Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon (Burton & Swinburne) (36 page)

As it struggled through this, Speke's column of men had become ever more ragged. His porters were not paid, like Burton's, but were slaves, and they took every opportunity to slip away, often carrying equipment with them. As for the Prussian soldiers, not being accompanied by a Sister of Noble Benevolence, they had succumbed again and again to fevers and infections.

Just as Burton had suspected, Speke's long head start had been eaten away, and, frustrated, the traitor had recently attempted to solve his problems by leaving the northern trail to join the southern one, which the king's agent was following. The question was: how far in front was he?

As usual, establishing a realistic sense of time was a hopeless endeavour. When asked how long ago Speke had passed, Burton received the reply: “Days and days and days and days and days and days.”

“How many?”

“This—” And Goha stretched out his arms to indicate a distance.

It was impossible to understand what he meant, and despite Burton's experience, and no matter how many different ways he asked the question, he didn't receive a comprehensible answer.

Later, he said to Swinburne, “Time is not the same in Africa as it is in Europe. The people here have an entirely different conception of it.”

“Perhaps they are rather more poetical,” Swinburne replied.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe they measure time not by the beat of a second or minute or hour, but by the intensity of their reactions to a thing. If they feel very disgruntled by Speke's expedition, that means it was here not long ago. If they feel mildly irritated, but they remember that they were more annoyed before, then a greater amount of time must have passed. And if they feel fine, but recall once being upset, then obviously the reason for it occurred long ago.”

“I never considered it that way,” Burton confessed. “I think you might be on to something.”

“Not that it helps much,” his assistant noted. “We still can't establish when Speke was here. How much easier it would be if old Goha could tell us, ‘Five o'clock last Sunday afternoon!’” He looked puzzled, and continued, “I say, Richard! What's the confounded day, anyway? I haven't a giddy clue!”

Burton shrugged. “Nor have I. I've haven't noted the date in my journal since—” He paused, then stretched out his arms. “This long ago.”

They left Ziwa, trudged across broad, rolling savannahs, and climbed onto the tableland of the Ugogo region. From here, they could see in the distance to their rear, crowned with mist and cut through by streaks of purple, the pale azure mountains of Usagara. In front, in the west, the terrain sank into a wide tract of brown bushland, dotted with grotesquely twisted calabash trees through which herds of elephants roamed, then rose to a range of rough hills. South and northward, verdure-crowned rocks thrust up from an uneven plain.

The villages they encountered, as they traversed this country, were inhabited by the Wagogo people, who, not having suffered as much the decimating attentions of slavers, demonstrated less timidity and a greater degree of curiosity. They turned out of their settlements in droves to watch the
wakongo
—the travellers—passing by, and cried out: “Wow! Wow! These must be the good men who are chasing the bad ones! Catch them,
Murungwana Sana
of Many Tongues, for they killed our cattle and chased us from our homes!”

However, while the people in general appeared to regard Burton's safari as a force bent on vengeance for the crimes committed by Speke's, the village elders with whom the explorer spoke proved rather more suspicious. “What will happen to us,” they asked, “when your people take the land?”

To this question, Burton had no reply, but it caused him more and more to think of Palmerston.

They will be accorded the rights given to all of our citizens.

The explorer felt increasingly uneasy.

They stopped for a day at a settlement called Kifukuru, the first where the Kinyamwezi language was spoken, rather than Kiswahili.

Swinburne entertained its inhabitants with a poetry reading. They didn't understand a word of it, of course, but they laughed uproariously at his odd twitches and hops, his jerky gestures and exaggerated facial expressions, and, for some obscure reason, they attached themselves to a stanza from “A Marching Song,” and demanded that he repeat it over and over:

Whither we know, and whence,
And dare not care wherethrough.
Desires that urge the sense,
Fears changing old with new,
Perils and pains beset the ways we press into.

Something about the first line of this caused the audience great merriment—perhaps its rhythm, or the sound of the words—and throughout the rest of the day, the diminutive poet was followed everywhere by hordes of children, who chanted, “Widdawenow! Anwense! Andah! Notkah! Wedru!”

“My hat, Richard!” he exclaimed. “I feel like the blessed Pied Piper of Hamelin! Aren't these little scamps marvellous, though?”

“They're the future, Algy!” Burton replied, and was instantly stricken by an incomprehensible sadness.

The next morning, the expedition took up its baggage and moved on, and Burton carried with him a growing depression and irritability. It was obvious to the others that he was lost in thought. He sat on his mule with his dark eyes smouldering, and his jaw, hidden behind a long bushy beard, set hard.

The rainy season had ended now and the plain, clothed in long ossifying grass, was already a mosaic of deep cracks. It took them two days to cross it, during which time Burton spoke little, then they chopped their way through a jungle and emerged into a ten-mile-wide clearing. Here, a powerful Wagogo chief named Magomba, who'd caused problems for Burton in '57, did so again by demanding that
hongo
be paid not just for the explorer's expedition but also for Speke's, which had forced its way with violence through the area. Reparation was also demanded for seven men killed by the Prussian forces.

Magomba was jet black in colour and his skin was crisscrossed with thousands of fine wrinkles. From the back and sides of his half-bald head, a few straggly corkscrews of grey hair depended; the whites of his eyes were actually yellow; and his filed teeth were brown. Brass rings dragged his earlobes down to his shoulders.

He squatted, all bones and joints, on a stool in his village's
bandani
, chewed constantly at a quid of tobacco, and expectorated without mercy.

Burton and Saíd bin Salím sat cross-legged before him.

“There was
ucháwi
—black magic,” Magomba said. “And I will not have
ucháwi
in my land.”

“What happened, O Magomba?” Burton asked. “Explain to me.”

“One of thy people—”

“Not mine!” Burton interrupted. “They are the enemy of my people!”

“One of thy people took a man by the neck and shook him until he dropped to the ground. The next morning, the man had turned into a tree. We had to cut off his head and burn him. Now, listen carefully whilst I tell thee of the tax thou must pay in order to pass through my domain.”

Magomba's demands were extortionate. Burton and Saíd spent the entire afternoon haggling, and eventually paid ten patterned cloths, six coils of brass wire, seven blue cottons, a pocket watch, twenty-five brass buttons, four boxes of beads, a quarter of tobacco, and a bottle of port.

“Good,” Magomba said. “Now I shall order a calf killed so that thy people may eat. It is good to see thee again,
Murungwana Sana.
Ever hast thou been my favourite of all the foul devils that plague this unhappy land.”

The next morning, as the expedition prepared for departure, the old chief confronted Burton and said, “I have had the blue cottons counted. There are only seven rolls.”

“It is what we agreed.”

“No. Thou promised nine.”

“You art mistaken. We said seven, and seven it is.”

“I will accept eight, providing thou swears an oath.”

“What oath?”

“Thou must give thy word not to strike my land with drought, nor with disease, nor with misfortune.”

“Eight it is, then. And I swear.”

Burton's porters hacked a route through the bordering jungle. The explorer led his people out of the clearing and, eventually, up into the hills and onto the glaring white plains of the Kanyenye region. Though the going was easier here, the heat was hellish and pertinacious gadflies assailed them all. The Daughters of Al-Manat had trouble controlling their horses, which constantly shied under the onslaught, and the pack mules bucked and kicked and shed their loads. As the ground gradually rose and became rockier, the expedition also suffered from a want of water, having used up their supply more rapidly than usual.

They started across rolling, very uneven ground, congested with gorse-like bushes and deeply pocked with holes and crevices.

Burton's calf muscles kept cramping, causing him such agony that he could barely keep from screaming.

Swinburne was thrown from his steed and landed among long, viciously sharp thorns. He emerged with his clothes in tatters and his body scratched and bleeding from head to toe. He announced, with much satisfaction, that it would sting for the rest of the day.

William Trounce slipped on stony ground and twisted his ankle.

Maneesh Krishnamurthy, who'd recovered from his malarial attack, was stung in his right ear. It became infected, and his sense of balance was so badly disturbed that he suffered severe dizziness and spent a whole day vomiting until he lapsed into unconsciousness. Once again, he had to be carried on a stretcher.

Isabella Mayson was prostrated by a gastric complaint that caused embarrassingly unladylike symptoms.

Isabel Arundell's horse collapsed and died beneath her, sending her crashing to the ground where she lay stunned until they revived her with smelling salts and a dash of brandy.

Herbert Spencer declared that he was experiencing shooting pains along his limbs, which was impossible, of course, but they'd all concluded that his hypochondriacal tendencies really did cause him discomfort.

Sister Raghavendra developed ophthalmia and could see nothing but blurred shapes and moving colours.

Two of Saíd bin Sálim's Askaris collapsed with fever, and the
ras kafilah
himself was stricken with an indefinable ague.

Nearly half of the Daughters of Al-Manat were beset by illness and infections.

Two more horses and three mules died.

Pox the parakeet flew away and didn't return.

As the sun was setting, they arrived in the district of K'hok'ho and wearily set up camp on open ground. No sooner had they lit a fire than angry warriors from the two nearby villages surrounded them and demanded that they move on. No amount of arguing would convince them that the expedition was anything other than an invading force, like the one before it. Tempers flared. A warrior stepped forward and thrust a spear into William Trounce's upper arm. Burton fought to control the Askaris, who stepped forward with scimitars drawn. “Stand down! We are going!” he shouted. “Kwecha! Kwecha! Pakia! Hopa! Hopa! Collect! Pack! Set out!”

Hurriedly, they struck camp and picked their way across the moonlit ground with the warriors escorting them on either side, mocking and jeering and threatening.

Sister Raghavendra, by touch alone, bandaged Trounce's arm.

“I'll need to stitch the wound, William, but we'll have to wait until we're safely away from these ruffians. Are you in pain?”

“By Jove, Sadhvi! Between this and the ankle, I'm having a fine day of it! I feel absolutely splendid! In fact, I thought I might top things off by repeatedly banging my head against a rock! What do you think?”

“I think you'd better chew on this.” She handed him a knob of a tobacco-like substance. “These herbs have strong pain-relieving properties.”

“What do they taste like?”

“Chocolate.”

Trounce threw the herbs into his mouth and started chewing. He gave a snort of appreciation. His ear whistled.

The warriors yelled a few final insults and withdrew.

Burton, at the front of the column, crested the brow of a hill, looked down onto a small plain, and saw the stars reflected in a number of ponds and small lakes.

“We'll rest there,” he said. “And let's hope that water is fresh.”