CHAPTER XIX. NYANGWE AND ITS HISTORY.
Nyangwe is the farthest point west in Africa ever reached by a white man who came in from the east. It is about three hundred and fifty miles from Ujiji, or a little over the distance across New York State, but the journey is not made in one day—Stanley was forty days in accomplishing it. Here he found that Livingstone, the first white man ever seen there, must have remained from six to twelve months. Livingstone had made a profound impression on the natives of this region. "Did you know him?" asked an old chief, eagerly. Stanley replying in the affirmative, he turned to his sons and brothers, and said: "He knew the good white man. Ah, we shall hear all about him." Then turning to Stanley, he said: "Was he not a very good man?" "Yes," replied the latter, "he was good, my friend; far better than any white man or Arab you will ever see again." "Ah," said the old negro, "you speak true; he was so gentle and patient, and told us such pleasant stories of the wonderful land of the white people—the aged white was a good man indeed."
Livingstone made a strong impression on Stanley also, who, speaking of him says: "What has struck me while tracing Livingstone to his utmost researches—this Arab depôt of Nyangwe,—revived all my grief and pity for him, even more so than his own relation of sorrowful and heavy things, is, that he does not seem to be aware that he was sacrificing himself unnecessarily, nor to be warned of the havoc of age and that his old power had left him. With the weight of years pressing upon him, the shortest march wearying him, compelling him to halt many days to recover his strength, and frequent attacks of illness prostrating him, with neither men nor means to escort him and enable him to make practical progress, Livingstone was at last like a blind and infirm man moving aimlessly about. He was his own worst taskmaker."
Whether Stanley's views of the mental condition of Livingstone—growing out of his sickness and want of money while in Nyangwe—are correct or not, one thing is true: that after the great explorer had seemingly reached the very point when the problem was to be solved as to where the mysterious Lualaba flowed, he waited there till he found a caravan going east, and then returned to Ujiji "a sorely tried and disappointed man." Standing on the last point which this intrepid explorer reached, Stanley is reminded of his own earnest efforts to induce that worn hero to return home and recruit, to which the invariable answer was: "No, no, no; to be knighted, as you say, by the Queen, welcomed by thousands of admirers, yes—but impossible, must not, can not, will not be."
Stanley, on this outmost verge of exploration, remembered the words of Livingstone when speaking of the beauties of the region lying west of the Goma Mountains, and says, "It is a most remarkable region; more remarkable than anything I have seen in Africa. Its woods, or forest, or jungles, or brush—I do not know by what particular term to designate the crowded, tall, straight trees, rising from an impenetrable mass of brush, creepers, thorns, gums, palm, ferns of all sorts, canes and grass—are sublime, even terrible. Indeed, nature here is remarkably or savagely beautiful. From every point the view is enchanting—the outlines eternally varying, yet always beautiful, till the whole panorama seems like a changing vision. Over all, nature has flung a robe of varying green, the hills and ridges are blooming, the valleys and basins exhale perfume, the rocks wear garlands of creepers, the stems of the trees are clothed with moss, a thousand streamlets of cold, pure water stray, now languid, now quick, toward the north and south and west. The whole makes a pleasing, charming illustration of the bounteousness and wild beauty of tropical nature. But, alas! all this is seen at a distance; when you come to travel through this world of beauty, the illusion vanishes—the green grass becomes as difficult to penetrate as an undergrowth, and that lovely sweep of shrubbery a mass of thorns, the gently rolling ridge an inaccessible crag, and the green mosses and vegetation in the low grounds that look so enchanting, impenetrable forest belts."
Stanley once penetrated into one of these great forests and was so overwhelmed by the majesty and solemn stillness of the scene, that he forgot where he was, and his imagination went back to the primeval days when that great, still forest was sown, till the silent trees seemed monuments of past history. But still, this district of Manyema (pronounced in various ways), he does not think so interesting as that of Uregga. In speaking of the Lualaba, after describing the various ways in which it is spelled and pronounced, he says if he could have it his own way he would call it "Livingstone River, or Livingstone's Lualaba," to commemorate his discovery of it and his heroic struggles against adversity to explore it. The letter in which he thus speaks of this region is dated November 1st, 1876. In three days he says he is going to explore this mysterious river to the utmost of his power. Two days previous to this letter, he wrote a long one on the horrors of the slave-trade that casts a pall as black as midnight over all this tropical beauty. He says that from Unyanyembe to Ujiji one sees horrors enough, but in this region they are multiplied tenfold. The traffic in slaves is so profitable and keeps up such a brisk trade with Zanzibar and the interior of Africa, that the native chiefs enter into it on the grandest scale, or rather it is more accurate to say, banditti under the leadership of so-called chiefs enter into it thus, and carry it on with remorseless zeal.
Raids are made on small independent villages, the aged are slain and hung up to terrify other villages into a meek acquiescence in their demands, and young men, young women, and children are marched off to Ujiji, from whence they are taken to Zanzibar, becoming, by their cruel treatment on the route, living skeletons before they reach their destination. Gangs, from one hundred to eight hundred, of naked, half-starved creatures Stanley met in his travels, and he wonders that the civilized world will let insignificant Zanzibar become the mart of such an accursed, cruel traffic.
There are regular hunting-grounds for slaves. When the business is dull, the inhabitants are left to grow and thrive, just like game out of season in a gentleman's park; but when the business begins to look up, the hunt begins, and the smiling villages become arid wastes. The country, long before he reached Nyangwe, was a wilderness, where a few years before dwelt a happy population. Stanley gives extracts from his diary, showing up the horrors of this system, which make the heart sicken as it thinks of what is daily transpiring in this unknown land.
Livingstone saw enough when he was at this place to awaken his deepest indignation, but since that time the Arabs have pushed further inland, and swept, with the besom of destruction, districts that in his time had been but slightly touched.
The trade in ivory is but another name for trade in human beings, and the only real commerce this vast, fruitful region has with Zanzibar is through its captured inhabitants, while the slain equal the number sent into captivity. But, while Mr. Stanley feels keenly the disgrace to humanity of this accursed traffic, he evidently does not see so clearly the way to put a stop to it. He is opposed to filibustering of all kinds, and to the interference of strong powers to coerce weak ones on the ground of humanity or Christianity, because it opens the door too wide to every kind of aggression. In fact, this makes it only necessary to use some philanthropic catch-word, in order to justify the annexation of any feeble territory.
Stanley evidently thinks there is some limit to the Monroe doctrine of non-interference in the affairs of other nations, as the following extract from one of his letters shows, in which, after discussing the whole matter carefully, he says he writes, "hoping he may cause many to reflect upon the fact that there exists one little State on this globe, which is about equal in extent to one English county, with the sole privilege of enriching itself by wholesale murder, and piracy and commerce in human beings, and that a traffic forbidden in all other nations should be permitted, furtively monopolized by the little island of Zanzibar, and by such insignificant people as the subjects of Prince Burghosh." Mr. Stanley is entirely opposed to filibustering and encroachments of strong powers on feeble ones, under the thousand and one false pretences advanced in support of unrighteous conquests, yet he evidently thinks little Zanzibar should be wiped out, or cease to be the source and centre of this cruel traffic in human beings. One has to travel, he says, in the heart of Africa to see all the horrors of this traffic.
The buying and selling of a few slaves on the coast gives no idea of its horrors. At Unyambembe, sometimes a sad sight is seen. At Uganda the trade begins to assume a wholesale character, yet it wears here a rather business aspect; the slaves by this time become hardened to suffering, "they have no more tears to shed," the chords of sympathy have been severed and they seem stolid and indifferent. At Ujiji, one sees a regular slave-market established. There are "slave-folds and pens," like the stock-yards of railroads for cattle into which the naked wretches are driven by hundreds, to wallow on the ground and be half-starved on food not fit for hogs. By the time they reach here they are mere "ebony skeletons," attenuated, haggard, gaunt human frames. Their very voices have sunk to a mere hoarse whisper, which comes with an unearthly sound from out their parched, withered lips. Low moans, like those that escape from the dying, fill the air, and they reel and stagger when they attempt to stand upright, so wasted are they by the havoc of hunger. They look like a vast herd of black skeletons, and as one looks at them in their horrible sufferings he cannot but exclaim, "how can an all-merciful Father permit such things?" No matter whether on the slow and famishing march or crowded like strayed pigs in the overloaded canoes, it is the same unvarying scene of hunger and horror, on which the cruel slave-trader looks without remorse or pity.
It may be asked how are these slaves obtained. The answer is, by a systematic war waged in the populous country of Marungu by banditti, supported by Arabs. These exchange guns and powder for the slaves the former capture, which enables them to keep up the war. These Arabs, who sell the slaves on the coast, furnish the only market for the native banditti of the interior. These latter are mostly natives of Unyamwege who band together to capture all the inhabitants of villages too weak to resist them. Marungu is the great productive field of their Satanic labors. Here almost every small village is independent, recognizing no ruler but its own petty chief. These are often at variance with each other, and instead of banding together to resist a common foe, they look on quietly while one after another is swept by the raiders. In crossing a river, Stanley met two hundred of these wretches chained together, and, on inquiry, found they belonged to the governor of Unyambembe, a former patron of Speke and Burton, and had been captured by an officer of the prince of Zanzibar. This prince had made a treaty with England to put a stop to this horrible traffic, and yet here was one of his officers engaged in it, taking his captives to Zanzibar, and this was his third batch during the year.
There are two or three entries in Stanley's journal which throw much light on the way this hunt for slaves is carried on.
"October 17th. Arabs organized to-day from three districts, to avenge the murder and eating of one man and ten women by a tribe half-way between Kassessa and Nyangwe. After six days' slaughter, the Arabs returned with three hundred slaves, fifteen hundred goats, besides spears, etc."
"October 24th. The natives of Kabonga, near Nyangwe, were sorely troubled two or three days ago by a visit paid them by Uanaamwee in the employ of Mohommed el Said. Their insolence was so intolerable that the natives at last said, 'we will stand this no longer. They will force our wives and daughters before our eyes if we hesitate any longer to kill them, and before the Arabs come we will be off.' Unfortunately, only one was killed, the others took fright and disappeared to arouse the Arabs with a new grievance. To-day, an Arab chief set out for the scene of action with murderous celerity, and besides capturing ten slaves, killed thirty natives and set fire to eight villages—'a small prize,' the Arabs said."
"October 17th. The same man made an attack on some fishermen on the left bank of the Lualaba. He left at night and returned at noon with fifty or sixty captives, besides some children."
"Are raids of this kind frequent?" asked Stanley.
"Frequent!" was the reply, "sometimes six or ten times a month."
One of these captives said to Stanley, on the march from Mana to Manibo, "Master, all the plain lying between Mana, Manibo and Nyangwe, when I first came here eight years ago, was populated so thickly that we traveled through gardens, villages and fields every quarter of an hour. There were flocks of goats and black pigs around every village. You can see what it now is." He saw that it was an uninhabited wilderness. At that time, Livingstone saw how the country was becoming depopulated before the slave-traders, but says Stanley, "Were it possible for him to rise from the dead and take a glance at the districts now depopulated, it is probable that he would be more than ever filled with sorrow at the misdoings of these traders."
He thinks there is but one way of putting a perpetual end to this infernal traffic, and that is by stopping it in the interior. English and American cruisers on the coast can have but partial success. The suggestion of the Khedive of Egypt is the right one. Annex the interior of Africa to some strong power and establish stations on the great highways over which these traders are compelled to transport their human chattels, where they will be pounced upon and made to give up their captives, and the trade will soon cease from its being too hazardous and unprofitable.
Portugal has no right to the west coast, which it claims. Let England, or England and America together, claim and exercise sovereignty over it, and it will need no cruisers on the coast to stop the trade in slaves. At any rate, it is high time the Christian nations of the world put a stop to this disgrace and blot upon humanity.