Wherever the Arab traders and settlers have struck this section from the east they have introduced the cultivation of rice and wheat with success, and they have carried along the planting of the mangoe, lime, orange, lemon, pine-apple and guava, all of which take hold, grow vigorously and produce liberally. All of these last have been tried on the Congo with the greatest encouragement.
Then there is practically no limit to the spice plants found growing naturally in the Congo section and capable of introduction. Ginger and nutmeg are quite common amid the rich plant growth of the entire section. As the immense prairie stretches of the Upper Congo and the Lake regions may at no distant day become the grazing ground for the world’s cattle supply, or the granary of nations, so the river bottoms, and the uplands as well, may become the cotton producing areas of the manufacturing world. Cotton is indigenous and grows everywhere. It is especially fond of the
cleared spots which mark the site of deserted villages, and asserts itself to the exclusion of other vegetation. It has neither frost nor drought to contend with, and nature has given it a soil in which it may revel, without the requirement of sedulous cultivation.
It may well be asked in connection with this section, what is there which civilization demands, or is used to, for its table, its factory, or store-house, that it does not produce, or cannot be made to produce? If it supports a population almost equal to that of Europe, a population without appliances for farming and manufacturing, a population of comparative idlers, what a surplus it might produce under intelligent management and with a moderate degree of industry. The native energy of Africa, even with the most advanced tribes, is sadly misdirected, or rather, not directed at all. The best muscle of every tribe is diverted to warlike pursuits or to the athleticism of the chase. Whilst it is not a rule that it is undignified for a full grown male to work, the customs are such as to attract him into other channels of effort, so that the burden of work is thrown upon the women. They are the vegetable gardeners, the raisers of fowls and goats, and in the cattle regions of the Upper Congo and Zambesi, they are the milk-maids, the calf-raisers and herd attendants. Therefore, African labor is today like African vegetation; it is labor run wild. It is a keen, excellent labor under the spur of reward, just as the African commercial sense is alive to all the tricks of trade. What it requires is instruction and proper direction, and with these one may find in tropical Africa a resource of far more value, both at home and abroad, than all the untold wealth of forest, soil or mine.
We see and hear too little of the human resources of Africa. By this we do not mean that religion does not regard the African as a fit subject for conversion, nor that ethnology does not seek to study him as a curiosity, nor that commerce fails to use him as a convenience, nor that the lust of the Orient has ceased to discuss him as a source of gratification, but we do mean that with all the writing about African resources and possibilities, the fertility of soil, the luxuriance of forest, the plenitude of minerals, the exuberance of animal life, there is but meagre discussion of the place the native himself is to fill, considered also in the light of a natural
resource. While we grow infatuated with descriptions of African wealth and possibility, we almost skip the mightiest problem Africa can reveal, the relationship its own people are to bear to its material development, their status as factors in unfolding the inner continent to the outer world. The eyes of commercial and manufacturing Europe are so set upon the main advantage, to wit, that of grabbing African lands and appropriating at a cheap rate whatever is accessible, as to overlook the future of the native. Our own eyes have been so dimmed by the melancholy sight of the North American Indian fading away before our boasted civilization, or by sight of the sons of Africa forced into degradation at the behest of hard-hearted greed, as that they are actually blind to the human factor in African enterprise. With all our respect for civilization, it must be confessed that it has failed signally to use to advantage what it found God-made and at hand, when it struck new continents and islands. It has destroyed and supplanted, as on the American continents, the Pacific islands, in Southern Africa, in the East Indies. Is that to be the role of civilization in Central Africa? Does not that continent present a higher and more humanitarian problem? Driven to desperation by a baffling climate, yet spurred by an inordinate cupidity, will not the civilization of the white man be compelled to the exercise of a genius which shall embrace the native populations, classify them as an indispensable resource, lift them to a plain of intelligent energy, look upon them as things of equality, and ultimately regard them as essentials in the art of progress and the race for development? We regard extinction of the African races as fatal to African development. There is no place in the world where the civilized commercial instinct crosses so directly the natural laws of the universe as in Africa. There is no place in the world where the ordinary forces of colonization are so nonplussed as in Africa. If we are to go ahead with our humanitarian and commercial and political problems in Africa, in the old fashioned, uncompromising, brutal way; if Africa is to be civilized by the rejection of Africans, by their extinction or degradation; then will civilization commit a graver mistake and more heinous crime than when it forced the Indian into the lava-bed, the Aztec into the Pacific or the Inca into bondage, and death in
the mine. America has its race problem on hand, to be solved more by blacks than whites. Africa presents the same problem to the world. Whatever the white man may make out of African resource by following the usual formula of civilization, reduction, extirpation and so on, on the unchristian plea that the end justifies the means, that result can be safely increased a thousand times if only it is not forgotten that the native is the true, the natural, factor in any rational and permanent scheme of development.
The next section of Central Africa which comes under observation is that which is watered by the Lualaba, or in other words, the Congo, from Stanley Falls to Lake Bangweola. This is an immense section, embracing 246,000 square miles, or a length of 1260 miles. This section comprehends the several lakes on the Lualaba and the drainage system on both sides of that river, but excluding Tanganyika, and that part of the reservoir system known as the Muta Nzigé. Lake Bangweola covers 10,000 square miles; Lake Moero, 2,700 square miles; and Lake Kassali, 2,200 square miles. From Stanley Falls to Nyangwé is 327 miles, all navigable, except the six miles below Nyangwé. On the right side, going up, the Lualaba receives the Leopold river, navigable for thirty miles; the Lowa, navigable for an unknown distance; the Ulindi, 400 yards wide, and navigable; the Lira, a deep, clear stream, 300 yards wide; the Luama, 250 miles long; the Luigi, and Lukuga, the latter being the outlet of Lake Tanganyika.
On the left side, the Lualaba receives the Black River, the Lumani, and the Kamolondo. Above Nyangwé, the main stream is again navigable to Moero Lake. Altogether there are 1,100 miles of navigable water in this section. It has, for twenty years, been a favorite stamping ground for slave traders, and its population has therefore been greatly decimated, yet Stanley estimates it at 6,000,000, embraced in nine principal and many subordinate tribes. On the Lower Lualaba are four important trading points, long used by the Arabs for their nefarious purposes, and all readily accessible to the eastern coast of Africa, over well defined routes. These points are Kasongo, Nyangwé, Vibondo, and Kirundu. They are even more accessible from the west coast by way of the Congo, and Stanley regards them as valuable points for the gathering
and dissemination of trade, since their populations have had twenty years of experience in traffic with outsiders. With their assistance the fine herds of cattle reared by the tribes of the plains east of the Lualaba might be brought to that river, and distributed along the entire length of the Congo, or even carried to European markets. This section is just as rich in natural products as that of the Upper Congo, and of the same general character.