Ichabod, Ichabod!
To Emin he’s departed.
Does he travel up the Congo?
Or hobnobs he with some Pongo
Of a native Afric chief,
Some slave-dealing royal thief,
Whom he marvellously teaches
To be honest and wear breeches?
How he tames the cruel hearted
Millions there, who now revere
Colt’s revolvers, home-brewed beer?
And – just as ’twere Livingstone –
Lifts his hat, holds out his hand –
‘Emin Pasha, I believe?’
Do such flattering thoughts deceive?
Shall we greet his well-known face
Once more in the market place?
Punch, 2 June 1888
Jephson located His Excellency Emin Pasha, Governor of Equatorial Province at the lakeside port of M’swa. The Advance was spotted through a telescope by one of Emin’s officers and a guard of honour, wearing their Ruritanian-style blue uniform tunics, gold epaulettes, cherry-coloured trousers, shiny black boots and fezzes on their heads, was sent to the jetty to welcome Jephson and his men. A comfortable bed, a spacious bath, a cold beer and excellent food awaited the young volunteer.
Emin was not there to greet him, but word of Jephson’s arrival was carried further up the lake and the Governor sent a message back saying he would return in two days. Jephson was glad of an opportunity to rest in comfort, eat good food and spend time away from Stanley’s prickly company. Strangely, life at M’swa was not conducted under the siege conditions Jephson had expected. There was an abundance of food and Emin’s military personnel went about daily duties seemingly oblivious to the fact that they could be attacked and mutilated by a multitude of enemies at any moment.
Emin returned on his steamer, the Khedive, on 27 April and welcomed the young Irishman. Jephson was expecting ‘a tall man, of a military appearance, but instead I saw a small, wiry, neat, but most unmilitary-looking man, with unmistakable German politeness of manner’. Emin asked Jephson what he needed. Jephson said that a notebook, a little oil and a bar of soap would be appreciated, ‘all of which he wrote down, grumbling all the time at the smallness of my demands. He enumerated several things he could give me, and seemed to take the greatest pleasure in being able to give them. His kindness was overwhelming. . . . It was a pleasure to me to get someone quite new to talk to, especially such a clever, intelligent man, whose conversation must at all times be deeply interesting.’
Jephson handed Emin the letter Stanley had written before his departure. As he read it, Emin wondered why the famous man who had come to relieve him and his people from their plight was begging for food. But he fulfilled the request. The Khedive was loaded with cows, goats, sheep, chickens and grain. By late afternoon of 29 April, Stanley looked out of his tent and observed a dark object on the lake’s distant horizon. He reached for binoculars and saw a plume of smoke through the heat haze. An hour later, a large steamer was visible heading in their direction. At last, the Pasha was on his way.
Stanley’s men gathered on the shore, firing guns and waving flags in the evening air as the steamer drew closer. Bula Matari himself had been considering how to greet the man he had come to rescue, deliver in triumph, the person on whose behalf the expedition party had suffered.
It was dark by the time the Khedive had birthed and after repeated salutes from rifles, Emin Pasha himself walked into camp accompanied by Captain Casati, his Italian-born deputy, and Jephson. Stanley shook hands with them all and asked which was Emin Pasha. A slight figure, wearing glasses and a fez said in excellent English: ‘I owe you a thousand thanks, Mr Stanley – I really do not know how to express my thanks to you.’
Stanley recalled: ‘I expected to see a tall, thin military looking figure, in faded Egyptian uniform, but instead of it I saw a small spare figure in a well-kept fez and clean suit of snowy cotton drilling, well ironed and of perfect fit. A dark grizzled beard bordered a face of Magyar cast, though a pair of spectacles lent it a somewhat Italian or Spanish appearance. There was not a trace of ill health or anxiety; it rather indicated good condition of body and peace of mind.’ This, then, was Stanley’s first impression of the beleaguered man he had come to snatch from the jaws of death, the same who only a month earlier had written a letter pleading, ‘If Stanley does not come soon, we are lost.’
They talked for two hours and consumed five half bottles of champagne. Stanley gave Emin a new pair of trousers purchased in Cairo – and arranged for 6ins to be cut from the leg so they would fit. Like everyone else, Stanley had been expecting a man 6ft tall, ‘but in reality Emin Pasha does not exceed 5ft 7ins in height’ – 2ins taller than Stanley.
The next day, Stanley and Emin sat down together for a lengthy conversation. Afterwards, Stanley admitted to his journal: ‘I am unable to gather in the least what his intentions may be.’ Nor did things improve in the ten days that followed. Emin would remain if his people remained. Emin would go if his people went – despite the fact that his province totalled 10,000 people, including thousands of women and children, all of whom were, apparently, in danger of being slaughtered by rebels. Stanley boldly suggested it might be possible to evacuate the entire population if sufficient donkeys, cows and sheep were assembled to help carry and feed the exodus. He suddenly saw himself in the role of a Moses, with Emin as his Aaron, leading the captive ‘children of Equatoria’ from danger to the new Promised Land at Victoria Nyanza. There the Pasha would become a living legend and Moses/Stanley his deliverer from evil. It was an undertaking too ambitious, vast and difficult to consider. Or was it?
Stanley outlined the options open to Emin: travel to Egypt with the rescue mission; remain in Equatoria as King Leopold’s representative; or escape to the Victoria Nyanza and command the East African Association on behalf of Sir William Mackinnon. Emin repeated he would only evacuate the province if his people decided to leave. He refused to consider the second option, stating that Equatoria belonged to Egypt. But he agreed to consider the third alternative.
It was accepted that Emin would return to Equatoria to consult his people and Jephson would accompany him, while Stanley backtracked through the forest to find Barttelot, Jameson and the rear column, now seriously overdue. Stanley selected 107 men, equipped each with twenty-five days’ rations and headed into the dark, humid equatorial forest. The original nightmare journey from Yambuya to the lake had taken 129 days to complete. The march in the reverse direction was accomplished in 62 days, each new day starting in the hope that men from the rear column would be sighted and ending with no sign of them.
The first European they encountered in camp at Banalya was William Bonny, who stared at Stanley as if he were looking at a dead man who had miraculously been brought back to life. Pressing his hand, Stanley said: ‘Well, Bonny, how are you? Where is the Major? Sick, I suppose?’
Bonny replied: ‘The Major is dead, sir.’
‘Dead? Good God! How dead? Fever?’
‘No sir, he was shot.’
‘By whom?’
‘By the Manyuema – Tippu-Tib’s people.’
‘Good heavens! Well, where is Jameson?’
‘At Stanley Falls.’
‘What is he doing there, in the name of goodness?’
‘He went to obtain more carriers.’
‘Well, where are the others?’ Bonny stated that Ward had travelled downriver to Bangala while Troup had been invalided home months before. ‘These queries, rapidly put . . . prepared me to hear as deplorable a story as could be rendered of one of the most remarkable series of derangements that an organised body of men could possibly be plunged into,’ wrote Stanley.
When Stanley’s advance guard left Yambuya to enter the forest, Barttelot and Jameson were left with 600 loads and 200 carriers too ill to march further. To follow Stanley’s route, the volunteers depended on Tippu-Tib keeping his word and producing 600 men to carry the goods. Barttelot and Jameson distrusted Tippu-Tib and were apprehensive about his ability to muster an army prepared to enter an unknown region with no guarantee of safe return. Barttelot was under the impression that Stanley had assigned him the role of commander of the rear column as a means of being rid of him for a while. As he watched Stanley march out of Yambuya, he began to regret volunteering for this foolish mission.
The Stanley arrived on 14 August with Bonny, Ward, Troup plus stores and the men who had been left at Bolobo. There was silence from Tippu-Tib. Pleading, cajoling or threatening produced no results. The volunteers considered taking 80 Zanzibaris and following Stanley, but the jungle had grown so quickly that vines and foliage obliterated the markers intended to indicate their route. They would have to sit it out in this desolate place, await Stanley’s return and expect a reprimand for failing to follow him.
Loads in their care contained tinned meat and jams, but Stanley had forbidden volunteers to touch the food until they had crossed the forest and arrived at the lake. Gentlemen did not break promises even if they were starving and, once their rations were consumed, the volunteers had to forage, trade and sometimes beg for food from the Manyuema in a district now facing a famine. They resorted to digging up the bitter manioc (cassava), the only thing that grew abundantly in the parched fields. When boiled for hours, the vegetable – poisonous when consumed raw – could be eaten like a potato. After soaking in water for days it could be dried, pounded into flour, made into bread, dumplings, porridge and tapioca. But the volunteers did not know this and became ill after eating manioc that had been incorrectly prepared.
Months passed and there was still no sign of Tippu-Tib’s men. The volunteers resorted to kidnapping native women and children and holding them ransom in exchange for food. The natives retaliated, raided the Englishmen’s huts seeking their women and children and stealing anything else they could lay their hands on. Tippu-Tib occasionally helped. On the occasions that volunteers were obliged to call on him at Stanley Falls to ask when his men were coming, he provided goats, sheep and rice to take back to Yambuya. But no men, only excuses.
On one miserable day at Yambuya, firing was heard on the opposite bank of the river and the volunteers could see through field glasses that Tippu-Tib’s slavers were rounding up natives. Ward and Bonny pleaded with the Arabs and brought one back to camp who told them that 500 of the 600 promised men had been attacked by natives on their way to Yambuya and were lost, absconding and going off in every direction. The Arab had been in charge of one of the groups. Tippu-Tib later confirmed the story and, smiling, told the volunteers that it would take a few days to round them up. To ensure the Arab slaver kept his word, Jameson announced he would remain with Tippu-Tib to insist he carry out his side of the bargain. A month later, Jameson was still waiting for the slaver to fulfil his promise.
It was while Jameson was travelling with Tippu-Tib that the young amateur ornithologist witnessed a ritual of the sort he and fellow volunteers might have experienced in one of their hunger-induced nightmares. They visited the native settlement at Riba-Riba where traditional dances were arranged for the Arab guests. Drummers and performers caked their bodies in white clay, sang wierd chants and contorted themselves.
Tippu-Tib told Jameson that the natives were known to be cannibals and years before he himself had witnessed human fat, produced from boiling bodies in a large pot, floating down the river. Jameson disbelieved the story and Tippu-Tib turned to an Arab companion and asked for a handkerchief to be brought. A man holding the hand of a small native girl appeared, accepted the handkerchief, produced a knife and stabbed the girl to death. Three men came forward and began cutting up the child’s body, each taking away a limb to clean off blood in the river before dropping it into a cooking pot. The child had not uttered a sound.
Jameson was disturbed that he was somehow responsible for the cannibalistic murder he had witnessed at Riba-Riba. If he had believed Tippu-Tib’s story in the first place, the girl might still have been alive. He excused himself, found a quiet place and searched for his sketchpad in an attempt to draw the terrible scenes he had witnessed in case evidence needed to be produced at some future inquiry.
It was now Barttelot’s turn to confront Tippu-Tib, who announced he would be unable to round up all the men from his district and would have to visit a neighbouring region – forty-two days’ march away – to recruit the rest. Amazingly, Barttelot believed him. He had no other choice. Meanwhile, volunteers became thinner by the day, their spirits broken.
Ward wrote to his family in England, telling them about the eternal waiting. ‘Day after day passes; we see no strange faces, we hear no news; our men are growing daily thinner and weaker.’ Barttelot was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He hated Africa, Africans, the heat, the filth, the lack of decent food – and most of all he hated Stanley. He suffered one tropical fever after another and rambled for hours on end. When he was well, he behaved irrationally, ordering natives to be flogged for reasons that existed only in his head.
Rumours circulated that Stanley and his men had perished in the great forest. The demoralised volunteers discussed returning to the coast, but they knew that without someone to carry supplies, they would be dead in days. They decided that one of them should attempt to get back to civilisation and Ward was elected to use any means possible to reach one of the stations and cable England, telling the world of their plight. Otherwise they would die together at Yambuya.
Unexpectedly, 400 Manyuema carriers suddenly turned up ready for the march to join Bula Matari. They were expecting 600, but 400 were enough to get them on their way to rejoin the advance column. They were an undisciplined and cantankerous rabble. Loads that could not be carried, including eight boxes of Stanley’s reserve clothing, medicines, provisions, charts and bottles of Madeira wine, were sent downriver. Ammunition for Tippu-Tib took precedence and there were enough Manyuema men to carry Emin Pasha’s ivory back.
Troup was too ill to walk and it was agreed he should return to England. The remaining volunteers, recharged with hope now they knew they would soon be on their way, awaited Tippu-Tib who arrived demanding to examine loads his men were expected to carry. He was shown the regulation 60lb packs and objected, stating his men could not possibly carry anything heavier than 40lb. The next three days were spent unpacking loads, repacking them and sending the surplus downriver. Before leaving, Tippu-Tib demanded £1,000 of his total payment plus forty-seven bales of cloth, ammunition and gunpowder. Barttelot was authorised to draw up the necessary bank draft and handed it to the slaver.
On 11 June, one year after Stanley’s advance column had marched into the forest, the rear column left Yambuya. Out of the 271 Zanzibaris left at the settlement, only 139 were now alive, of whom 101 were fit enough to walk. The remainder of the column comprised Manyuema men with wives and children, a dangerous, savage and cannibalistic group. There were daily desertions and Barttelot was concerned there would be insufficient porters to carry Emin’s supplies and ammunition. He told colleagues that the only solution lay in buying slaves from Tippu-Tib to supplement the depleting column. He returned to Stanley Falls to negotiate with the slaver, leaving Jameson in charge advancing through the forest. The porters rebelled, throwing the rear column into chaos that Jameson was unable to control.
Barttelot returned to find the column in disarray, porters firing indiscriminately into the air and no sign of any discipline to be seen. He found Jameson and Bonny desperately appealing to the men to calm down and stop firing. No one was listening. Barttelot said he had been unable to buy slaves from Tippu-Tib but had a letter authorising him to purchase them from the headman of a nearby village, who refused to part with his men. The rear column trudged on, a ragged, disobedient and disagreeable army that threatened to turn on its leaders at any time.
At the slightest hint of trouble, Barttelot flew into a rage, shouting at the men and beating those unfortunate enough to get in his way. Indiscriminate gunfire at night prevented him from sleeping and on the following days he was unable to think clearly and decisively. Early one morning he was woken by the sound of drumming, a daily ceremony performed by Manyuema women to greet the dawn. He knew it would eventually stop, but on this particular day he climbed from his camp bed, reached for his pistol and headed in the direction of the noise. When he found the woman responsible, he screamed at her to stop. She refused. He yelled his order again and she continued. A shot rang out and a bullet hit Barttelot below the heart and he fell dead.
There was confusion everywhere. Men stampeded into the forest, afraid that the remaining volunteers might seek revenge or wrongly accuse them of Barttelot’s murder. Bonny was woken and ran through the camp to find out what had happened. He was confronted by an armed mob marching in the direction of the volunteers’ tents. ‘I had no arms. I walked up to him [the head man] and asked him if he was leading his men to fight me. He replied, “No.” I said: “Then take your men quietly to their houses and bring all the headmen to me, for I wish to speak to them,”’ he later testified. Many headmen had vanished into the bush and those remaining were told by Bonny that they would be held responsible for the Major’s death and loss of goods. Nearly all of the Manyuema had fled, taking fifty loads with them.
Barttelot’s murderer was named as Sanga, husband of the woman the Major had been screaming at. Sanga had fled in terror, frightened he would be shot on the spot by the volunteers or slaughtered by his own people. The body of Major Edmund Musgrave Barttelot, described by Stanley as ‘a generous, frank and chivalrous young English officer’, who had left his privileged English life to volunteer for the expedition without pay, expecting adventure with a great explorer, was wrapped in a blanket and buried in the forest.
It was decided that Jameson would travel to Stanley Falls to inform Tippu-Tib of what had happened. There, he learned that the murderous Sanga was in hiding, telling anyone prepared to listen that he thought the Major was going to beat his wife in the same way he had seen him beat men on a previous day. He was tried before Jameson and Tippu-Tib, found guilty, shot and his body thrown into the Congo.
On his way back to the rear column, James Sligo Jameson, the wealthy young civilian and amateur ornithologist who had witnessed the dark cannibalistic ritual in the jungle weeks before, was struck down with fever and died at the village of Bangala, grief-stricken for Barttelot and worn out by his efforts to join up with the advance column. On the same day as his death, Stanley returned to Banalya to discover for himself the fate of the rear column.