Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone (47 page)

It was 4 a.m. when they found him. He was still kneeling in prayer, but was pitched forward, with his face buried in the pillow as if he’d dozed while praying. David Livingstone, at the age of sixty, was dead.

CHUMA AND SUSI
could have simply buried Livingstone’s body near Chitambo’s village and left for the coast. It was the logical thing to do. But they knew he had longed to return to England before he died. Finishing the journey without him would have been inappropriate, so, embarking on one final exhausting journey with Livingstone, Chuma and Susi set out on a mission to carry his body back to England.

To preserve the explorer’s remains, a tribesman named Farijala, who had once been a surgeon’s servant in Zanzibar, made a single horizontal incision in Livingstone’s abdomen, just above the pubic bone. The examining coroner in London would one day call Farijala’s work ‘ingeniously contrived’, marvelling at how the uneducated tribesman was able to remove Livingstone’s heart, lungs and abdominal organs through the small opening. As he did so, Farijala also removed the massive blood clot in Livingstone’s intestine. Then, cradling the heart carefully, Farijala laid it in the precious tin box Livingstone once used to protect his journals. After handing the watertight
box to Chuma and Susi, he shoved salt into Livingstone’s empty chest cavity. Then, even as the remainder of Livingstone’s body dried for two weeks in the sun, a hole was scraped from the ground at the base of a sprawling mpundu tree. The tin box was placed inside as prayers were read over the grave site. The dirt was placed back on top. His body would be returning to England, but Livingstone’s heart would always remain in Africa.

The mummification of Livingstone’s body continued. As it was dried, the legs were bent back at the knees to make him shorter and easier to carry. Blue and white striped calico was wrapped tightly around his corpse, followed by a protective cylinder of bark. Finally, the entire package was wrapped tightly in sailcloth, then slung from a pole. Two weeks after his death, Livingstone’s body swaying between them, Chuma and Susi began the long march to Zanzibar with the rest of the caravan. A drummer boy marched at the front of the column. Livingstone’s consular Union Jack snapped in the breeze. In all, seventy-nine porters made up the caravan. Many of them carried nothing more than Livingstone’s books and papers.

Moving slowly, stopping frequently for weather and sickness, taking turns carrying Livingstone’s body, the caravan reached Tabora in early November. The Royal Geographical Society, consumed by the sudden need to bring Livingstone back out of Africa, had sent yet another relief expedition to find him. This Third Livingstone Relief Expedition had seen one disaster after another. The usual litany of weather and malaria and geography had made their passage from Bagamoyo to Tabora miserable. Robert Moffatt, Livingstone’s nephew, had been one of the expedition’s four white men. He died of malaria. Another expedition member would commit suicide after a bout of dysentery drove him mad.

The only connection this discouraged, frazzled Third Livingstone Relief Expedition had with the African expeditions of previous searchers such as Burton, Speke, Grant and Stanley was the caravan leader — Sidi Mubarak
Bombay. The grizzled veteran of three major expeditions in East Africa was going into Africa once again with yet another band of explorers.

The relief expedition was loitering in Tabora in November, trying to figure out its next move. As if by a miracle, Livingstone was suddenly brought into their midst. Chuma and Susi, however, had no intention of stopping or giving up the body of their beloved leader. After a rest of less than a week, the devoted porters marched from Tabora towards Bagamoyo. Two of the relief expedition members accompanied the body. The other, Lieutenant V. Lovett Cameron, continued for Ujiji, where Livingstone had cached letters and journals. He wouldn’t stop his westward march until he got to the Atlantic, making Cameron the second British explorer to cross Africa.

Meanwhile, Chuma and Susi reached Bagamoyo in February 1874. When Chuma crossed to Zanzibar to formally present Kirk the news, he learned that the Consul was home in London on leave. Kirk’s deputy, Royal Navy Captain W. F. Prideaux, ordered the warship HMS
Vulture
to pick up Livingstone’s remains in Bagamoyo. Prideaux then dismissed Chuma, Susi and the rest of the caravan that had laboured for almost a year to carry Livingstone’s body out of Africa. For Chuma and Susi, who had been with Livingstone throughout his search, and without whose assistance the journey would have been impossible, it was an abrupt and thankless end.

Meanwhile, Livingstone’s body was placed in a proper coffin in Zanzibar, then he, his papers and his personal possessions were transferred to the steamship
Malwa
. By 16 April 1874, eight years and eighteen days after leaving England, Livingstone finally returned. England went into mourning as
Malwa
docked at Southampton to the thunder of a twenty-one-gun salute. A brass band played Handel’s
Dead March
as Livingstone’s flag-draped coffin was transferred to a special train provided by Queen Victoria. The train carried Livingstone’s body to London, where his remains were formally examined by Sir William
Ferguson and five of Livingstone’s friends. Kirk, ironically, was present, too. And while sun and salt and eleven hard months had rendered his face unrecognisable, the sight of his shattered left humerus was enough to convince all that this was truly Livingstone.

The body lay in state in the RGS Map Room on Friday, 17 April. ‘Floor and walls were covered with black cloth,’
The Times
reported. ‘And on all sides were memorials of the departed — his portraits taken at various periods of his career, his astronomical and drawing instruments, his charts in ink and pencil — the authentic records of his exploration — his chronometer, and other objects of unfading interest. Nor was the mournful darkness of the room unrelieved by graceful and tender devices. There were wreaths of amaranth and branches of palm.’

At half past noon on Saturday, 18 April 1874, a plumed hearse drawn by four horses pulled up at the Savile Row entrance to the RGS headquarters. Livingstone’s polished oak coffin was carried out of the door and placed in the hearse. Then Livingstone’s funeral procession made its way to Westminster Abbey. Twelve mourning carriages containing family, friends and RGS dignitaries travelled behind Livingstone. The Queen’s royal carriage and the Prince of Wales’s carriage followed next. A long line of personal carriages joined the procession. Houses along Savile Row had their curtains drawn in respect, and shops along Piccadilly, Regent Street and Waterloo Place had one or two shutters raised in the customary sign of mourning. Thousands of onlookers lined the road in what would become one of Britain’s largest ever displays of mourning. ‘The crowd in Trafalgar Square was larger than at other and less advantageous vantage points,’
The Times
reported. ‘But it was nowhere else so large as round the railings of Westminster Abbey.’

‘Inside the Abbey an immense congregation had assembled by a little after twelve o’clock,’ reported
The Times
. ‘So dense was the throng of ticket holders that many who were able to pass into the building were unable to avail themselves of that right.’

Kirk was there. Grant, too. Even E. D. Young. And by appropriate coincidence, Stanley had just returned to England after an assignment covering the Ashantee War. Those men — all vital to the arc of Livingstone’s search for the Source — would serve as four of the eight pallbearers. ‘Such a gathering of sunburnt visages and far-travelled men was never seen before, and indeed, the list might be lengthened with the names of a hundred other famous travellers present, who listen with wistful looks around their great dead chieftain,’
The Times
noted.

The service proceeded with a minimum of pomp and fanfare. Then, to the strains of Handel, as the choir intoned, ‘His body rests in peace, but his name liveth evermore,’ Livingstone was buried. His final resting place was not anonymous and his accomplishments would not be forgotten. As the mourners filed out, they threw flowers and wreaths down into Livingstone’s grave. ‘Each of those present’, concluded
The Times
, ‘takes a long parting glance at the great traveller’s resting place, and at the oaken coffin buried in spring blossoms, and palms, and garlands wherein lies “as much as could die” of the good, great-hearted, loving, fearless and faithful David Livingstone.’

Stanley was among those taking a last, wistful look. Their time together had been just five short months, but his name and Livingstone’s would be forever linked by history. Henry Morton Stanley, the drifter who fled Central City, Colorado, eight years before, striving to eke out a measure of adventure and success in his life, now knew both in spades — thanks in great part to Livingstone. ‘When I had seen the coffin lowered into the grave, and heard the first handful of earth thrown over it,’ Stanley wrote, ‘I walked away sorrowing over the fate of David Livingstone.’

Stanley walked solemnly out of the great doors of Westminster Abbey into bright London sunshine, already charting yet another course in his life. He was successful, he was wealthy and he was famous, yet Stanley was preparing to throw it all away. He had made a promise to
Livingstone in the heart of Africa — a promise to finish the explorer’s work, and find the Source of the Nile. It was a promise Stanley intended to keep.

Henry Morton Stanley, the new lion, was going back into Africa.

THE SAGA OF
Stanley and Livingstone sparked an unlikely turning point in history. Journalism’s growing power, America’s ascendance and Britain’s eventual eclipse, one generation of explorers giving way to another, and the opening of Africa — all were either foreshadowed by or came about as a result of Livingstone’s love affair with Africa and Stanley’s unlikely march to find him.

Though the story’s impact waned with every subsequent news cycle, author Joseph Conrad — who, as a child growing up in Poland, was so taken with Livingstone’s adventures that he declared of Africa: ‘When I grow up I shall go
there
’ — gave Stanley and Livingstone literary immortality. Conrad called Stanley’s search ‘a newspaper stunt’, and lamented that colonial ‘empire builders suppress for me the memory of David Livingstone’, but some of his biographers suggest Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness
is based loosely on the New York
Herald
expedition. Stanley is Marlow; Livingstone is Kurtz. Ironically, it is that brilliant novel, not the journals of Livingstone or Stanley, which stands as the literary snapshot synonymous with nineteenth-century Africa.

David Livingstone’s
burial site lies in the centre of Westminster Abbey’s nave, near the tomb of the Unknown
Warrior. The stone reads: ‘Brought by faithful hands over land and sea here rests David Livingstone, missionary, traveller, philanthropist, born March 19, 1813, at Blantyre, Lanarkshire, died May 1, 1873 at Chitambo’s Village, Ulala. For 30 years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, to abolish the desolating slave trade of Central Africa, where with his last words he wrote, “All I can add in my solitude is, may Heaven’s rich blessing come down on every one, American, English, or Turk, who will help to heal this open sore of the world.”’

Livingstone’s death opened the floodgates to European exploration of Africa. Within a decade, history’s infamous Scramble for Africa had begun. Europe’s powers began a pell-mell dash to exploit the resources and peoples of the continent. By the Anglo-German Agreement of 1886, the Sultan of Zanzibar’s influence was forever replaced by the two European nations. England took control of what is now Kenya, while Germany named their territory German East Africa. That is the land Stanley marched through on his journey to Livingstone. Nowadays the nation is known as Tanzania, and the railway tracks from Dar es Salaam to Kigoma roughly follow his path.

Germany’s control of the region concluded at the end of the First World War. The British, who defeated the Germans in a major battle on the sands of Bagamoyo, effected total control of the region. In April 1964, exactly one century after the Nile Duel and a year after the British ended their colonial reign, the independent Republic of Tanzania was born.