Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone (7 page)

There was a simplicity to exploring Africa during those early days, a purity. Livingstone was an ambitious young man whose energy was boundless. Life’s burdens slipped away as he left the vestiges of civilization behind. He wasn’t famous yet, didn’t carry England’s expectations on his slumped shoulders. But now, twenty-five years later, both those things had happened, conspiring just as surely as the Nile Duel to lead him back to Africa one last time.

Livingstone knew that if he failed to find the Source (and, curiously, even if he succeeded) the expedition would be his last. He was not only old chronologically, but Africa had whittled at his constitution for years. The sense that the British Government and the Royal Geographical Society were always looking over his shoulder, even in the middle of Africa, added an additional undercurrent of daily stress. And then to wrangle with balking, thieving porters and surly soldiers whose language he barely understood — well, sometimes it all became too overwhelming for Livingstone. ‘The sepoys had now made themselves such an utter nuisance that I felt I must take the upper hand with them,’ he had written on 18 June, upon learning that the sepoys had left a sick porter named Abraham to die along the trail. ‘So I called them up this morning and asked them if they knew the punishment they had incurred for disobeying orders, and attempting to tamper with the Nassick boys to turn them back … Their limbs are becoming contracted from sheer idleness. While all the other men are well and getting stronger, they alone are disreputably slovenly and useless looking. Their filthy habits are to be reformed, and if found at their habit or sitting down or sleeping for hours on the march, or without their muskets and pouches, they are to be flogged.’

Ten days later Livingstone gave up all hope that the sepoys would change, and dismissed them outright. He sent them back to the coast on 28 June. Livingstone and his caravan were on a highland plain at the time, surrounded by stands of pine trees and sparse grassland.
Soon after, his path descended in elevation once again, as he approached the dense greenery surrounding Lake Nyassa. On 8 August 1866, he reached the lake. Its shape was long and slender, just like its northern cousin, Lake Tanganyika. Nyassa was three hundred miles long and sixty miles wide — almost identical in size to Tanganyika, as well.

Livingstone had a proprietary connection to Nyassa, having discovered and partially charted it during his Zambezi expedition. After now slogging four months up the Rovuma delta’s morass to get there, the understated explorer was understandably relieved to stand on its rocky shores. The wind sweeping the lake produced small waves. He walked into Nyassa and let the cool waters drench him. ‘It felt like coming to an old home to see Nyassa again and dash in the rollers of its delicious waters — I was quite exhilarated by the roar of the inland sea.’

Reaching Nyassa was also a vital first step in narrowing the Source search. Livingstone believed Victoria and Tanganyika were two links in the chain that led to the Nile. He hoped that Nyassa was another link — he just needed to find the connection. Years later, when the geographical feature known as the Great Rift Valley, stretching from the Mediterranean to Southern Africa, became understood, parts of Livingstone’s theory would be proven true.

Thus, exploring Lake Nyassa for signs of the Source was a vital aspect of Livingstone’s search. His plan was to cross the lake or travel around it to the north in an anti-clockwise motion. However, hearing reports of a hostile tribe around the lake’s northern shores, and frustrated in his attempt to hire a boat to ferry him and his men across, Livingstone angled due south. He would travel round the lake clockwise. Random observations continued to fill his journals: ‘A lion killed a woman early yesterday morning, and ate most of her undisturbed’; ‘The agricultural class does not seem to be a servile one: all cultivate and the work is esteemed’; ‘A man had been taken off by a crocodile last night. He had been drinking beer and went
down to the water to cool himself, where he lay down and the brute seized him.’

As always, his symbiotic relations with the Arabs and the slave trade drew the most pointed commentary. ‘The fear which the English have inspired in the Arab slave traders is rather inconvenient. All flee from me as if I had the plague, and I cannot in consequence transmit letters to the coast.’

After 150 miles along that southerly course, Livingstone reached the southernmost tip of Lake Nyassa. He crossed the crocodile-infested Shire River as it flowed south from Nyassa into the Zambezi. He began travelling north again, up Nyassa’s western shores. The terrain was wooded, sometimes covered with clear brooks and limestone hills, and sometimes swampy from a dense black loam.

Life had been uneventful since the sepoys left — or as uneventful as any journey of African exploration could be — but trouble came Livingstone’s way on 26 September. He encountered an Arab man fleeing towards him, alone. Arabs generally travelled in large groups, for the lone Arab traveller was likely to be killed by Africans as revenge for the slave trade. The lone traveller was a strange sight.

Without being asked, the terrified Arab warned Livingstone’s caravan that the country he’d just come from was thick with the Mazitu. They’d killed the other forty-four members of his party. He was the only survivor.

Livingstone was knowledgeable about the Mazitu. They were fond of surprise attacks on any tribe that lay in their path. Male victims were hacked to pieces. Women and children were kept alive for use as slaves and concubines. The very name Mazitu, meaning ‘those who come from nowhere’ in Bantu, gave the marauders a sinister, terrifying countenance.

Livingstone’s men were understandably terrified. The most vocal about the danger was Livingstone’s most abrasive porter, a native of the Comoros Islands. Musa, as he was known, was singularly surly and lazy, fond of
stealing and stirring up trouble. He had worked as a sailor for Livingstone during the Zambezi expedition, earning a reputation for lying and sloth. Livingstone, however, had a forgiving, if slightly oblivious nature. He not only chose to forget his poor experience with Musa when he rehired him in Zanzibar, but he also hired eight other companions of Musa’s from the Johannas. Musa and the Johanna men repaid Livingstone’s largesse during the six months of travelling up the Rovuma and along Lake Nyassa by stealing from his stores whenever they thought he wasn’t looking. So Livingstone had ample reason to want them gone. And with Musa equally eager to leave, the time seemed right for them to sever their relationship. ‘Musa and all the Johanna men now declared that they would go no further,’ Livingstone wrote. ‘Musa said, “No good country that. I want to go back to Johanna to see my father and mother and son.”’

But Livingstone needed Musa and the Johanna men. The hard truth about exploration in Africa was the reliance on porters. No explorer could extend his journey beyond the reach of his supplies, so porters served as a human supply line for an expedition. Everything a European explorer needed to sustain his expedition could be found on the backs of the African men he hired: the beads and cloth that would be traded for food in local villages, gunpowder, medicine, even dinner plates and silverware. Livingstone was painfully aware of his dependence upon the porters. Despite his daily battle to disregard personnel issues, the fact was that he couldn’t go it alone.

Livingstone took Musa along as he approached a local tribal leader to confirm the rumours. The chief explained that the disturbance was not caused by the Mazitu, but by a tribe known as the Manganja, who were tired of the Arabs bringing guns and ammunition into their lands and stealing their people. ‘There are no Mazitu near where you are going,’ the chief assured Livingstone and Musa. Musa’s look of terror was so great that his eyes seemed to leap from his skull. ‘I no can believe that man,’ he yelped, refusing to calm down.

Though Livingstone himself could not have known whether the chief’s information was accurate, he continued to assure Musa that the path was safe. There would be no change of course. Then, acting as if the issue were settled, although for Musa it was not, Livingstone ordered the entire caravan — Musa and the Johannas included — to pick up their loads and push forward. He was eager to travel north towards Lake Tanganyika.

In the coming months, all of Britain would mourn Livingstone’s decision.

AS THE DOOR
to the Turkish dungeon swung closed behind Henry Morton Stanley, it was clear that the journey begun on the South Platte River five months earlier had veered out of the swashbuckling realm of adventure, and into a horrific display of stupidity, miscalculation and imminent personal danger. The overcrowded cell reeked of stale urine and unwashed bodies. As Stanley’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he was swarmed by other prisoners. He was powerless to stop the Turks as they stuck their hands in his pants and fondled him roughly, and did the same to William Harlow Cook and young Lewis Noe, a former Union Navy shipmate of Stanley’s who had accompanied them since New York. ‘You can imagine our feelings when surrounded by these people, who were too ready to induct us into their sodomitical practices,’ Stanley wrote. ‘I really pitied the poor boy Lewis, as he was mentally marked by these ruffians as their night’s victim.’

The problem began nine days earlier, as the three were
travelling on horseback through a remote region of the Pontic Mountains. They were attempting to cross the Anatolian Plateau, into the Caucasus, but were down to their last few dollars and their horses were breaking down from exhaustion. Stanley, who never let his morals get in the way of his ambitions, attempted to waylay a Turkish traveller in order to steal his two horses. To lure the middle-aged man, named Achmet, off the main road, Stanley used sign language and broken Turkish to intimate that the boyish Noe was available for sexual favours. When Achmet dismounted and reached over to fondle Noe’s genitals, Stanley deftly plucked Achmet’s sabre from its scabbard and hit the Turk over the head with the handle. Achmet was saved by his fez, which deadened the blow. Though dazed, he quickly drew his knife and squared off against Stanley. The American was no match for the Turk, and within seconds Achmet had Stanley on his back. Stanley’s hands had been deeply cut and were dripping blood as he desperately tried to push the blade of Achmet’s knife away from his heart.

Fortunately for Stanley, Noe had the presence of mind to club the Turk over the head with the butt of a rifle. The man toppled off Stanley, staggered to his feet, then fled on foot. Just then Cook, who had been lagging behind Stanley and Noe, caught up and learned what was happening. The three quickly tried to flee the scene, with Stanley and Noe riding their new mounts. But after less than an hour of travel, they glimpsed a vengeful Achmet coming after them on horseback — this time accompanied by a group of friends. After a gruelling four-hour chase through thick forest and over steep mountain trails, the three Americans were caught on a plateau. They were beaten, tied up and led to a small village, where they were tied by the neck to posts in a courtyard.

Over the next nine days, Stanley and his companions were beaten with fists and with the handle of a sword, pelted with mud and rocks by women and children, and had bullets fired just over their heads from point blank range. Worst of all, three Turks untied the seventeen-year-old
Noe one night, and took turns sodomizing him. They held a knife to his throat, promising he would be killed the instant he cried for help. Stanley and William Harlow Cook were just a few feet away, but could do nothing for their young friend. Stanley wrote later that the Turks ‘had no pity or remorse, but one by one they committed their diabolical crime which is, I think, or I hope, unknown to civilized nations, especially Christian America’.

Eventually, Achmet and his friends brought their captives into the nearby city of Rashakeni to be arraigned before a magistrate. There, the Americans were clapped in irons and banished to the Karahisar prison. It was in the foetid dungeon of Karahisar that Stanley and his companions were crudely molested on 27 September, and where Stanley suspected the inmates were making plans to rape Noe later that night.

Just when things seemed their worst, the three were saved by an unlikely summons to the prison commandant’s office. He had heard there were Americans in his prison, and he wanted to size up their character in person. Filthy and bruised, their clothes torn and their bodies racked with fatigue and fear, they were marched from the dungeon and paraded before the commandant. Sensing that keeping the three contrite Americans in his prison any longer might be politically sensitive, the commandant bound them over to the region’s governor, who released them on their own recognizance. The US minister in Turkey, fifty-one-year-old Edward Jay Morris, was alerted. ‘We are all in excellent spirits,’ Stanley wrote on 30 September, ‘Lewis especially.’

With Morris’s assistance, the Americans were cleared of all charges. On 14 November, they left Turkey by ship. By 14 January 1867, after one stop-off in Wales, Stanley arrived in New York aboard the
Denmark
. He had split amicably with Cook back in Turkey, and parted ways on a less friendly note with the traumatized Noe in New York. And though Noe blamed Stanley for his rape — and would continue to do so for the rest of his life — he saw a charismatic combination of strengths and weaknesses in
Stanley’s personality. ‘Stanley is a daring adventurer,’ Noe said after returning home, ‘bold and unscrupulous, but intelligent and specious. His manners were those of a quiet man.’