At Kadetamare the only pedometer, a patent watch-shaped instrument, broke down, probably from the effects of the climate. Whilst carried by my companion it gave a steady exaggerative rate, but being set to the usual military pace of 30 inches, when transferred to the person of “Seedy Bombay” and others, it became worse than useless, sometimes showing 25 for 13 miles. I would suggest to future explorers in these regions, as the best and the most lasting means of measuring distances, two of the small wheelbarrow perambulators—it is vain to put trust in a single instrument—which can each be rolled on by one man. And when these are spoilt or stolen, timing with the watch, and a correct estimate of the walking rate combined with compass-bearings, the mean of the oscillations being taken when on the march, would give a “dead-reckoning,” which checked by latitudes, as often as the cloudy skies permit, and by a few longitudes at crucial stations, would afford materials for a map approximating as nearly to correctness as could be desired in a country where a “handful of miles” little matters. The other instruments, though carefully protected from the air, fared not better than the pedometer: with three pocket-chronometers and a valuable lever-watch, we were at last reduced to find time by a sixpenny sun-dial. Before the first fortnight after our second landing in Africa had elapsed, all these instruments, notwithstanding the time and trouble devoted to them by my companion, at Zanzibar, failed in their ratings and became useless for chronometric longitudes. Two of them (Ed. Baker, London, No. 863, and Barraud, London, No. 2/537), stopped without apparent reason. A third, a first-rate article (Parkinson and Frodsham, No. 2955), issued to me from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, at the kind suggestion of Capt. Belcher, of the Admiralty, had its glass broken and its second-hand lost by the blunderer Gaetano: we remedied that evil by counting the ticks without other trouble than that caused by the odd number,—5 to 2 seconds. This instrument also summarily struck work on the 9th November, 1858, the day before we intended to have “made a night of it” at Jiwe la Mkoa. This may serve as a warning for future travellers to avoid instruments so delicate that a jolt will disorder them—the hair-spring of the lever watch was broken by my companion in jumping out of a canoe—and which no one but a professional can attempt to repair. A box chronometer carried in a “petarah” by a pole swung between two men so as to preserve its horizontality, might outlast the pocket-instruments, yet we read in Capt. Owens celebrated survey of the African coasts, that out of nine not one kept rate without fluctuations. The best plan would be to purchase half-a-dozen sound second-hand watches, carefully inspected and cleaned, and to use one at a time; if gold-mounted, they would form acceptable presents to the Arabs, and ultimately would prove economical by obviating the necessity of parting with more valuable articles.
The break-down of the last chronometer disheartened us for a time. Presently when our brains, addled by sun and sickness, had recovered tone by a return to the Usagara sanitarium, we remembered a rough and ready succedaneum for instruments. I need scarcely tell the reader that, unhappily for travellers, the only means of ascertaining the longitude of a place is by finding the difference between the local and Greenwich times, and that this difference of time with certain corrections is converted into distance of space. We split a 4 oz. rifle-ball, inserted into it a string measuring 39 inches from the point of suspension to the centre of the weight, and fixed it by hammering the halves together. The loose end of the cord was attached to a three-edged file as a pivot, and this was lashed firmly to the branch of a tree sheltered as much as possible from the wind. Local time was ascertained with a sextant by taking the altitude of a star or a planet; Greenwich time by a distance between the star or planet and the moon, and the vibrations of our rude pendulum did all that a watch could do, by registering the seconds that elapsed between the several observations.
I am somewhat presuming upon the subject, but perhaps it may here be better to chronicle the accidents which happened to the rest of our instruments. We had two Schmalcalder’s compasses (H. Barron & Co., 26, Oxenden Street), which, when the paste-board faces had been acclimatized and no longer curled up against their glasses, did good service; one of them was trodden upon by my companion, the other by a sailor during a cruise on the lake. We returned with a single instrument, the gift of my old friend Lieut.-General Monteith; it had surveyed Persia, and outlasting two long excursions into Eastern Africa, it still outlives and probably will outlive many of the showy articles now supplied by the trade. Finally, a ship’s compass, mounted in gimbals for boat-work and indented for upon the Engineer’s Stores, Bombay, soon became lumber, its oscillations were too sluggish to be useful.
We left Kadetamare on the 25th August, to ascend the fluviatile valley of the Mukondokwa. According to the guides this stream is the upper course of the Kingani River, with which it anastomoses in Uzaramo(?) It cuts its way through the chain to which it gives a name, by a transversal valley perpendicular to the lay, and so conveniently disposed that the mountains seem rather to be made for their drain than the drain for its mountains. The fluviatile valley is apparently girt on all sides by high peaks, with homesteads smoking and cattle grazing on all sides. Crippled by the night-cold that rose from the river-bed, and then wet through with the dew that dripped from the tall grass, we traversed, within ear-shot of the frightened villagers who hailed one another from the heights, some fields of grain and tobacco that had been lately reaped. After an hour and a-half of marching we arrived at the second ford of the Mukondokwa. Receiving less drainage than in the lower bed, the stream was narrower and only knee-deep; the landing-place of sloppy mud caused, however, many accidents to the asses, and on inspecting our stores a few days afterwards we found them all soft and mildewed. The reader will wonder that on these occasions we did not personally inspect the proceedings of our careless followers. The fact is we were physically and morally incapacitated for any exertion beyond balancing ourselves upon the donkeys; at Kadetamare I had laid in another stock of fever, and my companion had not recovered from his second severe attack. After fording the Mukondokwa we followed the right bank through cultivation, grass, and trees, up a gradually broadening valley peculiarly rich in field-rats. The path then crossing sundry swamps and nullahs, hill-spurs and “neat’s tongues,” equally rough thorny and precipitous, presently fell into a river-reach where pools of water, breast deep, and hedged in by impassable jungle and long runs of slushy mire festering in a furious sun, severely tried the porters and asses. Thence the road wound under the high hills to the South, whose flanks were smoking with extensive conflagrations, whilst on the opposite or left bank of the river, the opening valley displayed a forest of palms and tall trees. About 2 P.M. I reached the ground, a hutless circle of thorns, called by our people Muinyi: the rear-guard, however, did not straggle in before 6 P.M., and the exhaustion of the asses—seventeen now remained—rendered a day’s halt necessary.
During the last two marches the Baloch had been, they declared, without grain; the sons of Ramji and the porters, more provident, had reserved a small store, moreover they managed to procure a sheep from the next station. On the morrow a party, headed by Muinyi Wazira, set out to forage among the mountain settlements, bearing no arms in token of peace. About noon they returned, and reported that at the sight of strangers the people had taken to flight, after informing the party that they were in the habit of putting to death all Murungwana or freemen found trespassing off the road; however, that on this occasion the lives of the strangers should be spared. But Ambari, a slave belonging to Said bin Salim, presently tattled the true tale. The gallant foragers had not dared to enter the village; when the war-cry flew from hamlet to hamlet, and all the Wasagara, even the women and children, seized their spears and stood to arms, they at once threw themselves into the jungle and descended the hill with such unseemly haste that most of them bore the wounds of thorns and stones. Two of Baloch, Riza and Belok, lit their matches and set out proudly to provide themselves by their prowess; they were derided by Kidogo: “Verily, O my brethren! ye go forth to meet men and not women!” and after a hundred yards’ walk they took second thoughts and returned. The Mukondokwa Mountains, once a garden, have become a field for fray and foray; cruelty and violence have brutalised the souls of the inhabitants, and they have learned, as several atrocities committed since our passage through the country prove, to wreak their vengeance upon all weaker than themselves.
On the 27th August we resumed our way under fresh difficulties. The last march had cost us another ass. Muhinna, a donkey-driver, complaining of fever, had been mounted by Kidogo without my permission, and had summarily departed, thus depriving us of the services of a second, whilst all were in a state of weakness which compelled them to walk at their slowest pace. On the other hand, the men of the caravan, hungry and suffering from raw south-east wind and the chilly cold, the result not of low temperature but of humidity and extensive evaporation, were for pushing forward as fast as possible. The path was painful, winding along the shoulders of stony and bushy hills, with rough re-entering angles, and sometimes dipping down into the valley of the Mukondokwa, which, hard on the right, spread out in swamps, nearly two miles broad, temporary where they depended upon rain, and permanent where their low levels admitted of free infiltration. On the steep eminences to the left of the path rose tall and thick the thorny aloetic and cactaceous growth of arid Somaliland; the other side was a miniature of the marine lagoons, the creeks, and the bayous of green Zanzibar. After three hours of hard marching, the labour came to its crisis, where the path, breaking off at a right angle from the river, wound up an insecure ladder of loose earth and stones, which caused several porters and one ass to lose their footing, and to roll with their loads through the thorny bushes of the steep slope, near the off side, into the bed of rushes below. Then leaving the river-valley on the right, we fell into a Fiumara of deep loose sand, about a hundred yards broad, and occupying the centre of a widening table-land. The view now changed, and the “wady” afforded pleasant glimpses of scenery. Its broad, smooth and glistening bed, dinted by the footprints of cattle, was bounded by low perpendicular banks of stiff red clay, margined by mighty masses of brilliant green tamarinds, calabashes, and sycomores, which stood sharply out against the yellow stubbles beyond them. The Mkuyu or sycomore in Eastern Africa is a magnificent tree; the bole, composed of a pillared mass, averages from eight to ten feet in height, and the huge branches, thatched with thick cool foliage, extend laterally, overshadowing a circle whose perimeter, when the sun is vertical, sometimes attains five hundred feet. The fruit, though eaten by travellers, is a poor berry, all rind and seeds, with a slender title to the name of fig. There are apparently two varieties of this tree, resembling each other in general appearance, but differing in details. The Mtamba has a large, heavy, and fleshy leaf; its fruit is not smooth like that of the Mkuyu, but knobbed with green excrescences, and the bole is loftier than the common sycomore’s trunk. The roots of the older trees, rising above the earth, draw up a quantity of mould which, when the wood is decayed or destroyed, forms the dwarf mounds that in many parts encumber the surface of the country. Traces of extensive cultivation—fields of bajri or panicum, the staple cereal which here supplants the normal African holcus, or Kafir corn, and plantations of luxuriant maize, of beans, of the vetch known as the voiandzeia subterranea, of tobacco, and other plants—showed that this district is beyond the reach of the coast-kidnappers. From the rising ground on the left hand we heard the loud tattoo of the drum. The Baloch, choosing to be alarmed, fired several shots, much to the annoyance of the irascible Kidogo, who had laid down as a law that waste of powder in this region was more likely to invite than to prevent an attack. As we ascended the Fiumara it narrowed rapidly, and its head was encumbered with heaps of boulders from which sprang a runnel of the sweetest water. The camping-ground was upon the left bank of the bed. The guide called it Ndábi, probably from a small gnarled tree here abundant, bearing a fruit like a pale red currant, which tastes like sweetened gum dissolved in dirty water. I lost no time in sending for provisions, which were scarce and dear. Bombay failed in procuring a sheep, though the Baloch, by paying six cloths, were more fortunate. One of Kidogo’s principles of action, in which he was abetted by Said bin Salim, was to prevent our buying provisions, however necessary, at high prices, fearing lest the tariff thus established might become an “ada,” a precedent or custom for future travellers, himself and others. We were, therefore, fain to content ourselves and our servants with a little bajri and two eggs.
After a day’s halt at Ndabi we resumed the journey on the 29th August. The path crossed a high and stony hill-shoulder, where the bleak raw air caused one of the porters to lie down torpid like a frozen man. It then stretched over gradually rising and falling ground to a dense bush of cactaceæ and milk-bush, aloetic plants and thorns, based upon a surface of brickdust-red. Beyond this point lay another plateau of wavy surface, producing dwarfed and wind-wrung calabashes, and showing grain-fields carefully and laboriously ridged with the hoe. Flocks and herds now appeared in all directions. The ground was in some places rust-coloured, in others dazzlingly white with a detritus of granite; mica glittered like silver-filings in the sun, and a fine silky grass waved in the wind, bleached clean of colour by the glowing rays. This plateau ended in a descent with rapid slopes, over falls and steps of rock and boulder into the basin of the Rumuma River. It is a southern influent, or a bifurcation of the Mukondokwa, and it drains the hills to the south-west of the Rumuma district, whereas the main stream, arising in the highlands of the Wahumba or Wamusai, carries off the waters of the lands on the west. Losing our way, we came upon this mountain-torrent, which swirls through blocks and boulders under stiff banks of red earth densely grown with brush and reeds; and to find the kraal we were obliged to travel up the bed-side, through well-hoed fields irrigated by raised water-courses. The khambi was badly situated in the dwarf hollow between the river and the hills, and having lately been tenanted, as the smoking embers showed, it was uncleanly in the extreme. It was heart-breaking to see the asses that day. I left them to Said bin Salim, who, with many others, did not appear till eventide.
Rumuma is a favourite resting-place with caravans, on account of the comparative abundance of its supplies. I halted here two whole days, to rest and feed the starving porters, and to repair the sacks, the pack-saddles, and the other appointments of the asses. Here, for the first time, the country people descended in crowds from the hills, bringing fowls, hauling along small but beautifully formed goats, lank sheep, and fine bullocks—the latter worth twelve cloths—and carrying on their heads basket-platters full of the Voandzeia, bajri, beans, and the Arachis Hypogæa. The latter is called by the Arabs Sumbul el Sibal, or “Monkey’s Spikenard;” on the coast, Njugu ya Nyassa; in Unyamwezi, Karanga or K’haranga, and further west, Mayowwa or Mwanza. It is the Bhuiphali, or “earth-fruit” of India, and the Bik’han of Maharatta land, where it is used by cheap confectioners in the place of almonds, whose taste it simulates. Our older Cape travellers term it the pig-nut. The plant extends itself along the surface of the ground, and puts forth its fruit at intervals below. It is sown before the rains, and ripens after six months,—in the interior about June. The Arabs fry it with cream that has been slightly salted, and employ it in a variety of rich dishes; it affords them also a favourite oil. The Africans use it principally on journeys. The price greatly varies according to the abundance of the article; when moderate, about two pounds may be purchased for a “khete” of coral beads.
The Wasagara of Rumuma are short, black, beardless men. They wear their hair combed off the forehead, and twisted into a fringe of little pig-tails, which extend to the nape of the neck. Few boast of cloth, the general body contenting themselves with a goat-skin flap somewhat like a cobbler’s apron tied over one shoulder, as we sling a game-bag. Their ornaments are zinc and brass earrings in rolls, which distend the ear-lobe, bangles, or armlets of similar metal, and iron chains with oblong links as anklets. Their arms are bows and arrows, assegais with long lanceated heads, and bull-hide shields, three feet long by one broad, painted black and red in perpendicular stripes. I was visited by their Sultan Njasa, a small grizzled old man, with eyes reddened by liquor, a wide mouth, a very thin beard, a sooty skin, and long straggling hair, “à la malcontent.” He was attired in an antiquated Barsati, or blue and red Indian cotton, tucked in at the waist, with another thrown over his shoulders, and his neck was decked with many strings of beads. He insisted upon making “sare” or brotherhood with Said bin Salim, who being forbidden by his law to taste blood, made the unconscientious Muinyi Wazira his proxy. The two brothers being seated on the ground opposite each other, with legs well to the fore, one man held over their heads a drawn sword, whilst another addressed to them alternately a little sermon, denouncing death or slavery as the penalty for proving false to the vow. Then each brother licked a little of the other’s blood, taken with the finger from a knife-cut above the heart, or rather where the heart is popularly supposed to be. The Sultan then presented to the Muinyi, in memoriam, a neat iron chain-anklet, and the Muinyi presented to the Sultan a little of our cloth.
The climate of Rumuma was new to me, after the incessant rains of the maritime valley, and the fogs and mists of the Rufuta Range. It was, however, in extremes. At night the thermometer, under the influence of dewy gusts, sank in the tent to 48° F., a killing temperature in these latitudes to half-naked and houseless men. During the day the mercury ranged between 80° and 90° F.; the sun was fiery, whilst a furious south wind coursed through skies purer and bluer than I had ever seen in Greece or Italy. At times, according to the people, the hill-tops are veiled, especially in the mornings and evenings, with thick nimbus, vapours, and spitting clouds, which sometimes extend to the plain, and discharge heavy showers that invariably cause sickness. Here my companion once more suffered from an attack of “liver,” brought on, he supposed, from over-devotion to a fat bullock’s hump. Two of the Wanyamwezi porters were seized with preliminary symptoms of small-pox, euphuistically termed by Said bin Salim “shurua,” or chicken-pox. Several of the slaves, including the charming Halimah, were laid up; the worst of all, however, was Valentine, who complained of an unceasing racking headache, whilst his puffed cheeks and dull-yellow skin gave him the look of one newly deceased. At length, divining his complaint, he was cupped by a Mnyamwezi porter, and he recovered after the operation strength and appetite.