To The Coast
By 17 February all the surviving members of the expedition, and Emin with a group of about 65 loyal soldiers, met at Stanley's camp above Lake Albert, and during the subsequent weeks several hundred more of Emin's followers, many of them the families of the soldiers, accumulated there. Emin still had not expressed a firm intention to leave Equatoria, and 5 April, after a heated argument, Stanley determined to leave shortly, and the expedition departed Kavalli's for the coast on 10 April.
The trip to the coast passed first south, along the western flank of the Ruwenzoris, and Stairs attempted to ascend to a summit, reaching 10,677 ft before having to turn around. They then passed by Lake Edward and Lake George, then across to the southernmost point of Lake Victoria, passing through the kingdoms of Ankole and Karagwe. Stanley made "treaties" with the various rulers; although it is most likely that these were not regarded as such by the locals, they were later used to establish I.B.E.A claims in the area.
Lake Victoria was seen on 15 August, and the expedition reached Mackay's missionary station at Usambiro on 28 August. At this point they began to learn of the complicated changing situation in East Africa, with British and German interests scrambling to stake their claims, and a second relief expedition under Frederick John Jackson. After waiting fruitlessly for news of the Jackson expedition, Stanley left on 17 September, with a party now reduced to some 700 by a combination of death and desertion.
As the expedition approached the coast, they encountered parties of Germans and other signs of German activity in the interior, and were met by commissioner Wissmann on 4 December and escorted into Bagamoyo. That evening a banquet was held, during which an inebriated Emin fell out of a 2nd-story window he mistook for a balcony, and from which he did not recover until the end of January 1890. In the meantime, the rest of the expedition had dispersed; Stanley went to Zanzibar and then to Cairo, where he wrote the 900 pages of In Darkest Africa in just 50 days. The Zanzibari carriers were paid off or (in the case of prisoners) returned to their masters, the Sudanese and Egyptians were transported back to Egypt, some later returning to work for the I.B.E.A. Emin took service with the Germans in February, and the other Europeans returned to England.
Read more about this topic: Emin Pasha Relief Expedition
Famous quotes containing the word coast:
“Frequently also some fair-weather finery ripped off a vessel by a storm near the coast was nailed up against an outhouse. I saw fastened to a shed near the lighthouse a long new sign with the words “ANGLO SAXON” on it in large gilt letters, as if it were a useless part which the ship could afford to lose, or which the sailors had discharged at the same time with the pilot. But it interested somewhat as if it had been a part of the Argo, clipped off in passing through the Symplegades.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)