Mwengi, the chief, was a gigantic young Mhuma, tall as a guardsman, but quiet and possessed, and his people obeyed him with alacrity. We therefore halted to do a day’s bartering. A fine bunch of bananas could be purchased for ten cowries, and as eight cowries constituted a day’s ration allowance, no one could possibly complain of insufficient food.
An hour’s march beyond Ngoti we began to descend the eastern face of the plateau, and 900 feet below reached a rolling plain covered with leafless and sickly acacia, and were in the country of Uzinja.
1889.
Aug. 15.
Kimwani.
We halted after five hours in Kimwani or Kizinga—Chief Kajumba’s territory. The chief was another tall person of the Wahuma breed, at the time suffering from ophthalmia. When the Waganda invaded his territory a year ago he fled to Unya-Ruwamba, the Urigi district of Ihangiro, and hid himself on an island in the lake, whence, after paying a tribute of cattle to Uganda, he was permitted to return to his own land as a subject of Mwanga, but to find his banana groves cut down and the land well cleaned of every product. For the protection afforded him in his distress, Ihangiro claims Kimwani as a district attached to it. Kassasura, King of Usui, having invaded Kimwani and captured Kajumba and held him a prisoner for two months, also lays claim to his allegiance.
Kajumba, was liberal to us, as he sent us eighty-one bunches of bananas, one goat, and two pots of malwa. As he was on the verge of senility, he was inclined to be despotic and querulous, and it may be imagined that perhaps a small caravan would be differently treated.
Accompanied by guides from Kimwani we set out southward, and three miles beyond Kajumba’s we obtained a charming view of Lake Victoria and the islands Ikuta, Majinga, Soswa, Rumondo, and distant Mysomé, and near noon we camped at Nyamagoju, at the south-west extremity of an arm of the lake which receives the Lohugati, a periodical stream draining East Usui.
The next day’s march was along a plain which extended from Nyamagoju to another lake arm, at whose extremity we camped at a village called Kisaho. Our route each day now was across flat extents of land, from which the Lake had within twenty-five years or so receded. They are covered over with low bush, which at this season is leafless. The ground is dry, streamless, hard-baked and cracked, and shows a nitrous efflorescence in many places. To our right, as the land rises, on ridges over fifty feet above the Lake, we find a thin dwarf forest; at a hundred feet elevation we see respectable trees, and grasses become more nutritious.
1889.
Aug. 20.
Itari.
