Part 7 (2/2)

The next morning the caravan, thoroughly fatigued with the last day's exertions, was obliged to halt. Bombay was despatched after the lost goods; Kingaru, Mabruki the Great, and Mabruki the Little were despatched to bring back three doti-worth of grain, on which we were to subsist in the wilderness.

Three days pa.s.sed away and we were still at camp, awaiting, with what patience we possessed, the return of the soldiers. In the meantime provisions ran very low, no game could be procured, the birds were so wild. Two days shooting procured but two potfuls of birds, consisting of grouse, quail, and pigeons. Bombay returned unsuccessfully from his search after the missing property, and suffered deep disgrace.

On the fourth day I despatched Shaw with two more soldiers, to see what had become of Kingaru and the two Mabrukis. Towards night he returned completely prostrated, with a violent attack of the mukunguru, or ague; but bringing the missing soldiers, who were thus left to report for themselves.

With most thankful hearts did we quit our camp, where so much anxiety of mind and fretfulness had been suffered, not heeding a furious rain, which, after drenching us all night, might have somewhat damped our ardor for the march under other circ.u.mstances. The road for the first mile led over reddish ground, and was drained by gentle slopes falling east and west; but, leaving the cover of the friendly woods, on whose eastern margin we had been delayed so long, we emerged into one of the savannahs, whose soil during the rain is as soft as slush and tenacious as thick mortar, where we were all threatened with the fate of the famous Arkansas traveller, who had sunk so low in one of the many quagmires in Arkansas county, that nothing but his tall ”stove-pipe” hat was left visible.

Shaw was sick, and the whole duty of driving the foundering caravan devolved upon myself. The Wanyamwezi donkeys stuck in the mire as if they were rooted to it. As fast as one was flogged from his stubborn position, p.r.o.ne to the depths fell another, giving me a Sisyphean labour, which was maddening trader pelting rain, a.s.sisted by such men as Bombay and Uledi, who could not for a whole skin's sake stomach the storm and mire. Two hours of such a task enabled me to drag my caravan over a savannah one mile and a half broad; and barely had I finished congratulating myself over my success before I was halted by a deep ditch, which, filled with rain-water from the inundated savannahs, had become a considerable stream, breast-deep, flowing swiftly into the Makata. Donkeys had to be unloaded, led through a torrent, and loaded again on the other bank--an operation which consumed a full hour.

Presently, after straggling through a wood clump, barring our progress was another stream, swollen into a river. The bridge being swept away, we were obliged to swim and float our baggage over, which delayed us two hours more. Leaving this second river-bank, we splashed, waded, occasionally half-swimming, and reeled through mire, water-dripping gra.s.s and matama stalks, along the left bank of the Makata proper, until farther progress was effectually prevented for that day by a deep bend of the river, which we should be obliged to cross the next day.

Though but six miles were traversed during that miserable day, the march occupied ten hours.

Half dead with fatigue, I yet could feel thankful that it was not accompanied by fever, which it seemed a miracle to avoid; for if ever a district was cursed with the ague, the Makata wilderness ranks foremost of those afflicted. Surely the sight of the dripping woods enveloped in opaque mist, of the inundated country with lengthy swathes of tiger-gra.s.s laid low by the turbid flood, of mounds of decaying trees and canes, of the swollen river and the weeping sky, was enough to engender the mukunguru! The well-used khambi, and the heaps of filth surrounding it, were enough to create a cholera!

The Makata, a river whose breadth during the dry season is but forty feet, in the Masika season a.s.sumes the breadth, depth, and force of an important river. Should it happen to be an unusually rainy season, it inundates the great plain which stretches on either side, and converts it into a great lake. It is the main feeder of the Wami river, which empties into the sea between the ports of Saadani and Whinde. About ten miles north-east of the Makata crossing, the Great Makata, the Little Makata, a nameless creek, and the Rudewa river unite; and the river thus formed becomes known as the Wami. Throughout Usagara the Wami is known as the Mukondokwa. Three of these streams take their rise from the crescent-like Usagara range, which bounds the Makata plain south and south-westerly; while the Rudewa rises in the northern horn of the same range.

So swift was the flow of the Makata, and so much did its unsteady bridge, half buried in the water, imperil the safety of the property, that its transfer from bank to bank occupied fully five hours. No sooner had we landed every article on the other side, undamaged by the water, than the rain poured down in torrents that drenched them all, as if they had been dragged through the river. To proceed through the swamp which an hour's rain had formed was utterly out of the question. We were accordingly compelled to camp in a place where every hour furnished its quota of annoyance. One of the w.a.n.gwana soldiers engaged at Bagamoyo, named Kingaru, improved an opportunity to desert with another Mgwana's kit. My two detectives, Uledi (Grant's valet), and Sarmean, were immediately despatched in pursuit, both being armed with American breech-loaders. They went about their task with an adroitness and celerity which augured well for their success. In an hour they returned with the runaway, having found him hidden in the house of a Mseguhha chief called Kigondo, who lived about a mile from the eastern bank of the river, and who had accompanied Uledi and Sarmean to receive his reward, and render an account of the incident.

Kigondo said, when he had been seated, ”I saw this man carrying a bundle, and running hard, by which I knew that he was deserting you. We (my wife and 1) were sitting in our little watch-hut, watching our corn; and, as the road runs close by, this man was obliged to come close to us. We called to him when he was near, saying, 'Master, where are you going so fast? Are you deserting the Musungu, for we know you belong to him, since you bought from us yesterday two doti worth of meat?' 'Yes,'

said he, 'I am running away; I want to get to Simbamwenni. If you will take me there, I will give you a doti.' We said to him then, 'Come into our house, and we will talk it over quietly. When he was in our house in an inner room, we locked him up, and went out again to the watch; but leaving word with the women to look out for him. We knew that, if you wanted him, you would send askari (soldiers) after him. We had but lit our pipes when we saw two men armed with short guns, and having no loads, coming along the road, looking now and then on the ground, as if they were looking at footmarks. We knew them to be the men we were expecting; so we hailed them, and said, 'Masters, what are ye looking for?' They said, 'We are looking for a man who has deserted our master. Here are his footsteps. If you have been long in your hut you must have seen him, Can you tell us where he is?' We said, 'yes; he is in our house. If you will come with us, we will give him up to you; but your master must give us something for catching him.'”

As Kigondo had promised to deliver Kingaru up, there remained nothing further to do for Uledi and Sarmean but to take charge of their prisoner, and bring him and his captors to my camp on the western bank of the Makata. Kingaru received two dozen lashes, and was chained; his captor a doti, besides five khete of red coral beads for his wife.

That down-pour of rain which visited us the day we crossed the Makata proved the last of the Masika season. As the first rainfall which we had experienced occurred on the 23rd March, and the last on the 30th April, its duration was thirty-nine days. The seers of Bagamoyo had delivered their vaticinations concerning this same Masika with solemnity. ”For forty days,” said they, ”rain would fall incessantly;” whereas we had but experienced eighteen days' rain. Nevertheless, we were glad that it was over, for we were tired of stopping day after day to dry the bales and grease the tools and ironware, and of seeing all things of cloth and leather rot visibly before our eyes.

The 1st of May found us struggling through the mire and water of the Makata with a caravan bodily sick, from the exertion and fatigue of crossing so many rivers and wading through marshes. Shaw was still suffering from his first mukunguru; Zaidi, a soldier, was critically ill with the small-pox; the kichuma-chuma, ”little irons,” had hold of Bombay across the chest, rendering him the most useless of the unserviceables; Mabruk Saleem, a youth of l.u.s.ty frame, following the example of Bombay, laid himself down on the marshy ground, professing his total inability to breast the Makata swamp; Abdul Kader, the Hindi tailor and adventurer--the weakliest of mortal bodies--was ever ailing for lack of ”force,” as he expressed it in French, i.e. ”strength,” ever indisposed to work, s.h.i.+ftless, mock-sick, but ever hungry. ”Oh! G.o.d,”

was the cry of my tired soul, ”were all the men of my Expedition like this man I should be compelled to return.” Solomon was wise perhaps from inspiration, perhaps from observation; I was becoming wise by experience, and I was compelled to observe that when mud and wet sapped the physical energy of the lazily-inclined, a dog-whip became their backs, restoring them to a sound--some-times to an extravagant activity.

For thirty miles from our camp was the Makata plain an extensive swamp.

The water was on an average one foot in depth; in some places we plunged into holes three, four, and even five feet deep. Plash, splash, plash, splash, were the only sounds we heard from the commencement of the march until we found the bomas occupying the only dry spots along the line of march. This kind of work continued for two days, until we came in sight of the Rudewa river, another powerful stream with banks brimful of rus.h.i.+ng rain-water. Crossing a branch of the Rudewa, and emerging from the dank reedy gra.s.s crowding the western bank, the view consisted of an immense sheet of water topped by clumps of gra.s.s tufts and foliage of thinly scattered trees, bounded ten or twelve miles off by the eastern front of the Usagara mountain range. The acme of discomfort and vexation was realized on the five-mile march from the Rudewa branch. As myself and the w.a.n.gwana appeared with the loaded donkeys, the pagazis were observed huddled on a mound. When asked if the mound was the camp, they replied ”No.” ”Why, then, do you stop here?”--”Ugh! water plenty!!” One drew a line across his loins to indicate the depth of water before us, another drew a line across his chest, another across his throat another held his hand over his head, by which he meant that we should have to swim. Swim five miles through a reedy mars.h.!.+ It was impossible; it was also impossible that such varied accounts could all be correct. Without hesitation, therefore, I ordered the w.a.n.gwana to proceed with the animals. After three hours of splas.h.i.+ng through four feet of water we reached dry land, and had traversed the swamp of Makata. But not without the swamp with its horrors having left a durable impression upon our minds; no one was disposed to forget its fatigues, nor the nausea of travel which it almost engendered. Subsequently, we had to remember its pa.s.sage still more vividly, and to regret that we had undertaken the journey during the Masika season, when the animals died from this date by twos and threes, almost every day, until but five sickly worn-out beasts remained; when the w.a.n.gwana, soldiers, and pagazis sickened of diseases innumerable; when I myself was finally compelled to lie a-bed with an attack of acute dysentery which brought me to the verge of the grave. I suffered more, perhaps, than I might have done had I taken the proper medicine, but my over-confidence in that compound, called ”Collis Brown's Chlorodyne,” delayed the cure which ultimately resulted from a judicious use of Dover's powder. In no one single case of diarrhoea or acute dysentery had this ”Chlorodyne,” about which so much has been said, and written, any effect of lessening the attack whatever, though I used three bottles. To the dysentery contracted during, the transit of the Makata swamp, only two fell victims, and those were a pagazi and my poor little dog ”Omar,” my companion from India.

The only tree of any prominence in the Makata valley was the Palmyra palm (Bora.s.sus flabelliformis), and this grew in some places in numbers sufficient to be called a grove; the fruit was not ripe while we pa.s.sed, otherwise we might have enjoyed it as a novelty. The other vegetation consisted of the several species of thorn bush, and the graceful parachute-topped and ever-green mimosa.

The 4th of May we were ascending a gentle slope towards the important village of Rehenneko, the first village near to which we encamped in Usagara. It lay at the foot of the mountain, and its plenitude and mountain air promised us comfort and health. It was a square, compact village, surrounded by a thick wall of mud, enclosing cone-topped huts, roofed with bamboo and holcus-stalks; and contained a population of about a thousand souls. It has several wealthy and populous neighbours, whose inhabitants are independent enough in their manner, but not unpleasantly so. The streams are of the purest water, fresh, and pellucid as crystal, bubbling over round pebbles and clean gravel, with a music delightful to hear to the traveller in search of such a sweetly potable element.

The bamboo grows to serviceable size in the neighbourhood of Rehenneko, strong enough for tent and banghy poles; and in numbers sufficient to supply an army. The mountain slopes are densely wooded with trees that might supply very good timber for building purposes.

We rested four days at this pleasant spot, to recruit ourselves, and to allow the sick and feeble time to recover a little before testing their ability in the ascent of the Usagara mountains.

The 8th of May saw us with our terribly jaded men and animals winding up the steep slopes of the first line of hills; gaining the summit of which we obtained a view remarkably grand, which exhibited as in a master picture the broad valley of the Makata, with its swift streams like so many cords of silver, as the suns.h.i.+ne played on the unshadowed reaches of water, with its thousands of graceful palms adding not a little to the charm of the scene, with the great wall of the Uruguru and Uswapanga mountains dimly blue, but sublime in their loftiness and immensity--forming a fit background to such an extensive, far-embracing prospect.

Turning our faces west, we found ourselves in a mountain world, fold rising above fold, peak behind peak, cone jostling cone; away to the north, to the west, to the south, the mountain tops rolled like so many vitrified waves; not one adust or arid spot was visible in all this scene. The diorama had no sudden changes or striking contrasts, for a universal forest of green trees clothed every peak, cone, and summit.

To the men this first day's march through the mountain region of Usagara was an agreeable interlude after the successive journey over the flats and heavy undulations of the maritime region, but to the loaded and enfeebled animals it was most trying. We were minus two by the time we had arrived at our camp, but seven miles from Rehenneko, our first instalment of the debt we owed to Makata. Water, sweet and clear, was abundant in the deep hollows of the mountains, flowing sometimes over beds of solid granite, sometimes over a rich red sandstone, whose soft substance was soon penetrated by the aqueous element, and whose particles were swept away constantly to enrich the valley below; and in other ravines it dashed, and roared, miniature thunder, as it leaped over granite boulders and quartz rock.

The 9th of May, after another such an up-and-down course, ascending hills and descending into the twilight depths of deepening valleys, we came suddenly upon the Mukondokwa, and its narrow pent-up valley crowded with rank reedy gra.s.s, cane, and th.o.r.n.y bushes; and rugged tamarisk which grappled for existence with monster convolvuli, winding their coils around their trunks with such tenacity and strength that the tamarisk seemed grown but for their support.

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