Mangura, Izanjeh, and Vinyata, were the next places which marked the route of Stanley’s expedition. At the latter place he made a halt of five days, meeting with no little hostility from the natives, some skirmishing, and suffering the loss of some of his people. On the morning of the 26th, just before daybreak, he resumed his interrupted journey. On the 27th, at dawn, he crossed the Leewumbu, and the whole of that day and the day following his route was through a forest of fine myombo, intersected by singular narrow plains, forming at that season of the year so many quagmires. On the 29th he entered Mgongo Tembe, and formed the acquaintance of the Chief Malewa. On the 1st of February, after a very necessary halt of two days at Mgongo Tembe, with an addition to his force of eight pagazis and two guides, and encouraged by favorable reports of the country in front, he entered Mangura in Usukuma, near a strange valley containing a forest of borassus palms, thence by way of Igira, through the magnificent plain of Luwamberri, and across the Itawa River on its western verge. On the 9th he crossed the Nanga ravine, and the next day arrived at the Seligwa, flowing to the Leewumbu, and, following its course for four miles, reached the hospitable village of Mombiti.
On leaving the Leewumbu—or the Monangah River, as it is also called—Stanley struck northerly across a pathless country seamed with elephant tracks, rhinoceros wallows, and gullies which contained pools of gray, muddy water, and on the morning of the 17th arrived at eastern Usiha. Usiha is the commencement of a most beautiful pastoral country, which terminates only in the Victoria Nyanza. From the summit of one of the weird gray rock-piles which characterize it, one may enjoy that unspeakable fascination of an apparently boundless horizon. “On all sides,” says Stanley, “there stretches towards it the face of a vast circle replete with peculiar features, of detached hills, great crag-masses of riven and sharply-angled rock, and out-cropping mounds, between which heaves and rolls in low, broad waves a green, grassy plain, whereon feed thousands of cattle scattered about in small herds.”
On the morning of the 27th, five days later, Stanley had reached Gambachika, in North Usmau. This place is nineteen miles from the village of Kagehyi, his point of destination on Lake Victoria.
In speaking of his last day’s march, Stanley says: “The people were as keenly alive to the importance of this day’s march, and as fully sensitive to what this final journey to Kagehyi promised their weary frames, as we Europeans. They, as well as ourselves, looked forward to many weeks of rest from our labors and to an abundance of good food.
“When the bugle sounded the signal to ‘take the road,’ the Wanyamezi and Wangwana responded to it with cheers, and loud cries of ‘Ay indeed! ay indeed! please God!’ and their good will was contagious. The natives, who had mustered strongly to witness our departure, were effected by it, and stimulated our people by declaring that the lake was not very far off—‘but two or three hours’ walk.’
“We dipped into the basins and troughs of the land, surmounted ridge after ridge, crossed watercourses and ravines, passed by cultivated fields, and through villages smelling strongly of cattle, by good-natured groups of natives, until, ascending a long, gradual slope, we heard, on a sudden, hurrahing in front, and then we too, with the lagging rear, knew that those in the van were in view of the great lake!
“Presently we also reached the brow of the hill, where we found the expedition halted, and the first quick view revealed to us a long, broad arm of water, which a dazzling sun transformed into silver, some 600 feet below us, at a distance of three miles.”
In a short time the expedition had entered the village of Kagehyi, and Prince Kaduma, chief of Kagehyi, induced by one Sungoro, an Arab resident, proffered its hospitalities to the strangers. In summing up, during the evening of his arrival at this rude village on the Nyanza, the number of statute miles travelled by him, as measured by two rated pedometers and pocket watch, Stanley ascertained it to be 720. The time occupied—from November 17, 1874, to February 27, 1875, inclusive—was 103 days, divided into seventy marching and thirty-three halting days—an average of a little over ten miles a day.
