My old friend, the late Mr James Macqueen, has declared that the expedition was ‘organized upon erroneous and fallacious principles—with large parties of armed men, with numerous attendants, and extensive supplies.’ I can reply only that my model was the normal coast-caravan, and certainly with less apparatus we should have made less progress. We were not, however, favoured by fortune; and, as Baron Melchior de Grimm sagely observes, ‘there is nothing in this life’—especially in African travel—‘but luck, good or bad.’ The Kafilah-bashi was still Said bin Salim, who, upon receiving from Lieut.-Col. Hamerton an advance of $300, and the promise of a gold watch after return, in case of good conduct, at once pleaded a mortgage upon his plantations to the extent of $500. We were compelled to compound the matter for $250, before he could precede us to the coast, with his four slave musketeers, one lad, and two girls. The Baloch escort was, according to popular rumour, picked up in the Bazar: it began with a dozen, and it ended with seven muskets, not including the monocular Jemadar Mallok. They wanted everything imaginable,—debts to be paid, rice, lead, gunpowder, light matchlocks, $8 for an ass, and slaves to serve them. The Banyan Ramji supplied us with nine ruffians, whose only object was to lay out their, or his, money as profitably as possible in slaves; indeed, this seemed to be the end and aim of our whole native party. Upon the coast we engaged as porters 36 Unyamwezi negroes, men who usually behave well, but who are uncommonly ready to follow bad example. As the number was deficient, we supplied the place of more with some 30 baggage-asses, which added not a little to our troubles and losses.
Lieut.-Col. Hamerton listened with pleasure to my suggestion that he might at once change air, from the close, foul, fetid town, and superintend our departure from the coast. The Sayyid’s kindness was unwearied: he came to bid us adieu, and manned for us, with a crew of 20, his own corvette, the Artemise, Captain Mohammed bin Khamis. The latter having been educated in England, where he had learned to observe and survey, and imbued by ‘letters’ with the restless impulse of European civilization, had once proposed to the Royal Geographical Society himself to explore the Lake Regions; and had he been trustworthy, he might have done work valuable as that of Capt. ‘Montgomerie’s Pandits.’ His father, Khamisi wa Tani, was the ‘intelligent Sawahili or Mohammedan native of the Eastern coast of Africa,’ who had so notably cajoled Mr Cooley. This ‘mild and unassuming man’s’ antecedents were of the worst description. Born at Lamu, he became headman of the drummers at Zanzibar, and afterwards a slaver, according to M. Guillain, who terms him ‘spirituel et rusé coquin.’ In this capacity he ‘had travelled much on the mainland, he had visited many distant parts of the East, and could converse in fourteen languages.’ Turpilucricupidus then became Capt. Owen’s interpreter along the Eastern coasts of Arabia and Africa. His voyage in 1835 to London, where Shaykh Khamis bin Usman at once became an ‘African Prince,’ arose not ‘for the purpose of assorting the first cargoes shipped direct to Zanzibar,’ but from the stern necessity of temporarily leaving that Island with his head in loco, he having defrauded his master, the Sayyid, to the extent of $18,000. His ingenuity did not fail him in our country, where his revelations touching the Lake Regions and the unknown interior were delivered and chronicled with a gravity which excites laughter. Returning home, ‘the Liar,’ as he was popularly termed by his countrymen, received the Sayyid’s pardon. He then became a kind of lackey and maître d’hotel, factotum and Figaro in native houses, the ‘palace’ included, when Europeans were entertained. He has ever since devoted his talents to making himself as wealthy, and his friends as poor, as possible. I had been especially warned against him, on account of the prominent part which he took in spreading reports which led to the murder of M. Maizan, and it is not pleasant to see one’s fellow-countrymen so notably ‘humbugged.’
We found a general rendezvous at Kaole Urembo, which was attended by Ladha Damha, Chief of the Customs, the ‘’Ifrít’ Ramji, and the ex-Sarhang ‘General Tom:’ the Messrs Oswald also ran over in their four-gun schooner, the Electric Flash. On June 26, 1857, we bade adieu to Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, whose distressing alternations of insomnia, debility, and irritability had been apparently increased by the voyage. He dropped a tear as he said farewell, and solemnly blessed us, adding that we should meet no more in this world, and that he quitted it without regret. Thus it proved. He struggled against his fate, but he succumbed on July 5, the victim of a chronic liver complaint. Various reports of his death reached us in the interior, but it was not confirmed by letter till eleven months afterwards.
The work of exploring now began in real earnest. I have, however, no intention of inflicting upon the reader a rechauffé of our expedition, which has been described by me in four volumes,[[50]] and of which notices have been given in another three,[[51]] by Captains Speke and Grant. My principal object in alluding to them is to offer the judgment and the after-thoughts matured by a whole decade, as well as to show what has been done since. The risk of this, the first attempt, has been stated to be nil by a man who never trusted himself a mile away from the coast, and whose tenderness for his personal safety has ever been more than notorious. In writing our adventures I was careful not to make a sensation of danger; but future travellers, warned by the fate of MM. Maizan and Roscher, not to speak of Lieut. Stroyan, of Baron von der Decken’s party, nor of M. von Heuglin in the Somali country, and the detention of Dr Livingstone, will do well not to think that, when about to explore Central Africa, they are setting out upon a mere promenade. The repeated complaints respecting our petty troubles, which to readers appeared exaggerated, were true to my feeling at the time. The death of Sayyid Saíd had been our first blow; the second was the non-arrival of Dr Steinhaeuser; and the third was the loss of our excellent friend Lieut.-Col. Hamerton, whose presence at head-quarters would have forwarded our views in various ways. I have preserved copies of letters written to Banyans and others, who, after fair promises, completely neglected us. M. Ladislaus Cochet and Capt. Mansfield did their best; but as we had not taken counsel with them before departure, their efforts were, of course, limited. And the cholera which, unknown to us, had fallen upon the Island, decimating its population, naturally enough prevented the sufferers from bestowing attention upon a distant enterprise. The neglect, however, told upon our escort, and to manage them would have taxed the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job. The monoculous Jemadar, shortly after our return, persuaded Baron von der Decken to appoint him chief of his party when on route from Kilwa to the Nyassa or Southern Lake: as might be expected, that expedition did not reach half way. Concerning the ‘Sons of Ramji’ I find amongst my papers the following memo.:
‘Msene district, Jan. 14, 1858.
‘To Sheth Ramji,
‘The full term for which he engaged the eight slaves, Kidogo, Jako, Mbaruk, Waledi, Mboni, Muhinna, Buyuni, and Hayja, having now expired, we give them their dismissal. From the commencement of the march their insolence of manner and their independence of action have been so troublesome to us, and so disastrous to our progress, that we feel no compunction in thus summarily dismissing them.
(Signed) ‘Captains Burton & Speke.’
Under different circumstances we should have been spared the hardship and suffering of all ‘up-hill work,’ of labouring against the stream of events. We might then easily have returned via Egypt to Europe, as I firmly intended, and as my companion—aided by the experience of the past, and travelling under the most favourable auspices—was able to do on his second expedition. Once thoroughly laid open, no African road is difficult, unless temporary obstacles, such as famines or bandit raids, oppose progress, and the hard crust of the coast being broken, the interior offers comparatively few obstacles. But, I repeat, in wayfaring, as in warfare, opportunity is everything: better an ounce of fortune’s favours than a ton of genius or merit.
We followed the Arab line of traffic, first laid open to Lake Tanganyika by Sayf bin Said el Muameri, about 1825. The existence of a beaten path in Africa has its advantages and its disadvantages. The natives are accustomed to travellers; they no longer perpetually attribute to them supernatural and pernicious powers, nor do they, except amongst the worst tribes, expect every manner of evil to follow the portent: it is not difficult to engage hands, nor is it impossible to collect information concerning regions which cannot be visited. At the same time, contact with the slave-dealer has increased cupidity and has diminished hospitality: the African loses all sense of savage honour, without learning to replace it by commercial honesty, and all his ingenuity is devoted to the contrivance and the carrying out of ‘avanies.’ But where, on the other hand, the explorer must hew his own way—such was the case with Paul du Chaillu from the Gaboon region, and with myself up the Congo river—and where there is no prescriptive right of transit even for pay, the adventure waxes far more difficult and dangerous. Here we see the African at home, an unmitigated savage, unmodified by acquaintance with the outer world, dwelling in the presence of his brethren, and rich in all the contrarieties of the racial character. His suspicions and his desires are at once aroused. His horror of new things struggles with his wish to make the most of them; he has no precedent for his demands, and consequently he has no sense of their absurdity. A caravan is to him a ‘Doummoulafong,’ or thing sent to be eaten, as Mungo Park’s second expedition was called. A Portuguese officer has been asked $120 by the Wamakúa for permission to visit a hill behind Mozambique, distant some 25 miles from the sea. At the Yellalah, or Rapids of the Congo river, I was required to pay, before leave to advance could be given, a fee in goods which would have amounted to £200. And expense is not the main obstacle to the success of these exceptional expeditions: the merest accident with a fire-arm may render progress impossible, and may endanger the lives of the whole party.