throughout the march his scouts, Slim and Smoke, had failed to report to him when ordered.
Maybe he should have tried learning their actual names.

The depiction of native scouts and porters as inept, treacherous, mendacious, and superstitious is a fixture in the literature of colonial-era expeditions. If the scouts and porters had the opportunity to recount their side of the story, one wonders what they might have to say.

Quote Originally Posted by Polarbear1605 View Post
Waller definitely bit off more then he could chew...but orders are orders.
This quote:

"remembering the General's [Smith] several talks on the subject and his evident, desire to know the trail and run wires across, coupled with my own desire for some further knowledge of the people and the nature of this heretofore impenetrable country, I decided to make the trail with 50 men and the necessary carriers."
suggests that while the subject had been discussed, the expedition was not specifically ordered and was undertaken at Waller's own initiative, against the advice of other officers on the scene.

Quote Originally Posted by Polarbear1605 View Post
There was an expectation of living off the land with the help of the native porters.
If Waller was indeed "experienced in bush warfare" he would surely have known that it would be impossible to support a column that size by "living off the land". Of course "living off the land" in the parlance of the day meant finding some "savages" and stealing their food, but even that assumption would rely on finding cultivated areas and food to steal.

Of course actions taken at the turn of the century have to be assessed against the conventions of the day, and the writings of historians in the early '60s have to be assessed against the conventions of that day. Still, the arrogance, condescension and outright racism implicit in both the actions and the later "history" (using the term very lightly indeed) are startling, if only in the extent to which they highlight how far we've come (one hopes) since then.