THE METHODIST

NEW CONNEXION MAGAZINE.

JANUARY, 1879.

THE BENIGHTED CONTINENT.

CHAPTER I.

TORCH-BEARERS WHO FACED THE DARKNESS.

WITHIN a few years the literature of African Exploration has reached the dimensions of a considerable library. On this theme of late not only the traveller but the printer has been busy. To collect and condense into small space and popular form the results of what has been effected in this department of knowledge, leaves no space for flourishing introductory paragraphs, nor for long and elaborate apologies.

We strike, then, into the great mass at once, with a mere glance at the chief men-for ever honoured in the history of the race-who have been the means of awakening the civilised world to the sad condition of Africa, to the swarming millions of human beings who, shut out for long, long centuries from the rest of the world, are living a life scarcely human, and but just in advance of the wild beasts which roam the deserts and forests of that benighted land.

There is, however, just one word to the reader who may say, or even feel, "Oh! but have you visited Africa?" The answer is laconic. "No." But then you will let us tell the substance of what we have been told, so long as it is worth the telling. At least, we think so. Our claim to tell it is that we have had long and close intercourse with the best men who have visited Africa-with those who have penetrated here and there, north and south, east and west, over it and through it, in all directions; and we simply presume, if it is presumption, to give, in our own way, but always under the protection of competent authorities, the spirit and the pith of all that is important in connection with the labours of the great pioneers of African civilisation. Such a reader as we have supposed will perhaps bear in mind, too, that Gibbon described

the city of Mecca, though he had not been there; that Buffon depicted the haunts and homes of the Polar bear, yet he had not seen them; and that Huxley has written on the all but innumerable functions of the physical organism of man, though he has not verified, by personal experiment, a tithe, nor probably a twentieth, of that he has very well depicted. We know, indeed, that Huxley would brand a man that meddles with anatomy who has not spent the bulk of his life in the dissecting-room; but that is the spirit of protection, a desire to make a monopoly of his craft, and in the scientific world would amount to another priestcraft.

For many centuries Africa has been virtually lost to all that is good and elevating in our race, cut off from the world, and doomed to utter savageism. Its physical structure and configuration have presented strong doors, closed with bars and bolts. Its fortresses have stood much battering, have often been stormed, but never taken, and the besiegers have had to retreat discomfited, or to stay and mix up with the wild tribes until they became really a part of the general barbarism. There was a time, indeed, when Carthage stood on African soil, and seemed by her commerce and civilisation to promise some sort of redemption; but Carthage, brutally slaughtered by Rome, fell, and Rome herself afterwards kindled hope, but Rome disappeared and left nothing but traces of her ruins. These people, however, only stood on the outskirts, the mere fringes of the great continent. Several centuries ago there was a people who conquered the south of Spain, established a strong government there, and for ages were foremost in learning and the arts. To their schools the nobles of Europe sent their sons, to be drilled in the sciences at the feet of the Moorish Mahometans, for these people were the Moors or Moriscoes. From Andalusia, from Granada, civilisation as then known was carried to Africa, till at length the learned men of Morocco became the rivals of the Moriscoes of southern Spain. Though these Mahometan Moors have utterly lost their position, and are nowhere with respect to education and progress, they, or their race, the Arabs, have ever since been spreading the religion of the Prophet in northern Africa, and along her eastern coasts, till they have succeeded in changing very considerably in these districts the character of the negro; though Arab ignorance and brutality, mixed with a degenerate and corrupt form of even Islamism, have made the change only a few degrees less objectionable than the former negro savageism. In looking at the condition of Africa, Europeans are too apt to forget this feature in connection with a large mass of her population in the north and on the east coast.

With more or less earnestness, Europeans for more than a century have been looking towards this dark continent, but their efforts have been largely, especially of late, directed to regions south of those occupied by the Moorish Mahometans. Men of humane hearts, of deep sym

pathies, and inspired by Christian heroism, were fired into exertion by the terrible tales of this lost people, and they resolved, at the cost of their comforts, their health, and their lives, to force a way into their midst. To do this, they saw no chance but by taking the river courses. They must follow the great streams, on the banks of which the people were sure to have congregated. But the question arose, where did the great streams lead to ? No one knew; and hence the great problem for long centuries of the sources, or courses, or mouths of the Niger, the Congo, and the Nile.

While at Memphis, in the delta, gossiping with the Egyptian priests, and ever inquisitive, Herodotus received some misty information of a great river somewhere beyond the great desert of Sahara (probably the Niger was meant), flowing from west to east, which Herodotus himself conjectured to be a tributary of the great river which feeds Egypt, then rolling onward not far from him; and, in his "Prometheus Unbound," Eschylus had sung of a river in

"A land far distant, where the tawny race

Dwell near the fountains of the sun, and where

The Niger pours his dusky waters; wind

Along his banks till thou shalt reach the fall,

Where from the mountains with papyrus crowned

The venerable Nile impetuous pours

His headlong torrent.”

Pliny had his theory, but it resembled that of Herodotus ; and Ptolemy mapped the two rivers, the White Nile with some accuracy, but the Niger very erroneously. Theories were various, and the dispute became hot, and even savage, till it was decided to explore, to come at the truth.

Sir Joseph Banks, an enthusiast in geography, and himself an explorer, who had been with Cooke in one of his great voyages of discovery, by the founding of the African Association (1788), fairly started the movement in England to find and follow the Niger. This Association sent out John Ledyard, a brave American, to start from Cairo to the supposed latitudes of this strangely erratic river. Ledyard arrived at Cairo, but fever seized him and he died there. A Mr. Lucas was sent by the same Association, to start from Tripoli, on the north coast, and so inland to Central Africa, but a war amongst Arabs put an end to this design. Hornemann was next despatched, reached Fezzan, started across the Sabara desert, but was never heard of more. These attempts to storm the strongholds of Africa appeared like shooting at the moon. Fabulous tales of Timbuctoo, with its grand, imposing streets and gold roofs, had reached Europe from negroes and Arabs; and Major Houghton offered to lead an expedition to the Niger and this celebrated city. He started on his journey, and penetrated to a point

never before reached by a European; but the Moors of the Sahara laid hands on him, robbed him of everything, stripped him naked, and left him to die.

The next man was one than whom none better deserves the name of hero-the brave Mungo Park-whose work we read many times a quarter of a century ago with precisely the same feelings we read "Robinson Crusoe," when we swallowed it, every page, as genuine history; and we have gone through Park recently with hardly less interest. Many on its first appearance treated it as a fable, and it certainly had all the elements of a successful romance; but subsequent explorers up to the present moment have been astonished at the literal accuracy of all his descriptions and narrations they could verify. Mungo Park was a Scotchman, son of a farmer, and bred up to the medical profession. He was given to the study of botany-the reader remembers the tiny moss in the desert-and any one who loved botany was sure to be loved by Sir Joseph Banks. Sir Joseph fixed his eye on Park, introduced him to the African Association, and Park started to seek the Niger. His adventures and his fate are known all the world over. He was to start from the Gambia and search for the Niger and Timbuctoo. After learning, for several months, the Mandingo language, he started with a negro, named Johnson, and a negro boy, Demba; taking a horse and two donkeys, as well as the usual trumpery articles to give to the chiefs, and with which to purchase food. Being a white man, the chiefs exacted more than the usual tribute as he passed their villages, and ere he reached Bambara, whence he was making, nearly all his goods had been taken from him. The negroes had robbed Park very civilly, but when he got amongst the Moors they did their robberies like true barbarians; and Johnson, his companion, fearing to go further, returned. When Park got to Deena, the Moors hissed and shouted at him, spit in his face, opened his bundles, and took what they desired. He pushed on for Bambara, but some Moors overtook him with orders that he must go to the Moorish camp, as the chief's wife wanted to look at him to see what kind of animal a Christian was. After five days' travel he arrived there, and was carefully inspected, especially by the ladies, who kept him dressing and undressing, buttoning and unbuttoning all through the day. They put him to sleep with a hog which they considered had a deep antipathy to all Christians, and they made him barber to the chief, whom he took care to shave so wretchedly that he soon lost his office. At this camp he was nearly famished for food and water. At length, after a long captivity, he rose at midnight, made his escape, and instead of starting homeward, the brave fellow pushed on still to find the Niger, and in three days reached the frontier town of Bambara, where the people were mostly negroes, and therefore less barbarous. He stood on the banks of the Niger on July 20th, ,1796 which he found large

river, broad as the Thames at Westminster. He drank of the water, and lifted up his heart in thanksgiving and prayer to the Almighty who had thus far protected him. On the opposite bank stood a great city, Segou, where he found such marks of civilised life as he never dreamed of in Africa; but he was not allowed to enter. Now he struck out for Timbuctoo, but found his funds exhausted, the Moors thickly scattered on the way, and then he resolved to return home. His sufferings were terrible, his clothing was mere rags, and every meal he ate he had to beg. The incident of the " little moss" occurred about this time, and he took courage. There was a famine in the district, women were selling their children for corn, and he was often laid up with fever. At length he reached the sea coast and England, via the West Indies. There was a vast excitement in London, and Mungo Park was famous everywhere.

This famous traveller married the daughter of the surgeon with whom he had been apprenticed, and soon after started with a second expedition, accompanied this time by forty soldiers. This expedition was conducted under Government auspices, and £5,000 were placed at his disposal. Again he reached Segou, and passed onward, but his soldiers were soon reduced by deaths to three men, and, imprudently passing a village without paying the usual tax to its chief, he was attacked while in his canoe on the river. He defended himself with great spirit and resolution, and rashly shot on the right and left many natives. At last he was forced, with his men, to jump into the river, and all were drowned. At the time he had with him two English soldiers, a Lieutenant Martin, and three slaves. A man named Amado Fatouma, who had accompanied Park as far as Haoussa, but had then left him, gave the particulars of his death, and his story was afterwards more or less confirmed. But in the meantime many regarded the tale of his death as fabulous; amongst the rest, Park's son, who went in search of his father and died not very far from the western coast, near Accra. The conditions of African travel were not then so well known as at present, nor was the character of the people. What appears like, and has all the elements of, a hostile and violent attack, has often no such purpose, and probably Park was at fault here, for the natives long remembered the fatal battle and called Park "The Wild Beast."

His violence excited the revenge of the natives against white men, and and when Réné Caillié, a Frenchman, afterwards started for Timbuctoo, and reached it (1828), he went dressed as a Mahometan Arab, and feigned the religion of the Prophet. Major Laing had preceded him as the first European who entered Timbuctoo; but the revengeful spirit excited by the conflict with Mungo Park caused him to be murdered by a tribe of Tuaricks near the city. Caillié, however, who was supplied with money by the Governor of Sierra Leone, succeeded well as a