CHAPTER XI. PRESSING TOWARDS THE INTERIOR.
For a half an hour after the magic doctor left, Stanley sat quietly in his camp, his anxieties now thoroughly dissipated, thinking over his speedy departure for the Nyanza. The camp was situated on the margin of a vast wilderness, which stretched he knew not how far westward, while away to the north, south and east extended a wide, open plain, dotted over, as far as the eye could see, with villages. There were nearly two hundred of them, looking is the distance like clusters of beehives. Everything was peaceful, and not a sound disturbed the Sabbath-like stillness of the scene, when there suddenly broke on his ears the shrill war-cry, which was taken up by village after village till the whole valley resounded with it. It was one loud "he-hu, he-hu," the last syllable prolonged and uttered in a high, piercing note that made the blood shiver. Still Stanley felt no alarm, supposing that some war expedition was about to be set on foot, or some enemy was reported to be near, and listened to the barbaric cry simply with curiosity. The men in the camp kept about their usual avocations—some fetching water from a neighboring pool, while others were starting off after wood—when suddenly a hundred warriors appeared close to camp in full war costume. Feathers of the eagle and other birds waved above their heads, "the mane of the zebra and giraffe encircled their foreheads, their left hand held the bow and arrows, while the right grasped the spear." Stanley arose, and telling the men not to leave camp nor do anything to provoke a hostile act, waited to see what this sudden warlike attitude meant.
In the meantime the throng increased till the entire camp was surrounded. A slight bush fence had been built around it, which, though it concealed those within, was too slight to be of use in case of an attack. Seeing that this hostile demonstration was against him, Stanley sent out a young man who spoke their language, to inquire what they wanted. Six or seven warriors advanced to meet him, when a lively conversation followed. The messenger soon returned and reported that they accused one of the party of having stolen some milk and butter from a small village, and they must be paid for it in cloth. He at once sent the messenger back, directing him to tell the warriors that he did not come into their country to rob or steal, and if anything had been taken from them they had but to name the price they asked for it and it should be paid at once. The messenger brought back word that they demanded four yards of sheeting; although this was worth four times as much as the articles were which they alleged had been stolen, he was very glad to settle the matter so easily, and it was measured and sent to them. The elders declared that they were perfectly satisfied, and they all withdrew. But Stanley could not at once shake off the suspicion this unexpected show of hostile feeling had excited, and he watched narrowly the villages in the distance. He soon saw that the warriors were not pacified if the elders were, for he could see them hurrying together from all parts of the plain and gesticulating wildly.
Still he hoped the elders would keep them from any overt act of hostility. While he was watching them, he saw about two hundred men separate themselves from the main body, and taking a sweep, make for the woods west of the camp. They had hardly entered when one of Stanley's men rushed forth from the same vicinity into camp bleeding profusely from his face and arms. He said that Suleiman (a youth) and he were gathering wood when the savages came suddenly upon them. He was struck with a stick that broke his nose, and his arm was pierced with a spear, while Suleiman fell pierced with a dozen spears. His story and bloody appearance so excited the soldiers that Stanley could with difficulty restrain them from rushing out at once and attacking the murderers. He did not yet despair of preventing an outbreak, but took care to open the ammunition and be prepared for the worst. He saw at once that an immensely large force could be brought against him, and he must fortify himself or he would be overwhelmed by numbers, and so ordered the men immediately to commence strengthening the fence. They had not been long employed at it when the savages made a dash at the camp, and sent a shower of arrows into it. Stanley immediately ordered sixty soldiers to deploy fifty yards in front. At the word of command they rushed out, and the battle commenced.
The enemy soon turned in flight and the soldiers pursued them. Every man was now ordered to work on the defenses; some cut down thorn-trees and threw together rapidly a high fence all around the camp, while others were ordered to build platforms within for the sharp-shooters. All this time Stanley could hear the fire of the soldiers growing more and more indistinct in the distance. When the fence was completed he directed the sections of the Lady Alice to be placed so as to form a sort of central camp, to which they could retire in the last extremity. As soon as everything was finished he ordered the bugle to sound the retreat, and soon the skirmishers came in sight. They reported fifteen of the enemy killed. All had fought bravely, even a bull-dog had seized a savage and was tearing him to pieces, when a bullet put the poor wretch out of his misery.
They were not molested again that day, which gave them time to make their position still stronger. The night passed quietly, and they were allowed to breakfast in peace. But about 9 o'clock the savages in great numbers advanced upon the camp. All hopes of peace were now at an end, and since he was forced to fight, Stanley determined to inflict no half-way punishment, but sweep that fair valley with the besom of destruction. He therefore selected four reliable men, placed them at the head of four detachments, assigning to each a fleet runner, whose duty it was, not to fight, but to report any disaster that threatened or befell the detachment to which the man belonged. He then ordered them to move out and attack the savages. As the route of the enemy was certain, he directed them to pursue them separately, yet keep before them as the place of final rendezvous, some high rocks five miles distant down the valley. The detachments poured forth from the camp, and the deadly fire-arms so appalled those savage warriors, armed only with the bow and spear, that they at once turned and fled. The detachments followed in hot pursuit, and what promised to be a fight, became a regular stampede. But one detachment having pursued a large force of the enemy into the open plain, the latter turned at bay.
The leader of the detachment, excited by the pursuit, and believing, in his contempt for the savages, that the mere sight of his little band would send them scurrying away in deadly fear, charged boldly on them. Quick as thought they closed around him in overwhelming numbers. The runner alone escaped and bore the sad tidings to Stanley. The appointment of these runners shows his wonderful prevision—that foresight which on many occasions alone saved him. He at once sent assistance to the detachment that the courier had reported surrounded. Alas, before it arrived every man had been massacred. The aid, though it came too late to save the brave detachment, arrived just in time to save the second, which was just falling into the same snare, for the large force that had annihilated the first had now turned on this, and its fate seemed sealed. The reinforcements hurried off by Stanley found it completely hemmed in by the savages. Two soldiers had already been killed, the captain was wounded, and in a few minutes more they would have shared the fate of the first detachment.
It was at this critical moment they arrived, and suddenly pouring a deadly volley into the rear of the assailants, sent them to the right about with astonishing quickness. The two detachments now wheeled and poured a concentrated volley into the savages, which sent them flying wildly over the plain. A swift pursuit was commenced, but the fleet enemy could not be overtaken, and the march up the valley was scarcely resisted. Stanley, in camp, carefully watched the progress of the fight, which could be distinguished at first by the volleys of his soldiers, and when, receding in the distance, these could be no longer heard, by the puffs of smoke which showed where the pursuit led.
But at length clouds of smoke of a different character began to ascend from the quiet valley. To the right and left the dark columns obscured the noonday sun, and far as the eye could reach, the plain, with its hundreds of villages of thatched huts, presented one wide conflagration, till the murky mass of cloudy vapor, as it rolled heavenward, made it appear like a second Sodom, suffering the vengeance of heaven. To the distance of eight miles, Stanley could see jets of smoke that told of burning villages. He had delayed to the last moment hostile action, but having once commenced it he meant to leave behind him no power of retaliation.
It was a victorious but sad day, and the return of the detachments was anything but a triumphal march, for they bore back twenty-one dead men, besides the wounded, while they could report but thirty-five of the enemy killed. So little difference in the number of the slain, when one was the pursued and the other the pursuing party, and when the former was armed only with spears and bows, and the latter with the deadly rifle, seems at first sight unaccountable, but it must be remembered that the unfortunate detachment that was surrounded and massacred to a man, furnished almost the entire list of the killed.
The camp was at peace that night, but it was a sad peace. A few more such victories as this and Stanley would be left without an expedition.
This unfortunate experience with these people showed the danger of his undertaking a new route. His object was not to travel among new people, but to reach the lake region with his boat and settle great geographical problems and establish certain facts having an intimate bearing on the future of Africa. Yet by his chosen course he really obtained no new and valuable information but imperiled and well-nigh ruined the expedition fitted out with so much expense and care.
His was the nearest course to the lake, yet the long one by which Speke reached it was the safest. He had been in a perilous position, and it was clearly his own foresight that saved him. The appointment of a courier or swift runner to each detachment to act as a telegraph, would probably have occurred to few, yet this certainly saved one detachment from destruction and how much more no one can tell.
But he was not satisfied with the vengeance he had taken and the devastation he had wrought. He had resolved to teach those savage negroes a lesson on the danger of treachery to strangers, and he meant, now he had commenced it, to make it thorough and complete, and so next morning he sent off sixty men to proceed to the farthest end of the valley, some eight miles away, and destroy what yet remained; passing on through the ruins of the villages, they came to a large village in the extreme northeast. A very slight resistance was made here, and they entered it and applied the torch, and soon it shared the fate of all the rest. Before they destroyed it, however, they loaded themselves with grain. Provisions were now plenty, for the frightened negroes had left everything behind them in their flight. There was no longer any need of purchasing food, the valley was depopulated, and all the accumulated provisions of the inhabitants was at the mercy of the victors. Finding he had enough to last the expedition six days, Stanley next morning started westward before daybreak, and was soon far away from this valley of destruction, leaving the thoroughly humbled natives to crawl back to the ashes of their ruined homes. Without further trouble, in three days, he reached Iramba. Here he halted and took a calm survey of his condition and prospects. He found that out of the more than three hundred men with which he had left the coast, but one hundred and ninety-four remained.
Sickness, desertion and battle had reduced his number over a third before he had reached the point where his actual labors were to commence. It was not a pleasant look-out, for, although two hundred men, well armed with rifles, made a formidable force in a country where only arrows and spears were used, still this heavy ratio of loss must stop, or the expedition itself must fail. He was not in a country where he could recruit soldiers, and each one lost was a dead loss, and thousands of miles of exploration lay before him, in prosecuting which, he knew not how many battles would be fought, nor how much sickness would have to be encountered. It would not seem a difficult piece of arithmetical calculation to determine how long three hundred men would last if one-third disappeared in three months, or how many men it would require to prosecute his labors three years. But Stanley never seemed to act as though he thought defeat possible. Whether his faith was in God, himself, or his star, it was nevertheless a strong and controlling faith. Still, now and then it is very evident that he was perfectly conscious of the desperate nature of his condition, and felt disease, which carried off his friends and retainers, or the spear, might end, at any moment, his explorations and his life.
Though out of Urimi at last, yet Stanley found the natives of Iramba a very little improvement on those of the former district. Mirambo was their terror, and hence they were suspicious of all strangers. Again and again he was mistaken for this terrible chieftain, and narrowly escaped being attacked. In fact, this formidable warrior was fighting at one time within a day's march of him.
Urukuma was the next district he entered after Iramba, and he found it thickly peopled and rich in cattle. It consisted for the most part of rolling plains, with scattered chains of jagged hills. He was on the slope that led to the Nyanza, and the descent was so gradual, that he expected to find the lake, whose exploration he designed to make thorough and complete, comparatively shallow, although it covered a vast area. At last he reached a little village, not a hundred yards from the shore, and encamped. At this point he describes the topography of the new country he had passed over. He says:
"As far as Western Ugogo I may pass over without attempting to describe the country, as readers may obtain a detailed account of it from 'How I Found Livingstone.' Thence north is a new country to all, and a brief description of it may be interesting to students of African geography.
"North of Mizanza a level plain extends as far as the frontier of Urandawi, a distance of thirty-five miles (English). At Mukondoku the altitude, as indicated by two first-rate aneroids, was two thousand, eight hundred feet. At Mtiwi, twenty miles north, the altitude was two thousand eight hundred and twenty-five feet. Diverging west and north-west, we ascend the slope of a lengthy mountain-wall, apparently, but which, upon arriving at the summit, we ascertain to be a wide plateau covered with forests. This plateau has an altitude of three thousand eight hundred feet at its eastern extremity; but, as it extends westward it rises to a height of four thousand five hundred feet. It embraces all Uyanzi, Unyanyembe, Usukuma, Urimi and Iramba—in short, all that part of Central Africa lying between the valley of the Rufiji south and the Victoria Nyanza north, and the mean altitude of this broad upland cannot exceed four thousand five hundred feet. From Mizanza to the Nyanza is a distance of nearly three hundred geographical miles; yet, at no part of this long journey did the aneroids indicate a higher altitude than five thousand one hundred feet above the sea.
"As far as Urimi, from the eastern edge of the plateau, the land is covered with a dense jungle of acacias, which, by its density, strangles all other species of vegetation. Here and there, only in the cleft of a rock, a giant euphorbia may be seen, sole lord of its sterile domain. The soil is shallow, and consists of vegetable mould, mixed largely with sand and detritus of the bare rocks, which crown each knoll and ridge, and which testify too plainly to the violence of the periodical rains.
"In the basin of Matongo, in Southern Urimi, we were instructed by the ruins and ridges, relics of a loftier upland, of what has been effected by nature in the course of long ages. No learned geological savant need ever expound to the traveler who views these rocky ruins, the geological history of this country. From a distance we viewed the glistening naked and riven rocks as a singular scene; but when we stood among them, and noted the appearance of the rocky fragments of granite, gneiss and porphyry peeled as it were rind after rind, or leaf after leaf, like an artichoke, until the rock was wasted away, it seemed as if Dame Nature has left these relics, these hilly skeletons, to demonstrate her laws and career. It seemed to me as if she said, 'Lo, and behold this broad basin of Matongo, with its teeming villages and herds of cattle and fields of corn, surrounded by these bare rocks—in primeval time this land was covered with water, it was the bed of a vast sea. The waters were dried, leaving a wide expanse of level land, upon which I caused heavy rains to fall five months out of each year during all the ages that have elapsed since first the hot sunshine fell upon the soil. The rains washed away the loose sand and made deep furrows in course of time, until in certain places the rocky kernel under the soil began to appear. The furrows became enlarged, the waters frittered away their banks and conveyed the earth away to lower levels, through which it wore away a channel, first through the soil and lastly through the rock itself, which you may see if you but walk to the bottom of that basin. You will there behold a channel worn through the solid rock some fifty feet in depth; and as you look on that you will have some idea of the power and force of the tropical rains. It is through that channel that the soil robbed from these rocks has been carried away toward the Nyanza to fill its depths and in time make dry land of it. Now you may ask how came these once solid rocks, which are now but skeletons of hills and stony heaps, to be thus split into so many fragments? Have you never seen the effect of water thrown upon lime? The solid rocks have been broken or peeled in an almost similar manner. The tropic sun heated the face of these rocks to an intense heat, and the cold rain falling upon the heated surface caused them to split and peel as you see them.'
"This is really the geological history of this region simply told. Ridge after ridge, basin after basin, from Western Ugogo to the Nyanza, tells the same tale; but it is not until we enter Central Urimi, that we begin to marvel at the violence of the process by which nature has transformed the face of the land. For here the perennial springs and rivulets begin to unite and form rivers, after collecting and absorbing the moisture from the water-shed; and these rivers, though but gentle streams during the dry season, become formidable during the rains. It is in Central Urimi that the Nile first begins to levy tribute upon Equatorial Africa, and if you look upon the map and draw a line east from the latitude of Ujiji to longitude thirty-five degrees you will strike upon the sources of the Leewumbu, which is the extreme southern feeder of the Victoria Nyanza.
"In Iramba, between Mgongo Tembo and Mombiti, we came upon what must have been in former times an arm of the Victoria Nyanza. It is called the Lumamberri Plain, after a river of that name, and is about forty miles in width. Its altitude is three thousand seven hundred and seventy-five feet above the sea and but a few feet above Victoria Nyanza. We were fortunate in crossing the broad, shallow stream in the dry season, for during the masika or rainy season the plain is converted into a wide lake.
"The Leewumbu River, after a course of a hundred and seventy-five miles, becomes known as the Monaugh River, in Usukuma. After another run of a hundred miles, it is converted into Shimeeyu, under which name it enters the Victoria east of this port of Kagehyi. Roughly the Shimeeyu may be said to have a length of three hundred and fifty miles."