A Labyrinth of Kingdoms

by Steve Kemper

  Barth was also under question about Corporal Church, the sapper who had quarreled with Vogel in Kukawa and returned to Europe with the explorer. In addition to his regular soldier’s pay, Church had been promised a bonus of £10 to £15 from the Foreign Office if he performed satisfactorily. Barth had written to Clarendon from Murzuk that Church was accompanying him from Bornu because Vogel was “incapable of suffering any longer the arrogance and insolence, which this able but sulky and malicious man was continually manifesting in criticizing and even ridiculing all his doings and proceedings.” Despite this insubordination, which also included his refusal to accompany Vogel on several excursions from Kukawa, or finally to do any work at all for the mission, Church asked the FO for his bonus.

  Undersecretary Edmund Hammond asked Barth for a report on the matter. Barth was in Hamburg and answered with a brief note that reflected his recent stings from the RGS. Church, he wrote, “would have been an useful man under an English leader, but having had the misfortune of being placed under a German leader, and that moreover a very young one, he thought himself authorized to criticize him, and in doing so followed, as it seems, the insinuation of certain men who make science the battlefield for nationalities.”

  This peeved Hammond, who disliked Barth and sometimes fanned Shaw’s suspicions about documents going first to Germany. Hammond sent Barth’s letter to Clarendon, asking for instructions while also slashing at Barth and accusing the Germans of defrauding a deserving British soldier. Hammond found it unsatisfactory, he wrote, that just because Church “did not quite agree with foreign scientific gentlemen he therefore is to be considered solely to blame and mulcted of his reward and denied a character.” Clarendon saw things more diplomatically. Since Church’s conduct hadn’t been altogether satisfactory, “the smaller gratuity (£10) will be sufficient.” Barth and Clarendon thought the matter ended, but Church, Hammond, and the British military weren’t finished, and it flared up several months later.

  Before that happened, however, Barth had another, much uglier confrontation with Norton Shaw of the RGS. An envelope addressed to Barth from Tripoli arrived at the Foreign Office in mid-December 1855. A clerk there couldn’t find Barth’s address, so he took the envelope to the Royal Geographical Society in hopes of getting it. Norton Shaw took possession. Soon after, Shaw returned the envelope to the FO with a note that its seal was broken. The FO forwarded the opened envelope to Barth along with Shaw’s nonexplanation about the seal.

  Barth took this as the culminating insult from a man who had repeatedly accused him of shady behavior, and now had opened his private correspondence to seek information he thought the RGS was entitled to. Always thin-skinned in matters of honor, Barth felt flayed by recent slights and accusations. Once again he responded rashly. He returned the envelope’s contents—letters from Vogel and Vice-Consul Reade—to Lord Clarendon, with a scathing letter in which he denounced Shaw for opening his private mail.

  “How I have merited such an unjust and offensive treatment I am yet to learn,” he began. In an aggrieved tone he pointed out that after serving Britain for six years in Africa he had reported to Clarendon even before seeing his family. “Notwithstanding this loyal conduct of mine and notwithstanding my sincere attachment to England,” he continued, the FO had forwarded letters addressed to him to the secretary of the RGS, “expressly in order to be broken open by him and then to be returned to me with a sneer. Protesting to Your Lordship,” he continued, “that in sacrificing my life it has not been exactly my object to earn shame and insult, I have the honor to sign me Your Lordship’s most obedient humble servant, Dr. Barth.”

  He further embarrassed himself with a petulant postscript: “P. S. In conformity with the views of Your Lordship’s office I am preparing an advertisement in the French and German papers, begging my friends to forward all letters of importance, directly to Dr. Shaw, who appeared authorized by Your Lordship, to open my letters.”

  Clarendon immediately ordered an inquiry into why Barth’s packet was sent to the RGS, and he wrote a stern letter to the new president of the society, Admiral F. W. Beechey, asking him to investigate “the outrageous liberty that has been taken with [Barth’s] letter by their secretary.” Beechey, who admired Barth, immediately agreed.

  The FO clerk who took the envelope to the RGS swore that the seal was unbroken when Shaw took possession. Shaw strenuously denied opening it, and suggested that it had somehow been torn during the process of returning it to the FO. Barth doubted this explanation but, lacking any proof to the contrary, had no choice but to accept it. He dropped his charge. Besides, he was embarrassed by his overreaction and mollified by the prompt responses on his behalf by the FO and the RGS. He apologized to Clarendon for his insinuations about the FO.

  He also wrote to Beechey at the RGS that he had been hoping for friendly relations with the society’s eminent members, but had been distressed by hints of antagonism from “low-minded individuals, who will have easy work to excite jealousy against a stranger.” He had not come to England, he continued, “to implicate myself in private quarrels and disputes” but “to be instrumental if possible to further and to promote the knowledge of a Continent, which as yet is so insufficiently known, and to open it for European intercourse.” He could do this more readily in England than in Germany, he wrote, because of Britain’s power and empire. Beechey soon became one of Barth’s strongest supporters.

  All this took place in the last two weeks of 1855. Barth hoped that “private quarrels and disputes” were now behind him. But on January 3 of the new year, Shaw, no doubt in retaliation, wrote another letter to Hammond. He accused Barth of funneling astronomical information from Vogel to Petermann, now in Germany, who had published it there several months before the RGS received it. Hammond asked Barth to explain.

  Barth replied that in July 1855 he had sent all of Vogel’s astronomical observations, plus other information, to Lord Clarendon from Murzuk. He admitted that in his excitement over Vogel’s success at finally fixing the position of Yakoba he had sent that one nugget of data to Petermann for the cartographer’s delectation. It puzzled him that anyone considered this a big deal, especially since Clarendon had gotten this information and much more. He added that he sent certain information to Petermann because he was doing the maps, not for any underhanded reason.

  “I trust that no enlightened man,” wrote Barth, “will find a great fault in any communication of a progress in science, if neither the name of the author is kept secret and if due praise is given to the liberality of the Government, which has been the means of making the discovery. And neither of those two conditions, as far as I know, has ever been neglected by Mr. Petermann in any of the communications, which he has made to the Public, though I myself have repeatedly reproached him with publishing them too hastily.”

  (Petermann sometimes exasperated Barth, who once wrote, “I believe Petermann has really convinced himself that the African expedition was his work, not mine, and that Providence only brought me safely through all those unspeakable dangers thanks to his ideas and his leadership abilities… . Despite his great and justifiably rewarded abilities, Petermann is a real loudmouth.”)

  Clarendon characteristically found the right line through this tangle. He told Hammond he didn’t wish to deny information to Petermann, but that Barth “must see the manifest inconvenience” of the cartographer publishing valuable information before it had been given to the RGS. Barth got the point but it baffled him. He was naïve enough, and idealistic enough, to be surprised when anyone put political or national boundaries on scientific information.

  DORUGU AND ABBEGA, the freed slaves who had been Barth’s servants since he left Kukawa for Timbuktu, had accompanied the explorer to Germany and returned with him to England. Dorugu was about fifteen at the time, Abbega several years older. Barth hoped they would learn English and perhaps some European crafts that would make them useful to future explorers in Central Africa. He also planned to get linguistic help from them
for the book on African languages he intended to write after publishing his journal. Meanwhile, as he got to work on Travels and Discoveries, he arranged for the teenagers to stay with Reverend J. F. Schön, a missionary and a scholar of the Hausa language who had been on the Niger expedition of 1841.

  But by early 1856, Dorugu and Abbega were desperately homesick. They asked Barth to get them back to Africa. He arranged for the Foreign Office to pay their return voyage to Tripoli. He also asked Consul Herman to get them a camel, a trustworthy guide to Kano, and the Arabic passports carried by free blacks in defense against slavers.

  As these plans took shape, Barth was attacked by the AntiSlavery Society, a potent and noisy shaper of public opinion. The society accused Barth of participating in the slave trade while in Africa and of bringing two slaves to England as his servants. The source of these scandalous lies was evidently another man seeking vengeance against Barth: Corporal Church. Barth was stunned, and again felt his honor and integrity under attack.

  In the midst of this, the time arrived for Dorugu and Abbega to leave. But they had changed their minds and now wanted to stay, probably with Schön’s encouragement, since he too saw them as linguistic resources. Barth, angry that his good intentions for the Africans had blown up in his face and that his efforts to get them home were being shrugged off, refused this change of plans. Then in late February he got word that after boarding their ship in Southampton, the Africans had disembarked with Schön and gone home with him. Barth unreasonably took this as a betrayal by both the Africans and Schön.

  (Schön tutored and proselytized Dorugu and Abbega, with the intention of sending them back to Africa as missionaries. They were baptized in May 1857. Abbega returned to Africa later that year. Dorugu followed in 1864. Both quickly abandoned missionary work and applied their new skills to better-paying trades. Dorugu eventually became a schoolteacher. Abbega reverted to Islam and worked as an interpreter for explorers, British officials, and the Royal Niger Company.)

  Another irritant for Barth was some more sniping in the press about the mission’s cost and his management. Barth felt that the Foreign Office was doing little to defend him. In June 1856 he wrote Undersecretary Hammond “that certain people who from the beginning have done all in their power to vilify the Central African Expedition, spread exaggerated rumours with regard to the expenditure of that Expedition.” He told Hammond he had asked Admiral Beechey, president of the Royal Geographical Society, to insert a statement in his Anniversary Address that, according to Francis Galton, an expert on expenditures for exploration, the mission had cost relatively little. This was true. Barth asked Hammond to clear this statement with Lord Clarendon, “to check at once those rumours so offensive to every feeling of justice and truth.”

  The FO, however, did not want to sustain the controversy about expenses by giving it any more attention. Hammond’s terse answer: “Lord Clarendon considers it will be better not to publish any statement on this subject. His Lordship knows nothing of the reports to which you allude, and this may safely be disregarded.” Barth took this as a slap in the face.

  Corporal Church continued to agitate and spread venom, writing letters that cast himself as a wronged martyr. His complaint had been taken up by the British military, which sent letters to the FO wondering why a brave British soldier was being denied part of his rightful bonus because of scurrilous remarks by foreigners. Church’s plea was probably boosted by the lionizing of British soldiers in the Crimean War among the press and public after the heavy casualties caused by commanders’ gross incompetence. In May 1856 the Foreign Office sent Barth a list of Church’s grievances and asked for specific charges against him.

  Barth evidently didn’t know about Church’s recent machinations and was surprised to learn of his complaints. Barth’s long reply mixed his usual blunt honesty with cluelessness about its effects. First he expanded his short comments from the previous October, which he said had been intended to explain Church’s behavior, not criticize it: “For it is easily understood that the Members of an Expedition are brought into nearer contact with each other, than is generally the case in the army. Then Mr. Vogel was a very young man, who of course by his want of experience could not but commit some blunders and thirdly he was a foreigner and that at a time, when the war and the difference of politics roused national antipathies… . All this I said in order to explain and if possible excuse Corporal Church’s conduct in criticising and ridiculing Mr. Vogel’s conduct… . For [Church’s] mischievous, malicious and insolent behavior is an undeniable fact.”

  For Barth, the observing scientist, facts explained phenomena. Undeniable facts were simply data, not criticisms, even when draped with words such as “malicious” and “insolent.” It surprised him that Church and the FO didn’t understand that.

  He added more data. When he reached Kukawa in December 1854, Church had tried to poison him against Vogel, accusing the young scientist of sloppy bookkeeping and immoral relations. After investigating, Barth found both the books and Vogel’s character in good order, which in turn cast doubt on Church’s honesty. And then, in front of Barth, Church had threatened to smear Vogel if Vogel complained about him to British superiors. Barth noted that Church was also continuing to slur a man named Madi, hired by Richardson in 1850, who had served the mission loyally, “and having been most severely wounded and crippled for life, while defending the boat against the pirates of the lake, has been placed by me upon a small pension.”

  Church was clearly a nasty piece of work. And yet Barth ends his devastating letter this way: “I frankly confess, that I should feel sorry, if what I have said should deprive him of the higher rewards, which it appears he might have obtained. But I have been called for to vindicate my own conduct.”

  After the FO forwarded this letter to Church, he had the brass to respond that nothing in it charged him with neglect of duty or want of zeal, so he wanted his money. After all this agitation, the archives go silent about whether Church ever collected that additional £5 bonus. He did, however, receive a watch and chain from the Royal Geographical Society in May 1856 for “his meritorious and intelligent services while employed upon the African expedition under Dr. Vogel.”

  AT THE SAME CEREMONY where Church was honored by the RGS, Barth received one of the society’s most prestigious awards: the Patron’s Gold Medal. “For your successful and extensive explorations in Central Africa, your numerous excursions about Lake Chad, your discovery of the great river [Benue], and for your hazardous and adventurous journey to and from Timbuctu.” A scientist to his fingertips, Barth highly prized this tribute from his fellow scholars. In his acceptance he thanked the society on behalf of Prussia as well as himself. He also urged the British government to follow up his discoveries by opening a relationship with Central Africa through commerce on the Niger and Benue rivers. This would give the natives “a humane and lawful way” to replace the misery caused by the slave economy. The government ignored this advice for decades.

  Barth’s accomplishments as an explorer were indisputably prodigious, and British scholars expected that his published journals would carry similar scientific heft. But given his nationality and the previous friction with the RGS, some people questioned the award of the Gold Medal and felt it should have gone to Richard Burton for his journeys in disguise to Mecca (Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Medinah and Meccah, 1855), and to Harar in Ethiopia (First Footsteps in East Africa, 1856). But even the British candidates for the Gold Medal reportedly felt that no one deserved it more than Barth.

  Burton was among the small circle of people whom Barth saw in London while writing Travels and Discoveries. The two great African travelers met when Burton returned from the Crimean War in early 1856. Burton wanted to search for the source of the Nile. Barth suggested that he look for the Sea of Ujiji (Lake Tanganyika) described by Arab traders. This became Burton’s immediate goal. The British government and the RGS funded the project.

  Burton and his assistant John Ha
nning Speke left for eastern Africa in September 1856. They would be gone nearly three years. After appalling hardships, they became the first Europeans to reach Lake Tanganyika. They heard of an even bigger lake to the northeast, but Burton was too ill to move, so Speke went alone. He found the lake and named it Victoria. On scant evidence, he claimed it the source of the Nile. Despite Burton’s violent disagreement, Speke was eventually proven correct. Burton received the RGS’s Gold Medal in 1859 “for his various exploratory enterprises,” especially the expedition with Speke to the African lakes. Speke got the award in 1861 for the same journey, in particular his discovery of Lake Victoria.

  Barth’s friends in London also included Rear Admiral William Henry Smyth, an astronomer and one of the founders of the RGS; Dr. William Baikie, director of the Benue expedition; Francis Galton, a polymath who also explored southwest Africa and wrote The Art of Travel, an immensely popular handbook about exploratory travel; Desborough Cooley, the geographer and historian; and Sir Roderick Murchison, a geologist and one of the founders of the RGS, which he frequently served as president.