Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 14, 2024 7:46:18 GMT -8
I'm about 45% into Martin Dugard's Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone. Probably the first time I'd ever heard about Stanley and Livingstone was in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. And before picking up this book, I knew very little about either story. This book is a challenge to read for two reasons: It's a story about trudging through the jungles – over and over and over again. And it's a book about just how horrible people are. Livingstone was a great explorer. Stanley overcame a very rotten upbringing to become a famous newspaper reporter. I'll leave their sins aside for now. Both exemplified an almost superhuman trait to accept enormous risk and hardship. I read an article yesterday...just to sort of skip to the end, as it were. What exactly is the source of the Nile? And I don't believe the author of this book made the distinction between the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The source of the Blue Nile is Lake Tana in Ethiopia, a fact that I think has been known for a long time. In fact, the Nile gets about 85.6% of it's water from the Blue Nile and almost all of its sediment. That said, it seems somewhat of a moot point as to the source of the White Nile, but let's not spoil the story. Back in the day, the source of the Nile (the White Nile) was an intriguing and popular question. And it is apparently still somewhat of an open question as to the sources. It's more complicated than just saying Lake Victoria, for Lake Victoria is fed by another river, etc. The answer seems to be that the source is a series of rivers and lakes. And that region even today (because of political troubles) is hard to get into. And I'm struck while reading this how anyone could expect to find the source of the Nile in such a vast and inhospitable region just by trudging around on foot. The didn't have the advantage of a bird's eye view of Google Maps or GPS. They wandered around, made assumptions, and tried to piece things together as best they could. And perhaps the most amazing part is how far they could walk. One renowned safari aid (a native, I believe) who was often hired could easily walk 30 miles a day. I can't say I've ever done more than 10 in a day, although I'm not sure. But I can tell you how tired my feet were at even that short distance in optimal conditions. I have no idea how these guys could walk so far in much harder conditions while battling the inevitable health problems brought on by the usual suspects, malaria, etc. And obviously Livingstone did wear himself down eventually. But only after several years of hardship, poor food, and lack of medicine. I've read other books about explorers and it just seems a fact that a few rare people have an iron constitution quite far above the norm. Livingstone is an interesting character. He was a missionary, and yet eventually became more of an explorer with the missionary aspect as secondary. He was motivated to open up the Dark Continent to commerce which he then thought would help put an end to the slave trade. Later, having taken up finding the source of the Nile as an obsession, he spends a lot of time with the aid and comfort of actual slave traders who he needed at the time because his supplies had run out and, in many cases, needed to be carried. Yeah. Life is complicated. And from what I've read in the reviews of Stanley, well, there are sins aplenty with this guy. Perhaps all this should be judged in the context of just how horrible the natives could be to each other. But there is little doubt that the slave trade was an enormous evil. You get a lot of geography in this book but unfortunately very few maps. And Google Maps is only so much help because I think a lot of the place names used in the book are old ones and don't show up in Google Maps. But it's an adventure story as well. I love the brief segment on Livingstone being the first European to see Victoria Falls. His curiosity as to their height led him to dangle a weighted rope off the edge of what is now known as Livingstone Island which is in the middle of the falls (354 ft.) Livingstone had noted the oddity of the Zambezi River which was wide and broad, even quite near its source, and was losing almost no elevation for hundreds of miles. And, of course, the falls made sense then when he came to them. And you certainly do get some sense for the sheer size of the continent, even though much of the action is taking place in just one region. You get the idea that you might climb an escarpment and suddenly you went from impassible jungles to open and more temperate savannas. Worlds within worlds. As one reviewer put it, it is an adventure tale and a dual biography. |
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Post by kungfuzu on Jun 14, 2024 8:12:15 GMT -8
When you finish the above, you might like to look into another Victorian-era explorer and eccentric, Sir Richard Burton. I have two or three books about him, but the one that immediately comes to mind is this one.
He could be something of a rogue, but he was a genius and brave as Achilles. I believe he was one of the first, if not the first, non-Muslims to enter Mecca, explored Africa and could speak something like thirty languages.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 14, 2024 9:43:51 GMT -8
Burton is mentioned many times and he looks like the stereotypical Bwana. To his credit, Stanley read a lot of books in preparation for his safari, including one by Burton
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Post by kungfuzu on Jun 14, 2024 9:59:28 GMT -8
He was a tough SOB. Took a spear through the jaw during his explorations around Lake Tanganyika. Started his adult life in the East India Company's Army. Sean Connery looked a lot like Burton.
He was an unusual combination of strength, bravery, brilliance, strong curiosity and the will to pursue his interests, whatever the costs.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 14, 2024 10:23:34 GMT -8
Having never been in a tropical jungle, it's amazing to read just how quickly you can come to injury and worse.
There's this one very interesting segment describing Stanley's initial safari to Lake Tanganyika. The journey is roughly divided into thirds and takes about 5 months. Five months! That's seems forever to go a few hundred miles.
Stanley is feeling good. It's been a pleasant and marvelous journey so far, full of amazing sights and sounds. "Stanley thought he was in Eden." He's one week outside of the coastal town of Bagamoyo. He gets up one morning, still in his flannel pajamas, and decides to do some hunting. He takes one person with him. Leaves him behind a bit as he pursues a game trail, gets lost, and then it's a comedy of errors as he keeps falling and getting torn up by thorn bushes and such, completely shredding his pajamas. And he collects wounds all the way up to his head.
Stanley swears off ever going into the jungle again. But, of course, he's driven by necessity to do so later on. Soon the rains come, things get muddy, and they get into an area with lots and lots of insects. It's Eden no longer. But you do get the idea that there are patches of the journey that are idyllic.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jun 14, 2024 10:40:39 GMT -8
I have only been on the edges of a tropical jungle. It can still be dangerous.
I might have told you of a story I heard from an old Brit who had been born in Malaya, moved to Java as a boy, left during the war and returned to Penang in 1951.
He recalled the case of a surveying party on Borneo, I believe, which had set up camp in or around the jungle. Several of them had been playing cards at night and drinking rather heavily. One guy got up and went back to his tent to sleep it off, while the rest stayed up playing.
Sometime later, they heard screaming and a big ruckus. They ran to the tent in which their colleague was sleeping and saw the man struggling to get his arm out of the mouth of a python. One of them ran over, pulled out his pistol and shot the python.
It seems the drunk man had fallen asleep on his cot with his arm drooped over the side. The snake came under the tent and decided he had found a nice snack.
As I recall, they got the snake snack out of camp shortly thereafter.
Pythons have been found curled up in toilets on golf courses in Singapore, where very little jungle remains.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 14, 2024 11:38:39 GMT -8
This is the proper use of the word, "yikes." Yikes.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 15, 2024 7:16:59 GMT -8
One of the things that amazes me is that these explorers didn't get easily lost. They had compasses, rudimentary maps, trails to follow, and local information to make use of, but I've been lost in mere acres of terrain. I can't imagine wandering hundreds of miles in Africa and not becoming hopelessly lost.
It's also amazing how much cargo and how many porters were lost on the way. The cargo was lost often by way of deserting porters. It seemed to be just an inherent "cost of doing business." But a modern mind might find the losses extravagant. And no matter how well the planning, the same scenario seemed to repeat itself.
And it's shockingly sad in the days before "backup to the Cloud" to read of someone's box of journals being lost overboard, as happened to one of Livingstone's scientific specialists on one of his previous journeys. In the case of Livingstone being lost (at least to the outside world) for several years, he apparently was sending a constant stream of letters to the coast via his Muslim slave-trading enablers. But the slave-traders were so afraid that Livingstone would shed bad light on their slave-trading in his letters that the letters were never delivered.
And these explorers certainly learned or knew a lot beforehand. But it seems to confirm once again in human affairs that expertise is secondary to gumption. Stanley seemed a real rat-bastard and yet he was a success (at great expense to others, in many cases). Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. The race is not always to the swift. They were more of the Nike philosophy: "Just do it."
And the results of that are often harsh, brutal, and ugly and it can be difficult to read at times.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jun 15, 2024 15:41:57 GMT -8
I am particularly impressed with those who sailed the seas to discover new routes and lands. Their instruments for determining where they were on the wide ocean were not very good for centuries, yet they kept sailing across the world.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 15, 2024 18:09:27 GMT -8
I've read a gazillion seafaring stories, fiction and non-fiction. It was an entirely different world aboard a ship sailing the oceans. It was unimaginably difficult and harsh. And yet they were living life on the edge and seeing things no one else, or very few, had ever seen.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 19, 2024 20:02:38 GMT -8
I finished Into Africa tonight. And I dated it in my mind to a publication date of about 2004. Anything later than that would have been a non-stop sermon about how bad white people are, Europeans are a bunch of racist colonizers, black people are all victims, etc.
Because this book was more or less devoid of wokeness, it couldn’t have been written past about 2004. And I looked at the hardcover edition on Amazon and it lists a May 2003 publication date. That seems about right.
That's not to say it didn't mention racism in regards to the superior attitudes that most Europeans had over Africans. But the reporting was more in line of description (the way things were) rather than castigation (the way things ought to be).
I surprised myself somewhat at the good blind guess for the publication date. But this rule holds true. Anything after about 2004 or so is not reliable when it comes to history. Don't even bother.
I've read many books of jungle adventures, both fiction and non-fiction. I thought Into Africa was well-researched and generally fair-minded. But it's funny because it was somewhat like a Seinfeld episode. On that show they joked that it was "a show about nothing." And at the end of the day, it's interesting that so much worldwide focus was on Livingstone (and later Stanley) for basically having the art of getting lost (or side-tracked) in Africa from one's own stubbornness, egotism, or stupidity.
Livingstone was lionized by the world but I did not come away with a particularly good impression. He was an adventurer. But his methods were haphazard, perhaps amateurish. He was trampling around in the jungle because he wanted to do so with his ass being repeatedly pulled out of the fire by others. Later, Stanley followed after him with the motive of making himself rich and famous.
None of these motives are unusual or even particularly bad. But at the end of the book I was left with the "much ado about nothing" impression. A bit of somewhat reckless wandering around the jungle under the guise of looking for the source of the Nile became a cause for celebrity and true hero-worship.
And it's not that Livingstone was a bad guy. He seemed decent enough. But this didn't seem like Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, a truly important accomplishment. But given that the vast majority of the water comes from the Blue Nile, and it's single-source is well known, there is this much ado about nothing aspect that I can't escape.
Perhaps this comes through because I think the author did a splendid job in regards to the biographical aspects, especially with Stanley. You get to know this character, at least somewhat, although I do think Livingstone remains an enigma.
The author notes that Stanley and the Herald (Bennett) ushered in Big Journalism. I have no reason to doubt that. And that it probably "opened up" Africa and brought more white people to the continent (while eventually expelling the evil Muslim slaver-traders) is probably undeniable as well. And given places such as Kenya which was molded into a civilization by the British, it allowed many Africans to escape their crude and brutal tribalism, although these subjects are beyond the purview of this book.
But the Belgians were bastards. And I might try again to read Heart of Darkness. I tried several years ago but go bored by it.
Certainly the author was dutifully fair-minded in pointing out some of the truly extraordinary African guides who many European safaris depended upon. And there were more than a few idiot bureaucrats, especially in the British system. But, in the end, I would not have wanted to know either man, Stanley or Livingstone. I would have loved to have met Teddy Roosevelt and talk about his jungle adventure in the Amazon. Etc. But neither of these men, at least to my mind, would I want to bother with. But I'd love to talk to that one famous African guide (Bombay).
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 20, 2024 7:03:22 GMT -8
Of course, I understand the attraction of Livingstone was that he was the embodiment of Great British Resolve. And I don't blame them for having a hero.
Maybe the biography on Livingstone is sketchy compared to the information supplied on Stanley because of the religious angle of Livingstone (at least in his earlier days). Maybe the author was uncomfortable writing about that. I don't know.
And I get that people climb mountains "because it is there." But at the end of the day, there was zero practical utility in finding the source (or sources) of the White Nile. By much his own admission, finding the source for Livingstone became an obsession. And from an observer's point of view, a rather destructive one.
And given that the official (at least one of them...the first one, I believe) British rescue party was coming up the Nile to find him, why in blazes didn't someone looking for the source of the Nile actually follow the Nile? I understand there are difficulties by that route, but compared to the Central African routes, there is clearly no easy one.
Livingstone was clearly reckless and obsessed. I guess he was riding the wave of his popularity and resolved not to come back without finding the source. So he ditched his family, his life, (and arguably his religious convictions) and all of civilization on a quest that seemed not at all well thought out. He was basically just roaming around willy nilly.
To this day, oodles of people are climbing Everest (or trying to) and killing themselves in the process. And that was the reality of an African safari at the time. You were going to ruin yourself no matter what you found or didn't find. The bugs, germs, and other hostilities would bring down the best men, and often did.
It was interesting that more than once Stanley was on the verge of turning back, and had every rational reason to do so given the circumstances. But his quest for glory ultimately buoyed him and, if only by sheer luck, he wasn't brought down by either disease, accident, or murder (by villagers or those in his crew – there was a very close call at one point).
Still, this is real life and real life is messy, which certainly adds to the interest of reading about it. But it all seems a bit over-blown in importance.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jun 20, 2024 16:42:52 GMT -8
Funny you should write that. I am presently reading Team America and just finished Revolutionary: George Washington At War, both by Robert L. O'Connell. The first was published in 2022 and the second in 2019. Both have wokisms spinkled throughout. These were generally comments about racism or feminism. Most that didn't deal with these points were observations which any seventeen-year old could reason out on his own. In other words, they were silly and superfluous. I felt the books were written on a high-school level and contained little that I did not already know. One exception was the author's observation that the Hessians that Washington, and his troops, defeated at Trenton on Christmas Day were not drunk. They were in fact sober and did their best to beat the Continentals.
To learn this was worth reading the whole book. That fact puts a very different slant on the Battle of Trenton. The previous claim that the Germans were drunk was a slander against both the Germans and the Continentals. Against the first because they were disciplined soldiers not undisciplined drunks. The second because they defeated a sober, prepared and professional group, not a bunch of drunks.
That said, I doubt that I will be reading any more books by Dr. O'Connell. Having spent many months reading both The Cambridge Modern History and The Cambridge Medieval History, both of which were written by superb historians and excellent writers, reading O'Connell's histories is a bit painful.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 20, 2024 17:05:54 GMT -8
Interesting. I'd always believed the conventional wisdom. I wonder how the author sussed out this fact.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jun 20, 2024 17:13:25 GMT -8
I wonder the same thing, but am starting to look into it. I suspect that it would have to be through primary documents or published memoirs of soldiers who were at the battle.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jun 20, 2024 18:19:45 GMT -8
I looked at numerous links on the web and it would appear that it is now widely known among historians that the Hessians were not drunk.
I listened to a C-SPAN interview of a National Parks historian on the subject and he made it very clear that the Hessians were sober and excellent soldiers. He also confirmed my point about this being slander against both the Hessians and Continentals. It seems the claim that the Hessians were drunk was spread by British officers shortly after the battle so as to play down the American victory.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 21, 2024 6:42:02 GMT -8
I'll trust your judgment on this. But always in the back of my mind is that many try to gain notoriety by telling us the "real" story...basically engaging in revisionism. Maybe the Hessians were at least a little tipsy. Perhaps we could email the author (if we can find his address) and ask him.
But onto Heart of Darkness. I realize why I put down Conrad's novel the first time several years ago. A lot of "great" literature is a bit too full of itself. Conrad seems to want to pack in overly showy descriptive prose into each sentence until they collapse of their own weight. It's like macheteing your way through the thickets of the jungle.
I think a lot of great literature isn't this showy and instead (thinking Twain, for instance) is able to give a nice cadence to the storytelling while certainly also engaging in detailed and fancy descriptions where needed. I've read Hawthorne. I'm not new to the thickets. I can even enjoy them. But, sheesh.
Be that as it may, I'm sure Mr. Flu will forgive me if he knows that I chuckled a bit when reading this in the early chapters of Heart of Darkness:
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Post by kungfuzu on Jun 21, 2024 8:23:46 GMT -8
The National Parks historian was very clear on the point. He quoted the writings of a Continental soldier who was at the battle, that claimed the Germans were not drunk. The historian also mentioned that Colonel Rall, the commander of the Hessians at Trenton, had had Christmas dinner with a local Tory so he had probably taken a glass of wine or two during that, but was not in any way incapacitated.
The weather was horrible and the Hessian outposts had withdrawn from some of their positions and gone indoors to keep from freezing. This, probably more than anything, gave Washington and his troops the surprise they needed.
I looked into a number of different sites and they all confirmed the Hessians were not drunk. In fact, after the battle, the Continentals found many barrels of hooch which were not opened. Washington ordered them destroyed to keep his troops from imbibing.
That Heart of Darkness quote was pretty good.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jun 23, 2024 6:31:28 GMT -8
I'm sorry to say that I had to once again give up on reading that book. I just found the writing so uninteresting. I wonder if this book gained its famed for the usual liberal reasons. It was condemning the treatment of blacks, if not mankind in general. One Amazon reviewer speak for me:
Back to Into Africa. I'm not sure (I'd like Mr. Flu's opinion) when, or if, modern non-fiction books stopped making value judgments (unless it's a biography of a conservative, of course) and adopted the conceit of being merely descriptive or objective.
That's not to say that I think a biography should have an ax to grind. But clearly a biographer, in particular, has access to more information and is immersed in the subject for months or years while writing his book. To pretend not to know the implications of the facts just seems dishonest rather than objective.
To my mind, this faux "objectivity" is a modern thing. But, really, I want my biographer or non-fiction writer to make judgments when appropriate. Knowing the motives of people is a large part of knowing them. And often times people are motivated to do some bad things.
Livingstone, for example. Perhaps there is a reason that he remains somewhat of a sketchy figure in this book. But apparently he wrote a personal letter to a close friend that mentioned that he had had at least 300 native women. (The book does mention this, but draws no conclusions.)
That certainly could explain his somewhat aimless wandering for the source of the Nile which he claimed was based on finding some mythical springs (which seemed a very dodgy motive on the face of it) that the natives talked about. I read this book and it seems pretty clear that Livingstone was engaged in sexual tourism to some degree. His numbers don't surpass the claims of Wilt Chamberlain (20,000). But 300 for ostensibly a missionary/explorer is rather robust.
Do I want to condemn him for this? That's not my point. But I think a fact that large does perhaps explain his, to my mind, somewhat aimless wanderings.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jun 23, 2024 10:29:42 GMT -8
It's only a feeling, but I think that non-fiction books started dropping all pretense of examining/approaching a subject through the lens of commonly-held Western values, sometime in the mid-to-late eighties. I recall traveling in the USA during the period and noting the concerted effort to get people to accept the suppression of free speech through PC.
Just a couple of days ago, I mentioned to my wife that my biggest miss, as regards prognostications, was my belief that Americans would not fall for political correctness. I thought/maintained they were too grounded by common sense. Boy was I wrong on that. Such mistakes help keep my feet on the ground.  |
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