Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer

by Tim Jeal

  Henry arrived on Zanzibar on z11 September 11874, twenty-eight months after he had last been there. An Anglican cathedral was in the early stages of construction on the site of the closed-down slave market, formerly East Africa's largest. That slavery had been abolished on Zanzibar in June 11873 (with immense consequences for the sea-borne slave trade) had owed much to the publication of six of Stanley's despatches - in several of which he had described Livingstone's account of the massacre at Nyangwe - a week before the House of Commons debated the report of the Select Committee on the East African Slave Trade.12 The credit for the treaty would generally be given to Sir Bartle Frere (a former Governor of Bombay) and to John Kirk, who signed for the British government, as consul in Zanzibar. But every bit as influential had been Stanley's public promotion of Livingstone's despatches at exactly the right time. Nevertheless, on land the trade was expanding. The decline in slave prices, as export markets shrank and disappeared, made the ownership of slaves more attractive to African purchasers. On the Mombassa coast between 11875 and 11884, almost 5o,ooo slaves worked in the clove plantations and also in producing grain, oils seeds and gum copra. In Zanzibar itself, by 11870, Indian merchants owned 8,ooo slaves, and the Sultan 4,000 slaves for work on his clove plantations alone. Leading citizens routinely owned between 500 and z,ooo slaves. These numbers increased in the 1188os.'3 Many slaves employed on the East Coast had come from as far away as Lake Nyasa (Malawi), Buganda, and even from Manyema and the Upper Congo. Within Africa, warlord rulers like Mirambo and Msiri employed thousands of slaves as soldiers, making the continent an even more dangerous place.

  Henry Stanley did not look as though he possessed an iron constitution. He had put on weight while in Europe, had smoked too many cigars, and was not only rather red-faced but suffered occasionally from a racing heart and from indigestion. He was broad-shouldered and powerfully built in his upper body, but his short legs were not ideal for walking immense distances. Yet in the flesh at this date he made a powerful impression - his face, particularly his blue-grey eyes, had an almost mesmerizing quality, which many people remarked upon.

  His picture was not taken immediately before his greatest journey, but a small and indistinct photograph has survived of his fellow explorers, Frank and Edward Pocock, Frederick Barker and Kalulu. They are lined up on a flat roof, overlooking Zanzibar harbour, and sit cross-legged on the ground, looking diffident and ill at ease - a totally improbable group of adventurers about to begin one of the greatest journeys of all time. Yet the unseen photographer was their leader, whose burning determination to succeed without dying in the process promised to make up for their inexperience. They appeared to have no sense of occasion on this day of preparation as they stared stolidly ahead at a spot midway between the camera and the ground. Their lives had not yet rearranged themselves as history. For the engraving based on this badly faded photograph, Stanley included the expedition's dogs: a bull-terrier, Jack; two mastiffs, Castor and Captain; a bulldog, Bull; and a black retriever, Nero.14 The rate of survival for canines would prove even worse than that for humans, with all these animals dying during the journey. Henry loved dogs and had chosen three of his five from the Battersea Dogs' Home.

  Improbable heroes on a flat roof in Zanzibar (from left to right) Frank Pocock, Frederick Barker, an unknown local boy, Edward Pocock and Kalulu, from the engraving in Stanley's Through the Dark Continent

  While working hard at the recruitment of his carriers, Stanley unpacked the components of his exploring boat, named the Lady Alice in honour of his fiancee, whom Kalulu referred to, a little condescendingly, as `your girrl' [sic]." The boat was constructed in sections that proved to be too broad to be carried along narrow African paths, so she was now re-built in smaller portable parts by a skilful ship's carpenter, whose steamship happened by a lucky chance to be in the harbour just then.

  Stanley was thankful to be able to employ for this trip some of his most loyal and competent followers from his Livingstone expedition. These included Manwa Sera, Mabruki Speke, Chowpereh, Uledi, Fer- ajji and several of Livingstone's servants, including the ultra-loyal Gardner and Majwara, the boy who had fallen asleep in the explorer's hut shortly before he died. Originally, these men had been enticed or coerced from their tribal environments by slave and ivory traders operating deep into the interior. From the ranks of displaced Yao hunters and Swahili trading agents, freed slaves and mission `boys', came many remarkable career servants of white travellers. Their courage and endurance would be essential to the success of the explorers who opened up East and Central Africa in the last third of the nineteenth century. On numerous occasions, Stanley would acknowledge his immense indebtedness to the Wangwana - the black freemen of Zanzibar, who were his rank and file. Even before the start of his greatest journey, he had already declared them to be `clever, honest, industrious, docile, enterprising, brave and moral'." His white followers also pleased him - the young Pocock brothers surprising everyone by giving a concert for local merchants and diplomats. Frank played the concertina and Edward the bugle, while both also sang.'7 Yet these outwardly cheerful young men knew what had happened to Farquhar and Shaw, and had just learned that two of Cameron's white companions had recently suffered the same fate.

  In articles booming Stanley's forthcoming journey, the New York Herald's editor had stated that their special correspondent would be ,in command of an expedition more numerous and better equipped than any that has ever entered Africa'," and in his published accounts of the journey Henry supported this idea, claiming that he had left the coast with 356 people: carriers, women and children. The idea that Stanley always travelled with vast, well-provided expeditions is so widespread that it is necessary to emphasise once more that, as on his search for Livingstone, his insecurity led him to exaggerate, and again to diminish his real achievement. 'I In letters to several friends, he gave the total figure as 347, which would also feature in several places in his diary.2O But in the most credible diary entry, for 11 z November, the day on which his expedition embarked from Zanzibar in dhows, Stanley states that '224 answered to their names' before sailing. With himself and his three white companions added, this figure rose to zz8. The only surviving muster list for the expedition - which, though undated, was plainly written at the outset - contains 227 names.21 So, in reality, soon after the start of his epic journey Stanley had been leading about as many men as Speke and Burton had led in 11857, and Speke and Grant in 118611. His expedition was by no means the overlarge, invulnerable outfit it has been described as in all previous accounts.

  While Stanley was on Zanzibar and still able to communicate with the outside world, the letters he received from his fiancee dismayed as well as delighted him. Because the mails were irregular, Alice decided that Henry was a poor correspondent, accusing him of being `real mean about writing', and saying that she was `real angry with Africa'." She added a description of her sister's wedding: `I wish you could have been there to see me, I had the greatest crowd of men around me all the time young & old.' Having complained about tedious gentlemen callers who stayed with her late into the evening, Alice had the gall to rebuke him for having written to an acquaintance of hers called Mamie Anderson. In a letter dated z December, which would have worried him acutely if it had reached him before he left, she responded to one he had sent her from Zanzibar, in which he had finally admitted that his journey would probably take three years. After pointing out that this was a whole year longer than she had expected, Alice demanded: `And suppose you are not home then, where will you be? Dead or still seeking the Nile?'

  This was a reasonable worry. If he were to be away for three years, why not four or five, and how could she ever be sure he had not died in the meantime?" Henry had hoped that if he could get her to accept a wait of two years (rather than scare her off with three years straightaway), he could then more safely try to extend the permitted time limit to the three years he actually needed. This subterfuge backfired badly, making her wonder whether he would stick to any agre
ed schedule. Stanley caused additional grief by accusing her of encouraging men - an understandable allegation, given her references to swarms of admirers. `That is wrong,' she insisted; `... it is natural that they should like me ... it is really no fault of mine if they are conceited enough to think I will accept them if they only ask me.' But even if the infatuated Henry had read this arrogant letter before the start of his journey, he would still, in all likelihood, have travelled across Africa with her photograph wrapped in an oilcloth packet next to his heart. 14Perhaps this frivolous girl, who was utterly unimpressed with his bravery and commitment, was the type of lover best suited to spur on a man of his temperament to achieve the impossible.

  His first objective on his epic journey was to march just over 700 miles to Lake Victoria, and then circumnavigate and map the lake in order to establish whether Speke had been right to suppose that Victoria was a single lake with one outlet on its northern shore - his much-vaunted Nile source. Henry also aimed to show whether Burton was right to suggest that another, more southerly outlet, perhaps connecting Victoria with Lake Albert, could claim primacy as the Nile's source. If there really were (as Burton believed) two or three lakes, rather than one, then the most southerly would surely possess an outlet with a better claim to be the source than Speke's. After solving this major geographical conundrum, Stanley planned to travel Soo miles to the southwest and circumnavigate Lake Tanganyika. He meant to find its outlet and see whether it connected with Lake Albert to the north (as Samuel Baker believed was possible) or with Livingstone's Lualaba to the west. Finally, the Lualaba itself would have to be followed wherever it went to establish whether it was, as Livingstone thought, the Nile - or, as many geographers asserted, the Congo.

  The first leg of this unprecedented 7,ooo-mile journey began at Bagamoyo on 17 November under `an intensely bright and fervid sun'.25 Soon his men were crossing open savannah, after travelling for miles in single file on a narrow path barely a foot wide. As a rule, they started their march soon after dawn, hoping to achieve most of the day's mileage (usually six to nine miles, though sometimes more) before the heat of the sun was too great. The stronger and generally younger men carried sixty-pound bales of cloth, which would be reduced in weight as the journey proceeded and they grew frailer. Older men carried the precious barometers, watches, sextants, mercury bottles, compasses and photographic equipment, packed in boxes of forty pounds. The all-important chronometers, vital for fixing the expedition's position, were stowed in balls of cotton in boxes of twenty-five pounds, and carried by the most responsible men." Marching with the men (and included in the zz8 people who answered their names) were thirty-six women - most of them the wives of his Wangwana `captains' and senior pagazi or carriers.' As the path dipped and rose, the long line of porters, with the occasional brightly dressed woman among them, stretched out for several hundred yards, curving and twisting as they crossed a wooded hill, then straightening as they passed fields of manioc, maize and millet.

  In these first few weeks, though two dogs died, there would be few problems with carriers. Yet this honeymoon period would be brief; and as backs and feet became sore, and discipline began to irk them, men started to desert. In the next three and a half months, Henry was appalled to lose fifty of his zz8 followers - some dying of diseases, some in fights with tribesmen, but over half through desertion - and this was despite his using a group of skilled and trusted men - his `detectives' - to track down absconders.28 To stem the tide Stanley even resorted to chaining recaptured men for a few days, preferring this punishment - despite its unfortunate slave trade connotations - to beating offenders and causing life-threatening ulcers. Being fluent in Swahili, Henry was able to inspire his men and understand their complaints, which he felt should have enabled him to prevent serious losses. So his failure to do so, despite his best efforts, made the experience all the more frightening at the start of an unprecedented 7,000-mile journey.

  When at last Stanley managed to stop the desertions, new problems afflicted him. Two of his white companions contracted malaria, and the rains began in earnest.

  I am in a centre-pole tent, seven by eight. As it rained all yesterday, the tent was set over wet ground, which ... was soon trampled into a thick pasty mud, bearing the traces of toes, heels, shoe nails and dogs' paws. The tent walls are disfigured by large splashes of mud ... and there is an air of forlornness and misery ... I sit on a bed about a foot above the sludge.'9

  On the march, the clayey path was slippery, causing men to slip and fall under their heavy sixty-pound loads. Then in the constant rain the mud became thick and adhesive, making every step an effort. There was a food shortage in the surrounding country, and in these awful conditions the wretched carriers had to be put on half-rations. Two weeks later the rains ended, but Henry's difficulties did not.

  In January 11875, after a gradual ascent, he and his followers reached an endless tableland covered with dense low bush. In this scrubland there was not one large tree from which the shape of the forest could be discerned; instead, as far as the eye could see, dwarf varieties of acacia, mimosa and rank-smelling gum trees and euphorbia were tangled densely together. `The lower branches,' observed Stanley, `were so interwoven one with another that it sickens me almost to write of.'3° Sharp thorns cut through clothing, and at head height shoots and stubby branches threatened eyes and faces. Three days passed without a single sighting of game or any signs of cultivation. Occasionally they came across granite boulders the size of cottages, and massive tree roots erupting from the earth. Their guides deserted them on the fourth day, so Henry led them on north-west by compass. Not a single hopeful thing was sighted, but on the fifth day they found a small pond and drank its nitrous water. By the eighth day, hope for their survival was fading since no food had been obtained and people were starting to starve. In fact on that day, five men fell down in the bush and died before they could be found, and four other sick carriers lagged behind and were lost.

  Henry had to decide whether, in this uninhabited waste, where no birds or wild animals could be found to shoot, he would simply lose more lives if he were to send out a rescue party. He decided he would. So instead, on the ninth day, he sent ahead forty of the fittest men with instructions to find the nearest village and bring back grain. This proved to be the right decision. Within twenty-four hours the forty returned with food, which saved their companions' lives. The effect of this period of deprivation was felt for several weeks. Four more men died, and over a score remained on the sick list. On r z January, Stanley wrote: `I must now wait until my people are strengthened, refreshed & perfectly rested. I propose to deal very liberally with all to repay them for their sufferings ...'31 Looked back on from the vantage point of a year ahead, this ten-day ordeal would not stand out as one of the expedition's most frightening episodes, even though everyone in the party had faced the real possibility of collapsing and dying in the bush without hope of rescue. A graver danger soon confronted them.

  Beyond the forest, though passing through a land of cultivated fields and plentiful cattle, Henry noticed `a strange and peculiar air of discontent' among the local Africans. `They were seen hurrying their women and children away, and deserting their villages while others hovered round our camp menacingly, carrying in their hands a prodigious quantity of arms - spears, bows and arrows and knob-sticks.'32 So Stanley was obliged to resume the march much sooner than he wished. Many of his men were still emaciated when the column entered southern Ituru - the land of the Warimi: a people he described as `remarkable for their manly beauty, noble proportions and nakedness ... Only the women bearing children boasted of goat skins.'33 These people were very suspicious and only grudgingly sold food. They had no paramount chief, authority being shared between the headmen of individual villages.

  At this point one of Stanley's three young English companions, Edward Pocock, fell seriously ill. Edward had roused the expedition each morning with some notes on his bugle. Like his brother, Frank, Edward had formerly been a fisherman
on the river Medway. Henry at first suspected typhoid fever and, despite the local people's hostility, decided that Edward would have to rest whether the local chief's consent were given or not. But after a few days the chief's threats forced them to move on again, with Edward being carried in a hammock. By 115 January a rash of red pimples with white tops had broken out on his chest, suggesting smallpox. Stanley halted at once for Edward's sake, but he died early the following morning. Henry read the burial service in a shaking voice, while Frank Pocock wept over his brother's freshly dug grave. There would be no opportunity for Stanley to send a letter of condolence to Edward's parents for several months.34 By now, he himself was suffering from intermittent fever, as was Frederick Barker, his young clerk and storekeeper.

  When the march was resumed, Henry allowed a carrier suffering from asthma to follow the caravan at a slower pace, hoping he would catch up when they next halted. But with all members of the rearguard currently employed as carriers rather than as `soldiers' because of the number of men sick, the hapless Kaif Halleck was waylaid and hacked limb from limb by warriors of the local tribe, the Wanyaturu. This happened on zr January, as the caravan was approaching the village of Vinyata. Stanley had been gripped by `a presentiment of evil' ever since entering the region of Ituru, and had been doing his utmost to propitiate the locals by handing over liberal presents. Even after Halleck's murder, he warned his men against trying to avenge the killing.'' Two days later, while still camped at Vinyata, about a hundred natives assembled near the camp. They were wearing war-paint and made threatening gestures with their spears and bows.