All Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian
By Nitin Gairola
After the ‘discovery’ of the Americas by Columbus and others there was to be a ‘whitewashing’ of the continent as Europeans moved inwards and natives were wiped out. Besides the Americas, there was a whitewashing of Australia as well but since there were no major civilizations in Australia at that time, there was little bloodshed. But sadly there was subjugation, segregation and second grading of people and some of it remains to this day.
The Spanish Lust for Gold
There was a civilization rich in gold in a place called Biru (Peru) in the Andean Mountains of South America. Their emperor was the ‘Inca’ and the subjects thought he had descended from the sun god. However Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro set his sights on conquering the Incan empire and his small army with far superior weaponry captured and then killed the Incan emperor Atahuallpa and seized the capital Cusco in 1532. Gold was to become the center piece of the bloody story of the Spanish conquest in America as further north Hernando de Soto was allowed to colonize Florida owing to the weight of the fortune he had made in gold.
French & English in North America
With the Spanish taking control over South and Central America besides present day Florida, Canada was free for the French to claim as their own. Explorer Jacques Cartier and the French rulers wanted to find a north-west passage to Asia (a cut through the islands of the Arctic Ocean above Canada) in order to leap frog the Spanish in trade with Asia. The Spanish were already crossing into Asia from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean via Cape Horn in the far south of South America. It was a rather long journey with the Panama Canal between the two Americans not there just yet and hence the search for the ice-packed North-West passage. Besides Cartier, other explorers in search of this passage to Asia were the English adventurer, Martin Frobisher and Henry Hudson, who may not have succeeded but now has a famous bay, river and a strait named after him.
Other than finding a way through the passage, the English joined in the ‘search party’ to explore the middle of North America i.e. present day USA. Sir Walter Raleigh, backed by the monarchy, led an expedition to set up an English colony in North Carolina, USA. The American interiors were further ventured into and mapped via mighty rivers and land routes by pioneers such as Giovanni da Verrazano, Cavelier de La Salee and priest De Charlevoix, all in search of the ocean on the other side – The Pacific. None of them really fathomed the massive breadth of the North American continent above Mexico.
Settlers, Slaves and Pirates of the Caribbean
From 1600 onwards, after the explorers and pioneers had discovered these new lands, the civilians and settlers had started coming in for either a better life or for some adventure. A few years later, particularly in southern USA, African slaves began working on the tobacco farms and it was the beginning of a ‘dark’ phase in American history. Many of these civilian migrants, both English and French, lived as trappers and hunters and explored great parts of the continent and its mighty rivers. Individually they may not go down in history as pioneers, but they were intrepid travellers and collectively merit a mention too.
By the 1620’s the West Indies islands had vast sugar plantations set up by the English and French, and yes, slaves from Africa had arrived here as well as they had in the southern mainland USA – a case of forced travel, en masse. Also at this time the Caribbean Sea was ruled by ruthless pirates and one such was Captain Henry Morgan. He too and many of his ilk, were explorers of this part of the sea world, who were of course a little incapacitated from time to time (hic). Now we know where the ‘Captain Morgan’ brand of rum comes from.
How the west was won, and lost
Post USA’s independence from the British Empire in 1776 more settlers came to America’s 13 east coast colonies. They later started venturing westwards too. At this time a lot of native Indian tribes lived in the western heartland, in the great central grasslands called the Prairies. But soon the white settlers began crossing the Appalachian Mountains and arrived at the plains with dire consequences for the Native Americans.
Then at the turn of the 19th century in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson bought territory west of the Mississippi River from the French. In order to know his country better he selected Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the wilderness and to find a route all the way to the Pacific. A year later these two canoed on the Mississippi to reach the Rocky Mountains full of grizzly bears and bison and then they made it to the western ocean. The breadth and limits of America were finally known.
After the Pacific had been reached it was John Fremont who actually opened up the west to potential settlers by forming multiple caravan trails. These were from the Mississippi to the Rockies and from Oregon via the Columbia River to the west coast. He formed a trail from the Great Salt Lake to Sacramento, California as well.
With the US territory now stretching all the way to the west coast, settler count began to surge. This was also the time of the Gold Rush in California where gold had been discovered in 1848. They came in herds and most went bald and bust searching for the elusive metal, but it was a true ‘go west’ moment. Rail road was also built around this time, which aided the migration and led to bitter battles with the natives who were relegated to settlements and treated as second grade humans. The west was won, and lost at the same time.
Birth of the Scientific Explorers
In the Americas, especially South America, besides the great geographic explorers, there were also the scientific explorers. These scientific explorers charted new lands not for conquest, plunder or trade, but to further the understanding of the natural world. In a way they did explore for glory, but of a different kind. They dug out the past (archaeology, anthropology or paleontology), studied the present (say zoology or micro-taxonomy) and thought deeply of the future (say biodiversity or ecology).
The most famous of these were the ones who studied the flora and fauna of the Amazon River Basin in South America. In the 1730s, French scientist Charles-Marie de la Condamine sailed to Ecuador with the objective to measure the size and shape of the world (Geodesy). Then German Alexander von Humboldt and French Aime Bonpland explored the Andes and recorded many new plant species as did the Briton Henry Bates in the Amazon.
However the most famous of these scientific explorers was the great Charles Darwin of England who formulated the ‘theory of evolution through natural selection’ and it is considered by many the single greatest idea in all of human history. This theory makes us understand how all living creatures are related to each other and have branched out over millions of years due to slight genetic mutations during each subsequent reproduction.
Stumbling into Australia
With all the European urgency to find a westward route to Asia, it was only a matter of time before Australia got stumbled upon. Europeans believed there was a vast southern continent (Antarctica) but what they found was a bit smaller – Australia and New Zealand.
What happened was that in the wake of Magellan’s great circumnavigation of the world, many Spanish and Portuguese explorers had set out across the Pacific and discovered new islands for colonization in today’s Polynesia, Micronesia & Melanesia group of islands (Pacific and Indian Oceans). However in 1642, it was the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman who sailed from present day Jakarta in Indonesia (then called Batavia) and found the islands of Papua New Guinea, Fiji and New Zealand and also sailed around Australia to prove that this was a continent separate from the fabled large Southern continent.
The Dutch won the race and had found the next big continent, just as the Spanish had found the Americas. They called the land ‘New Holland’ (how imaginative). While due to the harsh environment their early attempts to settle in Australia failed, the Dutch still held sway over the trade between Europe and the East Indies (Indonesia). This made the ‘old’ Holland (now Netherlands) the biggest trading nation of the 17th century, rivaling in wealth with the other Western European powers. But from an explorer’s perspective and despite the flourishing spice trade in the East Indies, Australia as a continent remained largely unknown to the Europeans.
But in 1768, England turned its curious eyes towards this new adventure and potential new colonization for the British Empire. The Royal Geographic Society in London supported a scientific expedition to Tahiti, which was to be led by the meticulous planner, sailor and legendry explorer Captain James Cook. They were also hoping to discover the much discussed ‘Southern continent’. Cook reached the South Pacific in his vessel, The Endeavour, in April 1769 and sailed up the west coast of Australia before reaching Batavia via the Torres Strait, but he failed to find the Southern continent.
In 1772, Cook left on his second expedition aboard the ships named ‘Resolution’ and ‘Adventure’ and actually crossed the Antarctic Circle, becoming the first explorer to do so. He knew the great continent was somewhere close however the sea ice would ensure that the discovery would remain elusive, even though the massive ice chunks were a tell-tale sign that Antarctica was tantalizingly near. It is believed that Cook even saw the coastline of Antarctica, but it’s yet not proven. He returned home to England via Cape Horn and became the first man to visit all 6 known continents of the world – Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America and Oceania (which includes Australia). In case Cook had landed in Antarctica, then he would have been the first man to set foot in all 7. But we can say that he was the final man to see all 7 and he also crossed both the Arctic & Antarctic Circle and circumnavigated the world. He died in Hawaii Islands in 1779 when he was stabbed by the locals. What an explorer and what a loss.
While Antarctica would have to wait for another day and era, but what Abel Tasman and James Cook did in Australia was comparable to the deeds of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci in America.
Adventures in Terra Australia
So in the newly found Australia, many land expeditions were being put in place to explore its unknown interior, the red heart of the desert country. In 1788, the British began sending criminals and convicts to this large island country, many of who decided to stay back even after the sentence. Soon more desperate settlers came in looking for the same things as they did in America – another chance for a new life and for adventure. From 1798 to 1799, just before the turn of the century, Captain Matthew Flinders and George Bass mapped much of the southern Australian coastline besides sailing around Tasmania. Flinders also circled the entire country but the interior still remained uncharted.
Then Briton Charles Sturt came to Australia in 1826 and during his two expeditions inland mapped the Murray and Darling Rivers and this paved the way for early settlers. But Sturt’s attempt to find the much fabled inland sea in the center of Australia wasn’t a success since Australia’s interior had no sea – just the red desert. So in a way it wasn’t a failure but Sturt didn’t know that. In 1841 Edward Eyre trekked west from Adelaide in South Australia to Albany in the southern tip of Western Australia, hugging the coastline all along from east to west. The continent was being mapped and just as it was for the natives in America or those in Africa, a storm was coming towards the Aborigines, the native inhabitants of Australia. They would lose their land and many would die of disease brought by the settlers. As Mark Twain once said “history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes”
But with the interiors still a mystery there was a big cash prize offered by the government to the first person who would do a north to south crossing of terra Australia. So one Irish-Aussie, Robert Bruke, took up the challenge and set out on this arduous journey with William John Wills, his second in command. The expedition left Melbourne in the south with an entourage of men, camels, horses and provisions but it so happened that the camel master decided to quit the expedition 600 kilometers in. So Bruke took a call continue with a small group and lesser provisions. He had told one of the members, W.Brahe to manage the remaining group while his small party continued northwards. So now it was just Bruke, William and two other tough desert explorers – John King and Charles Gray. All four of them had provisions for around 3 months. But what would then transpire is one of the most tragic tales in the exploration of the deserted Aussie Outbacks.
After breaking up with the main group, finally Bruke’s expedition reached Flinders River in the Gulf of Carpentaria far north sometime in February of 1861. However they never saw the sea because mud flats were in the way. Imagine walking all the way from south to north of a massive country (a distance of 3,250 kilometers) and to reach within a few kilometers of glory just to be denied by a stretch of mud flats. Dejected the four of them started heading down south but Gray died of dysentery and the rest were able to return to their departure point at Cooper’s Creek in April. But what really came as a shock was that they found the place ‘deserted’. Bruke had set up their depot in February and now in April their 3 months of provisions were nearly finished. By June Bruke and William had died of starvation. The real tragedy was that when Bruke and team arrived back in Cooper’s Creek in April, their colleagues who had waited all along had just left a few hours earlier. Of the fearless four, only John King was saved by the natives.
The prize that was offered by the Australian government finally went into the ‘hands’ of McDouall Stuart (I mention ‘hands’ loosely as he lost the function of his limbs due to scurvy post the expedition). He made three attempts to achieve his goal and in the second one in 1861 McDouall came within around 300 kilometers of the coast but was impeded by thorn bushes. But persistent as he was, finally in late 1861 Stuart again tried, this time to reach the north coast at Chambers Bay. His almost foolhardy determination led to success in mid-1862 when he touched the Indian Ocean in the north. Australia had finally been crossed coast to coast, south to north and the taste of victory would have been sweet (even though the sea was salty). Stuart was and still is hailed as a true Aussie hero and the epitome of the old adage ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again’. Not giving up is very much part of the Aussie national character and it is particularly pronounced in their sports such as rugby and cricket.
The world was now known with the charting of America and Australia. However the dark interiors of Africa yet remained elusive to the Europeans but, as always, they didn’t want it to remain that way.
Nitin Gairola is from Dehradun and has travelled the natural world more than almost any Indian ever. He has set world travel records certified by India Book of Records, has written for Lonely Planet, and holds National Geographic conservation certifications. He is also a senior corporate executive in an MNC and in his early days, used to be a published poet as well. More than anything else, he loves his Himalayan home. Reach him at: www.facebook.com/MostTravelledIndian/ ; www.instagram.com/MostTravelled_Indian/
