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

by Frank T. Kryza

  Warrington peppered Laing with letters of encouragement and advice as he crossed the Sahara, ever recommending Clapperton to him and expressing the hope they would meet. “May you meet & return to Tripoli together, I sincerely hope. It will be to me a happy and joyful day,” he writes on November 22, 1825 (RS, 374[La] 105). Such letters drove Laing to distraction. The letter from Warrington to Clapperton (also addressed to Denham) is dated February 9, 1825 (PRO, FO 76/19). Clapperton wrote a bland reply on February 10 (also PRO, FO 76/19), but significantly did nothing to respond to Warrington’s request for information for Laing. I did not succeed in locating a copy of Clapperton’s letter of advice to Laing, and we know of its contents only though Laing’s sarcastic remarks about it. Lord Bathurst’s delight with the Denham and Clapperton mission must have been based in part on Clapperton’s bright assessment of it, in a letter to Wilmot Horton written at his London hotel on June 6, 1825 (PRO, CO 2/13), months before the world learned these details in Denham. The account of Clapperton’s second mission to Africa is based largely on Clapperton and Lander, with much supportive material and analysis from Bovill (Missions 4). The quotation about the “unweary, unostentatious, and inglorious crusade…” is from Lecky.

  THIRTEEN / THE IVORY MINIATURE

  Laing’s happy arrival at Ghadames is recorded in a letter to Warrington dated September 13, 1825, “8 o’clock PM” (PRO, FO 76/19, 2434). This letter is followed by at least a score more, as Laing was still energized and writing several thousand words daily (in his letters alone—no doubt he wrote much more in his private journal). Laing’s tone changed markedly on September 17, 1825, in the letter he sent to the consul reporting the arrival of Emma’s picture (PRO, CO 2/20). This letter arrived in Tripoli on November 17, 1825. Warrington’s worried reply is dated November 22, 1825 (RS, 374[La] 105). By September 19, 1825, Laing was so upset about Emma that he offered to abandon his mission and come home, and he said so to his father-in-law in another long letter (also PRO, CO 2/20). By October 5, 1825, he had recovered sufficiently to write a 5,000-word letter to Warrington indicating that he would continue, though he caviled about how much he missed Emma (also PRO, CO 2/20). This letter arrived in Tripoli on January 5, 1826. The letter to Bandinel about the auspicious comet which “beckons me on” is dated October 20, 1825 (RS, 374[La] 103), by which time we can assume he had completely recovered his urge to find the lost city.

  FOURTEEN / THE WIDOW ZUMA

  The material in this chapter is taken from the firsthand accounts of the second Clapperton expedition, as recorded separately in Clapperton and Lander. Hallett (Niger Journal) provides much additional commentary and primary source material (mainly letters) not included in Clapperton’s and Lander’s published accounts.

  FIFTEEN / TREACHERY IN THE TANEZROUFT

  Laing was in an upbeat mood when he had rested at In Salah and started writing letters there, starting with one dated November 3, 1825, and addressed to Warrington (PRO, CO 2/20). A long stream followed, to Wilmot Horton, Lord Bathurst, Emma, and the last one to James Bandinel, dated January 9, 1826 (RS, 374[La] 113), written the day before he set out for the Tanezrouft. These two months of relative loquacity were followed by utter silence. Though Laing wrote to Wilmot Horton on January 26, 1826, in a letter he datelined “Desart of Tenezerof,” that letter did not arrive in Tripoli until years after his death. As early as March 29, 1826, Warrington wrote to Hay (PRO, FO 76/20, 1258) about disturbing rumors of marauding bands beyond In Salah. Tripoli and London were in the dark about Laing’s whereabouts after he departed In Salah. Laing’s first account of his attack in the desert is to Warrington, dated May 10, 1826, written months after the event from the relative safety of Mokhtar’s camp (PRO, CO 2/20, 211). It arrived at the consulate on November 3, 1826, nine months after Laing was injured. By July 1, 1826, Laing revealed to Warrington just how badly his condition had deteriorated (PRO, CO 2/20, 212), though acknowledging also his determination to persevere. He wrote again on July 10, 1826 (PRO, CO 2/20, 218), to announce that he would resume his search for the lost city the next day.

  SIXTEEN / TROUBLES FOR CAPTAIN CLAPPERTON

  This chapter picks up where we left off in Chapter 14, using the same sources, namely Clapperton, Lander, supplemented by commentary from Hallett (Niger Journal). The account of Clapperton’s death from exhaustion and disease in Lander, written by the loyal friend who had once been his servant, is as moving as anything written by British explorers in the nineteenth century.

  SEVENTEEN / THE CITY OF LEGEND

  Hard information about Laing’s journey after the near-fatal attack in the desert is thin, in part because terrible injuries limited his ability to write. This chapter is based mainly on three letters from Laing, along with Bovill’s interpretation of them in light of other contemporaneous documents, and Warrington’s long forensic study of Laing’s disappearance and death. Laing describes the final leg of his journey to Timbuktu in a letter to Warrington dated simply “Monday” (PRO, CO 2/20), which arrived at the English Garden years later, on August 28, 1828. Though it cannot be dated precisely, its content suggests that it must have been written not long after an earlier important letter, also to Warrington, dated July 10, 1826 (also PRO, CO 2/20), which arrived in Tripoli on November 3, 1826. Finally, there is a third letter, the earliest of the three, which Laing also wrote in a state of deep depression after Mokhtar’s camp had been ravaged by disease and he lost his faithful Jack le Bore, a devastating blow. It is dated July 1, 1826 (also PRO, CO 2/20), and landed in Tripoli also on November 3, 1826. Sidi Mohammed’s letter to the bashaw describing Laing’s arrival at Timbuktu was provided to Warrington by Hassuna D’Ghies (PRO, FO 76/33). Laing’s only letter from Timbuktu, dated September 21, 1826 (after he had been there more than a month), is addressed to Warrington (PRO, CO 2/20) and was delivered by Alkhadir, along with the letter of May 10, 1826, referred to in Chapter 15. In his own visit two years later, Caillié pieced together his own version of Laing’s earlier visit.

  EIGHTEEN / THE LONG SILENCE

  The autograph copy of Emma Warrington Laing’s magnificent, heartbreaking letter to her husband, sent out into the Sahara to find her husband and later returned unopened to Tripoli, is dated November 10, 1826 (PRO, CO 2/20). The verbatim transcript of the report of Laing’s death published in L’Etoile of May 2, 1827, is in Bovill (Missions 1). Yusuf Bashaw’s copy of Mohammed el Washy’s letter announcing Laing’s death (PRO, FO 76/22 1315) was transmitted to Bathurst by Warrington as an appendix to a letter dated March 31, 1827 (also catalogued as PRO, FO 76/22, 1315). Warrington’s analysis of the French position expounded in L’Etoile is in a long letter to Sir Frederick Hankey* dated August 2, 1827 (PRO, FO 76/22, 3511).

  NINETEEN / THE LOST PAPERS

  René Caillié tells his own story best, in Caillié. Warrington’s transcript of his examination of Bongola is in the archives of the Royal Society (RS, 374[La] 131). Warrington’s letter to Hay concerning the “Miserable Intrigue” is dated October 28, 1828 (PRO, FO 76/23, 3263). The story of Warrington’s search for the lost papers is detailed in Bovill (Missions 1) and Dearden. Warrington’s challenge to Rousseau to a duel is dated August 12, 1830 (PRO, CO 2/20, United Service Club Volume). Lord Goderich’s tepid defense of Warrington is in a letter to Sir James Scarlett dated October 19, 1832 (PRO, FO 76/33).

  TWENTY / THE MYSTERY SOLVED

  Alexandre Bonnel de Mézières, the French army officer who disinterred Laing’s bones eighty-five years after his death, included a half dozen “Kodaks” in his monograph (Bonnel de Mézières), none more heartrending than that of the tiny coffin, not much bigger than a hatbox, he built to rebury them. The analysis presented here is largely his, with support from Bovill (Missions 1), especially in the importance attached to Warrington’s examination of the eyewitness Bongola as the foundation for a theory of Laing’s death. Warrington wrote at length about his efforts to recover Laing’s missing journals, mainly to R. W. Hay, Bathurst’s deputy as permanent undersecretary of st
ate for war and the colonies. Cited is his letter to Hay dated October 28, 1828 (PRO, FO 76/23, 3263). Warrington’s August 12, 1830, “I shall not disgrace my pen” missive to Rousseau survives only as a copy he kept at the consulate (PRO, FO 76/26, 2799). Foreign secretary Lord Aberdeen’s letter cashiering Warrington is dated April 7, 1846 (PRO, FO 76/33, 2867). Possibly because of debts, Warrington steered clear of England upon his recall and accepted an offer from his daughter Jane Wood to live with her at Patras, Greece, where her husband was British consul. The Woods were not burdened with him long. His son-in-law, Emma’s second husband, raised this elaborate monument to him:

  Sacred to the memory of Lieut. Colonel Hanmer Warrington

  who died at the British Consulate, Patras,

  on the 17th August 1847, aged 70.

  The life of this gallant offi cer was devoted

  to the service of his country,

  32 years of which he was employed,

  as H.M.’s Agent & Consul General at Tripoli.

  And long will his name be remembered in that land

  Where the slaves and the free were equally

  Objects of his protecting care.

  He was a kind and affectionate

  Husband and Father

  An unflinching friend and Noble Defender of the Rights of Man

  *These became widely available through Cambridge University Press. I was not surprised to find complete copies in each of Dallas’s two main university libraries, in addition to my own working set.

  *Dr. Walter Oudney died on his mission, en route to Kano with Clapperton. His name will not be found in the bibliography because he did not survive to publish his own account. Denham attached Oudney’s name to the title of his book (but shared credit as author only with Clapperton), and this only at the insistence of Sir John Barrow, who was appalled by Denham’s predilection for taking credit for the work of others while making catty comments about them. In any case, Denham had already expropriated many of Oudney’s most important observations.

  *Hallett, born in 1926, lived to see the new millennium. He died in February 2003.

  *Though Tuckey got author’s credit for his book, he died in the Congo estuary aboard the Dorothy, the ship he commanded, before returning to England, and could not actually have written it. The style betrays the gifted hand of secretary of the Admiralty Sir John Barrow, who almost certainly wrote Tuckey’s account from his notes, and, characteristically, took no credit on the spine of the book for this parting tribute to his fallen friend.

  *Robert John Wilmot, Bathurst’s undersecretary of state, adopted the surname “Horton” in 1822. “Wilmot,” “Wilmot Horton,” and “Horton” are thus all the same person.

  *Hankey was chief secretary to the government of Malta, and therefore, in effect, Warrington’s purser.

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