“In this manner,” says Stanley “we begin our long journey, full of hopes. There is noise and laughter along the ranks, and a hum of gay voices murmuring through the fields, as we rise and descend with the waves of the land and wind the sinuosities of the path. Motion had restored us all to a sense of satisfaction. We had an intensely bright and fervid sun shining above us, the path was dry, hard, and admirably fit for travel, and during the commencement of our first march nothing could be conceived in better order than the lengthy, thin column about to confront the wilderness.”
Stanley’s line of march strikes the valley of the Kingani River, and thence to Kikoka, where he makes his first halt. Resting the next day, he resumes the march on the third day for Rosako. This line is about thirty miles north of the most northerly route of any of the routes known to Stanley from the writings of other explorers. From Rosako he marched to Congorida, thence to Mfuteh, and westward of Mfuteh along the southern bank of the Wami some four miles. From this point his line diverges to Rubuti, a village on the Lugumbwa Creek. “Grand and impressive scenery meets the eye as we march to Makubika, the next settlement,” says Stanley, “where we attain an altitude of 2675 feet above the ocean. Peaks and knolls rise in all directions, for we are now ascending to the eastern front of the Kaguru Mountains. The summits of Ukamba are seen to the north, its slopes famous for the multitudes of elephants. The mountain characteristically called the ‘Back of the Bow,’ has a small, clear lake near it, and remarkable peaks or mountain crests break the sky-line on every side. Indeed, some parts of this great mountain range abound in scenery both picturesque and sublime.
“Between Mamboya and Kitangeh I was much struck by the resemblance that many of the scenes bear to others that I had seen in the Alleghanies. Water is abundant, flowing clear as crystal from numerous sources. As we neared eastern Kitangeh, villages were beheld dotted over every hill, the inhabitants of which, so often frightened by the inroads of the ever-marauding Wamasai, have been rendered very timid. Here, for the first time, cattle were observed as we travelled westerly from Bagamoyo.
A GHASTLY MONUMENT.
“We crossed the plain on the 11th of December, and arrived at Tubugwé. It is only six miles wide, but within this distance we counted fourteen human skulls, the mournful relics of some unfortunate travellers, slain by an attack of Wahumba, from the northwest. I think it is beyond doubt that this plain, extending, as it does, from the unexplored northwest, and projecting like a bay into a deep mountain fiord southeast of our road, must in former times have been an inlet or creek of the great reservoir of which the Ugombo Lake, south of here, is a residuum. The bed of this ancient lake now forms the pastoral plains of the Wahumba and the broad, plain-like expanses visible in the Ugogo country.”
From Tubugwé, Stanley directed his march to Mpwapwa, on the banks of a small tributary of the Mukondokwa, which he reached on the 12th day of December, after a twenty-five day’s march from Bagamoyo.
