My Wanyabuga friends provided me with two guides, who, after wasting two hours in visiting obscure villages, all of which were deserted, and answering my protests at our zigzag route by ambiguous allusions to marshes, eventually landed me within four hundred yards of where I had started, and suggested that I should camp. Having with difficulty persuaded them that I was annoyed, which they evidently considered unreasonable on my part, they smilingly explained that it was far from their homes, and they had hoped to find me other guides. However, vague allusions to the presence of a "kiboko"[#] convinced them of the inexpediency, not to say positive danger, of further nonsense, and they gaily proceeded on their way, chortling hugely at the success of what they thought a very merry prank. They led me to a deserted village opposite Kasenyi, a small island about a mile from the mainland, and the present headquarters of Katonzi. The Wanyabuga-Balegga market was in full swing, but vanished like mist at my sudden appearance, and it was only by going down to the beach stripped to the waist, and a happy allusion to brothership with "Kapelli," that I induced them to bring their canoes to the shore again. "Kapelli" is the native name of that gallant officer Colonel Lugard, and to have left a name in Africa that opens all doors and all hearts is the finest monument to his exploits that a man can have. They flocked in to see me under Tunja, Katonzi's eldest son, who brought several loads of food, and informed me that Katonzi had left two days before for Toro. They asked all kinds of questions about "Kapelli" and Mr. Grant, who was with Lugard in his expedition to release the Soudanese, and wanted to know why he had never come back, and had the English deserted their country after promising to protect them? I answered all their questions to the best of my ability, and when I showed them Lugard's book and the photograph of Grant, which, to my surprise, they immediately recognized, their delight knew no bounds.
[#] Kiboko: whip made of hippo hide.
The mosquitoes here defy description; even at mid-day I had to eat my food walking about, and my evening and morning toilet, combined as it was with a Dan Lenoesque extravaganza, if performed on the Empire stage would assuredly have brought down the house. I crawled into my mosquito-net with the greatest caution, disposed all my weighty belongings, such as boots and cartridge-bags, in a circle round my bed to keep down the edges of the net, exhausted all my candle-ends in exploding the odd hundred or two that had crawled in with me, and was quickly lulled to sleep by the dismal drone of myriads, happy in the knowledge that they were outside; sleep, gentle sleep, during which I evolved in one short hour from my own insignificant self through the alarming stages of Daniel in the lion's den, and a cold bread poultice, to the stern reality that they were inside; and they were, hundred and hundreds of them. In vain I searched for some hole or possible inlet, and eventually had to resign myself to the inevitable, buoyed up by the meagre consolation that I had discovered that, like the light of the glow-worm, the mosquito is possessed of the properties of the Röntgen rays.
Early the next morning Tunja came to tell me that Katonzi was coming back, and at midday he arrived in person. He is a dismal old nigger, and though somewhat rapacious, not a bad fellow. His first request was to see the wonderful book, and then how I struck a match, an accomplishment that tickled him immensely. He then naïvely asked me to give him my guns, saying that Lugard had given them two guns, but that the Belgians had taken them away. I asked him why all the people were so frightened, and where they had all gone; whereupon he proceeded to recount the same tales of misery and oppression that I had heard the day before, from which I gathered that a Congo Free State official rejoicing in the name of "Billygee" had suddenly swooped down on the country a year ago, and after shooting down numbers of the natives had returned west, carrying off forty young women, numerous children, and all the cattle and goats, and putting a finishing touch to the proceedings by a grand pyrotechnic display, during which they bound the old women, threw them into the huts, and then fired the roofs. Several absolutely independent witnesses informed me that this had been done actually in the presence of Billygee and the gentlemen who accompanied him. Katonzi's two sons, Tunja and Kutaru, were bound and taken away, but released after two months. Kavalli's eldest son is now in their hands, while a younger one escaped to the Balegga. As I have mentioned before, when in Mboga the Balegga told me similar tales; here I was repeatedly given accounts that tallied in all essentials, and further north the Wakoba made the same piteous complaints; and I saw myself that a country apparently well populated and responsive to just treatment in Lugard's time (and that under very trying conditions, owing to the numbers of destitute aliens in the country--to wit, the Soudanese) is now practically a howling wilderness; the scattered inhabitants, terrified even of one another, and living almost without cultivation in the marshes, thickets, and reeds, madly flee even from their own shadows. Chaos--hopeless, abysmal chaos--from Mweru to the Nile; in the south, tales of cruelty of undoubted veracity, but which I could not repeat without actual investigation on the spot; on Tanganyika, absolute impotence, revolted Askaris ranging at their own sweet will, while the white men are throwing their ivory and cartridges into the lake, and cutting down their bananas for fear the rebels should take them; on Kivu, a hideous wave of cannibalism raging unchecked through the land, while in the north the very white men who should be keeping peace where chaos now reigns supreme, are spending thousands in making of peace a chaos of their own. I have no hesitation in condemning the whole State as a vampire growth, intended to suck the country dry, and to provide a happy hunting-ground for a pack of unprincipled outcasts and untutored scoundrels. The few sound men in the country are powerless to stem the tide of oppression.
The departure of my mubaka provided by King Kasagama had taken a great load off my mind; he was too heavy a swell for me to keep pace with, dressed in white breeks, yellow putties, red fez, and three fancy cloths, to say nothing of a red and yellow belt; and his terrible anxiety lest he should miss a chance of putting up a large white umbrella with a green lining was so infectious that finally I found myself watching the clouds with one eye and the mubaka with the other, knowing that at the first ray of sunshine he would emerge from his hut and perform for my edification. In the cloudy intervals he devoured such masses of solid food that even with my experience of native capacity I became quite alarmed, and between the struttings and bursting-point tests, he had very little time to devote to my affairs, so that I was very glad to see the last of him.
Katonzi, after relating his own troubles, and thinking, I suppose, that it was my turn to have a few, proceeded to paint the most gruesome pictures of what was in front. With tears in his eyes he begged me to turn back, saying that if I died the white men would blame him; he informed me that all was wilderness beyond--no food, no paths, all the people dead. Putting his hand to his head, he explained how they had all just done so, lain down and expired.[#] Pressed as to the reason of this general collapse, he eagerly shook his head and murmured "Muungu" (Kismet). Though summing up the majority of these perils as "nigger gibberish," I was rather alarmed at the sudden death business, thinking that perhaps it was smallpox or the Bombay plague; but this, like the rest, was simply imagination. It is strange how natives get these ideas into their heads. I do not think it was gratuitous lying, as all his people, as far as I could see without any other reason than belief in the sudden death, were afraid even to hunt in the direction indicated; and he certainly had nothing to gain by stopping me from going forward, since he had no interest in the country. However, I thought it advisable to buy several days' provisions, and to do this it was necessary to draw the Balegga from the hills; all my overtures had failed so far, and I saw that the only way to start was to lay ground-bait for them by killing elephant or buffalo. With this object in view I sallied forth with a guide who was to take me to the elephant country. He wandered about for two or three hours in country that an elephant would not look at through a telescope, and whenever I said that I wanted elephant, he nodded his head and said, "Oh yes, elephant." Then suddenly, as if a bright idea had struck him, he said, "Oh yes, elephant!" and promptly walked back through camp to a narrow spit jutting out into the lake and about a quarter of a mile distant. As I could see water on both sides and short grass in front, I thought he meant hippo, or was mad, inclining to the latter belief; but no, he was quite confident, and stalked along muttering to himself, "Yes, elephant! Yes, elephant!" (as much as to say, "Who would have thought it?"); and sure enough there were nine elephant in the reeds in the lake at the end of the spit. The place was a mass of vegetation and honeycombed with elephant-holes. I dropped one with a single shot.
[#] I have since realized that he was referring to the sleeping sickness which entered this district at that time.
As I had expected, after a day of very hot sun, the odour was too tempting, and the Balegga swarmed down from the hills and brought me what food I wanted. I went for a stroll in the evening, and came on a small herd of buffalo; they were very small compared with the South African species, and amongst them were three light brown ones, a bull, cow, and three-parts-grown calf. They were very beautiful animals, with a black ridge of hair running along the neck and the top of the shoulders. I shot the bull, and as my pagasi had as much as they could carry, I told the natives to cure the hide and send it with the head into Toro, so I hope to be able to have it described. When I first saw them I thought they were eland, and it was with the greatest surprise that I found they had a buffalo's head attached. The small one was as light in colour as a reedbuck, and the other two a similar colour round the rump and the belly.[#] I could gather no information from the natives as to whether they had seen others; all they knew was that the buffalo was an evil beast, had once been very numerous, but was now finished.
[#] I have since found, on reference to the British Museum, that they were the Congo buffalo. This proves that their distribution is further East than was imagined. The fact that they were running in the same herd as the black Eastern variety is of considerable scientific interest.
CHAPTER XVII.