CHAPTER XIII

SPEKE IN UGANDA

Speke and Grant both seem to have taken the shape and existence of the Victoria Nyanza for granted. No doubt from the highlands of Karagwe and Buddu they occasionally caught glimpses of the distant Nyanza; besides which the chiefs and the Arabs spoke of its existence as a fact which could be ascertained by one or two days’ journey to the east. Speke was more concerned himself with losing no time in getting to the point at which the Nile left the Victoria Nyanza. He made little or no attempt to delineate the coast line of that lake with any accuracy, and as we know, he placed the west coast much too far to the east, reducing the lake to almost two-thirds of its actual area. Seeing how near he marched to the coast in Buddu, it is curious that he got no sight of the large archipelago of the Sese Islands,[66] which can be sighted from a distance of many miles. There is no indication of these islands on his map. Apparently he made no attempts to check his computation of the altitude of the Victoria Nyanza, which in 1858 he computed at 3740 feet (an estimate not far off the correct one of 3775 feet). All the other altitudes taken by his boiling-point thermometer seem to be too low. His surmise that the Ripon Falls are only 3308 feet above sea-level is more than four hundred feet too low; and if his altitudes in northern Unyamwezi are correct (which I doubt), the waters of the Victoria Nyanza must be a huge, pent-up dam which would flood large tracts of German East Africa.

[Illustration: THE RIPON FALLS FROM THE WEST BANK.]

Grant had to be left behind in Karagwe, owing to an ulcerated leg. Speke decided upon going to Uganda alone, but despatched the head-man of his caravan, Baraka, with a companion to the north of Unyoro, providing him with a letter to Petherick. He himself entered Uganda (first of all Europeans to do so) on the 16th of January, 1862. He travelled along the coast country of Buddu, and soon began to appreciate the beauty of the land.

“I felt inclined to stop here a month, everything was so very pleasant. The temperature was perfect. The roads, as indeed they were everywhere, were as broad as our coach roads, cut through the long grasses, straight over the hills and down through the woods in the dells,--a strange contrast to the wretched tracks in all adjacent countries. The huts were kept so clean and so neat, not a fault could be found with them; the gardens the same. Wherever I strolled I saw nothing but richness, and what ought to be wealth. The whole land was a picture of quiescent beauty, with a boundless sea in the background. Looking over the hills, it struck the fancy at once that at one period the whole land must have been at a uniform level with their present tops, but that, by the constant denudation it was subjected to by the frequent rains, it had been cut down and sloped into those beautiful hills and dales which now so much please the eye; for there were none of those quartz dykes I had seen protruding through the same kind of aqueous formations in Usui and Karagwe, nor were there any other sorts of volcanic disturbance to distort the quiet aspect of the scene.”

[Illustration: A VIEW IN UGANDA.]

Speke found an Uganda not much smaller in area than that Negro kingdom is to-day. It lacked the large slices of Unyoro which were cut off and added to Uganda after the commencement of the British Protectorate, but it probably wielded a political influence over Busoga on the east and Toro on the west, since denied to it. The population of this kingdom in those days was computed at not far under four millions. Its administrators at the present time are doubtful if the same kingdom possesses eight hundred thousand inhabitants. The roads then were as broad and as well kept as they are now. It is sad to think that the people were possibly happier. True, their despotic ruler--whom they regarded with almost religious veneration--slaughtered and tortured those who frequented his Court; but the people at large were little affected by these deeds of cruelty, even if they did not regard them with that disinterested admiration which the Negro always accords to a display of force. Syphilis had wrought but slight ravages amongst them; indeed, it was a disease of but recent introduction (coming from the Nile).[67] No religious feuds had begun. The people believed their monarch to be the mightiest on earth, and themselves to be the happiest folk, living in a real paradise. For beauty the land can hardly be matched elsewhere in Africa. The one indisputable flaw in the climate is the frequency of dangerous thunderstorms. But for these reminders of a harsher law the Baganda might well have looked back on their life under Mutesa and his predecessors as one of ideal happiness. They had plenty to eat. Their banana groves provided the staple of their diet unfailingly. In addition, the rich soil grew such legumens and cereals as they required. The rivers, lakes, and marshes swarmed with fish. Cattle throve. Goats, sheep, and fowls were abundant. Bark cloth from the fig-trees and carefully dressed skins provided the clothing they were so scrupulous to wear; for they shuddered at open indecency, and yet led the most licentious lives, licentiousness then paying no penalty in the spread of malignant diseases. This would be the way in which the average Muganda might look back on the past. Of course there was another side to the picture, no doubt. The paradisaical, unmoral lives of easy indulgence in their banana groves ill fitted them in the long run to cope with the attacks of stronger races. Fate led them under the British ægis after the country had been brought to something like ruin by ten years of civil war, and ten years of wretched misgovernment at the hands of a wicked sovereign. Had the British Protectorate not been declared, it is futile to suppose the country could have retained its independence. It would have been annexed by Germany or France, have been added to the Congo Free State or to the Egyptian Sudan.[68] If by some miracle it had escaped any one of these masters, it would have fallen victim later on to the Abyssinian raiders of the present day.

Speke found the country governed by a worshipped despot, Mutesa, who had just succeeded to a throne which had been in existence for something like four hundred and fifty years in an unbroken dynasty originally of Hima origin. This despot was a young man of agreeable countenance, with somewhat negroid features but a yellowish-brown skin. He had the large, liquid eyes characteristic of all the princes and princesses of this family. He lived in palaces which, though built of palm trunks, reeds, and grass were often imposing in appearance, with roofs rising to fifty feet above the ground. The interior of these dwellings had a raised floor of mud, hard as cement, and was divided into compartments by reed screens. The floor would be strewn with a soft carpet of fine fragrant grass, on which leopard skins and beautifully dressed ox-hides were laid down. The towns consisted mainly of collections of these straw-thatched dwellings surrounded by large gardens and banana groves, and fenced off from the outer world by tall reed fences so plaited as to produce an agreeably variegated aspect. Speke and his companion, and the Swahili porters with them, noticed the resemblance offered by this beautifully “tidy” country of Uganda to the civilised coast belt of Zanzibar. Negro savagery was far removed, especially in sanitary matters, where the arrangements were quite equal to those in force in England one hundred years ago. The religion of the country consisted of a worship paid to a large number of Ba-lubari or spirits, some of which were obviously ancestral, and others the personification of earth, air, or water forces.[69] The ministers of this religion were the Ba-mandwa or sorcerer-priests. Originally these priests were of the Bahima stock. Indeed, this religion which prevails amongst so many tribes in western and equatorial Africa seems to have had (like the Bahima aristocracy) a Hamitic origin, and to have come originally from the regions east of the White Nile.

Mutesa’s Court was remarkable for its hierarchy of officials. The principal minister is now the Katikiro, but was formerly styled Kamuraviona. He was formerly the commander-in-chief, though now no longer associated with such office. Some functions were hereditary, such as the Pokino or Governor of Buddu; but these hereditary posts were formerly the recognition of the existence of feudatory princes. The Kimbugwe was formerly the guardian of the king’s navel string and the keeper of his drums. The Mugema was the commissioner in charge of the royal tombs; Kasuju was the guardian of the king’s sisters; Mukwenda was his treasurer; Kauta was the steward of his kitchen; Seruti his head brewer; and so forth. In course of time many of these functions were purely honorary. The system seems to have come, like so much else of the civilisation of Uganda, from the Hamitic invaders, and it bears a curious resemblance to the origin of similar functionaries in the courts of Europe.

Society also was divided much as it is in our own world. There were the Royal Family and its collateral branches, known as Balángira, or princes. The princesses were called Bambeja. The Baronage was styled Bakungu. Then there was an upper class of functionaries known as Batongoli, while the peasants were classed as Bakopi.

Speke--handsome, manly, kindly, and straightforward--became an immense favourite with the volatile tyrant of Uganda, with the queens (for there were several queens--dowagers, mothers, consorts--at once in Uganda), with the nobles, and with the people. “My beard,” he writes, “engrossed the major part of most conversations; all the Baganda said they would come out in future with hairy faces.” The Royal Family of Uganda, he also remarks, gave orders without knowing how they were to be carried out, and treated all practical arrangements as trifling details not worth their attention; so that Speke and his caravan sometimes found themselves not very well off for food. The king or the queen-mother had said, “Let them be fed,” but ministers were not equally eager to see the royal largesse awarded. The handsome young king was extremely trying to deal with, as he put a great many questions and seldom waited for the answers. His slavish courtiers were constantly on their bellies, uttering incessant expressions of “Thank you very much” (“Niyanzi-ge”) for whatever their chief was pleased to do, say, or show to them. Not infrequently Speke intervened to save the lives of queens or pages who for a nothing were condemned to a cruel execution. On one occasion a picnic on the shores of the Victoria Nyanza was attended by the following incident. One of Mutesa’s wives,--

“a most charming creature, and truly one of the best of the lot, plucked a fruit and offered it to the king, thinking, doubtless, to please him greatly; but he, like a madman, flew into a towering passion, said it was the first time a woman had ever had the impudence to offer him anything, and ordered the pages to seize, bind, and lead her off to execution. These words were no sooner uttered by the king than the whole bevy of pages slipped their cord turbans from their heads, and rushed like a pack of cupid beagles upon the fairy queen, who, indignant at the little urchins daring to touch her majesty, remonstrated with the king, and tried to beat them off like flies, but was soon captured, overcome, and dragged away, crying on the names of the Kamuraviona and ‘Mzungu’ (myself) for help and protection; whilst Lubuga, the pet sister, and all the other women clasped the king by his legs, and kneeling, implored forgiveness for their sister. The more they craved for mercy, the more brutal he became, till at last he took a heavy stick and began to belabour the poor victim on the head. Hitherto I had been extremely careful not to interfere with any of the king’s acts of arbitrary cruelty, knowing that such interference, at an early stage, would produce more harm than good. This last act of barbarism, however, was too much for my English blood to stand; and as I heard my name, ‘Mzungu,’[70] imploringly pronounced, I rushed at the king, and staying his uplifted arm, demanded from him the woman’s life. Of course I ran imminent risk of losing my own in thus thwarting the capricious tyrant; but his caprice proved the friend of both. The novelty of interference even made him smile, and the woman was instantly released.”

Speke had quitted Grant in January, 1862. The two travellers did not meet again till the end of May in the same year. Grant had been constantly ill, and had been unable to make any survey of the lake shore. It was not till the 7th of July that Speke and Grant obtained leave to quit the capricious king on their journey eastwards to the Nile. The day before they started Speke notes:--

“On the way home one of the king’s favourite women overtook us, walking, with her hands behind her head, to execution, crying ‘Nyawo’ in the most pitiful manner. A man was preceding her, but did not touch her; for she loved to obey the orders of her king voluntarily, and in consequence of previous attachment was permitted as a mark of distinction to walk free. Wondrous world! It was not ten minutes since we parted from the king, yet he had found time to transact this bloody piece of business.”

On the following morning the king replied to Speke’s farewell remarks “with great feeling and good taste.” The king followed him with his courtiers in a procession to his camp, and exhorted the porters to follow the travellers through fire and water. “Then, exchanging adieus again, he walked ahead in gigantic strides up the hill, the pretty favourite of his harem, Lubuga, beckoning and waving with her little hands, and crying, ‘Bana! Bana!’[71] All showed a little feeling at the severance. We saw them no more.”