The Best Adventure and Exploration Stories Ever Told

by Stephen Brennan

  We lunched under a tree, and then arranged for another beat. There was a long, wide valley, or rather a slight depression in the ground—for it was only three or four feet below the general level—in which the grass grew tall, as the soil was quite wet. It was the scene of Percival’s adventure with the lion that chased him. Hill and I stationed ourselves on one side of this valley or depression, toward the upper end; Pease took Kermit to the opposite side; and we waited, our horses some distance behind us. The beaters were put in at the lower end, formed a line across the valley, and beat slowly toward us, making a great noise.

  They were still some distance away when Hill saw three lions, which had slunk stealthily off ahead of them through the grass. I have called the grass tall, but this was only by comparison with the short grass of the dry plains. In the depression or valley it was some three feet high. In such grass a lion, which is marvellously adept at hiding, can easily conceal itself, not merely when lying down, but when advancing at a crouching gait. If it stands erect, however, it can be seen.

  There were two lions near us, one directly in our front, a hundred and ten yards off. Some seconds passed before Hill could make me realize that the dim yellow smear in the yellow-brown grass was a lion; and then I found such difficulty in getting a bead on him that I overshot. However, the bullet must have passed very close—indeed, I think it just grazed him—for he jumped up and faced us, growling savagely. Then, his head lowered, he threw his tail straight into the air and began to charge. The first few steps he took at a trot, and before he could start into a gallop I put the soft-nosed Winchester bullet in between the neck and shoulder. Down he went with a roar; the wound was fatal, but I was taking no chances, and I put two more bullets in him. Then we walked toward where Hill had already seen another lion—the lioness, as it proved. Again he had some difficulty in making me see her; but he succeeded and I walked toward her through the long grass, repressing the zeal of my two gun-bearers, who were stanch, but who showed a tendency to walk a little ahead of me on each side, instead of a little behind. I walked toward her because I could not kneel to shoot in grass so tall; and when shooting off-hand I like to be fairly close, so as to be sure that my bullets go in the right place. At sixty yards I could make her out clearly, snarling at me as she faced me; and I shot her full in the chest. She at once performed a series of extraordinary antics, tumbling about on her head, just as if she were throwing somersaults, first to one side and then to the other. I fired again, but managed to shoot between the somersaults, so to speak, and missed her. The shot seemed to bring her to herself, and away she tore; but instead of charging us she charged the line of beaters. She was dying fast, however, and in her weakness failed to catch any one; and she sank down into the long grass. Hill and I advanced to look her up, our rifles at full cock, and the gun-bearers close behind. It is ticklish work to follow a wounded lion in tall grass, and we walked carefully, every sense on the alert. We passed Heller, who had been with the beaters. He spoke to us with an amused smile. His only weapon was a pair of field-glasses, but he always took things as they came, with entire coolness, and to be close to a wounded lioness when she charged merely interested him. A beater came running up and pointed toward where he had seen her, and we walked toward the place. At thirty yards’ distance Hill pointed, and, eagerly peering, I made out the form of the lioness showing indistinctly through the grass. She was half crouching, half sitting, her head bent down; but she still had strength to do mischief. She saw us, but before she could turn I sent a bullet through her shoulders; down she went, and was dead when we walked up. A cub had been seen, and another full-grown lion, but they had slunk off and we got neither.

  This was a full-grown, but young, lioness of average size; her cubs must have been several months old. We took her entire to camp to weigh; she weighed two hundred and eighty-three pounds. The first lion, which we had difficulty in finding, as there were no identifying marks in the plain of tall grass, was a good-sized male, weighing about four hundred pounds, but not yet full-grown; although he was probably the father of the cubs.

  We were a long way from camp, and, after beating in vain for the other lion, we started back; it was after nightfall before we saw the camp-fires. It was two hours later before the porters appeared, bearing on poles the skin of the dead lion, and the lioness entire. The moon was nearly full, and it was interesting to see them come swinging down the trail in the bright silver light, chanting in deep tones, over and over again, a line or phrase that sounded like:

  “Zou-zou-boule ma ja guntai; zou-zou-boule ma ja guntai.”

  Occasionally they would interrupt it by the repetition in unison, at short intervals, of a guttural ejaculation, sounding like “huzlem.” They marched into camp, then up and down the lines, before the rows of small fires; then, accompanied by all the rest of the porters, they paraded up to the big fire where I was standing. Here they stopped and ended the ceremony by a minute or two’s vigorous dancing amid singing and wild shouting. The firelight gleamed and flickered across the grim dead beasts and the shining eyes and black features of the excited savages, while all around the moon flooded the landscape with her white light.

  STANLEY’S LAST GREAT EXPEDITION

  HON. J. T. HEADLEY

  Stanley, after he had found Livingstone, naturally thought much of the latter’s explorations. Africa had become to him an absorbing subject, till he began to imbibe the spirit of Livingstone. This was natural, for he had won fame there, and why should he not win still greater laurels in the same field? This feeling was much increased after the death of the great explorer, with his work unfinished, and he longed to complete it. True, Cameron was on the ground to accomplish this very object, but Stanley knew the difficulties he would have to contend with without a boat of his own. The matter was talked over a good deal, and finally the proprietors of the New York Herald and London Telegraph determined to send him out. The vast lake region, embracing some six degrees of longitude and extending from the equator to fifteen degrees south latitude, had become a region of the greatest interest to explorers. On this vast water-shed lived a mighty population, and these lakes, with the rivers running into and out of them, must furnish the roads to commerce and be the means by which Africa would be lifted out of its barbarism into the light of civilization.

  The large lakes Nyassa and Tanganika had been more or less explored, but the one possessing the greatest interest—the Victoria Nyanza, on account of the general impression that it was the head of the Nile—was almost wholly unknown. The persistence with which the Nile had mocked all the efforts to find its source, had imparted a mystery to it and caused efforts to be made to unlock the secret, apparently wholly disproportioned to its value or real importance. This lake, therefore, was to be Stanley’s first objective point. Livingstone, Speke and Burton, and others had seen it—he would sail round it in a boat which he would take with him. This he had made in sections, so that it could be carried the nearly one thousand miles through the jungles of Africa to its destination.

  Everything being completed he started on his route, and in the latter part of 1874 found himself once more at Zanzibar. Here, in organizing his expedition, he discovered that the builder had made his boat, which he had christened the Lady Alice, a great deal heavier than he had ordered; but he luckily found a man in Zanzibar who was able to reduce its weight so that it could be transported by the carriers. It is not necessary to go into a description of how he organized the new expedition, nor of his journey along his old route to Unyanyembe. His force consisted in all of a little over three hundred men, and he took with him this time several powerful dogs. The interest of the expedition begins when he struck off from the regular route of the caravans going west, and entered an entirely new country and encountered a new race of people. Instead of moving directly westward, he turned off to the north, and at length reached the western frontier of Ugogo, on the last day of the year 1874. The country at this point stretched before him in one vast plain, which some of the na
tives said extended clear to Nyanza. He found that his course led him along the extremity of Whumba, which he was glad to know, as he thought his march would now be unmolested. Two days’ march brought them to the borders of Usandawa, a country abounding in elephants. Here he turned to the north-west and entered Ukimbu or Uyonzi on its eastern extremity. The guides he had hired in Ugogo to take him as far as Iramba here deserted him. Hiring fresh ones, he continued two days in the same direction, when these deserted him also, and Stanley found himself one morning on the edge of a vast wilderness with out a guide. The day before, the guides had told him that three day’s march would bring him to Urimi. Relying on the truth of this statement, he had purchased only two days’ provisions. Thinking, therefore, that they would be there by evening of the next day, he thought little of the desertion and moved off with confidence. But the next morning, the track, which was narrow and indistinct at the best, became so inextricably mixed up with the paths made by elephants and rhinoceros, that they were wholly at loss what course to take. Halting, Stanley sent out men to seek the lost path, but they returned unable to find it. They then, of course, had nothing left to do but to march by compass, which they did.

  As might be expected, it brought them, after a few hours’ march, into a dense jungle of acacias and euphorbias, through which they could make their way only by crawling, scrambling and cutting the entangling vines. Now pushing aside an obstructing branch—now cutting a narrow lane through the matted mass, and now taking advantage of a slight opening, this little band of three hundred struggled painfully forward toward what they thought was open country, and an African village with plenty of provisions.

  In this protracted struggle the third night overtook them in the wilderness, and there they pitched their lonely, starving camp. To make it more gloomy, one of the men died and was buried; his shallow grave seeming to be a sad foreboding of what awaited them in the future. The want of provisions now began to tell terribly on the men, but there was nothing to do but go forward, trusting to some outbreak to this apparently interminable wilderness. But human endurance has its limit, and although Stanley kept his little force marching all day, they made but fourteen miles. It was a continual jungle, with not a drop of water on the route. The poor carriers, hungry and thirsty, sunk under their loads and lagged behind the main force for many miles, until it became a straggling, weary, despondent crowd, moving without order and without care through the wilderness. The strong endeavored to help the weak, and did relieve them of their burdens and encourage them to hold on, so that most of them were able to reach the camp at night. But in despite of all effort five sick, despairing men, strayed from the path, which was only a blind trail made by those in advance. After the camp for the night was pitched, Stanley sent back scouts to find them, who explored the woods for a mile each side of the track they had made, but only one man was found, and he full a mile from the trail and dead. The other four had wandered off beyond reach and were never heard of more. This was getting to be fearful marching—five men in one day was a death roll that could not be kept up long, and Stanley began to cast about anxiously to determine what step he should next take. But there was but one course left open to him, to attempt to retrace his steps was certain death by famine, to advance could not be worse, while it might bring relief, so push on was the order, and they did push on weary, thirsty, starving, and on the fifth day came to a little village recently established, and which consisted of only four huts, occupied by four men with their wives and children. These had scarcely provisions enough to keep themselves, and hence could give nothing to Stanley’s starving men. It was useless to attempt further marching without food, for the men staggered into camp exhausted, and would rather die there than attempt to move again.

  Stanley’s experience had taught him how far he could urge on these African carriers and soldiers, and he saw they had now become desperate and would not budge another inch until they had something to eat. He, therefore, ordered a halt, and selecting twenty of his strongest men, sent them off in search of food. They were to press on to a village called Suna, about thirty miles distant, of which the natives told him, and where they said food was in abundance. As soon as they had disappeared in the forest, Stanley took his gun and strolled out in search of game. But, filled as the country seemed with it, he could find nothing to shoot. One of his men, however, came across a lion’s den, in which were two cubs, which he brought to Stanley. The latter skinned them and took them back to camp. As he entered it, the pinched and worn faces of his faithful men, as they sat hungry and despairing, moved him so deeply that he would have wept, but for fear of adding to their despondency. The two cubs would go but a little way toward feeding some two hundred and twenty men, if cooked as ordinary meat, so he resolved to make a soup of them, which would go much farther. But the question was where to get a kettle large enough to make a soup for such a large body of men. Luckily, he bethought himself of a sheet-iron trunk which he had among his baggage, and which was watertight. He quickly dumped out of it its contents, and filling it with water, set it over a fire which he had ordered to be made. He then broke open his medical stores, and taking out five pounds of Scotch oatmeal and three one-pound tins of revalenta Arabica, he made with it and the two young lions a huge trunk full of gruel, that would give even two hundred and twenty men a good bowl apiece. He said it was a rare sight to see those hungry, famished men gather around that Torquay dress-trunk and pile on the fuel, and in every way assist to make the contents boil, while with greedy eyes, with gourds in their hands, full of water, they stood ready to pour it in the moment it threatened to boil over and waste the precious contents. But he adds, “it was a rarer sight still to watch the famished wretches, as, with these same gourds full of the precious broth, they drank it down as only starving men swallow food. The weak and sick got a larger portion, and another tin of oatmeal being opened for their supper and breakfast, they waited patiently the return of those who had gone in quest of food.”

  Stanley’s position now became painfully trying. He was five days’ march from where he could obtain food, if he attempted to go back, which, in the present condition of his men, they could never make, and if any survived, it would be on the terrible condition of the living eating the dead.

  The only hope lay in reaching supplies in advance. But what is those twenty strong men he had sent on to find them never returned, having been ambushed and killed on the way, or what if they, at the end of several days, returned and reported nothing but an unbroken wilderness and impassable jungle or swamps in front, and themselves famished, ready to die? These were questions that Stanley anxiously put to himself and dared not contemplate the answer. The hours of painful anxiety and suspense, the maddening thoughts and wild possibilities that fire the brain and oppress the heart in such crises as these cannot be imagined, they can be known only by him who suffers the pangs they inflict. This is a portion of the history of the expedition that Stanley can never write, though it is written on his heart in lines that will never be effaced.

  The empty trunk lay on one side, and the night came down and the stars burned bright and tranquilly above, and all was silent in the wide solitude as Stanley sat and listened for the return of his men. But they came not, and the morning broke and the sun rode once more the tropical heavens in his splendor, but no musket shot from the forest told of the returning scouts. The weary hours wore on and the emaciated men lay around in silent suffering. To Stanley those hours seemed days. Night again darkened the forest and still no sign of the returning party. Would they ever return, was the terrible question Stanley was perpetually putting to himself, and if not, what desperate movement should be attempt? The third morning broke as calm and peaceful as the rest; he was beginning to despair, when, suddenly, a musket shot broke over the forest, and then another and another, sending sudden life and activity throughout the despairing camp. The men, as they emerged into view laden with food, were greeted with a loud shout, and the hungry wretches fell on the provisions they
brought like ravening wolves. The report of abundance ahead so excited the men that they forgot their feebleness and clamored to be led on that very afternoon. Stanley was quite willing to get away from the jungle, filled with such painful association, and cheerfully ordered the march, but before they could get away two men breathed their last in the camp and were left to sleep alone in the wilderness.

  That night they encamped at the base of a rocky hill, from which stretched away a broad plain. The hill—lifting itself into the clear air—the open plain seemed like civilization compared with the gloomy jungle in which they had been starving for the last two days, and where they had left two of their number, and they awoke next morning cheerful and refreshed. Starting off with the prospect of abundant provisions ahead, they made a steady march of twenty miles and reached the district of Suna in Urimi.

  Stanley was surprised, on entering the rude village, to see a new type of African life. Men and women of great beauty and fine physical proportions met his astonished sight. They stood before him in all their naked beauty, unabashed; the women bearing children alone wearing a covering of goat skins, designed evidently as a protection against external injury, and not caused by any notions of modesty. Their fine appearance seemed to indicate a greater mental development than any other tribes which they had met. Whether this were so or not, it would be difficult to tell, for they were the most suspicious, reserved people Stanley had ever met, being greatly disinclined to barter provisions, of which they had more than they wanted, for cloth and beads, of which they apparently had none. They had no chief, but seemed to be governed in their actions by the old men. With these Stanley therefore treated for permission to pass through their land. It required great tact to secure this, and still more to obtain the required food. Stanley bore this silent hostility patiently, for though he could have taken all he wanted by force, he wished to avoid all violence. While lingering here, two more of his exhausted company gave out and died, while his sick list swelled up to thirty. Among the latter was Edward Pocoke, who, with his brother, Stanley had engaged in England to accompany him as attendants. This compelled him to halt for four days, but finding that the hostile feeling of the natives increased the longer he stayed, he determined, dangerous as it was to the sick, especially to Pocoke, to leave. Dysentery and diarrhea was prevailing to an alarming extent, and rest was especially necessary for these, if they hoped to recover; but he was afraid matters would become dangerously complicated if he remained, and he turned his soldiers into carriers and slung the sick into hammocks. Encouraging them with the prospect of plenty and comfort ahead, he gave the order to march, and they passed out and entered upon a clear, open and well cultivated country. Reaching a village at ten o’clock they halted, and here young Pocoke breathed his last “to the great grief of all.” In speaking of the sad event that cast a gloom over the camp, Stanley says: “We had finished the four hundredth mile of our march from the sea and had reached the base of the water-shed, where the trickling streams and infant waters began to flow Nileward, when this noble young man died.” They buried him at night under a tree, with the stars shining down on the shallow-made grave-Stanley reading the burial service of the Church of England over the body. Far from home and friends in that distant, lonely land he sleeps to-day, a simple wooden cross marking his burial place. Stanley sent the following letter home to his father, describing his sickness and death: