Thomas Wallace Knox

“ After winding in and out of many creeks which were very shallow, we approached the village of Mankoneh, the chief of the Bateké. His people during the daytime are generally scattered over these sandy dunes of the Stanley Pool attending to their nets and fish-snares, and to protect themselves from the hot sun always take with them several large mats to form sheds. Mankoneh, to our great delight, was a bluff, hearty, genial soul, who expressed unbounded pleasure at seeing us; he also volunteered to guide us to the falls. ”

“ During the day the beach throughout its length is alive with the moving figures of porters, bearing clove and cinnamon bags, ivory, copal and other gums, and hides, to be shipped in the lighters waiting along the water's edge, with sailors from the shipping, and black boatmen discharging the various imports on the sand. In the evening the beach is crowded with the naked forms of workmen and boys from the 'go-downs,' preparing to bathe and wash the dust of copal and hides off their bodies in the surf. ”

“ Even we ourselves, under our solah topees, with flushed faces and perspiring brows, with handkerchiefs ever in use to wipe away the drops which almost blind us, and our heavy woollens giving us a feeling of semi-asphyxiation, would fain rest, were it not that the sun-bleached levels of the tawny, thirsty valley offer no inducements. The veterans of travel push on towards the river, three miles distant, where they may obtain rest and shelter, but the inexperienced are lying prostrate on the ground, exclaiming against the heat, and crying for water, bewailing their folly in leaving Zanzibar. ”

“ He was a tall, black-bearded man, of negroid complexion, in the prime of life, straight, and quick in his movements, a picture of energy and strength. He had a fine, intelligent face, with a nervous twitching of the eyes, and gleaming white and perfectly formed teeth. He was attended by a large retinue of young Arabs, who looked up to him as chief, and a score of Wangwana and Wanyamwezi followers whom he had led over thousands of miles through Africa. ”

“ All the paddles are headed with ivory balls, every head bears a feather crown, every arm shows gleaming white ivory armlets. From the bow of the canoe streams a thick fringe of the long white fibre of the Hyphene palm. The crashing sound of large drums, a hundred blasts from ivory horns, and a thrilling chant from two thousand human throats, do not tend to soothe our nerves or to increase our confidence. ”

“ We are not a whit dejected after our terrible experiences; we find our reward in being alive to look upon wild nature, and a strange elasticity comes over us. The boat-boys amuse me by singing their most animating song, to which every member of our expedition responds with enthusiasm. The men, women, and children are roused to maintain that reckless, exuberant spirit which assisted me to drive through the cannibal region of the Stanley Falls, for otherwise they might lose that dash and vigor on which depends our success. ”

“ After nearly seven years' acquaintance with the Wangwana, I have come to perceive that they represent in their character much of the disposition of a large portion of the negro tribes of the continent. I find them capable of great love and affection, and possessed of gratitude and other noble traits of human nature; I know, too, that they can be made good, obedient servants, that many are clever, honest, industrious, docile, enterprising, brave, and moral; that they are, in short, equal to any other race or color on the face of the globe, in all the attributes of manhood. ”

“ We have said our last words for years, perhaps forever, to kindly men! The sun sinks fast to the western horizon, and gloomy is the twilight that now deepens and darkens. Thick shadows fall upon the distant land and over the silent sea, and oppress our throbbing, regretful hearts, as we glide away through the dying light towards the Dark Continent.
"Upon landing at Bagamoyo, on the morning of the 13th of November, we marched to occupy the old house where we had stayed so long to prepare the first expedition. ”

“ When the Tanganika has risen three feet higher there will be no surf at the mouth of the Lukuga, no sill of sand, no oozing mud-banks, no rush-covered old river-course, but the accumulated waters of over a hundred rivers will sweep through the ancient gap with the force of a cataclysm, bearing away on its flood all the deposits of organic débris at present in the Lukuga Creek down the steep incline to swell the tribute due to the mighty Livingstone. ”

“ We dipped into the basins and troughs of the land, surmounted ridge after ridge, crossed 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 those in the van were in view of the Great Lake! ”

“ The well-remembered undulating ridges, and the gentle slopes clad with palms and mango-trees bathed in warm vapor, seemed in that tranquil, drowsy state which at all times any portion of tropical Africa presents at first appearance. A pale-blue sky covered the hazy land and sleeping sea as we steamed through the strait that separates Zanzibar from the continent. Every stranger, at first view of the shores, proclaims his pleasure. ”

“ Some of the Arab merchants have ordered chairs on the piers, or bunders, to chat sociably until the sun sets, and prayer-time has come. Boats hurry by with their masters and sailors returning to their respective vessels. Dhows move sluggishly past, hoisting as they go the creaking yards of their lateen sails, bound for the mainland ports. Zanzibar canoes and 'matepes' are arriving with wood and produce, and others of the same native form and make are squaring their mat sails, outward bound. Sunset approaches, and after sunset silence follows soon. ”

“ Something strange must surely lie in the vast space occupied by total blankness on our maps between Nyangwé and "Tuckey's Farthest!"
"'I seek a road to connect these two points. We have labored through the terrible forest, and manfully struggled through the gloom. My people's hearts have become faint. I seek a road. Why, here lies a broad watery avenue cleaving the Unknown to some sea, like a path of light! Here are woods all around, sufficient for a thousand fleets of canoes. ”

“ A monster canoe leads the way, with two rows of upstanding paddles, forty men on a side, their bodies bending and swaying in unison as with a swelling barbarous chorus they drive her down towards us. In the bow, standing on what appears to be a platform, are ten prime young warriors, their heads gay with feathers of the parrot, crimson and gray; at the stern, eight men, with long paddles, whose tops are decorated with ivory balls, guide the monster vessel; and dancing up and down from stem to stern are ten men, who appear to be chiefs. ”

“ On all sides rolled in grand waves a voluptuous land of sunshine and plenty and early summer verdure, cooled by soft breezes from the great equatorial fresh-water sea. Isolated hill-cones, similar to that of Rubaga, or square tabular masses, rose up from the beautiful landscape to attract, like mysteries, the curious stranger's observation, and villages and banana groves of still fresher green, far removed on the crest of distant swelling ridges, announced that Mtesa owned a land worth loving. ”

“ The summits of Ukamba are seen to the north, its slopes famous for the multitude of elephants. Farther inland we reached the spine of a hill at four thousand four hundred and ninety feet, and beheld an extensive plain, stretching northwest and west, with browsing herds of noble game. Camping on its verge, between a humpy hill and some rocky knolls, near a beautiful pond of crystal-clear water, I proceeded with my gun-bearer, Billali, and the notorious Msenna, in the hope of bringing down something for the Wangwana. ”

“ It is no longer the stately stream, whose mystic beauty, noble grandeur, and gentle, uninterrupted flow along a course of nearly nine hundred miles ever fascinated us, despite the savagery of its peopled shores, but a furious river, rushing down a steep bed obstructed by reefs of lava, projected barriers of rock, lines of immense boulders, winding in crooked course through deep chasms, and dropping down over terraces in a long series of falls, cataracts, and rapids. ”

“ From the bare rocky ridges of N'safu there is a perceptible decline to the Congo valley, and the country becomes, in appearance, more sterile—a sparse population dwelling in a mere skeleton village in the centre of bleakness. Shingly rocks strewed the path and the waste, and thin, sere grass waved mournfully on level and spine, on slope of ridge and crest of hill ”

“ On the 11th, at noon, after a last little banquet and songs, hearty cheers, innumerable toasts, and fervid claspings of friendly hands, we embarked. An hour before sunset the 'big iron canoe,' after a descent of about thirty-five miles, hauled in-shore, on the right bank, and made fast to the pier of another of Hatton & Cookson's factories at Ponta da Lenha, or Wooded Point. Two or three other Portuguese factories are in close neighborhood to it, lightening the gloom of the background of black mangrove and forest. ”

“ From the 17th of January, 1875, up to the 7th of April, 1876, we had been engaged in tracing the extreme southern sources of the Nile, from the marshy plains and cultivated uplands where they are born, down to the mighty reservoir called the Victoria Nyanza. We had circumnavigated the entire expanse; penetrated to every bay, inlet, and creek; become acquainted with almost every variety of wild human nature—the mild and placable, the ferocious and impracticably savage, the hospitable and the inhospitable, the generous-souled as well as the ungenerous ”

“ I have to-day seen the turbulent Mankorongo, King of Usui, and Mirambo, that terrible phantom who disturbs men's minds in Unyamwezi, through their embassies kneeling and tendering their tribute to him. I saw over three thousand soldiers of Mtesa nearly half civilized. I saw about a hundred chiefs who might be classed in the same scale as the men of Zanzibar and Oman, clad in as rich robes and armed in the same fashion, and have witnessed with astonishment such order and law as is obtainable in semi-civilized countries. All this is the result of a poor Muslim's labor ”

“ Her grasses are coarse, and wound like knives and needles; her reeds are tough and tall as bamboos; her creepers and convolvuli are of cable thickness and length; her thorns are books of steel; her trees shoot up to a height of a hundred feet. We find no pleasure in straying in search of wild-flowers, and game is left undisturbed, because of the difficulty of moving about, for, once the path is left, we find ourselves over head among thick, tough, unyielding, lacerating grass.
"At Manyema the beauty of Nature becomes terrible, and in the expression of her powers she is awful. ”

“ In an instant, at the caravan's centre, they fastened upon the poor porters. The struggle was short; and with the threat of an arrow or spear at their breasts, men were robbed of their cloths and ornaments, loads were yielded and run away with before resistance could be organized; only three men of a hundred stood by me; the others, whose only thought was their lives, fled into the woods, where I went shouting for them. One man, little Rahan, stood with cocked gun, defending his load against five savages with uplifted spears. No one else could be seen. ”

“ He must belong to no nation in particular, but to the entire white race. Such a man, or men, Mtesa, Emperor of Uganda, Usoga, Unyoro, and Karagwé—an empire three hundred and sixty geographical miles in length, by fifty in breadth—invites to repair to him. He has begged me to tell the white men that, if they will only come to him, he will give them all they want. Now, where is there in all the pagan world a more promising field for a mission than Uganda? ”

“ Never did the rocks assume such hardness, such solemn grimness and bigness, never were they invested with such terrors and such grandeur of height, as while we were the cruel sport and prey of the brown-black waves, which whirled us round like a spinning-top, swung us aside, almost engulfed us in the rapidly subsiding troughs, and then hurled us upon the white, rageful crests of others. ”

“ The Arabs of Zanzibar, whether from more frequent intercourse with Europeans or from other causes, are undoubtedly the best of their race. More easily amenable to reason than those of Egypt, or the shy, reserved, and bigoted fanatics of Arabia, they offer no obstacles to the European traveller, but are sociable, frank, good-natured, and hospitable. In business they are keen traders, and of course will exact the highest percentage of profit out of the unsuspecting European if they are permitted. They are stanch friends and desperate haters. ”

“ Scores of canoes flitted here and there, up and down, along the front of the camp, which gave us opportunities of observing that every person was tattooed in the most abominable manner; that the coiffeur's art was carried to perfection; that human teeth were popular ornaments for the neck; that their own teeth were filed; that brass wire to an astonishing quantity had been brought to them by the Bangala; as they had coils of it upon their arms and legs, and ruffs of it resting upon their shoulders; that while the men wore ample loin-coverings of grass-cloth, their women went naked ”