Lieut. Speke had now served five years, and when the campaign ended he applied himself, with his wonted energy, to make war upon the fauna and feræ of the Himalayas. A man of lithe, spare form, about six feet tall, ‘blue-eyed, tawny-maned; the old Scandinavian type, full of energy and life,’ with a highly nervous temperament, a token of endurance, and long, wiry, but not muscular limbs, that could cover the ground at a swinging pace, he became an excellent mountaineer. His strong nerve and clear head enabled him to cross the Passes before the melting of the snows allowed them to be called open, and to travel by break-neck paths, which others were unable to face: a rival, on one occasion, attempted to precede him, and brought on a low fever by the horrors of the Col and the Corniche. He soon proved himself the best East Indian sportsman of each successive season: that he was a good shot in his youth is shown by the ‘trophies’ with which he adorned the paternal hall. But, as Lieut. Herne and I took the first opportunity of ascertaining, he was by no means remarkable for the ‘use of an unerring rifle,’ when he appeared at Aden. This often happens in the case of men who have overtaxed their nervous systems during early life, and who have unintermittently kept up the practice of dangerous sport: to mention no others, the late Gordon Cumming and Jules Gérard are notable instances personally known to me. Those whose tastes lie in lion-hunting and boar-spearing will do well to give themselves as much repose as possible between the acts, and to husband their nerve-strength for great opportunities. A far better walker than a rider, he prided himself, as often happens, chiefly upon his equitation.
For five years after the Panjab war Lieut. Speke annually obtained long leave to cross the Snowy Mountains, and to add to his collections of the animals little known or unknown, which then abounded in those glaciers and ice-bound plains. His messmates, with whom he was ever a favourite, wondered at the facility with which he escaped the regimental grind of parade and escort duties. He thus explains the modus operandi, that others may profit by it. ‘The Commander-in-Chief, Sir William Gomm, observing to what good account I always turned my leave, instead of idling my time away or running into debt, took great pleasure in encouraging my hobby; and his staff were even heard to say it would be a pity if I did not get leave, as so much good resulted from it.’ I may add that, with the fine tact which distinguished him, he never allowed his friends to think themselves neglected, and always returned with rare and beautiful specimens of Himalayan pheasants, and other admired birds, for each one who had done him kindness, and thus men forgot to be jealous. Devoted also to one idea at a time, he eminently possessed the power of asking: no prospect of a refusal, however harsh, deterred him from applying for what was required to advance his views. I was struck by the way in which he wrote to Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton for supplies and advances, of which the latter had no power, or rather had not been empowered, to dispose.
Thus Lieut. Speke was the first to penetrate into some of the remotest corners of Little Thibet: and here, besides indulging his passion for shooting, collecting, and preserving, he taught himself geodesy in a rude but highly efficient manner. The Yearly Address (Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xxxv.) asserts that he learned to ‘make astronomical observations.’ This was not the case. But by watch and sun—to the latter a pocket-compass was presently preferred—he obtained distance and direction, and his thorough familiarity with all the topographical features of the mountains, enabled him to construct route-sketches and field-maps which, however rough, proved useful to sportsmen and explorers. Some years of this work, tracing out the courses of streams, crossing passes and rounding heights, gave him an uncommonly acute ‘eye for country,’—by no means a usual accomplishment even with the professional surveyor. As an old ‘agrimensor,’ I well know that there is no better training for the tyro who can afford the time than to begin field-work without instruments: the use of the latter will be learned in a few days, nay, hours; and even the most experienced prefer, when possible, to go over the ground, and to form a mental sketch before attempting exact topography. His maps and plans were never, I believe, published, in consequence of some difference with the editor, who had delayed printing them.
During his explorations he led the hardest of lives, and he solved the problem of ‘how to live upon half nothing.’ ‘In the backwoods and jungles,’ he says, ‘no ceremony or etiquette provokes unnecessary expenditure, whilst the fewer men and material I took with me on my sporting excursions the better sport we always got, and the freer and more independent I was to carry on the chase.’ He rose with the freezing dawn, walked in the burning sun all day, breaking his fast upon native bread and wild onions, and he passed the biting nights in the smallest of ‘rowtie’ tents, often falling asleep before finishing his food. The latter was of course chiefly game, and he had acquired a curious taste for the youngest of meat, preferring it even when unborn. He also attempted to travel barefooted, but this will almost always prove a failure to men who have not begun it in early life. His system of living was good: as the late Lord Palmerston advised, he ate much, drank little, and did not smoke.
The object of this economy was to carry out a project which he had matured in 1849, after the expiration of the Panjab campaign. Of his three years’ furlough he proposed to employ two in collecting animals whilst marching through Eastern Africa, north of the Line, with the third to be spent in ease and rest at home. The idea of ‘striking the Nile at its head, and then sailing down that river to Egypt,’ was altogether an after-thought, and similarly his knowledge of ‘Ruppell and others’ was the result of far later application. I well remember at Aden his astonishment at my proposing so improbable a scheme as marching overland to the Nile sources. But he had seen in maps the mythical ‘Mountains of the Moon,’ which twenty years ago used to span Africa from east to west, a huge black caterpillar upon a white leaf, and he determined that they would ‘in all probability harbour wild goats and sheep, as the Himalaya range does.’
Lieut. Speke’s tenth year of Indian service was completed on Sept. 3, 1854, and the next day saw him in the Peninsular and Oriental steamer bound from Calcutta to Aden. I was then at the Coal-Hole of the East, organizing amongst ‘the treasures and sweetnesses of the Happy Arabia,’ an expedition to explore, first the Guardafuian Horn, then the far interior. He brought with him ‘notions’ to the value of £390, all manner of cheap and useless chow-chow, guns and revolvers, swords and cutlery, and beads and cloths, which the ‘simple-minded negro of Africa’ would have rejected with disdain. He began at the very landing-place with a serious mistake, which might have led to the worst consequences. Meeting the first mop-headed Somalis who spoke broken English, he told them his intentions, and he actually allowed two donkey-boys to become his Abbans—guides and protectors. Strangers visiting the Eastern Horn must ever be careful to choose the most powerful of these licensed plunderers: the barbarians hold strongly to the right of might, and they would delight in stripping a white man appearing amongst them with an ignoble or an insufficient escort. On the other hand, the donkey-boys, having been appointed according to custom, would have claimed the honour and the profits of the post, and they would have been supported by public opinion against any Abbans of another tribe.
Making acquaintance with Lieut. Speke, I found with astonishment that he could speak no Eastern language but a little of the normal Anglo-Hindostani, and that, without knowing even the names of the harbour-towns, he proposed to explore one of the most dangerous parts of Africa. Convinced that if he preceded me his life would be lost, and that the Somali Expedition would be unable even to set out, I applied officially to the Political Resident of Aden, the late Colonel, afterwards Sir James, Outram, of whose ‘generous kind nature’ and of whose ‘frank and characteristic ardour’ my personal experience do not permit me to speak with certainty. In his younger days Colonel Outram had himself proposed to open up the wild regions opposite Aden. But when he rose to command and its responsibilities, he ‘considered it his duty as a Christian to prevent, as far as he was able, anybody from hazarding his life there.’ To a traveller prepared for a forlorn hope this view of Christian obligations was by no means consolatory, and I could not help wishing that Colonel Outram had been able to remember his own feelings of 20 years back. Thus far, however, he was dans son droit, he held it his duty to prevent men from destroying themselves, and he should have veto’d the whole affair.
Presently, however, upon my assuming the fullest responsibility and giving a written bond for our blood, the Political Resident allowed me to enrol Lieut. Speke as a member of the Expedition, and thus to save his furlough by putting him on full service. Colonel Outram would also have gratified his own generosity, and shifted all onus from his conscience, by making me alone answerable for the safety of a Madras officer who had left India expressly to join us. I had, however, now done enough: common report at Aden declared the thing to be impossible, and the unfortunate traveller returned unsuccessful.
Lieut. Speke was uncommonly hard to manage: he owned himself to be a ‘Mastí Bengali’ (bumptious Bengal-man), and having been for years his own master, he had a way as well as a will of his own. To a peculiarly quiet and modest aspect—aided by blue eyes and blonde hair—to a gentleness of demeanour, and an almost childlike simplicity of manner which at once attracted attention, he united an immense and abnormal fund of self-esteem, so carefully concealed, however, that none but his intimates suspected its existence. He ever held, not only that he had done his best on all occasions, but also that no man living could do better. These were his own words, and they are not quoted in a spirit of blame: evidently such is the temper best suited to the man who would work through the accumulated difficulties of exploration or of any other exceptional career. Before we set out he openly declared that being tired of life he had come to be killed in Africa—not a satisfactory announcement to those who aspired to something better than the crown of martyrdom. But when the opportunity came he behaved with prudence as well as courage. I therefore look upon his earlier confession as a kind of whimsical affectation, like that which made him, when he returned to England in 1859, astonish certain of the Browns by speaking a manner of broken English, as if he had forgotten his vernacular in the presence of strange tongues.
Finding, even at that early period of acquaintanceship, that he had a true but uncultivated taste for zoology, and extensive practice in rude field, mapping, I determined that his part of the work should be in the highly interesting Eastern Horn of Africa. He accordingly landed at Bunder Guray, with directions to explore the important feature, called by Lieut. Cruttenden, I. N., ‘Wady Nogal,’ and to visit the highlands of the Warsangali and the Dulbahanta tribes, the most warlike and the least treacherous of the Somal. Meanwhile Lieutenants Stroyan and Herne remained at Berberah, collecting information from and watching the annual fair, whilst I proceeded, more, it must be confessed, for curiosity and for display of travelling savoir faire, than for other reason, through the Habr Awal and other most dangerous families of the Somal, to Harar, the Tinbuktu of Eastern Africa.