by Monte Reel
During the first six months of his journey, only two days were free from clouds. Weeks succumbed to the vain quest for empirical proof. By the end of 1864, some of his men had grown impatient with their leader, who seemed more intent on watching the needle of his barometer than moving forward. Even his most trusted Nkomi assistant, a young man named Macondai, struggled to maintain his customary optimism.
“Macondai cursed the okenda i nialai (the good-for-nothing journey),” Paul noted, “which did not take us a step nearer to London.”
HE ARRIVED in a tribal village called Olenda, which he’d visited years before, and sent word ahead that his party planned to travel eastward through the lands of the Apingi tribe. To Paul’s surprise, a message came back almost immediately: he was not welcome.
This harsh denial had roots in his previous journey. The former king of the Apingi tribe and his son both had died shortly after Paul had visited them in the mid-1850s. The people blamed “the white man.” He was cursed, they said. The new king didn’t want to gamble with his life.
Paul and his men were forced to camp in Olenda, where he worked to reconfigure his route. Days later, before he was done, a young man in the village fell seriously ill. Rumors swirled that the young man, who had carried some of Paul’s equipment into the village, had been hexed by the foreign visitor. Within a day, the young man was dead. Around the same time, two more men who had been in contact with the traveling party showed the same symptoms as the dead man: their skin broke out in small red spots, which turned into tiny blisters after a day or two. Then some of Paul’s porters fell ill.
It was smallpox, and Paul knew it was deadly serious. He wasn’t at risk for infection himself, because he had been immunized in London two weeks before his departure. But the contagion could wipe out a village with terrifying rapidity.
The disease, which can be passed through the moisture of a person’s breath, generally takes about twelve days to incubate. Before arriving in Olenda, Paul hadn’t noticed any signs of the illness among his men. It was possible that some of the inhabitants of this remote village had already been infected. But it was also possible that members of his group had picked it up after leaving the coast, spreading it into the interior, where the tribes were particularly vulnerable to new diseases.
The villagers of Olenda quickly blamed Paul, who fanned their suspicions when, upon seeing the outbreak, he ordered his men to stay away from areas where the disease had been reported, telling them that smallpox was highly contagious. If he hadn’t brought the disease with him, the villagers thought, how did he know so much about it?
“They began boldly to accuse me of having introduced the eviva (thing that spreads, i.e., the plague), or, as they sometimes called it, the opunga (a bad wind), amongst them,” Paul later wrote. “They declared that I had brought death with me instead of bringing good to the people; that I was an evil spirit; that I had killed Remandji, king of the Apingi, and so forth. Hence arose angry disputes.”
Within days, more than half of the people in the village had fallen ill, their faces encrusted with hideous pustules, their minds fogged with fever. Paul was forced to search for new porters as his own men began to fall. On three occasions he rounded up enough porters to move his gear out of the village, but each time a crucial number of his crew fell ill before the loads could be fully packed. Seeing Paul’s mounting desperation, the healthy men of the village increased the amount of pay they demanded to work.
He was at wit’s end. With a skeleton crew of porters, he sent most of his equipment to another village. They were to drop off their loads and return to Olenda to help him and the remaining men carry the rest of the baggage.
While he waited in Olenda, the pox continued to tear through the community. “Not a day passed without its victims,” he later wrote, “each fresh death being announced by the firing of guns, a sound which each time pierced through me with a pang of sorrow. From morning to night, in my solitude, I could hear the cries of wailing, and the mournful songs which were raised by the relatives round the corpses of the dead.”
Soon there weren’t enough healthy men to gather food. The few able-bodied men, including most of Paul’s core Nkomi crew, trekked to neighboring villages to petition help, but they were turned away empty-handed. News of the plague had spread as fast as the disease itself. Paul’s men were considered a scourge.
The ruler of Olenda lasted longer than most of his subjects. But “King Olenda,” as he was called, wasn’t immune, and one morning he mentioned that he felt unusually hot and thirsty.
Paul was racked with guilt. He had taken a photograph of the king just days before, and those who were still well enough had gathered around to see the spectacle. Now Paul regretted having pulled out his camera, worried that the “magical” process he’d demonstrated would provide the villagers with yet another reason to be suspicious.
Soon, even Macondai, his most dependable assistant, was prostrate with fever. Paul felt like a pariah, which made the unexpected hospitality that some of the villagers showed him especially poignant. “Those who were now well enough crept towards the plantation to get plantains for me,” he wrote, “and even the invalids, men and women, sent me offerings of food, saying, ‘We do not want our stranger to be hungry.’ ”
He had expected hostility, and they had shown him kindness.
Weeks passed slowly while he waited for the men he’d sent ahead to return to help them leave the village. Wherever Paul walked among the locals, he saw hideous images. Men with sores teeming with maggots writhed on the ground. Raving women with graveyard eyes, victims of both disease and near starvation. Flies swarming over the dead. Eventually, Paul noted that the spread of the disease seemed to abate—“from sheer lack of victims for further ravages.”
Finally, three of his men from the advance party of porters returned to the camp bearing terrible news: much of Paul’s equipment never made it to the next village. Some of the men had simply returned to their remote and scattered plantations, taking their loads with them.
THE RIVERS that flowed down from the mountains were swollen with rain. One of them, the Ovigui, had overflowed its banks, creating three channels separated by slender strips of mud. The only way across was to walk a long and narrow log. Apparently, it was a well-traveled bridge. A rope of twisted lianas stretched across the water just above the log, tied from tree to tree, to serve as a handhold.
When Paul stepped onto the wet wood, his boot slipped. He tumbled down headfirst into a watery hole that was, fortunately for him, disconnected from the main flow of the swift river. As soon as he realized he was safe, he remembered the watches he was carrying. They were wet but unharmed.
This concern for his equipment was perpetual, as was his distrust of the handful of new porters he’d picked up in Olenda. He couldn’t afford to lose any more of his diminished supplies, and he’d only known the men for a matter of days. He feared theft. He had no extra clothes. All his sugar and tea were gone. His medicine chest felt light.
His paranoia intensified when some of his instruments—thermometers, aneroids—disappeared as the party trudged deeper into the interior.
THE STEEP mountainsides were crowded with trees that appeared to be lashed together by lianas and creeping ficus. Crystalline waterfalls sprayed a delicate mist over the jungle paths. The men stepped lightly over rotting branches.
“I found it impossible to keep them all together,” Paul wrote. “All sorts of excuses were invented for their lagging behind, and I soon made the discovery that they were hiding their provisions in the bush—a sign that they intended to rob me and run away by the same road.”
More of his men deserted him. He was forced to send others ahead to another village to try to ask for more help and more food, which was in scant supply. Game animals were hard to find. They survived mostly on kola nuts. His loyal Nkomi men from the coast helped him watch over the others at night in a constant vigil against theft.
By March 24, 1865, he had reached the
village of Máyolo. Settled in camp, Paul took an inventory of his gear and found that he’d lost more than he’d thought. His medicine chest had been plundered of castor oil, calomel, laudanum, rhubarb, and jalap. Three thermometers were gone, as were many of his beads. Worst of all, one of his cameras, most of his photographic plates, and his developing chemicals had disappeared. Later he heard that two of his former porters had been found dead back in their villages. It might have been smallpox. But Paul vaguely wondered if the men might have tasted the highly toxic chemical solutions.
The local villagers had heard of the plague, but the king, who had given the group approval to enter his territory, was more interested in what Paul might be able to offer him in return for the hospitality. Paul laid out whatever gifts he had left—some beads, cloth, a few guns.
“Look!” the king of the village told his subjects, impressed with the gifts. “This is the sort of plague the white man brings among us. Would you ever have had any of these fine things if I had not invited him to come?”
Yet within four days, the king himself was shaking with fever. Paul knew that if the man died, his expedition—and perhaps his life—would be over. None of the tribes in the forest would believe he hadn’t brought the plague down upon them. And he couldn’t deny it. No matter how the epidemic had begun, Paul couldn’t evade responsibility for helping to spread the pox farther inland.
As more people fell sick, a forest fire pressed frighteningly close to the village. As Paul rushed to secure his remaining powder and ammunition, he cursed his bad luck. That night the king continued to moan and wail.
Paul was filled with a nervous, frenzied energy. He scribbled in his journal and made triplicate copies of his notes. He grew obsessed with chronicling exactly what was happening. He instructed his men that if anything happened to him, they should make sure his journals found their way back to the coast, where they could be shipped to England. To the natives, his erratic priorities must have seemed a sure sign of madness.
“On the 1st and 3rd of April I over-exerted myself in taking several solar observations,” he reported. “The heat in the shade was about 92° Fahr., and in the sun it reached 130° or 135° Fahr. I took, at night, several lunar observations, ascertaining the distances between the moon and Venus and between the moon and Spica, and obtained also several meridian altitudes of stars. The sky was so clear that I was anxious not to let the opportunity pass of obtaining these observations. My exertions, however, combined with my heavy anxieties and the loss of my goods, brought on an attack of fever.”
He tested the local cure, spiking lime juice with cayenne pepper. The ailing king, meanwhile, required stronger medicine. His pox had reached the ominous blistering stage. A medicine woman rubbed an herbal salve over his skin, and she drew white stripes with chalk down his arms. She chewed roots and seeds, then spit the mushy pulp on his wounds. Finally, she lit a bundle of dry grass and held the flame close, scorching the king’s skin from his feet to his head. He only suffered the cure once. His health, somehow, began to improve.
Paul knew that his entire project was in serious danger. After he asked for more porters, the recovering king convened a community meeting to decide his fate.
Like a witness in his own trial, Paul pleaded his case. He reminded the king that he hadn’t come for ebony, or to find wives, or to sell goods—only to travel, and he was prepared to reward the local hospitality with gifts. “I told you when I came, and you knew it before, that I wanted to go further away,” he said. “Come and show me the road through the Apono country. It is the one I like the best, for it is the shortest. I will make your heart glad if you make my heart glad. I have things to give you all.”
King Máyolo slept on it. The following day he announced his decision: he would travel himself to visit an Apono chief who could ensure Paul’s safe passage.
But days later, when the king returned from his audience with the neighboring ruler, he informed Paul that the fear of the plague was too powerful. The tribe didn’t want Paul anywhere near them.
On May 14, he scribbled in his journal: “My misfortunes will never terminate!”
Twenty-four hours later, his luck did an about-face: “May 15th. Máyolo’s messenger returned to-day with the joyful news that the Apono chief would receive us.”
Paul left Máyolo with about twenty men, including his original companions from the coast, except two who were sick with smallpox. Paul carried a forty-pound pack on his shoulders—a considerable burden for someone who, in a weakened state, likely weighed about a hundred pounds.
CHAPTER 39
Running for Their Lives
He had now traveled about four hundred miles inland, farther than any outsider had ever penetrated. When he and his men reached the tiny village of Dilolo—it consisted of little more than a single dirt lane cutting between a couple dozen huts—the entire male population of the village was waiting for him, spears in hand. They had formed a human barricade to keep the infamous spreader of plague out of their town. They had also set fire to a swath of prairie flanking the village, to prevent the oncoming travelers from simply walking around them.
As Paul and his men continued toward them, one of the men blocking the road raised a bow and threatened to shoot. One of Paul’s porters responded by leveling a rifle. Instantly, without a word among themselves, nearly all the members of Paul’s bedraggled expedition raised their gun barrels in a united front.
Bows and arrows were no match for rifles. The barricade buckled. The villagers could only watch Paul’s men pass.
After they marched through, the crew was energized by the victory. Paul heard one of them shout to his compatriots: “We must go forward. We are going to the white man’s country. We are going to London!”
PAUL UNROLLED his tape measure as the old woman flinched. He assured her he wouldn’t hurt her. She didn’t seem convinced. The tape, stretched from the ground to the top of her head, measured exactly 52.5 inches—or just over four feet four inches.
His group had encountered the woman in a remote swath of forest, and she turned out to belong to a tribe of remarkably small people. Paul, for the first time in his life, felt like a giant. One after another, he approached them with his tape measure, asking them to stand still. The first young man he measured seemed perfectly representative of the men; he stood 54 inches tall, or four feet six inches. No one in the entire village stood over five feet. He measured the circumference of villagers’ heads, the distance from their eyes to their ears. He could barely believe what he was seeing, and to buy their cooperation, he gave them beads.
He’d heard rumors during his first expedition of a tribe of unusually hairy “dwarfed wild negroes” who lived somewhere beyond the regions where he’d traveled. But the same people who spoke of this mysterious tribe also insisted there was another cloven-footed race of men that lived even deeper in the forest—a far-fetched bit of folklore that seemed to rob all such tales of credibility. Yet here he was, incredibly, in a squalid wonderland built on a shrunken scale.
They were the first tribe of Pygmies ever discovered in central Africa. Paul wrote down their tribal name as “Obongos,” but eventually they became known as the Babongo people. He learned that they were seminomadic. For as long as anyone could remember, they had always stayed within the territory they shared with another tribe called the Ashango but rarely in a fixed place, moving their villages regularly. Paul didn’t think they were related to the Ashango: their hair seemed much curlier, and the men had more body hair than the neighboring tribes. His Ashango porters were “anxious to disown kinship with them” but at the same time admired Pygmies’ renowned expertise in hunting and trapping wild animals and fish, which they occasionally used to trade with their neighbors.
“My [Ashango] guides were kind enough to inform me that, if I wanted to buy an Obongo, they would be happy to catch one for me,” Paul later wrote.
He tried to win the friendship of the Obongo as he did almost every new tribe he encountered: by
exploiting the power of technology to appear like a magician commanding mysterious powers. Armed with the music boxes, a large magnet, sulfur matches, and his guns, he put on a show for the natives, many of whom had never seen any article of manufacture more advanced than a glass beer bottle.
The musical box was brought out, wound up, and set playing. The people were mute with amazement; at first they did not dare to look at the musical box, afterwards they looked from me to the box and from the box to me, evidently convinced that there was some communication between me and it. Then I went away into the forest, the musical box still continuing to play. When I came back there was still the same mute amazement. The box was still playing, and the people seemed to be spell-bound, not one could utter a word. When I saw that the tunes were played out, I shouted as loud as I could “Stop!” and the silence that ensued seemed to surprise them as much as the music had done before. Then taking my revolver I fired several times, and my men fired off their guns.
The show helped earn him safe passage through new territories, but his porters weren’t so easily fooled. They knew that he needed them more than they needed him. He continued to lose equipment to desertion and theft, and it had become increasingly difficult to keep the men from fighting among themselves. Days were squandered in arguments. Paul’s tolerance for the natives, particularly those in his own crew, eroded. By July 1865, his thoughts had darkened considerably: