Book: Freeland

T >> Theodor Hertzka >> Freeland




Our ultimatum was despatched to Suna on the very day on which we received
this sad news. We told the Masai, who offered to send the whole body of
their warriors against Uganda, that 1,000 men, in addition to the 1,200 at
present in Kavirondo, would be sufficient. We placed these 2,200 Masai
under our Freeland officers, chose from among ourselves 900 volunteers,
including 500 horsemen, and added twelve cannons and sixteen rockets,
together with thirty elephants. On the 24th of October Johnston, the leader
of this campaign, started for Kavirondo along the Masai road.

There he found, around the camp of the _el-moran_--now, when it was too
late, very carefully entrenched and guarded--unnumbered thousands of
Kavirondo and Nangi, armed with spear and bow. These he sent home as a
useless crowd. On the 10th of November he crossed the Uganda frontier; six
days later Suna was totally overthrown in a brief engagement near the Ripon
falls, his host of 110,000 men scattered to the winds, and he himself, with
a few thousand of his bodyguard armed with muskets and officered by Arabs
from the coast, taken prisoner.

On the second day after the fight our men occupied Rubaga, the capital of
Uganda. Thither came in rapid succession all the chief men of the country,
promising unconditional submission and ready to agree to any terms we might
offer. But Johnston offered to receive them into the great alliance between
us and the other native nations--an offer which the Wangwana naturally
accepted with the greatest joy. The conditions laid upon them were:
emancipation of all slaves, peaceful admission of Freeland colonists and
teachers, and reparation for all the injury they had done to the Kavirondo
and the Masai. In this last respect the Wangwana people suffered nothing,
for the countless herds of cattle belonging to their _kabaka_ which had
fallen into our hands as booty amply sufficed to replace what had been
stolen from the Kavirondo and as indemnity for the slain Kavirondo and
Masai warriors. Suna himself was carried away as prisoner, and interned on
the banks of the Naivasha lake.

The subsequent pacific relations were uninterrupted except by an isolated
attempt at resistance by the Arabs that had been left in the country; but
this was promptly and vigorously put down by the Wangwana themselves
without any need of our intervention. What contributed largely to inspire
respect in the breasts of the Wangwana were a military road which the
Kavirondo and Nangi constructed from the Victoria Nyanza to the Masai road
on the Baringo lake, and a Masai colony of 3,000 _el-moran_ on the
Kavirondo and Uganda frontier. But on the whole, after the battle at the
Ripon falls, the mere sound of our name was sufficient to secure peace and
quiet in this part also of the interior of Equatorial Africa. All round the
Victoria Nyanza, whose shores from time immemorial had been the theatre of
savage, merciless fighting, humane sentiments and habits gradually
prevailed; and as a consequence a considerable degree of material
prosperity was developed with comparative rapidity among what had
previously been the wildest tribes.

Even apart from its size, the Victoria Nyanza is the most important among
the enormous lakes of Central Africa. It covers an area of more than 20,000
square miles, and is therefore, with the exception of the Caspian, the Sea
of Aral, and the group of large lakes in North America, the largest piece
of inland water in the world. It is larger than the whole of the kingdom of
Bavaria, and its depth is proportionate to its size, for the plummet in
places does not touch the ground until it has sunk 250 fathoms; it lies
4,400 feet above the sea-level--more than 650 feet above the Brocken, the
highest hill in Middle Germany. This lake is nearly encircled by ranges of
hills which rise from 1,500 to 5,000 feet above its surface; so that the
climate of the immediately contiguous country, which is healthy without
exception and quite free from swamp, is everywhere temperate, and in some
districts positively Arcadian. And this magnificent, picturesque, and in
many places highly romantic lake is the basin source of the sacred Nile,
which, leaving it at the extreme northern end by the Ripon falls, flows
thence to the Albert Nyanza, which is 1,500 feet lower, and thence
continues its course as the White Nile.

Two months after we had established ourselves in Kavirondo and Uganda a
screw steamer of 500 tons burden was ploughing the sea-like waves of the
Victoria Nyanza, and before the end of the next year our lake flotilla
consisted of five ships. These were well received everywhere on the coast,
and the brisk commerce created by them proved to be one of the most
effective of civilising agencies. The fertility of the lands surrounding
this splendid lake is positively unbounded. A few hundred square yards of
well-watered ground are sufficient to supply the needs of a large family;
and when we had once instructed the natives in the use of agricultural
implements, the abundance of the choicest field and garden produce was
unexampled. But the growth of higher needs, particularly among the tribes
that dwelt on the western shores of the lake, remained for a long time
remarkably behind the improvement in the means of production. These simple
tribes produced more than sufficient to supply their wants, almost without
any expenditure of labour, and often out of mere curiosity to see the
results of the improved implements which had been furnished to them. As
they had no conception of property in land, and the non-utilisable
over-production could not, therefore, with them--as would unquestionably
have happened elsewhere--beget misery among the masses, here for years
together the fable of the Castle of Indolence became a reality. The idea of
property was almost lost, the necessities of life became valueless,
everyone could take as much of them as he wished to have; strangers
travelling through found everywhere a well-spread table; in short, the
Golden Age seemed about to come to the Victoria Nyanza. This absolute lack
of a sense of higher needs, however, proved to be a check to further
progress, and we took pains--not altogether without regret--so far to
disturb this paradisiacal condition as to endeavour to excite in the tribes
a taste for what they had not got. Our endeavours succeeded, but the
success was long in coming. With the advent of more strongly felt needs a
higher morality and intellectual culture at once took root in this corner
of the earth.




CHAPTER XII


One of the principal tasks of the Freeland government, and one in which, as
a rule, the ministries for art and science and for public works
co-operated, was the thorough investigation and survey of our new home:
first of the narrower district of the Kenia, and then of the neighbouring
regions with which we were continually coming into closer relationship. The
orographic and hydrographic systems of the whole country were determined;
the soil and the climate were minutely examined. In doing this, both the
higher scientific standpoint and that of prosaic utility were kept in view.
For scientific purposes there was constructed an accurate map of the whole
of the Masai and Kikuyu territories, showing most of the geographical
details. All the more prominent eminences were measured and ascended, the
Kenia not excepted.

The view from the Kenia is magnificent above measure; but, apart from the
mountain itself and its glaciers, it offers little variety. In a circle, as
far as the eye can reach, spreads a most fertile country, intersected by
numerous watercourses, which nowhere, except in a great trough-like basin
of about 1,900 square miles in extent in the north-west, give rise to
swamps. The most striking feature of the whole region is the tableland
falling away in a number of terraces, and broken by the shoulders of
massive hills. The foot-hills proper of the Kenia begin with the highest
terrace, where they form a girdle of varying breadth and height around the
central mass of the mountain, which rises with a steep abrupt outline. This
central mass, at a height of from 16,000 to 18,000 feet, bears a number of
gigantic glacier-fields, from the midst of which the peak rises abruptly,
flanked at some distance by a yet steeper, but small, horn.

A very different character marks the next in importance of the
mountain-formations that belong to the district of Freeland--namely, the
Aberdare range, about forty-five miles west of the Kenia, and stretching
from north to south a distance of more than sixty miles, with an average
breadth of twelve and a-half miles. The highest peak of this chain reaches
nearly 15,000 feet above the sea; and while the Kenia everywhere bears an
impress of grandeur, a ravishing loveliness is the great characteristic of
the Aberdare landscapes. It is true that here also are not wanting colossal
hills that produce an overwhelming impression, but the chief peculiarity is
the charming variety of romantic billowy-outlined hills, intermingled with
broad valleys, covered in part with luxuriant but not too dense forests, in
part spreading out into emerald flowery pastures everywhere watered by
numberless crystal-clear brooks and rivers, lakes and pools. This
mountain-district of nearly 800 square miles resembles a magnificent park,
from whose eminences the mighty snow-sea of the Kenia is visible to the
east, and the emerald-and-sapphire sheen of the great Masai
lakes--Naivasha, El-Meteita, and Nakuro--to the west. And this marvellously
lovely landscape, which combines all the charms of Switzerland and India,
bears in the bosom of its hills immense mineral treasures. Here, and not at
the Kenia, as our geologists soon discovered, was the future seat of the
Freeland industry, particularly of the metallurgic industry. Beds of coal
which in extent and quality at least equalled the best of England,
magnetite containing from fifty to seventy per cent. of iron, copper, lead,
bismuth, antimony, sulphur in rich veins, a large bed of rock-salt on the
western declivity just above the salt lake of Nakuro, and a number of other
mineral treasures, were discovered in rapid succession, and the most
accessible of them were at once taken advantage of. In particular, the
newly opened copper-mines had a heavy demand made upon their resources when
the telegraph was laid to the coast; the demand was still heavier as
electricity became more and more largely used as a motive force.

For great changes had meantime taken place at the Kenia. New-comers
continued to arrive in greater and greater numbers. At the close of the
fourth year the population of Freeland had risen to 780,000 souls. A great
part of Eden Vale had become a city of villas, which covered forty square
miles and contained 58,000 dwelling-houses, whose 270,000 occupants devoted
themselves to gardening, industrial, or intellectual pursuits. The
population of the Dana plateau had risen to 140,000, who, besides
cultivating what land was still available there for agriculture, gave by
far the greater part of their attention to various kinds of industries. The
main part of the agriculture had been transferred to a plain some 650 feet
lower down, beyond the zone of forest. This lower plateau extended, with
occasional breaks, round the whole of the mountain, and offered in its
3,000 square miles of fertile soil abundant agricultural ground for the
immediate future.

Here some 240,000 acres were at first brought under the plough after they
had--like all the cultivated ground in Freeland--been protected against the
visits of wild animals by a strong timber fence. The smaller game, which
could not be kept away from the seed by fencing, had respect for the dogs,
of which many were bred and trained to keep watch at the fences as well as
to guard the cattle. This protection was amply sufficient to keep away all
the creatures that would have meddled with the seed, except the monkeys,
some of which had occasionally to be shot when, in their nocturnal raids,
they refused to be frightened away by the furious barking of the
four-footed guardians.

Steam was still provisionally employed as motive power in agriculture; but
provision was being made on a very large scale to substitute electric for
steam force. The motive power for the electric dynamos was derived from the
Dana river where, after being supplemented by two large streams from the
hills just below the great waterfall, it was broken into a series of strong
rapids and cataracts as it hurried down to the lower land. These rapids and
cataracts were at the lower end of the tableland which, as indicative of
the use we made of it, we named Cornland. It was these rapids and smaller
cataracts, and not the great waterfall of 800 feet, that were utilised for
agricultural purposes. These afforded a total fall of 870 feet; and, as the
river here already had a great body of water, it was possible, by a
well-arranged combination of turbines and electro-motors, to obtain a total
force of from 500,000 to 600,000 horse-power. This was far more than could
be required for the cultivation of the whole of Cornland even in the
intensest manner. The provision made for the next year was calculated at
40,000 horse-power. Well-isolated strong copper wires were to convey the
force generated by twenty gigantic turbines in two hundred dynamos to its
several destinations, where it had to perform all the labours of
agriculture, from ploughing to the threshing, dressing, and transport of
the corn. For a network of electrical railways was also a part of this
system of agricultural mechanism.

The great Dana cataract, with what was calculated to be a force of 124,000
horse-power, was utilised for the purposes of electric lighting in Eden
Vale and in the town on the Dana plateau. For the time being, for the
public lighting it sufficed to erect 5,000 contact-lamps a little more than
100 feet high, and each having a lighting power of 2,000 candles. These
used up a force of 12,000 horse-power. For lighting dwelling-houses and
isolated or night-working factories, 420,000 incandescent-lamps were
employed. This required a force of 40,000 horse-power; so that the great
cataract had to supply a force of 52,000 horse-power to the electro-motors.
This was employed during the day as the motive power of a net of railways,
with a total length of a little over 200 miles, which traversed the
principal streets and roads in the Dana plateau and Eden Vale. In the
evening and at night, when the electricity was used for lighting purposes,
the railways had to be worked by dynamos of several thousand horse-power.
In this way altogether nearly two-fifths of the available force was called
into requisition at the close of the fifth year; the remaining three-fifths
remained for the time unemployed, and formed a reserve for future needs.

The fourth and fifth years of Freeland were also marked by the construction
of a net of canals and aqueducts, both for Eden Vale and for the Dana
plateau. The canals served merely to carry the storm-water into the Dana;
whilst the refuse-water and the sewage were carried away in cast-iron pipes
by means of a system of pneumatic exhaust-tubes, and then disinfected and
utilised as manure. The aqueducts were connected with the best springs in
the upper hills, and possessed a provisional capacity of supplying
22,000,000 gallons daily, and were used for supplying a number of public
wells, as well as all the private houses. By the addition of fresh sources
this supply was in a short period doubled and trebled. At the same time all
the streets were macadamised; so that the cleanliness and health of the
young towns were duly cared for in all respects.

The board of education had made no less vigorous efforts. A public opinion
had grown up that the youth of Freeland, without distinction of sex and
without reference to future callings, ought to enjoy an education which,
with the exception of the knowledge of Greek and Latin, should correspond
to that obtainable, for example, in the six first classes in a German
gymnasium. Accordingly, boys and girls were to attend school from the age
of six to that of sixteen years, and, after acquiring the elements, were to
be taught grammar, the history of literature, general history, the history
of civilisation, physics, natural history, geometry, and algebra.

Not less importance was attached to physical education than to intellectual
and moral. Indeed, it was a principle in Freeland that physical education
should have precedence, since a healthy, harmoniously developed mind
presupposed a healthy harmoniously developed body. Moreover, in the
cultivation of the intellect less stress was laid upon the accumulation of
knowledge than upon the stimulation of the young mind to independent
thought; therefore nothing was more anxiously and carefully avoided than
over-pressure of mental work. No child was to be engaged in mental
work--home preparation included--longer than at most six hours a day; hence
the hours of teaching of any mental subject were limited to three a day,
whilst two other school hours were devoted daily to physical
exercises--gymnastics, running, dancing, swimming, riding; and for boys, in
addition, fencing, wrestling, and shooting. A further principle in Freeland
education was that the children should not be _forced_ into activity any
more than the adults. We held that a properly directed logical system of
education, not confined to the use of a too limited range of means, could
scarcely fail to bring the pliable mind of childhood to a voluntary and
eager fulfilment of reasonably allotted duties. And experience justified
our opinion. Our mode of instruction had to be such as would make school
exceedingly attractive; but, when this had been achieved, our boys and
girls learnt in half the time as much, and that as thoroughly, as the
physically and intellectually maltreated European boys and girls of the
same age. For health's sake, the teaching was carried on out of doors as
much as possible. With this in view, the schools were built either in large
gardens or on the border of the forest, and the lessons in natural history
were regularly, and other lessons frequently, given in connection with
excursions into the neighbourhood. Consequently our school children
presented a different appearance from that we had been accustomed to see in
our old home, and especially in its great cities. Rosy faces and figures
full of robust health, vigour, and the joy of living, self-reliance, and
strong intelligence were betrayed by every mien and every movement. Thus
were our children equipped for entering upon the serious duties of life.

Naturally such a system of instruction demanded a very numerous and highly
gifted staff of teachers. In Freeland there was on an average one teacher
to every fifteen scholars, and the best intelligence in the land was
secured for the teaching profession by the payment of high salaries. For
the first four classes, which were taught chiefly by young women--single or
widowed--the salaries ranged from 1,400 to 1,800 labour-hour equivalents;
for the other six classes from 1,800 to 2,400. In the fifth year of the
settlement these salaries, reckoned in money, amounted to from 350£ to
600£.

But even such a demand for high intelligence Freeland was determined to
meet out of its own resources. In the third year, therefore, a high school
was founded, in which all those branches of knowledge were taught which in
Europe can be learnt at the universities, academies, and technical
colleges. All the faculties were endowed with a liberality of which those
outside of Freeland can have scarcely any conception. Our observatories,
laboratories, and museums had command of almost unlimited means, and no
stipend was too high to attract and retain a brilliant teacher. The same
held good of the technical, and not less of the agricultural and
commercial, professorial chairs and apparatus for teaching in our high
school. The instruction in all faculties was absolutely untrammelled, and,
like that in the lower schools, gratuitous. In the fifth year of the
settlement the high school had 7,500 students, the number of its chairs was
215; its annual budget reached as high as 2,500,000£, and was rapidly
increasing.

The means for all this enormous outlay was furnished in rich abundance by
the tax levied on the total income of all producers; for this income grew
amazingly under the double influence of the increasing population and the
increasing productiveness of labour. When the railway to the coast was
finished and its results had begun to make themselves felt, the value of
the average profit of a labour-hour quickly rose to 6s.; and as at this
time, the end of the fifth year in Freeland, 280,000 workers were
productively engaged for an average of six hours a day--that is, for 1,800
hours in the year--the total value of the profit of labour that year in
Freeland amounted to 280,000 × 1,800 × 6s.--that is, to a round sum of
150,000,000£. Of this the commonwealth reserved thirty-five per cent. as
tax--that is, in round figures, 52,500,000£; and this was the source from
which, after meeting the claims for the maintenance allowances--which
certainly absorbed more than half--all the expenses it was held desirable
to indulge in were defrayed.

In fact, the growth of revenue was so certain and had reached such large
proportions that, at the end of the fifth year, the executive resolved to
place before the representative bodies, meeting together for the purpose,
two measures of great importance: first, to make the granting of credits to
the associations independent of the central authority; and, secondly, to
return the free contributions of the members who had already joined, and in
future to accept no such contributions.

For the reasons given in the eighth chapter, the amount and order of the
loans for productive purposes had hitherto been dependent upon the decision
of the central authority. The stock of capitalistic aids to labour, and
consequently the productive means of the community, had now, however,
reached such a stage as to make any limit to the right of free and
independent decision by the workers themselves quite unnecessary. The
associations might ask for whatever they thought would be useful to
themselves, the capital of the country being considered equal to any
demands that could be reasonably anticipated. And this confidence in the
resources of Freeland proved to be well grounded. It is true that twice, in
the years that immediately followed this resolution, it happened that, in
consequence of unexpectedly large demands for capital, the portion of the
public revenue used for that purpose considerably exceeded the normal
proportion; but, thanks to the constant increase in all the profits of
production, this was borne without the slightest inconvenience. Later, the
reserves in the hands of the commonwealth sufficed to remove even this
element of fluctuation from the relations between the demand for capital
and the public revenue.

On the other hand, this resolution called forth a remarkable attempt to
swindle the commonwealth by means of the absolute freedom with which loans
were granted. In America a syndicate of speculative 'men of business' was
formed for the purpose of exploiting the simple-minded credulity of us
'stupid Freelanders.' Their plan was to draw as large a sum as possible
from our central bank under the pretence of requiring it to found an
association. Forty-six of the cleverest and most unscrupulous Yankees
joined in this campaign against our pockets. What they meant to do, and how
far they succeeded, can be best shown by giving the narrative written by
their leader, who is at present the honoured manager of the great saltworks
on the Nakuro lake:

'After we had arrived in Eden Vale, we decided to try the ground before we
proceeded to execute our design. We noticed, to our great satisfaction,
that the mistrust of the Freelanders would give us very little trouble. The
hotel in which we put up supplied us with everything on credit, and no one
took the trouble to ask we were. When I remarked to the host in a paternal
tone that it was a very careless procedure to keep a pump indiscriminately
free to any stroller who might come along, the host--I mean the director of
the Eden Vale Hotel Association--laughed and said there was no fear of
anyone's running away, for no one, whoever he might be, ever thought of
leaving Freeland. "So far, so good," thought I; but I asked further what
the Hotel Association would do if a guest _could_ not pay? "Nonsense," said
the director; "here everyone can pay as soon as he begins to work." "And if
he can't work?" "Then he gets a maintenance allowance from the
commonwealth." "And if he won't work?" The man smiled, slapped me on the
shoulder, and said, "Won't work won't last long here, you may rely upon it.
Besides, if one who has sound limbs _will_ be lazy--well, he still gets bed
and board among us. So don't trouble yourself about paying your score; you
may pay when you can and will."

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