OUR REWARD--SUCCESS.
"At length we sight the Lake Tanganyika, or the 'Sea of Ujiji.' The
route before us lay through a howling wilderness laid waste by the
fierce Watuta. Mpete, on the right bank of the Malagarázi river, is
very malarious, and the mosquitoes are dreadful. We bivouacked under
a shady tree, within sight of the ferry. The passage of this river
is considered dangerous on account of attacks of the tribes. At one
place I could only obtain a few corn cobs, and I left the meat,
with messages, for the rear. In the passages of the river our goods
and chattels were thoroughly sopped. After a while, from a hillside
we saw, long after noon, the other part of our Caravan, halted by
fatigue, upon a slope beyond a weary swamp; a violent storm was
brewing, and the sky was black, and we were anxious and sorry about
them.
"On the 13th February, after about an hour's march, I saw the _Fundi_
running forward, and changing the direction of the Caravan, and I
followed him to know _why_ he had taken this responsibility upon
himself. We breasted a steep stony hill, sparsely clad with thorny
trees, which killed Jack's riding ass. Our fagged beasts refused to
proceed. 'What is that streak of light which lies below?' said I to
Bombay. 'I am of opinion,' said Bombay, 'that that _is the_ water you
are in search of.' I gazed in dismay; the remains of my blindness, the
veil of trees, a broad ray of sunshine illuminating but one reach of
the lake, had shrunk its fair proportions. I began to lament my folly
in having risked life and lost health for so poor a prize, to curse
Arab exaggeration, and to propose an immediate return to explore the
Nyanza, or Northern Lake.
[Sidenote: _Scenery._]
"Advancing a few yards, the whole scene suddenly burst upon my view,
filling me with admiration, wonder, and delight. Nothing I in sooth
could be more picturesque than this first view of Tanganyika Lake, as
it lay in the lap of the mountains, basking in the gorgeous tropical
sunshine. There were precipitous hills, a narrow strip of emerald
green, a ribbon of glistening yellow sand, sedgy rushes, cut by the
breaking wavelets, an expanse of light, soft blue water foam thirty to
thirty-five miles wide, sprinkled by crisp tiny crescents of snowy
foam, with a background of high broken wall of steel-coloured mountain
flecked and capped with pearly mist, sharply pencilled against the
azure sky, yawning chasms of plum-colour falling towards dwarf hills,
which apparently dip their feet in the wave. One could see villages,
cultivated lands, fishermen's canoes on the water, and a profuse
lavishness and magnificence of Nature and vegetation. The smiling
shores of this vast crevasse appeared doubly beautiful to me after the
silent and spectral mangrove-creeks on the East African sea-board, and
the melancholy monotonous experience of desert and jungle scenery,
tawny rock and sun-parched plain, or rank herbage and flats of black
mire. Truly it was a revel for Soul and Sight! Forgetting toils,
dangers, and the doubtfulness of return, I felt willing to endure
double what I had endured; and all the party seemed to join with me in
joy. Poor purblind Jack found nothing to grumble at, except the 'mist
and glare before his eyes.' Said bin Salim looked exulting--_he_ had
procured for me this pleasure; the monoculous _Jemadar_ grinned his
congratulations, and even the surly Beloch made civil salaams.
[Sidenote: _In an Arab Craft to Ujiji._]
"As soon as we were bivouacked, I proceeded to get a solid-built Arab
craft, capable of containing thirty or thirty-five men, belonging to
an absent merchant. It was the second largest on the lake, and being
too large for paddling, the crew rowed, and at eight next morning we
began coasting along the eastern shore of the lake in a north-westerly
direction, towards the Kawele district. The picturesque and varied
forms of the mountains rising above and dipping into the lake were
clad in purplish blue, set off by the rosy tints of the morning, and
so we reached the great Ujiji. A few scattered huts in the humblest
beehive shape represent the Port town. This fifth region includes
the alluvial valley of the Malagarázi river, which subtends the
lowest spires of the highlands of Karagwah, and Urundi, the western
prolongation of the chain which has obtained, _probably_ from African
tradition, the name of 'Lunar Mountains.'
"At Ujiji terminates, after twelve stages, the transit of the fifth
region. The traveller has now accomplished a hundred stages, which
with necessary rests, but not including detentions and long halts,
should occupy a hundred and fifty days. The distance, on account of
the sinuosities of the road, numbers nine hundred and fifty statute
miles, which occupied us seven and a half months on account of our
disadvantages and illnesses. Arab Caravans seldom arrive at the
Tanganyika, for the same reasons, under six months, but the lightly
laden and the fortunate may get to Unyamyembe in two and a half, and
to the Tanganyika in four months. It is evident that the African
authorities (this was written thirty-five years ago) have hitherto
confounded the Nyanza, the Tanganyika, and the Nyassa Lakes. Ujiji was
first visited in 1840 by the Arabs, and after that they penetrated
to Unyamwesi. They found it conveniently situated as a central point
from whence their factors and slaves could navigate the waters, and
collect slaves and ivory from the tribes upon its banks, but the
climate proved unhealthy, the people dangerous, and the coasting
voyages ended in disaster. Ujiji never rose to the rank of Unyamyembe,
or Msene. Now, from May to September, flying Caravans touch here,
and return to Unyamyembe so soon as they have loaded their porters.
The principal tribes are the Wajiji, the Wavínza, the Wakaránga, the
Watúta, the Wabuha, and the Wáhha; but the fiercest races in the whole
land, and also the darkest, are the Wazarámo, the Wajíji, and the
Watatúru. The Lakists are almost an amphibious race, are excellent
divers, strong swimmers and fishermen, and vigorous eaters of fish,
and in the water they indulge in gambols like sportive water-fowls,
whether skimming in their hollow logs, or swimming.
"It is a great mistake not to go as a Trader. It explains the
Traveller's motives, which are always suspected to be bad ones. Thus
the Explorer can push forward into unknown countries, will be civilly
received and lightly fined, because the host expects to see him or his
friends again: to go without any motive only induces suspicion, and
he is opposed in every way. Nobody believes him to be so stupid as to
go through such danger and discomfort for exploring or science, which
they simply do not understand.
"The cold damp climate, the over-rich and fat fish diet, and the
abundance of vegetables, which made us commit excesses, at first
disagreed with us. I lay for a fortnight upon the earth, too blind to
read or write, too weak to ride, too ill to converse. Jack was almost
as groggy upon his legs as I was, suffering from a painful ophthalmia,
and a curious contortion of the face, which made him chew sideways,
like an animal that chews the cud. Valentine was the same. Jack and
Valentine were always ill of the same things, and on the same days,
showing that certain climates affected certain temperaments and not
others. Gaetano ate too much and brought on a fever. I was determined
to explore the northern extremity of the lake, whence, every one said,
issued a large river flowing northwards, so I tried to hire the only
dhow or sailing craft, and provision it for a month's cruise, and at
last Jack went to look after it, and I was twenty-seven days alone.
"I spent my time chiefly in eating, drinking, smoking, dozing. At two
or three in the morning I lay anxiously expecting the grey light to
creep through the door-chinks; then came the cawing of crows, and the
crowing of the village cocks. When the golden rays began to stream
over the red earth, torpid Valentine brought me rice-flour boiled in
water with cold milk. Then came the slavey with a leafy branch to
sweep the floor and to slay the huge wasps. This done, he lit the
fire, the excessive damp requiring it, and sitting over it, he bathed
his face and hands--luxurious dog!--in the pungent smoke. Then came
visits from Said bin Salim and the _Jemadar_ (our two headmen), who
sat and stared at me, were disappointed to see no fresh symptoms of
approaching dissolution, told me so with their eyes and faces, and
went away; and I lay like a log upon my cot, smoking, _dreaming of
things past, visioning things present,_ and indulging myself in a few
lines of reading and writing.
[Sidenote: _More Scenery._]
"As evening approached, I made an attempt to sit under the broad
eaves of the _tembe_, and to enjoy the delicious spectacle of this
virgin Nature, and the reveries to which it gave birth--
'A pleasing land of drowsihed it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye,
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass
For ever flushing round a summer sky.'
"It reminded me of the loveliest glimpses of the Mediterranean; there
were the same 'laughing tides,' pellucid sheets of dark blue water,
borrowing their tints from the vinous shores beyond; the same purple
light of youth upon the cheek of the earlier evening; the same bright
sunsets, with their radiant vistas of crimson and gold opening like
the portals of a world beyond the skies; the same short-lived grace
and loveliness of the twilight; and, as night closed over the earth,
the same cool flood of transparent moonbeams, pouring on the tufty
heights and bathing their sides with the whiteness of virgin snow.
"At seven p.m., as the last flush faded from the occident, the lamp--a
wick in a broken pot full of palm oil--was brought in. A dreary,
dismal day you will exclaim, a day that--
'lasts out a night in Russia,
When nights are longest there.'
[Sidenote: _After Twenty-seven Days Speke returns._]
"On the 29th of March the rattling of matchlocks announced Jack's
return. He was moist, mildewed, and wet to the bone, and all his
things were in a similar state; his guns grained with rust, his
fireproof powder-magazine full of rain, and, worse than that, he
had not been able to gain anything but a promise that, _after three
months,_ the dhow should be let to us for five hundred dollars. The
very dhow that had been promised to me whenever I chose to send for
it! The faces of my following were indeed a study.
"I then set to work to help Jack with his diaries, which afterwards
appeared in _Blackwood_, September, 1859, when I was immensely
surprised to find, amongst many other things, a vast horseshoe of
lofty mountains that Jack placed, in a map attached to the paper,
near the very heart of Sir R. Murchison's Depression. I had seen the
mountains growing upon paper under Jack's hand, from a thin ridge of
hills fringing the Tanganyika until they grew to the size given in
_Blackwood_, and Jack gravely printed in the largest capitals, 'This
mountain range I consider to be the true Mountains of the Moon;' thus
men _do_ geography, and thus discovery is stultified. The poor fellow
had got a beetle in his ear, which began like a rabbit at a hole to
dig violently at the tympanum, and maddened him. Neither tobacco,
salt, nor oil could be found; he tried melted butter, and all failing,
he applied the point of a penknife to its back, and wounded his ear
so badly that inflammation set in and affected his facial glands,
till he could not open his mouth, and had to feed on suction. Six or
seven months after, the beetle came away in the wax. At last I got
hold of Kannena the Chief, and after great difficulty and enormous
extortion, I promised him a rich reward if he kept his word; for I
was resolved at all costs, even if we were reduced to actual want, to
visit the mysterious stream. I threw over his shoulders a six-foot
length of scarlet broadcloth, which made him tremble with joy, and all
the people concerned in my getting the dhow received a great deal more
than its worth. I secured two large canoes and fifty-five men.
"On the 11th of April, at four in the morning, I slept comfortably on
the crest of a sand-wave, and under a mackintosh escaped the pitiless
storm, so as to be ready to start lest they should repent, and at 7.20
on the 12th of April, 1858, my canoe, bearing for the first time on
those dark waters--
'The flag that braved a thousand years
The battle and the breeze,'
stood out of Bangwe Bay, and, followed by Jack's canoe, we made for
the cloudy and storm-vexed north. The best escort to a European
capable of communicating with and commanding them, would be a small
party of Arabs, fresh from Hazramaut, untaught in the ways and tongues
of Africa. They would save money to the explorer, and also his life.
There were great rejoicings at our arrival at Uvira, the _ne plus
ultra_, the northernmost station to which merchants have as yet been
admitted. Opposite still, rose in a high broken line the mountains
of the inhospitable Urundi, apparently prolonged beyond the northern
extremity of the waters. Some say the voyage is of two days, some say
six hours; the breadth of the Tanganyika here is between seven and
eight miles.
"Now my hopes were rudely dashed to the ground. The stalwart sons
of the Sultan Maruta, the noblest type of Negroid seen near the
lake, visited me. They told me they had been there, and that the
Rusizi enters _into_ and does not _flow out_ of the Tanganyika. I
felt sick at heart. Bombay declared that Jack had misunderstood, and
_his_ (Bombay's) informer _now_ owned that he had never been beyond
Uvira, and never intended to do so. We stopped there nine days, and
there I got such a severe ulceration of the tongue that I could not
articulate. An African traveller may be arrested at the very bourne of
his journey, on the very threshold of his success, by a single stage,
as effectually as if all the waves of the Atlantic or the sands of
Arabia lay between him and it. Now Maruta and his young giants claimed
their blackmail, and also Kannena, and I had to pay up. Slaves are
cheaper here than in the market of Ujiji. Gales began to threaten, and
the crews, fearing wind and water, insisted on putting out to sea on
the 6th of May.
[Sidenote: _A Fight._]
"We touched at various stages and anchored at Mzimu, our former
halting-place, where the crew swarmed up a ladder of rock, and
returned with pots of palm oil. We left again at sunset; the waves
began to rise, the wind also, and rain in torrents, and it was a doubt
whether the cockleshell craft could live through the short chopping
sea in heavy weather. The crew was frightened, but held on gallantly,
and Bombay, a noted Agnostic in fine weather, spent the length of that
wild night in reminiscences of prayer. I sheltered myself under my
then best friend, my mackintosh, and thought of the couplet--
'This collied night, these horrid waves, these gusts that sweep the whirling deep;
What reck they of our evil plight, who on the shore securely sleep?'
Fortunately the rain beat down the wind and sea, or nothing could have
saved us. The next morning Mabruki rushed into the tent, thrust my
sword into my hands, said the Warundi were upon us, and that the crews
were rushing to their boats and pushing them off. Knowing that they
_would_ leave us stranded in case of danger, we hurried in without
delay; but presently no enemy appeared, and Kannena, the Chief,
persuaded them to re-land, and demand satisfaction of a drunken Chief
who had badly wounded a man, and then there was a general firing and
drawing of daggers. The crew immediately confiscated the three goats
that were for our return, cut their throats, and spitted the meat upon
their spears. Thus the lamb died and the wolf dined; the innocent
suffered, the plunderer was joyed; the strong showed his strength,
the weak his weakness--as usual. I saw the sufferer's wounds washed,
forbade his friends to knead and wrench him as they were doing, and
gave him a purgative which did him good. On the second day he was able
to rise. This did not prevent the report at home that I had killed the
man.
"On the 11th of May we paddled round to Wafanya Bay, to Makimoni, a
little grassy inlet, where our canoes were defended from the heavy
surf. On the 12th we went to Kyasanga, and the next night we spent in
Bangwe Bay. We were too proud to sneak home in the dark; we deserved
the Victoria Cross, we were heroes, braves of braves; we wanted to be
looked at by the fair, to be howled at by the valiant.
[Sidenote: _Are received with Honour._]
"On the 13th of May we appeared at the entrance of Kawele, and had a
triumphal entrance; the people of the whole country-side collected
to welcome us, and pressed waist-deep into the water. Jack and I
were repeatedly 'called for,' but true merit is always modest; it
aspires to 'Honour, not honours.'[1] We regained the old _tembe_,
were salaamed to by everybody, and felt like a 'return home.' We had
expended upwards of a month boating about the Tanganyika Lake. All the
way down, we were like baited bears, mobbed every moment; they seemed
to devour us; in an ecstasy of curiosity they shifted from Jack to
me, and back again, like the well-known ass between the bundles of
hay. Our health palpably improved. Jack was still deaf, but cured of
his blindness; the ulcerated mouth, which had compelled me to live
on milk for seventeen days, returned to its usual state, my strength
increased, my feet were still swollen, but my hands lost their
numbness, and I could again read and write. I attribute the change
from the days and nights spent in the canoe, and upon the mud of the
lake. Mind also acted upon matter; the object of my Mission was now
effected, and I threw off the burden of grinding care, with which the
imminent prospect of a failure had before sorely laden me."
Although Richard did not get the meed of success in England, and it
has taken the world thirty-four years to realize the grandeur of that
Exploration, he was the Pioneer (without money, without food, without
men or proper escort, without the bare necessaries of life, to dare
and do, in spite of every obstacle, and every crushing thing, bodily
and mentally) who opened up that country. It is to _him_ that later
followers, that Grant and Speke, and Baker and Stanley, Cameron, and
all the other men that have ever followed, owe it, that he opened the
oyster-shell for them, and they went in to take the pearl. I do not
want to detract from any other traveller's merits, for they are all
brave and great, but I _will_ say that if Richard Burton had had Mr.
Stanley's money, escort, luxuries, porterage, and white comrades,
backed by influence, there would not have been one single white spot
on the whole map of the great Continent of Africa that would not have
been filled up. Owing to shameful intrigues (which prospered none of
the doers, but injured him, the man who did all this), he got very few
words of praise, and that from a few, yet the World owes it to him
now that there are Missions and Schools and Churches, and Commerce,
and peaceful Settlements, and that anybody can go there. To _him_ you
owe "Tanganyika in a Bath-Chair;" but Speke got the cheering of the
gallery and the pit, and Stanley inherited them. And here I insert the
innocent joy-bells of his own heart, as I found them scribbled on the
edge of his private journal, and anybody thinking of what he had done
and what he had passed through, can warmly enter into his feelings of
self-gratulation, so modestly hidden--
"I have built me a monument stronger than brass,
And higher than the Pyramids' regal site;
Nor the bitterness shown, nor the impotent wind,
Nor the years' long line, nor the ages' flight
Shall e'en lay low!
"Not _all_ shall I perish; much of _me_
Shall vanquish the grave, and be living still,
When Mr. Macaulay's Zealanders view
The ivied ruin on Tower Hill,
And men shall know
"That when Isis hung, in the youth of Time,
Her veil mysterious over the land,
And defied mankind and men's puny will,
All that lay in the shadow, my daring hand
Was _first_ to show,
"Then rejoice thee, superb in the triumph of mind,
And the Delphian bay-leaf, O sweet Muse, bind
Around my brow!"
[Sidenote: _A Caravan arrives._]
"The rainy monsoon broke up after our return to Kawele. The
climate became truly enjoyable, but it did not prevent the strange
inexplicable melancholy which accompanies all travellers in tropical
countries. Nature is beautiful in all that meets the eye; all is soft
that affects the senses; but she is a syren whose pleasures pall,
and one sighs for the rare simplicity of the desert. I never felt
this sadness in Egypt and Arabia; I was never without it in India
and Zanzibar. We got not one single word from the agents who were to
forward our things, and Want began to stare us in the face. We had to
engage porters for the hammocks, to feed seventy-five mouths, to fee
several Sultans, and to incur the heavy expenses of two hundred and
sixty miles' march back to Unyanyembe, so I had to supplement with my
own little patrimony. One thousand pounds does not go very far, when
it has to be divided amongst a couple of hundred greedy savages in two
and a half years. On the 22nd of May musket-shots announced arrivals,
and after a dead silence of eleven months arrived a Caravan with
boxes, bales, porters, slaves, and a parcel of papers and letters from
Europe, India, and Zanzibar. Here we first knew of the Indian Mutiny.
This good fortune happened at a crisis when it was really wanted, but
as my agent could find no porters for the packages, he had kept back
some, and what he had sent me, were the worst. They would take us to
Unyamyembe, but were wholly inadequate for exploring the southern
end of the Tanganyika, far less for returning to Zanzibar, _viâ_ the
Nyassa Lake and Kilwa, as I hoped to do.
[Sidenote: _Geographical Remarks._]
"At the time I write, the Tanganyika, though situated in the
unexplored centre of intertropical Africa, and until 1858 unvisited by
any European, has a traditionary history of its own, extending over
three centuries. The Tanganyika, 250 miles in length, occupies the
centre of the length of the African continent. The general formation
suggests the idea of a volcanic depression, while the Nyanza is a vast
reservoir formed by the drainage of the mountains. The lay is almost
due north and south, and the form a long oval widening at the centre,
and contracting at the extremities; the breadth varies from thirty
to thirty-five miles, the circumference about 550 miles, and the
superficial area covers about 5000 square miles. By the thermometers
we had with us, the altitude was 850 feet above sea-level, and about
2000 feet below the Nyanza or Northern Lake, with high hill ranges
between the lakes, which precluded a possibility of a connection
between the waters. The parallel of the northern extremity of the
Tanganyika nearly corresponds with the southern creek of the Nyanza,
and they are separated by an arc of the meridian of about three
hundred and forty-three miles. The waters of the Nyanza are superior
to those of Tanganyika. The Tanganyika has a clear soft blue, like
the ultramarine of the Mediterranean, with the light and milky tints
of tropical seas. I believe that the Tanganyika receives and absorbs
the whole river system, the network of streams, nullahs, and torrents
of that portion of the Central African Depression, whose watershed
converges towards the great reservoir. I think that the Tanganyika,
like the Dead Sea, _as_ a reservoir, supplies with humidity the winds
which have parted with their moisture in the barren and arid regions
of the south, and maintains its general level by the exact balance
of supply and evaporation, and I think it possible that the saline
particles deposited in its waters may be wanting in some constituent,
which renders them evident to the taste; hence the freshness.
"According to the Wajiji, from their country to the Marungú river,
which enters the lake at the _south_, there are twelve stages,
numbering one hundred and twenty stations, but at most of them
provisions are not procurable, and there are sixteen tribes and
districts. The people of Usige, _north_ of the Tanganyika, say that
six rivers fall into the Tanganyika from the _east_, and _westernmost_
is the Rusizi, and that it is an _influent_.
"The Chief Kazembe is like a viceroy of the country lying south-west
of the Tanganyika, and was first visited by Dr. Lacerda, Governor of
the Rios de Sena, in 1798-99. He died, and his party remained nine
months in the country, without recording the name and position of this
African capital. A second expedition went in 1831, and the present
Chief was the grandson of Dr. Lacerda's Kazembe. He is a very great
personage in these parts, and many Arabs are said to be living with
him in high esteem. Marungú, though dangerous, was visited by a party
of Arab merchants in 1842, who assisted Sámá in an expedition against
a rival. He compelled the merchants to remain with him; they had found
means of sending letters to their friends, they are unable to leave
the country, but they are living in high favour with the Kazembe
who enriched them. Of course there are people who doubt their good
fortune. I collect my details from a mass of Arab _oral_ geography.
"The 26th of May, 1858, was the day appointed for our departure _en
route_ for Unyamyembe. Kannena had been drunk for a fortnight, and was
attacked by the Watuta, and fled. I heard of him no more. He showed
no pity for the homeless stranger--may the World show none to him! I
shall long remember my last sunrise look at Tanganyika, enhanced by
the reflection that I might never again behold it. Masses of brown
purple clouds covered the sunrise. The mists, luminously fringed with
Tyrian purple, were cut by filmy rays, and the internal living fire
shot forth broad beams like the spokes of a huge aërial wheel, rolling
a flood of gold over the light blue waters of the lake, and a soft
breeze, the breath of morn, awoke the waters into life.
[Sidenote: _Troublesome Following._]
"The followers were very tiresome, mutinous, and inconsequent in their
anxiety to escape from Kannena and the fighting Watuta. So, desiring
the headman to precede me with a headstrong gang to the first stage,
and to send back men to carry my hammock and remove a few loose loads,
I breakfasted, and waited alone till the afternoon in the empty and
deserted _tembe_; but no one came back, and the utter misery depicted
in the countenance of the Beloch induced me to mount my _manchil_,
and to set out carried by only two men. As the shades of evening
closed around us we reached the ferry of the Ruche river, and we
found no camp. The mosquitoes were like wasps, and the hippopotamus
bellowed, snorted, and grunted; the roars of the crocodiles made the
party miserable, as the porters waded through water waist-deep, and
crept across plains of mud, mire, and sea-ooze. As it was too dark
and dangerous to continue the march, and that, had I permitted, they
would have wandered through the outer gloom, without fixed purpose,
till permanently bogged, I called a halt, and we snatched, under a
resplendent moon and a dew that soaked through the blankets, a few
hours of sleep. We were destitute of tobacco and food, and when the
dawn broke, I awoke and found myself alone; they had all fled and left
me. About two p.m., some of them came back to fetch me; but they were
so impertinent, ordering me to endure the midday heat and labour,
that I turned them out, and told them to send back their master,
Said bin Salim, in the evening or the next morning. Accordingly, the
next morning, the 28th of May, at nine o'clock, appeared Said, the
_Jemadar_, and a full gang of bearers. He was impertinent too, but
I soon silenced him, and then we advanced till evening: for having
tricked me he lost two days. Later on, a porter placed his burden upon
the ground and levanted, and being cognac and vinegar, it was deeply
regretted. Then the Unyamwezi guide (because his newly purchased
slave-girl had become footsore and was unable to advance) cut off
her head, lest out of his evil should come good to another. The
bull-headed Mabruki bought a little slave of six years old. He trotted
manfully alongside the porters, bore his burden of hide bed and water
gourd upon his tiny shoulders. At first Mabruki was like a girl with
a new doll, but when the novelty wore off, the poor little devil was
so savagely beaten that I had to take him under my own protection. All
these disagreeables I was obliged to smooth down, because a traveller
who cannot utilize the raw material that comes to his hand, will make
but little progress. Their dread of the Wavinza increased as they
again approached the Malagarázi ferry. Here there are magnificent
spectacles of conflagration.
[Sidenote: _Forest on Fire._]
"A sheet of flame, beginning with the size of a spark, overspreads
the hillside, advancing on the wings of the wind with the roaring
rushing sound of many hosts where the grass lay thick, shooting huge
forky tongues high into the dark air, where tall trees, the patriarchs
of the forest, yielded their lives to the blast, smouldering and
darkening, as if about to be quenched, where the rock afforded scanty
fuel, then flickering, blazing up and soaring again till, topping the
brow of the hill, the sheet became a thin line of fire, and gradually
vanished from the view, leaving its reflection upon the canopy of
lurid smoke studded with sparks and bits of live braise, which marked
its descent on the other side of the buttress.
"We were treated with cruel extortion at the crossing of the
Malagarázi, but the armies of ants, and an earthquake at 11.15 a.m.
on the 4th of June, which induced us to consent, was considered a bad
omen by my party. They took seven hours to transport us, and at four
p.m. we found ourselves, with hearts relieved of a heavy load, once
more at Ugogi, on the left bank of the river. Fortunately I arrived
just in time to prevent Jack from buying a little pig for which he was
in treaty, otherwise we should have lost our good name amongst the
Moslem population. On the 8th of June we emerged from the inhospitable
Uvinza into neutral ground, where we were pronounced 'out of danger.'
The next day, when in the meridian of Usagozi, we were admitted for
the first time to the comforts of a village.
"On the 17th of June, in spite of desertions, we came to Irora, the
village of Salim bin Salih, who received us very hospitably. Here we
saw the blue hills of Unyanyembe, our destination. Next day we got to
Yombo, where we met some of our things coming up by the coast, sent
by the Consul of France--the French do things smartly--and a second
packet of letters. Every one had lost some friend or relation near and
dear to him. My father had died on the 6th of last September, after a
six weeks' illness, at Bath, and was buried on the 10th, and I only
knew it on the 18th of June--the following year. Such tidings are
severely felt by the wanderer who, living long behind the world, is
unable to mark its gradual changes, lulls (by dwelling upon the past)
apprehension into a belief that _his_ home has known no loss, and who
expects again to meet each old familiar face ready to smile upon his
return, as it was to weep at his departure.
"We collected porters at Yombo, passed Zimbili, the village of our
former miseries, and re-entered Kázeh, where we were warmly welcomed
by our hospitable Snay bin Amir, who had prepared his house and
everything grateful to starving travellers. Our return from Ujiji to
Unyanyembe had been accomplished in twenty-two stations, two hundred
and sixty-five miles. After a day's repose, all the Arab merchants
called upon me, and I had the satisfaction of finding that my last
order on Zanzibar for four hundred dollars' worth of cloth and beads
had arrived, and I also recovered the lost table and chair which the
slaves had abandoned.
"During the first week following the march, we all paid the penalty of
the toilsome trudge through a perilous jungly country in the deadly
season of the year, when the waters are drying up under a fiery sun,
and a violent _vent de bise_ from the east pours through the tepid air
like cold water into a warm bath. I again got swelling and numbness of
the extremities; Jack was a martyr to deafness and dimness of sight,
which prevented him from reading, writing, and observing correctly;
the Goanese were down with fever, severe rheumatism, and liver pains;
Valentine got tertian type, and was so long insensible that I resolved
to try the _tinctura Warburgii_. Oh, Doctor Warburg! true apothecary!
we all owe you a humble tribute of gratitude; let no traveller be
without you. The result was miraculous; the paroxysms did not return,
the painful sickness at once ceased; from a death-like lethargy, sweet
childish sleep again visited his aching eyes; chief boon of all, the
corroding thirst gave way to appetite, followed by digestion. We all
progressed towards convalescence, and in my case, stronger than any
physical relief, was the moral effect of Success and the cessation of
ghastly doubts and fears, and the terrible wear and tear of mind. I
felt the proud consciousness of having done my best, under conditions,
from beginning to end, the worst and most unpromising, and that
whatever future evils Fate might have in store for me, it could not
rob me of the meed won by the hardships and sufferings of the past.
[Sidenote: _He sends Speke to find the Nyanza._]
"I had not given up the project of returning to the seaboard _viâ_
Kilwa. As has already been mentioned, the merchants had detailed to
me, during my first halt here, their discovery of a large lake, lying
about sixteen marches to the north; and, from their descriptions
and bearings, Jack laid down the water in a hand-map, and forwarded
it to the Royal Geographical Society. All agreed in claiming for it
superiority of size over the Tanganyika, and I saw that, if we could
prove this, much would be cleared up. Jack was in a much fitter state
of health to go. There was no need for two of us going, and I was
afraid to leave him behind at Kázeh. It is very difficult to associate
with Arabs as one of themselves. Jack was an Anglo-Indian, without
any knowledge of Eastern manners and customs and religion, and of
any Oriental language beyond broken Hindostanee. Now, Anglo-Indians,
as everybody knows, often take offence without reason; they expect
civility as their _due_, they treat all skins a shade darker than
their own as 'niggers,' and Arabs are, or can be, the most courteous
gentlemen, and exceedingly punctilious.[2]
"Jack did not afterwards represent this fairly in _Blackwood_,
October, 1859. He said I 'was most unfortunately quite done up, and
most graciously consented to wait with the Arabs and recruit my
health;' but in July, 1858, _writing on the spot_, he wrote, 'To
diminish the disappointment caused by the shortcoming of our cloth,
and in not seeing the whole of the Sea of Ujiji, I have proposed
to take a flying trip to the unknown lake, while Captain Burton
prepares for our return homewards.' Said bin Salim did all he could
to thwart the project, and Jack threatened him with the _forfeiture
of his reward_ after he returned to Zanzibar. Indeed, he told him _it
was already forfeited_. He said 'he should certainly recommend the
Government _not to pay the gratuity, which the Consul had promised on
condition that he worked entirely for our satisfaction, in assisting
the expedition to carry out the arranged plans._' How Jack reconciled
himself to misrepresent my conduct about the payment on reaching home,
will never be understood.
"Our followers were to receive _certain_ pay in _any case_, which they
_did_ receive, and a reward in _case they behaved well_; our asses,
thirty-six in number, all died or were lost; our porters ran away; our
goods were left behind and stolen; specimens of the fine poultry of
Unyamwezi, intended to be naturalized in England, were bumped to death
in the cases; our black escort were so unmanageable as to require
dismissal; the weakness of our party invited attacks, and our wretched
Beloch deserted us in the jungle, and throughout were the cause of an
infinity of trouble. Jack agreed with me thoroughly, that it would be
an _act of weakness_ to pay the _reward_ of _ill-conduct_; instead of
putting it down to generosity, they would have put it down to fear,
and they would have played the devil with every future traveller; yet
he used this afterwards as a means to procure the Command of the next
Expedition for himself, and pointed it at me as a disgrace.
"By dint of severe exertion, Jack was able to leave Kázeh on the 10th
of July. These northern kingdoms were Karágwah, Uganda, and Unyoro.
The _Mkámá_, or Sultan, of Karágwah was Armaníka, son of Ndagára, who
was a very great man. He is an absolute Ruler, and governs without
squeamishness. He receives the traveller with courtesy, he demands
no blackmail, but you are valued according to your gifts. A European
would be received with great kindness, but only a rich man could
support the dignity of the white face. Corpulence is a beauty. Girls
are fattened to a vast bulk by drenches of curds and cream, thickened
with flour, and are beaten when they refuse, and they grow an enormous
size.
[Sidenote: _The Chief Suna._]
"From the Kitangure river, fifteen stations conduct the traveller to
Kibuga, the capital of Uganda, the residence of its powerful despot,
Suna. The Chief of Uganda has but two wants, with which he troubles
his visitors. One is a medicine against Death, the other a charm to
avert thunderbolts, and immense wealth would reward the man who would
give him either of these two things. The army of Uganda numbers three
hundred thousand men; each brings an egg to muster, and thus something
like a reckoning of the people is made. Each soldier carries one
spear, two assegais, a long dagger, and a shield; bows and swords are
unknown. The women and children accompany, carrying spare weapons,
provisions, and water. They fight to the sound of drums, which are
beaten with sticks like ours; should this performance cease, all fly
the field.
"Suna, when last visited by the Arabs, was a red man, of about
forty-five, tall, robust, powerful of limb, with a right kingly
presence, a warrior carriage, and a fierce and formidable aspect. He
always carried his spear, and wore a long piece of bark-cloth from
neck to ground; he makes over to his women the rich clothes presented
by the Arabs. He has a variety of names, all expressing something
terrible, bitter, and mighty. He used to shock the Arabs by his
natural, unaffected impiety. He boasted to them that he was the God
of earth, as their Allah was the Lord of heaven. He murmured loudly
against the abuse of lightning, and claimed from his subjects divine
honours, such as the facile Romans yielded to their Emperors. His
sons, numbering more than a hundred, were confined in dungeons; the
heir _elect_ was dragged from his chains to fill a throne, and the
cadets linger through their dreadful lives till death releases them.
His female children were kept under the most rigid surveillance within
the palace; but he had one favourite daughter, named Nasurú, whose
society was so necessary to him, that he allowed her to appear with
him in public.
[Sidenote: _Richard collects a Vocabulary._]
"Suna encouraged, by gifts and attentions, the Arab merchants to trade
in his capital, but the distance has prevented more than half a dozen
caravans from reaching him; yet all loudly praised his courtesy and
hospitality. My friend Snay Bin Amir paid him a visit in 1852. He
was received in the audience hall, outside which were two thousand
guards, armed only with staves. He was allowed to retain his weapons.
He saluted the Chief, who motioned his guest to sit in front of him.
Two spears were close to his hand. He has a large and favourite dog,
resembling an Arab greyhound. The dog was, and is always, by his side.
The ministers and the women were also present, but placed so that
they could only see the visitor's back. He was eager of news. When
the despot rose, all dispersed. At the second visit, Snay presented
his blackmail, and it was intimated to the 'King's Stranger' that
he might lay hands upon whatever he pleased, animate or inanimate;
but Snay was too wise to avail himself of this privilege. There were
four interviews, in which Suna inquired much about the Europeans,
and was anxious for a close alliance with the Sultan of Zanzibar.
He treated Snay very generously; but Snay, when he could without
offence, respectfully declined things. Like all African Chiefs, the
despot considered these visits as personal honours paid to himself.
It would depend, however, upon his ingenuity and good fortune whether
a traveller would be allowed to explore further, and perhaps the
best way would have been to buy or to build boats upon the nearest
western shore, with Suna's permission. During Jack's absence, I
collected specimens of the multitudinous dialects. Kisawahili, or
coast language, into which the great South African family here divides
itself, is the most useful, because most generally known, and, once
mastered, it renders the rest easy. With the aid of the slaves, I
collected about five hundred words in the three principal dialects
upon this line of road--the Kisawahili, the Kizaramo, which included
the Kik'hutu, and the Kinyamwezi. It was very difficult, for they
always used to answer me, 'Verily in the coast tongue, words never
take root, nor do they ever bear branches.' The rest of my time was
devoted to preparation for journeying, and absolute work--tailoring,
sail-making, umbrella-mending, etc.
"On the 14th of July the last Arab Caravan left Unyanyembe, under the
command of Sayf bin Said el Wardi. He offered to convey letters and
anything else, and I forwarded the useless surveying instruments,
manuscripts, maps, field and sketch books, and reports to the Royal
Geographical Society. This excitement over, I began to weary of Kázeh.
DIFFERENCES BEGIN BETWEEN SPEKE AND RICHARD.
"Already I was preparing to organize a little expedition to K'hokoro
and the southern provinces, when unexpectedly--in these lands a few
cries and gun-shots are the only credible precursors of a Caravan--on
the morning of the 25th of August reappeared Jack.
[Sidenote: _Speke returns and the Differences arose._]
"At length Jack had been successful. His 'flying trip' had led him to
the northern water, and he had found its dimensions surpassing our
most sanguine expectations. We had scarcely, however, breakfasted
before he announced to me the startling fact that 'he had discovered
the sources of the White Nile.' It was an inspiration perhaps. The
moment he sighted the Nyanza, he felt at once no doubt but that the
'lake at his feet gave birth to that interesting river, which has
been the subject of so much speculation and the object of so many
explorers.' The fortunate discoverer's conviction was strong. His
reasons were weak, were of the category alluded to by the damsel
Lucetta, when justifying her penchant in favour of the 'lovely
gentleman,' Sir Proteus--
'I have no other but a woman's reason--
I think him so because I think him so;'[3]
and probably his Sources of the Nile grew in his mind as his Mountains
of the Moon had grown under his hand.
"His main argument in favour of the lake representing the great
reservoir of the White Nile was that the 'principal men' at the
southern extremity ignored the extent northward. 'On my inquiring
about the lake's length,' said Jack, 'the man (the greatest traveller
in the place) faced to the north, and began nodding his head to it.
At the same time he kept throwing forward his right hand, and making
repeated snaps of his fingers, endeavouring to indicate something
immeasurable; and added that nobody knew, but he thought it probably
extended to the end of the world.' Strongly impressed by this valuable
statistical information, Jack therefore placed the northern limit
about 4° to 5° N. lat., whereas the Egyptian Expedition sent by the
late Mohammed Ali Pacha, about twenty years ago, to explore the coy
Sources, reached 3° 22' N. lat. The expedition therefore ought to
have sailed fifty miles upon the Nyanza Lake. On the contrary, from
information derived on the spot, that expedition placed the fountains
at one month's journey--three hundred to three hundred and fifty
miles--to the south-east, or upon the northern counterslope of Mount
Kenia.
"Whilst marching to the coast, Jack--he tells us--was assured by a
'respectable Sawahili merchant that when engaged in traffic, some
years previously, to the northward of the Line and the westward of
this lake, he had heard it commonly reported that large vessels
frequented the northern extremity of these waters, in which the
officers engaged in navigating them used sextants and kept a log,
precisely similar to what is found in vessels on the ocean. Query,
Could this be in allusion to the expedition sent by Mohammed Ali up
the Nile in former years?' (_Proceedings of the Royal Geographical
Society_, May 9, 1859). Clearly, if Abdullah bin Nasib, the Msawahili
alluded to, had reported these words, he merely erred. The Egyptian
Expedition, as has been shown, not only did not find, they never even
heard of a lake. But not being present at the conversation, besides
the geographical difficulties which any scientific geographer could
see at a glance, I am tempted to assign further explanation. Jack,
wholly ignorant of Arabic, was obliged to depend upon 'Bombay.'
Bombay misunderstood Jack's bad Hindostani. He then mistranslated the
words in Kisawahili to the best African, who, in his turn, passed
it on in a still wilder dialect to the noble savages who were under
cross-examination. My experience is that words in journeys to and fro
are liable to the severest accidents and have often bad consequences,
and now I felt that an _influent_ of the Nyanza was described as an
_effluent_, and the real original and only genuine White Nile would
remain thus described for years to our shame, and it is easy to see
how the blunder originated.
"The Arabic _bahr_ and the Kisawahili _báhari_ are equally applicable,
in vulgar parlance, to a river or sea, a lake or river. Traditions
concerning a Western sea--the to them now unknown Atlantic--over
which the white men voyage, are familiar to many East Africans; I
have heard at Harar precisely the same report concerning the log and
sextants. Either, then, Abdullah bin Nasib confounded, or Jack's
'_interrupter_' caused _him_ to confound, the Atlantic and the lake.
In the maps forwarded from Kázeh by Jack, the river Kivira was, after
ample inquiry, made a western _influent_ of the Nyanza Lake. In the
map appended to the paper in _Blackwood_, before alluded to, it has
become an _effluent_, and the only minute concerning so very important
a modification is, 'This river (although I must confess at first I did
not think so) is the Nile itself.'
"Beyond the assertion, therefore, that no man had visited the north,
and the appearance of 'sextants' and 'logs' upon the waters, there
is not a shade of proof _pro_. Far graver considerations lie on the
_con_ side; the reports of the Egyptian Expedition, and the dates
of the several inundations which--as will presently appear--alone
suffice to disprove the possibility of the Nyanza causing the flood
of the Nile. It is doubtless a satisfactory thing to disclose to an
admiring public of 'Statesmen, Churchmen, Missionaries, Merchants,
and more particularly Geographers,' the 'solution of a problem, which
it had been the first geographical desideratum of many thousand
years to ascertain, and the ambition of the first Monarchs in the
World to unravel' (_Blackwood's Magazine_, October, 1859). But how
many times since the days of a certain Claudius Ptolemæius, surnamed
Pelusiota, have not the fountains of the White Nile been discovered
and re-discovered after this fashion?
"What tended at the time to make me the more sceptical, was the
substantial incorrectness of the geographical and other details
brought back by Jack. This was natural enough. The first thing
reported to me was 'the falsehood of the Arabs at Kázeh, who had
calumniated the good Sultan Muhayya, and had praised the bad Sultan
Machunda:' subsequent inquiries proved their rigid correctness. Jack's
principal informant was one Mansur bin Salim, a half-caste Arab,
who had been flogged out of Kázeh by his compatriots; he pronounced
Muhayya to be a 'very excellent and obliging person,' and of
course he was believed. I then heard a detailed account 'of how the
Caravan of Salim bin Rashid had been attacked, beaten, captured, and
detained at Ukerewe, by its Sultan Machunda.' The Arabs received the
intelligence with a smile of ridicule, and in a few days Salim bin
Rashid appeared in person to disprove the report. These are but _two_
cases of _many_. And what knowledge of Asiatic customs can be expected
from the writer of the following lines?--'The Arabs at Unyanyembe had
advised my donning their habit for the trip in order to attract less
attention; a vain precaution, which I believe they suggested more to
gratify their own vanity in _seeing an Englishman lower himself to
their position_ (?), than for any benefit that I might receive by
doing so' (_Blackwood, loco cit._). This galamatias of the Arabs! the
haughtiest and the most clannish of all Oriental peoples.
[Sidenote: _Richard soliloquizes on Speke's Change of Front._]
"Jack changed his manners to me from this date. His difference of
opinion was allowed to alter companionship. After a few days it became
evident to me that not a word could be uttered upon the subject of the
lake, the Nile, and his _trouvaille_ generally without offence. By a
tacit agreement it was, therefore, avoided, and I should never have
resumed it, had Jack not stultified the results of my expedition by
putting forth a claim which no geographer can admit, and which is at
the same time so weak and flimsy, that no geographer has yet taken the
trouble to contradict it.
"Now, for the first time, although I had pursued my journey under
great provocations from time to time, I never realized what an
injury I had done the Expedition publicly, as well as myself, by
not travelling alone, or with Arab companions, or at least with a
less crooked-minded, cantankerous Englishman. He is energetic, he is
courageous and persevering. He distinguished himself in the Punjaub
Campaign. I first found him in Aden with a three years' furlough.
His heart was set on spending two years of his leave in collecting
animals north of the Line in Africa. He never _thought_ in any way
of the Nile, and he was astonished at _my_ views, which he deemed
impracticable. He had no qualifications for the excursion that he
proposed to himself, except that of being a good sportsman. He was
ignorant of the native races in Africa, he had brought with him
about £400 worth of cheap and useless guns and revolvers, swords and
cutlery, beads and cloth, which the Africans would have rejected with
disdain. He did not know any of the manners and customs of the East;
he did not know any language except a little Anglo-Hindostani; he
did not _even_ know the names of the Coast Towns. I saw him engage,
as protectors or _Abbans_, any Somali donkey-boys who could speak a
little English. I saw that he was going to lose his money and his
'leave' and his life. Why should I have cared? I do not know; but as
'virtue is really its own reward,' I did so, and have got a slap in
the face, which I suppose I deserve. I first took him to Somali-land;
then I applied officially for him, and thus saved his furlough and
his money by putting him on full service. You would now think, to see
his conduct, that the case was reversed--that he had taken me, not
I him; whereas I can confidently say that, except his shooting and
his rags of Anglo-Hindostani, I have taught him everything he knows.
He had suffered in purse and person at Berberah, and though he does
not know French or Arabic, though he is not a man of science, nor an
acute astronomical observer, I thought it only just to offer him the
opportunity of accompanying me as second in command into Africa. He
quite understood that it _was_ in a subordinate capacity, as we should
have to travel amongst Arabs, Belochs, and Africans, whose language
he did not know. The Court of Directors refused me, but I obtained
it by an application, to the Local Authorities at Bombay. He knew by
experience in Somali-land what travelling with _me_ meant, and yet he
was only too glad to come.
"I have also done more than Jack in the cause. The Royal Geographical
Society only allowed us £1000, and sooner than fail I have sacrificed
a part of the little patrimony I inherited, and my reward is, that
I and my expenditure, and the cause for which I have sacrificed
everything, are made ridiculous."
N.B.--Richard's kind-heartedness and forethought for others often
militated against himself, owing to the meanness and unworthiness of
the objects it was bestowed upon.
A FEW DETAILS OF THE LAKES FOR GEOGRAPHERS.
[Sidenote: _For Geographers._]
"I will here offer to the reader a few details concerning the lake in
question; they are principally borrowed from Jack's diary, carefully
corrected, however, by Snay bin Amir, Salim bin Rashid,[4] and other
merchants at Kázeh.
"This fresh-water sea is known throughout the African tribes as
Nyanza, and the similarity of the sound to 'Nyassa,' the indigenous
name of the little Maravi, or Kilwa Lake, may have caused in part the
wild confusion in which speculative geographers have involved the Lake
Regions of Central Africa. The Arabs, after their fashion of deriving
comprehensive names from local and minor features, call it Ukerewe,
in the Kisukuma dialect meaning the 'place of Kerewe' (Kelewe), an
islet. As has been mentioned, they sometimes attempt to join by a
river, a creek, or some other theoretical creation, the Nyanza with
the Tanganyika, the altitude of the former being 3750 feet above
sea-level, or 1900 feet above the latter, and the mountain regions
which divide the two having been frequently travelled over by Arab and
African caravans. Hence the name Ukerewe has been transferred in the
'Mombas Mission Map' to the northern waters of the Tanganyika. The
Nyanza, as regards name, position, and even existence, has hitherto
been unknown to European geographers; but, as will presently appear,
descriptions of this sea by native travellers have been unconsciously
transferred by our writers to the Tanganyika to Ujiji, and even to the
Nyassa of Kilwa.
"M. Brun-Rollet ('Le Nil Blanc et le Soudan,' p. 209) heard that on
the west of the Padongo tribe--which he places to the south of Mount
Kambirah, or below 1° S. lat.--lies a great lake, from whose northern
extremity issues a river whose course is unknown. In a map appended
to his volume this water is placed between 1° S. and 3° N. lat., and
about 25° 50' E. long. (Greenwich), and the reservoir is made an
influent of the White Nile.
"Bowditch ('Discoveries of the Portuguese,' pp. 131, 132), when
speaking of the Maravi Lake (the Nyassa), mentions that the 'negroes
or the Moors of Melinde' have mentioned a great water which is
known to reach Mombaça, which the Jesuit missionaries conjectured
to communicate with Abyssinia, and of which Father Lewis Marianna,
who formerly resided at Tete, recommended a discovery, in a letter
addressed to the Government at Goa, which is still preserved among
the public archives of that city. Here the confusion of the Nyanza,
to which there was of old a route from Mombasah, with the Nyassa is
apparent.
"At the southern point, where the Muingwira river falls into the
tortuous creek, whose surface is a little archipelago of brown rocky
islets crowned with trees and emerging from the blue waters, the
observed latitude of the Nyanza Lake is 2° 24' S.; the longitude by
dead reckoning from Kázeh is E. long. 33° and nearly due north, and
the altitude by B. P. thermometer 3750 feet above sea-level. Its
extent to the north is unknown to the people of the southern regions,
which rather denotes some difficulty in travelling than any great
extent. They informed Jack that from Mwanza to the southern frontier
of Karágwah is a land journey of one month, or a sea voyage of five
days towards north-north-west, and then to the north. They also
pointed out the direction of Unyoro N. 20° W. The Arab merchants of
Kázeh have seen the Nyanza opposite Weranhanja, the capital district
of Armanika, King of Karágwah, and declares that it receives the
Kitangure river, whose mouth has been placed about the equator.
"Beyond that point all is doubtful. The merchants have heard that
Suna, the late despot of Uganda, built _matumbi_, or undecked
vessels, capable of containing forty or fifty men, in order to
attack his enemies, the Wasoga, upon the creeks which indent the
western shores of the Nyanza. This, if true, would protract the lake
to between 1° and 1° 30' of N. lat, and give it a total length of
about 4°, or 250 miles. This point, however, is still involved in
the deepest obscurity. Its breadth was estimated as follows:--A hill
about two hundred feet above the water-level, shows a conspicuous
landmark on the eastern shore, which was set down as forty miles
distant. On the south-western angle of the line from the same point,
ground appeared; it was not, however, perceptible north-west. The
total breadth, therefore, has been assumed at eighty miles--a
figure which approaches the traditions unconsciously chronicled by
European geographers. In the vicinity of Usoga, the lake, according
to the Arabs, broadens out; of this, however, and in fact of all the
formation north of the equator, it is at present impossible to arrive
at certainty.
"The Nyanza is an elevated basin or reservoir, the recipient of the
surplus monsoon rain, which falls in the extensive regions of the
Wamasai and their kinsmen to the east, the Karágwah line of the
Lunar Mountains to the west, and to the south Usukuma, or Northern
Unyamwezi. Extending to the equator in the central length of the
African peninsula, and elevated above the limits of the depression in
the heart of the continent, it appeared to be a gap in the irregular
chain which, running from Usumbara and Kilima-ngao to Karágwah,
represents the formation anciently termed the Mountains of the Moon.
The physical features, as far as they were observed, suggest this
view. The shores are low and flat, dotted here and there with little
hills; the smaller islands also are hill-tops, and any part of the
country immediately on the south would, if inundated to the same
extent, present a similar aspect.
"The lake lies open and elevated, rather like the drainage and the
temporary deposit of extensive floods than a volcanic creation like
the Tanganyika, a long narrow mountain-girt basin. The waters are said
to be deep, and the extent of the inundation about the southern creek
proves that they receive during the season an important accession. The
colour was observed to be clear and blue, especially from afar in the
early morning; after nine a.m., when the prevalent south-east wind
arose, the surface appears greyish or of a dull milky white, probably
the effect of atmospheric reflection. The tint, however, does not,
according to travellers, ever become red or green like the waters of
the Nile. But the produce of the lake resembles that of the river in
its purity; the people living on the shores prefer it, unlike that
of the Tanganyika, to the highest and clearest springs; all visitors
agree in commending its lightness and sweetness, and declare that the
taste is rather of river or of rain water, than resembling the soft
slimy produce of stagnant, muddy bottoms, or the rough harsh flavour
of melted ice and snow.
"From the southern creek of the Nyanza, and beyond the archipelago of
neighbouring islets, appear the two features which have given to this
lake the name of Ukerewe. The Arabs call them 'Jezirah'--an ambiguous
term, meaning equally insula and peninsula--but they can scarcely
be called islands. The high and rocky Mazita to the east, and the
comparatively flat Ukerewe on the west, are described by the Arabs as
points terminating seawards in bluffs, and connected with the eastern
shore by a low neck of land--probably a continuous reef--flooded
during the rains, but never so deeply as to prevent cattle fording
the isthmus. The northern and western extremities front deep water,
and a broad channel separates them from the southern shore, Usukuma.
The Arabs, when visiting Ukerewe or its neighbour, prefer hiring the
canoes of the Wasakuma, and paddling round the south-eastern extremity
of the Nyanza, to exposing their property and lives by marching
through the dangerous tribes of the coast.
"The altitude, the conformation of the Nyanza Lake, the argilaceous
colour and the sweetness of its waters, combine to suggest that it
may be one of the feeders of the White Nile. In the map appended to
M. Brun Rollet's volume, before alluded to, the large water west of
the Padongo tribe, which clearly represents the Nyanza or Ukerewe,
is, I have observed, made to drain northwards into the Fitri Lake,
and eventually to swell the main stream of the White River. The
details supplied by the Egyptian Expedition, which, about twenty
years ago, ascended the White River to 3° 22' N. lat. and 31° 30' E.
long., and gave the general bearing of the river from that point of
its source as south-east, with a distance of one month's journey, or
from three hundred to three hundred and fifty miles, would place the
actual sources 2° S. lat. and 35° E. long., or in 2° eastward of the
southern creek of the Nyanza Lake. This position would occupy the
northern counterslope of the Lunar Mountains, the upper watershed of
the high region whose culminating apices are Kilima-ngao, Kenia, and
Doengo Engai. The distance of these peaks from the coast as given by
Dr. Krapf must be considerably reduced, and little authority can be
attached to his river Tumbiri.[5] The site, supposed by Mr. Macqueen
(_Proceedings of the Geographical Society of London_, January 24th,
1859) to be at least twenty-one thousand feet above the level of the
sea, and consequently three or four thousand feet above the line of
perpetual congelation, would admirably explain the two most ancient
theories concerning the source of the White River, namely, that it
arises in snowy regions, and that its inundation is the result of
tropical rains.
"It is impossible not to suspect that between the upper portion
of the Nyanza and the watershed of the White Nile there exists a
longitudinal range of elevated ground, running from east to west--a
_furca_ draining northwards into the Nile and southwards into the
Nyanza Lake--like that which separates the Tanganyika from the Maravi
or Nyassa of Kilwa. According to Don Angelo Vinco, who visited Loquéck
in 1852, beyond the Cataract of Garbo--supposed to be in N. lat. 2°
40'--at a distance of sixty miles lie Robego, the capital of Kuenda
and Lokoya (Logoja), of which the latter receives an affluent from the
east. Beyond Lokoya the White Nile is described as a _small and rocky
mountain river_, presenting none of the features of a stream flowing
from a broad expanse of water like the great Nyanza reservoir.
"The periodical swelling of the Nyanza Lake, which, flooding a
considerable tract of land on the south, may be supposed--as it lies
flush with the basal surface of the country--to inundate extensively
all the low lands that form its periphery, forbids belief in the
possibility of its being the head-stream of the Nile, or the reservoir
of its periodical inundation. In Karágwah, upon the western shore,
the _masika_, or monsoon, last from October to May or June, after
which the dry season sets in. The Egyptian Expedition found the river
falling fast at the end of January, and they learned from the people
that it would rise again about the end of March, at which season the
sun is vertical over the equator. About the summer solstice (June),
when the rains cease in the regions south of and upon the equator,
the White Nile begins to flood. From March to the autumnal equinox
(September) it continues to overflow its banks till it attains its
magnitude, and from that time it shrinks through the winter solstice
(December) till March.
"The Nile is, therefore, full during the dry season and low during
the rainy season, south of and immediately upon the equator. And as
the northern counterslope of Kenia will, to a certain extent, be
a lee-land like Ugogi, it cannot have the superfluity of moisture
necessary to send forth a first-class stream. The inundation is
synchronous with the great falls of the northern equatorial regions,
which extend from July to September, and is dependent solely upon the
tropical rains. It is therefore probable that the true sources of the
'Holy River' will be found to be a network of runnels and rivulets of
scanty dimensions, filled by monsoon torrents, and perhaps a little
swollen by melted snow on the northern water-parting of the eastern
Lunar Mountains.
OUR RETURN.
"At Kázeh, to my great disappointment, it was settled, in a full Arab
conclave, that we must return to the coast by the path with which
we were painfully familiar. It was only the state of our finances
which prevented us, whilst at Ujiji, from navigating the Tanganyika
southwards and arriving, after a journey of three months, at Kilwa.
That and 'leave' prevented us from going to Karágwah and Uganda. The
rains, which rendered travelling impossible, set in about September;
our two years' leave of absence were drawing to a close, and we were
afraid to risk it, but we meant to return and do these things, tracing
the course of the Rufiji river (Rwaha) and visiting the coast between
the Usagára Mountains and Kilwa, an unknown line.
[Sidenote: _The Kindness of Musa Mzuri and Snay bin Amir._]
"Musa Mzuri returned with great pomp to Kázeh; he is between
forty-five and fifty, tall, gaunt, with delicate extremities, and the
regular handsome features of a high-caste Indian Moslem. He is sad
and staid, wears a snowy skull-cap, and well-fitting sandals. His
abode is a village in size, with lofty gates, spacious courts, full
of slaves and hangers-on, a great contrast to the humility of the
Semite tenements. His son knew a little English, but he had learnt no
Hindostani from his father, who, though expatriated for thirty-five
years, spoke his mother tongue purely and well. Musa was a man of
quiet, unaffected manner, dashed with a little Indian reserve. One
Salim bin Rashid, while collecting ivory to the eastward of the Nyanza
Lake, had recovered a Msawahili porter, who, having fallen sick on
the road, had been left by a Caravan amongst the wildest of the East
African tribes, the Wahuma (the Wamasai). From this man, who spent
two years amongst these plunderers and their rivals in villany, the
Warudi, I gained most valuable information. I also was called upon by
Amayr bin Said el Shaksi, a strong-framed, stout-hearted Arab, who,
when his vessel foundered in the Tanganyika, swam for his life, and
lived for five months on roots and grasses, until restored to Ujiji by
an Arab canoe. He spent many hours a day with me--he gave me immense
information; and Hilal bin Nasur, a well-born Harisi returned from
K'hokoro, also gave me most valuable facts.
"It is needless to say that, with all our economy and care, we arrived
at the coast destitute. The hospitable Snay bin Amir came personally,
although only a convalescent, to superintend our departure, provided
us with his own slaves and a charming Arab breakfast; he spent the
whole of that day with us, and followed us out of the compound
through a white-hot sun and a chilling wind; nay, he did more--he
followed us to our next station with Musa, and he helped us to put
the finishing touches to the journals. I thanked these kind-hearted
men for their many good deeds and services, and promised to report
to H.H. the Sayyid Majid the hospitable reception of his subjects
generally, and of Snay and Musa in particular. In the evening we took
a most affecting farewell.[6] On the 4th of October, insufficiency
of porterage compelled me to send back men for articles left by them
at several of the villages, and we at last reached Hanga, our former
quarters. Desertions were rife, and so were quarrels, in which I was
always begged to take an active part, but experience amongst the
Bashi-Bazouks in the Dardanelles taught me better.
LITTLE IRONS.
[Sidenote: _Speke's Illness._]
"At Hanga, Jack had been chilled on the march from the cruel easterly
wind, and at the second march he had ague. At Hanga we were lodged in
a foul cowhouse full of vermin, and exposed to the fury of the gales.
He had a deaf ear, an inflamed eye, and a swollen face, but worst of
all was a mysterious pain, which shifted--he could not say whether
it was liver or spleen. It began with a burning sensation as by a
branding iron above the right breast, and then extended to the heart
with sharp twinges. It then ranged round the spleen, attacked the
upper part of the right lung, and finally settled in the liver.
"On the 10th of October, at dawn, he woke with a horrible dream of
tigers, leopards, and other beasts, harnessed with a network of iron
hooks, dragging him, like the rush of a whirlwind, over the ground. He
sat up on the side of his bed, forcibly clasping both sides with his
hands. Half stupefied by pain, he called to Bombay, who had formerly
suffered from this _kichyomachyoma_, 'the little irons,' who put him
in the position a man must lie in, who gets this attack. The next
spasm was less severe, but he began to wander. In twenty-four hours,
supported by two men, he staggered towards the tent to a chair; but
the spasms returning, he was assisted back into the house, where he
had a third fit of epileptic description, like hydrophobia. Again he
was haunted by crowds of devils, giants, lion-headed demons, who were
wrenching with superhuman force, and stripping the sinews and tendons
of his legs down to his ankles. With limbs racked by cramps, features
drawn and ghastly, frame fixed and rigid, eyes glazed and glassy, he
began to bark with a peculiar chopping motion of the mouth and tongue,
with lips protruding, the effect of difficulty of breathing, which so
altered his appearance that he was not recognizable, and terrified
all beholders. When the third and severest spasm had passed away, and
he could speak, he called for pen and paper, and wrote an incoherent
letter of farewell to his family. That was the crisis. I never left
him, taking all possible precautions, never letting him move without
my assistance, and always having a resting-place prepared for him;
but for some weeks he had to sleep in a half sitting-up position,
pillow-propped, and he could not lie upon his side. Although the pains
were mitigated, they did not entirely cease; this he expressed by
saying, 'Dick, the knives are sheathed!'
"During Jack's delirium he let out all his little grievances of
fancied wrongs, of which I had not had even the remotest idea. He was
vexed that his diary (which I had edited so carefully, and put into
the Appendix of 'First Footsteps in Eastern Africa') had not been
printed _as_ he wrote it--geographical blunders and all; also because
he had not been paid for it, I having lost money over the book
myself. He asked me to send his collections to the Calcutta Museum of
Natural History; now he was hurt because I had done so. He was awfully
grieved because in the thick of the fight at Berberah, three years
before, I had said to him, 'Don't step back, or they will think we
are running.' I cannot tell how many more things I had unconsciously
done, and I crowned it by not accepting immediately his loud assertion
_that he had discovered the Sources of the Nile_; and I never should
have known that he was pondering these things in his heart, if he had
not raved them out in delirium. I only noticed that his alacrity had
vanished; that he was never contented with any arrangement; that he
left all the management to me, and that then he complained that he
had never been consulted; that he quarrelled with our followers, and
got himself insulted; and, previously to our journey, having been
unaccustomed to sickness, he neither could endure it himself, nor
feel for it in others. He took pleasure in saying unkind, unpleasant
things, and said he could not take an interest in any exploration if
he did not command it.
"These illnesses are the effects of fever, and a mysterious
manifestation of miasma in certain latitudes; for in some tracts we
were perfectly well, in other tracts we were mortally sick, and the
changes were instantaneous. Cultivation and Civilization will probably
wear these effects out, by planting, clearing jungle, and so on.
"I immediately sent an express back to Snay bin Amir, for the proper
treatment, and found that they powdered myrrh with yolk of egg and
flour of _mung_ for poultices. I saw that, in default of physic,
change of air was the only thing for him, and I had a hammock rigged
up for him, and by good fortune an unloaded Caravan was passing down
to the coast. We got hold of thirteen unloaded porters, who for a
large sum consented to carry us to Rubuga, else we should have been
left to die in the wilderness. Bombay had long since returned to his
former attitude, that of a respectful and most ready servant. He
had on one trip broken my elephant gun, killed my riding-ass, and
lost his bridle, and did all sorts of irrational things, but for all
that he was a most valuable servant, for his unwearied activity, his
undeviating honesty, and his kindness of heart. Said bin Salim had
long forfeited my confidence by his carelessness and extravagance, and
the disappearance of the outfit committed to him at Ujiji--in favour
of one of his friends, as I afterwards learned--rendered him unfit for
stewardship. The others praised each other openly and without reserve,
and if an evil tale ever reached my ear, it was against innocent
Bombay, its object being to ruin him in my estimation.
[Sidenote: _They cross the "Fiery Field."_]
As I knew we should be short of water, I prepared by packing a box
with empty bottles, which we could fill at the best springs, and by
the result of that after-wisdom which some have termed 'fool's wit,'
I commenced the down march happy as a _bourgeois_ or a trapper in the
Pays Sauvage. Before entering the 'Fiery Field' the hammock-bearers
became so exorbitant that I drew on my jackboots and mounted an
ass, and Jack had so far convalesced that he wanted to ride too. He
had still, however, harassing heartache, nausea, and other bilious
symptoms, when exposed to the burning sun; but when he got to K'hok'ho
in Ugogi, sleep and appetite came, he could carry a heavy rifle,
and do damage amongst the antelope and guineafowl. Now all began
to wax civil, even to servility, grumbling ceased, smiles mantled
every countenance, and even the most troublesome rascal was to be
seen meekly sweeping out our tents with a bunch of thorns. We made
seven marches between Hanga and Tura, where we arrived on the 28th of
October, and halted six days to procure food. My own party were 10;
Said bin Salim's, 12; the Beloch, 38; Ramji's party, 24; the porters,
68--in all 152 souls. We plunged manfully into the 'Fiery Field,' and
after seven marches in seven days, we bivouacked at Jiwe la Mkoa,
and on the 12th of November, after two days' march, came into the
fertile red plain of Mdaduru, in the transit of Ugogi. After that,
where I had been taught to expect danger, it reduced itself to large
disappearances of cloth and beads. Gul Mahommed was our Missionary,
but he was just like the European old lady, who believes that on such
subjects all the world must think with her. I have long been suspected
of telling lies, when describing the worship of a god with four arms,
and the goddesses with two heads. The transit of Ugogi occupied
three weeks. At Kanyenye we were joined by a large down-Caravan of
Wanyamwezi, who, amongst other news, told us that our former line
through Usagára was closed through the fighting of the tribes.
[Sidenote: _An Official Wigging._]
"On the 6th of December we arrived at our old ground in the Ugogi
Dhun, and met another Caravan, which presently drew forth a packet of
letters and papers. This post brought me rather an amusing official
wigging. Firstly, there was a note from Captain Rigby, my friend
Hamerton's successor at Zanzibar. Secondly, the following letter:--
"'3, Savile Row.
"'DEAR BURTON,
"'Go ahead! Vogel and MacGuire dead--murdered. Write often.
"'Yours truly,
"'NORTON SHAW.'
"The 'wig' was this. I had paid the Government the compliment of
sending it, through the Royal Geographical Society, an account of
political affairs in the Red Sea, saying I feared trouble at Jeddah,
which I had had from my usual private information from the interior,
being fearful that there would be troubles at Jeddah; and the only
thanks I got was a letter, stating 'that my want of discretion and
due regard for the authorities to whom I am subordinate, has been
regarded with displeasure by the Government.' They are cold and crusty
to reward a little word of wisdom from their babes and sucklings; but
what was so comically sad was this:--The official wig was dated the
1st of July, 1857. Posts are slow in Africa, so that by the same
post I got a newspaper with an account of the massacre of nearly all
the Christians at Jeddah on the Red Sea, expressing great fears that
the Arab population of Suez also might be excited to commit similar
outrages. This took place on the 30th of June, 1858, exactly eleven
months after I had warned the Government.
"We loaded on the 7th of December, and commenced the passage of the
Usagára Mountains by the Kiringawána line. This is the southern route,
separated from the northern by an interval of forty-three miles. It
contains settlements like Maroro and Kisanga. It is nineteen short
stages; provisions are procurable, water plentiful, and plenty of
grass, as long as you can pass the Warori tribe. Mosquitoes are
plentiful. The owners of the land have a chronic horror of the Warori,
and on sighting our peaceful Caravan they raised the war-cry, and were
only quieted on knowing that we were much more frightened than they
were. We had wild weather, we stayed at Maroro for food; at Kiperepeta
there were gangs of four hundred touters, with their muskets, waiting
the arrival of Caravans.
[Sidenote: _Christmas Day,_ 1858.]
"On Christmas Day, 1858, at dawn, we toiled along the Kikoboga river,
which we forded four times. Jack and I had a fat capon instead of
roast beef, and a mess of ground nuts sweetened with sugar-cane,
which did duty for plum-pudding. The contrast of what was, with what
might be, now however suggested pleasurable sensations. We might now
see Christmas Day of 1859, whereas on Christmas Day, 1857, we saw
no chance of that of 1858. Fourteen marches took us from the foot
of Usagára Mountains to Central Zungomero, traversing the districts
of Eastern Mbwiga, Marundwe, and Kirengwe. It is a road hideous and
grotesque: no animals, flocks, or poultry; the villages look like
birds' nests torn from the trees; the people slink away--they are all
armed with bows and poisoned arrows. At Zungomero, the village on the
left bank of the Mgeta, which we had occupied on the outer march,
was razed to the ground. I here offered a liberal reward to get to
Kilwa. However, I did not succeed, and there was some intrigue about
the pay afterwards, which I never understood, which was annoying to
me; but such events are common on the slave-paths in Eastern Africa.
Of the seven gangs of porters engaged on this journey, _only one_, an
unusually small portion, _left me without being fully satisfied_, and
_that one fully deserved to be disappointed_.
"On the 14th of January, 1859, we received Mr. Apothecary Frost's
letters, drugs, and medical comforts, for which we had written to
him July, 1857. After crossing the Mgeta, we sat down patiently on
a bank, in spite of the ants, to await the arrival of a Caravan to
complete our gang, but the new medical comforts enabled us to have
ether-sherbet and ether-lemonade, and it did not hurt us. On the 17th
of January a Caravan came, which I had been longing to meet. The Arab
Chiefs Sulayman bin Rashid el Riami and Mohammed bin Gharib, who
called upon me without delay, gave me most interesting information. To
the south, from Uhehe to Ubena, was a continuous chain of highlands
pouring affluents across the road into the Rwaha river, and water
was only procurable in the beds of the nullahs and _fiumaras_. If
this chain be of any considerable length, it may represent the
water-parting between the Tanganyika and Nyassa Lakes, and thus divide
by another and a southerly lateral band the great Depression of
Central Africa.
"The 21st of January we left Zungomero, and made Konduchi on the 3rd
of February in twelve marches. The mud was almost throat-deep near
Dut'humi, and we had a weary trudge of thick slabby mire up to the
knees. In places, after toiling under a sickly sun, we crept under
the tunnels of thick jungle-growth veiling the streams, the dank
fœtid cold of which caused a deadly sensation of faintness, which was
only relieved by a glass of ether-sherbet or a pipe of the strongest
tobacco. By degrees it was found necessary to abandon the greater part
of the remaining outfit and luggage. The 27th of January saw us pass
safely by the village where M. Maizan was murdered.
"On the 28th there was a report that we were to be attacked at a
certain place, and Said bin Salim came to tell me that the road was
cut off, and that I must delay till an escort could be summoned from
the coast. I knew quite well that it was only an intrigue, but I
feared that real obstacles might be placed in our way by the wily
little man, and as soon as _bakshish_ was mentioned, four naked
varlets appeared in a quarter of an hour as escort.
"On the 30th of January the men screamed with delight at the sight of
the mango tree, and all their old familiar fruits.
"On the 2nd of February, 1859, Jack and I caught sight of the sea. We
lifted our caps, and gave 'three times three and one more.' The 3rd
of February saw us passing through the poles decorated with skulls--a
sort of negro Temple Bar--at the entrance of Konduchi; they now grin
in the London Royal College of Surgeons.
"Our entrance was immense. The war-men danced, shot, shouted; the boys
crowded; the women lulliloo'd with all their might; and a general
procession conducted us to the hut, swept, cleaned, and garnished
for us, by the principal _Banyan_ of the Head-quarter village, and
there the crowd stared and laughed until they could stare and laugh
no more. A boat transferred most of our following to their homes, and
they kissed my hand and departed, weeping bitterly with the agony
of parting. I sent a note to the Consul at Zanzibar, asking for a
coasting craft to explore the Delta and the unknown course of the
Rufiji river. I liberally rewarded Zawáda, who had attended to Jack in
his illness. We were detained at Konduchi for six days, from the 3rd
to the 10th of February.
[Sidenote: _Speke leaves Richard Ill, but apparently Friendly._]
"On the 9th of February the craft arrived at Konduchi from Zanzibar,
and we rolled down the coast with a fair, fresh breeze towards
Kilwa, the Quiloa of De Gama and of Camoens. We lost all our crew by
cholera, and we were unable to visit the course of the great Rufiji
river, a counterpart of the Zambesi in the south, and a water-road
which appears destined to become the highway of nations into Eastern
Equatorial Africa. The deluge of rain and floods showed me that
the travelling season was at an end. I turned the head of the craft
northwards, and on the 4th of March, 1859, we landed once more on
the island of Zanzibar. Sick and wayworn, I entered the house in sad
memory of my old friend, which I was fated to regret still more. The
excitement of travel was succeeded by an utter depression of mind
and body; even the labour of talking was too great. The little State
was in the height of confusion, in a state of Civil war; the eldest
brother of the Sultan was preparing a hostile visit to his youngest
brother, the Sultan Sayyid Majid of Zanzibar. After a fortnight of
excitement and suspense, a gunboat was sent to the elder brother
to persuade him to return. His Highness Sayyid Majid had honoured
me with an expression of his desire that I should remain until the
expected hostilities might be brought to a close. I did so willingly,
in gratitude to a Prince to whose good will my success was mainly
indebted, but the Consulate was no longer bearable to me. I was too
conversant with local politics, too well aware of what was going on,
to be a pleasant companion to its new tenant. I was unwilling to
go, because so much remained to be done. I wanted to wait for fresh
leave of absence and additional funds, but the evident anxiety of
Consul Rigby to get rid of me, and Jack's nervous impatience to go
on, made me abandon my intentions. Said bin Salim called often at the
Consulate, but Captain Rigby agreed with me that he had been more than
sufficiently rewarded, and the same with the others. Jack also was of
the same opinion, but it suited Jack, with his secret prospects or
intentions of returning without me, to change his mind afterwards,
and he was evidently able to get Captain Rigby to do the same. There
can be little doubt that Jack's intention of returning on the second
Expedition, on the lines of the one which he had done so much to
spoil, had a great deal to do with his action on this occasion. When
H.M.S. _Furious_, carrying Lord Elgin and Mr. Laurence Oliphant, his
secretary, arrived at Aden, passage was offered to both of us. I could
not start, being too ill. But _he_ went, and the words Jack said to
me, and I to him, were as follows:--'I shall hurry up, Jack, as soon
as I can,' and the last words Jack ever spoke to me on earth were,
'_Good-bye, old fellow; you may be quite sure I shall not go up to the
Royal Geographical Society until you come to the fore and we appear
together. Make your mind quite easy about that._'
"With grateful heart I bid adieu to the Sultan, whose kindness and
personal courtesy will long dwell in my memory, and who expressed a
hope to see me again, and offered me one of his ships of war to take
me home. However, a clipper-built barque, the _Dragon of Salem_,
Captain Macfarlane, was about to sail with the south-west monsoon for
Aden. Captain Rigby did not accompany us on board, a mark of civility
usual in the East, but Bombay's honest face turned up and seemed
peculiarly attractive.
"On the 22nd of March, 1859, the clove shrubs and coco trees of
Zanzibar faded from my eyes, and after crossing and recrossing three
times the tedious Line, we found ourselves anchored, on the 16th of
April, near the ill-omened black walls of the Aden crater. The crisis
of my African sufferings had taken place at the Tanganyika; the fever,
however, still clung to me.
"I left the Aden coal-hole of the East on the 20th of April, 1859, and
in due time greeted with becoming heartiness my native shores.
"The very day after he returned to England, May 9th, 1859, Jack
called at the Royal Geographical Society and set on foot the scheme
of a new exploration. He lectured in Burlington House, and when I
reached London on May 21st I found the ground completely cut from
under my feet. Sir Roderick Murchison had given Jack the leadership
of a new Expedition; my own long-cherished plan of entering Africa
through Somali-land, landing at the Arab town Mombas, was dismissed
as unworthy of notice. Jack published two articles in _Blackwood's
Magazine_, assumed the whole credit to himself, illustrated a
wonderful account of his own adventures and discoveries, with a chart
where invention is not in it. He said he did all the astronomical
work, and had taught me the geography of the country through which we
travelled, which made me laugh. Jack, who literally owed everything
to me, habitually wrote and spoke of me to mutual friends in a most
disagreeable manner. Many people who professed to be friendly to me
said it would be more dignified to say nothing, but I knew how unwise
it is to let public sentence pass by default, and how delay may cause
everlasting evil, so I wrote the most temperate vindication of my
position."[7]
[1] This was Richard's favourite and self-composed motto, and Chinese
Gordon quoted it in every letter he wrote him to the last day of his
life, with a word of congratulation as to its happy choice.--I. B.
[2] The Arabs always gave Richard the most courteous and cordial
reception, treating him practically as one of themselves. They could
not be expected to think so much of Speke, because he did not know
their language or their religion, and he always treated them as an
Anglo-Indian treats a nigger. He was burning to escape from Kázeh,
and the society of an utterly idle man to one incessantly occupied is
always a drawback, and Richard, whose stronger constitution had enabled
him to bear up at first with greater success, was gradually but surely
succumbing to the awful African climate.--I. B.
[3] "The following extract from the _Proceedings of the Royal
Geographical Society_, May 9, 1859, will best illustrate what I mean:--
"'Mr. Macqueen, F.R.G.S., said the question of the sources of the Nile
had cost him much trouble and research, and he was sure there was no
material error either in longitude or latitude in the position he had
ascribed to them, namely, a little to the eastward of the meridian
of 35° and a little northward of the equator. That was the principal
source of the White Nile. The mountains there were exceedingly high,
from the equator north to Kaffa Enarea. All the authorities, from
east, west, north, or south, now perfectly competent to form judgments
upon such a matter, agreed with him; and among them were the officers
commanding the Egyptian Commission. It was impossible they could _all_
be mistaken. Dr. Krapf had been within a very short distance of it; he
was more than a hundred and eighty miles from Mombas, and he saw snow
upon the mountains. He conversed with the people who came from them,
and who told him of the snow and exceeding coldness of the temperature.
The line of perpetual congelation, it is well known, was seventeen
thousand feet above the sea. He had an account of the navigation of the
White Nile by the Egyptian Expedition. It was then given as 30° 30' N.
lat. and 31° E. long. At this point the expedition turned back for want
of a sufficient depth of water. Here the river was 1370 feet broad,
and the velocity of the current _one quarter_ of a mile per hour. The
journals also gave a specific and daily current, the depth and width of
the river, and everything, indeed, connected with it. Surely, looking
at the current of the river, the height of the Cartoom above the level
of the sea, and the distance thence up to the equator, the sources of
the Nile must be six or eight thousand feet above the level of the sea,
and still much below the line of snow, which was six or eight thousand
feet farther above them. He deeply regretted he was unable to complete
the diagram for the rest of the papers he had given to the Society,
for it was more important than any others he had previously given.
It contained the journey over Africa from sea to sea, second only to
Dr. Livingstone. But all the rivers coming down from the mountains in
question, and running south-eastward, had been clearly stated by Dr.
Krapf, who gave every particular concerning them. He should like to
know what the natives had said was to the northward of the large lake.
Did they say the rivers ran out from or into the lake? How could the
Egyptian officers be mistaken?
"'Captain Speke replied. They were not mistaken; and if they had
pursued their journey fifty miles further, they would undoubtedly have
found themselves at the northern borders of this lake.
"'Mr. Macqueen said that other travellers--Don Angelo, for
instance--had been within one and a half degrees of the equator, and
saw the mountain of Kimborat under the Line, and persisted in the
statement, adding that travellers had been up the river till they found
it a mere brook. He felt convinced that the large lake alluded to by
Captain Speke was not the source of the Nile; it was impossible it
could be so, for it was not at a sufficiently high altitude.
"'The paper presented to the Society, when fully read in conjunction
with the map, will clearly show that the Bahr-el-Abiad had no
connection with Kilimanjaro, that it has no connection whatever with
any lake or river to the south of the equator, and that the swelling of
the river Nile proceeds from the tropical rains of the northern torrid
zone, as was stated emphatically to Julius Cæsar by the Chief Egyptian
Priest, Amoreis, two thousand years ago.
"'In nearly 3° N. lat. there is a great cataract, which boats cannot
pass. It is called Gherba. About halfway (fifty miles) above, and
between this cataract and Robego, the capital of Kuenda, the river
becomes so narrow as to be crossed by a bridge formed by a tree thrown
across it. Above Gherba no stream joins the river either from the south
or south-west.'"
[4] "When Jack returned to Kázeh, he represented Ukerewe and Mazita
to be islands, and although in sight of them, he had heard nothing
concerning their connection with the coast. This error was corrected by
Salim bin Rashid, and accepted by us. Yet I read in his 'Discovery of
the Supposed Sources of the Nile:' 'Mansur, and a native, the greatest
traveller of the place, kindly accompanied and gave me every obtainable
information. This man had traversed the island, as he called it, of
Ukerewe from north to south. But _by his rough mode of describing it,
I am rather inclined to think that instead of its being an actual
island, it is a connected tongue of land, stretching southwards from
a promontory lying at right angles to the eastern shore of the lake,_
which being a wash, affords a passage to the mainland during the fine
season, but during the wet becomes submerged, and thus makes Ukerewe
temporarily an island.' The information, I repeat, was given, not
by the 'native,' but by Salim bin Rashid. When, however, the latter
proceeded to correct Jack's confusion between the well-known coffee
mart Kitara, and 'the island of Kitiri occupied by a tribe called
Watiri,' he gave only offence, consequently Kitiri has obtained a local
habitation in _Blackwood_ and Petermann."
[5] "The large river Tumbiri, mentioned by Dr. Krapf as flowing towards
Egypt from the northern counterslope of Mount Kenia, rests upon the
sole authority of a single wandering native. As, moreover, the word
_T'humbiri_ or _Thumbili_ means a monkey, and the people are peculiarly
fond of satire in a small way, it is not improbable that the very name
had no foundation of fact. This is mentioned, as some geographers--for
instance, Mr. Macqueen ('Observations on the Geography of Central
Africa,' _Proceedings of the R.G.S. of London_, May 9, 1859)--have been
struck by the circumstance that the Austrian missionaries and Mr. Werne
('Expedition to discover the Source of the White Nile, in 1840-41')
gave Tubirih as the Bari name of the White Nile at the southern limit
of their exploration."
[6] Richard long mourned the loss of his friend, whom Captain Speke, on
his second journey with Colonel Grant--whether unable to assist I know
not--left to be killed by the negroes of Mirámbo, his African enemy, in
the bush.--I. B.
[7] Richard was a strong-willed, outspoken, and grievously injured man,
under the greatest provocation ever put forth. He behaved with dignity,
calmness, and generosity, above all praise.--I. B.