MR STANLY'S MISSION.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2800, 4 February 1878, Page 2

MR STANLY'S MISSION.

Lecture At Gap* Town.

Mr H. M. Stanley, the Joint Commissioner of the Daily Telegraph and Heir York Herald delivered an interesting lecture before the Philosophical^ Society of Cape Town, of which A4he following is a report from the Cape Argus :— After acknowledging the great kindness extended to him at Simon's Bay and Cap* Town, Mr Stanley said—

There are two little paragraph! which I have found in the report of the Royal Geographical Society*! proceedings, which. I, think I had better read, as they may probably make you pause a little before you hastily judge my conduct in Central Africa. For three yean the critics hare had their say, and surely soon it is time for me to hare mine. I would direct your attention to this crude map— excuse me calling it so—of Central Africa. You see Zanzibar, and you see Boma; my route started from Zanzibar, along the old caravan track as far as longVt9. From long. 34 ° I made a direct cut to Lake. Victoria. I there screwed my boat sections together, and navigated all that lake for the first time. Now that settled the first problem X had to solre. Livingstone said there were fire lakes; all the natives had told him so; all the Arab merchants spoke of having seen the south end and baring seen the north end; and Livingstone, with his genius and knowledge of grasp* ing the information furnished by natives, sketched a body of water 25,000 square miles in rxtent. Of course T had nothing to do with Livingstone's hypothesis or Speke's hypothesis—all I had to do was to prove my work honestly ; so I screwed my boatsections together, and circumnavigated the lake. I was friendly to Livingstone, and I was friendly to Speke; who wag rightor who was wrong I had hot to hee.d-~ geographical science would not allow it— and I found, after 17 days' circumnavigation of the lake, that it was a body of water, roupbly speaking, 150 miles in length and 150 in breadth, an area of $3,500 square miles; so that Speke was saying the truth, and Livingstone wag wrong, or at least the natives who told him were wrong. After circumnavigating

the lake, it then remained to settle the problem given to us By Sir Samuel Baker. He said that Lake Albert Nyanza Stretched from latitude 3 dogs. N. to 9 degs. S. I recollect very well attending a geographical soiree afc Willis's Itooms, London, in 1874, and I saw a huge map pendent from the wall, illustrating broadly enough the hypothesis of Sir Samuel Baker. I also saw a number of scientific ladies and gentlemen looking at this map, Rome with glasses and some without. They looked at the map very critically and very intently, with that scientific air necessary to take in the wholo thing. The lake was then said to be 800 miles in length, but it is now proved by expl.oraiiou to he only 254 miles in length. Most extraordinary people lite in that region between Luke Albert and Lake Victoria Nyanza. Among my experiences I may mention that on one occasion I was hurrying along with a column of 2200 natives from Lake Victoria to Lake Albert, and my donkeyboy was driving along a few milch cows. One of the white skinned races—that ?alo .people that live on the heights of 'ambaßarra—had also some cows, as these people live on little else than milk. Suddenly one of the pale-skinned ehil; dren said, "I have lost one of my cows." We looked about everywhere for it, but could not find it for a long time. At length we discovered that ifc had fallen bodily into a little pit about three feet in diameter. It was not a very large cow, as you may imagine, or it would not have gone down. While we were looking all about for the cow, wo heard a lowing noise right under our feet, as it were. We managed to haul up the animal with "• »wpe, »nd then discovered "that tit this spot there were several underground houses, hollowed out in the earth, and big enough to contain 200 or 300 men. Yet the entrance was only about three feet in diameter. Arriving at the shores of Lake Albert, we stood, as it were, on the edge of a plateau, and 1,100 feet below us was the lake. This country having been at j •war with Sir Samuel Baker and Colonel Gordon, we could hardly have expected a peaceable reception, and we had not; been there long before seeing soldiers and hearing the war-drums sound. They would listen to no overtures of peace and conciliation, for they hate white men. They had already seen two white men, with whom they had fougbt.and they did not wish to seeany more ; they only wished we would get away. We consented to go, and had not the cliffs been so precipitous, I would have attempted to descend, launch my boat, and settle the Albert question; but there were plenty of other problems to solve, so I thought I would leave this for some other traveller coming from Egypt, lieturning from Albert Nyanza, I went to ■ettle which were the main tributaries and feeders of Lake Victoria, and so came to the river Kagera. Then I discovered Lake Alexandra Nyanza. It had several names, but I thought it might just as well have one proper name, and there seemed to me an appropriateness in this illustrious title. 1 next came down to Ujiji, altogether a distance of 500 geographical miles, and at Ujiji I heard that Lieutenant Cameron had discovered the outlet of Lake Tanganyika—the outlet that must issue from the lake in this direction (pointing to the map). Lieutenant Cameron said that the Lukuga flows out of the lake, and that its current has a velocity of a knot in halt an hour. The Arabs said they had been there 60 years, and had never seen any river go out of the lake. The guides whom Lieutenant Cameron . took to the Lukuga said they went there with white men, but never saw any river go out. The chief living on the banks of the river said, " It goes out and comes in," and other natives whom I questioned corroborated this. It was said that a few years ago the river entered the lake, but that year it did not, and these were the kind of contradictory stories I heard. I came to the conclusion that all that was required was a careful survey of the river. Arriving at the river I met the Chief Kowie Nyangwe, and asked him all about it. He said ho was not going to allow me to pass, as the other men had brought such a quantity of water that he thought the whole country would be submerged. If one white man could have done such a terrible thing, and brought about such fearful consequences from his visit, what would not two white men do? Why, the whole ■world might be drowned. (Laughter.) However, a few presents and a little persuasive power led the superstitious chief to show me the exact spot where Lieutenant Cameron had gone, and I feund that the Lukuga neither goe3 out nor comes in; it is simply an arm of the lake or lagoon, and there is a barrier of mud deposit, with papyrus or spear-grass enclosing.stagnant pools. It is about a mile in length, and this muddy deposit, silted up by the action of the south-east wind sweeping up the lagoon, forms the bar. • The trend of the little streams on either ■ide of the Lukuga shows that in former ages the river entered into the Lake Tanganyika. Latterly the lake has risen considerably, and come near flooding this barrier., Between the time I left Livingstone at Ujiji and the time I arrived at Ujiji the second time, a period of five years, I found that the lake had covered portions of the Ujiji market for a distance oF- 200 yards. The palVn-trees in the market-place, under which we had sat several times j were now 200 feet in the lake. When I asked the natives if the water was rising, they said, " Yes; in former times that point which you see there extended far into the lake; we had rice-fields there." And all this shows that Lake

> Tanganyika ia rapidly arrivng at the ful--I*^*filment of its destiny, and that the time will come—it may be several rainy seasons off—when the lake will rise until it sweeps away the muddy deposit, and there will be a large river flowing from the lake towards Lualaba. From the Lukuga I circumnavigated the Lake, and thus settled the second problem. The third problem was to finish what Livingstone had left. At Nyangwe is the place where Livingstone left off. When Lieutenant Cameron arrived at Nyangwe he found he could not get canoea, the natives would not sympathise with him, and he was met by innumerable difficulties. The Arabs, who had a great affection for him, would not let him go on, so he resolved to shift his course, and come down to Benguela, took a steamer there and so came down to St. Patil do Loanda. In bo doing, Lieutenant Camp-on aqqompliahed very good work from' Nyangwo as Far"as hero (pointing to the map). Here he struck Livingstone's old road, and the road of the Portuguese traveller, Major Monteiro. All this part from Nyangwe to Lake Kalasi is now. When I came to Nyangwe I called my Arabs together, and asked them, " What lies ab,ea.d of this, and why did the white men", not go forward ? Why did Cameron stop at this ' place ? " So we formed a geographical

society, and all the Arabs sat down under the trees. They w-ro intensely delighted, and gave wo great attention. We all sat down dose to the place where Livingstone had been. One man eaid to me, " Whito man, you wiml to know all about this country ? " ' " Indeed I do." " I can tell you all about it. lam jusi the man that cun tell you all." ( " Oood man. Let us hear ? " "Well, that old mau Livingstone we would not allow to ro further on. He had only eight men "with him, and they were sick and tVebie half tho time. He wrs very sick, too. What could he do P We had to lako him from there to Ujiji. All that route is well known. How could he go north among the cannibals ? We persuaded him to go back, and he did, and wo hear that he is coming thia way again. As for the white man, Cameron, we would I not allow him to go. His people did not j want him to go. What was he to do alone? If they did not ro what could he do by himself? We said that we would K o with an expedition of 290 guna, and we did. Then we went with another ot 310 guns. What was the result P Every time we tried the river we lost our people in the cataracts. How can we go any more?" . „ . "You say very true. But tell us what lies ahead. It must be something very terrible." 11 Yes, yes. It is I who can tell you of these wonders. To begin with, there are the biggest men in the world, and there are the smallest men in the world, up there. These little men. are so high (about three feet.) No, they are only so high (about the length of a man's arm); They are, altogether, the very worst people under the sun. Why, they must I be genii or devils. They have little bits iof bows, and little bits of arrows with lots of little nicks in them, and in these nicks they fix some deadly poison or other, and the minute you get a scratch with one of these arrows it is all over, there is nothing more of you. You are only gone and good for nothing but to be put into the earth." 11 All this is very temtle. " That is not all. There are the gonllas, more terrible. The way they roar in the forest is awful. The forests resound with it. You can hear the gorillas roaring night and day." j " Wonderful indeed." " All I tell you is true. I can tell you even more. As for the river, it goes toward a big mountain, and then tumbles down, down, down; and then, after it has whirled. itself about, it goes on down, down again, and there ia nothing left of it." (Laughter.) lam simply repeating to you some of the knowledge I gained, and some of the information I got before I set out. , ! " Oh! master," said the man, " that forest goes from Nyangwe, and it goes on north and south, and south and louth, all over the country, everywhere. (Laughter.) There is positively no end to it. And in this forest all is dark. Oh! master, in this forest you can't see the sun anywhere. The trees are all matted together. Then there are great enormous snakes there. These snakes are, oh, so long, and then they bang on the boughs of the trees. You can't see them, and as soon as you get near them they immediately pounce down upon you and there is no more of you left. There are leopards, very big, and they crouch down on the branches of the trees so that you can't see them either. They wait until a poor wayfarer comes along, and then—Horn I he is gone. There is nothing left of him. Then as for the ants, they are everywhere. They are always at you. They bite your legs until it is just like hot water. (Laughter.) Then at night or when you want to sleep you make your bed, you spread your mat and lie down. You sleep and dream, and then suddenly you feel something bite, and you begin scratching all over." "Well, are there any more things, there P"

" Oh! master, there are the spirits, j They are awful. That forest I would not go through if you gave me 100,000dol. As for the natives, they generally know when you are coming. They have enormous spears, and hide behind the trees. They poise these spears in their hands, and make ready for you, and the first thing you feel is the spear and there !is nothing left of you. How can you possibly fight with men of thjp kind. You can't see them. They are covered over with the green leaves. And as for the dwarfs, they are little things about 30 inches. The first thing you know when you get into their country is that you hear a pifF piff in the air, and the next moment you feel little bits of arrows sticking all over you like the quills on a porcupine. And you meet a ■ lot of elephants, too. If you want to see one of my men who has seen all this and done some fighting with the dwarfs, I will send him to you." " Oh! certainly. Bring him by all means. But where does this river go P " "It goes north and north, and north still—always north. I don't think there is any end to it at all, and then you white people come and talk about wanting to fellow the river. If you go you will never reach anywhere. You will be forever gliding down this river. You will hare to pas 3 all the cataracts, and travel by many people I don't know anything about." To be continued.