“in palaver” with a petty island “king,” and at times the tap of a war-drum roused my experienced ear. The monarch, habited in a shabby cloth coat, occupied a settee, with a “minister” on either side; he was a fat senior of light complexion, with a vicious expression upon features, which were not those of the “tobacconist nigger,” nor had he the effeminate aspect of the Congoese.
I looked curiously at these specimens of the Musulungu or Musurungu, a wilder race than that of Shark Point: the English, of course, call them Missolonghi, because Lord Byron died there. Here the people say “le” for “re,” and “rua” for “lua,” confounding both liquids, which may also be found in the Kibundo tongue. In Loango, according to the Abbé Proyart, the national organ does not admit the roughness of the r, which is changed to l. Monteiro and Gamitto assert (xxii.) that the “Cazembes or Lundas do not pronounce the letter r, in whose place they use l.” The “Ibos” of the lower Congo, dwelling on the southern shore between the mouth and the Porto da Lenha, above which they are harmless, these men have ever been dangerous to strangers, and the effect of the slave-trade has been to make them more formidable. Lieutenant Boteler (1835) was attacked by twenty- eight canoes, carrying some 140 men, who came on boldly, “ducking” at the flash, and who were driven off only by a volley of musketry and a charge of grape. In 1860 a whaler and crew were attacked by their war-canoes sallying out from behind Scotchman’s Head. These craft are of two kinds, one shaped like a horse- trough, the other with a lean and snaky head. The “Wrangler” lost two of her men near Zungá chyá Kampenzi, and the “Griffon” escaped by firing an Armstrong conical shell. They have frequently surprised and kept for ransom the white agents, whom “o negocio” deterred from reprisals. M. Pissot, our companion, was amarré by them for some weeks, and the most unpleasant part of his captivity was the stunning concert of songs and instruments kept up during the day to prevent his escaping by night. The more sensible traders at Boma pay them black mail by employing them as boats’ crews, upon our Anglo-Indian principle of the “Paggi” and the “Ramosi.”
Merolla calls these men Musilongo or Sonhese. The word appears to me opprobrious, as if each tribe termed itself Mushi-Congo (Congo people), and its neighbours Musulungus: Barbot writes as a Frenchman Moutsie, the Portuguese Muxi (Mushi). Mushi-Longo would perhaps mean Loango-people; but my ear could not detect any approach to “Loango” in “Musulungu.” The first syllable, Mu, in Fiote or Congoese, would be a contraction of Muntu (plural Wántú). They inhabit the islands, own a part of the north bank, and extend southwards to Ambriz: eastward they are bounded by the Fiote or Congo-speaking peoples, to whom their tongue is intelligible. They have no tattoo, but they pierce the nose septum and extract the two central and upper incisors; the Muxi- Congoes or Lower Congoese chip or file out a chevron in the near sides of the same teeth– an ornament possibly suggested by the weight of the native pipe. The chipping and extracting seem to be very arbitrary and liable to change: sometimes the upper, at other times the lower teeth are operated upon. The fashionable mutilation is frequently seen in Eastern Africa, and perhaps it is nothing but a fashion. They are the “kallistoi” and “megistoi” of the Congoese bodies, taller and darker, fiercer and braver than their neighbours, nor will they cease to be river pirates till the illicit trade dies.
After taking leave of Sr. Silva we resumed our way, the thermometer (F.) showing at 1.45 P.M. 95° in the air when the sun was obscured, and the mirage played the usual fantastic tricks. The mangrove, which Tuckey’s introduction prolongs to fifty miles from the mouth, now disappears; in fact, it does not extend much above Bullock Island, nineteen direct miles on the chart from Shark Point and, as usual, it enables us to measure the extreme limit where the salt-tide ascends. The palhabote went gallantly,
“The water round her bows
Dancing as round a drinking cup.”
Small trembling waves poppled and frothed in mid-stream, where the fresh water met wind and tide; and by the “boiling” of the surface we saw that there was still a strong under-current flowing against the upper layer. A little beyond the factory we were shown on the northern bank Mariquita Nook, where the slaver of that name, commanded by a Captain Bowen, had shipped some 520 men. She was captured by H.M. Steamship “Zebra,” Commander Hoskins, after being reported by a chief, whom her captain had kicked, to a trader at the river mouth, and by him to the cruizer. Slavers used to show their sense by starting on Sundays, when the squadron kept a careless look-out; but their inevitable danger was the general “drunk” of the officers and crew to celebrate the event, and this libation often caused delays which led to seizure. It was an admirable site, a bit of golden sand fronting the cleared bush, commanding an unbroken sweep of vision to the embouchure, and masked by forest from Porto da Lenha. It is easily known by its two tall trees, and that nearest the sea, when viewed from the east, appears surmounted by what resemble the “Kangaroo’s Head:” they are cones of regular shape, covered to the topmost twig with the lightest green Flagellaria. The “bush” now becomes beautiful, rolling in bulging masses of verdure to the very edge of the clear brown stream. As in the rivers of Guinea, the llianas form fibrous chains, varying in size from a packthread to a cable; now straight, then twisted; investing the trees with an endless variety of folds and embraces, and connecting neighbours by graceful arches like the sag of an acrobat’s rope. Here and there a grotesque calabash contrasted with the graceful palms towering in air for warmth and light, or bending over water like Prince of Wales’s feathers. The unvarying green was enlivened by yew-like trees with scarlet flowers, the “Burning Bush” of Sierra Leone, setting off the white boles of the cotton-trees; and the whole was edged by the yellow green of the quaint pandanus hung with heavy fruit.
A little beyond “Mariquita Nook” the right bank becomes a net- work of creeks, “obscure channels,” tortuous, slimy with mud, banked with the snake-like branches of trees, and much resembling the lower course of the Benin, or any other north equatorial African river; the forest is also full of large villages, invisible like the streams till entered. A single tree, apparently growing out of the great stream-bed, showed shallow water as we passed the Ponte de tres Palmeiras; the three oil- palms are still there, but the easternmost is decaying. At 2 P.M. we were in sight of the chief slaving settlement on the Congo, the Whydah of the river, Porto da Lenha. Our charts have “Ponta de Linha,” three mistakes in as many words. Some authorities, however, prefer Ponta da Lenha, “Woody Point,” from the piles flanking the houses; others, Ponte da Lenha, from a bridge built by the agent of Messrs. Tobin’s house over the single influent that divides the settlement. Cruizers have often ascended thus far; the Baltimore barque of 800 tons went up and down safely in 1859, but now square-rigged ships, which seldom pass Zungá chyá Kampenzi, send up boats when something is to be done higher up.
Porto da Lenha dates like Abeokuta from the second decade of the present century. In Tuckey’s time the projection from the northern bank was known as “Tall Trees,” a term common to several places in the “Oil rivers;” no factories existed, schooners sailed to Boma for cargo, and dropped down stream as soon as loaded. From French Point it is distant 40,000 measured metres (= 21 statute miles and 1,615 yards); our charts show 20.50 nautical miles (= 32,500 metres in round numbers). The river opposite the projection narrows to a gate barely a mile and a half broad, whilst the valley stretches some five miles, and the blue hills inhabited by the Musulungus are clearly visible; the flood rises four or five feet, and drinking water must be brought from up stream. The site of the settlement is on the right or northern bank behind the projection, a slip of morass backed by swamps and thick growths, chiefly bombax, palm and acacia, lignum vitae, the mammee-apple and the cork-tree, palmyra, pandanus, and groves of papyrus. Low and deeply flooded during the rains, the place would be fatal without the sea-breeze; as it is, the air is exceedingly unwholesome. There is no quay, the canoe must act gondola; the wharf is a mere platform with steps, and in places the filthy drains are not dry even at this season. The length of the station is about one mile, and of no depth except what is taken up by the neat and expensive gardens. Eastward or up stream it thins out, and the foundations give considerable trouble; the inhabitants are condemned to do beavers’ work, to protect the bank with strong piles, and to heap up earth for a base, whilst, despite all their toil, the water often finds its way in. The sixteen houses look well; they are substantial bungalows, built country fashion, with timber and matting; they have large and shady verandahs, and a series of inner rooms. Each house has a well- kept pottage plot, inferior, however, to those up stream.
The tenure of ground here, as at Borna, is by yearly rent to the two “kings,” Nengongo and Nenzalo, each of whom claims a half. Like the chiefs of Porto Novo, the despot of Dahome, the rulers of many Nigerian tribes, and even the Fernandian “Bube,” these potentates may not look at the sea nor at the river. Their power is, therefore, deputed to “linguisters” or interpreters, linguistele ya Nchinu, “linguist to the king,” being the official titles of these worthies, who massacre the Portuguese language, and who are empowered to receive “comey” (customs) and rent. The revenue is composed of three principal items; an ounce ($16) per head of negro embarked at Porto da Lenha; four per cent, on all goods sold, and, lastly, a hundred hard dollars monthly ground- rent–£l92 (English pound symbol) a year. The linguist becomes more powerful than the chief, who is wholly in his power, and always receives the best presents. Neagongo’s fattore is old Shimbah, an ignoble aspect with a “kink in his leg;” Mashel or Machela, a corruption of the Portuguese Maciel, died about two months aeo: we shall see him disembarked for burial at Boma.
It is evident that the slavers were wrong not to keep hulks like those of the Bonny River; health would have gained, and the procedure might have modified negro “sass.” The chiefs begin early morning by going their rounds for drink, and end business between 7 and 10 A.M. Everywhere on this coast a few hours of work support a “gentleman;” even the comparatively industrious and hard-working Egbas rarely do anything after noon. These lords and masters are fully aware that the white men are their willing slaves as long as the large profits last. If a glass of watered rum, which they detect more easily than we do watered milk, be offered to them, it will be thrown in the donor’s face. Every factory must keep a barrel of spirits ready broached if the agents would buy eggs and yams, and the poorest negro comes regularly with his garrafa. The mixed stuff costs per bottle only a hundred reis (= fourpence), and thoroughly demoralizes the black world.
We landed at once, sent our letters to M. Monteiro, who hospitably offered his house, and passed the day quickly enough in a round of visits. Despite the general politeness and attention to us, we found a gloom overhanging the place: as at Whydah, its glories have departed, nor shall they ever return. The jollity, the recklessness, the gold ounces thrown in handfuls upon the monte-table, are things of the past: several houses are said to be insolvent, and the dearth of cloth is causing actual misery. Palm and ground-nut oil enable the agents only to buy provisions; the trade is capable of infinite expansion, but it requires time–as yet it supports only the two non-slaving houses, English and Dutch. The forty or fifty tons brought in every month pay them cent, per cent.; the bag of half a hundred weight being sold for four fathoms of cloth; or two hatchets, one bottle of rum, and a jug or a plate.
Early next day I went to the English factory for the purpose of completing my outfit. Unfortunately, Mr. P. Maculloch, the head agent, who is perfectly acquainted with the river and the people, was absent, leaving the business in the hands of two “mean whites,” walking buccras, English pariahs. The factory–a dirty disgrace to the name–was in the charge of a clerk, whom we saw being rowed about bareheaded through the sun, accompanied by a black girl, both as far from sober as might be. The cooper, who was sitting moony with drink, rose to receive us and to weigh out the beads which I required; under the excitement he had recourse to a gin-bottle, and a total collapse came on before half the work was done. Why should south latitude 6°, the parallel of Zanzibar, be so fatal to the Briton?
At 2.20 P.M. on September 2, we left Porto da Lenha, and passed Mashel’s Creek, on whose right bank is the village of Makatalla; the charts call it Foomou, and transfer it to the left. Here we enter upon the riverine archipelago. The great stream before one, now divides into three parallel branches, separated by long narrow islands and islets, banks and shallows. The northernmost channel in our maps, “Maxwell River,” is known to Europeans and natives as Noangwa; Mamballa or the central line is called by the moderns Nshibúl, and the southern is dubbed by the hydrographer, “Rio Konio,” a truly terrible mistake for Sonho. As a rule, the Noangwa, though infested during the rains by cruel mosquitoes, is preferred for the ascent, and the central for dropping down stream. The maximum breadth of the Congo bed, more than half island, is here five miles; and I was forcibly reminded of it when winding through the Dalmatian Archipelago.
The river still maintained its alluvial aspect as we passed along the right bank. The surface was a stubble strewn with the usual trees; the portly bombax; the calabash, now naked and of wintry aspect; and the dark evergreen palmyra, in dots and streaks upon the red-yellow field, fronted by an edging of grass, whose king, cyperus papyrus, is crowned with tall heads waving like little palms. This Egyptian bush extends from the Congo mouth to Banza Nokki, our landing-place; it grows thickest about Porto da Lenha, and it thins out above and below: I afterwards observed it in the sweet water marshes of Syria and the Brazils. We passed sundry settlements–Loango Pequeno, Loango Grande, and others–and many canoes were seen plying up and down. On the left or to the south was nothing but dense reedy vegetation upon the low islands, which here are of larger dimensions than the northern line. As evening drew near, the grasshoppers and the tree frogs chirped a louder song, and the parrots whistled as they winged their rapid flight high overhead. Presently we passed out of the lower archipelago, and sighted the first high land closing upon the stream, rolling hills, which vanished in blue perspective, and which bore streaks of fire during the dark hours. Our Cabinda Patron grounded us twice, and even the high night breeze hardly enabled us to overcome the six-knot current off the narrow, whose right side is called Ponta da Diabo. Devil’s Point is not so named in the chart: the place is marked “Strong Tide” (No. 1), opposite Chombae Island, which the natives term Zungá chyá Bundika, hence probably the name of the village Bemandika (Boma ndika). At this satanic headland, where the banks form a gate three miles broad, a man hailed us from the bank; none understood him, but all made up their minds that he threatened to visit us during the night.
A light breeze early next morning fortunately freshened as we approached “Strong Tide” (No. 2). We ran north of the second archipelago above the gate; south of us lay the “Low Islands” of the chart, with plantations of beans and tobacco; the peasants stood to stare like Icelanders, leaning on oblong-bladed paddles six feet long, or upon alpen-stocks capped with bayonets; the “scare-crows” were grass figures, with pots for heads and wooden rattles suspended to bent poles. On the right bank a block of hills narrows the stream, and its selvage of light green grasses will contribute to the “floating islands.” Higher up, blocks and boulders of all sizes rise from the vegetation, and prolong themselves into the shallower waters. There are two distinct bluffs, the westernmost marked by a tree-clump at its feet, and between them lies a baylet, where a dozen palms denote the once dreaded village Bemandika. The second block, 400 to 500 feet high, bears on its rounded summit the Stone of Lightning, called by the people Tadi Nzázhí, vulgò, Taddy Enzazzi. The Fiote language has the Persian letter Zh (j), sounding like the initial of the French “jour:” so Lander (“On the Course and Termination of the Niger,” “Journal Royal Geographical Society,” vol. i. p. 131) says of the Island Zegozhe, that “zh is pronounced like z in azure.” This upright mass, apparently 40 feet high, and seeming, like the “Lumba” of Kinsembo to rest upon a basement, is very conspicuous from the east, where it catches the eye as a watch- tower would. At the bluff-base, a huge slab, an irregular parallelogram, slopes towards the water and, viewed far up stream, it passably represents a Kaffir’s pavoise. This Fingal’s Shield, a name due to the piety of Mr. George Maxwell, is called by the French La Pierre Fétiche: it must not be confounded with our Fetish Rock (Tádi ya Muingu) on the southern bank at the entrance of the Nshibúl and Sonho branches. I can add nothing to Tuckey’s description or Lieutenant Hawkey’s tracing of the rude figures which distinguish a not unusual feature. Tuckey (p. 97) calls Fingal’s Shield Taddy d’ya M’wangoo, and Professor Smith, Taddi Moenga (p. 303); the only defect in Lieutenant Hawkey’s sketch is that of exaggerating the bluff, a mere mamelon, one of many lumps upon a continued level. Both rocks are of the oldest granite, much weather-worn and mixed and banded with mica and quartz. M. Charles Konig found in the finer-grained varieties “minute noble garnets,” which also appeared in the mica-slate of “Gombac” higher up stream, and in the primitive greenstone of “Boka Embomma.”[FN#8]
Beyond this point, where Boma is first sighted, lies the large marauding village of Twáná. Here also a man shouted to us from the bank “Muliele! muliele!” for the Portuguese “mulher,” one of the interminable corruptions of the tongue–a polite offer, as politely declined. The next feature is the Rio Jo Jacaré, a narrow sedgy stream on the right bank, which, winding northward through rolling lines of hills, bends westward, and joins, they say, the Rio Lukullu (Lukallo?) of Cabinda Bay. Men have descended, I am told, three leagues, but no one has seen the junction, consequently there may be a portage between the drains. If not, this is the apex of the greater Congo delta, a false formation, whose base between Cabinda Bay (S. lat. 5° 25′) and Ambrizette (S. lat. 7° 16′) measures 1° 51′, equal to 111 direct geographical miles, whilst its depth inland would be sixty.
Chapter Vii.
Boma.–our Outfit for the Interior
We now reach Boma, the furthest Portuguese factory, about thirty, usually reckoned thirty-eight, nautical miles from Porta da Lenha, and a total of 52.50 from French Point.
The upper dépôt of the Congo lies upon the north bank, accidenté ground, poor, stony, and sandy soil, with rounded, grass-clad hills, The southern is less broken; there are long slopes and waves of land which trend in graceful lines, charmingly diversified, to the uplands, where the old capital, São Salvador, is situated; and upon the undulating blue ridges, distance behind distance, appear markings by Nature’s hand, which the stranger’s eye can hardly distinguish from villa or village. The view explains how the old expedition felt “every day more in love with this beautiful country,” The sea-like river wants nothing but cattle on its banks to justify the description–
“Appunto una scena pastorale, a cui fanno Quinci il mar, quinci i colli, e d’ ogn’ intorno I fior, le piante, e l’ ombre, e l’ onde, e l cielo. Unteatro pomposo.”
In the centre of the broad stream, whose southern arm is not visible, are three islets. The western most, backed by a long, grassy, palm-tasselled bank, is called Zungá chyá Bundiká. This Chombae Island of the charts is a rocky cone, dark with umbrella- shaped trees. Its north-eastern neighbour, Simúle Kete, the Molyneux Island of Mr. Maxwell, the Hekay of Tuckey, and the Kekay of the chart, contrasts sharply with the yellow stubbles and the flat lines of Zungá chyá Ngándi. Here, since Tuckey’s time, the trees have made way for grass and stones; the only remnants are clumps in the south-eastern, which is not only the highest point, but also the windy and watery direction. On the Congo course the foul weather is mostly from the “sirocco,” where the African interior is a mass of swamps. At the mouth tornadoes come down the line of stream from the north-east, and I heard traditions of the sea-tornado, which blows in shore instead of offshore as usual. About the close of the last century one or other of these islands was proposed as a dépôt and settlement, which a few simple works would convert into a small Gibraltar. The easternmost Buka, the Booka Embomma of the charts and maps, will presently be described. In this direction the Zaire assumes the semblance of a mountain lake, whilst down stream the broad bosom of the Nshibúl branch forms almost a sea-horizon, with dots showing where tall, scattered palms spring from the watery surface. We cannot but admire the nightly effects of the wintry bush-fires. During the day livid volumed smoke forms cumuli that conceal their enemy, the sun, and discharge a rain of blacks ten times the size of Londoners. In the darkened air we see storms of fire fiercely whirling over the undulating ranges, here sweeping on like torrents, there delaying, whilst the sheets meet at the apex, and a giant beard of flame (
flouts the moon. The land must be splendidly grassed after the rains.
The Boma factories are like those of Porto da Lenha, but humbler in size, and more resembling the wicker-work native houses. The river, which up stream will show a flood mark of twelve feet, here seldom rises above five, and further down three and four; consequently piles are not required, and the swiftness of the current keeps off the jacaré. Formerly there were fourteen establishments, which licit trade in palm oil and ground-nuts, instead of men, women, and children, have reduced to ten. The air is sensibly drier and healthier than at the lower settlement, and apparently there is nothing against the place but deadly ennui and monotony.
We landed at once, and presented our letters to Sr. Antonio Vicente Pereira, who at once made us at home: he had seen Goa as well as Macáo, so we found several subjects in common. The factory enjoyed every comfort: the poultry yard throve, far better than at Porto da Lenha; we saw fowls and pigeons, “Manilla” ducks and ducklings, and a fine peacock from Portugal, which seemed to enjoy the change. The fish is not so good as that caught further down, and the natives have a habit of narcotizing it: the Silurus electricus is exceptionally plentiful. The farmyard contained tame deer, and a house-dog fierce as a tethered mastiff; goats were brought whenever wanted, and the black-faced, thin-tailed sheep gave excellent mutton. Beef was impossible; the Portuguese, like the natives, care little for milk, and of the herd, which strangers had attempted to domesticate, remained only a bull and a cow in very poor condition–the deaths were attributed to poisonous grass, but I vehemently suspect Tsetse. A daily “quitanda,” or market, held under the huge calabashes on a hill behind the house, supplied what was wanted.
Upon Market Hill executions also take place, the criminal being shot through the heart. M. Pereira’s garden produces all that Porta da Lenha can grow, with less trouble and of a superior kind. Water-melons, tomatoes, onions, and pimento, or large pepper (pimentão, siliquastrum, ndungu ya yenéne), useful to produce “crocodiles’ tears;” mint, and parsley flourish remarkably; turnips are eatable after two months; cabbage and lettuce, beet, carrot, and endive after three or four. It is a waste of ground to plant peas; two rows, twelve feet by four, hardly produce a plateful. Manioc ripens between the sixth and ninth month, plantains and bananas once a year, cotton and rice in four months, and maize in forty days–with irrigation it is easy to grow three annual crops. The time for planting is before the rains, which here last six weeks to two months, September and October. The staple of commerce is now the nguba, or ground-nut (plural, jinguba), which Merolla calls incumba, with sometimes a little milho (maize), and Calavance beans. Of fruits we find trellised grapes, pines, and guavas, which, as at Fernando Po, are a weed. The agrumi, limes, oranges and citrons are remarkably fine, and hold, as of old, a high place in the simple medicines of the country. A cup of lime-leaf tea, drunk warm in the morning, is the favourite emetic and cathartic: even in Pliny’s day we find “Malus Assyria, quam alii vocant medicam (Mediam?, venenis medetur” (xii. 7). On the Gold Coast and in the Gaboon region, colic and dysentery are cured by a calabash full of lime- juice, “laced” with red pepper. The peculiarity of European vegetables throughout maritime Congo and Angola is the absence of all flavour combined with the finest appearance; it seems as though something in the earth or atmosphere were wanting to their full development. Similarly, though in the upper regions the climate is delicious, the missionaries could not keep themselves alive, but died of privation, hardship, and fatigue.
Chapter VIII.
A Visit to Banza Chisalla,
Boma, at the head of the Congo delta, the great dépôt between the interior and the coast, owes its existence wholly to
“the cruel trade
Which spoils unhappy Afric of her sons.”
Father Merolla (1682), who visited it from “Angoij,” our “Cabinda,” speaks of it as a pretty large island, tributary to the Mani-Congo, extremely populous, well supplied with provisions, and outlaid by islets belonging to the Count of Sonho. Tuckey’s Embomma was an inland banza or town, and the site of the factories was called Market Point; the Expedition map and the hydrographic chart term it Loombee, the latter being properly the name of a large quitanda (market) lying two miles to the north-west. Early in the present century it is described as a village of a hundred huts, opposite which trading vessels anchored under charge of the “Fuka or king’s merchant;” no market was held there, lest, in case of dispute, the royal person might suffer. Although the main features of our maps are still correct, there have been great changes in the river-bed between Porto da Lenha and Boma, especially about the latter place, which should be transferred from its present site to Lumbi. The broad Chisalla Creek, which Mr. Maxwell calls Logan, between the northern bank and the island “Booka Embomma,” is now an arm only 200 feet wide. In fact all the bank about Boma, like the lower delta, urgently calls for re-surveying.
This part of the river belongs to the “Rei dos Reis,” Nessalla, under whom are some ten chief officers called “kings,” who buy and sell; indeed, Africa knows no other. The title is prostituted throughout the West Coast, but it is nowhere so degraded as in the Congo regions; the whites abuse it to flatter the vanity of the astute negro, who accepts it with a view to results–a “king- dash” must, of course, be greater than that of a subject. Every fellow with one black coat becomes a “preese” (prince), and if he has two he styles himself a “king.” Without permission of the “King of Kings” we could obtain neither interpreter, canoe, nor crew; a visit to Banza Chisalal was therefore necessary and, as it would have been vain to ask anything empty-handed, I took with me a fine spangled cloak, a piece of chintz, and a case of ship’s rum, the whole worth £9.
At 6.30 A.M. on September 5th we set out up stream in a fine canoe, wall-sided and rather crank, but allowing the comfort of chairs. She was of Mayumba make, superior to anything built on the river, and the six men that drove her stood up to pole, and paddle. Above Boma the hills, which are the outlines of the west African Ghats, form a graceful semicircle, separated from the water by a flat terrace garnished with little villages and tree- islets. On the north bank are many of the crater-like sinks which dot the coast from the Gaboon to Loango. We hugged the right side to avoid the rapid swirl; there was no backwater at the points, and hard work was required to prevent our being swept against the boulders of gneiss, schiste, and pudding-stone edging the shores and stretching into the stream. Here the fish is excellent as at Porto cla Lenha, and we found the people catching it in large spoon-shaped basins: I enquired about the Peixe mulher (woman- fish), the French sirène, which old missioners describe as an African mermaid, not exactly as she appeared to the “lovely lord of Colonsay,” and which Barbot figures with “two strutting breasts.” He makes the flesh taste like pork, and tells us that the small bones of the hand were good for gravel, whilst bracelets made of the left rib were worn near the heart, to stop bleeding. This manatus, like the elephant and the hippopotamus, has long disappeared before the gun.
After some three quarters of an hour we reached the entrance of Chisalla Creek, which is the northernmost branch of the main stream. On the left (north) was a plain showing traces of a large village, and we sighted our first grass-island–a compact mass of fibrous, earth-washed roots and reedy vegetation, inhabited by serpents and ardeine birds. To the right, or southward, rises the tall island of Boma, rocky and wooded, which a narrow channel separates from its eastern neighbour, Chisalla Islet. The latter is the royal Pere la Chaise, the graves being kept carefully concealed; white men who have visited the ground to shoot antelope have had reason to regret the step. Here also lie three officers of the Congo Expedition– Messrs. Galwey, Tudor, and Cranch–forgotten, as Gamboa and Reitz at Mombasah.
The banks of the winding creek were beautified with the malaguetta pepper, the ipomsea, the hibiscus, and a yellow flower growing upon an aquatic plant like a magnified water-cress. Animal life became somewhat less rare; we saw sandpipers, hawks, white and black fish-eagles, and long-legged water-hens, here supposed to give excellent sport. An embryo rapid, formed by a gneiss-band connecting the north bank with the islet, delayed us, and the rocks on the right showed pot-holes dug by the poling- staves; during the rains canoes from Boma avoid this place, and seek fuel down stream. After a total of two hours and a quarter we reached Banza Chisalla: it is a “small country,” in African parlance, a succursal of Boma proper, the Banza on the hills beyond the reedy, grassy plain. The site is charming–a flat palm-orchard backed by an amphitheatre of high-rolling ground, and the majestic stream approaches it through a gate, whose right staple is the tall Chisalla, and whose left is a rocky islet with outlying needles.
We ascended the river-bank, greeted by the usual accidents of an African reception; the men shouted, the women rushed screaming under cover, and the children stood howling at the horrible sight. A few paces placed us at the “palace,” a heap of huts, surrounded by an old reed-fence. The audience-room was a trifle larger than usual, with low shady eaves, a half-flying roof, and a pair of doorways for the dangerous but indispensable draught; a veteran sofa and a few rickety chairs composed the furniture, and the throne was known by its boarded seat, which would have been useful in taking a “lamp-bath.”
Presently entered the “Rei dos Reis,” Nessalla: the old man, whose appearance argued prosperity, was en grande tenue, the State costume of Tuckey’s, not of Merolla’s day. The crown was the usual “berretta” (night-cap) of open work; the sceptre, a drum-major’s staff; the robes, a “parochial” beadle’s coat of scarlet cloth, edged with tinsel gold lace. His neck was adorned with hair circlets of elephants’ tails, strung with coral and beads; the effect, to compare black with white, was that of Beau Brummell’s far-famed waterfall tie, and the head seemed supported as if on a narrow-rimmed “charger.” The only other ornament was a broad silver ring welded round the ankle, and drawing attention to a foot which, all things considered, was small and well shaped.
Some of the chiefs had copper rings of home manufacture, with neatly cut raised figures. The king held in his right hand an article which at first puzzled us–a foot’s length of split reed, with the bulbous root attached. He may not, like his vassals, point with the finger, and without pointing an African can hardly give an order. Moreover, the Sangálávú or Malaguetta pepper (Amomum granum Paradisi), fresh or old, is not only a toothstick, but a fetish of superior power when carried on journeys. Professor Smith writes “Sangala woo,” and tells us that it was always kept fresh in the house, to be rolled in the hands when invoking the Fetish during war-time; moreover, it was chewed to be spat at the enemy. Possibly he confuses it with the use as a tooth-stick, the article which Asia and Africa prefer to the unclean hog’s- bristle brush of Europe.
On the left of the throne sat the Nchinu, or “second king,” attired in a footman’s livery of olive-coloured cloth, white-worn at the seams, and gleaming with plated buttons, upon which was the ex-owner’s crest–a cubit arm.
The stranger in Africa marvels why men, who, as Dahome shows, can affect a tasteful simplicity, will make themselves such “guys.” When looking at these caricatures, he is tempted to read (literally) learned Montesquieu, “It is hardly to be believed that God, who is a wise being, should place a soul, especially a good soul, in such a black, ugly body,” and to consider the few exceptions as mere “sporting plants.” But the negro combines with inordinate love of finery the true savage taste–an imitative nature,–and where he cannot copy the Asiatic he must ape the European; only in the former pursuit he rises above, in the latter he sinks below his own proper standard. Similarly, as a convert, he is ennobled by El Islam; in rare cases, which may be counted upon the fingers, he is civilized by Christianity; but, as a rule, the latter benefits him so far only as it abolishes the barbarous and murderous rites of Paganism.
But there is also a sound mundane reason which causes the African “king” to pose in these cast-off borrowed plumes. Contrast with his three-quarter nude subjects gives him a name; the name commands respect; respect increases “dash;” and dash means dollars. For his brain, dense and dead enough to resist education, is ever alive and alert to his own interest; whilst the concentration of its small powers prevails against those who, in all other points, are notably his superiors. The whole of negro Africa teaches this lesson. “The Ethiopians,” says Father Merolla, “are not so dull and stupid as is commonly imagined, but rather more subtle and cunning than ordinary;” and he adds an instance of far-sighted treachery, which would not have been despicable even in a Hindoo.
A desultory palaver “came up;” the soul of the meeting not being present. M. Pissot explained my wish to “take walk and make book,” carefully insisting upon the fact that I came to spend, not to gain money. The grizzled senior’s face, before crumpled like a “wet cloak ill laid up,” expanded at these last words, and with a grunt, which plainly meant “by’ m’ by,” he rose, and retired to drink– a call of nature which the decencies of barbarous dignity require to be answered in private. He returned accompanied by his nephew, Manbuku Prata (pronounced Pelata), the “Silver Chief Officer,” as we might say, Golden Ball. The title is vulgarly written Mambuco; the Abbé Proyart prefers Ma-nboukou, or “prince who is below the Makaia in dignity.” The native name of this third personage was Gidifuku. It was a gorgeous dignitary: from the poll of his night-cap protruded a dozen bristles of elephant’s tail hair, to which a terminal coral gave the graceful curve of a pintado’s crest, and along his ears, like the flaps of a travelling casquette, hung two dingy little mirrors of talc from Cacongo, set in clumsy frames of ruddled wood. Masses of coral encircled his neck, and the full-dress naval uniform of a French officer, with epaulettes of stupendous size, exposed a zebra’d guernsey of equivocal purity. A long black staff, studded with broad-headed brass beads, served to clear the room of the lieges, who returned as fast as they were turned out–the baton was evidently not intended to be used seriously.
But the Manbuku Prata is not a mere “Punch in a puppet show.” His face expresses more intelligence and resolution than usual, and his Portuguese is not the vile article of the common trader. He means business. When other chiefs send their “sons,” that is their slaves, to fight, he leads them in person–venite, non ite. The French “Emigration Libre” put 30,000 dollars into his pocket, and he still hopes against hope to ship many a cargo for the Banana factory. He has some 300 armed serviles at Chinímí and Lámbá, two villages perched like condors’ nests upon hills commanding the river’s northern bank, and, despite the present dearth of “business,” he still owns some 100,000 francs in cloth and beads, rum and gunpowder.
As the “Silver Minister” took his seat upon the ground before the king, all removed their caps with a simultaneous grunt and performed the “Sákilá” or batta-palmas; this hand-clapping must be repeated whenever the simplest action is begun or ended by king or chief. Monteiro and Gamitto (pp. 101 et seg.) refer to the practice everywhere on the line of country which they visited: there it seems to be even a more ceremonious affair than in the Congo. The claps were successively less till they were hardly audible; after a pause five or six were given, and the last two or three were in hurried time, the while without pronouncing a word. The palaver now opened steadily with a drink: a bottle of trade “fizz” was produced for the white man, and rum for his black congeners; then the compliment of healths went all round. After this we fell to work at business. By dint of abundant wrangling and with an immense display of suspicion, natural under the circumstances, it was arranged that the king should forward me in a couple of his own canoes to Banza Nokki, the end of river navigation, as we were told, and falsely told; in my turn I was to pay goods valued about £6, at least three times the usual tariff. They consisted of fourteen red caps, as many “sashes,” and fifty-two fathoms of cloth for the crew; ten Peças de lei or Chiloes for each interpreter, and two pieces for the canoes. I should have given four fathoms for each man and the same for each boat. The final scene was most gratifying to the African mind: I solemnly invested old Nessala with the grand cloak which covered his other finery; grinning in the ecstasy of vanity, he allowed his subjects to turn him round and round, as one would a lay figure, yet with profound respect, and, lastly, he retired to charm his wives.
This part of the negotiations ended with presenting some “satin stripe” and rum to the Nchinu and Manbuku Prata, and with shaking hands–a dangerous operation. The people are cleanly; they wash when rising, and before as well as after every meal; they are always bathing, yet from prince to pauper, from baby to grey beard, they are affected with a psora known by its Portuguese name, “sarnas.” The Congo “fiddle” appears first between the articulations of the fingers, and bleaches the hands and wrists as if it were leprosy. Yet I did not see a single case of true lepra Arabum, or its modifications, the huge Barbadoes leg (elephantiasis), and the sarcoma scrotale and sarcocele of Zanzibar and East Africa. From the extremities the gale extends over the body, especially the shins, and the people, who appear in the perpetual practice of scalpturigo, attribute it to the immoderate use of palm wine. I observed, however, that Europeans, in the river, who avoid the liquor, are hardly ever free from this foul blood-poison, and a jar of sulphur mixture is a common article upon the table. Hydrocele is not unfrequent, but hardly so general as in the Eastern Island; one manner of white man, a half caste from Macáo, was suffering with serpigo, and boasted of it.
All predicted to me a similar fate from the “botch of Congo,” but happily I escaped. Indeed, throughout the West African Coast, travellers risk “craw-craw,” a foul form of the disease, seen on board the African steamers. Kru-men touching the rails of the companion ladders, have communicated it to passengers, and these to their wives and families.
The town was neat and clean as the people. The houses were built upon raised platforms, and in the little fenced fields the Cajanus Indicus vetch was conspicuous. In Hindostani it is called Thur, or Doll-plant, by the Eastern Arab Turiyan, in Kisawahili Mbarazi, in Angola voando (Merolla’s Ouuanda), and in the Brazil Guandu.[FN#9] The people had lost their fear, and brought their exomphalous little children, who resembled salmon fry in the matter of umbilical vesicles, to be patted by the white man; a process which caused violent screams and in some cases nearly induced convulsions– the mothers seemed to enjoy the horror displayed by their hopefuls. There is little beauty amongst the women, and settled Europeans prefer Cabinda girls. The latter have perhaps the most wiry and wig-like hair on the whole West African coast, where all hair is more or less wiry and wig- like. Cloth was less abundant in the village than a smear of red; the bosom even after marriage was unveiled, and the rule of fashion was shown by binding it tightly down. The rich wore armlets and leglets of staircase rods, brass and copper, like the metal gaiters and gauntlets of the Gaboon River. The only remarkable object was the Quesango, a wooden effigy of a man placed in the middle of the settlement: Battel mentions it amongst the “Gagas or Guides,” and Barbot terms it “Likoku Mokisi.” Three faint hurrahs, a feeble African echo of England like the “hoch!” of Vienna, and the discharge of a four- pounder were our parting honours.
We returned viâ the gateway between the two islets. On the south- eastern flank of Chisalla is a dwarf precipice called Mbondo la Zumba and, according to the interpreters, it is the Lovers’ Leap of Tuckey. But its office must not be confounded with that attributed to the sinister-looking scaur of Leucadia; here the erring wives of the Kings of Boma and their paramours found a Bosphorus. The Commander of the First Congo Expedition applies the name to a hanging rock on the northern shore, about eighteen miles higher up stream. A portentous current soon swept us past Père la Chaise, and shortly after noon we were comfortably at breakfast with Sr. Pereira.
During the last night we had been kept awake by the drumming and fifing, singing and shouting, weeping and howling, pulling at accordions and striking the monotonous Shingungo. Merolla names this cymbal Longa, and describes it justly as two iron bells joined by an arched bar: I found it upon the Tanganyika Lake, and suffered severely from its monotonous horrors. Monteiro and Gamitto (p. 232) give an illustration of what is known in the Cazembe’s country as “Gomati:” The Mchua or gong-gong of Ashanti has a wooden handle connecting the cones. Our palhabote had brought up the chief Mashel’s bier, and to-day we have the satisfaction of seeing it landed. A kind of palanquin, covered with crimson cloth and tinsel gold like a Bombay “Tabút,” it had three horns or prominences, two capped with empty black bottles, and the central bearing the deceased’s helmet; it was a fancy article, which might have fitted him of Gath, with a terrific plume and the spoils of three horses in the sanguine hues of war. Although eight feet long by five broad, the coffin was said to be quite full. The immense respect which the Congoese bear to their rulers, dead as well as alive, prevented my verifying the accounts of the slave dealers. I knew that the chief who had died at Kinsembo, had been dried on a bamboo scaffolding over a slow fire, and lay in state for some weeks in flannel stockings and a bale of baize, but these regions abound in local variations of custom. Some declared, as we find in Proyart, that the corpse had been mummified by the rude process of smoking; others that it had been exposed for some days to the open air, the relatives sitting round to keep off the flies till preliminarily bandaged. According to Barbot (iii. 23), the people of Fetu on the Gold Coast and the men of Benin used to toast the corpse on a wooden gridiron; and the Vei tribe, like the Congoese, still fumigate their dead bodies till they become like dried hams. This rude form of the Egyptian rite is known to East as well as to West Africa: Kimera, late King of Uganda, was placed upon a board covering the mouth of a huge earthern pot heated from below.
Instances are known of bodies in the Congo region remaining a year or two above ground till the requisite quantity of fine stuffs has been procured–the larger the roll the greater the dignity, and sometimes the hut must be pulled down before it can be removed. Here, as on the Gold Coast, we find the Jewish practice recorded by Josephus of converting the tomb into a treasury; in the case of Mashel some £600 in gold and silver, besides cloth, beads, and ornaments, shared, they say, his fate. The missionaries vainly fought against these customs, which are evidently of sentimental origin–
“Now bring the last sad gifts, with these The last lament be said;
Let all that pleased and still may please Be buried with the dead.”
The bier was borne by slaves, as the head men would not even look at it; at times the carriers circled round, as if to deprecate the idea that they were hurrying it to its bourne. The grave was a pit fifteen to twenty feet deep, cut like a well, covered with stones to keep out wild beasts, and planted round with the cylindrical euphorbia by way of immortelles.
I could not find out if the Congoese still practise the vivi- sepulture so common on the Western Coast–the “infernal sacrifices of man’s flesh to the memory of relatives and ancestors,” as the old missioners energetically expressed themselves. According to Battel, the “Giaghi” corpse was seated as if alive in a vault; in this “infernal and noisome dungeon” were placed two wives with their arms broken, and thus there was no danger of the Zumbi or ghost killing men by reapparition. When the king of Old Calabar died, a huge hole was dug, with an off chamber for two sofas, one of which supported the dressed and ornamented corpse. Personal attendants, such as the umbrella, sword, and snuff-box bearers, holding the insignia of their offices, together with sundry virgins, were either slaughtered or thrown in alive, a rude in pace. Quantities of food and trade goods, especially coppers, were heaped up; after which the pit was filled and the ground was levelled. The less wealthy sort of “gentlemen” here are placed in smaller graves near the villages; and the slaves are still “buried with the burial of an ass,”– cast forth into the bush.
Yet, by way of showing themselves kind to the dead, the Congoese are “commonly very cruel to the living.” Lately, a chief, called from his wealth, “Chico de Ouro” (Golden Frank) died somewhat suddenly. The Nganga or medicine man who, on such occasions, here as elsewhere, has the jus vitæ et necis, was called in; he charged one of the sons with parricide by witchcraft, and the youth was at once pierced by the bayonets of his brothers. “Golden Frank” was peculiar in his ways. He used to entertain the factors at dinner, imitating them from soup to cheese; his only objections were to tea, and to drinking toasts out of anything but the pet skull of an enemy: it was afterwards placed upon his grave.
Boma is no longer “the emporium of the Congo Empire,” if it ever did deserve that title. Like Porto da Lenha, it is kept up by the hopes of seeing better days, which are not doomed to dawn. Even at the time of my visit some 400 to 500 negroes were under guard in a deserted factory, and, whilst we were visiting Nessalla, they were marched down to bathe. When I returned from the cataracts, the barracoon contained only fifty or sixty, the rest having been shunted off to some unguarded point. At a day’s notice a thousand, and within a week 3,000 head could be procured from the adjoining settlements, where the chattels are kept at work. As in Tuckey’s day, “those exported are either captives in war or condemned criminals.” During the Free Emigration as much as $80 have been paid per man, a large sum for “Congoes:” whilst a cargo of 500 “Minas” (Guinea negroes) loses at most 20 per cent., these less hardy gangs seldom escape without at least double the deaths by dysentery or some other epidemic. Now they are freely offered for $10 to $20, but there are no buyers; the highest bid of which I heard was $100 for a house-“help.”
The slave-traders in the Congo look upon their employment as did the contrabandist in the golden days of smuggling; the “free sailor” whom Marryatt depicts, a law-breaker, yet not less a very pleasant, companionable fellow. The unhappy differences between the late British Commissioner for Loanda and the Judge of the mixed Court, Sr. José Julio Rodriguez, who followed his enemy to the grave on April 12, 1863, rendered São Paulo anything but a pleasant place to an English resident; but the rancour had not extended to the Congo, and, so far from showing chagrin, the agents declared that without the “coffin squadron,” negroes would have been a mere drug in the market. The only déplaisir is that which I had already found in a Gaboon factory, the excessive prevalence of petty pilfering. The Moleques or house-boys steal like magpies, even what is utterly useless to them; these young clerks of St. Nicholas will scream and writhe, and confess and beg pardon under the lash, and repeat the offence within the hour: as they are born serviles, we cannot explain the habit by Homer’s,
“Jove fixed it certain that whatever day Makes man a slave takes half his worth away.”
One of our watches was found in the pocket of a noble interpreter, who, unabashed, declared that he placed it there for fear of its being injured; and the traders are constantly compelled to call in the Fetishman for the protection of their stores against the prigging chiefs. Yet in Tuckey’s time there was only one thief at Boma, a boy who stole a knife, confessed, and restored it. During a month’s residence amongst the pagans of the interior, where the houses swarmed with serviles, and where my outfit, which was never locked up, must have represented a plate-chest in England, not the smallest article was “found missing,” nor could anything be touched except by collusion with the head man.
Chapter IX.
Up the Congo to Banza Nokki.
For a wonder the canoes came in time, and, despite their mat- sails, we could not complain of them. There were twelve paddlers two for the stem, and two for the stern of each craft, under a couple of interpreters, Jotakwassi and Nchama-Chamvu, who were habited in European frock-coats of broadcloth, and in native terminations mostly “buff.” Our excellent host bade us a kindly adieu, with many auguries of success–during the last night the frogs had made a noise in the house. Briefly, we set out on September 6th.
In the forty-five miles between Boma, where we enter the true trough of the Congo, and the landing-place of Banza Nokki below the cataracts, there are half-a-dozen reaches, the shortest of three, the longest of fifteen miles. They are not straight, as upon the chart; the windings of the bed exclude direct vision, and the succession of points and bays suggest, like parts of the Rhine, a series of mountain-tarns. The banks show the high-water level in a low shelf, a ribbon of green, backed by high rolling hills, rounded and stony, with grass dry at this season; the formation is primitive, and the material of the lower bed has been held to “prove the probability that the mountains of Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro, and other adjacent parts of South America, were primevally connected with the opposite chains, that traverse the plains of Congo and Loango.” In parts the rocks fall bluff into the river, and here the current rushes past like a mill-race without a shadow of backwater. The heights are intersected by gullies and ravines, of which I counted sixty-nine on the right and fifty-four on the left bank; many of them are well wooded, and others are fronted by plains of the reeds and flags, which manufacture floating islands, cast loose, like those of the Niger, about the end of July by the “Malka” rains. About a dozen contained running water: Captain Tuckey did not see one that would turn a mill in August and September; but in November and December all these fiumaras will discharge torrents.
The breadth of the entroughed bed varies from 700 yards to two miles where it most dispreads itself. The current increases from the normal three to five knots in rare places; the surface loses the glassiness of the lower section, and at once shows the boiling and swirling which will be noticed near the cataracts. The shores are often foul, but the midway is mostly clear, and, where sunken rocks are, they are shown by whirlpools. The flow of the tide, or rather the damming up of the lower waters between Porto da Lenha and the mouth, causes a daily rise, which we found to measure about a foot; thus it assists in forming a treble current, the rapid down-flow in the Thalweg being subtended by a strong backwater on either side carrying a considerable portion in a retrograde direction, and showing a sensible reflux; this will continue as far as the rapids. In the Amazonas the tides are felt a hundred leagues from the mouth; and, whilst the stream moves seawards, the level of the water rises, proving an evident under-current. Mr. Bates has detected the influence of oceanic tides at a point on the Tapajos, 530 miles distant from its mouth, such is the amazing flatness of the country’s profile: here we find the reverse.
The riverine trough acts as wind-conductor to a strong and even violent sea-breeze; on the lower section it begins as a ground- current–if the “bull” be allowed–a thin horizontal stratum near the water, it gradually curves and slides upwards as it meets the mountain flanks, forming an inverted arch, and extending some 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the summits. At this season it is a late riser, often appearing about 3 P.M., and sometimes its strength is not exhausted before midnight. The brown water, grass-sheeted at the sides, conceals the bright yellow sand of the bed; when placed in a tumbler it looks clear and colourless, and the taste is perfectly sweet–brackishness does not extend far above Porto da Lenha. Yet at Boma the residents prefer a spring near the factories, and attribute dysentery to the use of river-water. According to Mr. George Maxwell, the supply of the lower bed has the quality of rotting cables, and the same peculiarity was attributed to the Tanganyika.
Of late years no ship has ventured above Boma, and boats have ascended with some difficulty, owing to the “buffing stream.” Yet there is no reason why the waters should not be navigated, as proposed in 1816, by small steamers of good power, and the strong sea-breeze would greatly facilitate the passage. In older and more enterprising days merchant-schooners were run high up the Zaire. The master of a vessel stated to Tuckey that he “had been several voyages up to the distance of 140 miles from the mouth” without finding any difficulty.
Our course passed by Banza Chisalla where, as we had paid double, there was a vain attempt to make us pay treble. Travelling up the south-eastern reach, we passed a triangular insulated rock off the southern bank, and then the “diabolitos” outlying Point Kilu, opposite Banza Vinda on the other side. A second reach winding to the north-east showed on the right Makula (Annan) River, and a little further Munga-Mungwa (Woodhouslee); between them is the terminus of the São Salvador road. On the northern bank where the hills now become rounded mountains, 1,500 feet above the stream, perches Chinimi the village of Manbuku Prata, who expects canoes here to await his orders; and who was sorely offended because I passed down without landing. The next feature of the chart, Matádi “Memcandi,” is a rocky point, not an island. Turning a projection, Point Makula (Clough Corner), we entered No. 3, elbow bending southeast; on its concave northern side appeared the settlement Vinda la Nzádi. This is the Vinda le Zally of Tuckey; on the chart Veinde len Zally, and according to others Vinda de Nzadi, or village of the Zaire River. It is probably the “Benda” of the Introduction (p. xxxiv.); and as b and v sound alike in Fiote, Cabinda, Cabenda or Kabendah is evidently Ca-vinda–great village.
Our terminus that day was the usual resting-place of travellers, “Mfumba” behind Nkumungu (Point) Kaziwa, a mass of granitoid slabs, with a single tree for landmark. Opposite us was Sandi ya Nzondo, which others call Sanga ya Ngondo; in the chart this one- tree island is written “Catlo Zonda,” it is the first of two similar formations. Oscar Rock, its western (down stream) neighbour, had shared the fate of “Soonga lem Paccula,” (Zunga chya Makula?) a stone placed in the map north-east of the Makula or Annan debouchure; both were invisible, denoted only by swirls in the water. We had taken seven hours to cover what we easily ran down in two, and we slept comfortably with groan of rock and roar of stream for lullaby.
September 7.–Our course now lay uninterruptedly along the left bank, where the scenery became yet more Rhine-like, in natural basins, reaches on the chart: here and there rugged uprocks passably simulated ruined castles. The dwarf bays of yellow sand were girt by a goodly vegetation, the palm and the calabash only telling us that we were in Africa.
Our men pointed to the work of a Nguvu or hippopotamus, which they say sometimes attacks canoes; they believe with Tuckey that the river-horses cause irregularity of soundings by assembling and trampling deep holes in the bed; but the Ngadi is a proof that they do not, as M. du Chaillu supposes, exclusively affect streams with shoals and shallows. The jacaré (crocodile) is known especially to avoid the points where the current sweeps swiftly past, yet no one will hang his hand over the canoe into the water: we did not see any of these wretches, but at Boma Coxswain Deane observed one about sixteen feet long.
Curls of smoke arose from the mountain-walls of the trough, showing that the bush was being burned; and spired up from a grassy palm-dotted plain, between two rocky promontories on the left bank, the site of the Chacha or Wembo village: in a gap of the herbage stood half-finished canoes, and a man was bobbing with rod, line, and float. After an hour’s paddling we halted for breakfast under “Alecto Rock,” a sheer bluff of reddish schist, 150 feet high; here a white trident, inverted and placed ten feet above the water, showed signs of H.M. Ship “Alecto,” (late) Captain Hunt, whose boat passed up in 1855. The people call it Chimbongolo. The river is now three quarters of a mile wide, and the charming cove shows the brightest of sands and the densest of vegetation waving in the cool land-wind.
Resuming our way at 9 P.M., we passed on the left “Scylla Rocks,” then a wash, and beyond them four high and tree-clad heads off the right bank. Three are islets, the Zunga chya Gnombe–of the bull–formed by a narrow arm passing round them to the north: other natives called them Zunga chya Umbinda, but all seem to differ. These are the Gombac Islands of the chart, Hall Island being the easternmost, and the northern passage between the three horns and the main is called by us “Gombac Creek.” Half an hour beyond was a mass of villages, in a large, grassy low-land of the left bank, girt by mountains higher than those down stream. Some outlying huts were called by the interpreters Suko Nkongo, and formed the “beach town” of large interior settlements, Suko do Wembo and Mbinda. Others said Lasugu or Sugo Nkongo, the Sooka Congo of the charts: others again for “Mbinda” proposed “Mpeso Birimba.” This is probably the place where according to the mail of November, 73, diamonds were found, and having been submitted to “Dr. Basham (Dr. Bastian before mentioned), Director of the Museum of Berlin,” were pronounced to be of very fine water. It is possible that the sandstone may afford precious stones like the itacolumite of the Brazil (“Highlands of the Brazil,” i. 380), but the whole affair proved a hoax. In mid-stream rose No. 2, “One-Tree Island,” Zunga chya Nlemba or Shika chya Nzondo; in Tuckey it is called Boola Beca or Blemba (the husband) Rock; the old ficus dying at the head, was based upon a pedestal which appeared groin-shaped from the east. Here the mirage was very distinct, and the canoes seemed to fly, not to swim–
“As when far out of sea a fleet descried, Hangs in the clouds.”
The northern bank shows a stony projection called by Maxwell “Fiddler’s Elbow;” it leads to the fourth reach, the second of the north-eastern series; and the breadth of the stream, once more a mountain lake, cannot be less than two miles.
I foresaw trouble in passing these settlements. Presently a snake-like war canoe with hawser-holes like eyes, crept out from the southern shore; a second fully manned lay in reserve, lurking along the land, and armed men crowned the rocks jutting into the stream. We were accosted by the first craft, in which upon the central place of honour sat Mpeso Birimbá, a petty chief of Suko Nkongo; a pert rascal of the French factory, habited in a red cap, a green velvet waistcoat, and a hammock-shaped tippet of pine-apple fibre; his sword was a short Sollingen blade. The visit had the sole object of mulcting me in rum and cloth, and my only wish was naturally to expend as little as possible in mere preliminaries. The name of Manbuku Prata was duly thrown at him with but little effect: these demands are never resisted by the slave-dealers. After much noise and cries of “Mwendi” (miser, skin-flint) on the part of the myrmidons, I was allowed to proceed, having given up a cloth twenty-four yards long, and I felt really grateful to the “trade” which had improved off all the other riverine settlements. Beyond this point we saw nothing but their distant smokes.
Before the second north-eastern reach, the interpreters exclaimed “Yellala falla”–“the cataract is speaking,” and we could distinctly hear the cheering roar. The stream now assumed the aspect of Niagara below the Falls, and the circular eddies boiling up from below, and showing distinct convexity, suggested the dangerous “wells” of the northern seas. Passing the “Three Weird Sisters,” unimportant rocks off, the right bank, we entered upon the remarkably long stretch, extending upwards of five miles, and, from its predominating growth, we proposed to call it “Palmyra Reach.” The immediate river banks were clad with sedge, and the broad leaves of the nymphæa, a plant like the calamus of Asia, but here used only as a toothpick, began to oust the rushy and flaggy growth of the lower bed. The pink balls of the spinous mimosa, and bright flowers, especially the convolvulus and ipomaea, illuminated the dull green. The grassy land at the foot of the mountains was a mere edging, faced by outlying rocks, and we were shown the site of a village long ago destroyed.
The Nteba, or palmyra nobilis, mixed here and there with a glorious tamarind, bombax or calabash, forms a thin forest along the reach, and rarely appears upon the upper hills, where we should expect it. The people use both fruit and wine, preferring, however, the liquor of the Ebah (oil palm-tree), and the autumnal fires can hardly affect so sturdy a growth. The other trees are the mfuma, cotton-tree or bombax (Pentandria truncospinoso, Smith), much valued as a canoe: Merolla uses Mafuma, a plural form, and speaks of its “wonderful fine wool.” The wild figs show glorious stature, a truly noble growth, whose parents were sun and water.
The birds were lank black clivers (Plotus), exceedingly wild; the African roller (Coracias); halcyons of several species, especially a white and black kingfisher, nimble and comely; many swallows, horn-bills, and wild pigeons which made the bush resound; ardeine birds, especially a heron, like the large Indian “kullum;” kites, crows, “whip-poor-wills,” and a fine haliaetus, which flies high and settles upon the loftiest branches. One of these eagles was shot, after a gorge of the electric fish here common; its coat was black and white, and the eyes yellow, with dark pupils. Various lizards ran over the rocks; and we failed to secure a water-snake, the only specimen seen on the whole trip.
About noon we struggled past Point Masalla, our “Diamond Rock,” a reef ending in a triangular block, towering abruptly, and showing by drift-wood a flood-line now twelve feet high. There are several of these “bench-marks;” and the people declare that after every few years an unusual freshet takes place. Here the current impinges directly upon the rocks, making a strong eddy. “They die each time,” said the interpreters, as the canoemen, with loud shouts of “Vai ou nao Vai? Vai sempre! Vai direito, ya mondele!” and “Arister,” a mariner’s word, after failing to force the way, tumbled overboard, with a hawser of lliana to act as tow-line. “Vai direito,” according to Father Ciprani, also applies to a “wonderful bird, whose song consists in these plain words;” and “Mondele” is synonymous with the Utangáni of the Gaboon and the East African Muzungu, a white man.
This bend was in former days the terminus of canoe travel up stream. Grisly tales of mishap are told; and even now a musketry salute is fired when boats pass without accident. Beyond Diamond Rock is a well-wooded, stony cove, “Salan Kunkati:” Captain Tuckey makes this the name of the Diamond Rock, and translates it “the strong feather.” Quartz, before in lines and bands, now appears in masses: the “Coal Rock,” which the chart places near Insála (Bechope Point) on the northern bank, was probably submerged. High cliffs towered above us, and fragments which must have weighed twenty tons had slipped into the water; one of them bore an adansonia, growing head downwards.
The next feature was Npunga Bay, low and leek-green, between the blue-brown water, here some 700 yards broad, and the yellow sun- burnt trough-sides. A little further on, at 2 P.M., the canoe-men halted beyond a sandy point with two large “Bondeiro” trees, and declared their part of the bargain to have been fulfilled. “Bonderro” is a corruption of the Lusitanianized imbundeiro, the calabash, or adansonia (digitata?): the other baobab is called nkondo, probably the Aliconda and Elicandy of Battel and old travellers, who describe the water-tanks hollowed in its huge trunk, and the cloth made from the bark fibre. Thus the “Condo Sonio” of the Chart should be “Nkondo Sonho,” the latter a proper name. It is seldom that we find trees turned to all the uses of which they are capable: the Congo people despise the nutritious and slightly laxative flour of the “monkey bread,” and the young leaves are not used as pickles; the bast is not valued for cloth and ropes, nor are the boles cut into cisterns.
As will be seen, we ought to have insisted upon being paddled to Kala cliff and bight, the Mayumba Bay of the Chart, where the bed trends west-east, and shows the lowest rapids: the First Congo Expedition went up even higher. At Nkongo ka Lunga, the point marked by two calabashes, we inquired for the Nokki Congo, of which we had heard at Chisalla, and which still exists upon the chart,–districts and villages being often confounded. All laughed, and declared that the “port-town” had long been sold off, the same had been the case, even in Tuckey’s day, with the next settlement, “Condo Sonio” (the Baobab of Sonho), formerly the great up-stream mart, where the slave-traders transacted their business. All the population was now transferred inland and, like our predecessors, we were promised a two hours’ climb over the rough, steep highland which lay in front. Then we understood that “Nokki” was the name of a canton, not of a settlement. Its south-eastern limits may have contained the “City of Norchie, the best situated of any place hitherto seen in Ethiopia,” where Father Merolla (p. 280) baptized 126 souls,–and this is rendered probable by the crucifixes and coleworts which were found by the First Congo Expedition.
Here, then, at 97.50 miles from the sea, ended our clan’s cruize. We could only disembark upon the clean sand, surrounded by cool shade and blocks of gneiss, the favourite halting-place, as the husks of ground-nuts show. Nchama Chamvu was at once sent off with a present of gin and a verbal report of arrival to Nessudikira Nchinu, (King), of Banza Nkaye, whilst we made ready for a night’s lodging à la belle étoile. The mesenger returned, bringing a goat, and the good news that porters would be sent early next morning. We slept well in the cool and dewless air, with little trouble from mosquitoes. The voice of the cataract in its “sublime same-soundingness” alone broke the silence, and the scenery suggested to us, as to the first Britishers, that we might be bivouacking among the “blue misty hills of Morven.”
September 8.–Shortly after sunrise appeared Gidi Mavunga, father to the “king,” accompanied by five “princes,” in the usual black coats, and some forty slaves, armed with pistols, blunderbusses, and guns of French and Yankee build. Our visitors wore the official berretta, European shirts, that contrasted with coral necklaces and rings of zinc, brass, and copper, and handsome waistcoats, fronted by the well-tanned spoil of some “bush” animal, generally a wild cat, hanging like a Scotch sporran–this is and has long been the distinctive sign of a “gentleman.” According to John Barbot (Supplement, Churchill, v. 471), all men in Loango were bound to wear a furskin over their clothes, viz., of an otter, a tame cat, or a cat-o’-mountain; a “great wood or wild cat, or an angali (civet-cat). Besides which, they had very fine speckled spelts, called enkeny,’ which might be worn only by the king and his peculiar favourites.”
On the great man’s mat was placed a large silver-handled dagger, shaped somewhat like a fish-slicer; and the handsome hammocks of bright-dyed cottons brought down for our use shamed our humble ship’s canvas. The visitors showed all that African câlinerie, which, as fatal experience told me, would vanish for ever, changing velvet paw to armed claws, at the first question of cloth or rum. Meanwhile, we had only to visit their village “upon the head of Gidi Mavunga.”
About 9 A.M. we attacked a true Via Dolorosa, the normal road of the Lower Congo. The steep ascent of dry, clayey soil was strewed with schist and resplendent silvery gneiss; quartz appeared in every variety, crystallized and amorphous, transparent white, opaque, dusky, and rusty. Tuckey’s mica slate appears to be mostly schist or gneiss: I saw only one piece of true slate which had been brought from the upper bed. Merolla’s talc is mostly mica.
Followed an equally rough descent to a water set in fetid mud, its iridescence declaring the presence of iron; oozing out of the ground, it discharges during rains into the river: and, throughout the dry season, it keeps its little valley green with trees and shrubs. I observed what appeared to be the Esere or Calabar bean (Physostigma venenosum), whose hairy pod is very distasteful to the travelling skin: it was a “Mucuna urens.”
Another scramble upon a highly inclined hogsback, where weather- worn brown-black granite, protruded bone-like from the clay flesh, placed us at the outlying village of Kinbembu, with its line of palms; here the aneroid showed 1,322 feet. After a short rest, the hammock men resumed work over a rough plateau: the rises were scattered with brush-wood, and the falls were choked with the richest vegetation. Every hill discharged its own rivulet bubbling over the rock, and the waters were mostly chalybeate.
Presently appeared a kind of barracoon, a large square of thick cane-work and thatch about eight feet high, the Fetish house of the “Jinkimba” or circumcised boys, who received us with unearthly yells. After a march of an hour and three quarters,’covering five indirect and three direct miles in a south-eastern rhumb, we reached Banza Nkaye, the royal village, where the sympiesometer showed 1430 feet. Our bearers yelled “Abububu!” showing that we had reached our destination, and the villagers answered with a cry of “Abía-a-a!” The entrance was triumphal: we left the river with a tail of fifty-six which had swelled to 150 ragged followers.
After a short delay we proceeded to the “palace,” which was distinguished from afar by a long projecting gable, forming a cool verandah. Descending some three hundred feet, we passed a familiar sight in Africa, where “arboribus suus horror inest.” A tree-trunk bore three pegged skulls somewhat white with age; eight years ago they were taken off certain wizards who had bewitched their enemies. A labyrinthine entrance of transparent cane-work served to prevent indecent haste, and presently we found ourselves in presence of the Mfumo, who of course takes the title of “Le Rei.” Nessudikira was a “blanc-bec,” aged twenty or twenty-one, who till lately had been a trading lad at Boma–now he must not look upon the sea. He appeared habited in the usual guy style: a gaudy fancy helmet, a white shirt with limp Byronic collar, a broad-cloth frock coat, a purple velvet gold-fringed loin-wrap: a theatrical dagger whose handle and sheath bore cut- glass emeralds and rubies, stuck in the waist-belt; brass anklets depended over naked feet, and the usual beadle’s cloak covered the whole. Truly a change for the worse since Tuckey’s day, when a “savage magnificence” showed itself in the display of lions’ and leopards’ skins; when no women were allowed to be present, and when the boys could only clap hands: now the verandah is surrounded by a squatting crowd and resounds with endless chatter and scream.
Nessudikira, whose eyes by way of grandeur never wandered from the floor, shook hands with us without rising from his chair, somewhat after the fashion of certain women in civilized society, who would be dignified, and who are not. His father, Gidi Mavunga, knelt before him on the ground, a mat being forbidden in the presence: he made the “batta-palmas” before he addressed his “filho de pistola,” as he called him, in opposition to filho de fazenda. The “king” had lately been crowned in virtue of his mother being a uterine sister of his predecessor. Here the goods and dignity of the father revert after death to his eldest maternal brother; to his eldest nephew, that is, the eldest son of the eldest uterine sister, and, all others failing, to the first born of the nearest maternal relative. This subjection of sire to son is, however, mainly ceremonious: in private life the king wears a cotton pagne, and his “governor” asserts his birth- right even by wigging royalty.
We disposed ourselves upon seamen’s chests covered with red baize, fronting the semi-circle of frock-coated “gentlemen” and half-naked dependants and slaves. Proceedings began with the “mata-bicho” de rigueur, the inevitable preliminary and conclusion of all life-business between birth and burial. The Congo traveller will hear “Nganna! mata bicho” (Master! kill the worm, i.e., give me a dram), till the words seem, like “Bakhshish” further east, to poison his ears. This excuse for a drink arose, or is said to have arisen, from some epidemic which could be cured only by spirits, and the same is the tradition in the New World (“Highlands of the Brazil,” i. chap. 38). Similarly the Fulas of the Windward coast, who as strict Moslem will not drink fermented liquors, hold a cup of rum to be the sovereignest thing in the world for taenia. The entozoon of course gives rise to a variety of stale and melancholy jokes about the early bird, the worm that dieth not, and so forth.
A greybeard of our gin was incontinently opened and a tumbler in a basin was filled to overflowing; even when buying ground-nuts, the measure must be heaped up. The glass was passed round to the “great gentlemen,” who drank it African fashion, expanding the cheeks, rinsing the mouth so that no portion of the gums may lose their share, and swallowing the draught with an affectedly wry face. The basin then went to the “little gentlemen” below the salt, they have the “vinum garrulum,” and they scrambled as well as screamed for a sup of the precious liquor. I need hardly quote Caliban and his proposed genuflections.
I had been warned by all the traders of the lower river that Banza Nokki would be to me the far-famed point of which it was said,
“Quern passar o Cabo de Nam
Ou tornará, ou n o,”
and prepared accordingly. Old Shimbal, the linguist, had declared that a year would be required by the suspicious “bush-men” to palaver over the knotty question of a stranger coming only to “make mukanda,” that is to see and describe the country. M. Pissot was forbidden by etiquette to recognize his old employé (honours change manners here as in Europe), yet he set about the work doughtily. My wishes were expounded, and every possible promise of hammocks and porters, guides and interpreters, was made by the hosts. The royal helmet was then removed, and a handsome burnous was drawn over the king’s shoulders, the hood covering the berretta in most grotesque guise. After which the commander and M. Pissot set out for the return march, leaving me with my factotum Selim and the youth Nchama Chamvu. To the question “Quid muliere levius?” the scandalous Latin writer answers “Nihil,” for which I would suggest “Niger.” At the supreme moment the interpreter, who had been deaf to the charmer’s voice (offering fifty dollars) for the last three days, succumbed to the “truant fever.” He knew something of Portuguese; and, having been employed by the French factory, he had scoured the land far and wide in search of “emigrants.” He began well; cooked a fowl, boiled some eggs, and made tea; after which he cleared out a hut that was declared très logeable, and found a native couch resembling the Egyptian kafas.
We slept in a new climate: at night the sky was misty, and the mercury fell to 60° (F.). There was a dead silence; neither beast nor bird nor sound of water was heard amongst the hills; only at times high winds in gusts swept over the highlands with a bullying noise, and disappeared, leaving everything still as the grave. I felt once more “at home in the wilderness”–such, indeed, it appeared after Boma, where the cockney-taint yet lingered.
Chapter X.
Notes on the Nzadi or Congo River.
And first, touching the name of this noble and mysterious stream. Diogo Cam, the discoverer in 1485, called it River of Congo, Martin von Behaim Rio de Padrao, and De Barros “Rio Zaire.” The Portuguese discoveries utilized by Dapper thus corrupted to the sonorous Zaïre, the barbarous Nzadi applied by the natives to the lower bed. The next process was that of finding a meaning. Philippo Pigafetta of Vicenza,[FN#10] translated Zaïre by “so, cioè Sapio in Latino;” hence Sandoval[FN#11] made it signify “Rio de intendimiento,” of understanding. Merolla duly records the contrary. “The King of Portugal, Dom John II., having sent a fleet under D. Diego Cam to make discoveries in this Southern Coast of Africa, that admiral guessed at the nearness of the land by nothing so much as by the complexion of the waters of the Zaire; and, putting into it, he asked of the negroes what river and country that was, who not understanding him answered Zevoco,’ which in the Congolan tongue is as much as to say I cannot tell;’ from whence the word being corrupted, it has since been called Zairo.”
D’Anville (1749), with whom critical African geography began, records “Barbela,” a southern influent, perhaps mythical, named by his predecessors, and still retained in our maps: it is the Verbele of Pigafetta and the Barbele of Linschoten, who make it issue either from the western lake-reservoir of the Nile, or from the “Aquilunda” water, a name variously derived from O-Calunga, the sea (?), or from A-Kilunda, of Kilunda (?) The industrious compiler, James Barbot (1700), mentions the “Umbre,” the modern Wambre, rising in the northern mountains or, according to P. Labat, in a lake: Dapper (1676), who so greatly improved the outline of Africa, had already derived with De Barros the “Rio Zaïre” from a central reservoir “Zaïre,” whose island, the Zembre, afterwards became the Vambere, Wambre, and Zambere, now identified through the Zambeze with the Maravi, Nyassa or Kilwa water. The second or northernmost branch is the Bancora of modern maps, the Brankare of Pigafetta, and the Bancari of Cavazzi; it flows from the same mountain as the Umbre, and Duarte Lopez (1560) causes it to mingle with the Zaire on the eastern borders of Pango, at the foot of the Sierra del Crystal. In certain modern maps the Bankare fork is called “Lekure,”and is made to receive the “Bambaye.” The Barbela again anastomoses with the Luba (?) or northern section of the Coango, including its influent, the Lubilash; the Kasai (Kasabi) also unites with the Coango, and other dotted lines show the drainage of the Lualaba into the Kasai.
The Portuguese, according to Vasconcello, shunning all fanciful derivations, were long satisfied to term the Congo “Rio de Patron” (Rio do Padrao) from the first of memorial columns built at its mouth. In 1816 Captain Tuckey’s expedition learned with Maxwell that the stream should be called, not Zaire, but Moienzi Enzaddi, the “great river” or the “river which absorbs all other rivers.” This thoroughly corrupted name, which at once found its way into popular books, and which is repeated to the present day even by scientific geographers, suggested to some theorists “Zadi,” the name of the Niger at Wassenah according to Sidi Harriet, as related by the American, James Riley, of the brig “Commerce,” wrecked on August 28, 1815: others remembered “Zad” which Shaykh Yusuf (Hornemann), misleading Mungo Park, learned to be the Niger east of Tinbuktu, “where it turns off to the southward.” I need hardly say that this “Zadi” and “Zad” are evident corruptions of Bahr Shady, Shary, Shari, Chad, Tsad, and Chadda, the swampy lake, alternately sweet and brackish, which was formerly thrown by mistake into the Chadda River, now called the Binue or Bimúwe, the great eastern fork of the Negro-land Nile: the true drainage of the Chadda in ancient times has lately been determined by the adventurous Dr. Nachtigal. Mr. Cooley[FN#12] applied, as was his wont, a superficial knowledge of Kibundo to Fiote or Congoese, and further corrupted Moienzi Enzaddi to Muenya (for Menha or Menya) Zinzádi-this Angolan “emendation,” however, was not adopted.
The natives dwelling upon the Congo banks have, as usual in Africa, no comprehensive generic term for the mighty artery of the West Coast. Each tribe calls it by its own name. Thus even in Fiote we find “Mulángo,” or “Lángo,” the water; “Nkoko,” the stream, “Mwánza,” the river, and “Mwanza Nnenne,” the great river, all used synonymously at the several places. The only proper name is Mwánza Nzádi, the River Nzadi: hence Zaire, Zaïre, Zahir, Zaira the “flumen Congo olim Zaida” (C. Barlé)–all corruptions more or less common.
The homogeneous form of the African continent causes a whimsical family resemblance, allowing for the difference of northern and southern hemispheres, in its four arterial streams–the Nile and Niger, the Congo and Zambeze. I neglect the Limpopo, called in its lower bed Espirito Santo, Maniça, Manhiça (Manyisa), and Delagoa River; the Cunene (Nourse) River, the Orange River, and others, which would be first-rate streams in Europe, but are mere dwarfs in the presence of the four African giants. The Nile and Niger, being mainly tenanted by Moslemized and comparatively civilized races, have long been known, more or less, to Europe. The Zambeze, owing to the heroic labours of Dr. Livingstone, is fast becoming familiar to the civilized world; and the Congo is in these days (1873) beginning at last to receive the attention which it deserves. It is one of the noblest known to the world. Whilst the Mississippi drains a basin of 1,244,000 English square miles, and at Carrollton, in Louisiana, discharges as its mean volume for the year 675,000 cubic feet of water per second, the Congo, with a valley area of 800,000 square miles, rolls at least 2,500,000 feet. Moreover, should it prove a fact that the Nzadi receives the Chambeze and its lakes, the Bangweolo (or Bemba), the Moero, near which stands the capital of the Cazembe, the Kamalondo, Lui or Ulenge, “Lake Lincoln” (Chibungo), and other unvisited waters, its area of drainage will nearly equal that of the Nile.
The four arteries all arise in inner regions of the secondary age, subtended east and west by ghats, or containing mountains mostly of palaeozoic or primary formation, the upheaval of earthquakes and volcanoes. These rims must present four distinct water-sheds. The sea-ward slopes discharge their superabundance direct to the ocean often in broad estuaries like the Gambia and the Gaboon, still only surface drains; whilst the counterslopes pour inland, forming a network of flooded plains, perennial swamps, streams, and lakes. The latter, when evaporation will not balance the supply to a “sink,” “escape from the basin of the central plateau-lands, and enter the ocean through deep lateral gorges, formed at some ancient period of elevation and disturbance, when the containing chains were subject to transverse fractures.” All four head in the region of tropical rains, the home of the negro proper, extending 35° along the major axis of the continent, between Lake Chad (north latitude 14° to 15°), and the Noka a Batletle or Hottentot Lake, known to the moderns as Ngami (south latitude 20° to 21°). Consequently all are provided with lacustrine reservoirs of greater or smaller extent, and are subject to periodical inundations, varying in season, according as the sun is north or south of the line. Those of the northern hemisphere swell with the “summer rains of Ethiopia,” a fact known in the case of the Nile to Democritus of Abdera (5th cent. B.C.), to Agatharchidas of Cnidos (2nd cent. B.C.) to Pomponius Nida, to Strabo (xvii. 1), who traces it through Aristotle up to Homer’s “heaven-descended stream” and to Pliny (v. 10). For the same reason the reverse is the case with the two southern arteries; their high water, with certain limitations in the case of the Congo, is in our winter.
By the condition of their courses, all the four magnates are broken into cataracts and rapids at the gates where they burst through the lateral chains; the Mosi-wa-túnya (smoke that thunders) of the Zambeze, and the Ripon Falls discovered by Captains Speke and Grant upon the higher Nile, are the latest acquisitions to geography, whilst the “Mai waterfall,” reported to break the Upper Congo, still awaits exploration. This accident of form suggests a division of navigation on the maritime section and on the plateau-bed which, in due time, will be connected, like the St. Lawrence, by canals and railways. All but the Nzadi, and perhaps even this, have deltas, where the divided stream, deficient in water-shed, finds its sluggish way to the sea.
The largest delta at present known is the Nigerian, whose base measures 155 direct geographical miles between the Rivers Kontoro east, and Benin west. Pliny (v. 9) makes the Nile delta extend 170 Roman miles, from the Canopic or African to the Pelusiac or Asiatic mouth, respectively distant from the apex 146 and 166 miles; the modern feature has been reduced to 80 miles from east to west, and a maximum of 90 from north to south. The Zambeze extends 58 miles between the Kilimani or northern and the west Luabo, Cuama or southern outlet-at least, if these mouths are not to be detached. The Nzadi is the smallest, measuring a maximum of only 12 to 15 miles from the Malela or Bananal Creek to the mangrove ditches of the southern shore.
In these depressed regions the comparatively salubrious climates of the uplands become dangerous to the European; the people also are degraded, mostly pirates and water-thieves, as the Nigerian Ibos, the Congoese Musulungus, and the Landim (Amalandi) Kafirs about the lower Zambeze. There is a notable similarity in their productions, partly known to Pliny (v. 8), who notices “the calamus, the papyrus, and the animals” of the Nigris and the Nile. The black-maned lion and the leopard rule the wold; the gorilla, the chimpanzee, and other troglodytes affect the thinner forests; the giraffe, the zebra, and vast hosts of antelopes scour the plains; the turtle swims the seas; and the hippopotamus, the crocodile, and various siluridae, some of gigantic size, haunt the lakes and rivers. The nymphæa, lotus or water-lily, forms rafts of verdure; and the stream-banks bear the calabash, the palmyra, the oil-palm, and the papyrus. Until late years it was supposed that the water-lily, sacred to Isis, had been introduced into Egypt from India, where it is also a venerated vegetable, and that it had died out with the form of Fetishism which fostered it. It has simply disappeared like the crocodile from the Lower Nile. Finally, to conclude this rapidly outlined sketch, all at the present moment happily share the same fate; they are being robbed of their last mysteries; the veil of Isis is fast yielding to the white man’s grasp.
We can hardly as yet answer the question whether the Congo was known to the ancients. Our acquaintance with the oldest explorations is at present fragmentary, and we are apt to assume that the little told us in our school-books is the sum-total of former exploits. But possibly inscriptions in the New World, as well as in the Old, may confirm the “first circumnavigation” so simply recounted by Herodotus, especially that of the Phoenicians, who set out from the Red Sea, and in three years returned to the Mediterranean. The expression, “they had the sun to the right,” is variously explained. In the southern hemisphere the sailors facing west during our winter would see the sun at noon on the right, and in the northern hemisphere on the left. But why should they face west? In the “Chronicle” of Schedel (p. ccxc., printed in 1793, Pigafetta, Pinkerton, xi. 412) we read: “These two, (i.e. Jacob Cam and Martin Behem, or Behaim) by the help of the gods, ploughing the sea at short distance from shore, having passed the equinoctial line, entered the nether hemisphere, where, fronting the east, their shadow fell towards the south, and on their right hand.” Perhaps it may simply allude to the morning sun, which would rise to port as they went southwards, and to starboard as they returned north. Again, the “First Overland Expedition” is related by the Father of History with all the semblance of truth. We see no cause to doubt that the Nasammones or Nasamones (Nás Amún), the five young Lybians of the Great Syrtis (Fezzan) crossed the
strip along the Mediterranean), passed through the
The generation which has discovered the “Moabite Stone,” the ruins of Troy (Schliemann), and the key to the inscriptions of Etruria (Corssen), need not despair of further progress. It has been well remarked that, whereas the course of modern exploration has generally been maritime, the ancients, whose means of navigation were less perfect, preferred travelling by land. We are, doubtless, far better acquainted with the outlines of the African coast, and the immediately maritime region, than the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabs. But it is still doubtful whether their information respecting the interior did not surpass ours. Eratosthenes, librarian of Alexandria (B. C. 276-196) expresses correct notions concerning the upper course of the Nile; Marinus of Tyre[FN#13] had the advantage of borrowing from the pilot, Diogenes, who visited the Nile reservoirs of central inter-tropical Africa, and Ptolemy has been justified in certain important points by our latest explorations.
No trace of the Nzadi or Congo is to be found in the Pelusian geographer, whose furthest point is further north. In the “Tabula Rotunda Rogeriana” of A. D. 1154 (Lelewel, No. X.) two lakes are placed upon the equator, and the north-western discharges to the Atlantic the river Kauga or Kanga, which the learned Mr. Hogg suspected to be the Congo. Marino Sanudo (1321), who has an idea of Guinea (Ganuya) and of Zanzibar (Zinziber), here bends Africa to the south-east, and inscribes, “Regio inhabitabilis propter calorem.” Fra Mauro (1457) reduces “Ethiopia Occidentalis et Australis” to the minimum, and sheds the stream into the F. Xebe (Webbe or Galla-Somal River). Martin von Behaim of Nürnberg (1492) in whose day Africa began to assume her present form, makes the Rio de Padron drain the western face of the Montes Lunae. Diogo Ribera, chief pilot of the Indies under Charles V. (Seville, 1529) further corrects the shape of the continent, and places the R. do Padrão north, and the Rio dos Boms Sinhaes (Zambeze) south of the Montes Lunae. Mercator and Henry Hondt (1623) make the Zaire Lacus the northern part of the Zembre Lacus. John Senex (circ. 1712) shows the “R. Coango,” the later Quango, believed to be the great south-western fork of the Congo. It is not a little peculiar that the last of the classics, Claudius Claudianus, an Alexandrian Christian withal, describes the Gir, or Girrhaeus, with peculiarly Congoese features. In “De laud. Stilicho.” (lib. i. 252) we have–
“Gir, notissimus amnis
Æthiopum, simili mentitus gurgite Nilum.”
And again (“Eidyll. in Nilum,” 20):
“Hunc bibit infrenis Garamas, domitorque ferarum Girrhæus, qui vasta colit sub rupibus antra, Qui ramos ebeni, qui denies vellit eburnos.”
Here we find a Wady or torrent discharging into the Mediterranean, made equal to “Egypt’s heaven-descended stream;” caused to flow under great rocks, as the Niger was long believed to pass underground to the Nile, of which it was a western branch; and said to supply ebony, which is the characteristic not even of the Niger regions, but of the Zaire.[FN#14] A little of this peculiar and precious commodity is produced by Old Calabar, east of the Nigerian delta, and southwards it becomes common.
Pliny (v. i) places his Gir (which some editions read “Niger”) “some distance” beyond the snowy Atlas. Ptolemy (iv. 6) tells us “in Mediterraneâ verò fluunt amnes maximi, nempe Gir conjungens Usargalam montem et vallem Garamanticam, à quo divertens amnis continet secundum situm (east longitude) 42° (north latitude)– 16°.” Again: “Et Nigir fluvius jungens et ipse Mandrum” (Mandara, south of Lake Chad?) “et Thala montes” (the range near the western coast on the parallel of Cabo Blanco?). “Facit autem et hic Nigritem Paludem” (Lake Dibbie or Debu, north-east of Sego and Sansanding?) cujus situs 15°-18°.”
Here the Gir, Ger, Gar, or Geir is clearly laid down as a Mediterranean stream, whilst “Niger” gave rise to the confusion of the Senegal with the true Niger. The name has greatly exercised commentators’ ingenuity. D’Anville believes the Niger and the Gir to end in the same quarter of Africa, and the latter to be entirely unknown. Gosselin, agreeing with Pliny, whose Ger is the Nigir of the Greeks, places them south of the Atlas. Mr. Leake (loc. cit.) holds all conjecture useless. Not so the Rev. M. Tristram, whose geography is of the ornithological or bird’s- eye order. In “The Great Sahara” (pp. 362-4, Appendix I.), he asks, “May not the name Giris or Gir be connected with Djidi?” i. e. the Wadi Mzi, a mean sink in El Areg, south of Algeria. Gräberg (“Morocco”) had already identified it with the Ghir, which flows through Sagelmessa; Burckhardt with the Jir, “a large stream coming from about north latitude 10°, and flowing north- west through the Wadaí, west of the borders of Dar-Fur.” No wonder that some geographers are disposed to believe Gir, Giris, Ger, and Geir to be “a general native name for a river, like Bá” (Bahr), “Bi” (in many Central African tongues a river, Schweinfurth, ii. 241), “Quorra (Kwara), Gulbi and Gambaru (the Yeou), Shadda, and Enzaddi.”
It is still interesting to consider the circumstances which gave rise to Captain Tuckey’s disastrous expedition. As any map of Africa during the early quarter of the present century, Bowdich or Dupuis for instance, may prove, the course of the Niger was laid down, now according to the ancients, then after Arab information. The Dark Continent, of which D’Anville justly said that writers abused, “pour ainsi dire, de la vaste carrière que l’intérieur y laissait prendre” (“Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscriptions,” xxvi. 61), had not been subjected to scientific analysis; this was reserved for the Presidential Address to the Royal Geographical Society by the late Sir R. I. Murchison, 1852. Geographers did not see how to pass the Niger through the” Kong Mountains, which, uniting with the Jebel Komri, are supposed to run in one unbroken chain across the continent;” and these Lunar Mountains of the Moslems, which were “stretched like a chaplet of beads from east to west,” undoubtedly express, as M. du Chaillu contends, a real feature, the double versant, probably a mere wave of ground between the great hydrographic basins of the Niger and the Congo, of North Africa and of Central Africa. Men still wasted their vigour upon the Nigritis Palus, the Chelonídes waters, the Mount Caphas, and the lakes of Wangara, variously written Vancara and Vongara, not to mention other ways. Maps place “Wangara”to the north-west of Dahome, where the natives utterly ignore the name. Dupuis (“Ashantee,” 1824) suggests that, like “Takrúr,” it is an obsolete Moslem term for the 660 miles of maritime region between Cape Lahu and the Rio Formoso or the Old Calabar River. This would include the three despotisms, Ashanti, Dahome, and Benin, with the tribes who, from a distance of twenty-five days, bring gold to Tinbuktu (the Tungubutu of De Barros, i. 220). Thus the lakes of Wangara would be the lagoons of the Slave-coast, in which the Niger may truly be said to lose itself.
At length M. Reichard, of Lobenstein (“Ephémerides Géographiques,” Weimar, 1802), theoretically discovered the mouth of the Niger, by throwing it into the Bight of Benin. He was right in essentials and wrong in details; for instance, he supposed the Rio Formoso or Benin River and the Rio del Rey to join in one great stream beyond the flat alluvial delta: whereas the former is indirectly connected through the Wari with the Niger, and the latter has no connection with it at all. The truth was received with scant courtesy, and the hypothesis was pronounced to be “worthy of very little attention.” There were, however, honourable exceptions. In 1813, the learned Malte-Brun (“Précis de la Géographie Universelle,” vol. iv. 635) sanctioned the theory hinted at by Mungo Park, and in 1828 the well-abused Caillié, a Frenchman who had dared to excel Bruce and Mungo Park, wrote these remarkable words: “If I may be permitted to hazard an opinion as to the course of the River Dhioliba, I should say that it empties itself by several mouths into the Bight of Benin.” In 1829, fortified by Clapperton’s opinion, my late friend, James Macqueen, who to immense industry added many qualifications of a comparative geographer, recommended a careful examination of the estuaries between the Rio Formoso and Old Calabar. The question was not finally set at rest till 1830 (November 15th), when Richard and John Lander entered Yoruba viâ Badagry and, triumphantly descending the lower Niger, made the sea by the “Nun” and Brass embouchures.
Meanwhile, Mr. George Maxwell, a Scotchman who had long traded in the Congo, and who subsequently published a chart of the lower river proposed, at the end of the last century, to take from England six supernumerary boats for rowing and sailing, which could be carried by thirty people and portaged round the cataracts. This gave rise to Captain Tuckey’s first error, depending upon labour and provisions, which were not to be had “for love or money” anywhere on the Congo above the Yellala. With thirty or forty black rowers, probably Cabinda men, Maxwell advised navigating the river about May, when the Cacimbo or dry season begins; and with arms, provisions, and merchandize he expected to reach the sources in six weeks. The scheme, which was rendered abortive by the continental war of 1793, had two remarkable results. It caused Mungo Park’s fatal second journey, and it led to the twin expeditions of Tuckey and Peddie.
In July, 1804, the ardent and irrepressible Scot wrote from Prior’s Lynn, near Longtown, to a friend, Mr. William Kier, of Milholm, that the river “Enzaddi” was frequented by Portuguese, who found the stream still as large as near the mouth, after ascending 600 miles. It is useful to observe how these distances are obtained. The slave-touters for the Liverpool and other dealers used, we are told, to march one month up country, and take two to return. Thirty days multiplied by twenty miles per diem give 600 miles. I need hardly point out that upon such a mission the buyer would be much more likely to travel 60 miles than 600 in a single month, and I believe that the natives of the lower river never went beyond Nsundi, or 215 indirect miles from Point Padrão.
With truly national tenacity and plausibility Perfervidum Ingenium contended that the Congo or Zaire was the Nigerian debouchure. Major Rennell, who had disproved the connection of the Niger and the Egyptian Nile by Bruce’s barometric measurements on the course of the mountain-girt Bahr el Azrak, and by Brown’s altitudes at Darfur, condemned the bold theory for the best of reasons.
Mungo Park, after a brief coldness and coquetting with it, hotly adopted to the fullest extent the wild scheme. Before leaving England (Oct. 4, 1804), he addressed a memoir to Lord Camden, explaining the causes of his conversion. It is curious to note his confusion of “Zad,” his belief that the “Congo waters are at all seasons thick and muddy,” and his conviction that “the annual flood,” which he considered perpetual, “commences before the rains fall south of the equator.” The latter is to a certain extent true; the real reason will presently be given. Infected by the enthusiasm of his brother Scot, he adds, “Considered in a commercial point of view, it is second only to the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope; and, in a geographical point of view, it is certainly the greatest discovery that remains to be made in this world.”
Thereupon the traveller set out for the upper Niger with the conviction that he would emerge by the Congo, and return to England viâ the West Indies. From the fragments of his Journal, and his letters to Lord Camden, to Sir Joseph Banks, and to his wife, it is evident that at San-sanding he had modified his theories, and that he was gradually learning the truth. To the former he writes, “I am more and more inclined to think that it (the Niger) can end nowhere but in the sea;” and presently a guide, who had won his confidence, assured him that the river, after passing Kashna, runs directly to the right hand, or south, which would throw it into the Gulf of Guinea.
The fatal termination of Park’s career in 1805 lulled public curiosity for a time, but it presently revived. The geographical mind was still excited by the mysterious stream which evaporation or dispersion drained into the Lake-swamps of Wangara, and to this was added not a little curiosity concerning the lamented and popular explorer’s fate. We find instructions concerning Mungo Park issued even to cruizers collecting political and other information upon the East African coast; e.g., to Captain Smee, sent in 1811 by the Bombay Government. His companion, Lieutenant Hardy, converted Usagára, west of the Zanzibar seaboard, into “Wangarah,” and remarks, “a white man, supposed to be Park, is said to have travelled here twenty years ago” (“Observations,” &c.).
About ten years after Mungo Park’s death, two expeditions were fitted out by Government to follow up his discovery. Major Peddie proceeded to descend the Niger, and Captain Tuckey to ascend the Congo. We have nothing to say of the former journey except that, as in the latter, every chief European officer died–Major Peddie, Captain Campbell, Lieutenant Stokoe, and M. Kummer, the naturalist. The expedition, consisting of 100 men and 200 animals, reached Kakundy June 13, 1817, and there fell to pieces. Concerning the Zaire Expedition, which left Deptford on February 16, 1816, a few words are advisable.
The personnel was left to the choice of the leader, Commander J. K. Tuckey, R. N. (died). There were six commissioned officers– Lieutenant John Hawkey, R.N. (died); Mr. Lewis Fitz-maurice, master and surveyor; Mr. Robert Hodder and Mr. Robert Beecraft, master’s mates; Mr. John Eyre, purser (died); and Mr. James McKerrow, assistant surgeon. Under these were eight petty officers, four carpenters, two blacksmiths, and fourteen able seamen. The marines numbered one sergeant, one corporal, and twelve privates. Grand total of combatants, forty-nine. To these were added five “savants”: Professor Chetien Smith, a Norwegian botanist and geologist (died); Mr. Cranch, collector of objects of natural history (died); Mr. Tudor, comparative anatomist (died); Mr. Galway, Irishman and volunteer naturalist (died); and “Lockhart, a gardener” (of His Majesty’s Gardens, Kew). There were two Congo negroes, Benjamin Benjamins and Somme Simmons; the latter, engaged as a cook’s mate, proved to be a “prince of the blood,” which did not prevent his deserting for fear of the bushmen.
The allusions made to Mr. Cranch, a “joined methodist,” and a “self-made man,” are not complimentary. “Cranch, I fear,” says Professor Smith, “by his absurd conduct, will diminish the liberality of the captain towards us: he is like a pointed arrow to the company.” And, again, “Poor Cranch is almost too much the object of jest; Galway is the principal banterer.”In the Professor’s remarks on the” fat purser,”we can detect the foreigner, who, on such occasions, should never be mixed up with Englishmen.
Sir Joseph Banks had suggested a steamer drawing four feet, with twenty-four horse-power; an admirable idea, but practical difficulties of construction rendered the “Congo” useless. Of the fifty-four white men, eighteen, including eleven of the “Congo” crew, died in less than three months. Fourteen out of a party of thirty officers and men, who set out to explore the cataracts viâ the northern bank, lost their lives; and they were followed by four more on board the “Congo,” and one at Bahia. The expedition remained in the river between July 6th and October 18th, little more than three months; yet twenty-one, or nearly one-third, three of the superior officers and all the scientific men, perished. Captain Tuckey died of fatigue and exhaustion (Oct. 4th) rather than of disease; Lieutenant Hawkey, of fatal typhus (which during 1862 followed the yellow fever, in the Bonny and New Calabar Rivers); and Mr. Eyre, palpably of bilious remittent. Professor Smith had been so charmed with the river, that he was with difficulty persuaded to return. Prostrated four days afterwards by sickness on board the transport, he refused physic and food, because his stomach rejected bark, and, preferring cold water, he became delirious; apparently, he died of disappointment, popularly called a “broken heart.” Messrs. Tudor and Cranchalso fell victims to bilious remittents, complicated, in the case of the latter, by the “gloomy view taken of Christianity by that sect denominated Methodists.” Mr. Galway, on September 28th, visited Sangala, the highest rapid (“Narrative,” p. 328). In the Introduction, p. 80, we are wrongly told that he went to Banza Ninga, whence, being taken ill on August 24th, he was sent down stream. He, like his commander, had to sleep in the open, almost without food, and he also succumbed to fever, fatigue, and exhaustion.
The cause of this prodigious mortality appears in the records of the expedition. Officers and men were all raw, unseasoned, and unacclimatized. Captain Tuckey, an able navigator, the author of “Maritime Geography and Statistics,” had served in the tropics; his biographer, however, writes that a long imprisonment in France and “residence in India had broken down his constitution, and at the age of thirty (ob. æt. thirty-nine) his hair was grey and his head nearly bald.” The men perished, exactly like the missionaries of old, by hard work, insufficient and innutritious food, physical exhaustion, and by the doctor. At first “immediate bleeding and gentle cathartics” are found to be panaceas for mild fevers (p. 46): presently the surgeon makes a discovery as follows: “With regard to the treatment I shall here only observe that bleeding was particularly unsuccessful. Cathartics were of the greatest utility, and calomel, so administered as speedily to induce copious salivation, generally procured a remission of all the violent symptoms.” The phlebotomy was inherited from the missioners, who own almost to have blinded themselves by it. When one was “blooded” fifteen times and died, his amateur Sangrado said, “It had been better to have bled him thirty times:” the theory was that in so hot a climate all the European blood should be replaced by African. One of the entries in Captain Tuckey’s