Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer

by Tim Jeal

  Now that they were in a region of Arab-Swahili settlements, the danger of the Wangwana deserting en masse was acute. When three absconded with rifles and ammunition and were brought by Ugarrowwa's men to Stanley's camp that evening, after a day's march, he decided that unless he made an example of at least one, his losses would spiral out of control. He recalled that in 11876, before Tippu Tip turned back towards Nyangwe, the Arab had had to threaten to shoot any Wangwana who followed him rather than stayed with the expedition. Without Tippu's timely threat, Stanley would have lost his entire following. His present situation, he believed, was similar, and only a draconian punishment would prevent disaster. He rehearsed a charade with his captains, which was that three thieves would be condemned to death, but after the first had been hanged the captains would beg him to show mercy to the other two. So this was what was done. After one man had been hanged, Stanley's subsequent act of clemency to the remaining two was greeted emotionally with cries of: `Death to him who leaves Bula Matari! Show the way to the Nyanza!' (words confirmed by Parke in his diary). All the officers supported the punishment, and Jephson, the most sensitive, thought an execution was long overdue, given the frightening rate of desertion.Z" The last public hangings in England had taken place when these young men had been teenagers, and so they were not repelled by capital punishment. In Britain in the 1188os, soldiers could still be hanged or shot for mutiny, or desertion in the face of the enemy. For Africans, the death penalty was commonplace.

  As the food crisis deepened, members of the expedition began to starve, and Lieutenant Nelson was among thirty whom Stanley described as `absolutely incapable'. Though Nelson was white, Stanley was determined he should not be carried and thus deprive the expedition of two fit carriers. So, on 6 October, he announced that Nelson, who could not walk, was to share the fate of `fifty-two black men to whom we were equally bound by the most solemn obligations', and be left with them in a hastily improvised camp.22 Jephson was shocked that Nelson would only have food for two days and would have `to exist on what he can pick up in the shape of fungus & roots'. Stanley later denied having left Nelson so ill-provided. Parke found parting with his sick colleague `the most sickening, heart-rending goodbye I ever experienced'. Yet he thought Stanley right `to sacrifice one and save the remainder'.23

  Jephson, Parke, Stairs and Stanley marched on and experienced the same grim conditions as before, and the same steady trickle of thefts and desertions, interspersed with attacks by tribesmen or bands of Manyema. Feruzi All, whom Stanley described as his `third best man' was wounded in the head by a spear and `became paralysed and died in agony' four days later.14 Every day several men died of starvation, as they stumbled on towards Ipoto, the next Arab settlement. Henry sent ahead five reliable men to bring back food from the settlement, but they lost their way and would not be seen for three weeks. By now everyone was eating leathery forest beans, slugs and caterpillars. At a crucial moment, Stanley killed the last of his donkeys and divided it among his men. All this time, Stanley was distraught over what might happen to Nelson and his men; but he knew he would only be able to save them if he could reach the next camp and purchase food there." As Jephson acknowledged, `Stanley's anxiety has been frightful, for the success of the expedition has been & is indeed hanging in the bal- ance.'26

  On 118 October they arrived at Ipoto, the creation of another runaway Zanzibari slave, Kilonga-Longa, who had a dozen Arab-Swahili and about r 5o Manyema under him. They had assembled a substantial store of ivory, through robbery, and had planted rice, sweet potatoes and beans, and possessed many goats and fowls.27 Stanley described his men as skeletal, with `ashy grey skin ...[and] with every sign of wretchedness deep in their eyes'. Even so, he was appalled when his ravenous men `went mad ... stole freely & slaughtered goats and fowls belonging to the Arabs ... and at last they stole our rifles & cartridges & sold them to the Arabs for just two meals of meat each'. During three disastrous days, thirty rifles and 3,000 rounds of ammunition disappeared, threatening the very existence of the expedition. Stanley knew that he would never leave Ipoto with any kind of column unless he acted decisively. The man he executed, as an example, was called Juma, and he had sold several rifles. Many men had done the same and would be luckier. It is impossible to say whether Stanley could have held his force together without this second execution, but it seems unlikely, since even after the punishment he left Ipoto with a mere 147 men, having arrived with just over zoo, and having set out from Yambuya with 3 89. Life would have been much easier for Stan ley if he had only had more cloth to sell, because he would then have been able to build up a reserve of food. But the need to carry ammunition for Emin Pasha had made him skimp on trade goods."

  On z6 October, Jephson - the man about town, who had turned out to be a dauntless explorer - was sent back by Stanley with forty men and thirty Manyema to take food to Robert Nelson. Dr Parke accompanied him, with instructions to bring the sick man and other survivors back to Ipoto and to stay with them there. This was hard on the doctor, since it seemed likely to be many months before the Rear Column arrived and took him and Nelson on with them to Lake Albert. On the other hand, it was proof of Stanley's concern for the starving men that he should have left the doctor with Nelson, denying himself Parke's skills. When Jephson reached Nelson on the z9th, he was still alive, but reduced to `an infirm decrepit-looking skeleton'.29 Only five men were there out of fifty-two men left with him. Seventeen had died and the rest had fled. At Ipoto, Parke would also look after twentynine sick men, left behind by Stanley when he marched for the lake.3°

  Nelson felt very bitter that Stanley had failed to guarantee a better food supply from the Arabs. But having hardly any cloth, it is hard to see what else he could have done - except promise payment when the Rear Column arrived.3i The brutality of the Arab-Swahili at Ipoto and at Ugarrowwa's convinced Henry that an international ban on the import of gunpowder into Africa was essential, along with the confiscation of ivory at the coast. `It is simply incredible that because ivory is required for ornaments or billiard games, the rich heart of Africa should be laid waste ... [and] populations, tribes and nations should be utterly destroyed.''

  Jephson's arrival at Nelson's camp

  On 1o November, Stanley, Stairs, Hoffman and some 150 men reached the village of Ibwiri, about a hundred miles from the lake. Here, the local tribe greeted them in friendship, having had no experience of slave raids. For the first time since entering the Ituri forest four and a half months earlier, they found a substantial clearing - about three miles in diameter - containing fields planted with crops. Here the expedition stayed for two weeks while the men put on weight and strength. Stanley was joined here by Jephson and forty-eight men on the 16th, and the whole Advance Column, now numbering 175 men, left on the z3rd.33

  Observing his Wangwana as they regained some of their old spirit, Stanley felt humbled by them.

  No other body of men in the wide world could have borne such a period of hunger so meekly and resignedly ... their comrades dying at every camp, or falling dead along the track ... Goaded by the protracted hunger and loss of trust in their officers, they might have seized their Remingtons and, by one volley, have slain their white chiefs ... and shaken off their power ... which, so far as they knew, was only dragging them down to certain doom.34

  Yet even in this hilly grassland, their troubles were not over. Not long after leaving Ibwiri, they encountered a tribe that clearly meant to prevent them reaching Lake Albert.35

  The crisis came on 8 December, when Stanley and 173 men (his own party plus those brought on by Jephson) entered a broad valley only a few days' journey from the lake. Looking up, they saw `natives gathered on the hills on either side, shouting & yelling at us'. Given that their adversaries numbered about a thousand, Henry dreaded being rushed from both sides. Hand to hand fighting would be the end of them. And the Africans now descended and began pressing in on them. As they came within zoo yards, Stanley felt his men were in great danger and fired at a man, fell
ing him. At once the tribesmen backed off. In this breathing space Stanley managed to build a thorn bona to defend his people. He knew that if the Africans launched a determined night attack, they would be impossible to resist. Even in the day, the cultivated fields of tall-stemmed sorghum gave good cover to spearmen and bowmen. Fortunately for Stanley and his men, the night attack never came.

  Next day, he tried to make peace by handing over cloth and brass wire, and offering to become the chief's blood brother. But though these gifts were accepted, the tribe's hostility persisted, and a fight seemed inevitable. To warn them of the consequences, Stanley burned several settlements. `My idea has been all along to fight as little as possible,' Stanley wrote to a friend, `but when compelled to do so, to set about the job as efficiently as possible, so that there will remain no doubt in native minds what we propose doing when we tell them.'36 To his great relief, the chief decided to make peace. For every hundred men who had left Yambuya, only forty-five had reached this point, so he could afford no more losses .17

  On 113 December, Stanley and his men stood on a hill overlooking the lake. `Imagine our feelings on seeing the dark blue waters of Albert Nyanza, nearly z,5oo ft below us,' wrote Stairs, who could easily have died from his arrow wound. Henry's observations for longitude and latitude had brought them with perfect accuracy to this point in the district of Kavalli.38 But gazing through his glass at the lake, it alarmed him to see no canoes or trees large enough to carve into dugouts. In order to bring as much ammunition as possible for Emin, he had been obliged to leave his steel boat at Ipoto. It looked as if he might not be able to reach Emin's base at Wadelai on the Upper Nile without a long overland journey. And since hundreds of natives were even now closing in and firing arrows as they started their descent towards the lake, Stanley knew how dangerous that would be.39

  On the following day, he tried to convince local villagers that he came in friendship and merely wanted to buy canoes. But the people remained suspicious, refusing to sell them any boats. At last he heard that there was a white man thirty-five miles across the lake at Kibiro. But from the description, this seemed to be the Pasha's friend, the Italian traveller Gaetano Casati, rather than Emin himself.4° Everyone was deeply disappointed. Efforts to buy canoes continued next day, without success, as did attempts to exchange gifts. `Look where we might,' wrote Stanley, `a way to advance was denied to us, except by fighting, killing, destroying, consuming and being consumed.' Ruling out taking canoes by force, Stanley announced to his frustrated offi cers, Jephson and Stairs, that there was no choice but to return to Ipoto for the metal boat and more rifle rounds. They had only fortyseven cases of ammunition with them, and if they chose to march overland to Wadelai, they might have to use twenty-five of these in defending themselves on the way, leaving a pathetic amount of ammunition to hand over to Emin on arrival.41

  Both Stairs and Jephson were shocked that a man of Stanley's `immense experience & marvellous powers of resource' should not have `hit upon a feasible plan' to find Emin without doubling back to the fringes of the awful forest that they had been so thankful to leave.4z Yet the expedition was scattered in ill-provided small groups over several hundred miles, and Henry was acutely anxious about the safety of Parke and Nelson. It says a lot for his sense of realism that he was able to accept, after everything they had endured, that finding Emin would be a hollow achievement if the expedition fell apart. Without more supplies, his Advance Column could do little for the Pasha or for itself. The hostility of the lakeside natives ruled out remaining where they were. At Ibwiri the locals were friendly and food abundant, so Stanley now planned to return and build a camp there, to which Parke, Nelson and their men, and the invalids at Ugarrowwa's, could be brought. Only once the united Advance Column had re-provisioned itself from this new depot would he consider a second attempt on Lake Albert.43

  On beginning the march back to Ibwiri on 116 December 1887, Stanley decided not to climb in daylight up the rocky slope to the tableland from which they had descended to Albert's shores. Instead, he camped at the bottom of the slope without lighting fires or pitching tents. Then just before dawn, he ordered his men to scramble to the summit.44 At sunrise Jephson looked back and saw a party of Africans trying to get ahead of them to alert the tribesmen on the plateau, who would then have been able to attack the approaching intruders. This was exactly what Stanley had so cleverly avoided.

  But, as Jephson recorded, the danger was not over.

  Natives began to gather on the hills from all sides & close in on our rear. A large party of them with shouts & waving of spears come on with a rush & made as if to attack the rear. Stanley stepped out and taking a good steady aim with his Winchester Express fired at a native 550 yards distant & shot him through the head. The natives ... were all so utterly thunderstruck at the possibility of our being able to kill a man at such a distance that they took to their heels.45

  Had Stanley allowed them to come closer, he and his men would have ended up having to kill many more to defend themselves. Yet he had killed - albeit in self-defence - an undoubted owner of the land they were crossing, whose only desire had been to protect it. Stanley was deeply perplexed by the animosity of these tribes to the west of Lake Albert. Later, he would learn that he and his Advance Column had become linked in people's minds with the Warasura - the much-feared bandit allies of Kabarega, the King of Bunyoro.41

  Back at Ibwiri, on 6 January 11888, Henry supervised the construction of a fort with a sixteen-foot watchtower, and cleared three acres for corn and beans. To protect the log cabins built for his officers and the Wangwana, a ditch and stockade were constructed. Stanley feared attacks by the Manyema, and crop-stealing by pygmies.47 On 119 January, Stairs was sent with a hundred men to bring back Parke and Nelson from Ipoto, along with the steel boat. Amazingly, he returned in less than thee weeks, having marched 1158 miles through difficult terrain. Stanley now pondered whether to return to the lake with his boat and resume his search for Emin, or whether to go back at once through the Ituri Forest to help Major Barttelot's column through the jungle. He finally decided to send Lieutenant Stairs from Fort Bodo to Ugarrowwa's and back - a round trip of 366 miles - with a letter for Major Barttelot, which would be taken on from the Arab settlement by twenty Wangwana volunteers. In the letter, Stanley warned the major that near Arab settlements his column might well break up, and if this process started he should build a strong camp and wait to be relieved by the Advance Column.48

  At the time of Stairs's departure, Henry was suffering from a huge abscess in his right arm.49 Then gastritis and haematuric fever laid him low. For a week he drifted in and out of consciousness, while Jephson and the doctor took it in turns to sit with him at night. Parke ordered two Wangwana boys to be with him constantly in the day. One of these teenagers, Saleh bin Osman, became indispensable, and not just because his foot massage helped Henry to sleep. 'Sall' brought Stanley information about what his Wangwana captains and his officers were saying.

  Stanley's milk diet was keeping him alive, so Parke lived in fear that his two remaining goats would be stolen. On one occasion, Parke caught Hoffman drinking Stanley's milk, which enraged the sick man so much, when he heard of it, that he tried to hit his valet with a stick, merely jarring his bad arm.s° Six weeks later, Stanley was better; and at the end of March 11888, having waited for Stairs for as long as he felt able, he departed for the lake, taking 11 z6 men, the steel boat, the invaluable Dr Parke and the reliable Mounteney Jephson. Nelson was left behind with about forty-five men to guard the stores and crops at Fort Bodo. The Maxim would be left for Stairs to bring on to the lake for Emin in due course. The young officer arrived twenty-six days too late, with fifteen survivors from the fifty-six men who had been left with the Arabs at Ugarrowwa's.5'

  A month before Henry reached Lake Albert, Emin Pasha had come down the western side of Lake Albert in his steamer, and had spread the news far and wide that he was looking for a white man who had come from afar. On 14 April, several days from t
he lake, Stanley heard from members of the Zamboni tribe that `Malleju' ('the Bearded One') had recently been at Katonza's `in a big canoe, all of iron'." On reaching Kavalli's on the r 8th, Stanley was handed a packet by Chief Mbi- assi, containing a letter from Emin Pasha. Written three weeks earlier, it was, as William Hoffman commented, `a strange letter to receive from a man whom we had imagined to be in an agony of suspense for relief to arrive'.S3 Not by one word did Emin give the impression that he was pleased by Stanley's arrival. He merely asked him to spread information about his whereabouts so that he could return for him in his steamer. But though cool, the letter showed that Emin was alive - which was a huge relief to Stanley, who promptly sent Jephson and fifteen of his best men up the shore of the lake in the steel boat. A few days later, having heard that Stanley was camped near Kavalli's, Emin steamed south, and having located Jephson, took him on board and continued to Kavalli's, towing the steel boat.54

  Stanley's valet was chasing butterflies on a cliff above the expedition's camp when he spotted the smoke of a distant steamer. `I rushed down headlong ... nearly bursting with excitement. "Mr Stanley, Mr Stanley!" I shouted, "Emin Pasha is here.""' The date was 29 April 11888. The Wangwana dashed down to the shore, firing their guns in salute. It was eight o'clock and growing dark by the time Emin Pasha, his friend Captain Casati, Jephson and another of Emin's officers walked into the camp above Kavalli's.