The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death Volume Ii Part 20

_Noon_.--Spoke to Singeri about the missionary reported to be coming: he seems to like the idea of being taught and opening up the country by way of the Nile. I told him that all the Arabs confirmed Mtesa's cruelties, and that his people were more to blame than he: it was guilt before G.o.d. In this he agreed fully, but said, "What Arab was killed?"

meaning, if they did not suffer how can they complain?

6 A.M. Wet Bulb 55 Dry Bulb 57 min. 55 9 A.M. 74 82 Noon. 74 98 (Now becomes too hot to march.) 3.30 P.M. 75 90

_10th July, 1872._

6 A.M. 59 65 min. 55 Noon. 67 77 shady.

3 P.M. 69 81 cloudy.

5 P.M. 65 75 cloudy.

_10th July, 1872._--No great difficulty would be encountered in establis.h.i.+ng a Christian Mission a hundred miles or so from the East Coast. The permission of the Sultan of Zanzibar would be necessary, because all the tribes of any intelligence claim relations.h.i.+p, or have relations with him; the Banyamwezi even call themselves his subjects, and so do others. His permission would be readily granted, if respectfully applied for through the English Consul. The Suaheli, with their present apathy on religious matters, would be no obstacle. Care to speak politely, and to show kindness to them, would not be lost labour in the general effect of the Mission on the country, but all discussion on the belief of the Moslems should be avoided; they know little about it. Emigrants from Muscat, Persia, and India, who at present possess neither influence nor wealth, would eagerly seize any formal or offensive denial of the authority of their Prophet to fan their own bigotry, and arouse that of the Suaheli. A few now a.s.sume an air of superiority in matters of wors.h.i.+p, and would fain take the place of Mullams or doctors of the law, by giving authoritative dicta as to the times of prayer; positions to be observed; lucky and unlucky days; using cabalistic signs; telling fortunes; finding from the Koran when an attack may be made on any enemy, &c.; but this is done only in the field with trading parties. At Zanzibar, the regular Mullams supersede them.

No objection would be made to teaching the natives of the country to read their own languages in the Roman character. No Arab has ever attempted to teach them the Arabic-Koran, they are called _guma_, hard, or difficult as to religion. This is not wonderful, since the Koran is never translated, and a very extraordinary desire for knowledge would be required to sustain a man in committing to memory pages and chapters of, to him, unmeaning gibberish. One only of all the native chiefs, Monyumgo, has sent his children to Zanzibar to be taught to read and write the Koran; and he is said to possess an unusual admiration of such civilization as he has seen among the Arabs. To the natives, the chief attention of the Mission should be directed. It would not be desirable, or advisable, to refuse explanation to others; but I have avoided giving offence to intelligent Arabs, who have pressed me, asking if I believed in Mohamad by saying, "No I do not: I am a child of Jesus bin Miriam,"

avoiding anything offensive in my tone, and often adding that Mohamad found their forefathers bowing down to trees and stones, and did good to them by forbidding idolatry, and teaching the wors.h.i.+p of the only One G.o.d. This, they all know, and it pleases them to have it recognised.

It might be good policy to hire a respectable Arab to engage free porters, and conduct the Mission to the country chosen, and obtain permission from the chief to build temporary houses. If this Arab were well paid, it might pave the way for employing others to bring supplies of goods and stores not produced in the country, as tea, coffee, sugar.

The first porters had better all go back, save a couple or so, who have behaved especially well. Trust to the people among whom you live for general services, as bringing wood, water, cultivation, reaping, smith's work, carpenter's work, pottery, baskets, &c. Educated free blacks from a distance are to be avoided: they are expensive, and are too much of gentlemen for your work. You may in a few months raise natives who will teach reading to others better than they can, and teach you also much that the liberated never know. A cloth and some beads occasionally will satisfy them, while neither the food, the wages, nor the work will please those who, being brought from a distance, naturally consider themselves missionaries. Slaves also have undergone a process which has spoiled them for life; though liberated young, everything of childhood and opening life possesses an indescribable charm. It is so with our own offspring, and nothing effaces the fairy scenes then printed on the memory. Some of my liberados eagerly bought green calabashes and tasteless squash, with fine fat beef, because this trash was their early food; and an ounce of meat never entered their mouths. It seems indispensable that each Mission should raise its own native agency. A couple of Europeans beginning, and carrying on a Mission without a staff of foreign attendants, implies coa.r.s.e country fare, it is true, but this would be nothing to those who, at home amuse themselves with fastings, vigils, &c. A great deal of power is thus lost in the Church. Fastings and vigils, without a special object in view, are time run to waste.

They are made to minister to a sort of self-gratification, instead of being turned to account for the good of others. They are like groaning in sickness. Some people amuse themselves when ill with continuous moaning. The forty days of Lent might be annually spent in visiting adjacent tribes, and bearing unavoidable hunger and thirst with a good grace. Considering the greatness of the object to be attained, men might go without sugar, coffee, tea, &c. I went from September 1866 to December 1868 without either. A trader, at Casembe's, gave me a dish cooked with honey, and it nauseated from its horrible sweetness, but at 100 miles inland, supplies could be easily obtained.

The expenses need not be large. Intelligent Arabs inform me that, in going from Zanzibar to Casembe's, only 3000 dollars' worth are required by a trader, say between 600_l._ or 700_l._, and he may be away three or more years; paying his way, giving presents to the chiefs, and filling 200 or 300 mouths. He has paid for, say fifty muskets, ammunition, flints, and may return with 4000 lbs. of ivory, and a number of slaves for sale; all at an outlay of 600_l._ or 700_l._ With the experience I have gained now, I could do all I shall do in this expedition for a like sum, or at least for 1000_l._ less than it will actually cost me.

_12th July, 1872._--Two men come from Syde bin Habib report fighting as going on at discreet distances against Mirambo.

Sheikh But, son of Mohamad bin Saleh, is found guilty of stealing a tusk of 2-1/2 frasilahs from the Lewale. He has gone in disgrace to fight Mirambo: his father is disconsolate, naturally. Lewale has been merciful.

When endeavouring to give some account of the slave-trade of East Africa, it was necessary to keep far within the truth, in order not to be thought guilty of exaggeration; but in sober seriousness the subject does not admit of exaggeration. To overdraw its evils is a simple impossibility. The sights I have seen, though common incidents of the traffic, are so nauseous that I always strive to drive them from memory.

In the case of most disagreeable recollections I can succeed, in time, in consigning them to oblivion, but the slaving scenes come back unbidden, and make me start up at dead of night horrified by their vividness. To some this may appear weak and unphilosophical, since it is alleged that the whole human race has pa.s.sed through the process of development. We may compare cannibalism to the stone age, and the times of slavery to the iron and bronze epochs--slavery is as natural a step in human development as from bronze to iron.

Whilst speaking of the stone age I may add that in Africa I have never been fortunate enough to find one flint arrowhead or any other flint implement, though I had my eyes about me as diligently as any of my neighbours. No roads are made; no lands levelled; no drains digged; no quarries worked, nor any of the changes made on the earth's surface that might reveal fragments of the primitive manufacture of stone. Yet but little could be inferred from the negative evidence, were it not accompanied by the fact that flint does not exist in any part south of the equator. Quartz might have been used, but no remains exist, except the half-worn millstones, and stones about the size of oranges, used for chipping and making rough the nether millstone. Glazed pipes and earthenware used in smelting iron, show that iron was smelted in the remotest ages in Africa. These earthenware vessels, and fragments of others of a finer texture, were found in the delta of the Zambesi and in other parts in close a.s.sociation with fossil bones, which, on being touched by the tongue, showed as complete an absence of animal matter as the most ancient fossils known in Europe. They were the bones of animals, as hippopotami, water hogs, antelopes, crocodiles, identical with those now living in the country. These were the primitive fauna of Africa, and if vitrified iron from the prodigious number of broken smelting furnaces all over the country was known from the remotest times, the Africans seem to have had a start in the race, at a time when our progenitors were grubbing up flints to save a miserable existence by the game they might kill. Slave-trading seems to have been coeval with the knowledge of iron. The monuments of Egypt show that this curse has venerable antiquity. Some people say, "If so ancient, why try to stop an old established usage now?" Well, some believe that the affliction that befel the most ancient of all the patriarchs, Job, was small-pox.

Why then stop the ravages of this venerable disease in London and New York by vaccination?

But no one expects any benevolent efforts from those who cavil and carp at efforts made by governments and peoples to heal the enormous open sore of the world. Some profess that they would rather give "their mite"

for the degraded of our own countrymen than to "n.i.g.g.e.rs"! Verily it is "a mite," and they most often forget, and make a gift of it to themselves. It is almost an axiom that those who do most for the heathen abroad are most liberal for the heathen at home. It is to this cla.s.s we turn with hope. With others arguments are useless, and the only answer I care to give is the remark of an English sailor, who, on seeing slave-traders actually at their occupation, said to his companion, "s.h.i.+ver my timbers, mate, if the devil don't catch these fellows, we might as well have no devil at all."

In conversing with a prince at Johanna, one of the Comoro islands lying off the north end of Madagascar, he took occasion to extol the wisdom of the Arabs in keeping strict watch over their wives. On suggesting that their extreme jealousy made them more like jailers than friends of their wives, or, indeed, that they thus reduced themselves to the level of the inferior animals, and each was like the bull of a herd and not like a reasonable man--"fuguswa"--and that they gave themselves a vast deal of trouble for very small profit; he a.s.serted that the jealousy was reasonable because all women were bad, they could not avoid going astray. And on remarking that this might be the case with Arab women, but certainly did not apply to English women, for though a number were untrustworthy, the majority deserved all the confidence their husbands could place in them, he reiterated that women were universally bad. He did not believe that women ever would be good; and the English allowing their wives to gad about with faces uncovered, only showed their weakness, ignorance, and unwisdom.

The tendency and spirit of the age are more and more towards the undertaking of industrial enterprises of such magnitude and skill as to require the capital of the world for their support and execution--as the Pacific Railroad, Suez Ca.n.a.l, Mont Cenis Tunnel, and railways in India and Western Asia, Euphrates Railroad, &c. The extension and use of railroads, steams.h.i.+ps, telegraphs, break down nationalities and bring peoples geographically remote into close connection commercially and politically. They make the world one, and capital, like water, tends to a common level.

[Geologists will be glad to find that the Doctor took pains to arrange his observations at this time in the following form.]

A really enormous area of South Central Africa is covered with volcanic rocks, in which are imbedded angular fragments of older strata, possibly sandstone, converted into schist, which, though carried along in the molten ma.s.s, still retain impressions of plants of a low order, probably the lowest--Silurian--and distinct ripple marks and raindrops in which no animal markings have yet been observed. The fewness of the organic remains observed is owing to the fact that here no quarries are worked, no roads are made, and as we advance north the rank vegetation covers up everything. The only stone buildings in the country north of the Cape colony are the church and mission houses at Kuruman. In the walls there the fragments, with impressions of fossil leaves, have been broken through in the matrix, once a molten ma.s.s of lava. The area which this basalt covers extends from near the Vaal River in the south, to a point some sixty miles beyond the Victoria Falls, and the average breadth is about 150 miles. The s.p.a.ce is at least 100,000 square miles. Sandstone rocks stand up in it at various points like islands, but all are metamorphosed, and branches have flowed off from the igneous sea into valleys and defiles, and one can easily trace the hardening process of the fire as less and less, till at the outer end of the stream the rocks are merely hardened. These branches equal in size all the rocks and hills that stand like islands, so that we are justified in a.s.suming the area as at least 100,000 square miles of this basaltic sea.

The molten ma.s.s seems to have flowed over in successive waves, and the top of each wave was covered with a dark vitreous sc.u.m carrying scoriae with angular fragments. This sc.u.m marks each successive overflow, as a stratum from twelve to eighteen inches or more in thickness. In one part sixty-two strata are revealed, but at the Victoria Falls (which are simply a rent) the basaltic rock is stratified as far as our eyes could see down the depth of 310 feet. This extensive sea of lava was probably sub-aerial, because bubbles often appear as coming out of the rock into the vitreous sc.u.m on the surface of each wave: in some cases they have broken and left circular rings with raised edges, peculiar to any boiling viscous fluid. In many cases they have cooled as round pustules, as if a bullet were enclosed; on breaking them the internal surface is covered with a crop of beautiful crystals of silver with their heads all directed to the centre of the bubble, which otherwise is empty.

These bubbles in stone may be observed in the bed of the Kuruman River, eight or ten miles north of the village; and the mountain called "Amhan," west-north-west of the village, has all the appearance of having been an orifice through which the basalt boiled up as water or mud does in a geyser.

The black basaltic mountains on the east of the Bamangwato, formerly called the Bakaa, furnish further evidence of the igneous eruptions being sub-aerial, for the basalt itself is columnar at many points, and at other points the tops of the huge crystals appear in groups, and the apices not flattened, as would have been the case had they been developed under the enormous pressure of an ocean. A few miles on their south a hot salt fountain boils forth and tells of interior heat.

Another, far to the south-east, and of fresh water, tells the same tale.

Subsequently to the period of gigantic volcanic action, the outflow of fresh lime-water from the bowels of the earth seems to have been extremely large. The land now so dry that one might wander in various directions (especially westwards, to the Kalahari), and perish for lack of the precious fluid as certainly as if he were in the interior of Australia, was once bisected in all directions by flowing streams and great rivers, whose course was mainly to the south. These river beds are still called by the natives "_melapo_" in the south, but in the north "_wadys_," both words meaning the same thing, "river beds in which no water ever now flows." To feed these a vast number of gus.h.i.+ng fountains poured forth for ages a perennial supply. When the eye of the fountain is seen it is an oval or oblong orifice, the lower portion distinctly water worn, and there, by diminished size, showing that as ages elapsed the smaller water supply had a manifestly lesser erosive power. In the sides of the mountain Amhan, already mentioned, good specimens of these water-worn orifices still exist, and are inhabited by swarms of bees, whose hives are quite protected from robbers by the hardness of the basaltic rocks. The points on which the streams of water fell are hollowed by its action, and the s.p.a.ce around which the water splashed is covered by calcareous tufa, deposited there by the evaporation of the sun.

Another good specimen of the ancient fountains is in a cave near Kolobeng, called "_Lepelole_," a word by which the natives there sometimes designate the sea. The wearing power of the primeval waters is here easily traced in two branches--the upper or more ancient ending in the characteristic oval orifice, in which I deposited a Father Mathew's leaden temperance token: the lower branch is much the largest, as that by which the greatest amount of water flowed for a much longer period than the other. The cave Lepelole was believed to be haunted, and no one dared to enter till I explored it as a relief from more serious labour.

The entrance is some eight or more feet high, and five or six wide, in reddish grey sandstone rock, containing in its substance banks of well rounded s.h.i.+ngle. The whole range, with many of the adjacent hills on the south, bear evidence of the scorching to which the contiguity of the lava subjected them. In the hardening process the silica was sometimes sweated out of this rock, and it exists now as pretty efflorescences of well-shaped crystals. But not only does this range, which stands eight or ten miles north of Kolobeng, exhibit the effects of igneous action, it shows on its eastern slope the effects of flowing water, in a large pot-hole called Loe, which has the reputation of having given exit to all the animals in South Africa, and also to the first progenitors of the whole Bechuana race. Their footsteps attest the truth of this belief. I was profane enough to be sceptical, because the large footstep of the first man Matsieng was directed as if going into instead of out of this famous pot-hole. Other huge pot-holes are met with all over the country, and at heights on the slopes of the mountains far above the levels of the ancient rivers.

Many fountains rose in the courses of the ancient river beds, and the outflow was always in the direction of the current of the parent stream.

Many of these ancient fountains still contain water, and form the stages on a journey, but the primitive waters seem generally to have been laden with lime in solution: this lime was deposited in vast lakes, which are now covered with calcareous tufa. One enormous fresh-water lake, in which probably sported the Dyconodon, was let off when the remarkable rent was made in the basalt which now const.i.tutes the Victoria Falls.

Another seems to have gone to the sea when a similar fissure was made at the falls of the Orange River. It is in this calcareous tufa alone that fossil animal remains have yet been found. There are no marine limestones except in friths which the elevation of the west and east coasts have placed far inland in the Coanza and Somauli country, and these contain the same sh.e.l.ls as now live in the adjacent seas.

Antecedently to the river system, which seems to have been a great southern Nile flowing from the sources of the Zambesi away south to the Orange River, there existed a state of fluvial action of greater activity than any we see now: it produced prodigious beds of well-rounded s.h.i.+ngle and gravel. It is impossible to form an idea of their extent. The Loangwa flows through the bed of an ancient lake, whose banks are sixty feet thick, of well-rounded s.h.i.+ngle. The Zambesi flows above the Kebrabasa, through great beds of the same formation, and generally they are of hard crystalline rocks; and it is impossible to conjecture what the condition of the country was when the large pot-holes were formed up the hillsides, and the prodigious attrition that rounded the s.h.i.+ngle was going on. The land does not seem to have been submerged, because marine limestones (save in the exceptional cases noted) are wanting; and torrents cutting across the ancient river beds reveal fresh-water sh.e.l.ls identical with those that now inhabit its fresh waters. The calcareous tufa seems to be the most recent rock formed. At the point of junction of the great southern prehistoric Nile with an ancient fresh-water lake near Buchap, and a few miles from Likatlong, a mound was formed in an eddy caused by some conical lias towards the east bank of this rent within its bed, and the dead animals were floated into the eddy and sank; their bones crop out of the white tufa, and they are so well preserved that even the black tartar on buffalo and zebra's teeth remain: they are of the present species of animals that now inhabit Africa. This is the only case of fossils of these animals being found _in situ_. In 1855 I observed similar fossils in banks of gravel in transitu all down the Zambesi above Kebrabasa; and about 1862 a bed of gravel was found in the delta with many of the same fossils that had come to rest in the great deposit of that river, but where the Zambesi digs them out is not known. In its course below the Victoria Falls I observed tufaceous rocks: these must contain the bones, for were they carried away from the great tufa Lake bottom of Sesheke, down the Victoria Falls, they would all be ground into fine silt. The bones in the river and in the delta were all a.s.sociated with pieces of coa.r.s.e pottery, exactly the same as the natives make and use at the present day: with it we found fragments of a fine grain, only occasionally seen among Africans, and closely resembling ancient cinerary urns: none were better baked than is customary in the country now. The most ancient relics are deeply worn granite, mica-schist, and sandstone millstones; the b.a.l.l.s used for chipping and roughing them, of about the shape and size of an orange, are found lying near them. No stone weapons or tools ever met my eyes, though I was anxious to find them, and looked carefully over every ancient village we came to for many years. There is no flint to make celts, but quartz and rocks having a slaty cleavage are abundant. It is only for the finer work that they use iron tongs, hammers, and anvils and with these they turn out work which makes English blacksmiths declare Africans never did. They are very careful of their tools: indeed, the very opposites to the flint implement men, who seem sometimes to have made celts just for the pleasure of throwing them away: even the Romans did not seem to know the value of their money.

The ancient Africans seem to have been at least as early as the Asiatics in the art of taming elephants. The Egyptian monuments show them bringing tame elephants and lions into Egypt; and very ancient sculptures show the real African species, which the artist must have seen. They refused to sell elephants, which cost them months of hard labour to catch and tame, to a Greek commander of Egyptian troops for a few bra.s.s pots: they were quite right. Two or three tons of fine fat butcher-meat were far better than the price, seeing their wives could make any number of cooking pots for nothing.

_15th July, 1872._--Reported to-day that twenty wounded men have been brought into M'futu from the field of fighting. About 2000 are said to be engaged on the Arab side, and the side of Mirambo would seem to be strong, but the a.s.sailants have the disadvantage of firing against a stockade, and are unprotected, except by ant-hills, bushes, and ditches in the field. I saw the first kites to-day: one had spots of white feathers on the body below, as if it were a young one--probably come from the north.

_17th July, 1872._--Went over to Sultan bin Ali yesterday. Very kind, as usual; he gave me guavas and a melon--called "matanga." It is reported that one of Mirambo's chief men, Sorura, set sharp sticks in concealed holes, which acted like Bruce's "craw-taes" at Bannockburn, and wounded several, probably the twenty reported. This has induced the Arabs to send for a cannon they have, with which to batter Mirambo at a distance.

The gun is borne past us this morning: a bra.s.s 7-pounder, dated 1679.

Carried by the Portuguese Commander-in-Chief to China 1679, or 193 years ago--and now to beat Mirambo, by Arabs who have very little interest in the war.

Some of his people, out prowling two days ago, killed a slave. The war is not so near an end as many hoped.

[Mtesa's people on their way back to Uganda were stuck fast at Unyanyembe the whole of this time: it does not appear at all who the missionary was to whom he refers.]

Lewale sends off the Baganda in a great hurry, after detaining them for six months or more till the war ended, and he now gets pagazi of Banyamwezi for them. This haste (though war is not ended) is probably because Lewale has heard of a missionary through me.

Mirambo fires now from inside the stockade alone.

_19th July, 1872._--Visited Salim bin Seff, and was very hospitably entertained. He was disappointed that I could not eat largely. They live very comfortably: grow wheat, whilst flour and fruits grace their board.

Salim says that goat's flesh at Zanzibar is better than beef, but here beef is better than goat's flesh. He is a stout, jolly fellow.

_20th July, 1872._--High cold winds prevail. Temperature, 6 A.M., 57; noon, on the ground, 122. It may be higher, but I am afraid to risk the thermometer, which is graduated to 140 only.

_21st July, 1872._--Bought two milch cows (from a Motusi), which, with their calves, were 17 dotis or 34 fathoms. The Baganda are packing up to leave for home. They take a good deal of brandy and gin for Mtesa from the Moslems. Temperature at noon, 96.

Another nest of wagtails flown. They eat bread crumbs. The whydahs are busy pairing. Lewale returns to-day from M'futu on his own private business at Kwikuru. The success of the war is a minor consideration with all. I wish my men would come, and let me off from this weary waiting.

Some philosophising is curious. It represents our Maker forming the machine of the universe: setting it a-going, and able to do nothing more outside certain of His own laws. He, as it were, laid the egg of the whole, and, like an ostrich, left it to be hatched by the sun. We can control laws, but He cannot! A fire set to this house would consume it, but we can throw on water and consume the fire. We control the elements, fire and water: is He debarred from doing the same, and more, who has infinite wisdom and knowledge? He surely is greater than His own laws.

Civilization is only what has been done with natural laws. Some foolish speculations in morals resemble the idea of a Muganda, who said last night, that if Mtesa didn't kill people now and then, his subjects would suppose that he was dead!

_23rd July, 1872._--The departure of the Baganda is countermanded, for fear of Mirambo capturing their gunpowder.

Lewale interdicts them from going; he says, "You may go, but leave all the gunpowder here, because Mirambo will follow and take it all to fight with us." This is an afterthought, for he hurried them to go off. A few will go and take the news and some goods to Mtesa, and probably a lot of Lewale's goods to trade at Karagwe.

The Baganda are angry, for now their cattle and much of their property are expended here; but they say, "We are strangers, and what can we do but submit?" The Banyamwesi carriers would all have run away on the least appearance of danger. No troops are sent by Seyed Burghash, though they were confidently reported long ago. All trade is at a standstill.

_24th July, 1872._--The Bagohe retire from the war. This month is unlucky. I visited Lewale and Nkasiwa, putting a blister on the latter, for paralytic arm, to please him. Lewale says that a general flight from the war has taken place. The excuse is hunger.