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

by Frank T. Kryza

  Hassuna’s agitation was great and his anguished beseeching continued. “The ravings were incoherent. Then to the unspeakable confusion of everyone present, Hassuna threw himself at the Consul’s feet, imploring his Protection and Forgiveness,” Rossoni reported. “Colonel Warrington recoiled.… At last, shaking with emotion, he choked ‘Get up, Sidi Hassuna! If you must kneel, kneel to your God alone.’ The trembling Wretch rose and, still babbling incoherently, made his way to the door.”

  Though he reported to Whitehall that he could not decipher Hassuna’s wild talk, the episode increased Warrington’s anxiety about Laing’s fate, a sense of unease that was already intense following the evasive circumlocutions he had heard from the lips of Yusuf Bashaw. He had well-framed concerns: Laing’s whereabouts and the state of his continued exploration, whether he was alive or dead, the fate of his journals—where were the detailed and truthful answers to these questions?

  Warrington pressured the bashaw to use all his powers to gather more information about Laing. He blamed the delay on the bashaw’s well-known tendency to procrastinate even under the best of circumstances, and on a growing presentiment of what he began to call in his dispatches “some Foul and Underhand Work.”

  The Colonial Office shared the consul’s apprehension. To give force to Warrington’s protests at the Castle, and to provide incentive for the bashaw to produce Laing’s papers, if he had them, Lord Bathurst directed three British frigates to call seriatim at Tripoli on “courtesy visits.” All were well armed.

  While efforts to obtain authentic news of Laing met little success, the curiosity of Europe’s major newspapers made his fate a topic of international interest. In Paris, where there was fierce Anglo-French rivalry to send the first explorer to Timbuktu (and, indeed, to control all of West Africa), public discussion of Laing’s expedition was as intense as in London. Then, to everyone’s surprise, on May 2, 1827, Laing’s death was stated as a fact on the authority of extracts from a letter published in the Paris daily, L’Etoile.

  The letter was written from Sukhara-Ley, Tripoli, on April 5. Its opening words were painfully blunt: “Le major Laing dont on avait annoncé la fin tragique, a réellement péri victime de sa courageuse persévérance, après pu néamoins visiter la fameuse ville de Tombuctou. Le pacha de Tripoli a communiqué cet avis d’après une lettre que … son vassal lui a écrite… ”*

  The report went on to detail significant facts that, to British observers, raised more alarms. First, Sukhara was the name of the country house in the menshia occupied at the time by Baron Rousseau, the French consul at Tripoli. It was therefore assumed that the letter must have some real foundation, since Rousseau was a man of some stature,† with excellent contacts, and that the information had been supplied to Rousseau by a third party, most likely his friend Hassuna D’Ghies, whose position as foreign minister enabled him to get information from the interior more quickly than anyone.

  Second, Warrington had yet received no official confirmation of Laing’s death. How could a Paris newspaper confirm as fact what was only rumor in the British consulate? Third, the letter carried a strange and seemingly unnecessary emphasis on the improbability of recovering Laing’s papers. How could anyone know this, the British queried, unless that person already knew where the papers were?

  Warrington’s steely and accusing gaze now shifted from Hassuna to the French consul, Joseph-Louis, Baron Rousseau.

  ROUSSEAU WAS not only an expert in Middle East affairs, he was an avid writer on the subject. At one time, according to gossip making the consular rounds in Tripoli, he had expropriated the work of another French consul, one Monsieur de Coruncy, on the subject of an obscure biblical sect (the Rechabites), claiming it as his own. Warrington’s deputy, Giacomo Rossoni, who had reliable sources on both sides of the Mediterranean, also believed that Rousseau had purloined not only the text but the drawings and plans of a young Frenchman who had written a history of Syria, where the young man had been employed for several years as a surveyor. Baron Rousseau had published this work on Syria under his own name, Rossoni claimed, “thus defrauding the author of merit and money alike.”

  Warrington surmised that Rousseau would have found Laing’s papers a tempting target, both from a personal point of view and to appear to deny the British the prize of reaching Timbuktu first. As soon as he read the account in L’Etoile, Warrington demanded another audience at the Castle. At this meeting, Hassuna, who had been restored as foreign minister, denied any connection to the French newspaper article and “expressed his disbelief in its veracity.”

  Warrington hypothesized that Laing’s journals, far from disappearing, had been stolen from the explorer’s equipage and sent by secret messenger to Tripoli, where Hassuna D’Ghies had passed them on to his friend Baron Rousseau, probably to help defray his crippling debts. This scenario was not far-fetched. Clapperton’s journal had been stolen in Jaza, and the doings of foreign explorers were of enough interest that their papers could (and often did) attract the attention of opportunistic thieves.

  The consul’s concerns were honed by the absence of additional information. His exaggerated sense of the extent of the bashaw’s influence, which he believed actually did stretch to Timbuktu, had led him to suspect either that the bashaw knew what had transpired and was deliberately concealing it, or that he could easily find it out if he wanted to. Incensed at the unbroken silence, Warrington turned the chance visit of any British naval vessel to Tripoli into an opportunity to put pressure on the bashaw. As the bashaw likely did not have the slightest idea what had happened to Laing, and the naval pressure produced no results, Warrington began to attribute increasingly sinister motives to the infuriating silence.

  A year passed. The strain in the Warrington household was becoming intolerable. Compounding Warrington’s anguish, Emma, in despair, rekindled Timoléon Rousseau’s interest in her, resuming their long trysts in the English Garden and at Sukhara, which she often visited without escort. The French consul’s son had proposed to her months before Laing’s arrival in 1825, and his intense passion for her had never ceased, even after her marriage. Though Warrington loathed Timoléon, he did not have the heart to refuse his daughter permission to see the one person whose company seemed to give her some comfort. Emma and Timoléon spent long afternoons together. It is likely, too, that Emma, certain now that Laing was dead, hinted to her father that a marriage to the baron’s son would not be unwelcome.

  On March 3, 1828, the French consul buttonholed Warrington a second time with a proposal that they unite their families by the marriage of their children. Warrington explosively lost his temper and, in a rage, demanded that Rousseau get out of his house, nearly coming to blows with him. Emma’s distress was not reason enough for her father to become party to what he took to be the criminal acts of a duplicitous French fop. What is more, he had no incentive to forestall the scandal that was about to erupt.

  Hoping to make his second refusal of Timoléon less painful, Warrington suggested that Emma “look with favor” upon Thomas Wood, his new vice-consul at Benghazi and a man he had long admired. Her feelings, apparently, were not consulted.

  On April 22, 1828, HMS Eros sailed into Tripoli from Malta, her captain carrying a letter to the bashaw from Lord Bathurst. This document, sharply worded, was personally delivered by Warrington, according to his vice-consul “with a strong remonstrance to the effect that unless satisfactory news of Major Laing and Captain Clapperton [who was by now himself long overdue] were given, and proper measures taken for their safe conduct to Tripoli, if alive, and the preservation of their papers and property, if dead, he should, within four days, strike his flag.” This would effectively sever diplomatic relations between the two nations at a time when the bashaw was deeply apprehensive about French intentions in North Africa.

  At the eleventh hour on the appointed day, a reply came from the Castle admitting for the first time that Laing was dead, adding that the bashaw had already sent messengers across the Sahara to asc
ertain the true facts and gather up missing details.

  Four months later, on August 28, 1828, Sheikh Babani’s nephew, Alkhadir, accompanied by Bongola, the freed slave, appeared at the English Garden. Alkhadir told his story, which ended with Laing’s departure from Timbuktu, but Bongola claimed definitively that Laing had been murdered.

  Blinded by tears, Hanmer Warrington listened while shuffling through the pair of letters Alkhadir had brought him. Though distracted and agitated, he was alert enough to notice that the letters had been opened and that the dispatches from Timbuktu, which Laing had said in earlier letters that he would give to Alkhadir, were missing.

  Though he could not detain Alkhadir, Warrington kept Bongola at his estate in the menshia under unofficial house arrest. Consular archives show that Bongola was extensively questioned by Warrington on September 1, 1828 (nearly two years after Laing wrote his last letter). This is the transcript Warrington’s clerk kept of the interrogation:

  “What is your name?”

  “Bongola.”

  “Were you a servant to Major Laing?”

  “Yes,” [replied Bongola, producing a document that read:]

  Azoad, July 23, 1826

  I promise to pay Bearer, Bongola, the sum of 6 Dollars per month from the 15 Dec. 1825 ’till my return to Ghadames…. A. Gordon Laing.

  “When did you enter the service of Major Laing?”

  “From Tripoli, as I went with Babani, Major Laing’s conductor.”

  “Were you with Major Laing at the first attack?”

  “Yes, and wounded,” [Bongola replied, showing his head.]

  “Did you remain with Major Laing at Mokhtar’s camp?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you accompany Major Laing to Timbuctu?” [Warrington asked.]

  “Yes,” [replied Bongola.]

  “How was Major Laing received by the natives of Timbuctoo?”

  “He was received well.”

  “How long did he remain in Timbuctoo?”

  “About two months.”

  “Did you leave Timbuctoo with Major Laing?

  “Yes.”

  “Was Major Laing obliged to leave Timbuctu?”

  “Major Laing wished to go.”

  “Who went with you?”

  “A koffila of Arabs.”

  “In which direction did you go?”

  “The sun was on my right cheek.”

  “Did you know where you were going?”

  “To Sansanding.”

  “Did you see any water, and did you proceed without molestation?”

  “We saw no water, we passed unmolested during the day, but on the night of the third day, the Arabs of the country attacked and killed my master.”

  “Was the attack on the koffila or only against your Master?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Was any one killed besides your master?”

  “I was wounded but cannot say if any were killed.”

  “Were you sleeping alongside your Master?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many wounds had your master?”

  “I cannot say, but all with swords, and in the morning I saw that his head had been cut off.”

  “Did the person who had charge of your master commit the murder?”

  “The sheikh who was the person who accompanied my master killed him, being assisted by his black servants by many cuts of the sword.”

  “What did the sheikh then do?”

  “He went on to his country. An Arab took me back to Timbuctoo.”

  So Laing’s fate had been determined at last. Now the recovery of his papers became more compelling than ever, the more so when, in October 1828, the French explorer René Caillié returned to Toulon professing to have visited Timbuktu. Many Frenchmen, not to say Englishmen, doubted Caillié’s claim.*

  For the present, with Laing certainly dead and his papers, notes, maps, drawings, and other materials lost, the French explorer might be proved right, and the French people might wrongly get the honor due to Great Britain and her dead son.

  While this predicament vexed Lord Bathurst, it was intolerable to the vitriolic Warrington, nearly to the point of driving him insane. Where were Laing’s papers? They had to be found! Laing’s property, especially his papers, belonged to England. Consul Warrington was determined to find them.

  *Rossoni was an Italian who served as British vice-consul at Benghazi. A number of Warrington’s deputies over the years were third-country nationals hired in Tripoli to assist him in his ministerial duties. Rossoni was undoubtedly the most skilled of these, a man with contacts all over the Mediterranean who provided the British government with invaluable intelligence Warrington could never have gathered alone. Warrington liked him and often invited him to stay at Tripoli, a happy reprieve from his dreadfully hot and isolated post.

  *“Major Laing, whose tragic death now appears beyond any doubt, apparently fell victim to his own courageous determination to visit the famous city of Timbuktu, an effort in which he apparently succeeded. The bashaw of Tripoli made public this news after having received a letter confirming it from one of his vassals.” In light of subsequent events, it is notable that the French paper acknowledged that Laing had succeeded in reaching Timbuktu. France would later claim Caillié got there first.

  †Joseph-Louis Rousseau was born in Paris in 1780, the son of Jean-François-Xavier Rousseau, French consul general at Baghdad, a distant relation of the more famous Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the philosopher.

  *Much later, when he published his book, Caillié acknowledged he heard talk of Laing when he reached Timbuktu, and that he never doubted that the Englishman had preceded him there.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE LOST PAPERS

  WHILE THE LAING CONTROVERSY SIMMERED, René Caillié, an impoverished and unknown Frenchman, reached Timbuktu and returned safely to Europe. From childhood Caillié “had always had an idée fixe about Timbuktu.” He was the son of a poor man sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment for stealing six francs. His mother died when he was eleven. At the age of sixteen, Caillié sailed for Saint-Louis as an officer’s servant. Before he was twenty he had twice visited Senegal. In 1824 he began to prepare for his journey to Timbuktu by learning to speak Arabic and studying Islam, memorizing long passages from the Koran.

  Posing as an Arab traveling to Egypt, he left the coast of West Africa in April 1827. His difficult journey was interrupted by five months of illness, and it took him seven months to negotiate the terrain. He entered Timbuktu on April 20, 1828 (616 days after Laing’s arrival). He stayed for two weeks (less time even than Laing), then crossed the Sahara, reaching Tangier on September 7, where he lay hidden in the French vice-consul’s house until he could be smuggled safely aboard a French ship. He, rather than Laing, won the award of 10,000 francs offered by the French Société Géographique for the rediscovery of Timbuktu.

  René Caillié, the man who returned to tell the story of Timbuktu, as he appeared in the frontispiece of his 1830 book Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo.

  Though Laing had been there first, he had failed to return alive, thus forfeiting the prize.

  These developments, on top of everything else, made 1828 a miserable year for His Britannic Majesty’s consul general at Tripoli. Warrington passed his days waiting and watching, while devoting his nights to consoling his widowed and grieving daughter. With the interrogation of Bongola on September 1, any lingering hope for Laing’s safe return had died. Though he trusted Bongola no more than any other black man (which is to say not at all), the evidence of the freed slave did not seem to have been fabricated, and it could bear no other interpretation.

  Laing was truly dead, murdered, so much appeared to be fact. But knowing Laing’s fate offered no relief, no sense of closure, because his journals were still missing. Though it must have pained him to think it, Warrington understood that Laing’s papers were far more important, from the standpoint of the British Lion, than the explorer himself
. It was the consul’s duty now, as his heart grieved for his son-in-law, to do everything in his power to retrieve them, and he devoted himself to the job with all his stupendous vigor.

  If the journals of the articulate and observant Scot could be recovered, their author’s fame as a great explorer would be unassailable and his country’s honor saved. But where was Warrington to begin? He returned again and again to the testimony of Bongola. Bongola was the only eyewitness, not only to Laing’s death but to what had happened to his belongings. Warrington reviewed the transcript tirelessly in his office.

  “What property had your master when he was killed?”

  “Two camels. One carried the provisions the other carried my master and his bags.”

  “Where were your master’s papers?”

  “I was so stunned with the wound I never thought of the papers.”

  “Were the papers brought back to Timbuctoo?” “I dont know—they were in a skin of portfolios.”

  Why Laing’s attackers spared Bongola could possibly be explained by the fact that he was a slave and therefore of no importance (though he had monetary value as a chattel). His story, perhaps revamped to exonerate himself of cowardice or negligence, was that he had been wounded in the attack and was so stunned that he did not see what happened to Laing’s papers and other property.

  Warrington later had the chance to reexamine Alkhadir (Babani’s nephew), but all he gleaned from this was that Laing was almost certainly dead and that among Laing’s papers were three large notebooks, one with red and two with speckled bands. Laing had left several blank notebooks of the speckled-band variety at the English Garden, and when Warrington produced one and asked whether it resembled the others, Bongola and Alkhadir both replied that it was identical.