A Labyrinth of Kingdoms

by Steve Kemper

  Barth was beguiled by the daughter of a Tuareg chief, “one of the finest women that I saw in that country.” She noticed his admiration and half-joked that they should marry. Barth said he would gladly take her away, if only he had a camel strong enough to carry her: “her person rather inclined to corpulency, which is highly esteemed by the Tawarek.” He gave her a mirror, “which I was always accustomed to give to the most handsome woman in an encampment, the rest receiving nothing but needles.” Later in the journey this policy caused trouble in one camp when the women began vying for the award and Barth gave it to one of the competitors’ daughters.

  (His brief dalliance with the plump Tuareg beauty had a coda. In 1896 a Frenchman named Lieutenant Hourst started down the Niger from Timbuktu. Because the region’s people esteemed Barth’s memory, Hourst told everyone he was the explorer’s nephew, which often helped him out of sticky situations. At one point on the Niger Bend he was stalled by an old Tuareg chief. While waiting, Hourst learned that the pretty woman who had charmed Barth was still alive and living nearby. Hourst immediately asked to meet his “uncle’s” old crush, but she happened to be away. He sent warm greetings and a folding mirror “to the lady who might have been my aunt if she had not been so fat, or if Barth’s camels had been better able to carry heavy loads.” She turned out to be the sister of the recalcitrant chief, who was so pleased with Hourst’s flattery that he not only let him go but provided him with guides. “My dear ‘uncle’! my brave ‘uncle’! my providential ‘uncle’!” wrote Hourst, “—yet once again had you drawn a sharp thorn from the foot of your nephew when the happy thought occurred to you of relating your love affair with a daughter of the Kel es Suk.”)

  THE CARAVAN PROGRESSED slowly around the Niger’s lazy curve. The sheikh was using the trip to barnstorm, glad-handing every Tuareg chief and village chief along the route. He was also fond of sleeping late. Barth called it “sham traveling” and bit his tongue with frustration. “As if I was destined to spend my whole life in this region,” ran one typical entry, “we this day only moved on three miles.” But the slow pace did allow Barth to observe everything closely and to lay down the river’s course precisely. (According to Hourst, al-Bakkay traveled so slowly partly because he was defusing death threats against Barth along the way, though Barth never knew this.) To cover the 100 miles between Bamba and Gao, the ancient capital of the Songhai empire, took four weeks.

  Old texts called Gao “the most splendid city of Negroland,” with a circumference of six miles. Now it was a miserable dump, 300 huts surrounded by rubbish and swamp. The heat and humidity were staggering and unhealthy. Barth was eager to push on. This was the place where he and al-Bakkay had agreed to part.

  The explorer put his papers in order and wrote letters. He wanted to send off copies of his notes and the route from Timbuktu to Gao “in case of any mischance befalling myself.” The legs of his writing table had broken off, so he wrote with a board across his knees. “It is impossible for me,” he wrote in a letter to Lord Clarendon, “to praise in too strong terms the kindness hospitality and steadfast protection which the Sheikh El Bakay has bestowed upon me during my long stay in these quarters.” He urged Clarendon to take advantage of al-Bakkay’s preference for the British over the French by sending merchants soon. He praised the decision to send Vogel but added that it would be some time before they could meet, and he quashed the idea of joining Vogel in another expedition:

  … by my protracted stay in these countries, by constant exertion & want of proper food, but perhaps more than all by anxiety the greatest enemy of the African traveller I have been debilitated in such a degree, that I find it absolutely necessary to visit Europe before I shall be able to undertake something so eminently difficult. Indeed I must thank God if I reach home in safety, for my way is still a long one.

  The packet he gave al-Bakkay to send from Timbuktu included letters for the Foreign Office, the Royal Geographical Society, and many friends. It didn’t reach Europe until 1857, having spent more than two years in Ghadames.

  The lull before parting was bittersweet. Barth and his friends from Timbuktu had grown fond of each other. In the mornings, as he took the air outside his tent, they gathered around him for conversation. One morning they asked him to read aloud from his European books, for the sound of the languages. He read the Bible in Greek and some passages in English, and recited a poem in German—the latter a big hit because “the full heavy words of that language” reminded them of their own. Another day they asked him to put on his European clothing, so he dug out his black suit. They admired the fine cloth and the trousers but found the frock coat comical. In Central Africa, wrote Barth, they were right.

  As their time left together grew short, he and the sheikh continued their genial wide-ranging talks. They had been almost constant companions for nine-and-a-half months. Finally the day arrived when Barth was to cross the river and continue his journey home. His entry for July 9:

  This was the day when I had to separate from the person whom, among all the people with whom I had come in contact in the course of my long journey, I esteemed the most highly, and whom, in all but his dilatory habits and phlegmatic indifference, I had found a most excellent and trustworthy man. I had lived with him for so long a time in daily intercourse, and in the most turbulent circumstances, sharing all his perplexities and anxieties, that I could not but feel the parting very severely.

  Barth esteemed al-Bakkay, but couldn’t resist pointing out his flaws. The explorer sometimes judged the sheikh a timid procrastinator, but that seems unfair, considering the violent forces he had to balance. He risked his life by defying Ahmadu Ahmadu. He outmaneuvered not only the emir, but enemies in Timbuktu, including scheming members of his own family, while also dealing with constant threats from bellicose Tuaregs. He was also kind, generous, loyal, open-minded, and invigorating company. Because of him, Barth survived Timbuktu.

  When he reached the opposite bank of the Niger, Barth fired two shots in farewell, as al-Bakkay had requested. Then he turned and began jotting notes about the sandy downs of this new shore, and the paths that led away from the river toward the east.

  28

  Rumors and Consequences

  AFTER SEPARATING FROM AL-BAKKAY, BARTH QUICKENED THE PACE. No more leisurely mornings or layovers, no more short days. Barth roused his people early and pushed them to do at least 15 miles a day. One morning, to slow him down, they hid a camel behind some bushes and told him it was missing, but he found it and got everybody moving. Their first goal was Say, the port town where Barth had crossed the Niger more than year earlier.

  They stayed wet. If they weren’t crossing creeks and bogs, they were getting drenched by rainstorms. Barth’s fever and rheumatism kicked up, and he dosed himself with medicine. Their guide left them and his replacement didn’t show up. Barth, impatient, pushed on anyway. Because of the river’s loops and back channels, they sometimes got lost or hit deep impassable streams and had to backtrack. One day, disoriented in a maze of channels, they ran into a group of farmers who set them straight and also offered to share their meager meal—each of them carried a ball of pounded millet and some curdled milk. Barth gave them needles. They parted after reciting together the opening prayer of the Qur’an.

  Barth wrote down mile-by-mile descriptions of the river, noting places where navigation would be obstructed by rapids, narrows, or large rocks. As landmarks, he listed the names of villages, whether thriving or abandoned, and mapped his route. He was writing for the British merchants that he expected to follow him.

  Hippos and crocodiles were common, and sometimes frightened their animals. One day a blizzard of locusts flew into their faces, a sign of fertile regions ahead. Fields of corn and rice appeared. Villages became more frequent. More people meant more risk of thievery, so Barth began firing his gun at night in warning. But his group was also able to eat better, trading for grains, milk, and meat. “Nothing renders people in these countries so communicative,” he wrote
, “and, at the same time, allays their suspicions so much, as a little trading.”

  Everywhere they stopped, people visited, seeking presents or medicine or conversation with the foreigner. Barth was surprised that so many people knew all about his stay in Timbuktu and the events there. Occasionally one of al-Bakkay’s people entertained visitors by reading the satiric poem sent by the sheikh to Ahmadu Ahmadu.

  About 100 miles upriver from Say, Barth heard the Hausa salute and was offered one of his favorite foods, fura, a drink made of water mixed with millet flour and powdered sour cheese. These things, he wrote, signified Hausaland and “transported me once more into a region for which I had contracted a great predilection.”

  A few nights later they heard war drums close by, so they broke camp before dawn and continued toward Say. They reached the town on July 29, thirteen months since Barth first stood on the banks of the Niger. The governor was lame with rheumatism, so Barth gave him some medicine. In gratitude, the governor gave Barth a small piece of sugar, “a great treat to me, as I had long been deprived of this luxury.”

  He briefly considered continuing down the Niger to the sea. “But such an undertaking was entirely out of the question,” he wrote, “on account of the exhausted state of my means, the weak condition of my health, and the advanced stage of the rainy season, which made it absolutely necessary for me to reach Sokoto as soon as possible.” After three days in Say, he left the Niger and started overland.

  Though the route was familiar, the landscape had been transformed by rain. Landmarks had vanished behind lush vegetation. Barren plains had become fields of swaying millet. Insects were flourishing as well—fleas, hairy ants, and especially mosquitoes. A typical complaint from this part of the journey: “Owing to the number of [mosquitoes], repose was quite out of the question.”

  One aspect of the region remained unchanged—devastation caused by war. Barth passed villages thriving a year ago but now abandoned. The desolate scenes revived his anger about the region’s rulers, Sultan Khalilu of Gwandu and Sultan Aliyu of Sokoto, “both of whom were accelerating the ruin of their nation.”

  On August 9 at a village midway between Say and Gwandu, Barth confirmed a rumor heard from the governor of Say: Sheikh Umar of Bornu had been deposed by his brother, and the vizier Haj Beshir was dead. The news dismayed Barth but didn’t surprise him. The vizier’s greed and strong influence over Umar had made him many enemies in Bornu. ‘Abd erRahman, Umar’s martial brother, was first among them. He had once asked Barth for poison, with an obvious target.

  The coup had occurred the previous November. Barth later learned the details: Anger about the vizier’s high-handed ways was threatening to become violent, so Umar ordered a curfew and put the vizier in charge of enforcing it. The vizier’s men immediately rumbled with the supporters of ‘Abd erRahman. The next day Umar called together the entire court and appeared in his red robe, worn when issuing punishments. He blamed ‘Abd erRahman for inciting the previous night’s violence. ‘Abd erRahman insulted the vizier and accused his brother of having “the spirit of a sheep.” He stormed from the room and rode out of town with his followers.

  Umar and Haj Beshir pursued him. There was a skirmish. When it became clear that Umar’s forces were losing, Haj Beshir fled to Kukawa. As Umar was surrendering to ‘Abd erRahman, who agreed to let his brother live, Haj Beshir was gathering as many of his possessions as possible, no doubt including his favorite concubines. He bolted toward the Chari River, intending to cross and escape. But a Shuwa chief detained him at the river’s edge. In Kukawa a mob plundered his house. ‘Abd erRahman sent emissaries to Haj Beshir, promising on the Qur’an that if he returned he would be pardoned. At first the vizier refused, distrustful. But eventually hope, and perhaps the promise of comfort, won out. As soon as Haj Beshir set foot in Kukawa, ‘Abd erRahman had him seized and strangled with a bowstring.

  Aside from sadness about the death of his old friend, Barth worried what these developments meant for Vogel, the mission, and his own plans. If he couldn’t get home through Kukawa and the Tebu country, he would have to take the dangerous route through Aïr. The possibility made him shudder.

  OUTSIDE OF GWANDU a horseman recognized him with an exuberant “Marhaba!”—“Welcome!” The friendly greeting made Barth exceptionally happy. It was, he explained, “one of those incidents which, though simple and unimportant in their character, yet often serve to cheer the solitary traveler in foreign countries more than the most brilliant reception.” It was a foretaste of the homecoming he longed for.

  In Gwandu he ran into a man whom he had entrusted the previous year with a letter to be delivered in Sokoto. Asked if he had done so, the man pulled a small leather case from his hat and extracted a tattered paper. “Here is your letter!” he said. The envelop, with its Arabic instructions to forward the parcel to Tripoli, had been ruined by rain and river crossings. The recipient in Sokoto couldn’t read the English inside, so he returned the ragged document to the messenger. He had been wearing it in his hat as a charm ever since. In worse news, a fire had destroyed the precious store of books Barth had left here.

  Gwandu’s monkish Sultan Khalilu again refused to meet Barth. Though the explorer had given him many handsome presents on his first visit, and though he now desperately needed aid, the miserly sultan offered next to none. As before, the leader of Gwandu’s mafia tried to squeeze Barth, but this time he sharply refused, offering only a trivial present to be given on his way out of town.

  After four days he left for Sokoto, arriving on August 26. His old haunts were almost unrecognizable because the entire town was now “enveloped in one dense mass of vegetation.” His friends greeted him joyfully and made him comfortable. “While my Mohammedan and black friends thus behaved toward me in the kindest and most hospitable manner,” he wrote, “the way in which I felt myself treated by my friends in Europe was not at all encouraging, and little adapted to raise my failing spirits.”

  He had expected a sort of long-distance homecoming here—some supplies, certainly a thick packet of letters. He was astonished, and dejected, to find nothing at all for him, no words of concern or encouragement, nothing that acknowledged his efforts or even his existence. The only information about Europe came from a liberated female slave from Istanbul who told him that five Christians had come to Kukawa. This further perplexed him. Wasn’t he still the director of the expedition? Shouldn’t these Europeans have tried to get word and assistance to him? “I could only conclude from all this that something was wrong.”

  Spurred by an even greater sense of urgency, he stayed in Sokoto only three days before making the one-day journey to Wurno. Sultan Aliyu was there and welcomed him warmly. He knew all about Barth’s stay in Timbuktu, even the initial shabby treatment by Sidi Alawate. A generous man, Aliyu offered Barth bountiful dishes, so tempting after the poor rations of the previous weeks. But Barth had to turn down these rich foods because of dysentery, which wracked him for a week. As he was recuperating, the disease again “broke out with considerable violence,” completely draining his strength. He slowly recovered on a regimen of Dover’s powder (a mixture of ipecacuanha, opium, saltpeter, tartar, and licorice) and a diet of pounded rice mixed with curdled milk and mimosa seeds. He wasn’t able to get on a horse until September 22. Even then he remained weak.

  The disease had laid him up for nearly a month. He was eager to move on, but his companions also were ill and unfit for travel. He decided to wait until early October when the rainy season would be almost over. Meanwhile he and Sultan Aliyu often conversed. Barth found him cheerful, intelligent, and broadly curious, but also lazy, weak, and uninterested in protecting his subjects from war and depredation—his constant complaint about African rulers.

  On October 5 he began the 260-mile trip from Wurno to Kano. He was still feeble, “dragging myself along in the most desperate state of exhaustion.” In the evenings he sometimes collapsed with fatigue before his tent was up. His camels also were in bad shape. Throug
hout the trip from Timbuktu they often died and had to be replaced, unsuited for hard travel in the hot and humid rainy season. “The quantity of water that we had to sustain from above and below was not only destructive to animals,” wrote Barth, “but likewise to men, and I myself felt most cheerless, weak, and without appetite.” They traveled one section of the route at night to avoid thieves who expected them to leave in the morning. As they approached Kano, there were fields of corn, rice, cotton, and indigo, and many herds of cattle. He began to eat better and recovered some of his strength.

  After twelve days they reached the gates of Kano. Barth was frail and exhausted but keyed up. After the dashed expectations of Sokoto he was eager to collect the supplies, money, and, perhaps most important, the letters from home that he was certain must be waiting for him in this major center. It was October 17, 1854.

  NOTHING. Not a single line, nor any relief. “I was greatly disappointed,” he wrote, “in finding neither letters nor supplies, being entirely destitute of means, and having several debts to pay in this place—among others, the money due to my servants, to whom I had paid nothing during the whole journey from Kukawa to Timbuktu and back. I was scarcely able to explain how all this could have happened,” he continued, “having fully relied upon finding here every thing I wanted, together with satisfactory information with regard to the proceedings of Mr. Vogel and his companions, whose arrival in Kukawa I had as yet only accidently learned from a liberated slave in Sokoto.”

  Another staggering blow. No sign that people from home were thinking of him. No hint that the British government was concerned about him. No word that Vogel was looking for him to supply help. No confirmation that his scientific peers appreciated the reams of information he had been collecting and sending despite every imaginable hardship and obstacle. No encouragement to go on. These psychological stresses, piled on top of the dangers and deprivations of African travel, as well as his chronic physical ailments, would have crushed most people. Barth staggered but took action.