“On the same day, six hundred miles west of this camp, Jamieson, worn out with fatigue, sickness and sorrow, breathes his last.
“On the next day, August 18th, six hundred miles east, Emin Pasha and my officer Jephson are suddenly surrounded by infuriated rebels, who menace them with loaded rifles and instant death; but fortunately they relent and only make them prisoners, to be delivered to the Mahdists.
“Having saved Bonny out of the jaws of death, we arrive a second time at Albert Nyanza, to find Emin Pasha and Jephson prisoners in daily expectation of their doom.
“Jephson’s own letters will describe his anxiety. Not until both were in my camp and the Egyptian fugitives under our protection, did I begin to see that I was only carrying out a higher plan than mine. My own designs were constantly frustrated by unhappy circumstances. I endeavored to steer my course as direct as possible, but there was an unaccountable influence at the helm.”
In still another letter he gives us a most graphic account of this vast forest region. “Until we penetrated and marched through it,” he writes, “this region was entirely unexplored and untrodden by either white or Arab.”
“While in England, considering the best routes open to the Nyanza (Albert), I thought I was very liberal in allowing myself two weeks’ march to cross the forest region lying between the Congo and the grass-land; but you may imagine our feelings when month after month saw us marching, tearing, plowing, cutting through that same continuous forest. It took us one hundred and sixty days before we could say, ‘Thank God! we are out of the darkness at last.’ At one time we were all—whites and blacks—almost ‘done up.’ September, October, and half of that month of November, 1887, will not be forgotten by us. October will be specially memorable to us for the sufferings we endured. Our officers are heartily sick of the forest; but the loyal blacks, a band of one hundred and thirty, followed me once again into the wild, trackless forest, with its hundreds of inconveniences, to assist their comrades of the rear column. Try and imagine some of these inconveniences. Take a thick Scottish copse, dripping with rain; imagine this copse to be a mere undergrowth, nourished under the impenetrable shades of ancient trees, ranging from one hundred to one hundred and eighty feet high; briers and thorns abundant; lazy creeks, meandering through the depths of the jungle, and sometimes a deep affluent of a great river. Imagine this forest and jungle in all stages of decay and growth—old trees falling, leaning perilously over, fallen prostrate; ants and insects of all kinds, sizes, and colors murmuring around; monkeys and chimpanzees above; queer noises of birds and animals; crashes in the jungle as troops of elephants rush away: dwarfs with poisoned arrows securely hidden behind some buttress or in some dark recess; strong, brown-bodied aborigines with terribly sharp spears, standing poised, still as dead stumps; rain pattering down on you every other day in the year; an impure atmosphere, with its dread consequences, fever and dysentery; gloom throughout the day, and darkness almost palpable throughout the night; and then, if you will imagine such a forest, extending the entire distance from Plymouth to Peterhead, you will have a fair idea of some of the inconveniences endured by us from June 28th to December 5th, 1887, and from June 1st, 1888, to the present date, to continue again from the present date till about December 10th, 1888, when I hope then to say a last farewell to the Congo forest.
“Now that we have gone through and through this forest region, I only feel a surprise that I did not give a greater latitude to my ideas respecting its extent; for had we thought of it, it is only what might have been deduced from our knowledge of the great sources of moisture necessary to supply the forest with the requisite sap and vitality. Think of the large extent of the South Atlantic Ocean, whose vapors are blown during nine months of the year in this direction. Think of the broad Congo, varying from one to sixteen miles wide, which has a stretch of one thousand four hundred miles, supplying another immeasurable quantity of moisture, to be distilled into rain, and mist, and dew over this insatiable forest; and then another six hundred miles of the Aruwimi or Ituri itself, and then you will cease to wonder that there are about one hundred and fifty days of rain every year in this region, and that the Congo forest covers such a wide area.
“Until we set foot on the grass-land, something like fifty miles west of the Albert Nyanza, we saw nothing that looked like a smile, or a kind thought, or a moral sensation. The aborigines are wild, utterly savage, and incorrigibly vindictive. The dwarfs—called Wambutti—are worse still, far worse. Animal life is likewise so wild and shy that no sport is to be enjoyed. The gloom of the forest is perpetual. The face of the river, reflecting its black walls of vegetation, is dark and sombre. The sky one-half of the time every day resembles a winter sky in England; the face of Nature and life is fixed and joyless. If the sun charges through the black clouds enveloping it, and a kindly wind brushes the masses of vapor below the horizon, and the bright light reveals our surroundings, it is only to tantalize us with a short-lived vision of brilliancy and beauty of verdure.
“Emerging from the forest, finally, we all became enraptured. Like a captive unfettered and set free, we rejoiced at sight of the blue cope of heaven, and freely bathed in the warm sunshine, and aches and gloomy thoughts and unwholesome ideas were banished. You have heard how the London citizen, after months of devotion to business in the gaseous atmosphere in that great city, falls into raptures at sight of the green fields and hedges, meadows and trees; and how his emotions, crowding on his dazed senses, are indescribable. Indeed, I have seen a Derby day once, and I fancied then that I only saw madmen—for great, bearded, hoary-headed fellows, though well dressed enough, behaved in a most idiotic fashion, amazing me quite. Well, on this 5th of December we became suddenly smitten with madness in the same manner. Had you seen us you would have thought we had lost our senses, or that ‘Legion’ had entered and taken possession of us. We raced with our loads over a wide, unfenced field (like an English park for the softness of its grass), and herds of buffalo, eland, roan antelope, stood on either hand with pointed ears and wide eyes, wondering at the sudden wave of human beings, yelling with joy, as they issued out of the dark depths of the forest.
“On the confines of this forest, near a village which was rich in sugar cane, ripe bananas, tobacco, Indian corn, and other productions of aboriginal husbandry, we came across an ancient woman lying asleep. I believe she was a leper and an outcast, but she was undoubtedly ugly, vicious, and old; and, being old, she was obstinate. I practiced all kinds of seductive arts to get her to do something besides crossly mumbling, but of no avail. Curiosity having drawn toward us about a hundred of our people, she fastened fixed eyes on one young fellow (smooth-faced and good-looking), and smiled. I caused him to sit near her, and she became voluble enough—beauty and youth had tamed the ‘beast.’ From her talk we learned that there was a powerful tribe, called the Banzanza, with a great king, to the northeast of our camp, of whom we might be well afraid, as the people were as numerous as grass. Had we learned this ten days earlier, I might have become anxious for the result; but it now only drew a contemptuous smile from the people—for each one, since he had seen the grass-land and evidences of meat, had been transformed into a hero.