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