Chapter XII (7)

The cattle is a fine variety, with small humps and large horns, like that of Ujiji and Uviva. The herds are reckoned by Gundu, or stallions, in the proportion of 1 to 100 cows. The late Sultan Ndagara is said to have owned 200 Gundu, or 20,000 cows, which late civil wars have reduced to 12,000 or 13,000. In Karagwah cattle forms wealth, and everywhere in Africa wealth, and wealth only, secures defenders and dependants. The surplus males are killed for beef; this meat, with milk in its various preparations, and a little of the fine white hill-honey, forms the food of the higher classes.

The people of Karagwah, who are not, according to South African fashion, called Wakaragwah, are divided into two orders--Wahuma and Wanyambo--who seem to bear to each other the relation of patron and client, patrician and plebeian. The Wahuma comprises the rich, who sometimes possess 1000 head of cattle, and the warriors, a militia paid in the milk of cows allotted to their temporary use by the king. The Wanyambo--Fellahs or Ryots--are, it is said, treated by the nobles as slaves. The men of Karagwah are a tall stout race, doubtless from the effect of pure mountain-air and animal food. Corpulence is a beauty: girls are fattened to a vast bulk by drenches of curds and cream thickened with flour, and are duly disciplined when they refuse. The Arabs describe them as frequently growing to a monstrous size, like some specimens of female Boers mentioned by early travellers in Southern Africa. Fresh milk is the male, sour the female beverage. The complexion is a brown yellow, like that of the Warundi. The dress of the people, and even of the chiefs, is an apron of close-grained mbugu, or bark-cloth, softened with oil, and crimped with fine longitudinal lines made with a batten or pounding club. In shape it resembles the flap of an English saddle, tied by a prolongation of the upper corners round the waist. To this scarcely decent article the chiefs add a languti, or Indian-T-bandage of goat’s skin. Nudity is not uncommon, and nubile girls assume the veriest apology for clothing, which is exchanged after marriage for short kilts and breast coverings of skin. Both sexes wear tiara-shaped and cravat-formed ornaments of the crimson abrus-seed, pierced and strung upon mondo, the fine fibre of the mwale or raphia-palm. The weapons are bows and arrows, spears, knobsticks, and knives; the ornaments are beads and coil-bracelets, which, with cattle, form the marriage settlement. The huts are of the conical and circular African shape, with walls of stakes and roofs so carefully thatched that no rain can penetrate them: the villages, as in Usagara, are scattered upon the crests and ridges of the hills.

The Mkámá, or Sultan of Karagwah, in 1858, was Armanika, son of Ndagara, who, although the dignity is in these lands hereditary, was opposed by his younger brother Rumanika. The rebel, after an obstinate attack, was routed by Suna, the late despot of Uganda, who, bribed by the large present of ivory, which was advanced by Musa Mzuri of Kazeh, then trading with Armanika, threw a large force into the field. Rumanika was blinded and pensioned, and about four years ago peace was restored. Armanika resides in the central district, Weranhanja, and his settlement, inhabited only by the royal family, contains from forty to fifty huts. He is described as a man about thirty to thirty-five years old, tall, sturdy, and sinewy-limbed, resembling the Somal. His dress is, by preference, the mbugu, or bark-cloth, but he has a large store of fine raiment presented by his Arab visitors: in ornaments he is distinguished by tight gaiters of beads extending from knee to ankle. His diet is meat and milk, with sometimes a little honey, plantains, and grain: unlike his subjects, he eschews mawa and pombe. He has about a dozen wives, an unusually moderate allowance for an African chief, and they have borne him ten or eleven children. The royal family is said to be a race of centagenarians; they are buried in their garments, sitting and holding their weapons: when the king dies there is a funeral feast.

Under the Mkama is a single minister, who takes the title of Muhinda, and presides over the Wakungu, elders and headmen, whose duty it is to collect and to transmit to the monarch once every month his revenues, in the shape of slaves and ivory, cattle and provisions. Milk must be forwarded by proprietors of cows and herds even from a distance of three days’ march. Armanika is an absolute ruler, and he governs without squeamishness. Adulterers are punished by heavy fines in cattle, murderers are speared and beheaded, rebels and thieves are blinded by gouging out the eyes with the finger-joints of the right-hand, and severing the muscles. Subjects are forbidden to sell milk to those who eat beans or salt, for fear of bewitching the animals. The Mkama, who lives without state or splendour, receives travellers with courtesy. Hearing of their approach, he orders his slaves to erect four or five tents for shelter, and he greets them with a large present of provisions. He demands no blackmail, but the offerer is valued according to his offerings: the return gifts are carefully proportioned, and for beads which suit his taste he has sent back an acknowledgment of fifty slaves and forty cows. The price of adult male slaves varies from eight to ten fundo of white, green, or blue porcelain-beads: a woman in her prime costs two kitindi (each equal to one dollar on the coast), and five or six fundo of mixed beasts. Some of these girls, being light-coloured and well favoured, sell for sixty dollars at Zanzibar. The merchants agree in stating that a European would receive in Karagwah the kindest welcome, but that to support the dignity of the white face a considerable sum would be required. Arabs still visit Armanika to purchase slaves, cattle, and ivory, the whitest and softest, the largest and heaviest in this part of Central Africa. The land is rich in iron, and the spears of Karagwah, which are, to some extent, tempered, are preferred to the rude work of the Wafyoma. Sulphur is found, according to the Arabs, near hot springs amongst the mountains. A species of manatus (?) supplies a fine skin used for clothing. The simbi, or cowrie (Cypræa), is the minor currency of the country: it is brought from the coast by return caravans of Wanyamwezi.

The country of Karagwah is at present the head-quarters of the Watosi, a pastoral people who are scattered throughout these Lake Regions. They came, according to tradition, from Usingo, a mountain district lying to the north of Uhha. They refuse to carry loads, to cultivate the ground, or to sell one another. Harmless, and therefore unarmed, they are often plundered, though rarely slain, by other tribes, and they protect themselves by paying fees in cattle to the chiefs. When the Wahinda are sultans, the Watosi appear as councillors and elders; but whether this rank is derived from a foreign and superior origin, or is merely the price of their presents, cannot be determined. In appearance they are a tall, comely, and comparatively fair people; hence in some parts every “distinguished foreigner” is complimented by being addressed as “Mtosi.” They are said to derive themselves from a single ancestor, and to consider the surrounding tribes as serviles, from whom they will take concubines, but to whom they refuse their daughters. Some lodges of this people were seen about Unyanyembe and Msene, where they live by selling cattle, milk, and butter. Their villages are poor, dirty, and unpalisaded; mere scatters of ragged round huts. They have some curious practices: never eat out of their own houses, and, after returning from abroad, test, by a peculiar process, the fidelity of their wives before anointing themselves and entering their houses. The Arabs declare that they are known by their black gums, which they consider a beauty.

The last feature of importance in Karagwah is the Kitangure River on its northern frontier. This stream, deriving its name from a large settlement on its banks, according to some travellers flows through a rocky trough, according to others it traverses a plain. Some, again, make it thirty yards, others 600, and even half a mile, in breadth. All these statements are reconcileable. The river issues from Higher Urundi, not far from the Malagarazi; but whilst the latter, engaged in the Depression of Central Africa, is drawn towards the Tanganyika, the former, falling into the counterslope, is directed to the north-east into the Nyanza Lake. Its course would thus lie through a mountain-valley, from which it issues into a lacustrine plain, the lowlands of Unyoro and Uganda. The dark and swift stream must be crossed in canoes even during the dry season, but, like the Malagarazi, about June or at the end of the rains, it debords over the swampy lands of its lower course.

From the Kitangure River fifteen stations conduct the traveller to Kibuga, the capital district of Uganda, and the residence of its powerful despot. The maximum of these marches would be six daily, or a total of ninety rectilinear geographical miles. Though there are no hills, the rivers and rivulets--said to be upwards of a hundred in number--offer serious obstacles to rapid travelling. Assuming then, the point where the Kitangure River is crossed to be in S. lat. 1° 14′, Kibuga may be placed in S. lat. 0° 10′. Beyond Weranhanja no traveller with claims to credibility has seen the Nyanza water. North of Kibuga all is uncertain; the Arabs were not permitted by Suna, the last despot, to penetrate farther north.

The two first marches from the Kitangure River traverse the territory of “dependent Unyoro,” so called because it has lately become subject to the Sultan of Uganda. In former times Unyoro in crescent-shape, with the cusps fronting eastwards and westwards, almost encompassed Uganda. From dependent Unyoro the path, crossing a tract of low jungle, enters Uganda in the concave of the crescent. The tributary Wahayya, under Gaetawa, their sultan, still extend to the eastward. North of the Wahayya, of whose territory little is known, lies “Kittara,” in Kinyoro (or Kiganda?), a word interpreted to mean “mart,” or “meeting-place.” This is the region which supplies Karagwah with coffee. The shrub is propagated by sowing the bean. It attains the height of five feet, branching out about half-way; it gives fruit after the third, and is in full vigour after the fifth year. Before almost every hut-door there is a plantation, forming an effective feature in the landscape of rolling and wavy hill, intersected by a network of rivers and streams: the foliage is compared to a green tapestry veiling the ground; and at times, when the leaves are stripped off by wind and rain, the plant appears decked with brilliant crimson cherry-like berries. The Katonga River, crossed at Kitutu, is supposed to fall into the Nyanza, the general recipient of the network of streams about Karagwah. This diagonality may result from the compound incline produced by the northern counterslope of the mountains of Karagwah and the south-westward depression necessary to form and to supply the lake. The Katonga is a sluggish and almost stagnant body of considerable breadth, and when swollen it arrests the progress of caravans. Some portions of the river are crossed, according to the Arabs, over a thick growth of aquatic vegetation, which forms a kind of matwork, capable of supporting a man’s weight, and cattle are towed over in the more open parts by cords attached to their horns. Four stations lead from the Katonga River to Kibuga, the capital district of Uganda.

Kibuga is the residence of the great Mkámá or chief of Uganda. Concerning its population and peculiarities the Arabs must be allowed to tell their own tale. “Kibuga, the settlement, is not less than a day’s journey in length; the buildings are of cane and rattan. The sultan’s palace is at least a mile long, and the circular huts, neatly ranged in line, are surrounded by a strong fence which has only four gates. Bells at the several entrances announce the approach of strangers, and guards in hundreds attend there at all hours. They are commanded by four chiefs, who are relieved every second day: these men pass the night under hides raised upon uprights, and their heads are forfeited if they neglect to attend to the summons of the king. The harem contains about 3000 souls--concubines, slaves, and children. No male nor adult animal may penetrate, under pain of death, beyond the Barzah, a large vestibule or hall of audience where the king dispenses justice and receives his customs. This palace has often been burned down by lightning: on these occasions the warriors must assemble and extinguish the fire by rolling over it. The chief of Uganda has but two wants with which he troubles his visitors--one, a medicine against death; the other, a charm to avert the thunderbolt: and immense wealth would reward the man who could supply either of these desiderata.”

Suna, the great despot of Uganda, a warlike chief, who wrested dependent Unyoro from its former possessor, reigned till 1857. He perished in the prime of life and suddenly, as the Arabs say, like Namrud, whilst riding “pickaback”--the state carriage of Central Africa--upon a minister’s shoulders, he was struck by the shaft of the destroyer in the midst of his mighty host. As is the custom of barbarous and despotic races, the event was concealed for some months. When the usual time had expired, one of his many sons, exchanging his heir-elective name “Sámunjú” for Mtesa, became king. The court usage compels the newly elected chief to pass two years in retirement, committing state affairs to his ministers; little, therefore, is yet known of him. As he will certainly tread in the footsteps of his sire, the Arabs may again be allowed to describe the state and grandeur of the defunct Suna; and as Suna was in fact the whole kingdom of Uganda, the description will elucidate the condition of the people in general.

“The army of Uganda numbers at least 300,000 men; each brings an egg to muster, and thus something like a reckoning of the people is made. Each soldier carries one spear, two assegais, a long dagger, and a shield, bows and swords being unknown. When marching the host is accompanied by women and children carrying spare weapons, provisions, and water. In battle they fight to the sound of drums, which are beaten with sticks like those of the Franks: should this performance cease, all fly the field. Wars with the Wanyoro, the Wasoga, and other neighbours are rendered almost chronic by the policy as well as the pleasure of the monarch, and there are few days on which a foraging party does not march from or return to the capital. When the king has no foreign enemies, or when the exchequer is indecently deficient, he feigns a rebellion, attacks one of his own provinces, massacres the chief men, and sells off the peasantry. Executions are frequent, a score being often slain at a time: when remonstrated with concerning this barbarity, Sana declared that he had no other secret for keeping his subjects in awe of him, and for preventing conspiracies. Sometimes the king would accompany his army to a battue of game, when the warriors were expected to distinguish themselves by attacking the most ferocious beasts without weapons: even the elephant, borne down by numbers, yielded to the grasp of man. When passing a village he used to raise a shout, which was responded to by a loud flourish of horns, reed-pipes, iron whistles, and similar instruments. At times he decreed a grand muster of his soldiery: he presented himself sitting before his gate, with a spear in the right hand, and holding in the left the leash of a large and favourite dog resembling an Arab suluki or greyhound. The master of the hounds was an important personage. Suna took great pleasure in witnessing trials of strength, the combatants contending with a mixture of slapping and pushing till one fell to the ground. He had a large menagerie of lions, elephants, leopards, and similar beasts of disport, to whom he would sometimes give a criminal as a ‘_curée_:’ he also kept for amusement fifteen or sixteen albinos; and so greedy was he of novelty that even a cock of peculiar or uniform colour would have been forwarded by its owner to feed his eyes.”

Suna when last visited by the Arabs was a “red man,” aged about forty-five, tall, robust, and powerful of limb, with a right kingly presence and a warrior carriage. His head was so shaven as to leave what the Omani calls “el Kishshah,” a narrow crest of hair like a cock’s comb, from nape to brow; nodding and falling over his face under its weight of strung beads, it gave him a fierce and formidable aspect. This tonsure, confined to those about the palace, distinguishes its officers and inmates, servile as well as free, from the people. The Ryots leave patches of hair where they please, but they may not shave the whole scalp under pain of death, till a royal edict unexpectedly issued at times commands every head to shed its honours. Suna never appeared in public without a spear; his dress was the national costume, a long piece of the fine crimped mbugu or bark-cloth manufactured in these regions, extending from the neck to the ground. He made over to his women the rich clothes presented by the Arabs, and allowed them to sew with unravelled cotton thread, whereas the people under severe penalties were compelled to use plantain fibre. No commoner could wear domestics or similar luxuries; and in the presence, the accidental exposure of a limb led, according to the merchants, to the normal penalty--death.

Suna, like the northern despots generally, had a variety of names, all expressing something bitter, mighty, or terrible, as, for instance, Lbare, the Almighty (?); Mbidde and Purgoma, a lion. He could not understand how the Sultan of Zanzibar allowed his subjects treasonably to assume the name of their ruler; and besides mortifying the Arabs by assuming an infinite superiority over their prince, he shocked them by his natural and unaffected impiety. He boasted to them that he was the god of earth, as their Allah was the Lord of Heaven. He murmured loudly against the abuse of lightning; and he claimed from his subjects divine honours, which were as readily yielded to him as by the facile Romans to their emperors. No Mgándá would allow the omnipotence of his sultan to be questioned, and a light word concerning him would have imperilled a stranger’s life. Suna’s domestic policy reminds the English reader of the African peculiarities which form the groundwork of “Rasselas.” His sons, numbering more than one hundred, were removed from the palace in early youth to separate dungeons, and so secured with iron collars and fetters fastened to both ends of a long wooden bar that the wretches could never sit, and without aid could neither rise nor lie. The heir-elective was dragged from his chains to fill a throne, and the cadets will linger through their dreadful lives, unless wanted as sovereigns, until death release them. Suna kept his female children under the most rigid surveillance within the palace: he had, however, a favourite daughter named Nasuru, whose society was so necessary to him that he allowed her to appear with him in public.

The principal officers under the despot of Uganda are, first, the Kimara Vyona (literally the “finisher of all things”): to him, the chief civilian of the land, the city is committed; he also directs the kabaka or village headmen. The second is the Sakibobo or commander-in-chief, who has power over the Sáwágánzí, the life-guards and slaves, the warriors and builders of the palace. Justice is administered in the capital by the sultan, who, though severe, is never accused of perverting the law, which here would signify the ancient custom of the country. A Mhozi--Arabised to Hoz, and compared with the Kazi of el Islam--dispenses in each town criminal and civil rights. The only punishments appear to be death and mulcts. Capital offenders are beheaded or burned; in some cases they are flayed alive; the operation commences with the face, and the skin, which is always much torn by the knife, is stuffed as in the old torturing days of Asia. When a criminal absconds, the males of his village are indiscriminately slain and the women are sold--blood and tears must flow for discipline. In money suits each party begins by placing before the Mhozi a sum equivalent to the disputed claim; the object is to prevent an extensive litigiousness. Suna used to fine by fives or tens, dozens or scores, according to the offender’s means; thus from a wealthy man he would take twenty male and twenty female slaves, with a similar number of bulls and cows, goats and kids, hens and even eggs. One of his favourites, who used constantly to sit by him on guard, matchlock in hand, was Isa bin Hosayn, a Baloch mercenary of H. H. Sayyid Said of Zanzibar. He had fled from his debtors, and had gradually wandered to Uganda, where the favour of the sovereign procured him wealth in ivory, and a harem containing from 200 to 300 women. “Mzagayya,”--the hairy one, as he was locally called, from his long locks and bushy beard--was not permitted, nor probably did he desire, to quit the country; after his patron’s death he fled to independent Unyoro, having probably raised up, as these adventurers will, a host of enemies at Uganda.

Suna greatly encouraged, by gifts and attention, the Arab merchants to trade in his capital; the distance has hitherto prevented more than half-a-dozen caravans travelling to Kibuga; all however came away loudly praising his courtesy and hospitality. To a poor trader he has presented twenty slaves, and an equal number of cows, without expecting any but the humblest return. The following account of a visit paid to him in 1852, by Snay bin Amir, may complete his account of the despot Uganda. When the report of arrival was forwarded by word of mouth to Suna, he issued orders for the erection of as many tents as might be necessary. The guest, who was welcomed with joyful tumult by a crowd of gazers, and was conducted to the newly-built quarters, where he received a present of bullocks and grain, plantains and sugar-canes. After three or four days for repose, he was summoned to the Barzah or audience hall, outside of which he found a squatting body of about 2000 guards armed only with staves. Allowed to retain his weapons, he entered with an interpreter and saluted the chief, who, without rising, motioned his guest to sit down in front of him. Suna’s only cushion was a mbugu; his dress was of the same stuff; two spears lay close at hand, and his dog was as usual by his side. The Arab thought proper to assume the posture of homage, namely, to sit upon his shins, bending his back, and, with eyes fixed on the ground--he had been cautioned against staring at the “god of earth,”--to rest his hands upon his lap. The levee was full; at a distance of fifty paces between the king and the guards sat the ministers; and inside the palace, so placed that they could see nothing but the visitor’s back, were the principal women, who are forbidden to gaze at or to be gazed at by a stranger. The room was lit with torches of a gummy wood, for Suna, who eschewed pombe, took great pleasure in these audiences, which were often prolonged from sunset to midnight.

The conversation began with a string of questions concerning Zanzibar, the route, the news, and the other staple topics of barbarous confabulation; when it flagged, a minister was called up to enliven it. No justice was administered nor present offered during the first audience; it concluded with the despot rising, at which signal all dispersed. At the second visit Snay presented his blackmail, which consisted of ten cotton cloths, and one hundred fundo of coral, and other porcelain beads. The return was an offering of two ivories and a pair of serviles; every day, moreover, flesh and grain, fruit and milk were supplied without charge; whenever the wish was expressed, a string of slave-girls presently appeared bending under loads of the article in question; and it was intimated to the “king’s stranger” that he might lay hands upon whatever he pleased, animate or inanimate. Snay, however, was too wise to avail himself of this truly African privilege. During the four interviews which followed, Suna proved himself a man of intelligence: he inquired about the Wazungu or Europeans, and professed to be anxious for a closer alliance with the Sultan of Zanzibar. When Snay took leave he received the usual present of provisions for the road, and 200 guards prepared to escort him, an honour which he respectfully declined: Suna offered to send with him several loads of elephants’ tusks as presents to H. H. the Sayyid; but the merchant declined to face with them the difficulties and dangers of Usúí. Like all African chiefs, the despot considered these visits as personal honours paid to himself; his pride therefore peremptorily forbade strangers to pass northwards of his capital, lest the lesser and hostile chiefs might boast a similar brave. According to Snay, an European would be received with distinction, if travelling with supplies to support his dignity. He would depend, however, upon his ingenuity and good fortune upon further progress; and perhaps the most feasible plan to explore the water-shed north of the Nyanza Lake would be to buy or to build, with the permission of the reigning monarch, boats upon the nearest western shore. Suna himself, had, according to Snay, constructed a flotilla of matumbi or undecked vessels similar in shape to the Mtope or Muntafiyah--the modern “Ploiaria Rhapta” of the Sawahili coast from Lamu to Kilwa.

Few details were given by the Arabs concerning the vulgar herd of Waganda: they are, as has been remarked, physically a finer race than the Wayamwezi, and they are as superior in character; more docile and better disciplined, they love small gifts, and show their gratitude by prostrating themselves before the donor. The specimens of slaves seen at Kazeh were, however, inferior to the mountaineers of Karagwah; the complexion was darker, and the general appearance more African. Their language is, to use an Arab phrase, like that of birds, soft and quickly spoken; the specimens collected prove without doubt that it belongs to the Zangian branch of the great South-African family. Their normal dress is the mbugu, under which, however, all wear the “languti” or Indian-T-bandage of goatskin; women appear in short kilts and breast-coverings of the same material. Both sexes decorate their heads with the tiara of abrus-seeds alluded to when describing the people of Karagwah. As sumptuary laws impede the free traffic of cloth into Uganda, the imports are represented chiefly by beads, cowries, and brass and copper wires. The wealth of the country is in cattle, ivory, and slaves, the latter often selling for ten fundo of beads, and the same sum will purchase the Wasoga and Wanyoro captives from whom the despot derives a considerable portion of his revenues. The elephant is rare in Uganda; tusks are collected probably by plunder from Usoga, and the alakah of about ninety Arab pounds is sold for two slaves, male or female. The tobacco, brought to market in leaf, as in Ujiji, and not worked, as amongst the other tribes, is peculiarly good. Flesh, sweet potatoes, and the highly nutritious plantain, which grows in groves a whole day’s march long, are the chief articles of diet; milk is drunk by women only, and ghee is more valued for unction than for cookery. The favourite inebrients are mawa and pombe; the latter is served in neatly carved and coloured gourds, and the contents are imbibed, like sherry cobbler, through a reed.

From Kibuga the Arabs have heard that between fifteen and twenty marches lead to the Kivira River, a larger and swifter stream than the Katonga, which forms the northern limit of Uganda, and the southern frontier of Unyoro. They are unable to give the names of stations. South of Kivira is Usoga, a low alluvial land, cut by a multitude of creeks, islets, and lagoons; in their thick vegetation the people take refuge from the plundering parties of the Waganda, whose chief built, as has been told, large boats to dislodge them. The Wasoga have no single sultan, and their only marketable commodity is ivory.

On the north, the north-west, and the west of Uganda lies, according to the Arabs, the land of Independent Unyoro. The slaves from that country vaguely describe it as being bounded on the north-west by a tribe called Wakede, who have a currency of cowries, and wear tiaras of the shell; and the Arabs have heard that on the north-east there is a “people with long daggers like the Somal,” who may be Gallas (?). But whether the Nyanza Lake extends north of the equator is a question still to be decided. Those consulted at Kazeh ignored even the name of the Nyam-nyam; nor had they heard of the Bahri and Barri, the Shilluks on the west, and the Dinkas east of the Nile, made familiar to us by the Austrian Mission at Gondokoro, and other explorers.

The Wanyoro are a distinct race, speaking a language of the Zangian family: they have suffered from the vicinity of the more warlike Waganda, who have affixed to the conquered the opprobrious name of widdu or “serviles;” and they have lost their southern possessions, which formerly extended between Karagwah and Uganda. Their late despot Chawambi, whose death occurred about ten years ago, left three sons, one of whom it is reported has fallen into the power of Uganda, whilst the two others still rule independently. The county is rich and fertile, and magnificent tales are told concerning the collections of ivory, which in some parts are planted in the ground to pen cattle. Slaves are cheap; they find their way to the southern markets _viâ_ Uganda and Karagwah. Those seen at Kazeh and Kirira, where the Arab traders had a large gang, appeared somewhat inferior to the other races of the northern kingdoms, with a dull dead black colour, flattish heads, brows somewhat retreating, prominent eyes, and projecting lower jaws. They were tattooed in large burnt blotches encircling the forehead, and in some cases the inferior excisors had been extracted. The price of cattle in Unyoro varies from 500 to 1000 cowries. In this country ten simbi (Cypræa) represent one khete of beads; they are the most esteemed currency, and are also used as ornaments for the neck, arms, and legs, and decorations for stools and drums.

During my companions’ absence much of my spare time was devoted to collecting specimens of the multitudinous dialects into which the great South African family here divides itself. After some months of desultory work I had learned the Kisawahili or coast language, the lingua Franca of the South African coast: it is the most useful, because the most generally known, and because, once mastered, it renders its cognates as easy of acquirement as Bengali or Maharatti after Hindostani. The principal obstacle is the want of instructors and books--the Kisawahili is not a written language; and the elementary publications put forth in Europe gave me the preliminary trouble of composing a grammar and a vocabulary. Said Bin Salim, though bred and born amongst the Wasawahili, knew but little of the tongue, and his peculiarities of disposition rendered the task of instruction as wearisome to himself as it was unsatisfactory to me. My best tutor was Snay Bin Amir, who had transferred to the philology of East Africa his knowledge of Arabic grammar and syntax. With the aid of the sons of Ramji and other tame slaves, I collected about 1500 words in the three principal dialects upon this line of road, namely the Kisawahili, the Kizaramo--which includes the Kik’hutu--and the Kinyamwezi. At Kazeh I found a number of wild captives, with whom I began the dreary work of collecting specimens. In the languages of least consideration I contented myself with the numerals, which are the fairest test of independence of derivation, because the most likely to be primitive vocables. The work was not a labour of love. The savages could not guess the mysterious objects of my inquiry into their names for 1, 2, and 3; often they started up and ran away, or they sat in dogged silence, perhaps thinking themselves derided. The first number was rarely elicited without half an hour’s “talkee-talkee” somewhat in this style:--

“Listen, O my brother! in the tongue of the shores (Kisawahili) we say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5”--counting the fingers to assist comprehension.

“Hu! hu!” replies the wild man, “_we_ say fingers.”

“By no means, that’s not it. This white man wants to know how thou speakest 1, 2, 3?”

“One, two, three what? sheep, or goats, or women?”--expressing the numerals in Kisawahili.

“By no means, only 1, 2, 3 sheep in thine own tongue, the tongue of the Wapoka.”

“Hi! Hi! what wants the white man with the Wapoka?”

And so on till patience was almost impossible. But, like the Irish shay-horse of days gone by, their tongues once started often hobbled on without halting. The tame slaves were more tractable, yet even in their case ten minutes sufficed to weary out the most intellectual; when the listless and incoherent reply, the glazed eye gazing at vacancy, and the irresistible tendency to gape and yawn, to nod and snooze, evidenced a feeble brain soon overworked. Said Bin Salim would sit staring at me with astonishment, and ejaculate, like Abba Gregorius, the preceptor of Ludolph, the grammarian philologist and historian of Æthiopia, “Verily in the coast-tongue words never take root, nor do they bear branches.”

The rest of my time was devoted to preparations for journeying. The Fundi’s tent, which had accompanied us to Uvira, was provided with an outer cover. The Sepoys’ “pal,” brought from Zanzibar, having been destroyed by the ill-treatment of the villain Kannena, I made up, with the aid of a blackguard Baghdadi, named ’Brahim, a large tent of American domestics, which having, however, but one cloth, and that of the thinnest, proved a fiery purgatory on the down-march eastwards. The canvas lug-sail was provided with an extra double cloth, sewn round the top to increase its dimensions: it thus became a pent-shaped affair, twelve feet long, eight broad, and six feet high--seven would have been better,--buttoned at the foot, which was semicircular, and in front provided with blue cotton curtains, most useful against glare and stare. Its lightness, combined with impenetrability, made it the model of a tent for rapid marching. It was not, however, pegged down close to the ground, as some explorers advise, without the intervention of ropes; in these lands, a tent so pitched would rot in a week. The three tents were fitted with solid male bamboos, and were provided with skin-bags for their pegs, which, unless carefully looked after, disappear almost daily. The only furniture was a kitanda or cartel: some contrivance of the kind, a “Biddulph,” or an iron bed-frame, without joints, nuts, or screws, which are sure to break or to be lost, is absolutely necessary in these lands, where from Kaole to Uvira every man instinctively attempts to sit and to sleep upon something that raises him above the ground. Moreover, I have ever found the cartel answer the threefold purpose of bed, chair, and table; besides saving weight by diminishing the quantity of bedding required.

To the task of tent-making succeeded tailoring. We had neglected to provide ourselves with the loose blanket suits, served out to sailors on board men-of-war in the tropics: they are most useful in passing through countries where changes of climate are sudden and marked. Besides these, the traveller should carry with him an ample store of flannels: the material must be shrunk before making up shirts, otherwise it will behave as did the Little Boy’s mantle when tried by the frail fair Guinever. A red colour should moreover be avoided, the dye soon turns dark, and the appearance excites too much attention. Besides shirt and trousers, the only necessary is a large “stomach-warmer” waistcoat, with sleeves and back of similar material, without collar--which renders sleeping in it uneasy--and provided with four flapped pockets, to contain a compass and thermometer, a note-book, and a sketch-book, a watch and a moderate-sized knife of many uses. The latter should contain scissors, tweezers, tooth-pick, and ear-pick, needle, file, picker, steel for fire, turnscrew, watch-spring-saw, clasp blade, and pen blade: it should be made of moderate dimensions, and for safety be slung by a lanyard to the button-hole. For the cold mornings and the noon-day heats, I made up a large padded hood, bound round the head like the Arab Kufiyah. Too much cannot be said in favour of this article, which in eastward travel defends the eyes from the fiery glare, protects, when wending westwards, the carotids against the solar blaze, and, at all times, checks the intrusive staring of the crowd. I reformed my umbrella, ever an invaluable friend in these latitudes, by removing the rings and wires from the worm-eaten stick, and by mounting them on a spear, thus combining with shelter a staff and a weapon. The traveller should have at least three umbrellas, one large and water proof--white, not black--in the shape of those used by artists; and two others of moderate size, and of the best construction, which should be covered with light-coloured calico, as an additional defence against the sun. At Kazeh I was somewhat deficient in material: my lazy “Jack of all trades,” Valentine, made, however, some slippers of green baize, soled with leather, for me, overalls of American domestics for my companion, and various articles of indigo-dyed cotton for himself and his fellow-servant, who presently appeared tastefully rigged out like Paul and Virginia in “Bengal blue.”

The minor works were not many. The two remaining portmanteaus of the three that had left the Coast were cobbled with goatskins, and were bound with stout thongs. The hammocks, of which half had disappeared, were patched and provided with the Nara, or Indian cotton-tape, which in these climates is better than either reims or cord. To save my eyes the spectacle of moribund fowls, suspended to a porter’s pole, two light cages were made after the fashion of the country, with bent and bound withes. The metal plates, pots, and pans were furbished, and a damaged kettle was mended by a travelling tinker: the asses’ saddles and halters were repaired, and, greatest luxury of all, a brace of jembe or iron hoes was converted into two pairs of solid stirrups, under the vigilant eye of Snay bin Amir. A party of slaves sent to Msene brought back fifty-four jembe, useful as return-presents and blackmail on the down-march: they paid, however, one cloth for two, instead of four. Sallum bin Hamid, the “papa” of the Arabs, sold for the sum of forty dollars a fine half-bred Zanzibar she-ass and foal--there is no surer method of procuring a regular supply of milk on Eastern journeys. My black and white beads being almost useless, he also parted with, as a peculiar favour, seventeen or eighteen pounds of pink-porcelains for forty dollars, and with a Frasibah of coffee, and a similar quantity of sugar for eighty dollars, equal to sixteen pounds sterling. On the 14th July the last Arab caravan of the season left Unyanyembe, under the command of Sayf bin Said el Wardi. As he obligingly offered to convey letters and any small articles which I wished to precede me, and knowing that under his charge effects were far safer than with our own people, I forwarded the useless and damaged surveying instruments, certain manuscripts, and various enclosures of maps, field and sketch-books, together with reports to the Royal Geographical Society.

This excitement over I began to weary of Kazeh. Snay bin Amir and most of the Arabs had set out on an expedition to revenge the murder of old Silim--an event alluded to in a former page, and the place had become dull as a mess-dinner. Said bin Salim, who was ill, who coughed and expectorated, and sincerely pitied himself because he had a cold, became more than usually unsociable: he could enjoy nothing but the society of Brahim, the bawling Baghdadi, and the crowd of ill-flavoured slavery that flocked into the vestibule. My Goanese servant, who connected my aspect with hard labour, avoided it like a pestilence. Already I was preparing to organise a little expedition to K’hokoro and the southern provinces, when unexpectedly,--in these lands a few cries and gun-shots are the only credible precursors of a caravan,--on the morning of the 25th August reappeared my companion.

At length my companion had been successful, his “flying trip” had led him to the northern water, and he had found its dimensions surpassing our most sanguine expectations. We had scarcely, however, breakfasted, before he announced to me the startling fact, that he had discovered the sources of the White Nile. It was an inspiration perhaps: the moment he sighted the Nyanza, he felt at once no doubt but that the “Lake at his feet gave birth to that interesting river which has been the subject of so much speculation, and the object of so many explorers.” The fortunate discoverer’s conviction was strong; his reasons were weak--were of the category alluded to by the damsel Lucetta, when justifying her penchant in favour of the “lovely gentleman,” Sir Proteus:--

“I have no other but a woman’s reason.
I think him so because I think him so;”[11]

and probably his sources of the Nile grew in his mind as his Mountains of the Moon had grown under his hand.

[11] The following extract from the Proceedings of the R. Geographical
Society, May 9, 1859, will best illustrate what I mean:--

MR. MACQUEEN, F.R.G.S., said the question of the sources of the Nile
had cost him much trouble and research, and he was sure there was no
material error either in longitude or latitude in the position he had
ascribed to them, namely, a little to the eastward of the meridian of
35°, and a little northward of the equator. That was the principal
source of the White Nile. The mountains there were exceedingly high,
from the equator north to Kaffa Enarea. All the authorities, from
east, west, north, or south, now perfectly competent to form judgments
upon such a matter, agreed with him; and among them were the officers
commanding the Egyptian commission. It was impossible they could all
be mistaken. Dr. Krapf had been within a very short distance of it; he
was more than 180 miles from Mombas, and he saw snow upon the
mountains. He conversed with the people who came from them, and who
told him of the snow and exceeding coldness of the temperature. The
line of perpetual congelation, it was well known, was 17,000 feet
above the sea. He had an account of the navigation of the White Nile
by the Egyptian expedition. It was then given as 3° 30′ N. lat. and
31° E. long. At this point the expedition turned back for want of a
sufficient depth of water. Here the river was 1370 feet broad, and the
velocity of the current _one-quarter_ of a mile per hour. The journals
also gave a specific and daily current, the depth and width of the
river, and every thing, indeed, connected with it. Surely, looking at
the current of the river, the height of the Cartoom above the level of
the sea, and the distance thence up to the equator, the sources of the
Nile must be 6000 or 8000 feet above the level of the sea, and still
much below the line of the snow, which was 6000 or 8000 feet farther
above them. He deeply regretted he was unable to complete the diagram
for the rest of the papers he had given to the Society, for it was
more important than any others he had previously given. It contained
the journey over Africa from sea to sea, second only to that of Dr.
Livingstone. But all the rivers coming down from the mountains in
question, and running south-eastward, had been clearly stated by Dr.
Krapf, who gave every particular concerning them. He should like to
know what the natives had said was to the northward of the large lake?
Did they say the rivers ran out from or into the lake? How could the
Egyptian officers be mistaken?

CAPTAIN SPEKE replied. They were not mistaken; and if they had pursued
their journey 50 miles farther, they would undoubtedly have found
themselves at the northern borders of this lake.

MR. MACQUEEN said that other travellers, Don Angelo for instance, had
been within one and a half degree of the Equator, and saw the mountain
of Kimborat under the Line, and persisted in the statement, adding,
that travellers had been up the river until they found it a mere
brook. He felt convinced that the large lake alluded to by Captain
Speke was not the source of the Nile: it was impossible it could be
so, for it was not at a sufficiently high altitude.

The paper presented to the Society, when fully read in conjunction
with the map, will clearly show that the Bahr-el-Abied has no
connection with Kilimanjaro, that it has no connection whatever with
any lake or river to the south of the Equator, and that the swelling
of the river Nile proceeds from the tropical rains of the northern
torrid zone, as was stated emphatically to Julius Cæsar by the chief
Egyptian priest Amoreis 2000 years ago.

In nearly 3° N. lat. there is a great cataract, which boats cannot
pass. It is called Gherba. About half-way (50 miles) above, and
between this cataract and Robego, the capital of Kuenda, the river
becomes so narrow as to be crossed by a bridge formed by a tree thrown
across it. Above Gherba no stream joins the river either from the
south or south-west.

The main argument in favour of the Lake representing the great reservoir of the White River was, that the “principal men” at the southern extremity ignored the extent northward. “On my inquiring about the lake’s length the man (the greatest traveller in the place) faced to the north, and began nodding his head to it; at the same time he kept throwing forward his right hand, and making repeated snaps of his fingers endeavoured to indicate something immeasurable; and added, that nobody knew, but he thought it probably extended to the end of the world.” Strongly impressed by this valuable statistical information, my companion therefore placed the northern limit about 4°-5° north lat., whereas the Egyptian expedition sent by the late Mohammed Ali Pacha, about twenty years ago, to explore the Coy Sources, reached 3° 22′ north lat. It therefore ought to have sailed fifty miles upon the Nyanza lake. On the contrary, from information derived on the spot, that expedition placed the fountains at one month’s journey--300 to 350 miles--to the south-east, or upon the northern counterslope of Mount Kenia. Whilst marching to the coast, my companion--he tells us--was assured by a “respectable Sowahili merchant, that when engaged in traffic some years previously to the northward of the line, and the westward of this lake, he had heard it commonly reported that large vessels frequented the northern extremity of these waters, in which the officers engaged in navigating them used sextants and kept a log, precisely similar to what is found in vessels on the ocean. Query, could this be in allusion to the expedition sent by Mohammed Ali up the Nile in former years?” (Proceedings of Royal Geographical Society, May 9, 1859.) Clearly, if Abdullah Bin Nasib, the Msawahili alluded to, had reported these words, he merely erred; the Egyptian expedition, as has been shown, not only did not find, they never even heard of a lake. But not being present at the conversation I am tempted to assign further explanation. My companion, wholly ignorant of Arabic, was reduced to depend upon “Bombay,” who spoke an even more debased dialect than his master, and it is easy to see how the blunder originated. The Arabic bahr and the Kisawahili bahari are equally applicable in vulgar parlance to a river or sea, a lake or a river. Traditions concerning a Western Sea--the to them now unknown Atlantic--over which the white men voyage, are familiar to many East Africans; I have heard at Harar precisely the same report concerning the log and sextants. Either, then, Abdullah Bin Nasib confounded, or my companion’s “interrupter” caused him to confound the Atlantic and the Lake. In the maps forwarded from Kazeh by my companion, the River Kivira was, after ample inquiry, made a western _influent_ of the Nyanza Lake. In the map appended to the paper in Blackwood, before alluded to, it has become an _effluent_, and the only minute concerning so very important a modification is, “This river (although I must confess at first I did not think so) is the Nile itself!”

Beyond the assertion, therefore, that no man had visited the north, and the appearance of sextants and logs upon the waters, there is not a shade of proof _pro._ Far graver considerations lie on the _con._ side: the reports of the Egyptian expedition, and the dates of the several inundations which--as will presently appear--alone suffice to disprove the possibility of the Nyanza causing the flood of the Nile. It is doubtless a satisfactory thing to disclose to an admiring public, of “statesmen, churchmen, missionaries, merchants, and more particularly geographers,” the “solution of a problem, which it has been the first geographical desideratum of many thousand years to ascertain, and the ambition of the first monarchs in the world to unravel.” (Blackwood’s Magazine, October 1859.) But how many times since the days of a certain Claudius Ptolemæius surnamed Pelusiota, have not the Fountains of the White Nile been discovered and re-discovered after this fashion?

What tended at the time to make me the more sceptical was the substantial incorrectness of the geographical and other details brought back by my companion. This was natural enough. Bombay, after misunderstanding his master’s ill-expressed Hindostani, probably mistranslated the words into Kisawahili to some travelled African, who in turn passed on the question in a wilder dialect to the barbarian or barbarians under examination. During such a journey to and fro words must be liable to severe accidents. The first thing reported to me was the falsehood of the Arabs at Kazeh, who had calumniated the good Sultan Muhayya, and had praised the bad Sultan Machunda: subsequent inquiries proved their rigid correctness. My companion’s principal informant was one Mansur Bin Salim, a half-caste Arab, who had been flogged out of Kazeh by his compatriots; he pronounced Muhayya to be a “very excellent and obliging person,” and of course he was believed. I then heard a detailed account of how the caravan of Salim bin Rashid had been attacked, beaten, captured, and detained at Ukerewe, by its sultan Machunda. The Arabs received the intelligence with a smile of ridicule, and in a few days Salim bin Rashid appeared in person to disprove the report. These are but two cases of many. And what knowledge of Asiatic customs can be expected from the writer of these lines? “The Arabs at Unyanyembe had advised my donning their habit for the trip in order to attract less attention; a vain precaution, which I believe they suggested more to gratify their own vanity in _seeing an Englishman lower himself to their position_, than for any benefit that I might receive by doing so.” (Blackwood, loco cit.) This galimatias of the Arabs!--the haughtiest and the most clannish of all Oriental peoples.

But difference of opinion was allowed to alter companionship. After a few days it became evident to me that not a word could be uttered upon the subject of the Lake, the Nile, and his _trouvaille_ generally without offence. By a tacit agreement it was, therefore, avoided, and I should never have resumed it had my companion not stultified the results of the Expedition by putting forth a claim which no geographer can admit, and which is at the same time so weak and flimsy, that no geographer has yet taken the trouble to contradict it.

I will here offer to the reader a few details concerning the Lake in question,--they are principally borrowed from my companion’s diary, carefully corrected, however, by Snay bin Amir, Salim bin Rashid[12], and other merchants at Kazeh.