The porters would have halted on the next day, but the excited Said exerted himself manfully; at 2 P.M. we were once more on the road. Descending from the village-eminence, we crossed in a blazing sun the fetid Ruhembe; and, after finding with some difficulty the jungly path, we struck into a pleasant forest, like that traversed on the last march. It was cut by water-courses draining south, and at these places it was necessary to dismount. At 6 P.M. appeared a clearing, with sundry villages and clumps of the Mgude tree, whose tufty summits of the brightest green, gilt by the last rays of the sun, formed a lovely picture. The porters would have rested at this spot, but they were forced forwards by the sons of Ramji. Presently we emerged upon the southern extremity of the Makata Plain, a hideous low level of black vegetable earth, peaty in appearance, and, bearing long puddles of dark scummy and stagnant rain-water, mere horse-ponds, with the additional qualities of miasma and mosquitos. The sons of Ramji had determined to reach the Makata Nullah, still distant about two hours. I called a halt in favour of the fatigued Pagazi, who heard it with pleasure, and sent to recall Wulaydi, Shehe, and Nasibu, who were acting bell-wethers. The worthies returned after a time, and revenged themselves by parading, with many grimaces, up and down the camp.
On the morning of the 24th of December, we resumed the transit of the Makata Plain, and crossed the tail of its nullah. It was here bone-dry; consequently, had we made it last night, the thirsty caravan would have suffered severely. Ensued a long slope garnished with the normal thin forest; in two places the plots of ashes, which denote the deaths of wizard and witch, apprised us that we were fast approaching benighted K’hutu. A skeleton caravan of touters, composed of six muskets and two flags, met us on the way. Presently we descended into the basin of Kikoboga, which was occupied in force by gentry of the same description. After wading four times the black, muddy, and rushy nullah, which bisects the lake, we crossed a lateral band of rough high ground, whence a further counter-slope bent down to a Khambi in a diminutive hollow, called Mwimbi. It was the ideal of a bad encamping ground. The kraal stood on the bank of a dark, miry water at the head of a narrow gap, where heat was concentrated by the funnel-shaped hill-sides, and where the dark ground, strewed with rotting grass and leaves, harboured hosts of cock-roaches, beetles, and mosquitos. The supplies, a little grain, poor sugar-cane, good wild vegetables, at times plantains, were distant, and the water was vile. Throughout this country, however, the Wasagara cultivators, fearing plunder should a caravan encamp near their crops, muster in force; the traveller, therefore, must not unpack except at the kraals on either edge of the cultivation.
The dawn of Christmas Day, 1858, saw us toiling along the Kikoboga River, which we forded four times. We then crossed two deep affluents, whose banks were thick with fruitless plantains. The road presently turned up a rough rise, from whose crest began the descent of the Mabruki Pass. This col may be divided into two steps: the first winds along a sharp ridge-line, a chain of well-forested hills, whose heights, bordered on both sides by precipitous slopes of earth overgrown with thorns and thick bamboo-clumps, command an extensive view of spur and subrange, of dhun and champaign, sprinkled with villages and dwarf cones, and watered by streamlets that glisten like lines of quicksilver in the blue-brown of the hazy distant landscape. Ensues, after a succession of deep and rugged watercourses, with difficult slopes, the second step; a short but sharp steep of red earth, corded with the tree-roots that have been bared by the heavy rains. Beyond this the path, spanning rough ground at the hill-base, debouches upon the course of a streamlet flowing southwards from the last heights of Usagara to the plains of Uziraha in K’hutu.
The bullock reserved for the occasion having been lost in Uhehe, I had ordered the purchase of half a dozen goats wherewith to celebrate the day; the porters, however, were too lazy to collect them. My companion and I made good cheer upon a fat capon, which acted as roast-beef, and a mess of ground-nuts sweetened with sugar-cane, which did duty as plum-pudding. The contrast of what was with what might be now, however, suggested only pleasurable sensations; long odds were in favour of our seeing the Christmas Day of 1859, compared with the chances of things at Msene on the Christmas Day of 1857.
From Uziraha sixteen hours distributed into fourteen marches conducted us from Uziraha, at the foot of the Usagara mountains, to Central Zungomero. The districts traversed were Eastern Mbwiga, Marundwe, and Kirengwe. The road again realises the European idea of Africa in its most hideous and grotesque aspect. Animals are scarce amidst the portentous growth of herbage, not a head of black cattle is seen, flocks and poultry are rare, and even the beasts of the field seem to flee the land. The people admitted us into their villages, whose wretched straw-hovels, contrasting with the luxuriant jungle which hems them in, look like birds’ nests torn from the trees: all the best settlements, however, were occupied by parties of touters. At the sight of our passing caravan the goatherd hurried off his charge, the peasant prepared to rush into the grass, the women and children slunk and hid within the hut, and no one ever left his home without a bow and a sheath of arrows, whose pitchy-coloured bark-necks denoted a fresh layer of poison.
We entered Zungomero on the 29th of December, after sighting on the left the cone at whose base rises the Maji ya W’heta, or Fontaine qui bouille. The village on the left bank of the Mgeta, which we had occupied about eighteen months before, had long been level with the ground; we were therefore conducted with due ceremony into another settlement on the right of the stream. An army of black musketeers, in scanty but various and gaudy attire, came out to meet us, and with the usual shots and shouts conducted us to the headman’s house, which had already been turned into a kind of barrack by these irregulars. They then stared as usual for half-a-dozen consecutive hours, which done they retired to rest.
After a day’s repose, sending for the Kirangozi, and personally offering a liberal reward, I opened to him the subject then nearest my heart, namely, a march upon Kilwa. This proceeding probably irritated the too susceptible Said bin Salim, and caused him, if not actually to interfere, at any rate to withhold all aid towards furthering the project. Twanigana, after a palaver with his people, returned with a reply that he himself was willing, but that his men would not leave the direct track. Their reasons were various. Some had become brothers with the sons of Ramji, and expected employment from their “father.” Others declared that it would be necessary to march a few miles back, which was contrary to their custom, and said that they ought to have been warned of the intention before passing the Makutaniro, or junction of the two roads. But none expressed any fear, as has since been asserted, of being sold off into slavery at Kilwa. Such a declaration would have been ridiculous. Of the many Wanyamwezi caravans that have visited Kilwa none has ever yet been seized and sold; the coast-people are too well acquainted with their own interests to secure for themselves a permanent bad name. Seeing, however, that energetic measures were necessary to open the road, I allowed them two days for consideration, and warned them that after that time Posho or rations should be withdrawn.
On the next day I was privately informed by the Mnfumo or parson of the caravan, that his comrades intended to make a feint of desertion, and then to return, if they found us resolved not to follow them. The reverend gentleman’s sister-in-law, who had accompanied us from Unyamwezi as cook and concubine to Seedy Bombay, persuaded our managing man that there was no danger of the porters traversing Uzaramo, without pay, escort, or provisions. On the 1st January, 1859, however, the gang rose to depart. I sent for the Kirangozi, who declared that though loth to leave us he must head his men: in return for which semi-fidelity I made him name his own reward; he asked two handsome cloths, a Gorah or piece of domestics, and one Fundo of coral beads—it was double his pay, but I willingly gave it, and directed Said bin Salim to write an order to that effect upon Mr. Rush Ramji, or any other Hindu who might happen to be at Kaole. But I rejected the suggestion of my companion, who proposed that half the sum agreed upon in Unyanyembe as payment to the porters—nine cloths each—should be given to them. In the first place, this donation would have been equivalent to a final dismissal. Secondly, the Arabs at Kazeh had warned me that it was not their custom to pay in part those who will not complete the journey to the coast; and I could see no reason for departing from a commercial precedent, evidently necessary to curb the Africans’ alacrity in desertion.
On the day following the departure of the gang I set out to visit the Jetting Spring, and found when returning to the village shortly before noon that my companion had sent a man to recal the “Pagazi,” who were said to be encamped close to the river, and to propose to them a march upon Mbuamaji. The messenger returned and reported that the Wanyamwezi had already crossed the river. Unwilling that the wretches should lose by their headstrongness, I at once ordered Said bin Salim to mount ass and to bring back the porters by offers which they would have accepted. Some time afterwards, when I fancied that he was probably haranguing the men, he came to me to say that he had not eaten and the sun was hot. With the view of shaming him I directed Kidogo to do the work, but as he also made excuses, Khamisi and Shehe, two sons of Ramji, were despatched with cloths to buy rations for the Pagazi, and, coûte que coûte, to bring them back. They set out on the 2nd January, and returned on the 7th January, never having, according to their own account, seen the fugitives.
This was a regrettable occurrence: it gave a handle to private malice under the specious semblance of public duty. But such events are common on the slave-path in Eastern Africa; of the seven gangs of porters engaged on this journey only one, an unusually small proportion, left me without being fully satisfied, and that one deserved to be disappointed.