344 



SCIENCE. 



XIV. No. 355 



NYASSA-LAND AND ITS COMMERCIAL POSSIBILITIES.' 



The rapidity with which the geography of Africa — the New World 

 of the nineteenth century — has been opened up to the knowledge 

 of Western civiHzation during the last forty years, has left very little 

 to be filled in on our charts of the Dark Continent. As a natural 

 sequence to the delineation of the strictly geographic features of the 

 country comes the desire to know something of its cHmate, prod- 

 ucts, inhabitants, and resources. Added to the ever-increasing 

 pressure caused by the increase in population, is that love of ad- 

 venture which marks us as a nation, and leads the upper classes 

 to speculate in travel, and the lower in emigration. Is Africa a 

 suitable field for immigration ? Does its vast area produce such 

 articles as European civilization requires ? Will its peoples and 

 tribes buy our calicoes and manufactures, and have they any thing 

 to offer us in return ? These are the questions which have usurped 

 the place of the vague wonder as to what lay in the unknown in- 

 terior. We are concerned only with one comparatively small por- 

 tion of this vast continent ; and we deprecate criticism, ab initio, 

 by saying that even of this portion we must speak largely by infer- 

 ence, analogy, and report. 



By " Nyassa-Land " we include that country discovered by Living- 

 stone, and the scene of his last wanderings and death. Roughly 

 speaking, it is bounded on the north by the southern shores of 

 Tanganyika and the borders of the Kongo Free State ; on the west, 

 by Lakes Bangweolo and Moero, and the Kongo Free State ; on the 

 south, by the Zambezi ; and on the east, by the Shird River, Lakes 

 Shirwa, Nyassa, and Leopold. 



Nyassa-Land has during the last year and a half come promi- 

 nently into notice. Certain influential exponents of British thought 

 and feeling have taken up once more the question of the slave- 

 trade. The consensus of evidence of men so different in character 

 and thought as Livingstone, Lavigerie, Cameron, Elton, Stanley, 

 and Johnston, is not to be gainsaid, and British national feeling 

 has once more proved itself on the side of the oppressed. It was 

 generally agreed that Nyassa was one of the centres of the slave- 

 trade. It had been, moreover, for many years the sphere of per- 

 haps the strongest missionary effort in all Central Africa. Here 

 for over twenty years the Universities' Mission had worked, and 

 spent many thousands of pounds and many noble lives. Here for 

 the last fourteen years the Scotch churches had been working with 

 untiring zeal, founding some dozen stations ; and closely following 

 on these a trading company, in its origin largely philanthropic, and 

 founded at first as a lay mission society, had established trading- 

 centres along all the area occupied by the missions ; while even 

 private philanthropy had expended large sums in the construction 

 of the " Stevenson " road, between Tanganyika and Nyassa. No 

 wonder that those interested in the suppression of the slave-trade 

 turned their attention to Nyassa-Land, discovered and exploited by 

 British, and the centre of so many and such successful efforts by 

 our countrymen for its good. By a strange coincidence, at the 

 moment that the question of Nyassa began to assume such promi- 

 nence as a centre of the slave-trade, and on account of the action 

 of Portugal towards our missionaries and traders, and their hardly 

 concealed threats of annexation, — at this same time a new promi- 

 nence was given to the country by the news that the slave-traders 

 had attacked one of the trading-stations on the lake, and that the 

 British were fighting for their lives. The history of that siege, of 

 which Consul O'Neill was the hero, reads like a page of fiction, — 

 six white men, holding their own against an army of Arabs, utterly 

 cut off from assistance, voluntarily remaining rather than haul 

 down the British flag, slowly firing their last rounds of ammunition 

 one by one ! Had that story been told as was the story of Rorke's 

 Drift, England would be aware that she had six new heroes. 



It is our firm belief, that, for a country to be developed and 

 civilized, any scheme set on foot must have a sound commercial 

 and practical basis. This is the keynote of Sir John Kirk's creed, 

 than whom no man has been more practically successful in Africa. 



What, then, are the inducements offering for commercial enter- 

 prise in Nyassa-Land ? Let us first view it from the standpoint 

 we have already taken, the development of what has been already 

 initiated in the past. The carrying-trade for the missions alone is 



1 Paper read by Capt. F. D. Lugard of the English Army, before the British As- 

 sociation at its recent meeting. 



sufficient, in our opinion, to pay .dividends to a small company. 

 Undoubtedly the route to Csj^tfei. Africa;' the quickest, far the 

 cheapest, the easiest, and heftlthiest, is by the waterway of the 

 Zambezi, Shire, and Nyassa, t0, Tanganyika. All the necessary 

 supplies for the missions along Ihis route, together with calico for 

 their payments, should pass through the hands of the company on 

 Nyassa, including the supplies of food and calico for those settled 

 immediately around Tanganyika, both in the Kongo Free State on 

 the west, and the numerous Arab settlements on the east ; for 

 around each mission station there grows up rapidly a desire for 

 some of the rudimentary necessities of civilization. The ideas of 

 decency and of cleanliness are encouraged by mission settlements,, 

 and thus the two first wants of calico and soap are rapidly devel- 

 oped. These, together with salt, a chronic savage want, and metal 

 wire and beads for personal adornment, are essentially the pioneer- 

 ing elements, and indeed constitute the money of the country, for 

 which the natives are willing not only to bring their produce, but 

 to work by the week or month. These things, too, are largely re- 

 quired by the Arabs, and to a less degree by their followers ; and, 

 as they can be imported to the north of Nyassa at just about half 

 the price which the Arabs can bring them for, a large trade might 

 be done with these people, who are keen traders, and only too 

 ready to see on which side their interest lies ; while, if such com- 

 modities were supplied to them at the lowest prices compatible with 

 small profit, the great extension of our trade would amply, we be- 

 lieve, cover the loss consequent on the reduction of present prices, 

 while the prosecution of trade relations would tend to bring about 

 a closer connection between them and the white men, and so to 

 disarm the present feeling of mistrust and hostility. In return for 

 these articles, we should get from the native chiefs (i) the entree 

 into the country, with ready permission to settle near them and so 

 to exploit and develop the mineral wealth of the country ; (2) in ac- 

 tual payment, ivory and such other local products as we shall speak 

 of hereafter. From the Arabs we should get (i) we hope toleration, 

 for we must ever bear in mind that at starting we should be utterly 

 unable to cope with the united Arab power in these regions ; (2) in 

 actual payment, ivory, of which the Arabs are by far the best col- 

 lectors. From the people themselves we shall get manual labor, 

 porters for transport, and some minor products. The two former 

 are the great desideratum for exploiting the country or working its 

 minerals. 



In this way the existence of the missions is a direct encourage- 

 ment to trade. We have said that there is a constantly growing 

 demand for calico and other trade goods. Let us as briefly as pos- 

 sible see what the country has to give us in return. One thing 

 only, in our opinion, will pay for the initial expense of exploitation 

 and the subsequent heavy transit expenses, and that is mineral 

 wealth. We know for certain now that gold exists close to the 

 lake shore. Years and years ago, alluvial gold, and also copper, 

 were brought by the natives from Katanga. There is very good 

 reason to believe that the gold-bearing quartz reefs south of the 

 Zambezi extend probably from south-west to north-east through 

 this district, towards Moero and Katanga. Asbestos has been 

 found on the north-west shore, coal on the east, while iron and 

 copper are worked by the natives themselves. We have, then, very 

 fair grounds for believing that this country will repay by its min- 

 eral wealth the initial cost of exploitation. Its other products are 

 in a sense valuable, but would not, in our own opinion, ever of 

 themselves alone pay dividends to a large company. Of these, at 

 present, the most important is ivory ; but by far the greater part 

 which finds its way from the interior is " dead ivory," i.e., tusks which 

 have been kept for years, possibly for centuries, by chiefs in the far 

 interior, who were ignorant of its value, and used it as ornamental 

 door-posts, etc., and who now part with it to the Arab traders who 

 have penetrated to their lands, in exchange for trade goods. This is, 

 ipso facto, a decreasing product ; and no less so, we think, is the 

 " green " or newly killed ivory. Where only a year before large 

 herds of elephants were to be met with daily, the writer has wearily 

 followed tracks day by day without seeing a single elephant. The 

 importation of guns and powder is responsible for this sad destruc- 

 tion. Native hunters shoot down remorselessly, not merely cows, 

 but calves of any age, content to slaughter the latter to gorge on 

 their flesh, if they have no tusks to extract ; while the unfortunate 



