Volume Three—Chapter Thirty Nine.

Navigation of the River Gochob.

To put down the foreign slave-trade, without first devising honest occupation for a dense, idle, and mischievous population of Africa, would seal the death-warrant of every captive who, under the present system, is preserved as saleable booty. Hence it must be admitted, that to inculcate industry and to extend cultivation by voluntary labour, are indispensable stepping-stones towards the ultimate amelioration of a people who do not at present possess the elements for extended commerce. To create these would be to change the destinies of the Negro, by including him within the league of the rights of man; and habits of industry must rapidly raise him from savage ignorance to that state of improvement which is essential to fit him for the privileges of a freeman.

The present very limited exports of this immensely populous continent, which do not amount in value to those of Cuba, with only twelve hundred thousand inhabitants, must be reckoned among the chief causes of her misery and thraldom. Few, if any, of the commodities bartered with other nations are the production of capital, labour, or industry, and in the minds of the whole population the ideas of prosperity and of a slave-trade are inseparable. But if all that is coveted could be placed within honest reach, in exchange for the produce of the soil, the hands which should cultivate it will never afterwards be sold.

“Legitimate commerce,” writes Sir Fowell Buxton, “would put down the slave-trade, by demonstrating the superior value of man as a labourer on the soil, to man as an object of merchandise. If conducted on wise and equitable principles, it might be the precursor, or rather the attendant, of civilisation, peace, and Christianity to the unenlightened, warlike, and heathen tribes, who now so fearfully prey upon each other to support the slave-markets of the New World; and a commercial system upon just, liberal, and comprehensive principles, which guarded the native on the one hand, and secured protection to the honest trader on the other, would therefore confer the richest blessings on a country so long desolated and degraded by its intercourse with the basest and most iniquitous portion of mankind.”

The average cost of a seasoned slave in Cuba is 120 pounds sterling; but it has been seen that in Enárea and other parts of the interior he may be purchased for ten pieces of salt, equivalent to two shillings and a penny—for a pair of Birmingham scissors, or even for a few ells of blue calico. Hence it may be inferred that the hire of the freeman would be in the same ratio; and if so, it is obvious that this cheap labour, applied to a soil as productive as any in the world, would ensure to African tropical produce the superiority in every market to which it might be introduced.

Able advocates of the cause of humanity have upon these grounds clearly demonstrated, that, in order to suppress completely the foreign traffic in human flesh, it is only necessary to raise, in any accessible point affording the readiest outlet, sugar, coffee, and cotton, and to throw these yearly into the market of the world, already fully supplied by expensive slave labour. The creation of this cheap additional produce would so depress the price current in every other quarter, that the external slave-trade would no longer be profitable, and would therefore cease to exist.

The baneful climate of Africa is the obstacle which has hitherto opposed the introduction of agriculture, and the chief object in seeking geographical information has been to discover some point whence the object may be accomplished with safety. That point is presented in the north-eastern coast, where, from no great distance inland to an unknown extent, the spontaneous gifts of nature are transcendently abundant—the people are prepared by misfortune to welcome civilised assistance—the soil is fertile and productive, and the climate, alpine and salubrious, is highly congenial to the European constitution.

All these countries are believed to be accessible from the Juba, more commonly called the Govind, which is said to rise in Abyssinia, and to be navigable in boats for three months from its mouth. Its embouchure is in the territories of the friendly sheikhs of Brava, seven in number, the hereditary representatives of seven Arab brothers, who were first induced to settle on that part of the coast by the lucrative trade in grain, gold, ambergris, ivory, rhinoceros’ horns, and hippopotamus’ teeth. They were formerly under the protection of Portugal; but even the remembrance of that state of things has nearly passed away from the present generation. From Mombás, which is the most northern possession of Syyud Syyud, the Imam of Muscat, the coast as far as the equator is in occupation of the Sowáhili, a quiet and intelligent race of Moorish origin, and thence to Zeyla, which is now in the hands of Sheikh Ali Shermárki, the entire population is Somauli. The climate, even so far south as Mombás, is notoriously good; and the government affords a striking contrast to that of the western coast, where the regions in corresponding latitudes are subject to bloody despotism, such as is submitted to by none but the ignorant savage.

Measures at once simple and profitable, might therefore be adopted by the purchase or rent of land on this river, which is conjectured to be the Gochob, and would seem to promise easy access to the very hotbed of slavery. It has been well remarked by McQueen, in his Geographical Survey, that “rivers are the roads in the torrid zone;” and should the stream now under consideration fortunately prove fitted for navigation, the introduction through its means of the essential requisites to the happiness and the emancipation of the now oppressed continent, could not fail to confer the most inestimable advantages.

The power of Abyssinia, once so extended in this quarter, was known even to the Delta of the Niger. It was from the sovereigns of Benin that the Portuguese first heard of the glories of “Prester John;” and as it is quite certain that a communication did formerly exist, “by a journey of twenty moons,” through the countries in the upper course of the Egyptian Nile, there seems no reason to doubt that it might be readily renewed. Of the salubrity of the regions in which all these streams take their source, no question can be entertained. Ptolemy Euergetes, when sovereign of Egypt, penetrated to the most southern provinces of Ethiopia, which he conquered, and he has described his passage to have been effected, in some parts, over mountains deeply covered with snow.

Those portions of the continent which are blessed with the finest climate, and with the largest share of natural gifts, and which teem with a population long ravaged by the inroads of the kidnapper, must be of all others the most eminently fitted to receive, and the most capable of bringing to maturity, the seeds which can alone form the elements of future prosperity. And what nation is better qualified to confer such inestimable gifts, or more likely to profit by them, when judiciously bestowed, than Great Britain? The most civilised nations are those which possess the deepest interest in the spread of civilisation, and none more than herself are deeply interested in the speedy suppression of the traffic in human beings.

No beneficial change can ever be anticipated, so long as the population of the interior remain cut off from all communication with enlightened nations—so long as they are visited only by the mercenary rover, and are hemmed in by fanatic powers, whose policy it is to encourage this monstrous practice. The Mohammadans are not only traders for the sake of slaves almost exclusively, but they are, as respects the greater portion of interior Africa, jealous, reckless, commercial rivals. It is not, therefore, surprising that they should exert all the influence which they possess from the combination of avarice, ignorance, prejudice, and religion, to exclude foreign influence; and without roads, or any efficient means for the conveyance of heavy merchandise, it is not to be expected that the ignorant despot of the interior will ever think of making his slaves or his subjects cultivate produce of great bulk and laborious carriage, in order to procure in exchange articles which he requires, whilst with very trifling labour and still more trifling expense, they can be driven even to the most remote market, and there sold or exchanged.

But few people are more desirous or more capable of trading than the natives of Africa; and the facility with which factories might be formed is sufficiently proved by experience in various parts of the continent. Abundance of land now unoccupied could be purchased or rented at a mere nominal rate, in positions where the permanent residence of the white man would be hailed with universal joy, as contributing to the repose of tribes long harassed and persecuted. The serf would seek honest employment in the field, and the chiefs of slave-dealing states, gladly entering into any arrangement for the introduction of wealth and finery, would, after the establishment of agriculture, no longer find their interest in the flood of human victims, which is now annually poured through the highlands of Abyssinia.

I trust that these remarks upon the importance of such a communication as the Gochob may prove to afford to the countries in which it is situated, will not be considered either tedious or superfluous. Much has been written upon the policy which has seen, in many a barbarous location, the future marts of a boundless and lucrative commerce—the centres whence its attendant blessings, knowledge, civilisation, and wealth, would radiate amongst savage hordes. Here are no deserts, but nations already prepared for improvement, and countries gifted by nature with a congenial climate, and with a boundless extent of virgin soil, where the indigo and the tea-plant flourish spontaneously, and where the growth of the sugarcane and of every other tropical productions may be carried to an unlimited extent—regions affording grain in vast superabundance, and rich in valuable staples—cotton, coffee, spices, ivory, gold dust, peltries, and drugs. But although thus surrounded by natural wealth, and placed within reach of affluence and happiness, the denizens of these favoured regions imperatively require the fostering care of British protection, to become either prosperous, contented, or free.