Our return from Unyanyembe to the coast was to take place during the dead season, when provisions are most expensive and are not unfrequently unprocurable. But being “Wazungu” and well provided with “African money,” we might expect the people to sell to us their grain and stores, which they would have refused at tariff-prices to Arabs or Wasawahili. We carried as stock fourteen porters’ loads of cloth, viz., 645 domestics, 653 blue-cottons, and 20 coloured cloths, principally Debwani, Barsati, and Subai, as presents to chiefs. The supply of beads was represented by one load of ububu or black-porcelains—afterwards thrown away as useless—half a Frasilah (17·5 pounds) of “locust-legs,” or pink-porcelains, purchased from Sallum bin Hamid, and eight Kartasat or papered-bundles of the heavy and expensive “town-breakers,” vermilion or coral-porcelains, amounting to seventy Fundo, each of which covered as a rule the day’s minor expenses. The other stores were the fifty-four Jembe purchased at Msene, besides a few brought from Usukuma by my companion. These articles are useful in making up kuhonga or blackmail; in Ugogo and Usagara, which is their western limit, they double in value, and go even further than a white cotton-cloth. Finally, we had sixteen cows, heifers, and calves, bought in Usukuma by my companion, at the rate of six domestics per head. We expected them to be serviceable as presents, and meanwhile to add materially to our comfort by a more regular supply of milk than the villages afford. But, alas! having neglected to mark the animals, all were changed—a fact made evident by their running dry after a few days: the four calves presently died of fatigue; whenever an animal lay down upon the road its throat was summarily cut, others were left to stray and be stolen, and the last bullock preserved for a sirloin on Christmas was prematurely lost. A small per-centage proved useful as tribute to the chiefs of Ugogo, and served as rations when grain was unprocurable. The African, however, looks upon meat, not as “Posho”—daily bread—but as kitoweyo—kitchen: two or three pounds of beef merely whet his teeth for the usual Ugali or porridge of boiled flour. It is almost needless to state that, despite the best surveillance and the strictest economy, we arrived at the coast almost destitute; cloth and beads, hoes and cattle, all had disappeared, and had we possessed treble the quantity, it would have gone the same way.
The 26th September, 1858, saw us on foot betimes. The hospitable Snay bin Amir, freshly recovered from an influenza which had confined him for some days to his sleeping-mat, came personally to superintend our departure. As no porters had returned for property left behind, and as all the “cooking-pots” had preceded us on the yester, Snay supplied us with his own slaves, and provided us with an Arab breakfast, well cooked, and as usual, neatly served on porcelain plates, with plaited and coloured straw dish-covers, pointed like Chinese caps. Then, promising to spend the next day with me, he shook hands and followed me out of the compound. After a march of three miles, under a white-hot sun, and through a chilling wind, to which were probably owing our subsequent sufferings, we entered the dirty little village of Masui, where a hovel had been prepared for us by Said bin Salim. There we were greeted by the caravan, and we heard with pleasure that it was ready, after a fashion, to break ground.
Early on the next morning appeared Snay bin Amir and Musa Mzuri: as I was suffering from a slight attack of fever, my companion took my place as host. The paroxysm passing off, allowed me to settle all accounts with Snay bin Amir, and to put a finishing touch to the names of stations in the journal. I then thanked these kind-hearted men for their many good deeds, and promised to report to H. H. the Sayyid Majid the hospitable reception of his Arab subjects generally, and of Snay and Musa in particular. About evening time I shook hands with Snay bin Amir—having so primed the dear old fellow with a stirrup-cup of burnt-punch, that his gait and effusion of manner were by no means such as became a staid and stately Arab Shaykh.
On the 4th October, after a week of halts and snail’s marches—the insufficiency of porterage compelled me to send back men for the articles left behind at the several villages—we at last reached Hanga, our former quarters on the eastern confines of the Unyanyembe district. As long as we were within easy distance of Kazeh it was impossible to keep the sons of Ramji in camp, and their absence interfered materially with the completion of the gang. Several desertions took place, a slave given by Kannena of Ujiji to Said bin Salim, old Musangesi the Asinego, and two new purchases, male and female, made by the Baloch at Kazeh, disappeared after the first few marches. The porters were troublesome. They had divided themselves as usual into Khambi, or crews, but no regular Kirangozi having been engaged, they preferred, through mutual jealousy, following Shehe, one of the sons of Ramji. On the road, also, some heads had been broken, because the cattle-drivers had attempted to precede the line, and I feared that the fall of a chance shower might make the whole squad desert, under the impression that the sowing season had set in. In their idleness and want of excitement, they had determined to secure at Hanga the bullock claimed by down caravans at Rubuga. After four days’ halt, without other labour but that of cooking, they arose under pretext of a blow given by one of the children of Said bin Salim, and packing up their goods and chattels, poured in mass, with shouts and yells, from the village, declaring that they were going home. In sore tribulation, Said bin Salim and the Jemadar begged me to take an active part, but a short experience of similar scenes amongst the Bashi-Buzuks at the Dardanelles had made me wiser than my advisers: the African, like the Asiatic, is naturally averse to the operation proverbially called “cutting off one’s own nose;” but if begged not to do so, he may wax, like pinioned men, valorous exceedingly, and dare the suicidal deed. I did not move from my hut, and in half an hour everything was in statu quo ante. The porters had thrown the blame of the proceeding upon the blow, consequently a flogging was ordered for Said bin Salim’s “child,” who, as was ever the case, had been flagrantly in the wrong; but after return, evading the point, the plaintiffs exposed the true state of affairs by a direct reference to the bullock. Thus the “child” escaped castigation, and the bullock was not given till we reached Rubuga.
At Hanga my companion was taken seriously ill. He had been chilled on the line of march by the cruel easterly wind, and at the end of the second march from Kazeh he appeared trembling as if with ague. Immediately after arrival at the foul village of Hanga—where we lodged in a kind of cow-house, full of vermin, and exposed directly to the fury of the cold gales—he complained, in addition to a deaf ear, an inflamed eye, and a swollen face, of a mysterious pain which often shifted its seat, and which he knew not whether to attribute to liver or to spleen. It began with a burning sensation, as by a branding-iron, above the right breast, and then extended to the heart with sharp twinges. After ranging around the spleen, it attacked the upper part of the right lung, and finally it settled in the region of the liver. On the 10th October, suddenly waking about dawn from a horrible dream, in which a close pack of tigers, leopards, and other beasts, harnessed with a network of iron hooks, were dragging him like the rush of a whirlwind over the ground, he found himself sitting up on the side of his bedding, forcibly clasping both sides with his hands. Half-stupefied by pain, he called Bombay, who having formerly suffered from the “Kichyoma-chyoma”—the “little irons”—raised his master’s right arm, placed him in a sitting position, as lying down was impossible, and directed him to hold the left ear behind the head, thus relieving the excruciating and torturing twinges, by lifting the lung from the liver. The next spasm was less severe, but the sufferer’s mind had begun to wander, and he again clasped his sides, a proceeding with which Bombay interfered.
Early on the next morning, my companion, supported by Bombay and Gaetano, staggered towards the tent. Nearing the doorway, he sent in his Goanese, to place a chair for sitting, as usual, during the toils of the day, outside. The support of an arm being thus removed, ensued a second and violent spasm of cramps and twinges, all the muscles being painfully contracted. After resting for a few moments, he called his men to assist him into the house. But neglecting to have a chair previously placed for him, he underwent a third fit of the same epileptic description, which more closely resembled those of hydrophobia than aught I had ever witnessed. He was once more haunted by a crowd of hideous devils, giants, and lion-headed demons, who were wrenching, with superhuman force, and stripping the sinews and tendons of his legs down to the ankles. At length, sitting, or rather lying upon the chair, with limbs racked by cramps, features drawn and ghastly, frame fixed and rigid, eyes glazed and glassy, he began to utter a barking noise, and a peculiar chopping motion of the mouth and tongue, with lips protruding—the effect of difficulty of breathing—which so altered his appearance that he was hardly recognisable, and completed the terror of the beholders. When this, the third and the severest spasm, had passed away, he called for pen and paper, and fearing that increased weakness of mind and body might presently prevent any exertion, he wrote an incoherent letter of farewell to his family. That, however, was the crisis. He was afterwards able to take the proper precautions, never moving without assistance, and always ordering a resting-place to be prepared for him. He spent a better night, with the inconvenience, however, of sitting up, pillow-propped, and some weeks elapsed before he could lie upon his sides. Presently, the pains were mitigated, though they did not entirely cease: this he expressed by saying that “the knives were sheathed.” Such, gentle reader, in East Africa, is the kichyoma-chyoma: either one of those eccentric after-effects of fever, which perplex the European at Zanzibar, or some mysterious manifestation of the Protean demon Miasma.
I at once sent an express to Snay bin Amir for the necessary drugs. The Arabs treat this complaint by applying to the side powdered myrrh mixed with yoke of egg, and converted into a poultice with flour of mung (Phaseolus Mungo). The material was duly forwarded, but it proved of little use. Said bin Salim meanwhile, after sundry vague hints concerning the influence of the Father of Hair, the magnificent comet then spanning the western skies, insisted, as his people invariably do on such conjunctures, upon my companion being visited by the mganga, or medicine-man of the caravan. That reverend personage, after claiming and receiving the usual fee, a fat goat, anointed with its grease two little bits of wood strung on to a tape of tree-fibre, and contented himself with fastening this Mpigi—the negroid’s elixir vitæ—round my companion’s waist. The ligature, however, was torn off after a few minutes, as its only effect was to press upon and pain the tenderest part.
During the forced halt which followed my companion’s severe attack, I saw that, in default of physic, change of air was the most fitting restorative. My benumbed legs and feet still compelling me to use a hammock, a second was rigged up for the invalid; and by good fortune thirteen unloaded porters of a down caravan consented to carry us both for a large sum to Rubuga. The sons of Ramji were imperatively ordered to leave Kazeh under pain of dismissal, which none would incur as they had a valuable investment in slaves: with their aid the complement of porters was easily and speedily filled up.
Seedy Mubarak Bombay—in the interior the name became Mamba (a crocodile) or Pombe (small beer)—had long before returned to his former attitude, that of a respectful and most ready servant. He had, it is true, sundry uncomfortable peculiarities. A heaven-born “Pagazi,” he would load himself on the march with his “T’haka-t’haka,” or “chow-chow,” although a porter had been especially hired for him. He had no memory: an article once taken by him was always thrown upon the ground and forgotten: in a single trip he broke my elephant gun, killed my riding-ass, and lost its bridle. Like the Eastern Africans generally, he lacked the principle of immediate action; if beckoned to for a gun in the field he would probably first delay to look round, then retire, and lastly advance. He had a curious inverted way of doing all that he did. The water-bottle was ever carried on the march either uncorked or inverted; his waistcoat was generally wound round his neck, and it appeared fated not to be properly buttoned; whilst he walked bareheaded in the sun, his Fez adorned the tufty poll of some comrade; and at the halt he toiled like a charwoman to raise our tents and to prepare them for habitation, whilst his slave, the large lazy Maktubu, a boy-giant from the mountains of Urundi, sat or dozed under the cool shade. Yet with all his faults and failures Bombay, for his unwearied activity, and especially from his undeviating honesty,—there was no man, save our “Negro Rectitude,” in the whole camp who had not proved his claim to the title triliteral—was truly valuable. Said bin Salim had long forfeited my confidence by his carelessness and extravagance; and the disappearance of the outfit committed to him at Ujiji, in favour, as I afterwards learned, of an Arab merchant-friend, rendered him unfit for the responsibilities of stewardship.
Having summoned Said bin Salim, I told him with all gentleness, in order to spare his “shame”—the Persian proverb says, Fell not the tree which thou hast planted—that being now wiser in Eastern African travel than before, I intended to relieve him of his troublesome duties. He heard this announcement with the wriest of faces; and his perturbation was not diminished when informed that the future distribution of cloth should be wholly in the hands of Bombay, checked by my companion’s superintendence. The loads were accordingly numbered and registered; the Pagazi were forbidden, under pain of punishment, to open or to change them without permission; and Said bin Salim received, like the Baloch, a certain monthly amount of beads, besides rations of rice for the consumption of his children. This arrangement was persevered in till we separated upon the seaboard: it acted well, saving outfit, time, and a host of annoyances; moreover, it gave us command, as the African man, like the lower animals, respects only, if he respects anything, the hand that gives, that feeds him. It was wonderful to see how the “bone of contention,” cloth, having been removed, the fierceness of those who were formerly foes melted and merged into friendship and fraternisation. The triad of bitter haters, Said bin Salim, the monocular Jemadar, and Muinyi Kidogo, now marched and sat and ate together as if never weary of such society; they praised one another openly and without reserve, and if an evil tale ever reached my ear its subject was the innocent Bombay—its object was to ruin him in my estimation.