by Tim Jeal
Zanzibar's European residents had seen other expeditions in preparation, and swiftly realized that Stanley meant business. So how did he manage to purchase as much as he did with such a modest budget? Having worked as a clerk in a store, he knew about the fixing of prices and easily acquainted himself with all the varieties of cloth and beads his expedition would need to carry. As he made his purchases, nothing was too small to merit his attention: the screws needed to hold together his portable boats (ten pounds of two-inch and one-inch), his dozen bottles of Dr Collis Browne's Chlorodyne stomach medicine, his hand vice, two gimlets, hinges for a boat's rudder, and four ring bolts to secure it.8
Athough Stanley claimed to have been `totally ignorant of the interior' before setting out, he did his research carefully.' He read Speke's What led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (11864) and Baker's The Albert N'yanza (11866), and his copious notes inside the covers of Burton's book show how useful he found that author's work.'° Stanley would owe Burton and Speke a further debt when he hired Bombay and Mabruki, their principal `captains', as his principal captains, and four other `faithfuls' from their expeditions as the core of his own enterprise.
Zanzibar's residents - European, Indian, African and Arab - knew perfectly well that Stanley was mounting a significant expedition. But he told no one except Consul Webb that he meant to find Livingstone. Instead, Henry pretended that he meant to explore the upper reaches of an unimportant river, the Rufiji. This was what he told Dr John Kirk, the British political agent and acting consul, when Francis Webb took him to meet him at the British Residency on 9 January. Dr Kirk, a highly intelligent Scot, was a medical doctor and had been Livingstone's botanist and MO during the Zambezi Expedition. When Stanley trotted out his Rufiji story, Kirk did not laugh in his face but did the next best thing: `he lifted his eyelids perceptibly, disclosing the full circle of the eyes ... I would call it a broad stare'. Stanley had been rumbled, and knew it."
Kirk was invariably described as `the companion of Dr Livingstone', and the two men regularly corresponded. The acting consul was also responsible for sending him supplies. In return, Livingstone confided his geographical plans. Henry knew that he would be mad not to pick this perceptive man's brains before he left the island, and so he went back to see Kirk ten days later. Henry claimed to have introduced Livingstone into the conversation with such subtlety that the acting consul did not realize he was being pumped.12 In reality, Stanley came clean with Kirk, who responded well to this new openness, and the journalist in turn found himself `attracted by the apparent [sic] frank manner & bonhomie of Kirk ... Who could resist it?' In reply to a direct question from Stanley about where Livingstone was, Kirk replied with admirable straightforwardness:
Dr Livingstone is on the western side of Lake Tanganyika. He expects shortly to come to Ujiji [on Lake Tanganyika], which is about four months travel from here. I have sent him some fresh supplies & boatmen, and they are on the other side - that is on the coast at Bagamoyo, about z5 miles from here preparing to start for Ujiji.
Then the acting consul horrified his visitor with a warning:
Dr Livingstone is pretty well known to me, and I know that with all his modesty, he ... appreciates more than any other man what he has done. If he hears of Baker in the neighbourhood he will go further away ... If Burton & Speke were at Ujiji he would take himself to the west side of the Lake. He hates Burton like poison. He is a man of strong likings & dislikes. He is vain, and easily annoyed. Any slights - no one would take them so much to heart as he himself.
This was an indiscreet but truthful portrait of Livingstone, and Kirk could have said far worse. At the end of the disastrous Zambezi Expedition, Kirk had described his boss as `about as ungrateful and slippery a mortal as I ever came in contact with', and `one of those sanguine enthusiasts wrapped up in their own schemes whose reason and better judgment is blinded by headstrong passion'.I" Kirk would have recalled Livingstone's fury with various journalists over their coverage of the Zambezi Expedition. So why would he want to have anything to do with an American newspaperman? Kirk's off-putting words had been the truth as he saw it. And since he believed that two of his three caravans sent to Livingstone between the end of 1869 and early November 1870 had arrived (though only one of them actually had), he felt no misgivings about discouraging Stanley from trying to find the man.14 In any case, he knew that Stanley would try to find Livingstone anyway, and therefore, before the journalist left, handed him a packet of letters for the great explorer.I"
Dr John Kirk
Stanley was badly shaken by the diplomat's words. What if Livingstone really did dash away into the bush the moment he heard that a white man was approaching? If there was no interview, Bennett might sack him and refuse to honour the drafts, secured through Consul Webb's pledges. If so, Henry would feel obliged to repay Webb at least part of his losses from his own modest savings of just over £55o.16 From the start, then, Stanley was under immense pressure to succeed.
One way to have lightened the load on his own shoulders would have been to take an experienced second in command - such as a European elephant hunter. But before Stanley had even reached Zanzibar, he had engaged a Scottish sailor who had been first mate on the vessel in which he had made the crossing from Bombay. William L. Farquhar had had no African experience, but was employed because he could navigate and was a fair mathematician. When it became apparent in Zanzibar that he was a heavy drinker, Stanley did not pay him off. His own days as a merchant seaman had left him sympathetic towards all mariners. The essential quality he looked for in white expedition members was obedience. Originality and initiative, he did not desire. In fact, any gentleman or military officer likely to question his authority would have been anathema. The other white man chosen was a Cockney called John W. Shaw, the third mate of an American merchantman, who had recently been unjustly accused of mutinous conduct. Stanley hired him because he was skilful at sewing canvas, and would be able to make tents as well as bales and sacks for trade goods. Yet Shaw, like Farquhar, was a drinker with a liking for African prostitutes, without regard for the risk of contracting venereal disease.'
John Shaw and William Farquhar
The employee whom Stanley would describe as `the most important member of the expedition apart from myself' was Selim Heshmy. Stanley had taken on this clever teenage Syrian Christian as his personal servant and translator when passing through Jerusalem in January 187o, and he had been with him ever since in Palestine, Iraq, Russia, Persia and India. He now expected Selim, a Swahili speaker, to communicate with the Arabs in the interior." Maintaining discipline would become a priority for Henry for psychological and practical reasons. Bombay, the captain of Stanley's twenty-strong escort of armed askari or soldiers, had been punched in the mouth by Captain Speke and had broken teeth to prove it. Henry predicted that Bombay would not have `the audacity to stand up for a boxing match' with him because he would learn respect from the outset.'9 Yet Henry was genuinely prepared `to admit any black man ... to [his] friendship'." He thought the Swahili-speaking Zanzibari blacks, the Wangwana - most of them free men and a few the slaves of local merchants - `far more intelligent than I could ever have believed ...'.-` Stanley spent a month on Zanzibar before sailing for Bagamoyo on the mainland, the starting point for his journey.
While at Bagamoyo hiring porters, Stanley discovered a state of affairs that would lay the foundations for a disastrous feud with Dr Kirk. Henry found that the supplies bought with £500 - half the sum voted to Livingstone by Parliament in May r 870 - were still sitting in a hut in the town in February 18711, three months after being despatched from Zanzibar, simply because the seven-man escort engaged by the British diplomat had not troubled to leave for the interior. Five of these seven porters were slaves, a strange choice of carriers for the arch anti slavery propagandist Dr Livingstone.22 Stanley was amazed that Kirk had not himself crossed to Bagamoyo with the porters to see them on their way. In fact, Kirk only came a week after Stanley's arrival, and no
t primarily to see whether Livingstone's supplies were by now en route, but to shoot big game with the officers of a British warship. By the time Kirk returned to Bagamoyo from his shooting party, he found that the caravan had left two days earlier, its leaders having got wind of the fact that he was coming." Stanley was appalled that supplies for Dr Livingstone should be treated by Dr Kirk as such a low priority.
Stanley led the vanguard of his caravan out of Bagamoyo on zr March 1871.24 Four other columns had already gone ahead, one commanded by William Farquhar. In his book Henry said he himself had twentyeight pagazi or carriers with him, but the true figure was ten, with nine askari or soldiers under Mbarak Bombay, who was also in charge of seventeen donkeys. The pagazi were carrying, along with trade goods, his portable boat for use on Lake Tanganyika.~5 Selim, the translator, and John Shaw, the sailor, were in charge of the donkey and cart, and brought up the rear. Stanley rode ahead of his column on a magnificent Arab stallion - the gift of an American living in Zanzibar. Behind Henry's horse trotted his dog, Omar, bought as a black-and-tan puppy in Bombay, to guard his tent.26
Stanley felt wildly exhilarated. Just five years after the shambles of his Turkish expedition, here he was in Africa on his way to death or glory. Like a monarch, he referred to his followers as `my people'. They called him 'Bwana Mkuba' or `big master', and defined his various roles as `the vanguard, the reporter, the thinker, and leader of the Expedition'. 17 Stanley listed what he described as the expedition's `defence weapons': `one double-barrel breech-loading gun; one American Winchester rifle, or "sixteen-shooter"; one Henry rifle, or "sixteen shooter"; two Starr's breech-loaders; one Jocelyn breech loader, one elephant rifle ... two breech-loading revolvers, twenty-four muskets (flint-locks), six single-barrelled pistols, one battle-axe, two swords, two daggers ... one boar-spear, two American axes 4 lbs each, twenty-four hatchets, and twenty-four butcher-knives'.28 Probably this fire power was overstated, like so much else about his retinue. However, four modern repeating rifles between three white men was not unusual or excessive: hunters like Selous and Gordon Cumming invariably carried more.
After several blasts on a kudu horn, Henry's caravan started on the road into the interior, `a mere footpath, leading over a sandy soil of surprising fertility'. Out in front, the American flag sewn by Mrs Webb, the US consul's wife, was held aloft.29 At this moment of departure, Stanley must have wondered, and not for the first time after Kirk's warning, what manner of man he was gambling his life upon finding in the heart of Africa.
EIGHT
`I Cannot Die!'
In 118711, David Livingstone was fifty-eight but looked ten years older, as he told his favourite daughter, Agnes: `with cheeks fallen in ... the mouth almost toothless ... my smile is that of a hippopotamus ... a dreadful old fogy'.' The missionary explorer had always had a mordant sense of humour, which on the Zambezi he had frequently vented on his white travelling companions. Kirk had been right about his high opinion of his own merits as an explorer, and about his caustic criticism of other people, particularly travellers. Indeed, Livingstone detested Burton and Baker, partly as rivals but partly because he thought them unsympathetic towards Africans. He himself, by contrast, was usually patient and considerate to blacks, and had a passionate hatred of the slave trade. A sincerely religious man, he was indifferent to worldly wealth; and although it gratified him to have been awarded a gold medal by the Royal Geographical Society, the actual achievement of a great object delighted him more than any plaudits.
As Stanley set out to `find' him, David Livingstone was almost a forgotten man to the public at large. The fame he had achieved as a result of his epoch-making trans-Africa journey of 11853-6 had been eroded by the costly failure of his government-sponsored expedition to the Zambezi. In 11867, when he had briefly been supposed dead, the coverage in the British press had been derisorily brief. During his last visit to England Livingstone had felt insulted by the coolness of the foreign secretary, Lord John Russell, and he had thought his lordship's offer of £5oo towards his next trip outrageously mean. Although he had been given the honorary rank of consul, he had been told by Russell, with a bluntness he deeply resented, that this post carried no salary and that he could expect no pension.' Only when Sir Roderick Murchison threatened to shame the government by appealing to the public for money did the Cabinet authorize a grant of £r,ooo.3 Had Stanley known how low Livingstone's reputation stood among Britain's rulers, he might have felt less sanguine about his own journalistic aim. Yet perhaps even in that case he would have predicted that to pluck a neglected and needy man from the wilds of Africa, and make him famous all over again, would actually make a far better story than finding a popular and well-supplied explorer who needed nothing and was not bothered by having seen no white face for five years.
Livingstone had been a child factory worker in a cotton mill near Glasgow, and had lived with his family of six in a single room in a factory tenement. Yet in 118411, this amazing ex-factory boy sailed for South Africa, having been ordained as a Congregationalist minister, and having put himself through medical school on his earnings as a cotton spinner and qualified as a doctor. Thereafter, Livingstone spent ten frustrating years in Botswana as a medical missionary, making but one convert, who lapsed - a fact unknown to the public at large until the publication of my biography in 11973. His missionary father-in-law had spent a lifetime converting twenty or so people, but Livingstone saw no point in doing likewise. Since tribal and Christian institutions were irreconcilably different, he decided that no large-scale Christian progress would be possible until tribalism had been weakened by widespread European trade and settlement. Livingstone understood Africans and admired many aspects of their communal existence, and yet he felt obliged to try to change their entire way of life, and their societies, in order, as he saw it, to save their souls.
Opening up Africa to `trade and the Gospel' and ending the slave trade through exposing it became his twin objectives. `The slave trade must be suppressed as the first great step to any mission - that baffles every good effort.'4 But Livingstone had actually gone back to Africa in March 1 1866 because urged by Murchison of the RGS to settle the dispute raging between Speke and Burton about the true location of the source of the Nile. Livingstone hoped that if he found the Nile's source his outstanding achievement would lend weight to his attempts to convince politicians and businessmen that `legitimate' European trade with African chiefs would give them a lucrative market for their goods, removing the need for the chiefs to make money to buy western goods by selling their own people.
So, in 118711, did Livingstone need to be found and aided by anyone? By July 11868 - after two years of travelling - Livingstone's original fifty-nine followers had dwindled to just four, through desertions, dismissals and deaths. The popular image of Livingstone's followers as being a Sunday school on the move could not be further from the truth. Sixteen-year-old Chuma, one of his `faithfuls' (who had been liberated from a slave column by Livingstone), smoked marijuana whenever he could get it, and had sex with prostitutes or with absent men's wives. On one occasion Livingstone fired his pistol at Chuma because he would not march with the rest. Fortunately for Chuma, and for his master's reputation, the bullet missed. Gardner (another so-called faithful), like Chuma, regularly captured women and held them against their will. Simon (also a `faithful') actually murdered two people in Manyema and sold others to slave traders. All Livingstone's followers stole from him; and Susi, whom he trusted more than the rest, never reported these thefts.' His deserters had left Livingstone with so few trade goods and supplies that from as early as May 1867 he had been obliged to travel with Arab-Swahili ivory and slave caravans far more often than he had been able to travel alone.
Livingstone could endure his humiliating dependence on men he considered evil-doers largely because he made a distinction between Arab slavery as an institution - the treatment and possession of domestic slaves - and the cruel process by which Africans were torn from their homes. The slaves' journey
by land and sea was appallingly cruel, but upon arrival in Arabia they were usually treated better than were many British factory workers.
Being reduced to four followers by the middle of 11868, Livingstone knew he had no hope of carrying enough trade goods to pay chiefs for the right of passage through their territory. Yet for two months, with just these four followers, he did briefly leave the sustaining caravan of his friend Muhammad Bogharib, and on 118 July 118 6 8 arrived at Lake Bangweulu, in what is now north-eastern Zambia. This lake, with its surrounding marshes, he would soon establish was the source of the mighty, northward-flowing Lualaba River, which he now strongly suspected flowed on to become the Nile. A year later, in July 118 69, once more travelling with Bogharib, Livingstone left Ujiji and crossed Lake Tanganyika to Manyema, intending to trace the Lualaba northwards from the town of Nyangwe, and thereby solve the Nile mystery once and for all. As Stanley began his journey into the interior, in late March 118711, he was ignorant of Livingstone's plan, which made a meeting between them extremely unlikely. Nothing more had been heard of Livingstone since he left Ujiji.
As Stanley, resplendent in solar topee and white flannels, rode out of Bagamoyo on his thoroughbred stallion, between hedges of mimosa, his men shared his buoyant mood.