WITHIN the last year or two the position of Europeans in all parts of Central Africa has become matter of grave anxiety, and the anxiety grows more urgent while we write. Why?

It is nearly a generation since Speke accompanied by Grant discovered the Victoria Nyanza, the third inland sea of the world, only Lake Superior and the Caspian Sea being larger, and so solved the problem of ages about the source of the Nile.1 About the same time Burton discovered Tanganika, with no river flowing from it to the sea, and Livingstone discovered Nyasa, connected by the Shiré and Zambesi with the Indian Ocean. It is thirteen years since Stanley made that voyage from Nyangwe to Banana by which he opened out 1600 miles of the course of the Congo and brought to our knowledge an immense tract of country teeming with population, which was represented by white paper on the map of Africa issued in the Encyclopædia Britannica' in 1875. Since that time other very large discoveries have been made, only not on so vast a scale,— Thomson's, of Masailand with Kilimanjaro and Kenia; Wissmann's, of the Kasai, an affluent of the Congo navigable for 500 miles inland; Grenfell's, of the Oubangi, up which he went 500 miles, and which Van Gele from one direction and Junker from

another have since identified with the Wellé; and, most recent of all, Stanley's tracking of the Aruhwimi, from its outfall on the Congo to its source near the Albert Nyanza, a feat unequalled for courage and endurance, unless by that which he performed twelve years before. The openings thu made have been eagerly occupier! by those who were craving outlets for capital and for the spirit of adventure, and first by the men whom large philanthropic impulses prompt to missionary enterprise. Belgians, Frenchmen, Germans, Scandinavians, Englishmen, and, of course, Scotsmen, - traders, hunters, missionaries of every name,-have pushed into Africa at all available doors. And now their position has become one of acute peril from a special cause.

Together with those influences which may fairly be expected to carry enlightenment and civilisation, there has occurred what Lord Salisbury happily calls a recrudescence of the slave-trade in such enormous proportions and with such unprecedented violence as to stagger the advancing columns of civilisation, and to place the lives of Europeans in constant danger. In whatever direction you look you meet evidences of a hand-to-hand struggle between unquestionable wickedness on the one side, and what may, after allowance made for human

imperfection, be regarded as righteousness on the other; and the advantage is not yet by any means clearly with the latter. Rather the man-stealers have it for the present. The representatives of the Church Missionary Society, after doing admirable work for ten years in Uganda, have been driven out, not by the murderer of Bishop Hannington, but ostentatiously by the Arabs. The most forward station of the Congo Free State, occupied only after treaties had been carefully made with the native chiefs, has been for some years in the hands of the Arabs, and the country far and near laid waste. The African Lakes Company has been under the fire of the slavers for fourteen months at the north end of Nyasa, and its servants are not yet relieved. Captain Wissmann, holding a large commission from Prince Bismarck, finds it hard work to establish order on the portion of the Zanzibar littoral where the German flag was run up with much parade on the 16th of August, the murderous resistance made by Bushire and other Arab leaders teaching Germany that the fringe of coast, 10 miles deep and 350 long, which it supposed itself to have legally acquired from the Sultan, has after all to be won by the sword.

It must be emphatically stated that the foes with whom we have thus to contend are not the native owners of the soil. These commonly receive European traders and missionaries kindly, and occasional attacks are soon converted by wise and honest dealing into friendship. It is the Arabs who are the uncompromising enemies of civilisation. They came from Muscat, in Arabia, early in this century, set up a sultanate on the island of Zanzibar, went inland

VOL. CXLVI.-NO. DCCCLXXXV.

in all directions, and brought out from the central regions ivory and slaves. There is the closest connection between these two forms of merchandise. Africa has many valuable products, but the only one which can be brought protitably to the eastern shores of the continent is ivory, hard bone. Anxiously surveying the whole east coast, you do not find, it pierced by a single navigable river flowing from the interior, with the doubtful exception of the Zambesi; and there are no roads, no wheels, no horses, no bullocks: every pound of ivory must be slowly and painfully carried on the shoulders of men and women. To provide these carriers the Arabs have both great ly aggravated the domestic slavery existing among the tribes, and have added to it unspeakable atrocities. They organise treacherous attacks on peaceful towns, and set one tribe to war with another, for the purpose of providing themselves with that "black ivory" which has a double value; after carrying the white ivory to the coast the "black ivory can be sold there for the many open slave-markets of Arabia and Persia. Livingstone began to enlighten us about this accursed traffic, and much more recent testimony has been furnished by Cameron, Thomson, H. H. Johnston, Fred. Moir, Stanley, Wissmann, and others.

It is these Arab traders alone with whom we have seriously to contend. The last striking in stance is furnished by Mr Werner in the remarkably well-written, well-informed, honest and modest narrative by which he has placed the friends of Africa and truth under large obligations. He tells of a walk he had, early in 1888, with Major Barttelot round the island on which Stanley Falls Station is situated, and says

K

"Passing through the native vilages, the men and women crowded

round us with loud 'Sennene's' and rough handshakings; and more than one sable warrior-when none but

his friends were near-asked me if I had come to drive out the Arabs, as his people were quite ready to rise against them. All, of these hints I was obliged to pretend I did not understand, for I could not tell what ou 'earth to answer. Had I been free, I would gladly have done all in my power to help them; but I was in the service of the Congo Free State, and this Free State had just appoint ed Tippoo Tip Governor of Stanley Falls. What could I say to the Bakumu and Wenya who crowded round me? Luckily for myself, I knew not a word of their language, and could easily pretend to misunderstand the interpretation of my BaNgala boy, who knew no English. The Bakumu are certainly the finest built men I have seen on the Congo, and I never met any natives who Esemed more heartily glad to see Thite men."!

What followed in this case the world knows now from Mr Werner's faithful story, and from it only. When the tidings came, in the middle of September, that Barttelot had been murdered, some of us took the liberty to express grave suspicions of treachery on the part of Tippoo Tip: the record of one who was on the spot at the time turns these suspicions into certainty. Mr Werner tells, as an intelligent eyewitness, the details of what took place when Tippoo at last brought porters to Yambuya. There were 600 loads left by

Stanley, and he had Tippoo's promise to furnish 600 men to carry them but he brought only 400, and these after most injurious delay. Why? Because his supply from Zanzibar of the ammunition required for gigantic slave-raids was falling off, and he was deter mined to get all he could of the supply lodged in the camp on the

Aruhwimi.

"Tippoo Tip's demands appeared to me to be made simply with a view to extorting gunpowder, for he demanded and was paid in aminunition which should have gone to relieve Emin Pasha" (p. 233). Stanley's agreement with Tippoo expressly stipulated that his salary was to be "£30 a-month, payable to his agent at Zanzibar;" but he violated that with a high hand, as he did the more important stipulation which required him "to maintain the authority of the State on the Congo and all its affluents down to the Biyerré or Aruhwimi river, and to prevent the tribes thereon, as well as Arabs and others, from engaging in the slave-trade."2

Prevent the slave-trade! Tippoo actually sent one of his lieutenants to lay waste the country in advance of Stanley, and it is since Mr Werner's pages were in the press that those letters have come, in which Stanley's own pen describes the fearful sufferings he endured in consequence. All the country around the Falls, and up to the palisades within which Barttelot had to intrench himself,

was raided and burned. Just a year ago (June 2, 1888) Mr Werner was taking Tippoo to Yambuya in his little steamer, the A.I.A., when, in order to provide himself with a night's dry lodgings, he sent his Manyemas ashore to drive the natives off a little island, "pouring a perfect hail of iron slugs after the wretched fugitives" as they fled to their canoes, and seizing "all the fowls, goats, and other live stock they could find" (p. 266).

When the loads had been reduced to 400, the bearers insisted, with much outcry and insolence, that they were still too heavy; and Werner spent three days-made bright, it is pathetic to learn, by Jameson's fulness of life and story -in assisting him to "unscrew the lid of each case of ammunition, remove a portion of the contents, fill up the empty space with dried grass, and screw on the lids again,' -more plunder for Tippoo. His pages at this point of the tragical story (272 to 275) are of singular interest. When the last farewells had been spoken, and when the A.I.A. had just started to carry Tippoo back to his seat of government at the Falls

"

"The Belgian officer in command of the A.I.A. came and told me that Tippoo Tip had told the Manyemas that, if the Major did not treat them well, they were to shoot him. This was such an astonishing statement that I could hardly believe it; but it was confirmed by one of my men (a Zanzibari), and also by several of Tippoo's own men, then on board, and, some days later, by Salim bin Soudi, the interpreter. Had it been in my power, I would have gone back to the camp and told the Major; but I was not in command, and had to obey orders and go on. As long as I live, I hope

...

never to be in the same position again. It seemed like one long, long nightmare: the everlasting falling down a precipice which has no bottom is the the state of suspense I was in for the only thing to which I can compare next ten weeks. But how different was the awakening!"

These illustrations of the cruel dangers to which Europeans are exposed on the Congo have been strikingly confirmed by a letter from Major Parminter, one of the servants of the Free State, portions of which are printed and commented on in the Daily News' of May 30th. It appears that the Free State authorities have, none too soon, prohibited the sale of arms and ammunition beyond the confluence of the Oubangi and the Congo; and the first effect of this regulation, strictly enforced at Equator Station, was to stop a large supply which the Governor at the Falls had ordered up. About the same time the State authorities had turned out of the Aruhwimi Selim ben Mohammed, Tippoo's lieutenant, the wretch who tormented Stanley on his heroic march to the Albert Lake. Tidings had also come to the Falls of the blockade being strictly enforced on the Zanzibar coast. In consequence of these things the Governor appears to have summoned Major Becker, the State. Resident at Tippoo's court, Mr Herbert Ward, and Major Parminter to a special palaver, and made a speech of quite transcendent impudence. He protested his fidelity to Leopold II., demanded 200 rifles with corresponding cartridges, and declared that if this demand were not obeyed in six months he would-break with the

State! This was on February 22, 1889. We trust that long before the 22d of August the Free State will have conclusively ended its relations with the most cruel and treacherous miscreant unhung. Not unnaturally, many are disposed to criticise the conduct of Stanley and King Leopold II., in placing Tippoo in an office which has so greatly increased his power to do mischief: for our own part, not knowing all the circumstances, we prefer the more congenial attitude of praising the Free State for the successful efforts it is making to develop its resources at Stanley Pool, and we congratulate it on being strong enough, even beyond the Equator, to assert itself against man-stealers so powerful as Salim and Tippoo Tip. It is quite certain that these villains will not yield without a fierce struggle, and all men should back the Free State in the resistance it has begun to make against one who ought never to have been admitted within its territory. The Rev. George Grenfell, most trustworthy and competent of witnesses, writing from the lower Congo a month later than Major Parminter (March 26th), mentions the facts just narrated, and says

"It is a complicated business this appointment of Tippoo Tip: it was a diplomatic triumph, I suppose, to gain time. It is still further complicated by the fact that there are five Belgian officers at the Falls virtually in the power of the Arabs, and whom they might seize and hold as hostages. The Arab conquest, of which I wrote after my first visit to the Falls four years ago, has not for one moment been stayed. It has pushed steadily and, so far as the natives are concerned,

irresistibly westward and if something is not done, the whole country, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, will be overrun and eaten up."

The most hopeful element in the outlook of the Free State is that the railway which Stanley advocated years ago has at length been surveyed at a cost of £80,000, and that in consequence of the prospect of the great river being thus brought into rapid connection with the ocean, the building of factories and the putting together of steamers is going on briskly at the Pool;1 but tidings of the most serious kind are likely to reach us from the upper Congo before autumn.

Coming down in almost a straight line southward from Stanley Falls for more than 1000 miles, we find Europeans-in this case chiefly Scots-in an even more precarious position at the north end of Lako Ny yasa.

Into that great inland sea--for the name Lake is apt to mislead us islanders when applied to a piece of stormy water 360 miles long and from 25 to 60 wide

there steamed, in October 1875, a little vessel which had been carried from the Clyde and put together above Murchison Rapids on the Shiré. Dr Laws and his companions might say with the Ancient Mariner

"We were the first that ever burst

Into that silent sea."

Certainly the first to enter it with steam, and the first Europeans to attempt the navigation of its waters in any way for at least a century and a half. The steamer was called the Ilala, after the place where Livingstone died on his