On the 14th September, our tempers being sensibly cooled by the weather, we left the hill-top and broke ground upon the counterslope or landward descent of the Usagara Mountains. Following a narrow footpath that wound along the hill-flanks, on red earth growing thick clumps of cactus and feathery mimosa, after forty-five minutes’ march we found a kraal in a swampy green gap, bisected by a sluggish rivulet that irrigated scanty fields of grain, gourds, and water-melons, the property of distant villagers. For the first time since many days I had strength enough to muster the porters and to inspect their loads. The outfit, which was expected to last a year, had been half exhausted in three months. I summoned Said bin Salim, and passed on to him my anxiety. Like a veritable Arab, he declared, without the least emotion, that we had enough to reach Unyanyembe, where we certainly should be joined by the escort of twenty-two porters. “But how do you know that?” I inquired. “Allah is all-knowing,” replied Said; “but the caravan will come.” Such fatalism is infectious. I ceased to think upon the subject.
On the 15th September, after sending forward the luggage, and waiting as agreed upon for the return of the porters to carry my companion, I set out about noon, through hot sunshine tempered by the cool hill-breeze. Emerging from the grassy hollow, the path skirted a well-wooded hill and traversed a small savannah, overgrown with stunted straw and hedged in by a bushy forest. At this point massive trees, here single, there in holts and clumps, foliaged more gloomily than churchyard yews, and studded with delicate pink-flowers, rose from the tawny sun-burned expanse around, and defended from the fiery glare braky rings of emerald shrubbery, sharply defined as if by the forester’s hand. The savannah extended to the edge of a step which, falling deep and steep, suddenly disclosed to view, below and far beyond the shaggy ribs and the dark ravines and folds of the foreground, the plateau of Ugogo and its Eastern desert. The spectacle was truly impressive. The vault above seemed “an ample æther,” raised by its exceeding transparency higher than it is wont to be. Up to the curved rim of the western horizon, lay, burnished by the rays of a burning sun, plains rippled like a yellow sea by the wavy reek of the dancing air, broken towards the north by a few detached cones rising island-like from the surface, and zebra’d with long black lines, where bush and scrub and strip of thorn jungle, supplanted upon the watercourses, trending in mazy network southwards to the Rwaha River, the scorched grass and withered canes-stubbles, which seemed to be the staple growth of the land. There was nothing of effeminate or luxuriant beauty, nothing of the flush and fulness characterising tropical Nature, in this first aspect of Ugogo. It appeared what it is, stern and wild,—the rough nurse of rugged men,—and perhaps the anticipation of dangers and difficulties ever present to the minds of those preparing to endure the waywardness of its children, contributed not a little to the fascination of the scene. After lingering for a few minutes upon the crest of the step, with feelings which they will understand who after some pleasant months—oases in the grim deserts of Anglo-Indian life—spent among the tree-clad heights, the breezy lakes, and the turfy valleys of the Himalayas and the Neilgherries, sight from their last vantage-ground the jaundiced and fevered plains below, we scrambled down an irregular incline of glaring red clay and dazzling white chalk, plentifully besprinkled with dark-olive silex in its cherty crust. Below the descent was a level space upon a long ridge, where some small villages of Wasagara had surrounded themselves with dwarf fields of holcus, bajri, and maize. A little beyond this spot, called the “Third Rubeho,” we found a comfortless kraal on uneven ground, a sloping ledge sinking towards a deep ravine.
At the third Rubeho we were delayed for a day—as is customary before a “Tirikeza”—by the necessity of laying in supplies for a jungle march, and by the quarrels of the men. The Baloch were cross as naughty children, ever their case when cold and hungry: warm and full, they become merry as crickets. The Kirangozi in hot wrath brought his flag to Said bin Salim, and threatened to resign, because he had been preceded on the last stage by two of the Baloch: his complaints of this highly irregular proceeding were with difficulty silenced by force of beads. I remarked, however, a few days afterwards, when travelling through Ugogo, that the Kirangozi, considering himself in danger, applied to me for a vanguard of matchlockmen. The sons of Ramji combined with the porters in refusing to carry my companion, and had Bombay and Mabruki not shown good-will, we might have remained a week in the acme of discomfort. The asses, frightened by wild beasts, broke loose at night, and one was lost. The atmosphere was ever in excesses of heat and cold: in the morning, a mist so thick that it displayed a fog-rainbow—a segment of an arch, composed of faint prismatic tints—rolled like a torrent down the ravine in front: the sun, at noon, made us cower under the thin canvas, and throughout the twenty-four hours a gale like a “vent de bise,” attracted by the heat of the western plains, swept the encamping ground.
Sending forward my invalid companion in his hammock, I brought up the rear: Said bin Salim, who had waxed unusually selfish and surly, furtively left to us the task; he wore only sandals—he could not travel by night. Some of the Baloch wept at the necessity of carrying their gourds and skins.
On the 17th September, about 2 P.M., we resumed the descent of the rugged mountains. The path wound to the N.W. down the stony and bushy crest of a ridge with a deep woody gap on the right hand: presently after alternations of steep and step, and platforms patched with odoriferous plants, it fell into the upper channel of the Mandama or the Dungomaro, the “Devil’s Glen.” Dungomaro in Kisawahili is the proper name of an evil spirit, not in the European but in the African sense,—some unblessed ghost who has made himself unpopular to the general;—perhaps the term was a facetiousness on the part of the sons of Ramji.
It was a “via mala” down this great surface-drain of the western slopes, over boulders and water-rolled stones reposing upon deep sand, and with branches of thorny trees in places canopying the bed. After a march of five hours, I found the porters bivouacking upon a softer spot, and with difficulty persuaded four of the sons of Ramji to return and to assist the weary stragglers: horns were sounded, and shots were fired to guide the Baloch, who did not, however, arrive before 10 P.M.
On the 18th September, a final march of four hours placed us in the plains of Ugogo. Leaving the place of the last night’s bivouac, we pursued the line of the Dungomaro, occasionally quitting it where boulders obstructed progress, and presently we came to its lower bed, where perennial rills, exuding from its earth-walls and trickling down its side, veiled the bottom with a green and shrubby perfumed vegetation. As the plain was neared, the difficulties increased, and the scenery became curious. The Dungomaro appeared a large crevasse in lofty rocks of pink and gray granite, streaked with white quartz, and pudding’d with greenstone and black horneblend; the sole, strewed with a rugged layer of blocks, was side-lined with narrow ledges and terraces of brown humus, supporting dwarf cactus and stunted thorny trees; whilst high above towered stony wooded peaks, closing in the view on all sides. Farther down the bed huge boulders, sunburnt, and stained by the courses of rain-torrents, rose, perpendicularly as walls, to the height of one hundred and one hundred and twenty feet, and there the flooring was a sheet or slide of shiny and shelving rock, with broad fissures, and steep drops, and cups, “potholes,” baths, and basins, filed and cut by the friction of the gravelly torrents, regularly as if turned with the lathe. Where water lay, deep mud and thick clumps of grass and reed forced the path to run along the ledges at the sides of the base. Gradually, as the angle of inclination became more obtuse, the bed widened out, the tall stone-walls gave way to low earth-banks clad with gum-trees; pits, serving as wells, appeared in the deep loose sand, and the Dungomaro, becoming a broad, smooth Fiumara, swept away verging southwards into the plain. Before noon, I sighted from a sharp turn in the bed our tent pitched under a huge sycomore, on a level step that bounded the Fiumara to the right. It was a pretty spot in a barren scene, grassy, and grown with green mimosas, spreading out their feathery heads like parachutes, and shedding upon the ground a filmy shade that fluttered and flickered in the draughty breeze.
The only losses experienced during the scrambling descent, were a gun-case, containing my companion’s store of boots, and a chair and table. The latter, being indispensable on a journey where calculations, composition, and sketching were expected, I sent, during the evening halts, a detachment consisting of Muinyi Wazira, the Baloch, Greybeard Musa, and a party of slaves, to bring up the articles, which had been cache’d on the torrent bank. They returned with the horripilatory tale of the dangers lately incurred by the Expedition, which it appeared from them had been dogged by an army of Wasagara, thirsting for blood and furious for booty:—under such circumstances, how could they recover the chair and table? Some months afterwards an up-caravan commanded by a Msawahili found the articles lying where we had left them, and delivered them, for a consideration, to us at Unyanyembe. The party sent from Ugogo doubtless had passed a quiet, pleasant day, dozing in the shade at the nearest well.
Maji ya W’heta, or the Jetting Fountain in K’hutu.