by Tim Jeal
On 27 June, Stanley was traumatized to be told by one of his teenagers, Majwara, that he had seen Uledi, of all people, steal some precious Sami Sami beads - an amount sufficient to purchase two days' provisions for the entire expedition. Yet this was the man who had saved thirteen lives at immense risk to himself and had never failed the expedition. When such serious crimes were detected, Stanley asked his captains what punishment they thought appropriate. Despite Uledi's exceptional services, they decided that he should be flogged. But when Uledi's cousin, Saywa, and another man each offered to receive half of Uledi's strokes, Henry was so affected that he merely reprimanded him.6o In Africa, unaccountable things happened even to the best. Only the day before, Frank had been uncharacteristically careless when piloting the Lady Alice through some rapids. The result had been a crunching collision with a rock and a large hole in the hull."
On 3 June, the Lady Alice, with Henry aboard, passed perilously close to a massive whirlpool because she was steering badly as a result of `the growing weight of water' in her hull. From midday, Stanley walked overland. Before leaving the river, he talked to Frank about the difficulties of the next stretch of water, and how he should cling to the bank and use hauling ropes. But with Uledi as his canoe's coxswain, Stanley was not worried about him.62 That afternoon, Henry was resting on the rocks above Zinga Point, looking upriver through his fieldglass. He knew that Frank and Uledi had started later than he and his land party but, even so, was surprised not to have seen them yet. Then to his horror, he saw `something long and dark, rolling and tumbling about in the fierce waves'. Through his glass he made out eight heads above water, and these same men `struggling to right her ... and raise themselves on the keel'. Finally, some of them paddled for dear life towards the bank before diving into the water and swimming ashore. Then the empty canoe swept by `with the speed of an arrow, over the Zinga Falls, into ... the soundless depths of whirlpools'."
`Bad news travels fast. I soon heard the names of the saved and those of the drowned. Among the latter was Frank Pocock, my servant my companion and good friend. Alas, my brave, honest, kindly natured, good Frank, thy many faithful services to me have only found thee a grave in the wild waters of the Congo.' At the head of his diary entry for 3 June, Stanley wrote: `A BLACK WOEFUL DAY!', but it was infinitely worse than that. `As I look on his empty tent and dejected servants, and recall to mind ... his extraordinary gentleness, his patient temper, his industry, his cheerfulness and tender love of me ... I feel myself utterly unable to express my feelings or describe the vastness of my loss.164 A week later Henry's depression had not lifted. `Ah Frank! You are happy my friend. Out of this dreadful mess. Out of this pit of misery in which I am plunged neck deep.' Frank's floating corpse was seen by a fisherman several miles downstream, but this man was too scared to retrieve the white man's half-naked body. There would be no other sighting of his corpse. Again, Stanley agonized over why the boat's strongest swimmer had been one of the three to die. He guessed he had hit his head as the boat went over."
Frank's death damaged the Wagwana's morale at a disastrous moment, `benumbing their faculties of feeling, of hope and of action'. From now on, Stanley noted `an apathetic sullenness and lack of feeling for themselves and their comrades'. When they fell ill, few requested medicine, or showed solicitude when others were sick. 'Disease, violent and painful deaths ... had finally deadened that lively fear of death which they had formerly shown.'66 Two days later, eighty of his people `refused to work, declaring that they would prefer living and hoeing for the heathen than follow this White man longer, for his wages were but the wages of death'. In the past Frank had instilled discipline in men not in Stanley's immediate vicinity, but now Wangwana out of his sight constantly played up. It seemed that the expedition was collapsing after travelling 7,000 miles, and with only a few hundred to go. `I have publicly expressed a desire to die by a quick sharp death, which I think just now would be a mercy to what I endure daily ... Slavery is abhorrent to my very soul ... but these men make me regard myself every day, as only a grade higher than a miserable slave driver. 117
On zo June they had still not passed Zinga Falls, and though the earlier mutiny had collapsed, a new one replaced it, this time by thirtyone men led by Wadi Safeni, whose courage and common sense on Bumbireh had probably saved the lives of the Lady Alice's crew on their first visit. Because some people were eating rations without working for them, Stanley feared that the expedition might never reach the sea. He implored Safeni to `hold a palaver with these men [and] work with might and main to clear these Falls and so get away to somewhere where we can get food, or face dying among these savage people from starvation'. Safeni's answer was to lead the thirty-one away into the bush, though they were without trade goods and guns and knew not a word of the local language. Henry sent messengers after them, with warnings that their attempt to reach the sea independently would end in their death. Next day they all returned in the evening and Henry did not reprove them."
He realized that the only reliable way to reach the coast would be to take ten of his best men in a single boat, leaving the remaining 11110 members of the expedition behind. But he knew he was not `capable of it ... far better to die, as we have lived, together, and share fate, even the most fearful. Yet my people anger me, oh so much, and yet I pity and love them ... One man, never remarkable for bravery, fidelity, or anything else save his size, told me flatly today: "That they were tired."'69 Stanley, with his grey hair and emaciated face was tired too - utterly exhausted. Yet despite the pain and weakness of his physical body, Henry pulsed with almost mystical self-belief: `For my real self lay darkly encased, & was ever too haughty & soaring for such miserable environments as the body that encumbered it daily.'7°
And the deaths did not stop. A day after the mutineers returned, the largest of the two new canoes was lost over Zinga Falls, with Salaam Allah, the carpenter who had made her, on board. He was never seen again. At last, in mid-July, Stanley managed to engage zoo `stalwart natives' to carry his six canoes and the Lady Alice past the falls, overland.'' Every day, a few of his men committed thefts in nearby villages, and on zz July, for the first time, Henry left behind a man who had been apprehended. Had he gone on purchasing the release of every man caught stealing, his men would have felt they could rob the locals with impunity. A few days later another man was caught stealing - just one fowl - but he too was left behind to face possible execution by his captors. Although many of the Wangwana wished to release him by force, Stanley refused, pointing out that the purchase of food would then be impossible. At this time Stanley was only managing to buy a few pounds of ground nuts each day - far too few `for the preservation of working men's strength'.71
On 25 July, Stanley announced to his men that they were `not far from the sea'. This news had the effect of sending Wadi Safeni out of his mind. The wretched man embraced Henry's feet, crying out:
`We are home! We are home! We shall no more be tormented by empty stomachs and accursed savages! I am about to run all the way to the sea to tell your brothers you are coming!' ... I replied to him soothingly; but he, seizing his parrot and placing it on his shoulder, plunged into the woods. After a few seconds' reflection, it occurred to me that the man was a lunatic and I sent three men to bring him back ... But after four hours' search, they returned unsuccessful, and I never saw the sage Safeni again.73
Five days later, Stanley and his men, `hollow-eyed, sallow and gaunt', arrived at Isangila Cataract, where they learned to their horror that five more cataracts lay ahead. Knowing it would be madness to travel any further by water, Stanley ordered his men to drag the Lady Alice and the remaining canoes up onto the rocks above the cataract `to bleach and rot to dust'. Then he started on the overland march to Boma, where he had just heard that several white men lived, a mere five or six days' march away.74
As his enfeebled column filed across the rocky terrace of Isangila, nearly forty men were sick with dysentery, ulcers and scurvy. The path was strewn with splinters of
quartz that made crossing them a torment with bare feet. Three mothers in the party were nursing infants under two months old. Henry was deeply concerned, as these women struggled on, like everyone else, across an arid landscape of bleached grass and scattered stones. They kept moving in shorter and shorter marches, until on 3 August they arrived in an utterly exhausted state at Nsanda, `a miserable little village of about 5o souls'. His people fanned out over the country looking for anything edible: baobab fruits, calabashes, roots. A few pounds of potatoes cost an outrageous four yards of cloth, and the price of ground nuts was as exorbitant. The tribes living nearby all asked for `dashes', by which they meant rum. But having no rum, and the wrong cloth and beads, Stanley could buy very little, and many of his party remained close to starvation.71 To end his people's suffering as quickly as possible, he sent ahead four of his most dependable men with an open letter to the Europeans at Boma, begging them to send food. The chosen messengers were the now forgiven Uledi, the ever loyal Kacheche, Muini Pembe, a captain, and Robert Feruzi, who had been educated at the Universities' Mission in Zanzibar and spoke good English .71
Village of Nsanda August 4th 1877
To any gentleman who speaks English at Emboma
Dr Sir,
I have arrived at this place from Zanzibar with i 15 souls, men women & children. We are now in a state of imminent starvation. We can purchase nothing from the natives, for they laugh at our kinds of cloth, beads and wire. There are no provisions in the country that may be purchased except on market days, and starving people cannot afford to wait for these market days. I therefore have made bold to despatch ... this letter craving relief from you. I do not know you but I am told that there is an Englishman at Emboma, and as you are a Christian, and a gentleman, I beg you not to disregard my request. The boy, Robert will be better able to describe our true condition than I can tell you in this letter. We are in a state of the greatest distress, but if your supplies arrive in time, I may be able to reach Emboma in four days. I want 300 cloths, each 4 yards long of such quality as you trade with, which is very different from that we have, but better than all would be io or 15 man loads of rice, or grain to fill their pinched bellies immediately ... The supplies must arrive within two days, or I may have a fearful time of it among the dying. Of course I hold myself responsible for any expense you may incur in this business ... For myself if you have such little luxuries, as tea, coffee, sugar and biscuits by you, such as one man can easily carry, I beg on my own behalf that you will send a small supply, and add to the great debt of gratitude due to you upon the arrival of the supplies for my people. Until that time I beg you to believe me
Yours sincerely
Henry M.Stanley
Cmdg Anglo American Expedition for Exploration of Africa.
P.S. You may not know me by name - I therefore add that I am the person who discovered Livingstone in 11871. H.M.S.
Although Stanley's situation was desperate, this was a remarkably modest letter for a man to have written at the end of perhaps the greatest journey of all time, since it was, in effect, his first announcement to the world that he had traced the Congo from the heart of Africa to within reach of the sea. Yet he made no mention of making history. Instead, he added that final insecure postscript. Henry copied this letter in English, French and Spanish and handed the different versions to his messengers."
For the next two days, he and the rest of his party `dragged their weary limbs nearer to the expected relief', and on the 7th, soon after setting up camp at the end of their day's march, they were rewarded with the sight of Uledi and Kacheche `tearing through the grass, holding up a letter to announce to us that they had been successful'. A procession of carriers followed, bearing the goods that Stanley had asked for and, in addition, rum, fish, bread, butter, sardines, jam, peaches, grapes and several bottles of pale ale. Stanley then wrote an emotional letter of thanks to his benefactors, A. da Motta Veiga and J. W. Harrison, of the Liverpool trading firm Hatton & Cookson, in which he told them he would never forget his people's overjoyed expressions at the moment they realized they were saved. Henry admitted in his diary: `I had to rush to my tent to hide my tears that would flow despite all my attempts at composure. 171
When Stanley met two white men and, later, several others at the Portuguese trading post of Boma, he stared at their pale faces, embarrassed to be fascinated by them. This, he realized, was how Africans had viewed his and Frank's `weird pallor'. In fact the merchants' faces made him shiver.
The pale colour, after so long gazing on rich black and richer bronze, had something of an unaccountable ghastliness. I could not divest myself of the feeling that they must be sick ... Yet there was something very self-possessed about the carriage of these white men ... the calm blue-grey eyes rather awed me, and the immaculate purity of their clothes dazzled me.79
It was 9 August 11877, and they had taken four and a half months to struggle past the cataracts from Stanley Pool to Boma. At last journey's end was in sight - the sea was a mere fifty miles away. Stanley's party was taken there by steamer the very next day and put ashore at Kabinda further up the coast, where for ten days they were housed and fed by employees of Hatton & Cookson.8o
Although overwhelmed with relief that the long ordeal was over, Henry was horrified by the sudden collapse of his followers. The abrupt ending of the daily physical grind `plunged them into a state of torpid brooding from which it was difficult to arouse them'. Five died, possibly through being properly fed for the first time in years.B' Although about sixty were suffering from scurvy, fever and dysentery, Henry suspected it was the dread of never again seeing their homes that was killing them."
On 117 August, he wrote to Edward Levy-Lawson and to James Gordon Bennett Jr, telling them: `You now have a debt of gratitude to pay, in fact you are bound as men of honour ... These poor people must see their homes & relatives again by your means ... If you allow them to work their way across the continent themselves - ignorant of the country ... not one of them will ever see Zanzibar again, and the whole world will condemn you.' Stanley begged Lawson to use his influence with the British government to persuade them
to despatch a small gunboat to take these people to Zanzibar ... If the Govt will not assist you, you will either have to charter a vessel, or abandon them to their own endeavours which would be I fear stamped by civilized people as a thing you ought not to have done ... These men's wages must be paid - which will amount altogether to something near £2,5oo. I have already drawn on the salary you allowed me £2,328 - and I have given a year freely ... You must give me authority to draw on you for £i,25o at once ... I cannot leave my people until the affair is settled, [and] will not ...83
In due course the money was paid by Lawson and Bennett, and the British Admiralty sent a gunboat.84 Stanley's continuing anxiety about his followers contrasts very favourably with Livingstone's cavalier treatment of the 11114 Africans, who had made possible his great transAfrica journey between 11853 and 11856.85
The fate of his followers was not Henry's only worry, as he told Lawson: `I have heard that I have been attacked in the press - in fact I have seen three articles condemning me - and none, or nothing in my favour. I suppose I am very unpopular for the style of exploring that I have adopted.' But, as Stanley knew very well, his determination to control the direction in which he had travelled - by limiting desertions and by using force if need be - had enabled him to trace the Congo to the sea, whereas Cameron had followed an ArabSwahili trade route to the south-west - his failure being due to his inability to shift for himself.86 Livingstone had failed on the Lualaba for the very same reason.
As early as September 1 1877 - when Stanley arrived at Loanda in a Portuguese gunboat - he would have been wise to have written for publication a defence of his attack on the islanders of Bumbireh - which he realized, even now, had caused fury among humanitarians. But like his men, he felt drained and utterly listless. `Frequently, at meals, I found myself subsiding into sleep ... wine had no charm for me;
conversation fatigued me.' As always after a journey, he found that with `nothing to struggle against, the vast resolve, which sustained me through a long and difficult enterprise, died away', leaving behind `a peculiar melancholy'.' Nor had he stopped grieving. `I doubt whether anybody would believe how much I grieved after Frank's loss. No death ever struck me with grief like this. I wished to die.'88
Although Henry managed to write from Kabinda to his publisher, Edward Marston, as well as to Levy-Lawson, and to send from there a long despatch to his two commissioning newspapers, he did not at first send anything to Alice Pike." But en route to Loanda, he had met the explorer Serpa Pinto, and in late August he handed him a letter addressed to Alice. Having explained that the lady was his `pequena', or girlfriend, he begged Pinto to see that his missive began its journey to New York on the earliest possible mail ship.9° Stanley suspected that if any letters from Alice existed anywhere, they would be at Zanzibar, and that he would probably have to wait till he got there to read them. Yet however much mail might be waiting for him at Zanzibar, it was agony to have none to read now, having lived for three years without a single message. `I do not know whether anybody entertains any friendly recollection of me, or how they are disposed towards me ... My hopes of appreciation ought to be great ... but...I am in doubt.'9'
Having kept his spoilt fiancee waiting for a year longer than had been agreed between them in New York, he had every reason to fear that she might not have waited for him. But despite terrible anxieties, Stanley declined a passage to Lisbon in a Portuguese warship when it was offered. He had decided to accompany the Wangwana to Zanzibar and would never waver. When the British Admiralty at last allocated a warship, HMS Industry, to take everyone to East Africa, Stanley admitted to Edward King: `It surprises me that anybody should do me a kindness for I have heard that ... I have been called "invader", "fighting reporter", civiliser of Africans with explosive shells".'92