Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone Read Free Page A

forced off the prime agricultural and pasture lands onto desolate reservations that served as open-air prisons. Now, Stanley and Cook’s river ride allowed them to bear witness to what remained of the American frontier. The miles passed quickly. The prairie was beautiful and pure, awash in the renewal of spring.
    A week into the journey the raft flipped. Stanley and Cook escaped by swimming to shore, then ran hard along the banks trying to catch up with their craft as it bobbed downstream. Stanley finally dived back in and swam towards it. The muddy water swirled about him, threatening to suck him under. But Stanley was persistent, if nothing else, and finally he caught the raft and guided it back to shore.
    The next day, he and Cook floated downriver to Platte City, a small town at the convergence of the North and South Forks of the Platte. They were chilled from a night spent trying to sleep in wet clothes, and limped into town after carefully hiding their raft by the river. The town consisted of a dozen houses, some made of wood and some of sod. There was a small hotel, assorted saloons, a dry goods store and a few stray goats and mules. It was a town, however, with a reputation for vigilante violence. There were few trees in the area, so the bodies of horse thieves and murderers could be seen dangling fromtelegraph poles. One visitor to Platte City wrote that the telegraph poles served as ‘a line of gallows, twenty to the mile’. Stanley and Cook took a room.
    Platte City was just eighteen miles down a dirt road from Fort McPherson, headquarters of the US Army’s 5th Cavalry. A captain of the cavalry was in town when Stanley and Cook checked into their hotel. Taking one look at the bedraggled travellers, the captain accused Stanley and Cook of being deserters from the army post at Fort Laramie, up the North Fork of the Platte. He ordered them not to leave Platte City until he could check their status. Just to make sure they stayed in town, the captain ordered two of his soldiers to keep Stanley and Cook under surveillance.
    Not only did Stanley refuse to be intimidated, he seemed to revel in disregarding authority. He calmly went about his business, eating a meal in the small hotel and stocking up on food and ammunition for the remaining few hundred miles to Omaha, where the Platte and Missouri combined. The fact that his every movement was being watched didn’t fluster Stanley.
    After spending the night in town, Stanley and Cook paid their hotel bill and made to leave. The captain had been warned by his men, and was waiting for the erstwhile journalists. ‘Shall I put you under arrest?’ he said, squaring off in front of Stanley.
    There was little about Stanley that was physically intimidating. His nose was unbroken. His ears lacked a fighter’s cauliflower. He had no visible scars. His hands ran to small and had a curiously reddish tint. There was an omnipresent look of childlike confusion in his eyes. Yet Stanley glared at the captain with a menace Cook had never witnessed before. Placing one hand on his revolver, Stanley calmly agreed with the captain. ‘Yes,’ he said, clearly willing to shoot. ‘If you have men enough to do it.’
    The captain let them pass.
    On 12 June 1866 Stanley arrived in New York City. His ungainly search for success was under way. More important, Stanley had begun travelling east as Livingstoneworked his way west. As the miles between them decreased, the adventures that would ensue — random and whimsical at first, then linear and relentless — had begun, as well. Not even Stanley, with his enormous capacity for bluster and outlandish dreams, could imagine all that lay ahead.

I
THE SEARCHERS
    Sir Richard Francis Burton
© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS
    John Hanning Speke
© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS

ONE

THE NILE DUEL
16 SEPTEMBER 1864
Two Years Earlier
Bath, England
    THE CATALYST FOR the saga of daring took place shortly after eleven in the morning on Friday, 16