worthy of being placed beside the famous device of the “horse” by which the Greeks captured Troy town. Joining three canoes together, side by side, by poles lashed across them, he constructed on this platform a kind of wicker-work fort, which concealed a crew and garrison of two hundred men. This strange structure, covered by streamers, and with the drums and horns giving forth a horrible din, moved slowly towards the enemy’s stronghold, propelled by the paddles working between the canoes. The Wavuma watched with terror the approach of this awful apparition, which bore down upon them as if moved by some supernatural force. When it had advanced to within hailing distance, a voice was heard issuing from the mysterious visitant, which called on the Wavuma to submit to Mtesa or destruction would come on them. The bold islanders were awestruck. A council of war was held, when a chief stepped to the shore and cried, “Return, O Spirit; the war is ended!” A peace was sealed with the usual tribute of ivory and female slaves for the king’s harem.
The next morning the king’s war drums suddenly sounded the breaking up of his immense encampment on the shore, and Stanley discovered it to be on fire in a hundred places. All had to flee for their lives, and he thinks hundreds must have perished in the confusion. The king denied that he was responsible for an order which resulted in such a horror, but Stanley thought he was guilty of a piece of unwarranted cruelty, which illy became his new profession of faith. From that time on, his views began to change. Ingenious, enterprising, intelligent he found them, above any other African tribe he had met with. Their scrupulous cleanliness, neatness, and modesty cover a multitude of faults; but for the rest, “they are crafty, fraudful, deceiving, lying, thievish knaves, taken as a whole, and seem to be born with an uncontrollable love of gaining wealth by robbery, violence and murder.” Notwithstanding first impressions to the contrary, they are more allied to the Choctaw than the Anglo-Saxon, and are simply clever savages, whom prosperity and a favorable climate have helped several stages on the long, toilsome road towards civilization. There is no call upon us after
all to envy their luxurious lives of ease and plenty under the shade of their bowers of vine, fig, and plantain trees—
“For we hold the gray Barbarian lower than the Christian child.”
Nevertheless, Uganda, from its fertility and its situation at the outlet of the great fresh-water sea of the Nyanza, must be regarded as one of the most hopeful fields of future commercial enterprise, and its people as among the most promising subjects for missionary and philanthropic efforts in Central Africa.
As for the mighty Mtesa, little has been seen or heard of him since his friend “Stamlee” parted from him. Colonel Chaille Long, late of the Confederate Army, afterwards in the service of Egypt, who had seen him a few months before, did not think he would ever turn out to be a humane monarch. But that he has not lost his interest in his white friends and in the marvels of civilization was shown in the spring of 1880, when a deputation of four of his chiefs appeared in London on a tour of observation.
De Bellefonds, mentioned above as meeting Stanley at King Mtesa’s court, was murdered, with all his party, by the Unyoro, when on his way back to Gondokoro. Colonel Long went down the Victoria Nile from Lake Victoria Nyanza, and midway between the Victoria and Albert Nyanza discovered another great lake which he called Lake Ibrahim.
The last white visitors to the Nile reservoirs were an English party sent out to establish a Christian mission on Lake Victoria Nyanza. It consisted of Lieutenant Smith, and Messrs. Wilson and O’Neil. They took a small steamer along in sections from Zanzibar, and successfully floated the first steam craft on the bosom of the great lake. Wilson established himself at the court of King Mtesa. Smith and Wilson, while exploring the lake, were driven by a storm on the island of the Ukerewe, whose chief, Lukongeh, had been kind to Stanley. But no faith can be put in African princes. On December 7, 1877, Lukongeh attacked the missionary camp and massacred Smith and Wilson with all their black attendants. With this dismal
incident the history of the exploration of Victoria Nyanza closes for the present, except as we shall have to follow Stanley after leaving the court of King Mtesa on his trip down the western shore of the lake. It must be remembered that he was twice to see the king, once on his tour of circumnavigation, and then after he had completed it.
After he rounded the northern end of the lake and was well on his way down its western shores, he met with the most perilous of his adventures. The voyagers were nearly out of provisions. They had passed days of weary toil under the blistering tropical sun, and dismal nights of hunger on shelterless, uninhabited islands, when the grassy slopes of Bumbireh hove in sight. Numerous villages were seen in the shelter of the forest, with herds of cattle, maize fields, and groves of fruit trees, and altogether the island seemed to offer a haven of rest and plenty to the weary mariners. There was no food left in the boat, and a landing had to be attempted at all risks. The look of the Bumbireh natives was not so prepossessing as that of their land. They rushed down from their villages, shouting war-songs and brandishing their clubs and spears. No sooner had the boat reached shallow water, than they seized upon her, and dragged her, crew and all, high up on the rocky beach. “The scene that ensued,” says the traveller, “baffles description. Pandemonium—all the devils armed—raged around us. A forest of spears was levelled; thirty or forty bows were drawn taut; as many barbed arrows seemed already on the wing; knotty clubs waved above our heads; two hundred screaming black demons jostled each other, and struggled for room to vent their fury, or for an opportunity to deliver one crushing blow or thrust at us.”