[#] They turned up seven years later, the natives having kept them for me till a Government station was established.
The river, which is here one vast sea of grass, the opposite bank being quite invisible even from an eminence of 20 ft., continually branches inland in the form of long, narrow, meandering lagoons, which, I suppose, are apologies for rivers in this part of the world. As some of them are several miles in length, progress is very difficult, and every moment I dreaded to see a new one. However, I successfully dodged most of them, but had some trouble with one a mile broad, which we eventually passed by wading, the water being in places up to my boys' necks. At one time my small boy, with my revolver, prismatic compass, and coat, disappeared completely, but was extricated by an obliging Dinka of about 6 ft. 7 in. The prevalence of crocodiles, and a slimy bottom pitted with elephant-holes, did not facilitate matters.
Enormous numbers of Dinkas came to see me beaten by this obstruction; and after two hours' exhausting conversation in signs, during which I displayed all my remaining trade goods, I had still failed to induce a guide to show me the way across. In native fashion they all wanted to see what I would do. At last, utterly disgusted, I started to wade, intending to swim if we could not manage otherwise, as I dare not waste the two or three days that would be necessary to march round. When they saw that I was quite determined, several came with me and showed me the shallowest path across. They were hugely delighted when I presented them with a Jubilee medal and some beads, but said that they dare not go any further, as the next village was not their village, signifying that if they went they would be speared. A short march soon brought us to the village in question. The natives were rather nervous at first, but soon brought us plenty of rotten fish and a little milk. Here my surviving Ruanda man succumbed to the attacks of the mosquitoes, which defied description; he had been ailing for some time, and being too desperate to keep them off, he was literally sucked dry. It was absolutely necessary to turn in half an hour before sunset and to make all the preparations possible for the night. I piled all my belongings round the edge of my net, and kept a green wood fire burning at each end: then I lay inside, smoked native tobacco (of remarkable pungency), and prayed for morning. As soon as the sun went down they started operations. It was like having a tame whirlwind in one's tent. They could not possibly have been worse: had there been thousands more it would not have mattered, as not a single one more could have found room on any exposed part of one's anatomy. Every night two or three hundred contrived to enter my net; I have no idea how. The most pernicious and poisonous kind was a very small black mosquito, that might possibly have penetrated the mesh. I used to turn out in the morning feeling perfectly dazed from the amount of poison that had been injected during the night. The natives of the country obviate the nuisance by lining their huts with a deep layer of burnt cow-dung, in which they lie. They also smear a paste made of this ash and cow's urine all over their bodies. The women carefully collect all the dung and spread it out to dry. In the evening, when the cattle are brought in to be milked, they burn it. The smoke serves to keep the flies from the beasts during the milking. Then all the ash is collected and placed in the huts.
Following the river, we made good progress till a halt was called by the presence of a stupendous old bull elephant with magnificent tusks, who was dozing on the path. We shouted to him to get out of the way, and he slowly turned round, stalked towards us, and when within fifty yards curled up his trunk, spread his ears, rumbled and came. Crash went every load, and I found myself in a medley of tent and boxes, pots and pans, with a double .303 loaded with soft-nosed bullets, looking at him in amazement; but the shot fortunately turned him, and away he went, screaming and trumpeting, giving my blankets a parting kick as he swung round. This is the only time I have seen one aggressive without due cause. Owing to the absence of water and the quantity of plum-trees, of which they are very fond, there were enormous numbers of elephant along the river-bank, and except where they were on the path we scarcely noticed them, every day passing several herds. I was wild when I thought of the prodigious but futile efforts that Sharp and I made round the volcanoes to find them, when we had porters galore, while now, having no porters, I looked upon them as a nuisance, owing to the delay they caused. Here, and for some days afterwards, close to the line of bush, there was a well-defined river with a stream of one and a half to two miles an hour, which would be navigable for flat-bottomed punts. The numbers of hippo were incredible, literally thousands and thousands. At every two hundred yards there was a great purple bank of twenty, fifty, or a hundred lying with their bodies half exposed, while others were wandering about in every direction on the vegetation, islands, and mud-banks. They practically ignored our presence, though we often passed within ten yards of them. Other game was scarce; I only saw a few waterbuck, bushbuck, and once the track of a giraffe, though plenty of guinea-fowl, and a few ducks and geese; but these were of little use, as, on opening my last box of shot-cartridges, they fell to pieces, being eaten through and through with rust. At one village a native produced a recent number of Black and White, carefully wrapped up in a piece of goatskin, and pointed out with great glee a picture of Dreyfus; as I had no interpreter, and the natives no longer understood my ten words of pigeon Arabic, I have not the remotest conception how it came into this outlandish spot. It was very difficult to obtain supplies, owing to the general famine, so I shot another elephant, which came down to water near camp, and made my boys smoke a three-days' supply of meat. The following day we saw two large herds of elephant, one mainly composed of good bulls. Some, showing splendid ivories, refused for a long time to leave the path. We were compelled to stone them. Then, making good progress, we camped opposite a ferry, which led to an island where I could see some natives. They quickly collected, and in a few minutes there was a crowd of several hundred, with a solid hedge of spears glinting in the sun. At first they were very doubtful; then, suddenly realizing that it was all right, they swarmed across, yelling and whooping, and in one minute my diminutive camp was one howling black mass. At first things looked rather anxious, but some slaps on the back and a long-winded repetition of arâm, which appears to be the local form of salaam, quickly spread a broad grin over the mass; they brought me a present of about thirty large fish, and there was soon a brisk trade in milk, of which they had an unlimited supply, so that all my men had a good wholesome feed. They proved very friendly, and I much regret that our conversation was strictly limited to arâm, which, however, appears to have considerable significance, being invariably responded to by much grunting and a peculiar clucking noise like the soliloquy of an old hen. Every one in Dinka-land carries a long-bladed spear, a pointed fish-spear, and a club made of a heavy purple wood, while the important gentlemen wear enormous ivory bracelets round their upper arm; strict nudity is the fashion, and a marabout feather in the hair is the essence of chic. They are all beautifully built, having broad shoulders, small waist, good hips, and well-shaped legs. The stature of some is colossal. It was most curious to see how these Dinkas, living as they do in the marshes, approximate to the type of the water-bird. They have much the same walk as a heron, picking their feet up very high, and thrusting them well forward. Their feet are enormous. Their colossal height is, of course, a great advantage in the reed-grown country in which they live. They are the complete antithesis of the pigmy, as the country in which they live is the complete antithesis of the dense forest that is the home of the dwarfs. Many of these strange African peoples form most interesting reading to a student of evolution. The adaptability of a race to its surroundings is wonderful. The favourite pose of a Dinka is in reality the favourite pose of a water-bird. It is most interesting to note that surroundings should produce a similar type in families as remote from one another as birds and men.
My headman woke me in the morning with the pleasing information that my home-sick criminal had disappeared in the night, so the body of my tent had to go by the board, a severe loss, as afterwards transpired. During this day's march and a part of the next, the population changed entirely, the well-bred Dinkas giving place to a miserable fishing-folk, who are presumably the Woatsch spoken of, as reported to live here, by Sir S. Baker. They are an extraordinary people, of a very low stage of civilization, and showed abject terror at the sight of beads and cloth. I imagine they took me for a god, as each village, man, woman, and child, persisted in escorting me for a mile or so, doing the honours with a deafening chant, and continually pointing to the sun; this, though very flattering, hardly acted as a sedative on my fever, and I was heartily thankful to leave them behind; at one spot there must have been fully five hundred men who formed a solid phalanx round me, and sang at the top of their voices for a distance of two miles. They appeared not to have the remotest conception of barter, and hid their faces when I produced any of my trade goods, so that it was impossible to buy any food. Even during the night small bands approached to a respectful distance and chanted, and at one watering-place about a hundred loathsome hags danced a wild fandango around me, uttering the shrillest cries conceivable, and accompanying them with a measured flap-flap of their long pendant dugs; then, as a grand finale, all threw themselves on their faces at my feet, and with one ear-piercing shriek dispersed into the bush, leaving me under the impression that I was in the Drury Lane pantomime, outside two bottles of champagne. Never in all Africa had I met such embarrassing and impossible people. In the intervals of these trying performances I noticed that the country was slightly more elevated, and that there was a profusion of large trees. This would be the best position for a Government station. But it soon settled down again into the dismal flat of sun-baked clay, thorn, and palm-scrub, which in places recedes, leaving large plains that are flooded in ordinary seasons; here there were numbers of small buck, and I saw a beautiful male Cobus maria. It was a most handsome little beast, and was running with a large herd of other waterbuck, and had the same action as the Uganda kob. I was much disappointed, from lack of porterage, to lose the opportunity of procuring such a rare specimen. The variety of aquatic birds was enormous; amongst others, a beautiful black-and-white ibis; but I looked in vain for Balæniceps rex. The kites, marabouts, and vultures were a great nuisance. On several occasions a kite actually took my dinner out of the frying-pan on the fire while the cook's back was turned.
After the singing gentry, it was with no little relief that I met some respectable Dinkas again with large herds of cattle; they, too, appeared to be ignorant of the elements of barter, and it was only after an hour's dumb-crambo business that they brought an antediluvian fish as a feeler; this I immediately bought at great price, and then they realized that there was something in the idea, and brought a good supply. They have absolutely none of the fear of, and respect for, the white man that one finds all over Africa except in the regions of Exeter Hall legislation, but merely regard one as a great joke, and, on the whole, not such a bad sort of fool. They are all the most inveterate, pertinacious, and annoying beggars, and evince the greatest astonishment when one refuses to distribute one's belongings gratis amongst them. One in particular amused me, a 6 ft. 4 giant, who took a fancy to my last pair of trousers, and when, pleading modesty, I refused his request, he stamped and howled like a spoilt child. He then proceeded to make himself very objectionable, and forced his way into my tent, refused to quit, and brandished his club. This was too much, so I suddenly took him by the scruff of the neck and the seat of where he wished my trousers to be, and, trusting in the superiority of a beef and beer diet over one of fish and thin milk, to his intense amazement, ran him out of camp, and imparted a final impetus with a double-barrelled drop-kick, backed by a pair of iron-shod ammunition boots. I was surprised to find how weak he was, despite his colossal stature. The others took it as a huge joke, and an hour afterwards he returned and behaved himself very well, on the morrow guiding me for some miles.
From here the country changes completely, opening out into a limitless plain, dotted here and there with clumps of borassus palm, growing on small, flat-topped eminences which are the only possible camping-grounds. The channel (which I christened the Gertrude Nile, and which had never hitherto been more than half a mile from the bush) bends away to the west and spreads out into large marshes, though its course is still obvious, and the plain, which is a mass of matted, half-burnt reed, hippo and elephant holes, is scored with numerous channels of water and mud, and towards the bush, which is soon at least fifteen miles from the river, is covered with small ant-hills. There is an enormous population on these plains, with huge herds of cattle and goats, though it is impossible to say where they live, and they are wonderfully clever at hiding their cattle, and light smoke fires to prevent them from making a noise. I marched for hours without seeing a native, but when pitching camp I could see hundreds and hundreds advancing in Indian file from all directions, or if I took a line that led far from water, a group would appear like magic to put me right. There was something uncanny about knowing that one was watched by hundreds without ever seeing more than an occasional individual perched on one leg, the other foot resting on his knee, on the top of a far ant-hill, and looking like a long black stork. The first day that I camped in the plain I was visited by at least a thousand natives.
With the exception of one or two slight fracas with my boys, they were well-behaved, and I bought a large supply of fish; but the second day about fifteen hundred turned up, and having nothing to sell, became very obstreperous. They tried to steal, so I ordered the vicinity of my tent to be cleared, and hustled several fairly roughly. One turned on me, and I knocked him down, cutting my hand badly on his teeth. They took my rough handling very well, but immediately resented any movement of my boys, and one silly young blood danced a dangerous war-dance, brandishing his spear round one of my Askaris, till I broke it for him, and gave him two or three reminders with a heavy hippo-whip. They then became very much excited, and I spent the rest of the afternoon with my hand on my revolver, momentarily expecting a general émeute, when, no doubt, we should have fared badly. Fortunately, there were two respectable old gentlemen who did their best to keep the younger blades quiet. One man bolted with a bit of cloth; a miss-fire from my .303 saved his life, and one of the old gentlemen, not knowing that I had pulled the trigger, signed to me to hold, and had the cloth fetched back; he then succeeded in clearing the camp of about half the turbulent rabble, for which I was very thankful. They then began to slowly file off, but about a hundred, including some of the most noisy ruffians, remained; these I quickly cleared with a heavy whip in one hand and my revolver in the other. They did not like the whip and smiled at the revolver, evidently thinking it a sort of club, till I shot a confiding marabout which was watching the proceedings, when there was a race for first place to less dangerous quarters.
On the march we came upon a belated hippo out on the plain, and there was a great hunt, about two hundred natives chasing him and plunging their spears into his body, till at last, covered with blood, he turned to bay, when I finished him off with a shot in the head.
A few miles further on I shot a Senegal hartebeeste, which gave us a supply of meat. On the third day we succeeded in shaking off our too attentive friends, and although we marched for six hours only made seven miles, owing to the necessity of feeling one's way round the swamps and the difficult nature of the ground. In many places the burnt vegetation was of the consistency of coke, and severely cut my boys' feet. The plain still widened, and the Gertrude Nile tended more decidedly towards the west. The bush was no longer visible, but to the west of the swamps there appeared to be a slight ridge with a dense covering of borassus.