Hearts of Darkness by McLynn Frank

Author:McLynn, Frank
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sharpe Books
Published: 2020-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

An Object Lesson in Obstacles

The best way to illustrate the manifold hurdles that lay in the explorers’ path is to provide a case study. In order not to make the argument tendentious, I have selected a relatively obscure part of Stanley’s 1874-7 expedition. His three-month crossing of modem Tanzania to Lake Victoria lacks the high drama of his later time on the lake and his epic descent of the Congo. It has neither the colour of the meeting with Livingstone at Ujiji nor the uniquely nightmarish hues of his triple crossing of the Ituri forest in 1887-8. But for this reason it is a much more reliable guide to the kinds of obstacles that routinely beset all African explorers.

After being financed in 1874 by the Daily Telegraph and the New York Herald for an expedition to complete Livingstone’s work, Stanley arrived in Zanzibar in September 1874 with three white companions, all very young men. Frederick Barker was a former hotel clerk and the brothers Pocock (Frank and Edward) were Medway fishermen. He took four dogs and six riding asses into the interior with him, but more importantly, he had 300 porters and 18,000 lb of trade goods and arms. His first objective was Lake Victoria, but first he took his white men on a reconnaissance of the Rufiji to acclimatise them. Finally, on 17 November 1874, he gave the order to march.

The start of what was to be Stanley’s greatest exploit in Africa was not auspicious. The march from Bagamoyo began in great heat under a dazzling sun which became overpowering as they descended into the Kingani valley:

The ranks become broken and disordered; stragglers are many; the men complain of the terrible heat, the dogs pant in agony. Even we ourselves under our solar topees, with flushed faces and perspiring brows, with handkerchiefs ever in use to wipe away the drops which almost blind us, and our heavy woollens giving us a feeling of semi-asphyxiation, would fain rest, were it not that the sun-bleached levels of tawny thirsty valley offer no inducements.

The men cried out for water and some lay on the ground and bemoaned their fate in leaving Zanzibar. Conditions were so bad that by the time they reached Kingani the mastiff Castor had died of a heart-attack, while the other dogs were already in a bad way, Jack the bull-terrier being much bothered by the swarms of grasshoppers he met on the route. At the Kingani river and on the hills between Bagamoyo and Kingani plain Stanley posted his most trusted men as guards to prevent desertions.

At Kikoka on 18 November Stanley reluctantly ordered a day of rest. He was inclined to attribute the excessive exhaustion of the wangwana not just to the heat but to the use of drugs, especially opium. His reluctance to halt was borne out when a letter arrived from the troublesome Arab governor of Bagamoyo, asking Stanley’s men to return the women they had ‘abducted’. When Stanley gave the order for the women to be returned, the wangwana sprang to their Sniders.

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