the summer of 1876, Stewart started for
Livingstonia with a party of seventeen Europeans and four natives. Major
Malan, Stewart’s devoted friend and helper, had written to him, ‘Think
much over native agency at Nyasa. I hope you will take some labourers
there—to remain. Black men will listen to black men who come with white
men, and to white men who come with black.’
As many of the pupils at Lovedale
speak the same language as the Ngoni on Lake Nyasa, Stewart had appealed
to the senior students for volunteers. Of the fourteen who responded, four
were accepted. One of them was William Koyl, an ex-bullock driver, who
made a wonderful impression upon both blacks and whites, He said that he
could go only as a hewer of wood and drawer of water, that he had only
half a talent which he wished to use for Christ. ‘He was the human agent
largely used by God,’ Stewart said, ‘in opening the way for the Gospel
among the Ngoni—a tribe as cruel, as fond of bloodshed and raiding as any
in Africa.’ Near the end of his life, Stewart declared with deep feeling
that William Koyi was one of the best men he had ever known.
Large and enthusiastic meetings were
held in honour of the missionaries at Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.
Stewart records that one of the speakers struck the right key-note by
saying that ‘civilisation without Christianity was a dry stick to plant in
Africa or elsewhere.’ A friend then gave him a donation of £2000 for the
mission. Stewart writes:
‘We were going as civilisers as well
as preachers, and we took Scotch cart-wheels and axles, American trucks,
wheel-barrows, window-frames, and many other additional tools and
implements which a sailor would describe under the one word gear. . . . A
year later, Captain Elton, H.M.’s Consul at Mozambique, visited
Livingstonia. As we walked up from the beach together, I saw him looking
steadily down at some mark on the road which led from the beach to the
station. I asked him what he was looking at. He said, "Are these
wheel-marks? If they are, it is more than we have at Mozambique even after
two centuries." This was true, for no wheeled vehicle of any kind was to
be found there then.’
One of Stewart’s children was born
shortly before he started. He inserted ‘Nyasa’ in her name, ‘because,’ he
said, ‘I was not sure that I would see her again.’
The party safely reached Quilimane
on August 8, 1876. Stewart, with deep emotion and fervent gratitude to
God, visited the room in which he had spent six weeks thirteen years
before, as a fever-stricken stranger. ‘Then,’ he wrote,’ I had come down
all alone in a canoe after a journey of four hundred miles on the Zambesi.
I was very sick, very poor, very depressed. Things looked very black that
night. To-day we have a strong party with a good steamer, and a force of
twenty-three men. We have made a good start, and soon will come the
struggle for the life of the enterprise. So strange is the contrast
between the present and the past, that I can hardly think that I am the
same man who was here in 1863. Patient waiters are sometimes rewarded, you
see. . . . Does John remember when the word Livingstonia was first
uttered? He was sitting on one side of the fire and I on the other.’
They had a fleet of seventy canoes,
and ‘the number of natives employed altogether was nearly one thousand
men, six hundred of these being required at the Murchison Cataracts.’ The
efforts of the rowers drew forth his hearty admiration. He writes:
‘It was a pleasant sight to see all
these boats flying along under a steady breeze on the broad African river.
This also relieved the wearied rowers. Those in canoes had still the same
daily hard toil of punting and paddling against a swift current from dawn
till dusk. . . . We speak of their indolence and laziness, but it would be
more sensible to speak of their endurance, their willing loyalty to the
white man, and their contentment with but the smallest share of this
world’s good things, either to eat or to drink or to wear. All three for
him are of the roughest and poorest, the scantiest and most precarious,
and yet there is a perfectly wonderful, lighthearted cheerfulness when the
day is done.’
He wakes in the night, and hears one
of his Lovedale boys on watch, ‘pacing his round with his rifle on his
shoulder, singing low and sweetly, and apparently much to his heart’s
content, one of Sankey’s hymns, "Jesus loves me, even me." He did not know
that I was stirring.’ This singing watchman was Shadrack Ngunane, one of
the Love-dale volunteers, whom Stewart, by an act of grace, had allowed to
remain in Lovedale after a grave offence. ‘He has been as busy and
useful,’ Stewart adds, ‘as a white man could have been, always well,
always cheerful, always ready for everything. The picture of this once
wild Kafir, formerly rather troublesome, now cheerfully keeping his
midnight watch in this fashion and on such a venturesome journey, is one I
shall not forget. It made me hope for the day when out of the regions we
are now in there will be many who will prove themselves as worthy of the
labour bestowed on them as this lad has done, and help to convey the
Gospel still farther on. . . . Day or night I never found my Kafir friend
sleeping when he ought to be waking, or elsewhere than at the post of
duty. There are many such Kafirs, if all are not. There are also such men
to be found in other African tribes as well— men you can trust—if there
are also among them, as amongst all other sorts and conditions of men,
those whom you cannot trust. Such at least has been my experience of
thirty years amongst Africans. Let us not grudge to state what is true
about a race whose capacity and trustworthiness so many doubt, and often
speak of with needless contempt.’
Many were the anxieties of the
leader. It seemed to a native much easier to run off into the forest with
a bale of cotton, than to work a whole month for it under the broiling
sun. One evening seventy men deserted in the darkness, taking with them a
large quantity of calico. They were brought back with difficulty. ‘We have
come successfully through it all,’ Stewart wrote, ‘by God’s care and
help.’
Mr. Young met the party at the
Murchison Cataracts, and on October 21st the Ilala sailed into the
bay. ‘She entered the lake at six in the morning,’ Stewart wrote, ‘ and
according to our custom we had worship, the engines having stopped for a
few minutes. At Mr. Young’s request, we sang "From Greenland’s icy
mountains," all joining in with a fervour which was no doubt helped by the
peculiar associations of the place and hour.’
Stewart took charge at Livingstonia
for fifteen months. He and Dr. Laws made the second circumnavigation, but
the first exploration, of the stormy lake, and were the first white men to
set foot on its northern shores. They ran the Ilala, each three
months at a time, ‘steering, stoking, and repairing the steamer
themselves.’ Their chief difficulty was to secure enough of firewood. This
work on the steamer caused not a little anxiety to the two landsmen, but
it had to be done. [Consul Elton spent some time with the Livingstonia
missionaries, and he and his partly were conveyed in the Ilala to
the north end of the Lake Nyasa. In his In
Eastern and Central Africa he warmly praises
the work of the mission, and he adds (page 307): ‘Dr. Stewart looks worn
and anxious. He has a great deal of responsibility about the steamer, of
which he—as well as Dr. Laws—should be relieved. It is not legitimate
work, and it prevents him from concentrating his attention and care upon
subjects of higher importance.’ Again he says, ‘Dr. Stewart is really
ill.’] They found that the lake is three hundred and fifty miles long, and
that its breadth varies from sixteen to fifty miles. The men were the most
uncivilised they had seen anywhere in Africa. The most of them were
entirely nude, or ‘go-nakeds,’ to borrow the African phrase. Their only
covering was a coat of red ochre and paint, which, as in our houses,
served as a protection against the sun and the rain.
His Journal records careful
observations about all the objects he saw. But there are many blank leaves
with only the date. Each of these represented a fever-day.
The mission station was then at Cape
Maclear, at the southern end of the lake, a very beautifu’ spot, but
unhealthy, and not well watered. After prolonged and very anxious
examination of many sites, Stewart recommended that the mission should be
removed to Bandawe, half-way up the western side of the lake. The bay in
front of it he called Florence Bay, after one of his daughters. It is
still so named on the maps: it was the only place in Africa to which he
gave a name. At Florence Bay he had so severe an attack of fever that he
quietly gave instructions about his papers. In one of his letters he
placed several mosquitoes, and wrote underneath:
‘Our worst tormentors. We are more
afraid of them than of elephants.’
‘When I walked down the west side of
Lake Nyasa in quest of a site for the mission,’ he wrote, ‘I saw nothing
in the quiet lagoons and shores of that great inland sea but elephants in
abundance, and buffaloes, one startled lioness, and hippopotami without
number. There were the native people of course. The most of them were
living in triple stockaded villages for fear of the dreaded Ngoni. There
was not a single native Christian, nor a church or school-book or Bible,
or printed page, nor a single native who could tell the first letter of
the alphabet.’
One day, while waiting by the shore
till a younger missionary secured a dinner for them both, the idea flashed
into his mind: ‘How much easier it would be for all African workers, if
stores were opened near to or at their principal mission stations.’ This
was the real origin of the ‘African Lakes Corporation, Ltd.’ A letter was
forthwith drafted, indicating the advantages to be gained by opening up
the country to wholesome trade and commerce. This letter was sent to the
convener of the Livingstonia Mission Committee, and the result was the
formation of the Company. All the original shareholders were members of
the Livingstonia Committee, but they formed an independent Mercantile
Company, which has had great success, and has rendered immense services to
missions and the country. It has also had an influential share in the
abolition of the slave-trade. The shareholders were content ‘to take their
dividends out in philanthropy,’ but they now earn a dividend of ten per
cent.’
[Mr. Fred. L. M. Moir, the Secretary of the Company,
writes ‘At a very early stage it was found that, unless the time of the
missionaries was to be unduly taken up in attending to absolutely
necessary commercial affairs, a separate organisation was not only
desirable but essential. In the interests of the natives themselves, and
as discouraging the slave-trade, it was also obviously expedient to foster
legitimate commerce and to establish steam communication with the coast.
In the summer of 1878, as a result of representations made by Dr. James
Stewart and others, a Company—the Livingstonia Central Africa Company,
Limited (now known as the African Lakes Corporation, Limited)—was formed
by gentlemen in Glasgow and Edinburgh. A steamer to ply on the Zambesi and
Shire rivers was despatched along with consignments of barter goods and,
later on, the s.s. Ilala, brought out to Lake Nyasa by the first
Livingstonia party, was taken over by the Company. Trading and
transport stations were opened at Quilimane on the coast, on the Zambesi
and Shire rivers, at Blantyre, and on Lake Nyasa, the Company gradually
enlarging the scope of their operations as opportunities presented
themselves. From small beginnings the Company grew until now they have
numerous stations in Nyasaland, Portuguese Zambesia, North- Eastern and
North-Western Rhodesia, and, in addition to other craft, eight steamers on
the Zambesi and Shire rivers, two on Lake Nyasa, one on Lake Tanganyika
and one on Lake Mweru. The Company act as agents for various Missionary
Societies, and carry on an extensive trading, transport, and banking
business, besides interesting themselves in planting operations, etc.
‘The original Company suffered severely at the hands of
coast Arabs who, resenting attempts to introduce legitimate trade, made a
determined effort to clear the white men out of the country so as to
remove any obstacle to the continuance of slave-raiding operations.
Fighting ensued, but eventually, after a large sum of money had been
expended by the Company, the Arab slave.raiders were suppressed, and the
country came under the direct control of the British Government, the
Company handing over their treaty rights.
‘With the moral and intellectual advancement of the
natives of Central Africa, there has also been a steady development of the
resources of the country, and during the comparatively short period since
the formation of the Company, many changes for the better have taken
place, and the conditions of life have vastly improved. Natives, who in
other days would have contented themselves with lolling about in their
villages, are now employed as storekeepers, carpenters, printers,
telegraphists, typists, etc. In great measure the advance indicated is due
to the devotion and energy displayed by the missionaries of our Scottish
Churches.’
Situated in the Shire hills, and so named after
Livingstone’s birthplace.]
Stewart spent three months at Blantyre’ Mission, whose
existence was then imperilled. He was accompanied by his cousin, James
Stewart, C.E., F.R.G.S., who directed the reconstruction of the mission
and the making of the roads. These services were warmly acknowledged by
the Established Church. ‘In 1877 Dr. Laws of the Livingstonia Mission and
myself,’ he wrote, ‘went to assist the Blantyre men to found their
station. When we marched into what is now Blantyre, it consisted of five
habitable huts, and three old ones which were not habitable. As to church
or school, Bible or books, no such things existed. They had never been
heard of.’ Now, there is a famous and well-filled church, built of brick
and by natives. Blantyre has now a municipality, a weekly newspaper—The
British Central African Gazette—and some monthly sheets of a
missionary kind. There are four or five out-stations, at distances of
thirty to forty miles, at each of which there is a church and school and
real missionary work going on. The railway now reaches Blantyre.
In the midst of all these preliminaries Stewart asks:
‘Are we not in danger of forgetting our real purpose in this land? All
this work, pleasant to see, and beneficial as it will be in its results,
is material only. It is of the earth earthy. It begins and ends with time.
A certain text kept constantly recurring to my mind as I walked about the
place, "One thing is needful."’
The Lord’s Supper was celebrated on Lake Nyasa for the
first time on November 26, 1877. As in the Upper
Room at Jerusalem, twelve gathered around the Table with the Master. They
have now about four thousand native communicants, and about five thousand
candidates for communion.
In the end of 1877 Stewart handed over the mission to
Dr. Laws, and returned to Lovedale. He had spent nearly five of the best
years of his life in the establishment of Livingstonia.
