THE MARCH BACK. THE HIPPOPOTAMUS’ HUNT.
THE RETURN TO ZANZIBAR.
‘Wasteful, forth
Walks the dire Power of pestilent disease.
A thousand hideous fiends her course attend,
Sick nature blasting, and to heartless woe
And feeble desolation, casting down
The towering hopes and all the pride of man.’
THE SEASONS.
The Anglo-African traveller, in this section of the 19th century, is an
over-worked professional. Formerly the reading public was satisfied with
dry details of mere discovery, and was delighted with a few longitudes,
latitudes, and altitudes. Of late in this, as in all other pursuits, the
standard has been raised. Whilst marching so many miles per diem, and
watching a certain number of hours per noctem, the traveller, who is, in
fact, his own general, adjutant, quartermaster, and commissariat
officer, is expected to survey and observe, to record meteorology and
trigonometry, to shoot and stuff birds and beasts, to collect geological
specimens and theories, to gather political and commercial information,
beginning, of course, with cotton; to advance the infant study
anthropology; to keep accounts, to sketch, to indite a copious, legible
journal—notes are now not deemed sufficient—and to forward long reports
which shall prevent the Royal Geographical Society napping through its
evenings.
It is right, I own, to establish a high standard, which ensures some
work being done; but explorations should be distinguished from common
journeys, and a broad line drawn between the possible and the
impossible. Before a march, when all my time was certain to be amply
occupied, an ardent gentleman once requested me to collect beetles, and
a second sent me recipes for preserving the tenantry of shells. Another
unconscionable physicist deemed it his duty to complain because I had
not used a sextant at Meccah, and yet another because I had not
investigated the hypsometry of Harar. It was generally asserted that my
humble studies of geography in the Lake Regions were of no importance,
because the latitudes and longitudes, not the descriptions of the
country, were the work of another hand. A bad attack of ophthalmia in
Sind, and a due regard for eyes which have to do the work of four
average pair, made me resolve, in 1849, never to use sextant or circle
except when there is an absolute necessity. A President of the Royal
Geographical Society wrote that I had done nothing for geography in
South America, after having, in one of my half-a-dozen journeys, through
the almost unexplored Sierra de San Luiz in the Argentine Republic,
inspected and described 1300 miles of a river certainly unknown to him
10 years ago. This meagre idea of geography, reducing a journey to a
skeleton of perfectly uninteresting ‘crucial stations,’ carefully laid
down by lunars, occultations, and other observations, and fitted only
for the humblest professional map-maker, seems to have taken root in the
Royal Geographical Society’s brain, since the days when that learned
body was presided over by Admiral Smyth. Volney never handled sextant;
yet see what Gibbon says of his labours. We may now hope to see all such
things changed.
These African explorations are campaigns on a small scale, wherein the
traveller, unaided by discipline, has to overcome all the troubles,
hardships, and perils of savage warfare. He must devote himself to
feeding, drilling, and showing his men the use of arms, and to the
conduct of a caravan, as well as study the barometer, and measure lunar
distances. The Missionaries, and all those best acquainted with the
country, did not approve of our making observations at Usumbara. The
sight of an instrument suggests to barbarians that the stranger is
bringing down the sun, stopping the rain, breeding a pestilence, or
bewitching the land; and the dazzle of a brass instrument awakes savage
cupidity. Such operations are sometimes impossible, and often, as in
North Africa, they are highly unadvisable. The climate and petite santé,
to say nothing of catarrh and jungle fever, also rob man of energy as
well as of health: he cannot, if he would, collect shells and beetles,
whilst the lightest geodesical labours not unfrequently, as these pages
show, end badly.
The rainy season had fairly set in at Fuga, though the half of February
had not elapsed. Heavy clouds rolled up from the South-West, and during
our two days and nights upon the bills the weather was a succession of
drip, drizzle, and drench. In vain we looked for a star—we were
compelled to leave Fuga after two nights, without a single observation:
even the sun of S. lat. 6° could not disperse the dense raw vapours that
rose from the steamy ground. I feared to linger longer in Usumbara. We
daily expected the inevitable ‘seasoning fever,’ the rains would make
the lowland a hot-bed of disease, and our men were not clad to resist
the cold—73° (F.) at 4 P. M., whilst upon the plains the mercury ranged
between 81° and 99°. In the dry monsoon this route might be made
practicable to Chaga and Kilima-njaro, both of which have been proposed
in the Anglo-Indian papers as Sanitaria. With an escort of a hundred
musketeers, and at an expense of £500, the invalid who desires to try
this African Switzerland may, if perfectly sound in wind, limb, and
digestion, reach, despite all the Wamasai, the snowy region, after 10
mountain-marches, which should not occupy more than a month. The next
century will see these conditions changed.
Finding it impossible to push farther into Usumbara, we applied
ourselves to gathering general information. Sultan Kimwere, I was told,
is the fourth of a dynasty of Tondeurs and Écorcheurs originally from
Ngu or Nguru, a hilly region to the West and South of the Upper Panga-ni
stream. His father, Shubugah, conquered Bondei and pushed the Usumbara
frontier from Pare Eastward to the sea and from Msihi (in M. Rebmann
Emsihi Mdi), a mountain two days’ march N. East of Fuga, to the Panga-ni
river and the Indian Ocean. He left Usumbara to Kimwere, Bumburri and
Meringa-mountain to younger sons, and Msihi to a favourite daughter:
this division of his dominions naturally caused lasting bloodshed
amongst his successors. Kimwere, in youth a warrior of fame, ranked
highest in the triumvirate of mountain-kings, the others being B’áná
Rongwa of Chaga and B’áná Kizungu of Ukwafi. In age he has lost ground.
His sister’s sons, the chiefs of Bungu in Msihi, rebelled, destroyed his
hosts by rolling down stones; they were reduced, and sent to the slave
market, only by the arms of 25 Baloch. The Wazegura, I have said, are
also troublesome neighbours. Kimwere has a body of 400 musketeers whom
he calls his Waengrezi or Englishmen: they are dispersed amongst the
villages, for now the oryx-horn is silent and the beacon is never
extinguished upon the mountain-passes. This ‘Lion of the Lord’ asserts
present kinghood in one point only: he has some 300 wives, each
surrounded by slaves and portioned with a hut and a plantation. His
little family amounts to between 80 and 90 sons, some of whom have
Islamized, whilst their sire remains a most ‘pragmatical pagan.’ The
Lion’s person is sacred,—even a runaway slave saves life by touching the
hem of his garment. Presently he will become a ghost, it will be wrapped
up in matting, and placed sitting-wise under the deserted hut, a stick
denoting the actual spot: dogs will be slaughtered for the
funeral-feast, the people will cry, beat drums, and say, ‘O Lord, why
must we die?’ and Muigni Khatib, reigning instead of his sire, will put
to death all who dare, during the first two months of Matanga
(mourning), to travel upon the King’s highway.
Meanwhile Sultan Kimwere rules at home like a right kingly African king,
by selling his subjects, men, women, and children, old and young, gentle
and simple, singly or, when need lays down the law, by families and by
villages. Death, imprisonment, and mutilation of the hand are foreign
articles of state machinery and rare; sale of the person and
confiscation of property are indigenous and common. None may hold
property without this petty despot’s permission, and, as we had an
opportunity of seeing, the very ‘ministers’ dare not openly receive
presents. In a realm where coin is not current revenue is thus
collected. Cattle-breeders contribute the first-fruits of their flocks
and herds; elephant-hunters offer every second tusk, and traders are
mulcted in a portion of their merchandise. Cultivators annually pay 10
measures of grain; hence the quantity exported from Tanga and Panga-ni
to Zanzibar and even to Arabia. The lion’s share is reserved for the
Lion and his family, the crumbs are distributed amongst the councillors
and the corps of guards (Waengrezi).
The ‘headquarter village’ of Usumbara is Fuga, situated in a cool
healthy climate, nearly 4500 feet upon the sea-line. The town is a heap
of some 500 huts, containing, I was told, in round numbers, 3000
souls.[42] It is forbidden to foreigners because the king’s wives
inhabit a part, and it also shelters the chief magician-priests, in
whose ‘lodges’ criminals may take sanctuary. The place is completely
defenceless and unwalled: the tenements are the circular habitations,
common to Inner Africa from Harar to Tinbuktu. Frameworks of concentric
wattle-rings wrapped round with plantain leaves are fastened to slender
uprights planted in the ground, and the inside is plastered over with
fine mud. A low solid door acts also as window, and the conical roof is
supported by a single central tree; a fire-place of stones distributes
smoke as well as heat, and a chimney would be held expensive and
uncomfortable. In some homesteads the semi-circle opposite the entrance
is occupied by a raised plank framework forming a family bedstead, and
in a few cases a kind of second half-story, like a magnified bunk, is
raised above it.
The Wasumbara are abundantly leavened with Semitic blood; and they
increase and multiply, to judge from the lodges capping every hill, and
from the younglings who apparently form more than the normal fifth. Yet
the Arabs declare that the women are not prolific, six children being a
large family: this, if fact, must be attributed to preventatives,
abortion, and infanticide. The snowy heads of the seniors show that
there are still in the land Macrobian Æthiopians, men who die of sheer
old age; and what else can be expected from human beings who have hardly
an idea, except the fear of sale, to impede digestion? The males, though
of light brown colour and stoutly made, are plain and short: they chip
their teeth to points like saws, cats, or crocodiles, and they brand a
circular beauty-spot in the mid-forehead. Their heads are shaven, their
feet are bare, and except talismans round the neck, wrist, and ankles,
their only wear is a sheet thrown over the shoulders, and a rag or skin
tied around the loins. The characteristic grass-kilt of the Bedawin of
the plains is unfitted for the highlands. A knife is stuck in the
waist-cord, and men walk abroad with pipe, bow, and quiverless arrows
tipped with bone or iron. The women are adorned with talismans in
leather bags, and with massive collars of white beads, now in fashion
throughout this region: a ‘distinguished person’ will carry from 3 to 4
lbs. of these barbaric decorations. The feminine body dress is the
hideous African sheet bound tightly under the arms and falling over the
bosom to the ankles.
The Wasumbara of both sexes are for Africans industrious, the result of
cold climate necessitating comparatively many comforts. The husband and
children work in the fields or drive the cattle to graze when the sun
has dried up the dew: towards evening they fence the animals in the
house yard, and stow away the young within the hut. At times they amuse
themselves with running down the little Saltiana antelopes, and with
throwing sticks at the guinea-fowls, which they have not yet learned to
domesticate. To the goodwife’s share falls the work of cleansing the
little corral, of fetching wood and water, of pounding maize in a large
tin mortar, of baking plantain-bread, of cooking generally, and of
carrying as well as of bearing the baby: it is evident that here, as
among the Mormons, division of labour is called for, and it is readily
supplied, without fear of arrest, by polygamy and concubinage. Meat is
considered a luxury; the cattle want the enlarged udder, that unerring
sign of bovine civilization, and an English cow will produce as much
fluid as half-a-dozen Africans. The deficiency of milk in pastoral lands
often excites the traveller’s wonder: at times, after the herds have
calved, he drinks it gratis by pailsful; during the rest of the year he
cannot buy a drop even for medicine. Most tribes, moreover, have some
uncomfortable superstitions about it—one will not draw it before
nightfall, another will not tamely stand by and see it heated. Moreover,
no pastoral people that I have ever seen drink it fresh: they prefer to
sour it artificially, instead of trusting to their gastric juices; and
they are right. It is like the Cuisinier or rather the Cordon bleue, who
vicariously does part of man’s digestion, whereas ‘Cook’ leaves all to a
certain ill-used viscus. I presume that climate is the reason why the
Dahi of India, the Laban of Arabia, has not been introduced into
England, where curds and whey are still eaten. Usumbara produces an
abundance of tobacco, whose flavour is considered superior to the other
growths of the mainland: it is therefore pounded to thin round cakes,
neatly packed in banana-leaves, and exported to Zanzibar. With all their
advantages, the Wasumbara are yet a moody, melancholy brood, a timid,
dismal, and ignoble race, as indeed are for the most part those
barbarians who have exchanged pastoral for agricultural life. Perhaps
these children of the mist have too much mist, and they certainly have
not learned the art of defending themselves against their raw mountain
air. In hot climates beware of the cold, and vice versâ.
On Monday, February 16, we took leave of, and were formally dismissed
by, Sultan Kimwere. The old man was mortified that our rambles over his
hills had not produced a plant of sovereign virtue against the last evil
but one of human life. He had long expected a white Mganga, and now two
had visited him, and were about to depart without an attempt to restore
his youth. I felt sad to see the wistful lingering look with which he
accompanied his Kua-heri—farewell (à tout jamais!) But his case was far
beyond my skill.
We set out at 7 A.M. on the next day with infinite trouble. The three
porters whom we had engaged had run away, characteristically futile,
without even claiming their hire, and none of Sultan Kimwere’s men had
the stomach to face the redoubtable Wazegura. The Baloch had gorged
themselves faint with beef, and the hide, the horns, and huge collops of
raw meat were added to the slaves’ loads. We descended the Pass in a
Scotch mist and drizzle, veiling every object from view, and it deepened
into a large-dropped shower upon the fetid lowlands. The effect of
exchanging 4000 for 1000 feet was anything but pleasant, and we at once
felt shorn of half our strength. That night we slept at Pasunga; the
next at Msiki Mguru, and the third, after marching 17 miles, our
greatest distance, at Kohode. Here the graceless Mamba allowed us to be
punted over the deep sullen stream by a slave upon a bundle of cocoa
fronds, to the imminent peril of our chronometers.
We now resolved to follow the river-course downwards, and to ascertain
by inspection if the account of its falls and rapids had been
exaggerated. At dawn Wazira came from our party, who had halted on the
other side of the river, and warned us that it was time to march, yet 9
A. M. had sped before the rugged line began to stretch over the plain.
Our Baloch declared the rate of walking excessive, and Hamdan, who
represented ‘Master Shoetie, the great traveller,’ asserted that he had
twice visited the Lake Regions of the far interior, but that he had
never seen such hardships in his dreams.
The route lay along the alluvial flat before travelled over: instead,
however, of turning towards the thinly-forested waste to the north, we
hugged the Rufu river’s left bank, and presently we entered familiar
land, broken red ground, rough with stones and thorns. Wazira declared
his life forfeited if seen by a Mzegura: with some trouble, however, we
coaxed him into courage, and we presently joined on the way a small
party bound for Panga-ni. At 1 P.M. we halted to bathe and drink, as it
would be some time before we should again sight the winding stream.
During the storm of thunder and lightning which ensued, I observed that
our savage companions, like the Thracians of Herodotus and the Bhils and
Kulis (Coolies) of modern India, shot their iron-tipped arrows in the
air. Such, perhaps, is the earliest, paratonnerre, preserved
traditionally from ages long forgotten by man, until the time when
Franklin taught him to disarm the artillery of heaven. Through splashing
rain and gusty, numbing wind, which made the slaves whimper, we threaded
by a goat-path the dripping jungle, and we found ourselves, about 4
P.M., opposite Kiranga, a large village of Wazegura, on the right bank
of the river. The people turned out with bows and muskets to feast their
eyes: all, however, were civil, and readily gave cocoas in exchange for
tobacco.
Here the Rufu is a strong stream, flowing rapidly between high curtains
of trees and underwood, and entering a rocky trough. The hill-roots
projected by Mount Tongwe are cut through by the course, and the narrow
ledges on both banks form the vilest footpaths. After leaving Kiranga,
we found the track slippery with ooze and mire, sprinkled with
troublesome thorn-trees, and overgrown with sedgy spear and tiger grass.
The air was damp and oppressive, ‘heavy’ (light) with steamy moisture;
the clouds seemed to settle upon earth, and the decayed vegetation
exhaled a feverish fetor. As we advanced, the roar of the swollen river
told of rapids, whilst an occasional glimpse through its wall of verdure
showed a rufous surface flecked with white foam. Massive nimbi purpled
the western skies, and we began to inquire somewhat anxiously of Wazira
if any settlement was at hand.
About sunset, after marching 15 miles, we suddenly saw tall cocoas, the
‘Travellers’ Joy’ in these lands, waving their feathery crests against
the blue eastern firmament. The tree inhabits chiefly the coralline
lowlands along the coast, but upon the line of the Panga-ni it bears
fruit at least 30 miles from the sea, and whenever it is found distant
from the stream the natives determine water to be near. Presently
crossing an arm of the river by a long wooden bridge made rickety for
ready defence, we entered with a flock of homeward-bound goats,
Kizungu,[43] an island-settlement of Wazegura. The Headmen assembled to
receive us with some ceremony, cleared a hut of its inmates, placed
cartels upon the ground outside, and seated us ringed round by a noisy
crowd for the usual palaver.
This village being upon the frontier and excited by wars and rumours of
wars, had a bad name, and suggested treachery to the Baloch. My
companion and I fired our revolvers into tree-trunks, and ostentatiously
reloaded them for the public benefit. The sensation was such that we
seized the opportunity of offering money for rice and ghi: no provision,
however, was procurable. Our escort went to bed supperless; Hamdan
cursing this _Safar Kháis_, Anglicè rotten journey; pretty Rahmat
weeping over his twisted mustachios, and Sha’aban smoking like the
chimney of a Hammam. Murad Ali had remained at Msiki Mguru to buy a
slave without our knowledge. No novice in such matters, he had yet
neglected to tie the chattel’s thumbs together, and on the evening after
the sale he had the exquisite misery to see his dollars bolting at a
pace which baffled pursuit. We should have fared meagerly had not one of
the elders brought furtively after dark a handful of red rice and an
elderly hen: this provaunt was easily despatched by these hungry men, of
whom one was a Portuguese ‘cook-boy.’ Then placing our weapons handy, we
were soon lulled to sleep, despite smoke, wet beds, chirping crickets,
and other plagues, by the blustering wind, and by the continuous
pattering of rain.
[Illustration: FALLS OF THE PANGA-NI RIVER.]
About sunrise on Friday, February 20, we were aroused by the guide, and
after various delays we found ourselves ‘on the tramp’ at 7 A.M. This
country traversed was the reflection of what we had passed through.
Hills girt the river on both sides, with black soil in the lower and red
clay in the upper levels, whilst the path was a mere line foot-worn over
rolling ground and thicketty torrent-beds, and through thorny jungle and
tall succulent tiger-grass.
At 9 A. M. we stood upon a distant eminence to view the Falls of the
Panga-ni, of which we had read a hearsay description in the pages of Lt
Boteler. It somewhat suggested the Torc Cascade of guide-books. The
stream, swiftly emerging from a dense dark growth of tropical jungle,
hurls itself in three separate sheets, fringed with flashing foam, down
a rugged wall of brown rock. The fall is broken by a midway ledge,
whence a second leap precipitates the waters into a lower basin of
mist-veiled stone, arched over by a fog-rainbow, the segment of a circle
painted with faint prismatic hues. The spectacle must be grander during
the wet season, when the river, forming a single horseshoe, acquires
volume and momentum enough to clear the step that splits the now
shrunken supply; in fact,
‘When copious rains have magnified the stream
Into a loud and white-robed waterfall.’
Of all natural objects the cataract most requires that first element of
sublimity—size. Yet, as it is, the Panga-ni Falls, with the white spray
and light mist, set off by a background of black jungle and by a
framework of slaty rain-cloud, offer a picture sufficiently effective to
save us from disappointment.
As we jogged onwards the heat became intense. The clouds lay close upon
the cool mountain-tops: there it was winter, but the fount of life, the
Soter Kosmou, the grand differentiator between Africa and Greenland,
whose rays shot stingingly through the well-washed air, still parched
the summer plains. At 10 A. M. our Baloch, clean worn-out by famine and
fatigue, threw themselves upon the bank of a broad deep Nullah, in whose
rushy and jungly bed a little water still lingered. Wild bees had hived
in the tree-trunks, but none of us coveted the fate of plundering bears.
The bush was rich in the ‘Melon of Abu Jahl’ (Coloquintida), and the
slaves chewed the dried pulp of the calabash gourd. Half-an-hour’s rest,
a cocoa-nut each, a pipe, and above all things the spes finis, somewhat
restored our vigour. We resumed the march over a rolling waste of thin
green grass, enlivened by occasional glimpses of the river, whose very
aspect tempered the optic nerves and cooled the brain. Villages became
numerous as we advanced, far distancing our Baloch, and at 3 P.M., after
14 miles, we sighted the snake-fence and the penthouses of friendly
Chogwe. The Jemadar and his garrison received us with all the honours of
travel, and marvelled at our speedy return from Fuga, where, as at
Harar, a visitor can never reckon upon prompt dismissal. Sultan Kimwere
has detained Arab and other travellers a whole fortnight before his
Mganga would fix upon a fit time for audience.
Our feet were cut by hard boots and shoes, that had more than once been
wetted and dried; and wherever there was chafing or burning, we had lost
‘leather’ softened by constant perspiration. A few days of rest and
simple remedies, white of egg and flour-powdering, removed these small
inconveniences. Our first move was to Panga-ni, where Said bin Salim,
who had watched his charge with the fidelity of a shepherd’s dog,
received us with joyous demonstrations. The Portuguese lad who
accompanied us escaped with a few sick headaches, and we were happy to
find his confrère free from African fever. After spending a day upon the
seaboard, we returned, provided with munitions de bouche and other
necessaries, to Chogwe. Here we paid the bill—$20 to the Jemadar in
consideration of his two slaves; $5 a piece to the three hardworking
portion of our Baloch, and to the drones, old Sha’aban and the lady like
Rahmat, $4 and $3 respectively. Then, as the vessel in which we were to
cruise southward was not expected from Zanzibar before the beginning of
March, and we had a week to spare, it was resolved to try a fall with
Behemoth.
The hippopotamus, called by the Wasawahili Kiboko and Mvo, and by the
Arabs Bakar el Khor, ‘the creek-bullock,’ resembles a mammoth pig, with
an equine head, rather than a horse or a cow. Like the mangrove, he
loves the rivers and inlets where fresh water mingles with the briny
tide, and, as on this coast he has been little molested, he is
everywhere to be met with. In the Bights of Benin and Biafra, during
three years’ wanderings, I sighted but a single specimen, and that only
for a minute. When the night falls he wriggles up one of the many runs
on the river bank, and wanders far to graze upon fat rich grass and to
plunder grain plantations, where, like the elephant and the hog, he does
much more damage than is necessary. At dawn he exchanges the dangerous
open for shelter in the deep pools—the Khund of India—which as here, for
instance, succeed one another in the stream-bed like the beads of a
chaplet, and the place which he prefers is called by the natives his
‘house.’ In the presence of man he remains at home, fearing to expose
his person while passing over the shallow covering of the sand-ridges
which divide the hollows. When undisturbed he may be seen plunging
porpoise-like against the stream, basking where the water is warm and
not deep, dozing upon the soft miry bank, or sheltering himself under
the luxuriant rhizophoræ in groups and singly, the heavy boxhead resting
upon a friend’s broad stern. On terra firma he is easily killed by the
puny arrow and by the tripping-trap with its spike-drop: in the water he
is difficult to shoot, and unless harpooned he is scarcely to be bagged.
Thoroughly startled, he exposes above the surface only his eyes and
sloping brow; after a shot he will remain below for hours, raising
nothing but a nostril to supply himself with air, and slipping down the
moment he sights his foe. Receiving the death-wound, he sinks, and,
according to the people, he clings to the bottom: he reappears only when
blown up by incipient decomposition, and unless scouts are stationed,
the body will rarely be found. The Arabs and Baloch declare that a
trifling wound eventually proves fatal to the unwieldy form,—the water
enters it, and the animal cannot leave the stream to feed. All Easterns,
however, joining issue with the homœopathists, dread applying water to a
wound, and the Brazilian Tupys used to cure their hurts by toasting them
and by extracting the moisture before the fire. The people of Mafiyah
secure him, I am told, by planting upright a gag of sharpened and
hardened stick in his jaws when opened wide for attack: this improbable
tale is also told concerning the natives of Kalybia and the Maidan Arabs
of Assyria and their lions. The cow is timid unless driven beyond
endurance or grossly insulted in the person of her calf: the bulls are
more pugnacious, especially those who, expelled by the herd, live in
solitary dudgeon. The ‘rogue’—generally derived from the Hindostani
‘rogi,’ sick or sorry—is found amongst hippopotami, elk, deer, and other
graminivors as well as amongst elephants, lions, tigers, and the larger
carnivors. The ‘rogue’ hippopotamus is an old male no longer able to
hold his own against the young adults, who naturally walk off with his
harem, and leave him in the surliest state of widowerhood. The
man-eating lion is mostly some decrepit beast that finds it easier for
his stiff muscles and worn tusks to pull down a human biped than a wild
bull or an antelope. It was probably a rogue hippopotamus that caused
the death of Menes, ancient king, and the modern Africans from Abyssinia
southwards still lose many a life. Captain Owen’s officers when
ascending these streams had their boats torn by Behemoth’s hard teeth.
In the Panga-ni river ‘Sultan Mamba,’ a tyrant of the waters, thus
dubbed by the Baloch in honour of their friend the Kohode chief,
delighted to upset canoes in rude waggishness, and once broke a negro’s
leg. For this reason men were careful to skirt the banks by day when he
was supposed to be in mid-stream, and to avoid them during the dark
hours when he was scrambling up and down the sides. During a subsequent
battue off Wale Point we had two accidents in one day; a dugout was
smashed by a blow with the Kiboko’s forehand, and the corvette’s gig,
suddenly uplifted upon the tusk-points, showed a pair of corresponding
holes in her bottom.
Behold us now, O brother in St Hubert! merrily dropping down stream in a
monoxyle some 40 feet long, at early dawn, when wild beasts are
hungriest and tamest. The Jemadar and his brother, cloaked in scarlet
and armed with their slow matchlocks, sit in the stern; the polers,
directed by Sidi Bombay, who is great in matters of venerie, occupy the
centre, and we take up our station in the bows. The battery consists of
a shot-gun for experiments, a Colt’s rifle, and two ‘smashers,’ each
carrying a 4 oz. ball of zinc-hardened lead. The mise en scène is
perfect: the bright flush of morning, the cool, clear air, the river,
with its broad breast swelling between two rows of tall luxuriant trees,
and, protruding from the mirrory surface, the black box-heads, flanked
with small pointed ears, and not a little resembling the knight in old
chessmen. When swimming up stream the beasts threw up the hind legs, and
plunged with the action of a porpoise. As we approached them the boatmen
indulged in loud and ribald vituperations, such as ‘M’áná Maríra,’ O big
belly! ‘Hana ’mkía,’ O tailless one! and ‘Limundi,’ which was not
explained. These insults caused them to raise their crests in angry
curiosity, and to expose their arched necks of polished black, shining
with the trickling rills, which caught like quicksilver the reflection
of the sun.
My companion, a man of speculative turn, experiments upon the nearest
optics with buckshot and two barrels of grape, for which we had a mould.
The eyes, however, are obliquely placed; the charge scatters, and the
brute, unhurt, slips down like a seal. This will make the herd wary.
Vexed by the poor result of our trial, we pole up the rippling and
swirling surface that shows the enemy to be swimming under water towards
the further end of a deep pool. Our guns are at our shoulders; we know
that, after a weary time, he must rise and breathe. As the smooth water
undulates, swells, and breaks a way for the large square head, eight
ounces of lead fly in the right direction. There is a splash, a
struggle; the surface foams, and Behemoth, with open mouth like a
butcher’s stall, and bleeding like a gutter-spout, plunges above the
surface. Wounded in the cerebellum, he cannot swim straight, he cannot
defend himself. I thought how easy it would have been, but for the
crocodiles, to have done with him as the late Gordon Cumming did, and
related amidst universal incredulity. In such matters the reader
unconsciously asks himself ‘Could I?’ A negative is instinctively
suggested, and hence his belief revolts at the story—spernit et odit.
But all men cannot—in fact, very few men can—boast the eye, the nerve,
and muscle of glorious Gordon Cumming.
Returning to Kiboke, the Baloch are excited, and as the game rises
again, matchlocks bang dangerously as pop-guns. Presently the Jemadar,
having expended three bullets—a serious consideration with your Oriental
pot-hunter—retires from the contest, as we knew he would, recommending
the beasts to us. Bombay punches on the boatmen, who complain that a
dollar a day does not justify their facing death. At last a coup de
grâce, speeding through the ear, finds out the small brain; the brute
sinks, fresh gore purples the surface, and bright bubbles seethe up from
the bottom. Hippo. has departed this life: we wait patiently for his
reappearance, but he reappears not. At length Bombay’s sharp eye detects
a dark object some hundred yards down stream: we make for it, and find
our ‘bag’ brought up in a shallow by a spit of sand, and already in
process of being ogled by a large fish-hawk. The fish-hawk pays the
penalty of impudence. We tow the big defunct to the bank, and deliver it
to a little knot of savages, who have flocked down to the stream with
mouths watering at the prospect of creek-bullock beef. The meat is
lawful to Moslems of the Shafei school; others reject it, as, being
amphibious, it is impure. In Abyssinia they commonly eat it; here they
do not. The insufferable toughness and coarseness, to say nothing of the
musky bouquet, do not recommend it to Europeans. The Washenzi, however,
will feast royally, grease themselves with the dripping, and at sundown
bring us, according to agreement, the tusks, teeth, and skull, picked
clean as a whistle is said to be. The teeth, especially of young
animals, being delicately white and conical, make the prettiest handles
for knives.
The herd no longer rises; the beasts fear this hulking craft. We must
try some other plan. My companion, accompanied by Bombay, who strips to
paddle, in token of warm work expected, shifts to a small canoe, lashes
fast his shooting tackle to the seat, in case of an upset, and whilst I
occupy one end of the ‘house,’ makes for the other. Whenever a head
appears an inch above water, a heavy bullet ‘puds’ into or near it;
crimson patches marble the stream; some die and disappear, others plunge
in crippled state; while others, disabled from diving by holes drilled
through their snouts, splash and scurry about with curious snorts,
caused by the breath passing through the wounds. At last the small canoe
ventures upon another experiment. A baby hippo., with the naïveté
natural to his age, uprears his crest, doubtless despite the maternal
warning: off flies the crown of the little kid’s head. The bereaved
mother rises for an instant, viciously regards the infanticide, who is
quietly loading, snorts a parent’s curse, and dives as the cap is being
adjusted. Presently a bump, a shock, and a heave, and the bows of the
barque are high in the air. Bombay, describing a small parabola, lands
in frog-position upon the enraged brute’s back. My companion steadies
himself in the stern; happily the Kiboko had not struck out with the
forearm, nor torn off the gunwale with her mighty jaws: he sends a ball
through her sides as, with broad dorsum hunched up and hogged, like an
angry cat, she advances for a second bout. Bombay scrambles into the
monoxyle, and nothing daunted, paddles towards the quarry, which funks
and bolts till nothing is visible but a long, waving line of gore. With
a harpoon we might have secured it; now it will feed, with ‘speck’ and
musky meat, the Washenzi or the crocodiles.
Our most artful dodge was, however, to come. The Baloch have ceased
firing, confessing their matchlocks to be no ‘good,’ but they force the
boatmen to obey us, and they take great interest in the sport, as
Easterns will when they see work well done. My companion lands with his
black woodman carrying both smashers: they grope painfully through
mangrove-thicket where parasitical oysters wound the legs with their
sharp edges, and where the deep mud and shaking bog admit a man to the
knees. After a time, reaching a clear spot, they take up a position
where the bush-screened bank impends the deepest water, and signal me to
drive the herd. The latter, after rubbing their backs against the big
canoe, rise to breathe; I hoist a scarlet cloth upon a tall pole, and
the beasts, inquisitive as kangaroos, expose themselves to gratify a
silly curiosity. My companion has two splendid standing shots, and the
splashing and circling in the stream below tell the accuracy of his aim.
The dodge was suggested by seeing antelope thus arrested in their
flight, and by remembering the red whirligigs with bits of mirror, used
in former years by the French chasseur to kill hares.
Whilst in the pursuit of the animals that were retiring to the other end
of the pool, I saw a hole bursting in the stream close to the bows of
the canoe, and a dark head of portentous dimensions rose with a snort, a
grunt, and a spirt. Mamba! Mamba! shout the Baloch, and yet the old
rogue disdains to flinch or fly. A cove from the Colt strikes him full
in the front; his brain is pierced, he rises high, he falls with a crash
upon the wave, and all that hulking flesh cannot keep in a little life.
Sultan Mamba has for ever disappeared from the home of the hippopotamus:
never shall he bully canoe-men, never shall he break nigger’s leg again.
We soon learned the lesson that these cold-blooded beasts may be killed
with a pistol ball, if hit in the right place,—under the shoulder for
the heart, and in the ear for the remarkably small brain, whose pan is
strongly boxed in. Otherwise they carry as much lead as elephants. By 10
A. M. we had slain six, besides wounding I know not how many of the
animals. They might be netted, but the operation would not pay in a
pecuniary sense: the ivory of small teeth, under 4 lbs. each, is worth
little. Moreover, the herds are apt to shift quarters after an excess of
bullying, and are normally shy when exposed to the perpetual popgunning
of the Baloch. Even the vulture is absent—a bad sign. We did not often
return to this sport, finding the massacre monotonous, and such
cynegetics little more exciting than pheasant shooting.
Our first partie concluded with a bath in the Panga-ni, which here has
natural ‘bowers for dancing and disport,’ fit for Diana and her suite:
in these unclassical lands they are haunted, not by fairies, but by
monkeys. About a dwarf creek trees cluster on three sides of a square,
regularly as if planted, and rope-like creepers, the West African
tie-tie, bind together the supporting stems and hang a curtain to the
canopy of imperious sylvan shade. The consumptive Jemadar suffered
severely from the sun; he still, however, showed some ardour for sport.
‘A mixture of a lie,’ says Bacon bluntly, ‘doth ever add to pleasure.’
There was abundant amusement in the little man’s grandiloquent
romancing; a hero and a Rustam he had slain his dozens; men quaked—in
far Balochistan—at the mention of his name; his sword-blade never fell
upon a body without cutting it in twain, and, ’faith, had he wielded it
as he did his tongue, the weapon would indeed have been deadly. At
Panga-ni he had told us all manner of F. M. Pinto tales concerning the
chase at Chogwe, and his pal, an old Mzegura woodsman, had promised us
elephants, giraffes, and wild cattle. But when we pressed the point our
guide shirked the trial; his son was absent, war raged in the clan, his
family wanted provisions: he was ever coming on the morrow, and—the
morrow never came. This convinced me that the tale of game in the dry
season was apocryphal. Chogwe then offered few attractions, and we left
the bazar on Thursday, Feb. 26: my companion walked to Panga-ni, making
a route-survey, whilst the Jemadar and his tail escorted me in the large
canoe.
This trial trip to Fuga, which covered 150 miles in 11 days, had
supplied me with a fair budget of experience and had drawn my attention
to an important point, namely, the difference between our distances and
those of M. Erhardt’s map. Whilst we placed the head-quarter village 37
miles in direct line, and along the devious path 74 or 75, he gave the
measures respectively as 82 and 100. Hence I was led to question all the
distances in the remote parts: the road between Mombasah and
Kilima-njaro had already been reduced from 200 to 130 miles; and, to
judge from analogy, a little further subtraction might be applied. Our
longest march was only 17 miles: after 4 days’ continued work the slaves
were dead-beat; our escort, who carried only their weapons, murmured
loudly at our habits, and the Panga-ni people considered the rate of
walking excessive. Without measuring instruments or the habit of correct
timing, it is difficult to estimate distance. Some years afterwards,
when ascending the Cameroons Mountain, I found, by taping, 11,570 feet
to be the length of a march, which the whole party had set down at the
lowest estimate as five miles. Twenty miles in a tropical sun, without
water and over rough ground, where the step is shortened, will appear 40
in Europe, whilst the hour’s halt seems but a few minutes.[44]
For two days after returning to Panga-ni we abstained from taking
exercise. On the third we walked out several miles East along the shore,
and N. West inland, under the hottest of suns and over burning ground,
to explore a cavern, or rather a tunnel in the limestone rock of which
the natives, who came upon it when clearing out a well, had circulated
the most exaggerated accounts. My companion already complained of his
last night’s labour, an hour with the sextant upon damp sands in the
chilly dew. This excursion finished the work. On entering the house we
found Caetano, who had accompanied us to Fuga, suffering from aches in
the shoulders and a cold sensation creeping up the legs. Such sensations
heralded the fever, a malignant bilious remittent like ‘General Tazo’ of
Madagascar: as on the Niger, this ‘acclimatizing fever’ usually appears
before the 16th day. My companion was prostrated a few hours afterwards,
and next day I followed their example. Valentino, who escaped at
Panga-ni, came in for his turn at Zanzibar; and, as a proof that the
negro enjoys no immunity, Sidi Bombay suffered severely in early June.
I have no doubt that had Dr Steinhaeuser been with us, or had we been
acquainted with the prophylactic treatment of quinine, first developed
by the later Niger expeditions, and afterwards practised by myself with
so much success on the West Coast of Africa, we should have escaped with
a light visitation instead of dangerous and almost deadly attacks. But
we had also imprudently taxed strength and endurance to the utmost,
before our constitutions had been accustomed to the climate. As a rule,
the traveller in these lands should at first avoid exposure and fatigue
beyond a certain point to the very best of his ability. He might as well
practise sitting upon a coal fire as hardening himself to the
weather—which green men have attempted. Dr Bialloblotsky, a Polish
professor who had begun travelling at the end of a long life of
sedentary study, would practise walking bare-headed in the Zanzibar sun:
the result was congestion of the brain. Others have paced bare-footed
upon an exposed terrace, with ulceration of the legs and temporary
lameness, as the total results. The most successful in resisting the
miasma are they who tempt it the least, and the best training for a long
hungry march in these lands is repose with good living. Man has then
stamina to work upon: he may exist, like the camel, upon his own fat.
Those who fine themselves down by exercise and abstinence before such
journeys commit the error of beginning where they ought to end.
We spent no happy time in the house of the Wali Meriko, who, luckily for
us, was still absent at Zanzibar. The Jemadar, seeing that we could do
nothing, took leave, committing us to Allah and to Said bin Salim. The
Banyans intended great civility; they would sit with us for hours,
asking, like Orientals, the silliest of questions, and thinking withal
that they were making themselves agreeable. Repose was out of the
question. During the day gnats and flies added another sting to the
horrors of fever: by night rats nibbled our feet; mosquitos sang their
songs of triumph; and torturing thirst made the terrible sleeplessness
yet more terrible. Our minds were morbidly fixed upon one point, the
arrival of our vessel: we had no other occupation but to rise and gaze,
and to exchange regrets as a sail hove in sight, drew near, and passed
by. We knew that there would be no failure on the part of our thoughtful
friend, who had written to promise us a ‘Batela’ on March 1. But we
doubted the possibility of an Arab or an Msawahili doing anything in
proper time. The craft had been duly despatched from Zanzibar before the
end of February, but the fellows who manned her being men of Tumbatu,
could not pass their houses unvisited,—they wasted a precious week, and
they did not make Panga-ni till the evening of March 5.
After sundry bitter disappointments, we had actually hired a Banyan’s
boat that had newly arrived, when the long-expected ‘Batela’ ran into
the river. Not a moment was to be lost. Said bin Salim, who had been a
kind of nurse, superintended the embarkation of our belongings. My
companion, less severely treated, was able to walk to the shore; but
I—alas, for manliness!—was obliged to be supported like a bed-ridden old
woman. The Arabs were civil, and bade us a friendly farewell. The
Wasawahili, however, audibly contrasted the present with the past, and
drew indecorous conclusions from the change which a few days had worked
in the man who bore a 24 lb. gun with a 4 ounce ball.
All thoughts of cruising along the southern coast were thus at an end.
Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton had cautioned us not to despise bilious
remittents, and evidently we should not have been justified in
neglecting his advice to return to the consulate whenever seized by
sickness. With the dawn of Friday, March 6, we ordered the crew to up
sail: we stood over for the island with a fine fresh breeze, and early
in the afternoon we found ourselves once more within the pale of eastern
civilization. Our excellent friend at once sent us to bed, where we
remained for the best part of a week: we did not recover health till the
end of the normal month.
-----
Footnote 42:
Mr Cooley (Inner Africa Laid Open, p. 75) calls in Vuga, and gravely
chronicles the valuable observation of ‘Khamis’ his ‘intelligent
Sawáhili,’ who made it three times as large as the town of Zanzibar.
He confounds (p. 63) with Dos Santos (History of Eastern Æthiopia,
iii. 1), through 8° of distance, Karagwah or Karague with Gurague in
Abyssinia, Gurague meaning the left hand to one looking westward, and
thus corresponding with the Arabic El Sham (Syria or Damascus). We
also find (p. 55) Sadána for Sa’adani, and Wadóa for Wadoe.
Footnote 43:
It is mentioned by Dr Krapf as ever having been occupied by the
Portuguese. Mr Cooley (Inner Africa, &c., p. 34) modestly writes,
‘Kisúngo, more probably Kisonga.’
Footnote 44:
The German missionaries placed the Tanganyika Lake 600 direct
geographical miles from the sea: I reduced the distance to 300. This
was an error. But we had been told upon the coast that the Sea of
Unyamwezi is in Unyamwezi, and the easternmost frontier of the latter
region at Tura is distant 290 direct geographical miles from the
seaboard of Zanzibar.