By Emma Shaw Colcleugh
The Sunday Herald-Boston, May 17, 1908
Transcribed from the original by Amanda Selvidio
In no section of the world are the changes wrought within the last half-century so evident as in the erstwhile "Dark Continent," where the porters’ trail has, since Stanley’s time, widened to the iron roadway and steam carriage relieves the patient camel and the human burden-bearer.
This is emphasized by the recent return of Prof. Alexander Agassiz and his son from Uganda. That the former, is spite of his advanced age, could not only make the journey but refer to it as a "pleasure trip," seems surprising to those who remember the world-wide enthusiasm with which was received, scarcely three decades since, the news of Stanley’s visit to the same section of Africa.
It is interesting to every American to not that while Sir Samuel Baker and others exerted as indirect influence in the same direction, the visit of Stanley laid the real foundation for European rule in eastern equatorial Africa. As soon as Stanley entered Uganda — the great native kingdom beyond Victoria Nyanza — he found conditions so far superior to those among the African coast tribes that he at once grasped the possibilities of the section as a center for the civilization of the surrounding countries, the ending of the incessant tribal wars, and the termination of the slave trade.
That to do all this required better transportation facilities than were afforded by the caravan, or "sofari," as the natives call it, went without saying, and the interest awakened by Stanley’s home letters grew gradually until, in 1895, after the British protectorate was proclaimed, the government decided to construct a railway from Mombasa to Victoria Nyanza.
The completion of this gigantic undertaking carries the visitor of today into the very heart of savage Africa in as many days at it used to take months — months, too, whose days were days of toil and danger, and whose nights were marked by still greater peril from wild beasts, wilder men, and the deadly African fever, from which attacks few visitors were exempt.
Since the completion of the road, Mombasa, the eastern terminal station, has been changed from a sleepy oldworld aggregation of all sorts and conditions of men to a shipping port of some importance and the market to which are brought the ivory and skins from far interior. This town, upon an island of the same name, is connected with the mainland by a railway bridge a quarter of a mile long.
The section traversed by the railway impresses upon each visitor the difficulties encountered in its construction, and the remarkable diversity of East Africa. It contains all climates, all soils, animals ranging from the unwieldy elephant, the towering giraffe, and ravening lion, to tiny gazelles — desert lands and tropical jungles — wide-reaching plains and snow-topped mountains — forests sheltering the pygmies, and grazing lands dotted with the herds of the fierce Masai.
Lofty escarpments, which taxed almost to the limit the ingenuity of construction engineers, are succeeded by warm, rich lowlands, which merge into papyrus swamps as the shore of the Victoria Nyanza is finally reached.
To many, the term African calls up but a single type, the thick-lipped, flat-nosed negroes whom slave traders brought to America; but the visitor of today soon discovers that not more widely does the Taru desert differ from the fertile coast section which it succeeds, than do the people encountered during the 600 miles covered by the railway differ one from the other.
Extremes meet in the Kavirondos on the eastern shore of Victoria Nyanza and the people of Uganda, their nearest neighbors to the west. The latter are today, as they were when Stanley visited the country, clad from head to foot in long toga-like garments of terra-cotta colored bark cloth while the Kavirondos, in their customs in respect to dress, recall the state of mankind in the Garden of Eden, before the fall.
One may see, to be sure, a few strings of beads about the neck and, semi-occasionally, a tiny bead girdle; more than this fashion does not demand. The sole exception is a funny little tassel of banana fibre, which, fastened to the back by a cord about the waist, denotes that the wearer is a married woman. The brownish color of these tassels is, at a little distance, not unlike that of the color of the skin. To this fact was due the reports made by some of the first white visitors of "tolled natives" in equatorial Africa.
Between the extremes represented by the Kavirondos and the Waganda are the Suk warriors, whose distinctive decoration consists in saving every scrap of hair belonging to their immediate ancestors and, in some incomprehensible manner, thatching it upon their heads until, matted with gum and clay, it hangs to the waist; the lower part, by careful manipulation, is converted into a pouch about eight inches in depth in which the proud owners stow away their most valued possessions.
Save a goat skin over the shoulders, they attempt nothing in the way of raiment.
