They refused to contribute provisions, and starvation stared the travelers in the face. For weeks their only food was wild fruit and nuts. To forage was to invite death, and to engage in open war was to court annihilation. Disease broke out, and it must have swept them all away but for the precautions which Stanley took to head off its ravages. As it was, the number was greatly reduced, and the men were weak, emaciated, in a state of panic, amid surrounding dangers and without spirit for further trials. Writing of this critical period, his letters say:
“What can you make of this, for instance? On August 17, 1887, all the officers of the rear column are united at Yambuya. They have my letter of instructions before them, but instead of preparing for the morrow’s march, to follow our track, they decide to wait at Yambuya, which decision initiates the most awful season any community of men ever endured in Africa or elsewhere.
“The results are that three-quarters of their force die of slow poison. Their commander is murdered and the second officer dies soon after of sickness and grief. Another officer is wasted to a skeleton and obliged to return home. A fourth is sent to wander aimlessly up and down the Congo, and the survivor is found in such a fearful pest-hole that we dare not describe its horrors.
“On the same date, 150 miles away, the officer of the day leads 333 men of the advance column into the bush, loses the path and all consciousness of his whereabouts, and every step he takes only leads him further astray. His people become frantic; his white companions, vexed and irritated by the sense of the evil around them, cannot devise any expedient to relieve him. They are surrounded by cannibals and poison tipped arrows thin their numbers.
“Meantime I, in command of the river column, am anxiously searching up and down the river in four different directions; through forests my scouts are seeking for them, but not until the sixth day was I successful in finding them.”
Having now brought his different marching columns closer together, and loaded his sick in light canoes, he started on, intercepted continually by wild native raiders who inflicted considerable loss on his best men, who had to bear the brunt of fighting as well as the fatigue of paddling. Soon progress by the river became too tedious and difficult, and orders were given to cast off the canoes. The land course now lay along the north bank of the Itura, amid dense forests, and through the despoiled lands which had been a stamping ground for Ugarrowa and Kilingalango raiders. No grass land, with visions of beef, mutton and vegetables, were within a hundred miles of the dismal scene.
For two weeks the expedition threaded the unknown tangle, looking out for ambuscades, warding off attacks, and braving dangers of every description. At length the region of the Dwaris was reached and a plantain patch burst into view. The hungry wayfarers plunged into it and regaled themselves with the roasted fruit, while the more thoughtful provided a store of plantain flour for the dreaded wilderness ahead. Another plunge was made into the trackless forest and ten days elapsed before another plantation was reached, during which time the small-pox broke out, with greater loss of life than any other enemy had as yet inflicted. Meanwhile they had passed the mouth of the Ihuru, a large tributary of the Itura, and were on the banks of the Ishuru. As there was no possibility of crossing this turbulent tributary, its right bank was followed for four days till the principal village of the Andikuma tribe was reached. It was surrounded by the finest plantation of bananas and plantains, which all the Manyemas’ habit of spoliation and destruction had been unable to destroy. There the travelers, after severe starvation during fourteen days, gorged themselves to such excess that it contributed greatly to lessen their numbers. Every twentieth individual suffered from some complaint which entirely incapacitated him for duty.
From Andikuma, a six days’ march northerly brought them to a flourishing settlement, called Indeman. Here Stanley was utterly nonplussed by the confusion of river names. The natives were dwarfs. After capturing some of them and forcing answers, he found that they were on the right branch of the Ihuru river and that it could be bridged. Throwing a bridge across, they passed into a region wholly inhabited by dwarfs who proved very hostile. They are the Wambutti people, and such were their number and ferocity that Stanley was forced to change his north-east into a south-east course and to follow the lead of elephant tracks.
They had now to pass through the most terrible of all their African experiences. Writing further of this trying ordeal, Stanley says:
“On the fifth day, having distributed all the stock of flour in camp, and having killed the only goat we possessed, I was compelled to open the officers’ provision boxes and take a pound pot of butter, with two cupfuls of my flour, to make an imitation gruel, there being nothing else save tea, coffee, sugar, and a pot of sage in the boxes. In the afternoon a boy died, and the condition of the majority of the rest was most disheartening. Some could not stand, falling down in the effort to do so. These constant sights acted on my nerves until I began to feel not only moral but physical sympathy, as though the weakness was contagious. Before night a Madi carrier died. The last of our Somalis gave signs of collapse, and the few Soudanese with us were scarcely able to move. When the morning of the sixth day dawned, we made broth with the usual pot of butter, an abundance of water, a pot of condensed milk, and a cupful of flour for 130 people. The chiefs and Bonny were called to a council. At my suggesting a reverse to the foragers of such a nature as to exclude our men from returning with news of the disaster, they were altogether unable to comprehend such a possibility. They believed it possible that these 150 men were searching for food, without which they would not return. They were then asked to consider the supposition that they were five days searching food, and they had lost the road, perhaps, or, having no white leader, had scattered to shoot goats, and had entirely forgotten their starving friends and brothers in the camp. What would be the state of the 130 people five days hence? Bonny offered to stay with ten men in the camp if I provided ten days’ food for each person, while I would set out to search for the missing men. Food to make a light cupful of gruel for ten men for ten days was not difficult to procure, but the sick and feeble remaining must starve unless I met with good fortune; and accordingly a stone of buttermilk, flour, and biscuits were prepared and handed over to the charge of Bonny. In the afternoon of the seventh day we mustered everybody, besides the garrison of the camp, ten men. Sadi, a Manyema chief, surrendered fourteen of his men to their doom. Kibboboras, another chief, abandoned his brother; and Fundi, another Manyema chief, left one of his wives and her little boy. We left twenty-six feeble and sick wretches already past all hope unless food could be brought them within twenty-four hours. In a cheery tone, though my heart was never heavier, I told the forty-three hunger-bitten people that I was going back to hunt for the missing men. We traveled nine miles that afternoon, having passed several dead people on the road, and early on the eighth day of their absence from camp we met them marching in an easy fashion, but when we were met the pace was altered, so that in twenty-six hours from leaving Starvation Camp we were back with a cheery abundance around us of gruel and porridge, boiling bananas, boiling plantains, roasting meat, and simmering soup. This had been my nearest approach to absolute starvation in all my African experience. Altogether twenty-one persons succumbed in this dreadful camp.”
After twelve days journey the party on November 12th, reached Ibwiri. The Arab devastation, which had reached within a few miles of Ibwiri, was so thorough that not a native hut was left standing between Urgarrava and Ibwiri. What the Arabs did not destroy the elephants destroyed, turning the whole region into a horrible wilderness.
Stanley continues: – “Our sufferings terminated at Ibwiri. We were beyond the reach of destroyers. We were on virgin soil, in a populous region, abounding with food. We, ourselves, were mere skeletons – reduced in number from 289 to but little more than half that number. Hitherto our people were skeptical of what we told them. The suffering had been so awful, the calamities so numerous, and the forests so endless, that they refused to believe that by and by we would see plains and cattle, the Nyanza, and Emin Pasha. They had turned a deaf ear to our prayers and entreaties for, driven by hunger and suffering, they sold their rifles and equipments for ears of Indian corn, deserted with their ammunition and became generally demoralized. Perceiving that mild punishment would be of no avail, I resorted to the death penalty, and two of the worst cases were hanged in the presence of all.
