Rahmat the Mekrani calls himself a Baloch, and bears the proud title of Shah-Sawar, or the Rider King. He is the Chelebi, the dandy or tiger of the party. A good-looking brown man, about 25 years of age, with a certain affectation and girlishness of speech and tournure which bode no good, the Rider King deals in the externals of respectability: he washes and prays with artificial regularity; he is ever combing his long hair and beard; he trains his bushy mustache to touch his eyes, and he binds on crookedly a huge turban. His cue is to affect the Jemadar, to take command. He would have monopolized, had I permitted him, the general store of gunpowder, a small leathern bottle wrung from the C. O. at Chogwe: and having somewhat high-flown ideas of discipline, he began by stabbing a slave-boy. He talks loud in his nasal native Balochki, debased Persian, ridiculous Arabic, and voluble Kisawahili; moreover, his opinion is ever to the fore. The Rider King, pleading soldier, refuses to carry anything but his matchlock and a private stock of dates, which he keeps ungenerously to himself. He boasts of prowess in vert and venison: I never saw him hit the mark, but we missed some powder and ball, with which perhaps he may be more fortunate. Literally, he was not worth his salt. Yet this knave had resolved to force himself upon me when in June I set out for the Lake Regions, and made a show of levelling his old shooting-iron. For sixpence a shot he might have fired ad libitum.

Hamdan, a Maskat Arab, has seen better days, of which strong waters and melancholia have removed all traces except a tincture of lettres. Our Mullah, or chaplain-and-secretary, is small, thin, brown-skinned, long-nosed, and green-eyed, with little spirit and less muscularity. A crafty old traveller, he has a store of creature comforts for the journey: he carries with his childish match-lock a drinking gourd and a Ghi-pot, and for more reasons than one he sits apart at the camping ground. Strongly contrasting with him is the ancient Mekrani Sha’ahan, a decrepit giant with the negroid type of countenance, pockmarked, and ugly enough to frighten. He is of the pig-headed, opposed to the soft-brained, order of old man, hard and opinionated, selfish and unmanageable. He smokes, and must drink water throughout the livelong day. He dispenses the wisdom of a Dogberry, whereat all laugh; and much to the disgust of his hearers, he either coughs or snores during the hours of night. This senior will carry nothing but his long greasy gun, gourd, and pipe; and, despite his grey beard, he is the drone of our party.

Jemal and Murad Ali are our working men, excellent specimens of the true Baloch, vieux grognards, with a grim sour humour, something like ‘wut,’ especially when the fair sex and its backslidings are concerned. They have dark frowning faces, wrinkled and rugged as their natal hills, with pads of muscle upon their short forearms and sinewy angular calves, remarkable in this land of sheepshanks. Sparing of words, they grunt the shortest answers when addressed; if they speak at all, it is in a roar or a scream: they are angry men, uncommonly handy with their well-polished daggers, and they think as little of cutting a negro’s as a sheep’s throat. At the promise of an extra dollar they walk off under heavy loads, besides carrying their arms and necessaries. These two, in fact, are good men and true.

The gem of the party, however, is one Sidi Mubarak, who has taken to himself the agnomen of ‘Bombay.’ His sooty skin, and teeth sharp-pointed like those of the reptilia, denote his origin from Uhiao: he is one of those model Seedies, runaway slaves, employed as lascars and coal-trimmers, who with chaff, grimace, and peals of laughter, varied now and then by dance and song, delight the passengers in an Anglo-Indian steamer. Bombay, sold at Kilwa in early youth, a process of which he talks with many broad grins, was carried to Cutch by some Banyan, and there became a libertinus: he looks fondly back upon the hour of his adoption, and he sighs for the day when a few dollars will enable him to return. His head is a triumph to phrenology; a high narrow cranium, denoting by arched and rounded crown, fuyant brow and broad base with full development of the moral region, deficiency of the reflectives, fine perceptives, and abundant animality. His hair is of the woolliest: his twinkling little eyes are set close together, and his lips and expansive mouth, especially in rare fits of ill-temper, project as in the cynocephali. He works on principle and he works like a horse, candidly declaring that not love of us but his duty to his belly make him work. With a sprained ankle and a load quite disproportioned to his chétif body, he insists upon carrying two guns, and after a 30 miles’ walk he is as fresh as before it began. He attends us everywhere, manages our purchases, carries all our messages, and when not employed by us, he is at every man’s beck and call. Speaking a little broken Hindostani, he has for all ‘jungly niggers’ an ineffable contempt, which he never attempts to conceal. He had enlisted under the Jemadar of Chogwe: we thought, however, so highly of his qualifications, that persuasion and paying his debts induced him after a little coqueting to take leave of soldiering and to follow our fortunes. He began by escorting us to Fuga as head gun-carrier: on our march to the Lakes he was the confidential servant and interpreter of my companion, he being the only man with whom the latter could converse, and in the Second Expedition of Capts Speke and Grant he was promoted to command the Wasawahili. Almost every black brain would have been turned by this rapid and dazzling rise: Sidi Mubarak Bombay did not, however, as I had anticipated, ‘prove himself a failure in the end.’

A machine so formed could hardly be expected to begin work without some creaking. The Baloch were not entirely and solely under us, and in the East no man will, even if he can, serve two masters. For the first few days many a muttered cursing and loud wrangling showed signs of dissolution. One would not proceed because the Rider King kept the gunpowder, another started on his way home because he was refused some dates, and, during the night after departure, all Bombay’s efforts, we afterwards heard, were in requisition to prevent a break-up en masse. But by degrees the component parts fitted smoothly and moved steadily, till at last we had little to complain of, and the men volunteered to follow wherever we might lead. By acting upon the old Oriental principle, ‘the word is gone forth and must be heard,’ we never failed to win a disputed point, and one success paved the way for others. Amongst these perverse and headstrong races, however, the traveller must be careful in committing himself to an ultimatum, and he must be prepared when he says he will do a thing, to do it. Otherwise he will speedily lose caste, and caste once lost is not to be regained—in Africa or, perhaps, elsewhere.

NOTE.

Since these pages were written, Sidi Mubarak Bombay has been made Chief of Caravan by Mr Stanley of New York, who is now (December 10, 1871) marching upon the Tanganyika Lake in quest of Dr Livingstone.

CHAPTER VII.
THE MARCH TO FUGA. ASCENT OF THE HIGHLANDS
OF EAST AFRICA. PRESENTATION TO
KING KIMWERE.

Es gibt in Central Afrika Paradiese, die mit der Zeit die Civilisation aussuchen wird zum Besten der Menschheit.[Menschheit.]—J. von Müller.

On February 10, after a night of deep wilderness-silence, we arose betimes, and applied ourselves to the task of porterage. The luggage was again reduced—now to the very lowest expression. For observations we carried sextant and horizon, two compasses and stand, and a common and a boiling-point thermometer.[[36]] A waterproof carpet-bag contained journals and materials for writing and sketching. Our arms were a six-shooter each (4 lbs. 1 oz.), a Colt’s rifle (10 lbs. 8 oz.), a small Büchse by Nowotny of Vienna (8 lbs. 3 oz.), a shot-gun (W. Richards, 11 lbs.), three swords, and two bowie-knives; in fact, fighting gear, with the ammunition necessary for ourselves and men. A solid leather portmanteau was stuffed with a change of raiment and a gift for Sultan Kimwere, namely a coat of black broadcloth ($12), eight turbans of sprig muslin ($8), a similar number of Surat embroidered caps ($8), and two light-coloured cotton shawls of trifling value. Our provisions consisted of three bags of rice ($12.50), a sack of dates ($2.25), onions, manioc, flour, tea, and sugar, for 10 days; tobacco, pepper and salt, of which none is procurable in the interior; a lamb, three chickens, and a bottle of cognac, to be used in case of need. Our beds were in waterproofs, which might also be converted into tents and awnings; a horn lantern, wax candles, and a policeman’s dark-lantern, were added for night-work, whilst a portable tin canteen, with a Papin’s digester, completed the equipment. What we chiefly wanted were water-skins, beads, and ‘domestics;’ and this we presently found to our cost.