At Viboko I was compelled to wait, the shore in front being impracticable and the heights behind unscaleable, till Mswa sent down the canoes, which I had requested by numerous envoys. My boys were badly in need of a rest, the work having been very trying since Kahanama's, and the fever from which I was suffering made it equally acceptable to me. In the afternoon two natives arrived, saying that a muzungu[#] was coming down to meet me with ten canoes. After inquiries as to what kind of Askaris he had, etc., etc., I gathered that it must be a Belgian official, so killed the fatted calf in the guise of a skinny sheep and sundry osseous frames masquerading as dorkings, and then plunged for the second time into the turgid flow of Zola's Rome, to cleanse my French of probable Swahili trespassers. I even exhumed a tie, and having produced a menu that exhausted all the possible combinations and permutations of an African larder, awaited anxiously his arrival, picturing to myself the joys of a little talkee-talkee once more. A stiff southerly breeze evidently was delaying them, and it was not till after dark that we heard the wild canoe-song of the flotilla, which had rounded the point and caught sight of our camp-fires. Giving a last twirl to my moustache and a nautical hitch to the Poolesque garment aforesaid, and composing my features to the iron-clad smirk indispensable to such occasions, I advanced to do the honours, and grasped the hand of a dirty, greasy little negro clad in, or rather smeared over with, a prehistoric piece of cloth! Here was my muzungu! here my gallant Belgian staggering under the gold braid of a hat of that peculiarly unbecoming shape affected by French guards and German tourists, and majestically trailing the orthodox 30-franc sword! Inquiries elicited the fact that the parasitic relic of Manchester above mentioned established a valid claim to the title of muzungu in these parts. However, he had brought the canoes, so I readily forgave him, and next day we arrived at the old Soudanese station, Mswa. Mswa is the name of the chief, who is a vassal of Tukenda, and Mahagi is the name of the country itself. He is an intelligent old native, and remembered seeing that ubiquitous officer, Bt.-Major Vandeleur, D.S.O., when he crossed from Kibero, and was delighted at the photograph which forms the frontispiece to his book entitled Campaigns on the Nile and Niger. Here let me recommend travellers to take out photographs of men who have gone before them; the effect is wonderful on those natives who can grasp the idea, though, of course, to many natives a picture is merely a piece of paper. It convinces those who can understand it that you are speaking the truth--a possibility so utterly foreign to the native mind. After exchanging presents he retired, promising to bring more boys in the morning to work the canoes; but in the morning none were forthcoming, and after waiting some time while Mswa rushed frantically round the country, shouting to his people, who walked off into the grass and laughed at him, I concluded that he was either incompetent or trying to make a fool of me, and, to his consternation, manned the canoes with my own men and started. As I expected, enough men were immediately forthcoming, but too late, and I held on my way.
[#] Muzungu: white man.
We did not reach Mahagi till after dark. Here the hills again recede from the lake-shore, leaving an alluvial plain from one to two miles wide, which is densely populated by Lures, while in the hills there are numerous villages of Balegga. Tukenda is the big man, whose influence reaches from south of Mswa to Boki; he has a small herd of cattle and large flocks of goats, and his people are evidently flourishing and very friendly. So dense is the population that the natives have been emigrating down the lake, and have started new villages on the unoccupied sand-spits. At Boki a grand old tusker came sailing by the camp, and after a stern chase and much expenditure of powder, condescended to strike his colours. He was a perfect specimen of the Toro type above described, standing 11 ft. 1 in. at the shoulder, with a forefoot of 62 in., and measuring 5 ft. 6 in. round the elbow, while his tusks were 6 ft. 10 in. and 7 ft 1 in. long, weighing respectively 72 lbs. and 76 lbs. A small patch of forest about two miles by one mile comes down from the hills to the lake-shore, and as my boys had heard elephant there when cutting wood, I went for a stroll after the midday heat of the sun. Never have I seen a more delightful or interesting scene; countless herds of elephant had trampled down the undergrowth, leaving vast shady chambers joined in all directions by galleries. Some of these chambers were fully an acre in extent, and every vestige of vegetation underfoot had been crushed into a level carpet, upon which it was a pleasure to walk. As one entered these delightful retreats, troops and troops of monkeys lined the branches and gazed on us with fearless curiosity; while two or three hundred of the beautiful black-and-white colobus monkey performed the most amazing acrobatic feats overhead. Emerging on the far side I saw a herd of ten elephant. They were standing in long grass, but fortunately there was a small ant-hill close by; climbing up this I found them all with ears widespread advancing in line towards me, and had it not been for the fortuitous existence of this point of vantage they would have walked right on top of us, the grass being about 8 ft. high. They presented a glorious spectacle as they came sailing along, all canvas set (I can find no other word to express the motion of an elephant in grass), ten old tuskers, their ivory now and again gleaming white above the grass; on they came till, when within thirty yards, one turned and gave me a chance. He dropped to the shot, but quickly recovered; succumbing, however, after two more. I damaged three more considerably before exhausting the magazine, and then dashed off in pursuit, passing one which had dropped about five hundred yards off, and reached an ant-hill from which I could see number three evidently very sick. I dropped him with a forehead shot, but he recovered, and eventually reached the forest carrying another ten bullets. Here I followed again, but it was impossible to keep his spoor owing to the perfect maze of tracks, and after wandering around for some time, I climbed up an ant-hill with a large funnel down the middle. From this elevation I saw him standing not more than fifteen yards away. I fired the 10-bore, which staggered him, and knocked me down the funnel, but I scrambled out again just in time to give him the second barrel, which brought him down at the same time that I once more retired into my Stygian retreat; a 3 in. ridge of crumbling earth 15 ft. from the ground is not the most advisable basis from which to fire a 10-bore paradox. All these elephant were of the same type, huge solid beasts with shortish, thick tusks; 6 ft. 10 in., 7 ft. 3 in., 5 ft. 6 in., 5 ft. 6 in., 6 ft. 4 in., 6 ft. 5 in., and weighing 76 lbs., 78 lbs., 56 lbs., 56 lbs., 60 lbs., and 61 lbs. respectively.
The next day I found the fourth that I had hit very hard. He had fallen within two hundred yards of the other two, but owing to the long grass I had not seen him. His tusks weighed 49 lbs., and measured 6 ft. and 5 ft. 10 in., making a total of 633 lbs. for the day.
Between Boki and Munyagora there is a ten-mile stretch of inhospitable scrub covered with a species of acacia, with huge white thorns springing in pairs from hard bulbous excrescences. Formerly there was a settlement named Mjamori about half way, but the chief Akem has fled with his people to Munyagora; he told me that he had fled from the Belgians. I here made the discovery that "Billygee" is a generic term for the Congo officials, and not, as I had previously imagined, the name of an individual. From Munyagora to Igara, which lies at the bend of the river, the country is thickly populated. The Lures build very primitive shelters and surround each village with a scherm of thorn-tree; they do not appear to cultivate the soil, but breed large numbers of goats, which look very sleek and comely. The country, which is very barren and parched, is admirably adapted to that abominable quadruped, which is never so happy as when confined to a little sand and the rancid smell of its own kind.
I was an object of the greatest curiosity, especially to the ladies of these communities, who came in large numbers to inspect me (front seats at bath time being in great request), and who, whether from a ridiculous sense of modesty or a laudable desire to do honour to the occasion, donned over and above the national costume of a small piece of string tied round the waist, a hopelessly inadequate apron of dried grass: a garment that, from the simplicity of its cut and the small quantity of material employed in its composition, I should have no hesitation in classing with the species of female extravagance known, I believe, to the fair sex as tailor-made. The men, who seem to be of a hopeful disposition, spend much time in making wicker baskets resembling two lobster-pots fastened together like a cottage loaf; these they leave in the river tied to sticks and without bait. I saw many hundreds of these, and large numbers of natives visiting them, but only one fish, though my olfactory sense warned me of the vicinity of at least one more. They have a pretty little myth about buying food from the Balegga for fish, and as they do not kill their goats and certainly had not been buying lately, I cannot imagine what they live on; but I do know that in six hours they removed every scrap of five large bull elephant, hides, bones, and all; a small trifle of about twenty tons; so conclude they live a kind of boa-constrictor's existence. Many of the young men aggravate the natural ugliness of their faces by inserting pieces of glass about 5 in. long in their under-lip. One and all carry small bows, with reed arrows tipped with long thin spikes of iron neither barbed nor feathered. Most of the chiefs and elders are obviously of different race, some having the Galla features more or less pronounced. Here at the north end of the lake one emerges quite suddenly from the "Bantu" peoples to the Nilotic, and the line of division is wonderfully sharply defined. There are numbers of reedbuck and nsunu, and in the bush a small very red oribi of which I failed to procure a specimen. I also saw a herd of hartebeeste, and shot a cow; they closely resembled the Lichtenstein, though the rump was not so white, and the horns lie closer together and stand more erect than those of Lichtenstein. Mr. Cape tells me that Jackson's hartebeeste, which it appears to resemble in other respects, is a considerably larger beast; so that it is to be hoped that he will be able to take a skull and hide home for identification.
CHAPTER XVIII.
WADELAI TO KERO.
I arrived at Wadelai on October 1st, and found Lieut. Cape, R.A., in command; the boma is built on a small hill overlooking the miniature lake, and is slightly south of Emin's old site. Here, as elsewhere, the drought had been very serious, and the country consequently looked bare and uninviting. After Rhodesia, B.C.A., and Northern Rhodesia, it was difficult to believe that this land of administrative chaos had been occupied for six years. The mail arrived three weeks overdue, and some loads which had or ought to have been already a month on the road, were three weeks afterwards still untraceable, although the whole distance is only a fortnight's march, while station loads sent off yet three weeks earlier were still unheard of. Nowhere has the Government made any effort to introduce even bananas, much less fruit-trees, vegetables, wheat, or rice; no system of mail service has been organized, and no regulations as to import, duties, etc., had been issued. At Toro I asked for information about the transit dues, naturally objecting to pay the ordinary export duty of 15 per cent. on ivory which I had obtained outside the Protectorate. My request was ignored, and at Wadelai I was met by a demand for duties based on regulations apparently issued for our benefit, but by an error of judgment bearing a date subsequent to our crossing the frontier. From this I can only gather, either that the possibility of the country becoming a trade-route (one of the raisons d'être, I presume, of the railway) had never been entertained, or that it was part of the penny-wise, pound-foolish policy that robs officials of their hunting trophies, and maintains, at the preposterous figure of 14 rupees 8 annas a month, a large number of Waganda boatmen on the Nile, where they die like flies of dysentery brought on by unsuitable food. The country is quite unsuited to these Waganda, who are all banana-eaters, millet being the staple food; and this, coupled with the great difference in altitude, is killing them by dozens, while the banks of the Nile itself are lined with capable canoemen, who could be engaged at 3s. a month; 14 r. 8 a. a month to raw natives, many of whom are mere boys, is sufficient in itself to damn any country's future which will be dependent on its agriculture. Where would B.C.A. be with wages for raw labour at £1 a month? It is an uphill fight now at 3s. rate; 8 r. a load from Kampala to Fajao, a fourteen days' march, what produce will bear transport rates like this? Similarly the pay of the Soudanese is absurd; they actually do not know what to do with their money; and the only result of the late rise in their pay is that they no longer cultivate on their own account, but buy everything at exorbitant rates from the natives. They would have been equally contented and equally well off with half the sum, the effect of the other half being increased drunkenness and a general rise in the price of native produce. The Government should have its own plantations or make allotments to the station natives, instead of the present system of money rations, as it will be very difficult to induce the natives to work while they can sell enough produce at exorbitant rates to obtain their few luxuries, and in the near future to pay their hut-tax. Another gross piece of folly was the introduction of the rupee instead of the English currency.
It was very pleasant to find some one to talk to again; in six weeks one finds out what a terribly uninteresting fellow one is. After a rest of three or four days spent in waiting for the overdue mails and the arrival of the Waganda canoe fiasco, Lieutenant Cape took me out to see the Shuli country and for a general trot round, the pièce de résistance to be an old bull giraffe that Sheikh Ali, the local potentate, reported to be in his neighbourhood. My host was fortunate enough to be able to leave the station for a few days, though we were hampered in our movements by his having to keep within a day's march. This, I believe, was the second time he had succeeded in getting away for a day or two in his year's residence. The really important work of inspecting the country and winning the confidence of the natives had to give way to the soldierly occupation of sorting mails, and retailing beads and yards of cloth, which could be equally well done by an Indian at 10 or 15 r. a month. This playing at shop is, as far as I could judge, the sole raison d'être of these stations, and perhaps a desire on the part of the Government to show the unfortunate officer who has been inveigled into this Downing Street-warranted paradise what an insignificant thing he and his wants (at home we should say necessaries of life) are compared with a Dinka's boots or a Baluchi's ginger. The whole transport of the Protectorate has been paralyzed to supply a miserable mob of Baluchis with rations which their white officers would gladly have bought at their weight in gold, and who have been, are, and will be utterly useless in the country. Heaven knows what they have cost, and Heaven, I presume, knows why they were brought, for I am sure no one else does. There was not one single pound of flour in any station that I passed through, and no white man had been able to obtain a load of the common necessaries of life for months, because what little transport there was had been monopolized to hurry through the Soudanese belts, blankets, comic opera uniforms, and boots, which they take off and give to their boys to carry when they walk. One gallant officer amused me much by telling me that the one touch of civilization of the past year had been a ginger-pudding made from a surplus ounce of the Indians' rations.