Our Zanzibaris concluded that though the people of Equatoria might be excellent breeders, they were very poor soldiers. The Egyptians had been so long accustomed to overawe the natives of the Province by their numbers and superior arms, that now their number was somewhat reduced and overmatched by natives, they appeared to be doubtful of reaching peaceful countries; but they were so undisciplined, and yet so imperious, they would speedily convert the most peaceful natives to rancorous foes.
With the Pasha I had a conversation on this date, and I became fully aware that, though polite, he yet smarted under resentment for the explosion of April 5th. But the truth is that the explosion was necessary and unavoidable. Our natures were diametrically opposed. So long as there was no imperative action in prospect we should have been both capable of fully enjoying one another’s society. He was learned and industrious and a gentleman, and I could admire and appreciate his merits. But the conditions of our existence prohibited a too prolonged indulgence in these pleasures. We had not been commissioned to pass our days in Equatoria in scientific talk, nor to hold a protracted conversazione on Lake Albert. The time had come, as appointed, to begin a forward movement. It was not effected without that episode in the square at Kavalli. Now that we were on the journey I discovered to my regret that there were other causes for friction. The Pasha was devoured with a desire to augment his bird collections, and thought that, having come so far to help him, we might “take it easy.” “But we are taking it easy for manifold reasons. The little children, the large number of women burdened with infants, the incapable Egyptians, the hope that Selim Bey will overtake us, the feeble condition of Jephson and myself, and Stairs is far from strong.” “Well, then, take it more easy.” “We have done so; a mile and a half per day is surely easy going.” “Then be easier still.” “Heavens, Pasha, do you wish us to stay here altogether? Then let us make our wills, and resign ourselves to die with our work undone.” The thunder was muttering again, as behind the dark clouds on Ruwenzori, and another explosion was imminent.
1889.
May 26.
Ugarama.
I knew he was an ardent collector of birds and reptiles and insects, but I did not know that it was a mania with him. He would slay every bird in Africa; he would collect ugly reptiles, and every hideous insect; he would gather every skull until we should become a travelling museum and cemetery, if only carriers could be obtained. But then his people were already developing those rabid ulcers, syphilis had weakened their constitutions, a puncture of a thorn in the face grew into a horrid and sloughy sore; they had pastured on vice and were reaping the consequences. The camps soon became so filthy that they would breed a pestilence, and we should soon become a moving sight to gods and men. Carriers were dying—they were not well treated—and then, why then, we could not move at all by-and-by. He was in Heaven when his secretary, Rajab Effendi, brought him new species; he looked grateful when there was to be a two days’ rest, sad when he heard we should march; and when we should reach a nice place near Ruwenzori, we should stay a week, oh, splendid!
Now, all this made me feel as if we were engaged in a most ungrateful task. As long as life lasts, he will hold me in aversion, and his friends, the Felkins, the Junkers, and Schweinfurths will listen to querulous complaints, but they will never reflect that work in this world must not consist entirely of the storage in museums of skulls, and birds, and insects; that the continent of Africa was never meant by the all-bounteous Creator to be merely a botanical reserve, or an entomological museum.
Every man I saw, giant or dwarf, only deepened the belief that Africa had other claims on man, and every feature of the glorious land only impressed me the more that there was a crying need for immediate relief and assistance from civilisation; that first of all, roads of iron must be built, and that fire and water were essential agencies for transport, more especially on this long-troubled continent than on any other.
Alas! alas! With this grand mountain range within a stone’s throw of our camp—not yet outlined on my map—that other lake we heard so much about from Kaibuga, our Mhuma chief, not yet discovered, the Semliki Valley, with its treasures of woods and vegetable productions, not yet explored, and the Semliki River, which was said to connect the upper with the lower lake, not yet traced. To hear about wonderful salt lakes that might supply the world with salt; of large-bodied Wazongora, and numbers of amiable tribes; of the mysterious Wanyavingi, who were said to be descended from white men; to be in the neighbourhood of colossal mountains topped with snow, which I believed to be the lost Mountains of the Moon; to be in a land which could boast of possessing the fabulous fountains de la lune, a veritable land of marvel and mystery, a land of pigmies and tall men reported from of old, and not feel a glad desire to search into the truth of these sayings. He—the Maker who raised those eternal mountains and tapestried their slopes with the mosses, and lichens, and tender herbs, and divided them by myriads of watercourses for the melted snow to run into the fruitful valley, and caused that mighty, limitless forest to clothe it, and its foliage to shine with unfading lustre—surely intended that it should be reserved until the fulness of time for something higher than a nursery for birds and a store-place for reptiles.
The abundance of food in this region was one of the most remarkable features in it. Ten battalions would have needed no commissary to provide their provisions. We had but to pluck and eat. Our scouts reported that on every hand lay plantations abounding in the heaviest clusters of fruit. The native granaries were full of red millet, the huts were stored with Indian corn; in the neighbouring garden plots were yams, sweet potatoes, colocassia, tobacco.
1889.
May 27.
Ugarama.
From the spur of Ugarama, where we halted on the 27th, we could see that up to 8,000 feet of the slopes they were dotted with several scores of cultivated plots, and that the crooked lines of ravines were green with lengthy banana groves, and that upland and lowland teemed with population and food, and other products. Through a glass we were able to note that a thick forest covered the upper slopes and ridges, with an elevation of 9,000 up to 12,000 feet; and that where there was no cultivation the woods continued down to the base. The wild banana was seen flourishing up to a lofty limit, and graced the slopes denuded of trees, and towered over the tallest grass. The Ruwenzori peaks appeared shrouded by leaden clouds, and the lower mountain ranges played at hide-and-seek under the drifting and shifting masses of white vapour. By aneroid, Ugarama is 2,994 feet; and by boiling point, 2,942 feet above the sea. The immediate range, under whose lee the spur ran out to Ugarama village, was, by triangulation, discovered to be of an altitude of 9,147 feet.