Crossing the Runangwa or Marungu River, which, draining the southern countries towards the Tanganyika, is represented to equal the Malagarazi in volume, the traveller passes through the districts of Marungu Tafuna, Ubeyya, and Iwemba. Thence, turning to the north, he enters the country of the Wapoka, between whom and the Lake lie the Wasowwa and the Wafipa. This coast is divided from the opposite shore by a voyage of fourteen hours; it is a hilly expanse divided by low plains, where men swarm according to the natives like ants. At a short distance from the shore lies the Mvuma group, seven rocks or islets, three of which are considerable in size, and the largest, shaped like a cone, breeds goats in plenty, whilst the sea around is rich in fish. There are other islets in the neighbourhood, but none are of importance.
Ufipa is an extensive district fertilised by many rivers. It produces grain in abundance, and the wild rice is of excellent flavour. Cattle abounded there before the Watuta, who held part of the country, began a system of plunder and waste, which ended in their emigration to the north of Uvinza; cows, formerly purchased for a few strings of cheap white beads, are now rare and dear. The Wafipa are a wild but kindly people, who seldom carry arms: they have ever welcomed the merchants that visited them for slaves and ivory, and they are subject to four or five principal chiefs. The servile specimens seen at Unyanyembe were more like the jungle races of the Deccan than Africans—small and short, sooty and shrunken men, so timid, ignorant, and suspicious, that it was found impossible to obtain from them the simplest specimen of their dialect. Some of them, like the Wanyoro, had extracted all the lower incisors.
North of the Wafipa, according to the Arabs, lies another tribe, called Wat’hembe (?), an offshoot from the people on the opposite side of the Tanganyika. Here the lake receives a small river called the Murunguru (?). The circuit of the Tanganyika concludes with the Wat’hongwe, called from their sultan or their founder Wat’hongwe Kapana. In clear weather their long promontory is the furthest point visible from Kawele in Ujiji; and their lands extend northwards to Ukaranga and the Malagarazi River.
Such are the most important details culled from a mass of Arab oral geography: they are offered however to the reader without any guarantee of correctness. The principal authorities are the Shaykh Snay bin Amir el Harsi and Amayr bin Said el Shaksi; the latter was an eye-witness. All the vague accounts noted down from casual informants were submitted to them for an imprimatur. Their knowledge and experience surpassing those of others, it was judged better to record information upon trust from them only, rather than to heap together reliable and unreliable details, and as some travellers do, by striking out a medium, inevitably to confuse fact with fiction. Yet it is the explorer’s unpleasant duty throughout these lands to doubt everything that has not been subjected to his own eyes. The boldest might look at the “Mombas Mission Map” and tremble.
SNAY BIN AMIR’S HOUSE.
Mganga, or medicine man.
The porter.
The Kirangozi, or guide.