[2] "The following notice concerning a discovery which must ever be remembered as a triumph of geological hypothesis, was kindly forwarded to me by the discoverer:—
"'My speculations as to the whole African interior being a vast watery plateau-land of some elevation above the sea, but subtended on the east and west by much higher grounds, were based on the following data:—
"'The discovery in the central portion of the Cape Colony, by Mr. Bain, of fossil remains in a lacustrine deposit of Secondary age, and the well-known existence on the coast of loftier mountains known to be of a Palæozoic or Primary epoch, and circling round the younger deposits, being followed by the exploration of the Ngami Lake, justified me in believing that Africa had been raised from beneath the ocean at a very early geological period; and that ever since that time the same conditions had prevailed. I thence inferred that an interior network of lakes and rivers would be found prolonged northwards from Lake Ngami, though at that time no map was known to me showing the existence of such central reservoirs. Looking to the west as to the east, I saw no possibility of explaining how the great rivers could escape from the central plateau-lands and enter the ocean except through deep lateral gorges, formed at some ancient period of elevation, when the lateral chains were subjected to transverse fractures. Knowing that the Niger and the Zaire, or Congo, escaped by such gorges on the west, I was confident that the same phenomenon must occur upon the eastern coast, when properly examined. This hypothesis, as sketched out in my 'Presidential Address' of 1852, was afterwards received by Dr. Livingstone just as he was exploring the transverse gorges by which the Zambesi escapes to the east, and the great traveller has publicly expressed the surprise he then felt that his discovery should have been thus previously suggested.'"
[CHAPTER XIV.]
OUR REWARD—SUCCESS.
"At length we sight the Lake Tanganyika, or the 'Sea of Ujiji.' The route before us lay through a howling wilderness laid waste by the fierce Watuta. Mpete, on the right bank of the Malagarázi river, is very malarious, and the mosquitoes are dreadful. We bivouacked under a shady tree, within sight of the ferry. The passage of this river is considered dangerous on account of attacks of the tribes. At one place I could only obtain a few corn cobs, and I left the meat, with messages, for the rear. In the passages of the river our goods and chattels were thoroughly sopped. After a while, from a hillside we saw, long after noon, the other part of our Caravan, halted by fatigue, upon a slope beyond a weary swamp; a violent storm was brewing, and the sky was black, and we were anxious and sorry about them.
"On the 13th February, after about an hour's march, I saw the Fundi running forward, and changing the direction of the Caravan, and I followed him to know why he had taken this responsibility upon himself. We breasted a steep stony hill, sparsely clad with thorny trees, which killed Jack's riding ass. Our fagged beasts refused to proceed. 'What is that streak of light which lies below?' said I to Bombay. 'I am of opinion,' said Bombay, 'that that is the water you are in search of.' I gazed in dismay; the remains of my blindness, the veil of trees, a broad ray of sunshine illuminating but one reach of the lake, had shrunk its fair proportions. I began to lament my folly in having risked life and lost health for so poor a prize, to curse Arab exaggeration, and to propose an immediate return to explore the Nyanza, or Northern Lake.
"Advancing a few yards, the whole scene suddenly burst upon my view, filling me with admiration, wonder, and delight. Nothing I in sooth could be more picturesque than this first view of Tanganyika Lake, as it lay in the lap of the mountains, basking in the gorgeous tropical sunshine. There were precipitous hills, a narrow strip of emerald green, a ribbon of glistening yellow sand, sedgy rushes, cut by the breaking wavelets, an expanse of light, soft blue water foam thirty to thirty-five miles wide, sprinkled by crisp tiny crescents of snowy foam, with a background of high broken wall of steel-coloured mountain flecked and capped with pearly mist, sharply pencilled against the azure sky, yawning chasms of plum-colour falling towards dwarf hills, which apparently dip their feet in the wave. One could see villages, cultivated lands, fishermen's canoes on the water, and a profuse lavishness and magnificence of Nature and vegetation. The smiling shores of this vast crevasse appeared doubly beautiful to me after the silent and spectral mangrove-creeks on the East African sea-board, and the melancholy monotonous experience of desert and jungle scenery, tawny rock and sun-parched plain, or rank herbage and flats of black mire. Truly it was a revel for Soul and Sight! Forgetting toils, dangers, and the doubtfulness of return, I felt willing to endure double what I had endured; and all the party seemed to join with me in joy. Poor purblind Jack found nothing to grumble at, except the 'mist and glare before his eyes.' Said bin Salim looked exulting—he had procured for me this pleasure; the monoculous Jemadar grinned his congratulations, and even the surly Beloch made civil salaams.
"As soon as we were bivouacked, I proceeded to get a solid-built Arab craft, capable of containing thirty or thirty-five men, belonging to an absent merchant. It was the second largest on the lake, and being too large for paddling, the crew rowed, and at eight next morning we began coasting along the eastern shore of the lake in a north-westerly direction, towards the Kawele district. The picturesque and varied forms of the mountains rising above and dipping into the lake were clad in purplish blue, set off by the rosy tints of the morning, and so we reached the great Ujiji. A few scattered huts in the humblest beehive shape represent the Port town. This fifth region includes the alluvial valley of the Malagarázi river, which subtends the lowest spires of the highlands of Karagwah, and Urundi, the western prolongation of the chain which has obtained, probably from African tradition, the name of 'Lunar Mountains.'
"At Ujiji terminates, after twelve stages, the transit of the fifth region. The traveller has now accomplished a hundred stages, which with necessary rests, but not including detentions and long halts, should occupy a hundred and fifty days. The distance, on account of the sinuosities of the road, numbers nine hundred and fifty statute miles, which occupied us seven and a half months on account of our disadvantages and illnesses. Arab Caravans seldom arrive at the Tanganyika, for the same reasons, under six months, but the lightly laden and the fortunate may get to Unyamyembe in two and a half, and to the Tanganyika in four months. It is evident that the African authorities (this was written thirty-five years ago) have hitherto confounded the Nyanza, the Tanganyika, and the Nyassa Lakes. Ujiji was first visited in 1840 by the Arabs, and after that they penetrated to Unyamwesi. They found it conveniently situated as a central point from whence their factors and slaves could navigate the waters, and collect slaves and ivory from the tribes upon its banks, but the climate proved unhealthy, the people dangerous, and the coasting voyages ended in disaster. Ujiji never rose to the rank of Unyamyembe, or Msene. Now, from May to September, flying Caravans touch here, and return to Unyamyembe so soon as they have loaded their porters. The principal tribes are the Wajiji, the Wavínza, the Wakaránga, the Watúta, the Wabuha, and the Wáhha; but the fiercest races in the whole land, and also the darkest, are the Wazarámo, the Wajíji, and the Watatúru. The Lakists are almost an amphibious race, are excellent divers, strong swimmers and fishermen, and vigorous eaters of fish, and in the water they indulge in gambols like sportive water-fowls, whether skimming in their hollow logs, or swimming.
"It is a great mistake not to go as a Trader. It explains the Traveller's motives, which are always suspected to be bad ones. Thus the Explorer can push forward into unknown countries, will be civilly received and lightly fined, because the host expects to see him or his friends again: to go without any motive only induces suspicion, and he is opposed in every way. Nobody believes him to be so stupid as to go through such danger and discomfort for exploring or science, which they simply do not understand.
"The cold damp climate, the over-rich and fat fish diet, and the abundance of vegetables, which made us commit excesses, at first disagreed with us. I lay for a fortnight upon the earth, too blind to read or write, too weak to ride, too ill to converse. Jack was almost as groggy upon his legs as I was, suffering from a painful ophthalmia, and a curious contortion of the face, which made him chew sideways, like an animal that chews the cud. Valentine was the same. Jack and Valentine were always ill of the same things, and on the same days, showing that certain climates affected certain temperaments and not others. Gaetano ate too much and brought on a fever. I was determined to explore the northern extremity of the lake, whence, every one said, issued a large river flowing northwards, so I tried to hire the only dhow or sailing craft, and provision it for a month's cruise, and at last Jack went to look after it, and I was twenty-seven days alone.
"I spent my time chiefly in eating, drinking, smoking, dozing. At two or three in the morning I lay anxiously expecting the grey light to creep through the door-chinks; then came the cawing of crows, and the crowing of the village cocks. When the golden rays began to stream over the red earth, torpid Valentine brought me rice-flour boiled in water with cold milk. Then came the slavey with a leafy branch to sweep the floor and to slay the huge wasps. This done, he lit the fire, the excessive damp requiring it, and sitting over it, he bathed his face and hands—luxurious dog!—in the pungent smoke. Then came visits from Said bin Salim and the Jemadar (our two headmen), who sat and stared at me, were disappointed to see no fresh symptoms of approaching dissolution, told me so with their eyes and faces, and went away; and I lay like a log upon my cot, smoking, dreaming of things past, visioning things present, and indulging myself in a few lines of reading and writing.
"As evening approached, I made an attempt to sit under the broad eaves of the tembe, and to enjoy the delicious spectacle of this virgin Nature, and the reveries to which it gave birth—
'A pleasing land of drowsihed it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye,
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass
For ever flushing round a summer sky.'"It reminded me of the loveliest glimpses of the Mediterranean; there were the same 'laughing tides,' pellucid sheets of dark blue water, borrowing their tints from the vinous shores beyond; the same purple light of youth upon the cheek of the earlier evening; the same bright sunsets, with their radiant vistas of crimson and gold opening like the portals of a world beyond the skies; the same short-lived grace and loveliness of the twilight; and, as night closed over the earth, the same cool flood of transparent moonbeams, pouring on the tufty heights and bathing their sides with the whiteness of virgin snow.
"At seven p.m., as the last flush faded from the occident, the lamp—a wick in a broken pot full of palm oil—was brought in. A dreary, dismal day you will exclaim, a day that—
'lasts out a night in Russia,
When nights are longest there.'After Twenty-seven Days Speke returns.
"On the 29th of March the rattling of matchlocks announced Jack's return. He was moist, mildewed, and wet to the bone, and all his things were in a similar state; his guns grained with rust, his fireproof powder-magazine full of rain, and, worse than that, he had not been able to gain anything but a promise that, after three months, the dhow should be let to us for five hundred dollars. The very dhow that had been promised to me whenever I chose to send for it! The faces of my following were indeed a study.
"I then set to work to help Jack with his diaries, which afterwards appeared in Blackwood, September, 1859, when I was immensely surprised to find, amongst many other things, a vast horseshoe of lofty mountains that Jack placed, in a map attached to the paper, near the very heart of Sir R. Murchison's Depression. I had seen the mountains growing upon paper under Jack's hand, from a thin ridge of hills fringing the Tanganyika until they grew to the size given in Blackwood, and Jack gravely printed in the largest capitals, 'This mountain range I consider to be the true Mountains of the Moon;' thus men do geography, and thus discovery is stultified. The poor fellow had got a beetle in his ear, which began like a rabbit at a hole to dig violently at the tympanum, and maddened him. Neither tobacco, salt, nor oil could be found; he tried melted butter, and all failing, he applied the point of a penknife to its back, and wounded his ear so badly that inflammation set in and affected his facial glands, till he could not open his mouth, and had to feed on suction. Six or seven months after, the beetle came away in the wax. At last I got hold of Kannena the Chief, and after great difficulty and enormous extortion, I promised him a rich reward if he kept his word; for I was resolved at all costs, even if we were reduced to actual want, to visit the mysterious stream. I threw over his shoulders a six-foot length of scarlet broadcloth, which made him tremble with joy, and all the people concerned in my getting the dhow received a great deal more than its worth. I secured two large canoes and fifty-five men.
"On the 11th of April, at four in the morning, I slept comfortably on the crest of a sand-wave, and under a mackintosh escaped the pitiless storm, so as to be ready to start lest they should repent, and at 7.20 on the 12th of April, 1858, my canoe, bearing for the first time on those dark waters—
'The flag that braved a thousand years
The battle and the breeze,'stood out of Bangwe Bay, and, followed by Jack's canoe, we made for the cloudy and storm-vexed north. The best escort to a European capable of communicating with and commanding them, would be a small party of Arabs, fresh from Hazramaut, untaught in the ways and tongues of Africa. They would save money to the explorer, and also his life. There were great rejoicings at our arrival at Uvira, the ne plus ultra, the northernmost station to which merchants have as yet been admitted. Opposite still, rose in a high broken line the mountains of the inhospitable Urundi, apparently prolonged beyond the northern extremity of the waters. Some say the voyage is of two days, some say six hours; the breadth of the Tanganyika here is between seven and eight miles.
"Now my hopes were rudely dashed to the ground. The stalwart sons of the Sultan Maruta, the noblest type of Negroid seen near the lake, visited me. They told me they had been there, and that the Rusizi enters into and does not flow out of the Tanganyika. I felt sick at heart. Bombay declared that Jack had misunderstood, and his (Bombay's) informer now owned that he had never been beyond Uvira, and never intended to do so. We stopped there nine days, and there I got such a severe ulceration of the tongue that I could not articulate. An African traveller may be arrested at the very bourne of his journey, on the very threshold of his success, by a single stage, as effectually as if all the waves of the Atlantic or the sands of Arabia lay between him and it. Now Maruta and his young giants claimed their blackmail, and also Kannena, and I had to pay up. Slaves are cheaper here than in the market of Ujiji. Gales began to threaten, and the crews, fearing wind and water, insisted on putting out to sea on the 6th of May.
"We touched at various stages and anchored at Mzimu, our former halting-place, where the crew swarmed up a ladder of rock, and returned with pots of palm oil. We left again at sunset; the waves began to rise, the wind also, and rain in torrents, and it was a doubt whether the cockleshell craft could live through the short chopping sea in heavy weather. The crew was frightened, but held on gallantly, and Bombay, a noted Agnostic in fine weather, spent the length of that wild night in reminiscences of prayer. I sheltered myself under my then best friend, my mackintosh, and thought of the couplet—
'This collied night, these horrid waves, these gusts that sweep the whirling deep;
What reck they of our evil plight, who on the shore securely sleep?'Fortunately the rain beat down the wind and sea, or nothing could have saved us. The next morning Mabruki rushed into the tent, thrust my sword into my hands, said the Warundi were upon us, and that the crews were rushing to their boats and pushing them off. Knowing that they would leave us stranded in case of danger, we hurried in without delay; but presently no enemy appeared, and Kannena, the Chief, persuaded them to re-land, and demand satisfaction of a drunken Chief who had badly wounded a man, and then there was a general firing and drawing of daggers. The crew immediately confiscated the three goats that were for our return, cut their throats, and spitted the meat upon their spears. Thus the lamb died and the wolf dined; the innocent suffered, the plunderer was joyed; the strong showed his strength, the weak his weakness—as usual. I saw the sufferer's wounds washed, forbade his friends to knead and wrench him as they were doing, and gave him a purgative which did him good. On the second day he was able to rise. This did not prevent the report at home that I had killed the man.
"On the 11th of May we paddled round to Wafanya Bay, to Makimoni, a little grassy inlet, where our canoes were defended from the heavy surf. On the 12th we went to Kyasanga, and the next night we spent in Bangwe Bay. We were too proud to sneak home in the dark; we deserved the Victoria Cross, we were heroes, braves of braves; we wanted to be looked at by the fair, to be howled at by the valiant.
"On the 13th of May we appeared at the entrance of Kawele, and had a triumphal entrance; the people of the whole country-side collected to welcome us, and pressed waist-deep into the water. Jack and I were repeatedly 'called for,' but true merit is always modest; it aspires to 'Honour, not honours.'[1] We regained the old tembe, were salaamed to by everybody, and felt like a 'return home.' We had expended upwards of a month boating about the Tanganyika Lake. All the way down, we were like baited bears, mobbed every moment; they seemed to devour us; in an ecstasy of curiosity they shifted from Jack to me, and back again, like the well-known ass between the bundles of hay. Our health palpably improved. Jack was still deaf, but cured of his blindness; the ulcerated mouth, which had compelled me to live on milk for seventeen days, returned to its usual state, my strength increased, my feet were still swollen, but my hands lost their numbness, and I could again read and write. I attribute the change from the days and nights spent in the canoe, and upon the mud of the lake. Mind also acted upon matter; the object of my Mission was now effected, and I threw off the burden of grinding care, with which the imminent prospect of a failure had before sorely laden me."
Although Richard did not get the meed of success in England, and it has taken the world thirty-four years to realize the grandeur of that Exploration, he was the Pioneer (without money, without food, without men or proper escort, without the bare necessaries of life, to dare and do, in spite of every obstacle, and every crushing thing, bodily and mentally) who opened up that country. It is to him that later followers, that Grant and Speke, and Baker and Stanley, Cameron, and all the other men that have ever followed, owe it, that he opened the oyster-shell for them, and they went in to take the pearl. I do not want to detract from any other traveller's merits, for they are all brave and great, but I will say that if Richard Burton had had Mr. Stanley's money, escort, luxuries, porterage, and white comrades, backed by influence, there would not have been one single white spot on the whole map of the great Continent of Africa that would not have been filled up. Owing to shameful intrigues (which prospered none of the doers, but injured him, the man who did all this), he got very few words of praise, and that from a few, yet the World owes it to him now that there are Missions and Schools and Churches, and Commerce, and peaceful Settlements, and that anybody can go there. To him you owe "Tanganyika in a Bath-Chair;" but Speke got the cheering of the gallery and the pit, and Stanley inherited them. And here I insert the innocent joy-bells of his own heart, as I found them scribbled on the edge of his private journal, and anybody thinking of what he had done and what he had passed through, can warmly enter into his feelings of self-gratulation, so modestly hidden—
"I have built me a monument stronger than brass,
And higher than the Pyramids' regal site;
Nor the bitterness shown, nor the impotent wind,
Nor the years' long line, nor the ages' flight
Shall e'en lay low!
"Not all shall I perish; much of me
Shall vanquish the grave, and be living still,
When Mr. Macaulay's Zealanders view
The ivied ruin on Tower Hill,
And men shall know
"That when Isis hung, in the youth of Time,
Her veil mysterious over the land,
And defied mankind and men's puny will,
All that lay in the shadow, my daring hand
Was first to show,
"Then rejoice thee, superb in the triumph of mind,
And the Delphian bay-leaf, O sweet Muse, bind
Around my brow!"