In Dwarf Land and Cannibal Country a Record of Travel and Discovery in Central Africa. 146 Illustrations and Maps.
Second Popular Impression (Limited to 1500 copies). London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1900. 15 cm x 21 cm. Frontispiece, XXIV, 385 pages. One fold-out map of Toro and Aruwimi districts within interior. Hardcover [publisher’s original red cloth] with gilt lettering on spine. Pictoral and lettering on front board. Good+ condition. Signs of external wear. Bumps to corners. Some staining to front board with small cloth tear evident also. Spine ends rubbed. Valley between front pastedown and endpaper slightly cracked. Binding overall a little shaky but still firm and strong. Roughness to cut edges. Slight tears at edge of fold-out map. Some untrimmed pages. Interior mostly bright and clean.
Includes, for example, the following: England to Uganda – Mozambique – Zanzibar – Hope deferred at Mbuzini river – The Wami – Wagogo Thieves – The Wanyamwezi country – The Wasese / Uganda, The Soudanese War – Our entrance into Mengo – Kampala – Missionary occupations – Native customs – The Waganda – The Mayanja – Brief history of Toro – Kasagama – The Watoro – The Batatella rebellion – Visiting Mwenge – Crossing the Semliki – Disarming the Soudanese in Mengo – Battle on the plain at Luba’s – The Major Leaves for Budu – Severe struggle at Kabagambi – Wakonjo village – Kikorongo – Crossing the Semliki – Pygmy area – Sakarumbi – Kilonga-Longa – Avakubi – Among the cannibals – Basoko – Missionary friends at Upoto – Leopoldville etc.
A travel work, documenting Albert Lloyd’s experiences working as a Christian missionary in Central Africa for four years.
Sir John Kennaway MP, President of the Church Missionary Society, provides an introduction, which illuminates the missionary zeal and the racially-infused imperialist impulse of the Victorian era:
’He [Lloyd] has been bearing his share of “the white man’s burden” of ruling, civilising and Christianising the “silent peoples” of whom John Bull caries no less than 350 millions on his back. The duty is no light one, but it gives an outlet for the energies of our people, an object worthy of an Imperial race, of a Christian country, a call to put forth the highest qualities of the Anglo-Saxon character.”
Late 19th Century attitudes are evident throughout the work.’ (p.vii)
″We speak to-day of the great explorations for the opening up of the Dark Continent; our proposed railways, increased trade, and our civilising agencies. But what is the true state of affairs ? alas! it must still be called Darkest Africa. Thousands of square miles still unexplored, huge forests absolutely untouched, millions of her dusky sons in as gross a state of darkness as they were a thousand years ago. And this for all that more lives have been laid down for Africa, and a greater sacrifice of men to the enterprise of discovery than in any other land. The border is yet hardly touched. Civilised countries have been made the richer by her gold, and where is the recompense that has been paid to her? Her tribes are sunk in deepest depths of ignorance and sin, and alas! the white man’s greed for her gold, her rubber, and her ivory has only deepened her guilt, for often it has brought within her domains drunkenness, lawlessness, and vice, and all this rushing in upon a defenceless people. And still her hands are stretched out, and it is to us that she looks; to us – who have taken her wealth, and the blood of thousands of her sons, and who, in exchange, have given to her gin, and a handful of missionaries. But the day is at hand, and darkest Africa shall yet be enlightened. Already from her very heart a tiny streak of light has commenced to glow in the British Protectorate of Uganda. Thank God! Britain’s sons have planted the Union Jack in her very centre, not to suck her life-blood for the sake of her wealth, but to bring to her the priceless treasures of Peace, Prosperity and Religion.” (p.xii-xiii)
This sense of British noblesse oblige and impulse to undertake the civilising mission underpins the book’s narrative. It also frames the interactions with the two major Dramatis personæ of the work, and who remain unseen until the latter part of the book: the ‘dwarves’ and cannibals.
Describing his reasons for going in search of the Pygmies, the author tells the reader:
’We had much about them [the Pygmies] from the natives, and vague reports concerning them had come to us from European sources, but we were still a little sceptical as to whether they actually existed; and I judged that if by passing through the forest I could settle once and for all this uncertainty, and if they really did exist, communicate with them in some way or other, I should have done a certain amount of good and have made it possible to proceed to evangelise them. Add to this desire of extending the missionary work, a very natural one for adventure, which is inbred in the breast of most true Britons, and one has in a nutshell my reasons for undertaking the journey that I am about to describe.’ (p.273-274)
Similarly, when referring to the Bangwa tribe, Lloyd writes that, ’[s]urely the time has come when we in this civilised land of ours, possessing as we do all the privileges of a Christian country, should stretch out our hands to these poor innocent cannibals, and seek to lift them out of their darkness and gross superstition into the light of the gospel of Christ. Their blood will surely be upon us as a nation if we, knowing their state, seek not to break their age-bound chains of heathenism, and “proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.”’ (p.358)
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