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  Stanley angrily ordered the porter carrying the goat cart to fling it into a gully, then berated Shaw in front of the men. Shaw, Stanley commanded, was to dismount and walk. The donkey was needed for carrying supplies.

  Three tense days later, Shaw worked up the courage to confront Stanley. He and Farquhar arrived at breakfast in a dark mood. Stanley's greeting got no reply. He'd noticed the two engaging in heated conversation over the previous few days, and suddenly realized he was their topic. “Selim,” Stanley said to his servant. “Bring breakfast.”

  Liver, roasted goat, pancakes, and coffee appeared. Then, after scorning the food as “dog's meat,” Shaw aired his grievances. “It is a downright shame the way you treat us,” Shaw said. “I thought we were to have donkeys to ride every day and servants to wait on us. Instead of which I have now got to walk every day through the hot sun, until I feel as if I would rather be in hell than in this damned expedition.”

  “Do you know,” Stanley replied coolly, “that you are my servant, sir, and not my companion?”

  “Servant be damned.”

  Stanley's punch came out of nowhere, reaching across the camp table and knocking Shaw to the ground. He ordered the soldiers to confiscate Shaw's rifle and pistol, strike his tent, and throw all his possessions two hundred yards outside the boma.

  Shaw could only watch as Bombay and four of the soldiers struck his tent, brought Stanley the weapons, and gathered his belongings. “Now go, sir,” Stanley told the young sailor. “These men will escort you outside of the camp, and there leave you and your baggage.”

  Shaw stayed determined to get the best of Stanley. He followed Bombay and his men outside the camp. When they returned, Stanley noticed that Shaw wasn't with them. But as he and Farquhar resumed their breakfast inside the tent, with Stanley trying to find a delicate way to tell Farquhar it wasn't in the best interests of the New York Herald expedition for him to travel with them anymore, Bombay appeared in the doorway. “Mr. Shaw would like to speak to you.”

  “I went out to the gate of the camp, and there met Shaw, looking extremely penitent and ashamed,” Stanley wrote. “He commenced to ask my pardon and began imploring me to take him back, and promising that I should never find fault with him again.”

  The two shook hands. “Don't mention it, my dear fellow,” Stanley replied. “Quarrels occur in the best of families. Since you apologize, there is an end to it.”

  But Shaw wasn't as penitent as he pretended. The rest of the day passed as usual, and all seemed well that night as the camp lay down to sleep. In the morning they would push on to the village of Mpapwa, which made Stanley happy. With the donkeys all dead or dying, Mpapwa would be a perfect spot to hire new porters.

  Stanley entered his tent and climbed into his hammock. There was no mosquito netting to keep away insects. He brushed them away and stared at the canvas ceiling of his tent as he drifted off to sleep. Suddenly, a gunshot. A bullet tore through the tent's canvas and whistled past Stanley's head, missing him by inches. He roared from the tent in his bare feet. “Who fired that gun?” he barked at the porters huddled around the fire. They sat very close as the mountain air was cold at night.

  “Bana Mdogo,” came the answer.

  Gripping a pistol in each hand, Stanley stalked to Shaw's tent and threw back the flap. Shaw was breathing hard, as if sound asleep. His gun lay nearby. Stanley picked it up and felt the barrel—it was still hot. “I would advise you in the future,” he said to Shaw, who was stirring, “not to fire into my tent. I might get hurt, you know.”

  Stanley never mentioned the incident to Shaw again. He was confident the tension would dissipate when the caravan finally reached Mpapwa, a traditional Arab caravan stopover in a forest at the base of green hills, 160 miles from the coast. To a great extent, Stanley was right. The deprivation and fatigue of the trail—which had caused some of the mutinous tension—was alleviated by Mpapwa's abundance of comfort, and, more important, food: eggs, milk, mutton, honey, and beans. “Thank God!” Stanley wrote in his journal that night. A plague of earwigs buzzed around inside his tent, making it hard to concentrate. “After fifty-seven days of living upon matama porridge and tough goat, I have enjoyed with unctuous satisfaction a real breakfast and dinner.” For Shaw, there were the comforts of women to go with the food—an Arab caravan numbering almost one thousand men and slaves was in Mpapwa, on the way back to Bagamoyo. The women were being offered as prostitutes.

  Abdullah bin Nasib, leader of the large caravan, claimed to know Livingstone's location. “Abdullah,” Stanley wrote of the tall, nervous man, “gave me information on L. He had gone to Maurieria, which was a month's march from Ujiji. He had shot himself in the thigh while out hunting buffalo. As soon as he gets well he would return to Ujiji.”

  If bin Nasib was being truthful, Livingstone was alive and on his way to Ujiji. Mpapwa was turning out to be a very providential town, indeed.

  Stanley was mesmerized by the land around Mpapwa, with its verdant slopes thick with forests of sycamore, acacia, and mimosa trees, notched here and there by tumbling streams. As caravan life had not offered much chance for solitude or reflection beyond the functional, he took advantage of the opportunity to slip away for a few hours. He hiked up one hill to the summit to revel in the view of all he had traveled through. “One sweep of the eyes embraced hundreds of square miles of plain and mountain, from Ugombo Peak to distant Ugogo, and from Rubeho and Ugogo to the dim and purple pasturelands of the wild, untamable Wahumba,” Stanley wrote of the view.

  Then his eye turned to the arid land westward, through which the caravan would pass next. “The plain of Ugombo and its neighbor of Marenga Mkali, apparently level as a sea, was dotted here and there with ‘hillocks dropt in Nature's careless haste,' which appeared like islands amid the dun and green expanse. Where the jungle was dense the color was green, alternating with dark brown. Where the plain appeared denuded of bush and brake it had a whity-brown appearance, on which the passing clouds now and again cast their deep shadows. Altogether this side of the picture was not inviting. It exhibited too plainly the true wilderness in its sternest aspect. But perhaps the knowledge that in the bosom of the vast plain before me there was not one drop of water but was bitter as nitre, and undrinkable as urine, prejudiced me against it.”

  After three serene days, the caravan marched from Mpapwa. It was May 21. Stanley had hired new porters in Mpapwa to carry the load once given the donkeys, and resupplied foodstuffs, then pointed the group “westward, always westward.” The entire caravan was refreshed by the stop.

  The only man in the New York Herald expedition who had been unable to enjoy the respite of Mpapwa was Farquhar. The elephantiasis was killing him. He couldn't walk, and he was so heavy that two donkeys had died from carrying him. So when it came time to push on, Stanley was through with Farquhar. Leaving him alone in the middle of Africa was an extreme solution but there was no other choice. He explained to Farquhar “it would be better if I left him behind, in some quiet place, under the care of a good chief who would, for a consideration, look after him until he got well.”

  Just in case Farquhar's condition got worse, Stanley copied the name and address of Farquhar's next of kin, a sister living in Edinburgh, inside his journal. An English-speaking porter named Jako was ordered to stay and protect the dying sailor. Stanley gave Jako cloth, tea, a carbine, and three hundred rounds of ammunition for protection and currency. Nobody but Shaw, who was losing his only ally, was unhappy about Farquhar's abandonment. The porters loathed the Scot for his rants and cruelty, and mimicked the former sailor so well that even Stanley couldn't help but laugh. Stanley, who despised weakness in himself and so was hypercritical of it in others, rationalized that Farquhar was worthy of the abuse. “Farquhar had become the laughingstock of the caravan from his utter helpless to do anything at all for himself,” Stanley wrote. He was glad to be rid of Farquhar and racing on to Ujiji.

  Five days later Farquhar fell down and died as he tried to get out
of bed. The locals, not knowing how to dispose of the white man, dragged his naked body into the jungle for the hyenas. “There is one of us gone,” Stanley told Shaw after hearing the news from some Arab traders. “Who will be the next?”

  The taunt would prove eerily prescient. Only one of them would live to see Zanzibar again.

  • CHAPTER 20 •

  Gondokoro

  May 26, 1871

  Gondokoro, the Upper Nile

  730 Miles to Livingstone

  As he stood on the edge of the Nile, with rows and rows of polished soldiers standing to attention on his new parade ground, Sir Samuel White Baker had every reason to be proud. It had taken him nearly a year and a half, but he had successfully traveled almost the entire length of the Nile and established a British presence in Gondokoro. His position was four degrees north of the equator. Ujiji, by coincidence, was four degrees south.

  The winds were light and variable, and the temperature was nearly eighty degrees. As local Bari tribesmen looked on from a distance, naked and curious about the squat, bearded man speaking so gravely, Baker pronounced to all assembled that the new outpost was now a colony. Its name was Equatoria. He was now poised to solicit any and all information about Livingstone's whereabouts.

  There had been times on the long journey upriver that Baker doubted he would ever reach Gondokoro. The Sudd, for instance, nearly broke him. Located five hundred miles south of Khartoum, the swampy section of Nile River was the most confounding stretch of river on earth. Papyrus ferns and detritus from Lake Victoria swept downriver and clogged the Nile's flow in the Sudd, so effectively bringing it to a standstill that the river stagnated. The banks, which were almost impossible to discern from the choked river, were nothing but unstable mud and impenetrable jungle for a hundred miles in either direction. Crocodiles and hippos loitered in the stinking miasma. Snakes moved without a sound through the reeds and trees. The sun hovered glowing and hot, like the tip of a lit cigar. The Sudd was neither land nor river, and Baker's expedition had been stuck for weeks.

  A smaller expedition could have found an alternate route, perhaps hacking through the undergrowth alongside the river. Baker, however, was driving an army. Under his command were seventeen hundred Sudanese and Egyptian soldiers. Forty-eight sharpshooters protected his and his wife Florence's every movement. He had a personal assistant, a doctor, two engineers, a shopkeeper, an interpreter, and a shipwright to consult in times of indecision. An alternate plan could only become a fiasco.

  Besides, he couldn't very well leave the boats. He had an entire fleet. It had taken fifty-five sailboats and nine steamers to transport Baker's men the fifteen hundred miles from Cairo to Khartoum. The largest steamboat was one hundred feet long and weighed over 250 tons. Baker, his wife, his assistants, his army, and his armada lit the boilers in Khartoum, on February 8, 1870. Their intent was to travel through the Sudd, then five hundred miles beyond it to the abandoned Austrian mission station at Gondokoro. There they would claim the land, establish a military presence, and explore. Finding Livingstone, as Baker promised Murchison, would be a primary objective.

  Baker was no stranger to adversity or exotic conditions. Before becoming an explorer he spent the years of 1859 and 1860 supervising the construction of a railway between the Danube River and the Black Sea. He went to Africa in 1861 to hunt big game. Searching for the source was just a sidelight. Traveling with Florence, a blond Hungarian dynamo fifteen years his junior who would later become his second wife, Baker worked his way upriver from Cairo. They crossed paths with Speke and Grant in Gondokoro, four degrees north of the equator, in March 1863. Even after hearing Speke's Lake Victoria hypothesis the couple pushed on in the hope of discoveries of their own. On March 14, 1864, the pair discovered a lake just north of Victoria. Appropriately, they named it Albert, for the Queen's late husband.

  Queen Victoria, however, was chagrined to learn that Baker and Florence were unmarried. And, worse, that the Hungarian was a Catholic. Though Florence converted to Anglicism upon their return to England, and the two became husband and wife shortly after, the bohemian tone of their trek to Lake Albert was in stark contrast to the spiritual glow the British public imbued in Livingstone's journeys.

  It was Baker, however, who had the most compassion for Livingstone's plight, and who had quickly taken up his pen to write Murchison back on March 8, 1867, when reports of Livingstone's murder surfaced. “I would rather die thus,” he wrote of sudden death by the Mazitu, “than be slowly poisoned by a doctor; and the hard soil of Africa is a more fitting couch for the last gasp of an African explorer than the down pillow of civilized home. Livingstone's fate seems to have cast a gloom over African travels, and the papers appear to taunt African travelers with running quixotic risks. If England is becoming so cowardly and so soft that travel shall cease in dangerous countries because some fall victim to it, then it is time to roll up the English flag and admit the decline of the English spirit. In all humility,” he concluded, offering his services as an explorer to Murchison once again, “I am ready.”

  Baker's straightforward letter was a showcase of his complexity. In his renaissance-man lifetime, Baker had founded an agricultural community in Ceylon, shot tigers in India, hunted bears in Russia, and undertaken his first Nile exploration just for the thrill of seeing someplace new. Once, when an African king who was holding the Bakers hostage suggested he and the rugged Brit exchange wives, Baker boldly pressed a revolver into the king's stomach and told him exactly how little he thought of the idea. For good measure, Florence then charged forward and berated the king in Hungarian.

  The Sudd, however, had proven a yearlong obstacle. Hundreds of men died in the backbreaking, futile attempt to clear a channel. So when Baker finally got men and matériel through the quagmire by building an impromptu dam that raised the water level high enough for his ships to float through, he was mightily relieved.

  The celebration was saved for Gondokoro. On May 26, 1871, just five days after Stanley marched from Mpapwa, Baker ordered his remaining twelve hundred soldiers to assemble in clean uniforms. The tiny settlement lay on a hill overlooking the Nile. Lake Tanganyika—and, more important, Ujiji—was just a few hundred miles south. The ruined red brick Austrian mission huts and sheds had been repaired. A fort consisting of three main buildings and a newly built city of African-style, conical-roofed, mud-and-stick huts was built adjacent. A fence surrounded it, starting at the Nile and running inland around the complex. Vegetable gardens were planted. Baker's vessels were docked along the shore, parallel to the bank, except for the biggest steamship, which was parked nose first into a small inlet. Baker, showing he hadn't forgotten his roots as an engineer, even concocted a still.

  That balmy May evening, the Bakers dined on roast beef, Christmas pudding, and rum. The celebration was an acknowledgment that their goals were being accomplished one by one—slowly, but nonetheless accomplished. Baker had the premier British presence in the interior. He was the new tip of the African spear, hoping to build commerce in the interior and stamp out slavery. He was also poised to go in any direction to find Livingstone, and had already begun the habit of interviewing any and all passing travelers for signs of the elusive explorer.

  Unknowingly, that night Sir Samuel White Baker and his lovely wife, Florence, were almost the exact same distance from Ujiji as Stanley.

  • CHAPTER 21 •

  Ten Human Jawbones

  May 24, 1871

  Nyangwe

  As Livingstone enjoyed the splendor of life in Nyangwe, he developed a favorite pastime: attending the village market. Thousands upon thousands of Africans came from surrounding villages to take part. Most were women, though he did observe the comings and goings of the local men, all of whom considered themselves to be chiefs. Livingstone, then, enjoyed the marketplace from both an anthropological and a masculine point of view. “With market women it seems to be a pleasure of life to haggle and joke, and laugh and cheat: many come eagerly and retire with careworn faces
; many are beautiful and many old; all carry very heavy loads of dried cassava and earthen pots, which they dispose of very cheaply for palm oil, fish, salt, pepper, and relishes for their food.”

  Day after day, waiting for the people to trust him enough to rent a simple canoe, Livingstone observed the ebb and flow of the market. Ultimately, in a way he could only foresee if he shrugged off the trusting nature that allowed him to travel through Africa unscathed, his marketplace observations would come between him and the source.

  The May 24, 1871, entry in Livingstone's journal was yet another marketplace observation. He was still too feeble to walk any sustained distance, and the rainy season made travel difficult. He was also still without a canoe. “The market is a busy scene—everyone is dead earnest—little time is lost in friendly greetings,” Livingstone wrote. “Each is intensely eager to barter food for relishes, and makes strong assertions as to the goodness or badness of everything. The sweat stands in beads on their faces. Cocks crow briskly even when slung over the heads hanging down. Pigs squeal.”

  Though the only white man for hundreds of miles in any direction, the people had finally gotten used to Livingstone's presence. He had been able to sit undisturbed, or, when the opportunity arose, make the occasional bit of conversation. On May 27, 1871, Livingstone remarked in his journal, “A stranger in the market had ten human under-jawbones hung by a string over his shoulder. On inquiry he professed to have killed and eaten the owners and showed with his knife how he cut up his victim. When I expressed disgust, he and others laughed.”