The Mackinder expedition to Mount Kenya

Halford Mackinder · 1899 CE · Earth

The Mackinder expedition to Mount Kenya — Halford Mackinder · 1899 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Make the first ascent of Mount Kenya and survey its glaciers, peaks, plants and animals.

Historical context

Halford Mackinder, the first Reader in Geography at Oxford, believed that nobody would take a geographer seriously who was not also an explorer, and chose the unclimbed Mount Kenya, whose glaciers straddle the equator. He sailed from Marseille in June 1899 with the photographer Campbell Hausburg and two Courmayeur guides, César Ollier and Joseph Brocherel, took the new railway from Mombasa to Nairobi, and marched north with 170 porters through smallpox, famine and a hostile countryside. The expedition climbed Batian on 13 September 1899; it also left eight of its African porters shot, a fact its leader's published diary does not hide.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Smallpox at Nairobi

    26 July 1899

    Mackinder's ship left Marseille on 10 June and reached Zanzibar on 28 June; from Mombasa the new railway carries the party to Nairobi, where an outbreak of smallpox forces it to leave almost at once, on 26 July, without buying stores. It numbers 170: six Europeans, two Maasai, 66 Swahili and 96 Kikuyu.

  2. Three weeks through famine country

    August 1899

    The march north to the mountain takes three weeks in the heavy rains, through country where the Maasai who were to sell food have migrated because of famine. Forty-nine Kikuyu are sent back for want of food, one man dies of dysentery, six desert, and two Swahili porters are killed by Kikuyu while trying to get food from a local chief.

  3. La grande route du Mount Kenya

    15 August 1899

    The caravan reaches the base of Mount Kenya on 15 August and forces a way through the belt of dense bamboo and forest that cloaks the lower slopes, a job Mackinder expected to take three days and which is done in one. Above the forest a standing camp is made at 3,139 metres.

  4. The stone hut in the Teleki valley

    22 August 1899

    On 22 August the site of the highest camp is chosen in the Teleki valley, close to where Mackinder's Camp stands today at about 4,300 metres, and a stone hut is built there. The mountain party has food for three weeks; the base camp below the forest has almost none.

  5. A night tied to the cliff

    30 August 1899

    On 30 August Mackinder, Ollier and Brocherel make their first attempt up the eastern face of the southern arête of Nelion, are caught high on the mountain by the early tropical nightfall, and spend the twelve-hour equatorial night in an unplanned bivouac at 5,121 metres. Next day an impassable difficulty on the arête turns them back.

  6. Shot by order

    September 1899

    During the weeks on the mountain several porters are punished and eight of the expedition's African porters are shot dead, marked on a letter in Hausburg's hand as shot by order. Who gave the order is disputed, since both Mackinder and Edward Saunders were recorded issuing death threats.

  7. Three hours on the Diamond Glacier

    12 September 1899

    On 12 September the three climb the now familiar face of the southern arête again and spend the night near its top in a Mummery tent. Early on the 13th they traverse the head of the Darwin glacier, follow a rock rib to a small glacier below the col between the twin summits, and find its ice so steep and so intensely hard that a traverse they hoped to make in twenty minutes takes three hours of step-cutting.

  8. Batian at noon

    13 September 1899

    From the Gate of the Mists a final rock scramble takes Mackinder, Ollier and Brocherel to the summit of Batian precisely at noon on 13 September 1899. They stay about forty minutes making observations and taking photographs, then descend cautiously in mist by the same route.

Outcome

Batian at noon on 13 September 1899 by Mackinder, Ollier and Brocherel after two failures; the peaks named, thirty-three days on the mountain, two porters killed by Kikuyu and eight shot by order of the expedition.

Halford Mackinder

The Oxford geographer who, to prove that geography was an adventurer's science, climbed Batian on Mount Kenya with two Courmayeur guides on 13 September 1899, in an expedition remembered as much for its dead porters as for its summit.

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