we rounded the bluff northern point of the island, put into “Mtuwwa,” a little bay on its western shore, pitched the tent, and slept at ease.

Another halt was required on the 22nd April. The Sultan Kisesa demanded his blackmail, which amounted to one coil-bracelet and two cloths; provisions were hardly procurable, because his subjects wanted white beads, with which, being at a discount at Ujiji, we had not provided ourselves; and Kannena again successfully put in a tyrannical claim for 460 khete of blue-porcelains to purchase rations.

On the 23rd April we left Mtuwwa, and made for the opposite or western shore of the lake, which appeared about fifteen miles distant; the day’s work was nine hours. The two canoes paddled far apart, there was therefore little bumping, smoking, or quarrelling, till near our destination. At Murivumba the malaria, the mosquitoes, the crocodiles, and the men are equally feared. The land belongs to the Wabembe, who are correctly described in the “Mombas Mission Map” as “Menschenfresser—anthropophagi.” The practice arises from the savage and apathetic nature of the people, who devour, besides man, all kinds of carrion and vermin, grubs and insects, whilst they abandon to wild growths a land of the richest soil and of the most prolific climate. They prefer man raw, whereas the Wadoe of the coast eat him roasted. The people of a village which backed the port, assembled as usual to “sow gape-seed;” but though

and amongst cannibals one always fancies oneself considered in the light of butcher’s meat,—the poor devils, dark and stunted, timid and degraded, appeared less dangerous to the living than to the dead. In order to keep them quiet, the bull-headed Mabruki, shortly before dusk, fired a charge of duck-shot into the village; ensued loud cries and deprecations to the “Murungwana,” but happily no man was hurt. Sayfu the melancholist preferred squatting through the night on the bow of the canoe, to trusting his precious person on shore. We slept upon a reed-margined spit of sand, and having neglected to pitch the tent, were rained upon to our heart’s content.

We left Murivumba of the man-eaters early on the morning of the 24th April, and stood northwards along the western shore of the Lake: the converging trend of the two coasts told that we were fast approaching our destination. After ten hours’ paddling, halts included, we landed at the southern frontier of Uvira, in a place called Mamaletua, Ngovi, and many other names. Here the stream of commerce begins to set strong; the people were comparatively civil, they cleared for us a leaky old hut with a floor like iron,—it appeared to us a palace!—and they supplied, at moderate prices, sheep and goats, fish-fry, eggs, and poultry, grain, manioc and bird-pepper.

After another long stretch of fifteen rainy and sunny hours, a high easterly wind compelled the hard-worked crews to put into Muikamba (?) of Uvira. A neighbouring hamlet, a few hovels built behind a thick wind-wrung plantain-grove, backed a reed-locked creek, where the canoes floated in safety and a strip of clean sand on which we passed the night as pleasantly as the bright moonlight and the violent gusts would permit. On the 26th April, a paddle of three hours and a half landed us in the forenoon at the sandy baystand, where the trade of Uvira is carried on.

Great rejoicings ushered in the end of our outward-bound voyage. Crowds gathered on the shore to gaze at the new merchants arriving at Uvira, with the usual concert, vocal and instrumental, screams, shouts, and songs, shaums, horns, and tom-toms. The captains of the two canoes performed with the most solemn gravity a bear-like dance upon the mat-covered benches, which form the “quarter-decks,” extending their arms, pirouetting upon both heels, and springing up and squatting down till their hams touched the mats. The crews, with a general grin which showed all their ivories, rattled their paddles against the sides of their canoes in token of greeting, a custom derived probably from the ceremonious address of the Lakists, which is performed by rapping their elbows against their ribs. Presently Majid and Bekkari, two Arab youths sent from Ujiji by their chief, Said bin Majid, to collect ivory, came out to meet me; they gave me, as usual, the news, and said that having laid in the store of tusks required, they intended setting out southwards on the morrow. We passed half the day of our arrival on the bare landing-place, a strip of sand foully unclean, from the effect of many bivouacs. It is open to the water and backed by the plain of Uvira; one of the broadest of these edges of gently-inclined ground which separate the Lake from its trough of hills. Kannena at once visited the Mwami or Sultan Maruta, who owns a village on a neighbouring elevation; this chief invited me to his settlement, but the outfit was running low and the crew and party generally feared to leave their canoes. We therefore pitched our tents upon the sand, and prepared for the last labour, that of exploring the head of the Lake.

We had now reached the “ne plus ultra,” the northernmost station to which merchants have as yet been admitted. The people are generally on bad terms with the Wavira, and in these black regions a traveller coming direct from an enemy’s territory is always suspected of hostile intentions,—no trifling bar to progress. Opposite us still rose, in a high broken line, the mountains of inhospitable Urundi, apparently prolonged beyond the northern extremity of the waters. The head, which was not visible from the plain, is said to turn N.N. westwards, and to terminate after a voyage of two days, which some informants, however, reduce to six hours. The breadth of the Tanganyika is here between seven and eight miles. On the 28th April, all my hopes—which, however, I had hoped against hope—were rudely dashed to the ground. I received a visit from the three stalwart sons of the Sultan Maruta: they were the noblest type of Negroid seen near the Lake, with symmetrical heads, regular features and pleasing countenances; their well-made limbs and athletic frames of a shiny jet black, were displayed to advantage by their loose aprons of red and dark-striped bark-cloth, slung, like game-bags, over their shoulders, and were set off by opal-coloured eyeballs, teeth like pearls, and a profusion of broad massive rings of snowy ivory round their arms, and conical ornaments like dwarf marling-spikes of hippopotamus tooth suspended from their necks. The subject of the mysterious river issuing from the Lake, was at once brought forward. They all declared that they had visited it, they offered to forward me, but they unanimously asserted, and every man in the host of bystanders confirmed their words, that the “Rusizi” enters into, and does not flow out of the Tanganyika. I felt sick at heart. I had not, it is true, undertaken to explore the Coy Fountains by this route; but the combined assertions of the cogging Shaykh and the false Msawahili had startled me from the proprieties of reason, and—this was the result!

Bombay, when questioned, declared that my companion had misunderstood the words of Hamid bin Sulayyam, who spoke of a river falling into, not issuing from the lake; and added his own conviction that the Arab had never sailed north of Ubwari Island. Sayfu, who at Ujiji had described, as an eye-witness, the mouth of the déversoir and its direction for two days, now owned that he had never been beyond Uvira, and that he never intended to do so. Briefly, I had been deceived by a strange coincidence of deceit.

On the 28th April, we were driven from the strip of land which we originally occupied by a S. E. gale; here a “blat,” or small hurricane, which drives the foaming waters of the tideless sea up to the green margin of the land. Retiring higher up where the canoes were careened, we spread our bedding on the little muddy mounds that rise a few inches above the surface of grass-closed gutter which drains off the showers daily falling amongst the hills. I was still obliged to content myself with the lug-sail, thrown over a ridge-pole supported by two bamboo uprights, and pegged out like a tent below; it was too short to fall over the ends and to reach the ground, it was therefore a place of passage for mizzle, splash, and draught of watery wind. My companion inhabited the tent bought from the Fundi, it was thoroughly rotted, during his first trip across the Lake—by leakage in the boat, and by being “bushed” with mud instead of pegs on shore. He informed me that there was “good grub” at Uvira, and that was nearly the full amount of what I heard from or of him. Our crews had hutted themselves in the dense mass of grass near our tents; they lived as it were under arms, and nothing would induce them to venture away from their only escape, the canoes, which stood ready for launching whenever required. Sayfu swore that he would return to Ujiji rather than venture a few yards inland to buy milk, whilst Bombay and Mabrukí, who ever laboured under the idea that every brother-African of the jungle thirsted for their blood, upon the principle that wild birds hate tame birds, became, when the task was proposed to them, almost mutinous. Our nine days’ halt at Uvira had therefore unusual discomforts. The air, however, though damp and raw, with gust, storm, and rain, must have been pure in the extreme; appetite and sleep—except when the bull-frogs were “making a night of it”—were rarely wanting, and provisions were good, cheap, and abundant.

I still hoped, however, to lay down the extreme limits of the lake northwards. Majid and Bekkari the Arab agents of Said bin Majid, replied to the offer of an exorbitant sum, that they would not undertake the task for ten times that amount. The sons of Maruta had volunteered their escort; when I wanted to close with them, they drew off. Kannena, when summoned to perform his promise and reminded of the hire that he had received, jumped up and ran out of the tent: afterwards at Ujiji he declared that he had been willing to go, but that his crews were unanimous in declining to risk their lives,—which was perhaps true. Towards the end of the halt I suffered so severely from ulceration of the tongue, that articulation was nearly impossible, and this was a complete stopper to progress. It is a characteristic of African travel that the explorer may be arrested at the very bourne of his journey, on the very threshold of success, by a single stage, as effectually as if all the waves of the Atlantic or the sands of Arabia lay between.

Maruta and his family of young giants did not fail to claim their blackmail; they received a total of twelve cloths, five kitindi, and thirty khete of coral beads. They returned two fine goats, here worth about one cloth each, and sundry large gourds of fresh milk—the only food I could then manage to swallow. Kannena, who had been living at Maruta’s village, came down on the 5th May to demand 460 khete of blue porcelains, wherewith to buy rations for the return-voyage. Being heavily in debt, all his salt and coil-bracelets had barely sufficed for his liabilities: he had nothing to show for them but masses of Sambo—iron-wire rings—which made his ankles resemble those of a young hippopotamus. The slaves and all the fine tusks that came on board were the property of the crew.

Our departure from Uvira was finally settled for the 6th May: before taking leave of our “furthest point,” I will offer a few details concerning the commerce of the place.

Uvira is much frequented on account of its cheapness; it is the great northern depôt for slaves, ivory, grain, bark-cloth, and ironware, and, in the season, hardly a day elapses without canoes coming in for merchandise or provisions. The imports are the kitindi, salt, beads, tobacco, and cotton cloth. Rice does not grow there, holcus and maize are sold at one to two fundo of common beads per masuta or small load,—perhaps sixteen pounds,—and one khete is sufficient during the months of plenty to purchase five pounds of manioc, or two and even three fowls. Plantains of the large and coarse variety are common and cheap, and one cloth is given for two goodly earthen pots full of palm-oil. Ivory fetches its weight in brass wire: here the merchant expects for every 1000 dollars of outfit to receive 100 farasilah (3500 lbs.) of large tusks, and his profit would be great were it not counterbalanced by the risk and by the expense of transport. The prices in the slave-mart greatly fluctuate. When business is dull, boys under ten years may be bought for four cloths and five fundo of white and blue porcelains, girls for six shukkah, and as a rule at these remote places, as Uvira, Ujipa, and Marungu, slaves are cheaper than in the market of Ujiji. Adults fetch no price, they are notoriously intractable, and addicted to desertion. Bark-cloths, generally in the market, vary from one to three khete of coral beads. The principal industry of the Wavira is ironware, the material for which is dug in the lands lying at a little distance westward of the lake. The hoes, dudgeons, and small hatchets, here cost half their usual price at Ujiji. The people also make neat baskets and panniers, not unlike those of Normandy, and pretty bowls cut out of various soft woods, light and dark: the latter are also found, though rarely, at Ujiji and in the western islets.

A gale appeared to be brewing in the north—here the place of storms—and the crews, fearing wind and water, in the afternoon insisted upon launching their canoes and putting out to sea at 10 A.M. on the 6th May. After touching at the stages before described, Muikamba, Ngovi and Murivumba of the anthropophagi, we crossed without other accidents but those of weather—the rainy monsoon was in its last convulsions—the western branch or supplementary channel separating the Lake from the island of Ubwari. Before anchoring at Mzimu, our former halting-place, we landed at a steep ghaut, where the crews swarmed up a ladder of rock, and presently returned back with pots of the palm-oil, for which this is the principal depôt.

On the 10th May the sky was dull and gloomy, the wind was hushed, the “rain-sun” burnt with a sickly and painful heat; the air was still and sultry, stifling and surcharged, while the glimmerings of lurid lightning and low mutterings from the sable cloud-banks lying upon the northern horizon, cut by light masses of mist in a long unbroken line, and from the black arch rising above the Acroceraurian hills to the west, disturbed at times the death-like silence. Even the gulls on the beach forefelt a storm. I suggested a halt, but the crews were now in a nervous hurry to reach their homes,—impatience mastered even their prudence.

We left Mzimu at sunset, and for two hours coasted along the shore. It was one of those portentous evenings of the tropics—a calm before a tempest—unnaturally quiet; we struck out, however, boldly towards the eastern shore of the Tanganyika, and the western mountains rapidly lessened on the view. Before, however, we reached the mid-channel, a cold gust—in these regions the invariable presage of a storm—swept through the deepening shades cast by the heavy rolling clouds, and the vivid nimble lightning flashed, at first by intervals, then incessantly, with a ghastly and blinding glow, illuminating the “vast of night,” and followed by a palpable obscure, and a pitchy darkness, that weighed upon the sight. As terrible was its accompaniment of rushing, reverberating thunder, now a loud roar, peal upon peal, like the booming of heavy batteries, then breaking into a sudden crash, which was presently followed by a rattling discharge like the sharp pattering of musketry. The bundles of spears planted upright amidships, like paratonnerres, seemed to invite the electric fluid into the canoes. The waves began to rise, the rain descended, at first in warning-drops, then in torrents, and had the wind steadily arisen, the cockle-shell craft never could have lived through the short, chopping sea which characterises the Tanganyika in heavy weather. The crew, though blinded by the showers, and frightened by the occasional gusts, held their own gallantly enough; at times, however, the moaning cry, “O my wife!” showed what was going on within. Bombay, a noted Voltairian in fine weather, spent the length of that wild night in reminiscences of prayer. I sheltered myself from the storm under my best friend, the Mackintosh, and thought of the far-famed couplet of Hafiz,—with its mystic meaning I will not trouble the reader:—

Fortunately the rain beat down wind and sea, otherwise nothing short of a miracle could have preserved us for a dry death.

That night, however, was the last of our “sea-sorrows.” After floating about during the latter hours of darkness, under the land, but uncertain where to disembark, we made at 7 A.M., on the 11th May, Wafanya, our former station in ill-famed Urundi. Tired and cramped by the night’s work, we pitched tents, and escaping from the gaze of the insolent and intrusive crowd, we retired to spend a few hours in sleep.

I was suddenly aroused by Mabruki, who, rushing into the tent, thrust my sword into my hands, and exclaimed that the crews were scrambling into their boats. I went out and found everything in dire confusion. The sailors hurrying here and there, were embarking their mats and cooking-pots, some were in violent parley with Kannena, whilst a little knot was carrying a man, mortally wounded, down to the waters of the Lake. I saw at once that the affair was dangerous. On these occasions the Wajiji, whose first impulse is ever flight, rush for safety to their boats and push off, little heeding whom or what they leave behind. We therefore hurried in without delay.

When both crews had embarked, and no enemy appeared, Kannena persuaded them to reland, and proving to them their superior force, induced them to demand, at the arrow’s point, satisfaction of Kanoni, the chief, for the outrage committed by his subjects. During our sleep a drunken man—almost all these disturbances arise from fellows who have the “vin méchant”—had rushed from the crowd of Warundi, and, knobstick in hand, had commenced dealing blows in all directions. Ensued a general mêlée. Bombay, when struck, called to the crews to arm. The Goanese, Valentine, being fear-crazed, seized my large “Colt” and probably fired it into the crowd; at all events, the cone struck one of our own men below the right pap, and came out two inches to the right of the backbone. Fortunately for us he was a slave, otherwise the situation would have been desperate. As it was, the crowd became violently excited, one man drew his dagger upon Valentine, and with difficulty I dissuaded Kannena from killing him. As the crew had ever an eye to the “main chance,” food, they at once confiscated three goats, our store for the return voyage, cut their throats, and spitted the meat upon their spears:—thus the lamb died and the wolf dined, and the innocent suffered and the plunderer was joyed, the strong showed his strength and the weak his weakness, according to the usual formula of this sublunary world.

Whilst Kannena was absent, on martial purposes intent, I visited the sole sufferer in the fray, and after seeing his wound washed, I forbade his friends to knead the injured muscles, as they were doing, and to wrench his right arm from side to side. A cathartic seemed to have a beneficial effect. On the second day of his accident he was able to rise. But these occurrences in wild countries always cause long troubles. Kannena, who obtained from Sultan Kanoni, as blood-money, a small girl and a large sheep, declared that the man might die, and insisted upon my forthwith depositing, in case of such contingency, eight cloths, which, should the wound not prove fatal, would be returned. The latter clause might have been omitted; in these lands, nescit cloth missa reverti. As we were about to leave Ujiji, Kannena claimed for the man’s subsistence forty cloths,—or as equivalent, three slaves and six cloths—which also it was necessary to pay. A report was afterwards spread that the wretch had sunk under his wound. Valentine heard the intelligence with all that philosophy which distinguishes his race when mishaps occur to any but self. His prowess, however, cost me forty-eight dollars, here worth at least £100 in England. Still I had reason to congratulate myself that matters had not been worse. Had the victim been a Mjiji freeman, the trouble, annoyances, and expense would have been interminable. Had he been a Mrundi, we should have been compelled to fight our way, through a shower of arrows, to the boats; war would have extended to Ujiji, and “England,” as usual, would have had to pay the expenses. When Said bin Salim heard at Kazeh a distorted account of this mishap—of course it was reported that “Haji Abdullah” killed the man—he hit upon a notable device. Lurinda, the headman of Gungu, had often begged the Arab to enter into “blood-brotherhood” with him, and this had Said bin Salim pertinaciously refused, on religious grounds, to do. When informed that battle and murder were in the wind, he at once made fraternity with Lurinda, hoping to derive protection from his spear. His terrors afterwards persuaded him to do the same with Kannena: indeed at that time he would have hailed a slave as “Ndugu yango!” (my brother!)

When Kannena returned successful from his visit to Kanoni, we prepared to leave Wafanya. The fierce rain and the nightly drizzle detained us, however, till the next morning. On the 11th May we paddled round the southern point of Wafanya Bay to Makimoni, a little grassy inlet, where the canoes were defended from the heavy surf.

After this all was easy. We rattled paddles on the 12th May, as we entered our “patrie,” Nyasanga. The next night was spent in Bangwe Bay. We were too proud to sneak home in the dark; we had done something deserving a Certain Cross, we were heroes, braves of braves; we wanted to be looked at by the fair, to be howled at by the valiant. Early on the morning of the 13th May we appeared with shots, shouts, and a shocking noise, at the reed-lined gap of sand that forms the ghaut of Kawele. It was truly a triumphal entrance. All the people of that country-side had collected to welcome the crew, women and children, as well as men, pressed waist-deep into the water to receive friend and relative with becoming affection:—the gestures, the clamour, and the other peculiarities of the excited mob I must really leave to the reader’s imagination; the memory is too much for me.

But true merit is always modest; it aspires to Honor, not honours. The Wagungu, or whites, were repeatedly “called for.” I broke, however, through the sudant, strident, hircine throng, and regaining, with the aid of Riza’s strong arm, the old Tembe, was salaamed to by the expectant Said bid Salim and the Jemadar. It felt like a return home. But I had left, before my departure, with my Arab chargé-d’affaires, four small loads of cloth, and on inspecting the supplies there remained only ten shukkah. I naturally inquired what had become of the 110 others, which had thus prematurely disappeared. Said bin Salim replied by showing a small pile of grain-bags, and by informing me that he had hired twenty porters for the down-march. He volunteered, it is true, in case I felt disposed to finish the Periplus of the Lake, to return to Kazeh and to superintend the transmission of our reserve supplies; as, however, he at the same time gave me to understand that he could not escort them back to Ujiji, I thanked him for his offer, and declined it.

We had expended upwards of a month—from the 10th April to the 13th May, 1858—in this voyage fifteen days outward bound, nine at Uvira, and nine in returning. The boating was rather a severe trial. We had no means of resting the back; the holds of the canoes, besides being knee-deep in water, were disgracefully crowded;—they had been appropriated to us and our four servants by Kannena, but by degrees, he introduced in addition to the sticks, spears, broken vases, pots, and gourds, a goat, two or three small boys, one or two sick sailors, the little slave-girl and the large sheep. The canoes were top-heavy with the number of their crew, and the shipping of many seas spoilt our tents, and besides, wetted our salt, and soddened our grain and flour; the gunpowder was damaged, and the guns were honeycombed with rust. Besides the splashing of the paddles and the dashing of waves, heavy showers fell almost every day and night, and the intervals were bursts of burning sunshine.

The discomfort of the halt was not less than that of the boat. At first we pitched tents near the villages, in tall, fetid grass, upon ground never level, where stones were the succedanea for tent-pegs stolen for fuel, and where we slept literally upon mire. The temperature inside was ever in extremes, now a raw rainy cold, then a steam-bath that damped us like an April shower. The villagers, especially in the remoter districts, were even more troublesome, noisy, and inquisitive, than the Wagogo. A “notable passion of wonder” appeared in them. We felt like baited bears: we were mobbed in a moment, and scrutinised from every point of view by them; the inquisitive wretches stood on tiptoe, they squatted on their hams, they bent sideways, they thrust forth their necks like hissing geese to vary the prospect. Their eyes, “glaring lightning-like out of their heads,” as old Homer hath it, seemed to devour us; in the ecstasy of curiosity they shifted from one Muzungu to his “brother,” till, like the well-known ass between the two bundles of hay, they could not enjoy either. They were pertinacious as flies, to drive them away was only to invite a return; whilst, worst grief of all, the women were plain, and their grotesque salutations resembled the “encounter of two dog-apes.” The Goanese were almost equally honoured, and the operation of cooking was looked upon as a miracle. At last my experience in staring enabled me to categorise the infliction as follows. Firstly, is the stare furtive, when the starer would peep and peer under the tent, and its reverse, the stare open. Thirdly, is the stare curious or intelligent, which, generally accompanied with irreverent laughter regarding our appearance. Fourthly, is the stare stupid, which denoted the hebete incurious savage. The stare discreet is that of sultans and great men; the stare indiscreet at unusual seasons is affected by women and children. Sixthly, is the stare flattering—it was exceedingly rare, and equally so was the stare contemptuous. Eighthly, is the stare greedy; it was denoted by the eyes restlessly bounding from one object to another, never tired, never satisfied. Ninthly, is the stare peremptory and pertinacious, peculiar to crabbed age. The dozen concludes with the stare drunken, the stare fierce or pugnacious, and finally the stare cannibal, which apparently considered us as articles of diet. At last, weary of the stare by day, and the tent by night, I preferred inhabiting a bundle of clothes in the wet hold of the canoe; this, at least, saved the trouble of wading through the water, of scrambling over the stern, and of making a way between the two close lines of grumbling and surly blacks that manned the paddle-benches; whenever, after a meaningless halt, some individual thought proper to scream out “Safári!” (journey!)

Curious to say, despite all these discomforts our health palpably improved. My companion, though still uncomfortably deaf, was almost cured of his blindness. When that ulcerated mouth, which rendered it necessary for me to live by suction—generally milk and water—for seventeen days, had returned to its usual state, my strength gradually increased. Although my feet were still swollen by the perpetual wet and by the painful funza or entozoon, my hands partially lost their numbness, and the fingers which before could hold the pen only for a few minutes were once more able freely to write and sketch. In fact, I date a slow but sensible progress towards a complete recovery of health from the days and nights spent in the canoe and upon the mud of the Tanganyika Lake. Perhaps mind had also acted upon matter; the object of my mission was now effected, and this thought enabled me to cast off the burden of grinding care with which the imminent prospect of a failure had before sorely laden me.

The rainy monsoon broke up on the 14th May, the day after my return to Kawele, and once more, after six months of incessant storm-wind and rain, clouds and mists, we had fine, cool mornings, clear warm sun, and deliciously cold nights. The climate became truly enjoyable, but the scenery somewhat lost its earlier attractions. The faultless, regular, and uniform beauty, and the deep stillness of this evergreen land did not fail to produce that strange, inexplicable melancholy of which most travellers in tropical countries complain. In this Nature all is beautiful that meets the eye, all is soft that affects the senses; but she is a Siren whose pleasures soon pall upon the enjoyer. The mind, enfeebled perhaps by an enervating climate, is fatigued and wearied by the monotony of the charms which haunt it; cloyed with costly fare, it sighs for the rare simplicity of the desert. I have never felt this sadness in Egypt and Arabia, and was never without it in India and Zanzibar.

Our outfit, as I have observed, had been reduced to a minimum. Not a word from Snay bin Amir, my agent at Kazeh, had arrived in reply to my many missives, and old Want began to stare at us with the stare peremptory. “Wealth,” say the Arabs, “hath one devil, poverty a dozen,” and nowhere might a caravan more easily starve than in rich and fertile Central Africa. Travellers are agreed that in these countries “baggage is life:” the heartless and inhospitable race will not give a handful of grain without return, and to use the Moslem phrase, “Allah pity him who must beg of a beggar!” As usual on such occasions, the Baloch began to clamour for more rations—they received two cloths per diem—and to demand a bullock wherewith to celebrate their Eed or greater Festival. There were several Arab merchants at Kawele, but they had exhausted their stock in purchasing slaves and ivory. None in fact were so rich as ourselves, and we were reduced to ten shukkah, ten fundo of coral beads, and one load of black porcelains, which were perfectly useless. With this pittance we had to engage hammals for the hammock, to feed seventy-five mouths, and to fee several Sultans; in fact, to incur the heavy expenses of marching back 260 miles to Unyanyembe.

Still, with an enviable development of Hope, Said bin Salim determined that we should reach Kazeh unfamished. We made the necessary preparations for the journey, patched tents and umbrella, had a grand washing and scouring day, mended the portmanteaus, and ground the grain required for a month’s march, hired four porters for the manchil, distributed ammunition to Said bin Salim and the Baloch, who at once invested it in slaves, and exchanged with Said bin Majid several pounds of lead for palm-oil, which would be an economy at the Malagarazi Ferry. For some days past rumours had reached here that a large caravan of Wanyamwazi porters, commanded by an Arab merchant, was approaching Kawele. I was not sanguine enough to expose myself to another disappointment. Suddenly on the 22d May, frequent musket shots announced the arrival of strangers, and at noon the Tembe was surrounded with boxes and bales, porters, slaves, and four “sons of Ramji,” Mbaruko, Sangora, Khamisi, and Shehe. Shahdad the Baloch, who had been left behind at Kazeh in love, and in attendance upon his “brother,” Ismail, who presently died, had charge of a parcel of papers and letters from Europe, India, and Zanzibar. They were the first received after nearly eleven months, and of course they brought with them evil tidings,—the Indian mutinies. En revanche, I had a kindly letter from M. Cochet, Consul of France, and from Mr. Mansfield, of the U.S., who supplied me with the local news, and added for my edification a very “low-church” Tract, the first of the family, I opine, that has yet presented itself in Central Africa. Mr. Frost reported that he had sent at once a letter apprising me of Lieut.-Colonel Hamaton’s death, and had forwarded the medical supplies for which I indented from K’hutu: these, as has been explained, had not reached me. Snay bin Amir also informed me that he had retained all the packages for which he could find no porters; that three boxes had been stolen from his “godown;” and finally, that the second supply, 400 dollars-worth of cloth and beads, for which I had written at Inenge and had re-written at Ugogo and other places, was hourly expected to arrive.

This was an unexpected good fortune, happening at a crisis when it was really wanted. My joy was somewhat damped by inspecting the packs of the fifteen porters. Twelve were laden with ammunition which was not wanted, and with munitions de bouche, which were: nearly half the bottles of curry-powder, spices, and cognac were broken, tea, coffee, and sugar, had been squeezed out of their tin canisters, and much of the rice and coffee had disappeared. The three remaining loads were one of American domestics,—sixty shukkahs—and the rest contained fifteen coral-bracelets and white beads. All were the refuse of their kind: the good Hindoos at Zanzibar had seized this opportunity to dispose of their flimsy, damaged, and unsaleable articles. This outfit was sufficient to carry us comfortably to Unyanyembe. I saw, however, with regret that it was wholly inadequate for the purpose of exploring the two southern thirds of the Tanganyika Lake, much less for returning to Zanzibar, viâ the Nyassa or Maravi Lake, and Kilwa, as I had once dreamed.

I received several visits from our old companion, Muhinna bin Sulayman of Kazeh, and three men of his party. He did not fail to improve the fact of his having brought up my supplies in the nick of time. He required five coil-bracelets and sixteen pounds of beads as my share of the toll taken from him by the Lord of the Malagarazi Ferry. For the remaining fifteen coil-bracelets he gave me forty cloths, and for the load and a half of white beads he exchanged 880 strings of blue porcelains—a commercial operation by which he cleared without trouble 35 per cent. Encouraged by my facility, he proposed to me the propriety of paying part of the kuhonga or blackmail claimed from new comers by Rusimba and Kannena. But facility has its limits: I quietly objected, and we parted on the best of terms.