[421] Ibid. p. 18.
[422] Marchand l'Africain, by C. Castellani, pp. 279-280. The author reveals his malice by the statement (p. 293) that the Sirdar, after the battle of Omdurman, ordered 14,000 Dervish wounded to be éventrés.
[423] Parl. Papers, Egypt, No. 2 (1898), p. 9; No. 3 (1898), pp. 3-4.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PARTITION OF AFRICA
In the opening up of new lands by European peoples the order of events is generally somewhat as follows:--First come explorers, pioneers, or missionaries. These having thrown some light on the character of a land or of its people, traders follow in their wake; and in due course factories are formed and settlements arise. The ideas of the new-comers as to the rights of property and landholding differ so widely from those of the natives, that quarrels and strifes frequently ensue. Warships and soldiers then appear on the scene; and the end of the old order of things is marked by the hoisting of the Union Jack, or the French or German tricolour. In the case of the expansion of Russia as we have seen, the procedure is far otherwise. But Africa has been for the most part explored, exploited, and annexed by agencies working from the sea and proceeding in the way just outlined.
The period since the year 1870 has for the most part witnessed the operation of the last and the least romantic of these so-called civilising efforts. The great age of African exploration was then drawing to a close. In the year 1870 that devoted missionary explorer, David Livingstone, was lost to sight for many months owing to his earnest longing peacefully to solve the great problem of the waterways of Central Africa, and thus open up an easy path for the suppression of the slave-trade. But when, in 1871, Mr. H. M. Stanley, the enterprising correspondent of the New York Herald, at the head of a rescue expedition, met the grizzled, fever-stricken veteran near Ujiji and greeted him with the words--"Mr. Livingstone, I presume," the age of mystery and picturesqueness vanished away.
A change in the spirit and methods of exploration naturally comes about when the efforts of single individuals give place to collective enterprise[424], and that change was now rapidly to come over the whole field of African exploration. The day of the Mungo Parks and Livingstones was passing away, and the day of associations and companies was at hand. In 1876, Leopold II., King of the Belgians, summoned to Brussels several of the leading explorers and geographers in order to confer on the best methods of opening up Africa. The specific results of this important Conference will be considered in the next chapter; but we may here note that, under the auspices of the "International Association for the Exploration and Civilisation of Africa" then founded, much pioneer work was carried out in districts remote from the River Congo. The vast continent also yielded up its secrets to travellers working their way in from the south and the north, so that in the late seventies the white races opened up to view vast and populous districts which imaginative chartographers in other ages had diversified with the Mountains of the Moon or with signs of the Zodiac and monstrosities of the animal creation.