Empire_ What Ruling the World Did to the British - Jeremy Paxman [54]
The porters travelled in a cacophony of shouting, whistling, singing and imitations of the shrieks and cries of birds – the noise was intended not merely to amuse them but to deter any potential attackers. The party fought its way through swamps and scrub, up mountains and across rivers: 10 miles a day was good going. Tribal chiefs demanded tribute to allow the expedition to pass, thorn-bushes tore at their clothes, insects bit them mercilessly. If a hare or antelope crossed their path, the porters dropped their loads to chase it, and if successful, tore it limb from limb and ate it raw. On other occasions they squabbled, became lethargic when smoking drugs, mutinous when not. The two explorers fell sick with fever, hallucinated, starved, became so weak they could not walk, while at other times an ulcerated tongue prevented Burton from giving any orders at all. His account of the journey, The Lake Regions of Central Africa, describes how tribal chiefs amuse themselves by chopping limbs off people who displease them, how an ancient witch-doctor tried – and failed – to cure his sickness and notes the different practices of tribes like the Wanyamwezi and the Wagogo, from clothing and sex to favoured methods of intoxication. Speke does not figure prominently in the narrative and when he does appear it is generally to be described as under the weather, weak, obtuse, or having done ‘nothing at all’. Burton does, however, include Speke’s own account of the incident in which a small black beetle crawled into his ear while he was asleep. When the beetle reached his eardrum Speke said it had the same sort of effect as a swarm of bees attacking a train of donkeys. Unable to remove the beetle by pouring melted butter into his ear canal, Speke decided to try to dig it out with the blade of his penknife. In silencing the beetle he also made himself deaf and the entire side of his head and neck swelled up in buboes – it was, he said, the most painful experience of his life. (When he blew his nose his ear made an audible whistle, and six months after the event bits of beetle were still dropping out of his ear.)
The two men landed on the east coast of mainland Africa from Zanzibar in June 1857. A year later, they had reached the Arab slave station at Tabora, in what is now western Tanzania, having already made the momentous discovery of the existence of Lake Tanganyika. Burton had hoped that the lake might turn out to be the source of the Nile, but it was not high enough above sea level for that, and anyway the river on which they had pinned their hopes turned out to flow in the wrong direction. ‘I felt sick at heart,’ Burton wrote. The camp at Tabora was comfortable, and especially congenial to Burton who enjoyed the company of Arabs – that they were in Africa as slavers did not trouble him unduly. Speke, however, was restless and anxious to see what truth there was in the tales the traders told of a much bigger lake three weeks’ journey to the north. While Burton stayed in camp to recuperate and write up his notes, Speke set off again.
On 3 August 1858 John Hanning Speke stood on the shores of a massive body of water. He was instantly, instinctively – and unscientifically – convinced he had found what they were looking for. He stayed at the lake only three days and then rushed back to rejoin Burton, unable to contain his excitement. ‘We had scarcely breakfasted,