Into Africa Page 15

  At Webb's suggestion, Stanley began relying on a powerful trader named Sheikh Hashid for advice on caravan construction. From Hashid, Stanley learned the proper assortment of cloth, beads, and wire needed for use as currency in the interior. They would be payment for food from villages en route, hiring new porters as needed, and paying tribute to those chiefs demanding a toll for the privilege of passing through their land. Cloth, beads, and wire were worth more than gold in Africa. The goods had to be functional, abundant, and appealing to the eye. “The women of Africa,” Stanley learned, “are as fastidious in their tastes for beads as the women of New York are for jewelry.”

  Then there were the basic, vital logistics. The pagazis (porters) carried a maximum weight of seventy pounds on their shoulders. They operated between Bagamoyo and the crossroads of Tabora, roughly two-thirds of the way to Ujiji. At Tabora the men would be paid off and Stanley would need to hire new men for the final push to Ujiji. If Livingstone wasn't at Ujiji, and Stanley needed to push farther inland, there would be an additional charge. Payment was in dotis—bolts of blue Indian calico—or “Merikani,” the preferred American cotton from the mills of Salem or Nashua. Each doti was four yards long and three feet wide. Depending upon experience, a pagazi received from fifteen to twenty-five dotis for his tour of duty.

  Stanley purchased eight thousand yards of Merikani to pay his porters and to barter in the interior. The cloth came folded from the mill, but would have to be unfolded and tightly rolled into seventy-pound bales for carrying. After rolling, the bale of cloth was bound with coir rope and pounded by two men until the bale was shaped like a bedroll—three feet long, one foot wide, one foot deep. The bale was placed in a mat bag known as a makanda, which the pagazi hoisted onto his shoulders for travel. Beads, on the other hand, were placed in long narrow bags weighing sixty-two pounds each. Wire was carried on poles in loads of six coils weighing sixty pounds.

  But cloth, beads, and wire were just the start. Stanley purchased food, medicine, ammunition, and pack mules. Anticipating the great moment he would meet Livingstone, Stanley also purchased a bottle of champagne. Stanley spent money zealously, until his little search party became the largest-ever expedition to set forth from Zanzibar—so big that Stanley was forced to divide it into five subcaravans and stagger their departures to avoid robbery. The mules would carry those loads too heavy for porters.

  As January passed, and Stanley was almost ready to sail for Bagamoyo, all of Zanzibar talked about the white man setting off into the mainland. “This fact was repeated a thousand times in the streets, proclaimed in all the shop alcoves, and at the customs house,” Stanley wrote. “The native bazaar laid hold of it and agitated it every day until my departure. The foreigners, including the Europeans, wished to know the pros and cons of my going in and coming out.” He was getting worried. The Rufiji River façade was wearing thin. There were too many goods for such a short journey, too much money being thrown around by a simple newspaper reporter. But he stuck to his story. The need for secrecy was still vital, no matter how obvious things were getting.

  Right to the end, Stanley continued purchasing in an eager, but not impulsive fashion. A childhood of poverty had made him careful with money. Finally, “there remained for me,” Stanley wrote months later in his first dispatch to the Herald, “to raise a small company of faithful men, who should act as soldiers, guards to the caravan, and servants when necessary.” The legendary Sidi Mubarak Bombay—“the honestest of black men who served with Burton, and subsequently with Speke”—came on board as leader of Stanley's protective militia. In time, Bombay would serve as unofficial caravan leader, and liaison between Stanley and the pagazis.

  Thirteen years had passed since a young Bombay had dazzled Burton and Speke with his easy humor and insatiable work ethic. But he was still able to walk thirty miles at a brisk pace, had worked with the most expeditions of any man, and knew the interior by rote. Bombay, however, had also passed into middle age. He was bald and the young pagazis didn't respect him. As the rare man in history to follow the Nile from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean, Bombay thought himself a celebrity. He had an ego, as Stanley knew from reading the works of Burton and Speke, and could be outspoken, prone to drinking and chasing women, and a procrastinator. So there were liabilities incumbent with Bombay's hiring. All in all, however, the exploration veteran was vital.

  Stanley trusted Bombay so much he let the former slave hire his own soldiers. Bombay handpicked twenty men. For defense, the force carried “one double-barreled smooth bore No. 12, two American Winchester rifles or ‘sixteen shooters,' two Starr's breech-loading carbines, one Jocelyn breech-loader, one elephant rifle, carrying balls eight to the pound; two breech-loading revolvers, twenty-four flintlock muskets, six single-barreled pistols, one battle axe, two swords, two daggers, one boar spear, two American axes, twenty-four hatchets, and twenty-four long knives.”

  Stanley, it seemed, was ready for anything. In less than a month he had assembled his caravan and was preparing to get under way.

  On February 5, as the sun rose over the Indian Ocean, Stanley said good-bye to Webb and his family. Four dhows bobbed in the harbor right in front of the American Consulate. As a going away present, Webb's wife sewed Stanley an American flag. She had come to enjoy his company a great deal, though she'd thought him gruff when they first met. The flag was Mrs. Webb's contribution to her husband and Stanley's anti-British subterfuge. Stanley ran the provocation up his dhow's mast. He hadn't written any newspaper dispatches to the Herald from Zanzibar, for fear of giving away his intentions. That would wait until he reached somewhere deep in the interior. The homemade Old Glory, now fluttering and snapping in the wind, would add a patriotic dimension to Stanley's trip that was sure to please his readers.

  Stanley's flotilla of forty-foot-long dhows contained two other valuable presents: horses. One was a bay, the gift of an American merchant. The larger, a gray, was from Sultan Barghash. The Sultan had taken to Stanley after the reporter impressed him with stories of journeys through Islamic countries. The Sultan also presented Stanley with a signed paper, stating the New York Herald expedition could go anywhere in his domain, unhindered. The backing of such an influential friend emboldened Stanley. It was just a month since he'd arrived in Zanzibar. He had known just one person when he arrived. But through ambition, drive, and even a little personal charisma, Stanley had financed the entire journey and made two very powerful friends in Webb and Barghash.

  When it came time to sail that day, Shaw and Farquhar were missing. It was mid-morning when Stanley found them in a seaside bar, drinking whiskey, surrounded by a dozen new acquaintances, spending their advance salary. Farquhar, in Stanley's words, “was holding forth on the greatness of the art of African exploration.” In truth, Farquhar was scared of the unknown miles that lay ahead. Lazy, insolent, and mean, he was drinking to calm his fears. “Trying,” as Stanley scornfully wrote later, “to stave off with the aid of whiskey the dread presentiments that would insidiously now and then obtrude themselves into their minds, warning them that though the new lands were about to be revealed to them, with all the fantastic scenes credited to the new country, there might me something in these strange parts that might . . . well, what?”

  Stanley glowered at the sailors. “Get into the dhows at once, men,” Stanley barked. “This is a rather bad beginning after signing contracts.”

  Shaw spoke up. He was more complicated than Farquhar, more sensitive and unafraid to show his fears. Unlike Farquhar, however, who could find work on a ship that would take him away from Zanzibar and Africa if he successfully deserted from Stanley, Shaw was stuck on the island. The false charge of mutiny by the captain of the USS Nevada made him unemployable. Though proven innocent, no other skipper in port would hire him. Unless Shaw wanted to stay on Zanzibar forever, earning his passage money by working for Stanley was his only option.

  On the verge of departure, though, Shaw was haunted by fears he'd signed on too hastily. “If
you please, sir, may I ask if you think I have done quite right in promising to go with you to Africa?” Shaw asked tentatively as Stanley stood over him. Farquhar remained quiet.

  The question about the group's safety in Africa—unspoken for so long—hung between the three men. Their differences in manner and background were many, and best heard in their accents: Shaw's clipped Cockney, Farquhar's working man's Scottish brogue, Stanley's curious Southern drawl. But all three had privately wondered whether going into Africa was wise. That hesitation was one of the few things they had in common. Devoid of hubris and machismo, and spoken on the verge of their journey as a passive plea to be released from his obligation, Shaw's question placed the issue squarely at the middle of their triangular relationship—where it would remain for the rest of their journey together.

  “Have you not received your advance? Have you not signed the contract?” Stanley scoffed. “Get into the boat, man, at once. We are all in it for now. Sink or swim. Live or die. None can desert his duty.”

  When the Herald expedition's dhows finally sailed for the mainland just before noon, Shaw and Farquhar were reluctantly on board. Stanley looked back and scanned the shore. Kirk was nowhere to be seen. But Stanley spied Webb, his wife, and two young children cheering him on, waving star-spangled hats, handkerchiefs, and even a banner. “Happy people, and good!” Stanley wrote of the Webbs. “May their course and ours be prosperous, and may God's blessing rest on us all.”

  Then Stanley turned his back on Zanzibar, ready to face at last the land haunting his dreams. In the final days on the island, when people asked his destination, Stanley no longer mentioned the headwaters of the Rufiji. Instead, in simple tones, he declared: “I am going to Africa.”

  Now Henry Morton Stanley had the blessing of the American Consul and was flying the American flag. Yet Stanley harbored one great secret—something he concealed from everyone he met and was now carrying into Africa—he was actually not an American. Stanley was, in fact, as British as Livingstone.

  • CHAPTER 14 •

  Into Africa

  February–March 1871

  Bagamoyo

  815 Miles to Livingstone

  Character is built through trials and turmoil. Stanley, who endured a heart-wrenching childhood, then an adolescence fraught with hardship, sexual molestation, and longing, as well as an international change of residence, had seen an abundance of both in his life. Despite the challenges and setbacks, he still indulged himself in moments of great hope. Without that lustrous act of faith there could be no viable search for Livingstone.

  Life had taught Stanley to prepare for the worst in any new situation. As a result he was steeled, almost resigned, to the African mainland being a brutish place that was far more harrowing than his nightmares. But in the days after Stanley's dhows dropped anchor atop the coral reef forming Bagamoyo's natural harbor, he was surprised to discover Africa wasn't as bad as he thought. At least, Bagamoyo wasn't. Weary of Zanzibar's claustrophobia and squalor, Stanley reveled in the sweet ocean breezes and the bombast of coastal jungle greenery. “We were able to sleep in the open air, and rose fresh and healthy each morning to enjoy our matutinal bath in the sea. And by the time the sun had risen we had engaged in multitudinous preparations for our departure for the interior,” he wrote.

  Bagamoyo would be the second, and final, stage of Stanley's launch. Zanzibar was for purchasing supplies, while Bagamoyo was for hiring the men to carry them and for indulging in last-minute organization. On the surface it was an idyllic place for a man to gather his thoughts and gain perspective. The white sand beach was a crescent curving slowly outward. Stanley could see ten miles down the coast in either direction, the tall rows of palm and pine trees separating sand from jungle. Dhows lay stranded on their sides at low tide, making it easier to unload boats. The sounds of Swahili being spoken mingled with the thunk of shipwrights swinging short-handled axes into felled tree trunks and the clatter in the treetops of wind knocking palm fronds against one another.

  Sand berms along the beach protected Bagamoyo from the sea. The town was set two hundred yards back on a single long street with a few houses made of stone and others of mud. The buildings were whitewashed, like those in Zanzibar, but were mostly one story, and without the island's signature ornate wooden doors. The population was Arab slavers, Indian merchants, and slaves. The only Europeans were the French fathers of the Holy Ghost Roman Catholic mission, which rested on several acres just inland, to the north. Stanley rented a home on the western edge of Bagamoyo, with a courtyard for penning the pack animals and pitching tents. As new supply needs made themselves known, he began sending Bombay back and forth on the four-hour dhow journey to Zanzibar for last-minute items.

  The paradise of Bagamoyo, however, came with a sad legacy. It was the terminus of the slave caravans and the last African soil that slaves would ever tread. Originally, the Arabs had named the town Bwagamoyo—“throw off melancholy”—but the slaves changed it. Bagamoyo, in Swahili, means “crush your heart.”

  Life in Bagamoyo was even slower paced than in Zanzibar. With his anxieties and short attention span, Stanley grew bored. The euphoria of leaving Zanzibar was soon replaced by an impatience to leave Bagamoyo. Time was closing in. The monsoons were coming. But Stanley was stuck. The Zanzibar cholera epidemic of 1869 and 1870 had devastated the East African coast, too, killing over one hundred thousand people. Wary of the disease, skilled porters were still avoiding Bagamoyo, which meant there weren't enough men to carry Stanley's massive load. The journalist offered double and triple the going rate, but he still couldn't find porters. There were tasks for him to oversee in the meantime, such as compressing the doti into bundles. Otherwise, all Stanley could do was wait on the manpower.

  In his boredom, Stanley's fears returned. He realized again how “impracticable” it was to search for Livingstone. And again, he went as far as to make allusions to suicide. He would kill himself, he wrote in one bizarre sentence, “by putting my head in a barrel of sand, which I thought to be a most easy death, and one I gratuitously recommend for all would-be suicides.”

  His thoughts never went beyond rumination, but they defined Stanley's mood. He was edgy, afraid of failure, trying to contain an inner foreboding. Finding Livingstone was more than just an assignment—he pictured it as the rightful conclusion to the self-help regimen he'd begun two years before in Aden. He was a glory-hound but had the prescience to realize that facing his fears by trekking across Africa would give him charge of his destiny. “I mean, by attention to my business, by self-denial, by indefatigable energy, to become my own master and that of others,” he wrote.

  He was propelled by an underdog's penchant for proving himself through extreme actions, no matter how dangerous or how much they scared him. That which did not kill Stanley definitely made him stronger. He had been a timid, needy child. But each new challenge since leaving home had hardened him, and added another notch of courage. Cumulatively, they had prepared him for Africa. He knew how to camp, how to shoot, how to endure days without food and water, how to march. Instead of observing and writing about the actions of others, as the life of a journalist traditionally mandated, Stanley would write about himself. Hero or goat, he was about to take center stage.

  So he shooed the depression away and turned it into rage. The rage, in turn, was directed at one man: John Kirk. Their one-sided battle of wills and wits—a skirmish of which Kirk was almost completely unaware—wouldn't end just because Stanley had sailed to Africa.

  A fresh opportunity for attacking the British Consul arose when Stanley noticed that Livingstone's caravan of relief supplies, which had left Zanzibar November 1, more than three months earlier, was still in Bagamoyo. In that time the caravan could have almost traveled to Ujiji. Instead, the porters drew a daily salary for doing nothing, living off Livingstone's money as they made trips back to friends and family in Zanzibar. “They lived in clover here,” Stanley fumed. “Thoughtless of the errand they had been sent upon, an
d careless of the consequences.”

  The problem lay with Kirk. Overwhelmed by his new duties and apathetic about helping Livingstone, he allowed the caravan to idle. He knew that in addition to the seven men hired in Zanzibar, the relief caravan required an additional thirty-five porters to carry all the loads. He had not, however, hired them. Kirk had also been an Africa hand long enough to know that heat and malaise robbed men of initiative, made them lazy, made them cowards. It wasn't enough merely to purchase supplies, trusting that the porters would deliver them. After the failure of the 1868 and 1869 resupply attempts, Kirk knew it was vital that porters be hired, and that a supervisor escort the caravan all the way to Ujiji—if only to act as a catalyst. Kirk hadn't arranged such an escort, either through his contacts in Zanzibar or by traveling to Bagamoyo and arranging it himself, so the porters showed no sign of leaving.

  The more Stanley ruminated about Kirk's failure to expedite supplies to Livingstone, the more the conflict between him and Kirk escalated in his head. Stanley represented America: brash, arrogant with resources, steadfast in the belief that anything was possible. Kirk was Great Britain: sober, powerful, understated. So while Kirk was quietly sure Livingstone would carry on until the supplies inevitably reached him, Stanley was appalled Kirk could be so reckless about Livingstone's safety. “If the British Consul puts forward a plea that he was not aware that his supplies to Livingstone were still halted at Bagamoyo, it will only prove to me that he was more culpably negligent than ever of his duty to a British subject and a brother official, who was left completely dependent on him for even the means to live,” Stanley wrote.

  As if reading Stanley's mind, a rumor circulated through Bagamoyo on the tenth of February that “balyuz”—the ambassador—was coming to town. The relief caravan immediately packed up and slipped away in the dead of night, headed in the general direction of Ujiji. By the time Kirk stepped off the HMS Columbine and strolled into Bagamoyo two days later, they were long gone.