37. Zanzibar to Tanganyika, 26th June 1857 to 26th May 1858.
Burton left Zanzibar on his great expedition at the end of June, carrying with him various letters of introduction from the Sultan of Zanzibar, a diploma signed by the Shaykh El Islam of Mecca, and the passport already mentioned of Cardinal Wiseman. To his star-sapphire he added some little canvas bags containing horse chestnuts which he carried about "against the Evil Eye, and as a charm to ward off sickness." [169] Beside Burton and Speke, the party consisted of two Goa boys, two negro gun-carriers, Sudy Bombay, and ten Zanzibar mercenaries. Dr. Steinhauser, who had hoped to join them, was restrained by illness. "My desire," says Burton, "was to ascertain the limits of Tanganyika Lake, to learn the ethnography of its tribes, and to determine the export of the produce of the interior." He held the streams that fed Tanganyika to be the ultimate sources of the Nile; and believed that the glory of their discovery would be his. Fortune, however, the most fickle of goddesses, thought fit to deprive him of this ardently coveted boon.
The explorers landed at Wale Point on June 26th, and on July 14th reached K'hutu. At Dug'humi Burton, despite his bags of chestnuts, fell with marsh fever, and in his fits he imagined himself to be "two persons who were inimical to each other," an idea very suitable for a man nursing the "duality" theory. When he recovered, fresh misfortunes followed, and finally all the riding asses died. Burton, however, amid it all, managed to do one very humane action. He headed a little expedition against a slave raider, and had the satisfaction of restoring five poor creatures to their homes.
The tropical vegetation and the pleasant streams afforded delightful vistas both by daylight and moonlight, but every mile the travellers were saddened by the sight of clean-picked skeletons or swollen corpses. Sometimes they met companies of haggard, heavy-gaited men and women half blind with small-pox—the mothers carrying on their backs infants as loathsome as themselves. Near every kraal stood detached huts built for the diseased to die in. They passed from this God-forsaken land to a district of springs welling with sweet water, calabashes and tamarinds, and circlets of deep, dew-fed verdure. The air was spicy, and zebras and antelopes browsed in the distance. Then the scene again changed, and they were in a slimy, malarious swamp. They were bitten by pismires an inch long, and by the unmerciful tzetze fly. The mercenaries, who threatened to desert, rendered no assistance, and the leader, one Said bin Salim, actually refused to give Burton a piece of canvas to make a tent. Sudy Bombay then made a memorable speech, "O Said," he said, "if you are not ashamed of your master, be at least ashamed of his servant," a rebuke that had the effect of causing the man to surrender at once the whole awning. At other times the star-sapphire which Burton carried on his person proved a valuable auxiliary—and convinced where words failed. But the mercenaries, mistaking Burton's forbearance for weakness, became daily bolder and more insolent, and they now only awaited a convenient opportunity to kill him. One day as he was marching along, gun over shoulder and dagger in hand, he became conscious that two of his men were unpleasantly near, and after a while one of them, unaware that Burton understood his language, urged the other to strike. Burton did not hesitate a moment. Without looking round, he thrust back his dagger, and stabbed the man dead on the spot. [170] The other, who fell on his knees and prayed for mercy, was spared. This, however, did not cure his followers of their murderous instincts, and a little later he discovered another plot. The prospective assassins having piled a little wood where they intended to kindle a fire, went off to search for more. While they were gone Burton made a hole under the wood and buried a canister of gunpowder in it. On their return the assassins lighted the fire, seated themselves comfortably round, and presently there weren't any assassins. We tell these tales just as Burton told them to his intimate friends. The first may have been true, the second, we believe, simply illustrates his inveterate habit of telling tales against himself with the desire to shock. In any circumstances, his life was in constant peril; but he and the majority of the party, after unexampled tortures from thirst, arrived footsore and jaded in a veritable land of Goshen—Kazeh or Unyanyembe, where they met some kindly Arab merchants.
"What a contrast," exclaims Burton, "between the open-handed hospitality and the hearty good-will of this noble race—the Arabs—and the niggardliness of the savage and selfish African. It was heart of flesh after heart of stone." Burton found the Arabs of Kazeh living comfortably and even sybaritically. They had large, substantial houses, fine gardens, luxuries from the coast and "troops of concubines and slaves." Burton gallantly gives the ladies their due. "Among the fair of Yombo," he says, "there were no fewer than three beauties—women who would be deemed beautiful in any part of the world. Their faces were purely Grecian; they had laughing eyes their figures were models for an artist with—
"Turgide, brune, e ritondette mamme."
like the 'bending statue' that delights the world. The dress—a short kilt of calabash fibre—rather set off than concealed their charms, and though destitute of petticoat they were wholly unconscious of indecorum. These beautiful domestic animals graciously smiled when in my best Kenyamwezi I did my devoir to the sex; and the present of a little tobacco always secured for me a seat in the undress circle."
Of the native races of West Africa Burton gave a graphic account when he came to write the history of this expedition. [171] All, it seems, had certain customs in common. Every man drank heavily, ate to repletion and gambled. They would hazard first their property and then themselves. A negro would stake his aged mother against a cow. As for morality, neither the word nor the thing existed among them. Their idea of perfect bliss was total intoxication. When ill, they applied to a medicine man, who having received a fee used it for the purpose of getting drunk, but upon his return to sobriety, he always, unless, of course, the patient took upon himself to die, instead of waiting, attended conscientiously to his duties. No self-respecting chief was ever sober after mid-day. Women were fattened for marriage just as pigs are fattened for market—beauty and obesity being interchangeable terms. The wearisome proceedings in England necessary to a divorce, observes Burton, are there unknown. You turn your wife out of doors, and the thing is done.
The chief trouble at Kazeh, as elsewhere, arose from the green scorpion, but there were also lizards and gargantuan spiders. Vermin under an inch in length, such as fleas, ants, and mosquitoes, were deemed unworthy of notice. The march soon began again, but they had not proceeded many miles before Burton fell with partial paralysis brought on my malaria; and Speke, whom Burton always called "Jack," became partially blind. Thoughts of the elmy fields and the bistre furrows of Elstree and the tasselled coppices of Tours crowded Burton's brain; and he wrote:
"I hear the sound I used to hear,
The laugh of joy, the groan of pain,
The sounds of childhood sound again
Death must be near."
At last, on the 13th February they saw before them a long streak of light. "Look, master, look," cried Burton's Arab guide, "behold the great water!" They advanced a few yards, and then an enormous expanse of blue burst into sight. There, in the lap of its steel-coloured mountains, basking in the gorgeous tropical sunshine, lay the great lake Tanganyika. The goal had been reached; by his daring, shrewdness and resolution he had overcome all difficulties. Like the soldiers in Tacitus, in victory he found all things—health, vigour, abundance.
No wonder Burton felt a marvellous exultation of spirits when he viewed this great expanse of waters. Here, he thought, are the sources of that ancient river—the Nile. Now are fulfilled the longing of two thousand years. I am the heir of the ages! Having hired "a solid built Arab craft," the explorers made their way first to Ujiji and then to Uvira, the northernmost point of the lake, which they reached on April 26th. On their return voyage they were caught in a terrible storm, from which they did not expect to be saved, and while the wild tumbling waves threatened momentarily to engulf them a couplet from his fragmentary Kasidah kept running in Burton's mind:
"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?" [172]
However, they came out of this peril, just as they had come out of so many others. Burton also crossed the lake and landed in Kazembe's country, [173] in which he was intensely interested, and some years later he translated into English the narratives of Dr. Lacerda [174] and other Portuguese travellers who had visited its capital, Lunda, near Lake Moero.