There is something strangely rigid, immovable and conservative about this old continent. We were reminded of this by the Lion of Cape Guardafui, and now we find it confirmed even by the official regulations of steamer traffic. The ancients, as we know, only sailed by day, and savages, who are not very well skilled in navigation, always moor their sea-going craft off shore in the evening. We Europeans, on the other hand, consider it one of our longest-standing and highest achievements to be independent both of weather and daylight in our voyages. To this rule the Rovuma and Rufiji form one of the rare exceptions; they always seek some sheltered anchorage shortly before sunset, and start again at daybreak the next morning.
On the trip from Dar es Salam to Lindi and Mikindani—the South Tour, as it is officially called—the first harbour for the night is Simba Uranga, one of the numerous mouths of the great Rufiji river. The entrance to this channel is not without charm. At a great distance the eye can perceive a gap in the green wall of mangroves which characterizes the extensive delta. Following the buoys which mark the fairway, the little vessel makes for the gap, not swiftly but steadily. As we approach it opens out—to right and left stretches the white line of breakers, foaming over the coral reefs which skirt the coast of Eastern Equatorial Africa—and, suddenly, one is conscious of having escaped from the open sea and found refuge in a quiet harbour. It is certainly spacious enough—the river flows, calm and majestic, between the green walls of its banks, with a breadth of 600, or even 800 metres, and stretches away into the interior farther than the eye can follow it. The anchorage is about an hour’s steam up river. On the right bank stands a saw-mill, closed some time ago: its forsaken buildings and rusting machinery furnishing a melancholy illustration of the fallacious hopes with which so many Colonial enterprises were started. Just as the sun sinks below the horizon, the screw ceases its work, the anchor-chain rattles through the hawse-holes, and the Rufiji is made fast for the night. Her furnace, which burns wood, is heated with mangrove logs, cut in the forests of the Delta and stacked at this spot ready for transference on board. This work is usually done under the superintendence of a forester, whom I am sorry not to see, he being absent up country. His life may be leisurely, but scarcely enviable; for we are speedily surrounded, even out in mid-stream, by dense clouds of mosquitoes, which, I fancy, will hardly be less abundant on land. The swabbing of the decks on an ocean steamer, in the early morning, just at the time when sleep is sweetest, is represented on the Rufiji by the wooding in the Simba Uranga River, and the shipping of cargo in the open roadstead of Kilwa. In the two nights passed on board, I got very little sleep, between the incessant bumping of loads thrown down on deck, and the equally incessant yelling of the crew. There was little compensation for this, either in the magnificent sunset witnessed on the Simba Uranga, or the wonderfully impressive spectacle we enjoyed when steaming out in the early morning. Nothing could have revived us but the fresh breeze of the monsoon on the open sea. No sooner, however, were we outside than Neptune once more demanded his tribute. I do not know whether a healthy nervous system would have been affected by the Rufiji’s mode of stoking—and if so, how—but to us three sea-sick passengers, who had to share the amenities of the bridge as far as Kilwa, it was simply intolerable. Of the two boats, the Rovuma, at any rate, has a digestion sufficiently robust to grapple with the thirty-inch lengths of mangrove-wood, thrown into her furnaces just as they are. The Rufiji, however, has a more delicate constitution, and can only assimilate food in small pieces. With the first glimmer of daybreak, the heavy hammer, wielded by the strong right arm of a muscular baharia, crashes down on the steel wedge held in position by another native sailor on the first of the mangrove logs. Blow after blow shakes the deck; the tough wood creaks and groans; at last the first morsel has been chopped up for the ravenous boiler, and the fragments describe a lofty parabola in their flight into the tiny engine-room. Then comes another crash which makes the whole boat vibrate,—and so on, hour after hour, throughout the whole day. Not till evening do the men’s arms rest, and our sea-sick brains hail the cessation of work with sincere thankfulness, for the continuous rhythm of the hammer, which seems quite tolerable for the first hour, becomes, in the eleven which follow it, the most atrocious torture.
My black followers behaved exactly as had been foretold to me by those best acquainted with the race. At Dar es Salam each of the twenty-seven had received his posho, i.e., the means of buying rations for four days. At Simba Uranga, the mnyampara (headman) came to me with a request that I should buy more provisions for himself and his twenty-three subordinates, as they had already eaten all they had. The complete lack of purchasable supplies in the forest saved me the necessity of a refusal,—as it also did in the case of Moritz, who, with his refined tastes, insisted on having some fish, and whom, with a calm smile, I projected down the bridge ladder. That is just like these improvident children of the Dark Continent; they live in the present and take no thought for the future—not even for to-morrow morning. Accordingly, I had to spend a few more rupees at Kilwa, in order to quiet these fellows, the edge of whose insatiable appetite had not been blunted by sea-sickness. Kilwa—called Kilwa Kivinje, to distinguish it from Kilwa Kisiwani, the old Portuguese settlement further south,—has sad memories for us, connected with the Arab rising of 1888, when two employees of the German East African Company met with a tragic death through the failure of our fleet to interfere. The officers in command have been severely blamed for this; but to-day, after examining for myself the topography of the place, I find that the whole deplorable business becomes perfectly intelligible. The shallowness of the water off shore is such that European steamers have to anchor a long way out, and the signals of distress shown by the two unfortunate men could not have been seen.
Under normal circumstances three days is a pretty liberal allowance for the run from Dar es Salam to Lindi by the Rufiji; but we did not accomplish it in the time. South of Kilwa we lost the shelter afforded us for the last two days by the island of Mafia and the countless little coral reefs and islets, and consequently felt the full force of the south wind. Being now the only passenger, I had plenty of room, but was if possible more wretched than before, as the supply of oranges—the only thing I felt the slightest inclination to eat—was exhausted. Soon after midday the captain and mate began to study the chart with anxious looks.
“When shall we get to Lindi?” I asked wearily, from the depths of my long chair.
An evasive answer. The afternoon wore on, and the view to starboard: a white, curling line of breakers, backed by the wall of mangroves with their peculiar green, still remained the same. The captain and mate were still bending over their chart when the sun was nearing the horizon.
LINDI ROADSTEAD
“Is that headland Cape Banura?” I asked, thinking that we were on the point of entering Lindi Bay, which once seen can never be mistaken.
Another evasive answer made it quite clear to me that our two navigators could not be very familiar with this part of the coast. In fact the captain was quite a new-comer, and the mate was acting temporarily in the place of a man on leave. As the sun was now fast setting, we ran into the first convenient inlet, passed a quiet night there, and did the last three or four hours to Lindi on the fourth day, without further incident. Our harbour of refuge was Mchinga Bay, which was unknown to the two seamen and to me—though not, as afterwards appeared, to the two engineers. Unluckily it happened—as it always does when our countrymen are cooped up together in a small space for any length of time—that there was an implacable feud between the after-deck and the engine-room, and the latter had not thought fit to enlighten the former as to the ship’s position.