Akim-Foo: the history of a failure ... With route map, etc

Front matter

AKIM-FOO: THE HISTORY OF A FAILURE. LONDON : GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS, st. John's square. Frontispiece.] ,tJ F1NeER.P0ST 0N THE ItOAD TO COOJIASSIE." (P. 154). AKIM-FOO : THE HISTOEY OF A FAILUBE By MAJOR W. F. BUTLER, C.B., F.R.G.S AUTHOR OF " THE OBEAT LONE LAND," ETC. " "Tis not in mortals to command success, But we'll do more, Sempronius." We'll do without it. WITH ROUTE MAP, ETC. llonBoii : SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, LOW, & SEARLE, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET. 1875. [All rights reserved.] AKIMFOO: THE HISTORY OF A FAILURE.

Chapter I

The last white hill crest of the Wild North Land had sunk beneath a horizon of pine-trees. Prairie, forest, ice covered lake, frozen river, rushing rapid, mountain-peak, and rock-shadowed canon, had faded into the haze of things that lie far away in the by-gone. Of all the long wanderings of the snowy winter and slow-coming spring, there remained only these few shreds and patches of recollection which the wanderer picks from his pathway, to carry on with him into a future time. And never is there a moment when these shreds and patches are of such little use to us as at the termination of a long journey. The work is over, we have got back to civilization and the old tracks again ; around us men come and go along the well-worn roads to which we are strangers now. Behind us lies the confused mass of our late enterprise, shapeless — for time has not yet come to place its several portions in their true positions; — before us, an unknown realm into which the B AKIMFOO imagination scarcely dares to penetrate, so vague and vast are its hidden possibilities.

More than a year before the date of which I now speak (the early autumn of 1873) I had set out upon a long journey. Little by little the vast distances of the North had been conquered. Night after night the camp had been made deeper in these remote regions where Nature wraps herself in a wilderness so limitless that the roll of the human tide will beat for centuries in vain against her vast desolation. And now it was all over — the dim shadowy waste ; the long reach of the silent river • the pine-woods, over whose forked tops the low-hung moon looked at endless stretch of frozen lake and ice-piled shore line ; the giant mountains, whose peaks slept in an eternity of snow — all had sunk back again into an oblivion as deep as the rest from which the wanderer's footsteps had for the moment roused them.

Wandering down the Pacific slope to California, and crossing the Continent in eight days (it had taken me eight months to cross it 1000 miles farther to the north), I stood once more on the Atlantic shore. I was uncertain where to turn to. Would I cross the ocean to the old familiar haunts again, or go back to the solitudes, the red man, and the camp fire ? I had left horses in the meadows of the Saskatchewan, and there were scattered dogs that had drawn my sleighs in half the fur forts across the frozen North. One evening (it was the 30th of August) I entered the melancholy-looking room where, 'neath a gloom, as of some great disaster, Hotel America consumes its dinner. More from habit than from any expectation of finding news, I took from the boy newsvendor at the door the evening paper.

During the melancholy meal the " Free something or other" lay unread beside me. At last, glancing at its Telegraphic Summary, I read as follows : — " Great Britain. — It has been decided to despatch an expedition against the Ashantees on the West Coast of Africa. Sir Garnet Wolseley will command. He will be accompanied by a select staff of officers, amongst whom will be several of those who served on the Red River Expedition. It is expected that the campaign will be finished in March, and that the troops will return to England in April. Sir Garnet will sail for Africa on the 8th September." I read to the end, then read over again, rolled up the paper, and walked straight to the Telegraph office. " Will you send that message immediately ? " The clerk read, — " To Sir Garnet Wolseley. Ashanti Expedition.

Remember . Will sail by first steamer." " Yes, that's right." Before I left the office the wire was " clicking- " the message to England. There used to be an old game played by boys at school, which bore the name of " Follow the Leader." It did not call for much thought, or demand the exercise of much discretion on the part of the following; yet it was a useful pastime for all that ; and, although the tendency of to-day is somewhat against following a leader in any thing, and faithful service to a chief is deemed derogatory to the well-being of the democratic boy or man, it is nevertheless a spirit which has done some great things in its time, which has written its results deeper perhaps b AKIMFOO : on this old earth of ours than all the individuality that ever sprung, or will spring, from the masterhood of the many and the serviceship of none.

Well, if this old game which we played as boys did not call for much thought or reflection, neither did the resolve which I had now made. Three years before I had been one of a small band who followed Wolseley into the solitudes of North America, when he led his little army across that wilderness of rock and water, pine-tree and precipice, which lies between the head waters of the St. Lawrence and the lake called Winnipeg. The leadership of that time made the following a pleasant task, and among the followers there was not one who was not ready to do hard work again in the footsteps of the leader. True, there would be many fresh hands anxious to cast their fortunes into this new enterprise on the fever-stricken African coast ; for the fame of the chief had already widened out over a larger area-, and the men who looked to Wolseley as the rising star of the British army might be counted by hundreds in those ranks where, despite the chop and change of Par liamentary strife, there still burned, fresh and bright, the true spirit of English chivalry.

But if to the young blood of the army Wolseley was tha rising star, to those who had known him in other times, and followed his leadership in other lands, he was already the risen star ; and it was enough to say to any one among them, " Wolseley leads," to insure an unquestioning following. In my own case there could be no mistake. True, there lay the Atlantic between me and the starting-point; but the Atlantic had been quickly bridged before as the prelude to another enterprise ; and if it intruded itself a second time, the only thing was to cross it again, and to cross it quickly too ; there was but scant time to lose. Here was the last day of August, and the start was to be on the 8th September. To catch that start seemed impossible if the cable spoke truly ; but there are many delays in such things ; and even if the date still held punctual, that extra 3000 miles w-hich I had to cross would entitle me to " a few minutes' law," and I could follow to the fight.

Quebec, Boston, and New York send steamers weekly to England. From the latter port there is a vessel starting almost daily. A glance at the list informed me that the " Russia " would sail on the 3rd September from New York. I was late for the Saturday boat from Quebec. The " Russia " was the next, and, better still, the best and fastest ship that sailed the stormy Atlantic. And now I had little to do, save to part from and pension off an old friend. He had followed me into many lands, but the one I was about to seek he could not enter. For many a month he had shared food and fortune, drawn my load by day, and slept beside me at night ; rendering a debt of toil and trust, the value of which it would not be easy to put into words; but now the service and the fellowship must here alike end, and the old dog and his master go their different ways.

For me, the master, the change from Arctic cold to African heat would be bad enough, but for him — the dog — it would have been a hundredfold worse. I could readily cast aside the blanket-coat, the fur cap, the moose skin " mittaines ; " but the woolly coat, the bushy tail, the immense neck-muffler of soft fur and long hair, with AKIMFOO : which Nature had adorned the burly person of the " Un tiring," were as unalterable as the pace and pluck which she had also given him. The story of that long fellowship, and the wild scenes through which it was carried, has been told in another book; but the record of the " Untiring's " progress through the territories and civilized States of the great Union has yet to be unfolded. For the present it will be sufficient to say that, after many adventures, the Untiring had arrived at the Atlantic seaboard, apparently to regard that ocean with the same almost placid indifference which he had already bestowed upon the Pacific.

His progress through the States of the Republic by boat and coach, by road and rail, had been attended with some slight misapprehension on the part of the citizens regarding his exact species. On the shores of Puget Sound, in Washington territory, a group of small boys imagined that they beheld a Cinnamon Bear, and, regarding me in the light of the chain-and-collar man, had the temerity to inquire, " What time is the show to begin, mister ?" On another occasion, an old lady travelling in a stage coach (in which the Untiring, having been rated and charged as a first-class passenger, was also travelling as such) ejaculated, " Laux, look at that 'ere Coon I " In the long railroad journey from San Francisco to Boston, he afforded ample opportunity to innumerable conductors and baggage-men to graduate in the degrees of extortion to its highest limit.

I can unhesitatingly say that, with the exception of a single Mormon baggage-man on the short line between Ogden and Salt Lake City, I did not encounter one individual connected with railroad baggage transport in the West who had not become so contaminated by contact with the Untiring as to demand double the correct sum as remuneration for his conveyance. The stern morality and high probity of these railroad officials in the United States is so fully established, that I can only account for their peculiar conduct on this occasion by the supposition that the fault lay on the side of the dog ; just as the horse is the cause of turf vil lainies at Newmarket, and the scenery in Switzerland or at Niagara must be held responsible for all the hotel swindles. Be that as it may, despite overcharging, curious classification, and many mistakes as to genus, the Untiring had reached in safety the Atlantic ; and now the time of parting had come.

The paths that for 8000 miles had lain together must here separate. It was a simple business. In these things animals have perhaps the advantage of us ; they don't know what is about to take place. They look at us almost to the last as though the life was always to be the same. Never had the Untiring's tail been more proudly ele vated, his ears more erect, than on the evening when I led him to his new home, and introduced him to his future friends. Although he had been born and bred in remotest savagery, his deportment was as polished as the oaken floor on which he stepped. When the moment of departure arrived, he had never theless to be secured with chain and collar. A collar had long been an accustomed burthen to him ; but heretofore it had been used to draw me along with him, now it was to keep us asunder.

When he found that he was to be tied, he howled with that peculiar moan which only his breed and the wild wolves of the North can send through the pine-woods. Old dog, good-bye ! One doesn't waste much time over AKIMFOO : these things; but perhaps the Good-byes that are said short and curt, or are not said at all in spoken words, are the ones given to the hardest parting — their echo is within, and their memory lingers long. He stopped the howl ; there was a strain at the chain that would not break, a tug at the collar that would not draw or hawl, and the long fellowship was ended. Then, as we drove away to the port where the steamer lay in the moonlight, the old dog stopped his moan, as dogs in mental pain sometimes do, to listen — to listen in the vain hope that the sound of footstep or of hoof-beat may be returning instead of going away ; and then, on the night air, the howl rose louder than before, until the link of sound was lost in distance.

A steamer of colossal size, and rich in all that gilding, paint, and lighting can do, carries golden New York to and from its favourite watering-place. On this night there was an unusual crowd on board the vessel. There had been a wedding, or a dance, or some thing of more than ordinary " brilliancy " in the watering place, and a dense crowd covered the deck and saloon, and filled the gangways and galleries, which, like the tiers in a theatre, ran round the vessel. This gorgeous steam-ship had a history. She had cost some millions of dollars, had broken the company which constructed her, and finally had become the property of the notorious Mr. Jim Fisk. An English millionaire becoming proprietor of a large steam-ship or two would probably have rested content with his acquisition. Not so Mr. Fisk.

Having gazetted himself Admiral, and dressed himself in the full uniform of his rank, he appeared every evening at the hour of sailing on the quarter-deck of his ship. It would appear, however, that he was content with the role of Port Admiral, and did not ambition the more onerous duties of the open sea, as he was in the habit of quitting his vessel at the moment of her departure. Traces of Mr. Fisk's peculiar ideas of luxury were still visible on board the steamer ; there were singing-birds in large cages ; there was a German band, and French beds. The band and the birds made much noise; the birds watched the band, and the band Watched the Rhine ; and, finally, the passengers preferred good French beds to bad German music. The boat was crowded to excess, so that "a state room" and a French bed were things not for me; but a blanket had too often been my bed in the forest to be a hardship here, and, getting possession of one, I rolled myself up on a table, and dreamt of the long nights in the North and the old dog again.

At twelve o'clock next day the " Russia " steamed out of New York, with what is called " the usual complement of passengers." Somewhere off Fort La Fayette a small tug steamed violently towards the colossal Cunarder, whistling, puffing, and splashing as she came. "There," said a bystander, " that's meant as a good-bye to some railway or mining man. I always estimate the amount of financial scheming* and commercial villainy there is on board this ship bound for Europe, by the quantity of steam-whistling and ' good-bye ' puffing that goes on as we clear yon point. There must be some great rascals on board, this voyage." In due time the " Russia " touched the shores of England. It was early on the morning of the 13th of AKIMFOO : September. Late on the previous evening another steam ship had sailed out of the Mersey ; she was called the " Ambriz," a vessel of the West African trade.

She bore a young General and a goodly company of gallant men, bound on a distant enterprise. The " Russia " coming in, passed the " Ambriz " going out, somewhere off the wild race of Holyhead. There were many lights from ships at sea, and light houses on shore ; and out of that gallant little band on board the " Ambriz," there was many a one to whom these misty lights were the last glimpse in life of English land. I had lost little time, and the big ship " Russia " had steamed her best, without stint of coal or stress of storm ; but, for all that, I had missed the start, and there was nothing for it but to follow to the fight.

Chapter II

" Man wants but little here below " for the work of war or travel. The word " outfit " is a term of great commercial value, but of little practical importance. Given a stout gun, a good pistol, a few pairs of strong boots, two or three suits of tweed, and half a dozen flannel shirts, a wide awake hat, and a man may be considered " outfitted " for anything that the four quarters of the globe might be likely to bring forth. A well-filled pocket is of far more consequence than a well-filled trunk, and whether it be for Vancouver or Van Dieman, for Patagonia or Pegu, the real outfit is English gold. Fully two-thirds of the usual conventional outfit will be found utterly useless before one is a week in the new land. The kettle whose peculiar function was to boil water without fuel, the very acme of kettles in Oxford Street or Cornhill, will be found to do anything and everything in the world, except boil water.

That admi rable institution by which bed, bath, and board, are com bined in one and the same article, owing to some little hitch in its mysterious mechanism, offers to the wearied traveller a board when it should turn up as a bed, and becomes a bath just at the moment when there is not a drop of water to be had. AKIMFOO : If it be an African outfit which you have provided yourself with in Piccadilly or Cornhill, you will find some of the most cherished articles put to strange uses by your trusted Krooman from Palmas, or your grinning hench man from Old Calabar. It is curious to notice how quickly these clever " dodges " collapse in contact with the rough but simple ways of the wilds. With a knife, an awl, an axe, and a bit of line, a wild man will perform most of the " skilled work " of the wilderness.

He will build a boat, make a snow-shoe, a bridge, a house, a horse-cart, or a dog-sleigh ; if he can't, he is not worth his salt, and the sooner he turns " tame man " the better. He does not hold the clever dodges in much repute; he has probably seen their inevitable collapse too often to have much faith left in them; a gun that will carry and kill farther than his own, and that will go off after it has been submerged in a lake or river, will excite his admiration ; but for the rest— he thinks his own gear of shoe and sleigh, cart and canoe, halter and hobble, best fitted for his work— and he is right. I remember going to a renowned outfitter in London, preparatory to setting out upon an expedition. I wanted a few flannel shirts, silk handkerchiefs, stockings, &c; the purchase was soon effected, but upon mentioning my destination to the worthy man, he evidently regarded me as a humbug.

" We have an Explorer's Room, sir," he bluntly remarked. "Would you not like to inspect our stock ? Some of the most celebrated travellers have pro cured their outfits from us, I can assure you, sir. If you are really going to travel, sir; — Eh ?" To attempt the work of travel or exploration without a visit to the "Explorer's Room," was an act which he deemed irrational and absurd, and indicative of an im postor ; a man had no right to hunt white bears except in proper " polar spectacles," or seek for sport in South Africa without a pair of patent " hippopotamus leggings," or a helmet of felt. War, however, differs from mere travel, inasmuch as it necessitates a uniform dress and fixed armament. On the present occasion it had been determined to subdue King Coffee in grey Canadian home-spun, an Elcho sword-bayonet, unblackened leather boots, and a cork helmet.

These articles take at any period some little time to get ready, but at the period of which we speak, it had become a matter of no little difficulty to procure some of them. The sudden demand of some forty or fifty officers for Canadian home-spun had depleted the big city of London of that article, and although the cable had been employed to supply the city with the exhausted fabric, none had yet come from across the ocean. At length a substitute was found, and on the last day of September, exactly one month after I had in America gleaned tidings of an Ashanti war, I sailed away from England for Africa. It was a dark, gusty afternoon, filled with the forecast of the coming winter ; there was the smoke of the huge city to make murkier the misty autumn evening, and the Mersey looked its worst as the tender bore away from wharf to steamer.

The steam-ship " Benin " was a sad contrast to the magnificent " Russia," whose deck I had quitted but one fortnight earlier. It was the difference between America and Africa; they were the opposite poles of comfort, speed, and cleanliness. Low in the water lay the ill- AKIMFOO : shapen craft ; dirty with coal and cargo were the low decks, and dirtier still the saloon and close, ill-ventilated cabins. A few passages earlier, eleven men had died out of her small crew, two cabin servants and a steward being of the nnmber ; but these little items of information we did not know at the time of sailing, and it was as well that they should have been revealed at later stages, or perhaps the murky autumn evening would have worn a drearier hue. But if the vessel itself was wanting in everything that makes ship-life pleasant, the man who commanded her seemed sufficient in himself to counterbalance every dis advantage.

His was not the suavity of the conventional sea captain. He had seen life and death in many phases on this dismal coast to which his ship was bound again ; and in his quiet, handsome face, tinged with thought, and his voice, gentle as a woman's could be, I often thought I read the sad story of West African travel. He was in the prime of manhood ; he was the picture of health and strength ; yet that night, as we rounded out by the grim shore of Anglesea, he looked his last on English land. " I hope to be back again by Christmas," he said to me. " I hope to spend Christmas-day at home." It was the old story. The " Benin " went and came, and ere Christmas had come she was at anchor in the muddy Mersey again ; but her brave, kind captain lay out in a hammock shroud somewhere in that " vast and wandering grave " which throbs against the sands of Equa torial Africa.

Pitching and rolling over the Bay of Biscay, the "Benin" held her slow course to the South. African passengers are not, as a rule, a lively race ; they seem to suffer under a weight of inertia; if they are novices, about to enter Africa for the first time, they are engaged in firing off revolvers at peaceable porpoises, or molesting unoffending members of Mother Cary's family. On the present occasion the " Benin " carried some passengers well known in African travel. He of the Congo devoted himself to skinning an ant eater; he of Zanzibar practised single-stick with such assiduity that he succeeded one day, off Sierra Leone, in single-sticking the eye of another passenger, and leaving it sightless for life. This feat put an end to the single sticking of the Tanganika traveller, and left the ant-eater skinner to pursue alone his meaner task.

Early on the morning of the seventh day after leaving England, the outline of an island mountain rose above the sea. It is one well known by name over the earth, but seldom I think is its full beauty realized. Sailing in from the rough northern seas, from the huge billows of the " rolling forties," and with the smoke-darkened landscape of Liverpool still a recent picture on memory's canvas, the traveller looks upon Madeira as on some fairy land of beauty : and it is perhaps as beautiful a bit of nature as can be found the wide earth over. Out of blue waves a great mountain mass rears its peaks to the skies. The ocean which laves the rocks of Madeira is well fitted to form the setting to such a gem ; it sends its coolest, freshest, softest breezes to fan the rugged brow of the lofty mountain ; it gathers up showers so gentle, that they seem like wreaths of feathery gauze around the fair hillsides of the beautiful island ; a thousand varied tints stream through these floating showers from the brilliant sun above, and fall in shafts of many coloured light on Ruivo's scarped sides and • Machico's AKIMFOO : glistening rivulets.

Groves of green nestle in valleys, where once the earthquake rumbled, and the fire torrent ran downwards to the sea; colours, bright and vivid, soft and refreshing to the eye, lie spread along the slope which rises from the ocean ; white villas with dark-brown roofs peep out from groves of laurel and palm ; and over all, the grim peaks of Ruivo and Machico, and the Arrierro, come and go through the rifts of vapour which float lazily around their stupendous precipices. Across the giant fissures in the upper mountain the rainbow has thrown bridges of light, and at times one sees beneath the brilliant arches, the silvery threads of mountain rivulets as they flash over some lofty precipice, or fall in foam down the steep ravines, as they hurry to the ocean with the message of the sky. So much for the sight, it has a rich banquet spread before it : but the ear is feasted too ; the blue sea falls on the grey rock with the music of a dreamland, and all the evening long, the mellowed chime of bells floats out upon the wave, from the towers of church and convent built high up Torrezha's side.

Nature is fond of antithesis. She has placed her most beautiful islands off the shores of her most hideous continent. Madeira and Teneriffe belong to that conti nent which has the Sahara and the Soudan as the leading features of its scenery. We looked at this earthly paradise only from the deck of our vessel ; for a senseless quarantine kept us prisoners on board ; yet perhaps it was better thus to see it ; for the scenes thus looked upon, live in memory as pictures free from the recollection of the discomforts which attend upon actual existence in their midst. There is an old story in Madeira that the earliest inhabitants were two lovers, who, fleeing from Brittany, were driven by wild tempests to this island. Machico still tells from his cloud-wrapt summit the word-worn story of these happy castaways : for surely if Love, since it quitted Paradise, ever found on earth a fitting bower, it was here amidst the wild vines and violet covered rocks of this sea-girt heaven.

We sailed away from Madeira, and on a wild dusky evening in early October the "Benin " rounded the east cape of Teneriffe, and cast anchor a cable's length from the mole of Vera Cruz. The outline of the mountain isle laY jagged and dark, against an orange and pale saffron coloured sky; the surf thundered loudly on the shore, and a heavy bank of cloud hung over the glorious Peak. It was a wild and desolate-looking scene, destitute of all softness or brightness of colouring ; yet behind that out line of rugged mountain lay a picture of marvellous beauty. " Oratava is the most beautiful spot I have ever seen on the earth," says the German's greatest traveller. It was near midnight when we steamed from beneath the shadow of this weird-looking isle, and saw the scattered lights of Santa Cruz grow dim in distance : the colossal Peak had hidden its head in gloomy vapour.

I was destined to see it under other circumstances. Little more than five months later, two men held up a fainting man to a narrow port-hole on the lower deck of another steamer, to behold a glorious prospect. The deadly African fever had for a moment left him, and they raised his worn frame to take one look at the Peak at the earth which he seemed on the verge of leaving. Outside the narrow port there lay, touched by the wino of a gentle breeze, a sunset sea; beyond rose a mountain mass, and high up in heaven one glorious peak stood C AKIMFOO : above all other summits ; there was snow upon his crown, and along his fissured shoulders there were dark seams, whose shadows lay against the glitter of their rugged edges in the dying sun. The calm of a vast peace seemed to rest on sea and heaven.