Beyond Usenye we traversed a deep jungle where still lingered remains of villages which had been plundered and burned down by the Wawende and the Watuta, whose hills rose clearly defined on the right hand. Having passed the night at Rukunda, or Lukunda, on the 31st January we sighted the plain of the Malagarazi River. Northwards of the road ran the stream, and the low level of the country adjoining it had converted the bottoms into permanent beds of soft, deep, and slippery mire. The rest of the march was the usual country—jungle, fields, and grasses—and after a toilsome stretch, we unpacked at the settlement of Wanyika.
At Wanyika we were delayed for a day by the necessity of settling Kuhonga, or blackmail, with the envoys of Mzogera. This great man, the principal Sultan of Uvinza, is also the Lord of the Malagarazi River. As he can enforce his claims by forbidding the ferrymen to assist strangers, he must be carefully humoured. He received about forty cloths, white and blue, six Kitindi or coil bracelets, and ten Fundo (or 100 necklaces) of coral beads. It is equivalent in these lands to 50l. in England. When all the items had been duly palavered over, we resumed our march on the 2nd February. The road, following an incline towards the valley of the river, in which bush and field alternated with shallow pools, black mud, and putrid grass, led to Unyanguruwwe, a miserable settlement, producing, however, millet in abundance, sweet potatoes, and the finest manioc. On the 3rd February we set out betimes. Spanning cultivation and undulating grassy ground, and passing over hill-opens to avoid the deeper swamps, we debouched from a jungle upon the river-plain, with the swift brown stream, then about fifty yards broad, swirling through the tall wet grasses of its banks on our right hand, hard by the road. Upon the off side a herd of elephants, forming Indian file, slowly broke through the reed-fence in front of them: our purblind eyes mistook them for buffaloes. Northwards lay an expanse of card-table plain, over which the stream, when in flood, debords to the distance of two miles, cutting it with deep creeks and inlets. The flat is bounded in the far offing by a sinuous line of faint blue hills, the haunts of the Watuta; whilst, westward and southward, rises the wall-shaped ridge, stony and wooded, which buttresses the left bank of the river for some days’ journey down the stream. We found lodgings for the night in a little village, called from its district Ugaga; we obtained provisions, and we lost no time in opening the question of ferryage. The Sultan Mzogera had sold his permission to cross the river. The Mutware, or Mutwale, the Lord of the Ferry, now required payment for his canoes.
Whilst delayed at Ugaga by the scabrous question of how much was to be extracted from me, I will enter into a few geographical details concerning the Malagarazi River.
The Malagarazi, corrupted by speculative geographers to Mdjigidgi,—the uneuphonious terminology of the “Mombas Mission Map,”—to “Magrassie” and to “Magozi,” has been wrongly represented to issue from the Sea of Ujiji. According to all travellers in these regions, it arises in the mountains of Urundi, at no great distance from the Kitangure, or River of Karagwah; but whilst the latter, springing from the upper counterslope, feeds the Nyanza or Northern Lake, the Malagarazi, rising in the lower slope of the equatorial range, trends to the south-east, till it becomes entangled in the decline of the Great Central African Depression—the hydrographical basin first indicated in his Address of 1852 by Sir Roderick I. Murchison, President of the Royal Geographical Society of London.[10] Thence it sweeps round the southern base of Urundi, and, deflected westwards, it disembogues itself into the Tanganyika. Its mouth is in the land of Ukaranga, and the long promontory behind which it discharges its waters, is distinctly visible from Kawele, the head-quarters of caravans in Ujiji. The Malagarazi is not navigable; as in primary and transition countries generally, the bed is broken by rapids. Beyond the ferry, the slope becomes more pronounced, branch and channel-islets of sand and verdure divide the stream, and as every village near the banks appears to possess one or more canoes, it is probably unfordable. The main obstacle to crossing it on foot, over the broken and shallower parts near the rock-bars, would be the number and the daring of the crocodiles.
[10] The following notice concerning a discovery which must ever be remembered as a triumph of geological hypothesis, was kindly forwarded to me by the discoverer:—
“My speculations as to the whole African interior being a vast watery plateau-land of some elevation above the sea, but subtended on the east and west by much higher grounds, were based on the following data:—
“The discovery in the central portion of the Cape colony, by Mr. Bain, of fossil remains in a lacustrine deposit of secondary age, and the well-known existence on the coast of loftier mountains known to be of a Palæozoic or primary epoch and circling round the younger deposits, being followed by the exploration of the Ngami Lake, justified me in believing that Africa had been raised from beneath the ocean at a very early geological period; and that ever since that time the same conditions had prevailed. I thence inferred that an interior network of lakes and rivers would be found prolonged northwards from Lake Ngami, though at that time no map was known to me showing the existence of such central reservoirs. Looking to the west as well as to the east, I saw no possibility of explaining how the great rivers could escape from the central plateau-lands and enter the ocean except through deep lateral gorges, formed at some ancient period of elevation, when the lateral chains were subjected to transverse fractures. Knowing that the Niger and the Zaire, or Congo, escaped by such gorges on the west, I was confident that the same phenomenon must occur upon the eastern coast, when properly examined. This hypothesis, as sketched out in my ‘Presidential Address’ of 1852, was afterwards received by Dr. Livingstone just as he was exploring the transverse gorges by which the Zambesi escapes to the east, and the great traveller has publicly expressed the surprise he then felt that his discovery should have been thus previously suggested.”
The Lord of the Ferry delayed us at Ugaga by removing the canoes till he had extracted fourteen cloths and one coil-bracelet,—half his original demand. Moreover, for each trip the ferryman received from one to five khete of beads, according to the bulk, weight, and value of the freight. He was as exorbitant when we returned; then he would not be satisfied with less than seven cloths, a large jar of palm oil, and at least three hundred khete. On the 4th February we crossed to Mpete, the district on the right or off bank of the stream. After riding over the river plain, which at that time, when the rains had not supersaturated the soil, was hard and dry, we came upon the “Ghaut,” a muddy run or clearing in the thicket of stiff grass which crossed the stream. There we found a scene of confusion. The Arabs of Kazeh had described the canoes as fine barges, capable of accommodating fifty or sixty passengers. I was not, however, surprised to find wretched “baumrinden”—tree-rind—canoes, two strips of “myombo” bark, from five to seven feet in length, sown together like a doubled wedge with fibres of the same material. The keel was sharp, the bow and stern were elevated, and the craft was prevented from collapsing by cross-bars—rough sticks about eighteen inches long, jammed ladder-wise between the sides. When high and dry upon the bank, they look not unlike castaway shoes of an unusual size. We entered “gingerly.” The craft is crankier than the Turkish caïque, and we held on “like grim death” to the gunwale with wetted fingers. The weight of two men causes these canoes to sink within three or four inches of water-level. An extra sheet of stiff bark was placed as a seat in the stern; but the interior was ankle-deep in water, and baling was necessary after each trip. The ferryman, standing amidships or in the fore, poled or paddled according to the depth of the stream. He managed skilfully enough, and on the return-march I had reason to admire the dexterity with which he threaded the narrow, grass-grown and winding veins of deep water, that ramified from the main trunk over the swampy and rushy plains on both sides. Our riding asses were thrown into the river, and they swam across without accident. Much to my surprise, none of the bales were lost or injured. The ferrymen showed decision in maintaining, and ingenuity in increasing, their claims. On the appearance of opposition they poled off to a distance, and squatted, quietly awaiting the effect of their decisive manœuvre. When the waters are out, it is not safe to step from the canoe before it arrives at its destination. The boatman will attempt to land his passenger upon some dry mound emerging from deep water, and will then demand a second fee for salvage.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
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