The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-05-06 00:00:00

LIEUTENANT CAMERON AT THE
LONDON INSTITUTION.

The theatre of the above institution was crowded
to the doors on Monday afternoon to hear Lieutenant
Cameron describe his journey across the continent of
Africa. The lecturer commenced by stating that he
should not trouble the audience with the particulars
of the first part of his journey, of which he had already
given details at the Geographical Society's meeting.
He described the stones worn by women in the upper
hp, the carving of sticks and implements in use among
the natives, and the difficulties he had to encounter
in the various villages. He found indications of
civilization in many places. At one village where
the men were all ironfounders and smiths, the
huts had some architectural pretensions, and
were surrounded by regularly-planted groves of
palm trees, four huts being situated within each
grove. Coming to the great rivltsr Lualaba, the lec-
turer warmly eulogised the surrounding scenery, and
added that it was studded with inhabited islands. One
of these islands was a great oyster market often at-
tended by seven or eight thousand people. The people
had ivory and various natural products to dispose of,
but they would exchange them for nothing except
slaves, alleging that in any other traffic their capital
would remain too long unproductive. (A laugh.) In
this district the captured slaves suffered many hard-
ships, amongst others that of being occasionally swal-
lowed by the crocodiles. During his short sojourn,
two or three disappeared in that way. Whilst he re-
mained mention was made of a great lake at some
distance, upon the shores of which was the great
depot for the slave traders. Some incidents which have
already been published, followed, the result of which
was that whilst the enemy ran one way, he and his
party ran" another, making it a sort of African
Bull's Run. Having at last reached the shore of
one of the lakes, he had the opportunity of seeing a
sort of congress of native doctors, who went about
each with a row of iron bells hung over his loins,
which he kept perpetually ringing to attract patients.
Like doctors elsewhere, those eminent physicians were
very solicitous about their fees. The lecturer went
on to describe with considerable humour a royal lev6e
at which he had the honour of assisting, and 'after
which he preceeded on his journey in a south south-
west direction. He passed over symptoms of coal
formations similar to those which existed in England
previous to the period when we commenced working
the mines. He saw a chained gang of female slaves,
upwards of sixty in number, driven with the
greatest brutality by a slave trader, and he knew
that every such gang represented a village de-
stroyed. He encountered a chief who had known
Livingstone, and after many vicissitudes arrived at
last at Loanda, where he was seized with scurvy, and
might have died but for the kind hospitality of a
trader, who had been a lieutenant in the French
navy. A portion of the country through which
he passed was the loveliest in the world. In parts it
resembled the Wiltshire Downs, and in others the
park-like scenery of the Midland counties of England.
lie saw this during a forced march of 130 miles in five
days to the coast. Ia conclusion, Lieutenant Cameron
stated that nearly the whole of the country through
which he had pasael was unsurpassed in the richness
of its fertility. It abounded in mineral products, in
ivory, in palms, in palm oil, and other valuable arti-
cles of commerce. The hideous blot of the slave trade,
however, darkened the whole of this beauteous scene,
and the only way of abolishing that trade would be to
oper! extensive and easy means of communication with
the interior, a tning which could easily be done by cut-
ing a canal of between 20 and 30 miles in length be-
tween the Congo and the Zambesi. That once done,
they would have uninterrupted communication from
the west to the east of Africa.