Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure (35 page)

To the south of Shooa, Baker and Ibrahim and their followers crossed a splendid granite plateau bordering a level tableland of fine grass. But from this high ground, they could see a low and interminable prairie stretching southwards as far as the eye could see, relieved only by an occasional palm tree. Their guide now lost the path, and as they struggled through ten-foot-high grass, they found themselves stumbling into deep swamps between undulations in the land. Since these morasses were numerous, the march became exhausting for man and beast – the oxen often having to be unloaded and their burdens floated across on improvised rafts. Florence was too feverish to walk and had to be carried on her bed, which proved too cumbersome to be taken across the swamps. So Baker tried to carry her on his back. He soon regretted it. ‘In the middle, the tenacious bottom gave way, and I sank, and remained immovably fixed while she floundered frog-like in the muddy water … until she was landed by being dragged through the swamp.’
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On 22 January they reached a broad river, flowing from east to west. From Speke’s directions they assumed it must be the Nile. They were greeted by some men in a canoe, who shocked them with the news that this part of the country was Rionga’s domain. As soon as the canoeists learned that Baker’s and Ibrahim’s men had no connection with their allies Mohammed Wad-el-Mek and Andrea De Bono, they refused to sell food or to guide Baker to the lake. But it was some compensation for the visitors, as they continued southwards, to turn their back on the swamps and enter a noble forest that ran parallel with the river, as it roared beneath them to their right in a succession of falls between high cliffs. ‘These heights were thronged with natives … armed with spears and shields … shouting and gesticulating as though daring us to cross the river.’ These men were on the Bunyoro side of the river and were clearly Kamrasi’s
warriors. As Baker’s party reached the Karuma Falls, close to the Bunyoro ferry, the heights were just as crowded with men, who sent across a canoe to parley. Bacheeta, Baker’s female translator, explained to them that Speke’s brother had just arrived from his country to pay Kamrasi a visit. When asked why this brother had brought so many men with him, Bacheeta replied without hesitation that the white man’s presents for Kamrasi were so numerous that they required many carriers. After this mouthwatering announcement by his interpreter, Baker dared imagine that he might soon be summoned to meet Kamrasi. Certainly he would have to look the part.

I prepared for the introduction by changing my clothes in a grove of plantains for my dressing room, and altering my costume to a tweed suit, I [then] climbed up a high and almost perpendicular rock that formed a natural pinnacle on the face of the cliff, and waving my cap to the crowd on the opposite side, I looked almost as imposing as Nelson in Trafalgar Square.

Returning to the ground, Baker ordered his and Ibrahim’s men – 112 in all – to hide themselves in the plantains, in case ‘the natives were startled by so imposing a force’. With Florence beside him, he then advanced to meet Kamrasi’s men, who had been in the canoe and were now approaching on foot through the reeds. Their greeting was both gratifying and alarming, being expressed by ‘rushing at us with the points of their lances thrust close to our faces, [while] shouting and singing in great excitement’. Baker asked Bacheeta to tell them that he hoped not to be kept waiting for weeks before meeting Kamrasi as Speke had been. They replied by recounting how Wad-el-Mek had come to Bunyoro, claiming to be Speke’s friend, and had therefore been trusted and given gifts by Kamrasi, but had then returned with Rionga’s people and with their help had killed many of the king’s subjects. So, Baker was told, it was out of the question for him to cross the river before messengers had returned from the capital with Kamrasi’s permission. After all, Baker’s party might include some of the people who had behaved so treacherously several months earlier. Forewarned
about Wad-el-Mek’s attack, Baker had expected to be met with suspicion, but he was still disappointed by the extent of the hostility. After lengthy discussions, the headman of the district reluctantly agreed to let Baker and Florence cross the river. It was a mark of Baker’s almost excessive self-confidence that he was prepared to be ferried over with only two servants and with Bacheeta, despite warnings from his men that he would be murdered if separated from them.
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Baker and Florence slept on the ground on straw under a Scotch plaid, having dined on ripe plantains, washed down with plantain wine that tasted like thin cider. Next day, nobody would tell them a word about the lake, although they asked numerous people. Not that the hundreds of Nyoro flocking to look at them were hostile. Indeed, the sight of Florence combing her long blonde hair created as great a stir (in Baker’s phrase) as a gorilla would have done appearing on a London street.

At the end of a wearisome week of waiting, some men arrived from Kamrasi’s town, Shaguzi (M’ruli). After inspecting Baker closely, they declared that he was truly ‘the brother of Speke’, and agreed that he and all his men could leave for Shaguzi the following day, 30 January 1864. After this announcement Baker felt more affectionate towards his hosts, and wrote in his diary about the cleverness of their blacksmiths and potters and the beauty of their women, but this benign mood would not last. Florence fell ill on the first day of the march, and for a week Baker feared she would die. On 5 February she was so ill that even travelling on a litter was more than she could bear. Baker described the country as being ‘full of mosquitoes’ but made no connection between their presence and the fever that so many of his people were contracting. Fadeela – the servant who had appeared in Baker’s tent after being beaten – was dying and expired three days later. On that day, Baker was so weak that he had to be held upright on his ox’s back by two men, and even then he fell off and had to rest under a tree for five hours.

From the contradictory messages now being received from Kamrasi, Baker could see that the ruler was deliberately trying to
delay his arrival, possibly out of fear.
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But, on 10 February, the Englishman and his party at last arrived at Shaguzi, and a man whom Baker took to be Kamrasi, accompanied by 500 warriors, came to see him. This royal visitation was due to the fact that Baker – like Florence – was too ill to walk. Later, he was carried to the royal hut where he presented the supposed
omukama
with some presents, including a large Persian carpet, a pair of red Turkish shoes, some necklaces and a double-barrelled gun. When he asked permission to travel to the lake, the man he thought was Kamrasi – who was actually Kamrasi’s younger brother, Mgambi, impersonating the king under orders – told Baker that the lake was a hundred miles away and that in his weakened condition he would certainly die on the way there. Baker brushed aside this warning, and ignoring the immense danger that he and Florence would face without quinine, renewed his pleas to be permitted to set out. Baker explained that the Nile flowed northwards for an immense distance, passing through many countries from which valuable articles could be sent to Kamrasi, if he would only allow his English visitor to travel to the Luta N’zige.

Mgambi tried to make his consent conditional upon Baker agreeing to attack Rionga, which he refused to do. Ibrahim, however, agreed to become Mgambi’s blood brother, licking blood from his punctured arm, and promising to act against his enemies. This pledge was made after he had been given twenty large tusks and promised more. Ibrahim was also happy, it turned out, to take all his men towards Karuma Falls and to leave Baker with only thirteen porters, and the interpreter, Bacheeta, whose freedom he was obliged to purchase with three double-barrelled guns. Mgambi, the impersonator, gave Baker and Florence the use of a hut, built on marshy ground in a mosquito-ridden meadow. They suffered from fever daily, and were appalled to be told by Mgambi that all the medicines in the chest left behind by Speke had been used up. It rained in torrents most days, and Baker feared that he and Florence would not survive if they were detained in this damp place much longer. They felt a little more hopeful after learning from an indiscreet headman that the
journey was not as horrifying as it had been made out. In fact, salt traders usually reached the lake in ten days.
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Baker was finally given permission to leave on 23 February, but at the last moment, just as the oxen were being saddled, Mgambi, whose protuberant eyes had always disturbed Baker, said casually: ‘I will send you to the lake and to Shooa, as I’ve promised; but you must leave your wife with me.’ In his account (the only one there is), Baker thrust the muzzle of his revolver against Mgambi’s chest and said he would shoot him dead if the insult was repeated. Florence in the meantime looking ‘as amiable as the head of the Medusa’, let fly at Mgambi in Arabic, which Bacheeta bravely translated word for word. Mgambi was astonished by all the fuss. He said he would have been perfectly happy to have offered Baker one of
his
wives. It was the custom in Bunyoro, but if Baker did not like it he was sorry. By way of compensation, he ordered all the bystanders to act as carriers for Baker, and in addition provided an escort of 300 men.
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They began their march through the beautiful Bugoma mimosa forest but soon arrived at the same great swamp that earlier had forced them away from the direct route to the lake. Baker and Florence were too ill to cross the morass on foot, and since their oxen could only proceed by swimming, the two invalids were placed on litters and propelled to firmer ground by two dozen men splashing in the water. In their enfeebled state, the lovers could not control their escort, whose members rushed ahead and plundered every village on their route. Nor could they compel them to start early enough to avoid the heat of the sun. On 27 February, they had to cross the Kafu river, which was covered over with thickly matted aquatic plants, forming a bridge of sorts. But to ride oxen on this trembling and uncertain surface was impossible, so even the desperately ill Florence had to walk. Baker urged her to follow him, treading exactly where he had placed his feet. At all costs, he said, she should keep moving.

Looking back, when less than halfway across, he was horrified ‘to see her standing in one spot and sinking gradually through the weeds, while her face was distorted and perfectly purple’.
A moment later, ‘she fell as though shot dead’. Baker and about ten men ‘dragged her like a corpse through the yielding vegetation’. It was an agonising moment for him:

I laid her under a tree, and bathed her head and face with water … but she lay perfectly insensible, as though dead, with teeth and hands firmly clenched, and her eyes opened but fixed … It was in vain that I rubbed her heart and the black women rubbed her feet … she was carried mournfully forward as a corpse.

The only sign of life was ‘a painful rattling in the throat’, which seemed the prelude to death.

At the next village, he laid her down in a hut and opened her teeth with a wooden wedge, before moistening her tongue with drops of water. She was breathing, but only five times a minute, and he feared she was suffering from ‘congestion of the brain’. Outside the hut, members of his escort danced and sang until Baker could bear it no longer and swore he would fire at them unless they returned to Shaguzi. Left with his own people and about twenty porters – thirty-five people in all – he continued nursing Florence all next day and night. On 1 March they carried her on a litter for a while. It was a terrible time for Baker, who blamed himself for putting his personal ambitions above his love for her.

Was she to die? Was so terrible a sacrifice to be the result of my self-exile? … I was ill and broken-hearted, and I followed by her side over wild parklands and streams, with thick forest and deep marshy bottoms … and through valleys of tall papyrus rushes, which waved over the litter like the black plumes of a hearse.

For a second night he sat by her side in a dismal hut, listening to the cry of a hyena, and imagining the animal digging up her grave.

Next day they pressed on, but had to stop when she became delirious. In the morning they started again and in the evening, after a long day’s march, she had violent convulsions and it seemed ‘all but over’. He lay down on a plaid beside her, while outside his men began to dig her grave. Yet at first light, ‘when
she opened her eyes, they were calm and clear’. The date was 4 March, and Florence slowly recovered during the coming week. She was very fortunate to be alive, and her man was lucky not to be facing a lifetime spent blaming himself for his adored lover’s death.

On 14 March, on a clear day, they climbed out of a valley and toiled to the top of a hill. Below them was the lake.

The glory of our prize burst suddenly upon me! There, like a sea of quicksilver, lay far beneath, the grand expanse of water – a boundless sea horizon on the south and south-west, glittering in the noonday sun; and on the west, at fifty or sixty miles’ distance, blue mountains rose from the bosom of the lake to a height of about 7,000 feet … It is impossible to describe the triumph of that moment … England had won the sources of the Nile!

He decided to name his lake Albert Nyanza, after Queen Victoria’s late lamented consort. Believing his
nyanza
to be larger than Speke’s, Baker’s respect for the primacy of his friend’s discovery speedily diminished. ‘The Victoria and the Albert Lakes are the two sources of the Nile,’ he declared.
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The zigzag path down to the lake was so precipitous that the riding oxen had to be left at the top, while Florence supported herself on her lover’s shoulder and tottered down the pass on foot, resting every few minutes. The descent to the lakeside beneath the cliff took two hours. On the white pebbly beach Baker rushed into the water ‘thirsty with heat and fatigue, and with a heart full of gratitude, drank deeply’. This closer view of the Luta N’zige did not lead him to reduce the height of the mountains to a more realistic 5,000 feet, nor to halve the lake’s average width. But his greatest exaggeration of its size was the immense distance to which he believed it extended in the south. He allowed local reports of other lakes in that direction (in reality the separate lakes Edward and George) to lead him to suppose that these waters were an extension of his lake, which stretched, he guessed, as far as Karagwe. In time, all this would be shown to be the wishful thinking of a man who had longed for
his
lake to be the Nile’s most important source. Nevertheless,
since the days when Nero had sent his two centurions south, nobody travelling directly up the Nile – and many had tried – had reached any of the great lakes.