impracticable and the heights behind unscaleable, till Mswa sent down
the canoes, which I had requested by numerous envoys. My boys were
badly in need of a rest, the work having been very trying since
Kahanama's, and the fever from which I was suffering made it equally
acceptable to me. In the afternoon two natives arrived, saying that a
muzungu[#] was coming down to meet me with ten canoes. After inquiries
as to what kind of Askaris he had, etc., etc., I gathered that it must
be a Belgian official, so killed the fatted calf in the guise of a
skinny sheep and sundry osseous frames masquerading as dorkings, and
then plunged for the second time into the turgid flow of Zola's _Rome_,
to cleanse my French of probable Swahili trespassers. I even exhumed a
tie, and having produced a menu that exhausted all the possible
combinations and permutations of an African larder, awaited anxiously
his arrival, picturing to myself the joys of a little talkee-talkee once
more. A stiff southerly breeze evidently was delaying them, and it was
not till after dark that we heard the wild canoe-song of the flotilla,
which had rounded the point and caught sight of our camp-fires. Giving
a last twirl to my moustache and a nautical hitch to the Poolesque
garment aforesaid, and composing my features to the iron-clad smirk
indispensable to such occasions, I advanced to do the honours, and
grasped the hand of a dirty, greasy little negro clad in, or rather
smeared over with, a prehistoric piece of cloth! Here was my muzungu!
here my gallant Belgian staggering under the gold braid of a hat of that
peculiarly unbecoming shape affected by French guards and German
tourists, and majestically trailing the orthodox 30-franc sword!
Inquiries elicited the fact that the parasitic relic of Manchester above
mentioned established a valid claim to the title of muzungu in these
parts. However, he had brought the canoes, so I readily forgave him,
and next day we arrived at the old Soudanese station, Mswa. Mswa is the
name of the chief, who is a vassal of Tukenda, and Mahagi is the name of
the country itself. He is an intelligent old native, and remembered
seeing that ubiquitous officer, Bt.-Major Vandeleur, D.S.O., when he
crossed from Kibero, and was delighted at the photograph which forms the
frontispiece to his book entitled _Campaigns on the Nile and Niger_.
Here let me recommend travellers to take out photographs of men who have
gone before them; the effect is wonderful on those natives who can grasp
the idea, though, of course, to many natives a picture is merely a piece
of paper. It convinces those who can understand it that you are
speaking the truth--a possibility so utterly foreign to the native mind.
After exchanging presents he retired, promising to bring more boys in
the morning to work the canoes; but in the morning none were
forthcoming, and after waiting some time while Mswa rushed frantically
round the country, shouting to his people, who walked off into the grass
and laughed at him, I concluded that he was either incompetent or trying
to make a fool of me, and, to his consternation, manned the canoes with
my own men and started. As I expected, enough men were immediately
forthcoming, but too late, and I held on my way.
[#] _Muzungu_: white man.
We did not reach Mahagi till after dark. Here the hills again recede
from the lake-shore, leaving an alluvial plain from one to two miles
wide, which is densely populated by Lures, while in the hills there are
numerous villages of Balegga. Tukenda is the big man, whose influence
reaches from south of Mswa to Boki; he has a small herd of cattle and
large flocks of goats, and his people are evidently flourishing and very
friendly. So dense is the population that the natives have been
emigrating down the lake, and have started new villages on the
unoccupied sand-spits. At Boki a grand old tusker came sailing by the
camp, and after a stern chase and much expenditure of powder,
condescended to strike his colours. He was a perfect specimen of the
Toro type above described, standing 11 ft. 1 in. at the shoulder, with a
forefoot of 62 in., and measuring 5 ft. 6 in. round the elbow, while his
tusks were 6 ft. 10 in. and 7 ft 1 in. long, weighing respectively 72
lbs. and 76 lbs. A small patch of forest about two miles by one mile
comes down from the hills to the lake-shore, and as my boys had heard
elephant there when cutting wood, I went for a stroll after the midday
heat of the sun. Never have I seen a more delightful or interesting
scene; countless herds of elephant had trampled down the undergrowth,
leaving vast shady chambers joined in all directions by galleries. Some
of these chambers were fully an acre in extent, and every vestige of
vegetation underfoot had been crushed into a level carpet, upon which it
was a pleasure to walk. As one entered these delightful retreats,
troops and troops of monkeys lined the branches and gazed on us with
fearless curiosity; while two or three hundred of the beautiful
black-and-white colobus monkey performed the most amazing acrobatic
feats overhead. Emerging on the far side I saw a herd of ten elephant.
They were standing in long grass, but fortunately there was a small
ant-hill close by; climbing up this I found them all with ears
widespread advancing in line towards me, and had it not been for the
fortuitous existence of this point of vantage they would have walked
right on top of us, the grass being about 8 ft. high. They presented a
glorious spectacle as they came sailing along, all canvas set (I can
find no other word to express the motion of an elephant in grass), ten
old tuskers, their ivory now and again gleaming white above the grass;
on they came till, when within thirty yards, one turned and gave me a
chance. He dropped to the shot, but quickly recovered; succumbing,
however, after two more. I damaged three more considerably before
exhausting the magazine, and then dashed off in pursuit, passing one
which had dropped about five hundred yards off, and reached an ant-hill
from which I could see number three evidently very sick. I dropped him
with a forehead shot, but he recovered, and eventually reached the
forest carrying another ten bullets. Here I followed again, but it was
impossible to keep his spoor owing to the perfect maze of tracks, and
after wandering around for some time, I climbed up an ant-hill with a
large funnel down the middle. From this elevation I saw him standing
not more than fifteen yards away. I fired the 10-bore, which staggered
him, and knocked me down the funnel, but I scrambled out again just in
time to give him the second barrel, which brought him down at the same
time that I once more retired into my Stygian retreat; a 3 in. ridge of
crumbling earth 15 ft. from the ground is not the most advisable basis
from which to fire a 10-bore paradox. All these elephant were of the
same type, huge solid beasts with shortish, thick tusks; 6 ft. 10 in., 7
ft. 3 in., 5 ft. 6 in., 5 ft. 6 in., 6 ft. 4 in., 6 ft. 5 in., and
weighing 76 lbs., 78 lbs., 56 lbs., 56 lbs., 60 lbs., and 61 lbs.
respectively.
The next day I found the fourth that I had hit very hard. He had fallen
within two hundred yards of the other two, but owing to the long grass I
had not seen him. His tusks weighed 49 lbs., and measured 6 ft. and 5
ft. 10 in., making a total of 633 lbs. for the day.
Between Boki and Munyagora there is a ten-mile stretch of inhospitable
scrub covered with a species of acacia, with huge white thorns springing
in pairs from hard bulbous excrescences. Formerly there was a
settlement named Mjamori about half way, but the chief Akem has fled
with his people to Munyagora; he told me that he had fled from the
Belgians. I here made the discovery that "Billygee" is a generic term
for the Congo officials, and not, as I had previously imagined, the name
of an individual. From Munyagora to Igara, which lies at the bend of
the river, the country is thickly populated. The Lures build very
primitive shelters and surround each village with a scherm of
thorn-tree; they do not appear to cultivate the soil, but breed large
numbers of goats, which look very sleek and comely. The country, which
is very barren and parched, is admirably adapted to that abominable
quadruped, which is never so happy as when confined to a little sand and
the rancid smell of its own kind.
I was an object of the greatest curiosity, especially to the ladies of
these communities, who came in large numbers to inspect me (front seats
at bath time being in great request), and who, whether from a ridiculous
sense of modesty or a laudable desire to do honour to the occasion,
donned over and above the national costume of a small piece of string
tied round the waist, a hopelessly inadequate apron of dried grass: a
garment that, from the simplicity of its cut and the small quantity of
material employed in its composition, I should have no hesitation in
classing with the species of female extravagance known, I believe, to
the fair sex as tailor-made. The men, who seem to be of a hopeful
disposition, spend much time in making wicker baskets resembling two
lobster-pots fastened together like a cottage loaf; these they leave in
the river tied to sticks and without bait. I saw many hundreds of these,
and large numbers of natives visiting them, but only one fish, though my
olfactory sense warned me of the vicinity of at least one more. They
have a pretty little myth about buying food from the Balegga for fish,
and as they do not kill their goats and certainly had not been buying
lately, I cannot imagine what they live on; but I do know that in six
hours they removed every scrap of five large bull elephant, hides,
bones, and all; a small trifle of about twenty tons; so conclude they
live a kind of boa-constrictor's existence. Many of the young men
aggravate the natural ugliness of their faces by inserting pieces of
glass about 5 in. long in their under-lip. One and all carry small
bows, with reed arrows tipped with long thin spikes of iron neither
barbed nor feathered. Most of the chiefs and elders are obviously of
different race, some having the Galla features more or less pronounced.
Here at the north end of the lake one emerges quite suddenly from the
"Bantu" peoples to the Nilotic, and the line of division is wonderfully
sharply defined. There are numbers of reedbuck and nsunu, and in the
bush a small very red oribi of which I failed to procure a specimen. I
also saw a herd of hartebeeste, and shot a cow; they closely resembled
the Lichtenstein, though the rump was not so white, and the horns lie
closer together and stand more erect than those of Lichtenstein. Mr.
Cape tells me that Jackson's hartebeeste, which it appears to resemble
in other respects, is a considerably larger beast; so that it is to be
hoped that he will be able to take a skull and hide home for
identification.
*CHAPTER XVIII.*
*WADELAI TO KERO.*
I arrived at Wadelai on October 1st, and found Lieut. Cape, R.A., in
command; the boma is built on a small hill overlooking the miniature
lake, and is slightly south of Emin's old site. Here, as elsewhere, the
drought had been very serious, and the country consequently looked bare
and uninviting. After Rhodesia, B.C.A., and Northern Rhodesia, it was
difficult to believe that this land of administrative chaos had been
occupied for six years. The mail arrived three weeks overdue, and some
loads which had or ought to have been already a month on the road, were
three weeks afterwards still untraceable, although the whole distance is
only a fortnight's march, while station loads sent off yet three weeks
earlier were still unheard of. Nowhere has the Government made any
effort to introduce even bananas, much less fruit-trees, vegetables,
wheat, or rice; no system of mail service has been organized, and no
regulations as to import, duties, etc., had been issued. At Toro I asked
for information about the transit dues, naturally objecting to pay the
ordinary export duty of 15 per cent. on ivory which I had obtained
outside the Protectorate. My request was ignored, and at Wadelai I was
met by a demand for duties based on regulations apparently issued for
our benefit, but by an error of judgment bearing a date subsequent to
our crossing the frontier. From this I can only gather, either that the
possibility of the country becoming a trade-route (one of the _raisons
d'etre_, I presume, of the railway) had never been entertained, or that
it was part of the penny-wise, pound-foolish policy that robs officials
of their hunting trophies, and maintains, at the preposterous figure of
14 rupees 8 annas a month, a large number of Waganda boatmen on the
Nile, where they die like flies of dysentery brought on by unsuitable
food. The country is quite unsuited to these Waganda, who are all
banana-eaters, millet being the staple food; and this, coupled with the
great difference in altitude, is killing them by dozens, while the banks
of the Nile itself are lined with capable canoemen, who could be engaged
at 3s. a month; 14 r. 8 a. a month to raw natives, many of whom are mere
boys, is sufficient in itself to damn any country's future which will be
dependent on its agriculture. Where would B.C.A. be with wages for raw
labour at L1 a month? It is an uphill fight now at 3s. rate; 8 r. a
load from Kampala to Fajao, a fourteen days' march, what produce will
bear transport rates like this? Similarly the pay of the Soudanese is
absurd; they actually do not know what to do with their money; and the
only result of the late rise in their pay is that they no longer
cultivate on their own account, but buy everything at exorbitant rates
from the natives. They would have been equally contented and equally
well off with half the sum, the effect of the other half being increased
drunkenness and a general rise in the price of native produce. The
Government should have its own plantations or make allotments to the
station natives, instead of the present system of money rations, as it
will be very difficult to induce the natives to work while they can sell
enough produce at exorbitant rates to obtain their few luxuries, and in
the near future to pay their hut-tax. Another gross piece of folly was
the introduction of the rupee instead of the English currency.
It was very pleasant to find some one to talk to again; in six weeks one
finds out what a terribly uninteresting fellow one is. After a rest of
three or four days spent in waiting for the overdue mails and the
arrival of the Waganda canoe fiasco, Lieutenant Cape took me out to see
the Shuli country and for a general trot round, the _piece de
resistance_ to be an old bull giraffe that Sheikh Ali, the local
potentate, reported to be in his neighbourhood. My host was fortunate
enough to be able to leave the station for a few days, though we were
hampered in our movements by his having to keep within a day's march.
This, I believe, was the second time he had succeeded in getting away
for a day or two in his year's residence. The really important work of
inspecting the country and winning the confidence of the natives had to
give way to the soldierly occupation of sorting mails, and retailing
beads and yards of cloth, which could be equally well done by an Indian
at 10 or 15 r. a month. This playing at shop is, as far as I could
judge, the sole _raison d'etre_ of these stations, and perhaps a desire
on the part of the Government to show the unfortunate officer who has
been inveigled into this Downing Street-warranted paradise what an
insignificant thing he and his wants (at home we should say necessaries
of life) are compared with a Dinka's boots or a Baluchi's ginger. The
whole transport of the Protectorate has been paralyzed to supply a
miserable mob of Baluchis with rations which their white officers would
gladly have bought at their weight in gold, and who have been, are, and
will be utterly useless in the country. Heaven knows what they have
cost, and Heaven, I presume, knows why they were brought, for I am sure
no one else does. There was not one single pound of flour in any
station that I passed through, and no white man had been able to obtain
a load of the common necessaries of life for months, because what little
transport there was had been monopolized to hurry through the Soudanese
belts, blankets, comic opera uniforms, and boots, which they take off
and give to their boys to carry when they walk. One gallant officer
amused me much by telling me that the one touch of civilization of the
past year had been a ginger-pudding made from a surplus ounce of the
Indians' rations.
We had a delightful trip, killing a good elephant, 71 lbs. and 61 lbs.
(broken tusks); but the giraffe turned out to be an unsociable old
gentleman and not on view; we were always nearly coming on him, but
never quite came. The country was full of rhino, the difficulty being to
avoid them. One day natives came in to report an elephant in the Shuli
country, and we hurried off to the spot. Here we found that he had
killed a woman who had met him unexpectedly on the path. Unfortunately
we failed to avenge her, as, after following for some hours, we lost the
spoor owing to the hardness of the ground. The following morning they
brought us news of buffalo, which turned out to be three rhino lying
under a tree. They started off, making a great variety of strange
sounds, and after a stern chase we slew the old bull, which stood 5 ft.
5 in. at the shoulder, and measured 12 ft. in length. Unfortunately we
had also wounded one of the cows during the bombardment, and so had a
long tramp to finish her. On the morrow we again had news of buffalo,
and this time found, but they escaped without a shot, Cape's .303
missing fire. For some reason or other they travelled hard, and just as
we were coming close again, a confounded old cow rhino, which was
evidently sleeping close to their track, charged Cape most viciously.
Fortunately he turned her at three yards with a double barrel from the
.303, and she rushed past me with a youngster, tail and nose in air and
squealing like a steam-whistle, in hot pursuit. I dropped her with a
spine-shot from my .303, but to our annoyance she recovered after
dragging her hind quarters for fifty yards, and led us a long and
exhausting dance in a desperate sun. She was a saucy old lady, but our
battery was too much for her, and she never charged again, although
after the first burst she made no frantic efforts to go away. A very
long shot from Cape's 8-smoothbore glanced off her shoulder. Curiously
enough, I had an exactly similar experience with my rhino on the
Chambesi: the first shot from my 4-bore glanced off the shoulder,
although a broadside shot at thirty yards and striking 18 in. below the
ridge. Of course both these guns fired spherical balls. In Cape's case
I distinctly heard the bullet strike, and then again strike the trees
far away. I regret to say we never caught the calf; he stayed behind in
the grass at an early stage of the fracas; he was the funniest-looking
little chap imaginable, and reminded me of the mock turtle; if taught to
follow, he would have made quite a sensation in the Park. The elephant,
which measured 11 ft. 6 in. at the shoulder, 58 in. round the fore foot,
18 ft. round the edge of the ear, 4-1/2 ft. from the earhole to the
outside edge, was chiefly remarkable for the complacent way in which he
received a really extraordinary sequence of lead; we kept up a running
bombardment over about half a mile; and it was not till Cape put an
experimental shot into his leg that we could induce him to take any
notice of us. This brought him round sharp, and I popped a shot in, in
front of the eye, which knocked him down. Even then he made desperate
efforts to get up again, and would have succeeded had it not been for
the slope on which he was lying, and the fact that his legs were
up-hill.
About this time life became rather a burden, owing to the terrific
storms that broke over us nightly. The first one removed my tent as you
would a candle-extinguisher, and left me exposed to a torrent of
ice-cold water (one can hardly call it rain, as it comes in one solid
mass, like an inverted bath). This experience--and a more awful one I
cannot conceive--made us both rather nervous, and the greater portion of
the succeeding three nights was spent in anxious wakefulness, desperate
hammerings at pegs and holding of poles, to the accompaniment of a
running and not too polite commentary on Nature and her ways, sustained
in a high falsetto to keep up one another's courage. But this became
rather wearying, and we consequently returned to Wadelai. The Shulis,
whose country lies to the east of the Lures, and extends from the
Somerset Nile to about 48 north, are similar in appearance to their Lure
neighbours. They hunt game by means of nets and regularly organized
battues, and seem to be fair shikaris compared to the other people in
this part of Africa. They appear to be braver than the Lures, who are
the most abject curs. Near Mahagi I have seen elephant's droppings on
the roofs of the huts, and the fields trodden flat, and this in spite of
there being a number of guns in the country, while we did succeed in
inducing some Shulis to follow the spoor of the murderous elephant
above-mentioned, but at the chatter of a monkey they hurriedly
disappeared, and it needed ten minutes to collect them again. They
build very neat villages, laid out on a definite plan, and very superior
to the primitive hayricks of the Lures. An outer ring of huts, with the
spaces between stoutly palisaded, encloses alternate rings of
grain-stores and huts, while the centre is occupied by a dining and
"jabbering" place, formed by piling stout poles in tiers; these, like
most of their other possessions, being stained with a kind of red clay.
In some central position a large pigeon-loft is built, in which all the
small babies are stowed and shut up for the night; a very excellent
idea, and one that might be introduced at home. Many of the young
bloods wear neat head-dresses made of human hair, with an outer layer of
beads and culminating in a peak in front, which is tipped with an old
cartridge-case or other gaudy object. They paint their bodies in
gruesome patterns with red-and-white clay, and do not distress
themselves about the proprieties. They still own considerable herds of
cattle and enormous flocks of goats and sheep, and their cultivations
are very extensive. Numbers of chiefs came to pay their respects, glad
of the opportunity of doing so without passing through Lure country,
which they must do to visit Wadelai. One old gentleman arrived with a
cane-bottomed chair, which he said had once belonged to Emin; he also
distinctly remembered Sir Samuel Baker. His two chief wives came and
called on us; they were pleasant-featured women, and scrupulously clean,
but their appearance was much spoilt by the inevitable piece of glass
and enormous earrings. This wearing of a piece of glass in the lower lip
is very curious, and peculiar, I believe, to the Shulis and Lures.
On October 22nd, giving up all hopes of my loads, I sent back my Manyema
_via_ Kampala, and embarking in my man-of-war with five trusty Watonga,
my small boy from Ujiji, and my two Wa Ruanda, I started down stream
once more, and profiting by a strong current, made considerable
progress, and encamped on the left bank by one of the first villages of
the Madi. The Madi are a fine race, closely allied to the Lures; they
surround their villages with a dense thorn hedge, and the only means of
ingress is through small holes 2 ft. high. They make beautiful arrows
with barbs of a great variety of patterns.