It was 6 A. M. before we were free to follow the thorny goat-track which leads down the N. Eastern spur of Mount Tongwe. By dint of fighting our way through rushes and tiger-grass, we struck into the Panga-ni road, and after three hours’ winding to the north-west, we rested at some fetid pools in a reed-grown fiumara. The sun began to sting, and we had already occupied the shadow of a tall rock, intending to doze till the afternoon, when Wazira, who had disappeared in the morning after hearing the growling of a lion, returned to us, and for reasons of his own, induced us to advance by promising better water. The path ran over stony ground, at times plunging into the forest; there were frequent thorny ridges, and narrow green dales or rather ravines, bordered with lovely amphitheatres of lofty and feathery tropical trees, showing signs of inundation during the rains. But the Kazkazi, or N. East monsoon, had dried up the marrow of the land, and though we searched secundum artem, as for treasure, we found no water.
Noon came, and the sun towered in its pride of place. Even whilst toiling up the stony, dusty track, over a series of wearisome, monotonous slopes, unvisited by the cool sea-breeze, we could not but remark the novel aspect of the land. The ground was brick-red, a favourite colour in Africa as in the Brazil, and its stain extended half-way up the tree-boles, which the ants had streaked with ascending and descending galleries. Overhead floated, cloud-like, a filmy canopy of sea-green verdure, pierced by myriads of little sun pencils; whilst the effulgent dome, purified as with fire from mist and vapour, set the picture in a frame of gold and ultramarine. Painful splendours! The men began to drop off. None but Hamdan had brought a gourd. Sha’aban clamoured for water. Wazira, and the four slave-boys, retired to some puddle, a discovery which they sensibly kept to themselves, leaving the rest of the party to throw themselves upon the hot ground, and to cower under tree and bush.
As the sun sank westward, Wazira joined us with a mouthful of lies, and the straggling line advanced. Our purblind guide once more lagged in the rear, yielding the lead to old Sha’aban. This worthy, whose wits were absorbed in visions of water, strode blunderingly ahead over the hills and far away, guided by the Khombora cone. My companion, keeping him in sight, and I being in rear of both, we all three missed the path, and shortly after sunset we reached a narrow fiumara. Here stood, delightful sight! some puddles, bright-green with chickweed and brown-black with the mire below. We quenched our thirst, and bathed our swollen feet, and patted, and felt, and handled the fluid, as though we loved it. But even this charming occupation had an end, and other thoughts suggested themselves. Our shots and shouts remained unanswered, and it would have been the merest midsummer-madness to have wandered in the dubious moonlight about the thorny, pathless jungle. We therefore kindled a fire, looked to our weapons, chose a soft sandy place under the bank, and certain that Sha’aban would tend the fire like a Vestal virgin, we were soon lulled to sleep by the music of the breeze, and by the frogs chaunting their ancient querele upon the miry margin of the pools. That day’s work had been only three leagues and a bittock. But—
‘These high, wild hills, and rough, uneven ways
Draw out the miles:’
it seemed as though we had marched double distance; a circumstance which the young African traveller would do well to note.
At dawn, after our supperless bivouac, we retraced our steps, and soon came upon our people, who shouted aloud, Khayr! Khayr! They had taken the northern path, and they had nighted also near water, upon the upper course of the fiumara which gave us hospitality. The Nyuzi is a rocky bed about 20 feet broad, showing traces of violent periodical freshets, edged with thick trees, gummy acacias, wild mulberries, and large wood-apples (Feronias). Even in the driest season it preserves pools, sometimes 100 feet long, and water is always procurable by digging in the sand. The banks shelter various birds and antelopes. We found doves, kites, and curlews, whilst large iguanas congregated around the water to dine upon the fish-fry which die of heat in the sun-scalded shallows.
After shaking hands all around, and settling sundry small disputes about the right and the wrong, we spread our mats in the grateful shade, and made up for the past with tea and tobacco. During the day our Baloch shaved one another’s heads, and plaited Sawás, or sandals of palm-leaf. The guide engaged, as extra porters, five wild men, habited in the simplest attire—a kilt of dried grass, with the upper ends woven into a cord of the same material. This thatch, fastened round the waist, extended to mid-thigh: it is cool, clean, and certainly as decent as the garb of the Gael. All had bows and poisoned arrows, except one, who boasted of a miserable musket and of literally a powder-horn, the vast spoils of a cow, slung across his shoulder. The wretches were lean as wintry wolves, and not less ravenous. We fed them with rice and Ghi: of course they asked for more, till their stomachs, before shrunken like empty bladders, stood out in the shape of little round lumps from the hoop work of ribs. We had neglected to take their arms by way of pledges to the contract: after amply feeding they arose, and with small, beady eyes twinkling at the practical joke, they bade us adieu. Though starving, they would not work! A few hours afterwards they fell in with the hippopotamus, for which they were waiting, as it passed from the feeding-grounds to its day-home in the stream. Behemoth is a helpless beast on dry land. He was presently surrounded by his enemies, porcupined with arrows, and soon nothing of him remained but a heap of bones and a broad stain of blood.
We rested till 3.15 P.M. in the grateful shade, and then, persuading our carriers to load one another, an operation still of some difficulty, we advanced over a path dented by the spoor of wild cattle. The rolling ground was a straggling thorn-jungle, a ‘forest without shade,’ studded with bright blossoms: the usual black-jacks were scattered about a plain, fired to promote the growth of fodder, and ant-hills rose regularly like Irish ‘fairy-mounts,’ as if disposed by the hand of art. Needless to say that all was desert of man. The Khombora Cone fell far behind: the walls of Usagama, whose peaks, smoking by day and burning by night, resembled fumaroles from afar, changed their blue tints first for brown and then for a distinct green hue. At length, emerging from the wood, we debouched upon an alluvial plain, and sighted the welcome river flashing light through its setting of emerald trees, as it mirrored the westing orb of day. At 6 P.M., after a 10-mile walk, traversing the tall rushes, young trees, and thick underwood of the bank, we found ourselves opposite Kohode, the village of a friendly Mzegura chief. ‘Sultan Mamba’ having recognized the Baloch, forthwith donned his scarlet cloak, superintended the launching of the village canoe from its cajan house; stood surrounded by the elders watching our transit, and, as we landed, wrung our hands with rollicking greetings, and with those immoderate explosive cachinnations, which render the African family to all appearance so ‘jolly’ a race.
The Thursday was a halt at Kohode. It is the normal cultivator’s hamlet of these regions, built upon the tall and stiff clay bank of the Panga-ni river, here called the Rufu or Lufu. According to the people this would mean death or destruction, no bad description of a stream swarming with crocodiles, and we find the dissyllable commencing many riverine names, as Rufiji, Rufuma, and Rufuta. From without the settlement has a pleasant appearance of seclusion and rural comfort: it suggested a village in the Tirhai or the Dehra Dhun: there was the same peaceful quiet look, sheltered situation, and circle of tall forest. Rendered invisible till near by screening tree, bush, and spear grass, it is protected by a stout palisade of trunks, and this, in directions where foes, human or bestial, may be expected, is doubled and trebled. The entrances, in the shape of low triangles, formed by inclining the posts en chevron, lead to a heap of wattle and dab huts, here square, there round: they are huddled together, but where space allows they are spread over a few hundred feet. Goats, sheep, and black cattle, which, contrary to the custom of Guinea, thrive beyond the coast, are staked near or inside the owners’ habitations. From the deep strong-flowing Rufu, running purple, like Adonis after rains, with the rich loam of the hills, and here about 80 yards wide, a bathing-place is staked off, against the hippopotamus and the crocodile. Our Baloch, who hold, with all Orientials, that drinking the element at night impairs digestion, make of this an exception: and my companion, an old Himalayan, thought that he could detect in it the peculiar rough smack of snow water. The stream is navigable, but boats are arrested by the falls below, and portages are not yet known in East Africa.