There was little novelty in our return-march to Unyamyembe. We took the northerly route, crossing and skirting the lower spurs of the mountains which form the region of Uhha. During the first few stages, being still within the influence of that bag of Æolus, the Tanganyika trough, we endured tornados of wind and heavy rain, thunder and lightning. After the 5th March the threatening clouds drew off, the dank heavy dew diminished, and the weather became clear and hot, with a raw cold eastern wind pouring through the tepid temperature, and causing general sickness. On the 29th May we pitched at Uyonwa, a little settlement of Wabuha, who have already raised crops of sweet potatoes; if they have the sense to avoid keeping cattle, the only attraction to the robber Watuta, they may once more convert the sad waste of Uhha, a wilderness where men are now wolves to one another, into a land smiling with grains and fruits. Beyond Uyonwa we hurried over “neat-tongue” hills, separated by green swamps and black rivulets, with high woody banks, over jungle paths thick with spear and tiger grass, brambly bush and tall growths of wild arrowroot, and over a country for the most part rough and rugged, with here and there an acacia-barren, a bamboo-clump, or a lone Palmyra. Approaching the Rusugi River, which we forded on the 1st June at the upper or Parugerero passage, the regular succession of ridge and swamp gave way to a dry, stony, and thorny slope, rolling with an eastward decline. We delayed for an hour at the Salt-pass, to lay in a supply of the necessary, and the temptation to desert became irresistible. Muhabanya, the “slavey” of the establishment, ran away, carrying off his property and my hatchet. The Jemadar was rendered almost daft by the disappearance of half of his six slaves. A Mnyamwezi porter placed his burden—it was a case of Cognac and vinegar, deeply regretted!—upon the ground, and levanted. Two other porters lost their way, and disappeared for some days; their comrades, standing in awe of the Wavinza, would not venture in search of them. The Kirangozi or Mnyamwezi guide, who had accompanied the Expedition from the coast, remained behind, because his newly-purchased slave-girl had become foot-sore, and unable to advance; finding the case hopeless, he cut off her head, lest of his evil good might come to another. The party gave the usual amount of trouble. The bull-headed Mabruki had invested his capital in a small servile, an infant phenomenon, who, apparently under six years, trotted manfully alongside the porters, bearing his burden of hide-bed and water-gourd upon his tiny shoulder. For some days he was to his surly master as her first doll to a young girl: when tired he was mounted upon the back, and after crossing every swamp his feet were carefully wiped. When the novelty, however, wore off, the little unfortunate was so savagely beaten that I insisted upon his being committed to the far less hard-hearted Bombay. The Hanmals who carried my manchil were the most annoying of their kind. Wanyamwezi veterans of the way (their chief man wore a kizbao or waistcoat, and carried an old Tower musket), originally five in number, and paid in advance as far as Unyanyembe; they deserted slowly and surely, till it was necessary to raise a fresh gang. For a short time they worked well, then they fell off. In the mornings when their names were called they hid themselves in the huts, or they squatted pertinaciously near the camp fires, or they rushed ahead of the party. On the road they hurried forwards, recklessly dashing the manchil, without pity or remorse, against stock and stone. A man allowed to lag behind never appeared again on that march, and more than once they attempted to place the hammock on the ground and to strike for increase of wages, till brought to a sense of their duty by a sword-point applied to their ribs. They would halt for an hour to boil their sweet potatoes, but if I required the delay of five minutes, or the advance of five yards, they became half mad with fidgetiness; they were as loud-voiced, noisy and insolent, as turbulent and irritable, as grumbling, importunate, and greedy specimens of the genus homo, species Africanus, as I have ever seen, even amongst the “sons of water” in the canoes of Ujiji. In these lands, however, the traveller who cannot utilise the raw material that comes to hand will make but little progress.
On the 2nd June we fell into our former route at Jambeho, in the alluvial valley of the Malagarazi River. The party was pitched in two places by the mismanagement of Said bin Salim; already the porters began to raise loud cries of Posho! (provaunt!) and their dread of the Wavinza increased as they approached the Malagarazi Ferry. The land in the higher levels was already drying up, the vegetation had changed from green to yellow, and the strips of grassy and tree-clad rock, buttressing the left bank of the river, afforded those magnificent spectacles of conflagration which have ever been favourite themes with the Indian muse:—
“silence profound
Enwraps the forest, save where bubbling springs
Gush from the rock, or where the echoing hills
Give back the tiger’s roar, or where the boughs
Burst into crackling flame and wide extends
The blaze the Dragon’s fiery breath has kindled.”
Wilson’s Uttara Rama Cheritra, act 2.
A sheet of flame, beginning with the size of a spark, overspread the hill-side, advancing on the wings of the wind, with the roaring rushing sound of many hosts where the grass lay thick, shooting huge forky tongues high into the dark air, where tall trees, the patriarchs of the forest, yielded their lives to the blast, smouldering and darkening, as if about to be quenched where the rock afforded scanty fuel, then flickering, blazing up and soaring again till topping the brow of the hill, the sheet became a thin line of fire, and gradually vanished from the view, leaving its reflection upon the canopy of lurid smoke studded with sparks and bits of live braise, which marked its descent on the other side of the buttress. Resuming our march along the cold and foggy vale of the Malagarazi, and crossing on the third day the stony slabby hills that bound the fluviatile plain northward, we reached, on the 4th June, the dreaded ferry-place of the river.
The great Malagarazi still swollen, though the rains had ceased, by the surplus moisture of the sopped earth, had spread its wide heart of shallow waters, variegated with narrow veins—a deeper artery in the centre showing the main stream—far over the plain. Thus offering additional obstacles to crossing, it was turned to good account by the Mutware, the Lord of the Ferry. On arrival at the Kraal overlooking the river I summoned this Charon, who demanded as his preliminary obolus one pot of oil, seven cloths, and 300 khete of blue porcelains. Said bin Majid, our companion, paid about one-fifth the sum. But the Kraal was uncomfortable, we were stung out by armies of ants; a slight earthquake, at 11.15 A.M., on the 4th June, appeared a bad omen to Said bin Salim: briefly, I was compelled to countenance the extortion. On the next morning we set out, having been cannily preceded by Said bin Majid. Every difficulty was thrown in the way of our boxes and baggage. Often, when I refused the exorbitant sum of four and even five khete per load, the fellows quietly poled off, squatted in their canoes, and required to be summoned back by Said bin Salim with the abjectest concessions. They would not take on board a Goanese or a Baloch without extra pay, and they landed, under some pretext, Said bin Salim and the Jemadar upon a dry knoll in the waste of waters, and demanded and received a cloth before they would rescue them. In these and kindred manœuvres nearly seven hours were expended; no accidents, however, occurred, and at 4 P.M. we saw ourselves, with hearts relieved of some load, once more at Ugogo, on the left bank of the river. I found my companion, who had preceded me, in treaty for the purchase of a little pig; fortunately the beads would not persuade the porters to part with it, consequently my pots escaped pollution.
An eventless march of twelve days led from the Malagarazi Ferry to Unyanyembe. Avoiding the détour to Msene we followed this time the more direct southern route. I had expected again to find the treacle-like surface over which we had before crept, and perhaps even in a worse state; but the inundations compelled the porters to skirt the little hills bounding the swamps. Provisions—rice, holcus and panicum, manioc, cucumbers and sweet potatoes, pulse, ground-nuts, and tobacco—became plentiful as we progressed; the arrowroot and the bhang plant flourished wild, and plantains and palmyras were scattered over the land. On the 8th June, emerging from inhospitable Uvinza into neutral ground, we were pronounced to be out of danger, and on the next day, when in the meridian of Usagozi, we were admitted for the first time to the comfort of a village. Three days afterwards we separated from Said bin Majid. Having a valuable store of tusks, he had but half loaded his porters; he also half fed them: the consequence was that they marched like mad men, and ours followed like a flock of sheep. He would not incur the danger and expense of visiting a settlement, and he pitched in the bush, where provisions were the least obtainable. When I told him that we must part company, he deprecated the measure with his stock statement, viz. that at the distance of an hour’s march there was a fine safe village full of provisions, and well fitted for a halt. The hour’s march proved a long stage of nearly sixteen miles, over a remarkably toilsome country, a foul jungle with tsetse-haunted thorn-bushes, swamps, and inundated lands, ending at a wretched cluster of huts, which could supply nothing but a tough old hen. I was sorry to part with the Arab merchant, a civil man, and a well-informed, yet somewhat addicted to begging like all his people. His marching freaks, however, were unendurable, dawdling at the beginning of the journey, rushing through the middle, and lagging at the end. We afterwards passed him on the road, of course he had been delayed, and subsequently, during a long halt at Unyanyembe, he frequently visited me.
On the 17th June the caravan, after sundry difficulties, caused by desertion, passed on to Irora the village of Salim bin Salih, who this time received us hospitably enough. Thence we first sighted the blue hills of Unyanyembe, our destination. The next day saw us at Yombo, where, by good accident, we met a batch of seven cloth-bales and one box en route to Ujiji, under charge of our old enemy Salim bin Sayf of Dut’humi. My complaint against “Msopora,” forwarded from Zuryomero, had, after Lieut.-Col. Hamerton’s decease, on the 5th July 1857, been laid by M. Cochet, Consul de France, before H. M. the Sayyid Majid,—a fact which accounts for the readiness with which our effects were on this occasion delivered up, and for the non-appearance of the individual in person. We also received the second packet of letters which reached us during that year: as usual, they-were full of evil news. Almost every one had lost some relation or friend near and dear to him: even Said bin Salim’s hearth had been spoiled of its chief attraction, an only son, who, born it was supposed in consequence of my “barakat” (propitious influence), had been named Abdullah. Such tidings are severely felt by the wanderer who, living long behind the world, and unable to mark its gradual changes, lulls, by dwelling upon the past, apprehension into a belief that his home has known no loss, and who expects again to meet each old familiar face ready to smile upon his return as it was to weep at his departure.
After a day’s halt to collect porters at Yombo, we marched from it on the 20th June, and passing the scene of our former miseries, the village under the lumpy hill, “Zimbili,” we re-entered Kazeh. There I was warmly welcomed by the hospitable Snay bin Amir, who, after seating us to coffee, as is the custom, for a few minutes in his Barzah or ante-room, led us to the old abode, which had been carefully repaired, swept, and plastered. There a large metal tray bending under succulent dishes of rice and curried fowl, giblets and manioc boiled in the cream of the ground-nut, and sugared omelets flavoured with ghee and onion shreds, presented peculiar attractions to half-starved travellers.
Our return from Ujiji to Unyanyembe was thus accomplished in twenty-two stations, which, halts included, occupied a total of twenty-six days, from the 26th May to the 20th June 1858, and the distance along the road may be computed at 265 statute miles.