STANLEY'S DISCOVERIES AND TEE FUTURE OF AFRICA. 409 



with small retinues, conciliating the natives of 

 the larger kingdoms by patient persistence and 

 feeling their way. But of recent years all this 

 has been changed. The progress of discovery 

 has transferred the outposts of knowledge and the 

 starting-points of exploration to places where the 

 population is far more abundant than that which 

 is met with in either the northern or the southern 

 portions of Africa, yet where it is, for the most 

 part, divided into tribes. Hence modern explor- 

 ers have found the necessity of traveling with 

 large and strongly-armed retinues. This new meth- 

 od has been frequently adopted in the upper 

 basin of the White Nile, which has also been the 

 scene of many military expeditions sent by the 

 Egyptian Government to force a way into the 

 Soudan, including that commanded by Sir Samuel 

 Baker. So, in the south, Livingstone's compara- 

 tively small band of determined CafFres, placed at 

 his disposal by a chief whose confidence he had 

 gained, enabled him to cross the continent in the 

 latitude of the Zambesi. Subsequently other trav- 

 elers, like Burton, Speke, Grant, and Cameron, 

 starting from Zanzibar, have adopted a similar 

 plan. Their forces were large enough to enable 

 them to pass as they pleased through regions 

 where the tribes were small, they were sufficiently 

 powerful to make larger tribes fear to attack 

 them, and, as they invariably adopted a concilia- 

 tory policy with the latter, they never came into 

 serious collision with the natives. Mr. Stanley 

 has adopted the plan of traveling with an armed 

 retinue on a much larger scale than any of those 

 whom we have named, and he has certainly car- 

 ried, by these means, a great expedition suc- 

 cessfully through Africa. Thus he states, " I led 

 2,280 men across hostile Unyoro," on an expedi- 

 tion intended to cross the Albert Nyanza. Again, 

 when he leaves Nyangwe on his final expedition 

 down the Lualaba, he starts with a body of 500 

 fighting-men. Thus, with a larger military force 

 than hitherto employed, and making a deter- 

 mined use of it, Mr. Stanley has conducted a ge- 

 ographical raid across the middle of Africa, which 

 has led him into scenes of bloodshed and slaugh- 

 ter, beginning at the Victoria Nyanza, and not 

 ending until he arrived in the neighborhood of 

 the western coast. This achievement undoubt- 

 edly places Mr. Stanley in the foremost rank of 

 African discoverers, and insures to him a hardly- 

 earned and lasting fame. 



The question will no doubt be hotly discussed 

 how far a private individual, traveling as a news- 

 paper correspondent, has a right to assume such 

 a warlike attitude, and to force his way through 



native tribes regardless of their rights, whatever 

 those may be. A man who does so acts in defi- 

 ance of the laws that are supposed to bind private 

 individuals. He assumes sovereign privileges, 

 and punishes with death the natives who oppose 

 his way. He voluntarily puts himself into a po- 

 sition from which there is no escape, except by 

 battle and bloodshed ; and it is a question which 

 we shall not argue here, whether such conduct 

 does not come under the head of filibustering:. 

 Nations are above laws, and may do and decide 

 what expeditions they may care to launch, but 

 the assumption of such a right by private indi- 

 viduals is certainly open to abuse, and seems hard 

 to defend. It is impossible to speak of Mr. Stan- 

 ley's journey without noticing this exceptional 

 characteristic of it. At the same time it is not 

 our present object to discuss the morality of his 

 proceedings, but to occupy ourselves with his 

 discoveries, which are unquestionably of the 

 highest geographical importance, and may lead to 

 consequences in comparison with which the death 

 of a few hundred barbarians, ever ready to fight 

 and kill, and many of whom are professed canni- 

 bals, will perhaps be regarded as a small matter. 



The results of Mr. Stanley's journey at the 

 moment of writing these remarks are very im- 

 perfectly before us ; but we already know enough 

 to see that he finds the course of the Congo to 

 form a great arc, as was rudely laid down in the 

 well-known map of Duarte Lopez, published by 

 Pigafetta at Rome in 1591, and that his route 

 brings him into quasi connection with the two 

 farthest points reached in that part of the conti- 

 nent by explorers from the north, namely, that 

 reached by Schweinfurth, who received the gold 

 medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1874 

 " for his discovery of the Uelle River, beyond the 

 southwestern limits of the Nile Basin," and that 

 other point reached by the literary informant of 

 Dr. Barth, who, traveling southward from Dar- 

 fur, came to the great river of Kubanda, flowing 

 to the west. 



The Uelle was reached by Schweinfurth 1 in 

 April, the time when its waters were at their 

 lowest level, yet it was then 800 feet across, with 

 a depth of from 12 to 15 feet; its volume of out- 

 flow was estimated by him at 10,000 cubic feet 

 per second. All the Monbuttoo and the Niam- 

 niam people agreed in telling him that the Uelle 

 held on its course, as far as they could follow it, 

 for days and days together, till it widened so 

 vastly that the trees on its banks ceased to be 



1 Schweinfurth, " The West of Africa," vol. i., p. 

 553, English translation. 



