and water, the stillness of which is only broken by the occasional blow
of a hippo, the splash of a fish or crocodile, the wild cry of the
numerous flights of wild-fowl, and the everlasting plaint of the
fish-eagle. A perpetual mirage hovering over the scene adds to the
general mystery; groups of huts suddenly appear where all was shimmering
light, and as suddenly vanish; a canoe with its two upright punters
glides past apparently in the sky, a goose suddenly assumes the
proportions of an elephant, and an elephant evolves out of what one took
to be a goose; and thus the scene is ever changing, till the grey of
evening and the crisp light of the rising sun bring out in strong relief
the placid sheets of water, the long brown bands of weeds, the tiny
islands with their little huts perched among the waving reeds, the thin
strips of sand with their occasional waddling hippo, the little black
canoes slowly gliding in and out amongst the weed-beds and tufts of
grass, and the continual flight of flocks of white ibis.
I never tired of sitting on the shore and watching the long string of
little black canoes slowly wending their way towards me, bringing in
fish and salt, to trade with the group of Balegga who were waiting with
loads of beans and millet flour.
The small stretch of country lying between the Semliki, the Albert Lake,
and the hills is called Kitwakimbi, and is distinct from Bukande, which
begins at the foot of the hills and reaches back to the watershed.
My Wanyabuga friends provided me with two guides, who, after wasting two
hours in visiting obscure villages, all of which were deserted, and
answering my protests at our zigzag route by ambiguous allusions to
marshes, eventually landed me within four hundred yards of where I had
started, and suggested that I should camp. Having with difficulty
persuaded them that I was annoyed, which they evidently considered
unreasonable on my part, they smilingly explained that it was far from
their homes, and they had hoped to find me other guides. However, vague
allusions to the presence of a "kiboko"[#] convinced them of the
inexpediency, not to say positive danger, of further nonsense, and they
gaily proceeded on their way, chortling hugely at the success of what
they thought a very merry prank. They led me to a deserted village
opposite Kasenyi, a small island about a mile from the mainland, and the
present headquarters of Katonzi. The Wanyabuga-Balegga market was in
full swing, but vanished like mist at my sudden appearance, and it was
only by going down to the beach stripped to the waist, and a happy
allusion to brothership with "Kapelli," that I induced them to bring
their canoes to the shore again. "Kapelli" is the native name of that
gallant officer Colonel Lugard, and to have left a name in Africa that
opens all doors and all hearts is the finest monument to his exploits
that a man can have. They flocked in to see me under Tunja, Katonzi's
eldest son, who brought several loads of food, and informed me that
Katonzi had left two days before for Toro. They asked all kinds of
questions about "Kapelli" and Mr. Grant, who was with Lugard in his
expedition to release the Soudanese, and wanted to know why he had never
come back, and had the English deserted their country after promising to
protect them? I answered all their questions to the best of my ability,
and when I showed them Lugard's book and the photograph of Grant, which,
to my surprise, they immediately recognized, their delight knew no
bounds.
[#] _Kiboko_: whip made of hippo hide.
The mosquitoes here defy description; even at mid-day I had to eat my
food walking about, and my evening and morning toilet, combined as it
was with a Dan Lenoesque extravaganza, if performed on the Empire stage
would assuredly have brought down the house. I crawled into my
mosquito-net with the greatest caution, disposed all my weighty
belongings, such as boots and cartridge-bags, in a circle round my bed
to keep down the edges of the net, exhausted all my candle-ends in
exploding the odd hundred or two that had crawled in with me, and was
quickly lulled to sleep by the dismal drone of myriads, happy in the
knowledge that they were outside; sleep, gentle sleep, during which I
evolved in one short hour from my own insignificant self through the
alarming stages of Daniel in the lion's den, and a cold bread poultice,
to the stern reality that they were inside; and they were, hundred and
hundreds of them. In vain I searched for some hole or possible inlet,
and eventually had to resign myself to the inevitable, buoyed up by the
meagre consolation that I had discovered that, like the light of the
glow-worm, the mosquito is possessed of the properties of the Roentgen
rays.
Early the next morning Tunja came to tell me that Katonzi was coming
back, and at midday he arrived in person. He is a dismal old nigger,
and though somewhat rapacious, not a bad fellow. His first request was
to see the wonderful book, and then how I struck a match, an
accomplishment that tickled him immensely. He then naively asked me to
give him my guns, saying that Lugard had given them two guns, but that
the Belgians had taken them away. I asked him why all the people were
so frightened, and where they had all gone; whereupon he proceeded to
recount the same tales of misery and oppression that I had heard the day
before, from which I gathered that a Congo Free State official rejoicing
in the name of "Billygee" had suddenly swooped down on the country a
year ago, and after shooting down numbers of the natives had returned
west, carrying off forty young women, numerous children, and all the
cattle and goats, and putting a finishing touch to the proceedings by a
grand pyrotechnic display, during which they bound the old women, threw
them into the huts, and then fired the roofs. Several absolutely
independent witnesses informed me that this had been done actually in
the presence of Billygee and the gentlemen who accompanied him.
Katonzi's two sons, Tunja and Kutaru, were bound and taken away, but
released after two months. Kavalli's eldest son is now in their hands,
while a younger one escaped to the Balegga. As I have mentioned before,
when in Mboga the Balegga told me similar tales; here I was repeatedly
given accounts that tallied in all essentials, and further north the
Wakoba made the same piteous complaints; and I saw myself that a country
apparently well populated and responsive to just treatment in Lugard's
time (and that under very trying conditions, owing to the numbers of
destitute aliens in the country--to wit, the Soudanese) is now
practically a howling wilderness; the scattered inhabitants, terrified
even of one another, and living almost without cultivation in the
marshes, thickets, and reeds, madly flee even from their own shadows.
Chaos--hopeless, abysmal chaos--from Mweru to the Nile; in the south,
tales of cruelty of undoubted veracity, but which I could not repeat
without actual investigation on the spot; on Tanganyika, absolute
impotence, revolted Askaris ranging at their own sweet will, while the
white men are throwing their ivory and cartridges into the lake, and
cutting down their bananas for fear the rebels should take them; on
Kivu, a hideous wave of cannibalism raging unchecked through the land,
while in the north the very white men who should be keeping peace where
chaos now reigns supreme, are spending thousands in making of peace a
chaos of their own. I have no hesitation in condemning the whole State
as a vampire growth, intended to suck the country dry, and to provide a
happy hunting-ground for a pack of unprincipled outcasts and untutored
scoundrels. The few sound men in the country are powerless to stem the
tide of oppression.
The departure of my mubaka provided by King Kasagama had taken a great
load off my mind; he was too heavy a swell for me to keep pace with,
dressed in white breeks, yellow putties, red fez, and three fancy
cloths, to say nothing of a red and yellow belt; and his terrible
anxiety lest he should miss a chance of putting up a large white
umbrella with a green lining was so infectious that finally I found
myself watching the clouds with one eye and the mubaka with the other,
knowing that at the first ray of sunshine he would emerge from his hut
and perform for my edification. In the cloudy intervals he devoured
such masses of solid food that even with my experience of native
capacity I became quite alarmed, and between the struttings and
bursting-point tests, he had very little time to devote to my affairs,
so that I was very glad to see the last of him.
Katonzi, after relating his own troubles, and thinking, I suppose, that
it was my turn to have a few, proceeded to paint the most gruesome
pictures of what was in front. With tears in his eyes he begged me to
turn back, saying that if I died the white men would blame him; he
informed me that all was wilderness beyond--no food, no paths, all the
people dead. Putting his hand to his head, he explained how they had
all just done so, lain down and expired.[#] Pressed as to the reason of
this general collapse, he eagerly shook his head and murmured "Muungu"
(Kismet). Though summing up the majority of these perils as "nigger
gibberish," I was rather alarmed at the sudden death business, thinking
that perhaps it was smallpox or the Bombay plague; but this, like the
rest, was simply imagination. It is strange how natives get these ideas
into their heads. I do not think it was gratuitous lying, as all his
people, as far as I could see without any other reason than belief in
the sudden death, were afraid even to hunt in the direction indicated;
and he certainly had nothing to gain by stopping me from going forward,
since he had no interest in the country. However, I thought it advisable
to buy several days' provisions, and to do this it was necessary to draw
the Balegga from the hills; all my overtures had failed so far, and I
saw that the only way to start was to lay ground-bait for them by
killing elephant or buffalo. With this object in view I sallied forth
with a guide who was to take me to the elephant country. He wandered
about for two or three hours in country that an elephant would not look
at through a telescope, and whenever I said that I wanted elephant, he
nodded his head and said, "Oh yes, elephant." Then suddenly, as if a
bright idea had struck him, he said, "Oh yes, _elephant_!" and promptly
walked back through camp to a narrow spit jutting out into the lake and
about a quarter of a mile distant. As I could see water on both sides
and short grass in front, I thought he meant hippo, or was mad,
inclining to the latter belief; but no, he was quite confident, and
stalked along muttering to himself, "Yes, elephant! Yes, elephant!" (as
much as to say, "Who would have thought it?"); and sure enough there
were nine elephant in the reeds in the lake at the end of the spit. The
place was a mass of vegetation and honeycombed with elephant-holes. I
dropped one with a single shot.
[#] I have since realized that he was referring to the sleeping sickness
which entered this district at that time.
As I had expected, after a day of very hot sun, the odour was too
tempting, and the Balegga swarmed down from the hills and brought me
what food I wanted. I went for a stroll in the evening, and came on a
small herd of buffalo; they were very small compared with the South
African species, and amongst them were three light brown ones, a bull,
cow, and three-parts-grown calf. They were very beautiful animals, with
a black ridge of hair running along the neck and the top of the
shoulders. I shot the bull, and as my pagasi had as much as they could
carry, I told the natives to cure the hide and send it with the head
into Toro, so I hope to be able to have it described. When I first saw
them I thought they were eland, and it was with the greatest surprise
that I found they had a buffalo's head attached. The small one was as
light in colour as a reedbuck, and the other two a similar colour round
the rump and the belly.[#] I could gather no information from the
natives as to whether they had seen others; all they knew was that the
buffalo was an evil beast, had once been very numerous, but was now
finished.
[#] I have since found, on reference to the British Museum, that they
were the Congo buffalo. This proves that their distribution is further
East than was imagined. The fact that they were running in the same
herd as the black Eastern variety is of considerable scientific
interest.
*CHAPTER XVII.*
*ALBERT LAKE AND UPPER NILE TO WADELAI.*
An hour's walk into the valley of death brought us to a cluster of
villages with a large population, which was in a state of utter
destitution. The people, who were very nervous at first, eventually
gathered round in numbers with the same tale of rapine and murder, and
the chief gave me a guide to take me to the foot of the hills. Another
hour brought us to Nsabe, which, though generally depicted on maps in
large letters, consists of about five dirty little muck-heaps, only
recognizable as human habitations by the filthy smell that emanated from
them. All the inhabitants fled, leaving their spears, bows, and beer in
their hurry, and no amount of shouting and yelling would induce them to
return. Our guide promptly made a bundle of the spears and other
movables, with a view to appropriation, which when complete I placed
against a tree, accompanying the movement by a vigorous application of
my boot to the toughest portion of his anatomy. Incorrigible, bullying,
thieving curs, one is often tempted to think that the Boer method of
treating natives is, after all, the only one they deserve. Their Mark
Tapleyism is their sole redeeming feature, and that is attributable to
the incapacity of their intellect to hold anything but the impression of
the moment. Although of the same tribe and close neighbours, I expect
he would have thoroughly enjoyed seeing me burn and loot the place; it
is the same everywhere--a guide amongst his own people is a worse thief
even than a Manyema porter. He then took us by a devious route to the
shore of the lake, and seemed greatly astonished to find that the
village he had mentioned did not exist; nor had it left any trace
behind. I could see by the way he was behaving that he intended to
bolt, and knowing that without a native of the country there was very
little chance of inducing the people, in their frightened state, to
remain in their villages, I kept a close eye on him. As I expected, when
I sat down on the shore to wait for the boys to close up, he began
edging off towards the jungle; but when he looked round to see if it was
all clear, he found himself covered by my .303. I had him brought back,
and explained to him that his chief had sent him to show the way to the
foot of the hills, that he had led me into the wilderness and could now
lead me out, the two alternatives being villages, another guide, and a
present, or a race with a .303 bullet. He chose the former, and seeing
that fooling was a glut in the market, promptly took us to a village of
the Wakoba called Kahoma, and in Kahuma's country. Here all the people
fled, but he followed, and persuaded them to bring food to trade. They,
too, had been raided, and had lost two women and two children captured.
They could not tell me how many white men or Askaris there were, as they
had not waited to see. The majority of them are fine, well-made men,
and intensely black. One in particular took my fancy. He was a
tremendous swell, with anything from 15 to 20 lbs. of red clay on his
head, an enormous ivory bracelet, and multitudes of iron rings. The
Wakoba live all along the lake-shore and in the fringe of the hills,
and, curiously enough, their villages are mixed indiscriminately with
those of the Balegga, with whom they seem to be on the best of terms,
although the two peoples are quite distinct, the Balegga being real
out-and-out bestial little savages, while the Wakoba are much above the
Central African average of intelligence, with quite a wide knowledge of
local affairs. They are both in a state of parallel expansion, the
Balegga working to the north into the Lendu country, and the Wakoba in
the opposite direction encroaching on the Wanyabuga.
Two miles north of Kahoma the hills come down to the water's edge,
leaving only a narrow shingly beach, and thenceforward our progress
became painfully slow; at intervals the headlands jut out into the
water, and the work of transporting the loads round these obstructions
with only two or three small and very unstable canoes was one of
considerable difficulty, even the latitude of Doctor Johnson's
dictionary proving insufficient on occasions; scores of little streams
come tumbling down into the lake, each one forming a small delta, on
many of which there are Wakoba villages with a few banana palms, and
signs of scratching on the hillside, where I presume something was
intended to grow, but had turned dizzy and given up the attempt. After
Kahanama's, which is in Kahuma's sphere, Mpigwa is the big man, and I
passed through many of his villages, some of the largest being Kabora,
Zingi (?), Bordo, Nsessi, and Kiboko. Most of the scenery is very fine,
the little white cascades gleaming in the shadow of immense trees, many
of which are covered with scarlet and yellow blossoms, and in the midst
of luxuriant tangles of vegetation the great gaunt slabs of slimy rock
deep-set in their snow-white bed of sand, over which the little waves
come tumbling in, gurgling and splashing round their feet and moaning
and sobbing into a thousand miniature caves; while great apes and little
brown-eyed monkeys drop from branch to branch and sit leering and
gibbering at us as we paddle past.
The continual wetting and rock-climbing had the most disastrous effect
on my already attenuated wardrobe, and for two or three days I was
compelled to disport myself clad in a simple shirt, which, thanks to a
classical education and consequent ignorance of the art of washing, had
contracted to the modest and insufficient dimensions of a
chest-preserver, while assuming the durable but inappropriate
consistency of a piece of oil-cloth. The roseate hues of early dawn
"weren't in it" with my nether limbs after the first day's exposure to a
pitiless sun, and I became a sort of perambulating three-tiered
Neapolitan ice, coffee, vanilla and raspberry, a phenomenon that greatly
astonished a savage who surprised me in my bath, and who immediately
fetched all his kith and kin to see; on the second day, however, the
alarming desertion of a third of my epidermis so pained me mentally and
physically, that after a great effort I produced a double-barrelled
garment that in the absence of Poole-bred critics served its turn.
Of the various arts and crafts that one is called upon to undertake in
Africa, such as cooking, shoe-mending, washer-womaning, doctoring,
butchering, taxiderming, armoury work, carpentering, etc., _ad
infinitum_, I think perhaps tailoring is the most trying; the cotton
will _not_ go into the eye of the needle, and the needle _will_ go into
one's fingers, and then when you think it is all over, you find you have
sewn the back of your shirt to the front, or accomplished something
equally unexpected and equally difficult to undo.
At Nsessi, two miles south of Kiboko, there is a superb waterfall; it
has a drop of about 500 ft., and is divided into three stages, all at a
different angle to one another, falling 100 ft., then swirling round at
an angle, plunging into the next pool, and then a last long slide to the
level of the lake. Stupendous silver-trunked trees, with foliage the
colour of the ilex and brilliant splashes of scarlet bloom, crowd round
on either side of the gorge wherever the wild rocks afford a footing;
above towers a pointed peak showing bright above the dense gloom of the
gorge, and a white stripe of sand fringes the little village, nestling
in its banana grove, at the base.
These natives lead a curious existence, shut in between precipitous
hills and the lake, their sole means of communication with one another
being their leaky little 10 ft. dug-outs. They are wonderfully clever
at handling them, and perform the extraordinary feat of crossing the
lake, dodging in and out between the waves in the most marvellous
manner. As a means of transport they are not to be recommended; the
shape of a cross-section being that of an egg with its top off, one
slides in with comparative ease like a pickle into a pickle-jar: once
in, as with the pickle, extrication is a matter of time and patience.
It needs one of Lear's Jumblies to feel thoroughly at home, as they leak
like a sieve, and only perpetual bailing will keep them afloat.
The first day, in the sweet innocence of youth, I set off to round a
headland with my guns and a tin box containing my indispensables on
board, fearing to trust them to a native. All went smoothly at first,
till I had arrived well off the rocks with a slight swell on and no
landing-place near, and then she began slowly to heel over, while water
seemed to be rushing in through the wood itself. After prodigious
efforts I succeeded in running into the rocks, the water being then
within an inch of the gunwale. I saved my guns and box, but smashed the
canoe, and after that turned passenger. It looks so easy when they come
dancing along, each with a native kneeling in the stern and plying a
huge curved-bladed paddle; but it is a very different thing when one is
wedged in oneself; physically incapable of squatting in a kneeling
posture, as a native does, one finds bailing out an impossibility; the
whole of the bottom of the canoe seems to be covered with boots, and the
incurved edges catch the wooden bailing-dish and jerk the contents into
one's lap.
Although the lake teems with fish, many of large size, the Wakoba make
no attempt to catch them, trusting to the occasional chance of
purchasing from the natives on the other shore or from Kasenyi.
One day I shot a baboon at the natives' request, a performance, by the
way, that I shall not repeat, nor would I recommend it to any one but
the most hardened villain. A frantic scramble took place for the flesh,
and when I asked them what it tasted like, they "smole a smile."
Amongst the countless troops of monkeys that are for ever coughing and
dancing amongst the rocks and trees, I saw a small family of very
beautiful little fellows with bright fox-red fringes down their sides,
but I could not bring myself to shoot at them after seeing that
unfortunate baboon, although I have never seen them described, or
elsewhere in Africa.