the death of Colonel Hamerton, the Expedition was entirely dependent on
Luddah Damha, the Custom-master here, for money and supplies. He
advanced considerable sums of money without any security, forwarded all
requisite supplies, and, Captain Speke says, afforded the Expedition
every assistance, in the most handsome manner. Should Government,
therefore, be pleased to present him with a shawl, or some small mark of
satisfaction, I am confident he is fully deserving of it, and it would
gratify a very worthy man to find that his assistance to the Expedition
is acknowledged.
“I have, &c.,
“(Signed) C. P. RIGBY, Captain,
“H. M.’s Consul and British Agent, Zanzibar.”
3.
“East India United Service Club, St. James’s Square,
11th November, 1859.
“Sir,--I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your official
letter, dated the 8th of November, 1859, forwarding for my information
copy of a letter, addressed by Captain Rigby, Her Majesty’s consul and
agent at Zanzibar, to the Government of Bombay, respecting the
non-payment of certain persons, hired by me to accompany the Expedition
under my command into Equatorial Africa, and apprising me that Sir C.
Wood especially desires to be informed, why I took no steps to bring the
services of the men who accompanied me, and my obligations to them, to
the notice of the Bombay Government.
“In reply to Sir Charles Wood I have the honour to state that, as the
men alluded to rendered me no services, and as I felt in no way obliged
to them, I would not report favourably of them. The Kafilah Bashi, the
Jemadar, and the Baloch were servants of H.H. Sayyid Majid, in his pay
and under his command; they were not hired by me, but by the late
Lieut.-Col. Hamerton, H.M.’s Consul and H.E.I.C.’s agent at Zanzibar,
and they marched under the Arab flag. On return to Zanzibar, I reported
them as undeserving of reward to Lieut.-Col. Hamerton’s successor, Capt.
Rigby, and after return to England, when my accounts were sent in to the
Royal Geographical Society, I appended a memorandum, that as those
persons had deserved no reward, no reward had been applied for.
“Before proceeding to reply to Capt. Rigby’s letter, paragraph by
paragraph, I would briefly premise with the following remarks.
“Being ordered to report myself to Lieut.-Col. Hamerton, and having been
placed under his direction, I admitted his friendly interference, and
allowed him to apply to H.H. the Sultan for a guide and an escort.
Lieut.-Col. Hamerton offered to defray, from public funds, which he
understood to be at his disposal, certain expenses of the Expedition,
and he promised, as reward to the guide and escort, sums of money, to
which, had I been unfettered, I should have objected as exorbitant. But
in all cases, the promises made by the late consul were purely
conditional, depending entirely upon the satisfactory conduct of those
employed. These facts are wholly omitted in Capt. Rigby’s reports.
“2. Capt. Rigby appears to mean that the Kafila Bashi, the Baloch
sepoys, and the porters received nothing whatever on my return to
Zanzibar, in March last, from the interior of Africa, because the funds
supplied to me by the Royal Geographical Society for the Expenditure of
the Expedition, had been exhausted. Besides the sum of (1000_l._) one
thousand pounds, granted by the Foreign Office, I had expended from
private resources nearly (1400_l._) fourteen hundred pounds, and I was
ready to expend more had the expenditure been called for. But, though
prepared on these occasions to reward liberally for good service, I
cannot see the necessity, or rather I see the unadvisability of offering
a premium to notorious misconduct. This was fully explained by me to
Capt. Rigby on my return to Zanzibar.
“3. Capt. Rigby ‘_understands_’ that the party of Baloch sepoys,
consisting of a Jemadar and twelve armed men, were promised a monthly
salary of 5 dollars each. This was not the case. Lieut.-Col. Hamerton
advanced to the Jemadar 25, and to each sepoy 20 dollars for an outfit;
he agreed that I should provide them with daily rations, and he promised
them an ample reward from the public funds in case of good behaviour.
These men deserved nothing; I ignore their ‘fidelity’ and
‘perseverance,’ and I assert that if I passed safely through an
unexplored country, it was in no wise by their efforts. On hearing of
Lieut.-Col. Hamerton’s death, they mutinied in a body. At the Tanganyika
Lake they refused to escort me during the period of navigation, a month
of danger and difficulty. When Capt. Speke proposed to explore the
Nyanza Lake, they would not march without a present of a hundred
dollars’ worth of cloth. On every possible occasion they clamoured for
‘Bakshish,’ which, under pain of endangering the success of the
Expedition, could not always be withheld. They were often warned by me
that they were forfeiting all hopes of a future reward, and, indeed,
they ended by thinking so themselves. They returned to Zanzibar with a
number of slaves, purchased by them with money procured from the
Expedition. I would not present either guide or escort to the consul;
but I did not think it my duty to oppose a large reward, said to be
2,300 dollars, given to them by H.H. the Sultan, and I reported his
liberality and other acts of kindness to the Bombay Government on my
arrival at Aden. This fact will, I trust, exonerate me from any charge
of wishing to suppress my obligations.
“4. The Banyan Ramji, head clerk of the Custom House, did not, as is
stated by Capt. Rigby, procure me (10) ten men who accompanied the
Expedition as porters; nor were these men, as is asserted, (in par. 6),
‘Slaves belonging to deewans or petty chiefs on the opposite mainland.’
It is a notorious fact that these men were private slaves, belonging to
the Banyan Ramjee, who hired them to me direct, and received from me as
their pay, for six months, thirty dollars each; a sum for which, as I
told him, he might have bought them in the bazaar. At the end of six
months I was obliged to dismiss these slaves, who, as is usually the
case with the slaves of Indian subjects at Zanzibar, were mutinous in
the extreme. At the same time I supplied them with cloth, to enable them
to rejoin their patron. On my return from the Tanganyika Lake, they
requested leave to accompany me back to Zanzibar, which I permitted,
with the express warning that they were not to consider themselves
re-engaged. The Banyan, their proprietor, had, in fact, sent them on a
trading trip into the interior under my escort, and I found them the
most troublesome of the party. When Ramji applied for additional pay,
after my return to Zanzibar, I told him that I had engaged them for six
months; that I had dismissed them at the end of six months, as was left
optional to me; and that he had already received an unusual sum for
their services. This conversation appears in a distorted form and
improperly represented in the concluding sentence of Capt. Rigby’s 6th
paragraph.
“5 and 6. With respect to the two men sent on with supplies after the
Expedition had left Zanzibar, they were not paid, on account of the
prodigious disappearance of the goods intrusted to their charge, as I am
prepared to prove from the original journals in my possession. They were
dismissed with their comrades, and never afterwards, to the best of my
remembrance, did a day’s work.
“7 and 8. The Kafilah Bashi received from me for the first journey to
Usumbara (50) fifty dollars. Before my departure in the second
Expedition he was presented by Lieut. Colonel Hamerton with (500) five
hundred dollars, almost double what he had expected. He was also
promised, in case of good conduct, a gold watch, and an ample reward,
which, however, was to be left to the discretion of his employers. I
could not recommend him through Captain Rigby to the Government for
remuneration. His only object seemed to be that of wasting our resources
and of collecting slaves in return for the heavy presents made to the
native chiefs by the Expedition, and the consequence of his carelessness
or dishonesty was, that the expenditure on the whole march, until we had
learnt sufficient to supervise him, was inordinate. When the Kafilah
Bashi at last refused to accompany Captain Speke to the Nyanza Lake, he
was warned that he also was forfeiting all claim to future reward, and
when I mentioned this circumstance to Captain Rigby at Zanzibar, he then
agreed with me that the 500 dollars originally advanced were sufficient.
“9. With regard to the statement of Said bin Salim concerning the
non-payment of the seventy-three porters, I have to remark that it was
mainly owing to his own fault. The men did not refuse to accompany me
because I wished to diverge from the “correct route,” nor was I so
unreasonable as to expect them to venture into the jaws of the slave
trade. Several caravans that had accompanied us on the down-march, as
well as the porters attached to the Expedition, were persuaded by the
slaves of Ramjee (because Zanzibar was a nearer way to their homes) not
to make Kilwa. The pretext of the porters was simply that they would be
obliged to march back for three days. An extra remuneration was offered
to them, they refused it, and left in a body. Shortly before their
departure Captain Speke proposed to pay them for their services, but
being convinced that they might be prevented from desertion, I did not
judge advisable by paying them to do what would be virtually dismissing
them. After they had proceeded a few miles, Said bin Salim was sent to
recall them, on conditions which they would have accepted; he delayed,
lost time, and ended by declaring that he could not travel without his
dinner. Another party was instantly sent; they also loitered on the way,
and thus the porters reached the coast and dispersed. Before their
departure I rewarded the Kirangozi, or chief man of the caravan, who had
behaved well in exhorting his followers to remain with us. I was delayed
in a most unhealthy region for the arrival of some down porters, who
consented to carry our goods to the coast; and to prove to them that
money was not my object, I paid the newly-engaged gang as if they had
marched the whole way. Their willingness to accompany me is the best
proof that I had not lost the confidence of the people. Finally, on
arrival at the coast, I inquired concerning those porters who had
deserted us, and was informed by the Diwan and headman of the village,
that they had returned to their homes in the interior, after a stay of a
few days on the seaboard. This was a regrettable occurrence, but such
events are common on the slave-path in Eastern Africa, and the
established custom of the Arabs and other merchants, whom I had
consulted upon the subject before leaving the interior, is, not to
encourage desertion by paying part of the hire, or by settling for
porterage before arriving at the coasts. Of the seven gangs of porters
engaged on this journey, only one, an unusually small proportion, left
me without being fully satisfied.
“10. That Said bin Salim, and Ramji, the Banyan, should have appealed to
Captain Rigby, according to the fashion of Orientals, after my departure
from Zanzibar, for claims which they should have advanced when I refused
to admit them, I am not astonished. But I must express my extreme
surprise that Captain Speke should have written two private letters,
forcibly pointing out the claims of these men to Captain Rigby, without
having communicated the circumstance in any way to me, the chief of the
Expedition. I have been in continued correspondence with that officer
since my departure from Zanzibar, and until this moment I have been
impressed with the conviction that Captain Speke’s opinion as to the
claims of the guide and escort above alluded to was identical with my
own.
“11. With respect to the last paragraph of Captain Rigby’s letter,
proposing that a shawl or some small mark of satisfaction should be
presented by Government to Ladha Damha, the custom-master at Zanzibar,
for his assistance to the Expedition, I distinctly deny the gratuitous
assertions that I was entirely dependent on him for money and supplies;
that he advanced considerable sums of money without any security; that
he forwarded all requisite supplies, or, as Captain Speke affirms, that
he afforded the Expedition every assistance in the most handsome manner.
Before quitting Zanzibar for inner Africa, I settled all accounts with
him, and left a small balance in his hands, and I gave, for all
subsequent supplies, an order upon Messrs. Forbes, my agents in Bombay.
He, like the other Hindus at Zanzibar, utterly neglected me after the
death of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton; and Captain Rigby has probably seen
some of the letters of complaint which were sent by me from the
interior. In fact, my principal merit in having conducted the Expedition
to a successful issue is in having contended against the utter neglect
of the Hindus at Zanzibar (who had promised to Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton,
in return for his many good offices, their interest and assistance), and
against the carelessness and dishonesty, the mutinous spirit and the
active opposition of the guide and escort.
“I admit that I was careful that these men should suffer for their
misconduct. On the other hand, I was equally determined that those who
did their duty should be adequately rewarded,--a fact which nowhere
appears in Captain Rigby’s letter. The Portuguese servants, the
negro-gun carriers, the several African gangs of porters, with their
leaders, and all other claimants, were fully satisfied. The bills drawn
in the interior, from the Arab merchants, were duly paid at Zanzibar,
and on departure I left orders that if anything had been neglected it
should be forwarded to me in Europe. I regret that Captain Rigby,
without thoroughly ascertaining the merits of the case (which he
evidently has not done), should not have permitted me to record any
remarks which I might wish to offer, before making it a matter of appeal
to the Bombay Government.
“Finally, I venture to hope that Captain Rigby has forwarded the
complaints of those who have appealed to him without endorsing their
validity; and I trust that these observations upon the statements
contained in his letter may prove that these statements were based upon
no foundation of fact.
“I am, Sir,
“Your obedient Servant,
“R. F. BURTON,
“Bombay Army.”
4.
“India Office, E. C., 14th January, 1860.
“Sir,--I am directed by the Secretary of State for India in council, to
inform you that, having taken into consideration the explanations
afforded by you in your letter of the 11th November, together with the
information on the same subject furnished by Captain Speke, he is of
opinion that it was your duty, knowing, as you did, that demands for
wages, on the part of certain Belochs and others who accompanied you
into Equatorial Africa, existed against you, not to have left Zanzibar
without bringing these claims before the consul there, with a view to
their being adjudicated on their own merits, the more especially as the
men had been originally engaged through the intervention or the
influence of the British authorities, whom, therefore, it was your duty
to satisfy before leaving the country. Had this course been followed,
the character of the British Government would not have suffered, and the
adjustment of the dispute would, in all probability, have been effected
at a comparatively small outlay.
“Your letter, and that of Captain Speke, will be forwarded to the
Government of Bombay, with whom it will rest to determine whether you
shall be held pecuniarily responsible for the amount which has been paid
in liquidation of the claims against you.
“I am, Sir,
“Your obedient Servant,
“(Signed) J. COSMO MELVILL.”
5.
“Sir,--I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your official
letter of the 14th January, 1860.
“In reply, I have the honour to observe that, not having been favoured
with a copy of the information on the same subject furnished to you by
Captain Speke, I am not in a position to understand on what grounds the
Secretary of State for India in council should have arrived at so
unexpected a decision as regards the alleged non-payment of certain
claims made by certain persons sent with me into the African interior.
“I have the honour to observe that I did not know that demands for wages
existed against me on the part of those persons, and that I believed I
had satisfactorily explained the circumstances of their dismissal
without payment in my official letter of the 11th November, 1859.
“Although impaired health and its consequences prevented me from
proceeding in an official form to the adjudication of the supposed
claims in the presence of the consular authority, I represented the
whole question to Captain Rigby, who, had he then--at that time--deemed
it his duty to interfere, might have insisted upon adjudicating the
affair with me, or with Captain Speke, before we left Zanzibar.
“I have the honour to remark that the character of the British
Government has _not_, and cannot (in my humble opinion) have suffered in
any way by my withholding a purely conditional reward when forfeited by
gross neglect and misconduct; and I venture to suggest that by
encouraging such abuses serious obstacles will be thrown in the way of
future exploration, and that the liberality of the British Government
will be more esteemed by the native than its character for sound sense.
“In conclusion, I venture to express my surprise, that all my labours
and long services in the cause of African Exploration should have won
for me no other reward than the prospect of being mulcted in a pecuniary
liability incurred by my late lamented friend, Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton,
and settled without reference to me by his successor, Captain Rigby.
“I have the honour, &c. &c.,
“RICHD. F. BURTON,
“Captain, Bombay Army.”
“The Under Secretary of State for India.”
INDEX.
Abad bin Sulayman, rest of the party at the house of, at Kazeh, i.
323.
Abdullah, the Baloch, sketch of him, i. 136.
Abdullah bin Nasib, of Zanzibar, his kindness, i. 270.
Abdullah bin Jumah, and his flying caravan, i. 315.
Abdullah bin Salim of Kazeh, his authority there, i. 329.
Abdullah, son of Musa Mzuri, ii. 225, 226.
Ablactation, period of, in East Africa, i. 117.
Abrus precatorius used as an ornament in Karagwah, ii. 181.
Adansonia digitata, or monkey-bread of East Africa, peculiarity of,
i. 47.
Africa, Central, great depression of, i. 409; ii. 8.
African proverbs, i. 131.
Africans, a weak-brained people, i. 33.
Africans, East, their character and religion, ii. 324.
Albinos, frequency of, amongst the Wazaramo tribes, i. 109.
Description of them, 109.
Amayr bin Said el Shaksi, calls on Capt. Burton, ii. 228. His
adventures, 228.
Ammunition, danger of, in African travelling, i. 264.
Androgyne, the, ii. 159.
Animals, wild, of Uzaramo, i. 63. Of Dut’humi, 87. Of Zungomero, 95.
Of the Mrima, 103, 104. Of K’hutu, 160. Of the Usagara mountains, 162.
Of the plains beyond the Rufuta, 181, 183. Of Ugogi, 242. Of the road
to Ugogo, 247. In Ugogo, 300. Of Unyamwezi, ii. 15. Of Ujiji, 60.
Antelopes in the Doab of the Mgeta river, i. 81. In the Rufuta plains,
183. Of East Africa, 268, 269. On the Mgunda Mk’hali, 289. Of Ugogo,
i. 300.
Ant-hills of East Africa, i. 202, 203. In Unyamwezi, ii. 19. Clay of,
chewed in Unyamwezi, 28.
Anthropophagi of Murivumba, ii. 114.
Ants in the Doab of the Mgeta river, i. 82. Red, of the banks of
rivers in East Africa, 186. Maji m’oto, or “hot water” ants, 187. Near
the Marenga Mk’hali river, 201. Account of them, 202. Annoyance of, at
K’hok’ho, 276. Of Rubuga, 317. Of East Africa, 371. Of Unyamwezi,
ii. 19. Of Ujiji, 64.
Apples’ wood, at Mb’hali, i. 401.
Arab caravans, description of, in East Africa, i. 342.
Arab proverbs, i. 50, 86, 133, 135.
Arabs of the East coast of Africa, i. 30. The half-castes described,
32. Those settled in Unyanyembe, 323. History and description of their
settlements, 327. Tents of, on their march, 353.
Arachis Hypogæa, as an article of food, i. 198.
Arak tree in Ugogo, i. 300.
Archery in East Africa, ii. 301.
Armanika, Sultan of Karagwah, account of, ii. 183. His government,
183, 184. Besieged by his brother, ii. 224.
Arms of the Wazaramo, i. 110. Of the Wadoe, 124. Of the Baloch
mercenaries, 133. Of the “Sons of Ramji,” 140. Required for the
expedition, 152. Of the Wasagara tribe, 199, 237. Of the Wahehe, 240.
Of the Wagogo, 304. Of the Wahamba, 312. Of the porters of caravans,
350. Of the Wakimbu, ii. 20. Of the Wanzamwezi, 30. Of the Wajiji, 66.
Of the Wavinza, 75. Of the Watuta, 77. Of the people of Karagwah, 182.
Army of Uganda, ii. 189.
Artémise frigate, i. 1.
Atmosphere, brilliancy of the, in Ugogo, i. 297.
Asclepias in the Usagara mountains, i. 165.
Ashmed bin Nuuman, the Wajhayn or “two faces,” i. 3.
Assegais of the Wasagara tribe, i. 237. Of the Wanyamwezi, ii. 22. Of
East Africa generally, 301.
Ass, the African, described, i. 85. Those of the expedition, 151. Loss
of, 180. Fresh asses purchased from a down caravan, 209.
Asthma, or zik el nafas, remedy in East Africa for, i. 96.
Atheism, aboriginal, ii. 342.
Bakera, village of, i. 92.
Bakshshish, in the East, ii. 84, 85. The propriety of rewarding bad
conduct, 85. Influence of, ii. 172.
Balochs, the, of Zanzibar, described, i. 14. Their knavery, 85. Their
behaviour on the march, 127. Sketch of their character, 132. Their
quarrels with the “Sons of Ramji,” 163. Their desertion and return,
173. Their penitence, 177. Their character, 177, 178. Their discontent
and complaints about food, 212, 221. And proposed desertion, 273, 278.
Their bile cooled, 274. Their injury to the expedition, 319. Their
breakfast on the march, 345. Their manœuvres at Kazeh, 376. Their
desertion, ii. 111. Influenced by bakhshish, 217. Their quarrel with
the porters, 253. Doing “Zam,” ii. 276. Sent home, 277.
Bana Dirungá, village of, i. 71.
Banadir, Barr el, or harbour-land, geography of, i. 30.
Bangwe, islet of, in Lake Tanganyika, ii. 53. Described, 99.
Banyans, the, of the East Coast of Africa, i. 19.
Baobab Tree of East Africa, i. 47.
Barghash, Sayyid, of Zanzibar, a state prisoner at Bombay, i. 3.
Barghumi, the, of East Africa, ii. 294.
Bark-cloth, price of, at Uvira, ii. 121.
Basket making in East Africa, ii. 316.
Basts of East Africa, ii. 317.
Battle-axes of the Wanyamwezi, ii. 23. Of the East Africans, 307.
Bazar-gup, or tittle-tattle in the East, i. 12.
Bdellium Tree, or Mukl, of Ugogo, i. 299. Uses of, among the Wagogo,
300.
Beads, mode of carrying, in the expedition, i. 145. Account of African
beads of commerce, 146. Currency at Msene, 398. Those most highly
valued in Ujiji, ii. 72. Bead trade of Zanzibar, 390.
Bedding required for the expedition, i. 154.
Beds and bedding of the East Africans, i. 370.
Beef, roast, and plum-pudding at Msene, i. 400.
Bee-hives, seen for the first time at Marenga Mk’hali, i. 200. Their
shape, 200. Of Rubuga, 317.
Beer in East Africa, ii. 285. Mode of making it, 286.
Bees in K’hutu, i. 120. But no bee-hives, 120. Wild, attack the
caravan, i. 176, 248, 249. Annoyance of, at K’hok’ho, 276. Of East
Africa, ii. 287.
Beetles in houses at Ujiji, ii. 91, _note_. One in the ear of Captain
Speke, 91, _note_.
Belok, the Baloch, sketch of him, i. 135.
Bérard, M., his kindness, i. 22.
Berberah, disaster at, referred to, i. 68.
Bhang plant, the, in Zungomero, i. 95. Smoked throughout East Africa,
96. Effects produced by, 96. Used in Ujiji, ii. 70.
Billhooks carried by the Wasagara tribe, i. 238.
Birds, mode of catching them, i. 160. Scarcity of, in East Africa,
270. Of Ugogo, 300. Period of nidification and incubation of, ii. 13.
Of Unyamwezi, 16. Of Ujiji, 60.
Births and deaths amongst the Wazaramo, customs at, i. 115, 116, 118,
119.
Bivouac, a pleasant, i. 245.
Black Magic. See Uchawi.
Blackmail of the Wazaramo, i. 70, 113. Of the Wak’hutu, 121. Of the
Wazegura, 125. At Ugogo, 252. Account of the blackmail of East Africa,
253. At Kirufuru, 264. At Kanyenye, 265. In K’hok’ho, 274. At Mdaburu,
279. At Wanyika, 407. At Ubwari island, ii. 114.
Blood of cattle, drunk in East Africa, ii. 282.
Boats of the Tanganyika Lake, described, ii. 94.
Boatmen of the Tanganyika Lake, ii. 101.