When they finally reached Yambuya, on the banks of the Aruwimi River, Stanley left Major Barttelot, his second in command, with a large body of men — his “rear column”—to wait for supplies from Léopoldville, while the remainder of his expedition went on. On June 28, 1887, with several of his officers — Jephson, Stairs, Nelson, and Parke — and his servants Hoffman and Baruti by his side, along with three hundred and eighty of his ablest men, Stanley set out, due east, into the vast Ituri Forest, a dark and dank realm the size of France, so dense with trees that light rarely penetrated to the ground. As they followed the course of the river, the sound of the cataracts was deafening; but to travel within the forest itself was daunting in a different way, often deathly silent and always gloomy, “like being inside a long-abandoned and very dark cathedral,” he later wrote. He would ultimately call it the “region of horrors.”
From Stanley’s journaclass="underline"
Camp near the Lenda River, incessant roar of the cataracts maddening: from the soft and viscous topsoil, worms and slugs oozing out of the loamy mud under the worn soles of our boots, the earth smelling of elephant, simian, and antelope dung; from the trunks of rotting trees, swarms of stinging red ants in livid streams in every direction, like lines of fire… black ants, too, crawling up our boots, supping on our spoons, swimming in our thin broths, teeming over our plates and into every open box, every blanket, even crawling onto the pages of my books. Pismires — tiny insects with scissors-like mandibles — cutting into the soft flesh of one’s neck; and bees small as gnats and able to pass through the eyes of needles, stinging, biting, attacking with the ferocity of black wasps, so voracious in their appetites that they stripped the hair off my mule’s legs. Such little creatures going for the eyes, ears, and nostrils, my skin covered with swelling sores, as if I’d fallen again and again onto a nettle patch; venomous hornets tormenting us as well… and wasps, their baggy nests hanging everywhere off the trees, exploding like darts through the air and attacking man and animal alike at the slightest provocation — a footfall, a voice, the striking of a match… tiger slugs crawling up over my stockings and wriggling onto my skin, a stinging slime left in their wake; green centipedes with beady eyes falling out of the trees… and butterflies, too — appearing abruptly in swarms from the east, dropping down in sheets from the trees, and so densely gathered they are an obstruction to one’s movement; to pass them is like parting a curtain, a cloud of them, in a blizzard of fluttering wings, the creatures alighting upon our faces.
Then:
The Ituri again, clack-clack in the trees; around me, in the netting of lianas and creeping vines that crosshatch the woods, and off the branches of the surrounding trees, femurs and rib cages, spines and clavicles — human bones of every variety — hanging everywhere, like clock pendulums or Chinese wind chimes. Worse is the undergrowth, for with every step, I feel the ground beneath my feet oozing with blood, the syrupy mud rising up onto my boots with every step. The leather of my shoes coming apart like soaked, mealy bread… such disagreeable things I ascribe to bad digestion and a very severe headache before turning into bed….
Or:
On the trail came across a dying native, his head cracked open by a rifle butt, the side of an eyeball visible through a split in the forehead of the skull, his smooth belly expanding ever so slightly with his last breaths — the oddity of it all, not a drop of blood issuing from the gaping wound, as if the blood had been stopped like mud in his veins… had no choice but to discharge my pistol into his head, to put the poor fellow out of his misery, the crack of the gun, the body writhing for a final moment… a nightmare, to be sure.
And his journals go on and on: with opinions about his officers, reports of the dead and wounded, and counts of deserters in his caravan.
WITHIN THE HUNDREDS OF PAGES of his journals, there exist these scant references to Huckleberry Finn:
September 20, 1887
My eyes are slowly going bad… have been reading Clemens’s novel again, in my tent, before sleep; some parts I have found less than what he is capable of, some of it strictly picaresque, but some parts profoundly moving. I particularly find Jim to my liking and not unlike my good-natured man Uledi… The river of freedom is an idea I enjoy, but an illusion, no doubt, especially given the reality of the river that exists in this place. A river of death… But I find that just thinking about the Mississippi and my old life does wonders for my spirit, even when I know it is just a made-up story.
October 8, 1887
On a reconnoitering excursion across the black lake of [illegible] when, because of a heavy and sudden fog, we could not see far into the darkness or take our bearings by the stars, I had no choice but to light a torch, even though that light might well have brought a hail of poison arrows from the shore toward our canoe. But I had no torch, so I asked Hoffman to hand me my knapsack, wherein were contained several books, including the Bible and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as I had thought to burn one of them for light — but which one? Though it troubled me to use the Bible, I could not bear the thought of tearing to pieces and making ashes out of Clemens’s gift to me, so putting it aside and begging Providence’s forgiveness, and bearing in mind that I had another Bible back in camp, I ripped from my Bible’s binding clumps of its pages, which I put to a lucifer match, its sudden glare giving us a sense of where we were in relation to the shore, which we shortly could make out was to our right. We were fortunate to find some of our party (Lieutenant Stairs and well-armed Somalis) awaiting us there, for seeing our light, they set afire some of their own torches, and we were saved.
IN A PHOTOGRAPH taken in a Cairo studio, circa January of 1890, Stanley is posed with the surviving four officers of his expedition (Jephson, Stairs, Nelson, and Parke) against the painted backdrop of an African plain, potted palms surrounding them. These gentlemen — in their dapper, high-collared white Victorian shirts and walrus mustaches — are either seated, canes and bowler hats set on their laps, or standing, at ease, looking bemusedly into the camera, as if they had still not gotten reaccustomed to the trappings of normal modernity. Stanley, his face gaunt and his expression weary, seems by far the eldest; with his hair turned completely white, he could have been an uncle posing with his nephews or a schoolmaster with his teachers instead of an intrepid explorer who’d just turned forty-nine.
Dearest Samuel,
How are you, my old friend? As for me, I fear the best years of my life are gone, and now, at fifty, whatever glories might await me, my personal circumstances remain as solitary as before, but with the difference that I am now feeling my age — Africa will do that to a man.
I mention this because it is you who tried to dissuade me from undertaking the whole business during my last visit with you in Connecticut, in the winter of ’86. As we talked about Africa one night, you doubted the value of the mission, calling it an excuse for “wholesale colonization” of the region, and as you, dear Samuel, by the example of your happy home life, made me think heavily about the prospect of spending endless months in the wilderness without the ordinary comforts of domesticity, I nearly changed my mind. But the eyes of my peers were upon me, and besides, I did not think the mission would be as difficult as it turned out to be.