The Explorers Page 7

  The casual traveler didn’t stand a chance against the Sahara, and even less of a chance against the Sudd. A vast migration of cultures was unthinkable. In this way, Egypt prospered and advanced the course of civilization, benefiting from the exchange of ideas that occurred through constant communication, warring, and intermarrying with other peoples in northern Africa and the Mediterranean Rim.

  Thanks to this cruel geography, the tribes of Africa living south of the Sudd did not take part in this advance. The land and their people stayed the same as they had for centuries before: a cultural island and a mystery to the outside world for thousands of years after Alexander the Great conquered the Egyptians.

  This was the land that Burton and Speke prepared to enter.

  7

  By sheer coincidence, James Erhardt and Johann Rebmann, the German missionaries who claimed to have seen the Mountains of the Moon a few years earlier, sent a brand-new map home to their employers at the Church Missionary Society at almost precisely the same moment in history. Basing their drawing on descriptions provided by Arab slave traders, they portrayed a network of lakes in central Africa that might provide a clue to the location of the source. The CMS, not being in the exploration business, passed it on to the proper British authority, the Royal Geographical Society.

  Begun in 1830 as a British adjunct to similar societies in Paris and Berlin, the London Geographical Society’s mission was to advance the knowledge of geography. With King William IV as its patron, the London Geographical Society became the Royal Geographical Society, soon overtaking Paris and Berlin to become the leading body in its field.

  And since the advancement of geographical knowledge is most easily accomplished through global exploration, this also became their domain. Sir Joseph Banks had died ten years earlier, but he would have been happy to know that his African Association would be absorbed by the RGS, and his dream of finding the source carried on by another generation.

  The Royal Geographical Society discussed the Erhardt/Rebmann findings during their winter meetings in late 1855. It was widely agreed that although the map may have been inaccurate in their estimation—this notion being based on the previous writings of Ptolemy, Herodotus, and other classical works on Africa—it certainly represented a new key to finding the source. Soon there was talk about sending a new expedition to verify this information.

  As all this was taking place, Dick Burton returned home from the Crimea. It was only a matter of time before he heard about Erhardt and Rebmann’s map.

  But before Burton could seriously ponder a return to Africa, he had to deal with a very public cloud of shame now swirling about him. His commanding officer in the Crimea had been W. F. Beatson, a make-up-your-own-rules general cut from the same cloth as Burton, who had spent the better part of his career in India. Beatson had been forced to resign his command during the war amid charges from rivals within the British military that he could not control his troops. Beatson filed suit against his enemies for defamation of character upon his return to London. In an example of putting out the fire with gasoline, Beatson chose the ever-controversial Burton to testify in his behalf.

  Burton proceeded to talk down to the court in a grand and rather sarcastic manner, using his superior intellect to mock the opposing attorneys. Even though Burton’s efforts led to Beatson’s vindication, his public behavior led to a revenge-driven series of rumors that had the effect of greatly assassinating Burton’s character. Chief among these were begun by a fellow officer, who began circulating sordid rumors, including the fabrication that Burton had been caught in a Turkish harem and castrated. These tales might have been ignored if there weren’t at least a little truth in them. Burton’s fondness for the prurient and pornographic was an open secret. Those who heard the gossip were at the very least titillated—and at the most, appalled. “Pious mothers loathed Burton’s name,” wrote Burton biographer Thomas Wright in 1906. “And even men of the world mentioned it apologetically.”

  It’s a wonder that any respectable woman would have looked twice at Burton during that time, considering the damage it might do to her own good name. But in the midst of the controversy, Burton began courting Isabel Arundel, the beautiful and devout Catholic woman he would one day marry. Her mother, having heard the rumors, was appalled. “He is not an old English,” she told Isabel, warning her daughter to stay away. “He is not a Catholic. He has neither money nor prospects.”

  Soon Burton would have both. For despite the controversy and innuendo, Burton was still very much an explorer. He approached the Royal Geographic Society about a journey into central Africa to verify Erhardt and Rebmann’s mysterious map.

  Now, the leadership of the RGS was not the band of swashbuckling adventurers one might expect to be leading a society devoted to death-defying exploration. Its members included politicians, linguists, scientists, orientalists, merchants, engineers, cartographers, ethnographers, and a great number of wealthy gentlemen who enjoyed dabbling in arts and knowledge.

  These were respectable men, living in Victorian London at a time when decorum and propriety were of the utmost importance. Very few were actively adventurous. They were led by Sir Roderick Murchison, a Scot who had been on the verge of squandering his inheritance when his wife urged him to take up a hobby more respectable than drinking and fox hunting. He chose geology, and became an expert in the field. Murchison’s 1839 opus The Silurian System categorized Paleozoic marine invertebrate fossils in the Welsh border regions, and was named for a British tribe in that region that had successfully resisted Roman invasion. The book earned him worldwide respect and acclaim.

  In addition to being a scholar, Murchison was also very much a showman. One famous photo shows him arriving at a geological dig wearing white top hat and tails.

  The combination of these two traits would make the RGS great. It was Murchison whose genius elevated its public celebrity above the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Geological Society, and any of a number of other societies then existent in London to expand mankind’s knowledge of the universe. He served as its president and chief apologist off and on from 1843 to 1871, and oversaw the RGS’s evolution from a curious group of travelers who wanted to know more about the world, into nothing less than the body most responsible for the expansion of the British Empire. Every time an explorer entered a new land and claimed it for England, Queen Victoria’s stake in the world got a little bigger. No wonder that Murchison has been nicknamed “the Architect of Empire.”

  The RGS medal, bestowed annually, became the symbol of greatness in exploration achievement. Murchison made the charting of Africa and the discovery of the Nile’s source his greatest priorities. Even as British explorers were venturing into Asia, South America, and Canada, Murchison held his African explorers in the highest esteem. They were his “lions,” and he did all in his power to ensure that their achievements were trumpeted in the newspapers and that their published journals became best sellers. Murchison was not the first man to realize there was great wealth and fame in being an explorer, yet no other man had exploited it so ruthlessly for personal gain.

  Not everyone could be a lion. Murchison made sure that only the most qualified individuals received RGS funding. David Livingstone, for instance, became so famous after his journeys that he was not only mobbed on the streets of London, he was also mobbed when he attended church.

  What separated Burton and Murchison—one an explorer and the other an exploration cheerleader—was their source of hope. Burton was driven by curiosity and a deep desire to push his personal limits by exploring deeper into Africa. Murchison was equally curious about the unknown spots on the map, but his dreams were much more limited. The man who fostered the British Empire was reluctant to leave the comforts of England for the sacrifice of exploration.

  The white top hat and tails had no place in Africa.

  8

  Murchison was a social animal, and befr
iended many of the great explorers of his day to bask in their reflected glory. Yet he would always remain distant from Burton and his constant whiff of scandal. Nonetheless, Murchison recognized a bold opportunity when he saw one. And the plan that Burton presented to the RGS in the early months of 1856 was both elaborate and intensely researched. For his dream of venturing into Africa to become a reality, Burton was well aware that he had to present himself as the ultimate professional. This was Burton’s last chance. He may have succeeded in Mecca, but that achievement was three long years ago. The list of embarrassments, setbacks, and outright failures since then would have doomed a less ambitious man. One more would surely disgrace Burton and spell the end of official governmental permissions—and private funding—for his adventures.

  That scar on his cheek only made matters worse. It was like a scarlet letter, reminding one and all of his Somaliland failure, and reinforcing the notion that the man standing before them was the reprobate Burton. The scar had been such an emblem of bad behavior that it originally kept Burton out of the Crimean War. He had literally traveled from regiment to regiment when he first arrived in the Crimea, looking for a unit that would offer him a commission. Each time he was refused. His eventual posting was only made possible because the unit was comprised of Turkish irregulars, and the irascible General Beatson was desperate for any officer who possessed the stones to train them.

  The scar would one day become a source of pride. As Burton got older and heavier, the scar traveled from his cheek up closer to his eyes—yet it never faded away. And while he was deeply nervous about appearing unattractive when Frederic Leighton painted his portrait in 1872, Burton chose to appear in profile, revealing the scarred side of his face like the badge of honor it had become.

  Sixteen years earlier, however, driven by the hope of one last grand act of redemption, Burton pored over every sort of material relating to central Africa he could find: theories passed down for almost two thousand years, old maps, legends, and the accounts of French, British, Dutch, and Portuguese travelers. He determined that the journey’s destination should be a place called Ujiji, on the shores of this hypothetical lake Erhardt and Rebmann’s map portrayed, and that they should follow Arab slaving trails.

  Burton did not specifically mention a search for the source. For purposes of funding the mission, it was much better to focus his travels on potential commercial exploitation. But the Nile was never far from Burton’s planning. The “Unveiling of Isis,IX” as he liked to call it, was just the sort of grand achievement that would end his public disgrace.

  And then he went one step farther, in an act that reveals some of the ingenious problem solving in which the brain engages when it comes to hope: Burton, the ultimate loner, proposed that Speke be his sidekick.

  It was a compromise, a surprise, and the greatest single indicator that Burton knew he could not complete his mission alone. This was his last chance. Failure was not an option. Speke was not so much a fellow explorer as a safety net.

  This sort of unconventional thinking, which involves not just the will to achieve a goal but a fixation on that positive outcome, is vital to all successful personal odysseys. It is not a coincidence that the eminent psychologist Charles Snyder titled his landmark 1991 study on hope The Will and the Ways.

  Hope is not just the will to get someplace, but the process of finding the countless ways to get there. Snyder’s hope theory supposes that the person who has hope also possesses the will and determination that goals will be achieved, and makes use of the complex set of different strategies at his or her disposal to see these dreams come true.

  The difference between people like Burton, however, and those who don’t make use of the brain’s more freewheeling capabilities, is a vestige of our primitive selves that has been dubbed “the reptilian brain”—or, more colloquially, the lizard brain. This prehistoric portion of our brain is, quite literally, the sort of brain that a chicken or a lizard possesses. The lizard brain is devoted solely to staying alive and propagating the species—or, more specifically, to fear and pleasure. It’s certainly not hard to imagine the carnal and adventurous Burton having an overdeveloped lizard brain. It might even be deemed his defining attribute.

  The lizard brain is also in charge of reproduction of the species, which causes it to send out impulses designed to prevent failure—or death. A substance known as norepinephrine is released by nerve cells. This makes the heart pound faster, pupils dilate, throats tighten, and less blood flows to nonessential organs.

  Left unchecked, the lizard brain floods the body with messages of anger and negativity. This creates an overwhelming sense of caution. At the lower end of the spectrum, the lizard brain is the result of procrastination. The lizard brain, for instance, causes writer’s block, as an individual becomes overwhelmed by a project and becomes too fearful of failure to let the words pour forth. The lizard brain is the source of compromise, mediocrity, and lives not lived to the fullest. Because it is more focused on preventing failure than ensuring success, it allows for a long life, but not necessarily a bold or a happy one. This is the voice in our head that urges us to back off and go slow; to avoid the roller coaster and instead stroll the boardwalk.

  The amygdala, the set of neurons governing the lizard brain, is activated by the body’s stress response. So at the other end of the spectrum, it is that same jolt of adrenaline early man felt when staring down a lion on the African savanna. The lizard brain tried to save his life by urging him to run like hell.

  But what if that primal man’s family was starving, and that lion represented dinner? Or its great tawny hide represented warmth? Or maybe that rogue lion had been terrorizing his family, as the great lions of TsavoX would do centuries later. Killing the lion would be necessary for their survival, and thus he would have to stand his ground and kill it.

  Early man would do this by overriding the lizard brain. First he would take a slow deep breath to bring down his heart rate. Then he would face the reality that panic would not help him complete his task. Then he would allow his brain to be flooded with possible solutions. This might happen slowly at first, because the lizard brain would be screaming that killing a lion is impossible, because everything is impossible to the lizard brain. But if he remained calm and focused on completing his mission, those solutions would soon present him with possibilities.

  All the while, the lizard brain would be screaming that he was about to die.

  9

  This is why the lizard brain is the enemy of hope. Dreams are sabotaged by its negativity. Thoughts of success are replaced by fear of embarrassment, shame, ridicule, and death—whether literal or emotional. In modern terms, this is the reason people don’t pursue financially risky but emotionally stimulating careers, attempt public speaking (or public singing!), introduce themselves to the man or woman of their dreams, or attempt a marathon or any of a number of myriad other challenges that might make their lives richer and happier. Fear of public humiliation overwhelms them, and so they set their dreams aside as the lizard voice in their heads tells them they are too dumb, too ugly, too heavy, and most certainly doomed to failure—so why bother trying?

  The lizard brain is why a curious and hopeful man such as Sir Roderick Murchison was more than happy to investigate and fund history’s greatest explorations but unwilling to undertake even one of his own.

  Curiosity and hope are also why that great Portuguese nobleman Henry the Navigator devoted his life to the sea. He built a great research and training facility that featured a library, nautical academy, astronomical observatory, and shipbuilding facility. Over time, he sponsored the design of a revolutionary new ship called the caravel. The caravel, with its triangular sail (“lateen” in nautical terms) and shallow draft (perfect for coastal sailing), allowed Portuguese explorers to navigate the treacherous reefs and shoals of the African coast. It was a design not too far removed from, but nevertheless an upgrade over, Brendan’s hide-
covered curragh. It was the caravel that allowed Bortolemeu Dias to round the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. This not only allowed Portuguese vessels to sail across the Indian Ocean to open the spice trade with Asia, it also meant they could sail north up the African coast and open a European market for Arab slave traders.

  Columbus, most famously, sailed caravels on all four voyages to the New World.XI The caravel was such a singular and unique vessel that it’s safe to say that these journeys might never have occurred without its discovery.

  Like Sir Roderick, however, Henry the Navigator never once sailed on an expedition. He had the resources, the power, and every other tool at his disposal to sail the world, but he never ventured outside Portugal.

  Even among history’s great explorers, there was a difference between those who learned to look at a problem from every angle, seeing hope where others merely saw “impossible,” and those who were doomed midexpedition by the ongoing stress of a journey.

  Consider the outcomes of two very different expeditions. In 1845, Sir John Franklin, an RGS founder and former governor of Tasmania, set out from England to find the Northwest Passage to Asia. In the same way that Columbus had hoped to sail west to the Orient through a southerly route, so Franklin was hoping to do the same by finding a route north of Canada. This would immeasurably enhance Britain’s trade prospects. Taking into consideration all previously explored aspects of this potential waterway, there were roughly 1,000 miles of the Canadian Arctic that needed discovering.