The planes appeared covered with Spectators viewing the white men and the articles which we had, our party weakened and much reduced in flesh as well as Strength.
I got the Twisted hare to draw the river from his Camp down which he did with great Cherfullness on a white Elk skin, from the 1st. fork which is few miles below, to the large fork on which the So So ne or Snake Indians fish, is South 2 Sleeps; to a large river which falls in on the NW Side and into which The Clarks river empties itself is 5 Sleeps from the mouth of that river to the falls is 5 Sleeps at the falls he places Establishments of white people &c. and informs that the great numbers of Indians reside on all those fo[r]ks as well as the main river; one other Indian gave me a like account of the Countrey. Some few drops of rain this evening. I precured maps of the Countrey & river with the Situation of Indians, Towns from Several men of note Separately which varied verry little.
[Clark] Saturday (Monday), 23 September 1805 gave a Shirt to the Twisted hare & a knife & Handkerchief with a Small pece of Tobacco to each. Finding that those people gave no provisions to day we deturmined to purchase with our Small articles of Merchindize, accord[ingly] we purchased all we could, Such as roots dried, in bread, & in their raw State, Berries of red Haws & Fish.
Capt. Lewis & 2 men Verry Sick this evening, my hip Verry Painfull, the men trade a few old tin Canisters for dressed Elk Skin to make themselves Shirts. at dark a hard wind from the SW accompanied with rain which lasted half an hour. The twisted hare envited Capt. Lewis & myself to his lodge which was nothin[g] more than Pine bushes & bark, and gave us Some broiled dried Salmon to eate, great numbers about us all night. at this village the women were busily employed in gathering and drying the Pas-she-co root of which they had great quantities dug in piles.
[Clark] Sunday (Tuesday), 24 September 1805 despatched J. Colter back to hunt the horses lost in the mountains & bring up Some Shot left behind, and at 10 oClock we all Set out for the river and proceeded on by the Same rout I had previously traveled, and at Sunset we arrived at the Island on which I found the Twisted hare, and formed a Camp on a large Island a little below, Capt. Lewis scercely able to ride on a jentle horse which was furnished by the Chief, Several men So unwell that they were Compelled to lie on the Side of the road for Some time others obliged to be put on horses. I gave rushes Pills to the Sick this evening. Several Indians follow us.
[Clark] Monday (Wednesday), 25 September 1805 I Set out early with the Chief and 2 young men to hunt Some trees Calculated to build Canoes, as we had previously deturmined to proceed on by water, I was furnished with a horse and we proceeded on down the river Passed down on the N side of the river to a fork from the North we halted about an hour, one of the young men took his guig and killed 6 fine Salmon two of them were roasted and we eate, I Saw fine timber for Canoes.
[Clark] Tuesday (Thursday), 26 September 1805 I had the axes distributed and handled and men apotned. [apportioned] ready to commence building canoes on tomorrow, our axes are Small & badly calculated to build Canoes of the large Pine, Capt Lewis Still very unwell, Several men taken Sick on the way down, I administered Salts Pils Galip, [jalap] Tarter emetic &c. I feel unwell this evening, two Chiefs & their families follow us and encamp near us, they have great numbers of horses. This day proved verry hot, we purchase fresh Salmon of the Indians.
[Clark] Thursday (Saturday), 28 September 1805 Our men nearly all Complaining of their bowels, a heaviness at the Stomach & Lax, Some of those taken first getting better, a had one of the other Canoes unloaded & with the assistance of our Small Canoe and one Indian Canoe took out every thing & toed the empty Canoe on Shore.
[Clark] Wednesday, 9 October 1805 at Dark we were informed that our old guide & his son had left us and had been Seen running up the river Several miles above, we could not account for the cause of his leaveing us at this time, without receiving his pay for the services he had rendered us, or letting us know anything of his intention.
we requested the Chief to Send a horseman after our old guide to come back and receive his pay &c. which he advised us not to do as his nation would take his things from him before he passed their camps. The Indians and our party were verry mery this after noon a woman faind madness &c. &c. Singular acts of this woman in giveing in small po[r]tions all she had & if they were not received She would Scarrify her self in a horid manner &c. Capt Lewis recovering fast.
[Clark] Wednesday (Thursday), 10 October passed 2 Islands and two bad rapids at 3 miles lower passed a Creek on the Lard. with wide cotton willow bottoms we arrived at the heade of a verry bad riffle at which place we landed near 8 Lodges of Indians after viewg. this riffle two Canoes were taken over verry well; the third stuck on a rock which took us an hour to get her off which was effected without her receiving a greater injurey than a Small Split in her Side which was repaired in a Short time, we purchased fish & dogs of those people, dined and proceeded on. here we met with an Indian from the falls at which place he Sais he saw white people, and expressed an inclination to accompany us, we passed a few miles above this riffle 2 Lodges and an Indian batheing in a hot bath made by hot stones thrown into a pon[d] of water. at five miles lower and Sixty miles below the forks arived at a large southerly fork which is the one we were on with the Snake or So-So-nee nation (haveing passed 5 rapids) This South fork or number of Indians about us gazeing This day proved verry worm and Sultery, nothing killed men complaining of their diat of fish & roots. all that is able working at the Canoes.
[Clark] Friday (Saturday) 5 October 1805 had all our horses 38 in number Collected and branded Cut off their fore top and delivered them to the 2 brothers and one son of one of the Chiefs who intends to accompany us down the river to each of those men I gave a Knife & Some Small articles &c. they promised to be attentive to our horses untill we Should return.
Nothing to eate except dried fish & roots. Capt Lewis & myself eate a Supper of roots boiled, which Swelled us in Such a manner that we were Scercely able to breath for Several hours. finished and lanced (launched) 2 of our canoes this evening which proved to be verry good our hunters with every diligence Could kill nothing. The hills high and ruged and woods too dry to hunt the deer which is the only game in our neighbourhood. Several Squars Came with fish and roots which we purchased of them for Beeds, which they were fond of. Capt Lewis not So well to day as yesterday.
[Clark] Monday, 7 October 1805 I continue verry unwell but obliged to attend every thing all the Canoes put into the water and loaded, fixed our Canoes as well as possible and Set out as we were about to Set out we missd. both of the Chiefs who promised to accompany us, I also missed my Pipe Tomahawk which could not be found.
The after part of the day cloudy proceded on passed 10 rapids which wer dangerous the Canoe in which I was Struck a rock and Sprung a leak in the 3rd rapid, we proceeded on.
After descending the Snake and Columbia rivers, the Corps of Discovery reached the Pacific on 15 November 1805. They wintered on the south bank of the Columbia, before making the return journey, reaching their jump-off point of St Louis on 23 September 1806, having long been given up for dead by everyone except the Voyage’s instigator, President Thomas Jefferson.
South African soldier, explorer and philosopher. He served with the British army during the Second World War, rising to the rank of colonel. With the cessation of hostilities he was employed by the British government to explore remote parts of Africa, including Mount Mlanje (the setting for Rider Haggard’s The People of the Mist). While on the mountain a ‘chiperone’, or rainstorm, blew up.
Vance now said he knew an easy way down off the mountain which led to a large tea estate at the bottom. Quillan said he knew it too, it was the old timber carriers’ track. It was steep, but cut out in the side of the Great Ruo gorge and clearly defined. We could not go wrong. Only it meant abandoning the last part of the trip and that, he thought, would be a pity for me. I said firmly, ‘Abandon.’ Vance then decided to go ahead to the tea estate and get a truck to take us round by road to Likabu
la. With luck, he said, we could all be back on the mountain at Chambe that evening.
With our last eggs I made him a quick omelette for breakfast, and sent him off in the rain. Quillan and I followed slowly with the carriers.
We set out at eight but the rain was so thick and violent that there was only a dim, first-light around us. We went slowly. The track was steep and highly dangerous. On the left of us, only a yard or so away, was that deep cleft down to the Great Ruo gorge. The bearers too had great difficulty with their loads. They had to lower themselves down from one level to another by cedar roots and help one another down perilous mud precipices.
As we went down, the noise of falling water all round us became deafening. Whenever there was a slight lift of the rain and mist, the half-light, the mepacrine gloom on the mountain would be suddenly illuminated by a broad, vivid flash of foaming white water leaping down the face of smooth black cliffs, thousands of feet high. We had to shout in places to make ourselves heard.
Moreover the mountain itself, the very stones on which we trod, the mud wherein we slid, seemed to begin to vibrate and tremble under this terrible pounding of water. At moments when we rested, the ground shook like a greaser’s platform in the engine-room of a great ship. This movement underfoot, combined with the movement of the flashing, leaping, foaming water in our eyes, and driving rain and swirling mists, gave to our world a devastating sense of instability. The farther down we went, the more pronounced it became, until I began to fear that the whole track would suddenly slither like a crocodile from underneath my feet and leave me falling for ever under the rain and Mlanje’s cataclysmic water. It needed a conscious effort of will to keep me upright, and I found this all the more difficult because of a new complication that was arising. I began to feel as if my very senses were abandoning their moorings inside myself.
Luckily this stage of the journey did not last too long. Two and a quarter hours later our track suddenly became easier and broader.
Quillan said, ‘We’ll soon be off it now.’
We came round a bend in the track and there, to our surprise, was Vance. He was sitting at the side of a fast stream of water which was pouring over the track and had evidently held him up. He was joining some lengths of creeper, of monkey rope, together.
‘I didn’t want to cross this stream without a rope,’ he said. ‘I have been up and down this stream as far as possible and this is the best place to try it. It doesn’t look difficult. Do you think this will do?’
He handed me his rope of creepers.
‘No! Certainly not,’ I said, and looked at the stream.
Its beginnings, above us, were lost in the mist and rain. Then it suddenly appeared out of the gloom about a hundred yards above, charging down at us at a steep angle, and finally, just before it reached us, smashing itself up behind a tremendous rock, deeply embedded on the side of the gorge. Somewhere behind the rock it reassembled its shattered self and emerged from behind it flowing smoothly. For about twenty yards it looked a quiet, well-behaved stream but, on our left at the track’s edge, it resumed its headlong fall into the terrible main Ruo gorge below us. I now went to this edge and looked over, but the falling water vanished quickly in the gloom and told me nothing. Only the ground shook with the movement as my eyes and head ached with the noise.
I came back and found Quillan lighting a fire.
‘Our bearers are nearly dead with cold,’ he explained. ‘They’ll crack up if we don’t do something. Two woodcutter blokes died here of exposure two years ago. But if I can get this fire going for them in the lee of this rock, our chaps will be all right.’
The rain poured down even more heavily than before, and it looked darker than ever. The shivering negroes, the bamboos bent low with rain, the black rocks, were like figures and things moving in the twilight of a dream.
Again I went and looked at the stream above. Vance appeared to have chosen rightly. The stream was swollen but did not look dangerous at that point, particularly with a good rope. Higher up it would have been hopeless.
‘I tell you, Dicky,’ I said. (It was the first time I had called him that and I don’t know why I did, except that we all suddenly seemed to be very close to one another.) ‘I tell you what, Dicky. We’ll take all our ropes, you knot them together and then I’ll go across. I am bigger than you.’
‘I don’t think that is necessary,’ he said. ‘I know the way. You don’t. And with a rope it will be easy.’
We joined up the ropes, tested the result in every way, pulling it, leaning on it. It seemed tight and strong. We took Vance’s valise straps and added them to the end, just in case. I then tied it round Vance’s chest with a knot that couldn’t slip. I made sure it could not tighten and hinder his breathing.
As I tied it I said, ‘Dicky, are you sure you are happy about this and know how to do it, for if you are not I would much rather do it myself?’
‘Of course I know,’ he said with a deep laugh. ‘I have done it scores of times in Burma. And I must hurry. I want to get those poor black devils under shelter as soon as I can.’
‘Well, remember,’ I said, ‘keep your face to the stream; always lean against it; go into it carefully and feel well round your feet with your stick before you move.’
He took up the stout stick that we had cut for him. I called Quillan and two of the bearers. Quillan and I took the rope. I braced my feet against a tree on the edge of the stream, just in case, but I was not at all worried.
Vance waded in. The water came about to his navel. He went steadily on for some distance then, to my bewilderment, turned his back slightly on the stream. It was the first deviation from plan.
He took another step or two, stopped, suddenly abandoned his stick to the stream and yelled to us, ‘Let out the rope!’
It was the second deviation from plan. I was horrified. What the hell was he up to? Before we had even properly grasped his meaning he had thrown himself on the stream and was swimming a breaststroke. As was inevitable, the stream at once caught him and quickly swept him to where it foamed and bubbled like a waterfall over the edge of the track. The unexpected speed with which all of this had happened was the most terrifying thing about it. Even so, Vance had got to within a foot of the far bank, was on the verge of reaching it – when the water swept him over the edge and he disappeared from our view.
Quillan and I were braced for the shock. As we saw it coming we both shouted for the bearers, who rushed to our assistance in a body. The rope tightened in a flash. The strain was tremendous. Vance’s body, no longer water-borne but suspended out of sight, below the edge of the rocky track, with the weight and stream of water pouring on top of it, strained the rope to the utmost. Yet it held.
I think it would have continued to hold if the angle and violent impact of the water on the body had not now with incredible speed whipped Vance along the sharp edge of the rocks, swung him from the far side over towards our bank and chafed the rope badly in the process. It still held for a second or two. We worked our way along it towards him – were within two yards of him – when the rope snapped.
At that moment we knew that he was dead. Anyone who stood with us in the black rain, amid those black cliffs in that world of storming, falling, rushing, blind water, must have known that he was dead. Quillan turned round, lifted a face to me naked and bare with misery, and said hoarsely, ‘What to do, now? He is dead, you know!’
I nodded and said, ‘Please take a search party as far as you can, Peter, and see what you can see.’
He immediately set out. I called Leonard and some bearers and started to undo our baggage. It was obvious we could not cross now. We had lost all our rope; we had lost one body with a rope, we could not risk losing one without a rope. Nor could we stay there.
Quillan was back almost at once. I was not surprised. We were, as I have said before, on the edge of the Great Ruo gorge.
He shook his head. ‘Not a sign, not a hope. He is dead and there is nothing we can do now except to see
that these fellows don’t conk out.’
He indicated the bearers.
We called them all round us. They were cold and terribly shaken by Vance’s death. One old man was crying and they were all shivering as if with malaria. We told them to dump their loads and to start back up the mountain to the huts we had slept in the night before. A moan of despair rose up from them. They said they wanted to sit by the river, wanted to make a fire and wait for the sun. But I knew that that only meant that the spirit had gone out of them, that they had given up hope and were resigned to do no more than sit down and die in comfort.
It was then that Leonard, the puny plainsman, the sophisticated native from the towns, stood up, unsolicited, and lashed them with his tongue. I don’t know what he said, but he insulted them into some shape of spirit.
We distributed all our own and Vance’s clothes among them. That cheered them. They began to laugh and to tease one another, at the sight of their companions in tennis shirts, grey sweaters too big for them, in green, blue, red and grey striped pyjamas, and my own green jungle bush-shirts with their red 15 Corps flashes still on them.
I expect it was an incongruous sight in that world of rain, falling water and black, impersonal rock, but I did not find it at all funny. It seemed to me to fill the cup of our misery to overflowing. I expect whatever gods sit on this African Olympus might well find it amusing to kill a young man of twenty-eight in order to dress up some of the despised, ubiquitous outcasts of their African kingdom in silk pyjamas in the pouring rain. To me, just to kill was bad enough; to mock the kill an intolerable perfection of tragedy. I came near to joining in Quillan’s tears at that moment, but fortunately I got angry as well, so angry that I believe if my strength had matched my rage I could have picked up the whole of Mlanje and thrown it over the edge of the world into the pit of time itself.
Survivor: The Autobiography Page 19
