Wanderings in Three Continents

by Sir Richard Francis Burton

from its shores, and here I found a lodging in a ruinous tembe inn, built by an Arab merchant, where I was lodged in comparative comfort, though the tembe was tenanted only by ticks and slaves.

As the tembe was to be my home for a space, my first care was to purify the floor by pastilles of asafœtida and fumigations of gunpowder; the second to prepare the roof for the rainy season. Improvement, however, was slow, for the natives were too lazy to work, and the porters took the earliest opportunity of deserting. I, however, managed to provide a pair of cartels, with substitutes for chairs and tables. Benches of clay were built round the rooms, but they proved useless, being found regularly every morning occupied in force by a swarming, struggling colony of white ants. The roof, long overgrown with tall grass, was fortified with mud; it never ceased, however, to leak like a colander, and presently the floor was covered with deep puddles, then masses of earth dropped from the soft sides of the walls, and, at last, during the violent showers, half the building fell in.

On the second day of my arrival I was called upon by Kannena, the headman of Kawele. He was introduced, habited in silk turban and a broadcloth coat, which I afterwards heard he had borrowed from the Baloch. His aspect was truly ignoble; a short, squat, and broad-backed figure, and his apology for a nose much resembled the pug with which the ancients provided Silenus. On this, his first appearance,

he behaved with remarkable civility, and proceeded to levy his blackmail, which was finally settled at ten coil-bracelets and two fundi of beads. I had no salt to spare, or much valuable merchandise might have been saved. Their return was six small bundles of grain. Then Kannena opened trade by sending us a nominal gift, a fine ivory, weighing at least seventy pounds, and worth, perhaps, £100. After keeping it a day or two I returned it, saying I had no dealings in ivory and slaves. This, it appears, was a mistake, as I ought, by a trifling outlay, to have supported the character of a trader. The Wajiji did not understand. “These are men who live by doing nothing!” they exclaimed, and they lost no time in requesting me to quit their territory. To this I objected, and endeavoured to bribe them off. My bribes, I suppose, were not sufficient, for we at once began to see the dark side of the native character. Thieves broke into our out-houses, our asses were wounded by spears, and we were accused of having bewitched and killed their cattle. Still, other travellers fared even worse than we did.

At first the cold, damp climate of the lake regions did not agree with us; perhaps, too, the fish diet was over-rich and fat, and the abundance of vegetables led to little excesses. All energy seemed to have abandoned us. I lay for a fortnight upon the earth, too blind to read and write except at long intervals, too weak to ride, and too ill to talk. My companion,

Speke, who, when we arrived at the Tanganyika Lake, was almost as groggy upon his legs as I was, suffered from a painful ophthalmia and a curious distortion of face, which made him chew sideways, like a ruminant. The Baloch complained of influenzas and catarrhs, and their tempers were as sore as their lungs and throats.

But work remained undone, and it was necessary to awaken from my lethargy. Being determined to explore the northern extremity of the Tanganyika Lake, whence, according to several informants, issued a large river flowing northwards, I tried to hire from an Arab merchant the only dhow, or sailing boat, then in existence, since the wretched canoes of the people were quite unfit for a long cruise. I entrusted the mission first of all to my Arab, Said bin Salim, but he shirked it, and I therefore directed my companion to do his best. I got the dhow, and set about stocking it with provisions for a month’s cruise. I had great difficulty in obtaining sufficient provisions, the prices demanded were so exorbitant. After many delays I at last sent my companion away, supplied with an ample outfit, escorted by two Baloch, and attended by his men, across the Bay of Ukaranga. I was then left alone.

During my twenty-seven days of solitude the time sped quickly; it was chiefly spent in eating and drinking, dozing and smoking. Awaking at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., I lay anxiously expecting the grey light creeping through the door chinks; the glad tidings of

its approach were announced by the cawing of the crows and the crowing of the village cocks. When the golden rays began to stream over the red earth, my torpid servant was called out, and he brought me a mass of suji, or rice-flour boiled in water, with a little cold milk as a relish. Then entered the “slavey” of the establishment, armed with a leafy branch, to sweep the floor and slay the huge wasps that riddled the walls of the tenement. This done, he lit the fire, as the excessive damp rendered this precaution necessary. Then ensued visits of ceremony from Said bin Salim and another, who sat, stared, and seeing that I was not yet dead, showed disappointment in their faces and walked away. So the morning wore on. My servant was employed with tailoring, gun-cleaning, and similar light work, over which he grumbled perpetually, whilst I settled down to diaries and vocabularies, a process interrupted by sundry pipes. We had two hours’ sleep at noon, and I may say that most of the day I lay like a log upon my cot, smoking almost uninterruptedly, dreaming of things past and visioning things present, and sometimes indulging myself in a few lines of reading and writing.

Dinner was an alternation of fish and fowl, butchers’ meat being extremely rare at Ujiji. At evening I used to make an attempt to sit under the broad eaves of the tembe and enjoy the delicious spectacle of this virgin nature. I was still very weak.