The Explorers Page 10

  With their massive bulk, sharp tusks, and powerful bite force, these otherwise tranquil animals annually accounted for more human deaths than lions.

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  Speke was eager to add these specimens to his home museum, but a very real fact of life was that he would just as often be the hunted as the hunter. Days on the trail would mean long hours of marching, while nights would be spent inside a protective fencing of thorns known as a boma that his load bearers would build from scratch every day.

  The boma would keep out the lions and hyenas, but not East Africa’s extensive roster of killer serpents. The list reads like a who’s who of venomous snakes: puff adder, Gabon viper, black and green mambas, boomslang, and several cobras—including the spitting cobra. There were also African rock pythons, which are not venomous, but can grow to twenty feet long, and are predatory enough to feast on juvenile Nile crocodiles.VIVII

  While tracing the path of Burton and Speke across what is now Tanzania, I inadvertently saw each of these species up close and personal. The guesthouse where I was staying featured a long, dark hallway that linked its restaurant to the men’s room. There was no light in this passage, but it was clear that the glass walls seemed to be moving as I made my way forward. Stopping to peer closer at this phenomenon, I instantly recoiled at the sight of a black mamba pressing its nose into the other side of the glass. I jumped straight backward and almost crashed into another glass case, this one filled with puff adders. In fact, inside each case lining the walls of this amateur herpetology collection were dozens of writhing, venomous snakes. The glass came from the thinnest of windowpanes—and was even cracked in several places, making the display all the more terrifying. It’s worth noting that a crocodile pen was at the far end of the hallway. And since the only way to or from the lavatory was through this eerie portal, I had to return to my dinner via the same path.

  But at least glass stood between the snakes and myself. Passing through was as simple—and terrifying—as taking a deep, calming breath and walking very quickly.

  There would be no such barrier protecting Burton and Speke on their daily march into the interior.

  4

  So there was tension as their journey began—between Burton and Speke, between the explorers and their caravan, between the various tribes and nationalities constituting the caravan, and between the entire party and ever-dangerous Africa. All the while, in the minds of Burton and Speke, was the memory of their failure in Somaliland, and the very real fact that they must not fail again.

  In the midst of this palpable anxiety, a great tragedy occurred, one that might have stopped the expedition dead in its tracks if anyone had known about it. The fact that they didn’t was perhaps the only bit of good luck Burton and Speke enjoyed in their journey’s early days.

  Here’s what happened: their timepieces broke.

  This might not seem like a big deal. The concept of time would seem to have little bearing in a vast wilderness where schedules and social calendars have no place. So a little explanation is necessary.

  Ironically, at the very same moment Burton and Speke were lumbering along the coastal plain, the Boston Watch Company in Massachusetts was launching the first-ever pocket watch made from standardized parts. By 1865 they would be turning out fifty thousand per year. These watches would prove vital to the expansion of America’s railroad system, because proper timekeeping is important for avoiding collisions. This would have the added benefit of the railroads implementing intense standards to ensure that a watch not only worked, but was also easily readable and kept perfect time. Those railroad-grade pocket watches would later prove ideal for exploration, because precise measurements of time are vital to establishing east–west location—also known as longitude.VIII This, in turn, makes it possible to draw precise maps. And drawing precise maps is as vital to an explorer’s job as the journey itself, allowing the global unveiling that takes place when a new location is revealed, and the words “Unknown” are replaced by the height of mountains and the courses of mighty rivers.

  In June 1857, a timepiece portable enough to wear on one’s wristIX was still three quarters of a century away. The pocket watch standardization demanded by the railroads would not take place for more than forty years. Thus the Burton and Speke expedition were forced to carry three bulky marine chronometers to help measure longitude.

  As it sounds, each timepiece was a precision instrument, designed for use on the high seas. The chronometers were housed in what appeared to be large mahogany music boxes. Each watch face was 4 inches across, and the box protecting it was 7 inches square. The clock casing was made of brass and the dials of steel. Each was spectacular to behold. One was even synchronized to the Royal Observatory back home in Greenwich, where the first accurate marine chronometer was invented by John Harrison in 1772.

  Harrison’s invention was among the most important in the history of exploration, because it added a bold new precision to cartography. It also changed the world in two other dramatic ways: First, it allowed Britain to co-opt time. For navigation purposes, ships at sea need a fixed time coordinate to determine their longitude. British authorities had already declaredX that absolute noon would be the moment when the sun reached its highest point over Greenwich. The term “Greenwich Mean Time,” to denote the universal day, was established on this calculation. The global breadth of the Victorian British Empire ensured that the rest of the world would soon base their local time on this moment. This is why we have time zones, so that each point on the map can designate noon similarly. Prior to this, localities and individuals depended upon solar time, as defined by sundials and the position of the stars, to schedule their days and seasons. The technology required to break time down into minutes and seconds was only available to the very wealthy, or to great observatories like that in Greenwich.

  Second, the invention of the marine chronometer allowed Britain to designate itself as the home of longitude. Greenwich became the “prime meridian”—or, zero longitude—in 1851. Ships’ captains throughout the British fleet understood these reasons perfectly well, because they always knew their precise distance from home. The rest of the world was left to wonder how a small suburb on the Thames had absconded with both time and travel.

  Burton and Speke knew all this. They knew that they didn’t just possess a random assemblage of marine chronometers, but timepieces with a pedigree linked to the home of time itself. The set was not just extraordinary, it was precious.

  Yet these two intrepid explorers, men who knew that failure was not an option, allowed the chronometers to break.

  And not just one of the timepieces—all three of them. Burton and Speke learned the hard way that a wooden box that works just fine perched atop the smooth surface of a ship’s map table doesn’t survive as well stuffed into a bundle worn across a porter’s back for hours on end. This is particularly true when the porter is exhausted, and the bundle is hurled to the ground the instant the caravan comes to a

  rest.

  Time seemed meaningless in those endless days marching through the coastal scrub defining the first 100 miles of Burton and Speke’s journey. The 3:00 a.m. wakeups, the brutal marches, and, most of all, each man’s first crippling bouts of malaria were much more immediate concerns. Their heads ached, their joints were stiff, they threw up, their skin turned yellow, they shivered uncontrollably, and their unseen though very swollen spleens gave them severe back pain, made it impossible to eat, and turned even the simplest cut or nick into an infection.

  Small wonder that the chronometers went unused and unappreciated for three weeks; or that their careless destruction went undiscovered.

  Without the ability to determine exact longitude, any maps drawn by Burton (though not Speke, as we will soon learn) would be imprecise and subject to questioning. Exact location would be impossible to pinpoint. Discoveries would be open to argument.

  So why go on? Why continue a journey that has
become pointless?

  Because after three weeks, Burton and Speke had penetrated East Africa’s coastal plain. The path had been uninteresting and there had been little in the way of discovery: just small mud huts, termite mounds, and the pink backs of hippopotamuses rising above the brownish-green waters of the Kingani River like so many stepping-stones. Turning back would have rendered all that hard travel meaningless. The Africa they had come to see, with its reports of an endless savanna and snow-capped equatorial mountains, was almost within their reach.

  In a word, the passion that had brought them to Africa was about to be realized.

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  Truly, passion was the only thing keeping them going. Anyone who has undertaken a lengthy expedition will testify that the things that matter most back home—in the case of Burton and Speke, fear of failure, need for redemption, approval of friends and family—become inconsequential in the wilderness. This is the reason why so many expeditions fail. Once those motivations are taken away, many find no reason to go on. The same can be said of almost any great objective.

  Yet if there is a greater goal, and the perspective that even in the middle of nowhere, someone is keeping score of an individual’s actions and behavior, the passion that enveloped the long journey at its inception does not fade.

  Burton and Speke may not have liked each other, but they both possessed this fire. If possible, each possessed an overabundance. Most great expeditions have just one individual who owns the fervor to succeed at all costs. It is extremely rare to have two.

  Far more common is the scenario where one man leads and a pack of naysayers engage in the daily task of tearing him down when times get tough. Yet despite their enormous social differences and worldviews, Jack Speke and Dick Burton shared an overwhelming passion for all things discovery. From the brilliance of the sunrise to the squabbling of their caravan, they were in the ironic position of being in their element while being completely out of their element—at the very same time.

  Passion, in fact, is an emotion that seems tailor-made for Burton and Speke. It is ambition’s fuel, leading us off onto the strange and sometimes unexpected tangents that define a life. And whether healthy (exercise, career, love) or destructive (compulsive exercise, workaholism, adultery), passion demands one very specific tribute: sacrifice. This act of giving up one thing (or everything) to completely pursue another is the definition of whether an activity is a passion or merely a fleeting fancy.

  The word “passion” comes from the Latin verb patoir, which means “to suffer and endure.” This is why the word attaches itself so easily to exploration, but is also used to describe the crucifixion of Christ—though it would not be until the twelfth century that someone made this connection. Interestingly, passion would not be used to describe sex, love, or enthusiasm for almost four hundred more years.

  Passions are personal. They are obsessive, a source of joy, self-defining, and validating. The object of an individual’s passion, so often irrelevant or irrational to others, is very often the burning ambition that gets them out of bed in the morning. This is because passion is derived from two seemingly contrary parts of the brain. The first is the caudate nucleus, the part of the brain that floods the body with the chemical dopamine when a positive result is achieved. Runners will know dopamine as the source of the “runner’s high,” and lovers everywhere will know it as the euphoria of a passionate new romance, when it feels impossible to keep their hands to themselves.

  The second part of passion is more practical, derived from one of the brain’s most advanced regions. The prefrontal cortex, as its name describes, is behind the forehead, right up at the front of the brain. This is where the tactics, planning, and calculations necessary to achieve a goal transpire. The prefrontal cortex is that logical part of the brain that tells a college student, for instance, to study first and attend a keg party afterward—rather than the other way around. The next time you find yourself focused on a plan or a scheme, and wonder why it seems like there is a lot of commotion in the front of your skull, it’s because the cells of the prefrontal cortex are busy at work.

  Thus every hard-fought success—thanks to the prefrontal cortex—is rewarded by immense personal and emotional well-being, courtesy of dopamine. Work and reward. Work and reward. Passion is our inner Pavlovian process. It’s no wonder that we become consumed by our desires.

  Passion is where we step out of our comfort zones. Each journey of exploration–global or personal—starts with curiosity and builds to hope, but passion is where it kicks into gear. It is the poetry that bursts forth from the previously stifled; the daily dedication to fitness from the newly healthy; and that decision to not delay life’s greatest adventures until retirement age, but to live each and every day from this moment forward to its fullest.

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  I would consider the case of John Harrison and his lifetime obsession with building marine chronometers to be a powerful example of passion. But Ewart Grogan goes him one better—much better. The fourteenth of twenty-one children born to the surveyor general to Queen Victoria, and named after British prime minister William Ewart Gladstone—who also happened to be his godfather—Grogan developed a fondness for mountaineering in his teen years. During a family vacation to Switzerland following his father’s death he immersed himself in climbing the local peaks, hoping to gain acceptance into the legendary Alpine Club, the world’s oldest mountaineering association. It took him four years, but at age nineteen, Grogan realized his goal of being elected to the Alpine Club—whereupon he quit climbing and entered Cambridge to study law.

  But the adventurous spirit that led the six-foot-tall Grogan to climb mountains was not quite done with him. In short order he was expelled for a number of pranks and run-ins with the law, volunteered to join the army and wage war in southern Africa against a Zulu uprising, and subsequently became so ill with blackwater fever, amoebic dysentery, malaria, and an abscessed liver that he was initially given up for dead and almost buried alive. Even after Grogan finally recovered, he still found a way to hasten his demise: Ewart Grogan fell in love.

  Her name was Gertrude Watt, and she was the shy oldest sister of a Cambridge friend. The family estate was on the North Island of New Zealand, and it was at the invitation of Eddie Watt that Grogan had sailed there to recuperate from the African illnesses still coursing through his body.

  Gertrude soon grew equally fond of the quick-witted Grogan. Yet when he asked her stepfather for her hand in marriage, Grogan was quickly shot down. Gertrude’s father had invented the steam engine, and she was heir to a considerable fortune. Grogan, on the other hand, had no prospects and no income. He was, in the words of stepfather James Coleman, “drifting down the river of life without a rudder.”

  The year was 1897. The scene was played out in a large drawing room, in a villa containing forty rooms. The palatial home faced east, toward Hawke’s Bay, first charted by James Cook in 1769, who also named it after Sir Edward Hawke, the first lord of the Admiralty who had launched Cook’s exploration career. The Pacific stretches ever eastward from Hawke’s Bay, not encountering a single landfall at the same thirty-nine degrees south latitude until the coast of Chile, almost 8,000 storm-tossed miles away.

  So that particular drawing room was an evocative location, and it would not be too great a leap to believe that the stunning view from its windows conjured up thoughts of adventure and global travel. But it was the view of blue-eyed Gertrude that enchanted Grogan more than anything. And so, as he looked out over literally a sea of possibility, the twenty-two-year-old Grogan suggested a rather astonishing wager to prove his worthiness: he would walk from Cape Town to Cairo—the southern tip to the northern tip of Africa. It was a distance of almost 5,000 miles, and one that no man in history had ever accomplished.

  “I can only assume you are trying to be funny,” Coleman replied coolly.

  “I am quite serious,” replied Grogan. “Never more so.”


  There was no way Grogan could back down. An overwhelming sense of passion had led him to venture into the audacious, and he was now quite stuck with whatever happened next.

  Coleman was incredulous. “My good man, do you realize what that would mean?”

  “Perfectly.”

  The journey lasted two and a half years. In February of 1900, Ewart Grogan arrived in Cairo.

  On April 30 of that year, he became the youngest man ever to address the Royal Geographical Society—of which he was later named a Fellow. He subsequently met separately with Queen Victoria and Henry Morton Stanley to speak of his journey.

  And on October 11, 1900, Ewart Grogan and Gertrude Watt wed at Christ’s Church in London, before a crowd of hundreds. They remained married until Gertrude’s death almost forty-three years later.

  7

  So it was with the explorers. They didn’t just set out on journeys; they undertook them with a powerful passion. They researched the lands through which they would travel, read the journals of explorers who had gone ahead of them, then lived each day as if it were their last. Ann Davison, the first woman to sail single-handedly across the Atlantic,XI described exploration as “one of those rare glorious experiences that lift you out of the commonplace on to Olympian heights of delight,” as if each journey fulfilled some deeper part of her being.

  Passion can be seen most clearly—even today—all due to a monumental discovery that took place in India in the year 1852, in the town of Dehra Run, some 100 miles north of Delhi. Sir Andrew Waugh was sitting in his office at what was known as the Grand Trigonometrical Survey. He had spent the last thirty years of his life mapping the Indian subcontinent. Working from south to north, the survey had come within sight of the Himalayas in 1830, but the peaks were so massive and the valleys so deep that measuring them with normal instruments was prohibitive.