Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone by Martin Dugard

Author:Martin Dugard [Dugard, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography, History, Explorers, Africa
ISBN: 9780767910743
Amazon: 0767910745
Publisher: Broadway Books
Published: 2004-04-12T12:00:00+00:00

TWENTY

GONDOKORO

26 MAY 1871

Gondokoro, the Upper Nile

730 miles from Livingstone

STANDING ON THE edge of the Nile, 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 travelled 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 when 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 the Nile was the most confounding stretch of river on earth. Papyrus ferns and the detritus swept downriver from Lake Victoria 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 not land, and not river, and Baker’s expedition had been stuck for weeks.

A smaller expedition could have found an alternative route, perhaps hacking through the undergrowth alongside the river. Baker, however, was driving an army. Under his command were 1,700 Sudanese and Egyptian soldiers. Forty-eight sharpshooters protected his and 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. He also had an entire fleet. It had taken fifty-five sailboats and nine steamers to transport Baker’s men the 1,500 miles from Cairo to Khartoum. The largest steamboat was a hundred feet long and weighed over 250 tons.

Baker, his wife, his assistants, his army and his armada lit the boilers in Khartoum on 8 February 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 had spent 1859 to 1860 supervising the construction of a railway between the River Danube and the Black Sea. He had gone to Africa in 1861 to hunt big game. Searching for the Source was just a sideline.

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