by Tim Jeal
We were all in the highest spirits [he recalled]. The soldiers sang, the kirangozi [guide] lifted his voice into a loud bellowing note, and fluttered the American flag, which told all on-lookers, `Lo, a Musungu's [white man's] caravan!' and my heart, I thought, palpitated much too quickly for the sober face of a leader. But I could not check it; the enthusiasm of youth still clung to me despite my travels ... Loveliness glowed around me. I saw fertile fields ... strange trees - I heard the cry of cricket and pee-wit, and sibilant sound of many insects ... What could I do but lift my face toward the pure-glowing sky, and cry, `God be thanked!i6
As Stanley saw for the first time giraffe, hippopotami, and antelope, he compared himself with `an English nobleman' in his immense park. `I felt momentarily proud that I owned such a vast domain, inhabited with such noble beasts ... the pride of the African forests.'' This was the workhouse boy in paradise. In travelling with his young servants - especially with Selim, his translator, and, in a month or two, with young Kalulu, the slave-boy whom he would free by purchase to be his butler and valet - Henry would be reminded of the boys at the workhouse, who had been his de facto family during his adolescence. Not that his affection for them would stop him beating both Selim and Kalulu for `crimes' such as stealing food and breaking things. But with his bearskin rug covering the ground inside his tent, and his cream pots, candlestick and bottle of Worcestershire sauce on his folding table, Stanley - when in good health - would feel as much at home on safari as he ever did.' For this was a young man who had had no home of his own, anywhere in the world, since his grandfather's death when he was five.
For a few more days, fortune smiled on Henry. But the Victorian African explorer was always wise to be wary. Within days, Stanley's two Arab horses were killed by the tsetse fly - as if to teach him early that transport of goods, within much of Africa, could only be upon the heads or backs of men. Some of Stanley's donkeys - a species that showed greater resistance to the fly than other draught animals - were also sickening. Henry's caravan had travelled 112- 5 miles, and was near the town of Simbawenni, when he felt obliged to flog his cook `for incorrigible dishonesty and waste'. Stanley was never going to let his expedition be destroyed by the pilfering and carelessness that had destroyed so many others. He therefore pretended to expel the cook from the expedition, imagining that the threat alone would make him beg to be taken back, since expulsion might be a death sentence. But Stanley's stratagem misfired, and just when the caravan was about to leave the dry, lightly wooded tableland to cross the Makata swamp, the cook deserted.
Many explorers would have let the matter rest there - glad to see the back of any man who had proved impossible to discipline - but Stanley demonstrated at this early stage the steely determination that distinguished him from other explorers. He was not going to allow desertion, and sent three soldiers after the cook. These hapless soldiers were then arrested under suspicion of murder by the female chief of Simbamwenni town, who had just heard that the cook's donkey had been found by some of her people, but no cook. Henry therefore had to send out Shaw and another two men to look for the missing soldiers. The soldiers were eventually released, and the cook returned to Zanzibar, where he made a claim against his late employer for $ioo for his lost beast and clothes!'
The failure of his first attempt to compel the return of an absconder left Stanley no less determined to compel all future deserters to return and honour their contracts. A few days later, a carrier decamped after enduring many hours of misery getting the expedition's property across the swollen Makata river. Henry sent in pursuit his `two detectives', as he called Uledi (James Grant's former valet) and Sarmian, both of them armed with American breech-loaders. They very soon recaptured the missing pagazi, who was beaten, and chained for a few days. His re-capture inevitably caused other carriers to think hard about the advisability of running away.
Yet, despite some successes of this kind, this was the first of Stanley's major journeys and he still had much to learn. He had split his expedition into five caravans or columns, in order to discourage attacks by African rulers who might have thought a single large caravan too threatening. But Henry's separation from his other columns reduced his influence over most of his expedition. With one white man, John Shaw, also in his own column, as well as Bombay, Uledi and Mabruki, his principal lieutenants, there were sure to be deser tions from the other columns, especially since the only other white man, Farquhar, was a poor leader of the second largest column.
The five days it took the expedition to march through the 'cataclysm' of `knee deep water and black mire' that was the Makata swamp resulted in Stanley, Shaw and Selim all contracting malaria, along with many of the pagazi. They had no idea, at this date, that the numerous mosquitoes they saw in clouds over the marshland were responsible for their misfortune. Dysentery and smallpox also afflicted the travellers, and in a few weeks Stanley's weight plummeted from 1170 to 1130 pounds. One of the pagazi very soon died of dysentery, as did Omar, Stanley's young dog, of whom he had already grown fond.'° Stanley narrowly escaped death when the sick and shaky Selim rested his double-barrelled smooth bore on something jagged, accidentally firing it. By now, Stanley was suffering from fever `with its insane visions, its frenetic brain-throbs & dire sickness'." Ten days later he and Shaw were still sick, and Henry wondered whether he would ever have the strength to reach Ujiji.
On African expeditions, relationships between Europeans often became hostile and even paranoid. The dangers, the discomforts, and above all the pain and misery brought on by African fevers all undermined sociable impulses. Almost everything annoys the malaria sufferer: he is intensely sensitive to light and to the loud voices and vigorous movements of healthy human beings. The sufferer must be covered with heavy blankets until the malarial convulsions and the interior freezing coldness subside, leaving him weak, exhausted and querulous. Only men respecting one another when fit have any chance of remaining on good terms.
Even before malaria had afflicted them, Stanley, Shaw and Farquhar had fallen out. Farquhar's objection to sewing together some rubberized cloth to make a mackintosh for Selim had struck Henry as mutinous." After drinking and whoring on Zanzibar, Farquhar had quarrelled with Shaw, and Stanley had become disgusted with him. Drink had been the ruin of Henry's father - or the man he thought was his father - and sexual promiscuity had led to his own illegitimacy and wretched childhood. Shaw also sought out whores, and despite this close contact angered Henry with his racism." Nor could he control the donkey pulling the baggage cart, and this delayed the whole column.14
When Stanley and Farquhar fell ill, relations between them worsened beyond repair. This happened after the swamps had given way to the Usagara hills, and they were struggling up and down steep slopes, in and out of vegetation-choked valleys, under a blazing sun. When Henry overtook Farquhar's column, he found him `sick a-bed with swollen legs (Bright's disease, engendered by general debauchery), unable and perhaps not a little unwilling to move'.'' In fact the Scotsman was probably suffering from elephantiasis. He had used up an excessive amount of cloth, not just to buy food for his carriers, but to purchase chickens and other delicacies for himself. Worse still, all nine of the donkeys entrusted to him were dead or dying. The overweight Farquhar had regularly been riding the same donkey day after day until the wretched creature collapsed, and similar behaviour had led to the deaths of many of the nine.
On zo May, after ten days' travelling together, the Scotsman was too ill to walk even a few yards, and had to ride all day and every day, with fatal consequences for whichever donkey he was riding. Stanley came to a decision for which he would later be upbraided. This was to leave the sick man with a village chief and with enough cloth to keep him alive till the expedition should pass by again. The alternative, if the caravan was to be kept moving, would have been for him to die in the saddle, after killing more donkeys. And if more donkeys were lost, Henry would find himself scouring the countryside for additional porters, wasting many days.i6 Farquhar died
five days after the expedition's departure - and though Stanley would not have been able to save him if he had stayed, he must have regretted not remaining with him for a few more days.'7
Relations with Shaw did not improve when Farquhar had been left behind. On one occasion Stanley knocked him down for insolence, and later Shaw - half-crazed with fever - put a bullet through Stanley's tent when the journalist was sleeping within.'8 Such recklessness was not uncommon among African explorers. 'I At the age of thirty, Henry could be ruthless. He was obsessed with the success of his mission, and knew he would be ruined by failure. He therefore tended to equate any weakness that delayed him with a treacherous lack of will power. His own periods of helplessness, he pardoned - but, in fairness, he was not incapable for weeks at a time, as was Shaw. Yet Henry never would acknowledge that his magnificent constitution was a great rarity.
Though impatient with white colleagues, he showed commendable restraint with Africans. The Wagogo, whose territory lay midway between the coast and Lake Tanganyika, were `clannish and full of fight', and their young warriors repeatedly rushed up to within a few feet of him and shouted in his face before moving closer to inspect his clothes." The traveller in Wagogo territory, wrote Henry, `was tempted, a score of times each day to draw a bead with his rifle ... but such an outburst of anger would be bitterly regretted afterwards'.2' Stanley was ill with fever at the time, and on two occasions lashed out with a whip. But he paid these people generously for the right of passage through their territory - the equivalent of $1170 in gold.22
Henry arrived in the district of Unyanyembe - over two-thirds of the way to Ujiji - on 23 June, having marched 5z5 miles from the coast in 84 days, much faster than Burton and Speke's time of 1134 days." Two weeks before reaching the town of Tabora in Unyanyembe desertions became uncontrollable, and on arrival he had a mere twenty-five men. Arab settlements always proved powerful magnets for his Wangwana followers.z4 At this time, Henry learned that an Arab-Swahili caravan, which had just arrived from Manyema on the far side of Lake Tanganyika, had brought news that Livingstone was dead. This conflicted with earlier rumours that he had shot himself in the thigh while hunting buffalo and planned to return to Ujiji as soon as he had recovered." These reports were alarming. Slightly earlier intelligence given him by an Arab caravan leader was that `Dochter Fellusteen' was in Manyema where he had been deserted by all but three of his people. This too was far from reassuring. If the doctor really had only three followers, how would he ever be able to return to Lake Tanganyika?"
Stanley was now in the land of the Nyamwezi, who were the greatest African traders and travellers of central east Africa - they also provided a high proportion of the pagazi to be hired at Bagamoyo. European purchases of ivory increased dramatically from 1850 onwards, with demand for ivory combs, billiard balls, ornaments and piano keys seemingly insatiable. When Sultan Said Barghash of Zanzibar found that this new market could not be satisfied with the erratic supplies brought to the coast by the Nyamwezi, he sent his own Arab and Swahili-speaking African subjects inland to procure more ivory. These new caravans were financed by the capital of the Banians, the Indian traders of Bombay and Zanzibar. Along with this ever-expanding market for ivory came an increasing demand for slaves. By the time Stanley reached Unyanyembe for the first time, the Arab-Swahili traders in ivory and slaves - a slave would carry a tusk, until himself becoming saleable at Bagamoyo or Zanzibar - had journeyed as far west as Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the banks of the Lualaba and Lomani rivers over a thousand miles from the coast. A few Arabs had even crossed the continent from Kilwa to Luanda. Among the Arabs' defended trading settlements and staging posts were Ujiji, and Unyanyembe at the heart of the Nyamwezi chiefdom.
Initially the Nyamwezi derived great advantage from being hosts to a large Arab-Swahili community, since the traders brought the commodities of the industrial world, but as these guests, in time, achieved a near monopoly of the ivory and slave trades between Unyanyembe and Zanzibar, the Nyamwezi faced being squeezed out. However, in 1871 their chief, the magnificently named Mirambo, who possessed personal magnetism and considerable military skill, decided to take control of the main trade route to the ivory regions of central Africa. To achieve this, he meant to fight the Arabs of Unyanyembe. To win, he was prepared to employ Ngoni mercenaries - who for several decades had been moving up from southern Africa, spreading destruction as they went. Mirambo, like the Arabs, was also buying slaves and ivory on his own account. Unfortunately for the New York Herald's special correspondent, this remarkable man would make his first concerted move against the Arabs just as Henry was planning to leave Unyanyembe for U]ill .17
He brought with him letters of introduction written by the Sultan of Zanzibar Barghash to Said bin Salim, the Governor of Unyanyembe, and his henchman Shaykh bin Nasibu.2S Now, Henry was given a feast by these grandees, and was allocated a tembe - or stockaded house - for himself and his followers. The Arabs confided that war with Mirambo was imminent and suggested he fight on their side. Their force numbered roughly z,zoo, so Stanley's few men would hardly sway the balance. He tried to attract `volunteer refugees', as he called them, but only managed to engage another twenty men, bringing his numbers to about fifty.29 Then he dithered for a month or so - worried about fighting again in someone else's war. It seems he only committed himself after the Arabs had convinced him that Mirambo was a bandit, who had usurped the Nyamwezi chiefship and was only holding onto it with the help of mercenaries - `ruga-ruga' - from neighbouring tribes.3° Stanley was comforted to have this justification for fighting. Mirambo and his force were blocking the route to Ujiji, 250 miles to the west, and seemed unlikely to move until attacked. Unless Henry could soon resume his march, he would be compelled to return to the coast for more supplies - and in that case, Mr Bennett would abandon him. So clearing the road to Ujiji was a necessity.
A fortnight before the fighting began, Henry was unconscious for several days with fever, and delirious for a week after that. So when the march against Mirambo began on z9 July,3i he was still very weak, though strong enough to give Bombay, his chief soldier, a few cuts with his cane when he kept the whole party waiting for several hours while he had intercourse with his favourite whore. Three days west of Unyanyembe, John Shaw, Henry's only remaining white colleague, lay on the path and said that he was dying. Then, somehow, he clambered onto his donkey and kept moving for a few days more.
On 6 August, the Arab-Swahili army, and Stanley's small group with it, was approaching Mirambo's stronghold at Wilyankuru. Too sick to take part, Henry was a bystander when 50o men, under the son of a local Arab merchant, captured the central stockade. Mirambo only briefly defended it, before withdrawing with 400 of his men, leaving behind twenty dead warriors. Flushed with their `victory', the Arabs left, loaded with a large amount of abandoned ivory and grain. But Mirambo's withdrawal had been a ruse. The unsuspecting Arabs were ambushed in nearby woodland by the Nyamwezi, and massacred to a man. Stanley had waited a few miles away with the bulk of the Arab force, which fled when news of the massacre broke. Scarcely able to stand, Henry would have been left behind in the general flight if his young translator, Selim, had not saddled his donkey and lifted his master onto the beast's back."
When Mirambo sacked Tabora several days later, burning a quarter of the town, Henry remained holed up in his tembe in the nearby suburb of Kwihara. Here he heard the grim news that his closest acquaintance among the Arabs, Khamis bin Abdulla, with his son, and the son of Shaykh Nasibu, had been killed in a doomed effort to defend Tabora. In line with his usual tendency to exaggerate his own numbers, Stanley later claimed to have had 1150 men in his tembe, prepared to resist Mirambo's anticipated attack on Kwihara. In fact, according to his diary, he had a mere thirty men with him on zz August. Ironically, this made his decision to resist far braver. The following day Henry's followers were joined by the twenty or so pagazi who had reached Unyanyembe, out of the thirty-three hired by Kirk to carry Livingstone's stores to Ujiji. These men had
been enjoying themselves in Tabora since May. Stanley now took over Livingstone's stores, which included seventeen bales of cloth and twenty-two boxes of wire and beads, as well as a packet of letters.33 As Henry ran up the Stars and Stripes and waited for Mirambo's army, he hoped his fifty followers' muskets would discourage a frontal assault on the tembe. He seemed unaware that Mirambo's tactics would be to set fire to his tembe's thatch in order to force him into the open. His body would then be mutilated, as had been those of his Arab acquaintances, whose faces, genitals and stomachs were all boiled and eaten by Mirambo's men, mixed with a little rice and goat meat.14 Fortunately for Henry, Mirambo chose to back off just when his enemies were at his mercy. Why, is a mystery. Perhaps he feared his men would be vulnerable to counter-attack when weighed down with their plunder. But Stanley remained deeply anxious, and decided it could be suicidal to try to reach Ujiji by the direct westerly route. He therefore planned to avoid the war entirely, by marching south and south-west for ten days and only then starting to head north to Ujiji.
By 7 September Henry's numbers had dwindled from fifty to thirtythree - a small party indeed to travel in such dangerous territory. The same day, he bought the freedom of an eleven-year-old slave boy, whose name was Ndugu M'hali, which meant `my brother's wealth'. Stanley wanted this boy to act as his personal servant and gun-carrier. Disliking the boy's name, Henry renamed him Kalulu, which in Swahili meant a young male antelope.35 As Stanley prepared to leave the tern be in Kwihara, Shaw became too sick to move, even in a travelling cot.36 Six days later he was no better, and Selim was also dangerously ill. Henry did his best to nurse them both, while railing at the delay. `The Apostle of Africa, Livingstone, is always in my mind, and as day after day passes without trying to find him, I find myself subject to fits of despression ... Shaw is sick, stubbornly so.' Incredibly, Stanley had not yet told the Cockney that they were in search of Liv- ingstone.37 At last, on r9 September, Henry believed he would be able to leave Kwihara next day. That night his fever left him, and though depressed by Arab warnings that he would die before reaching Ujiji, he wrote by candlelight:
