Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone (2 page)

Livingstone was the man who did it. Even more than the Arabs and Portuguese who went into Africa seeking ivory and slaves, he traversed the continent’s unknown
sub-Saharan region. Between 1841 and 1851 he explored the deserts, rivers and lakes of Southern Africa in a series of journeys lasting weeks and months. From 1852 to 1856 he walked from east to west across South-Central Africa along the course of the Zambezi. Then, after returning from his first visit to England since 1840, he explored the Zambezi and the area to its north more thoroughly. This single expedition lasted from 1858 to 1863.

Livingstone didn’t emerge unscathed. The continent had insinuated itself into his appearance, given him bearing and presence, set him apart from other men. The narrow face with the hound-dog eyes had become taut, furrowed and tanned from day after day squinting into the sun. His Scottish burr had an African inflection and his lips struggled to form English sentences after years of wrapping themselves around Bantu’s many dialects. Hookworm thrived in his belly. He was chronically anaemic. And of course, there was the famous left arm, permanently crooked after a lion bit deep and shook Livingstone like a rag doll. Not only did Livingstone survive the mauling with a preternatural calm, but also set the bone and sutured the eleven puncture wounds himself, without anaesthetic. Later he said that his time in the lion’s jaws was an epiphany. He’d learned a secret that made him unafraid of death.

Livingstone was, then, the perfect man to venture into Africa to find the Source of the Nile. The explorer left England in August of 1865. Travelling via Bombay, he arrived in Zanzibar on 28 January 1866. There he purchased supplies, including the cloth and beads that functioned as currency for buying food in villages along the way and paying his porters. He also arranged for a second, crucial shipment of relief provisions to be sent overland to the village of Ujiji. Ujiji lay almost due west from Zanzibar, in the very centre of Africa. It was a primary Arab slave-trading outpost on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. The relief supplies, so vital to an extended expedition, would be waiting when Livingstone reached Ujiji. In the event of a calamity such as theft or
medical emergency, Livingstone would have peace of mind, knowing that his problems would be solved — as long as he could navigate to Ujiji. Despite his sworn opposition to the slave trade and disdain for the heathen Arabs who played such a pivotal role, he was depending upon them to carry these vital supplies to Ujiji and store them until he arrived. The success of Livingstone’s entire expedition depended upon this act of trust.

Livingstone would lead an unlikely caravan. ‘I have thirteen sepoys, ten Johanna men, nine Nassick boys, two Shupanga men, and two Waiyaus, Wakatini and Chuma,’ Livingstone wrote in his journal. The sepoys were Indian marines assigned to Livingstone by Sir Bartle Frere, the Governor of Bombay. They carried rifles instead of a porter’s load, and would serve as bodyguards. The Nassick boys also signed on in India, and would serve as porters. The Johanna men were from the Comoros Island of the same name, and many had served with Livingstone on his previous expedition. Most notable of all the men were the Waiyau lad named James Chuma, who had been a slave until Livingstone arranged his freedom in 1861, who could read and write English and would begin the journey as Livingstone’s cook; and the Shupanga man named David Susi. Their deep loyalty to Livingstone would be vital in training the newcomers in the ways of an African expedition.

Those loads not carried by human beings would be lashed to an oddball menagerie of experimental pack animals: six camels, three buffalo, a calf, two mules and four donkeys.

Most important of all, there were no other Britons, Europeans or other white men making the journey. Livingstone had no peer, no confidant. He was ostensibly alone, which was as he liked it.

So it was that on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Livingstone’s first arrival in Africa, HMS
Penguin
docked in Zanzibar to take him there again. Over the next few days the supplies and animals were loaded. Then, at 10 a.m. on 19 March 1866 — Livingstone’s birthday —
Penguin
sailed from Zanzibar harbour under the command of a British officer named Lieutenant Garforth. They would steam three hundred miles south before putting ashore at the mouth of the jungle-clotted Rovuma River. From there Livingstone would push inland. He believed the Source of the Nile flowed into the Zambezi, and maybe even into West Africa’s Congo. In Livingstone’s mind, fountains south of the equator thrust these great rivers from the ground. Livingstone would travel west into Africa to find those fountains, and find his destiny.

Livingstone’s journal entry practically sang as the trip got under way. ‘Now that I am on the point of starting another trip into Africa I feel quite exhilarated,’ he wrote. ‘The effect of travel on a man whose heart is in the right place is that the mind is made more self-reliant: it becomes more confident of its own resources — there is greater presence of mind. The body is soon well knit; the muscles of the limbs grow hard as a board and seem to have no fat. The countenance is bronzed, and there is no dyspepsia. Africa is a most wonderful country for appetite, and it is only when one gloats over marrow bones or elephant feet that indigestion is possible. No doubt much toil is involved, and fatigue of which travellers in the more temperate climes can form but a faint conception. But the sweat of one’s brow is no longer a curse when one works for God. It proves a tonic to the system, and is actually a blessing. No one can truly appreciate the charm of repose unless he has undergone severe exertion.’

On 24 March 1866, Lieutenant Garforth unloaded Livingstone’s men and animals at the sweltering port of Mikindany, twenty-five miles north of the swampy, hippo-infested Rovuma. Livingstone planned to hire additional porters there before setting out. That evening, Livingstone shook Garforth’s hand, thanked him, then went ashore. ‘The
Penguin
’, Livingstone wrote simply of the last Englishmen who would see him alive, ‘then left.’

On 4 April 1866, the explorer marched his caravan into Africa. As if the continent was swallowing him whole, Livingstone’s entry into the jungle marked his disappearance from the outside world.

ONE MONTH LATER,
and halfway around the world, Henry Morton Stanley unknowingly began a journey towards David Livingstone. He was twenty-five years old, a squat, dogged Civil War vet who fought for the blue
and
the grey, but had otherwise achieved nothing remarkable in his lifetime. In fact, Stanley’s life to that point was notable only for its mediocrity. He had tried and been found wanting as a soldier, sailor, gold miner, son and lover. Yet there seemed no limit to the endeavours he was willing to attempt, then abruptly discard, without noteworthy accomplishment. He did, however, possess a natural flair for writing. He had already published several freelance newspaper pieces and had vague plans to become a success through a career in journalism.

The Front Range of the Rocky Mountains burst with wild-flowers and the air smelled of budding green buffalo grass as Stanley stood on the banks of the South Platte River. A prairie wind, hard and cool, slapped Stanley’s clean-shaven cheeks and blew back his brown hair. At his feet lay a collection of logs and planks bound together
into a flat-bottomed raft drawing just eight inches of water.

Beside him was his friend and fellow would-be journalist, William Harlow Cook. They had met in Black Hawk City, Colorado, the previous year. Stanley was working in a smelting plant and sent Cook a congratulatory letter about a story the other man had written for a local paper. Cook was a meek individual, the perfect foil to Stanley’s bluster. When Stanley made plans to travel from Colorado by rafting down the South Platte at flood stage, Cook didn’t so much agree as follow timidly in his wake. It was of little consequence that the journey was potentially suicidal. What was important was that both could swim, for neither man had river-rafting experience and melting snow had engorged the otherwise lazy Platte. Stanley and Cook planned on riding those newly cut tree trunks for hundreds of miles down the ripping, snorting river until they reached an even broader and more swollen flow, the Missouri. The two freelance writers had had their fill of the west. They were off to points east, maybe all the way to China — wherever they might find an adventurous story to sell. Rafting the Platte would be a much quicker and easier method of crossing America’s Great Plains, their first major geographical barrier, than walking.

‘Stanley’, Cook noted, ‘is short and quick and not easy to forget an enemy, but he is also firm and true as a friend.’ Stanley was thick around the middle but otherwise muscular. He wore his moustache neatly trimmed and his hair combed straight back. His accent was a curious composition of a Louisiana drawl and a singsong lilt that overtook him when he became excited. He was fond of tall tales, but there was just enough truth in his stories to make them entirely believable. He was tight with a dollar and a prodigious saver, yet was always telling new acquaintances about one lavish scheme or another: gold mining in Alaska, grand adventures in Asia Minor, going to New York to become a real newspaper writer. Like his tall tales, there was just enough truth and
ambition behind Stanley’s schemes to make people believe he meant to accomplish them.

Key pieces of Stanley’s character had been shaped in recent years. The Civil War, of all things, had been a positive experience for him. He had begun the war as a dry-goods salesman in an Arkansas backwater and come out of the war physically and emotionally equipped for a life of adventure. He had seen combat. He had become an expert marksman. He had endured the blisters, exhaustion and muscle pain of forced marches and seen first-hand the logistics of moving men and material over great distances, rapidly.

Stanley learned something else in the war — that he had a way with the written word. While serving as a clerk in the Union Navy he began writing newspaper stories on the side, detailing his battle experiences. He also began expressing his thoughts in a journal, revealing both surprising depth and moments of great melancholy.

When the war ended Stanley joined the scores of Civil War vets who were travelling into the American West to make their fortune. He made his way to the California gold fields and then to Colorado’s silver mines, selling the odd freelance story to the Missouri
Democrat
about life on the authentic frontier. For the most part, however, Stanley was a drifter. In January 1866, frustrated with shovelling quartz in the Black Hawk City smelting works, Stanley moved two miles west to Central City and found employment as an apprentice printer with the town newspaper. The
Miner’s Daily Register
wasn’t glamorous (he had to moonlight by prospecting for gold to make ends meet) but it was regular work. After four months, however, Central City became tedious and Stanley hatched his plan to travel to New York then Asia Minor to assemble stories for a proposed book. With Cook, Stanley began his journey by taking the stagecoach from Central City into Denver, and it was there that they built their raft.

On 6 May, the two men carefully dragged it down the banks of the South Platte and scampered aboard. Stanley carried a pistol and rifle to hunt game for dinner, and each
man had a bedroll, but otherwise their gear and provisions were minimal. They poled the raft into the swift, swirling current. The river carried them through Colorado towards Nebraska.

Stanley and Cook kept a sharp eye for Indians along the banks at all times. The Cheyenne and Pawnee were ostensibly peaceful, but rogue bands of braves still attacked travellers. The American Indians had had their lands to themselves until European powers and their colonial offspring grew interested in the vast region’s commercial possibilities. Everything west of the Missouri River had been a blank spot on the map a mere sixty years earlier, when Lewis and Clark marched westwards for a definitive reconnaissance in 1804. The Indians were forced off the prime agricultural and pasture lands onto desolate reservations that served as open-air prisons. Now, Stanley and Cook’s river ride allowed them to bear witness to what remained of the American frontier. The miles passed quickly. The prairie was beautiful and pure, awash in the renewal of spring.

A week into the journey the raft flipped. Stanley and Cook escaped by swimming to shore, then ran hard along the banks trying to catch up with their craft as it bobbed downstream. Stanley finally dived back in and swam towards it. The muddy water swirled about him, threatening to suck him under. But Stanley was persistent, if nothing else, and finally he caught the raft and guided it back to shore.

The next day, he and Cook floated downriver to Platte City, a small town at the convergence of the North and South Forks of the Platte. They were chilled from a night spent trying to sleep in wet clothes, and limped into town after carefully hiding their raft by the river. The town consisted of a dozen houses, some made of wood and some of sod. There was a small hotel, assorted saloons, a dry goods store and a few stray goats and mules. It was a town, however, with a reputation for vigilante violence. There were few trees in the area, so the bodies of horse thieves and murderers could be seen dangling from
telegraph poles. One visitor to Platte City wrote that the telegraph poles served as ‘a line of gallows, twenty to the mile’. Stanley and Cook took a room.