1888.
Nov. 2.
Audaki.
On the second some scouts hunting up the various tracks extending eastward came across two women, one of whom said she knew of a great village to the north where there was food. Another said that Andari lay E.N.E., four days’ march, where there was such a stock of food that Andaki was a mere handful compared with it.
Soon after leaving Andaki, and crossing a broad ridge, we came upon a vast abandoned clearing. Probably a year had elapsed since the people had fled, and their settlements had been consumed with fire, for the banana plants were choked by the voracious undergrowth and wild plants, and the elephants had trampled through and through, and sported for months among the wasted groves, and over the crushed Musa plants, through phrynia flourishing two fathoms deep, and where the stumps of cut trees had sprouted and grown until their tufted tops were joined to one another in one great thick carpet of bush. Through this we carved our way with brandished billhooks and cutlasses; the native women had lost the track, and were bewildered by the wildly luxuriant shrubbery, under which we sweated in the damp hot-house heat, and ploughed our way through the deep green sea, until after ten hours we came to a babbling rillet, and must perforce camp from sheer exhaustion, though we had made but five miles.
1888.
Nov. 4.
Forest.
On the morning of the fourth we resumed the task, to slash, cut, creep and crawl, bore through, in and out, to clamber over logs, tread carefully over gaping rifts in the reeking compost, bend under logs, to tunnel away with might and main, to drive through—a hungry column of men was behind, a wilderness before us—to crash headlong through the plants, veer to the left, and now to the right, to press on and on, to sharpen the weapons on the stones of the brook; to take a hasty drink to satisfy our thirst, and again to the work. Cleave away merrily, boys; sever those creepers; cut those saplings down! No way now? then widen that game hole in the bush clump! Come, strike with billhook and sword, axe and cutlass! We must not die like fools in this demon world! This way and that, through and through, until after sixteen hours we had cut a crooked channel through the awful waste, and stood once more under the lordly crowns of the primeval forest.
Paddy’s traditional patchy clothes was a dress suit compared to mine, as I stood woefully regarding the rents and tatters and threads waving in tassels from my breeches and shirt; and the men smiled, and one said we looked like rats dragged through the teeth of traps, which I thought was not a bad simile. But we had no time for talk; we ate a couple of roast plantains for lunch, and continued our journey, and by 3 P.M. were within half-an-hour of the Ihuru River.
The next day, before it was full daylight, we were filing along an elephant track that ran parallel with the Ihuru, which was at this time one raging series of rapids its whole length, and sounding its unceasing uproar in our ears. Numbers of deep tributaries were waded through; but we maintained a quick pace, owing to the broad track of the elephants, and by the usual hour of the afternoon nine miles had been covered.
Thirteen Zanzibaris of the rear column, and one of the Danagla soldiers of Emin Pasha, had succumbed during the last few days, and I do not know how many Madis and Manyuema.
On the evening of the sixth, after a march of eight miles, I became impressed with the necessity of finding food shortly, unless we were to witness wholesale mortality. Starvation is hard to bear, but when loads must be carried upon empty stomachs, and the marches are long, the least break in the continuity of supply brings with it a train of diseases which soon thins the ranks. Our Nyanza people were provident, and eked their stores with mushrooms and wild fruit; but the feeble manioc-poisoned men of the rear column, Madis and Manyuema, were utterly heedless of advice and example.
A youth named Amani, who looked rather faint, was adjured to tell me the truth about what he had eaten the last two days.