Freeland

T >> Theodor Hertzka >> Freeland

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Speechless with delight, we gazed long at this unparalleled natural
miracle, whose grandeur and beauty words cannot describe. The eye eagerly
took in the flood of light and glittering colour, and the ear the noise of
the water pealing down from a fabulous height; the breast greedily inhaled
as a cordial the odorous air which was wafted through this enchanted
valley. The woman who was with us--Ellen Fox--was the first to find words.
Like a prophetess in an ecstasy, she looked long at the play of the water;
then, suddenly, as a stronger breath of wind completely dissipated the
vaporous veil of the waterfall, which just before had formed a waving,
sabre-like, shimmering band, she cried, 'Behold, the flaming sword of the
archangel, guarding the gate of Paradise, has vanished at our approach! Let
us call this place Eden!'

The name Eden was unanimously adopted. That this valley must be our future
place of abode was at once decided by all of us. A more careful examination
showed its superficies to be over sixty-two square miles. Allowing thirteen
miles for the elliptical lake stretching out under the Kenia cliffs, and
fifteen miles for the woods which clothed the heights around the valley,
there remained above thirty miles of open park-land surrounding the lake,
except where the Kenia cliffs touched the water, stretching in narrow
strips to the Kenia on the north-east, and broadening on the other sides to
from 1,100 yards to four miles. The glacier-water forming the Dana entered
the valley on the north-west, and left it on the south-east. The water,
which was not so cold when it entered the lake as might have been expected,
rapidly acquired a higher temperature in the lake; on hot days the lake
rose to 75 deg. Fahr. Other streams fall into the lake, some of them from the
Kenia cliffs, and others from the various hills which surround the valley.
We counted not less than eleven such streams, among them a hot one with a
temperature of 125 deg. Fahr.

Naturally we had not been idle during the four days which preceded our
discovery of Eden Vale. On the 1st of July, a few hours after the couriers
with the first despatches, the expeditions appointed to establish regular
communication with Mombasa were sent off. There were two such expeditions:
one, under Demestre and three other engineers, had to construct the road;
and the other, under Johnston, had to procure the draught oxen--of which it
was estimated about 5,000 would be required--and to arrange for the
provisioning of the whole distance. To the first expedition were allotted
twenty of our members and two hundred of our Swahili men, with a train of
fifty draught beasts; with Johnston went merely ten of ourselves, twenty
draught beasts, and ten sheep-dogs. How these expeditions accomplished
their tasks shall be told later.

I had now sent away altogether 58 of our own people, 200 Swahili men, and
181 saddle and draught beasts, besides having lost nine of the latter by
death during the journey. I had, therefore, now with me at the Kenia 149
whites, 80 Swahili, and 475 beasts, besides the dogs and the elephants. In
addition to the above, we were offered the services of several hundred of
the Wa-Kikuyu, who had followed us. Of these latter I retained 150 of the
most capable; the others, in charge of five of ourselves, I sent back at
once to their home, with the commission to purchase and send on to the
Kenia 800 strong draught oxen, 150 cows, 400 oxen for slaughter, and
several thousand hundredweight of various kinds of corn and food. Having
attended to these things, I allotted and gave out to the most suitable
hands the many different kinds of work which had first to be done. One of
our workmen had charge of the forge and smithy, another the saw-mill, with,
of course, the requisite assistance. A special section was told off for the
tree-felling, and another section had to get ready and complete the
agricultural implements. One of the engineers who remained at the Kenia was
appointed, with one hundred blacks under him, to construct the requisite
means of communication in the settlement--particularly to build bridges
over the Dana.

On the 5th of July we shifted our settlement to Eden Vale. The ground was
exactly measured, and on the shores of the lake the future town was marked
out, with its streets, open spaces, public buildings, and places of
recreation. In this projected town we allowed space for 25,000 family
houses, each with a considerable garden; and this covered thirteen square
miles. Outside of the building area--which could be afterwards enlarged at
pleasure--2,500 acres were selected for temporary cultivation, and
irrigated with a network of small canals; as soon as possible it was to be
fenced in to protect it against the incursions of the numberless wild
animals that swarmed around it, as well as from our domestic animals which,
though shut up at night in a strong pen, were allowed during the day, when
they were not in use, to pasture in the open country under the care of some
of the Swahili men and the dogs.

In the meantime, the saw-mill, which had been set up in the Dana plateau,
hard by the river, and had for its motive-power one of the rapid streams
that came down from the hills, had begun its work. The first timber which
it cut up was used in the construction of two large flat boats, in which
the transportation of the building timber up the river to the Eden lake was
at once begun. A few weeks later, on the shores of the lake, there had
arisen forty spacious wooden buildings, into which we whites removed from
the confined camp-tents we had previously occupied. The negroes preferred
to remain in the grass huts which they had made for themselves in the
shelter of a little wood. By this time the cattle were also furnished with
their pen, which was high and strong enough to offer an insurmountable
obstacle to any invasion by quadrupeds. In this pen there was room for
about two thousand beasts, and it was, moreover, provided with a covered
space for protection against rain.

By the 9th of July, our smiths, wheelwrights, and carpenters had converted
ten of the ploughshares we had brought with us into ploughs, and by the
same date the first consignment of cattle had come in from Kikuyu--120 oxen
and 50 cows, together with 200 sheep and a large quantity of poultry.
Ploughing was at once attempted, under the direction of our agriculturists.
The Kikuyu oxen struggled a little against the yoke, and at first they
could not be made to keep in the furrow; but in three days we were able to
work them with ease in teams of eight to a plough. This expenditure of
force was necessary, as the black fat soil, matted by the thick virgin
turf, was extremely difficult to break up. At first it was necessary to
have a driver to every pair of oxen, and the furrows were not so straight
as if ploughed by long-domesticated oxen; but at any rate the ground was
broken up, and in a comparatively short time the beasts got accustomed to
their work and went through it most satisfactorily. On the 15th of July a
fresh arrival of oxen brought fifteen more ploughs into use; and again on
the 20th. By the end of the month, with these forty ploughs, some 750 acres
had been broken up. This was at once harrowed and prepared for the seed. It
was then sown with what seed-corn we had brought with us--chiefly wheat and
barley--supplemented to the extent of about three-fourths by African wheat
and _mtama_ corn. The ground was then rolled again, and the work was
finished in the second half of August. The whole of the cultivated area was
then hedged in, and we cheerfully greeted the beginning of the shorter
rainy season.

In the meantime a garden--provisionally of about twenty-five acres--had
been laid out, a little farther from the precincts of the town than the
arable land; for whilst the latter could easily be removed farther away as
the town increased, it was necessary to find for the garden as permanent a
site as possible--one therefore that lay outside of the range of the growth
of the town. As we had among us no less than eighteen skilled gardeners,
and as these had as much assistance as they required from the Swahili and
Wa-Kikuyu, the twenty-five acres were in a few months planted with the
choicest kinds of fruits and berries, vegetables, flowers--in short, with
all kinds of useful and ornamental plants which we had brought from our old
homes, had collected on our way, or had met with in the neighbourhoods in
which we had settled. The garden also was covered with a network of
irrigating canals, and enclosed against unwelcome intruders by a high and
strong fence.

Against accidental inroads of monkeys there was no other protection than
the vigilance of our dogs and the guns of the gardeners. A war of
annihilation was therefore begun against the monkeys of the whole district,
of which there were untold legions in the woods that girdled Eden Vale and
in some small groves in the vale itself. While we shot other animals only
when we needed their flesh, the monkeys were destroyed wherever they showed
themselves in the neighbourhood of Eden Vale; and very soon the cunning
creatures began carefully to avoid the inhospitable valley, whilst outside
of it they retained their former daring. Several other animals were also
excluded from the general law of mercy, and that even more rigorously than
the monkeys, which were proscribed only within the boundaries of the
valley. These animals were leopards and lions, against which we organised,
whenever we had time, serious hunting expeditions. After a few months these
animals entirely disappeared from the whole district; and subsequently they
almost voluntarily forsook all the districts into which we penetrated with
our weapons and with our noisy activity. They have room enough elsewhere,
and hold it to be unnecessary to expose their skin to the bullets of white
men. On the other hand, we did not molest the hyenas; the harm which they
now and then did by the theft of a sheep was more than compensated for by
their usefulness as devourers of carrion. They are shy, cowardly beasts,
which do not readily attack anything that is alive; but in the character of
unwearied sanitary police they scour field and forest for dead animals. In
the list of beasts not to be spared stood at first the hippopotamuses,
which haunted the Eden lake and the Dana in large herds. We should have had
nothing to object to in these uncouth brutes if they had not molested our
boats and behaved aggressively towards our bathers. But, after our shells
had somewhat lessened their number, and in particular after certain
uncommonly daring old fellows had been disposed of, the rest acquired
respect for us and kept at a distance whenever they saw a man; we then
relaxed our severity, and for the time contented ourselves with keeping
them out of Eden Vale. But of course we showed no mercy to the numberless
crocodiles that infested the lake and the river. We attacked these with
bullet and spear, with hook and poison, day and night, in every conceivable
way; for we were anxious that our women and children, when they came,
should be able to bathe in the refreshing waters without endangering their
precious limbs. As the district which these animals frequented was in the
present case a very circumscribed one--fresh individuals could come neither
down from the Kenia nor over the waterfall at the end of the great
plateau--we soon succeeded in so thinning their numbers that only a few
examples were left, the destruction of which we handed over to our
Andorobbo huntsmen, whom we furnished with weapons for this Purpose, and to
whom we offered a large premium for every crocodile slain in the Eden lake
or in the Dana above the waterfall. As a fact, before the arrival of the
first caravan of immigrants, the last crocodile had disappeared from Eden
Vale and from the basin of the Dana.

Agriculture, gardening, and the chase had not absorbed all the strength at
our disposal. We were at the same time busy constructing a number of
practicable roads round the lake, along the river-bank to the east end of
the plateau, and a number of branches from this main road to different
parts of our district. It must not be imagined that these roads were works
of art--they were merely fieldways, which, however, made it possible to
carry about considerable loads without the expenditure of an enormous
amount of force. In three places the Dana was bridged over for vehicular
traffic, and in two others for foot traffic. Only in two places was much
work required--at the end of the gorge through which the Dana passed from
Eden Vale into the great plateau, and at a place where the Kenia cliffs
touched the lake. At these places several cubic yards of rock had to be
blown away, in order to make room for a road.

As in the meanwhile neither wheelwrights nor smiths had been standing
still, when the roads were ready there were also ready for use upon them a
number of stout waggons and barrows.

The construction of the flour-mill demanded a greater expenditure of
labour. The mill was fixed on the upper course of the Dana, 1,100 yards
above the entrance of the river into the Eden lake, and was furnished with
ten complete sets of machinery. The site was chosen because just above
there was a strong rapid, while below the Dana flowed calmly with a very
trifling fall until it reached the great cataract. Thus we had, through the
whole of the provisionally occupied district, a splendid waterway to the
mill, and yet for the mill we could take advantage of the rapid flow of the
upper Dana. We had brought from Europe the more complicated and delicate
parts of this mill; but the wheels, shafts, and the ten millstones we
manufactured ourselves. This mill--which was provisionally constructed of
wood only--was ready by the end of September, thanks to the additional
assistance of the two instalments of members which had reached us in the
early part of the same month.

I have already mentioned that, as soon as we had reached the Kenia, I asked
our committee for fresh supplies and a fresh body of pioneers; and that the
committee had informed me that at the end of July there would start an
expedition of 260 horsemen and 800 cwt. of goods upon 300 beasts. This
expedition reached Mombasa on the 18th of August. Then it divided into two
groups: one group, containing the most adventurous 145 horsemen, started at
once on the 18th of August with fifty very lightly loaded led-horses--the
whole of the 300 sumpter beasts were horses--without taking with them a
single native except an interpreter. They relied upon the assistance of
those of our men who were constructing the roads, and of the population
friendly to us; but they were at the same time resolved to bear without
murmuring any deprivations and fatigue that might await them. A forced ride
of twenty days, with only a one day's rest at Taveta, brought these brave
fellows among us on the 9th of September. Five horses had died, seven
others had to be left behind knocked up; they themselves, however, all
reached us, except one who had broken his leg in a fall, and was left in
good hands in Miveruni, somewhat exhausted, but otherwise in good
condition. The newly arrived joined us heartily in our work two days after.
The 115 others reached us ten days later, with 250 sumpter horses and 100
Swahili drivers. The greater part of the goods they had given to Johnston
on the way, who met with them at Useri, where he had been eagerly awaiting
them. The articles brought to us at the Kenia--in all something over 300
cwt.--contained a quantity of tools and machinery; these, and especially
the considerable addition of workmen, contributed in no small degree to
expedite our various works.

The flour-mill was--as has been stated--ready by the end of September. It
at once found abundant employment. It is true that our harvest was not yet
gathered in; but we had been gradually purchasing different kinds of
grain--to the amount of 10,000 cwt.--of the Wa-Kikuyu, and had stored it
near the lake in granaries, for which the saw-mill had supplied the
building material. All this grain was ground by the end of October; and,
even if our harvest had failed, the first few thousands of those who were
coming would not have had to suffer hunger.

But our harvest did not fail. A few weeks after the beginning of the hot
season--which begins in October--the fertile soil, which had been
continuously kept moist by our system of irrigation, blessed us with a crop
that mocked all European conceptions. Every grain sowed yielded on an
average a hundred and twenty fold. Our 750 acres yielded 42,000 cwt. of
different kinds of grain, for each haulm ended, not in single lean ears,
but in thick heavy bunches of ears--our European wheat and barley not less
than the African kinds. We had fortunately made ample preparation for the
work of the harvest. Before the end of August a machine-factory had been
erected a few hundred yards above the flour-mill. Water-power was used, and
the work of manufacture began at once. Partly of materials brought with us,
but mainly of materials prepared by ourselves, we had constructed several
reaping-machines and two threshing-machines, worked by horse-power.

Our factories were able to produce these machines because our geologists
had discovered, among other valuable mineral treasures, iron and coal in
our district. The coal lay in one of the foot-hills of the Kenia, on the
Dana plateau, nearly two miles from the river; the iron in one of the
foot-hills which the Dana in its upper course had cut through, a mile and a
quarter above Eden Yale. The coal was moderately good anthracite, and the
iron ore was a rich forty-percent. ferro-manganese. A smelting and refining
furnace, as well as an iron-works, were at once put up near the source of
the iron; they were of a, primitive and provisional character, but they
sufficed to supply us with serviceable cast and wrought iron, and thus to
make us at once independent of the supplies brought from Europe. We now
possessed a small but independent iron industry, and this enabled us to
gather in and work up within a few weeks the unexpectedly rich harvest.

A further use which we immediately made of our increased powers of
production was to put up two new saw-mills and a brewery. The saw-mills
were needed to supply material for the shelter of the continually
increasing stream of fresh arrivals; and the brewery was intended to serve
as a means of agreeably surprising the new-comers with a welcome draught of
a familiar beverage with which most of them would be sorry to dispense. As
soon as the barley was cut and threshed, it was malted. Our gardeners had
grown hops of very acceptable quality on the sides of the Kenia foot-hills;
and soon a cool cellar, made by utilising some natural caverns, was filled
with casks of the noble drink.

By the end of October we were able to contemplate our four months' labours
with a restful satisfaction. Six hundred neat block-houses awaited as many
families; 50,000 cwt. of corn and flour, copious supplies of cattle for
slaughter and draught, building material and tools, were ready for the
food, shelter, and equipment of many thousands of members. The garden had
been not less successfully cultivated, and its dainty gifts were already
beginning to be enjoyed. Our own garden-produce did not, as yet, suffice to
cover our anticipated requirements; but it continued to be supplemented by
a brisk barter trade with the Wa-Kikuyu. For these natives we had
established a regular weekly market in Eden Vale, which several hundreds of
them attended, bringing with them their goods upon ox-carts, the use of
which we had introduced among them and had made possible by means of the
roads our engineers had constructed through their country. Since we had set
up our iron-works, the Wa-Kikuyu came to us principally for iron either in
a raw condition or made up into tools. For this they at first bartered
cattle and vegetables; afterwards, when we no longer needed these things,
they offered mainly ivory, of which we had already acquired 138 tons,
partly through our trade with the Wa-Kikuyu and the Andorobbo, and partly
as the fruits of our own hunting. For ivory is as cheap here as
blackberries; the Wa-Kikuyu and the Andorobbo are glad to buy our wrought
iron for double its weight in the material which is so valuable in the
West. An iron implement, whether hammer, nail, or knife, is exchanged for
from ten to twenty times its weight in ivory. Thus almost the whole cost of
our expedition was already covered by our ivory--the cattle and provisions,
the implements and machinery, not to speak of the land, being thrown in
gratis.

CHAPTER VI

Whilst we at the Kenia were thus busily preparing a comfortable home for
our brethren who were expected from the Old World, our colleagues, under
the direction of Demestre and Johnston, were working not less successfully
on the tasks allotted to them.

Demestre had nothing to do with the construction of roads within the Kenia
district; his work began with the great forests that girdled this district.
The execution of the work from thence to the boundary between Kikuyu and
Masailand, at Ngongo, he deputed to the engineer Frank, an American; the
second section, from Ngongo to Masimani in Masailand, midway between Ngongo
and Taveta, was allotted to the engineer Moellendorf, a German; the third
section, from Masimani to Taveta, to Lermanoff, a Russian, as his name
shows; the last and most difficult section, from Taveta to Mombasa,
including two of the worst deserts, Demestre reserved to himself. To each
of the four sections five whites were appointed. His 200 Swahili,
strengthened by double that number of Wa-Kikuyu hired on the march through
their land, Demestre divided between the first two sections, allotting 50
Swahili and 300 Wa-Kikuyu to the first in Kikuyuland, and 150 Swahili and
100 Wa-Kikuyu to the second in Masailand. The third section was organised
from Taveta. Lermanoff and a companion rode thither from Kenia, by making
use of our courier-stages, in six days. He engaged 100 Swahili men in
Taveta--where Swahili caravans are always to be met with--and 250 natives
in Useri and Chaga. In the meantime his four colleagues had arrived and
brought with them the pack-horses allotted to his--as to each--section; and
the work from Taveta to Useri was begun on the 15th of July. Demestre also
made use of the courier-stages, and rode, with no other breaks than
night-rests, first to Teita, where he hired 400 Wa-Teita, whom he at once
set to work, under the direction of one of his colleagues, upon the road
between Teita and Taveta. He then hastened on to Mombasa, and by the 20th
of July he was able to put 500 people of the coast upon the most difficult
part of the work--the road from Mombasa to Teita.

The work to be done in all cases was threefold. First, in the places where
there was a deficiency of water--of which places there were several in the
lower sections, particularly in the deserts of Duruma, Teita, and
Ngiri--wells had to be dug and, where there was no spring-water, cisterns
made capacious enough to supply water sufficient not merely for the workmen
during the construction of the road, but afterwards for the men and cattle
of the caravans that passed that way. As there occur in Equatorial Africa
at all seasons of the year heavy storms of rain, which in the so-called hot
season are only much less frequent than in the so-called rainy season,
there was no danger that large cisterns draining the rain-water from a
sufficiently wide area would be exhausted even in the hot months; but the
cisterns had to be protected from the direct rays of the sun as well as
from impurities. The former was effected by providing the cisterns with
covering and shelter; the second by making the rain-water filter through
layers, several yards thick, of sand and gravel. The natural water-holes,
which are found in all deserts, but which dry up in times of protracted
drought, indicated the spots where it would be most practicable to
construct cisterns, for such spots were naturally the lowest points. The
larger of these water-holes needed only to be deepened, the evaporation of
the water guarded against, and the cisterns surrounded by the
above-mentioned natural filter, and the work was then finished. Of these in
the different sections twenty five were dug, with a depth of from nine to
sixteen yards and a diameter of from two to nine yards. Of ordinary wells
with spring-water thirty-nine were made. Each of these artificial supplies
of water was placed under the protection of a watchman.

In the second place, there was the road-making itself. In general, the
route which the expedition had taken from Mombasa to the Kenia was chosen,
and merely freed from obstacles and widened to twice its original width
where it led through bush. But at certain places, particularly where steep
heights had to be traversed, it was necessary to look for a fresh and less
hilly track. That several bridges had to be built scarcely need be
mentioned.