Set like sparkling jewels in its crevices and depressions, the great lakes send forth the streams which, flowing through gaps in their surrounding mountain barriers, rushing through narrow channels, oozing slowly through elevated flats or bounding in beautiful cascades over steep steps, and carrying the vitalizing fluid in every direction through the length and breadth of Africa, form its system of circulation.
Bordering the great lakes and clustering on the slopes, forests of gigantic trees form the flesh and muscle of this great creation; preserved in perpetual verdure wherever water constantly remains and in long extending lines and network fringing the ever-winding banks of the streams, and finally joining with the verdant belt of the sea-coast to form the brilliant epidermis of the whole, and forming background and filling to the network of these prominent features, in broad concentric curves and in belts and patches, the more stunted thorny growth, long grass, broad savanna and sandy plain, ever changing in color and aspect.
The great new and beautiful world of Africa lies open before us; 250,000,000 intelligent and courageous people have become exposed to the influence, for good or evil, of the civilized races. What shall we do with it and them? Quite possible is it fairly and honestly so to explore and deal with both country and people as to develop its resources and benefit them, while adding to the world's treasury of comfort-bringing products and human brotherhood the riches and the friendship of a new continent; but it must be by peaceful and just measures and by honest trade with wholesome wares.
II.
As a practical way of leading you in imagination to the heart of Africa, and as indicating the circumstances and experience upon which my observations on Africa are based, I shall describe one of my many journeys.
In the year 1882 I had the honor to be leader of the largest European expedition that has yet entered Africa, having in it, for instance, 200 more men than the Emin Pasha relief expedition. There were ten Europeans, all told, who represented survey and navigation, medicine, carpentry, blacksmithing, and other specially selected talent for the purpose of exploration and civilization, as well as those specially devoted to the teaching of Christianity, which was the ultimate aim of all. We entered Africa from the village of Saadani, on the eastern coast, opposite Zanzibar, our destination being the shores of Lake Tanganyika at Ujiji.
To make not only our progress sure, but work and residence at our destination safe and possible in such a land, we had stores of groceries, medicines, tools and clothing, and a large quantity of calico and other cloth, which forms the currency of the country, for the purchase of supplies and payment of wages to porters, servants and workmen.
The special locality to be worked being the countries surrounding Lake Tanganyika, to which that extensive and beautiful inland sea gives access, we carried with us also, for its navigation, a sailing boat built of steel, of the form of a sea-going life-boat, and constructed in small sections and pieces for transport. This boat I designed myself. Six of the sections were to travel on specially constructed light carts, drawn by African natives, and the rest, in small pieces, were to be carried by the porters in the ordinary way.
The mode of travel was walking, except when now and then an invalid was carried in a hammock. The method of transport was by means of native porters, hundreds of whom devote themselves to this work. They are paid $5 per month as wages, payable at Zanzibar on their return to the coast, less such advance in kind as they may draw from their leader along the road. In addition, they get a regular allowance of two yards of white calico per seven days, each man, as barter with which to obtain food.