Journey of Ewart Grogan

Journey of Ewart Grogan by Roger Pocock

Roger Pocock's account of Ewart Grogan's journey tells the story of a Cambridge undergraduate who accomplished what seasoned explorers had long failed to do: walk the entire length of Africa from the Cape to Cairo. Cecil Rhodes, writing to Grogan in 1900, expressed both admiration and good-humoured envy, remarking that a youth on a Cambridge vacation had succeeded where the world's ponderous explorers had not. Before his great trek, Grogan had already accumulated considerable experience, having traveled in the South Seas, climbed in the Alps, and fought in the Matabele campaigns. He was not a penniless adventurer but a man of means, and his route from the Cape to the Zambesi covered ground that needed no fresh pioneering. Beyond that, existing colonies and steamers carried him as far as Lake Tanganyika, where the real hardships began. For much of the journey he had a partner, Mr. A. H. Sharp, along with a caravan of one hundred fifty negro carriers, though the two men were rarely together at any one time, one often exploring ahead while the other managed the column, and both suffering repeated bouts of fever. Their path followed the Great Rift, a vast geological gash running through the continent and containing a chain of lakes, Nyassa, Tanganyika, Kevu, Albert Edward, and Albert, from which the Nile descends toward Egypt. The rift was walled by live volcanoes, choked with swamps and gigantic forests, and at the time of the journey was inhabited by hostile cannibal tribes. Beyond all this, Khartoum was then held by the Khalifa and his dervish army, making the expedition's northern destination itself a danger. The narrative offers vivid episodes from the journey. Grogan shot a magnificent black-maned lion measuring ten feet four inches, the kill complicated when his rifle jammed as the wounded animal rose. He tracked an enormous bull elephant through dense jungle near Lake Kivo, where he had also observed a large volcano thrown up within the previous two years and vast new lava floods. The elephant charged through forest so dense that Grogan could not move aside, fired both barrels at point-blank range, and was hurled ten feet into a thorn bush, drenched in the elephant's blood, his rifle thrown ten yards away. Despite recovering and pursuing the animal through pools of blood and terrifying charges, the elephant escaped at sunset. Near the Rift's western margins the expedition encountered the catastrophic effects of cannibal tribes sweeping through Central Africa like a locust swarm. Grogan moved north through forest filled with corpses and starving fugitives who urged him to turn back. He pressed on into a province of ruined villages and desolated farms. When a mob attacked his small party by night, he shot six with his rifle and picked off more at a mile's range as they fled. He entered a house where cannibals had been feasting and found horrors that haunted him afterward in dreams. He and his partner then chose an alternative route for the expedition. In the same forests Grogan encountered pygmies, no more than three feet tall but sturdy, strong, and capable of killing elephants with tiny poisoned arrows, whom he found kindly and clever, contrary to other explorers' reports. He also met ape-men, tall figures with hanging paunches, short legs, small skulls, huge jaws, and bodies covered in wiry hair, who were frightened at first but grew friendly and demonstrated their fire-making skills. He also discovered the skeleton of a gigantic ape whose species, the local people told him, stole negro women and had never been seen by a white man. At the northern end of the Rift, Mr. Sharp departed for Mombasa and the carriers were dismissed. Grogan continued down the Nile Valley with only five attendants, eventually leading a party of fourteen through the Dinka country. The Dinka were exceptionally tall, beautifully built swamp-dwellers who moved with the gait of wading birds and stood at rest on one leg. One tribe attacked the party: Grogan's men panicked, one Congo soldier was stabbed to the heart, two others were struck down with cracked skulls, and Grogan himself warded off a club blow with his arm before using his empty rifle as a threat and shooting the fleeing attackers with a dum-dum rifle. Wounded and famished, he pushed on until he stumbled into the desert camp of Captain Dunn, a British officer, and the two men exchanged pleasantries as though they had met at a garden party before Dunn thought to ask where Grogan had come from. With the battle of Omdurman having broken the dervish power and opened the Nile, Grogan continued by steamer through Khartoum to Cairo and home, carrying with him the memory of the lions' night roaring across the African plain, a sound he described as thundering, rumbling, and majestic, the finest music in the world.

By Roger Pocock · First published 1902 · Genre: Adventure, Travel Writing, Exploration Narrative · 2,588 words

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A. D. 1898

From the Right Honorable Cecil Rhodes to Ewart S. Grogan in the year 1900: --

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adventure · travel narrative · exploration · Africa · early 20th century · biography · historical · memoir · geographical journey · colonial era · expedition · travelogue

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Journey of Ewart Grogan is listed on Textopian as a short story by Roger Pocock, dated 1902 CE.

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