STANLEY'S FOREST MARCH.
E, incessant exploration in the Dark Continent, and the habit of command have developed Henry Stanley;, originally something of an adventurer, into a true herot. It is difficult to conceive of a narrative which would rots.. English enthusiasm for its author more strA---' story of his marvellous march from ugly than.lne cue Congo to the Imagine this forest and jungle in all stages of decay and It is just possible that his reappearance may be a scene growth—old trees falling, leaning perilously over, fallen of the most dramatic kind. The letters have been written prostrate ; ants and insects of all kinds, sizes, and colours with great care, to avoid giving information to enemies murmuring around ; monkeys and chimpanzees above, who might capture them ; but it is most probable, queer noises of birds and animals, crashes in the jungle as in spite of Thursday's rumours, that Emin Pasha .troops of elephants rush away; dwarfs with poisoned intended to stay and continue to rule his dominions. arrows securely hidden behind some buttress or in some Indeed, that remarkable personage, the most unique ,dark recess ; strong, brown-bodied aborigines, with terribly figure even among the adventurers who have from time to sharp spears, standing poised, still as dead stumps ; rain time attained power in Africa or Asia, has hardly a .pattering down on you every other day in the year ; an motive for returning. Originally a German Jew devoted impure atmosphere, with its dread consequences, fever and to science and investigation, he has become in reality an dysentery ; gloom throughout the day, and darkness independent Sovereign, and having turned Mussulman, almost palpable throughout the night ; and then imagine he rules the great region entrusted to him with abso- such a forest extending the entire distance from Plymouth lute authority. His thirteen hundred black regulars to Peterhead." The underwood is so matted, that progress have settled and married in the land, and will never, is only made possible by cutting, and the little army of he says, return to Egypt by their own consent. He half-savage but obedient men could advance only at the himself lives like an Asiatic, which no doubt by blood he rate of less than three miles a day. The few clearings had is ; and he has formed a Negro army so well disciplined been devastated by Arab slave-stealers ; there was nothing that it has defeated even the fanatic soldiers sent from to eat but " wild fruit, fungi, and a large bean-shaped nut," Khartoum. He has herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, a diet barely sufficient for monkeys ; the water must have his supplies of grain are more than ample, and he is been horrible, though no lack of it is mentioned ; the men accumulating a stock of ivory which, if the road to the dropped daily from exhaustion or sickness, more than two northward ever opens, may bring him great wealth, in the hundred died or deserted, and the remainder became so European sense. He is, in truth, an African Sovereign, mutinous, that twice Stanley was compelled, in order to and as his authority consolidates itself, and that of the save them and himself, to enforce capital sentences ; and Mandi dies away under the blows it is sustaining from the still the indomitable leader, confident in his knowledge and westward, he may hope to stretch his dominion from the himself, tramped steadily on. That awful march, hardly Albert Nyanza northward to Khartoum. Having renounced „equalled, we believe, in its circumstances of horror since Judaism, and quitted civilisation for years, he can be little the world began, lasted more than five months, during tempted to quit that position, and return to the less varied .which Henry Stanley and his white lieutenants, protected life of an almost penniless student of natural history in only by their superiority of race and brain-power, Berlin. There is no reason to doubt his statement that " dragged "—it is his own word—the Negro followers he will never desert his followers, and that if he leaves his along, until at last, on November 12th, after a hundred and Kingdom, he will carry with him eight thousand souls, sixty days of hunger and misery, during which the white thousands of them women and children. To march south- chief never lost his hope, or changed his tone, or ceased wards with that cavalcade, through the awful forest of the to promise that he would reach the Lake, the survivors Aruwhimi to the Congo, or eastward to the Zanzibar of the march, some hundred and fifty skeletons, emerged coast, would be a desperate attempt; nor is there anything on a rich grass plain full of cattle and comfort, and began to be expected from the settlement which, if he retreats, again to grow fat. The very hearts of the Negroes he must form in some new region, to draw him from .changed, and they who, under the perpetual gloom of the the banks of the Nile, where he is a Prince, and whence forest and worn by hunger, had been "abject slavish he may in time communicate easilx with Germany by the creatures," robbed with impunity by all the Arabs they Suakin route. European journalists, in discussing such met, were again ready for battle, and danced in the grass a personage, are apt to assume that a, cultivated European with their burdens, in pure joy at once more beholding an must always be longing for Europe, and this was clearly ordinary world. There were still dangers to be sur- Stanley's own idea ; but we doubt if that is always mounted, for the villagers they met, all belonging, the case. Almost all Europeans detest the tropics ; Stanley thinks, to broken fragments of tribes from the but every now and then, in India, in Cambodia, in China, Kingdom of Unyoro, disbelieved " that good men could and in tropical America, a European is to be found whom ,come from the West "—a singular and suggestive tradition nothing would induce to return to the tamer life of Europe, —but on December 13th, amidst continuous fighting, they and who finds in the society of the inferior races a never- .saw the Albert Nyanza, and deemed their troubles at an end. ending charm. A naturalist has always occupation for his They were, however, far from ended. Emin Pasha was not intellect, power has attractions for all strong minds, and there, and Stanley was compelled to march back to Ibwiri, Emin Pasha, though, if we may trust a biography which eleven days into the forest, and then once again to betake has every sign of truth, he has joined the long list of rene- himself to the shore of the Nyanza, the retreat and the gades from a higher to a lower faith—for though Judaism second advance consuming five more months yet, on which is not Christianity, it is a loftier faith than Islam—may he does not dwell, but which must have been months of feel that in partly civilising a great African Kingdom, he terrible exertion, made more exhausting by disappointment is doing a great work. That is the impression we and the sense of partial failure. At last, on April 29th, derive from his own account in the latest letters pub- 1888, after nearly eleven months of such exertion as few lished, and there is no reason why it should not be even of African explorers have survived, Stanley, with true. We are not all alike, or all convinced that fifty ,' only a fourth of his force remaining, and no stores, met years of Europe is better than a cycle of Cathay; and ' Emin Pasha—who had descended in a steamer—only to to found a dynasty on the Upper Nile may seem to Emin -find tna :lie chief he meant to relieve had decided Pasha far more attractive work than to lecture in -to remain. Arm in a week, he set out on his return, University which has forgotten him, on tropical beast Albert Nyanza, through a forest one-fifth larger than intending to fetch stores for Emin, accomplished the France (240,000 square miles), the description of which back march in safety, the road being cut and known, recalls nothing so much as Gustave Dore's illustra- and then started again for the Nyanza by a new route, tions to Dante's " Inferno." Stanley began his march on which as yet he has disappeared, though there is from Yamboya, on the Aruwhimi, on June 28th, 1887, some reason to believe that he has reached his object, and with three European lieutenants and 386 black fol- was with Emin Pasha in the great fight in which the latter lowers ; and after a journey of sixty-four days, harassed defeated the troops of the Mandi and seized his steamers. and impeded, but not interrupted, by incessant attack Acclimatised by such a march, sickness would hardly touch from the Negro tribes on his road, who did every- the explorer ; his followers had been weeded out by disease thing savage man may do to drive him back, entered and desertion ; and he had doubtless heard, when with the the " continuous, unbroken, compact forest," five times Pasha, of some route by which he might avoid, on his the size of England, which Stanley himself thus return to the Albert Nyanza, the worst horrors of that end- .describes :—" Take a thick Scottish copse, dripping with less forest. He has, it is known, some plan of action, though rain ; imagine this copse to be a mere undergrowth, it is buried in his own mind ; Emin Pasha has most of the nourished under the impenetrable shade of ancient trees necessary means for a great enterprise ; and we may hope ranging from 100 ft. to 180 ft. high ; briars and thorns yet to see Stanley emerge full of knowledge, and with abundant ; lazy creeks, meandering through the depths of energy unimpaired, the most successful explorer in the the jungle, and sometimes a deep affluent of a great river. world. Imagine this forest and jungle in all stages of decay and It is just possible that his reappearance may be a scene growth—old trees falling, leaning perilously over, fallen of the most dramatic kind. The letters have been written prostrate ; ants and insects of all kinds, sizes, and colours with great care, to avoid giving information to enemies murmuring around ; monkeys and chimpanzees above, who might capture them ; but it is most probable, queer noises of birds and animals, crashes in the jungle as in spite of Thursday's rumours, that Emin Pasha .troops of elephants rush away; dwarfs with poisoned intended to stay and continue to rule his dominions. arrows securely hidden behind some buttress or in some Indeed, that remarkable personage, the most unique ,dark recess ; strong, brown-bodied aborigines, with terribly figure even among the adventurers who have from time to sharp spears, standing poised, still as dead stumps ; rain time attained power in Africa or Asia, has hardly a .pattering down on you every other day in the year ; an motive for returning. Originally a German Jew devoted impure atmosphere, with its dread consequences, fever and to science and investigation, he has become in reality an dysentery ; gloom throughout the day, and darkness independent Sovereign, and having turned Mussulman, almost palpable throughout the night ; and then imagine he rules the great region entrusted to him with abso- such a forest extending the entire distance from Plymouth lute authority. His thirteen hundred black regulars to Peterhead." The underwood is so matted, that progress have settled and married in the land, and will never, is only made possible by cutting, and the little army of he says, return to Egypt by their own consent. He half-savage but obedient men could advance only at the himself lives like an Asiatic, which no doubt by blood he rate of less than three miles a day. The few clearings had is ; and he has formed a Negro army so well disciplined been devastated by Arab slave-stealers ; there was nothing that it has defeated even the fanatic soldiers sent from to eat but " wild fruit, fungi, and a large bean-shaped nut," Khartoum. He has herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, a diet barely sufficient for monkeys ; the water must have his supplies of grain are more than ample, and he is been horrible, though no lack of it is mentioned ; the men accumulating a stock of ivory which, if the road to the dropped daily from exhaustion or sickness, more than two northward ever opens, may bring him great wealth, in the hundred died or deserted, and the remainder became so European sense. He is, in truth, an African Sovereign, mutinous, that twice Stanley was compelled, in order to and as his authority consolidates itself, and that of the save them and himself, to enforce capital sentences ; and Mandi dies away under the blows it is sustaining from the still the indomitable leader, confident in his knowledge and westward, he may hope to stretch his dominion from the himself, tramped steadily on. That awful march, hardly Albert Nyanza northward to Khartoum. Having renounced „equalled, we believe, in its circumstances of horror since Judaism, and quitted civilisation for years, he can be little and birds. Anyhow, he had, when Stanley left him, elected to stay where he is, one of the most noteworthy figures which even this age of separate personages has pro- duced. Savants are common enough, and savants with a love of exploration ; but the adventurer who obtains a crown, or the power of a crowned head over a defined territory, is rare. Our countLymen are everywhere, but we have had in the half-century only one Rajah Brooke, and it is his career, after all, -which that of Sultan Schnitzler most resembles.
Previous page
