Hi »s V I THE LAKE REGIONS CENTBAL AFEICA. Jf5l. ^Bieroxi of {Hobcm XDiscoucry. By JOHN GEDDIE. WITH THIRTY -TWO ILLUSTRATIONS. [bonbon : T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW. EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK. l88 3 © 11 t C 11 t B. INTRODUCTORY AND HISTORICAL, PART FIRST. THE NILE. I. THE SECRET OF THE NILE, II. THE WHITE NILE AND THE ALBERT NTANZA, III. A VOYAGE ON THE VICTORIA NTANZA, IV. UGANDA AND KING MTESA, V. THE ULTIMATE NILE SOURCES, 22 37 54 74 96 PART SECOND. THE CONGO. I. TANGANYIKA, II. THE LUALABA LAKES, III. CATARACTS AND CANNIBALS, IV. THE WATER-PARTING OF THE CONGO, 115 138 106 190 VI CONTEXTS. PART THIRD. THE ZAMBESI. I. PROM l.AKK 1ULOLO TO LAKE NGAMI, ... ... ... 20G II. Tin: VICTORIA PALLS AND THE LOWER ZAMBESI, ... ... 231 III. Till: SHIRE AND l.AKK NVASSA, ... ... ... ... 248 ^cist of DEI lustrations. THE LADY ALICE SHOOTING THE RAPIDS, CARAVAN CROSSING THE NUBIAN DESERT, .. EOROSKO, THE STARTING-PLACE FOR THE DESERT, SIR SAMUEL AND LADY BAKER ON THE MARCH, SCENE ON THE ATBARA, .. MADEMOISELLE TINNE, SWAJIPS OF THE WHITE NILE, PREPARATIONS FOR A START, A ROYAL PROGRESS, THE MURCHISON FALLS, . . STANLEY ON THE MARCH, RUBAGA, KING MTESA's CAPITAL, OUTLET OF THE VICTORIA NYANZA, SIR SAMUEL BAKER SHOOTING A RHINOCEROS, EMBARKING AT ZANZIBAR, LANDSCAPE IN VSAGARA, BURTON AND SPEKE ON TANGANYIKA, LIVINGSTONE AND STANLEY ON TANGANYIKA THE " BETSY" ON TANGANYIKA, A SOKO HUNT, .. CROSSING A SPONGE, ASSEMBLING TO MARKET, NYANGWE, MARKET IN MANYUEMA, .. ATTACK BY THE ARUWIMI CANNIBALS, A NYAM-NYAM VILLAGE, .. DEATH OF FRANK POCOCK, A WEIR BRIDGE, GAME ON THE ZAMBESI, .. VICTORIA FALLS, CHARGED BY A BUFFALO, THE DENIZENS OF THE SWAMP, THE SLAVE HUNTER AND HIS VICTIMS, Frontispiece 12 30 30 34 3S 43 47 50 53 GO 79 105 112 117 117 121 125 127 150 151 15S 150 17S 179 1S7 193 215 232 242 250 262 LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. Entroimcton) aub jjtetorital. "' Pistol. A foutra for the world and worldlings base ! I speak of Africa and golden joys.'' S Henry IV. FRICA is the continent with which man — civilized man— has had perhaps the long- est acquaintance, and concerning which he still knows least. It has been a mystery to him since the earliest ages, and he is only now beginning to penetrate the real heart of the secret. Probably it was on the rich soil of Egypt that the first geographer traced the first chart, and the first astronomer began to take observa- tions of the sun, moon, and stars ; and it may have been on the flood of the Nile that the first mariner dared to trust himself on the fickle bosom of the waters. Since then the searchers after knowledge have ofone far afield, and learned much. New worlds have been discovered and peopled, and the whole face of nature has been changed. But it was only the 10 THE MYSTERIOUS CONTINENT. other day that the hoary secret of the Nile — the dis- tant and hidden sources from which Egypt draws it- life-blood — was revealed; and it is around these very sources that the geographer and the naturalist have still the largest field for discovery, where the fairest promise is held out to the traveller and the hunter for big game," and where a little romance continues to linger in a work-a-day world. It is strange that this should be so, — that the Nile, the water of which was used to knead the bricks of ancient I pt, and that witnessed the rise of tin- pyramids, whose shapes can he seen glimmering in the gray dawn of history, should have been so long shrouded in niyst.-iy, while the course of the Mississippi, the • ■ of which was only ascertained some three and a half centuries ago should be as familiarly known a- that of tin- Rhine. < >n the whole, perhaps, fortunate thai the secret ha- been so well kepi It will only be after everything ha- been " found out" thai people will begin to understand the value of the unknown, and to sigh because there are no new lakes, rivers and mountain ranges to discover. Meanwhile tln-re i till a greal deal that we should like to know, and cannot Within the four corners ol Africa, and moi i.illy in the great equatorial hake Region, there i- a \;i t torehouse of unre\ealed facts an aim tli po ihility of discos ery and adven- So recently have the physical conditions "I it- interior been revealed that Europe is still hut half aw.-d c to tie facl that Africa is green and flourishing at the head however uninviting in the rind, that THE " BURN'ED SIDE'' OF AFRICA. 11 away in its centre, beyond the pestilential mangrove swamps and tracts of arid sand that almost every- where girdle its coasts, there are high and delightful countries, full of running streams and far-stretching lakes, of rich tropical verdure and abundant animal life. It is too soon yet to pronounce an opinion on the capabilities of Central Africa for supporting a peaceful, industrious, and civilized population. The climate of its uplands is no doubt more cool and healthy than that of the coast, but its suitability for European constitutions is at least doubtful. Still, it is impossible not to believe that its magnificent lake system, its mighty rivers, and its vast and fertile plains will be employed for the uses of commerce and agriculture, and that its future will be as brilliant as its past has been dark. The truth is that our ideas of Africa are still col- oured with the old impressions of it which we find in books and in the popular memory. The sunburned and dusty face which it presented towards the Medi- terranean photographed itself, as it were, on the imagination of Europe. Our ancestors knew only one side of it — the burned side — and they judged of the whole from what they saw. To them Africa was the "Desert," with a narrow fringe of vegetation along its seaboard and in the Valley of the Nile, and its " burning sand " was the image that presented itself most naturally to the average mind. Now a desert is all very well in its way— in the way, that is, of thrilling adventure and hairbreadth escape ; ami Africa is especially well provided in the matter of 1 2 sioiiTS IN TIIK SAHARA. deserts. The Sahara is the greatest, the most unmi- tigated desert in the world. It stretches from Tunis to Lake Chad and from the Atlantic to the Nile — nay. it may be said to extend to the banks of the Tigris, for the Red Sea is only a depression in its surface that happens to he below the sea-level. There are other portions of its area which are sup- posed to be below the level of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and which science may one day trans- form into a new " Lake Region." Geologists indeed inform us that the Sahara is the bed of an ancient and its whole appearance and condition bear out the theory. There i- no regular rainfall or perennial Btreams there are mountains, hut no mountain m and there are, as has been said, depressions; but no permanent lake-. Lastly, in the Sahara pro- there are no stationary habitations, and few of animal or vegetable life. In all these re- Bpecta it nol only differs from, bui is a complete con- ! to, the high, luxuriant, well-watered table-land below the Equator. The picturesque Bights of the desert have keen le familiar enough to us by description : the long line of laden camels threading their way across the be between the white blaze of the buu and the yellow glare of the and past the bleached skele- 1 man and l.. a i thai strew the track the vivid contra I of the flowing white robes and tawny faces " r , ' 1 " Arab driver and the ebony limbs of the uegro Bl *ve and attendant the flight of a party of Moorish • in. n with then- gay caparisons and glittering ( i iiiiii,];: IlilWiLiiiiil i II A TERRA INCOGNITA. 13 spears ; the sand pillars, " leagued to fight with war- ring winds ;" the oases with their green palm-groves and cool fountains ; and the brilliant hues of a stormy sunset. These, however, are but the accidents of desert-life. Its characteristic aspect is silence, mon- otony, desolation. Even the beasts of prey avoid it. Only for man, who finds an intellectual pleasure in overcoming difficulty and facing Nature in her sternest mood, can it have attractions ; and the edge of his appetite for travel is soon blunted by actual experience of desert dangers and fatigues, when there is no hope ahead to allure his steps forward. Such was the main cause that discouraged African exploration down to about the middle of the fifteenth century. A new motive then came strongly into play, — the rivalry of the European nations for the trade of the East. There is a circumstantial ancient story of a Phoenician vessel, sent out by Pharaoh Necho, that sailed from the Red Sea, and appeared three years later at the Pillars of Hercules — our Strait of Gibraltar — having circumnavigated the African continent. It is the fact, however, that about the middle of the fifteenth century nothing was known — in Europe at least — of the African coast-line beyond Cape Bojador on the west side, or Cape Guardafui on the east. From Morocco round the Cape of Good Hope to the entrance of the Red Sea was a complete terra incognita. It was the Por- tuguese who took up the quest for a sea-passage to India, and after eighty years of glorious effort they carried their flag triumphantly to the goal. The 1-t PRINCE HENRY, THE NAVIGATOR. man to whom, above all others, Europe is indebted for the discovery of the pathway to the East, and for the revival of modern commercial enterprise, is Prince Henry of Portugal, named the Navigator, son of King .lolm I. of "good memory." Prince Henry had gained renown by righting the Moors in Africa, and was high in the counsels of his own country; but it is as the first great promoter of the spirit of mari- time discovery that he has won imperishable fame. His motives were partly patriotic, he wished to see his countrymen outstrip the Genoese and Venetians in the race to the markets of the East; but he had also an anient and unquenchable love of knowledge for its own Bake. "Until his day," says Mr. Major of tli-- British Museum, in his admirable Life of the hem. '• fche pathways of the human race had been the mountain, the river, and the plain, the strait, the lake, tli<- inland sea; but he it was who first conceived the thought of opening up a road through the unexplored • an a road replete with danger, but abundant in promi It was in the year 141") that Prince Henry ut out his first expedition to trace the African coa^t. Prom thai -late till his death in L4G0 no year passed in which he did not send forth a vessel — often in. .re than <.iie— to follow up the quest and push a little further to the southward. Abandoning the royal court, and taking up Inn residence on the bare and itorm-swepi promontory "f Sagres, the extreme tern corner of Europe, he devoted himself heari and soul to his work. Never was a purpose (0M) A "CEXTURY OF DISCOVERY." 15 followed up with such heroic and unflinching resolu- tion, and never has success been more magnificent and far-reaching in its results. For years he had to fight against failure and ridicule, and not till 1435 was Cape Bojador rounded ; and twenty years more elapsed ere the Venetian Cadamosto doubled Cape de Verd and sighted the mouth of the Gambia. But by years of unwearying endeavour Prince Henry at length succeeded in breathing his spirit into Europe. He fashioned a race of intrepid seamen, and inspired not his countrymen alone but other nations with the passion for adventure and the thirst for new know- ledge. The Portuguese explorers, taught and encour- aged by experience, took wider flights. No longer crawling along the coasts of the desert, exposed to the fiery breath of the Sahara and the countless dan- gers from shoals, currents, and storms, and the invete- rate hostility of the barbarous Moors, they ventured boldly into mid-ocean. Within little more than a quarter of a century after Prince Henry's death, Diego Cam had discovered the mouth of the Congo, and traced the African coast almost to the Orange River ; Bartholomew Diaz had doubled that " Cape of Storms " which succeeding voyagers rechristened " of Good Hope ; " and twelve years later Yasco da Gama had fulfilled the long-delayed hope of accomplishing the sea-passage to India. In another direction, but originating in the same impulse, Columbus had dis- covered a new world in the west ; and a few years later Australia had been visited, and Magellan's bat- tered vessel and the remnants of his crew arrived at (658) 2 10 VERDANT AFRICA. San Lucar, having completed the circumnavigation of the world All this, as Mr. Major points out, had been the work of "one century of continuous and connected discovery," and it may all be traced back to the far-seeing thought and indomitable will of one man. There are two points especially worthy of notice in the early history of the Portuguese exploration of Africa. One of these is the discovery of the mouth of the Senegal, the first permanent stream of any consequence met with on the southward voyaging. Prince Eenry and the other geographical experts of lii- day considered it to be the "western outlet of the Nile:" and their conclusion was not so utterly ridiculous and far from the mark as appears to us at t i it aight. If it has no connection with the Nile system, ii belongs at least, to t lie same class of streams, utterly distinct from those of the desert, and draws • i from tin' same region of regular and abundant rainfall, [t was here, in fact, where Europe firsi 't eyes on that moist, luxuriant, intertropical Africa which is still being unfolded before it, and which at thai time was so completely at variance with preconceived ideas. Hire, too, the African elephant was again seen in its wild state a glorious promise of the spori that lay in store for the hunter of a later era Cadamosto was wonderfully struck witli tie- audd( ii change, not only in the country, but in the Inhabitants. " On the south side of the river the people were very black, stout, and well made, and the country verdant, woody, and fertile; while THE WEST COAST SLAVERS. 17 on the north side the men were thin, tawny, and short, and the country dry and sterile." The races of mixed Moorish and Arab blood and Mohamme- dan religion were about to be left behind, and acquaintance made for the first time as a people — individual specimens had of course been seen scattered throughout the eastern countries. — with the Negro. In the quaint language of these old voyagers it was the borderland of the Tawny Moors and the Black Moors (" black-a-moors"). Unhappily the wrongs of the negro began with his first contact with Europeans. The first idea that occurred to the Portuguese mariners on seeing this new black race was to capture specimens and bring them home. The practice, there can be little ques- tion, was the first beginnings of the west coast slave- trade. All the maritime nations of Europe fastened themselves like leeches on the side of Africa and sucked her life-blood, and none more greedily, as we should blush to remember, than the English. Millions literally of her children were carried off to the planta- tions of Brazil, the West Indies, the Spanish Main, and the British Colonies ; and as many more died in mid - passage. Slavery, which may be said to have been the staple trade of Africa during three centuries, was fatal to that spirit of research and discovery which the "Navigator" had called into life. The slaver cared not, because he dared not, to venture far from the rendezvous in the lagoon or the barracoons on the river where his victims were col- lected; and he did all in his power to hide his haunts 18 THE EQUATORIAL LAKE REGION. and close the doors of ingress to all who would be likely to interfere with his gains. The .slave-trade, more than any impediments offered by nature, has stood chiefly in the way of the opening up of the African continent; and it was not until it received its death -Mow early in the present century that explorers began to make their way into the interior, and map out its blank spaces with magnificent lakes and rivers. With the great work done by Caille, Barth, Richardson, Overweg, Rohlfs, Vogel, Nachtigal, and other discoverers, along the margin and occa- sionally through the heart of the great northern desert, we shall in this place have nothing to say; it lies quite beyond the region of the great equatorial Lakes. Neither can we enter on the stirring narrative of tin' travels of Mungo Park, Landers, Clapperton, and other investigators of the course of the Niger, or seek to trace the northward march of that army of colonists. Dutch and English, who have carried cultivation and civilization from the Cape Mountain to the limit of tie- Kalihari Desert, the southern equivalent of the Sahara. But between these two sterile tracts lies a vast expanse of Africa, the exploration of which, if it dors not call forth greater powers of endurance or more heroic courage, promises at least to yield incom- parably greater results than can he looked for to the northward. It i- a region whose physical features are homogeneous and unique and on the grandest cale where Nature has been most prodigal in all her in It contains the reservoirs and upper courses MODERN EXPLORERS. 19 of the three ^reat African streams — the Nile, the Congo, and the Zambesi — whose waters afford an unrivalled chain of lake and river communication, and on whose banks have been found powerful states and strange peoples and customs of which the last generation never dreamed. The roll of travel- lers who have penetrated into it contains such names as Livingstone, Speke and Grant, Burton, Baker, Schweinfurth, Gordon, Cameron, Stanley, Kirk, Van der Decken, Elton, Keith Johnston, Pinto, and others of hardly lesser note, some of whom have laid down their lives in witness of their devotion in the cause of science ; and every one of these names recalls memories of gigantic difficulties grappled with, of dangers boldly encountered, of sufferings bravely borne, of great achievements performed, and nearly all within the short space of twenty years. Surely the record of such a work could be made interesting. Before, however, proceeding to describe the region of the great equatorial lakes, and to narrate the experiences of recent explorers, it might be well to refer to another trophy of research, which seems to hint that all these are but a modern revelation of what was known three hundred years ago to the Portuguese colonists of Angola. In an old chart of the African continent, published at Rome in 1591, along with a " Description of the Kingdom of Congo'' by one Duarte Lopez, who had spent nine years in that country, there is shown, in a wonderfully com- plete and accurate shape, the system of the equatorial lakes and the rivers connected with them. We have, 20 A MEDIEVAL MAP. for instance, the Blue Nile, flowing through a "Lago Barcena," in Abyssinia, as the Bahr-el-Azrek does through Lake Dembea. Then the White Nile is seen taking its rise in two great lakes on the equator, which might easily represent the Victoria Nyanza of Speke and Albert Nyanza of Sir S. Baker. Due south of what we will say is the Albert Lake is another great fresh-water sea, the equivalent, in the ancient chart, to Tanganyika; and this is connected not only with the "Rio Congo," but with the Nile and the Zambesi. We know from Stanley's and < lameron's travels that the Tanganyika sends its surplus water to the Congo, and Livingstone has shown that there is continuous water communication between the latter river and the Zambesi. We are Qot ye( in a position either to affirm or deny that a similar connecting link exists between it and the Nile. In fact, in a rough-and-ready way, this map present pretty correctly the main features of the Lake Region a- revealed by the investigations of the Last few jrears; while in regard to other particulars in it. our knowledge is net yet s () far extended that we can put our finger on them and say that they .],. nut represent facts. Does the delineation of th. e remarkable-looking lakes and interlinked river ■ ms represent a bold and happy guess on the part •.•nth century chartographer ? or does it preserve a record of facts familiar in his day that rward fell into oblivion? Ere tin' slave-trade had pit it ban of hatred between the coast-dweller and the inhabitant of the interior, when Portuguese UNRECORDED DISCOVERY. 21 influence was predominant in Abyssinia, and a native Christian kingdom of Congo sent missions to the Pope, it is quite conceivable that the true facts con- cerning the Xile and Congo sources may have come to light. This scrap, then, dug from among the rubbish of the Vatican Library, may possibly be the sole relic now extant of a race of medieval explorers, the fame of whose adventures has "fallen dumb," and whose labours have had to be done over again. Pari Jnvst.— %Thc ililc. CHAPTER I. THE SECRET OF THE NILE. " When geographers on Afric maps With lavage pictures filled the gaps, ' Car uninhabitable downs Placed elephants instead of towns." Swift. jlOME thirty years ago the modern world was startled ami gratified with its first glimpse at the Lake Region of equa- torial Africa. Pigafetta's map was still covered with the thick dust of centuries; it had to discovered" like the lakes themselves. Or, if any one in these days had glanced at its wild com- plication of inland seas ami lake-like rivers, he would have been vastly amused. The more he knew, or thought he knew, of geography, the louder he would have laughed. The maps which our fathers used at school mowed as a rule a gnat hlank occupying the interior of Africa, from the Abyssinian mountains to th'' Orange River, and from the coast ranges on the i side to the corresponding face of the table-land FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE CENTRAL LAKES. 23 on the east. No geographer had soiled the pure white expanse with his lines and figures ; it was the happy hunting-grounds of conjecture and fancy. The Zambesi and the mighty Congo itself were re- presented as short stumps of rivers, with perhaps a dotted prolongation into the interior, drawn accord- ing to the geographer's fancy. A couple of native traders — the Pombeiros — had, indeed, early in the present century, passed from the Portuguese colony of Angola to the eastern side of the continent, -and told how, on their journey, they had crossed a hun- dred rivers, visited the courts of powerful negro kings, and traversed countries where the inhabi- tants had made considerable progress in arts and industry. Their story, like that of other pioneers, was generally discredited, and themselves and their stores of information treated with contemptuous neglect. But about thirty years ago authentic intelligence began to be received of the existence of great lakes in the interior. On the 1st of August 1849 Living- stone, Oswell, and Murray, after weary marching across the Kalihari Desert, stood on the margin of Lake Xgami, the most southerly and the first dis- covered of the great chain of equatorial lakes. As we shall often have occasion to notice, there is no sight so animating and at the same time so tanta- lizing to the traveller through unknown countries as the sudden glimpse of a grand expanse of water stretching away to the horizon. He expected to find dry land, and, lo ! an apparently illimitable sea bars 24 THE "MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON." his further journey, and warns him that he must return. But he has made a discovery worth that of ires of nameless rivers and unpronounceable tribes. The fancy is excited with the prospect of vague and almost limitless possibilities, and speculation and con- jecture become violently active. The discoverer is drawn back to complete his work, and a score of others plunge into the unexplored to share in his fame. From the discovery of Ngami probably may be dated the revival of modern curiosity in the secrets of the African continent. Rumours were rife in the Portuguese colonies of the existence of a large lake to the north of the Zambesi, known as Maravi, or Nyassa. Its outflow was unknown, and a favourite theory was that it belonged to the system of the Nile, and was part of a long chain of reservoirs from which the river of Egypt drew it> exhaustless store of water. < >nly the Nile, said these speculators, who, like all their contemporaries, hail formed a most inadequate idea of the volume and character of the other two great streams of Central Africa, Mas worthy of such a magnificent gathering -ground. There were others who believed they confuted this view by pointing to the " Mountains of the Moon.'' This was a venerable geographical fiction which, like a huge caterpillar, had sprawled for centuries across tin- breadth of Africa, somewhere about the neigh- bourhood of the equator. Nobody had penetrated their 013 b< 1 ious n 1 or could even say he had I their peak-, on the horizon . but there lay the fountain* of the Nil. according to Ptolemy and AN ANTIQUE HOAX. 25 other ancient geographers, whose authority on this point, if it could be questioned, at least could not be contradicted. There is reason to believe that in this story of the Nile fountains, first told by Herodotus. on the authority of the " Secretary of Minerva at Sais," survives a venerable practical joke played by a party of facetious Egyptian priests on the geog- rapher more than two thousand three hundred years ago. This worthy but credulous old Greek gentleman visited the land of the Pharaohs, then a great seat of learning and art, and the scholarly ecclesiastics natu- rally paid their distinguished visitor a good deal of attention, pointing out to him with just national pride the vast monuments of Egyptian industry and inge- nuity, whose ruins are still the astonishment of the world. At length the stranger put a " poser." " Whence comes this oreat flood that issues from the desert where there is neither rainfall nor running stream except itself ? and what is the secret of that period- ical rise in its waters by which Egypt is kept con- tinually green and fertile ? " The Egyptian priests of 450 B.C. could no more answer than could the Egyptians of last generation ; but they had observed how ready their visitor was to produce his tablets, and the air of complete sincerity with which he jotted down in them the most astounding particulars; so, winking slyly to one another, they told him the cock-and-bull story of the " two conical hills, named Crophi and Mophi," midway between which were "the unfathomable fountains of the Nile, half the water running northward into Egypt, and half 2G THE SEARCH FOR THE NILE FOUNTAINS southward into Ethiopia." No doubt when his back was turned the rogues poked one another in the ribs — if that was one of the fashions in which an ancient Egyptian testified his delight in the arts of deceit — and chuckled at the manner in which the representa- tive of this new-fangled Greek culture and civilization had been befooled. It is only justice to Herodotus to say, however, that he seems more than half to suspect that his informants were amusing themselves at his expense. This piece of ancient Egyptian pleasantry repre- sents the only positive statement which we pos- sessed regarding the sources of the White Nile down to 1861, when Spekc and Grant coming from the south, and Baker following the valley of the river towards the equator, almost simul- taneously solved the mystery of its How. The story too has it- tragic side; for, as we shall see, poor Livingstone, pinning his faith resolutely by Herod- otus, and believing that In- had discovered the veritable fountains of the Nile and Mountains of the Moon faraway to the south in the water-shed between the Congo and Zambesi, tinned his back on the glimpse of home and country which the sight of Stanley afforded him, and followed this Will-o'-the- wisp into the swamp of the Bangweolo, to meet his lonely and lingering death. In Ptolemy's time, six hundred year after Herodotus, some genuine infor- mation regarding the Nile sources must have filtered through to Egypt ; for he tells us that the great river take it rise ome ten degrees south of the equator, C0XQUER0RS AND DISCOVERERS. 27 in many streams that converge into two lakes, situ- ated east and west of each other, from which issue two rivers that join and form the Nile. The unravelling- of the problem of the Nile has been a favourite dream of the conquerors of Egypt since and probably long before Homer sang of its "heaven-descended stream," whose mythical head- waters were a favourite haunt of Jove himself when the king of the celestials wished to revel and dis- port himself in absolute seclusion from the children of men. In the days especially when cultivation and a settled population extended far to the south of their present limits, and a powerful state flourished at Meroe, near the junction of the White and Blue Niles, the tramp of armed hosts on the march for the mythical •' fountains " has often resounded deep into the African interior. Sesostris, the first king who patronized map -making, made attempts to discover these springs. Alexander of Macedon, Cambyses the Persian, and the Roman Cresars were inspired with the same wish. We are told by Lucan that Julius Csesar said he would give up civil war could he but look on the sources of the Nile; and Nero despatched a party of centurions, who returned with wonderful stories of cataracts and marshes that compelled them to return. The measure of success indeed that attended these renowned warriors and hectoring heroes was poor in proportion to the vast means they set in motion to gain it. Their first motive was plunder and conquest, and the long trains of laden camels and captives that followed 28 ISMAIL PASHA. their returning march carried away few spoils of science. The idea of the solitary explorer, with his life in his hand and goodwill towards man in his heart, encountering all the perils and privations of African travel fur pure love of knowledge, is wholly a modern conception : and it is with modern discovery we have to deal. Something must be said, however, of one re- nin rkable political personage, who strangely com- bined the practice of the Oriental despot with the theories of the modern man of science, and to whom, perhaps, more than to any other man we are chiefly indebted for the complete solution of the mystery of the Nile. This is Ismail Pasha, the ex-viceroy of Egypt. Now that he has fallen hopelessly from his high estate, and has himself become a wanderer and an exile, his great services in the cause of discovery and international commerce may be heartily acknow- ledged. His career has been a failure, relieved by bril- liant flashes of success. If he has deserved ill of his people, to whom he owed his first duty, he has de- served nobly of science. He bas overwhelmed Egypt with debt, and ground it- people into the dust with burdens heavier than they could hear: but he intro- duced to them the light of Western knowledge ; he l.nilt the Suez Canal, and he sought out and an- nexed the sources of the Nile. For twenty years an army of European pioneers and explorers in the khe- dive's pay or under his protection have been working their way southward, mapping out lakes and rivers, Pounding set t lements, capturing slave-gangs, until now A START FOR THE LAKES. 29 the whole extent of the Nile valley, from the equator to the Mediterranean, owns the sway of Egypt, and is open to the influences of commerce and civil- ization. Every one has heard of the series of cata- racts that obstruct the navigation of the river between Assouan in Upper Egypt and Khartoum in the Soudan. Among the many schemes under- taken by Ismail Pasha in pursuance of his grand idea of making Egypt coextensive with the Nile was that of constructing a " ship incline " over the First Cataract, and running a line of railway from Wady Haifa, near the Second Cataract, to Khartoum, and ultimately, perhaps, to the great lakes. The great work, we believe, has actually been begun ; but considering the financial condition of Egypt it is not likely that any one will be privileged, during the present generation, to travel express in a comfortable railway carriage from Cairo to the margin of the Victoria Nyanza ! On the journey we are about to take we must, like the first pioneers, be content with a much more slow and laborious method of travelling, over a route still beset with numberless dangers. And on the very threshold we meet with the most formidable obstacle of all to an advance into the interior of Africa from the side of Egypt or the Red Sea — the great Nubian Desert. This dreary tract we must cross, otherwise we can have no adequate idea of the hardships of the explorer's life, the difficulties and discouragements he meets with at the very outset, and the surprising con- trast between his experiences in the earlier and in the ((358) 3 30 A CAMEL RIDE THROUGH THE DESERT. later stages of his progress. His voyage up the Nile, under the ever clear and brilliant sky of Egypt, past the silent shapes of the temples, the sphinxes,, the pyramids, and other gigantic monuments of a great past, and surrounded by the sights and sounds of I >riental life, has been a holiday trip to the traveller bound lakewards. When he places his foot on the desert sand, and transfers his guns, his tent, and other impedimenta of travel from the river-boat to the back of the " ship of the desert" which is to con- vey him across the Great Bend of the Nile from Korosko to Abu Hammed, the stern reality of his task begins. The first day's sun, reflected with over- powering force from the fantastic cliffs and flinty sand of the Korosko Desert, probably burns out of him any romance that he may have entertained in connection with Nubian travel; before the nearest halting-place is reached, the early delightful sense of the novelty of riding on camel-back has given place to a hearty detestation of the uneasy motion. th< slow progress, and the abominable temper of that over- lauded brute. Soon you are glad to abandon travel in the full blaze of day, with its blistering glare from rock an I sand, the pitiless sun overhead, and the furnace-like breath of the desert air, and you march at night, when the earth is -rowing cool 1 ler the great stars. Here and there, as you d< cend into the bed of a " wady," or dry water-course, the eye is relieved for an in itani by a patch of green verdure, a frightened gazelle dashes away to the Bheltei ofthenearesl and hills or a glimpse is caught J k A NUBIAN THUNDERSTORM. 31 of a naked Arab youth tending his flock of goats ; for even the desert is not entirely void of plant and ani- mal life, though every living thing seems to partake of the arid nature and to bear the dusty colours of the surrounding waste. Even rain is not altogether unknown, and it is looked for at least once every winter season, though 'sometimes four years will pass without a fall. At these times the clouds that have drifted up from the distant Indian Ocean may be seen pitching their black tents about the summits of the mountain rid'Tes that divide the Nile Vallev from the Red Sea. The nomad Arab tribes, the only inhabitants of these thirsty hills, watch them with breathless hope. A north wind may blow during the night and drift them back whence they came. More likely they burst in thunderstorm — the whole of the storms of a season compressed into one furious onslaught of light- ning and rain. The dry wadies of yesterday are roaring torrents by morning, bearing down to the Nile a tribute of water for one day in the year at least. For one day also, or perhaps for some weeks, the earth and air are swept of their impurities, and the face of the desert begins to look fresh and verdant, as grass and plants spring up rapidly on every hand ; but then ao-ain the drought and the heat return, and nature withers more rapidly than it sprang to life. There are spots, however, well known to the Aral) shepherd and camel-driver, where there are running- water and green turf all the }^ear round, or where, sheltered perhaps by the naked rocks of some deep 32 A DESERT HALT. ravine, a little oasis of palm and tamarisk trees is to be found. These are the halting-places on the march — the stepping-stones by means of which alone this howling wilderness may be crossed. Sometimes the wells fail, or are poisoned, or a predatory band occu- pies the spring* ; and then the unfortunate traveller has to face the peril of death from thirst or exhaus- tion as the fainting caravan is hurried forward to the next halting-place. In any case he is fervently thankful when the shining waters of the Nile come again into sight at Aim Hammed, and tins doleful stage of his desert wandering is at a close But the "secret of the Nile" seems, if possible, further from solution than ever; and the stream whose shores he uow follows for many weary marches mii ,-i more mysterious phenomenon in Upper Nubia than it is as it Hows under the walls of Cairo. In the twelve hundred miles of its lower course the Nile receives no tributary either on the right hand or on the left. It may be traced like a ribbon of silver with a narrow fringe of green, winding in great folds DO 1 D D through a hot and thirsty desert, and under the full blaze of a sun thai drinks its waters but returns nothing to n in the shape of rain : and man also exacts a heavy tribute from it for the irrigation of the soil. It is not, till we reach the moutb of tli" A.tbara the Bahr-el- Azwab or Black Nile thai some light begins to break in as to the sources of this exhaustless store of water, Even the A.tbara though in some respects the mosi important of the Nile tributaries, is but a dry river-bed during a great pari of the year, Its 33 sources are away to the left, in the Abyssinian moun- tains, whose great buttresses now begin to cut the eastern horizon. There also are a " Lake Region " and " Nile sources," the discovery of which by Bruce about a century ago made a great talk in the world. But we must not step aside to climb that stupendous wall, or look upon the wonders beyond, great though the temptations are. Abyssinia is a country so unique in its physical features, its social life, its history, its religion, and its archaeological remains, that it is small wonder that Bruce's account of his sojourn there was at first received with incredulity. The thorough trustworthiness of his narrative has been established by the brothers D'Abbadie, Dr. Beke, De Cosson, and other recent explorers ; and James Bruce — " the Greatest anions; us all," as Dr. Livingstone declares — has taken his proper place as one of the most accurate of observers, as well as most intrepid of travellers. It was Sir Samuel Baker, however, on his first jour- ney up the Nile in the summer of 1861, who first adequately pointed out the part played by the Abys- sinian streams in the phenomena of the Nile — a part scarcely, if any. inferior to that of the equatorial lakes themselves. Sir Samuel turned aside from his southward route and followed the dry bed of the Atbara, partly to enjoy the hunting of the " big game" — the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, giraffe, and lion — that abound in the thick jungles covering the lower slopes of these hills, and partly to watch the great annual flooding of the Nile tribu- taries. The "Black Nile " was simply a vast furrow THE AT15AKA IN KI.Oul). thirty feet in depth and from four hundred 3-ards to half a mile in breadth, ploughed through the heart of the desert, its edges marked by a thin growth of leafless mimosas and dome palms. The only trace of water was here and there a rush-fringed pool which the impetuous torrent had hollowed out in the sudden bends in the river's course, and where disported themselves hippopotami, crocodiles, and immense turtles, that had long ago adjusted their relations on a friendly footing on the discovery that none of them could do harm to the others. On the 23rd of June, the simoom was blowing with overpowering force; the heat was furnace-like, and the tents of the travellers were covered with several inches of drifted jand. A.bove, in the Abyssinian mountains, however, the lightnings were playing and the rains were fall- in- ;i-, it* the windows of heaven had been opened. The monsoon had sei in: the rising streams were choking their narrow channels in their frantic rush to tin' lowlands, and were tearing away huge ma of t lie rich dark soil, to he spread a month hence over the tint plains of Egypt. The party encamped on the Atliara heard through the nmht :i sound as if of dis- i.int thunder; but it was " the roar of the approach- ing water." The traveller describes the scene best in his own words : — On the morning of the 24th of June I stood on the banks of the noble A.tbara river at break of day. Wonder of t he desert ! Yesterday there was a barren slieel of glaring sand, with ;i fringe of withered bush and trees upon its borders that cut the yellow ex- mm? THE CLUE TO THE MYSTERY. 35 panse of desert. For days we had journeyed along the exhausted bed. All nature, even in nature's pov- erty, was most poor : no bush could boast a leaf, no tree could throw a shade ; crisp gums crackled upon the stems of the mimosas — the sap dried upon the burst bark, sprung with the withering heat of the simoom. In one night there was a mysterious change — wonders of the mighty Nile ! An army of water was hastening to the wasted river. There was no drop of rain, no thunder-cloud on the horizon to give hope — all had been dry and sultry ; dust and desola- tion yesterday, to-day a magnificent stream, five hun- dred yards in width and from fifteen to twenty feet in depth, flowed through the dreary desert ! Bamboos and reeds, with trash of all kinds, hurry along the muddy waters. Where are all the crowded inhabi- tants of the pool \ The prison doors are open, the prisoners released, and rejoicing in the mighty stream of the Atbara." We turn our back reluctantly on this majestic mountain mass, which, with its head capped with snow and its feet in the dust of the desert, stretches upwards through so many zones, and performs such wonderful functions. We have the clue to one part of the Nile mystery — its great periodical inundations, the source of its fertilizing slime. The Bahr-el-Azrek, the Blue Nile of Bruce, contributes, like the Atbara, though in a secondary degree, to the flood of the river and the fertility of Egypt, with this difference, that it brings down some water all the year round. At Khartoum we reach the junction between the 36 THE MEETING OF THE WATERS. Blue and the White Nile, the frontier also of two strongly-contrasted physical regions, and the dividing line between barbarism and savagely. The secret that has still to be unveiled is the i-ource of that un- failing flow of water which, resisting the influences of absorption, evaporation, and irrigation, carries a life-giving stream through the heart of Egypt at all seasons of the year. < Ul (_> 2: UJ — 1 2 U* OF TH REG < 0, < UJ H < 2: —1 UJ CHAPTER II. THE WHITE NILE AXD THE ALBERT NYANZA. " We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea." — Ancient Marin* r. [EITHER civilization nor savagedom has much credit by their border-city. Khar- toum has i no-rafted all the vices of the one state of society on the squalor and misery of the other. A traveller sums up its attrac- tions by the remark that " a more miserable, filthy, and unhealthy spot can hardly be imagined ; " and other visitors have heartily endorsed the opinion. Nevertheless it is an interesting place. Here, up to a comparatively recent date, was the " Threshold of the Unknown." It has been the starting-point of almost numberless Nile expeditions, since the days perhaps of the Pharaohs. Mehemet Ali, the first viceroy of Egypt, and grandfather of Ismail Pasha, got a little way to the south of it in his conquest of the Soudan in 1830. He found the climate so un- healthy that he established a penal settlement at Fazougli, a little distance up the White Nile, banish- ment to which was regarded as equivalent to sen- (658) 4 WHITE XILE EXPLORERS. fence of death At the time of Linant's expedition nothing was known beyond the fourteenth degree of north latitude, or about a hundred miles south Khartoum. The wilderness of fever-stricken marshes that line the White Nile long baffled the attempts of the most determined explorers to pene- trate to the southward At length " dry land " was again at GondoTcoro, only five degrees from the equator. It in turn became an advanced posi- tion of Effvptian authority, a centre of mission enterprise, a half-way house where the traveller ted and equipped himself for new discoveries. 1'. m the base of Gondokoro, Petherick pursued his arches into the condition of the negro race- : the Uppei Nile; the- Italian traveller. Miani. pene- trated Car towards the south-west, into the countries upied by the Nyam-Nyam tribes, that singular dwarf s and cannibals ; and Dr. Schwein- furth. • Long, a ad Mdlle. Tinne* followed up arch with magnificent results. Mdlle. Tinne, a brave Dutch lady, desen f their husbands, the banks of the Zambesi, and the other on the White Nile. Mdlle. Tinn.' and Mr-. Livingstone paid with their lives for their devotion, MADEMOISELLE TINNE. Past SS. SLAVE-HUNTING OX THE NILE. 39 and are buried by the streams from whose waters they helped to raise the veil. Lady Baker has been more fortunate. Only a girl of seventeen when she rode by her husband's side from Gondokoro, she has lived to return to Europe from the inmost heart of Africa, and her name will be associated indissolubly with the two great events of recent African history — the discovery of the great lakes and the suppression of the slave traffic. For unfortunately explorers and missionaries were not the only strangers who were attracted to this region of the White Nile. It has long been one of the great man-hunting grounds of Africa. The Egyptian conquest of the Soudan rather gave a stimulus to the trade than otherwise. The traffic was in the heyday of its prosperity as the European travellers were struggling to reach the equatorial lakes, and the pages of their journals reveal its horrors in all their hideous nakedness. Arab traders were the chief actors in these enterprises ; but a motley crew of other nations, including — with shame it must be said — some of white race, took a share in them ; and they were under the scarcely-disguised patronage, and very largely for the profit, of the Egyptian authoi'ities at Khartoum and elsewhere. Khartoum marks pretty exactly the limit of the area occupied by the Arab race in this direction, and also of the main influence of the Mussulman religion. Beyond it we have the negro and the pagan. Fanaticism and race hatred, therefore, helped to inflame the evil passions which the slave trade 40 MURDER AND MAX-CATCHING. invariably arouses. The business of the miscreants engaged in this detestable work was simply kid- napping and murder. The trade of the White Nile was purely slave-hunting. The trifling traffic in ivory and gums Mas a mere deception and sham, intended to cover the operations of the slaver. A marauding expedition would be openly fitted out at Khartoum, composed of some of the most atrocious ruffians in Africa and south-western Asia, with the scum of a few European cities. Their favourite mode of going to work was to take advantage of one of those wars which are constantly being waged between the tribes of Central Africa. If a war were not going on in the quarter which the slave-hunters had marked out for their raid, a quarrel was purposely fomented — at no time a difficult task in Africa. At dead of night the marauders with their black allies would steal down upon the doomed village. At a signal the huts are fired over the heads of the sleeping inmates, a volley of musketry is poured in, and the gang of desperadoes spring upon their victims. A scene of wild confusion and massacre follows, until all resistance has been relentlessly put down, and then the slave-catcher counts over and ecures his human spoils. This is the first act of the bloody drama. Most probably, if the kidnappers think ilny have not made a huge enough "haul," they pick ;i quarrel with their allies, who are in their turn shot, down, or overpowered, and manacled to their late enemies, are soon floating down the Nile in a slave dhow, on their way to the markets of Egypt or Turkey. SUPPRESSION OF THE SLAVE TRAFFIC. 41 The waste of human life, the stoppage of industry and honest trade, the demoralization of the whole region within reach of the raiders, the detestable cruelties and crimes practised on the helpless captives on the journey down the river, on the caravan route across the desert, or in the stifling- dens where they are lodged at the slave depots and markets, represent an enormous total of human misery. The efforts of Baker Pasha, Gordon Pasha, and other lieutenants of the viceroy of Egypt, to- gether with the measures taken by European powers to intercept slave cargoes on the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, have given, it may be hoped, a death-blow to the traffic. So closely is it bound up with all the social and commercial usages of Central Africa that it will linger on for many a day to come, and at the first symptom of relaxed watchfulness it will revive to new life. Ao - ain and airain it has raised its hateful head in the Upper Nile region ; and only the other day Colonel Gordon had to lead a large expedition against a force of some two thousand lawless adventurers who still openly persevered in their piratical enter- prises. But for the most part they now pursue obscure paths, and rely more on guile and cunning than on force for securing their prey. The story of the suppression of the "White Nile slave trade has still to be told ; for Colonel Gordon, the man who has been the chief actor in the work, has a must rare " talent for silence/' and has not as yet taken the world into his confidence with regard to his wonder- ful adventures as " Governor-General of the Soudan " 12 THE MIMOSA FOREST. — a post which he has now resigned. Knight-erram; never met with more startling experiences, and cer- tainly never undertook a task of such real and last- ing value to the cause of humanity and discovery. While with the slave trade has been removed the chief impediment to the opening up of the Nile sources, the actual physical difficulties met with have been stupendous. Entering the White Nile, we plunge into a new world — a region whose climate and animal and vegetable life, in brief, whose whole aspect and nature, are totally unlike those of the desert which stretches up to the walls of Khartoum. We arc within the zone of regular rainfall, an inter- mediate region that extends to the margin of the great lakes, where we meet with the equatorial belt of perennial rains. Henceforth we have not only heat but moisture acting upon the face of nature. One may determine which of the two climates is tic more tolerable by considering whether lie would prefer to be roasted or stewed. The traveller would tin 1 it hard to decide whether the desert or the Bwamp is the greater bar to his advance. Every mile of progress marks an increase of dampness and of warmth. First of all, we pass through the great mimosa forest, which extends, belt-like, almost across the continent, marking the confines of the Sahara and the Soudan. The reader must not imagine a dense girdle of tall trees and tangled undergrowth, but a park-like country, with wide glades between clumps and lines of thorny shrub- bery. The mimosa, or Arabian acacia — the tree I PI 2 I THE SWAMPS OF THE WHITE NILE. 43 from which the gum-arabic of commerce is extracted — has assigned to it the outpost duty in the struggle between tropical luxuriance and desert drought ; and its lines are extended in " skirmishing order." By-and-by it gives place to the ambatch, as the characteristic tree of the Nile. The margin of the river becomes marshy and reedy. The water en- croaches on the land, and the land on the water. The muddy stream rolls lazily between high walls of rank vegetation, and bearing islands of intertwisted leaves, roots, and stems on its bosom. It breaks up into tortuous channels that seem to lead nowhere and everywhere. A nearly vertical sun shines down on the voyager as he slowly toils up-stream ; scarcely a breath of wind is stirring to blow away the mala- rious mists that rise from the steaming shores, or to shake out his drooping sail. Worst plague of all, the mosquitoes are incredibly active and numerous. Nothing can ward off their persistent attacks, or satiate their thirst for blood. Day follows day with scarcely an event to break the dreary monotony. Now and then, perhaps, the unwieldy shape of a hippopotamus comes snorting to the surface, a croco- dile shows his vicious jaws, or where the banks are more solid than elsewhere a buffalo pushes his head through the reeds to drink. The true river margin is invisible, except from the boat's mast, over the heads of the tall papyrus stems with their funereal plumes. Could we reach it, we would probably be glad to sheer off again ; for of all the growths of this dismal swamp man is the most repulsive. The 44 A SLOUGH OF DESPOND. Dinka tribes of the White Nile are among the lowest in the scale of human beings. Utterly innocent of clothing, travellers tell us they are equally destitute of moral qualities. The Shillooks are a finer race physically, but they are inveterate pirates and mur- derers ; and the traveller, if not himself too strongly supported to fear molestation, would do wisely to give their canoes of ambatch a wide berth. At the entrance of the Sobat a glimpse is caught of a vista of open water rolling down from the southern Abyssinian highlands, where, Dr. Beke tells, the stream runs for seven days' journey through a forest so dense as completely to exclude the rays of the sun. Above the Sobat mouth, how- ever, we meet with the greatest of all the obstruc- tions of the Nile — with what is, in fact, the lowest of the Nile reservoirs. Here, at the union of the main stream of the White River with the numerous channels of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, coming from the west, and with other affluents on the right bank, has been formed a vast marsh through which the water soaks as through a sponge. In the centre is a small nucleus of a lake — Lake No : but to reach it, or to emerge from it again, or to thread by any other track a way through this net-work of blind creeks and labyrinthine channels, demands inexhaustible patience and skill. Yet across this Slough of Des- pond Sir S. Baker managed, in his Becond Nile expedition, to cut a canal, through which was towed, or rather dragged, the first steamer that ever floated on the head-waters of the great river. If by extraor- A TRAMP ACROSS AFRICA. 45 dinary good-luck we escape scathless from the clutches of the fever and the savages, we step again upon dry land, with unspeakable thankfulness, at Gondokoro. Seventeen years ago — probably the description applies at the present moment, though Egypt has since made it a military station, and renamed it Lsmailia — Gondokoro was a squalid collection of grass huts, in the midst of an untrodden wilderness, and surrounded by barbarous and hostile tribes. It was the scene, however, of one of the most interesting episodes in the history of discovery. One evening in February 1SG3 a travel-stained caravan, with two white men at its head, crested the high ground above the station, and with shouts, waving of flags, and rattle of musketry, came briskly down the slope. It was Speke and Grant, thus far on their overland march from Zanzibar, with the secret of the Nile in their pockets. On their long tramp they had visited strange new peoples and countries, and by courage and tact had escaped unharmed from a multitude of perils. They had traced the western shore of that vast reservoir of fresh water which Speke had sighted on a previous expedition, and had named the Victoria Nyanza. They had seen the lake discharging its surplus waters to the northward over the Ripon Falls, and knew that they had solved the great geographical puzzle of the day. Lower down, at the Karuma Falls, they were compelled to leave the stream, which they now knew to be the Nile, and crossing to the right bank, they made straight across country to Gondokoro. Here they came in 46 A STRAXGE MEETING. sight of the farthest outpost of Egyptian exploration, and again looked upon the river that was to bear them down to the Mediterranean. By a curious coincidence, the first Englishman who had penetrated so far to the southward was at that moment in Gondokoro. Samuel Baker and his wife were interrupted in their preparations for their journey to the Nile sources by the noise of the appi'oaching party, and they rude out to see what all the hubbub meant. Four people from a dis- tant nook of Europe met in the heart of Africa; and as they clasped hands, the hoary secret of the Nile was unriddled! All of them hail numberless difficulties before as well as behind them ; but their hearts were undismayed, and swelled only with pride at what had been accomplished for science and for their native land. The travellers from Zanzibar bore the marks of their long journey — "battered and torn, but sound and seaworthy." "Speke," Baker tells us, "appeared tin- more worn of the two; he was excessively lean, but in reality in good tough condition. He bad walked the whole way from Zanzibar, never having once ridden during the wearying march. Grant was in honourable rags, his bare knees projecting through the remnants of trousers thai were an exhibition of rough industry in tailor-work. He was looking tiled and feverish, but both men bad a fire in the eve that showed the spirit thai had led them through." The firsi greet- ings over, baker's earliest question was, Was there no leaf of the laurel reserved for him? Yes; thei • . THE EXPLORER'S DIFFICULTIES. 47 was. Below the Karuma Falls, Speke and Grant had been informed, the stream from the Victoria Nyanza fell into, and almost immediately emerged again from, another lake, the Luta Nzige, which must therefore be the ultimate reservoir of the Nile waters. No European had ever seen this basin, or even heard of it before ; and Baker determined that this should be his share of the prize. A new class of obstacles and risks, however, meet us when we undertake, as we must do here, a land journey in intertropical Africa. There is no longer, as in the desert, the peril of death from thirst or starvation ; for the country abounds in game, and our course does not throughout lie through intermin- able swamp, as in the river navigation. But from the very beginning we are beset with hindrances and an- noyances small and great. An army of porters must be got together, — Stanley numbered his by the thou- sand, — drilled, and fed. Like other Africans, they are children of impulse, credulous, suspicious, often lying, cowardly, and treacherous. On the slightest provocation they are seized with panic, and desert ; or they take advantage of relaxed discipline, and mutiny. The leader must be possessed of inex- haustible good-humour, and at the same time be able to prove, when occasion requires, that he is a stern master. A dove-like demeanour will hardly suit the African explorer ; he must be wise as a serpent and watchful as a hawk. "When at length a start is made, difficulties accumulate at every step. In a country where rain falls for ten or eleven (638) 5 48 TROPICAL MOISTURE AXD VEGETATION. months in the year, under a vertical sun, the growth of vegetation is amazing. In the dry season the grass and shrubs are burned far and wide ; but after a few weeks' rain the new plant-life starts up with incredible quickness. The country is covered with an impenetrable jungle of grass, reeds, and bamboos. A thick undergrowth starts up below the shade of the forest trees ; the great stems of the pandanus, the banana, and the baobab are covered to their tops with a feathery growth of parasitic ferns and orchids, ami festooned with the tough branches of the wild vine and the liana, and other twining and creeping plants. The rivers are at their highest mark, and the marshes are profound and impassable. The native villages arc almost smothered under the dank luxuriance of plant-life, and lions and other beasts of prey can creep up unseen to the very doors of the huts. The whole country, in short, becomes a, tangled brake, with only here and (here an open space, or a rough track marking where tli<' heavy body of an elephant, a rhinoceros, or a buffalo has crushed ;i way through the high grass. The fact that tin re is "a lion in the way ' much more an elephant -is an incentive to the traveller to push on. I>nt there are other and worse enemies, whom he cannot, remove from his path by means of his rifle. Where, a- is the ease between Gondokoro and r looking on while lie makes a hog of himself by swallowing calabash after calabash of native beer. Withouthis "pombe," or beer, the African king could hardly exist; and when it is his royal pleasure to travel, mounted on the back of one of his courtiers, a large flagon of his favourite beverage is carried behind him by one of bis wives to refresh his majesty on the road. In duplicity, cruelty, and rapacity King Kamrasi was A ROYAL PROGRESS. Page SO. THE ALBERT XYAXZA IN SIGHT. 51 abreast of any black man of his time. Speke and Grant did not love him for his inordinate and insa- tiable greed, and the long delays that this caused at his capital, Mrooli ; and Baker had still less reason to do so. His exactions on that traveller ended in a demand for an exchange of wives. This was too much ; and the incensed explorer, holding his loaded revolver within a foot or two of the monarch's chest, sternly told him that if the insult were repeated he would shoot the scoundrel dead. This threat had a due effect, and next day Baker was again on the march to the lake. And after all it turned out that it was only a sham Kamrasi, who had been playing the part of king before the white man ; the real anointed of Unyoro had been skulking among the attendants, and when an acquaintance is made with him later, he turns out to be several degrees more objectionable even than his substitute. At length, after eighteen days' march through forest and morass, amid almost continuous rains, and with his wife for the greater part of the way borne beside him insensible in a litter — having been prostrated with sunstroke — the explorer reached the long-sought-for goal. Ascending a gentle slope, with little to distinguish it from the other undulations of the surface, the Luta Nzige — the Albert Nyanza, as it was afterwards christened, after an honoured name in Eno-land — burst on his siffht, its white waves breaking on a pebbly beach fifteen hundred feet below. Far away on the horizon, blue mountains, seven thou- sand feet in height, could be faintly descried. Their 52 A VOYAGE OX THE ALBERT LAKE. distance seemed about seventy miles, and the lake appeared to extend to their very base. Northward and southward the gleaming expanse of water seemed limitless. It was a basin worthy of its great func- tion, as the gathering-place of the head- waters of the Nile, which issues a full-grown stream from its northern end. The white strangers who had been first privileged to look upon this glorious scene lost no time in hurrying down to the shore of the lake and bathing their feet in its clear fresh water. After an adventurous voyage in a frail, native boat, they reached the lower end of the great reservoir, where, within a few miles, could be seen the Victoria Nile entering the lake, and the broad channel fringed with water-plants where the White Nile made its exit. Their course lay amid storm and sunshine; first under beetling precipices that line the eastern shore of the Albert Nyanza, and down which jets of water — each a Nile source — could be seen plunging from a height of one thousand feet into the lake ; and then through a fiat waste of reeds, and out and in among beds of water-plants and floating rafts of vegetable matter in every stage of growth and decay. But the travellers could not wait to examine all these wonders, or to trace the extent of the Albert basin. They must be in (iondokoro in a tew weeks, or leave their bones in Central Africa. Turning into the entrance to the Victoria Nile, and ascending a few miles, a new marvel greeted them — the Murchison Palls. "Rounding a corner," says the THE MURCHISON FALLS. Page S3- THE MURCHISOX FALLS. 53 traveller's record, " a magnificent sight burst upon us. On either side of the river were beautiful wooded cliffs, rising abruptly to a height of about three hundred feet ; rocks were jutting out from the intensely green foliage ; and rushing through a gap that cleft the rock exactly before us, the river, contracted from a grand stream, was pent up in a narrow gorge of scarcely fifty yards in width : roaring furiously through the rock -bound pass, it plunged in one leap of about one hundred and twenty feet perpendicular into a dark abyss below. The fall of water was now white, which had a superb effect as it contrasted with the dark cliffs that walled the river, while the grace- ful palms of the tropics and wild plantains completed the beauty of the scene. This was the greatest water- fall of the Nile." Since Baker's time, Gordon Pasha and M. Gessi, in a steamer brought up in pieces from Gondo- koro, have navigated the Albert Nyanza, curtailing- it considerably of the fair proportions it showed on the first maps, and showing that, instead of joining in at its southern extremity with Tanganyika, it ends at a distance of about one hundred miles in a forest of ambatch ; and Colonel Long, M. Linant de Belief onds, and others, have traced the whole course of the Victoria Nile — discovering on their way a new lake, Ibrahim — as far as the Victoria Nyanza, on whose mightier waters we must now embark. CHAPTER III. A VOYAGE ON THE VICTORIA NYANZA. " Of most disastrous chances. Of moving accidents by flood and field, Of hair-breadth 'scapes." — Othello. T was front a direction opposite to that in which we have been approaching it that the first sight of the Victoria Nyanza — the queen of African lakes — was caught by a European eye. Its discovery followed closely on that of Tanganyika, and preceded by a few months the finding of Lake Nyassa. The three chief reservoirs of the equatorial rainfall, after re- maining hidden since the beginning of history from the sight of all but the barbarous natives of their shores, were revealed to the knowledge of the scientific world within ;i period of eighteen months. In the summer of L858, Richard Burton and John Speke, two promising young lieutenants in the Indian army, who had been commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society to search for the sup- posed bake Regions in the centre of the African continent, were at Unyanyembe, half-way on their return journey to Zanzibar, after having sighted and DISCOVERY OF THE VICTORIA LAKE. 55 partly explored the great fresh-water reservoir which is now so well known as the Tanganyika. Speke had heard, from Arab and native sources, rumours of a still larger lake that lay far away to the north- ward ; and the idea caught a strong hold upon him that here at last were authentic tidings of the long- sought-for Nile sources. His companion was more sceptical, and decided to remain where he was, ar- ranging and preparing the results of their previous journey, while Speke should pursue alone the new line of exploration. He started on the 9th of July 1858, and, after three weeks' march over an undulating country in- tersected by streams flowing to the northward, he came in view, on the 30th of the month, of the head of a deep gulf expanding towards the north. Pur- suing his journey along the eastern side of this gulf, he saw, from a height of two hundred feet above its surface, how it opened out into an ocean-like expanse of water, girt in by hill and forest on the right hand and on the left, but stretching away inimitably towards the northward and eastward — "so broad that you could not see across it, and so long that nobody knew its length." " I no longer felt any doubt," he writes, " that the lake at my feet gave birth to that interesting river, the source of which has been the subject of so much speculation and the object of so many explorers." Unable at the time to pursue his investigations further, he returned to Unyanyembe, and ultimately to England. There his new theory of the Nile 56 NILE THEORIES. sources gave rise to voluminous and sometimes bitter discussion. Two schools of Nile theorists arose : one of which clung to Speke's reading of the problem, while the other held that the new lake was an insig- nificant detached sheet of water, or, at most, quite a subsidiary reservoir of the great river, whose true head-waters would probably be found in the Tangan- yika, if not even farther south. The most powerful supporter of this notion was Speke's old companion, the burly Richard Burton, who has perhaps tra- velled in and written more about strange countries, and come through more startling experiences, than any man of his generation. Avowedly to substan- tiate the correctness of his views. Captain Spcke was again on the East African Coast in the autumn of I860, and, in company Avith Captain Grant, a brother officer, started on one of the most ardu- ous and eventful marches ever undertaken by a discoverer. They followed almost the track which Speke had traversed two years before: but, instead of making for the smith end of the lake, they were compelled to strike off towards the left; andj after many adventures and hardships, they found themselves, in the close of 1861, in Kara- gwe, a country to the west of the Victoria, ruled over by a respectable and mild - tempered old black king named Rumanika. Just as every visitor to Kamrasi lias the same story to relate of his i.i cally greed and brutality, so the explorers whose good fort mie lias led them to the neigh- bourhood of Rumanika's head village, have all come 57 away delighted with his unaffected kindliness and generous help. We will meet him, however, further on, and have to note at present that Speke and Grant were com- pelled to take up quarters with him for a period that must have tried the patience of both host and guests, and that it was not till the end of January 18G2 that our travellers got a first sight of the lake. Then, keeping well up on the high grounds, they proceeded on their way northwards, catching only at long in- tervals a glimpse of the shining waters, until they arrived at the court of Mtesa, king, or " emperor," as some will have it, of Uganda. This is, in many respects, the most interesting personage in Central Africa, and as important, in his way, to the explorer as the Victoria Nyanza itself, over which he is the presiding genius. There is no such unanimity of opinion regarding Mtesa, as in the case of the other two " Great Powers " of the Nile Lake Region— the kings of Unyoro and Karagwe. He has been painted to us by different hands as a bloodthirsty monster, and as a highly intelligent and amiable prince ; as a thorough savage, and as the accomplished ruler of a semi-civilized people. We will have an opportunity presently of studying this enigmatical monarch more at our leisure. Speke and Grant, at least, formed the worst possible opinion of him, and with good reason. His " capital " — which is simply the spot where the king chooses to take up his residence — was a Doubting- Castle to them, ami Mtesa a good representative of Giant Despair. At length they took their departure, 58 SCEPTICAL GEOGRAPHERS. and striking a river that flowed to the north, they followed it up-stream until they reached a spot where the lake was seen emptying its surplus waters over a rocky ledge into the channel that led them towards Egypt. Satisfied then that the object of their journey was achieved, they turned their back on the Victoria Nyanza, and shaped the nearest course for Gondokoro, where we witnessed them arrive in tatters, but in triumph. Their journey, however, was far from setting at rest the controversy as to the origin of the Nil''. Such is the opinionativeness of the geographer's nature, that most of the disputants stuck to their old positions. The adherents to Spekc's views, of course, swore by him and his lake more strongly than ever. Others ridi- culed the bare idea of a vast body of fresh water two hundred ami fifty miles long by as many in breadth, such as Speke had sketched on his map from native information, existing at this particular spot, and nearly as hiffh above sea-level as the summit of Ben Nevis. Tt was directly in the teeth of the e\ idenee of ancient manuscripts and preadopted opinions, and native in- formation could be g,,t to support any conceivable proposition. Sir Samuel Baker, for instance, received (lie most positive assurance in L869 that the native boats ailed from the Albert Nyanza to Ujiji on bake Tanganyika ; and Livingstone held firmly to the opinion of the identity of these two lakes, until lie had himself the honour of disproving it by ^sit- ing the north end of Tanganyika. To the last days of his life l,,. believed thai fche Victoria Nyanza, as a A NEW MAX AND A NEW METHOD. 59 single body of water, existed only on Speke's map, and that its area was actually occupied by at least five different lakes, some of which had probably no connection with the Nile at all. The solution of the Nile puzzle was still, in short, in a tantalizing and unsatisfactory stage of semi- solution. An explanation had been offered but the proof of its soundness was not yet complete. Mr. Henry M. Stanley resolved to set the whole question at rest, or perish in the attempt. He would establish the claims of the Victoria to the respectful regard to which its vastness and the importance of its functions entitled it, or show it up as a geographical humbug. Mr. Stanley is no ordinary figure, even among African explorers. His achievements in this field will vie with those of his most distinguished compeers. In tenacity of purpose, in courage, and in endurance he is scarcely second to Livingstone himself. Mr. Stanley introduced a novel method of African exploration, and brought a new power at his back. He was the representative, not of geographical research or of missionary zeal, but of newspaper enterprise. Al- ready he had made a successful journey into Central Africa as the representative of the New York Herald, and, in his own peculiar language, had " discovered Livingstone;" that is, discovered whereabouts Living- stone was pursuing his researches. On the present occasion he was accredited by the New York paper and by the Daily Telegraph of London, jointly, and the expedition bore at its head the British and American flags. It was also semi-scientific and semi- Cess) Q GO A.V EXPLORING ARMY. military in its organization. Hero, in the leader's words, is the order of march, as the party started gaily from Bagamo} T o, opposite Zanzibar, on the 17th of No- vember 1S74 : — " Four chiefs, a few hundred yards in front ; next, twelve guides, clad in red robes of Jobo, bearing coils of wire ; then a long file, two hundred and seventy strong, bearing cloth, wire, beads, and sections of the Lady Alice; after them, thirty-six women and ten boys, children of the chiefs, and boat-bearers, fol- lowed by riding-asses, Europeans, and gun-bearers ; the long line closed by sixteen chiefs, who act as rearguard : in all, three hundred and fifty-six souls connected with the Anglo-American expedition. The lengthy line occupies nearly half a mile of the path." Mr. Stanley did not mean to be stopped on the route he had chosen by the objections of any native chief to the passage of the little army through his territory. If the opposition were carried to the ex- tent of a challenge of battle, the American explorer was prepared to accept it and fight his way through. In this way he counted on avoiding the long delays, the roundabout routes, and the fragmentary results which had marked the efforts of previous travellers. It is an admirable method, if your main object is to get through the work rapidly, if you are strong • nough to despise all assaults, and if you have no prospect of travelling the -ami' road again. Its wisdom and justifiableness need not be discussed; luit it may simply be remarked that this conjunction of campaigning and exploration gives an extra spice of danger and an exciting variety to the narrative, THE SOUTHERN LIMIT OF THE NILE BASIX. 61 which carries us back to the time when the Con- quistadors were busy carving out with their swords rich provinces for Spain and Portugal in the New World. Mr. Stanley carried with him, it will be seen, the sections of a boat, forty feet in length, wherewith to explore the Victoria Nyanza, or any other great lake or stream that he might meet with on his course. He had with him as assistants three Englishmen — Francis and Edward Pocock, young Thames water- men, and a clerk named Frederick Barker — none of whom, alas ! ever emerged from the deadly jungles of Central Africa which they entered so light-heartedly. Unyanyembe is the usual half -way house of tra- vellers to the lakes ; but, breaking off to the right before reaching that unhealthy den of black-mailers, Mr. Stanley marched his array north-westwards till about the fifth degree of south latitude he reached the water-parting, where the streams begin to flow northwards. Here, in a plain over five thousand feet above the sea, and two thousand five hun- dred miles in a straight line from its mouth in the Mediterranean, is the most southerly limit of the basin of the Nile. Here, also, Stanley's difficulties began to gather thick and fast upon him. The party suffered for want of food, and lost their way. The camp was attacked with sickness, and Edward Pocock was one of the victims. The natives were hostile, and there were fears that Mirambo, chief of the " Ruga-Rugas," a noted freebooter of these parts, was hovering with his band of cut-throats in the 62 THE GREAT LAKE IN* SIGHT. neighbourhood. By-and-by these storm-clouds burst in war, not with the bandits, but with the people of Ituru. A " three days' battle " resulted in the com- plete discomfiture of the savage foe ; and the weak- ened expedition marched on, having lost in the affair " twenty -four killed and four wounded,"' besides having twenty -five on the sick-list. For many days' march the valley of the Shimeeyu, the principal affluent of the lake from the south, was follows 1 through dense forests, over which loomed " enormous bare rocks, like castles, and hillocks composed of great fragments of splintered granite and broad heaving lumps of gneiss ; then through fine rolling plains, with a broad prospect on either hand of rich pasture lands, hedge-inclosed villages, and herds of wild and tame animals, only interrupted by the gray masses of crag that started up here and there from the surface of the green downs." The lakt; was near at hand. " We dipped," says Mr. Stanley, "into the basins and troughs of the land, surmounted ridge after ridge, cross,, 1 water- courses and ravines, passed by cultivated fields and through villages smelling strongly of cattle, by good- natured groups of natives, until, ascending a long gradual slope, we heard, on a sudden, hurrahing in front, and then we too, with the lagging rear, knew that the "Teat lake was in sight." Six hundred feel b sneath them and three miles away, lay "along, broad arm of water," shining like silver in the bright sun- shine, bordered by lines of green waving rushes, thin ves of to-. 5, and native hut-: beyond these a dark AX ADVENTUROUS VOYAGE. 63 boundary of hills, and in front a gleaming plain of water, with gray rocky islets scattered over it. The Victoria I> yanza had been struck at Kagehyi, not far from the spot where Speke first saw its waters. No time was lost in putting the Lady Alice together; and, leaving the bulk of his followers in charge of Frank Pocock and Barker, Stanley, with a crew of ten sailors and a steersman, set out on the 8th of March 1875 on his perilous voyage round the coasts of the great fresh-water sea. It would be too long a story to trace the progress of the bold " special correspondent " from point to point of his adventurous course, or even simply to recount the names of the new countries, rivers, bights, capes, and islands that passed under his eyes as he coasted along the lake shores. He has described his experiences with remarkable spirit and graphic power ; and if one is inclined now and then to smile at the gorgeousness of his tastes in language, and the im- posing titles that he bestows on shock -headed savages and the members of their " courts," no one can deny the thrilling interest of his narrative. It is like making a voyage with Robinson Crusoe in unknown tropical seas, or accompanying a knight-errant on one of his marvellous journeys into the untrod- den forest in quest of adventure ; and yet all the time you are aware that you are witnessing events that happened in sober fact only the other day, and that were recorded in the newspapers as they oc- curred, like a debate in Parliament or the details of a railway accident. 64 THE SCENERY OF THE NYANZA. Each day some new danger had to he faced, from storms, or shoals, or hostile natives. For weeks the shores of the Nyanza stretched on, promontory be- hind promontory, and still the tired mariners toiled alono- the margin of the unknown lands on their lee, and out and in among the numerous islands. From the starting point round the eastern shore the coast shows a succession of hold headland and deep bay, at the head of which is generally a river draining the highlands behind. Sometimes a dark mountain mass, covered with wood, overhangs the waters, rising ab- ruptly to a height of three thousand feet or more ; and then ao-ain there will intervene between the hills and the lake an open plain, grazed over by herds of zebras, antelopes, and giraffes. There is great diversity also in the islands. Many of them are bare masses of rock, supporting no green blade ; others are swathed to the summit in masses of rank intertwisted vege- tation that excludes the perpendicular rays of the sun. Some of the smallest arc highly cultivated, and occupied by a dense population ; one or two of the largest, such as Ugingo, betray no sign of human beings inhabiting their dismal shades. Generally 1 1 m • region is rocky, broken, hilly, and intensely tropical in character. Behind the coast ranges absolutely nothing is known beyond a few- vague reports picked up from native sources. The rivers are not large, and it is not probable that they have their sources so far off as the great snowy range thai runs down midway between the lake and the east coast of Africa. Some geographers have chosen to cull AN UNVISITED REGION. 65 this chain by the venerable name of the " Mountains of the Moon," thus removing these ancient landmarks from their immemorial position in the centre of Africa, and placing them at right angles to their former direction. They ought, therefore, to have some connection with the Nile ; but the likelihood is that the drainage of the western slopes of Kili- mandjaro, Kenia, and the other great mountain masses that lift their heads above the line of perpetual snow on the very equator, finds its way into a number of detached lakes existing in this part of the African plateau. The intervening country is roamed over by the Madai, a fierce pastoral tribe, who make their living by plundering their more industrious neigh- bours. It may be long, therefore, ere any one ven- tures into the domains of these Bedouins of the Equator to explore their secrets. Stanley heard of " hills that smoked " in this quarter, and it is likely enough that active volcanoes may be found here, many of the summits of the snowy range being ex- tinct craters. Farther to the northward, it is con- jectured, is the present location of a mysterious lake — Baringo — which, since the very earliest da} T s of map-making, has played an active part on the chart of Africa, appearing, disappearing, and reappearing again in quite a different part of the continent in a most unaccountable way. If any discoverer is ever lucky enough to catch it, it may possibly be found to be the source of the Asua river, and an important Nile lake. When Stanley reached the extreme north- eastern corner of the Victoria Nyanza, where Speke 66 BELLICOSE "HIPPOS." was positive that the Baringo would be got, he found that it had again shifted its ground. Before reaching this point, the crew of the Lady Alice had encountered other perils than those arising from reefs and storms. Unexpected opposition, for instance, was offered by the Victorian hippopotamus. This behemoth of an animal abounds here, as it does in all the waters of tropical Africa; but while in most other places it refrains from attacking man, unless when provoked, it was found on the Victoria lake to be of a peculiarly bellicose disposition. A few hours after starting on his voyage, Stanley was driven off the land and put to ignominious flight by a herd of savage hippopotami sallying out towards him open-mouthed. On another occasion, the rowers had to pull for bare life to escape the furious charge of a monster whose temper had been ruffled by the boat coming in contact with his back as he was ris- ing to the surface to breathe. Probably the hippo- potamus of the Victoria would be no more courageous than his neighbours if he were met with on land. There he always cuts a ridiculous figure, as he waddles along with his short legs and bulky body in search of the grass <>n which he feeds. !!<• seems to know that he i^ at a disadvantage on terra Jlrma, which, it' he can help it. he never visits except by night. When interrupted, he makes the best of his way back to the water, where his greal strength always make-, him a formidable antagonist. On the Victoria Nyan/.a tin- inhabitants do not seem to have dis- covered the methods of killing him practised by the SAVAGES OS THE LOOK-OUT. 67 natives on the Zambesi, by capturing him in pitfalls, or setting traps that bring down a heavy log of wood armed with an iron stake upon his stupid skull ; and round a great part of the shores he is the real monarch of the lake, his sway being only dis- puted by the crocodile. But the hippopotami and alligators are not the only " ugly customers " to be met with by the waters of the Victoria Nyanza. Frequently, when the crew of the Lady Alice approached the shore, lithe naked fio-ures would be seen flitting between the trunks of the trees, and savage eyes peering at them through the dense masses of foliage. If an attempt were made to land, a wild-looking crowd would troop out upon the shore; spears would be poised threateningly and arrows placed ready in the bow-string. Though the savage of the lake has not been endowed with the elf-locks that add so greatly to the formidable appearance of the "Red Indian, or with the huge frizzly mop of hair that helps to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of the wild men of Papua, he has succeeded tolerably well, by the aid of tattooing and painting in clay, in increasing his natural hideous- ness. The character of these negroes agrees very well with their outsides. They are cruel, treacherous, and vindictive, and any one cast away on their shores would have an extremely small chance of being- able to tell the story of his entertainment among them. At one point, near the north-eastern extremity of the lake, Mr. Stanley was induced to approach close G8 MORE FREE THAN WELCOME. to the land by the friendly gestures of half-a-dozen natives. As the boat was pulled nearer, the group on the shore rapidly increased, and it was thought prudent to halt. Instantly there started out of the jungle a forest of spears, and a crowd of yelling savaees rushed down in hot haste to the margin, lest their hospitable intentions towards the strangers should be balked. The boat, however, to the as- tonishment of these primitive black men, hoisted a great sail to the favouring land breeze, which carried it out to an island where the crew^ could camp and sleep in safety for the night. A little further on, while oil' the island of Ugamba, a large native canoe, manned by forty rowers and adorned with a waving mane of long grasses, was pulled confidently towards the mysterious craft. After reconnoitring it for a little, they edged up alongside, half of the occupants of the canoe standing up and brandishing their tufted spears. These visitors had been drinking freely of pombe to keep up their courage. They were noisy, impudent, and obstreperous; and finding that the white man and liis companions remained quiet ami patient, they began to reel tipsily about the boat, shout out their drunken choruses, and freely handle the property and persons of the strangers. Gradually they grew -'ill more unpleasantly aggressive. One drunken rascal whirled his sling over Stanley's head, and, cheered by lib companions, seemed aboul to aim the stone &\ tin' white man. Suddenly Stanley, who had bis revolver ready in his hand, fired a Bhot into the water. In an instant the boat was clear of the LAKE PIRATES BALKED. 69 intruders, every one of whom had plunged into the water at the first sound of the report, and was swimming lustily for the shore. With some little trouble their fears were pacified, and the humbled roisterers, partly sobered by their dip, came meekly back for their abandoned canoe. Presents were ex- changed, and the two parties separated, expressing profound admiration for each other. A still more dangerous people are the Wavuma, a pirate race, from whose clutches Stanley had great difficulty in escaping. They sent out from the shore a boat's crew on scouting duty, who approached holding up vegetables as a bait to the hungry voyagers. Mean- while a fleet of large canoes put out, and tried to intercept and surround the Lady Alice. As the crew of the latter bent to their oars in order to get out of harm's way. lances began to hurtle through the air, and a member of the scouting party held gleefully aloft a bunch of beads which he had dexterously abstracted from the white man's boat. Taking aim at this interesting gentleman, and at another who was making himself prominent in the pursuit, Mr. Stanley fired right and left, doubling them up in the bottom of their respective boats. Aiming his big rifle next at the advancing canoes, he drove great holes in them below the water-line, causing their crews to devote their whole attention to their craft to prevent them from sinking, while the exploring boat sailed on unmolested. The most perilous and the most dubious of Mr. Stanley's adventures, however, occurred at the island 70 A BUMBIREH RECEPTION. of Bumbireli, on the western side of the lake. The voyagers by this time were nearly at the end of their resources. They had passed weary days of toil under the blistering tropical sun, and dismal nights of hunger and cold on shelterless, uninhabited islands, when the grassy slopes of Bumbireli hove in sight. Numerous villages were seen in the shelter of the forest, with herds of cattle, maize fields, and groves of fruit trees, and altogether the island seemed to otter a haven of rest and plenty to the weary mariners. There was besides no food left in the boat, and a landing had to be attempted at all risks. The look of the Bumbireli natives was not so prepossessing as that of their land. They rushed down from their villages, shouting war-songs and brandishing their clubs and spears. No sooner had the boat reached shallow water, than they seized upon her, and dragged her, crew and all, high up on the rocky beach. " The scene that ensued," says the traveller, " baffles descrip- tion. Pandemonium — all the devils armed — raged around us. A forest of spears was levelled; thirty or forty bows were drawn taut; as many barbed airows seemed already on the wing; knotty clubs waved above our heads; two hundred screaming black demons jostled each other, and struggled for room to vent their fury, or for an opportunity to deliver one crushing blow or thrust at us." In point of fact, no thrust was delivered, and possibly none was intended; but the situation was certainly an unpleasant one. The troop of gesticulating, yell- ing savages increased every second; and the diabolical WARFARE AND MISFORTUNE. 71 noise of a number of drums increased the hubbub. The islanders began to jostle their guests, to pilfer, and at last to seize upon the oars. Stanley whispered some words of direction to his companions, and fired his double-barrelled elephant rifle into the crowd. Two men fell ; and while the others gave way, assisted by the discharge amongst them of two rounds of duck shot, the Lady Alice was pushed clown the beach, and the expedition was again afloat on the lake. But their position seemed little improved. On shore was the infuriated enemy, hurling after them stones and spears ; canoes were being launched in pursuit; while the crew of the Lady Alice had to tear up her bottom boards to serve as paddles ; and, to crown their misfortunes, two huge hippopotami were bearing down on them with jaws agape. A couple of balls settled these new foes ; but the two- legged antagonists were not so easily shaken off. In spite of the brisk fire directed upon them, four canoes were got into the water and manned. The elephant gun, loaded with explosive balls, was again, however, equal to the occasion. " Four shots killed five men and sank two of the canoes." The other crews had to stop to pick up their friends from the water, and could only shout in baffled rage, as the strangers paddled away from them, " Go and die in the Nyanza ! " Dismal days of famine and hardship followed. A storm overtook the fugitives, and they were tossed for hours on the waves of the Nyanza, and drenched with spray and rain. On board there were only four bananas as food for twelve hungry 72 RETRIBUTORY MEASURES. souls. At length they reached an island, on which, as it was uninhabited, they obtained not only food but peaceful shelter ; and, refreshed, they next morn- ing pursued their course, which landed them, not a man missing, at Kagehyi, whence they had set out sixty days before. Most people in Mr. Stanley's place would have thought that they had had enough of Bumbireh, and that the most prudent course was to give it in future a wide berth. Not so our traveller. He considered that a duty lay upon him of punishing the people who had treated him so scurvily — though it must be said that the natives had considerably the worst of the encounter. Assembling his forces, and reinforced by a number of Mtesa's men, he earned the war briskly into the enemy's ground. A fighting party of two hundred and thirty spearmen and fifty mus- keteers set out for the offending island. They were opposed by two or three thousand natives ranged along the shore. For an hour the savages gallantly held the water-line, opposing with slings and arrows the volleys from the boats; but at length they were put to flight, and Mr. Stanley, sheathing his sword, went on to other and more peaceful conquests. During his two months' absence circumnavigating the lake, the second of his white companions, Frederick liarker, had died at Kagehyi. That sad event was one of tlie items of the heavy cost at which a really greal feat of exploration had been performed. The importance of Spike's discoveries and the correctness of his views were completely established. The Victoria A GREAT FEAT. / 6 Nyanza was shown to be one vast body of water, and the head basin of the Nile stream. Its extent was shown to be about twenty-one thousand square miles, an area equal to that of Bavaria or Scotland. Excellent havens, navigable streams, and fertile islands were revealed for the first time to our know- ledge. Rich and beautiful countries and interesting races were vividly pictured for us. The most remark- able personage, however, in Central Africa is King Mtesa, and the most interesting people are his sub- jects the Waganda, whose acquaintance we failed to make on our voyage round the lake. (058) CHAPTER IV. UGANDA AND KING MTESA. Larger constellations burning, mellow moons anil ha] 1 y skies, Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise; There, methinks, would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind. In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that move mankind." locksley Hall will be remembered that, while coasting along the north shore of the Victoria Nyanza, Mr. Stanley had much ado to escape the attentions which the islanders of Uvunia, situated close to the outlet of the Nile from the lake, wished to force upon him. ( In the fol- lowing morning he came upon a land and a people that almost made him fancy that he had dropped dur- ing the night upon another planet, or at least sailed in some mysterious way From pagan Central Africa to semi-civilized and Mohammedan Asia. Instead ot the stones and spear-thrusts which the Wavuma desired to bestow upon him, he received nothing save courtesy and hospitality. In place of the naked, howling savages whom he had parted from a few hours before, he saw a bronze - coloured people, VILLAGE COURTESIES. VO scrupulously clean and decently, even handsomely clad, and showing- in their agriculture, their house architecture, their dress, but most of all in their polite demeanour, that they 1 had made considerable progress in arts and industry, and were under the strict dominion of recognized law. The head-man of the village approached. He was attired in a skirt of pure white, covered by a cloak of finely prepared bark cloth, having over it a fur of dressed monkey-skin. On his head was a handsome cap, and on his feet sandals. His followers were clothed in the same style, though in less rich materials. He smilingly bade the strangers welcome to the country, slew for them a fatted kid, and spread before them a feast of ripe bananas, clotted milk, sweet potatoes, and eggs, with civil apologies for having been taken unprepared for such guests. The traveller looked about him. It was a land of sun- shine and plenty — a green and flowery Paradise set between the brilliant sky and the scarcely less pure azure of the lake. Care and want seemed never to have intruded their presence here. There was food enough and to spare growing wild in the woods, or in the cultivated patches round the snug homesteads. Each roomy, dome -shaped hut had its thatched portico, where the inhabitants chatted or smoked. Surrounding them were courtyards, with erections which served as barns, cooking-houses, and lavatories, all inclosed by a trimly-kept hedge. Outside is the peasant's garden-plot, where he grows crops of pota- toes, yams, pease, kidney-beans, and other veget- 76 an African's paradise. ables of a .size that would be the despair of Coven t Garden. Bordering it are patches of coffee, tobacco, sugar-cane, and castor-oil plant, all for family con- sumption. Beyond these are his fields of maize and other grain, and his plantations of banana, plantain, and fig ; and outside of the village is the common where his flocks of goats and small white hornless cattle graze, in company with those of his neigh- bours. The land is of inexhaustible fertility. The sun- shine is unfailing : drought in this moist climate is unknown ; and the air is cooled and purified by the breezes from the lake and from the mountains. Within his own inclosure the peasant has enough and to spare for himself and his household, both of luxuries and necessaries. His maize fields furnish him with the staff of life, and the fermented grain yields the " pombe," which he regards almost as much a requisite of existence as bread itself. The grind- ing of Hour and the brewing of beer are all per- formed under his own eye by his family. The tig- tree yields him the bark out of which his clothes are made: but the banana is, perhaps, the most indispens- able of the gifts of nature in these climes. it supplies him, says Stanley, with " bread, potatoes, dessert, wine, beer, medicine, house and fence, bed, cloth, cook- ing-pot, table-cloth, parcel-wrapper, thread, cord, rope, sponge, bath, shield, sun-hat, and canoe. With it, he is happy, fat, and thriving; without it, a Famished, discontented, woe-begone wretch." The banana grows to perfection in Uganda; groves of it embower AN INVITATION TO COL'RT. 77 every village ; and the Waganda,* in addition to being simply fat and prosperous, have plenty of leisure time to devote to the arts of war and of peace. It is to the former, unfortunately, that they are most naturally prone ; but they have also made consider- able progress in manufactures, especially in cloth- making, tanning, metal -working, and canoe and house building. Even literature is not unknown among them, as we shall presently see. In short, there is considerable excuse for Speke's remark when he saw the beautiful scenery of the Ripon Falls at the outlet of the Nile from the lake, that with " a wife and family, a yacht and a gun, a dog and a rod," one might here be supremely happy, and never wish to revisit the haunts of civilization. While we have been making this survey, mes- sengers have been despatched to the head-quarters of the king, or kabaka (" emperor ") of the country, announcing the arrival of the white stranger. Ity- and-by, with heralding of drums and other music, and attended by a number of splendidly-equipped canoes, and with an escort bearing firearms, came an envoy with an urgent invitation to " court." The new-comer quite eclipsed the village chief in the gorgeousness of his apparel. Above features on which were strongly impressed a sense of the import- * It may be noted here, in a sentence, as something to be usefully borne in mind, that throughout Eastern and Central Africa, the prefix "U" signifies the country ; " Wa" (in some quarters " Ba," " Ma," or " Ama"), the people ; " Ki," the language; "M," a single individual, and "Mono," the prince, of a tribe. This holds good of all the region, from the Nile lakes to Hottentotland, occupied by the Bantu division of the African stock, who are markedly distinct from the true negroes of the West Coast. 78 A BEAUTIFUL LAND. ance of his mission waved a huge plume of cock's feathers, surmounting an elaborately worked head- dress of beads. A crimson robe was disposed about him with a dignified grace worthy of an ancient Roman, while over it was hung a snow-white goat- skin. The progress to the head-quarters of the court was conducted with due pomp and circumstance. Every step Stanley's wonderment and admiration in- creased ; each moment he received new proofs that lie had fallen among a people as different from those whom his previous wanderings had made him ac- quainted with as "the British in India are from their Afridi fellow-subjects, or white Americans from Choc- taws." Emerging from the margin of dense forests and banana and plantain groves on the lake shores, the singular beauty of the land revealed itself to him. Wherever he turned his eyes there was a brilliant play of colours, and a boldness and diversity of out- line such as he had never before seen. Broad, straight. and carefully-kept roads led through a rolling, thickly- peopled country clad in perennial -Teen. Now the path would dive down into a hollow, where it was shaded by tin- graceful fronds of plantains and other tropical trees, where a stream murmured over the stones, and the air was filled with the fragrance of fruit; and then again it would crest a ridge, from whence a magnificent prospect would be obtained of the sea-like expanse of the lake, w ith its wooded cape, and islands, the dim blue lines of the distant hills, and tin- fruitful and smiling country King between, it oft undulating outline of forest-covered valley THE CAPITAL OP UGANDA. „ 79 and grassy hill sharply broken by gigantic table- topped masses of gray rock and by profound ravines. At length, crowning the summit of one of the © * o smooth, dome-shaped hills which form one of the prominent features of the Uganda landscape, appeared King Mtesa's capital, Rubaga. A number of tall huts are clustered round one taller than the rest, from the top of which waves the " imperial standard " of Uganda. A high cane fence surrounds this residence © © of the court, with gates opening on four broad avenues that stretch, at right angles to each other, to the bottom of the hill. These also are lined with fences, and connected by narrow and winding paths, and the spaces between are occupied with groves of fig, banana, and other fruit trees, embowering the houses of the "commonalty." Up one of these wide pro- menades marched the explorer and his following; and after due delay — for court etiquette is as tedious and ceremonious on the Victoria Nyanza as in Europe — the Great gate was drawn aside, and with a crowd © © of courtiers, claimants, petitioners, and other waiters on royal favour, he was ushered from one courtyard to another, until he stood in the presence of King Mtesa himself, seated in his great audience hall, and surrounded by a host of chiefs, warriors, pages, pur- suivants, standard-bearers, executioners, drummers, fifers, clowns, dwarfs, wizards, medicine-men, slaves, and other retainers of court. And here occurred one of those singular rencounters between white men in © the interior of Africa of which we have already wit- nessed an example. King Mtesa, for his own glorifi- 80 ANOTHER UNEXPECTED MEETING. cation and delight probably, in the first place, but also, no doubt, to provide a pleasant surprise for his guests, had arranged that at Mr. Stanley's second interview at the " palace," another European traveller, who some time before had announced his approach, should be ushered into the hall of state. This was M. Linant de Belief onds, the son and the brother of distinguished explorers in the Nile countries, and who had been sent by Gordon Pasha on an embassy to Uganda. For a change we will hear this French gentleman's account of what he saw, the more espe- cially as he does not see King Mtesa and his court under such a glamour of romance as Mr. Stanley : — " On entering the court I am greeted with a fright- ful uproar. A thousand instruments, each more out- landish than the other, produce the most discordant and deafening sounds. Mtesa's body-guard, carrying guns, present arms on my appearance. The king is standing at the entrance to his reception hall. I approach, and bow to him a la Tu rque. He holds out his hand, which I press. I immediately perceive a sun-burned European to the left of the king, a trav- eller, whom I imagine to be Cameron. We exchange glances without speaking. Mtesa enters the reception room, and we follow him. it is a narrow room about sixty feet long by fifteen wide, the ceiling of which, sloping down at the entrance, is supported by a double row of pillars which divide the room into two aisles. The principal and central room is unoccupied, and leads to fche king's throne; the two aisles are tilled with the great dignitaries and chief officers, A COURT RECEPTION IN UGANDA. 81 At each pillar stands one of the king's guard, wearing a long red mantle, a white turban ornamented with monkey-skin, white trousers and black blouse with a red band. All are armed with guns. Mtesa takes his place on his throne, which is a wooden seat in the shape of an office arm-chair; his feet rest upon a cushion ; the whole placed on a leopard's skin spread over a Smyrna carpet. Before the king is a highly- polished elephant's tusk ; at his feet, two boxes con- taining fetiches ; on either side of the throne, a lance (one copper and the other steel), each held by a guard. These are the insignia of Uganda. The dog which Speke mentions has been done away with. Crouching at the feet of the kino- are the vizier and two scribes. Mtesa is dignified in manner, and does not lack a certain natural air of distinction. His dress is elegant, — a white couftan finished with a red band, stockings, slippers, vest of black cloth embroidered with gold, and a tarbush with a silver plate on the top. He wears a sword with an ivory inlaid hilt, and a staff. I exhibited my presents, which Mtesa scarcely pretended to see, his dignity forbidding him to show any curiosity. I address the traveller who sits in front of me, on the left of the king : ' Have I the honour of speaking to Mr. Cameron ? '— ' No, sir ; Mr. Stanley.'—' M. Linant do Bellefonds, member of the Gordon Pasha Expedition.' We bow low to each other, as though we had met in a drawing-room, and our conversation is at an end for the moment." Havincr seen Kino- Mtesa at the summit of his 82 A WAGANDA LEGEND. glory, high and lifted up, girt about by hosts of vas- sals, the absolute slaves of his will, listening delight- edly to the sound of a thousand drums and tom-toms, and gazing from his commanding eminence over his fair capital and the rich and beautiful region that owns him as lord, and in company with two white strangers who have come from the utmost ends of the earth to pay him court, there will be some curiosity to learn how the singular fabric of empire on which he sits has been built up in the heart of savage Africa. All around is the night of pagan darkness, ignorance, and cruelty. Here, in the land of the Waganda, if there is, as yet, no light to speak of, there is a ruddy tinge in the midst of the blackness that seems to give promise of approaching dawn. If the people are still blood- thirsty, revengeful, and fond of war and pillage, they have learned some lessons in observing law and order ; they practise some useful arts; they observe many of the decencies of life, and in the cleanliness of their houses and persons they are examples to some Euro- pean countries. The Waganda themselves have a high opinion of their own importance; and their legends carry back their origin to what, for an African tribe, remote past. The story, as related by them to Captain Speke, is as follows: — " Eight generations ago a sportsman from Unyoro, by name Uganda, came with a pack of dogs, a woman, a spear, and a shield, hunting on the left bank of the Katonga Valley, not far from the lake. Be was but a poor man, though BO successful in hunting that vast number-, Hocked to him for flesh, and became so THE FOUNDER OF UGANDA. 83 fond of him as to invite him to be their king, say- ing, ' Of what use to us is our present king, living so far away 1 ' At first Uganda hesitated, but, on being further pressed, consented, when the people, hearing his name, said, ' Well, for the future, let this country between the Nile and the Katonga be called Uganda ; and let your name be Kimera, the first king of Uganda.' The report of these proceedings reached the great king of Unyoro, who, in his magnificence, merely said, ' The poor creature must be starving : allow him to feed where he likes.' Kimera, suddenly risen to eminence, grew proud and headstrong, formed a strong clan around him, punished severely, and soon became magnificent. Nothing short of the grandest palace, a throne to sit on, the largest harem, the smartest officers, the best dressed people, even a menagerie for pleasure, in fact only the best of every- thing, would content him. Fleets of boats, not canoes, were built for war, and armies formed. In short, the system of government, according to barbarous ideas, was perfect. Highways were cut from one extremity of the country to another, and all rivers bridged. No house could be built without its necessary append- ages for cleanliness, and to disobey these laws was death. After the death of Kimera the prosperity of Uganda never decreased, but rather improved." A different version of the legend was told to Mr. Stanley by Sabadu, the " court historian " of Uganda. According to this personage, Kimera was not the founder of the Waganda nation, but only an import- ant figure in a long list of thirty-five monarchs, 84 HEROES AND SAGES. who were enumerated by name, and the first who taught his countrymen the delights of sport. He was, in fact, the Nimrod of Uganda genealogy, and a mighty giant to boot, the mark of whose enormous foot is still pointed out on a rock near the lake, where he had slipped while hurling a spear at an elephant. The first of the "Waganda was Kintn, a blameless priest, who objected to the shedding of blood — a scruple which does not seem to have been shared in by any of his descendants — and who came into this Lake Region when it was absolutely empty of human inhabitants. From Bantu, Sabadu traced the descent of his master through a line of glorious ancestry, — warriors and legislators, who performed the most astounding deeds of valour and wisdom, — and completely proved that, whatever may be the condition of history, fiction, at least, flourishes at the court of Mtesa. Passing over a hero who crushed hosts of his enemies by flying up into the air and dropping great rocks upon their heads, and a doughty champion who took his stand on a hill and there for three days withstood the assaults of all comers, catching the spears thrown at him and fling- ing them buck, until he was surrounded by a wall of two thousand slain, we come to Sunn, tin' father of Mtesa, who died only a little before Speke and Grant's visit to the country. Sunn, by all accounts, ;i gloomy monarch, who sat with bis eyes brood- ingly bent on the ground, only raising them to give tin' signal to his executioners for the slaughter of -"Hi-' of bis subjects. It is told of this sanguinary mtesa's youthful foibles. 85 despot that in one day he caused eight hundred of his people to be killed in his sight, and that he made a ghastly pyramid with the bodies of twenty thousand Wasoga prisoners — inhabitants of the opposite shore of the Victoria Nile, who had rebelled against him. He had able lieutenants, however, who spread the terror of his arms far and wide ; and Unyoro and other neighbouring countries were reduced to vassalage. He died, and his chiefs rejected his nomination of his eldest son — a brutal young ruffian, whose claim to distinction was that he had slain a buffalo with a club — and chose as his successor the mild-eyed young Mtesa. The latter immediately gave a proof of his quality by murdering his nearest relatives and all his father's most trusted counsellors and warriors. He was drunk with power, and too often also drunk with pombe. It was at this period of his career that Speke and Grant made his acquaintance. In these days, when the fit of frenzy was upon him, he would give orders for the slaughter of those who, a few hours before, were his prime favourites, or, arming himself with a bundle of spears, the miscreant would sally into his harem and launch them indiscrimin- ately among his wives and children. A favourable change, however, by -and- by came over the spirit and conduct of Mtesa, and the credit of it is due to an Aral) " mullah/' or priest, Muley-bin-Salim, who visited him on a slave-hunting errand, and converted him to Mohammedanism. In accordance with the tenets of his new faith, he gave up drinking and many of the pagan practices of his fathers, though 86 A FASCINATING MONARCH. still lending some countenance to the " wizards " and their charms, and did not shed blood recklessly, as of yore. The Moslem Sabbath was observed, and the politic courtiers made profession of the creed of Islam ; but it does not seem to have taken any root among the people. Mtesa himself, indeed, appears to have adopted it more from whim than anything else. His is a very inquiring and receptive mind, ready to wel- come the latest novelty in ideas or customs from what- ever quarter it comes ; and Aral) religion, literature, and morality were received with open arms. These, though far from perfect, were at least an improve- ment on the old pagan habits and superstitions. The first ardour of the convert to Mohammedanism had passed away before the time of Mr. Stanley's arrival. Mtesa, however, was in high good-humour, and delighted, as usual, to have a new ' L sensation" at his court. The American traveller found him a most fascinating personage. He describes him as a tali. slimly-made man. apparently about thirty years of age, with fine intelligent features, and an expression in which amiability is blended with dignity. A remarkable feature of his face are his u larere, lustrous lambenl eyes." His skin, like that of his people gen- erally, is of a rich red brown, wonderfully smooth in the surface. When in council, his manner is sedate and com], osed ; hut in private he relaxes this regal dignity, gives free play to the humour of the hour, and indulges in hearty peals of laughter. Of the intelligence and capacity of this remarkable potentate there can be no question ; neither can it be CONVERTING A KINO. 87 doubted that lie has a sincere admiration and liking for white men. His curiosity about European cus- toms, inventions, and manufactures is insatiable ; and he seems really to have entertained at one time the notion of modelling his kingdom after a civilized pattern. His hospitality to " Standee " and other white visitors was prodigal, his professions of friend- ship overpowering. There is something cat-like in ■his caressing and insinuating ways; and, indeed, Mtesa with all his suave smiles and attentions was as little to be trusted as the leopard, which the kings of Uganda take as their badge. He is as cun- ning and fickle, as cruel and insinuating, as that lithe and beautiful creature. Carried away by the first enthusiasm of his admiration, Stanley resolved on the bold undertaking of converting Mtesa from the faith of Islam to Christianity, and lost no time in beginning the task. Daily he gave him lessons on the truths of the Christian religion and the errors and absurdities of Mohammedanism. His scholar was attentive and zealous, and the work of conver- sion seemed to make great progress. Before Stanley departed to rejoin his companions at Kagehyi, on that disastrous voyage in which he fell into the hands of the natives of Bumbireh, the king had advanced so far as to observe, along with his great captains, the Christian as well as the Moslem Sabbath, and had caused the Ten Commandments to be written down on a board for his daily perusal. On the traveller's return to Ruba^-a, some weeks later, he found that Mtesa had gone to war with our 1658) 8 88 THE UGANDA ARMY. old piratical acquaintances the Wavuma. A vast host had been gathered together both by land and sea. The king had resolved to crush his enemies by sheer weight of numbers and terminate the war by one blow. The American explorer followed in the train of the Uganda army across the arm of the lake out of which the Victoria Nile flows, to the rendezvous, a projecting cape separated from Uvuma by a smaller island, which the enemy had made his head-quarters. Stanley had, on the route, an admirable opportunity of witnessing the power that King Mtesa could bring into the field. He estimates the army marching under the Uganda banner at one hundred and fifty thousand men; and, adding women, children, slaves, and other camp-followers, that no fewer than a quarter of a million souls were assembled on Nakar- anga Point. If these figures are anything near the truth, there can be no difficulty in accepting the cal- culation that, including the tributary countries of Karagwe, Unyoro, and others, Mtesa rules over a population of three and three-quarter million souls and a territory embracing seventy thousand square miles. Besides the land army, the war canoes of Uganda numbered five hundred ; but, as is often the case in European warfare, only aboul half of these were ready for service. To man these great craft- some of which are over seventy feel in length- about eighl thousand six hundred paddlers were required. The Wavuma, on their side, had about two hundred canoes engaged ; but, considering their greater apti- tude and skill in fighting on the water, the odds LESSONS IN WAR AND SCRIPTURE. 89 against them were not so great as at first sight appears. Day after day the Uganda war-fleet put off and attempted to effect a landing on the enemy's stronghold ; but each time they were foiled by the nimble boats of the Wavuma, which darted like sharks out of the sheltering coves and creeks, scat- tered the array of the assailants, and paddled again out of range before Mtesa's howitzers and musketry, planted on the cape, could do them much harm. The king was in despair ; and after vainly consulting the medicine-men, he applied for counsel to Stanley, who advised that a causeway should be built of rocks and logs over the half-mile of water between the cape and the island. This work was begun, but the labourers soon grew tired of it ; besides it was too slow a process for Mtesa's ardent temperament, and the plucky enemy w T ere each day becoming more audacious in their assaults. Meanwhile the w T ork of converting the kino- to Christianity was steadily proceeding. Daily readings were given from the Scriptures to the king and his counsellors, and with the aid of Waganda scribes an abridgment of the Bible was copied in the Kiswa- hili tongue, the language of the Zanzibar coast, which is familiar to Mtesa and his chiefs. At length there came a day when the king assembled his council, and formally laid before them the proposal to renounce the creed of Mohammed and adopt the grander faith taught him by his friend " Stamlee." The replies of the ministers were diplomatically vague. Chambarango, the General, said, "Let us take 90 A MYSTERIOUS CRAFT. what is best ;" quoth the Prime Minister, ''How are we to know which is true?" and the Hmh Steward cautiously answered, " I am waiting to hear my mas- ter's w< >rds." The matter thus left to his own choice, Mtesa emphatically declared his preference for the " Book of the white man," and announce* 1 his intention of firmly adhering to its teachings, and to lay the foundation of a new Christian Church in Uganda. Unluckily, a few days later his navy suffered another reverse, and we find the king storming about in a frenzy of unbridled passion, giving orders for the roasting of a prisoner he had taken, and .shouting for the blood of his enemies. Stanley gave his pupil a well-deserved scolding; and thinking it was time to interfere in the war, which was hindering him from continuing his journey, he put into operation a little project he had conceived, and which is worthy of being placed beside the famous device of the "horse" by which the Greeks captured Troy town. Joining three canoes together, side by side, by poles Lashed across them, he constructed on this platform a kind of wicker-work fort, which concealed a crew and garri- son of two hundred men. This strange structure, covered by streamers, and with the drums and horns giving forth a horrible din. moved slowly towards tin- enemy's Btronghold, propelled by the paddles working between the canoes. The Wavuma watched with terror the approach of this awful apparition, which bore down upon them as if moved by some supernatural force. When it had advanced to within THE CAMP OX FIRE. 91 hailing distance, a voice was heard issuing from the mysterious visitant, which in oracular tones called on the Wavuma to make peace and submit to Mtesa, other- wise sudden destruction would fall upon them. The bold islanders were completely cowed with fear and amazement. A short council was held, and then a chief, stepping forward to the shore, cried, "Return, spirit ; the war is ended ! " The wonted tribute of ivory and young female slaves for the king's harem was delivered the same evening, and peace again reigned on the shores of the Victoria Nyanza. Next morning Stanley was aroused by the tre- mendous uproar of the " great King of War-drums " sounding the break-up of the camp. The king had apparently played him a scurvy trick. He had departed early before daybreak, and the camp had been fired in a hundred places. A strong breeze was blowing from the lake, and so swiftly were the flames leaping from one straw hut to another, that the traveller and his followers had to seize hastily on their goods and weapons and run for their lives through a shrieking, struggling mass of some sixty thousand human beings, all confusedly fleeing out of the reach of the conflagration. Hundreds, nay, thou- sands of helpless women and children must, he says, have been overtaken by the fire, or trampled to death in the rush of hurrying feet. Mtesa denied that he had given the order to fire the camp, but it is im- possible to absolve him from the suspicion of having been to blame for this reckless waste of life. The incident was at least an inauspicious beginning of his 92 SECOND IMPRESSIONS OF THE WAGANDA. new profession of faith. A closer acquaintance with the Waganda caused Mr. Stanley to modify some- what his first transports of admiration of their quali- ties. Ingenious, enterprising, intelligent he found them, above any other African tribe he had met with. Their scrupulous cleanliness, neatness, and modesty cover a multitude of faults ; but for the rest, " they are crafty, fraudful, deceiving, lying, thievish knaves, taken as a whole, and seem to be born with an uncontrollable love of gaining wealth by robbery, violence, and murder." Notwithstanding first im- pressions to the contrary, they are more allied to the < Ihoctaw than to the Anglo-Saxon, and are simply clever savages, whom prosperity and a favourable climate have helped several stages on the long, toil- some road towards civilization. There is no call upon us after all to envy their luxurious lives of ease and plenty under the shade of their bowers of vine, fig, and plantain trees — " For we hold the gray Barbarian lower than the Christian child." Nevertheless, Uganda, from its fertility and its situa- tion at the outlet of the great fresh-water sea of the Nyanza, must be regarded as one of the most hopeful fields of future commercial enterprise, and its people as among the most promising subjects for missionary and philanthropic effort in Central Africa. As for the mighty Rltesa, little has been Been "i" heard of him since his friend " Standee " parted from him. Colonel Chaille Long, late of the Confederate Army, afterwards in the service of Kgypt, who had A LAKE -WITHOUT A SHORE. 93 seen him a few months previously, did not form a very sanguine opinion of his turning out a respect- able and humane monarch. * Like poor M. Linant de Bellefonds — who, by the way, was massacred with his whole following by the Bari tribe on his return journey to Gondokoro — the colonel was despatched to the Uganda court on a mission from Gordon Pasha. On this expedition he discovered, as has already been mentioned, an addi- tional link in the great chain of Nile lakes. Fighting his way through Kamrasi's country, Unyoro — a bitter enemy alike of his nominal suzerain, Mtesa, and of white men — Long lighted upon a sheet of water in which the wandering Nile lost itself, at a distance of some hundred miles from the Victoria Lake. " I looked in vain," he says, "for the opposite shore. Stretching away to the eastward a scarcely visible line seemed to indicate land, certainly twenty miles away." Advancing, the appearance of land showed itself also on the opposite or western side ; but this, on being approached, proved to be a vast expanse of floating water-lilies, whose immense heads, several feet in diameter, bobbed and floated on the surface like broad-brimmed hats, while their roots were fastened to the bottom many fathoms below. It is, in fact, a lake without any defined shore ; for beyond the lilies are jungles of papyrus and water-cane growing upon a " floating sod " of matted roots and * That Mtesa has not lost his interest in his white friends and in the marvels of civilization, was shown by the appearance in London, in the spring of lsbO, of four Uganda chiefs, as a deputation from the king. 04 UGANDA COMPLIMENTS AXD GIFTS. earth, gradually becoming more compact and stable as the marsh merges into dry land. Portions of this spongy mass are constantly "slipping their moorings," drifting out into the open water, where they are caught by the river -current setting through Lake Ibrahim (as Long named his discovery), and float gaily down the Nile, a perpetual procession of green, moving islands. Colonel Long was warmly received by King Mtesa, as all other civilized guests have been. The humour of the hour with the kino- of Uganda was the indulgence of one of the traditional practices of his ancestors, which cannot be reconciled with either the Christian or Mohammedan faith. In honour of his guest, he caused a score of his subjects to be decapitated every morning, until the colonel, while highly appreciating the compliment, delicately hinted that he would prefer to dispense with it. Then Mtesa sent him away loaded with presents for the ruler of Masr (Egypt), among the gifts being a young daughter of his own. This scion of the blood- royal of Uganda, Colonel Long complacently tells us, was deposited in an " ethnological museum," which, it appears, the viceroy was forming at Cairo for the reception of curious specimens of the human family. A sad fate befell the last white visitors to Uganda. In response to Mr. Stanley's appeal, a party, consist- ing of Lieutenant Smith and Messrs. Wilson and < I'Neil, wa ->iii nut from England to found a mission on Lake Victoria Nyanza. Tiny carried with them from Zanzibar a little steamer, the Daisy the first steam-vessel to fl--.it on the waters of the lake. Mr. A TRAGIC CLOSE. 95 Wilson established himself at King Mtesa's court. Lieutenant Smith and Mr. O'Neil, while exploring the lake, were driven by a hurricane to the island of Ukerewe, the chief of which, Lukongeh, had proved himself a good friend to Stanley. No faith, however, can be placed in African princes. On the 7th of December 1877, Lukongeh attacked the missionary camp and massacred the two white men and their black attendants. With this dismal incident the history of the exploration of Lake Victoria has practically closed for the present. CHAPTER V. THE ULTIMATE NILE SOURCES. " In my traveller's history, Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rooks, and hills whose heads kiss heaven, It was my hint to speak .... And of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads I)o grow beneath their shoulders."— Vtlullo. T was early in November 1875 that Stanley- bade farewell to his friend and pupil, Mtesa, at Ulagalla, his old capital, where Speke and Grant had first set eyes on this interesting and ambiguous personage. The explorer had an untrodden world surrounding him in all directions from which he could select a, line of route. He chose to follow the line of the equator westward, in the hope of falling upon the prolongation south- ward <>f Baker's lake, the Albert, the limits of which he proposed to explore. He departed, laden with the "token- of the esteem of his convert,'' such as spears, lii. Ids, knives, myrrh, and furs; monkey-skins and walking-sticks; beeves, goats, bananas, beer, and wine, and an escort of one hundred w arriors. The friends of Mtesa's friend were not forgotten, and at TRANSFORMATION SCENES. 97 Stanley's request, a comely damsel and other hand- some presents were sent to Lukongeh of Ukerewe, whose atrocious requital of this attention has just been recorded. The escort was but an insignificant fraction of the backing which the king gave to his hon- oured guest. Further on, near the boundary between Uganda and Unyoro, a body of two thousand spear- men joined the expedition, whose full strength num- bered nearly three thousand souls. Stanley's novel method of exploration had undergone a new develop- ment ; and the secrets of Nature were to be wrested from her by the spear and the bow — by a sudden and overpowering rush, instead of by patience and address. The result of the experiment in this quar- ter does not invite its repetition; for a journey more tantalizino- and indecisive in its results has never been made by traveller. The path led through scenes of surpassing beauty and fertility, and of a character that progressively changed from soft tropical luxuriance to Alpine u - randeur. Starting from the lake shore, we are told, the traveller has to struggle for miles through a tangled undergrowth of bushes, grasses, and creepers, overtopped by the stately stems of gum, sycamore, palm, tamarind, and other tall forest trees, whose meeting foliage gives a cavernous gloom to these woods even at mid-day. Then he emerges into the blinding sunlight, and sees stretching before him for many days' march an undulating country, dotted with ant-hills, and thinly sprinkled with candelabra- like tamarisks, thorny acacias, and euphorbias ; and 98 A MOUNTAIN MONARCH. at the top of every new ascent he opens up a wide prospect of "hill, valley, mead, and plain, easy swells and hollows, grassy basins and grassy eminences, the whole suffused with fervid vapour." The scene grows wilder and the way more rough. The wave-like swells of the surface become higher, the depressions between more profound. The primitive rocks break through the soil, and show bare sharp ridges and rounded rib-like masses, tinted gray with mosses and lichens, as if the skeleton of the land were starting through its skin. The slopes of the hills are strewn with splintered fragments of quartz and granite, and the valleys are encumbered with the debris. The streams that at first ran in deep troughs, with scarcely any perceptible current in their reed-choked beds, are now ice-cold torrents, brawling over stones and boulders. Great detached mountains, rising to a height of nine thousand or ten thousand feet above sea-level, begin to show themselves on the right hand and od the left. The stifling atmosphere of the forest gives place to cutting breezes and chilly mists. And then the monarch of mountains in this part of Africa, Mount Gordon Bennett, is seen lifting his blunted cone high in air at a distance of some forty miles north of the line of march, and seeming to dominate the whole region. This va-t detached mass is estimated by Mr. Stanley to rise to a heighl of 14,000 <>r 15,000 feet above sea- level and must seem a sublime objed even to the eye accustomed to African wonders. Its lower slopes are inhabited by a people known aa the Gambaragara, WHITE AFRICAN'S. 99 several specimens of whom Mr; Stanley saw in the train of Kino- Mtesa and on the march. He describes them as of regular features and remarkably light com- plexion — "approaching that of dark-faced Europeans. They differed entirely in habits and manners from the Waganda, and their women were superior in looks to any that Mr. Stanley had seen in Africa. It would be interesting to know more of these singular people and their rocky stronghold ; but the fact that they have the typical woolly hair of the negro would seem to show that they are of the same origin as then- more dark-coloured neighbours. Possibly the high and temperate region in which they live — in spite of the fact that the equator almost passes across their mountain — may have something to do with their lightness of skin. Major Serpa Pinto, the Portuguese explorer, met with specimens of " white Africans " on his recent journey on the Upper Zambesi, where, as we know from Livingstone and others, examples of neo-ro " albinos " are not uncommon freaks of nature. On the whole we must wait for more evidence before deciding whether there is an indigenous "white race " in Central Africa. The Gambaragara appear to be a pastoral people, possessing great flocks of cattle, and living chiefly on milk. The fastnesses of their mountain-home, with which they alone are acquainted, render them safe from the assaults of the predatory tribes that surround them ; and their king is strono- enough to exact tribute from the surround- ing lowlands. Snow often covers the high parts of the mountain, which seems to be an extinct volcano, 100 A TANTALIZING DISCOVERY. the crater being now occupied by a lake, from the centre of which, it is said, rises a lofty column of rock. The whole country indeed seems to have been subjected to violent volcanic action, large areas being covered with scoriae, and hot springs and miniature craters of bubbling mud are stated to be of frequent occurrence. Traversing a bare plateau, the dividing ridge is at length reached at a distance of one hun- dred and seventy miles from the Victoria Nyanza. This last obstacle surmounted, the explorer, to his amazement, found himself on the edge of an awful precipice, fifteen hundred feet in depth, at the bottom of which " slumbered serenely, reflecting the plateau walls on its placid surface, the blue Muta NzigeV' Having thus reached, apparently, the goal of his journey, Mr. Stanley was not permitted to reap the harvest of discovery for which he had toiled so much. At first all had gone well with the army of explora- tion. As soon as they had crossed their own frontier into the territory of Kaba Rega — who is no other than our old acquaintance Kamrasi — they found the country deserted. The inhabitants believed that Kin"- Mtesa's men were out on one of their accus- tomed raids. The Waganda warriors themselves seemed to form pretty Dearly the same view of the situation. They made great spoil of the abandoned finps, hunted industriously for loot, and were in high spirits. As they left their own frontier further be- hind them, their courage gradually oozed away. The ominous disappearance of the Wanyoro population puzzled and disquieted them. Mosl of them also could PANIC AND RETREAT. 101 not pass over this tract of country without qualms of conscience or at least of fear. This was especially the case with the native "general" of the force, Samboozi, " the Spoiler," who had taken a prominent share in a great foray made into these parts, by which the premier of Waganda had first earned his fame. Enormous spoil had been taken and great slaughter inflicted ; and Samboozi and his brethren did not feel comfortable in returning in such weak force to a land on which they had left so ugly a mark. There were awful memories also of the smoking cones, fountains of boiling water, fumes of sulphur and brimstone, and generally diabolical features of the country in front, which even the recollection of the fat kine and beautiful captives of Gambaragara could not efface. Just before the lake was reached, parties of armed men were seen gathering on the hills. Prisoners were captured, who declared that an over- whelming attack was imminent. The bold Waganda were smitten with terror ; the panic spread to Stan- ley's own followers. He stormed, cajoled, threatened, entreated by turns, and all without effect. He asked but for two days' grace, until he could lower the boat he had brought with him down the rock wall to the lake. He was told that one day's delay meant destruction ; that he might stay if he chose, but that only a small proportion even of his own men would stand by him. There was nothing for it but ignominious retreat, and Uganda was reached without molestation. Ter- rific was the wrath of Mtesa when he heard of the 102 A TEMPTING OFFER. pusillanimity and desertion of his men. Calling for- ward one of the young- aspirants to royal favour, he ordered him to " eat up " Samboozi in the approved fashion of Uganda. In a few days the unlucky '• Spoiler," who in the days of his prosperity had carried his head unnecessarily high, was a nameless captive, loaded with chains, on his way to taste of the royal clemency. Another had taken his titles, his lands, his flocks, his spoils of war, and his slaves, and was lord of his two hundred wives. The king- sent an urgent message after Stanley, offering him Ids great general Sekebobo. with a hundred thousand men, to carry him in triumph to the Muta X/d^v, and stay there till his work was finished. But the traveller, with bitter thoughts in his heart, and a materially lower estimate of the Waganda than he had adopted on his first acquaintance, was already far away on a new line of discovery. He pondered long on the offer, but reflecting how little cause he had t<> rely on Waganda faith, and the misery which such an excursion would inflict, he decided to decline it. Few people will doubt that he resolved wisely. But the question has beeu raised, What is this Lake Muta X/.i-e. on who-e waters the persevering American traveller was unable to embark, though he stood on n In ink with three thousand men at his back? That is still one of the unsolved African mysteries. Stanley himself unhesitatingly put it down as the Luta X/.ig.', or '• Lake of the Locust heal', ' of Speke, and Albert Nyanza of Baker, the latter discoverer having on his map represented that lake as stretch- A CRACKED COXTIXEXT. 103 ing far to the south of the equator, and even ■ be- lieved it to be the northern end of Tanganyika. Unfortunately for that theory, Gordon and Gessi's examination of the Albert proved that it came to an end more than a degree short of the point where Stanley sighted his lake, and that no such feature as his " Beatrice Gulf " was to be found on the eastern shore. The singular thins** is that there should be two bodies of water, not only lying along the same line of longitude, with the same remarkable shape and configuration, and apparently on much the same level, but bearing likewise the same local name Luta, Muta, or Mootan Nzige. All these riddles will be solved shortly, and the conjecture that there is a con- nection between the two lakes, and that they, with Tanganyika, and probably also Lake Nyassa, mark the line of an extraordinary fracture or crack in the African continent, extending almost due north and south, will probably be found correct. But next time the attempt is made, the aid of a negro host had better not be called in to assist the perplexed geographer. The route that Stanley, marching in dudgeon from Uganda, pursued through the country behind the wooded western shores of the Victoria Lake, was that which Speke and Grant had traversed in their north- ward journey fourteen years before. It is well watered, rich in cattle, thickly peopled, and diversi- fied with hill and hollow. Its most remarkable feature is the rivers — if rivers they can be called — by which the perennial rainfall of this region is drained (658) q 104 " RUSH DRAINS." into the great reservoir of the Nyanza. Speke has bestowed on them the name of " rush drains." Back among the hills they are rushing rivulets, that hurry down the glens they have ploughed in the mountain side, meeting in the lower country in main lines of drainage that convey their waters to the lake, to escape ultimately over the Ripon Falls to the Nile and Egypt. But these lower courses of the Nyanza affluents are no longer running streams ; they have worn their way down through the soft clay soil to the level of the lake, and are simply long, winding- creeks, their surface covered over by a dense growth of reeds and water-grasses, which frequently hides all sign of the water below. These rushy lagoons the traveller finds to be a formidable obstacle in his course. They cannot be crossed on foot, and the papyrus and cane are often so strong and thickly set that it is next to impossible to push a boat from one bank to the other. The largest of these rivers and the most important of the tributaries of the Victoria Nyanza is the stream which Speke called the Kitan- gule, and which Stanley, out of compliment to the Princess of Wales, has styled the Alexandra Nile. It seems as if we were never to see the last of the river of Egypt. It might reasonably be supposed that bavin"- traced it to its home in the great Victoria Lake, we should have been ready confidently to solve that world-old puzzle, which was so long considered equivalent to a demand for the impossible- ■" <'nl qucerere Nili." But not at all. Apart from the Baringo and Muta Nzige* mysteries, it has been dis- 5s <5 NEW NILE PUZZLES. 105 covered that Baker's Jake sends off' a second effluent to the north in addition to that which flows past Gondokoro ; that Lake Ibrahim does not pour all its waters into the Albert Nyanza, but despatches a branch into the wilderness ; while the Victoria Lake also is said to have a double outlet. What becomes of these wandering waters, whether they ultimately find their way back to the parent stream, or go off to form new lakes of their own or reinforce alien rivers, no one as yet can exactly say. But here, in the Alexandra Nile, Mr. Stanley tells us he has discovered a new ramification of this wonderful river-system, leadino- to a new chain of lakes and lake mysteries. His claim that this is to be regarded as a continua- tion of the main stream of the Nile derives some force from the fact, previously observed and com- mented on by Speke and Grant, that it apparently contributes almost as much water to the lake as flows out of it at the northern end, and that this is univer- sally recognized by the natives of the region, who call this river the " Mother of the Waters of Uganda," or of the Victoria Nile. In this view the Victoria Nyanza would be regarded as merely the temporary resting-place of the Nile, on its way from parts still unknown to the Mediterranean, and the course of the stream, already ascertained to be the second in point of length in the world, would be indefinitely pro- longed. Till this has been better established, how- ever, we must prefer to hold by what seems the more probable and natural view, that the vast fresh- water sea discovered by Speke is — as it is well 106 RIVER OR LAKE ? worthy to be — the true Nile source ; and that it is as bootless to search beyond it for the beginnings of the river of the Delta as it would be to search the shores of Lake Superior for the " real original " head-waters of the St. Lawrence. The " Alexandra Nile," however, is interesting for its own sake, and on account of the people that live on its banks. Where Stanley struck it, above the point of junction with one of its chief tributaries, its channel was more than a quarter of a mile wide Only a hundred yards of this space, however, is occu- pied by open water. Broad beds of sedge and ooze stretched out from each shore ; but in the centre was a dull, iron-coloured current, over fifty feet in depth, and flowing at a rate of three and a half knots an hour. Throughout its lower course, where seen by Speke, Grant, and Stanley, the Kitangule preserves this character of a brown-tinted stream of profound depth, flowing steadily between wide margins of rushes, and overhung by grassy terraced banks, on which native villages and herds of cattle are thickly scattered. Further up it breaks through a barrier of rock, and tens down a steep incline in a roaring cataract. For fully sixty miles beyond these falls, the river occupies the whole breadth of the valley from bank t<> bank — a width varying from four to fifteen miles. It is no longer a stream, for there is scarcely any perceptible current ; neither is it a con- tinuous lake, except after the heavy rains, It is a Beries of reedy lagoons, each with its little core of open water, and connected with each other by deep, KIXG RUMANIKA AT HOME. 107 still canals and creeks, and with green islands sprinkled over the surface, some of which drift hither and thither with the winds, or rise and fall as the rains alter the level of the lake. Crossing the Alexandra Nile, we ascend the ridges that skirt the southern side of the valley, to rind ourselves in Karagwe, the country of King Ruma- nika. Here, if anywhere in Central Africa, the tra- veller finds a haven of peace, where he can rest for a few weeks in security under the paternal rule of this kindly old chief, and recruit himself for the toils and vexations that lie ahead. This was the experience of Speke and Grant, who made a stay of many months under the care of Rumanika; and it was also the experience of Stanley. They all speak warmly of his gentle and reasonable disposition, his hospi- tality, and his friendliness, and seem to have con- tracted a sincere liking for him and his people. As has been mentioned, he is a vassal of Mtesa of Uganda ; but the two men are a strong contrast to each other in every respect, except in their mutual admiration of Europeans. Instead of Mtesa, restless and excitable, with his bursts of stormy passion and his wayward- ness and whim, we are presented, in Rumanika, with an African specimen of " sweet reasonableness," serene of temper, soft of voice, and placid in manner. This " venerable and gentle pagan," as Stanley calls him, is, at the same time, a very tall man of his inches, standing six and a half feet in height. In his dress of state he must present a striking and gorgeous figure. Heavy anklets of bright copper adorn his 108 AFRICAN TALES OF MARVEL. legs, bangles of the same metal glitter on his arms, while from his shoulders depends a flaming robe of crimson flannel. In his hand he carries an enormous walking-stick, seven feet in length ; and around him surge a multitude of spearmen, drummers, and fifers, each striving with voice and instrument to outdo the other in sounding the praises of King Ruma- nika and his guests. He may, however, have laid aside these vanities along with paganism, for mis- sionaries have recently gone to reside with the genial old fellow. Besides busying himself in providing for the creature comforts of his guests, Rumanika was in- defatigable in ministering to their intellectual tastes. He delightedly showed them the contents of the royal "armoury" and "treasure chamber," discoursed with them for the hour on the customs and traditions of his people, and took an intense interest in the filling up of their note-books. His curiosity about the world of Europe and its marvels was insatiable ; and he seems to have considered himself bound in honour to requite his visitors for their information by telling them equally wonderful tales of Africa. The kindly old gentleman, indeed, seems to have a vein of humour in him. Thus we find him, after having been told by Speke of the surprising results , of steam power, and of how two people could talk to each other though a thousand miles apart, putting the question gravely, but with probably a sly twinkle in his eye, " Whether or not the moon made different faces, to laugh at us mortals on earth?" Stanley THE CONNECTING LINK. 109 and he formed themselves into a sort of Mutual Admiration and Improvement Society, and devoted themselves for hours to " astonishing one another's weak minds ' : with the mysteries of the universe. The geographical information thus obtained from Rumanika must clearly be accepted with consider- able reserve ; but if it is not all true : it is at least all new. The most prominent object to be seen from the shores of Karagwe is the triple cone of M'fum- biro, which, at a distance of sixty miles to the north- west, towers over all the lower ranges to a height, according to Speke, of ten thousand, and, according to Stanley, of twelve thousand feet. This great mountain, says Rumanika, is in the country of Ruanda, a powerful state governed by an " empress," who will allow no stranger to enter her domains. From other sources Stanley learned that this re- markable lady was of middle age, tall in stature, of an almost light Arab complexion, and with very large brilliant eyes. Her dominions occupy the greater part of the country lying between the south end of the Muta Nzige and Tanganyika. It contains another great lake, two days' canoe journey in length by one and a half day's in breadth— say forty miles by thirty — out of which the Alexandra Nile flows. It is just possible to ascend from this basin, by a reedy channel, into yet another sheet of water — Lake Kivu — out of the opposite end of which flows a stream that becomes the Rusizi, and falls into the north end of the great Tanganyika; so that if Rumanika's information should turn out to be cor- 110 DEMONS AND DWARFS. rect, we should have the Portuguese maps of three centuries ago confirmed -with extraordinary minute- ness. The three great river-systems of Africa, drain- ing into three separate seas, would be proved to be connected by a chain of lakes; and we would have continuous water communication from the Nile to the mouth of the Congo, and from the Congo to the outlet of the Zambesi in the Indian Ocean. Still more startling were Rumanika's statements re- garding the peoples of these unknown lands. Ruanda, he asserts, is populated by " Shaitans " (demons), and he would have had Stanley put down on this part of his map a note similar to that which the old traveller, Sir John Mandeville, wrote over a then unvisited portion of Asia — "This lande is inhabited by Deuills." What Rumanika meant, probably, was that they had treated himself churlishly ; and, from Stanley's own experience, they are not an amiable people, for, on his attempting to land on their shores, they snapped and gnashed their teeth like dogs, and made other gestures of intense objection to his presence. Beyond Ruanda, on a lake called Mkinyaga, are a race -of cannibals, and also a pigmy people only " two feet high." Possibly some report has reached Karagwe of the existence of the Akka dwarfs in the Nyam-Nyam country west of Lake Albert, and the king had exer- cised the art of pleasing by reducing the stature of tin' pigmies as low as he dared From the observa- tions of Dr. Scliwcinfurtli, and of the explorers on (he west coast, these dwarf races appear to occupy a large space of the interior of Africa about the equator, TAILS AND LONG EARS. Ill and by many they are believed to represent the abo- riginal people of the continent who have been dis- possessed by negro and other immigrants. Rumanika had also to tell of another pigmy people, who had the further remarkable distinction of wearing tails. But the strangest marvel of all was a people " who had Ions ears descending to their feet; one ear formed a mat to sleep on, the other served to cover the owner from the cold like a dressed hide/' Seeing, probably, that his listener looked incredulous, Rumanika added, to clench the truth of his narrative, " They tried to coax one of them to come and see me, but the journey was long, and he died on the way." Everybody must regret this untoward accident : a specimen of the long-eared tribe, if he could have been brought to Europe, would have created a tremendous sensation in scientific circles. Some of the notes on natural history picked up in Karagwe have also the merit of novelty. The rhino- ceros — the black two-horned variety — is a denizen of this country. Mr. Stanley had the fortune to shoot here a white rhinoceros, which, however, like the " white elephant," is only a dirty -gray coloured brute. This animal had evidently just escaped from the claws of some wild beast, a hand-breadth of his thick hide being torn from his rump. But, if we are to believe the natives of the country, it is the rhino- ceros's big cousin the elephant who is his most un- pleasant neighbour. If they meet in a jungle path, the rhinoceros has to squeeze his ponderous body into the thicket, or prepare for a battle-royal. In 112 ELEPHANT VERSUS RHINOCEROS. such a quarrel his horn is an ugly weapon, but it is no match for the tusks and the superior weight of his rival. The elephant will sometimes treat him contemptuously — as a schoolmaster would deal with a naughty boy — and, breaking off a stout twig, say as thick as a man's thigh, he belabours the unlucky beast with it until he is glad to save himself by flight. At other times the elephant will force his stubborn adversary against a tree and pin him there with his tusks, or will throw him down and squeeze the life out of him. These tales are probably apocryphal: but there are authentic records of con- tests in the forest between these two huge beasts in which the bulkier animal has not always come off victor. The rhinoceros is a headstrong and self- willed creature, and his vicious -looking head does not belie his actual character. The fits of ungovern- able rage in which he is said to indulge, when it is his habit to root up trees with his horn and run "amuck ' : among his acquaintances, may probably be merely a playful way he has of displaying Ins vast strength. Rut an old bull-rhinoceros is not a plea- sant object to encounter unarmed in a forest path ; and if the crusty veteran happen to come across a surly bachelor elephant whose temper has just been ruffled by expulsion from the herd, the spec- tator may look out for a scene worth witnessing -first of all, taking care to secure a safe place of retreat. Sir Samuel Baker, who " bagged " many a rhinoceros in the course of his journeys, has remarked tli;it fche black rhinoceros almost invariably charges THE WATER-SHED OF THE NILE. 113 an enemy that he smells but does not see, while he generally retreats if he observes the object before obtaining the wind. On the southern margin of Karagwe, the limit of the region drained into the Victoria Nyanza is reached at a ridge five thousand six hundred feet above sea- level, beyond which the waters flow towards the Tanganyika. So far as has yet been explored, this height seems to represent the average level of the outer " rim " of the lake basin. Outside of Karagwe. we look in vain for Rumanikas among the petty kings to whom court must be paid. Garrulity and lying are met with in abundance, but no more genial kindness and zealous sympathy. The chiefs are adepts in black-mailing, which they sometimes vary by pilfering or barefaced robbery. At one of these villages, the caravan which Grant was hurrying for- ward — the chief of the expedition being several marches ahead — was set upon by a gang of rascals, armed with spears, who killed several of his porters, put the rest to flight, broke open and plundered bales and boxes, and, clad in their spoils, danced jeeringly round the white man as he sat on the wreck of his fortunes. In the same neighbourhood Stanley en- countered the arch-bandit of these regions, Mirambo, whose name is a word of terror from the Victoria Lake to the Nyassa, and from Tanganyika to Zanzi- bar. To the explorer's astonishment, he found this notorious personage — "The mildest-mannered man That ever cut a throat ; " Ill A MEEK MARAUDER. in short, " a thorough African gentleman," almost " meek " in his demeanour. He had difficulty in believing that this " unpresuming, mild-eyed man, of inoffensive exterior, so calm of gesture, so generous and open-handed," was the terrible man of blood who wasted villages, slaughtered his foes by the thousand, and kept a district of ninety thousand scpuare miles in continual terror. Incontinently, the impulsive explorer resolved to swear " blood brother- hood " with the other wandering warrior, and the ceremony was gone through with all due solemnity. The marauding chief presented his new brother with a quantity of cloth, and the explorer gave him in return a revolver and a quantity of ammunition ; and then, mutually pleased with each other, they parted — Mirambo and his merry men to the gay greenwood, where, doubtless, they had a pressing engagement to meet some other party of travellers, and Stanley for Ujiji. Jhtvt Seconb.— The Conga, CHAPTER I. TANGANYIKA. " Ber. 'Tis here ! Hor. 'Tis here ! Ma r. 'Tis gone ! "Samlet. !AKE TANGANYIKA had been known to the Arab slave-hunters on the east coast lone before a white man had been privileged to gaze on its bright blue waters. These industrious dealers in " black ivory " had good reasons of their own for keeping their knowledge of the interior hid from curious inquirers from Europe ; but in spite of this caution, the figure of a great lake, distorted and magnified by the mists of obscurity that shrouded it, had for years been descried, through the medium of popular report at Zanzibar, flitting about in the centre of the conti- nent. But even after science had caught a sub- stantial grasp of the lake, it was found exceedingly difficult to retain a hold of it. There never was a lake. (658) 10 1 1 G HAS IT AX OUTLET ? even in Central Africa, that has shown itself such an adept at giving its searchers "the slip" as Tan- ganyika. It has shrunk in where it was confidently expected to bulge out, and twisted to right or to left at the points where all who believed that they knew anything of its habits were confident that it would run straight. Where it was expected to come to an end, it would suddenly open up a vista of another hundred miles of its sprawling length ; and only when its explorers had become persuaded that they were on the eve of discovering that it stretched beyond the equator, did it suddenly confound them with the view of its extremity. Its length, its breadth, its depth, and its shape have all given rise to knotty discussions ; but the questions most warmly debated have been — whether it has an outlet ; where that outlet, if it exists, is to be found; and with what river-system does it connect the lake '. And the curious thing is that though Tanganyika has been circumnavigated, and every one of its twelve hundred miles of coast line traced, no one ean yet be quite positive that these questions have been solved. But the first difficulty of all is to reach the lake. It is situated six hundred miles as the crow Hies inland from the east coast. The road is haunted by danger and shewn with obstacles. Of the tra- vellers of our race who have started from Zanzibar for it- shores, only about a half have been fortunate enough to reach the lake: some have tinned back disco ma 'jed by the difficulties of the route; others, ala ! have fallen down and died martyrs in the cause FROM ZANZIBAR TO TANGANYIKA. 117 of science and humanity. From the first step of his journey from the east coast, after embarking at the island of Zanzibar and landing with porters, baggage, and beasts of burden at Bagamoyo, on the main- land — indeed long before he takes the first step — the explorer is beset and well-nigh overwhelmed with impediments, vexations, and perils of every kind. On the low coast country there are mala- rious fevers to be faced, flooded morasses to be crossed, a jungle of rank vegetation through which a path has to be cut. Beautiful highland countries, such as Usagara, are passed through as he ascends the steep sides of the African plateau, and the orandeur and diversity of their scenery make some amends for the toilsomeness of the long up-hill climb. Arrived at the summit of the ascent, instead of a corresponding declivity on the other side, the tra- veller finds himself on the margin of a table -land gently sloping westward. The moisture, borne in by the damp winds from the Indian Ocean, is arrested by the bluff face which the plateau presents to the sea, and in the lee of this skirting mountain wall arid tracts have to be crossed — stony, sandy, or saline wastes, where water is only found at long intervals, and where the torments of thirst and hunger have frequently to be endured. Then nearer the lake new dangers meet us, from robber tribes, from hostile gangs of kidnappers, from treacherous native chiefs. Throughout the whole way we must count upon endless anxieties of the mind and con- stant trials of the temper. At any moment, the 118 travellers' enemies. porters, hired at so much cost and trouble, are liable to fling- down their loads and run away, or escape into the forest, carrying their burdens with them. At each halting-place the same scene of noisy haggling is enacted, and the wayfarer has to pay dearly for his night's lodging. The head-man of the village may be truculent or fawning — he may insinu- atingly plead for a " present," or brutally demand his "black-mail" — but greedy and troublesome and treacherous he is almost certain to be. And even when quarters have been secured for the night, and the traveller stretches his tired limbs in his ham- mock, he is never sure that ere morning some "gentleman of the road,'' like our friend Mirambo, whom we lately parted with, may not break through the palisades, with his gang of ruffians, and put all within to the sword. But an enemy more dire than Mirambo dogs the steps of the explorer, or lurks in wait for him at every turn of the path. This is disease — fever and dysentery — into whose power the traveller on African soil is sure to fall sooner or later, and probably many times on his journey, and from whose fell grip he may count himself fortunate if he escape with his life. Dr. Dillon, who with Lieutenants Murphy and Cameron started for Tanganyika in L 873, in search of* Livingstone, gives a description of the party down with fever at l'n van vembe, which it will he ad- mitted is " \ i iy tragical mirth." "Now," he says, "for a dismal tale of woe! On or about (none of us know the date exactly) August FEVER AND ITS FANTASIES. 119 13th, Cameron felt seedy. I never felt better; ditto Murphy. In the evening we felt seedy. I deter- mined not to be sick. 'I will eat dinner ; I'll not go to bed.' I did manage some dinner, but shakes enough to bring an ordinary house down came on, and 1 had to turn in. For the next four or five days our diet was water and milk. Not a soul to look after us. The servants knew not what to do. We got up when we liked, and walked out. We knew that we felt giddy, that our legs would not support us. I used to pay a visit to Cameron, and he used to turn in to me, and complain. One day he said, ' The fellows have regularly blocked me in. I have no room to stir. The worst of it is, one of the legs of the grand piano is always on my head, and people are strumming away all day. It's all drawing-room furniture that they have blocked me in with.' I was under the impression that my bed was on the top of some ammunition panniers; and I told Murphy I was sorry I could not get away sooner to call on him, but 1 had the king of Uganda stopping with me, and I must be civil to him, as we should shortly be in his country. Murphy pretty well dozed his fever off, but I never slept from beginning to end. We all got well on the same day, about, I suppose, the fifth (of the fever), and laughed heartily at each other's confidences." Poor Dillon ! a few days after these words were written, he shot himself dead while in the delirium of the fever. Murphy decided to turn back to the coast, and Cameron pursued his westward way alone. 120 A MAGNIFICENT PICTURE. As the lake is approached the bare dry plateau gives place again to verdure and running streams. So rank is the vegetation, that in some places the very posts planted to form the village stockades take root, sprout, and completely screen the huts with a dense green wall of foliaire. Sometimes huge crags of granite, with splintered tops, show above the greenery, like feudal castles crowned with ruined pinnacles and turrets. In other tracts, the hill slopes are covered solely by a close growth of stunted acacias, '• looking," as Captain Burton graphically says, " like umbrellas in a crowd. ' At length, the great countries of Ugogo and Unyamwezi having been traversed, and the mountain screen that shuts in Tanganyika surmounted, the lake itself comes into sight, with the thatched bouses of Ujiji, the rendez- vous of all the expeditions, scientific, missionary, and trading, that have ever visited its shores, scattered along the margin of its dancing blue waters. The view, by the unanimous testimony of all who have looked upon it, must be one of exceptional grandeur and impressiveness. To the first discover- ers of Tanganyika, Burton and Speke, it seemed the revelation of a new world — a sight to make men hold their breath with a rush of new thoughts, as when Bilbao and his men stood "silent on a peak in Darien," and gazed on the Pacific. " It filled us," says Burton,"with admiration, wonder, ami delight. Beyond a short foreground of rugged and precipitous hill-fold, down which (he footpath painfully zigzags, a narrow plot of emerald green shelves gently A NEW ASPECT. 121 towards a ribbon of glistening yellow sand, here bordered by sedgy rushes, there clear and cleanly cut by the breaking wavelets. Farther in front stretches an expanse of the lightest, softest blue, from thirty to thirty-five miles in breadth, and sprinkled by the east wind with crescents of snowy foam. It is bounded on the other side by tall and broken walls of purple hill, flecked and capped with pearly mist, or standing sharply pencilled against the azure sky. To the south lie high bluff headlands and capes; and as the eye dilates it falls on little outlying islets, speckling a sea horizon. Villages, cultivated lands, the frequent canoes of the fishermen, give a some- thing of life, of variety, of movement to the scenery." Just fifteen years later, Cameron looked down on the same scene under somewhat less sunny con- ditions. "At first," he says, "I could hardly realize it. Lying at the "bottom of a steep descent was a bright-blue patch about a mile long, then some trees, and beyond them a great gray expanse, having the ap- pearance of sky with floating clouds. 'That the lake!' said I, in disdain, looking at the small blue patch below me. ' Nonsense !' 'It is the lake, master,' persisted my men. And then it began to dawn on me that the vast gray expanse was the Tanganyika, and that which I had supposed to be clouds the distant mountains of Ugoma, whilst the blue patch was only an inlet lighted up by a passing ray of the sun." Livingstone came upon Tanganyika on the opposite shore. He was footsore, emaciated with toil and 122 THE '■' FINDING OF LIVINGSTONE." hunger, racked with rheumatic pains caused by con- stant wettings in the quagmires away to the south and west. But even in his depressed frame of mind and body he was thrilled with the view of the mysterious sea of fresh water and its grand moun- tain surroundings. Resting for a little at Ujiji, he recrossed the lake ; and again plunged into the wilder- ness, to return again nearly a year later, in a more broken plight than before — "worried, thwarted, baffled, when almost in sight of the end towards which 1 strained, dragging every step in pain, and feeling as if dying on my feet." And then occurred perhaps the most famous of the historic meetings that have taken place between travellers in the remote centre of Africa. At the hour of the veteran travellers greatest need, Stanley arrived on the scene with aid and news from Europe. Most people are familiar with the American explorer's account of his "finding of Livingstone*," of his polite how and question, as he approached the tattered figure, by whose familiar gold-banded cap, rather than by the gaunt, careworn features, he recognized the great missionary. "Dr. Livingstone,] presume?" quoth the bold "special." "Yes," said the doctor, smiling, and returning the salute; but the linn hand -rasp that followed spoke volumes of suppressed feelings which neither of the men could trust his tongue to utter. Once more Livingstone's powerful constitution rallied, and having convoyed his new friend hull' of the distance to the coa t I,- turned his back again on Europe and all its promised rest and rewards, on family, on happiness, UJIJI AND ITS MEMORIES. 123 on civilization, — and betook himself again to the un- completed task to which he had devoted his life, — " Strong in will, To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. " When Cameron looked down on the Tanganyika waters from the hills behind Ujiji the iron frame of the great missionary traveller had sunk down under its burden. His body, embalmed by his faithful attendants, had been met some marches before on the way to the coast, and to Westminster Abbey, where it found a meet resting-place ; and Cameron's chief mission to Ujiji was to secure the papers of the dead traveller, which had been left in the hands of native traders. Stanley, too, felt sad at heart when, de- scending from the Niie sources, he revisited, after an interval of five years, the scene of his first triumph. The soul of the beautiful landscape was gone. " The lake expands with the same grand beauty ; the moun- tains opposite have the same blue-black colour ; the surf is still as restless, the sun as bright; the sky re- tains its glorious azure, and the palms all their beauty; but the grand old hero, whose presence once filled Ujiji with such absorbing interest for me, was gone!" With memories clino-m£ round it, however, of five such giants of African discovery as David Living- stone, Speke and Burton, Stanley and Cameron, Ujiji must always retain a strong interest for us. These masterful spirits seized on the lake with a powerful grip, and in spite of ail its slippery wriggling. did not loosen their hold until it had yielded up its secrets. Tanganyika, like the Albert Nyanza and 124 A HYPOTHETICAL NILE. Muta Nzige — like Nyassa, which we will meet with further on — is an enormous " trough " or crevasse, sunk far below the level of the high table-land which occupies the whole centre of Africa from the Abyssi- nian mountains on the east to the Cameroons on the west coast, and terminating towards the south only with Table Mountain. Though its shores are not, perhaps, generally so steep as those of the other lakes mentioned, the surrounding mountain walls are a> high. Its length is greater than any of them, beino; iittle short of five hundred miles. Its waters, like theirs, are very deep, and sweet to the taste, proving almost conclusively that it must have an outlet somewhere ; for lakes which have no means of draining away their waters, and sustain themselves by a balance of inflow and evaporation, are salt or brackish. But while the Albert is undoubtedly part of the Nile basin, and the Nyassa drains to the Zambesi, to what great river does Tanganyika pre- sent its surplus '. The first notion was that it was a far outlying branch of ancient Nilus. Arm-chair geographers constructed ;i remarkable hike, in shape like a High- land bagpipe. The swollen "bag" represented a shadow of tie' Victoria Nyanza, drawn from native report and it was joined to the long "chanter"' of Tanganyika as actually seen by Burton's party. Livingstone was strongly convinced that the outlet of the lake would be found at the extreme northern end, and that its waters went to reinforce the Nile. Seeing, however, is believing; and on the ICth flip VOYAGE TO THE NORTH EXD. 125 November 1871 — three weeks after the two explorers had forgathered so strangely at Ujiji — he set out in company with Stanley to discover the " connecting link." The voyage was not without its dangers and excitements. The dwellers on the lake shores showed themselves several times to be hostile. At one place they shouted to the boatmen to land, and rushed along the shore, slinging stones at the strangers, one of the missiles actually striking the craft. When night fell, and the crew disembarked to cook their supper and to sleep under the lee of a high crag, the natives came crowding around, telling them with a show of much friendliness to rest securely, as no one would harm them. The doctor was too old a bird to be caught by such chaff. The baggage was stowed on board, ready for a start, and a strict watch was kept. Well into the night, duskv forms were noticed dodo-inw from rock to rock, and creeping up towards the tires; so, getting quietly on board, the party pulled out into the lake, and the skulking enemy rushed out upon the strand, howling furiously at beinc balked of their prey. The first geographical surprise was met with a little beyond the turning-point of Burton and Speke. These latter investigators coasted the lake until, as they thought, they saw its two bounding ranges meet, and there they drew the extremity of Tan- ganyika, and returned. This appearance, however, was found by Livingstone and Stanley to be caused by a high promontory which juts out from the western shore overlapping the mountains on the 126 THE HEAD OF THE LAKE AT LAST. east. Beyond this narrow strait Tanganyika again opens up. and stretches on for sixty miles further, overhung by mountains rising to a height of seven thousand feet above sea-level., and some four thousand three hundred feet above the surface of the lake. At last the actual extremity of the long trough-like body of water came in view. As the voyagers approached it, they only became more puzzled as to what they should find. Two days' sail from their destination they were positively assured by the natives that the water flowed out of Tanganyika. Next day equally emphatic testimony was given that the Rusizi stream discharged itself into the lake. Even when the limits of open water were reached in a broad marshy Hat covered by aquatic plants, it was not easy to answer the question which the travellers had come all this long way to solve. Seven broad inlets were seen penetrating the bed of reeds. In none of them could any current be dis- covered. Entering the centre channel in a canoe, however, and pulling OD for some distance past sedgy islands and between walls of papyrus, dis- turbing with every stroke of the paddles some of the sleeping crocodiles that throng in hundreds in this marsh, all doubt as to the course of the Rusizi was soon removed. A strong current of discoloured water was met pouring down from the high grounds, and further examination showed that the stream had other channels losing themselves m the swam]), or finding their way into one or other of the inlets at the head of the lake. CAMERON OX THE LAKE. 127 The outlet of Tanganyika must be sought for else- where. Some thought that it must empty itself at its southern extremity into Nyassa, but this theory •was destroyed by Livingstone's subsequent land journey across the watershed between the two lakes. Others believed that a "notch 1 ' would be discovered either in its eastern or its western mountain barrier, by which its surplus water would be seen flowing off towards the Indian Ocean or towards the Atlantic. Livingstone's own notion was that the lake com- municated with the Lualaba by a subterranean pas- sage under the dark cliffs of Ugoma, on the coast op- posite to Ujiji ; and he even thought he could distin- guish the roaring sound of the escaping waters, which the natives told him could be heard for many miles. This was the uncertain position of the Tanganyika problem when Cameron arrived at Ujiji. He deter- mined, as his first instalment of real discoverers work, to set this puzzling matter at rest; and his simple plan was to coast along the Tanganyika, and cling doggedly to its shores until he found the outlet, if outlet it had. Hiring a couple of Arab boats, and a crew of thirty-eight men, he set out on his survey- ing cruise about the middle of March 1874, leading the way in his "flag-ship" the Betsy, with the tender following in its wake. A boating excursion on the Tanganyika, especially when there is the elating feeling that every mile of progress is so much territory conquered from the realms of the Unknown and added to the general knowledge of mankind, must have its rare and peculiar delights. The scenery is 128 TANGANYIKA SCENERY. by turns fantastic, sublime, but always singularly striking in its picturesque variety and wonderful contrasts of vivid colour, and never by any chance resembling anything we are accustomed to in our sober-hued northern climes. On one side lies the pale-blue expanse of the lake, beautiful but treacher- ous ; for at any moment a sudden storm may come scouring down the mountain gullies " in thunder, lightning, and in rain," whipping the waters into foam, and arousing a tierce strife ami uproar of con- tending waxes, out of which the voyager is glad to Bteer his craft into some haven of safety. But the characteristic aspect of Tanganyika is when it is bathed in the dazzling light of the tropical sun, and when the mirror-like waters reflect every tint and every detail of the landscape and the sky. - tiling, as we now are. southward, the view on the right hand is bounded by the high broken line of the mountains on the opposite side of the lake, sometimes far off on the horizon, thirty miles away, and then again separated from us only by a distance of two or three leagues, I Hose at hand on the left rise- the other rocky wall that rims in the Tanganyika, the bright red cliffs of sandstone gleaming out from the vivid een ma f foliage that clothe their sides from the shore to the sky-line, both rock and trees 1 eing in gairish contrast with the shades of the water and of the 1 The shores are constantly advancing in bold headlands or receding in bays, al the head of which a torrent will probably be seen rushing down a stony channel overhung by fine forest trees' ANIMAL LIFE. 129 or the inlet may end in a white pebbly or sandy beach, or in a creek choked with rank green weeds and undergrowth. At frequent intervals cascades tumble over the cliffs; the table-land above is like a sponge soaked with moisture, and the rocks seem constantly paying their tribute of tears to the lake. On Cameron's voyage, which only extended about half way round the shores of Tanganyika., he counted the mouths of a hundred rivers discharging into it. the first met with and the most important of all being the Malagarazi. whose modest beginnings Stanley saw as he crossed the water-parting from the Victoria Nyanza. Further on the colour of the Tanganyika crags undergo many changes. Instead of red sandstone, precipices of black marble, streaked with white, abut on the shore ; in several places the section of a coal formation, which may be of great importance in the future development of the region, is exposed; or the waves break at the feet of cliffs of chalk, cut as cleanly as if done with a knife. The shores and water are alive with animal life. Aquatic birds of many species — gulls, divers, herons, king- fishers, eagles, fish -hawks — abound. The serried back of a floating crocodile looks to the cautious mariner like a ridge of rock, half awash: the resound ing snort of a hippopotamus warns him to get ready his gun ; or the leaping of the large lake fish encour • ages him with the hope of a change of fare. Occasionally a chance of still better sport will pre- sent itself. At one spot, while running under sail close to the narrow beach, Cameron espied an 130 "DOUBLES" AND "DEMON'S/' elephant which had scrambled down through the thicket to enjoy the luxury of a bathe. Instantly the crew were ordered to lie down flat in the boat, to keep silence, and in particular not to disturb one fellow who was snoring peacefully below the gun- wale. Unluckily, just as the boat was getting within range, the sleeper awoke, started to his feet, and yelled at the pitch of his voice, "Elephant, master.'" and away bolted the great brute unscathed into the jungle, "flapping his big ears, like a rabbit bolting into its bunow." This is not the only kind of annoyance that has to be encountered in a native boat manned by blacks; and many times had Cameron occasion to wish devoutly for "two or three weeks of an English whale-boat and crew." The men were lazy, and seized every occasion of shirking their work ; and their stupidity, cowardice, and superstition made constant demands on the explorer's temper. Attacks of fever, which rendered him unfit to take bearings, also caused delay. While Buffering from one of these seizures, he had the curious idea thai he was " double," and that it was for the sole ben. 'lit of his second self, lying shaking and groaning on the opposite side of the boat, that a pot of cold tea had been laid down. " When in my tossing aboul I rolled over to thai side, I seized the tea-pot, drank like a whale, and chuckled at the idea of the other thirsty mortal having been done out of some "f his tipple." Still more detention was caused by another species of ghostly beings- -" demons " — with which Tanganyika is more than averagely well sup- Tanganyika's "cloven hoof." 131 plied. Almost every cape, island, or high crag in the southern portion of Tanganyika is in native estima- tion the chosen abode of some " devil ; " and no one will dare to pass the haunts of these malicious spirits, save under certain conditions, and after offering beads or some other gift to propitiate their good will. The "devil," or, as is quite as often the case, the " deviless," is highly susceptible to flattery ; and while passing its retreat, the boatmen sing such praises as, "You big devil! you big king! you kill all men ; let us go by." The most powerful of* all the spirits of the lake has his seat on a singular tabular mount, shaped like a vast tower, and rising to a height of twelve hundred feet, and flanked on either side by two similar rocks, the abodes of the demon's wife and son. These devils' dwellings are situated at the extreme southern end of Tanganyika, where the lake has, appropriately, a "cloven hoof" shape — a long pro- montory, as in the case of Lake Nyassa, piercing the extremity. There is no thoroughfare this way for the waters of Tanganyika. The haunts of evil spirits are not needed to make it a wild, eerie, and romantic place. The walls of the plateau into which the bays and inlets of the lake are dovetailed show some of the most extraordinary examples of rock and tree scenery to be seen in the world. Ponderous masses of irranite, rising as high as eighty feet above the surface of the water, are scattered at the foot of the cliffs. At some places there are the appearances of terraces and fortress -walls, crowned with parapets 132 CRAGS, CAVES, AXD MONKEYS. and towers, built up in courses, as by the hand of man. " Enormous masses of rock," says Cameron, " are scattered and piled in the most fantastic manner — vast overhanging blocks, rocking-stones, obelisks, pyramids, and every form imaginable. The whole is overgrown with trees jutting out from every crevice or spot where soil has lodged, and from them hang creepers fifty or sixty feet long, while through this fringe there are occasional glimpses of hollows or caves." The whole scene seemed a design for some trans- formation scene in a pantomime, rather than a sub- stantial part of Mother Earth; and the spectator almost expected to see the rocks open and the sprites appear. He had not long to wait. "As I paused to gaze at the wondrous sight — all being still, without ;i sound of life— suddenly tin- long creepers began to move, as some, brown object, quickly followed by another and another, was seen. It was a party of monkeys swinging themselves along, and outdoing Leotard on the flying trapeze ; and then stopping, and hanging by one paw, they chattered and gibbered ;it the Btrange sight of a boat. A shout, and they were gone more rapidly than they came, whilst the mlling echo almost equalled thunder in its in- tensity. In places the slightest shock of earthquake would cause masses of thousands <>f tons to topple down from their lofty site-;, ami carry ruin and de- struction before them." The sli^hte^t noise disturb- ing the accustomed silence <>f these spectral crags and cavee ia duplicated and prolonged with startling effect. A TANGANYIKA DANDY. 133 If one raise the voice above a whisper, it is enough to make " The great echo flap. And buffet round the hills from bluff to bluff." The people of the Tanganyika shores do not pro- duce so imposing an effect as their country, though they do their best to call in art to aid the defects of nature. Take, for instance, a picture of a head-man dressed in the height of fashion as a specimen of many we have met, and are likely yet to meet, on our journeying: — "The chief was profusely greased, had a patch of lamp-black on his chest and forehead, and wore a tiara of leopards' claws, with the roots dyed red, ami behind it a tuft of coarse, whitish hair ; a pair of leopard- skin aprons, a few circles of yellow grass below his knees, a ring on each ankle, and a fly-flapper with the handle covered with beads, com- pleted his attire, if we except the lamp-black which was rubbed into all his tattoo marks/' They are immensely proud of the figure they cut ; and Cameron nearly burst a blood-vessel laughing at the care with which one dandified black folded up his only article of clothing, a loin-cloth, placed it on his head, and hoisted an umbrella of which he had become pos- sessed, to save it and his painted skin from the rain. Considering the precipitous nature of the shor^, the population is pretty dense on the western bank, and they carry on several branches of native manufacture, such as the weaving of cotton : but the eastern coast of the lake has been harried by the slave-traders and the robber clans. Unmistakable sicms of the o 134 the outlet at last. ravages of these miscreants during the interval since Livingstone had visited the lake Mere observed by Cameron, and the depopulation was almost complete when Stanley followed in the latter s footsteps two years later. at Two months after he had set sail from Ujiji, Cameron was rewarded for his persevering search by the discovery of what appeared to him to be un- doubtedly the long-sought-for outlet of Tanganyika. About half-way between the southern and northern extremities of the lake, the chain of mountains girdling the western shore came almost suddenly to a stop. Some miles further on, the shores of the lake Mere to be seen again rising abruptly, and in the centre of the gap was a broad channel stretch- ing far into the land between the opposing heights. This was the Lukuga; which for days before the traveller hud heard of as the river that carried off the outflow of the Tanganyika. His impression that this was the case was confirmed l>v finding a current setting out of the lake, and which drifted his boat into the channel. At first a mile in width, the Lukuga, at a little distance from the lake, became choked with grass, reeds, ami mud-banks, through w hieh the water seemed to drain ; and a gap in a low range of hills, some eight miles ahead, was pointed out by which, the natives told him, the Lukuga i caped aid flowed down the opposite slope to the Lualaba, and thence to the great Western Ocean. The scientific " bigwigs," when this discovery was reported to them gave a great gasp of relief, as if MORE MYSTERY. 135 some knotty fact that threatened to spoil their care- fully constructed theories had been satisfactorily got out of the way. Tanganyika, with its heavy rain- fall, its fresh water, and its walled-in sides, was not then so great an anomaly after all. It had an outlet —and not a subterranean or otherwise mysterious outlet, but one quite above-board — though it had made the eccentric choice of placing it in its side instead of at either end. Tanganyika, however, had one trick more to play To it, in 1870, as has already been said, came Mr. Henry M. Stanley, fresh from his triumphs on the Victoria Nyanza. He took a mental glance round the lake, saw that there were obscure corners here and there which needed to be lighted up, and thought he might as well accomplish this little task before setting out on his o-iorantic undertaking cf tracing the mighty stream of the Lualaba, which Livingstone had discovered away to the westward, and believed to be the head-waters of the Nile, though others, who had information that the lonely missionary traveller lacked, were convinced that it could be none other than the Congo. Stanley em- barked in his stanch little Lady Alice, which had alternately carried and been carried by the traveller for so many hundreds of miles already ; and he made a boat voyage of between eight hundred and nine hundred miles, that occupied him fifty-one days. Among other places, he visited the Lukuga ; but lo ! instead of a current setting out of the lake, he found one flowing in. The little tributary streams of the Lukuga also, which Cameron had observed were all 136 A FASCINATING THEORY. turned from the Tanganyika, twisted their mouths the other way on Stanley's arrival ! It is true there were the break in the plateau-wall, the gap in the low ridge beyond, through which water was found running westward, and the grass-covered swamp be- tween. But this swamp, says Stanley, is the parent both of the Lukuga flowing to the lake and of the other Lukuga flowing to the Lualaba. There is only a foot or two of difference in the level, but the marsh has the advantage of it over the lake, and of course water cannot flow up-hill. But though the Tangan- yika had yet got no outlet in 187G, it is now pro- bably supplied with one in full working order.* The level of the lake, the American explorer points out — and indeed others had pointed it out before him — is gradually rising, as witness the submerged fields and villages along its banks. A few feet more of rise and it would overtop the impediment in the Lukuga channel, ami discharge itself for the first time by this convenient waste-water pipe into the neighbouring basin of the Lualaba. For thousands of years — indeed since the world began — it has slowly been filling up its deep reservoir, good-naturedly delaying the cere- mony of "turning on the water" until Mr. Stanley should be on the spot, to witness it! This is a fascinating theory, but perhaps a more obvious one is to be preferred Tanganyika is too old not to have discovered this chink In its side long ago. !n its time it has bad several levels, and in ha been confirmed by 1 1 1 . - reoenf \i II of Mr. Bore i<> the Lukuga creek. Hi- found 11 itrong current atting. unequivocally out "f the lake, and flowing by thi i bannel down the ilope toward the Lualaba. THE "OCCASIONAL CONTRIBUTOR." 137 point of fact it alters its flood-mark at least once every year with the rainy and the dry seasons. The Lukuga gap probably represents the fracture of an earthquake, or a hole which the imprisoned waters had broken out and escaped by in some former age, and which has been its safety-valve in its later history. When the Tanganyika has water to spare, it empties it westward ; when it has not, it keeps all its supply to itself, and generally preserves a very fine balance between inflow and evaporation. It is a semi-detached lake — an " Occasional Contributor " to the ponderous volume of the Congo — and as such it has no prototype elsewhere on the globe, at least on the same scale. TLXBC tS// \ t PER BO 1 (058) 13 CHAPTER II. THE LUALABA LAKES. ,: This is the forest primeval."— Evangeline. THE true wonder-land of Central Africa is beyond the Tanganyika, and our know- ledge of it is of later date even than the discovery of the sources of the Nile. In the centre of the great table-land, of which mention has so often been made, is a vast hollow., with sloping sides, measuring a thousand miles in length by pro- bably as many in breadth, into which the rains and the dews of heaven— the deluging rains and heavy dews of the tropics — have fallen for ages. At one period — perhaps when the Sahara was an arm of the great salt ocean — this depression must have formed the bed of a fresh-water sea, Gradually the great reservoir would fill up, till the brimming waters would discover the spot where its retaining wall was lowest, and would spill over into the Atlantic. The channel thus formed would gradually deepen, eating its way through the rocky barrier, until the whole storehouse of water would be drained to the bottom. Behind would be A MIGHTY RIVER. 139 left soaked plains and dripping hill -slopes of rich alluvial soil, which the hot sun and plentiful moisture of this equatorial clime would cover with a prodigal growth of vegetation as fast as the waters withdrew. Winding in great folds for two thousand miles at the lowest level of the depression is a mighty river — the main trunk on which all the branches of drainage converge. From its nature it is in its upper course no scurrying, brawling stream, roaring over rapids, and making mad leaps down precipices. Its current is slow and majestic, broad, smooth, deep, and even- flowing, and capable of bearing navies of merchant- men on its wide breast. Sometimes it stands still, and spreads out into great lakes, from whose centre an ocean horizon surrounds the voyager. Between these expansions its appearance is more like that of a lake than a river. Its breadth is rarely less than one, often as much as six and even ten miles. Islands miles in length look like insignificant clumps of ver- dure from its banks, and the inhabitants have rarely communication with the shore. The Nile may exceed it in length, but it is no more comparable with it in bulk and volume than a slender palm-tree is to the massive baobab, or than the scraggy giraffe is to the lordly elephant. There are many of its minor branches that supply more water than all the rivers of Northern Africa put together. These affluents have their coui'ses, like the main stream, through rank forest wildernesses for many hundreds of miles, receive in their turn tributaries which would be rivers of the first rank in Europe, expand into large unvisited 140 A XEGLECTED PROBLEM. lakes, and pass by the dwellings of races who have never seen and probably never heard of the white man. Europe was, on its side, equally ignorant of this vast forest and lake region and its inhabitants till the year 1873. The mouth of the Congo river had of course been familiarly known for centuries; but the colossal volume of water which it discharges into the sea, and which is exceeded only by that of the Amazon among the rivers of the world, had never been accurately gauged. Little or no curiosity was shown as to where the swift current, ten miles in width and six hundred feet deep, could have been collected. Twenty or thirty years ago geographers hardly deigned to bestow a thought on the problem of the Conffo, and dismissed it with the most careless men- tion. Away in another direction — in the Portuguese settlements on the east coast — rumours had long been current of a powerful potentate, named Cazembe, who ruled over a rich and extensive region in the interior, occasionally visited by native traders. At the close of last century a Portuguese traveller, Dr. Lacerda, succeeded in reaching Cazembe's court; but he died there, and the story of his adventures was for the most part left untold. In 1866, the foremost champion of geographical discovery, David Living- stone, buckled on his armour, and started from the ea t coast, with the resolution to unveil the long hidden secrets of this region, Already he had been for the best part of twenty years engaged in explorer's work in South Central Africa where we shall accom- LIVINGSTONE S START. 1-il pany him on his two famous journeys across the conti- nent, and on his subsequent expeditions to complete the examination of the river-system of the Zambesi. On this the most arduous, the most extended, and, alas ! the last of his journeys, Livingstone first set out on the 7th of April 18GC, starting from the mouth of the Rovuma river, half-way between the Zambesi and Zanzibar. He held his way round the southern end of Nyassa, skirted the high land between that lake and the Loangwa river, a branch of the Zambesi, and after many months of wandering found him- self, at the close of 18(36, on the crest of a range which parted the waters flowing south from those flowing north into a great valley which he was told was that of the Chambesi river. Livingstone had no idea at this time that he had crossed the threshold of a new region. The Chambesi was not an unfamiliar name. He believed, as the rest of the world then believed — misled partly by the similarity of sound — that it was merely a northern branch of the Zambesi. What the explorer looked down upon from his vantage-ground was a vast sea of verdure, which filled up all the valleys and tossed itself to the highest peaks of the hills. The soil was moister, the vegetation more dense, the air more humid even than in the countries behind him. He had reached, in fact, the head-waters of the Congo — the Lualaba ; or, as some have proposed to rechristen this river in honour of the man who may be said to have made its importance known, the Livingstone. It was under evil auspices that the missionary 142 THE "FOREST primeval." pioneer plunged into the depths of this virgin forest, which, for the next seven years and a half, was the scene of his lonely wanderings, and where he at length laid himself down to die. His followers had deserted him, carrying back to the coast lying stories of his having been murdered. Trusted servants decamped with his medicine-chest, leaving him with no means of fighting the deadly diseases which from that hour began to break down his strength. The country ahead had been wasted and almost emptied of inhabi- tants by the slave-traders. Hunger and thirst were the daily companions of his march. Constant expo- sure to wet brought on rheumatism and ague ; pain- ful ulcers broke out in his feet ; pneumonia, dysen- tery, cholera, miasmatic fever attacked him by turns ; but still, so long as his strength was not utterly pros- trated, the daily march had to be accomplished. Still more trying than the fatigue were the vexatious delays, extending sometimes over many months, caused by wars, epidemics, or inundation, that fre- quently compelled him to retrace his steps when appar- ently on the verge of some great discovery. Often, in ord.-r to make progress, he had no alternative but to attach his party to some Arab expedition which, under pretence of ivory-trading, had come out to plunder, to kidnap, and to murder. The terrible Bcenes of misery and slaughter of which he was thus compelled to be the witness had perhaps a stronger and more depressing effect on his mind than all the Other trial- that fell to his lot. "I am heart-broken and sick of the sight of human blood," he writes, as LONELY WANDERINGS. 143 he turns, baffled, weary, and broken down in health, from one most promising line of exploration which he had been striving for a year to follow. " Weary ! weary!" is the only entry for one day's march through dismal swamp and shaggy forest. But no sooner had a little strength returned to him than he again turned his back on the road that led to his distant home, where rest and honours were awaiting him, and took up his uncompleted labours in whatever direction he saw a path opened for him into the wilderness. And in all these eight years' wanderings he was only once — at Ujiji, in 1871 — cheered by the sight of the face of a civilized man ; only at intervals of years did he hear news of home and friends, and of the great events that were happening in Europe. It was a struggle between one heroic soul and the whole forces of savage nature and savage man ; and though the great traveller fell in the unequal contest, he fell unconquered and covered with glory. Of this journey we have only an imperfect and fragmentary record — rough jottings made at the close of the long day's march, the mere skeleton outline of that story of wild adventure and strange discovery, the particulars of which can never now be known. For weeks at a time no entries are to be found in the journal : the hand that should have written them was palsied with fever, the busy brain stunned into uncon- sciousness, and the tortured body was being borne by faithful attendants through novel scenes on which the eager explorer could no longer open his eyes. His letters were lost or stolen on the long way to the coast; 144 THE "LAST JOURNALS." his Arab companions were hostile spies on his move- ments, and strove with might and main to mislead him and to close all channels of information from him. Yet these loose and disjointed notes — written latterly on scraps of old newspapers, with an ink manufactured by the traveller himself from the seeds of a plant — tell a more affecting tale and convey a more valuable store of knowledge than many a brilliant and care- fully-written narrative. As in all Livingstone's writings, there is a trans- parent earnestness and truthfulness in these " Last Journals ; " and we see not merely the bold pioneer of discovery, but the patient and loving student of nature, and the warm-hearted advocate of down- trodden fellow-men. Glimpses of the savage jungle life and scenery are occasionally revealed to us. From an eminence we look down on the unshorn forest, through which the path has led for many days' journey, stretching illimitably before us, with perhaps no break or clearing save the channel of some slow winding stream. In the valley of the Chambesi, into which we are first introduced, the population has been almost completely swept away by the slavers, whose trade is rather one of "consecutive murder" than of simple man-hunting. The native clearings have been over- grown by jungle and weeds, and the primeval woods 11 hold undisputed sway. The ancient monarchs of the forest arc only, however, scattered at intervals among the trees of baser and more stunted growth. Deva tating tires sweep over these virgin lands in the dry i i on, leaving over great tracts only tall trunks FOREST SIGHTS AND SOUNDS. 145 rising here and there above the ashes of their fellows, A single year restores the grasses, creepers, and bam- boos to their wonted rankness, and the country is again covered with dense scrub and forest. An oppressive stillness generally reigns in these untrodden solitudes. The African forest is far, how- ever, from being destitute of life, colour, and move- ment ; even the sweet songs of birds, which we are accustomed to think are only heard in temperate climes, are not absent. The volume of song in many localities is as strong, though not perhaps so har- monious, as is heard in our British woods. Notes are heard resembling those of the lark, the chaffinch, the robin, the blackbird, and other familiar songsters, all, however, with a difference, as if our favourites were carolling in some foreign tongue. Others give forth a deep metallic sound like a bell, while a little denizen of the woods repeats a single note like a stroke on a violin string. The shrill treble of the tiny tree-frog, perched on some branch like the feathered members of the choir, mingles not unmusi- cally with the chorus. Some there are of gorgeous plumage, but the majority of African songsters, unlike the birds of South America and other tropical coun- tries, are sober-suited like our own. In dry, hot weather, when the sun is high, the forest is silent ; but in the mornings and evenings, especially after a shower, the universal twitter and the piping duets of affectionate lovers recommence. Perhaps the chir- ruping note of the honey-guide makes itself promi- nent, as it strives to attract the attention of the trav- 146 NATURAL HISTORY NOTES. eller. This singular bird has learned somehow to make its living by a study of the tastes of its fellow- creature, man. Following its guidance, one is led infallibly* to the retreat of a swarm of honey-bees ; and in the plunder that ensues it of course expects to share. Birds of two separate varieties have entered into a similar league of friendly co-operation with the rhinoceros and the buffalo. They are allowed to perch on the backs of these bulky quadrupeds, and pick up a livelihood on the ticks and other parasites that infest their skins ; and they render a still more valuable service to their big friends by taking short flights in the air, and warning them by a shrill note of the approach of some danger invisible down among the tall close growth of the jungle grass. The habits of bees, of ants, of beetles, of spiders, and of the innumerable insects that infest the forest localities constantly afford matter for instruction and amusement, though the traveller would often gladly dispense with the entertainment in order to rid him- self of their attentions. The most ferocious enemy of the explorer in these countries, in fact, is not any of the larger species of wild beasts, with their portent- ous weapons of claw, and horn, and tusk, but a small fly — the notorious tsetse. Promising expeditions have been brought to hopeless ruin by these puny warriors. Its bite is death to cattle and all kinds of baggage animals; its presence in a country is an effectual bar to colonization Itissupposed tofollow the tracts of the zebra, occupying well-defined spaces, which it never crosses ; and it is believed that with LION AND ELEPHANT. 147 the expulsion of game the area of its ravages will be contracted. At the same time, it is a rather sad thought that the magnificent herds of wild animals — zebras, elands, buffaloes, giraffes, gnus, and numer- ous species of deer and antelope — which once roamed all over Central and South Africa, down to the Cape of Good Hope, are every year being thinned away, or driven northwards. The lion — the boasted king of animals — makes a poor figure beside the tsetse fly in travellers' records. The general impression about him is that, in spite of his formidable strength, his imposing roaring, and his majestic mane, he is a coward and a skulker. Livingstone had a hearty contempt for the brute, though in his time he had been severely mauled and bitten by him. The lion, however, when sore pressed by hunger, has been known to pluck up sufficient courage to tear off the flimsy roof of a native hut and leap down upon the sleeping inmates. The elephant — a much grander animal in every respect — occasionally performs a similar feat, his motive being curiosity, or perhaps mischief, if one of his periodical fits of ill-nature is upon him. A sight may now and again be got of a roaming rhinoceros tramping stolidly with surly gruntings through the depths of the thicket ; a glade will be suddenly opened up where a group of shaggy buffaloes are grazing ; or a herd of startled giraffes will break away in a shambling gallop, their long necks swinging ungracefully to and fro, as they crash their way through the forest, like <: locomotive obelisks." Now and then a shot may be got at a troop of zebras, 148 GALLANT SPORT. pallahs, wild-beeste, or other big-game animals, and the scanty larder be replenished for a time ; but the traveller must often lay his account with being absolutely in want of food, and be fain, like Living- stone, to draw in his belt an inch or two in lieu of dinner. But the most gallant sport in these regions — excelling in danger and excitement even elephant- hunting — is the chase of the hippopotamus. This is prosecuted b}^ a hereditary race of hunters, who have attained extraordinary skill in their art. They are described as a bold, outspoken, hospitable people, who live a wandering life, moving from river to river in search of their prey. In frail boats, built solely for swiftness, they cautiously approach the spot where a huge hippopotamus is seen slumbering on the bosom of the stream. Not a sound is heard, not a ripple is visible, as they drop down on their victim ; and only when within a few feet of him does the harpooner in the bow rise and plunge his weapon with all his force into the monster's vitals. At first the animal strives to escape, dragging the canoe after him ; but finding that his enemies are close at his heels, he turns round and rushes furiously at them with wide-open jaws. The light boat dodges, backs, turns from right to left, or skims away, with the dexterity of a trained horse avoiding the charge of an elephant. One crunch of the powerful jaws of the brute or one kick of his foot crushes the frail craft into matchwork ; but the hunters are prepared for such a catastrophe, and instantly dive and swim under water to the shore THE SOKO AND HIS HABITS. 149 while their enemy is looking for them on the surface. Then another boat coining^ to the rescue carries on the contest, and the bio; water-horse succumbs at last from wounds and loss of blood. " This hunting," says Livingstone, " is the bravest thing I ever saw." The night is often made hideous by the shrieks of another of the strange denizens of these forests. This is the soko — either the gorilla which Du Chaillu saw on the Ogowai river, or a closely allied species of " wild- man-o'-the-woods." A glimpse was caught of this sin- gular animal by Cameron on the Tanganyika; Stanley heard much about it while voyaging down the Lual- aba ; but only Livingstone has given authentic partic- ulars regarding it. Its true home of course is among the trees ; but it can make its way at considerable speed over the ground, using its long fore-arms as crutches, and " hitching " itself along on its knuckles. In many of its ways it is exceedingly human-like. Stanley describes their chattering and quarrelling among;' the branches as indistinguishable from the sound of natives squabbling ; to Lieutenant Cameron they looked like a company of black men, only bigger. He was told that they build a nest for themselves every night ; but Livingstone says that these struc- tures show no more science than a cushat's nest. The missionary tells, however, that the soko will pull out a spear, if it is stabbed with one, and stanch the wound with leaves or grass. He describes it as a hideous, pot-bellied creature, whose repulsiveness is increased by its wrinkled yellow face, human-like features, and incipient whiskers and beard. The 150 TANGANYIKA AGAIN. soko, however, is not so bad as it looks. It will not, he says, attack an unarmed man or a woman, and only springs upon a person carrying a spear, from a fear that he is about to assault it. Its mode of attack is invariably to seize the intruder in its powerful arms, get his hand into its mouth, and one by one bite off his fingers and spit them out. It has been known to kidnap babies, and carry them up into the trees, but this seems to be more out of sport than mischief. In his family relations the male soko is a model of affection — assisting the mother to carry her young, and attending strictly to the proprieties of soko society. A young soko which was in the doctor's possession had many intelligent and winning ways ; showed great affection and gratitude, was careful in making its bed and tucking itself in every night, and scrupulously wiped its nose with leaves. In short, it must be allowed that the native verdict that the "soko have good in him" is borne out by the known facts, and that in some respects he com- pares not unfavourably, both in character and man- ners, with some of the men we make acquaintance with in our wanderings through Africa. < rossing the ( lhambesi, and climbing the northern slope of the valley, Livingstone, in the beginning of April L867, found himself on the mountains over- hanging a shed of water called bake Liemba, which subsequently turned out to be the southern end of our old acquaintance, Tanganyika Thence his route zigzagged away to the westward, through a land lull of swamp and slow-running streams, flowing %z3^:mmmmB u SPONGE^" — NEW LAKES 151 towards the setting sun. So saturated was the soil with moisture, that for days solid land was not to be found. Where there was not absolute swamp and mire, the ground was covered with a matted green carpet — a thin crust of vegetation and soil covering " the waters under the earth " — which rose and fell a foot at each step. These treacherous places had to be crossed with a light step, and with- out pausing, for at the least delay the foot might slip through the floating mass, and the unhappy traveller plunge up to the armpits in mire. In the spring of 1867, the reservoir which absorbed the contents of this sponge-like tract was reached. This was Lake Moero, a sheet of water almost insig- nificant for Central Africa, yet whose farther shore was not visible, except on very clear days, to the visitor to its coasts. A black wall of mountains frowned on its western side, but elsewhere its banks were flat. A broad, deep stream flowed into its southern end, and escaped at its northern extremity much enlarged in volume. Livingstone was told that further to the north this great river — the Lualaba — spread into a larger lake — Kamolondo — about the point of its junction with a stream of equal or even greater magnitude coming from the south-westwards, named the Lufira, and that the united waters continued their course to the north- ward through new lakes and unknown countries occupied by wild and cannibal races. It was now that Livingstone got his first hint that he was working not, as he supposed, on the Zambesi, but (658) 2 3 152 KING CAZEMBE. on some new river-system. He instantly rushed to the conclusion that he was on the head -waters of the great river of Egypt, — the wish no doubt being father to the thought, — and up to his last day, though doubts occasionally visited him that it was the course of the despised Congo on which he had lighted, he was firmly convinced that he was engaged on the exploration of the hidden sources of the Nile. He would fain have followed the river downwards to the sea, but there was civil war ahead, and the whole country was flooded ; so he turned his steps southwards in search of another great lake through which the Lualaba was said to flow before reaching Moero. But, first, the great potentate of the region, Cazembe, whose chief town was situated within a few miles of the shores of Mo.ro lake, had to be visited. The importance and the splendour of Cazembe's court were found to have been much exaggerated. The chief held only an elective rule, and his barbaric state was no greater than that of scores of other black " kings" in Africa, He turned out, however, to be a very friendly and hospitable personage, in spite <.f his squinting eyes and gener- ally sinister aspect, the TOW of human skulls with which his gates weiv garnished, and the number of his courtiers who had had their ears cropped and their hands chopped off The doctor did not want b>r meal, meat, and fish, foaming pombe and banana wine, so Ion-- as he stayed with Cazembe; but the chief wa- in no hurry to part with his white guests, > I LAKE BAXGWE0L0. 153 and put off as long as possible his promise to supply guides to the unknown lake. But even an African king will run short of excuses for delay, and so on the 18th of July 1868 Dr. Livingstone found himself, after several weeks' tramp through wet and dry, on the rushy margin of Lake Bangweolo. It is a grand expanse of water, this that had lain so long hid in the inmost recesses of the dark continent of Africa, though its shores have not the bold pictur- esqueness of those of Tanganyika, or the rich diver- sity of those of the Victoria Nyanza. Close to the spot where the discoverer came in sight of it, a wide arm, gradually narrowing to a breadth of half a mile, reached away to the northward. It was the outlet of the lake, the great Lualaba, here known as the Luapula. The lake itself lies east and west, is oval in outline, and measures two hundred miles in length, by about one hundred and thirty in breadth. Vast tracts of flooded forest and marsh surround the open water, especially on the eastern and southern shores, and may almost be regarded as forming part of the lake. The water is of a deep sea- green colour, and rests on a bed of pure white sand. No bold bluffs or fantastically coloured cliffs jut out from the shores of Bangweolo. But for the scattered villages of the fishermen, its surroundings would have a depressing aspect of loneliness and monotony. A few islands break the sky-line, and from these others are visible nearer the centre of the lake. Sailing out in a canoe to the farthest of these isles, Livingstone saw on every side an ocean horizon. 154 A WEARY JOURNEY. Wide as was the view around him, he was never in all his lonely life in a more lonely spot — never so far beyond the ken of civilization. Having ascertained that a range of mountains ran along the southern side of the lake, separating its water-shed from that of the Zambesi, and that the Chambesi river flowing into its eastern end was the head- waters of the Lualaba. the doctor retraced his steps to the north, and resolved to follow a new line of exploration. He would return to Tanganyika, and making to the north-westward, would strike the course of the Lualaba further down, and follow it until, as he hoped, he had proved it to be the Nile. Terrible trials and sufferings marked this journey. Impedi- ments met him at every step ; his illnesses returned upon him with fourfold force ; his followers deserted him ; his stores of food were exhausted; the natives were hostile and treacherous. For sixteen days he was carried in a litter, under the vertical rays of the sun, over rough hills and thorny and marshy hollows in which the water frequently mounted to the waists of the bearers. The road constantly rose and fell over the uneven boggy ground, and every jolt was torture to the sick and toilworn traveller. The sight of the Tanganyika revived for a little his drooping spirits: but still he feared that he must die ere he reached l T jiji. and then, he writes, "all the letters that await me will be useless." On the I Itli of March 1869 he arrived at the goal for which he so despairingly longed, but found awaiting bim no aid or supplies, no medicines, no letters. Mirambo A NEW REGION. 155 was on the war-path against the Arabs, and the road to the coast was closed. Slowly the traveller's strength returned ; but several months elapsed before he found himself able to set out for the unknown country to the west through which the Lualaba flows after leaving Lake Kamolondo. Even the Arab slave-traders had not previously penetrated so far into the interior. Livingstone followed in the trail of these despera- does, and saw but too abundant examples of their methods of " opening up " the country. Again, as he began to descend the slope towards the great river, he entered the region of forest, marsh, and running stream. The hill-sides were ploughed by the waters into deep ravines, some of them filled to the lips with the dense growth of trees and shrubs spread like a sombre green pall over the face of the land. Others of these canons show steep cliff-like sides, draped with trailing mosses and ferns. This route has also been traversed by Cameron and Stanley, and their more detailed narrative bears out the description of Livingstone, which shows that a new region, markedly distinct in its plant and animal life, and in its races of men and their customs, is entered into so soon as the water-shed is crossed. In the very first country reached, Ubujwa, we meet with "caste," unknown to the eastern side of the continent, the upper classes being distinguished by tattooing and ornaments, as well as in dress and features, from those beneath them. Then follows a more mountainous country, Uvinza — a succession of sharp ridges separated by 15G PATHS IN THE FOREST. profound gullies. The e}'e cannot penetrate the gloom of these abysses, and only a faint murmur of waters tells that a river flows through their depths. The only means of crossing them is often by a bridge of ratans or the trunk of some fallen tree. The ridges can sometimes only be surmounted by clinging to rocks and creepers, and scrambling like a squirrel from branch to branch. Often a decayed trunk hangs threateningly over the head of the explorer, kept upright by the parasitical plants that bind the forest trees together like great cables. " Into these primeval woods," says Livingstone, " the sun, though vertical, cannot penetrate, except as sending down their pencils of rays into the gloom. The rain-water stands for months in stagnant pools made by ele- phants' feet, and the dead leaves decay on the damp soil. One feels himself the veriest pigmy before these gigantic trees; many of their roots, high out of the soil in the path, keep you constantly looking down, and a good gun docs no harm to the parrots and guinea-fowl on their tops. The climbing plants, from the size of a whipcord to that of a man-of-war's hawser, make the ancient path the only passage." Beyond tin' mountains we reach the great alluvial plain, bordering on the Lualaba, occupied by a strange race of people — the Manyuema. Here Livingstone passed many months: first in attempts t.» reach the great river, the paths being closed by the wars which the Arab inroad had stirred up; and then at Nyangwe, on the Lualaba, in futile endea- vours to continue his journey. 1 [e mingled much with MANYUEMA MANNERS. 157 the Manyuema, and found something in them to ad- mire and a great deal to shock and disgust. They are a fine race — the most handsome and athletic he had seen in Africa. Some of the female Manyuema especially might be described as beautiful in features as well as form. They have made a good deal of progress in the arts of agriculture and manufacture as practised among savages. The country is thickly peopled, large villages being met with at the end of every mile or two of march. The houses are neatly built, with red painted walls, thatched eaves, and doorways higher than one is accustomed to see in Africa ; and they are generally arranged on a regular plan, the streets radiating from a central space. The cottages are shaded by banana and other fruit trees, and around the villages are lame areas planted with maize, manioc, sweet potatoes, yams, and sesamum. The inhabitants are clever smiths, tanners, and weavers. The chiefs are imposing- looking personages, with dirks and sharp two-edged swords stuck in their girdles, a permanent cone- shaped cap, composed of their own hair plastered with clay, in addition to a multiplicity of bangles, rings, bells, and nose and ear ornaments. These "superior persons" wear a kilt of grass-cloth, of a gaudy tartan pattern, giving them a not remote re- semblance to imperfectly dressed Rob Roys painted black. The vulgar herd have generally to be con- tent with a leathern apron. It seems only too well established that these fine-looking fellows are canni- bals. Livingstone was never able to obtain con- 158 MAX-EATERS AND MAN-HUNTERS. elusive proof on the point, though the evidence pointed strongly in that direction. He was of opinion that it was only their captive enemies that they ate, and that they had been led to the practice by their indulgence in soko flesh. The soko, indeed, they are inclined to regard as a member of the human family ; if not exactly one of ourselves, at least a poor relation. At one of the Manyuema villages Mr. Stanley noticed a row of one hundred and eighty- six skulls decorating the principal streets, and was told that they were remains of sokos, the trophies of former feasts. He carried off two of the skulls, and presented them to Professor Huxley, who declared that they were negro craniums of the usual type. Whether habitual cannibals or not, the Manyuema have the most callous indifference for human sufTer- iii"- and bloodshed; and the slave-traders found it the easiest task imaginable to set the tribes at each other's throats. These ruffians having gained com- plete ascendency with their fire-arms, sided first with one party and then with another, and when the combatants were suilicicntly weak they all fell an easy prey. From his camp at Nyangwe Livingstone counted at one time ten and at another seventeen villages in flames at once. The slavers' depredations culminated in a massacre of more than ordinary atrocity. One of the great institutions of the Manyuema country is their markets, held in certain villages and at stated times. Even in war-time market people are allowed to pass freely to and from the AX ARAB MASSACRE. 159 fairs with their wares. People from distant dis- tricts collect here, and exchange their surplus pro- ducts for Manyuema luxuries. Fish-wives, goat- herds, slave-owners ; dealers in ivory, palm oil, pottery, skins, cloth, and iron-ware ; sellers of fruit, vegetables, salt, grain, and fowls, all mingle in the motley throng, and shout the merits of their par- ticular goods at the top of their lungs, and with a perseverance and ardour that would make the fortune of an auctioneer at home. Strange varieties of savage costume and no costume are to be seen in these groups : the wild Balegga man-eater stalking side by side with the white-skirted Moslem man- hunter from Zanzibar ; and the plumed, painted, tattooed, and bespangled chieftain laying his dignity temporarily aside to chaffer with a poor commoner in his simple waistcloth, over the price of a pig or of a mess of roasted white ants. At Nyangwe there was a market once in every four days, and the assemblage generally numbered about three thousand. One fair-day the Arabs, who had been sauntering peaceably among the crowd, suddenly produced their arms and began firing on the helpless multitude, chiefly composed of women. Flinging down their wares, the panic-stricken people fled on all sides, many of them dashing into the river that flowed close by, or climbing into boats that filled and sank with the numbers that crowded into them. The market-place was strewn with the dead and dying, and with the confused heaps of merchandise which had been dropped or thrown down in the flight, 1G0 NATIVE GEOGRAPHY. while the murderous scoundrels continued firing so long as they could see a victim to aim at. Livingstone believed that five hundred lives were sacrificed in this unprovoked massacre. The object was to " strike terror " into the hearts of the inhabi- tants, and show them the irresistible power of the gun. The result was that the country became too hot to hold the murderers. Livingstone, rather than continue to be a witness of their monstrous crimes, resolved to abandon his attempt to continue his journey. He had learned a good deal at Nyangwe of the course and character of the Lualaba, but he still believed that it was the Nile. At this point the river is a full mile in breadth, flowine- north-west- 9 n> wards with a deep rapid current of a pale gray tint, between low banks, and sprinkled over with little green islands covered with sedge and trees. Some distance below, a great tributary, the Lomame, falls into it on the opposite bank. The main stream of the Lualaba, Livingstone was told, was not the branch which he had traced between Lake. Bangweolo and Lake Moero, but another river, rising in a chain of mountains in the south, which joins it in Lake Kamolondo. The inhabitants on this stream lived in strange underground dwellings. — galleries and chambers excavated in the soil or chiselled out of the rucks. Near its head were copper- workings, and its source was in a fountain on a rounded hill, from a spring in which also flowed the Lomame; while on it- southern side were tin' head-springs of tli.- Zambesi, and of its chief* tributary, the Kafua I DANGERS ON THE WAY. 161 " The Mountains of the Moon ! " was the doctor's mental note, " the hills Crophi and Mophi ! the Foun- tains of the Nile ! the ancient Mines of Copper ! the Troglodytes ! Here they all are, just where Ptolemy and other venerable authorities placed them ; and other explorers, who are wandering astray in search of them to the northward, have turned their backs on the true beginnings of the sacred river of Egypt." And in this firm belief he ceased from seeking to follow up the Lualaba, and turning his own back upon the sources of the Nile, resisting the entreaties of Stanley, and the natural longings of his heart to revisit home, he followed what he was persuaded was the marked -out path of duty, leading him to the enigmatical fountains which he had heard of among the savages of Manyuema. Cameron, the next comer to that country, was told quite a different tale by those accomplished fictionists ; and, by means which were not in Livingstone's power, he proved that the Lualaba could not be the Nile, for the two simple reasons, that its volume was many times larger, and its level many hundred feet lower, than that of the "White Nile at Gondokoro. After two years of absence, the veteran missionary was again at Ujiji, where Stanley was one of the first to greet him. Other dangers besides sickness and privation had beset him; for the country was up in arms, the avengers of blood were at his heels, having confounded him with the strangers who were desolating the land, and twice in one day he had narrow escapes from spears hurtling close past him (058) 1 ± 1G2 THE FINAL JOURNEY. from the thicket. Another year passed before new stores reached him from the coast and he was able to set out on his final journey. This last sad chapter of the story of a noble life is a record of suffering borne with heroic patience and steadfastness rather than a narrative of exploration and adventure, and it may be swiftly passed over. The start was from Unyanyembe, on the 14th cf August 1872 ; the route lay along the eastern side of Tanganyika, and round the northern, eastern, and southern shores of Bangweolo. From the first a full share of the hardships and dis- couragements of African travel fell to their lot, but it was not till they began the long descent into the hollow, at the bottom of which lies Bang- weolo, that the misery and gloom began to accumu- late with more than ordinary intensity. The rain fell incessantly. The path was a miry track, between high walls of dripping grass and cane, in which the foot slipped and sank at every step. The spongy soil had soon soaked up all the moisture it could ci mtain, but still the skies poured down a pitiless flood on the drowned land. The country was flat, with no hillock or rock- from which the travellers could catch a glimpse of their surroundings, or see a way of escape from their difficulties. The way they followed, sloping imperceptibly to the lake level, led them deeper into the mire and mud. Every mile or two a river hud to be crossed,— a sluggish, turbid stream with a wide margin of inundated marsh on either bank. It was impossible to tell where the "rain! rain! rain!" 163 river merged into the swamp, and the swamp into the land. Still the forlorn band plodded slowly on, skirting as closely as possible the northern coast of the lake, and seeking a way round its eastern end. " Rain ! rain ! rain ! " is the doctor's entry on Christmas day. At the close of January there was no cessation of the downfall ; it seemed as if it would never fair. The malarial fever again seized on the explorer with re- doubled force. He who had in earlier years always marched briskly at the head of his men, now dragged his limbs wearily in the rear. Sometimes he was able to keep his seat on one of the asses that accom- panied his train ; but at other times this exertion was too painful, and he staggered feebly along with the support of two of his faithful men. He was no lonu-er able to wade the streams, and had to be car- ried through the muddy currents on the shoulders of his servants. The toil and misery of these cross- ings may be imagined from the fact that the water occasionally rose to the chins of the bearers, and that they were liable at any moment to plunge into deep holes or become firmly entangled in the mud and weeds. The surrounding country was uninhabited — indeed, uninhabitable. The supplies of food began to fail, and hunger was added to the torments of the march. The guides deserted, and the fated band struggled on through fen and brake, not knowing whither they were journeying, seeing nothing from day to day save the tall, damp barriers of jungle that hemmed them in, and the gloomy sky overhead. 164 THE LAST ENTRY. TheChambesi river — here three hundred yards wide and three fathoms deep — was, however, found and crossed, and the wanderers began to turn their faces westward along the south side of Bangweolo. The doctor was able to walk no further ; when he climbed upon his ass, he fell to the ground from sheer weak- ness. His devoted retainers — Chouma, Susi, Jacob Wainwright, and the others — carried him by turns on their shoulders, or in a litter which they constructed. On the 23rd of April and the three following days he was able only to write in his diary the date, and the distances marched — from a mile to two miles and a half. On the 27th occurs the last entry, waver- ingly traced with his dying hand : " Knocked up quite, and remain — recover — sent to buy milch goats. We are on the banks of the R[iver] Molilamo." His last days march, like so many that had gone before, was partly through the interminable marsh and in rain. His bearers had to halt often, so violent were his pains and so great his exhaustion. Arrived at tin- village of Chitambo, in Ilala, he was helped from tin- litter to the lied of leaves spread for him in a native hut. He spoke kindly to his humble com- panions, and asked anxiously how many days' march it was to the Lualaba. The malarial poison was already, however, exercising its benumbing power over his faculties; even the fountains of the Nile had faded into dimness, if not into utter darkness, before his mind's eye. In the morning of the 1st of May the servant to watch by him awoke and found his ma THE DEATH OF LIVINGSTONE. 165 kneeling by the side of his rude couch in an atti- tude of prayer. Alarmed by the utter stillness of the figure, he called in his companions. The brave spirit had fought its last fight in the darkness, and had fled. The noble Christian philanthropist, the manful champion of the weak and oppressed, the un- wearied and keen-eyed lover of nature, the intrepid explorer whose name is as inseparably connected with Africa as that of Columbus is with America, had sunk down exhausted in the very heart of the continent, with his life-long work still unfinished. His highest praise is that he spent thirty years in the darkest haunts of cruelty and savagery and yet never shed the blood of his fellow-man. The noblest testimony to his character and his influence is the conduct of that faithful band of native servants who had followed his fortunes so long and so far, and who, embalming his body, and secretly preserving all his papers and possessions, carried safely back over the long weary road to the coast all that remained of the hero and his work. CHAPTER III. CATARACTS AND CANNIBALS. " The long day wanes ; the slow moon climbs; the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order, smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be we will touch the Happy Isles." Tennyson, V!yssc$. HILE Livingstone was lingering for so many months on the banks of the Lua- Iaba at Nyangwe, he looked daily with eager longing at the strong, deep, mile- broad current that swept, placidly past and disap- peared into the depths of the unexplored continent. Behind, to the eastward, lay eight hundred miles of the breadth of Africa which had already been crossed; but ahead there stretched nearly a thousand miles of absolutely unknown country between him and the Atlantic. Into that ocean, a thousand miles in a straight line west-south-west of his present position, the Congo discharged itself, and its stream, pouring apparently Erom the central reservoir, bad been tract d A PERILOL'S ENTERPRISE. 167 for one hundred and fifty miles from the coast. But this Lualaba flowed almost due north, as if heading for the Nile or the Niger. He longed for the power to embark on its waters, and follow its mysterious fortunes to the " hitter end," whether in the Medi- terranean or the Western Sea. But he had to give up the idea as fool-hardy. The shaggy forests that covered the land in front were even more gloomy and forbidding than those that lay behind ; the tribes that haunted their depths were ferocious and un- tamed to an extent that made the Manyuema seem mild and civilized by comparison. No volunteers could be found rash enough to brave the known and the unknown dangers of the route ; and for an ex- plorer to venture upon this wild enterprise weakly guarded was to court certain destruction. Cameron also found the difficulties of following the course of the Lualaba insuperable, and bent his steps to the south-westward instead. Stanley, however, who arrived here in the close of 187G, was differently sit- uated. Not a whit behind his predecessors in courage and energy, he possessed what they wanted — money — which has an almost absolute power even in Cen- tral Africa — and men. His followers, in spite of all the losses of the expedition, still numbered about one hundred and forty. The weaklings had been weeded out by the toils and troubles of the journey ; those that remained were now veterans, trained in a hard school to obedience and steadfastness. The best assur- ance of their fidelity was the fact that if they deserted they would infallibly be killed, and probably eaten. 168 START FOR THE WEST COAST. The American explorer made the great resolve to dare all — to join his life and fortunes to this river, and like his countryman's bull -terrier, as recorded by- Mark Twain, " kinder freeze to it, :> until he found its outlet. So he marshalled his people, his captains of tens and fifties, with the women and children of his force, and addressed them in pithy and stirring words, like a Viking or some other old-world warrior about to lead his men on some desperate adventure where glory and peril would be reaped in equal proportions. The answer was not lukewarm, and they set out from Manyuema, plunging at once into the al>3*sses of the virgin forest. Such woods, so tall and dense and sombre, the traveller had never before invaded. Compared with them the forests of Uganda and along the shores of Tanganyika seemed mere jungle and thicket. Even the Manyuema had penetrated but a little way into their depths. They line the course of the Lualaba on both sides for fifteen hundred miles below Nyangwe, and stretch back from its banks to unknown distances. Ahead of Stanley's expedition went a large party of Arabs and their retainers from the coast — some seven hundred in number — whom he had hired as his escort for the first stages of the journey. The long file extended for miles along the narrow elephant track, and fre- quent halts had to be made to cut a path through the thicket, or to rest the weary carriers. The t rees," says the explorer, " kept shedding their dcw^ upon us like rain in great round drops. Every IN THE DEPTHS OF THE FOREST. 169 leaf seemed weeping. Down the boles and branches, creepers and vegetable cords, the moisture trickled and fell on us. Overhead the wide-spreading branches, in many interlaced strata, each branch heavy with broad, thick leaves, absolutely shut out daylight. We knew not whether it was a sunshiny day or a dull foggy day. for we marched in a feeble solemn twilight, such as you experience in temperate climes an hour after sunset. It was so dark some- times that I could not see the words recording notes of the track which I pencilled in my note-book. To right and left, to the height of about twenty feet, towered the undergrowth, — the lower world of vege- tation. What rude blast can visit these imprisoned shades ? The tempest might roar without the leafy world, but in its deep bosom there is absolute still- ness." Every few hundred yards the path dived clown into the bed of a swampy water-course or ravine filled with water-plants and festooned with tough creepers, armed some of them with formidable hooks that cut the bare feet and exposed limbs of the porters to the bone. It soon became almost im- possible to force a way through this dense mass of vegetation for the unwieldy sections of the Lady Alice, which after her many wanderings by land and sea was about to start on a more perilous voyage than any that had preceded. The Arabs, too, had soon enough of the forest life,, for sickness was strik- ing down their men in scores. It was resolved to take to the river, and face the dangers from the 170 AFLOAT OX THE LUALABA. numerous rapids and the savage cannibal tribes on its shores, rather than continue to struggle through these thorny and gloomy shades. The river-margin was reached, the Lad]) Alice put together and launched, and the voyage down-stream began, a land party following the river-bank parallel with the boat. The stream and the dwellers thereon were not long in each giving a taste of their peculiar quality. A dangerous rapid had to be shot down. The natives swarmed out in their canoes, uttering wild war-whoops. The passage of the river became one long running fight between the spear and arrow and the musket. So soon as the boat made its appearance round a bend of the stream, the kettle-drums gave the alarm in the native villages, and soon the great war-horns and war-drums boomed out their deep notes across the waters. The savages rushed to their canoes, and paddled out gleefully to intercept the strangers, of whom they expected to make an easyprey. It was evident from their shouts and gestures that fchey were in search not merely of spoil but of supper. No doubt was left in the minds of Stanley and his crew, from the ghastly remains of human feasts in their villages, that the tribes on this part of the Lua- laba, and for many hundreds of miles below, are can- nibals of the most pronounced and ferocious type. IF the Lady Alice found it impossible to escape by speed from her enemies, the tactics often adopted were to moor her in the Btream, raise a bulwark of captured shields above her gunwale, and behind this barrier, impervious to arrow or spear, await the LAND AND RIVER FIGHTS. 171 attack. Sometimes the first discharge of musketry- put the assailants to ignominious flight. More fre- quently the battle was prolonged for hours, though it invariably ended in the assailants being beaten off. Stanley did not, of course, stop to collect statistics of his victories ; but the number of the savages killed in these fights must have been something consider- able. The members of the expedition, protected though they were, did not come off lightly. At the end of the first month over twenty ''naval engagements" had been fought, and not thirty of the party had escaped wounds. Many seats were empty, the owners having fallen victims to the river, to the cunning enemy, or to small-pox and other diseases that attacked the expedition with great virulence. The land party fared even worse. Darts were launched upon them from the thickets, and ambus- cades lay in wait for them at every turn. From the " Expedition Camp" relief parties had to be sent to their help, and to guide them when, as often happened, they lost their way. The difficulties of the forest path became, if possible, greater as they proceeded ; the unhealthy, steaming atmosphere seemed to thicken and the dripping branches to be more closely inter- woven, until they had to burrow and crawl on hands and feet through the tangle like wild animals. The Arabs had had enough of it. They refused to pro- ceed further, though they were still eight days' march from the point agreed upon for parting company; and Stanley and his men were left alone in the wilderness. Something must be resolved upon, and quickly. 172 A GREAT RESOLVE. otherwise nothing could save the expedition. A can- nibal tribe had, as usual, attacked the boat, and had been beaten to an island in mid-stream, "where their boats were drawn up. By a brilliant stratagem, car- ried out by the leader and his faithful Frank Pocock, the enemy's boats were " cut out " during the night and towed to the shore. Peace negotiations were then entered into with the savages, resulting in twenty-two canoes being retained by the explorers as indemnity ; and in these the whole of the expedi- tion, with their goods and chattels, embarked on the 28th December 1876, the Lady Alice showing the way down-stream, and the crews responding with hearty shouts to the declaration of the leader that they should "toil on and on by this river and no other to the salt sea." The tom-toming, the blasts of the war-horns, the incessant attacks of the cannibals went on from day to day, till even the fighting became monotonous. The safety of the party lay in the width of the great stream, which enabled them to move to whichever bank seemed most deserted, or keep in mid-river if attacks were threatened from both sides. Tribu- taries, each of them a mighty stream, discharged themselves into the Lualaba, and increased its breadtli and volume. One of these was the Lomame, or Young's river, coming from Livingstone's supposed " Fountains" in the south, and which is six hundred yards wide at the mouth, and flows between low banks densely covered with timber. But the chief affluents arc on the right bank of the Lualaba. Of NILE OR CONGO? 173 these the Luama is four hundred yards wide, the Lira three hundred yards only, but of great depth, and the Urindi five hundred yards ; but they are puny streams beside the Lowwa, which is two-thirds of a mile broad at its junction with the main river. Still further down, and also on the north bank, the Mbura discharges itself into the Lualaba by two branches, each two hundred yards in breadth ; and a hundred and fifty miles lower down there is suddenly opened the vast mouth of the Aruwimi, two thou- sand yards from shore to shore, and leading, like a broad highway, to regions still unvisited. Ere this point is reached strange vicissitudes have occurred to the river itself and to the voyagers on it. The breadth of the stream has increased from two thousand to three thousand and latterly four thou- sand yards. Its course has been persistently north- ward. The Equator has been reached, but still the direction of the Lualaba corresponds with that of the Nile Valley. Can it be, thinks the leader of the little flotilla, that Livingstone was right, and that this after all is the Nile ? He had little time for reflection, so unremitting were the natives in their attentions, and so desperately hard was the toil of working down-stream. Just below the mouth of the Lomane besfin a series of cataracts — seven of them within a distance of seventy miles — with roaring- rapids between, where the Lualaba cuts its way through a range of hills as it descends from a higher to a lower level in its bed. The channel is contracted to a third or even a sixth of its ordinary breadth, 174 THE CATARACTS. and through this narrow gorge the stream tumbles and boils, flinging itself over ledges of rock, or dash- ing frantically against the walls that hem it in, as if it were struggling with all its giant power to escape from its prison. Within the gorge the ear is stunned with the continual din of the rushing waters, and the attention kept constantly on the strain to avoid the perils of rock, rapid, whirlpool, and cataract with which the course is strewn. With extreme caution and good-luck the rapids may be run in safety ; but how are frail canoes to survive the experiment of a plunge over a perpendicular ledge, in company with millions of tons of falling water, into an abyss of seething and gyrating foam ? On shore the dangers are scarcely less formidable than on the water. The cannibal natives lie in wait to oppose the landing, or better still, to slay or cap- ture victims wherewith to replenish their larders. A toilsome ascent has to be made to the summit of the bluffs forming the river-banks over rough boulders and through tangled forest. In places where the fall of the stream is slight it may lie possible to lower down the boats, by means of strODg hawsers of creepers, to the pool below ; but in other cases the canoes have to be dragged painfully up the cliffs, ami launched again with almost equal toil where the current seems a little calmer. All this while tin' poisoned arrows are hissing through the air, spears are launched out of every thicket where ;i wily savage can find a hiding-place, and stones are slung or thrown at the unlucky A STRANGE CAPTURE. 175 pioneers from each spot of vantage ground. Only by- stationing van and rear guards and Hanking parties, and maintaining a brisk tire on the bush, can the assailants be kept at bay. When a camp is formed for the night, the wearied members of the expedition, after posting a strong guard, hope for a little rest after the terrible trials of the day. Most likely they are disappointed. The vindictive assailants never leave off exhibiting proofs of their hostility during the whole night ; and the whiz of the flying arrows, the hurtling of lances through the stockade, and the sharp crack of the rifle mingle with the dreams of the sleeper. One morning at day-break it was found that the savage fishermen had spread their nets all about the camp, and were waiting outside, expecting to make a great haul. The expedition broke through this and all the other toils drawn round it ; but each day there were new labours to begin and new attacks to be beaten off. Sometimes prisoners were made ; but so low was the intelligence of the natives, and so inveterate their animosity, that hardly any progress could be made in this way towards a peaceable understanding. One curious prize fell into the hands of the strangers — a member of a tribe of dwarfs, the Watwa, who inhabit the country some distance up the Lomane. He was only four and a half feet high — a miserable object — bow-legged and thin-shanked, with a straggling fringe of whisker round his ape- like features, whose appearance aroused no consum- ing desire that pigmies should be more common in the world than they are. 17G A DESPERATE STRAIT. The descent of the Stanley Falls, as this region of cataracts and cannibals has been named, was not accomplished by the expedition without loss of life and property. In spite of every precaution, canoes would be dragged from their moorings and be sucked down by the whirlpools or swept over the falls ; or the occupants would lose nerve in the presence of danger, and allow their craft to drift into the power- ful centre current, whence escape was hopeless. One marvellously narrow escape there was. A canoe was capsized in a piece of bad water, just above one of the falls. Two of the three men on board' swam to the shore; the third, clinging to his boat, was carried straight towards the cataract. Luckily, a few feet from the brink of the fall, a single pointed rock pro- jected from the bed of the stream. On this the canoe struck, and one side getting jammed below the sur- face, the other tilted up. To this frail hold the luck- less man clung, with his feet dipping in the water, and hanging, as it were, on the verge of eternity. Numerous were the devices adopted by his comrades to rescue him from his doom. Ropes Mere flung towards him, and attempts made to float empty canoes within his reach, but to no effect. At Length ;i canoe, with two bold spirits on hoard — one of whom was Qledi, the coxswain of the expedition, who by pluck and coolness was instrumental in saving a score of lives during the descent of the Lualaba— essayed thedangeroua task. Stout cables were lashed to bow and stem, and were held by the Strong hands of men OH the shore, and by this means the boat was guided SMOOTH WATERS AGA IX. 177 towards its goal. When within ten yards of the terrified wretch, a rope was flung to him, and clutch- ing at it he disappeared over the falls into the yawn- ing gulf below. The canoe drifted against a rocky islet that divided the falls, and on pulling the rope it was discovered that the drowning man was still at the end of it, and he was hauled safely to the little isle. It seemed but reprieve from death, and night fell before anything could be done to effect a rescue. But next morning the means were found to float cables to the rock, where the three men maintained a precarious foothold, and one by one they were dragged hand over hand through the raging current. Siinul- taneously, however, another canoe had been upset, and one man was carried down into the chasm to certain death. After twenty -two days of incessant labour, the expedition once more floated in smooth waters below the Stanley Falls. The banks of the stream again opened up, and its breadth spread out to a mile or a mile and a half. At the same time the river suddenly changed its northerly direction to a course west- north-west. Before the Aruwimi is reached, the vast stream rolls between banks four thousand yards apart, and green fertile islands are sprinkled on its broad bosom. No change, however, is manifest in the character of the natives of its banks. If possible, they are more inveterately hostile and bloodthirsty than ever, and the most formidable attack yet made on the expedition occurred at the junction of the Aruwimi. The shores of both streams resounded to (658) IT) 178 A CANNIBAL ARRAY. the din of the everlasting war-drums, and from every cove and island swarmed a crowd of canoes, that began forming into line to intercept and attack the travellers. These crafts were larger than any that had yet been encountered. The leading canoe of the savages was of portentous length, with forty paddlers on each side, while on a platform at the bow were stationed ten redoubtable young warriors, with crimson plumes of the parrot stuck in their hair, and poising long spears. Eight steersmen were placed on the stern, with large paddles ornamented with Lalls of ivory : while a dozen others, apparently chiefs, rushed from end to end of the boat directing the attack. Fifty -two other vessels of scarcely smaller dimensions followed in its wake. From the bow of each waved a long mane of palm fibre ; every warrior was decorated with feathers and ornaments of ivory; and the sound of a hundred horns carved out of elephants' tusks, and a song of challenge and defiance chanted from two thousand savage throats, added to the wild ex- citement of the scene. The assailants were put to flight after a series of charges more determined and prolonged than usual. This time, however, the blood of the strangers was fully up. They were tired of standing everlast- ingly on the defensive, of finding all their advances repelled with scorn and hatred. They carried the war into (he enemy's camp, ami drove them out of their principal village into the forest. In the centre ol the village was found a singular structure — a temple of ivory, the circular roof supported by thirty- THE ARUWIMI. 179 three large tusks, and surmounting a hideous idol, four feet high, dyed a bright vermilion colour, with black eyes, beard, and hair. Ivory here was " abun- dant as fuel," and was found carved into armlets, balls, mallets, wedges, grain pestles, and other articles of ornament and use ; while numerous other weapons and implements of iron, wood, hide, and earthenware attested the ingenuity of the people. Their cannibal propensities were as plainly shown in the rows of skulls that grinned from poles, and the bones and other grisly remains of human feasts scattered about the village streets. Collecting their spoils, the voyagers made haste to leave the neighbourhood of the Aruwimi. Native report spoke of great lake-like expansions higher up the stream, and some day it may be one of the chief highways to the heart of Africa. If it should turn out to be, as Stanley has no hesitation in pronouncing it, the Welle of Schweinf urth, there is especial interest attached to its exploration; for the Welle, which from its north-westerly course was supposed by the German discoverer to flow into Lake Chad, passes through a region of unique natural features and marvellous beauty, inhabited by races, such as the Akka dwarfs and the Nyam Nyam cannibals, that present some marked points of difference from other African peoples. Had we followed in the footsteps of Dr. Schweinf urth, we would have seen him received by the dignified King Munza of Monbuttu, in a lofty and spacious hall, thronged with warriors and coun- sellor's of state, some of them full-bearded, light-corn- 180 ISLAND PARADISES. plexioned men, with long, hooked Jewish noses, wearing gorgeous vestments of fig-tree bark, copper rings and chains, great cylindrical caps of papyrus surmounted by plumes of ostrich and parrot, and with sickle-like swords of gleaming copper girt to their waists. But any one who desires to penetrate to tliis region by the Aruwimi must obviously be prepared to carry things with the high hand. Below the Aruwimi the breadth of the main stream continues to increase as it bends north-westerly to the fourth degree of north latitude, then westerly, and at last south-westwards to its outlet in the Atlantic. Countless jungle-overgrown islands impede its course, and between these it flows in numerous channels, with a distance of from four to as many as ten miles separating its opposing banks. For one thousand miles the river is uninterrupted by rapids or cataracts, and this portion of the voyage was in many ways the most pleasant and peaceable. The shore- dwellers were still frequently hostile, but the explorers could now dodge them successfully out and in among the islands, or slip past unobserved down some of the central passages. At, night the camp Mas pitched on some secluded isle in mid-stream, where they could sleep undisturbed by the fear of being made into a stew ere morning. These little clumps of verdure were full of botanical treasures, — fruit and oil-bear- ing palms of many varieties, gaudy tropical flowers, tall cotton-wood and teak trees, twining coils of ratan and wild vine and broad-leaved aquatic plants; and though their shades were haunted by A GREAT TRIBUTARY. 181 myriads of mosquitoes that swarmed out and industri- ously drew toll from the veins of the passers-by, though a dip in the stream was rendered dangerous by the legions of crocodiles that lurked in- its waters, and the storms that often swept across; the wide reaches of the stream raised heavy brown waves that threatened to swamp the canoes, the travellers had been so harshly disciplined in the school of adversity that these were counted as trifling discomforts. It was only a respite, however, for worse dangers and difficulties than any they had passed still lay ahead; and though the breadth of the stream rendered its navigation safe, it interfered with the objects of exploration. They could never positively tell whether the broad channels they saw opened up from time to time were new tributaries of the Congo, or merely passages between the islands. Those on the north side might even have been branches thrown off by the main stream to form the great Ogowai River, whose upper course, in spite of the efforts of Du Chailiu, Marche, Compiegne, Savorgnan de Brazza, and other French explorers, is still little known. One great affluent of the Congo, however, made its presence unmistakably known. This is the Ikelemba, a river not much over one thousand yards wide at its mouth, but pouring a deep, impetuous torrent of dark, tea- coloured water into the main stream. The volume of water which it brings down is not greatly surpassed by the giant Aruwimi and Lowwa combined. Below the junction its dark -brown waters spread over a breadth of three thousand yards, while the whity- 182 THE RETURN OF TROUBLES. gray waves of the Congo are confined to the remain- ing five thousand yards, and thus the two streams tiow side by side in the same bed without mingling, the divisional line plainly marked by a zigzag ripple for a distance of one hundred and thirty miles. The Ikelemba is reported by the natives to flow from a great unvisited lake, which is believed to be the same as one that Livingstone heard of at JVJyangwe, and named Lake Lincoln. Further on, another large tributary of the Lualaba, or Congo, flows in — the [bari-Nkutu, identical with the Kwans-'o whose head- waters had been crossed by Livingstone and Cameron ri'jht hundred miles to the southward. By this time we have approached close to the western verge of the great central tabledand, and are little more than four hundred miles from the coast of the Atlantic. For the last nine hundred miles the fall in the river -level has only been three hundred and sixty-four feet, and a descent of eleven hundred and fifty feet has still to be made ere the sea is reached. The days of smooth sailing arc near an end, but fortunately also the natives have suddenly become peacefully and even helpfully disposed. In- dications of intercourse with Europeans had been noticed some time before. The piratical Bangala tribe, thai live near the mouth of the Ikelemba, are armed with old-fashioned muskets and clothed in cloth from the Manchester looms, which they had obtained by exchange from traders on the coast, the goods being handed on from one native market to another Ear into the interior of Africa. A furious FAMILIAR SIGHTS AND SOUNDS. 183 assault was made on the strangers from the east coast; but the Snider was more than a match for the vener- able flint-lock, and they passed on their way victor- iously. At the Ibari-Nkutu, mountain spurs come down to the shores, the river narrows as precipitous cliffs take the place of the low, wooded banks, and then it opens up into a wide oval pool, walled in by chalk crags, reminding two of the voyagers — Stanley and his faithful assistant Frank Pocock — of the white coasts of England at Dover. At the lower end of the pool a hoarse, distant roar smote on their ears — familiar also, but of far other significance. The cataracts had begun again ! The next two hundred miles formed the most tedi- ous, the most laborious, and the most disastrous por- tion of the river voyage, which had already lasted four months. The vast stream of the Lualaba-Congo, contracted to a breadth of twelve hundred yards, and often less, tore its way in foam and tumult through the gap which it has worn in the course of ages through the successive barriers of the coast ranges. In all this distance there are but few yards of smooth water. Reefs, narrows, rapids, cataracts, whirlpools, boiling caldrons succeed each other in seemingly end- less succession. The rock and river scenery of these Livingstone Cataracts is an exaggeration of that of the Stanley Falls higher up. The cliffs lining the river are at first six hundred feet in height, but soon they tower to an altitude of from twelve hundred to fifteen hundred feet above the stream. Betwtrn them and the furious torrent there frequently inter- 184 THIRTY CATARACTS. poses only piled-up masses of boulder, over which it is next to impossible to scramble. Sometimes the tortured waters boil and roar at the very feet of the perpendicular crags, and there is no passage except by climbing up the face of the cliffs at some access- ible spot, or trusting oneself to the tender mercies of the stream. Stanley was often forced to adopt this dangerous course, and twice at least he was against his will shot like an arrow down a dangerous rapid, narrowly shaving the rocks that jut up in all parts of the river-bed. Between the Ntamo Falls, the first of the Living- stone series, and the great Yellala Falls, which are the last on the course of the river, no fewer than thirty cataracts have to be descended. In general these are not, like the Niagara Falls, or the Victoria Falls on the Zambesi, deep leaps of the river over a perpendicular ledge, but rather a succession of head- long rushes, as if the stream were tearing down a series of huge staircases. Stanley's vivid account of tin- Greai Ntamo Fall may stand for all. "Take," he says, "a strip of sea, Mown over by a hurricane, four miles in length by half a mile in breadth, and a pretty accurate conception of its rush- ing waves may be obtained. Some of the troughs were one hundred yards in length, and from one to another the mad river plunged. There was first a rush down info the middle of an immense trough, and then, by sheer force, the enormous volume would lilt itself upwards steeply until, gathering itself into a ridge, it suddenly hurled itself twenty or thirty feet A TERRIFIC GORGE. 185 straight upwards before rolling clown into another trough. The roar was deafening and tremendous, I can only compare it to the thunder of an express train through a rock tunnel. To speak to my neigh- bour I had to bawl in his ear." In this wild current, rushing along at a speed of thirty miles an hour, the most powerful ocean steamer would, he says, be as helpless as a cockle- boat ; and for the frail canoes, of course, there was no alternative but to drag them over rock and boulder to a point below the falls, or lift them bodily up to the level of the table-land that over- hung the water. This fifteen hundred feet of sheer ascent involved almost incredible toil and long de- tours ; and when the summit had been reached, a path had to be cut for the canoes through the unprimed forest and jungle. Frequently canoes were swept away by the stream and wrecked, and then a halt had to be made until trees were cut down and new vessels had been painfully hewn and fashioned out of the solid wood. Little time or temptation had the pioneers to linger and enjoy the sublime scenery of the terrific gorge. Yet, environed though they were on every side by perils and difficulties, their frames enfeebled by toil and fever, and their ears stunned by the constant roar of falling waters, it was impossible sometimes not to pause in breathless ad- miration of the tremendous prospects of crag and waterfall that opened up before them. Such a spot is that where the Edwin Arnold River flings itself, in one bound of three hundred feet, into the main stream, 186 SHOOTING THE FALLS. clearing the base of the cliffs by a distance of ten yards. Still more grand is the view at the entrance of the Xkenke, which rushes down from a height of one thousand feet in one enormous cascade ; while close by it another stream takes a sheer plunge of four hundred feet into the river. "The noise of the Nkenke torrent," says Stanley, " resembled the roar of an express train over a railway bridge ; that of Cataract River, taking its leap from the cliffs, was like the rumble of thunder ; the last line of rapids, with its fretting and fuming flanks, was heard only as the swash of waves against a ship's prow when driven by a spanking breeze against a cross sea; while the cataract below lent its dull boom to swell the chorus of angry waters." Many were the gaps made in the already thinned ranks of the expedition in struggling through this fatal " Valley of the-Shadow." In one day Stanley saw three of his canoes with eleven of his men carried over a cataract and disappear in the wild whirl of waters below. First a boat, in which was Kalulu, the explorer's follower in two great expeditions, and the hero of a tale of African adventure which he Wrote, was sucked within the power of the fall, and plunged sheer down into the abyss, from which neither it nor its occupants were seen to emerge. Hardly had the horror-stricken onlookers turned their eyes away from this calamity, when another canoe, with two men on board, was seen shooting swiftly i low 11 tin- centre stream towards what appeared certain death. By almost a miracle, however, they .-; •, :- DEATH OF FRANK POCOCK. Page iSf. DEATH OF FRANK POCOCK. 187 hit a spot where they made an " easy fall " over the ledge, and succeeded in struggling safely to land. Close behind came a third canoe, in which was only one man, driving to its fate. As the stern of the little craft tilted up, and the bow dived down over the edge of the fall, the boatman rose to his feet and shouted a farewell to his companions on the shore. No doubt was entertained of his fate, until a few days after he suddenly reappeared in the camp. He had been picked up insensible by the aborigines some distance down the stream, and had been kept by them a prisoner till he had found means to regain his freedom. At another cataract the carpenter of the expe- dition was swept away and drowned. But the dark- est day for the leader was that in which the last of his three white companions, the cheery and devoted Frank Pocock, was snatched from him by the remorseless waters. Pocock had been disabled by fever and by ulcers on his feet, and had been left behind with the rear of the party while the others carried the boats past the Massasse Falls. Chafing at the delay, and at the idea of being carried by natives, he got into a boat along with three com- panions, and insisted on making the mad attempt to "shoot" the falls. The certain result followed. The boat capsized, and was sucked down into the vortex below the cataract. It emerged again, and the three black men, clinging to its keel, were floated to a place of safety. But poor young Pocock, courageous and powerful swimmer though he was, found his last Com) 16 18S THE ATLANTIC AT LAST. resting-place in one of the profoundest pools of the deep Congo. Miserable weeks of unavailing grief, of vexing © © © delays, of insubordination and desertion among his followers, of trouble with the natives of the country, and of ceaseless toil, followed for Stanley ; but at last he struggled clear of all the impediments of the river, and marched, the gaunt, tattered, and pre- maturely gray-haired leader of a hungry and haggard band, across the open country to Boma, where, as he knew, there were European oil factories and planta- tions and English residents. There, among men of © © his own race, surrounded by civilized comforts to which he had Long been a stranger, he soon forgot O © O the toils and perils he had passed through in the natural elation at having accomplished an exploit almost unparalleled in the history of adventure. On the 12th of August 1877, three years after the start from the Indian Ocean, eight months from setting 7 © © out from Nyangwe to follow the Lualaba, the expe- dition emerged from the broad portal of the Congo into the Atlantic. They could hardly them elves be- lieve that this vast flood, pouring two million cubic [i i I of water into the ocean every second, through a channel ten miles wide and thirteen hundred feet in depth — the stream whose strong fresh current, strewn with floating islands reeds, and timber torn from the shore- of the great lakes and gianl forests of the in- © terior, had firs! been noticed by Diego ( !am when still out of sighi of land four hundred years before was the same thai they had seen pent up between narrow THE " HAPPY ISLES." 189 walls of rock, and bounding over boulder and ledge. In the journey of seven thousand two hundred miles, one hundred and fourteen members of the original party had perished. Many had fallen in battle or 1 >v treachery ; still more were the victims of African diseases. Some the ' : milfs had washed down ;" but a goodly remnant survived all danger and reached the " Happy Isles" — either those that own the sway of Seyd Burghash of Zanzibar, or the still more for- tunate lands ruled over by Her Gracious Majesty. CHAPTER IV. THE WATER-PARTING OF THE CONGO. Citizen's Wife. Let the Knight travel over great hills; and let him be very weary, and come to a king's house."— 77" Knight of flu Burning Pestle. I HE feat of crossing Africa from ocean to ocean was not first performed by Stanley. Commander Cameron had, two years previously, travelled from the cast to the west coast; and twenty years had elapsed since Dr. Livingstone had walked from Kuruman. his mission station in the Kalihari Desert, north- westwards to the Atlantic at St. Paul de Loanda, and then retraced his steps eastwards to the other side of the continent at the Zambesi mouth. But early in the century the native traders Pedro Joas Baptista and Anastacio Jose', known as the " Pom- beiros," had proceeded from the colony of Angola to Tete, on the Zambesi, in the Mozambique possessions of Portugal. Since Stanley's day Major Serpa Pinto has crossed Africa transversely from Loanda to Natal. Livingstone, Cameron Pinto and the Pom- beiros ;ill traversed the water-shed separating the Congo from the basin of the Zambesi . and so. while A REGION OF WATER-PARTINGS. 191 we are still absolutely ignorant of the region that supplies the water which the Lualaba draws from the north of the Equator, we do know something of the southern reservoirs from whence comes the other half of its store. It is a sloppy country, this region of the " water- partings,'" even in the dry season ; during the rains it is a vast quagmire. The stupendous rock and cataract scenery of the main stream of the Congo we will seldom meet with here ; but it has natural marvels of its own that are worthy of notice. Brilliant battle-pieces can no longer be woven into the narrative ; for, unlike the impetuous American, Livingstone and Cameron, when they found the path barred by force, sat down and sought to weary out the enemy by patience, or turned aside or turned back rather than meet vio- lence with violence. Even cannibals get scarce ; yet on this route we will meet some examples of sheer brute barbarity and truculent ruffianism that will not easily be paralleled even in Africa. Cameron crossed to the left bank of the Lualaba at Nyangwe, and struck south-westwards, because he did not choose to right with the natives for a passage clown the stream, even if he had had the prospect of doing so with success. He hoped, and he made many endeavours, to return to the Lualaba ; but he was baffled in every attempt by the unrelenting opposi- tion of the aborigines. So his route bended more and more to the south, towards the sources of the river, and at last he abandoned all idea of regaining the main stream ; " recognizing it to be my duty,' he 192 BRITISH RETALIATION'. says, " not to risk a single life unnecessarily, and feeling that the merit of any geographical discovery woukl be irretrievably marred by shedding a single drop of native blood." But despite this resolve, the march was by no means without warlike incident. On one occasion, tramping up the banks of the Loinane river, the traveller's cogitations were disagreeably interrupted by a flight of arrows rustling about him. One of the arrows glanced off his shoulder, and getting a peep of the bowman dodo-ino- behind a tree, Cameron flung down his rifle and started off in pursuit. Catching up his adversary after a brisk chase, the gallant naval officer administered to him a well-earned drubbing with his fists, smashed his bow and arrows, and dismissed him with a " stern admonition" that pro- jected the savage a yard or two into the forest. This specimen of British retaliation had an impressive effect on the other natives who were looking on from their lurking-places in the bushes, and they were soon swearing friendship and performing dances in the stranger's honour. Only a few marches further on, however, the party fell into another ambuscade, and arrows ami spears began to whistle around. The savages followed them on both sides of tin' track, keeping out of range of guns in the open, but creeping up ami shooting al the travellers where- ever there was cover of jungle or crass. " The whit ! whit! of the Ion 1 '- arrows through tin- trees created a very unpleasant sensation," we arc told; but so long as none of the exploring party were wounded, the A WEIR BRIDGE. P«g' '93. UPS AND DOWNS. 193 leader " kept on never minding."' By-and-by, a village was observed in the jungle ahead, and tired of being made marks of, the members of the expedi- tion made a rush for it, while the inhabitants cleared out at the other end ; and here Cameron fortified him- self, and so stoutly repelled all attempts to capture his position that the villagers were fain to agree to a par- ley and allow the travellers to go their way in peace. The route from the Lualaba to the Lomane, and southwards along the banks of the latter stream, leads through a great plain covered with forest and scrub, and cut up at short intervals by innumerable water- courses. In and out of these gulches the path con- tinually dips and rises, except at places where the natives of the country have thrown across a " sus- pension bridge " for their convenience, composed of stout cables of ratan fastened to the trunks of the trees on each side of the stream, with guy ropes and wattled balustrade made of smaller creepers, and cut lengths of bamboo forming the roadway. Other ingeniously constructed bridges there are in this country which are designed to serve a double use. These are " fish-weirs," formed of long poles, forty feet or more in leno-th, driven into the bed of the stream, crossing each other in the shape of a " St. Andrew's cross," and joined together by other poles laid hori- zontally along the line of junction. In the water below, the nets of the fishermen are spread between the lower ends of the poles, while the wayfarer can march dry-shod from bank to bank along the V-shaped space between their tops. 194 THE "NOBLE SAVAGE." Over these precarious structures, and with many ups and downs, the party continued their way, till they came to Kilemba, the head-town of Kasongo, the king of the great country of Rua or Urua. Kasongo — which is this precious potentate's title, not his name — is perhaps, on the whole, the most ogrish person to be met with in the interior of Africa. His land is an extensive one, stretching from the margin of the Tanganyika to the water-shed of the Congo with the Zambesi ; and he firmly believes that he is the most powerful monarch on the face of the earth, the only individual worthy of being spoken of in the same breath with him being his relative and neigh- bour, Muata Yanvo, great chief of Ulunda, which immediately adjoins Rua to the west. Like other ogres whom we read of in story, Kasongo was not in his den when the travellers arrived. He was abroad oiv his usual pursuit of plundering and slaughtering in a distant corner of his domain ; and his chief wife had to do the honours of the Kilemba court till his return. This did not happen for four months: and after his arrival, a period as long elapsed before the expedition was allowed to proceed. Cameron had, therefore, excellent opportunities of studying the " noble savage'" close at hand and at his leisure. In one respect, at least, Kasongo is above; European sovereigns, for none have claimed such absolute power, The lives, persons, and property of his sub- j'-et are at his disposal, to use or abuse as he will; and generally bis will is a very cruel and rapacious one. Something of the nature of chiefship in Rua KASOXGO'S DOMESTIC ARRANGEMENTS. 195 may be gathered from the ceremonies attending the burial of the monarch :— " The first proceeding is to divert the course of a stream, and in its bed to dig an enormous pit, the bottom of which is covered with living women. At one end a woman is placed on her hands and knees, and upon her back the dead chief, covered with his beads and other treasures, is seated, being supported on either side by one of his wives, while his second wife sits at his feet. The earth is then shovelled in on them, and all the women are buried alive, except the second wife, to whom custom grants the privilege of beincr killed before the huo-e orave is filled in. This being completed, a number of male slaves — sometimes forty or fifty — are slaughtered, and their blood poured upon the grave ; after which, the river is allowed to resume its course." When a "small chief " dies, " two or three wives and a few slaves only " are sacrificed ; but on the occa- sion of the funeral obsecpiies of so great a man as the late Kasongo, it is said that no fewer than a hundred women were buried alive ! Such hideous barbarities would be looked upon as incredible, and the story as a monstrous libel on human nature, were the evi- dence not so undoubted. Kasonij-o's household fur- niture consists of his relatives and the members of his harem. When it is his royal pleasure to sit down, one of his wives has to " make a back " for him. When he walks about his house, he must have a car- pet of living human bodies on which to tread; and when he stretches himself to sleep, his mattress must 19G COURT FAVOURS. be composed of a pile of his fellow-creatures. The first thing that Cameron observed on being ushered into the presence of this wretched creature, was the mutilation to which his courtiers and retainers had been almost universally subjected. Ears, noses, and lips were cropped off on the most trifling provoca- tion, or out of simple caprice ; and Kasongo's prime favourite showed the tokens of his master's favour in his wanting not only the features mentioned, but also his hands. During the traveller's stay with him, the king was generally drunk and half mad with pombe and bhang; and his filthy, debauched, and brutal face Mas no more pleasant to look at than his doings are agreeable to dwell on. Yet there were some, calling themselves Europeans, dwelling at Kasongo's court, that found his company and ways very much to their liking. These were the Portuguese half-breeds, in whose hands is the slave-trade, which is conducted on a large scale between this part of the interior and the west coast. At Kasongo's we part company with tlic Moslem slave-trader; but we are introduced to a still more truculent scoundrel the Christian kid- napper from the Portuguese settlements, who is as much more vile than the Arab as the civilization from which he has degenerated is higher than that of Mohammedan Africa, In fact, one feels some compunction of feeling towards the Arab pioneers from the east const, when about to sec the hist of them for some time. Among them arc what may In- called honourable men according to their dim CHRISTIAN KIDNAPPERS. 197 lights. Several of these adventurous merchants in black and white ivory were very helpful and kindly towards Livingstone, and Stanley also struck up a friendship with members of the fraternity. No one could have given more proofs of generous friendship than were shown towards Cameron at Kasongo's by Jumah Mericani, " a fine, portly Arab, with a dash of the tar-brush ; " and he and others were ready to admit that if they could find any more reputable business they would be glad to abandon slaving. No such scruples seem ever to have visited the Portuguese half-breed slave-traders. If there is a white sheep in that exceedingly dingy flock, he has escaped the notice of a series of very keen -eyed ob- servers. The representatives of West Coast civiliza- tion at Kasongo's, Jose Antonio Alvez and Louren^o da Souza Coimbra, were bad specimens even of their class. Alvez was an ugly old black, scarcely to Lie distinguished in hue and features from a full-blooded negro, who had industriously added to his natural bad qualities those acquired by a lifetime of slave- hunting and murder. Coimbra was a younger but perhaps more unmitigated ruffian. These were the companions with whom, and their slave-gang, the Eng- lish explorer had to make his journey to the Portu- guese colony. But, first, he made two interesting trips to lakes in the neighbourhood of Kasongo's capital. One was to the neighbourhood of Lake Kassali, some days* march to the south-eastward, and on the central channel of the Lualaba drainage — the river Luapula, which 198 FLOATING FARMS. Livingstone saw bursting out of Lake Moero, after passing through Lake Bangweolo, being, according to Cameron's information, only a western branch of the main stream, which it joins at Lake Kamolondo. The Kassali Lake, which is of considerable size, must be an interesting place in more ways than one. The true Lualaba and a great tributary, the Lxifira; pour them- selves into it : and the united waters, escaping from its northern end, form a series of lake-like expan- sions as they slowly drain towards Kamolondo. On the lake itself are floating islands, inhabited by numerous populations of fishermen. The matted growths of aquatic plants fringing its shores are cut off in sections, and towed to the centre of the lake. Logs, brushwood, and earth are laid on the floating platform, until it acquires a consistency capable of supporting a native hut and a plot of bananas and other fruit trees, with a small flock of goats and poultry. The island is anchored by a stake driven into the bed of the lake ; and if the fishing become scarce, or should other occasion occur for shifting his domicile, the proprietor simply draws the peg, and shifts his little floating mansion, farm, and stock whither he choos< ss. Mr. Cameron was not so lucky as to be able to examine these curious habitations; in fact, he was only able to get a look of the lake from the high- lands above it. The lake-dwellers having consulted a wizard, or " medicine-man —who is almost as im- portant a member of African society as the king — and this personage having produced his "fetiches and SOCIABLE LIONS. 199 charms, and drummed and postured to his heart's content, announced as the result of his hocus-pocus, that if the white man were allowed to approach nearer to the lake, its waters would dry up ! The traveller had, therefore, reluctantly to turn back. What he heard concerning the country beyond was fitted to stimulate his curiosity and ours. He was told, for instance, of a river which produced leprosy in any one drinking its waters ; and of a tree of so deadly a shade, that of a trading party who Jay down to rest under its branches, nothing was found next morning save their skeletons and the ivory they car- ried. More wonderful still was a district where the villagers were on excellent speaking and visiting terms with the lions of the neighbourhood. As many as two hundred of the friendly animals would some- times attend the village gatherings, and walk affably about among their hosts, who wouid regale their four-legged guests with honey, goats, and sheep ; and when a lion of their acquaintance died, they would mourn for him as for a relative. Away towards the head-waters of the Lualaba and Lufira are situated the Katanga copper-workings, which supply brace- lets, necklaces, anklets, and other ornaments in brass to a large portion of Central Africa ; and here, it is said, gold is found in quantity, but is Hung aside as "soft "and useless. Considering the close neigh- bourhood of these workings to districts visited by European traders, this is, perhaps, the most incredible story of all. Much more definite and authentic were the particulars gathered concerning the underground 200 AN AFRICAN VENICE. villages on the Lutira. The ramifications of these extend right across the bed of the stream ; and the subterranean chambers are said to be lofty and spaci- ous, with roofs supported by pillars of white marble and quartz, formed of the unhewn rock. They have many passages of exit and entrance, so that if their enemies follow them into their retreat, they may find themselves attacked in rear by the cave-dwellers who have escaped by another door. All these contrivances for defence and hiding show how insecure is human life in a region where every petty chief's hand is against his neighbour, and where the king is the curse and terror of his people. The huts in the vicinity of Kasongo's capital are buried deep in the jungle, and thickly fenced round with thorns, the only approach being by a long, low. nar- row passage, through which one often has to crawl on hands and knees, and which can be closed by a port- cullis-like contrivance composed of bars of wood. Another illustration of the universal state of fear in which the inhabitants live is seen in the lake- villages of Lake Mohrya, on the right of Cameron's route, to which lie made an excursion. Three such villages are built on the waters of the shallow lake, and de- tached huts are sprinkled over its surface. The houses are built on piles, six feet above the level of the water. Underneath nets are hung, and the canoe is moored in which the inhabitants of this African Venice make trips to their cultivated fields on the shore to fetch away their produce of grain and fruit. Ordinary morning calls between the lake- COWARDLY MISCREANTS. 201 dwellers are paid by simply swimming from hut to hut. So timid are these people that Cameron could open no communication with them, and those whom he surprised among their crops rushed at the top of their speed to their canoes, and paddled out into the lake. Considering the experiences of the people of these countries, no one can feel surprised at the suspicion and hostility they show towards strangers. Terrible evidence of their wrongs was seen by Cameron on his journey along with Alvez and Coimbra from King Kasongo's to the Portuguese territory. Where these swaggering bravoes felt themselves to be masters, they hectored and bullied to their heart's content, rummaged and plundered the fields and villages from which the inhabitants had fled in terror, and destroyed what they could not carry away. But when they came to a village where the population were armed with guns, and were prepared to use them, the heroes put on a meek and lamb-like demeanour, and made obsequious proffers of presents of cloth and beads. After one short absence, Coimbra appeared in camp with a gang of fifty-two female slaves, the produce of the sack and destruction of at least ten villages, each having a population of from one hundred to two hundred souls. These poor creatures were loaded with their children and the plunder of their own homes, and covered with weals and sores ; and so mercilessly cruel was their treatment, that Cameron felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to cut them free, and to seize their brutal captor by the scruff (658) 1 7 202 AX AFRICAN REVOLUTION. of the neck and shake his wretched soul out of him. The march began in the end of June 1875, nine months after Cameron's arrival at Kasono-o\s. It led first through Ussambi, between the head-streams of the Lualaba and the Lomame, over wooded hills, flat-topped table -lands of sandstone, and numerous rivers with banks fringed with marshes — a beautiful and diversified but dilhcult country. Then it entered Ulunda, the realm of Muata Yanvo. The travellers gave a wide berth to the chief town of that gi'eat man, who in character and pursuits was another edition of Kasongo. The last white man that visited him had never returned. Besides, there had been a revolution at court. Muata Yanvo had been trying to add to the list of his accomplishments by practising "vivi- section" on some of his wives, and the others, taking fright, had joined in a conspiracy against him, and the despot of Ulunda was a fugitive. The country lies in a long strip on both banks of the Kassabe River — probably the same as Stanley's Ikelemba. Where Cameron crossed Ulunda, near its southern end, it i^ a thickly-wooded undulating land, full of countless streams flowing towards the Congo, and inhabited by a wild repulsive-looking people. The hollows bit wciii tin- undulations are occupied by "sponges" — the saturated marshes overgrown with water-plants, with which Livingstone made so fatal acquaintance Dear Bangweolo. When tin' frontier of Ulunda is passed — the road still leading south-westwards— we reach Lovale, a SLOPPY WATER-SHEDS. 203 still more swampy country, lying . across the water- shed of the Congo and the Zambesi. The sources of the two rivers are interlocked or dovetailed into each other ; and at intervals of two or three miles streams flowing towards the Atlantic and towards the Indian Ocean are crossed alternately. These great plains are comparatively dry during the heats of summer, but in the season of the rains they are vast quagmires covered waist-deep with water, and a large lake unites the two great river-systems. By cutting a canal about twenty miles in length through this level country, with light portages for passing the rapids on the river courses, internal navigation might, says Cameron, be established between the east and west coast ; and this may be one of the great w T orks for the development of Central Africa which the future will see accom- plished. West of Lovale is Kibokwe, where swamp again gives place to almost uninterrupted forest, and we begin to ascend the slope towards the high coast ranges that form the western edge of the great table- land of Central Africa. The eastern scarp of the tableau we crossed, it will be remembered, soon after leaving Zanzibar ; and the water-shed between the Congo and the Zambesi seems to be a low ridge, transversely connecting these tw r o mountain walls. The rearing of bees is the chief occupation of the people of Kibokwe, and they are also clever workers in iron. Still further westwards is the country of Bihe, on the upper basin of the river Kwanza, 204- DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS. which flows into the Atlantic to the south of the Congo. Bihe, a region of rocks and hills and running streams, is the border-land between savagery and civilization ; and its chief town is the great mart for the exchange of tropical produce — chiefly bees'" - wax, ivory, palm-oil, india-rubber, cinnabar, and slaves — for the old rifles, glass beads, and brass wire which the white traders bring up from the coast. Beyond Bihe a still more beautiful highland country is reached. No human pen or pencil, Cameron says, could do justice to the loveliness and grandeur of the scenery of Bailunda, a land of " rocky hills, with brawling burns rushing along their rugged courses, with here and there falls from twenty to thirty feet in height, the crystal water sparkling in the sunset as it dashes from crag to crag. Large tree-ferns grow on the banks, and among the bushes are myrtle, jasmine, and other flowering shrubs : while beautiful ferns, similar to maiden-hair and other delicate kinds, flourish in the damp crevices of the rocks In tin- foreground arc glades in the woodland, varied by knolls crowned by groves of large English-look- ing trees, sheltering villages with yellow, thatched lout's; plantations with the fresh green of young crops and bright red of newly-hoed ground in vivid contrast; whilst in the far distance are mountains of endless and pleasing variety of form, gradually fading away until they Mend with the blue of the sky. White fleecy clouds drift overhead ; and the hum of bees, the bleating ol goats and crowing of cocks, break the stillness of the air BACK TO TRODDEN PATHS. 205 With this glimpse of it in its fairest aspect, we pass from the charmed circle of Central Africa ; for soon the summit of the range is reached, and the steep slope to the coast begins, first through heavy forests of palm, with rank thickets of creepers, then down the lower foot-hills, thinly sprinkled over with baobabs, euphorbias, and cactuses, and other thorny growths, the unfailing signs of a droughty climate, until at length we are on the arid strip along the sea-shore, among the well-known, thick-lipped, flat- nosed negro peoples of the west coast, and by the familiar waves of the Atlantic. JJart 'uhivi).--vLhc Hambcst. CHAPTER I. FROM LAKE DILOLO TO LAKE NGAML " Away, away from the dwellings of men ! By the wild deer's haunt and the buffalo's glen ; By valleys remote where the oribi plays, Where the gnu, the gazelle, and the hartebeest graze ; And the gemsbok and eland unhunted recline By the skirts of gray forest o'erhung with wild vine; And tin- elephant browses at peace in his wood; And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood; And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will In the Vley, where the wild ass is drinking his fill." Prisi;le. AKE DILOLO is the connecting link between the Conjjo and the Zambesi. It is not much of a lake — a mere pond, in fact, compared with the great inland \\r have lately been making acquaintance with. It i-- triangular in shape and some eight miles in length by three miles in breadth ;it the widest end. It is more worthy of curious notice, however, than many lakes that far exceed it in extent. It puzzled Livingstone on a first view; but by an A GEOGRAPHICAL CUKIOSITV. 207 attentive consideration of it he was first enabled to grasp firmly a clue to the physical configuration of South Central Africa. When the doctor first saw its waters — on that famous journey of his in 1852-4 from the Cape of Good Hope to the capital of the Portuguese possessions on the west coast — he found a broad, still channel draining out of Lake Dilolo towards the Zambesi. A few months after, he again approached its shores, this time from the northern side ; for he was on his way back across the conti- nent, in fulfilment of his pledge to restore his Mako- lolo guides and companions to their homes. He was surprised to observe that another slow-flowing, rush- choked stream, a mile in breadth, escaped from the other extremity of the lake, and poured down the slope towards the Conrjo. On both occasions Livingstone was ill with the fever and ague that are the con- stant companions of the traveller in these damp, flat regions ; and on his north-westward march he had been two days without food when he sighted Dilolo. He was able, however, to conquer the disease sufficiently to satisfy himself that this little lake, situated four thousand seven hundred feet above the sea-level, is placed exactly on the water- shed between the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, and distributes the contents of its basin in impartial share between the two seas. A drop of rain, as it is blown by the wind to the one or the other end of Dilolo, may reinforce the vast tumbling flood that roars through the gorges of the Concro, and rushes out for sixty miles into the salt waters of the 208 A DOUBLE PART. Atlantic, or may make with the Zambesi the dizzy leap over the great Victoria Falls, and mingle with the eastern ocean. No well authenticated case of an exactly similar phenomenon is known. Lake Kivo may form the corresponding bond of union between the Cono-o and the Nile, but regarding it we have only hearsay evidence. There is the well- known instance of the " two-ocean fountain " in the Rocky Mountains, the stream from which, split in two by some trifling obstacle in the path, contributes half of its waters to the stormy Atlantic, while the other half finds a resting-place in the Pacific. Hum- boldt has described the curious phenomenon of the Cassiquiare river in Venezuela, that " flows in two directions " — towards the Rio Nem-o and the great estuary of the Amazon, and towards the Orinoco and the Caribbean Sea ; and further on we will meet with something closely resembling the Cassiquiare, uniting the Zambesi with Lake Ngami. But no well authenticated case of a lake with exactly simi- lar position and functions as Dilolo is known to geography. Apart from the eccentric double part it plays, the features of Dilolo are tame and ordinary enough. It has, of course, its hippopotami and itscrocodiles — every water in Central Africa has; and almost equally, of course, it is fringed with inundated marshes covered with a profuse growth of mat-rushes, cane, papj-rus, lotus, and arum. Round it stretch wide plains, limitless apparently as the sea, on which, for many months of the year, the stagnant water rests, bal- ABUNDANT "REFRESHMENTS." 209 anting itself, as it were, between the two sides of the continent, and unable to make up its mind whether to favour the east coast or the west with its tribute. Only at hollow spots here and there can the presence of the water be detected by the eye that glances over these immense flats. They are overgrown with tall m-ass with stalks sometimes an inch and a half in diameter, through which it is terribly tough work to force a passage. Most people would consider the fact of the surface being covered with a foot or two of water an addition to their mis- fortunes; but Livingstone had a knack of extracting comfort from his very troubles, and descants some- times on the " refreshing " feel of the moisture about his feet. In the rainy season this drowned vegeta- tion has a sere and yellow look. No trees break the horizon, the little islands in the fen bearing only a low growth of scrub, and the landscape is dismal and monotonous in the extreme. Dilolo itself means " despair," and the dwellers near it tell a melancholy story, curiously resembling the tale of the Cities of the Plain, and the traditions handed down regarding some of the lakes in Central Asia, of how a vener- able wanderer came to this spot one evening, and begged for the charity of shelter and food ; how the churlish inhabitants mocked his petition, with the exception of one poor man, who gave the stranger a nook by his fire and the best his hut afforded ; and how, after a terrible night of tempest and lightning, the hospitable villager found his guest gone, and the site of his neighbours' dwellings occupied by a lake. 210 PIEBALD PLAINS. When the rains have ceased, and the hot sun has begun to dry up the moisture, the outlook is more cheerful, and Livingstone describes the beautiful effects produced by a small flower that carpets these plains. A broad golden band stretches across the path, composed of flowers of every shade of yellow. from palest lemon to deepest orange ; then succeeds a strip of blue, varying from the lightest tint to purple ; and so band follows band, with the regularity and uniformity of the stripes on a zebra's hide. Another little flower, whose leaves are furnished with hairs on the tip of each of which a drop of dew sparkles in the mornings, adds another charm to this strange parti -coloured country. The explorer is glad, however, to escape from these spongy water-sheds — which, with their springs spout- ing water in all directions, have been compared by Livingstone to the "rose" of a watering-pan or water- cart — and to pass down into the shades of the forests of the Zambesi, where at least there will be a change of discomforts and a variety of scenery. In traversing the region from the Cape four modes of conveyance wen- tested by the missionary. There is first the bullock waggon, familiar in the English colony, an admirably convenient and pleasant method in the dry open plains to the southward, but not practicable in the reedy wildernesses adjoining the Zambesi Riding on bullock-back was also a mode of travelling which Livingstone had frequently to resort to from sheer inability to walk front weals ness. Of course marching on foot is the best of all DISMAL SHADES. 211 plans when a thorough and minute acquaintance with the district traversed is desired. But the dis- advantages of it are obvious, and for easy and rapid progress there is nothing like " paddling your own canoe," or better still, having it paddled for you by skilled boatmen, down the deep reaches and over the rushing shallows of the third of the great African rivers. Before the main stream of the Zambesi is reached the silvan shades of the Lotembwa and the Leeba have to be threaded — dark moss -coloured rivers flowing between dripping banks of evergreen forest and jungle, with frequent clearings, where the villagers raise their crops of manioc, the plant that yields the tapioca of commerce, and that here, as in Angola, furnishes the chief food of the inhabitants. Fetich worship nourishes in these damp and gloomy woods. In their depths a fantastically carved demon -face, staring from a tree, will often startle the intruder in the spirit haunts ; or a gro- tesque representation of a lion, or a crocodile, or of the "human face divine/' made of rushes plastered over with clay, and with shells or beads for eyes, will be found perched in a seat of honour, with offerings of food and ornaments laid on the rude altar. Whether human sacrifices are offered at these shrines, as is said to be the case in parts of Muata Yanvo's and Kasongo's territories, cannot positively be said. But the most simple and trifling acts are " taboo ; " and unless the traveller is exceedingly wary in all that he does or says — in his rising up and his sitting down, in where he lays his rifle and how or when he 212 WITCH FINDING AND WEATHER-MAKING. eats or drinks — he is likely mulcted in heavy fines, or looked upon as a doomed and accursed man, who will bring misfortune on all who aid or approach him. The " medicine-man : ' has a terrible power, which he often exercises, over the lives and property of his fellows ; and a denunciation of "witch-craft" is gener- ally equivalent to a sentence of death. Here, as else- where in Central Africa, the ordeal of " muava," or poison-drinking, is the method left open to the victim to escape from a charge of this kind. If his stomach should reject the decoction, he is considered innocent; while the more likely probability of his death is held to establish his guilt. After all, we should remember that in these and other supersti- tions, such as the evil eye, the poor Balovale are only a few generations behind our own enlightened land. A great source of the witch-finders' revenue is " weather-making ;" but, unlike the prophets in the arid deserts to the south, the magicians of this moist and cloudyregion devote their energies to keeping off the rain and not to bringing it down from heaven. Of course, if they persevere long enough the rain ceases to fall. The credulous Balovale believe im- plicitly that this has been produced by the "medi- cine" they have purchased so dearly, just as the Bechuana place entire trust in the ability of their rain-makers, when handsomely hired, to bring showers down on the thirsty ground by virtue of drumming and capering. The behaviour of the inhabitants of these re- mote villages on the sudden apparition among them THE WHITE HOBGOBLIN. 213 of a white man is apt to shake the latter s com- placent notion that the superior good looks of his own race are universally acknowledged. Their stan- dard of beauty is quite different from ours. Some- times it is fat that is chiefly sought after, and the desirableness of a wife is measured by the number of pounds she weighs. Sometimes it is intense sooti- ness of hue that is supposed to lend the principal charm to complexion, though the chief races of the Zambesi — for instance, the Makololo — are by no means quite black, but rather of a dark coffee colour. Often it is a peculiarity of ornamentation or tattooing, a special style of head-dress, or some preposterous disfigurement of the nose, lips, or ears, on which the female popu- lation mainly rely for making themselves attrac- tive. The wearing of clothes is regarded as a practice fairly provocative of laughter, and as " improper " as the want of them would be in Europe. As for the long hair of the stranger and his shaggy beard and whiskers like the mane of a lion, nothing, according to their notions, could be more hideous, and examina- tion alone will convince them that he is not wear- ing a wig over his natural locks of crisp wool. Pos- sessing these ideas, the white man — especially if he have blue eyes and red whiskers — is in their eyes a frightful hobgoblin, before whom the village girls run away screaming with terror, and the children hide trembling behind their mothers, much as would hap- pen if a naked black monster, with green hair and yellow eyes, were suddenly to appear in the street of one of our own little country hamlets. 214 A MAGIC-LANTERN SEANCE. In spite of the most minute explanations, it is impossible to eradicate from these poor negro people's minds the idea that there is something supernatural about the white man, with his won- derful knowledge, his mysterious apparatuses, and his magical coming from and departure to the sea ; and they insist on regarding us as a race of mermen, who have the powers of light and darkness more completely at our command than even the most skilled of their medicine -men. At the village of Shinte, the principal chief on the Leeba river, and a vassal of Muata Yanvo, Livingstone was very kindly treated by the great man, who received him seated in state under the shade of a banian tree, with his hun- dred wives seated behind him and his band of drum- mers and marimba-players performing in front ; and out of gratitude the doctor treated the distinguished party to an entertainment with the magic -lantern. The subject was the death of Isaac, and the court looked on with awe as the gigantic figures, with flow- ing oriental robes, prominent noses, and ruddy com- plexions, appeared upon the curtain. But when Abraham's uplifted hand, armed with the dagger, was seen descending, the ladies of the court, fancying that it was about to be sheathed in their own bosoms instead of Isaac's, sprang to their feet, and with shouts of "Mother, mother!" rushed "helter-skelter, tum- bling pell-mell over each other and over the little idol- houses and tobacco-bushes;" and it was impossible to bring one of them back to witness the patriarch's subsequent fortunes. THE GAME OF THE ZAMBESI. 215 On the lower part of the Leeba the scenery becomes very beautiful and richly diversified. The alterna- tion of hill and dale, open glade and forest, past which the canoe bears us swiftly, reminds one of a carefully kept park. Animal life becomes more plentiful with every mile of southing, and the broad meadows bordering the stream are pastured by great herds of wild animals — buffaloes, elands, antelopes, and zebras, with an occasional elephant and rhinoceros — which are so tame that they may be slaughtered in scores before they begin to take alarm. Below the confluence of the Leeba with the Leeambye, or main branch of the Zambesi — which flows from the east through a district that has never been explored — the abundance of game on the banks of the river is even more remarkable. The air, too, is often darkened by the flight of innumerable water-fowl — scarlet ibises, fish-hawks, cranes, and waders and divers of many varieties for which names have not yet been in- vented — the earth teems with insect life, and the water swarms with fish. As an instance of the prodigious quantity and exceeding tameness of the wild animals here, Liv- ingstone mentions that " eighty-one buffaloes defiled in slow procession before our fire one evening within gunshot, and herds of splendid elands stood by day without fear at two hundred yards' dis- tance;" while all through the night the lions were heard roaring close to the camp. In the heat of the day the sleek elands, tall as ordinary horses, with bulky, ox-like bodies and delicately (ess) 18 216 RIVER SCENERY. striped skins, browse or recline under the shade of the clumps of forest ; troops of graceful, agile, fleet- footed antelopes of smaller species scour across the pasture-lands to seek the cool retreat of some deep dell in the woods ; or a solitary rhinoceros comes grunting down to the bank in search of some soft place where he can roll his horny hide in the mud. The trees themselves have a variety and beauty which the sombre evergreen foliage higher up lacks, and which is equally wanting in the thorny, dust-coloured growths of the desert further south. The banian, or Indian fig, is a stately and prominent feature in the landscape, and its habit of sending down branches that take root and shoot up again in a new growth, until a single plant forms a grove of itself, has sug- gested the native name, meaning "the tree that walks." The lofty stem and graceful top of the palmyra palm often shows itself above the other forest vegetation ; the pandanus, draped from its topmost sword-shaped leaf to its exposed roots in lovely mosses, lichens, and orchids, is always a beautiful object ; and the huts of the natives peep out from bowers of bananas, broad-fronded plantains, and flowering hibiscus. The voyage down-stream is by no means without incident. The river swarms with hippopotami and cro- codiles. The former lead a lazy, sleepy life by day in tin' bottom of the stream, coming now and then to the surface to breathe, and exchange a snort of recog- nition with their acquaintances, and are only too well pleased to let the passer-by go in peace, if be will only leave them alone In districts where they are HIPPOPOTAMI AXD CROCODILES. 217 hunted they are wary, and take care to push no more than the tip of their snouts out of water in some bed of rushes, where they breathe so softly that they can- not be heard. But in a pool where they have not been disturbed, they can be seen swimming and ''blow- ing off steam" freely, the female hippopotamus having frequently the squat little figure of her calf riding on her neck. Certain elderly behemoths who are expelled the herd become soured in temper, and are dangerous to encounter ; and so also is a mother who has been robbed of her young. Such a one made an attack on Livingstone's boat when descending the Zambesi in 1C55, and butting it from beneath, tilted the fore end out of water, and flung one of the rowers into the stream. By diving and holding on to the grass at the bottom, while the angry beast was look- ing for him on the surface, he escaped its vengeance ; and the boat being fortunately close to the shore the rest of the crew also got off unscathed. The alligators on this part of the Zambesi are pecu- liarly rapacious and aggressive, and the chances are that anybody unlucky enough to fall into the river will find his way into the maw of a watchful croco- dile. Every year these ferocious reptiles carry off hun- dreds of human victims, chiefly women while filling their water -jars, or men whose canoes are accidentally upset ; and the inhabitants in their turn make a prey of the saurian, beinGf extremely fond both of its flesh and eggs. The crocodile prefers surprises to open methods of attack. He skulks behind a bank of rushes, or lies in wait at the bottom of a pool, and 218 THE BAROTSE VALLEY. rushes out as soon as he sees a human limb in the water. Sometimes, however, when " sharp set ' : with hunger, and where a favourable opportunity occurs, lie will haul his body ashore, and waddle boldly up the bank on his stumpy legs to the attack ; or if, while disporting himself on shore, his wicked green eyes fall on some likely victim in the stream, he has been known to scuttle with great alacrity through the rushes, and, plunging into the river, make openly and open-jawed for his prey. The young show their vicious temper almost as soon as they are out of the shell; and one savage little wretch, some two feet long, made a snap at Dr. Livingstone's legs while walking along the side of a stream in the Zambesi region, that made the explorer jump aside with more agility than dignity. Some distance below the junction of the Leeba the Zambesi enters the Barotse Valley. This is one of the most fertile and most unhealthy districts in the interior of Africa. It is a land flowing with milk and honey. It is stocked with great herds of domes- tic cattle — which are of two varieties, one high standing, with enormous bonis nearly nine feet I •<■- t wiiii tin' tips, and a beautifully formed little white breed —and roamed over by wild game of every kind in immense numbers. It eonld e-row e-rain euoimh to support ten times the inhabitants it at present contains; but the resident here, if he survive the proce - of acclimatization, must lay his account for periodica] ague, rheumatism, and fever. Like the lower valley of the Nile, the barotse country is A PERIODICAL "LAKE REGION." 219 every year inundated over its whole surface by the waters of the river, which deposit a layer of fertiliz- ing slime on its surface. The banks of the Zambesi, for some distance above and below this district, are high and cliffy, presenting reach after reach of fine rock and woodland scenery, while the stream runs swiftly over a stony bed. For a hundred miles in the Barotse Valley the stream has a deep and wind- ing course, and the hills withdraw to a distance of fifteen miles from either bank. To the foot of these hills the waters extend in flood time, and the valley becomes temporarily one of the " Lake Regions " of Central Africa, with the native villages, each built on its artificial mound, showing above the flood as islands. At the lower end of the valley the rocky spurs again approach each other, and the river forces its way through a narrow defile, in which, in flood time, the water rises to a height of sixty feet above its ordinary level. Here are situated the Gonye Falls, which are a serious impediment to the navigation of the Upper Zambesi. But there is no such difficulty or danger here for canoes ascending or descending as poor Stanley met with on the Congo. Practice has made the natives living near the falls adepts in the work of transporting these craft over the rocky ground ; and as soon as a boat approaches the rapids from above or below, it is slung on a pole and whisked without delay by a party of sturdy porters to the calmer water beyond. Below Gonye the water bounds and rolls and bounces from bank to bank and chafes over boulders in an alarming manner, 220 THE CHOBE. its breadth being contracted to a few hundred yards ; but these swollen rapids might all be ascended, Livingstone thinks, when the river is full. After mairy leagues of these mad gambollings the Zambesi settles down again for a hundred miles of sober flow, and opens out into a magnificent navigable river, a mile or two from bank to bank. Still more grand, however, are its dimensions after it receives a great, deep, dark -coloured, slow -flowing- river — the Chobe — which enters it from the right, near where the Zambesi, which has been bending round from south to south-east, turns almost directly east- wards towards the Indian Ocean. The Chobe dis- charges by several mouths, through winding channels fringed with impenetrable beds of papyrus which a^ume the size of small palms. The stems are plaited and woven together into an almost solid mass by climbing convolvuluses with stalks as tough as whip- cord, and by grasses with keen, sharp, serrated edges that cut like razors. Even the hippopotamus has no little ado in forcing a way through this reedy forest, and less weighty personages have to walk humbly in his track. So wide is the Zambesi below the en- trance of tli<"( 'hold- that even a practised native eye cannot tell from the bank whether the land dimly seen beyond is island or the opposite shore; and tin- stream flows placidly and prosperously past, with no sign that it is almost within sight of a tn mendous downfall. I lut the fortunes of the main river must be left in the meantime, while we look a little up the Chobe. TIIE ADVENTURES OF PIXTO. 221 It takes its rise in many springs and marshes to the south-west of Dilolo, and gathers in water from every quarter, which it squanders as freely again lower down its course. The only traveller who has crossed this line of country is Major Serpa Pinto, on his recent journey from Bihe to Natal. His descriptions may be coloured a little by the fervour of a Southern imagination : and perhaps we should accept with some slight reserve his accounts of marching for many days through morasses, with water up to his armpits, and only a handful of canary seed as food ; of a species of antelope that lives under water like the hippopotamus, only coming now and then to the surface to breathe ; and of a race of "white Africans,'' with Mongolian features, which some fanciful people have endeavoured to identify as a remnant of Gen- seric's Vandals who had fled all the way thither after the Arab conquest of Algiers. But there can be no doubt that Major Pinto made a most important and adventurous journey. He says that he found a spot where he could almost have placed his cap on the point of junction between streams draining towards the Atlantic, towards the Zambesi and the Indian Ocean, and towards the Kalihari Desert ; and he tells of a river bed — the " Great Macaricari " — where the current flows in different directions at dif- ferent periods of the year, so that when the Zambesi and its tributaries are in flood, the surplus water is poured off by the Macaricari to refresh the thirsty south, and when the level of the northern rivers fall, it restores to them a part of the water it had withdrawn. 222 A TANGLE OF STREAMS. The streams in these flat, damp regions, indeed, seem to be all connected with each other by innumerable creeks and arms, just as the stems of the trees are joined together by the network of creepers. So the Chobe, after having sent off several branches to the left to reinforce the Zambesi, is supposed to depute another body of water to the right to join a more southerly river, the Embara. This stream, which rises on the east side of the ranges behind Benguela, after receiv- ing a tributary from the Chobe, splits into two. Its more southerly branch, the Teoghe, finds its way into Lake Ngami ; and the more northerly, the Tzo, after contributing unnecessarily to the overflowing cup of the Chobe, turns also desertwards, and having stretched an arm towards Ngami, passes on into the waste, as the Zouga, with more halting step and gradually failing power, until it is absorbed in the great "salt-pans" of Kalihari. As we have been moving southwards, a rapid and wonderful change has come over the climate and the vegetation. The damp, steaming atmosphere of the marshes has given place to a dry and parching air that drinks up every particle of moisture without being satisfied. The dense, evergreen forests that shut in the traveller, bounding his view like a wall on every side, have been succeeded by wide, open, parched-up downs, covered by sparse growths of dry euphorbia, cactus, mimosa, and other gum-trees, with here and there a vast baobab — giants eighty or a hundred feel in girth, that may have been standing on these plains, savants tel] us, since the < rreat Deluge subsided. The 7 O FROM DAMP AFRICA TO DUSTY AFRICA. 223 thickets bristle with thorny and leathery plants, and to force a way through them is a task compared with which crawling along a wall covered with broken glass would be a harmless and pleasant pastime. Some of these plants are armed with long spines that stab like daggers ; others have sharp cutting edges that gash like knives; while a third class of them — such as the " wait-a-bit " thorn or " grapnel " — are fur- nished with a multitude of strong barbed hooks, in- geniously arranged so as to seize and hold the intruder in whatever direction he moves. Even the baobabs and gums gradually disappear, and with them all trace of running streams ; for we have emero-ed on the other side of the region of the tropical rains and the great lakes, and are in the Kalihari Desert, the southern equivalent, though on a smaller scale, of the Great Sahara. Lake Ngami and the wooded banks of the Zouga are the farthest outposts of the equatorial moisture towards the south, just as Lake Chad and the swamps of the White Nile mark its northern limits. Once, it is supposed — indeed the fact seems indubitable — the Zambesi and all its upper branches flowed clown into this southern basin, and formed a goodly inland sea, until a great cataclysm happened that diverted the Zambesi waters to the east coast, leaving the central lake to dry up into the shallow Ngami, and the streams of these regions to wander about puzzled and uncertain whether to keep in the old tracks or follow in the new direction. The discovery of Ngami was made on August 1, 224 THE DISCOVERY OF LAKE NGAMI. 1849, by Livingstone, in company with Oswell and Murray ; and the circumstance marked an important era in the history of Central Africa. The sight of its wide stretch of unfailing water — or rather that of the forest-lined banks of the Zouga river that the tra- vellers followed for some days previous to the dis- covery of the lake — demolished the theory of a burn- ing desert occupying the interior of Africa from the Mediterranean to the Cape, and went far to prove, what has since been completely established, that "the fabulous torrid zone of parched and burn- ing sand is a well -watered region resembling North America in its fresh -water lakes, and India in its hot, humid lowlands, jungles, ghauts, and cool high- land plains." Before the eyes of the travellers were gladdened by the sight of the waves breaking against the sandy or rush-fringed margin of the lake, they had been many times cheated into the belief that the goal of the journey had been reached. Once Oswell, walking ahead of the bullock-train, came suddenly in sight of a beautiful blue expanse on which the last rays of the setting sun were shining, and feeling sure this was " the lake " at last, he Hung his cap into tin; air. and gave a shout that made his native companions imagine he had gone crazy. It was only one of the salt-pans, or vleys, so common in the Kala- hari Desert, with a deceitful haze lying over the white incrustation. Some of these "pans'' arc of great extent — one of them, Ntwetwe, being a hun- dred miles in length; and the soil covered by the THE KALIHARI DESERT. 225 deposit of salt is, of course, useless for pasturage or any other purpose. The Kalihari, however, is by no means an un- mitigated desert ; it is a fertile tract of country which happens to lack the grand requisite of a rain- fall. The rain-laden winds from the east are robbed of their moisture in passing over the high ranges behind Natal and the Zulu and Kaffir countries. Showers occasionally fall on the high grassy plains of the Transvaal table-land, and still more sparsely in the Bechuana country beyond ; but with every mile westward the land becomes more dry and barren, and in the arid central and western regions rain is a phenomenon that may not occur for years. When a fall does take place, however, the transformation is almost miraculous. The surface soil is bound to- gether by the roots of grasses and other plants that carpet the desert with luxuriant green so soon as they drink of the life-giving moisture. The most re- markable of the vegetable products of the Kalihari is the large water-melon with which, after a heavy rainfall, the ground will be covered for hundreds of square miles. Another plant shows only a small shoot above the surface, but by digging down a bulb- ous root full of moisture and as large as a child's head is found. Many species of plants, that have no such tendency under their natural conditions, suit themselves to circumstances in the Kalihari Desert by developing large bulbous underground protuber- ances in which to lay up a store of precious sap. On the eastern verges of the Great Thirst Land this 226 LIFE OUT OF THE DUST. waking to life out of the dust takes place periodically ; and nothing, says Livingstone, can exceed the beauty of the spring at Kolobeng, in the Bakwain country, west of the new British possession of the Transvaal. Immediately before the change the sun has been shining down on the hot "veldt" with a hotter glare than ever, and clouds of dust render outdoor exist- ence almost unbearable. Then showers begin to fall; and when the ground has once been well soaked, a marvellous effect is produced. " In one day a tinge of green is apparent all over the landscape ; and in five or six days, the fresh leaves sprouting forth and the young leaves shooting up give an appearance of spring that it requires weeks of a colder climate to produce. The birds, which in the hot, dry, windy season had been silent, burst into merry, twittering songs, and are busy building their nests; and the earth teems with myriads of young insects," some of which, it may be noted, such as the white ant, arc an important and favourite article of diet of the natives. But the pride and glory of the Kalihari Desert are tin' herds of big and small game — giraffes, zebras, quaggas, gnus, ostriches, elands, harteheestes, wild- beestes, geinsboks, klipspringers, gazelles, pokus, lech- wes, pallahs, and numerous other species of the deer ami antelope trito — that roam over its spacious plains. Great deeds of slaughter have heen done with the rifle, und told over again in many a stirring hook of African sport by Gordon Cumming, Andersson, and other mighty Nimrods, who were among the first of A ROARING BULLY. 227 the army of hunters who now annually invade these bald solitudes in search of the trophies of hide, tusk, and horn, which every year become more difficult to obtain. The lion is practically the only " great cat " whom the sportsman has to encounter, the tiger being unknown in Africa, and the leopard compara- tively rare. The " forest king " seems more at home and comfortable in this tawny desert than in the rank forests further north, probably because he finds " food " more plentiful. Livingstone, in his usual con- temptuous tone when speaking of this brute, describes him as about as big as a donkey, and only brave at roaring. Even the talk of his " majestic roar " he re- gards as "majestic twaddle;" and he says he could never tell the voice of the lion from the voice of the ostrich, except from knowing that the quadruped made a noise by night and the bird by day. The lion would never dream of pitting himself against the noble elephant, though he will tear a young ele- phant calf if he find one unprotected ; and he would have still less chance in a contest with the armour- cased rhinoceros. Even the buffalo is more than a match for the "king of beasts;" and Major Oswell once came upon three lions who were having much trouble in pulling a mortally wounded buffalo to the ground. Both the elephant and rhinoceros are hunted here by the natives with packs of dogs. The yelping of the curs at his heels completely "puts out" the heavy-sided quarry, and while he is paying attention to them, and making lumbering attempts to crush 228 the elephant's charge. them, the hunter creeps up and plants his bullet or poisoned arrow in a vital place. English sportsmen, however, disdaining such base aid, generally prefer to go out alone against the elephant, on foot or on horseback ; and in early days " bags " of as many as twenty would be made on a trip. The chase of the colossal animal, which attains his maximum height of twelve feet in the neighbourhood of the Limpopo, became in these circumstances really exciting and dangerous work ; for the African elephant, owing to the formation of his skull, cannot be brought down by a forehead shot like the Indian variety. Living- stone recommends to the intending hunter a course of preliminary practice at home for meeting an ele- phant's charge, by standing on a railway track until an express train is within a yard of him and then skipping aside. Tli<- giraffe and ostrich arc also hunted on horse- bark ; and the plan adopted with these gaunt, ungainly, but fleet-footed denizens of the waste is to press them at a hard gallop from the very first, which causes them to lose wind and sometimes to drop dead from excitement. The ostrich, when at the top of its speed, has been calculated to rlee at the rate of some thirty miles an hour, so there is no hope of overtaking it in a long stern-chase ; but the stupid bird often delivers itself into the hands of its pursuers by running up-wind towards them — from ;oi instincl of terror that it is being surrounded — in- tead of speeding straight ahead. Vast quantities of the desert game are killed in seasons of drought, DESERT DWELLERS. 229 when the torments of thirst drive them to the muddy springs and vleys, where their enemy man lies in wait for their lives ; and their numbers are said to be failing year by year, as civilization encroaches upon their haunts, and the spear and arrow are discarded for the gun. The peoples of the Kalihari Desert are as character- istic of the soil and climate as its vegetable life and its four-footed beasts. There are two distinct races. The Ba- Kalihari are remnants of Bechuana tribes that have been driven into the desert by the pres- sure of stronger peoples behind. They are a pastoral or cattle -grazing folk, who cling under extraordinary difficulties to their ancestral love of the domestic animals, and may be seen laboriously watering their flocks of lean goats and meagre cattle by scooping up the precious fluid by the spoonful. A spindle- shanked, angular, pot-bellied, inoffensive people, they have to fi«-ht a hard battle for existence with Nature and with their neighbours. The Bushmen are true sons of the waste — wild men of the desert, who live by the chase and the foray. They are of diminu- tive stature ; and it has been suggested that, with the Akka and other pigmy tribes in the interior of the continent, they represent the real aborigines of Africa. Be that as it may, the real marvel about the Bushmen is how they contrive to exist at all in a region where water can only be obtained by sucking it up from the soil through reeds, and stor- ing it in calabashes and ostrich shells against a time of still more grim drought. On the margin of the 230 ENTER, THE TREK-BOERS AND DIAMOND-DIGGERS. desert there are some thriving Bechuana communi- ties, as for instance Shoshong, where the tine old chief, Khama, has protected the missionaries and traders, and taken the lead of his tribe, the Bamang- wato, in adopting Christianity and civilized ways. Another race, the Trek-Boers, or Emigrant Dutch farmers, have entered this region, fleeing from British rule in the Transvaal, as their fathers fled from the Cape Colony and Natal, and their vanguard, seeking a new Land of Promise, have unhitched their wag- gons on the shores of Lake No-ami. As their comim'- always prognosticates troubles with the natives, and as gold-washers and diamond-dio-o-ers are thronging into the Kalihari Desert and Matabele-land, we may expect to sec British authority close to their heels, and perhaps at no very distant date established on the banks of the Zambesi. CHAPTER II. THE VICTORIA FALLS AND THE LOWER ZAMBESI. ! 'Calm he still pursued The stream that with a larger volume now Rolled through the labyrinthine vale; and then, Foanrng and hurrying o'er its rugged track, Fell into the immeasurable void, Scattering its waters to the passing winds." — Alastor. AILING down the Zambesi, below the en- trance of the Chobe, in November 1855, Dr. Livingstone saw rising high into the air before him, at a distance of six miles, five pillars of vapour, with dark smoky summits. The river was smooth and tranquil, and the boat — in which was his stanch friend, Sekelutu, chief of the Makololo — "glided pleasantly over water clear as crystal, past lovely islands densely covered with tropical vegetation, and by high banks, with red cliffs shining through the brilliant green of the borassus and O CD O wild date palms." The traveller was not, however, altogether unprepared for the marvels that lay ahead. Two hundred miles away he had heard the fame of the gorge of Mosi-oa-Tunya — the " Sounding Smoke" — where the Zambesi mysteriously disappeared. As the crisis was approached, the pulse of the river (658) 19 232 THE " SOUNDING SMOKE." seemed to quicken. It was still more than a mile in width, but it hurried over rapids and chafed round points of rock ; and the most careful and skilful navigation was needed, lest the canoe should be dashed against a reef or hurried helplessly down the current. The mystery in front became more inexpli- cable the nearer it was approached ; for the great river seemed to disappear suddenly underground, leaving its bed of hard, black basaltic rock prolonged between the well-defined banks, but with grass and trees filling the space where the water had flowed ! By keeping the middle of the stream, cautiously paddling and punting from rock to rock, and taking advantage of the eddies, the canoe was grounded on a small island on the very lip of the Victoria Falls — a memorable spot, where Livingstone planted some fruit trees, and, for the only time on his travels, carved his initials, in remembrance of his visit. Even here it could not be seen what became of the vast body of water, until the explorer had crept up to the dizzy edge of the chasm and peeped over into the dark gulf below. A river over a mile in width precipitated itself sheer down into a rent extending at right angles across its bed, and only eighty yards across ! The walls of the cleft were cut as cleanly as if done by a knife, and no projecting crag broke the d< cent of the falling waters. Four rocks or small islands on the edge of the falls divide them into five separate cascades, and in front of each fall rises one of the tall "pillars of Bmoke," which are visible in flood time at a distance of ten miles. Only at low RAINBOWS OVER THE ABYSS. 233 water can the island on which Livingstone stood be approached ; for when the river is high an attempt to reach it would infallibly result in a plunge into the thundering abyss. Against the black, glittering walls cf the precipice opposite the falls, two, three, and some- times four rainbows, each forming three-quarters of a circle, are painted on the ascending clouds of spray,, which, continually rushing up from the depths below, lick off the rills of water streaming down the sides of the rock, and carry them high in air in the shape of vapour. A fine rain is constantly falling from these clouds, and the tops of the cliffs are covered with dense, dripping, evergreen vegetation. But the great sisht is the cataract itself. The rent seems to be of comparatively recent formation, for the edge of the rock has been worn back only three feet. Over this the water sweeps in unbroken sheets, its glassy outer surface being only slightly indented between island and island. For eight or ten feet it falls in a crystal mass ; below that it hangs like a white fleece in mid -air ; and then it seems to break into detached pieces of foam that follow one another in bewilder- ingly swift comet-like flights, each trailing behind it a " tail " of vapour, until lost in the gloom of the chasm. Since Livingstone's first brief visit, the falls have been more minutely examined by the doctor himself, in company with his brother Charles, and Kirk, and also by subsequent explorers, such as Mauch and Pinto,* so that we now know pretty accurately their * The last party who visited the spot, in the close of 1879, included an English- woman, Mrs. Kennedy, the first European lady who has seen the Victoria Falls. 234 ZIGZAGS AMID PRECIPICES. dimensions and leading features. The breadth of the river at the falls has been ascertained to be over eighteen hundred and sixty yards, and the depth of the precipice below the island three hundred and sixty feet, or twice the depth of Niagara. At the bottom of the rent, the waters that have fallen into it both on the right and on the left rush to- gether, and meet in the centre of the gulf, immedi- ately beneath the island, where, confined in a space of twenty or thirty yards, they form a fearful boiling- whirlpool. From this the stream escapes through a narrow channel at right angles to the course of the stream above, and turning a sharp corner, emerges into another chasm parallel with the first, then through another confined gap to a third chasm, and so pursues its way in wild zigzags through forty miles of hills till it breaks out into the more level country of the Lower Zambesi. The flow of the stream through this inaccessible ravine is not so turbulent as might be imagined from its being pent in between walls often less than forty x.mls apart. It pursues its way with a churning, grinding motion, sweeping round the sharp turns with :i swift resistless ease that indicates plainly the profound depth of the water. It was through this -jap, caused by some unrecorded convulsion of the earth, that the great lake that had at one time occupied South ( !entral Africa has been drained ; and it forms undoubtedly the most wonderful natural feature in Africa, and perhaps also in the world. At the Great Falls of the Zambesi we are still a AN AFRICAN NAPOLEON. 235 thousand miles from the sea, and many hundreds of miles from the first traces of civilization, such as it is in the Portuguese possessions of Africa. Nature has been exceedingly lavish in her gifts in the Lower Zambesi valley, giving it a fertile soil, a splendid system of river communication, and great stores of mineral and vegetable wealth — everything, indeed, suited to make the country prosperous, except a healthy climate and an industrious and peaceable population. It has been man himself that, by war and slave -hunting, has cursed it hitherto with apparently hopeless blight. Around the falls them- selves are the scenes of some of the most noteworthy events in Central African warfare ; and for many miles beneath them may be seen terrible traces of the devastation wrought by military ambition, which is not less the besetting sin of negro than it is of European princes. The history of " Chaka's wars " has not yet been written, and probably never will. Nevertheless, they extended over as great an area, shook as many " thrones and dominions," as the campaigns of Bona- parte himself. Chaka was a chief, or chieflet, in Zululand, and grandfather of that Cetywayo whose ill-starred stru£>-o-l e with the English has cost him his country and his liberty. It is said that some shipwrecked sailors who were cast away near Chaka's kraal or village, early in the present century, enter- tained their host with stories of the extraordinary career of conquest of the First Napoleon, then in the zenith of his power. The black warrior was 236 chaka's conquests. smitten with the desire to imitate the deeds of the man whom he resembled in some way in military talent and boundless ambition. By the counsel of his sailor friends he formed his tribe into a reu the upper streams of the Zam- besi, began to fall to pieces under Sekelutu. The tribe broke into hostile sections, and was attacked on the 'lay of its decline by its old enemies. Its name and place have perished from among the list of African nation-, and the only remnant left have THE LOWER ZAMBESI. 239 escaped into the region of the Upper Shire, "where, out of gratitude mainly for the friendship of Living- stone, they act as the faithful henchmen and guard- ians of the Scottish missionaries who have chosen the Nyassa country for the scene of their labours. Over the smouldering embers of these old fires the intrepid Livingstone had to pass in his descent of the Zambesi in 1856, and in his further researches in this country in company with his brother Charles and Dr. Kirk four years later. They had to tread warily and softly, otherwise the whole country might have been set in flame. To the honour of British ex- plorers be it said, not only was no blood shed on their travels, but they succeeded in healing old-standing feuds among the native tribes whose territory they traversed. As we descend the Zambesi, and approach the Indian Ocean, the prospect widens, and the stream gathers breadth and volume, for great tributaries flow in, especially on the right bank. The Kafue is a river hardly smaller than the Zambesi itself ; some, indeed, have considered it the main stream. Its course has still to be traced, and its source, whether in some un- known lake, or in the n which, and on the slopes above, herds of buffaloes, zebras, water-bucks, koodoos, and wild pigs may be seen grazing peacefully togctln-r, with occasionally a troop of elephants or a solitary rhinoceros. The river swarms with fish, crocodiles, and hippopotami; indeed, Dr. Living- SURPRISES IN THE JUNGLE. 241 stone says that nowhere on his travels has he seen such an abundance of animal life as in and around this portion of the Zambesi. Yet it is possible even here to be, or at least to appear to be, alone. The jungle path and its high walls of grass, or the bare, wide plain with its girdle of moun- tains, seem the boundaries of the world. At these times, says Livingstone, a strange stillness pervades the air. " No sound is heard from bird or beast or living thing. The air is still, and earth and sky have sunk into a deep and sultry repose, and like a lonely ship on a desert sea is the long line of weary travellers." But they soon discover that they are not alone in the wilderness. " Other living forms are round us with curious eyes on our movements. As we enter a piece of woodland, an unexpected herd of pallahs, or water- bucks, suddenly appears, standing still and quiet as if forming part of the landscape ; or we pass a clump of thick thorns, and see through the bushes the dim, phantom forms of buffaloes, the heads lowered, gazing at us with fierce, untamable eyes. Again a sharp turn brings us upon a native, who has spied us from afar, and creeps up with noiseless steps to get a nearer view. Sometimes the interruption comes in an unpleasant form. Once Livingstone, walking in a reverie ahead of his party, was startled by a female rhinoceros, followed by her calf, coming thundering down along the narrow path, and had barely time to jump into the thicket to escape the charge. A few steps further 242 CRUSTY OLD BACHELORS. on, a thorn plucked his watch from his pocket, causing him to look round, and there was the great beast, standing almost at his elbow, staring spell-bound at the new prodigy that was passing through her domain. Occasionally a panic-stricken herd of buf- faloes will make a rush through the centre of the line of bearers and donkeys, scattering them in wild con- fusion into the bush, and tossing perhaps the nearest man or animal into the air. Neither the buffalo nor any other wild creature, however, will attack a human being except when driven to extremity. The lion or leopard, when watching for its prey near the spring or above the forest track, will perhaps drop down on a man who passes underneath ; the buffalo, if it thinks it is being surrounded, will make a mad charge to escape ; or the elephant, if wounded and brought to bay, or in defence of its young, will turn on its pursuer. A " rogue " elephant or buffalo, who has been turned out of the herd by his fellows for some fault or blemish, and becoming crusty and ill-natured by his solitary life, has been known to make an unprovoked attack on the first creature, man or beast, that presents itself to his sight. Thus, one savage old bull-buffalo furiously charged a native of Living- stone's party in the ascent of the river in I860, and the man had barely time to escape into a tree when tin- huge head came crashing against the trunk with a shock fit to crack both skull and tree. Backing a little, he came on with another rush, and continued this " butt" practice until seven shots were fired into him. But, as a rule, every untamed creature flees in CHARGED BY A BUFFALO. Page 242. SUBLIME SCEXERY. 243 terror on sighting, and still more on scenting, " red- handed man." The voyage by river is also not without its dangers. From the parallel hill-ranges, rocky and forest-clad hills jut out at intervals, and round these the stream makes magnificent sweeps. At more than one place it is hemmed in by high walls of rock, between which it rushes in a swift current for many miles. In these gorges are to be seen the finest scenery on the river. In the time equivalent to our autumn, especially, when the deciduous trees that grow out of every cranny, and cover the rough face of the crags with a screen of foliage, are painted with gorgeous tints of vermilion and yellow, and these tints are contrasted with the dark hues of the evergreens and the fresh green of the trees that are coming into leaf, and when a setting sun is throwing its level light down the pass, the scene is such that no European imagination can picture. But still more grand is it in the period of the rains. Every day the black clouds are seen rolling round the summits of the hills, and vomiting streams of lightning, while the thunder rumbles and echoes con- tinually among the rocks, and rain descends in sheets, and the great river rises until its pent-up waters are tearing through the narrow gap at a height eighty feet above the ordinary river-level. The Kebrabasa Rapids, more than half-way the distance between the Victoria Falls and the sea, are the only narrows of this kind that present any serious obstacle to the ascent of the river by a steamer, and even these are believed (658) 20 244 SAILING OVER A WHIRLPOOL. to be passable at flood-time, when the rocky bed is "smoothed over" by the depth of water. In the ordinary state of the river the Kebrabasa Cataracts cannot be passed, although the inhuman experiment has been tried of fastening slaves to a canoe and Hinging them into the river above the rapids. Near this spot Dr. Kirk had a dangerous adventure. The canoe in which he was seated was caught in the swirls of one of the many whirlpools formed by the cataracts, and drifted broadside towards the open vortex. Suddenly a great upward boiling of the water, here nearly a hundred feet deep, caught the frail craft and dashed it against a ledge of rock, which the doctor was fortunately able to grasp, and thus save himself, though he lost his scientific instru- ments, his notes, and his botanical specimens, the fruits of many months of travel. When Livingstone's boat, which was immediately behind, reached the spot, the yawning cavity had momentarily filled up, and he sailed safely over the very mouth of the whirl- pool. Before reaching Kebrabasa, we meet with two other noteworthy features of the Lower Zambesi — the traces of Portuguese colonization, and of the slave-trade. Nowhere, till lately, was this traffic more flourishing or more deeply rooted, or its corrupting and ruinous effects more markedly seen, than in the colony of Mozambique. Here, too, Livingstone was the cham- pion who, almost single-handed, marched out, gave battle to the many-headed monster, and inflicted what we must hope is a fatal wound. In spite of THE EAST COAST SLAVERS. 245 reiterated denials from high quarters, there cannot be the slightest doubt that not merely Portuguese subjects but Portuguese officials were actively con- cerned in the operations of the slaver. They not only winked at, but openly patronized and profited by it. The actual slave-hunters were generally Arabs from the coast, and Portuguese half-breeds — a race that seems to preserve all the evil qualities of the European and the negro. They undertook the supply not only of the " export trade " to Madagascar, Arabia, and Persia, which was mostly in the hands of Banians — British-Indian subjects — but also the home mar- ket ; for slavery was, perhaps still is, the basis of society and industry throughout the Portuguese pos- sessions in Africa. The more extended and active the operations of the kidnapping parties, the more hopelessly backward became the condition of the scattered white com- munities. Round the forts of the Portuguese for many days' journey were to be met with only wasted and abandoned fields, fio-htino- clans, and efeneral anarchy and decay. Their authority, it has been said, did not extend beyond the range of their guns ; and in many places the settlements only existed on suffer- ance of the native tribes, to whom a yearly tribute had to be paid. For instance, the Landeens, as the Portuguese call the Zulu tribe of the Matabele, came down annually to Tete, on the Zambesi, clad in all the paraphernalia of battle, to collect their black- mail of cloth, beads, and brass wire. A refusal meant war ; and the colonists dared not increase the area of 246 PORTUGUESE COLONIZATION. their sugar and cotton plantations lest they should be subjected to new exactions. Legitimate trade was extinct, and with it true civilization. The climate near the river is deadly. The "cach- imba," or malarious foo- from the steaming mangrove swamps of the Zambesi delta and coast country, is blown up the river in the mornings, bringing with it fever and ague, that lay their enervating hands on the mental and physical faculties of the white men who choose this country as a residence. The class of colonists who emigrate from Portugal to Mozambique is not the most select. Needy adven- turers, military men in disgrace., and criminals, are types largely represented. They have neither the inclination nor the energy to en broken hell lying half-buried in the rank weeds. At the junction df two noble rivers, in the midst of a beautiful and fertile expanse of green fields, undulat- ing forest, and pleasant hills, with magnificent moun- tains in the background, it is a scene of utter ruin THE JESUIT MISSIONS. 247 and desolation, overgrown with thorn-bushes, nox- ious plants, and long grass, the haunt of the hyena and the owl, — a fit picture of the past and present of the Portuguese colony, and of the blighting effects of the slave-trade. The old missionaries who planted this church were full of plans for the explora- tion and regeneration of Africa, and submitted schemes with this object to their spiritual and political superiors. Livingstone bears generous tes- timony — all the more rare, coming from one be- longing to a different religious sect — to the zeal, piety, and self-abnegation of these Jesuit priests ; he regards the calumnies circulated about them as " the mere brandy-and-water twaddle of immoral traders." Their plans and labours hindered the slavers' success, and it was necessary to get rid of them by calumny or any other weapon. With the failure of their mission perished all true progress in discovery ; and when Livingstone visited the Portuguese colonies on the Zambesi in 1856, he found complete ignorance of the existence of the Victoria Falls, and only hazy rumours regarding a lake called the Maravi, Nyanja, or Nyassa, from which, at a distance of forty days' journey to the northward, the Shire, the last of the great affluents of the Zambesi, was supposed to flow. CHAPTER III. THE SHIRE AND LAKE NYASSA. " I know the secrets of a land Where human foot did never stray ; Fair is that land as evening skies, And cool — though in the heart it lies Of burning Africa."— Peter Bell. HE river Shire, which we are now about to ascend, falls into the Zambesi from the left, only some ninety miles from its mouth. Twenty years ago its course was unknown, and its banks were wildernesses untrodden by the foot of a white man. Now the stream is one of the best-known and most frequented of the highways to the Lake Regions. The Shirt- is much narrower than the Zambesi, but of deeper channel, and in the upper and lower portions more easily ascended by steamers. Midway in its course, however, we meet a greal impediment <<> the navigation of the river, and consequently to the civilization and commercial development <>f the regions beyond. In thirty-live miles the stream descends twelve bundled feet in a series of rapids and cataracts over a rock -encumbered bed and between sheer walls of cliff! THE SHIRE. 249 Beauty and use are badly adjusted on the Shire*. The scenery of the unnavigable portion of the river is full of singular and romantic beauty. In the picturesque diversity of its charms of crag and forest and rushing water it is scarcely equalled by any other part of Africa. Monotony, on the other hand, has set its stamp on the banks of the useful, slow- flowino- river beneath and above. Yet the ascent of one hundred and fifty miles from the Zambesi to the cataracts is not without its attractions. The landscape is intensely and characteristically African. If the river is fringed on either shore by tall and sombre reeds, the majestic mountains that bound the Shire valley are always in sight. A dense tro- pical vegetation covers these hills to the very tops, except that patches of lighter tint show where the hands of the natives have cleared the ground for the cultivation of crops of cotton, sorghum, or maize ; for these healthy uplands, above the reach of the mosquito and the deadly marsh fog, and safe also, in some degree, from the ravages of the kidnapper, are inhabited by an industrious race, the Manganjas, who have made no small progress in agriculture and native iron and metal manufactures. This whole country is favourable for the raising of cotton, which here grows a larger and finer staple, it is said, even than in Egypt. Every Manganja village has its cotton patch, where sufficient is grown for the use not only of the community but of neighbouring tribes. The demand certainly is not large, the require- ments of Africans in the matter of clothing being 250 THE "GONAKEDS. modest — or immodest, if you will. There is a tribe, for instance, on the Lower Zambesi, whose name, being interpreted, means the '•' Go-Nakeds." The full costume of a " Go- Naked " is a coat — of red ochre. Livingstone met one of their men of rank once, and found his court suit represented by a few beads and a pipe two feet long. Unfortunately the Manganja, along with their ingenuity and industry as weavers, blacksmiths, and farmers, are inordinately fond of beer and smoking, and are great in the arts of brewing and tobacco-manufacturing. With all these disadvantages, however, it is pleasant to find in one corner at least of Africa a race with both the skill and the inclination to work, and a native in- dustry ready to spring up into large proportions so soon as it receives a little encouragement. After the Zambesi has been left behind, a great mountain called Morumbala, four thousand feet in height, bounds for many miles the view on the right as we ascend the Shire*. Beyond it we reach one of the marshes or old lake-beds which form one of the features of this valley. The bounding lines of hills make each a semicircular curve, and inclose a vast morass, through the centre of which the river drains slowly between dripping walls of sedee and mud. No human inhabitant can dwell iii these impenetrable swamps; but they are far from empty of life. Great flights of wild geese, ducks, waders, and other water-fowl abound here in prodigious numbers, and rise from the brake at the noise of the passing boat or steamer— for already THE SHIRE SWAMPS. 251 steamers have ploughed the waters of the Shire. Cor- morants and fish-hawks patiently watch for their prey from the top of some tree or shrub that over- hangs the water; or an antelope is seen picking its way from one oozy island to another. In the stream itself we cannot go far without disturbing the rest of some ugly saurian ; or a hippopotamus, catching alarm in time, can be traced crashing its way through the reeds to a place of safety. Consul Elton describes his passage of this " lake of mud " as a time to be remembered. The country was inundated. " Far and wide the waters stretched over the whole flat, from the margin of the hills bounding the granitic ranges north of Morumbala away to the Manganja range on the west, forming an immense expanse, here and there dotted with lines of green rushes and low trees. It was a day without a cloud — a company of distant pelicans look- ing like a line of breakers in the bright sunset, Mor- umbala purpling far away against a roseate-tinged sky, of the deepest azure overhead, the Nyanja waters of a deep amethyst colour." But the gloiy of these marshes is their elephants. The Nyanja Mururu, or Great Lake, a little further on, is even a more favourite haunt for them than the Nyanja Pangolo, or Little Lake, we have just crossed with Elton. Here in 1859 Li vino-stone's party counted no fewer than eight hundred of these gigantic animals in sight at once ; on a subsequent voyage down the river they passed " two miles of elephants." Such a spectacle as this — almost of 252 ELEPHANT PRESERVES. itself worth a journey to Africa — is no longer to be seen on the Shire. The wise animals have not been long in discovering how dangerous a new-comer the white man is in their domain, and they are too cautious now to come trooping out in herds to the bank when sounds of an unusual kind are heard on the river. The rirle has thinned their numbers, and induced many more to change their haunt ; while those that remain keep in the day-time within the recesses of the swamp, where they are pretty safe from the attack of any hunter white or black. A Makololo chief who has occupied this portion of the river considers the great elephant swamp as his special preserve, and it is only by his leave — which may always be obtained by a handsome present — that the sportsman is permitted to go out after the great pachyderms. In many parts of savage Africa, indeed, the " game laws ' : are as strictly enforced as in civilized England, and a usual arrangement is for the hunter to share his booty with the black " lord of the soil."' Above the marshes, and just where the Mur- chison Cataracts begin, and river navigation con- sequently ends, Chi Lisa's village stands, or rather stood ; for ( Ihibisa and his people have given place to anew race 1'ioin this point Dr. Livingstone made three excursions in search of the "Lake Maravi," which h«' had heard of among the Portuguese. The first expedition threatened to end m a tragic manner. It soon became plain that the guide was leading the party quite away from the direction in which the LAKE SHIRWA. 253 " Great lake " was understood to lie ; and as they reached a lonely spot, one of the doctor's faithful Makololos came up to him, and remarked, in a matter-of-fact way, "That fellow is taking us into mischief. My spear is sharp. There is no one here. Shall I cast him into the long grass ? " A gesture of assent, or even silence, and the unlucky guide would have been run through the body ; but Living- stone was not the man to permit blood to be spilt, even on an apparently well-grounded suspicion of treachery. After all, it turned out to be merely a blunder, and no treachery. The party were led safely to the margin of the " great lake " of the dis- trict — the elephant marsh that they had passed some time before while ascending the river ! The second trip resulted in a discovery of an in- land sea, though not the one they were in search of. Climbing over the shoulder of the high mountains east of the Shire, the party came in sight of Lake Shirwa, lying in an isolated, pear-shaped basin, nearly two thousand feet above sea -level. Magnificent mountain scenery surrounds the lake, the waters of which, contrary to the rule in Central Africa, are salt, or rather brackish. Although the area of Shirwa is probably as large as that of all the lakes of Great Britain taken together, it is but a mill-pond com- pared with some of the inland seas we have visited, or with one which still lies ahead. Yet, girt in though it is with hills, it shows to one standing near its southern end a boundless sea-horizon towards the north. Opposite on the eastern shore a lofty range 254- AFRICAN* HIGHLANDS. rises to a height of eight thousand feet above sea- level, while behind, the table-topped Mount Zomba, only one thousand feet lower, dominates the Shire valley. All this mountainous mass seems habitable, and, in fact, is inhabited to its very summits ; and its tem- perate climate, healthful breezes, and freedom from malaria and mosquitoes, have led to its being chosen as the site of the Church of Scotland mission to the Nyassa country — their station, Blantyre, being named after the Scottish village where Livingstone first saw the light. In ascending to the Nyassa, the opposite or western side of the Shire is generally chosen, and travellers prefer to make a wide detour into the healthy Manganja uplands to struggling through the rocky, broken, and wooded country through which the river tears its impetuous way. It is delightful to breathe the bracing air of these high plains after escaping from the humid, Stirling atmosphere of the valley. The change of scenery and climate puts a new life into the veins of the traveller. Many novel views of African life come under his notice among tin- Manganja highlands. The path up the lung ascent is toilsome, but the eye is cheered by the glorious views of the deep valley lying below and the blue domes and peaks that rise ahead. The country is open and park-like, full of grand forest. trees and flowing streams. In the evening we halt at a Manganja village and receive a hearty- perhaps an uproarious — wel- VILLAGE RECREATIONS. 255 come. The villages are surrounded by thick-set hedges of the poisonous euphorbia ; and however busy at work or at feasting the inhabitants are inside, a guard is always kept on vigilant watch at the entrance, to give warning if a foraging band of Mazitu heave in sight in the mountains, or the white robes of a party of Arab slave-hunters are seen ascending the valley. When it is known that it is friends who are approaching, the villagers are not long in making amends for the shyness of their first greetings. Mats of reeds and bamboo are spread for the wayfarers under the shade of the banian tree at the " boalo," an open space for the public entertain- ment of strangers at one end of the village, the fav- ourite spot for lounging and smoking, and where on moonlight nights the young people indulge in singing and dancing and their elders in hard drinking bouts. The whole community troop out to see the "white visitors, who are regarded with just such a mixture of curiosity and fear as a company of Red Indians would be looked upon by English rustics. Presents are exchanged with the chief, and then a brisk trade sets in, the villagers bartering food and articles of native manufacture for beads, looking-glasses, cloth, and other surprising products of Europe. Generally there follow dancing, pombe-drinking, and serenading in honour of the visitor, a homage which the latter is often glad to escape from by strolling out for a night-hunt for elephant or other game, or to note down by the clear light of the moon his observations for the day. 256 DISCOVERY OF LAKE NYASSA. Soon it is time to descend into the valley, where the Shire' is found again flowing deep and slow, as below the falls, and opening up into a marshy lake- let, Pamalombe, with a strong family resemblance to the swamps of the lower river. It ought to be recorded, in justice to African honesty, that when the I lab J, the first steamer that floated on the Nyassa, was conveyed in pieces from the Lower to the Upper Shire* by a band of some hundreds of porters, under Captain Young's leadership, it was found, on putting the little craft together, that not a single bolt or screw had been mislaid or stolen, though the temptation to fling away or decamp with their burdens must have sorely tried the carriers. Even when almost within sight of the Nyassa, Livingstone could hear nothing of the goal of which he was in search. The chief of the " Great Lake" village on the Shire' told him that the river stretched on for " two months' journey," and then emerged from two rocks that towered perpendicularly to the skies. " We shall go and see these wonderful rocks,'' said the doctor. "And when you see them," objected his Makololo companions, "you will just want to see something else." Next day they continued their march, and before noon on the lGth of September L859 came in sight of the lake. Like the Tanganyika and Albert Lakes, Nyassa is a long any Mrs. HOFLAND. With 14 Engravings. Royal 181110, cloth. Price is. 6d. The Children on the Plains. A Story of Travel and Advert- inn; in the Great Prairie* of North America. By .Mrs. Sarah S. Baker, Author of " I he Jewish Twins," &c. With 16 Illustrations. Royal 181110, cloth. Price 1 T. NELSON .l.\/> SONS, LONDON, EDINBURGH, AXD NEW YORK, STORY BOOKS OF NATURAL HISTORY. RICHLY ILLUSTRATED. Jenny and the Insects ; or, Little Toilers and their Industries. With 26 Illustrations by Giacomelli. Post 8vo, cloth extra, gilt edges. Price 3s. 6d. Tiny Workers J or, Man's Little Rivals in the Animal World. With 13 Engravings. Price is. 6d. The History Of the Robins. By Mrs. Trimmer. Illustrated with 16 Original Drawings by Giacomelli, engraved by Rouget, Berveiller, Whymper, Sargent, &c. New and Cheaper Edition. Post 8vo, gilt edges. Price 3s. In the Woods. By M. K. M. , Author of ' ' The Birds We See, " &c. With 34 Illustrations by Giacomelli. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 2s. 6d. Sea Birds, and the Lessons of their Lives. By Mrs. Surr. With 24 Engravings. Foolscap 8vo, cloth, gilt edges. Price 2s. Stories of the Dog, and his Cousins the Wolf, the Jackal, and the Hyena. With Stories Illustrating their Place in the Animal World. By Mrs. Hugh Miller. With 34 Engravings. Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price is. 6d. Stories of the Cat, and her Cousins the Lion, the Tiger, and the Leopard. With Stories Illustrating their Place in the Animal World. By Mrs. Hugh Miller. With 29 Engravings. Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price is. 6d. Talks with Uncle Richard about Wild Animals. By Mrs. George Cupples. With 75 Illustrations. i8mo, cloth. Price is. 6d. Mamma's Stories about Domestic Pets. By Mrs. George Cupples. With 56 Illustrations. i8mo, cloth. Price is. 6d. Things in the Forest. By Mary and Elizabeth Kirby. With Coloured Frontispiece, and 50 Illustrations. Royal i8mo, cloth. Price is. 6d. Stories about DogS. By Mrs. Surr. With 12 Tinted Engrav- ings by Harrison Weir. 4to, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. Stories about Cats. By Mrs. SURR. With 12 Tinted Engrav- ings by Harrison Weir, and other Arti>ts. 4to, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. History of Good Dog Fanny and Tuft the Canary. With other Stories, all true. By Mrs. Gaskell, of Ingersley. Price is. 6d. T. NELSON AND SO.YS, LOXDOX, IIDIXBURGH. AND NEW YORK. BOOKS FOR BOYS, BY THE LATE W. H. G. KINGSTON. In the Wilds Of Florida. With 37 Engravings. Gilt edges. Price 5s. My First Voyage to Southern Seas. With 52 Engravings. Gilt edges. Price 5s. Old Jack. A Sea Tale. With 66 Engravings. Gilt edges. Trice 5s. Saved from the Sea; or, The Loss of the Viper, and the Adven- tures of her Crew in the Great Sahara. With 30 Full-page Engravings. Gilt edges. Price 5s. The South Sea Whaler: A Story of the Loss of the Champion^ and the Adventures of her Crew. With upwards of 30 Engravings. Gilt edges. Price 5s. Twice Lost. A Story of Shipwreck, and of Adventure in the Wilds of Australia. With 36 Engravings. Gilt edges. Price 5s. A Voyage Round the World. A Tale for Boys. With 42 Engravings. Gilt edges. Price 5s. The Wanderers; or, Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and up the Orinoco. With 30 Full-page Engravings. Gilt edges. Price 5s. The Young Llanero. A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela. With 44 Engravings. Gilt edges. Price 5s. The Young Rajah. A Story of Indian Life and Adventure. With upwards of 40 Full-page Engravings. Gilt edges. Price 5s. In the Eastern Seas; or, The Regions of the Bird of Paradise. A Tale for Hoys. With m Illustrations. Crown 8vo, gilt edges. Price 6s. In the Wilds Of Africa. With upwards of 70 Illustrations. Crown 8vo, gilt edges. Price 6s. Afar in the Forest. With 41 Full-page Engravings. Cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. In the Rocky Mountains. A Tale of Adventure. With 41 Engravings. Price 3s. 6d. In New Granada; or, Heroes and Patriots. With 36 Full-page Engravings. Price 3s. 6d. Stories of the Sagacity of Animals. With 60 Illustrations by Harrison Weir. Price 3s. 6d. Almost a Hero; or, School Days at Ashcombe. By Robert Richardson, Author of "Ralph's Year in Russia," "The Young Crags- man," &C. With 7 Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. Odd Moments of the Willoughby Boys. By Emily Hartley. Post Bvo, cloth extra. Price 2s. 6d. Culm Rock ; or, Ready Work for Willing Hands. A Book for Boys. By J. w. Bradley. Fool ap 8vo, cloth extra. Price 2s. The Boy's Country Book. By William Howitt. Post 8vo, cloth. With Illustrations. Price 3s. 6d. From " Edinburgh Review," July /S70. — "To our mind William Howitt's 'I itry Book' is the best of the kind that has ever been written." Nuts for Boys to Crack. By the Rev. John Tom., D.D., Author of" Simple Sketches," &<;. Royal 181110. Price is. 6d. T. NELSON AND SONS, LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK. BOOKS FOR BOYS, BY R. M. BALLANTYNE. Hudson Bay ; or, Everyday Life in the Wilds of North America. With 46 Engravings. Crown 8vo, cloth extra. Price 5s. The Young FUP-TradePS. A Tale of the Far North. With Illus- trations. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 3s. 6d. Ungava. A Tale of Eskimo Land. With Illustrations. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 3s. 6d. The Coral Island. A Tale of the Pacific. With Illustrations. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 3s. 6d. Martin Rattler ; or, A Boy's Adventures in the Forests of Brazil. With Illustrations. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 3s. 6d. The Dog Crusoe and his Master. A Tale of the Western Prairies. With Illustrations. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 3s. 6d. The Gorilla Hunters. A Tale of Western Africa. With Illus- trations. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 3s. 6d. The World Of lee ; or, Adventures in the Polar Regions. With Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 3s. 6d. The Ocean and its Wonders. With 60 Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. VOYAGES, TRAVEL, AND ADVENTURE, The Eastern Archipelago. A Description of the Scenery, Ani- mal and Vegetable Life, People, and Physical Wonders of the Islands in the Eastern Seas. By the Author of "The Arctic World," &c. With 60 En- gravings and a Map. Crown 8vo, cloth extra. Price 5s. The Lake Regions of Central Africa. A Record of Modem Discovery. By John Geddie. With 32 Illustrations. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. Recent Polar Voyages. A Record of Adventure and Discovery from the Search after Franklin to the Voyage of the Alert and the Discovery (1875-76). With 62 Engravings. Crown 8vo, cloth. Price 5s. Great Shipwrecks. A Record of Perils and Disasters at Sea— 1544-1877. With 58 fine Engravings. Crown 8vo, cloth. Price 5s. Kane's Arctic Explorations. The Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin. With 60 Engravings. Crown 8vo, cloth extra. Price 5s. Pictures of Travel in Far-off Lands. A Companion to the Study of Geography.— Central America, With 50 Engravings. Po>t 8vo, cloth. Price 2s. Pictures of Travel in Far-off Lands.— South America. With 50 Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 2S. On the Nile. The Story of a Family Trip to the Land of Egypt. By Sara K. Hint. With 16 Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. T. NELSON AND SONS. LONDON, EDINBURGH, .1ND NEW YORK. NEW SERIES OF BOOKS FOR PRESENTS AND PRIZES, BE A UTIFULL Y ILL USTRA TED. Alpine Climbing 1 . Being Narratives of Ascents of Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, the Jungfrau, and other lofty Summits of the Alps. By the Author of "The Mediterranean Illustrated," &c. With 34 Illustrations. Foolscap 8vo, cloth extra. Price 2s. Gibraltar and its Sieges. With a Description of its Natural Features. With 18 Full-page Illustrations. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 2s. California and its Wonders. By the Rev. John Todd, D.D. New Edition, carefully revised and brought down to the present time. With 17 Engravings. Post 8vo. Price 2s. The Jordan and its Valley, and the Dead Sea. By the Author of "The Mediterranean Illustrated." With 45 Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 2s. Mount Sinai, Petra, and the Desert. Described and Illus- trated. With 23 Full-page Illustrations. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 2s. The Euphrates and the Tigris. A Narrative of Discovery and Adventure. With a Description of the Ruins of Babylon and Nineveh. With 18 Full-page Illustrations. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 2s. The Amazon and its Wonders. With illustrations of Animal and Vegetable Life in the Amazonian Forest. With 26 Fufl-page Engrav- ings. Post 8vo. cloth extra. Price 2s. In the Far East. A Narrative of Exploration and Adventure in Cochin-China, Cambodia, Laos, and Siam. With 2S Full-page Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 2s. The Story of Ida Pfeiffer and her Travels in Many Lands. With 25 Full-page Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 2s. The Story of the Life and Travels of Alexander yon Humboldt. With 27 Full-page Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 2s. Sir David Wilkie : His Life and Works. By the Rev. Adam L. Simpson, D.D., Derby. 14 Engravings. Price 2s. INSTRUCTIVE SERIES OF SHILLING BOOKS, Each with Coloured Frontispiece, and Numerous Engravings. Royal 18mo, cloth. Wonders Of Creation : Volcanoes and their Phenomena. With 1 1 . ■ ■,..-. Nature's Wonders : Pictures of Remarkable Scenes in Foreign Lands. With |o I a ra ings. Wonders of the Vegetable World. With 32 Engravings. Scenes of Wonder in Many Lands. Being Descriptions of Rapids, I . Waterfalls, &c. With 27 Engravings. Life and Travel in Tartary, Thibet, and China. Being a Narrative of the Abbe 1 Hue's Travels in the Far East. l'-y M. Jones, with 30 Engravings, T. NELSON AND '■. EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK. TEMPERANCE PRIZE TALES, Being the Works which obtained the Prizes of £100 and £SO respectively, offered by the United Kingdom Band of Hope Union. Frank Oldfield ; or, Lost and Found. By the Rev. T. P. Wilson, M.A. With 5 Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. Tim'S Troubles ; or, Tried and True. By M. A. Paull. With 5 Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. Sought and Saved. ATale. By M.A. Paull, Author of "Tim's Troubles; or, Tried and True," "True Hearts make Happy Homes," &c. With 6 Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. Lionel Franklin's Victory. By E. Van Sommer. With 6 En- gravings. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. Every-Day Doings. By Hellena Richardson. With 6 Illus- trations. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. Owen's Hobby ; or, Strength in Weakness. A Tale. By Elmer Burleigh. With 6 Engravings. Post 8vo. Price 3s. 6d. WORKS BY THE REV, T, P, WILSON, AUTHOR OF "FRANK OLDFIELD." Frank Oldfield ; or. Lost and Found. With 5 Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. Great Heights Gained by Steady Efforts ; or, Perseverance and Faithfulness Triumphant. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. True tO his Colours ; or, The Life that Wears Best. With 6 Illustrations. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. Amos Huntingdon. A Tale illustrative of Moral Courage, with Examples taken from Real Life. With 6 Illustrations. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. Working in the Shade ; or, Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reap- ing. Royal i8mo. Price is. 6d. WORKS BY M, A, PAULL, AUTHOR OF "TIM'S TROUBLES." Tim'S Troubles ; or, Tried and True. With 5 Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. Sought and Saved. With 6 Engravings. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. Stories of the Mountain and the Forest. With 9 Engrav- ings. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. True Hearts make Happy Homes : The Story of the Vivians of Woodiford. Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 3s. 6d. May's Sixpence; or, Waste Not, Want Not. Royal iSmo. is. 6d. Willie's Choice ; or, All is not Gold that Glitters. Foolscap Svo. Price is. 6d. T. NELSON AND SONS, LONDON, EDINBURGH, .-1ND NEW YORK. TALES FOR THE HOME CIRCLE, Isabel's Secret. By the Author of " The Story of a Happy Little Girl." Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price 3s. Stepping Heavenward. A Tale of Home Life. By the Author of "The Flower of the Family." Post 8vo, cloth. Price 2s. 6d. The Flower Of the Family. Post Svo, cloth. Price 2s. 6d. Ever Heavenward ; or, A Mother's Influence. By the Author of "The Flower of the Family." Post 8vo; cloth. Price 2s. 6d. Stories by the Author of "Stepping Heavenward." With 4 Illustrations Printed in Colours. Post Svo, cloth extra. Price 2S. The Story Of a Happy Home ; or, The Children's Year, and how they Spent it. By Mary Howitt. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 2s. Tales for the Home Circle. By Madame de Witt (weVGuizoT). With 31 Engravings. Post 8vo. Price 2s. Anna Lee : Maiden, Wife, Mother. By T. S. Arthur. Post Svo, cloth. Price 2s. SOW Well and Reap Well. By T. S. Arthur. Illustrated. Post 8vo, cloth. Price is. 6d. True Riches ; or, Wealth without Wings. By T. S. Arthur. Illustrated. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 2s. Favourite Narratives for the Christian Household. Containing: — The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain — The Dairyman's Daughter — The Young Cottager, &c. Post 8vo, cloth. Price 2s. The Triumph Of Industry ; or, The Story of Little Robinson of Paris. Translated from the French by Lucy Lanuon. Illustrated. Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price is. 6d. The Royal Banner; or, Gold and Rubies. A Story for the Young. By the Author of " Little Snowdrop and her Golden Casket." Post 8vo, cloth extra. Price 2S. Father's Coming Home. By the Author of "Copsley Annals," &c. With 7 Illustrations. Post 8vo, cloth. Price is. 6d. WatCh —Work— Wait. A Story of the Battle of Life. By Sarah MYERS. Foolscap 8vo, cloth. Price is. 6d. Sweetest When Crushed ; or, The Blessing of Trials when Rightly Borne. By AGNES VEITCH. Royal i8mo, cloth. Price is. 6d. The Power Of Kindness, and Other Stories. Illustrated. Royal i8mo, cloth. Price is. Old Robin and his Proverb; or, With the Lowly is Wisdom. By Mr.. HENRY F. BROCI , With Coloured Frontispiece, and numerous Kngravings. Royal i8mo, cloth. Price is. T. NELSON AND SONS, LONDON, LD1X1WRG1I, AXD NF.IV YORK: INSTRUCTIVE BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG. Eighteenpence each. Brother Reginald's Golden Secret. By the Author of " Hope On," &c. Coloured Frontispiece and numerous Engravings. Royal i8mo. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Royal i8mo. Father's Coming Home. A Tale. By the Author of " Under the Microscope." Royal i8mo. The Fisherman's Children; or, The Sunbeam of Hardrick Cove. With Coloured Frontispiece and 26 Engravings. Royal i8mo. Grandpapa's Keepsakes ; or, Take Heed will Surely Speed. By Mrs. George CippUES. With Coloured Frontispiece and Vignette, and 45 Engravings. Royal i8mo. The Fisherman's Boy; or, "All have not the same Gifts." With Coloured Frontispiece. Royal i8mo. King Jack Of HaylandS. With Coloured Frontispiece and numerous Engravings. Royal iSmo. Lessons on the Life of Christ for the Little Ones at Home. By the Author of " Hymns from the Land of Luther." With Coloured Fron- tispiece and 30 Engravings. Royal i8mo. Simple Sketches. By the Rev. John Todd, D.D., Author of " The Student's Guide," &c. Illustrated. Royal i8mo. Under the Microscope; or, "Thou Shalt Call Me My Father." By the Author of " Village Missionaries." With Coloured Frontispiece and 17 Engravings. Royal i8mo. Stories from the History of the Jews. From the Babylonish Captivity to the Fall of Jerusalem. By A. L. O. E. With Coloured Fron- tispiece and Vignette, and 30 Illustrations. Royal i8mo. The Story Of a Needle. By A. L. O. E. Illustrated. Royal 181110. Watch— Work— Wait. A Story of the Battle of Life. By Sarah Myers. Royal i8mo. Susy's Flowers ; or, " Blessed are the Merciful, for They shall obtain Mercy." By the Author of " Hope On," &c. With Coloured Fron- tispiece and Vignette, and numerous Engravings. Royal i8mo. Sweetest When Crushed; or, The Blessing of Trials when Rightly Borne. A Tale for the Young. By Acnes Veitch. Royal i8mo. Things in the Forest. By Mary and Elizabeth Kirisy. With Coloured Frontispiece and 50 Illustrations. Royal i8mo. Wings and Stings. By A. L. O. E. With Coloured Frontispiece and 16 Engravings. Royal i8mo. The Swedish Twins. A Tale for the Young. By the Author of " The Babes in the Basket." With Coloured Frontispiece. Royal 181110. The Boy Artist. A Tale. By the Author of "Hope On." With Coloured Frontispiece and numerous Engravings. Royal i8mo. Little Aggie's Fresh Snowdrops, and what they did in One Day. With Coloured Frontispiece and 30 Engravings. Royal i8mo. Wonders of the Heavens— The Stars, including an Account of Nebula, Comets, and Meteors. With 50 Engravings. Royal i8mo. Wonders of the Heavens— The Sun, Moon, and Planets. Their Physical Character, Appearance, and Phenomena. With 46 Engrav- ings. Royal i8mo. T. NELSON AXD SOXS, LONDON, EDINBURGH, AXD NEW YORK. NEW SERIES OF SHILLING BOOKS, The Search fOP Franklin. With Engravings from Designs by the Artist of the Expedition. Foolscap 8vo. The Rocket ; or, The Story of the Stephensons, Father and Son. By H. C. Knight. Illustrated. Foolscap 8vo. NO Gains Without Pains; or, The Story of Samuel Budgett, the Successful Merchant. By H. C. Knight. Foolscap 8vo. Truth and its Triumph ; or, The Story of the Jewish Twins. By Mrs. Sarah S. Baker, Author of " The Children on the Plains." Foolscap 8vo. Trots' Letters to Her Doll. By Mary E. Broomfield, Author of " Daddy Dick," &c. Foolscap 8vo. NEW SERIES OF NINEPENNY BOOKS. BY MRS. GEORGE CUPPLES. Each with Coloured Frontispiece, an Illuminated Side, and Numerous Engrauings. 18mo. Bertha Marchmont ; or, All is not Gold that Glitters. Fanny Silvester ; or, A Merry Heart doeth Good like a Medicine, Bluff Crag ; or, A Good Word Costs Nothing. Hugh WellWOOd'S Success ; or, Where there's a Will there's a Way. Alice Leighton ; or, A Good Name is rather to be Chosen than Riches. Carry's Rose ; or, The Magic of Kindness. Little May and her Friend Conscience. By M. Parrott. These are bright, cheerful stories, having for their object the inculcation of the principle implied in the second title of the books. They are profusely illustrated, prettily bound, and make most attractive presents for children. NEW SERIES OF SIXPENNY BOOKS. l8mo, cloth. Each with Frontispiece Printed in Oil Colours. Amy Harrison; or, Heavenly Seed and Heavenly Dew. Dreaming Susy, and other Stories. A Mother's Blessing, and other Stories. Children of the Kingdom, and other Stories. The Old Castle, and other Stories. Little Cross-Bearers, and other stories. T NELSON -ISD SONS, LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK. THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. RHURlilL /,14/j £ J3 9482 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 497 711 2 J^