Part 10

On the 19th April we stretched westward, towards Ubwari, which appeared a long strip of green directly opposite Urundi, and distant from eighteen to twenty miles. A little wind caused a heavy chopping swell; we were wet to the skin, and as noon drew nigh, the sun shone stingingly, reflected by a mirrory sea. At 10 A.M. the party drew in their paddles and halted to eat and smoke. About 2 P.M. the wind and waves again arose,--once more we were drenched, and the frail craft was constantly baled out to prevent water-logging. A long row of nine hours placed the canoes at a roadstead, with the usual narrow line of yellow sand, on the western coast of Ubwari Island. The men landed to dry themselves, and to cook some putrid fish which they had caught as it floated past the canoe, with the reed triangle that buoyed up the net. It was “strong meat” to us, but to them its staleness was as the “taste in his butter,” to the Londoner, the pleasing toughness of the old cock to the Arab, and the savoury “fumet” of the aged he-goat to the Baloch. After a short halt, we moved a little northwards to Mzimu, a strip of low land dividing the waters from their background of grassy rise, through which a swampy line winds from the hills above. Here we found canoes drawn up, and the islanders flocked from their hamlets to change their ivory and slaves, goats and provisions, for salt and beads, wire and cloth. The Wabwari are a peculiar, and by no means a comely race. The men are habited in the usual mbugu, tigered with black stripes, and tailed like leopard-skins: a wisp of fine grass acts as fillet, and their waists, wrists, and ankles, their knob-sticks, spears, and daggers, are bound with rattan-bark, instead of the usual wire. The women train their frizzly locks into two side-bits resembling bear’s ears; they tie down the bosom with a cord, apparently for the purpose of distorting nature in a way that is most repulsive to European eyes; and they clothe themselves with the barbarous goat-skin, or the scantiest kilts of bark-cloth. The wives of the chiefs wear a load of brass and bead ornaments; and, like the ladies of Wafanya, they walk about with patriarchal staves five feet long, and knobbed at the top.

We halted for a day at Mzimu in Ubwari, where Kannena demanded seventy khete of blue-porcelain beads as his fee for safe conduct to the island. Suddenly, at 6 P.M., he informed me that he must move to other quarters. We tumbled into the boats, and after enjoying two hours of pleasant progress with a northerly current, and a splendid moonshine, which set off a scene at once wild and soft as any

“That savage Rosa dashed, or learned Poussin drew,”

we rounded the bluff northern point of the island, put into “Mtuwwa,” a little bay on its western shore, pitched the tent, and slept at ease.

Another halt was required on the 22nd April. The Sultan Kisesa demanded his blackmail, which amounted to one coil-bracelet and two cloths; provisions were hardly procurable, because his subjects wanted white beads, with which, being at a discount at Ujiji, we had not provided ourselves; and Kannena again successfully put in a tyrannical claim for 460 khete of blue-porcelains to purchase rations.

On the 23rd April we left Mtuwwa, and made for the opposite or western shore of the lake, which appeared about fifteen miles distant; the day’s work was nine hours. The two canoes paddled far apart, there was therefore little bumping, smoking, or quarrelling, till near our destination. At Murivumba the malaria, the mosquitoes, the crocodiles, and the men are equally feared. The land belongs to the Wabembe, who are correctly described in the “Mombas Mission Map” as “Menschenfresser--anthropophagi.” The practice arises from the savage and apathetic nature of the people, who devour, besides man, all kinds of carrion and vermin, grubs and insects, whilst they abandon to wild growths a land of the richest soil and of the most prolific climate. They prefer man raw, whereas the Wadoe of the coast eat him roasted. The people of a village which backed the port, assembled as usual to “sow gape-seed;” but though

“A hungry look hung upon them all,”--

and amongst cannibals one always fancies oneself considered in the light of butcher’s meat,--the poor devils, dark and stunted, timid and degraded, appeared less dangerous to the living than to the dead. In order to keep them quiet, the bull-headed Mabruki, shortly before dusk, fired a charge of duck-shot into the village; ensued loud cries and deprecations to the “Murungwana,” but happily no man was hurt. Sayfu the melancholist preferred squatting through the night on the bow of the canoe, to trusting his precious person on shore. We slept upon a reed-margined spit of sand, and having neglected to pitch the tent, were rained upon to our heart’s content.

We left Murivumba of the man-eaters early on the morning of the 24th April, and stood northwards along the western shore of the Lake: the converging trend of the two coasts told that we were fast approaching our destination. After ten hours’ paddling, halts included, we landed at the southern frontier of Uvira, in a place called Mamaletua, Ngovi, and many other names. Here the stream of commerce begins to set strong; the people were comparatively civil, they cleared for us a leaky old hut with a floor like iron,--it appeared to us a palace!--and they supplied, at moderate prices, sheep and goats, fish-fry, eggs, and poultry, grain, manioc and bird-pepper.

After another long stretch of fifteen rainy and sunny hours, a high easterly wind compelled the hard-worked crews to put into Muikamba (?) of Uvira. A neighbouring hamlet, a few hovels built behind a thick wind-wrung plantain-grove, backed a reed-locked creek, where the canoes floated in safety and a strip of clean sand on which we passed the night as pleasantly as the bright moonlight and the violent gusts would permit. On the 26th April, a paddle of three hours and a half landed us in the forenoon at the sandy baystand, where the trade of Uvira is carried on.

Great rejoicings ushered in the end of our outward-bound voyage. Crowds gathered on the shore to gaze at the new merchants arriving at Uvira, with the usual concert, vocal and instrumental, screams, shouts, and songs, shaums, horns, and tom-toms. The captains of the two canoes performed with the most solemn gravity a bear-like dance upon the mat-covered benches, which form the “quarter-decks,” extending their arms, pirouetting upon both heels, and springing up and squatting down till their hams touched the mats. The crews, with a general grin which showed all their ivories, rattled their paddles against the sides of their canoes in token of greeting, a custom derived probably from the ceremonious address of the Lakists, which is performed by rapping their elbows against their ribs. Presently Majid and Bekkari, two Arab youths sent from Ujiji by their chief, Said bin Majid, to collect ivory, came out to meet me; they gave me, as usual, the news, and said that having laid in the store of tusks required, they intended setting out southwards on the morrow. We passed half the day of our arrival on the bare landing-place, a strip of sand foully unclean, from the effect of many bivouacs. It is open to the water and backed by the plain of Uvira; one of the broadest of these edges of gently-inclined ground which separate the Lake from its trough of hills. Kannena at once visited the Mwami or Sultan Maruta, who owns a village on a neighbouring elevation; this chief invited me to his settlement, but the outfit was running low and the crew and party generally feared to leave their canoes. We therefore pitched our tents upon the sand, and prepared for the last labour, that of exploring the head of the Lake.

We had now reached the “ne plus ultra,” the northernmost station to which merchants have as yet been admitted. The people are generally on bad terms with the Wavira, and in these black regions a traveller coming direct from an enemy’s territory is always suspected of hostile intentions,--no trifling bar to progress. Opposite us still rose, in a high broken line, the mountains of inhospitable Urundi, apparently prolonged beyond the northern extremity of the waters. The head, which was not visible from the plain, is said to turn N.N. westwards, and to terminate after a voyage of two days, which some informants, however, reduce to six hours. The breadth of the Tanganyika is here between seven and eight miles. On the 28th April, all my hopes--which, however, I had hoped against hope--were rudely dashed to the ground. I received a visit from the three stalwart sons of the Sultan Maruta: they were the noblest type of Negroid seen near the Lake, with symmetrical heads, regular features and pleasing countenances; their well-made limbs and athletic frames of a shiny jet black, were displayed to advantage by their loose aprons of red and dark-striped bark-cloth, slung, like game-bags, over their shoulders, and were set off by opal-coloured eyeballs, teeth like pearls, and a profusion of broad massive rings of snowy ivory round their arms, and conical ornaments like dwarf marling-spikes of hippopotamus tooth suspended from their necks. The subject of the mysterious river issuing from the Lake, was at once brought forward. They all declared that they had visited it, they offered to forward me, but they unanimously asserted, and every man in the host of bystanders confirmed their words, that the “Rusizi” enters into, and does not flow out of the Tanganyika. I felt sick at heart. I had not, it is true, undertaken to explore the Coy Fountains by this route; but the combined assertions of the cogging Shaykh and the false Msawahili had startled me from the proprieties of reason, and--this was the result!

Bombay, when questioned, declared that my companion had misunderstood the words of Hamid bin Sulayyam, who spoke of a river falling into, not issuing _from_ the lake; and added his own conviction that the Arab had never sailed north of Ubwari Island. Sayfu, who at Ujiji had described, as an eye-witness, the mouth of the déversoir and its direction for two days, now owned that he had never been beyond Uvira, and that he never intended to do so. Briefly, I had been deceived by a strange coincidence of deceit.

On the 28th April, we were driven from the strip of land which we originally occupied by a S. E. gale; here a “blat,” or small hurricane, which drives the foaming waters of the tideless sea up to the green margin of the land. Retiring higher up where the canoes were careened, we spread our bedding on the little muddy mounds that rise a few inches above the surface of grass-closed gutter which drains off the showers daily falling amongst the hills. I was still obliged to content myself with the lug-sail, thrown over a ridge-pole supported by two bamboo uprights, and pegged out like a tent below; it was too short to fall over the ends and to reach the ground, it was therefore a place of passage for mizzle, splash, and draught of watery wind. My companion inhabited the tent bought from the Fundi, it was thoroughly rotted, during his first trip across the Lake--by leakage in the boat, and by being “bushed” with mud instead of pegs on shore. He informed me that there was “good grub” at Uvira, and that was nearly the full amount of what I heard from or of him. Our crews had hutted themselves in the dense mass of grass near our tents; they lived as it were under arms, and nothing would induce them to venture away from their only escape, the canoes, which stood ready for launching whenever required. Sayfu swore that he would return to Ujiji rather than venture a few yards inland to buy milk, whilst Bombay and Mabrukí, who ever laboured under the idea that every brother-African of the jungle thirsted for their blood, upon the principle that wild birds hate tame birds, became, when the task was proposed to them, almost mutinous. Our nine days’ halt at Uvira had therefore unusual discomforts. The air, however, though damp and raw, with gust, storm, and rain, must have been pure in the extreme; appetite and sleep--except when the bull-frogs were “making a night of it”--were rarely wanting, and provisions were good, cheap, and abundant.

I still hoped, however, to lay down the extreme limits of the lake northwards. Majid and Bekkari the Arab agents of Said bin Majid, replied to the offer of an exorbitant sum, that they would not undertake the task for ten times that amount. The sons of Maruta had volunteered their escort; when I wanted to close with them, they drew off. Kannena, when summoned to perform his promise and reminded of the hire that he had received, jumped up and ran out of the tent: afterwards at Ujiji he declared that he had been willing to go, but that his crews were unanimous in declining to risk their lives,--which was perhaps true. Towards the end of the halt I suffered so severely from ulceration of the tongue, that articulation was nearly impossible, and this was a complete stopper to progress. It is a characteristic of African travel that the explorer may be arrested at the very bourne of his journey, on the very threshold of success, by a single stage, as effectually as if all the waves of the Atlantic or the sands of Arabia lay between.

Maruta and his family of young giants did not fail to claim their blackmail; they received a total of twelve cloths, five kitindi, and thirty khete of coral beads. They returned two fine goats, here worth about one cloth each, and sundry large gourds of fresh milk--the only food I could then manage to swallow. Kannena, who had been living at Maruta’s village, came down on the 5th May to demand 460 khete of blue porcelains, wherewith to buy rations for the return-voyage. Being heavily in debt, all his salt and coil-bracelets had barely sufficed for his liabilities: he had nothing to show for them but masses of Sambo--iron-wire rings--which made his ankles resemble those of a young hippopotamus. The slaves and all the fine tusks that came on board were the property of the crew.

Our departure from Uvira was finally settled for the 6th May: before taking leave of our “furthest point,” I will offer a few details concerning the commerce of the place.

Uvira is much frequented on account of its cheapness; it is the great northern depôt for slaves, ivory, grain, bark-cloth, and ironware, and, in the season, hardly a day elapses without canoes coming in for merchandise or provisions. The imports are the kitindi, salt, beads, tobacco, and cotton cloth. Rice does not grow there, holcus and maize are sold at one to two fundo of common beads per masuta or small load,--perhaps sixteen pounds,--and one khete is sufficient during the months of plenty to purchase five pounds of manioc, or two and even three fowls. Plantains of the large and coarse variety are common and cheap, and one cloth is given for two goodly earthen pots full of palm-oil. Ivory fetches its weight in brass wire: here the merchant expects for every 1000 dollars of outfit to receive 100 farasilah (3500 lbs.) of large tusks, and his profit would be great were it not counterbalanced by the risk and by the expense of transport. The prices in the slave-mart greatly fluctuate. When business is dull, boys under ten years may be bought for four cloths and five fundo of white and blue porcelains, girls for six shukkah, and as a rule at these remote places, as Uvira, Ujipa, and Marungu, slaves are cheaper than in the market of Ujiji. Adults fetch no price, they are notoriously intractable, and addicted to desertion. Bark-cloths, generally in the market, vary from one to three khete of coral beads. The principal industry of the Wavira is ironware, the material for which is dug in the lands lying at a little distance westward of the lake. The hoes, dudgeons, and small hatchets, here cost half their usual price at Ujiji. The people also make neat baskets and panniers, not unlike those of Normandy, and pretty bowls cut out of various soft woods, light and dark: the latter are also found, though rarely, at Ujiji and in the western islets.

A gale appeared to be brewing in the north--here the place of storms--and the crews, fearing wind and water, in the afternoon insisted upon launching their canoes and putting out to sea at 10 A.M. on the 6th May. After touching at the stages before described, Muikamba, Ngovi and Murivumba of the anthropophagi, we crossed without other accidents but those of weather--the rainy monsoon was in its last convulsions--the western branch or supplementary channel separating the Lake from the island of Ubwari. Before anchoring at Mzimu, our former halting-place, we landed at a steep ghaut, where the crews swarmed up a ladder of rock, and presently returned back with pots of the palm-oil, for which this is the principal depôt.

On the 10th May the sky was dull and gloomy, the wind was hushed, the “rain-sun” burnt with a sickly and painful heat; the air was still and sultry, stifling and surcharged, while the glimmerings of lurid lightning and low mutterings from the sable cloud-banks lying upon the northern horizon, cut by light masses of mist in a long unbroken line, and from the black arch rising above the Acroceraurian hills to the west, disturbed at times the death-like silence. Even the gulls on the beach forefelt a storm. I suggested a halt, but the crews were now in a nervous hurry to reach their homes,--impatience mastered even _their_ prudence.

We left Mzimu at sunset, and for two hours coasted along the shore. It was one of those portentous evenings of the tropics--a calm before a tempest--unnaturally quiet; we struck out, however, boldly towards the eastern shore of the Tanganyika, and the western mountains rapidly lessened on the view. Before, however, we reached the mid-channel, a cold gust--in these regions the invariable presage of a storm--swept through the deepening shades cast by the heavy rolling clouds, and the vivid nimble lightning flashed, at first by intervals, then incessantly, with a ghastly and blinding glow, illuminating the “vast of night,” and followed by a palpable obscure, and a pitchy darkness, that weighed upon the sight. As terrible was its accompaniment of rushing, reverberating thunder, now a loud roar, peal upon peal, like the booming of heavy batteries, then breaking into a sudden crash, which was presently followed by a rattling discharge like the sharp pattering of musketry. The bundles of spears planted upright amidships, like paratonnerres, seemed to invite the electric fluid into the canoes. The waves began to rise, the rain descended, at first in warning-drops, then in torrents, and had the wind steadily arisen, the cockle-shell craft never could have lived through the short, chopping sea which characterises the Tanganyika in heavy weather. The crew, though blinded by the showers, and frightened by the occasional gusts, held their own gallantly enough; at times, however, the moaning cry, “O my wife!” showed what was going on within. Bombay, a noted Voltairian in fine weather, spent the length of that wild night in reminiscences of prayer. I sheltered myself from the storm under my best friend, the Mackintosh, and thought of the far-famed couplet of Hafiz,--with its mystic meaning I will not trouble the reader:--

“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 wind and sea, otherwise nothing short of a miracle could have preserved us for a dry death.

That night, however, was the last of our “sea-sorrows.” After floating about during the latter hours of darkness, under the land, but uncertain where to disembark, we made at 7 A.M., on the 11th May, Wafanya, our former station in ill-famed Urundi. Tired and cramped by the night’s work, we pitched tents, and escaping from the gaze of the insolent and intrusive crowd, we retired to spend a few hours in sleep.

I was suddenly aroused by Mabruki, who, rushing into the tent, thrust my sword into my hands, and exclaimed that the crews were scrambling into their boats. I went out and found everything in dire confusion. The sailors hurrying here and there, were embarking their mats and cooking-pots, some were in violent parley with Kannena, whilst a little knot was carrying a man, mortally wounded, down to the waters of the Lake. I saw at once that the affair was dangerous. On these occasions the Wajiji, whose first impulse is ever flight, rush for safety to their boats and push off, little heeding whom or what they leave behind. We therefore hurried in without delay.

When both crews had embarked, and no enemy appeared, Kannena persuaded them to reland, and proving to them their superior force, induced them to demand, at the arrow’s point, satisfaction of Kanoni, the chief, for the outrage committed by his subjects. During our sleep a drunken man--almost all these disturbances arise from fellows who have the “_vin méchant_”--had rushed from the crowd of Warundi, and, knobstick in hand, had commenced dealing blows in all directions. Ensued a general mêlée. Bombay, when struck, called to the crews to arm. The Goanese, Valentine, being fear-crazed, seized my large “Colt” and probably fired it into the crowd; at all events, the cone struck one of our own men below the right pap, and came out two inches to the right of the backbone. Fortunately for us he was a slave, otherwise the situation would have been desperate. As it was, the crowd became violently excited, one man drew his dagger upon Valentine, and with difficulty I dissuaded Kannena from killing him. As the crew had ever an eye to the “main chance,” food, they at once confiscated three goats, our store for the return voyage, cut their throats, and spitted the meat upon their spears:--thus the lamb died and the wolf dined, and the innocent suffered and the plunderer was joyed, the strong showed his strength and the weak his weakness, according to the usual formula of this sublunary world.