The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places (39 page)

So things went on until September 4th, which still found us on the march. We had reached the basin of Inenge, which lies at the foot of the Windy Pass, the third and westernmost range of the
Usagara Mountains. The climate is ever in extremes; during the day a furnace, and at night a refrigerator. Here we halted. The villagers of the settlements overlooking the ravine flocked down to
barter their animals and grain.

The halt was celebrated by abundant drumming and droning, which lasted half the night; it served to raise the spirits of the men, who had talked of nothing the whole day but the danger of being
attacked by the Wahumba, a savage tribe. The next morning there arrived a caravan of about four hundred porters, marching to the coast under the command of some Arab merchants. We interchanged
civilities, and I was allured into buying a few yards of rope and other things, and also some asses. One of my men had also increased his suite, unknown to me at first, by the addition of Zawada
– the “Nice Gift.” She was a woman of about thirty, with black skin shining like a patent leather boot, a bulging brow, little red eyes, a wide mouth, which displayed a few long,
scattered teeth, and a figure considerably too bulky for her thin legs. She was a patient and hardworking woman, and respectable enough in the acceptation of the term. She was at once married off
to old Musangesi, one of the donkey-men, whose nose and chin made him a caricature of our old friend Punch. After detecting her in a lengthy walk, perhaps not a solitary one, he was guilty of such
cruelty to her that I felt compelled to decree a dissolution of the marriage, and she returned safely to Zanzibar. At Inenge another female slave was added to our troop in the person of Sikujui
– “Don’t Know” – a herculean person with a virago manner. The channel of her upper lip had been pierced to admit a bone, which gave her the appearance of having a
duck’s bill. “Don’t Know’s” morals were frightful. She was duly espoused, in the forlorn hope of making her a respectable woman, to Goha, the sturdiest of the
Wak’hutu porters; after a week she treated him with sublime contempt. She gave him first one and then a dozen rivals, and she disordered the whole caravan with her irregularities, in addition
to breaking every article entrusted to her charge, and at last deserted shamelessly, so that her husband finally disposed of her to a travelling trader in exchange for a few measures of rice. Her
ultimate fate I do not know, but the trader came next morning to complain of a broken head.

After Inenge we were in for a bad part of the journey, and great labour. Trembling with ague, with swimming heads, ears deafened by weakness, and limbs that would hardly support us, we
contemplated with horrid despair the apparently perpendicular path up which we and our starving asses were about to toil.

On September 10th we hardened our hearts and began to breast the Pass Terrible. After rounding in two places wall-like sheets of rock and crossing a bushy slope, we faced a long steep of loose
white soil and rolling stones, up which we could see the porters swarming more like baboons than human beings, and the asses falling every few yards. As we moved slowly and painfully forward,
compelled to lie down by cough, thirst, and fatigue, the sayhah, or war-cry, rang loud from hill to hill, and Indian files of archers and spearmen streamed like lines of black ants in all
directions down the paths. The predatory Wahumba, awaiting the caravan’s departure, had seized the opportunity of driving the cattle and plundering the village of Inenge.

By resting every few yards, we reached, after about six hours, the summit of the Pass Terrible, and here we sat down amongst aromatic flowers and pretty shrubs to recover strength and
breath.

On September 14th, our health much improved by the weather, we left the hilltop and began to descend the counterslope of the Usagara Mountains. For the first time since many days I had strength
enough to muster the porters and inspect their loads. The outfit which had been expected to last a year had been exhausted within three months. I summoned Said bin Salim, and told him my anxiety.
Like a veritable Arab, he declared we had enough to last until we reached Unyamyembe, where we should certainly be joined by reinforcements of porters.

“How do you know?” I inquired.

“Allah is all-knowing,” said Said. “The caravan will come.”

As the fatalism was infectious, I ceased to think upon the subject.

The next day we sighted the plateau of Ugogo and its eastern desert. The spectacle was truly impressive. The first aspect was stern and wild – the rough nurse of rugged men. We went on the
descent from day to day until September 18th, when a final march of four hours placed us on the plains of Ugogo. Before noon I sighted from a sharp turn in the bed of a river our tent pitched under
a huge sycamore, on a level step. It was a pretty spot in the barren scene, grassy, and grown with green mimosas, and here we halted for a while. The second stage of our journey was
accomplished.

After three days’ sojourn at Ugogo to recruit the party and lay in rations for four long desert marches, we set forth on our long march through the province of Ugogo. Our first day’s
journey was over a grassy country, and we accomplished it in comparative comfort. The next day we toiled through the sunshine of the hot waste, crossing plains over paths where the slides of
elephants’ feet upon the last year’s muddy clay showed that the land was not always dry. During this journey we suffered many discomforts and difficulties. The orb of day glowed like a
fireball in our faces; then our path would take us through dense, thorny jungle, and over plains of black, cracked earth. Our caravan once rested in a thorny copse based upon rich red and yellow
clay; once it was hurriedly dislodged by a swarm of wild bees, and the next morning I learnt that we had sustained a loss – one of our porters had deserted, and to his care had been committed
one of the most valuable of our packages, a portmanteau containing “The Nautical Almanac,” surveying books, and most of our papers, pen, and ink.

When we resumed our journey, the heat was awful. The sun burnt like the breath of a bonfire, warm siroccos raised clouds of dust, and in front of us the horizon was so distant that, as the Arabs
expressed themselves, a man might be seen three marches off.

October 5th saw us in the centre of Kanyenye, a clearing in the jungle of about ten miles in diameter. The surface was of a red clayey soil dotted with small villages, huge calabashes, and
stunted mimosas. Here I was delayed four days to settle blackmail with Magomba, the most powerful of the Wagogo chiefs. He was of a most avaricious nature. First of all I acknowledged his
compliments with two cottons. On arrival at his headquarters, I was waited on by an oily Cabinet of Elders, who would not depart without their “respects” – four cottons. The next
demand was made by his favourite, a hideous old Princess with more wrinkles than hair, with no hair black and no tooth white; she was not put right without a fee of six cottons. At last,
accompanied by a mob of courtiers, appeared the chief
in magnifico.
He was the only chief who ever entered my tent in Ugogo – pride and a propensity for strong drink prevented such
visits. He was much too great a man to call upon Arab merchants, but in our case curiosity mastered State considerations. Magomba was an old man, black and wrinkled, drivelling and decrepit. He
wore a coating of castor-oil and a loincloth which grease and use had changed from blue to black. He chewed his quid, and expectorated without mercy; he asked many questions, and was all eyes to
the main chance. He demanded, and received, five cloths, one coil of brass wire, and four blue cottons. In return he made me a present of the leanest of calves, and when it was driven into camp
with much parade, his son, to crown all, put in a claim for three cottons. Yet Magomba, before our departure, boasted of his generosity – and indeed he was generous, for everything we had was
in his hands, and we were truly in his power. It was, indeed, my firm conviction from first to last in this expedition that in case of attack or surprise by natives I had not a soul except my
companion to stand by me, and all those who accompanied us would have either betrayed us or fled. We literally, therefore, carried our lives in our hands.

We toiled on and on, suffering severely from the heat by day and sometimes the cold by night, and troubled much with mutinous porters and fears of desertion, until at last we reached the heart
of the great desert, or elephant ground, known as Fiery Field. On October 20th we began the transit of this Fiery Field. The waste here appeared in its most horrid phase; a narrow goat-path
serpentined in and out of a growth of poisonous thorny jungle, with thin, hard grass straw growing on a glaring white and rolling ground. The march was a severe trial, and we lost on it three boxes
of ammunition. By-and-by we passed over the rolling ground, and plunged into a thorny jungle, which seemed interminable, but which gradually thinned out into a forest of thorns and gums, bush and
underwood, which afforded a broad path and pleasanter travelling. Unfortunately, it did not last long, and we again had a very rough bit of ground to go over. Another forest to pass through, and
then we came out on October 27th into a clearing studded with large stockaded villages, fields of maize and millet, gourds and watermelons, and showing numerous flocks and herds. We had arrived at
Unyamwezi, and our traverse of Ugogo was over.

The people swarmed from their abodes, young and old hustling one another for a better stare; the man forsook his loom and the girl her hoe, and we were welcomed and escorted into the village by
a tail of screaming boys and shouting adults, the males almost nude, the women bare to the waist, and clothed only knee-deep in kilts. Leading the way, our guide, according to the immemorial custom
of Unyamwezi, entered uninvited and
sans cérémonie
the nearest village; the long string of porters flocked in with bag and baggage, and we followed their example. We were
placed under a wall-less roof, bounded on one side by the bars of the village palisade, and surrounded by a mob of starers, who relieved one another from morning to night, which made me feel like a
wild beast in a menagerie.

We rested some days at Unyamwezi – the far-famed “Land of the Moon” – but I was urged to advance on the ground that the natives were a dangerous race, though they
appeared to be a timid and ignoble people, dripping with castor and sesamum oil, and scantily attired in shreds of cotton or greasy goat-skins. The dangers of the road between Unyamwezi and Ujiji
were declared to be great. I found afterwards that they were grossly exaggerated, but I set forth with the impression that this last stage of my journey would be the worst of all. The country over
which we travelled varied very much from day to day, being sometimes opened and streaked with a thin forest of mimosas, and at other times leading us through jungly patches. Going through a thick
forest, one of the porters, having imprudently lagged behind, was clubbed and cruelly bruised by three black robbers, who relieved him of his load. These highwaymen were not unusual in this part,
and their raids formed one of the many dangers we had to guard against.

On November 7th, 1857, the one hundred and thirty-fourth day from the date of leaving the coast, we entered Kazeh, the principal village of Unyamwezi, much frequented by Arab merchants. I always
got on well with the Arabs, and they gave me a most favourable reception. Striking indeed was the contrast between the openhanded hospitality and hearty goodwill of this truly noble race and the
niggardliness of the savage and selfish Africans. Whatever I alluded to – onions, plantains, limes, vegetables, tamarinds, coffee, and other things, only to be found amongst the Arabs –
were sent at once, and the very name of payment would have been an insult.

Kazeh is situated in Unyamyembe, the principal province of Unyamwezi, and is a great meeting-place of merchants and point of departure for caravans, which then radiate into the interior of
Central Intertropical Africa. Here the Arab merchant from Zanzibar meets his compatriot returning from the Tanganyika and Uruwwa. Many of the Arabs settle here for years, and live comfortably, and
even splendidly. Their houses, though single storied, are large, substantial, and capable of defence; their gardens are extensive and well planted. They receive regular supplies of merchandise,
comforts, and luxuries from the coast; they are surrounded by troops of concubines and slaves; rich men have riding asses from Zanzibar, and even the poorest keep flocks and herds.

I was detained at Kazeh from November 8th until December 14th, and the delay was one long trial of patience. Nevertheless, on the morning of December 15th I started off afresh, charmed with the
prospect of a fine open country, and delighted to get away from what had been to me a veritable imprisonment.

I will not describe the details of our march, which went on without a break. Christmas Day found us still marching, and so on day after day, if I except an enforced halt of twelve days at Msene.
On January 10th, 1858, I left Msene, with considerable difficulty through the mutiny of porters; and so we pressed on, more or less with difficulty, until at last a formidable obstacle to progress
presented itself. I had been suffering for some days; the miasmatic airs of Sorora had sown the seeds of a fresh illness. On the afternoon of January 18th, 1858, I was seized with an attack of
fever, and then paralysis set in from the feet upwards, and I was completely
hors de combat.
There seemed nothing left for me but to lie down and die. One of my chief porters declared that
the case was beyond his skill: it was one of partial paralysis, brought on by malaria, and he called in an Arab, who looked at me also. The Arab was more cheerful, and successfully predicted that I
should be able to move in ten days. On the tenth I again mounted my ass, but the paralysis wore off very slowly, and prevented me from walking any distance for nearly a year. The sensation of
numbness in my hands and feet disappeared even more slowly than that. I had, however, undertaken the journey in a “nothing like leather” frame of mind, and was determined to press on.
So we pressed.