1888.
Sept. 30.
Avugadu.
On the last day of September we moved up to above upper rapids of Avugadu, at which camp we discovered wild oranges. There were also wild mango-trees, if we may trust the flowering and foliage. Red figs of a sweetish flavour were very common, but as their shrunk pedicels possessed no saccharine secretions they were uneatable.
A native woman was delivered of a child on the road. She was seen standing over the tiny atom. The Zanzibaris as they came up crowded around the unusual sight, and one said, “throw the thing into the river out of the way.” “But why should you do that when the infant is alive?” asked another. “Why don’t you see that it is white? it must be some terrible disease I am sure.” “Oh Ignorance, how many evils transpire under thy dark shade.” “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” rushed to my mind, as I looked in wonder at the speakers, who, utterly unconscious that they were committing murder, would have extinguished the little spark of life there and then.
Our anxieties at this period were mainly on the account of those suffering from ulcers. There was one wise little boy of about thirteen called Soudi, who formerly attended on the Major. An injury he had received had caused about four inches of the leg bone to be exposed. We had also fifteen cases of small-pox, who mingled in the freest manner possible with our Zanzibaris, and only the suicide, Tam, had thus far been attacked.
1888.
Oct. 1.
Avejeli.
On arriving at Avejeli, opposite the Nepoko, the wife of the Manyuema drummer, a prepossessing lassie, went out to the gardens close by to collect herbs. A band of natives were in hiding, and they pierced her with arrows. Seven of them quivered in her body. Her screams attracted attention, and she was hastily brought in, but even as we were about to inject the ammonium she rolled over, raised her arms, and embraced her young husband in the most touching manner, gave a long sigh, and died. “Oh, ye travellers! who belong to that clique who say the Africans know neither love, affection, nor jealousy. What would you have said to this pitiful death-scene?” We had also a Manyuema woman who was a hideous object, a mass of loathsome pustules, emitting an almost unbearable stench, but her husband tended and served her with a surpassing and devoted tenderness. Death, death everywhere, and on every day, and in every shape; but love, supreme love stood like a guardian angel to make death beautiful! Poor unlettered, meek creatures, the humblest of humanity, yet here unseen, and unknown of those who sing of noble sacrifices, of constancy and devotion, proving your brotherhood with us amid the sternest realities by lulling your loved ones to rest with the choicest flowers of love!
On the 2nd of October we moved up to Little Rapids below the confluence of the Ngaiyu with the Ituri, where a tornado visited us, churned up the generally waveless river into careering rollers, that stretched from bank to bank, with a power and force that disturbed the very bed and muddied the stream until it resembled a wild strip of shallow wind-driven sea, beating on an alluvial shore. Our canoes were dashed one against the other until they promised to become matchwood, while the great forest groaned and roared with the agony of the strife, but in half-an-hour the river had resumed its placid and tender face, and the forest stood still as though petrified.
During a halt on the 3rd, Mr. Jameson’s box, containing various trifles belonging to an industrial naturalist, was opened. Books, diaries, and such articles as were worth preserving, were sealed up for transport athwart the continent; the others, unnecessary to a person in civilization, were discarded.
1888.
Oct. 3.
Bavikai.
Mr. Bonny was despatched with twenty-eight men past the Ngaiyu, to verify my hope that a landing-place I had observed in passing and repassing would lead to the discovery of a road by which I could avoid the devastated wilderness that stretched for nearly 200 miles along the south bank between the Basopo Rapids and Ibwiri. Mr. Bonny, after returning, was pleased to express his surprise at the marvellous dexterity and agility of the scouts, who sprang with the lightness of springing bush antelopes over every kind of impediment, and who in almost every thousand paces gained five hundred ahead of him. A mile and a half from the landing-place on the north bank he had found a fine village surrounded by rich groves of plantains. To this village, called Bavikai, we proceeded more in the hope that we could utilize some road going north-easterly, whence, after sixty miles or so, we could strike on a bee-line course for the Albert.