James P. Boyd

“ Is that to be the role of civilization in Central Africa? Does not that continent present a higher and more humanitarian problem? Driven to desperation by a baffling climate, yet spurred by an inordinate cupidity, will not the civilization of the white man be compelled to the exercise of a genius which shall embrace the native populations, classify them as an indispensable resource, lift them to a plain of intelligent energy, look upon them as things of equality, and ultimately regard them as essentials in the art of progress and the race for development? ”

“ Whole populations have been swept into the slave-gangs and hurried down to the coast, leaving the country behind them a desert, and their path marked by the skeletons of those who have succumbed to exhaustion or the cruelty of their brutal drivers. The miserable remnant of the population roost in trees, or seek shelter in the deepest recesses of the forest: while the jungle overruns the fields of maize, cotton, manioc, and sorghum and the charred ruins of their villages. ”

“ It is by no means a Rhine journey, with gay steamers, flush with food and wine. The Congo is one-and-a-half times larger than the Mississippi, and with a width which is majestic in comparison with the “Father of Waters.” It shows a dozen varieties of palm. Its herds of hippopotami, flocks of gleeful monkeys, troops of elephants standing sentry at forest entrances, bevies of buffaloes grazing on its grassy slopes, swarms of ibis, parrots and guinea-fowl fluttering everywhere—these create a life for the Congo, surpassing in variety that of the Mississippi. ”

“ No spirited traveler ever sets foot on the black soil of Egypt, without gazing on that wonder of antiquity, the threefold mass of the pyramids on the steep edge of the desert, an hour’s ride over the long causeway extending out from Ghiseh. The desert’s boundless sea of yellow sand, whose billows are piled up around the gigantic pyramids, deeply entombing the tomb, surges hot and dry far up the green meadows and mingles with the growing grass and corn. ”

“ Our own eyes have been so dimmed by the melancholy sight of the North American Indian fading away before our boasted civilization, or by sight of the sons of Africa forced into degradation at the behest of hard-hearted greed, as that they are actually blind to the human factor in African enterprise. With all our respect for civilization, it must be confessed that it has failed signally to use to advantage what it found God-made and at hand, when it struck new continents and islands. ”

“ A north wind may blow during the night and sweep them back whence they came. But more likely they burst into thunderstorm, as if all the storms of a season were compressed into one. The dry wadys of yesterday are roaring torrents by morning, bearing to the Nile their tribute of a single day, and for a day or a week, the desert air is pure and the desert sand shoots a tender vegetation, only to be withered, like Jonah’s gourd, in fewer hours than it sprang. ”

“ The boats passed Bamu Island, 14 miles in length, which occupies the center of Stanley Pool, the stream being haunted by hippopotami and the interior of the island by elephants and buffaloes, adventures with which were common. The shores are yet bold and wooded, monkeys in troops fling themselves from tree to tree, white-collared fish eagles dart with shrill screams across the wide expanse of waters, and crocodiles stare wildly at the approaching steamers, only to dart beneath them as they near and then to reappear in their wake. ”

“ A YOUNG SOKO.
Palms crown the heights of all the mountains and hills, and the forests, usually of a width of five miles between the groups of villages, are indescribable for their luxuriance and beauty. Climbers fold themselves gracefully over the gigantic trees, wild fruit abounds, and monkeys and brilliant birds skip and flit from bough to bough, with continuous chatter and chirp. The soil is excessively rich and the people cultivate largely, even though they are much separated by feuds and dense forest reaches. Their maize bends its fruit stalk round like a hook. ”

“ At last night comes, and the flotilla is twenty miles above Bolobo. Night does not mean the end of a day’s work with the expedition, but rather the beginning of one, for it is the signal for all hands to put ashore with axes and saws to cut and carry a supply of wood for the morrow’s steaming. A great light is lit upon the shore, and for hours the ringing of axes is heard, varied by the woodman’s weird chant. ”

“ Day thus follows day with nothing to break the monotony except now and then the appearance of a hippopotamus, rising snortingly to the surface, a crocodile with his vicious jaws, or, where the land is solid, a buffalo pushing his head through the reeds to take a drink. The true river margin is invisible except from the boat’s masts over the head of the tall papyrus. Even could we reach it, we would wish ourselves back again, for of all the growth of this dismal swamp man is the most repulsive. The Dinka tribes of the White Nile are among the lowest in the scale of human beings. ”

“ Space must be found further on for the details of that long, exciting and dangerous journey, which reversed all other tracks of African travel, yet redounded more than all to the glory of the explorer and the advancement of knowledge respecting hidden latitudes. But here we can get a fair view of a situation, which in all its lights and shadows, in its many startling outlines, in its awful suggestion of possibilities, is perhaps the most interesting and fateful now before the eyes of modern civilization. ”

“ Until the latter half of the nineteenth century the world was ignorant of what lay beyond the rapids of Isangila, or how slight was the obstacle which lay between civilization and the broad natural highway which cleared the dark virgin regions of Africa into two equal halves, and how nature had found a hundred other navigable channels by which access could be gained to her latest gift to mankind. As a unit of that mankind for which nature reserved it, I rejoice that so large an area of the earth still lies to be developed by the coming races ”

“ It is the principal emporium of trade on the Congo—the buying and selling mart for Banana Point, and connected with it by steamers. There is nothing picturesque hereabouts, yet Boma has a history as old as the slave trade in America, and as dark and horrible as that traffic was infamous. Here congregated the white slave dealers for over two centuries, and here they gathered the dusky natives by the thousand, chained them in gangs by the dozen or score, forced them into the holds of their slave-ships, and carried them away to be sold in the Brazils, West Indies and North America. ”

“ Perhaps a gazelle dashes away in fright to the nearest sand hills, or it may be you catch a glimpse of a naked Arab youth tending his flock of goats, for even desert wastes are not utterly void of plant and animal life.
These deserts are not even rainless, though as much as four years have been known to pass without a shower. A rain storm is watched with breathless hope by the nomad Arab tribes. They see the clouds drifting up from the distant Indian Ocean and pitching their black tents on the summits of the mountains that divide the Nile Valley from the Red Sea. ”

“ It is the one dark, mysterious spot, strangely made up of massive mountains, lofty and extended plateaus, salt and sandy deserts, immense fertile stretches, climates of death and balm, spacious lakes, gigantic rivers, dense forests, numerous, grotesque and savage peoples, and an animal life of fierce mien, enormous strength and endless variety. It is the country of the marvelous, yet none of its marvels exceed its realities. ”

“ Everywhere there is jungle of grass, reeds and bamboos, when the rivers are at their height; and amid the forests the great stems of the pandanus, banana and boabab are covered to their tops with a feathery growth of ferns and orchids, and festooned with wild vines and creeping plants. ”

“ It would be folly to risk them with their frail barks. Moreover, he learned that the town of Boma, on the Atlantic coast, could be reached by easy journeys across the country. His main problem, as to whether the Lualaba and the Congo were the same, had long since been solved. He had been following the Congo all the time, had seen its splendid forests and mighty affluents, its dashing rapids and bewildering whirlpools and falls, had even, through the spectacles of Livingstone, seen its head waters in Lake Bangweolo, amid whose marshes the veteran explorer laid down his life. ”

“ As all these surprising revelations were given to the outer world, by the pioneers of civilization who were struggling within Africa, we began to get new conceptions of situations whose existence never dawned on those who were skimming the ocean’s shores and fighting the battles of commerce. A new world had been brought to light, not only geographically, but as to its soil, water, vegetation, animals, people, climate, and every physical aspect. ”

“ TATAKA, LIBERIA.
“A word from Tataka Mission, this beautiful June day (June 6, 1889) , may be interesting. A shower of rain has just fallen and everything looks refreshed, and as I sit on our veranda and look around I wish I could have some of my friends look at the fair picture. All nature is beautiful, but these darkened minds, as dark as their skins, can see no beauty in it. They never gather flowers, for their beauty; at times they bring in a few leaves and roots for medicine. ”

“ In no age of the world, in no history of continents, can anything be found so surprising as the discoveries and developments made in Africa since the days of those pioneer missionaries, Schmidt and Vanderkemp. It would take long to tell how her bays have been sounded since their time, how her plains have been spanned, her mountains scaled, her rivers threaded, lakes discovered, diamonds found, and a goodly number of grand highways projected into even the remotest parts of that, till of late little known, yet most marvelous land of the sun ”

“ The muddy stream rolls lazily along between high walls of rank vegetation, and bears whole islands of intertwisted leaves, roots and stems on its bosom, very much as an Arctic strait bears its acres of ice floes. It breaks up into tortuous channels that lead everywhere and nowhere. A nearly vertical sun shines down on the voyager as he slowly toils up stream. Scarcely a breath of air stirs to blow away the malarious mists or fill a drooping sail. Mosquitoes are numerous, and insatiate for blood. ”

“ 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? ”

“ We cannot yet count upon the direct advantages of a civilized Africa upon America. In a political and commercial sense our activity cannot be equal to that of Europe on account of our remoteness, and because we are, as yet, but little more than colonists ourselves. Africa underlies Europe, is contiguous to it, is by nature situated so as to become an essential part of that mighty earth-tract which the sun of civilization is, sooner or later, to illuminate. Besides Europe has a need for African acquisition and settlement which America has not. ”

“ Between the two sterile tracts of Africa lies the real Continent. All the coast lands are a shell. Egypt is but a strip on either side the Nile. Central Africa—the Lake regions which feed the Nile, Congo and Zambesi—is a great and grand section, where nature has been prodigal in all her gifts, and which invites a civilization as unique and strong as its physical features. ”

“ Are not all our visions of conquest and permanent redemption, through and by means of the white races, but idle outcrops of the imagination, or worse, but figments born of our desire to subdue and appropriate? Can compensation come, in the form of commercial, moral or spiritual advantage, adequate to the great sacrifice to be entailed on humanity by substitution of white energy for that which is native to African soil and climate? ”

“ The Ubangi are the Toledo sword-makers of Africa. How bountiful their supply of iron is remains to be ascertained, but it is presumably a plentiful mineral, and its use among these people, not to say numerous other tribes, is evidence that the stone age of Africa was past, long before the heathen of Europe and America had ceased to strike fire by flints in their chilly caverns, or crush one another’s skulls with granite tomahawks. The iron spears and swords of some of these African tribes are models in their way, keen as Damascus blades and bright as if mirrored on Sheffield emery wheels. ”

“ As we approach the skirt of the groves we are struck by the dead silence which reigns. No laughter is to be heard, no sign of a welcome from our old friends. The silence of death breathes over the lofty crowns of the palms, slowly waving in the wind. We enter, and it is in vain we look to the right and left for the happy homesteads and the happy old scenes. Tall grass covers everything, and a charred pole here and there, and a few banana trees are the only evidences that a man once dwelt here. ”

“ The habits of bees, ants, beetles and spiders are noted, and of the ants, found in all parts of Africa, those in these central regions build the most palatial structures. The most ferocious enemy of the explorer is not the portentous weapon of lion’s claw, rhinoceros’ horn, or elephant’s tusk, but a small fly—the notorious tsetse, whose bite is death to baggage animals, whose swarms have brought ruin to many a promising expedition, and whose presence is a more effectual barrier to the progress of civilization than an army of a million natives. ”

“ The council, consultation, or palaver, is one of Africa’s fixed institutions. We have unfortunately, and unfairly, adopted the word “palaver” to express our notion of what the natives regard with all seriousness, and what is, in their polity, as necessary as an American deliberative body or a treaty-making power are to us. A “palaver” is an idle talk. An African palaver may appear to be very idle to us, and considering its length—sometimes days and even weeks—it is a terrible bore to white people who have to wait till it ends. ”