The Kirangozi and Bombay having rejoined at Sorora, the Expedition left it on the 16th January. Traversing a fetid marsh, the road plunged into a forest, and crossed a sharp elbow of the Gombe Nullah, upon whose grassy and reedy banks lay a few dilapidated “baumrinden” canoes, showing that at times the bed becomes unfordable. Having passed that night at Ukungwe, and the next at Panda, dirty little villages, where the main of the people’s diet seemed to be mushrooms resembling ours and a large white fungus growing over the grassy rises, on the 18th January we entered Kajjanjeri.
Kajjanjeri appeared in the shape of a circle of round huts. Its climate is ever the terror of travellers: to judge from the mud and vegetation covering the floors, the cultivators of the fields around usually retire to another place during the rainy season. Here a formidable obstacle to progress presented itself. I had been suffering for some days: the miasmatic air of Sorora had sown the seeds of fresh illness. About 3 P.M., I was obliged to lay aside the ephemeris by an unusual sensation of nervous irritability, which was followed by a general shudder as in the cold paroxysm of fevers. Presently the extremities began to weigh and to burn as if exposed to a glowing fire, and a pair of jack-boots, the companions of many a day and night, became too tight and heavy to wear. At sunset, the attack had reached its height. I saw yawning wide to receive me
“those dark gates across the wild
That no man knows.”
The whole body was palsied, powerless, motionless, and the limbs appeared to wither and die; the feet had lost all sensation, except a throbbing and tingling, as if pricked by a number of needle points; the arms refused to be directed by will, and to the hands the touch of cloth and stone was the same. Gradually the attack seemed to spread upwards till it compressed the ribs; there, however, it stopped short.
This, at a distance of two months from medical aid, and with the principal labour of the Expedition still in prospect! However, I was easily consoled. Hope, says the Arab, is woman, Despair is man. If one of us was lost, the other might survive to carry home the results of the exploration. I had undertaken the journey in the “nothing-like-leather” state of mind, with the resolve either to do or die. I had done my best, and now nothing appeared to remain for me but to die as well.
Said bin Salim, when sent for, declared, by a “la haul!” the case beyond his skill; it was one of partial paralysis brought on by malaria, with which the faculty in India are familiar. The Arab consulted a Msawahili Fundi, or caravan-guard, who had joined us on the road, and this man declared that a similar accident had once occurred to himself and his little party in consequence of eating poisoned mushrooms. I tried the usual remedies without effect, and the duration of the attack presently revealed what it was. The contraction of the muscles, which were tightened like ligatures above and below the knees, and those λυτα γουνατα, a pathological symptom which the old Greek loves to specify, prevented me from walking to any distance for nearly a year; the numbness of the hands and feet disappeared even more slowly. The Fundi, however, successfully predicted that I should be able to move in ten days—on the tenth I again mounted my ass.
This unforeseen misfortune detained the caravan at Kajjanjeri till porters could be procured for the hammock. On the 21st January four men were with difficulty persuaded to carry me over the first march to Usagozi. This gang was afterwards increased to six men, who severally received six cloths for the journey to Ujiji; they all “bolted” eight days after their engagement, and before completing half the journey. These men were sturdier than the former set of Hammals, but being related to the Sultan of Usagozi, they were even more boisterous, troublesome, and insolent. One of them narrowly escaped a pistol bullet; he ceased, however, stabbing with his dagger at the slave Mabruki before the extreme measure became necessary.
Usagozi was of old the capital province of Unyamwezi, and is still one of its principal and most civilised divisions. Some authorities make Usagozi the western frontier of Unyamwezi, others place the boundary at Mukozimo, a few miles to the westward; it is certain, however, that beyond Usagozi the Wanyamwezi are but part-proprietors of the soil. The country is laid out in alternate seams of grassy plains, dense jungle, and fertile field. The soil is a dark vegetable humus, which bears luxuriant crops of grain, vegetables, and tobacco; honey-logs hang upon every large tree, cattle are sold to travellers, and the people are deterred by the aspect of a dozen discoloured skulls capping tall poles, planted in a semicircle at the main entrance of each settlement, from doing violence to caravans. When I visited Usagozi it was governed by “Sultan Ryombo,” an old chief “adorned with much Christian courtesy.” His subjects are Wakalaganza, the noble tribe of the Wanyamwezi, mixed, however with the Watosi, a fine-looking race, markedly superior to their neighbours, but satisfied with leaky, ragged, and filthy huts, and large but unfenced villages. The general dress of the Wakalaganza is bark-cloth, stained a dull black.
We halted three days on the western extremity of the Usagozi district, detained by another unpleasant phenomenon. My companion, whose blood had been impoverished, and whose system had been reduced by many fevers, now began to suffer from “an inflammation of a low type, affecting the whole of the interior tunic of the eyes, particularly the iris, the choroid coat, and the retina;” he describes it as “an almost total blindness, rendering every object enclouded as by a misty veil.” The Goanese Valentine became similarly afflicted, almost on the same day; he complained of a “drop serene” in the shape of an inky blot—probably some of the black pigment of the iris deposited on the front of the lens—which completely excluded the light of day; yet the pupils contracted with regularity when covered with the hand, and as regularly dilated when it was removed. I suffered in a minor degree; for a few days webs of flitting muscæ obscured smaller objects and rendered distant vision impossible. My companion and servant, however, subsequently, at Ujiji, were tormented by inflammatory ophthalmia, which I escaped by the free use of “camel-medicine.”
Quitting Usagozi on the 26th January, we marched through grain fields, thick jungle-strips, and low grassy and muddy savannahs to Masenza, a large and comfortable village of stray Wagara or Wagala, an extensive tribe, limiting Unyamwezi on the S. and S.E., at the distance of about a week’s march from the road. On the 27th January, after traversing cultivation, thick jungles, and low muddy bottoms of tall grass chequered with lofty tamarinds, we made the large well-palisadoed villages of the Mukozimo district, inhabited by a mixture of Wanyamwezi, with Wagara from the S.E. and Wawende from the S.W. The headman of one of these inhospitable “Kaya,” or fenced hamlets, would not house “men who ride asses.” The next station was Uganza, a populous settlement of Wawende, who admitted us into their faubourg, but refused to supply provisions. The 29th January saw us at the populous and fertile clearing of Usenye, where the mixed races lying between the Land of the Moon eastward, and Uvinza westward, give way to pure Wavinza, who are considered by travellers even more dangerous than their neighbours.