by Tim Jeal
I shook hands with all, and asked which was Emin Pasha [recalled Stanley]. Then one rather small, slight figure, wearing glasses, arrested my attention by saying in excellent English, `I owe you a thousand thanks, Mr Stanley; I really do not know how to express my thanks to you.' ... At the door of the tent we sat, and a wax candle threw light upon the scene. I expected to see a tall thin military figure, in faded Egyptian uniform, but instead of it I saw a small spare figure in a well-kept fez and a clean suit of snowy cotton drilling, well-ironed and of perfect fit. A dark grizzled beard bordered a face of Magyar cast, though a pair of spectacles lent it, somewhat an Italian or Spanish appearance. There was not a trace on it of ill-health or anxiety.'S6
Emin described this meeting with Stanley as `a moment I shall never forget'.57 But before arriving at Stanley's camp, he had written: `My hopes are not rose-coloured, but my resolution is taken: go I will not!' He was referring to a letter that Stanley had written on 118 April offering to escort him and his officials back to Egypt. By now, Emin knew from Jephson how ill-provided and exhausted Stanley's Advance Column was, and this had dashed his hopes that the newcomer might play an important part in the power politics of the region and thus enable him to stay in Equatoria as he really wished to do. Thirty-one boxes of ammunition and the tattered remnants of Stanley's column were not going to help Emin restore his line of communication to Zanzibar through hostile Bunyoro. Yet Emin had no intention of letting Stanley see, at this early stage, either his disappointment, or what he truly desired. At their first meeting, Stanley invited Emin, Casati and Jeph son into his tent and produced five pints of champagne. Soon, despite his lack of `rose-coloured' hopes, Emin was enthralled by Stanley's account of his misfortunes in the unexplored primeval forest extending from Ibwiri as far as the Congo. `The hours sped by like a dream till past ten,' Emin confided to his diary."
Stanley meets Emin Pasha
From the beginning, there was mutual respect between the two men, but this did not stop Emin being secretive and disingenuous from the day of their first meeting. Casati thought Emin's pride prevented him being honest with Stanley. `To confess his own powerlessness, and censure his own errors, was repugnant to his proud mind.'S9 Stanley appreciated Emin's courtesy, his unconventionality, his interest in science, and the neatness of his journals.6o Emin's modest height of five feet seven inches and his being only a year older than Stanley were also things they had in common. Henry knew that Emin was a German, and realized that his Turkish name, his marriage to an Abyssinian, and his conversion to Islam made him most unusual; but he had no idea that Emin, like himself, had turned his back on his native land because he had felt rejected by his fellow countrymen.
At their first proper discussion on 3o April, Emin appeared to believe that Stanley's only objective was to persuade him to accompany him to England or Egypt - whereas this was merely one of two options (the other being to move Emin and a number of his men to an area east of Lake Victoria), either of which Stanley would have been happy with. Understandably, Henry and his officers had come to see `rescuing' Emin, and taking him away from the supposed dangers he had been facing, as justifying all the deaths and suffering the expedition had experienced. So, even when it was found that Emin was not in immediate danger - able, in fact, to supply the expedition with large quantities of grain and meat - this notion of taking him away still held a powerful appeal. Emin was at once aware of this.6i
On 3o April Stanley told Emin bluntly that if he decided not to return to Egypt, he and his men could expect no more pay from the Egyptian government - in fact no aid of any kind. That same government had paid half the costs of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, and since its ministers wanted Emin to evacuate Equatoria, Stanley believed he was morally obliged to put the Egyptian case to the Pasha before suggesting any possible alternatives. So at first, he did his utmost to persuade Emin to leave, emphasizing that it would be impossible to get his people out at some later date through the Ituri Forest, when he (Stanley) had gone. With Bunyoro closed to him by King Kabarega's hostility, there would be no eastern escape route either. So his Egyptian officials and Sudanese soldiers would never see their homes again unless they took their chance now. Emin agreed that Stanley had a point, but refused to give any decision.6z
On the evening of the following day, Emin and Henry resumed their conversation. The Pasha predicted that the Egyptians and his irregular soldiers might agree to come too if he left, but many of his regular soldiers, `who have enjoyed such a free and happy life', would never consent to come away. But if they stayed, would it be right to desert them? `Would it not be consigning them all to ruin? "I Emin Pasha then asked Stanley what would happen `supposing the men surround me and detain me by force'. It was a great pity both that Stanley brushed aside this possibility, and that Emin did not at once admit that his hold over his men was weakening by the day.
At this same meeting, Stanley abandoned any idea of persuading Emin to leave for Egypt, and instead put forward his two alternative proposals. What would Emin do, he asked, if King Leopold `found him a sufficient salary, and gave him enough year by year to pay and feed his troops'? The Pasha waved this aside. There was not enough food in Equatoria, he said, regardless of how much money was available. Since Emin had already told Stanley that he needed to take his men to a place in good communication with the coast, where food was plentiful, and where the surrounding rulers were friendly - unlike the kings of Buganda and Bunyoro, and the Mahdists - Stanley was not surprised by this response. He now put his own favourite option. Emin described in his diary his delight on learning that it would be possible for him to `occupy the north-eastern corner of the Victoria Nyanza, from which communications could be established immediately, and where the country was healthy'. Henry also said this scheme would `find support in England'. Of course, this was Mackinnon's East African proposal, though Stanley did not name his friend. Emin was euphoric, and, in his own words, `entered into it heart and soul'.64
When they discussed the same subject on 3 May, they agreed, most unaccountably, that the only immediate question that should be put to Emin's troops was whether they would be prepared to return to Egypt. It would take several months to ascertain the wishes of soldiers stationed at posts further north. While this process went on, Stanley offered to leave Jephson and three Sudanese soldiers to represent him, while he retraced his footsteps through the Ituri Forest to find out why the Rear Column had not yet appeared. Recently he had become seriously worried about them. Emin predicted that only his r 5o Egyptians would wish to go home. But he and the bulk of his men would stay on in Africa: not in Equatoria, which he agreed was untenable, but somewhere on the Aruwimi, or near Lake Victoria. Stanley knew that resettlement could only succeed if Emin persuaded enough of his men to come with him to the north-eastern corner of that lake to provide - as Stanley told Mackinnon - a disciplined body of men `by which your territory could be governed & civilized'." Emin was as excited as before, and stayed chatting with Stanley by candlelight until late. Back on his steamship, anchored on the dark lake, he wrote in his diary: `I think this was perhaps the most memorable day of my life.'66 Three days later, as keen as ever, Emin asked Stanley to confirm whether it would be possible to recruit most of his soldiers for the new company. Stanley confirmed that it would .17
On ro May, Emin remarked in his diary that the document Stanley had written to be read to his troops (which had been closely based on the Egyptian government's letter) contained two passages that would destroy any chance that the majority might choose to go to Egypt. The first was the insulting `If you stay here, you are no longer his soldiers'; and the second, `Your pay continues until you arrive in Egypt,' which made Emin suspect that Stanley's intention was `to discharge all the people here ......8 Indeed Stanley's intention was to make as many men as possible opt to remain in Africa to become employees of Mackinnon's company. He evidently believed he would have plenty of time, after they had rejected a return to Egypt, to sell to them his preferred Lake Vic
toria scheme. Unfortunately, he had forgotten Emin's anxieties about his men possibly deciding to detain him by force." It is beyond knowing why Emin did not warn Stanley that if his African troops believed that they were going to be dragged off to Egypt, they might mutiny. It is also puzzling that Emin did not tell Stanley that his arrival with such an enfeebled Advance Party, and a mere thirty-one cases of ammunition, had damaged him (Emin) in the eyes of his men, who had expected the greatest explorer in the world to come with enough stores and men to sustain them indefinitely in Equatoria. So when Stanley left for Fort Bodo on 116 June, at the start of his search for Barttelot's column, he was not worried about Emin's safety in his absence. His return journey through the Ituri Forest demanded all his energies.
Travelling with his valet, William Hoffman, 11113 Wangwana and 9 5 local Madi tribesmen, Stanley set a scorching pace. On 17 August, he and Hoffman - paddling on the Aruwimi in a canoe - rounded a bend in the river not far from a village called Banalya and spotted a white man on a landing stage. `In great excitement,' wrote Hoffman, 'Stanley and I leaped into the water, as soon as it was shallow enough.'7° Splashing to the bank, they saw that the man was neither Barttelot nor Jameson, but Sergeant Bonny, the medical assistant. What Bonny told them, during the next half-hour, constituted, said Stanley, `one of the most harrowing chapters of disastrous and fatal incidents that I ever heard attending the movements of an expedition in Africa'.'' And he was not exaggerating.
TWENTY-FIVE
`Evil Hangs over this Forest...'
Stanley was stupefied to learn from Bonny that out of 2711 men left behind with Major Barttelot and his officers in June 11887, only 1132 marched from the camp when the Rear Column had finally left just over a year later. They had been heading for Banalya, their present location, ninety-five miles east of Yambuya - their intention being to stay only a short time before continuing their journey to Lake Albert. Accompanying the 1132 surviving members of the original Yambuya garrison had been 4311 Manyema carriers, who had at last been provided by Tippu Tip, after ten months of desperate pleading by Barttelot.' When Stanley arrived at Banalya, the Rear Column had been there a month, but already another forty men had died or were missing, and three-quarters of the Manyema carriers had deserted.' Given Stanley's love for the Wangwana, he was outraged to learn from Bonny that seventy-nine of them, and twenty-two Sudanese, had died, and that a further thirty-eight sick men had been left at Yambuya, or abandoned on the road, and could therefore be presumed dead too.3
In four weeks, Banalya had become, in Stanley's words, `a charnel house'. The people there were mostly `disfigured, bloated, marred and scarred ... Six dead bodies were lying unburied', while living Wangwana were broken men, `worn to thin skin and staring bone from dysentery and anaemia, with ulcers as large as saucers'.4 So what could have happened? The answers became painfully clear to him during his interrogation of Bonny, which began on the riverside landing stage.
`Well, Bonny, how are you? Where is the Major? Sick, I suppose?'
`The Major is dead, sir.'
`Dead? Good God! How dead? Fever?'
`No, sir, he was shot.'
By whom?'
'By the Manyema - Tippu-Tip's people.'
Barttelot had been shot dead a month ago by one of the Manyema carriers eventually sent by Tippu. The shooting had occurred just after the major had threatened a woman with a revolver. She had irritated him by beating a drum soon after dawn. Days earlier, Major Barttelot had flogged a number of Manyema and was extremely unpopular with them. His killer, Sanga, had thought the major might shoot his wife, since she had been the one drumming. He was apprehended at Stanley Falls by Tippu Tip, and was executed after a brief trial conducted by the Belgian resident.'
And were the other officers dead too? To Stanley's relief, Troup had been invalided home, Ward was at Bangala, boo miles away, and Jameson had gone to Stanley Falls seeking carriers to replace the mutinous Manyema, most of whom had deserted. Unknown to Bonny, more recently Jameson had canoed downstream to Bangala, and had died from fever on the very day Stanley arrived at Banalya. Earlier, at the Falls, Jameson had tried and failed to get Tippu Tip to agree to accompany him through the Ituri Forest to find Stanley, offering the Arab (as only a very rich man could) the colossal fee of £zo,ooo, which Tippu had not accepted, fearing that any further involvement with the disaster-prone Rear Column would ruin his relations with the British at Zanzibar and with Europeans in general.6
For now, Stanley's only inside information about events at Yambuya had to come from the surviving Wangwana and from Bonny.' Two months ago, Stanley had sensed something sinister about the whole Ituri Forest - a territory where there is slaughter and misery even to this day. `Evil hangs over this forest as a pall over the dead ... it is a region accursed for crimes; whoever enters within its circle becomes subject to Divine wrath.'s And `crimes' were exactly what he was soon recording in his diary at Bonny's dictation.
The major caused John Henry, a mission boy, to be flogged 300 lashes. He died that night. Ward caused a mutineer to be flogged at Bolobo so severely that he also died within a few hours ... The major kicked his little boy Sudi - a boy of 113 years old in the shin. I found the boy with an ulcer z1 by 3~ inches unable to move. The major caused a Sudanese to be shot by a platoon of his comrades for stealing a piece of meat. William Bonny relates that the least thing caused the major to behave like a fiend. He had a steel-pointed cypress walking staff with which he dealt severe wounds. One man, a Manyema, he stabbed 17 times with the steel point of his stick ... The major would walk up and down the camp with his large white teeth set firm & exposed ... At such times he would dash at people right & left - as though he were running amuck.'
Stanley nursed the boy, Sudi, in his own tent until he died six weeks later.'° Stanley was unsure whether he could rely on what Bonny told him. After all, this hospital sergeant had flogged two Sudanese soldiers so severely that Stanley noted: `Never in my life have I seen anything so awful ... two deep hollows [in the buttocks] in which maggots swarmed and a saucer might easily have been put into either hollow." Bonny's excuse was that he had caught them stealing stores in the chaos that had followed the major's murder. But Henry was not appeased.12 He warned Bonny that even if these men survived, he might still be charged with murder for not objecting to the execution of the Sudanese who had only stolen some meat.13
To take the heat off himself, Bonny told Stanley of a horrifying incident involving the whisky heir, James Jameson. On his way to Kas- songo to meet Tippu Tip, Jameson had purchased an eleven-year-old girl and had then given her to cannibals, so he could watch her being stabbed to death, dismembered, cooked and eaten. Bonny said he had seen Jameson's sketches of the whole ghastly process. But Henry remained outwardly sceptical, although informed that Assad Farran, a Swahili-speaking interpreter whom Barttelot had sent home, had seen the murder and had made a statement. Stanley still meant to reserve judgement until he had questioned Jameson, Troup and Ward.14 Later, Troup confirmed that the major had `had an intense hatred of anything in the shape of a black man', and that by early May he had been insane.,' But given the gravity of the allegation and the need to confirm whether the other crimes cited by Bonny had actually taken place, Stanley opened Jameson's box.,' The whisky heir's journal corroborated everything Bonny had said about Barttelot's and Jameson's behaviour, including the cannibal incident.,'
In the case of the mission-educated translator, John Henry, who stole Barttelot's revolver and was sentenced to death - though this was a first offence, and he was starving - Stanley learned that Troup had fiercely objected to shooting him. Yet when Barttelot had decreed the far more brutal punishment of 300 lashes, no officer intervened." Men were invariably maimed for life by half as many strokes with the chicotte - a whip of twisted hippopotamus hide that drew blood at the first stroke. After fifty blows most men were insensible. It appalled Stanley that one Sudanese soldier, Burgari Mohammed, who had received a shocking 115 o lashes for stealing meat from Ward's ho
use, had then been kept in chains day and night for two months. Somehow, he had escaped from the guard-house, taking his jailor's rifle, knowing he would die in chains unless he got away. But he was recaptured and shot for deser- tion.i9 Scarcely able to stand after his long period in chains, the man had been forced to dig his own grave. How could the other officers have allowed such a thing to happen, demanded Stanley? Why had they let Barttelot `kick, strike, & slay human beings whom they were bound to protect'? Z° Because they feared being shot too, replied Bonny, who claimed that Troup had been so scared of the major that he had hidden in his house for several months after an argument.Z"
But, in Stanley's eyes, his officers' greatest crime was their indifference to the daily suffering of all Yambuya camp's z6o Africans - Wangwana, Sudanese and Somalis. Though they had died by twos and threes for months on end, it had not occurred to anyone, as Stanley put it, `that the simple reason [why their men were dying] was that the major never gave them time to prepare their food properly. He kept them from morning to sunset at work & never paid the least attention to their wants. To satisfy their raging hunger they ate the raw poisonous stuff ...'ZZ Before leaving Yambuya in June 11887, he and Parke had explained to the officers and to the Wangwana that the highly nutritive manioc tubers growing close to the camp had to be peeled and softened in water before being dried in the sun for several days. Otherwise the natural cyanide in the tubers would not be eliminated. `Why should they have permitted themselves to be so blind?' demanded Henry."