Half an hour later, all the guards being now on duty, however, the natives essayed another quarter of the camp, but the rifle-shots rang out quickly in reply, and there was a scamper and a rustle heard. In the distance we heard two rifles fired, and an agonised cry, by which we knew that there were some of our incorrigible looters abroad.
Our force was weak enough, in all conscience, not in numbers, but in real strength, for defence and capacity 1887.
Dec. 5.
Babusessé. for bearing ammunition, and these wanderers were always a source of great anxiety to me. It was useless to reason and expostulate; only downright severity restrained them, and as yet, so fresh were we from the horrors of the forest, that I had not the moral courage to apply the screw of discipline; but when I assumed mildness, their own heedless imprudence incurred punishments far more severe than any of us would ever have thought of inflicting.
A heavy rain fell on us during the night, which detained us next morning until eight o'clock. I employed the time in extracting something intelligible respecting the character of the natives in front, but we were all so profoundly ignorant of the language that we could make but little headway. In the endeavour to make herself clear, the woman drew on the ground a sketch of the course of the Ituri. This illustrated one of the strangest facts in African geography that one could imagine. The river was represented as going up to the crest of the watershed, flowing steeply upward parallel with Lake Albert, and finally lifting itself over to be precipitated into the Nyanza! Stupefied by what she said, I kept her by me as we marched out of camp into the open. From the crown of a hill she pointed out, half a mile below, the Ituri River flowing eastward. The stretch in view was an east by south course.
Now here was a deep puzzle. We had crossed from the right bank to the left bank of the Ituri two days previously, in N. Lat. 1° 24': we were now in N. Lat. 1° 28'. Yet the Ituri we saw flowed E. by S. and E.S.S., and my route to Kavalli was obviously south of east.
I declined to perplex myself any more with the problem, or in trying to understand what the woman meant, that the river we had ascended for 600 miles from the Congo flowed to the Nyanza. The only solution possible was that there were two Ituris, one flowing to the Congo, the other into the Nile basin; but both she and her brother stoutly maintained that there was only one Ituri.
1887.
Dec. 5.
Babusessé. We continued on our journey, following a path which dipped down into the valley. We presently stood on the banks of the stream, and the solution was at hand. It was the main Ituri River, flowing south of west! We are all wise after the event.
There was a clumsy, misshapen canoe in the river, and as Saat Tato was an expert canoeist, he was detailed to ferry the caravan over for a reward of 20 dollars. The river was 125 yards broad, about seven feet average depth, with a current of two knots. It was a cataract of this stream whose low thunder we had heard near Mbiri.
The natives of Abunguma, on the left side of the river, watched our operations from a hill-top a mile off, with an air of confidence which seemed to say, "All right, friends. When you are through, you will have to reckon with us." Nothing could be done in such an open land as this without "all the world knowing it." The Abunguma shook their spears bravely at us; the Babusessé occupied every prominent point on the right side of the river. It appeared once or twice as if our manhood was about to be tested on an important scale. There was the comfort, however, that, knowing the natives to be alert and active, we could not be surprised on a pasture slope where the grass around the camp was but three inches high.
Since we had entered Ibwiri we had fared luxuriously—for Africa. We had enjoyed meat and milk daily. We had lived on fowls, young and dried beans, sugar-cane, sweet potatoes, yams, colocassia, tomatoes, brinjalls, melons, plantains, and bananas. On the people the effect was wonderful. They were men in every respect superior both in body and spirit to the gaunt and craven wretches whom the Arab slaves of Ipoto scourged and speared without more than a mild protest. On the whites also the effect had been most beneficial. Though spare, we were no longer meagre and haggard; a little wine would have completed the cure.