Chapter XXI (2)

By sunset several of the foragers had returned well rewarded for their enterprise, but many were belated, and, till long past midnight, guns were fired as signals, and the great ivory horns sounded loud blasts which travelled through the glades with continued rolling echoes. About nine p.m., tidings came that two Zanzibaris had been killed by poisoned arrows. An hour later a dead body, that of Ferajji, the humorous head-man, who was cross-examined at Banalya, was brought in. On inspection, the corpse was found studded with beads of perspiration. The arrow wound was a mere pin-hole puncture in upper left arm, but it had proved quite enough. It was said that he walked about an hour after being struck, towards camp, but then cried out for a little rest, as he was faint. During the ten minutes’ rest he died.

Young Hussein bin Juma, of a respectable parentage at Zanzibar, was soon after carried in, and brought to me, not dead, as reported, but in an extremely low condition. I discovered that the arrow had pierced the outer flesh of the right arm, and had entered an inch above the third rib. The arrow was hastily withdrawn and shown to me. It was smeared over with a dark substance like thick coal tar, and emitted a most peculiar odour. The arm was not swollen, but the body wound had caused a considerable tumour, soft to the touch. He said that he had felt exceedingly faint at one time, and that he perspired greatly, but had felt great relief after retching. At present he was languid, and suffered from thirst. After washing well both wounds, five grains of carbonate ammonia were injected into each wound, and a good dose of strong medical brandy was administered.

In ten days young Hussein was quite restored, and went about performing his accustomed duties.

A squad of men returned long after midnight with fowls, plantains, and fortunately without accident. But early in the morning, Tam, a native of Johanna, raving from small-pox, threw himself into the rapids and was drowned. He had declined being vaccinated.

After hauling our canoes overland three-quarters of a mile, we halted a day above the rapids to prepare five days’ rations of flour. The strain of hauling the rotten craft had reduced our flotilla to twenty-two vessels.

Engwedde’s long series of rapids was passed without accident, and thence we moved to Avisibba, and a good march brought us to the camp below Mabengu Rapids, where we had waited so long for the lost column under Jephson in August, 1887.

The next day was a halt, and a strong foraging party was sent over to Itiri to collect food. In the afternoon it returned, bringing several days’ supply of plantains with a few goats and fowls, and for the first time we were able to make soup and distribute meat to the Banalya sick. It was reported to me that the Manyuema had carved a woman most butcherly to allay their strong craving for meat, but the headman assured me that it was utterly false, and I am inclined to believe him, for the Zanzibaris, if they had really detected such a monstrous habit in people who might at any time contaminate their cooking-pots, would have insisted on making a severe example.

[Sidenote: 1888. Sept. 30. Avugadu.]

On the last day of September we moved up to above upper rapids of Avugadu, at which camp we discovered wild oranges. There were also wild mango-trees, if we may trust the flowering and foliage. Red figs of a sweetish flavour were very common, but as their shrunk pedicels possessed no saccharine secretions they were uneatable.

A native woman was delivered of a child on the road. She was seen standing over the tiny atom. The Zanzibaris as they came up crowded around the unusual sight, and one said, “throw the thing into the river out of the way.” “But why should you do that when the infant is alive?” asked another. “Why don’t you see that it is white? it must be some terrible disease I am sure.” “Oh Ignorance, how many evils transpire under thy dark shade.” “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” rushed to my mind, as I looked in wonder at the speakers, who, utterly unconscious that they were committing murder, would have extinguished the little spark of life there and then.

Our anxieties at this period were mainly on the account of those suffering from ulcers. There was one wise little boy of about thirteen called Soudi, who formerly attended on the Major. An injury he had received had caused about four inches of the leg bone to be exposed. We had also fifteen cases of small-pox, who mingled in the freest manner possible with our Zanzibaris, and only the suicide, Tam, had thus far been attacked.

[Sidenote: 1888. Oct. 1. Avejeli.]

On arriving at Avejeli, opposite the Nepoko, the wife of the Manyuema drummer, a prepossessing lassie, went out to the gardens close by to collect herbs. A band of natives were in hiding, and they pierced her with arrows. Seven of them quivered in her body. Her screams attracted attention, and she was hastily brought in, but even as we were about to inject the ammonium she rolled over, raised her arms, and embraced her young husband in the most touching manner, gave a long sigh, and died. “Oh, ye travellers! who belong to that clique who say the Africans know neither love, affection, nor jealousy. What would you have said to this pitiful death-scene?” We had also a Manyuema woman who was a hideous object, a mass of loathsome pustules, emitting an almost unbearable stench, but her husband tended and served her with a surpassing and devoted tenderness. Death, death everywhere, and on every day, and in every shape; but love, supreme love stood like a guardian angel to make death beautiful! Poor unlettered, meek creatures, the humblest of humanity, yet here unseen, and unknown of those who sing of noble sacrifices, of constancy and devotion, proving your brotherhood with us amid the sternest realities by lulling your loved ones to rest with the choicest flowers of love!

On the 2nd of October we moved up to Little Rapids below the confluence of the Ngaiyu with the Ituri, where a tornado visited us, churned up the generally waveless river into careering rollers, that stretched from bank to bank, with a power and force that disturbed the very bed and muddied the stream until it resembled a wild strip of shallow wind-driven sea, beating on an alluvial shore. Our canoes were dashed one against the other until they promised to become matchwood, while the great forest groaned and roared with the agony of the strife, but in half-an-hour the river had resumed its placid and tender face, and the forest stood still as though petrified.

During a halt on the 3rd, Mr. Jameson’s box, containing various trifles belonging to an industrial naturalist, was opened. Books, diaries, and such articles as were worth preserving, were sealed up for transport athwart the continent; the others, unnecessary to a person in civilization, were discarded.

[Sidenote: 1888. Oct. 3. Bavikai.]

Mr. Bonny was despatched with twenty-eight men past the Ngaiyu, to verify my hope that a landing-place I had observed in passing and repassing would lead to the discovery of a road by which I could avoid the devastated wilderness that stretched for nearly 200 miles along the south bank between the Basopo Rapids and Ibwiri. Mr. Bonny, after returning, was pleased to express his surprise at the marvellous dexterity and agility of the scouts, who sprang with the lightness of springing bush antelopes over every kind of impediment, and who in almost every thousand paces gained five hundred ahead of him. A mile and a half from the landing-place on the north bank he had found a fine village surrounded by rich groves of plantains. To this village, called Bavikai, we proceeded more in the hope that we could utilize some road going north-easterly, whence, after sixty miles or so, we could strike on a bee-line course for the Albert.

As the men were being transported across the river opposite the landing-place of the Bavikai on the 4th, I saw a dozen Madis in a terrible condition from the ravages of the small-pox, and crowding them, until they jostled them in admirable unconcern, were some two dozen of the tribe as yet unaffected by the disease. This little fact put me on a line of reflections which, had a first-class shorthand writer been near, might have been of value to other thoughtless persons. Never did ignorance appear to me so foolish. Its utter unsuspectingness was pitiful. Over these human animals I saw the shadow of Death, in the act to strike. But I said to myself, I see the terrible shade over them ready to smite them with the disease which will make them a horror, and finally kill them. When I fall also it will probably be from some momentary thoughtlessness, when I shall either be too absorbed, or too confident to observe the dark shadow impending over me. However, _Mambu Kwa Mungu_, neither they nor I can avoid our fate.

Among my notes on the 5th of October I find a few remarks about Malaria.

While we have travelled through the forest region we have suffered less from African fevers, than we did in the open country between Mataddi and Stanley Pool.

A long halt in the forest clearings soon reminds us that we are not yet so acclimated as to utterly escape the effects of malaria. But when within the inclosed woods our agues are of a very mild form, soon extinguished by a timely dose of quinine.

On the plateau of Kavalli and Undussuma, Messrs. Jephson, Parke, and myself were successively prostrated by fever, and the average level of the land was over 4500 feet above the sea.

On descending to the Nyanza plain, 2500 feet lower, we were again laid up with fierce attacks.

At Banana Point, which is at sea-level, ague is only too common.

At Boma, 80 feet higher, the ague is more common still.

At Vivi, there were more cases than elsewhere, and the station was about 250 feet higher than Boma, and not a swamp was near it.

At Stanley Pool, about 1100 feet above sea level, fever of a pernicious form was prevalent.

While ascending the Congo with the wind astern we were unusually exempted from ague.

But descending the Upper Congo, facing the wind, we were smitten with most severe forms of it.

While ascending the Aruwimi we seldom thought of African fever, but descending it in canoes, meeting the wind currents, and carried towards it by river-flow and paddle, we were speedily made aware that acclimatisation is slow.

Therefore it is proved that from 0 to 5000 feet above the sea there is no immunity from fever and ague, that over forty miles of lake water between a camp and the other shore are no positive protection; that a thousand miles of river course may serve as a flue to convey malaria in a concentrated form; that if there is a thick screen of primeval forest, or a grove of plantains between the dwelling-place and a large clearing or open country there is only danger of the local malaria around the dwelling, which might be rendered harmless by the slightest attention to the system; but in the open country neither a house nor a tent are sufficient protection, since the air enters by the doors of the house, and under the flaps, and through the ventilators to poison the inmates.

Hence we may infer that trees, tall shrubbery, a high wall or close screen interposed between the dwelling-place and the wind currents will mitigate their malarial influence, and the inmate will only be subjected to local exhalations.

Emin Pasha informed me that he always took a mosquito curtain with him, as he believed that it was an excellent protector against miasmatic exhalations of the night.

Question, might not a respirator attached to a veil, or face screen of muslin, assist in mitigating malarious effects when the traveller finds himself in open regions?

Three companies of forty men each were sent in three different directions to follow the tracks leading from Bavikai. The first soon got entangled in the thick woods bordering the Ngaiyu, and had an engagement with the natives of Bavikai, who were temporarily encamped in the dark recesses, the second followed a path that ran E. by N., and soon met a large force of natives coming from three different villages. One of our men was wounded in the head with a poisoned arrow. The third was perplexed by a network of paths, and tried several of them, but all ended in plantations of plantains and thin bush of late growth, and in the search these men encountered savages well armed and prepared with poisoned darts. We were therefore compelled to recross the river to the south bank, to try again higher up, to avoid the trying labour of tunnelling through the forest.

[Sidenote: 1888. Oct. 10. Hippo Broads.]

On the 10th the Expedition reached Hippo Broads. On this date we saw a cloud of moths sailing up river, which reached from the water’s face to the topmost height of the forest, say 180 feet, so dense, that before it overtook us we thought that it was a fog, or, as was scarcely possible, a thick fall of lavender-coloured snow. The rate of flight was about three knots an hour. In the dead calm morning air they maintained an even flight, but the slightest breeze from the banks whirled them confusedly about, like light snow particles on a gusty day. Every now and then the countless close packed myriads met a cloud of moth migrants from above river, and the sunbeams glinting and shining on their transparent wing caused them to resemble fire sparks.

Bits of turfy green, cropped close by hippo, which favours this fine reach of river, distinguish the banks near this locality. Many oil palms, some raphia, arums, phrynia, amoma, pepper bushes, &c., denote a very ancient site of a human settlement. My tent was pitched under a small branching fig-tree, which protected it from a glowing Equatorial sun, but the heat reflected from the river’s face mounted up to 87° in the shade at 3 P.M. This unusual heat preceded a tempest, with lightning, startling thunder, and deluging rain.

At the Bafaido Cataract, a woman who fell into our hands informed us that the Medze tribe lived on the other side of the Ngaiyu River and that the Babandi were found on its left bank.

Near Avaiyabu, a lurking native who had been standing behind a leafy screen of parasites depending from the branches of a big tree, suddenly stepped into the path, snatched a little girl belonging to the Manyuema, and drove his double-edged dagger from breast to back, and holding his weapon above his head uttered a furious cry, which might well have been “Death to the invader!”

And at the next camp, Avamberri landing-place, Soudi the wise little boy who had served the Major, while being carried past the rapids to the canoes waiting above, died on the carriers’ shoulders. The enamel covering of the leg-bone had been all destroyed by the virulent ulcer. Since we had left Bungangeta Island, Soudi had been carried and nursed, but want of exercise, and exposure to sun in the canoe and constant rain had weakened his digestion. His constitution had been originally healthy and sound. The little fellow had borne his sufferings bravely, but the reserve medicines were at Bangala, and we could do nothing for him.

On the 18th of October we were at Amiri Rapids, and the second Zanzibari showed symptoms of small-pox. So far we had been remarkably free of the disease, despite the fact that there were from ten to twenty sufferers daily in the camp since arriving at the settlement of the Batundu. Out of 620 Zanzibaris who were ordered to be vaccinated, some few constitutions might possibly have resisted the vaccine; but no more decided proof of the benefits resulting to humanity could be obtained from Jenner’s discovery than were furnished by our Expedition. Among the Manyuema, Madis, and native followers, the epidemic had taken deadly hold, and many a victim had already been tossed into the river weighted with rocks. For this was also a strange necessity we had to resort to, to avoid subsequent exhumation by the natives whom we discovered to be following our tracks for the purpose of feeding on the dead.

One of the Zanzibari headmen while acting as coxswain of a canoe was so stung by wasps at this camp that he despaired of his life, and insisted that his will should be written, wherein he made his brother, then with us, his sole legatee. I conformed to his wish in a clerkly fashion that pleased him well, but I also administered a ten-grain dose of carbonate of ammonium hypodermically, and told him he should reach Zanzibar in spite of the vicious wasps who had so punished him. The next day he was a new man, and boasted that the white man’s medicines could cure everything except death.

[Sidenote: 1888. Oct. 18. Amiri Falls.]

After moving to the top of Amiri Rapids, a series of misfortunes met us. Some few of the flighty-headed untrained men of the rear-column rushed off to the plantain plantations without a leader or authority, and conducted themselves like children. The natives surrounded them and punished them, wounding three. Two others, one suffering from a palpitation of the heart, and another feeble youth, had left the trail to hide from the rear-guard.

Up to date, we had lost since 1st of September, nine Zanzibaris killed, one from suicide, one from ulcers, and two were missing. Of the Manyuema contingent, fifteen had been killed or had died from small pox, and eighteen Madis had either been killed or had perished from the pest. Total loss, forty-four deaths within forty-nine days.

[Sidenote: 1888. Oct. 19.

Amiri Falls.]

From Amiri Falls to Avatiko was a seven-days’ march through a depopulated country, through a land wholly empty of food. Beyond Avatiko by the new route I proposed to follow, two days would probably transpire before another supply of food could be obtained. This was my estimate, at which with the Zanzibaris of the advance column who were now trained in forest life, we might perform these journeys. If we could obtain no food at Avatiko, then our lot would be hard indeed. Up to within a day’s march of Avatiko, we could employ the canoes in carrying an extra supply of provisions. It would not be impossible to take twenty days’ rations of flour per capita; but a leader to perform such a work must be obeyed. He performs his duties by enjoining on all his followers to remember his words, to take heed of his advice, and do their utmost to conform to his instructions.

On the 20th at dawn, 160 rifles were despatched to the plantations five miles inland from Amiri Falls. The men were told how many days Avatiko was distant, and that they should employ one day in collecting food, in peeling, slicing and drying their plantains in the plantation, so that they could bring from sixty to seventy pounds of food, which when distributed would supply each person with over twenty pounds, equal to ten days’ rations. Experience of them proved to me that the enterprising would carry sufficient to satisfy them with fifteen days’ unstinted food; others, again, despite the warning of death rung in their ears, would not carry more than would suffice them for four days.

On the afternoon of the 21st I was gratified to see that the people had been very successful. How many had followed my advice it was impossible to state. The messes had sent half their numbers to gather the food, and every man had to contribute two handfuls for the officers and sick. It only remained now for the chiefs of the messes to be economical of the food, and the dreaded wilderness might be safely crossed.