Stanley in Africa. Boyd James Penny

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      In the distance a fleet of canoes is sighted, bearing down on the steamers. Are they the hostile Bahunga? The En Avant is sent forward on a reconnoissance, and soon makes out the fleet to consist of a thousand canoes, extending a mile and a half in length. Five men to a canoe gave a force of 5,000 men, an army of sufficient size to overwhelm a hundred such tiny steamers as composed the Stanley flotilla. A storm arose, accompanied by vivid lightning and heavy thunder shocks. The elements cleared the river of all fragile barks and left the steamers to their course.

      The old town of Mawembé came into view. It was not such as Stanley had mapped it, but a burned and nearly deserted spot. The Arab slave merchant had evidently penetrated thus far, and these ashes were the marks of his cruelty. Another town, higher up, and entirely in ashes, proved the sad conjecture to be true, for before it sat at least 200 woe-begone natives, too abject in their desolation to even affect curiosity at the approaching steamers. On being hailed, they told the pitiful tale of how a strange people, like those in the steamers, and wearing white clothes, had come upon them in the night, slaughtered their people, and carried off their women and children. The fleet of canoes, seen among the islands below, contained their own people, gathered for protection, forced to live on the islands in the day-time and to go ashore at night for food. All this had happened but eight days before, and the marauders had retreated up the river in the direction of Stanley Falls.

      A few miles above, the charred stakes, upright canoes, poles of huts, scorched banana groves and prostrate palms indicated the ruins of the site of Yavunga, the twelfth devastated town and eighth community passed since leaving the mouth of the Aruwimi. Opposite Yavunga were the Yaporo, a populous tribe, but now stricken by fire, sword and famine as were their brothers. These had charged on Stanley six years before, but they were now in no mood to dispute his way.

      Floating by is an object which attracts attention. A boat-hook is thrown over, and to it clings the forms of two women bound together by a cord. The ghastly objects are raised, and a brief inspection shows that they could not have been drowned more than twelve hours before. The steamers push on, round a point, and in the distance appear white objects. A glass is brought to bear, and they prove to be the tents of the Arab thieves. They are from Nyangwé, above the Falls, the capital of Tippoo Tib’s empire, unholy conquest from the Manyuema people, founded in flame, murder and kidnapping. The camp was palisaded and the banks were lined with canoes, evidence that the marauders had managed somehow to pass the Falls in force. The first impulse of Stanley was to attempt a rescue and wreak a deserved vengeance on these miscreants. But on second thought, his was a mission of peace, and he was without authority to administer justice. He represented no constituted government, but was on a mission to found a government. To play the rolé of judge or executioner in such an emergency might be to defeat all his plans and forever leave these wretches without a strong arm to cling to in time of future need. Had he come upon an actual scene of strife and burning, it would have been his to aid the weaker party, but now the law of might must have its way, till a sturdier justice than was at his disposal could come to tread in majesty along those dark forest aisles.

      And now what a meeting and greeting there was! The steamers signalled the arrival of strangers. A canoe put out from the shore and hailed in the language of the Eastern coast. Both sides understood that the meeting was one of peace. The steamers made for shore below the tents, and a night encampment was formed. Soon Stanley’s Zanzibaris were shaking hands with the Manyuema slaves of Abed bin Salim, who constituted the band that had been ravaging the country to obtain slaves and ivory. They had been out for sixteen months, and for eleven months had been raiding the Congo. The extent of country they had plundered was larger than Ireland, and contained a population of 1,000,000 souls. They numbered 300 men, armed with shot-guns and rifles, and their retinue of domestic slaves and women doubled their force. Their camp, even then, was on the ruins of the town of Yangambi, which had fallen before their torches, and many of whose people were prisoners on the spot where they were born.

      Stanley took a view of the stockade in which they had confined their human booty. This is the horrible story as he writes it:

      “The first general impressions are that the camp is much too densely peopled for comfort. There are rows upon rows of dark nakedness, relieved here and there by the white dresses of the captors. There are lines or groups of naked forms upright, standing or moving about listlessly; naked bodies are stretched under the sheds in all positions; naked legs innumerable are seen in the perspective of prostrate sleepers; there are countless naked children, many were infants, forms of boyhood and girlhood, and occasionally a drove of absolutely naked old women, bending under a basket of fuel, or cassava tubers, or bananas, who are driven through the moving groups by two or three musketeers. In paying more attention to details, I observe that mostly all are fettered; youths with iron rings around their necks, through which a chain like one of our boat-anchor chains is rove, securing the captives by twenties. The children over ten are secured by three copper rings, each ringed leg brought together by the central ring, which accounts for the apparent listlessness of movement I observed on first coming in presence of the curious scene. The mothers are secured by shorter chains, around whom their respective progeny of infants are grouped, hiding the cruel iron links that fall in loops or festoons over mamma’s breasts. There is not one adult man-captive amongst them.

      “Besides the shaded ground strewn over so thickly by the prostrate and upright bodies of captives, the relics of the many raids lie scattered or heaped up in profusion everywhere, and there is scarcely a square foot of ground not littered with something, such as drums, spears, swords, assegais, arrows, bows, knives, iron ware of native make of every pattern, paddles innumerable, scoops and balers, wooden troughs, ivory horns, whistles, buffalo and antelope horns, ivory pestles, wooden idols, beads of wood, berries, scraps of fetishism, sorcerers’ wardrobes, gourds of all sizes, nets, from the lengthy seine to the small hand-net; baskets, hampers, shields as large as doors (of wood or of plaited rattan), crockery, large pots to hold eight gallons, down to the child’s basin; wooden mugs, basins, and mallets; grass cloth in shreds, tatters and pieces; broken canoes, and others half-excavated; native adzes, hatchets, hammers, iron rods, etc., etc. All these littering the ground, or in stacks and heaps, with piles of banana and cassava peelings, flour of cassava, and sliced tubers drying, make up a number of untidy pictures and details, through all of which, however, prominently gleam the eyes of the captives in a state of utter and supreme wretchedness.

      “Little perhaps as my face betrayed my feelings, other pictures would crowd upon the imagination; and after realizing the extent and depth of the misery presented to me, I walked about as in a kind of dream, wherein I saw through the darkness of the night the stealthy forms of the murderers creeping towards the doomed town, its inmates all asleep, and no sounds issuing from the gloom but the drowsy hum of chirping cicadas or distant frogs – when suddenly flash the light of brandished torches; the sleeping town is involved in flames, while volleys of musketry lay low the frightened and astonished people, sending many through a short minute of agony to that soundless sleep from which there will be no waking. I wished to be alone somewhere where I could reflect upon the doom which has overtaken Bandu, Yomburri, Yangambi, Yaporo, Yakusu, Ukanga, Yakonda, Ituka, Yaryembi, Yaruche, populous Isangi, and probably thirty scores of other villages and towns.

      “The slave-traders admit they have only 2,300 captives in this fold, yet they have raided through the length and breadth of a country larger than Ireland, bearing fire and spreading carnage with lead and iron. Both banks of the river show that 118 villages and 43 districts have been devastated, out of which is only educed this scant profit of 2,300 females and children, and about 2,000 tusks of ivory! The spears, swords, bows, and the quivers of arrows show that many adults have fallen. Given that these 118 villages were peopled only by 1,000 each, we have only a profit of two per cent.; and by the time all these captives have been subjected to the accidents of the river voyage to Kirundu and Nyangwé, of camp-life and its harsh miseries, to the havoc of small-pox and the pests which miseries breed, there will only remain a scant one per cent. upon the bloody venture.

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