A company of seventy rifles was immediately despatched to reconnoitre further, and in ten minutes there was quite a sustained fusillade, deep booming of muskets against sharp volleys of Remingtons and Winchesters. Soon after two of our men were carried to camp wounded, who reported that the enemy were Wara Sura. The rifles appeared to have pressed the strangers hard; the firing was getting more distant, but in an hour’s time we had two more wounded, and a Zanzibari youth, and a Manyuema youth killed, and almost immediately, as I thought of preparing a strong reinforcement, Uledi and the rifles walked into camp accompanied by the chiefs of the enemy, who turned out to be Manyuema raiders, the followers of Kilonga-Longa!
Their story was that a band of fifty gunmen, accompanied by about 100 spearmen, had crossed the Ituri River, and pushing east had arrived about twenty days ago near the edge of the forest, having crossed the Semliki River, and had, with their usual tactics, commenced raiding when they caught sight of some men with guns whom they guessed to be Wara Sura, and had fired upon them. The strangers had fired in return and killed one of them, wounded another mortally, and four others severely. The rest had fled to their settlement, crying out, “We are finished,” whereupon they had then sent men to be in ambush along the route, while the community at the settlement was repairing its defences. On seeing the head of the party coming along the road, they had fired, killing two and wounding four slightly, but when their friends began to rain bullets on them, they cried out “Who are you?” and were answered that they were Stanley’s men, and firing at once ceased, and an acquaintance ever disastrous to us was then renewed. Though we should have wished to have had a legitimate excuse for annihilating one band of the unconscionable raiders, we could not but accept their apologies for what had clearly been an accident, and gifts were exchanged.
We were told that they had met gangs of the Wara Sura, but had met “bad luck,” and only one small tusk of ivory rewarded their efforts. Ipoto, according to them, was twenty days’ march through the forest from Bukoko.
Ruwenzori was now known as Virika by the Awamba of this district.
Since emerging from the Awamba forest near Ugarama, we had journeyed along a narrow strip, covered with prodigious growth of cane-grass reaching as high as fifteen feet. From eminences it appears to be from three to eight miles wide, separating the deep, dark forest. From the immediate vicinity of the mountain, notwithstanding that the grass was of the height and thickness of bamboo, the path was infinitely better, and we had but to cross one or two ravines and watercourses during a march. A feature of it was the parachute-shaped acacia, which in the neighbourhood of the Nyanza was the only tree visible. Near the forest line this tree disappears, and the vegetation, riotously luxuriant and purely tropical, occupied the rest of the valley.
The streams we had lately crossed were cold mountain torrents with fairly wide beds, showing gravel, sand, cobble stones, specimens of the rocks above, gneiss, porphyry, hornblende, sandstone, steatite, hematite, and granite, with several pumice lumps. Three of the principal rivers, called the Rami, Rubutu, and Singiri, were respectively of the temperatures 68°, 62°, and 65° Fahrenheit.