Red Nile: The Biography of the World’s Greatest River

by Twigger, Robert

  It shows Baker’s courage that, knowing he would have to deal with the Bunyoro King, Kamrasi, he still went ahead with his plan. Speke warned him repeatedly about the devious and repugnant nature of Kamrasi, but Baker, trusting in his immense physical strength which he was convinced was the key to impressing Africans, was sure he would gain the permission he needed to get to the lake. Kamrasi had odd protuberant eyes and a fickle nature. He said that Baker could of course go to the lake. He’d even send an armed party of warriors to protect him. But he wanted Florence in exchange.

  This demand was the last of many they had had to endure during the weeks they had been in Kamrasi’s company. So far they had given the chief a Persian carpet fifteen feet square, a Kashmiri shawl, a double-barrelled rifle, several pairs of wool socks, handfuls of bracelets and necklaces, even the yellow kerchief Florence wore on her head. But no, he wanted more. Kamrasi hadn’t even allowed them to stay in his capital. Instead they lodged outside the town in huts on a muddy meadow abutting a mosquito-infested swamp.

  But Kamrasi had not reckoned on the hero that was Sam Baker. After the demand had been translated – with the addition of several African wives for Sam thrown in as a sweetener – the enraged Baker leapt forward drawing his navy revolver from his waistband. He held it as steady as his fever-ridden state would allow, a few feet from the King’s chest, and in a wild rage told him that if the demand was ever repeated he would kill him then and there. Florence joined in in Arabic (a language Kamrasi was ignorant of) and then the female interpreter joined in.

  Kamrasi knew he had gone too far. His gross face remained impassive as he opted for less offensive gifts. That kilt Baker had been wearing when he arrived (Baker wore full Highland dress when he wanted to impress native chiefs) – could he have that? Or the compass he’d been shown? After all, good Speke had given him a chronometer. The wheedling continued, but Baker was firm. No more gifts until they had permission to leave. Kamrasi shrugged. They could go. It would take twenty days, he said. But ominously he added, ‘Don’t blame me if you can’t get back.’

  Baker and Florence were already weakened with malaria and gastric fever. The medicine chest left by Speke which they had hoped would replenish their stocks of quinine had been emptied by Kamrasi long ago. But discovering a new lake would make their name. They left with guides and a hundred-strong warrior escort. ‘I trust I have seen the last of Kamrasi – a greater brute cannot exist,’ wrote Baker. But this was not to be.

  This is the very nature of exploration, what makes it so different from later travellers following a well-worn path. You are under the complete control of local chiefs. You have to pass through lands relying on guides you pick up along the way. You cannot afford not to trust, yet trusting too much may also bring disaster. The explorer must be a curious mix of the obsessive, the optimistic, the psychologically resilient. For all Baker’s claims about the importance of physical strength it is the mental strength, epitomised by Florence’s iron will to continue, that marks out the successful explorer.

  Baker rode on an ox to conserve his strength. Florence, weakened by months of fever, was conveyed in an angarep – a sedan chair carried by twelve men. Her condition worsened. One evening Baker ordered a new handle to be fitted to his pickaxe in preparation for digging her grave. But Florence did not die, and on they went. A range of mountains grew closer and closer. The thought of crossing them seemed too dreadful to contemplate. The guides revealed nothing to them except the route for the following day. They finally reached a village Baker understood was called Parkani – in fact it meant ‘very close’: the lake was in front of the mountains, a mere half-day’s walk away.

  They could hardly contain their excitement. But when they saw the great lake, the seventh largest in all Africa, over a hundred miles long and eight times bigger than Lake Constance, worthy indeed to be named after Victoria’s consort Prince Albert, Baker was too stunned or exhausted to lead his men in a round of three cheers ‘in the tradition of Old England’ as he had long planned. Fever ridden, in no state either to continue or to turn back, he had achieved the dream that started when he had first heard about Livingstone and had been rejected for a place on the Scottish explorer’s expedition. Now, at the age of forty-two, Baker was no longer a rich big-game hunter and adventurer – he had become, like Livingstone, one of the world’s great explorers.

  He knew he couldn’t turn back, though, until he had verified that the Nile flowed in and out of Lake Albert. This long thin lake is the receptacle for all the rivers of the region – filling a rift valley between 1 and 2 degrees North – with mountains running along both its sides. It forms such a formidable barrier the fauna changes from one side to the other. Locusts cease to be found on the other side of the lake – hence its original name Luta Nziga, which means ‘the brightness which kills locusts’.

  Speke’s intelligence was correct – the Nile flowed in and out of the northern end of Lake Albert, the river much swollen by the other sources flowing into the long lake. It can be said that the three main sources of the Nile are, along with the Blue Nile, Lake Victoria and Lake Albert.

  More waiting followed for Sam and Florence. More fever as the natives of the lake, who lived by extracting salt from the lakeside (Albert is a very salty lake, unlike the sweet water of Victoria), kept them waiting and extracted as many beads and baubles as they could. It was not the men who worked the salt ‘mines’ but the women who, completely naked, waded through the bubbling sulphurous gullies that fed into the top part of the lake. The women dam the hot salty ooze in little channels and the mixture of mud and salt is packed into banana leaves and laid in long pieces of bamboo which can be carried easily along narrow jungle paths.

  If Baker had known it, he might have crossed the lake to continue to the Mountains of the Moon, which were only fifty miles away but shrouded in almost perpetual mist. The world would have to wait twenty years before Stanley would discover the Ruwenzoris. Here too lived the Twa tribe of pygmy people. It was Aristotle, acting on the information of Greek and Egyptian travellers, who stated that tiny people lived in caves in the Mountains of the Moon. But Baker had other things on his mind. When two dugout canoes thirty-two feet long were finally procured (the other craft mere flimsy rafts of papyrus so unstable he feared for their lives), it turned out that his men could not paddle them in a straight line. It is somewhat comic to think of Baker, having come all this way, spending the day going round in circles on the water, but that is what happened. That night Sam used his knife and axe to fashion rudders for the canoes from two paddles. He also used one of the plaid blankets that had survived Kamrasi’s acquis itiveness to make into a sail. The local people were amazed: it was the first sailing boat to be seen on Lake Albert. (Years later the European tradition of cruising the lake would result in the SS Robert Coryndon, ‘the best floating library in the world’ according to Hemingway. This ship plied Lake Albert for years until it sank in 1964. For forty years its rusted wreck was still visible at the north end of the lake looking like a small Titanic run aground, but it had been removed by 2012.)

  Sam and Florence sailed up the lake. They saw that a reedy estuary marked the outflow. The ingress was near by and they started up it to verify that it was indeed the Victoria Nile. One thing that puzzled Baker was the relative heights of Lake Victoria and Lake Albert. Though only 168 miles apart, his altitude tests – done by measuring carefully the boiling point of water – suggested that Albert was much lower than Victoria. His thermometer read 207.8 degrees, which meant the height they were at was 2,388 feet compared to the 3,700 feet of Victoria. Unless there was a large waterfall, this was not the same Nile. Florence was utterly weak but told him to continue with their search upriver. ‘Seeing is believing,’ she said.

  Banks of weed gave way to rising cliffs. The river narrowed after ten miles to a few hundred yards. They heard a roaring noise, and turning the corner of the bending and ever narrowing river came upon the largest waterfall on the Nile cascading through a slot
a bare twenty-three feet wide. Smoky mist rose high above the waterfall and the slot itself was a pounding comb of white water. At 141 feet high the falls, which Baker named after Murchison of the Royal Geographical Society – a canny move for an explorer to make – were high enough to explain the anomaly in the heights of the two lakes. They had truly secured the Nile for European posterity.

  All that remained was the trip home – through Kamrasi’s land. The King had earlier sent an urgent message to Baker asking him to return and help him in a war he was fighting with a neighbouring tribe. Unknown to Baker, this was the start of the disintegration of the upper Nile kingdoms, as slave-trader armies, run by such men as the Maltese adventurer De Bono, were following the explorers deeper and deeper into Equatorial Africa. The slavers set one tribe against another in order to extract ivory out of the locality. It was against such a slaver-backed tribe that Kamrasi begged for help. Baker refused. Kamrasi, true to form, decided to starve him out, cutting off supplies and sending word that they were to be denied food along the lake. In the end they were reduced to eating a kind of wild spinach and drinking tea made from thyme growing on the river banks. Finally after some two months Baker sent word that if Kamrasi despatched fifty men and food he would at least enter into negotiations about helping the King with his own men and guns. The food and men arrived, and Baker and Florence began to recover on a new diet of meat and milk. They made their way back to the capital Kisoona and began negotiations. Baker agreed to help in defence but not in any attack. The old bully Kamrasi wanted to flee into the bush in the face of De Bono’s private army of slavers. Baker ordered that his Highland costume be unpacked, and kilt-clad he persuaded Kamrasi that they would stay and fight. He raised a Union Jack above the town which greeted De Bono’s craven emissaries spying out the capital for an attack. These men were told by Baker that if they did not withdraw from Bunyoro he would inform Khartoum that De Bono had invaded a country under British protection. If he did that their leader would certainly be hanged. The bluff succeeded and Baker earned considerable new respect from Kamrasi. The slavers retreated but left behind some mail for the Bakers that had come from England via Khartoum (no doubt the slavers had posed as friends of the Bakers while in Khartoum). These letters had taken two years to find them – the very first postal service running the length of the Nile river. Florence received some copies of the London Illustrated News that contained illustrations of the latest female fashions. As Kamrasi had been unable to get his own white bride, Florence thoughtfully cut out pictures of the women and sent them to the King.

  Finally the season for Nile travel arrived and they set off for Gondokoro and Khartoum. The journey was far from quick. To hasten things they travelled across the desert to the Red Sea and then to Suez by steamer. Baker had still not married Florence, his faithful companion of six exciting years. As they neared England he became fearful of the reception his ‘lady companion’ would receive. He telegraphed James, a younger brother, to meet him in Paris. Here they hatched a plan to win the family – and, by extension, England – over to Florence. When they finally arrived it was to no fanfare or ticker-tape parade. Baker told no one and lived quietly for three weeks in London to satisfy the banns requirements for a marriage by special licence. Only two people attended the wedding – in St James’s Piccadilly – a church large enough to hold a congregation of 2,000. The two were James Baker and his wife Louise, and both were to become staunch friends of the twenty-four-year-old Florence. At long last, one of the most eventful courtships in history had ended, as it should, at the altar.

  26 • Buried alive

  The person who is comfortable thinks everyone is comfortable.

  Ethiopian proverb

  Baker was the greatest of the Red Nile explorers. He travelled extensively on the Nile – not just a quick trip (all right, a two-year quick trip) to the source. Like all good Red Nilists he had a nose for the extraordinary and the macabre.

  The death of a great king among the people dwelling in the upper Nile region of Bunyoro, now in western Uganda, was an extraordinary event. The Bunyoro controlled almost the whole area between Lake Albert and Lake Victoria and their kings – Kamrasi and later Kabarega – were a thorn in the side of Baker’s sweeping ambitions. When Baker returned in 1871 he was not unhappy to hear of Kamrasi’s death. He gave an account of the great funeral:

  When a king of Bunyoro dies, the body is exposed upon a framework of green wood, like a gigantic gridiron, over a slow fire. It is thus gradually dried, until it resembles an oven-roasted hare.

  Thus mummified, it is wrapped in new bark-cloths, and lies in state within a large house built specially for its reception. The sons fight for the throne (an exceedingly small and ancient piece of furniture). The civil war may last for years, but during this period of anarchy, the late king’s body lies still unburied.

  At length, when victory has decided in favour of one of his sons . . . the funeral of his father must be his first duty.

  An immense pit or trench is dug, capable of containing several hundred people. This pit is lined with new bark-cloths. Several wives of the late king are seated together at the bottom, to bear upon their knees the body of their departed lord.

  The night previous to the funeral, the king’s own regiment or bodyguard surround many dwelling and villages, and seize the people indiscriminately as they issue from their doors in the early morning. These captives are brought to the pit’s mouth. Their legs and arms are now broken with clubs and they are pushed into the pit on top of the king’s body and his wives.

  An immense din of drums, horns, flageolets, whistles, mingled with the yells of a frantic crowd, drown the shrieks of the sufferers, upon whom the earth is shovelled and stamped down by thousands of cruel fanatics, who dance and jump upon the loose mound so as to form it into a compact mass; through which the victims of this horrid sacrifice cannot grope their way, the precaution having been taken to break the bones of their arms and legs. At length the mangled mass is buried and trodden down beneath a tumulus of earth, and all is still. The funeral is over.

  Among the Dinka, the rainmaker was considered the highest-status personage in the tribe. His privilege, when he became infirm with old age, was also to be buried alive.

  Burial alive of the king’s wives and vassals occurs all over the world throughout history. In Ethiopia it was said that the sons of Prester John were buried alive alongside their father. On his return to Cairo, Baker’s attention was drawn to Ibn Battuta, who relates the death of the great Khan of Peking, who is buried with four female slaves and six male slaves and the slain bodies of his family and close friends. In this version the slaves are given a poison to drink while they are being incarcerated alive. But Ibn Battuta then relates a story he has heard from the south of Sudan ‘from persons upon whose word full reliance may be placed, that among certain infidels of these countries, on the death of the king, a vault is constructed in which the corpse is laid and along with it a certain number of his courtiers and servants . . . the forearms of these persons are first broken, as also their legs, below the knees . . .’

  Ibn Battuta was writing in 1346. Five hundred years later the same funeral rites were still being practised in the same region. But within fifty years all that would end.

  27 • The madness of King Theodore and the elephants of war.

  Big talk: its head is fire, its behind water. Ethiopian proverb

  Things were changing too at the other end of the Nile, the Blue end in Ethiopia. An extraordinary new Christian king named Theodore had begun conquering and subduing all the warring factions around Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile. In 1855 he proclaimed himself Emperor of Ethiopia, father of the Blue Nile, and attempted to abolish slavery. That he ended up as an enslaver of others suggests that his efforts at abolition were at best a partial success.

  Born in 1818, Theodore claimed descent from Solomon and Alexander the Great; in reality he was the son of a small local chieftain with no royal claim at all. A self-m
ade monarch, he would make those who would mock his rightful claims tremble indeed. Having conquered all the warring Muslim tribes and unified his Christian subjects, he proclaimed himself Emperor Theodore III. The world took notice. England even sent a consul, Walter Plowden, to make a treaty with him. By then, in the late 1840s, England had realised that the Red Sea coast was worth controlling. It made sense to be friends with Theodore.

  And Theodore came to love Walter Plowden like a brother. When Walter was killed by tribesmen near Gondar in 1860, Theodore avenged him by killing and mutilating 2,000 members of the offending tribe. That was a lot, even by Ethiopian standards.

  The English sent another consul, Charles Cameron (of the same clan but not a direct relative of the future Prime Minister of Britain). While not a fool exactly, Cameron lacked Plowden’s charm, Plowden’s pull. He lacked something, that was certain. Foresight? Nous? Whatever he lacked, his inadvertent attempt to curry favour with Ethiopia plunged that country, and Britain, into a costly war at the source of the Blue Nile, a war that produced the first and last amphibious elephant attack in history. It is quite the most extraordinary story in a river of extraordinary stories.

  Cameron presented Theodore with a brace of pistols – a welcome, though possibly risky choice of gift for a man with a volatile temper and a line in mutilation. He then committed his major blunder by suggesting that Theodore write to the British authorities in order to conclude treaties beneficial to both (that is, beneficial to the Brits). Theodore took to this task with great seriousness. He knew that the British had an empress called Victoria – would she not be thrilled to hear from a fellow emperor?

  The letter was about a page and a half long, full of talk of exterminating the Turks, who had pressed up from Sudan and Egypt. Also it contained a fair bit of general politesse and an attempt at brotherhood against the assumed joint enemy of Islam. The letter was sent and an answer eagerly awaited.