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Sen tS Re Met bape 5 pe ey Pa i a cal cas gt are ale ad act —~ —~ ~ ai 7 of eed Ye C ae al ep om maap . thn ete aE eet io Fo em Ace hae Ay 2M Sc eed im 4 “ , “ : en a tere Rona semeee = ee ee ee ete ee a ee Dag PNRM Det tt ig Toth eel ant ass Fg ltt othe ante mcr - 7 ie ; on ate — joel Fatn ne eyoree! = “ “ P : a Sn amen eae a i ° natant catena- PRAM eae gt Te tae Maen PT Mga ee Kine gene saieoee rt . ee er ae ee ene et on petite cal en eachatt AAT Megha Peg Tege: Demin tat eae ee a aie ae ee eee ee re ee St re i Oe Oe ee iN eR ee ne pe = A i Bel ge =k me Rag i, 2 7 ee et a gs tem es ee emer IS a eg ENE RT le _ Png tell Aa at ee Be RR SN cae gle Phe ere Tone Ot eae Sate Cee me teany ce he, SE I eT a ae iad ~~ — en heat NN ee ee eae Sy ee ee ae ee ee Fe OE Diet ent line re ee 2 Ee tO IT oO RU eg gaan me Seat tee meet die eagle teed ~~ se ee ee ee Te pe ea ee ee eee ee) ee ee ee ee © ee ee ee ee ee i + J “ ci rn te get i pe ne ia ieee EAE Cea mn tite EAT 6 a gh i ie ie i a al ll Oh gS A LE TR. Eee ead ate Eggs ae a ee Sa gig Premio A raed ore . OL, = neta “eh Roem Pt Ng nl rae Ne ee tate a a ote ee Fale Seep! sm ng meme Te a ~aee / Ma ae a = : aoa ~ - ~~ pn —_ = Lae bs Qa » a - a - a - - ———— - ws ~~ — ~ — a - > ot = ’ ! ao = a > = - . d ~ - +, ae > << = “ » > » _ Me sect be - i Peel iol —e ~— ~ — a ~~ > C = eta -_ ow a SSSRE eats N Aas °Mrito sz ; elmbavala Pek ha isiwana aN songo Manan. 1 A 3 eens mathe x SN S=5 ; SHOWING ee CENTRAL THE AUTHOR'S ROUTE. English Miles gap 40 30 50 200 Route___ AFRICA) } te} =| 4 z rf lan ve en 31 32 Longitude East 33 of | Greenwich , London; Hodder and Stoughton. 5 Maximbyap, ~N,, Mme OPTICAL AFRICA BY / HENRY DRUMMOND LE, D., PRSE, F.G.S. Ei | “sag bs ai 2 ie AUTHORISED EDITION WITH SIX MAPS, AND ILLUSTRATIONS few Work: SCRIBNER AND WELFORD MDCCCLXXXVIII. a 7m | 1g cd Bl ae a Ol 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. 3 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 tor “be explored; to Livingstone it was a land to be pitied and redeemed. And recent events on Lake Nyassa 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. CONTENTS CHAPTER THE WATER-ROUTE TO THE HEART OF AFRICA: THE RIVERS ZAMBESI AND SHIRE CHAPTER II THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY: LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA CHAPTER Il! THE ASPECT OF THE HEART OF AFRICA: THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE GEA Pe Ive LV: THE HEART-DISEASE OF AFRICA: ITS PATHOLOGY AND CURE CHAP TE RV WANDERINGS ON THE NYASSA-TANGANYVIKA PLATEAU : A TRAVELLER’S DIARY PAGE 27 49 67 87 = CONTENTS CHAPTER Vi THE WHITE ANT: A THEORY . CHAPTER Vil MIMICRY: THE WAYS OF AFRICAN INSECTS CHAPTER: VII! A GEOLOGICAL SKETCH CHAP T ER 1x A POLITICAL WARNING CHAPTER X A METEOROLOGICAL NOTE PAGE I2I 150 181 223 BEST. "Or MAPS I, AUTHOR’S ROUTE MAP . : ; frontispiece a II. OREOGRAPHICAL MAP < a“ III, SLAVE-TRADE Map . ; i Lage. 67. 0 Iv. GEOLOGICAL SKETCH-MapP : : rc ones, V. POLITICAL MAP ACCORDING TO AGREEMENTS . Lud fe VI. POLITICAL MAP ACCORDING TO ARBITRARY CLAIMS 99 HE WATER-ROUTE TO THE HEART | of OF AFRICA — THE ZAMBESI AND SHIRE us Rebate iid ees ahiata co NGO STA EQUATORIAL | AFRICA. Scale 1.23,000,000. Dondon; Hodder and Stoughton. [ohwa Sy I THE WATER-ROUTE TO THE HEART OF | AFRICA 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 © sreat 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 9 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 fe) WATER ROUTE TO 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 il 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 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 I opened 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 entrée; 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 ZAMBESI] 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 orass-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 at a 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 C 18 WATER-ROOTE TO THE HEART OF AFIICA 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 Africa. 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. Il THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA Il THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY ~ LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA *“OMEWHERE in the Shire 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 séeing 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 3355 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. = = = AN i \ SSS ON aS = == i, 4 } i Ne ‘ Zz = = = ‘h Ly y Oy * — = : f » ——— == h . =S— = ; f fi IN SS WWeae Ny =s f = ee Oe WY — ae fie ee an = Bit! Bp) ry “i waz, | = a == ae yy a tae = 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 to denuding 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. ee WHITE ANT HILLS, VII MIMICRY THE 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 ose 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 Helz- 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. Besides 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 WAVS 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 Danazde and Acrazede, 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 demmg 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 ij tte: deco, Shade vofvthe 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 vichim: Whe 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 ——— 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 as oe 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 Phasmide, 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 Phasmidze look THE WAYS OF AFRICAN [INSECTS 171 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 tone 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 antennz 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 antennze 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 toa 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 like dried hay, the same in colour, the ‘Same in ‘fineness, ‘and Vamice 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 Harpax 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 Hage 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 THE WAVS 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 fo, and li 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 réle 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 Tt 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, fn 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 antenne 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 esthetic elements in nature so far below the mechanical? Aré 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? VIII mee OLOGICAL SKETCH SS 2 Rie SSS Si EES SSS worn ee sernies Sete eee ee ee | = MAGIWANGWA ae eeaei | | + RA} | | | \ | | | | eyo) | if | | Bee yu PYALELI” nee 4 aq GEOLOGICAL SKETCH-MAP v7|-EAST CENTRAL AFRICA \ Elepltant, Mar: <= a by Henry Drummond. (J Sand, Clay with Coral Reefs. (Ev Red and Grey Sandstone, fine Conglomerate, Limestone, Shale, and Coal. [CD Granite and Gneiss. Intrusive Basalt and Syenite; Volcanic Porphyrite at north end of Lake Nyasa, 920s so Moy lee an0 { 30 31 Longitude East 33 of Greehwich London; Hodder and Stoughton. VIII APGEOEROGICAL: 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 creat 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- aren. 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, 1 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 GHOLOGICAL 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 treet 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.” —P7o- ceedings, vol. i1. 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 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 genera] 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 sray 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 a 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 19I 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. . Ata bend.in the river a fine seeompas 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/inzdae, 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, 23d Agri/ 1888. DEAR PRorEssoR DRumMMonpD —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 sizé, 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 Paleeoniscidee, 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 species, 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 (?) Drummond:. O feat 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 paleeoniscid. 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 is 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 palzeoniscid 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 Gyvolefis. ‘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 palzoniscid 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 198 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 palzoniscid fish, which it is, however, impossible to name.—I am, yours faithfully, R. H. TRAQUAIR. 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: :° Pirst, regardine 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 isa 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 [fis 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 striz, nor glaciated surface, nor outline, is anywhere traceable. One 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. IX wm ROLITICAL. WARNING IX APOLITICAL WARNING | AEN el 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, so | ventured to point out the irrelevancy to the Portu- gsuese 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 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 described 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- gsuese 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— 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 ereater, 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 medical 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. “I 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 Spain . Opposite the Canaries. France : : . French Senegambia. Britain . British France 7. ak rencla 3 Britain é 0) British 5 Portugal. vis) oleae EOKLUCIICSe. ne France Britain usierta Leone: Liberia . Republic of Liberia... _ France . .. Gold: Coast. A POLITICAL WARNING 213 England . . Gold Coast. France . Dahomey. Unappropriated ; : ‘. England . : =) Niger Germany . . Cameroons. French ’ » Brench ‘Congo. Portuguese . . Portuguese Congo. International ye onse: Portuguese . 7 Ane Olas Portuguese . Benguela. Germany . . Angra Pequena. England . . Walvisch Bay. Germany . . Orange River. England . » Cape o1 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 20h 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 1st 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 217 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 roth 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 Glistmers: Ine Karl Peters. himselfi.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 of idly reap) its frurts. > Hlere 1s; 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. ~ xX mo WE TEOROLOGICAL NOTE xX A METEOROLOGICAL 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, 85° 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 the 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. A METEOROLOGICAL NOTE TABLE OF May. June. TEMPERATURES .| Aug. Sept. ilsieysok 80° ho: 62° 75" 76° 68° oe 75 60° Foe a3. 69° Lo 75 65° heh 66° 75° 74 62° 76° 71° 77° 79° 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 AG. 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 227 AT LAKE NYASSA. May. 65° 70° June.| July. Aug. Sept. Hen 228 26 27 28 A METEOROLOGICAL NOTE May. | June.} July. | Aug. | Sept. 67° | 61° | 66° | 63° | 74° || 29 De re AURA ST, oe 1 ee Se eae 67° | 63° | 67° | 64° | — || “30 LST ae eTe | To | POR IE) 69° | —.| 65° | 65° | 73° || 31 TENT Wey 7 OA GAA ela) 77 | 82: DOr POS TO. 73° For N72 | FO 1°79. 1-0 + Pe a NS 7 o- THE END June.| July. | Aug. | Sept 63° | 65° | — | 68° 91:72. Guo 72° | 75° | — | 80° 64° | 63° | 67° | 74° 74° | 78° | 79° | 82° = 75 |e 65° | 66° Oe Ce 76° | 83° Printed by R. & R. Crark, Edinburgh. ry 3469 EUROPEAN POSSESSIONS AND CLAIMS IN CENTRAL AND SOUTFERN j\FRICA. _ ae . By J.G Ba rtholomew, ERSE. SK TO AGREEMENTS. S| 5 30 = = as ; = - : - ad we : Ska\ AR AB I\ Aa aya. Mi Tatu ‘Rarquhavl= We ; : Kilenba gy 5 ; Pe Tasale py Hos et OM Ga et soma a z 4 : : y 5 ifgemo Led -- Providence 1 Quirombo F ae & StDans idtcd Trop: of Capricorn \ British Statute Miles 69:16 ~1 Deg. pC GOS R00 es 3 CE 1, ery *beth So Se M9597) B— KEY TO) COLOURING. BRITISH zz) FRENCH... . GERMAN ... , i ITALIAN.. PORTUGUESE. . a | SF ANISH fe London; Hi odder and Stoughton. Fernando Po Annobo (ona Ban, (al claimed by FranaejCONCO STATE { | ini iit 0 029 991 625 A