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THE LAST FRONTIER


      *      *      *      *      *      *

_BY E. ALEXANDER POWELL_


THE LAST FRONTIER

GENTLEMEN ROVERS

THE END OF THE TRAIL

FIGHTING IN FLANDERS

THE ROAD TO GLORY

VIVE LA FRANCE!

ITALY AT WAR


_CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS_

      *      *      *      *      *      *


[Illustration: A SANDSTORM PASSING OVER KHARTOUM.

“It approached at the speed of a galloping horse—a great fleecy,
yellowish-brown cloud which looked for all the world like the smoke of
some gigantic conflagration.”]


THE LAST FRONTIER

The White Man's War for Civilisation in Africa

by

E. ALEXANDER POWELL, F.R.G.S.

Late of the American Consular Service in Egypt

With Sixteen Full-Page Illustrations and Map






New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
1919

Copyright, 1912, by
Charles Scribner's Sons

[Illustration: Publisher's Logo]




  To
  MY CHEERFUL, UNCOMPLAINING
  AND COURAGEOUS COMRADE ON THE
  LONG AFRICAN TRAIL
  MY WIFE




FOREWORD


The unknown lands are almost all discovered. The work of the explorer
and the pioneer is nearly finished, and ere long their stern and hardy
figures will have passed from the world's stage, never to return. In
the Argentine, in Mexico, and in Alaska store clothes and stiff hats
are replacing corduroys and sombreros; the pack-mule is giving way to
the motor-car. The earth has but one more great prize with which to
lure the avaricious and the adventurous: Africa—mysterious, opulent,
alluring—beckons and calls.

The conditions which exist in Africa to-day closely parallel those
which were to be found, within the memory of many of us, beyond the
Mississippi. In North Africa the French are pushing their railways
across the desert in the face of Arab opposition, just as we pushed
our railways across the desert in the face of Indian opposition forty
years ago. As an El Dorado the Transvaal has taken the place held by
Australia, and California, and the Yukon, in their turn. The grazing
lands of Morocco and the grain lands of Rhodesia will prove formidable
rivals to those of our own West in a much-nearer future than most
of us suppose. French and British well-drillers are giving modern
versions of the miracle of Moses in the Sahara and the Sudan and
converting worthless deserts into rich domains thereby.

The story of the conquest of a continent by these men with levels and
transits, drills and dynamite, ploughs and spades, forms a chronicle
of courage, daring, resource, and tenacity unsurpassed in history.
They are no idlers, these pioneers of the desert, the jungle, and the
veldt; they live with danger and hardship for their daily mates; they
die with their boots on from snake-bite or sleeping-sickness or Somali
spear; and remember, please, they are making new markets and new
playgrounds for you and me. Morocco, Algeria, Tripolitania, Equatoria,
Rhodesia, the Sahara, the Sudan, the Congo, the Rand, and the Zambezi
... with your permission I will take you to them all, and you shall
see, as though with your own eyes, those strange and far-off places
which mark the line of the Last Frontier, where the white-helmeted
pioneers are fighting the battles and solving the problems of
civilisation.

                                        E. ALEXANDER POWELL.




AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT


For assistance in the preparation of this book I am grateful to many
people. To the editors of _Collier's_, _The Outlook_, _The Review
of Reviews_, _The Independent_, _The Metropolitan_, _Travel_, and
_Scribner's_ my thanks are due for their permission to use such
portions of this volume as originally appeared in their magazines in
the form of articles. I also desire to acknowledge my indebtedness
to the Right Hon. James Bryce, O.M., for permission to avail myself
of certain data contained in his admirable work on South Africa; to
Charles K. Field, Esq., editor of _The Sunset Magazine_, for the title
and introductory lines to Chapter V; to the Hon. F. C. Penfield,
former American Diplomatic Agent in Egypt, from whose clear and
comprehensive “Present-Day Egypt” I have drawn portions of my account
of the complex administration of the Nile country; to J. Scott Keltie,
LL.D., F.R.G.S., author of “The Partition of Africa” and editor of
“The Statesman's Year-Book,” for much valuable information obtained
from those volumes; and to Miss Isabel Savory, A. Sylva White, Esq.,
S. H. Leeder, Esq., C. W. Furlong, Esq., and Francis Miltoun, Esq.,
for suggestions derived from their writings on African subjects. To
the American diplomatic and consular officials in Africa, and to
missionaries of many creeds and denominations, I am indebted for
innumerable kindnesses and much valuable information. At consulate
and mission station alike, from Cape Bon to Table Bay, I found the
latch-string always out and an extra chair at the table. I likewise
take this opportunity of expressing my appreciation of the courtesies
shown me by H. H. Abbas Hilmi II, Khedive of Egypt; H. R. H. Prince
George of Greece, former High Commissioner in Crete; H. H. Ali bin
Hamoud bin Mohammed, ex-Sultan of Zanzibar; H. E. the French Minister
of the Colonies; H. E. the Belgian Minister of the Colonies; Sir
Thomas Cullinan of the Premier Diamond Mine, Pretoria; and to the
officers of the Imperial German East Africa Railways; the Beira,
Mashonaland and Rhodesian Railways; and the British South Africa
Company.

                                        E. A. P.




CONTENTS


                                                                   PAGE

  FOREWORD                                                          vii

  AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT                                                  ix

  CHAPTER

      I. THE THIRD EMPIRE                                             1

     II. THE PASSING OF THE PEACOCK'S TAIL                           27

    III. SIRENS OF THE SANDS                                         56

     IV. THE ITALIAN “WHITE MAN'S BURDEN”                            80

      V. THE LAND OF BEFORE-AND-AFTER                               108

     VI. IN ZANZIBAR                                                143

    VII. THE SPIKED HELMET IN AFRICA                                165

   VIII. “ALL ABOARD FOR CAPE TOWN!”                                190

     IX. THE LAST STAND OF THE PIONEER                              205

      X. THE COUNTRY OF BIG THINGS                                  223

     XI. THE FORGOTTEN ISLES                                        248

         INDEX                                                      287




ILLUSTRATIONS


  A Sandstorm Passing Over Khartoum                      _Frontispiece_

  “Through Dim Bazaars where Turbaned Shopkeepers Squat
    Patiently in their Doorways”                                     17

  The Troglodyte Town of Medenine, Southern Tunisia                  26

  Some Sirens of the Sands                                           58

  Jewish Women in the Cemetery of Tunis                              70

  An Arab Bride Going to Her Husband                                 79

  Sunrise on the Great Sands                                         87

  Work and Play in Black Man's Africa                               110

  The Saviour of the Sudan and Some of Those he Saved               118

  Strange People from Innermost Africa                              129

  The Gateway to East Africa                                        146

  Arab Women of Zanzibar                                            156

  The Hand of the War Lord in German Africa                         187

  Railroading Through a Jungle                                      188

  More Work for the Pioneer                                         219

  The Prison Place of a Great Emperor                               268


  Map of Africa, Showing Railways and Spheres
    of Influence                                     _At end of volume_




THE LAST FRONTIER




CHAPTER I

THE THIRD EMPIRE


We have witnessed one of the most remarkable episodes in the history
of the world. In less than a generation we have seen the French
dream of an African empire stretching without interruption from the
Mediterranean to the Congo literally fulfilled. French imperialism did
not end, as the historians would have you believe, on that September
day in 1870 when the third Napoleon lost his liberty and his throne
at Sedan. The echoes of the Commune had scarcely died away before the
French empire-builders were again at work, in Africa, in Asia, in
Oceanica, founding on every seaboard of the world a new and greater
France. In the two-score years that have elapsed since France's _année
terrible_ her neglected and scattered colonies have been expanded into
a third empire—an empire oversea. She has had her revenge for the loss
of Alsace-Lorraine by forestalling Teutonic colonial ambition in every
quarter of the globe: in China, in Australasia, in Equatoria, and in
Morocco the advance of the German _vorlopers_ has been halted by the
harsh “_Qui vive?_” of the French videttes.

Though thirty centuries have elapsed since Phœnicia first began to
nibble at the continent, it was not until 1884 that the mad rush began
which ended in Africa's being apportioned among themselves by half a
dozen European nations with as little scruple as a gang of boys would
divide a stolen pie. This stealing of a continent, lock, stock, and
barrel, is one of the most astounding performances in history. France
emerged from the scramble with a larger slice of territory than any
other power, a territory which she has so steadily and systematically
expanded and consolidated that to-day her sphere of influence extends
over _forty-five per cent of the land area and twenty-four per cent of
the population of Africa_.

So silently, swiftly, and unobtrusively have the French
empire-builders worked that even those of us who pride ourselves
on keeping abreast of the march of civilisation are fairly amazed
when we trace on the map the distances to which they have pushed
the Republic's African frontiers. Did you happen to know that the
fugitive from justice who turns the nose of his camel southward from
Algiers must ride as far as from Milwaukee to the City of Mexico
before he can pass beyond the shadow of the tricolour and the arm of
the French law? Were you aware that if you start from the easternmost
boundary of the French Sudan you will have to cover a distance equal
to that from Buffalo to San Francisco before you can hear the Atlantic
rollers booming against the break-water at Dakar? It is, indeed, not
the slightest exaggeration to say that French influence is to-day
predominant over all that expanse of the Dark Continent lying west of
the Nile basin and north of the Congo—a territory one and a half times
the size of the United States—thus forming the only continuous empire
in Africa, with ports on every seaboard of the continent.

With the exception of the negro republic of Liberia (on whose
frontiers, by the way, France is steadily and systematically
encroaching), the little patches of British and Spanish possessions
on the West Coast, and the German colonies of Kamerun and Togoland,
France has unostentatiously brought under her control that enormous
tract of African soil which stretches from the banks of the Congo to
the shores of the Mediterranean, and from the Atlantic seaboard to the
Valley of the Nile. Algeria has been French for three-quarters of a
century, being regarded, indeed, as a part of France and not a colony
at all. Though the Bey of Tunis still holds perfunctory audiences in
his Palace of the Bardo, it is from the French Residency that the
protectorate is really ruled. Though Tripolitania has passed under
Italian dominion, it is French and not Italian influence which is
recognised by the unsubjugated tribesmen of the hinterland. And now,
after years of intrigue and machinations, which twice have brought her
to the brink of war, France, by one of the most remarkable diplomatic
victories of our time, has won the last of the world's great
territorial prizes and has set the capstone on her colonial edifice by
adding the empire of Morocco—under the guise of a protectorate—to her
oversea domain.

On the West Coast the tricolour floats over the colonies of Senegal,
French Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Dahomey, Upper Senegal-Niger, and
Mauritania (the last named a newly organised colony formed from
portions of the Moroccan hinterland), the combined area of these
possessions alone being about equal to that of European Russia.

From the Congo northward to the confines of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan
stretches the great colony of French Equatorial Africa—formerly known
as the French Congo—the acquirement of which by Savorgnan de Brazza,
counterchecked the ambitious plans of Stanley and his patron, King
Leopold, thus forming one of the most dramatic incidents in the
scramble for Africa. Though potentially the most valuable of the
French West African possessions, being enormously rich in both jungle
and mineral products, notably rubber, ivory, and copper, France has
taken surprisingly little interest in this colony's development, and,
as a result, it has been permitted to fall into a state of almost
pitiful neglect. There are two causes for the backwardness of French
Equatorial Africa: first, its atrocious climate, the whole territory
being a breeding-ground for small-pox, blood diseases, tropical
fevers in their most virulent forms, and, worst of all, the terrible
sleeping-sickness; second, the almost total lack of easy means of
communication, the back door through the Belgian Congo being the only
direct means of access to the greater part of the colony, which was
virtually cut in half by the broad area lying between the southern
boundary of Kamerun and the equator and extending eastward from the
coast to the Ubangi River, which France ceded to Germany in 1911 as
a _quid pro quo_ for being permitted a free hand in Morocco, and
which has been renamed “New Kamerun.” Though the economic development
of this region must prove, under any circumstances, a difficult,
dangerous, and discouraging task, it can be accomplished if the
government will divert its attention from its projects in North Africa
long enough to make Libreville a decent port, to provide adequate
steamer services on the great rivers that intersect the colony, and to
link up those rivers with each other and with the coast by a system of
railways.

Lying on the northern frontier of French Equatorial Africa, and
separating it from the Sahara, is the great Central African state of
Kanem, with its organised native government, its important commerce,
and its considerably developed civilisation, which was completely
subjugated by France in 1903, Wadai, its powerful neighbour to the
east, accepting a French protectorate in the same year. In the centre
of this ring of colonies lie the million and a half square miles of
the French Sahara, which the experiments of the French engineers have
proved to be as capable of irrigation and cultivation as the one-time
deserts of our own Southwest. Off the other side of the continent
is the great colony of Madagascar, the second largest island in the
world, in itself considerably larger than the mother country; while
the French Somali Coast forms the sole gateway to Abyssinia and
divides with the British colony of Aden the control of the southern
entrance to the Red Sea. Everything considered, history can show few
parallels to this marvellous colonial expansion, begun while France
was still suffering from the effects of the disastrous Prussian War,
and quietly carried on under the very eyes of greedy and jealous
neighbours.

The territorial ambitions of most countries have been blazoned to
the world by many wars. It took England two disastrous campaigns to
win South Africa and two more to conquer the Sudan; Russia learned
the same lesson in Manchuria at even a more terrible cost; while
Italy's insecure foothold on the Red Sea shore was purchased by the
annihilation of an army. Where other nations have won their colonial
possessions by arms, France has won hers by adroitness. Always her
policy has been one of pacific penetration. Trace the history of her
African expansion and you will find no Majuba Hill, no Omdurman, no
Adowa, no Modder River. Time and time again the accomplishments of her
small and unheralded expeditions have proved that more territory can
be won by beads and brass wire than by rifles and machine-guns.

Not long ago I asked the governor-general of Algeria what he
considered the most important factors in the remarkable spread
of French influence and civilisation in North Africa, and he
answered, “Public schools, the American phonograph, and the American
sewing-machine.” The most casual traveller cannot but be impressed by
the thoroughness with which France has gone into the schoolmaster
business in her African dominions. She believes that the best way to
civilise native races is by training their minds, and she does not
leave so important a work to the missionaries, either. In Algiers
there is a government university with nearly two thousand students
and a faculty of one hundred professors, while in more than eighteen
hundred secondary, primary, and infant schools the youth of Algeria,
irrespective of whether they believe in Christ, in Abraham, or in
Mohammed, are being taught how to become decent and patriotic citizens
of France. In Tunisia alone there are something over fifteen hundred
educational institutions; all down the fever-stricken West Coast,
under the palm-thatched roofs of Madagascar and the crackling tin ones
of Equatoria, millions of dusky youngsters are being taught by Gallic
schoolmasters that _p-a-t-r-i-e_ spells “France,” and the meaning
of “_Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité_.” To these patient, plodding,
persevering men, whether they wear the white linen of the civil
service or the sombre cassocks of the religious orders, I lift my hat
in respect and admiration, for they are the real pioneers of progress.
If I had my way, the scarlet ribbon of the Legion would be in the
button-hole of every one of them. We too may claim a share in this
work of civilisation, for I have seen a band of savage Arab raiders,
their fierce hawk-faces lighted up by the dung-fed camp-fire, held
spellbound by the strains of a Yankee phonograph; and I have seen the
garments of a tribal chieftain of Central Africa being fashioned on an
American sewing-machine.

“When the English occupy a country,” runs a saying which they have
in Africa, “the first thing they build is a custom-house; the first
thing the Germans build is a barracks; but the first thing the French
build is a railway.” Nothing, indeed, is more significant of the
civilising work done by the French in these almost unknown lands than
the means of communication, there being in operation to-day in French
Africa six thousand miles of railway, twenty-five thousand miles of
telegraph, and ten thousand miles of telephone. Think of being able to
buy a return ticket from Paris to Timbuktu; of telegraphing Christmas
greetings to your family in Tarrytown or Back Bay or Bryn Mawr from
the shores of Lake Tchad; or of sitting in the American consulate
at Tamatave and chatting with a friend in Antanarivo, three hundred
miles away. Why, only the other day the Sultan of Morocco, at Fez,
sent birthday congratulations to the President of France, at Paris, by
wireless.

To-day one can travel on an admirably ballasted road-bed, in an
electric-lighted sleeping-car, with hot and cold running water in your
compartment, and with a dining-car ahead, along that entire stretch
of the Barbary Coast lying between the Moroccan and Tripolitanian
frontiers, which, within the memory of our fathers, was the most
notorious pirate stronghold in the world. A strategic line has
been built six hundred miles southward from the coast city of Oran
to Colomb-Bechar, in the Sahara, with Timbuktu as its eventual
destination, and, now that the long-standing Moroccan controversy
has been settled for good and all, another railway is already being
pushed forward from Ujda, on the Algerian-Moroccan border, and in
another year or two the shriek of the locomotive will be heard under
the walls of Fez the Forbidden. From Constantine, in Algeria, another
line of rails is crawling southward via Biskra into the Sahara, with
Lake Tchad as its objective, thus opening up to European commerce the
great protected states of Kanem and Wadai. From Dakar, on the coast
of Senegal, a combined rail and river service is in operation to the
Great Bend of the Niger, so that one can now go to the mysterious
city of Timbuktu by train and river steamer, in considerable comfort
and under the protection of the French flag all the way. In Dahomey,
within the memory of all of us a notorious cannibal kingdom, a railway
is under construction to Nikki, four hundred miles into the steaming
jungle; from Konakry, the capital of French Guinea, a line has just
been opened to Kourassa, three hundred and fifty miles from anywhere;
while even the fever-stricken, voodoo-worshipping Ivory Coast boasts
two hundred miles or so of well-built line with its rail-head already
half-way from the coast to Jimini. From Tamatave, the chief seaport
of Madagascar, you can go by rail to the capital, Antanarivo, three
hundred miles up into the mountains, and, if you wish to continue
across the island, government motor-cars will run you down, over roads
that would make the Glidden tourists envious, to Majunga, on the other
side. From Djibouti, the capital of the French Somali Coast, another
railway has been pushed as far up-country as Diré-Dawah, in Menelik's
dominions (fare sixty dollars for the round trip of two hundred and
fifty miles), thus diverting the lucrative trade of Abyssinia from the
British Sudan to the French marts in Somaliland.

France has more good harbours on the coasts of Africa than all the
other nations put together. Algiers, with one of the finest roadsteads
in the world, is now the most important coaling-station in the
Mediterranean and a port of call for nearly all of the lines plying
between America and the Near East; by the construction of a great
ship-canal the French engineers have made Tunis directly accessible
to ocean-going vessels, thus restoring the maritime importance of
Carthage to her successor; with Tangier under French control, a naval
base will doubtless eventually be constructed there which will rival
Toulon and will divide with Gibraltar the control of the entrance
to the Mediterranean. With its entire western portion dominated by
the great French ports of Villefranche, Toulon, Ajaccio, Marseilles,
Oran, Algiers, and Bizerta, the Mediterranean is well on the road to
becoming, as Napoleon once prophesied, a French lake.

But, though good harbours are taken rather as a matter of course
in the Mediterranean, one hardly expects to find them on the
reef-bordered West Coast, which is pounded by a ceaseless and
merciless surf. At all of the British, German, Spanish, and Portuguese
ports in West Africa, save one, you are lowered from the steamer's
heaving deck into a dancing surf-boat by means of a contrivance
called the “mammy chair,” and are taken ashore by a score of ebony
giants who ply their trident-shaped paddles madly in their desperate
efforts to prevent your being capsized. Alternately scorched by the
sun and soaked by the waves, you are landed, about three times out
of four, on a beach as hot as though of molten brass. The fourth
time, however, your Kroo boys are not quite quick enough to escape
the crest of one of those mighty combers—and you can thank your lucky
stars if you get ashore at all. This is the method by which every
passenger and every bale of merchandise is landed on the West Coast
and it is very dangerous and unpleasant and costly. But when you come
to the French port of Dakar, instead of being dangled between sea and
sky in a bo's'n's chair and dropped sprawling into the bottom of a
pitching surf-boat, and being paddled frantically ashore by a crew of
perspiring negroes, you lounge in a cane chair on an awning-covered
deck while your vessel steams grandly in, straight alongside a
concrete wharf which would do credit to the Hudson River, and a steam
crane dips down into the hold and lifts the cargo out, a dozen tons
at a time, and loads it on a waiting train to be transported into the
heart of Africa, and as you lean over the rail, marvelling at the
modernity and efficiency which characterise everything in sight, you
wonder if you are really in the Dark Continent, or if you are back in
America again.

But if the French harbours are amazingly good, the French vessels
which drop anchor in them are, for the most part, amazingly bad.
The _Messageries Maritimes_, a highly subsidised line which has a
virtual monopoly of the French colonial passenger trade, and which
is notorious for its we-don't-care-whether-you-like-it-or-not
attitude, has the worst vessels that I know, bar none, and charges
the most exorbitant fares. If you wish to visit the Somali Coast, or
Madagascar, or Réunion, you will have to take this line, because there
is no other, but elsewhere along the coasts of Africa you will do well
to follow my advice and travel under the British or the German flag.

The struggle of the French colonial army to maintain law and order
along the vast reaches of France's African frontiers forms one of
the most thrilling and romantic chapters in the history of colonial
expansion. Theirs has been a work of tact, rather than of force, for,
where England, Germany, Italy, and Belgium have used the iron hand in
dealing with the natives, France, more farsighted, has seen the wisdom
of hiding it within the velvet glove. Always she has conciliated the
Moslem. She has safeguarded the privacy of his mosques and harems; she
has encouraged by government subsidies his schools and universities;
instead of desecrating the tombs of his holy men, she has whitewashed
them; the burnooses of the great tribal and religious chieftains
are brilliant with French decorations; the native _mollahs_ and
_cadis_ are utilised as local magistrates in all except the gravest
cases or those involving a European. To attempt to govern a country
without those, or against those, to whom it belonged, is a blunder
of which France has never been guilty. It has been the consistent
policy of other European nations, on the contrary, neither to trust
the natives nor to treat them with any degree of consideration.
Hence the ominous unrest in India; hence the ever louder murmur of
“Egypt for the Egyptians”! hence the refusal of the natives of German
East Africa to work on German-owned plantations and their wholesale
emigration from that colony; hence the fact that no Italian official
in Eritrea or Benadir dares venture outside the town walls unarmed and
unescorted, nor will in Tripolitania for many years to come. I have
been assured repeatedly by North African sheikhs that, should France
become involved in a European war, her native soldiery would volunteer
almost to a man. That England is far from certain how her Egyptian and
Sudanese troops would behave in such a contingency is best proved by
the formidable British garrisons which she deems it wise to maintain
in the land of the Valley of the Nile.

I am but reflecting the opinions of many highly placed and intimately
informed European officials in North Africa when I assert that
Germany's repeated interference with the French programme in Morocco
was due as much to military as to political reasons, the Germans using
this means to hinder the expansion of that mysterious _force noire_
which has long been a bugaboo to the War Office authorities in Berlin.
Whether this was the true reason or not for Germany's attitude in the
Moroccan business, no one knows better than the German general staff
that, in the event of war, the Republic would be able to advance a
great black army to the banks of the Rhine in thirty days—and that she
would not be deterred by the scruples which prevented her utilising
her African soldiery in 1870. It has been repeatedly urged, indeed,
that the numerical inferiority of the annual French conscription, as
compared with that of Germany, be made up for by drafting a corps of
black troops drawn from French West Africa into the continental army.
France has already recruited very close to twenty thousand native
troops—which is the strength of an army corps—in her West African
possessions alone, and as any scheme for drafting it into Algeria,
so as to enable the French troops stationed there to be available
elsewhere, would instantly arouse the Arab population to revolt, it is
highly probable that this African army corps would, in case of war, be
employed on the European continent. Though France's African army does
not at present number much over fifty thousand men—all well drilled,
highly disciplined, and modernly armed—the French drill-sergeants in
Africa are not idle and have limitless resources to draw from. The
population of the negro states under French protection runs into many
millions, and would easily yield twenty per cent of fighting men,
while the acquisition of Morocco has added the Berbers, that strange,
warlike, Caucasian race, to the Republic's fighting line. Nothing
pleases the African as an occupation more than soldiering, his native
physique, courage, and endurance making him, with amazingly little
training, a first-class fighting man. It is no great wonder, then,
that Germany looks askance at the formidable army which her rival is
building up so quietly but so steadily on the other side of the Middle
Sea.

No small part in the winning of North Africa has been played by the
Foreign Legion—how the name smacks of romance!—that picturesque
company of adventurers, soldiers of fortune, and ne'er-do-weels,
ten thousand strong, most of whom serve under the French flag in
preference to serving in their own prisons. In this notorious corps
the French Government enlists without question any physically fit man
who applies. It asks no questions and expects to be told any number
of lies. It trains them until they are as hard as nails and as tough
as rawhide; it works them as a negro teamster works a Kentucky mule;
it pays them wages which would cause a strike among Chinese coolies;
and, when the necessity arises, it sends them into action with the
assurance that there will be no French widows to be pensioned. So
unenviable is the reputation of the Legionnaires that even the
Algerian desert towns balk at their being stationed in the vicinity,
for nothing from hen-roost to harem is safe from their depredations;
so they are utilised on the most remote frontiers in time of peace and
invariably form the advance guard in time of war. It is commonly said
that when the Legion goes into action its officers take the precaution
of marching in the rear, so as not to be shot in the back, but that
is probably a libel which the regiment does not deserve. Wherever
the musketry is crackling along France's colonial frontiers, there
this Legion of the Damned is to be found, those who wear its uniform
being, for the most part, bearers of notorious or illustrious names
who have chosen to fight under an alien flag because they are either
afraid or ashamed to show themselves under their own.

Several times each year it is customary for the commandants of the
French posts along the edge of the Sahara to organise _fantasias_ in
honour of the Arab sheikhs of the region, who come in to attend them,
followed by great retinues of burnoosed, turbaned, and splendidly
mounted retainers, with the same enthusiasm with which an American
countryside turns out to see the circus. At one of these affairs,
held in southern Algeria, I could not but contrast the marked
attentions paid by the French officials to the native chieftains with
the cavalier and frequently insolent attitude invariably assumed by
British officials toward Egyptians of all ranks, not even excepting
the Khedive. Were a French official to affront one of the great Arab
sheikhs as Lord Kitchener did the Khedive, when he exacted an apology
from his Highness for presuming to criticise the discipline of the
Sudanese troops, he would be fortunate indeed if he escaped summary
dismissal.

At the _fantasia_ in question luxuriously furnished tents had been
erected for the comfort of the native guests; a champagne luncheon
provided the excuse for innumerable protestations of friendship; a
series of races with money prizes was arranged for the visitors'
horses; and, before leaving, the sheikhs were presented with ornate
saddles, gold-mounted rifles, and, in the cases of the more
important chieftains, with crosses of the Legion of Honour. In return
for this they willingly agreed to capture and surrender certain
fugitives from justice who had fled into the desert; to warn the
more lawless of their tribesmen that the plundering of caravans must
cease; to furnish specified quotas of recruits for the native cavalry;
and to send in for sale to the Remount Department a large number of
desert-bred horses. And, which is the most important of all, they go
back to their tented homes in the desert immensely impressed with the
power, the wealth, and the generosity of France.

[Illustration: “THROUGH DIM BAZAARS WHERE TURBANED SHOPKEEPERS SQUAT
  PATIENTLY IN THEIR DOORWAYS.”

Here, in the native quarters of the remote towns of the Algerian
hinterland, the disciples of Pan-Islam find eager listeners to their
creed of Africa for the Africans.

_Photograph by Em. Frechon, Biskra._]

Not content with these periodic manifestations of friendship, the
French Government makes it a point occasionally to invite the native
rulers of the lands under its control to visit France as the guests
of the nation. Escorted by French officers who can talk with them in
their own tongue, these colonial visitors in their outlandish costumes
are shown the delights of Montmartre by night, they are dined by the
President of the Republic at the Élysée, they are given the freedom
of Paris at the Hôtel de Ville, and they finally return to their own
lands the friends and allies of France for the rest of their lives.
“It doesn't cost the government much,” an official of the French
Colonial Office once remarked to me, _à propos_ of a visit then being
paid to Paris by the King of Cambodia, “and it tickles the niggers.”

Straggling down here and there into the desert from some of the
North African coast towns go the trade routes of the caravans, and
it is the protection of these trade routes, traversing, as they do,
a territory half again as large as that of the United States, that
is entrusted to the twelve hundred _méharistes_ composing France's
Saharan forces. By a network of small oasis garrisons and desert
patrols, recruited from the desert tribes and mounted on the tall,
swift-trotting camels known as _méhari_, France has made the Saharan
trade-routes, if not as safe as Fifth Avenue or Piccadilly, certainly
very much safer for the lone traveller than lower Clark Street, in
Chicago, or the neighbourhood of the Paris _Halles_. It has long been
the fashion to hold up the Northwest Mounted Police as the model for
all constabulary forces, just as it has been the fashion to extol
the English as the model colonisers, but, taking into consideration
the fewness of their numbers, the vastness of the region which they
control, and the character of its climate and its inhabitants, I give
the blue ribbon to these lean, brown-faced, hard-riding camel-men who
have carried law and order into the furthermost corners of the Great
Sahara.

Though comparatively unfertile, the Sahara vastly influences
the surrounding regions, just as the Atlantic Ocean influences
the countries which border on it. Were commerce to be seriously
interrupted upon the Atlantic, financial hardships would inevitably
result in the countries on either side. So it is, then, with the
Sahara, which is, to all intents and purposes, an inland ocean. Ever
since the caravan of the Queen of Sheba brought gifts to King Solomon,
ever since Abraham came riding down from Ur, it has been customary
for the nomad Arab rulers through whose territories the desert trade
routes pass to exact heavy tribute from the caravan sheikhs, the Bilma
trans-Saharan route alone being plundered annually to the tune of ten
million francs until the coming of the French camel police. Many of
these great trade caravans, you will understand, are literally moving
cities, sometimes consisting of as many as twelve thousand camels, to
say nothing of the accompanying horses, donkeys, sheep, and goats.
To outfit such a caravan often takes a year or more, frequently at
a cost of more than one million dollars, the money being subscribed
in varying sums by thousands of merchants and petty traders dwelling
in the region whence it starts. It is obvious, therefore, that the
looting of such a caravan might well spell ruin for the people of a
whole district; and it is by her successful protection of the caravan
routes that France has earned the gratitude of the peoples of all
those regions bordering on the Great Sahara. But the days of the
caravan trade are numbered, for the telegraph wires which already
stretch across the desert from the Mediterranean coast towns to the
French outposts in the Congo, the Senegal, and the Sudan, are but
forerunners to herald the coming of the iron horse.

France's path of colonial expansion in Africa has been remarkably
free from obstructions, for, barring the Algerian campaign of 1830,
and the German-created incidents in Morocco, she has acquired her
vast domain—close on half the total area of the continent—at a
surprisingly low cost in money and lives. The only time, indeed,
when her African ambitions received a serious setback was in 1898,
at Fashoda (now known as Kodok), on the White Nile, when the French
explorer, Major Marchand, yielded to the peremptory demand of Lord
Kitchener and hauled down the tricolour which he had raised at that
remote spot, thus losing to France the whole of the Western Sudan and
the control of the head-waters of the Nile.

There is an interesting bit of secret diplomatic history in this
connection. The story has been told me by both French and British
officials—and there is good reason to believe that it is true—that
the French Government had planned, in case Marchand was able to hold
his position until reinforcements arrived, to divert the waters
of the White Nile, at a point near its junction with the Sobat
River, into the Sahara, an undertaking which, owing to the physical
characteristics of that region, would, so the French engineers
claimed, have been entirely feasible. France would thus have
accomplished the twofold purpose of irrigating her desert territory
and of turning Egypt into a desert by diverting her only supply of
water; for this, remember, was in those bitter, jealous days before
the Anglo-French _entente_. It was, indeed, the intelligence that the
Khalifa proposed, by doing this very thing, to bring Egypt to her
knees that caused the second Sudanese expedition to be pushed forward
so rapidly. (I should add that the idea, once so popular in France, of
turning the Sahara into an inland sea, has been proven impracticable,
if not impossible.) It is safe to say that England's prime reason for
clinging so tenaciously, and at such heavy cost, to the arid tract
known as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, is to safeguard Egyptian prosperity
by keeping control of the head-waters of the Nile. To illustrate
how completely the Nile is the barometer of Egyptian prosperity, I
might add that the last time I was in Khartoum the officials of the
Sudanese Irrigation Service complained to me most bitterly that they
were being seriously hampered in their work of desert reclamation by
the restrictions placed upon the quantity of water which they were
permitted to divert from the Nile, a comparatively small diversion
from the upper reaches of the river causing wide-spread distress among
the Egyptian agriculturists a thousand miles down-stream.

Because the map-makers from time beyond reckoning have seen fit to
paint the northern half of the African continent a speckled yellow,
most of us have been accustomed to look upon this region as an arid,
sun-baked, worthless desert. But French explorers, French engineers,
and French scientists have proved that it is very far from being
worthless or past reclamation. M. Henri Schirmer, the latest and most
careful student of its problems, says: “The sterility of the Sahara is
due neither to the form of the land nor to its nature. The alluvium of
sand, chalk, and gypsum which covers the Algerian Sahara constitutes
equally the soil of the most fertile plains in the world. What causes
the misery of one and the wealth of the other is the absence or the
presence of water.” Now, an extensive series of experiments has
proven that the Sahara, like the Great American Desert, has an ample
supply of underground water, which in many cases has been reached at
a depth of only forty feet. There is, incidentally, hardly a desert
where the experiment has been tried, whether in Asia, Africa, or
America, where water has not been found within two thousand feet of
the surface. Though usually not sufficient for agriculture, enough
has generally been found to afford a supply for cattle, railroads,
and mines. Three striking examples of what can be accomplished by
scientific well-drilling in arid lands are the great wells of the
Salton Desert, the flowing wells at Benson, Arizona, and a supply of
seven hundred thousand gallons of water a day from the deep wells on
the mesa at El Paso, each of these supplies of water being obtained
from localities which were superficially hopelessly dry.

It should be borne in mind, in any discussion of North Africa, that
until the early '80's the Great American Desert was as primitive,
waterless, and sparsely settled a region as the Sahara. Its scattered
inhabitants practised irrigation and agriculture very much as the
people of southern Algeria and Tunisia do to-day, and, like them, they
constructed buildings of unburnt brick and stone. Though the Indian
was able to find a meagre sustenance upon the American desert, just
as the Arab does upon the African, it was of a kind upon which the
white man could not well exist. The unconquered Apaches plundered
wagon-trains and mail-coaches just as the Tuareg occasionally plunders
the Saharan trade caravans to-day, and the only white men were the
soldiers at scattered and lonely posts or desperadoes flying from the
law. There is, indeed, a striking similarity between the conditions
which prevail to-day along France's African borders and those which
existed within the memories of most of us upon our own frontier.

Then the railways came to the American West, just as they are coming
to North Africa to-day, and the desert was awakened from its lethargy
of centuries by the shriek of the locomotive. The first railroads
to be constructed were designed primarily as highways between the
Atlantic and the Pacific seaboards, with hardly a thought of revenue
from the desert itself. But hard on the heels of the railway-builders
followed the miners and the cattlemen, so that to-day the iron highway
across the desert is bordered by prosperous cities and villages, by
mines and oil-derricks and ranches and white farm-houses with green
blinds, this one-time arid region, which the wiseheads of thirty years
ago pronounced worthless, now yielding a wealth twice as much per
capita as that of any other portion of the United States.

What has already been accomplished in the American desert, French
brains, French energy, and French machinery are fast accomplishing
in the Sahara. Thanks to the recent invention, by a non-commissioned
officer of France's African forces, of a six-wheeled motor-sledge
driven by a light but powerful aeroplane engine, the problem of rapid
communication in these desert regions, which have hitherto been
impassable to any kind of animal or mechanical traction, has been
solved. As the new vehicle has proved itself capable of maintaining
a speed over sand dunes of twenty miles an hour, it promises to be
of invaluable assistance to the French in their work of opening up
the waste places. Not only have French expeditions explored and
charted the whole of the unknown regions, but they have thoroughly
investigated the commercial possibilities of the immense territories
which have recently come under their control. These investigations
have shown that the Sahara is very far from being the sandy plain,
flat as a billiard-table, which the pictures and descriptions in our
school geographies led us to believe, and which the reports of those
superficial travellers who had only journeyed into the desert as far
as Biskra, in Algeria, or Ghadames, in Tripolitania, confirmed, but
is, on the contrary, of a remarkably varied surface, here rising into
plateaus like those of Tibesti and Ahaggar, there crossed by chains of
large and fertile oases, and again broken into mountain ranges, with
peaks eight thousand feet high, greater than the Alleghanies and very
nearly as great as the Sierra Nevadas.

An oasis, by the way, does not necessarily consist, as the reading
public seems to believe, of a clump of palm-trees beside a brackish
well, many of them being great stretches of well-watered and
cultivated soil, sometimes many square miles in extent, and rich
in fig, pomegranate, orange, apricot, and olive trees. The oasis
of Kaouer, for example, with its one hundred thousand date-palms,
furnishes subsistence for the inhabitants of a score of straggling
villages, with their camels, flocks, and herds. There are said to be
four million date-palms in the oases of the Algerian Sahara alone, and
to cut down one of them is considered as much of a crime as arson is
in a great city, for its fruit is a sufficient food, from its leaves
a shelter can be made which will keep out sun and wind and rain, and
its shade protects life and cultivation. Many date plantations and
even vineyards have flourished for several years past in southernmost
Algeria by means of water from below the surface, while the chief of
the French geodetic survey recently announced that a tract in the very
heart of the Sahara, nine degrees in longitude by twelve degrees in
latitude, is already sufficiently watered for the raising of grain.
The reports of these expeditions and commissions bear with painstaking
thoroughness on the productivity of the soil, the suitability of
the climate, the existence and accessibility of forest wealth, the
presence and probable extent of mineral veins, and on transportation
by road, rail, and river over all that huge territory which comprises
France's African empire.

The story of French success in the exploration, the civilisation,
the administration, and the exploitation of Africa is one of the
wonder-tales of history. That she has relied on the resources of
science rather than on those of militarism makes her achievement
the more remarkable, for where England's possessions have largely
been gained by punitive expeditions, France has won hers by pacific
penetration. Look at Senegambia as it is now under French rule,
and compare its condition with what it was as Mungo Park describes
it at the end of the eighteenth century; contrast the modernised
Dahomey of to-day, with its railways, schools, and hospitals, with
the blood-soaked, cannibal country of the early '60's; remember that
Algeria has doubled in population since the last Dey, by striking
the French consul with his fan, turned his country into a French
department—and you will have a bird's-eye view, as it were, of what
the French have accomplished in the colonising field.

If French Africa becomes in time a rich and prosperous dominion—and I
firmly believe that it will—it is to her patient and intrepid pioneers
of civilisation—-desert patrols, railway-builders, well-drillers,
school-teachers, commercial investigators—that the thanks of the
nation will be due; for they are pointing the way to millions
of natives, on whose activities and necessities the commercial
development of Africa must eventually depend. So I trust that those
at home in France will give all honour to the men at work in the
Sahara, the Senegal, and the Sudan or rotting in the weed-grown,
snake-infested cemeteries of the Congo and Somaliland; men whose
battles have been fought out in steaming jungles or on lonely oases,
far away from home and friends and often from another white man's
help and sympathy; sometimes with savage desert raiders, or in action
against Hausa, Berber, or Moor; but oftenest of all with an unseen and
deadlier foe—the dread African fever.

[Illustration: THE TROGLODYTE TOWN OF MEDENINE, SOUTHERN TUNISIA.

Perhaps the strangest city in the world. The dwellings, known as
rhorfas, are built in the form of horseshoes to keep out thieves.

_Photograph by Soler, Tunis._]




CHAPTER II

THE PASSING OF THE PEACOCK'S TAIL


An unaccustomed silence hung over the labyrinth of court-yards,
corridors, gardens, mosques, and kiosks which compose the imperial
palace in Fez. The chatter of the harem women was hushed; the
white-robed officials of the household slipped through the
mosaic-paved passages like melancholy ghosts; even the slovenly
sentries at the gates, their red tunics over their heads to protect
them from the sun, seemed to tread more softly, as though some great
one lay dying. Within the palace, in a room whose furnishings were
a strange jumble of Oriental taste and European tawdriness, a group
of men stood about a table. Certain of them were tall and sinewy
and swarthy, their white burnooses, which enveloped them from their
snowy turbans to their yellow slippers, marking them unmistakably
as Moors. Of the others, whose clearer skins showed them to be
Europeans, some wore the sky-blue tunics and scarlet breeches of the
_chasseurs d'Afrique_, some the braided jackets and baggy trousers of
the _tirailleur_ regiments, some the simple white linen of the civil
administration, while across the chest of one, a grizzled man with the
épaulettes of a general of division, slanted a broad scarlet ribbon.
At the table sat an old-young man, a man with an aquiline, high-bred
nose, a wonderfully clear, olive skin, and a fringe of scraggy beard
along the line of his chin, a man with a weak mouth and sensual lips
and heavy-lidded, melancholy eyes. The man with the scarlet ribbon
unrolled a parchment and, bowing, spread it upon the table. One of
the native dignitaries, with a gesture of reverence which included
heart and lips and head, dipped a quill pen into an ink-well and
tendered it to the silent figure at the table. “Your Majesty will have
the goodness to sign here?” said the soldier, half-questioningly,
half-commandingly, as he indicated the place with his finger. The
man at the table gravely inclined his head, reached for the pen,
hesitated for a moment, then slowly began to trace, from right to
left, the strange Arabic signature. “Inshallah! It is done!” he said,
and throwing down the pen he sunk his face into his hands. “Vive la
France!” said the general solemnly, and “Vive la France!” echoed the
officers around him. Well might the one lament and the others rejoice,
for, with the final flourish of the Sultan's pen, Morocco had ceased
to exist as an independent nation and France had added an empire to
her dominions.

“The world is a peacock,” says a Moorish proverb, “and Morocco is the
tail of it.” Now, however, it has become the tail of the Gallic cock,
for when, on March the thirtieth, 1912, Sultan Mulai-abd-el-Hafid
signed the treaty establishing a French protectorate over his country,
Morocco entered upon a new phase of its existence. With that act there
ended, let us hope for all time, a situation which on more than one
occasion has threatened the peace of the world. Not since the English
landed in Egypt a third of a century ago has an event occurred which
so vitally concerns the future welfare of Africa; not since the Treaty
of Tilsit has France won so decisive a diplomatic victory or added
so materially to her territorial possessions. By the signing of that
treaty France laid the final stone in the mighty colonial structure
which she has built up in Africa, and opened to Christianity,
civilisation, and commerce the door of a region which has hitherto
been a synonym for mystery, cruelty, intolerance, and fanaticism.

Though scarcely forty hours of travel by train and boat separate the
departure platform at the Quai d'Orsay station in Paris from the
landing-beach at Tangier, though its coast is skirted by the tens
of thousands of American tourists who visit the Mediterranean each
year, less is known of Morocco than of many regions in central Asia
or inner Africa. Though a few daring travellers have made scattering
crow's-feet upon its map, there are regions as large as all our New
England States put together which are wholly unexplored. It is almost
the last of the unknown countries. As its women draw their veils to
hide their faces from the men, so the Moors have attempted to draw a
veil of mystery and intolerance over the face of their country to hide
it from the stranger. What strange tribes, what ruins of an earlier
civilisation, what wealth in forests or minerals lie behind its ranges
can only be conjectured. Its maps are still without the names of
rivers and mountains and towns—though the rivers and mountains and
towns are there; the sole means of travel are on camels, mules, or
donkeys along the wild, worn paths, it being the only country of any
size in the world which cannot boast so much as a mile of railway; its
ports and the two highways leading from the coast to its capitals, Fez
and Morocco City, were, until the coming of the French, alone open
to the traveller—and none too safe at that; the foreigner who has
the hardihood to stray from the frequented paths is taking his life
in his hands. Few of the maps of Morocco are, so far as accuracy is
concerned, worth the paper they are printed on, being largely based on
unscientific material eked out by probabilities and conjectures, there
being less accurate information, in fact, about a country larger than
France, and only two days' journey from Trafalgar Square, than there
is about Abyssinia or Borneo or Uganda. Even the names which we have
given to the country and its inhabitants are purely European terms and
are neither used nor recognised by the people themselves, who call
their country _El Moghreb el Aska_, which means literally “Sunset
Land,” the term Morocco being a European corruption of the name of one
of its capitals, Marrakesh, or, as it is known to foreigners, Morocco
City. A land almost as large as the State of Texas, with snow-capped
mountain ranges, navigable rivers, vast forests, a fertile soil,
an abundant water supply, and an ideal climate; a land of walled
cities and white villages, of domed mosques and slender minarets,
of veiled women and savage, turbaned men; a land of strange peoples
and still stranger customs; a land of mystery and fatalism, of
suspicion and fanaticism, of cruelty and corruption, of confusion and
contradiction—that is Morocco, where, as an Arabic writer has put it,
a wise man is surprised at nothing that he sees and believes nothing
that he hears.

This empire which has come under the shadow of the tricolour is,
above all else, a white man's country. Unlike India and Tripolitania
and Rhodesia and the Sudan, Morocco is a country which is admirably
adapted for European colonisation, being blessed with every natural
advantage that creation has to offer. Its only objectionable feature
is its people. Lying at the western gateway of the Mediterranean,
where the narrowed sea has so often proved a temptation to invasion,
its Atlantic ports within striking distance of the great lanes of
commerce between Europe and South America and South Africa, Morocco
occupies a position of enormous strategic, political, and commercial
importance. The backbone of the country is the Great Atlas, which,
taken as a whole, has a higher mean elevation than that of any other
range of equal length in Europe, Africa, or western Asia, attaining
in places an elevation of nearly fifteen thousand feet. Snow-clad,
this mighty and isolated wall rises so abruptly from the plain that
it needs but little stretch of the imagination to understand how the
ancients believed that on it rested the heavens—whence, indeed, its
name. Personally, the thing that surprised me most in Morocco was
the total absence of desert. Either because of its proximity to the
Sahara, or because of its camels, or the two combined, I went to
Morocco expecting that I should find vast stretches of sun-baked,
yellow sand. As a matter of fact, I found nothing of the kind.
Traversed from east to west, as I have already said, by the strongly
defined range of the Atlas, the greater part of its surface is really
occupied by rolling prairies, diversified by low hills, and not at
all unlike Ohio and Indiana. Though admirably adapted to the growing
of cereals, the strict prohibition against the exportation of grain
has naturally resulted in discouraging the native farmers, so that
immense tracts of fertile land remain uncultivated. The alluvial soil,
which is remarkable for its richness, frequently reaches a depth of
fifteen feet and could be brought to an almost incredible degree of
productiveness by the application of modern agricultural methods. What
greater praise can be given to any soil than to say that it will bear
three crops of potatoes in a single year and that corn is commonly
sown and reaped all within the space of forty days?

Unlike its neighbouring countries, Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripolitania,
Morocco does not lack for navigable waterways, for it possesses
several large rivers which could be navigated for hundreds of miles
inland, though at present, owing to the apathy of the inhabitants, and
the unsettled condition of the regions along their banks, they are
used for neither traffic nor irrigation. The chief of these is the
Muluya, which, with its tributary the Sharef, provides northeastern
Morocco with a valuable commercial waterway for a distance of more
than four hundred miles. The most important river of northwest Morocco
is the Sebu, which empties into the Atlantic, while in the central
and western districts the Kus, the Bu-Regreg, the Sus, and the Assaka
will, under the new régime, prove invaluable as means of opening up
the country.

A very large number of people seem to be under the impression that
Morocco is unhealthy and suffers from a sweltering heat. Nothing
could be farther from the truth. The climate is, as a matter of fact,
extremely healthful, malaria, the scourge of the other countries of
North Africa, being unknown. In the regions lying between the central
range of the Atlas and the sea the thermometer seldom rises above
ninety degrees or falls below forty degrees, the mountain wall serving
as a protection from the scorching winds of the Sahara. During the
winter months the rains are so heavy and frequent along the Atlantic
coast that good pasturage is found as far south as Cape Juby, while in
the interior the rivers frequently become so swollen that travel is
both difficult and dangerous. The unpleasantness of the rains (and you
don't know what discomfort is, my friends, until you have journeyed in
Morocco during the rainy season) is more than compensated for by the
beauties of the spring landscape. For mile after mile I have ridden
across meadows literally carpeted with wild flowers, whose varied
and brilliant colours, combined with the peculiar fashion in which
each species confined itself to its own area, gave the countryside
the appearance of a vast floral mosaic. After seeing these gorgeous
natural combinations of colour—dark blue, yellow, white, and scarlet,
iris, marigolds, lilies, and poppies—I no longer wondered where the
Moors draw the inspiration for that chromatic art of which they left
such marvellous examples in the cities of southern Spain.

Though the country has, unfortunately, become largely deforested—for
what Moor would ever think of planting trees, which could only be
of value to another generation?—a wealth of timber still remains
in the more remote valleys of the Atlas, the pines and oaks often
attaining enormous size. Though Spanish concessionaires are profitably
working gold mines in the Riff country, and the great German firm of
Mannesmann Brothers has acquired extensive iron-ore-bearing properties
in the Sus, and though large deposits of silver, copper, lead, and
antimony have been discovered at various points in the interior, the
mineral wealth of Morocco is still a matter for speculation. It is not
likely to remain so long, however, for history has shown that it is
the miners who form the real advance-guard of civilisation.

To the stranger who confines his investigations to the highways which
connect the capitals with the coast, Morocco gives the impression of
being very sparsely settled. This is due to the fact that the natives
take pains to avoid the highroads as they would the plague, the
continual passage of troops and of travellers, all of whom practise
the time-honoured custom of living on the country and never paying
for what they take, having had the natural result of driving the
inhabitants into less travelled regions, though traders and others
whose business takes them into the back country find that it is far
more densely populated than most foreigners suspect. Heretofore it
has been possible for almost any foreigner, by the judicious use of
bakshish, to obtain from the authorities an official order which
required the people living along the roads to supply food both for
him and his escort and fodder for their horses. Now, this was a very
serious tax, especially among a people as poverty-stricken as the
Moorish peasantry, and as a result of it the heedless traveller often
caused much misery and suffering. But if the occasional traveller
proved so serious a burden, imagine what it meant to these poor
people when the Sultan himself passed, for, able to move only with an
army, without any commissariat or transport, and feeding itself as it
went, he devastated the land of food and fodder as though he was an
invader instead of a ruler, sweeping as ruthlessly across his empire
as the Huns did across southern Europe, and leaving his subjects to
starve. Is it any wonder, then, that the desperation of the wretched,
half-starved peasantry has vented itself in repeated revolutions?
The coming of the French is bound to change this deplorable and
demoralising state of affairs, however, for, once assured of
protection for their crops and justice for themselves, the fugitive
country folk will quickly flock back and resume the cultivation of
their abandoned lands.

One of the facts about Morocco that will probably surprise most
people—I know that it surprised me—is that the Berbers, who form
fully two thirds of the population, are a purely white race, as white
indeed, barring the tan which results from life under an African
sun, as we ourselves. Though the generic term Moor is applied by
Europeans to all the inhabitants of Morocco, there are really four
distinct racial divisions of the population: the Berbers, who,
being the earliest-known possessors of the land, are the genuine
Moroccans, and are, when of unmixed blood, a very energetic and
vigorous people, indeed; the Arabs, who are the descendants of the
Mohammedan conquerors of the country and possess to the full the
Arab characteristics of arrogance, indolence, and cruelty; the
negroes, brought into the country as slaves from Central Africa in an
influx extending over centuries, this admixture having resulted in
deteriorating both the Berbers and the Arabs, the infusion of black
blood showing itself in dark skins, thickened lips, low foreheads,
sensual tastes, and a marked stupidity; and lastly, but by no means
the least important, the ubiquitous, persecuted, and persecuting Jews.
The Berbers dwell for the most part in the mountains, while the Arabs,
on the contrary, are to be found only on the plains, it being the
weak, sensual, and intolerant amalgam produced by the fusion of these
two races, and tinctured with negro blood, which forms the population
of the Moorish cities and to which the name “Moor” most properly
belongs.

Between the Moor of the mountains and the Moor of the towns there
is as wide a gulf as there is between the natives of Vermont and
the natives of Venezuela. The town Moor is sullen, suspicious of all
strangers, vacillating; the pride, but none of the energy, of his
ancestors remains. In his youth he is licentious in his acts; in his
old age he is licentious in his thoughts. He is abominably lazy. He
never runs if he can walk; he never walks if he can stand still; he
never stands if he can sit; he never sits if he can lie down. The
only thing he puts any energy into is his talking; he believes that
nothing can be done really well without a hullabaloo. The men of the
mountains are cast in a wholly different mould, however, from that of
the men of the towns. Fierce enemies and stanch friends, they like
fighting for fighting's sake. They are intelligent and industrious;
though fonder of the sword and the pistol than of the plough and the
hoe, their fertile mountain valleys are nevertheless fairly well
cultivated. They are a hardy, warlike, and indomitable race and have
never yet been conquered. It is well to remember in any discussion of
these people that, through all the vicissitudes of their history, they
have never before had the flag of another nation flying over them. All
the successive invaders of North Africa have been confronted with the
problem of subduing them, but always they have failed and have gone
back. Not only that, but once the Moors went invading on their own
account, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, conquering all southern
Spain, holding it for five hundred years, and leaving behind them the
architectural glories of Seville, of Cordova, and of Granada to tell
the story. Unless I am very much mistaken, therefore, it will cost
France many lives and much money to make them amenable to her rule.

The decadence of the Moors is primarily due to two things: immorality
and racial jealousies. They are probably the most licentious race, in
both thought and act, in the world. Compared to them the inhabitants
of Sodom and Gomorrah were positively prudish. This extreme moral
degeneracy is in itself enough to ruin the sturdiest people, but,
as though it was not sufficient, the two principal races, Arab and
Berber, hate each other as the Armenian hates the Turk, this racial
antagonism in itself making impossible the upbuilding of a strong and
united nation. In fact, the only thing they have in common is their
religion, which is the air they breathe, and which, though incapable
of producing internal harmony, unites them in hostility to the
unbeliever.

There is less public spirit in Morocco than in any place I know. No
Moor takes the slightest interest in anything outside his personal
affairs, and no one ever plans for the future—other than to hope that
he will get a comfortable divan and his share of houris in Paradise.
The last thing that would occur to a Moor would be to spend money on
anything which will not bring him in an immediate profit, so that,
as a consequence, trees are never planted, mines never worked, roads
never made, bridges never built. He does not want civilisation. He
does not believe in modern inventions or improvements. What was good
enough for his father is good enough for him. Why lug in railways and
telegraphs, and similar contrivances of the devil, then, when things
are good enough as they are?

There is no cause for the other European nations to envy France the
obligations she assumed when she declared a protectorate over Morocco.
She has a long and hilly road to travel before she can convert her
latest acquisition into a national asset. Before Morocco can be thrown
open to French settlers its savage and hostile population will have
to be as effectually subdued as were the Indians of our own West.
The tribes of southern Morocco are especially hostile to the French
occupation, and many military experts believe that the protectorate
will never be enforced in those regions without a long campaign and
much shedding of blood, while one eminent French general has openly
asserted that it will take at least a dozen years fully to subdue the
country.

Personally, I am a firm believer in the future of Morocco and the
Moors under the guidance and protection of France. I have seen too
much of what France has accomplished in far less favoured regions, and
under far more discouraging conditions, to think otherwise. Nothing
illustrates the latent possibilities of the Moorish character better
than an experiment which was made some years ago. At the request of
the Sultan, the British minister to Morocco asked his government
for permission to send a body of Moors to Gibraltar for the purpose
of being instructed in British drill and discipline. The War Office
acceding to the request, two hundred Moors, selected at random from
various tribes throughout the empire, were sent to Gibraltar and
remained there for three years, the men being occasionally changed
as they acquired a knowledge of drill. They had good clothing given
them, slept in tents, and were allowed by the Sultan a shilling a
day, receiving precisely the same treatment as British soldiers.
During the three years they were stationed on the Rock, there were
only two cases in the police court against them for dissolute conduct
or disorder. The soldiers of what civilised nation could have made
such a record? Colonel Cameron, under whose superintendence they were
placed, reported that they learned the drill as quickly and as well
as any Englishmen, and that they were sober, steady, and attentive to
their duties. (The Moors, it should be remarked, are noted for their
abstemiousness, the precepts of the Koran which forbid the use of
spirits and tobacco being rigidly observed.) This tends to show that
Moors, living under a just and humane government, and having, as these
men had, proper provision made for their livelihood, are not a lawless
or even a disorderly people, and that they are capable of being
transformed, under such a form of government as France has established
in Algeria and Tunisia, into the splendid warriors which their
ancestors were in Spain. It was, as I think I have remarked in the
preceding chapter, the knowledge that France, in acquiring Morocco,
would obtain the material for a formidable addition to her military
forces which was, it is generally believed, one of the motives that
inspired Germany's persistent opposition to a French protectorate.

Though the reins of Moorish power are already firmly in the hands of
the French Resident-General at Fez, there is no reason to believe that
the French expect, for the present at least, to depose the Sultan,
it being to their interests, for obvious reasons, to maintain the
pleasant fiction that Morocco is still an independent empire to which
they have disinterestedly lent their protection, In August, 1912,
Sultan Mulai-abd-el-Hafid, appreciating the emptiness of his title
under the French régime, abdicated in favour of his brother, Mulai
Youssef, who is known to be friendly to France. The new Sultan, who is
the seventeenth of the dynasty of the Alides and the thirty-seventh
lineal descendant of Ali, uncle and son-in-law of the Prophet, is
known to his subjects as Emir-el-Mumenin, or Prince of True Believers,
and as such he exercises a spiritual influence over his subjects which
the French are far too shrewd to disregard. The position of the Sultan
of Morocco has, indeed, become strikingly similar to that of his
fellow-ruler in the other corner of Africa, the Khedive of Egypt, for,
like him, he must needs content himself henceforth with the shadow
of power. Even if the imperial form of government is permanently
maintained (and this I very much doubt, for it is characteristic of
the Latin races—as Taine puts it—that they always want to occupy a
“sharply defined and terminologically defensible position”), its real
ruler will be the Resident-General of France, whose policies will be
carried out by French advisers in every department of the government
and whose orders will be backed up by French bayonets. So long as
Mulai Youssef is content meekly to play the part of a puppet, with
French officials pulling the strings, he will be permitted to enjoy
all the honours and comforts of royalty, but let him once give ear
to sedition, let him make the slightest attempt to undermine the
authority of the French régime, and he will find himself occupying a
sentry-guarded villa in Algiers near the residences of the ex-Queen of
Madagascar and the ex-King of Annam, those other Oriental rulers who
thought to match themselves against the power of France.

The Sherifian umbrella, which is the Moorish equivalent of a crown,
is hereditary in the family of the Filali Sherifs of Tafilelt. Each
Sultan is supposed, prior to his death, to indicate the member of the
imperial family who, according to his conscientious belief, will best
replace him. This succession is, however, elective, and all members
of the Sherifian family are eligible. It has generally happened that
the late Sultan's nominee has been elected by public acclamation at
noonday prayers the Friday after the Sultan's death, as the nominee
generally has obtained possession of the imperial treasure and is
supported by the body-guard, from whose ranks most of the court
officials are appointed. I might add that all of the Moorish Sultans
in recent years have been so extremely bad that no successor whom they
could appoint, or who could appoint himself, could by any possibility
be worse. The present Sultan knows scarcely half a dozen places in his
whole empire, and has spent most of his life in two of them—Marrakesh
and Fez—having held, up to the time of his accession to the throne,
the important post of Khalif of the latter city. The Moors never pray
for their sovereign to journey among them, for, so disturbed has been
the condition of the country for many years past, and so numerous have
been the pretenders to the Sherifian throne, that recent Sultans have
rarely ventured outside the walls of their capitals with less than
thirty thousand followers behind them, so that when they had occasion
to pass through the territory of a hostile tribe, as not infrequently
happened, they fought their way through, leaving ruin and desolation
behind them. Though both Mulai Youssef and his predecessors have
always resided at one or the other of the two official capitals, the
coast city of Tangier has heretofore been the real capital of Morocco.
Here lived the diplomatic and consular representatives of the foreign
powers and, with a cynical disregard for the Moorish Government and
people, ran things between them. Though considerations of safety
doubtless entered into the matter, the chief reason for making Tangier
the diplomatic capital was the extreme inconvenience to the foreign
legations of being obliged to follow the court in its periodical
migrations from one capital to the other. Therefore the diplomatic
folk remained comfortably in Tangier—which, incidentally, can readily
be overawed by a war-ship's guns—and the Sultan appointed ministers to
treat with them there and thus carry on the foreign business of the
state. When questions of great importance had to be negotiated special
missions were sent to the capital at which the Sultan happened to be
residing, the departure of these ambassadorial caravans, with their
secretaries, attachés, kavasses, servants, and body-guards, not to
mention the immense train of pack-mules and baggage camels, providing
a spectacle quite as picturesque and entertaining as any circus
procession. That feature of Moorish life disappeared with the coming
of the French, however, for the foreign ministers will doubtless
shortly be withdrawn; and hereafter, when any negotiations are to be
conducted anent Morocco, instead of a diplomatic mission having to
make a two-hundred-mile journey on horses or camels, the ambassador at
Paris of the power in question will step into his motor-car and whirl
over to the Ministry of the Colonies in the Rue Oudinot.

I know of nothing which gives so graphic an idea of the amazing
conditions which have heretofore prevailed in Morocco, and to which
the French are, thank Heaven, putting an end, as the speech which a
former British minister, Sir John Drummond Hay, made some years ago to
the reigning Sultan, and which was, probably, the most extraordinary
address ever made by a diplomatic representative to a foreign ruler.

“Your Majesty has been so gracious as to ask me,” said Sir John,
looking the despot squarely in the eye, “to express frankly my
opinion of affairs in Morocco. The administration of the government
in Morocco is the worst in the world. The government is like a
community of fishes; the giant fish feed upon those that are small,
the smaller upon the least, and these again feed upon the worms.
In like manner the vizier and other dignitaries of the court, who
receive no salaries, depend for their livelihood upon peculation,
trickery, corruption, and the money they extract from the governors
of provinces. The governors are likewise enriched through peculation
from tithes and taxes, and extortion from sheikhs, wealthy farmers,
and traders. A Moor who becomes rich is treated as a criminal. Neither
life nor property is secure. Sheikhs and other subordinate officials
subsist on what they can extort from the farmers and the peasantry.
Then again, even the jailers are not paid; they gain their livelihood
by taking money from prisoners, who, when they are paupers, are
taught to make baskets, which are sold by the jailers for their own
benefit. How can a country, how can a people, prosper under such a
government? The tribes are in a constant state of rebellion against
their governors. When the Sultan resides in his northern capital
of Fez, the southern tribes rebel, and when he marches south to
the city of Morocco, eating up the rebels and confiscating their
property, the northern tribes rebel. The armies of the Sultan, like
locusts, are constantly on the move, ravaging the country to quell
the revolts. Agriculture is destroyed, the farmers and peasantry only
grow sufficient grain for their own requirements, and rich lands are
allowed to lie fallow because the farmers know the crops would be
plundered by the governors and sheikhs. Thus it happens with cattle
and horses. Breeding is checked, since the man who may become rich
through his industry is treated as a criminal and all his possessions
are taken from him, as in the fable the goose is killed to get the
golden eggs.”

France, in pursuing her Moroccan adventure, will do well to bear
in mind two danger-spots: the Riff and the Sus. Unless she treads
carefully in the first she is likely to become embroiled in a quarrel
with Spain; with the natives of the Sus she will probably have trouble
whether she treads lightly or not. Sooner or later France is bound to
come into collision with Spain, for, with Morocco avowedly a French
protectorate, I fail to see how she can tolerate Spanish soldiers
on its soil. Spain, basing her pretensions on her expulsion of the
Moors from Granada in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, has always
considered herself one of the heirs of Morocco. In fact, a secret
treaty was signed between France and Spain in 1905 which distinctly
defined the respective spheres of influence of the two powers in that
country. By the terms of this treaty Spain was acknowledged to have
predominating interests in those regions adjacent to the ports of
Ceuta, Melilla, and El Araish, as well as in the Riff, a little-known
and exceedingly mountainous district, believed to be rich in minerals,
which lies in the northwestern corner of the empire, two days'
journey eastward from Tetuan. Spain distinctly engaged not to take
any action in the zone thus allotted to her other than to proceed
with its commercial exploitation, but it was stipulated that, should
the weakness of the Sherifian government make the maintenance of the
_status quo_ impossible, she should have a free hand in her sphere.

France, meanwhile, steadily continued her “pacific penetration”
of Morocco, pushing her Algerian railways closer and closer to
Morocco's eastern frontier, mobilising troops at strategic points, and
overrunning the Sultan's dominions with “scientific” expeditions and
secret agents. Spain soon began to regard with envy and impatience
the subtle game which the French were so successfully playing, but
it was not until 1910 that she found the opportunity and the excuse
for which she had been eagerly waiting. Some Spanish labourers, who
were working on a railway which was being laid from Melilla to some
mines a few miles distant, were attacked by Riffian tribesmen and a
number of the Spaniards were killed. Spain jumped at the opportunity
which this incident afforded as a hungry trout jumps at a fly, and a
few days later a Spanish army was being disembarked on Moroccan soil.
A sharp campaign ensued which ended in the temporary subjugation of
the Riffians and the occupation by Spain of a considerable tract of
territory extending from Ceuta eastward to Cabo del Agua and southward
as far as Seluan, thus comprising practically all of Morocco's
Mediterranean seaboard. A Moorish envoy was sent to Madrid and, after
protracted negotiations, a convention was signed which permitted Spain
to establish a force of Moorish gendarmerie, under Spanish officers,
at Melilla, Aljucemas, and Ceuta, for the maintenance of order in the
districts near those places. Until this force has shown itself capable
of maintaining order, the Spaniards assert that they will remain in
occupation of the territory they now hold. Emboldened by her success
in this adventure, and greedy for further expansion, Spain, in June,
1911, sent a vessel to El Araish (Laraiche) on the Atlantic coast, and
a column was despatched from there to Alcázar, which lies some twenty
miles inland. The region was apparently perfectly calm at the time,
and the reasons given by Spain for her action—that mysterious horsemen
had been seen upon the walls of Alcázar—appeared, in France at least,
to be mere pretensions and raised a storm of indignation. As things
now stand, France has proclaimed a definite protectorate over the
whole of Morocco, an arrangement to which the Sultan has consented.
Despite that proclamation, however, Spain continues to occupy a rich
and extensive district of the country with an army of forty thousand
men. By what means France will attempt to oust her—for oust her she
certainly will—is an interesting subject for speculation and one which
is giving both French and Spanish diplomats many sleepless nights.

A word, in passing, upon the region known as the Riff. It is more
discussed and less known than any other quarter of Morocco. Nothing
has been written upon it except from hearsay and no European has
penetrated across its length and breadth, and this although it is
but two days' ride on horseback from Tetuan. Situated in the very
heart of the Great Atlas range, and accessible only through narrow
passes and over rough mountain trails, this region has, from time
beyond reckoning, been the home and the refuge of that savage and
mysterious clan known as the Riffs. Their feudal chieftains live in
great castles built of stone and lead much the same lives as did the
European nobles of the Middle Ages. The passes giving access to the
Riff are commanded by hilltop forts impregnable to anything short of
modern artillery—and to get within range of them the artillery would
need to have wings. They are a people rich in possibilities, are these
Riffs, and one whom it is wiser to conciliate than to fight, as France
will doubtless sooner or later learn. Brigands by nature, farmers in
a small way by occupation, disciples of the vendetta, scorners of the
law, suspicious of strangers, their only courts the gun and dagger,
the Riffs have more in common with the mountaineers of the Blue Ridge
than any people that I know. They have nothing in common with the
other inhabitants of Morocco except their dress, wearing the universal
brown hooded _jellab_ and over it the toga-like white woollen _haik_,
a skull-cap of red or brown, a belt with pouches of gaily coloured
leather, and in it, always, a muzzle-loading pistol and the vicious
curved knife, while over the shoulder slants the ten-foot-long Riff
rifle, coral-studded, brass-bound, ivory-butted, and almost as
dangerous to the man behind it as to the one in front. The Riffs are
fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and quite frequently red-haired, and claim to
be descended from the Romans, which is no unreasonable assumption on
their part, as the Romans were adventuring in Morocco—they called it
Mauritania—long before Cæsar's day.

The other danger-point in Morocco is the Sus, a “forbidden” and
unknown country through which only a handful of European travellers
have ever passed, all in disguise and all in peril of their lives.
The Sus is the rich and fertile valley lying between the Great Atlas
and the Anti Atlas, and touching the Atlantic coast at Agadir. It is
said to be thickly populated; it is believed to contain rich mines;
it is fanatical to the last degree. Its Berber inhabitants, who are
separated from the Arabs of the surrounding regions by a totally
distinct language known as the _Tamazight_, or Tongue of the Free,
though acknowledging the religious supremacy of the reigning Sultan,
have always maintained a semi-independence, having never submitted to
Moorish rule nor paid tax nor tribute to the government of Morocco.
Twice within the last three or four decades Moorish Sultans have
invaded and attempted to conquer the Sus, but each time they have been
driven back across the Atlas. The origin of the people of this region
is lost in the mists of antiquity. According to the Koran its original
inhabitants were natives of Syria, where they proved themselves such
undesirable citizens that King David ordered them to be tied up in
sacks and carried out of the country on camels, since he wished to see
their faces no more. Arrived in the vicinity of the Atlas Mountains,
the leader of the caravan called out in the Berber tongue “_Sus!_”
which means “Let down! Empty out!” So the exiled undesirables were
dumped unceremoniously out of their sacks, and the country in which
they found themselves, and where they settled, is called the Sus to
this day. The people of the Sus have never liked the French, and
there is little doubt that they will oppose any attempt to treat them
as a province of Morocco, and consequently subject to French control.
It is obvious that France will sooner or later be obliged to send an
expedition into the Sus for the purpose of asserting her power as
well as to counteract the German influence which is rapidly gaining
ground there, for the Sus, remember, is the region where Germany's
interests in Morocco are centred and provided the excuse for sending
her gun-boat to Agadir and almost provoking a European war thereby.
Germany still retains her commercial interests in the Sus Valley, and
France will be obliged to step gingerly indeed if she wishes to avoid
stirring up still another _affaire Marocaine_.

If France accomplishes nothing more in Morocco than the extermination
of the slave trade she will have performed a genuine service to
humanity. Though slavery has been abolished in every other quarter of
Africa, no attempt has ever been made by the European powers to put
a check upon the practice in Morocco. Something over three thousand
slaves, it is estimated, are imported into Morocco every year, most
of them being brought by the terrible desert routes from Equatoria
and the Sudan, the trails of the slave caravans being marked by the
bleaching bones of the thousands who have died on the way from heat,
hunger, or exhaustion. Many smug-faced people will assure you that
slavery has been wiped out in Africa—praise be to the Lord!—but I can
take you into half a dozen Moroccan cities and show you slaves being
auctioned to the highest bidder as openly as they were in our own
South fifty years ago. There is a large and profitable demand for
slaves, particularly girls and boys, in all of the Moroccan cities, a
young negress having a market value of anywhere from eighty dollars
to one hundred and twenty dollars. Although, as I have already
remarked, the bulk of the slaves are driven across the Sahara by the
time-honoured method, exceptionally pretty girls are often brought
from West African ports in French vessels as passengers and disposed
of to wealthy Moors by private sale. So great is the demand for young
and attractive women that girls are occasionally stolen from Moorish
villages, the slave-dealer laying a trail of sweets, of which the
native women are inordinately fond, from the outskirts of the villages
up to neighbouring clumps of trees, behind which he conceals himself,
pouncing out upon his unsuspecting victims as they approach. If France
succeeds in stamping out the slave trade in Morocco as effectually as
she has in her other African possessions, she will prove herself, as
our missionary friends would put it, the flail of the Lord.

Of all France's ambitious projects for the exploitation of North
Africa in general, and the opening up of Morocco in particular, the
one which most appeals to the imagination, and which, when executed,
is likely to be of the greatest benefit to the world, is her
astounding scheme for bringing South America a week nearer to Europe
by means of a railway from Tangier, in Morocco, to Dakar, in Senegal.
The route, as at present planned, would run from Tangier, via Fez,
to Tuat. From Tuat the Sahara would be crossed and the Niger gained
at Timbuktu. Though about three hundred miles of this section would
lie through the most hopeless desert country, it presents no great
obstacle to engineers, the Sudanese line from Wady Halfa to Khartoum
proving how easily the difficulties of desert construction and lack
of water can be overcome. The third section would be from Timbuktu
to Dakar, where the French within the last few years have created a
magnificent naval port and commercial harbour. Already Timbuktu and
Dakar are in regular communication by a mixed steamer and railway
service, the journey taking, when the Senegal is in flood, but five
days. As such a system would have, of necessity, to be independent of
the Niger and Senegal river services, which are not always reliable, a
line is now under construction which will bring Timbuktu into direct
rail communication with Dakar, thus eliminating the difficulties
and uncertainties of river navigation. From Dakar to Pernambuco, in
Brazil, is less than fifteen hundred miles, which could be covered
by a fast steamer in three days. There are already regular sailings
between these ports, but with the completion of this trans-African
system (and, believe me, it is far from being as chimerical as it
sounds, for the French do not let the grass grow under their feet
when they once get a clear right of way for railway-building) ocean
greyhounds will be placed in service between Dakar and the South
American ports, it being estimated that the traveller who purchases
his ticket via Madrid, Gibraltar, and then over the Moroccan-Saharan
system, can journey from Paris to Rio de Janeiro in twelve days. It
is obvious that in some such scheme as this lies the future of the
French Sahara, as well as the enormously increased prosperity of the
Moroccan hinterland and of the Niger-Senegal possessions, for it was
just such a transcontinental line, remember, which brought population
and prosperity to the desert regions of our own West.

It is no light task to which France has pledged herself in agreeing
to effect the regeneration of an empire so decrepit and decadent as
Morocco, but that she will accomplish it is as certain as that the
leaves come with the spring. The changes which the coming of the
French will effect in Morocco stretch the imagination almost to the
breaking-point. Already the wireless crackles and splutters from a
mast erected over the French Residency in Fez. With the proclamation
of the protectorate the waiting railway-builders jumped their
rail-heads across the Moroccan border as homesteaders, hearing the
signal gun, jump their horses over the border of newly opened lands.
Two or three years more and the traveller will be able to purchase
through tickets to Fez and Marrakesh as easily as he can now to San
Francisco or Milan. At Tangier, Rabat, El Araish, Mogador, and Agadir
harbours will be dredged, break-waters built, and wharves constructed,
while the filthy, foul-smelling cities will be made as clean and
sanitary as Tunis and Algiers. Under French control Tangier, with its
ideal climate, its picturesque features, and its splendid situation,
will rival Cairo and the Riviera as a fashionable winter resort. The
Moorish peasantry will be permitted to till their farms in peace,
undisturbed by devastating armies, while the warlike Riffs can have
their fill of fighting in French uniforms and under the French flag.
This is no empty vision, remember. Peace, progress, and prosperity
are bound to come to Morocco, just as they have come to those other
African regions upon which the Frenchman has set his hand. Just how
soon they come depends largely upon the Moors themselves.




CHAPTER III

SIRENS OF THE SANDS


Zorah-ben-Abdallah was a perilously pretty girl, judged by any
standard that you please. She was unveiled—a strange thing for an
Eastern woman—and the clearness of her _café-au-lait_ complexion was
emphasised by carmine lips and by blue-black hair, bewilderingly
becoiffed and bewitchingly bejewelled; her eyes Scherazade would have
envied. She was leaning from the window of a second-class compartment
in the ramshackle train which plies between Constantine and Biskra
and was quite openly admiring the very tight light-blue tunic and the
very loose scarlet riding-breeches of my companion, a young officer of
_chasseurs d'Afrique_ who was rejoining his regiment at El-Kantara.

“She's a handsome girl,” said I.

“Not for an Ouled-Naïl,” said he, adjusting his monocle and staring at
her critically, very much as though he were appraising a horse. “An
Ouled-Naïl's face is her fortune, you know, and in the Ziban, where
they come from, she wouldn't get a second look.”

“She would get several second looks on Broadway,” said I, taking
another one myself. “I once travelled twelve thousand miles to see
some women not half as pretty.”

That is why I went to the Ziban, that strange and almost unknown
zone of oasis-dotted steppes in southernmost Algeria. Hemmed in
between the Atlas Mountains and the Great Sahara, it forms the real
Algerian hinterland, a region vastly different in people, manners,
and customs from either the desert or the littoral. Here, in this
fertile borderland, where the red tarbooshes and baggy trousers of
the French outposts are the sole signs of civilisation, is the home
of the Ouled-Naïls, that curious race, neither Arab, Berber, nor
Moor, the beauty of whose dusky, daring daughters is a staple topic
of conversation in every harem and native coffee-house between the
Pyramids and the Pillars of Hercules.

Rather than that you should be scandalised later on, it would be
well for you to understand in the beginning that the women of the
Ouled-Naïl are, so far as morality is concerned, as easy as an old
shoe. It comes as something of a shock, after seeing these petite and
pretty and indescribably picturesque women on their native heath, or
rather on their native sands, to learn that from earliest childhood
they are trained for a life of indifferent virtue very much as a
horse is trained for the show-ring. But it is one of those conditions
of African life which must be accepted by the traveller, just as he
accepts as a matter of course the heat and the insects and the dirt.

Breaking home ties almost before they have entered their teens, they
make their way to Biskra, to Constantine, and to Algiers, yes, and to
Tripoli on the east and to Tangier on the west, dancing in the native
coffee-houses or in the harems of the rich and not infrequently
earning considerable sums thereby. The Ouled-Naïl promptly converts
all of her earnings that she can spare into gold, linking these gold
pieces together into a sort of breastplate, not at all unlike that
jingling, glittering affair which Mary Garden wears in her portrayal
of _Salome_. When this golden garment becomes long enough to reach
from her slender, supple neck to her still more supple waist, the
Ouled-Naïl retires from business, returns to the tents of her people
in the edge of the Great Sands, hides her pretty face behind the veil
common to all respectable Moslem women, and, setting her daintily
slippered feet on the straight and narrow path of virtue, leads a
strictly moral life ever after.

[Illustration: Ouled-Naïl dancing-girls. “Petite, piquant, and
indescribably picturesque.”]

[Illustration: Women of the “Great Tents.” The wife and daughter of a
nomad sheikh of the Algerian Sahara.

SOME SIRENS OF THE SANDS.]

The peculiar dances of the Ouled-Naïls demand many years of arduous
and constant practice. A girl is scarcely out of her cradle before,
under the tutelage of her mother, who has herself been a _danseuse_
in her time, she begins the inconceivably severe course of gymnastics
and muscle training which is the foundation of their strange and
suggestive dances. From infancy until, scarcely in her teens, she
bids farewell to the tent life of the desert and sets out to make her
fortune in the cities along the African littoral, she is as carefully
groomed and trained as a colt entered at the county fair. Morning,
noon, and night, day after day, year after year, the muscles of her
chest, her back, her hips, and her abdomen are developed and trained
and suppled until they will respond to her wishes as readily as
her slender, henna-stained fingers. Her lustrous, blue-black hair
is brushed and combed and oiled and brushed again; she is taught to
play the hautboy, the zither, and the flute and to sing the weird and
plaintive songs the Arab loves; to make the thick, black native coffee
and with inimitable dexterity to roll a cigarette. By the time she
is thirteen she is ready to make her début in the dance-hall of some
Algerian town, whence, after three or four or possibly five years of
a life of indifferent virtue, she returns, a-clank with gold pieces,
to the tented village from which she came, to marry some sheikh or
camel-dealer and to bear him children, who, if they are boys, will
don the white turban and scarlet burnoose of the Spahis and serve in
the armies of France, or, if they are girls, will live the life of
their mother all over again. It will be seen, therefore, that the
profession is an hereditary one, which _all_ the women of the tribe
pursue without incurring, so far as I could learn, a hint of scandal
or a trace of shame. It is a queer business, and one to which no other
country, so far as I am aware, offers a parallel, for whereas the
geishas of Japan, the nautches of India, and the odalisques of Turkey
are but classes, the Ouled-Naïls are a race, as distinct in features,
language, and customs as the Bedouin, the Nubian, or the Jew.

That the men of the Ouled-Naïl (which, by the way, is pronounced as
though the last syllable were spelled “Nile”) look upon the lives
led by their sisters, daughters, and sweethearts with much the same
toleration and approval that an up-State farmer shows for the
village maid who goes to the city to earn a living as a waitress, a
stenographer, or a shop-girl, is proved by a little incident which
Mr. S. H. Leeder, the English author-traveller, tells of having once
witnessed on the station-platform at Biskra. A tall young tribesman
of the Ouled-Naïl, the son of a sheikh of some importance, was
leaving Biskra, to which town he had been paying a short visit with
his mother. He was taking back with him one of his countrywomen, a
dancing-girl named Kadra, who had been a resident in the Rue Sainte,
as Biskra's Tenderloin is known, for two or three years, and was
quite celebrated for her beauty, with the intention of marrying her.
Here was this girl, after such an amazing episode in her career,
quietly dressed, veiled to the eyes, and carefully chaperoned by the
prospective bridegroom's mother, returning to assume a position of
rank and consideration among her own people, while several of her late
companions, tears of sorrow at the parting pouring down their unveiled
and painted faces, clung to and caressed her with every sign of
childlike affection. And such marriages, I have been assured by French
officials, are not the exception but the rule in the Ziban. Never was
the truth brought home to me more sharply that “East is East, and
West is West, and never the twain shall meet” than in the land of the
Ouled-Naïls, where, unlike our own, it is never too late to mend; not
even for a woman.

Barring the two who appeared in the production of “The Garden of
Allah,” the only genuine Ouled-Naïls ever seen in the United States
were those who, owing to the enterprise of some far-seeing showman,
were responsible for introducing that orgy of suggestiveness known
as the _danse du ventre_ to the American public at the Chicago
World's Fair of 1893, a dance which, thanks to numerous but unskilled
imitators, French, Egyptian, and Syrian, spread from ocean to ocean
under the vulgar but descriptive nickname of “the houchee-kouchee.” As
a matter of fact, the _danse du ventre_, as seen in the questionable
resorts of our own country, has about as much in common with the real
dance of the desert people, as performed on a silken carpet spread
before the tent of some nomad sheikh, as the so-called “Spanish
fandango” of the vaudeville stage has with the inimitably beautiful
and difficult dances to be seen at Señor Otero's dancing-academy in
Seville. The dance of the Ouled-Naïls is the very essence of Oriental
depravity. It is the dance of the pasha's harem; it is the dance of
those native cafés which the European tourists are always so eager
to visit; it is the dance which every little girl of the tribe is
taught—long years before she knows its meaning.

Depraved though they are, the Ouled-Naïls never depart in their dress
from that which would be considered perfectly proper and respectable
even by Mr. Anthony Comstock. The painters of every country seem
to have taken a peculiar delight in depicting Arab dancing-girls
as conspicuously shy of clothing, but, picturesqueness aside, the
décolleté gown of an American woman would embarrass and shock these
daughters of the sands as much as it would all Moslems, for though
they may be somewhat lacking in morals they are never lacking in
clothes. The women of the Ouled-Naïl are considerably below the medium
height and, owing to the peculiar fashion in which their gaudy-hued
tarlatan skirts are bunched out around the waist and are shortened
to display their trim ankles and massive silver anklets, they appear
even smaller than they really are. Their hands and feet are small
and wonderfully perfect—if one is able to overlook the nails stained
crimson with henna; arched eyebrows meet over eyes as big and lustrous
and melting as those of a gazelle; while their wonderful blue-black
hair, plaited into ropes and heavily bejewelled—whether the “jewels”
are genuine or not is no great matter—is brought down over the ears in
the fashion which made Cléo de Mérode famous.

But the really distinguishing feature of the Ouled-Naïl's costume is
her jewelry. She has so much of it, in fact, that there is no gold to
be had in Algeria. Ask for napoleons instead of paper money at your
bank in Algiers and you will meet with a prompt

“Impossible, m'sieur.”

“But why is it impossible?” you ask.

“Because we have no gold, m'sieur,” is the polite response.

“Where is it, then?” you inquire, scenting a robbery or an anticipated
run on the bank.

“On the Ouled-Naïls, m'sieur,” the cashier courteously replies.

And he speaks the literal truth. Every centime that a dancing-girl
can beg, borrow, or earn goes toward the purchase of massive
silver jewelry, anklets, bracelets, and the like, and these in turn
are exchanged for gold pieces—whether French napoleons, English
sovereigns, or Turkish liras she is not at all particular—which,
linked together in that golden armour of which I have already spoken,
envelops her lithe young body from neck to hips. When her portable
wealth has attained to such dimensions it is usually the sign for the
Ouled-Naïl to retire from business, going to her desert husband with
her dowry about her neck.

When it is remembered that the native quarters of these towns in the
edge of the Sahara are frequented by savage desert tribesmen who
know little and care less about civilisation and the law, is it to
be wondered at that time and time again these unprotected girls are
done to death in the little rooms up the steep, dark stairs for the
sake of the gold which they display so lavishly as part of their
allurements? During my stay in one of these Algerian towns an Arab,
stealthily coming up behind an Ouled-Naïl as she was returning one
night from the dance-hall through the narrow, deserted streets, drove
a knife between her shoulders and, snatching the little fortune which
hung about her neck, fled with it into the desert. But the arm of
the French law is very long, reaching even across the sand wastes
of the Great Sahara, and months later, when he thought all search
for him had been abandoned, the fugitive felt its grasp as he sat,
cross-legged, in the distant bazaars of Wadai. After that came the
trial and the guillotine, for in Algeria, as in the other lands which
they have conquered, the French have taught the natives by such grim
object-lessons that punishment follows swift on the heels of crime.

Now, if that same crime had been committed fifty miles to the
eastward, across the Tunisian frontier, the murderer would, in all
likelihood, have gotten off with thirteen months in jail—that is, if
he was caught at all. For, though the regency of Tunisia is French in
pretty much everything but name, it has been deemed wise to maintain
the fiction of Tunisian independence by permitting the Bey a good
deal of latitude so far as the punishment of his own subjects is
concerned, his ideas of justice (_la justice du Bey_ it is called,
in contra-distinction to _la justice française_, which is a very
different sort of justice indeed) usually working out in a fashion
truly Oriental. In Tunisia all death sentences must be confirmed by
the Bey in person, the condemned man being brought before him as he
sits on his gilt-and-velvet throne in the great white palace of the
Bardo. In the presence of the sovereign the murderer is suddenly
brought face to face with the members of his victim's family, for such
things are always done dramatically in the East. The Bey then inquires
of the family if they insist on the execution of the murderer, or if
they are willing to accept the blood-money, as it is called, a sum
equivalent to one hundred and forty dollars, which in theory is paid
by the murderer to the relatives of his victims as a sort of indemnity
if he is allowed to escape with his life. If, however, he does not
possess so large a sum, as is frequently the case, the Bey makes it
up out of his private purse. Nine times out of ten, if the victim was
a woman, the blood-money is promptly accepted—and praise be to Allah
for getting it!—for in Africa women are plenty but gold is scarce. In
case the blood-money is accepted the murderer's sentence is commuted
to imprisonment for twelve months and twenty-seven days, though just
why the odd twenty-seven I have never been able to learn. But it
may have been that it was an only son, or a husband, or a chieftain
of importance who was murdered, and in such cases the relatives
invariably demand the extreme penalty of the law.

“Do you insist on his blood?” inquires the Bey, a portly and
easy-going Oriental who has a marked aversion to taking life, even in
the case of murderers.

“We do, your Highness,” replies the spokesman of the family, salaaming
until his tarboosh-tassel sweeps the floor.

“Be it so,” says the Bey, shrugging his shoulders. “I call upon
you to bear witness that I am innocent of his death. May Allah the
Compassionate have mercy upon him! Turn him toward the gate of the
Bardo,” which last is the local euphemism for “Take him out and hang
him.” Five minutes later the wretch is adorning a gallows which has
been set up in the palace gardens.

Due north from the land of the Ouled-Naïls, and hemmed in by the
snow-capped peaks of the Atlas, is the Grand Kabylia, a wild, strange
region, peopled by many but known to few. Whence the Kabyles came
nobody knows, though their fair complexions, red hair, and blue eyes
lead the ethnologists to suppose that they are a branch of that
equally white and equally mysterious Berber race who occupy the
Moroccan ranges of the Atlas. Thirteen hundred years ago they came to
North Africa from out of the East, bringing with them a civilisation
and a culture and institutions distinctively their own. Retreating
into their mountain fastnesses before that Arab invasion which spread
the faith of the Prophet over all North Africa, they have dwelt there
ever since, the French, who conquered them in the middle of the
last century only after heavy losses, having wisely refrained from
interference in their tribal laws or customs, which remain, therefore,
almost unmodified.

Though the Kabyles, of all the Moslem races, treat their women
with the greatest respect, neither imprisoning them in harems nor
hiding them beneath veils and swaddling-clothes, they share with the
mountaineers of the Caucasus the somewhat dubious distinction of
selling their daughters to the highest bidder. Between the Circassians
and the Kabyles there is, however, a distinction with a difference,
for, whereas the former sell their daughters in cold blood and take
not the slightest interest in what becomes of them thereafter, the
Kabyle parent expects, even if he does not always insist, that the man
who purchases his daughter shall marry her. A fine, upstanding Kabyle
maiden of fifteen or thereabouts, with the lines of a thoroughbred,
the profile of a cameo, and a skin the colour of a bronze statue, will
fetch her parents anywhere from eighty to three hundred dollars, at
least so I was told at Tizi-Ouzou, the _chef-lieu_ of the district,
and the man who told me assured me very earnestly that, the crops
having been bad, a girl could be bought very cheaply, and begged me to
think it over.

Though the Mauresques of Algeria, the Jewesses of Tunisia, and the
fair-skinned beauties of Circassia combine a voluptuous figure with an
altogether exceptional beauty of complexion and features, the women of
Kabylia, with their flashing teeth, their sparkling eyes, their full
red lips, their lithe, slender bodies, and their haughty, insolent
manners, suggest a civilisation older and more sensuous, and entirely
alien to our own. The humblest peasant girl, grinding the family flour
between the upper and the nether stones in the doorway of a mud hovel,
possesses so marked a distinction of feature and figure and bearing
that it is not difficult to believe that Cleopatra or Helen of Troy
might well have come from this same race.

The approach of a Kabyle woman is heralded in two ways: first, by a
strong-scented perfume, which, like the celebrated _parfum du Bey_ of
Tunis, is composed of the blended scents of a score or more different
kinds of blossoms, the odour changing from carnation to rose, to
heliotrope, to violet, and so on every few minutes (no, I didn't
believe it either, until I tried it); and, secondly, by the clink
and jingle of the bracelets, anklets, necklaces, and bijoux of gold,
silver, turquoise, and coral with which they are loaded down, and
which sound, when they move, like an approaching four-in-hand. Good
specimens of this Kabyle jewelry are becoming increasingly difficult
to obtain, by the way, and bring high prices in the shops of Tunis and
Algiers, being eagerly sought after by collectors.

Personally, I am quite unable to picture an admirer making love to one
of these insolent-eyed beauties, for they are headstrong and hot of
temper, and if the gentleman happened to say the wrong thing he would
very probably find the _yataghan_, which every Kabyle maiden carries,
planted neatly between his shoulders. They seem to be fond of cold
steel, do these Kabyles, for at the conclusion of a wedding ceremony
the bridegroom, walking backward, holds before him an unsheathed
dagger and the bride, following him, keeps the point of it between her
teeth. Another wedding custom of Kabylia, no less strange, consists of
the partial martyrdom of the bride, who, clad in her marriage finery,
stands for an entire morning with her back to a stone pillar in the
village square, her eyes closed, her arms close at her sides, and her
only foothold the column's narrow base, the cynosure of hundreds of
curious eyes. Despite the stern stuff of which the Kabyle women are
made, it is small wonder that the bride usually faints before this
peculiarly harrowing ordeal is over.

As far removed from these half-savage women of Ouled-Naïl and of
Kabylia as a Philadelphia Quakeress is from a Cheyenne squaw are those
poor prisoner women of whose pale, half-hidden faces the visitor to
the North African coast towns sometimes gets a glimpse at the barred
window of a harem, or meets at nightfall hastening home from their
sole diversion, the weekly excursion to the cemetery. You can see
them for yourself any Friday afternoon if you will loiter without the
whitewashed gateway to the cemetery of Bou-Kabrin, on the hill above
Algiers, for they believe that on that day—the Moslem Sabbath—the
spirits of the dead re-visit the earth, and hence their weekly
pilgrimage to the cemetery to keep them company. When the sun begins
to sink behind the Atlas these white-veiled pyramids of femininity
reluctantly begin to make their way back through the narrow, winding
lanes of the native city, disappearing one by one through doors which
will not open for them until another Friday has rolled around. Picture
such a life, my friends: six days a week encloistered behind jealously
guarded doors and on the seventh taking an outing _in the cemetery_!

That many of these Mauresque women of the coast towns are very
beautiful—just as many others are exceedingly ugly—there is but little
doubt, though they are so sheeted, shrouded, veiled, and draped from
prying masculine eyes that a man may know of their beauty only by
hearsay. I imagine that the dress of the Mauresque woman was specially
designed to baffle masculine curiosity, for if Aphrodite herself were
enveloped in a white linen sheet from head to waist, and in enormous
and ridiculous pantaloons from waist to ankle, she could go where she
pleased without being troubled by admirers. Not only is a Mauresque
woman never permitted to see a man—or rather, the man is not permitted
to see her, for despite all precautions she sometimes manages to
catch glimpses of people through the lattices of her harem windows—but
she may not receive a visit from her father or brother without her
husband's permission. When she is ill enough to require the services
of a physician—and she has to be very ill indeed before one is
summoned—incredibly elaborate are the preparations. All the women
of her household are ranged about the bed, while her servants hide
her under the bedclothes almost to the point of suffocation. If her
pulse has to be felt a servant covers her hand and arm so carefully
that only an inch or so of her wrist is visible. If she has hurt her
shoulder, or back, or leg, a hole is made in the bedclothes so that
the doctor may just be able to see the injured place, and nothing
more. Should he have the hardihood to insist on looking at her tongue,
the precautions are still more elaborate, the attendants covering the
patient's face with their hands and just leaving room between their
fingers so that her tongue may be stuck out. I know a French physician
in Tunis who told me that he was once called to attend the favourite
wife of a wealthy Arab merchant, and that while he was conducting the
examination the lady's husband stood behind him with the muzzle of a
revolver pressed into the small of his back.

[Illustration: JEWISH WOMEN IN THE CEMETERY OF TUNIS.

“They believe that the spirits of the dead revisit the earth, and
hence the weekly pilgrimage to the cemetery to keep them company.”]

Always over the head of the Arab woman hangs the shadow of divorce.
Nowhere in the world does the law so facilitate the separation of man
and wife. If a man grows weary of his wife's looks, of her temper,
or of her dress; if he wishes to replace her with another; or if
he is tired of married life and does not wish a wife at all, he has
but scant difficulty in getting rid of her, for in North Africa a
divorce can be had in fifteen minutes at a total cost of a dollar
and twenty cents. In theory, either husband or wife may divorce the
other by a simple formality, without assigning any reason whatever.
As a matter of fact, however, actual divorce by the man is rare, the
Moslem husband usually preferring to get rid of his wife by a process
called repudiation, which bears with great injustice and cruelty on
the woman. If he tires of her for any reason, or merely wishes to
replace her, he drives her away with the words “Woman, get thee hence;
take thy goods and go.” In this case, although the husband is free
to remarry, the woman is not and can only obtain a legal release by
returning to the man the money which he paid for her. The woman may
apply to the courts for divorce without her husband's consent only
if she is able to prove that he ill-treats or beats her _without
sufficient reason_, if he refuses her food, clothes, or lodging, or if
she discovers a previous wooing on her husband's part, all previous
betrothals, or even offers of marriage, whether the other lady refused
or accepted him, being considered ground for divorce.

The next time you happen to be in Tunis don't fail to pay a visit to
the divorce court. It is the most Haroun-al-Raschidic institution
this side of Samarkand. A great hall of justice, vaulted and floored
with marble and strewn with Eastern carpets, forms the setting, while
husbands in turbans and lawyers in tarbooshes, white-veiled women and
green-robed, gray-bearded judges complete a scene which might have
been taken straight from the _Arabian Nights_. The women, closely
veiled and hooded, and herded like so many cattle within an iron
grill, take no part in the proceedings which so intimately affect
their futures, their interests being left in the hands of a voluble
and gesticulative _avocat_. On either side of the hall is a series of
alcoves, and in each alcove, seated cross-legged on a many-cushioned
divan, is a gold-turbaned and green-robed _cadi_. To him the
husband states his case, the wife putting in her defence—if she has
any—through her lawyer and rarely appearing in person. The judge
considers the facts in silence, gravely stroking his long, gray beard,
and then delivers his decision—in nine cases out of ten, so I was
told, in favour of the husband. Should either party be dissatisfied,
he or she can take an appeal by the simple process of walking across
the room and laying the case before one of the judges sitting on the
other side, whose decision is final. A case, even if appealed, is
generally disposed of in less than an hour and at a total cost of six
francs, which goes to show that the record for quick-and-easy divorces
is not held by Reno.

It is characteristic of the Moslem view-point that infidelity on
the part of the husband is no cause for divorce whatsoever, while
infidelity on the part of the wife, owing to the strict surveillance
under which Moslem women are kept and the prison-like houses in
which they are confined, occurs so rarely as to be scarcely worth
mentioning. Should a Moslem woman so far succeed in evading the
vigilance of her jailers as to enter into a liaison with a man,
instead of a divorce trial there would be two funerals. To put his
wife and her paramour out of the way without detection is a matter of
no great difficulty for an Arab husband, for if any one disappears
in a Mohammedan country the harem system renders a search extremely
difficult, if not, indeed, wholly out of the question. In fact, it
has happened very frequently, especially in such populous centres as
Tangier, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Cairo, that a man has enticed
his rival into his house, either keeping him a prisoner for life or
slowly killing him by torture. Though the French authorities are
perfectly well aware of such occurrences, neither they in Algeria
and Tunisia nor the English in Egypt feel themselves strongly enough
intrenched to risk the outburst of fanaticism which would inevitably
ensue should they violate the privacy of a harem.

I am perfectly aware of the fact that it has become the fashion among
those travellers who confine their investigations of African life to
the lanes about Mustapha Supérieur, to the _souks_ of Tunis, and to
the alleys back of the Mousky, to pooh-pooh the idea that slavery
still exists in North Africa. As a matter of fact, however—though
this the European officials will, for reasons of policy, stoutly
deny—slavery not only exists _sub rosa_ in Algeria and Tunisia and in
Egypt, but slave markets are still openly maintained in the inland
towns of Morocco and Tripolitania, the French and Italian occupations
notwithstanding. When a wealthy Moslem wants slaves nowadays he does
not send traders to Circassia or raiders to Uganda, but he applies to
one of the well-known dealers in Tetuan, or Tripoli, or Trebizond,
a marriage contract is drawn up, and all the ceremonies of legal
wedlock are gone through by proxy. By resorting to these fictitious
marriages and similar subterfuges, the owner of a harem may procure
as many slaves, white, brown, or black, as he wishes, and once they
are within the walls of his house, no one can possibly interfere to
release them, for, the police being under no conditions permitted to
violate the privacy of a harem, there is obviously no safeguard for
the liberty, or even the lives, of its inmates. As a result of this
system, a constant stream of female slaves—fair-haired beauties from
Georgia and Circassia, brown-skinned Arab girls from the borders of
the Sahara, and negresses from Equatoria—trickles into the North
African coast towns by various roundabout channels, and, though the
European officials are perfectly well aware of this condition of
things, they are powerless to end it. The women thus obtained, though
nominally wives, are in reality slaves, for they are bought for money,
they are not consulted about their sale, they cannot go away if they
are discontented, and their very lives are at the disposal of their
masters. If that is not slavery, I don't know what is.

In those cases where the European authorities have ventured to meddle
with native customs, particularly those concerning a husband's
treatment of his wife, the interference frequently has had curious
results. A wealthy Arab from the interior of Oran, starting on a
journey to the capital of that province, bade the wife whom he
adored an affectionate good-bye. Returning several days before he
was expected, he seized the smiling woman, who rushed to greet him,
tied her hands, and dragging her into the street gave her a furious
beating in the presence of the astounded neighbours. No, she had not
been unfaithful to him, he said, between the blows, nor had she been
unkind. He not only was not tired of her, so he assured the onlookers,
but she was a veritable jewel of a wife. Finally, when his arm grew
tired and he stopped to take breath, he explained that, passing
through a street in Oran, he had seen a crowd following a man who was
being dragged along by two gendarmes. Upon inquiry he learned that he
was being taken to prison for having beaten his wife. Therefore he
had ridden home at top speed, without even waiting to complete his
business, so that he might prove to himself, to his wife, and to his
neighbours that he, at least, was still master in his own house and
could beat his wife when he chose.

And here is another incident which illustrates the fashion in which
the French administrators in Algeria deal with those ticklish
questions which involve Arab domestic relations. A farmer and his wife
were travelling through the interior; he was on a donkey and she, of
course, on foot. Along came an Arab sheikh on horseback and offered
the woman a lift. She accepted, and presently, growing confidential,
admitted that she was unhappily married and detested her husband. Her
companion proposing an elopement, she readily agreed. Accordingly,
when they came to a by-road, this Lochinvar of the desert put spurs
to his horse and galloped off with the lady across his saddle-bow,
paying no heed to the shouts and protestations of the husband toiling
along in the dust behind. Though he succeeded in tracing the runaway
couple to the sheikh's village, the husband quickly found that plans
had been made against his coming, for the villagers asserted to a man
that they had known the eloping pair for years as man and wife and
that the real husband was nothing but an impudent impostor. Unable to
regain his wife, he then appealed to the French authorities of the
district, who were at first at somewhat of a loss how to act in the
circumstances, for the Europeans in North Africa are always sitting on
top of a powder barrel and a hasty or ill-considered action may result
in blowing them higher than Gilderoy's kite. Finally, an inspiration
came to the _juge d'instruction_ before whom the matter had been
brought. Placing the dogs of the real husband in one room, and those
of the pretended husband in another, he confronted the woman with them
both. Now, Arab dogs are notoriously faithful to the members of their
own households and equally unfriendly toward all strangers, so that
though her own dogs fawned upon her and attempted to lick her hand,
those of the sheikh snarled at sight of her and showed every sign of
distrust. The judge promptly ordered her to be returned to her lawful
husband—who, I fancy, punished her in true Arab fashion—and had the
village placarded with a notice in Arabic which read: “The testimony
of one dog is more to be believed than that of a townful of Arabs.”
To appreciate how much more effective than any amount of fines or
imprisonment this notice proved, one must remember that the deadliest
insult an Arab can give another is to call him a dog.

Perhaps it is because they live so far from the contaminating
influence of civilisation, or what stands for civilisation in North
Africa, that the lives of those women who dwell beneath the black
camel's-hair tents of the Sahara are far freer and happier than those
led by their urban cousins. Which reminds me of a little procession
that I once met while riding through southern Algeria. It consisted of
an Arab, his wife, and a donkey. The man strode in front, his rifle
over his shoulder. Then came the donkey, bearing nothing heavier than
its harness. In the rear trudged the wife, carrying the plough. Though
the Arab women may, and probably do, till the fields yoked beside
a camel, a donkey, or an ox, their faces are unveiled and they are
permitted free intercourse with the men of their tribe. Even among
the nomad desert folk, however, women are regarded with indifference
and contempt, the Arabs saying of a boy “It is a benediction,” but
of a girl “It is a malediction.” With the Arabs a woman is primarily
regarded as a servant, and long before a daughter of the “Great
Tents” has entered her teens she has been taught how to cut and fit a
burnoose, to sew a tent cover, and to make a _couscous_, that peculiar
dish of half-ground barley, raisins, honey, hard-boiled eggs, and
mangled fowl, stewed with a gravy in a sealed vessel, of which the
Arabs are so fond. By the time she is ten her parents have probably
received and accepted an offer for her hand—and praise Allah for
ridding them of her!—and by the time she is twelve she is married
and a mother. When a match has been decided upon—and it is by no
means an uncommon thing for an unborn child to become conditionally
engaged—several days of haggling as to the price which is to be paid
for her ensue, the bridegroom eventually getting her at a cost of
several camels, cattle, or goats, her value being based upon her
looks and the position of her parents. On the day of the wedding the
bride—on whose unveiled face, remember, the bridegroom has never laid
eyes—concealed within a swaying camel-litter which looks for all the
world like a young balloon, preceded by a band and accompanied by
all her relatives, is taken with much ceremony to her new home. When
the long-drawn-out marriage feast is over, the hideous racket of the
flutes and tom-toms ceases and the wedding guests depart. Alone in
her tent, the bride awaits her husband, who will see her face for the
first time. Seating himself by her side, her husband makes her take
off, one by one, her necklaces, her rings, and her anklets, so that,
unadorned, she may be estimated at her true worth. If, thus stripped
of her finery, she is not up to his expectations, the man may even at
this late hour declare the marriage off and send the girl back to her
parents. Should he be satisfied with his latest acquisition—for it
is more than likely that he already has three or four other wives—he
produces a club, which he places on the floor beside her, a custom
whose significance requires no explanation. An Arab husband does
not confine himself to a stick in regulating his domestic affairs,
however, for only a few months ago the French authorities of Oran
divested a desert sheikh of the burnoose of authority because, in a
fit of jealous rage, he had cut off his wife's nose.

[Illustration: AN ARAB BRIDE GOING TO HER HUSBAND.

“Followed by rejoicing relatives, the bride is taken to her husband's
home in a swaying camel litter which looks like a young balloon.”

_Photograph by Em. Frechon, Biskra._]




CHAPTER IV

THE ITALIAN “WHITE MAN'S BURDEN”


Since the world began the arm of Italy has reached out into the
Mediterranean toward Africa, its finger pointing straight at Tripoli.
Phœnicians, Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Spaniards, and
Turks followed the suggestion of that finger in their turn, but of
them all only the Arab and the Turk remain. In every case a colonial
empire was the mirage which beckoned to those land-hungry peoples
from behind the golden haze which hangs over the African coast-line,
and in every case their African adventures ended in disappointment
and disaster. After an interim of centuries, in which the roads and
ramparts and reservoirs built along that shore by those primeval
pioneers have crumbled into dust, the troop-laden transports of a
regenerated Italy have followed in the wake of those Greek galleys,
those Roman triremes, and those Spanish caravels. Undeterred by
the recollection of her disastrous Abyssinian adventure, Italy is
imbued with the idea, just as were her powerful predecessors, that
her commercial and political interests demand the extension of her
dominion across the Middle Sea.

Ever since the purple sails of Phœnicia first flaunted along its
coasts the history of Tripolitania has been one of invasion and
conquest. In the very dawn of history the galleys of Greece dropped
anchor off this shore, in the belief that it was the Garden of the
Hesperides, and the vestiges of their colony of Cyrenaica lure the
archæologists to-day. The Greeks, who, because of its three leagued
cities of Oëa, Sabrata, and Leptis, named their new possession
Tripolis, just as Decapolis signified the region of ten cities and
Pentapolis of five, retreated before Carthage's colonial expansion,
and the Carthaginians gave way in turn to the conquering Romans,
who included the captured territory within their province of Africa
and called it Regio Tripolitana—whence the name it bears to-day.
Christianity was scarcely four centuries old when the hordes of
fierce-faced, skin-clad Vandals, sweeping down from their Germanic
forests, burst into Gaul, poured through the passes of the Pyrenees,
overran Spain, and, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, carried fire and
sword and torture from end to end of the Mediterranean. Before another
century had rolled around, however, Belisarius, the great captain of
Byzantium, had broken the Vandal power forever, and the troubled land
of Tripolitania once again came under the shadow of the cross. Then
the wave of Arab conquest came, rolling across North Africa, breaking
upon the coasts of Spain, and not subsiding until it reached the
marches of France, supplanting the feeble Christianity of the natives
of all this region with the vigorous and fanatical faith of Islam.
Though Ferdinand the Catholic, not content with expelling the Moors
from Spain, continued his crusade against the infidel by capturing
the Tripolitan capital, the Knights of Saint John, to whom he turned
the city over, surrendered to the beleaguering Turks just as the
sixteenth century had reached its turning-point, and Turkish it has
remained, at least in name, ever since.

We of the West can never be wholly indifferent to the fate and
fortunes of this much-harassed land, for our flag has fluttered from
its ramparts and the bayonets of our soldiers and the cutlasses of
our sailors have served to write some of the most stirring chapters
of its history. So feeble and nominal did the Turkish rule become
that the beginning of the last century found Tripolitania little
more than a pirate stronghold, ruled by a pasha who had not only
successfully defied, but had actually levied systematic tribute upon,
every sea-faring nation in the world. It was not, however, until the
Pasha of Tripoli overstepped the bounds of our national complaisance
by demanding an increase in the annual tribute of eighty-odd thousand
dollars which the United States had been paying as the price of its
maritime exemption that the American consul handed him an ultimatum
and an American war-ship backed it up with the menace of its guns.
Standing forth in picturesque and striking relief from the tedium of
the four years' war which ensued was the capture by the Tripolitans
in 1803 of the frigate _Philadelphia_, which had run aground in the
harbour of Tripoli, and the enslavement of her crew; her subsequent
recapture and destruction by a handful of blue-jackets under the
intrepid Decatur; and the heroic march across the desert to Derna of
General William Eaton and his motley army.

Eaton's exploit, like that of Reid and the _General Armstrong_ at
Fayal, seems to have been all but lost in the mazes of our national
history. With the object of placing upon the Tripolitan throne the
reigning Pasha's exiled elder brother, who had agreed to satisfy
all the demands of the United States, William Eaton, soldier of
fortune, frontiersman, and former American consul at Tunis, recruited
at Alexandria what was thought to be a ridiculously insufficient
expeditionary force for the taking of Derna, a strongly fortified
coast town six hundred miles due west across the Libyan desert. With
a handful of adventurous Americans, some two-score Greeks, who fought
the Turk whenever opportunity offered, and a few squadrons of Arab
mercenaries—less than five hundred men in all—he set out under the
blazing sun of an African spring. Though his Arabs mutinied, his
food and water gave out, and his animals died from starvation and
exhaustion, Eaton pushed indomitably on, covering the six hundred
miles of burning sand in fifty days, carrying the city by storm, and
raising the American flag over its citadel—the first and only time it
has ever floated over a fortification on that side of the Atlantic.

A territory larger than all the Atlantic States, from Florida to
Maine, put together; a dry climate as hot in summer and as cold in
winter as that of New Mexico; a surface which varies between the
aridity of the Staked Plains and the fertility of the San Joaquin
Valley of California; so sparsely populated that its fanatic,
turbulent, poverty-stricken population averages but two inhabitants
to the square mile—that is Tripolitania. Bounded on the west by
Tunisia and the French and on the east by Egypt and the English,
the hinterland of the regency stretches into the Sahara as far as
the Tropic of Cancer. Its eleven hundred miles of coast-line set
squarely in the middle of the north African littoral; its capital
almost equidistant from the Straits, the Dardanelles, and the Suez
Canal; and half the great ports of the Mediterranean not twelve hours'
steam away, the strategical, political, and commercial position of
Tripolitania is one of great importance.

Tripolitania, as the regency should properly be called, or Libya, as
the Italians have classically renamed it, consists of four more or
less distinctly defined divisions: Tripoli, Fezzan, Benghazi, and the
Saharan oases. Under the Turkish régime the districts of Tripoli and
Fezzan have formed a vilayet under a _vali_, or governor-general;
Benghazi has been a separately administered province under a
_mutes-sarif_ directly responsible to Constantinople, while the
oases have not been governed at all. The district of Tripoli, which
occupies the entire northwestern portion of the regency, is for the
most part an interminable stony table-land, riverless, waterless, and
uninhabited save along the fertile coast. The stretches of yellow sand
which the traveller sees from the deck of his ship are not, as he
fondly imagines, the edge of the Sahara, but merely sand dunes blown
in by the sea, such as may be seen elsewhere on the Mediterranean
coast.

Sloping from these coastal sand dunes up to the barren interior
plateau is a zone, averaging perhaps five miles in width, of an
altogether remarkable fertility, for its deep ravines, filled with
considerable streams during the winter rains, continue to send down a
supply of subterranean water even during the dry season. By means of
countless wells, round and round which blindfolded donkeys and oxen
plod ceaselessly, the water is drawn up into reservoirs and conducted
thence to the fields. In this coast oasis it is harvest-time all the
year round, for, notwithstanding the primitive agricultural implements
of the natives and their crude system of irrigation, the soil is
amazingly productive. From April to June almonds, apricots, and corn
are gathered in; in July and August come the peaches; from July to
September is the vintage season, and the Tripolitan grapes vie with
those of Sicily; from July to September the black tents of the nomad
date and olive pickers dot the fields, though the yellow date of the
coast is not to be spoken of in the same breath with the luscious,
mahogany-coloured fruit of the interior oases; from November to April
the orange groves are ablaze with a fruit which rivals that of Jaffa;
the early spring sees the shipment of those “Malta potatoes” which
are quoted on the menus of every fashionable hostelry and restaurant
in Europe; while lemons are to be had for the picking at almost any
season of the year.

Southward into the Sahara from the southern borders of Tripoli
stretches the province of Fezzan, its inaccessibility, its prevalent
malaria, and its deadly heat having popularised it with Abdul-Hamid,
of unsavoury memory, as a place of exile for disgraced courtiers
and overpopular officials, presumably because of the exceeding
improbability of any of them ever coming back. Artesian wells and
scientific farming have proved in other and equally discouraging
quarters of Africa, however, that the words “desert” and “worthless”
are no longer synonymous, so there is no reason to believe that the
agricultural miracles which France has performed in Algeria and
Tunisia on the one hand, and England in Egypt and the Sudan on the
other, could not be successfully attempted by the Italians in Fezzan.
Arid and inhospitable as this region appears to-day, it should be
remembered that its Greek and Roman colonists boasted of it as “the
granary of Europe.” What has been done once may well be done again.
All that this soil needs, after its centuries of impoverishment and
neglect, is decent treatment, and any one who has seen those vineyards
on the slopes of Capri and those farmsteads clinging to the rocky
hill-sides of Calabria, where soil of any kind is so precious that
every inch is tended with pathetic care, will predict a promising
agricultural future for an Italian Tripolitania. In its physical
aspects, northern Tripolitania resembles Europe much more than it does
Africa; its climate is no warmer than southern Italy in summer and
not nearly as unhealthy as the _Campagna Romana_; while its soil,
as I have already remarked, holds great possibilities for patient,
hardy, frugal, industrious agriculturists of the type of those twenty
thousand Sicilians who are forced by poverty to emigrate each year
to America or the Argentine. Keeping these facts in mind, one does
not have to seek far for the causes which underlay Italy's sudden
aggression.

[Illustration: SUNRISE ON THE GREAT SANDS.

For sheer majesty and grandeur, the only thing that is at all
comparable with a Saharan sunrise is daybreak in the Grand Cañon of
the Colorado.]

Reaching Egyptward in the form of a mighty fist is the peninsula
of Barka, the Cyrenaica of the ancients, officially known as the
Mutessariflik of Benghazi, its many natural advantages of climate,
soil, and vegetation making it the most favoured region in the
regency, if not, indeed, in all North Africa. While the climate and
vegetation of southern Tripoli and of Fezzan are distinctly Saharan,
the date-palm being the characteristic tree, Benghazi is just as
decidedly Mediterranean, its fertile, verdure-clad uplands being
covered with groves of oak, cypress, olive, fig, and pine. Though
well supplied with rain and, as I have said, extremely fertile, the
Benghazi province, once the richest of the Greek colonies, is now
but scantily populated. Scattered along its coasts are Benghazi,
the capital, with an inextricably mixed population and one of the
worst harbours in the world; Tobruk, which, because of its excellent
roadstead and its proximity to the Egyptian frontier and the Canal,
Germany has long had a covetous eye on; and the insignificant ports of
Derna and Khoms, the lawless highlands of the interior being occupied
by hordes of warlike and nomadic Arabs who acknowledge no authority
other than their tribal sheikhs.

South by east into the Libyan Desert straggle the Aujila and Kufra
chains of oases, marking the course of the historic caravan route
to Upper Egypt and presenting the aspect of a long, winding valley,
extending from the Benghazi plateau almost to the banks of the Nile.
Underground reservoirs lie so near the surface of the desert that all
of these sand-surrounded islands have water in abundance, that of Jof,
for example, supporting over a million date-palms and several thousand
people, together with their camels, horses, and goats.

Such, in brief, bold outline, are the more salient
characteristics—climatic, agricultural, and geographical—of the
region which Italy has seized. Everything considered, it was not
such a long look ahead that the Italian statesmen took when they
decided to play their cards for such a stake. Though neither soil
nor climate has changed since the days of Tripolitania's ancient
prosperity, centuries of wretched and corrupt Turkish rule, with
its system of absentee landlords and irresponsible officials, has
reduced the peasantry to the same state of dull and despairing apathy
in which the Egyptian _fellaheen_ were before the English came. If
Tripolitania is to be redeemed, and I firmly believe that it will be,
the work of regeneration cannot be done by government railways and
subsidised steam-ship lines and regiments of brass-bound officials,
but by patient, painstaking, plodding men with artesian-well drilling
machines and steam-ploughs and barrels of fertiliser. It may well
be, as the Italian expansionists enthusiastically declare, that
Tripolitania constitutes a “New Italy” lying at the very ports of old
Italy, but it is going to take many, many millions of lire and much
hard work to make it worth the having.

To those unaccustomed to the sights and sounds and smells of the East,
a visit to the town of Tripoli is more interesting than enjoyable.
Both its harbour and its hostelry are so incredibly bad that no
one ever visits them a second time if he can possibly help it. The
harbour of Jaffa, in Palestine, is a trifle worse, if anything, than
that of Tripoli; but the only hotel I know of which deserves to be
classed with the Albergo Minerva in Tripoli is the one next door to
the native jail in Aden. Picture a cluster of square, squat, stuccoed
houses, their tedious sky-lines broken by the minarets of mosques and
the flagstaffs of foreign consulates, facing on a crescent-shaped
bay. Under the sun of an African summer the white buildings of the
town blaze like the whitewashed base of a railway-station stove at
white heat; the stretch of yellow beach which separates the harbour
from the town glows fiery as brass; while the waters of the bay look
exactly as though they had been blued in readiness for the family
washing. Within the crumbling ramparts of the town is a network of dim
alleys and byways, along which the yashmaked Moslem women flit like
ghosts, and vaulted, trellis-roofed bazaars where traders of two-score
nationalities haggle and gesticulate and doze and pray and chatter the
while they and their wares and the passing camels smell to heaven.
Scattered here and there among the shops are native bakeries, in the
reeking interiors of which, after your eyes become accustomed to the
darkness, you can discern patient camels plodding round and round and
round, grinding the grain in true Eastern fashion between the upper
and the nether millstones.

Follow the narrow Strada della Marina past the custom-house, where the
Italian sentry peers at you suspiciously from beneath the bunch of
cock's feathers which adorns his helmet; past the odorous fish-market
and so into the unpaved, unlighted, foul-smelling quarter of the
Jews, and your path will be blocked eventually by the sole remaining
relic of Tripoli's one-time greatness, the marble arch of triumph
erected by the Romans in the reign of Antoninus Pius, now half-buried
in débris, its chiselled boasts of victory mutilated, and its arches
ruthlessly plastered up, the shop of a dealer in dried fish. In that
defaced and degraded memorial is typified the latter-day history of
Tripolitania. Before the Italian occupation disrupted the commerce of
the country and isolated Tripoli from the interior, by long odds the
most interesting of the city's sights were the markets, which were
held upon the beach on the arrival of the trans-Saharan caravans, for
they afforded the foreigner fleeting but characteristic glimpses,
as though on a moving-picture screen, of those strange and savage
peoples—Berbers, Hausas, Tuaregs, Tubbas, and Wadaians—who are
retreating farther and farther into the recesses of the continent
before the white man's implacable advance.

All down the ages Tripoli has been the gateway through which weapons,
cutlery, and cotton have entered, and slaves, ostrich feathers, and
ivory have come out of inner Africa by plodding caravan. Since the
sons of Ham first found their way across the wilderness of Shur, this
region has been the terminus of three historic trade routes. The
first of these runs due south across the desert to Lake Tchad and the
great native states of Kanem, Sokoto, Bagirmi, and Wadai; the second
follows a southwesterly course across the Sahara to the Great Bend of
the Niger and the storied city of Timbuktu; while the third, going
south by east, long carried British cottons and German jack-knives to
the natives of Darfur and the Sudan. Is it any wonder, then, that,
fired by the speeches of the expansionists in the Roman senate, all
Italy should dream of a day when the red-white-and-green banner should
float over this gateway to Africa and endless lines of dust-coloured
camels, laden with glass beads from Venice and cotton goods from
Milan, should go rolling southward to those countries which lie beyond
the great sands? But, lost in the fascination of their dream, the
Italians forgot one thing: modern commerce cannot go on the back of
a camel. No longer may Tripolitania be reckoned the front door, or
even the side door, to central Africa. As the result of French and
British encroachment and enterprise, not only has nearly all of the
Tripolitanian hinterland been absorbed by one or the other of these
powers, but, what is of far more commercial importance, they have
succeeded in diverting the large and important caravan trade of which
the Italians dreamed, and which for centuries has found its way to
the sea through Tripoli, to their own ports on the Nile, the Senegal,
and the Niger, leaving to _Tripolitania Italiana_ nothing but its
possibilities as an agricultural land.

The statesmen who planned, and the soldiers and sailors who executed,
the seizure of Tripolitania, were obeying a voice from the grave.
Though the overwhelming disaster to the Italians at Adowa in 1896,
when their army of invasion was wiped out by Menelik's Abyssinian
tribesmen, caused the political downfall of Crispi, the greatest
Italian of his time, his dream of Italian colonial expansion, like
John Brown's soul, went marching on. With the vision of a prophet
that great statesman saw that the day was not far distant when the
steady increase in Italy's population and production would compel her
to acquire a colonial market oversea. Crispi lies mouldering in his
grave, but the Italian Government, in pursuance of the policy which he
inaugurated, has been surreptitiously at work in Tripolitania these
dozen years or more.

Never has that forerunner to annexation known as “pacific penetration”
been more subtly or more systematically conducted. Even the Pope
lent the government's policy of African aggrandisement his sanction,
for is not the Moslem the hereditary foe of the church, and does not
the cross follow close in the wake of Christian bayonets? Italian
convents and monasteries dot the Tripolitanian littoral, while cowled
and sandalled missionaries from the innumerable Italian orders have
carried the gospel, and the propaganda of Italian annexation, to
the oppressed and poverty-stricken peasantry of the far interior.
Under the guise of scientists, Italian political and commercial
agents have been quietly investigating the problems and possibilities
of the regency from end to end, while the powerful Banco di Roma,
an institution backed with the funds of the Holy See, through its
branches in Tripoli and Benghazi, has been systematically buying up
arable farm-lands from the impoverished peasantry at a few lire the
hectare, which quadrupled in value with the landing of the first
Italian soldier.

Though prior to the war there were probably not two thousand
native-born Italians in the whole of Tripolitania, the numerous
Jews, in whose hands was practically the entire trade of the
country, were offered inducements of one kind and another to become
Italian subjects, Italy thus laying a foundation for her claims to
predominating interests in that region. On the pretext that the
Turkish authorities had tampered with the foreign mail-bags, Italy
demanded and obtained permission to establish her own post-offices
at the principal ports, so that for many years past the anomalous
spectacle has been presented, just as in other portions of the
Turkish Empire, of letters from a Turkish colony being franked with
surcharged Italian stamps. The most ingenious stroke, however, was
the establishment of numerous Italian schools—and very good schools
they are—where the young idea, whether Arab, Maltese, or Jew, has been
taught to shoot—along Italian lines.

To those really conversant with the situation, Italy's pretexts that
the activities of her subjects resident in Tripolitania had been
interfered with and their lives and interests seriously endangered
sound somewhat hollow. To tell the truth, Italians have had a freer
rein in the regency—and, incidentally, have caused more trouble—than
any other people. Italy's real reasons for the seizure of Tripolitania
were two, and only two: first, she wanted it; and second, she could
get it.

Now that she has Tripolitania in her grasp, however, her task is but
begun, for setting forward the hands of progress by occupation of
Moslem territory has ever been a perilous proceeding. Though France
shouldered the white man's burden in Algeria with alacrity, she paid
for the privilege with just forty years of fighting; it took England,
with all the resources of her colonial experience and her colonial
army, sixteen years to conquer the ill-armed Arabs of the Sudan, while
the desperate resistance of the Mad Mullah and his fanatic tribesmen
has compelled her practically to evacuate Somaliland; overthrown
ministries, depleted war-chests, and thousands of unmarked graves in
the hinterland bear witness to the deep solicitude displayed for the
cause of civilisation in Morocco by both France and Spain; Russia
spent a quarter of a century and the lives of ten thousand soldiers in
forcing her beneficent rule on the Moslems of Turkestan. Italy will
be more fortunate than her colonising neighbours, therefore, if she
emerges unscathed from her present Tripolitanian adventure, for every
page of the history of latter-day colonisation proves that seizure
of Moslem territory never ends with a naval demonstration, a landing
party, a staff with a descending and an ascending flag, and the flash
and thunder of a national salute.

When Italy pointed the noses of her transports Tripoliward she
committed the incredible blunder of underestimating for a second
time the resistance that she would encounter. She made just such a
mistake some years ago in Abyssinia, and the plain of Adowa is still
sprinkled with the bleaching bones of her annihilated army. The
Italian agents in Tripolitania had assured their government that,
as a result of Turkish oppression, corruption, and overtaxation,
the Turks were heartily disliked by the Tripolitanians—all of
which was perfectly true. But when they went on to say that the
Tripolitanians would welcome the expulsion of the Turks and the
substitution of an Italian régime, they overshot the mark. In other
words, the Tripolitanians much preferred to be ill-treated by the
Turks, who are their coreligionists, than to be well-treated by the
Italians, who are despised unbelievers. The Italians, having had no
previous experience with Moslem peoples, landed at Tripoli with every
expectation of being welcomed as saviours by the native population. It
is quite true that the natives gave the Italians an exceedingly warm
reception—with rifles and machine guns. Here, then, were some sixty
thousand Italian soldiers, who had anticipated about as much trouble
in taking Tripolitania as we should in taking Hayti, instead of being
permitted to play the jaunty and picturesque rôles of deliverers from
oppression, being forced to battle desperately for their lives against
the very people whom they had come to save and civilise. It was a
graphic instance of the workings of Mohammedanism. How Kitchener and
Cromer, those two grim men who have had more experience than any other
Europeans in fighting and governing Mohammedans, must have smiled to
themselves when they read the Italian statements that the taking of
Tripolitania meant only a campaign of a fortnight.

To comprehend thoroughly the peculiar situation in which Italy
finds herself, you should understand that the portly, sleepy-eyed,
good-natured old gentleman who theoretically rules Turkey under
the title of Mohammed V is, politically speaking, as much a dual
personality as Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde. As Sultan of Turkey, or, to give
him his proper title, Emperor of the Ottomans, he is the nominal ruler
of some twenty-four millions of divided, discontented, and disgruntled
Turkish subjects—Osmanlis, Arabs, Syrians, Armenians, Circassians,
Bulgars, Greeks, Jews—and in that capacity plays no great part in
ordering the affairs of the world. But Mohammed V is more than Sultan
of Turkey: he is likewise Successor of the Prophet, Commander of the
Faithful, and Caliph of all Islam, and as such is the spiritual and
temporal leader of the two hundred and twenty millions who compose the
Moslem world. Nor is there any way of disassociating the two offices.
In making war on the Sultan of Turkey, therefore, Italy automatically
made war on the chief of all Mohammedans, thus shaking her fist in the
face not alone of a nation but of a religion—and the most militant and
fanatical of all religions at that. There is not a wearer of turban
or tarboosh between the Gold Coast and the China coast, be he Hausa,
Tuareg, Berber, Moor, Algerian, Tunisian, Tripolitanian, Egyptian,
Sudanese, Somali, Arab, Kurd, Turk, Circassian, Persian, Turkoman,
Afghan, Sikh, Indian, Malay, or Moro, who does not regard Italy's
aggression in Tripolitania as an affront to himself and to his faith.

Among all Moslems there is growing an ominous unrest, a fierce
consciousness that the lands which they have for centuries regarded as
their own are gradually slipping from them, and a decision that they
must fight or disappear. On the Barbary coast, the Nile, the Congo,
the Niger, and the Zambezi they see the turbans and the tarbooshes
retreating before the white helmets' implacable advance, and now they
see even the Ottoman throne, to them a great throne, shaking under the
pressure. Hence there is not a Moslem in the world to-day who will
remain indifferent to any action which hints at the dismemberment of
Turkey, for he knows full well that the fate of the Ottoman Empire and
the political fortunes of Islam are inextricably interwoven.

That Italy can hold the Tripolitanian coast towns as long as her
ammunition, her patience, and her public purse hold out, no one
acquainted with the conditions of modern warfare will attempt to
deny. Unless, however, the militant section of Islam, of which this
region is the very focus, can be induced to acquiesce in an Italian
occupation, the life of an Italian soldier who ventures out of
range of his war-ships' guns will not be worth an hour's purchase.
Hordes of fanatical, desert-bred Arabs, inured to hardship, deadly
sun, scanty food, and dearth of water, mounted on swift camels and
as familiar with the trackless desert as the woodsman is with the
forest in which he works, ablaze with a religion which assures them
that the one _sure_ way to paradise is to die in battle with the
unbelievers, can harass the Italian army of occupation for years to
come by a guerilla warfare. Even though Turkey agrees to surrender
Tripolitania and to withdraw her garrisons from that province, Italy
will still have far from smooth sailing, for the simple reason that
she is not fighting Turks alone, but Moslems, and, as a result of her
ill-advised slaughter of the Arabs, she has made the Moslem population
of Tripolitania permanently hostile. Most significant of all, the Arab
resistance to an Italian advance into the interior of the country will
be directed, controlled, and financed by that sinister and mysterious
power known as the Brotherhood of the Senussiyeh.

To American ears the word “Senussiyeh” doubtless conveys but little
meaning, but to the French _administrateurs_ in Algeria and Tunisia,
and to the officers of the Military Intelligence Department in Egypt
and the Sudan, it is a word of ominous import. Though the Brotherhood
of the Senussiyeh is, without much doubt, the most powerful
organisation of its kind in the world, so complete is the veil of
secrecy behind which it works that comparatively little is definitely
known as to its designs, ramifications, and resources. Briefly, it is
a secret Moslem society, organised about a century ago by an Algerian
dervish, Mohammed ben Ali ben Es Senussi, from whom it takes its
name; its object is the restoration of the Mohammedan religion to
its original purity, austerity, and political power, the first step
toward which is the expulsion of the Christian from Moslem lands; its
initiated members, scattered throughout the Mohammedan world, have
been variously estimated at from five to fifteen millions; the present
grand master of the order, Senussi Ahmed-el-Sherif, the third of the
succession, is admittedly a man of exceptional intelligence, resource,
and sagacity; his monastic court at Jof, in the oasis of Kufra, five
hundred miles, as the camel goes, south of Benghazi and about the same
distance from the Nile, is the capital of a power whose boundaries are
the boundaries of Islam.

It is no secret that the growing power of the Senussiyeh is causing
considerable concern to the military and political officials of those
European nations that have possessions in North Africa, for, in
addition to the three-hundred-odd _zawias_, or monasteries, scattered
along the African littoral from Egypt to Morocco, the long arm of
the order reaches down to the mysterious oases which dot the Great
Sahara, it embraces the strange tribes of the Tibesti highlands, it
controls the robber Tuaregs and the warlike natives who occupy the
regions adjacent to Lake Tchad, and is, as the French and British
have discovered, a power to be reckoned with in the protected states
of Kanem, Sokoto, Bagirmi, Bornu, and Wadai.

The organisation of the order is both strong and simple. The _khuan_,
or brothers, whose names are carefully recorded in the books of the
mother lodge at Jof, owe unquestioning obedience to the _mokaddem_,
or prefect, in charge of the district to which they belong. Each
_mokaddem_ has under his orders a corps of secret agents, known as
_wekils_, whose duty is to keep him constantly in touch with all that
is going on in his district and to communicate his instructions to
the brothers. On Grand Bairam—the Mohammedan Easter—the _mokaddems_
meet in conclave at Jof, on which occasion the spiritual and political
condition of the order is discussed and its course of action decided
on for the ensuing year. Above the _mokaddems_, and acting as an
intermediary between them and the veiled and sacred person of
the Senussi himself, is a cabinet of viziers, who, by means of a
remarkable system of camel couriers, are enabled to keep constantly in
touch with all the districts of the order.

At Jof, from which no European investigator has ever returned, are
centred all the threads of this vast organism. There is kept the
war-chest of the order, constantly increased by large and small
contributions from true believers all over the world, for every member
of the Senussiyeh who has a total income of more than twenty dollars
a year must contribute two and one half per cent of it to the order
annually; there the Senussi has established depots of stores and war
material and factories for the manufacture, or rather the assembling,
of modern fire-arms; thither come to him from the obscure harbours
of the Tripolitanian coast cargoes of arms and ammunition; thither
flock pilgrims from North and West Africa, from the Niger and from the
Nile, to receive his orders and to seek his blessing; there is centred
one of the most remarkable secret-service systems in the world, its
agents not alone in every corner of the Mohammedan world, but likewise
keeping their fingers ever on the political pulse of Europe.

A place better fitted for its purpose than Jof it would be hard to
imagine. Here, surrounded by inhospitable desert, with wells a long
day's camel-ride apart, and the route known only to experienced and
loyal guides, the Senussi has been free to educate, drill, and arm
his disciples, to accumulate great stores of arms and ammunition, and
to push forward his propaganda of a regenerated and reinvigorated
Islam, without any possibility of interference from the Christian
nations. There seems to be but little doubt that factories have
been erected at Jof for the assembling of weapons of precision, the
materials for which have been systematically smuggled across the
Mediterranean from Greece and Turkey for years past. Strange as
it may sound, these factories are under the direction of skilled
engineers and mechanics, for so well laid are the plans of the order
that it annually sends a number of Moslem youths to be educated in
the best technical schools of Europe. Upon completing their courses
of instruction they return to Jof, or other centres of Senussiyeh
activity, to place their trained services at the disposal of the
order, others being sent Europeward to be educated in their turn. The
Senussiyeh's military affairs are equally well organised, the Arabs,
than whom there is admittedly no finer fighting material in the world,
being instructed along European lines, modified for desert warfare,
by veteran drill-masters who have learned their trade in the native
armies of England and France. The nucleus of this mobile and highly
effective force is, so I am told by French officials in Africa, an
admirably mounted and equipped camel corps of five thousand men which
the Senussi keeps always on a war footing in the Kufra oases. These
facts in themselves prove definitely that it would be no sporadic
resistance, but a vast, organised movement, armed with improved
weapons, trained by men who learned their business under European
drill-masters, and directed by a high intelligence, with which Italy
would have to reckon should she attempt the hazardous experiment of an
advance in the real hinterland of Tripolitania.

Let me make it perfectly clear that the grand master of the Senussiyeh
is a man of altogether exceptional ability. Under his direction the
order has advanced with amazing strides, for he is a remarkable
organiser and administrator, two qualities rarely found among the
Arabs. The destruction of the Mahdi and of the Khalifa, and the more
recent dethronement of Abdul-Hamid, resulted in bringing a large
accession of force to his standard by the extinction of all religious
authority in Africa except his own. Though the Sultan of Turkey
is, as I have said, the titular head of the Moslem religion, and is
venerated as such wherever praying-rugs are spread, the chief of this
militant order is undoubtedly regarded by the average Mohammedan as
the most actively powerful figure, if not as the saviour, of Islam.
The first Senussi was powerful enough to excommunicate the Sultan
Abdul-Medjid from the order because of his intimacy with the European
powers; the father of the present Khedive of Egypt was accustomed to
address the second Senussi in such terms as a disciple would use to a
prophet, while Abbas Hilmi II, the reigning Khedive, a few years ago
journeyed across the Libyan desert to pay his respects to the present
head of the order.

Those who are in a position to know whereof they speak believe that
the Senussiyeh would actively oppose any attempt on the part of
the Italians to occupy the hinterland of Tripolitania, for it is
obvious that such an occupation would not alone bring the Christian
in dangerous proximity to the chief stronghold of the order, but it
would effectually cut off the supplies of arms and ammunition which
caravans in the pay of the Senussiyeh have regularly been transporting
to Jof from obscure ports on the Tripolitanian coast. It has been the
policy of the Senussiyeh, supported by the Turkish administration in
Tripolitania, to close the regions under its control to Christians,
so it is scarcely likely that it would do other than resist an
Italian penetration of the country, even in the face of a Turkish
evacuation. Though the order encouraged resistance to the French
advance in the Sudan, considering that the extension of the French
sphere of influence threatened its own prestige in those regions, it
has, as a rule, refrained from displaying antagonism toward the rulers
of the adjoining regions. Aside from proselytism, the Senussiyeh
has performed a great work in the Sahara in the colonisation and
cultivation of the oases, the encouragement of trade, the building of
rest-houses, the sinking of wells, and the protection of trans-Saharan
caravans.

Stripped of the glamour and exaggeration with which sensational
writers and superficial travellers have invested the subject, it is
apparent that the Senussi controls a very wide-spread and powerful
organisation—an organisation probably unique in the world. As a
fighting element his followers are undoubtedly far superior to the
wild and wretchedly armed tribesmen who charged the British squares so
valorously at Abu Klea and Omdurman and who wiped out an Italian army
in the Abyssinian hills. Their remarkable mobility, their wonderful
powers of endurance, their large supplies of the swift and hardy
racing-camel known as _hegin_, and their marvellous knowledge of this
great, inhospitable region, coupled with the fact that they can always
retreat to their bases in the desert, where civilised troops cannot
follow them, are all advantages of which the Senussi and his followers
are thoroughly aware.

Although the Senussi is, as I have shown, amply capable of causing
the Italians serious trouble, it is very unlikely that he will prove
actively hostile if they refrain from encroaching upon those remote
regions which he looks upon as his own. Italy will have her hands
full with the development of the coastal regions for many years to
come, so, if she is wise, she will leave the interior of the country
severely alone, recognise the religious authority of the Senussi, and,
if possible, effect some such working agreement with him as England
has done with an equally dangerous neighbour, the Amir of Afghanistan.

From the glimpses which I have given you of the inhospitable character
of Tripolitania and the still more inhospitable people who inhabit it,
it will be seen that Italy's task does not end with the ousting of the
Turk. She has set her hand to the plough, however, and started it upon
a long and arduous and very costly furrow, the end of which no man can
see. For a nation to have a colony, or colonies, wherein she can turn
loose the overflow of her population and still keep them under her
own flag, is an undeniable asset, particularly when the colony is as
accessible from the mother country as Libya[1] (for we must accustom
ourselves to the new name sooner or later) is from Italy. But if Italy
is to be a success as a colonising nation she must school herself to
do things differently in Tripolitania from what she has in her other
African dependencies of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland.

[1] The Italians have given their new possession the historic name of
Libya.

First and foremost, she must pick the men who are to settle her new
colony as carefully as she picks the men for her _carabinieri_,
choosing them with a view to their intelligence, industry, energy, and
sobriety, for to flood Tripolitania with such a class of emigrants
as every vessel from Italy dumps on our hospitable shores is but to
invite disaster.

Secondly, she must impress on these colonists the imperative necessity
of keeping on friendly terms with the natives, who are, after all,
the real owners of the soil, and of obtaining their co-operation
in the development of the country. The Arab, remember, unlike the
negro, cannot be bullied and domineered with impunity, Germany's
African colonies providing significant examples of the failures which
invariably result from ill-treatment of the native population.

Thirdly, there must be no “absentee landlordism,” the future of
the colony largely depending, to my way of thinking, upon frugal,
hard-working peasant farmers, owning their own farms, whose prosperity
will thus be indissolubly linked with that of the colony.

Lastly, all local questions of administration should be taken entirely
out of the hands of Rome and left to “the man on the spot,” for
history is filled with the chronicles of promising colonies which
have been ship-wrecked on the rocks of a highly centralised form of
government.

If the Italians will take these things to heart, I believe that
their conquest of Tripolitania will prove, in the end, for the
country's own best good, contributing to its peace and to the welfare
of its inhabitants, native as well as foreign, and that it will
promote the opening up of the dark places to civilisation, if not
to Christianity—for the Moslem does not change his faith. When,
therefore, all is said and done, I cannot but feel that the cross of
the House of Savoy portends more good to Africa in general, and to
Tripolitania in particular, than would ever the star and crescent.




CHAPTER V

THE LAND OF BEFORE-AND-AFTER


This is the story of how a handful of white men jerked a nation out of
the desert and the depths of despair, as though by its collar, set it
on its feet, and taught it to play the game. It is the story of how
northeast Africa—a region which God had seemingly forgotten—has been
transformed into a prosperous and self-respecting country by giving
it two things which it had always needed and had never known—justice
and water. It is the chronicle of a thirty years' struggle, under
disheartening conditions, against overwhelming odds, and when you
have finished it you will agree with me, I think, that it is one of
the wonder-tales of history. It is a drama in which English officials
and Egyptian pashas and Arab sheikhs all have their greater or their
lesser parts, and it is as full of romance and intrigue and treachery
and fighting as any moving-picture play that was ever thrown upon a
screen.

To my way of thinking, the rescue and rehabilitation of the Nile
country is the most convincing proof of England's genius as a
colonising nation. That you may be able to judge, by comparison, what
she has accomplished, you must go back a third of a century or so, to
the days when Ismail Pasha—he with the brow of a statesman and the
chin of a libertine—still sat on the throne of the Pharaohs, wielding
an extravagant, vacillating, and ineffectual rule over a region which
stretched from the Mediterranean seaboard southward to Uganda and the
sleeping-sickness, and from the Red Sea shore westward until it lost
itself in the sand wastes of the Great Sahara. Of the one million
three hundred and fifty thousand square miles at that time included
within the Egyptian borders, less than five thousand were cultivated
land; the rest was yellow desert and nothing more. The seven millions
of blacks and browns who composed the population were so poor that the
dwellers in the slums of Whitechapel were affluent when compared to
them; they lived, for the most part, in wretched hovels of sun-dried
mud scattered along the banks of the Nile, maintaining a hand-to-mouth
existence by raising a low grade of cotton on a few feddans of land
which they irrigated by hand, at an appalling cost of time and
labour, with water drawn up in buckets from the river. As a result
of the _corvée_, or system of forced labour on public works which
prevailed, a large part of the population was virtually in a state
of slavery; the taxes, which were unjustly assessed and incredibly
exorbitant, could only be collected with the aid of the _kourbash_,
as the terrible whip of rhino hide used by the slave-dealers was
known. Barring the single line of ramshackle railway which connected
Cairo with Alexandria and with the Suez Canal, the only means of
transportation were the puffing river-boats and the plodding caravans.
The unpaid and ill-disciplined army was a synonym for cowardice,
as proved by its defeats by the tribesmen of Abyssinia and the
Sudan. The Khedive was a profligate and a spendthrift; his ministers
and governors were cruel, dishonest, and tyrannical; the national
resources had been dissipated in a veritable debauch of extravagance
and corruption. I doubt, indeed, if the sun ever shone on a more
decadent, demoralised, and discouraged nation than was Egypt on that
June day in 1879, when a cablegram from Constantinople, addressed,
significantly enough, to “Ismail Pasha, ex-Khedive of Egypt,” brought
the Sultan's demand for his immediate abdication in favour of his
son Tewfik. Called to a heritage of bankruptcy and wide-spread
discontent, the new ruler, anxious though he undoubtedly was to use
his prerogatives for his people's good, found himself forced to decide
between European intervention and native rebellion. The question was
decided for him, however, for, in the spring of 1882, Arabi and his
lawless soldiery broke loose and overran the land.

[Illustration: Dance of Nuba women, Kordofan.

Illustration: Shilluk warriors, Blue Nile.

Illustration: Bread-making in the Lado Enclave, Sudan.

WORK AND PLAY IN BLACK MAN'S AFRICA.]

Whether this Arabi Pasha was at heart a patriot or a plunderer is a
question which has never been satisfactorily decided, nor is it one
which particularly concerns us, although, if you ever happen to find
yourself at Kandy, in the hills of Ceylon, where he still lives in
exile, I would recommend you to call upon him, for he will receive you
with marked hospitality and will talk to you quite frankly about those
stirring events in which he played so prominent a part. As this is a
story of the present, rather than of the past, suffice it to say that
Arabi, then an officer in the Egyptian army, instigated a military
revolt which had as its object the ending of European influence in the
affairs of Egypt. So rapidly did this propaganda of “Egypt for the
Egyptians!” spread among the lower classes of the population, and so
perilous became the position of foreigners resident in the country,
that, upon Alexandria being captured and looted by the revolutionists,
a British squadron bombarded and partially destroyed that city, while
a British army, hurried from Malta for the protection of the Canal, in
which England held the dominating interest, dispersed Arabi's forces
at Tel-el-Kebir, pushed on across the desert to Cairo, stamped out
the remaining embers of the revolt, and restored in a measure the
authority of the Khedive, though not without taking the precaution of
surrounding him with British “advisers” and garrisoning his cities
with British troops. Such, in tabloid form, is the story of the
beginnings of British domination in the land of the Valley of the Nile.

In view of the chaotic condition of the country, England naturally
decided that the only way to insure the safety of her subjects, as
well as of her great financial and political interests in that region,
was to continue the military occupation of Egypt, for the time being
at least, and boldly to begin the task of its financial, judicial,
political, and military reconstruction. The form of government which
has resulted is, I suppose, the most extraordinary in the history of
nations.

Nominally a province of the Turkish Empire, and administered by
a viceroy who theoretically derives his power from the Turkish
sovereign, Egypt is autonomous (so far as Turkey is concerned),
though it still pays annual tribute of about three million five
hundred thousand dollars to the Sultan. Though the title “khedive”
means sovereign or king, without qualification or limitation, the real
ruler of Egypt is not his Highness Abbas Hilmi II, but his Britannic
Majesty's Agent and Consul-General—at present Lord Kitchener of
Khartoum—who, though officially Britain's diplomatic representative
in Egypt and nothing more, in reality exercises almost unlimited
authority and power. In other words, England has assumed the position
of a receiver for Egypt's foreign creditors and has apparently made
the receivership—which has never been agreeable to the khedivial
government—a permanent one. Egypt's situation might, indeed, be
quite aptly compared to a railway system which has been forced into
bankruptcy by the extravagant methods of its directors, and one
of whose largest creditors has become receiver with full power to
reorganise the system for its stockholders' and its creditors' best
good.

Another feature of Egypt's complex form of government is the
International Debt Commission, which consists of delegates from
England, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, and Italy, who are
stationed at Cairo for the purpose of keeping an eye on the national
revenues and periodically collecting a share of them, over and above
the actual running expenses of the government, to pay the interest on
the Egyptian bonds held in those countries.

To this administrative medley must be added the complications caused
by the Ottoman Capitulations—by which fourteen foreign governments,
including our own, exercise almost sovereign rights in Egypt, the
International Tribunals, or “Mixed Courts,” in the control of which
Egypt has almost nothing to say, giving them complete jurisdiction in
all civil cases in which aliens may be involved with each other or
with Egyptians, while the foreign consuls possess absolute authority
in criminal cases where their nationals are concerned.

The Capitulations, many of which date back to the early days of
Turkish power, are nothing less than guarantees to foreigners within
the Ottoman dominions of full and complete immunity from the laws
governing Turkish subjects. No reciprocal obligation was constituted
by a Capitulation (which, by the way, means the instrument containing
the terms of an agreement), as it was intended to be a purely
gratuitous concession granted to Christians, by virtue of which they
were tolerated upon the soil of Islam. Though the Capitulations
were never regarded by the Turks as treaties—it being obvious that
the Commander of the Faithful, who is likewise the Successor of
the Prophet and the Shadow of Allah, could never treat a Christian
ruler as an equal—they have all the character and force of treaties
nevertheless, inviolability of domicile, freedom from taxation of
every sort, and immunity from arrest for any offence whatsoever being
but items in the comprehensive promise not to molest the foreigner.
In short, the Capitulations give to the nations possessing them as
complete jurisdiction over their citizens as they exercise at home,
the Egyptian Government being powerless to lay so much as a finger on
a foreigner who breaks its laws.

Should an American sailor, for example, become involved in a drunken
affray, as sometimes happens, and wound or kill an Egyptian, the
Egyptian police would no more arrest him than they would the Khedive.
They would merely keep him under surveillance, meanwhile notifying
the American consul, who would despatch his _kavasses_, as the armed
guards which are attached—also by virtue of the Capitulations—to the
various consulates are called, to effect the man's arrest. He would
then be tried by the consul, who possesses magisterial powers, before
a jury drawn from American residents or tourists, and, if found
guilty, would be confined in one of the several consular prisons which
the United States maintains in the Turkish Empire, although, if the
sentence were a long one, he would probably be sent to a prison in
this country to serve it out.

Though the Egyptian police may be perfectly aware that Georgios
Miltiades runs a roulette game in the back room of his café, and keeps
a disorderly house up-stairs, he can lounge in his doorway and jeer
at them with perfect safety for the simple reason that he is a Greek
subject, and therefore his café is as much on Greek soil as though it
were in the Odos Ammonia in Athens, his consul alone possessing the
right to enter it, to cause his arrest, and to inflict imprisonment or
fine.

Notwithstanding the fact that the importation of hasheesh into Egypt
is strictly prohibited, the government making every effort to stamp
out its use by the natives, the Italian smuggler who drops anchor in
Alexandria harbour with a cargo of it aboard knows perfectly well
that the arm of the Egyptian law is not long enough to reach him. If,
however, he is caught by the local police in the act of taking the
contraband ashore, it will be confiscated, though he himself can be
arrested and punished only by the Italian consular official resident
at that port.

As a result of the privileges granted to foreigners by the
Capitulations, the consuls stationed in Egypt, as well as in other
parts of the Turkish Empire, are virtually the governors of their
respective colonies, possessing powers which cause their wishes to
be respected and their orders obeyed. They are expected to keep a
watchful eye on the doings of their nationals, especially those who
keep saloons, dance-halls, or cafés; to settle, either in or out of
court, their quarrels and even their domestic disputes; to inspect the
sanitary condition of their houses; to perform the marriage service
for those who prefer a civil to a religious ceremony; and to attend to
their burial and the administration of their estates when they die.
It is scarcely necessary to add that, as a result of this anomalous
state of affairs, there is constant friction and frequent conflicts
of authority between the foreign consuls and the local authorities.
So jealously, indeed, do the foreign powers guard the privileges
conferred upon them by the Capitulations, that Cairo can have no
modern drainage system because certain of the European governments
refuse to give the Egyptian sanitary inspectors permission to enter
the houses of their subjects.

In matters of personal law, such as marriage, divorce, guardianship,
succession, and the like, foreigners are, in general, subject to their
own patriarchs or other religious heads, while similar questions are
decided for the natives by the native courts known as _Mehkemmehs_,
which are presided over by the Cadis. In other matters Egyptians are
justiciable before the ordinary native tribunals, which now consist of
forty-six summary courts having civil jurisdiction in matters up to
two thousand five hundred dollars in value and criminal jurisdiction
in offences punishable by a fine or by imprisonment up to three years;
seven central tribunals, each of the chambers of which consists of
three judges; and a court of appeals at Cairo, about half of whose
members are European. Since its reorganisation, the native Egyptian
bench has won an enviable record for honesty, energy, and efficiency,
and would, if granted complete jurisdictional powers, prove a great
influence for good in the land.

So far as the Khedive is concerned, he has about as much to say in
the direction of the government as the child Emperor of China had
before the revolution put a president in his stead. Not only is Abbas
Hilmi surrounded by English secretaries and advisers, without whose
permission he may scarcely change his mind, but he is compelled to
yield to England even in choosing the members of his ministry, the one
or two attempts which he has made to assert his right to independence
of action in this respect having been met by England with a military
demonstration in the streets of his capital which was not abated until
the office was filled by an Egyptian satisfactory to the British
Consul-General.

Some years ago, when that grim old statesman, Lord Cromer, was still
_deus ex machina_ in Egypt, the Khedive, emboldened by the rapid
spread of the Nationalist movement, which has for its slogan “Egypt
for the Egyptians!” flatly declined to give a cabinet portfolio to a
certain Egyptian politician whose appointment had been urged by the
British Consul-General and who was notoriously a British tool. The
following morning Lord Cromer drove to the Abdin Palace and demanded
an audience with the Khedive. There were no euphemisms employed in the
interview which ensued.

“I have come to obtain your Highness's signature to this decree,”
announced Lord Cromer, in the blunt and aggressive manner so
characteristic of him.

“Suppose, my lord,” the Khedive asked quietly, “that I decline to make
an appointment which is not for the good of Egypt—what then?”

“Then, your Highness,” said Cromer menacingly, “Ceylon.”

“But suppose, my lord,” Abbas Hilmi again inquired, his face pale with
anger, “that I disregard your threat to exile me to Ceylon and still
refuse to sign this commission?”

Lord Cromer strode across the room to a window which commanded a view
of Abdin Square and threw back the curtain. “Will your Highness look
out of this window before you give me a final answer?” he asked.

The Khedive stepped to the window and looked down. There, drawn up in
motionless ranks which stretched from end to end of the great square,
was a brigade of British infantry, the Egyptian sun blazing down on
the rows of brown helmets, on the business-like uniforms of khaki,
and on the slanting lines of steel. For five full minutes Abbas Hilmi
stood in silence, looking down on that grim display of power. Then he
turned slowly to Lord Cromer. “Give me the pen,” he said.

[Illustration:

The real ruler of Egypt, His Excellency Field Marshal Lord Kitchener
of Khartoum, British Agent and Consul-General in Egypt, inspecting a
guard of honour upon his recent visit to the battle-field of Omdurman.

Illustration: “Riflemen made from mud.” A march past of Sudanese
infantry.

THE SAVIOUR OF THE SUDAN AND SOME OF THOSE HE SAVED.]

Here is another example of the harshness of the attitude which England
has seen fit to adopt in her dealings with the Egyptian sovereign. In
the days when Lord Kitchener, fresh from his triumphs in the Sudan,
was still Sirdar of the Egyptian army, the Khedive announced that he
would utilise the occasion of his approaching visit to Khartoum to
review the troops of the garrison. For hours the sinewy, brown-faced
soldiery marched and countermarched before the Khedive on the field
of Omdurman. The infantry in their sand-coloured uniforms swept by
with the swing of veterans; the field batteries—the same that had
mown down the Mahdi's fanatic tribesmen—rumbled by at a gallop; the
camel corps, the riders swaying on their strange mounts like vessels
in a gale, paced past; then the cavalry came, as fast as the horses
could lay foot to ground, lances levelled, the troopers cheering
like madmen, thundering past the reviewing party in a whirlwind of
colour and dust and noise. It was a fine exhibition and one of which
any commanding officer might well have been proud, but the Khedive had
received his military education in Austria, where faultless alignment
and the ability to execute intricate parade movements are reckoned
among the first requisites of a soldier; so when Lord Kitchener, the
conqueror of the Sudan and the maker of the Egyptian army, reined up
his charger before him, saluted, and perfunctorily asked, “I trust
that your Highness is satisfied with the discipline and appearance of
your forces?” Abbas Hilmi, probably as much from a spirit of hostility
to the English as for any other reason, answered in a voice loud
enough to be heard by all around him, “They are a fine body of men,
Lord Kitchener, but I am far from satisfied with their discipline.”
Officers who witnessed this incident have told me that Lord Kitchener
was as amazed as though he had received a slap in the face. Within
an hour his resignation as Sirdar was in the hands of the Khedive,
who as promptly accepted it. But England could never permit her
foremost soldier to be so wantonly and so publicly affronted, for to
do so would be dangerously to impair her prestige among all classes
of Egyptians. So the cable flashed a message from Downing Street to
the British Agency in Cairo and a few hours later the Khedive was
peremptorily informed that he could choose between apologising to
Lord Kitchener and requesting him to withdraw his resignation or of
abdicating in favour of his brother. Appreciating that it was wiser
to apologise and keep his throne than to remain stubborn and lose it,
Abbas Hilmi requested Kitchener to remain on as Sirdar—and he himself
remained on as Khedive.

The men who really transact the business of the Egyptian Government
are not the holders of cabinet portfolios, but the departmental
under-secretaries, all of whom are English, their plans being
perfunctorily submitted to their Egyptian chiefs for their
approval, though they would be used whether they received it or
not. The national revenues and expenditures are controlled by an
English financial adviser, without whose permission the Khedive
and his ministers cannot spend so much as a piastre of government
funds. Similarly, the ministries of the interior, of justice, of
communications, and of agriculture are dictated by English “advisers.”
For upward of thirty years, in fact, the Nile country has been
more absolutely governed from London than has India, or Canada, or
Australia, or South Africa, or any of the Crown colonies, and this
despite the fact that between England and Egypt there is no tie that
is officially recognised by any foreign power. Now, thirty years is
a considerable lapse of time anywhere, particularly in the East,
where men mature rapidly, so that those who were children when the
British came are in the prime of life now. The fact that in that
interim England has had ample time to train them for the duties of
governmental administration, as witness what we have accomplished
among the Filipinos in less than half that time, but that she has
made little, if any, effort to do so, is quite naturally taken by
all thinking Egyptians as a proof that there is no sincerity back of
her repeated assertions that she intends to turn Egypt over to them
as soon as they are fitted to administer it. In fact, I have heard
responsible British officials assert that, to their way of thinking,
the natives were getting altogether too much education as it was, and
that the less they were taught to think the easier it would be for
England to hold the country. Frankly stated, England's attitude toward
the Egyptians has been “You cannot go near the water until you know
how to swim.”

Let it be perfectly clear, however, that nothing is farther from my
intention than to intimate that British rule has not been beneficial
to Egypt. No fair-minded person who was familiar with the appalling
condition of the country and its people before the English came, and
with their present state of prosperity, would cast so much as the
shadow of a doubt on the wonderful improvement which has been brought
about. The story of Egypt's rise from practical bankruptcy until its
securities are now quoted nearly as high as English consols reads
like a romance of the gold fields. During the last few years the
country has been experiencing a land boom equal to that of southern
California, property in Alexandria having sold at the rate of one
hundred dollars a square yard; scientific irrigation, combined with
the completion of the great dam at Assuan, has enormously enlarged
the area of cultivation and has made Egypt the second greatest
cotton-producing country in the world; the national debt has been
materially reduced; and, most significant of all, Egypt's European
bondholders have consented to have the interest on their bonds reduced
from seven to three and a half per cent. Life and property have been
made as safe in Port Said and Zagazig and the Fayoum as they are
in Yonkers or Salem or New Rochelle; slavery has been abolished;
official corruption has been rooted out; forced labour for public
works is no longer permitted; an admirable system of railways brings
the entire cultivated area within reach of the coast; hospitals have
been established in all of the larger towns; while every phase of the
public health has been so closely watched that the population of the
country has actually doubled in the thirty years since the English
came.

To my way of thinking, the most interesting chapter in the history of
present-day Egypt is that which records the development of scientific
irrigation. Northeast Africa being practically rainless, its sole
source of water supply is the Nile, this mighty river created by
torrential rains in the mountains of Abyssinia and by the overflow of
equatorial lakes, and which is without tributaries in Egypt proper,
having an overflow which varies with the seasons. For four months
the flood rushing seaward, which is known as “high Nile,” enriches
hundreds of square miles of what would otherwise be arid and worthless
land. Then come eight months of low Nile, which, were it not for the
genius of an English engineer, would mean unwatered fields, scanty
crops, and probably famine. The British administrators, appreciating
from the very outset that Egypt's entire future depended upon its
agricultural prosperity, and that this, in turn, depended upon the
_fellaheen_ having an ample and steady supply of water for their
farms, set their engineers at the task of devising some scheme for
compelling the great river to pay tribute to the land through which it
passed instead of wasting its fertilising waters in the Mediterranean.
Hence the great barrage at Assuan, suggested by Sir William Willcocks,
designed by Sir Benjamin Baker, built by Sir John Aird, and financed
by Sir Ernest Cassel. A mile and a quarter long, containing a million
tons of stone and creating a reservoir three times the area of the
Lake of Geneva, this titanic barrier permits the additional irrigation
of one million six hundred thousand acres of land. Though its cost was
twelve million five hundred thousand dollars, it has already increased
the earning power of Egypt fully thirteen million dollars annually, so
it will be seen that it more than pays for itself to the country every
twelvemonth. The systematic liberation, during the burning summer
months, of the water thus conserved, means unfailing prosperity for
Egypt, for it is almost unbelievable, to one who has not seen it with
his own eyes, what agricultural magic water can work in this naturally
fertile soil. As the regions capable of responding to irrigation are
almost boundless, and as the water supply is almost inexhaustible, and
as the engineers—and, what is far more important, the financiers—have
come to appreciate that the pregnant soil can be made to pay for
the cost of any reservoir, or series of reservoirs, which they may
construct, it is only reasonable to assume that the great dam at
Assuan is but the forerunner of many others, so that eventually the
Valley of the Nile will be white with cotton and yellow with grain
from the Delta to the Sudd.

But if Upper Egypt suffers from being too dry, Lower Egypt suffers
from being too wet. The prosperity of the country, remember, depends
almost entirely upon its cotton crop, which has an approximate value
of one hundred million dollars annually, the cotton fields covering
some one million six hundred thousand acres, most of which are in the
Delta. That this source of revenue may be increased, the Egyptian
Government has recently undertaken a huge drainage project, which
will, it is estimated, when completed in 1915, redeem a great tract
of flooded and hitherto worthless land, bringing a million additional
acres under cultivation, almost doubling the production of cotton,
and, incidentally, draining Lake Mariout, that historic body of water
disappearing forever.

Agriculture and its attendant problems of irrigation and fertilisation
constitute the sole hobby and amusement of the present Khedive, Abbas
Hilmi II, and, consequently, he is keenly interested in anything that
pertains to it, being a ready and liberal purchaser of all improved
types of agricultural machinery, which he puts to practical use on
the great estates which he owns near Alexandria, in the Delta, and in
the Western Desert. It so happened that, while I was the consular
representative of the United States at Alexandria, I received a
call one morning from the president of an American concern engaged
in the manufacture of agricultural and well-drilling machinery who
explained that he was passing through Egypt and asked if it would
be possible for me to obtain him an audience with the Khedive. The
request was duly transmitted to the Grand Master of Ceremonies, and
shortly thereafter a reply reached me naming the day and hour when
his Highness would receive my compatriot and myself at the palace of
Ras-el-Tin. Frock-coated and top-hatted, we drove to the palace on
the day appointed, were received by the officials of the khedivial
household, and shown into the _salle de réception_, where Abbas Hilmi
stood awaiting us. After a cordial greeting—for the Khedive makes no
secret of his liking for Americans—he drew me down beside him on a
small sofa, motioning my companion to take a chair opposite us.

“It gives me particular pleasure,” I began, “to present Mr. K—— to
your Highness, particularly as he is an authority on agricultural
machinery—a subject in which your Highness is, I know, considerably
interested.”

“Say, Khedive,” exclaimed my fellow-countryman, suddenly leaning
forward and emphasising every sentence by waggling his finger under
Abbas Hilmi's august nose, “I've got the niftiest little proposition
in well-drilling machinery that ever struck this burg, and if you
don't jump at a chance to get in on the ground floor, then all I've
got to say is that you're throwing away the chance of your lifetime.”

The Khedive, being, naturally, quite unaccustomed to this form of
verbal assault and still more unaccustomed to having any one waggle a
finger under his nose, at first drew back haughtily; then the humour
of the situation dawned upon him, and, as the river of talk which
is one of the chief assets of the trained American salesman flowed
steadily on, he became interested in spite of himself, now and then
interjecting a pertinent question, and terminating the audience by
giving the American an order for several thousand dollars' worth
of American machinery, which, the last I heard of it, was giving
excellent satisfaction on the royal farms.

       *       *       *       *       *

If it is difficult to fix the exact legal status of Egypt, it is still
more difficult to explain that of the Sudan, which is described in the
official blue-books as “an Anglo-Egyptian condominium.” Until 1882
the Sudan was as much a part of Egypt proper as Florida is a part of
the United States, but in that year Egyptian rule was interrupted by
the revolt of the Mahdi, who, with his successor the Khalifa, held
the country for sixteen years under a bloody and desolating tyranny.
In 1896 an Anglo-Egyptian army under Sir Herbert Kitchener began
operations for the recovery of the lost provinces, and, on September
2, 1898, the overthrow of the Dervish power was completed on the
battle-field of Omdurman. In the following year the pleasing farce was
presented of a convention being signed by the British and Egyptian
Governments (or, in other words, by Lord Cromer as the representative
of England in Egypt and by Lord Cromer as the virtual dictator of
Egypt) which provides for the administration of the territory south of
the twenty-second parallel of latitude by a governor-general appointed
by Egypt with the assent of England; and which declares that the
British and Egyptian flags shall be used together; that laws shall be
made by proclamation; that no duties shall be levied on imports from
Egypt; and that slavery is prohibited. In view of England's absolute
domination of Egypt, it is obvious that the term “condominium,” as
applied to the Sudan, is a euphemism for “British possession,” and
that England controls this great region as completely as though her
flag alone flew over it and King George's picture ornamented its
stamps.

The name Sudan is short for Beled-es-Sudan, which means the Land of
the Blacks. Extending from the southern frontier of Egypt to Uganda,
a distance equal to that from Saint Paul to New Orleans, and from the
shores of the Red Sea to the confines of the great central African
kingdom of Wadai, or as far as from Chicago to Denver, the Sudan
boasts an area three times that of Texas. This area, prior to the
Dervish oppression, had a population estimated at eight and a half
millions, but, as a result of the wholesale massacres perpetrated by
the Mahdi and his followers, it has to-day less than two and a half
millions. Since the return of peace, however, the Sudan is gradually
recovering from the effects of the Dervishes' barbaric rule, during
which the whole country was depopulated, wide tracts of land went out
of cultivation, and trade was largely abandoned.

At present the poverty, the scanty population, and the lack of
irrigation in the Sudan form a striking contrast to the wealth, the
density of population, and the high state of cultivation found in
Egypt. But, though it has been, until very recently, little better
than an abandoned estate, with practically no market value, the money
and labour which its British proprietors are expending upon it are
already beginning to produce highly promising results. As a matter
of fact, the agricultural resources of this inland empire are hardly
guessed at, for the fact is too apt to be overlooked that, beyond
the sandy deserts which guard its northern frontier, there exist
extensive and fertile regions which, in the provinces of Gezire and
Sennar alone, are estimated at fifteen millions of acres. Added to
this, the Sudan is particularly fortunate in possessing, in the Blue
and the White Nile, two great waterways which are destined to prove
invaluable as mediums of fertilisation and transportation. There is,
indeed, no room for doubt that the Sudan is destined to be in time
a great agricultural centre, for cotton, wheat, and sugar-cane are
staple and give every promise of prolific crops—many English experts
prophesying that, when provided with facilities for irrigation, it
will supplant the United States as the chief cotton-growing country
of the world—while, farther afield, there are excellent cattle ranges
and untold wealth in forest lands. But although much money has
already been spent upon the Sudan, much more will have to be spent
before it can have more than a speaking acquaintance with prosperity,
for none of its three great needs—population, irrigation, and
transportation—can be provided for nothing or in a hurry.

[Illustration:

Fighting-men of the Emir of Wadai. (“They are wearing helmets and
chain mail captured by their Saracenic ancestors from the Crusaders.
The quilted armour on the horses will turn anything short of a
bullet.”)

Illustration: A gift from Ali Dinar, Sultan of Darfur, to the Sirdar
of the Sudan. (The Sultan of Darfur is a semi-independent and powerful
native ruler of the Southwestern Sudan.)

STRANGE PEOPLE FROM INNERMOST AFRICA.]

I was told so repeatedly by people in other and more favoured parts
of Africa that the Sudan was nothing but a waste of sun-scorched
sand, that I went there as much to see if the description were a true
one as for any other reason. You don't have to search for romance in
the Sudan; it's there waiting for you when you arrive. It met me on
the station platform at Wady Halfa, which is the first town across
the Sudanese frontier, in the form of a fair-haired, moon-faced,
khaki-clad guard on the Khartoum express, who spurned the tip I
proffered him to secure a compartment to myself as insolently as the
poor but virtuous heroine of the melodrama spurns the villain's gold.
He drew back as though the silver I offered him were a rattlesnake
in working order and his face flushed a dull brick-red; then,
bowing stiffly from the waist, as a Prussian officer does when he
is introduced, he turned on his heel and strode away. “I say, you
got the wrong one that time, old chap,” remarked an Englishman who
had witnessed the little incident and who, judging from his pith
helmet and riding-breeches, was of the country. “You probably didn't
know that you were offering a tip to a former captain in his German
Majesty's _garde du corps_?” I remarked that a month before a former
general of division of the Bey of Tunis had accepted with marked
gratitude a tip not half so large for showing me through the Palace of
the Bardo.

“Well, this Johnnie won't,” was the reply. “He may not have much
money, but he's loaded to the gunwales with pride. The story of his
career sounds as if it had served as a model for one of Ouida's
novels. Refused to marry the girl his parents had picked out for
him, so his father cut off his allowance and left him to shift for
himself. He sent in his papers, went to Algeria, and enlisted—of all
fool things!—in that regiment of earth's hard cases called the Foreign
Legion. It didn't take him long to get all he wanted of that kind of
soldiering, so one day, when he was sent down to Oran in charge of
a prisoner, he swam out to a British steamer lying in the harbour,
worked his passage to Alexandria, enlisted in a British cavalry
regiment, took part in Kitchener's campaign against the Khalifa, was
wounded in the shindy at Omdurman, and retired on a pension. Now he
wears a guard's uniform and carries a green flag and walks up and
down the platform shouting 'All aboard for Khartoum!' And at home he
would have a coronet on his visiting-cards and spend his afternoons
swaggering along Unter den Linden. Extraordinary what a man will do
if he has to, isn't it? But you'll find lots more of the same kind in
the Sudan. It's no place for idlers down here; every one works or gets
out.”

That struck me as a pretty promising introduction to a country which,
so I had been assured elsewhere, had nothing more interesting to
recommend it than sun and sand, and it was with a marked rise in my
anticipations that I saw my luggage stowed away in a compartment of
one of the long railway carriages, which are painted white for the
same reason that a man wears a white suit in the tropics, which have
windows of blue glass to prevent the sun-glare from injuring the
passengers' eyes, and which are provided with both outside and inside
blinds in an attempt to keep out a little of the heat. Looked at from
any stand-point that you please, the thirty hours' railway journey
from Wady Halfa to Khartoum is far from being an enjoyable experience,
for a light in your compartment means a plague of flies, while any
attempt to get air, other than that kicked up by the electric fan,
means suffocating dust. It being too dark to read and too hot to
sleep, the only alternative is to sit in your pajamas, swelter, and
smoke.

Considering the obstacles it has had to overcome, the Sudan government
deserves great credit for the railways it has built and the trains it
operates. The construction of the railway to Khartoum was undertaken
by General Kitchener in 1896, in order to support the advance of
his army, and, in spite of the difficulty of laying a railway line
across the sandy and stony surface of the desert, the work was so
energetically carried on that the line advanced at the rate of a mile
a day. The most serious obstacle was, of course, the provision of an
adequate supply of water for the engines and workmen, so a series of
watering-stations was established, at which wells, sunk to a depth of
eighty feet or more, tap the subterranean water. These stations are
so far apart, however, that to supply the engines it is necessary to
attach two or more tank-cars to each train. Still another difficulty
is the shifting sand, which, during the period of the _khamsin_, or
desert wind, proves as disastrous to railroading in the Sudan as snow
does to the railroads of our own Northwest, an inch of sand throwing
an engine from the rails far more effectually than a yard of snow.

It was my fortune, by the way, to encounter one of the _huboubs_,
or sand-storms, for which the Sudan is famous. To give an adequate
idea of it, however, is as impossible as it is to describe any other
overwhelming phenomenon of nature. Far off across the desert we saw
it approaching at the speed of a galloping horse—a great fleecy,
yellowish-brown cloud which looked for all the world like the smoke of
some gigantic conflagration. A distant humming, which sounded at first
like the drone of a million sewing-machines, gradually rose into such
a roar as might be made by a million motor-cars, and then the storm
was upon us. The sand poured down as though shaken through a sieve;
the landscape was blotted out; the sun was obscured and there came
a yellow darkness, like that of a London fog; men and animals threw
themselves, or were hurled, to the ground before the fury of the wind,
while a mantle of sand, inches thick, settled upon every animate and
inanimate thing. Then it was gone, as suddenly as it had come, and we
were left dizzy, bewildered, blinded, half-strangled, and gasping for
breath, amid a landscape which was as completely shrouded in yellow
sand as an American countryside in winter is covered with snow. Under
any circumstances a sand-storm is a disagreeable experience, but out
on the desert, where the traveller's life frequently depends upon the
plainness of the caravan trails, it ofttimes brings death in its train.

It is a gratifying compliment to American mechanical skill that the
running-time between Wady Halfa and Khartoum has been shortened four
hours by the recent adoption of American locomotives, which run,
fittingly enough, over American-made rails. In the construction of
its trains the Sudan government has avoided the irksome privacy of
the European compartment car and the unremitting publicity of the
American Pullman by designing a car which combines the best features
of both. The first-class cars on the Sudanese express trains contain
a series of coupés, each somewhat roomier than the drawing-room in
a Pullman sleeper and each opening into a spacious corridor which
runs the length of the car. For day use there is one long cushioned
seat running crosswise of each compartment, which at night forms the
lower berth, the back of the seat swinging up on hinges to form the
upper. Each coupé is provided with running water, a folding table,
two arm-chairs of wicker, and an electric fan, without which last,
owing to the almost incredible dust which a train sets in motion,
one would all but suffocate. At several stations along the line are
well-equipped baths, at which the trains stop long enough for the
passengers hurriedly to refresh themselves.

The mention of these railway baths recalls an incident which seems
amusing enough to relate. I once had as a fellow-passenger on the
journey from Khartoum northward a red-faced, white-moustached,
choleric-tempered English globe-trotter, who was constitutionally
opposed to the practice of tipping, which he took occasion to
characterise on every possible occasion as “An outrage—a damnable
outrage, sir!” Now, at these wayside bath stations it has long been
the accepted custom to give the equivalent of five cents to the
silent-footed native who fills the tub, brings you your soap and
towels, and brushes your garments. But this the irascible Englishman,
true to his principles, refused to do, still further unpopularising
himself by loudly cursing the cleanliness of the tub, the warmth of
the water, the size of the towels, and the slowness of the Sudanese
attendant. Five minutes before the time for the train to leave the
whistle gave due warning and the passengers scrambled from the bath
into their clothes, which the native attendants were accustomed to
brush and leave outside the bath-room doors. Every one hurried into
his clothes, as I have remarked, except the anti-tipping Englishman,
who almost choked with blasphemy when he found that his garments
had mysteriously disappeared. Though a hasty search was instituted,
not a trace of them could be found, the impassive Sudanese stolidly
declaring that they had seen nothing of the effendi's missing
apparel. The engine shrieked its final warning and the laughing
travellers piled aboard—all, that is, but the Englishman, who rushed
onto the platform clad in a bath towel, only to retreat before the
shocked glances of the women passengers. My last impression of that
God-forsaken, sun-blistered bath station in the desert was the rapidly
diminishing sound of his imprecations as he continued his fruitless
search for his garments. There was no other train, I should add, for
three days. Weeks later I heard that his clothes were eventually
returned to him by a native, who said that he had found them, neatly
folded, underneath a near-by culvert.

Nowhere is the overpowering romance of the land brought more vividly
before you than in the dining-cars or on the decks of the river
steamers. The tall young Englishman in flannels who sits opposite
you at table remarks casually that he is using a four months'
leave of absence to go up Gondokoro-way after elephant, and a
French marquis who is sitting near by, happening to overhear the
conversation, leans across to inquire about the chances for sport
on the Abyssinian frontier. “You can't go across there, you know,”
interrupts a bimbashi, whose freckled Irish face looks strangely
out of place beneath the tarboosh which denotes an officer in the
Egyptian service. “The Hadendowas are on the rampage again and the
Sirdar has issued orders that no one is to be permitted to cross into
Menelik's territory until things have quieted down. There's no use
your trying it, for the camel police are jolly well certain to turn
you back.” The bearded man in the ill-fitting clothes, who would be
taken almost anywhere for a commercial traveller, is, you are told,
one of the most celebrated big-game shots in the world, and just
now is on his way to the Lado Enclave in search of a certain rare
species of antelope for the Berlin museum. The grizzled Egyptian
officer sitting by himself—for the British no more mingle socially
with the Egyptians than Americans do with negroes—once served under
Gordon, as the bit of faded blue ribbon on the breast of his tunic
denotes; the brown-faced Englishman in riding-clothes, with the
wrinkles about his eyes which come from staring out across the sands
under a tropic sun, is a pasha and the governor of a province as
large as many a European kingdom, and farther up the line he will get
off the train and disappear into the desert on one of his periodical
tours of inspection, perhaps not seeing another white face for three
months or more. It struck me that there was something particularly
fine and manly and self-reliant about these young Englishmen who are
acting as policemen and judges and administrators and agricultural
experts rolled into one, out there at the Back of Beyond. “It's only
the hard work that makes it bearable,” said one of them in answer to
my question. “What with the heat and the flies and the never-ending
vista of yellow sand and the lack of companionship, we should die from
sheer loneliness if we didn't work from dawn until bedtime. Besides,
every two years we get long enough leave to go home.” (And oh, the
caress in that word home.) Then he asked me with pathetic eagerness
about the latest song-hits at the London music-halls, and was this
new Russian dancer at Covent Garden as wonderful as the illustrated
weeklies made her out, and honestly, now, did I think the government
was going to be such a bally ass as to give the Irish home rule? That
young man—he was twenty-four on his last birthday, he told me—has
charge of a province four times as large as New York State, and in it
he wields a power which is a strange cross between the patriarchal
and the despotic. With a score or so of camel police he maintains law
and order among a population which, until very recent years, were as
savage and intractable as the Sioux; he holds the high justice, the
middle, and the low; and he is, incidentally, a practical authority on
such varied subjects as wheat-growing, cotton-raising, camel-breeding,
fertilising, and irrigation. Nor would I fail to call attention to
the little-known but wonderful work of a handful of British officers,
who, working continuously since 1898, in those fever-ridden swamps
near Lake No, have finally succeeded in removing the last block
of Sudd,[2] twenty-four miles long, thus making the Nile a free,
navigable waterway from Khartoum to Rejaf, in Uganda, a distance of
twelve hundred miles. And these young men, remember, are but isolated
examples of the thousands, in Africa, in Asia, in America, and in
Oceanica, who are binding together Britain's colonial empire.

[2] The name given to the dense masses of water plants which have long
obstructed the upper reaches of the Nile.

Its discomforts notwithstanding, the railway journey from Wady Halfa
to Khartoum is filled with interest, comparing not at all unfavourably
with that other remarkable desert journey by the Trans-Caspian railway
from Krasnovodsk to Samarkand. For two hundred miles or more after
leaving Wady Halfa we see through the blue glass of the windows
nothing but endless wastes of black rocks and orange sand. Then
the desert gives place to undulating sand-hills, and these in turn
to clusters of dom-palms, to fields of barley, to conical acacias,
and finally a fringe of palms announces the proximity of the river.
We pass in turn Gebel Barka, the sacred mountain of the ancient
Egyptians, and, at its base, the ruins of Napata, once the capital
of an Ethiopian kingdom. A few miles south of Atbara, which is the
junction of the railway to Port Sudan, on the Red Sea, we pass the
so-called Island of Meroe, with its score of pyramids, beside which
the majestic monuments of Egypt are but the creations of yesterday,
for this region, remember, was the cradle of the Egyptian arts and
sciences. In the settlements along the banks we now begin to see the
typical round straw huts of Central Africa, with their pointed roofs
and airy _recubas_, or porches. The peoples change with the scenery,
the slender, tarbooshed Nubian giving way to the fierce-faced,
shock-headed Hadendowas, that savage fighting-clan who hold the
country between the Nile and the Red Sea, and they, in turn, to the
Kabbabish Bedouins, those freebooters of the desert, who, perched high
on their lean white racing camels, were the terror of every caravan
in the days before the British came. The cultivated patches become
thicker, the signs of civilisation grow increasingly frequent, the
train rumbles across a long iron bridge which spans the river, and
slowing, comes to a halt before a long, low station building on which
is the word “Khartoum.”

Like another Phœnix, Khartoum has risen from its ashes on the site
of that city which formed the funeral pyre of the heroic Gordon. The
name—“elephant's trunk”—refers to the shape of the long peninsula on
which the city stands and which forms the point of separation of the
Nile into its Blue and White branches. It is a brand-new city which
the British engineers have constructed; a city with a ground plan
as mathematically laid out and with streets as broad as Washington;
a city with pavements and sidewalks and gutters and sewers and
lighting facilities on the most modern lines. As all the buildings
are of a dust-coloured brick, the business portion of the city has
a certain air of substantial permanence, but so uncompromising is
the architecture and so destitute of shade are the streets that it
looks more like a Russian penal settlement than like an African
capital. In the residential quarter, however, the picturesque has
not been sacrificed to the utilitarian, for along the bank of the
Blue Nile a splendid boulevard—a sort of African Riverside Drive—has
been constructed, and here no business or commercial trespass will
be permitted, for from the Grand Hotel to the Palace, a distance
of a mile or more, it is lined with the residences of the British
officials, low-roofed, broad-verandaed bungalows nestling in luxuriant
gardens. The thing that impresses one most about Khartoum is the
extraordinary width of its streets and diagonal avenues and the
frequency of its open circles, but the British will tell you quite
frankly that military considerations, rather than beauty, guided them
in planning it and that a few field-guns, properly placed, can sweep
the entire city. There are two buildings in Khartoum which seem to me
to be more significant of the new era which has begun for the Sudan
than all the other features of the city combined. One is the Gordon
Memorial College, built with the object of training the sons of the
Sudanese sheikhs and chieftains along those lines which are best
calculated to make for the future peace, progress, and prosperity of
the country. With his laurels as the victor of Omdurman still fresh
upon him, Lord Kitchener appealed to his countrymen for one hundred
thousand pounds for the establishment of this institution, which he
felt that England owed to the memory of Gordon, and, so prompt and
general was the response, the entire sum was subscribed within a few
days. The other building to which I referred is the recently completed
Anglican Cathedral, which stands as a recognition of Gordon's great
work as a missionary and as an impressive exhibition of the advance
of the Christian faith. Could Gordon have returned to life on the
occasion of the consecration of this cathedral, and have seen
harmoniously gathered beneath its lofty roof religious dignitaries of
such different minds and faiths as the Bishop of London, the Coptic
Archbishop of Alexandria, the Greek Patriarch of Abyssinia, and the
Grand Cadi and the Grand Mufti, the heads of the Mohammedan community
in the Sudan, he might well have exclaimed, “I did not die in vain.”

       *       *       *       *       *

I have now sketched for you the conditions which prevailed in the
Valley of the Nile before the English came and those which obtain
there to-day. What its future is to be depends wholly upon the action
of England. Were she to leave the country now, or within the near
future, she would leave it under conditions which would soon result
in chaos, and the good that she has done would be largely lost. The
extensive schemes of irrigation upon which she has entered, and upon
which the prosperity of this whole region so largely depends, could
never be financed by an independent Egypt, and the same is true of the
question of transportation, which is at the bottom of all the problems
of economic development in the Sudan.

That England's position in the Nile country is illegal and illogical
her stanchest supporters do not attempt to deny, but those who are
really familiar with Egyptian conditions and character will agree
with me, I think, that Egypt could suffer no greater calamity than
to have the English go. Not that I think that there is the slightest
probability of their doing so, for Italy's aggression in Tripolitania,
combined with the attitude of the other members of the Triple
Alliance, has resulted in Britain strengthening, rather than relaxing,
her grip on Egypt and the Suez Canal. The canal provides, indeed,
the key to the entire Egyptian situation, for upon her control of it
depends England's entire scheme of administration in India and the
Farther East. To withdraw her forces from Egypt would be tantamount
to leaving the gateway to her Eastern possessions unguarded, and
that, I am convinced, she will never do. Two lesser, though in
themselves important, reasons militate against her surrendering the
control of the Valley of the Nile. One is her hope of eventually
realising, in spite of German opposition, Cecil Rhodes's dream of
an “All Red” route from the Cape to Cairo, of which Egypt and the
Sudan would be the northern links. The other is the belief that in
the scientific irrigation and cultivation of the fertile Nile lands
lie the means of freeing British manufacturers from their dependence
on American cotton. I am inclined to believe, therefore, that in the
not far-distant future England will become convinced that candour
is a better policy than hypocrisy, and will frankly add to her
globe-girdling chain of colonial possessions the whole of that vast
region lying between the mouths of the Nile and the swamps of the
Sudd.




CHAPTER VI

IN ZANZIBAR


There is no name between the covers of the atlas more redolent of
romance and adventure. Ever since Livingstone entered the African
jungle on his mission of proselytism; ever since Stanley entered
the same jungle on his quest of Livingstone; and ever since the
railway-builders began to run their levels and lay their rails along
the trail blazed by them both, Zanzibar has been the chief gateway
through which Christianity, civilisation, and commerce have entered
the Dark Continent. Though its area has been steadily lessened by
spoliation, treaty, and purchase, until the sultanate, which once
extended from Cape Guardafui to Delagoa Bay and inland to the Great
Lakes, has dwindled to two coastwise islands in the Indian Ocean,
Zanzibar the capital is still the most important place, politically
and commercially, in all East Africa, and one of the most picturesque
and interesting cities in the world.

It bears the impress of the many kinds of men of many
nationalities—Arab sultans, slave-traders and pirates, Portuguese
merchants, European explorers, and ivory-hunters—who have swaggered
across the pages of its history. Four hundred years ago Vasco da
Gama's exploring caravels dropped anchor in its harbour, and the
architecture of the city is still Portuguese; a century later the
dhows of the piratical sultans of Muskat swooped down, giving to
Zanzibar an Arab dynasty, a lucrative slave trade and the Arabic
tongue; then a British war-ship came, bringing with it British law and
order and decency, and, under the mask of a “protectorate,” British
rule. Though its golden age ended with the extermination of the trade
in “black ivory,” it is still a place of considerable importance: the
end of several submarine cables, a port of call for many steamship
lines, a naval base within easy striking distance of the German and
Portuguese colonies on the East Coast and guarding the lines of
communication between the Cape and the Canal, and the place of export
for the major portion of the world's supply of copra, cloves, and
ivory.

Seen from the harbour, Zanzibar has little to commend it. So
uninviting, indeed, is the face that it turns seaward, that the story
is told of an American politician sent there as consul, who, after
taking one look from the steamer's deck at the sun-baked town, with
its treeless, yellow beach and its flat-roofed, whitewashed houses,
refused to go ashore at all, from the next port at which the steamer
called cabling his resignation to Washington. Though a city of
something over one hundred thousand people, with the major portion
of the trade of East Africa in its hands, Zanzibar has neither dock,
jetty, nor wharf, passengers and packages alike being disembarked in
small boats and carried through the surf on the shoulders of Swahili
boatmen. There are no words in the language adequate to describe the
scene which takes place on the beach bordering the harbour when
a mail steamer comes in. The passengers—white-helmeted tourists;
pompous, drill-clad officials; sallow-faced Parsee merchants;
chattering Hindoo artisans; haughty, hawk-nosed Arabs; and cotton-clad
Swahilis from the mainland—are unceremoniously dumped with their
belongings on the sand, where they instantly become the centres of
shouting, pleading, cursing, struggling, gesticulating, perspiring
mobs of porters and hotel-runners, from whose rough importunities they
are rescued only by the efforts of a dozen _askaris_, who lay their
rhinoceros-hide whips about them indiscriminately.

When a poor imitation of order has been restored and the luggage has
been rescued and sorted, you start for the hotel—there is only one
deserving of the name—with a voluble hotel-runner clinging to your arm
as though afraid you would break away, and followed by a miniature
safari of porters balancing trunks, hat-boxes, kit-bags, gun-cases,
bath-tubs, and the other impedimenta of an African traveller on their
turbaned heads. Returning the ostentatious salute of the tan-coloured
sentry at the head of the water-stairs, you follow your guide through
a series of tortuous and narrow alleys, plunge into the darkness of an
ill-smelling tunnel, and suddenly emerge, blinded with the sun-glare,
into a thoroughfare lined on either side with tiny, fascinating,
hole-in-the-wall shops, whose owners rush out and offer you their
silver, ivory, and ostrich-feather wares vociferously.

Quite unexpectedly the procession halts under a swinging sign bearing
the legend “Afrika Hotel.” The proprietor, a rotund, red-cheeked
German who looks as if he had stepped straight out of a Munich
beer-garden, escorts you pantingly up two—three—four flights of stone
stairs, lined on either side with strange native weapons and East
Coast curios, to a brick-floored cell under the roof, there being
more likelihood of catching an occasional breeze, he explains, near
the top. Wind in any form is as scarce in Zanzibar as rain is in the
Sahara, and when they do get a breath of air strong enough to stir the
window curtains it is as much of an event as a cyclone is in Kansas.
The furniture of the room, monastic in its simplicity, consists of
an iron bed, an iron table, an iron chair, and an iron washstand
supporting a tin bowl and pitcher, for anything which is not of metal
stands an excellent chance of destruction by the devastating swarms
of red ants. The bed is draped with a double thickness of mosquito
netting of so fine a mesh that the air within feels strained and
unnourishing, like milk that has been skimmed and watered, and the
heavy shutters are closed in a fruitless attempt to keep out some of
the stifling mid-day heat, though the proprietor, after glancing at
the thermometer, remarks that it isn't so hot after all, being only
120 in the shade.

[Illustration: “Zanzibar has neither dock, jetty, nor wharf,
passengers and packages alike being disembarked in small boats and
carried through the surf on the shoulders of Swahili boatmen.”

Illustration: The business portion of Zanzibar is a wilderness of
narrow streets and dim bazaars, hemmed in with tiny shops and wretched
dwellings, with here and there an ancient house dating from the
Portuguese occupation.

THE GATEWAY TO EAST AFRICA.

_Photograph by DeLord, Zanzibar._]

You are advised to go to bed in the dark, as a light would attract the
mosquitoes, and never, never, under any circumstances, to get into bed
until you have assured yourself that there are no mosquitoes inside
the curtains, though the proprietor cheerfully adds: “But you can
only get fever from the black-and-white-striped ones.” Likewise, you
are solemnly warned never to go out of doors during the day without
a topée lest you die from sunstroke (I knew one man who took off his
helmet long enough to wave good-bye to a departing friend and was dead
in an hour in consequence); never to drink other than bottled water
(at two rupees the bottle) lest you die from typhoid; never to stay
out of doors after nightfall lest you contract malaria; never to put
on your boots without first shaking them out lest a snake or scorpion
have chosen them to spend the night in; never to return late at night
from the club without getting a policeman to escort you, lest a native
thug run a knife between your shoulder-blades; and never to put
your revolver under your pillow, where it cannot be reached without
attracting attention, but to keep it beside you in the bed, so that
you can shoot through the bedclothes without warning if you should
wake up to find an intruder in your room.

The best and most interesting thing about the Afrika Hotel is its
bath, a forbidding, stone-floored room, totally devoid of furniture or
tub. It is separated from the sleeping-room by the hotel parlour, so
that lady callers unaccustomed to Zanzibar ways are sometimes a trifle
startled to see a gentleman whose only garment is a bath-towel pass
through the parlour with a hop-skip-and-jump on his way to the bath.
You clap your hands, which is the East Coast equivalent for pressing
a button, and in prompt response appears an ebony-skinned domestic
bearing on his head a Standard Oil can filled with water. Running
through a staple in the ceiling is a rope, and to the end of this rope
he attaches the can, hoisting it until it swings a dozen feet above
your head. Hanging from a hole in the side of the can is a cord. When
you are ready for your bath you stand underneath the can, jerk the
cord sharply, and the can empties itself over you like a cloudburst.
Then you clap your hands and wait until the Swahili brings more water,
when you do it all over again.

The first thing the new arrival in Zanzibar does is to bathe and
put on a fresh suit of white linen, for to appear presentable in
the terrible humidity of the East Coast requires at least four
white suits a day; and the second thing he does is to call upon the
consul, a very homesick young gentleman, who is so glad to see any
one from “God's country” that he is only too eager to spend his
meagre salary in entertaining him. If it is drawing toward sunset
you will probably find him just starting for the golf club, which is
the rendezvous at nightfall for Zanzibar's European society, whose
chief recreations, so far as I could see, are golf, gambling, and
gossip. With a sturdy, khaki-clad Swahili, a brass American eagle on
the front of his fez, trotting between the shafts of the consular
'rickshaw (the Department of State refuses to appropriate enough
money to provide our representative with a carriage), and another
pushing behind, you whirl down the bright red highway which leads
to the suburb of Bububu; past the white residency from which the
British consul-general gives his orders to the little brown man who
is permitted to play at ruling Zanzibar; past the police barracks,
where, at sight of the eagle on the 'rickshaw coolies' fezes, the
sentry on duty shouts some unintelligible jargon, a bugle blares,
and a group of native constables spring into line and bring their
hands smartly to the salute as you pass; past the Marconi station on
the cliff, where the wireless chatters ceaselessly with Bagamoyo and
Kilindini and Dar-es-Salam; until you come to a sudden halt before
a bungalow, almost hidden in a wonderful tropic garden, whose broad
verandas overlook an emerald velvet golf course which stretches from
the highway to the sea.

Playing golf in Zanzibar always struck me as one of the most
incongruous things I ever did. It seems as though one ought to devote
his energies to pirating or pearl-fishing or slave-trading in a
place with such a name. Moreover, there is such a continuous circus
procession passing along the highway—natives in _kangas_ of every
pattern and colour; Masai and Swahili warriors from the mainland;
Parsee bankers in victorias and Hindoo merchants in 'rickshaws; giant
privates of the King's African Rifles in bottle-green tunics and
blue puttees; veiled women of the Sultan's zenana out for an airing
in cumbersome, gaudily painted barouches, preceded and followed by
red-jacketed lancers on white horses; perhaps his Highness himself, a
dapper, discontented-looking young mulatto, whirling by in a big gray
racing-car—that it is quite out of the question to keep your eye on
the ball, and you play very bad golf in consequence. Another trouble
is that the caddies are all natives, and golf is discouraging enough
in itself without having to shout “Fore!” or ask for a mashie or a
putter in Swahili.

After a perfunctory round or two you go back to the club-house
veranda, where the European society of Zanzibar is seated in cane
chairs, with the English illustrated weeklies, and tall glasses with
ice tinkling in them. The talk is the talk of exiled white folk
everywhere: the news contained in the Reuter's despatches which are
posted each evening on the club bulletin-board; the condition of the
ivory market; the prospects for big game-shooting under the new German
game laws; the favourites for the next day's cricket match, the next
week's polo game, or the next month's race meet; the latest books, the
newest plays—as gathered from the illustrated weeklies; what is going
to become of Smyth-Cunninghame's widow, whose husband has just died of
fever; is it true that Major Buffington has been transferred from the
“K. A. R.” to a line regiment; and is Germany really looking for war?

That night the consul gives a dinner for you at the Zanzibar Club,
where you are served by bare-footed servants immaculate in crimson
turbans and white linen, and eat with solid silver from irreproachable
china, in a room made almost comfortable by many swinging punkahs.
After dinner you sit on the terrace in the dark, somewhere between
the ocean and the stars, and over the coffee and cigars you listen to
strange stories of “the Coast,” told by men who themselves played a
part in them. One man tells you what Stanley really said when, after
months in the jungle without seeing a white man's face, he finally
stumbled on the camp of Livingstone, and how, instead of rushing up
and throwing his arms around him and crying, “Saved at last, old
fellow; saved at last!” he lifted his helmet at sight of the gaunt,
fever-stricken man sitting in front of the tent, and said very
politely, just as he would if accosting a stranger on Fifth Avenue
or Piccadilly, “Doctor Livingstone, I believe?” Another, a wiry,
bright-eyed Frenchman, with a face tanned to the colour of mahogany,
tells of the days when the route from Tanganyika to the coast was
marked by the bleaching skeletons of slaves, and he points out to you,
across the house-tops, the squalid dwelling in which Tippoo Tib, the
greatest of all the slave-traders, died. A British commissioner, the
glow of his cigar lighting up his ruddy face, his scarlet cummerbund,
and his white mess jacket, relates in strictest confidence a chapter
of secret diplomatic history, and you learn how the German Foreign
Office shattered the British dream of an all-red Cape-to-Cairo
railway, and why England is so desirous of the Congo being placed
under international control. A captain of the King's African Rifles
holds you spellbound with a recital of the amazing exploits of the
American elephant poacher, Rogers, who, jeering at the attempts of
three governments to capture him, made himself, single-handed, the
uncrowned king of Equatoria. Then a Danish ivory-hunter breaks in, and
you hear all sorts of wild tales of life on safari, of ivory-trading
in the Lado Enclave, of brushes with the Uganda police south of
Gondokoro, and of strange tribal customs practised in the hinterland.
When the dawn begins to creep up out of the east, the Englishmen tell
the drowsy steward to bring them Scotch and sodas and the Frenchmen
order absinthes; then every one shakes hands with every one else
and you make your way back to your hotel through the narrow, silent
streets, returning the salute of the night constable sleepily.

No visitor leaves Zanzibar without going to the cemetery. Like the
palace, and the stone ship built by a former sultan, it is one
of the show places of the city. I saw it under the guidance of a
gloomy English resident, who said that he always walked there every
evening “so as to get accustomed to the place before staying in it
permanently.” Leading me across the well-kept grass to two newly dug
graves, he waved his hand in a “take-your-choice; they're-both-ready”
gesture. “Two deaths to-day?” I queried. “Not yet,” said he, “but
we always keep a couple of graves ready-dug for Europeans. In this
climate, you know, we have to bury very quickly.” For in Zanzibar, as
all along the East Coast, the white man's hardest fight is with a foe
he can feel only as a poison in his burning veins, and can see only in
the dreams of his delirium—the deadly black-water fever.

Though the streets in the outskirts of Zanzibar are wide, well
shaded, and excellently macadamised with some kind of bright-red soil
which recalls the roads outside of Colombo, in Ceylon, the business
portion of the town, where the natives chiefly live, is a labyrinth
of narrow streets and dim bazaars, hemmed in with tiny shops and
wretched dwellings, with here and there an ancient house dating
from the Portuguese occupation, impregnable as a feudal castle, its
massive doorways of exquisitely carved teakwood in sharp contrast
to the surrounding squalor. Every shop is open to the street, and
half of them, it seemed to me, are devoted to the sale of ivory
carvings, ostrich feathers, brassware, and silver-work, though the
Arab workmanship is in all cases poorly executed and crude in design.
The most typical things to be bought in Zanzibar are the quaint images
of African animals which the natives carve from the coarser grades of
ivory and which make charming, though costly, souvenirs. Nothing is
cheap in Zanzibar, or, for that matter, anywhere else in Africa, and
every purchase is a matter of prolonged and wearisome negotiation,
the seller fixing a fantastic price and lowering it gradually, as he
thinks discreet, his rock-bottom figure depending upon the behaviour
and appearance of the customer.

Zanzibar is still the chief ivory market of the world, the supplies of
both elephant and rhino ivory, so I was assured by British officials,
steadily increasing rather than diminishing. A few years ago it
was feared that the supply of ivory would soon run out, but the
indiscriminate slaughter of elephants has been checked, at least in
British territory, by strict game laws rigidly enforced. Whether from
the laxity of its laws or the indifference of its officials, German
East Africa is still the ivory-hunter's paradise, the extermination
of elephants in that colony proceeding almost unchecked. When one
remembers that African ivory brings all the way from fifty dollars to
five hundred dollars per hundredweight in the open market, and that
the tusks of a full-grown elephant weigh anywhere from one hundred
to five hundred pounds, it will be seen that the ivory-hunter's
trade is a profitable though a hazardous one. Other ivory-hunters,
instead of going after the elephants themselves, spend their time in
journeying from village to village and bartering with the natives
for the stores of ivory—some of them the produce of centuries—which
most of them possess. Unless the trader knows his business, however,
the simple-minded natives will sell him the so-called “dead” ivory
from the bottom of the pile rather than the “live” ivory of elephants
recently killed, which, because of its greater elasticity and better
colour, commands a much higher price, and, I might add, forms but a
small part of the supply. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of half a
million pounds of ivory are shipped from Zanzibar each year to make
the toilet-articles and billiard-balls and piano-keys of the world.

The population of Zanzibar is pretty evenly divided between Arabs
and Swahilis, with a considerable sprinkling of East Indians, who
play the same rôles of peddlers, petty tradesmen, and money-lenders
in the Orient that the Jews and Armenians do in the Occident. The
dress of the Swahili is as simple as it is striking: two lengths of
cotton cloth, called _kanga_, one draped about the waist and the other
about the shoulders, with an extra remnant twisted into a turban,
form the costume of men and women alike, though the Swahili women,
in addition to the _kanga_ proper, wear cotton pantalets resembling
those in fashion in ante-bellum days, edged at the ankles with neat
little frills, like those the chefs at fashionable restaurants put on
lamb chops. These _kangas_ are crudely stamped in an endless variety
of startling patterns, some of the more elaborate designs looking,
from a little distance, as though embroidered. The inventiveness of
the British, Belgian, and German designers must be sorely taxed, for
the fashions in East Africa change as rapidly as they do in Paris and
with as little warning, the _kangas_ stamped with card-pips—hearts,
diamonds, clubs, and spades—which were all the rage among Zanzibar's
dusky leaders of fashion for a time, suddenly giving place to those
bearing crude pictures of sailing-ships or Arabic quotations from the
Koran. One negro dandy whom I saw paraded the streets, the envied of
all his fellows, wearing a _kanga_ on which was printed, in endless
repetition, the British coat of arms and the loyal motto “God Save
the King!” while still another swaggered by in a garment sprinkled
over with the legend in letters six inches high “Remember the Maine!”
Though the important trade in cotton goods which we once had with East
Africa has long since passed into British and German hands, there is
a certain melancholy satisfaction in knowing that, so firmly does
the reputation of our cottons endure, the natives of all this region
still insist on the piece goods which they purchase, whether made in
Manchester or Dresden, bearing the stamp “American,” and will take no
other.

The costumes of the Arabs, on the other hand, recall all the stories
of pirates and slave-traders which one associates with this romantic
coast, for the men, ignoring the law which prohibits the carrying of
arms, swagger insolently through the streets with dagger-filled sashes
and trailing scimiters, their white _jibbahs_ flapping about their
sandalled feet and their snowy turbans cocked rakishly. The dress of
the Arab women of Zanzibar resembles the costume of no other people,
its characteristic features being the immense, doughnut-shaped turbans
and the frilled, skin-tight trousers striped like barber-poles.

[Illustration: ARAB WOMEN OF ZANZIBAR.

“Their dress resembles the costume of no other people, its
characteristic features being the immense, doughnut-shaped turbans and
the frilled, skin-tight trousers striped like barber-poles.”]

The universal medium of communication in Zanzibar and along the East
Coast is Swahili, this _lingua franca_ being generally used not only
between Arabs and natives, and between natives and Europeans, but
between Europeans themselves, the English, French, and Portuguese
traders who do business in German East Africa depending entirely upon
this mutually understood tongue for conversing with the Germans. I
remember once, in Dar-es-Salam, listening to an Englishman who knew no
French and a Frenchman who knew no English hold an animated political
argument, and later on bargain with the German hotel-keeper for
accommodations in the same outlandish tongue.

I have always found that the farther people dwell from civilisation,
the more punctilious they are about observing its usages. That is why
English officials at remote and lonely stations in India invariably
put on evening clothes before they sit down to their solitary dinners,
and why the question of precedence is not taken nearly as seriously
in London or Paris or New York as it is in Entebbe or Sierra Leone.
One would quite naturally suppose that the Europeans dwelling in those
sun-scorched, fever-ridden, God-forsaken countries along the East
Coast would adopt the careless attitude of Kipling's homesick soldier,
who longed for a land “where there ain't no Ten Commandments and a man
can raise a thirst”; but, strangely enough, the exact opposite is the
case. There is plenty of drinking throughout Africa, it is true, for
the white men dwelling there will assure you that to exist in such a
climate a man must “keep his liver afloat,” but, though heavy drinking
is the rule, the man who so far loses control of himself as to step
beyond the bounds of decency is ostracised with a promptness and
completeness unheard of in more civilised places. This respect for the
social conventions was graphically illustrated by an unpleasant little
episode which occurred during my stay in Zanzibar. A young Englishman,
who had been rubber-prospecting in the wilds of the back country for
nearly a year, celebrated his return to civilisation, or what stands
out there for civilisation, by giving a stag dinner at the club. It
was rather a hilarious affair, as such things go, and when it broke
up at dawn every one had had quite as much to drink as was good for
him, while the youthful host had had entirely too much. In fact, he
insisted on winding up the jollification by smashing all the crockery
and glassware in sight, and, when the native steward remonstrated,
he tripped him up very neatly and sat on him. Some hours later, being
sober and very much ashamed of himself, he sent a check for the damage
he had done, together with a manly letter of apology, to the board of
governors, which promptly responded by demanding his resignation. Now,
to drop a man from a club in East Africa is equivalent to marooning
him on a desert island, for out there the club is invariably the
rendezvous of the respectable European society, the only place where
one can get a European book or newspaper to read or a well-cooked
meal to eat, and the scene of those dinners, dances, card parties,
charades, and other forms of amusement which help to make existence in
that region endurable. Not content with demanding his resignation and
thus closing to him the gateway to every decent form of recreation in
Zanzibar, the virtuous board of governors notified every other club on
the coast of its action, so that when business called the youngster to
Mombasa or Dar-es-Salam or Lourenço Marques, he found himself barred
from the privileges of the clubs in those places as well. But his
punishment did not end there, for, a few days after his escapade, two
club members to whom he nodded upon the street cut him dead, while
another, a man whom he had known intimately for years, answered his
greeting by remarking, as he raised his eyebrows, “Really, sir, I
don't think I have the pleasure of your acquaintance.”

In the happy-go-lucky days before the reorganisation of our consular
service a profane and uncouth lumberman named Mulligan—the name will
do as well as another—was rewarded for certain political services
by being appointed consul at Zanzibar. At that time the American
consulate was in a building on the edge of the harbour and almost next
door to the Sultan's palace. Mulligan had not been in Zanzibar a week
before he began to complain that he was being robbed of his sleep by
the women of the royal harem, who chose the comparatively cool hour
just before sunrise in which to bathe on the sandy beach below the
consulate windows. Mulligan, after making numerous complaints without
receiving any satisfaction, openly announced that the next morning he
was disturbed he would take the law into his own hands. He did not
have to wait long for an opportunity, for, returning a few nights
later from an unusually late séance at the club, he had scarcely
fallen asleep when he was aroused by the shrieks of laughter of native
women bathing beneath his window. Springing out of bed, he caught up
a shot-gun standing in the corner, slipped in a shell loaded with
bird-shot, and, pushing the muzzle out of the window, fired at random.
The roar of the discharge was echoed by a chorus of piercing screams
and Arabic ejaculations of pain and terror, whereupon the consul,
satisfied that he had effectually frightened the disturbers of his
rest, returned to bed and to sleep. An hour later he was reawakened
by his excited vice-consul, who burst into the bedroom exclaiming,
“You'll have to get out of here quick, Mr. Consul! It won't be healthy
for you in Zanzibar after what happened this morning. There's a German
boat in the harbour and if you hurry you'll just about catch her! But
there's no time to spare.” “Now, what the devil have I got to get out
of here for, confound you?” demanded the consul, now thoroughly awake
and thoroughly angry. “Certainly not because I frightened a lot of
nigger wenches who were waking me up at four o'clock every morning
with their damned hullabaloo?” “Nigger wenches nothing!” exclaimed the
vice-consul, as he began to throw his chief's belongings into a trunk.
“When you let off that load of bird-shot this morning you peppered
the Sultan's favourite wife, and now the old man's fairly hopping
with rage and swears that he'll have your life even if you are the
American consul.” Forty minutes later ex-Consul Mulligan ascended the
gangway of a homeward-bound steamer, for those were the days before
the British protectorate, when the tyrannical sultans of Zanzibar were
laws unto themselves.

The morning before I left I went with the consul to call on
his Highness Seyyid Ali bin Hamoud bin Mohammed, the Sultan of
Zanzibar.[3] The 'rickshaw stopped with a jerk in front of the
handsome iron gates of the palace; the guard turned out and presented
arms, while a negro bugler sounded a barbaric fanfare; an official in
white linen and much gold lace met us at the entrance and escorted
us up flight after flight of heavily carpeted stairs, until we
emerged, breathless and perspiring, on the breeze-swept upper
veranda of the four-story building, which, with its long piazzas
and its uncompromising architecture, looks more than anything else
like an American summer hotel. After a quarter of an hour spent in
smoking highly perfumed cigarettes, another official announced that
his Highness would receive us, and we were ushered into a small room
furnished like an office, where a pleasant-looking young negro of
twenty-six or so was sitting at an American roll-top desk dictating
letters to an English secretary. Like every one else, he was dressed
entirely in white linen, with a red tarboosh, gold shoulder-straps,
and pumps of white buckskin. Motioning us to be seated, he offered us
more of the perfumed cigarettes, inquiring, with an Eton accent, as to
the state of my health, when I arrived, what were my impressions of
Zanzibar, when I intended to leave, and where I was going. As we were
bowing ourselves out, after ten minutes of perfunctory conversation,
the Sultan's secretary sidled up and whispered: “His Highness expects
that you will give him the pleasure of staying to luncheon.”

[3] Since this was written Sultan Ali bin Hamoud has abdicated in
favour of his cousin, Seyyid Khalifa.

The luncheon was very much the same as one would get at Sherry's
or Claridge's or the Café de Paris, except that for our special
benefit a few native dishes with strange names and still stranger
flavours had been added to the menu. The wines were irreproachable
and the Hodeidah coffee and Aleppo cigarettes could have been had
nowhere west of Suez. My eye was caught by the magnificence of the
jewel-monogrammed cigarette-case which the Sultan constantly passed
to me, and I ventured to comment on it admiringly. “Do you like it?”
said he, with a pleased smile. “It is only a trifle that I picked up
last spring in Paris. Accept it from me as a little souvenir of your
visit to Zanzibar—really—please do.” Quite naturally I hesitated, as
who would not at accepting offhand a thing worth a couple of thousand
rupees. The Sultan looked disappointed. “It is not worthy of you,” he
remarked. “Some day I shall send you something more fitting,” and he
put it back in his pocket. All the rest of my stay in Zanzibar I kept
thinking how near I came to getting that magnificent case, and what a
story it would have made to tell at dinner tables over the camembert
and coffee; and it almost spoiled my visit. As I was leaving the
palace the military secretary inquired: “Why on earth didn't you take
the cigarette case when the Sultan offered it?” “Polite hesitation,” I
replied. “I was going to accept it in just a minute.” “In the East you
should accept first and hesitate afterward,” he answered.

After luncheon I played billiards with the Sultan. He is a good
player, and it was no trouble at all to let royalty win gracefully.
The conversation turned on America. It seemed that the two Americans
whom his Highness most admired were Theodore Roosevelt and John Philip
Sousa; the one because he had visited Africa and proved himself a
real _shikari_; the other because he had immortalised the Sultan's
dominions in his _A Typical Tune of Zanzibar_. (It happened that a
month or so later I dined with Mr. Sousa in Johannesburg and told him
this incident, whereupon he offered to send the Sultan an autographed
copy of _El Capitan_. If he has forgotten to do it, this will serve to
remind him that the Sultan's address is still “The Palace, Zanzibar.”)
Incidentally his Highness mentioned that he was about to be married.
Later on the English secretary supplemented this by explaining that
his latest bride—he already had three wives—was the fifteen-year-old
daughter of a well-to-do merchant in the bazaars, with whom the
Sultan had been haggling regarding the price to be paid for the girl
for a year or more. After a time we strolled out on the breeze-swept
veranda. As I leaned over the railing I noticed something sticking up
out of the harbour and I pointed to it. “What is that, your Highness?”
I inquired. “A wreck,” he answered shortly. “A wreck! A wreck of
what?” I persisted. “The wreck of the Zanzibar navy,” he said, turning
away—and I suddenly recalled the story of the little gun-boat with
its negro crew that stood up to the great British cruiser and banged
away with its toy guns until it was sent to the bottom with every man
on board, and all at once I felt very sorry for this youth, whose
fathers held sway over a dominion as large as all that part of the
United States lying west of the Rocky Mountains, but which, thanks to
the insatiable land hunger of the European nations, has dwindled to a
territory scarcely larger than Rhode Island.

That in the not far-distant future Zanzibar will again play a part
in the drama of international politics there is but little doubt.
The island's position adjacent to the mainland, from which it is
separated by a channel less than thirty miles wide, combined with
the advantages of its deep and roomy harbour, mark it naturally as
the chief entrepôt of all East Africa, and the gate through which the
interior of the continent is destined to be opened up to European
settlement and exploitation. Being almost equidistant—some two
thousand four hundred miles—from India, the Cape, and the Canal, and
controlling the lines of cable communication with Madagascar and
Mauritius, it affords a strategic position of immense importance as
a naval base in the contingency of closing the Suez Canal in time of
war. Germany has long had a greedy eye on Zanzibar, for the nation
that holds it controls, both strategically and commercially, Germany's
East African possessions and their capital of Dar-es-Salam. That
England would be willing to turn Zanzibar over to Germany in return
for the cession of a strip of territory through German East Africa
which would permit the completion of her long-dreamed-of, and at
present indefinitely interrupted, Cape-to-Cairo trunk line, there is
every reason to believe. So I trust that the little brown man in the
white-and-gold uniform will enjoy playing at sovereignty while he
may, for if that day ever comes to pass when the red banner on his
palace flagstaff is replaced with the standard of Germany, there will
pass into the pleasant oblivion of the Paris boulevards the last of
a long line of one-time powerful, oftentimes piratical, but always
picturesque rulers, the Sultans of Zanzibar.




CHAPTER VII

THE SPIKED HELMET IN AFRICA


The other day two suave, frock-coated gentlemen, seated at a
green-covered table in the Foreign Office in Berlin, by putting their
names to the bottom of a piece of parchment, caused a territory
almost as large as the State of Texas to become French, and another
territory, larger than the State of Oregon, to become German. About as
many people were affected, though not consulted, by that international
dicker—which has passed into history as the Morocco-Equatoria
Convention—as there are in the county of London. The lot of about
four-fifths of these people will doubtless be materially improved, and
in a few years, if they have any gratitude in their Moorish souls,
they will be thanking Allah for having given them French instead of
Sherifian justice. As for those Congolese blacks who compose the other
fifth, they will soon find, unless I am very much mistaken, that the
red-white-and-black flag stands for something very different from the
red-white-and-blue one, and that the stiff-backed, guttural-tongued
German officers in their tight-fitting uniforms will prove sterner
masters than the easy-going French _administrateurs_ in their topées
and white linen.

Now the significance of that convention does not lie in its
ethics—which are very questionable; nor in the territory and
population and resources concerned—which are very great; but in the
fact that it brings within reasonable measure of fulfilment the
imperial dream which William II began dreaming some seven and twenty
years ago, and which he recently translated to the world in the
declaration “Germany's future lies oversea.” In those four words is
found the foreign policy of the Fatherland. The episode which began
with the sending of a war-ship to an obscure port of Morocco and ended
with Germany's acquirement of a material addition to her African
domain was not, as the world supposes, an example of the haphazard
land-grabbing so popular with European nations, but a single phase of
a vast and carefully laid scheme whose aim is the creation of a new
and greater Germany oversea—a _Deutschland über Meer_.

To solve the problems with which she has been confronted by
her amazing increase in population and production, Germany has
deliberately embarked on a systematic campaign of world expansion
and exploitation. Finding that she needs a colonial empire in her
business, she is setting out to build one just as she would build a
fleet of dreadnoughts or a ship canal. The fact that she has nothing
or next to nothing to start with, does not worry her at all. What she
cannot obtain by purchase or treaty site will obtain by threats, and
what she cannot obtain by threats she stands perfectly ready to obtain
by going to war. Having once made up her mind that the realisation of
her political, commercial, and economic ambitions requires her to have
a colonial dominion, she is not going to permit anything to stand in
the way of her getting it. In other words, wherever an excuse can be
provided for raising a flagstaff, whether on an ice-floe in the Arctic
or an atoll in the South Pacific, there the German flag shall flutter;
wherever trade is to be found, there Hamburg cargo boats shall drop
their anchors, there Stettin engines shall thunder over Essen rails,
there Solingen cutlery and Silesian cottons shall be sold by merchants
speaking the language of the Fatherland. It is a scheme astounding
by its very vastness, as methodically planned as a breakfast-food
manufacturer's advertising campaign and as systematically conducted;
and already, thanks to Teutonic audacity, aggressiveness, and
perseverance, backed up by German banks, fleets, and armies, much
nearer realisation than most people suppose.

In Morocco, East Africa, and the Congo; in Turkey, Persia, and
Malaysia; in Hayti, Brazil, and the Argentine; on the shores of all
the continents and the islands of all the seas, German merchants and
German money are working twenty-four hours a day building up that
oversea empire of which the Kaiser dreams. The activities of these
pioneers of commerce and finance are as varied as commerce and finance
themselves. Their guttural voices are heard in every market place;
their footsteps resound in every avenue of human endeavour. Their
holdings in Brazil are the size of European kingdoms, and so absolute
has their power become in at least two states—Santa Catharina and Rio
Grande do Sul—that the Brazilian Government has become seriously
alarmed. Their mines in Persia and China and the Rand rival the cave
of Aladdin. They are completing a trunk line across western Asia which
threatens to endanger England's commercial supremacy in India; in
Africa they are pushing forward another railway from the shores of the
Indian Ocean to the Great Lakes which will rival the Cape-to-Cairo
system in tapping the trade of the Dark Continent. They own the
light, power, and transportation monopolies of half the capitals of
Latin America. In China the coal mines and railways of the great
province of Shantung are in their hands. They work tea plantations in
Ceylon, tobacco plantations in Cuba and Sumatra, coffee plantations
in Guatemala, rubber plantations in the Congo, hemp plantations in
East Africa, and cotton plantations in the Delta of the Nile. Their
argosies, flying the house flags of the Hamburg American, the North
German Lloyd, the German East Africa, the Deutsche Levante, and a
score of other lines, carry German goods to German warehouses in the
world's remotest corners, while German war-ships are constantly aprowl
all up and down the Seven Seas, ready to protect the interests thus
created by the menace of their guns.

Back of the German miners and traders and railway builders are the
great German banks, which, when all is said and done, are the real
exploiters of Germany's interests oversea. So completely are the
foreign interests of the nation in their hands that there is no reason
to doubt the story that the Emperor, when warned by the great bankers
whom he had summoned to a conference over the ominous Moroccan
situation that war with France would endanger, if not destroy,
Germany's oversea ambitions, turned to his ministers with the remark,
“Then, gentlemen, we must find a peaceable solution.” We of the West
have not yet awakened to a realisation of the magnitude of Germany's
foreign interests or to the almost sovereign powers which the banks
behind them exercise in certain quarters of the world—particularly in
that Latin America which we have complacently regarded as securely
within our own commercial sphere. In Asia Minor the Deutsche Bank not
only controls the great Anatolian Railway system but it is building
the Bagdad Railway—probably the most important of Germany's foreign
undertakings—these two German-owned systems providing a route by which
German goods can be carried over German rails to India more cheaply
than England can transport her own goods to her possessions in her own
bottoms. In one hand the Disconto Bank Gesellschaft holds the railway
and mining concessions of the Chinese province of Shantung, while with
the other it reaches out across the world to grasp the railway system
of Venezuela, it being to enforce certain claims of this bank that
the German gun-boat _Panther_—the same that occupied Agadir—bombarded
La Guayra in 1902 and as a consequence brought the relations of the
United States and Germany uncomfortably close to the breaking-point.
Seven German banks—the German-Asiatic Bank, the German-Brazilian
Bank, the German-Orient Bank, the German-Palestine Bank, the Bank
of Chile and Germany, the Bank of Central America, and the German
Overseas Bank—devote themselves exclusively to the exploitation of
foreign concessions, either owning or dominating enterprises of
every conceivable character in the regions denoted by their titles
or lending financial assistance to German subjects engaged in such
undertakings.

A few years ago, when Germany was starting in the race for naval
supremacy, the Imperial Admiralty issued a review of Germany's oversea
interests for the purpose of impressing the Reichstag with the
necessity for dreadnoughts and then more dreadnoughts. Here are some
of the figures, taken from the list at random, and the more impressive
because they are from official sources and because, since they were
published, they have materially increased:

  North Africa                $25,000,000
  Egypt                        22,500,000
  Liberia                       1,250,000
  Zanzibar                      1,500,000
  Mozambique                    2,750,000
  Madagascar                    1,500,000
  British South Africa        337,500,000
  Turkey and the Balkans      112,500,000
  British India and Ceylon     27,500,000
  Straits Settlements           8,750,000
  China                        87,500,000
  Mexico                       87,500,000
  Venezuela and Colombia      312,500,000
  Peru and Chile              127,500,000
  Argentine                   187,500,000
  Brazil                      400,000,000

And this endless caravan of figures represents but a fraction of
Germany's transmarine interests, remember, for it does not include
her colonies on both coasts of Africa, in North China, and in the
South Seas. Now, if you will again glance over the above list of
Germany's foreign interests, you can hardly fail to be struck by the
fact that by far the greater part of them are in countries notorious
for the weakness and instability of their governments, as, for
example, China, Morocco, Turkey, Liberia, Mexico, and Venezuela; or
in countries which, though possessing stable governments, would not
be strong enough successfully to resist German aggression or German
demands. In regions where German settlers abound and where German
banks are in financial control it is seldom difficult for Germany
to find an excuse for meddling. It may be that a German settler is
attacked, or a German consul insulted, or a German bank has difficulty
in collecting its debts. So the slim cables carry a dash-dotted
message to the Foreign Office in Berlin; instantly the cry goes up
that in Morocco or China or Venezuela or Hayti German “interests”
are imperilled; and before the government of the country in question
realises that anything out of the ordinary has happened a cruiser with
a German flag drooping from her taffrail is lying off one of its coast
towns. Before the silent menace of that war-ship is removed, Germany
generally manages to obtain a concession to build a railway, or a
ninety-nine-year lease of a coaling-station, or the cession of a strip
of more or less valuable territory, and so goes merrily and steadily
on the work of building up a German empire oversea.

But these interests, world-wide though they are, fail to satisfy
the German expansionist party whose prophet is the Kaiser. They
demand something more material than figures; they would see the
German flag floating over government houses instead of warehouses,
over fortifications instead of plantations. They would see more of
the map of the world painted in German colours. But Germany was late
in getting into the colonising game, so that wherever she has gone
she has found other nations already in possession. In North Africa
her prospectors and concession-hunters found the French too firmly
established to be ousted; the only territory left in South Africa over
which she could raise her flag was so arid and worthless that neither
England nor Portugal had troubled to include it in their dominions;
though she bullied China into leasing her the port of Kiauchau, the
further territorial expansion in the Celestial Empire of which she had
dreamed was halted by Russian jealousy and Japanese ambition; around
Latin America—the most enticing field of all—stretched the protecting
arm of the Monroe Doctrine.

Now, these “Keep Off the Grass” signs with which she was everywhere
confronted did not improve Germany's disposition. They made her feel
abused and peevish, and whenever she saw a foreign flag flying over
some God-forsaken islet in the Pacific or a stretch of snake-infested
African jungle, she resented it deeply and said that she was being
denied “a place in the sun.” So when France despatched an expedition
to Fez in the summer of 1911 to teach the Moorish tribesmen proper
respect for French property and French lives, Germany seized on that
action as an excuse for occupying a Moroccan harbour and a strip of
the adjacent coast, on the pretext that her interests there were being
jeopardised, and flatly refused to evacuate it unless France gave
her something in return. I might mention, in passing, that Germany's
interests in Morocco are considerably more important than is generally
supposed, the powerful Westphalian firm of Mannesmann Brothers having
obtained from Sultan Abdul Aziz extensive mining, ranching, and
plantation concessions in that portion of his empire which the German
newspapers proceeded to prematurely dub “_West Marokko Deutsch_.”
The rich iron deposits in this region, when taken in conjunction
with the alarming decrease of the ore supply in the German mines and
the consequent shortage which threatens the German iron and steel
industry, undoubtedly provided one of the reasons underlying the
Kaiser's interference with the French programme in Morocco.

France, knowing full well the enormous political and commercial value
of Morocco, and determined to complete her African empire by its
acquirement, after months of haggling, during which battle-ships and
army corps were moved about like chessmen, consented to compensate
Germany by ceding her a slice of the colony of French Equatorial
Africa, better known, perhaps, as the French Congo.[4] It was a good
bargain that France made, too, for she took an empire and gave a
jungle in exchange. But Germany made the better bargain, it seems
to me, for by agreeing to a French protectorate over Morocco she
obtained one hundred thousand square miles of African soil without
its costing her a foot of land or a dollar in exchange. From the
view-point of the world at large, Germany emerged from the Moroccan
imbroglio with a good-sized strip of equatorial territory, presumably
rich in undeveloped resources, certainly rich in savages, snakes,
and fevers, and, everything considered, of very doubtful value. But
to Germany this stretch of jungle land meant far more than that. It
was a territory which she had wanted, watched, and waited for ever
since she entered the game of colonial expansion. It is one of the
links—in many respects the most essential one—which she requires to
connect her scattered possessions in the Dark Continent and to bar the
advance of her great rival, England, to the northward by stretching an
unbroken chain of German colonies across Africa from coast to coast.
The acquisition of that piece of west-coast jungle marked the greatest
stride which Germany has yet taken in her march toward an empire
oversea.

[4] Germany has given her new colony the official designation “New
Kamerun.”

Heretofore Germany has been in much the same predicament as a boy who
tries to put a picture puzzle together when some of the pieces are
missing. In Germany's case the missing pieces were held by England,
France, Belgium, and Portugal, and they refused to give them up. If
you will open the family atlas to the map of Africa, you will see that
Germany's four colonies on that continent are so widely separated that
their consolidation is apparently out of the question. Northernmost
of all, and set squarely in the middle of that pestilential coast-line
variously named and noted for its slaves, its ivory, and its gold,
and aptly called “the rottenest coast in the world,” is the colony
of Togo. Approximately the size of Cuba and rich in native products,
it is so remote from the other German possessions that its only
value is in providing Germany with a _quid pro quo_ which she can
use in negotiating for some territory more desirable. In the right
angle formed by the Gulf of Guinea is the colony of Kamerun, a rich,
fertile, and exceedingly unhealthful possession about the size of
Spain. Though its hinterland reaches inland to Lake Tchad, it has
hitherto been destitute of good harbours or navigable rivers, being
barred from the Niger by British Nigeria and from the Congo, until
the recent territorial readjustment, by French Equatorial Africa.
Follow the same coast-line twelve hundred miles to the southward and
you will come to German Southwest Africa, a barren, inhospitable,
sparsely populated land, stretching from a harbourless coast as far
inland as the Desert of Kalahari. On the other side of the continent,
just south of the Equator, lies German East Africa, almost twice the
size of the mother country and the largest and richest of the Kaiser's
transmarine possessions. The combined area of these four colonies is
equal to that of all the States east of the Mississippi put together;
certainly a substantial foundation on which to begin the erection of
an empire, especially when it is remembered that French Africa, which
now comprises forty-five per cent of the continent, is for the most
part the work of but a single generation.

When Monsieur Cambon and Herr von Kiderlein-Waechter put their pens to
the piece of parchment of which I have already spoken, the boundary of
the Kamerun was automatically extended southward almost to the Equator
and eastward some hundreds of miles to the Logone River, the apex of
the angle formed by the meeting of these new frontiers touching the
Congo River and thereby bringing the Kamerun into contact with the
Belgian Congo. In other words, Germany's great colonies on either
coast are no longer separated by French and Belgian territory, but
by Belgian alone—and Belgium, remember, is both weak and neutral.
Now, it is by no means beyond the bounds of possibility that Belgium
might consent to sell Germany either the whole or a portion of the
Congo, for the financial difficulties of that colony have been very
great, and it has never been able to pay its way, its wants having
been supplied at first by large gifts of money from King Leopold,
and more recently by loans raised and guaranteed by Belgium. This
unsatisfactory financial condition not having helped to popularise
the Congo with the thrifty Belgians, there is considerable reason to
believe that the Brussels Government would lend an attentive ear to
any proposals which Germany might make toward its purchase. England
might be expected, of course, to oppose the sale of the Congo to
Germany tooth and nail, it being the fear of just such an eventuality
which caused her to seize on the rubber atrocities as an excuse for
her vigorous and persistent advocacy of the internationalisation
of the Congo. Though France holds the reversionary rights to the
Congo, there are no grounds for believing that she would place any
serious obstacles in the way of its acquisition by Germany, for she
has given it to be understood that she intends devoting her energies
henceforward to the exploitation of her enormous possessions in North
Africa. Assuming, then—and these assumptions, believe me, are not
nearly so chimerical as they may sound—that the Belgian Government
should sell Germany all or a part of the Congo, Germany's possessions
would then stretch across the continent from coast to coast,
comprising all that is most worth having in Equatorial Africa.

While we are about it, let us carry our assumptions one step farther
and take it for granted that Portugal could be induced to dispose
of her great west-coast colony of Angola, to which Germany already
possesses the reversionary rights. It is not only possible, but
probable, that a good round offer of money, or perhaps another Agadir
performance, based on some easily found pretext and backed up by
German war-ships in the Tagus, would induce the Lisbon Government
to hand over Angola, along with its fevers and its slavery, to the
Germans. Portugal is bitterly poor, its government is weak and
vacillating, and a long list of failures has left the people with
little stomach for colonisation. The Portuguese Republic has few
friends among the monarchical nations of Europe and could count on
scant aid from them in resisting Teutonic coercion. It is asserted
in diplomatic circles, indeed, that the ink on the Morocco-Equatoria
Convention was scarcely dry before the German minister in Lisbon had
opened secret _pourparlers_ with the Portuguese Foreign Office with
a view to the purchase of both Angola and the east-coast colony of
Mozambique.[5] The acquisition of Angola would supply Germany with the
final link needed to unite her colonies in East, West, and Southwest
Africa, thus giving her an African empire second in size only to that
of France. Far-fetched and far-distant as all this may sound, I have
but roughly sketched for you that imperial dream for whose fulfilment
the Kaiser and his people are indefatigably working and confidently
waiting.

[5] Though commonly applied to the colony of Portuguese East
Africa, the name Mozambique belongs, strictly speaking, only to the
northernmost province of that possession.

Very few people are aware that, as long ago as 1898, England and
Germany concluded a secret agreement which definitely provides for
the eventual disposition of Portugal's African possessions. Of its
true history and scope, however, little has ever leaked out. It grew
out of Joseph Chamberlain's restless and ambitious schemes for the
consolidation of British dominion in Africa. Appreciating, early in
the Boer War, that England's success in that struggle would largely
depend upon Germany remaining strictly neutral, that master statesman
proposed to the Berlin Government a plan the effect of which was to
divide the reversion of Angola and Mozambique between Great Britain
and Germany, inferentially leaving the former a free hand south of
the Zambezi. This was the famous Secret Treaty, the final text of
which was afterward signed by Lord Salisbury, and it was largely
in virtue of this agreement that England was free from German
interference during the Boer War. It is an interesting comment on the
ethics of international politics that this remarkable agreement was
concluded without any consultation of Portugal, the country the most
vitally concerned. Delagoa Bay is no longer as imperative a necessity
to England as it was in 1898, at which time it was the quickest way
to reach the Transvaal, and, on the other hand, the West Coast is
daily becoming more important for strategical and commercial reasons,
for the “Afro” railway, of which I have made mention in the chapter
on Morocco, will become in the near future the great highway between
Europe and South America, while the railway now being built between
Benguela (Lobito Bay) and the Katanga region will provide the easiest
and quickest means of communicating with Rhodesia and the Transvaal.
The terms of the Anglo-German Secret Treaty are of interest, however,
as indicating how that portion of the African continent lying south
of the Congo will be eventually parcelled out, and as showing the
framework on which is being slowly but surely constructed Germany's
African empire.

The erection of such a German state across the middle of Africa would
have far-reaching results in more directions than one. In the first
place, it would end forever England's long-cherished ambition of
eventually linking up her Sudanese and South African possessions
and thus completing an “All Red” route from Cairo to the Cape. In
the second place, Germany is now in a position to build her own
transcontinental railway—from east to west instead of from north
to south—on German or neutral soil all the way, thus removing the
completion of the Cape-to-Cairo system, even under international
auspices, to a very distant day, and making Dar-es-Salam and Duala,
instead of Cape Town and Alexandria, the starting-points for those
highways of steel which are destined to open up inner Africa.

It is surprising how little even the well-informed know of these
far places which Germany has taken for her own. Fertile spots as
any upon earth, covered with hard-wood forests and watered by many
rivers, when seen from the shade of an awning over a ship's deck
they are as alluring as the stage of a theatre set for a sylvan
opera. Go a thousand yards back from that smiling coast, however,
and the illusion disappears, for you find a country whose hostile
natives, savage beasts, and deadly fevers combine to make it deserving
of its title—“the white man's graveyard.” The statesmen of the
Wilhelmstrasse must have taken a long look into the future when they
raised the German flag over such lands as these. The returns they
have yielded thus far would have discouraged a man less sanguine
than William Hohenzollern. Though subsidised German steam-ships ply
along their coasts, though their forests resound to the clank and
clang of German railway-builders' tools, though the plantations of
government-assisted settlers dot the back country, though she has
spent on them thousands of lives and millions of marks, Germany's
only returns thus far have been a few annual tons of ivory, copra,
and rubber, some excellent but unprofitable harbours, and many lonely
stations where her sons contract fevers and pessimism. But I would
stake my life that this out-of-the-way, back-of-beyond, sun-blistered,
fever-stricken German Africa will be a great colony some day.

From the care with which they are laid out, from the perfection of
their sanitary arrangements, from the substantiality of their public
buildings and official residences and their suitability to the
climatic conditions, the travellers who confine their investigations
to the coast are readily deceived into thinking that Tanga and
Bagamoyo and Dar-es-Salam and Swakopmund and Duala are the gateways
to rich and prosperous colonies. From the very outset, however,
the imperial government based its claim for popular support in its
colonial ventures upon the erroneous assumption that German colonies
would attract Germans, and that in this way the language of the
Fatherland would be spread abroad and eventually supplant that of
Shakespeare. The Germans, however, have stubbornly refused to go to
their own colonies, preferring those where English is the speech and
where there are fewer officials and more freedom. To-day, therefore,
you find the model German towns, so perfectly built that you feel as
though you were walking through a municipal exhibition, almost wholly
peopled by brass-bound, hide-bound officials, while the German traders
are carrying on thriving businesses under the English flag at Mombasa
and Zanzibar and Sierra Leone.

Now, Germany has no one but herself to blame for this condition of
affairs, having brought it about by the short-sightedness of her
colonial policy and the harshness and incapacity of her officials.
Intending to found industrial colonies, she created military
settlements instead, administering and exploiting them, not as if they
were German lands, but as if they were an enemy's country. Nothing
emphasises more sharply the purely military character of Germany's
African colonies than the fact that there are seven soldiers or
officials to every German civilian. Dwelling in idleness, in one of
the most trying climates in the world, the officials seem to take a
malicious satisfaction in interfering with the civil population, thus
driving the traders—who form the backbone of every colony—to take up
their residence in English ports and so paralysing German trade. The
soldiers, for want of something better to do, are forever seeking
advancement by making unnecessary expeditions into the hinterland for
the purpose of “punishing” the natives, thus causing them to migrate
by wholesale into British, Belgian, and even Portuguese territory, so
that the German colonies are left without labour and the plantations
are consequently being ruined.

The needless severity of Germany's colonial rule is graphically
illustrated by the fact that during 1911 there were 14,849 criminal
convictions in German East Africa alone, or one conviction to every
637 natives; while in the adjoining protectorate of Uganda, among the
same type of natives but under a British administration, the ratio
of convictions was only one in 2,047. There is not a town in German
East Africa where you cannot see boys of from eight to fourteen
years, shackled together by chains running from iron collar to iron
collar and guarded by soldiers with loaded rifles, doing the work of
men under a deadly sun. Natives with bleeding backs are constantly
making their way into British and Belgian territory with tales of
maltreatment by German planters, while stories of German tyranny,
brutality, and corruption—of some instances of which I was myself a
witness—form staple topics of conversation on every club veranda and
steamer's deck along these coasts. In German Southwest Africa the
dearth of labour, owing to the practical extermination of the Herero
nation in Germany's last “little war” in that colony, has become a
serious and pressing problem. In a single campaign—which cost Germany
five hundred million marks and the lives of two thousand soldiers,
and which could have been avoided altogether by a little tact and
kindness—half the total population of the colony was killed in
battle or driven into the desert to perish. That is why the builders
of the Swakopmund-Otavi Railway in German Southwest Africa—the
longest two-foot-gauge line in the world—have to send to Europe for
their labour. Until Germany makes a radical change in her methods
of colonial administration, and until she learns that traders and
labourers are more essential to a colony's prosperity than pompous
and domineering officials, her colonial accounts will continue to
stand heaviest on the debit side of the ledger.

Successful colonial administration in Africa, as in all tropical
countries, is largely a matter of temperament, and the stolid sons of
the Fatherland seem, strangely enough, to be more quickly affected by
the demoralising climate and to be irritated more easily than either
the English or the French. The Englishman's sense of justice and the
Frenchman's sense of humour are their chief assets as successful
colonisers and rulers of alien peoples, but the German colonial
official, who is generally serious by nature and almost always
domineering as the result of his training, possesses neither of these
invaluable attributes and is heavily handicapped in consequence. It
is no easy task with which he is confronted, remember. The loneliness
and the privations of the white man's life, and the debility that
comes from the heat and the rains and the fevers, when combined with
the strain of governing and educating an inconceivably lazy, stubborn,
stupid, and intractable people, make the job of an African official
one of the most trying in the world. The loneliness and the climate
seem to grip a German as they never do an Englishman, and he becomes
irritable and ugly and unreasonably annoyed by trifles, so that when
a native fails to get out of his way quickly enough, or to salute him
with the punctiliousness which he considers his due, he flies into a
rage and orders the man to be flogged. The native goes back to his
village with a bleeding back and hatred in his heart, and, as likely
as not, a bloody, costly, and troublesome native uprising ensues.
The African native is, after all, nothing but an overgrown and very
aggravating child, and his upbringing is a job for school-teachers
instead of drill sergeants, and the sooner the imperial government
appreciates that fact the better.

I went to German East Africa, which is the Kaiser's star colony,
expecting to be deeply impressed; I came away deeply disappointed. It
is only about fifty miles from Zanzibar across to Dar-es-Salam, the
capital of the colony, but the local steamer, which is the size of a
Hudson River tugboat and rolls horribly on the slightest provocation,
manages to use up the better part of a day in making the trip. Seen
from the steamer's deck, Dar-es-Salam presents one of the most
enchanting pictures that I know, and every one who goes ashore there
does so with high expectations. Imagine, if you can, a city of two
hundred thousand people, with the imposing, red-roofed schools and
churches and hospitals and barracks and municipal buildings of, say,
Düsseldorf, and the white-walled, broad-verandaed, bungalow dwellings
of southern California; with concrete wharves and cement sidewalks and
beautifully macadamised roads and many public parks: imagine all this,
I say, dropped down in the midst of a palm grove on one of the hottest
and unhealthiest coasts in the world—that is Dar-es-Salam. The hotel
is, barring the one at Kandy in Ceylon and another at Ancon in the
Canal Zone, the best and most beautiful tropical hostelry I have ever
seen, but, as it is owned and run by the government, for the benefit
of its officials, its manager, a blond, florid-faced, pompadoured
Prussian, was as independent as a hotel clerk in a city where a
presidential convention is going on. Just as in the other German
colonies, I found East Africa to be suffering from a severe attack
of militarism. I saw more sentries and patrols and guards during my
four days' stay in Dar-es-Salam than I did in Constantinople during
the Turkish Revolution. I was lulled to sleep by regimental bugles
and I was awakened by them again at daybreak, and I never set foot
out of doors without meeting a column of native soldiery, their black
faces peering out stolidly from beneath the sun-aprons, their spindle
shanks encased in spiral puttees, their feet rising and falling in the
senseless “parade step” in time to the monotonous “_rechts! links!
rechts! links!_” of the German sergeant. But what struck me most
forcibly about Dar-es-Salam was that it appeared to have no business.
Apparently the soldiers had frightened it away. The harbours of
Mombasa and Zanzibar and Beira and Lourenço Marques are alive with
steamers taking on or discharging cargo (and quite two out of three of
them fly the German flag), and their streets are lined with offices
and warehouses and “factories” (over the doors of many of which are
signs bearing German names), and their wharves are piled high with
bales of merchandise going to or coming from the four corners of the
earth; but in the harbour of Dar-es-Salam, as in all the other German
harbours I visited, the only vessels are white German gun-boats or
rusty German tramps; its streets are lined with government offices
instead of business offices; on its wharves are a few puncheons of
palm-oil, or other products of the bush, and nothing more.

[Illustration: Warundi warriors. German East Africa.

Illustration: Native infantry. German East Africa. A few years ago
these men were just such savages as those shown above.

THE HAND OF THE WAR LORD IN GERMAN AFRICA.]

However much the administration of the German colonies may be open
to criticism, and however slow they may have been in commercial
development, I have nothing but praise and admiration for the
accomplishments of their railway-builders. From Dar-es-Salam I
travelled inland by railway motor-car nearly to Kilamatinde, a
distance of three hundred and seventy miles, through one of the most
savage regions in Africa, over one of the best graded and ballasted
roadbeds I have ever seen. The line is now being pushed forward from
Kilamatinde toward Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, which it will reach,
so the chief engineer assured me, by the summer of 1914. From Ujiji,
which, by the way, is the place where Stanley discovered Livingstone,
a steamer service will be inaugurated to Albertville, on the Belgian
shore of the lake, whence a line is under construction to the
navigable waters of the Lualaba, which is one of the chief tributaries
of the Congo; while another line of steamers will ply between Ujiji
and Kituta, in northeastern Rhodesia, which point the British
Cape-to-Cairo system is approaching. By the close of 1914, in all
probability therefore, the traveller who lands at Dar-es-Salam will
be able to travel by train, with the passage across Lake Tanganyika
as the only interruption, to the Cape of Good Hope, or by train and
river steamer to the mouth of the Congo, and in perfect comfort and
safety all the way. As Walfish Bay, the only harbour in Southwest
Africa worthy of the name, belongs to England, the Germans, finding
themselves unable to buy it and appreciating that a harbourless colony
is all but worthless, promptly set to work and built themselves
artificial harbours at Swakopmund and at Lüderitz Bay, though at
appalling cost. That Germany is exceedingly anxious to acquire
Walfish Bay, and that she stands ready to make almost any reasonable
concession to obtain it, there is little doubt. The mere fact that
Walfish Bay is owned by England is a source of constant aggravation
to the Germans, for it lies squarely in the middle of their Southwest
African coast-line, its roomy roadstead and deep anchorage being in
sharp contrast to the German port of Lüderitz Bay, which is being
rapidly sanded up, and that of Swakopmund, a harbour on which the
Berlin Government has already thrown away several millions of marks.
Lüderitz Bay is already connected with the inland town of Keetmanshoop
by three hundred and fifty miles of narrow-gauge line, and plans are
now under consideration for pushing this southeastward so as to link
up with the South African system near Kimberley, while from Swakopmund
another iron highway, four hundred miles long, gives access to the
Otavi copper-mining country and will doubtless be extended, in the not
far-distant future, to the Rhodesian border, tapping the main line of
the Cape-to-Cairo system in the neighbourhood of the Victoria Falls.

[Illustration: Mr. and Mrs. Powell travelling by railway motor-car in
German Africa.

Illustration: A way-station on the line of the German East African
Railway.

RAILROADING THROUGH A JUNGLE.]

I have laid considerable stress upon the subject of railways,
because it seems to me that in them lies the chief hope of the German
colonies, for wherever the railway goes there goes civilisation.
Throughout the vast and potentially rich regions thus being opened
up by the locomotive the imperial government is pouring out money
unstintingly in the construction of roads, bridges, and reservoirs,
the sinking of artesian wells, the establishment of telegraph
lines and postal routes, the erection of schools and hospitals, in
furnishing trees to the planters and machinery and live-stock to the
farmers, and in assisting immigration. So, if keeping everlastingly at
it brings success, I cannot but feel that the day will come when these
officers and officials, these soldiers and settlers, these traders and
tribesmen, will find their places and play their parts in the Kaiser's
imperial scheme of a new and greater Germany over the sea.




CHAPTER VIII

“ALL ABOARD FOR CAPE TOWN!”


In Bulawayo, which is in Matabeleland, stands one of the most
significant and impressive statues in the world. From the middle of
that dusty, sun-baked thoroughfare known as Main Street rises the
bronze image of a bulky, thick-set, shabbily clad man, his hands
clasped behind him, his feet planted firmly apart, as he stares in
profound meditation northward over Africa. Cecil John Rhodes was
the dreamer's name, and in his vision he saw twin lines of steel
stretching from the Cape of Good Hope straight away to the shores of
the Mediterranean; a railway, to use his own words, “cutting Africa
through the centre and picking up trade all the way.”

If ever a man was a strange blending of dreamer and materialist, of
utopian and buccaneer, of Clive and Hastings with Hawkins and Drake,
it was Cecil Rhodes. In other words, he dreamed great dreams and let
no scruples stand in the way of their fulfilment. Having trekked over
nearly the whole of that vast territory that stretches northward
from the Orange and the Vaal to the shores of Lake Tanganyika, his
imagination saw in this fertile, sparsely settled country virgin soil
for the building up of a new and greater Britain. The predominance
of the British in Egypt and in South Africa, and the fact that the
territory under British control stretched with but a single break
from the mouths of the Nile to Table Bay, gave rise in the great
empire-builder's mind to the project of a trunk-line railway “from
the Cape to Cairo,” and under the British flag all the way. Though
Rhodes's dream of an “All Red” railway was rudely shattered by the
Convention of 1889, which allowed Germany to stretch a barrier across
the continent from the Indian Ocean to the Congo State, he never
abandoned the hope that a British zone would eventually be acquired
through German East Africa, either by treaty or purchase, even going
so far as to open negotiations with the Kaiser to this end on his own
initiative.

It was a picturesque vision, said the men to whom he confided his
dream, but impractical and impossible, for in those days the line
from Alexandria to Assuan and another from Cape Town to Kimberley
practically comprised the railway system of the continent, and five
thousand miles of unmapped forest, desert, and jungle, filled with
hostile natives, savage beasts, and deadly fevers, lay between. But
the man who had added to the British Empire a territory greater
than France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy combined; who had
organised the corporation controlling the South African diamond
fields; who had put down a formidable native uprising by going unarmed
and unaccompanied into the rebel camp; and who was responsible, more
than any other person, for the Boer War, was not of the stamp which is
daunted by either pessimistic predictions or obvious obstacles.

It was a slow and disheartening business at first, this building of
a railway with a soul-inspiring name. The discovery of the diamond
fields had already brought the line up to Kimberley; the finding
of gold carried it northward again to the Rand; the opening up of
Rhodesia led the iron highway on to Bulawayo, and there it stopped,
apparently for good. But Rhodes was undiscouraged. He felt that to
push the railway northward from Bulawayo to the southern shores of
Lake Tanganyika was an obvious and necessary enterprise—the actual
proof, as it were, of the British occupation. But the Boer War was
scarcely over, the national purse was drained almost dry, and even
the most optimistic financiers shrank from the enormous expense and
problematical success of building a railway into the heart of a savage
and unknown country.

Finally Rhodes turned to the imperial government for assistance
in this imperial enterprise, for the man who had added Zululand,
Bechuanaland, Matabeleland, Mashonaland, Barotseland, and Nyasaland
to the empire felt that the empire owed him something in return. He
first laid his scheme before Lord Salisbury, then prime minister, who
said that nothing could be done until he had a closer estimate of
the expense. Returning to Central Africa, Rhodes had a flying survey
of the route made in double-quick time, and with the figures in his
pocket hastened back to London. This time the premier sent him to see
Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, the chancellor of the exchequer. Hicks-Beach,
who was notorious for his parsimony in the expenditure of national
funds, was frigid and discouraging, but finally relaxed enough to say:
“Get a proper survey made of your proposed railway, with estimates
drawn up by responsible engineers, and if the figure is not too
unreasonable we will see what can be done.” Fortified with this shred
of hope, Rhodes again betook himself to the country north of the
Zambezi, and, after months of work, hardship, and privation, facing
death from native spears, poisonous snakes, and the sleeping-sickness,
his men weakened by malaria and his animals killed by the dreaded
tsetse-fly, he returned to England and presented his revised surveys
and estimates to the chancellor of the exchequer. That immaculately
clad statesman negligently twirled his eye-glass on its string as he
regarded with obvious disfavour the fever-sunken cheeks and unkempt
appearance of the pioneer. “Really, Mr. Rhodes,” he remarked coldly,
“I fear it is quite out of the question for her Majesty's government
to lend your scheme its countenance or assistance.” It is a pleasingly
human touch that as the indignant empire-builder went out of the
minister's room he slammed the door so that the pictures rattled on
the wall.

After dinner that night Rhodes strolled over to see a friend of
Kimberley days, a Hebrew financier named Alfred Beit, in whom he found
a sympathetic listener. As Rhodes took his hat to go, Beit casually
remarked, “Look here, Rhodes, you'll want a start. Four and a half
million pounds is a big sum to raise. We'll do half a million of it,
Wernher [his partner] and I.” That meant success. Though ministers of
the Crown turned a cold shoulder to the great imperialist who came to
them with a great imperial enterprise, help came from two German Jews
who had become naturalised Englishmen. The next day the City brought
the total up to a million and a half, and within little more than a
fortnight the entire four and a half millions were subscribed, the
three names, Rhodes, Beit, and Wernher, being accepted by the man in
the street as sufficient guarantee of success. It was in this fashion
that Cecil Rhodes raised the money for another great stride in his
railway march northward.

By 1904 the road had progressed as far as the Victoria Falls of
the Zambezi, where it crosses the river on a wonderful steel-arch
bridge—the highest in the world—its span, looking for all the world
like a frosted cobweb, rising four hundred and twenty feet above the
angry waters. “I want the bridge to cross the river so close to the
falls,” directed Rhodes, “that the travellers will have the spray in
their faces.” “That is impossible,” objected the engineers. “What you
ask cannot be done.” “Then I will find some one who can do it,” said
Rhodes—and he did. The bridge was built where he wanted it, and as
the Zambezi Express rolls out above the torrent the passengers have
to close the windows to keep from being drenched with spray. By 1906
the rail-head had been pushed forward to Broken Hill, a mining centre
in northern Rhodesia; three years later found it at Bwana M'kubwa, on
the Congo border. Here the task of construction was taken up by the
Katanga Railway Company, and in February, 1911, freight and passenger
trains were in operation straight through to Elisabethville, in the
heart of the Belgian Congo, two thousand three hundred and sixteen
miles north of Cape Town and only two hundred and eighty miles from
the southern end of Lake Tanganyika.

As you sit on the observation platform of your electric-lighted
sleeping-car, anywhere along that section of the “Cape-to-Cairo”
between Cape Town and the Zambezi, you rub your eyes incredulously
as you watch the rolling, verdure-clad plains stretching away to the
foot-hills of distant ranges, and note the entire absence of those
dense forests and steaming jungles which have always been associated,
in the minds of most of us, with Central Africa. The more you see of
this open, homely, rather monotonous country the harder it becomes
for you to convince yourself that you are really in the heart of that
mysterious, storied Dark Continent and not back in America again.

And the illusion is completed by the people, for the only natives you
see are careless, happy, decently clad darkies who might have come
straight from the levees of Vicksburg or New Orleans, while on every
station platform are groups of fine, bronze-faced, up-standing fellows
in corded riding-breeches and brown boots, their flannel shirts open
at the neck, their broad-brimmed hats cocked rakishly—just such types,
indeed, as were common beyond the Mississippi twenty years ago, before
store clothes and the motor-car had spoiled the picturesqueness of our
own frontier.

North of the Zambezi it is a different story, however, for there it is
frontier still, with many of a frontier's drawbacks, for the prices
of necessities are exorbitant and of luxuries fantastic; skilled
workmen can command almost any wages they may ask, and common labour
is both scarce and poor. The miner, the scientifically trained farmer,
and the skilled workman have rich opportunities in this quarter of
Africa, however, for the mineral wealth is amazing, much of the soil
is excellent, and civilisation is advancing over a great area with
three-league boots.

For excitement, variety, and picturesqueness I doubt if the journey
through Barotseland and the Katanga district of the Congo can be
equalled on any railway in the world. It is true that the Uganda
Railway—which, by the way, does not touch Uganda at all—has been
better advertised, but in quantity of game and facilities for hunting
it the territory through which it runs is no whit superior to that
traversed by the “Cape-to-Cairo.” Stroll a mile up or down the Zambezi
from the railway bridge and you can see hippos as easily as you can
at the Zoo in Central Park; in Northwest Rhodesia herds of bush-buck,
zebras, and ostriches scamper away at sight of the train; and as you
lie in your sleeping-berth at night, while the train halts on lonely
sidings, you can hear the roar of lions and see the gleam of the
camp-fires by means of which the railway employees keep them away.
On one occasion, when our train was lying on a siding south of the
Zambezi, the conductor of the dining-car suddenly exclaimed, “Look
there, gentlemen—look over there!” His excitement was justified, for
from over a screen of bushes, scarcely a biscuit's throw away, a herd
of five giraffes craned their preposterous necks and peered at us
curiously. Once, when I was travelling through Northwest Rhodesia,
our engine struck a bull elephant which had decided to contest the
right of way. As the train was running at full speed, both engine and
elephant went off the track. Returning that way some days later, we
noted that the local station-master had scraped the gargantuan skull
to the bone, filled it with earth, and set it on the station platform
as a jardinière to grow geraniums in. He was an ingenious fellow.

From the Cairo end, meanwhile, the northern section of the great
transcontinental system was being pushed steadily, if slowly,
southward. The difficulties of river transportation experienced by
the two Sudanese expeditions had proved conclusively that if the
Sudan was ever to be opened up to European exploitation it must be by
rail rather than by river. It was the Khalifa who was unconsciously
responsible for the rapid completion of much of the Sudanese section
of the “Cape-to-Cairo,” for, in order to come to hand-grips with him,
Kitchener and his soldiers pushed the railway down the desert to
Khartoum at record speed, laying close on two miles of track between
each sunrise and sunset. There it halted for a number of years;
but after the British had done their work, and Khartoum had been
transformed from a town of blood, lust, and fanaticism into a city
with broad, shaded streets, along which stalks law and order in the
khaki tunic of a Sudanese policeman, the railway-building fever, which
affects some men as irresistibly as the _Wanderlust_ does others,
took hold of Those Who Have the Say, and the line was again pushed
southward, along the banks of the Blue Nile, to Sennar, one hundred
and fifty-eight miles south of Khartoum. With the completion, in 1910,
of several iron bridges, it was advanced to Kosti, a post on the White
Nile, with the northern end of Lake Tanganyika some twelve hundred
miles away.

That a few more years will see the northern section extending
southward, via Gondokoro, to Lake Victoria Nyanza, and the southern
section northward to Lake Tanganyika, there is little doubt. Indeed,
the plans are drawn, the routes mapped, the levels run, and on the
Katanga-Tanganyika section the railway-builders are even now at work.
But when the Victoria Nyanza has been reached by the one section,
and Tanganyika by the other, there will come a halt, for between the
two rail-heads there will still be six hundred miles of intervening
territory—and that territory is German.

Unless, therefore, England can obtain, by treaty or purchase, a
railway zone across German East Africa, such as we have obtained
for the Canal across the Isthmus of Panama, it looks very much
as though there would never be an all-British railway from the
Mediterranean to the Cape, and as though the life dream of Cecil
John Rhodes would vanish into thin air. There are several reasons
why Germany is not inclined to give England the much-desired right
of way. First, because between the two nations a bitter rivalry,
political and commercial, exists, and the Germans feel that already
far too much of the continent is under the shadow of the Union Jack;
secondly, because the Germans are, as I have already mentioned in the
preceding chapter, themselves building a railway from Dar-es-Salam,
the capital of their east-coast colony, to Lake Tanganyika, and by
means of this line they expect to divert to their own ports the trade
of all that portion of inner Africa lying between Rhodesia and the
Sudan; thirdly, because it is unlikely in the extreme that England
would give Germany such a _quid pro quo_ as she would demand—as,
for example, the cession of Walfish Bay, the British port in German
Southwest Africa, or of the British protectorate of Zanzibar, or of
both; fourthly, because the Germans now have the British in just such
a predicament regarding the completion of the “Cape-to-Cairo” railway
as the British have the Germans regarding the completion of the Bagdad
railway. In other words, the only condition on which either country
will permit its rival's railway to be built through its territory is
internationalisation.

That there will ever be an all-British railway from the Mediterranean
to the Cape seems to me exceedingly doubtful, for the political,
territorial, and financial obstacles are many, and not easily
to be disposed of; but that the not-far-distant future will see
the completion, under international auspices, of this great
transcontinental trunk line seems to me to be as certain as that the
locomotive sparks fly upward or that the hoar-frost on the rails
disappears before the sun. Rhodes always said that the success of such
a system must largely depend on the junctions to the east and west
coasts, which would affect such a line very much as tributary streams
affect a river. A number of such feeders are already in operation and
others are rapidly building. Beginning at the north, the main line
of the “Cape-to-Cairo” is tapped at Cairo by the railways from Port
Said and Suez; and at Atbara Junction, in the Sudan, a constantly
increasing stream of traffic flows in over the line from Port Sudan,
a harbour recently built to order on the Red Sea. The misnamed Uganda
Railway is in regular operation between Mombasa on the Indian Ocean
and Port Florence on the Victoria Nyanza, whence there is a steamer
service to Entebbe in Uganda. From Dar-es-Salam, the capital of German
East Africa, the Germans are rushing a railway through to Ujiji, on
the shores of Lake Tanganyika, the engineer-in-chief assuring me that
it would be completed and in operation by the summer of 1914. From
Beira, in Portuguese East Africa, the Beira, Mashonaland, and Rhodesia
Railway carries an enormous stream of traffic inland to its junction
with the main line at Bulawayo. Still farther south a line from the
Portuguese possession of Delagoa Bay connects with the main system
at Mafeking, on the borders of Bechuanaland, while Kimberley is the
junction for a line from Durban, in Natal, and De Aar for feeders from
East London and Port Elizabeth, in Cape of Good Hope.

From Swakopmund, on the other side of the continent, a railway has
already been pushed nearly five hundred miles into the interior
of German Southwest Africa which will eventually link up with the
“Cape-to-Cairo” in the vicinity of the Victoria Falls, running through
German territory practically all the way. Still another line is being
built inland from Lobito Bay in Angola (Portuguese West Africa) to
join the transcontinental system near the Congo border, nearly half
of its total length of twelve hundred miles being completed. It is
estimated that by means of this line the journey between England and
the cities of the Rand will be shortened by at least six days. It
will be seen, therefore, that the “Cape-to-Cairo” system will have
eleven great feeders, eight of which are already completed and in
operation, while all of the remaining four will be carrying freight
and passengers before the close of 1914.

When the last rail of the “Cape-to-Cairo” is laid, and the last spike
driven, its builders may say, without fear of contradiction, “In
all the world no road like this.” And in the nature of things it is
impossible that there can ever be its like again, for there will be
no more continents to open up, no more frontiers to conquer. It will
start on the sandy shores of the Mediterranean and end under the
shadow of Table Mountain. In between, it will pass through jungle,
swamp, and desert; it will zigzag across plains where elephants play
by day and lions roar by night; it will corkscrew up the slopes of
snow-capped mountains, meander through the cultivated patches of
strange inland tribes, stride long-legged athwart treacherous,
pestilential swamps, plough through the darkness of primeval forests,
and stretch its length across the rolling, wind-swept veldt, until it
finally ends in the great antipodean metropolis on the edge of the
Southern Ocean. On its way it traverses nearly seventy degrees of
latitude, samples every climate, touches every degree of temperature,
experiences every extreme. At Gondokoro, in the swamp-lands of
the Sudd, the red-fezzed engine-driver will lean gasping from his
blistered cab; at Kimberley, in the highlands of the Rand, he
will stamp with numbed feet and blow with chattering teeth on his
half-frozen fingers.

The traveller who climbs into the Cape-to-Cairo Limited at the Quay
Station in Alexandria, in response to the conductor's cry of “All
aboard! All aboard for Cape Town!” can lean from the window of his
compartment as the train approaches Cairo and see the misty outlines
of the Pyramids, those mysterious monuments of antiquity which were
hoary with age when London was a cluster of mud huts and Paris was
yet to be founded in the swamps beside the Seine; at Luxor he will
pass beneath the shadow of ruined Thebes, a city beside which Athens
and Rome are ludicrously modern; at Assuan he will catch a glimpse
of the greatest dam ever built by man—a mile and a quarter long and
built of masonry weighing a million tons—holding in check the waters
of the longest river in the world; at Khartoum, peering through
the blue-glass windows which protect the passengers' eyes from the
blinding sun glare, he can see the statue of Gordon, seated on his
bronze camel, peering northward across the desert in search of the
white helmets that came too late; at Entebbe his eyes will be dazzled
by the shimmering waters of the Victoria Nyanza, barring Lake Superior
the greatest of all fresh-water seas; at Ujiji he will see natives
in German uniforms drilling on the spot where Stanley discovered
Livingstone. He will hold his breath in awe as the train rolls out
over the Victoria Falls of the Zambezi, for there will lie below him
the mightiest cataract in the world—an unbroken sheet of falling,
roaring, smoking water, two and a half times the height and ten times
the width of the American Fall at Niagara; at Kimberley he will see
the great pits in the earth which supply the women of the world with
diamonds; in the outskirts of Johannesburg he will see the mountains
of ore from which comes one-third of the gold supply of the world. And
finally, when his train has at last come to a halt under the glass
roof of the Victoria Terminal in Cape Town, with close on six thousand
miles of track behind it, the traveller, if he has any imagination and
any appreciation in his soul, will make a little pilgrimage to that
spot on the slopes of Table Mountain known as “World's View,” where
another statue of that same bulky, thick-set, shabbily clad man, this
time guarded by many British lions, stares northward over Africa. He
will take his stand in front of that mighty memorial and, lifting
his hat, will say: “You, sir, were a great man, the greatest this
benighted continent has ever known, and if one day it is transformed
into a land of civilisation, of peace, and of prosperity, it will be
due, more than anything else, to the great iron highway, from the
Nile's mouth to the continent's end, which is the fulfilment of your
dream.”




CHAPTER IX

THE LAST STAND OF THE PIONEER


When the penniless younger son of the English society play is jilted
by the luxury-loving heroine, he invariably packs his portmanteau
and betakes himself to Rhodesia to make his fortune. Fifty years ago
he sought the golden fleece in California; thirty years ago he took
passage by P. & O. boat for the Australian diggings; ten years ago he
helped to swell the mad rush to the Yukon; to-day his journey's end
is the newest of the great, new nations—Rhodesia. He returns in the
fourth act, broad-hatted, bronzed, and boisterous, to announce that
he is the owner of a ten-thousand-acre farm, or a diamond field, or a
gold mine, or all of them, and that he has come home to find a girl
to share his farm-house on the Rhodesian veldt, where good cooking is
more essential in a wife than good clothes and a good complexion.

Now, beyond having a vague idea that Rhodesia is a frontier country
somewhere at the back of beyond, there is only about one in every
fifty of the audience who has any definite notion where or what it
really is. Picture, then, if you can, a territory about the size
of all the Atlantic States, from Florida to Maine, put together,
with the dry, dusty, sunny climate of southern California and the
fertile, rolling, well-watered, and well-wooded surface of Indiana;
picture such a country dropped down in the heart of equatorial
Africa—that is Rhodesia. It lies a little above and to the right of
that speckled yellow patch on the map of Africa which was labelled
in our school geographies the Kalahari Desert. Bearing the name
of the great empire-builder is the whole of that region which is
bounded on the north by the Congo and the sleeping-sickness, on the
east by Mozambique and the black-water fever, on the west by Angola
and the cocoa atrocities, and on the south by the Transvaal and the
discontented Dutch. It is watered by the Limpopo, which forms its
southernmost boundary; by the Zambezi, which separates Southern
Rhodesia from the northeast and northwest provinces; and by the
innumerable streams which unite to form the Congo.

When the railway which English _concessionaires_ are now pushing
inland from the coast of Angola to the Zambezi is completed, the front
door to Rhodesia will be Lobito Bay, thus bringing Bulawayo within
sixteen days of the Strand by boat and rail. At present, however, the
country must be entered through the cellar, which means Cape Town and
a railway journey of fourteen hundred miles; or by the side door at
Beira, a fever-stricken Portuguese town on the East Coast, which is
fortunate in being but a night's journey by rail from the Rhodesian
frontier and is, in consequence, the gateway through which British
jams, American harvesters, and German jack-knives are opening up inner
Africa to foreign exploitation.

The Rhodesia-bound traveller who escapes landing at Beira in a basket
is fortunate, for it has a poorly sheltered harbour and neither dock,
jetty, nor wharf, so that in the monsoon months, when the great
combers come roaring in from the Indian Ocean mountain-high, there is
about as much chance of getting the steam tender alongside the rolling
liner as there is of getting a frightened horse alongside a panting
automobile. If a dangerous sea is running, the disembarking passenger
is put into a cylindrical, elongated basket, a sort of enlarged
edition of those used for soiled towels in the lavatories of hotels; a
wheezing donkey-engine swings it up and outward and, if the man at the
lever calculates the roll of the ship correctly, drops it with a thud
on the deck of the tender plunging off-side.

Built on a stretch of sun-baked sand, between a miasmal jungle and the
sea, Beira is the hottest and unhealthiest place in all East Africa.
“It is one of the places that the Lord has overlooked,” remarked
a sallow-faced resident, as he took his hourly dose of quinine.
Even the paid-to-be-enthusiastic author of the steamship company's
glowing booklet hesitates at depicting this fever-haunted, sun-baked,
sand-suffocated seaport of Mozambique, contenting himself with the
noncommittal statement that “it is indescribable; it is just Beira.”
The town has but three attractions: a broad-verandaed hotel where
they charge you forty cents for a lemonade with no ice in it; a golf
course, laid out by a newly arrived Englishman, who died of sunstroke
the first day he played on it; and a trolley system which makes every
resident the owner of his own street-car. The heat in Beira being
too great to permit of walking—a shaded thermometer not infrequently
climbs to one hundred and twenty degrees; the streets being too deep
in sand for the use of vehicles; and the tsetse-fly killing off horses
in a few days, those European traders and officials who are condemned
to dwell in Beira get about in “trolleys” of their own. These
two-seated, hooded conveyances, which are a sort of cross between a
hand-car, a baby-carriage, and the wheeled chairs on the board walk at
Atlantic City, are pushed by half-naked and perspiring natives over
a track which extends from one end of the town to the other and with
sidings into every man's front yard. It struck me, however, that the
most interesting things in Beira were the corrugated-iron shanty and
the stretch of wooden platform which mark the terminus of the railway,
and from which, in answer to my anxious queries, I was assured that a
train departed twice weekly for Salisbury, the capital of Rhodesia. I
used to sit on the veranda of the hotel and stare across the stretch
of burning sand at that wretched station as longingly as the small boy
stares at the red numeral on the calendar which indicates the Fourth
of July.

A temperature of one hundred and eighteen degrees in my compartment of
the sleeping-car; miasma rising in cloud wreaths from the jungle; a
station platform, alive with slovenly Portuguese soldiers with faces
as yellow as their uniforms; helmeted, gaunt-cheeked traders and
officials, and cotton-clad Swahilis, comprised my last recollection
of Beira and the terrible East Coast. The next morning I awoke in my
compartment shivering, not from fever but from cold. Gone, as though
in a bad dream, were the glaring sands, the steaming jungle, and the
sallow, fever-racked men. Instead, my car window framed a picture of
rolling, grass-covered uplands, dotted here and there with herds of
grazing cattle and substantial, whitewashed farm-houses, while back
of all was the gray-blue of distant mountains. As I looked at the
transformed landscape incredulously, the train halted at a way-station
swarming with broad-hatted, flannel-shirted, sun-tanned men with
clean-cut Anglo-Saxon faces. A row of saddle-horses were tied to the
station fence, while their owners stamped up and down the platform
impatiently, awaiting the sorting of the infrequent mail from home; a
democrat wagon and a clumsy Cape cart were drawn up in the roadway;
and at a house close by a woman in a sunbonnet was feeding chickens.
“Where are we?” I inquired of the guard, as he passed through the
train. “We're just into Rhodesia now, sir,” said he, touching his
cap. “This is Umtali, in Mashonaland.” (Now, if I had asked that same
question of a brakeman on one of our own railways, he would probably
have answered, with the independence of his kind: “Can't you read
the sign on the station for yourself?”) “Surely there must be some
mistake,” I said to myself. “This cannot be Central Africa, for where
are the impenetrable jungles through which Livingstone cut his way,
the savage animals which Du Chaillu shot, and the naked savages with
whom Stanley alternately battled and bartered? This is not Africa;
this is our own West, with its men in corduroy and sombreros and its
women in gingham, with its open, rolling prairies and its air like
dry champagne.” Indeed, throughout my stay in Rhodesia I could not
rid myself of the impression that I was back in the American West
of thirty years ago, before the pioneer, the prospector, and the
cow-puncher had retreated before the advance of the railway, the
harvester, and the motor-car.

The story of the taking and making of Rhodesia forms one of the
most picturesque and thrilling chapters in the history of England's
colonial expansion. About the time that the nineteenth century had
reached its turning-point, a strange tale, passing by word of mouth
from native kraal to native kraal, came at last to the ears of a
Scotch worker in the mission field of Bechuanaland. It was a tale of a
waterfall somewhere in the jungles of the distant north; a waterfall
so mighty, declared the natives, that the spray from it looked like
a storm cloud on the horizon and the thunder of its waters could
be heard four days' trek away. So the missionary, wearied with the
tedium of proselyting amid a peaceful people and restless with the
curiosity of the born explorer, set out on a long and lonely march to
the northward, through a country which no white man's eyes had ever
seen. It took him three years to reach the falls for which he started,
but when at last he stood upon the brink of the canyon and looked down
upon the waters of the Zambezi as they hurtled over four hundred feet
of sheerest cliff, he was so awed by their majesty and their beauty
that he named them after Victoria, the young English queen. Before he
left the missionary-explorer carved his name on the trunk of a near-by
tree, where it can be seen to-day; the name is David Livingstone.

For a quarter of a century the regions adjacent to the Zambezi were
disturbed only by migratory bands of natives and marauding animals.
Then Stanley came with his mile-long caravan of porters, halting long
enough to explore and map the region, on his historic march from coast
to coast. In the middle eighties a young English prospector, trekking
through the country with a single wagon, found that for which he was
seeking—gold. Likewise he saw that its verdure-clad prairies would
support many cattle and that its virgin soil was adapted for many
kinds of crops; that it was, in short, a white man's country. Unarmed
and unaccompanied, he penetrated to the kraal of Lobenguela, the
chief of the warlike Matabele, who occupied the region, and induced
him to sign a treaty placing his country under British protection.
The price paid him was five hundred dollars a month and a thousand
antiquated rifles; cheap enough, surely, for a territory three times
the size of Texas and as rich in natural resources as California. A
year later the British South Africa Company, a corporation capitalised
at thirty million dollars, under a charter granted by the Imperial
Government, began the work of exploiting the concession; naming it,
properly enough, after Cecil John Rhodes, the lone prospector who,
with the vision of a prophet, had foreseen its possibilities and by
whose unaided efforts it had been obtained. Such was the first step in
Rhodes's policy of British expansion northward—a policy so successful
that in his own lifetime he saw the frontiers of British Africa pushed
from the Orange River to the Nile.

To hand over a colonial possession, its inhabitants and its resources,
to be administered and exploited by a private corporation, sounds like
a strange proceeding to American ears. Imagine turning the Philippines
over to the Standard Oil Company and giving that corporation
permission to appoint its own officials, make its own laws, assess
its own taxes, and maintain its own military force in those islands.
That, roughly speaking, was about what England did when she turned
Rhodesia over to the chartered company. It should be remembered,
however, that, beginning when the European nations were entering
upon an era of economic exploration of hitherto virgin territories,
these chartered companies have played a large part in the history of
colonisation in general and in the upbuilding of the British Empire
in particular, though in the great majority of cases it was trade,
not empire, at which they aimed. Warned, however, by the fashion in
which the East India Company and the Hudson's Bay Company abused their
power, the British Government keeps a jealous eye on the activities of
the Rhodesian _concessionaires_, their charter, while conferring broad
trading privileges and great administrative powers, differing from
earlier instruments in neither delegating sovereignty nor granting an
exclusive monopoly.

The Rhodesia protectorate is the result of the consolidation of four
great native kingdoms: Mashonaland in the southeast, Matabeleland in
the southwest, Barotseland in the northwest, and in the northeast a
portion of the now separately administered protectorate of Nyasaland.
Practically the whole country is an elevated veldt, or plateau,
ranging from three thousand five hundred to five thousand feet above
sea-level; studded with granite kopjes which in the south attain to
the dignity of a mountain chain; well watered by tributaries of the
Congo, the Zambezi, and the Limpopo; and covered with a luxuriant
vegetation. Like California, _Southern_ Rhodesia has a unique and
hospitable climate, free from the dangerous heats of an African summer
and from cold winds in winter. Though the climate of nearly all of
Southern Rhodesia is suitable for Europeans, much of the trans-Zambezi
provinces, especially along the river valleys and in the low-lying,
swampy regions near the great equatorial lakes, reeks with malaria,
while in certain other areas, now carefully delimited and guarded by
governmental regulation, the tsetse-fly commits terrible ravages among
cattle and horses and the sleeping-sickness among men. The climate as
a whole, however, is characterised by a rather remarkable equability
of temperature, especially when it is remembered that Rhodesia extends
from the borders of the temperate zone to within a few degrees of
the equator. At Salisbury, the capital, for example, the mean July
temperature is 57.5° and for January 70.5°, the extremes for the year
ranging from 34° to 93°. It is a significant fact, however, that the
glowing prospectuses of the chartered company touch but lightly on
the climatic conditions which prevail north of the Zambezi, a region
from which, it struck me, the European settler who does not possess
a system that is proof against every form of tropical fever, a head
that is proof against sunstroke, and a mind which is proof against
that oftentimes fatal form of homesickness which the army surgeons
call nostalgia, is much more likely to go home in a coffin than in a
_cabine de luxe_.

In mines of gold, of silver, and of diamonds Rhodesia is very rich;
agriculturally it is very fertile, for in addition to the native crops
of rice, tobacco, cotton, and india-rubber, the fruits, vegetables,
and cereals of Europe and America are profitably grown. The great
fields of maize, or “mealies,” as all South Africans call it, through
which my train frequently passed, constantly reminded me of scenes in
our own “corn belt”; but in the watch-towers which rise from every
corn-field, atop of which an armed Kaffir sits day and night to
protect the crops from the raids of wild pigs and baboons, Rhodesia
has a feature which she is welcome to consider exclusively her own.

Though Rhodesia is distinctly a frontier country, with many of a
frontier's defects, her towns—Salisbury, Bulawayo, Umtali, and the
rest—are not frontier towns as we knew them in Butte, Cheyenne,
Deadwood, and Carson City. There are saloons, of course, but they
are not of the “gin palace” variety, nor did it strike me that
intoxication was particularly common; certainly nothing like what
it used to be during the gold-rush days in Alaska or in our own
West. This may be due to the fantastic prices charged for liquor—a
whiskey-and-soda costs sixty cent—and then again it maybe due to
the fact that most of the settlers have brought their families with
them, so that, instead of spending their evenings leaning over green
tables or polished bars, they devote them to cricket, gardening, or
a six-weeks-old English paper. Though nearly every one goes armed,
the streets of the Rhodesian towns are as peaceable as Commonwealth
Avenue, in Boston, on a Sunday morning. Indeed, the commandant of
police in Bulawayo assured me that he had had only one shooting affray
during his term of office. In Rhodesia, should a man draw his gun as
the easiest means of settling a quarrel, his companions, instead of
responding by drawing theirs, would probably call a constable and have
him bound over to keep the peace. Even the rights of the natives are
rigidly safeguarded by law, an American settler in Umtali complaining
to me most bitterly that “it's more dangerous for a white man to kick
a nigger down here than it is for him to kill one in the States.” Now,
all this was rather disappointing for one who, like myself, was on the
lookout for the local colour and picturesqueness and whoop-her-up-boys
excitement which one naturally associates with life on a frontier;
but I might have expected just what I found, for wherever the flag
of England flies, whether over the gold-miners of the Yukon, the
ivory-traders of Uganda, or the settlers of Rhodesia, there will be
found the deep-seated respect of the Englishman for English order and
English law.

In my opinion the country club, more than any other single factor, has
contributed most to the making, socially and morally, of Rhodesia.
Though the American West is dotted with just such towns as Salisbury,
Bulawayo, Gwelo, and Umtali, with the same limitations, pitfalls,
and possibilities, the men's centre of interest, after the day's
work is over, is the saloon, the dance-hall, or the barber-shop
with a pool-room in the rear. They do things differently in central
Africa. In every Rhodesian town large enough to support one—and the
same is true of all Britain's colonial possessions—I found that a
“sports club” had been established on the edge of the town. Often
it was nothing but a ramshackle shed or cottage that had been given
a coat of paint and had a veranda added, but files of the English
newspapers and illustrated weeklies were to be found inside, while
from the tea tables on the veranda one overlooked half a dozen tennis
courts, a cricket ground, and a foot-ball field. It is here that
the settlers—men, women, and children—congregate toward evening,
to discuss the crop prospects, the local taxes, the latest gold
discoveries, and, above all else, the news contained in the weekly
mail from home. Why have not our own progressive prairie towns some
simple social system like this? It was in speaking of this very thing
that the mayor of Salisbury—himself an American-remarked: “In the
little, every-day things which make for successful colonisation of a
new country, you fellows in the States are twenty years behind us.”

Living is expensive in Rhodesia, the prices of necessaries usually
being high and of luxuries ofttimes fantastic. To counterbalance
this, however, wages are extraordinarily high. It is useless to
attempt to quote wages, for the farther up-country a man gets the
higher pay he can command, so I will content myself with the bare
statement that for the skilled workman, be he carpenter, blacksmith,
mason, or wheelwright, larger wages are to be earned than in any part
of the world that I know. The same is true of the man who has had
practical experience in agriculture or stock-raising, there being a
steady demand for men conversant with dairying, cattle-breeding, and
irrigation. Let me drive home and copper-rivet the fact, however,
that in Rhodesia, as in nearly all new countries, where there is a
considerable native population to draw upon, there is no place for the
unskilled labourer.

For the man with resource and a little capital there are many roads to
wealth in British Africa. I know of one, formerly a laundry employee
in Chicago, who landed in Rhodesia with limited capital but unlimited
confidence. Recognising that the country had arrived at that stage of
civilisation where the people were tired of wearing flannel shirts,
but could not afford to have white ones ruined by Kaffir washermen,
he started a chain of sanitary up-to-date laundries, and is to-day
one of the wealthy men of the colony. If you ever had to pay one
of his laundry bills you would understand why. Another American,
starting business as a hotel-keeper in Salisbury, soon perceived
that the people were ripe for some form of amusement other than that
provided by the cricket fields and saloons; so he built a string of
cinematograph and vaudeville theatres combined, and to-day, on the
very spot where Lobenguela's medicine-men performed their bloody
rites a dozen years ago, you can hear the whir of the moving-picture
machine and see on the canvas screen a military review at Aldershot
or a bathing scene at Asbury Park. Still another American whom I met
has increased the thickness of his wallet by supplying prospectors
and settlers with sectional houses which are easily portable and can
be erected in an hour. Taking the circular, conical-roofed hut of the
Matabele as his model, he evolved an affair of corrugated iron which
combines simplicity, portability, and practicability with a low price,
so that to-day, as you travel through Rhodesia, you will see these
American-made imitations of Kaffir huts dotting the veldt.

Though Rhodesia has a black population of one million six hundred
thousand, as against twenty thousand whites, there has thus far been
no such thing as race troubles or a colour question, due in large
measure, no doubt, to the firm and just supervision exercised by
the British resident commissioners. Arms, ammunition, and liquor
excepted, natives and Europeans are under the same conditions. Land
has been set apart for tribal settlements, the mineral rights being
reserved to the company, but, if the native occupation is disturbed,
new lands must immediately be assigned, all disputes being ultimately
referrible to the British high commissioner. Those natives living
near the towns are segregated in settlements of their own, a native
under no circumstances being permitted to remain within the town
limits after nightfall, or to enter them in the day-time without a
pass signed by the commandant of police. Though possessing many of the
temperamental characteristics of the American negro, and in particular
his aversion for manual work, the Rhodesian native is, on the whole,
honest and trustworthy, a well-disciplined and efficient force of
native constabulary having been recruited from the warlike Barotse and
Matabele.

[Illustration: MORE WORK FOR THE PIONEER.

In the heart of the jungle in Northeastern Rhodesia near the Congo
border. This is the sort of country through which portions of the
“Cape-to-Cairo” railway will pass.]

Highways of steel bisect Rhodesia in both directions. From Plumtree,
on the borders of Bechuanaland, the Rhodesian section of the
great Cape-to-Cairo system stretches straight across the country
to Bwana M'kubwa, on the Congo frontier, while another line, the
Rhodesia, Mashonaland, and Beira, links up, as its name indicates,
the transcontinental system with the East Coast. Though the
much-advertised Zambezi Express is scarcely the “veritable train de
luxe” which the railway folders call it, it is a comfortable enough
train nevertheless, with electric-lighted dining and sleeping cars,
the latter being fitted, as befits a dusty country, with baths. The
dining-car tariff is on a sliding scale; the farther up-country you
travel the higher the prices ascend. Between Cape Town and Mafeking
the charges for meals seemed to me exceedingly reasonable (fifty cents
for breakfast, sixty cents for luncheon, and seventy-five cents for
dinner); between Mafeking and Bulawayo they are only moderate; between
Bulawayo and the Zambezi they are high; and north of the Zambezi—when
you can get any food at all—the charges for it are exorbitant. When
the section to Lake Tanganyika is completed only a millionaire can
afford to enter the dining-car. It speaks volumes for the development
of British South Africa, however, that one can get into a sleeping-car
in Cape Town and get out of it again, six days later, on the navigable
head-waters of the Congo, covering the distance of nearly two thousand
five hundred miles at a total cost of eighty dollars—and much of it
through a country which has been opened to the white man scarcely a
dozen years.

Just as every visitor to the United States heads straight for
Niagara, so every visitor to South Africa purchases forthwith a
ticket to the Victoria Falls of the Zambezi, the mighty cataract in
the heart of Rhodesia which is the greatest natural wonder in the
Dark Continent and, perhaps, in the world. The natives call the falls
_Mosi-oa-tunya_, which means “Thundering Smoke,” and you appreciate
the name's significance when your train halts at daybreak at a wayside
station, sixty miles away, and you see above the tree-tops a cloud of
smoky vapour and hear a low humming like a million sewing-machines. It
is so utterly impossible for the eye, the mind, and the imagination to
grasp the size, grandeur, and beauty of the Victoria Falls that it
is futile to attempt to describe them. If you can picture an unbroken
sheet of water forty city blocks in width, or as long as from the
Grand Central Station, in New York, to Washington Square, hurtling
over a precipice twice as high as the Flatiron Building, you will have
the best idea that I can give you of what the Victoria Falls are like.
They are unique in that the level of the land above the falls is the
same as that below, the entire breadth of the second greatest river in
Africa falling precipitately into a deep and narrow chasm, from which
the only outlet is an opening in the rock less than one hundred yards
wide. From the Boiling Pot, as this seething caldron of waters is
called, the contents of the Zambezi rush with unbridled fury through a
deep and narrow gorge of basaltic cliffs, which, nowhere inferior to
the rapids at Niagara, extends with many zigzag windings for more than
forty miles. My first glimpse of the falls was in the early morning,
and the lovely, reeking splendour of the scene, as the great, placid
river, all unconscious of its fate, rolls out of the mysterious depths
of Africa, comes suddenly to the precipice's brink, and plunges in one
mighty torrent into the obscurity of the cavern below, the rolling
clouds of spray, the trembling earth, the sombre rain-forest on the
opposite bank, and a rainbow stealing over all, made a picture which
will remain sharp and clear in my memory as long as I live.

The Outer Lands are almost all exploited; the work of the pioneer and
the frontiersman is nearly finished, and in another decade or so we
shall see their like no more. Rhodesia is the last of the great new
countries open to colonisation under Anglo-Saxon ideals of government
and climatically suitable for the propagation of the Anglo-Saxon race.
Though the handful of hardy settlers who have already made it their
home speak with the burr of the shires instead of the drawl of the
plains; though they wear corded riding-breeches instead of leather
“chaps”; and stuff Cavendish into their pipes instead of rolling their
cigarettes from Bull Durham, they and the passing plainsmen of our own
West are, when all is said and done, brothers under their skins.

With the completion of the Cape-to-Cairo trunk line and its subsidiary
systems to either coast, with the exploitation of the mineral
deposits which constitute so much of Rhodesia's wealth, and with the
harnessing of the great falls and the utilisation of the limitless
power which will be obtainable from them, this virgin territory in the
heart of Africa bids fair to be to the home and fortune seekers of
to-morrow what the American West was to those of yesterday, and what
northwestern Canada is to those of to-day. A few years more and it
will be a developed and prosperous nation. To-day it is the last of
the world's frontiers, where the hardy and adventurous of our race are
still fighting the battles and solving the problems of civilisation.




CHAPTER X

THE COUNTRY OF BIG THINGS


The most significant thing I saw in South Africa was an old-fashioned
gabled, whitewashed house. The name of it is _Groote Schuur_, and it
stands in very beautiful grounds on the slopes of Table Mountain,
a mile or so at the back of Cape Town. That house was the home of
Cecil John Rhodes, who, more than any other man, was responsible
for the Boer War and for the resultant British predominance south
of the Congo, and in his will he directed that it should be used as
the official residence of the prime minister of that South African
confederation which his prophetic mind foresaw. The welding of the
Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State with the
British colonies of Natal and the Cape of Good Hope produced the great
antipodal commonwealth of which the empire-builder dreamed, but the
man who, as prime minister, dwells under _Groote Schuur's_ gabled
roof and directs the policies of the new nation is a member of that
Boer race which Rhodes hated and feared and whose political power he
firmly believed had been broken forever. Fortune never doubled in her
tracks more completely than when she made General Louis Botha, the
last leader of Boer troops in the field, the first prime minister of a
united South Africa.

Strange things have happened in South Africa in the dozen years that
have passed since the musketry crackled along the Modder and the
Tugela, for the country that the world believed had been won for
good and all by British arms is being slowly but surely rewon by
Boer astuteness. Already the bonds which hold the new Union of South
Africa to the British Empire have become very loose ones. The man
who, as prime minister, is the virtual ruler of the young nation, is
a far-sighted and sagacious Dutchman, while seven out of the eleven
portfolios in his cabinet are held by men of the same race. The Union
not only makes its own laws and fixes its own tariffs, but the leading
Dutch organ of the country recently went so far as to urge that, in
case Great Britain should become engaged in a European war, it would
be possible and might be proper for South Africa to declare its
neutrality and take no part in it. Not only is the white population
of the Union overwhelmingly Dutch, but in many parts of the country
English is becoming merely a subsidiary tongue, while it is not at all
unlikely, in view of the bill recently passed by the Parliament making
Dutch compulsory in the schools, that the language of the Netherlands
will eventually become the predominant tongue throughout all South
Africa. Most suggestive of all, perhaps, the Orange River Colony, upon
entering the Union, promptly reverted to its old name of the Orange
Free State, which it bore before the war with England. Indeed, it may
sadly perplex the historians of the future to decide who won the Boer
War.

If South Africa is to become a union in fact as well as in name its
people will have to face and solve the great national problems of
race and colour. Of these, the former are, if not the more important,
certainly the more pressing. Two of the four provinces of the Union,
remember, are British solely by right of conquest; a third is bound
by the closest ties of blood and tradition to the Dutch people; while
only one of the four is British in sentiment and population. Many
intelligent people with whom I talked, both in England and in Africa,
assured me that the formation of the Union was the first step toward
cutting the bonds which join South Africa to the mother country. While
most Englishmen scoff at any such suggestion, swaggeringly asserting
that they “have whipped the Dutch once and can do it again,” the
Dutch retort, on the other hand, that it took England, with all her
financial and military resources, four years, and cost her tens of
thousands of lives and millions of pounds, to conquer the two little
Boer republics, and that she would not have beaten them then if their
money had held out. Though there is certainly no love lost between the
English and the Boers, I think that the majority of the latter are
convinced that it is to their own best interests to be loyal to the
new government, in the direction of which they have, after all, the
greatest say.

The attitude which the British Government has adopted in its treatment
of the Boer population since the close of the war has been remarkable
for its generosity and far-sightedness. In all its colonial history
it has done few wiser things than the recognition of the military,
as well as the civic, ability of General Botha. Not only is this
sagacious Dutchman, who led the forces of the embattled Boers until
dispersed by the tremendously superior might of England, and then
inaugurated a guerilla warfare by which the conflict was prolonged for
two years with victories which will go down in history as notable,
now prime minister of the new nation, but, early in 1912, he was
appointed to the rank of general in that very army which he so long
and so valorously defied. This is, I believe, an almost unprecedented
instance of the wise and politic exercise of imperial authority in
the strengthening of imperial power and can hardly fail to result in
increasing the loyalty of South Africa's Boer population.

The men who planned and brought the Union into being have had to pick
their steps with care, and more than once their ingenuity has been
taxed to the utmost to avoid the outcropping of racial jealousies and
enmities. The white population of South Africa, you should understand,
consists of three classes: the Boers, which means simply “tillers of
the soil,” and which is the name applied by the South African Dutch
to themselves; the Colonials, or British immigrants, most of whom
have come out with the intention of returning to England as soon as
they have made their fortunes; and, lastly, the Africanders, men
whose fathers were British immigrants, but who were themselves born
and bred in South Africa and who have intermarried with the Boers
so often that it is almost impossible to draw the line between the
races. Given these three factions, therefore, with their different
customs, ideals, and aspirations, and it needs no saying that the
task confronting those who are responsible for the smooth working of
the governmental machinery is no easy one. The political jealousy
existing between Briton and Boer in South Africa to-day is comparable
only to that which existed between Northerners and Southerners during
reconstruction days. The racial antagonism which arose over the
location of the Federal capital, and which threatened at one time to
upset the whole scheme of federation, was only overcome by the novel
expedient of creating two capitals instead of one, Pretoria, the old
capital of the Transvaal, where Krüger held sway, being made the
residence of the Governor-General and the seat of the executive power,
while the Parliament sits in Cape Town.

The Union Parliament consists of a Senate having forty members—eight
of whom are appointed by the Governor-General, the other thirty-two
being elected, eight by each province—and a House of Assembly with 121
members chosen as follows: Cape of Good Hope 51, Natal 17, Transvaal
36, and Orange Free State 17. No voter is disqualified by race or
colour, but the members of Parliament must be English subjects of
European descent who have lived in the colony for at least five years.
Now, a very great deal, so far as the well-being of the native races
of South Africa are concerned, depends upon the interpretation that
is given to the words “European descent.” In Cuban society every
one who is not absolutely black is treated as white, whereas in the
United States every one who is suspected of having even a “touch of
the tar brush” is treated as black. Though the Federal constitution is
very far from giving the native races a standing equal to that of the
whites, intelligent government of the natives is promised by a clause
which provides that four of the Senate, out of a total of forty, shall
be appointed because of their special knowledge of the wants and
wishes of the coloured population.

If the racial problem is the most pressing, the colour problem is by
far the most serious question before the people of South Africa, for
the blacks not only outnumber the whites four to one, but there is the
ever-present danger that rebellion may spring up among them without
the slightest warning. Apart from all other considerations, the very
numbers of the natives in South Africa form a dangerous element in
the problem, for there are close on five million blacks south of the
Limpopo as against a million and a quarter Europeans. If, in our own
South, where the blacks are only half as numerous as the whites, there
exists a problem of which no satisfactory solution has been offered,
how much more serious is the state of affairs in a country where a
handful of white men—themselves split into two camps by racial and
political animosities—are face to face with a vast, warlike, and
constantly increasing native population! In fact, the colour problem
which has arisen would be strikingly similar to that in our Southern
States were it not that there is a vast difference in type and
temperament between the South African native and the Southern darky.
The native races are three in number: the Bushmen, the aborigines
of South Africa, a race of pygmy savages of a very low order of
intelligence, who are fast becoming extinct; the Hottentots, a people
considerably more advanced toward civilisation but rapidly decreasing
from epidemics; and the Kaffirs, as the various sections of the great
Zulu race are commonly known, a warlike, courageous, and handsome
people who, since the British Government ended their inter-tribal
wars, are rapidly multiplying, having increased fifteen per cent
in the last seven years. Although the Europeans in South Africa
universally regard the Kaffirs with contempt, it is not altogether
unmixed with fear, for a nation of fighting men, such as the Zulus,
who organised a great military power, enacted a strict code of laws,
and held the white man at bay for a quarter of a century, will not
always remain in a state of subjection, nor will they tamely submit to
being driven into the wilderness north of the Zambezi, a solution of
the colour problem which has frequently been proposed.

That the attitude of Great Britain toward the colour question in South
Africa is similar to that of the Northern States toward the same
problem in the South, while the attitude of the European settlers
is almost identical with that of the Southerners, is strikingly
illustrated by a case which recently occurred in South Africa, in
which a European jury found a native guilty of attempting to assault a
white woman, a crime as unknown under the old régime in South Africa
as it was in our own South before the Civil War. Though the judge
sentenced the man to death, the Governor-General promptly commuted
the sentence on the ground that the “fact of crime” had not been
established. Immediately a storm of protest and indignation arose
among the white population which swept the country from the Zambezi
to the Cape, the settlers asserting that if the decree of commutation
were to form a precedent, no white woman would be safe in South
Africa. The echoes of this controversy had not yet died away before
two other cases occurred which intensely aggravated the situation.
One was the case of a settler named Lewis, who shot a native for an
insult to his daughters, while the other was that of the Honourable
Galbraith Cole, a son of the Earl of Enniskillen, who killed a native
on the alleged charge of theft. Both men were tried by white juries
on charges of murder, and both were promptly acquitted, though Mr.
Cole, in spite of his acquittal, was deported from South Africa by the
government. As though to emphasise their colour prejudice, the lawyers
of the Union about this time took concerted action to prevent native
attorneys from practising among them. How, then, can the natives, who
form three fourths of the population of the new Union, and who are
far more children of the soil than the Europeans, be said to have
protection of their most elementary rights if they are to be debarred
from having men of their own colour and race to defend them, and if no
white jury can be trusted to do justice where a native is concerned?

The imperial government deserves the greatest credit, however, for
the steps it has taken to preserve his lands to the native. In the
native protectorates and reservations of Basutoland, Swaziland,
Bechuanaland, Griqualand, Tembuland, and Pondoland the government has
reserved for the exclusive use and benefit of the natives territories
considerably larger than the combined area of our three Pacific-coast
States. Though these territories are under the control of British
resident commissioners, the native chiefs are allowed to exercise
jurisdiction according to tribal laws and customs in all civil matters
between natives, special courts having been established to deal with
serious civil or criminal matters in which Europeans are concerned.
Though certain small areas of land in these rich territories are held
by whites, the bulk of the country is reserved for the exclusive use
and benefit of the natives, and it is not at all likely that any more
land will be alienated for purposes of settlement by Europeans. (Could
anything be in more striking contrast to our disgraceful treatment of
the Indian?) Though South Africa has much in common with Canada, and
with Australia, and with our own Southwest, it is, when all is said
and done, a black man's country ruled by the white man, and it is upon
the justice, liberality, and intelligence of this rule that the peace
and prosperity of the young nation must eventually depend.

Two great obstacles will always stand in the way of the white man
having an easy row to hoe in South Africa: the climate and the lack
of water. Though the climate of the uplands is pleasant and makes
men want to lead an outdoor life, I am not at all certain that it
tends to develop or maintain the keenness and energy characteristic
of dwellers in the north temperate zone. The climate of the coastal
regions is, moreover, distinctly bad, the sharply cold nights and the
misty, steaming days producing the coast fever, which is a combination
of rheumatism, influenza, dysentery, and malaria, and is very
debilitating indeed. The white man who intends to make his permanent
home in South Africa has, therefore, two alternatives: he can submit
to the exactions of the climate, take life easily, leave the black
bottle severely alone, and live a long but unprogressive life, or he
can exhaust his energies and undermine his health in fighting the
climate and die of old age at sixty. If the climate is not all that
is desirable for men, it is infinitely worse for animals, for every
disease known to the veterinarian abounds. Time and again the herds
of the country have been almost exterminated by the hoof-and-mouth
disease, or by the rinderpest, a highly contagious cattle distemper
which is probably identical with that “murrain” with which Moses
smote the herds of ancient Egypt and which helped to bring Pharaoh
to terms. In the low-lying regions along the East Coast, and in the
country north of the Limpopo it is necessary to keep horses shut up
every night until the poisonous mists and dew have disappeared before
the sun lest they contract the “blue-tongue,” a disease characterised
by a swollen, purplish-hued tongue which kills them in a few hours
by choking; while in certain other districts, especially in the
vicinity of the Zambezi and of the Portuguese territories, the deadly
tsetse-fly makes it impossible to keep domestic animals at all.

The other great obstacle to the prosperity of South Africa is the
lack of water, for _less than one-tenth_ of the country is suitable
for raising any kind of a crop without water being led onto it—and
irrigation by private enterprise is out of the question, as even the
indomitable Rhodes was forced to admit. The government is fully alive
to the crying need for water, however, and a scheme for a national
system of irrigation is filling a large part of the Ministry of
Agriculture's programme. If carried out, this scheme will enormously
enlarge the area of tillage, for some of the regions now hopelessly
arid, such as the Karroo, have a soil of amazing fertility and need
only water to make them produce luxuriant crops. Were the rains of the
wet season conserved by means of the great tanks so common in India,
or were artesian wells sunk like those which have transformed the
desert regions of Algeria and Arizona, the vast stretch of the Karroo,
instead of being yellow with sand, might be yellow with waving corn.

Though agriculture is, and probably always will be, the least
important of the country's great natural sources of wealth, the
development of rural industries is, thanks to governmental assistance,
steadily progressing. Roads and bridges are being built, experimental
farms organised on a large scale, the services of scientific experts
engaged, blooded live-stock imported, agricultural banks established,
and literature dealing with agricultural problems is being distributed
broadcast over the country. The exports of fruit are steadily
increasing; sugar is being grown on the hot lands of Natal and might
be grown all the way to the Zambezi; tea has lately been introduced
in the coastal regions and would probably also flourish in the north;
the tobacco of the Transvaal is as good a pipe tobacco as any grown,
and those who have become accustomed to it will use no other; with
the exception of the olive, which does not thrive, and of the vine,
which succeeds only in a limited area around Cape Town, nearly all
of the products of the temperate zone and of subtropical regions can
be grown successfully. Though South Africa unquestionably presents
many promising openings in farming, in fruit-growing, and in truck
gardening, it is folly for a man to attempt any one of them unless he
possesses practical experience, a modest capital, and a willingness
to work hard and put up with many inconveniences, for in no other
English-speaking country are the necessities of life so dear and so
poor in quality, nowhere is labour so unsatisfactory, and nowhere is
lack of comfort so general.

South Africa's chief source of wealth is, and always will be, its
minerals. It was, strangely enough, the latest source to become
known, for nobody suspected it until, in 1867, a Boer hunter, his eye
caught by a sparkle among the pebbles on the Orange River, picked up
the first diamond. The diamonds found in that region since then have
amounted in value to nearly a billion dollars. Fifteen years after
the great diamond finds which sent the adventurers and fortune-seekers
of the world thronging to South Africa, came the still greater gold
discoveries on the Witwatersrand, or “The Rand,” as the reef of
gold-bearing quartz in the Transvaal is commonly called. The total
value of the gold production of the Rand for the twenty-five years
ending in June, 1910, was nearly one and a half billion dollars. But
though the Rand produces more gold than America and Australia put
together; though Kimberley has a virtual monopoly of the world's
supply of diamonds; though seams of silver, iron, coal, copper, and
tin are only waiting for capital and skill to unlock their treasures,
South Africa is, in the midst of this stupendous wealth, poor, for she
is as dependent on foreign sources for her food supply as England. In
other words, a region as large as all the States west of the Rocky
Mountains, in which flourish nearly all the products of every zone
from the Equator to the Pole, is unable to supply the wants of a white
population which is less than that of Connecticut. In California, on
the other hand, which is strikingly similar to South Africa in many
respects, the cultivation of the land kept pace with the production
of gold and eventually outstripped it. Until the mining industry of
South Africa is likewise put upon a solid agricultural foundation, the
country can never hope to be self-supporting.

In many respects Johannesburg, the “golden city,” is the most
interesting place I have ever seen. In 1886 it was nothing but a
collection of miserable shanties. To-day “Joburg,” as it is commonly
called, is a city of a quarter of a million people, with asphalted
streets, imposing office buildings, one of the best street-railway
systems that I know, the finest hotel south of the Equator, and one
of the most beautiful country clubs in the world. It is a city of
contrasts, however, for you can stand under the _porte-cochère_ of
the palatial Carlton Hotel and hear the click of roulette balls,
the raucous scrape of fiddles, and the shouts of drunken miners
issuing from a row of gambling-hells, dance-halls, and gin palaces
still housed in one-story buildings of corrugated iron; a beplumed
and bepainted Zulu will pull you in a 'rickshaw, over pavements as
smooth and clean as those of Fifth Avenue, to a theatre where you
will have the privilege of paying Metropolitan Opera House prices to
witness much the same sort of a performance that you would find in a
Bowery music-hall; in the Rand Club you can see bronzed and booted
prospectors, fresh from the mining districts of Rhodesia or the
Congo, leaning over the bar, cheek-by-jowl with sleek, immaculately
groomed financiers from London and Berlin and New York. Johannesburg
is a spendthrift city, a place of easy-come and easy-go, for the
mine-workers are paid big wages, the mine-managers receive big
salaries, and the mine-owners make big profits, and they all spend
their money as readily as they make it. The English miner averages
five dollars a day, which he spends between Saturday night and Monday
morning in a drunken spree, while a native labourer will save enough
in a few months to keep him in idleness and his conception of comfort
for the rest of his life.

There is pleasant society in Johannesburg and much hospitality to a
stranger. I took nearly a score of letters of introduction with me to
the Rand, but one would have done as well, for you present one letter,
and at the dinner which the man to whom it is addressed promptly gives
for you at the Rand Club or at the Carlton you will meet several of
the other people to whom you bear introductions. Through their club
life and their business relations the English and Americans in South
Africa are linked together in acquaintance like rings in a shirt of
chain-mail, so that if a man in Bulawayo or Kimberley or Johannesburg
gets to living beyond his income, or loses heavily at cards, or pays
undue attention to another man's wife, they will be discussing his
affairs in the club bars or on the hotel verandas of Cape Town and
Durban within a fortnight. I found that nearly all of the mines on
the Rand are managed by Americans, and that the mine-owners, who are
nearly all English or German, preferred them to any other nationality,
which struck me as being very complimentary to the administrative
and mechanical abilities of our people. One of these American
mine-managers drove forty miles in his motor-car so as to shake hands
with me, merely because he had learned in a roundabout way that I
came from the same part of New York State as himself, while another
fellow-countryman, who had made a great fortune during the Boer War
by contracting to wash the clothes of the British army, and received
war-time prices for his work, kidnapped me from the hotel where I was
staying, and landed me, baggage and all, in his home, and actually
felt affronted when I tried to leave after a week.

Few places could be more unlike Johannesburg than Pretoria, the new
capital of the Union, only thirty miles away. It is as different
from the “golden city” as sleepy Bruges is from bustling Antwerp; as
Tarrytown, New York, is from Paterson, New Jersey. At first sight I
was surprised to find so English a town, but after I had strolled
in the shade of the wooden arcades formed by the broad verandas of
the shops I decided that the atmosphere of the city was Indian; the
rows of mud-bespattered saddle-horses tied to hitching-posts along
the main streets and the rural produce being sold from wagons in the
central market-place recalled our own West; but the substantial,
white-plastered houses, with their old-fashioned _stoeps_, their
red-brick sidewalks, and their prim and formal gardens, finally
convinced me that the town was, after all, Dutch. Every visitor to
Pretoria goes to see Krüger's house, the low, whitewashed dwelling
with the white lions on the _stoep_, where the stubborn old President
used to sit, smoking his long pipe and drinking his black coffee and
giving parental advice to his people. Across the way is the old Dutch
church where he used to hold forth on Sundays, with the gold hands
still missing from the clock-face on its steeple, for in the last days
of the South African Republic they were melted down and went to swell
the slender war-chest of the Boer army. In the cemetery hard by the
crafty, indomitable old man lies buried, while the hated flag against
which he fought so long flies over the capital where he collected his
guns and hatched his schemes of conquest, and within sight of his
black-marble tomb there are rising in brick and stone the great new
buildings which mark Pretoria as the capital of a united South Africa.

Thirty miles northward across the veldt from Pretoria is the great
hole in the ground known as the Premier Diamond Mine, the newest and
potentially the richest of the South African diamond fields. Here, in
January, 1905, the surface manager, a Scotchman named McHardy, while
strolling through the pit during the noon hour, saw the sparkle of
what he at first took to be a broken bottle. Prying it loose with
his stick from the surrounding rubble, he found it to be a diamond
as large as a good-sized orange. This remarkable stone, which is
the largest diamond heretofore found, has since become known to the
world as the Great Cullinan, being named after Sir Thomas Cullinan,
one of the owners of the mine. It is a pure white stone, 4 by 2-1/4
by 2 inches, weighing 3,025 carats, or 1.37 pounds, and worth in
the neighbourhood of a million dollars. As the surface cleavage
shows that it is undoubtedly a fragment of a much larger crystal,
one cannot but wonder what the original stone was like. The Great
Cullinan was immediately purchased by the Transvaal Government—or,
rather, the mine's share was purchased, for the government receives
sixty per cent of the value of all diamonds found—and presented to
King Edward. The question then arose of how so valuable a gem could
be transported to England in safety, for no sooner had its discovery
been announced than the criminals of the world began to lay their
plans to get possession of it. After many discussions and innumerable
suggestions and much newspaper comment, four men, armed to the teeth,
left the Premier Mine, carrying with them a red-leather despatch box.
Crossing the thirty miles of veldt to Pretoria under heavy escort,
they were conveyed in a private car to Cape Town; in the liner by
which they took passage to England a safe had been specially installed
and the red-leather despatch box was placed in it, two of the men
remaining on duty in front of it night and day. From Southampton a
special train took them up to London and a strong guard of detectives
and police surrounded them on their way to the bank at which the
diamond was to be delivered. When the despatch box was opened in the
presence of a group of curious officials it was found to contain
nothing more valuable than a lump of coal! The stone itself—and as
Sir Thomas Cullinan told me the story it is undoubtedly true—was
wrapped in cotton wool and tissue paper, put in a pasteboard box,
wrapped up in brown paper, and sent to England by parcels post, not
even the post-office authorities being given an inkling that it was
in the mails. I almost forgot to mention, by the way, that McHardy,
the discoverer of the great stone, was given a bonus of ten thousand
dollars, though it is a sad and peculiar commentary that within a year
his wife died, the bank in which he put the money failed, and his
house burned down.

The diamonds are found in beds of clay, of which there are two
layers: a soft, yellow clay, lying on or near the surface, and a hard,
blue clay, lying deeper. These clays, which are usually covered by a
thin stratum of calcareous rock, are supposed to be the remains of
mud pits due to volcanic action, such as the boiling springs of the
Yellowstone. Imagine a great hollow, looking like a gigantic bowl,
perhaps half a mile in diameter and one hundred feet deep, enclosed
by a series of barbed-wire fences and filled by thousands of Kaffir
workmen, looking, from a distance, like a gigantic swarm of ants—such
was my first impression of the Premier Mine. The native labourers,
who work in three shifts of eight hours each, after cleaving the
“hard-blue” with their picks, load it onto trolley-cars, which are
attached to a cable and hauled to the surface of the pit, where it
is spread on mile-long fields and exposed for several months to
rain, wind, and sun so as to effect decomposition. The softened
lumps of earth, after being brought into still smaller fragments by
the pickaxe, are then sent to the mills, where they are crushed,
pulverised, washed, and finally sent to the “greaser” to get at the
stones. Until very recently men had to be employed to sort the washed
“concentrates” and pick out the diamonds. But they would miss some.
And the men had to be guarded lest they steal the gems. And detectives
had to be hired to watch the guards who watched the men. But one day
a mine employee named Kirsten happened to notice that the diamonds,
no matter how small or discoloured, always stuck to a greasy surface,
just as iron filings stick to a magnet, while the dirt and other
stones did not. That was the suggestion which led to the invention of
the “Kirsten greaser,” a series of sloping boards, heavily coated with
grease, which are gently agitated as the mud and slime containing the
diamonds are slowly washed over them, and which never fail to collect
the precious stones.

At Kimberley, which is the only other diamond-producing district
of any importance in South Africa, the gem-bearing ground extends
over an area of but thirty-three acres, so that open mining has long
since given way to shafts, which have now been sunk to a depth of
two thousand five hundred feet, galleries being driven through the
producing ground at every forty-foot level, precisely as in a coal
mine. Kimberley has a romantic and picturesque history. In 1869 you
could not have found its name upon the map. In the following year
a Boer hunter, pitching his tent on the banks of the Orange River,
chanced to pick up a glittering stone from among the pebbles. The
news of his find making its way overland to Cape Town, the submarine
cables flashed it to every quarter of the globe, so that within a
twelvemonth adventurers and fortune-seekers had flocked there in
tens of thousands. By 1871 sixteen hundred claims, each thirty-one
feet square, were being worked, each man digging out the earth on
his own small plot, carrying it to one side, pulverising it by hand,
and sifting it for diamonds. The dirt from one claim would fall into
a neighbouring one, while some miners could not get their dirt out
at all without crossing another's property, so that quarrels and
lawsuits and shooting affrays soon began. About this time two quiet,
uncommunicative, shabbily clad men appeared at Kimberley and began to
buy up the various claims, until, before any one really appreciated
what was happening, the whole diamond industry of South Africa was
in their hands. Those men were Cecil John Rhodes and Barney Barnato,
and the great amalgamation which their skill and shrewdness effected,
now known as the DeBeers Consolidated Mining Company, was one of the
greatest _coups_ in the history of finance. It is this corporation
which the women of the world have to blame for keeping up the price of
diamonds, for the first thing it did was to close the greater part of
the Kimberley mines, keeping just enough open to produce the amount of
stones which experience has proved that Europe and America are able to
take at a price high enough to leave a gratifying profit. Although,
as a result of this policy, the price of diamonds has been well
maintained, the population of Kimberley has been greatly reduced, the
one great corporation, with its comparatively small staff of employees
and its labour-saving machinery, having taken the place of the horde
of independent adventurers of the early days.

It struck me that by far the most interesting sights, both at the
Kimberley and the Premier mines, were the so-called compounds, in
which the native labourers are confined, for the native who hires
out to work in a diamond mine must submit, during the term of his
contract, to as close confinement as a convict in a penitentiary;
he knows that he is in danger of being shot by the guards if he
attempts to escape; he is prepared to be searched daily with the same
minuteness which customs inspectors display in the case of a known
smuggler; and when his contract expires he has still to put up with
a fortnight's solitary confinement, in which emetics and cathartics
play an unpleasant part. The mine compounds are huge enclosures,
unroofed but covered with a wire netting to prevent anything being
thrown out over the walls. Around the interior of the wall are rows
of corrugated-iron huts, in which the natives live and sleep when
they are not at work, while the open space in the middle is used
for cooking, for washing, and for native games. The compounds are
surrounded by three lines of barbed-wire fence which are constantly
patrolled by armed sentries and illuminated at night by powerful
search-lights; every entrance is as jealously guarded as that of a
German fortress; and visitors are never admitted unless they bear a
pass signed by the administration and are accompanied by a responsible
official of the mine. Although the government—which, as I have already
remarked, takes sixty per cent of the mine's earnings—has made I. D.
B. (illicit diamond-buying) a penal offence with a uniform punishment
of twenty years at hard labour, and though the mining companies
maintain espionage systems which rival those of many Continental
governments, no employee, from director down to day labourer, ever
being free from scrutiny, millions of dollars' worth of diamonds are
smuggled out of the mines each year. To encourage honesty, ten per
cent of the value of any stone which a workman may find is given to
him if he brings it himself to the overseer, well over a quarter of a
million dollars being paid out annually on stones thus found.

The compound of the Premier Mine contained, at the time of my visit,
something over twelve thousand natives, representing nearly every
tribe from Pondoland to the head-waters of the Congo. Here one sees
Zulus, Fingos, Pondos, Basutos, Bechuanas, Matabele, Mashonas,
Makalaka, and even Bushmen from the Kalahari country and Masai from
German East Africa, all attracted by the high wages, which range from
five to eight dollars a week. When the native's six-month contract
has ended, he takes his wages in British sovereigns—and his earnings
accumulate quickly because he can live on very little—goes home to his
own tribe, perhaps six weeks' journey away, buys a wife and a yoke
of oxen, and lives lazily ever after. Not all of the natives are of
so thrifty a turn of mind, however, for the company store holds many
attractions for them and they are heavy purchasers of camel's-hair
blankets, French perfumes, and imported cutlery, refusing almost
invariably to take anything but the best.

I have tried to paint for you a comprehensive, though necessarily an
impressionistic, picture of this great new nation that has sprung up
so quickly in the antipodes, and to give you at least a rough idea of
what its people, its soil, its towns, its climate, its resources, and
its problems are like. That South Africa will always be a country of
great mineral wealth there is little doubt, for, when the supplies
of gold and diamonds are exhausted, copper, iron, and coal should
still furnish good returns. Likewise, it will always be a great
ranching country, for nearly all of its vast veldt is ideal, both in
climate and pasturage, for live-stock. It will probably never become a
manufacturing country, for coal is of poor quality, there is neither
water power nor inland waterways, and labour is neither good nor
cheap. If, as I have already remarked, government irrigation can be
introduced as successfully as it has been in our own Southwest, and
if the malaria which makes the rich coast-lands almost uninhabitable
can be exterminated as effectually as we have exterminated it on the
Isthmus of Panama, I can see no reason why South Africa should not
eventually become one of the great agricultural countries of the
world. Though many South Africans look forward to a day when the
natives will begin to retire to the country north of the Zambezi, and
when a large European population will till their own farms, by their
own labour, with the aid of government-assisted irrigation, I am
personally of the opinion that South Africa will never become at all
evenly populated, but that it will always bear a marked resemblance to
our Southwest, with large areas devoted to the raising of sheep and
cattle, with certain other areas irrigated for the raising of fruit,
and with its population centred for the most part in towns scattered
at long distances from one another, but connected by rapid railway
communications.

Everything considered, South Africa is a country of big things—big
pay, big prices, big opportunities, big obstacles, big resources,
big rewards—and she needs young men to help her fight her battles and
solve her problems. So, if I were a youngster, with the sheep-skin of
a technical or agricultural school in my pocket, a few hundred dollars
in my purse, and a longing for fortune and adventure in my heart,
I think that I should walk into one of those steam-ship offices in
Bowling Green and book a passage for that land of which some one has
said, “Fortune knocks at a man's door once in most countries, but in
South Africa she knocks twice.”




CHAPTER XI

THE FORGOTTEN ISLES


There can be no doubt about it: real cannibal kings are getting
scarce. Ever since, as a youngster, I read of Du Chaillu's adventures
among the man-eating natives of Equatoria, I had hankered to see a
real live cannibal in the flesh. But when, in later years, I made
inquiries about them from missionaries and traders and officials in
Senegal and Uganda and Nyasaland, I invariably received the reply:
“Oh, that's all over now; except among a few of the West Coast tribes,
cannibalism is a thing of the past.” So when the captain of the little
German cargo boat on which I was loitering up and down Africa's Indian
seaboard remarked at breakfast one morning that he had decided to put
in to Mahé, in the Seychelle group, and that I might care to pass the
time while he was taking on cargo by visiting the colony of cannibal
royalties who were in exile there, I felt that one of my boyhood
dreams was to be realised at last.

Do you happen, by any chance, to have been to Mahé, in the Seychelles?
No? Of course not. Then you must picture an emerald island dropped
down in a turquoise sea. Peacock-coloured waves ripple on a silver
strand, and this loses itself almost immediately in a dense forest
of giant palms, which, mounting leisurely, dwindles and straggles
and runs out in a peak of bare blue rock, which disappears, in turn,
behind a great, low-hanging, purple heat cloud. To reach these
delectable isles one must have time and patience a-plenty, for they
lie far from the ocean highways and are visited by scarcely a dozen
vessels, all told, each year. Draw a line straight across the Indian
Ocean from Colombo to Zanzibar, and where that line intersects the
equator are the Seychelles, mere specks in that expanse of ocean.
Mahé, the largest of the group, is everything that a tropical island
should be, according to the story-books, even to its inaccessibility,
for, barring the French mail steamer which touches there every other
month on its way to Madagascar, and an occasional German freighter or
British tramp which drops in on its way from Goa to Kilindini, on the
chance of picking up a cargo of copra, it is as completely cut off
from the outside world as though it were in Mars.

I rather imagine that they are the loneliest people in the world,
those score of men and women—English, French, and German—who
constitute the entire white population of the islands. That is why
they are so pathetically eager to welcome the rare visitors who come
their way. Indeed, until I went to Mahé I never knew what hospitality
really meant. When our anchor rumbled down under the shadow of the
Morne Seychellois, and the police boat—its crew of negroes, with their
flashing teeth and big, good-humoured faces, their trim, blue sailor
suits and broad-brimmed straw wide-awakes, looking like overgrown
children—had taken me ashore, I promptly found myself surrounded by
the entire European population.

“I am the wife of the legal adviser to the Crown,” said a sweet-faced
little Irishwoman. “My husband and I would be so pleased if you would
come up to our bungalow for dinner. You can have no idea how good it
seems to see a white face again.”

“Oh, I say, then you must promise to breakfast with me,” urged a tall
young Englishman in immaculate white linen, who, it proved, was the
superior judge of the colony. “You won't disappoint me, will you,
old chap? I'm dying to hear what's going on in the world. And if you
_should_ have any magazines or newspapers that you could spare——”

But the government chaplain, wasting no time in words, fairly hustled
me into a diminutive dog-cart and, amid the reproaches of his
fellow-exiles, off we rattled behind the only horse on the island. The
padre was not to monopolise me for long, however, for the little group
of homesick exiles pursued us to his bungalow, where they settled me
in a long cane chair, thrust upon me cheroots and whiskey-and-sodas,
and listened breathlessly to the bits of world gossip for which I
ransacked the pigeon-holes of my memory for their benefit. The newest
songs, the most recent plays, the latest fashions, all the gossip of
Broadway and Oxford Street and the Avenue de l'Opéra—they hung on my
words with an eagerness that was pathetic.

“I hope you'll pardon us,” apologised my host, “but it's so seldom
that we see a pukka white man out here that we quite forget the few
manners we have left in our eagerness to learn what is going on at
home—the little things, you know, that are not important enough to put
in the cables and that they never think to put in the letters. Until
you have lived in such a place as this, my friend, you don't know the
meaning of that word 'home.'”

It is hot in the Seychelles; hot with a damp, sticky, humid,
enervating heat which is unknown away from the Line. They tell a
story in Mahé of an English resident who died from fever and went to
the lower regions. A few days later his friends received a message
from the departed. It said, “Please send down my blankets.” There are
days in an American midsummer when indoors becomes oppressive; it is
_always_ oppressive in the Seychelles, in January as in August, at
midnight as at noon. During the “hot season” it is overpoweringly so,
for you live for six months at a stretch in a bath of perspiration
and wonder whether you will ever know what it is to be cool again.
“There are six hundred minutes in every hour of the hot weather,”
the governor's wife remarked to me, “and not one of them bearable.
Although,” she added, “after the mercury in your bedroom thermometer
has climbed above one hundred and thirty, a few more degrees don't
much matter.” In her bungalow, for the greater part of the day, the
white woman in the Seychelles is as much a prisoner by reason of the
heat as is a Turkish woman in a harem from custom. Having neither
shopping, domestic duties, nor callers to occupy her, the only break
in the day's terrible monotony comes at sunset, when every one meets
every one else at the little club on the water-front which, with its
breeze-swept verandas and its green croquet lawns and tennis courts,
is the universal gathering-place between the hours of six and eight.
An afternoon nap is universal—if the flies will allow it. Flies by
day and mosquitoes by night are as wearing on European nerves as
the climate, the beds being from necessity so smothered in mosquito
netting that the air that gets within is as unsatisfactory as strained
milk. In the hot weather a punkah is kept going all night—this huge,
swinging fan, pulled by a coolie who squats in the veranda outside,
and who can go to sleep without ceasing his pulling, being as
necessary for comfort as a pillow—while, during the hottest nights, it
is customary to sleep unclad and uncovered, save for a sheet, which
the punkah-coolie, slipping in every hour, sprinkles with water.

The white woman in this part of the world is an early riser. A cup of
tea is always served her when she is awakened, and as soon as she is
dressed comes _chota hazri_, or the little breakfast, consisting of
tea, toast, eggs, and fruit. The most is made of the cool hours of
the morning, for in the hot weather it is customary to “shut up the
bungalow” at about seven A. M., when the temperature is moderately low
compared with what it will rise to a few hours later. Every door and
window is closed and thereafter the greatest care is taken to make
entrances and exits as quickly as possible, for a door left open for
any length of time quickly raises the temperature. If kept carefully
closed, however, it is remarkable how cool the room keeps as compared
with the stifling heat without.

Though a Seychellian bungalow is generally barn-like without and
barren within, its European mistress usually contrives to make its
rooms pretty and inviting, it being astonishing what marvels of
transformation can be accomplished by means of native mattings, Indian
printed curtains, and furniture of Chinese wicker, all effective and
ridiculously cheap. The kitchen is a detached building, erected as far
away from the bungalow as possible, and the white woman who knows when
she is well off seldom enters it. Once a month, however, she inspects
her cooking pots and pans, because, being made of copper, they have to
be periodically tinned or they become poisonous, almost as many lives
being lost in the tropics by the neglect of this simple precaution as
by failure to have every drop of drinking water boiled. As there is
no ice-making plant in the Seychelles, water is cooled for drinking
by being placed in a porous earthenware vessel and swung to and fro
in the heated atmosphere until, though still far from cool, it is a
little less tepid and nauseous.

But the European residents are not the only exiles in the Seychelles,
nor, to my way of thinking, the ones most to be pitied, for of recent
years these islands, presumably because of their very remoteness, have
been turned into a political prison for those deposed cannibal kings
whose kingdoms have, on one excuse and another, been added to the
dominions of the British Crown. At present there are three political
prisoners of note on the island of Mahé—King Kabanga of Uganda, King
Assibi of the Gold Coast, and King Prempeh of Ashantee. Though all of
these ebony royalties were enthusiastic patrons of the cooking-pot,
King Prempeh is by far the most notorious and the most interesting
personality of the three, for it was his palace at Kumasi that was
built of the skulls and surrounded by a neat picket fence made from
the leg and arm bones of the people he and his tribesmen had eaten.
Hard by the palace was the ghastly “crucifixion grove” where the
victims were slaughtered and their bodies hung until sufficiently
gamy to suit the royal palate. Owing to an error of judgment in
selecting a British commissioner as the _pièce de résistance_ for
one of his feasts, an expedition was sent to Ashantee, the country
annexed to the British empire, and its ruler forced to exchange his
skull-walled palace in Kumasi for a four-roomed, tin-roofed cottage
in the outskirts of Victoria, the capital of the Seychelles, where,
surrounded by the huts of the chieftains who accompanied him into
exile, he lives on the meagre pension granted him by the British
Government.

Clad in the flaming cotton robe of red and yellow which is the West
African equivalent of royal ermine, worn over a pair of very soiled
pajamas, his Majesty received me on the veranda of his little dwelling
in the presence of the constable who guards him and who acts as
interpreter when the King's scanty store of English gives out. Now
I am not an entire stranger to the ways of the Lord's Anointed, but
this audience with Prempeh of Ashantee was one of the most memorable
experiences that I can recall. In the first place, the mercury had
crept up and up and up until it hovered in the neighbourhood of one
hundred and thirty degrees in the shade of the house; in the second
place, the sons of the King (he told me that he had forty-two in all)
had crowded into the tiny room until the place fairly reeked with the
smell of perspiration; in the third place, I was at a loss what to
talk to his Majesty about. The questions which one would like to ask a
cannibal king are obvious—whether he takes his meat rare or well done,
whether he prefers the tenderloin or the sirloin, whether he likes
white meat better than black—but Prempeh of Ashantee is not at all the
sort of person with whom one would feel inclined to take liberties,
and I was very far from being sure whether he would consider such
questions as liberties or not. After an awkward pause, during which
the King shuffled his feet uneasily and I wiped away rivulets of
perspiration, he said something in Ashantee—at least I suppose it was
Ashantee—to one of his attendants, who shortly returned with a tin
tray holding a bottle of whiskey, a siphon of lukewarm seltzer, and
a couple of very dirty glasses. After another long and uncomfortable
pause, the King asked me if I wouldn't have something to drink. Taking
it for granted that Prempeh's capacity for drink would be as _outré_
as his choice of food, I poured his beer glass full to the brim with
whiskey, giving to myself the drink sanctioned by civilised custom.

“In my country,” said the King, leaning forward and speaking in the
broken English which he had acquired from the government chaplain,
“bad men sometimes try to poison king, so king turn drinks other way
round,” and, suiting the action to the words, he turned the tray so
as to place before _me_ the beer-glassful of whiskey. I have never
been quite certain whether there was a twinkle in the eye of that
simple-hearted cannibal when he literally turned the table on me or
not.

At the time of my visit to Prempeh he was in the throes of marital
unhappiness, the details of which he confided to me. It seems that for
several years past he had been endeavouring to gain admission to the
Church-of-England fold, arguing, plausibly enough, that such a proof
of his complete regeneration might result in inducing the British
Government to send him back to his home in Ashantee. Working on that
assumption, he had, not long before, asked the government chaplain
to confirm him, to which request that gratified but still somewhat
sceptical clergyman had replied: “I am sorry to say that what your
Majesty asks is at present impossible, as your Majesty's marital
affairs are not pleasing to the church.”

So Prempeh, who had brought only twelve of his wives with him into
exile, thinking that the church held such a number to be incompatible
with his dignity,—for the workings of the West African mind are
peculiar, remember,—sent a message to the governor of the Seychelles
asking permission to take a maiden of Mahé for his thirteenth spouse,
and it was not until the indignant chaplain remonstrated with him
for his fall from grace that he grasped the fact that Christianity
demands of its converts the minimum instead of the maximum number of
wives.

“So me ship three wives back Africa,” Prempeh explained to me in his
quaint West Coast English. “Now me have only nine. Nine wives not
many for great king. But if chappy [chaplain] not let me in church
with nine wives, then me ship them back Africa too, for me very much
homesick to see Ashantee.”

Poor, deposed, exiled, homesick king, he will never again see that
African home for which he longs, I fear, for he cost England far too
much in lives and money. He came out on the veranda of his little
house to say good-by, and as I looked back, as my 'rickshaw boy drew
me swiftly down the road, he was still standing there waving to me—a
real, dyed-in-the-wool cannibal king, who has killed and eaten more
human beings, I suppose, than almost any man that ever lived.

       *       *       *       *       *

Two days' steam southward from the Seychelles, and midway between the
island of Mahé and Diégo-Suarez, on the north coast of Madagascar,
lies the islet of Saint Pierre, whence comes much of the guano with
which we fertilise our flower-beds and gardens, and those giant
sea-turtles whose shells supply our women-folk with fans, combs, and
brooches. Here, on this half a square mile of sun-baked rock in the
middle of the Indian Ocean, the Scotch manager of the syndicate which
works the guano deposits lives the whole year round, during half of
which time he sees no human face, during the other half having the
company of a few score blacks who are brought over from Mahé under
contract to gather the rich deposits of guano. His only shelter a
wooden shack, his only companions the clouds of clamorous sea-fowl,
his only fresh food turtles and fish, his only communication with
the world two times a year when the workers come and go, I expected
to find him unshaven and slovenly, the most exiled of all exiles,
the loneliest of the lonely. I made up a bundle of two-months-old
newspapers and pictured the pleasure it would give him to learn the
news of that big, busy, teeming world which lay over there beyond the
rim of the Indian Ocean. I imagined that he would cling to my arm and
beg piteously for news from home, and I thought it quite possible that
he might weep on my shoulder. But when a crew of blacks had taken me
through the booming surf in a tiny native dugout, and I and my bundle
of newspapers had been hauled up an overhanging cliff at the end of
a rope, I found the poor exile whose lonely lot I had come to cheer
immaculate in white linen and pipe-clayed shoes and wholly contented
with the shade of a green palm, the murmur of a turquoise sea, a book
of Robert Burns's verses, and the contents of a large black bottle.

       *       *       *       *       *

When De Lesseps, that lean Frenchman with the vision of a prophet
and the energy of a Parisian, drove his spade through the sands of
Suez and thereby shortened the sea-road from Europe to the East by
five thousand miles, he gave France her revenge on Saint Helena.
Ever since Clive won England her Indian empire, this obscure rock in
the South Atlantic had been a prosperous half-way house on the road
to the Farther East, its lonely islanders driving a roaring trade
with the winged fleets of war and commerce that stopped there long
enough to replenish their larders and refill their casks. But when the
completion of the Canal altered the trade routes of the world, the
tedious Cape journey was abandoned, the South Atlantic was deserted,
and Saint Helena was ruined. By the genius of one of her sons, France
had settled her score with that grim island, whose name still leaves a
bitter taste in the mouths of Frenchmen.

He who would see the prison place of the great Emperor for himself
must be rich in time and patience, for the vessels that earn their
government subsidy by grudgingly dropping anchor for a few hours
in Jamestown's open roadstead are only indifferently good and very
far between. Scarcely larger than the island of Nantucket—or Staten
Island, if that conveys more meaning; almost midway between the
fever-haunted coasts of Angola and Brazil; sixteen days' steam from
Southampton Water and seven from Table Bay; its rockbound coasts as
precipitous and forbidding as the walls of the Grand Canyon; and with
a population less than that of many of New York's down-town office
buildings, Saint Helena possesses one attraction, nevertheless, which
more than repaid me for the long and arduous journey. That attraction
is a mean and lonely cottage, set on a bleak and barren hill. To stand
within the walls of that wretched dwelling and to stare out across
the wastes of ocean from that wind-swept hilltop, I travelled twenty
thousand miles, for on that distant stage was played the last act of
the mightiest tragedy of modern times.

Loitering up and down the seven seas, I have seen many islands, but
none, that I can recall, that turns toward the seafarer a face at
once so gloomy and so forbidding. It needs no vivid imagination, no
knowledge of its history, to transform the perpendicular cliffs of
Saint Helena into the grim walls of a sea-surrounded prison. It is a
place so stern, so solemn, and so awesome that it makes you shiver in
spite of yourself. As I leaned over the rail of a Castle steamer, with
sunrise still an hour away and the Cross flaming overhead, and watched
the island's threatening profile loom up out of the night, I shuddered
in sympathy with that stern, cold man who came as a prisoner to these
same shores close on a century ago.

From the view-points of safety and severity, the captors of the fallen
Emperor could not have chosen better. For the safe-keeping of a man
whose ambitions had decimated, bankrupted, and exhausted the people
of a continent, it was imperative that a prison should be found
whence escape or rescue would be out of the question by reason of its
very isolation and remoteness. Twelve hundred miles from the nearest
continental land, and that a savage and fever-infested wilderness;
with but a single harbour, and that so poor that landing there is
perilous except in the very best of weather; its great natural
strength increased by impregnable forts; its towering rocks commanding
a sea view of sixty miles in every direction, thus obviating the
possibility of a surprise attack, Saint Helena admirably fulfilled
the requirements for a prison demanded by a harassed, weakened, and
frightened Europe.

Though those travellers who take passage by the slow and infrequent
“intermediate” steamers to the Cape are usually afforded an
opportunity of setting foot on Saint Helena's soil, the brief stay
which is made there permits of their doing little else. As the house
occupied by Napoleon stands in the very heart of the island and on
its highest point, and as the road which leads to it is so rough and
precipitous that those who hire one of the few available vehicles
generally walk most of the way out of pity for the horses, there is
rarely time for the traveller who intends proceeding by the same boat
to set eyes on the spot which gives the island its fame. I heard,
indeed, of scores of travellers who had chosen the discomforts of this
roundabout and tedious route for the express purpose of visiting the
house where Napoleon died, and who found, on arriving at Saint Helena,
that they would have time for nothing more than a hurried promenade in
the town. Nor are any efforts made by the indolent islanders to induce
travellers to stay over a steamer, for there are neither hotels nor
boarding-houses, and a visitor would have to depend for his bed and
board on the hospitality of some private family.

The South Atlantic, her bosom rising and falling lazily under the
languorous influence of the tropic morning, had exchanged her sombre
night robe for a shimmering, sparkling garment of sun-flecked blue
before the sleepy-eyed quarantine officer had laboriously climbed
the port ladder; and the yellow flag at our masthead, fluttering
down, had signalled to the clamorous crews of negroes waiting eagerly
alongside that they could take us ashore. In the pitiless light of the
early morning the island looked even more forbidding than when the
harshness of its features was veiled by night. Naked slope and ridge
rose everywhere, and everywhere they were cut and cross-cut by equally
bare valleys and ravines, but not a house, not a tree, not a sign of
life, vegetable or animal, could we detect as we drew near. Even the
sea-birds seemed afraid to alight on those grim cliffs, darting in on
outspread wings as though to settle on them, only to wheel away with
frightened, discordant cries, the while an everlasting surf hurled
itself angrily against the smooth black rocks, voicing its impotence
in a sullen, booming roar.

Approaching the shore, we were amazed to see that what had appeared
from the ship's deck to be a solid, perpendicular wall of rock was
split in the middle, as though by a mighty chisel, and in the cleft
thus formed nestled Jamestown, the island's capital, flanked on either
side by towering, fort-crowned cliffs which effectually conceal
it from the sea. Landing at the same stone water-stairs where the
captive Emperor had come ashore nearly a century before, we followed a
stone-paved causeway, bordered on the land side by a deep but empty
moat, over a creaking drawbridge, through an ancient portcullised
gateway, and so into a spacious square, shaded by many patriarchal
trees and dotted here and there with groups of antiquated cannon.
Bordering the square are the post-office, which does a thriving
business in the sale of the rare surcharged stamps of the islands when
the steamers come in; the custom-house, the law courts, the yellow
church of Saint James, and the castle, a picturesque and straggling
structure, begun by the first English governor in 1659, which is
used by the governor for his “town” residence, though his “country”
place is barely a mile away. The town itself is simply a mean and
straggling street, lined on either side by whitewashed, red-roofed,
green-shuttered houses which become less and less pretentious and more
and more scattered as you make your way up the ever narrowing valley
until it loses itself in the hills. If there is a more dead-and-alive
place than Jamestown I have yet to see it. A New Hampshire hamlet on a
Sunday morning is positively boisterous in comparison. Once a month,
however, when the British mail comes in, the town arouses itself long
enough to go down to the post-office and get the letters and the
papers—especially the illustrated weeklies—from that far-off place
which every islander, even though he was born and raised on Saint
Helena, refers to as “home.”

From the very edge of the village square the cliff known as Ladder
Hill rises sheer, its great bulk throwing an ominous shadow over the
little town. It takes its name from the Jacob's ladder whose seven
hundred wooden steps will bring you, panting and perspiring, to the
fort and the wireless station which occupy the top. I suppose there
is no other such ladder in the world, it being, so I was proudly
assured by the islanders, nine hundred and ninety-three feet long and
six hundred and two feet high. Nor can I conceive of any other place
wanting such an accommodation, for those who use it are constantly in
danger of bursting their lungs going up or of breaking their necks
coming down.

A biscuit's throw from the foot of the ladder, and facing the public
gardens, stands the sedate, old-fashioned house where Napoleon spent
the first few nights after his arrival on the island. It is a prim,
two-story residence, the sombreness of its snuff-coloured plaster
relieved by white stone trimmings and window-sills—just such a place,
in fact, as the British colonists built by the hundreds in our own New
England towns. By one of the most remarkable coincidences of which I
have ever heard, Napoleon was given the same bedroom which had been
occupied by the Duke of Wellington—then Sir Arthur Wellesley—on his
homeward voyage from India only a few years before.

Leaving Jamestown in its gloomy, rock-walled ravine, we followed the
incredibly rough high-road which bumps and jolts and twists and turns
and climbs back and up onto the table-land which forms, as it were,
the roof of the island. The deeper we penetrated into the interior
the more luxuriant the vegetation became. The dry, barren, soilless,
lichen-coated rocks of the coast zone gave way to grassy valleys
abloom with English gorse and broom and dotted with the bright green
of willows and the dark green of firs, and these merged, in turn, into
a land of bamboos and bananas, of oranges and lemons and date-palms,
where the vegetation was so luxuriant and tropical as to give it
almost the appearance of a botanic garden. I know, indeed, of no other
place in the world where one can pass through three distinct zones
of vegetation in the course of an hour's drive, the first few miles
into the interior of Saint Helena being, so far as the scenery is
concerned, like a journey from the rocky, desolate shores of Labrador,
through the pine forests and fertile farm-lands of New England and New
York, and so southward into the essentially tropical vegetation of
lower Florida.

The road wound on and on, uncovering new beauties at every turn.
Cheerful, low-roofed bungalows peeped out at us from gardens ablaze
with camelias, fuchsias, and roses; through the vistas formed by fig,
pear, and guava orchards we caught glimpses of prosperous-looking
stone farm-houses whose thick walls and high gables showed that they
dated from the Dutch occupation; passing above a tiny sylvan valley,
our driver pointed out the rambling Balcombe place, where the Emperor
lived for some weeks while Longwood was being prepared for his
occupancy, and in the box-bordered gardens of which he made quiet love
to his host's pretty daughter. In the same valley, not a pistol-shot
away, are the whitewashed, broad-verandaed quarters of the Eastern
Telegraph Company's force of operators—tennis-courts, cricket-fields,
and a swimming-pool set in a lawn of emerald velvet serving to make
the enforced exile of these young Englishmen, who relay the news of
the world between Europe and the Cape, a not unpleasant one.

Steeper and steeper became the road; scantier and less luxuriant
the vegetation, until at last we emerged upon a barren, wind-swept
table-land. A farm-yard gate barred our road, but at the impatient
crack of the driver's whip a small brown maiden hastened from a
near-by lodge to open it, curtseying to us prettily as we rattled
through. Three minutes' drive across a desolate, gorse-covered moor,
and our driver pulled up sharply at a gate in a scraggy privet hedge
surrounding just such a ramshackle, weather-beaten farm-house as you
find by the hundreds scattered along the coast of Maine. “Longwood,”
he remarked laconically, pointing with his whip. Convinced that I
could not have heard aright, I asked him over again, for, despite
all the accounts I had read of the mean surroundings amid which the
Emperor ended his days, I could not bring myself to believe that this
miserable cottage, with its sunken roof and lichen-coated walls, could
have sheltered for more than half a decade the conqueror of Europe,
the master of the Tuileries and Fontainebleau and Versailles, the
man whose troopers had stabled their horses in every capital of the
Continent.

Longwood House is an old-fashioned, rambling cottage, only one story
high, unless you count the quarters improvised for the members of the
Emperor's suite in the garret, which were lighted by means of small
windows cut in the shingle roof. The house is built in the form of a
T, the entrance, which is reached by four or five stone steps and a
tiny latticed veranda, being represented by the bottom of the letter,
while the dining-room, kitchens, and offices are represented by the
top. Originally the dwelling of a peasant farmer, at the time Napoleon
reached the island it was being used as a sort of shooting-box by the
lieutenant-governor, the present front of the house being hastily
added to form a reception-room for the Emperor. In addition to this
_salle de réception_, where you are asked to sign the visitor' book
by the old French soldier who is the official guardian of the place,
there is a drawing-room, a dining-room, the Emperor's study, his
bedroom, bath, and dressing-room—all small, ill-lighted, damp, and
cheerless. Practically the entire lower floor of the house was used
by Napoleon, the members of his _entourage_—marshals, ministers, and
courtiers, remember, who were accustomed to the life of the most
brilliant court in Europe—being accommodated in tiny, unventilated
cubby-holes directly under the eaves. With the exception of two
or three small pier-glasses, the house is now quite destitute of
furniture, though in other respects it is kept religiously as it
was in Napoleon's time, even the faded blue wall-paper, sprinkled
with golden stars, having been carefully preserved. On the walls
of the various rooms are notices in French and English indicating
the purposes to which they were put during the imperial occupancy.
Between two windows of the reception-room, where the Emperor's bed
was removed from his bedroom a few days before his death because
of the better light, stands a marble bust made from the cast taken
immediately after his death, which, barring the one made by Canova
during his life, is the only likeness of Napoleon admittedly correct.
Without the house is the small and unkept garden in which the Emperor
walked and sometimes worked, the arbour under which he spent so
many hours, and the cement-lined fish-pond which he built with his
own hands. Inside or out, there is not one suggestion of colour, of
comfort, or of cheer: it is a prison-house and nothing more.

Near the bottom of the brown and windy hill on which Longwood stands
is Geranium Valley, which contains the tomb, or rather the cenotaph,
of the Emperor. It was by Napoleon's own wish that his body was buried
in this exquisite spot, close beside the spring at which he so often
used to drink and amid the wild geraniums of which he was so fond. The
famous willow-tree still overshadows the little grave-space, which is
enclosed by a high iron railing and a carefully trimmed hedge of box,
while masses of flowers give brightness to a spot hallowed by many
memories, for it was in this shady glen that the Emperor passed the
most peaceful hours of his exile and it was here that he rested for
twenty years until France brought him back in triumph to his final
resting-place under the great gilt dome of Les Invalides.

[Illustration: Longwood House. “This miserable cottage, with its
sunken roof and lichen-coated walls, sheltered for more than half a
decade the conqueror of Europe.”

Illustration: Looking northward across the Atlantic from Longwood.
“To stare out across the wastes of ocean from that wind-swept hilltop
I travelled twenty thousand miles.”

THE PRISON PLACE OF A GREAT EMPEROR.]

Both Longwood and the grave occupy the peculiar position of being
French territory in the heart of a British colony, for half a
century ago Queen Victoria presented the property to the French
nation, an official appointed by the French Government residing on and
caring for the place and showing it with mingled pride and sadness to
the few visitors who make their way to this one of the world's far
corners. It was an interesting but gloomy experience, that pilgrimage
to the prison place of the great Emperor, for it visualised for me, as
nothing else ever could do, the sordidness, the humiliations, and the
mental tortures which marked the last years of Napoleon. As my vessel
steamed steadily northward across the Atlantic, with the boulevards of
Paris not three weeks away, I leaned over the taffrail and, staring
back at the receding cliffs of that grim island, I seemed to see
the short, stoop-shouldered, gray-coated, cock-hatted figure of the
Emperor staring wistfully out across those leagues of ocean toward
France.

       *       *       *       *       *

To locate the next of these “Forgotten Isles,” and the most completely
forgotten of all of them, you had better get out the family atlas and,
with a ruler and a pencil, do a little Morris-chair exploring. Draw
a line due south from Cape Verde, which is the westernmost point of
Africa, and another line due east from Cape San Roque, which is the
easternmost point in South America, and where those two lines meet,
out in the wastes of the South Atlantic, you will find a barren rock
which resembles, as, indeed, it is, an extinct and partially submerged
volcano. This rock, which is considerably smaller than its sister
island of Saint Helena, seven hundred miles away, is officially
designated by the British Government as H.M.S. “Ascension.” Entirely
under the control and jurisdiction of the Lords Commissioners of the
Admiralty, it is unique in that it is the only island in the world
which has the rating of a man-o'-war, being garrisoned, or rather
manned, by a detachment of sailors and marines, and being administered
in every respect as though it were a unit of the British navy. With
the exception of a dozen acres of vegetable garden, there is not a
single green thing on the island—grass, shrub, or tree. The island of
Saint Pierre, of which I made mention earlier in this chapter, is bad
enough, goodness knows, but it at least has a palm-tree. Ascension
hasn't even that. How they get men to go there is altogether beyond
my comprehension. If I had to take my choice between being sentenced
to exile on Ascension (which Heaven forbid!) or confinement in Sing
Sing, I rather think I should choose the prison. There are people on
Ascension, nevertheless, the population, which consists of officers,
seamen, and marines, together with a handful of cable operators and
a score of Kroo boys from Sierra Leone, numbering in all about one
hundred and thirty. There were also four women—relatives of the
officers—on the island when I was there. They had been there only
six months, I was told, yet when our vessel arrived not one of them
was on speaking terms with the others. Ascension, is, however, one
of the most flourishing “match factories” in the British empire, it
being safe to say that any unattached female, no matter what her
disqualifications, can get a husband in a week's stay on the island.
A young Englishman and his bride boarded our boat at Ascension. She
had been born and had spent all of her life on Saint Helena (which
is not exactly a roaring metropolis itself), and had married one of
the cable operators stationed at Ascension, who was taking her on
her first visit to the outside world. She told me that the event of
her life, her marriage excepted, had been going out to a vessel to
see a motor-car which was being transported to Cape Town. Here was
an educated and intelligent English girl who had come to womanhood
without ever having seen a railway train, a street-car, a building
over two stories high, or a crowd of more than five hundred people.
When we reached Teneriffe, in the Canaries, which is about as
somnolent a place as any I know, her husband took her ashore to see
the sights with keen anticipation. She rode on an electric car, she
took tea in a four-story hotel, she attended a moving-picture show—and
was brought back to the steamer suffering from violent hysterics.
A week later we reached Southampton, where she was so completely
prostrated by the roar and bustle of her first city that she had to go
to bed under medical attention.

To those British officials and soldiers who are performing the
manifold duties of empire along Africa's fever-stricken West Coast,
the island of Ascension is a godsend, for an excellent sanatorium has
been built by the government on its highest point, and to it come
wasted, sunken-cheeked, fever-racked skeletons from all parts of
that coast of death to build up their strength before going back to
their work again. Not only is Ascension a coaling, cable, and health
station of considerable importance, but it is also the chief habitat
of the sea-turtle, which comes there in thousands between January
and May, to lay its eggs in the sand. After having seen the enormous
size these creatures attain, it is almost possible to believe some of
those fantastic yarns about his trained turtles with which Baron de
Rougemont set Europe gasping a few years back. During the year that I
visited Ascension more than two hundred turtles were captured, ranging
in weight from five hundred to eight hundred pounds apiece. Four of
the monsters, each weighing close to half a ton, were put aboard our
vessel, being sent by the officers of the garrison as a gift to his
Majesty the King. They must have had turtle soup at Buckingham Palace
for several days in succession after those turtles arrived.

       *       *       *       *       *

It could not have been long after daybreak when a frousy-headed Greek
steward awoke me with an intimation that we were off Canea. The
evil-smelling mixture which was called coffee only by courtesy, and
which was really chicory in disguise, held no attraction for me, for,
through the port-holes of the dining-saloon I could see, rising from
a sapphire sea, the green-clad, snow-capped mountains of Crete, the
island of mythology and massacre.

Our little steamer forged ahead at half-speed and the white town kept
coming nearer and nearer, until we could distinguish the caiques in
the harbour, and the queer, narrow houses with their latticed harem
windows which encircled it, and the white mosque with a palm-tree
silhouetted against its slender minaret, and even the crowd of ebony,
tan, and coffee-coloured humanity that fought for posts of vantage at
the water-stairs. It was a picture of sunshine and animation, of vivid
colours and strange peoples, such as one seldom sees except in some
gorgeously staged comic opera, and as I surveyed it sleepily from the
steamer's deck I had a momentary feeling that I was only an onlooker
at a play and that the curtain would go down presently and I should
have to go out into the drab, prosaic, humdrum world again.

But even as this was in my mind a gun boomed out from a crumbling
bastion and five little balls ran up five flagstaffs which I had
already noticed standing all in a row on the uppermost ramparts
and had mistaken, naturally enough, for some new form of Marconi
apparatus. The five little balls broke out into five flags and the
morning breeze caught up their folds and held them straight out as
though for our benefit, so that we could make them out quite plainly.
Four of them were old friends that I had known on many seas—the Union
Jack and the Tricolour and the Saint Andrew's cross of Russia and
the red-white-and-green banner of Italy—but the fifth flag, which
flew somewhat higher than the others, was of unfamiliar design; but
the blood-red square of bunting, traversed by the Greek cross and
bearing in its upper corner the star of Bethlehem, told its own story
and I knew it for the flag of Crete. And I knew that there was deep
significance in the design of that unknown flag and in the position
of the four familiar ones that flew below it, for they signalled to
the world that the Turk had been driven out, never to return; that
Christianity had triumphed over Mohammedanism, and that the cross had,
indeed, replaced the crescent; that the centuries of massacre were now
but memories; that peace, in the guise of foreign soldiery, had, for a
time at least, found an abiding-place in Crete; and, most significant
of all, that the new flag with its single star would be upheld, if
necessary, by the mightiest array of bayonets and battle-ships in
Christendom.

The island of Crete, which is about the size of Porto Rico, not
only occupies a very important strategical position, being nearly
equidistant from the coasts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, commanding
every line of communication in the eastern Mediterranean, and
being within easy striking distance of the Strait of Gibraltar,
the Dardanelles, and the Canal, but it is also one of the richest
agricultural regions in the world, or would be if the warring elements
among its population would permit the rattle of the harvester to
replace the rattle of the machine-gun. Ever since the Turks wrested
the island from the Venetians, close on two and a half centuries ago,
its history has been one of corruption, cruelty, and massacre. Almost
annually, for more than seventy years, the island Christians rose in
rebellion against their Turkish masters, and just as regularly the
Turks suppressed those rebellions with a severity which turned the
towns of the island into shambles and its fertile farm-lands into a
deserted wilderness. The cruelty which coupled the name of Turk with
execration in Armenia and Macedonia assumed such atrocious forms in
Crete that finally the great powers were aroused to action, and in
1898 the fleets of England, France, Italy, and Russia dropped anchor
in Suda Bay, the Turkish officials were forcibly deported, and a board
of admirals assumed control of the affairs of the unhappy island.
After a few months of martial government, during which the admirals
squabbled continuously among themselves, the intervening powers
proclaimed the island an autonomous state, subject to the Porte, but
paying no tribute, and ruled by a high commissioner to be appointed
by the King of the Hellenes. Though theoretically independent, it was
provided that all questions concerning the foreign relations of Crete
should be determined by the representatives of the powers, who would
also maintain in the island, for a time at least, an international
army of occupation. Recent events in the Balkans having resulted
in bringing about an agitation in Crete for annexation to Greece,
where a propaganda has long been vigorously carried on with that end
in view, the protecting powers have definitely announced that the
administration of the island will be continued by the “constituted
authorities” (this should read “_self_-constituted”) until the
question can be settled with the consent of Turkey. As things stand
at present, the withdrawal of the international troops from Crete
is about as distant as the withdrawal of the British garrisons from
Egypt. To tell the truth, each of the protecting powers is exceedingly
anxious to get the island for itself—England because it forms an
admirable half-way house between Gibraltar and the Canal; France
because its occupation would carry French influence into the eastern
end of the Mediterranean; Italy because it would serve as a connecting
link between the peninsula and Tripolitania; and Russia because it
would give her the command of the entrance to the Dardanelles—and
hence, though they will certainly never restore it to Turkey, they are
far from anxious to hand it over to Greece, to whom, after all, it
belongs historically, geographically, and ethnologically. As a result,
the Cretan question will probably disturb the chancelleries of Europe
for some years to come.

As I strained my eyes across the sparkling waters in vain search for
signs of a hotel and breakfast, a boat flying the port-captain's flag
and manned by gendarmes—splendid, muscular fellows with high boots and
bare knees and baggy Turkish trousers, their keen brown faces peering
out from under their fluttering cap-covers—came racing out from shore.
As it came alongside the crew tossed oars with all the smartness of
man-o'-war's-men; the white-clad officer in the stern, who was very
stout and very stiffly starched, climbed the stairs gingerly, as
though fearful of injuring the faultless crease in his linen trousers,
and, after the exchange of ceremonious bows and laboured compliments
in French, informed me that the High Commissioner had placed the boat
at my disposal. There is always something peculiarly satisfying to the
soul about going ashore under official auspices, not only because of
the envious glances of your fellow-passengers who line the rail, but
because of the powerlessness of the customs officials to annoy you.

Canea, which is the seat of government, is the most picturesquely
cosmopolitan place west of Suez. It has a mild and equable climate;
living is cheap and reasonably good; there is a large garrison of
foreign soldiery; there are no extradition treaties in force; and
trouble of one kind or another is always brewing. Like a magnet,
therefore, Canea has attracted the scum and offscourings of all the
Levant—needy soldiers of fortune, professional revolution-makers,
smooth-spoken gamblers and confidence men, rouged and powdered women
of easy virtue from east and west, Egyptian donkey-boys, out-at-elbows
dragomans who speak a score of tongues and hail from goodness knows
where—all that rabble of the needy, the adventurous, and the desperate
which follow the armies of occupation and are always to be found on
the fringe of civilisation.

The foreign troops are quartered for the most part on the massive
Venetian ramparts which still surround the town, but all business
centres along the narrow, stone-paved quay bordering the harbour, and
in a straggling thoroughfare which, leaving the water-front through
a fine old gate still bearing the carven lion of Saint Mark, serves
as the vertebra for an amazing tangle of dim alleys and deafening
bazaars, in which all the products of the Levant are bought and sold
amid indescribable confusion.

Canea is at its best at sunset, for it is not until then that the
town awakens to life. As the sun begins to sink behind the Aspra
Vouna, the streets, hitherto deserted, become thronged as though by
magic; the spaces before the cafés are packed with coffee-drinking,
nargileh-smoking humanity of all shades and of all religions; the
soldiers begin to appear in groups of twos and threes and fours; the
clerks in the shipping-offices put on white drill jackets, and sit
in chairs tipped back against their doors, and drink from tall, thin
glasses with ice tinkling in them, and the muezzin, brazen-throated,
appears on the balcony of his minaret, reminding one for all the world
of a Swiss cuckoo-clock as he pops out to chant his interminable call
to prayer: “Allahu il Allahu! Allahu Akbar! God is most great! Come to
prayer! There is no God but Allah! He giveth life and dieth not! Your
sins are great; greater is Allah's mercy! I extol his perfections!
Allahu il Allahu! Allahu Akbar!”

It is such a scene as one marks with the white milestone of
remembrance that he may go back to it in memory in after years.
Picture, if you can, a stone-paved promenade bordering a U-shaped
harbour. In the harbour are many craft—all small ones, for it is too
shallow for the great steamers to enter. There are caiques with sails
of orange, of scarlet, and of yellow; schooners, grain-laden, from
Egypt and Turkey and Greece; fishing-boats with rakish lateen-sails
and great goggle eyes painted at their bows to ward off the evil eye,
and, so the sailors will tell you, to detect the fish. And along
the quayside, where the human stream wanders restlessly, there are
Greeks in tufted shoes and snowy fustanellas that make them look like
ballet-dancers; swarthy Turks in scarlet sashes and scarlet fezes,
wearing the unsightly trousers peculiar to their race; bare-kneed
Cretan highlanders, descendants in form and feature of the ancient
Greeks, swaggering along with insolent grace in their braided,
sleeveless jackets and high boots of yellow, untanned leather;
Algerians in graceful flowing burnooses and Egyptians with tarbooshes
and Arabs with turbans—now and then a mollah with scornful, intolerant
eyes and the green turban which marks the wearer as a descendant of
the Prophet—and brawny, coal-black negroes from Tripoli, from Nubia,
and from the Sudan.

And then there are the soldiers: British Tommies, smart even in khaki,
boots shining, buckles shining, faces shining, swaggering along this
Cretan street and flourishing their absurd little canes precisely
as their fellows are doing all over the globe; French colonials,
swathed in blue puttees from ankle to knee and in red cummerbunds
from hip to chest, their misery completed by mushroom helmets so
large that nothing can be seen of the wearer but his chin; chattering
Italian _bersaglieri_, who strut about in cocks' feathers and crimson
facings when at home in the Corso or the Toledo or the Via Vittorio
Emmanuele, but out here must needs content their vanity with white
linen uniforms and green hackle in their helmets; sad-faced Russians,
uniformed as they would be in summer in Saint Petersburg or Moscow,
flat white caps, belted white smocks, trousers tucked in boots,
their good-humoured, ignorant faces stamped with all the signs of
homesickness, for their thoughts are far away in some squalid tenement
in the poor quarter of Warsaw perhaps, or in a peasant's cabin beside
the head-waters of the Volga.

Though Canea is the seat of government, Candia—or Heraklian, the
classic name by which the Greeks prefer to call it—is the largest and
most important town on the island. Disregarding the advice of friends,
I went from Canea to Candia on a Greek coasting steamer. No one ever
takes a first-class passage on a Greek boat, for the second and third
class passengers invariably come aft and stay there, despite the
commands and entreaties of the purser, so a third-class ticket answers
quite as well as a first. Fortunately—or unfortunately, as you choose
to regard it—I had as fellow voyagers a company of British infantry,
which was being transferred to Candia after three years' service
in the western end of the island. The soldiers, who had managed to
smuggle aboard a considerable quantity of rum, quickly got beyond
the control of the boy lieutenant, just out of Sandhurst, who was in
command, and who, appreciating that discretion is the better part of
valour, especially where a hundred drunken soldiers are concerned,
wisely left them to their own boisterous devices and retreated with me
to the captain's quarters on the bridge, where we remained until we
sighted Candia's harbour lights and our anchor rumbled down inside the
breakwater.

Were it not for the massive Venetian walls which surround it, Candia
would have almost the appearance of an Indian town, the similarity
being increased by its dark-faced, gaily dressed inhabitants and
by the British soldiers who throng its streets. A single broad,
stone-paved thoroughfare, lined in places with shade-trees and
surprisingly clean, winds like a snake from the harbour up the
hill, past rows of blackened ruins—grim reminders of the latest
insurrection—past square after square of white-walled, red-tiled
houses; through noisy bazaars where the turbaned shopkeepers squat
patiently in their doorways; past unkept marble fountains whose
stained carvings would make many a museum director envious; past
mosques with slender, graceful minarets and groups of filthy beggars
grovelling on their steps for alms; past the ornate, twin-domed Greek
cathedral, and so on to the ramparts where the British garrison is
quartered in yellow barracks that overlook the sea.

But the real Crete is no more to be judged from glimpses of Canea
and Candia than America could be judged by visiting New York and
Chicago. It is in the picturesque mountain villages of the Sphakiote
range that the genuine, untamed, unmixed fighting Cretan is to be
found, for these dwellers on the slopes of Mount Ida, alone of all the
scattered branches of the great Hellenic family, have preserved in
form and feature the splendid physical characteristics of the ancient
Greeks. With the Governor of Candia for my guide, the mountain village
of Archanais as our destination, and with an escort of gendarmerie
clattering at our heels, we set out from Candia one morning before
the sun was over the walls, for we had forty miles of hard riding
between us and dinner, and roads in the Sphakiote country often
consist of nothing more than dried-up water-courses. For the first few
miles the road was crowded with peasantry bringing their produce to
market—droves of donkeys, wine-skin-laden; long strings of the sturdy,
shaggy native ponies tethered head to tail and tail to head, their
panniers filled with purple figs or new-dug potatoes; sullen-eyed
Turks driving rude native carts, their women-folk veiled to the eyes
and hiding even them in the presence of the _giaours_; chattering
Greeks with homespun rugs or bundles of the heavy native lace; now
and then a prosperous farmer, striding along with a peculiar rolling
walk, due to the round-soled boots affected by the islanders, carrying
a measure of potatoes or perhaps a pair of fowls in the baggy seat of
his enormous trousers. We passed a grass-grown Turkish cemetery where
the gilded tombstones, capped by carven fezes or turbans in the case
of men, and shells in that of women, blazed in the morning sunlight,
while, a little farther on, we halted for a few moments before the
tomb of a revered sheikh, almost hidden by the bits of cloth which the
passing faithful had torn from their garments and tied to it.

Some half a dozen miles inland from Candia lie the ruins of Knossos,
the one-time palace of King Minos, a powerful monarch of the Mycenæan
age who is supposed to have ruled in Crete during that hazy era when
mythology ended and history began. The audience chamber and the royal
throne, which were old when the Pyramids were built, are still in
a perfect state of preservation, though these amazing evidences of
prehistoric grandeur are no more interesting than the marvellous
network of cellars and subterranean passages which underlie the
palace, many of them still lined, just as they were five thousand
years ago, with row upon row of mammoth earthen jars for the storage
of grain, of olives, and of wine in time of famine or siege. Many
eminent archæologists, by the way, maintain that it was from this
bewildering maze of corridors and passage-ways that the legend of the
Minotaur and the labyrinth, the scene of which was laid in Crete,
arose. Were Crete as easy of access as Egypt, these ruins of Knossos
would long since have taken rank with those which dot the banks of the
Upper Nile.

Half a dozen hours of riding over an open, sun-baked country and later
through gloomy pine woods and mountain defiles, with an occasional
halt at a wayside _xenodocheion_ that the troopers of our escort might
refresh themselves with that nauseous-tasting fermentation of rice
known as _arrack_, which is the national drink of Greece, brought
us at last, hot, saddle-worn, and weary, into the village square
of Archanais. The demarch of the town, with a dozen or so of the
insurrectionist chieftains from the surrounding mountains, awaited our
coming beneath a hoary plane-tree that shaded half the village square.
Seats were placed for us beneath its grateful shade, and, with the
ceremony of which the Greeks are so fond, we were served with small
cups of Turkish coffee and with the inevitable _loukoum_, which is
a candy resembling “Turkish delight.” This formal welcome, which no
Cretan ever neglects, completed, we were escorted to the house of
the demarch, with whom we were to dine. It was a long, low-roofed,
homelike dwelling, red tiles above and white plaster beneath, and
surrounding it a garden ablaze with flowers. Met at the door by a
servant with a pitcher of chased brass, we proceeded to wash in the
open air, the domestic pouring the water over our hands in a steady
stream, according to the Cretan fashion.

The dinner was beyond description. From a Cretan standpoint it was
doubtless a feast for the gods. I, being ravenous with hunger, asked
not the names of the strange dishes, but enjoyed everything that was
set before me as only a hungry man can. The meal began with ripe
olives and spiced meat chopped up with wheat grains and wrapped in
mulberry leaves; it passed on through a course that resembled fried
egg-plant but wasn't; through duck, stuffed with rice and olives
and cooked in oil, and a pudding that tasted as though it had been
flavoured with _eau de cologne_, concluding with small native melons,
which I have never seen equalled for flavour except in Turkestan, and,
of course, coffee and cigarettes. The meal lasted something over three
hours, and then, sitting cross-legged on the divan which ran entirely
around the room, the whole party dropped one by one to sleep. The one
recollection of Archanais which will always remain with me is that
of a roomful of swarthy-faced, black-moustached, baggy-trousered,
armed-to-the-teeth, overfed men, notorious revolutionists every one,
all sound asleep and all snoring like steam-engines.

That night we rode down the mountains in the moonlight, the
snow-capped peaks looming luridly against the purple sky. The
moonbeams lighted up the ruined farmsteads which we passed and played
fitfully among the gnarled branches of the ancient olive-trees, giving
to the silent land an aspect of unutterable peace. The whole world
seemed sleeping and the hoofs of our horses rang loudly against the
stones. The road which had been white with dust in the morning was a
ribbon of silver now; the stately palm-trees stirred ever so gently
in the night breeze; the ruins of ancient Knossos grew larger in the
moonlight until all its ancient glory seemed restored; the crosses
on the Greek cathedral and the crescents on the slender minarets
seemed to raise themselves in harmony like fingers pointing toward
heaven; the great guns that frowned from the ramparts were hidden in
the shadows—all was silence, beauty, infinite peace, until, as we
walked our tired horses slowly across the creaking drawbridge into the
city, a helmeted figure stepped from the shadow of the walls, a rifle
flashed in the moonlight, and a harsh voice challenged:

“Halt! Who goes there?”




INDEX


  Abbas Hilmi II, 112.

  Abyssinia, 10.

  Africanders, 226.

  Agriculture in: French Africa, 24;
    German Africa, 181;
    Morocco, 32;
    Rhodesia, 214;
    South Africa, 234;
    the Sudan, 128;
    Tripolitania, 85-86.

  Ahaggar (Sahara), 24.

  Alexandria, bombardment of, 111.

  Algeria, 3, 9, 14, 16.

  Algerian hinterland, 57.

  Algiers, 10.

  Americans in: Rhodesia, 217-8;
    the Transvaal, 237.

  Anglo-German secret treaty, 178-9.

  Angola, 177-8.

  Antanarivo, 9.

  Arab: justice, 75;
    resistance to Italian rule, 98;
    weddings, 78;
    women, 77.

  Arabi Pasha, 110.

  Arabi's rebellion, 111.

  Archanais (Crete), 283.

  Artesian wells in the Sahara, 22.

  Ascension Island, 269.

  Ashantee, 254.

  Assuan dam, 123.

  Atlas Mountains, 31.

  Aujila oases, 88.


  Bagirmi, 100.

  Barbary Coast, 8.

  Barka (Tripolitania), 87.

  Barnato, Barney, 243.

  Barotseland, 196.

  Beira (Port. East Africa), 206 _et seq._

  Beit, Alfred, 193.

  Belgian Congo, 176-7;
    communications in, 187;
    reversion of, 177.

  Benghazi (Tripolitania), 84, 87.

  Berbers, 36.

  Bey of Tunis, 64.

  Big game in Rhodesia, 196.

  Biskra (Algeria), 60.

  “Blue tongue,” 232.

  Boers, 226.

  Bornu, 100.

  Botha, General Louis, 233 _et seq._

  Bridge over the Zambezi, 194.

  British in: Egypt, 111 _et seq._;
    South Africa, 223 _et seq._

  British South Africa Company, 212.

  Broken Hill (Rhodesia), 194.

  Bulawayo (Rhodesia), 190.

  Bwana M'kubwa (Rhodesia), 194.


  Candia (Crete), 280 _et seq._

  Canea (Crete), 272 _et seq._

  Cannibalism, 253.

  “Cape-to-Cairo” Railway, 190 _et seq._

  Cape Town, 203, 227.

  Capitulations, privileges conferred by Ottoman, 113.

  Caravans, 17, 19, 91.

  Ceuta (Morocco), 47.

  Chartered companies, 212.

  Colomb-Bechar (Morocco), 8.

  Colour problem in South Africa, 226-8.

  Consuls, powers of, in Egypt, 114 _et seq._

  Cost of living in Rhodesia, 217.

  Cotton culture in: Egypt, 124;
    the Sudan, 142.

  Country clubs, beneficial effects of, in Rhodesia, 216.

  Crete, 272 _et seq._;
    administration of, 275;
    foreign troops in, 279-280;
    hospitality in, 283-4;
    insurrections in, 274.

  Crime in South Africa, 229.

  Crispi, 92.

  Cromer, Lord, 117.

  Cullinan, “The Great,” diamond, 239.

  Cyrenaica, 87.


  Dahomey, 4, 9, 25.

  Dakar (Senegal), 11, 53.

  Dam at Assuan, 202.

  Dancing girls, 58 _et seq._

  Dar-es-Salam (German East Africa), 185.

  DeBeers syndicate, formation of, 243.

  Delta of the Nile, 124.

  Derna, capture of, by Americans, 83.

  Desert: reclamation, 21;
    transportation, 23.

  Diamond: fields at Kimberley, 242;
    mining, 234 _et seq._

  Dining-cars on “Cape-to-Cairo” Ry., 219.

  Diré-Dawah (Abyssinia), 10.

  Divorce: court in Tunis, 71;
    in Algeria, 70.

  Djibouti (French Somali Coast), 9.

  Drainage project in Egypt, 124.

  Dutch in South Africa, 224.


  Eaton's, Gen. William, capture of Derna, 83.

  Education in French Africa, 6.

  Egypt, 108 _et seq._;
    army, 118;
    education, 120;
    future of, 141;
    government, 111 _et seq._;
    irrigation, 122;
    justice, 113, 116;
    Khedive, 112, 116, 117, 124;
    land values in, 121.

  Egyptian Debt Commission, 112.

  El Araish (Morocco), 48.

  England's desire for railway zone in German Africa, 198.

  Execution in Tunis, 65.


  _Fantasias_, 16.

  Fashoda: see _Kodok_.

  Fevers in East Africa, 152.

  Fez (Morocco), 9.

  Fezzan (Tripolitania), 84, 86.

  Flowers in Morocco, 33.

  Foreign Legion, 15.

  France's African army, 12-14.

  Franco-Spanish treaty, 46.

  French: Africa, 1 _et seq._;
    colonial expansion, 1 _et seq._;
    Congo (see _French Equatorial Africa_);
    Equatorial Africa, 4;
    Guinea, 4, 9;
    Sahara, 5;
    Somali Coast, 5;
    sphere of influence, 2 _et seq._;
    steamers, 11;
    treatment of natives, 16, 42, 75.


  German Africa, 165 _et seq._;
    climate of, 180;
    railways in, 179.

  German colonial expansion, 166;
    desire for the Congo, 176 _et seq._;
    desire for Zanzibar, 164;
    East Africa, 175, 185-6;
    trade of, 186;
    interests in Morocco, 172.

  German militarism in Africa, 182, 186;
    overseas banks, 168-170;
    treatment of the natives, 182-4;
    Southwest Africa, 175.

  Germany's foreign policy, 171-2;
    oversea interests, 170.

  Golf in Zanzibar, 149.

  Gordon, General Charles George, 203.

  Gordon Memorial College at Khartoum, 140.

  Great Bend of the Niger, 9.

  “_Groote Schuur_,” the home of Cecil Rhodes, 223.

  Guano islands, 257.


  Harbours: in French West Africa, 10;
    in German Southwest Africa, 188.

  Harems, life in, 69 _et seq._

  Hay's, Sir John Drummond, speech to Sultan of Morocco, 44.

  Heraklian. (See _Candia_.)

  Hicks-Beach, Sir Michael, and Cecil Rhodes, 192.


  Illicit diamond buying, 244.

  Irrigation in: Egypt, 122;
    French North Africa, 21;
    South Africa, 233;
    Sudan, 21, 128.

  Ismail Pasha, 108 _et seq._

  Italy in Africa, 80 _et seq._

  Ivory Coast, 4, 9.

  Ivory: market in Zanzibar, 153;
    trade, 153 _et seq._


  Jamestown (Saint Helena), 262-4.

  Jimini (Ivory Coast), 9.

  Jof (Sahara), 99 _et seq._

  Johannesburg, 203, 235 _et seq._


  Kabyle marriage customs, 68.

  Kabyles, the, 65 _et seq._;
    sale of their daughters by, 66.

  Kabylia (Algeria), 65.

  Kamerun, 173-6.

  Kamerun, New, 173-6.

  Kanem (French Sudan), 5, 9, 100.

  _Kangas_, 154.

  Karroo, the, 233.

  Katanga District (Belgian Congo), 195-6.

  Keetmanshoop (German Southwest Africa), 188.

  Khalifa, the, 20, 197.

  Khartoum, 138 _et seq._

  King Assibi of the Gold Coast, 254.

  King Kabanga of Uganda, 254.

  King Minos of Crete, 282.

  King Prempeh of Ashantee, 254 _et seq._

  Kitchener, Lord, of Khartoum, 112, 118.

  Knossos, ruins of, 282.

  Kodok (Anglo-Egyptian Sudan), 20.

  Kosti (Anglo-Egyptian Sudan), 198.

  Kourassa (French Guinea), 9.

  Krüger, President Paul, 238.

  Kufra Oases, 88, 99.

  Kumasi (Ashantee), 254.


  Labor, demand for, in Rhodesia, 218.

  Lake No, 137.

  Lake Tanganyika, 187.

  Lake Tchad, 9.

  Language problem in South Africa, 224.

  Laraiche. (See _El Araish_.)

  Liberia, 3.

  Libya, 80 _et seq._

  Livingstone, David, finding of, by Stanley, 151.

  Livingstone's discovery of Victoria Falls, 210.

  Lobenguela, 211.

  Lobito Bay Railway, 179, 201.

  “Longwood,” residence of Napoleon, 266.

  Lualaba River, 187.

  Lüderitz Bay (German Southwest Africa), 188.


  Madagascar, 5, 9, 12.

  Mahé (Seychelles), 248 _et seq._

  Majunga (Madagascar), 9.

  Mannesmann Brothers in Morocco, 173.

  Marchand, Major, and the Fashoda incident, 20.

  Marrakesh (Morocco), 30.

  Mashonaland, 209.

  Matabeleland, 190.

  Mauresque women, 67-69.

  Mauritania, 4.

  Méharistes, 18.

  Melilla (Morocco), 47.

  Meroe, Island of (Anglo-Egyptian Sudan), 138.

  Mineral resources of South Africa, 234.

  Mohammedanism, spread of, in Africa, 95 _et seq._

  Moorish character, 38.

  Moors, the, 36.

  Morals of Europeans in East Africa, 157.

  Morocco, 27 _et seq._;
    agriculture, 32;
    climate, 33;
    flowers, 33;
    future of, 41, 54;
    natural resources, 34;
    railways projected in, 52;
    slavery in, 51;
    travel in, difficulties of, 35.

  Morocco City. (See _Marrakesh_.)

  Morocco-Equatoria Convention, 165.

  Mount Ida (Crete), 281.

  Mozambique, 178.

  Mulai-abd-el-Hafid, ex-Sultan of Morocco, 28.

  Mulai Youssef, Sultan of Morocco, 41.


  Napoleon's exile on Saint Helena, 259 _et seq._

  Natal, 234.

  Native: labor in South African mines, 243;
    troops in French Africa, 13.

  Natives: treatment of Rhodesian, 218;
    treatment of South African, 229.

  New Kamerun, 5, 173-6.

  Nikki (Dahomey), 9.

  Nile, the, 122;
    as agent of prosperity, 21;
    plan to divert the, 20.


  Oases, Saharan, 24.

  Oasis of: Kaouer, 24;
    Kufra, 88, 99;
    Jof, 99 _et seq._;
    Tuat, 52.

  Omdurman (Anglo-Egyptian Sudan), 126.

  Orange River Free State, 224.

  Otavi District (German Southwest Africa), 188.

  Ouled-Naïls, 56 _et seq._


  Papal assistance to Italy in taking of Tripolitania, 92.

  Parliament of Union of South Africa, 227.

  Port Florence (British East Africa), 200.

  Portugal in Africa, 177.

  Portuguese East Africa, 178.

  Premier Diamond Mine, 239.

  Pretoria (Transvaal), 238.


  Race problem in South Africa, 225.

  Railway: “Afro,” 52, 179;
    “Cape-to-Cairo,” 190 _et seq._;
    Lobito Bay, 179, 201;
    Otavi, 188;
    Uganda, 200.

  Railways in: Abyssinia, 10;
    Algeria, 8;
    Central Africa, 190;
    French Africa, 8;
    German Africa, 179;
    Morocco, 52;
    Rhodesia, 219;
    the Sahara, 8;
    the Sudan, 131-3;
    West Africa, 9.

  Rand, the, 235.

  Rejaf (Uganda), 137.

  Réunion, 12.

  Rhodes, Cecil John, 190 _et seq._, 211, 212.

  Rhodes Memorial near Cape Town, 203.

  Rhodesia, 205 _et seq._;
    agriculture, 214;
    climate, 209, 213-4;
    cost of living in, 217;
    country clubs in, 216;
    future of, 222;
    government, 212;
    labour, demand for skilled, 217;
    law and order in, 214;
    natives, 218;
    railways, 219;
    resources, 214.

  Riff, the (Morocco), 46-48.

  Rinderpest, 232.

  Rogers, American adventurer, 151.


  Sahara, 18, 21.

  Saint Helena, 258 _et seq._

  Saint Pierre Island, 257.

  Salisbury, Lord, 192.

  Salisbury (Rhodesia), 213.

  Sand storms, 132.

  Sea turtles, 272.

  Sebu River (Morocco), 32.

  Senegal, 4.

  Senegambia, 25.

  Senussi, the sheikh, 99 _et seq._

  Senussiyeh, Brotherhood of, 98 _et seq._

  Seychelles, 248 _et seq._;
    climate of, 251;
    housekeeping in, 252-3.

  Sharef River (Morocco), 32.

  Sherifian dynasty, 42.

  Slavery in North Africa, 73.

  Sleeping-sickness, 213.

  Sobat River, 20.

  Sokoto (Nigeria), 100.

  South Africa, Union of, 223 _et seq._;
    agriculture, 234;
    colour problem in, 226-8;
    diamond-mining, 234 _et seq._;
    future of, 246;
    language problem in, 224;
    mineral resources of, 234;
    need of irrigation in, 233;
    race problem in, 225;
    treatment of natives in, 228-231.

  Spanish sphere of influence in Morocco, 46.

  Sphakiote Mountains (Crete), 281.

  Stanley, Henry M., 151, 211.

  Sudan, the Anglo-Egyptian, 126 _et seq._;
    agriculture, 128;
    future of, 141;
    government, 127;
    railways, 131-3.

  Sudd, the, 137.

  Suez Canal, 141.

  Sultan of Morocco, 41.

  Sultan of Turkey, 96.

  Sultan of Zanzibar, 160 _et seq._

  Sus, the (Morocco), 46, 49.

  Swahili: language, 156;
    race, 154.

  Swakopmund (German Southwest Africa), 188, 200.


  Table Mountain (Cape of Good Hope), 203.

  Tamatave (Madagascar), 9.

  Tangier (Morocco), 10, 43, 54.

  Teneriffe (Canary Islands), 271.

  Tewfik Pasha, 110.

  Tibesti (Sahara), 24.

  Timbuktu (Upper Senegal-Niger Territories), 8, 9, 53.

  Tippoo Tib, 151.

  Tobruk (Tripolitania), 87.

  Togoland, 175.

  Tortoise shell from Saint Pierre, 257.

  Transvaal, 235.

  Treatment of women in North Africa, 74-79.

  Tripoli (Tripolitania), 84-89.

  Tripolitania, 80 _et seq._;
    future of, 88, 105;
    trade of, 91.

  Tsetse-fly, 208, 213.

  Tuaregs, 99.

  Tuat (Sahara), 52.

  Tunisia, 3.

  Tunisian justice, 64.

  Tunisian perfumery, 67.

  Turkish Sultan's influence in Africa, 96.


  Uganda Railway, 200.

  Ujda (Morocco), 9.

  Ujiji (German East Africa), 187.

  Umtali (Mashonaland), 209.

  United States in Africa, 82 _et seq._

  Upper Senegal-Niger Territories, 4.


  Vasco da Gama, 143.

  Victoria (Seychelles), 254.

  Victoria Falls, 194, 210, 220 _et seq._

  Victoria Nyanza, 198, 203.


  Wadai, 5, 9, 100.

  Wady Haifa (Anglo-Egyptian Sudan), 137.

  Walfish Bay (German Southwest Africa), 188.

  Women of North Africa, 56 _et seq._

  “World's View” (Cape of Good Hope), 203.


  Zambezi River, 221.

  Zanzibar, 143 _et seq._;
    climate, 146;
    future of, 163;
    German desire for, 164;
    hotel accommodation in, 146-7;
    ivory market in, 153;
    natives of, 154;
    Sultan of, 160 _et seq._;
    tropical diseases in, 152.

  Ziban, the (Algerian Sahara), 57.

  Zulus, 229.


[Illustration: MAP OF AFRICA, SHOWING RAILWAYS AND SPHERES OF
INFLUENCE.]




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