Into Africa Page 31

  And just as soon as Livingstone felt capable again, the older explorer suggested that the younger explorer might want to accompany him in his search for the source. Stanley, who had been prodding Livingstone to return to Zanzibar with him, was flattered, but knew it was impractical.

  So they had reached a compromise. They would return to Tabora together, but only after searching the shores of Lake Tanganyika for a river flowing out of its northern end, toward Lake Victoria. That would at least confirm a portion of Livingstone's source theory.

  It was agreed. They departed from Ujiji on November 16 in a long dugout canoe paddled by twenty of Stanley's men. The canoe was crafted from a mvule tree so wide that the paddlers could sit by side. Fair weather made the journey pleasant. Stanley and Livingstone passed the hours in conversation as the canoe glided over the dark-green waters of Tanganyika. Hippos sported around the boat, coming up for air and threatening to tip the canoe before disappearing back underwater. The shores were heavily wooded and grassy, with some of the trees bursting with startling, bright blossoms. The lake was so vast that Stanley considered it an inland sea.

  Their adventures were as dangerous and unlikely as anything Stanley or Livingstone had seen before: a near ambush while camping along the shore, the sight of couples making love along the banks as Stanley and Livingstone paddled past. To Stanley's surprise, Livingstone never whipped or harangued his men, preferring to settle all differences through gentle persuasion. Even more surprising was how Livingstone used the same method with hostile tribes demanding tribute. Not only did Livingstone achieve more through kindness than Stanley had through rage, but by the time Livingstone had negotiated their way out of one problem or another, a hostile tribe or recalcitrant porter was often a new ally.

  As Stanley and Livingstone paddled the shores of Lake Tanganyika together, world attention toward Livingstone's plight was escalating into frenzy. It all began when Kirk's letters of September 22 and September 25 arrived in London. Murchison was dead, so his letter was passed on to the new RGS president. When a horrified Sir Henry Rawlinson learned that Livingstone was surrounded, without hope of escape, he went public with the truth about Livingstone's predicament. On November 27, Rawlinson decreed that the RGS was sending a search and relief expedition to save Livingstone. “It appeared to the Council and myself that the hope we had of communicating with Dr. Livingstone through Mr. Stanley, the American traveler, must for the present be abandoned,” Rawlinson said. “One plan proposed was to send native messengers, offering a reward of one hundred guineas to whichever would bring a letter back in Dr. Livingstone's handwriting to the sea-coast. Another, recommended by one of our African travelers, was to organize a direct expedition headed by some experienced and well-qualified Europeans.”

  In a follow-up meeting on December 11, the latter won out. Rawlinson demanded that the RGS go rescue Livingstone. Rawlinson was an articulate man, and a true adventurer, but the new RGS president lacked Murchison's political connections. His position was further weakened on December 14, when James Grant publicly expressed great faith in “the little American Stanley,” whom he had met by coincidence once in Abyssinia.

  When Rawlinson formally requested money from the Foreign Office to finance a search, they gave it their official backing and expressed their deep sympathy, but refused to allocate funding. Public outrage was so great that the issue of rescuing Livingstone was taken up on the floor of Parliament. James Grieve, a sixty-one-year-old Liberal member of Parliament from Greenock, stood in the House of Commons to battle for Livingstone's cause. He demanded that Robert Lowe, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, explain the rationale behind denying funding for a search.

  Lowe was not a popular man by any stretch of the imagination. He was enormously disliked by Gladstone, the very Prime Minister who'd given him his job. Lowe's attention to fiscal restraint at the expense of humanity and warmth even had the charismatic Benjamin Disraeli refusing to shake his hand. Lowe had no intention of changing his manners on account of a wayward African explorer. Having already dealt with the Livingstone issue back in May 1870, Lowe wasn't any more amenable to dispensing funds—unnecessarily, from Lowe's point of view—less than two years later.

  After first telling Grieve that he thought the question ludicrous, Lowe reminded Grieve that money had previously been allocated to find Livingstone, that Livingstone was nowhere to be found, and that Sir Samuel White Baker was already in the region with a large armed force. “It is from those armed men,” the chancellor told Grieve dismissively, as part of a lengthy defense, “that Livingstone would be most likely to receive relief.”

  Grieve was reluctantly forced to accept Lowe's explanation. No governmental monies were allocated to fund a rescue expedition. But in Gondokoro, unbeknownst to Lowe or Parliament, Sir Samuel White Baker was giving Livingstone very little thought and none of his assets. He was too busy finding food for his men, trying to motivate his apathetic Egyptian troops, enlisting Florence to keep track of weather and barometer, and waging war with the naked Bari. Baker had not forgotten about Livingstone, of course. He was in the habit of questioning the occasional traveler from the vicinity of Lake Tanganyika, and had even heard vague reports of a white man or two in Central Africa, but Gondokoro was not yet stable enough for Baker to leave without risking its collapse. The little fort on the Nile was a bare, dusty expanse hardly capable of sustaining the grain vital to Baker's still. To Baker and the Bari, however, Gondokoro was worth fighting for. Neither group planned on leaving it to the other.

  Back in London, in the minds of Henry Rawlinson and the RGS, Baker had become less relevant. They were no longer depending upon Baker's passive search plan anymore—regardless of the British Government's official position. The time had come for action. A public fundraising drive was begun, led by the Crimean War hero Florence Nightingale. “If it costs ten thousand pounds to send him a pair of boots, we should send it,” she railed, in what would be an overwhelmingly successful public campaign. “England too often provides great men then leaves them to perish.”

  Nightingale's candor rallied the British public, but by then America had appropriated their hero. In New York, James Gordon Bennett, Jr., was taunting Britain like never before. On December 11, 1871—the same day Rawlinson belatedly agreed it was time to search for their lost lion, but long before the world became aware that Stanley found Livingstone—Bennett had run Kirk's letters pleading innocence in the Herald. With Stanley elevated from merely the “American traveler” of the September 19 edition all the way up to a swashbuckling adventurer who was not only racing through Africa, but tormenting the British Consul in Zanzibar to such a degree that letters to officials in London were being written, the stage was set for Stanley's mission to be ladled out to the people of New York, dispatch by dispatch.

  The first ran on December 22, 1871. It was the piece Stanley had written on July 4, the ninety-fifth anniversary of America's declaration of independence from the British. That symbolism gave his published words a patriotic tinge that enhanced the Anglo-American rivalry. The ensuing commotion was so great that Bennett ran a taunting editorial the following day. “An African exploring expedition is a new thing in the enterprises of modern journalism,” Bennett wrote proudly, “and in this, as in many other great achievements of the Third Estate, to the New York Herald will belong the credit of the first bold adventure in the cause of humanity, civilization, and science.”

  Then, contradicting Kirk's assertion that Stanley was stuck, Bennett assured the Herald's readers that his reporter would get through. Bennett was “thus encouraged in hope that this expedition will settle all doubts in reference to Dr. Livingstone, and we hope too, that it will accomplish something more than the solution of the Livingstone mystery.”

  Bennett was confident Stanley and the Herald would be forever linked with “the names of Burton and Speke and Grant, and of Baker and Burton and Livingstone,” then went on to conclude that Britain was “too slow and too penurious” to find their missing
explorer.

  Other American papers took up the cause. On December 27, 1871, the Buffalo Express called Stanley's expedition “the most extraordinary newspaper enterprise ever dreamed of.”

  Bennett then twisted the lion's tail even harder, puckishly sending a second New York Herald expedition to Africa. The Herald was now off to Gondokoro to find and rescue Sir Samuel White Baker (completely disregarding the fact that Baker wasn't lost and certainly didn't need to be rescued). Bennett's mocking of British exploration while trumpeting American initiative elevated the rivalry to new highs. Herald circulation soared.

  Alvan S. Southworth, the journalist in charge of finding Baker, planned to hire a massive steamboat to cruise upriver on the Nile from Cairo. Southworth's published opinion that “energetic, live, I might say reckless Americans, each with his special mental and physical gifts, could bare this whole continent to the view of anxious mankind,” set the table perfectly for the coming publication of Stanley's dispatches. “The British,” Southworth went on to write, “are good, hardy, stubborn travelers, but they are like their journalism and ideas—slower than the wrath of Grecian gods.”

  Meanwhile, deep in Africa, Livingstone and Stanley were oblivious to the hype and bedlam. The sublime bond growing between the two explorers would become the richest by-product of the New York Herald expedition. Stanley was an eager pupil and basked in Livingstone's paternal influence. Even though Stanley had already proven adept at the fundamentals of African exploration during his travels through Ugogo, dealings with the Arabs in Tabora, and circuitous escape from Mirambo, Livingstone was giving him a new kind of tutorial on exploration. On the northern end of the lake, they found the river rumored to flow from Lake Tanganyika into the Nile—the Rusizi—but it flowed into Tanganyika, not out of it.

  The source lay elsewhere, Livingstone confided in Stanley. He would have to travel south again. In absence of a river flowing out of Lake Tanganyika, Livingstone was sure that the fountains were somewhere far to the south of his current position—likely somewhere between ten and twelve degrees south latitude. Livingstone had heard of four fountains, two of which spawned a river that flowed to the north—the Lualaba—and two of which begat a river flowing south—the Zambezi. Natives had mentioned them to him time and again. That put the fountains in the vicinity of a lake called Bangweolo, which Livingstone had visited in 1868. As the crow flew, it was four hundred miles from Ujiji to Lake Bangweolo. But a wanderer like Livingstone never traveled in such a direct manner. For him to walk that far south again and find the source, he would likely need to wander for a full year.

  One thing was certain: Livingstone would not allow Stanley to rescue him. The explorer longed to return to England but, no matter how much he missed his children and friends, and despite physical problems that would have years earlier killed a man of lesser constitution, Livingstone would not leave Africa until his work was done.

  On December 13, after a month-long, three-hundred-mile canoe trip, Livingstone and Stanley paddled back to Ujiji and took up residence at Livingstone's home once again. Livingstone's dysentery had returned, worse than ever. Also, he was showing stronger signs of a hereditary form of manic depression known as cyclothymia, which caused alternating days of low moods with days of euphoria. This chronic bipolar dysfunction was manifest in the way Livingstone communicated with Stanley—one day reveling in endless conversation, and the next shunning the young American with the curious accent—even as they sat together in the dugout mvule canoe. Despite those illnesses and the constant anemia and hookworm, the two men's relationship continued to deepen. They spent their remaining days in Ujiji buying supplies with Stanley's dwindling bundles of cloth and girding for the trek back to Tabora. Once they arrived at Stanley's home there, Livingstone would stay in Tabora to rest while Stanley would race back to Zanzibar and purchase supplies so Livingstone could continue his travels. Stanley would then immediately commission a new group of porters to carry the new supplies to Livingstone. The men accompanying the medicine, cloth, food, and beads from Zanzibar to Tabora would then remain in Livingstone's employ until he found the source. In many ways, Livingstone would be starting fresh, as if he were stepping off the Penguin like he had back in 1866. The only differences would be the knowledge gained thus far, the fact that his position deep in Africa precluded another journey through the coastal jungles, and Livingstone's ever-diminishing health.

  Their plan was to leave Ujiji for Tabora sometime around New Year's Day, 1872. Stanley purchased goats for the journey so Livingstone would have milk, which was the easiest way for him to ingest calories. A mule was also procured, meaning Livingstone could ride after so many years of walking. Stanley dedicated himself to crafting a comfortable, functional saddle for his mentor. When fever forced Stanley into bed again on December 18, Livingstone was by his side until it snapped on December 21. It was then that Stanley noticed that Livingstone's left arm suffered some sort of paralysis, and was shorter than the right. Livingstone explained to Stanley about the lion attack from 1843, then let the young man trace his fingers along the left bicep and elbow to feel how the bones set improperly.

  Livingstone didn't mention the epiphany that transpired as that arm was crushed in a lion's jaws almost thirty years before. “The shock produced a stupor similar to that which seems to be felt by a mouse after the first shake of the cat,” Livingstone had described the encounter just after it happened. “It caused a sort of dreaminess, in which there was no sense of pain nor feeling of terror, though I was quite conscious of all that was happening. It was like what patients partially under the influence of chloroform describe, who see all the operation, but feel not the knife. This singular condition was not the result of any mental process. The shake annihilated fear, and allowed no sense of horror in looking round at the beast. This peculiar state is probably produced in all animals killed by the carnivora; and if so, is a merciful provision by our benevolent Creator for lessening the pain of death.”

  That rendezvous with God's mercy had rendered death powerless before Livingstone. The transcendent ability to walk alone through the wilds of Africa had been born that day in 1843. He planned to continue walking alone long after returning to Tabora, and long after Stanley returned to England. He approached the coming time of hardship and potentially fruitless exploration without fear.

  On January 7, 1872, the New York Herald's London correspondent continued Bennett's anti-British ridicule, writing that “British munificence at times presents queer aspects. No sum is thought too large to devote to Christianizing the Fiji islanders, or for the purpose of carrying Bibles and warming pans to the benighted heathens of Central Africa or Nova Zambia. But for furthering in comparatively the greatest work of the nineteenth century—that of the discovery and exploration—the British government manifests an apathy and infirmity of purpose singularly at variance with both past policy and with present interest.”

  The very next day the Times of London ran a story about Livingstone, reporting the new search. Wholly unaware—like all the world outside Ujiji—that the explorer had been found three months earlier, Nightingale had almost single-handedly raised four thousand pounds to fund the second Livingstone search and relief expedition. The RGS added five hundred more pounds from their own coffers. On February 9, the expedition left London by train from Charing Cross Station. In command was Lieutenant L. S. Dawson, who learned his exploration stripes along China's Yangtze. Lieutenant W. Henn of the Royal Navy was second in command.

  The third member gave the rescue an emotional heft. Twenty-year-old Oswell Livingstone was off to find his father. He was a timid young man, more comfortable in the city than the wilderness. He hadn't been to Africa since he was a child, and had been in the presence of his father less than five years of his life, but the time had come to follow in his father's large footsteps—if only to save him.

  Bennett, though, didn't let sentimentality interfere with his attacks. The Herald mocked the new expedition as a reaction to American interv
ention, and one whose purposes paled in comparison with Stanley's. “When the Herald equipped an expedition to explore Africa,” a Bennett editorial reported on February 13, 1872, “it marked a new era in journalism as the ripest phase of modern civilization.”

  On February 14 and 17 the Herald continued its taunts by printing assurances from the RGS and the expedition members that Stanley would fail.

  By that time, back in equatorial Africa, Stanley and Livingstone had left Ujiji and were en route to Tabora. Following the southern route to avoid Mirambo, they made good time. By February 14, they were in the village of Ugunda, just four days' march from Tabora. Word of their coming had already reached Tabora. Ferrajjii and Cowpereh, the two special messengers Stanley had enlisted to carry his early Herald dispatches from Tabora back to the coast, had returned from Zanzibar carrying letters and newspapers. Even as the Herald dispatches were just beginning their hundred-day voyage by American merchant ship from Zanzibar to New York, the two messengers met the two explorers in Ugunda.

  As the mail was eagerly opened, Stanley was stunned to read a letter from a furious Consul Webb, informing him that Bennett had refused to honor Stanley's debts. Stanley, usually brimming with bravado, was so staggered by the news that he couldn't open any more of his mail. Even as Livingstone was absorbed in his own letters from home, Stanley merely sat and ruminated about the financial impossibility of repaying Webb. “There was no doubt of it,” Stanley wrote in his journal. “Bennett was about to treat me as I had heard he had treated others of his unfortunate correspondents.”