THE UPPER NILE BASIN.
COL. H. G. PROUT, LATE OF THE KEHDIVE’S STAFF, EGYPT.
In what I have to say I shall not try to give any large picture of African travel or life; I shall try only to give some accurate notions of a limited area.
The Soudan is not a definite geographical term. Bellad es Soudan is the country of the blacks, and is merely a general term like Central Africa. An Egyptian Governor-General of the Soudan rules a vast territory, extending in Gordon’s time from the Tropic of Cancer on the north to near the equator on the south, about 1,640 miles; and from the Red Sea on the east to the western boundary of Darfour, averaging about 660 miles in width. This territory includes Upper and Lower Nubia, the fertile and little known Sennaar, the wastes north of Abyssinia, the provinces of Darfour and Kordofan, and the mysterious regions of the White Nile and its affluents.
Nowhere else in the explored world is there an equal area so uniform in climate and surface. The sad result of this uniformity you see in the condition of the people. In your effort to help the people, you must fight against these facts of nature. A monotony of savage tribes live in a bad climate, uniform in its badness; they inhabit a land which throughout great regions gives no variety of surface. From these conditions they have no escape. I do not say that no great improvement of people so situated is possible; but I do say that man has seldom found himself in a worse position.
In the northern zone of the Soudan, down to about the twelfth degree of latitude, the climate has admitted of a feeble development of Mohammedan civilization; further south the conditions are desperate.
The Arab officers of the Khedive, the Nubian slave hunters, the few European traders and travelers who have gone as far as Gondokoro, the handful of American and English officers who, in late years, have tried to carry law and light into that unhappy country—every man of them would tell you the same story of more or less rapid failure of his own vital powers, and of the terrible mortality among his comrades. We, at this distance, only hear of those who go up the Nile and come back. One has but to spend a few weeks in Khartoum to learn a long list of names of men who have gone as far as Khartoum or Fashoda, or the Sobat or Lado, only to come back, broken in health, often to die before getting to the sea.
Let us now glance briefly at the physical geography of the Nile basin south of Khartoum. Below the tenth degree of latitude, the steppe country is no longer seen. Vast marshes stretch away on either hand, broken by peninsulas and islands of dry land. For 790 miles this is the character of the immediate valley of the White Nile. Between latitudes 5 and 6 the swamps end and the face of the country becomes more like our own land. From this latitude to the equator is a charmingly diversified country, with mountains, valleys, creeks, meadows, and not an extraordinary proportion of swamps. Of course, this region is more healthy than the marshes of the White Nile, but even it has a trying climate.
Here the Nile is a rapid stream, with numerous wooded and rocky islands and long stretches of rapids and cataracts. The forests are neither so vast nor so dense as we imagine tropical forests to be; nor do we find here the majestic trees and the luxuriant vegetation of the Central American forests. The herbage grows with wonderful rapidity, and during the summer months much of the country is covered with grass of amazing height and strength.
On the west and south the great swamp basin seems to end at a crest of high land running northwesterly from the Nile at about latitude 5, crossing the eighth degree of latitude at 150 or 200 miles west of the Nile, and keeping something the same general direction to the steppes of Darfour and Wadai.
The eastern limit of the swamp region is even more conjectural than the western, but we may expect that it will be found within 100 miles of the Nile, and that it is a line running south by west from near the mouth of the Sobat. The total area of the swamp basin may be 25,000 square miles.
Khartoum is the point of rendezvous and departure for all routes into the Soudan. It may be reached from Cairo by two principal routes; one up the Nile valley, the other by the Red Sea and by caravan to Berber on the Nile, 250 miles north of Khartoum. The quicker and probably the cheaper route is by the Red Sea, Suakim and Berber. The journey by this route, allowing three days each at Suakim and Berber, may be made in 32 days. By this route there are but two days of hard marching necessary. The rest of the journey can be made at a comfortable pace. Both of these routes into the Soudan are much frequented. Special difficulties in getting transportation may operate against one or the other of them at different times. This is something to be decided at Cairo.
Khartoum, the capital of the Soudan, is a town of about 30,000 people, with many and fairly good shops, at which the traveler can procure anything really necessary, except arms, ammunition and medicines. At this great African city all lines of traffic converge. Here boats can be procured, manned, provisioned and stored to go up the White or Blue Nile, the Sobat or the Bahr el Ghazalle. Here camels may be hired and caravans fitted out to go to the East or the West.
From Khartoum to Fashoda, in the tenth degree of latitude, about 450 miles, the White Nile is practically Mohammedan. Though the Shillooks rove considerably north of that point, they are continually harassed by their enemies, the Bagarra Arabs from Kordofan and the government tax-gatherers from the Nile, and lead a very unsettled life. On the eastern bank of the Nile, also, the Mohammedan tribes have driven the negroes south of the tenth parallel.
South of Fashoda, however, for more than 100 miles along the west bank of the Nile, past the mouth of the Sobat, and extending back many miles into the interior, is the country held by the great tribe of the Shillooks. Their huts in this region are like one vast village. They are a powerful and spirited tribe, numbering over a million souls, it is estimated. They have resisted the Egyptian Government with tenacity and considerable success. Indeed, I cannot say how much of their territory is actually subjugated to-day; but it is probable the Egyptian power is not acknowledged far from Fashoda.
The Shillooks are one of the finest negro tribes of which we know anything. They are prosperous cultivators of the soil and great hunters. Although they are greatly exasperated by the wars of the government and the plundering of the passing slave-traders, it is likely that they could soon be led to feel confidence in men whom they found to be neither officials nor slavers. With their light canoes they cross the river constantly, hunting, fishing and raiding on the neighboring Dinkas and Nouers. Although they have been so badly treated by the government and the traders, yet they have learned to discriminate among white men, and it is quite possible that they might be found more open to the influence of Christian missionaries than the tribes farther away from the route of travel.
On the west bank of the Nile, north of the Sobat, is a branch of the great Dinka tribe. These people have fared even worse than the Shillooks at the hands of the slavers, and have almost abandoned the banks of the streams. They will probably return with the decline of slave-hunting, if indeed they are not already occupying again their old lands. These are docile and intelligent negroes, and are favorite slaves. The black regiments of the Soudan were mostly recruited from the Dinkas. Like the Shillooks, the Dinkas are pure heathen and great cattle-breeders. The immediate southern bank of the Sobat is now occupied by the Nouer tribe, who have also pushed over to the north of that stream and are found far up its course. They go to the west as far as the Gazelle River and their southern limit is ill-defined. They are a very numerous tribe, but perhaps inferior in intelligence to either the Shillooks or the Dinkas, although Poncet speaks of them as clean, well-housed, and valiant warriors and hunters.
The little that we know of the country and people up the Sobat is not encouraging. The land is flat, and in the rainy season marshy. On the banks of the streams are forests of the talch acacia. The people have been hostile, and Col. Gordon withdrew his station from that region before I went to the provinces of the Equator.
The mouth of the Sobat, and the great east and west reach of the Nile which flows here east by south for about 100 miles, mark the southern limit of the steppe country. South of this one should not rest till he reaches the high lands of the Bahr el Gebel, below latitude 5. The characteristic features of that region are truly charming to one who has crossed the deserts, steppes and marshes on his way from the Mediterranean.
Here are found various tribes of negroes, the Bohr, the Shir, the Madi, and finally, to the south, the great Wanyoro and Waganda tribes, who are thought by Speke not to be negroes. On the east are the Latookas and the Lungo; on the west the Niambara. For our purposes it is not necessary to discriminate very closely between them. They are all naked heathen, given to warfare and pillage, detesting work, and certainly not spiritually minded.
All of these people had been greatly exasperated by the slave-traders and by the garrison left at Gondokoro by Baker. The policy of the slave-traders had been to keep one tribe at war with another, and by allying themselves with one and the other to get much of the fighting done for them and to carry off the spoils in slaves, cattle and ivory. The Egyptian garrison had imitated the traders, and when Gordon went up it was practically besieged at Gondokoro. In two years and a half Gordon had reduced the garrison at Gondokoro to a sergeant and ten men, and his strongest garrison, that at Moogi, was but 90 men. He had established stations for 300 miles at a day’s march, or less, apart, and over much of this distance one courier could pass unharmed. The chiefs about the stations paid tribute of corn and furnished porters readily. On the Albert Lake he put a steamer and two large iron life-boats, which traversed without danger or difficulty the 125 miles of river south of Dufli. The Moogi family, for some distance on the east bank of the river, was still hostile, but all the other river people had great confidence in the wonderful white man who had been just and truthful with them. How much of this condition still exists I do not know, but the fact that it did exist in 1877 shows what missionaries might hope to do there.
The negroes of the far Nile country, like the Shillooks, the Dinkas, and the Nouers below, breed cattle, raise their poor breadstuffs and a few vegetables, and hunt but little. Were it not for the tribal wars, they would seldom suffer for food, although local famines from drought do occur. Like the negroes farther down the Nile, they are, too, a simple and happy people, only asking to be let alone. They want nothing that our civilization can give them except bright beads and wire. Therefore, to establish relations of trade with them is not easy.
I began by promising to give you somewhat accurate notions of certain limited regions. I find that I have been able to skim but hastily over even the area to which I have confined myself.
I will conclude with a few words about that area as a missionary field. I need not tell you that the poor people are densely ignorant of Christianity, as they are of all religion. I need not tell you again that like all savages they make each other as miserable as they can with their poor knowledge of the art and means of war; or that the slave-traders and the Khedive’s troops are adding daily to their capacity in that way. I hardly need tell you that I believe them to be human beings whose happiness might be increased by teaching them peaceful industries and by inducing them to give up idleness and fighting. In short, there is no doubt that the condition of the people of Central Africa and the Soudan is deplorable, and there is a possibility that Christian missionaries might make it better. The question is how and where you can do the most with the means at your command. Probably the most can be done by working steadily up the Nile, and to moderate distances east and west of the water-way, with a base in the more healthful regions of the north, and a steamer to carry people back and forth. I believe it would be a mistake to plant an isolated mission anywhere south of the swamp region. The essential thing is to be able to take a man away as soon as you find that he can no longer resist the fevers, recruit him in the desert air, and then hurry him back before he and his people have forgotten each other. If you plant a colony in the heart of Africa and leave it for three years, at the end of that time there will probably not be a man of it living—almost certainly he will not be living and working there. But it will take an ordinary man at least three years to fit himself for really good work amongst a people whose language and ways are so new to him.
A valuable lesson may be drawn from the experiences of Gordon and Baker in the same country. Baker isolated himself in Unyoro, with no base and no line of communications. He was obliged to burn his baggage and retreat, with great courage and skill it is true, but with the absolute waste of his expedition. Gordon kept up fortnightly steamers to Khartoum, established his little garrisons step by step, and when he left the Provinces the power of the government was firmly fixed there.
The idea of the Roman Catholic mission is excellent so far as it goes. They have built comfortable houses at Khartoum and El Obeid; have established schools, gardens and hospitals; have a corps of people trained in Arabic and some of the negro dialects, and somewhat acclimated, and—there they stop and sit in their gardens. They are capital financiers, and their mission will not be apt to break up for want of money or recruits; but as a means of practical good in Africa, it is nearly worthless without a chief of heroic fibre.
The scheme that I should strongly advise is a sanitarium and school in the north, with your own steamer on the Nile; a mission near the Sobat; and if the White Nile is found to keep open, another at the head of navigation. In the course of years such a scheme would probably make a mark in the countries it reached; but to succeed it must have at its head a man of courage and brains, a man of sleepless energy, a man hungry and thirsty for work, and he must be a diplomat as well, for he will be terribly worried on all sides. I have suggested a point near the Sobat for a mission, because at that point relations could be established with some of the largest tribes—the Shillooks, Dinkas and Nouers—and because it is the last point at which a colony could be planted north of the great swamp basin. A colony south of that is liable to be cut off for months and even years, by the formation of the “sud” or grass barrier in the Nile. Undoubtedly the Sobat region is inferior in land and climate to the high lands south of Gondokoro; but, as I have pointed out, to isolate your mission so that it cannot be rapidly recruited and supplied will be fatal. Of this I am positive. When you find that the Soudan authorities are sure or even likely to keep communications open up the Nile, then a mission should be sent up to Gondokoro or farther south. All the dangers in and obstacles to this noble work should be measured and faced, and the work so organized that a real retreat need never be made. True progress must be very slow, and you must not look for quick results. When you have done your best you must not be disappointed if you seem to have done very little. To plant a mission on a solid foundation, with the right chief at its head and the right material at his hand, will be a great work.