Chapter III: The Start—mombasa to Taita

After a month’s sojourn in Zanzibar, most agreeably spent as the recipient of Sir John Kirk’s hospitality, all my arrangements for commencing my expedition to Kilima-njaro were completed. I had hired upwards of thirty porters, most of them old _employés_ of Mr. Stanley’s on the Congo, and despatched them to Mombasa in an Arab dau, while I followed in the mail-steamer going north, accompanied by my personal servant, a Tamil boy from Ceylon. I took leave of Sir John Kirk with considerable regret one dark evening after an unusually agreeable dinner-party, and entered a little rowing-boat, which was to take me to the steamer, with a feeling of such downheartedness that my calmer reflections told me Zanzibar was likely to prove my African Capua. After my own experience I could realize now how previous explorers had been unnerved and unfitted for the rough life of the wilderness by the luxurious and easy-going life in Zanzibar. Fortunately the steamer I was journeying in to Mombasa was the same vessel which had brought me down to Aden, so that I once more found myself among friends. The night I left Sir John Kirk’s was stiflingly hot, and the steamer was full of passengers—I shuddered at passing the night in a poky cabin with three other inmates. The captain saw my hesitation, and offered most kindly to rig up a cot for me on deck. I accepted his proposal eagerly, forgetting the danger in it, of which both of us were unaware. The steamer, according to custom, would remain all night in Zanzibar harbour, and leave at dawn. Now—and this is the only reason I record this incident—there is no surer way of getting a bad fever than to sleep in the open air in a tropical port. The reasons for this are many and would take up a great deal of time and space to describe properly; I therefore confine myself to the dogmatic assertion, which I here record in the interest of such of my readers as may be proceeding to the tropics, and are likely to be tempted to pass a quiet night in harbour on the cool upper deck instead of in their stuffy berths below. Sleep in the air as much as you like at open sea, but never when you are lying off shore in a port or land-locked bay. I paid the penalty of this one night’s mistake in a very bad fever which attacked me soon after I landed at Mombasa, and left me horribly weak from its effects. Most fortunately, in my hour of extremity, I had fallen among friends. Captain Gissing, the Vice-Consul, was my host, and not only quartered me and my baggage in his Consulate, but also put up my thirty Zanzibar followers, an act of kindness for which I fear he was ill-rewarded by their noisy behaviour and continual squabbles with the populace of the town. So kind was Captain Gissing, that I was not made aware of this till after my recovery, and I beg to thank him again here for his considerate patience. The men were anything but bad fellows, but I suppose, finding themselves masterless with plenty to eat and nothing to do, they waxed riotous. In the meantime, the Rev. Mr. Handford, of the Church Missionary Society, who had brought me round in the crisis of my fever, carried me off to his station of Frere Town on the mainland (Mombasa is an island) to effect my convalescence, which, so pleasant was the nursing bestowed on me under his wife’s kind care, would have been quietly enjoyable had I not continually worried myself about my arrested work. However, my friends were not idle while I lay in enforced inactivity, and the Revs. A. Downes Shaw, of Kisolutini, and Thomas Wakefield, of Jomvu, were both busily engaging porters for my caravan.

At length I was so far recovered as to resume my preparations for departure, and I once more repaired to Captain Gissing’s house to pack my vast quantity of baggage into loads of a more or less uniform weight, averaging fifty pounds apiece.

MOMBASA.

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As yet Eastern Africa provides no other means of porterage than human labour, and all goods and chattels have to be carried on men’s heads and shoulders. There are donkeys to be bought, it is true, but they never seem to do well on long journeys, and are in no way to be depended on; besides, at the time when I was staying at Mombasa, asses were both dear in price and poor in quality. Thirty of my men had been, as already mentioned, engaged in Zanzibar, and it would have been far better for the fortunes of my caravan had I recruited all the porters of my expedition at that place, for the men who frequent the capital and emporium of the dominions of Sayyid Barghash are of a better stamp than the worthless A-nika and A-rabai that inhabit the vicinity of Mombasa. Why this should be is a problem very difficult to solve, and one not altogether unsurrounded by thorny questions. I am afraid that in recording my downright bad opinion of the native carriers—many of them professing Christians—which are to be found in the vicinity of the English missionary stations near Mombasa, I am giving pain to my very kind friends, the missionaries who labour in those parts. I am sorry for this, for I am aware, more than any one perhaps, how thoroughly deserving of respect and support is their unselfish work in those regions. But truth must be told, and in the interests of travellers who succeed me in these districts, I warn them never, if they can help it, to engage porters at Mombasa. Independently of all questions of religion—Mohammedan and Christian alike—the inhabitants of the Mombasa district are a thoroughly bad lot. It is hopeless to win them by kindness, or infuse a spirit of discipline by sternness. They are liars, cowards, thieves, and drunkards. They were so when Krapf, the earnest pioneer of Christian missions, first came among them; they are so still, after nearly forty years of evangelization. Why is it that men got from Zanzibar, Pangani, Mozambique, or elsewhere, should be so much superior? It must be some inherent fault in the local race, because the few men whom I obtained from the Mombasa missions that were _not_ natives of Mombasa, but had been trained in the mission schools, turned out all that could be desired.

However, being unaware of all this, I had already vicariously engaged the bulk of my porters at Mombasa, fearing to be disappointed at Zanzibar, as there is often a paucity of caravan-men in that place, owing to the constant demand. Even before I started for the interior, the true character of the Mombasa men began to dawn upon me, but I hesitated to take the extreme step of dismissing them and sending to Zanzibar for others, because this would, firstly, be very expensive, and secondly, for the reason that they were only engaged for one month to transport my goods to the mountain, and there leave me with my nucleus of thirty Zanzibaris. Moreover, I was feverishly anxious to leave Mombasa, feeling sure that I should never shake off the effects of my illness till I left the unhealthy coast; and without worrying myself about a change of men, I had quite sufficient hindrance and vexatious delay in the purchase and packing of the necessary goods for sale and barter in the interior.

The great staple of East African trade and the chief currency of all countries lying inland, is “merikani,” or American sheeting. I had to purchase several huge bales of this at Zanzibar and transport it to Mombasa, there to be split up into loads of five gora each. A “gora,” or “jora,” is about forty-two yards, and in sheeting of medium quality, weighs 12 lbs., so that each load of five gora weighed 60 lbs., and was a fair burden for a single porter. There were many other kinds of “cloth” (“cloth” becomes in Africa a generic name for all dry goods) to be taken. “Kaniki,” or indigo-dyed cotton; gaudy red handkerchiefs from Manchester looms; “bandeira,” or Turkey-red; “kikoi,” or handsomely bordered waistbands, fringed every two yards; richly dyed stuffs from Western India and the Persian Gulf, “maskati,” “dubhani,” “sabhai,” &c. All these in common with the “merikani,” had to be carefully divided into loads averaging 55 lbs. or 60 lbs.; each load counted and catalogued in its amount to check the stealing of any of its contents, and then finally sewn up in a peculiar kind of grass matting, very strong, and almost impervious to rain. Next, the beads had to be considered. It was necessary to take with the expedition different kinds and colours, for in East Africa, as I remarked on the River Congo, there are most varied and capricious tastes to consult among the natives, and scarcely two villages concur in their canons of taste. Thus, you must take different sizes of blue bead, called by the Wa-swahili _maji bahri_, or “sea-water,” for although an entire tribe may affect one shade of blue in their bead necklaces, yet each individual will have special opinion as to the correct size of the bead. Then there are large ruby-red beads and white ones, and tiny pink and medium-sized black, and transparent blue. When the beads are bought in sacks from the traders, they are only threaded on rotten, worthless thread, and it is impossible to trade with them before they have been re-threaded securely. For this purpose you purchase on the coast a stout twine, made, I fancy, from the fibre of a Raphia palm, and then you set your men to work to re-thread all the beads. This task, of course, gives them immense opportunities for quiet pilfering, for the beads in their eyes are almost like coinage; so not only must you keep a sharp eye on the little groups of four or five merry black men who are so blithely slipping bead after bead along the yellow strings of palm-fibre, but each man’s lot must be carefully weighed before and after its transference from the old thread to the new. Even with every precaution some loss always takes place during the process, and a day or two after this task is over you are surprised and grieved to see one of your most trusted followers reeling about the streets of the coast town, drunk on the proceeds of the misappropriated beads.

If you are likely to travel through countries ranged over by the Masai, large coils of iron wire must be taken, as these predatory people greatly value it, and turn it to many useful ends in their simple manufactures. Natives of all tribes in East Africa are also fond of copper and brass wire of every thickness, the very large sizes being coiled into bracelets or anklets, and the finer sorts used with much ingenuity to ornament gun-stocks, the hafts of knives, or the rods of spears. Finally, to this already extensive list of goods must be added a few sacks of cowries, barrels of trade gunpowder, tin boxes of percussion-caps, looking-glasses, large and small butchers’ knives, bells, mouse-traps, and cheap musical instruments; while as presents for chiefs of special importance, fancy articles have to be taken, such as musical-boxes, accordions, guns of superior make, playing-cards, fine snuff, and gaudy picture-books. I was myself provided with a huge roll of coloured plates from the _Graphic_ and other illustrated papers, which I found made a most satisfactory impression on chiefs of an æsthetic turn of mind, already cloyed with the cloth, beads, and brass wire of the ordinary trader. When all these wares had been selected, assorted, and packed, I had further to add to our encumbrances by purchases of food for myself and the men, as the country through which our journey lay was almost uninhabited and devoid of cultivation. For myself I added crates of potatoes and onions, and a dozen live fowls to my precious stock of preserved provisions; while for the men, large quantities of Indian corn and beans were bought. How easily fed these Swahili porters are! What other race would be content to trudge twenty miles a day with a burden of sixty pounds, and be regaled on nothing but maize and beans?

Fig. 17.—The Shaws’ House, Kisolutini—the first Mission Station in
East Africa.
]

At length all my arrangements were finished. The men had received and spent their advanced wages, and had sobered down after the drunken spree by which they nearly always inaugurate a journey into the interior. I myself was ready and anxious to be off. I longed for the bracing air of the inland plateaux to dispel the weakening fever from which I suffered, and gladly stepped into Captain Gissing’s pretty skiff, in which the first stage of the journey might be made, for several tidal creeks extend inland from Mombasa for a distance of nearly twenty miles. My men journeyed by land, and we all met again in the vicinity of the mission station of Rabai. After one night spent with Mr. and Mrs. Wakefield at Jomvu, and a pleasant rest with the Shaws at Kisolutini, I was at length launched alone into the wilderness, rather relieved than otherwise at my unaccustomed solitude. My party consisted of one hundred and twenty men.

The first day’s tramp into the interior was very trying. Owing to the scarcity of water, I had resolved to make a long march to a place called Gora, at a distance of about thirty miles from my starting point. I gave my caravan a little start ahead of me, and followed leisurely in a hammock, feeling at first too weak from fever to be able to go on foot. In fact, what with anterior weakness and a blazing sun, I felt in such a stupid condition that I hoped, during the first day of my travels, to be allowed to journey peacefully without undue exercise of energy. But it was not to be, and perhaps fortunately so, since there is nothing that dispels the languidness of fever so speedily as the necessity for vigorous action. After some hours’ easy jog-trot in my net-hammock, I came up with the bulk of my caravan, and found all the men reclining in the pleasant shade of a leafy wood. The Zanzibaris rose somewhat apologetically, and with a show of respect, but the men of Rabai and Mombasa merely looked at me with stolid unconcern, and several yawned unrestrainedly in my face when I questioned them as to the cause of this prolonged halt. The head-man of these Christian—save the mark!—porters then informed me that his men considered the walk to Gora too long to be undertaken in a day, and had chosen this pleasant spot to repose in during the sultry hours. I called on the laggards to take up their burdens and go on; I maintained that I alone had the power to order a halt; that the morning was still fresh, and that if we rested now we should never reach the water-place by nightfall—in vain, I was only met with sullen looks and murmurs of dissent.

Now was the crisis in which my authority was to be asserted or for ever to be subordinated to the men’s caprices. The Zanzibaris were waiting to see how I should act, and would gauge my disposition by the way in which I met my first difficulties. In fact, the scene in which this conflict of wills took place was not ill-disposed for effect. A slight depression or basin was sunk in the centre of the clearing, in which the dissentient porters and their loads were grouped, and around ran an amphitheatre-like rise of ground, whereon stood a file of Zanzibaris awaiting the outcome of our dispute before taking sides. No longer addressing an indiscriminate crowd, I called on one man to pick up his burden and take the road. He promptly and curtly refused, and as quickly my Indian servant had him by the heels, whilst I soundly trounced him with his own walking-stick. This was quite a sufficient display of force. Whilst the recalcitrant porter was still screaming abjectly for pardon, and I was still gravely counting the strokes of the wand—eight!—nine!—ten!—eleven!—the other men had hoisted their loads on their bullet-heads, and were falling into file along the narrow path, leaving my servant and myself alone with the victim of our wrath. The very hammock-men had disappeared, and hurried forward in an excess of zeal. But I was almost independent of them now. The temporary burst of just anger not only brought a flush of colour to my pallid face, but seemed to restore strength to my limbs, and I strode on now by the side of the caravan, exhorting and encouraging the men till we had all regained our good humour, and even the scapegoat himself emerged from sulky silence, and gave a half-humorous, half-dolorous account of his beating to the men walking near him.

I had now a little leisure to observe the character of the scenery through which we were passing. There were no hills at present in sight, and the view was bounded by the scrub and stunted trees which closed up round the narrow path. Nevertheless, the want of landscape beauty was atoned for by the vivid glory of the wild flowers, which now, at the close of the rainy season, were in perfection of bloom. That beautiful genus _Commelyna_ (a monocotyledonous plant allied distantly to the spider-worts) gave us species with pale blue, ultramarine, and citron-yellow blossoms. I marvel that the _Commelynæ_, commonest of African flowers, have never been introduced by European floriculturists. Under cultivation they ought to yield beautiful displays of colour, and, as many species grow on the flanks of Mount Kilima-njaro in an English temperature, there is no reason why they should not supplant the lobelia in our garden borders, and yield a vivid sheet of rich blue blossoms far surpassing the feeble flowerets of the last-mentioned plant. Many other wild flowers make themselves noticeable by their abundance and beauty in this district between Gora and Rabai, which lies at about thirty to forty miles from the coast, and receives more rain and humidity from the not far distant Indian Ocean than the sterile steppes further westward. Great, tall, terrestrial orchids of the _Lisso-chilus_ genus border the pathway, and display their graceful heads of blossoms, which are mauve, or bright yellow, or yellow and purple, according to the species. Then there are spotted-leaved aloes, with sprays of waxy-pink flowers, great prickly candelabra euphorbias, with tiny green inflorescence, and other smaller euphorbias with large, weird flowers of a dull, dead purple-brown. White and blue clitoreas trail over harsher shrubs, and enliven the grey-green bush with tender colour. _Crinum_ lilies are lavish in squandered bloom, and the air is fragrant with a thousand odours, to which the flowers of acacias, climbing jessamines, and corissas powerfully contribute.

We reached Gora that night by the light of the moon, but as my tardy porters had lagged behind, I arrived at the camping-place without tent, bed, or provisions, and not only had to lie down to sleep supperless, but blanketless; and, as the night air was unusually chilly, my health was not improved by these privations. The next day we fortunately had but a march of sixteen miles to accomplish; nevertheless the men went very badly. We stopped in the morning at Samburu, a pleasant place, with once-cultivated plantations run wild. Here there was indifferent water in clefts in the rocks, and we set to work to prepare our midday meal. We waited for the laggards of the caravan until four o’clock, and then, too impatient to delay any longer, I took advantage of the cool afternoon and limped on to my next camping-place. By midnight all were at length reassembled, but I resolved in future, if it were only to avoid anxiety, to walk behind instead of before the caravan, and not to pass any one on the road; thus, I should always arrive simultaneously with my baggage. The following day I put this plan into operation, but its first results were not encouraging. About every half-hour the Rabai men would put down their burdens and compose themselves for a nap in the shade. As these intermittent siestas greatly deranged the uniform progress of the caravan, I objected, preferring to rest unanimously every two hours, but walk uninterruptedly whilst on the march. As the Rabai men were, however, of a different opinion, I now began to meet at every turn of the path a man’s load without a man, and on inquiry was told that its whilom bearer had decamped into the bush. Last of all I counted nearly a dozen of such abandoned burdens, and sat down desperate by the wayside, not knowing what course to pursue. However, my Zanzibar men stood by me like trumps, and many of them carried extra loads, and so brought all the things to our next camping-place at Ziwani.

Here we arrived at about dusk, although there was scarcely any ending to the daylight, for we were favoured with a brilliant moon. I now was able to review my men and rearrange the loads so that all the things might be carried on the morrow. I retired at last to my tent, thoroughly exhausted, both with physical fatigue and mental anxiety. Throwing myself, or rather involuntarily tumbling, on my bed, I felt I was fainting, and just roused my energies sufficiently to ask my servant to open my wine-case and get me out some champagne. When a bottle of Moët and Chandon had been uncorked, and a tumblerful (alas for the delicate champagne-glass, I had it not!) drunk, an effect as magical as that of the “hashish” given by the Sheikh of the Mountain to his deluded followers was produced. Before the foaming draught had passed my lips I was a poor, despondent creature of the earth, earthy, and tied to the base soil by physical fatigue and mental prostration; but no sooner had the sparkling wine entered my system than I was transfigured, transformed. My fever-dried skin broke out into grateful perspiration, the fitful pulse resumed a brisk and regular beat—no fainting now. I felt ready to march anywhere, and my blistered and ulcerated feet pained me no more. I ate my evening meal in a sort of tranquil ecstasy, and afterwards undressed dreamily, and steeped all my cares in the Lethe of sleep. And a cupful of champagne on an empty stomach had sufficed to work this happy change!

In case there are some of my readers whom this rhapsody (copied almost word for word from my diary) may offend, let them understand that I am singing the praises of champagne as a _medicine_, not as a customary drink. No one can inveigh more strenuously than I against the daily or even frequent use of alcoholic drinks in a hot climate. I believe that in Africa, as a general rule, and under ordinary circumstances, a man may with benefit to himself abstain _totally_ from the use of wine, beer, or spirits. But, for the very reason that he rarely indulges in strong drink, when he does find himself in a state of physical or mental prostration, especially ensuing from attacks of fever, there is no more certain tonic than a little _good_ champagne. I have seen cases in Africa, East and West, where a cupful of champagne administered at an apparently hopeless juncture has snatched a man from a sinking condition, and brought him back to life. I only took a dozen of champagne—and no other wine—with me to Kilima-njaro, and of this dozen eleven bottles were consumed at various crises in my adventures, when I felt my physical strength deserting me. Somehow the very knowledge that you have such a stimulant at hand braces your nerves with mental confidence, and the happy faith in its sovereign efficacy inspires you with a cheering belief that Death himself will flee before a goblet of champagne.

The name of our last camping-place, “Ziwani,” had a pleasant sound to the thirsty traveller, for translated into English it means “By the pool,” and would consequently suggest the close proximity of water. But, except under favourable conditions, this is not the case at the spot in question, and, as it happened, Taru, a day’s journey from Ziwani, was the last place where we had been able to replenish our gourds and bottles. In consequence of such dearth of water it was necessary that the distance between Ziwani and Maungu (the next watering-place) should be covered in a day, and as this was thirty-two miles it meant a forced march of thirteen hours. My men had willingly allowed me to ignore the disagreeable necessity, fearing that I might, as I certainly should have done, force them to break the distance between Ziwani and Maungu by a night march—a thing they much detested, even when performed by the light of a full moon, having, like most Africans, a superstitious fear of night. But being themselves conscious of the long stretch of waterless country they had to traverse before reaching the mountains of Maungu, they, for once, were eager and ready to start before their leader’s call, and consequently when I awoke from that delicious dreamless sleep caused by the timely draught of champagne, I found myself almost alone, while a strange and unwonted silence pervaded the camp. The head-man of the caravan was squatted outside the tent patiently awaiting my awakening. The Indian servant and the senior cook were busily preparing breakfast, while just sufficient men remained behind to carry my tent, bed, and cooking apparatus.

Learning the cause of my porters’ disappearance, and far from disapproving such unaccustomed and unprompted activity, I hastily dressed, swallowed my breakfast, and also prepared myself for the long journey that lay before us. The bright slanting beams of an hour-old sun lit up the landscape so cheerfully that the purpose of covering thirty-two miles by nightfall seemed both feasible and easy of accomplishment. The air was fresh and buoyant, and either my potion of the night before or the change from the hothouse atmosphere of the coast to a more bracing climate had brought back strength to my limbs and courage to my heart, for I stepped out along the red path at three miles an hour and enjoyed the exercise. This rate of progress soon brought me up to the rearguard of those who had started with the earliest dawn, but whose energy had waned after two or three hours’ hard tramp. Already, with stupid resignation, many were stretching themselves by the wayside, having first, to satisfy a moderate thirst, consumed in several gulps the remainder of the drinking-water which was to carry them through the day; and, this finished, they were prepared to lie down in utter hopelessness, feeling themselves unequal to the task of walking twenty-five miles to the next water-supply or twenty-five miles back to the last.

I should parenthetically remark that these East Coast porters, like most Africans, are utterly without prevision, and so long as they can satisfy the desire of the moment care little to provide for future wants as yet unfelt. On long journeys, where there is no water on the road, you will experience the greater difficulty in preventing your men dropping and dying of thirst, because, although they may have started with an ample supply of drinking-water in their gourds—quite sufficient for the time required if carefully measured out—yet, in spite of warning and prohibition, they will squander the precious fluid, quench every slight attack of thirst, and consume it all in a few hours; then, during the long waterless tramp which ensues, they will wring your heart with the sight of their sufferings, and stagger along the dusty path with dry, swollen tongues, parched lips, and bloodshot eyes.

So it was on this terrible journey to Maungu. Towards midday, when the noon blazed in fierce white heat, when the sky was so hot and scintillating that it was devoid of all colour and shone like a silver shield, when the short, scrubby mimosas gave no sheltering shade under their thorny boughs, when escape from the overpowering dazzling sunshine was impossible, and the baked and heated soil seemed to burn the soles of my boots, and made the men who were still plodding on pick up their feet like the proverbial dancing bear—then I began to doubt whether my party would reach Maungu intact, for now it was useless to battle with the sullen sluggishness of many of the porters, who preferred lying in the road exposed to hard words and blows rather than toiling patiently and uninterruptedly on in the direction of water and permissible repose. So in sheer despair I left them to lie wherever they threw themselves, accepting in lieu of any other consolation their assurance that they would follow on in the cooler hours of the day. Now, even, it became with myself a desperate rush to reach the water-supply before I should suffer painfully from thirst. An examination of my own store of the precious liquid had revealed the appalling fact that not one drop remained, and the man who had been carrying my bottles and calabash confessed to having assisted in its disappearance. This was a serious matter; thumping the man did nothing towards allaying my increasing thirst. All that could be done was to journey on patiently but unremittingly in the direction of Maungu. There was no time to prepare food in the middle of the day: I pulled out a tin of hare soup from my provision box, opened it, and drank the undiluted liquor. The unfinished bottle of champagne was divided and consumed by myself and my patient Tamil servant, lending a factitious strength to our tired, overheated bodies, and so far buoying up our spirits that we strode on past man after man until we were well ahead of the caravan.

Soon, however, I needed to rest more and more frequently, stopping at last to pause and pant in every patch of thin shade. Then my Tamil boy and the head-collector proposed that they should go on alone and return to meet me as soon as water was found. This I acceded to, and so was left completely alone. In this condition, hobbling along painfully, resting continually, and with foolish persistency painting, to my thirsting imagination, vivid pictures of cooling draughts, I toiled through the sultry afternoon, persisting doggedly in my determination not to give in till I was within measurable distance from water. Sometimes I did give way—stretched myself languidly under the faint patchwork of shade that some meagre bush afforded, and lay there during some minutes, vainly trying to moisten my dried lips with my parched tongue, and hoping that with the approach of night and its dewy coolness I might overcome this raging thirst. Then the little lithe lizards would come and look at me with their heads on one side, and their bright eyes scanning me half-mockingly; an irate ant would nip my hot hand, which I had abandoned as if it no longer belonged to me, and carelessly placed on an unconsidered ant-hill, till at length, weary of my unrestful repose, I would stagger to my feet, and limp on for a few minutes in agony, as you always do when you have given blistered feet a brief rest and then commence walking again.

I will spare you a further recital of these very ordinary, everyday African sufferings, so interesting to me to ponder over now that I am writing about them in England, where thirst is almost desirable from the many pleasant ways there are of quenching it. I will suppose that I have stumbled over a rocky path in the waning daylight, toiled on the last dreary miles of the journey under a rising moon, and at length found myself amid a strange thicket of thorny trees and weird euphorbias at the base of the hill of Maungu. In the camping-place where most caravans stop, I see a small fire burning, a man sitting, and a man lying down. The former is one of my natural history collectors and the other my Indian servant, Virapan, who has fainted. I question the collector, a man called Athmani, and he tells me the water lies in a cup-shaped basin at the summit of the hill (which is nearly 5000 feet high), and that his companion and helpmate, Mabruki, has gone to get some. Fancy when you have walked thirty-two miles for a drink finding your cistern lies some three or four thousand feet above you!

With what amount of patience I should have awaited the return of the water-carrier I do not know, but just at this juncture one of my porters arrived, and threw down his burden with a weary sigh. I remembered with joy the contents of the lumpy sack he bore, and rapidly untying its mouth took from it several cocoanuts. Filling a gourd with their milk, I was able to assuage the thirst of myself and my servant, who had returned to consciousness, and we then passed with equanimity the half-hour that elapsed before Mabruki came back from his quest among the rocks of Maungu, bearing gourds full of delicious water, clear and cool.

At this camping-place we remained until the afternoon of the next day, awaiting the coming in of all the laggards; but my patience was at last overtaxed, and I resolved to go on with a few followers to Ndara, the next camping-spot, where we should be in an inhabited country, and with pleasanter surroundings, for the vegetation in the vicinity of Maungu was singularly forbidding and ugly, suggesting some enchanted forest, and, moreover, the water-supply proved scanty and difficult of access. I left my head-man and a few followers to search for the missing men, and walked on to Ndara through the moonlight, stopping to sleep for a few hours before dawn. In the early morning we began to ascend and cross a rocky ridge, and on surmounting it looked out westward over the plains or mountain plateaux of Taita. Here our sight was gladdened by clumps of really green and shady trees, and we were further delighted by the first signs of evident cultivation. Further on we met some natives, ugly, nearly naked, and very black, with huge rings of beads in their wide-lobed ears, and greeting them with effusive friendliness we induced them to follow us to our camp with a few eatables (sweet potatoes and corn-cobs principally), feeling in our delight at once more reaching habitable country an amiable desire to be on the best of terms with its inmates. We pitched the tent at the foot of Ndara Hill, near a pool of dirty water, whither large flocks of cattle came to drink.

In this not unpicturesque country of rocks and forest trees and lovely wild flowers I stayed during two days, and at last collected my caravan round me. Maungu was very nearly being a Moscow to my little army, but ultimately there was small loss in either men or goods. Some two or three porters had run back to the coast, leaving their burdens behind, while two miscreants who carried a case of spirit for preserving natural history specimens, had broached and drunk the alcohol, and, strange to say, still survived this extraordinary bout.

Before I leave Ndara, therefore, I may take this opportunity of describing, somewhat in detail, the men who were following me to the steeps of Kilima-njaro, and on whose fidelity the fate of the expedition entirely depended. The head-man of the entire caravan was Kiongwe, a pleasant-spoken, rather plain young man of about thirty, who had served much on the Congo, and had accompanied Stanley thither in his first expedition, in proof of which he wore a massive silver ring. Kiongwe (whose name meant in Swahili a “headstrong jackass,” and who was therefore politely called by his inferiors “Shaongwe” in order that his name might not be too closely interpreted) was good-tempered, respectful, and fairly brave, but could not always be trusted with property, as he felt now and then an irresistible temptation to appropriate a little of his master’s cloth and beads. However, he made a good head-man, for if lenient to his own occasional dishonesty he watched well that no one else robbed me. The second in command was Abdallah, another old Congo traveller, and a learned Arab scribe. Excelling Kiongwe in politeness and suavity of demeanour, he also erred somewhat as regards strict honesty, but was on the whole a very good fellow. His manners and mode of life were quite fastidiously gentlemanly, and his person was always, and under every circumstance, clean and sprucely apparelled. Without being in the least religious he had a gusto for prayers, and all his leisure moments were employed in the rapid and glib recital of the Koran. I once asked him what would be his ideal mode of life. “Kusoma Muungu, sikuzote”—“To be always praying to God,” he replied, with the faintest hypocritical tone of self-satisfaction in his voice.

Fig. 18.—Virapan, my Tamil Servant.
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Then in order of precedence came Mabruki and Athmani, two natural history collectors, men who, by accompanying several preceding African travellers, had acquired a rough knowledge of preparing specimens. The further history of these two gentlemen will be disclosed as this narrative proceeds. My two cooks deserve a word of mention. Faraji, the elder, was a busy old man of the Yao tribe, who had accompanied Cameron across Africa and further served a three-years’ term on the Congo. He was the strongest man in the caravan, and his only fault was a somewhat large style of housekeeping, by which himself and his colleagues were amply fed out of the remains of my dinner. Cephas, the junior cook, often called Cephassi by the soft-tongued Zanzibaris, was originally a freed Nyassa slave. Educated at the Nassick Mission, near Bombay, he had been taught to cook in a way that generally procured him good situations. He had visited England and there acquired certain useful expletives which served him as augmentative, diminutive, intensifying, and modifying adverbs, and lent great expression to his simple English. Beneath the rank of the men already cited, whose wages were specially fixed, came a troop of Zanzibaris on their promotion, who received a uniform rate of five dollars a month. Among these, however, I had noticed already several as good servants or cheerful, conscientious men—Ibrahim and Kadu Stanley, especially. Ibrahim was nick-named “Mčekesaji,” a word which you will find translated in Steere’s dictionary “a merry, laughing body.” Kadu Stanley was remarkable as having been an old servant of Stanley, to whom he had been given by Mtesa, King of Buganda. After the Zanzibaris came a herd of Rabai and Mombasa men, solely remarkable for their hopelessly bad disposition and for the quaint combination of Christian and heathen names they assumed. I had only engaged them to carry the bulk of my goods to Kilima-njaro, and when we had attained that goal I took leave of them without regret.