MURCHISON FALLS
We had intended, on leaving the Nile where it turns northward at
Mruli, to march directly across to Hoima, on the Albert Lake; and this
journey, by way of Masindi, would have required four marches. But
tales of the beauty and wonder of the Murchison Falls had captivated
my mind, and before embarking at Kakindu a new plan had been resolved.
Runners were sent back to the telegraph wire at Jinja, and thence a
message was flashed by Kampala to Hoima, directing the flotilla which
awaited us there, to steam to the north end of the Albert and meet us
by the foot of the Murchison Falls at Fajao. Thither we were now to
proceed by five marches--two to Masindi and three more turning
northward to the Nile.
The road from Mruli consists of a sort of embanked track through
low-lying and desolate scrub and jungle. The heavy black cotton soil,
cracked and granulated by the heat, offered at this time a hardened if
uneven surface to the bicycle; but in the rains such paths must become
utterly impassable. As one advances westward the country improves
rapidly in aspect. The dismal flats of the South Chioga shore are left
behind, and the traveller discovers more characteristic Uganda scenery
in a region of small hills and great trees. Before Masindi is reached
we are again in a rich and beautiful land. Pools of shining water, set
in verdant green, flash back the sunbeams. Bold bluffs and ridges rise
on all sides from amid the unceasing undulations of the ground.
Streams plash merrily downwards through rocky channels. The yellow
grass roofs of frequent villages peep from underneath their groves of
bananas among broad streaks of cultivated ground, and chiefs and
headmen salute the stranger with grave yet curious politeness as the
long "safari" winds beneath the trees.
The heat grows as the altitude dwindles, and even in the early morning
the sun sits hard and heavy on the shoulders. At ten o'clock its power
is tremendous. So long as the roadway consisted of nobbly lumps of
black cotton soil bicycling, though possible in places, was scarcely
pleasant. But the change in the landscape arises from the change in
the soil. The fields are now of bright red earth, the paths of red
sandstone washed in places almost as smooth and as firm as asphalt by
the rains and sparkling with crystalline dust; and when the ridges
which form the watershed between Lake Chioga and Lake Albert had been
topped, my bicycle glided almost without impulsion down four miles of
gradual descent into Masindi. This station--which is the residence of
a collector--lies embosomed in a wide bay of gently-sloping hills
clothed with noble trees. It is indeed a pleasant spot. There are real
houses, standing on high stone platforms, with deep verandas and wire
gauze windows. The roads are laid out in bold geometry of broad red
lines. There are avenues of planted trees, delicious banks of flowers,
a prepared breakfast, _cold_, not cool, drinks, a telegraph office,
and a file of the _Times_. What more could an explorer desire or the
Fates accord?
We were now to strike northwards to the Nile at Fajao in three long
marches (for the porters) of about sixteen miles each. Upon the Hoima
road some preparations had been made to make the journey easier by
clearing the encroaching jungle from the track and constructing
rest-houses. But my change of plan had disconcerted these
arrangements, and on the new route we had to clear our own paths from
the overgrowth by which even in a season, if unused, they are choked,
and to trust to tents and improvised shelters. Progress was therefore
slow and camps unpretentious. But all was redeemed by the wonders of
the scene.
For a whole day we crept through the skirts of the Hoima forest, amid
an exuberance of vegetation which is scarcely describable. I had
travelled through tropical forests in Cuba and India, and had often
before admired their enchanting, yet sinister, luxuriance. But the
forests of Uganda, for magnificence, for variety of form and colour,
for profusion of brilliant life--plant, bird, insect, reptile,
beast--for the vast scale and awful fecundity of the natural processes
that are beheld at work, eclipsed, and indeed effaced, all previous
impressions. One becomes, not without a secret sense of aversion, the
spectator of an intense convulsion of life and death. Reproduction and
decay are locked struggling in infinite embraces. In this glittering
Equatorial slum huge trees jostle one another for room to live;
slender growths stretch upwards--as it seems in agony--towards
sunlight and life. The soil bursts with irrepressible vegetations.
Every victor, trampling on the rotting mould of exterminated
antagonists, soars aloft only to encounter another host of aerial
rivals, to be burdened with masses of parasitic foliage, smothered in
the glorious blossoms of creepers, laced and bound and interwoven with
interminable tangles of vines and trailers. Birds are as bright as
butterflies; butterflies are as big as birds. The air hums with flying
creatures; the earth crawls beneath your foot. The telegraph-wire runs
northward to Gondokoro through this vegetable labyrinth. Even its
poles had broken into bud!
As we advanced, continually rising or falling with the waves of the
land, and moving in rapid alternations from a blazing patch of
sunshine into a cloistered dimness, every now and then the path became
smooth, broad, and of firm sandstone. And here one could watch the
columns of marching soldier-ants. Perhaps in a hundred yards the road
would be crossed four times by these fierce armies. They move in
regular array, and upon purposes at once inscrutable and unswerving. A
brown band, perhaps two inches broad and an inch and a half _deep_, is
drawn across your track. Its ends are lost in the recesses of the
jungle. It moves unceasingly and with a multiplied rapidity; for each
ant runs swiftly forward, whether upon the ground or upon the backs of
his already moving comrades. About a yard away, on each side of the
main column, are the screening lines of the flank-guards, and for five
yards beyond this every inch is searched, every object is examined by
tireless and fearless reconnoitring patrols. Woe to the enemy who is
overtaken by these hordes. No matter what his size or nature, he is
attacked at once by an ever-increasing number of assailants, each one
of whom, upon remorseless instinct, plunges his strong mandibles in
the flesh, and will have his head pulled off his shoulders rather than
let go.
These ant armies fascinated me. I could not resist interfering with
them. With my walking-stick I gently broke the column and pushed the
swarming rope off its line of march. Their surprise, their confusion,
their indignation were extreme. But not for an instant did they pause.
In a second the scouts were running all over my boots eagerly seeking
an entry, and when I looked back from this to the walking-stick I held
it was already alive. With a gesture so nimble that it might have been
misunderstood, I cast it from me and jumped back out of the danger
circle until I found refuge on a large rock at a respectful distance.
The Soudanese sergeant-major of the escort, a splendid negro, drilled
as smart as a Grenadier Guardsman and with a good long row of medal
ribbons on his khaki tunic, so far forgot himself as to grin from ear
to ear. But his gravity was fully restored when I invited him to
rescue my walking-stick, which lay abandoned on the field in the
mandibles of the victorious enemy. The devoted man was, however, equal
to the crisis.
I have a sad tale also to tell of the perversity of butterflies. Never
were seen such flying fairies. They flaunted their splendid liveries
in inconceivable varieties of colour and pattern in our faces at every
step. Swallow-tails, fritillaries, admirals, tortoise-shells,
peacocks, orange-tips--all executed in at least a dozen novel and
contrasted styles, with many even more beautiful, but bearing no
resemblance to our British species--flitted in sunshine from flower to
flower, glinted in the shadow of great trees, or clustered on the path
to suck the moisture from any swampy patch. The butterfly is a dirty
feeder, and if ever some piece of putrescent filth lay odorous on the
ground, be sure it would be covered with a cloud of these greedy
insects, come in such gay attire to eat such sorry meat. I found them
sometimes so intoxicated with feasting that I could pick them up quite
gently in my fingers without the need of any net at all.
To any one who has ever tried to collect the modest and now all too
rare and scattered butterflies of Britain, these sights could not but
be a hard temptation. For a week I had resisted it, not because it was
not easy enough to make a net, but because of the difficulty of
setting and preserving the prizes; and it was not until the end of our
first day's march out from Masindi that I was told that much the best
way of sending butterflies home from Africa was to enclose them in
neatly-folded triangles of paper and leave them to be set in London.
Forthwith, out of telegraph-wire and mosquito-curtain, a net was made,
and before another dawn I was fully equipped. It is almost incredible
to state that from that very moment, except near the Murchison Falls,
I scarcely ever saw a really fine butterfly again all the way to
Gondokoro. Whether this was due to the intelligent perversity of these
insects, or to the fact that we had left the deeper recesses of the
forest region, I do not inquire; but the fact remains, and I carry
away from the butterflies of Uganda only the haunting memories of
unrealized opportunity.
This first day's march from Masindi was a long one, and our porters
panted and toiled under their loads through the heat of the day. It
was not till the afternoon that the main body came into camp, and
stragglers trickled through into the dusk. Meanwhile the local natives
built under our eyes, with extraordinary speed and cleverness, a
spacious dining-hall and two or three quite excellent bedrooms from
the surrounding elephant-grass and bamboo groves; and we fared as
comfortably in these two humble dwellings as if we dwelt in kings'
palaces. The forest was a little thinner on the second day, although
the jungle was of the same dense and tangled fertility. We started an
hour before sunrise, and by eight o'clock had climbed to the saddle of
the high rocky wall which contains the valley of the Victoria Nile.
From this elevation of, perhaps, six hundred feet above the general
level of the plain a comprehensive view of the landscape was for the
first time possible. In every direction spread a wide sea of foliage,
thinning here into bush, darkening there into forest, rising and
falling with the waves of the land, and broken only by occasional
peaks of rock. Far away to the north-west a long silver gleam, just
discernible through the haze of the horizon, revealed to our eyes the
distant prospect of the Albert Nyanza. The camera cannot do justice to
such a panorama. In photographs these vast expanses look like mere
scrubby commons, inhospitable and monotonous to the eye, melancholy to
the soul. One has to remember that here are Kew Gardens and the Zoo
combined on an unlimited scale; that Nature's central productive
laboratory is here working night and day at full blast; and that the
scrubby common of the picture is really a fairyland of glades and
vistas, through which an army of a hundred thousand men might march
without the glint of a bayonet, or even the dust of an artillery
column, betraying their presence to the watcher on the crag.
Our camp this night lay in a tiny patch cleared in the heart of this
wild world. The cluster of tents under a canopy of palms, illumined by
the watch-fires, bright with lanterns, and busy with the moving
figures of men and the hum of human activity, seemed at a hundred
yards' distance an island of society amid an ocean of Nature. To what
strange perils--apart altogether from the certainty of losing your
way--would a walk of a quarter of a mile in any direction expose the
wanderer? To withdraw from the firelight was to be engulfed in the
savage conditions of prehistoric time. Advance, and the telegraph-wire
would tell you the latest quotations of the London markets, the
figures of the newest by-election. An odd sensation!
[Illustration: MURCHISON FALLS.]
We had scarce proceeded for an hour on our third march, when just as
it grew daylight a low vibrant murmur began to be perceptible in the
air. Now it was lost as we descended into some moist valley, now it
broke even more strongly on the ear as we reached the summit of some
ascent--the sound of the Nile plunging down the Murchison Falls. And
by nine o'clock, when we were still about ten miles off, a loud,
insistent, and unceasing hum had developed. These Falls are certainly
the most remarkable in the whole course of the Nile. At Foweira the
navigable reaches stretching from Lake Chioga are interrupted by
cataracts, and the river hurries along in foam and rapid down a
gradual but continuous stairway, enclosed by rocky walls, but still a
broad flood. Two miles above Fajao these walls contract suddenly till
they are _not six yards apart_, and through this strangling portal, as
from the nozzle of a hose, the whole tremendous river is shot in one
single jet down an abyss of a hundred and sixty feet.
The escarpment over which the Nile falls curves away in a vast bay of
precipitous, or almost precipitous, cliffs, broken here and there by
more gradual rifts, and forms the eastern wall of the Albert Lake,
from whose waters it rises abruptly in many places to a height of six
or seven hundred feet. Arrived at the verge of this descent, the lower
reaches of the Victoria Nile could be discerned, stretching away mile
after mile in a broad, gleaming ribbon almost to its mouth on the
lake. The Falls themselves were, indeed, invisible, concealed behind a
forested bluff, but their roaring left no doubt of their presence.
Below me a zigzag path led down by long descents to the water's edge,
and on an open meadow a row of tents and grass houses had already been
set up.
Fajao as a native town was no more. At hardly any point in Uganda has
the sleeping sickness made such frightful ravages. At least six
thousand persons had perished in the last two years. Almost the whole
population had been swept away. Scarcely enough remained to form the
deputation, who, in their white robes, could be distinguished at the
entrance to the cleared area of the camping-ground. And this cleared
area was itself of the utmost importance; for all around it the powers
of evil were strong. The groves which fringed and overhung the river
swarmed with tsetse flies of newly-replenished venom and approved
malignity, and no man could enter them except at a risk. After pausing
for a few minutes to watch a troop of baboons who were leaping
about from tree to tree on the opposite hill, and who seemed as big as
men, I climbed down the zigzag, photographed the deputation, and shook
hands with the chief. He was a very civilized chief--by name James
Kago--who wore riding-breeches and leather gaiters, and who spoke a
few unexpected sentences of excellent English. He seemed in the best
of spirits, and so did the remnant of the population who gathered
behind him, though whether this was due to stoical philosophy or good
manners, I could not tell. All was smiles and bows and gurglings of
guttural gratification. The district officer who had travelled with me
explained that the chief had had the path up to the top of the Falls
improved, and that he proposed, after we had lunched and rested, to
guide us along it to the very edge of the abyss, but that the forest
along the river-bank was so dangerous because of the tsetses that we
should in prudence wear veils and gloves before entering it. With all
of this I made no quarrel.
[Illustration: FAJAO, WITH NATIVES ASSEMBLED TO WELCOME US.]
In a little rocky inlet forming a small natural harbour we found the
Albert flotilla already arrived. It consisted of the _Kenia_, a
steam-launch about forty feet long, decked, and with a cabin, and
drawing four feet of water, and three steel sailing-boats of different
sizes--to wit, the _James Martin_, the _Good Intent_, and the
_Kisingiri_. These small vessels were to carry us down the Victoria
Nile into the Albert Nyanza, across the top end of this lake, and then
down the hundred and seventy miles' reach of the White Nile till
navigation is barred at Nimule by more cataracts. They were manned by
a crew of jolly Swahili tars smartly dressed in white breeches and
blue jerseys, on whose breasts the words "Uganda Marine" were worked
in yellow worsted. The engineer of the steam-launch commanded the
whole with plenary powers of discipline and diplomacy; and it was by
means of this little group of cock-boats that trade and communications
with the Nile province and around the whole of Lake Albert were alone
maintained. The flotilla, nestling together in its harbour and
sheltered by a rocky breakwater from the swift current, made a pretty
picture; and behind it the Nile, streaked and often covered with the
creamy foam of the Falls, swept along in majestic flood six hundred
yards from brim to brim.
[Illustration: FLOTILLA AT FAJAO.]
We began our climb to the summit of the Falls in the blazing heat
of the day, and for the first time I was forced to confess the Central
African sun as formidable as that which beats on the plains of India.
Yet even at the worst moments it is more endurable, for the breeze
does not stifle you with the breath of a furnace. First the path led
through the deadly groves; and here, of course, the most beautiful
butterflies--some five inches across the wings--floated tantalizingly.
Sometimes we descended to where the river lapped along the rocks and
curled in eddies under floating islands of froth. Precautions were
required against diverse dangers. The Nile below the Murchison Falls
swarms with crocodiles, some of an enormous size, and herds of
hippopotamus are found every half mile or so; so that, what with the
rifles which it was necessary to take for great beasts, and the gloves
and veils which were our protection against even more villainous small
ones, we were painfully encumbered. Indeed, the veils were such a
nuisance and the heat was so great that I resolved to hazard the
tsetse and took mine off. But after half an hour of menacing buzzings,
and after a fly--presumably of the worst character--had actually
settled on my shoulder, brushed off by the promptness of my
companion, I changed my mind again.
As we were thus scrambling along the brink of the river a crocodile
was discovered basking in the sunshine on a large rock in mid-stream,
about a hundred and fifty yards from the shore. I avow, with what
regrets may be necessary, an active hatred of these brutes and a
desire to kill them. It was a tempting shot, for the ruffian lay
sleeping in the sun-blaze, his mouth wide open and his fat and scaly
flanks exposed. Two or three attendant white birds hopped about him,
looking for offal, which I have been assured (and does not Herodotus
vouch for it?) they sometimes pick from his very teeth. I fired. What
the result of the shot may have been I do not know, for the crocodile
gave one leap of mortal agony or surprise and disappeared in the
waters. But then it was my turn to be astonished. The river at this
distance from the Falls was not broader than three hundred yards, and
we could see the whole shore of the opposite bank quite plainly. It
had hitherto appeared to be a long brown line of mud, on which the sun
shone dully. At the sound of the shot the whole of this bank of the
river, over the extent of at least a quarter of a mile, sprang into
hideous life, and my companions and I saw hundreds and hundreds of
crocodiles, of all sorts and sizes, rushing madly into the Nile, whose
waters along the line of the shore were lashed into white foam,
exactly as if a heavy wave had broken. It could be no exaggeration to
say that at least a thousand of these saurians had been disturbed at a
single shot. Our British friends explained that Fajao was the
favourite haunt of the crocodiles, who lay in the water below the
Falls waiting for dead fish and animals carried over by the river.
Very often, they told us, hippos from the upper river and from Lake
Chioga were caught and swept downwards, the force of the water
"breaking every bone in their body." "Indeed," added the officer,
somewhat obscurely, "they are _very lucky_ if they are not smashed
into pulp."
[Illustration: THE TOP OF THE MURCHISON FALLS.]
[Illustration: UGANDA SCENERY.]
At length we turned a corner and came face to face with the Falls.
They are wonderful to behold, not so much because of their
height--though that is impressive--but because of the immense volume
of water which is precipitated through such a narrow outlet. Indeed,
seeing the great size of the river below the Falls, it seemed
impossible to believe that it was wholly supplied from this single
spout. In clouds of rainbow spray and amid thunderous concussions of
sound we set to work to climb the southern side of the rock wall, and
after an hour achieved the summit. It was possible to walk to within
an inch of the edge and, lying on one's face with a cautious head
craned over, to look actually down upon the foaming hell beneath. The
narrowness of the gorge at the top had not been overstated. I doubt
whether it is fifteen feet across from sheer rock to sheer rock. Ten
pounds, in fact, would throw an iron bridge across the Nile at this
point. But it is evident that the falling waters must have arched and
caved away the rock below their surface in an extraordinary degree,
for otherwise there could not possibly be room for the whole river to
descend.
We waited long at this strange place, watching the terrible waters,
admiring their magnificent fury, trying to compute their force. Who
can doubt that the bridle is preparing which shall hold and direct
their strength, or that the day will come when forlorn Fajao--now
depopulated and almost derelict--will throb with the machinery of
manufacture and electric production? I cannot believe that modern
science will be content to leave these mighty forces untamed, unused,
or that regions of inexhaustible and unequalled fertility, capable of
supplying all sorts of things that civilized industry needs in greater
quantity every year, will not be brought--in spite of their insects
and their climate--into cultivated subjection. Certain it is that the
economy of the world remains hopelessly incomplete while these
neglects prevail, and, while it would be wasteful and foolish to
hustle, it would be more wasteful and more foolish to abate the steady
progress of development.
From these reflections I was roused abruptly by the Nile, a wave of
whose turbulent waters--cast up by some unusual commotion as they
approached the verge--boiled suddenly over a ledge of rock hitherto
high and dry, carrying an ugly and perhaps indignant swish of water to
my very feet.