Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone (40 page)

That possibility, however, looked bleak. To the west, from where he’d just come, the Arabs and Africans were beginning hostilities. To the east, towards Tabora, Mirambo was waging a massive campaign against the Arabs. No one in Ujiji could ever remember warfare on such an enormous scale. There was no way for supplies to reach Livingstone from either direction.

‘I felt, in my destitution, as if I were the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves. But I could not hope for priest, Levite or good Samaritan to come by on either side,’ Livingstone wrote.

Clearly unbeknown to Livingstone, his rescuer was closing in on Ujiji.

‘
NEAR ISINGA MET
a caravan of eighty Waguhha direct from Ujiji, bearing oil and bound for Unyanyembe. They report that a white man was left by them five days ago at Ujiji. He had the same colour as I have, wears the same shoes, the same clothes, and has hair on his face like I have, only his is white. This is Livingstone. Hurrah for Ujiji!’

Stanley’s ecstatic thoughts on 3 November were a compendium of the haste, excitement and even trepidation beating in his heart. ‘This is Livingstone! He must be Livingstone! He
can
be no other. But still, he may be someone else — someone from the West Coast. Or perhaps he is Baker! No; Baker has no white hair on his face, but we must now march quick, lest he hears we are coming, and runs away,’ Stanley wrote, suddenly eager to be there instantly. ‘I was madly rejoiced, intensely eager to resolve the burning question: is it Dr David Livingstone? God grant me patience, but I do wish there was a railroad.’

Setting aside the impossibility of finding a train to speed
him quickly into Ujiji, Stanley brought the men together and asked if they would be willing to march non-stop for that town. The reward for their efforts, he promised, would be an extra doti. To a man, they agreed. Even as he made the offer, Stanley’s thoughts were going back to the very start of the journey, when both his bay and his grey Arabian had died within fifteen hours of each other. ‘With a horse,’ Stanley thought, ‘I could reach Ujiji in about twelve hours.’

As close as it seemed, however, Ujiji was still eighty miles away. The terrain was mostly gullied woodland tilting ever so slightly downhill as the watershed searched for Lake Tanganyika. The soil was rich and red. Banana and mango trees grew in small groves. Rocks and marshes littered the trail like so much natural debris. All in all, the roadblocks to his journey’s final steps were considerable. But Stanley set aside thoughts of horses and began the final push. The men were uplifted, and marched without fear. If all went well, Stanley estimated they could be there in fifty hours.

Africa, however, had never made the going easy for Stanley. The last leg of his journey would be no different. Just three hours after leaving the Malagarasi River, Stanley passed through countryside that reminded him of the Nebraska prairie. Villages seemed to be everywhere, comprised of mud huts shaped like beehives. The equatorial sun bleached the grass white. It was while travelling through a village so large it had small suburbs surrounding it that the New York
Herald
expedition was halted by a large group of warriors. They were members of the hostile Ha tribe.

‘How dare you pass by without paying tribute to the King of Uhha?’ Stanley was asked imperiously.

‘We have paid it,’ Stanley sputtered.

‘To whom?’

‘To the Chief of Kawanga.’

The Chief of Kawanga, it turned out, had kept the tribute for himself. Stanley was in a new territory. The warriors ordered Stanley to rest his caravan in their village until tribute was paid.

But Stanley was through dealing with the vagaries of tribute and in no mood to stop his caravan until reaching Ujiji. Under the blazing sun that had become such a regular part of his day, he forced his caravan to stand in the middle of the road as he sorted the matter out. After a series of emissaries had challenged Stanley in the name of the king, a regal young man clad in a crimson toga, a turban and an ivory necklace sauntered over. ‘The gorgeously dressed chief was a remarkable man in appearance,’ Stanley wrote. ‘His face was oval in form, high cheekbones, eyes deeply sunk, a prominent and bold forehead, a fine nose and a well-cut mouth. He was tall in figure and perfectly symmetrical.’

The chief was Mionvu, of the Uhha tribe. His turban, Stanley noted with a keen journalistic eye, was made of cloth woven in Massachusetts. Politely but firmly, Mionvu requested that Stanley and his forty-five men come out of the sun. ‘Why does the white man halt in the road?’ Mionvu wanted to know. His manner was exceedingly polite, but firm. ‘The sun is hot. Let him seek the shelter of my village, where we can arrange this little matter between us.’

Stanley thought it was a trap. An army of a thousand Ha warriors had assembled around the caravan. Stanley was frightened by how the warriors applauded Mionvu’s speech with too much enthusiasm, and noticed with alarm that they were armed with bows, arrows and spears — and fully prepared to use them. The next time he came to Africa, he vowed to himself, he would march through Mionvu’s village with one hundred men and punish the man who didn’t fear the New York
Herald
or the Star-spangled Banner.

‘Will the white man’, Mionvu concluded his speech, ‘have war or peace?’

Though Stanley’s reply matched Mionvu’s oratorical prowess — his words were a stirring and lengthy paraphrase of a speech he once heard General Sherman deliver to the chiefs of the Arapaho and Cheyenne Indian tribes on the North Platte in 1867 — it cost him an amazing
eighty-five doti to get out of the regal king’s territory alive.

The next village was Kahirigi. The chief was Mionvu’s brother. He wanted thirty doti and was persistent that there would be no negotiation. ‘I saw my fine array of bales being reduced fast,’ Stanley wrote. ‘Four more such demands would leave me cleaned out.’

Despite the king’s mandate, Stanley sent Bombay and Asmani to negotiate. Stanley stewed in his tent all afternoon, smoking his pipe and searching for a desperate solution to a desperate situation. There were five more chiefs between him and Ujiji. All lived within two hours of each other and would already know about the wealth of Stanley’s caravan when he passed. The cloth would certainly go. Arriving in Ujiji without any currency for trade would defeat the purpose — he would find Livingstone but would be unable to buy food or medicine, let alone pay his own way back to Tabora. Stanley considered going to war with the various tribes comprising the kingdom of Uhha, but ruled that out. He had come to the conclusion that prudence, not aggression, was the key to remaining alive in Africa. ‘How am I to reach Livingstone without being beggared?’ Stanley wondered.

Stanley called his guides into his tent. Unveiling his plan immediately, Stanley asked how to get past the next five chiefs without paying tribute. They told him it was impossible. However, they added hopefully, there was another guide in the boma who might know a way.

The guide’s name was Mguna. He was the slave of an Arab living in Tabora. When Mguna heard Stanley’s plan he didn’t reject it out of hand, but he made sure Stanley knew the odds of success were slim. ‘You must have complete control over your men,’ Mguna told Stanley. ‘And they have to do exactly as told.’ Failure would mean war and death.

Stanley agreed. For twelve doti, Mguna promised to show Stanley a back road out of town. The caravan would have to leave in the dead of night and observe total silence. Because they would be avoiding villages at all
costs, the caravan must be carrying enough food to last at least four days.

As soon as Mguna left, Stanley sent his men out to purchase four days’ worth of grain. They returned with six. All seemed to be going in Stanley’s favour. ‘I did not go to sleep at all last night,’ he wrote in his journal the next day. ‘A little after midnight, as soon as the moon was beginning to show itself, by gangs of four the men stole quietly out of the village. By 3 a.m. the entire expedition was outside the boma and not the slightest alarm had been made.’

As soon as the caravan was gathered, Stanley whistled softly for Mguna. The new guide appeared out of the shadows and stepped into the light of the moon, which had grown bright. Walking carefully, making sure the donkey and chickens and goats were quiet and the bundles didn’t snag on any low tree branches, the New York
Herald
expedition tramped out of the village through a burned-out section of flat ground. They travelled south, away from Ujiji until clear of the village, then turned due west and made a beeline for Livingstone. Their path was parallel to the main road, but four miles off it to avoid being seen. As the sun rose they stopped for a silent breakfast in a jungle clearing. Antelope were clearly visible and waiting to be shot, but Stanley didn’t dare risk a single sound. He sipped a cup of coffee and exulted that his escape seemed to have worked.

But as they waded across the swift, knee-deep Rusizi River, a woman who had joined the group to travel with her husband was suddenly overcome with fear. She let out a piercing shriek, as if bitten by a crocodile. Mguna motioned for Stanley to shut her up before the whole countryside knew they were there. ‘We would have hundreds of angry Wahha about us and probably a general massacre would ensue,’ Stanley wrote.

Stanley ordered the woman to be quiet, but several of the scared porters were already running off with their loads. Instead of silence, what Stanley got from the woman was an even louder brand of shriek. Like a siren,
the sound rose higher and higher. The woman’s husband became so enraged that he drew his sword and asked Stanley’s permission to cut off her head. Instead, Stanley placed his hand over her mouth. When she fought her way clear and began screaming again, Stanley whipped her across the shoulders ten times and had her gagged and bound.

The exhausted and scared Stanley waded ashore, regrouped his scattered caravan, and resumed his march. Twenty-four exhausting hours later, after being forced to slit the throats of their chickens and goats when Mguna mistakenly led them too close to a village in the middle of the night, the New York
Herald
expedition emerged from a bamboo jungle and found themselves safe. They cheered each other and knew the brotherhood of those who have endured near-death together. Stanley made another estimate of time and distance. They were forty-six miles from Ujiji. He thought they would make it in eighteen and a half hours. ‘Patience, my soul,’ he wrote that night. The caravan was camped in a thick forest, but a village had been spotted nearby, so no fires were lit or noises allowed. ‘A few hours more then the end of all this will be known!’

The world seemed brighter to Stanley. He noticed the smoothness of pebbles that day, the beauty of wild-flowers, a grove where wild fruit trees grew. His happiness grew even more when the group turned onto a smooth road and the pace increased. He thought back on all he had been through and it seemed simple in retrospect. ‘What cared we now for the difficulties we had encountered — for the rough and cruel forests, for the thorny thickets and hurtful grass, for the jangle of all savagedom, of which we had been the joyless audience. Tomorrow! Ay, the great day draws nigh and we may well laugh and sing while in this triumphant mood. We have been sorely tried, we have been angry with each other but we forget all these now, and there is no face but is radiant with the happiness we have all deserved.’

The men cheered Stanley as Ujiji drew near. He had taken them through a wilderness and boldly past thieving
sultans. Now they camped one last night in the village of Nyamtaga, just a short march from town. Beer was served and goats were roasted. Stanley was nervous about presenting himself to such an important ‘Englishman’ and laid out the clean set of clothes he’d saved for the occasion: a white safari uniform, a new plaid wrap for his helmet and polish for his boots. ‘Hyah Barak-Allah,’ the faithful shouted to him. ‘Onward, and the blessing of God be on you.’

When Stanley dressed in the morning he was pleased with his appearance, thinking that he looked good enough to parade down the streets of Bombay. The New York
Herald
caravan set forth with the great blow of a horn, on what it hoped would be the last hours of its mission. The path was rugged and steep, leading them to the top of a small mountain, but Stanley didn’t care. He was so taken with the idea of confirming that the white man in Ujiji was Livingstone that the miles flew past.

The view from the summit, however, took Stanley’s breath away. For the first time, Lake Tanganyika shone below him. It was like a silver sea, bordered by the most amazingly ominous mountains. Stanley couldn’t take his eyes off it, even as the caravan descended the mountain’s far side. It had been almost exactly two years since Bennett’s commission. The pressures and risks of marching across Africa to find Livingstone had been on his mind every day since. Somewhere down there, on the shore of that sparkling lake, lay Ujiji. To finally see the spot where the meeting would take place — and a lovely spot it was, a beautiful reward for all the toils and struggle — was like a dream come true.