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:—

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

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.

This fresh-water sea is known throughout the African tribes as Nyanza, and the similarity of the sound to “Nyassa,” the indigenous name of the little Maravi or Kilwa Lake, may have caused in part the wild confusion in which speculative geographers have involved the Lake Regions of Central Africa. The Arabs, after their fashion of deriving comprehensive names from local and minor features, call it Ukerewe, in the Kisukuma dialect meaning the “place of Kerewe” (Kelewe), an islet. As has been mentioned, they sometimes attempt to join by a river, a creek, or some other theoretical creation, the Nyanza with the Tanganyika, the altitude of the former being 3750 feet above sea-level, or 1900 feet above the latter, and the mountain regions which divide the two having been frequently travelled over by Arab and African caravans. Hence the name Ukerewe has been transferred in the “Mombas Mission Map” to the northern waters of the Tanganyika. The Nyanza, as regards name, position, and even existence, has hitherto been unknown to European geographers; but, as will presently appear, descriptions of this sea by native travellers have been unconsciously transferred by our writers to the Tanganyika of Ujiji, and even to the Nyassa of Kilwa.

M. Brun-Rollet (“Le Nil Blanc et le Soudan,” p. 209) heard that on the west of the Padongo tribe,—whom he places to the S. of Mount Kambirah, or below 1° S. lat.—lies a great lake, from whose northern extremity issues a river whose course is unknown. In the map appended to his volume this water is placed between 1° S. and 3° N. lat., and about 25° 50′ E. long. (Greenwich), and the déversoir is made an influent of the White Nile.

Bowdich (“Discoveries of the Portuguese,” pp. 131, 132), when speaking of the Maravi Lake (the Nyassa), mentions that the “negroes or the Moors of Melinde” have mentioned a great water which is known to reach Mombaca, which the Jesuit missionaries conjectured to communicate with Abyssinia, and of which Father Lewis Marianna, who formerly resided at Tete, recommended a discovery, in a letter addressed to the government at Goa, which is still preserved among the public archives of that city. Here the confusion of the Nyanza, to which there was of old a route from Mombasah with the Nyassa, is apparent.

At the southern point, where the Muingwira River falls into the tortuous creek, whose surface is a little archipelago of brown rocky islets crowned with trees, and emerging from the blue waters, the observed latitude of the Nyanza Lake, is 2° 24′ S.; the longitude by dead reckoning from Kazeh is E. long. 33° and nearly due north, and the altitude by B. P. thermometer 3750 feet above sea-level. Its extent to the north is unknown to the people of the southern regions, which rather denotes some difficulty in travelling than any great extent. They informed my companion that from Mwanza to the southern frontier of Karagwah is a land journey of one month, or a sea voyage of five days towards the N. N. W. and then to the north. They also pointed out the direction of Unyoro N. 20° W. The Arab merchants of Kazeh have seen the Nyanza opposite Weranhanja, the capital district of Armanika, King of Karagwah, and declare that it receives the Kitangure River, whose mouth has been placed about the equator. Beyond that point all is doubtful. The merchants have heard that Suna, the late despot of Uganda, built matumbi, or undecked vessels, capable of containing forty or fifty men, in order to attack his enemies, the Wasoga, upon the creeks which indent the western shores of the Nyanza. This, if true, would protract the lake to between 1° and 1° 30′ of N. lat., and give it a total length of about 4° or 250 miles. This point, however, is still involved in the deepest obscurity. Its breadth was estimated as follows. A hill, about 200 feet above the water-level, shows a conspicuous landmark on the eastern shore, which was set down as forty miles distant. On the south-western angle of the line from the same point ground appeared; it was not, however, perceptible on the north-west. The total breadth, therefore, has been assumed at eighty miles,—a figure which approaches the traditions unconsciously chronicled by European geographers. In the vicinity of Usoga the lake, according to the Arabs, broadens out: of this, however, and in fact of all the formation north of the equator, it is at present impossible to arrive at certainty.

The Nyanza is an elevated basin or reservoir, the recipient of the surplus monsoon-rain which falls in the extensive regions of the Wamasai and their kinsmen to the east, the Karagwah line of the Lunar Mountains to the west, and to the south Usukuma or Northern Unyamwezi. Extending to the equator in the central length of the African peninsula, and elevated above the limits of the depression in the heart of the continent, it appears to be a gap in the irregular chain which, running from Usumbara and Kilima-ngao to Karagwah, represents the formation anciently termed the Mountains of the Moon. The physical features, as far as they were observed, suggest this view. The shores are low and flat, dotted here and there with little hills; the smaller islands also are hill-tops, and any part of the country immediately on the south would, if inundated to the same extent, present a similar aspect. The lake lies open and elevated, rather like the drainage and the temporary deposit of extensive floods than a volcanic creation like the Tanganyika, a long narrow mountain-girt basin. The waters are said to be deep, and the extent of the inundation about the southern creek proves that they receive during the season an important accession. The colour was observed to be clear and blue, especially from afar in the early morning; after 9 a.m., when the prevalent south-east wind arose, the surface appeared greyish, or of a dull milky white, probably the effect of atmospheric reflection. The tint, however, does not, according to travellers, ever become red or green like the waters of the Nile. But the produce of the lake resembles that of the river in its purity; the people living on the shores prefer it, unlike that of the Tanganyika, to the highest, and clearest springs; all visitors agree in commending its lightness and sweetness, and declare that the taste is rather of river or of rain-water than resembling the soft slimy produce of stagnant muddy bottoms, or the rough harsh flavour of melted ice and snow.

From the southern creek of the Nyanza, and beyond the archipelago of neighbouring islets, appear the two features which have given to this lake the name of Ukerewe. The Arabs call them “Jezirah”—an ambiguous term, meaning equally insula and peninsula—but they can scarcely be called islands. The high and rocky Mazita to the east, and the comparatively flat Ukerewe on the west, are described by the Arabs as points terminating seawards in bluffs, and connected with the eastern shore by a low neck of land, probably a continuous reef, flooded during the rains, but never so deeply as to prevent cattle fording the isthmus. The northern and western extremities front deep water, and a broad channel separates them from the southern shore, Usukuma. The Arabs, when visiting Ukerewe or its neighbour, prefer hiring the canoes of the Wasukuma, and paddling round the south-eastern extremity of the Nyanza, to exposing their property and lives by marching through the dangerous tribes of the coast.

Mazita belongs to a people called Makwiya. Ukerewe is inhabited, according to some informants, by Wasukuma; according to others, the Wakerewe are marked by their language as ancient emigrants from the highlands of Karagwah. In Ukerewe, which is exceedingly populous, are two brother Sultans: the chief is “Machunda;” the second, “Ibanda,” rules at Wiru, the headland on the western limit. The people collect ivory from the races on the eastern mainland, and store it, awaiting an Arab caravan. Beads are in most request; as in Usukuma generally, not half a dozen cloths of native and foreign manufacture will be found upon a hundred men. The women are especially badly clad; even the adult maidens wear only the languti of India, or the Nubian apron of aloe-fibre, strung with the pipe-stem bead called sofi, and blackened, like India-rubber, by use; it is fastened round the waist, and depends about one foot by six or seven inches in breadth.

The Arabs who traffic in these regions generally establish themselves with Sultan Machunda, and send their slaves in canoes round the south-east angle of the lake to trade with the coast people. These races are successively from the south; the Washaki, at a distance of three marches, and their inland neighbours the Wataturu; then the Warudi, a wild tribe, rich in ivory, lying about a fortnight’s distance; and beyond them the Wahumba, or Wamasai. Commercial transactions extend along the eastern shore as far as T’hiri, or Ut’hiri, a district between Ururu and Uhumba. This is possibly the origin of the island of Tiri or Kittiri, placed in my companion’s map near the north-west extremity of the Nyanza Lake, off the coast of Uganda, where there is a province called Kittara, peculiarly rich in coffee. The explorer heard from the untrustworthy country people that, after a long coasting voyage, they arrived at an island where the inhabitants, a poor and naked race, live on fish, and cultivate coffee for sale. The information appears suspicious. The Arabs know of no islands upon the Nyanza which produce coffee. Moreover, if the people had any traffic, they would not be without clothing.

The savagery of the races adjacent to the Nyanza has caused accidents amongst travelling traders. About five years ago a large caravan from Tanga, on the eastern coast, consisting of 400 or 500 guns, and led by Arab merchants, at the end of a journey which had lasted nearly two years, happened to quarrel with the Wahumba or Wamasai near the lake. The subject was the burning down of some grass required for pasture by the wild men. Words led to blows; the caravan, having but two or three pounds of gunpowder, was soon dispersed; seven or eight merchants lost their lives, and a few made their escape to Unyanyembe. Before our departure from Kazeh, the slaves of Salim bin Rashid, having rescued one of the wounded survivors, who had been allowed by the Wamasai to wander into Urudi, brought him back to Kazeh. He described the country as no longer practicable. In 1858 also the same trading party, the principal authority for these statements, were relieved of several bales of cloth, during their sleep, when bivouacking upon an inhabited island near the eastern shore.

The altitude, the conformation of the Nyanza Lake, the argilaceous colour and the sweetness of its waters, combine to suggest that it may be one of the feeders of the White Nile. In the map appended to M. Brun-Rollet’s volume, before alluded to, the large water west of the Padongo tribe, which clearly represents the Nyanza or Ukerewe, is, I have observed, made to drain northwards into the Fitri Lake, and eventually to swell the main stream of the White River. The details supplied by the Egyptian Expedition, which, about twenty years ago, ascended the White River to 3° 22′ N. lat., and 31° 30′ E. long., and gave the general bearing of the river from that point to its source as south-east, with a distance of one month’s journey, or from 300 to 350 miles, would place the actual sources 2° S. lat., and 35° E. long., or in 2° eastward of the southern creek of the Nyanza Lake. This position would occupy the northern counterslope of the Lunar Mountains, the upper water-shed of the high region whose culminating apices are Kilima-Ngao, Kenia, and Doengo Engai. The distance of these peaks from the coast, as given by Dr. Krapf, must be considerably reduced, and little authority can be attached to his river Tumbiri.[13] The site, supposed by Mr. Macqueen (“Proceedings of the Geographical Society of London,” January 24th, 1859), to be at least 21,000 feet above the level of the sea, and consequently 3000 or 4000 feet above the line of perpetual congelation, would admirably explain the two most ancient theories concerning the source of the White River, namely, that it arises in a snowy region, and that its inundation is the result of tropical rains.

It is impossible not to suspect that between the upper portion of the Nyanza and the watershed of the White Nile there exists a longitudinal range of elevated ground, running from east to west—a “furca” draining northwards into the Nile and southwards into the Nyanza Lake—like that which separates the Tanganyika from the Maravi or Nyassa of Kilwa. According to Don Angelo Vinco, who visited Loquéck in 1852, beyond the cataract of Garbo—supposed to be in N. lat. 2° 40′—at a distance of sixty miles lie Robego, the capital of Kuenda, and Lokoya (Logoja), of which the latter receives an affluent from the east. Beyond Lokoya the White Nile is described as a small and rocky mountain-river, presenting none of the features of a stream flowing from a broad expanse of water like the great Nyanza reservoir.

The periodical swelling of the Nyanza Lake, which, flooding a considerable tract of land on the south, may be supposed—as it lies flush with the basal surface of the country—to inundate extensively all the low lands that form its periphery, forbids belief in the possibility of its being the head-stream of the Nile, or the reservoir of its periodical inundation. In Karagwah, upon the western shore, the masika or monsoon lasts from October to May or June, after which the dry season sets in. The Egyptian Expedition found the river falling fast at the end of January, and they learned from the people that it would again rise about the end of March, at which season the sun is vertical over the equator. About the summer solstice (June), when the rains cease in the regions south of and upon the equator, the White Nile begins to flood. From March to the autumnal equinox (September) it continues to overflow its banks till it attains its magnitude, and from that time it shrinks through the winter solstice (December) till March. The Nile is, therefore, full during the dry season and low during the rainy season south of and immediately upon the equator. And as the northern counterslope of Kenia will, to a certain extent, be a lee-land, like Ugogo, it cannot have the superfluity of moisture necessary to send forth a first-class stream. The inundation is synchronous with the great falls of the northern equatorial regions, which extend from July to September, and is dependent solely upon the tropical rains. It is, therefore, probable that the true sources of the “Holy River” will be found to be a network of runnels and rivulets of scanty dimensions, filled by monsoon torrents, and perhaps a little swollen by melted snow on the northern water-parting of the Eastern Lunar Mountains.

Of the tribes dwelling about the Nyanza, the western have been already described. The Washaki and the Warudi are plundering races on the east, concerning whom little is known. Remain the Wahinda, a clan or class alluded to in this and a former chapter, and the Wataturu, an extensive and once powerful tribe, mentioned when treating of the regions about Tura.

The Wahinda (in the singular Muhinda) are, according to some Arabs, a foreign and ruling family, who coming from a distant country, probably in the neighbourhood of Somaliland, conquered the lands, and became Sultans. This opinion seems to rest upon physical peculiarities,—the superiority of the Wahinda in figure, stature, and complexion to their subjects suggesting a difference of origin. Others explain the word Muhinda to mean a cadet of royal family, and call the class Bayt el Saltanah, or the Kingly House. Thus, whilst Armanika is the Mkámá or Sovereign of Karagwah, his brother simply takes the title of Muhinda. These conflicting statements may be reconciled by the belief general in the country that the families of the Sultans are a foreign and a nobler race, the date of whose immigration has long fallen into oblivion. This may be credited without difficulty; the physique of the rulers—approximating more to the northern races of Africa—is markedly less negroid than that of their subjects, and the difference is too great to be explained by the effects of climate or of superior diet, comfort, and luxury.

The Wahinda are found in the regions of Usui, Karagwah, Uhha, Uvinza, Uyungu, Ujiji, and Urundi, where they live in boma—stockades—and scattered villages. Of this race are the Sultans Suwarora of the Wasui, Armanika of Karagwah, Kanoni of Uhha, Kanze of Uyungu, Mzogera of Uvinza, Rusimba of Ujiji, Mwezi of Urundi, Mnyamurunde of Uyofo, Gaetawa of Uhayya, and Mutawazi of Utumbara. The Wahinda affect a milk diet which is exceedingly fattening, and anoint themselves plentifully with butter and ghee, to soften and polish the skin. They never sell their fellow clansmen, are hospitable and civil to strangers, seldom carry arms, fear nothing from the people, and may not be slain even in battle. Where the Wahinda reign, their ministers are the Watosi, a race which has been described when treating of their head-quarters Karagwah.

The Wataturu extend from the Mángewá district, two marches northward of Tura in a north-north-westerly diagonal, to Usmáo, a district of Usukuma, at the south-east angle of the Nyanza Lake. On the north and east they are limited by the Wahumba, on the south by the people of Iramba, and there is said to be a connection between these three tribes. This wild pastoral people were formerly rich in flocks and herds; they still have the best asses in the country. About five years ago, however, they were persuaded by Msimbira, a chief of Usukuma, to aid him against his rival Mpagamo, who had called in the Arabs to his assistance. During the long and bitter contest which ensued, the Arabs, as has been related, were worsted in the field, and the Wataturu suffered severe losses in cattle. Shortly before the arrival of the Expedition at Kazeh the foreign merchants had despatched to Utaturu a plundering party of sixty slave-musketeers, who, however, suddenly attacked by the people, were obliged to fly, leaving behind eighteen of their number. This event was followed by a truce, and the Wataturu resumed their commerce with Tura and Unyanyembe, where, in 1858, a caravan, numbering about 300 men, came in. Two small parties of this people were also met at Tura; they were small, dark, and ugly savages, almost beardless, and not unlike the “Thakur” people in Maharatta-land. Their asses, provided with neat saddle-bags of zebra skin, were better dressed than the men, who wore no clothing except the simplest hide-sandals. According to the Arabs this clan affects nudity: even adult maidens dispense with the usual skin-kilt. The men ignored bows and arrows, but they were efficiently armed with long spears, double-edged sime, and heavy hide shields. They brought calabash or monkey-bread flour—in this country, as in Ugogo, a favourite article of consumption—and a little coarse salt, collected from the dried mud of a Mbuga or swamp in the land of Iramba, to be bartered for holcus and beads. Their language sounded to the unpractised ear peculiarly barbarous, and their savage suspiciousness rendered it impossible to collect any specimens.

At Kazeh, sorely to my disappointment, it was finally settled, in a full conclave of Arabs, that we must return to the coast by the tedious path with which we were already painfully familiar. At Ujiji the state of our finances had been the sole, though the sufficient obstacle to our traversing Africa from east to west; we might—had we possessed the means—by navigating the Tanganyika southwards, have debouched, after a journey of three months, at Kilwa. The same cause prevented us from visiting the northern kingdoms of Karagwah and Uganda; to effect this exploration, however, we should have required not only funds but time. The rains there setting in about September render travelling impossible; our two years’ leave of absence were drawing to a close, and even had we commanded a sufficient outfit, we were not disposed to risk the consequences of taking an extra twelve months. No course, therefore, remained but to regain the coast. We did not, however, give up hopes of making our return useful to geography, by tracing the course of the Rwaha or Rufijí River, and of visiting the coast between the Usagara Mountains and Kilwa, an unknown line not likely to attract future travellers.