influence of customary stimulants, an unconquerable depression usurped the high-blown courage it inspired, which some called nostalgia (home-sickness) and some hypochondria. Many had also, as they themselves confessed, come out merely to see the great river. Their imaginations had run riot amid herds of destructive elephants, rapacious lions, charging buffaloes, bellowing hippopotami, and repugnant rhinoceri, while the tall lithe-necked giraffe and the graceful zebra occupied the foreground of those most unreal pictures. Their senses had also been fired by the looks of love and admiration cast on them by their sweethearts, as they declared their intention to ‘go out to the Congo regions,’ while many a pleasant hour must have been spent together as they examined the strange equipments, the elephant-rifles, the penetrative ‘Express,’ and described in glowing terms their life in the far off palmy lands watered by the winding Ikelemba or the mighty Congo. Thus they had deluded themselves as well as the International Committee, whose members looked with eyes of commendation as the inspired heroes delivered with bated breath their unalterable resolution to ‘do or die.’
AFRICAN RHINOCEROS.
“But death was slow to attack the valorous braves while the doable lay largely extended before them. The latter was always present with its exasperating plainness, its undeniable imperativeness which affronted their ‘susceptibilities,’ and ignored their titles and rights to distinction. The stern every-day reality, the meagre diet and forbidding aspect, humbled their presumption. When they hear that in this land there is neither wine nor beer, as they have known them, nor comfortable cognac to relieve the gnawing, distressful hankering they suffered for their usual beverages, their hearts beat more feebly. They begin to see that those bright African images and beautiful dreams of tropical scenery and excitement are replaced by unknown breadths of woodless regions, exuberant only with tall spear grass and jungly scrub. The hot sun dares them to the trial of forcing a way through such scarcely penetrable growth. Distance and fatigue, seeming to be immense beyond any former conception, masters their resolution; and, alas! and alas! there are no fair maidens with golden hair to admire their noble efforts at doing and dying.
“Conscience, or the prickings of shame, may whisper to a few not quite lost in despondency, that there is brave work to be performed, and that they may experience the colonist’s pleasure of seeing the vegetables, fruit-trees and plants grow instead of that cane-grass and jungle now covering the broad acreage. But some answer, ‘Bah! I did not come to work; I came to hunt, to play, to eat, and to receive a big salary from the Commission.’
“‘Do you feel fatigued? Try some hot tea or coffee.’
“‘What!’ shriek they. ‘Try Congo water! No, thank you; my stomach was made for something better than to become a nest for young crocodiles.’”
In all the foregoing Stanley speaks of the white help that was furnished him for his mission to found the Congo Free State. The help was of a high grade, being composed of men who came recommended to the Commission. They were selected for their valor and skill at home and for their professed willingness to brave African climate and all the dangers of exploration and colonization. They were for the most part educated men and well qualified to engineer roads, build comfortable homes, establish trading and military stations, carry on just commerce and exercise wise government over consenting tribes and contiguous territories. They were young, ambitious men, who had their fames and fortunes to make and to whom failure at home would have been a misfortune and disgrace. Indeed, if one had been going to pick out a body of men for the express purpose of testing the question whether it is possible for the white races to exist and thrive in tropical Africa, establish civilized governments, cultivate the soil, carry on manufactures and commerce, redeem the natives, and introduce institutions such as are found at home, these would have been the men.
But let us see how they fared. Stanley takes one as a sample—he does not fail to make honorable exceptions of those who behaved differently,—and this one perhaps, the loudest professor, at the start, of heroic zeal in his undertaking. He is conducted to the site of a newly established station and endowed with full authority. He is given an army of forty disciplined blacks, and two or three of his own color are left with him as companion and assistants. He is made a rich banker for the surrounding tribes by heaps of cloth
bales, bags of beads, and bundles of brass-rods, the bank notes of the country, with full liberty to circulate them to the best advantage. The river at his feet swarms with fish of edible varieties, which he may catch in plenty, if he chooses to imitate the industry and ingenuity of the natives. The surrounding villages are full of fowls, and eggs are plenty. Sheep and goats can always be had, if the slightest attention is paid to their grazing and to their protection against wild beasts. In the west, goat’s milk, and in the centre and east, cow’s milk, can be had with little trouble. The natives, almost everywhere, raise sweet potatoes in abundance and sell them cheaply. Most villages have their fields of cassava, whose root yields a wholesome food, which can be prepared in a variety of agreeable ways. All of the ordinary garden vegetables, as tomatoes, beans, pumpkins, and onions can be grown with easy tillage. In his commissariat are stores of rice, canned vegetables, wheat flour, fish, meats, and soups from Europe, together with tea, coffee, butter, jam, condensed-milk, and in fact everything to tempt a palled palate or a weak stomach. The question of food is therefore settled in such a manner as to require very little exertion or sacrifice to make the supply permanent, varied and wholesome.