by Tim Jeal
In late September 1879, when Stanley made his agreement with the five chiefs of Vivi, he acted as he thought morally right, and asked no more than that they `cede to us the right of locating ourselves in any part of their country, making roads etc. for the sum of about £115 a year'. As a one-off payment, he handed over fifty pieces of cloth, three boxes of gin, five military coats, five knives, five cloth waist belts and five ample loincloths of superior quality. He also threw in with the annual £115 rent, `a monthly royalty of £z worth of cloth', which he described as purchasing `the privilege of residence', plainly believing he was the chiefs' tenant, and that they had retained ownership of their land, even in places where he meant to build. Elsewhere he would refer to this payment as `a rental'.37 Nor did Stanley suddenly change his good practice. From the beginning of his time on the Congo to the end, he tried to look after the interests of the indigenous inhabitants. Even before his arrival, he had told Strauch that treaties had to be made `with tact & generosity & by exercising large forbearance ... Such privileges as they grant must be paid for.' Everything would depend upon the chiefs' feeling `that it is for their own interests to conform to what we wish'.38
On Vivi plateau, as the hard-working Wangwana `saluted the dawn of a new era with the inspiring sound of striking picks, ringing hoes ... and dull thudding of sledgehammers', Stanley believed that, by making it possible for missionaries and traders to come, he was working for the benefit of the local Africans and ultimately the whole region.39 He sometimes joined the Wangwana and worked with a sledgehammer, breaking up large rocks that could then be beaten into the earth as part of the foundations of the road leading out of the settlement towards Stanley Pool.
The image of Stanley as a hard and unrelenting man would owe something to a light-hearted incident at this time. Nsakala, a local sub-chief, who had been watching him work, cried out, `Oh that is the way to break rocks,' using the native term Bula Matari, a striker or breaker of rocks. `Aye fellows, that is a good name ...' Nsakala had a reputation as a humorist, but the name he had coined spontaneously spread from market to market and was soon `in general use' over a wide region. Stanley reported this fact, not without pride, in his book about the Congo, and his critics saw it as further evidence that he was not just a breaker of rocks but of men too - the ideal conquistador. His self-designed, and unintentionally comical `Stanley Cap' dates from this period, and with its tall crown, numerous ventilation holes, cloth `havelock' to shield the neck, and its military peak and leather band, it seems almost to have been intended to make its unsmiling, moustachioed wearer appear worthy of the name Bula Matari - in short, the ideal disguise for a sensitive and wounded man who wished to seem invulnerable.41
Wearing his `Stanley Cap' in 1885
One senses a frustrated homemaker in the attention the thirty-nineyear-old Stanley gave to every detail of Vivi's construction. Deter mined that the place should not remain bleak, he supervised the moving of z,ooo tons of alluvial soil up onto the rocky plateau to make gardens. He then planted them with mangos and orange trees and numerous vegetables. The first house he built at Vivi was a two-storey chalet with a veranda. This was for the station chief, Augustus Sparhawk. Other houses for European and African workers followed, as did storehouses and poultry sheds. Because it loomed high above the river, Stanley described Vivi as `our Acropolis'; this hyperbole does not conceal the delight he took when it was completed four months later.4' He reported to Colonel Strauch that all the houses were 'ornamented sufficiently to suit a modern taste'. The paths were raked, the `flower mounds, vegetable beds and grass plots' weeded, and all the trade goods for selling to the local Africans safely stored. These included muskets, cutlery, tableware, tin plates, tin trays, fish hooks, hoes, hatchets, fancy boxes, second-hand military caps and uniforms, lackey coats, straw hats, jack-in-the-box and monkey-trick toys, Tyrolese hats, velvet smoking caps, brassware, and umbrellas - all of which were soon on sale to those able to pay with ground nuts, palm oil, ivory, kola nuts and so forth.
But if laying out and stocking Vivi had been pleasurable, the job ahead was not.
It is going to be a tedious task ... and a protracted one to make a road fifty-two miles long [this was to Isangila, the next station, rather than to his final destination, Stanley Pool, 23 5 miles away] then to come back and transport a boat, which may be moved only a mile a day perhaps, then to come back, hauling the heavy waggon with us to transport another heavy launch and move on a mile a day again, then back for another heavy launch, and repeat the same operation for three boilers three times ... total 936 miles before we can embark for our second station.
To carry out this back-breaking work, Stanley only had '13o efficient working men', many of whom were needed for road-making; those dragging the 3.5-ton Royal scarcely weighed as much all together as the vessel.42 This nightmare of getting steamships onto the Upper Congo above the cataracts, and taking up all the materials for his next station too, was a crushing physical ordeal, made harder by the heat, the rains, and the prevalence of fatal diseases.
Though Henry cherished his labourers, he was said to be harsh to his white colleagues by some of them. His favourite Dane, Albert Christophersen, wrote home saying that Stanley sometimes refused to let gravely sick whites go home; and there was some truth in this. As officers in the Great War would one day have to do, Stanley had to decide in each case whether a man was genuinely sick, or simply afraid of dying. If truly sick:
I should not hesitate a moment to let them go ... Personally I do not think I am severe, that is a term which stands for mere firmness with some people. But it requires some firmness to manage such a motley following as I have ... When employer and employee are down with fever, someone must be more magnanimous ... The Zanzibaris are extremely contented, but I know they could be fired into desperate revolt if there was any severity.43
By October 1188o, a year after work had started on Vivi, four Europeans had died, the same number had gone home, one Wangwana had died, and a shocking twenty-five of the coastal Liberian Krumen were dead. These deaths and illnesses grieved Stanley, though he still tried to get the `funky Europeans' to be brave. The English storekeeper, John Kirkbright, was often ill and begged to go home. Henry implored him not to `blame Africa - she is cruel and wild and demands the best of man's parts to enjoy her, but once a man has conquered himself - Africa has as much loveliness as another continent. The fault lies in the man ...' Kirkbright stayed, but six months later he was dead.44 Even Martin Martinsen, one of the two hardworking Danes, succumbed that summer. Stanley abandoned all work for a day to nurse him. But he still died, `to the undoubted grief of everyone in camp'. Despite his sorrow, Stanley's general attitude remained stoical. `Death will overtake the strongest of us all some day, but in the meantime ... be firm and manly and leave Death to strike us when Fate ordains.'45
A steamer on the Upper Congo
Meanwhile, the struggle to blast away rocks and lay down a decent road surface went on at a rate of a hundred yards a day. Swinburne, who was part of the tight-knit group that Stanley always kept close to him, cut his leg badly with an adze while `encouraging our West Coast Natives into a little bit more life and animation'. The wound was soon oozing with tropical ulcers, and Anthony had to be sent to recuperate on Madeira. Another European was lucky to escape being crushed to death when one of the ship's three-ton boilers broke free from a wag- gon.46 The others whom, along with Swinburne, Stanley liked to keep near him were the Danish seaman, Albert, the Somali teenager, Dualla, the middle-aged Yao, Susi, whom Stanley had liked ever since meeting him with Livingstone, and two trans-Africa veterans, Wadi Rehani and Mabruki Ndogo.
The fact that Stanley preferred the company of his `Dark Companions' to that of most Europeans was deeply resented by the Belgian officers who came out to the Congo in the summer of 18 8 0.47 Of these first four arrivals, Lieutenant Louis Valcke proved hard-working and capable, but Lieutenant Carlos Branconnier typified for Stanley undesirable traits common to many Belgian officers:
a tendency to be brutal to Africans, and to feel above dirtying their hands and doing the exhausting, practical pioneering work required.48 This same disinclination to work in the torrid heat would lead Stanley to criticize many other Belgians sent out to him in future - most of them possessing `a fastidious stomach' and each requiring `a servant to wait on him, a boy to carry his rifle, his haversack, water-bottle & ammunition, three men to carry his portmanteau & trunks, two men to carry his tent, one to carry his cooking utensils, one man to carry his provisions, & one to carry his ammunition and utensils'.49 What Stanley really needed, he told Strauch, were more `black men and mechaniciens [engineers]', not officers with `their never ceasing demands for luxuries and medicine'.5°
Stanley and his men began to build their second station at Isangila on 18 March 188o, nine days after the arrival of an infuriating letter from Colonel Strauch, warning Stanley most urgently that the Italian born French naval officer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza might be about to open a viable route from the coast to Stanley Pool and the Upper Congo, avoiding the cataracts. In 11875, de Brazza had traced the Ogowe river to within 115 o miles of Stanley Pool, and was now on the Ogowe once again, possibly with French government backing, hoping to claim Stanley Pool for France and thus establish control over the Upper Congo before Stanley could do so. All that was needed, Strauch told Henry, was for de Brazza to reach the Pool ahead of him, and all would be lost. Since it was three years since he had first reached this Pool that bore his name, Stanley was appalled to be told that de Brazza was acting as if some kind of `race' were in progress. He wrote testily in his diary: `Unless there is some other object in view, it would be ridiculous in me to arrest the work here for the purpose of racing to Stanley Pool & saying I was there twice before de Brazza.' Stanley's belief that he ought to keep on with his road-building was unshaken, even when Strauch told him flatly: `We hope that in the event of his coming down the Almina, he will already find you settled at its junction with the Congo, and in the most favourable site for the establishment of a great station.'
It was horribly frustrating for Henry to find how little understanding Strauch and Leopold had of the distances involved and the logistical problems he faced already. And supposing he were to deplete his force, abandon the road, and the half-built Isangila Station, and rush to the Upper Congo in the hope of reaching the mouth of the Almina first - what good would it do? `I might secure a hundred sites on the north bank of the Congo but de Brazza, if he had any gumption could easily intrude himself between many of these sites ... The moment we retreated from a post for want of supplies it would be snapped up.' Stanley therefore saw no alternative, unless he received a direct order to the contrary, but to go on building the road and bringing up his steam launches after him." An order came, early in October, `to proceed to Stanley Pool and obtain concessions from the natives', but Stanley still continued his existing work.
On 7 November, he was in camp close to the new station already under construction at Isangila, having built three bridges, filled numerous gorges with rocks and earth, and completed about forty miles of road. One of his young servants, Lutete Kuna, burst into his tent as he sat reading after his Sunday breakfast. The excited youth handed him a page torn from a notebook, on which were written in pencil the words `Le Comte Savorgnan de Brazza, Enseigne de Vais- seau'. Unlike Livingstone, who hated the competition of other explorers, Stanley at once welcomed de Brazza as `a gallant fellow' who `deserves every credit for a brave feat of exploration'. He had been equally friendly and generous spirited on meeting Linant de Bellefonds in Buganda. De Brazza had emerged on the Congo opposite the mouth of the Kwa, and on descending to Stanley Pool had spent three weeks on the lake's northern shore. He travelled with a small escort of Gabonese, and Senegalese blacks from Dakar, who had been trained as sailors there by the French navy. All twenty-four were armed with Winchester repeaters. One of them, Sergeant Malamine, had been left at the Pool by de Brazza, in command of eight other sailors, with orders to set up a small post at Mfwa.5L What instructions he had given to his Senegalese sergeant, de Brazza kept to himself.
Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza
As the olive-skinned Italian-turned-Frenchman, in his tattered naval coat, described what he had done, Stanley was struck by `a kind of rapture that came and went [across his face] with wonderful rapidity'. Stanley's French was poor, as was de Brazza's English, yet enough came across to make Henry admire his rival. Two days later, after his vivacious visitor had left, he wrote: `Genius is often distinguished by some eccentricity. De Brazza's is for ragged clothes, & going about the country without working boots.' They parted in a friendly manner, with Stanley handing de Brazza a letter of commendation to the chief of Vivi Station, and lending him his riding ass, and the services of two Wangwana guides.s3
For Stanley, the next five months were taken up completing the station at Isangila and building another at Manyanga closer to the Pool, while simultaneously carrying on with the road and dragging the steamers Royal and En Avant ever closer to the point where they could be relaunched on the Congo. But on 27 February 118811, travelling between Isangila and Manyanga, Henry met two Baptist missionaries, W. Holman Bentley and a Mr Crudington, and heard some disturbing news from them. In early October 1188o, only a month before meeting Stanley, de Brazza had signed a treaty with the paramount chief, Makoko, on the northern shores of the Pool, and was now claiming that territory for France. Since de Brazza had told Henry that he had been sent to West Africa by the French branch of the AIA, not as `an agent of the French government', Stanley felt thoroughly disillusioned. Clearly Sergeant Malamine and his men, with their `magazine Winchester 115 shooters', had been left behind to support a territorial claim.
But what the two missionaries told Henry was not all bad. They had been ferried by the Senegalese sergeant to the south side of the Pool, where they had been met at Kinshasa by a man claiming to be chief over the whole region. His name was Ngaliema, Chief of Kintamo, and he had made sure that the Baptists and their French escort were met `by a furious multitude', making them fear for their lives until they all escaped in their canoes.14 Although Stanley knew it would be very hard to win over Ngaliema and other chiefs living to the south of the Pool, he at least knew that de Brazza had made no headway there. Stanley had one advantage - or thought he did. He had become Ngaliema's blood brother on his journey down the Congo in 11877. But before he could seek out his `brother', Stanley had a close encounter with a more formidable adversary.
During the first few days of May 118811, Henry fell ill. What at first seemed to be a mild fever forced him to bed on the 6th. By the 8th, he was suffering from an acute `haematuric' attack, his urine being the colour of port wine. This steady loss of blood made him progressively weaker, and though he took doses of quinine as large as thirty grains, the fever did not abate. As he shivered and sweated alternately, a terrible ache started in the very centre of his head. Between the 113th and the 119th he was unaware of his surroundings. On the zoth he regained consciousness, and asked for sixty grains of quinine in a glass of Madeira. This was brought by Dualla, who with Mabruki Ndogo was nursing him round the clock. Shortly afterwards he had a strong premonition that he was going to die and asked Mabruki `to call everybody up that I might bid them farewell. They lifted the tent walls and I saw my dear followers around. The whites nearest to me. What a joy it was to see Albert tall & straight before me.' Stanley asked him `to come near & look at me & keep his eyes fixed until I could finish what I had to say'. In a barely audible voice he gasped, `Farewell Zanzibaris, goodbye boys,' and then added a few words to favoured individuals. Afterwards, he sank back and just before losing consciousness again cried: `I am saved.' A week later, he had the strength to sit up in bed.
On r June, after remarking that he had been `at the very edge of the grave', he recalled a classic near-death experience: `I am at the entrance of a very lengthy tunnel, and a light as of a twinkling star is seen an immeasurable length away. There is a sensible increase in the glow - t
he twinkling ceases, it has become an incandescent globe. It grows larger & it advances ... the light grows blinding.' He had come that close. At the start of his recovery he asked Dualla and Mabruki to carry him out of his tent in a hammock. He looked up `at the great uplifted sky, so placid, starless, indifferently serene ... and from sheer weakness ... silently wept'. Only Dualla's and Mabruki's nursing, and their provision of beef tea, well-beaten eggs and an occasional thimbleful of fortified wine, had seen him through.55
Five days later, when he was still resting for most of the day, he received one of Colonel Strauch's most maddening letters. Leopold had received news of de Brazza's progress, and wanted Stanley to claim the entire Upper Congo for `the Association'. He asked him to build four new stations above the Pool, and then more between Stanley Falls and Nyangwe. As Stanley noted dryly, `Nyangwe is 11,300 miles above Stanley Pool. Not a few days journey.' Strauch was promising seventy more men, raising the total to zoz, sixty-six of whom would be returning to Zanzibar within a year. Stanley calculated that the four stations up to Stanley Falls would take z6o men three years to create. Yet Strauch was asking for a date by which he would be `sending goods via Vivi to Nyangwe'. But the coup de grace for Stanley was that Leopold had heard de Brazza was purchasing tusks: `I am therefore asked to collect as much ivory as I can.'s6
This communication depressed Henry for weeks. He knew that de Brazza had been given sufficient means by the French government to engage 500 local men and buy fifty canoes, enabling him to purchase and transport his ivory. Stanley wrote back telling Strauch that he would buy ivory at the Pool at once if provided with goods for purchasing tusks and enough men to carry them. When Stanley told Strauch of his fear that Leopold's whole enterprise might become commercial and monopolistic, the king's factotum replied soothingly, emphasizing `the philanthropic & international character of this enterprise', and that it was `not for anyone's exclusive profit'. The purpose was `to bring by degrees the savages of central Africa into the current of progress for the amelioration of their material and moral condition'.57