We were the recipients at Zanzibar of so much courtesy and hospitality that pages might be filled with the mere mention of them. To Major Wissmann, I am vastly indebted for large and unstinted hospitality, and I feel honoured with the acquaintance of this noble and brave German centurion. To the gallant Captains Foss and Hirschberg we owe great gratitude for their unremitting kindness. To Consul-General Col. Euan-Smith and his charming wife, to whom I am indebted for courtesies past counting, and a hospitality as ungrudging as it was princely and thoroughly disinterested, besides favours and honours without number, I am too poor in aught to do more than make this simple record of a goodness which cannot be recompensed. And indeed there was not a German, or English, or Italian, or Indian resident at Zanzibar who did not show to myself and companions in some form or another, either by substantial dinners and choice wines their—what was called—appreciation of our services in behalf of Emin Pasha, Captain Casati, and their followers.
The Agent of the East African Company, in company with Lieut. Stairs, having completed their labours, of calculating the sums due to the survivors of the Relief Expedition, and having paid them accordingly, a purse of 10,000 rupees was subscribed thus: 3000 rupees from the Khedive of Egypt; 3000 rupees from the Emin Relief Fund; 3000 rupees from myself personally; 1000 rupees from the Seyyid Khalifa of Zanzibar, which enabled the payees to deliver from 40 to 60 rupees extra to each survivor according to desert. General Lloyd Mathews gave them also a grand banquet, and in the name of the kind-hearted Sultan in various ways showed how merit should be rewarded. An extra sum of 10,000 rupees set apart from the Relief Fund is to be distributed also among the widows and orphans of those who perished in the Yambuya Camp, and with the Advance Column.
Among my visitors at Zanzibar was a Mohammedan East Indian, named Jaffar Tarya, who is a wealthy Bombay merchant, and acts as agent for many Arab and Zanzibari caravan owners in Africa. Among others he acts as agent for Hamed bin Mohammed, alias Tippu-Tib. He informed me that he held the sum of £10,600 in gold, which was paid to him for and in behalf of Tippu-Tib by the Government of the Congo Free State for ivory purchased by Lieut. Becker from Tippu-Tib in its name. Jaffar Tarya had thus unwittingly put the means in my hands to enable me to bring Tippu-Tib some day before the Consular Court at Zanzibar to be judged for alleged offences committed against British subjects—the gentlemen of the Emin Relief Committee—and to refund certain expenses which had been incurred by the declarations he had made before Acting Consul-General Holmwood, that he would assist the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition with carriers. Thus, in consideration of his signed agreement that he would furnish the Expedition with 600 carriers, he had been granted free passage and board for himself and ninety-six of his followers from Zanzibar to Banana Point, River Congo=£1940, and from Banana Point to Stanley Falls=£1940. At Yambuya he had received forty-seven bales of cloth, about fifty cases of gunpowder, as many cases of fixed ammunition, Remington rifles, elephant guns, revolvers, and £128 worth of stores for his sub-chief, Muini Sumai, on the promise that he would supply carriers to escort Major Barttelot until the Major would either meet me or Emin Pasha, which he did not do further than for about ninety miles, and therefore caused us a delay of nearly a year, and a further expense of nearly twelve months’ pay extra to about 250 Zanzibaris. The bill of claims that we could legitimately present amounted in the aggregate to £10,000. Whereupon I pleaded for an injunction that such moneys should not depart from the hands of the British subject Jaffar Tarya until an English court of justice should decide whether the Emin Relief Committee was not entitled in equity to have these expenses and moneys refunded. After hearing the evidence the Consular Judge granted the injunction. There is not a doubt, then, that, if strict justice be dealt to this arch offender, the Emin Relief Committee may find itself in possession of funds sufficient to pay each Zanzibari survivor a bonus of 300 rupees, and each of our officers the sum of £1000 cash, a consummation devoutly to be wished.
1890.
Jan. 16.
Cairo.
After arriving at Cairo on the 16th of January, 1890, and delivering the 260 refugees to the Egyptian authorities, I sought a retired house wherein I might proceed to write this record of three years’ experiences “In Darkest Africa, and the Story of our Quest, Rescue, and Retreat of Emin, the Governor of Equatoria.” I discovered such a house in the Villa Victoria, and on January 25th I seized my pen to do a day’s work. But I knew not how to begin. Like Elihu, my memory was full of matter, and I desired to write that I might be refreshed; but there was no vent. My right hand had forgotten its cunning, and the art of composition was lost by long disuse. Wherefore, putting firm restraint against the crowds of reminiscences that clamoured for issue, I let slip one after another with painful deliberation into the light, and thus, while one day my pen would fairly race over the paper at the rate of nine folios an hour, at other times it could scarcely frame 100 words. But finally, after fifty days’ close labour, in obedience to an irresistible impulse I have succeeded in reaching this page 903 of foolscap manuscript, besides writing 400 letters and about 100 telegrams, and am compelled from over-weariness to beg the reader’s permission to conclude.
Some scenes of the wonderful land of Inner Africa, through which we have travelled together, must for ever cling to our memories. Wherever we go some thought of some one of the many scenes in that great forest will intrude itself into the mind. The eternal woods will stand in their far-away loneliness for ever. As in the past, so they will flourish and fall for countless ages in the future, in dumb and still multitudes, shadowy as ghosts in the twilight, yet silently creeping upward and higher into the air and sunshine. In fancy we shall often hear the thunder crashing and rushing in rolling echoes through the silence and the darkness; we shall see the leaden mists of the morning, and in the sunshine the lustre of bedewed verdure and the sheen of wet foliage, and inhale the fragrance of flowers.