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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
Henry M. Stanley's 'In Darkest Africa' is a captivating account of his journey through the unexplored regions of the African continent. A blend of travelogue and adventure narrative, this book details Stanley's encounters with native tribes, wildlife, and harsh landscapes, providing readers with a vivid portrayal of Africa in the 19th century. The author's descriptive and engaging writing style draws the reader into the heart of the wilderness, making this book a classic in the genre of exploration literature. The book also delves into the complexities of colonialism and the impact of European imperialism on Africa, offering valuable insights into the historical context of the time. Henry M. Stanley, a renowned explorer and journalist, was known for his expeditions in Africa and his role in mapping out the continent. His firsthand experiences in Africa and his passion for discovery are evident in 'In Darkest Africa,' making it a seminal work in the field of African exploration. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in adventure stories, African history, or the legacy of European exploration in Africa. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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In Darkest Africa
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Table of Contents
Introduction
At the edge of known maps, a rescue march becomes a crucible where ambition, endurance, and empire collide.
In Darkest Africa is Henry M. Stanley’s two-volume narrative, first published in 1890, recounting his attempt to reach Emin Pasha, then governor of Equatoria, after upheavals in the Nile-Sudan region had isolated him from external support. Composed in the immediate aftermath of the expedition of 1887–1889, it fuses personal testimony with the apparatus of a field report. Without revealing outcomes, the book’s premise is straightforward and arresting: traverse Central Africa under extreme conditions to contact an imperiled provincial administrator, and then determine a practicable course amid uncertainty, competing authorities, and rapidly shifting political weather.
The work holds classic status because it crystallized a defining form of nineteenth-century exploration literature: a blend of logistical precision, geographic observation, and dramatic confrontation with the unforeseen. It attracted wide attention upon publication and has remained central to discussions of how the Victorian age imagined Africa and itself. Its endurance rests on more than notoriety. Stanley’s book has been continually cited in histories of exploration, in studies of imperial culture, and in debates about narrative authority, offering a capacious record whose prose, maps, and appended data became exemplars for later accounts of difficult journeys.
As literature, the book is notable for its deliberate pacing and its careful calibration of immediacy and distance. Stanley alternates between scene and summary, using concise chronologies, inventory-like passages, and sudden bursts of set-piece description to convey the demands of river travel, forest marches, negotiations, and illness. The inclusion, in early editions, of maps and illustrations underscores a documentarian impulse that complements the storytelling voice. The prose often proceeds by accumulation—miles, rations, bearings, names—so that grand moments emerge from a bedrock of detail. That method, influential in travel writing, taught readers to regard hardship as both narrative engine and evidence of observational authority.
Historically, the book belongs to the late-Victorian “Scramble for Africa,” when European powers accelerated territorial claims and information-gathering across the continent. Stanley, already famed for earlier journeys and for his journalism, wrote within a media ecosystem that magnified exploration as a spectacle of endurance tied to national prestige and scientific curiosity. Composed soon after his return, the narrative reflects an urgency to fix events while memory and documents were fresh. Its publication in two volumes in 1890 situates it at a moment when public appetite for expeditionary accounts was high and when disputes over the purposes and limits of such ventures were intensifying.
The geographical and ethnographic breadth of In Darkest Africa is essential to its appeal and to its documentary value. Stanley records rivers, forests, and trading routes, and he attends—if often through the filters of his time—to encounters with numerous communities whose cooperation, resistance, or wary neutrality shaped every mile traveled. Readers see how landscape and social complexity intertwine: dense vegetation alters pace and communications; multilingual negotiations determine access and safety; scarcity and abundance both become strategic facts. Although the perspective reflects nineteenth-century assumptions, the accumulation of observed particulars makes the book a significant primary source for historians and geographers.
At its thematic core lies the drama of leadership under duress. The narrative explores how a commander interprets fragmentary intelligence, allocates dwindling resources, delegates authority, and tries to maintain cohesion when illness and fatigue erode judgment. It is also a study in logistics: boats assembled and disassembled, routes chosen for their navigability or their perils, supplies calculated against uncertain timelines. These elements confer a modern resonance, revealing how planning, improvisation, and morale interact when events refuse to align with expectations. The book’s structure—stages, setbacks, recalculations—transforms practical problems into a compelling arc.
Another enduring theme is knowledge—how it is made, tested, and contested in places where instruments falter and rumor proliferates. In Darkest Africa speaks to the nineteenth-century belief that mapping and measurement could convert uncertainty into mastery, even as the narrative repeatedly encounters ambiguity. The very title, with its rhetoric of darkness, signals the era’s metaphors for the unknown and the moral freight attached to unveiling it. Contemporary readers will recognize both the power and the limits of that epistemic project: the map illuminates routes and rivers; it cannot resolve competing claims, translate intent perfectly, or erase the consequences of entry.
Because it records an expedition justified as a relief mission, the book also stages ethical questions that have not faded. What obligations arise when distant crises are filtered through journalism and diplomacy? Where is the line between assistance and intrusion? Stanley’s account has been scrutinized for the human costs recorded within it and for the assumptions that guided decisions in the field. Without adjudicating controversies here, one can see how the narrative’s candor about hardship, loss, and confrontation has made it a touchstone in discussions about humanitarian rhetoric, coercion, and the often painful arithmetic of survival in extreme conditions.
In literary history, In Darkest Africa helped shape both the adventure tradition and its critics. Later writers, including those who interrogated empire, wrote into or against the imaginative space formed by such expeditionary narratives. Joseph Conrad’s work, for example, is frequently read in dialogue with earlier Congo accounts, of which Stanley’s are a prominent part. Beyond fiction, journalists and travel writers adopted the book’s documentary strategies—its integration of itinerary, observation, and reflection—while twentieth- and twenty-first-century scholars have used it as a locus for re-reading the archive of exploration through postcolonial and historiographical lenses.
To approach the book today is to read at two levels. It is, first, a meticulously constructed story of a defined mission in a particular time and place. It is, also, a historical document whose language, framing, and silences reveal the values and anxieties of the culture that produced it. Understanding both levels enriches the experience: the reader gains a sense of ground-level decision-making in the interior of Africa in the late 1880s and, simultaneously, an awareness of how narrative form mediates experience, turning journals, dispatches, and maps into a coherent public text.
The contemporary relevance of In Darkest Africa lies in its convergence of themes that remain alive: the politics of relief and rescue, the ethics of intervention, the challenges of navigating unfamiliar environments responsibly, and the fraught power of storytelling about others. Its lasting appeal endures in the tension between practical detail and grand design, between recorded fact and interpretive frame. As a classic, it asks to be read critically and closely, not merely for its drama but for its testimony to how individuals and institutions imagine duty, risk, and purpose when the path ahead is real and the stakes are human.
Synopsis
In Darkest Africa, published in 1890, presents Henry M. Stanley’s detailed account of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, launched to reach and assist Emin Pasha, the isolated governor of Equatoria. Framed as a factual narrative, the work combines travel chronicle, logistical report, and geographic survey. Stanley traces how the expedition took shape in the context of late nineteenth-century imperial rivalry, regional upheavals, and the disruption caused by the Mahdist advance. He sets out the scope of his undertaking, identifies constraints of distance and provisioning, and maps the inquiry he will pursue: how to penetrate the central African interior, maintain cohesion, and communicate across fractured political and cultural frontiers.
Stanley describes the assembling of personnel, carriers, and supplies, drawing largely from the East African caravan system and coastal markets. He recounts negotiations with regional powerbrokers, including arrangements with Tippu Tip to facilitate movement and transport in the Congo basin. The expedition proceeds by sea and river to the Congo, then upstream to a forward base on the Aruwimi at Yambuya. There Stanley establishes depots, divides the force, and calibrates loads to balance speed against endurance. The narrative emphasizes planning, the engineering of transport, and the standardized use of trade goods for exchange, anticipating the privations expected inland.
The Advance Column’s push from Yambuya into the equatorial forest becomes the book’s central test of logistics and leadership. Stanley records the slow progress through dense vegetation, incessant rain, and an unforgiving environment that undermines health and equipment. Scarcity of provisions forces stringent rationing and repeated searches for edible resources. The party constructs stockades, fords streams, and improvises routes to bypass river obstacles. Stanley dwells on the cumulative strain of disease, exhaustion, and uncertainty, while arguing that discipline, route reconnaissance, and careful caching of supplies can offset attrition. The march, he notes, transforms exploration into a problem of survival and communication.
Encounters with communities along the route range from wary exchange to armed skirmish. Stanley seeks passage and food by negotiation where possible, using cloth, beads, and wire as currency, but he also recounts moments when misunderstandings or previous raids by outsiders make talks fail. The book documents the presence of Zanzibari and Sudanese intermediaries, as well as the effects of long-standing slave-trading networks on local politics. Observations on settlement patterns, cultivation, hunting, and forest economies are interwoven with the march narrative. Stanley presents these ethnographic notes as practical knowledge gathered under pressure, constantly tied to decisions about route, pace, and security.
As the expedition emerges from the forest belt, the narrative widens to geography. Stanley records major waterways, measures distances, and sketches the relationship between river systems and the lakes on the western side of the Nile basin. He notes sightings of a high, snow-capped range later identified to Europeans as the Ruwenzori and follows valleys that link the rift lakes to Lake Albert. The account proposes connections among the Aruwimi, Semliki, and Nile tributaries, offering maps and itineraries to fix previously uncertain lines on the continental interior. These observations occur amid ongoing hardships, underscoring how discovery is achieved under exacting conditions.
The approach to Equatoria centers the book’s political and human stakes. Stanley explains why Emin Pasha’s position had become precarious, outlining disrupted supply lines, the burden of administering scattered stations, and shifting loyalties among troops and local allies. Communications prove difficult: the lake frontier is expansive, boats are scarce, and messages cross slowly through intermediaries. Stanley presents meetings, correspondence, and councils as he weighs options with his counterparts, focusing on the practicalities of provisioning, medical needs, and command. The question of whether to reinforce a threatened province or to organize a withdrawal frames the negotiations that follow.
Parallel to the Advance Column’s story, Stanley recounts the experiences of the Rear Column left at Yambuya to forward supplies. He presents reports of delays, illness, and conflict that beset this contingent, showing how leadership disputes and local tensions contributed to setbacks. The narrative incorporates letters, journals, and depositions to clarify what occurred in his absence, while acknowledging losses among both officers and carriers. This material becomes a study in how plans unravel when communication is slow and authority is dispersed, reinforcing the book’s emphasis on redundancy, trustworthy lieutenants, and the risks inherent in divided commands.
In the latter sections, Stanley details the combined effort to regroup, sustain a large party, and execute a prolonged movement out of the interior. He emphasizes medical care, food acquisition, and the moral weight of decisions affecting soldiers, porters, and dependents. Terrain and climate remain unforgiving, yet alliances, river craft, and careful staging enable progress. Alongside the itinerary, the book reflects on leadership: the balance between severity and leniency, the value of clear orders, and the need to answer public criticism with documents and testimonies. The narrative’s cadence is one of testing, adjustment, and the steady search for a practicable line of retreat.
Without disclosing final outcomes, In Darkest Africa closes by linking its journey to broader issues that outlast any single expedition. Stanley argues that accurate mapping, reliable routes, and honest record-keeping are foundational to future travel and administration. He acknowledges the era’s entanglement of exploration, commerce, and empire, noting how violence and dependency distort encounters as much as curiosity and cooperation advance them. The book endures as a geographic record of central Africa and a contested document of its time, inviting readers to weigh courage and endurance against the ethical costs and political ambitions that framed the expedition in the first place.
Historical Context
Henry Morton Stanley’s In Darkest Africa is set in the late 1880s, when Central and East Africa were being folded into the expanding structures of European imperial power. The narrative unfolds between the Congo Basin and the Upper Nile’s Equatoria province, a region then claimed by the Khedivate of Egypt under nominal Ottoman suzerainty. Dominant institutions shaping the story include imperial governments, chartered companies, missionary societies, Arab–Swahili trading networks, and emergent colonial militaries. The book recounts a transcontinental enterprise—planned in European capitals, staged from Zanzibar and the Congo River, and prosecuted through African caravan systems—reflecting the logistical reach and ideological confidence of high Victorian imperialism.
The expedition and the book belong to the “Scramble for Africa” (roughly 1880s–1914), when European states rapidly partitioned African territories. The Berlin Conference of 1884–85 formalized principles of occupation and recognized King Leopold II’s claims to the Congo Free State. The rush for territory, resources, and prestige fostered intense Anglo–French–German–Belgian rivalries. Stanley’s narrative echoes this context: it presents exploration as both humanitarian and strategic labor, transforming rivers into transport corridors, blank spaces into mapped provinces, and interpersonal treaties into foundations for rule. In doing so, it mirrors the era’s conflation of geographical discovery with political entitlement and international legal doctrine.
The immediate crisis behind Stanley’s journey was the Mahdist revolt in the Egyptian Sudan (beginning 1881). After the fall of Khartoum and the death of Charles Gordon in early 1885, Egyptian authority collapsed across the Nile Valley southward. Equatoria, administered on Egypt’s behalf by Eduard Schnitzer—widely known as Emin Pasha—was cut off from the north. Emin had troops, stores, and local alliances, but his communications and supply lines were severed. In Darkest Africa repeatedly references this geopolitical breakdown, recasting a complex imperial retreat as a drama of isolation and relief, and situating Equatoria within the broader convulsions of the Mahdist state’s emergence.
Public emotion after Gordon’s death and the Victorian fascination with rescue narratives supplied the social energy for an Emin relief effort. A London-based Emin Pasha Relief Committee formed in 1886–87, drawing on philanthropic networks, commercial interests, and the press. Sir William Mackinnon and other imperial entrepreneurs helped mobilize funds and logistics. Stanley—already famous for finding Livingstone in 1871 and for his Congo work—was chosen to lead. Newspapers amplified each planning step, prime examples of late nineteenth‑century media power shaping imperial projects. The book reflects this origin, justifying decisions to donors and readers while framing the expedition as a public obligation fulfilled.
The plan leveraged multiple empires. With Leopold II’s permission, the expedition used Congo River steamers to reach the Aruwimi, establishing a base at Yambuya in mid‑1887. Stanley advanced east through the Ituri rainforest while a rear column remained to bring up supplies. The enterprise depended on hired African labor—Zanzibari and coastal porters, Sudanese soldiers, and inland guides—within existing caravan systems. In Darkest Africa records the grueling forest march, the challenge of riverine transport, and the attrition of men and materiel, illustrating how imperial ventures relied on African intermediaries and local knowledge even as European leaders claimed singular authorship.
Technological change shaped possibilities and perils. Quinine prophylaxis, better understood by the 1870s, made prolonged stays in malarial zones somewhat more survivable, though death rates remained high. River steamers, sectional boats, and improved firearms altered mobility and coercive power. Survey instruments—sextants, chronometers, compasses—and standardized mapmaking practices turned observation into cartographic authority. Telegraph networks and a vibrant press relayed news home, converting field achievements into metropolitan capital. Stanley’s narrative frequently foregrounds instruments, measurements, and logistics, exemplifying a late‑Victorian faith that technology could master distance, disease, and unfamiliar environments, even as the expedition repeatedly encountered their limits.
Stanley’s ties to the Congo Free State form an essential backdrop. From 1879 to the mid‑1880s he helped establish stations along the Congo and concluded treaties on Leopold II’s behalf, laying foundations for the new state. During the Emin expedition, Free State steamers and posts facilitated movement to Yambuya. In Darkest Africa thus sits at the hinge of exploration and administration, depicting the Congo as a corridor and a network of stations rather than merely a river. Later revelations about Free State abuses would shadow this entanglement, but at the time Stanley presented Congo infrastructure as a neutral, even benevolent, enabling apparatus.
Another indispensable context is the Arab–Swahili ivory and slave trade that linked Zanzibar to the central interior. Powerful merchant leaders—of whom Tippu Tip was the most famous—controlled routes in Manyema and the Upper Congo. Stanley negotiated with Tippu Tip during the expedition era, seeking carriers and political accommodation. The book denounces slave raiding and presents the march as opposing it, yet it also records reliance on the very commercial and political networks that slave and ivory trading had created. This ambivalence reflects a common imperial posture: humanitarian rhetoric overlaying transactional arrangements with entrenched regional powers.
Geographically, the expedition forced a European encounter with the Ituri rainforest and the interlacustrine highlands. Stanley’s party traveled along the Aruwimi and through dense equatorial forest, then toward the great lakes and the Nile headwaters. The book offers ethnographic observations of communities including forest‑dwelling groups often identified by Europeans as “pygmies,” and reports sightings of the Ruwenzori range and lake shores tied to the Nile system. While these descriptions expanded European knowledge, they were filtered through late‑Victorian racial hierarchies and metaphors of darkness and primitiveness, revealing as much about contemporary European categories as about the peoples described.
The expedition’s internal crisis—the collapse of the rear column at Yambuya—generated intense controversy. Officers died, including Edmund Musgrave Barttelot, and allegations of indiscipline and atrocities surfaced. The widely publicized Jameson affair, involving claims that James Sligo Jameson witnessed a murder, inflamed British opinion in 1890. Stanley’s account counters such accusations, assigning blame and emphasizing the difficulties of command. Parliamentary debate, press polemic, and memoirs by other participants turned the expedition into a case study in imperial responsibility, exposing the moral hazards of privately organized ventures operating far from metropolitan oversight.
Hardship was constant. Disease—malaria, dysentery, fevers—ravaged the columns despite quinine. Food scarcity in the forest compelled strict rationing, barter, and foraging, while tsetse belts limited animal transport, increasing reliance on human carriers. Discipline practices, weapons escorts, and punitive skirmishes reflected the expedition’s dependence on force for security and provisioning. In Darkest Africa details camp routines, route‑cutting, and the conversion of cloth, beads, and wire into currency, giving a view of everyday caravan economies. These pages document, even when seeking to justify, the costs borne by African porters and soldiers who sustained European geographical ambitions.
Missionary activity formed an overlapping sphere of influence. After Stanley’s widely read letter of 1875 invited Christian missions to Buganda, Protestant and Catholic societies established stations around Lake Victoria, competing with one another and with Islamic networks. By the late 1880s, missionaries operated along routes relevant to the expedition, offering intelligence, supplies, and moral support. The book situates encounters with mission stations within a broader contest for souls and schools that paralleled the contest for territories. It also underscores how humanitarian and evangelizing aspirations could align with, and sometimes propel, the extension of European political authority.
International rivalry in East Africa sharpened while Stanley was in the field. German East Africa took shape in the mid‑ to late‑1880s under imperial auspices, while British influence coalesced through private companies and later formal protectorates. The Heligoland–Zanzibar Treaty of 1890 clarified spheres: Britain gained Zanzibar influence; Germany consolidated mainland claims. The expedition’s emergence on the East African coast, at ports such as Bagamoyo, intersected these changing jurisdictions. Emin Pasha later accepted employment under German auspices. In Darkest Africa, written on the cusp of these settlements, captures a moment when relief, exploration, and partition were inseparable.
Late‑Victorian racial science and social evolutionism suffuse the narrative frame. Hierarchies of “civilization,” discussions of character, and depictions of “tribal” customs were deployed to explain cooperation or resistance and to justify coercive measures. Stanley’s prose sometimes admires African navigational skill or endurance, yet the dominant idiom is classificatory and paternal. The famous metaphor of “darkness” blends cartographic ignorance, moral judgment, and atmospheric description. Read historically, the book documents how knowledge production—maps, vocabularies, specimen lists—was entangled with claims about progress and governance that validated European expansion.
The publishing economy amplified the expedition’s significance. Lavishly illustrated volumes, subscription models, and lecture tours moved exploration from field to parlor. Maps traced routes; engravings dramatized encounters; appendices cataloged observations. Newspapers serialized excerpts and debated accusations, ensuring that the book’s appearance in 1890 crowned months of speculation. The text thus functioned as both reportage and branding, consolidating Stanley’s authority and translating logistical feats into cultural capital. In Darkest Africa exemplifies how imperial adventures were packaged for a literate mass audience hungry for sensation, science, and moral purpose, thereby reinforcing constituencies for further expansion.
Financial backing linked private profit and public virtue. Shipping magnates, chartered companies, and anti‑slavery advocates converged around the relief plan, each with distinct expectations. Ivory markets in Europe and America drove inland commerce; anti‑slavery sentiment sought to replace it with “legitimate” trade under European oversight. The book speaks the idiom of abolition while showcasing the commercial infrastructures—caravan routes, depots, credit in cloth and beads—that abolitionists also hoped to redirect. This mixture of philanthropy and profit characterized late‑nineteenth‑century imperial projects, making the expedition a test case for whether humanitarian language could be reconciled with on‑the‑ground exigencies.
Contestation over the Congo Free State darkened the backdrop soon after publication. In 1890 George Washington Williams issued a blistering open letter accusing Leopold’s regime of abuses; later, E. D. Morel and Roger Casement exposed systematic violence. These developments retroactively reframed Stanley’s Congo achievements and his logistical reliance on Free State infrastructure. Readers came to view In Darkest Africa alongside a growing archive of testimony about forced labor and terror, complicating its humanitarian claims. The book therefore occupies an unstable position: a proud narrative of relief and exploration that, within a decade, stood amid a crisis of imperial legitimacy in Central Africa.
Author Biography
Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904) was a Welsh-born journalist, explorer, and bestselling author of the Victorian era. Best known for his dramatic encounter with David Livingstone and for opening transcontinental routes across central Africa, he became a defining figure in the age of high imperialism. His books translated field experience into vivid narratives that captivated European and American audiences, shaping popular ideas about geography, commerce, and humanitarianism. At the same time, his expeditions and administrative work in the Congo made him one of the era’s most controversial actors. Stanley’s literary output, grounded in reportage, helped construct enduring myths and debates about exploration, empire, and evidence.
Stanley grew up in Wales with limited formal education before sailing to the United States as a young man. Journalism became his apprenticeship: he learned concise, telegraphic prose in the newsroom and on assignment, refining habits of note-taking, sketch mapping, and interviewing. Working for the New York Herald, he reported from the eastern Mediterranean and Africa in the late 1860s and early 1870s, including the British expedition to Abyssinia. The Victorian press shaped his literary instincts more than any university syllabus; serialized publication, eyewitness testimony, and competitive scoops provided both stylistic models and career incentives, placing him within the wider tradition of travel writing and imperial reportage.
In 1869 the New York Herald commissioned Stanley to search for David Livingstone, whose whereabouts in central Africa had become uncertain. After extended travel through the interior, he met the Scottish missionary-explorer at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika in 1871, an encounter memorialized in the greeting famously attributed to him. His account, How I Found Livingstone (1872), combined logistical detail with narrative suspense and established his authorial voice. The book sold widely, enhanced his journalistic stature, and demonstrated his capacity to turn field notes into marketable literature. It also introduced themes—perseverance, commerce, and moral uplift—that he would reuse in later volumes.
Seeking to consolidate his reputation, Stanley led a major expedition from the East African coast into the continent’s interior during the mid-1870s, traversing central watersheds and navigating immense river systems to reach the Atlantic. Through the Dark Continent (1878) presented this crossing as a saga of endurance, mapping, and technological improvisation, and it argued for new routes of trade. The work documented the connection between the Lualaba and the Congo River and offered extensive observations on terrain, peoples, and logistics. Readers praised its momentum and descriptive power, though critics noted the high human cost borne by African porters and the expedition’s martial tone.
From 1879 Stanley undertook a new assignment along the Congo on behalf of Leopold II of Belgium, helping to establish stations and negotiate treaties that laid groundwork for the Congo Free State. In The Congo and the Founding of its Free State (1885), he defended the project in the language of anti-slavery, commerce, and civilization. The book functioned as both justification and manual, detailing river navigation, transport systems, and administrative schemes. Its reception was mixed: many contemporaries hailed it as a blueprint for progress, while others accused it of masking coercion. Later scrutiny linked these efforts to a regime notorious for abuses.
Stanley returned to central Africa in 1887 to lead the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, aiming to reach a beleaguered provincial governor on the Upper Nile. The journey, complicated by internal disputes, dense equatorial forest, and staggering casualties, culminated in In Darkest Africa (1890), a two-volume narrative that blended cartographic record with sensational episodes. He followed with lecture tours and additional writings, including My Dark Companions and Their Strange Stories (1893). Admirers praised his energy, logistical mastery, and scene-setting; detractors challenged his claims, accused him of exaggeration, and condemned his methods. Nonetheless, his books consolidated his position as the era’s foremost exploration author.
In later years Stanley settled in Britain, lectured widely, and entered public life as a Member of Parliament in the late 1890s. He received official recognition and remained a prominent commentator on African affairs. He died in 1904; a posthumous Autobiography (1909) further shaped his public image, though scholars treat it cautiously. Stanley’s legacy remains contested: he contributed to mapping central Africa and popularizing geographic knowledge, yet his expeditions and administrative work advanced systems later associated with extreme violence. Today his writings are read both as primary sources on nineteenth-century exploration and as texts that illuminate the rhetoric and realities of empire.
In Darkest Africa
Volume 1
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
The Khedive[1] and the Soudan—Arabi Pasha—Hicks Pasha[3]'s defeat—The Mahdi[2]—Sir Evelyn Baring and Lord Granville on the Soudan—Valentine Baker Pasha—General Gordon: his work in the Upper Soudan—Edward Schnitzler (or Emin Effendi Hakim[6]) and his province—General Gordon at Khartoum: and account of the Belief Expedition in 1884, under Lord Wolseley—Mr. A. M. Mackay, the missionary in Uganda—Letters from Emin Bey to Mr. Mackay, Mr. C. H. Allen, and Dr. R. W. Felkin, relating to his Province—Mr. F. Holmwood's and Mr. A. M. Mackay's views on the proposed relief of Emin—Suggested routes for the Emin Relief Expedition—Sir Wm. Mackinnon and Mr. J. F. Hutton—The Relief Fund and Preparatory details of the Expedition—Colonel Sir Francis De Winton—Selection of officers for the Expedition—King Leopold and the Congo Route—Departure for Egypt.
Only a Carlyle in his maturest period, as when he drew in lurid colours the agonies of the terrible French Revolution, can do justice to the long catalogue of disasters which has followed the connection of England with Egypt. It is a theme so dreadful throughout, that Englishmen shrink from touching it. Those who have written upon any matters relating to these horrors confine themselves to bare historical record. No one can read through these without shuddering at the dangers England and Englishmen have incurred during this pitiful period of mismanagement. After the Egyptian campaign there is only one bright gleam of sunshine throughout months of oppressive darkness, and that shone over the immortals of Abu-Klea[4] and Gubat, when that small body of heroic Englishmen struggled shoulder to shoulder on the sands of the fatal desert, and won a glory equal to that which the Light Brigade were urged to gain at Balaclava. Those were fights indeed, and atone in a great measure for a series of blunders, that a century of history would fail to parallel. If only a portion of that earnestness of purpose exhibited at Abu-Klea had been manifested by those responsible for ordering events, the Mahdi would soon have become only a picturesque figure to adorn a page or to point a metaphor, and not the terrible portent of these latter days, whose presence blasted every vestige of civilization in the Soudan to ashes.
In order that I may make a fitting but brief introduction to the subject matter of this book, I must necessarily glance at the events which led to the cry of the last surviving Lieutenant of Gordon for help in his close beleaguerment near the Equator.
To the daring project of Ismail the Khedive do we owe the original cause of all that has befallen Egypt and the Soudan. With 5,000,000 of subjects, and a rapidly depleting treasury, he undertook the expansion of the Egyptian Khediviate into an enormous Egyptian Empire, the entire area embracing a superficial extent of nearly 1,000,000 square miles—that is, from the Pharos of Alexandria to the south end of Lake Albert, from Massowah to the western boundary of Darfur. Adventurers from Europe and from America resorted to his capital to suggest the maddest schemes, and volunteered themselves leaders of the wildest enterprises. The staid period when Egyptian sovereignty ceased at Gondokoro, and the Nile was the natural drain of such traffic as found its way by the gentle pressure of slow development, was ended when Captains Speke and Grant, and Sir Samuel Baker brought their rapturous reports of magnificent lakes, and regions unmatched for fertility and productiveness. The termination of the American Civil War threw numbers of military officers out of employment, and many thronged to Egypt to lend their genius to the modern Pharaoh, and to realize his splendid dreams of empire. Englishmen, Germans, and Italians, appeared also to share in the honours that were showered upon the bold and the brave.
While reading carefully and dispassionately the annals of this period, admiring the breadth of the Khedive's views, the enthusiasm which possesses him, the princely liberality of his rewards, the military exploits, the sudden extensions of his power, and the steady expansions of his sovereignty to the south, west, and east, I am struck by the fact that his success as a conqueror in Africa may well be compared to the successes of Alexander in Asia, the only difference being that Alexander led his armies in person, while Ismail the Khedive preferred the luxuries of his palaces in Cairo, and to commit his wars to the charge of his Pashas and Beys.
To the Khedive the career of conquest on which he has launched appears noble; the European Press applaud him; so many things of grand importance to civilization transpire that they chant pæans of praise in his honour; the two seas are brought together, and the mercantile navies ride in stately columns along the maritime canal; railways are pushed towards the south, and it is prophesied that a line will reach as far as Berber. But throughout all this brilliant period the people of this new empire do not seem to have been worthy of a thought, except as subjects of taxation and as instruments of supplying the Treasury; taxes are heavier than ever; the Pashas are more mercenary; the laws are more exacting, the ivory trade is monopolised, and finally, to add to the discontent already growing, the slave trade is prohibited throughout all the territory where Egyptian authority is constituted. Within five years Sir Samuel Baker has conquered the Equatorial Province, Munzinger has mastered Senaar, Darfur has been annexed, and Bahr-el-Ghazal has been subjugated after a most frightful waste of life. The audacity manifested in all these projects of empire is perfectly marvellous—almost as wonderful as the total absence of common sense. Along a line of territory 800 miles in length there are only three military stations in a country that can only rely upon camels as means of communication except when the Nile is high.
In 1879, Ismail the Khedive having drawn too freely upon the banks of Europe, and increased the debt of Egypt to £128,000,000, and unable to agree to the restraints imposed by the Powers, the money of whose subjects he had so liberally squandered, was deposed, and the present Khedive, Tewfik, his son, was elevated to his place, under the tutelage of the Powers. But shortly after, a military revolt occurred, and at Kassassin, Tel-el-Kebir, Cairo, and Kafr Dowar, it was crushed by an English Army, 13,000 strong, under Lord Wolseley.
During the brief sovereignty of Arabi Pasha, who headed the military revolt, much mischief was caused by the withdrawal of the available troops from the Soudan. While the English General was defeating the rebel soldiers at Tel-el-Kebir, the Mahdi Mohamet-Achmet was proceeding to the investment of El Obeid. On the 23rd of August he was attacked at Duem with a loss of 4500. On the 14th he was repulsed by the garrison of Obeid, with a loss, it is said, of 10,000 men. These immense losses of life, which have been continuous from the 11th of August, 1881, when the Mahdi first essayed the task of teaching the populations of the Soudan the weakness of Egyptian power, were from the tribes who were indifferent to the religion professed by the Mahdi, but who had been robbed by the Egyptian officials, taxed beyond endurance by the Government, and who had been prevented from obtaining means by the sale of slaves to pay the taxes, and also from the hundreds of slave-trading caravans, whose occupation was taken from them by their energetic suppression by Gordon, and his Lieutenant, Gessi Pasha. From the 11th of August, 1881, to the 4th of March, 1883, when Hicks Pasha, a retired Indian officer, landed at Khartoum as Chief of the Staff of the Soudan army, the disasters to the Government troops had been almost one unbroken series; and, in the meanwhile, the factious and mutinous army of Egypt had revolted, been suppressed and disbanded, and another army had been reconstituted under Sir Evelyn Wood, which was not to exceed 6000 men. Yet aware of the tremendous power of the Mahdi, and the combined fanaticism and hate, amounting to frenzy, which possessed his legions, and of the instability, the indiscipline, and cowardice of his troops—while pleading to the Egyptian Government for a reinforcement of 5000 men, or for four battalions of General Wood's new army—Hicks Pasha resolves upon the conquest of Kordofan, and marches to meet the victorious Prophet, while he and his hordes are flushed with the victory lately gained over Obeid and Bara. His staff, and the very civilians accompanying him, predict disaster; yet Hicks starts forth on his last journey with a body of 12,000 men, 10 mountain guns, 6 Nordenfelts, 5500 camels, and 500 horses. They know that the elements of weakness are in the force; that many of the soldiers are peasants taken from the fields in Egypt, chained in gangs; that others are Mahdists; that there is dissension between the officers, and that everything is out of joint. But they march towards Obeid, meet the Mahdi's legions, and are annihilated.
England at this time directs the affairs of Egypt with the consent of the young Khedive, whom she has been instrumental in placing upon the almost royal throne of Egypt, and whom she is interested in protecting. Her soldiers are in Egypt; the new Egyptian army is under an English General; her military police is under the command of an English ex-Colonel of cavalry; her Diplomatic Agent directs the foreign policy; almost all the principal offices of the State are in the hands of Englishmen.
The Soudan has been the scene of the most fearful sanguinary encounters between the ill-directed troops of the Egyptian Government and the victorious tribes gathered under the sacred banner of the Mahdi; and unless firm resistance is offered soon to the advance of the Prophet, it becomes clear to many in England that this vast region and fertile basin of the Upper Nile will be lost to Egypt, unless troops and money be furnished to meet the emergency. To the view of good sense it is clear that, as England has undertaken to direct the government and manage the affairs of Egypt, she cannot avoid declaring her policy as regards the Soudan. To a question addressed to the English Prime Minister in Parliament, as to whether the Soudan was regarded as forming a part of Egypt, and if so, whether the British Government would take steps to restore order there, Mr. Gladstone replied, that the Soudan had not been included in the sphere of English operations, and that the Government was not disposed to include it within the sphere of English responsibility. As a declaration of policy no fault can be found with it; it is Mr. Gladstone's policy, and there is nothing to be said against it as such; it is his principle, the principle of his associates in the Government, and of his party, and as a principle it deserves respect.
The Political Agent in Egypt, Sir Evelyn Baring, while the fate of Hicks Pasha and his army was still unknown, but suspected, sends repeated signals of warning to the English Government, and suggests remedies and means of averting a final catastrophe. "If Hicks Pasha is defeated, Khartoum is in danger; by the fall of Khartoum, Egypt will be menaced."
Lord Granville replies at various times in the months of November and December, 1883, that the Government advises the abandonment of the Soudan within certain limits; that the Egyptian Government must take the sole responsibility of operations beyond Egypt Proper; that the Government has no intention of employing British or Indian troops in the Soudan; that ineffectual efforts on the part of the Egyptian Government to secure the Soudan would only increase the danger.
Sir Evelyn Baring notified Lord Granville that no persuasion or argument availed to induce the Egyptian Minister to accept the policy of abandonment. Cherif Pasha, the Prime Minister, also informed Lord Granville that, according to Valentine Baker Pasha, the means at the disposal were utterly inadequate for coping with the insurrection in the Soudan.
Then Lord Granville replied, through Sir Evelyn Baring, that it was indispensable that, so long as English soldiers provisionally occupied Egypt, the advice of Her Majesty's Ministers should be followed, and that he insisted on its adoption. The Egyptian Ministers were changed, and Nubar Pasha became Prime Minister on the 10th January, 1884.
On the 17th December, Valentine Baker departed from Egypt for Suakim, to commence military operations for the maintenance of communication between Suakim and Berber, and the pacification of the tribes in that region. While it was absolutely certain in England that Baker's force would suffer a crushing defeat, and suspected in Egypt, the General does not seem to be aware of any danger, or if there be, he courts it. The Khedive, fearful that to his troops an engagement will be most disastrous, writes privately to Baker Pasha: "I rely on your prudence and ability not to engage the enemy except under the most favourable conditions." Baker possessed ability and courage in abundance; but the event proved that prudence and judgment were as absent in his case as in that of the unfortunate Hicks. His force consisted of 3746 men. On the 6th of February he left Trinkitat on the sea shore, towards Tokar. After a march of six miles the van of the rebels was encountered, and shortly after the armies were engaged. It is said "that the rebels displayed the utmost contempt for the Egyptians; that they seized them by the neck and cut their throats; and that the Government troops, paralysed by fear, turned their backs, submitting to be killed rather than attempt to defend their lives; that hundreds threw away their rifles, knelt down, raised their clasped hands, and prayed for mercy."
The total number killed was 2373 out of 3746. Mr. Royle, the excellent historian of the Egyptian campaigns, says: "Baker knew, or ought to have known, the composition of the troops he commanded, and to take such men into action was simply to court disaster." What ought we to say of Hicks?
We now come to General Gordon, who from 1874 to 1876 had been working in the Upper Soudan on the lines commenced by Sir Samuel Baker, conciliating natives, crushing slave caravans, destroying slave stations, and extending Egyptian authority by lines of fortified forts up to the Albert Nyanza. After four months' retirement he was appointed Governor-General of the Soudan, of Darfur, and the Equatorial Provinces. Among others whom Gordon employed as Governors of these various provinces under his Vice-regal Government was one Edward Schnitzler, a German born in Oppeln, Prussia, 28th March, 1840, of Jewish parents, who had seen service in Turkey, Armenia, Syria, and Arabia, in the suite of Ismail Hakki Pasha, once Governor-General of Scutari, and a Mushir of the Empire. On the death of his patron he had departed to Niesse, where his mother, sister, and cousins lived, and where he stayed for several months, and thence left for Egypt. He, in 1875, thence travelled to Khartoum, and being a medical doctor, was employed by Gordon Pasha in that capacity. He assumed the name and title of Emin Effendi Hakim—the faithful physician. He was sent to Lado as storekeeper and doctor, was afterwards despatched to King Mtesa on a political mission, recalled to Khartoum, again despatched on a similar mission to King Kabba-Rega of Unyoro, and finally, in 1878, was promoted to Bey, and appointed Governor of the Equatorial Province of Ha-tal-astiva, which, rendered into English, means Equatoria, at a salary of £50 per month. A mate of one of the Peninsular and Oriental steamers, called Lupton, was promoted to the rank of Governor of the Province of Bahr-el-Ghazal, which adjoined Equatoria.
EMIN PASHA.
On hearing of the deposition of Ismail in 1879, Gordon surrendered his high office in the hands of Tewfik, the new Khedive, informing him that he did not intend to resume it.
In 1880 he accepted the post of Secretary under the Marquis of Ripon, but resigned it within a month.
In 1881 he is in Mauritius as Commandant of the Royal Engineers. In about two months he abandons that post to proceed to the assistance of the Cape authorities in their difficulty with the Basutos, but, after a little experience, finds himself unable to agree with the views of the Cape Government, and resigns.
Meantime, I have been labouring on the Congo River. Our successes in that immense territory of Western Africa have expanded into responsibilities so serious that they threaten to become unmanageable. When I visit the Lower Congo affairs become deranged on the Upper Congo; if I confine myself to the Upper Congo there is friction in the Lower Congo. Wherefore, feeling an intense interest in the growth of the territory which was rapidly developing into a State, I suggested to His Majesty King Leopold, as early as September, 1882, and again in the spring of 1883, that I required as an associate a person of merit, rank, and devotion to work, such as General Gordon, who would undertake either the management of the Lower or Upper Congo, while I would work in the other section, as a vast amount of valuable time was consumed in travelling up and down from one to the other, and young officers of stations were so apt to take advantage of my absence. His Majesty promised to request the aid of General Gordon, but for a long time the replies were unfavourable. Finally, in the spring of 1884, I received a letter in General Gordon's well-known handwriting, which informed me I was to expect him by the next mail.
It appears, however, that he had no sooner mailed his letter to me and parted from His Majesty than he was besieged by applications from his countrymen to assist the Egyptian Government in extricating the beleaguered garrison of Khartoum from their impending fate. Personally I know nothing of what actually happened when he was ushered by Lord Wolseley into the presence of Lord Granville, but I have been informed that General Gordon was confident he could perform the mission entrusted to him. There is a serious discrepancy in the definition of this mission. The Egyptian authorities were anxious for the evacuation of Khartoum only, and it is possible that Lord Granville only needed Gordon's services for this humane mission, all the other garrisons to be left to their fate because of the supposed impossibility of rescuing them. The Blue Books which contain the official despatches seem to confirm the probability of this. But it is certain that Lord Granville instructed General Gordon to proceed to Egypt to report on the situation of the Soudan, and on the best measures that should be taken for the security of the Egyptian garrisons (in the plural), and for the safety of the European population in Khartoum. He was to perform such other duties as the Egyptian Government might wish to entrust to him. He was to be accompanied by Colonel Stewart.
Sir Evelyn Baring, after a prolonged conversation with Gordon, gives him his final instructions on behalf of the British Government.
A precis of these is as follows:—
"Ensure retreat of the European population from 10,000 to 15,000 people, and of the garrison of Kartoum."
1
"You know best the when and how to effect this."
"You will bear in mind that the main end (of your Mission) is the evacuation of the Soudan."
"As you are of opinion it could be done, endeavour to make a confederation of the native tribes to take the place of Egyptian authority."
"A credit of £100,000 is opened for you at the Finance Department."
Gordon has succeeded in infusing confidence in the minds of the Egyptian Ministry, who were previously panic-stricken and cried out for the evacuation of Khartoum only. They breathe freer after seeing and hearing him, and according to his own request they invest him with the Governor-Generalship. The firman[5], given him, empowers him to evacuate the respective territories (of the Soudan) and to withdraw the troops, civil officials, and such of the inhabitants as wish to leave for Egypt, and if possible, after completing the evacuation (and this was an absolute impossibility) he was to establish an organized Government. With these instructions Lord Granville concurs.
I am told that it was understood, however, that he was to do what he could—do everything necessary, in fact, if possible; if not all the Soudan, then he was to proceed to evacuating Khartoum only, without loss of time. But this is not on official record until March 23rd, 1884, and it is not known whether he ever received this particular telegram.2
General Gordon proceeded to Khartoum on January 26th, 1884, and arrived in that city on the 18th of the following month. During his journey he sent frequent despatches by telegraph abounding in confidence. Mr. Power, the acting consul and Times correspondent, wired the following despatch—"The people (of Khartoum) are devoted to General Gordon, whose design is to save the garrison, and for ever leave the Soudan—as perforce it must be left—to the Soudanese."
The English press, which had been so wise respecting the chances of Valentine Baker Pasha, were very much in the condition of the people of Khartoum, that is, devoted to General Gordon and sanguine of his success. He had performed such wonders in China—he had laboured so effectually in crushing the slave-trade in the Soudan, he had won the affection of the sullen Soudanese, that the press did not deem it at all improbable that Gordon with his white wand and six servants could rescue the doomed garrisons of Senaar, Bahr-el-Ghazal and Equatoria—a total of 29,000 men, besides the civil employees and their wives and families; and after performing that more than herculean—nay utterly impossible task—establish an organized Government.
On February 29th Gordon telegraphs, "There is not much chance of improving, and every chance is getting worse," and on the 2nd of the month "I have no option about staying at Khartoum, it has passed out of my hands." On the 16th March he predicts that before long "we shall be blocked." At the latter end of March he telegraphs, "We have provisions for five months, and are hemmed in."
It is clear that a serious misunderstanding had occurred in the drawing up of the instructions by Sir Evelyn Baring and their comprehension of them by General Gordon, for the latter expresses himself to the former thus:—
"You ask me to state cause and reason of my intention for my staying at Khartoum. I stay at Khartoum because Arabs have shut us up, and will not let us out[1q]."
Meantime public opinion urged on the British Government the necessity of despatching an Expedition to withdraw General Gordon from Khartoum. But as it was understood between General Gordon and Lord Granville that the former's mission was for the purpose of dispensing with the services of British troops in the Soudan, and as it was its declared policy not to employ English or Indian troops in that region, the Government were naturally reluctant to yield to the demand of the public. At last, however, as the clamour increased and Parliament and public joined in affirming that it was a duty on the country to save the brave man who had so willingly volunteered to perform such an important service for his country, Mr. Gladstone rose in the House of Commons on the 5th August to move a vote of credit to undertake operations for the relief of Gordon.
Two routes were suggested by which the Relief Expedition could approach Khartoum—the short cut across the desert from Suakim to Berber, and the other by the Nile. Gordon expressed his preference for that up the Nile, and it was this latter route that the Commanding General of the Relief Expedition adopted.
On the 18th September, the steamer "Abbas," with Colonel Stewart (Gordon's companion), Mr. Power, the Times correspondent, Mr. Herbin, the French Consul, and a number of Greeks and Egyptians on board—forty-four men all told—on trying to pass by the cataract of Abu Hamid was wrecked in the cataract. The Arabs on the shore invited them to land in peace, but unarmed. Stewart complied, and he and the two Consuls (Power and Herbin) and Hassan Effendi went ashore and entered a house, in which they were immediately murdered.
On the 17th November, Gordon reports to Lord Wolseley, who was then at Wady Halfa, that he can hold out for forty days yet, that the Mahdists are to the south, south-west, and east, but not to the north of Khartoum.
By Christmas Day, 1884, a great part of the Expeditionary Force was assembled at Korti. So far, the advance of the Expedition had been as rapid as the energy and skill of the General commanding could command. Probably there never was a force so numerous animated with such noble ardour and passion as this under Lord Wolseley for the rescue of that noble and solitary Englishman at Khartoum.
On December 30th, a part of General Herbert Stewart's force moves from Korti towards Gakdul Wells, with 2099 camels. In 46 hours and 50 minutes it has reached Gakdul Wells; 11 hours later Sir Herbert Stewart with all the camels starts on his return journey to Korti, which place was reached January 5th. On the 12th Sir Herbert Stewart was back at Gakdul Wells, and at 2 P.m. of the 13th the march towards Abu Klea was resumed. On the 17th, the famous battle of Abu Klea was fought, resulting in a hard-won victory to the English troops, with a loss of 9 officers and 65 men killed and 85 wounded, out of a total of 1800, while 1100 of the enemy lay dead before the square. It appears probable that if the 3000 English sent up the Nile Valley had been with this gallant little force, it would have been a mere walk over for the English army. After another battle on the 19th near Metammeh, where 20 men were killed and 60 wounded of the English, and 250 of the enemy, a village on a gravel terrace near the Nile was occupied. On the 21st, four steamers belonging to General Gordon appeared. The officer in command stated that they had been lying for some weeks near an island awaiting the arrival of the British column. The 22nd and 23rd were expended by Sir Chas. Wilson in making a reconnaissance, building two forts, changing the crews of the steamers, and preparing fuel. On the 24th, two of the steamers started for Khartoum, carrying only 20 English soldiers. On the 26th two men came aboard and reported that there had been fighting at Khartoum; on the 27th a man cried out from the bank that the town had fallen, and that Gordon had been killed. The next day the last news was confirmed by another man. Sir Charles Wilson steamed on until his steamers became the target of cannon from Omdurman and from Khartoum, besides rifles from a distance of from 75 to 200 yards, and turned back only when convinced that the sad news was only too true. Steaming down river then at full speed he reached Tamanieb when he halted for the night. From here he sent out two messengers to collect news. One returned saying that he had met an Arab who informed him that Khartoum had been entered on the night of the 26th January through the treachery of Farag Pasha, and that Gordon was killed; that the Mahdi had on the next day entered the city and had gone into a mosque to return thanks and had then retired, and had given the city up to three days' pillage.
In Major Kitchener's report we find a summary of the results of the taking of Khartoum. "The massacre in the town lasted some six hours, and about 4000 persons at least were killed. The Bashi Bazouks and white regulars numbering 3327, and the Shaigia irregulars numbering 2330, were mostly all killed in cold blood after they had surrendered and been disarmed." The surviving inhabitants of the town were ordered out, and as they passed through the gate were searched, and then taken to Omdurman where the women were distributed among the Mahdist chiefs, and the men were stripped and turned adrift to pick a living as they could. A Greek merchant, who escaped from Khartoum, reported that the town was betrayed by the merchants there, who desired to make terms with the enemy, and not by Farag Pasha.
Darfur, Kordofan, Senaar, Bahr-el-Ghazal, Khartoum, had been possessed by the enemy; Kassala soon followed, and throughout the length and breadth of the Soudan there now remained only the Equatorial Province, whose Governor was Emin Bey Hakim—the Faithful Physician.
Naturally, if English people felt that they were in duty bound to rescue their brave countryman, and a gallant General of such genius and reputation as Gordon, they would feel a lively interest in the fate of the last of Gordon's Governors, who, by a prudent Fabian policy, it was supposed, had evaded the fate which had befallen the armies and garrisons of the Soudan. It follows also that, if the English were solicitous for the salvation of the garrison of Khartoum, they would feel a proportionate solicitude for the fate of a brave officer and his little army in the far South, and that, if assistance could be rendered at a reasonable cost, there would be no difficulty in raising a fund to effect that desirable object.
On November 16, 1884, Emin Bey informs Mr. A. M. Mackay, the missionary in Uganda, by letter written at Lado, that "the Soudan has become the theatre of an insurrection; that for nineteen months he is without news from Khartoum, and that thence he is led to believe that the town has been taken by the insurgents, or that the Nile is blocked "; but he says:—
"Whatever it proves to be, please inform your correspondents and through them the Egyptian Government that to this day we are well, and that we propose to hold out until help may reach us or until we perish."
A second note from Emin Bey to the same missionary, on the same date as the preceding, contains the following:—
"The Bahr-Ghazal Province being lost and Lupton Bey, the governor, carried away to Kordofan, we are unable to inform our Government of what happens here. For nineteen months we have had no communication from Khartoum, so I suppose the river is blocked up."
"Please therefore inform the Egyptian Government by some means that we are well to this day, but greatly in need of help. We shall hold out until we obtain such help or until we perish."
To Mr. Charles H. Allen, Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, Emin Bey writes from Wadelai, December 31, 1885, as follows:—
"Ever since the month of May, 1883, we have been cut off from all communication with the world. Forgotten, and abandoned by the Government, we have been compelled to make a virtue of necessity. Since the occupation of the Bahr-Ghazal we have been vigorously attacked, and I do not know how to describe to you the admirable devotion of my black troops throughout a long war, which for them at least, has no advantage. Deprived of the most necessary things for a long time without any pay, my men fought valiantly, and when at last hunger weakened them, when, after nineteen days of incredible privation and sufferings, their strength was exhausted, and when the last torn leather of the last boot had been eaten, then they cut away through the midst of their enemies and succeeded in saving themselves. All this hardship was undergone without the least arrière-pensée, without even the hope of any appreciable reward, prompted only by their duty and the desire of showing a proper valour before their enemies."
This is a noble record of valour and military virtue. I remember the appearance of this letter in the Times, and the impression it made on myself and friends. It was only a few days after the appearance of this letter that we began to discuss ways and means of relief for the writer.
The following letter also impressed me very strongly. It is written to Dr. R. W. Felkin on the same date, December 31, 1885.
* * * * *
"You will probably know through the daily papers that poor Lupton, after having bravely held the Bahr-Ghazal Province was compelled, through the treachery of his own people, to surrender to the emissaries of the late Madhi, and was carried by them to Kordofan."
