Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone (16 page)

In the outpouring of public sorrow that followed, Isabel Burton wrote to
The Times
and publicly suggested what
many were already thinking: it was time to find Livingstone. And not just evidence of his existence, as Young had found two years before, but the man himself. Isabel, whose penchant for independent thinking was so notable among women in Victorian England that the
Edinburgh Review
was inspired to comment on her character — ‘a clever capable woman, self-reliant in difficulties, with a pretty sense of humour’ — wrote the letter without any prompting from her husband. Richard Burton was on his way to Beirut to serve as Consul to Damascus. He didn’t worry about his fellow lion. Burton felt Livingstone had to be alive, for when he finally died the bush telegraph would wire the news back to Zanzibar within days. Isabel’s letter, then, was notable for its independence and compassion.

It also forced Murchison into a tight spot. To seek funding for a rescue mission would be publicly admitting that his steadfast belief in Livingstone’s safety was a sham. Yet if he didn’t, his friend might perish. ‘Sir Roderick’, Rawlinson once noted, ‘never deserted a friend in need.’

On 29 September help arrived in the form of a letter from Sir Samuel White Baker. Barrel-chested, with light bags under his blue eyes, a pronounced nose, greying brown hair parted on the right and a frizzy beard draping down to his sternum, the fifty-seven-year-old Baker was the most animated and emotionally stable of Murchison’s lions. He was at the Nile’s mouth in Alexandria, he wrote to Murchison, about to journey upriver with his new spouse and long-time travel companion, the former Florence von Sass. She was blonde, Hungarian, a second wife fifteen years his junior.

Baker’s letter explained his itinerary and goals, offered Mrs Baker’s warmest wishes, then added a compelling postscript: ‘I see a letter in the papers from Mrs Burton, proposing an expedition in search of Livingstone. Although well meant, it will be a useless undertaking, as I shall arrive south of the Albert before any expedition from Zanzibar could reach Tanganyika. There I shall be certain to hear of him.’

So it was settled. Baker would not aggressively search for Livingstone, but he would travel up the Nile to Gondokoro. His intention was to build a settlement and open up the interior to commerce. The settlement would serve as a listening post. Baker, who thought Livingstone’s Nile theories were absurd, would race to his fellow lion’s assistance if Livingstone’s location became known.

Murchison affixed a cover letter and forwarded Baker’s missive to
The Times
, confident there could be no better caretaker of Livingstone’s safety. Baker was intelligent, thorough, bold and fluent in the local language. If any explorer could divine word of a fellow white man, it was he. The RGS would not launch a search expedition. There was no need.

Isabel Burton’s letter, however, was a call to arms. Adventurous men throughout England disregarded Baker’s assurances. Inspired by E. D. Young’s new bestseller
The Search for Livingstone
, they sent applications to the RGS, hoping to join the search party. All were turned away. ‘No such expedition had, however, been intended,’ the RGS finally stated publicly. ‘Dr Livingstone had been more than three years and a half in the heart of Africa without a single European attendant.’ Murchison ‘was not sure that the sight of an un-acclimatized young gentleman sent out from England would not produce a very bad effect upon the Doctor. Because, in addition to his other labours, he would have to take care of the new arrival.’

Almost loving in his staunch defence of Livingstone’s ability to prosper, Murchison never broached the subject of a search party again. Livingstone would return on his own or not at all.

It never occurred to Murchison that search and rescue could be attempted without RGS participation; that Livingstone’s disappearance didn’t just belong to Britain and the RGS any more. The man and the story belonged to the world. And even as Isabel Burton’s letter ran in
The Times
, followed by Samuel White Baker’s, events were unfolding in New York that would directly affect Livingstone.

It was October 1869. Winter was coming to London. War was brewing in Europe. And James Gordon Bennett, Jr, in that time of upheaval, was about to decide it was time to go looking for Livingstone in earnest.

THERE WERE TWO
main villages of the Manyuema region west of Lake Tanganyika through which Livingstone was travelling. The first was Bambarre, located in a valley beneath high granite mountains that reminded Livingstone of glaciers. Those mountains were also named Bambarre. Further inland, and at a much lower elevation along the banks of the Lualaba, was the lush oasis of Nyangwe, which was Livingstone’s ultimate goal. The terrain was intensely rugged in the miles between Lake Tanganyika and Nyangwe, however, and the going was very slow. Livingstone was only halfway to Nyangwe when he finally reached the village of Bambarre on 21 September 1869. He had travelled just two hundred miles in the two months since leaving Ujiji.

Those two hundred miles, however, were some of the most arduous in all of Africa. The mountains of Bambarre were like towering castle walls protecting Africa’s innermost kingdoms from easy incursion. The heavily forested slopes were so steep that hiking upward often meant scrambling on all fours, clutching trees and creeping vines
to avoid tumbling back down. The ground near the summit was moist and cool, protected from the sun by the stifling density of the primeval forest. The air was dank and oppressive from lack of light and circulating breezes. Moss and ferns sprouted on the trees. The creepers twined up and around the great tree trunks so tightly that even dead trees remained upright, supported by the same parasitical vines that had killed them.

As Livingstone descended into the valley on the other side, the ground was riven with deep gullies and ravines. The forest was even more awesome, with trees growing to three hundred feet tall, canopies intertwined. But slowly, as the base of the mountains came closer, the clear blue sky and rays of sunshine began filtering through. The forest thinned, and the trees became smaller. When the mountains had finally tapered out, and Livingstone was in a land of green fields, sparkling streams and scattered clusters of mighty trees, he had done much more than merely cross a mountain range. He had, in fact, entered a place like none he had seen before in Africa.

The village of Bambarre was arranged like a European city, with long boulevards and bright-red square houses made of clay. Palm trees grew in the village centre. Communal granaries protected food supplies from birds and animals. ‘The houses are all well filled with firewood on shelves, and each has a bed on a raised platform in an inner room,’ he wrote. ‘Very many people come running to see the strangers. Gigantic trees all about the villages.’

Bambarre was the sort of place a man could call home — and Livingstone did. He was so weary from travelling, and so enjoyed the abundance of peoples and food in Bambarre, that he immediately postponed his march to the Lualaba River. On 22 September, having decided to take a sabbatical from exploration, he had his men build a house for him in the village. Mohammed Bogharib and the other Arabs left Livingstone behind and moved quickly to find slaves. Livingstone had just enough cloth and copper wire to pay his way, and the people took to him. It was a little jungle village just a few degrees south
of the equator, where the chief was polite, and the people were interested in the location of England and the words of the Bible. The men dressed in aprons made of deerskin, and carried a single spear and a cutting knife. Using clay, they moulded their hair into elaborate animal shapes — horns, gills, scales — and decorated the design with rings of iron and copper. The fact that they sometimes practised cannibalism didn’t scare Livingstone in the slightest.

Meanwhile, back in Zanzibar a cholera epidemic was sweeping through the island. Vice-Consul Kirk’s five-year-old daughter Marion was among those suffering the intestinal spasms and vomiting. She was lucky to survive. Kirk and his wife never got sick, thanks to the new technique of separating the ill from the well known as quarantine, developed by Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War. Almost seventy thousand slaves, however, did not survive. The island’s plantations depended upon their labour, and owners frantically sought replacements. The result was a mad dash towards the interior by slavers eager to quench the market’s demand.

The impact on Livingstone was great. More than ever, the traders feared his letters would incite anti-slavery passion once they reached London, thus shutting down their line of work at a most lucrative time. So though Livingstone would write letters and pass them to caravans marching east, most of the letters disappeared as if they had never been written at all. Livingstone was cut off in Africa.

As a result, the relative safety of Bambarre was misleading. Livingstone was not only trapped, but his health also continued to fail. Almost all his back and bottom teeth had fallen out. Eating was a chore. He was too weak to travel great distances. The ulcers on his feet had returned. So instead of wandering and seeing the world from a broad perspective, his explorations turned to minute details. He wrote about white ants, for instance, while resting in Bambarre, and how easy it was to catch them for frying after they had done battle with the larger and more deadly driver ants. Most of all, he pondered his
Nile theories, and came to the conclusion that the Lualaba was definitely the Source. ‘I have to go down and see where the headwaters join, then finish up by going round outside or south of all the sources. I don’t like to leave my work so that another may cut me out and say he has found sources south of mine. I am dreaming of finding the lost city of Meroe, but reality reveals that I have lost nearly all my teeth. That is what the sources have done for me,’ Livingstone wrote.

Once able to wander hundreds of miles a month, Livingstone was now barely making a few hundred a year. Receiving assistance was one thing. Being carried, however, was contrary to Livingstone’s identity as one of history’s great wanderers. The stroll, the saunter, the march, the gambol — all held a place in his repertoire. Like a leaf swept through the sky by a gentle breeze, Livingstone wafted through life, landing where the wind decided, then lifting again with a fresh gust. ‘No one’, he once wrote, ‘can truly appreciate the charm of repose unless he has undergone severe exertion.’ Now, his health and fortitude were flagging. Livingstone’s days of extreme exertion seemed to be over.

In 1841, when Livingstone first came to Africa, the natives laughed when he offered to accompany them on walks in the bush. They pointed to his baggy pants and untanned skin and said he would never last. Every word of their ridicule was spoken in their native Setswana, not knowing Livingstone was fluent in it. He wandered with them, however, earning their respect as he kept the pace with ease. Not only was he undeterred by Africa’s extreme temperatures, Livingstone embraced them. ‘A merry heat doeth like a good medicine,’ he wrote. His travels taught him about the topography and climate and soil quality and dangers of Africa — the aspects that interested Europe — and also about its great, under-appreciated history.

It was his wondrous ability to wander that led the Royal Geographical Society, that fulcrum of British exploration, to embrace Livingstone as one of their own.
They awarded him a gold chronometer in absentia for his Kalahari crossing in 1850, followed by their prestigious gold founder’s medal for the four-year journey across Africa. On that expedition Livingstone named a geographical landmark after a member of royalty, the only time he did so in his career. The story of Livingstone measuring Victoria Falls soon made its way around London, and added to his growing legend. The feat happened in November 1855. Livingstone was following the Zambezi’s course from its source in the Central African highlands. He was puzzled that the Zambezi lost almost no elevation for hundreds of miles from its origin. It sprawled a mile wide across the landscape, languorous and imposing. The shores were lined with rat holes and vegetation. Hippos, otters and tiger fish were predominant in the river.

Livingstone knew it had to narrow and begin descending towards the sea at some point, but the miles passed without a drop in elevation. He was exhausted, suffering from insect bites, infectious running sores and debilitating bouts of dysentery. His journey began to take on a Sisyphian quality. After following the river for five hundred miles, Livingstone seemed no nearer the secret than when he started.

Finally, he heard the sound of distant thunder. As he gazed down the river to the sound the entire massive body of water disappeared into a fissure in the earth. Approaching the edge carefully, he was shocked to see the Zambezi spilling 360 feet off a cliff into the merest sliver of a gorge. Compressed into the narrow space, it became a frothing, roiling juggernaut, racing to the sea.

Livingstone had been taking careful notes throughout his journey. He was determined to measure the falls’ depth exactly. Slipping into a borrowed canoe, he paddled alone to an island in the centre of the river. The island jutted out over the edge of the falls. On hands and knees, Livingstone crept to the lip. Dropping flat on his chest he peered into the chasm and carefully lowered a weighted rope into the thundering abyss. Great plumes of mist rose
into the air, making it hard to judge where the falls ended and the river began. The roar reverberating off the gorge’s wall deafened him and made the ground tremble. Livingstone carefully recoiled his rope and backed away from the edge. He was normally calm about his discoveries, but the enormous waterfall awed him. It was, he later wrote, ‘the most wonderful sight I have seen in Africa’.