Jules Verne (26 page)

So it will now be understood how terrible were those words just
pronounced by Dick Sand.

"Africa! Equatorial Africa! Africa of slave-traders and slaves!"

And he was not deceived; it was Africa with all its dangers, for his
companions and for himself.

But on what part of the African continent had an inexplicable fatality
landed him? Evidently on the western coast, and as an aggravating
circumstance, the young novice was forced to think that the "Pilgrim"
was thrown on precisely that part of the coast of Angola where the
caravans, which clear all that part of Africa, arrive.

In fact it was there. It was that country which Cameron on the south
and Stanley on the north were going to cross a few years later, and at
the price of what efforts! Of this vast territory, which is composed
of three provinces, Benguela, Congo, and Angola, there was but little
known then except the coast. It extends from the Nourse, in the south,
as far as the Zaire in the north, and the two principal towns form two
ports, Benguela and St. Paul' de Loanda, the capital of the colony
which set off from the kingdom of Portugal.

In the interior this country was then almost unknown. Few travelers
had dared to venture there. A pernicious climate, warm and damp lands,
which engender fevers, barbarous natives, some of whom are still
cannibals, a permanent state of war between tribes, the slave-traders'
suspicion of every stranger who seeks to discover the secrets of their
infamous commerce; such are the difficulties to surmount, the dangers
to overcome in this province of Angola, one of the most dangerous of
equatorial Africa.

Tuckey, in 1816, had ascended the Congo beyond the Yellala Falls;
but over an extent of two hundred miles at the most. This simple
halting-place could not give a definite knowledge of the country,
and nevertheless, it had caused the death of the greater part of the
savants and officers who composed the expedition. Thirty-seven years
later, Dr. Livingstone had advanced from the Cape of Good Hope as
far as the upper Zambesi. Thence, in the month of November, with a
hardihood which has never been surpassed, he traversed Africa from the
south to the northwest, cleared the Coango, one of the branches of the
Congo, and on the 31st of May, 1854, arrived at St. Paul de Loanda. It
was the first view in the unknown of the great Portuguese Colony.

Eighteen years after, two daring discoverers crossed Africa from the
east to the west, and arrived, one south, the other north, of Angola,
after unheard-of difficulties.

The first, according to the date, was a lieutenant in the English
navy, Verney-Howet Cameron. In 1872, there was reason to fear that the
expedition of the American, Stanley, was in great danger. It had been
sent to the great lake region in search of Livingstone. Lieutenant
Cameron offered to go over the same road.

The offer was accepted. Cameron, accompanied by Dr. Dillon, Lieutenant
Cecil Murphy and Robert Moffat, a nephew of Livingstone, started from
Zanzibar. After having crossed Ougogo, he met Livingstone's faithful
servants carrying their master's body to the eastern coast. He
continued his route to the west, with the unconquerable desire to pass
from one coast to the other.

He crossed Ounyanyembe, Ougounda, and Kahouele, where he collected
the great traveler's papers. Having passed over Tanganyika, and the
Bambarre mountains, he reached Loualaba, but could not descend its
course. After having visited all the provinces devastated by war and
depopulated by the slave trade, Kilemmba, Ouroua, the sources of the
Lomane, Oulouda, Lovale, and having crossed the Coanza and the
immense forests in which Harris has just entrapped Dick Sand and his
companions, the energetic Cameron finally perceived the Atlantic Ocean
and arrived at Saint Philip of Benguela. This journey of three years
and four months had cost the lives of his two companions, Dr. Dillon
and Robert Moffat.

Henry Moreland Stanley, the American, almost immediately succeeded the
Englishman, Cameron, on the road of discoveries. We know that this
intrepid correspondent of the New York
Herald
, sent in search of
Livingstone, had found him on October 30th, 1871, at Oujiji, on Lake
Tanganyika. Having so happily accomplished his object for the sake of
humanity, Stanley determined to pursue his journey in the interest of
geographical science. His object then was to gain a complete knowledge
of Loualaba, of which he had only had a glimpse.

Cameron was then lost in the provinces of Central Africa, when, in
November, 1874, Stanley quitted Bagamoga, on the eastern coast.
Twenty-one months after, August 24th, 1876, he abandoned Oujiji, which
was decimated by an epidemic of smallpox. In seventy-four days he
effected the passage of the lake at N'yangwe, a great slave market,
which had been already visited by Livingstone and Cameron. Here he
witnessed the most horrible scenes, practised in the Maroungou and
Manyouema countries by the officers of the Sultan of Zanzibar.

Stanley then took measures to explore the course of the Loualaba and
to descend it as far as its mouth. One hundred and forty bearers,
engaged at N'yangwe, and nineteen boats, formed the material and the
force of his expedition.

From the very start he had to fight the cannibals of Ougouson. From
the start, also, he had to attend to the carrying of boats, so as to
pass insuperable cataracts.

Under the equator, at the point where the Loualaba makes a bend to
the northeast, fifty-four boats, manned by several hundred natives,
attacked Stanley's little fleet, which succeeded in putting them to
flight. Then the courageous American, reascending as far as the second
degree of northern latitude, ascertained that the Loualaba was the
upper Zaire, or Congo, and that by following its course he could
descend directly to the sea.

This he did, fighting nearly every day against the tribes that lived
near the river. On June 3d, 1877, at the passage of the cataracts of
Massassa, he lost one of his companions, Francis Pocock. July 18th he
was drawn with his boat into the falls of M'belo, and only escaped
death by a miracle.

Finally, August 6th, Henry Stanley arrived at the village of Ni-Sanda,
four days' journey from the coast.

Two days after, at Banza-M'bouko, he found the provisions sent by two
merchants from Emboma.

He finally rested at this little coast town, aged, at thirty-five
years, by over-fatigue and privations, after an entire passage of the
African continent, which had taken two years and nine months of his
life.

However, the course of the Loualaba was explored as far as the
Atlantic; and if the Nile is the great artery of the North, if the
Zambesi is the great artery of the East, we now know that Africa still
possesses in the West the third of the largest rivers in the world—a
river which, in a course of two thousand, nine hundred miles, under
the names of Loualaba, Zaire, and Congo, unites the lake region with
the Atlantic Ocean.

However, between these two books of travel—Stanley's and
Cameron's—the province of Angola is somewhat better known in this
year than in 1873, at that period when the "Pilgrim" was lost on the
African coast. It was well known that it was the seat of the western
slave-trade, thanks to its important markets of Bihe, Cassange, and
Kazounde.

It was into this country that Dick Sand had been drawn, more than one
hundred miles from the coast, with a woman exhausted by fatigue and
grief, a dying child, and some companions of African descent, the
prey, as everything indicated, to the rapacity of slave merchants.

Yes, it was Africa, and not that America where neither the natives,
nor the deer, nor the climate are very formidable. It was not that
favorable region, situated between the Cordilleras and the coast,
where straggling villages abound, and where missions are hospitably
opened to all travelers.

They were far away, those provinces of Peru and Bolivia, where the
tempest would have surely carried the "Pilgrim," if a criminal hand
had not changed its course, where the shipwrecked ones would have
found so many facilities for returning to their country.

It was the terrible Angola, not even that part of the coast inspected
by the Portuguese authorities, but the interior of the colony, which
is crossed by caravans of slaves under the whip of the driver.

What did Dick Sand know of this country where treason had thrown him?
Very little; what the missionaries of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries had said of it; what the Portuguese merchants, who
frequented the road from St. Paul de Loanda to the Zaïre, by way of
San Salvador, knew of it; what Dr. Livingstone had written about it,
after his journey of 1853, and that would have been sufficient to
overwhelm a soul less strong than his.

Truly, the situation was terrible.

The day after that on which Dick Sand and his companions had
established their last halt in the forest, two men met together about
three miles from there, as it had been previously arranged between
them.

These two men were Harris and Negoro; and we are going to see now what
chance had brought together, on the coast of Angola, the Portuguese
come from New Zealand, and the American, whom the business of trader
obliged to often traverse this province of Western Africa.

Harris and Negoro were seated at the foot of an enormous banyan, on
the steep bank of an impetuous stream, which ran between a double
hedge of papyrus.

The conversation commenced, for the Portuguese and the American
had just met, and at first they dwelt on the deeds which had been
accomplished during these last hours.

"And so, Harris," said Negoro, "you have not been able to draw this
little troop of Captain Sand, as they call this novice of fifteen
years, any farther into Angola?"

"No, comrade," replied Harris; "and it is even astonishing that I have
succeeded in leading him a hundred miles at least from the coast.
Several days ago my young friend, Dick Sand, looked at me with an
anxious air, his suspicions gradually changed into certainties—and
faith—"

"Another hundred miles, Harris, and those people would be still more
surely in our hands! However, they must not escape us!"

"Ah! How could they?" replied Harris, shrugging his shoulders. "I
repeat it, Negoro, there was only time to part company with them. Ten
times have I read in my young friend's eyes that he was tempted to
send a ball into my breast, and I have too bad a stomach to digest
those prunes which weigh a dozen to the pound."

"Good!" returned Negoro; "I also have an account to settle with this
novice."

"And you shall settle it at your ease, with interest, comrade. As to
me, during the first three days of the journey I succeeded very well
in making him take this province for the Desert of Atacama, which
I visited formerly. But the child claimed his caoutchoucs and his
humming-birds. The mother demanded her quinquinas. The cousin was
crazy to find cocuyos. Faith, I was at the end of my imagination,
and after with great difficulty making them swallow ostriches for
giraffes—a god-send, indeed, Negoro!—I no longer knew what to
invent. Besides, I well saw that my young friend no longer accepted my
explanations. Then we fell on elephants' prints. The hippopotami were
added to the party. And you know, Negoro, hippopotami and elephants
in America are like honest men in the penitentiaries of Benguela.
Finally, to finish me, there was the old black, who must find forks
and chains at the foot of a tree. Slaves had freed themselves from
them to flee. At the same moment the lion roared, starting the
company, and it is not easy to pass off that roaring for the mewing
of an inoffensive cat. I then had only time to spring on my horse and
make my way here."

"I understand," replied Negoro. "Nevertheless, I would wish to hold
them a hundred miles further in the province."'

"One does what he can, comrade," replied Harris. "As to you, who
followed our caravan from the coast, you have done well to keep your
distance. They felt you were there. There is a certain Dingo that does
not seem to love you. What have you done to that animal?"

"Nothing," replied Negoro; "but before long it will receive a ball in
the head."

"As you would have received one from Dick Sand, if you had shown ever
so little of your person within two hundred feet of his gun. Ah! how
well he fires, my young friend; and, between you and me, I am obliged
to admit that he is, in his way, a fine boy."

"No matter how fine he is, Harris, he will pay dear for his
insolence," replied Negoro, whose countenance expressed implacable
cruelty.

"Good," murmured Harris, "my comrade remains just the same as I have
always known him! Voyages have not injured him!"

Then, after a moment's silence: "Ah, there, Negoro," continued he,
"when I met you so fortunately there below, at the scene of the
shipwreck, at the mouth of the Longa, you only had time to recommend
those honest people to me, while begging me to lead them as far as
possible across this pretended Bolivia. You have not told me what you
have been doing these two years! Two years, comrade, in our chance
existence, is a long time. One fine day, after having taken charge of
a caravan of slaves on old Alvez's account—whose very humble agents
we are—you left Cassange, and have not been heard of since! I have
thought that you had some disagreement with the English cruiser, and
that you were hung!"

"I came very near it, Harris."

"That will come, Negoro."

"Thank you!"

"What would you have?" replied Harris, with an indifference quite
philosophical; "it is one of the chances of the trade! We do not carry
on the slave-trade on the coast of Africa without running the risk of
dying elsewhere than in our beds! So, you have been taken?"