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AN AFRICAN ADVENTURE
AN AFRICAN ADVENTURE
ADVENTURES IN INTERVIEWING PEACE AND BUSINESS S. O. S: America's Miracle in France THE BUSINESS OF WAR THE REBIRTH OF RUSSIA THE WAR AFTER THE WAR LEONARD WOOD: Prophet of Preparedness BY ISAAC F. MARCOSSON AUTHOR OF "ADVENTURES IN INTERVIEWING," ETC. NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD MCMXXI COPYRIGHT · 1921 BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT · 1921 BY JOHN LANE COMPANY THE PLIMPTON PRESS NORWOOD · MASS · U·S·A To THOMAS F. RYAN WHO FIRST BEHELD THE VISION OF
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FOREWORD
FOREWORD
From earliest boyhood when I read the works of Henry M. Stanley and books about Cecil Rhodes, Africa has called to me. It was not until I met General Smuts during the Great War, however, that I had a definite reason for going there. After these late years of blood and battle America and Europe seemed tame. Besides, the economic war after the war developed into a struggle as bitter as the actual physical conflict. Discord and discontent became the portion of the civilized world. I wanted to get a
43 minute read
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I
I
Turn the searchlight on the political and economic chaos that has followed the Great War and you find a surprising lack of real leadership. Out of the mists that enshroud the world welter only three commanding personalities emerge. In England Lloyd George survives amid the storm of party clash and Irish discord. Down in Greece Venizelos, despite defeat, remains an impressive figure of high ideals and uncompromising patriotism. Off in South Africa Smuts gives fresh evidence of his vision and auth
17 minute read
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II
II
Yet Smuts continued as Premier which means that he brought the life of Parliament to a close without a sharp division. Moreover, he manœuvered his forces into a position that saved the day for Union and himself. How did he do it? I can demonstrate one way and with a rather personal incident. During the week I spent in Capetown Smuts was an absorbed person as you may imagine. The House was in session day and night and there were endless demands on him. The best opportunities that we had for talk
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III
III
What of the personal side of Smuts? While he is intensely human it is difficult to connect anecdote with him. I heard one at Capetown, however, that I do not think has seen the light of print. It reveals his methods, too. When the Germans ran amuck in 1914 Smuts was Minister of Defense of the Union of South Africa. The Nationalists immediately began to make life uncomfortable for him. Balked in their attempt to keep the Union out of the struggle they took another tack. After the Botha campaign i
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IV
IV
Now let us turn to another and less conspicuous South African whose point of view, imperial, personal and patriotic, is the exact opposite of that of Smuts. Throughout this chapter has run the strain of Hertzog, first the Boer General fighting gallantly in the field with Smuts as youthful comrade; then the member of the Botha Cabinet; later the bitter insurgent, and now the implacable foe of the order that he helped to establish. What manner of man is he and what has he to say? I talked to him o
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I
I
When you take the train for the North at Capetown you start on the first lap of what is in many respects the most picturesque journey in the world. Other railways tunnel mighty mountains, cross seething rivers, traverse scorching deserts, and invade the clouds, but none has so romantic an interest or is bound up with such adventure and imagination as this. The reason is that at Capetown begins the southern end of the famous seven-thousand-mile Cape-to-Cairo Route, one of the greatest dreams of E
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II
II
Shortly after my return from Africa I was talking with a well-known American business man who, after making the usual inquiries about lions, cannibals and hair-breadth escapes, asked: "Is it dangerous to go about in South Africa?" When I assured him that both my pocket-book and I were safer there than on Broadway in New York or State Street in Chicago, he was surprised. Yet his question is typical of a widespread ignorance about all Africa and even its most developed area. What people generally
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III
III
With this economic setting for the whole South African picture and a visualization of the Cape-to-Cairo Route let us start on the long journey that eventually took me to the heart of equatorial Africa. The immediate objectives, so far as this chapter is concerned, are Kimberley, Johannesburg and Pretoria, names and towns that are synonymous with thrilling chapters in the development of Africa and more especially the Union. You depart from Capetown in the morning and for hours you remain in the f
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IV
IV
The part that Americans had in the development of Kimberley is slight compared with their participation in the exploitation of the Rand gold mines. Not only were they the real pioneers in opening up this greatest of all gold fields but they loomed large in the drama of the Jameson Raid. One of their number, John Hays Hammond, the best-known of the group, was sentenced to death for his rôle in it. The entire technical fabric of the Rand was devised and established by men born, and who had the gre
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V
V
No attempt at an analysis of South Africa would be complete without some reference to the native problem, the one discordant note in the economic and productive scheme. The race question, as the Smuts dilemma showed, lies at the root of all South African trouble. But the racial conflict between Briton and Boer is almost entirely political and in no way threatens the commercial integrity. Both the Dutchman and the Englishman agree on the whole larger proposition and the necessity of settling once
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I
I
For fifty-eight hours the train from Johannesburg had travelled steadily northward, past Mafeking and on through the apparently endless stretches of Bechuanaland. Alternately frozen and baked, I had swallowed enough dust to stock a small-sized desert. Dawn of the third day broke and with it came a sharp rap on my compartment door. I had been dreaming of a warm bath and a joltless life when I was rudely restored to reality. The car was stationary and a blanketed Matabele, his teeth chattering wit
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II
II
We can now go into the story of the occupation of Rhodesia, which not only unfolds a stirring drama of development but discloses something of an epic of adventure. With most corporations it is an easy matter to get down to business once a charter is granted. It is only necessary to subscribe stock and then enter upon active operations, whether they produce soap, razors or automobiles. The market is established for the product. With the British South Africa Company it was a far different and infi
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III
III
Rhodesia produces much more than trouble for the Chartered Company. She is pre-eminently a land of ranches and farms. Here you get still another parallel with the United States because it is no uncommon thing to find a farm of 50,000 acres or more. I doubt if any other new region in the world contains a finer or sturdier manhood than Rhodesia. Like the land itself it is a stronghold of youth. Likewise, no other colony, and for that matter, no other matured country exercises such a rigid censorsh
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IV
IV
Since we bid farewell to Cecil Rhodes in this chapter after having almost continuously touched his career from the moment we reached Capetown, let us make a final measure of his human side,—and he was intensely human—particularly with reference to Rhodesia, which is so inseparably associated with him. His passion for the country that bore his name exceeded his interest in any of his other undertakings. He liked the open life of the veldt where he travelled in a sort of gypsy wagon and camped for
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I
I
Unfold the map of Africa and you see a huge yellow area sprawling over the Equator, reaching down to Rhodesia on the south-east, and converging to a point on the Atlantic Coast. Equal in size to all Latin and Teutonic Europe, it is the abode of 6,000 white men and 12,000,000 blacks. No other section of that vast empire of mystery is so packed with hazard and hardship, nor is any so bound up with American enterprise. Across it Stanley made his way in two epic expeditions. Livingstone gave it the
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II
II
When I left Elizabethville I bade farewell to the comforts of life. I mean, for example, such things as ice, bath-tubs, and running water. There is enough water in the Congo to satisfy the most ardent teetotaler but unfortunately it does not come out of faucets. Most of it flows in rivers, but very little of it gets inside the population, white or otherwise. Speaking of water brings to mind one of the useful results of such a trip as mine. Isolation in the African wilds gives you a new appreciat
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III
III
The private car on which I travelled from Fungurume to Bukama was my final taste of luxury. When Horner waved me a good-bye north I realized that I was divorcing myself from comfort and companionship. In thirty hours I was in sun-scorched Bukama, the southern rail-head of the Cape-to-Cairo Route and my real jumping-off place before plunging into the mysteries of Central Africa. Here begins the historic Lualaba, which is the initial link in the almost endless chain of the Congo River. I at once w
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IV
IV
On this trip Franck outlined to me his whole colonial creed. It was a gorgeous June morning and we had just left a particularly picturesque Arabized village behind us. Hundreds of natives had come out to welcome the Minister in canoes. They sang songs and played their crude musical instruments as they swept alongside our boat. We now sat on the upper deck and watched the unending panorama of palm trees with here and there a clump of grass huts. "All colonial development is a chain which is no st
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I
I
Two days more of travelling on the Lower Lualaba brought us to Ponthierville, a jewel of a post with a setting of almost bewildering tropical beauty. Here we spent the night on the boat and early the following morning boarded a special train for Stanleyville, which is only six hours distant by rail. Midway we crossed the Equator. Thirty miles south of Stanleyville is the State Experimental Coffee Farm of three hundred acres, which produces fifteen different species of the bean. This institution
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II
II
Since Stanleyville is the head of navigation on the Congo there is ordinarily no lack of boats. I was fortunate to be able to embark on the "Comte de Flandre," the Mauretania of those inland seas and the most imposing vessel on the river for she displaced five hundred tons. She flew the flag of the Huileries du Congo Belge, the palm oil concern founded by Lord Leverhulme and the most important all-British commercial interest in the Congo. She was one of a fleet of ten boats that operate on the C
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III
III
On the Congo I got my first glimpse of the native fashion in mourning. It is a survival of the biblical "sackcloth and ashes." As soon as a death occurs all the members of the family smear their faces and bodies with ashes or dirt. Even the babies show these rude symbols of woe. It gives the person thus adorned a weird and ghastly appearance. When ashes and dust are not available for this purpose, a substitute is found in filthy mud. The mourner is not permitted to wash throughout the entire per
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IV
IV
Two stops on the Congo River deserve special attention. In the Congo there began in 1911 an industry that will have an important bearing on the economic development of the Colony. It was the installation of the first plant of the Huileries du Congo Belge. This Company, which is an offshoot of the many Lever enterprises of England, resulted from the growing need of palm oil as a substitute for animal fat in soap-making. Lord Leverhulme, who was then Sir William Lever, obtained a concession for co
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V
V
Now for the last stage of the Congo River trip. Like so many of my other experiences in Africa it produced a surprise. One morning when we were about two hundred miles north of Kinshassa I heard the whir of a motor engine, a rare sound in those parts. I thought of aeroplanes and instinctively looked up. Flying overhead toward Coquilhatville was a 300-horse power hydroplane containing two people. Upon inquiry I discovered that it was one of four machines engaged in carrying passengers, mail, and
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I
I
Go up the Kasai River to Djoko Punda and you believe, despite the background of tropical vegetation and the ever-present naked savage, that for the moment you are back in the United States. You see American jitneys scooting through the jungle; you watch five-ton American tractors hauling heavy loads along the sandy roads; you hear American slang and banter on all sides, and if you are lucky enough to be invited to a meal you get American hot cakes with real American maple syrup. The air tingles
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II
II
At this point the question naturally arises—what is the Société Generale? To ask it in Belgium would be on a par with inquiring the name of the king. Its bank notes are in circulation everywhere and it is known to the humblest peasant. The Société Generale was organized in 1822 and is therefore one of the oldest, if not the oldest, joint stock bank of the Continent. The general plan of the famous Deutsche Bank of Berlin, which planted the German commercial flag everywhere, and which provided a l
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III
III
Kinshassa is nearly a thousand miles from Tshikapa. To get there I had to retrace my way up the Congo as far as Kwamouth, where the Kasai empties into the parent stream. I also found that it was necessary to change boats at Dima and continue on the Kasai to Djoko Punda. Here begins the jungle road to the diamond fields. Up to this time I had enjoyed the best facilities that the Congo could supply in the way of transport. Now I faced a trip that would not only try patience but had every element o
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IV
IV
At dawn the next morning and after a breakfast of hot cakes we set out. Nelson was in a great state of excitement because he had never ridden in an automobile before. He was destined not to enjoy that rare privilege very long. The rough highway hewed by American engineers through the thick woods was a foot deep in sand and before we had proceeded a hundred yards the car got stuck and all hands save Moody got out to push it on. Moody was the chauffeur and had to remain at the wheel. Draped in fog
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V
V
Tshikapa, which means "belt," is a Little America in every sense. It commands the junction of the Tshikapa and Kasai rivers. There are dozens of substantial brick dwellings, offices, warehouses, machine-shops and a hospital. For a hundred miles to the Angola border and far beyond, the Yankee has cut motor roads and set up civilization generally. You see American thoroughness on all sides, even in the immense native villages where the mine employees live. Instead of having compounds the company e
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VI
VI
I had originally planned to leave Africa at St. Paul de Loanda in Portuguese West Africa, where Thomas F. Ryan and his Belgian associates have acquired the new oil wells and set up still another important outpost of our overseas financial venturing. But so much time had been consumed in reaching Tshikapa that I determined to return to Kinshassa, go on to Matadi, and catch the boat for Europe at the end of August. There were two ways of getting back to Kabambaie. One was to go in an automobile th
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