We had a delightful trip, killing a good elephant, 71 lbs. and 61 lbs. (broken tusks); but the giraffe turned out to be an unsociable old gentleman and not on view; we were always nearly coming on him, but never quite came. The country was full of rhino, the difficulty being to avoid them. One day natives came in to report an elephant in the Shuli country, and we hurried off to the spot. Here we found that he had killed a woman who had met him unexpectedly on the path. Unfortunately we failed to avenge her, as, after following for some hours, we lost the spoor owing to the hardness of the ground. The following morning they brought us news of buffalo, which turned out to be three rhino lying under a tree. They started off, making a great variety of strange sounds, and after a stern chase we slew the old bull, which stood 5 ft. 5 in. at the shoulder, and measured 12 ft. in length. Unfortunately we had also wounded one of the cows during the bombardment, and so had a long tramp to finish her. On the morrow we again had news of buffalo, and this time found, but they escaped without a shot, Cape's .303 missing fire. For some reason or other they travelled hard, and just as we were coming close again, a confounded old cow rhino, which was evidently sleeping close to their track, charged Cape most viciously. Fortunately he turned her at three yards with a double barrel from the .303, and she rushed past me with a youngster, tail and nose in air and squealing like a steam-whistle, in hot pursuit. I dropped her with a spine-shot from my .303, but to our annoyance she recovered after dragging her hind quarters for fifty yards, and led us a long and exhausting dance in a desperate sun. She was a saucy old lady, but our battery was too much for her, and she never charged again, although after the first burst she made no frantic efforts to go away. A very long shot from Cape's 8-smoothbore glanced off her shoulder. Curiously enough, I had an exactly similar experience with my rhino on the Chambesi: the first shot from my 4-bore glanced off the shoulder, although a broadside shot at thirty yards and striking 18 in. below the ridge. Of course both these guns fired spherical balls. In Cape's case I distinctly heard the bullet strike, and then again strike the trees far away. I regret to say we never caught the calf; he stayed behind in the grass at an early stage of the fracas; he was the funniest-looking little chap imaginable, and reminded me of the mock turtle; if taught to follow, he would have made quite a sensation in the Park. The elephant, which measured 11 ft. 6 in. at the shoulder, 58 in. round the fore foot, 18 ft. round the edge of the ear, 4-½ ft. from the earhole to the outside edge, was chiefly remarkable for the complacent way in which he received a really extraordinary sequence of lead; we kept up a running bombardment over about half a mile; and it was not till Cape put an experimental shot into his leg that we could induce him to take any notice of us. This brought him round sharp, and I popped a shot in, in front of the eye, which knocked him down. Even then he made desperate efforts to get up again, and would have succeeded had it not been for the slope on which he was lying, and the fact that his legs were up-hill.
About this time life became rather a burden, owing to the terrific storms that broke over us nightly. The first one removed my tent as you would a candle-extinguisher, and left me exposed to a torrent of ice-cold water (one can hardly call it rain, as it comes in one solid mass, like an inverted bath). This experience--and a more awful one I cannot conceive--made us both rather nervous, and the greater portion of the succeeding three nights was spent in anxious wakefulness, desperate hammerings at pegs and holding of poles, to the accompaniment of a running and not too polite commentary on Nature and her ways, sustained in a high falsetto to keep up one another's courage. But this became rather wearying, and we consequently returned to Wadelai. The Shulis, whose country lies to the east of the Lures, and extends from the Somerset Nile to about 48 north, are similar in appearance to their Lure neighbours. They hunt game by means of nets and regularly organized battues, and seem to be fair shikaris compared to the other people in this part of Africa. They appear to be braver than the Lures, who are the most abject curs. Near Mahagi I have seen elephant's droppings on the roofs of the huts, and the fields trodden flat, and this in spite of there being a number of guns in the country, while we did succeed in inducing some Shulis to follow the spoor of the murderous elephant above-mentioned, but at the chatter of a monkey they hurriedly disappeared, and it needed ten minutes to collect them again. They build very neat villages, laid out on a definite plan, and very superior to the primitive hayricks of the Lures. An outer ring of huts, with the spaces between stoutly palisaded, encloses alternate rings of grain-stores and huts, while the centre is occupied by a dining and "jabbering" place, formed by piling stout poles in tiers; these, like most of their other possessions, being stained with a kind of red clay. In some central position a large pigeon-loft is built, in which all the small babies are stowed and shut up for the night; a very excellent idea, and one that might be introduced at home. Many of the young bloods wear neat head-dresses made of human hair, with an outer layer of beads and culminating in a peak in front, which is tipped with an old cartridge-case or other gaudy object. They paint their bodies in gruesome patterns with red-and-white clay, and do not distress themselves about the proprieties. They still own considerable herds of cattle and enormous flocks of goats and sheep, and their cultivations are very extensive. Numbers of chiefs came to pay their respects, glad of the opportunity of doing so without passing through Lure country, which they must do to visit Wadelai. One old gentleman arrived with a cane-bottomed chair, which he said had once belonged to Emin; he also distinctly remembered Sir Samuel Baker. His two chief wives came and called on us; they were pleasant-featured women, and scrupulously clean, but their appearance was much spoilt by the inevitable piece of glass and enormous earrings. This wearing of a piece of glass in the lower lip is very curious, and peculiar, I believe, to the Shulis and Lures.
On October 22nd, giving up all hopes of my loads, I sent back my Manyema via Kampala, and embarking in my man-of-war with five trusty Watonga, my small boy from Ujiji, and my two Wa Ruanda, I started down stream once more, and profiting by a strong current, made considerable progress, and encamped on the left bank by one of the first villages of the Madi. The Madi are a fine race, closely allied to the Lures; they surround their villages with a dense thorn hedge, and the only means of ingress is through small holes 2 ft. high. They make beautiful arrows with barbs of a great variety of patterns.
Here the mosquitoes were terrible, and as they were small enough to penetrate the mesh of my net, sleep was out of the question, while my wretched natives spent the night in reminiscences of the happy lands flowing with milk and honey now left far behind. On the following day the river widened considerably, in some places resembling a lake rather than a river. In the vicinity of Bora, the old Egyptian station, it must be at least four miles broad, and the current is almost imperceptible, except where the sudd is so extensive as to leave only one or two small channels. There are enormous numbers of hippopotami in these reaches, and they constitute a very real danger to navigation. One of the Uganda canoes, in emerging from the Unyama, a river opposite Dufilé, was attacked, and only escaped by running into the sudd. Captain Delmé Radcliffe, the officer commanding this district, was attacked in the steel boat; and an infuriated old bull chased me for fully half a mile, at one time being within five yards of the stern, but a well-placed shot from my revolver eventually induced him to desist from the pursuit. The Madi attack them with a harpoon-head, fastened to the end of a shaft by a twist of the rope to which it is attached, and so arranged as to detach itself after the delivery of the stroke from the shaft, which remains in the hand of the hunter, while the rope is free to run out until the float, which is tied to the other end, can be thrown overboard. The ridge of hills that commences at Wadelai gradually increases in height, till at Bora the hills become quite imposing; then they rapidly diminish, and a few miles south of Dufilé vanish completely, giving place after a few miles of level ground to some isolated kopjes. On the left bank a range of hills runs parallel to the Nile, opposite Wadelai, but at a distance of about twenty miles from the river; then they bend to the east and merge into the formidable peaks that dominate Dufilé and the Karas rapids. On the bank of the river, and even in mid-stream, there are some picturesque kopjes black with cormorants. In the vast wastes of weed and water through which one passes it is easy to trace the formation of the formidable barriers which further north render navigation almost impossible. There is a small plant, similar in form to our well-known London Pride, which grows in the water, and is entirely independent of the soil, deriving its sustenance from the water by means of a tangle of roots resembling seaweed, and which descend to a depth of 1 ft. 6 in. to 2 ft. This plant grows in enormous quantities at the mouth of the Semliki, and in the placid reaches of the Victoria Nile, and single plants and even large masses are carried by the wind and current, and eventually are caught by a snag, a bed of water-lilies, or a bank of sand; they are soon followed by others, and by degrees the mass becomes enormous. Then grass-seeds are dropped by birds or driven by the wind, and the mass is quickly matted by the grass; driftwood, plants, and refuse of all sorts soon accumulate, and the rotting remains and mud that settles from the stream form a solid bottom. Then come the papyrus and the dense reeds, and what was originally a stick or a water-lily has in a few months become a solid island. There are numbers of Uganda kob and hartebeeste on the banks, but remarkably few ducks or geese. The neighbourhood of old Dufilé appears to be very densely populated, and at my camp, near the old site, I was visited by numbers of natives, who told me that the Belgian post was further down, below the commencement of the rapids, and that the Belgians had been recently fighting a tribe living in the hills.
The following morning, after narrowly escaping shooting the rapids, owing to a mistake in Bt.-Major Vandeleur's map, which transposes the river Unyama and the stream which flows in farther north, I reached Afuddu, a post built in the bottom of a crater several miles from anywhere, and surrounded by dense bush. A more concise summing up of Uganda methods than that afforded by the placing of Afuddu would be difficult to conceive. Subsequent inquiries elicited the monstrous fact that the site had been chosen because of a magnificent shady tree which serves as an open-air dining-room: in fine, two white men and a hundred odd Soudanese are condemned to live in a mosquito-bush situated in a hollow surrounded by hills, two hours from the river and off the main road to Fort Berkeley, for the shade afforded by a tree during meal-times. Naturally the site is now to be changed, which means the loss of a year's work. I was much distressed to find Lieut. Langton of the 21st Lancers, the O.C., in bed with black-water fever. Fortunately two days later Dr. Walker arrived from Lamogi, and when I left all danger was past. The Commandant of new Dufilé sent over wine and other luxuries for the invalid, and sent me a most pressing invitation to go and shoot with him, which, owing to my anxiety to arrive at Fort Berkeley, and obtain the latest news, I was unable to accept.
After three days' wallowing in the unheard-of luxury of glass, china, silver, milk and butter galore, for which Afuddu is justly famous, I set off with thirty Madi porters provided by a neighbouring chief, and crossing the line of hills north of the Unyama, camped on the Asua, which in the rains is a very formidable river. On the road I saw my first herd of giraffe, but owing to the necessity of avoiding delay, the country being uninhabited, and consequently foodless, I had to rest content with a long look through my binoculars. I was much impressed with their immense height and extraordinary action. The road to Fort Berkeley crosses the plateau several miles east of the Nile, and passes through a stony, inhospitable country, the haunt of numerous rhinoceros, antelope, and elephant. Scores of rocky streams flow west to the Nile. In the neighbourhood of the large hills, four days from Afuddu, their banks are clothed with dense masses of bamboo. The third day out we passed through the deserted fields and villages of a chief, Krefi, who, owing to some difference as to the porterage of food with the authorities at Fort Berkeley, has moved with all his people from the road towards the interior. This has been a sad blow to the transport of the region, as formerly a relay of porters and food were to be obtained, whereas now the porters from Afuddu have to do the whole five days to Alimadi's villages, and that without being able to obtain food on the road, an innovation which they naturally resent. At Alimadi's I found a detachment of Soudanese from Fort Berkeley buying food. Alimadi himself is a decent old chief, and still owns a few head of cattle; I believe the only herd in the vicinity that has survived the depredations of the Dervishes. Between here and Fort Berkeley the road traverses the sites of numerous villages, the inhabitants of which have either fled or been slain. Fort Berkeley is quite in keeping with the other stations on the Nile, having been carefully placed under a brow which commands the interior of the zariba. A swamp to the west between the fort and the river, and an extensive swamp to the south, add to the general salubrity of the situation. The nearest food-centres are two days' march, with the consequent result that half the garrison is constantly away buying food. The Maxim has been mounted behind a large acacia tree, which effectively screens it from an imaginary enemy, but at the same time confines its firing area to the inside of the fort, and gives a general finish-off to the situation. The station has been provided with an Egyptian clerk, who can only write Arabic, which is not required, and whose duties are consequently limited to holding a tape-yard at the Stores issue, for which herculean task he receives the very respectable sum of a hundred rupees a month.
Captain Dugmore, D.S.O., the officer in command, received me with every kindness, and nearly broke my heart by assuring me that I should spend Christmas with him. I had counted on being home by Christmas; a vain hope, as it afterwards transpired, and his prediction came near being fulfilled. He was engaged in completing a magnificent water-wheel à la Chinoîse, compounded of broken-up chop-boxes and empty tins. The extraordinary relics employed in its construction and the ingenuity displayed filled me with amazement. But, alas! its life was short, for after three days of service it collapsed in a high wind, which, considering that the only elements available for the construction of its axle were some green wood and a sardine-tin, was not remarkable. Here, as elsewhere, all the crops had failed, owing to the drought, and Captain Dugmore's wheat, though cherished with loving care, was gradually disappearing before the ubiquitous termite. As the launch was away, we were in the ignominious position of being dependent on the Belgians for a ferry across the river. Shabby! shabby! is the only word for our methods in Africa. At present on the Nile we have one steel boat refloated off Mahagi, and below the cataracts one steam-tub. Add to this a few useless Waganda canoes, one of which, after an initial cost of, say, £100, carries one load, and all of which are warranted to spoil half their contents owing to the enormous leakage inevitable in canoes consisting of planks sewn together by fibre, and you have our Upper Nile fleet; while the Belgians, whose transport difficulties are at least equal to ours, have a large steamer and a dozen fine steel whale-boats, with several more in construction and on the road. The majority of the Belgians (there are about twenty on the Nile) are well lodged in burnt-brick houses, while, with the exception of a weird construction in sun-dried brick at Fort Berkeley, all our officers are housed, like the natives, in grass and mud huts. The sum of the situation is this. The Belgians under Chaltin reached the Nile, drove out the Dervishes from Redjaf after some stiff fighting, followed them up, and eventually, by repeated activity and the effective occupation and fortification of Kero on the 5-½° parallel, compelled them in self-defence to evacuate Bohr. They then put their steamer on the river, and by a reconnaissance towards the Bahr-el-Ghazal, ascertained that the Dervishes had left the country, presumably to join the Khalifa in Kordofan. In the meanwhile Colonel Martyr's expedition arrives on the scene, and after establishing four posts--Wadelai, Lamoji, Afuddu, and Fort Berkeley--in the most unsuitable positions, succeeds in launching a small steam-tub capable of holding about ten men, and in which it is impossible to put both wood and supplies at the same time. Everybody, the officers of the expedition included, imagined that an effort was to be made to effect a junction with the Egyptian forces--an excellent opportunity of acquiring a maximum of "kudos" at a minimum of cost, a chance that does not come to all men--and the chance slid by.
From Bohr to Gaba Shambeh there is an excellent waterway, and at the same time that we were bolting from the mosquitoes and imaginary difficulties, some Senegalese with a French officer were flying the tri-colour at Gaba Shambeh, and were advancing their interests via Abu-kuka towards Bohr. After such dismal failures, and in view of the prevailing chaos, it is hardly to be wondered at that the Commissioner found it advisable to issue general orders to the effect that any officials writing home to their friends, and mentioning abuses in letters which should appear in the Press, would be held responsible. At Fort Berkeley I seemed to have come to a full stop. The steam-tub, with Dr. Milne and Capt. Gage, who had suddenly started with Commandant Henry and the Belgian steamer on a reconnaissance towards Khartoum, was still away, and though they had been absent more than two months there was no reliable news. But the arrival of Inspector Chaltin, the victor of the Dervishes at Redjaf, opened up new possibilities. In response to his cordial invitation Captain Dugmore and I repaired to Redjaf in a Belgian whale-boat, and in the intervals of an amazing sequence of various wines and spirituous liquors, Inspector Chaltin kindly invited me to join him at Kero, adding that he would make inquiries about the possibility of going from Bohr overland, and offering me every assistance in his power.
Accordingly, a few days later I found myself again at Redjaf, the guest of the charming commanding officer of the station, Commandant Colin. Here I learnt that I was to proceed slowly down river in the company of M. Beaupain, the judge, a most ardent sportsman, and to whom I am indebted for many kindnesses. The mushroom-stone mentioned by Baker in Ismaïlia is still extant, though hardly of the dimensions depicted. The Dervishes had thrown up enormous earthworks, and the outline of the old station and the foundations of the houses are still visible; while, as at Bedden, lime-trees and oil-seed acacia imported by Emin are flourishing. A few hours' paddling brought us to Lado, which is a howling waste in a wilderness of swamps. Here the river is already of considerable breadth and a network of enormous islands, many of which were covered with crops of red millet, which looked very promising despite the drought. The agricultural possibilities of these thousands of isles and islets immediately after flood as a rule are very great; at highest river most are inundated, but sowings after the first fall give enormous crops, the soil, which is composed of alluvium and decaying vegetation, being of extraordinary richness. The formation of many is very curious, resembling nothing so much as a coral island, a solid bank of varying thickness enclosing a lagoon, with the stream flowing all round. Lieut. Engh received me with the greatest hospitality, and we spent several delightful days in this historic waste. There is here a fine herd of cattle looted from the Dervishes. The earthworks of the old station are enormous, and need a garrison of fully one thousand men. At present there is a small palisaded enclosure in one corner which contains the station, and the approaches are commanded by two Krupp guns and a Maxim posted on a brick tower. But Inspector Chaltin talks of removing the main station from Kero to Lado, owing to its greater agricultural possibilities, in which case the whole extent of the earthworks will be utilized. Between here and Redjaf are enormous swamps, which further north on the Kero road become still more extensive, in places opening out into vast lagoons. The lagoon immediately to the south of Kero is about fifteen miles in circumference, though not more than half a mile wide at the river neck. To the east lie the hills of Gondokoro, and beyond them other ranges of hills with a large population and many cattle. These are the last eminences till we reach the hills of Kordofan, and the country settles down into one vast dismal flat, a wilderness of water, weed, and scrub; the haunt of thousands of hippo, elephant, and dismal marabout storks; the paradise of malaria, misery, and mosquitoes.
Six hours' paddling brought us to Kero, the frontier station of the Congo Free State, on the 5-½° parallel, which is their temporary limit as arranged by treaty with the French. The station is a marvellous example of energy, although only in existence for one year. A large and well-built brick house for the inspector has been completed, and the majority of the whites, to the number of about ten, are housed in baked-brick cottages. There are several large whale-boats, and more in course of erection. At one time there were a thousand Askaris, a number which has been reduced since the reconnaissance of Commandant Henry towards the north, which ascertained that the Dervishes had retreated via Rumbek and Mashra er Rek towards Kordofan. The high bank on which the station stands being the promontory at a sharp bend of the river, is being rapidly eaten away by the stream, and the water-edge is now thirty yards further back than a year ago. This shows to what an extent and with what marvellous rapidity the Nile changes its course. The quantity of fish is prodigious, and an Anzande fisherman keeps the station daily supplied with fish of the best quality. Some attain to a weight of 200 lbs., and several enormous specimens have been obtained by dynamite explosions which are the evening amusement. The Anzande method is very ingenious. The fisherman selects a shallow spot, and with a clever knack throws a funnel-shaped net weighted round the rim, and attached by the apex to a cord, by means of which he feels if any fish have been covered; he then slowly draws in, and the weights, thus closing together, form a bag with the fish struggling in the meshes. Several times I saw him take a dozen large fish at a time, and half an hour's work in almost the same spot sufficed to provide fish for all the white men, and many to spare. The food question is one of considerable difficulty, grain being only obtainable at a distance of several days, which necessitates the continued absence of half the garrison. However, the natives managed to eke out their daily ration of one small cup of red millet with fish, an occasional hippo or antelope, and a kind of plum which grows in profusion in the district; it has a hard outer shell, then one-tenth of an inch of sweet fibre which leaves an after-taste of quinine, and finally a hard stone containing a kernel that cooked tastes like a mixture of prussic acid and quintessence of quinine; however, the natives devour them with avidity, and also extract an oil which I am told is quite tasteless--a fact that, after tasting one of the kernels, I am prepared to take on trust. There is also a small berry tasting like an old apple, from which they make a form of bread, which at first sight I pardonably mistook for clay. There was plenty of snap about the Congo State soldiers, who paraded daily with drums and bugles, and it was easy to see by the general efficiency and the progress made in a short time that the country was under a strong man, the whole Nile district forming a very agreeable contrast to the Tanganyika chaos.