Off the Map

by Fergus Fleming

  With the aid of a similarly wounded camel driver he continued south for 400 miles, strapped like baggage over a camel’s hump, until he reached the oasis of Sidi el Muktar, where he caught plague and, while recuperating, had his pistol stolen. He was by now the only survivor of the party that had left Tripoli, his assistants having died either from disease or at the hands of the Tuareg. He had no money, no weapons and, according to the later testimony of one Arab, no right hand. Everyone at Sidi el Muktar beseeched him to return from whence he came. Writing with the thumb and middle finger of his left hand – he had practised left-handed writing before he set out, against just such an emergency – Laing assured the world that ‘I am nevertheless doing well and hope yet to return to England with much important geographical information’.

  Attaching himself to a new caravan, Laing covered the remaining 200 miles to Timbuctoo in approximately a fortnight, entering the fabled city on 13 August 1826. He had completed the 2,650-mile journey from Tripoli in 13 months, had become the first European to cross the central Sahara from north to south, and had done so in the face of tribulations that would have undone a lesser (and perhaps saner) man. It had been, to quote his own words, a display of considerable enterprise and genius. Unfortunately, Timbuctoo did not repay the trouble he had taken to find it. An impoverished settlement of mud houses, it did not resemble in the slightest anything he had been led to expect. It did have mosques and a ruler, but the mosques were nothing to write home about and the ruler was a powerless figure, theoretically a vassal of the Niger kingdoms to the east but dominated in reality by the Tuareg, possessing neither palaces nor retinues of slaves. There were no libraries, no universities and not a trace of the ‘elegance and suavity’ that Westerners had anticipated so longingly. Everything that had been written about it was wrong.

  With the help of his caravan leader, Laing found a billet and began to investigate the town. Accounts tell of him galloping at night into the surrounding countryside, returning at dawn to stride through the streets, in uniform, waving a letter of credit from the Pasha of Tripoli and announcing himself as the personal representative of the King of England. In his rooms he wrote a deranged letter to Warrington, stating that Timbuctoo, ‘has completely met my expectations ... I have been busily employed during my stay searching the records in the town, which are abundant, and in acquiring information of every kind.’ At the same time, however, he admitted that the ruler ‘trembles for my safety and strongly urges my immediate departure’. He had envisaged a stay of at least six months, but with nothing to do, and having had it drummed into his head that he would certainly be killed if he tried to follow the Niger to its mouth, he left within six weeks.

  On 22 September he caught a caravan north to Morocco. Three days later the Tuareg attacked, finishing what they had left undone in January. Two of them wrapped Laing’s turban round his neck and hauled on either end until he was dead. To make sure, they then decapitated him. A black servant, who feigned death, made his way back to Ghadames, from where the news of Laing’s death reached Warrington in March 1827. There was immediate uproar. Warrington, who could be violent when aroused, accused the consuls of every other country, particularly France, of having ordered Laing’s assassination. He demanded the immediate retrieval of Laing’s journal, which was believed to be hidden somewhere in Timbuctoo, and when it did not appear accused the Pasha’s chief minister of having sold it to the French. The French consul promptly took refuge in the American consulate before fleeing to Spain.

  Warrington thrashed in vain. There was no proof that Laing had even written a journal, let alone that the French had stolen it. Eventually he reverted to his time-honoured pastime of insulting the consul of Sardinia. Meanwhile, a letter from his daughter wandered on camel across the Sahara to Timbuctoo before being returned to Tripoli. ‘Alas, Laing, how cruel, how sad, has been our fate,’ it read. ‘Will you, my own idolized husband, return to your Emma’s fond arms? Will you come and repose on her faithful bosom? Will you restore happiness to her torn heart?’ On 13 April 1829 Warrington married her to one of his vice-consuls, and she died six months later from tuberculosis, whose telltale signs Laing had seen in her portrait at In Salah.

  Warrington’s squabbles were of no interest to London – he would eventually be sacked for them in 1847 – but his allegations against the French touched a nerve. It was known that France, for reasons undisclosed but obviously pernicious, wanted to beat Britain to Timbuctoo. When Laing had first presented his case John Barrow and the Colonial Office had approved it because it was so cheap, but also because, if a Briton did not do it – God forbid – a Frenchman might. Competitors were already in the field, and the British would be left behind if they did not move swiftly. They had moved and they had discovered Timbuctoo, but their man had not returned alive and the few letters he had sent had given very little information about the town. Meanwhile, the French were closing in.

  René Caillié was six years younger than Laing and very much a single-issue man, that issue being the exploration of Africa. ‘[Even as a youth] I already felt an ambition to signalize myself by some important discovery,’ he later wrote. ‘The map of Africa, in which I scarcely saw any but countries marked as desert or unknown, excited my attention more than any other.’ Of all the unknown spots in those desert spaces, it was Timbuctoo that attracted him most. By the age of 16 he was in Senegal, where he successfully wangled his way on to one of Britain’s many expeditions. Its failure and the discomfort he endured – ‘I have since been told that my eyes were hollow, that I panted for breath, and that my tongue hung out of my mouth. For my own part I recollect that at every halt, I fell to the ground from weakness, and had not even the strength to eat... I was not, however, the worst off, for I saw several drink their urine’ – did not deter him a jot and, after a spell working in France, he had raised enough money for the passage back to Africa. Unlike the British, who refused to insult their civilization by travelling in anything other than Western clothes, Caillié decided that the key to successful exploration was to adopt local garb and manners. Thus in 1824, while Laing was promoting himself in London, Caillié was back in West Africa acclimatizing himself to life as an Arab trader, the disguise in which he intended to reach Timbuctoo. After nine months learning Arabic and studying Islam (he pretended to his tutors that he was an eager convert) he was confident he could hold his own in caravan society. Returning to the coast, he found work supervising an indigo factory in the British colony of Sierra Leone where he soon amassed savings of 2,000 francs, ‘and this treasure seemed to me to be sufficient to carry me all over the world’.

  While at the indigo works he received heartening news: the Geographical Society of Paris had announced in December 1824 an award of 10,000 francs for the first person to reach Timbuctoo. In theory, it did not care about the explorer’s nationality – though exceptions could be made for Britons: Laing did not receive the prize – nor did it support heavily-manned expeditions, ‘which would require the concurrence of several observers and many years’ peaceable residence in the country’. All it wanted was ‘precise information, such as may be expected from a man provided with instruments, and who is no stranger either to natural or mathematical science’. And the proof was to be presented in ‘a manuscript narrative, with a geographical map, founded upon celestial observations’.

  It took 18 months for the news to reach Sierra Leone, and when Caillié heard it he was overjoyed. ‘Dead or alive, it will be mine,’ he proclaimed. Like Laing he was spurred by an attachment to the opposite sex – in this case his sister, who needed expensive medical attention – but unlike Laing he had no governmental support and, despite the transfer of several thousand francs left over from a recent (failed) attempt via Senegal, he expected none. He would, instead, undertake it at his own expense. Presenting himself as an Egyptian who had been carried in infancy to France and, newly released in West Africa, was trying to regain his homeland, he caught a caravan to the interior on 19 April 1827. He carried a
Koran, a small chest of trinkets and an umbrella.

  Caillié’s disguise held up, and he was able to keep reasonable track of his whereabouts, having earlier trained himself in the course of many long and laborious treks to estimate distances without using instruments. He committed to memory the name of every town they passed, and when he had the chance he scribbled surreptitious notes under the cover of reading the Koran. His travelling companions were pleasant enough and the locals were almost unanimously friendly. Indeed, apart from the physical difficulties of travelling on foot in the tropics, and the intermittent bouts of fever that were the curse of the region, the only thing to complain of was that the caravan’s tortuous progress was to the east rather than north. Wherever he stopped he was admired for his generosity, his unassuming attitude and his umbrella, which he furled and unfurled to repeated hurrahs.

  In August they reached the little village of Tieme, having covered approximately 530 miles, and it was here that Caillié’s health gave way. A parasitical worm had infected his foot, producing a sore that refused to heal. As the rains were heavy, and he was suffering another attack of fever, he decided to take a short break. By the end of August the sore had abated and he felt able to resume his journey. Unfortunately, ‘another sore much larger than the first broke out on the same foot. I suffered considerable pain, and my foot was so swelled that I could not walk.’ When the rains ceased at the end of October he was still bedridden, and his hosts’ hospitality faltered as his supply of trade goods began to diminish. The village women, he recorded, were a torment: ‘I was at once an object of curiosity and aversion to them. They ridiculed my gestures and my words, and went about the village mimicking me and repeating what I had said ... the difficulty I experienced in walking excited their immoderate laughter.’ On 10 November his sore had healed and he could once again contemplate the journey ahead. His intention was to join a caravan that would take him to the town of Jenne, 600-odd miles to the north, from where it was a matter of just 200 miles to Timbuctoo. But even as he looked forward, his health held him back. ‘At that very time,’ he wrote, ‘violent pains in my jaw informed me that I was attacked with scurvy.’

  It was a measure of Westerners’ dietary ignorance that Caillié should succumb to the disease so swiftly. And to do so in the tropics, where fruit and vegetables were so freely available, was a terrible indictment. But scurvy was considered a scourge of the sea, so perhaps Caillié could be forgiven for not anticipating its appearance on land. For a while he suffered agonies: ‘The roof of my mouth became quite bare, part of the bones exfoliated and fell away, and my teeth seemed ready to drop out of their sockets. I feared that my brain would be affected by the agonising pains I felt in my head, and I was more than a fortnight without sleep.’ A kindly African woman served him twice-daily doses of rice water, which seemed to help. But then his sores broke out afresh and ‘all hope of departure vanished’. He was ‘soon reduced to a skeleton ... One thought alone absorbed my mind – that of Death. I wished for it and prayed for it to God.’

  After ‘six weeks of indescribable suffering’ he felt a bit better, and by 9 January was on the move to Jenne, accompanying a caravan that had arrived in Tieme with a cargo of kola nuts. He was still scorbutic, unable to join campfire meals because his wobbly teeth made eating an embarrassment and because his palate tended to shed onto his tongue. But he persevered: ‘I never for a moment reproached myself for the resolution which had brought me to these deserts, where I had suffered so much misery.’ His misery increased, to the point where he found himself shivering with fever at the bottom of a canoe as it plied down the Bari, one of the Niger’s tributaries. He was so destitute that its occupants ‘were emboldened ... to insult me in the grossest manner ... and the slaves, following this example, behaved with grossest insolence towards me.’ A year after his departure from the coast, Caillié reached Jenne. The local ruler gave him permission to stay in town until the next departure for Timbuctoo and, in exchange for Caillié’s umbrella, promised him a trouble-free trip to the Niger.

  The following month, on 20 April, Caillié arrived in Timbuctoo. ‘On entering this mysterious city, which is an object of curiosity and research to the civilised nations of Europe, I experienced an indescribable satisfaction. How many grateful thanksgivings did I pour forth for the protection which God had vouchsafed me, amidst obstacles and dangers which appeared insurmountable. This duty being ended, I looked around.’ It was not what he had hoped for: ‘I had formed a totally different idea of the wealth and grandeur of Timbuctoo.’ The houses were dull – he was shown the one in which Laing had stayed – and the countryside was monotonous. ‘Nothing was to be seen in all directions but immense plains of quicksand of a yellowish-white colour. The sky was pale and red as far as the horizon: all nature wore a dreary aspect, and the most profound silence prevailed; not even the warbling of a bird was to be heard ... Timbuctoo and its environs present the most monotonous and barren scene I ever beheld.’ All he could say in its praise was that ‘the difficulties surmounted by its founders cannot fail to excite the admiration’.

  The people, however, of whom he judged there were between 10,000 and 12,000, were ‘of a gentle and cheerful disposition’ and showed him great kindness during his stay. Admiring of his apparent devoutness and of his determination to reach Egypt, they provided him with food, lodging and even a few slaves. Less attractive were the Tuareg who controlled the surrounding countryside and who sauntered regularly into town to receive ‘gifts’ – followed by demands for more ‘gifts’ for going away again. Occasionally the chief of the Tuareg honoured the town with his presence, a privilege so expensive that ‘it is a general calamity’. Caillié described how the inhabitants lived in fear of the Tuareg denying them access to the Niger, and kept their warehouses full in anticipation of a siege that might descend at any moment. He noted, however, that a steady dribble of caravans passed through Timbuctoo, bound for the north with cargoes of slaves, a little bit of gold, ivory, gum and ostrich feathers. Despite its outwardly wretched situation – there was no cultivable land, the main source of fuel was camel dung, except for water everything necessary to human survival had to be imported – he had to admit to a sneaking admiration for the way Timbuctoo struggled on, destitute of every resource, but surviving, as it had done for centuries, on trade alone.

  With regular meals Caillié regained some of his strength, but he could not recommend the desert climate. The nights were oppressively calm, and when a wind did blow ‘it is felt like a burning vapour and seems almost to scorch the lungs. I was continually ill at Timbuctoo.’ He was afflicted, too, by the mental strain of maintaining his disguise: one day while taking notes in his Koran he was approached by an Arab; fearing he had been found out, he was delighted when the man simply slid some cowrie shells (the region’s currency) into his pocket. It was yet another example of the town’s hospitality, but the incident reminded him how dangerous a path he trod. After a fortnight he had seen all he wanted to and was ready to leave. He could have retraced his steps to the West African coast, but he decided instead to catch a caravan to Morocco, on the grounds that nobody would believe he had visited Timbuctoo if he did not continue to the Mediterranean – or, as he put it, ‘returning via the Barbary States ... would impose conviction on the envious’. In the first week of May a 1,400-camel caravan left for the north-west. Caillié’s hosts were so reluctant to let him go that he missed its departure and had to run for a mile through the sand. When he caught up he was too weak to walk and had to be thrown onto a baggage camel.

  Caillié remained on the camel for the rest of the trip, his charm having affected the caravan leader as much as it had the people of Timbuctoo. But even in such comfort he found the journey appalling. The caravan moved from oasis to oasis, where the water was brackish at best and at times so contaminated as to be undrinkable. They reached the salt mines of Taoudeni, a place in which slaves, and the occasional free man working to pay off debts, toiled in abominable conditions. Cailli�
�, the first European to see the place, was appalled: there were no women, no means of sustenance other than what was brought by caravans, and the wells were so chlorinated as to poison anybody who drank from them regularly. Leaving this dismal spot, they entered a desert of total hostility. Their water was dispensed once a day from the communal tanks that the camels carried, and Caillié’s attempts to purchase a private supply were rejected with contempt. The rules of trans-Saharan travel were straightforward: everyone, even the slaves, was allotted the same amount every 24 hours.* To the oppressive heat and the lack of water was added the bleakness of the environment. Caillié’s caravan plodded through plains of sand and rock so featureless that he could only liken it to the sea. Like mariners, they endured gales, one of which Caillié described as so vicious that the men were thrown about like toys and lay on the ground, their heads covered, praying to Allah. ‘Through the shouts and prayers and the roaring of the wind I could distinguish the plaintive moans of the camels who were as much alarmed as their masters, and more to be pitied for they had not tasted food for four days.’ When the storm abated they continued as before, but more thirstily. ‘The heat was stifling,’ Caillié wrote. ‘The allowance of water was every time more and more scanty. We suffered beyond all expression.’ In the dry heat the soles of their feet cracked; they sewed them together with needle and thread. To Caillié the journey was a torment, and his relief on reaching the oasis of Tafilafet on 23 July was indescribable. There were melons, dates and apples in abundance, though the latter were hard going because his teeth were still loose from scurvy. He found it hard to believe that people put themselves through such torture on a regular basis – but some obviously did, because he was given the chance to buy Laing’s compass and sextant.