Nyangwe is the farthest point west in Africa ever reached by a white man who came in from the east. It is about three hundred and fifty miles from Ujiji, or a little over the distance across New York State, but the journey is not made in one day—Stanley was forty days in accomplishing it. Here he found that Livingstone, the first white man ever seen there, must have remained from six to twelve months. Livingstone had made a profound impression on the natives of this region. "Did you know him?" asked an old chief, eagerly. Stanley replying in the affirmative, he turned to his sons and brothers, and said: "He knew the good white man. Ah, we shall hear all about him." Then turning to Stanley, he said: "Was he not a very good man?" "Yes," replied the latter, "he was good, my friend; far better than any white man or Arab you will ever see again." "Ah," said the old negro, "you speak true; he was so gentle and patient, and told us such pleasant stories of the wonderful land of the white people—the aged white was a good man indeed."
Livingstone made a strong impression on Stanley also, who, speaking of him says: "What has struck me while tracing Livingstone to his utmost researches—this Arab depôt of Nyangwe,—revived all my grief and pity for him, even more so than his own relation of sorrowful and heavy things, is, that he does not seem to be aware that he was sacrificing himself unnecessarily, nor to be warned of the havoc of age and that his old power had left him. With the weight of years pressing upon him, the shortest march wearying him, compelling him to halt many days to recover his strength, and frequent attacks of illness prostrating him, with neither men nor means to escort him and enable him to make practical progress, Livingstone was at last like a blind and infirm man moving aimlessly about. He was his own worst taskmaker."
Whether Stanley's views of the mental condition of Livingstone—growing out of his sickness and want of money while in Nyangwe—are correct or not, one thing is true: that after the great explorer had seemingly reached the very point when the problem was to be solved as to where the mysterious Lualaba flowed, he waited there till he found a caravan going east, and then returned to Ujiji "a sorely tried and disappointed man." Standing on the last point which this intrepid explorer reached, Stanley is reminded of his own earnest efforts to induce that worn hero to return home and recruit, to which the invariable answer was: "No, no, no; to be knighted, as you say, by the Queen, welcomed by thousands of admirers, yes—but impossible, must not, can not, will not be."
Stanley, on this outmost verge of exploration, remembered the words of Livingstone when speaking of the beauties of the region lying west of the Goma Mountains, and says, "It is a most remarkable region; more remarkable than anything I have seen in Africa. Its woods, or forest, or jungles, or brush—I do not know by what particular term to designate the crowded, tall, straight trees, rising from an impenetrable mass of brush, creepers, thorns, gums, palm, ferns of all sorts, canes and grass—are sublime, even terrible. Indeed, nature here is remarkably or savagely beautiful. From every point the view is enchanting—the outlines eternally varying, yet always beautiful, till the whole panorama seems like a changing vision. Over all, nature has flung a robe of varying green, the hills and ridges are blooming, the valleys and basins exhale perfume, the rocks wear garlands of creepers, the stems of the trees are clothed with moss, a thousand streamlets of cold, pure water stray, now languid, now quick, toward the north and south and west. The whole makes a pleasing, charming illustration of the bounteousness and wild beauty of tropical nature. But, alas! all this is seen at a distance; when you come to travel through this world of beauty, the illusion vanishes—the green grass becomes as difficult to penetrate as an undergrowth, and that lovely sweep of shrubbery a mass of thorns, the gently rolling ridge an inaccessible crag, and the green mosses and vegetation in the low grounds that look so enchanting, impenetrable forest belts."
Stanley once penetrated into one of these great forests and was so overwhelmed by the majesty and solemn stillness of the scene, that he forgot where he was, and his imagination went back to the primeval days when that great, still forest was sown, till the silent trees seemed monuments of past history. But still, this district of Manyema (pronounced in various ways), he does not think so interesting as that of Uregga. In speaking of the Lualaba, after describing the various ways in which it is spelled and pronounced, he says if he could have it his own way he would call it "Livingstone River, or Livingstone's Lualaba," to commemorate his discovery of it and his heroic struggles against adversity to explore it. The letter in which he thus speaks of this region is dated November 1st, 1876. In three days he says he is going to explore this mysterious river to the utmost of his power. Two days previous to this letter, he wrote a long one on the horrors of the slave-trade that casts a pall as black as midnight over all this tropical beauty. He says that from Unyanyembe to Ujiji one sees horrors enough, but in this region they are multiplied tenfold. The traffic in slaves is so profitable and keeps up such a brisk trade with Zanzibar and the interior of Africa, that the native chiefs enter into it on the grandest scale, or rather it is more accurate to say, banditti under the leadership of so-called chiefs enter into it thus, and carry it on with remorseless zeal.
Raids are made on small independent villages, the aged are slain and hung up to terrify other villages into a meek acquiescence in their demands, and young men, young women, and children are marched off to Ujiji, from whence they are taken to Zanzibar, becoming, by their cruel treatment on the route, living skeletons before they reach their destination. Gangs, from one hundred to eight hundred, of naked, half-starved creatures Stanley met in his travels, and he wonders that the civilized world will let insignificant Zanzibar become the mart of such an accursed, cruel traffic.
There are regular hunting-grounds for slaves. When the business is dull, the inhabitants are left to grow and thrive, just like game out of season in a gentleman's park; but when the business begins to look up, the hunt begins, and the smiling villages become arid wastes. The country, long before he reached Nyangwe, was a wilderness, where a few years before dwelt a happy population. Stanley gives extracts from his diary, showing up the horrors of this system, which make the heart sicken as it thinks of what is daily transpiring in this unknown land.
Livingstone saw enough when he was at this place to awaken his deepest indignation, but since that time the Arabs have pushed further inland, and swept, with the besom of destruction, districts that in his time had been but slightly touched.
The trade in ivory is but another name for trade in human beings, and the only real commerce this vast, fruitful region has with Zanzibar is through its captured inhabitants, while the slain equal the number sent into captivity. But, while Mr. Stanley feels keenly the disgrace to humanity of this accursed traffic, he evidently does not see so clearly the way to put a stop to it. He is opposed to filibustering of all kinds, and to the interference of strong powers to coerce weak ones on the ground of humanity or Christianity, because it opens the door too wide to every kind of aggression. In fact, this makes it only necessary to use some philanthropic catch-word, in order to justify the annexation of any feeble territory.
Stanley evidently thinks there is some limit to the Monroe doctrine of non-interference in the affairs of other nations, as the following extract from one of his letters shows, in which, after discussing the whole matter carefully, he says he writes, "hoping he may cause many to reflect upon the fact that there exists one little State on this globe, which is about equal in extent to one English county, with the sole privilege of enriching itself by wholesale murder, and piracy and commerce in human beings, and that a traffic forbidden in all other nations should be permitted, furtively monopolized by the little island of Zanzibar, and by such insignificant people as the subjects of Prince Burghosh." Mr. Stanley is entirely opposed to filibustering and encroachments of strong powers on feeble ones, under the thousand and one false pretences advanced in support of unrighteous conquests, yet he evidently thinks little Zanzibar should be wiped out, or cease to be the source and centre of this cruel traffic in human beings. One has to travel, he says, in the heart of Africa to see all the horrors of this traffic.