their Lakist brethren, to drunkenness, and, when drunk, quarrelsome and
violent. At Wafanya, however, they are kept in order by Kanoni, their
mutware or minor chief, subject to “Mwezi,” the mwami or sultan of
Urundi. The old man appeared, when we reached his settlement, in some
state, preceded by an ancient carrying his standard, a long wisp of
white fibre attached to a spear, like the Turkish “horse-tail,” and
followed by a guard of forty or fifty stalwart young warriors armed with
stout lance-like spears for stabbing and throwing, straight double-edged
daggers, stiff bows, and heavy, grinded arrows. Kanoni began by
receiving his black-mail--four cloths, two coil-bracelets, and three
fundo of coral beads: the return was the inevitable goat. The climate of
Wafanya is alternately a damp-cold and a “muggy” heat; the crews,
however, if numerous and well armed, will delay here to feed when
northward bound, and to lay in provisions when returning to their homes.
Sheep and fine fat goats vary in value from one to two cloths; a fowl,
or five to six eggs, costs a khete of beads; sweet potatoes are somewhat
dearer than at Ujiji; there is no rice, but holcus and manioc are cheap
and abundant, about 5 lbs. of the latter being sold for a single khete.
Even milk is at times procurable. A sharp business is carried on in
chikichi or palm-oil, of which a large earthen pot is bought for a
cloth; the best paddles used by the crews are made at Wafanya; and the
mbugu, or bark-cloth, is bought for four to ten khete, about one third
of the market-price at Ujiji. Salt, being imported from Uvinza, is dear
and scarce: it forms the first demand for barter, and beads the second.
Large fish is offered for sale, but the small fry is the only article of
the kind which is to be purchased fresh. The country owes its plenty,
according to the guides, to almost perennial showers.
The inhospitality of the Warundi and their northern neighbours, who
would plunder a canoe or insist upon a black-mail equivalent to plunder,
allows neither traffic nor transit to the north of Wafanya. Here,
therefore, the crews prepare to cross the Tanganyika, which is divided
into two stages by the island of Ubwari.
In Ubwari I had indeed discovered “an island far away.” It is probably
the place alluded to by the Portuguese historian, De Barros, in this
important passage concerning the great lake in the centre of Africa: “It
is a sea of such magnitude as to be capable of being navigated by many
sail; and among the islands in it there is one capable of sending forth
an army of 30,000 men.” Ubwari appears from a distance of two days
bearing north-west; it is then somewhat hazy, owing to the extreme
humidity of the atmosphere. From Wafanya it shows a clear profile about
eighteen to twenty miles westward, and the breadth of the western
channel between it and the mainland averages from six to seven miles.
Its north point lies in south lat. 4° 7′, and the lay is N. 17° E.
(corrected). From the northern point of Ubwari the eastern prolongation
of the lake bears N. 3° W. and the western N. 10° W. It is the only
island near the centre of the Tanganyika--a long, narrow lump of rock,
twenty to twenty-five geographical miles long, by four or five of
extreme breadth, with a high longitudinal spine, like a hog’s back,
falling towards the water--here shelving, there steep, on the
sea-side--where it ends in abrupt cliffs, here and there broken by broad
or narrow gorges. Green from head to foot, in richness and profuseness
of vegetation it equals, and perhaps excels, the shores of the
Tanganyika, and in parts it appears carefully cultivated. Mariners dare
not disembark on Ubwari, except at the principal places; and upon the
wooded hill-sides wild men are, or are supposed to be, ever lurking in
wait for human prey.
We halted two miserable days at Wafanya. The country is peculiarly rich,
dotted with numerous hamlets, which supply provisions, and even milk,
and divided into dense thickets, palm-groves, and large clearings of
manioc, holcus, and sweet potatoes, which mantle like a garment the
earth’s brown body. Here we found Kannena snugly ensconced in our
sepoy’s pal, or ridge-tent. He had privily obtained it from Said bin
Salim, with a view to add to his and his ward’s comfort and dignity.
When asked to give it up--we were lodging, I under a lug-sail, brought
from the coast and converted into an awning, and my companion in the
wretched flimsy article purchased from the Fundi--he naively refused.
Presently having seen a fat sheep, he came to me declaring that it was
his perquisite: moreover, he insisted upon receiving the goat offered to
us by the Sultan Kanoni. I at first demurred. His satisfactory rejoinder
was: “Ngema, ndugu yango!--Well, my brother,--here we remain!” I
consulted Bombay about the necessity of humouring him in every whim.
“What these jungle-niggers want,” quoth my counsel, “that they will
have, or they will see the next month’s new moon!”
The morning of the 18th April was dark and menacing. Huge purpling
clouds deformed the face of the northern sky. Having loaded the canoes,
however, we embarked to cross the channel which separated us from the
Ubwari island. As the paddles were in hand, the crew, starting up from
their benches, landed to bring on board some forgotten manioc. My
companion remained in his boat, I in mine. Presently, hearing an unusual
uproar, I turned round and saw the sailors arming themselves, whilst the
“curtain-lion,” Khudabakhsh, was being hustled with blows, and pushed up
the little cliff by a host of black spearmen; a naked savage the while
capering about, waving the Baloch’s bare blade in one hand and its
scabbard in the other. Kannena joined majestically in the “row,” but the
peals of laughter from the mob showed no signs of anger. A Mjiji slave,
belonging to Khudabakhsh had, it appears, taken flight, after landing
unobserved with the crowd. The brave had redemanded him of Kannena, whom
he charged, moreover, with aiding and abetting the desertion. The slave
Sultan offered to refer the point to me, but the valiant man, losing
patience, out with his sword, and was instantly disarmed, assaulted, and
battered, as above described, by forty or fifty sailors. When quiet was
restored, I called to him from the boat. He replied by refusing to
“budge an inch,” and by summoning his “brother” Jelai to join him with
bag and baggage. Kannena also used soft words, till at last, weary of
waiting, he gave orders to put off, throwing two cloths to Khudabakhsh,
that the fellow might not return home hungry. I admired his generosity
till compelled to pay for it.
The two Baloch were like mules; they disliked the voyage, and as it was
the Ramazan, they added to their discomforts by pretending to fast.
Their desertion was inexcusable; they left us wholly in the power of the
Wajiji, to dangers and difficulties which they themselves could not
endure. Prudent Orientals, I may again observe, never commit themselves
to the sole custody of Africans, even of the “Muwallid,” namely those
born and bred in their houses. In Persia the traveller is careful to mix
the black blood with that of the higher race; formerly, whenever the
member of a family was found murdered, the serviles were all tortured as
a preliminary to investigation, and many stories, like the following,
are recounted. The slaves had left their master in complete security,
and were sitting, in early night, merrily chatting round the camp fire.
Presently one began to relate the list of their grievances; another
proposed to end them by desertion; and a third seconded the motion,
opining, however, that they might as well begin by murdering the
patroon. No sooner said than done. These children of passion and
instinct, in the shortest interim, act out the “dreadful thing,” and as
readily repent when reflection returns. The Arab, therefore, in African
lands, seldom travels with Africans only; he prefers collecting as many
companions, and bringing as many hangers on as he can afford. The best
escort to a European capable of communicating with and commanding them,
would be a small party of Arabs fresh from Hazramaut and untaught in the
ways and tongues of Africa. They would by forming a kind of balance of
power, prevent that daring pilfering for which slaves are infamous; in
the long run they would save money to the explorer, and perhaps save his
life.
Khudabakhsh and his comrade-deserter returned safely by land to Kawele;
and when derided by the other men, he repeated, as might be expected,
notable griefs. Both had performed prodigies of valour; they had however
been mastered by millions. Then they had called upon “Haji Abdullah”
for assistance, to which he had replied “My power does not extend here!”
Thus heartlessly refused aid by the only person who could and should
have afforded it, they were reduced, sorely against their will, to take
leave of him. Their tale was of course believed by their comrades, till
the crews brought back the other version of the affair, the
“camel-hearts” then once more became the laugh and jibe of man and
woman.
After a short consultation amongst the men concerning the threatening
aspect of the heavens, it was agreed by them to defer crossing the Lake
till the next day. We therefore passed on to the northern side of the
point which limits the bay of Wafanya, and anchoring the craft in a
rushy bayou, we pitched tents in time to protect us against a violent
thunderstorm with its wind and rain.
On the 19th April we stretched westward, towards Ubwari, which appeared
a long strip of green directly opposite Urundi, and distant from
eighteen to twenty miles. A little wind caused a heavy chopping swell;
we were wet to the skin, and as noon drew nigh, the sun shone
stingingly, reflected by a mirrory sea. At 10 A.M. the party drew in
their paddles and halted to eat and smoke. About 2 P.M. the wind and
waves again arose,--once more we were drenched, and the frail craft was
constantly baled out to prevent water-logging. A long row of nine hours
placed the canoes at a roadstead, with the usual narrow line of yellow
sand, on the western coast of Ubwari Island. The men landed to dry
themselves, and to cook some putrid fish which they had caught as it
floated past the canoe, with the reed triangle that buoyed up the net.
It was “strong meat” to us, but to them its staleness was as the “taste
in his butter,” to the Londoner, the pleasing toughness of the old cock
to the Arab, and the savoury “fumet” of the aged he-goat to the Baloch.
After a short halt, we moved a little northwards to Mzimu, a strip of
low land dividing the waters from their background of grassy rise,
through which a swampy line winds from the hills above. Here we found
canoes drawn up, and the islanders flocked from their hamlets to change
their ivory and slaves, goats and provisions, for salt and beads, wire
and cloth. The Wabwari are a peculiar, and by no means a comely race.
The men are habited in the usual mbugu, tigered with black stripes, and
tailed like leopard-skins: a wisp of fine grass acts as fillet, and
their waists, wrists, and ankles, their knob-sticks, spears, and
daggers, are bound with rattan-bark, instead of the usual wire. The
women train their frizzly locks into two side-bits resembling bear’s
ears; they tie down the bosom with a cord, apparently for the purpose of
distorting nature in a way that is most repulsive to European eyes; and
they clothe themselves with the barbarous goat-skin, or the scantiest
kilts of bark-cloth. The wives of the chiefs wear a load of brass and
bead ornaments; and, like the ladies of Wafanya, they walk about with
patriarchal staves five feet long, and knobbed at the top.
We halted for a day at Mzimu in Ubwari, where Kannena demanded seventy
khete of blue-porcelain beads as his fee for safe conduct to the island.
Suddenly, at 6 P.M., he informed me that he must move to other quarters.
We tumbled into the boats, and after enjoying two hours of pleasant
progress with a northerly current, and a splendid moonshine, which set
off a scene at once wild and soft as any
“That savage Rosa dashed, or learned Poussin drew,”
we rounded the bluff northern point of the island, put into “Mtuwwa,” a
little bay on its western shore, pitched the tent, and slept at ease.
Another halt was required on the 22nd April. The Sultan Kisesa demanded
his blackmail, which amounted to one coil-bracelet and two cloths;
provisions were hardly procurable, because his subjects wanted white
beads, with which, being at a discount at Ujiji, we had not provided
ourselves; and Kannena again successfully put in a tyrannical claim for
460 khete of blue-porcelains to purchase rations.
On the 23rd April we left Mtuwwa, and made for the opposite or western
shore of the lake, which appeared about fifteen miles distant; the day’s
work was nine hours. The two canoes paddled far apart, there was
therefore little bumping, smoking, or quarrelling, till near our
destination. At Murivumba the malaria, the mosquitoes, the crocodiles,
and the men are equally feared. The land belongs to the Wabembe,
who are correctly described in the “Mombas Mission Map” as
“Menschenfresser--anthropophagi.” The practice arises from the savage
and apathetic nature of the people, who devour, besides man, all kinds
of carrion and vermin, grubs and insects, whilst they abandon to wild
growths a land of the richest soil and of the most prolific climate.
They prefer man raw, whereas the Wadoe of the coast eat him roasted. The
people of a village which backed the port, assembled as usual to “sow
gape-seed;” but though
“A hungry look hung upon them all,”--
and amongst cannibals one always fancies oneself considered in the light
of butcher’s meat,--the poor devils, dark and stunted, timid and
degraded, appeared less dangerous to the living than to the dead. In
order to keep them quiet, the bull-headed Mabruki, shortly before dusk,
fired a charge of duck-shot into the village; ensued loud cries and
deprecations to the “Murungwana,” but happily no man was hurt. Sayfu the
melancholist preferred squatting through the night on the bow of the
canoe, to trusting his precious person on shore. We slept upon a
reed-margined spit of sand, and having neglected to pitch the tent, were
rained upon to our heart’s content.
We left Murivumba of the man-eaters early on the morning of the 24th
April, and stood northwards along the western shore of the Lake: the
converging trend of the two coasts told that we were fast approaching
our destination. After ten hours’ paddling, halts included, we landed at
the southern frontier of Uvira, in a place called Mamaletua, Ngovi, and
many other names. Here the stream of commerce begins to set strong; the
people were comparatively civil, they cleared for us a leaky old hut
with a floor like iron,--it appeared to us a palace!--and they supplied,
at moderate prices, sheep and goats, fish-fry, eggs, and poultry, grain,
manioc and bird-pepper.
After another long stretch of fifteen rainy and sunny hours, a high
easterly wind compelled the hard-worked crews to put into Muikamba (?)
of Uvira. A neighbouring hamlet, a few hovels built behind a thick
wind-wrung plantain-grove, backed a reed-locked creek, where the canoes
floated in safety and a strip of clean sand on which we passed the night
as pleasantly as the bright moonlight and the violent gusts would
permit. On the 26th April, a paddle of three hours and a half landed us
in the forenoon at the sandy baystand, where the trade of Uvira is
carried on.
Great rejoicings ushered in the end of our outward-bound voyage. Crowds
gathered on the shore to gaze at the new merchants arriving at Uvira,
with the usual concert, vocal and instrumental, screams, shouts, and
songs, shaums, horns, and tom-toms. The captains of the two canoes
performed with the most solemn gravity a bear-like dance upon the
mat-covered benches, which form the “quarter-decks,” extending their
arms, pirouetting upon both heels, and springing up and squatting down
till their hams touched the mats. The crews, with a general grin which
showed all their ivories, rattled their paddles against the sides of
their canoes in token of greeting, a custom derived probably from the
ceremonious address of the Lakists, which is performed by rapping their
elbows against their ribs. Presently Majid and Bekkari, two Arab youths
sent from Ujiji by their chief, Said bin Majid, to collect ivory, came
out to meet me; they gave me, as usual, the news, and said that having
laid in the store of tusks required, they intended setting out
southwards on the morrow. We passed half the day of our arrival on the
bare landing-place, a strip of sand foully unclean, from the effect of
many bivouacs. It is open to the water and backed by the plain of Uvira;
one of the broadest of these edges of gently-inclined ground which
separate the Lake from its trough of hills. Kannena at once visited the
Mwami or Sultan Maruta, who owns a village on a neighbouring elevation;
this chief invited me to his settlement, but the outfit was running low
and the crew and party generally feared to leave their canoes. We
therefore pitched our tents upon the sand, and prepared for the last
labour, that of exploring the head of the Lake.
We had now reached the “ne plus ultra,” the northernmost station to
which merchants have as yet been admitted. The people are generally on
bad terms with the Wavira, and in these black regions a traveller coming
direct from an enemy’s territory is always suspected of hostile
intentions,--no trifling bar to progress. Opposite us still rose, in a
high broken line, the mountains of inhospitable Urundi, apparently
prolonged beyond the northern extremity of the waters. The head, which
was not visible from the plain, is said to turn N.N. westwards, and to
terminate after a voyage of two days, which some informants, however,
reduce to six hours. The breadth of the Tanganyika is here between seven
and eight miles. On the 28th April, all my hopes--which, however, I had
hoped against hope--were rudely dashed to the ground. I received a visit
from the three stalwart sons of the Sultan Maruta: they were the noblest
type of Negroid seen near the Lake, with symmetrical heads, regular
features and pleasing countenances; their well-made limbs and athletic
frames of a shiny jet black, were displayed to advantage by their loose
aprons of red and dark-striped bark-cloth, slung, like game-bags, over
their shoulders, and were set off by opal-coloured eyeballs, teeth like
pearls, and a profusion of broad massive rings of snowy ivory round
their arms, and conical ornaments like dwarf marling-spikes of
hippopotamus tooth suspended from their necks. The subject of the
mysterious river issuing from the Lake, was at once brought forward.
They all declared that they had visited it, they offered to forward me,
but they unanimously asserted, and every man in the host of bystanders
confirmed their words, that the “Rusizi” enters into, and does not flow
out of the Tanganyika. I felt sick at heart. I had not, it is true,
undertaken to explore the Coy Fountains by this route; but the combined
assertions of the cogging Shaykh and the false Msawahili had startled
me from the proprieties of reason, and--this was the result!
Bombay, when questioned, declared that my companion had misunderstood
the words of Hamid bin Sulayyam, who spoke of a river falling into, not
issuing _from_ the lake; and added his own conviction that the Arab had
never sailed north of Ubwari Island. Sayfu, who at Ujiji had described,
as an eye-witness, the mouth of the déversoir and its direction for two
days, now owned that he had never been beyond Uvira, and that he never
intended to do so. Briefly, I had been deceived by a strange coincidence
of deceit.
On the 28th April, we were driven from the strip of land which we
originally occupied by a S. E. gale; here a “blat,” or small hurricane,
which drives the foaming waters of the tideless sea up to the green
margin of the land. Retiring higher up where the canoes were careened,
we spread our bedding on the little muddy mounds that rise a few inches
above the surface of grass-closed gutter which drains off the showers
daily falling amongst the hills. I was still obliged to content myself
with the lug-sail, thrown over a ridge-pole supported by two bamboo
uprights, and pegged out like a tent below; it was too short to fall
over the ends and to reach the ground, it was therefore a place of
passage for mizzle, splash, and draught of watery wind. My companion
inhabited the tent bought from the Fundi, it was thoroughly rotted,
during his first trip across the Lake--by leakage in the boat, and by
being “bushed” with mud instead of pegs on shore. He informed me that
there was “good grub” at Uvira, and that was nearly the full amount of
what I heard from or of him. Our crews had hutted themselves in the
dense mass of grass near our tents; they lived as it were under arms,
and nothing would induce them to venture away from their only escape,
the canoes, which stood ready for launching whenever required. Sayfu
swore that he would return to Ujiji rather than venture a few yards
inland to buy milk, whilst Bombay and Mabrukí, who ever laboured under
the idea that every brother-African of the jungle thirsted for their
blood, upon the principle that wild birds hate tame birds, became, when
the task was proposed to them, almost mutinous. Our nine days’ halt at
Uvira had therefore unusual discomforts. The air, however, though damp
and raw, with gust, storm, and rain, must have been pure in the extreme;
appetite and sleep--except when the bull-frogs were “making a night of
it”--were rarely wanting, and provisions were good, cheap, and abundant.
I still hoped, however, to lay down the extreme limits of the lake
northwards. Majid and Bekkari the Arab agents of Said bin Majid, replied
to the offer of an exorbitant sum, that they would not undertake the
task for ten times that amount. The sons of Maruta had volunteered their
escort; when I wanted to close with them, they drew off. Kannena, when
summoned to perform his promise and reminded of the hire that he had
received, jumped up and ran out of the tent: afterwards at Ujiji he
declared that he had been willing to go, but that his crews were
unanimous in declining to risk their lives,--which was perhaps true.
Towards the end of the halt I suffered so severely from ulceration of
the tongue, that articulation was nearly impossible, and this was a
complete stopper to progress. It is a characteristic of African travel
that the explorer may be arrested at the very bourne of his journey, on
the very threshold of success, by a single stage, as effectually as if
all the waves of the Atlantic or the sands of Arabia lay between.
Maruta and his family of young giants did not fail to claim their
blackmail; they received a total of twelve cloths, five kitindi, and
thirty khete of coral beads. They returned two fine goats, here worth
about one cloth each, and sundry large gourds of fresh milk--the only
food I could then manage to swallow. Kannena, who had been living at
Maruta’s village, came down on the 5th May to demand 460 khete of blue
porcelains, wherewith to buy rations for the return-voyage. Being
heavily in debt, all his salt and coil-bracelets had barely sufficed for
his liabilities: he had nothing to show for them but masses of
Sambo--iron-wire rings--which made his ankles resemble those of a young
hippopotamus. The slaves and all the fine tusks that came on board were
the property of the crew.
Our departure from Uvira was finally settled for the 6th May: before
taking leave of our “furthest point,” I will offer a few details
concerning the commerce of the place.