The unfortunate Lieutenant Stroyan was run through with a spear; he slept far from us, and we did not see him fall. Lieutenants Herne and Speke and I defended ourselves in our tent till the savages proceeded to beat it down. I then gave the word to sally, and cleared the way with my sabre. Lieutenant Herne accompanied me and—wonderful to relate—escaped without injury. Lieutenant Speke was seized and tied up; he had eleven spear-thrusts before he could free himself, and he escaped by a miracle. When outside the camp, I vainly tried once more to bring up our men to the fray. Finding me badly hurt they carried me on board the boat. Here I was joined by the survivors, who carried with them the corpse of our ill-fated friend.
Sad and dispirited, we returned to Aden. We had lost our property as well as our blood, and I knew too well that we should be rewarded with nothing but blame. The authorities held a Court of Inquiry in my absence, and facetiously found that we and not they were in fault. Lord Dalhousie, the admirable statesman then governing in general British India, declared that they were quite right. I have sometimes thought they were.
TO THE HEART OF AFRICA
1856-1859
I
THE JOURNEY
I HAD long wished to “unveil Isis”—in other words, to discover the sources of the Nile and the Lake regions of Central Africa—and to this end I left London in September, 1856, for Bombay. Here I applied for Captain Speke to accompany me as second in command, as he wished much to go. My subsequent dispute with Speke is well known, and I will not refer to it here. I took him with me out of pure good nature, for, as he had suffered with me in purse and person at Berbera the year before, I thought it only just to offer him the opportunity of renewing an attempt to penetrate to the unknown regions of Central Africa. I had no other reasons. He was not a linguist, nor a man of science, nor an astronomical observer, and during the expedition he acted in a subordinate capacity only. The Court of Directors refused him leave, but I obtained it from the local authorities in Bombay. I may here add that the Royal Geographical Society had given me a grant of £1,000, and that the Court of Directors of the East India Company had given me two years’ leave.
I landed at Zanzibar from Bombay on December 19th,
1856, and received much kindness from Lieutenant-Colonel Hamerton, Her Majesty’s Consul. First of all I made an experimental trip, and this and the study of Zanzibar occupied my time until May 14th, 1857, when I left Zanzibar for the second time, and on the 27th of the same month I landed at Wale Point, on the east coast of Africa, about eighty-four miles from the town of Bagamoyo.