SOME BOOKS ON AFRICA.*
Tan sources of the Nile formed for more than two thousand years the chief speculation of geographers, and, as Sir Harry Johnston well says, since the discovery of America they have been easily the greatest geographical secret which the Caucasian race had to solve. The record of the quest, beginning in the dimmest ages of history and extending down to our own day, could not fail to be a fascinating story. The Egyptians had a fair knowledge of Abyssinia, and the sources of the Blue Nile, and Greek and Roman geographers seem to have explored the White Nile as far south as Fashoda. But the foremost pioneers were the Arabians, who explored the whole Eastern coast as far south as Delagoa Bay, and apparently penetrated far enough inland to hear of the Great Lakes and the snow mountains. Then came a long gap, broken only by the heroic enterprises of the Portu.. guess in Abyssinia, till we come to James Bruce in the latter half of the eighteenth century, who traced and mapped the head-waters of the Blue Nile. Muhammad Ali, who, whatever his faults, had a taste for exploration, sent several expeditions up the White Nile, one of which got as far as Gondokoro. But it was not till the middle of last century that the great era of Nile discovery began with the travels of Speke and Burton. They discovered Tanganyika, and then; Burton having fallen sick, Speke went on alone to the North, and was the first white man to set eyes on Victoria Nyanza. In his second expedition, made along with Grant, Speke explored the shores of the Great Lake and the neighbouring territories, and from native information indicated the existence of Albert Nyanza. If we take into account the difficulties he encountered, and the additions which he made to human ' knowledge, we must grant him the first place among African explorers. It was reserved for Sir Samuel Baker, the most romantic figure on the roll, to reach Albert Nyanza ; but his work as an explorer was constantly interfered with by his political aims, such as the repression of the slave trade, which did not obscure the efforts of pure scientists like Emin and
Schweinfurtb. " Baker Pasha,' " says Sir Harry Johnston, . " . in the remembrance of the old natives, the one heroic white wan they have known : terrible in battle, scrupulously just, at all times kind and jovial in demeanour among friends : a born ruler over a savage people." The last great name is Stanley, who defined the exact shape of Victoria Nyanza, and discovered Albert Edward Nyanza, the Semliki River, and Ruwenzori, the great snows of Equatorial Africa. The Mountains of the Moon, the most fascinating, surely, of the world's ranges, seem to have a curious power of enshrouding themselves in mystery. They are first hinted at in Ptolemaeus (150 A.D.), who wrote on the report of a great merchant called Diogenes. Speke and Baker were both at different times in places from which they might have been seen, and Stanley in 1875 actually encamped at their base without knowing it. The heavy mists rising from the tropical valleys act as an almost continuous veil. They have never been climbed, and even their height is not clear. Sir Harry Johnston gives it at 20,000 ft., but other geographers would place them lower than Kilimanjaro, or even Kenia. But whatever their relative height, snows directly on the Equator must always fascinate the imagination of all lovers of mountains. Sir Harry John- ston has done a useful service in setting forth the often tangled results of African exploration in a clear narrative.
• (1) The Nile Quest : a Record of the Exploration of the Nile and its Basin. By Sir Harry Johnston, G.C.M.G., K.C.B. London : Lawrence and Sullen. L7s. 6d.1—(2) South Africa after the War. By E. F. Knight. London : Long- mans and Co. [roe. 6d. net. J—(3) Old Caps Colony a Chronicle of her Mrn, and flows. By Mrs. A. F. Trotter. London : A. Constable and Co. [lOs. 6d. net.] —(4) The Native Problem in South Africa. By Alexander Darla. London; Chapman and Hall. [6s.]—(3) Labour and other Questions in South Africa. By •• ludicus." London : T. Fisher Unwin. [3s. fell
He seems to look forward to the day when the highlands, whether of Abyssinia or Uganda, will be the home of a white race, who will use them as a vantage-ground from which to control the development of the native races of the Upper Nile Valley. This is, indeed, the problem of all our tropical African possessions. The vantage-ground must exist before the white masters can extend their civilisation.
Mr. Knight has been well advised in reprinting the letters he wrote from South Africa describing the tour of the country which he made during the first year of peace. For one thing, they form a contemporary record of the work of repatriation which it would be a pity to forget. Mr. Knight trekked through the northern districts of Cape Colony, where he found the country Dutch, who had not suffered the brunt of war, full of bitterness and bravado; but when be reached the new Colonies he found the men who had lost everything very reasonable, and perfectly content to make the best of the new regime. He does full justice to the Government policy of land settlement, which is being pursued in the face of gigantic difficulties, for, like all experienced South Africans, he has come to the conclusion that the only way to safeguard our interests in South Africa is to fill the country with men of British stock. Towards the Dutch he is sympathetic and just,—the fighting , Dutch, that is, the simple back-veld farmer and such a leader as Delarey. He points out a fact which it is well that Englishmen should realise, that the agitation for more hours for the teaching of High Dutch in the schools is purely fictitious, engi- neered by the Church and a small Hollander clique. " It is a tongue," as he says rightly, "more foreign to the Boer than English ; he has no use for it and no desire to acquire it." The pictorial power which delighted us in Where Three Empires Meet appears in the admirable descriptions of the Pilandsberg and of Rhodesian travel, and especially in the really masterly account of the Victoria Falls, which is the only piece of writing we know that comes near to doing justice to the original. In some small points we disagree with him. He seems to us to overestimate the influence of De Wet, who has enormously lost caste since the war with his own people. It is unfair, too, to attribute extreme bitterness to the Boers of the remote bush-veld, who represent almost the least politically inclined section of the race. There are one or two small slips which Mr. Knight might correct in a later edition. It is not in the Orange River Colony that the Government has most land at its disposal (p. 134). Even if the term means only land fit for early settlement, that State falls considerably short of the Transvaal. " Witwatersrand" on p. 251 should be Witwatersberg, and the correct name of the spruit on p. 283 is the Selons.
It is a far cry from Mr. Knight's story of the results of war to Mrs. Trotter's charming volume, where the name is never mentioned. It is the sign that a land has come to maturity when it has the power to reflect upon itself and study its history, and we are glad to find in Cape Colony to-day a kind of book which forms a very delightful class of American literature. Mrs. Trotter writes chiefly of that old Dutch architecture which so perfectly fits the landscape, and of the men who made Constantia, and Stellenbosch, and the Paarl.
The "tavern of the Indian ocean" had a variegated history and many curious guests :-
"What a crowd of people walk down the road ! Old Van Riebeeck in his silk stockings ; Van der Stel, keen and courteous ; Captain Cook, stretching himself after a long sea voyage, or at his window cutting his signature with a diamond ring—the pane of glass was there a few years ago ; Clive ; the gallant figure of young Wellington, his face bronzed by an Indian sun ; Dutch skippers ; Englishmen in the service of John Company—can you not see them all ?"
The style is graceful and picturesque, and full of the atmosphere of a land which holds, in the author's words, " something of the sun-dried fascination of the East." The sketches, too, are nearly as good as the writing,—and that is very good indeed. Anything which tends to make the people of a Colony interested in their own traditions and their indigenous arts is to be warmly welcomed. Mrs. Trotter will permit us one complaint. A writer of her distinction of style
should not write of a clergyman as " the Rev. Bek." It is one of the ugliest of Colonial phrases.
The two little books which remain on our list deal chiefly with labour questions and the eternal native problem.
Though we differ on certain points from Mr. Davis, we recog- nise the wide knowledge and the good sense which characterise his monograph, and on the main lines of policy we are entirely at one with him. He points out the radical crudeness of the Kaffir mind, and the necessity in education of starting at the beginning. Like all sensible men, he sees the impossibility of forced labour. " The pressure must come from within and not from without. A higher standard of living must be imported into the kraal, and the native, while at work at the mines, must be educated to higher wants and higher ambi- tions, so that when he returns to his home his neighbours may regard him with envy, inducing emulation." And again : —" The fallacy that to keep the nigger of service to his master he must be kept in mental and political subjection is on a par with the argument often heard at home that since the Board schools have been established the lower classes have deteriorated in usefulness." At the same time, he points out very clearly that the native problem is one for South Africa to settle for herself, and that the assumption that her motives must be bad, made by globe-trotters and home theorists, is an insult to a British people. The little book by " Indicus" is a good example of what Mr. Davis and most right-thinking people must condemn. The author is an Anglo-Indian gentleman, who spent four months last year in South Africa. The book is chiefly a melange of conversa- tions with various people in hotels and railway trains, which were not worth printing. From these the writer arrives at a summary condemnation of the British Administration and a profound pessimism as to the future of the country. It is much as if one were to collect the opinions of a few discon- tented people, say in Manchester, during a period of com- mercial depression, and give it forth as the voice of England. The conclusions of " Indicus " are as remarkable as his methods. South Africa is a black man's country, and nothing more. There is a tremendous fear of a native war. The Boers are the stronger white race and the better colonists, and must predominate. British colonists have, as• a rule, no intention of settling in South Africa. He also argues for a fairer treatment of the " coolie " population ; but the value which his Indian experience might have given to his views on this question is discounted by his shallow mis- reading of the South African situation. The kindest thing we can say is that the author would have been well advised. to let his views remain concealed in the decent obscurity of his diary.
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