The great labour still remained. Trembling with ague, with swimming heads, ears deafened by weakness, and limbs that would hardly support us, we contemplated with a dogged despair the apparently perpendicular path that ignored a zigzag, and the ladders of root and boulder, hemmed in with tangled vegetation, up which we and our starving drooping asses were about to toil. On the 10th September we hardened our hearts, and began to breast the Pass Terrible. My companion was so weak that he required the aid of two or three supporters; I, much less unnerved, managed with one. After rounding in two places wall-like sheets of rock—at their bases green grass and fresh water were standing close to camp, and yet no one had driven the donkeys to feed—and crossing a bushy jungly step, we faced a long steep of loose white soil and rolling stones, up which we could see the Wanyamwezi porters swarming, more like baboons scaling a precipice than human beings, and the asses falling after every few yards. As we moved slowly and painfully forwards, compelled to lie down by cough, thirst, and fatigue, the “sayhah” or war-cry rang loud from hill to hill, and Indian files of archers and spearmen streamed like lines of black ants in all directions down the paths. The predatory Wahumba, awaiting the caravan’s departure, had seized the opportunity of driving the cattle and plundering the villages of Inenge. Two passing parties of men, armed to the teeth, gave us this information; whereupon the negro “Jelai” proposed, fear-maddened—a sauve qui peut—leaving to their fate his employers, who, bearing the mark of Abel in this land of Cain, were ever held to be the head and front of all offence. Khudabakhsh, the brave of braves, being attacked by a slight fever, lay down, declaring himself unable to proceed, moaned like a bereaved mother, and cried for drink like a sick girl. The rest of the Baloch, headed by the Jemadar, were in the rear; they had levelled their matchlocks at one of the armed parties as it approached them, and, but for the interference of Kidogo, blood would have been shed.
By resting after every few yards, and by clinging to our supporters, we reached, after about six hours, the summit of the Pass Terrible, and there we sat down amongst the aromatic flowers and bright shrubs—the gift of mountain dews—to recover strength and breath. My companion could hardly return an answer; he had advanced mechanically and almost in a state of coma. The view from the summit appeared eminently suggestive, perhaps unusually so, because disclosing a retrospect of severe hardships, now past and gone. Below the foreground of giant fractures, huge rocks, and detached boulders, emerging from a shaggy growth of mountain vegetation, with forest glens and hanging woods, black with shade gathering in the steeper folds, appeared, distant yet near, the tawny basin of Inenge, dotted with large square villages, streaked with lines of tender green, that denoted the water-courses, mottled by the shadows of flying clouds, and patched with black where the grass had been freshly fired. A glowing sun gilded the canopy of dense smoke which curtained the nearer plain, and in the background the hazy atmosphere painted with its azure the broken wall of hill which we had traversed on the previous day.
Somewhat revived by the tramontana which rolled like an ice-brook down the Pass, we advanced over an easy step of rolling ground, decked with cactus and the flat-topped mimosa, with green grass and bright shrubs, to a small and dirty khambi, in a hollow flanked by heights, upon which several settlements appeared. At this place, called the “Great Rubeho,” in distinction from its western neighbour, I was compelled to halt. My invalid sub. had been seized with a fever-fit that induced a dangerous delirium during two successive nights; he became so violent that it was necessary to remove his weapons, and, to judge from certain symptoms, the attack had a permanent cerebral effect. Death appeared stamped upon his features, yet the Baloch and the sons of Ramji clamoured to advance, declaring that the cold disagreed with them.
On the 12th September the invalid, who, restored by a cool night, at first proposed to advance, and then doubted his ability to do so, was yet hesitating when the drum-signal for departure sounded without my order. The Wanyamwezi porters instantly set out. I sent to recal them, but they replied that it was the custom of their race never to return; a well-sounding principle against which they never offended except to serve their own ends. At length a hammock was rigged up for my companion, and the whole caravan broke ground.
The path ran along the flank of an eminence, and, ascending a second step, as steep but shorter than the Pass Terrible, placed us at the Little Rubeho, or Windy Pass, the summit of the third and westernmost range of the Usagara Mountains, raised 5,700 feet above the sea-level. It is the main water-parting of this ghaut-region. At Inenge the trend is still to the S.E.; beyond Rubeho the direction is S.W. Eventually, however, the drainage of both slope and counter-slope finds its way to the Indian Ocean, the former through the Mukondokwa and the Kingani, the latter through the Rwaha and the Rufiji Rivers.
A lively scene awaited my arrival at the “Little Rubeho.” From a struggling mass of black humanity, which I presently determined to be our porters, proceeded a furious shouting and yelling. Spears and daggers flashed in the sun, and cudgels played with a threshing movement which promised many a broken head. At the distance of a few yards, with fierce faces and in motionless martial attitudes, the right hand upon the axe-handle stuck in the waist-belt, and the left grasping the bow and two or three polished assegais, stood a few strong fellows, the forlorn hope of the fray. In the midst of the crowd, like Norman Ramsay’s troop begirt by French cavalry—to compare small things with great—rose and fell the chubby, thickset forms of Muinyi Wazira and his four Wak’hutu, who, undaunted by numbers, were dealing death to nose and scalp. Charge! Mavi ya Gnombe (“Bois de Vache”) charge! On! Mashuzi (“Fish Fry-soup”) on! Bite, Kuffan Kwema (“To die is good”) bite, Smite, Na daka Mali (“I want wealth”) smite! At length, when
“Blood (t’was from the nose) began to flow,”
a little active interference rescued the five “enfans perdus.” The porters had been fighting upon the question whether the men with small-pox should, or should not, be admitted into the kraal, and Muinyi Wazira and his followers, under the influence of potations which prevented their distinguishing friend from foe, had proved themselves, somewhat unnecessarily heroes. It is usually better to let these quarrels work themselves out; if prematurely cut short, the serpent, wrath, is scotched, not slain. A little “punishment” always cools the blood, and secures peace and quiet for the future. Moreover, the busy peacemaker here often shares the fate of M. Porceaugnac, and earns the reward of those who, according to the proverb, in quarrels interpose. It is vain to investigate, where all is lie, the origin of the squabble. Nothing easier, as the Welsh justice was fond of declaring, than to pronounce judgment after listening to one side of the question; but an impartial hearing of both would strike the inquiring mind with a sense of impotence. Perhaps it is not unadvisable to treat the matter after the fashion adopted by a “police-officer,” a certain captain in the X. Y. Z. army, who deemed it his duty to discourage litigiousness and official complaints amongst the quarrelsome Sindhi population of Hyderabad. The story is somewhat out of place; though so being, I will here recount it.
Would enter, for instance, two individuals in an oriental costume considerably damaged; one has a cloth carefully tied round his head, the other has artificially painted his eye and his ear with a few drops of blood from the nose. They express their emotions by a loud drumming of the tom-tom accompanying the high-sounding Cri de Haro—Faryad! Faryad! Faryad!—
“I’ll ‘Faryad’ yer, ye”——