Another short march of two and a quarter hours brought us to a village of thirty-nine round, conical huts, which possessed elaborate doorways, here and there ornamented with triangles painted red and black. The Elais gunieensis palm was very numerous near the village.
1889.
May 25.
Ugarama.
On the next day we emerged out of the forest, and camped in the strip of grass-land in the village of Ugarama, in N. lat. 0° 45′ 49″ and E. long. 30° 14′ 45″. The path had led along the crests of a narrow, wooded spur, with ravines 200 feet deep on either hand, buried by giant trees. The grass-land here did not produce that short nutritive quality which made Kavalli so pleasant, but was of gigantic spear-grasses, from 6 to 15 feet high.
The Egyptian Hamdan made his reappearance at this camp. Left to himself he had probably discovered it hard to die alone in the lonely woods, and had repented of his folly. By this time we had become fully sensible of the difficulty we should meet each day while these people were under our charge. Low as was my estimation of them before, it had descended far below zero now. Words availed nothing, reason could not penetrate their dense heads. Their custom was to rush at early dawn along the path, and after an hour’s spurt sit down, dawdle, light a fire, and cook, and smoke, and gossip; then, when the rear-guard came up to urge them along, assume sour and discontented looks, and mutter to themselves of the cruelty of the infidels. Almost every day complaints reached me from them respecting Captain Nelson and Lieutenant Stairs. Either one or the other was reported for being exacting and too peremptory. It was tedious work to get them to comprehend that they were obeying orders; that their sole anxiety was to save them from being killed by the natives, or from losing their way; that the earlier they reached camp the better for everybody; that marches of two or three hours would not kill a child even; that while it was our duty to be careful of their lives, it was also our duty to have some regard for the Zanzibaris, who, instead of being two or three hours on the road were obliged to be ten hours, with boxes on their heads; that it was my duty also to see that the white officers were not worn out by being exposed to the rain, and mud, and shivering damp, waiting on people who would not see the benefit of walking four or five miles quickly to camp to enjoy twenty to twenty-one hours’ rest out of the twenty-four. These whining people, who were unable to walk empty-handed two and a half or three hours per day, were yellow Egyptians; a man with a little black pigment in his skin seldom complained, the extreme black and the extreme white never.
The Egyptians and their followers had such a number of infants and young children that when the camp space was at all limited, as on a narrow spur, sleep was scarcely possible. These wee creatures must have possessed irascible natures, for such obstinate and persistent caterwauling never tormented me before. The tiny blacks and sallow yellows rivalled one another with force of lung until long past midnight, then about 3 or 4 A.M. started afresh, woke everyone from slumber, while grunts of discontent at the meeawing chorus would be heard from every quarter.
