Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer

by Tim Jeal

  thinking it a pity to shoot people who took no pains to conceal themselves. Besides their conduct, though somewhat distrustful was not to be compared with the arrogant savages [past whom] we had run the gauntlet lately. I told them in a mixture of Kiswahili, Kukisu and Kibaswa that if they did not bring food, I must take it or we would die. They must sell it for beads ... or brass wire ... I drew significant signs across the throat. It was enough ...

  When he threw ashore a copper bracelet and a string of beads, `they clapped hands, laughed'; the two parties `hurrahed, and made blood brotherhood'.33

  For several days, this friendliness persisted among the riverside people they encountered. Stanley and Frank allowed men in canoes to come right up close to them - believing that these villagers of Urangi, like those of Rubunga, were not cannibals - and the two white men `smiled in the midst of a tattooed group, remarkable for their filed teeth and gashed bodies, and bearing in their hands fearfully dangerous-looking naked knives'.34 But on the r rth, the Lady Alice's crew were fired at from canoes manned by tribesmen whom they had thought friendly. This was the first time Stanley had `seen the smoke of gunpowder drifting away from a native canoe'. One of the Wangwana shouted: `Master, one of our men is killed.' Stanley at once ordered his men to return fire, and the result was that two or three Africans were shot dead, while Rehani, one of the expedition's men, was also killed.3i While this encounter brought a frightening new danger, it proved that they had arrived at the furthest point on the river to which indirect Portuguese influence had penetrated from their trading stations near the coast.

  The following day the Congo increased from two miles across to seven, with many low, reedy islands in the main channel large enough to hide an army of musket-wielding tribesmen, and also to be home to numerous varieties of bird and animal. On one island Stanley saw an elephant, and on another several buffalo. But though he longed to land to shoot for the pot, he did not dare, for fear he might be targeted by concealed Africans. At least the width of the river meant that the flotilla could stay out of range of either bank, and the scenery was exceptionally beautiful as they glided `between palmy and spicy islands, whose sweet fragrance and vernal colour cause us to forget our dangerous life'. It was the sheer variety of foliage and trees that amazed him: `Teak and cotton-wood palms ... the tall cane with its drooping feathery leaves, the bushy and many rooted mangrove ... and the low grassy banks from which the crocodile plunges into the brown depths.' But war drums could dispel enjoyment of the scenery in an instant.36

  In the second volume of Stanley's book Through the Dark Continent, he wrote an exciting set piece about an encounter with between fifty and sixty canoes - manned by members of the Bangala (Ngala) tribe - that extended from the morning of the 114th to the late afternoon of 115 February. This was a very testing encounter, but in respect of the number of Bangala canoes mentioned by Stanley, it qualifies as one of his classic exaggerations. A comparison with Frank Pocock's diary establishes that fighting did indeed go on for two days, and that many shots were fired at Stanley's flotilla, but the comparison also shows that the number of African canoes involved never exceeded eight at any one time, and the total of the vessels pursuing them, over the two days, was about twenty. But even eight canoes, with crews of twenty or more men to each, and carrying, along with those paddling, additional men with guns, posed a formidable challenge. So how did Stanley behave when faced with this new danger?

  According to Frank, even when his master knew that there were muskets in the canoes, he ordered his men not to fire until they themselves had been fired upon. Frank described the casualties inflicted upon the pursuers rather vaguely as `some killed and wounded'. So Henry caused totally unnecessary damage to his reputation by inflating the incident into a major battle in his book - suggesting, by implication, that many more Africans would have died than the three or four mentioned in his diary.

  Stanley's previous biographers have accepted the highly coloured account in Through the Dark Continent. This resort to fiction would appear to be largely due to a journalist's hankering for the best possible story. Despite the fact that his navigation of the Congo was selfevidently one of the greatest journeys of all time, it can only strike one as sad that he had still felt the need to pep it up. In fact the two days in question were extremely dangerous, as Frank Pocock affirmed, with `five hours hard fighting against guns, [and] the bullets whistling over our heads'. Being subjected to this sniping for hour after hour, with men occasionally suffering flesh wounds, would have been a ghastly experience regardless of the number of canoes involved, especially since when individual canoes dropped out they were often replaced by others.37 The British missionary William Holman Bentley, who attempted to convert the Bangala in the 1188os, had no doubt that Stanley would have `had to fight in self-defence, or walk quietly to their cooking pots, and submit to dissection and the processes of digestion'."

  Apart from one brief attack on 9 March, this two-day ordeal would turn out to be the last of its kind - from now on, famine and cataracts would threaten the expedition more often than guns and spears. Before the end of February, after a period of great anxiety about food, they were managing to buy goats, fowls and bananas with cloth and brass wire. The people selling to them also had guns, `old American flintlocks', and `murderously long knives'. But despite having no interpreter, `we did very well with signs', recorded Stanley.39 During the first week of March, the expedition had completed the immense r,zoo-mile hoop-like bend of the river and arrived at the junction with the Kwa River. Fifty miles to the south, the Congo widened into a huge lake. Henry claimed that Frank suggested to him that this seventeen by fifteen mile expanse of water be called Stanley Pool, but it seems more likely that he himself gave it this name, which would endure until the independence of the Belgian Congo in r96o. On the northern shore, the capital of the French Congo, Brazzaville, would one day be built, while to the south Leopoldville (modern Kinshasa), capital of the Belgian Congo, would stand. The relative friendliness of the Africans around the pool Stanley attributed to the influence of Portuguese commerce ('trade has tamed their natural ferocity') - although no white person of any nationality had ever penetrated closer to Stanley Pool than 278 miles.4°

  Because two months earlier Stanley had succeeded in descending the Stanley Falls with short detours overland, interspersed with periods on the river, he decided to ignore local warnings and to try to do the same again when passing the formidable cataracts below the pool. He had no idea that there would be thirty-two falls. Stanley later described this final leg of his journey as `a tragic period, before which our running the gauntlet through the cannibal lands seems child's play'. Of course he knew that the cataracts would bring conditions unimaginably `different from that soft, glassy flow of the river by the black forests ... where a single tremulous wave was a rarity', when they `glided day after day'.41 Yet Stanley had experienced one extraordinary event on the Stanley Falls that should have given him a presentiment of what lay ahead.

  A canoe had been smashed on rocks in some rapids, and the man paddling had been flung into the water and swept onwards to the brink of the next vertiginous falls. By an amazing stroke of good fortune, he managed to clutch a rock in midstream right on the very lip above the maelstrom below. Though Zaidi, who had been on the Livingstone expedition, seemed doomed, Stanley risked his best men and canoes in trying to rescue him. He attached an unmanned canoe to a rattan hawser and then inched it closer and closer to the stranded man. But, halfway there, the rattan snapped `like a pack thread', and the canoe hurtled over the falls. Next, Henry put two volunteers - Uledi, his experienced coxswain, and Marzouk - into a canoe and attached three rattans. With immense bravery, even after two rattans had parted, the two men had continued edging ever closer to the falls, somehow managing, at the last moment, to pull Zaidi into the canoe. Descending these new cataracts, such bravery was likely to be needed again. By now, Stanley's total of men, women and children had fallen from 1143 to 1129. In reaching Stanley Pool, f
ourteen had died by drowning, or by disease, or in African attacks. During the same period the number of canoes had dropped from twenty-three to fourteen.42

  Now, Henry was about to ask the Wangwana for a commitment that might reasonably have been asked of soldiers in war, but not from contracted civilians. Nevertheless, he appreciated their qualities as few earlier explorers had done, and ungrudgingly acknowledged his indebtedness. Without them, Burton's, Speke's and Grant's achievements, like his own, would have been impossible. Stanley accepted that men subjected to an endless physical and mental ordeal could be forgiven for lapsing into despair and depression at times. To help the Wangwana, he meant to lead by example and show them that `they could endure like Stoics, and fight like heroes'.43 The ultimate compliment he paid to the best of them can be found in a letter to his close friend, Edward King: `The execution & fulfilment of all plans, and designs was due to the pluck and intrinsic goodness of zo men ... take these zo men out and I could not have proceeded beyond a few days journey.'44 On the later Emin Pasha Expedition, most of his white colleagues would remark on the very special relationship Stanley enjoyed with his Wangwana carriers.

  At especially dangerous moments, Henry would work on the Wangwana by shaming as well as exhorting.45 `Will you go back and tell my friends you left me in this wild spot, and cast me adrift to die ... Speak, Wangwana, and show me those who dare follow me!' Some of them, such as his coxswain, Uledi, his detective, Kacheche, his adviser, Wadi Safeni, his storekeeper, Wadi Rehani, and his chief captain, Manwa Sera, were men of extraordinary courage, endurance and fidelity, often placed in situations so dangerous and stressful that only a very exceptional European would have proved equal to coping with them. Just such a man was the only other surviving European member of the party, Frank Pocock, the Kentish boatman. `An extraordinary man,' Stanley called him, `respected, beloved ... of cool steadfast courage.' So brave in fact that once, on his master's request, though well aware that three tribesmen's muskets were aimed at him at a distance of a few yards, he lowered his gun so that Henry could `exhaust all endeavours for peace' before precipitating them into another fight.46 Though a marvellous seaman and swimmer, Frank had recently been leading land parties, marching more miles than his master and wearing out his last pair of boots in the process. After that, sandals made from portmanteau leather had exposed his feet to attack by parasites. Now, Frank had to be carried or to travel by canoe, since his feet were `almost in a state of mortification'.47

  On 115 March 11877, they all started down the river, believing they were about 50o miles from the sea, and never supposing that their worst ordeal was just beginning.48 The first rapids reminded Stanley of `a strip of water blown over by a hurricane, with every interval of fifty or a hundred yards marked by wave-towers ... and the mad clash of watery hills ... The roar was tremendous and deafening. I can only compare it to the thunder of an express train through a rock tunnel.'49

  A few days later, the expedition lost its best seventy-five-foot canoe, which was torn from the hands of fifty men and swept away. Men slipped and injured themselves on wet rocks, and Stanley `fell down, feet first, into a chasm, 30 feet deep between two enormous boulders, but fortunately escaped with only a few rib bruises'.''

  On i9 March the steersman of the canoe in which Kalulu was travelling, along with Ferajji, a Livingstone search veteran, and three others, let his vessel drift into the fastest flowing part of the river at a point where Stanley had urged all coxswains to hug the right bank. In the centre the current was so powerful that `human strength availed nothing and the canoe and its unfortunate people glided over the treacherous calm surface like an arrow to doom'. Approaching the fatal lip of the falls, the canoe was `whirled round three or four times, and presently we saw the stern pointed upward and knew that only by a miracle could any of the crew be saved'. A miracle was not forthcoming, and all six men were drowned. `My heart aches sorely for them especially for Rehani, Ferajji, Mauredi and Kalulu.' After Kalulu's desertion at Lake Tanganyika, his unique status had been lost, and Stanley did not mourn him as long as he might have done if he had proved faithful.5'

  Death of Kalulu

  The horrors of that day were not over:

  Fast upon this catastrophe, before we could begin to wail their loss, another canoe with two men darted by, borne like lightning on the placid but irresistible water to apparent nay, almost certain destruction ... By a strange chance, or his dexterity, he [the steersman] shot his canoe over the Falls, and lower down in calmer water he contrived to secure his canoe to the shore. The two men were presently seen clambering over the rocks towards the point opposite our camp ... Our pity and love gushed strong towards them, but we could utter nothing of it. The roar of the Falls mocked and overpowered the feeble human voice.

  Henry now insisted that all canoes must be attached to a tow-line, held by at least two men on the bank. Yet before this instruction could be acted upon, `a third canoe darted past with only one man [on board]'. This was Soudi, who had been wounded by a spear during the fight in Ituru, on the way to Lake Victoria. Now, he shouted to Stanley: `I am lost, Master; there is but one God.' The river swept him down over no less than four falls, `great waves striking madly at him, yet his canoe did not sink, and he and it swept behind the island and we could see nothing more, for darkness fell on us and on the river'.'' Three days later, to everyone's amazement, Soudi returned to the expedition. He had been kidnapped on landing, and only released when it was realized that he served that great magician, `the white man with large fiery eyes'. On the same day the other two absentees `made their appearance in our camp to our general joy', having hidden for two days to avoid being caught and enslaved.53

  Frank Pocock was not abashed by what had happened, and guided three canoes down some white-water rapids a week later `in first rate style'. On the same day, Frank, thanks to his prowess as a swimmer, saved a man `who was half drowned ... after he had sunk once'. S4 On iz April, Stanley and a skeleton crew on the Lady Alice were lucky to survive a botched attempt to lower them down some rapids. The men holding the stern rope failed to stop the vessel swinging out into the stream; so Henry and his crew found themselves descending the rapids, completely out of control. `As we began to feel that it was useless to contend with the current, a sudden terrible rumbling noise caused us to look below, and we saw the river almost heaved bodily upward, as if a volcano had burst under it.' By some frantic oar strokes, they avoided being sucked under as their bows plunged down the side of this `watery mound'. `Once or twice we were flung scornfully aside, and spun around contemptuously, as though we were too insignificant to be wrecked.' At last, they managed to steer the boat to the bank.

  In about an hour, a straggling line of anxious souls appeared; and all that love of life ... and full sense of the worth of living, returned to my heart as my faithful followers rushed up one after another with their exuberant welcome to life ... And Frank, my amiable and trusty Frank was neither last nor least in his professions of love."

  `Lady Alice' over the falls

  In the meantime, just when food was becoming very hard to buy, a bag of Blue Mutoonda beads - among the expedition's most valuable means of exchange - went missing. Even at a moment when lives were in danger daily, Stanley searched remorselessly for these beads until they were found divided among five men's private possessions. These beads were priceless because cloth was almost valueless as currency on this lower stretch of the river, and members of the expedition had been asked to pay as much as a gun for a goat. Despite their hunger, the five thieves were flogged on Stanley's orders. He felt no remorse. What would have been the use of surviving the falls and rapids, only to starve for lack of funds?"

  In late April, with no path anywhere near the river, and more terrible cataracts downstream, Stanley was obliged to order his long-suffering men to haul six heavy canoes up a r,goo-foot hill. This involved hacking out a path almost a mile long and cutting numerous logs for rollers. But though four of Stanley's men had chronic dysentery,
and another eight were suffering from flesh-eating ulcers, the task was managed by the expedition's fit men within a week.57 The food crisis went on, but Stanley would never condone thefts from local villagers. Henry always paid to release thieves who had been caught, and even took them back to their captors if they escaped, so that proper negotiations could take place. On one occasion, Stanley paid a staggering $15o in cloth for the release of a man who had stolen a chicken. Now that he was on land as often as on water, and therefore frequently face to face with Congolese tribesmen, he was determined to avoid fights. 5'

  Most of May was devoted to building two new canoes from massive trees. To speed up the process, Stanley set up a night party under Frank. Since these vessels were made of teak, the work of hollowing them was incredibly arduous, and during it Kacheche had to take the expedition's collection of axes to a local smithy to be honed. When both the new canoes were launched, Stanley redistributed his land and water parties - himself taking command of the land party, hitherto Frank's job, with joint command on the river passing to Manwa Sera, his chief captain, and to Uledi, the expedition's most skilled coxswain. Chowpereh, who had been with Livingstone when he died, was also transferred to the river group. These changes were made because Frank was now too lame to walk. Baraka, a boatman with a ready wit, had coined `the sobriquet of Goee-Goee, a term quite untranslatable as regards its descriptive humour', though Henry thought that `despairing, forlorn good-for-nothings' was a fair equivalent. When Baraka called Frank `a Goee-Goee, he laughingly assented', though really mortified.59