Arrived at Ukaranga I was disappointed to find there a few miserable grass-huts—used as a temporary shelter by caravans passing to and from the islets fringing the opposite coast—that clustered round a single Tembe, then occupied by its proprietor, Hamid bin Sulayyam, an Arab trader. Presently the motive of the rascally Fundi, in misleading the caravan, which, by the advice of Snay bin Amir, I had directed to march upon the Kawele district in Ujiji, leaked out. The roadstead of Ukaranga is separated from part of Kawele by the line of the Ruche River, which empties itself into a deep hollow bay, whose chord, extending from N.W. to S.E., is five or six miles in length. The strip of shelving plain between the trough-like hills and the lake is raised but a few feet above water-level. Converted by the passage of a hundred drains from the highlands, into a sheet of sloppy and slippery mire, breast deep in select places, it supports with difficulty a few hundred inhabitants: drenched with violent rain-storms and clammy dews, it is rife in fevers, and it is feared by travellers on account of its hippopotami and crocodiles. In the driest season the land-road is barely practicable; during and after the wet monsoon the lake affords the only means of passage, and the port of Ukaranga contains not a single native canoe. The Fundi, therefore, wisely determined that I should spend beads for rations and lodgings amongst his companions, and be heavily mulcted for a boat by them. Moreover, he instantly sent word to Mnya Mtaza, the principal headman of Ukaranga, who, as usual with the Lakist chiefs, lives in the hills at some distance from the water, to come instanter for his Honga or blackmail, as, no fresh fish being procurable, the Wazungu were about to depart. The latter manœuvre, however, was frustrated by my securing a conveyance for the morrow. It was an open solid-built Arab craft, capable of containing thirty to thirty-five men; it belonged to an absent merchant, Said bin Usman; it was in point of size the second on the Tanganyika, and being too large for paddling, its crew rowed instead of scooping up the water like the natives. The slaves, who had named four khete of coral beads as the price of a bit of sun-dried “baccalà,” and five as the hire of a foul hovel for one night, demanded four cloths—at least the price of the boat—for conveying the party to Kawele, a three hours’ trip. I gave them ten cloths and two coil-bracelets, or somewhat more than the market value of the whole equipage,—a fact which I effectually used as an argumentum ad verecundiam.
At eight A.M., on the 14th February, we began coasting along the eastern shore of the lake in a north-westerly direction, towards the Kawele district, in the land of Ujiji. The view was exceedingly beautiful:
“... the flat sea shone like yellow gold
Fused in the sun,”
and the picturesque and varied forms of the mountains, rising above and dipping into the lake, were clad in purplish blue, set off by the rosy tints of morning. Yet, more and more, as we approached our destination, I wondered at the absence of all those features which prelude a popular settlement. Passing the low, muddy, and grass-grown mouth of the Ruche River, I could descry on the banks nothing but a few scattered hovels of miserable construction, surrounded by fields of sorghum and sugar-cane, and shaded by dense groves of the dwarf, bright-green plantain, and the tall, sombre elæis or Guinea-palm. By the Arabs I had been taught to expect a town, a ghaut, a port, and a bazar, excelling in size that of Zanzibar, and I had old, preconceived ideas concerning “die Stadt Ujiji,” whose sire was the “Mombas Mission Map.” Presently Mammoth and Behemoth shrank timidly from exposure, and a few hollowed logs, the monoxyles of the fishermen, the wood-cutters, and the market-people, either cut the water singly, or stood in crowds drawn up on the patches of yellow sand. About 11 A.M. the craft was poled through a hole in a thick welting of coarse reedy grass and flaggy aquatic plants to a level landing-place of flat shingle, where the water shoaled off rapidly. Such was the ghaut or disembarkation quay of the great Ujiji.
Around the ghaut a few scattered huts, in the humblest bee-hive shape, represented the port-town. Advancing some hundred yards through a din of shouts and screams, tom-toms and trumpets, which defies description, and mobbed by a swarm of black beings, whose eyes seemed about to start from their heads with surprise, I passed a relic of Arab civilisation, the “Bazar.” It is a plot of higher ground, cleared of grass, and flanked by a crooked tree; there, between 10 A.M. and 3 P.M.—weather permitting—a mass of standing and squatting negroes buy and sell, barter and exchange, offer and chaffer with a hubbub heard for miles, and there a spear or dagger-thrust brings on, by no means unfrequently, a skirmishing faction-fight. The articles exposed for sale are sometimes goats, sheep, and poultry, generally fish, vegetables, and a few fruits, plantains, and melons; palm-wine is a staple commodity, and occasionally an ivory or a slave is hawked about: those industriously disposed employ themselves during the intervals of bargaining in spinning a coarse yarn with the rudest spindle, or in picking the cotton, which is placed in little baskets on the ground. I was led to a ruinous Tembe, built by an Arab merchant, Hamid bin Salim, who had allowed it to be tenanted by ticks and slaves. Situated, however, half a mile from, and backed by, the little village of Kawele, whose mushroom-huts barely protruded their summits above the dense vegetation, and placed at a similar distance from the water in front, it had the double advantage of proximity to provisions, and of a view which at first was highly enjoyable. The Tanganyika is ever seen to advantage from its shores: upon its surface the sight wearies with the unvarying tintage—all shining greens and hazy blues—whilst continuous parallels of lofty hills, like the sides of a huge trough, close the prospect and suggest the idea of confinement.
And now, lodged with comparative comfort, in the cool Tembe, I will indulge in a few geographical and ethnological reminiscences of the country lately traversed.
The fifth region includes the alluvial valley of the Malagarazi River, which subtends the lowest spires of the Highlands of Karagwah and Urundi, the western prolongation of the chain which has obtained, probably from African tradition, the name of “Lunar Mountains.” In length, it extends from the Malagarazi Ferry in E. Lat. 31° 10′ to the Tanganyika Lake, in E. Long. 30° 1′. Its breadth, from S. Lat. 3° 14′, the supposed northern limit of Urundi, to S. Lat. 5° 2′; the parallel of Ukaranga is a distance of 108 rectilinear geographical miles. Native caravans pass from the Malagarazi to Ujiji in eight days, usually without halting till arrived within a stone’s throw of their destination. To a region of such various elevations it would be difficult to assign an average of altitude; the heights observed by thermometer never exceeded 1850 feet.
This country contains in due order, from east to west, the lands of Uvinza, Ubuha, and Ujiji: on the northern edge is Uhha, and on the south-western extremity Ukaranga. The general features are those of the alluvial valleys of the Kingani and the Mgeta Rivers. The soil in the vicinity of the Malagarazi is a rich brown or black loam, rank with vegetable decay. This strip along the stream varies in breadth from one to five miles; on the right bank it is mostly desert, but not sterile, on the left it is an expanse of luxuriant cultivation. The northern boundary is a jagged line of hill-spurs of primitive formation, rough with stones and yawning with ravines: in many places the projections assume the form of green “dogs’ tails,” or “neat’s tongues,” projecting like lumpy ridges into the card-table-like level of the river-land southwards. Each mound or spur is crowned with a tufty clump, principally of bauhinias and mimosas, and often a lone, spreading and towering tree, a Borassus or a Calabash, ornamenting the extreme point, forms a landmark for the caravan. The sides of these hills, composed of hornblende and gneissic rock, quartzite, quartz-grit, and ferruginous gritstone, are steep, rugged, and thickly wooded, and one slope generally reflects the other,—if muddy, muddy; and if stony, stony. Each “hanger,” or wave of ground, is divided from its neighbour by a soft sedgy valley, bisected by a network of stagnant pools. Here and there are nullahs, with high stiff earthbanks for the passage of rain torrents. The grass stands in lofty screens, and the path leads over a matted mass of laid stalks which cover so closely the thick mud that loaded asses do not sink; this vegetation is burned down during the hot season, and a few showers bring up an emerald crop of young blades, sprouting phœnix-like from the ashes of the dead. The southern boundary of the valley is more regular; in the eastern parts is an almost tabular wall of rock, covered even to the crest with shrub and tree.
As is proved by the regular course of the Malagarazi River, the westward decline of the country is gentle: along the road, however, the two marches nearest to the Tanganyika Lake appear to sink more rapidly than those preceding them. The main drain receives from the northern hill-spurs a multitude of tributaries, which convey their surplus moisture into the great central reservoir.
Under the influence of the two great productive powers in nature—heat and moisture—the wondrous fertility of the soil, which puts forth where uncleared a rank jungle of nauseous odour, renders the climate dangerous. The rains divide the year into two unequal portions of eight and four months, namely, the wet monsoon, which commences with violence in September and ends in May, and the dry hot weather which rounds off the year. The showers fall, as in Zanzibar, uncontinuously, with breaks varying from a few hours to several days; unlike those of Zanzibar, they are generally accompanied by violent discharges of electricity. Lightning from the north, especially at night, is considered a sign of approaching foul weather. It would be vain to seek in these regions of Central Africa the kaskazi and kosi, or regular north-east and south-west monsoons, those local modifications of the trade-winds which may be traced in regular progress from the centre of Equatorial Africa to the Himalayas. The atmospheric currents deflected from the Atlantic Ocean by the coast-radiation and the arid and barren regions of Southern Africa are changed in hydrometric condition, and are compelled by the chilly and tree-clad heights of the Tanganyika Lake, and the low, cold, and river-bearing plains lying to the westward, to part with the moisture which they have collected in the broad belt of extreme humidity lying between the Ngami Lake and the equator. When the land has become super-saturated, the cold, wet, wind, driving cold masses, surcharged with electricity, sets continually eastward, to restore the equilibrium in lands still reeking with the torrid blaze, and where the atmosphere has been rarified by from four to six months of burning suns. At Msene, in Western Unyamwezi, the rains break about October; thence the wet monsoon, resuming its eastward course, crosses the Land of the Moon, and, travelling by slow stages, arrives at the coast in early April. Following the northing sun, and deflected to the north-east by the rarified atmosphere from the hot, dry surface of the Eastern Horn of Africa, the rains reach Western India in June, and exhaust themselves in frequent and copious downfalls upon the southern versant of the Himalayas. The gradual refrigeration of the ground, with the southing of the sun, produces in turn the inverse process, namely, the north-east monsoon. About the Tanganyika, however, all is variable. The large body of water in the central reservoir preserves its equability of temperature, while the alternations of chilly cold and potent heat, in the high and broken lands around it, cause extreme irregularity in the direction of the currents. During the rains of 1858 the prevalent winds were constantly changing: in the mornings there was almost regularly a cool north breeze drawn by the water from the heights of Urundi; in the course of the day it varied round towards the south. The most violent storms came up from the south-east and the south-west, and as often against as with the gale. The long and rigorous wet monsoon, broken only by a few scattered days of heat, renders the climate exceedingly damp, and it is succeeded by a burst of sunshine which dries the grass to stubble in a few days. Despite these extremes, the climate of Ujiji has the reputation of being comparatively healthy; it owes this probably to the refreshing coolness of the nights and mornings. The mukunguru, or seasoning-fever of this region, is not feared by strangers so much as that of Unyanyembe, yet no one expects to escape it. It is a low bilious and aguish type, lasting from three to four days: during the attack perspiration is induced with difficulty, and it often recurs at regular times once a month.