Chapter XIV: Our Reward--Success (2)

"Now, for the first time, although I had pursued my journey under great provocations from time to time, I never realized what an injury I had done the Expedition publicly, as well as myself, by not travelling alone, or with Arab companions, or at least with a less crooked-minded, cantankerous Englishman. He is energetic, he is courageous and persevering. He distinguished himself in the Punjaub Campaign. I first found him in Aden with a three years' furlough. His heart was set on spending two years of his leave in collecting animals north of the Line in Africa. He never _thought_ in any way of the Nile, and he was astonished at _my_ views, which he deemed impracticable. He had no qualifications for the excursion that he proposed to himself, except that of being a good sportsman. He was ignorant of the native races in Africa, he had brought with him about £400 worth of cheap and useless guns and revolvers, swords and cutlery, beads and cloth, which the Africans would have rejected with disdain. He did not know any of the manners and customs of the East; he did not know any language except a little Anglo-Hindostani; he did not _even_ know the names of the Coast Towns. I saw him engage, as protectors or _Abbans_, any Somali donkey-boys who could speak a little English. I saw that he was going to lose his money and his 'leave' and his life. Why should I have cared? I do not know; but as 'virtue is really its own reward,' I did so, and have got a slap in the face, which I suppose I deserve. I first took him to Somali-land; then I applied officially for him, and thus saved his furlough and his money by putting him on full service. You would now think, to see his conduct, that the case was reversed--that he had taken me, not I him; whereas I can confidently say that, except his shooting and his rags of Anglo-Hindostani, I have taught him everything he knows. He had suffered in purse and person at Berberah, and though he does not know French or Arabic, though he is not a man of science, nor an acute astronomical observer, I thought it only just to offer him the opportunity of accompanying me as second in command into Africa. He quite understood that it _was_ in a subordinate capacity, as we should have to travel amongst Arabs, Belochs, and Africans, whose language he did not know. The Court of Directors refused me, but I obtained it by an application, to the Local Authorities at Bombay. He knew by experience in Somali-land what travelling with _me_ meant, and yet he was only too glad to come.

"I have also done more than Jack in the cause. The Royal Geographical Society only allowed us £1000, and sooner than fail I have sacrificed a part of the little patrimony I inherited, and my reward is, that I and my expenditure, and the cause for which I have sacrificed everything, are made ridiculous."

N.B.--Richard's kind-heartedness and forethought for others often militated against himself, owing to the meanness and unworthiness of the objects it was bestowed upon.

A FEW DETAILS OF THE LAKES FOR GEOGRAPHERS.

[Sidenote: _For Geographers._]

"I will here offer to the reader a few details concerning the lake in question; they are principally borrowed from Jack's diary, carefully corrected, however, by Snay bin Amir, Salim bin Rashid,[4] and other merchants at Kázeh.

"This fresh-water sea is known throughout the African tribes as Nyanza, and the similarity of the sound to 'Nyassa,' the indigenous name of the little Maravi, or Kilwa Lake, may have caused in part the wild confusion in which speculative geographers have involved the Lake Regions of Central Africa. The Arabs, after their fashion of deriving comprehensive names from local and minor features, call it Ukerewe, in the Kisukuma dialect meaning the 'place of Kerewe' (Kelewe), an islet. As has been mentioned, they sometimes attempt to join by a river, a creek, or some other theoretical creation, the Nyanza with the Tanganyika, the altitude of the former being 3750 feet above sea-level, or 1900 feet above the latter, and the mountain regions which divide the two having been frequently travelled over by Arab and African caravans. Hence the name Ukerewe has been transferred in the 'Mombas Mission Map' to the northern waters of the Tanganyika. The Nyanza, as regards name, position, and even existence, has hitherto been unknown to European geographers; but, as will presently appear, descriptions of this sea by native travellers have been unconsciously transferred by our writers to the Tanganyika to Ujiji, and even to the Nyassa of Kilwa.

"M. Brun-Rollet ('Le Nil Blanc et le Soudan,' p. 209) heard that on the west of the Padongo tribe--which he places to the south of Mount Kambirah, or below 1° S. lat.--lies a great lake, from whose northern extremity issues a river whose course is unknown. In a map appended to his volume this water is placed between 1° S. and 3° N. lat., and about 25° 50' E. long. (Greenwich), and the reservoir is made an influent of the White Nile.

"Bowditch ('Discoveries of the Portuguese,' pp. 131, 132), when speaking of the Maravi Lake (the Nyassa), mentions that the 'negroes or the Moors of Melinde' have mentioned a great water which is known to reach Mombaça, which the Jesuit missionaries conjectured to communicate with Abyssinia, and of which Father Lewis Marianna, who formerly resided at Tete, recommended a discovery, in a letter addressed to the Government at Goa, which is still preserved among the public archives of that city. Here the confusion of the Nyanza, to which there was of old a route from Mombasah, with the Nyassa is apparent.

"At the southern point, where the Muingwira river falls into the tortuous creek, whose surface is a little archipelago of brown rocky islets crowned with trees and emerging from the blue waters, the observed latitude of the Nyanza Lake is 2° 24' S.; the longitude by dead reckoning from Kázeh is E. long. 33° and nearly due north, and the altitude by B. P. thermometer 3750 feet above sea-level. Its extent to the north is unknown to the people of the southern regions, which rather denotes some difficulty in travelling than any great extent. They informed Jack that from Mwanza to the southern frontier of Karágwah is a land journey of one month, or a sea voyage of five days towards north-north-west, and then to the north. They also pointed out the direction of Unyoro N. 20° W. The Arab merchants of Kázeh have seen the Nyanza opposite Weranhanja, the capital district of Armanika, King of Karágwah, and declares that it receives the Kitangure river, whose mouth has been placed about the equator.

"Beyond that point all is doubtful. The merchants have heard that Suna, the late despot of Uganda, built _matumbi_, or undecked vessels, capable of containing forty or fifty men, in order to attack his enemies, the Wasoga, upon the creeks which indent the western shores of the Nyanza. This, if true, would protract the lake to between 1° and 1° 30' of N. lat, and give it a total length of about 4°, or 250 miles. This point, however, is still involved in the deepest obscurity. Its breadth was estimated as follows:--A hill about two hundred feet above the water-level, shows a conspicuous landmark on the eastern shore, which was set down as forty miles distant. On the south-western angle of the line from the same point, ground appeared; it was not, however, perceptible north-west. The total breadth, therefore, has been assumed at eighty miles--a figure which approaches the traditions unconsciously chronicled by European geographers. In the vicinity of Usoga, the lake, according to the Arabs, broadens out; of this, however, and in fact of all the formation north of the equator, it is at present impossible to arrive at certainty.

"The Nyanza is an elevated basin or reservoir, the recipient of the surplus monsoon rain, which falls in the extensive regions of the Wamasai and their kinsmen to the east, the Karágwah line of the Lunar Mountains to the west, and to the south Usukuma, or Northern Unyamwezi. Extending to the equator in the central length of the African peninsula, and elevated above the limits of the depression in the heart of the continent, it appeared to be a gap in the irregular chain which, running from Usumbara and Kilima-ngao to Karágwah, represents the formation anciently termed the Mountains of the Moon. The physical features, as far as they were observed, suggest this view. The shores are low and flat, dotted here and there with little hills; the smaller islands also are hill-tops, and any part of the country immediately on the south would, if inundated to the same extent, present a similar aspect.

"The lake lies open and elevated, rather like the drainage and the temporary deposit of extensive floods than a volcanic creation like the Tanganyika, a long narrow mountain-girt basin. The waters are said to be deep, and the extent of the inundation about the southern creek proves that they receive during the season an important accession. The colour was observed to be clear and blue, especially from afar in the early morning; after nine a.m., when the prevalent south-east wind arose, the surface appears greyish or of a dull milky white, probably the effect of atmospheric reflection. The tint, however, does not, according to travellers, ever become red or green like the waters of the Nile. But the produce of the lake resembles that of the river in its purity; the people living on the shores prefer it, unlike that of the Tanganyika, to the highest and clearest springs; all visitors agree in commending its lightness and sweetness, and declare that the taste is rather of river or of rain water, than resembling the soft slimy produce of stagnant, muddy bottoms, or the rough harsh flavour of melted ice and snow.

"From the southern creek of the Nyanza, and beyond the archipelago of neighbouring islets, appear the two features which have given to this lake the name of Ukerewe. The Arabs call them 'Jezirah'--an ambiguous term, meaning equally insula and peninsula--but they can scarcely be called islands. The high and rocky Mazita to the east, and the comparatively flat Ukerewe on the west, are described by the Arabs as points terminating seawards in bluffs, and connected with the eastern shore by a low neck of land--probably a continuous reef--flooded during the rains, but never so deeply as to prevent cattle fording the isthmus. The northern and western extremities front deep water, and a broad channel separates them from the southern shore, Usukuma. The Arabs, when visiting Ukerewe or its neighbour, prefer hiring the canoes of the Wasakuma, and paddling round the south-eastern extremity of the Nyanza, to exposing their property and lives by marching through the dangerous tribes of the coast.

"The altitude, the conformation of the Nyanza Lake, the argilaceous colour and the sweetness of its waters, combine to suggest that it may be one of the feeders of the White Nile. In the map appended to M. Brun Rollet's volume, before alluded to, the large water west of the Padongo tribe, which clearly represents the Nyanza or Ukerewe, is, I have observed, made to drain northwards into the Fitri Lake, and eventually to swell the main stream of the White River. The details supplied by the Egyptian Expedition, which, about twenty years ago, ascended the White River to 3° 22' N. lat. and 31° 30' E. long., and gave the general bearing of the river from that point of its source as south-east, with a distance of one month's journey, or from three hundred to three hundred and fifty miles, would place the actual sources 2° S. lat. and 35° E. long., or in 2° eastward of the southern creek of the Nyanza Lake. This position would occupy the northern counterslope of the Lunar Mountains, the upper watershed of the high region whose culminating apices are Kilima-ngao, Kenia, and Doengo Engai. The distance of these peaks from the coast as given by Dr. Krapf must be considerably reduced, and little authority can be attached to his river Tumbiri.[5] The site, supposed by Mr. Macqueen (_Proceedings of the Geographical Society of London_, January 24th, 1859) to be at least twenty-one thousand feet above the level of the sea, and consequently three or four thousand feet above the line of perpetual congelation, would admirably explain the two most ancient theories concerning the source of the White River, namely, that it arises in snowy regions, and that its inundation is the result of tropical rains.

"It is impossible not to suspect that between the upper portion of the Nyanza and the watershed of the White Nile there exists a longitudinal range of elevated ground, running from east to west--a _furca_ draining northwards into the Nile and southwards into the Nyanza Lake--like that which separates the Tanganyika from the Maravi or Nyassa of Kilwa. According to Don Angelo Vinco, who visited Loquéck in 1852, beyond the Cataract of Garbo--supposed to be in N. lat. 2° 40'--at a distance of sixty miles lie Robego, the capital of Kuenda and Lokoya (Logoja), of which the latter receives an affluent from the east. Beyond Lokoya the White Nile is described as a _small and rocky mountain river_, presenting none of the features of a stream flowing from a broad expanse of water like the great Nyanza reservoir.

"The periodical swelling of the Nyanza Lake, which, flooding a considerable tract of land on the south, may be supposed--as it lies flush with the basal surface of the country--to inundate extensively all the low lands that form its periphery, forbids belief in the possibility of its being the head-stream of the Nile, or the reservoir of its periodical inundation. In Karágwah, upon the western shore, the _masika_, or monsoon, last from October to May or June, after which the dry season sets in. The Egyptian Expedition found the river falling fast at the end of January, and they learned from the people that it would rise again about the end of March, at which season the sun is vertical over the equator. About the summer solstice (June), when the rains cease in the regions south of and upon the equator, the White Nile begins to flood. From March to the autumnal equinox (September) it continues to overflow its banks till it attains its magnitude, and from that time it shrinks through the winter solstice (December) till March.

"The Nile is, therefore, full during the dry season and low during the rainy season, south of and immediately upon the equator. And as the northern counterslope of Kenia will, to a certain extent, be a lee-land like Ugogi, it cannot have the superfluity of moisture necessary to send forth a first-class stream. The inundation is synchronous with the great falls of the northern equatorial regions, which extend from July to September, and is dependent solely upon the tropical rains. It is therefore probable that the true sources of the 'Holy River' will be found to be a network of runnels and rivulets of scanty dimensions, filled by monsoon torrents, and perhaps a little swollen by melted snow on the northern water-parting of the eastern Lunar Mountains.

OUR RETURN.

"At Kázeh, to my great disappointment, it was settled, in a full Arab conclave, that we must return to the coast by the path with which we were painfully familiar. It was only the state of our finances which prevented us, whilst at Ujiji, from navigating the Tanganyika southwards and arriving, after a journey of three months, at Kilwa. That and 'leave' prevented us from going to Karágwah and Uganda. The rains, which rendered travelling impossible, set in about September; our two years' leave of absence were drawing to a close, and we were afraid to risk it, but we meant to return and do these things, tracing the course of the Rufiji river (Rwaha) and visiting the coast between the Usagára Mountains and Kilwa, an unknown line.

[Sidenote: _The Kindness of Musa Mzuri and Snay bin Amir._]

"Musa Mzuri returned with great pomp to Kázeh; he is between forty-five and fifty, tall, gaunt, with delicate extremities, and the regular handsome features of a high-caste Indian Moslem. He is sad and staid, wears a snowy skull-cap, and well-fitting sandals. His abode is a village in size, with lofty gates, spacious courts, full of slaves and hangers-on, a great contrast to the humility of the Semite tenements. His son knew a little English, but he had learnt no Hindostani from his father, who, though expatriated for thirty-five years, spoke his mother tongue purely and well. Musa was a man of quiet, unaffected manner, dashed with a little Indian reserve. One Salim bin Rashid, while collecting ivory to the eastward of the Nyanza Lake, had recovered a Msawahili porter, who, having fallen sick on the road, had been left by a Caravan amongst the wildest of the East African tribes, the Wahuma (the Wamasai). From this man, who spent two years amongst these plunderers and their rivals in villany, the Warudi, I gained most valuable information. I also was called upon by Amayr bin Said el Shaksi, a strong-framed, stout-hearted Arab, who, when his vessel foundered in the Tanganyika, swam for his life, and lived for five months on roots and grasses, until restored to Ujiji by an Arab canoe. He spent many hours a day with me--he gave me immense information; and Hilal bin Nasur, a well-born Harisi returned from K'hokoro, also gave me most valuable facts.

"It is needless to say that, with all our economy and care, we arrived at the coast destitute. The hospitable Snay bin Amir came personally, although only a convalescent, to superintend our departure, provided us with his own slaves and a charming Arab breakfast; he spent the whole of that day with us, and followed us out of the compound through a white-hot sun and a chilling wind; nay, he did more--he followed us to our next station with Musa, and he helped us to put the finishing touches to the journals. I thanked these kind-hearted men for their many good deeds and services, and promised to report to H.H. the Sayyid Majid the hospitable reception of his subjects generally, and of Snay and Musa in particular. In the evening we took a most affecting farewell.[6] On the 4th of October, insufficiency of porterage compelled me to send back men for articles left by them at several of the villages, and we at last reached Hanga, our former quarters. Desertions were rife, and so were quarrels, in which I was always begged to take an active part, but experience amongst the Bashi-Bazouks in the Dardanelles taught me better.

LITTLE IRONS.

[Sidenote: _Speke's Illness._]

"At Hanga, Jack had been chilled on the march from the cruel easterly wind, and at the second march he had ague. At Hanga we were lodged in a foul cowhouse full of vermin, and exposed to the fury of the gales. He had a deaf ear, an inflamed eye, and a swollen face, but worst of all was a mysterious pain, which shifted--he could not say whether it was liver or spleen. It began with a burning sensation as by a branding iron above the right breast, and then extended to the heart with sharp twinges. It then ranged round the spleen, attacked the upper part of the right lung, and finally settled in the liver.

"On the 10th of October, at dawn, he woke with a horrible dream of tigers, leopards, and other beasts, harnessed with a network of iron hooks, dragging him, like the rush of a whirlwind, over the ground. He sat up on the side of his bed, forcibly clasping both sides with his hands. Half stupefied by pain, he called to Bombay, who had formerly suffered from this _kichyomachyoma_, 'the little irons,' who put him in the position a man must lie in, who gets this attack. The next spasm was less severe, but he began to wander. In twenty-four hours, supported by two men, he staggered towards the tent to a chair; but the spasms returning, he was assisted back into the house, where he had a third fit of epileptic description, like hydrophobia. Again he was haunted by crowds of devils, giants, lion-headed demons, who were wrenching with superhuman force, and stripping the sinews and tendons of his legs down to his ankles. With limbs racked by cramps, features drawn and ghastly, frame fixed and rigid, eyes glazed and glassy, he began to bark with a peculiar chopping motion of the mouth and tongue, with lips protruding, the effect of difficulty of breathing, which so altered his appearance that he was not recognizable, and terrified all beholders. When the third and severest spasm had passed away, and he could speak, he called for pen and paper, and wrote an incoherent letter of farewell to his family. That was the crisis. I never left him, taking all possible precautions, never letting him move without my assistance, and always having a resting-place prepared for him; but for some weeks he had to sleep in a half sitting-up position, pillow-propped, and he could not lie upon his side. Although the pains were mitigated, they did not entirely cease; this he expressed by saying, 'Dick, the knives are sheathed!'

"During Jack's delirium he let out all his little grievances of fancied wrongs, of which I had not had even the remotest idea. He was vexed that his diary (which I had edited so carefully, and put into the Appendix of 'First Footsteps in Eastern Africa') had not been printed _as_ he wrote it--geographical blunders and all; also because he had not been paid for it, I having lost money over the book myself. He asked me to send his collections to the Calcutta Museum of Natural History; now he was hurt because I had done so. He was awfully grieved because in the thick of the fight at Berberah, three years before, I had said to him, 'Don't step back, or they will think we are running.' I cannot tell how many more things I had unconsciously done, and I crowned it by not accepting immediately his loud assertion _that he had discovered the Sources of the Nile_; and I never should have known that he was pondering these things in his heart, if he had not raved them out in delirium. I only noticed that his alacrity had vanished; that he was never contented with any arrangement; that he left all the management to me, and that then he complained that he had never been consulted; that he quarrelled with our followers, and got himself insulted; and, previously to our journey, having been unaccustomed to sickness, he neither could endure it himself, nor feel for it in others. He took pleasure in saying unkind, unpleasant things, and said he could not take an interest in any exploration if he did not command it.

"These illnesses are the effects of fever, and a mysterious manifestation of miasma in certain latitudes; for in some tracts we were perfectly well, in other tracts we were mortally sick, and the changes were instantaneous. Cultivation and Civilization will probably wear these effects out, by planting, clearing jungle, and so on.

"I immediately sent an express back to Snay bin Amir, for the proper treatment, and found that they powdered myrrh with yolk of egg and flour of _mung_ for poultices. I saw that, in default of physic, change of air was the only thing for him, and I had a hammock rigged up for him, and by good fortune an unloaded Caravan was passing down to the coast. We got hold of thirteen unloaded porters, who for a large sum consented to carry us to Rubuga, else we should have been left to die in the wilderness. Bombay had long since returned to his former attitude, that of a respectful and most ready servant. He had on one trip broken my elephant gun, killed my riding-ass, and lost his bridle, and did all sorts of irrational things, but for all that he was a most valuable servant, for his unwearied activity, his undeviating honesty, and his kindness of heart. Said bin Salim had long forfeited my confidence by his carelessness and extravagance, and the disappearance of the outfit committed to him at Ujiji--in favour of one of his friends, as I afterwards learned--rendered him unfit for stewardship. The others praised each other openly and without reserve, and if an evil tale ever reached my ear, it was against innocent Bombay, its object being to ruin him in my estimation.

[Sidenote: _They cross the "Fiery Field."_]

As I knew we should be short of water, I prepared by packing a box with empty bottles, which we could fill at the best springs, and by the result of that after-wisdom which some have termed 'fool's wit,' I commenced the down march happy as a _bourgeois_ or a trapper in the Pays Sauvage. Before entering the 'Fiery Field' the hammock-bearers became so exorbitant that I drew on my jackboots and mounted an ass, and Jack had so far convalesced that he wanted to ride too. He had still, however, harassing heartache, nausea, and other bilious symptoms, when exposed to the burning sun; but when he got to K'hok'ho in Ugogi, sleep and appetite came, he could carry a heavy rifle, and do damage amongst the antelope and guineafowl. Now all began to wax civil, even to servility, grumbling ceased, smiles mantled every countenance, and even the most troublesome rascal was to be seen meekly sweeping out our tents with a bunch of thorns. We made seven marches between Hanga and Tura, where we arrived on the 28th of October, and halted six days to procure food. My own party were 10; Said bin Salim's, 12; the Beloch, 38; Ramji's party, 24; the porters, 68--in all 152 souls. We plunged manfully into the 'Fiery Field,' and after seven marches in seven days, we bivouacked at Jiwe la Mkoa, and on the 12th of November, after two days' march, came into the fertile red plain of Mdaduru, in the transit of Ugogi. After that, where I had been taught to expect danger, it reduced itself to large disappearances of cloth and beads. Gul Mahommed was our Missionary, but he was just like the European old lady, who believes that on such subjects all the world must think with her. I have long been suspected of telling lies, when describing the worship of a god with four arms, and the goddesses with two heads. The transit of Ugogi occupied three weeks. At Kanyenye we were joined by a large down-Caravan of Wanyamwezi, who, amongst other news, told us that our former line through Usagára was closed through the fighting of the tribes.

[Sidenote: _An Official Wigging._]

"On the 6th of December we arrived at our old ground in the Ugogi Dhun, and met another Caravan, which presently drew forth a packet of letters and papers. This post brought me rather an amusing official wigging. Firstly, there was a note from Captain Rigby, my friend Hamerton's successor at Zanzibar. Secondly, the following letter:--

"'3, Savile Row.

"'DEAR BURTON,

"'Go ahead! Vogel and MacGuire dead--murdered. Write often.

"'Yours truly,

"'NORTON SHAW.'

"The 'wig' was this. I had paid the Government the compliment of sending it, through the Royal Geographical Society, an account of political affairs in the Red Sea, saying I feared trouble at Jeddah, which I had had from my usual private information from the interior, being fearful that there would be troubles at Jeddah; and the only thanks I got was a letter, stating 'that my want of discretion and due regard for the authorities to whom I am subordinate, has been regarded with displeasure by the Government.' They are cold and crusty to reward a little word of wisdom from their babes and sucklings; but what was so comically sad was this:--The official wig was dated the 1st of July, 1857. Posts are slow in Africa, so that by the same post I got a newspaper with an account of the massacre of nearly all the Christians at Jeddah on the Red Sea, expressing great fears that the Arab population of Suez also might be excited to commit similar outrages. This took place on the 30th of June, 1858, exactly eleven months after I had warned the Government.

"We loaded on the 7th of December, and commenced the passage of the Usagára Mountains by the Kiringawána line. This is the southern route, separated from the northern by an interval of forty-three miles. It contains settlements like Maroro and Kisanga. It is nineteen short stages; provisions are procurable, water plentiful, and plenty of grass, as long as you can pass the Warori tribe. Mosquitoes are plentiful. The owners of the land have a chronic horror of the Warori, and on sighting our peaceful Caravan they raised the war-cry, and were only quieted on knowing that we were much more frightened than they were. We had wild weather, we stayed at Maroro for food; at Kiperepeta there were gangs of four hundred touters, with their muskets, waiting the arrival of Caravans.

[Sidenote: _Christmas Day,_ 1858.]

"On Christmas Day, 1858, at dawn, we toiled along the Kikoboga river, which we forded four times. Jack and I had a fat capon instead of roast beef, and a mess of ground nuts sweetened with sugar-cane, which did duty for plum-pudding. The contrast of what was, with what might be, now however suggested pleasurable sensations. We might now see Christmas Day of 1859, whereas on Christmas Day, 1857, we saw no chance of that of 1858. Fourteen marches took us from the foot of Usagára Mountains to Central Zungomero, traversing the districts of Eastern Mbwiga, Marundwe, and Kirengwe. It is a road hideous and grotesque: no animals, flocks, or poultry; the villages look like birds' nests torn from the trees; the people slink away--they are all armed with bows and poisoned arrows. At Zungomero, the village on the left bank of the Mgeta, which we had occupied on the outer march, was razed to the ground. I here offered a liberal reward to get to Kilwa. However, I did not succeed, and there was some intrigue about the pay afterwards, which I never understood, which was annoying to me; but such events are common on the slave-paths in Eastern Africa. Of the seven gangs of porters engaged on this journey, _only one_, an unusually small portion, _left me without being fully satisfied_, and _that one fully deserved to be disappointed_.

"On the 14th of January, 1859, we received Mr. Apothecary Frost's letters, drugs, and medical comforts, for which we had written to him July, 1857. After crossing the Mgeta, we sat down patiently on a bank, in spite of the ants, to await the arrival of a Caravan to complete our gang, but the new medical comforts enabled us to have ether-sherbet and ether-lemonade, and it did not hurt us. On the 17th of January a Caravan came, which I had been longing to meet. The Arab Chiefs Sulayman bin Rashid el Riami and Mohammed bin Gharib, who called upon me without delay, gave me most interesting information. To the south, from Uhehe to Ubena, was a continuous chain of highlands pouring affluents across the road into the Rwaha river, and water was only procurable in the beds of the nullahs and _fiumaras_. If this chain be of any considerable length, it may represent the water-parting between the Tanganyika and Nyassa Lakes, and thus divide by another and a southerly lateral band the great Depression of Central Africa.

"The 21st of January we left Zungomero, and made Konduchi on the 3rd of February in twelve marches. The mud was almost throat-deep near Dut'humi, and we had a weary trudge of thick slabby mire up to the knees. In places, after toiling under a sickly sun, we crept under the tunnels of thick jungle-growth veiling the streams, the dank fœtid cold of which caused a deadly sensation of faintness, which was only relieved by a glass of ether-sherbet or a pipe of the strongest tobacco. By degrees it was found necessary to abandon the greater part of the remaining outfit and luggage. The 27th of January saw us pass safely by the village where M. Maizan was murdered.

"On the 28th there was a report that we were to be attacked at a certain place, and Said bin Salim came to tell me that the road was cut off, and that I must delay till an escort could be summoned from the coast. I knew quite well that it was only an intrigue, but I feared that real obstacles might be placed in our way by the wily little man, and as soon as _bakshish_ was mentioned, four naked varlets appeared in a quarter of an hour as escort.

"On the 30th of January the men screamed with delight at the sight of the mango tree, and all their old familiar fruits.

"On the 2nd of February, 1859, Jack and I caught sight of the sea. We lifted our caps, and gave 'three times three and one more.' The 3rd of February saw us passing through the poles decorated with skulls--a sort of negro Temple Bar--at the entrance of Konduchi; they now grin in the London Royal College of Surgeons.

"Our entrance was immense. The war-men danced, shot, shouted; the boys crowded; the women lulliloo'd with all their might; and a general procession conducted us to the hut, swept, cleaned, and garnished for us, by the principal _Banyan_ of the Head-quarter village, and there the crowd stared and laughed until they could stare and laugh no more. A boat transferred most of our following to their homes, and they kissed my hand and departed, weeping bitterly with the agony of parting. I sent a note to the Consul at Zanzibar, asking for a coasting craft to explore the Delta and the unknown course of the Rufiji river. I liberally rewarded Zawáda, who had attended to Jack in his illness. We were detained at Konduchi for six days, from the 3rd to the 10th of February.

[Sidenote: _Speke leaves Richard Ill, but apparently Friendly._]

"On the 9th of February the craft arrived at Konduchi from Zanzibar, and we rolled down the coast with a fair, fresh breeze towards Kilwa, the Quiloa of De Gama and of Camoens. We lost all our crew by cholera, and we were unable to visit the course of the great Rufiji river, a counterpart of the Zambesi in the south, and a water-road which appears destined to become the highway of nations into Eastern Equatorial Africa. The deluge of rain and floods showed me that the travelling season was at an end. I turned the head of the craft northwards, and on the 4th of March, 1859, we landed once more on the island of Zanzibar. Sick and wayworn, I entered the house in sad memory of my old friend, which I was fated to regret still more. The excitement of travel was succeeded by an utter depression of mind and body; even the labour of talking was too great. The little State was in the height of confusion, in a state of Civil war; the eldest brother of the Sultan was preparing a hostile visit to his youngest brother, the Sultan Sayyid Majid of Zanzibar. After a fortnight of excitement and suspense, a gunboat was sent to the elder brother to persuade him to return. His Highness Sayyid Majid had honoured me with an expression of his desire that I should remain until the expected hostilities might be brought to a close. I did so willingly, in gratitude to a Prince to whose good will my success was mainly indebted, but the Consulate was no longer bearable to me. I was too conversant with local politics, too well aware of what was going on, to be a pleasant companion to its new tenant. I was unwilling to go, because so much remained to be done. I wanted to wait for fresh leave of absence and additional funds, but the evident anxiety of Consul Rigby to get rid of me, and Jack's nervous impatience to go on, made me abandon my intentions. Said bin Salim called often at the Consulate, but Captain Rigby agreed with me that he had been more than sufficiently rewarded, and the same with the others. Jack also was of the same opinion, but it suited Jack, with his secret prospects or intentions of returning without me, to change his mind afterwards, and he was evidently able to get Captain Rigby to do the same. There can be little doubt that Jack's intention of returning on the second Expedition, on the lines of the one which he had done so much to spoil, had a great deal to do with his action on this occasion. When H.M.S. _Furious_, carrying Lord Elgin and Mr. Laurence Oliphant, his secretary, arrived at Aden, passage was offered to both of us. I could not start, being too ill. But _he_ went, and the words Jack said to me, and I to him, were as follows:--'I shall hurry up, Jack, as soon as I can,' and the last words Jack ever spoke to me on earth were, '_Good-bye, old fellow; you may be quite sure I shall not go up to the Royal Geographical Society until you come to the fore and we appear together. Make your mind quite easy about that._'

"With grateful heart I bid adieu to the Sultan, whose kindness and personal courtesy will long dwell in my memory, and who expressed a hope to see me again, and offered me one of his ships of war to take me home. However, a clipper-built barque, the _Dragon of Salem_, Captain Macfarlane, was about to sail with the south-west monsoon for Aden. Captain Rigby did not accompany us on board, a mark of civility usual in the East, but Bombay's honest face turned up and seemed peculiarly attractive.

"On the 22nd of March, 1859, the clove shrubs and coco trees of Zanzibar faded from my eyes, and after crossing and recrossing three times the tedious Line, we found ourselves anchored, on the 16th of April, near the ill-omened black walls of the Aden crater. The crisis of my African sufferings had taken place at the Tanganyika; the fever, however, still clung to me.

"I left the Aden coal-hole of the East on the 20th of April, 1859, and in due time greeted with becoming heartiness my native shores.

"The very day after he returned to England, May 9th, 1859, Jack called at the Royal Geographical Society and set on foot the scheme of a new exploration. He lectured in Burlington House, and when I reached London on May 21st I found the ground completely cut from under my feet. Sir Roderick Murchison had given Jack the leadership of a new Expedition; my own long-cherished plan of entering Africa through Somali-land, landing at the Arab town Mombas, was dismissed as unworthy of notice. Jack published two articles in _Blackwood's Magazine_, assumed the whole credit to himself, illustrated a wonderful account of his own adventures and discoveries, with a chart where invention is not in it. He said he did all the astronomical work, and had taught me the geography of the country through which we travelled, which made me laugh. Jack, who literally owed everything to me, habitually wrote and spoke of me to mutual friends in a most disagreeable manner. Many people who professed to be friendly to me said it would be more dignified to say nothing, but I knew how unwise it is to let public sentence pass by default, and how delay may cause everlasting evil, so I wrote the most temperate vindication of my position."[7]

[1] This was Richard's favourite and self-composed motto, and Chinese Gordon quoted it in every letter he wrote him to the last day of his life, with a word of congratulation as to its happy choice.--I. B.

[2] The Arabs always gave Richard the most courteous and cordial reception, treating him practically as one of themselves. They could not be expected to think so much of Speke, because he did not know their language or their religion, and he always treated them as an Anglo-Indian treats a nigger. He was burning to escape from Kázeh, and the society of an utterly idle man to one incessantly occupied is always a drawback, and Richard, whose stronger constitution had enabled him to bear up at first with greater success, was gradually but surely succumbing to the awful African climate.--I. B.

[3] "The following extract from the _Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society_, May 9, 1859, will best illustrate what I mean:--

"'Mr. Macqueen, F.R.G.S., said the question of the sources of the Nile had cost him much trouble and research, and he was sure there was no material error either in longitude or latitude in the position he had ascribed to them, namely, a little to the eastward of the meridian of 35° and a little northward of the equator. That was the principal source of the White Nile. The mountains there were exceedingly high, from the equator north to Kaffa Enarea. All the authorities, from east, west, north, or south, now perfectly competent to form judgments upon such a matter, agreed with him; and among them were the officers commanding the Egyptian Commission. It was impossible they could _all_ be mistaken. Dr. Krapf had been within a very short distance of it; he was more than a hundred and eighty miles from Mombas, and he saw snow upon the mountains. He conversed with the people who came from them, and who told him of the snow and exceeding coldness of the temperature. The line of perpetual congelation, it is well known, was seventeen thousand feet above the sea. He had an account of the navigation of the White Nile by the Egyptian Expedition. It was then given as 30° 30' N. lat. and 31° E. long. At this point the expedition turned back for want of a sufficient depth of water. Here the river was 1370 feet broad, and the velocity of the current _one quarter_ of a mile per hour. The journals also gave a specific and daily current, the depth and width of the river, and everything, indeed, connected with it. Surely, looking at the current of the river, the height of the Cartoom above the level of the sea, and the distance thence up to the equator, the sources of the Nile must be six or eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, and still much below the line of snow, which was six or eight thousand feet farther above them. He deeply regretted he was unable to complete the diagram for the rest of the papers he had given to the Society, for it was more important than any others he had previously given. It contained the journey over Africa from sea to sea, second only to Dr. Livingstone. But all the rivers coming down from the mountains in question, and running south-eastward, had been clearly stated by Dr. Krapf, who gave every particular concerning them. He should like to know what the natives had said was to the northward of the large lake. Did they say the rivers ran out from or into the lake? How could the Egyptian officers be mistaken?

"'Captain Speke replied. They were not mistaken; and if they had pursued their journey fifty miles further, they would undoubtedly have found themselves at the northern borders of this lake.

"'Mr. Macqueen said that other travellers--Don Angelo, for instance--had been within one and a half degrees of the equator, and saw the mountain of Kimborat under the Line, and persisted in the statement, adding that travellers had been up the river till they found it a mere brook. He felt convinced that the large lake alluded to by Captain Speke was not the source of the Nile; it was impossible it could be so, for it was not at a sufficiently high altitude.

"'The paper presented to the Society, when fully read in conjunction with the map, will clearly show that the Bahr-el-Abiad had no connection with Kilimanjaro, that it has no connection whatever with any lake or river to the south of the equator, and that the swelling of the river Nile proceeds from the tropical rains of the northern torrid zone, as was stated emphatically to Julius Cæsar by the Chief Egyptian Priest, Amoreis, two thousand years ago.

"'In nearly 3° N. lat. there is a great cataract, which boats cannot pass. It is called Gherba. About halfway (fifty miles) above, and between this cataract and Robego, the capital of Kuenda, the river becomes so narrow as to be crossed by a bridge formed by a tree thrown across it. Above Gherba no stream joins the river either from the south or south-west.'"

[4] "When Jack returned to Kázeh, he represented Ukerewe and Mazita to be islands, and although in sight of them, he had heard nothing concerning their connection with the coast. This error was corrected by Salim bin Rashid, and accepted by us. Yet I read in his 'Discovery of the Supposed Sources of the Nile:' 'Mansur, and a native, the greatest traveller of the place, kindly accompanied and gave me every obtainable information. This man had traversed the island, as he called it, of Ukerewe from north to south. But _by his rough mode of describing it, I am rather inclined to think that instead of its being an actual island, it is a connected tongue of land, stretching southwards from a promontory lying at right angles to the eastern shore of the lake,_ which being a wash, affords a passage to the mainland during the fine season, but during the wet becomes submerged, and thus makes Ukerewe temporarily an island.' The information, I repeat, was given, not by the 'native,' but by Salim bin Rashid. When, however, the latter proceeded to correct Jack's confusion between the well-known coffee mart Kitara, and 'the island of Kitiri occupied by a tribe called Watiri,' he gave only offence, consequently Kitiri has obtained a local habitation in _Blackwood_ and Petermann."

[5] "The large river Tumbiri, mentioned by Dr. Krapf as flowing towards Egypt from the northern counterslope of Mount Kenia, rests upon the sole authority of a single wandering native. As, moreover, the word _T'humbiri_ or _Thumbili_ means a monkey, and the people are peculiarly fond of satire in a small way, it is not improbable that the very name had no foundation of fact. This is mentioned, as some geographers--for instance, Mr. Macqueen ('Observations on the Geography of Central Africa,' _Proceedings of the R.G.S. of London_, May 9, 1859)--have been struck by the circumstance that the Austrian missionaries and Mr. Werne ('Expedition to discover the Source of the White Nile, in 1840-41') gave Tubirih as the Bari name of the White Nile at the southern limit of their exploration."

[6] Richard long mourned the loss of his friend, whom Captain Speke, on his second journey with Colonel Grant--whether unable to assist I know not--left to be killed by the negroes of Mirámbo, his African enemy, in the bush.--I. B.

[7] Richard was a strong-willed, outspoken, and grievously injured man, under the greatest provocation ever put forth. He behaved with dignity, calmness, and generosity, above all praise.--I. B.