Into Africa

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part 1 The Searchers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part 2 Somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part 3 Ten Human Jawbones

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Part 4 The World Turned Upside Down

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Part 5 Homecoming

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Martin Dugard

  Copyright Page

  TO CALENE WITH LOVE

  “We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope—and hope does not disappoint us.”

  ROMANS 5:3–5

  Prologue

  LIVINGSTONE

  March 15, 1866

  Zanzibar

  Twenty-five years to the day after first setting foot in Africa, and just four days before his fifty-third birthday, David Livingstone was holed up in a small house on the island of Zanzibar, waiting for a ship to take him back to his beloved continent. He had been away nearly three years and was impatient to return. The mere thought of mingling with African villagers, tramping through pristine wilderness, and “the stimulus of remote chances of danger either from beasts or men” exhilarated him.

  Livingstone had been stuck on the small island, just twenty miles off the coast of East Africa, since January. With every day that passed, he grew more disgusted by it. Zanzibar had once been a tropical paradise, lush with palm and mango trees, swept by sensual trade winds. But now the island was choked with people. Piles of human excrement and trash were piled on the sandy beaches, and the air smelled putrid at low tide. In the largest city, also Zanzibar, diplomats and merchants from the United States, Great Britain, and the European continent battled for control of East Africa's expanding regional economy, even as they turned a blind eye to the slave trade Livingstone had battled so hard to end. Newly captured African men, women, and children, still wearing the manacles and dog collars from their long march out of the African interior, were imprisoned in caves beneath the island, waiting for the day they would be sold in the city market.

  The mood throughout Zanzibar was menacing, transient, bristling with compromise. Livingstone ached to be away from the chaos, in the wilds of Africa, alone.

  Zanzibar, however, was also where European explorers bought their supplies and began their journeys into Africa's unknown heart. Livingstone was one of those men. Many said he was the best—or had been, in his prime. Now, in his fifties, Livingstone was about to begin the most ambitious expedition of his career. His goal was to achieve the Holy Grail of discovery: to determine once and for all the source of the Nile River—a challenge that had eluded scores of worthy explorers through the centuries. And while there was a time when his prowess was so esteemed, and his expeditions imbued with such moral purpose, that finding the source was almost beneath him, now he needed this accomplishment desperately. It would not only seal his legacy—it would restore him to the pinnacle of world exploration.

  At first glance Livingstone seemed too benign and diminutive—too religious—to pursue such an epic undertaking. His spiritual aura was so great that even the Arab slave raiders against whom he battled so vehemently said he possessed the intangible known as baraka, uplifting and blessing all coming in contact with him. But limitless reservoirs of bravery and perseverance also pooled inside the thin middle-aged man with the stutter, crooked left arm, and brown walrus mustache. He had walked across the Kalahari Desert, traced the path of the Zambezi River, and, in the journey making him famous, ambled from one side of Africa to the other. Livingstone's explorations were never linear or brief. Instead, he reveled in rambling, circuitous wanders through jungles, swamp, and savannah that lasted years and years; long walks through open spaces without benefit of a map that epitomized exploration in its purest form. The London papers often assumed the worst in those lengthy absences and had reported Livingstone's death on several occasions. But he was never lost, just overdue.

  Before leaving England in August 1865 to find the source, Livingstone had assured his children and friends that the journey would last an uncharacteristically brief two years. He would breach the African continent on its eastern shore, then travel west into the interior with the assurance of a man who had been there before. Livingstone knew the land, knew where he was going, and knew where he would likely find the source. Two years seemed an accurate prediction.

  Throughout the journey, as he had done since becoming an explorer, Livingstone would scrawl copious daily notes. His script had presence—big loops in his lowercase “l”s, no slant to his cursive, pithy phrasing—and his journal pages were sometimes flecked with blood or from single drops of sweat falling from his brow. In the past, those simple words, often written by firelight with mosquito netting draped over his head, had been published when his wanders were through. His books had become best-sellers, and the world had learned about Africa through Livingstone's eyes.

  Before the Scot's discoveries, geographers surmised that a vast desert lay in the middle of Africa. But as Livingstone traveled farther into that blank section of the map between 1841 and 1863, he saw for himself that Africa's interior was a marvelous mosaic of highlands, light woodlands, tropical rain forest, plateaus, mountain ranges, coastal wetlands, river deltas, deserts, and thick forests. Just like Egypt and the rest of Northern Africa, civilizations had thrived in Southern and Central Africa for millennia. An estimated twenty million people inhabited the interior when Livingstone first arrived. The tribes lived in villages, great and small. Their mud and grass huts with a single low doorway would be clustered within a protective fence of thornbushes or sharpened stakes. Entire families shared a hut, and entire villages worked together to cultivate the surrounding fields and, if necessary, wage war. They understood metallurgy, and made spears from iron and copper. Artisans wove fine cloths, baskets, and other functional objets d'art. Beer was brewed from bananas or grain. Fish and game were plentiful. Coffee was indigenous. Communication between villages and kingdoms was accomplished through a relay of swift runners. This “bush telegraph” allowed information to travel quickly for thousands of miles.

  The common root language, which Livingstone quickly learned, was Bantu. An amazing six hundred dialects had spun from that tongue as tribes dispersed across the continent over thousands of years. Through the insular nature of Africa's geography, and the fact that people from other continents were terrified of exploring its interior, Africa's hidden civilizations had flourished.

  One of the primary reasons Europeans stayed away so long dated back to the fifth century B.C. While attempting a counterclockwis
e circumnavigation of Africa, the Carthaginian explorer Hanno the Navigator dropped anchor on the west coast of Africa, near the equator. He and his men went ashore to hunt game and find fresh water. Slogging into a tropical rain forest, the music of drums and bamboo flutes wafted through the jungle from someplace not too far off. Hanno and his men were scared, but they stayed the course. Then an enormous black man attacked them. The Carthaginians were in awe of his rippling muscles, great white teeth, and full body hair. Fearing for their lives, the Carthaginians killed him. To prove to the world that such a man existed, he was skinned, then brought back to Carthage. This “gorilla,” as Hanno's translators called him, terrified all who saw it. That display, plus Hanno's written account of the voyage, later translated into Greek and distributed throughout the known world, established Africa's reputation as a savage land.

  Livingstone was the man who reopened European minds toward Africa. Even more than the Arabs and Portuguese who went into Africa seeking ivory and slaves, he traversed the continent's unknown sub-Saharan region. Between 1841 and 1851 he explored the deserts, rivers, and lakes of Southern Africa in a series of journeys lasting weeks and months. From 1852 to 1856 he walked from east to west across south-central Africa along the course of the Zambezi. Then, after returning from his first visit to England since 1840, he explored the Zambezi and the area to its north more thoroughly. This single expedition lasted from 1858 to 1863.

  Livingstone didn't emerge unscathed. The continent had insinuated itself into his appearance, given him bearing and presence, set him apart from other men. The narrow face with the hound dog eyes had become taut, furrowed, and tanned from day after day squinting into the sun. His Scottish burr had an African inflection and his lips struggled to form English sentences after years of wrapping themselves around Bantu's many dialects. Hookworm thrived in his belly. He was chronically anemic. And, of course, there was the famous left arm, permanently crooked after a lion bit deep and shook Livingstone like a rag doll. Not only did Livingstone survive the mauling with a preternatural calm, but also set the bone and sutured the eleven puncture wounds himself, without anesthetic. Later he said that his time in the lion's jaws was an epiphany. He'd learned a secret that made him unafraid of death.

  Livingstone was, then, the perfect man to venture into Africa to find the source of the Nile. Unlocking Africa's greatest mystery would be a fitting career summation. Traveling via Bombay, he arrived in Zanzibar on January 28, 1866. There he purchased supplies, including the cloth and beads that functioned as currency for buying food in villages along the way and paying his porters. He also arranged for a second, crucial shipment of relief provisions to be sent overland to the village of Ujiji. Ujiji lay almost due west from Zanzibar, in the very center of Africa. It was a primary Arab slave-trading outpost on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. The relief supplies, so vital to an extended expedition, would be waiting when Livingstone reached Ujiji. In the event of a calamity such as theft or medical emergency, Livingstone would have peace of mind, knowing that his problems would be solved—as long he could navigate to Ujiji. Despite his sworn opposition to the slave trade, and disdain with the heathen Arabs for playing such a pivotal role, he was depending upon them to carry these vital supplies to Ujiji and store them until he arrived. The success of Livingstone's entire expedition depended upon this act of trust.

  Livingstone would lead an unlikely caravan. “I have thirteen sepoys, ten Johanna men, nine Nassick boys, two Shupanga men, and two Waiyaus, Wakatini and Chuma,” he wrote in his journal. The sepoys were Indian marines assigned to Livingstone by Sir Bartle Frere, the Governor of Bombay. They carried rifles instead of a porter's load and would serve as bodyguards. The Nassick boys also signed on in India; they would serve as porters. The Johanna men were from the Comoro Island of the same name, and many had served with Livingstone on his previous expedition. Most notable of all the men were the Waiyau lad named James Chuma, who had been a slave until Livingstone arranged his freedom in 1861, who could read and write English, and would begin the journey as Livingstone's cook; and the Shupanga man named David Susi. Their deep loyalty to Livingstone would be vital in training the newcomers in the ways of an African expedition.

  Those loads not carried by human beings would be lashed to an oddball menagerie of experimental pack animals: six camels, three buffalo, a calf, two mules, and four donkeys.

  Most important of all, there were no other Britons, Europeans, or other white men making the journey. Livingstone had no peer, no confidant. He was ostensibly alone, which was as he liked it.

  So it was that on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Livingstone's first arrival in Africa, HMS Penguin docked in Zanzibar to take him there again. Over the next few days the supplies and animals were loaded. Then, at 10 A.M. on March 19, 1866—Livingstone's birthday—Penguin sailed from Zanzibar Harbor under the command of a British officer named Lieutenant Garforth. They would steam three hundred miles south before putting ashore at the mouth of the jungle-clotted Rovuma River. From there Livingstone would push inland. He believed the source of the Nile flowed into the Zambezi, and maybe even into West Africa's Congo. In Livingstone's mind, fountains south of the equator thrust these great rivers from the ground. Livingstone would travel west into Africa to find those fountains, and find his destiny.

  Livingstone's journal entry practically sang as the trip got under way. “Now that I am on the point of starting another trip into Africa I feel quite exhilarated,” he wrote. “The effect of travel on a man whose heart is in the right place is that the mind is made more self-reliant: It becomes more confident of its own resources—there is greater presence of mind. The body is soon well knit; the muscles of the limbs grow hard as a board, and seem to have no fat. The countenance is bronzed, and there is no dyspepsia. Africa is a most wonderful country for appetite, and it is only when one gloats over marrow bones or elephants' feet that indigestion is possible. No doubt much toil is involved, and fatigue of which travelers in the more temperate climes can form but a faint conception. But the sweat of one's brow is no longer a curse when one works for God. It proves a tonic to the system, and is actually a blessing. No one can truly appreciate the charm of repose unless he has undergone severe exertion.”

  On March 24, 1866, Lieutenant Garforth unloaded Livingstone's men and animals at the sweltering port of Mikindany, twenty-five miles north of the swampy, hippo-infested Rovuma. Livingstone planned to hire additional porters there before setting out. That evening, Livingstone shook Garforth's hand, thanked him, then went ashore. “The Penguin then left,” Livingstone wrote simply of the last Englishmen who would see him alive.

  On April 4, 1866, the explorer marched his caravan into Africa. As if the continent were swallowing him whole, Livingstone's entry into the jungle marked his disappearance from the outside world.

  STANLEY

  May 6, 1866

  Denver, Colorado

  9,200 Miles to Livingstone

  One month later, and halfway around the world, Henry Morton Stanley unknowingly began a journey toward David Livingstone. The Front Range of the Rocky Mountains burst with wildflowers and the air smelled of budding green buffalo grass as Stanley stood on the banks of the South Platte River. A prairie wind, hard and cool, slapped Stanley's clean-shaven cheeks and blew back his brown hair. He was twenty-five years old, a squatty, dogged Civil War vet who fought for the blue and the gray, but had otherwise achieved nothing remarkable in his lifetime. In fact, Stanley's life to that point was notable only for its mediocrity. He had tried and been found wanting as a soldier, sailor, gold miner, son, and lover. Yet there seemed no limit to the endeavors he was willing to attempt, then abruptly discard, without noteworthy accomplishment. He did, however, possess a natural flair for writing. Stanley had already published several freelance newspaper pieces and had vague plans to become a success through a career in journalism.

  At Stanley's feet lay a collection of logs and planks bound together into a flat-bottomed raft drawing just eight
inches of water. Beside him was his friend and fellow would-be journalist, William Harlow Cook. They had met in Black Hawk City, Colorado, the previous year. Stanley was working in a smelting plant and sent Cook a congratulatory letter about a story the other man had written for a local paper. Cook was a meek individual, the perfect foil to Stanley's bluster. When Stanley made plans to travel from Colorado by rafting down the South Platte at flood stage, Cook didn't so much agree as follow timidly in his wake. It was of little consequence that the journey was potentially suicidal. What was important was that both could swim, for neither man had river-rafting experience and melting snow had engorged the otherwise lazy Platte. Stanley and Cook planned on riding that freshly cut lumber for hundreds of miles down the ripping, snorting river until they reached an even broader and more swollen flow, the Missouri. The two freelance writers had had their fill of the West. They were off to points east, maybe all the way to China—wherever they might find an adventurous story to sell. Rafting the Platte would be a much quicker and easier method of crossing America's Great Plains, their first major geographical barrier, than walking.

  “Stanley,” Cook noted, “is short and quick and not easy to forget an enemy, but he is also firm and true as a friend.” Stanley was thick around the middle but otherwise muscular. He wore his mustache neatly trimmed and his hair combed straight back. His accent was a curious composition of a Louisiana drawl and a singsong lilt that overtook him when he became excited. He was fond of tall tales, but there was just enough truth in his stories to make them entirely believable. He was tight with a dollar and a prodigious saver, yet always telling new acquaintances about one lavish scheme or another: gold mining in Alaska, grand adventures in Asia Minor, going to New York to become a real newspaper writer. Like his tall tales, there was just enough truth and ambition behind Stanley's schemes to make people believe he actually meant to accomplish them.

  Key pieces of Stanley's character had been shaped in recent years. The Civil War, of all things, had been a positive experience for him. He had begun the war as a dry goods salesman in an Arkansas backwater and come out physically and emotionally equipped for a life of adventure. He had seen combat. He had become an expert marksman. He had endured the blisters, exhaustion, and muscle pain of forced marches and seen firsthand the logistics of moving men and matériel over great distances, rapidly.