Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 June 1891 — AN AFRICAN DANDY. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

AN AFRICAN DANDY.

Tlppa Tib the Klcliest Man In Inner Airies—His Influence. Wo present here the latest portrait of the great Central African, Tippu Tib. Tippu Tib will soon be in Arabia again, his birthplace, for he is a native of Muscat. He is on the way to revisit the land of his fathers. He was the son of a half-casto Arab, and his mother was a full-blooded negro slave. In point of ancestry, therefore, many of the Arabs whom he has controlled as a master does a slave, look down upon him. He is the man described by Cameron as an Afiican dandy, and of whom Stanley said that he was the finest gentleman ho had ever met in Africa. Bv pure intellectual superiority Tippu Tib, after he went to the, lake regions as a trader, gradually gained the supremacy over all other tiaders, until a large tract of country, extending from Kassongo, on the Upper Congo, to Stanley Falls, acknowledged him as its ruler. He has supreme influence over all the Arabs in the district he governs, and if so disposed he can be of much assistance to the Congo Free State in its efforts to suppress slave raids. For several years he lived at Stanley Falls, where he accumulated an immense quantity of ivory, much of

which has been taken to the coast by caravans of 1,000 to 3,000 men. His home, however, is at Kossongo. At Stanley Falls he lives in a mean little hut, apparently caring nothing for its discomforts, though lie is rich enough, if he chose, to live in one of the finest houses in Zanzibar. Gleerup, the Swede, who crossed Africa a while ago, visited Kassongo and reported that Tippu Tib’s dwelling there was a fine stone mansion, which would compare favorably with any private residence in Zanzibar. Though in his dealings with white men he has been courteous, obliging and generally faithful, Tippu Tib in the past has cau.-ed an enormous amount of suffering to the helpless natives of Central Atriea. He has made slaves of thousands of them, and this has involved the destruction of many villages and the slaughter of many helpless natives. No one supposes that he is actuated by any motive than that of self-interest. He has now agreed to stop slave raiding in the territory he controls, only because he sees that it is his interest to do so. He is a very shrewd man, and finding it useless to oppose the advance of the whites, he has decided to co-operate with them, knowing that it is to their advantage to give him abundant opportunity to carry on his trading enterprises. It is hoped that this able man, who is by far the richest person in Inner Africa, may be made a.yaluable agent in carrying on the civilizing work now in progress on the Upper Congo and in the lake regoins.

TIPPU TIB