The Explorers Read online

  XV. Climbers, desert explorers, and nautical adventurers have all used their expertise in wartime.

  XVI. French, meaning “people from the mountains.”

  XVII. Winner of the RGS Patron’s Medal in 1938.

  XVIII. The reporter breaking the news was legendary journalist and travel writer James—now Jan—Morris. For my money, she’s one of the great writers of our time.

  XIX. Which is not as farfetched as it seems. Shipton had taken a photograph of a purported abominable snowman print in 1947. Clearly etched in the snow, the footprint was longer than the climber’s ice ax.

  XX. Like many explorers, Amundsen had frequent money problems. His beloved Maud was sold to pay his creditors. She later sank in Cambridge Bay, Canada, where her hull can still be seen protruding above the shallow waters.

  XXI. There is discrepancy over whether Stanley’s famous “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” line was ever actually spoken. A glance at Stanley’s journals shows that portion of the page ripped from the book, so the truth will never be known. The words were meant to make him sound genteel, but in time they would become a vaudeville punch line that Stanley abhorred.

  XXII. Henry Morton Stanley was one of his pallbearers. Stepping out of the church, Stanley vowed to continue Livingstone’s work. This ultimately led to Stanley marching from one side of Africa to the other, in what is easily the greatest expedition in history. Stanley not only completed Livingstone’s work, but also that of the ill-fated Congo explorer James Hingston Tuckey from 1816. Stanley named an enormous rapids on the Congo River the Livingstone Falls, for his mentor. Nothing was named for Tuckey.

  XXIII. Livingstone was penniless as his final journey got under way. The postmortem sales of his journals provided quite handsomely for his heirs.

  XXIV. Now known as Tabora, and most easily accessed by plane or by the railway running from one side of Tanzania to the other, hewing closely to the same Arab slave path followed by Burton and Speke.

  XXV. The 8-foot-tall tomb has recently been cleaned after years of neglect. Visitors are directed to walk around back, where the ladder leads up to a viewing window. The Burtons’ coffins are clearly visible, if a little spooky.

  XXVI. Bombay was an African but got his unusual name after being sold into slavery as a young boy and taken away to India. Emancipated after his owner’s death, Bombay returned to Africa and led expeditions for Burton, Speke, Stanley, and Verney Lovett Cameron, with whom he walked across Africa from east to west. In his lifetime he also followed the Nile from its source all the way to the Mediterranean. The RGS bestowed a silver medal for achievement on him in 1876. Nonetheless, he is still viewed as nothing more than a prolific load bearer rather than the man leading the way—which, in fact, he was. Based on the explorare etymology of explorer—one who goes ahead and cries out what he sees—Bombay is clearly one of history’s greatest.

  XXVII. The actual length is 418.2 miles, making it the longest lake on Earth.

  XXVIII. Actual width is 45 miles.

  COURAGE

  1

  The US Department of State’s website issues regular travel warnings that detail the world’s most dangerous and unstable countries. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a perpetual presence on that list, right up there with North Korea, Pakistan, and Libya. Those contemplating a trip to the Congo are told to be wary of everything from polio, cholera, and yellow fever to roving bands of militia. Public transport is to be avoided at all costs, police checkpoints often result in wrongful imprisonment, and stopping at the scene of an accident is strongly discouraged due to random acts of mob violence. There are few viable roads and railways through its hundreds of miles of rain forest. Walking outside after dark, taking photos of government officials and buildings, and roving gangs of street children are all to be avoided. Certain regions of the Congo are completely off-limits not only to tourists, but to embassy personnel as well. One such area, the State Department warns, is home to armed groups who “pillage, steal vehicles, kidnap, rape, kill, and carry out military or paramilitary operations in which civilians are indiscriminately targeted.”

  In other words, not a very nice place.

  The Congo is on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika. Tanzania is on the eastern. Ujiji is no longer the main hub on that part of the lake, which means that ferry travel across to the Congo begins in nearby Kigoma. Technology in the form of Internet cafés and television have trickled into the heart of Africa, but even simple acts of commerce suggest that the encroachment of the modern world is slow in coming. There are no ATMs, and when I attempted to pay by credit card one storeowner examined my Visa from a number of different angles before asking, “Where is the money?”

  Yet for all the dangers and lack of modernization, there is a great appeal to the coastline of Lake Tanganyika. Sunrise on a clear day is golden and inviting. Fishing boats can be seen arriving after a long night on the water. The people are friendly and eager to offer directions. As of this writing, there are no State Department travel warnings about Tanzania.

  Burton and Speke experienced this same duality. On one side of Lake Tanganyika was prosperous Ujiji. There, merchants charged extortionist prices, and a damp lakeside climate rotted books and botanical specimens, but otherwise life was easy. The option of spending the day in an angle of repose constantly beckoned, making it the perfect stopover for two extremely sick explorers. “I lay a fortnight upon the earth,” Burton wrote, “too blind to read or write.”

  On the far side of the lake were dense rain forests, hostile tribes, constant peril, and an utter lack of the convenient Arab footpath they had followed to Ujiji. Yet Burton and Speke needed to go across. The first step of their RGS mission had been to reach the lake region of central Africa. This had been accomplished. Now, before they could turn around and go home, Burton and Speke needed to recuperate, then find it within themselves to push into the unknown and explore the lake’s perimeter. They needed to find the place where the Nile flowed northward out of the lake. The Arabs and the local tribes swore that such a river existed, though absolutely none of them had ever seen it. But the fact of the matter was simple: the truth about the Nile was out there.

  Find that river, and Lake Tanganyika was the source. Fail to find that river, and the source sprung from someplace else.

  In other words, sick as they were, Burton and Speke would be required to actually explore.

  This is where courage enters the picture. It was the Greek philosopher Aristotle who noted that the definition of courage is twofold: (1) recognition that a cause is worthwhile; and (2) that an individual faces danger with the full knowledge of what the potential outcome might be. A soldier on the field of battle is considered courageous if he risks his life so that others may live. However, if that same individual suffers from impulsivity or manic behavior, he is behaving irrationally—not courageously.

  That definition applies to physical courage, moral courage, and any other small daily act that requires a willful decision to accept a challenge, no matter how big or small. Courage is New York City firefighters climbing up into the twin towers on September 11. Courage is also the child who asks that the training wheels be taken off his or her two-wheeled bicycle. Researchers don’t use the word “courage” when describing this process. They call the object of peril a “decision point” and the act of behaving courageously as “overcoming fear.”

  Because the ability to be courageous is not just learned but also accrued—decision by decision, challenge by challenge, throughout our lives—that youthful day those firemen chose to take off their training wheels would form the basis of their heroism so many years later. Researchers refer to this process as “making fear-overriding decisions over time.”

  But almost all of us learn to ride a bike. Not everyone, however, possesses the courage to walk into a burning s
kyscraper when everyone else is racing out. Why do some of us acquire a deep well of bravery while others rarely if ever venture outside their comfort zone?

  In a word: mediocrity. Just as courage is a willful act to confront risk, so mediocrity is a choice to avoid risk. Once again, we have our lizard brain to thank for this. It kicks in whenever it sniffs a fearful situation, reminding us that the propagation of the species depends upon risk avoidance, no matter how milquetoast—or even cowardly—our behavior might appear.

  This instigates a bodily reaction known as somatic arousal. Our heart rate increases immediately, because the large muscles of the legs will need extra oxygen when the order is given to run away. This is also why we breathe faster in pressure situations—the lungs take in extra oxygen and immediately shunt it into the bloodstream.

  The adrenal glands, which are just above the kidneys, then secrete adrenaline and other defensive hormones into the bloodstream. Memory pathways in the brain are instantly enhanced, so that we remember the situation more vividly than a less dangerous event.I The stress hormones also trigger excess perspiration, leading to the clammy palms and notorious “cold sweat” so often associated with being afraid. They also cause the hairs on our arms to stand up. These “goose bumps,” as we know them, are medically known as piloerection, and serve no modern purpose. It has been theorized that it made prehistoric man—who had far more hair covering his body—look bigger when approached by a predator. It’s worth noting that cats also display piloerection in times of fear.

  All that blood and oxygen rushing to our legs causes an increase in muscle tension. This is why our knees shake when we’re afraid.

  And finally, a portion of the brain stem known as the pontine micturition center is bombarded by electronic signals, demanding that it do its job. That particular and highly specialized job is to control the bladder. This is why many human beings react to fear the same way as gazelles, pigeons, laboratory rats, and many other members of the animal kingdom: by peeing all over themselves.

  Thank goodness for courage.

  A portion of the brain known as the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) analyzes the fear and decides whether it is a true life-and-death threat, or merely a burst of anxiety. The heart rate and breathing slow down, the legs stop shaking, the clammy hands go dry, and we don’t feel embarrassing warmth running down our legs. The most marvelous thing about the sgACC is that it can bring about this sense of calm even when a threat is very real. A lifetime of courageous decisions sharpens the sgACC, making it easier and easier to override the lizard brain in dangerous situations.II For this very reason, elite commando outfits such as the British Special Air Service (SAS) train using live ammunition. The danger is still all too real, but the brain learns to differentiate between gunfire that will kill and a shot too far away to do harm.

  The sgACC’s ability to stop somatic arousal is not only instantaneous, but can occur before we realize we’re in danger. The brain is capable of making decisions six to seven seconds before we are aware that one is required. Which means that we choose whether to be courageous or cowardly before consciously making the decision to do so.

  2

  “Courage,” wrote the academic and theologian C. S. Lewis, “is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” Yet as much as we admire acts of courage, there is also an institutionalized embrace of mediocrity in the modern world. Settling for good enough is rampant, and widely encouraged. Curiosity, for instance, that great trait that starts all voyages of discovery (personal and otherwise), is actively suppressed. “Curiosity killed the cat” is such a common phrase that we overlook its crystal clear subtext: “Don’t take risks.” Or, in corporate-speak: “Don’t think outside the box.”

  The French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once wrote of a commute on the morning he was about to make his very first flight. The city bus was filled with clerks, bankers, and laborers. “I heard them talking to one another in murmurs and whispers. They talked about illness, money, and shabby domestic cares. Their talk painted the walls of the dismal prison in which these men had locked themselves up. And suddenly I had a vision of the face of destiny,” Saint-Exupéry noted.

  Then, enraged at lives not being lived to their fullest, he directed his writing to the mediocrity surrounding him. “You rolled yourself into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, raising a modest rampart against the winds and the tides and the stars. You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as a man. Nobody grasped you by the shoulders while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.”

  The hardening that Saint-Exupéry mentions is born out of mankind’s cultural embrace of mediocrity. This herd mentality is seen in everything from popular hairstyles to clothing to music—emphasis on the word “popular.” Parents want to see their children succeed in life, and know that going along with the crowd seems to be the best way to make that possible.

  “All men dream, but not equally,” wrote T. E. Lawrence, the legendary British desert explorer, making a distinction between those who choose mediocrity and those who choose courage. “Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.”

  Inspiring as those words might be, children are not raised to be those “dreamers of the day.” Daydreaming,III in fact, is widely viewed as a lazy waste of time. Throughout their schooling years, it is made clear that children who choose to simply do as they are told, rather than those who challenge conventional wisdom through an unconventional creative thought process, will be amply rewarded for their acquiescence. The educational system, corporate culture, and most every aspect of modern life are comfortable with the status quo, resenting and fearing anything that introduces radical change. Men such as the firefighters marching into those twin towers and the navy SEALs who shot Osama bin Laden most likely did not learn that courage-producing continuum of “fear-overriding decisions” from their teachers, high school sports coaches, or not even their parents. Instead, it was their years of rigid professional training that provided them with calm detachment in the face of danger.

  Their commitment to their comrades—“brothers” in the words of New York City firefighters—adds an ethical aspect known as moral courage. Those with high levels of moral development are driven by their conscience to do the right thing at all times. Personal experience, professional training, a lifetime of knowledge acquisition, and the surrounding environment combine with this reliance on moral values to empower individuals in the face of danger. Among others, this moral courage is seen in the nurse who acts as an advocate for her patient, the civil rights activist, the whistle blower, and first responders such as firefighters, smoke jumpers, and police.

  It would be a stretch to consider the explorers highly moral. Many, such as the pirate William Dampier,IV had few morals whatsoever, and were entirely motivated by money. But by its very nature, the profession of explorer involved traveling alone into places with ways and beliefs different from anything they’d ever experienced. An explorer had two ethical choices in such an environment: rely on his conscience as a moral compass, or compromise his morals to suit his surroundings. Jack Speke, for instance, once watched an infant being boiled alive in Africa. Yet he did nothing to stop it, a fact greeted with widespread horror when news of the atrocity reached England.

  Perhaps the most famous example of physical and moral courage in the annals of exploration is that of Lawrence Oates, a British cavalry officer who traveled to the South Pole as part of Robert Falcon Scott’s 1910–12 Terra Nova expedition.

  If ever a complete absence of morality exists on the
face of the Earth, it is at that barren wasteland of snow, ice, wind, and horrific freezing temperatures known as the South Pole. It is, in a word, awful. At the time of Scott’s expedition, no man had ever set foot upon it, and no tribes of indigenous people had developed a religion to explain the power that the weather and terrain had over their lives. It was a blank slate of morality—which did absolutely nothing to detract from mankind’s desperate desire to see the pole, touch the pole, and breathe, if only for a short time, its frozen air.

  Scott’s goal was to be the first. En route from England to Antarctica, he learned that a Norwegian expedition would be attempting the same journey. Led by Roald Amundsen, the taciturn discoverer of the Northwest Passage, they were a well-disciplined team. Amundsen was known for being rigid and almost heartless in the way he drove his men. Scott’s compassion, on the other hand, was legendary. He accepted frailties in other men that he found so despicable in himself.

  Rather than make much of the race to the pole, and perhaps endanger the lives of his men, Scott chose to downplay the rivalry with Amundsen. “The proper, as well as the wiser, course is for us to proceed as though this had not happened. To go forward and do our best for the honor of our country without fear or panic. There is no doubt that Amundsen’s plan is a very serious menace to ours,” he wrote.

  Scott and his team set off across the Ross Ice Shelf on November 1, 1911. Amundsen was already two weeks into his journey. Scott’s supplies were carried by dogs, Siberian ponies, and motor vehicles on tracks. All but the dogs gave out within a few days.

  As one can imagine, the journey was horrid. “Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised” was how Antarctic explorer Apsley Cherry-Gerrard described the expedition. He shivered so hard on that trip that his teeth shattered from all the chattering.