Into Africa Page 5

  If Livingstone hadn't grown restless, his whole life might have been spent in that simple, unremarkable bubble of mission life, leading Bible studies and prayer services. But the boredom set in just weeks after arriving at Kuruman's dreary, parched scrubland location. Not only his own boredom, but the natives'. “Our attendance at public worship would vary from ten to fifty,” he wrote, “and these very often manifesting the greatest indecorum. Some would be smoking, others laughing, some working, some would be employed in removing their ornaments.”

  Desiring a more effective way to do his job, Livingstone requested, and received, permission to “go forward into the dark interior” to survey new mission sites. The prospect filled Livingstone with “inexpressible delight.”

  There was a simplicity to exploring Africa during those early days, a purity. Livingstone was an ambitious young man whose energy was boundless. Life's burdens slipped away as he left the vestiges of civilization behind. He wasn't famous yet, didn't carry England's expectations on his slumped shoulders. But now, twenty-five years later, both those things had happened, conspiring just as surely as the Nile Duel to lead him back to Africa one last time.

  Livingstone knew that if he failed to find the source (and, curiously, even if he succeeded) the expedition would be his last. He was not only old chronologically, but Africa had whittled at his constitution for years. The sense that the British Government and the Royal Geographical Society were always looking over his shoulder, even in the middle of Africa, added an additional undercurrent of daily stress. And then to wrangle with balking, thieving porters and surly soldiers whose language he barely understood—well, sometimes it all became too overwhelming for Livingstone. “The sepoys had now made themselves such an utter nuisance that I felt I must take the upper hand with them,” he wrote on June 18, upon learning that the sepoys had left a sick porter named Abraham to die along the trail. “So I called them up this morning and asked them if they knew the punishment they had incurred for disobeying orders, and attempting to tamper with the Nassick boys to turn them back . . . Their limbs are becoming contracted from sheer idleness. While all the other men are well and getting stronger, they alone are disreputably slovenly and useless looking. Their filthy habits are to be reformed, and if found at their habit of sitting down or sleeping for hours on the march, or without their muskets and pouches, they are to be flogged.”

  Ten days later Livingstone gave up all hope that the sepoys would change, and dismissed them outright. He sent them back to the coast on June 28. Livingstone and his caravan were on a highland plain at the time, surrounded by stands of pine trees and sparse grassland. Soon after, his path descended in elevation once again, as he approached the dense greenery surrounding Lake Nyassa. On August 8, 1866, he reached the lake. Its shape was long and slender, just like its northern cousin, Lake Tanganyika. Nyassa was three hundred miles long and sixty miles wide—almost identical in size to Tanganyika, as well.

  Livingstone had a proprietary connection to Nyassa, having discovered and partially charted it during his Zambezi expedition. After now slogging four months up the Rovuma delta's morass to get there, the understated explorer was understandably relieved to stand on its rocky shores. The wind sweeping the lake produced small waves. He walked into Nyassa and let the cool waters drench him. “It felt like coming to an old home to see Nyassa again and dash in the rollers of its delicious waters—I was quite exhilarated by the roar of the inland sea.”

  Reaching Nyassa was also a vital first step in narrowing the source search. Livingstone believed that a chain of rivers and lakes led to the Nile—Victoria and Tanganyika were two links in that chain. Hopefully, Nyassa was, too—he just needed to find the connection. Years later, when the geographical feature known as Great Rift Valley, stretching from the Mediterranean to Southern Africa, became understood, parts of Livingstone's theory would be proven true.

  Thus, exploring Lake Nyassa for signs of the source was a vital aspect of Livingstone's search. His plan was to cross the lake or travel around it to the north, in a counterclockwise motion. However, hearing reports of a hostile tribe around the lake's northern shores, and frustrated in his attempt to hire a boat to ferry him and his men across, Livingstone angled due south. He would travel around the lake clockwise. Random observations continued to fill his journals: “A lion killed a woman early yesterday morning, and ate most of her undisturbed”; “the agricultural class does not seem to be a servile one: all cultivate and the work is esteemed”; “a man had been taken off by a crocodile last night. He had been drinking beer and went down to the water to cool himself, where he lay down and the brute seized him.”

  As always, his symbiotic relations with the Arabs and the slave trade drew the most pointed commentary. “The fear which the English have inspired in the Arab slave traders is rather inconvenient. All flee from me as if I had the plague, and I cannot in consequence transmit letters to the coast.”

  After one hundred and fifty miles along that southerly course, Livingstone reached the southernmost tip of Lake Nyassa. He crossed the crocodile-infested Shire River as it flowed south from Nyassa into the Zambezi. He began traveling north again, up Nyassa's western shores. The terrain was wooded, sometimes covered with clear brooks and limestone hills, and sometimes swampy from a dense black loam.

  Life had been uneventful since the sepoys left—or, as uneventful as any journey of African exploration could be—but trouble came Livingstone's way on September 26. He encountered an Arab man fleeing toward him, alone. Arabs generally traveled in large groups, for the solitary Arab traveler was likely to be killed by Africans as revenge for the slave trade. Livingstone realized something strange and powerful had occurred to the man before him.

  Without being asked, the terrified Arab warned Livingstone's caravan that the country he'd just come from was thick with the Mazitu. They'd killed the other forty-four members of his party. He was the only survivor.

  Livingstone was knowledgeable about the Mazitu. They were fond of surprise attacks on any tribe that lay in their path. Male victims were hacked to pieces. Women and children were kept alive for use as slaves and concubines. The very name Mazitu, meaning “those who come from nowhere” in Bantu, gave the marauders a sinister, terrifying countenance.

  Livingstone's men were understandably terrified. The most vocal about the danger was Livingstone's most abrasive porter, a native of the Comoros Islands. Musa, as he was known, was singularly surly and lazy, fond of stealing and stirring up trouble. He had worked as a sailor for Livingstone during the Zambezi expedition, earning a reputation for lying and sloth. Livingstone, however, had a forgiving, if slightly oblivious nature. He not only chose to forget his poor experience with Musa as he rehired him in Zanzibar, but he also hired eight other companions of Musa's from the Johannas. Musa and the Johanna men repaid Livingstone's largesse during the six months of traveling up the Rovuma and along Lake Nyassa by stealing from his stores whenever they thought he wasn't looking. “Musa and all the Johanna men now declared that they would go no further,” Livingstone wrote. “Musa said, ‘No good country that. I want to go back to Johanna to see my father and mother and son.' ”

  But Livingstone needed Musa and the Johanna men. The hard truth about exploration in Africa was the reliance on porters. No explorer could extend his journey beyond the reach of his supplies, so porters served as a human supply line for an expedition. Everything a European explorer needed to sustain his expedition could be found on the backs of the African men he hired: the beads and cloth that would be traded for food in local villages, gunpowder, medicine, even dinner plates and silverware. Livingstone was painfully aware of his dependence upon the porters. Despite his daily battle to disregard personnel issues, a hard and true fact of his mission was that he couldn't go it alone.

  Before Musa could flee, Livingstone attempted to quell his fears by bringing him along as he approached a local tribal leader to confirm the rumors. The chief explained that the disturbance was not caused by
the Mazitu, but by a tribe known as the Manganja, who were tired of the Arabs bringing guns and ammunition into their lands, and stealing their people. “There are no Mazitu near where you are going,” the chief assured Livingstone and Musa.

  Musa's look of terror was so great that his eyes seemed to leap from his skull. “I no can believe that man,” he yelped, refusing to calm down.

  Though Livingstone himself could not have known whether the chief's information was accurate, he continued to assure Musa that the path was safe. There would be no change of course. Then, acting as if the issue were settled, Livingstone ordered the entire caravan—Musa and the Johannas included—to pick up their loads and push forward. He was eager to travel north toward Lake Tanganyika.

  In the coming months, all of Britain would mourn Livingstone's decision.

  • CHAPTER 3 •

  Scared Straight

  September 27, 1866

  Karahisar, Turkey

  3,500 Miles to Livingstone

  As the door to the Turkish dungeon swung closed behind Henry Morton Stanley, it was clear that the journey begun on the South Platte River five months earlier had veered out of the swashbuckling realm of adventure and into a horrific display of stupidity, miscalculation, and imminent personal danger. The overcrowded cell reeked of stale urine and unwashed bodies. Strangers thrust their hands into his pants, pawing Stanley's penis and testicles. Other Turkish inmates were forcing themselves on William Harlow Cook and young Lewis Noe, a former Union Navy shipmate of Stanley's who had accompanied them since New York. “You can imagine our feelings when surrounded by these people, who were too ready to induct us into their sodomitical practices,” Stanley wrote. “I really pitied the poor boy Lewis, as he was mentally marked by these ruffians as their night's victim.”

  The problem had begun nine days earlier, as the three down-on-their-luck travelers rode their exhausted horses through a remote region of Turkey's Pontic Mountains. The day had been long, and Cook was lagging behind, so it was Stanley and Noe who spied the rider trotting toward them, leading a horse. Stanley never let his morals get in the way of his ambitions, and he impulsively concocted a desperate scheme to rob the man. As the Turk drew closer, Stanley spoke in sign language and broken Turkish to intimate that the boyish Noe was available for sexual favors. The rider, who gave his name as Achmet, dismounted. He stepped forward, until his face and Noe's were just inches apart, then pressed his calloused palm against Noe's genitals. Just then, Stanley deftly plucked Achmet's saber from its scabbard and smashed the Turk over the head with the handle. Achmet was dazed, but his fez had deadened the blow. He quickly drew his knife and squared off against Stanley. The American was no match for the Turk. Within seconds Stanley was flat on his back, his hands deeply cut and dripping blood as he desperately tried to push the blade of Achmet's knife away from his heart.

  Fortunately for Stanley, Noe had the presence of mind to club the Turk over the head with the butt of a rifle. Achmet toppled off of Stanley, staggered to his feet, then ran. Just then Cook rode into the clearing and learned what was happening. The three quickly fled the scene, with Stanley and Noe astride their new mounts. But after less than an hour of travel, they glimpsed a vengeful Achmet galloping after them—this time in the company of friends. For four grueling hours the chase went on, through thick forest and up precarious mountain trails before, finally, the three Americans were trapped atop a high plateau. The Turks could have killed them there. Instead, Stanley and his friends were beaten, then bound with rope and led to a small village courtyard, where they were tied by the neck to wooden posts.

  Over the next nine days, Stanley and his companions were beaten with fists and with the handle of a sword, pelted with mud and rocks by women and children, and had bullets fired just over their heads from point blank range. Worst of all, three Turks untied the seventeen-year-old Noe one night, and took turns sodomizing him. They held a knife to his throat, promising he would be killed the instant he cried for help. Stanley and Cook were just a few feet away, but could do nothing for their young friend. Stanley wrote later that the Turks “had no pity or remorse, but one by one they committed their diabolical crime which is, I think, or I hope, unknown to civilized nations, especially Christian America.”

  The next morning, as the dazed Americans looked on, the three rapists bowed down to answer the Muslim call to prayers in the same courtyard.

  Eventually, Achmet and his friends brought their captives into the nearby city of Rashakeni to be arraigned before a magistrate. There, the Americans were clapped in irons and banished to the Karahisar prison. It was in the fetid dungeon of Karahisar that Stanley and his companions were crudely molested on September 27, and where Stanley suspected the inmates were making plans to rape Noe later that night.

  Just when things seemed their worst, the three were saved by an unlikely summons to the prison commandant's office. He had heard there were Americans in his prison, and he wanted to size up their character in person. Filthy and bruised, their clothes torn and their bodies racked with fatigue and fear, they were marched from the dungeon and paraded before the commandant. Sensing that keeping the three contrite Americans in his prison any longer might be politically sensitive, the commandant bound them over to the region's governor, who released them on their own recognizance. The U.S. Minister in Turkey, fifty-one-year-old Edward Jay Morris, was alerted. “We are all in excellent spirits,” Stanley wrote on September 30, “Lewis especially.”

  With Morris's assistance, the Americans were cleared of all charges. On November 14, they left Turkey by ship. By January 14, 1867, after one stop off in Wales, Stanley arrived in New York aboard the Denmark. He had split amicably with Cook back in Turkey, and parted ways on a less friendly note with the traumatized Noe in New York. And though Noe blamed Stanley for his rape—and would continue to do so for the rest of his life—he saw a charismatic combination of strengths and weaknesses in Stanley's personality. “Stanley is a daring adventurer,” Noe said after returning home, “bold and unscrupulous, but intelligent and specious. His manners were those of a quiet man.”

  The adventure to Turkey hadn't continued on to China, as Stanley had once planned. And it hadn't yielded any freelance writing assignments. In fact, Stanley had done no journalistic work whatsoever. But the trip—perhaps the most ludicrous and avoidable of Stanley's list of failures—provided the forward momentum his journalism career needed. He was chastened by his time in prison and abuse by the Turks, and had begun to examine the folly of his loose morals. Stanley had also developed two specific career goals. The first was to write for the New York Herald, America's greatest newspaper. The second, inspired in part by David Livingstone, was to write adventurous stories about travels through Africa. “Stanley spoke to me of Dr. Livingstone's explorations in Africa,” noted Noe. “He expressed a desire to go to Africa himself, and said he should aim to do so as a correspondent of the Herald, and thereby make a story and a sensation, and gain both fame and money.”

  Stanley, however, didn't have the journalistic credentials to get hired by the Herald—yet. So he took the train from New York to St. Louis and secured a full-time position with the Missouri Democrat. His salary was fifteen dollars a week, and his first assignment was covering the Missouri State Legislature in Jefferson City.

  Covering an august political body was a sharp contrast to the dungeon of Karahisar, and not normally the type of adventurous subject the restless Stanley preferred to write about, but his work was so impressive that within just two months he was reassigned to the biggest story of his career thus far. It was March of 1867. The Democrat ordered Stanley to return to the West to cover the American Indian Wars. The great cavalry of the United States Army was galloping across the Kansas prairie, fourteen hundred men and horses and cannon strong, hell-bent on evicting the Cheyenne nation once and for all from the Great Plains. Everything about the operation was epic, from the force's mass to the plain's endless sweep to the undeniable truth that history was about to be
written.

  Stanley, much to his glee, would be the one writing it.

  Meanwhile, from England, came the shocking news that Livingstone was dead.

  • CHAPTER 4 •

  The Perfect Adventure

  March 7, 1867

  Portsmouth

  Five months after Livingstone tried to calm a terrified Musa about the Mazitu, a Royal Navy gunner named E. D. Young read the March 7, 1867, Times with shock and revulsion. It was a raw Thursday morning in Portsmouth as a numbing east-northeast blow strafed the wooden decks of Queen Victoria's new royal yacht Osborne. Young read that his beloved Livingstone was dead.

  It was there in black and white: Livingstone was missing and presumed murdered. The story was wrenching. An emotional cover letter from Sir Roderick Murchison referring to his “lamented friend” in the past tense was accompanied by a missive from Zanzibar confirming that Livingstone's entire expedition had been butchered by the Mazitu.

  “On the fifth of December nine Johanna men of the party which accompanied Dr. Livingstone came to Zanzibar,” read the letter from Vice-Consul John Kirk, “reporting that on the west of Nyassa, sometime between the end of July and September, they were suddenly attacked by a band of Mazitu, and that Dr. Livingstone, with half his party, were murdered. Those who returned escaped, as they say, through being behind and unseen, and they all depose to having helped bury the body of their dead leader the same evening. Although in details and other things the accounts of the various men differ, they all agree that they saw the body, and that it had one wound—that of an axe—on the back of the neck. One man saw the fatal blow given.