The most troublesome features of the beaten path to the white face are the exorbitant demands of the negro chiefs. They know that the slave-dealer, if over-taxed, will open some other and rival line. But they see the European for the first time; they never expect, nor perhaps do they desire, ever to see him again; and their only object is to gauge his generosity by extracting from him as much as possible. This is the severest trial of temper, for the explorer well knows that the end of his outfit is the end of his journey. Whilst he recognizes the absolute necessity of economy, the disappointed chief, in high dudgeon, urges his rights, perhaps with threats; and certainly causes all manner of delays and difficulties. The native in charge of the caravan fears awkward consequences, especially at times of war or draught, of famine or pestilence, and complies with the demand in secret, if prevented from acting openly, out of his own purse if not from the public funds. The over-worked traveller, scolding, storming, and getting up temper to blood-heat when required, cannot watch every string of beads or yard of cloth; and some day a report is brought to him that he is running short, when perhaps the most interesting part of his journey is within sight, and yet, for want of means, cannot be explored.
We found also an unmitigated evil in the universal practice of desertion. The fickle and inconsequent negro slave must, they say, run away once in his life, and, like the liar of the Persian Joe Miller, he will do so at the most awkward of times. The impulsive, irritable, and violent Murungwanah (libertus) is equally apt to abscond, especially after disputes with his fellows, and he generally adds injury to injury by carrying away his pack. The undisciplinable free porters disappear en masse if commons wax short, if loads be too heavy, if a fight be threatened, or if wasting of ammunition be forbidden. Under similar circumstances the turbulent Baloch mutiny and march off. During our 18 months’ march there was not, in the party of 80, an individual who did not at some time or other desert or attempt to desert us. The Second Expedition, despite all its advantages of more abundant supplies and of ample support from Zanzibar, fared not a whit better: we find in it 123 desertions duly chronicled.
For three months and a half our heart-wearing work was cheered only by two stimulants, the traveller’s delight in seeing new scenes unfold themselves before his eyes and the sense of doing a something lastingly useful to geographers. We were also opening for Europeans a new road into the heart of Africa, a region boundless in commercial resources, and bounded in commercial development only by the stereotyped barbarism of its inhabitants; and we hoped that those who might follow us would be able to turn many of the obstacles through which we were compelled to cut a way. In November, 1857, we perforce halted for rest and to reorganize the party at Kazeh in Unyamwezi, some 350 direct geographical miles from the coast. The site was the most pleasant that we had hitherto seen, a plateau (S. lat. 5° and E. long. G. 33°) in the depths of the Tropics, but made temperate by altitude (3000 to 4000 feet above sea level), studded with hills rising abruptly from fertile grassy plains, and broken by patches of cultivation, by valleys, and by forests of the richest growth.
At this half-way house the Expedition was hospitably received by the warm-hearted Arabs, Snay bin Amir, Saíd bin Majid, old Saíd bin Ali, the sons of Salim bin Rashid, Muhinna bin Sulayman, and other notabilities of the great central mart. They housed us and supplied all our wants—I know not what we should have done without their friendly aid—and the geographical information which they gave me directly led to what many have held to be the most important feature of the exploration. The Second Expedition also records its obligations in the matter of hands and rations. It found, however, Kazeh turned, into an agricultural depôt, the neighbouring villages ruined, and the people starving. The merchants had refused to pay a tax imposed upon them by Manwa Sera, son of the Fundi Kira, lord of Unyanyembe, in the days when I visited it, and the young chief, who was very popular, had been supplanted by his half-brother Msikiwa. Hence a war resulting in the death of my poor friend, the brave Snay bin Amir, who, being too proud and perhaps not young enough to run from the hosts of enemies, lay down when abandoned by his negroes and took his chance, that is to say, was slaughtered. Manwa Sera then threatened to attack Kazeh, and the Arabs begged Capt. Speke not to abandon hosts, whose warm and generous hospitality he repeatedly acknowledges. The reply was that ‘he had a duty to perform as well as themselves, and that in a day or two he would be off.’ Some men would not have treated so lightly a heavy debt of gratitude, but such compunctions are often fatal to success. Capt. Speke, I doubt not, really believed that ‘the interests of old England were at stake:’ he had not hesitated for a moment in throwing over a Himalayan friend who was to have accompanied him, nor did he deem himself otherwise but justified in separating from a companion subject to African fever recurring every fortnight.
We were detained a month at Kazeh. Purple skies, westerly gales, and furious thunderstorms, showed that the Masika Mku, or Great Rains, were about to break, and the change was evident after the high cold easterly winds which, during the six months of rainless season, sweep the elevated basin. Our gang was paid off and another was not easily collected: porters during the dry, these men became peasants in the wet weather. With infinite trouble, and only by the aid of the Arabs, we were able to leave Kazeh on December 8, during the height of the S. West monsoon. The march of 180 direct geographical miles was to us the most disastrous of all. The downfall was copious and unintermitting, storms burst over us with such thunder and lightning as I have never witnessed before or since, the flooding rivers necessitated ferry-boats, and the land, declining and draining to the westward, became one Great Dismal Swamp. Deduced in strength by persistent fevers, we could not resist the drenchings and sunburnings, the long day marches and the nights spent in unhealthy and sometimes deserted villages. My companion complained of blindness which hardly permitted him to read a watch, and I suddenly found myself helpless with paraplegia, a paralysis of the extremities, which, according to Capt. Smee, often follows febrile attacks at Zanzibar.
After a total of some 537 rectilinear geographical miles[[52]] from the coast, we ascended, on Feb. 13, 1858, the well-wooded range which bounds the eastern waters of the ‘Sea of Ujiji,’ and from the western declivity we sighted—very imperfectly, it must be owned—the fair expanse of a lake whose name was then unknown to us. Some months afterwards, when reading Dr Livingstone’s first expedition, I found (chap. xxiv.) that the traveller meeting a party of Zanzibar Arabs at Naliele in the centre of the continent, heard of the ‘Tanganyenka,’ a ‘large shallow lake over which canoes were punted.’ At that time, however, I had sent to England the picturesque native name ‘Tanganyika,’ the ‘meeting-place of waters.’[[53]] The sight was a cordial: this one gleam of success consoled us, made us forget the petty annoyances, the endless worry, the hardship, and the sickness which we had endured for it; and we felt a sensible relief from the grinding care which the prospect of failure must ever present.
Yet even the bright view of the blue waters had its dark side: we had left the Louisa behind, and we saw no way of navigating this lake. Reaching, on February 14, 1858, Kawele of the Ujiji district, a market village and a depot for ivory and slaves on the eastern side, and about the northern third of the Tanganyika, we housed our goods and began to cast about for canoes. The only dau or sailing craft belonged to Shaykh Hamid, an Arab trader then living at Kasenge, a little insular station near the Western shore. After making all necessary inquiries, I despatched, on May 3, my companion with a party of 26 men: he crossed the Tanganyika, but in vain—the proprietor would not convoy us round the lake, though we offered him £100 for a fortnight’s cruise. Captain Speke here met with a strange accident: a beetle crept into his ear, and being awkwardly killed, caused for 6 to 7 months deafness and suppuration: it acted, however, as a counter-irritant, and to a certain extent gave him back his sight. My companion afterwards complained loudly of being unable to accompany Hamid to the Uruwwa[[54]] district, where merchants traded for ivory and copper: we should thus have spanned half the Continent, and our line could easily have been connected with Dr Livingstone’s route through Angola. As, however, on that journey Hamid and all his slaves were murdered, and their property was plundered by the people, my companion had not much to regret.
Hamid, moreover, gave information which made us wild to reach the upper end of the Tanganyika Lake. He had been so near its northern head that he had felt the outward drift of the
stream. The rains were still heavy; but as our supplies were running short, we resolved to make the attempt in any way. Kannena, the Chief of Ujiji, proved himself an ill-disposed and ungovernable savage, ever attempting to thwart our plans, and evidently holding that we were quite at his mercy. But wishing to bring ivory from Uvira, he was persuaded to escort us with two canoes. Our excursion northwards occupied 15 days, eight being the usual time; and it was not a ‘pleasure-trip.’
At Uvira my hopes of discovering the Western Nile Reservoir, and of solving the problem which has puzzled some 30 centuries, were rudely dashed to the ground. The Warundi savages, who had stopped Hamid near the northern end of the lake, were hostile to the Wajiji, and we could not proceed to the north where the mountains walling-in the water seemed to converge. Similarly the second expedition, during five months spent with the King of Ugande, was unable to sight the ‘Victoria Nyanza,’ distant five hours’ walk. Capt. Speke ascended perhaps 150 feet, but from so low an altitude he could obtain no general view of the land north of the Tanganyika, and he laid down a narrow valley. Presently receiving a visit from the three stalwart sons of the Sultan Maruta, the subject of the mysterious stream which all my informants, Arab as well as African, had made to issue from the lake, and which for months we had looked upon as the western head-stream of the Nile, was at once brought forward. All declared (probably falsely) that they had visited it; all asserted that the Rusizi river enters into, instead of flowing from, the Tanganyika, and presently Sidi Bombay, by way of the coldest consolation (‘little goat, don’t die, spring comes!’), declared that Hamid had meant the reverse of what he said. I felt sick at heart. The African’s account of stream-direction is often diametrically opposed to fact; seldom the Arab’s—in this point I differ totally from Capt. Speke. But our Wajiji would not suffer us to remain at Uvira, much less to penetrate northwards: we were compelled hurriedly to return; and thus, as has before been related, the mystery remained unsolved. I distinctly deny that any ‘misleading by my instructions from the Royal Geographical Society as to the position of the White Nile,’ made me unconscious of the vast importance of ascertaining the direction of the Rusizi river. The fact is, we did our best to reach it, and we failed.