3-077-630 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Mr. W. Bonny, 1890. 'The march from Yambuya to Kavalli, distant 322 geographical miles...occupied Mr. [Henry Morton] Stanley's party above five months...the scarcity of food, with grievous sickness, dysentery, ulcers, and other miseries, reduced the men to extreme debility, and their number dwindled from 389 to 173 from deaths and desertions. The European companions of Mr. Stanley were Lieutenant Stairs, R.E., from the Royal School of Military Engineering at Chatham; Surgeon Thomas H. Parke, of the Army Medical Service...Mr. William Bonny, who had been an officer of the Congo Free State, had been left with the rearguard at Yambuya. But he accompanied Major Barttelot's disastrous march in June 1888, and was, after the assassination of Major Barttelot, the death of Mr. Jameson, and the departure of Messrs. Troup and Ward, the only remaining European officer with the rearguard. He was met by Mr. Stanley, who was returning to seek the rearguard, at Banalya, on Aug. 17, a month after Major Barttelot was killed. The column then in his charge was diminished from 257 men to 71, great part of the stores being also lost. Having rejoined Mr. Stanley with the wreck of the rearguard, Mr. Bonny kept thenceforth always with the leader of the expedition'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.