Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure

Explorers of the Nile

by the same author

NON-FICTION
Livingstone
Baden-Powell
Stanley
Swimming with my Father

FICTION
Somewhere Beyond Reproach
Cushing’s Crusade
The Missionary’s Wife
Deep Water

Explorers of the Nile

The Triumph and Tragedy of a
Great Victorian Adventure

TIM JEAL

Yale
UNIVERSITY PRESS

New Haven & London

First published 2011 in the United States by Yale University Press and in Great Britain by Faber and Faber Limited.

Copyright © 2011 by Tim Jeal.

All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.

Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use.
For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office).

Typeset by Donald Sommerville.
Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011933872 ISBN 978-0-300-14935-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my daughters,
Jessica, Lucy and Emily

Contents

Illustrations

Plates

Maps

Introduction

PART I
Solving the Mystery

1 Blood in God’s River

2 A Great Misalliance

3 A Rush of Men Like a Stormy Wind

4 About a Rotten Person

5 Everything Was to be Risked for This Prize

6 Promises and Lies

7 A Blackguard Business

8 Our Adventurous Friend

9 As Refulgent as the Sun

10 An Arrow into the Heart

11 Nothing Could Surpass It!

12 The Nile is Settled

13 A Hero’s Aberrations

14 Death in the Afternoon

15 The Doctor’s Dilemma

16 The Glory of Our Prize

17 A Trumpet Blown Loudly

18 Almost in Sight of the End

19 Never to Give Up the Search Until I Find Livingstone

20 The Doctor’s Obedient and Devoted Servitor

21 Threshing Out the Beaten Straw

22 Nothing Earthly Will Make Me Give Up My Work

23 Where Will You Be? Dead or Still Seeking the Nile?

24 The Unknown Half of Africa Lies Before Me

PART 2
The Consequences

25 Shepherds of the World?

26 Creating Equatoria

27 An Unheard of Deed of Blood

28 Pretensions on the Congo

29 An Arabian Princess and a German Battle Squadron

30 ‘Saving’ Emin Pasha and Uganda

31 The Prime Minister’s Protectorate

32 To Die for the Mahdi’s Cause

33 Equatoria and the Tragedy of Southern Sudan

34 A Sin not Theirs: The Tragedy of Northern Uganda

CODA
Lacking the Wand of an Enchanter

APPENDIX
Fifty Years of Books on the Search for the Nile’s Source

Acknowledgements

Sources

Notes

Index

List of Illustrations

An Arab-Swahili slave trader murders a sick slave, an engraving in
The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa
edited by Horace Waller

Massacre of the Manyema women in Nyangwe, an engraving in
The Last Journals

‘A large spear . . . stuck firmly into the soil’, an engraving in
The Last Journals

Speke’s escape from his captors, the frontispiece of Speke’s
What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile

Naval vessels at Zanzibar, an engraving in Stanley’s
How I Found Livingstone in Central Africa
[HIFL]

Sidi Mubarak Bombay, a photograph at the Royal Geographical Society

Burton’s drawings of the heads of Africans, in his
The Lake Regions of Central Africa

The Ladies’ Smoking Party, an engraving in
Lake Regions

Kazeh, an engraving in
Lake Regions

African village scenes, in Speke’s
Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile [Journal]

Sir Roderick Murchison.
National Portrait Gallery, London

John Blackwood, frontispiece of
Annals of a Publishing House
(Vol. III
John Blackwood),
ed. Mrs Gerald Porter (1898)

Captain James Grant, in Harry Johnston’s
The Nile Quest
(1903)

Speke and Grant present Rumanika with a rhinoceros’ head, an engraving in Speke’s
Journal

The road to the
kabaka
’s palace, an engraving in J. W. Harrison’s
The Story of the Life of Mackay of Uganda

Mutesa’s musicians, in Speke’s
Journal

Kahala and other young Baganda women, an engraving in Speke’s
Journal

Royal wife led to execution, an engraving in Speke’s
Journal,
based on a drawing by James Grant

The Ripon Falls, an engraving in Speke’s
Journal

Grant and Speke at Kamrasi’s court, an engraving in Speke’s
Journal

Grant and Speke entertained by Florence and Baker, an engraving in the Baker family collection

John and Katherine Petherick, an engraving used as the frontispiece to the Pethericks’
Travels in Central Africa

Grant and Speke acclaimed at the RGS, illustration in the
Illustrated London News
14 July 1863

Murchison Falls, an engraving in Samuel Baker’s
The Albert Nyanza

John Shaw and William Farquhar, an engraving in Stanley’s
HIFL

The meeting of Stanley and Livingstone, an engraving in
HIFL

Livingstone sitting with Stanley outside his
tembe
in Ujiji, an engraving in
HIFL

Stanley and Livingstone at the mouth of the Rusizi, an engraving in
HIFL

John Kirk, a photograph in Richard Hall’s
Stanley: An Adventurer Explored

Livingstone travelling through marshes, an engraving in
The Last Journals

Alice Pike, a photograph in Richard Hall’s
Stanley: An Adventurer Explored

The Pocock brothers, an illustration in
The Exploration Diaries of H. M. Stanley,
ed. Richard Stanley and Alan Neame

Stanley’s reception on Bumbireh, an engraving in Stanley’s
Through the Dark Continent

Tippu Tip, an engraving in Stanley’s
In Darkest Africa

Death of Kalulu, an engraving in Stanley’s
Through the Dark Continent

Livingstone’s remains carried through Southampton, as seen in the
Illustrated London News
25 April 1874

Baker Pasha, an engraving of a photograph in the Baker family collection

Raising the flag at Gondokoro, an engraving in Baker’s
Ismailia

Kabarega’s return visit to Baker, an engraving in Baker’s
Ismailia

The ‘Battle of Masindi’, an engraving in Baker’s
Ismailia

The retreat to Fatiko, an engraving in Baker’s
Ismailia

Alexander Mackay, frontispiece of J. W. Harrison’s
The Story of the Life of Mackay of Uganda

Muhammad Ahmad, the Mahdi

King Leopold II of Belgium, a photograph in the Royal Museum of Central Africa

De Brazza welcomed at Makoko’s court, from
L’Illustration
8 July 1882

SMS
Adler
in 1889.
Courtesy of the Naval Historical Foundation, US Naval History and Heritage Command

Emin Pasha, an engraving from a photograph in Stanley’s
In Darkest Africa

Steamship on the Upper Congo, an engraving in Stanley’s
The Congo and the Founding of its Free State

Lieutenant Stairs hit by an arrow, an engraving in
In Darkest Africa

Lord Salisbury