Through the Dark Continent, Vol. 2 (of 2)

Mutiny in the camp—Again among the cataracts—Frank’s body found—The fall of the Edwin Arnold River—Tired out!—Wholesale desertion—More cataracts—“Good-bye, my brother, nothing can save you!”—Rushing blindly on—Saved again!—The Jason found.

“June 4.—We are all so unnerved with the terrible accident of yesterday that we are utterly unable to decide what is best to do. We have a horror of the river now, and being far apart—over eighty men being at Mowa—we are unable to communicate with each other, for the journey overland to Mowa is long and fatiguing. The natives of Zinga strongly sympathize with me, which is a consolation in my affliction.

“June 5.—My troubles increase. A messenger came this morning from Manwa Sera bearing the terrible news that the people have mutinied and refuse to work. They say they would prefer hoeing for the heathen to following me longer, for they say that the end of all will be death. The Mowa natives have also infected them with their silly superstitions, by talking about the Spirits of the Falls, for it appears that the late catastrophe has elicited a host of legends in connection with Massassa. Had we sacrificed a goat to the two falls, they say, the accident would never have occurred! Though Muslims by profession, my people are also heathen. But I have not myself recovered from the shock, and I judge their feelings by my own, therefore it is better they should rest where they are.

“June 9.—I left Zinga before dawn with Uledi and the boat’s crew, travelling along the river, and took a closer view of Massassa, and the cove where they had halted their canoe. Poor, rash Frank! had he only crawled over the rocks a few yards he would have realized the impossibility of safely shooting the Massassa. The rocky projections, which raise the curling waves in mid-river, are single blocks from 10 to 40 feet high piled one above another, lying at the base of a steep cliff of Massassa. The cliff is of course impassable, as it is from three hundred to four hundred feet high. The colossal size of the blocks is a serious impediment. The falls we have had enough of, at least for the present. From Massassa I proceeded to Mowa, and reasoned with the men. They were extremely depressed, rueful of face, and apparently sunk in despair. Only Manwa Sera, the chiefs, and boat’s crew seemed alive to the fact that necessity compelled us to move, before starvation overtook us. They would not be convinced that it was best to struggle on. However, I would even begin to battle with the falls once more; and after a little persuasion I succeeded in inducing the boat’s crew to man one of the canoes, and to take it to the cove whither they had taken the unfortunate Jason, before they had been rash enough to listen to a sick man’s impatience. The feat was successful; the canoe was lashed to the rocks and a guard of ten men set over it. This act seemed to encourage the Wangwana to believe that there was no danger after all as far, at any rate, as the cove. At sunset I reached Zinga again, terribly fatigued.

“June 10.—The full story of the sufferings I have undergone cannot be written, but is locked up in a breast that feels the misery into which I am plunged neck-deep. Oh! Frank, Frank, you are happy, my friend. Nothing can now harrow your mind or fatigue your body. You are at rest for ever and for ever. Would that I were also! While I was absent yesterday from Zinga, a man lost to all feeling, Saburi Rehani, proceeded to steal the cassava of the natives, which of course raised their ire, and for a period things were very gloomy this morning. However, a liberal payment of cloth has quenched the sulkiness of the Zingaese, and Saburi was punished. I have now three camps, one at Zinga, one at Massassa, and the other at Mowa, and I was not able to leave Zinga before noon because of Saburi’s robbery. The boat’s crew took another canoe down to Massassa in the afternoon, and at 5 P.M. I was obliged to clamber over the mountains, walk round Pocock Pool, and down to Zinga again, where I have just arrived, weak, fainting, and miserable.

“June 11.—The body of Frank was found in Kilanga basin three days ago by a native fisherman, as it was floating about, but the horrified man would not touch it. The body was on its back, the upper part nude, he having torn his shirt away to swim. It is to be regretted that the body was thus left to float a dishonoured spectacle; and Ndala, king of Zinga, also grieves that it was not brought ashore for respectful burial.

“June 12.—Crossed again to Massassa, and four more canoes have been brought to the cove, without accident.

“June 13 and 14.—Sick of a fever; but in the meantime I am gratified to hear that Manwa Sera has been successful in bringing all the canoes down to Massassa, and that all the people have finally left Mowa.

“June 15.—At early dawn proceeded up the Zinga mountain, skirted the Pocock Pool, crossed the Edwin Arnold River, and descended to Massassa. A grove covered the top of the cliff, and the axe-men were detailed to cut down branches, which those without axes conveyed to fill the deep pits between the several colossal blocks. Others were employed in fixing two rows of piles in the cove, sinking the ends between the boulders, which, when filled with brush, might enable us to draw the canoes upward.

“June 18.—The last three days have witnessed some hard work. To the astonishment of the aborigines, Massassa Point has been covered from end to end, a distance of 600 yards, with brushwood, in some places 40 feet thick, and three canoes have been hauled successfully past the falls, and dropped into Pocock Basin. Leaving instructions with Manwa Sera, I manned the canoes and proceeded to Zinga by water. Mid-way, as we skirted the base of the lofty cliffs, we came to a fine fall of the Edwin Arnold River, 300 feet deep. The cliff-walls are so perpendicular, and the rush of water so great from the cascades above, that the river drops on the boulders below fully thirty feet from the cliffs base.

“June 19.—The canoes have all, thank Heaven! passed the dread Massassa, and are safe at Zinga, about two hundred yards above the Zinga Fall. I ventured into nearly the middle of the Pocock Pool to-day, about seven hundred yards below where Frank lost his life, and sounding I obtained 55 fathoms, or 330 feet, of water; then rowing steadily towards Edwin Arnold Fall, it slowly decreased to 35 feet, the lead striking hard against the submerged rocks.”

By the 17th I observed that the river had fallen 9 feet since the third of the month, and that the Massassa was much milder than on the fatal 3rd. Zinga is, however, just as wild as at first, and it is evident that the channel of the fall is much obstructed by boulders.

It is worthy of notice that each fall is known by the natives of the opposing banks under different names. “Zinga” is only employed by the Babwendé, who occupy the table-land on the right side of the river; the Bassessé, on the left side, call it “Bungu-Bungu.”

The fish-laws are very strict here. The people descend to the Zinga Fall each day about 7 A.M., and at the same time the Bassessé may be seen descending the opposite mountain, for both sides of the fall have their respective large boulders, amongst which the full swollen river rushes impetuously in narrow foamy channels, where the nets are placed. On the Zinga side, as many as thirty nets are placed, but no man may lift a net until one of the kings, or one of their sons, is present, and the half of the produce is equitably divided among the kings Ndala, Mpako, and Monango, and each king has his separate rock on which his share is laid. If the Zinga folks have had a fortunate find in their nets, they announce it by a loud shout to the Bassessé on the opposite side; and the Bassessé, on successful mornings, take care to express their luck with equal spirit and animation. The pike and cat-fish, the silurus, the water-snake and eel, and the various fish found in the African lakes and rivers, I find to be common to the Livingstone also.

Several of the boulders of the Zinga cataract are covered by a species of Podostomaceæ, which while the river covers them are green and fresh, resembling sea-weed, and affording the natives a kind of spinach; when the river recedes, the weed soon withers and becomes shrivelled up.

To-day, for the first time, I heard of the Kwango from a man who has visited Embomma, which I believe to mean the “place of the king” in the language of Babwendé, and to be synonymous with Kwikuru in Unyamwezi, and Kibuga in Uganda. They point it out as being west. They have a curious idea in their heads that I must have come from some place south of the Bakonga country, and floated down some great body of water; and, lest their superstitious heads should find something objectionable in my coming down the great river, I have been very reticent.

They call the Livingstone the Bilumbu at Nzabi, which may be interpreted “day.” At Zinga they call it Mwana Kilunga, the “lord of the ocean.” Mputu, though signifying sea, also means “the sea along the coast,” most probably the surf. The Babwendé term for “river” is Njari.^[14] A constant companion of the Babwendé is the haversack net, made out of the Hyphene palm fibre. I was reminded, as I looked at each native bearing this net-pouch with him, of the traveller’s satchel carried by tourists in Europe.

Along the cataracts in the Babwendé country there is no game. The noise of gunpowder, more than its destructiveness, has driven the game into the lands occupied by the silent-weaponed tribes. But there is a species of small bush antelope, and the coney, which is still hunted by the natives with their dogs—animals of the normal pariah class.

“June 20.—As we began to lay brushwood along the tracks this morning, by which we are to haul our canoes from the Pocock Basin past the Zinga point into the basin below, the people stirred about so languidly and sullenly that I asked what was the matter. One fellow, remarkable for nothing but his great size and strength, turned round and said sharply, ‘We are tired, and that’s what’s the matter,’ which opinion one-third did not hesitate to confirm. Such a spirit being most serious in these days of scant food and hard toil—men, like beasts of prey, being governed by the stomach—I invited the people together to rehearse their grievances and to describe their wrongs. They could say nothing, except that they were tired and were not going to work more. Death was in the river; a wearisome repetition of frightful labour waited for them each day on the rocks; their stomachs were hungry, they had no strength. Said I, ‘And I have none, my friends, I assure you. I am as hungry as any of you. I could get meat to make me strong, but it would be robbing you. I am so tired and sorry that I could lie down smiling and die. My white brother, who was lost the other day, is far happier than I. If you all leave me, I am safe, and there is no responsibility on me. I have my boat, and it is in the river. The current is swift, the fall is only a few yards off. My knife can cut the rope, and I shall then go to sleep for ever. There are the beads; take them, do what you will. While you stay with me, I follow this river until I come to the point where it is known. If you don’t stay with me, I still will cling to the river, and will die in it.’ I walked away from them. One man, Safeni, the coxswain at Bumbireh, on being asked by a disaffected body of men what was best to be done, said, ‘Let us pack up and be gone. We shall die anyhow, whether we stay here or whether we travel.’ They were not long in following his counsel, and filed up the steep ascent to the table-land, thirty-one in number. One of the tent-boys came to announce the fact. On ascertaining that the infection was not general, I then resolved that they should not endanger their own lives or the lives of the faithful, and called Kachéché and Manwa Sera to follow and plead with them. They overtook them five miles from here, but only received a determined refusal to return, and persisted in continuing their journey. Meanwhile the faithful are at work.

“June 21.—Despatched Kachéché and Manwa Sera again early this morning to cut off the fugitives, to inform the chiefs in advance that my people were not to be permitted to pass them, but, if they persisted in going beyond them, to lay hands on them and bind them until I could arrive on the scene. The chiefs seconded me so well that they beat their war-drum, and the mock excitement was so great that the mutineers were halted, and I learn by my two men that they already regret having left their camp.

“June 22.—Again Kachéché and Manwa Sera returned to the mutineers, who were fifteen miles away from here, and, promising them pardon and complete absolution of the offence, succeeded, with the aid of the friendly chiefs, in inducing them to return, sadder and wiser men, to resume their duties, and so to enable me to triumph over these obstacles.

“June 23.—We commenced our work this morning, assisted by 150 Zinga natives, and by 10 A.M. had succeeded in drawing three canoes up the 200-foot steep to the level of the rocky point. The fourth canoe was the new Livingstone, which weighed about three tons. It was already 20 feet out of the water, and we were quite confident we should be able with 200 men to haul her up. But suddenly the rattan and Ficus elastica cables snapped, and with the rapidity of lightning the heavy boat darted down the steep slopes into the depths. The chief carpenter of the Expedition, who had superintended its construction, clung to it under the idea that his single strength was sufficient to stay its rapid downward descent, and he was dragged down into the river, and, unable to swim, scrambled into the canoe. Uledi sprang after the carpenter, as the men remembered that he could not swim, and, reaching the canoe, cried out to him to jump into the river and he would save him. ‘Ah, my brother,’ the unfortunate man replied, ‘I cannot swim.’ ‘Jump, man, before it is too late! You are drifting towards the cataract!’ ‘I am afraid.’ ‘Well, then, good-bye, my brother; nothing can save you!’ said Uledi as he swam ashore, reaching it only 50 feet above the cataract. A second more and the great canoe, with Salaam Allah in it, was swept down over the cataract, and was tossed up and down the huge waves until finally a whirlpool received it. I reckoned fifty-four during the time it was under water; then it rose high and straight out of the depths, the man still in it. Again it was sucked down, revolving as it disappeared, and in a few seconds was ejected a second time, the man still in it. A third time it was drawn in, and when it emerged again Salaam Allah had disappeared. The fleet-footed natives and the boat’s crew had started overland to Mbelo Ferry, and shouted out the warning cries to the ferrymen, who were at once on the alert to save the canoe. After riding high on the crests of the waves of the Ingulufi Rapids, the Livingstone canoe entered the calmer waters of the crossing-place, and, in view of all gathered to witness the scene, wheeled round five times over the edge of a large whirlpool and disappeared for ever! It is supposed that she was swept against the submerged rocks beneath, and got jammed; for though there is a stretch of a mile of quiet water below the pool, nothing was seen of her up to sunset, five hours after the catastrophe. Two of the new canoes are thus lost, and another good man has perished. The Wangwana take this fatal accident as another indication of the general doom impending over us. They think the night of woe approaching, and even now, as I write, by the camp-fires they are counting up the lost and dead. Poor people! Poor me!

“June 24.—We were five hours engaged in hauling the Glasgow, our longest canoe, up a hill 200 feet, with over two hundred men. Of the smaller canoes we ran up three. It has been my policy to excite the people, with whatever tends to keep them from brooding over our losses, with wine, drums, and music, which I purchase liberally, because, though apparently extravagant at such a period, it is really the most economical.

“I hear of a place called Kakongo below, where the natives intend to fight me—for the glory of it, it seems, for so far reports have all been in our favour. No native has been injured by me wilfully, neither have I permitted injury to be done them from any of my people. Strong in my innocence, and assured that they shall have the first fire, it is a matter of unconcern. If we do not fear terrible Nature in this region, we certainly shall not step aside for the vaunts or threats of savages.

“June 25.—At dawn of day we were up and began to lower the boat and canoes into the basin below Zinga. By night, thank God, all our flotilla was beyond the cataract. The Zingaese say there are only the Ingulufi, Mbelo, and Ntombo Mataka Falls—three more falls!—and the last, I hope, will prove to be ‘Tuckey’s Cataract,’ with fair sailing down to the Yellala Falls; and then, with bowed heads, we will travel for the sea as only hungry men can travel.

“June 26.—I intrusted to Wadi Rehani and Kachéché the task of taking the goods overland to Mbelo Falls, while I passed the day at Zinga. A month ago we descended the Upper Mowa Falls; it is still in sight of me, being only three miles off. Three miles in thirty days, and four persons drowned even in this short distance!

“June 27.—Again I led the way this morning, round the Zinga basin, and approached the Ingulufi Rapids. We sought a channel between a few scattered boulders which stood close to shore and disparted the ever vexed river, and having examined the stream, and finding it to be mere rapids, without those fatal swirling vortices, dashed over the waves into the Mbelo basin. Reaching camp, which was at the top of a 300-foot cliff, we halted for a hermit’s lunch on bananas, and, wishing to inspire once more that spirit which was almost quenched by our late accidents, at 1 P.M. I descended the cliff again by means of ladders of rattan-cane, which for the last 30 feet enabled us to reach the water-line, and embarked. Cautiously we moved along—ten men to the cane-cables at bow and stern—and step by step, with a prudence born of perfect knowledge of its dangers, we approached the Mbelo Falls. It was almost another copy of the Lady Alice Rapids: the river was just as confined; rocky islets rose to the left of us; the cliffs towered upward, dwarfing us into mere minute atoms compared to the colossal height of cliffy front and tree-clad slopes, which ran steep from the cliffy verge to the level of the table-land. The river roared as loudly, the white-brown waves were as menacing, the massive rock-fragments hung toppling over their bases. As we neared a great rock looming in front of us in the water, we saw a channel between it and the shore; and while our eyes were fixed upon that narrow thread-like stream, with the dear hope that it would enable us to triumph over the difficulty of Mbelo, the faithless stern-cable parted, the river just then gave an uneasy heave, which snapped the bow-cable, and again were we borne, on the crests of the wild waves, into mid-channel; rocks, boulders, and cliffs flying past us with incredible rapidity. There were six men in the boat besides myself, and Uledi was at the helm, calm, cool, and confident. Our feelings are, however, different to those which filled us during a similar period of danger. There are certain voices whispering, ‘What will be, will be,’ ‘One cannot escape the inevitable,’ and such like, so that the sense of danger is somewhat blunted. Those lively fears which once oppressed us we know no more. Nerve and soul have alike been deadened by oft-seen woes, oft-felt strokes of misfortune. We have wept so often we can weep no more: we have suffered so much we cannot suffer more. Thus the ridgy waves which pelt us, and their rude strength and giant force, awe us not. The cliff-walls rising in solemn majesty up to the zenith, the dark shaggy lines of trees, the fury of waters, the stern rigidness of the stupendous heights, we reck not of. ‘What is to be, will be.’ We are past the Mbelo Falls, and a stream, brown-black and menacing, enters the main river from behind the rock islets; we are whirled round twice by the eddying pool, precipitated into a dancing, seething, hissing cauldron, just as if the river was boiling over. A sharp angular edge of mountain cliff, as though of a fortress, is past, and away down stream we dart, racing amid noise and waves and foam, when the cold grey cliffs drop sheer down, and finally emerge in Nguru basin, borne on a slackened current; and it is then we sigh, and murmur ‘Saved again!’ With nothing of triumph, nothing of the flashing glitter of proud eyes, but subdued and grateful, we seek the sandy beach of Kilanga.

“Leaving four men at Kilanga in charge of the boat, I crossed the little brook that divided the district of Kilanga from Nguru, and proceeded to meet the terror-stricken multitude, who could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw me advancing towards them. I was like one risen from the dead to them. ‘Yes, we shall reach the sea, please God!’ said they. ‘We see the hand of God, now. But you must not tempt the wicked river any more, master. We shall do it ourselves. Better far that we die than you. You shall not go to the river again until we are beyond the falls.’ Poor dear souls, they made me forgive them all. How bitter had my thoughts been lately; but this genuine expression of love and devotion healed the sickened soul, and infused new vigour into it, until I felt again that old belief that success would finally reward us.”

The above, faithfully transcribed from my note-book, convey, more truly than any amount of after-written descriptions, the full sense of the miserable scenes we endured during that fatal month of June 1877. Four days after my last narrow escape we succeeded, by patience, great caution, and laborious toil, in escaping past the dread Mbelo and reaching Kilanga, happily without further accident, but not without incident; for amongst the lower rocks of Nguru basin, left high and dry by the subsiding river, we discovered the Jason, broken in half, the two portions being about fifty feet apart; and midway between them was the almost mummied body of Jumah, the guide, lying on its face, with its arms outstretched. This Jumah was one of the two drowned with Francis Pocock on the fatal 3rd of June, and while Uledi and his comrades were wondering what had become of the two Wangwana who had so suddenly sunk out of sight, and endeavouring to right the canoe as they drifted through the Pocock Basin, he must have been clinging to one of the cables beneath it.

The last day of our stay at Mbelo was marked by the death of the poor ram, which had accompanied us ever since we left the cheerless gloom of the Uregga forests, by a fall from the cliffs.cliffs.