Henry Morton Stanley

The Rescue of Emin Pasha

Stanley's exploration of the Congo in 1874-1877 sparked the interest of King Leopold II of Belgium, who commissioned Stanley to direct the development of the Congo Free State. With King Leopold's support, Stanley undertook his next expedition in 1879, retracing his route up the Congo River.  During the next five years, he explored the interior of what is now the central African nation of Zaire, making the European discovery of Lake Tumba and Lake Leopold II, and directed the construction of overland routes around the Congo River's unnavigable sections.  His efforts in support of King Leopold are described in "The Congo and the Founding of its Free State" (1885).

Stanley's last African expedition began in 1887 as a relief mission to aid Emin Pasha, the German-born governor of southern Sudan's Equatoria province.  Emin Pasha, a convert to Islam, had been cut off from the outside world since the outbreak of a Muslim revolt six years earlier, in which the Sudanese revolted under the Mahdi against Egyptian rule.

Over ¥20,000 was raised to pay for an expedition to go to the rescue, and Stanley, despite the criticism of his methods, was considered the preeminent African explorer of his day and was thus the man to undertake the task.  Stanley's plan for the rescue was to use his Congo experience and cut through the unknown Ituri Forest to reach Emin Pasha, then headquartered on Lake Albert in what is now Uganda, from the west rather than approaching from the more obvious, and much easier, route from the east.  This would have the advantage of exploring new territory to King Leopold's Congo Free State.  Accordingly, Stanley arrived at the mouth of the Congo River on March 18, 1887.

The expedition consisted of 700 African employees of Stanley commanded by eight European officers and 800 of Tippu Tib's supporters.  It was divided into two groups – an advance column and a rear column.  Stanley led the advance column up the Congo and then the Aruwimi River.  In the upper reaches of the Aruwimi they had to fight their way through the Ituri, one of the densest, darkest, and most impenetrable forests on Earth.  It is also the home of the Pygmies, who were very adept at maintaining their sanctuary by shooting poison arrows at intruders.  The death toll from these attacks and from disease and hunger was very high.  In one place, 52 men who were too sick to carry on were abandoned to die.  At another place, Stanley had a man who had stolen a rifle hanged.  The survivors reached the edge of the forest on December 2, 1887.  Stanley built a small fort for the rear column and brought up his boat so that he could sail down to Lake Albert.

When Stanley finally met up with Emin Pasha and his companion Gaetano Casati on April 29, 1888, he was dismayed to discover that they did not feel particularly threatened and did not want to be rescued.  Stanley argued with them for a period of time and then returned to his fortified camp to meet up with the rear column.  On the way back he got his first glimpse of a great snowcapped range of mountains in the distance.  The clouds on the upper slopes parted long enough to reveal peaks rising to nearly 17,000 feet.  This is the Ruwenzori Range, which have been identified with the legendary Mountains of the Moon that the Greek philosopher Ptolemy had written 1,900 years before.  They were supposed to be the source of the Nile, and, in fact, some of the water draining the mountains flows into Lade Edward and Lake Victoria and so to the White Nile.

When Stanley got back to his camp, he found that the rear column had not arrived.  He travelled 90 miles into the Ituri Forest before finding the missing men.  They had been decimated by dissension and disease, and only 98 out of the original 258 were still alive.  He gathered up the remnants and travelled back with them to Emin Pasha's headquarters.  By the time they arrived, some of Emin Pasha's troops had rebelled, and there was news that the Mahdists were making gains to the north.  In spite of this, Emin Pasha could not make up his mind what he wanted to do.  In one final angry confrontation, Stanley convinced the German to go with him to Zanzibar.  Along the way they explored the land south of Lake Albert.  They found another large lake that Stanley named Albert Edward Nyanza after Britain's Prince of Wales, and is now called simply Lake Edward.  One of Stanley's officers tried to scale one of the peaks of the Ruwenzori and got two-thirds of the way up.  They reached Zanzibar in December 1889, but by then Emin Pasha had decided that he did not want to go back and returned to the interior, where he was killed in 1892. 

Next: Stanley in England