Part 11

Whilst Kannena was absent, on martial purposes intent, I visited the sole sufferer in the fray, and after seeing his wound washed, I forbade his friends to knead the injured muscles, as they were doing, and to wrench his right arm from side to side. A cathartic seemed to have a beneficial effect. On the second day of his accident he was able to rise. But these occurrences in wild countries always cause long troubles. Kannena, who obtained from Sultan Kanoni, as blood-money, a small girl and a large sheep, declared that the man might die, and insisted upon my forthwith depositing, in case of such contingency, eight cloths, which, should the wound not prove fatal, would be returned. The latter clause might have been omitted; in these lands, _nescit_ cloth _missa reverti_. As we were about to leave Ujiji, Kannena claimed for the man’s subsistence forty cloths,--or as equivalent, three slaves and six cloths--which also it was necessary to pay. A report was afterwards spread that the wretch had sunk under his wound. Valentine heard the intelligence with all that philosophy which distinguishes his race when mishaps occur to any but self. His prowess, however, cost me forty-eight dollars, here worth at least £100 in England. Still I had reason to congratulate myself that matters had not been worse. Had the victim been a Mjiji freeman, the trouble, annoyances, and expense would have been interminable. Had he been a Mrundi, we should have been compelled to fight our way, through a shower of arrows, to the boats; war would have extended to Ujiji, and “England,” as usual, would have had to pay the expenses. When Said bin Salim heard at Kazeh a distorted account of this mishap--of course it was reported that “Haji Abdullah” killed the man--he hit upon a notable device. Lurinda, the headman of Gungu, had often begged the Arab to enter into “blood-brotherhood” with him, and this had Said bin Salim pertinaciously refused, on religious grounds, to do. When informed that battle and murder were in the wind, he at once made fraternity with Lurinda, hoping to derive protection from his spear. His terrors afterwards persuaded him to do the same with Kannena: indeed at that time he would have hailed a slave as “Ndugu yango!” (my brother!)

When Kannena returned successful from his visit to Kanoni, we prepared to leave Wafanya. The fierce rain and the nightly drizzle detained us, however, till the next morning. On the 11th May we paddled round the southern point of Wafanya Bay to Makimoni, a little grassy inlet, where the canoes were defended from the heavy surf.

After this all was easy. We rattled paddles on the 12th May, as we entered our “patrie,” Nyasanga. The next night was spent in Bangwe Bay. We were too proud to sneak home in the dark; we had done something deserving a Certain Cross, we were heroes, braves of braves; we wanted to be looked at by the fair, to be howled at by the valiant. Early on the morning of the 13th May we appeared with shots, shouts, and a shocking noise, at the reed-lined gap of sand that forms the ghaut of Kawele. It was truly a triumphal entrance. All the people of that country-side had collected to welcome the crew, women and children, as well as men, pressed waist-deep into the water to receive friend and relative with becoming affection:--the gestures, the clamour, and the other peculiarities of the excited mob I must really leave to the reader’s imagination; the memory is too much for me.

But true merit is always modest; it aspires to Honor, not honours. The Wagungu, or whites, were repeatedly “called for.” I broke, however, through the sudant, strident, hircine throng, and regaining, with the aid of Riza’s strong arm, the old Tembe, was salaamed to by the expectant Said bid Salim and the Jemadar. It felt like a return home. But I had left, before my departure, with my Arab chargé-d’affaires, four small loads of cloth, and on inspecting the supplies there remained only ten shukkah. I naturally inquired what had become of the 110 others, which had thus prematurely disappeared. Said bin Salim replied by showing a small pile of grain-bags, and by informing me that he had hired twenty porters for the down-march. He volunteered, it is true, in case I felt disposed to finish the Periplus of the Lake, to return to Kazeh and to superintend the transmission of our reserve supplies; as, however, he at the same time gave me to understand that he could not escort them back to Ujiji, I thanked him for his offer, and declined it.

We had expended upwards of a month--from the 10th April to the 13th May, 1858--in this voyage fifteen days outward bound, nine at Uvira, and nine in returning. The boating was rather a severe trial. We had no means of resting the back; the holds of the canoes, besides being knee-deep in water, were disgracefully crowded;--they had been appropriated to us and our four servants by Kannena, but by degrees, he introduced in addition to the sticks, spears, broken vases, pots, and gourds, a goat, two or three small boys, one or two sick sailors, the little slave-girl and the large sheep. The canoes were top-heavy with the number of their crew, and the shipping of many seas spoilt our tents, and besides, wetted our salt, and soddened our grain and flour; the gunpowder was damaged, and the guns were honeycombed with rust. Besides the splashing of the paddles and the dashing of waves, heavy showers fell almost every day and night, and the intervals were bursts of burning sunshine.

The discomfort of the halt was not less than that of the boat. At first we pitched tents near the villages, in tall, fetid grass, upon ground never level, where stones were the succedanea for tent-pegs stolen for fuel, and where we slept literally upon mire. The temperature inside was ever in extremes, now a raw rainy cold, then a steam-bath that damped us like an April shower. The villagers, especially in the remoter districts, were even more troublesome, noisy, and inquisitive, than the Wagogo. A “notable passion of wonder” appeared in them. We felt like baited bears: we were mobbed in a moment, and scrutinised from every point of view by them; the inquisitive wretches stood on tiptoe, they squatted on their hams, they bent sideways, they thrust forth their necks like hissing geese to vary the prospect. Their eyes, “glaring lightning-like out of their heads,” as old Homer hath it, seemed to devour us; in the ecstasy of curiosity they shifted from one Muzungu to his “brother,” till, like the well-known ass between the two bundles of hay, they could not enjoy either. They were pertinacious as flies, to drive them away was only to invite a return; whilst, worst grief of all, the women were plain, and their grotesque salutations resembled the “encounter of two dog-apes.” The Goanese were almost equally honoured, and the operation of cooking was looked upon as a miracle. At last my experience in staring enabled me to categorise the infliction as follows. Firstly, is the stare furtive, when the starer would peep and peer under the tent, and its reverse, the stare open. Thirdly, is the stare curious or intelligent, which, generally accompanied with irreverent laughter regarding our appearance. Fourthly, is the stare stupid, which denoted the hebete incurious savage. The stare discreet is that of sultans and great men; the stare indiscreet at unusual seasons is affected by women and children. Sixthly, is the stare flattering--it was exceedingly rare, and equally so was the stare contemptuous. Eighthly, is the stare greedy; it was denoted by the eyes restlessly bounding from one object to another, never tired, never satisfied. Ninthly, is the stare peremptory and pertinacious, peculiar to crabbed age. The dozen concludes with the stare drunken, the stare fierce or pugnacious, and finally the stare cannibal, which apparently considered us as articles of diet. At last, weary of the stare by day, and the tent by night, I preferred inhabiting a bundle of clothes in the wet hold of the canoe; this, at least, saved the trouble of wading through the water, of scrambling over the stern, and of making a way between the two close lines of grumbling and surly blacks that manned the paddle-benches; whenever, after a meaningless halt, some individual thought proper to scream out “Safári!” (journey!)

Curious to say, despite all these discomforts our health palpably improved. My companion, though still uncomfortably deaf, was almost cured of his blindness. When that ulcerated mouth, which rendered it necessary for me to live by suction--generally milk and water--for seventeen days, had returned to its usual state, my strength gradually increased. Although my feet were still swollen by the perpetual wet and by the painful funza or entozoon, my hands partially lost their numbness, and the fingers which before could hold the pen only for a few minutes were once more able freely to write and sketch. In fact, I date a slow but sensible progress towards a complete recovery of health from the days and nights spent in the canoe and upon the mud of the Tanganyika Lake. Perhaps mind had also acted upon matter; the object of my mission was now effected, and this thought enabled me to cast off the burden of grinding care with which the imminent prospect of a failure had before sorely laden me.

The rainy monsoon broke up on the 14th May, the day after my return to Kawele, and once more, after six months of incessant storm-wind and rain, clouds and mists, we had fine, cool mornings, clear warm sun, and deliciously cold nights. The climate became truly enjoyable, but the scenery somewhat lost its earlier attractions. The faultless, regular, and uniform beauty, and the deep stillness of this evergreen land did not fail to produce that strange, inexplicable melancholy of which most travellers in tropical countries complain. In this Nature all is beautiful that meets the eye, all is soft that affects the senses; but she is a Siren whose pleasures soon pall upon the enjoyer. The mind, enfeebled perhaps by an enervating climate, is fatigued and wearied by the monotony of the charms which haunt it; cloyed with costly fare, it sighs for the rare simplicity of the desert. I have never felt this sadness in Egypt and Arabia, and was never without it in India and Zanzibar.

Our outfit, as I have observed, had been reduced to a minimum. Not a word from Snay bin Amir, my agent at Kazeh, had arrived in reply to my many missives, and old Want began to stare at us with the stare peremptory. “Wealth,” say the Arabs, “hath one devil, poverty a dozen,” and nowhere might a caravan more easily starve than in rich and fertile Central Africa. Travellers are agreed that in these countries “baggage is life:” the heartless and inhospitable race will not give a handful of grain without return, and to use the Moslem phrase, “Allah pity him who must beg of a beggar!” As usual on such occasions, the Baloch began to clamour for more rations--they received two cloths per diem--and to demand a bullock wherewith to celebrate their Eed or greater Festival. There were several Arab merchants at Kawele, but they had exhausted their stock in purchasing slaves and ivory. None in fact were so rich as ourselves, and we were reduced to ten shukkah, ten fundo of coral beads, and one load of black porcelains, which were perfectly useless. With this pittance we had to engage hammals for the hammock, to feed seventy-five mouths, and to fee several Sultans; in fact, to incur the heavy expenses of marching back 260 miles to Unyanyembe.

Still, with an enviable development of Hope, Said bin Salim determined that we should reach Kazeh unfamished. We made the necessary preparations for the journey, patched tents and umbrella, had a grand washing and scouring day, mended the portmanteaus, and ground the grain required for a month’s march, hired four porters for the manchil, distributed ammunition to Said bin Salim and the Baloch, who at once invested it in slaves, and exchanged with Said bin Majid several pounds of lead for palm-oil, which would be an economy at the Malagarazi Ferry. For some days past rumours had reached here that a large caravan of Wanyamwazi porters, commanded by an Arab merchant, was approaching Kawele. I was not sanguine enough to expose myself to another disappointment. Suddenly on the 22d May, frequent musket shots announced the arrival of strangers, and at noon the Tembe was surrounded with boxes and bales, porters, slaves, and four “sons of Ramji,” Mbaruko, Sangora, Khamisi, and Shehe. Shahdad the Baloch, who had been left behind at Kazeh in love, and in attendance upon his “brother,” Ismail, who presently died, had charge of a parcel of papers and letters from Europe, India, and Zanzibar. They were the first received after nearly eleven months, and of course they brought with them evil tidings,--the Indian mutinies. _En revanche_, I had a kindly letter from M. Cochet, Consul of France, and from Mr. Mansfield, of the U.S., who supplied me with the local news, and added for my edification a very “low-church” Tract, the first of the family, I opine, that has yet presented itself in Central Africa. Mr. Frost reported that he had sent at once a letter apprising me of Lieut.-Colonel Hamaton’s death, and had forwarded the medical supplies for which I indented from K’hutu: these, as has been explained, had not reached me. Snay bin Amir also informed me that he had retained all the packages for which he could find no porters; that three boxes had been stolen from his “godown;” and finally, that the second supply, 400 dollars-worth of cloth and beads, for which I had written at Inenge and had re-written at Ugogo and other places, was hourly expected to arrive.

This was an unexpected good fortune, happening at a crisis when it was really wanted. My joy was somewhat damped by inspecting the packs of the fifteen porters. Twelve were laden with ammunition which was not wanted, and with munitions _de bouche_, which were: nearly half the bottles of curry-powder, spices, and cognac were broken, tea, coffee, and sugar, had been squeezed out of their tin canisters, and much of the rice and coffee had disappeared. The three remaining loads were one of American domestics,--sixty shukkahs--and the rest contained fifteen coral-bracelets and white beads. All were the refuse of their kind: the good Hindoos at Zanzibar had seized this opportunity to dispose of their flimsy, damaged, and unsaleable articles. This outfit was sufficient to carry us comfortably to Unyanyembe. I saw, however, with regret that it was wholly inadequate for the purpose of exploring the two southern thirds of the Tanganyika Lake, much less for returning to Zanzibar, _viâ_ the Nyassa or Maravi Lake, and Kilwa, as I had once dreamed.

I received several visits from our old companion, Muhinna bin Sulayman of Kazeh, and three men of his party. He did not fail to improve the fact of his having brought up my supplies in the nick of time. He required five coil-bracelets and sixteen pounds of beads as my share of the toll taken from him by the Lord of the Malagarazi Ferry. For the remaining fifteen coil-bracelets he gave me forty cloths, and for the load and a half of white beads he exchanged 880 strings of blue porcelains--a commercial operation by which he cleared without trouble 35 per cent. Encouraged by my facility, he proposed to me the propriety of paying part of the kuhonga or blackmail claimed from new comers by Rusimba and Kannena. But facility has its limits: I quietly objected, and we parted on the best of terms.

[Illustration: A Mnyamwezi.

A Mjiji.

Mugungu Mbaya, “the wicked white man.”

A Mgogo.

Ferry Boat on the Malagarazi River.

A Mzaramo.]

CHAP. XV.

THE TANGANYIKA LAKE AND ITS PERIPLUS.

The Tanganyika Lake, though situated in the unexplored centre of Intertropical Africa, and until 1858 unvisited by Europeans, has a traditionary history of its own, extending through more than three centuries.

“Accounts of a great sea in the interior of Africa obtained (partially from native travellers) at Congo and Sofala,” reached the Portuguese settlements on both shores of the continent.[6] The details of de Barros (first printed in 1852), whilst affording substantially correct details, such as the length of the Lake--100 leagues--the capability of navigation, and the one large island--Ubwari--are curiously intermingled with the errors of theoretical conclusion. Subsequently Pigafetta (1591), writing upon the authority of Portuguese inquirers, affirms that there is but one lake (the N’yassa) on the confines of Angola and Monomotapa, but that there are two lakes (the Nyassa and the Tanganyika), not lying east and west, as was supposed by Ptolemy of Alexandria, but north and south of each other, and about 400 miles asunder, which give birth to the Nile. From that epoch dates the origin of our modern misconceptions concerning the Lake Region of Central Intertropical Africa. The Nyassa and the Tanganyika were now blended, then separated, according to the theories or the information of the geographer; no explorer ventured to raise from the land of mystery the veil that invested it; and the “Mombas Mission” added the colophon by confounding, with the old confusion, the Nyanza or Ukerewe, a third lake, of which they had heard at Mombasah and elsewhere. It is not wonderful then that Dr. Vincent suspected the existence or the place of the Central Lake, or that the more ignorant popularizers of knowledge confounded the waters of the Nyassa and the Ngami.[7]

[6] Mr. Cooley’s ‘Memoir on the Geography of N’yassi,’ p. 1. (Vol. XV. of 1845, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society.) The extracts from Portuguese history in the text are entirely taken from that learned paper, which in describing actualities wanted nothing but a solid foundation of data. The geographer’s principal informant in 1834 was one “Khamisi bin Tani,” civilised into “Khamis bin Osman,” a Msawahili of Lamu who having visited the Nyassa, Maravi or Kilwa Lake, pretended that he had travelled to the Tanganyika Lake. I cannot allow this opportunity to pass without expressing my gratitude to Mr. Cooley for his courtesy in supplying me with references and other information.

[7] In the ‘Westminster Review’ (New Series, No. XX.) occurs the following passage, which sufficiently illustrates the assertion in the text; the critic is discussing Mr. C. Andersson’s ‘Lake Ngami,’ &c. &c. (London, 1856):--“African missionaries, penetrating some little distance inland from the S.E., recently brought information, which they received second-hand from Arab travellers, of a vast fresh-water lake far in the interior, described as being of enormous dimensions--as nothing less than a great inland sea. Frequenters of the Geographical Society’s meetings in Whitehall-place have observed in consequence, on the site which used to be marked in the maps as a sandy desert, a blue spot, about the size of the Caspian, and the shape of a hideous inflated leech. We trusted that a more accurate survey would correct the extreme frightfulness of the supposed form. Mr. Andersson has spared us further excitement. The lake turns out to be a mirage--a mythus with the smallest conceivable nucleus of fact. On the very spot occupied by this great blue leech--long. E. from Greenwich 23° and lat. S. 20° 21′--he found a small speck of bitter water, something more than twenty miles across, or the size of Lake Corrib in Galway. So perishes a phantom which has excited London geographers for a whole season.”

Had the learned reviewer used his eyes or his judgment in Whitehall-place, he would not thus have confounded the hypothetic sea of the ‘Mombas Mission Map’--a reservoir made to include the three several waters of Nyanza, Tanganyika, and Nyassa--in E. long. 24°-29°, and _S. lat._ 0° 13′--with the little Ngami explored by Dr. Livingstone and a party of friends in August, 1849, and placed by him in E. long. 23°, and in _S. lat._ 20° 20′ 21′. The nearest points of the two waters are separated by an interval, in round numbers, of 700 miles.

The earliest name given by theoretical writers to the hypothetical single lake appears to have been Zembére, Zémbere, Zambre, Zambri, or Zembre, probably a corruption or dialectic variety of Zambesi, that river being supposed, like the Nile, the Zaire, the Manisa, and others, to be derived from it. The word Moravi or Maravi, which still deforms our maps, is the name of a large tribe or a lordly race like the Wahinda, dwelling to the south-east and south-west of the Nyassa. In the seventeenth century Luigi Mariano, a missioner residing at the Rios de Sena, calls the Central Sea the Lake of Hemosura; his description however applies to the Nyassa, Maravi or Kilwa Lake, and the word is probably a corruption of Rusuro or Lusuro, which in the language of Uhiao signifies a river or flowing water. In the ‘Mombas Mission Map’ the lake is called “See von Uniamesi,” a mere misnomer, as it is separated by hundreds of miles from the Land of the Moon: the northern

## part is termed Ukerewe, by a confusion with the Nyanza Lake and the

southern N’hánjá, for Nyassa, the old Maravi water near Kilwa. It is not a little curious, however, that Messrs. Cooley and Macqueen should both have recorded the vernacular name of the northern Lake Tangenyika, so unaccountably omitted from the ‘Mombas Mission Map.’ The words Tanganyenka and Tanganyenko used by Dr. Livingstone, who in places appears to confound the Lake with the Nyanza and the Nyassa, are palpable mispronunciations.

The African name for the central lake is Tanganyika, signifying an anastomosis, or a meeting place (sc. of waters,) from ku tanganyika, the popular word, to join, or meet together: the initial t being changed to ch--ku changanyika for ku tanganyika--in the lingua Franca of Zanzibar doubtless gave rise to Mr. Cooley’s “Zanganyika.” The word Tanganyika is universally used by the Wajiji and other tribes near and upon the Lake. The Arabs and African strangers, when speaking loosely of it, call it indifferently the Bahari or Sea, the Ziwa or Pond, and even the Mtoni or River. The “Sea of Ujiji” would, after the fashion of Easterns, be limited to the waters in the neighbourhood of that principal depot.