Next day, still wanting meat, I rode out on horseback and, with the assistance of my porter followers, brought in the meat of four Reedbuck. On the 28th of September I again went out with the same purpose, and secured three Waterbuck, animals about the size of a mule and of the same dark mouse colour. In this way were the natives tided over some bad ration days.
Before passing on, I must mention a strange incident that occurred last night. A great pack of hyenas, like a pack of timber wolves, came from the bush to the east, right through the centre of the camp, snarling and howling and fighting at our very hut doors as they passed, arousing the whole camp to wakefulness and astonishment with their gruesome, fiendish uproar. The camp, in pitch darkness, was a regular wolf garden for some minutes, ere the last of the howling, quarrelling mob had gone through, and passed beyond the camp. Why such a thing occurred no one could tell next morning; the impression given was that the whole band was chasing something, a wounded buck perhaps, or one or two outcasts of their own kind; but, in any case, they were so intent on their business that they knew no fear of our presence, for they went through our camp, in their wild excitement, just as if they were going down a main city street, though in ordinary temperament such surroundings would have filled them with the greatest suspicion and fear.
So much for the small events of bush life while we lay at Tulo.
After the usual reorganising, preparatory to abandon a camp we had been settled in for some days, we left Tulo in the early morning of 30th September, and trekked forward to Nkessa’s, en route for Kissaki; there to take over the positions captured some time ago by South African forces, in conjunction with operations on this side.
Meantime we had learned that we were to remain on in the country, a reduced but a hard-dying Imperial unit, though in the latter months of this year a great many exhausted white troops were sent back to better climes—I believe, in all, some 12,000, the larger number of whom, excepting a battalion of the Loyal North Lanes, and the 2nd Rhodesians, had landed in the country in the early part of the year. These troops were replaced, in time, by newly raised battalions of King’s African Rifles, and by the Nigerian Brigade—all of them native regiments, accustomed to the hot African climate.
ADVANCE TO RUFIJI POSTPONED
The advance to the Rufiji had by this time been definitely postponed, and our command was now concerned in holding the Mgeta River front at all vital points, and in patrolling, continuously and alertly, the intervening country from post to post. Our battalion was ordered to Kissaki Fort, and to Camp A—the old Arab fort of Kissaki, and about two miles south of the present fort. In taking up these positions we were on the extreme right of the Mgeta front, a front that lay virtually east and west along the course of the river. Our camp at Old Kissaki was within a square compound, walled in by an ancient hedge of impenetrable, needle-leaved cactus. Within the compound were some old stone foundations of long-demolished buildings, and in the centre an old unused stone-built well. Outside the compound a road ran in from the east to the very entrance of the square, to turn off abruptly there and head north on the way to New Kissaki Fort. The road outside the compound, in both directions, was bordered with solid-looking avenues of large, thick-leaved mango trees, while underneath those trees, on the road from the east, nestled the shaded grass huts of a score or two of peaceful natives. In the neighbourhood of the fort some land was cultivated, but where not, it grew dense and rank, with tall grass and low bush. In the big rains of February—April the entire country adjacent to the river is two or three feet under water, say the natives; and they tell of how they then go to live in the hills. This locality had a considerable native population, and their huts and mealie patches are to be found at intervals near to the banks of the river along its course.
Native Kraal.
PEACEFUL NATIVES AT KISSAKI