II.

THE EAST AFRICAN LAKE COUNTRY.

LAKES SHIRWA AND NYASSA.

Somewhere in the Shiré Highlands, in 1859, Livingstone saw a large lake--Lake Shirwa--which is still almost unknown. It lies away to the East, and is bounded by a range of mountains whose lofty summits are visible from the hills round Blantyre. Thinking it might be a useful initiation to African travel if I devoted a short time to its exploration, I set off one morning accompanied by two members of the Blantyre staff and a small retinue of natives. Steering across country in the direction in which it lay, we found, two days before seeing the actual water, that we were already on the ancient bed of the lake. Though now clothed with forest, the whole district has obviously been under water at a comparatively recent period, and the shores of Lake Shirwa probably reached at one time to within a few miles of Blantyre itself. On reaching the lake a very aged female chief came to see us, and told us how, long, long ago, a white man came to her village and gave her a present of cloth. Of the white man, who must have been Livingstone, she spoke very kindly; and, indeed, wherever David Livingstone's footsteps are crossed in Africa the fragrance of his memory seems to remain.

The waters of Shirwa are brackish to the taste, and undrinkable; but the saltness must have a peculiar charm for game, for nowhere else in Africa did I see such splendid herds of the larger animals as here. The zebra was especially abundant; and so unaccustomed to be disturbed are these creatures, that with a little care one could watch their movements safely within a very few yards. It may seem unorthodox to say so, but I do not know if among the larger animals there is any thing handsomer in creation than the zebra. At close quarters his striped coat is all but as fine as the tiger's, while the form and movement of his body are in every way nobler. The gait certainly, is not to be compared for gracefulness with that of the many species of antelope and deer who nibble the grass beside him, and one can never quite forget that scientifically he is an ass; but taking him all in all, this fleet and beautiful animal ought to have a higher place in the regard of man than he has yet received.

We were much surprised, considering that this region is almost uninhabited, to discover near the lake shore a native path so beaten, and so recently beaten by multitudes of human feet, that it could only represent some trunk route through the continent. Following it for a few miles, we soon discovered its function. It was one of the great slave routes through Africa. Signs of the horrid traffic soon became visible on every side; and from symmetrical arrangements of small piles of stones and freshly-cut twigs, planted semaphore-wise upon the path, our native guides made out that a slave-caravan was actually passing at the time. We were, in fact, between two portions of it, the stones and twigs being telegraphic signals between front and rear. Our natives seemed much alarmed at this discovery, and refused to proceed unless we promised not to interfere--a proceeding which, had we attempted it, would simply have meant murder for ourselves and slavery for them. Next day, from a hill-top, we saw the slave encampment far below, and the ghastly procession marshalling for its march to the distant coast, which many of the hundreds who composed it would never reach alive.

Talking of native footpaths leads me to turn aside for a moment to explain to the uninitiated the true mode of African travel. In spite of all the books that have been lavished upon us by our great explorers, few people seem to have any accurate understanding of this most simple process. Some have the impression that everything is done in bullock-wagons--an idea borrowed from the Cape, but hopelessly inapplicable to Central Africa, where a wheel at present would be as great a novelty as a polar bear. Others at the opposite extreme suppose that the explorer works along solely by compass, making a bee-line for his destination, and steering his caravan through the trackless wilderness like a ship at sea. Now it may be a surprise to the unenlightened to learn that probably no explorer in forcing his passage through Africa has ever, for more than a few days at a time, been off some beaten track. Probably no country in the world, civilized or uncivilized, is better supplied with paths than this unmapped continent. Every village is connected with some other village, every tribe with the next tribe, every state with its neighbor, and therefore with all the rest. The explorer's business is simply to select from this network of tracks, keep a general direction, and hold on his way. Let him begin at Zanzibar, plant his foot on a native footpath, and set his face towards Tanganyika. In eight months he will be there. He has simply to persevere. From village to village he will be handed on, zigzagging it may be sometimes to avoid the impassable barriers of nature or the rarer perils of hostile tribes, but never taking to the woods, never guided solely by the stars, never in fact leaving a beaten track, till hundreds and hundreds of miles are between him and the sea, and his interminable footpath ends with a canoe, on the shores of Tanganyika. Crossing the lake, landing near some native village, he picks up the thread once more. Again he plods on and on, now on foot, now by canoe, but always keeping his line of villages, until one day suddenly he sniffs the sea-breeze again, and his faithful foot-wide guide lands him on the Atlantic seaboard.

Nor is there any art in finding out these successive villages with their intercommunicating links. He _must_ find them out. A whole army of guides, servants, carriers, soldiers and camp-followers accompany him in his inarch, and this nondescript regiment must be fed. Indian corn, cassava, mawere, beans, and bananas--these do not grow wild even in Africa. Every meal has to be bought and paid for in cloth and beads; and scarcely three days can pass without a call having to be made at some village where the necessary supplies can be obtained. A caravan, as a rule, must live from hand to mouth, and its march becomes simply a regulated procession through a chain of markets. Not, however, that there are any real markets--there are neither bazaars nor stores in native Africa. Thousands of the villages through which the traveller eats his way may never have victualled a caravan before. But, with the chief's consent, which is usually easily purchased for a showy present, the villages unlock their larders, the women flock to the grinding stones, and basketfuls of food are swiftly exchanged for unknown equivalents in beads and calico.

The native tracks which I have just described are the same in character all over Africa. They are veritable footpaths, never over a foot in breadth, beaten as hard as adamant, and rutted beneath the level of the forest bed by centuries of native traffic. As a rule these footpaths are marvellously direct. Like the roads of the old Romans, they run straight on through everything, ridge and mountain and valley, never shying at obstacles, nor anywhere turning aside to breathe. Yet within this general straightforwardness there is a singular eccentricity and indirectness in detail. Although the African footpath is on the whole a bee-line, no fifty yards of it are ever straight. And the reason is not far to seek. If a stone is encountered no native will ever think of removing it. Why should he? It is easier to walk round it. The next man who comes that way will do the same. He knows that a hundred men are following him; he looks at the stone; a moment, and it might be unearthed and tossed aside, but no; he also holds on his way. It is not that he resents the trouble, it is the idea that is wanting. It would no more occur to him that that stone was a displaceable object, and that for the general weal he might displace it, than that its feldspar was of the orthoclase variety. Generations and generations of men have passed that stone, and it still waits for a man with an altruistic idea. But it would be a very stony country indeed--and Africa is far from stony--that would wholly account for the aggravating obliqueness and indecision of the African footpath. Probably each four miles, on an average path, is spun out by an infinite series of minor sinuosities, to five or six. Now these deflections are not meaningless. Each has some history--a history dating back, perhaps, a thousand years, but to which all clue has centuries ago been lost. The leading cause, probably, is fallen trees. When a tree falls across a path no man ever removes it. As in the case of the stone, the native goes round it. It is too green to burn in his hut; before it is dry, and the white ants have eaten it, the new detour has become part and parcel of the path. The smaller irregularities, on the other hand, represent the trees and stumps of the primeval forest where the track was made at first. But whatever the cause, it is certain that for persistent straightforwardness in the general, and utter vacillation and irresolution in the particular, the African roads are unique in engineering.

Though one of the smaller African lakes, Shirwa is probably larger than all the lakes of Great Britain put together. With the splendid environment of mountains on three of its sides, softened and distanced by perpetual summer haze, it reminds one somewhat of the Great Salt Lake simmering in a July sun. We pitched our tent for a day or two on its western shore among a harmless and surprised people who had never gazed on the pallid countenances of Englishmen before. Owing to the ravages of the slaver the people of Shirwa are few, scattered and poor, and live in abiding terror. The densest population is to be found on the small island, heavily timbered with baobabs, which forms a picturesque feature of the northern end. These Wa-Nyassa, or people of the lake, as they call themselves, have been driven here by fear, and they rarely leave their Lake-Dwelling unless under cover of night. Even then they are liable to capture by any man of a stronger tribe who happens to meet them, and numbers who have been kidnapped in this way are to be found in the villages of neighboring chiefs. This is an amenity of existence in Africa that strikes one as very terrible. It is impossible for those at home to understand how literally savage man is a chattel, and how much his life is spent in the more safeguarding of his main asset, _i.e._, himself. There are actually districts in Africa where _three_ natives cannot be sent a message in case two should combine and sell the third before they return.

After some time spent in the Lake Shirwa and Shiré districts, I set out for the Upper Shiré and Lake Nyassa. Two short days' walk from the settlement at Blantyre brings one once more to the banks of the Shiré. Here I found waiting the famous little _Ilala_, a tiny steamer, little bigger than a large steam launch. It belonged originally to the missionaries on Lake Nyassa, and was carried here a few years ago from England in seven hundred pieces, and bolted together on the river bank. No chapter in romance is more interesting than the story of the pioneer voyage of the _Ilala_, as it sailed away for the first time towards the unknown waters of Nyassa. No keel had ever broken the surface of this mighty lake before, and the wonderment of the natives as the Big Canoe hissed past their villages is described by those who witnessed it as a spectacle of indescribable interest. The _Ilala_ is named, of course, after the village where David Livingstone breathed his last. It indicates the heroic mission of the little ship--to take up the work of Civilization and Christianity where the great explorer left it. The _Ilala_ now plies at intervals between the Upper Shiré--above the cataracts--and the shores of Lake Nyassa, carrying supplies to the handful of missionaries settled on the western shore. Though commanded by a white man, the work on board is entirely done by natives from the locality. The confidence of the black people once gained, no great difficulty seems to have been found in getting volunteers enough for this novel employment. Singularly enough, while deck hands are often only enlisted after some persuasion, the competition for the office of fireman--a disagreeable post at any time, but in the tropical heat the last to be coveted--is so keen that any number of natives are at all times ready to be frizzled in the stokehole. Instead of avoiding heat, the African native everywhere courts it. His nature expands and revels in it; while a breath of cold on a mountain slope, or a sudden shower of rain, transforms him instantly into a most woebegone object.

After leaving Matope, just above the Murchison cataracts, the _Ilala_ steams for a couple of days in the river before Lake Nyassa is reached. The valley throughout this length is very broad, bounded on either side by distant mountains which at an earlier period probably formed the shores of a larger Lake Nyassa. The fact that Lake Nyassa is silting up at its southern end becomes more apparent as one nears the lake, for here one finds a considerable expanse already cut off from the larger portion, and forming a separate sheet of water. The smaller lake is Lake Pomalombe, and it is already so shallow that in the dry season the _Ilala's_ screw stirs the gray mud at the bottom. The friendship of the few villages along the bank is secured by an occasional present; although the relations between some of them and the Big Canoe are at times a little strained, and in bad humors doubtless they would send it to the bottom if they dared. It is to be remembered that this whole region is as yet altogether beyond the limits, and almost beyond the knowledge of civilization, and few white men have ever been in the country, except the few agents connected with the Lakes Company and the Missions. Beyond an occasional barter of cloth or beads for firewood and food, the _Ilala_ has no dealings with the tribes on the Upper Shiré, and at present they are about as much affected by the passing to and fro of the white man's steamer as are the inhabitants of Kensington by an occasional wild-fowl making for Regent's Park. One is apt to conclude, from the mere presence of such a thing as a steamer in Central Africa, that the country through which it is passing must be in some sense civilized, and the hourly reminders to the contrary which one receives on the spot are among the most startling experiences of the traveller. It is almost impossible for him to believe, as he watches the native life from the cabin of the _Ilala_, that these people are altogether uncivilized; just as it is impossible for him to believe that that lurch a moment ago was caused by the little craft bumping against a submerged hippopotamus. A steel ship, London built, steaming six knots ahead; and grass huts, nude natives, and a hippopotamus--the ideas refuse to assort themselves, and one lives in a perpetual state of bewilderment and interrogation.

It was a brilliant summer morning when the _Ilala_ steamed into Lake Nyassa, and in a few hours we were at anchor in the little bay at Livingstonia, My first impression of this famous mission-station certainly will never be forgotten. Magnificent mountains of granite, green to the summit with forest, encircled it, and on the silver sand of a still smaller bay stood the small row of trim white cottages. A neat path through a small garden led up to the settlement, and I approached the largest house and entered. It was the Livingstonia manse--the head missionary's house. It was spotlessly clean; English furniture was in the room, a medicine chest, familiar-looking dishes were in the cupboards, books lying about, but there was no missionary in it. I went to the next house--it was the school, the benches were there and the blackboard, but there were no scholars and no teacher. I passed to the next, it was the blacksmith shop; there were the tools and the anvil, but there was no blacksmith. And so on to the next, and the next, all in perfect order, and all _empty_. Then a native approached and led me a few yards into the forest. And there among the mimosa trees, under a huge granite mountain, were four or five graves. These were the missionaries.

I spent a day or two in the solemn shadow of that deserted manse. It is one of the loveliest spots in the world; and it was hard to believe, sitting under the tamarind trees by the quiet lake shore, that the pestilence which wasteth at midnight had made this beautiful spot its home. A hundred and fifty miles north, on the same lake-coast, the remnant of the missionaries have begun their task again, and there, slowly, against fearful odds, they are carrying on their work. Travellers have been pleased to say unkind things of missionaries. That they are sometimes right, I will not question. But I will say of the Livingstonia missionaries, and of the Blantyre missionaries, and count it an honor to say it, that they are brave, efficient, single-hearted men, who need our sympathy more than we know, and are equally above our criticism and our praise.

Malarial fever is the one sad certainty which every African traveller must face. For months he may escape, but its finger is upon him, and well for him if he has a friend near when it finally overtakes him. It is preceded for weeks, or even for a month or two, by unaccountable irritability, depression and weariness. On the march with his men he has scarcely started when he sighs for the noon-day rest. Putting it down to mere laziness, he goads himself on by draughts from the water-bottle, and totters forward a mile or two more. Next he finds himself skulking into the forest on the pretext of looking at a specimen, and, when his porters are out of sight, throws himself under a tree in utter limpness and despair. Roused by mere shame, he staggers along the trail, and as he nears the mid-day camp puts on a spurt to conceal his defeat, which finishes him for the rest of the day. This is a good place for specimens he tells the men--the tent may be pitched for the night. This goes on day after day till the crash comes--first cold and pain, then heat and pain, then every kind of pain, and every degree of heat, then delirium, then the life-and-death struggle. He rises, if he does rise, a shadow; and slowly accumulates strength for the next attack, which he knows too well will not disappoint him. No one has ever yet got to the bottom of African fever. Its geographical distribution is still unmapped, but generally it prevails over the whole east and west coasts within the tropical limit, along all the river-courses, on the shores of the inland lakes, and in all low-lying and marshy districts. The higher plateaux, presumably, are comparatively free from it, but in order to reach these, malarious districts of greater or smaller area have to be traversed. There the system becomes saturated with fever, which often develops long after the infected region is left behind. The known facts with regard to African fever are these: First, it is connected in some way with drying-up water and decaying vegetation, though how the germs develop, or what they are, is unknown. Second, natives suffer from fever equally with Europeans, and this more particularly in changing from district to district and from altitude to altitude. Thus, in marching over the Tanganyika plateau, four or five of my native carriers were down with fever, although their homes were only two or three hundred miles off, before I had even a touch of it. Third, quinine is the great and almost the sole remedy; and, fourth, no European ever escapes it.

The really appalling mortality of Europeans is a fact with which all who have any idea of casting in their lot with Africa should seriously reckon. None but those who have been on the spot, or have followed closely the inner history of African exploration and missionary work can appreciate the gravity of the situation. The malaria spares no man; the strong fall as the weak; no number of precautions can provide against it; no kind of care can do more than make the attacks less frequent; no prediction can be made beforehand as to which regions are haunted by it and which are safe. It is not the least ghastly feature of this invisible plague that the only known scientific test for it at present is a human life. That test has been applied in the Congo region already with a recklessness which the sober judgment can only characterize as criminal. It is a small matter that men should throw away their lives, in hundreds, if need be, for a holy cause; but it is not a small matter that man after man, in long and in fatal succession, should seek to overleap what is plainly a barrier of Nature. And science has a duty in pointing out that no devotion or enthusiasm can give any man a charmed life, and that those who work for the highest ends will best attain them in humble obedience to the common laws. Transcendentally, this may be denied; the warning finger may be despised as the hand of the coward and the profane. But the fact remains--the fact of an awful chain of English graves stretching across Africa. This is not spoken, nevertheless, to discourage missionary enterprise. It is only said to regulate it.

To the head of Lake Nyassa in a little steam yacht is quite a sea-voyage. What with heavy seas, and head-winds, and stopping to wood, and lying-to at nights, it takes longer time than going from England to America. The lake is begirt with mountains, and storms are so incessant and so furious that Livingstone actually christened Nyassa the "Lake of Storms." The motion on anchoring at night was generally so unpleasant that one preferred then to be set on shore. My men--for I had already begun to pick up my caravan whenever I could find a native willing to go--would kindle fires all round to keep off beasts of prey, and we slept in peace upon the soft lake sand.

Instead of being one hundred and fifty miles long, as first supposed, Lake Nyassa is now known to have a length of three hundred and fifty miles, and a breadth varying from sixteen to sixty miles. It occupies a gigantic trough of granite and gneiss, the profoundly deep water standing at a level of sixteen hundred feet above the sea, with the mountains rising all around it, and sometimes sheer above it, to a height of one, two, three, and four thousand feet. The mountains along the west coast form an almost unbroken chain, while the north-east and north are enclosed by the vast range of the Livingstone Mountains. The anchorages on the lake are neither so numerous nor so sheltered as might be wished, but the _Ilala_ has picked out some fair harbors on the west coast, and about half as many are already known on the east.

I only visited one native village on the lake, and I should hope there are none others like it--indeed it was quite exceptional for Africa. I tumbled into it early one morning, out of the _Ilala's_ dingy, and lost myself at once in an endless labyrinth of reeking huts. Its filth was indescribable, and I met stricken men, at the acute stage of smallpox, wandering about the place at every turn, as if infection were a thing unknown. The chief is the greatest slaver and the worst villain on the lake, and impaled upon poles all round his lodge, their ghastly faces shrivelling in the sun, I counted forty human heads.

This village was not African, however. It was Arab. The native villages on Nyassa are rarely so large, seldom so compact, and never so dirty. Everywhere they straggle along the shore and through the forest, and altogether there must be many hundreds of them scattered about the lake. On the western shore alone there are at least fifteen different tribes, speaking as many different languages, and each of them with dialects innumerable.

The bright spot on Lake Nyassa is Bandawé, the present headquarters of the Scotch Livingstonia Mission. The phrase "headquarters of a mission" suggests to the home Christian a street and a square, with its overshadowing church; a decent graveyard; and a reverent community in its Sunday clothes. But Bandawé is only a lodge or two in a vast wilderness, and the swarthy worshippers flock to the seatless chapel on M'lunga's day dressed mostly in bows and arrows. The said chapel, nevertheless, is as great an achievement in its way as Cologne Cathedral, and its worshippers are quite as much interested, and some of them at least to quite as much purpose. In reality no words can be a fit witness here to the impression made by Dr. Laws, Mrs. Laws, and their few helpers, upon this singular and apparently intractable material. A visit to Bandawé is a great moral lesson. And I cherish no more sacred memory of my life than that of a communion service in the little Bandawé chapel, when the sacramental cup was handed to me by the bare black arm of a native communicant--a communicant whose life, tested afterwards in many an hour of trial with me on the Tanganyika plateau, gave him perhaps a better right to be there than any of us.