was now effected—and I threw off the burden of grinding care with which the prospect of a probable failure had sorely laden me.[6]
The rainy monsoon broke up after our return to Kawele, and the climate became most enjoyable, but it was accompanied by that inexplicable melancholy peculiar to tropical countries. I have never felt this sadness in Egypt and Arabia, but I was never without it in India and Zanzibar. We were expecting stores and provisions, but we got not one single word from the agents who were to forward our things, and want began to stare us in the face. Money was a necessity, or its equivalent. I had to engage porters for the hammocks, feed seventy-five mouths, to fee several chieftains, and to incur the heavy expenses of two hundred and sixty miles’ marching back to Unyamyembe, so I had to supplement the sum allowed me by the Royal Geographical Society with my own little patrimony. One thousand pounds does not go very far when it has to be divided amongst two hundred greedy savages in two and a half years.
On May 22nd our ears were gladdened by the sound of musket-shots announcing arrivals, and then, after a long silence of eleven months, there arrived a caravan with boxes, bales, porters, slaves, and a parcel of papers and letters from Europe, India, and Zanzibar. How we pounced upon them! Here we first knew of the Indian Mutiny. The caravan
arrived at a crisis when it was really wanted, but as my agent could not find porters for all the packages, he had kept back some of them, and what he sent me were the least useful. They would suffice to take us back to Unyamyembe, but were wholly inadequate for exploring the southern end of Tanganyika, far less for returning to Zanzibar viâ the Nyassa Lake and Kilwa, as I had hoped to do.
On May 26th, 1858, we set out on our homeward journey, and left Kawele en route for Unyamyembe. I shall never forget my last sunrise look on Tanganyika. The mists, luminously fringed with purple, were cut by filmy rays; the living fire shot forth broad beams over the light blue waters of the lake, and a soft breeze, the breath of the morning, awoke the waves into life.
I had great difficulties in getting away, but at nine o’clock we departed with a full gang of porters, and advanced until the evening. Many troubles arose: a porter placed his burden upon the ground and levanted, and being cognac and vinegar it was deeply regretted; then the Unyamwezi guide, because his newly purchased slave girl had become footsore and unable to walk, cut her head off. All these disagreeables I was obliged to smooth down as best I could. Then there was a great dread of savage tribes, and there was also a fear of conflagration, a sort of prairie fire.
A sheet of flame, beginning with the size of a spark, would overspread the hillside, advancing on the wings
of the wind with the roaring, rushing sound of many hosts, where the grass was thick, shooting huge forked tongues high into the air, and tall trees, the patriarchs of the forest, yielded their lives to the blast. Onward the fire would sweep, smouldering and darkening where the rock afforded scanty fuel, then flickering, blazing up, and soaring on again over the brow of the hill, until the sheet became a thin line of fire, gradually vanishing from the view.
On October 4th, after a week of halts and snails’ marches, we at last reached Hanga, our former quarters in the western confines of the Unyamyembe district. Here my companion was taken seriously ill, and immediately after our arrival at this foul village, where we were lodged in a sort of cow-house, full of vermin and exposed directly to the fury of the cold gales, he complained, in addition to the deaf ear, an inflamed eye, and a swollen face, of a mysterious pain, which he knew not whether to attribute to the liver or the spleen. Shortly after this his mind began to wander, and then he underwent three fits of an epileptic description, which more closely resembled those of hydrophobia than any I have ever witnessed. He was haunted by a crowd of hideous devils, giants, and lion-headed demons, who were wrenching and stripping the sinews and tendons of his legs. He began to utter a barking noise, with a peculiar chopping motion of the mouth and tongue. When the third spasm was over, he called for pen and paper, and, fearing that increased weakness of mind and body might prevent any further
exertion, he wrote an incoherent letter of farewell to his family. That, however, was the crisis, and he afterwards spent a better night; the pains were mitigated, or, as he expressed it, “the knives were sheathed.”