The night before we parted we spent together. Shaw played some tunes on an accordion which I had purchased for him at Zanzibar; but, though it was only a miserable ten-dollar affair, I thought the homely tunes evoked from the instrument that night were divine melodies. The last tune played before retiring was "Home, sweet Home."
The morning of the 27th we were all up early: There was considerable vis in our movements. A long, long march lay before us that day; but then I was to leave behind all the sick and ailing. Only those who were healthy, and could march fast and long, were to accompany me. Mabruk Saleem I left in charge of a native doctor, who was to medicate him for a gift of cloth which I gave him in advance.
The horn sounded to get ready. Shaw was lifted in his litter on the shoulders of his carriers. My men formed two ranks; the flags were lifted; and between these two living rows, and under those bright streamers, which were to float over the waters of the Tanganika before he should see them again, Shaw was borne away towards the north; while we filed off to the south, with quicker and more elastic steps, as if we felt an incubus had been taken from us.
We ascended a ridge bristling with syenite boulders of massive size, appearing above a forest of dwarf trees. The view which we saw was similar to that we had often seen elsewhere. An illimitable forest stretching in grand waves far beyond the ken of vision—ridges, forest-clad, rising gently one above another until they receded in the dim purple-blue distance—with a warm haze floating above them, which, though clear enough in our neighbourhood, became impenetrably blue in the far distance. Woods, woods, woods, leafy branches, foliage globes, or parachutes, green, brown, or sere in colour, forests one above another, rising, falling, and receding—a very leafy ocean. The horizon, at all points, presents the same view, there may be an indistinct outline of a hill far away, or here and there a tall tree higher than the rest conspicuous in its outlines against the translucent sky—with this exception it is the same—the same clear sky dropping into the depths of the forest, the same outlines, the same forest, the same horizon, day after day, week after week; we hurry to the summit of a ridge, expectant of a change, but the wearied eyes, after wandering over the vast expanse, return to the immediate surroundings, satiated with the eversameness of such scenes. Carlyle, somewhere in his writings, says, that though the Vatican is great, it is but the chip of an eggshell compared to the star-fretted dome where Arcturus and Orion glance for ever; and I say that, though the grove of Central Park, New York, is grand compared to the thin groves seen in other great cities, that though the Windsor and the New Forests may be very fine and noble in England, yet they are but fagots of sticks compared to these eternal forests of Unyamwezi.
We marched three hours, and then halted for refreshments. I perceived that the people were very tired, not yet inured to a series of long marches, or rather, not in proper trim for earnest, hard work after our long rest in Kwihara. When we resumed our march again there were several manifestations of bad temper and weariness. But a few good-natured remarks about their laziness put them on their mettle, and we reached Ugunda at 2 P.M. after another four hours' spurt.
Ugunda is a very large village in the district of Ugunda, which adjoins the southern frontier of Unyanyembe. The village probably numbers four hundred families, or two thousand souls. It is well protected by a tall and strong palisade of three-inch timber. Stages have been erected at intervals above the palisades with miniature embrasures in the timber, for the muskets of the sharpshooters, who take refuge within these box-like stages to pick out the chiefs of an attacking force. An inner ditch, with the sand or soil thrown up three or four feet high against the palings, serves as protection for the main body of the defenders, who kneel in the ditch, and are thus enabled to withstand a very large force. For a mile or two outside the village all obstructions are cleared, and the besieged are thus warned by sharp-eyed watchers to be prepared for the defence before the enemy approaches within musket range. Mirambo withdrew his force of robbers from before this strongly-defended village after two or three ineffectual attempts to storm it, and the Wagunda have been congratulating themselves ever since, upon having driven away the boldest marauder that Unyamwezi has seen for generations.
The Wagunda have about three thousand acres under cultivation around their principal village, and this area suffices to produce sufficient grain not only for their own consumption, but also for the many caravans which pass by this way for Ufipa and Marungu.
However brave the Wagunda may be within the strong enclosure with which they have surrounded their principal village, they are not exempt from the feeling of insecurity which fills the soul of a Mnyamwezi during war-time. At this place the caravans are accustomed to recruit their numbers from the swarms of pagazis who volunteer to accompany them to the distant ivory regions south; but I could not induce a soul to follow me, so great was their fear of Mirambo and his Ruga-Raga. They were also full of rumors of wars ahead. It was asserted that Mbogo was advancing towards Ugunda with a thousand Wakonongo, that the Wazavira had attacked a caravan four months previously, that Simba was scouring the country with a band of ferocious mercenaries, and much more of the same nature and to the same intent.
On the 28th we arrived at a small snug village embosomed within the forest called Benta, three hours and a quarter from Ugunda. The road led through the cornfields of the Wagunda, and then entered the clearings around the villages of Kisari, within one of which we found the proprietor of a caravan who was drumming up carriers for Ufipa. He had been halted here two months, and he made strenuous exertions to induce my men to join his caravan, a proceeding that did not tend to promote harmony between us. A few days afterwards I found, on my return, that he had given up the idea of proceeding south. Leaving Kisari, we marched through a thin jungle of black jack, over sun-cracked ground with here and there a dried-up pool, the bottom of which was well tramped by elephant and rhinoceros. Buffalo and zebra tracks were now frequent, and we were buoyed up with the hope that before long we should meet game.
Benta was well supplied with Indian corn and a grain which the natives called choroko, which I take to be vetches. I purchased a large supply of choroko for my own personal use, as I found it to be a most healthy food. The corn was stored on the flat roofs of the tembes in huge boxes made out of the bark of the mtundu-tree. The largest box I have ever seen in Africa was seen here. It might be taken for a Titan's hat-box; it was seven feet in diameter, and ten feet in height.