African Exploits: The Diaries of William Stairs, 1887-1892

Les Harding is the author of Exploring the Avalon, Historic St.
John’s: The City of Legends, The Voyages of Lesser Men: Thumbnail
Sketches in Canadian Exploration and The Journeys of Remarkable Women:
Their Travels on the Canadian Frontier.

William Stairs of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was a young man with an
unquenchable thirst for adventure. After graduating from the Royal
Military College in Kingston, he became an officer in the British army.
Bored by life as a peacetime soldier, Stairs jumped at the chance to
join the famous explorer and journalist Henry M. Stanley on his
trans-African expedition of 1887.

The purpose of the expedition was to rescue Emin Pasha, one of General
Gordon’s subordinates in the Sudan. No matter that Emin Pasha did not
think he needed rescuing, rescued he would be. After three years of
horrible suffering and unimaginable difficulties, the expedition’s
survivors, who had begun their journey at the mouth of the Congo River,
emerged half-dead at Zanzibar. After a short respite, Stairs, who had
not completely regained his health, volunteered for a second
expedition—this one to Katanga on behalf of the unscrupulous King
Leopold of Belgium. At the end of that expedition, in 1892, Stairs died
of malaria.

Full of drama and color, the diary entries provide a fascinating
account of the 19th-century scramble for control of Africa. Some
passages read like an exciting adventure novel, others like a chilling
tale of psychological horror. Probably without realizing it, Stairs
reveals himself to have been transformed, but not for the better. Over
the course of his African travels, this erudite and educated young man
became arrogant and brutalized by absolute power and the example set by
the sinister Stanley. Before long Stairs was flogging native bearers to
death, torching entire villages, and beheading deserters without a
second thought.

The editor, who unearthed the diaries in the Nova Scotia Archives, has
done a masterful job of presenting them to the modern reader. He
provides a lengthy and thorough introduction and plenty of helpful
footnotes and background. The choice of illustrations is similarly
excellent.