From the Red Vale of Mdáburu three main lines traverse the desert between Ugogo and Unyamwezi. The northernmost, called Njia T’humbi, leads in a west-north-westerly direction to Usukuma. Upon this track are two sultans and several villages. The central “Karangásá,” or “Mdáburu,” is that which will be described in the following pages. The southernmost, termed Uyánzi, sets out from K’hok’ho, and passes through the settlements known by the name of Jiwe lá Singá. It is avoided by the porters, dreading to incur the wrath of Sultan Kibuyá, who would resent their omitting to visit his settlement, M’dáburu.
These three routes pass through the heart of the great desert and elephant-ground “Mgunda Mk’hali”—explained by the Arabs to mean in Kinyamwezi, the Fiery “Shamba” or Field. Like Marenga Mk’hali, it is a desert, because it contains no running water nor wells, except after rain. The name is still infamous, but its ill-fame rests rather upon tradition than actuality; in fact, its dimensions are rapidly shrinking before the torch and axe. About fifteen years ago it contained twelve long stages, and several tirikeza; now it is spanned in eight marches. The wildest part is the first half from Mdáburu to Jiwe lá Mkoa, and even here, it is reported, villages of Wakimbu are rising rapidly on the north and south of the road. The traveller, though invariably threatened with drought and the death of cattle, will undergo little hardship beyond the fatigue of the first three forced marches through the “Fiery Field;” in fact, he will be agreeably surprised by its contrast with the desert of Marenga Mk’hali.
From east to west the diagonal breadth of Mgunda Mk’hali is 140 miles. The general aspect is a dull uniform bush, emerald-coloured during the rains, and in the heats a network of dry and broom-like twigs. Except upon the banks of nullahs—“rivers” that are not rivers—the trees, as in Ugogo, wanting nutriment, never afford timber, and even the calabash appears stunted. The trackless waste of scrub, called the “bush” in Southern Africa, is found in places alternating with thin gum-forest; the change may be accounted for by the different depths of water below the level of the ground. It is a hardy vegetation of mimosas and gums mixed with evergreen succulent plants, cactaceæ, aloes, and euphorbias: the grass, sometimes tufty, at other times equally spread, is hard and stiff; when green it feeds cattle, and when dry it is burned in places by passing caravans to promote the growth of another crop.
The groundwork of Mgunda Mk’hali is a detritus of yellowish quartz, in places white with powdered felspar, and, where vegetation decays, brown-black with humus. Water-worn pebbles are sprinkled over the earth, and the vicinity of Fiumaras abounds in a coarse and modern sandstone-conglomerate. Upon the rolling surface, and towering high above the tallest trees, are based the huge granitic and syenitic outcrops before alluded to. The contrast between the masses and the dwarf rises which support them at once attracts the eye. Here and there the long waves that diversify the land appear in the far distance like blue lines bounding the nearer superficies of brown or green. Throughout this rolling table-land the watershed is to the south. In rare places the rains stagnate in shallow pools, which become systems of mud-cakes during the drought. At this season water is often unprocurable in the Fiumaras, causing unaccustomed hardships to caravans, and death to those beasts which, like the elephant and the buffalo, cannot long exist without drinking.
On the 20th October we began the transit of the “Fiery Field,” whose long broad line of brown jungle, painted blue by the intervening air, had, since leaving K’hok’ho, formed our western horizon. The waste here appeared in its most horrid phase. The narrow goat-path serpentined in and out of a growth of poisonous thorny jungle, with thin, hard grass-straw, growing on a glaring white and rolling ground; the view was limited by bush and brake, as in the alluvial valleys of the maritime region, and in weary sameness the spectacle surpassed everything that we had endured in Marenga Mk’hali. We halted through the heat of the day at some water-pits in a broken course; and resuming our tedious march early in the afternoon, we arrived about sunset at the bed of a shallow nullah, where the pure element was found in sand-holes about five feet deep.
On the 2nd day we reached the large Mabunguru Fiumara, a deep and tortuous gash of fine yellow quartzoze sand and sunburnt blocks of syenite: at times it must form an impassable torrent, even at this season of severe drought it afforded long pools of infiltrated rain-water, green with weeds and abounding with shell-fish, and with the usual description of Silurus. In the earlier morning the path passed through a forest already beautified by the sprouting of tender green leaves and by the blooming of flowers, amongst which was a large and strongly perfumed species of jasmine, whilst young grass sprouted from the fire-blackened remnants of the last year’s crop. Far upon the southern horizon rose distant hills and lines, blue, as if composed of solidified air, and mocking us by their mirage-likeness to the ocean. Nearer, the ground was diversified by those curious evidences of igneous action, which extend westward through eastern Unyamwezi, and northwards to the shores of the Nyanza Lake. These outcrops of gray granite and syenite are principally of two different shapes, the hog’s back and the turret. The former usually appears as a low lumpy dome of various dimensions; here a few feet long, there extending a mile and a half in diameter: the outer coat scales off under the action of the atmosphere, and in places it is worn away by a network of paths. The turret is a more picturesque and changing feature. Tall rounded blocks and conical or cylindrical boulders, here single, there in piles or ridges, some straight and stiff as giant ninepins, others split as if an alley or a gateway passed between them, rise abruptly and perpendicularly almost without foundationary elevation, cleaving the mould of a dead plain, or—like gypseous formations, in which the highest boulders are planted upon the lowest and broadest bases—they bristle upon a wave of dwarfish rocky hill. One when struck was observed to give forth a metallic clink, and not a few, balanced upon points, reminded me of the tradition-bearing rocking stones. At a distance in the forest, the larger masses might be mistaken for Cyclopean walls, towers, steeples, minarets, loggans, dwelling houses, and ruined castles. They are often overgrown with a soft grass, which decaying, forms with the degradation of the granite a thin cap of soil; their summits are crowned with tufty cactus, a stomatiferous plant which imbibes nourishment from the oxygen of the air; whilst huge creepers, imitating trees, project gnarled trunks from the deeper crevices in their flanks. Seen through the forest these rocks are an effective feature in the landscape, especially when the sunbeams fall warm and bright upon their rounded summits and their smooth sides, here clothed with a mildew-like lichen of the tenderest leek-green, there yellowed like Italian marbles by the burning rays, and there streaked with a shining black as if glazed by the rain, which, collecting in cupfuls upon the steps and slopes, at times overflows, coursing in mimic cataracts down the heights.
That march was a severe trial; we had started at dawn, we did not, however, arrive at the Mabunguru Fiumara before noon, and our people straggled in about eveningtide. All our bullet-moulds, and three boxes of ammunition, were lost. Said bin Salim, the Jemadar, and three other men had followed in the rear, driving on the “One-Eyed Fiend,” which, after many a prank, lay down upon the ground, and positively declined to move. The escort, disliking the sun, abandoned it at once to its fate, and want of provisions, and the inordinate length of the marches, rendered a halt or a return for the valuable load—four boxes of ammunition—out of the question. An article once abandoned in these deserts is rarely if ever recovered; the caravan-porters will not halt, and a small party dares not return to recover it.
The 22nd October saw us at Jiwe la Mkoa, the half-way-house of Mgunda Mk’hali. The track, crossing the rough Mabunguru Fiumara, passed over rolling ground through a thorny jungle that gradually thinned out into a forest; about 8 A.M. a halt was called at a water in the wilderness. My companion being no longer able to advance on foot, an ass was unloaded, and its burden of ammunition was divided, for facility of porterage, amongst the sons of Ramji. After noon we resumed our march, and the Kirangozi, derided by the rival guide of the Coast-Arabs’ caravan, and urged forward by Kidogo, who was burning to see his wife and children in Unyamwezi, determined to “put himself at the head of himself.” The jungle seemed interminable. The shadows of the hills lengthened out upon the plains, the sun sank in the glory of purple, crimson, and gold, and the crescent-moon rained a flood of silvery light upon the topmost twig-work of the trees; we passed a dwarf clearing, where lodging and perhaps provisions were to be obtained, and we sped by water near the road where the frogs were chanting their vesper-hymn; still far,—far ahead we heard the horns and the faint march-cries of the porters. At length, towards the end of the march, we wound round a fantastic mass of cactus-clad boulders, and crossing a low ridge we found at its base a single Tembe or square village of emigrant Wakimbu, who refused to admit us. The little basin beyond it displayed, by “black jacks” and felled tree-trunks, evidences of modern industry, and it extended to the Jiwe or Rock, which gives its name to the clearing. We were cheered by the sight of the red fires glaring in the Kraal, but my companion’s ass, probably frightened by some wild beast to us invisible, reared high in the air, bucked like a deer, broke his frail Arab girths, and threw his invalid rider heavily upon the hard earth. Arrived at the Kraal, I found every boothy occupied by the porters, who refused shelter until dragged out like slaughtered sheep. Said bin Salim’s awning was as usual snugly pitched; ours still lay on the ground. The little Arab’s “duty to himself” appeared to attain a higher limit every stage; once comfortably housed, he never thought of offering cover to another, and his children knew him too well even to volunteer such a service to any one but himself. On a late occasion, when our tent had not appeared, Said bin Salim, to whom a message had been sent, refused to lend us one half of the awning committed to him, a piece of canvas cut out to serve as a tent and lug-sail. Bombay then distinguished himself by the memorable words,—“If you are not ashamed of your master, be ashamed of his servant!” which had the effect of bringing the awning and of making Said bin Salim testily refuse the half returned to him.
Jiwe la Mkoa, or the Round Rock, is the largest of the many hogs’-backs of grey syenite that stud this waste. It measures about two miles in extreme diameter, and the dome rises with a gentle slope to the height of 200 or 300 feet above the dead level of the plain. Tolerable water is found in pits upon a swamp at its southern base, and well covered Mtego or elephant traps, deep grave-like excavations, like the Indian “Ogi,” prove dangerous to travellers; in one of these the Jemadar disappeared suddenly, as if by magic. The smooth and rounded surface of the rock displays deep hoof-shaped holes, which in a Moslem land would at once be recognised as the Asr, or the footprints of those holy quadrupeds, Duldul or Zu’l Jenah. In places the Jiwe, overgrown with scattered tufts of white grass, and based upon a dusty surface blackened by torrent rains, forcibly suggested to the Baloch the idea of an elderly negro’s purbald poll.
We encamped close to the Jiwe, and in so doing we did wrong: however pleasant may be the shadow of a tall rock in a thirsty land by day, way-wise travellers avoid the vicinity of stones which, by diminished radiation, retain their heat throughout the night. All caravans passing through this clearing clamour to be supplied with provisions; our porters, who, having received rations for eight days, which they consumed in four, were no exceptions to the rule. As the single little village of Jiwe la Mkoa could afford but one goatskin of grain and a few fowls, the cattle not being for sale, and no calves having been born to the herds, the porters proposed to send a party with cloth and beads to collect provaunt from the neighbouring settlements. But the notable Khalfan bin Khamis, the most energetic of the Coast-Arabs in whose company we were travelling, would brook no delay: he had issued as usual three days’ rations for a long week’s march, and thus by driving his porters beyond their speed, he practised a style of economy usually categorised by us at home as “penny-wise and pound-foolish.” His marching was conducted upon the same principle; determining to save time, he pushed on till his men began to flag, presently broke down, and finally deserted.