Our preparations were not very great. Besides Hatibu and Bilal and their wives, Tipolo sent twenty men from Zanzibar, and thirty Wanyamwesi. A hundred loads of ivory were loaded on as many slaves, and fifty more were sent to be used in case the others broke down, or to be sold and bartered on the road. In the meantime they carried the personal belongings of their escort, and a small stock of beads and cowries with which to pay for food. Muinyi Dugumbi and others also took the opportunity of this party leaving for the coast to send away slaves and ivory, and gave the charge of their ventures to some of their own adherents.
Before leaving Nyangwe, Tipolo told me to speak for him to the consul of the English at Zanzibar, and say that he had done all that lay in his power for me. He said that his agent there would provide me with means to return home. His kindness quite overpowered me, and I did not know how I could thank this generous and good-hearted man for all his kindness to me. It is my duty to represent him as he appeared to me, and to mourn that such a man should be almost compelled to be a trafficker in human flesh.
He accompanied us for a couple of hours on our first day’s march. When we parted he said he had given into Hatibu’s charge, for my special use, a bag of rice, some curry stuff, and a small quantity of coffee, to enable me to live more comfortably than if I were to depend entirely on the products of the country for food.
For the first three or four days our road led through a comparatively open country, where there were but few inhabitants, and where the villages lay far apart. Hatibu, in obedience to the orders of Tipolo, paid the people of these villages for any supplies he got from them; but the other chiefs of parties allowed their men to plunder and rob, and it was easy to see that if it had not been for the fear entertained of our fire-arms, the sufferers would have attacked us. As it was, the women and children all fled on our approach, and only the men remained in the villages. Armed with heavy spears and huge wooden shields, they seemed formidable fellows; and every night a warning was given in camp that no one should straggle from the caravan, as we were entering Manyuema, where the people were fierce, and would kill and eat all strangers whom they found alone. Nor was this warning unnecessary; for as I conversed with Hatibu and Bilal around our campfire at night, they told me many instances of stragglers having been cut off; and often in the day-time we could see bodies of men watching the progress of our party, evidently ready to attack us if any favourable opportunity offered itself.
As we advanced the country became more thickly populated; and in the course of each day’s march we passed many large villages, which were different in their arrangements from any I had seen in my wanderings in Africa. They were all composed of long, parallel rows of huts, built of red mud, with thatched roofs. The huts, instead of being as usual round or square, were oblong, and the roofs had gable ends. In the smaller of the villages there were only two rows of these huts, facing each other across a wide open space. Along the centre of this was usually planted a row of oil palms, between which were the village granaries and floors of hardened clay, with trunks of trees sunk to half their diameter, and having holes cut in them for the women and slaves to pound the corn required for food.
In the larger villages there were two, three, and even four of these double rows, sometimes disposed abreast, and sometimes radiating from a large open space. In every village were one or more large sheds, under which were foundries where iron was smelted, the blast necessary to get up the heat being produced by men working a curious kind of bellows, there being sometimes ten or a dozen men squatting round the furnace, each working away at his own pair of bellows. The iron was made into blooms weighing about three or four pounds, shaped like a double cone, with a projection about as big as a skewer, and four inches long at each end. These were used by the producers to barter for all sorts of necessaries of life, and even luxuries, as they are understood in Central Africa. Hatibu, who said they would be of great use on our road for procuring provisions, laid in a stock of them, as did all our followers.
The ironworkers did not confine themselves to making this iron currency, for they were most skilful smiths. The blades of the knives, spears, and axes which they made were often elaborately ornamented with patterns chiselled on them, and in some cases were perforated. The most valuable of all were inlaid with copper, the patterns being very good and tasteful. Indeed, the arms of the chiefs were often such masses of ornament that they became almost useless for purposes of offence.
The villages of these ironworkers were passed in about seven days; and soon after we came to a river called the Luama, which we had to cross in canoes. Here, while crossing, we were somewhat frightened by a herd of hippopotami coming down the stream and blowing close to the canoes. One, indeed, came so close to the canoe in which Hatibu and I were that I could have touched its back with my hand, and I was in a great fright lest we should be capsized.
As it was too late for us to continue our march when we were all across, we had to form our camp on the bank of the river; and in the evening we began speaking of the hippopotami. Some natives in the camp told us how they were in the habit of waiting at night for the brutes to land, and spearing them as they came out of the water. I was desirous to be quit with them for the fear and annoyance they had caused us, and I proposed to Hatibu that we should try our hand at this sport if we could find a place where they were in the habit of coming ashore.
When the natives heard this, they said they would take us to a place where there would be hippopotami in plenty, but as it would be too late for us to go that night, they proposed that we should halt the next day to let the people rest and get food. This suited us very well; for we found that corn was cheap and plentiful, and Hatibu had intended to have made a stay two days further on for the purpose of provisioning the caravan. By what he now heard he found that the village where he had intended to halt had been burned by the inhabitants of another some little distance away, so that we should have been disappointed had we tried to get food there.