His Chief Aim—An
Explorer—His Apprenticeship —Two Letters from Livingstone—’ Hell’s Highway
‘—Methods with the Natives—A Good Laugher—Human Brotherhood—How gods are
Made.
‘As for me, I am determined to open
up Africa, or perish.’ —Livingstone.
‘Trade in Africa has been in two
ivories, white and black—slaves and elephants’ tusks.
‘—General Gordon.
‘Misfortune, that grand instructress
of impatient men.’—Dr. Stewart’s
Journal.
IN his Journal Stewart describes
himself as ‘a Zambesian.’ He was a Zambesjan in that nobler than
geographical sense in which a student at Oxford is called an Oxonian. In
Zambesiland he served an apprenticeship without which, so far as we can
see, he could not have been the successful founder of Livingstonia, nor
the pioneer of the East African Mission. His whole after-life was greatly
enriched by the unique experiences of these days.
While he owed much to Livingstone,
he was largely a self-taught expert in African affairs. His admiration of
Livingstone was great, and it was the admiration of a kindred spirit. It
was his desire to carry forward the moral and missionary side of
Livingstone’s work. On leaving for Africa he wrote: ‘I give my life to
work out his (Livingstone’s) ideas if they are practicable, that is, if
climate and national position will permit. I have left my chance of a good
position at home. Health must be given up to whatever risks, etc., and a
huge amount of labour undergone.’
Stewart’s grand tour during these
two wander-years had an immense influence over him. He then gained his
diploma as an explorer. His services in this field were fittingly
recognised when he was made, like Livingstone, an Honorary Member of the
Geographical Society. He was among the very last of the interesting order
of explorers. For little room is now left in our little planet for the
pioneer save amid the snows of the North and South Poles. Tibet was the
last of the great explorations possible in this world. The would-be
explorer may now, Alexander-like, sit down and mourn that there are no
unknown regions to conquer.
Stewart, like Livingstofle, was a
born traveller. African travel was far more dangerous then than it is now.
It is plain that he had the courage that can serenely face formless and
unknown perils, and is thus greater than the physical courage of the
soldier on the battlefield. Strong in him also was that craving to get
beyond the limits of the known, which distinguished his Viking forefathers
in the Saga times. But his love of adventure and travel was only the
obedient and helpful handmaid of a nobler passion. In him the missionary
came before the explorer, and both were combined. It was not the Spirit of
travel that whispered in his heart, but the voice that still speaks from
heaven to him who has an ear to hear, and to which James had responded as
he was leaning on his plough.
His powers had been tested and
developed by his hard African experiences. Stanley and other African
travellers have noted that African travel reveals a European’s character
more than any other mode of life does. Stewart endorses that view, for he
wrote: ‘African travel tries to the utmost every power and quality a man
possesses—his temper teeth and tact, his patience, purse and perseverance
all alike heavily.’ These tests helped to make hini the strong and
self.reliant man he became.
He had already gained a rich
treasure of Africar experience which qualified him to speak with decisior
and authority upon the conditions of travel, life, and missions in that
land. He was thus delivered from the tentative timidities and those
initial mistakes which brought disaster to more than one mission in
Central Africa. No other man in Scotland was then so well qualified as a
pioneer of missions, to smooth the path for others.
On the Zambesi he was introduced to
three men who rendered essential service at the founding of Livingstonia.
These were Mr. Edward D. Young, R.N., Captain Wilson, R.N., and the Rev.
Horace Wailer.
His life was enriched through his
comradeship with Livingstone, who often said: 'I am very
glad that you have come,’ [When in Bombay, Livingstone ‘spoke very kindly
of Stewart, aid seems to hope that he may yet join him in Central
Africa.’— Blaikie's s Life of
Livingstone, p. 362.] and he advised about
all the details of the proposed mission. He strongly recommended Nyasaland
as the best centre whence the great Light should shine forth on Darkest
Africa. He much desired that ‘that most energetic body’ (as he called it),
‘the Free Church,’ would soon
occupy the field. And he gave the strongest possible proof of his
appreciation of his young companion. He wrote to him: ‘If the Government
pays for the Lady Nyasa’ (a steamer built at his own expense), ‘I shall be
in a position to offer you all your expenses out, and £150 a year
afterwards. It will be well-spent money if we check the slave-trade on the
lake, whoever pays for it.’ So eager was he to see the mission begun at
once.
In a letter to the Foreign Mission
Committee of the Free Church of Scotland, Dr. Livingstone set forth the
very serious difficulties a new mission must encounter in Central Africa.
He then adds this pregnant postscript :—
‘March 1, 1862.
‘I have shown this (letter)
to Mr. Stewart who is now with us, and I would add that my remarks are
framed to meet the eyes of the ordinary run of missionaries; but for such
a man as Mr. Stewart I would say there are no serious obstacles in the
way.’
He also wrote the following letter to
Dr.Candlish:—
‘SHUPANGA, ZAMBESI, March 12,
1862.
‘I am happy to inform you
that Mr. Stewart arrived off the mouth of this river on the last day of
January, and as it appeared that the most satisfactory way of going to
work would be for him to come and see the country and people with his own
eyes, I invited him to accompany us while trying to take a steamer up to
Lake Nyasa. . . . I have given Mr. Stewart a hearty welcome and rejoice in
the prospect of another mission where there is so much room for work.
Nineteen thousand slaves pass annually through the custom-house of
Zanzibar, and the chief portion of them comes from Lake Nyasa. We hope to
do something towards stopping this traffic, but it is only by Christian
missions and example that the evil can be thoroughly rooted out.
‘From all I have observed
of Mr. Stewart he seems to have been specially raised up for this work,
and specially well adapted for it. Before becoming acquainted with him I
spoke cautiously, perhaps gave too much prominence to difficulties of
which I myself make small account, and may have been led to it by having
seen missionaries come out with curious notions; willing to endure
hardships, but grumbling like mountains in labour when put about by things
that they did not expect; but to such a man (Mr. Stewart), I would say
boldly, "Go forward, and with the divine blessing you will surely
succeed."
We also add two letters of
Dr. Livingstone to Stewart.
The first was addressed to ‘the Rev. James
Stewart in Nubibus, or elsewhere’ —
‘SHUPANGA, December 24, 1862.
‘Possibly I underestimate
difficulties, and I may not fully realise those which must be encountered
by the men who will be honoured to introduce the Gospel into the centre of
the slave-market of Eastern Africa. But were I young again, and planning
how I could best lay out my life, without hesitation I would go in for
this new field of missionary labour. If an efficient minister settles in
almost any parish at home, or goes to India or other country where he
could enter into other men’s labours, the conversions that may be
attributed to the labours of his life might probably far outnumber those
which may result directly from your efforts here. But I believe
that work here would eventually tend
most to the advancement of the Kingdom. I undervalue the preaching of the
Cross nowhere. The case, however, under consideration seems to be very
much that of a professor of theology giving up the pastorate and direct
effort to save souls in order that, by preparing other minds for the work,
he may indirectly convert a hundredfold more than he otherwise could have
done.
‘The effects of missions are
cumulative. You here begin a work which in influence and power will go on
increasing to the end of time. Much good will also be done in the way of
eradicating the slave-trade, and in wiping out guilt which we as a nation
contracted. Africa must be Christianised from within outwards, and those
who help to overcome the great obstacles now presented will, as men speak,
deserve the most credit. . . .
I suppose you have more pluck
than that. But do it who will, the Gospel will be planted.
‘In conclusion, I would say that,
were I in your case, I should place myself without reserve in the hands of
my elders—men anxious to do just that which will best promote the cause of
Christianity which they have at heart. Taking it as a fact that, if two of
such men agree as touching a matter and ask the Hearer of Prayer, the
request will be granted, how much more when a large number of Christ’s
people agree to ask His guidance. Wisdom will, of course, be granted. May
the All-Wise One direct your steps.’
The second was addressed to Stewart
at Quilimane, ‘or wherever he may be found (ou onde estiver).’
‘RIVER SHIRÉ,
‘February
19, 1863.
‘MY
DEAR
SIR,—I am very sorry to hear from Mr. Procter that you have been very ill
after we left Shupanga, but I hope the change to Vianna’s will be
beneficial. I was so eager to get up to our work that I may have seemed
heartless in leaving you at all, but you appeared to have got over the
attack of fever, and I expected you to recover soon, and hoped that you
would have experienced the beneficial effects which usually attend a
change of residence, in this complaint. I earnestly trust that you are
better.
‘The country is completely
disorganised and a new system must be introduced with a strong hand. We
have counted thirty-two dead bodies floating down the stream, and scarcely
a soul is to be seen in the lower Shire valley.
‘I never witnessed such a change. It
is a desert, and dead bodies are everywhere. I fear that your friends may
find in the deaths and disorders reasons for declining all share in the
work of renovation, but it will be done by those who are to do it, and the
devil’s reign must cease.
‘Be sure and let me know how our
Free Churchmen deal with the important question you will bring before
them.’
Livingstone also gave Stewart a
letter in which he said, ‘While confidently recommending him to the kind
offices of our countrymen, I declare myself ready to pay any expenses he
may incur in his Passage to the Cape or homewards.’
Stewart fully sympathised with his
chief’s detesta tion
of slavery. In 1859 Livingstone explored
the Shiré River, which till then had been absolutely unknown, and he also
discovered Lakes Shirwa and Nyasa. The Shire valley had then a teeming
population. Stewart visited it in 1862, and found everywhere traces of
desolation. He denounces in the most energetic language the Portuguese who
had hired one warlike tribe to enslave their neighbours. ‘The truth is
from the Zambesi to Lake Nyasa on the north and east banks of the river,
there is nothing but slaving—Africans selling each other. . . . The Ajawa
are in their pay, and attack village after village of the Manganja. They
kill the men and sell the women and children. When men are taken, they are
sold for five yards of calico (2s. 6d.), women for two yards (Is. in
value). The Portuguese are at the bottom of all the fighting that has
occurred.’
In the end of 1862 Livingstone
steamed up the Shire with the Pioneer, having in tow the Lady
Nyasa, which he hoped to launch on Lake Nyasa, [In this he was sadly
disappointed.] the key of Central Africa. On every side he found
heartrending evidences of recent slave-raiding. The air was darkened with
vultures; hyenas abounded; bodies too numerous for the over-gorged
crocodiles and alligators to devour, floated down the stream and clogged
the paddles of the steamers. ‘Blood, blood, everywhere blood,’ Livingstone
wrote in agony of soul. Of such scenes he wrote: ‘It gave me the
impression of being in Hell. . . . It felt to me like Gehenna without the
fire and brimstone.’ To him the slaves’ route was ‘hell’s highway.’
Mr. E. D. Young, who was then with
Livingstone, told at a meeting in Glasgow that he saw a woman in a
slave-gang sinking down exhausted. She had a load on her head and a baby
on her back. The slave-driver asked her if she could go on. She shook her
head. He then took her baby, dashed its head against a tree, flung its
quivering body on the ground, and ordered the mother to take up her load.
Stewart closely studied
Livingstone’s methods with the natives. Here is an extract from the report
of a speech of Stewart’s in 1875: ‘Without mentioning any names, he
wished, as a man and as an African missionary, to take this opportunity
before this venerable Assembly which represented so large a section of
public opinion in Scotland, of uttering his solemn protest against all
explorations carried on in Africa by means of force and bloodshed. It was
necessary to open up Africa, but it was not necessary to leave their
footsteps tracked in blood. When first, to quote a line from the "March of
the Cameron Men," he "followed his chief to the field"—he meant the great
chief of African exploration, David Livingstone, who had traversed more of
Africa than any man, living or dead—he had got some advice from him (Dr.
Livingstone) which he afterwards followed. That advice was, never to shed
blood unless he was certain his own would otherwise be shed; and with any
quite new or strange people, it was better to retire for a little than
bring on a collision.’
Stewart soon discovered the secret
of his master’s power over the natives. He soon learnt that the surest way
to establish confidence among the Africans was to show it yourself by
meeting them with frankness and geniality. In his Journal he writes:
‘Simple acts of Courtesy and kindness are never lost even among savage
people.’ Livingstone agreed with Dr. Samuel Johnson, who held that every
man may be judged of by his laughter; with Carlyle, who says that ‘no man
who has once heartily and wholly laughed, can be altogether irreclaimably
bad’; and with Sir Walter Scott, who used to say, ‘give me an honest
laugher.’ Whenever he (Livingstone) had observed a chief with a joyous
twinkle of the eye accompanying his laugh, he always set him down as a
good fellow, and had never been disappointed in him afterwards. ‘An
ill-natured or vicious fellow would not laugh in that way,’ was his remark
regarding such a laugher. The clever chief Chibisa, whom Stewart visited,
he thus describes: ‘A jolly person, who laughs easily, which is always a
good sign. Chibisa believed firmly in two things: the divine right of
Kings, and the impossibility that Chibisa should ever be in the wrong.’ .
. . Livingstone evidently made a great impression on Chibisa; like other
chiefs he began to fall under the spell of his influence. Concerning
another chief Stewart says: ‘As a laughing fellow we felt safe with him.
If a fellow laughs you know that you are likely to be well off: an
ill-natured or vicious man does not, nor do great potentates.’
He saw also that Livingstone treated
every black man as if he were a blood-relation. He tells that ‘Livingstone
saluted the poorest with a very pleasant smile, and raised his gold-laced
cap (the badge of his high office) a little above his head. Before the
poorest African he maintained self-restraint and self-respect as carefully
as in the best society at home.' [I once remarked to an aged woman who
knew Livingstone in his youth, that in one of his books he says that he
had always used his mother’s methods in managing the natives. ‘Ay, an’ ye
may be sure,’ she added, ‘that Dauvid used his mither’s tones tae. He was
by ordinar’ saft spoken, and gin ye had shut yer een, ye wad hae thocht
that it was juist his mither hersel’ speakin’, guid woman.’]
His keen sense of human brotherhood
secured a never-failing princely courtesy towards the blacks. They loved
him as the white man who treated black men as his brothers. ‘If some
travellers have engraved their names on the rocks and tree trunks, he has
engraved his in the very hearts of the heathen population of Central
Africa. Wherever Livingstone has passed, the name of missionary is a
passport and a recommendation.’ (Coillard.)
Livingstone says: ‘When a chief has
made any inquiries of us, we have found that we gave most satisfaction in
our answers when we tried to fancy ourselves in the position of the
interrogator, and him that of a poor, uneducated fellow-countryman in
England. The polite, respectful way of speaking, and behaviour of what we
call "a thorough gentleman," almost always secures the friendship and
goodwill of the Africans. . . . It ought never to be forgotten that
influence among the heathen can be acquired on1y by patient
continuance in well-doing, and that good manners are as necessary among
barbarians as among the civilised.’ Livingstone used to say that it was a
very dangerous thing to despise the manhood of the meanest savage, and
that some white men he had known had lost their lives as penalty for their
scorn.
These facts help us to understand
how the image of Livingstone is cherished and deified in the tenacious and
grateful heart of Ethiopia, and also how men were canonised as saints in
the Middle Ages, and how gods were manufactured out of heroic men in the
childhood of our race. Full light is shed on this interesting subject in
these two admirable books—Coillard of the Zambesi, p. 272,
etc., and also Coillard’s On the Threshold of
Central Africa, p. 60. We
there learn bow Livingstone is clothed with divine virtues, and set forth
in celestial proportions. The old people were never tired of talking about
him, and they often closed their ‘praise-words’ by saying, ‘he was not a
man, he was a god.’ He has already acquired a halo of legendary divinity.
Stewart closely resembled
his hero in his unfailing reliance upon God and prayer and the Bible in
his hours of need. Converse with God in African solitudes had fostered his
piety, his self-knowledge, and self-reliance. Under the depression of
fever he used to calm his mind by prayer, and so restore it to a quiet
confidence in God. In one of his journeys he was deserted by many of his
carriers who took with them some articles which he needed, and which he
could not replace. He thought that he must turn back at once. But on that
day he was reading Hebrews xii. i : ‘Wherefore seeing we also are
compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses let us run with
patience (endurance, holding on and holding out) the race that is set
before us, looking unto Jesus.’ The words came to him as on angel’s wings:
he marched right on and reached his goal. From the very first he bore
himself as a hero of the Dark Continent. [There is an exactly parallel
passage in Stanley’s Darkest Africa, vol. i. pp. 2 and 291. Stanley twice
describes this incident at length. He says regarding one of his greatest
dangers: ‘The night before I had been reading the exhortation of Moses to
Joshua, and whether it was the effect of the brave words, or whether it
was a voice I know not, but it appeared to me as though I heard, "Be
strong and of a good courage." . . . I could have sworn that I heard the
voice. I began to argue with it, and it replied, "nevertheless, be strong
and of a good courage."]
In the originality of his
career, in tenacity of purpose, in his habit of never quailing before
difficulties, in splendid audacity of programmes in energy, in sanctified
common-self, and in his inexhaustible faith in the elevation of the
African, Stewart set an inspiring example to missionary pioneers. One of
his discoveries was that to him to whom God is a Father, every land may
become a fatherland.
Central Africa was thus to
him what Arabia was to Paul—a retreat in which he examined his own heart,
revised his life, developed the self-reliance which is based upon the
reliance of faith, and sought complete consecration to Christ and His
service. In these great solitudes he bad his musing times and seasons of
sweet thought, and heard the voice of God more distinctly than elsewhere.
‘His faith in God, always strong,’ Dr. Wallace writes, ‘though not
effusive, was strengthened by his experiences of the solitary life in the
heart of Africa, entirely cut off from Christian fellowship. In a letter
to me written when his only companion was a native boy, he said that he
had never felt so near heaven, and added that now to him, "God, holiness
and heaven are the only things worth living for."
‘Pain, sorrow, loss he
deemed not wholly ill,
But heaven’s high solvents to release God’s gold
In men from base combines, yea to unfold
The nobler self of love, faith, Godward will.’
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