Chapter XIV: Our Reward--Success (1)

"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.