer could scarcely be

204. A POLITICAL WARNING

construed into residence, nor could a strip of coast-
line. with propriety be termed the “interior son
ventured to point out the irrelevancy to the Portu-
guese Official. Waiving the merely philological
question of residence, he went at once to the root
of the matter by informing me that the Portuguese
definition of the word Interior differed materially
from that of England. The Interior, he said, com-
prised the whole of Africa inland from the coast-
province of Mozambique, and included, among other
and larger possessions, the trifling territories of the
Upper Shiré, the Shiré Highlands, Lake Shirwa, and
Lake Nyassa. These last, he assured me, belonged
to Portugal, and it became me, having therein shared
the protection of that ancient flag, to acknowledge the
obligation to the extent of so many hundred Reis.
Though not unprepared for this assumption, the
idea of enforcing it by demanding tribute was so
great a novelty that, before discharging my supposed
liabilities, I humbly asked information on the follow-
ing points:—1. Did the region described really
belong to Portugal? 2. When and where was this
claim recognised by England directly or indirectly ?
3. Where in the Interior, as thus defined, was the
Portuguese flag to be found? And 4. What pro-

tection had it ever given to me or to any other

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a. Ie oe ee ee? Sere

A POLITICAL WARNING 205

European? The replies to these queries being
evasive, I took it upon myself to correct the history,
the geography, and the politics of the throng of
Government officials who now joined the sederunt
by the following statement of facts:—1. The region
Geecmped did not belong to Portugal. 2. Its
sovereignty had never been in any way acknow-
ledged by England. 3. The Portuguese flag was
nowhere to be found there, and never had been
there. 4. Not one solitary Portuguese up to that time
had ever even set foot in the country—except one
man who was brought in for a few weeks under
English auspices; so that no protection had ever
been given, or could possibly be given, to me or to
any one else. These statements were received in
silence, and after much running to and fro among
the officials the representative of John Bull, instead
of being dragged to prison, and his rifle—his only
real escort through Nyassa-land—poinded to pay for
his imaginary protection, found himself bowed off
the premises with a discharge in full of his debt to
Portugal, and the unpaid tax-paper still in his pocket. _

I recall this incident to introduce in all serious-
ness the question interesting so many at the present
moment as to the title-deeds of Equatorial Africa.
Why Africa should not belong to the Africans I have

206 A POLITICAL WARNING

never quite been able to see, but since this Continent
is being rapidly partitioned out among the various
European States, it is well, even in the African
interest, to inquire into the nature and validity of
these claims. The two political maps which will be
found at the end of this volume will enable those
interested to see the present situation at a glance,
and I shall only further emphasise one or two points
of immediate practical importance.

The connection of Portugal with Africa is an
old, and— it least it was at first—an honourable one,
The voyages of the Portuguese were the first to
enrich geography with a knowledge of the African
coasts, and so early as 1497 they took possession of
the eastern shore by founding the colony of Mozam-
bique. This rule, however, though nominally extend-
ing from Delagoa Bay to as far north as Cape
Delgado, was confined to two or three isolated
points, and nowhere, except on the Zambesi, affected
more than the mere fringe of land bordering the
Indian Ocean. On the Zambesi the Portuguese
established stations at Senna, Tette, and Zumbo,
which were used, though on the most limited scale,
as missionary and trading centres; but these are at
present all but abandoned and in the last stages of
decrepitude. The right of Portugal to the lower

A POLITICAL WARNING 207

regions of the Zambesi, notwithstanding its entire
failure to colonise in and govern the country, can
never be disputed by any European Power, though
the Landeens, or Zulus, who occupy the southern
bank, not only refuse to acknowledge the claim but
exact an annual tribute from the Portuguese for their
occupation of the district.

No one has ever attempted to define how far
inland the Portuguese claim, founded on coast-
possession, is to be considered good; but that it
cannot include the regions north of the Zambesi—
the Shiré Highlands and Lake Nyassa —is self-
evident. These regions were discovered and explored
by Livingstone. They have been occupied since his
time exclusively by British subjects, and colonised
exclusively with British capital. The claim of Eng-
land, therefore—though nothing but a moral claim
has ever been made—is founded on the double right
of discovery and occupation ; and if it were a ques-
tion of treaty with the natives, it might possibly be
found on private inquiry that a precaution so obvious
had not been forgotten by those most nearly inter-
ested. On the other hand, no treaties exist with
Portugal ; there is not a single Portuguese in the
country, and until the other day no Portuguese had

even seen it. The Portuguese boundary-line has

208 A POLITICAL WARNING

always stopped at the confluence with the Shiré of
the river Ruo, and the political barrier erected there
by Chipitula and the river Chiefs has been main-
tained so rigidly that no subject of Portugal was ever
allowed to pass it from the south. Instead, there-
fore, of possessing the .Shiré Highlands, that is the
region of all others from which the Portuguese have
been most carefully excluded.

The reason for this enforced exclusion is not far
to seek. At first the Portuguese had too much to
do in keeping their always precarious foothold on
the banks of the Zambesi to think of the country
that lay beyond ; and when their eyes were at last
turned towards it by the successes of the English,
the detestation in which they were by this time held
by the natives—the inevitable result of long years of
tyranny and mismanagement—made it impossible
for them to extend an influence which was known to
be disastrous to every native right. Had the Portu-
suese done well by the piece of Africa of which
they already assumed the stewardship, no one now
would dispute their claim to as much of the country
as they could wisely use. But when even the natives
have had to rise and by force of arms prevent their
expansion, it is impossible that they should be

allowed to overflow into the Highland country—

ee ree ee mee! 2 eh Oe rere

A POLITICAL WARNING 209

much less to claim it—now that England, by pacific
colonisation and missionary work, holds the key to
the hearts and hands of its peoples. By every moral
consideration the Portuguese have themselves for-
feited the permission to trespass farther in Equa-
torial Africa) They have done nothing for the
people since the day they set foot in it. They have
never discouraged, but rather connived at, the slave-
trade; Livingstone himself took the servant of the
Governor of Tette red-handed at the head of a large
slave-gang. They have been at perpetual feud with
the native tribes. They have taught them to drink.
Their missions have failed. Their colonisation is
not even a name. With such a record in the past,
no pressure surely can be required to make the
Government of England stand firm in its repudia-
tion of a claim which, were it acknowledged, would
destroy the last hope for East Central Africa.
England’s stake in this country is immeasurably
greater than any statistics can represent, but a
rough estimate of the tangible English interest will
show the necessity of the British Government doing
its utmost at least to conserve what is already there.
The Established Church of Scotland has three
ordained missionaries in the Shiré Highlands, one
f@recdical man, a male and a female teacher, a
P

210 A POLITICAL WARNING

carpenter, a gardener, and other European and
many native agents. The Free Church of Scotland
on Lake Nyassa has four ordained missionaries—
three of whom are doctors—several teachers and
artizans, and many native catechists. The Univer-
sities Mission possesses a steamer on Lake Nyassa,
and several missionary agents; while the African
Lakes Company, as already mentioned, has steamers
both on the Shiré and Lake Nyassa, with twelve
trading stations established at intervals throughout
the country, and manned by twenty-five European
agents. All these various agencies, and that of the
brothers Buchanan at Zomba, are well equipped
with buildings, implements, roads, plantations, and
gardens ; and the whole represents a capital expend-
iture of not less than 4180,000. The well-known
editor of Livingstone’s Journals, the Rev. Horace
Waller, thus sums up his account of these English
enterprises in his TZztle-Deeds to Nyassa-Land:
“ Dotted here and there, from the mangrove swamps
at the Kongoné 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, Foreign Office representatives, doctors,
scientific men, engineers, and mechanics. All these

were our countrymen: they lie in glorious graves ;

A POLITICAL WARNING 211

their careers have been foundation-stones, and
already the edifice rises. British mission stations
are working at high pressure on the Shiré Highlands,
and under various auspices, not only upon the shores
of Lake Nyassa, but on its islands also, and by
desperate choice as it were, in the towns of the
devastating hordes who live on the plateaux on
either side of the lake. Numbers of native Christians
owe their knowledge of the common faith to these
efforts ; scores of future chiefs are being instructed
_in the schools, spread over hundreds of miles ; planta-
tions are being mapped out ; commerce is developing
by sure and steady steps; a vigorous company is
showing to tribes and nations that there are more
valuable commodities in their land than their sons
and daughters.” This is the vision which Living-
stone saw, when, in the last years of his life, he
pleaded with his fellow-countrymen to follow him
into Africa. “IJ have opened the door,” he said, “I
leave it to you to see that no one closes it after me.”

The urgency of the question of Portuguese as
against British supremacy in Equatorial Africa must
‘not blind us, however, to another and scarcely less
important point—the general European, and espe-
cially the recent German, invasion of Africa. The

Germans are good, though impecunious colonists,

212 A POLITICAL WARNING

but it cannot be said that they or any of the other
European nations are as alive to the moral responsi-
bilities of administration among native tribes as
England would desire. And though they are all
freely entitled to whatever lands in Africa they may
legitimately secure, it is advisable for all concerned
that these acquisitions should be clearly defined and
established in international law, in order that the
various Powers, the various trading-companies, and
the various missions, may know exactly where they
stand. The almost hopeless entanglement of the
Foreign Powers in Africa at present may be seen
from the following political “section,” which re-
presents the order of occupation along the Atlantic
seaboard from opposite Gibraltar to the Cape :—

POLITICAL “SECTION” OF WESTERN AFRICA

Spain ; . Morocco.

France ORR

Spain . Opposite the Canaries.
France . French Senegambia.
Britain ; . ~ rigisn he)
France -* : . French “
Britain . Britisie 5
Portugal. . Portuguese ss
France

Britain ; ; . Sierra Leone
Liberia . Republic of Liberia.

France . Gold Coast.

A POLITICAL WARNING 213

England Gold Coast.
France Dahomey.
Unappropriated ‘a

England Niger.

Germany Cameroons.
French French Congo.
Portuguese . Portuguese Congo.
International Congo.
Portuguese . Angola.
Portuguese Benguela.
Germany Angra Pequena.
England Walvisch Bay.
Germany Orange River.
England Cape of Good Hope.

These several possessions on the western coast
have at least the advantage of being to some extent
_ defined, but those on the east, and especially as
regards their inland limits, are in a complete state
of chaos. It seems hopeless to propose it, but what
is really required is an International Conference
to overhaul title-deeds, adjust boundary - lines,
delimit territories, mark off states, protectorates,
lands held by companies, and spheres of influence.
England’s interest in this must be largely a moral
one. Her ambitions in the matter of new territories
are long ago satisfied. But there will be certain
conflict some day if the portioning of Africa is not

more closely watched than it is at present.

214 A POLITICAL WARNING

As an example of the complacent way in which
vast tracts in Africa are being appropriated, glance
for a moment at the recent inroads of the Germans.
On the faith of private treaties, and of an agree-
ment with Portugal, Germany has recently staked
off a region in East Central Africa stretching from
the boundaries of the Congo Free State to the
Indian Ocean, and embracing an area considerably
larger than the German Empire. To a portion only
of this region—the boundaries of which, contrasted
with that arbitrarily claimed in addition, will be
apparent from a comparison of the maps—have the
Germans procured a title; and the steps by which
this has been attained afford an admirable illustra-
tion of modern methods of land-transfer in Africa.
What happened was this :—

Four or five years ago Dr. Karl Peters concluded
treaties with the native chiefs of Useguha, Ukami,
Nguru and Usagara, by which he acquired these
territories for the Society for German Colonisation.
The late Sultan of Zanzibar attempted to remon-
strate, but meantime an imperial “ Schutzbrief” had
been secured from Berlin, and a German fleet arrived
at Zanzibar prepared to enforce it. Britain appealed
to Germany on the subject, and a Delimitation

Commission was appointed, which met in London.

A POLITICAL WARNING 215

An agreement was come to, signed by Lord Iddes-
leigh on 29th October 1886, and duly given effect
to. The terms of this Anglo-German Convention
have been recently made public in a well-informed
article by Mr. A. Silva White (Scottish Geographical
Magazine, March 1888), to which I am indebted
for some of the above facts, and the abstract may
be given here intact, as political knowledge of Africa
is not only deficient, but materials for improving it
are all but inaccessible. In view, moreover, of the
spirit of acquisitiveness which is abroad among the
nations of Europe, and of recent attempts on the
part of Germany to claim more than her title allows,
the exact terms of this contract ought to be widely
known :—

I. Both Powers recognise the sovereignty of the Sultan
of Zanzibar over the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, Lamu
and Mafia, as also over those small islands lying within a
circuit of twelve nautical miles of Zanzibar. Both Powers
also recognise as the Sultan’s possessions on the mainland
an uninterrupted coast-line from the mouth of the Miningani
River at the entrance of the bay of Tunghi (south of Cape
Delgado) as far as Kipini (south of Wito). This line
encloses a coast of ten nautical miles inland for the whole
distance. The northern boundary includes Kau; north
of Kipini, both Powers recognise as belonging to the Sultan
of Zanzibar the stations of Kisimayu, Brava, Merka, and
Makdishu (Magadoxo), each with a land circuit of ten

216 A POLITICAL WARNING

nautical miles, and Warsheikh with a land circuit of five
nautical miles. “

II. Great Britain engages herself to support those

negotiations of Germany with the Sultan which have for
their object the farming out (Verpachtung) of the customs
in the harbours of Dar-es-Salaam and Pangani to the
German East African Association, on the payment by the
Association to the Sultan of an annual guaranteed sum of
money.
III. Both Powers agree to undertake a delimitation of
their respective spheres of influence in this portion of the
East African Continent. This territory shall be considered
as bounded on the south by the Rovuma River, and on
the north by a line, commencing from the mouth of the
Tana River, following the course of this river or its tribu-
taries, to the intersection of the Equator with the 38th
degree of east longitude, and from thence continued in a
straight line to the intersection of the rst degree of north
latitude with the 37th degree of east longitude. The line
of demarcation shall start from the mouth of the river
Wanga, or Umbe, and follow a straight course to Lake
Jipé (south-east of Kilima-njaro), along the eastern shore
and round the northern shore of the lake, across the river
Lumi, passing between the territories of Taveta and Chagga,
and then along the northern ‘slope of the Kilima-njaro
range, and continued in a straight line to the point on the
eastern shore of Lake Victoria Nyanza which is intersected
by the 1st degree of south latitude.

Great Britain engages herself to make no territorial
acquisitions, to accept no Protectorates, and not to com-
pete with the spread of German influence to the south of
this line, whilst Germany engages herself to observe a similar
abstinence in the territories to the north of this line.

A POLITICAL WARNING 21

ie |

IV. Great Britain will use her influence to promote the
conclusion of a friendly agreement concerning the existing
claims of the Sultan of Zanzibar and the German East
African Association, on the Kilima-njaro territory.

V. Both Powers recognise as belonging to Wito the
coast stretching from the north of Kipini to the north end
of Manda Bay.

VI. Great Britain and Germany will conjointly call

upon the Sultan of Zanzibar to recognise the General Act

of the Berlin Conference, save and except the existing
rights of His Highness as laid down in Art. I. of the Act.

VII. Germany binds herself to become a party to the
Note signed by Great Britain and France on toth March
1862, in regard to the recognition of the independence
of Zanzibar.

This is the only document which can have any
validity, and such German claims—outside the limit
here assigned—as are represented on the newer
German maps, are to be treated as mere charto-
graphical flourishes. Encouraged, however, by this
success in securing territory in Africa, and without
stopping to use or even to proclaim their pro-
tectorate over more than a fraction of the petty
states comprised within it, the Germans instantly
despatched expedition after expedition to secure
further conquests in the remoter and unappropriated
districts. Dr. Karl Peters himself led one large

expedition; Dr. Jiihlke negotiated agreements with

218 A POLITICAL WARNING

the tribes on the distant Somal coast; and other
explorers brought back rare and heavy spoil—on
paper—to Berlin. So the swallowing up of Africa
goes on. The slices cut are daily becoming bigger,
and in a few years more not a crumb of the loaf
will remain for those who own it now. The poor
Sultan of Zanzibar, who used to boast himself lord
of the whole interior, woke up, after the London
Convention, to find that his African kingdom con-
sisted of a ten-mile-wide strip of coast-line, extending
from Kipini to the Miningani River. Even this has
already been sold or leased to the English and
Germans, and nothing now remains to His Highness
but a few small islands.

Since turning her attention towards Africa,
Germany has not only looked well after new terri-
tory, but seized the opportunity to inspect and
readjust the title-deeds to her other African property.
We find a new treaty concluded in 1885 between
her and the British Protectorate in the Niger regard-
ing the Cameroons ; another towards the close of the
same year with France on the same subject, and
securing rights to Malimba and Great Batonga; and
a third with Portugal in 1887, defining, in the
interests of the latter, the boundaries of Angola,

and ceding to Germany, as a guid-pro-quo, an

A POLITICAL WARNING 219

acknowledgment of the claim of the Germans—
which, of course, England repudiates—to East
Central Africa from the coast to the south end of
Tanganyika and Lake Nyassa, as far as the latitude
of the Rovuma.

These facts prove the genuine political activity
of at least one great European power, and offer
a precedent to England, which, in one respect at
least, she would do well to copy. Her title-deeds,
and those of certain districts in which she is
concerned, are not in such perfect: order as to
justify the apathy which exists at present, and her
interests in the country are now too serious to be
the prey of unchallenged ambitions, or left at the
mercy of any casual turn of the wheel of politics.

Thanks, partly, to the recent seizure by Portugal
of the little Zambesi steamer belonging to the
African Lakes Company—on the plea that vessels
trading on Portuguese waters must be owned by
Portuguese subjects, and fly the Portuguese flag—
and to influential deputations to head-quarters on
the part of the various Missions, the Foreign Office
is beginning to be alive to the state of affairs in
East Central Africa. The annexation of Matabele-
land will be a chief item on the programme with

which it is hoped the Government will shortly sur-

220 A POLITICAL WARNING

prise us; but, what is of greater significance, it will
probably include a declaration of the Zambesi as an
open river, and the abolition or serious restriction of
the present customs tariff. Important as these
things are, however, they affect but slightly the two
supreme English interests in East Central Africa—
the suppression of the slave-trade and the various
missionary and industrial enterprises. The most
eager among the supporters of these higher interests
have never ventured to press upon Government any-
thing so pronounced as that England should declare
a Protectorate over the Upper Shiré and Nyassa
districts; but they do contend, and with every
reason, for the delimitation of part of this region as
a “Sphere of British Influence.”

Granting even that the shadowy claims of
Germany and Portugal to the eastern shore of Lake
Nyassa are to be respected, there remain the whole
western coast of the Lake, and the regions of the
Upper Shiré which are reached directly from the
waters of the Zambesi, without trespassing on the
soil of any nation. These regions are not even
claimed at present by any one, while by every right
of discovery and occupation—by every right, in fact,
except that of formal acknowledgment—they are

already British. It will be an oversight most culp-

A POLITICAL WARNING 221

able and inexcusable if this great theatre of British
missionary and trading activity should be allowed
to be picked up by any passing traveller, or become
the property of whatever European power had
sufficient effrontery at this late day to wave its flag
over it. The thriving settlements, the schools and
_ churches, the roads and trading-stations, of Western
Nyassa-land are English, And yet it is neither
asked that they should be claimed by England,
annexed by England, nor protected by England.
Those whose inspirations and whose lives have
created this oasis in the desert, plead only that no
intruder now should be allowed to undo their labour
or idly reap its fruits. Here is one spot, at least,
on the Dark Continent, which is being kept pure
and clean. It is now within the power of the
English Government to mark it off before the world
as henceforth sacred ground. To-morrow, it may

be too late.

' Whe .
n = ” c
ots <
1 r S ‘
a ijn. = < F ! “
A -
‘ ’ J ( ‘d ~
. = a
7 ‘ - : \3
he = . ‘ ‘ : \
. A rs a ‘
t 7 ‘ ig - r

7},

Bee TROROLOGICAL NOTE

HE Lake Nyassa region of Africa knows only

two seasons—the rainy and the dry. The
former begins with great regularity on the opening
days of December, and closes towards the end of
April; while during the dry season, which follows
for the next six months, the sun is almost never
darkened with a cloud. At Blantyre, on the Shiré
Highlands, the rainfall averages fifty inches; at
Bandawé, on Lake Nyassa, a register of eighty-six
inches is counted a somewhat dryish season.

The barometer in tropical countries is much more
conservative of change than in northern latitudes,
and the annual variation at Lake Nyassa is only
about half an inch—-or from 28°20 inches in
November to 28°70 inches in June. The diurnal
variation, according to Mr. Stewart, is rarely more

than twenty-hundredths of an inch.
Q

226 A METEOROLOGICAL NOTE

The average temperature for the year at Blantyre,
where the elevation is about three thousand feet
above sea-level, is 50° Fahr., but the mercury has
been known to stand ten degrees lower, and on one
exceptional occasion it fell 2° below freezing point.
At Lake Nyassa, half the height of Blantyre, 35°
Fahr. is a common figure for mid-day in the hottest
month (November) of the year, while the average
night-temperature of the coldest month (May) is
about 60°. The lowest registered temperature on
the Lake has: been 54°,-and tie highest —though
this is extremely rare—100° Fahr. When the
Livingstonia Mission occupied the promontory of
Cape Maclear, at the southern end of Nyassa, in
1880, one of the then staff, Mr. Harkess, had the
energy to keep a systematic record of the temper-
ature, and I am indebted to his notebook for the
following table. The figures represent observations
taken at 6 A.M., 12 noon, and 6 P.M. A dash indi-
cates that the observation was omitted for the hour
corresponding. The wet bulb reads on an average

10° degrees lower.

vi!

A METEOROLOGICAL NOTE
TABLE OF TEMPERATURES AT LAKE NYASSA.
May. June.) July. | Aug. | Sept. May.| June.| July. | Aug. | Sept.
70° | 62° | 64° | 67° | 68° || 13 | 65° | — 70° | 72°
Be175 1 73-)24 | 79° FO 93. 80° | 79°
ms (7° |.74°| 73° | 75° Mae) ye ie
— | 60° | 64° | 68° | 69° || 14 | 67° | 63° 68° | 71°
aelas | 74 )=— | 79° aie 77, +80"
mee3- | — | 74-4 75. oo Pee beat EC
G7 | 65° | 62° | 65° | 66° || 15°| 68° | 64° | —.| 66° | 72°
76° | 78° | 74° | — | 75° DOIG es heed Napa By Ole
mo) 74 |.70 | — | 74° Ce 5d (hail Nea OS
684°| 64° | — | 62°| 71° || 16 | 71° | 64° | 68° | 67° | —
m.\ 7) | 73°) — 177° DA ag AT | 755 | ZO
ee i) | 79. age (28 73 | 27°
eee 102 9G" ||| 17 |.68° |-64°)| 65°:| — | —
79 | 74 | —|— | — 78° | 74°|77°| — | —
eet | — | — PP ates | Lop eo"
— | 64° | 64° | 70° | 65° || 18 | 72° | 71° | 68° | 68° | 73°
W581. 77 | 72. | 77°-| 81° 80° 174° | 75.175 (73
me pro 74 | — 77° a Cay nae ae ee
eeiee7 164° | 61° | 72° ||.19 | 65° 64° | 69° || — | —
mo | 728171 | 79° | 80° ro) Urged OE lel ged Pe
ero zt |.— | 77° PO Me ae] 74.
eieg Gat) — | 70° || 20 | 63° | — | 67° | 68° | 75°
meaeet i — | — | So" 74 | 76-170 | "| 82°
eer 74 71) — | 81° | 76° | 74° | 74° | 75° | 80°
SiGe. | 65° | 62°-|.70° || 21 | 67° | 65° | 64° | 64° | 71°
o7-) 79 75") 79° | 81° fy e205 be | 85.
meees. 73 | | 77° 154) 68") 75; (75 | 78
mos 166 | 61°) — || 22 | 70° 163° | 67° | — | 2°
75 175 | — | 81° | 80° We OG | 7S | 7S" Sr
eens ae | 177° = Ot) 70-1 75° 1.79"
mee uG |=) 62° | 70° || 23.) | 58° | 65°. | — |-70°
m5 7° | 76° |-79" | 79° 67° | 77° | 79° | 82°
ft) | 73. |-— | 79° SE Si A a
Metnes 69 4 66" | — || 24.) — | 62° | 64°| 68° | 73°
75.|75°| 77° | 81° | — Po: || 76. | 69" | 82°
71° | 72°) — | 76° | — 76° | — | 74° | 66° | 81°

227

228

May. | June.| July. | Aug. | Sept May. | June.| July. | Aug.
67° | 61° | 66° | 63° | 74° || 29 | 68° | Ga" nem alee
PRN FA. So! 75" | 72 ae
css PTS ee 77° | 72) ee
67° | 63° | 67° | 64° | — || 80 | — | 64° | 63° | 67°
75 9S | Oo G2 hs 75. | 74 \ fe a
iM eee ee 76°. 4) eae
69° | — | 65° | 6s? | 73° 87 (67°) 9 eee
77 NIZE NGA | 97 ee 74° 76° | 9
74° | — | 71° | 77° | 82°] | 94° |__| 76° | 83°
FO" =) AOS | EO lene

To |) 92 96 | FO ae

77 Tg ge eee"

THE END

A METEOROLOGICAL NOTE

Printed by R. & R. Ciarx, Edinburgh.

EUROPEAN POSSESSIONS AND CLAIMS IN CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN AFRICA.

By JG Bartholomew, ERSE

SKETCH MAP SHOWING DIVISION ACCORDING TO AGREEMENTS

SKETCH MAP SHOWING DIVISION ACCORDING TO CLAIMS.

Drape af Coprinerm Trapt of Capricarn.

Bri Statute Milus 6016-2 Dog.
p__.¢ ago rye _sgo po avo

KEY TO COLOURING.

sritish French (i German — [2] iTacian PorTuaueseE [| SPANISH Ee Annsben mn CONGO STATE [od
; ' Tesco ceeitn cer Gye ae

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