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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In Darkest Africa, Henry M. Stanley's seminal work, recounts the author's perilous journey through the unexplored regions of Central Africa in the late 19th century. This expansive narrative is rich with vivid descriptions and detailed observations of the continent's diverse cultures, landscapes, and peoples. Stanley employs a compelling literary style, blending adventure tale with ethnographic study, reflecting the complexities of imperial European interests in Africa during the Age of Exploration. With an immersive approach, he captures not only the physical challenges of his expedition but also the philosophical dilemmas surrounding colonization and the ethical implications of exploration. Henry M. Stanley, a Welsh-American journalist and explorer, became renowned for his groundbreaking explorations in Africa, having been initially dispatched by the New York Herald to find the missing David Livingstone. Stanley's earlier experiences, steeped in the conflicting narratives of exploration and exploitation, informed his understanding of the African landscape and its peoples. His life, characterized by a relentless pursuit of adventure and a keen desire to document the unknown, imbues this work with a sense of urgency and moral questioning. In Darkest Africa is essential reading for those intrigued by the intersection of adventure literature, exploration, and the historical context of Africa in the late 19th century. Scholars, history enthusiasts, and general readers alike will find themselves captivated by Stanley's powerful prose and the profound questions he raises about civilization, morality, and the human spirit in the face of hardship. 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
Table of Contents
Introduction
An expedition pushes into a continent’s tangled heart, bearing not only provisions and rifles but the weight of duty, ambition, and doubt. In Darkest Africa (Vol. 1&2) opens amid the urgency of a relief mission and the enormity of an interior largely unmapped to European readers of the 1890s. Henry Morton Stanley frames a journey as ordeal and argument: the test of leadership under scarcity, the press of logistics against terrain, and the uneasy bargains of empire meeting local sovereignties. The drama lies less in a single battle than in endless decisions at the edge of knowledge, where each mile achieved recalibrates peril and purpose.
In two substantial volumes published in 1890, Stanley set down his account soon after returning from the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition of 1887–1889. The proximity of composition to events gives the narrative a documentary pulse: dates, distances, inventories, and place-names accumulate alongside reflections shaped by fatigue and resolve. Issued for British and American audiences, the book entered a culture avid for exploration news and visualized with foldout maps and illustrations. Without rehearsing conclusions, the volumes chart a passage up the Congo and across central Africa toward Equatoria, organizing the story as a quest that doubles as a report to readers, patrons, and posterity.
Stanley, a Welsh-born journalist who became a celebrated explorer, had already achieved global fame for locating David Livingstone in 1871 and for earlier transcontinental journeys. His career straddled reportage and statecraft; he advanced the interests of European powers while crafting narratives that reached large audiences. In Darkest Africa follows How I Found Livingstone and Through the Dark Continent, extending an oeuvre that blended observation, self-fashioning, and argument for the feasibility of trans-African routes. Whatever one’s judgment of his politics, Stanley possessed a gift for marshalling detail, pacing suspense, and translating field notes into scenes that fixed themselves in public memory.
At the center of these volumes stands a single objective: to reach and relieve Emin Pasha, the governor of Equatoria, who had become isolated amid upheavals in the Nile basin. The plan, devised in a period of strained communications and shifting alliances, required moving men and stores through the Congo basin and the deep forests of the interior, then threading corridors of river and savanna toward the northeastern frontier. Stanley presents the enterprise as a mosaic of marches, negotiations, and improvisations. The premise is stark and compelling: a remote official, a continent-wide detour, and a race against attrition, rumor, and the calendar of seasonal rains.
One reason the book endures is its narrative architecture. The chapters live by the rhythm of departure and camp, peril and respite, with maps that clarify routes even as the text stresses uncertainty. Stanley’s prose is direct and logistical, yet punctuated by set-pieces that render forest, river, and mountain as characters in their own right. He moves from precise counts of loads to descriptions of canopy gloom and sudden clearings, from lists of rations to the fragile choreography of bargaining. The tonal shifts create a layered reading experience, part travel dossier, part epic, holding attention through accumulation rather than ornament alone.
Leadership under constraint is among the book’s abiding themes. The pages return to questions of provisioning, discipline, and the calculus of risk when delay can be fatal and haste catastrophic. Endurance appears not as a single heroic act but as a pattern of small obediences to plan and circumstance. The terrain imposes its curriculum: rivers that both enable and trap, forests that disorient, diseases that thin the ranks. Against this, Stanley emphasizes organization—columns, caches, scouts, and messages—making logistics itself a narrative engine. Readers encounter not only a journey, but the anatomy of moving a large, diverse body of people across difficult and contested space.
As a classic of nineteenth-century exploration writing, In Darkest Africa helped define how a wide readership pictured central Africa and the practical demands of long-distance travel. Its blend of reportage and high-stakes quest shaped expectations for adventure narratives well into the twentieth century. The work stands alongside other travel accounts that informed literary treatments of empire, and later writers engaged with its imagery, dilemmas, and rhetoric even when they opposed its assumptions. The book’s techniques—alternating close observation with panoramic summary, interleaving maps with incident—echo in fiction and nonfiction that confront the problem of narrating vast, resistant geographies and the moral frictions they generate.
Modern readers will also recognize, within these pages, the attitudes and hierarchies of the imperial age. Stanley writes from a position implicated in European expansion, and his representations of African societies reflect the categories and limits of his time. The narrative therefore functions as both source and symptom: invaluable for its record of routes, names, and encounters, and instructive for how power relations shape what is seen and said. To call the book a classic is not to exempt it from critique; rather, its status invites careful reading that holds in tension feats of organization with the costs and constraints of the world it served.
The expedition unfolded during the so-called Scramble for Africa, when European governments and companies pressed inland, treaties proliferated, and cartographers redrew maps at conference tables far from the places depicted. In the northeast, the Mahdist uprising had disrupted Egyptian rule, isolating Equatoria and complicating every plan to reach it. Simultaneously, advances in steam transport and river navigation promised new corridors, even as unfamiliar pathogens and seasonal cycles disrupted them. Stanley situates his march within that matrix of opportunity and hazard, acknowledging reliance on local knowledge and intermediaries while insisting on centralized command—an alignment of factors that makes the book a key historical document.
The volumes are notable for their density of proper names and exact distances, yet they also sketch personalities: guides, messengers, interpreters, rival leaders, and allies encountered in forests and stations. Though the primary voice is unmistakably Stanley’s, flashes of dialogue and recorded messages convey the multiplicity of interests shaping each decision. The logistical ledger coexists with ethnographic description and descriptive climatology. This blend gives the narrative a stratified texture—one that can be mined by historians, geographers, and literary scholars alike. It is a story told while moving, and the friction of movement leaves its trace on syntax, emphasis, and selection.
To approach In Darkest Africa today is to read across layers: as adventure narrative, as geopolitical artifact, as testimony of environmental encounter, and as a case study in crisis management. Its scenes of route-finding, supply failure, and improvisation have analogues in contemporary fields from disaster response to polar and oceanic exploration. At the same time, its blind spots prompt questions about voice, representation, and the ethics of mission. The book does not require agreement with its premises to be compelling; it requires attention. That attention, disciplined and comparative, allows the volumes to yield instruction beyond their immediate century and stage.
Finally, the book’s lasting appeal lies in its tension between certainty and uncertainty—between the mapped line and the ground beneath it. Stanley’s account captures the exhilaration and terror of acting under imperfect information, a condition not confined to the nineteenth century. The themes of endurance, leadership, and responsibility resonate in a world still negotiating aid, exploration, and cultural encounter under pressure. To read these volumes is to enter an archive of decisions at the edge of knowledge and to measure their consequences. That measure, performed with rigor and humility, keeps In Darkest Africa a classic whose relevance continues to unfold.
Synopsis
In Darkest Africa (Vol. 1 & 2), published in 1890, Henry M. Stanley recounts the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition of 1887–1889. Framed as a mission to reach and assist Emin Pasha, governor of Equatoria, who had been isolated amid the upheavals in the Nile basin, the narrative interweaves logistics, geography, and diplomacy. Across two volumes, Stanley traces the planning, the arduous journey from the Indian Ocean to the Congo basin, the overland march toward the upper Nile, and the complex human encounters that defined the enterprise. The work situates its story within contemporary debates about humanitarian duty, imperial strategy, and the practical limits of exploration.
Stanley opens with preparations at the coast, the recruitment of porters and soldiers, and the difficult task of assembling stores suited to tropical travel. Negotiations with regional authorities and traders shape the initial strategy, including arrangements to move inland along established river routes. The choice to approach Equatoria via the Congo reflects both geography and politics, promising navigable water and access to supply stations while committing the expedition to long, uncertain lines of communication. Stanley emphasizes discipline, chain of command, and the need to balance speed with survival, sketching a leadership ethos that will be tested repeatedly as the enterprise leaves the relative security of coastal hubs.
The narrative then follows the flotilla up the Congo River, using steamers and small craft to pass from station to station. Early sections detail the rapids, portages, and dependence on local pilots and boatmen, as well as the reliance on posts established under the Congo Free State. At a forested tributary—the Aruwimi—the expedition establishes a base at Yambuya, a point of departure for the deeper interior. Here the party divides: an Advance Column to push swiftly toward Lake Albert with selected men and supplies, and a Rear Column to hold the base, manage stores, and coordinate additional carriers promised through regional intermediaries.
Volume 1 dwells on the Advance Column’s penetration of the equatorial forest, whose dense canopy, heavy rains, and limited food supplies impose relentless attrition. The account catalogs day-by-day obstacles—mud, disease, damaged equipment—alongside tactical choices about foraging, river crossings, and relations with villages. Encounters range from wary negotiations to sudden clashes, reflecting the expedition’s ambiguous status as both supplicant and armed stranger. Stanley records observations on forest communities and hunting methods, while noting the effectiveness of small, mobile groups in cutting paths and ferrying loads. The rhetoric of perseverance is constant, but so is a sober tally of losses and the narrowing margins around the central objective.
As the column nears the watershed leading to Lake Albert, the terrain opens into higher country, only to present new logistical knots: gaps between food depots, the need to cache goods, and complex routes around hostile or uncertain districts. A fortified camp in the forest—later used as a hospital and magazine—provides a pivot for renewed efforts. Attempts to reach the lakeshore underscore the mismatch between grand plans and the realities of transport and weather. Rumor and secondhand news about Equatoria complicate decisions, prompting periods of waiting, reconnaissance, and recalibration. The book captures these pauses as strategic interludes rather than mere delays, foregrounding information as a precious resource.
Running in parallel, the fate of the Rear Column at Yambuya becomes a darker counterpoint. Stanley recounts prolonged delays in securing the additional carriers that had been promised through powerful trading networks upriver. Leadership struggles, sickness, and breakdowns in discipline drain strength and credibility. The narrative presents these developments partly through reports and later meetings, folding them into an assessment of responsibility and command. Without dwelling on sensational detail, the work acknowledges the human cost and reputational burdens that attach to prolonged holding actions in an unhealthy, contested environment, and how events at the base reverberate through the forward strategy and the morale of those pushing inland.
The second volume foregrounds diplomacy. Stanley at last makes contact with Emin Pasha, whose position involves not only personal safety but the welfare of officials, soldiers, and dependents anchored to Equatoria. Conversations revolve around authority, allegiance, and the feasibility of evacuation, intertwining Egyptian policies, local loyalties, and the stark arithmetic of food and ammunition. The book traces exchanges of letters, councils with officers, and reconnaissance across lake and river. It highlights the challenge of assisting a provincial administration that retains agency and responsibilities, making relief a negotiation rather than a simple extraction. The expedition’s remit, moral framing, and time constraints are all tested in these deliberations.
Alongside the diplomatic chapters, Stanley amplifies the scientific and descriptive side of the journey. He records bearings, river courses, and routes that, in his view, clarify the relationship between the Congo basin and the upper Nile watershed. Ethnographic sketches note languages, trade goods, leadership structures, and the deep imprint of coastal trading networks that reach far inland, including the traffic in enslaved people. Natural history enters through observations on the equatorial forest and the contrasting grasslands and highlands nearer the lakes. The work punctuates narrative with maps and lists, using data to anchor claims and to argue that persistent travel and record-keeping yield knowledge even amid uncertainty.
As the expedition turns toward resolution, the book closes by reflecting on endurance, logistics, and the fraught boundary between humanitarian purpose and imperial ambition. Stanley frames the enterprise as a test of planning, improvisation, and responsibility to allies and dependents, while acknowledging that relief can complicate as much as it clarifies. In Darkest Africa endures less for any single episode than for its layered portrait of movement through contested spaces, its effort to systematize experience into routes and reports, and its exposure of the moral ambiguities of late nineteenth-century exploration. Read today, it offers indispensable material and equally indispensable questions, without dissolving them into simple answers.
Historical Context
In Darkest Africa unfolds within the late 1880s, a period when European imperial expansion dominated the African continent. The Berlin Conference of 1884–85 had codified rules for territorial acquisition, and new “protectorates” and chartered companies spread rapidly. Steam navigation, telegraph networks along coasts, and missionary societies linked metropoles to African inland regions. The Ottoman-Egyptian administration lingered in northeastern Africa, while the Congo Free State—personally controlled by Belgium’s King Leopold II—took shape in Central Africa. Newspapers, geographical societies, and public lectures turned exploration into mass spectacle. Stanley’s narrative reflects this institutional world, where exploration, science, commerce, and empire were tightly intertwined.
Henry Morton Stanley, born in 1841 in Wales as John Rowlands, had already become a celebrated explorer-journalist by the time he wrote In Darkest Africa (1890). Famous for meeting David Livingstone in 1871, he later crossed Central Africa (1874–77), traced the Congo River’s course, and helped establish posts that facilitated Leopold II’s rule. His earlier books shaped European images of Africa as a frontier for science and commerce. By the late 1880s, Stanley embodied the Victorian blend of reportage, geographical mapping, and imperial advocacy. The Emin Pasha Relief Expedition (1887–89), which the book recounts, drew on this accumulated prestige and experience.
The Scramble for Africa forms the immediate political backdrop. The Berlin Conference attempted to regulate expansion, proclaiming “effective occupation” as the standard for colonial claims. Leopold II secured international recognition of the Congo Free State, promising free trade and anti-slavery measures. Stanley’s logistical reliance on Congo stations and river steamers shows how this new colonial entity enabled expeditions deep into Central Africa. At the same time, his book echoes a prevailing European belief that exploration justified sovereignty. The narrative often conflates cartography and colonial order, illustrating how geographic knowledge functioned as a tool of state-building during this rapid partitioning.
East Africa’s coastal trade networks were equally decisive. Zanzibar, under its sultan, served as a major entrepôt for ivory and slaves moving inland along caravan routes. Arab-Swahili merchant-leaders, notably Tippu Tip, managed commercial spheres extending into the interior. Stanley’s expedition recruited porters and negotiated passage within these established systems. His narrative denounces slave trading while relying on the organizational reach of coastal caravans and intermediaries. This tension—condemnation of slavery amid dependence on existing trade infrastructures—illustrates the complexities of late nineteenth-century East and Central African economies and the compromises expeditions made to move men and goods.
The Mahdist uprising in Sudan (beginning 1881) and the fall of Khartoum in 1885 severed Egyptian control over southern provinces. Equatoria, along the upper White Nile, became isolated under its governor, Emin Pasha. European publics, already captivated by tales of beleaguered garrisons, viewed relief as both humanitarian duty and imperial mission. Stanley’s book emerges directly from this crisis. It frames the journey as an emergency response to geopolitical collapse, blunted communication, and changing power balances in the Nile Basin. The Mahdist state’s consolidation created the conditions that made a transcontinental rescue plausible yet perilous.
Emin Pasha—born Eduard Schnitzer in 1840—served the Egyptian Khedivate as a physician and administrator, eventually becoming governor of Equatoria. Operating within overlapping Ottoman, Egyptian, and local African political systems, Emin maintained fragile authority through alliances with soldiers and communities under severe strain. In Darkest Africa presents him as a figure of science and administration caught in regional upheaval. His predicament reflected the retreat of Egyptian power and the contested governance of frontier provinces. Stanley’s portrait of Emin speaks to Victorian ideals of learned service but also reveals the limits of individual agency amid collapsing imperial structures.
Financing and organizing the expedition required an international web of institutions and patrons. European geographical societies lent prestige, while private donors and public subscriptions supplied funds. The team was cosmopolitan—British officers, European assistants, and large contingents of African and Zanzibari porters. The route leveraged the Congo Free State’s transport infrastructure, reaching Yambuya on the Aruwimi River, from which an advance column pressed inland. This hybrid of state, private, and quasi-state backing exemplified how exploration had become a collective enterprise, enabled by new colonial outposts and the transoceanic flows of money, supplies, and publicity.
Technology shaped everyday life on the trail. Steamers on the lower Congo shortened approach times; inland, dismantled boats and canoes extended navigation on upper rivers and lakes. Breech-loading rifles and standardized ammunition altered power dynamics in skirmishes, while metallic trade goods—cloth, beads, wire—functioned as currency in caravans. Quinine, increasingly accepted as malaria prophylaxis, mitigated but did not prevent disease and high mortality. Compasses, improved sextants, and route surveys supported mapmaking central to the book’s authority. Stanley’s narrative highlights how such tools enabled movement and control, yet it acknowledges logistics constantly strained by terrain, climate, and sickness.
The expedition crossed the Ituri rain forest, a region little known to Europeans at the time. Dense canopy, torrential rains, and limited food supplies undermined caravan routines designed for savanna routes. Encounters with forest communities, including groups Stanley called “pygmies,” entered European literature through his descriptions, often filtered by the racial attitudes of the era. The book’s depictions contributed to new geographic and ethnographic awareness, but they also reflected hierarchies that simplified complex societies. The Ituri crossing became a touchstone for discussing endurance, environmental limits, and the constraints of imported caravan practices in equatorial forests.
A notorious feature of the relief enterprise was the split between the advance column and the rear column left at Yambuya. The rear column was plagued by disease, desertion, and breakdowns in command. The death of Major Edmund Barttelot and the scandal surrounding naturalist James S. Jameson—accused of facilitating a horrific act to observe cannibalism—fed a heated press debate in Europe. Stanley’s volumes defend the expedition’s decisions while deflecting some responsibility to circumstances and subordinates. The controversy illustrates how exploration had become a moral spectacle, with the public scrutinizing conduct as much as geographic results.
Discipline and force were contentious elements in Stanley’s methods. Corporal punishment, forced marches, and punitive responses to ambushes appear in his writings and were criticized by contemporaries who questioned the human cost of such expeditions. Stanley framed severity as necessary for survival and order in perilous conditions. His rhetoric mirrored broader Victorian contradictions: humanitarian language coexisting with coercive practices. In Darkest Africa thus records not only geographic progress but also the ethical boundaries of imperial logistics, where authority over large, diverse caravans often relied on fear, hierarchical organization, and the selective use of violence.
Scientific claims underpin much of the narrative. The expedition refined the mapping of the Ituri-Aruwimi system, the Semliki valley, and the western approaches to Lake Albert. Stanley publicized sightings of the snow-clad Ruwenzori range, aligning them with classical references to the “Mountains of the Moon.” By publishing routes, coordinates, and comparative readings, he sought to inscribe the journey into authoritative cartography. These claims spurred debate among geographers and explorers over priority and accuracy. The book thereby participated in a culture where “discovery” was simultaneously data collection, national prestige, and an argument about the reliability of eyewitness science.
The expedition intersected with shifting imperial alignments in East Africa. German colonial expansion on the mainland (from 1885) and British interests along the coast culminated in the 1890 Heligoland–Zanzibar Treaty, clarifying spheres of influence. After his relief, Emin Pasha eventually entered German service in East Africa and later died in 1892 during a venture in the eastern Congo. Stanley’s account sits at this junction of British, German, and Belgian ambitions. Its description of routes, resources, and ports of access offered strategic knowledge at a moment when paperwork, treaties, and flag-raisings consolidated power as much as guns did.
Anti-slavery ideals were a central European justification for intervention. The Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference (1889–90) sought to restrict arms and curb the slave trade, reinforcing Leopold II’s claims to a moral mission in the Congo. Stanley’s narrative denounces slaving networks, particularly those associated with Arab-Swahili traders, and presents the expedition as part of a struggle against this commerce. Yet the book also reveals ambiguities—reliance on established caravan systems and alliances with powerful intermediaries. It exemplifies a period when anti-slavery rhetoric legitimized expansion while masking the emerging coercive labor regimes that would later be widely condemned.
The economics of ivory and expanding European consumer demand underwrote many inland caravans. Ivory for piano keys, billiard balls, and luxury goods drew traders far into Central Africa, intertwining with slaving routes. Stanley’s expedition navigated these circuits, paying in cloth, beads, and wire, and bargaining for food and carriers in markets already reshaped by external demand. This commerce influenced diplomacy, conflict, and subsistence practices encountered en route. Although rubber would later dominate the Congo Free State’s extractive system, In Darkest Africa captures an earlier moment when ivory still structured regional economies and the incentives that both aided and endangered travelers.
Public reception shaped the book’s significance. Serialized reports, illustrated volumes, and lecture tours turned the expedition into a best-selling saga. Admirers praised endurance and cartographic gains; critics questioned casualties and ethics. Missionaries, abolitionists, and commercial lobbies read the text differently, using it to argue for reform, further intervention, or caution. African perspectives rarely appeared except through European intermediaries, a silence that modern historians highlight. As a publishing event, In Darkest Africa demonstrates how print culture turned exploration into a shared metropolitan experience, influencing policy debates and popular imaginaries simultaneously.
Later revelations about the Congo Free State recast aspects of Stanley’s legacy. From the late 1890s onward, campaigners such as E. D. Morel and Roger Casement exposed systematic atrocities tied to rubber extraction and forced labor. Although these events postdate the Emin expedition, they altered readings of Stanley’s cooperation with Leopold’s regime and the infrastructure he helped establish. In Darkest Africa thus became anchored in a longer arc: from optimistic claims of anti-slavery and civilization to documented abuses that challenged the moral foundations of European rule. The text stands at the pivot of this historical reappraisal of empire and exploitation.
Author Biography
Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904) was a Welsh-born journalist, explorer, and bestselling author whose career unfolded at the height of nineteenth-century imperial expansion. He achieved global fame after locating the missionary-explorer David Livingstone in Central Africa, an encounter that produced one of the most quoted lines in exploration lore. Stanley’s narratives brought vast audiences to African geography and politics, shaping popular understanding in Britain and the United States. Celebrated for logistical audacity and feats of endurance, he is equally remembered as a central agent in the creation of the Congo Free State, a role that places his legacy within continuing debates about colonialism and human rights.
Born John Rowlands in Denbigh, Wales, Stanley spent part of his childhood in a workhouse and received limited formal schooling. In his youth he left Britain for the United States, where he adopted the name Henry Morton Stanley and learned the crafts of reporting and self-promotion in a competitive press culture. Experience as a sailor and soldier during the American Civil War preceded his turn to journalism, which became the foundation of his literary voice. His prose was shaped by Victorian reportage, travel narrative conventions, and a fascination with exploration exemplified by Livingstone, whose moral authority as an anti-slavery missionary strongly influenced Stanley’s public framing of African journeys.
Stanley’s breakthrough came through the New York Herald, whose proprietor James Gordon Bennett Jr. dispatched him to find Livingstone, then out of contact in East Africa. After a difficult trek, Stanley reached Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika in 1871 and met the older explorer, an event he later narrated with theatrical economy. How I Found Livingstone (1872) combined rapid-fire reportage with ethnographic and geographical description, and it sold widely. The book established Stanley as both celebrity and author, and it also cemented the template of his later works: dramatic first-person narrative, a strong sense of logistical detail, and claims that exploration could advance commerce and suppress the slave trade.
In the mid-1870s Stanley undertook an ambitious expedition to trace Central African waterways and cross the continent. The journey confirmed the course of the Lualaba-Congo system and carried his caravans from the East African coast to the Atlantic. Through the Dark Continent (1878) presented this achievement in two volumes, mixing maps, incident-packed chapters, and observations on landscapes and societies encountered en route. The book reinforced his reputation for organization and endurance, while also drawing criticism for the violence and heavy mortality that accompanied such ventures. As literature, it expanded the market for adventure reportage; as documentation, it supplied European readers with names, routes, and tentative cartographies.
From the late 1870s into the 1880s, Stanley worked for enterprises backed by King Leopold II that sought a Central African state. He negotiated treaties, built stations, and established transport routes along the Congo River. The Congo and the Founding of Its Free State (1885) defended this project as humanitarian and commercial, a framing that influenced policymakers and publics. Subsequent revelations about forced labor and widespread brutality in the Congo Free State permanently altered assessments of the enterprise and of Stanley’s role in enabling it. His writings remain crucial primary sources, but they are now read alongside testimony that documents the coercive systems his groundwork helped to make possible.
Stanley returned to Central Africa in the late 1880s to lead the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, a complex mission marked by extreme hardship, internal disputes, and loss of life. He recounted it in In Darkest Africa (1890), another bestseller that blended logistical narrative with claims of humanitarian purpose. In the years that followed he lectured extensively, advised on African affairs, and entered British public life, serving in Parliament in the 1890s. He was knighted before the turn of the century, recognition that reflected his stature in contemporary Britain even as criticisms of his African campaigns and the Congo project gathered momentum among journalists, missionaries, and reformers.
Stanley spent his later years writing, corresponding with geographical and reform audiences, and defending his record. He died in 1904. His name endures through the iconic greeting to Livingstone, through maps altered by his caravans, and through books that shaped adventure writing and popular journalism. Today his oeuvre is both source and subject: mined for data on routes, encounters, and early colonial administration, and interrogated for its rhetoric, omissions, and imperial assumptions. The continuing reassessment of Stanley underscores the entanglement of exploration, publicity, and power in the late nineteenth century, ensuring that his works remain central to debates about evidence, ethics, and empire.
In Darkest Africa (Vol. 1&2)
Volume 1
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
The Khedive[1] and the Soudan—Arabi Pasha[2]—Hicks Pasha's defeat—The Mahdi—Sir Evelyn Baring and Lord Granville on the Soudan—Valentine Baker Pasha—General Gordon[4]: his work in the Upper Soudan—Edward Schnitzler (or Emin Effendi Hakim[5]) 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[1q]. 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[6] 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[7], 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[3] 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, 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."
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
