Odd this day

It’s the 197th anniversary of Alexander Gordon Laing entering Timbuktu and saying it “has completely met my expectations”, even though someone there a few years earlier had described it as “dull, filthy and exceedingly unattractive”. Why was he putting on a brave face? Well…

He’d written a book the year before, Travels in the Timannee, Kooranko and Soolima Countries, in Western Africa, and had another one planned about further successful exploration, so… glossing over the facts it was, then.

Also, the British had certain expectations of what was then spelt Timbuctoo, dating back to 14th century explorer Ibn Battuta, who found it a centre of trading and scholarship, a tale enhanced by a 17th century observer who said:

In 1809, James Grey Jackson had published a book about Morocco, where he was apparently a trader, which included an ‘Account of Timbuctoo’ — “the great emporium of Central Africa” — and was still in print over a decade later

Unfortunately, Jackson hadn’t actually been there. It looks like he got his ‘facts’ from Asseed El Hage Abd Salam Shabeeny (if, as seems likely, this is a frontispiece from a different edition of the book, now on Gutenberg).

Still, it was definitely a legendary city of gorgeous palaces and unimaginable wealth, so the British launched expeditions (and the French government offered a 10,000 franc reward for the first person to visit, which may have spurred on the British).

In the 17th century, two expeditions got lost. In the 18th, Sir Joseph Banks, President of The Africa Association, sent three people off: John Ledyard, Daniel Houghton and Ben Ali. The first two died, and Ali didn’t go, disappearing instead into the wilds of London.

In 1795, Mungo Park reached the Niger river but not Timbuctoo. 10 years later he went back with 44 soldiers. They all died of diseases they picked up along the way, and he was attacked and killed

Then an American sailor, Benjamin Rose (unless he was called Robert Adams; he claimed both) popped up in Mogador in Morocco, saying he’d reached the place, and it was “dull, filthy and exceedingly unattractive”.

Many of the details he offered — such as the speed of desert travel (15–20 miles a day) — were accurate, but because he said there was no gold in Timbuctoo and the British knew it was there, they dismissed his account.

Confirmation bias really is a hell of a drug.

In 1821, a Major Peddie came back from Africa without most of the people he’d gone with, because they were dead. The expedition cost somewhere in the region of £40,000 (about £3m today). So, Banks’ Association were desperate for a successful mission.

When Laing came along in 1824 offering to take no salary and only charge £640 10s (plus £173 7s 6d a year after that), they happily took him up on it. But it wasn’t straightforward. Arriving in Tripoli in May 1825, he met British consul, Hanmer Warrington, who lived here:

Laing also met the consul’s daughter, Emma, and decided to delay the next bit of the trip. He proposed, and was accepted, causing his prospective father-in-law some concern — he having already decided that Laing was one or two camels short of a train.

The devoted young couple had to convince him, though, because, as consul, Warrington was the only representative of the Church of England in the area, and would have to perform the marriage ceremony — so cunning Hanmer came up with a compromise.

He gave his consent, on the condition that they did not consummate the marriage until a vicar was available. “I will take good care my daughter remains as pure and chaste as snow”, he wrote, presumably expecting her to be widowed and wanting to assure her ‘marriageability’.

Just before he left, Laing ordered Warrington to pay the Pasha of Tripoli £4,000 for permission to cross his territory, somewhat increasing the knockdown price of the expedition. But this was absolutely fine, because as he said in a letter to his parents

Quoted in Curing Hiccups with Small Fires — A Delightful Miscellany of Great British Eccentrics, Karl Shaw

And at one stage, he wrote to his sister to say reiterate his status as a Man Of Destiny, so his father-in-law’s fears for the balance of his mind may not have been entirely misplaced.

Laing finally set off in July 1825, telling his wife he expected to be in Timbuctoo in 42 days. Naturally, then, in January 1826, he had got as far as Algeria, where he waited for the roads south to be safe enough from Tuareg tribesmen to be passable.

And while there, he nearly gave up. A portrait of Emma arrived, which he’d commissioned, and she looked “melancholy … unhappy — her sunken eye, her pale cheek and colourless lips”. He would have turned back, but a letter from his father-in-law dissuaded him.

…and the roads had been deemed safe, so out he set. And was attacked almost immediately by Tuareg tribesmen

To begin from the top, I have five sabre cuts on the crown of the head and three on the left temple, all fractures from which much bone has come away: one on my left cheek which fractured the jaw bone and had divided the ear, forming a very unsightly wound: one over the right temple and a dreadful gash on the back of the neck, which slightly grazed the windpipe: a musket ball in the hip, which made its way though my back, slightly grazing the backbone: five sabre cuts on my right arm and hand, three of the fingers broken, the hand cut three-fourths across, and the wrist bones cut through; three cuts on the left arm, the bone of which has been broken but is again uniting: one slight wound on the right leg and two with one dreadful gash on the left, to say nothing of a cut across the fingers of my left hand, now healed up.

He also had dysentery, or possibly plague, depending on whose account you read, but somehow made it a further 600 miles to his destination. It had taken 13 months. He intended to stay for a further six, but was not made welcome and left after six weeks.

Tuareg people promptly attacked again, and this time finished the job. Apparently two of them tied his turban round his neck and pulled either end until he stopped breathing. Then they cut his head off for good measure.

Hanmer Warrington waited a decent interval and married his daughter to a vice-consul in 1829. Unfortunately, Laing had been right about one thing: she was looking a bit peaky. She died of TB six months later.

The first European to reach Timbuktu and get back alive was French explorer René Caillé, in April 1828.

From Tripoli to Timbuktu