It is late afternoon: a dozen natives are standing in a circle on a level spot in mid-channel and looking round them attentively, almost timidly, staring straight at the water, as though anxious to penetrate to the bottom. What are they after? Has the white man lost some valuable property for which he is setting them to look? The answer is much simpler than that. Look within the circle, and you will see two hats floating on the surface of the current. When they raise themselves a little from the shining level, you will see two white faces—those of the Wazungu, Knudsen and Weule, who, delighted to escape for once from the rubber bath with its mere half-bucket of water, are cooling their limbs in the vivifying current. And the natives? The Rovuma has the reputation—not altogether undeserved—of containing more crocodiles than any other river in East Africa, and therefore it is as well to station a chain of outposts round us, as a precautionary measure. It is highly amusing to watch the uneasy countenances of these heroes, though the water for a long way round does not come up to their knees.
Evening is coming on; a stiff westerly breeze has sprung up, sweeping up the broad river-channel with unopposed violence, so that even the scanty current of the Rovuma makes a poor attempt at waves. Glad of the unusual sight, the eye ranges far and wide down the river. Everything is still as death—no trace remains of the old joyous Matambwe life as it was in the sixties. There, far away, on the last visible loop of the river, appears a black dot, rapidly increasing in size. Our natives, with their keen sight, have spied it long ago, and are staring in the same direction as ourselves. “Mtumbwi”—(a canoe)! they exclaim in chorus, when the dot coming round a bend becomes a black line. In a quarter of an hour the canoe has reached us, a dug-out of the simplest form, with a mournful freight, an old woman crouching in the stern more dead than alive. I feel sorry for the poor creature, and at a sign from me an elderly man and a younger one spring lightly to the bank. A few questions follow. “She is very ill, the bibi,” is the answer, “we think she will die to-day.” I can see for myself that no human help will avail. The two men return at their paddles, and in ten minutes more we see them landing higher up on the other side, carrying between them a shapeless bundle across the sand-bank into the bush. A human destiny has fulfilled itself.
Nils Knudsen had in his usual enthusiastic way been telling me of the marvels to be found at Naunge camp, higher up the Rovuma, where he insisted that we must go. This time he was not so far wrong; in fact, the wild chaos of rocks beside and in the river, the little cascades between the mossy stones, and the dark green of the vegetation on the banks, made up an attractive picture enough. But the state of the ground itself! The trodden grass and broken bushes, as well as the unmistakable smell, showed plainly enough that it was a popular camping-place and had been used not long before. “No, thank you!” said I. “Safari—forward!” Here, where we were directly on Livingstone’s track, the open bush begins a couple of hundred yards away from the bank. With three askari to cover my left flank, I therefore marched up stream, through the vegetation lining the bank, at the cost of indescribable toil, but rejoicing in the view of the river with its ever-changing scenery. At last I found what I was looking for. In mid-channel, at a distance from us of perhaps six or seven hundred yards, rose an island, steep and sharply-cut as the bow of a man-of-war, its red cliffs shining afar over the silvery grey of the sand-banks, but covered at the top with a compact mass of fresh green vegetation. With a shrill whistle to call my followers across from the pori, and one leap down the bank, I waded through the deep sand direct for the island.
The idyllic life which I enjoyed for some days on this island in the Rovuma has left an indelible impression on my memory. Nils Knudsen was always hunting, and never failed to return with a supply of meat for roasting, which kept the men in high good humour. Our tents were pitched in a narrow sandy ravine at the foot of the cliff, which may have been twenty-seven or twenty-eight feet high; the men were encamped at some distance to leeward, and I myself was alone in a green bower at the top of the island, where no one was allowed to approach me without announcing himself in the words prescribed by Swahili etiquette, “Hodi Bwana!” Only my personal attendants might bring me, unannounced, the repasts prepared by Omari, who has now learned to cook some things so as not to be absolutely uneatable. Altogether it was a delightful interlude.
TYPICAL HUT IN THE ROVUMA VALLEY
Equally delightful was our last camp on the Rovuma. It was at the mouth of the Bangala, its largest northern tributary, so imposing on the map, but just now only a dry channel. The water was still flowing underground; but we should have had to dig down several yards to reach it. We did not find it necessary to do so, having abundance of clear water in the Rovuma itself, where my men led quite an amphibious life. How neat and clean they all looked as soon as daily washing became possible. “Mzuri we!” (“How fine you are!”) I remarked appreciatively in passing to Chafu koga, the Dirty Pig, for that is the approximate rendering of his name. The self-complacent smile on his bronze-coloured face was by itself worth the journey to Africa.
There is only one drawback to life on the Rovuma: the gale which springs up about sunset and, gradually rising till it becomes a veritable hurricane, sinks again about midnight. No reed fence is any protection against it, neither is it any use to seek shelter behind the tent; and no contrivance so far devised will keep the lamp from being blown out, so that there is nothing for it but to go to bed at eight.
Our nights, moreover, were disturbed by unwelcome visitors. Elephants, it is true, which, though abounding in this part of the country, are very shy, always made a wide circuit round our camp; but lions seemed to be fond of taking moonlight walks up and down between the sleeping carriers. At the Bangala, the sentry, who had stood a little way off with his gun at the ready, related to me with a malicious grin how he saw a lion walk all along the row of snoring men, and stop at Omari, the cook, seemingly considering whether to eat him or not. After standing like this for some time, he gave a deep, ill-tempered growl, as if he did not consider Omari sufficiently appetising, and slowly trotted back into the bush.
Luisenfelde Mine—I do not know what Luise gave it its name—will long remain in my memory as a greeting from home, in the heart of the African bush; it sounds so enterprising and yet so pleasantly familiar. It is true that the mining operations did not last long, though the former owner, Herr Vohsen, in the pride of his heart, bestowed on the lustrous red garnets produced there the name of “Cape rubies.” Garnets are so cheap and found in so many places that in a very short time the market was glutted. Herr Marquardt, the enterprising manager, went home, and Nils Knudsen, his assistant and factotum, remained behind forgotten in the bush. Literally in the bush, for the well-built house with its double roof of corrugated zinc protected by an outer covering of thatch, was shut up, and the Norwegian had to find shelter as best he could in one of the two outhouses. We halted here, on our march northward from the Rovuma, for three or four hours, so as to eat our Sunday dinner under the verandah of the manager’s house. Here we had before us a double reminder of the past: in the middle of the compound a great heap of the unsaleable “Cape rubies” which were to have realised such fortunes, and now lie about as playthings for native children, and in the foreground the grave of Marquardt’s only child, a promising little girl of three, who came here with her parents full of health and life. We prosaic Europeans have no faith in omens; but it appears that the child’s sudden death was no surprise to the natives. Knudsen tells me that one day a native workman from the garnet-pits came to him and said, “Some one will die here, sir.” “‘Nonsense!’ I said, and sent him away. Next day he came again and said the same thing. I sent him about his business, but he kept coming. Every night we heard an owl crying on the roof of Marquardt’s house. This went on for a whole fortnight, and then Marquardt’s little girl was taken ill and died in a few hours. The bird never came after that. They call it likwikwi.”