by Tim Jeal
But despite his revulsion, Speke could not afford to offend Mutesa or refuse to show him his picture books, or shoot with him, or offer him medical treatment, if he requested it. He also felt obliged to obey the king when he asked for his portrait to be made. In the pencil and water colour sketch, which Speke produced of him, the king is naked, ‘preparing for his blister’: an archaic procedure, by which fluid was drawn from the part of the body being treated. Mutesa’s expression is inscrutable, and despite the artist’s limitations, the king’s body looks slim and graceful, although his genitals are drawn smaller than life size, as in Greek works of art.21 Given their earlier conversation on the subject of what made a penis the ideal size, it seems unlikely that the picture pleased the king. ( See colour plates.)
On 14 May, Mabruki, who had been led to Bunyoro by Baganda guides, returned with the thrilling news that although Petherick had not yet arrived in King Kamrasi’s country, his party was still at Gani. The fact that one of the two white men was said to be bearded, seemed to guarantee that Petherick himself was present. Mabruki explained that Baraka and Uledi, who had been sent to Bunyoro from Karagwe in late January, were still being detained by Kamrasi, and were thus unable to leave for Gani. This was extremely frustrating for Speke. Meanwhile Grant, who had hoped to survey the lakeside on his way from Karagwe to Buganda, had sent ahead a message to say he was still crippled by his ulcerated leg and was being carried and was therefore unable to make observations. While Speke longed for Grant’s arrival so they could leave for the Nyanza’s outlet, en route to Bunyoro and Gani, Mutesa remained more interested in shooting than in the white man’s plans. The day after Mabruki reappeared, the kabaka hit and killed a large adjutant bird or great stork ( leptopilos) and ‘in ecstasies of joy and excitement, rushed up and down the potato-field like a mad bull … Whilst the drum beat, the attendants all woh-wohed, and the women rushed about lullooing and dancing’.22
Grant finally arrived on 27 May 1862, after a period of four months’ separation from Speke. They were, in Grant’s words, ‘so happy to be together again, and had so much to say, that when the pages burst in with the royal mandate that his Highness must see me tomorrow, we were indignant at the intrusion’. At his first audience, Grant was as impressed by Mutesa’s person and clothing as Speke had been, but it was not long before ‘a shudder of horror crept over [him]’. As the audience ended, two young women, who had had the temerity to smile at the explorers, were dragged away by the executioner. ‘Could we have been the cause of this calamity?’ agonised Grant, ‘and could the young prince with whom we had conversed so pleasantly have the heart to order the poor women to be put to death?’ He would know the answer long before hearing the cries of people being tortured whenever he passed the hut of Maula, Mutesa’s chief detective. Grant admired Speke for having the courage to intervene from time to time. Once, his friend even succeeded in securing the release of the executioner’s own son, who had been condemned to death.23
But though Mutesa became no less whimsically cruel, he pleased Speke and Grant two days after the latter’s arrival, by sending emissaries to Kamrasi to ask him once again to allow Baraka and Uledi to leave for Gani. But the explorers were warned by him that they themselves could not expect to go anywhere just yet. By now it was early June and Speke had been in Buganda more than three months.24 As he was preparing for the next phase of his great journey, Méri came to see him several times, looking he thought ‘more beautiful than ever, and [she went] away sighing’ because wanting to be taken back. But Speke still believed that material considerations, rather than love, had inspired these visits.25
At last, on 18 June, after Speke had enlisted the Queen Mother’s help, the kabaka agreed to let him and Grant travel eastward to the lake’s outlet and then north-west to Bunyoro. This permission was confirmed early in July, enabling them to leave on the 7th with a Baganda escort and sixty cows donated by the king. The king and Lubuga, ‘the favourite of his harem’, came to see them off, and Speke persuaded his men to n’yanzig for the many favours they had received. This was Speke’s own verb, which he had coined to describe the extravagant forms of obeisance lavished on Mutesa, such as kneeling and throwing out the hands, while repeating the words: ‘N’yanzig ai N’yanzig Mkahma’, and then floundering face-downwards on the earth like fishes out of water. His men must have done this vigorously, because Mutesa complimented them warmly, before taking one last glance at the white men, and then striding away, while Lubuga ‘waved her little hands and cried: “Bana! Bana!”‘26
Royal wife led to execution.
ELEVEN
Nothing Could Surpass It!
Because Petherick could not be expected to wait indefinitely at Gani, ten days into his and Grant’s journey Speke was gripped by the absolute necessity of reaching the Nyanza’s outlet as soon as possible. After notching up the source, he would be free to hurry north to join hands with the Welshman, before travelling downriver with him to Gondokoro. Unfortunately, Grant’s ulcerated leg was still stopping him walking well, so the two friends agreed that it would be best if Speke and a small party of a dozen Wangwana and three or four Baganda were to march immediately to the outlet, while Grant travelled more slowly to Bunyoro with the expedition’s stores and the rest of the men. Once there, his task would be to gain Kamrasi’s consent for their passage through his kingdom to Gani.1
In years to come, Speke’s critics would say that he selfishly reserved for himself what he confidently believed would turn out to be the discovery of the Nile’s source. But Grant would always deny this, saying he had been ‘positively unable to walk twenty miles a-day, through bogs and over rough ground … [and so had] yielded … to the necessity of parting’.2 On no occasion would he ever blame Speke. Yet though Grant believed it would have been folly to risk letting his lameness delay their eagerly anticipated meeting with Petherick, three days after he and Speke had parted company, the normally sweet-natured Grant was seized by an uncharacteristic fit of rage. A goat-boy, who had briefly lost sight of his flock, was given twenty lashes on his orders – a shocking punishment for a minor offence.3
Speke had been detained by Mutesa for four and a half months, while being a mere fifty miles from the Nyanza’s principal outflow. This short journey proved trouble-free until his party had to cross a three-mile-wide, mosquito-infested creek, which the cattle had to swim across with the men holding their tails. Then, on 21 July 1862, Speke wrote joyfully in his journal: ‘Here at last I stood on the brink of the Nile; most beautiful was the scene, nothing could surpass it!’ He had not proved that this really was the Nile, but on seeing the 600-yard river flowing between tall grassy banks, he felt more certain than ever that he had attained the object of his search. Everything about it struck him as beautiful. The valley was shaded here and there by tall trees, and the soft grass reminded him of English parkland. Hartebeest and antelope were browsing – while, occasionally, cloudy acacia and festoons of lilac convolvuli added something exotic to the scene. When Speke, in his excitement, suggested to Bombay that he and his men ought ‘to shave their heads and bathe in the holy river’, the African shrugged his shoulders. ‘We are contented with all the commonplaces of life,’ he remarked soberly, perhaps calling to mind exotic, shaven-headed holy men in India.4 The name of this place was Urondogani, and because it was a few miles downstream from the Nyanza, Speke tried to hire boatmen to take him and his men southwards, upstream to the precise point at which Nyanza and river met – for there, he had decided, would be the source itself. But the locals refused all help, and so he was obliged to ‘plod through huge grasses and jungle’ for three more days to the place called by the Baganda, ‘The Stones’.
Speke admitted in his journal that ‘the scene was not exactly what I [had] expected; for the broad surface of the lake was shut out from view by a spur of hill, and the falls, about 12 feet deep and 400 to 500 feet broad, were broken by rocks’. Nevertheless, despite the unspectacular nature of the place, he stared for several hours, mesmeris
ed by the water rushing from the lake between the rocky islets and sweeping over the long ledge of rock into the river, as ‘thousands of passenger-fish [barbel] leapt at the falls with all their might’. He had no doubt that this was the very point at which the lake gave birth to ‘old father Nile’. Bewitched by the place, he mused that he would only need ‘a wife and family, garden and yacht, rifle and rod, to make [him] happy here for life’. He also thought it the perfect location for a Christian mission. He named ‘The Stones’ the Ripon Falls, after the first Marquess of Ripon, President of the RGS and later viceroy of India. The stretch of water into which the lake at first funnelled, he called the Napoleon Channel out of respect for the Emperor Napoleon III. Unlike the RGS, which had only honoured Burton with its Patron’s Gold Medal, the French Geographical Society had presented Speke with its Medaille d’Or for his discovery of the Nyanza, making him a Francophile for life.5
The Ripon Falls.
Speke dallied three days at ‘the source’, watching the fishermen coming out in boats and stationing themselves on the islets with rods. Hippopotami and crocodiles lay sleepily on the water and cattle came down to drink in the evening. The explorer finally tore himself away and set out downstream into Bunyoro, with his fifteen men in five flimsy boats, little better than rafts. His plans were ruined by Kasoro, the man deputed by Mutesa to guide him, but who now led a raid against some Wanyoro traders in canoes. Henceforth, Speke expected hostility en route, and got it the same day, when ‘an enormous canoe, full of well-dressed and well-armed men’ came up behind his rafts and then kept pace with them. The banks on each side grew higher and were soon lined with men thrusting their spears in his direction. The crew of the pursuing canoe paddled faster and swung their vessel across the bows of Speke’s little craft. Even now, Speke was in denial about the gravity of his situation. ‘I could not believe them to be serious … and stood up in the boat to show myself, hat in hand. I said I was an Englishman going to Kamrasi’s, and did all I could, but without creating the slightest impression.’
Other canoes, full of armed men, now slid out from the rushes that lined the banks, compelling Speke to order all his boats to huddle together, so that no vessel could be picked off. But several of his captains preferred to go their own way, and one of their boats was promptly caught with grappling hooks, forcing its crew to choose between using their firearms or being boarded and stabbed to death. From across the river, Speke heard his men fire three shots, and saw two Wanyoro warriors fall, one killed outright. Fearing he would now be ambushed if he continued downstream, Speke decided to travel overland to Bunyoro. It comforted him to believe that Grant was already at Kamrasi’s capital, and would have established friendly relations.
However, on 16 August, Speke was shocked to hear that Kamrasi had not allowed Grant to enter his country, and a mere five days after that, he stumbled on his companion’s camp, close to the border. Soon afterwards, these two avid hunters came upon a large herd of elephants that had never heard a shot fired. The explorers’ joy was short-lived. When Grant hit an old female, she merely ‘rushed in amongst some others, who with tails erect commenced screeching and trumpeting, dreadfully alarmed, not knowing what was taking place’. Both men were so upset by this spectacle that they stopped firing. ‘I gave up,’ recorded Speke, ‘because I never could separate the ones I had wounded from the rest, and thought it cruel to go on damaging more.’6
Now that Kamrasi had forbidden them to enter his kingdom, the explorers faced a grim dilemma. Should they nevertheless risk crossing Bunyoro uninvited in order to reach Gani, where they believed Petherick was still waiting with boats and supplies, or should they give up the idea of following the river downstream and try instead to persuade Mutesa to give them the men to travel through Masailand to Zanzibar? When they were on the point of deciding, six Wanyoro guides arrived with the wonderful news that Kamrasi would see the white men after all.7 Shortly after this, 150 of Kamrasi’s warriors arrived to escort them – a sight which made Speke’s Baganda guides flee rather than risk being killed by their traditional enemy. The Baganda took with them twenty-eight panic-stricken Wangwana, leaving Speke and Grant with a mere twenty followers – far too few to guarantee them a safe journey north to Gondokoro, unless Petherick could be located and soon.8 Though confident that he had found the Nile’s source, Speke knew he would be treated sceptically unless he could describe the course of the river on its way to Gondokoro. Once again an African monarch seemed likely to determine whether his mission would be satisfactorily completed.
Kamrasi, the monarch in question, feared that some super-naturally inspired misfortune might befall him if he admitted the white men, though he had no desire to deprive himself of the gifts they might shower on him. So he kept them at arms’ length, housed in huts ‘in a long field of grass, as high as the neck, and half under water’. This waterlogged wedge of land was encircled by the crocodile-filled river and one of its effluents, the Kafu, thus obliging the explorers to embark in a canoe when making their long-delayed first visit to Kamrasi’s audience-hut.
Their reception by the omukama (the traditional title of all kings of Bunyoro) took place on 9 September 1862, after a wait of nine days during which Kamrasi had weighed up the risks and benefits involved in seeing them. He greeted them coldly, giving no indication whether they would be allowed to follow the river downstream and visit Gani. In contrast to Mutesa’s excitement when examining his presents, Kamrasi hardly glanced at his. He only seemed mildly interested in a double-barrelled gun and a gold chronometer watch, which he had noticed Speke take from his pocket. The omukama dressed more plainly than Mutesa, in local bark-cloth rather than in silk or calico. Although dourer than the kabaka, he turned out to be more humane, only executing murderers and letting off minor criminals with a warning.
Grant and Speke at Kamrasi’s court.
Speke hoped that Kamrasi’s carefully concealed interest in European factory-made goods would make him eager to open a trade route to the north, and thus willing to help his new visitors to travel north-east to Gani. Yet when this subject was broached, Kamrasi remarked dismissively that all his ivory exports were sent east to Zanzibar because he was often at war with the tribes to the north. Worse still, he insisted that his ‘guests’ should expect to stay with him for three to four months. Only when Speke had agreed to part with his valuable chronometer did Kamrasi agree to let Bombay and an escort of fifteen Wanyoro depart for Gani with instructions to Petherick to wait a little longer.
Kamrasi explained to Speke and Grant that they were lucky he had been foolhardy enough to receive them, since they were the first whites to visit Bunyoro, and his brothers had warned him against bringing such unpredictable people among them. How could he be sure they did not ‘practise all kinds of diabolical sorcery’?9 Naturally, he had taken the precaution of placing a river between his residence and theirs. The omukama continued to isolate them, even when Bombay had told him that his white masters were the sons of Queen Victoria. Kamrasi refused to see them as anything but traders, whose guns were their most desirable commodity. Bunyoro had a profitable trade in salt, and the East Coast Arabs had first reached the country forty years earlier along routes pioneered by the salt traders. So, before Speke’s arrival, Kamrasi had already acquired primitive muskets from the Arab-Swahili who took his ivory to Zanzibar. But, like Mutesa, he had never until now seen modern guns that could kill a cow with a single bullet. To see this miracle performed both thrilled and scared him, making him desperate to acquire such rifles.10 So when Speke promised to send back six modern carbines from Gani, Kamrasi appeared to be ready to allow him to leave. To hasten his release, Speke gave the omukama quinine and samples of every pill in his possession. This was in response to the king’s heartfelt request to be given medicines so that his children need not go on dying. But there would still be prolonged sessions of haggling over other desirable items – a hair-brush, a sketching stool and some dinner-knives – before Kamrasi finally permitted the explorers to l
eave for Gani on 9 November, exactly two months after their arrival.
Both explorers had been deeply disappointed that the omukama had refused to let them travel sixty miles to the west to visit an immense lake (the Luta N’zige or dead locust lake), which they imagined must be part of the Nile’s system. The great river was said to thunder into this lake over spectacular falls, and then flow out again at its northern end. But though Speke badly needed to trace the river northwards and connect it with the known Nile, Bombay’s return from Petherick’s supposed outpost on 1 November had ruled out any journey except the trek to Gani. For while Bombay had not actually seen the Welshman at Faloro in Gani, he had heard that he had gone downriver on an eight days’ journey and was expected back there soon. So Speke’s and Grant’s priority would have to be joining forces with Petherick, because success in this would greatly increase their chances of reaching Egypt alive.11