the minds of the Wajiji marvel, doubt, disbelief, ill-will. “These are
men who live by doing nothing!” exclaimed the race commercial as the
sons of Hamburg; and they lost no time in requesting me to quit their
territory sooner than convenient. To this I objected, offering, however,
as compensation for the loss of their octrois and perquisites to pay for
not trading what others paid for trading. Kannena roughly informed me
that he had a claim for Kiremba, or duties upon all purchases and sales;
two cloths, for instance, per head of slave, or per elephant’s tusk; and
that, as he expected to gain nothing by brokerage from me, he must
receive as compensation, four coil-bracelets and six cotton cloths.
These were at once forwarded to him. He then evidenced his ill-will in
various ways, and his people were not slow in showing the dark side of
their character. They threatened to flog Sayfu, the old Msawahili of
Chole, for giving me hints concerning prices. The two surviving riding
asses were repeatedly wounded with spears. Thieves broke into the
outhouses by night, and stole all the clothes belonging to the Jemadar
and to the bull-headed slave Mabruki. At first the widows of the late
Kabeza, to whom the only cows in the district belonged, supplied us
plentifully with milk; gradually the quantity shrank, whenever an
opportunity offered it was “cut off;” and, at last, we could no longer
afford the exorbitant price demanded. My companion having refused a
cheese to Kannena, the dowager ladies, who owned the cows, when applied
to for milk, threw away the vessel, and swore that by boiling what ought
to be drunk unboiled, we were manifestly bewitching and killing their
cattle. On one occasion, a young person related to Rusimba went to the
huts of the Baloch, and, snatching up a fine cloth which she clasped to
her bosom, defied them to recover it by force, and departed, declaring
that it was a fine for bringing “whites” into the country. At first our
heroes spoke of much slaughter likely to arise from such procedure, and
with theatrical gesture, made “_rapière au vent_;” presently
second-thoughts suggested how beautiful is peace, and thirdly, they
begged so hard, that I was compelled to ransom for them the article
purloined. I had unwittingly incurred the animosity of Kennena. On the
day after his appearance in rich clothing he had entered unannounced
with bare head, a spear or two in hand, and a bundle of wild-cats’ skins
by way of placket; not being recognised, he was turned out, and the
ejectment mortally offended his dignity. Still other travellers fared
even worse than we did. Said bin Majid, who afterwards arrived at Ujiji
to trade for ivory and slaves, had two followers wounded by the Wajiji,
one openly speared in the bazaar, and the other at night by a thief who
was detected digging through the wall of the store-hut.
After trade was disposed of, ensued a general Bakhshish. Nothing of the
kind had been contemplated or prepared for at Zanzibar, but before
leaving Unyanyembe, I had found it necessary to offer an inducement, and
now the promise was to be fulfilled. Moreover, most of the party had
behaved badly, and in these exceptional lands, bad behaviour always
expects a reward. In the first place, says the Oriental, no man
misconducts himself unless he has power to offend you and you are
powerless to punish him. Secondly, by “petting” the offender, he may be
bribed to conduct himself decently. On the other hand, the Eastern
declares, by rewarding, praising, or promoting a man who has already
satisfied you, you do him no good, and you may do him great harm. The
boy Faraj, who had shamelessly deserted his master, Said bin Salim, was
afterwards found at Unyanyembe, in Snay bin Amir’s house, handsomely
dressed and treated like a guest; and his patron, forgetting all his
stern resolves of condign punishment, met him with a peculiar kindness.
I gave to the Baloch forty-five cloths, and to each slave, male and
female, a pair. The gratification, however, proved somewhat like that
man’s liberality who, according to the old satirist, presented fine
apparel to those whom he wished to ruin. Our people recklessly spent all
their Bakhshish in buying slaves, who generally deserted after a week,
leaving the unhappy ex-proprietor tantalised by all the torments of
ungratified acquisitiveness.
At first the cold damp climate of the Lake Regions did not agree with
us; perhaps, too, the fish diet was over-rich and fat, and the abundance
of vegetables led to little excesses. All energy seemed to have
abandoned us. I lay for a fortnight upon the earth, too blind to read or
write, except with long intervals, too weak to ride, and too ill to
converse. My companion, who, when arriving at the Tanganyika Lake was
almost as “groggy” upon his legs as I was, suffered from a painful
ophthalmia, and from a curious distortion of face, which made him chew
sideways, like a ruminant. Valentine was nearly blind; and he also had a
wry mouth, by no means the properest for the process of mastication.
Gaetano, who arrived at Ujiji on the 17th February, was half-starved,
and his anxiety to make up for lost time brought on a severe attack of
fever. The Baloch complained of influenzas and catarrhs: too lazy to
build huts after occupying Kannena’s “Traveller’s Bungalow” for the
usual week, they had been turned out in favour of fresh visitors, and
their tempers were as sore as their lungs and throats.
But work remained undone; it was necessary to awake from this lethargy.
Being determined to explore the northern extremity of the Tanganyika
Lake, whence, according to several informants, issued a large river,
flowing northwards, and seeing scanty chance of success, and every
prospect of an accident, if compelled to voyage in the wretched canoes
of the people, I at first resolved to despatch Said bin Salim across the
water, and, by his intervention, to hire from an Arab merchant, Hamid
bin Sulayyam, the only dow, or sailing-craft then in existence. But the
little Arab evidently shirked the mission, and he shirked so
artistically, that, after a few days, I released him, and directed my
companion to do his best about hiring the dow, and stocking it with
provisions for a month’s cruise.
Then arose the preliminary difficulties of the trip. Kannena and all his
people, suspecting that my only object was economy in purchasing
provisions, opposed the project; they demanded exorbitant sums, and
often when bargained down and apparently satisfied, they started up and
rushed away, declaring that they washed their hands of the business. At
length, Lurinda, the neighbouring headman, was persuaded to supply a
Nakhoda and a crew of twenty men. An Arab pays on these occasions,
besides rations, ten per cent. upon merchandise; the white men were
compelled to give four coil-bracelets and eight cloths for the canoe;
besides which, the crew received, as hire, six coil-bracelets, and to
each individual provisions for eight days, and twenty khete of large
blue-glass beads, and small blue-porcelains were issued. After many
delays, my companion set out on the 2nd of March, in the vilest weather,
and spent the first stormy day near the embouchure of the Ruche River,
within cannon shot of Kawele. This halt gave our persecutors time to
change their minds once more, and again to forbid the journey. I was
compelled to purchase their permission by sending to Kannena an
equivalent of what had been paid for the canoe to Lurinda, viz. four
coil-bracelets and eight cloths. Two days afterwards my companion,
supplied with an ample outfit, and accompanied by two Baloch and his
men--Gaetano and Bombay--crossed the bay of Ukaranga, and made his final
departure for the islands.
During my twenty-seven days of solitude the time sped quickly; it was
chiefly spent in eating and drinking, smoking and dozing. Awaking at 2
or 3 A.M., I lay anxiously expecting the grey light creeping through the
door-chinks and making darkness visible; the glad tidings of its
approach were announced by the cawing of the crows and the crowing of
the village cocks. When the golden rays began to stream over the red
earth, the torpid Valentine was called up; he brought with him a mess of
Suji, or rice-flour boiled in water, with a little cold milk as a
relish. Then entered Muhabanya, the “slavey” of the establishment, armed
with a leafy branch to sweep the floor, and to slay the huge wasps that
riddled the walls of the tenement. This done he lit the fire--the
excessive damp rendered this precaution necessary--and sitting over it
he bathed his face and hands--luxurious dog!--in the pungent smoke.
Ensued visits of ceremony from Said bin Salim and the Jemadar, who sat,
stared, and, somewhat disappointed at seeing no fresh symptoms of
approaching dissolution, told me so with their faces, and went away.
From 7 A.M. till 9 A.M., the breakfast hour, Valentine was applied to
tailoring, gun-cleaning, and similar light work, over which he groaned
and grumbled, whilst I settled down to diaries and vocabularies, a
process interrupted by sundry pipes. Breakfast was again a mess of Suji
and milk,--such civilised articles as tea, coffee, and sugar, had been
unknown to me for months. Again the servants resumed their labour, and
they worked, with the interval of two hours for sleep at noon, till 4
P.M. During this time the owner lay like a log upon his cot, smoking
almost uninterruptedly, dreaming of things past, and visioning things
present, and sometimes indulging himself in a few lines of reading and
writing.
Dinner was an alternation of fish and fowl, game and butchers’ meat
being rarely procurable at Ujiji. The fish were in two extremes, either
insipid and soft, or so fat and coarse that a few mouthfuls sufficed;
most of them resembled the species seen in the seas of Western India,
and the eels and small shrimps recalled memories of Europe. The poultry,
though inferior to that of Unyanyembe, was incomparably better than the
lean stringy Indian chicken. The vegetables were various and plentiful,
tomatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, sweet potatoes, yams, and several kinds
of beans, especially a white harricot, which afforded many a _purée_;
the only fruit procurable was the plantain, and the only drink--the
toddy being a bad imitation of vinegar--was water.
As evening approached I made an attempt to sit under the broad eaves of
the Tembe, and to enjoy the delicious spectacle of this virgin Nature,
and the reveries to which it gave birth.
“A pleasing land of drowsihed it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye,
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
For ever flushing round a summer sky.”
It reminded me of the loveliest glimpses of the Mediterranean; there
were the same “laughing tides,” pellucid sheets of dark blue water,
borrowing their tints from the vinous shores beyond; the same purple
light of youth upon the cheek of the earlier evening, the same bright
sunsets, with their radiant vistas of crimson and gold opening like the
portals of a world beyond the skies; the same short-lived grace and
loveliness of the twilight; and, as night closed over the earth, the
same cool flood of transparent moonbeam, pouring on the tufty heights
and bathing their sides with the whiteness of virgin snow.
At 7 P.M., as the last flush faded from the occident, the lamp--a wick
in a broken pot full of palm oil--was brought in; Said bin Salim
appeared to give the news of the day,--how A. had abused B., and how C.
had nearly been beaten by D., and a brief conversation led to the hour
of sleep. A dreary, dismal day, you will exclaim, gentle reader; a day
that
“lasts out a night in Russia,
When nights are longest there.”
Yet it had its enjoyments. There were no post-offices, and this African
Eden had other advantages, which, probably, I might vainly attempt to
describe.
On the 29th of March the rattling of matchlocks announced my companion’s
return. The Masika had done its worst upon him. I never saw a man so
thoroughly moist and mildewed; he justified even the French phrase “wet
to the bone.” His paraphernalia were in a similar state; his guns were
grained with rust, and his fire-proof powder-magazine had admitted the
monsoon-rain. I was sorely disappointed: he had done literally nothing.
About ten days before his return I had been visited by Khamis bin Jumah,
an Arab merchant, who, on the part of the proprietor of the dow, gave
the gratifying message that we could have it when we pleased. I cannot
explain where the mismanagement lay; it appears, however, that the wily
“son of Sulayyam” detained the traveller simply for the purpose of
obtaining from him gratis a little gunpowder. My companion had rested
content with the promise that after three months the dow should be let
to us for a sum of 500 dollars! and he had returned without boat or
provisions to report ill success. The faces of Said bin Salim and the
Jemadar, when they heard the period mentioned, were indeed a study. I
consoled him and myself as I best could, and applied myself to supplying
certain deficiencies as regards orthography and syntax in a diary which
appeared in Blackwood, of September 1859, under the title “Journal of a
Cruise in the Tanganyika Lake, Central Africa.” I must confess, however,
my surprise at, amongst many other things, the vast horseshoe of lofty
mountain placed by my companion in the map attached to that paper, near
the very heart of Sir R. Murchison’s Depression. As this wholly
hypothetical, or rather inventive feature,--I had seen the mountains
growing upon paper under my companion’s hand, from a thin ridge of hill
fringing the Tanganyika to the portentous dimensions given in Blackwood
(Sept. 1859), and Dr. Petermann’s Mittheilungen, (No. 9, of 1859,)--wore
a crescent form, my companion gravely published, with all the pomp of
discovery, in the largest capitals, “This mountain range I consider to
be THE TRUE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON.” * * * Thus men _do_ geography! and
thus discovery is stultified.
When my companion had somewhat recovered from his wetness, and from the
effects of punching-in with a pen-knife a beetle which had visited his
tympanum[2], I began seriously to seek some means of exploring the
northern head of the Tanganyika. Hamid bin Sulayyam had informed his
late guest that he had visited the place, where, although attacked by an
armada of thirty or forty hostile canoes, he had felt the influence of a
large river, which drains the water northwards: in fact, he told the
“lie with circumstance.” By a curious coincidence, Sayfu, the Mswahili
of Chole, declared that he also had sighted a stream issuing from the
northern extremity of the lake--this was the “lie direct”--and he
offered to accompany me as guide and interpreter. When we compared
statements, we saw what was before us,--a prize for which wealth,
health, and life, were to be risked.
[2] My companion gives in Blackwood, Sept. 1859, the following
description of his untoward accident:--“This day (that of his arrival
at the isle of Kivira) passed in rest and idleness, recruiting from
our late exertions. At night a violent storm of rain and wind beat on
my tent with such fury that its nether parts were torn away from the
pegs, and the tent itself was only kept upright by sheer force. On the
wind’s abating, a candle was lighted to rearrange the kit, and in a
moment, as though by magic, the whole interior became covered with a
host of small black beetles, evidently attracted by the glimmer of the
candle. They were so annoyingly determined in their choice of place
for peregrinating, that it seemed hopeless my trying to brush them off
the clothes or bedding, for as one was knocked aside another came on,
and then another, till at last, worn out, I extinguished the candle,
and with difficulty--trying to overcome the tickling annoyance
occasioned by these intruders crawling up my sleeves and into my hair,
or down my back and legs--fell off to sleep. Repose that night was not
destined to be my lot. One of these horrid little insects awoke me in
his struggles to penetrate my ear, but just too late: for in my
endeavour to extract him, I aided his immersion. He went his course,
struggling up the narrow channel, until he got arrested by want of
passage-room. This impediment evidently enraged him, for he began with
exceeding vigour, like a rabbit at a hole, to dig violently away at my
tympanum. The queer sensation this amusing _measure_ excited in me is
past description. I felt inclined to act as our donkeys once did, when
beset by a swarm of bees, who buzzed about their ears and stung their
heads and eyes until they were so irritated and confused that they
galloped about in the most distracted order, trying to knock them off
by treading on their heads, or by rushing under bushes, into houses,
or through any jungle they could find. Indeed, I do not know which was
worst off. The bees killed some of them and this beetle nearly did for
me. What to do I knew not. Neither tobacco, oil, nor salt could be
found: I therefore tried melted butter; that failing, I applied the
point of a pen-knife to his back, which did more harm than good; for
though a few thrusts kept him quiet, the point also wounded my ear so
badly, that inflammation set in, severe suppuration took place, and
all the facial glands extending from that point down to the point of
the shoulder became contorted and drawn aside, and a string of bubos
decorated the whole length of that region. It was the most painful
thing I ever remember to have endured; but, more annoying still, I
could not open my mouth for several days, and had to feed on broth
alone. For many months the tumour made me almost deaf, and ate a hole
between that orifice and the nose, so that when I blew it, my ear
whistled so audibly that those who heard it laughed. Six or seven
months after this accident happened, bits of the beetle, a leg, a
wing, or parts of its body, came away in the wax.”
It now became apparent that the Masika or rains, which the Arabs, whose
barbarous lunar year renders untrustworthy in measurements of time, had
erroneously represented as synchronous with the wet monsoon of Zanzibar,
was drawing to a close, and that the season for navigation was
beginning.[3] After some preliminaries with Said bin Salim, Kannena,
who had been preparing for a cruise northwards, was summoned before me.
He agreed to convey me; but when I asked him the conditions on which he
would show me the Mtoni, or river, he jumped up, discharged a volley of
oaths, and sprang from the house like an enraged baboon. I was prepared
for this difficulty, having had several warnings that the tribes on the
northern shores of the Tanganyika allow no trade. But fears like
Kannena’s may generally be bought over. I trusted, therefore, to Fate,
and resolved that at all costs, even if reduced to actual want, we
should visit this mysterious stream. At length the headman yielded every
point. He received, it is true, an exorbitant sum. Arabs visiting Uvira,
the “ultima thule” of lake navigation, pay one cloth to each of the
crew; and the fare of a single passenger is a brace of coil-bracelets.
For two canoes, the larger sixty feet by four, and the lesser about
two-thirds that size, I paid thirty-three coil-bracelets, here equal to
sixty dollars, twenty cloths, thirty-six khete of blue glass beads, and
770 ditto of white-porcelains and green-glass. I also promised to
Kannena a rich reward if he acted up to his word; and as an earnest I
threw over his shoulders a six-foot length of scarlet broadcloth, which
caused his lips to tremble with joy, despite his struggles to conceal
it. The Nakhoda (captain) and the crew in turn received, besides
rations, eighty cloths, 170 khete of blue glass-beads, and forty of
coral-porcelains, locally three times more valuable than whites or
greens. Sayfu, the interpreter, was as extravagantly paid in eight
cloths and twenty-seven pounds of white and blue-porcelains. After
abundance of dispute it was settled that the crews should consist of
fifty-five men, thirty-three to the larger and twenty-two to the smaller
canoe. It was an excess of at least one-half, who went for their own
profit, not for our pleasure. When this point was conceded, we were
kindly permitted to take with us the two Goanese, the two black
gun-carriers, and three Baloch as an escort. The latter were the valiant
Khudabakhsh, whom I feared to leave behind; Jelai, the mestiço-Mekrani;
and, thirdly, Riza, the least mutinous and uncivil of the party.
[3] Not unmindful of the instructions of the Bombay Geographical
Society, which called especial attention to the amount of rain-fall
and evaporation in a region, which abounding in lakes and rivers yet
sends no supplies to the sea, I had prepared, at Zanzibar, a dish and
a gauge for the purpose of comparing the hygrometry of the African
with that of the Indian rainy monsoon. The instruments, however, were
fated to do no work. The first portion of the Masika was spent in a
journey; ensued severe sickness, and the end of the rains happened
during a voyage to the north of the Tanganyika. A few scattered
observations might have been registered, but it was judged better to
bring home no results, rather than imperfections which could only
mislead the meteorologist.
Before departure it will be necessary to lay before the reader a sketch
of our conveyance. The first aspect of these canoes made me lament the
loss of Mr. Francis’ iron boat: regrets, however, were of no avail.
_Quocumque modo--rem!_ was the word.