Part 4

From the Msawahili Fundi,--fattore, manciple or steward--of a small caravan belonging to an Arab merchant, Hamid bin Sulayyam, I purchased for thirty-five cloths, about thrice its value, a little single-fold tent of thin American domestics, through which sun and rain penetrated with equal facility. Like the cloth-houses of the Arab travellers generally, it was gable-shaped, six or seven feet high, about eight feet long by four broad, and so light that with its bamboo-poles and its pegs it scarcely formed a load for a man. On the 9th February, we descended from the ridge upon which the kraal was placed, and traversed a deep swamp of black mud, dotted in the more elevated parts with old salt-pans and pits, where broken pottery and blackened lumps of clay still showed traces of human handiwork. Beyond this low-land, the track, striking off from the river-valley and turning to the right, entered toilsome ground. We crossed deep and rocky ravines, with luxuriant vegetation above, and with rivulets at the bottom trickling towards the Malagarazi, by scrambling down and swarming up the roughest steps of rock, boulder, and knotted tree-root. Beyond these difficulties lay woody and stony hills, whose steep and slippery inclines were divided by half a dozen waters, all more or less troublesome to cross. The porters, who were in a place of famine, insisted upon pushing on to the utmost of their strength: after six hours’ march, I persuaded them to halt in the bush upon a rocky hill, where the neighbouring descent supplied water. The Fundi visited the valley of the Rusugi River, and finding a herd of the Mbogo or Bos Caffer, brought home a welcome addition to our well-nigh exhausted rations.

The 10th February saw us crossing the normal sequence of jungly and stony “neat’s-tongues,” divided by deep and grassy swamps, which, stagnant in the dry weather, drain after rains the northern country to the Malagarazi River. We passed over by a felled tree-trunk an unfordable rivulet, hemmed in by a dense and fetid thicket; and the asses summarily pitched down the muddy bank into the water, swam across and wriggled up the slimy off-side like cats. Thence a foul swamp of black mire led to the Ruguvu or Luguvu River, the western boundary of Uvinza and the eastern frontier of Ukaranga. This stream, which can be forded during the dry season, had spread out after the rains over its borders of grassy plain; we were delayed till the next morning in a miserable camping ground, a mud-bank thinly veiled with vegetation, in order to bridge it with branching trees. An unusual downfall during the night might have caused serious consequences;--provisions had now disappeared, moreover the porters considered the place dangerous.

The 10th February began with the passage of the Ruguvu River, where again our goods and chattels were fated to be thoroughly sopped. I obtained a few corn-cobs from a passing caravan of Wanyamwezi, and charged them with meat and messages for the party left behind. A desert march, similar to the stage last travelled, led us to the Unguwwe or Uvungwe River, a shallow, muddy stream, girt in as usual by dense vegetation; and we found a fine large kraal on its left bank. After a cold and rainy night, we resumed our march by fording the Unguwwe. Then came the weary toil of fighting through tiger and spear-grass, with reeds, rushes, a variety of ferns, before unseen, and other lush and lusty growths, clothing a succession of rolling hills, monotonous swellings, where the descent was ever a reflection of the ascent. The paths were broken, slippery, and pitted with deep holes; along their sides, where the ground lay exposed to view, a conglomerate of ferruginous red clay--suggesting a resemblance to the superficies of Londa, as described by Dr. Livingstone--took the place of the granites and sandstones of the eastern countries, and the sinking of the land towards the Lake became palpable. In the jungle were extensive clumps of bamboo and rattan; the former small, the latter of poor quality; the bauhinia, or black-wood, and the salsaparilla vine abounded; wild grapes of diminutive size, and of the austerest flavour, appeared for the first time upon the sunny hill-sides which Bacchus ever loves, and in the lower swamps plantains grew almost wild. In parts the surface was broken into small deep hollows, from which sprang pyramidal masses of the hugest trees. Though no sign of man here met the eye, scattered fields and plantations showed that villages must be somewhere near. Sweet water was found in narrow courses of black mud, which sorely tried the sinews of laden man and beast. Long after noon, we saw the caravan halted by fatigue upon a slope beyond a weary swamp: a violent storm was brewing, and whilst half the sky was purple black with nimbus, the sun shone stingingly through the clear portion of the empyrean. But these small troubles were lightly borne; already in the far distance appeared walls of sky-blue cliff with gilded summits, which were as a beacon to the distressed mariner.

On the 13th February we resumed our travel through screens of lofty grass, which thinned out into a straggling forest. After about an hour’s march, as we entered a small savannah, I saw the Fundi before alluded to running forward and changing the direction of the caravan. Without supposing that he had taken upon himself this responsibility, I followed him. Presently he breasted a steep and stony hill, sparsely clad with thorny trees: it was the death of my companion’s riding-ass. Arrived with toil,--for our fagged beasts now refused to proceed,--we halted for a few minutes upon the summit. “What is that streak of light which lies below?” I inquired of Seedy Bombay. “I am of opinion,” quoth Bombay, “that that is _the_ water.” I gazed in dismay; the remains of my blindness, the veil of trees, and a broad ray of sunshine illuminating but one reach of the Lake, had shrunk its fair proportions. Somewhat prematurely 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, with the view of exploring the Nyanza, or Northern Lake. Advancing, however, a few yards, the whole scene suddenly burst upon my view, filling me with admiration, wonder, and delight. It gave local habitation to the poet’s fancy:--

“Tremolavano i rai del Sol nascente Sovra l’onde del mar purpuree e d’oro, E in veste di zaffiro il ciel ridente Specchiar parea le sue bellezze in loro. D’Africa i venti fieri e d’Oriente, Sovra il letto del mar, prendean ristoro, E co’ sospiri suoi soavi e lieti Col Zeffiro increspava il lembo a Teti.”

Nothing, in sooth, could be more picturesque than this first view of the Tanganyika Lake, as it lay in the lap of the mountains, basking in the gorgeous tropical sunshine. Below and beyond a short foreground of rugged and precipitous hill-fold, down which the foot-path zigzags painfully, a narrow strip of emerald green, never sere and marvellously fertile, shelves towards a ribbon of glistening yellow sand, here bordered by sedgy rushes, there cleanly and clearly cut by the breaking wavelets. Further in front stretch the waters, an expanse of the lightest and softest blue, in breadth varying from thirty to thirty-five miles, and sprinkled by the crisp east-wind with tiny crescents of snowy foam. The background in front is a high and broken wall of steel-coloured mountain, here flecked and capped with pearly mist, there standing sharply pencilled against the azure air; its yawning chasms, marked by a deeper plum-colour, fall towards dwarf hills of mound-like proportions, which apparently dip their feet in the wave. To the south, and opposite the long low point, behind which the Malagarazi River discharges the red loam suspended in its violent stream, lie the bluff headlands and capes of Uguhha, and, as the eye dilates, it falls upon a cluster of outlying islets, speckling a sea-horizon. Villages, cultivated lands, the frequent canoes of the fishermen on the waters, and on a nearer approach the murmurs of the waves breaking upon the shore, give a something of variety, of movement, of life to the landscape, which, like all the fairest prospects in these regions, wants but a little of the neatness and finish of Art,--mosques and kiosks, palaces and villas, gardens and orchards--contrasting with the profuse lavishness and magnificence of nature, and diversifying the unbroken _coup d’œil_ of excessive vegetation, to rival, if not to excel, the most admired scenery of the classic regions. The riant shores of this vast crevasse appeared doubly beautiful to me after the silent and spectral mangrove-creeks on the East-African seaboard, 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. My purblind companion 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 Baloch made civil salams.

Arrived at Ukaranga I was disappointed to find there a few miserable grass-huts--used as a temporary shelter by caravans passing to and from the islets fringing the opposite coast--that clustered round a single Tembe, then occupied by its proprietor, Hamid bin Sulayyam, an Arab trader. Presently the motive of the rascally Fundi, in misleading the caravan, which, by the advice of Snay bin Amir, I had directed to march upon the Kawele district in Ujiji, leaked out. The roadstead of Ukaranga is separated from part of Kawele by the line of the Ruche River, which empties itself into a deep hollow bay, whose chord, extending from N.W. to S.E., is five or six miles in length. The strip of shelving plain between the trough-like hills and the lake is raised but a few feet above water-level. Converted by the passage of a hundred drains from the highlands, into a sheet of sloppy and slippery mire, breast deep in select places, it supports with difficulty a few hundred inhabitants: drenched with violent rain-storms and clammy dews, it is rife in fevers, and it is feared by travellers on account of its hippopotami and crocodiles. In the driest season the land-road is barely practicable; during and after the wet monsoon the lake affords the only means of passage, and the port of Ukaranga contains not a single native canoe. The Fundi, therefore, wisely determined that I should spend beads for rations and lodgings amongst his companions, and be heavily mulcted for a boat by them. Moreover, he instantly sent word to Mnya Mtaza, the principal headman of Ukaranga, who, as usual with the Lakist chiefs, lives in the hills at some distance from the water, to come instanter for his Honga or blackmail, as, no fresh fish being procurable, the Wazungu were about to depart. The latter manœuvre, however, was frustrated by my securing a conveyance for the morrow. It was an open solid-built Arab craft, capable of containing thirty to thirty-five men; it belonged to an absent merchant, Said bin Usman; it was in point of size the second on the Tanganyika, and being too large for paddling, its crew rowed instead of scooping up the water like the natives. The slaves, who had named four khete of coral beads as the price of a bit of sun-dried “baccalà,” and five as the hire of a foul hovel for one night, demanded four cloths--at least the price of the boat--for conveying the party to Kawele, a three hours’ trip. I gave them ten cloths and two coil-bracelets, or somewhat more than the market value of the whole equipage,--a fact which I effectually used as an _argumentum ad verecundiam_.

At eight A.M., on the 14th February, we began coasting along the eastern shore of the lake in a north-westerly direction, towards the Kawele district, in the land of Ujiji. The view was exceedingly beautiful:

“ . . . the flat sea shone like yellow gold Fused in the sun,”

and 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 morning. Yet, more and more, as we approached our destination, I wondered at the absence of all those features which prelude a popular settlement. Passing the low, muddy, and grass-grown mouth of the Ruche River, I could descry on the banks nothing but a few scattered hovels of miserable construction, surrounded by fields of sorghum and sugar-cane, and shaded by dense groves of the dwarf, bright-green plantain, and the tall, sombre elæis or Guinea-palm. By the Arabs I had been taught to expect a town, a ghaut, a port, and a bazar, excelling in size that of Zanzibar, and I had old, preconceived ideas concerning “die Stadt Ujiji,” whose sire was the “Mombas Mission Map.” Presently Mammoth and Behemoth shrank timidly from exposure, and a few hollowed logs, the monoxyles of the fishermen, the wood-cutters, and the market-people, either cut the water singly, or stood in crowds drawn up on the patches of yellow sand. About 11 A.M. the craft was poled through a hole in a thick welting of coarse reedy grass and flaggy aquatic plants to a level landing-place of flat shingle, where the water shoaled off rapidly. Such was the ghaut or disembarkation quay of the great Ujiji.

Around the ghaut a few scattered huts, in the humblest bee-hive shape, represented the port-town. Advancing some hundred yards through a din of shouts and screams, tom-toms and trumpets, which defies description, and mobbed by a swarm of black beings, whose eyes seemed about to start from their heads with surprise, I passed a relic of Arab civilisation, the “Bazar.” It is a plot of higher ground, cleared of grass, and flanked by a crooked tree; there, between 10 A.M. and 3 P.M.--weather permitting--a mass of standing and squatting negroes buy and sell, barter and exchange, offer and chaffer with a hubbub heard for miles, and there a spear or dagger-thrust brings on, by no means unfrequently, a skirmishing faction-fight. The articles exposed for sale are sometimes goats, sheep, and poultry, generally fish, vegetables, and a few fruits, plantains, and melons; palm-wine is a staple commodity, and occasionally an ivory or a slave is hawked about: those industriously disposed employ themselves during the intervals of bargaining in spinning a coarse yarn with the rudest spindle, or in picking the cotton, which is placed in little baskets on the ground. I was led to a ruinous Tembe, built by an Arab merchant, Hamid bin Salim, who had allowed it to be tenanted by ticks and slaves. Situated, however, half a mile from, and backed by, the little village of Kawele, whose mushroom-huts barely protruded their summits above the dense vegetation, and placed at a similar distance from the water in front, it had the double advantage of proximity to provisions, and of a view which at first was highly enjoyable. The Tanganyika is ever seen to advantage from its shores: upon its surface the sight wearies with the unvarying tintage--all shining greens and hazy blues--whilst continuous parallels of lofty hills, like the sides of a huge trough, close the prospect and suggest the idea of confinement.

And now, lodged with comparative comfort, in the cool Tembe, I will indulge in a few geographical and ethnological reminiscences of the country lately traversed.

The fifth region includes the alluvial valley of the Malagarazi 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.” In length, it extends from the Malagarazi Ferry in E. Lat. 31° 10′ to the Tanganyika Lake, in E. Long. 30° 1′. Its breadth, from S. Lat. 3° 14′, the supposed northern limit of Urundi, to S. Lat. 5° 2′; the parallel of Ukaranga is a distance of 108 rectilinear geographical miles. Native caravans pass from the Malagarazi to Ujiji in eight days, usually without halting till arrived within a stone’s throw of their destination. To a region of such various elevations it would be difficult to assign an average of altitude; the heights observed by thermometer never exceeded 1850 feet.

This country contains in due order, from east to west, the lands of Uvinza, Ubuha, and Ujiji: on the northern edge is Uhha, and on the south-western extremity Ukaranga. The general features are those of the alluvial valleys of the Kingani and the Mgeta Rivers. The soil in the vicinity of the Malagarazi is a rich brown or black loam, rank with vegetable decay. This strip along the stream varies in breadth from one to five miles; on the right bank it is mostly desert, but not sterile, on the left it is an expanse of luxuriant cultivation. The northern boundary is a jagged line of hill-spurs of primitive formation, rough with stones and yawning with ravines: in many places the projections assume the form of green “dogs’ tails,” or “neat’s tongues,” projecting like lumpy ridges into the card-table-like level of the river-land southwards. Each mound or spur is crowned with a tufty clump, principally of bauhinias and mimosas, and often a lone, spreading and towering tree, a Borassus or a Calabash, ornamenting the extreme point, forms a landmark for the caravan. The sides of these hills, composed of hornblende and gneissic rock, quartzite, quartz-grit, and ferruginous gritstone, are steep, rugged, and thickly wooded, and one slope generally reflects the other,--if muddy, muddy; and if stony, stony. Each “hanger,” or wave of ground, is divided from its neighbour by a soft sedgy valley, bisected by a network of stagnant pools. Here and there are nullahs, with high stiff earthbanks for the passage of rain torrents. The grass stands in lofty screens, and the path leads over a matted mass of laid stalks which cover so closely the thick mud that loaded asses do not sink; this vegetation is burned down during the hot season, and a few showers bring up an emerald crop of young blades, sprouting phœnix-like from the ashes of the dead. The southern boundary of the valley is more regular; in the eastern parts is an almost tabular wall of rock, covered even to the crest with shrub and tree.

As is proved by the regular course of the Malagarazi River, the westward decline of the country is gentle: along the road, however, the two marches nearest to the Tanganyika Lake appear to sink more rapidly than those preceding them. The main drain receives from the northern hill-spurs a multitude of tributaries, which convey their surplus moisture into the great central reservoir.

Under the influence of the two great productive powers in nature--heat and moisture--the wondrous fertility of the soil, which puts forth where uncleared a rank jungle of nauseous odour, renders the climate dangerous. The rains divide the year into two unequal portions of eight and four months, namely, the wet monsoon, which commences with violence in September and ends in May, and the dry hot weather which rounds off the year. The showers fall, as in Zanzibar, uncontinuously, with breaks varying from a few hours to several days; unlike those of Zanzibar, they are generally accompanied by violent discharges of electricity. Lightning from the north, especially at night, is considered a sign of approaching foul weather. It would be vain to seek in these regions of Central Africa the kaskazi and kosi, or regular north-east and south-west monsoons, those local modifications of the trade-winds which may be traced in regular progress from the centre of Equatorial Africa to the Himalayas. The atmospheric currents deflected from the Atlantic Ocean by the coast-radiation and the arid and barren regions of Southern Africa are changed in hydrometric condition, and are compelled by the chilly and tree-clad heights of the Tanganyika Lake, and the low, cold, and river-bearing plains lying to the westward, to part with the moisture which they have collected in the broad belt of extreme humidity lying between the Ngami Lake and the equator. When the land has become super-saturated, the cold, wet, wind, driving cold masses, surcharged with electricity, sets continually eastward, to restore the equilibrium in lands still reeking with the torrid blaze, and where the atmosphere has been rarified by from four to six months of burning suns. At Msene, in Western Unyamwezi, the rains break about October; thence the wet monsoon, resuming its eastward course, crosses the Land of the Moon, and, travelling by slow stages, arrives at the coast in early April. Following the northing sun, and deflected to the north-east by the rarified atmosphere from the hot, dry surface of the Eastern Horn of Africa, the rains reach Western India in June, and exhaust themselves in frequent and copious downfalls upon the southern versant of the Himalayas. The gradual refrigeration of the ground, with the southing of the sun, produces in turn the inverse process, namely, the north-east monsoon. About the Tanganyika, however, all is variable. The large body of water in the central reservoir preserves its equability of temperature, while the alternations of chilly cold and potent heat, in the high and broken lands around it, cause extreme irregularity in the direction of the currents. During the rains of 1858 the prevalent winds were constantly changing: in the mornings there was almost regularly a cool north breeze drawn by the water from the heights of Urundi; in the course of the day it varied round towards the south. The most violent storms came up from the south-east and the south-west, and as often against as with the gale. The long and rigorous wet monsoon, broken only by a few scattered days of heat, renders the climate exceedingly damp, and it is succeeded by a burst of sunshine which dries the grass to stubble in a few days. Despite these extremes, the climate of Ujiji has the reputation of being comparatively healthy; it owes this probably to the refreshing coolness of the nights and mornings. The mukunguru, or seasoning-fever of this region, is not feared by strangers so much as that of Unyanyembe, yet no one expects to escape it. It is a low bilious and aguish type, lasting from three to four days: during the attack perspiration is induced with difficulty, and it often recurs at regular times once a month.

From the Malagarazi Ferry many lines traverse the desert on the right or northern bank of the river, which is preferred to the southern, whence the Wavinza exclude travellers. Before entering this region caravans generally combine, so as to present a formidable front to possible foes. The trunk road, called Jambeho, the most southerly of the northern routes, has been described in detail.