by Monte Reel
He decided to wager it all on the only thing he believed he could regain control of: himself.
CHAPTER 35
The Reinvention
Paul decided to return to Africa. Instead of proving himself by killing more gorillas and bringing them back, he hoped to vindicate himself by carefully compiling the kind of irrefutable evidence and data that he lacked the first time around and that had left his entire enterprise vulnerable to doubt. This time, he’d chart his routes on precisely plotted maps, keep records of astronomical data, and chronicle every step. Instead of being content in the role of an adventurer, he wanted to transform himself into a bona fide explorer, a title that his critics insisted he didn’t deserve. During much of 1863, he prepared for the expedition with a disciplined program of self-improvement.
How could someone without any scientific or geographical training become a respectable Victorian explorer? In the mid-nineteenth century, an entire literary subgenre helpfully sprang up to answer this question. The Royal Geographical Society not only housed many of these how-to-explore books in its library but also sponsored the publication of several of them.
In the 1850s the RGS produced a field manual called Hints to Travellers, which compiled tips from many of its most far-flung voyagers. The handbook was “addressed to a person who, for the first time in his life, proposes to explore a wild country, and who asks, ‘What astronomical and mapping instruments, and other scientific outfit, ought I to take with me? and what are the observations for latitude and longitude on which I should chiefly rely?’ To this end we give a list of instruments, books, and stationery, complete in itself, down to the minutest detail, so that an intending traveller may order his outfit at once.”
Francis Galton, the organization’s secretary, a year later expanded this theme with The Art of Travel; or, Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries. A glance at the index hints at the breadth of the book’s ambition (see entries like “bones as fuel” and “savages, management of”). Other exploration guides included What to Observe; or, The Traveller’s Remembrancer, written by Colonel Julian R. Jackson, another former RGS secretary. A new edition of Jackson’s book had just been issued in 1861.
“With such a book in his hand,” wrote Randolph Barnes Marcy, an American army officer whose Prairie Traveler was must reading for rough travel on both sides of the Atlantic, “[the reader] will feel himself a master spirit in the wilderness he traverses, and not the victim of every new combination of circumstances which nature affords or fate allots, as if to try his skill and prowess.”
All the books emphasized the importance of detailed, systematic observation. Along with advice on fording rivers and organizing campsites, readers were given detailed how-tos on geological surveying and orienteering, equipment checklists, and advice on what exactly to look for when judging the physical and moral health of native populations. Richard Burton, for one, rarely traveled without such books; he even edited the British edition of The Prairie Traveler, footnoting Marcy’s text with his own observations. And it was Burton’s influence that helped prevent the RGS from distancing itself from Paul at a time when some of its members seemed to have given up on him; even Murchison, one of his most energetic backers, had been uncharacteristically silent as the most recent controversy developed.
Shortly after Burton moved to West Africa to assume his consular duties, he had organized a trip to Gabon to search for gorillas—not a traditional activity for a consul, to be sure, but Burton was anything but a traditionalist. At first, his trip, undertaken around the same time as Reade’s, seemed to cast more suspicion on Paul’s stories. R. B. N. Walker reported to the Times that Burton had written to him personally to say he had detected “gross errors” in Paul’s account. But after he saw Walker’s statements in the newspaper, Burton responded with his own letter to the editor saying that Walker had unfairly represented his conclusion.
“I will briefly state that, after a residence of about three weeks in the Gaboon country, during which I walked to Cape Lopez and explored the south-eastern fork of the river beyond any former traveler, my opinion of M. Du Chaillu’s book is higher than it was before visiting the land of the gorilla,” Burton wrote. “The Mpongwe natives give ‘Mpolo’—i.e., the ‘big man,’ their corruption of M. Paul’s name—the highest character as a chasseur. No one, save the jealous European, doubts his having shot the great anthropoid (mind, I modestly disbelieve in the danger).”
Burton’s vote of confidence didn’t change the minds of many of Paul’s critics, but it preserved just enough credibility among the learned men of London to give the would-be explorer their blessing in his quest to redeem himself. With their encouragement, Paul hit the how-to books. But he did more than simply read them; with the support of the RGS, he sought out the authors and editors of those books for direct, hands-on instruction.
SIR GEORGE BACK, a sixty-six-year-old British navy vice admiral, was busy revising Hints to Travellers for a new 1864 edition. In his younger days, Back had served under Sir John Franklin during his pioneering expeditions through Canada’s Northwest Territories. Later, Back had led his own exploratory surveys of the Arctic. As a result, he was an accomplished navigator and handy with all the state-of-the-art instrumentation needed to determine his precise position on the globe. Paul developed a quick and lasting friendship with Back, who tutored him in the basics of geographical science.
In Explorations and Adventures, Paul had claimed to summit a peak he called Mount Andele at a time when Reade said he was relaxing on the Atlantic coast. He had written that the mountain stood in the heart of a region that many of his critics claimed he’d never visited. “We were two days about the ascent,” Paul had written, “which was a tedious affair, and without its reward, as, when I reached the summit, I found it enveloped in clouds, and mists, and forests, and could get no view at all.” The lack of concrete detail fed suspicions that he’d invented the incident. Why hadn’t he provided altitude measurements of the peak and those of the surrounding range so that geographers could verify his route? Because at the time he’d had neither the know-how nor the instruments to take such readings.
Paul vowed that this time he’d do things right. Back taught him how to use instruments, such as aneroid barometers, to determine his exact altitude at any given time. Together, they visited the finest watchmakers and meteorological technicians in London, and Back recommended custom-made instruments for Paul to take with him. To protect their sensitive calibrations, he even provided Paul with the same kinds of water-resistant leather carrying cases that he’d used in the Arctic.
As he studied with Back, Paul also took an advanced course on astronomy, which was a requirement to precisely gauge geographical coordinates. He convinced the head of the Royal Observatory in Twickenham to personally tutor him. To ensure that he could use those coordinates to draw accurate maps immune to criticism, he studied cartographical technique with the RGS’s map curator, the man who had authored the mapping and orienteering sections of Hints to Travellers.
To erase doubts about his descriptions of gorillas in the wild, Paul had another plan: he’d take pictures of them. Thomas Malone, the photography expert who had exhausted his patience during the Ethnological Society meeting, had held Paul to an unreasonably high standard in demanding photographic evidence of him. In the mid-1850s, practically no explorers took pictures in the field. The cameras, chemicals, and glass plates were far too cumbersome and delicate to survive extended overland journeys, and few explorers had the expertise necessary to use them. But photographic technology had advanced considerably in the years since Paul’s first encounters with gorillas, and he resolved to become an expert in expeditionary photography.
Paul didn’t study with Malone, who had become one of the most prestigious photography instructors in London, but he found another teacher whose credentials couldn’t be surpassed: Antoine Claudet. The French-born photographer had learned the art of the daguerreotype from Daguerre himself in the 1830s, and
Claudet even owned part of the patent to that process. The photographer’s subsequent inventions (the red-filtered darkroom light, among others) had helped refine the emerging art form. He had even been appointed as Queen Victoria’s royal photographer. In his studio on Regent Street, the sixty-five-year-old master taught Paul everything he’d need to know to capture images in the jungle—provided his photographic subjects stayed still. Paul learned how to mix chemicals, how to manage tricky outdoor exposures, and how to properly handle the glass plates (film had not yet been invented) during development.
As he collected more skills, he discovered that he needed more and more equipment, all of which would have to be hauled overseas. It was a logistical challenge he hadn’t faced during his first expeditions. Large trading vessels regularly traveled between Liverpool and the mouth of the Gabon River, but after that initial voyage Paul would still need to move all of his stuff to the Fernan-Vaz Lagoon, some two hundred miles south, to enter the forest. Ships of sufficient size rarely followed that route. So he was forced to charter his own.
ON AUGUST 6, 1863, a hundred-ton schooner called the Mentor was tied to St. Katharine’s Dock in London. For several hours, Paul paced the pier, watching as one tin chest after another was hauled onto the ship. They contained almost everything he’d purchased from the sale of his specimens.
Some of the boxes were packed tight with dozens of pairs of balmoral lace-up hiking boots, linen camp slippers, light-colored flannel shirts, pocketed jackets, thick cotton pants, and leggings. He had hundreds of pounds of gunpowder, dozens of rifles and revolvers, thousands of bullets, gallons of castor oil, quarts of laudanum, and enough quinine to treat a small army. He was also taking a weighty store of arsenic, watches, watch keys, sextants, binoculars, a telescope, a sundial, brass aneroid barometers, prismatic and pocket compasses, drawing pens, protractors, thermometers, lanterns, candles, magnifying glasses, rain gauges, almanacs, journal books, skeleton maps, matches, and flints. He had seven pounds of mercury in a stone bottle to create artificial horizons and measure the reflective angles of stars. He had nautical almanacs for the next four years. He had a magnetic-electro machine with a ninety-foot cord for conducting wire, glass tubes and jars to collect insects and worms. He had enough photographic chemicals and equipment to make two thousand pictures, and this alone filled ten boxes. In all, he had fifty-seven large chests of equipment, plus fifty “voluminous bundles of miscellaneous articles,” including everything from thousands of pounds of beads for trading to several Geneva music boxes that might be used to impress the natives.
Before Paul left London, John Murray had given him fifty pounds to buy presents for the local chiefs of the Fernan-Vaz region. “Be assured that I will apply the amount in a way that will be always an agreeable souvenir to myself and which I think will please you,” Paul wrote to Murray after he received the money. The resulting shopping spree bought enough stovepipe hats, coats, umbrellas, and silk finery to fill a large trunk.
The voyage south along the west coasts of Europe and Africa was long but uneventful. On October 8, 1863, after stops in Accra and Lagos, Paul spotted the verdant coast near the Fernan-Vaz Lagoon.
There, beyond the palms and mangroves, he hoped to wander inland armed with his shiny new gear. He didn’t know exactly how far he would travel or how long the expedition would last. The objective, in his words, was “to fix with scientific accuracy the geographical positions of the places I had already discovered, and to vindicate by fresh observations, and the acquisition of further specimens, the truth of the remarks I had published on the ethnology and natural history of the country.”
More than gorillas, he was hunting for validation, and he didn’t want to return to London until he found it.
CHAPTER 36
Damaged Goods
The Mentor lingered a teasing distance off the Gabonese coast for days, unable to move closer to the shore. The surf was too rough. Impatient, Paul lowered himself into a canoe and paddled through the waves to survey the mouth of the Fernan-Vaz Lagoon, trying to find a suitably tranquil place to disembark. But an incessant progression of seething whitecaps, in combination with a tricky maze of shifting sandbars, proved too risky for the Mentor. The ship would have to remain at sea until the surf calmed, if that ever happened. Unwilling to wait, Paul enlisted the help of natives. He decided to unload all of his equipment into their canoes and trust the Gabonese oarsmen to paddle straight through the breakers, all the way to the sandy beach.
It took the crew hours to transfer his cargo into the bobbing pirogues, which sank a little further into the water as each new crate was carefully lowered inside. One canoe was filled with guns, another with ammunition. The gifts he’d bought for the local leaders were dropped into another, along with the boxes of clothes and shoes.
He saved his most precious cargo for the very last canoe, which bumped up against the Mentor. In went the sextants, chronometers, prismatic compasses, and medicine. To make sure that these items were safe, Paul and Captain Vardon, who helmed the Mentor, would ride along in this craft with a few native oarsmen.
The other canoes departed first, pushing away from the ship and nosing toward the beach. Paul watched the men paddle away from him, the canoes seesawing over the waves, dipping in and out of sight, jouncing and splashing.
Under his light coat, Paul wore a life vest made of cork. He carefully stepped down into the last canoe with Vardon. They settled down among the boxes and crates as the oarsmen guided the wooden vessel into the waves, which seemed to be gathering force behind them.
Their strategy was to reach land as a surfer would: race to get on top of a surging wave, and let it carry them home. Paul peered behind him, and he saw a powerful swell approaching. The oarsmen took off, paddling hard. The wave was gaining on them. They stole quick glances over their shoulders to monitor its progress, then paddled even harder—but they couldn’t paddle fast enough. The wave crashed over the canoe, hurling Paul into the sudden silence of the water. Struggling to collect his bearings, he popped back to the roiling surface. He gasped for air between a relentless succession of breakers that kept pushing him back under. The cork vest couldn’t fully counteract the downward tug of his soaked clothing. As both he and Vardon fought to keep their heads above the waves, some of the oarsmen reached them to help. They wrestled the coat off Paul and “with great exertions kept me from sinking.”
A group of onlookers standing on the shore had seen them struggling and dispatched rescue canoes. But the powerful swells held the paddlers back. The men in the water battled exhaustion. When the waves finally subsided, a rescue canoe arrived and someone yanked them out of the water. Paul and the others were breathless with fatigue—but safe.
The canoe’s precious cargo didn’t fare so well.
Some of the boxes, tossing in the waves, were collected by the natives. Others washed ashore later. Some of the pieces of equipment remained undamaged, but most were ruined. For the moment, so was the primary objective of Paul’s expedition.
Dejected, Paul dried out the waterlogged instruments, their delicate gauges splayed to meaningless readings. He wrapped them up and shipped them up the coast on a small boat to Baraka, where they were in turn shipped back to the stores in England where he’d bought them. By mail, he pleaded with the shop owners to repair, or even replace, the damaged goods.
Most of the shop owners agreed to help him, but all Paul could do now was wait for the replacements, which would arrive a full nine months later. But it was not time wasted.
EACH DAY that he waited, his expenses mounted. To help defray the costs, Paul came up with a plan to help Captain Vardon fill the Mentor’s hold with goods to sell back in England. The process took about four months, but it was worthwhile. Paul used his experience dealing with native traders to help him acquire ebony, palm oil, and barwood. In return, Vardon reduced the debt that Paul owed him for chartering the ship. Paul also earned a lot of goodwill from the tribal leaders, who were thankful for the business.
<
br /> The unplanned pause also forced Paul into a relaxed pace that afforded him time to play with some of the cameras and astronomical instruments that had survived. With a clear view of the horizon and well-mapped coordinates, the coast was a perfect place to experiment with his sextants. “I like to practice while I am near to the sea-shore,” he wrote to Murray during his delay, “as I know exactly my longitude, and would then know if I am correct.”
His unhurried attitude seemed to put the Nkomi, the tribe that inhabited this stretch of the coast, at ease. He paid calls on friends he’d met years before, and he earned the trust of the same men he’d have to depend upon as porters when he finally headed inland.
King Quengueza, the chieftain who had allegedly told Reade that Paul had lied about his gorilla hunting, lived in a village about eighty miles upriver, but Quengueza traveled to the coast to greet his old friend as soon as he heard Paul had arrived. Reade had portrayed the king as a pathetic caricature of ersatz royalty, but Paul didn’t share that opinion. “I felt and still feel the warmest friendship towards this stern, hard-featured old man,” he wrote, “and, in recalling his many good qualities, cannot bring myself to think of him as an untutored savage.”
The reunion was warm but cloaked in the strict protocol of a formal royal greeting. Gifts were ceremoniously exchanged. In front of a group of royal hangers-on, Quengueza presented Paul with a goat. In return, Paul presented the king with a copy of his book (the illustrations, he knew, would be cherished) and a set of silver dining ware, which he had purchased in London with some of the money Murray had given him. “The old fellow was so delighted,” Paul wrote to Murray soon after the exchange, “that he said that he would send you a very large stick of ebony.”