Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone (37 page)

On 22 September, from Fort McPherson, even before climbing into the saddle to begin the hunt, Bennett sent a wire to New York authorizing payment for all of Stanley’s expenses. The telegraph was relayed to London, where the message was passed on to Zanzibar on 25 September. Bennett could only hope Stanley received the news before selling the Livingstone story elsewhere.

Then, taking charge of the Livingstone news cycle, Bennett began a build-up to the day he would, he hoped, publish Stanley’s stories. The
Herald
’s editorial columns began running news about East Africa. The writing was informative, introducing the public to men like Kirk and reacquainting them with Livingstone.

When it came to Stanley, however, Bennett hadn’t received a word of copy since the reporter sailed from India a year earlier. He could only pay the bills and hope for a return on his investment.

STANLEY CONTRACTED SMALLPOX
in the middle of September, but he was determined to leave Tabora, regardless. After a brief few days of fever and bed rest, Stanley finally marched his lean caravan from Tabora on 20 September. His route from Tabora to Ujiji was simple on paper: 150 miles south-west from Tabora, then 150 miles north-west, 90 miles north, then 70 miles slightly north-west again — 460 miles in all. Most important, it would theoretically be outside of Mirambo’s reach. The only thing Stanley knew about the terrain itself was its reputation for being forested and sometimes swampy, and he also knew that the Arabs predicted his death.

Stanley mounted his donkey and led his men out of Tabora. The Stars and Stripes were flying, guns were fired, the men were laughing and shouting, all happy to be on the move. Only the Arabs and Shaw were distraught to see the caravan’s three months in Tabora come to an end. As a show of their displeasure, and to reinforce their belief that Stanley’s precious cloth and beads would be wasted
when he died, the Arabs commandeered Livingstone’s relief supplies. They forbade the bundles of cloth and the porters from leaving Tabora. Stanley, though outraged, was also eager to leave Tabora. Rather than let the issue delay his departure, he merely argued that denying Livingstone his mail was inhumane. The Arabs agreed. A single porter was allowed to join Stanley’s march, carrying nothing but Livingstone’s letters.

Looking on with dour expressions, remonstrating with him for forcing Shaw to travel, the Arabs stood to one side and said goodbye to Stanley. The temperature on the shadeless plain was over one hundred degrees.

‘Farewell,’ Stanley cried to the Arabs, tipping his hat. Shaw, who had relapsed in the night, could barely stay on his donkey. It was with reluctance that he spurred his animal forward. With that, the New York
Herald
expedition moved from the safety and luxury of Tabora back into the wilderness. For the first time in their entire journey, they were marching into a place no other caravan or expedition had ever travelled to.

Before they had even left the Arabs behind, however, Mabruki, one of the new guides, playfully goosed Shaw’s donkey with a stick. The animal bolted and tossed the hapless sailor into a bush with inch-long thorns.

The Arabs rushed forward to help Shaw, running across the dusty flat field in their flowing white robes, verbally abusing Stanley for making a sick man travel. And though they called him cruel and stubborn, Stanley was through with listening to them. He dismounted, lifted Shaw off the ground and hoisted the dying sailor onto his donkey once again. ‘Pluck up,’ Stanley cried sarcastically as he walked back to his donkey, ignoring Shaw’s moaning and the Arabs’ accusations. ‘Courage.’

All went well most of that first day. Instead of pushing the pace up front, Stanley rode at the rear to help Shaw. The rest of the caravan surged ahead on their forced march and they made good time. But as Stanley came over a small ridge and spotted the night’s camp in the distance, his American flag flying in the midst of a grove of rice
paddies and plantains, his fever returned. He collapsed into his hammock at the campsite and covered himself in his bearskin. Caused by the variola virus, smallpox’s incubation period is twelve days. Thirty per cent of all people who develop the fever, fatigue, headaches, backaches and lesions brought on by smallpox die. Interestingly, it is spread from one person to another by the spray of infected saliva during face-to-face contact. Stanley most likely contracted it in those moments with Shaw, standing over the bed and berating him to rise.

That night, as Shaw nursed his wounds from repeatedly falling off his donkey and Stanley went to bed with fever, the remaining porters sat around the campfire discussing what the next day would bring. There was much quiet talk of desertion. Though Tabora was just a few miles behind, the broad, sunny plains were about to be replaced by the thick and dismal forest they had heard so much about. Stanley had paid a portion of their inflated salaries before departure, and given out guns and ammunition, so if they deserted they could run back home with a small amount of wealth. On the other hand, the law stipulated that Stanley would be able to exact a punishment on his way back from Ujiji when he stopped in Tabora once again.

The scared porters argued silently. Stanley wasn’t likely to be coming back, they guessed. He would die for certain. Not even a massive man like Asmani could protect a fifty-four-man caravan if a tribal force of a thousand attacked. Deserting before the journey went on too much longer seemed almost prudent compared with becoming another set of bleached bones whose meat had been picked clean by hyenas.

Twenty porters ran off that night. Stanley found out the next morning when he rose, determined to ignore his fever and continue forward. He flew into a rage. Selecting twenty of his most faithful men, he dispatched them back to Tabora to round up the deserters. Selim the servant was also sent back to Tabora and told to buy a slave chain from the Arabs. ‘Towards night my twenty detectives
returned with nine of the missing men,’ Stanley wrote. ‘Selim also returned with a strong chain capable of imprisoning within the collars attached to it, ten men. Kaif-Halek also appeared with the letter bag which he was to convey to Livingstone under my escort. The men were then addressed, and the slave chain exhibited to them. I told them I was the first white man who had taken a slave chain with him on his travels. But, as they were all so frightened of accompanying me, I was obliged to make use of it, as it was the only means of keeping them together. The good never fear being chained by me — only the deserters, the thieves, who received their hire and presents and guns and ammunition and ran away.’

Nevertheless, two more men tested Stanley that night. After standing around in 108 degree heat waiting for Bombay to hunt down the deserters, Stanley had the men flogged and chained.

Morale in the camp had plummeted fast in the few short days since leaving Tabora, and Stanley seemed to be losing control. Men begged Stanley to be released from their contracts. Some, like Kasegra Saleem, were released on grounds of sickness (Saleem was vomiting from one end and passing worms out of the other). Another, Abdul the tailor, had been a burden since Bagamoyo. He was allowed to leave because Stanley had grown tired of his whining. Finally, Stanley wondered whether it was time to turn around and go back. ‘The fates had determined on our return,’ he wrote.

But Stanley struggled on. When the caravan reached the village of Kigandu on 24 September, four days into the trek, he was taunted by the natives for his refusal to fight Mirambo and called a coward. The villagers demanded cloth in exchange for permission to pass through their territory. Stanley wouldn’t pay, so he and his men were forced to sleep in an area a mile outside the village infested by rats. There, Shaw fell hard getting off his donkey, but was so weak from the sleeping sickness that he simply dozed off where he hit the ground rather than rise to go to his tent.

Stanley looked at his friend, and finally felt pity. ‘Do you wish to go back, Mr Shaw?’ he said wearily.

‘If you please,’ Shaw replied. ‘I do not believe I can go any farther.’

‘Well, Mr Shaw, I have come to the conclusion that it is best that you should return. My patience is worn out.’ Stanley warned Shaw that he would die if he returned to Tabora, for there would be no one to take care of him, but the sailor’s mind was made up.

‘I wish I had never ventured to come,’ Shaw admitted. ‘I thought life in Africa was so different from this.’

The travellers’ last night together was spent mournfully. Sitting around a campfire while Shaw played ‘Home Sweet Home’ on a cheap accordion he’d carried since Zanzibar, they celebrated their friendship. ‘We had mutually softened towards each other,’ Stanley wrote. He was sure Shaw would die, and it was hard saying goodbye. Shaw, on the other hand, was planning on recovering and marching back to the coast. His heart was light. ‘Home Sweet Home’ wasn’t a lament, but anticipation.

The next morning, Stanley gave Shaw a canteen of tea, a leg of lamb and a loaf of bread, then placed him in a litter to be carried back to Tabora. It would take two men to carry him. Their regular loads would be carried by Shaw’s donkey. Stanley ordered the trumpet sounded and the flags raised then formed the men into two lines. His good friend Shaw was leaving, and he wanted it done in style. The sailor was carried between the two rows in a sign of respect and farewell. He and Stanley said a solemn goodbye, wishing each other well. Then they went in opposite directions to meet their fates. After all was said and done, their parting was a relief to Stanley, too. ‘Shaw was borne away to the north, while we fled to the south, with quicker and more elastic steps as if we felt a great incubus had been taken from us,’ Stanley wrote.

Even before Shaw’s departure Stanley had imagined what it would be like to emulate Livingstone in his travels. ‘With the illustrious example of Livingstone travelling by himself before me, I was asking myself,
Would it not be just as well for me to try to do the same thing?’

Without Shaw, Stanley ignored his own weakened condition and fairly raced for Ujiji. His pace increased from one mile an hour to three. The journey was into its seventh month. In Stanley’s mind, Livingstone was most definitely in Ujiji. He wasn’t thinking beyond that. He couldn’t. He barely had the resolve to make it to Ujiji. Finding the strength to go further into Africa, or to wander indefinitely searching for the good doctor, was unthinkable.

As it was, the new trail was a challenge unlike any other Stanley had faced so far. The danger of Africa had increased by increments since leaving Bagamoyo, but in the wilderness south-west of Tabora it was as if a Pandora’s box of Africa’s most violent hardships was opened. Clouds of tse-tse flies and sword flies had the men constantly swatting the air and flapping their arms. The heat was relentless in its intensity, like a flame being applied to the men’s skin. Rotting vegetation was sometimes poisonous when inhaled. Dead bodies of natives who had died of smallpox littered the side of the trail. Guerrilla warriors roamed the countryside, and villages were fortified for war, surrounded by fences of three-inch-thick wooden poles lashed tightly together, with special platforms for sharpshooters to see over the top.

Yet in the hardship, Stanley knew a strange peace. Africa became him, despite its dangers. Stanley took a proprietary interest in Africa, and thought of the land as his own. ‘I felt momentarily proud’, he admitted in his journal after revelling in a ‘romantic’ vista, ‘that I owned such a vast domain.’

He embraced that sense of ownership, and like the need to find Livingstone, it gave him courage. The porters were born and raised in Africa, yet were uncomfortable in the wilderness and pressed forward reluctantly. But Stanley rejoiced in each day’s march, and in merely being in Africa. Unable to procure cigars, he had taken to smoking a white clay pipe at the end of each day to watch the sun
set. ‘Colours of gold and silver, saffron and opal, when its rays and gorgeous tints were reflected upon the tops of the everlasting forest, with the quiet and holy calm of heaven,’ he wrote of the sunsets.

In those hours, listening to the men smoking their gourd pipes around the campfire and hearing the chirp of crickets, Stanley also became anxious about Livingstone. ‘We are both on the same soil, perhaps in the same forest — who knows? — yet he is so far removed from me,’ Stanley wrote.

The worries disappeared during the day, especially when in early October the thick forest gave way to a grassland where game of all variety waited to be felled for the cooking pot. On 4 October the expedition began a three-day halt along the Gombe River to hunt and regroup. After two weeks of travel, they had walked over two hundred miles but were still unable to shake their fear of the land through which they were walking. That its beauty and providence were equal to its dangers made no difference.

The men didn’t like it that Stanley’s demand for a brisk pace left them exhausted at the end of each day, and Stanley hoped rest and fresh meat in their stomachs would rekindle the men’s morale. Buffalo, zebra and antelope fed the caravan, and the porters were briefly happy. Stanley found himself in conflict over the killing, however. Fresh meat was a precious commodity, for protein was hard to come by on the trail. But he marvelled at the animals’ beauty and majesty, and it pained him to shoot a zebra and see it rear up on its hind legs in shock, then collapse and have its head sliced off by the natives. ‘Ah, it is such a pity. But hasten, draw the keen sharp-edged knife across the beautiful stripes which fold around the throat. And — what an ugly gash! It is done.’