Into Africa Page 11
Science changed Murchison. He was still capable of great arrogance, but his focus shifted from glorifying himself to serving his country. At some point in his education Murchison developed a prescient vision of what was right for Great Britain. On May 24, 1830, he became a charter member of something called the Geographical Society of London. Soon after, the name was changed. The Royal Geographical Society's charter was to further scientific exploration worldwide and accumulate a geographical library of books and charts. It was a body whose time had come. Exploration needed a firm hand to guide it through a time of transition.
Prior to the turn of the nineteenth century, exploration was primarily a naval endeavor. Expeditions were government financed. Commissioned officers were in command. The focus was oceanic, the goal conquest. The great geographical questions revolved around finding undiscovered landmasses in the southern hemisphere and vetting them for potential settlement. With rare exceptions, only the ships and officers of the Royal Navy were capable of the complex global circumnavigation necessary to do the job right.
By the time Captain James Cook was murdered by Hawaiian natives in 1779, each and every continent had been sketched, and most of the Pacific islands plotted. Two years later, the British Government ceased funding all voyages of exploration. France, the world's other great exploration power, became embroiled in revolution and war soon after. The French set aside exploration, as well.
But the pursuit of exploration did not stop. The call to adventure is genetic in a handful of men and women, not quieted by something so mundane as bureaucratic disinterest. These private citizens began mapping the unknown world on their own. The focus switched from sea to land. The Amazon, the Indian Subcontinent, and the Australian Outback called to men with courage and initiative. But the area with the greatest allure, perhaps because it was the most terrifying and closest to Europe, was Africa. The animals were carnivorous and prehistoric. Human beings were prey. Mysterious diseases, theoretically caused by bad air—mal aria to Italians, hence “malaria”—brought on fever, chills, madness, and death. The local inhabitants were considered cannibals or emasculants.
Playboy botanist Joseph Banks had formed the African Association in 1788 to foster exploration of what was popularly known as “The Dark Continent.” While the term later took on racial overtones, it came about because cartographers colored the unknown regions of Africa black—which, at the time, meant almost everything south of Cairo and north of Cape Town. The African Association commissioned American adventurer John Ledyard to lead their first expedition, a journey up the Nile. Ledyard died in Cairo before the journey began. The mysterious nature of his illness only added to Africa's cachet.
Banks had sailed with Cook and been a fishing companion of Sandwich's. When the Royal Geographic Society (then the London Geographical Society) absorbed the African Association shortly after its founding, the botanist became the bridge from one generation of explorers to another. Murchison quickly took up where Banks left off. His showmanship meant he once arrived for a public rock-gathering trek dressed in white pants, white shooting jacket, and white top hat. And because he was a bastion of London society, Murchison could be shameless in using his high-level political connections to obtain expedition funding. That faculty was much-needed: Global exploration was an expensive undertaking and the RGS was continually short of funds.
“Industry and energy, a clear head, a strong will, and great tenacity of purpose” defined Murchison's character, marveled friend Henry Rawlinson. As did “kindness of manner, his entire absence of jealousy, his geniality, fine temper, tact, and firmness.”
In time, Murchison and the RGS became synonymous, just as RGS explorations became synonymous with Britain's global expansion into an empire. The RGS's annual gold medals for achievement became two of the world's most prized decorations. Generals, statesmen, and scientists from both Britain and Europe clamored to join so they could affix “F.R.G.S.”—Fellow, Royal Geographical Society—to their signature and dine at the exclusive Geographical Club on Whitehall Place. In all, RGS memberships rose from the founding five to a select twenty-three hundred in Murchison's lifetime.
In the early 1850s Murchison set geology aside to focus on imperial expansion. The introduction of disciplines like organic chemistry was making science too complex for him to keep pace. Even geology began requiring physics, chemistry, and mathematical skills, so he became the “gentleman geologist” in name only. Enhancing the link between exploration and global power became his specialty.
By a twist of fate, it was during that period that Livingstone entered Murchison's life. An evangelical revival had swept through England. Groups such as the London Missionary Society, mindful that Britain had been a pagan nation until missionaries arrived on her shores in the sixth century, were returning the favor by sending men and women around the world to proselytize. They were not explorers in the traditional sense, but the missionaries caught Murchison's eye because they were venturing far into the wilderness to spread their faith. They set up schools and churches on the frontier, and lived among the natives of Polynesia, Asia, South America, and Africa. They learned the local languages. The missionaries ate the local food. Sometimes, as in the case of one New Zealand tribe whose favorite recipe called for Anglicans, the locals ate the missionaries. On all levels, the missionary connection with the local peoples and cultures was deeper than anything a passing explorer might experience.
To Murchison, Livingstone was the perfect hybrid of explorer, missionary, and scientist. Livingstone's Christianity was muscular, which was appealing to an empire claiming the faith as its official religion. His travels, though he was far from perfect and certainly not a saint, had a righteous heft. When word of the young Scot's early, relatively tentative, explorations trickled back to London in the late 1840s, Murchison took note. They finally met in 1856, when Livingstone returned to London after sixteen years away. Their friendship blossomed. When Livingstone was mobbed in the streets and even churches of London because of his bold walk across Africa, it was due to Murchison's organizing a massive public relations campaign. When Livingstone received the Society's gold medal for excellence in exploration, it was Murchison presenting. And when a middle-aged Livingstone needed funding for his Zambezi expedition, it was Murchison who handled negotiations with the foreign secretary. Murchison not only wrangled the money, he convinced the government to fund a river steamer, as well.
Owing in great part to Livingstone's unrelenting travels, Murchison “adopted and made his own the great field of African discovery,” in Rawlinson's words. His focus became finding the source of the Nile. Thus Murchison gave his greatest encouragement to those travelers wishing to investigate Africa. In time, Murchison's African explorers developed into his core group of “lions,” as Burton called them. The pride was Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Grant, Baker, the French-American gorilla expert Paul Du Chaillu, and the British authority on Ethiopia, Charles Beke. But it was Livingstone, being of Scottish highland origin, who received Murchison's greatest attention. For even though Murchison lived in London for more than fifty years, he always carried a powerful sense of Scottish clan loyalty.
Admiration between the two men flowed both ways. It also seemed as though Livingstone worshipped Murchison. He “was the best friend I ever had—true, warm, and abiding,” the searcher wrote. He once lugged a portmanteau full of Central African rocks home as a gift for his geologist friend. But while Livingstone did the hard work of exploration, there was no doubt the elder Murchison held the upper hand in their partnership. Their relationship was not that of a father to a son, but of “a highlander to his chief.” The two shared many a private hour walking the countryside, hunting rocks, and talking Africa. Each man benefited from the other's prominence: Murchison reveled in the worldwide interest in himself and the RGS that came with Livingstone's discoveries, while the explorer received government assistance, public subscriptions to fund further expeditions, and the fame he quietly coveted.
It
was Murchison who sheltered Livingstone from the fallout of the failed Zambezi trip, instructing the explorer to avoid all media and public appearances for two months after arriving home, knowing any negative editorials would be forgotten over time. It was Murchison who, knowing that his friend's finances were dwindling, introduced Livingstone's speech at the British Association's conference in Bath on the night of Monday, September 19, just three short days after Speke's suicide, publicly alluding to the explorer's financial situation in the hopes that Her Majesty's government would step forward and offer a pension. “Dr. Livingstone has had honors in abundance showered upon him, but he cannot live nor provide for his family on honors merely. I think he is entitled to public and national recompense,” Murchison said. Murchison was such a stirring speaker that he was interrupted for applause three times during the introduction alone. By the time Livingstone took the stage the audience was at a fever pitch. The pairing of Murchison's display of affection and Livingstone's earnest, adventurous remarks rendered Livingstone's Bath speech the highlight of the 1864 British Association meetings.
As the summer of 1869 arrived, however, and with his annual president's address behind him, Murchison was coming to the end of methods to help his friend. He became obsessive in pondering the vagaries of African travel and how they might be slowing Livingstone's return. For instance, he noted that if Livingstone were following the Nile from Lake Victoria north to the Mediterranean, he would have to catch the boat from Gondokoro to Khartoum that left each April. From there it was twenty-five days to Alexandria. That would place Livingstone home by the end of June—but only if he made the Gondokoro boat. Otherwise he might have to wait a year for another.
In April it had been reported Livingstone was in Zanzibar en route to Europe. A July article in the Medical Times and Gazette said Livingstone was somewhere in the region of Lake Victoria. On the whole, Livingstone rumors ran in the Times on the average of once a week. Murchison immediately wrote rebuttals to any mentioning his friend's death. He cautioned the public against despondence.
The social season ended quietly in late July without sign of Livingstone. The landed gentry returned to their estates. August passed, and still no word. The question of his whereabouts lurked beneath the veneer of daily English life. The mystery threatened to go unsolved and taunt the curious forever. No one, however, took action. Like the boy who cried wolf, Livingstone had been reported overdue and dead one too many times in his career, only to reappear. Based on what E. D. Young had seen and written, the British Government had begun an unspoken policy of not funding Livingstone search expeditions. Not even Murchison was stepping forth to suggest differently.
Then, on August 28, a tragic occurrence cast a shadow over all African exploration. In their “Deaths” section, the Times reported that Alexandrine Tinne, the Belgian heiress and veteran African explorer, was attempting to become the first woman ever to cross the Sahara when she was murdered by robbers in Northern Africa. They had ridden into her camp and murdered her companions. Then, as the men charged their horses at Tinne, she held up her hand as if to halt them. One of the intruders quickly pulled his sword and cut the hand off as he galloped past. Another Arab then shot her in the heart. Alexandrine Tinne was thirty-three.
Miss Tinne's explorations and bravery were well known to Britons. She had explored the upper Nile at the same time as Speke and Grant, and was respected as a very capable explorer, regardless of her gender. The manner of her death was unsettling, as was its timing.
In the outpouring of public sorrow that followed, Isabel Burton wrote the Times and publicly suggested what many were already thinking: It was time to find Livingstone. And not just evidence of his existence, as Young had found two years before, but the man himself. Isabel, whose penchant for independent thinking was so notable among women in Victorian England that the Edinburgh Review was inspired to comment on her character—“a clever capable woman, self-reliant in difficulties, with a pretty sense of humor”—wrote the letter without any prompting from her husband. Richard Burton was on his way to Beirut to serve as Consul to Damascus. He didn't worry about his fellow lion. Burton felt Livingstone had to be alive, for when he finally died the bush telegraph would wire the news back to Zanzibar within days. Isabel's letter, then, was notable for its independence and compassion.
It also forced Murchison into a tight spot. To seek funding for a rescue mission would be publicly admitting his steadfast belief in Livingstone's safety was a sham. Yet if he didn't, his friend might perish. “Sir Roderick,” Rawlinson once noted, “never deserted a friend in need.”
On September 29 help arrived in the form of a letter from Sir Samuel White Baker. Barrel-chested, with light bags under his blue eyes, a pronounced nose, graying brown hair parted on the right, and a frizzy beard draping down to his sternum, the fifty-seven-year-old Baker was the most animated and emotionally stable of Murchison's lions. He was at the Nile's mouth in Alexandria as he wrote to Murchison, about to journey upriver with his new spouse and longtime travel companion, the former Florence von Sass. She was blond, Hungarian, a second wife, and fifteen years his junior.
Baker's letter explained his itinerary and goals, offered Mrs. Baker's warmest wishes, then added a compelling postscript: “P.S. I see a letter in the papers from Mrs. Burton, proposing an expedition in search of Livingstone. Although well meant, it will be a useless undertaking, as I shall arrive south of the Albert before any expedition from Zanzibar could reach Tanganyika. There I shall be certain to hear of him.”
So it was settled. Baker would not aggressively search for Livingstone, but he would travel up the Nile to Gondokoro. His intention was to build a settlement and open up the interior to commerce. The settlement would serve as a listening post. Baker, who thought Livingstone's Nile theories were absurd, would race to his fellow lion's assistance if Livingstone's location became known.
Murchison affixed a cover letter and forwarded Baker's missive to the Times, confident there could be no better caretaker of Livingstone's safety. Baker was intelligent, thorough, bold, and fluent in the local language. If any explorer could divine word of a fellow white man, it was he. The RGS would not launch a search expedition. There was no need.
Isabel Burton's letter, however, was a call to arms. Adventurous men throughout England disregarded Baker's assurances. Inspired by E. D. Young's new best-seller, The Search for Livingstone, they sent resumes to the RGS, hoping to join the search party. All were turned away. “No such expedition had, however, been intended,” the RGS finally stated publicly. “Dr. Livingstone had been more than three years and a half in the heart of Africa without a single European attendant.” Murchison “was not sure that the sight of an unacclimatized young gentleman sent out from England would not produce a very bad effect upon the Doctor. Because, in addition to his other labors, he would have to take care of the new arrival.”
Steadfast in his belief Livingstone was alive, almost loving in his staunch defense of Livingstone's ability to prosper, Murchison never broached the subject of a search party again. Livingstone would return on his own or not at all.
It never occurred to Murchison that search and rescue could be attempted without RGS participation, and that Livingstone's disappearance didn't just belong to Britain and the RGS anymore. The man and the story belonged to the world. And even as Isabel Burton's letter ran in the Times, followed by Samuel Baker's, events were unfolding in New York that would directly affect Livingstone.
It was October 1869. Winter was coming to London. War was brewing in Europe. And James Gordon Bennett, Jr., in that time of upheaval, decided it was time to go looking for Livingstone in earnest.
• CHAPTER 10 •
Lualaba
October 1869
Bambarre
There were two main villages in the Manyuema region west of Lake Tanganyika through which Livingstone was traveling. The first was Bambarre, located in a valley beneath high granite mountains that reminded Livingstone of glaciers. Those mounta
ins were also named Bambarre. Further inland, and at a much lower elevation along the banks of the Lualaba, was the lush oasis of Nyangwe, which was Livingstone's ultimate goal. The terrain was intensely rugged in the miles between Lake Tanganyika and Nyangwe, however, and the going was very slow. Livingstone was only halfway to Nyangwe when he finally reached the village of Bambarre on September 21, 1869. He had traveled just two hundred miles in the two months since leaving Ujiji.
Those two hundred miles, however, were some of the most arduous in all of Africa. The mountains of Bambarre were like towering castle walls protecting Africa's innermost kingdoms from easy incursion. The heavily forested slopes were so steep that hiking upward often meant scrambling on all fours, clutching trees and creeping vines to avoid tumbling back down. The ground near the summit was moist and cool, protected from the sun by the stifling density of the primeval forest. The air was dank and oppressive from lack of light and circulating breezes. Moss and ferns sprouted on the trees. The creepers twined up and around the great tree trunks so tightly that even dead trees remained upright, supported by the same parasitical vines that had killed them.
As Livingstone descended into the valley on the other side, the ground was riven with deep gullies and ravines. The forest was even more awesome, with trees growing to three hundred feet tall, canopies intertwined. But slowly, as the base of the mountains came closer, the clear blue sky and rays of sunshine began filtering through. The forest thinned, and the trees became smaller. When the mountains had finally tapered out, and Livingstone was in a land of green fields, sparkling streams, and scattered clusters of mighty trees, he had done much more than merely cross a mountain range. He had, in fact, entered a place like none he had seen before in Africa.