Kitabı oku: «Stanley in Africa», sayfa 8
THE RESCUE OF EMIN
In the fall of 1886, Stanley was summoned from the United States by the King of Belgium to come and pay him a visit. That monarch seems to have remembered what others had forgotten, that a European adventurer and a European project lay buried somewhere beneath the Equator and in the very heart of the “Dark Continent.” Stanley responded to the King’s invitation, and out of the interview which followed sprang a reason for his late and most memorable journey across equatorial Africa. But it was deemed wise to interest other agencies, and so the British Geographical Society was consulted and induced to lend a helping hand. In order to further nationalize the projected journey a commission was formed under whose auspices it was to take place. This enlisted for the moment the sympathies of the German peoples, for the lost one was a German. So grew up what came to be known as the “Emin Bey Relief Committee,” with head-quarters at London, and with Sir William Mackinnon as its secretary.
And now, who is Emin Bey, or as he appears most frequently, Emin Pasha? What is there about his disappearance in the wilds of Africa that makes knowledge of his whereabouts and his rescue so desirable? What, of more than humanitarian moment, can attach to a journey planned as this one was? These questions are momentous, for they involve far more than mere men or mere projects of rescue. They involve the aims and ambitions of empires, the policies of dynasties, the destinies of future African States and peoples. That these things are true will appear from the answers which history makes to the above queries – a history which is aglow with events and attractive in its details, however little it may serve to reveal of the present plans of those who contribute most to its making. Emin Pasha was born in the Austrian province of Silesia, and the town of Opplen, in 1840, the same year as Henry M. Stanley. He studied medicine at Breslau, Königsberg and Berlin, and entered upon the world as a regular M.D. with a diploma from the Berlin University. Sometime before the Russian-Turkish war he went to Constantinople and entered the Turkish army with the title of Bey, or Colonel. A taste for travel took him to the East where he acquired the oriental languages. On his return we find him attached to the Imperial Ministry of Turkey, but only during part of the incumbency of Midhat Pasha, who, finding his ministry opposed to his ultra hatred of Russia, dismissed it.
Up to this time he was known as Dr. Eduard (Edward) Schnitzer, that being the name of his parents, with the prefix of Colonel, or Bey as an affix. This was all as to outside knowledge of him. On his dismissal from the Court at Constantinople he fled to Asia, and after many wanderings turned up at Suakim and finally at Khartoum, in Africa, where he made the acquaintance of that ill-starred and fatalistic English adventurer, General Gordon, then Governor General of the Soudan, under English auspices. The General finding him an adventurer of attainments made him a storekeeper of his army, and upon ascertaining that he was an M.D., promoted him to the position of surgeon. In 1877 he was a practitioner of medicine at Lado, in southern Soudan. He afterwards became Surgeon-General of Gordon’s staff. In this capacity he served for four years. During this time he was engaged in making many valuable scientific researches and collections and in contributing interesting papers to European learned societies. He was also of great use to Gordon, who sent him to Uganda and Unyoro on diplomatic missions.
In 1878, when General Gordon was made Governor-General of the Soudan by the British Government, he raised Col. Schnitzer to the rank of Governor of the province of Hat el Seva in Southern Soudan. By this time the Mahdi had risen in the Soudan, and was confronting Gordon with his Mohammedan followers. To identify himself more fully with the Mohammedan people among which he had to live, Col. Schnitzer abandoned his German name and took the Arabic one of Emin (the faithful one) and the full title of Pasha (General or Governor). The scheme on the part of Gordon was to seize and hold the equatorial provinces of the Soudan, in the rear of the Mahdi’s forces, and thus introduce a military menace as well as make a political and moral diversion in favor of the cause he represented. Gordon gave him part of his own army, augmented by a large native force, and with this Emin Pasha took possession of his provinces far toward the Equator, and abutting on the central lake system of the continent.
For a time all went well with him. He proved a most indefatigable traveler, and showed special fitness to govern. He was familiar with the language of the Turks, Arabs, Germans, French and Italians, and acquired readily the dialects of the heathen tribes. On every side he displayed suavity, tact and genius. In 1879, he made an excursion to the western shore land of the Mwutan, which till then had not been visited by white men. In 1880 he visited Makralla-land, and planted many trading stations, thus enlarging his territory geographically and politically. In this expedition he located many important rivers, chief of which was the Kibali. In 1881 he pushed his explorations westward into the land of the powerful Niam Niams, and southward into the lands of the Monbuttus, which tribes are types of the best physical and political strength in that part of Africa, west of the Nile sources.
Thus Emin kept on increasing the extent and importance of his territory, and it came to be recognized as the best governed of any in the vast undefined domain of the Soudan. He found it infested with Arab slave-dealers, who practiced all the barbarities of their kind, and much of his time was occupied in suppressing the nefarious traffic. He became the recognized foe of those who penetrated his domains to barter in human flesh, or if cupidity dictated, to burn, pillage and kill, in order that they might freight their dhwos with trophies of their cruelty.
Though undefined east and west, his kingdom came to recognize Lado as its northern capital, and Wadelai, on Lake Albert Nyanza, as its southern. The work of organizing his territory extended from 1878 to 1882. He had practically driven out the slave-traders and converted a deficient revenue into a surplus for his government, conducting everything on the basis laid down by his superior, General Gordon, and carrying out with the most marked success the plans of that noble enthusiast. He was fast making his territory semi-civilized when the Mahdi arose, led his hosts northward, massacred the army of Gordon, and finally made himself master of Khartoum and a great part of the Soudan. This was in 1882. The Egyptian garrisons throughout the Southern Soudan were then abandoned to their fate, and the last attempt to save Khartoum ended with the death of General Gordon.
During the years of bloodshed that followed, Emin remained at his post, his provinces entirely cut off from the world, and he himself neglected and left entirely to his own resources. He held at the time about four thousand native and Egyptian troops under his command. He was completely surrounded by hostile tribes, but it is generally admitted that if he had chosen to leave behind him the thousands of helpless women and children and abandon the province to the merciless cruelties of the slave traders, he could easily have effected his escape either to the Congo or to the Zanzibar coast. But he determined to stay and to keep the equatorial provinces for civilization, if possible.
The great work done by this brave and indefatigable German cannot be told here in detail. But he organized auxiliary forces of native soldiers; he was constantly engaged in warfare with surrounding tribes; he garrisoned a dozen river stations lying long distances apart. His ammunition ran low and he lacked the money needed for paying his small army; but in the face of manifold difficulties and dangers he maintained his position, governed the country well, and taught the natives how to raise cotton, rice, indigo and coffee, and also how to weave cloth and to make shoes, candles, soap and many articles of commerce. He vaccinated the natives by the thousand in order to stamp out small-pox; he opened the first hospital known in that quarter; he established a regular post-route, with forty offices; he made important geographical discoveries in the basin of the Albert Nyanza Lake, and in many ways demonstrated his capacity for governing barbarous races by the methods and standards of European civilization.
Murder, war and slavery were made things of the past, so that at last “the whole country became so safe that only for the wild beasts in the thickets, a man could have gone from one end of the province to the other, armed with nothing more than a walking-stick.” A German writer said of him at the time: “In his capital, Lado, where Dr. Schnitzer earlier resided, he arose every day before the sun. His first work was to visit the hospitals and care for the health of the people and the troops. After a day devoted to executive labors, a great part of the night would be spent in writing those essays on anthropology, ethnology, geography, botany, and the languages of the people dwelling in his province which have made his name famous as a scientific explorer.”
Tn 1885 Emin had ten fortified stations along the Upper Nile, the most northern one being Lado, and the most southern one Wadelai. The latter place he made his capital for some time. His command at Wadelai then consisted of 1500 soldiers, ten Egyptians and fifteen negro officers. The rest were at the various stations on the Nile. He had ammunition to hold out until the end of 1886, and longer, he wrote, “if the wild tribes did not make the discovery that he would be then entirely out of it.” In 1887 he wrote: “I am still holding out, and will not forsake my people.” After that, letters were received from him in which he described his position as hopeful. In one of the last of these letters he wrote:
“The work that Gordon paid for with his blood I will strive to carry on according to his intentions and his spirit. For twelve long years I have striven and toiled and sown the seeds for future harvests, laid the foundation stones for future buildings. Shall I now give up the work because a way may soon open to the coast? Never!”
The successes of the Mahdi had isolated him entirely on the north. To the west and south were powerful tribes which, though not unfriendly, could offer him no avenue of escape. To the east were still more powerful peoples, once friendly but now imbued with the Mahdi’s hatred of white men and their commercial and political objects. Chief of these were the Uganda, whose King, Mtesa, had died in 1884, and had been succeeded by his son Mwanga, a thorough Mahdist and bitter against European innovation. Emin was therefore a prisoner. This was known in Europe in 1886, but how critical his situation was, no one could tell. It was natural to regard it as perilous, and it was hoped that the Egyptian Government would take measures for his relief. The Cairo Government did nothing except to give him the title of Pasha and to offer £10,000 to any expedition that might be sent to him. Many relief expeditions were then planned, but nothing came of them till the one at whose head Stanley was placed took shape.
Where should such an expedition go? What should it do? It did not take long for the “wizard of equatorial travel” to decide. Here might be opened a whole volume of controversy as to whether Stanley’s mission in search of Emin was really humanitarian or not. The Germans who had the greatest interest in the safety of their fellow countryman, refused to look on the expedition as other than a scheme to rid the Southern Soudan of a Teutonic ruler in the interest of England. They regarded Emin as abundantly able to take care of himself for an indefinite time, and the event of his withdrawal as amounting to a confession that Germanic sovereignty was at an end in the lake regions of Central Africa. It cannot be ascertained now that Stanley entered upon the expedition for the relief of Emin Pasha in other than a humanitarian spirit, though he was backed by English capital. It is fair to presume that since he was invited to the ordeal by the Belgian King, whose exchequer was responsible for the greater part of the outlay, he went with perfectly disinterested motives. But be that as it may, he felt the delicacy of his task and, after having discovered the lost one, his interviews with him are models of diplomatic modesty and patience.
On being placed in charge of the expedition by its projectors, Stanley naturally chose the Congo route into the heart of Africa, because he was familiar with it by his recent efforts to found the Congo Free State, and because it would give him a chance to review and refresh his labors in that behalf. If all things were as he had left them, he knew that a water-way traversable by steam was open for him to a point on the Congo opposite the habitation of Emin and distant but a few hundred miles. So May 11, 1887, found Stanley on the west coast of Africa ready to start inland. He did not collect his force and equipments at the mouth of the Congo, but made his way around the cataracts to Stanley Pool. There, at the station called Kinchassa everything was gathered for the up-river journey. Thence, the expedition embarked in three steamers, Le Stanley, the large stern-wheeler belonging to the Congo Free State, towing the Florida which had just been put together by sections. Le Stanley and Florida had on board about 300 men, mostly trained and armed natives, among whom were four English officers and several scientific gentlemen, besides a cargo of ammunition, merchandise and pack animals. The next steamer was the Henry Reid, a launch belonging to the American Baptist Missionary Union, and kindly loaned to Stanley for the purpose of transporting part of his force and equipments from Stanley Pool to his proposed camp on the Aruwimi. The other steamer was the Peace, placed at Stanley’s disposal by the Rev. Holman Bentley, of the English Baptist Missionary Society, and of which a young missionary named Whitely had charge.
On their passage up the Congo, and after a sail of ten days a camp was formed at Bolobo, and left in charge of Captain Ward, who was deemed a proper person for the command on account of his previous knowledge of the natives, always inclined to be more or less hostile at that point. Captain Ward had met Stanley below Stanley Pool and while he was performing his tedious journey around the cataracts. He thus describes the expedition on its march at the time of the meeting.
In the front of Stanley’s line was a tall Soudanese warrior bearing the Gordon Bennett yacht flag. Behind the soldier, and astride a magnificent mule, came the great explorer. Following immediately in his rear were his personal servants, Somalis, with their braided waistcoats and white robes. Then came Zanzibaris with their blankets, water-bottles, ammunition-belts and guns; stalwart Soudanese soldiery, with great hooded coats, their rifles on their backs, and innumerable straps and leather belts around their bodies; Wagawali porters, bearing boxes of ammunition, to which were fastened axes, shovels and hose lines, as well as their little bundles of clothing, which were invariably rolled up in old threadbare blankets. At one point the whale-boat was being carried in sections, suspended from poles, which were each borne by four men. Donkeys laden with sacks of rice were next met, and a little further back were the women of Tippoo Tib’s harem, their faces concealed and their bodies draped in gaudily-colored clothes. Here and there was an English officer. A flock of goats next came along, and then the form of Tippoo Tib came into view as he strutted majestically along in his flowing Arab robes and large turban, carrying over his right shoulder a jewel-hilted sword, the emblem of office from the Sultan of Zanzibar. Behind him followed several Arab sheiks, whose bearing was quiet and dignified.
It was not the intention to hurry over the long stretch of water between Stanley Pool and the Aruwimi, but to make the trip by easy stages. Yet it was a trip involving great labor, for there being no coal, and the steamers being small, the work of wood-cutting had to be done every night. The launches required as much wood for twelve hours steaming as thirty or forty men, laboring at night, could cut with their axes and cross-cut saws. In some portions of the upper Congo where the shores are swampy for miles in width, the men were often compelled to wade these long distances before striking the rising forest land, and of course they had to carry the wood back to the steamers over the same tedious and dangerous routes.
As has been stated, Stanley’s objective was the mouth of the large river Aruwimi, which enters the Congo, a short distance below Stanley Falls, in Lat. 1° N., and whose general westward direction led him to think that by following it he would get within easy marches of Lake Albert Nyanza and thus into Emin’s dominions.
On the arrival of the expedition at the mouth of the Aruwimi, an armed camp was formed at Yambungi and left in charge of the unfortunate Major Barttelot, and here a conference was awaited with the dual-hearted Arab, Tippoo Tib, whom Stanley had recognized as ruler at Nyangwe, on the Congo, above Stanley Falls, and who was bound to him by the most solemn treaties. The wily chieftain came up in due time, and the interview was such as to engender serious doubts of his further friendship, notwithstanding his protestations.
The occasion was a palaver, at the request of Major Barttelot, with a view to obtain some definite understanding as to the providing of the Manyema porters whom Tippoo Tib had promised Stanley he would supply in order that the rearguard might follow him up from the Aruwimi River to Wadelai. How the porters did not come up to time; how the commander of the rearguard was hampered with new conditions as to weight when the men did appear; and how the dreadful business ended in the assassination of Major Barttelot and the breaking up of the camp, will appear further on. The death of Mr. Jameson soon afterwards, at Ward’s Camp, on the Congo, a distressing sequel to the former tragedy, was in somber tone with the reports of Stanley’s death which came filtering through the darkness at about the same time. The cloud which fell upon the Aruwimi camp seemed to spread its dark mantle over the entire expedition. Mr. Werner, in his interesting volume “A Visit to Stanley’s Rear Guard,” gives a characteristic sketch of the Arab chief; and Mr. Werner was the engineer in charge of the vessel which took Major Barttelot part of the way on his last journey to the Falls. “After the light complexion of the other Arabs,” he says, “I was somewhat surprised to find Mr. Tippoo Tib as black as any negro I had seen; but he had a fine well-shaped head, bald at the top, and a short, black, thick beard thickly strewn with white hairs. He was dressed in the usual Arab style, but more simply than the rest of the Arab chiefs, and had a broad, well-formed figure. His restless eyes gave him a great resemblance to the negro’s head with blinking eyes in the electric advertisements of somebody’s shoe polish which adorned the walls of railway-stations some years ago – and earned him the nickname of ‘Nubian blacking.’”
In June, 1887, Stanley started on his ascent of the unknown Aruwimi, and through a country filled with natives prejudiced against him by the Arab traders and friends of the Mahdi. His force now comprised 5 white men and 380 armed natives. His journey proved tedious and perilous in the extreme, and though he persevered in the midst of obstacles for two months, he was still 400 miles from Albert Nyanza. It was now found that the river route was impracticable for the heavier boats. At this point their troubles thickened. The natives proved hostile, and ingenious in their means of opposing obstructions to the further progress of the expedition. They refused to contribute provisions, and starvation stared the travelers in the face. For weeks their only food was wild fruit and nuts. To forage was to invite death, and to engage in open war was to court annihilation. Disease broke out, and it must have swept them all away but for the precautions which Stanley took to head off its ravages. As it was, the number was greatly reduced, and the men were weak, emaciated, in a state of panic, amid surrounding dangers and without spirit for further trials. Writing of this critical period, his letters say:
“What can you make of this, for instance? On August 17, 1887, all the officers of the rear column are united at Yambuya. They have my letter of instructions before them, but instead of preparing for the morrow’s march, to follow our track, they decide to wait at Yambuya, which decision initiates the most awful season any community of men ever endured in Africa or elsewhere.
“The results are that three-quarters of their force die of slow poison. Their commander is murdered and the second officer dies soon after of sickness and grief. Another officer is wasted to a skeleton and obliged to return home. A fourth is sent to wander aimlessly up and down the Congo, and the survivor is found in such a fearful pest-hole that we dare not describe its horrors.
“On the same date, 150 miles away, the officer of the day leads 333 men of the advance column into the bush, loses the path and all consciousness of his whereabouts, and every step he takes only leads him further astray. His people become frantic; his white companions, vexed and irritated by the sense of the evil around them, cannot devise any expedient to relieve him. They are surrounded by cannibals and poison tipped arrows thin their numbers.
“Meantime I, in command of the river column, am anxiously searching up and down the river in four different directions; through forests my scouts are seeking for them, but not until the sixth day was I successful in finding them.”
Having now brought his different marching columns closer together, and loaded his sick in light canoes, he started on, intercepted continually by wild native raiders who inflicted considerable loss on his best men, who had to bear the brunt of fighting as well as the fatigue of paddling. Soon progress by the river became too tedious and difficult, and orders were given to cast off the canoes. The land course now lay along the north bank of the Itura, amid dense forests, and through the despoiled lands which had been a stamping ground for Ugarrowa and Kilingalango raiders. No grass land, with visions of beef, mutton and vegetables, were within a hundred miles of the dismal scene.
For two weeks the expedition threaded the unknown tangle, looking out for ambuscades, warding off attacks, and braving dangers of every description. At length the region of the Dwaris was reached and a plantain patch burst into view. The hungry wayfarers plunged into it and regaled themselves with the roasted fruit, while the more thoughtful provided a store of plantain flour for the dreaded wilderness ahead. Another plunge was made into the trackless forest and ten days elapsed before another plantation was reached, during which time the small-pox broke out, with greater loss of life than any other enemy had as yet inflicted. Meanwhile they had passed the mouth of the Ihuru, a large tributary of the Itura, and were on the banks of the Ishuru. As there was no possibility of crossing this turbulent tributary, its right bank was followed for four days till the principal village of the Andikuma tribe was reached. It was surrounded by the finest plantation of bananas and plantains, which all the Manyemas’ habit of spoliation and destruction had been unable to destroy. There the travelers, after severe starvation during fourteen days, gorged themselves to such excess that it contributed greatly to lessen their numbers. Every twentieth individual suffered from some complaint which entirely incapacitated him for duty.
From Andikuma, a six days’ march northerly brought them to a flourishing settlement, called Indeman. Here Stanley was utterly nonplussed by the confusion of river names. The natives were dwarfs. After capturing some of them and forcing answers, he found that they were on the right branch of the Ihuru river and that it could be bridged. Throwing a bridge across, they passed into a region wholly inhabited by dwarfs who proved very hostile. They are the Wambutti people, and such were their number and ferocity that Stanley was forced to change his north-east into a south-east course and to follow the lead of elephant tracks.
They had now to pass through the most terrible of all their African experiences. Writing further of this trying ordeal, Stanley says:
“On the fifth day, having distributed all the stock of flour in camp, and having killed the only goat we possessed, I was compelled to open the officers’ provision boxes and take a pound pot of butter, with two cupfuls of my flour, to make an imitation gruel, there being nothing else save tea, coffee, sugar, and a pot of sage in the boxes. In the afternoon a boy died, and the condition of the majority of the rest was most disheartening. Some could not stand, falling down in the effort to do so. These constant sights acted on my nerves until I began to feel not only moral but physical sympathy, as though the weakness was contagious. Before night a Madi carrier died. The last of our Somalis gave signs of collapse, and the few Soudanese with us were scarcely able to move. When the morning of the sixth day dawned, we made broth with the usual pot of butter, an abundance of water, a pot of condensed milk, and a cupful of flour for 130 people. The chiefs and Bonny were called to a council. At my suggesting a reverse to the foragers of such a nature as to exclude our men from returning with news of the disaster, they were altogether unable to comprehend such a possibility. They believed it possible that these 150 men were searching for food, without which they would not return. They were then asked to consider the supposition that they were five days searching food, and they had lost the road, perhaps, or, having no white leader, had scattered to shoot goats, and had entirely forgotten their starving friends and brothers in the camp. What would be the state of the 130 people five days hence? Bonny offered to stay with ten men in the camp if I provided ten days’ food for each person, while I would set out to search for the missing men. Food to make a light cupful of gruel for ten men for ten days was not difficult to procure, but the sick and feeble remaining must starve unless I met with good fortune; and accordingly a stone of buttermilk, flour, and biscuits were prepared and handed over to the charge of Bonny. In the afternoon of the seventh day we mustered everybody, besides the garrison of the camp, ten men. Sadi, a Manyema chief, surrendered fourteen of his men to their doom. Kibboboras, another chief, abandoned his brother; and Fundi, another Manyema chief, left one of his wives and her little boy. We left twenty-six feeble and sick wretches already past all hope unless food could be brought them within twenty-four hours. In a cheery tone, though my heart was never heavier, I told the forty-three hunger-bitten people that I was going back to hunt for the missing men. We traveled nine miles that afternoon, having passed several dead people on the road, and early on the eighth day of their absence from camp we met them marching in an easy fashion, but when we were met the pace was altered, so that in twenty-six hours from leaving Starvation Camp we were back with a cheery abundance around us of gruel and porridge, boiling bananas, boiling plantains, roasting meat, and simmering soup. This had been my nearest approach to absolute starvation in all my African experience. Altogether twenty-one persons succumbed in this dreadful camp.”
After twelve days journey the party on November 12th, reached Ibwiri. The Arab devastation, which had reached within a few miles of Ibwiri, was so thorough that not a native hut was left standing between Urgarrava and Ibwiri. What the Arabs did not destroy the elephants destroyed, turning the whole region into a horrible wilderness.
Stanley continues: – “Our sufferings terminated at Ibwiri. We were beyond the reach of destroyers. We were on virgin soil, in a populous region, abounding with food. We, ourselves, were mere skeletons – reduced in number from 289 to but little more than half that number. Hitherto our people were skeptical of what we told them. The suffering had been so awful, the calamities so numerous, and the forests so endless, that they refused to believe that by and by we would see plains and cattle, the Nyanza, and Emin Pasha. They had turned a deaf ear to our prayers and entreaties for, driven by hunger and suffering, they sold their rifles and equipments for ears of Indian corn, deserted with their ammunition and became generally demoralized. Perceiving that mild punishment would be of no avail, I resorted to the death penalty, and two of the worst cases were hanged in the presence of all. We halted 13 days at Ibwiri, revelling on fowls, goats, bananas, corn, yams, etc. The supplies were inexhaustible and our people glutted themselves with such effect that our force increased to 173 sleek robust men – one had been killed with an arrow.”
On November 24th the expedition started for Albert Nyanza, 126 miles distant. Given food, the distance seemed nothing. On December 1st an open country was sighted from the top of a ridge which was named Mt. Pisgah. On the 5th the plains were reached and the deadly, gloomy forest left behind. The light of day now beamed all around, after 160 days of travel. They thought they had never seen grass so green or a country so lovely. The men could not contain themselves but leaped and yelled for joy, and even raced over the ground with their heavy burdens.
