Great Travelers in History: Mary Kingsley

1862-1900

By Jenni Gate

The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.

Albert Einstein

Mary Henrietta Kingsley traveled paths few in history had ever explored in a time when women never traveled alone. Her journeys within West Africa expanded Europe’s knowledge of the region. Despite the inherent racism of colonialist England during the Victorian era, she became an advocate for the people of West Africa, often suffering ridicule as a result. Ignoring popular opinion and the expectations of society, Mary Kingsley paddled up little-known estuaries, walked through jungles, endured insects and reptiles, climbed mountains, and stoked fires on steamships. She met and befriended cannibals and missionaries alike, though it would be fair to say she preferred the former to the latter. She collected specimens of fish wherever she went, and took copious notes of her experiences. Her life was extraordinary but short.

Although she had no formal education, Mary Kingsley grew up in a house full of books about science and memoirs of explorers. Her father, a doctor and writer, traveled extensively throughout his own life. He contracted rheumatic fever on his last journey and returned home where his daughter cared for him until his death. She had nursed her mother for years. Coincidentally, both parents died within a few weeks of one another. Mary Kingsley, then age 30, decided to travel. She had a few academic connections through her brother, who was in law school at that time. Mary read what was known about Africa, asked her acquaintances for advice about traveling there and was roundly told not to go. She was repeatedly warned that it was too dangerous to go to West Africa.

Ignoring all advice, in 1893 she headed to Liverpool and boarded a ship for the Canary Islands, then pushed on to Sierra Leone. She arrived in West Africa with few possessions other than her high-necked shirts and floor-length skirts. Traveling the coastline by steamboat, she made her way past the oil rivers of Nigeria and on to Angola. 

Region traveled by Kingsley

It was the Victorian era, and women did not travel alone. Her shipmates assumed she was a missionary, and they were scandalized to find her still on board the ship after all the other missionaries disembarked at the Canary Islands. Even in Africa, local women continually asked where her husband was. She frequently went into dangerous areas alone, but most often journeyed with African men who helped her by cooking, translating, making camp, and finding pathways.

On her second journey to West Africa a year after the first, Kingsley traversed the rivers of the French Congo and climbed Mount Cameroon (the first English person to climb it). She met and befriended the Fan (or Fang as some sources name them) people, who were known to be cannibals. Exploring by steamboat and dugout canoe, paddling the swamps and streams of the Ogooué River in Gabon, she collected fish from the rivers and lakes to take back to the British Museum as specimens for study. She was thrilled to have this work taken seriously by the zoologist who helped sponsor the trip, Dr. Albert Gunther. At least three previously unknown species of fish were named after her.

Mary Kingsley documented travels on the rivers throughout West Africa. Her writing is evidence of a humorous and curious mind. In Travels in West Africa, she described the dangers of paddling through the tidewaters of African rivers in dugout canoes:

Now a crocodile drifting down in deep water, or lying asleep with its jaws open on a sand-bank in the sun, is a picturesque adornment to the landscape when you are on the deck of a steamer, and you can write home about it and frighten your relations on your behalf; but when you are away among the swamps in a small dugout canoe, and that crocodile and his relations are awake – a thing he makes a point of being at flood tide because of fish coming along – and when he has got his foot upon his native heath – that is to say, his tail within holding reach of his native mud – he is highly interesting, and you may not be able to write home about him – and you get frightened on your own behalf.

About encounters with insects in West African Studies, she wrote:

But it’s against the insects ashore that you have to be specially warned. During my first few weeks of Africa, I took a general natural historical interest in them with enthusiasm as of natural history, it soon became a mere sporting one, though equally enthusiastic at first. Afterwards a nearly complete indifference set in, unless some wretch aroused a vengeful spirit in me by stinging or biting. I should say, looking back calmly upon the matter, that 75 per cent of West African insects sting, 5 per cent bite, and the rest are either permanently or temporarily parasitic on the human race. And undoubtedly one of the many worst things you can do in West Africa is to take any notice of an insect. If you see a thing that looks like a cross between a flying lobster and the figure of Abraxas on a Gnostic gem, do not pay it the least attention, never mind where it is; just keep quiet and hope it will go away – for that’s your best chance; you have none in a stand-up fight with a good thorough-going African insect. …

Of course you cannot ignore driver ants, they won’t go away, but the same principle reversed is best for them, namely, your going away yourself. 

And later in the same work:

While in West Africa you should always keep an eye lifting for Drivers. You can start doing it as soon as you land, which will postpone the catastrophe, not avoid it; …it may be just as well for you to let things slide down the time-stream until Fate sends a column of the wretches up your legs. … The females and workers of these ants are provided with stings as well as well-developed jaws. They work both for all they are worth, driving the latter into your flesh, enthusiastically up to the hilt; they remain therein, keeping up irritation when you have hastily torn their owner off in response to a sensation that is like that of red hot pinchers.

After her second trip to West Africa, Kingsley toured England and spoke widely of her travels. She lectured on diverse topics from opening trade to Europeans in the region to the harm caused by missionaries converting native people and destroying whole ways of life in the process. Her opinions, formed from personal experience and observation, were controversial, sometimes creating a backlash in the press. Yet her work was influential in establishing perceptions of West Africa in Europe, and many of her observations are still relevant.

Volunteering as a nurse for the Second Boer War, Mary Kingsley returned to Capetown, South Africa in the late 1890s where she died of typhoid on June 3, 1900. In England between journeys, she had met Rudyard Kipling, striking up a friendship of mutual respect and admiration. In her work, Kingsley often quoted Kipling. At her death, Kipling gave her eulogy before her burial at sea with full military honors.

About her own writing, Mary Kingsley was humble and humorously self-deprecating, as the following story illustrates:

Alas! I am hampered with bad method of expression. I cannot show you anything clearly and neatly. I have to show you a series of pictures of things, and hope you will get from those pictures the impression which is the truth. I dare not set myself up to tell you the truth. … It is a repetition of the difficulty a friend of mine and myself had over a steam launch called the Dragon Fly, whose internal health was chronically poor, and subject to bad attacks. Well, one afternoon, he and I had to take her out to the home-going steamer, and she had suffered that afternoon in the engines, and when she suffered anywhere she let you know it. We did what we could for her, in the interests of humanity and ourselves; we gave her lots of oil, and fed her with delicately-chopped wood; but all to but little avail. So both our tempers being strained when we got to the steamer, we told her what the other one of us had been saying about the Dragon Fly. The purser of the steamer thereon said “that people who said things like those about a poor inanimate steam launch were fools with a flaming hot future, and lost souls entirely.” We realised that our observations had been imperfect; and so, being ever desirous of improving ourselves, we offered to put the purser on shore in the Dragon Fly. We knew she was feeling still much the same, and we wanted to know what he would say when jets of superheated steam played on him. He came, and they did; and when they did, you know, he said things I cannot repeat. Nevertheless, things of the nature of our own remarks, but so much finer of the kind, that we regarded him with awe when he was returning thanks to the “poor inanimate steam launch”; but it was when it came to his going ashore, gladly to leave us and her, that we found out what that man could say; and we morally fainted at his remarks made on discovering that he had been sitting in a pool of smutty oil, which she had insidiously treated him to, in order to take some of the stuffing out of him about the superior snow-whiteness of his trousers. Well, that purser went off the scene in a blue flame; and I said to my companion, “Sir, we cannot say things like that.” “Right you are, Miss Kingsley,” he said sadly; “you and I are only fit for Sunday school entertainments.”

Mary Kingsley wrote two books, Travels in West Africa, published in 1897, and West African Studies, published in 1899, and she published several articles. Her writing was descriptive and full of detail about the surroundings and observations of the people she encountered. The humor infusing her writing makes reading her work still a joy today.

Once in a Lifetime

A still from the new footage of an uncontacted Amazon tribe in Brazil.
© BBC/FUNAI/Survival VIA www.survivalinternational.org

When I wander through the ruins of ancient civilizations, I try to imagine what life was like in those times. Did people hold their babies in their arms and guard them with their lives, just like we do? Did they wonder why relationships had to be so complicated? Did they spend their childhood annoying their siblings? My musings may appear trivial, but I truly believe it doesn’t matter how different our cultures are, there are some basic human characteristics that are a part of our DNA, whether we like it or not.

As with other parts of the world, Latin America has its fair share of extinct cultures--the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas to name but a few. Learning about the ruins and how these once powerful civilizations fell has been an endless source of fascination for me. So much so, my last book, Vestige, explored a way the Incas could have perished. But what about the indigenous groups that live in Latin America right now?

Globalisation has been wonderful in a lot of ways. I love that I can chat via computer to a friend on the other side of the world. Using a phone, emailing, and faxing are all part of modern day society and have become ingrained in our lives. I do wonder, though, at what point this western globalization will go too far. Not everyone wants to be in contact via email, cell phone, and Facebook. And not everyone wants to dress like westerners or live our kind of lifestyle. 

In the 1500s, when the Europeans first arrived in South America, many indigenous populations vanished because of diseases such as smallpox, measles, and the flu. It’s not much different today. Some communities have lived in isolation for thousands of years and still use their centuries old techniques for hunting, eating, birthing, and medicine. They have no knowledge of the western world and no immunity to our diseases. It doesn’t take a scientist to work out what would happen if these people came into contact with outsiders. 

As an armchair anthropologist, I love to learn about both ancient and modern communities. I like to find out about a community’s way of life, religious ceremonies, and their relationships with each other and the world they live in. We can learn a lot from other cultures. But, as with most things, there are lines that shouldn’t be crossed.

The inquisitive side of me wants to know more about the tribes that live in isolation today. However, this information comes at a cost. I could never justify anyone suffering at the hands of someone else in a quest for knowledge, or even worse, for natural resources.

Photo via www.survivalinternational.org

In 1836, Charles Goodyear invented rubber, and by the late 19^th and 20^th centuries, the Amazon was targeted as the perfect place to harvest sap from the rubber tree. When mahogany became the wood du jour, loggers forced their way into the forests. Unfortunately, these are the places where many indigenous tribes live, and as a result, they have come face to face with a modern world. The people either fled deeper into the jungle, or became displaced and westernized. 

Thankfully, groups such as the Peruvian Native Federation of the Madre de Rios River and Tributaries (FENAMAD), and the Racimos de Ungurahui Project, have managed to secure territorial reserves in south-eastern Peru. The reserve protects three groups of indigenous people who now live in voluntary isolation and this ensures their rights are finally respected. 

Of course, these types of decisions can cause great controversy, as seen only a few weeks ago. Fisticuffs erupted in Peru after officials from the outgoing administration let slip there were plans to modify—and perhaps revoke—the protected status for reserves set aside for indigenous groups and the surrounding rainforests. With over 15 nomadic or semi-nomadic groups inhabiting eastern Peru, this would have a detrimental effect on the inhabitants if companies moved in to take the natural resources. Groups such as http://www.survivalinternational.org will ensure the new Peruvian government, which only came into power a few days ago, is aware of the impact on the indigenous people should the restrictions be lifted. 

Photo via www.survivalinternational.org

Growing up in Australia, I am well and truly aware of the impact one society can have on another, especially if the contact is forced. The city where I grew up, Geelong, has a long association with the Wathaurong tribe, and I am afraid to say the way the English settlers treated the Aborigines was atrocious. It doesn’t sit well to know there are groups of people in the world today who could be subjected to unwanted contact and their way of life changed forever. The last thing I want to do is travel to the Amazon in ten years time, look at the ruins of a village, and hear stories about the indigenous people that became extinct in my lifetime.

Click here for a short video that has some amazing footage of a tribe in the Amazon. There are also some very interesting points made by the man in charge of monitoring uncontacted tribes in Brazil.

Where The Wild Things Are

In the opening scene of my novel, Vestige, Tess Garibaldi stumbles through the Amazon with an enigmatic and oh-so-sexy guide at her side. Nature forces her to confront a myriad of challenges, but she pushes on, shedding her city-girl persona and transforming into an Indiana Jones in heels. 

The old adage “write what you know” comes in handy when creating the types of stories I write. I can pull from my travel experiences, face my own phobias (from a safe distance), and relive thrilling adventures. Not only does doing this make my settings more authentic, it brings back memories of favorite places I’ve travelled to. And one that is on my top five list is Manu National Park, in Peru.

Manu National Park is situated north of the tourist capital of Cuzco (the stepping-off point for trips to Machu Picchu). A recognized UNESCO World Heritage Site, Manu covers an area of 18,811 square kilometres (11,688 square miles). According to scientists, the park has over 15,000 species of plants, and up to 250 varieties of trees can be found in every hectare. Birdwatchers from all over the world travel to Manu to study the 1,000 plus species of birds. The only humans allowed to permanently live in the park are those in the “cultural zone”—several small tribal communities of the Matsigenga Amazonian group. The centre of the park is restricted to scientific and educational professionals who are invited by the indigenous communities. 

When I lived in Cuzco, I had the chance to join a tour at the last minute. Individuals aren’t allowed into the restricted areas unless they are with a certified tour group, so I filled the final spot, packed my bags, and jumped on a bus. We bounced in and out of potholes along narrow roads that hugged the mountainside. I did my best not to gaze into the bottomless canyons only a few feet from where I sat, gripping my seat of the speeding bus. Along the way we visited a cluster of Chullpas—burial chambers that date back to pre-Inca times. Plunging into the swirling mist of the cloud forest, we eventually arrived at a river and transferred by dug-out canoe to arrive at Manu National Park proper.

For ten days, we paddled, walked, climbed, and swam. Nights were full of strange bird calls and howler monkeys screeching overhead. More than once I heard rustling and sniffing outside my tent. And unlike my heroine, Tess, I did not leave the tent to investigate. One of the most memorable mornings started off with our usual early rise (when monkeys chatter above your tent at five in the morning there’s not much choice, really) and a visit to the Macaw Salt Lick. Travelling by boat, we sat underneath a camouflage and stared in awe at the wall of red, blue, yellow, orange and green feathered friends perched happily on the high banks of the river, licking salt from the clay walls. The only place in the world this happens is in the western Amazon where the birds can fill their dietary need for salt.

Our travels took us to Oxbow Lake and our search for the Giant Otter. Once close to extinction, the otters are the world’s largest fresh-water carnivores and are now only found in Manu. Paddling quietly along the lake, my eyes strained to find the tiniest ripple or air bubble on the surface to indicate an otter was nearby. Just as I had given up hope, I spotted one sitting on a fallen log, eating a huge fish. Oblivious to our presence, the otter devoured its meal, slid into the water and dived under, disappearing from view but forever etched in my memory. 

I braved tarantulas (I can’t even begin to tell you how arachnophobic I am), avoided fire ants, got bitten from head to toe by invisible insects and endured heat so intense it makes me sweat thinking about it now. But I survived. And I loved every second of it. Would I do it again? Absolutely! I’ve been to many jungles in the world now, but I’ll never forget my first love, Manu National Park.

So when my heroine Tess is swinging from vines and crossing treacherous rivers, I imagine being in her shoes. The rotting undergrowth makes my nose twitch, the sun burns my skin and I experience the thrill of the unfamiliar, knowing I’ll be a changed person as a result.

Has visiting a particular destination changed you and, if so, how?