EMIN AND CASATI ARRIVE AT OUR LAKE SHORE CAMP.
Brief summaries of our incidents of travel, events in Europe, occurrences in the Equatorial Provinces and 1888.
April 29.
Albert
Nyanza. matters personal, occupied the best part of two hours, after which, to terminate the happy meeting, five half-pint bottles of champagne—a present from my friend Greshoff, of Stanley Pool—were uncorked and duly drank to the continued good healths of Emin Pasha and Captain Casati.[13]
The party were conducted to the boat, which conveyed them to the steamer.
April 30th.—Marched Expedition to Nsabé, a fine dry grassy spot, fifty yards from Lake and about three miles from Nyamsassi Island. As we passed the anchorage of the steamer Khedive, we found a detachment of the Pasha's Soudanese drawn up on the Lake shore on parade to salute us with music. The Pasha was dressed in his uniform coat, and appeared more of a military man than last night.
Our Zanzibaris, by the side of these upright figures, seemed altogether a beggarly troop, and more naked than ever. But I was not ashamed of them. It was by their aid, mean as they appeared, that we had triumphed over countless difficulties, and though they did not understand drill, nor could assume a martial pose, the best of these Soudanese soldiers were but children to them for the needs of a Relief Expedition. After this little ceremony was over I delivered to the Pasha thirty-one cases of Remington ammunition, and I went aboard the steamer, where I breakfasted on millet cake fried in syrup, and a glass of new milk.
The steamer proved to be the Khedive, built by Samuda Brothers in 1869, and is about ninety feet long by seventeen or eighteen feet wide; draught five feet. Though nearly twenty years old, she is still serviceable though slow. The upper works look well enough, but she is much patched below water, I am told.
On board, besides the Pasha, were Casati, Vita Hassan, a Tunisian apothecary, some Egyptian clerks, an Egyptian 1888.
April 30.
Albert
Nyanza. lieutenant, and some forty Soudanese soldiers, besides a fine crew. Sometimes, from the familiar sounds heard during moments of abstraction, I fancied myself at Alexandria or on the Lower Congo; but, looking up, and taking a sweeping view around, I became assured that I was on board of a steamer afloat on Lake Albert. As we move slowly about a mile and a half from the shore northward, the lofty mass of the plateau of Unyoro is to our right, and to our left is an equally formidable plateau wall, the ascents and descents of which we know so well. By a glance at the mass of Unyoro, which is darkly blue, I see the reason Baker gave the name of Blue Mountains to our plateau wall, for were we steaming along the Unyoro shore the warm vapour would tint our plateau wall of similar colour. When we have left Nyamsassi Island astern, a damp sheet of rock, wetted by the stream we crossed yesterday in our descent, glistens in the sun like a mirror, and makes it resemble a clear falling sheet of water. Hence Baker gave it the name of a Cascade, as seen by him from the eastern side.
Dr. Junker and Dr. Felkin, especially in the Graphic numbers of January, 1887, made us expect a nervous, wiry, tall man of six feet, or thereabouts, but in reality Emin Pasha does not exceed 5 feet 7 inches in height. I remember that the former was anxious that the trousers ordered in Cairo for his friend should be long enough in the extremities. About six inches were cut off the legs before they fitted. He tells me he is forty-eight years old. In appearance he does not indicate such an age; his beard is dark almost to blackness, while his activity would befit a man of thirty or thirty-five.
The Pasha tells me that he has visited Monbuttu, but, like the travellers Schweinfürth, Casati, Piaggia, and Junker, he has not made any astronomical observations, but confined himself solely to the compass survey. The meteorology of this climate, however, has received greater attention, as might be expected from his methodical habitude of mind.