Part 30

MONDAY, APRIL 7.—We have spent a good part of this day lying off Chindi, a decaying town at the mouth of the Zambesi river. We arrived at 9 A. M., and anchored in the open sea, where we rolled and pitched gently until 4:30 P. M. It seems the “Burgermeister” is ahead of time, and the tender did not come off until 2:30 P. M. It brought two hundred negro boys, sixteen to eighteen years old, and entirely naked except that each one wore a cloth about the loins. These boys had been sent to work on sugar plantations by labor agents, who received a pound each for finding them. But the boys soon contracted dysentery, and are being sent home. When the tender came alongside, many of the boys were seasick, and some of them crying. They were transferred from the tender to the ship in a huge basket, ten or twelve at a time. Many of the boys had sore feet, having walked to Chindi from the plantations where they were employed. All of them were thin in flesh, and nine out of ten had no baggage; nothing to eat out of, and nothing to sleep on: no possession whatever except a loin-cloth, and some of these were made of grass, or of old matting. The slaves of olden days could not have presented a much worse spectacle. These boys worked on the sugar plantations at $1.75 per month. Counting interest on money invested, and taking into consideration the fact that old slaves must be cared for, that is cheaper than owning slaves.... Ten white passengers also came out on the tender, and of course these were brought on board before the negroes. The passenger basket is a huge wicker affair in which six to ten persons are locked. Then it is hoisted, by means of a donkey engine, from the tender to the deck of the ship, or _vice versa_. Sometimes, when passengers are disembarking, and the basket is being lowered to the deck of the tender, the waves send the tender upward quickly, and the passengers get a bad jolt. In the open sea, the small tenders roll and knock about so much that this method of handling passengers is necessary. Several children were brought on board, and in every case they screamed with fright. But if the tackle holds, the method is safe enough.... The “Burgermeister” is the best ship we have been on since leaving home. The food is abundant, and well cooked, and the service excellent in all respects. Captain Ulrich is the youngest captain I have ever seen on a steamship; he is not more than forty years old, and probably under that age. He is a famous man on the line because of the dignified interest he takes in passengers. He told me last night that during the present trip he hadn’t had an hour of bad weather; and he left Hamburg February 25, and came through the dreaded Bay of Biscay and the stormy English channel.... Chindi is the port of entry for Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, and the Zambesi river enters the ocean there. Small boats ply on the river, and there are sugar plantations in the interior. It is generally believed that Chindi will be greatly harmed by a new railroad to be built from Beira.... Nyasaland is one of the modern achievements in colonization. Although in the heart of the Dark Continent, and given over only a few years ago to the most appalling barbarism, it now has a railway service, settlements lit by electricity, vast tracts of land under scientific cultivation, an improved wagon-road 100 miles long, a stable government, and cheap land, on which may be grown corn, cotton, and tobacco. I hear even at this distance of one planter who made $10,000 in one year from tobacco.... In order to reach Nyasaland at present, travelers leave ships five miles off Chindi, being transferred to tenders in baskets. At Chindi they take small boats for Port Herald, two hundred miles up the Zambesi river. The negro engineers on these steamboats get $3.75 a month. The captain of the boat is a white man, and an engineer, but natives have learned his trade, and now do all the work in the engine-room. This is true all over Africa: the white men show the negroes, and the negroes pick up all the trades. At Port Herald begins a railroad one hundred and thirteen miles long, with very stiff grades, running into the interior. There are only four white men employed on the line: the general manager, the traffic superintendent, the chief accountant, and the locomotive foreman. All the telegraphers are negroes, and do their work well for $2.50 a month. In order to become telegraphers, it was necessary for them to learn to read and write English. The head boy in the general offices of the railway, a very capable clerk, gets $3.75 a month. The locomotive engineers are Hindus, and receive $30 a month; but the firemen are all negroes, and receive but $3.75 a month. All the firemen are capable of running engines, and do run them at times. It is only a question of a few years until negroes succeed the high-priced Hindus as locomotive engineers. The section reached by the railroad is devoted largely to tobacco and cotton. One planter has five hundred acres in tobacco, and employs eight hundred natives; it is estimated there that tobacco requires a man and a half to every acre. These natives receive $1.25 a month and board, but their board costs only two cents a day; they eat only corn-meal, which costs a dollar a hundred pounds as a rule. That amounts to less than $2 a month for a good workman. A tobacco planter in Nyasaland is satisfied if he gets five hundred pounds of cured tobacco per acre, one-third of the yield in the United States, and he sells it on an average for seven or eight cents a pound. You would think his freight bill would eat up his profits, but he pays only half a cent a pound for transporting his crop to London. The rate is purposely made very low, to encourage tobacco-growing. It is not equally low on second-class merchandise in other parts of Africa; that rate from Capetown to Bulawayo, a merchant told me, is four cents a pound.... Food is very cheap in the interior of Africa. In Nyasaland, a half-dozen chickens may be bought for twenty-four cents. A young man on board is an employee of the Eastern Telegraph Co., and is being transferred to Zanzibar. He says he has chicken so frequently that he despises it; his associates lately joined him in a protest to the company against chicken. The chickens here are small and tough: every native raises chickens, which are compelled to pick up a living: they are not fed. The natives do not eat them, but carry them great distances to market.... The whisky used by the natives is made of corn, by a very simple process. They crush the grains of corn, pour water over the mass, and allow it to ferment. Then they add water, and put it away in earthen jars until needed.... One of the most interesting men on board is an official of the British company which built the railroad from Port Herald, two hundred miles up the Zambesi river from Chindi, into Nyasaland. He is going to England for his vacation; the ships are all crowded now, as this is the favorite season for the exiles to go home. He says the English cotton and tobacco planters in Nyasaland are not very prosperous; they make a living, but not much more. They are pioneers, and pioneers rarely make a great deal of money. This man is named Metcalf, and had an attack of the African fever today. He dosed himself with quinine, and, going to bed, covered himself with blankets. There he perspired and suffered until the attack wore off. Many of the passengers of the “Burgermeister” are invalids going home to recuperate after an experience with the climate of Africa.

TUESDAY, APRIL 8.—It is fortunate I am not seasick, and laid up, for my cabin window looks out on the deck where the steerage passengers are. Early this morning I heard a babel of voices, and supposed all the negro boys were on deck, and talking at the same time. Looking out of my window, I discovered that fifteen or twenty Hindus were doing all the talking, while the two hundred negro boys were sitting around in perfect silence. The steerage passengers can look into my room, if so disposed, and often do. Before I finished dressing, the two hundred negro boys were fed. Each was given three ship biscuits, and weak tea was provided for those who could get to it. When the boys gathered around the teakettle, they reminded me of pigs around a swill-trough. The stronger boys drank the tea from cups made out of the hollow of their hands, and the weaker ones, or runts, got none. Several of the boys were living skeletons, and had evidently been very ill. I threw an apple to one of the runts, but he had never seen that kind of fruit before, and I was compelled to inform him by means of signs that it was good to eat.... Six of the boys sat together, and divided everything given them. I was told that they were brothers, although there wasn’t a year’s difference in their ages. Their father probably has a dozen wives, as polygamy is practiced by nearly all the natives.... While the negro boys were scrambling for the scant food provided by the steamship company, the other deck passengers were eating breakfasts of their own providing. In one place, six Hindu men were eating, seated in a circle; they seemed to be traveling together. In every party of Hindus, one of the number seems to be a half-servant, and he waits on the others. Several of the negro passengers are dressed like the Hindus, and do not seem to know any other language than Hindu. Other parties of diners on the deck were Arabs, and all ate with their fingers. Yesterday, as soon as the ship anchored off Chindi, the Hindus began fishing, the pastime of lazy people everywhere. All of them had hooks and lines in their baggage, and the cook provided them with fresh meat for bait. A dozen or more fish were caught, of a variety resembling our catfish. One Hindu family caught three fish, which were “cleaned” for dinner in the dirtiest manner imaginable. I saw the Hindu mother finally prepare the fish for the fire, and this was the way she did it: Each piece of fish was dusted with curry powder before going in the pot, as we dust fish in cracker-meal for frying. Then she put in a few pieces of potato and onion, and a crushed mass of some sort of vegetable. The woman’s hands being covered with curry and the crushed vegetable referred to above, she washed them in water, and poured the water into the pot with the fish. Then the half-servant took the pot away, and evidently placed it on the stove of the crew cook. In an hour he brought it back, and the mess was allowed to cool, after which the six members of the family gathered around, and ate with their fingers. The mother made a drink in the following manner: A little condensed milk was poured into a dirty washbasin nearly full of water. Sugar was added, and this beverage was passed about, and drank with a relish. One member of the family was a girl of fourteen, rather pretty, but dirty beyond description. A boy of eleven was also very good-looking. The mother, after dinner, lit a cigarette, and handed it occasionally to her husband, who took a few puffs, and handed it back to his wife.... Speaking of smoking cigarettes, last evening Adelaide and I sat with a party on deck to drink coffee after dinner. There were five ladies in the party, and Adelaide was the only one who did not smoke a cigarette with the coffee.... The poorer class of Hindus seem to be the laziest class of people in the world; the poverty of the people of India is due more to shiftlessness than to British oppression.... The weather has been superb all day, and land in sight nearly all the time.