Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer
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It shattered Stanley that Emin had deliberately concealed from him how precarious his hold over his men had become. Thanks to this incomprehensible reticence, ten months had been wasted and the Pasha's authority had been fatally damaged. Jephson confirmed in his report for Stanley, written on 7 February, that Emin's position with his men had been desperate all along and that he had simply lied. `Thus we were led to place our trust in people who were utterly unworthy of our confidence and help.'4 At a stroke, Stanley's high hopes of settling Emin and a large number of his men north-east of Lake Victoria had ended, as had his hopes of bringing the Pasha to Egypt or England. Now, the relief expedition seemed doomed to end in farcical anti-climax.
Emin Pasha believed, wrote Jephson, that if his men came with Stanley en masse and found a place to settle in, they would do so in order to plunder the great explorer on the way, `taking all his arms and ammunition'.' Of course Stanley now dreaded being overpowered by mutinous soldiers. Any thought of creating a settlement near Lake Victoria was dead and buried, and even Emin accepted this.' With the Mahdists pressing south and the Pasha's men likely to make a deal with them, Stanley felt that Emin now had no choice but to come with him to the coast. What security could he ever know as a solitary wanderer in the interior?
Emin, Jephson, a handful of loyal officers and seven or eight soldiers arrived at Tunguru on Lake Albert in late December, leaving behind a confused situation further north, with some men still loyal to him but the majority not. On 117 January 118 89, Stanley wrote to Emin urgently requesting `a definite answer to the question: if you propose to accept our escort and assistance to reach Zanzibar ... [and] whether there are any officers or men disposed to accept our safe conduct to the sea'.7 In a postscript to Jephson, Stanley warned, `this time there must be no hesitation but positive yea or nay, and home we go'.'
Though Stanley could not sympathize with Emin for failing (even after the Mahdist advance) to perform the simple task of getting a thousand men to understand the obvious fact that they would die if they stayed in Equatoria, it is hard not to feel a little sorry for the Pasha. He had survived in the past by confining his operations to his southern stations on Lake Albert, and by making very few demands on anyone. His undoing had been Stanley's request that he recommend a definite plan of action to his men in the north. Now with the Lake Victoria settlement off the agenda, Emin was depressed to realize that he had become Stanley's only trophy. `For him,' wrote the Pasha, `everything depends on whether he is able to take me along, for only then, when people could actually see me, would his expedition be regarded as totally successful.'9 Emin himself had no idea what he wanted. One day he said, `I consider I am absolutely free to think only of my personal safety and welfare'; but the next he declared, `I know I am not in any way responsible for these people, but I cannot bear to go out myself first and leave anyone behind me."° With the Mahdists pressing southwards, Stanley knew that many of Emin's former fol lowers would be tempted `to curry favour with the Khalif of Khartoum by betraying their would-be rescuers and their former Pasha and his white companions into his hands'."
Carrying the possessions of Emin Pasha and his officers up from Lake Albert to the plateau
So when Jephson wrote of these Egyptians and Sudanese soldiers as `depraved villains', and `brutishly stupid', it enraged Stanley to find Emin still delaying a decision and thus endangering the lives of his own best people, and the expedition's, for the sake of such disloyalty. But at last on 113 February, Emin wrote saying he was coming very soon to Stanley's camp with twelve officers and forty soldiers, who wanted `some time to bring their brothers' from Wadelai.IZ Since he arrived with zoo large loads as his personal luggage, his friend Casati with eighty loads, Vita, his apothecary, forty, and Marco, the Greek trader, sixty - a total requiring 38o carriers for only four people - Stanley did not like to think what would happen if most of the officers eventually came south from Wadelai. How could he possibly engage enough porters? Emin's old `Saratoga trunk' on its own required two carriers. `I tried to lift one end of it ... I should say it contains stones ... What a story that old trunk could tell since it left Cairo. How many poor natives has it killed?' If a hundred officers and scores of dependents came too, Henry wondered how he would ever feed them all without robbing local Africans.13
A month later, Emin Pasha asked Stairs and Jephson to help his lieutenant, Shukri Agha, to collect `slaves' (the Egyptian term was abid) for his people - his intention being to force local Africans, at gunpoint, to act as additional carriers and servants. Jephson described these forced labour forays as `cruel hunts' and complained to Stanley, who told him and Stairs that they need not help the Pasha.14 When twenty-eight more captives were brought in by Emin's men, a disgusted Stanley ordered their immediate release. `I am sick of the necessities of these people. I really think they had better die rather than we should unnecessarily inflict misery & commit injustice.' He thought that Emin `like many scientists was indifferent to the warmer human feelings'.I"
By late March 11889, Stanley had already been waiting two and a half months for Emin's people to assemble at his camp at Kavalli's, on a plateau above Lake Albert. But when, on z6 March, Emin received a letter from his deputy, Selim Bey, informing him that he would be bringing south from Wadelai a further ten officers and boo men, Stanley was far from pleased. Not only had many of these officers been rebels, but Selim Bey claimed he could not arrive with them before ro April - the deadline for departure that Stanley had agreed with Emin and Shukri Agha. Stanley's worries about the loyalty of Selim's men therefore made him still more determined to leave on the 11oth.i6 By now Emin Pasha had more than 500 people in Stanley's camp, only 11z6 of whom were officers or soldiers. Most were petty clerks and officials and their women and children, many of whom were probably going to die on their way to the coast. Add to these people 230 members of the expedition, 1130 Manyema carriers and several hundred locally recruited porters, and Stanley's party already numbered almost a thousand souls - a nightmarish number to have to feed. Many were likely to find places to settle en route, but Stanley's responsibility for the safety of the rest weighed heavily on him.
It would have been a great comfort if Emin had even once expressed a firm desire to travel with him, but it was obvious that the Pasha had been overwhelmed by events, and had given up trying to form plans of his own. Yet this passivity was far from supportive. Then on 5 April, Henry's faith in him collapsed completely, when Emin's boy, Serour, told him that the Pasha's entire household, with the exception of two servants, was about to desert, along with all his soldiers. Because during the preceding night a rifle had been stolen from a Wangwana tent, and unsuccessful attempts had been made to steal guns from others, Stanley believed that Emin really was about to be deserted by everyone. To stop this happening, Henry decided he must prove at once to Emin's Egyptians, Sudanese and Africans that he could not be disobeyed.
Acting on instinct, Henry strode across the camp to Emin Pasha's tent and told him that a rebellion would break out unless he mustered all his men and got them to declare in public which of them intended to leave with the expedition. When Emin prevaricated, Henry gave him the alternative of going to a camp two miles away to avoid being kidnapped. The Pasha declined both options, so the explorer insisted he choose one. `I am resolved, Pasha, I am resolved,' he cried, his patience at an end. When Emin reluctantly ordered his men to leave their tents, they ignored him. So Stanley told Jephson to take thirty Wangwana to force them out. Inevitably, this was done at gunpoint, causing much offence to Emin. But Stanley swept aside his objections, compelling his men to indicate whether they intended to come on the 11oth. Not one man said he meant to stay.'7 Once they had assembled in the open, it was apparent that the health of many was precarious. One Egyptian soldier had been deserted by his wife and was caring for their half-starved baby. Others were in equally desperate plights. But unless they embarked on the dangerous journey being urged on them, they would be massacred by local Africans as soon as their ammuniti
on ran out.,8
The caravan that eventually left Kavalli's on 11o April 11889 consisted of 11,330 people. Stanley reckoned that 230 of these (mainly Wangwana) were members of his original expedition, 1130 were all that remained of Tippu Tip's 4311 Manyema carriers handed over to Major Barttelot, 400 were locally recruited carriers, and 570 were Emin's people - about 400 of these being women and children.'9 The extended column stretched for three miles and was `very gay with flags & the coloured clothes of Zanzibaris & Egyptian women'. Soon Jephson was reporting less picturesque scenes. Two weeks into the journey, one of the Nubians, who was a servant to one of Emin's officers, shot a local African who had been forced to work for the Egyptians. The man's bleeding body was left tied to two other terrified servants. The Nubian was said to have misunderstood an order from his officer and so escaped being hanged, but the ill-treatment of their slaves by the Pasha's people horrified Stanley and Jephson.
When we were by ourselves [wrote Jephson] no such scenes were ever seen in our camp, such few natives as the Zanzibaris caught were kindly treated & looked after ... this was in the camp of Stanley who has been called a pirate & freebooter ... But now that Emin Pasha, who has been represented as one of the champions of Anti-Slavery, has come into our camp, scenes of the most disgraceful cruelty, constant beatings, constant shrieking of women and constant desertions are of daily occurrence.
The expedition had so far cost about 400 lives - a heavy price to pay for saving `some 5o Egyptian employees, with their wives, concubines, families & slaves, the dregs of Cairo & Alexandria'."
Three days into the journey, Stanley became dangerously ill. There was no question of his travelling, so the expedition was now halted for a month. At the same time Parke and Jephson were prostrated by haematuric fever. It was fortunate that Stairs remained in good health, since on 27 April Emin Pasha confided to him that he had uncovered a plot, involving virtually all his soldiers and carriers, to desert en masse. This strongly suggested that the threat Stanley had acted against on 5 April had been entirely real. Stairs and a party of Wangwana disarmed the ringleaders, and Shukri Agha placed them under arrest. Desertions had been going on for days, and next day Emin decided to end the humiliating disloyalty once and for all by trying deserters in future before a mixed court of his officers and Stanley's. On 5 May, Rehan, the ringleader, who had deserted a week earlier taking some men and women with him, was sentenced to be hanged after being found guilty of desertion, of stealing a gun, and of inciting others to desert. With Emin's people still melting away at a disastrous rate, Stanley dragged himself from his bed to see that the sentence was carried out. He felt no unease, and sent a record of the trial to the EPRE's committee. Five witnesses had been called, and among their depositions it was stated that Rehan had been caught with a stolen rifle in his hands. His execution would be the last - although one of Emin's men, who had killed a member of a friendly tribe, was handed over to tribal elders, who had refused to accept compensation in trade goods. No officer objected to the surrender of this murderer, though everyone knew he would be speared to death.Z"
Three days later Stanley was well enough to travel, as was Jephson, who had recently been amazed to be invited to take his meals with his leader and be treated `like his friend'" As they turned south, bound for Lake Victoria and the coast, they walked at first through `dewy fields of Indian corn'. Just then, they caught sight of `the pure snowy peaks [of the Ruwenzoris] seen above the clouds', and were dazed by a feeling `of mingled wonder & awe'." During the next three months the expedition recorded its most important geographical discoveries. They investigated the seventy-mile-long Ruwenzori range, which Stanley and Parke had first seen a year earlier. (They had thought themselves the first white men to have done so, though in April 11876, when camped near Lake Edward, Stanley's servant, Frank Pocock, had glimpsed a snow-covered peak that could only have been a Ruwenzori.)14 The expedition marched south, along the western bank of the Semliki river, which Stanley was excited to observe flowed into Lake Albert at its southern end. On the day the expedition crossed the Semliki, Stanley could barely walk a hundred yards. His officers only managed to commandeer three canoes, and so the whole operation took a day and a half, at the end of which just over a thousand men, women and children, and their baggage and goats, had been taken to the eastern bank in hundreds of trips. And although the expedition was then attacked by fifty Warasura, Kabarega's mercenaries, they were driven off with ease at a cost of two of Henry's men killed.2'
During the month Stanley devoted to exploring the Ruwenzori, he had no trouble feeding his waiting men. The people they encountered made generous gifts of food as soon as they heard that the expedition had driven away their dreaded enemy, the Warasura. The expedition would `under ordinary circumstances have needed forty bales of cloth and twenty sacks of beads as currency to purchase food. [But] not a bead or yard of cloth was demanded from us.'2' This friendliness was a great boon to Stanley just when he arrived at the lake that he had very nearly reached in 11876, only to be turned back by Kabarega's warriors. Safe to investigate at leisure, he now named it Lake Edward, after the Prince of Wales.2' He also established that this lake was the source of the Semliki River, which was a more important reservoir for the Nile than had hitherto been guessed at, since it extended zoo miles to the south of Lake Albert. All the new information Stanley had just gathered about the Nile's western reservoir, and the Ruwenzori mountains that fed it, would have been justification enough for any major expedition. Yet, because it had been incidental to Stanley's main purpose of finding and relieving Emin Pasha, it would always be seen as a footnote.28
As Henry travelled on towards the south-western corner of Lake Victoria en route for Bagamoyo and home, he became the bloodbrother of Buchunku, son of the King of Ankole - a judicious move since this monarch could muster an army of over roo,ooo men. He also took the precaution of demonstrating for the very first time the Maxim gun that had been brought for Emin's defence. Stairs fired a few bursts at a hillside, causing the young man to cry out, either with delight or with terror (opinions were divided which).29 At this time a small delegation of Bugandan Christians came to Stanley's camp and tried to persuade him to involve himself in their country's politics, which he felt unable to do in his current situation.3° As Henry continued southwards, he reflected on how sad it was that the missionaries, who had gone to Buganda at his behest, had been obliged to ally themselves with armed factions in order to survive. Alexander Mackay, whose mission station on the southern shores of Lake Victoria was Henry's next objective on his way to the coast, had chosen to flee rather than fight, and had therefore saved the lives of his flock. Three years earlier, about fifty of them had preferred martyrdom to recantation, though knowing that King Mwanga would castrate them, and then roast them alive.3i
While still in Ankole, Stanley had a furious argument with the Pasha about what duties his armed men should perform. Stanley felt that the Egyptians ought to take their turn at regular rear-guard duty rather than dawdle along as they pleased, but Emin felt unable to ask them. Stanley asked him angrily why he had allowed such useless people to follow him. `I could not stop them,' he retorted, `and I am very sorry I came myself.' This was too much for Stanley, who snapped: `You are simply a most thankless & ungrateful man.' Henry then insisted that in future Shukri Agha alternate with Stairs and Nelson as commander of the rear-guard. `Do as you like,' Emin told Stanley, `and you may leave me behind if you please.' To Stanley's surprise, two days later, the Pasha approached him in his tent `& tendered an apology for using such words'." Soon afterwards, they gained their first glimpse of Lake Victoria - a sight confirming that they were well on the way home.
On arrival at Usambiro, the mission on the southern shores of the lake, Stanley took an immediate liking to the bearded missionary Alexander Mackay, who dressed in white linen suits and usually sported a grey Tyrolean hat. `He is a little Scotchman,' he told a friend. `I am a Hercules by his side, but he is the nattiest, toughest little fellow you co
uld conceive. Young too - probably 32 years of age.' Stanley was impressed by Mackay's refusal to despair after the destruction of his Bugandan mission, and `the murdering of his Bishop, burning of his pupils, and strangling of his converts'. It was `the sense of duty' of men like Moffat, Livingstone and Mackay that Stanley found most remarkable - Livingstone refusing to go home though old and ill, Moffat working fifty years in Africa in the same village, Mackay braving every danger for twelve years, and never a thought of leaving his flock for home.33
Besides being a man of God, Mackay had once been an engineer, and still taught practical skills, such as boat-building, carpentry and horticulture. More than that, Mackay made Stanley reflect on his own religious feelings - how as a young man he had lost the non-conformist certainties he had known at St Asaph, becoming, in his own words, `arrogant, self-assertive ... and more obdurate than others'. Ambition and `absorption in the things of the present' had prevented `self-communion'. His gradual return to belief was due, he thought, ,to the losses of friends and companions which caused such serious effect on me that often life was almost intolerable ... Countless fevers made me sensible of the fragility of my strength ... As a consequence I fell into a mood more introspective and self-searching ... during which there crept memories of the faith of childhood.' The fact that he had seemed to be `saved again and again' in Africa forced him `to recognize the Divine Hand'.34