The 2nd of September saw us en route to Márengá Mk’hali, or the “brackish water.” Fording the Rumuma above the spot where it receives the thin supplies of the Márengá Mk’hali, we marched over stony hills and thorny bushes, dotted with calabash and mimosa, the castor-shrub and the wild egg-plant, and gradually rising, we passed into scattered fields of holcus and bajri, pulse and beans. Here, for the first time, bee-hives, called by the coast-people Mazinga, or cannons, from their shape, hollowed cylindrical logs, closed with grass and puddle at both ends, and provided with an oval opening in the centre, were seen hanging to the branches of the foliaged trees. Cucumbers, water-melons, and pumpkins grew apparently without cultivation. The water-melon, called by the Arabs Johh, and by the Wasawahili Tikiti, flourishes throughout the interior, where it is a favourite with the people. It is sown before the rainy season, gathered after six months, and placed to ripen upon the flat roofs of the villages. Like the produce of Kafir-land, it is hard, insipid, fleshy, and full of seeds, having nothing but the name in common with the delicious fruit of Egypt and Afghanistan. The Junsal, or Boga, the pumpkin, is, if possible, worse than the water-melon. Its red meat, simply boiled, is nauseously sweet; it is, however, considered wholesome, and the people enjoy the seeds toasted, pounded, and mixed with the “Mboga,” or wild vegetables, with which a veritable African can, in these regions, keep soul and body together for six months. About 10 A.M., I found Khalfan’s caravan halted in a large kraal amongst the villages, on the eastern hill above the “brackish water.” They were loading for the march, and my men looked wistfully at the comfortable huts; but their halt had been occasioned by small-pox, I therefore hurried forwards across the streamlet to a wind-swept summit of an opposite hill. The place was far from pleasant, the gusts were furious; by night the thermometer showed 54° F., by day there was but scanty shelter from the fiery sun, and the “Márengá Mk’hali,” which afforded the only supplies of water, was at a considerable distance. Moreover our umbrellas and bedding suffered severely from a destructive host of white ants, that here became troublesome for the first time. The “Chunga Mchwa,” or termite, abounds throughout the sweet red clay soils, and cool damp places, avoiding heat, sand, and stone, and it acts like a clearer and scavenger; without it, indeed, some parts of the country would be impassable, and it is endowed with extraordinary powers of destruction. A hard clay-bench has been drilled and pierced like a sieve by these insects in a single night, and bundles of reeds placed under bedding, have in a few hours been converted into a mass of mud; straps were consumed, cloths and umbrellas were reduced to rags, and the mats used for covering the servants’ sleeping-gear were, in the shortest possible time, so tattered as to be unserviceable. Man revenges himself upon the white ant, and satisfies his craving for animal food, which in these regions becomes a principle of action,—a passion,—by boiling the largest and fattest kind, and eating it as a relish with his insipid ugali, or porridge. The termite appears to be a mass of live water. Even in the driest places it finds no difficulty in making a clay-paste for the mud-galleries, like hollow tree-twigs, with which it disguises its approach to its prey. The phenomenon has been explained by the conjecture that it combines by vital force the atmospheric oxygen with the hydrogen evolved by its food. When arrived at the adult state, the little peoples rise ready-winged, like thin curls of pipe-smoke, generally about even-tide, from the ground. After a flight of a few yards, the fine membranes, which apparently serve to disperse the insects into colonies, drop off. In East Africa there is also a semi-transparent brown ant, resembling the termite in form, but differing in habits, and even exceeding it in destructiveness. It does not, like its congener, run galleries up to the point of attack. Each individual works for itself in the open air, tears the prey with its strong mandibles, and carries it away to its hole. The cellular hills of the termites in this country rarely rise to the height of three feet, whereas in Somali-land they become dwarf towers, forming a conspicuous feature in the view.

No watch was kept by the Baloch at Márengá Mk’hali, though we were then in the vicinity of the bandit Wahumba. On the next day we were harangued by Kidogo, who proceeded to expound the principles that must guide us through the unsafe regions ahead. The caravan must no longer straggle on in its usual disorder, the van must stop short when separated from the main body, and the rear must advance at the double when summoned by the sound of the Barghumi, or the koodoo-horn, which acts as bugle in Eastern Africa. I thought, at the time, that Kidogo might as well address his admonitions to the wind, and I thought rightly.

The route lay through the lateral plain which separates the Mukondokwa or second, from the Rubeho or third parallel range of the Usagara Mountains. At Márengá, Mk’hali, situated as it is under the lee of the two eastern walls, upon which the humid N. E. and S. E. trade-winds impinge, the eye no longer falls, as before, upon a sheet of monotonous green, and the nose is not offended by the death-like exhalations of a pestilent vegetation. The dew diminishes, the morning-cloud is rare upon the hill-top, and the stratus is not often seen in the valley; rain, moreover, seldom falls heavily, except during its single appointed season. The climate is said to be salubrious, and the medium elevation of the land, 2500 feet, raises it high above the fatal fever-level, without attaining the altitudes where dysentery and pleurisy afflict the inhabitants. For many miles beyond Márengá Mk’hali water is rarely found. Caravans, therefore, resort to what is technically called a “Tirikeza,” or afternoon march. In the Kisawahili, or coast-language, “ku Tirikeza,” or “Tilikeza,” and in Kinyamwezi, “ku Witekezea,” is the infinitive of a neuter verb signifying “to march after noon-day”; by the Arabs it is corrupted into a substantive. Similarly the verb ku honga, to pay “dash”, tribute, passage-money, or blackmail, becomes in the mouths of the stranger, ku honga, or Honga. The tirikeza is one of the severest inflictions that African travelling knows. At 11 A.M. everything is thrown into confusion, although two or three hours must elapse before departure; loads are bound up, kitchen-batteries are washed and packed, tents are thrown, and stools are carried off by fidgeting porters and excited slaves. Having drunk for the last time, and filled their gourds for the night, the wayfarers set out when the midday ends. The sun is far more severely felt after the sudden change from shade, than during the morning marches, when its increase of heat is slow and gradual. They trudge under the fireball in the firmament, over ground seething with glow and reek, through an air which seems to parch the eyeballs, and they endure this affliction till their shadows lengthen out upon the ground. The tirikeza is almost invariably a lengthy stage, as the porters wish to abridge the next morning’s march, which leads to water. It is often bright moonlight before they arrive at the ground, with faces torn by the thorns projecting across the jungly path, with feet lacerated by stone and stub, and occasionally a leg lamed by stumbling into deep and narrow holes, the work of field-rats and of various insects.

We left Márengá Mk’hali at 1 P.M., on the 3rd September, and in order to impressionise a large and well-armed band of the country people that had gathered to stare at, to criticise, and to deride us, we indulged in a little harmless sword-play, with a vast show of ferocity and readiness for fight. The road lay over several rough, steep, and bushy ridges, where the wretched asses, rushing away to take advantage of a yard of shade, caused constant delays. The Wanyamwezi animals having a great persistency of character, could scarcely be dislodged; and when they were, they threw their loads in pure spite. After topping a little “col” or pass, we came in sight of an extensive basin, bounded by distant blue hills, to which the porters pointed with a certain awe, declaring them to be the haunts of the fierce Wahumba. A descent of the western flank led us to a space partially cleared by burning, when the cry arose that men were lurking about. We then plunged into a thick bush of thorny trees, based upon a red clayey soil caked into the semblance of a rock. Contrary to expectation, when crossing a deep nullah trending northwards, we found a little rusty, ochreish water, in one of the cups and holes that dented the sandstone of the soles. Thence the path, gradually descending, fell into a coarse scrub, varied with small open savannahs, and broken, like the rest of the road, by deep, narrow watercourses, which carry off the waters of the southern hills to the northern lowlands. About 6 P.M., we came upon a cleared space in a thick thorn-jungle, where we established ourselves for the night. The near whine of the hyæna, and the alarm of the asses, made sleep a difficulty. The impatience and selfishness of thirst showed strongly in the Baloch. Belok had five large gourds full of water, perhaps three gallons, yet he would not part with a palmful to the sick Ismail. That day I was compelled to dismiss my usual ass-leader Shahdad, the zeze-player and fracturer of female hearts, who preferring the conversation of his fellows, dragged the animal through thorns and alongside of trees so artistically, that my nether garments were soon in strips. I substituted for him Musa the Greybeard, who, after a few days, begged, with bitter tears, to be excused. It was his habit to hurry on towards the kraal and shade, and the slow hobble of the ass detained him a whole hour in sore discomfort. The task was then committed to the tailor-youth Hudul, who lost no time in declaring that I had abused him—that he was a Baloch—that he was not an asinego. Then I tried Abdullah,—the good young man. I dismissed him because every day brought with it a fresh demand for cloth or beads, gourds or sandals, for a “chit” to the Balyuz—the Consul, or a general good character as regards honesty, virtue, and the et ceteras. Finally the ass was entrusted to the bull-headed slave Mabruki, who thinking of nothing but chat with his “brother,” Seedy Bombay, and having that curious mania for command which seems part of every servile nature, hurried my monture so recklessly, that earth-cracks and rat-holes caused us twain many a severe fall. My companion had entrusted himself to Bombay, who, though he did nothing well rarely did anything very badly.

The 4th September began with an hour’s toil through the dense bush, to a rapid descent over red soil and rocks, which necessitated frequent dismounting,—no pleasant exercise after a sleepless night. Below, lay a wide basin of rolling ground, surrounded in front by a rim of hills. It was one of the many views which “catching the reflex of heaven,” and losing by indistinctness the harshness of defined outline and the deformity of individual feature, assume, viewed from afar, a peculiar picturesqueness. Traces of extensive cultivation, flocks and herds, were descried in the lower levels, which were a network of sandy nullahs; and upon the rises, the regular and irregular square or oblong habitations, called “Tembe,” were seen for the first time. Early September is, in this region, the depth of winter. Under the burning, glaring sun, the grass becomes white as the ground; the fields, stubbles stiff as harrows, are stained only by the shadow of passing clouds; the trees, except upon the nullah-banks, are gaunt and bare, the animals are walking skeletons, and nothing seems to flourish but flies and white ants, caltrops and grapple-plants. After crossing deep water-cuts trending N.E. and N.N.E., we descended a sharp incline and a rough ladder of boulders, and found a dirty and confined kraal, on the side of a rocky khad[8] or ravine, which drains off the surplus moisture of the westerly crags and highlands, and which affords sweet springs, that cover the soil as far as they extend with a nutritious and succulent grass. As this was to be a halting-place, a more than usually violent rush was made by the Baloch, the sons of Ramji, and the porters, to secure the best quarters. The Jemadar remaining behind with three of the Wanyamwezi, who were unable to walk, did not arrive till after noon, and my companion, suffering from a paroxysm of bilious fever, came in even later. Valentine was weaker than usual, and Gaetano groaned more frequently, “ang duk’hta”—body pains! To add other troubles, an ass had been lost, and “Khamsin,”—No. 50—my riding-animal, had by breaking a tooth in fighting incapacitated itself for food or drink: its feebleness compelled me to transfer the saddle to the last of the Zanzibar riding-asses, Siringe,—the Quarter-dollar—and Siringe, sadly back-sore, cowering in the hams, and slipping from under me every few minutes, showed present signs of giving in.

The basin of Inenge lies at the foot of the Rubeho or “Windy Pass,” the third and westernmost range of the Usagara Mountains. The climate, like that of Rumuma, is ever in extremes—during the day a furnace, and at night a refrigerator—the position is a funnel, which alternately collects the fiery sunbeams and the chilly winds that pour down from the misty highlands. The villagers of the settlements overlooking the ravine, flocked down to barter their animals and grain. Here, for the first time since our departure from the coast, honey, clarified butter, and, greatest boon of all, milk, fresh and sour, were procurable. The man who has been restricted to a diet so unwholesome as holcus and bajri, with an occasional treat of kennel-food,—broth and beans,—will understand that the first unexpected appearance of milk, butter, and honey formed an epoch in our journey.

The halt was celebrated with abundant drumming and droning, which lasted half the night; it served to cheer the spirits of the men, who had talked of nothing the whole day but the danger of being attacked by the Wahumba. On the next morning arrived a caravan of about 400 Wanyamwezi porters marching to the coast, under the command of Isa bin Hijji and three other Arab merchants. An interchange of civilities took place. The Arabs lacking cloth could not feed their slaves and porters, who deserted daily, imperilling a valuable investment in ivory. The Europeans could afford a small contribution of three Gorah or pieces of domestics: they received a present of fine white rice, a few pounds of salt, and a goat, in exchange for a little perfumed snuff and assafœtida, which after a peculiar infusion is applied to wounds, and which, administered internally, is considered a remedy for many complaints. I was allured to buy a few yards of rope, indispensable for packing the animals. The number of our asses being reduced from thirty to fifteen, and the porters from thirty-six to thirty, it was necessary to recruit. The Arabs sold two Wanyamwezi animals for ten dollars each, payable at Zanzibar. One proved valuable as a riding ass, and carried me to the Central Lake, and back to Unyanyembe: the other, though caponized and blind on the off-side, had become by bad treatment so obstinate and so cleverly vicious, that the Baloch called him “Shaytan yek-cham,” or the “one-eyed fiend:” he carried, besides sundries, four boxes of ammunition, weighing together 160 pounds, and even under these he danced like a deer. Nothing was against him but his character: after a few days he was cast adrift in the wilderness of Mgunda M’khali, because no man dared to load and lead him. Knowing that the Arab merchants upon this line hold it a point of honour to discourage, by refusing a new engagement, the down-porters in their proclivity to desert, and believing that it was a stranger’s duty to be even stricter than they are, I gave most stringent orders that any fugitive porter detected in my caravan should be sent back a prisoner to his employers. But the Coast-Arabs and the Wasawahili ignore this commercial chivalry, and shamelessly offer a premium to “levanters:” moreover, in these lands it is hard to make men understand the rapport between sayings and doings. Seven or eight fellows, who secretly left the party, were sent back; one, however, was taken on without my knowledge. Said bin Salim persuaded the merchants to lend us the services of three Wanyamwezi, who for sums varying from eight Shukkah to two cloths, and a coil large enough to make three wire bracelets, undertook to carry packs as far as Unyanyembe. Our Ras Kafilah had increased in Uzaramo his suite by the addition of “Zawada,”—the “nice gift,” a parting present of the headman Kizaya. She was a woman about thirty, with a black skin shining like a patent-leather boot, a bulging brow, little red eyes, a wide mouth which displayed a few long, strong, scattered teeth, and a figure considerably too bulky for her thin legs, which were unpleasantly straight, like ninepins. Her morale was superior to her physique; she was a patient and hard-working woman, and respectable in the African acceptation of the term. She was at once married off to old Musangesi, one of the donkey-men, whose nose and chin made him a caricature of our dear old friend Punch. After detecting her in a lengthy walk, perhaps not solitary, through the jungle, he was palpably guilty of such cruelty that I felt compelled to decree a dissolution of the marriage. After passing through sundry adventures she returned safely to Zanzibar, where, for aught I know, she may still grace the harem of Said bin Salim. At Inenge another female slave was added to the troop, in the person of the lady Sikujui, “Don’t know,” a “mulier nigris dignissima barris,” whose herculean person and virago manner raised her value to six cloths and a large coil of brass wire. The channel of her upper lip had been pierced to admit a disk of bone; her Arab master had attempted to correct the disfigurement by scarification and the use of rock-salt, yet the distended muscles insisted upon projecting sharply from her countenance, like a duck’s bill, or the beak of an ornithorhyncus. This truly African ornamentation would have supplied another instance to the ingenious author of “Anthropometamorphosis.”[9] “Don’t know’s” morals were frightful. She was duly espoused—as the forlorn hope of making her an “honest woman”—to Goha, the sturdiest of the Wak’hutu porters; after a week she treated him with a sublime contempt. She gave him first one, then a dozen rivals; she disordered the caravan by her irregularities; she broke every article entrusted to her charge, as the readiest way of lightening her burden, and—“le moindre défaut d’une femme galante est de l’être”—she deserted so shamelessly that at last Said bin Salim disposed of her, at Unyanyembe, for a few measures of rice, to a travelling trader, who came the next morning to complain of a broken head.

Isa bin Hijji did us various good services. He and his companions kindly waited some days to superintend our preparations for crossing the Rubeho Range. They supplied useful hints for keeping the caravan together at different places infamous for desertion. They gave me valuable information about Ugogo and Ujiji, and they placed at my disposal their house at Unyanyembe. They “wigged” the Kirangozi, or guide, for carelessness in not building a kraal-fence every night, and for not bringing in, as the custom is, wood and water. Kidogo was reproved for allowing his men to load our asses with their luggage, and the Baloch for their continual complaints about food. The latter had long forgotten the promises made at Muhama; they returned at every opportunity to their old tactic, that of obtaining, by all manner of pretexts, as much cloth and beads as possible, ostensibly for provisions, really for trading and buying slaves. At Rumuma they declared that one cloth per diem starved them. Said bin Salim sent them its value, about fifty pounds of beans, and they had abundant rations of beef and mutton, but they could not eat beans. At Inenge they wanted flour, and as the country people sold only grain, they gave themselves up to despair. I sent for the Jemadar and told him, in presence of the merchants, that, as a fitting opportunity had presented itself, I was willing to weed the party, by giving official dismissal to Khudabakhsh and Belok, to the invalid Ismail and his musical “brother” Shahdad. All four, when consulted, declared that they would die rather than blacken their faces by abandoning the “Haji Abdullah;” that same evening, however, as I afterwards learned, they wrote, by means of the Arabs, a heartrending complaint to their chief Jemadar at Zanzibar, declaring that he had thrown them into the fire (of affliction), and that their blood was upon his hands. My companion prepared official papers and maps for the Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, and I again indented upon the Consul and the Collector of Customs for drugs, medical comforts, and an extra supply of cloth and beads, to the extent of 400 dollars, for which a cheque upon my agents in Bombay was enclosed. The Arabs took leave of us on the 2nd September. I charged them repeatedly not to spread reports of our illness, and I saw them depart with regret. It had really been a relief to hear once more the voice of civility and sympathy.

The great labour still remained. Trembling with ague, with swimming heads, ears deafened by weakness, and limbs that would hardly support us, we contemplated with a dogged despair the apparently perpendicular path that ignored a zigzag, and the ladders of root and boulder, hemmed in with tangled vegetation, up which we and our starving drooping asses were about to toil. On the 10th September we hardened our hearts, and began to breast the Pass Terrible. My companion was so weak that he required the aid of two or three supporters; I, much less unnerved, managed with one. After rounding in two places wall-like sheets of rock—at their bases green grass and fresh water were standing close to camp, and yet no one had driven the donkeys to feed—and crossing a bushy jungly step, we faced a long steep of loose white soil and rolling stones, up which we could see the Wanyamwezi porters swarming, more like baboons scaling a precipice than human beings, and the asses falling after every few yards. As we moved slowly and painfully forwards, compelled to lie down by cough, thirst, and fatigue, the “sayhah” or war-cry rang loud from hill to hill, and Indian files of archers and spearmen streamed like lines of black ants in all directions down the paths. The predatory Wahumba, awaiting the caravan’s departure, had seized the opportunity of driving the cattle and plundering the villages of Inenge. Two passing parties of men, armed to the teeth, gave us this information; whereupon the negro “Jelai” proposed, fear-maddened—a sauve qui peut—leaving to their fate his employers, who, bearing the mark of Abel in this land of Cain, were ever held to be the head and front of all offence. Khudabakhsh, the brave of braves, being attacked by a slight fever, lay down, declaring himself unable to proceed, moaned like a bereaved mother, and cried for drink like a sick girl. The rest of the Baloch, headed by the Jemadar, were in the rear; they had levelled their matchlocks at one of the armed parties as it approached them, and, but for the interference of Kidogo, blood would have been shed.

By resting after every few yards, and by clinging to our supporters, we reached, after about six hours, the summit of the Pass Terrible, and there we sat down amongst the aromatic flowers and bright shrubs—the gift of mountain dews—to recover strength and breath. My companion could hardly return an answer; he had advanced mechanically and almost in a state of coma. The view from the summit appeared eminently suggestive, perhaps unusually so, because disclosing a retrospect of severe hardships, now past and gone. Below the foreground of giant fractures, huge rocks, and detached boulders, emerging from a shaggy growth of mountain vegetation, with forest glens and hanging woods, black with shade gathering in the steeper folds, appeared, distant yet near, the tawny basin of Inenge, dotted with large square villages, streaked with lines of tender green, that denoted the water-courses, mottled by the shadows of flying clouds, and patched with black where the grass had been freshly fired. A glowing sun gilded the canopy of dense smoke which curtained the nearer plain, and in the background the hazy atmosphere painted with its azure the broken wall of hill which we had traversed on the previous day.

Somewhat revived by the tramontana which rolled like an ice-brook down the Pass, we advanced over an easy step of rolling ground, decked with cactus and the flat-topped mimosa, with green grass and bright shrubs, to a small and dirty khambi, in a hollow flanked by heights, upon which several settlements appeared. At this place, called the “Great Rubeho,” in distinction from its western neighbour, I was compelled to halt. My invalid sub. had been seized with a fever-fit that induced a dangerous delirium during two successive nights; he became so violent that it was necessary to remove his weapons, and, to judge from certain symptoms, the attack had a permanent cerebral effect. Death appeared stamped upon his features, yet the Baloch and the sons of Ramji clamoured to advance, declaring that the cold disagreed with them.

On the 12th September the invalid, who, restored by a cool night, at first proposed to advance, and then doubted his ability to do so, was yet hesitating when the drum-signal for departure sounded without my order. The Wanyamwezi porters instantly set out. I sent to recal them, but they replied that it was the custom of their race never to return; a well-sounding principle against which they never offended except to serve their own ends. At length a hammock was rigged up for my companion, and the whole caravan broke ground.

The path ran along the flank of an eminence, and, ascending a second step, as steep but shorter than the Pass Terrible, placed us at the Little Rubeho, or Windy Pass, the summit of the third and westernmost range of the Usagara Mountains, raised 5,700 feet above the sea-level. It is the main water-parting of this ghaut-region. At Inenge the trend is still to the S.E.; beyond Rubeho the direction is S.W. Eventually, however, the drainage of both slope and counter-slope finds its way to the Indian Ocean, the former through the Mukondokwa and the Kingani, the latter through the Rwaha and the Rufiji Rivers.

A lively scene awaited my arrival at the “Little Rubeho.” From a struggling mass of black humanity, which I presently determined to be our porters, proceeded a furious shouting and yelling. Spears and daggers flashed in the sun, and cudgels played with a threshing movement which promised many a broken head. At the distance of a few yards, with fierce faces and in motionless martial attitudes, the right hand upon the axe-handle stuck in the waist-belt, and the left grasping the bow and two or three polished assegais, stood a few strong fellows, the forlorn hope of the fray. In the midst of the crowd, like Norman Ramsay’s troop begirt by French cavalry—to compare small things with great—rose and fell the chubby, thickset forms of Muinyi Wazira and his four Wak’hutu, who, undaunted by numbers, were dealing death to nose and scalp. Charge! Mavi ya Gnombe (“Bois de Vache”) charge! On! Mashuzi (“Fish Fry-soup”) on! Bite, Kuffan Kwema (“To die is good”) bite, Smite, Na daka Mali (“I want wealth”) smite! At length, when

a little active interference rescued the five “enfans perdus.” The porters had been fighting upon the question whether the men with small-pox should, or should not, be admitted into the kraal, and Muinyi Wazira and his followers, under the influence of potations which prevented their distinguishing friend from foe, had proved themselves, somewhat unnecessarily heroes. It is usually better to let these quarrels work themselves out; if prematurely cut short, the serpent, wrath, is scotched, not slain. A little “punishment” always cools the blood, and secures peace and quiet for the future. Moreover, the busy peacemaker here often shares the fate of M. Porceaugnac, and earns the reward of those who, according to the proverb, in quarrels interpose. It is vain to investigate, where all is lie, the origin of the squabble. Nothing easier, as the Welsh justice was fond of declaring, than to pronounce judgment after listening to one side of the question; but an impartial hearing of both would strike the inquiring mind with a sense of impotence. Perhaps it is not unadvisable to treat the matter after the fashion adopted by a “police-officer,” a certain captain in the X. Y. Z. army, who deemed it his duty to discourage litigiousness and official complaints amongst the quarrelsome Sindhi population of Hyderabad. The story is somewhat out of place; though so being, I will here recount it.

Would enter, for instance, two individuals in an oriental costume considerably damaged; one has a cloth carefully tied round his head, the other has artificially painted his eye and his ear with a few drops of blood from the nose. They express their emotions by a loud drumming of the tom-tom accompanying the high-sounding Cri de Haro—Faryad! Faryad! Faryad!—

“I’ll ‘Faryad’ yer, ye”——

After these, the usual appellatives with which the “native” was in those days, on such occasions received, the plaintiff is thus addressed:—

“Well, you—fellow! your complaint, what is it?”

“Oh, Sahib! Oh, cherisher of the poor! this man who is, the same hath broken into my house, and made me eat a beating, and called my ma and sister naughty names, and hath stolen my brass pot, and—”

“Bas! bas! enough!” cries the beak; “tie him”—the defendant—“up, and give him three dozen with thine own hand.”

The wrathful plaintiff, as may be imagined, is nothing loath. After being vigorously performed upon by the plaintiff aforesaid, the defendant is cast loose, and is in turn addressed as follows:—

“Well, now, you fellow! what say you?”

“Oh, my lord and master! Oh, dispenser of justice! what lies hath not this man told? What abominations hath he not devoured? Behold (pointing to his war-paint) the sight! He hath met me in the street; he hath thrown me down; he hath kicked and trampled upon me; he hath—”

“Bas! enough!” again cries the beak: “tie him—the plaintiff—up, and see if you can give him a good three dozen.”

Again it may be imagined that the three dozen are well applied by the revengeful defendant, and that neither that plaintiff nor that defendant ever troubled that excellent “police-officer” again.

On Rubeho’s summit we found a single village of villanous Wasagara; afterwards “made clean”—as the mild Hindu expresses the extermination of his fellow-men—by a caravan in revenge for the murder of a porter. We were delayed on the hill-top a whole day, despite the extreme discomfort of all hands. Water had to be fetched from a runnel that issued from a rusty pool shaded by tilted-up strata of sandstone, at least a mile distant from camp. Rain fell daily, alternating with eruptions of sun; a stream of thick mist rolled down the ravines and hollows, and at night the howling winds made Rubeho their meeting-place. Yet neither would the sons of Ramji carry my companion’s hammock, nor would Said bin Salim allow his children to be so burdened; moreover, whatever measures one attempted with the porters, the other did his best to thwart. “Men,” say the Persians, “kiss an ass for an object.” I attempted with Kidogo that sweet speech which, according to Orientals, is stronger than chains, and administered “goose’s oil” in such quantities that I was graciously permitted to make an arrangement for the transport of my companion with the Kirangozi.

On the 14th September, our tempers being sensibly cooled by the weather, we left the hill-top and broke ground upon the counterslope or landward descent of the Usagara Mountains. Following a narrow footpath that wound along the hill-flanks, on red earth growing thick clumps of cactus and feathery mimosa, after forty-five minutes’ march we found a kraal in a swampy green gap, bisected by a sluggish rivulet that irrigated scanty fields of grain, gourds, and water-melons, the property of distant villagers. For the first time since many days I had strength enough to muster the porters and to inspect their loads. The outfit, which was expected to last a year, had been half exhausted in three months. I summoned Said bin Salim, and passed on to him my anxiety. Like a veritable Arab, he declared, without the least emotion, that we had enough to reach Unyanyembe, where we certainly should be joined by the escort of twenty-two porters. “But how do you know that?” I inquired. “Allah is all-knowing,” replied Said; “but the caravan will come.” Such fatalism is infectious. I ceased to think upon the subject.

On the 15th September, after sending forward the luggage, and waiting as agreed upon for the return of the porters to carry my companion, I set out about noon, through hot sunshine tempered by the cool hill-breeze. Emerging from the grassy hollow, the path skirted a well-wooded hill and traversed a small savannah, overgrown with stunted straw and hedged in by a bushy forest. At this point massive trees, here single, there in holts and clumps, foliaged more gloomily than churchyard yews, and studded with delicate pink-flowers, rose from the tawny sun-burned expanse around, and defended from the fiery glare braky rings of emerald shrubbery, sharply defined as if by the forester’s hand. The savannah extended to the edge of a step which, falling deep and steep, suddenly disclosed to view, below and far beyond the shaggy ribs and the dark ravines and folds of the foreground, the plateau of Ugogo and its Eastern desert. The spectacle was truly impressive. The vault above seemed “an ample æther,” raised by its exceeding transparency higher than it is wont to be. Up to the curved rim of the western horizon, lay, burnished by the rays of a burning sun, plains rippled like a yellow sea by the wavy reek of the dancing air, broken towards the north by a few detached cones rising island-like from the surface, and zebra’d with long black lines, where bush and scrub and strip of thorn jungle, supplanted upon the watercourses, trending in mazy network southwards to the Rwaha River, the scorched grass and withered canes-stubbles, which seemed to be the staple growth of the land. There was nothing of effeminate or luxuriant beauty, nothing of the flush and fulness characterising tropical Nature, in this first aspect of Ugogo. It appeared what it is, stern and wild,—the rough nurse of rugged men,—and perhaps the anticipation of dangers and difficulties ever present to the minds of those preparing to endure the waywardness of its children, contributed not a little to the fascination of the scene. After lingering for a few minutes upon the crest of the step, with feelings which they will understand who after some pleasant months—oases in the grim deserts of Anglo-Indian life—spent among the tree-clad heights, the breezy lakes, and the turfy valleys of the Himalayas and the Neilgherries, sight from their last vantage-ground the jaundiced and fevered plains below, we scrambled down an irregular incline of glaring red clay and dazzling white chalk, plentifully besprinkled with dark-olive silex in its cherty crust. Below the descent was a level space upon a long ridge, where some small villages of Wasagara had surrounded themselves with dwarf fields of holcus, bajri, and maize. A little beyond this spot, called the “Third Rubeho,” we found a comfortless kraal on uneven ground, a sloping ledge sinking towards a deep ravine.

At the third Rubeho we were delayed for a day—as is customary before a “Tirikeza”—by the necessity of laying in supplies for a jungle march, and by the quarrels of the men. The Baloch were cross as naughty children, ever their case when cold and hungry: warm and full, they become merry as crickets. The Kirangozi in hot wrath brought his flag to Said bin Salim, and threatened to resign, because he had been preceded on the last stage by two of the Baloch: his complaints of this highly irregular proceeding were with difficulty silenced by force of beads. I remarked, however, a few days afterwards, when travelling through Ugogo, that the Kirangozi, considering himself in danger, applied to me for a vanguard of matchlockmen. The sons of Ramji combined with the porters in refusing to carry my companion, and had Bombay and Mabruki not shown good-will, we might have remained a week in the acme of discomfort. The asses, frightened by wild beasts, broke loose at night, and one was lost. The atmosphere was ever in excesses of heat and cold: in the morning, a mist so thick that it displayed a fog-rainbow—a segment of an arch, composed of faint prismatic tints—rolled like a torrent down the ravine in front: the sun, at noon, made us cower under the thin canvas, and throughout the twenty-four hours a gale like a “vent de bise,” attracted by the heat of the western plains, swept the encamping ground.

Sending forward my invalid companion in his hammock, I brought up the rear: Said bin Salim, who had waxed unusually selfish and surly, furtively left to us the task; he wore only sandals—he could not travel by night. Some of the Baloch wept at the necessity of carrying their gourds and skins.

On the 17th September, about 2 P.M., we resumed the descent of the rugged mountains. The path wound to the N.W. down the stony and bushy crest of a ridge with a deep woody gap on the right hand: presently after alternations of steep and step, and platforms patched with odoriferous plants, it fell into the upper channel of the Mandama or the Dungomaro, the “Devil’s Glen.” Dungomaro in Kisawahili is the proper name of an evil spirit, not in the European but in the African sense,—some unblessed ghost who has made himself unpopular to the general;—perhaps the term was a facetiousness on the part of the sons of Ramji.

It was a “via mala” down this great surface-drain of the western slopes, over boulders and water-rolled stones reposing upon deep sand, and with branches of thorny trees in places canopying the bed. After a march of five hours, I found the porters bivouacking upon a softer spot, and with difficulty persuaded four of the sons of Ramji to return and to assist the weary stragglers: horns were sounded, and shots were fired to guide the Baloch, who did not, however, arrive before 10 P.M.

On the 18th September, a final march of four hours placed us in the plains of Ugogo. Leaving the place of the last night’s bivouac, we pursued the line of the Dungomaro, occasionally quitting it where boulders obstructed progress, and presently we came to its lower bed, where perennial rills, exuding from its earth-walls and trickling down its side, veiled the bottom with a green and shrubby perfumed vegetation. As the plain was neared, the difficulties increased, and the scenery became curious. The Dungomaro appeared a large crevasse in lofty rocks of pink and gray granite, streaked with white quartz, and pudding’d with greenstone and black horneblend; the sole, strewed with a rugged layer of blocks, was side-lined with narrow ledges and terraces of brown humus, supporting dwarf cactus and stunted thorny trees; whilst high above towered stony wooded peaks, closing in the view on all sides. Farther down the bed huge boulders, sunburnt, and stained by the courses of rain-torrents, rose, perpendicularly as walls, to the height of one hundred and one hundred and twenty feet, and there the flooring was a sheet or slide of shiny and shelving rock, with broad fissures, and steep drops, and cups, “potholes,” baths, and basins, filed and cut by the friction of the gravelly torrents, regularly as if turned with the lathe. Where water lay, deep mud and thick clumps of grass and reed forced the path to run along the ledges at the sides of the base. Gradually, as the angle of inclination became more obtuse, the bed widened out, the tall stone-walls gave way to low earth-banks clad with gum-trees; pits, serving as wells, appeared in the deep loose sand, and the Dungomaro, becoming a broad, smooth Fiumara, swept away verging southwards into the plain. Before noon, I sighted from a sharp turn in the bed our tent pitched under a huge sycomore, on a level step that bounded the Fiumara to the right. It was a pretty spot in a barren scene, grassy, and grown with green mimosas, spreading out their feathery heads like parachutes, and shedding upon the ground a filmy shade that fluttered and flickered in the draughty breeze.

The only losses experienced during the scrambling descent, were a gun-case, containing my companion’s store of boots, and a chair and table. The latter, being indispensable on a journey where calculations, composition, and sketching were expected, I sent, during the evening halts, a detachment consisting of Muinyi Wazira, the Baloch, Greybeard Musa, and a party of slaves, to bring up the articles, which had been cache’d on the torrent bank. They returned with the horripilatory tale of the dangers lately incurred by the Expedition, which it appeared from them had been dogged by an army of Wasagara, thirsting for blood and furious for booty:—under such circumstances, how could they recover the chair and table? Some months afterwards an up-caravan commanded by a Msawahili found the articles lying where we had left them, and delivered them, for a consideration, to us at Unyanyembe. The party sent from Ugogo doubtless had passed a quiet, pleasant day, dozing in the shade at the nearest well.