At last, on April 2nd, we sailed from Kituta in the Good News.
Mr. Mohun and a large number of his Zanzibaris were with me. Consequently there was not much room. The Good News was originally the property of an English Mission on the Lake, and when the Mission moved to find healthier quarters, the steamer was sold at a ridiculously low figure to the African Lakes Corporation, although, I believe, the Administration of Northern Rhodesia offered a larger sum. A large hole had been knocked in her bottom and filled up with cement; and the machinery was tied together with string and strips of sardine-tins. Vast cockroaches were in possession, and night was made hideous by their peregrinations; some of them were almost as large as mice, and it was a great strain on one's mosquito-curtain when they climbed up the sides in droves. Mr. Mohun endured them all night, but I, in a very few minutes, gave up the unequal fight and retired on deck.
Our noble captain, who was quite new to the lake, did not know where he was going, nor did he care. His idea of navigating a boat consisted in sleeping in his bunk until the natives told him we had arrived somewhere; even then, he never inquired what the place was. His only anxiety was lest he should oversleep himself and miss a meal.
In the evening we arrived at the Congo Free State post of M'liro, which is at the south-western corner of the lake, a few miles over the Anglo-Congolese boundary.
On board I discovered two of the boys who had gone up with Sharp, and who had been left at Kituta. At Kituta I had given instructions that they were to be sent back; so the following morning, having crossed the lake to a wooding station, on the eastern shore, I turned them off with their pay and cloth to buy food on the road; but one of them, on adventure bent, slipped on board again. During the night, finding the sleeping-places rather limited, he calmly threw a crate containing twenty-eight fowls, belonging to Mr. Mohun, overboard.
On April 4th we recrossed the lake and arrived at the French Mission Station of M'bala. This station is of several years' standing, and the Fathers, who are seven in number, with several lay brothers, have built themselves a substantial and comfortable home. They have also built a magnificent cathedral, capable of holding many hundred devotees. I am afraid it would need a large expenditure of cloth and medals to fill it. There are also elaborate workshops, and the gardens, which are very extensive, are planted with numbers of flourishing fruit trees. The coffee-shrubs were particularly remarkable for their size and yield. On the walls were many gigantic sable heads. The horns of one that I measured were 46-½ in.; while many others were almost as long. All these antelope had been shot in the immediate vicinity by native hunters employed on the mission station. It was here that the record sable head which Mr. Boyd presented to me was obtained; and it is evident that these sable must be the largest in the world. They also had a few rhino horns, which had been shot in the neighbourhood.
They gave us a tremendous dinner, with a bewildering profusion of courses and some luscious kinds of fruit, amongst which the ceil-de-boeuf was particularly soothing; and delicious Algerian wine flowed freely round the festive board. There are two or three white sisters at the station; it was very sad to see how ill they looked.
After dinner, some natives brought in a large catch of fish, amongst which was a splendid kind of white-fleshed salmon. The Fathers informed me that this fish, at that time of the year, runs up the small streams, and jumps up waterfalls of considerable height.
The charming point about these white Fathers is that they never ply one with fantastic accounts of the work which they are doing. When we regretfully took our leave, they presented us with several large baskets of potatoes, tomatoes, pomegranates, and many other fruits and vegetables.
Along this shore there are enormous dug-out canoes, and we were carried to and from the steamer in one very fine specimen, probably 40 ft. in length.