Boer War Discovery Page 92r

Emin Pasha, left, was a German naturalist and adventurer, Eduard Schnitzer, who was picked by General Gordon to administer the Southern Sudan for him, as Governor of Equatoria. Schnitzer was a convert to Islam and spoke local African languages. When Gordon was overrun by the Mahdi's Muslim armies at Khartoum, and killed, in 1885, Emin Pasha was cut off from the outside world. He fled for safety with his followers to Wadelai in today's northern Uganda, on the banks of the Nile. It was thought he needed to be rescued.

Henry Morton Stanley, a journalist for the New York Herald, decided to mount an expedition across Africa to reach him and set him free by bringing him out. The English speaking world wildly cheered him on.

(Christian American and British government elites, encouraged by their media barons, have long felt a God-sent duty to free people from those Muslim hordes that threaten civilization in distant lands.)

Stanley wanted to repeat his earlier triumph, when, with a similar African expedition (1873-77), he had found the long lost "Doctor Livingstone I presume" and proved to the world that the missionary doctor was alive and well. Why not try it again. It had made Stanley famous and sold a lot of books and newspapers.

Finally the exasperated Stanley resumed his march across East Africa to the coast, which he reached in December 1889. Emin Pasha then decided to transfer his loyalties to the German colonial service, and Stanley went home without him, so failing in his primary objective.

Stanley produced a fabulous narrative of the geography and ethnographic richness he found crossing the heart of Africa from coast to coast, "The Geographical Results of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition" 1890.

In 1892 a hundred miles south of Stanley Falls, Emin Pasha, while on another exploration adventure, was murdered by Arab slave traders.

The Words on the Jug: "Out of Darkness into Light" is emblazoned under Stanley's cameo on the front of the jug. It was the common belief, among whites at the time, that they had a Christian duty to bring the light of civilization and progress into the heart of "Darkest Africa." The Emin Pasha Expedition was a great opportunity to move this work along.

Clearly the Africans weren't impressed. The column had some 2,000 people in all, of whom hundreds, mostly black bearers, died largely due to Stanley's merciless leadership style. He also had one African hanged for stealing a rifle. Two of his white officers, also died, including Major Berttelot, whose name among the white officers, is raised on the jug.

William Grant Stairs was second in command to Stanley and was actually a Canadian explorer, soldier, and adventurer who was born in Halifax, NS and attended the Royal Military College in Kingston, ON. He was the first white man to climb the Ruwenzori Mountains, the fabled Mountains of the Moon, which Stanley is given credit for discovering.

Thomas Heazle Parke was the expedition's physician, while Berttelot, Mounteney-Jephson, and Nelson were other military men who commanded various divisions of Stanley's entourage.

William Bonny commanded Stanley's Rear Column of some 400 men, fewer than half of whom survived. He was an amateur entomologist after whom a butterfly, which he first collected on the expedition, was named.

Below, Stanley on the right, finally meets the elusive Emin Pasha, surrounded by thousands of festive Africans. This detail from a huge print issued by the Illustrated London News - hence the fold - was designed to be framed, and to be hung in public houses and hotels for decades.

Epilogue: In the 1890s the British had enough of the Muslims running amok and sought to restore order in this part of Africa, sending Lord Kitchener and his armies to recapture the Sudan and Khartoum, which they did in 1898 at the Battle of Omdurman.

Then the British turned their eyes on South Africa...

Shades of the American military industrial complex initiatives a century later, in the 1990s, against Muslim countries in the Middle East.

As for Stanley, he settled down in the land of his birth, Britain, married a British woman, became a Member of Parliament from 1895-1900 and died in 1904.

Below, the bugle carried by Emin Pasha's bugler on his campaigns.

Below, the remaining leaders of the Relief Expedition from left: Heazle-Parke, Nelson, Stanley, Stairs, Mounteney-Jephson.

Underneath, is the Royal Geographical Society medal presented to Stanley in 1890 for the discoveries he made during his search for Emin Pasha.