Into Africa Page 26

  The Arabs' warnings haunted him as he wrote, and he began to wonder if they were trying to deceive him in an attempt to keep him in Tabora. Mirambo had been driven back with great losses recently, but was still too close for Stanley to attempt the main caravan route. Stanley grew defiant in his writing, imagining the Arabs were trying to take advantage of him, just as others had throughout his life. Stanley grew righteous in his desire to prove the Arabs wrong. He heaped contempt upon them for underestimating him. The Arabs had placed themselves squarely in the path of his mission of finding Livingstone, depriving him of a job and a future by trying to make him fail. He could see that clearly.

  Stanley had grown to hate Tabora. It represented disease in his mind. The taste of medicines like calomel, colycinth, rhubarb, tartar emetic, ipecacuanha, and quinine made his stomach turn just thinking of them. Calling it “inane” and “repulsive,” he was anxious to be going and leaving behind the place that had begun to feel like a jail.

  Stanley rededicated himself to his mission. “I have taken a solemn, enduring oath; an oath to be kept while the least hope of life remains in me,” he railed, “never to give up the search, until I find Livingstone alive, or until I find his dead body. And never to return home without the strongest possible proofs that he is alive, or that he is dead. No living man, or living men, can stop me. Only death can prevent me.”

  It was almost midnight, and Stanley felt weak again from the malaria. He would leave in the morning, no matter how badly he felt. He turned to his journal one last time and wrote emphatically, “FIND HIM! FIND HIM.” A wave of calm filled Stanley. “I feel more happy. Have I uttered a prayer? I shall sleep calmly tonight.”

  • CHAPTER 30 •

  Escalation

  September 19, 1871

  Fort Macpherson, Nebraska

  The cat was out of the bag. Just as Livingstone reached the western shore of Lake Tanganyika and Stanley spent his last nights in Tabora, the New York Herald printed a Livingstone rumor from its London bureau. The date was September 19, 1871. “Advices from Zanzibar announce to the receipt of positive intelligence about the fate of Dr. Livingstone. The authority of the statement is unquestionable. A party of Americans is hurrying into the interior with the object of rescuing the doctor from his perilous position,” the intentionally vague piece read. As with the byline and source of the information, the rescuer's name was notably missing.

  Until then, James Gordon Bennett, Jr., had mentioned nothing about Stanley or a rescue mission in the Herald. But Henry Rawlinson's June 26 RGS address had broken the secret. The rigid class divisions of Victorian England, which precluded a member of the aristocracy from speaking informally with members of the lower classes, kept Rawlinson's admission within the upper-class domain of those attending the meeting. But Livingstone gossip was too delicious to remain secret for long. Maids, butlers, footmen, and grooms weren't deaf to their employers' conversations. The rumors about a non-English rescue expedition spread like smoke. When they wafted Bennett's way via his bureau he had no choice but to run the brief mention. Otherwise it was only a matter of time before British papers broke the story. The identity of the “party of Americans” became a much-discussed mystery in New York and London.

  Bennett had a crisis on his hands. There were many layers and tangents to the situation, all of which would have to be handled as a whole for the news leak to be resolved to his advantage. In simplest terms, however, the crisis was about money. For all his free-spending ways, Bennett could be miserly if his bottom line was threatened. The only way he would sell more newspapers was by controlling the news cycle. That would be done through exposing minimal details about the rescue until it actually took place. Mentioning the Herald's involvement or Stanley's name before that time would cause other publishers to cover the story, or open the Herald up to ridicule if Stanley failed. And Bennett certainly didn't want a premature leakage of the news to cause Baker to begin racing toward Livingstone.

  The greater dilemma was Stanley: Bennett didn't know if he still had the journalist's loyalty. The first bill for the expedition had reached New York in late March. An outraged Bennett took one look at the enormous sum and instructed I. F. Lockevon, a Herald accountant, to reject it. “Please take notice,” Lockevon's letter to Stanley read, “that a draft drawn on you by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., Esquire, at Zanzibar January 17, 1871, for 3,750 gold dollars is protested for non-acceptance and that the holders look to you for payment thereof.”

  The dismissal, written March 29, 1871, made sense at the time. The Gould-Fisk Gold Crisis of 1869, the catalyst for Stanley's search, was long forgotten. Bennett and President Grant had become very dear friends. Bennett was the commodore of the New York Yacht Club. The Herald was flush. It didn't make sense to pay an outrageous bill by an overzealous correspondent who would likely die somewhere in Africa, thereby wasting thousands of dollars of Bennett's money.

  But Stanley was alive, on his way to Livingstone. If Stanley returned safely to Zanzibar he would need to come up with thousands of dollars in a hurry. The obvious way to accomplish that was by selling his stories to the highest bidder—or, in keeping with freelance tradition, to several of the highest bidders. Bennett's great commission would fill the headlines of every paper but his own.

  Just as he had done in his flight to Paris in 1869, Bennett escaped New York to think. He headed for Nebraska to hunt buffalo at the invitation of the obese General Philip Sheridan, whom Bennett first met at President Grant's summer home in Long Branch, New Jersey. Recreational hunting was a fashionable new pastime among the wealthy, copied from the British aristocracy. By hunting on the prairie, Bennett and his cronies were again imitating the British. For in addition to traditional big game expeditions through Africa and India, British sportsmen had become fond of the American West. The first British hunters came as far back as 1855, when Sir George Gore's party killed three thousand buffalo and forty grizzly bears.

  Bennett assembled a coterie of New York's most powerful men for the trip west. By coincidence he even brought his own Livingstone—the stockbroker Carol, a member of the New York Livingstons, related to the explorer in name only. Another friend making the trip was Leonard W. Jerome. The “King of Wall Street” was President Grant's emissary to Germany's Otto von Bismarck. He had just returned with Sheridan from observing the Franco-Prussian War. They even visited Bismarck at Versailles during the siege of Paris in February 1871.

  On the night of September 16, Bennett's band of financiers, generals, and executives chugged out of New York's brand new Grand Central Depot in a special railway car. In all, the buffalo caravan numbered seventeen shooters, equally divided between Bennett's peers and Sheridan's. Five greyhounds came along to flush jackrabbits. A French chef prepared all meals. Waiters served the food on china and silverware.

  But Bennett himself was not with them. The Stanley crisis needed to be resolved. He waited a day, ordered the story to run, then began the thirty-six-hour train trip to Chicago.

  Bennett arrived the morning of Tuesday, September 19, at roughly the same time the “American Traveler” story reached New York newsstands.

  Bennett's caravan moved into the Union Pacific Railroad's superintendent's private car after switching trains for the journey's final leg. The tracks paralleled the north banks of the cottonwood-lined Platte, which was nothing more than a trickle after the summer heat. The prairie was flat and spare. Miles passed without change. As the others read and smoked, Bennett left to ride on the cowcatcher. Wind in his hair, smokestack just behind him, Bennett's first glimpses of true wilderness came from that steel perch atop the V-shaped forward tip of a Union Pacific locomotive, squinting into the afternoon Nebraska sun. It was the same territory Stanley had traveled five years earlier in search of glory. Now, nine thousand miles east, Stanley crawled across Africa in a state of near starvation, while Bennett skimmed west across the America frontier like a sultan.

  On September 22, 1871, the hunting party disembarked near Fort McPh
erson, a cavalry outpost at the convergence of the North and South Forks of the Platte. This was where Stanley had nearly been arrested while rafting the Platte with Cook five years before, but the place had changed dramatically. During the Transcontinental Railroad's construction it had become a boomtown, with saloons and brothels and the Railway Hotel springing up. Even after the railroad's construction crews continued their westward push, the area remained vibrant—if not so raucous.

  Sixteen wagons of provisions awaited Bennett and his companions, including one wagon specially designed to keep champagne iced. They would travel to Fort Hays, ten days' journey south in Kansas. The terrain was sprawling grassland creased by a handful of muddy rivers. There were few settlers. For protection, just in case the Cheyenne and Pawnee violated their peace treaties, 350 soldiers from Company F of the U.S. Fifth Cavalry would ride alongside.

  As Stanley walked or rode a donkey, fretting about every doti of cloth and watching his subordinates die from malaria, smallpox, and elephantiasis, Bennett's caravan proceeded under the guidance of legendary Indian scout Buffalo Bill Cody. “Tall and somewhat slight in figure,” wrote General Henry Davies in describing Cody, “possessed of great strength and iron endurance; straight and erect as an arrow, and with strikingly handsome features.”

  Cody wasn't impressed by the easterners. The scout with the vandyked beard and flowing blond hair made fun of his charges by wearing a white buckskin suit fringed in white leather, complete with a white sombrero, a blood-red shirt, and a flashy white horse. “As it was a knobby and high-toned outfit,” Cody wrote, “I determined to put on a little style myself.”

  Bennett wasn't a very good shot. His journey through the wilderness was more a social interlude than an adventure. Every day the caravan rose at three-thirty, Cody would lead the “dudes” in a shot of pre-breakfast bourbon, and then the hunting would begin. The drinking began again late each afternoon when the tents were pitched and the waiters began the first course of the evening's seven-course meal. “Claret, whiskey, brandy, and ale” were staples of the daily menu. So many bottles of champagne were consumed that Cody called the easterners “The Mumm Tribe” and commented many years later that settlers “recognized the sites upon which these camps had been constructed by the quantities of empty bottles which remained behind to mark them.”

  The caravan reached journey's end at Fort Hays on October 2, 1871. They had traveled 194 miles and killed six hundred buffalo and two hundred elk. They had eaten prairie dog and filet of buffalo aux champignons; broiled cisco, fried dace, and stewed jackrabbit. They had seen the Platte and forded the Republican; hunted along Beaver Creek and Medicine Creek, the Solomon and the Saline. But at Fort Hays they reached the end of the wilderness. It was a land once as wild and untamed as the Africa Stanley was trudging through, but had become civilization.

  Fort Hays was the home of Indian-fighter General George S. Custer and his Seventh Cavalry. It would become the epicenter of the diminished American frontier in a few short years, the original “wild west” town. Cattle drives from Texas would conclude at the local railhead. Wild Bill Hickock would become sheriff—and would be run out of town for arresting Custer's brother. Legendary showman P. T. Barnum would be suckered out of 150 dollars by local card sharks on his one and only visit, when he came west in search of “wild men” to populate his circus. But however bawdy, anarchic, and unromantic, Fort Hays was under the governance of a single nation. Its growing pains would form a cohesive national identity once the transition from wilderness to civilization was complete. Africa, already being nibbled and divided by the British and Germans and Portuguese and Arabs and Italians and French, was being robbed of that singular identity in 1871.

  It was near Fort Hays where the caravan's railroad car waited. They rode the Kansas Pacific locomotive home via Kansas City and Chicago. There the men shaved their ten-day beards and bathed, completing their return to civilization. They didn't see the journey as a farce, but as a legitimate adventure. In fact, the Herald ran dispatches from Bennett's great journey on September 23 and 28. Despite the fact that other newspapers lampooned the trip as “New Yorkers on the warpath,” General Davies published an adventure book about the intrepid foray, Ten Days on the Plains.

  In typical Bennett fashion, the Stanley and Livingstone crisis was solved during his time away from New York. Bennett needed Stanley on his side, and knew the financial rewards from the circulation boost brought on by the exclusive story of Stanley finding Livingstone would outweigh the expedition's exorbitant cost. Also, with the New York Times gaining readership through their groundbreaking investigation of deep-seated crime and corruption in New York's Tammany Hall, Bennett couldn't afford to be cautious. If Bennett refused to pay Stanley's bills there was a very real possibility Stanley could compound the Times's advantage by selling the Livingstone story there.

  On September 22, from Fort McPherson, even before climbing into the saddle to begin the hunt, Bennett sent a wire to New York authorizing payment for all of Stanley's expenses. The telegraph was relayed to London, where the message was passed on to Zanzibar on September 25. Bennett could only hope Stanley received the news before selling the Livingstone story elsewhere.

  Then, taking charge of the Livingstone news cycle, Bennett began a build-up to the day he would hopefully publish Stanley's stories. The Herald's editorial columns began running news about East Africa. The writing was informative, introducing the public to men like Kirk and reacquainting them with Livingstone.

  When it came to Stanley, however, Bennett hadn't received a word of copy since the reporter sailed from India a year earlier. He could only pay the bills and hope for a return on his investment.

  • CHAPTER 31 •

  The Unknown

  September 20, 1871

  Tabora

  250 Miles to Livingstone

  Stanley contracted smallpox in the middle of September, but he was determined to leave Tabora regardless. After a few brief days of fever and bed rest, Stanley finally marched his lean caravan from Tabora on September 20. His route from Tabora to Ujiji was simple on paper: 150 miles southwest from Tabora, then 150 miles northwest, 90 miles north, then 70 miles slightly northwest again—460 miles in all. Most important, it would theoretically be outside of Mirambo's reach. The only things Stanley knew about the terrain itself was its reputation for being forested and sometimes swampy, and that the Arabs predicted his death.

  Stanley mounted his donkey and led his men out of Tabora. The Stars and Stripes were flying, guns were fired, the men were laughing and shouting, all happy to be on the move. Only the Arabs and Shaw were distraught to see the caravan's three months in the oasis come to an end. As a show of their displeasure, and to reinforce their belief that Stanley's precious cloth and beads would be wasted when he died, the Arabs commandeered Livingstone's relief supplies. They forbade the bundles of cloth and the porters from leaving Tabora. Rather than let the issue delay his departure, an outraged Stanley merely argued that denying Livingstone his mail was inhumane. The Arabs agreed. A single porter was allowed to join Stanley's march, carrying nothing but Livingstone's letters.

  Looking on with dour expressions, remonstrating him for forcing Shaw to travel, the Arabs stood to one side and said good-bye to Stanley. The temperature on the shadeless plain was over one hundred degrees.

  “Farewell,” Stanley cried, tipping his hat. Shaw, who had relapsed in the night, could barely stay on his donkey, but reluctantly spurred his animal forward. With that, the New York Herald expedition moved from the safety and luxury of Tabora back into the wilderness. For the first time in their entire journey, they were marching into a place no other caravan or expedition had ever traveled.

  But as the expedition paraded out of town, Mabruki, one of the new guides, maliciously goosed Shaw's donkey with a stick. The animal bolted and tossed the hapless sailor into a bush with inch-long thorns.

  The Arabs rushed forward to help Shaw, running across the dusty flat field in their flowing w
hite robes, verbally abusing Stanley for making a sick man travel. And though they denounced him as cruel and stubborn, Stanley was through listening to them. He dismounted, lifted Shaw off the ground, and hoisted the dying sailor atop his donkey once again. “Pluck up,” Stanley cried sarcastically as he walked back to his own donkey, ignoring Shaw's moaning and the Arabs' accusations. “Courage.”

  All went well most of that first day. Instead of pushing the pace up front, Stanley rode at the rear to help Shaw. The rest of the caravan surged ahead on their forced march and they made good time. But as Stanley came over a small ridge and spotted the night's camp in the distance, his American flag flying in the midst of a grove of rice paddies and plantains, his fever returned. He collapsed into his hammock at the campsite and covered himself in his bearskin. Instead of malaria, it was smallpox he was battling this time. Caused by the variola virus, its incubation period is twelve days. Thirty percent of all people who develop the fever, fatigue, headaches, backaches, and lesions brought on by smallpox die. Interestingly, it is spread from one person to another by the spray of infected saliva during face-to-face contact. As the incubation period is seven to twelve days, Stanley most likely contracted it in those moments with Shaw, standing over the bed and berating him to rise.

  That night, as Shaw nursed his wounds from repeatedly falling off his donkey and Stanley went to bed with fever, the remaining porters sat around the campfire discussing what the next day would bring. There was much quiet talk of desertion. Though Tabora was just a few miles behind, the broad, sunny plains were about to be replaced by the thick and dismal forest they had heard so much about. Stanley had paid a portion of their inflated salaries before departure, and given out guns and ammunition, so if they deserted they could run back home with a small amount of wealth. On the other hand, the law stipulated Stanley would be able to exact a punishment on his way back from Ujiji when he stopped in Tabora once again.