Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer
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In Nyangwe, Stanley stayed in a mud house, only thirty feet from the ruins of Livingstone's residence of five years ago. `Not a whit of my admiration and love for him has lessened,' wrote Stanley.86 On 5 November 11876, Henry left Nyangwe with 1146 of his own followers, only 1107 of whom were contracted men on wages, the rest being women and children - mainly the wives and progeny of his Wangwana `captains'. Stanley listed forty-eight of his men as having guns of some sort, and thirty-two of them as being proficient in their use. The majority of his men he described as `mere dummies'. 17 These were inadequate numbers, and the only reason Stanley believed he would survive the next zoo crucial miles was that Tippu Tip had just arrived with almost 300 people - about 1140 of whom had guns, seventy had spears, and the rest were a mixture of slaves, women of his harem and their children.88 But while these men might shield him and prevent desertions for a couple of months, Stanley knew he would be on his own again, in terra incognita, for many months after Tippu Tip had left him. And on the great river, he would face the risk of death by drowning, by starvation, by disease or by African attacks. Before leaving Nyangwe, he wrote to his close friend Edward King a letter acknowledging that they might never meet again. Just as Mungo Park had been killed by Africans on the Niger, Stanley admitted that he might lose his life on the Lualaba.
I can die, but I will not go back ... The unknown half of Africa lies before me. It is useless to imagine what it may contain, what I may see, what wonders may be unfolded ... I cannot tell whether I shall be able to reveal it in person or whether it will be left to my dark followers. In three or four days we shall begin the great struggle with this mystery ... 89
FOURTEEN
`The Great Struggle with this Mystery'
On leaving Nyangwe, the combined expedition headed north along the Lualaba's eastern bank, from which they would be able to investigate any major tributary flowing towards the Nile or Lake Albert. After only a day the pleasant meadowland came to an end, and they plunged into `the dreaded black and chill forest called Mitamba'. Stanley made the mistake of letting Tippu Tip's `heterogeneous column of all ages' enter the forest ahead of him, so that he and his men, who were used to rapid marching, were obliged to advance by fits and starts, while `down the boles and branches, creepers and vegetable cords, moisture trickled ... and the trees kept shedding their dew ... like rain in great round drops'. The undergrowth was twenty feet high, and above it stretched `wide-spreading branches, in many interlaced strata, each branch heavy with broad thick leaves ... We knew not whether it was a sunshiny day, or a dull, foggy, gloomy one ... The path soon became a stiff clayey paste, and at every step we splashed water over the legs of those in front.' Progress was also hampered by deep streams crossing the path. The Wangwana carrying the dismantled parts of the Lady Alice had the hardest time, often lagging behind the others by several hours.'
Stanley sent men ahead with axes to cut a path and make life easier for the boat-carriers, but the adhesive clay still slowed their steps. `Such crawling, scrambling, tearing through the damp, dank jungles' was soon undermining morale. From the branches of a tree, Henry looked ahead `over the wild woods, which swept in irregular waves of branch and leaf' as far as the eye could see. For weeks or even months, they might have to struggle on in the dark, unhealthy, hothouse air beneath the canopy of this vast tropical forest. Insects bit them con stantly, and snakes were commonplace, `a python ten feet long, a green viper and a monstrous puff adder' being spotted during a single march. Less threatening were the many monkeys and chimpanzees. But `each night was made hideous' by the harsh cries of lemurs.'
After ten days' travelling, his men's faces told Stanley that `all their courage was oozing out'. Ahead lay `nothing but the eternal interlaced branches ... and a tangle' through which they `had to burrow and crawl like wild animals on hands and feet'.' On 114 November, Tippu Tip announced that because conditions were so much worse than any he had ever experienced, he would not continue for sixty marches as per his contract. Very reluctantly Henry agreed to reduce the marches from sixty to twenty, if the fee was cut commensurately. But he still hoped to get far enough from Nyangwe in Tippu's protective company to pass through the territory of the tribes made hostile by earlier slave raids.4
On 19 November, the combined expedition reached the Lualaba. The local Wenya tribesmen refused to sell them canoes to enable Stanley and Tippu Tip to transport their entire following across to the less thickly forested western bank. So, after bolting together the Lady Alice and launching her, Stanley and his men stole five canoes.' He now went on by river, with about thirty men in the Lady Alice and twenty in his canoes. Frank Pocock led the remainder - about ninety men - by land alongside Tippu Tip's larger party of 300. In the nearest village, almost zoo human skulls lined the main thoroughfare. Nearby, Frank Pocock saw similar sights. `These people are real cannibals,' he noted. `They cut the ears off slaves and captives and eat all their flesh.'6 Yet cannibals or not, Stanley tried to buy vegetables and fowls from the Wenya - only to see the entire population of the village decamp.
Kacheche and several trusted men managed to purchase supplies from a village a few miles away. But then `the natives surrounded them and one of them threw a spear at Kacheche, who shot him dead 1.7 A sadder incident occurred when an old man approached the stolen canoes - now being used by the expedition to transport men and supplies - and attempted `to repossess himself of one'. When he advanced, waving a spear - to the cheers of his fellow tribesmen - Billali, one of Stanley's young gun-bearers, panicked and shot him dead. Stanley wrote sadly in his journal: `I was absent, having gone up the Lualaba ... or I might have saved the foolish but determined old man.'8
At about this time, Stanley was enjoying the bustle of a riverside market. `Then a little child ran up the river bank ... and screamed: "The Wasambye, the Wasambye," in an agony of alarm. At the dread name the market dissolved ... Where but a few seconds before there was joy, gaiety, marketing and peace, at the sound of the words: "The Wasambye," there was emptiness.' The Wasambye was the name the Wenya gave to the slavers of Nyangwe - men like Mtagamoyo. In their white clothing, the Wangwana looked identical to these persecu- tors.9
Eighty miles north of Nyangwe, spears were thrown into Henry's riverside camp, luckily missing everyone. Stanley described this minor skirmish as `our first fight on the Lualaba'. Later, because he would claim to have had thirty-two fights on the river, this would be taken as proof of his willingness to kill people to please newspaper readers. In fact, many so-called fights - like this first one - did not deserve the name'° (see this note for fuller details). But a well-planned attack remained a distinct possibility, so Henry was eager, as soon as possible, to unite his land party with his river party.
In early December, several hundred natives fired poisoned arrows at his boat's crew and would not respond to overtures of friendship. They only desisted when three had been killed by rifle-fire from the Lady Alice. On the same day, Stanley's men were hemmed in by eight large canoes. These people, as Stanley knew, were attacking in the belief that he had come to steal their property and enslave them. This knowledge made it a distasteful business to have no alternative but to shoot at them, in this instance killing one. It was therefore a relief, on II December, to join up with the land party. Henry now had a large enough force to deter minor attacks, and shortly afterwards his diplomatic efforts bore fruit. `Today I succeeded in checking the demonstrativeness of the Mpika Island people and induced them to refrain from indulging in war. We made peace and brotherhood with them, and the news spread quickly, and we heard shouts of "Go in peace".'II
Two days after Christmas, at Vinya-Njara, Stanley finally parted with Tippu Tip. During December the Arab leader had lost his three favourite concubines through smallpox, and another seven of his followers died in a four-day period between the r rth and the r 5th. Almost seventy people from both parties were suffering from chest diseases, ulcers and fever, so nothing could persuade Tippu to delay his return to Nyangwe.'Z Henry feared th
at at the moment of parting his men might mutiny and refuse to embark in the twenty-three canoes he had purchased for them from the Wenya. After all, Nyangwe was still a mere 112- 5 miles to the south, and they would have a better chance of staying alive if they returned there with Tippu Tip than if they risked life and limb on the awesome Lualaba. Six weeks earlier, Stanley had questioned his men and discovered that only thirty-eight of them intended to carry on with him after Tippu Tip had headed south. Even Manwa Sera's loyalty was in doubt.
Stanley told Tippu emphatically that if he turned a blind eye and permitted his (Stanley's) Wangwana to follow him back to Nyangwe, he would denounce him to the Sultan of Zanzibar, who would then force him to pay compensation. Although the Arab was incensed, he did not want to make Stanley his enemy. He therefore advised the explorer to tell his men that the Sultan would punish them severely if they broke their contracts. Tippu then addressed the Wangwana very sternly, saying he would shoot them if they tried to desert Stanley. This threat proved effective, and Henry's men got into their canoes. Stanley gave Tippu Tip a draft for $z,6oo, a silver cup, a wooden box, a gold chain and large quantities of cloth, beads, shells and brass wire., 3
On z8 December 11876, as the Lady Alice floated by at the head of Stanley's flotilla of twenty-three canoes, Tippu's men on the bank sang an emotional song of farewell. Soon most of them were weeping `as though they were nearly heartbroken'.14 Henry shouted in Swahili: `Sons of Zanzibar, lift up your heads and be men. What is there to fear? ... Strike your paddles deep, cry out Bismillah! and let us for- ward.•5 He then urged his men to sing, but not even his normally stoical coxswain, Uledi, could manage more than a croak.
Three days later Stanley gave his numbers as 1143 people. He reckoned that only thirty-four of his 1107 contracted men (and he included himself and Frank) `would be able to make a tolerable resistance'. The expedition, at this stage, included eight children and sixteen women - most of them the wives of his captains. One of these, Amina, the wife of Kacheche, died of fever at this time in the bottom of her husband's canoe.'6 Many more deaths lay ahead, but by now the canoes were being swept downstream at a speed that made it futile to think of going back. Many of his men were totally inexperienced on water, and although their incompetence reduced the chances of desertion, it scared Henry, whose voice was soon hoarse with shouting warnings. The Wangwana smoked a great deal of banghy or cannabis, which slowed their reactions and befuddled them. Indeed, some of them did extraordinary things - like the man who, on being told to grab an overhanging bush on the bank to slow down his canoe, jumped from his craft onto dry land and hugged the riverside bush, while his canoe floated away without him.''
On r January 11877, after a long river passage through uninhabited forest, they came to a settlement where they were called Wajiwa, rather than Wasambye. Stanley hoped that these new people might not automatically suspect his men were slave traders.
We were gliding gently down past the settlement and attempting in mild terms to make pacific overtures, addressed them as Friends, and greeted them with the word Sen-nen-neh or `Peace'. We got no answer, though we saw them plainly enough behind the plantains and trees, crouching with drawn bows. We passed them by. Then our gentle and quiet behaviour was regarded by them as cowardice ... and immediately 14 canoes well-manned dashed out from the creeks.
So Stanley found himself facing the usual choice of kill or be killed, and having to choose the former. He hit two men with the same bullet, not knowing whether fatally, and this scared off the canoes. Before this encounter, his interpreter had heard men saying in the canoes: `We shall eat Wajiwa today.' And indeed the taunting cry, `Niama, niama' - `meat, meat' was often heard. For all these Africans, who had seen no white men or guns before, their enlightenment was very painful.'s But Stanley's position was impossible. The only way he could have avoided bloodshed would have been to anchor his entire fleet - no easy matter - and then have tried to purchase a peaceful passage with lavish gifts of beads, shells and cloth. Yet, on each occasion, this process would have taken several days, and could easily have ended in fighting, with the element of surprise lost.'9
At the start of this most challenging part of his journey, Henry was enraged by the attempt of one set of villagers to catch him and his boat's crew in a large net. `They considered us as game to be trapped, shot, or bagged at sight.'Z° He nevertheless regretted his rapid mode of travel: `One must not run through a country but give the people time to become acquainted with you and let their worst fears subside.' During this stage of his expedition his problem, he claimed, was that `the river bore [his] heavy canoes downwards', and that in addition these goods would have been rapidly exhausted had he negotiated with every tribe along the banks: `To save myself and my men from certain starvation, I had to rush through."' And in all probability, nothing Stanley could have said would have reconciled these tribes to his unprecedented intrusion.22 `In our waters,' a member of the Soko tribe told him nearly ten years later, `we never heard of a tribe moving downriver with many canoes, unless it came for war. So when we heard of this tribe [Stanley and the Wangwana] we moved out of our river to fight it."3
Stanley could do nothing to allay the suspicions he provoked. One tribe expressed to him a confusion that was general: `How can he be a good man who comes for no trade, whose feet you never see, who always goes covered with clothes, unlike all other people? No, there is something very mysterious about him, perhaps wicked, perhaps he is a magician.'14 Even the act of writing on paper was described as `witchcraft, which must be punished with death'. On one occasion Stanley was told: `The white chief must instantly deliver his notebook (his medicine) to be burned, or there would be war on the instant.' So Stanley handed over his collected Shakespeare, Chandos Edition, which was duly burned. `For a time it was like another jubilee. The country was saved; their women and little ones would not be visited by calamity."s
Yet Stanley's problems were as often to do with the geological configuration of the continent as with its people. On 6 January, after travelling 400 miles due north, the expedition came to the first cataract in a chain of seven that extended over sixty miles and would later be called the Stanley Falls. Now all the boats had to be taken out of the water and dragged overland past the first falls, along paths hacked through the jungle with axes. The larger canoes, being immense dugouts, had to be pulled along a track of logs acting as rollers. When possible, these vessels were attached to ropes and thick hawsers made from rattan creepers, and lowered down through the roaring white water. The noise of the river crashing over rocks and funnelling into narrow channels and gorges was so loud that, for hours at a time, Henry and his men could not hear each other speak, though standing side by side.
While getting their boats past these seven cataracts, the smallest of which extended for several miles, Stanley and his men were forced to live on land, and were therefore exposed to attack at close quarters by forest-dwelling tribes. Constantly worried by what he called `the senseless hate and ferocity of these primitive aborigines' - most notably the Kumu, who had subjugated three neighbouring tribes, and were cannibals - he built thorn bomas for his men, and positioned riflemen to protect his pioneers while they were cutting through the dense brushwood. To make sure the Kumu would not imagine that he could easily be defeated, Stanley drove off a group of spear-waving men who had been shouting war cries, and burned their village.z6 Not that this prevented future attacks. One night, the pioneers' camp was attacked by `a desperate savage with a knife 18 inches long', with which he killed a Wangwana, Muftah Rufigi - the wretched man having his arm almost severed from his shoulder, and the blade then `buried up to the hilt in his chest'.z7
On r9 January, Stanley's men captured eight members of the WaneMpungu tribe, who told him that the larger Kumu tribe `ate old men and old women, as well as every stranger captured in the woods'.z8 Near the junction with the Aruwimi River, Stanley noted:
Evidences of cannibalism were numerous in the human and `soko' (ape) skulls that grinned on m
any poles, and the bones that were freely scattered in the neighbourhood, near the village garbage heaps and the river banks ... The most positive, and downright evidence in my opinion, was the thin forearm of a person that was picked up near a fire, with certain scorched ribs.z9
Soon after passing the seventh fall and entering the territory of Bem- berri, where the locals responded to cries that they had `no cause for war' with a fusillade of stones, Henry refused to let himself be provoked, and recorded `We endeavoured to do our best to avoid a conflict and happily succeeded' - though these people, the Barundu, followed in canoes for a few miles. Henry by now had only fifty-two guns when he would have needed zoo to feel safe.3° The fear of being overwhelmed during a concerted land and river attack haunted him.
I pen these lines with half a feeling that they would never be read by any other white person ... If we suffer on this journey, we suffer for the injuries done to the tribes above by Mtagamoyo and his confederates ... Day and night we are pained with the dreadful drumming which announces our arrival and their fear of our purposes ... It may truly be said that we are `Running the gauntlet'.
Stanley's progress along the rapids took twenty-four days, and he found soon after the final falls that the river turned decisively westwards. Then on 7 February - a historic day - he heard the river referred to as `Ikuta Yacongo', leaving no doubt that the Lualaba was the Upper Congo."
Now they had left the Wenya tribe behind, they had no interpreter and so could not make themselves understood. Worse still, with at least Boo miles to go, their ammunition was running low. `I began to fear we should find ourselves hemmed [in] by savage enemies without means of resistance.'j2 On 7 February, Stanley knew that unless he could buy food by the end of the day, he and his men would have to take it by force. At the village of Rubunga they were met aggressively by three canoes, but still displayed copper rings, brass wire, red beads and shells in an effort to initiate bartering. They then raised hands to mouths and pointed to their stomachs. Henry was kept waiting so long for a positive reaction that his men said they were being made fools of and ought to shoot and take whatever they wanted. `I saw the natives so clearly, they presented such easy targets that a blind man might have shot a dozen,' wrote Stanley, but he decided to wait