Race for Timbuktu: In Search of Africa's City of Gold

by Frank T. Kryza

  So much is official, & I shall feel obliged by your sending a copy of it to Lord Bathurst, as I write with my left hand with much pain and difficulty and shall not upon that account communicate till my arrival at Tinbuctoo. Private. I have many charges of complaint against the memory of the old Sheik, all of which you shall know in due time; he has never repaid the 400$ he borrowed from me at Benioleed; he bore no expence of any sort upon the road, and when I was laying without expectations of living, he took my best gun, sent it to Tinbuctoo & sold it for a hundred dollars, the original cost in England—I write to no one but you; May God bless you all: I dare not yet trust myself with my feelings, for which reason I have not attempted a line to my dearest Emma: I shall make the trial at Tinbuctoo; & in the mean time remember me with kindest love & beg her to think nothing of my misfortunes, for all will yet be well.

  Yours ever truly

  A. Gordon Laing

  It took eight months for Laing’s letter to reach Tripoli, in November. In September, Emma had received the undated note from her husband, the one in which he had written about having cut his finger. This was the first news of Laing in Tripoli in five months, and it obscured completely what he had suffered. Reassured by this deceptive note, Consul Warrington, who had already heard rumors of an attack in the desert, wrote to Lord Bathurst that “[i]t … affords reason to credit the report of the Attack & it is very satisfactory to know that the wound He has received is of no consequence.” Two months later, Warrington received the letter written in Sidi Mokhtar’s camp (above), and shortly after that, the wounded camel driver Hamet, who had returned to Tripoli on Laing’s orders with more mail, also reached the coast and gave Warrington an eyewitness account of the Tuareg butchery.

  Despite his weakened state, Laing held out, reporting to Warrington on July 1 that “my fever yielded at length to the effects of blistering and calomel. I am now the only surviving member of the mission and my situation is far from being agreeable.” But as he slowly recovered from his wounds and illness, there was an ominous change in the tone of some of Laing’s letters, indicating that his many misfortunes had begun to affect his emotional balance. After months of enforced idleness at the camp, he complained that “with a mind sadly depressed with sickness, sorrow, and disappointment, I lift an unwilling pen to acquaint you that I am no further on my Journey than I last addressed you.… I regard my situation here as Captive.… I am subject to dreadful pain in my head arising from the severity of my wounds.” He now believed, he said, that he was a man of genius ordained to discover Timbuktu. He wrote that unless he reached the city, “the world will ever remain in ignorance of the place, as I make no vain glorious assertion when I say, that it will never be visited by a Christian man after me!” a statement that must have raised eyebrows at the British consulate. And he wrote Emma, “I shall do more than has ever been done before and shall show myself to be what I have ever considered myself, a man of enterprise and genius.” Clearly unsettled by his trials, Laing had made the object of his mission even more important, if possible, than it had been before.

  In late summer, Laing felt strong enough to continue, but El Mokhtar’s son, Sidi Mohammed, who now ruled the camp, tried to persuade him to go back to Tripoli. His efforts were futile. Laing, growing paranoid, wrote Warrington that he suspected someone in the camp of stealing twenty Spanish dollars from him. “I have also been shewn knives, forks, beads, snuff boxes, looking glasses without number &c which I know to be mine, that the villain has been selling.”

  Laing swept aside Sidi Mohammed’s arguments, and in late July or early August the young chief had no choice but to let Laing leave, providing a strong escort. In return, Laing promised him the equivalent of a thousand Spanish dollars. “I have now obtained permission to proceed to Timbuctoo,” he wrote just before departing the camp, “at the expense of everything I have got, but I had no alternative.”

  On this, the last stage of his great journey, Laing was also accompanied by Alkhadir, Babani’s nephew, and Bongola. To Laing’s relief, they soon left the sandy wastes behind. The face of the land improved day by day, with flowering grasses, trees, and vegetation taking the place of endless dunes, bleak stones, and rocky hills. Red and yellow roses bloomed; deep purple strands of bougainvillea draped the trail. They stopped to enjoy interludes of shade provided by green, living trees, a luxury not known for months. They were moving directly south now, toward the sun, and every dawn had a more entrancing clearness, a more caressing warmth, and the bronze color in the human faces Laing saw took on a deeper tint, the dark blue-black of tropical sub-Saharan Africa. They left, at long last, the exhausted, dust-powdered sky of the Sahara.

  Laing found himself in game country, surrounded now by vast herds of wild animals, the very landscape he had dreamed of but despaired of finding. Antelope and guinea fowl roamed forest-covered hills. The caravan frightened away a herd of gazelles, but Laing managed to shoot one. With the retreating gazelles went a pack of hyenas; from a safe distance, they watched their prey with a sardonic mirth, whooping and laughing with the demented intensity of hyenas.

  Laing contemplated the mystery of the addax, the powerful beast of these parts, the only living creature, it was said, that could live for years without a drop of water, making it the lone animal that did not have to observe the law of those who live in the desert: Aman iman—“Water is life.” To Laing, this was the harbinger of the promised land—the Niger and Timbuktu. The desert was dying. He stopped among the trees and scrutinized, as though they were divine glyphs in the soft earth, the tracks of ostriches. He lowered himself to the ground and realized he was trembling, trembling with a hint of that hysterical happiness that grips those who have had a close brush with death.

  Laing’s party thought they were over the worst of the desolation, but the Sahara held one last terror for them. The herds of game distracted Laing so much that he was surprised by a vicious sandstorm, the worst of the desert crossing. It continued unabated for two days, during which nobody could move. The tiny party huddled in their inadequate robes, the universe a whirring mass of sand that blotted out the sun. Laing retreated again into his own head, his last refuge now, for he had seized upon a profound truth: no sandstorm could counter the fact that the desert crossing was over, and that he had survived.

  After spending more than a year in the desert, having come close to madness and death, Alexander Gordon Laing was finally within miles of his destination. He had reached the southernmost edge of the world’s greatest desert and was walking on the red, moist, lateritic soil of black Africa—rich, vital, fertile, inexhaustible.

  Timbuktu itself, he could now be certain, would soon spread open its gates to him.

  **Dixon Denham’s Narrative of Travel and Discoveries in North and Central Africa came out under the Murray imprint later that year. George F. Lyon’s Travels in Northern Africa had been published by Murray in 1821. Laing’s Travels in the Timanee had just been published (also by Murray, in 1825), and it is typical of him that he did not ask for a copy of his own book.

  *In modern times, this wind is well known for stripping vehicles of paint and pushing sand particles into supposedly airtight cameras and watches.

  *The swiftest breed of dromedary, the racehorse of the desert, used mainly as saddle animals rather than as beasts of burden.

  *Wadi Ahnet cannot be located precisely on today’s maps, but it probably lay in the district of Ahnet, about 150 miles south of Insalah, near Adrar Nahalet in modern Algeria.

  *The exact date has been much debated, but never fixed with certainty.

  *Laing was right-handed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  TROUBLES FOR CAPTAIN CLAPPERTON

  IN APRIL 1826, while Laing recovered from his wounds in Sheikh Mokhtar’s camp, Hugh Clapperton was pondering whether to leave Kano and make a beeline for Sokoto. As he weighed his next move, the filth and congestion of Kano caused him to fall ill, as he had on his first visit to the city. Clapperton was soon confined to his hut.
He quickly grew bored lying on his cot. Though he could barely walk, he spent hours sitting up in bed catching up with his travel notes. He and Lander had walked through a succession of warm rains on the way to Fulani territory, and his notes are full of vignettes of the great pastoral landscape. Absent the nastiness of war, this Africa was one of sunshine and soft air washed clean, newborn leaves and buds, pioneer birds and flowers.

  Though sick, he felt excited to be again among the Fulani. To Clapperton they were Africa’s greatest people, and Sultan Bello was, without a doubt, Africa’s greatest ruler. Even in those suburbs of Kano plagued by the war, Clapperton discovered pleasant things to write about. He comments on little walled villages, each with its own “fetish house,” although many of the people professed Islam. There was iron in the local hills, and most villages boasted a competent blacksmith. Iron utensils were commonplace.

  While Clapperton recuperated in bed, Lander toured the Kano district, biding his time. He was impressed by the colossal termite mounds, twenty feet high and as tough as reinforced concrete, which he called “Gothic cathedrals in miniature.” He was also amused to see some of the literate men of the city earning a comfortable living simply by writing Koranic texts on a chalkboard, then washing off and selling the muddy liquid, at exorbitant prices, as “good fetish,” an example of lucrative synergy between the Muslim and pagan religions. It was impossible, in this part of the world, to say where animism ended and Islam began.

  Upon their arrival in Kano, Clapperton and Lander had been formally welcomed by the governor of the town, the same Hajji Hat Salah who had given Clapperton such a chilly reception on his first expedition two years earlier. This time, if possible, he was even less cordial. The political dynamic in West Africa had changed dramatically.

  Initially Clapperton was housed in his old quarters, next door to the hajji’s “mansion,” and his social calendar was overbooked with visits from the solemn Arab merchants with whom he got along so well before. At first, these men were open and friendly. They appeared to believe that Clapperton had come to put an end to the great war—a conflict that had ruined their trade and made transport of merchandise prohibitively dangerous. But when they found that Hajji Hat Salah no longer paid much attention to the Englishmen, the candor of the merchants dissolved into thinly veiled suspicion.

  Kano’s gossip was full of war and rumors of war. The two explorers tried to learn the underlying causes of the conflict between Sultan Bello and Sheikh El Kanemi, the better to undertake their own planning. These efforts quickly backfired, as no one in Kano seemed comfortable discussing such matters with white men. Clapperton had talked openly of going on to Kukawa, El Kanemi’s royal capital, after he ended his talks with Sultan Bello in Sokoto. This aroused Hajji Hat Salah’s mistrust, the more so since the war seemed to be going against the caliphate. The Fulani hierarchy in Kano worried that Clapperton might be in league with El Kanemi. They even speculated that he had been sent to Kano as a spy. Clapperton and Lander were soon confined within the city walls.

  As he had often demonstrated, Clapperton lacked the qualities of a diplomat. He was prone to say exactly what was on his mind and just what he thought about anything. His opinions were an open book. He now expressed the dangerous view that if Sultan Bello was getting the worst of the struggle, it was no less than he deserved. After all, El Kanemi, with thousands of his people dying of starvation, had appealed to his powerful neighbor to send food. Sultan Bello responded by returning El Kanemi’s ambassadors impaled on spears, taunting, “If you want food, come and fight for it.” In Clapperton’s view, El Kanemi had been rightly enraged by this tactless and brutal response. Affronted, El Kanemi gathered his army and advanced into Bello’s empire, maintaining strict discipline among his troops. For once, the army of Bornu, which Dixon Denham had described as “nothing but a rabble,” was grimly efficient, wiping out Fulani villages one after another. Thousands were slaughtered.

  When the better-defended walled towns resisted, El Kanemi destroyed them with a diabolical weapon he had invented himself, one far more effective than the cannons Hillman renovated for him: his warriors caught vultures (not a difficult task when the birds were gorged), and wedged pieces of cloth into their claws. The rags were soaked in oil and set aflame, and the terrified birds were thrown into the air near the town walls. When their feathers began to burn, the vultures came crashing out of the sky, landing on the thatched huts within the town, setting them alight. Conflagration spread from hut to hut, creating urban infernos. In the ensuing panic, Bornu soldiers swept through untended gates, annihilating every living thing.

  Only once in this deadly advance on Kano was El Kanemi seriously opposed. An ally of Bello, his cousin Jacoba, made a stand some miles from the great commercial capital, sending word to the hajji that he needed reinforcements immediately. The Kano troops hesitated too long behind the mighty walls of their city, and Jacoba’s army was defeated. Compounding this disaster, Hajji Hat Salah at the last moment did scramble out with a strong force that might have turned the tide had he used it earlier. Instead, his army was mauled by El Kanemi’s, though most of the Fulani soldiers managed to get back into Kano and slam the gates shut. The walls and ditches of the commercial capital of his kingdom were all that now stood between Sultan Bello and defeat.

  While all this was going on, Clapperton took advantage of the chaos in Kano to sneak out of town. Feeling better now, he thought he could make it to Sokoto quickly—if he traveled alone. He ordered Lander to stay behind with their servant, a young man named Pasco. Lander’s presence, Clapperton believed, would also serve to mollify the hajji when he discovered Clapperton’s escape. In a sense, Lander would serve as a hostage, guaranteeing Clapperton’s return. In any case, Lander had become ill himself in Kano and was so weakened by dysentery that the most he could do was guard the baggage. Clapperton had long ago stopped making the effort to dress as a naval officer—by this time, he said, he looked more like a London beggar. No one noticed as he passed through the gates.

  Clapperton had reached the village of Zaria when El Kanemi’s troops attacked Kano. Kano to Zaria was a brief march along a well-defined road, and news traveled fast. It became clear to Clapperton that this new outbreak of violence was not just one more of the perpetual skirmishes that had plagued the region since his first trip. He stopped in Zaria long enough to send a messenger back to Kano to learn Lander’s fate. Hearing that his partner was safe, Clapperton again turned to Sokoto.

  He was riding an exhausted camel during one of the worst tropical storms he had ever seen. The route was vaguely familiar, for he had traveled from Kano to Sokoto before, but conditions were dreadful, obscuring old landmarks. Rain showered down like sheets of pebbles; rivers of mud made the track impassable. Those travelers he encountered feared itinerant soldiers, who were always prone to highway robbery when strangers on the road had something worth stealing. But the hospitality of the local villagers never failed completely. A hut and some food was made available. In the mornings, Clapperton was often the first to awake, poorly rested, and he would watch whatever village he found himself in unwrinkle from sleep, listening to the soft slap of bare feet passing on mud streets. Constantly sick himself, he was awed by the robust health of the Fulani.

  He found tame ostriches in each village to scare away the “evil eye,” but there were wild birds, too—ibis, storks, and cranes. Clapperton noted vast Fulani herds of great horned cattle, all a brilliant white, carefully tended. Local wars were of no concern to these nomadic herdsmen. They wandered long distances, from lands we know today as Senegal all the way to the Congo estuary, guarding their cattle with tenacity and devotion.

  At the high-walled town of Koki, Clapperton had an attack of “ague,” but he tried to keep moving. The weather got worse. The roads, made of the beaten red laterite so common in West Africa and which is as hard as brick in the dry season, disappeared under the flood of tropical cloudbursts. His starved camel sank to its stomach in orange mud. At Jaza, where h
e took a day or two to rest, desperately sick, much of the land surrounding the town had simply disappeared under swampy water.

  While convalescing at Jaza, he met Sultan Bello’s gadado, or prime minister, sent out from Sokoto to escort him to the royal court. The gadado, an easygoing man, was appalled at Clapperton’s failing health. He tried to persuade him to go back to Kano until the rains passed. Though this advice was sensible, Clapperton was long past accepting it. In a country where there are ten bright days for every pair of rainy ones, Clapperton insisted on slogging on.