That night, part of his journal was stolen, perhaps taken for its power as ju-ju, or possibly “borrowed” by one of the gadado’s minions to see if Clapperton was indeed an enemy scout, or simply to prevent the explorer from taking geographical and logistical information out of the district. Nothing was going right; the theft added to Clapperton’s growing sense of ill omen. He rewrote as much of his journal as he could, but the original was never recovered. He went on to Sokoto with the gadado under armed escort. The weather cleared; the country approaching Sokoto was wild savanna, teeming with game, mainly elephant.
Clapperton reached Sokoto on October 20, 1826, where he was escorted to the same house he occupied on his first visit. He was cordially received by Sultan Bello, whom he found reading an Arabic translation of Euclid’s Elements. “Bello’s appearance was very little altered from what it was when I saw him last,” wrote Clapperton, “except that he had got a little lustier [i.e., full of vitality], and dressed somewhat better.” But Clapperton discovered that while Bello’s outward demeanor had not changed, his interest in English explorers had decreased markedly. Though Bello received his English visitor kindly enough, it was with a reserve the exhausted Clapperton found impossible to penetrate. The African leader’s mind was clearly on other matters. King George IV of England and the bizarre activities of his white emissary had receded into the backdrop of Bello’s concerns. He asked if the English king was well, but no more.
Though worn out by his trip, Clapperton still clung to the hope of opening a trade route to the coast, building a shipyard for the caliphate, and persuading Bello to give up slavery in return for trade—especially imports of weapons—with England. The sultan had previously welcomed Clapperton’s mission precisely because it seemed to him an efficient way to obtain munitions. In Clapperton’s absence, Arab advisers had apparently convinced Bello that British explorers were on a mission of conquest, and that Clapperton particularly was the representative of a great power that would eventually seize his country and dispossess him. The bogey of India was constantly held up to him as an example of the disingenuous intentions of white people. Bello correctly (and presciently) understood that the explorers were the thin end of the wedge, the vanguard of the scramble for colonization that was, in fact, about to begin.
Bello was also preoccupied with the ongoing conflict with his archenemy, El Kanemi, and Clapperton found it next to impossible to get him to concentrate on anything but the prosecution of the war. Like Hajji Hat Salah, Sultan Bello was annoyed and provoked by Clapperton’s planned visit to El Kanemi at Kukawa. Clapperton had presents for El Kanemi that Bello speculated might assist military efforts. Perhaps he had heard of Hillman’s cannon, or the Congreve rockets. Bello opined that Clapperton might even give the Bornu leader information about the caliphate’s military strength and plans. He bluntly advised Clapperton that his proposed journey beyond the caliphate’s borders represented interference in the internal affairs of his country, as well as a provocation in a local conflict in which the English had no legitimate role. Clapperton was unable to convince him otherwise. Relations between the two men soured, and their meetings became less frequent and less cordial.
Ominously, Clapperton recorded that Bello harangued him that “when I was here two years ago, the Sheikh of Bornu had written to him, advising him to put me to death; as, if the English should meet with too great encouragement, they would come into Sudan, one after another, until they got strong enough to seize the country, and dispossess him, as they had done in India, which they had wrested from the hands of the Mahometans.”
Clapperton said he could not believe that the sheikh of Bornu (El Kanemi), who had shown him such warm hospitality in Kukawa two years earlier, had ever written such a letter. When he demanded to see it, Bello said he had lent it to one of his ministers. Of course it was never produced. Discussions reached an impasse and days went by with no progress. By mid-December, six weeks after his arrival in Sokoto, Clapperton was sick again and spending much of his day in bed. In a final effort to convince Bello of his friendly intentions, Clapperton paid him a visit at a country retreat the sultan maintained outside town. This time Bello, who had left the city to amuse himself with cronies and concubines and temporarily to forget his troubles, lost his temper. He told Clapperton flatly that he would not let him continue to Bornu. “He was desired to say that I was a spy,” Clapperton wrote, “and that he would not allow me to go beyond Sokoto; hinting, at the same time, that it would be better I should die, as the English had taken possession of India by first going there by ones and twos, until we got strong enough to seize upon the whole country.”
Though Bello’s position appeared to leave no room for negotiation, Clapperton continued to meet with him in increasingly chilly meetings back in the city, the distrust between the two men growing deeper. Though Clapperton was never imprisoned, after a time Bello no longer admitted him to audiences and showed only too palpably that the earlier friendship between them was over.
Though all of Clapperton’s Arab merchant friends paid calls, he began to fear that they, too, were plotting his downfall. They knew, or he suspected they knew, that any success he might achieve as a commercial ambassador would mark the end of their days as wealthy merchants. Clapperton, after all, might well be the harbinger of the end of the slave trade, and slaves had long been their principal source of revenue.
In the meantime Lander, still in Kano, got a letter from Clapperton dated November 7, 1826, informing him that the sultan did not want him to go to Bornu. In words that applied as much to himself as to his servant, he advised Lander to keep his spirits up whatever their difficulties. “Think of your friends in England,” he wrote, “and fancy yourself in their little circle; never permit hope to sink so far within you as to say to yourself, ‘I shall never see my country again.’”
Lander was puzzled next by a message from Sokoto stating that Clapperton was ill and needed him, and that he should come right away—and be sure to bring all their baggage. Though suspicious at first, he decided to go to his friend’s side. In fact, the summons had come from Bello, who wanted to see what goodies Clapperton was concealing in his equipage for El Kanemi. En route to Sokoto, Lander was given another letter from Clapperton dated December 18. “Their cursed Bornu war has overturned all my plans and intentions,” Clapperton wrote, “and set the minds of the people generally against me, as it is pretty well understood by both rich and poor that I have presents for their archenemy the Sheikh.”
Lander reached Sokoto on December 23, surprising Clapperton, who thought he was still safely in Kano. Outraged at the deception, Clapperton confided to his journal “that my business with the sultan is now finished, and I would have no more to say.” Two days later, Christmas Day, Clapperton wrote: “I gave my servant Richard one Sovereign out of six I have left, as a Christmas gift; for he is well deserving, and has never once shown a want of courage or enterprise unworthy of an Englishman.” It was becoming clear that in his race with Laing, he had come to a dead end and would have to regroup. It would be hard enough now to escape Sokoto, much less reach Lake Chad and find the Niger. But Clapperton was not a man easily thwarted.
Meanwhile, his conflict with Bello came to a boil. The sultan insisted on seeing George IV’s letter to the sheikh of Bornu. Against his better judgment, Clapperton showed him the tin case in which the letter was kept, under royal seal, but refused to open it, saying: “To give up this letter is more than my head is worth.” Bello said he would open it himself and send a letter of apology to London.
“The King of England would never so much as look at such a letter from you,” Clapperton replied, “after his subjects had received such vile treatment.” Clapperton was so high-handed with the sultan, known throughout his kingdom as “the Beloved of God,” that one of Bello’s courtiers remarked: “With truth, do you hear how that man talks before the Prince of the Faithful?” Bello was a ruler who put humans to slaughter as casually as an English farmer might order a chicken�
��s neck wrung for dinner, yet Clapperton refused to yield, perhaps suspecting, rightly, that fear of British retaliation would temper his conduct.
In the end, Bello snatched the tin box, opened it, and had the letter translated. It did, in fact, mention various gifts entrusted to the explorer for El Kanemi. Bello, inquisitive and suspicious now about what Clapperton’s baggage contained, gave orders to have it confiscated. To accomplish this, the next day he sent his gadado to Clapperton’s hut to seize the presents. Clapperton lay ill on his mat, but rose to protest that “they were acting like robbers towards me, in defiance of all good faith; that no people in the world would act the same, and they had far better have my head cut off than done such an act; but I supposed they would do that also when they had taken everything from me.”
The gadado warned him that he risked execution if he continued to resist. “If I lose my head,” Lander reported Clapperton replying, “it will be for no other crime than that of speaking for the just rights of my king and country; I repeat, you are a nation of scoundrels and robbers.”
The confiscation of his baggage marked the end of any hope of rapprochement with Bello. It was the last straw in the privations and humiliations Clapperton had endured. Overwrought, frustrated, and probably half out of his mind, he now appeared to surrender what little natural caution he possessed. He went off to hunt game for several days. Away from camp, exhausted, he lay down on the ground and fell asleep in the open air, just as he had near the coast, with such dire consequences. When he woke up he had “caught a chill,” in the language of his age, which soon developed into yet another bout of grave illness (probably malaria). His already undermined constitution could not take this additional strain.
For the next two months the explorers were prisoners in their beehive hut. Clapperton slid steeply into an overpowering depression compounding his physical distress. Lander, in turn, became sick also, in part from seeing that Clapperton had lost all incentive to try and get better. Something inside both men had cracked.
“On the 12th March,” wrote Lander, “my dear, kind Master was again attacked by dysentery.” Lander, alone and still ill himself, did what he could. Clapperton was wasting away. Lander dragged Clapperton’s cot out into the open air in an effort to provide some relief from the oppressive heat—109 degrees in the shade was the normal midday temperature, according to his meticulous notes—and spent hours hovering over him with an improvised fan. But nothing seemed to revive his patient.
A ray of hope appeared with the return of Pasco, their servant, whose promiscuous behavior with Kano women had been so reckless that Lander had been forced to fire him months earlier. Pasco, now penitent, wanted his job back. He took over the chores of the meager household, cooking, washing, and bringing supplies from the market.
Lander was glad to have Pasco back; his loneliness and helplessness had become unbearable. It was a grim picture. Of the confident and happy party assembled on the deck of HMS Brazen on the expedition’s arrival off the West African coast, only Clapperton and Lander were left. The Cornishman’s tune on heading to shore, “Over the Hills and Far Away,” had proved only too prophetic. Help could not reach them now. The leader of the team was clearly not long for this world. Only Lander, a servant whose name was not even known to Earl Bathurst, would be left.
The demoralized and distracted Sultan Bello offered no help. Worse, now that there was no chance Clapperton could deliver message or gifts to El Kanemi, the fate of two insignificant white men ceased to concern Bello. The African king had lost some of his confidence as a war leader.* At that moment El Kanemi was still at the gates of Kano and the whole of the Hausaland was in a state of chaos and terror.
In a significant act of the military acumen for which he was so famous, at the last minute El Kanemi pulled back his troops—he had made his point: that the Fulani could be defeated. Their aura of invincibility was badly tarnished, and Sultan Bello had been punished for murdering El Kanemi’s embassy. The sheikh circulated the rumor that he was retreating to Kukawa, having accomplished his goal.
Clapperton’s political impotence, coupled with unabating illness, had taken its toll. He had returned to these two warring African empires with a keen sense of optimism, only to find an opéra-bouffe world of shortsighted inefficiency, violence, bitter jealousies, limited goals, and an overall lack of cohesion. Even the hope of a safe return to England must now have seemed problematic.
Despite these reverses, Clapperton’s journal is more interesting at this time than anywhere else in its pages. He continued to take copious notes on the people, races, places, customs—a remarkable social barometer of this new land. He recorded an oral history of Bello’s father, Othman Dan Fodio, who had been more astute a military leader than the son. Clapperton surmised that Bello’s vacillation in prosecuting his war with El Kanemi had its origin in his memory of Othman Dan Fodio, the illustrious father whose reputation dogged him.
Then came news of yet another skirmish with El Kanemi, one in which Bello’s forces had won at least a fleeting victory. While pursuing him, Bello’s forces had seized all his baggage, camels, and tents, 209 horses, and a number of slaves. Bello summoned Clapperton (for the first time in weeks) to revel in showing him the sheikh’s copper water jug, which had three sword cuts in it. He danced a little jig, brandishing the jug in triumph, as though it were El Kanemi’s head. The victory put Bello in an ebullient mood. He became outwardly friendly once more and sought out Clapperton, no longer overtly treating him as a spy. He asked Clapperton whether he ate pork, and the explorer replied that it was better than dog, which he had seen sold in the open market at Tripoli.
“The sultan said, it was strange what people would eat,” wrote Clapperton. “In the districts of Umburm, belonging to Jacoba [Bello’s cousin], they eat human flesh.… I said I did not think any people existed on the face of the earth that eat their own kind as food…. [T]he sultan said he had seen them eat human flesh, they said it was better than any other; that the heart and breasts of a woman were the best part of her body.”
Clapperton’s health improved with Bello’s disposition. He went hunting daily. Dressed in a flowing robe and a white muslin turban, with a beard that had grown to patriarchal length, he was again treated with civility and respect. In the evening, he and Lander smoked cigars, their only remaining luxury (brandy bottles were long empty), read aloud, and laughed at stale jokes they both knew by heart. They thought of home and wondered whether Bello would ever let them leave Sokoto. Lander was discouraged by their detention, and wrote that “like the beautiful apple said to grow on the borders of the Red Sea, our hopes wore a fair and promising outside, but produced only bitter ashes.”
In early March 1827, news arrived that the reverses of Sheikh El Kanemi had been only temporary. His troops had regrouped and laid siege to Kano once more. It was rumored he was about to march on Sokoto itself. Bello considered the threat so exigent that he evacuated the city to the low hill country nearby, taking Clapperton and Lander with him to ensure they would have no contact with the enemy. The intended attack never materialized. Bello and the explorers returned to Sokoto on March 10, to furnacelike heat of 110 degrees, further weakening Clapperton, who was again suffering from dysentery. This time, he was too weak to keep his journal.
His last entry, dated March 11, begins badly: “Nothing worth noting down.” He then writes of the sultan’s decision to let them leave Sokoto. But Clapperton was in no condition to leave, and he knew it. He had nightmares and complained of a burning in his stomach. Lander treated him with laudanum, Seidlitz powders, and Epsom salts.* Clapperton deduced he was doomed, and told Lander so: “Richard, I shall shortly be no more, I feel myself dying.” Lander reassured him: “God forbid my dear master, you will live many years yet.” He lingered on another month, hollow-eyed and skeletal. He gave his last instructions, which Lander reported in a letter that shows great stress in its absence of all punctuation:
What my master said to me at Sakatoo April 1827 R
ichard i am going to die i cannot help shedding tears as he had behaved like a father to me since i had been with him we went into the hut he was then laying in a shade outside he said Richard come here my dear boy its the will of God it cant be helped bear yourself up under all troubles like a man and an english man do not be affraid and no one will hurt you i do not fear that sir its for the loss of you who has been a father to me since when i have ben with you my dear boy i will tell you what to do take great care of my journals and when you arrive in London go to my agents and tell them to send directly for my uncul and tell him it was my wish that he would go with me to the colonoal office and delever the journals that they might not say their were anything missing my little money my close and everything i have belongs to you Bello will lend you money to buy cammels and provisions and send you home over the desert with the gaffic [coffle, or caravan] and when you arrive at Tripoli Mr Warrington will give you what money you want and send you home the first opportunity…. [W]rit down the names of the towns you go throw and all purticulars and if you get safe home with the journals i have no doubt of your being well rewarded for your truble.
A day or two later, Clapperton seemed to rally, feeling so much better that he talked of getting up and making a further effort to patch matters with Bello. He ate some food. The cramped beehive hut, for the first time in two months, momentarily radiated optimism.
But it was only the last bright flicker. The following morning Lander heard his master call “Richard” in a low voice, and turning quickly, saw the dying man sit up—an act he had not had the strength to do for days—and look around wildly. Lander went to the cot and took his pulse, which was rapid. Then, with no further movement, he lost consciousness. On April 13, 1827, Lander heard the death rattle in Clapperton’s throat. He cradled him as he took his last breath.
Race for Timbuktu: In Search of Africa's City of Gold Page 26