Stanley in Africa. Boyd James Penny

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СКАЧАТЬ aglow with events and attractive in its details, however little it may serve to reveal of the present plans of those who contribute most to its making. Emin Pasha was born in the Austrian province of Silesia, and the town of Opplen, in 1840, the same year as Henry M. Stanley. He studied medicine at Breslau, Königsberg and Berlin, and entered upon the world as a regular M.D. with a diploma from the Berlin University. Sometime before the Russian-Turkish war he went to Constantinople and entered the Turkish army with the title of Bey, or Colonel. A taste for travel took him to the East where he acquired the oriental languages. On his return we find him attached to the Imperial Ministry of Turkey, but only during part of the incumbency of Midhat Pasha, who, finding his ministry opposed to his ultra hatred of Russia, dismissed it.

      Up to this time he was known as Dr. Eduard (Edward) Schnitzer, that being the name of his parents, with the prefix of Colonel, or Bey as an affix. This was all as to outside knowledge of him. On his dismissal from the Court at Constantinople he fled to Asia, and after many wanderings turned up at Suakim and finally at Khartoum, in Africa, where he made the acquaintance of that ill-starred and fatalistic English adventurer, General Gordon, then Governor General of the Soudan, under English auspices. The General finding him an adventurer of attainments made him a storekeeper of his army, and upon ascertaining that he was an M.D., promoted him to the position of surgeon. In 1877 he was a practitioner of medicine at Lado, in southern Soudan. He afterwards became Surgeon-General of Gordon’s staff. In this capacity he served for four years. During this time he was engaged in making many valuable scientific researches and collections and in contributing interesting papers to European learned societies. He was also of great use to Gordon, who sent him to Uganda and Unyoro on diplomatic missions.

      In 1878, when General Gordon was made Governor-General of the Soudan by the British Government, he raised Col. Schnitzer to the rank of Governor of the province of Hat el Seva in Southern Soudan. By this time the Mahdi had risen in the Soudan, and was confronting Gordon with his Mohammedan followers. To identify himself more fully with the Mohammedan people among which he had to live, Col. Schnitzer abandoned his German name and took the Arabic one of Emin (the faithful one) and the full title of Pasha (General or Governor). The scheme on the part of Gordon was to seize and hold the equatorial provinces of the Soudan, in the rear of the Mahdi’s forces, and thus introduce a military menace as well as make a political and moral diversion in favor of the cause he represented. Gordon gave him part of his own army, augmented by a large native force, and with this Emin Pasha took possession of his provinces far toward the Equator, and abutting on the central lake system of the continent.

      For a time all went well with him. He proved a most indefatigable traveler, and showed special fitness to govern. He was familiar with the language of the Turks, Arabs, Germans, French and Italians, and acquired readily the dialects of the heathen tribes. On every side he displayed suavity, tact and genius. In 1879, he made an excursion to the western shore land of the Mwutan, which till then had not been visited by white men. In 1880 he visited Makralla-land, and planted many trading stations, thus enlarging his territory geographically and politically. In this expedition he located many important rivers, chief of which was the Kibali. In 1881 he pushed his explorations westward into the land of the powerful Niam Niams, and southward into the lands of the Monbuttus, which tribes are types of the best physical and political strength in that part of Africa, west of the Nile sources.

      Thus Emin kept on increasing the extent and importance of his territory, and it came to be recognized as the best governed of any in the vast undefined domain of the Soudan. He found it infested with Arab slave-dealers, who practiced all the barbarities of their kind, and much of his time was occupied in suppressing the nefarious traffic. He became the recognized foe of those who penetrated his domains to barter in human flesh, or if cupidity dictated, to burn, pillage and kill, in order that they might freight their dhwos with trophies of their cruelty.

      Though undefined east and west, his kingdom came to recognize Lado as its northern capital, and Wadelai, on Lake Albert Nyanza, as its southern. The work of organizing his territory extended from 1878 to 1882. He had practically driven out the slave-traders and converted a deficient revenue into a surplus for his government, conducting everything on the basis laid down by his superior, General Gordon, and carrying out with the most marked success the plans of that noble enthusiast. He was fast making his territory semi-civilized when the Mahdi arose, led his hosts northward, massacred the army of Gordon, and finally made himself master of Khartoum and a great part of the Soudan. This was in 1882. The Egyptian garrisons throughout the Southern Soudan were then abandoned to their fate, and the last attempt to save Khartoum ended with the death of General Gordon.

      During the years of bloodshed that followed, Emin remained at his post, his provinces entirely cut off from the world, and he himself neglected and left entirely to his own resources. He held at the time about four thousand native and Egyptian troops under his command. He was completely surrounded by hostile tribes, but it is generally admitted that if he had chosen to leave behind him the thousands of helpless women and children and abandon the province to the merciless cruelties of the slave traders, he could easily have effected his escape either to the Congo or to the Zanzibar coast. But he determined to stay and to keep the equatorial provinces for civilization, if possible.

      The great work done by this brave and indefatigable German cannot be told here in detail. But he organized auxiliary forces of native soldiers; he was constantly engaged in warfare with surrounding tribes; he garrisoned a dozen river stations lying long distances apart. His ammunition ran low and he lacked the money needed for paying his small army; but in the face of manifold difficulties and dangers he maintained his position, governed the country well, and taught the natives how to raise cotton, rice, indigo and coffee, and also how to weave cloth and to make shoes, candles, soap and many articles of commerce. He vaccinated the natives by the thousand in order to stamp out small-pox; he opened the first hospital known in that quarter; he established a regular post-route, with forty offices; he made important geographical discoveries in the basin of the Albert Nyanza Lake, and in many ways demonstrated his capacity for governing barbarous races by the methods and standards of European civilization.

      Murder, war and slavery were made things of the past, so that at last “the whole country became so safe that only for the wild beasts in the thickets, a man could have gone from one end of the province to the other, armed with nothing more than a walking-stick.” A German writer said of him at the time: “In his capital, Lado, where Dr. Schnitzer earlier resided, he arose every day before the sun. His first work was to visit the hospitals and care for the health of the people and the troops. After a day devoted to executive labors, a great part of the night would be spent in writing those essays on anthropology, ethnology, geography, botany, and the languages of the people dwelling in his province which have made his name famous as a scientific explorer.”

      Tn 1885 Emin had ten fortified stations along the Upper Nile, the most northern one being Lado, and the most southern one Wadelai. The latter place he made his capital for some time. His command at Wadelai then consisted of 1500 soldiers, ten Egyptians and fifteen negro officers. The rest were at the various stations on the Nile. He had ammunition to hold out until the end of 1886, and longer, he wrote, “if the wild tribes did not make the discovery that he would be then entirely out of it.” In 1887 he wrote: “I am still holding out, and will not forsake my people.” After that, letters were received from him in which he described his position as hopeful. In one of the last of these letters he wrote:

      “The work that Gordon paid for with his blood I will strive to carry on according to his intentions and his spirit. For twelve long years I have striven and toiled and sown the seeds for future harvests, laid the foundation stones for future buildings. Shall I now give up the work because a way may soon open to the coast? Never!”

      The successes of the Mahdi had isolated him entirely on the north. To the west and south were powerful tribes which, though not unfriendly, could offer him no avenue of escape. To the east were still more powerful peoples, once friendly but now imbued with the Mahdi’s hatred of white men and their commercial and political objects. Chief of these were the Uganda, whose King, Mtesa, had died in 1884, and had been succeeded СКАЧАТЬ