CHAPTER I.
PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE.
‘We were now landed upon the Continent of Africa, the most desolate, desert, and inhospitable country in the world, even Greenland and Nova Zembla itself not excepted.’—DEFOE.
I could not have believed, before Experience taught me, how sad and solemn is the moment when a man sits down to think over and to write out the tale of what was before the last Decade began. How many thoughts and memories crowd upon the mind! How many ghosts and phantoms start up from the brain—the shreds of hopes destroyed and of aims made futile; of ends accomplished and of prizes won; the failures and the successes alike half forgotten! How many loves and friendships have waxed cold in the presence of new ties! How many graves have closed over their dead during those short ten years—that epitome of the past!
‘And when the lesson strikes the head, The weary heart grows cold.’
* * * * * *
The result of a skirmish with the Somal of Berberah (April 19, 1855) was, in my case, a visit ‘on sick leave’ to England. Arrived there, I lost no time in recovering health, and in volunteering for active Crimean service. The campaign, however, was but too advanced; all ‘appointments’ at head-quarters had been filled up; and new comers, such as I was, could look only to the ‘Bashi Buzuks,’ or to the ‘Turkish Contingent.’
My choice was readily made. There was, indeed, no comparison between serving under Major-General W. F. Beatson, an experienced Light-Cavalry man who had seen rough work in the saddle from Spain to Eastern Hindustan; and under an individual, half-civilian, half-reformed Adjutant-General, whose specialty was, and ever had been, foolscap— literally and metaphorically.
In due time I found myself at the Dardanelles, Chief of Staff in that thoroughly well-abused corps, the Bashi Buzuks. It were ‘actum agere’ to inflict upon the reader a _réchauffé_ of our troubles,—how the military world declared us to be a band of banditti, an irreclaimable savagery; how a man, who then called himself H. B. M.’s Consul—but who has long since incurred the just consequences of his misconduct—packed the press, because General Beatson had refused him a lucrative contract; how we awoke one fine morning to find ourselves in a famous state of siege and blockade, with Turkish muskets on the land side, and with British carronades on the water-front; and how finally we, far more sinned against than sinning, were reported by Mr Consul Calvert to Constantinople as being in a furor of mutiny, intent upon battle and murder and sudden death. These things, and many other too personal for this occasion, will fit better into an autobiography.
The way, however, in which I ‘came to grief’ (permit me the phrase) deserves present and instant record: it is an admirable comment upon the now universally accepted axiom, ‘surtout, pas de zèle,’ and upon the Citizen-king’s warning words, ‘Surtout, ne me faites pas des affaires.’
The Bashi Buzuks, some 3000 sabres, almost all well mounted and better armed, were pertinaciously kept pitched on a bare hill-side, far from the scene of action and close to the Dardanelles country town, that gay and lively Turkish Coventry, at the Hellespont-mouth. In an evil hour I proposed, if my General, who wanted nothing better, would allow me, to proceed in person to Constantinople and to volunteer officially for the relief of the doomed city, Kars.
Ah, Corydon, Corydon, quæ te dementia cepit?
And I _did_ proceed to Stamb’ul; and I _did_ volunteer; and a neat hit, indeed, was that same public-spirited proceeding!
It would be a lively imagination that could conceive the scene of storm which resulted from my brazen-faced procedure. The picture has its comic side when looked back upon through the mellowing medium of three long lustres. The hopeful eagerness of the volunteer; the ‘proper pride’ in one’s corps, that had come forward for an honourable action; the fluent proof that we could convoy rations enough for the gallant and deserted Ottoman garrison, diplomatically left for months to slow death by starvation; and—the blank and stunned surprise at the hurricane of wrath which burst from the high authority to whose ambassadorial ear the project was entrusted.
Reported home as a ‘brouillon’ and turbulent, I again turned lovingly towards Africa—Central and Intertropical—and on April 19, 1856, I resolved to renew my original design of reaching the unknown regions, and of striking the Nile-sources viâ the Eastern coast. For long ages, I knew, explorers had been working, literally, as well as figuratively, against the stream; and, as the ancients had succeeded by a flank march, so the same might be done by us moderns. My Ptolemy told me the tale in very plain and emphatic terms, and although his shore-line shows great inaccuracies, his traditions of the interior, derived from mariners of Tyre and from older writers, appeared far more reliable:—
‘He (_scil._ the Tyrian) says that a certain Diogenes, one of those sailing to India, ... having the Troglyditic region on the right, after 25 days reached the Lakes whence the Nilus flows, and of which the Promontory of the Rhapta is a little more to the south.’[2]
Amongst my scanty literary belongings on our march to the Tanganyika Lake was a paper (De Azaniâ Africæ littore Orientali, Commentatio Physiologica, Bonviæ, Formis Caroli Gengii, MDCCCLII.) kindly sent to me by the author, Mr George F. de Bunsen. It quoted that same passage which was a frequent solace to me during our 18 months’ wanderings, and I still preserve the pamphlet as a memory.
Nor had I forgotten Camoens:—
‘And there behold the lakes wherein the Nile is born, a truth the ancients never knew; see how he bathes, ’gendering the crocodile, th’ Abassian land, where man to Christ is true. behold, how lacking ramparts (novel style!) he fights heroic battle with the foe. see Meroe, island erst of ancient fame, Nobá amongst the peoples now its name.’[3] _Lusiad_, Canto x. 95.
This is happier and truer to antiquity than the doubts of José Basilio da Gama:—
‘—the sombre range Virginal, ne’er by foot of man profaned, Where rise Nile’s fountains, if such fountains be.’ _O Uruguay_, Canto v.
I consulted my excellent friend the late Dr Barth, of Timbuktu, about following the footsteps of pilot Diogenes the Fortunate. He replied in a kind and encouraging letter, hinting, however, that no prudent man would pledge himself to discover the Nile sources. The Royal Geographical Society benevolently listened once more to my desire of penetrating into the heart of the Dark Continent. An Expeditionary Committee was formed by Sir Roderick I. Murchison, the late Rear-admiral Beechey (then President of the Society), Colonel Sykes, Chairman of the Court of Directors of the Hon. East Indian Company, Mr Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Mr Francis Galton, the South African traveller, and Mr John Arrowsmith. I did not hear, strange to say, till many years had passed, of the active part which Vice-admiral Sir George Back, the veteran explorer of the Arctic regions, had taken in urging the expedition, and in proposing me as its head. Had it been otherwise, this recognition of his kindness would not have come so tardily.
The Committee obtained from Lord Clarendon, then H. M.’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the sum of £1000, and it was understood that the same amount would be advanced by the then ruling Court of Directors. Unfortunately it was found wanting. I received, however, on Sept. 13, 1856, formal permission, ‘in compliance with the request of the Royal Geographical Society, to be absent from duty as a regimental officer under the patronage of H. B. Majesty’s Government, to be despatched into Equatorial Africa, for a period not exceeding two years, calculated from the date of departure from Bombay, upon the pay and allowances of my rank.’ So wrote the Merchant-Sultans.
I was anxious again to take Lieut. John Hanning Speke, because he had suffered with me in purse and person at Berberah, and because he, like the rest of the party, could obtain no redress. Our misfortunes came directly from Aden, indirectly from England. I had proposed to build a fort at Berberah, and to buy all the non-Ottoman ports on the western shores of the Red Sea for the trifle of £10,000. In those days of fierce outcry against ‘territorial aggrandisement’ the Court of Directors looked with horror at such a firebrand proposal, and they were lost in wonder that a subaltern officer should dare to prepare for the Suez Canal, which Lord Palmerston and Mr Robert Stephenson had declared to be impracticable. Therefore the late Dr Buist, editor of the Bombay _Times_, had his orders to write down the ‘Somali Expedition.’ He was ably assisted by a certain Reverend gentleman, then chaplain at Aden, who had gained for himself the honourable epithet of Shaytan Abyaz, or White Devil, while the apathy of the highest political authority—the Resident at Aden, Brigadier Coghlan—and the active jealousy of his assistant, Captain Playfair, also contributed to thwart all my views, and to bring about, more or less directly, the bloody disaster which befell us at Berberah. For this we had no redress. The Right Honourable the Governor-General of India, the late Lord Dalhousie, of pernicious memory, thought more of using our injuries to cut off the slave-trade than of doing us justice, although justice might easily have been done. After keeping us waiting from April 23, 1855, to June 13, 1857, the spoliator of Oude was pleased to inform us, laconically and disdaining explanation, that he ‘could not accede to the application.’[4]
Nothing could persuade the Court of Directors to dispense with the services of Lieut. Speke, who had, like myself, volunteered for the Crimea, and who, at the end of the War, had resolved to travel for the rest of his leave. I persuaded him to accompany me as far as Bombay, trusting that the just and generous Governor, the late Lord Elphinstone, who had ever warmly supported my projects, and that my lamented friend James Grant Lumsden, then Member of Council, would enable us, despite official opposition at home, to tide over all obstacles.
I have been prolix upon these points, which suggest that the difficulty of reaching the Lunar Mountains, or the ‘Invisos Fontes,’ were in London, not in Africa; that the main obstacles were not savages and malaria, but civilized rivalry and vis inertiæ; and that the requisites for success were time, means, and freedom from official trammels. Hardly had we reached Cairo (Nov. 6, 1856), and had inspected an expedition fitted out by H. H. the late Abbas Pasha, and admirably organized by the late Marie Joseph Henri Leonie de Lauture, Marquis d’Escayrac (generally known as Comte d’Escayar de Lauture), when an order from the Court of Directors summoned me back to give evidence at some wretched Court- martial pending on Colonel A. Shirley. The document being so worded that it could not be obeyed, we—Lieut. Speke and I—held on our way.
And even when outward bound, I again got into trouble, without being able, as was said of Lord Gough, to get out again. A short stay at Suez, and the voyage down the Red Sea, taught me enough of Anglo-Indian mismanagement and of Arab temper, to foresee some terrible disaster. Again that zeal! Instead of reporting all things couleur de rose, I sent under flying seal, through the Royal Geographical Society, with whom I directly corresponded, a long memorandum, showing the true state of affairs, for transmission to the home branch of the Indian Government. This ‘meddling in politics’ was ‘viewed with displeasure by Government,’ and reminded me of the old saying—
‘Wha mells wi’ what anither does, May e’en gang hame and shoe his goose.’
The result was a ‘wig’ received in the heart of Africa, and—curious coincidence!—accompanying that sheet of foolscap was a newspaper containing news of the Jeddah massacre (June 15, 1858), and of our farcical revenge for the deaths of Messrs Page, Eveillard, and some fourteen souls, nearly the whole Christian colony.[5] It need hardly be mentioned that this catastrophe showed the way to others, especially to the three days ‘Tausheh’ of Damascus in 1860.
Fortune had now worked her little worst. We had a pleasant passage to Bombay (Nov. 23, 1856), where affairs assumed a brighter aspect, as we began preparing for the long exploration. Lord Elphinstone, after an especial requisition, allowed Lieut. Speke to accompany me. He also kindly ordered the Hon. East India Company’s sloop of war Elphinstone, Captain Frushard, I.N., to convoy us, knowing how much importance Orientals attach to appearances—especially to first appearances. My ‘father’ Frushard gained nothing by the voyage but the loss of his pay; therefore is my gratitude to him the greater. Nor must I forget to record the obliging aid of Mr, now Sir Henry L. Anderson, Secretary to the Government of Bombay; he enabled us to borrow from the public stores a chronometer, surveying instruments, and other necessaries.
Judging that a medical officer would be useful, not only to the members of the expedition, but would also prove valuable in lands where the art of healing is not held destructive, and where Medici are not called ‘Caucifici et Sanicidæ,’ Lord Elphinstone also detached the late Dr J. F. Steinhaeuser, then staff-surgeon, to accompany us. Unfortunately the order came too late. No merchantman happened then to be leaving Aden for Zanzibar, and during the south-west monsoon native craft will not attempt the perilous passage. Nothing daunted, my old and tried friend crossed the Straits to Berberah, with the gallant project of marching down country to join us in the south; nor did he desist till it became evident, from his slow rate of progress, that he could not make Zanzibar in time. The journey through the North-eastern horn of Africa would alone have given a title to Fame. Its danger and difficulty were subsequently proved (October 2, 1865) by the wounding of Baron Theodore von Heughlin and by the murder of Baron von der Decken, Dr Link, and others of his party.[6]
The absence of Dr Steinhaeuser lost the East African Expedition more than can be succinctly told. A favourite with ‘natives’ wherever he went, a tried traveller, a man of literary tastes and of extensive reading, and better still, a spirit as staunch and determined as ever attempted desperate enterprise,—he would doubtless have materially furthered our views, and in all human probability Lieut. Speke would have escaped deafness and fever-blight, I paralysis and its consequent invalidism. We afterwards wandered together over the United States, and it is my comfort, now that he also is gone, to think that no unkind thought, much less an unfriendly word, ever broke our fair companionship. His memory is doubly dear to me. He was one of the very few who, through evil as well as through good report, disdained to abate an iota of his friendship, and whose regard was never warmer than when all the little world looked its coldest. After long years of service in pestilential Aden, the ‘Coal-hole of the East,’ he died suddenly of apoplexy at Berne, when crossing Switzerland to revisit his native land. At that time I was wandering about the Brazil, and I well remember dreaming, on what proved to be the date of his death, that a tooth suddenly fell to the ground, followed by a crash of blood. Such a friend, indeed, becomes part of oneself. I still feel a pang as my hand traces these lines.
NOTE.
‘The Bashi Bazuks, commanded by General Beatson, were displaying all the violence and rapacity of their class, little, if at all, restrained by the presence of their English officers.’ Thus writes Mr John William Kaye in ‘Our Indian Heroes’ (_Good Words_, June, 1851), for the greater glorification of a certain General Neill, whose principal act of heroism was to arrest a ‘Jack-in-Office Station Master.’ Mr Kaye is essentially an official writer, but even official inspiration should not be allowed directly to misstate fact.
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Footnote 1:
Mr Frere’s memory is unusually short. I intrusted the MS. to the Eurasian apothecary of the Zanzibar Consulate, and I suspected (Lake Regions of Central Africa, vol. i. chap. i.) that it had come to an untimely end. The white population at Zanzibar had in those days a great horror of publication, and thus is easily explained how a parcel legibly addressed to the Royal Geographical Society had the honour of passing eight years in the strong box of the ‘Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.’
Footnote 2:
Georg. lib. i. ix. The concluding words are ὧν ἐστι τὸ τῶν Ῥαπτῶν ἀκροτήριον ὀλιγῴ νοτιώτερον. There is no reason why Bilibaldus Pirkimerus (Bilibaldi Pirckeymher), Lugd. 1535, should render it, ‘quibus _Rhaptum promontorium_ paululum est Australius.’
Footnote 3:
When the Portuguese counselled the Abyssinians to wall their settlements against the Gallas, the former replied like Spartans, ‘No; we keep stones to build churches and temples, but we defend our country with our arms and hands!’ The Coptic ‘Nob’ signifies gold (Ritter Erdkunde, French translation, 142), the Camoensian ‘Noba’ is therefore more correct than our modern Nubia, which we find in the monk Burchard (A.D. 1250), ‘Æthiopia quæ hodie Nubia dicitur.’ De Barros (1. iii. xii.) prefers ‘a gente dos Nobis.’ I have been tempted to add a stanza which is _not_ translated from Camoens.
95 (_a_)
‘And see the twain from Albion’s chalky shore go forth th’ Egyptian mystic veil to rend: the farthest font of Nilus they explore, those mighty waters whence the rivers trend, then, O dire Chance! O Fortune hard and sore! of all their fatal labours view the end— that lies self-victimed in his natal land, this lives afar on friendless foreign strand.’
Footnote 4:
The losses of the Somali expedition (not including those of the Arab and Somali attendants) were as follows:—
Lt. Stroyan, I.N. (killed), lost Co.’s Rupees 1750 Lt. Speke (wounded) do. 4100 Lt. Burton (do.) do. 1950 Lt. Herne do. 500 Shaykh Ahmed do. 120 —— Total, Company’s Rupees 8420
Footnote 5:
I could not resist the temptation of printing ‘wig’ and newspaper paragraph side by side in the Appendix (ii. 428) to my ‘Lake Regions of Central Africa.’
Footnote 6:
Proceedings Royal Geographical Society, May 5, 1866. The lamented travellers’ notes have now (1869-70) being published under the title of ‘Baron Carl Claus von der Decken’s Reisen in Ost-Afrika in den Jahren 1859 bis 1861. Bearbeitet von Otto Kersten (who accompanied the first expedition). London. Asher.’