6940-AFRICAN ADVENTURE - LAND OF SORROWS

PREPARATIONS

To begin with our weapons. We had three 12-bore express elephant rifles made by Alex. Herry the well known gunsmith, carrying two-ounce leaden balls, in Eley’s gas-tight cartridges, containing six and a half drachms of powder. These guns were magnificent for their work, and not only satisfied us thoroughly, but were so much admired that we had afterwards many offers made for them by those who had experience in elephant hunting. The number of cartridges which should be taken depends, of course, upon the length of time it is intended to remain among the big game, for the less weight one carries the better, as will be seen later on. We found these guns most effective too with hippopotami and the other larger animals.

We included in our armory a 450 Henry express rifle, a 450 Dougal, and a service pattern Martini Henry rifle, the last three intended for water buck, pallabs, koodoo-rams, and other “deer” that go by the name of “buck” in South Africa. Some shot guns for feathered game and a dozen flintlock muskets, which we obtained through the Army and Navy Stores, complete the list, not forgetting a revolver each of the latest pattern, with a spare one in addition.

A tent is indispensable, and the best kind is a circular bell tent, the size depending on the number. Our party consisted of two whites only, and the tent we had turned out very middling, but this was owing to the fault of K.-H. who, looking at a list of tents at the Army and Navy Co-operative Stores in London, selected one, the woodcut of which pleased him, without looking at the material of which the tent was made. When we opened the case containing our tent on reaching our destination we found a slight, flimsy calico arrangement meant to shade a lady’s afternoon tea table on a soft lawn, and which could not resist the dew, much less a shower of rain. A bell tent is the right thing to take, made of good stout canvas to give shelter from the sun as well as the rain.

Another very useful thing to take is an Ashanti hammock, for if you are ill they are far better to travel in than the jolting “machillas” the Portuguese and native chiefs effect. If staying at a native village they can also be slung inside the huts to sleep off the ground, where rats generally have noisy meetings, calculated to disturb the slumbers of anything possessed of the senses of touch, hearing, &c. The torments these rats were, in numerous instances, will be noticed later on. Large square waterproof sheets, two in number, we also took with us; they are useful to cover up bales of calico, guns, &c. which cannot be stored in the tent for want of room and in very wet weather when pitching the tent they make a dry floor. We obtained nearly everything we wanted at the stores already mentioned, and at prices far below we would have had to pay elsewhere.

Among other things we also bought, all of which we found quite requisite, were three or four tomahawks, a couple of axes (the latter for cutting firewood and the getting the tusks of the elephants out), indiarubber bath, buckets, two rough towels each and soap. This latter item you cannot take too much of, as it is very much sought after by the natives high and low, who will give almost anything in exchange for it.

For provisions we took tinned bacon, sardines, cocoa and milk and some jam. What we could have also taken, but did not get till long after, was tinned kiln-dried flour, tinned meats and vegetables. They are much needed and made all the difference in good and bad health. We had a chest of tea which, although far more than we required, was very useful in the shape of presents to chiefs, and we laid in a good stock of cavendish at the stores, both of us being heavy smokers.

For presents to the natives we had the aforementioned flintlock guns and we got a number of small cheap looking glasses, knives – the kind usually found in the kitchen for cutting up meat -- colored handkerchiefs in large quantities, blue blankets, flints and steels, wooden pipes and beads. Our investment in beads was not very successful, for it is necessary to take the right kind or the natives refuse to touch them. Fashion in beads in Central Africa is as imperative as bonnet fashions in London and Paris. In one place a handful of red beads with a white centre will get you almost anything, while a wagon load of white beads would be of as much use as a cargo of Swedenborgian works. In another, the red beads would be discarded as only fit for slaves, and the white ones would be the height of aesthetics. The only way to manage about this is to get the beads from the traders at Zanzibar or the Portuguese ports on the east coast. If they know where you are going you can always obtain the right information. Beads are always valued by the size and shape, as well as the color, and this has to be considered.

Lead in bars is another useful thing to take, for it is welcomed as a present, but too much of it is troublesome to carry. We had about two-hundredweight of it, and we sometimes found its presence in our way. Of course spirits are eagerly sought after, but it is risky work carrying any quantity about. It tempts the natives to steal, and a small quantity will make them drunk and quarrelsome, and the refusal of it when it is known to be in the possession of the visitor causes bad feeling. The morality of giving negroes spirits or using it to barter is another question, but anyway it will be found that very little is really needed. We took a few jars, containing altogether about ten gallons, and as we intended to remain at least twelve months, it was not out of the way. With bad water you require it, and some of the Arab chiefs, who can drink it without abusing the opportunity, are very grateful for a “nobbler”

Snuff is a “present” that fetches the black brother, and a very cheap description will do. Nearly every one of them takes snuff, which is made out of native tobacco, and very poor snuff too. We took brass wire with us, but found no demand for it, and as a “present” it was viewed with indifference. The main thing however is calico. No matter what quantity you take white calico is never too abundant. It is the currency of all Central Africa from east to west, and nothing can be done without calico. It should be done up in trusses of about two hundred yards each and unbleached is the best, costing about three pence or four pence a yard or even cheaper. A better kind, bleached, may also be taken as a ”specialté” costing from four pence to sixpence a yard. This latter will be much prized by some of the greater chiefs, and by the Arabs met in the interior. Everything is paid for in calico. Men are hired at the rate of so much calico per moon. On arriving at a village you buy a fowl for so many “fingers” of calico, fruit, food for your men, for yourself, &c., all is paid for by the calico. You may get a fowl, or two fowls, in one part of the country for perhaps three or four inches of wide calico, in another place they want half a fathom, the fathom always being measured across the chest with arms fully extended and reckoned from the tips of the fingers of one hand to the tips of the other. Prices vary everywhere, from a narrow strip and inch or two in width for a few eggs, to six fathoms for an able-bodied slave the price males were fetching in Portuguese territory when we left the country in March 1880.

One of the best of our purchases was a canteen very cleverly constructed and containing a teapot, kettle, frying pan, gridiron, three cups and saucers of metalware, three knives and forks, salt and mustard pots, three dishes, three plates, spoons, fireplace and water bucket, the whole most ingeniously packed inside the latter and when the whole affair was closed up it was not much larger than an ordinary galvanized bucket, and of no weight. We obtained this at the stores also and it served us well throughout the whole of our trip.

ROUTE PLANNING

After we had got everything ready the next thing was to consider the route to take to reach our destination. If the reader will glance at the map of South Africa, or that part of the continent south of the equator, he will observe above Zululand and Natal the Portuguese territory known as Mozambique. Below the seaport town of Mozambique and opposite to Madagascar he will notice the Zambesi River, on of the larger rivers of the world. At the mouth of it – according to nearly all maps but not in reality- he will see the town of Quilimane. This town was our destination whence we proposed to start into the interior for sport. There are various ways of reaching this place from London. The first route, and by far the most convenient is by one of the British India Company’s steamers to Aden calling at Malta. On the way from Aden one of the branch lines of the same company runs down to Zanzibar, Mozambique and Quilimane and Delagoa Bay for about sixty guineas first class. This route is recent and was only inaugurated when we left Africa.

Another way is by the Union Steamship Company from Southampton and Plymouth to the Cape of Good Hope and then on by the same line to the South African colonial ports, and by their steamer which sails from Natal to Delagoa Bay, Quilimane, Mozambique, and Zanzibar, the latter being the terminus. The disadvantage of this line is that – up to a recent date at all events – the steamers did not follow the example of the British-India in crossing the dangerous bar and landing passengers at Quilimane itself, which is some nine miles up an intricate river, but merely lay to for a few hours to allow people to get ashore as best they can. When seen in time the Portuguese send a small steam gun boat down the river and across the bar to receive passengers, but should this tender be absent in her capacity as a man-of-war hunting officially for slave dhows the passengers have to go ashore in one of the ship’s boats, or if too rough to permit of this they have to go on to Mozambique and Zanzibar and trust to providence providing favorable means on their return a fortnight later. Passengers and goods are often thus carried by this company backwards and forwards and instances have occurred in which cargo has cost the company as much as ten times its value in shipping charges, lighterage &c. Our advice is therefore not to go by the Union Company and the only reason it is mentioned is because in their offices they pretend to deliver you at Quilimane in the same way as they do at the Cape.

The third and final route is by the Donald Curry Line from London and Dartmouth via Madeira. This is the way we went out and it was then the most convenient. The Cape is reached in about twenty days and at Cape Town you change into another of the company’s coasting steamers and go on to Natal. We labored under the delusion that we could easily reach Quilimane from Natal by the Union Company but events turned out slightly different to what we had anticipated as will be narrated later on. The best of all these routes is undoubtedly by the British India and to any enterprising young Australian sportsman with a few months to spare and a little loose cash the following “wrinkle” may be worth knowing. By taking a direct P & O steamer to Aden, the British India steamer to Zanzibar can be caught, and on reaching that island, by a native dhow, the sportsman can be landed at opposite Badamayo, in a day, on the mainland, near which any amount of giraffe, ostriches, lions, hippopotami, zebra and similar game can be shot but no elephants.

Zanzibar can easily be reached in five or six weeks and with a two month’s shooting of all kinds, from the big game already mentioned down to “buck”, the varieties of which are numerous, and include gazelles not eighteen inches in height, blue hartebeestes, water buck &c. Six months will cover the whole time between the departure from to the return to Australian shores.

So much interest is taken in everything relating to Africa by the public, that the number of travellers in that part of it, which appears in maps some twenty-five years old; as the Great desert, is yearly increasing. The discoveries of Livingstone, Speke, Grant, Burton, Stanley, Cameron, and the other explorers only tend to whet the appetite of those who follow their varied adventures, and although we made no discoveries, which was chiefly caused by an unfortunate accident and a serious illness of one of us, still we would fain hope that what we did and what we saw during our sojourn among the black tribes, and the way in which two most unscientific individuals viewed everything may prove amusing and instructive reading to those who prefer to remain at home.

We reached the source of the slave trade, the very fountainhead of the terrible curse, and our eyes were opened to many things of which we had been previously ignorant. One most painful matter can hardly be passed over in silence, that which relates to the operations of certain missionaries. We conceived it rightly or wrongly, to be our duty to make public both what we witnessed and were told, and although it was a most distasteful business to us, good results have followed. The reader will learn further of everything relating to this matter.

One thing, we would caution any but the most healthy from visiting the same scenes. The climate is trying to those of a delicate constitution, and it is a great mistake, too commonly made, to attempt to rough it like one may do with impunity in the Rocky Mountains in America or the Australian bush. The actual heat in Central is not so intense; on the coast it ranges from 78 deg to 80 deg Fahn. according to the best authorities, both day and night. In the interior it is sometimes very hot during the day, but the thermometer is not often so high as it is in many parts of Queensland during the summer months. The coast is the place where malaria fevers abound and it is very deadly among the sweltering mangrove fringed rivers but away inland where the missionary stations are planted it is much healthier, although it is doubtful whether Central Africa will ever be sufficiently so for Europeans to really colonize it. The inhabitants are very numerous and of most varied dispositions, from the warriors of Zululand, the milder races north of the Zambesi and south of Lake Nyassa, and the fiercest tribes at the north end of that lake, to the ferocious blood-thirsty natives met with by Stanley and Cameron.

In relating our experiences we shall endeavor to put before the reader the general aspect of central Africa and its various resources. It is rich in minerals – far richer than some people imagine, and capital only is wanted to develop these riches. The Portuguese and Arabs between them have had it nearly all their own way, but the former, even though they have abolished slavery since 1875 in their African possessions are pretty nearly as bad as the Arabs who devastate certain places in the interior in the pursuit of “black ivory”. The Portuguese also put so many obstacles in the way of enterprise, that it is not surprising that none of the wealth of the colonies in that part of the world enriches Portugal by their own efforts. Were the Mozambique and adjacent territories, claimed by Portugal, in England’s hands a vast amount of treasure would long since have been yielded, for the Shire River, upper and lower, provide the waterway to Lake Nyassa, the head of which lake would be the natural point for the whole of the inland trade to arrive at. The ground between Quilimane and the north of Nyassa is the ground we travelled over and as there were only our two selves it will be seen that by gaining the confidence of the natives there is no difficulty in the way of opposition from them. The Arabs at present are great traders and they exchange gunpowder, guns, calico and numerous things that the negroes require for ivory, slaves, minerals and general produce. They are very cruel and horrible tales can be told of the sufferings of the wretched gangs of human beings marching down to the coast, to be distributed either among the clove and other plantations of the mainland or among the numerous islands.

With this short preface to an account of our travels it will be as well commence, and it is worthwhile warning the reader that some time will elapse before the first elephant is shot. It takes a long time to reach the elephant country and the journey thither was one that was full of interest to us, and we sincerely trust it may prove so to others in the perusal.