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, Reader in Geography at Oxford since 1887, believed that most people had no use for a geographer who was not also an adventurer and explorer, and chose Mount Kenya, which had no recorded ascent, which the equator crosses and which the Gikuyu call Kere-Nyaga. He sailed from Marseille on 10 June 1899 with Campbell Hausburg, who shared the cost and took the photographs, the collector Edward Saunders, the taxidermist Claude Camburn and two men of Courmayeur, the guide César Ollier and Joseph Brocherel. From Mombasa the new railway took them to Nairobi, and on 28 July a caravan of 170, six Europeans, 66 Swahili, two Maasai guides and 96 Kikuyu, marched north through a land struck by famine and smallpox. Mackinder, Ollier and Brocherel reached Batian at noon on 13 September 1899. Two Swahili men were killed in a fight on the way, and a list in Hausburg's hand, published with Mackinder's diary in 1991, marks eight Zanzibar porters "shot by order".

The voyage, step by step

  1. Smallpox at Nairobi

    26 July 1899

    The six Europeans of the party left Marseille on 10 June 1899 and reached Zanzibar on 28 June, where fifty-nine Swahili porters were engaged. Mackinder landed at Mombasa on 4 July among famine-stricken people on relief works and prevalent smallpox, and the Uganda Railway carried the caravan to its railhead at Nairobi, where Kikuyu porters were recruited. The spread of smallpox and the threat of quarantine then forced a hurried departure: the last detachment left the railway on 26 July, and on the 28th the caravan set out, 170 strong: six Europeans, 66 Swahili, two Maasai guides and 96 Kikuyu.

  2. Through the Kikuyu country

    August 1899

    From 28 July the caravan crosses the dry Kapoti plains, and from 31 July it climbs into the ridges of southern Kikuyu, where at Muluka the Kikuyu porters try to desert and are stopped by a display of firearms; the word is given out that anyone running from the line will be shot. On 6 August it enters Meranga, whose elders, meeting in council, declare themselves friends. From 7 August it rains every day from midnight until noon or later, and the caravan marches drenched through square miles of standing maize, then two days through forest beyond the country of the chief Wang'ombe, and reaches the foot of the mountain on 15 August.

  3. La grande route du Mont Kenya

    19 August 1899

    On 15 August the caravan pitches its base camp north of the Sagana, at the foot of the forest, looking over Laikipia to the Aberdares. On 18 August the mountain party sets out, and on the 19th César and Joseph lead with axes, two askaris following with machetes, along elephant paths and the crest of the ridge: the passage of the forest and bamboo, which Mackinder expected to take perhaps three days, is made in a single day, with an hour to spare before nightfall. On the 20th a standing camp is pitched at about 10,300 feet, 3,139 metres.

  4. The stone hut in the Teleki valley

    23 August 1899

    On 21 August Mackinder and the two guides reach the alpine zone of the Höhnel valley; a dropped match sets the moor alight, and next day they fight the fire for two hours. On 23 August, from the col above, they look across the Teleki valley to the glaciers of the peak and choose the site of the top camp, a mile from the foot of the ice. That afternoon the askari Ibrahim brings a pencilled note from Hausburg: two of the Swahili, the head askari Sudulla and Feruzi, have been killed, and the base camp is almost out of food. Mackinder goes down; César and Joseph build a stone hut at the top camp.

  5. A night tied to the cliff

    30 August 1899

    Early on 30 August Mackinder, César and Joseph go up the moraine of the Lewis glacier, cross the ice to a snow-filled couloir and climb the eastern face of the southern arête of the central peak. Three mauvais pas, treacherous fissured rock and the broken edge of the ridge delay them, and night falls at the foot of Nelion. They tie themselves to a slab of rock just below the arête for the twelve hours of equatorial darkness, at about 16,800 feet, 5,121 metres. In the morning a cleft cut clean through the peak, between the arête and Nelion, turns them back.

  6. Shot by order

    September 1899

    On 7 September 1899 the food caravan from Naivasha and the retreat from the mountain met at the base camp north of the Sagana, and the next day Hausburg and Captain Gorges led most of the caravan, the Swahili porters among them, back towards Naivasha. Among the expedition's bills is a carbon copy of the list of Swahili porters and askaris supplied by Boustead, Ridley and Company of Zanzibar, who were to be sent back to Zanzibar for discharge at the end of the expedition. Porters were paid ten rupees a month, askaris twelve and a headman thirty. Beside eight of the names, in Campbell Hausburg's handwriting, the list says in varying words that the man has been "shot by order". One of them is Musa Wadi Shabani, whom the diary's editor identifies with Musa, one of the twelve porters picked for the mountain. The editor found no record of the place, the date or who gave the order; if the men were shot, he reasoned, it was between Naivasha and Zanzibar, after the climb. The pin marks the base camp, not the place of the killings.

  7. Three hours on the Diamond Glacier

    12 September 1899

    At noon on 12 September Mackinder, César and Joseph leave the top camp, the porters having gone down, follow their first track up and across the Lewis glacier and up the face of the southern arête, and spend the night near its top in a Mummery tent, a little tent pitched on two ice axes. They are away as soon as the sun rises out of the cloud roof, cross the head of the Darwin glacier on cut steps, creep up a rib of rock below Nelion, then cross the small glacier that hangs from the Gate of the Mist between the two points. It is so steep and so intensely hard that three hours go in cutting steps on a traverse they had hoped to make in twenty minutes.

  8. Batian at noon

    13 September 1899

    A final rock scramble from the Gate of the Mist sets Mackinder, César Ollier and Joseph Brocherel on the summit of Batian precisely at noon on 13 September 1899. The view from the gate had been magnificent; at the top they are a few moments too late, and the mist gives only glimpses of the valleys. The top is like a stunted tower crowned by three or four low turrets, on which they sit, feet inward. There is no snow, the sling thermometer reads 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and lichens grow on the rocks. They dare stay only forty minutes, for fear of the afternoon storm, regain the previous night's sleeping place as the sun goes down, continue by moonlight and reach camp after ten at night, exhausted but victorious.

Outcome

Batian, the summit, reached precisely at noon on 13 September 1899 by Mackinder, César Ollier and Joseph Brocherel after two failures, one on rock and one on ice; the peaks named after Maasai chiefs; two Swahili men, the askari Sudulla and Feruzi, killed in a fight in the chief Wang'ombe's country; and eight Zanzibar porters marked "shot by order" on a list in Hausburg's hand, a killing that no record dates or attributes.

Halford Mackinder

The Oxford geographer who, believing that a geographer had to be an explorer too, climbed Batian on Mount Kenya with César Ollier and Joseph Brocherel of Courmayeur on 13 September 1899, in an expedition whose record also holds two Swahili men of the caravan killed in a fight and eight marked "shot by order".

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