[#] A sort of courier.The prevailing type of elephant in these parts differs so essentially from that of Toro, that I have been forced to the conclusion that there are two distinct varieties; a theory in which the natives universally concur.When in Toro I saw more than a thousand elephant, and without exception they carried a thick, heavy type of tusk, the elephant themselves being unusually large and solid.In Mboga, on the other hand, the prevailing type was a much smaller elephant, with very long thin tusks. Two cows shot by Mr. Bagge carried tusks about 4 ft., and no thicker than the butt-end of a billiard-cue.The average height of old bulls in Mboga is about 9 ft., while the only two that I shot in Toro were 11 ft. and upwards, and several others that I had a chance of observing closely must have been about the same size. The Indian notion of twice the circumference of the foot equalling the height does not hold with the African species; I generally found that it fell short of the height by about 8 or 10 in. In a subsequent chapter I have dealt fully with this question.A few days later, answering to the call of elephant, I came on a herd of cows, one of which I shot, hoping to be able to send the calf into Fort Gerry. The little fellow stood about 3 ft. high, and stalked towards us in the most majestic manner, rumbling and grunting on a 12 ft. scale at least. So confident was his advance that my boys, guns and all, fled without more ado, and it was only when I had caught him by the tail that they ventured back. His strength was amazing, and it needed the united efforts of myself and four boys to throw him. However, we eventually managed to tie his legs together, and laid him under a tree squealing and shrieking like a steam-engine. Whether in his vocal efforts he broke a blood-vessel, or whether owing to the heat of the sun, the sad fact remains that after I had made all arrangements for his transport to Fort Gerry he left the earthly trials of pitfalls and 4-bores at sunset. I was very much disappointed, as I had hoped that if he had survived he might have been of service in the future, should a progressive Government, departing from the usual practice of thinking of the matter when it is too late, endeavour to make use of the vast transport treasure that is now roaming the papyrus swamps of Toro. In the greater part of Africa the elephant is now a thing of the past; and the rate at which they have disappeared is appalling. Ten years ago elephant swarmed in places like B.C.A., where now you will not find one. Still, there is yet an accessible stronghold of the pachyderm in Toro, where at the lowest possible estimate there must be fifteen thousand elephant. Why is not an effort made, and that at once (for in a few years' time it will be too late), to secure this vast means of transport to posterity? What an inestimable boon to the country, and what an easy solution of half the labour problem that is already such a thorn in the side of the southern administrations! I suppose it is on the same principle on which a paternal Government sends its servants out to a pestilential spot where the sole recreation is shooting, and then forbids them that recreation, while allowing every native who can command a gas-pipe and a handful of powder to sally forth and slay a tithe of what he wounds, regardless of sex and age; or on which the same paternal Government allows the aforesaid servants to take out and pay for a licence permitting them to shoot two elephant, and then confidentially informs them that all ivory shot by servants of the Protectorate, either within or without the Protectorate's dominions, is the property of the Government; however (note the wild, unreasoning generosity), servants returning home may, with the permission of the Commissioner, be allowed to take a pair of tusks as a trophy. Upon what possible theory this preposterous claim is based I fail to conceive, unless the Government assumes that the leisure of their servants is included in their salary, in which case they may claim the pictures of an amateur artist who may be in their service, or his letters home, or anything else equally reasonable. It is the spirit of the thing that is so pitiable, and it seems so unnecessary, for nobody doubts but that the Exchequer can manage to stagger along somehow, even though deprived of the support that the miserable dozen tusks or so would afford; and, after all, the right to shoot and keep a couple of elephant is not an extravagant recompense for two years' isolation in a wilderness devoid of recreation.I then moved my camp some miles to the west, on a hill overlooking a large patch of very dense elephant-grass.The next morning I went south to a deep gorge filled with dense forest, where some elephant were reported. We descended a steep grass slope into the gorge itself, which was cut up in all directions by elephant and buffalo spoor. Suddenly, with much puffing, pawing, and snorting, some buffalo rushed past at about forty yards, at the same time starting some elephant, which we heard crashing up the slope. Leaving the buffalo to puff and snort, we struck the elephant spoor and cautiously approached to where we could hear them grunting and rumbling. By stooping low it was possible to follow the path with comparative ease, but the bush was so thick that we could not see two yards ahead. Having approached within ten yards, I stood, hoping that some movement would show me their exact whereabouts; but though they quickly recovered from their fright and started feeding, I could see nothing but the occasional waving of the leaves above where they were standing. After a quarter of an hour of this amusement, during which I was balancing myself on a slippery bank of clay, I descended again, and coming dead up-wind succeeded in getting within two yards of one. A thick tangle of lianas alone separated us, and although I could hear him breathing, and felt sure he must hear my heart thumping, I could see nothing. I know nothing in the world more exciting than hunting elephant in this description of country. One approaches so close, and yet can see nothing; the only thing to do is to wait, in hopes of some movement bringing them into view. Then they make such extraordinary noises, and at every crash of a branch torn down one thinks they are stampeding or coming towards one. Again, the wind is so shifty in cover, and one puff will set them all off, very possibly in the least desirable direction. A dropping shot is almost out of the question, and when wounded they have a nasty knack of looking to see who did it; a whole regiment of lions cannot produce the same moral effect as one elephant when he cocks his ears, draws himself up to his full height, and looks at you, letting off at the same time a blood-curdling scream, while in all probability others invisible are stampeding on all sides with the din of an earthquake. They are so vast (one I measured was actually 15 ft. from edge of ear to edge of ear) that they seem to block out the whole horizon; one seems to shrivel, and the very gun to dwindle into a pea-shooter; try as I will, I can never quite stomach it, and always feel inclined to throw down my rifle and run till I drop.At last the elephant, having an idea that something was amiss, moved, and showing his head, received a mate to that idea in the shape of a .303 bullet. Down the bank he rushed, taking the bark off one side of a tree, while I stepped round the other. I got another shot home as he passed, and head over heels he went like a bolting rabbit. Trees, bush, blocks of earth, vanished like chaff, till a mighty old veteran trunk pulled him up short about fifty yards below. There he lay, his legs in the air, screaming and vainly struggling to regain his feet, a path like the sea-wall at Brighton leading down to him. A few more shots finished him.The next day I was again in this gorge, and after vainly floundering about on the spoor of a small elephant, and complimenting in suitable terms a swarm of biting ants which eventually left me indistinguishable from a splash of pickled cabbage, I saw a fine old tusker grazing in the short grass on the top of the further bank. To cross was a matter of minutes, as I knew that at any moment he might descend into the gorge, and on emerging I saw him still in the same place. Walking up quite close, I dropped the poor old brute with one shot. He had very long teeth for their weight, 8 ft. 4 in. (tip slightly broken), and 7 ft. 4 in. (tip broken), and weighing 76 and 73 lbs. respectively. Standing on his ribs--that is, about 6 ft. from the ground--I saw some more grazing on the other side of a branch gully, so I set off in pursuit; but some of the half-starved natives, who would follow me about the country, and had been lurking behind some bushes, spoilt my chance of a shot by darting out up-wind of the herd, presumably to catch any elephant that might drop.For several days matters were very quiet, and though I ranged far and wide, one day following buffalo spoor for several hours, I saw nothing; till again I was wakened by the welcome cry of "njojo," and snatching a hasty breakfast, set off, this time backed by the double 10-bore paradox which had been sent out after me, and had arrived the previous day; and very thankful I felt for its support. My double 4-bore had gone home with Sharp, who had left his paradox in its stead as the more useful all-round gun. And though I had my double .500 magnum, the firm that provided my cartridges had sent out all expanding bullets, despite the fact of my having ordered half with solids; just to humour me, however, they labelled the packets "solid bullets," so that I never found out till north of Tanganyika. Two other firms distinguished themselves in a similar manner, one by shipping my double .303 in a case, without so much as a cleaning-rod, much less a screwdriver or spare pin, and the other by providing me at the trifling cost of 2s. 6d. each with damaged cartridge-cases for my 4-bore; the majority of them were badly split at the rim, sufficiently split to fill rapidly when held in water, and though they had been carefully repolished, on close inspection the old firing marks were quite obvious. The consequent result was that the first shot I fired I was knocked over a fallen tree two yards behind me.Our native took us across the marsh lying below the camp by a path that in its various intricacies led into a pit of water 20 ft. deep, into which they fondly hoped some elephant would walk; then through numerous villages where the banana-groves, owing to the depredations of elephant, looked more like street barricades, till we eventually emerged from the odoriferous fog of drying elephant meat on to the ridge where I had last camped. He then told us that two elephant had come into the bananas during the night and had retired up the gorge. Skirting along the edge of the plateau, we soon saw them in the elephant-grass below, and descending with difficulty through the tangled mat of grass, I took up my position behind a tree and waited, hoping that when they moved I might have a favourable chance. One was standing under a small tree about four hundred yards away; and the other, at a distance of two hundred yards, was up to his belly in mud, his stern alone showing round a tuft of grass. Previous experience had taught me that it was useless to go down into the grass, so I had perforce to stay where I was and possess my soul in patience. After some time the one under the tree moved, and in a leisurely manner strolled up to his companion. As he emerged from the long grass round the mud-hole I had one glimpse of his tusks, and, quite satisfied, I took the only chance I was likely to obtain, and fired a half-side head shot. He drew himself up into a bunch of indignant protest, as much as to say, "Who the devil did that?" But a second shot failing to elucidate the matter, he swung round and crashed away across the gully, while number two bolted straight ahead. I rained shot into him while he swerved round and followed in the wake of his companion. Then I dashed along the side of the slope, stumbling, tripping, rolling, and diving over grass that I could not force my way through, till a sudden drop of 10 ft. landed me face first on the bed of a stream, invisible above through the grass, but painfully tangible below. Fortunately my rifle did not suffer proportionately, and scrambling out I reached a small ridge from which I could see my elephant standing about three hundred yards off. Again I fusilladed him till out of range, and then followed, falling twice to the elephant's once. He was nearly spent, but managed to reach some extra long grass, where I lost sight of him for some time, till at length he crawled out into the shade of a tree under the opposite bank. The gorge was narrow at this point, so that he was not more than one hundred yards off when I reopened the bombardment. For a long time he took the phut-phut of the bullets without showing the slightest emotion. Then suddenly over he went like a tree under the axe. He struggled to his feet once more, only to fall for the last time under the continued hail. Cutting across the dip, I climbed on to the bank about twenty yards above him; but the grass was so dense that I could not see him, although considerably above the level of the tangle where he was lying. His great sobs told me that all was over, and anxious to put him out of his misery, I went down, having to approach within two yards before I could see him, and finished him off with the 10-bore, his head being invisible. To my amazement he had only one tusk, 7 ft. 9 in., and 98 lbs.; and as I was sure that I had seen two tusks, I came to the conclusion that this must be number two, and that number one had dropped at the same time that I did. So following back on the spoor, I came on the other elephant, lying four hundred yards from where I had first hit him, but, lo and behold! he also had only one tusk, 7 ft. 7 in., and 86 lbs. So certain was I of having seen two tusks that I followed his spoor back, thinking that possibly there might have been a third hidden by the grass, but it was not so, and to this day I believe he took the other tusk off and threw it away, as a sort of Jonah! On arriving at camp I found that letters and tomatoes had arrived from Toro. Our pagasi had attempted their old games about three days' journey south of the Albert Edward and had been attacked with the loss of twenty men, amongst them Sulimani, the root of all the disturbances. His successor in office, who, like other gentlemen of his kidney, combined loudness of talk in times of peace with extraordinary fleetness of foot in times of danger, was the first to bring the news to Toro.CHAPTER XVI.SEMLIKI VALLEY AND KAVALLI'S COUNTRY.Leaving this country with regret, I descended into the valley once more and marched north, crossing the Semliki to avoid the swamps mentioned by Colonel Lugard at the westerly bend of the river, and recrossed about six miles from where the river enters the lake. For some distance the mournful monotony of aloe and euphorbia is broken by groves of the stately borassus palm. The few miserable Wanyoro, who are sparsely scattered over the plain, were absolutely destitute. The prolonged drought had dried up the maize and millet, and the beans, which form their main food supply, were finished, so that three hippo that I killed for them raised me to a giddy pinnacle of fame; my tent became, for the time being, a second Lourdes, droves of pilgrims pouring in to pay homage to my .303. Their astonishment, when I showed them the size of the bullet and how the magazine worked, was most ludicrous. They had heard how it would drop a huge elephant without a wriggle of his trunk, and they had heard the three shots and could see the three hippo tied to the bank, and had imagined, I suppose, that it was a sort of 7-pounder; so that when they held a cartridge with its pencil-like bullet in their hand, and the truth gradually dawned on them, they would drop it like a hot potato. Some, when I started the mechanism, fairly took to their heels. A native's estimate of a gun varies proportionately with the size of the bore, and his idea of killing range is ten yards, or, if the sportsman is something of a marksman, perhaps twenty. I was fortunate in bringing off several shots at about four hundred to five hundred yards at nsunu,[#] and natives, having no unit of distance, consider everything from two hundred yards to about five miles as the same thing. I have several times heard my gun-bearer, Makanjira, who is a great admirer of the gun, solemnly explaining to an open-mouthed audience how he had seen me kill beasts at such a distance, pointing to a hill some three or four miles away. Consequently, its powers were magnified to the most prodigious proportions, and on the march excited natives would point to mere specks on the horizon, inform me they were buck, and expect me to kill them on the instant; they never gave me any of the credit--it was the gun, the wonderful gun, and I only obtained a reflected glory as its possessor. After crossing the river, I found the natives very nervous and suspicious, and though I visited the village near which I camped, and induced the chief to come to the river-bank to see one of the hippo, which I told him he might have, the following morning, on sending for a guide, I found that they had "shot the moon," carrying off their half-dozen miserable goats, and fled into the bush.[#] Nsunu:Cobus Thomasi.As the guide promised me by the chief on the other side was not forthcoming, and not wishing to delay any longer, as the sun was terrible on these arid plains, I started without one, and, after two hours' walking, found that I had penetrated well into the marshes at the south end of the lake. In trying to skirt round the arm of water and sudd that stretches to the south, we soon found ourselves in an apparently boundless sea of one of Nature's truly African inventions, a tall grass, 8 to 10 ft. high, the roots forming a hopeless tangle of matted whipcord reaching 2 ft. from the ground, and effectually hiding the honeycomb of old hippo and elephant-holes 2 ft. deep below, while the stems and leaves are covered with myriads of invisible spines, which detach themselves in one's skin and clothes, and set up the most intense irritation.After floundering through this sea of misery for a couple of hours, we were extricated by the promised guide, who had followed on our tracks, and eventually arrived at a miserable patch of huts; we came so unexpectedly on the people that they had not time to fly, and a few explanations soon put them at their ease. I found that they were Wanyabuga, the same people who were so friendly to Lugard and belonged to Katonzi, a nominal vassal of Kasagama's, and who is now the sole survivor of Lugard's three blood brothers, Katonzi, Kavalli, and Mugenzi. They do not cultivate, but depend on the Balegga and Wakoba for grain, which they barter for fish and salt. They are quite distinct in appearance from the surrounding tribes. The type is a tall (5 ft. 8 in.), large-limbed, square-shouldered negro, bull-necked, bullet-headed, with a very low forehead and coarse features; colour very dark; but they have a jolly expression, and were some of the pleasantest natives I ever dealt with. It was curious to see even amongst these people, who live a life apart from their surroundings, the occasional delicate features, gazelle-like eyes, light colour, lithe limbs, and genteel nonchalance of the Galla influence.At the south end of the Albert Edward, where the Rutchuru flows into the lake, forming similar marshes to those of the Semliki, there is a people living exactly the same life. Unfortunately, owing to their extreme shyness, I could find out very little about them, but from their mode of life, methods of fishing, and general appearance, I have no doubt that they are closely allied; probably survivors of former inhabitants who have found a last refuge in these intricate waterways and impenetrable marshes. The similarity in the names of these two peoples is significant.It is a strange amphibious existence in these simmering wastes of weed and water, the stillness of which is only broken by the occasional blow of a hippo, the splash of a fish or crocodile, the wild cry of the numerous flights of wild-fowl, and the everlasting plaint of the fish-eagle. A perpetual mirage hovering over the scene adds to the general mystery; groups of huts suddenly appear where all was shimmering light, and as suddenly vanish; a canoe with its two upright punters glides past apparently in the sky, a goose suddenly assumes the proportions of an elephant, and an elephant evolves out of what one took to be a goose; and thus the scene is ever changing, till the grey of evening and the crisp light of the rising sun bring out in strong relief the placid sheets of water, the long brown bands of weeds, the tiny islands with their little huts perched among the waving reeds, the thin strips of sand with their occasional waddling hippo, the little black canoes slowly gliding in and out amongst the weed-beds and tufts of grass, and the continual flight of flocks of white ibis.I never tired of sitting on the shore and watching the long string of little black canoes slowly wending their way towards me, bringing in fish and salt, to trade with the group of Balegga who were waiting with loads of beans and millet flour.The small stretch of country lying between the Semliki, the Albert Lake, and the hills is called Kitwakimbi, and is distinct from Bukande, which begins at the foot of the hills and reaches back to the watershed.My Wanyabuga friends provided me with two guides, who, after wasting two hours in visiting obscure villages, all of which were deserted, and answering my protests at our zigzag route by ambiguous allusions to marshes, eventually landed me within four hundred yards of where I had started, and suggested that I should camp. Having with difficulty persuaded them that I was annoyed, which they evidently considered unreasonable on my part, they smilingly explained that it was far from their homes, and they had hoped to find me other guides. However, vague allusions to the presence of a "kiboko"[#] convinced them of the inexpediency, not to say positive danger, of further nonsense, and they gaily proceeded on their way, chortling hugely at the success of what they thought a very merry prank. They led me to a deserted village opposite Kasenyi, a small island about a mile from the mainland, and the present headquarters of Katonzi. The Wanyabuga-Balegga market was in full swing, but vanished like mist at my sudden appearance, and it was only by going down to the beach stripped to the waist, and a happy allusion to brothership with "Kapelli," that I induced them to bring their canoes to the shore again. "Kapelli" is the native name of that gallant officer Colonel Lugard, and to have left a name in Africa that opens all doors and all hearts is the finest monument to his exploits that a man can have. They flocked in to see me under Tunja, Katonzi's eldest son, who brought several loads of food, and informed me that Katonzi had left two days before for Toro. They asked all kinds of questions about "Kapelli" and Mr. Grant, who was with Lugard in his expedition to release the Soudanese, and wanted to know why he had never come back, and had the English deserted their country after promising to protect them? I answered all their questions to the best of my ability, and when I showed them Lugard's book and the photograph of Grant, which, to my surprise, they immediately recognized, their delight knew no bounds.[#]Kiboko: whip made of hippo hide.The mosquitoes here defy description; even at mid-day I had to eat my food walking about, and my evening and morning toilet, combined as it was with a Dan Lenoesque extravaganza, if performed on the Empire stage would assuredly have brought down the house. I crawled into my mosquito-net with the greatest caution, disposed all my weighty belongings, such as boots and cartridge-bags, in a circle round my bed to keep down the edges of the net, exhausted all my candle-ends in exploding the odd hundred or two that had crawled in with me, and was quickly lulled to sleep by the dismal drone of myriads, happy in the knowledge that they were outside; sleep, gentle sleep, during which I evolved in one short hour from my own insignificant self through the alarming stages of Daniel in the lion's den, and a cold bread poultice, to the stern reality that they were inside; and they were, hundred and hundreds of them. In vain I searched for some hole or possible inlet, and eventually had to resign myself to the inevitable, buoyed up by the meagre consolation that I had discovered that, like the light of the glow-worm, the mosquito is possessed of the properties of the Röntgen rays.Early the next morning Tunja came to tell me that Katonzi was coming back, and at midday he arrived in person. He is a dismal old nigger, and though somewhat rapacious, not a bad fellow. His first request was to see the wonderful book, and then how I struck a match, an accomplishment that tickled him immensely. He then naïvely asked me to give him my guns, saying that Lugard had given them two guns, but that the Belgians had taken them away. I asked him why all the people were so frightened, and where they had all gone; whereupon he proceeded to recount the same tales of misery and oppression that I had heard the day before, from which I gathered that a Congo Free State official rejoicing in the name of "Billygee" had suddenly swooped down on the country a year ago, and after shooting down numbers of the natives had returned west, carrying off forty young women, numerous children, and all the cattle and goats, and putting a finishing touch to the proceedings by a grand pyrotechnic display, during which they bound the old women, threw them into the huts, and then fired the roofs. Several absolutely independent witnesses informed me that this had been done actually in the presence of Billygee and the gentlemen who accompanied him. Katonzi's two sons, Tunja and Kutaru, were bound and taken away, but released after two months. Kavalli's eldest son is now in their hands, while a younger one escaped to the Balegga. As I have mentioned before, when in Mboga the Balegga told me similar tales; here I was repeatedly given accounts that tallied in all essentials, and further north the Wakoba made the same piteous complaints; and I saw myself that a country apparently well populated and responsive to just treatment in Lugard's time (and that under very trying conditions, owing to the numbers of destitute aliens in the country--to wit, the Soudanese) is now practically a howling wilderness; the scattered inhabitants, terrified even of one another, and living almost without cultivation in the marshes, thickets, and reeds, madly flee even from their own shadows. Chaos--hopeless, abysmal chaos--from Mweru to the Nile; in the south, tales of cruelty of undoubted veracity, but which I could not repeat without actual investigation on the spot; on Tanganyika, absolute impotence, revolted Askaris ranging at their own sweet will, while the white men are throwing their ivory and cartridges into the lake, and cutting down their bananas for fear the rebels should take them; on Kivu, a hideous wave of cannibalism raging unchecked through the land, while in the north the very white men who should be keeping peace where chaos now reigns supreme, are spending thousands in making of peace a chaos of their own. I have no hesitation in condemning the whole State as a vampire growth, intended to suck the country dry, and to provide a happy hunting-ground for a pack of unprincipled outcasts and untutored scoundrels. The few sound men in the country are powerless to stem the tide of oppression.The departure of my mubaka provided by King Kasagama had taken a great load off my mind; he was too heavy a swell for me to keep pace with, dressed in white breeks, yellow putties, red fez, and three fancy cloths, to say nothing of a red and yellow belt; and his terrible anxiety lest he should miss a chance of putting up a large white umbrella with a green lining was so infectious that finally I found myself watching the clouds with one eye and the mubaka with the other, knowing that at the first ray of sunshine he would emerge from his hut and perform for my edification. In the cloudy intervals he devoured such masses of solid food that even with my experience of native capacity I became quite alarmed, and between the struttings and bursting-point tests, he had very little time to devote to my affairs, so that I was very glad to see the last of him.Katonzi, after relating his own troubles, and thinking, I suppose, that it was my turn to have a few, proceeded to paint the most gruesome pictures of what was in front. With tears in his eyes he begged me to turn back, saying that if I died the white men would blame him; he informed me that all was wilderness beyond--no food, no paths, all the people dead. Putting his hand to his head, he explained how they had all just done so, lain down and expired.[#] Pressed as to the reason of this general collapse, he eagerly shook his head and murmured "Muungu" (Kismet). Though summing up the majority of these perils as "nigger gibberish," I was rather alarmed at the sudden death business, thinking that perhaps it was smallpox or the Bombay plague; but this, like the rest, was simply imagination. It is strange how natives get these ideas into their heads. I do not think it was gratuitous lying, as all his people, as far as I could see without any other reason than belief in the sudden death, were afraid even to hunt in the direction indicated; and he certainly had nothing to gain by stopping me from going forward, since he had no interest in the country. However, I thought it advisable to buy several days' provisions, and to do this it was necessary to draw the Balegga from the hills; all my overtures had failed so far, and I saw that the only way to start was to lay ground-bait for them by killing elephant or buffalo. With this object in view I sallied forth with a guide who was to take me to the elephant country. He wandered about for two or three hours in country that an elephant would not look at through a telescope, and whenever I said that I wanted elephant, he nodded his head and said, "Oh yes, elephant." Then suddenly, as if a bright idea had struck him, he said, "Oh yes,elephant!" and promptly walked back through camp to a narrow spit jutting out into the lake and about a quarter of a mile distant. As I could see water on both sides and short grass in front, I thought he meant hippo, or was mad, inclining to the latter belief; but no, he was quite confident, and stalked along muttering to himself, "Yes, elephant! Yes, elephant!" (as much as to say, "Who would have thought it?"); and sure enough there were nine elephant in the reeds in the lake at the end of the spit. The place was a mass of vegetation and honeycombed with elephant-holes. I dropped one with a single shot.[#] I have since realized that he was referring to the sleeping sickness which entered this district at that time.As I had expected, after a day of very hot sun, the odour was too tempting, and the Balegga swarmed down from the hills and brought me what food I wanted. I went for a stroll in the evening, and came on a small herd of buffalo; they were very small compared with the South African species, and amongst them were three light brown ones, a bull, cow, and three-parts-grown calf. They were very beautiful animals, with a black ridge of hair running along the neck and the top of the shoulders. I shot the bull, and as my pagasi had as much as they could carry, I told the natives to cure the hide and send it with the head into Toro, so I hope to be able to have it described. When I first saw them I thought they were eland, and it was with the greatest surprise that I found they had a buffalo's head attached. The small one was as light in colour as a reedbuck, and the other two a similar colour round the rump and the belly.[#] I could gather no information from the natives as to whether they had seen others; all they knew was that the buffalo was an evil beast, had once been very numerous, but was now finished.[#] I have since found, on reference to the British Museum, that they were the Congo buffalo. This proves that their distribution is further East than was imagined. The fact that they were running in the same herd as the black Eastern variety is of considerable scientific interest.CHAPTER XVII.ALBERT LAKE AND UPPER NILE TO WADELAI.An hour's walk into the valley of death brought us to a cluster of villages with a large population, which was in a state of utter destitution. The people, who were very nervous at first, eventually gathered round in numbers with the same tale of rapine and murder, and the chief gave me a guide to take me to the foot of the hills. Another hour brought us to Nsabe, which, though generally depicted on maps in large letters, consists of about five dirty little muck-heaps, only recognizable as human habitations by the filthy smell that emanated from them. All the inhabitants fled, leaving their spears, bows, and beer in their hurry, and no amount of shouting and yelling would induce them to return. Our guide promptly made a bundle of the spears and other movables, with a view to appropriation, which when complete I placed against a tree, accompanying the movement by a vigorous application of my boot to the toughest portion of his anatomy. Incorrigible, bullying, thieving curs, one is often tempted to think that the Boer method of treating natives is, after all, the only one they deserve. Their Mark Tapleyism is their sole redeeming feature, and that is attributable to the incapacity of their intellect to hold anything but the impression of the moment. Although of the same tribe and close neighbours, I expect he would have thoroughly enjoyed seeing me burn and loot the place; it is the same everywhere--a guide amongst his own people is a worse thief even than a Manyema porter. He then took us by a devious route to the shore of the lake, and seemed greatly astonished to find that the village he had mentioned did not exist; nor had it left any trace behind. I could see by the way he was behaving that he intended to bolt, and knowing that without a native of the country there was very little chance of inducing the people, in their frightened state, to remain in their villages, I kept a close eye on him. As I expected, when I sat down on the shore to wait for the boys to close up, he began edging off towards the jungle; but when he looked round to see if it was all clear, he found himself covered by my .303. I had him brought back, and explained to him that his chief had sent him to show the way to the foot of the hills, that he had led me into the wilderness and could now lead me out, the two alternatives being villages, another guide, and a present, or a race with a .303 bullet. He chose the former, and seeing that fooling was a glut in the market, promptly took us to a village of the Wakoba called Kahoma, and in Kahuma's country. Here all the people fled, but he followed, and persuaded them to bring food to trade. They, too, had been raided, and had lost two women and two children captured. They could not tell me how many white men or Askaris there were, as they had not waited to see. The majority of them are fine, well-made men, and intensely black. One in particular took my fancy. He was a tremendous swell, with anything from 15 to 20 lbs. of red clay on his head, an enormous ivory bracelet, and multitudes of iron rings. The Wakoba live all along the lake-shore and in the fringe of the hills, and, curiously enough, their villages are mixed indiscriminately with those of the Balegga, with whom they seem to be on the best of terms, although the two peoples are quite distinct, the Balegga being real out-and-out bestial little savages, while the Wakoba are much above the Central African average of intelligence, with quite a wide knowledge of local affairs. They are both in a state of parallel expansion, the Balegga working to the north into the Lendu country, and the Wakoba in the opposite direction encroaching on the Wanyabuga.Two miles north of Kahoma the hills come down to the water's edge, leaving only a narrow shingly beach, and thenceforward our progress became painfully slow; at intervals the headlands jut out into the water, and the work of transporting the loads round these obstructions with only two or three small and very unstable canoes was one of considerable difficulty, even the latitude of Doctor Johnson's dictionary proving insufficient on occasions; scores of little streams come tumbling down into the lake, each one forming a small delta, on many of which there are Wakoba villages with a few banana palms, and signs of scratching on the hillside, where I presume something was intended to grow, but had turned dizzy and given up the attempt. After Kahanama's, which is in Kahuma's sphere, Mpigwa is the big man, and I passed through many of his villages, some of the largest being Kabora, Zingi (?), Bordo, Nsessi, and Kiboko. Most of the scenery is very fine, the little white cascades gleaming in the shadow of immense trees, many of which are covered with scarlet and yellow blossoms, and in the midst of luxuriant tangles of vegetation the great gaunt slabs of slimy rock deep-set in their snow-white bed of sand, over which the little waves come tumbling in, gurgling and splashing round their feet and moaning and sobbing into a thousand miniature caves; while great apes and little brown-eyed monkeys drop from branch to branch and sit leering and gibbering at us as we paddle past.The continual wetting and rock-climbing had the most disastrous effect on my already attenuated wardrobe, and for two or three days I was compelled to disport myself clad in a simple shirt, which, thanks to a classical education and consequent ignorance of the art of washing, had contracted to the modest and insufficient dimensions of a chest-preserver, while assuming the durable but inappropriate consistency of a piece of oil-cloth. The roseate hues of early dawn "weren't in it" with my nether limbs after the first day's exposure to a pitiless sun, and I became a sort of perambulating three-tiered Neapolitan ice, coffee, vanilla and raspberry, a phenomenon that greatly astonished a savage who surprised me in my bath, and who immediately fetched all his kith and kin to see; on the second day, however, the alarming desertion of a third of my epidermis so pained me mentally and physically, that after a great effort I produced a double-barrelled garment that in the absence of Poole-bred critics served its turn.Of the various arts and crafts that one is called upon to undertake in Africa, such as cooking, shoe-mending, washer-womaning, doctoring, butchering, taxiderming, armoury work, carpentering, etc.,ad infinitum, I think perhaps tailoring is the most trying; the cotton willnotgo into the eye of the needle, and the needlewillgo into one's fingers, and then when you think it is all over, you find you have sewn the back of your shirt to the front, or accomplished something equally unexpected and equally difficult to undo.At Nsessi, two miles south of Kiboko, there is a superb waterfall; it has a drop of about 500 ft., and is divided into three stages, all at a different angle to one another, falling 100 ft., then swirling round at an angle, plunging into the next pool, and then a last long slide to the level of the lake. Stupendous silver-trunked trees, with foliage the colour of the ilex and brilliant splashes of scarlet bloom, crowd round on either side of the gorge wherever the wild rocks afford a footing; above towers a pointed peak showing bright above the dense gloom of the gorge, and a white stripe of sand fringes the little village, nestling in its banana grove, at the base.These natives lead a curious existence, shut in between precipitous hills and the lake, their sole means of communication with one another being their leaky little 10 ft. dug-outs. They are wonderfully clever at handling them, and perform the extraordinary feat of crossing the lake, dodging in and out between the waves in the most marvellous manner. As a means of transport they are not to be recommended; the shape of a cross-section being that of an egg with its top off, one slides in with comparative ease like a pickle into a pickle-jar: once in, as with the pickle, extrication is a matter of time and patience. It needs one of Lear's Jumblies to feel thoroughly at home, as they leak like a sieve, and only perpetual bailing will keep them afloat.The first day, in the sweet innocence of youth, I set off to round a headland with my guns and a tin box containing my indispensables on board, fearing to trust them to a native. All went smoothly at first, till I had arrived well off the rocks with a slight swell on and no landing-place near, and then she began slowly to heel over, while water seemed to be rushing in through the wood itself. After prodigious efforts I succeeded in running into the rocks, the water being then within an inch of the gunwale. I saved my guns and box, but smashed the canoe, and after that turned passenger. It looks so easy when they come dancing along, each with a native kneeling in the stern and plying a huge curved-bladed paddle; but it is a very different thing when one is wedged in oneself; physically incapable of squatting in a kneeling posture, as a native does, one finds bailing out an impossibility; the whole of the bottom of the canoe seems to be covered with boots, and the incurved edges catch the wooden bailing-dish and jerk the contents into one's lap.Although the lake teems with fish, many of large size, the Wakoba make no attempt to catch them, trusting to the occasional chance of purchasing from the natives on the other shore or from Kasenyi.One day I shot a baboon at the natives' request, a performance, by the way, that I shall not repeat, nor would I recommend it to any one but the most hardened villain. A frantic scramble took place for the flesh, and when I asked them what it tasted like, they "smole a smile." Amongst the countless troops of monkeys that are for ever coughing and dancing amongst the rocks and trees, I saw a small family of very beautiful little fellows with bright fox-red fringes down their sides, but I could not bring myself to shoot at them after seeing that unfortunate baboon, although I have never seen them described, or elsewhere in Africa.At Viboko I was compelled to wait, the shore in front being impracticable and the heights behind unscaleable, till Mswa sent down the canoes, which I had requested by numerous envoys. My boys were badly in need of a rest, the work having been very trying since Kahanama's, and the fever from which I was suffering made it equally acceptable to me. In the afternoon two natives arrived, saying that a muzungu[#] was coming down to meet me with ten canoes. After inquiries as to what kind of Askaris he had, etc., etc., I gathered that it must be a Belgian official, so killed the fatted calf in the guise of a skinny sheep and sundry osseous frames masquerading as dorkings, and then plunged for the second time into the turgid flow of Zola'sRome, to cleanse my French of probable Swahili trespassers. I even exhumed a tie, and having produced a menu that exhausted all the possible combinations and permutations of an African larder, awaited anxiously his arrival, picturing to myself the joys of a little talkee-talkee once more. A stiff southerly breeze evidently was delaying them, and it was not till after dark that we heard the wild canoe-song of the flotilla, which had rounded the point and caught sight of our camp-fires. Giving a last twirl to my moustache and a nautical hitch to the Poolesque garment aforesaid, and composing my features to the iron-clad smirk indispensable to such occasions, I advanced to do the honours, and grasped the hand of a dirty, greasy little negro clad in, or rather smeared over with, a prehistoric piece of cloth! Here was my muzungu! here my gallant Belgian staggering under the gold braid of a hat of that peculiarly unbecoming shape affected by French guards and German tourists, and majestically trailing the orthodox 30-franc sword! Inquiries elicited the fact that the parasitic relic of Manchester above mentioned established a valid claim to the title of muzungu in these parts. However, he had brought the canoes, so I readily forgave him, and next day we arrived at the old Soudanese station, Mswa. Mswa is the name of the chief, who is a vassal of Tukenda, and Mahagi is the name of the country itself. He is an intelligent old native, and remembered seeing that ubiquitous officer, Bt.-Major Vandeleur, D.S.O., when he crossed from Kibero, and was delighted at the photograph which forms the frontispiece to his book entitledCampaigns on the Nile and Niger. Here let me recommend travellers to take out photographs of men who have gone before them; the effect is wonderful on those natives who can grasp the idea, though, of course, to many natives a picture is merely a piece of paper. It convinces those who can understand it that you are speaking the truth--a possibility so utterly foreign to the native mind. After exchanging presents he retired, promising to bring more boys in the morning to work the canoes; but in the morning none were forthcoming, and after waiting some time while Mswa rushed frantically round the country, shouting to his people, who walked off into the grass and laughed at him, I concluded that he was either incompetent or trying to make a fool of me, and, to his consternation, manned the canoes with my own men and started. As I expected, enough men were immediately forthcoming, but too late, and I held on my way.
[#] A sort of courier.
The prevailing type of elephant in these parts differs so essentially from that of Toro, that I have been forced to the conclusion that there are two distinct varieties; a theory in which the natives universally concur.
When in Toro I saw more than a thousand elephant, and without exception they carried a thick, heavy type of tusk, the elephant themselves being unusually large and solid.
In Mboga, on the other hand, the prevailing type was a much smaller elephant, with very long thin tusks. Two cows shot by Mr. Bagge carried tusks about 4 ft., and no thicker than the butt-end of a billiard-cue.
The average height of old bulls in Mboga is about 9 ft., while the only two that I shot in Toro were 11 ft. and upwards, and several others that I had a chance of observing closely must have been about the same size. The Indian notion of twice the circumference of the foot equalling the height does not hold with the African species; I generally found that it fell short of the height by about 8 or 10 in. In a subsequent chapter I have dealt fully with this question.
A few days later, answering to the call of elephant, I came on a herd of cows, one of which I shot, hoping to be able to send the calf into Fort Gerry. The little fellow stood about 3 ft. high, and stalked towards us in the most majestic manner, rumbling and grunting on a 12 ft. scale at least. So confident was his advance that my boys, guns and all, fled without more ado, and it was only when I had caught him by the tail that they ventured back. His strength was amazing, and it needed the united efforts of myself and four boys to throw him. However, we eventually managed to tie his legs together, and laid him under a tree squealing and shrieking like a steam-engine. Whether in his vocal efforts he broke a blood-vessel, or whether owing to the heat of the sun, the sad fact remains that after I had made all arrangements for his transport to Fort Gerry he left the earthly trials of pitfalls and 4-bores at sunset. I was very much disappointed, as I had hoped that if he had survived he might have been of service in the future, should a progressive Government, departing from the usual practice of thinking of the matter when it is too late, endeavour to make use of the vast transport treasure that is now roaming the papyrus swamps of Toro. In the greater part of Africa the elephant is now a thing of the past; and the rate at which they have disappeared is appalling. Ten years ago elephant swarmed in places like B.C.A., where now you will not find one. Still, there is yet an accessible stronghold of the pachyderm in Toro, where at the lowest possible estimate there must be fifteen thousand elephant. Why is not an effort made, and that at once (for in a few years' time it will be too late), to secure this vast means of transport to posterity? What an inestimable boon to the country, and what an easy solution of half the labour problem that is already such a thorn in the side of the southern administrations! I suppose it is on the same principle on which a paternal Government sends its servants out to a pestilential spot where the sole recreation is shooting, and then forbids them that recreation, while allowing every native who can command a gas-pipe and a handful of powder to sally forth and slay a tithe of what he wounds, regardless of sex and age; or on which the same paternal Government allows the aforesaid servants to take out and pay for a licence permitting them to shoot two elephant, and then confidentially informs them that all ivory shot by servants of the Protectorate, either within or without the Protectorate's dominions, is the property of the Government; however (note the wild, unreasoning generosity), servants returning home may, with the permission of the Commissioner, be allowed to take a pair of tusks as a trophy. Upon what possible theory this preposterous claim is based I fail to conceive, unless the Government assumes that the leisure of their servants is included in their salary, in which case they may claim the pictures of an amateur artist who may be in their service, or his letters home, or anything else equally reasonable. It is the spirit of the thing that is so pitiable, and it seems so unnecessary, for nobody doubts but that the Exchequer can manage to stagger along somehow, even though deprived of the support that the miserable dozen tusks or so would afford; and, after all, the right to shoot and keep a couple of elephant is not an extravagant recompense for two years' isolation in a wilderness devoid of recreation.
I then moved my camp some miles to the west, on a hill overlooking a large patch of very dense elephant-grass.
The next morning I went south to a deep gorge filled with dense forest, where some elephant were reported. We descended a steep grass slope into the gorge itself, which was cut up in all directions by elephant and buffalo spoor. Suddenly, with much puffing, pawing, and snorting, some buffalo rushed past at about forty yards, at the same time starting some elephant, which we heard crashing up the slope. Leaving the buffalo to puff and snort, we struck the elephant spoor and cautiously approached to where we could hear them grunting and rumbling. By stooping low it was possible to follow the path with comparative ease, but the bush was so thick that we could not see two yards ahead. Having approached within ten yards, I stood, hoping that some movement would show me their exact whereabouts; but though they quickly recovered from their fright and started feeding, I could see nothing but the occasional waving of the leaves above where they were standing. After a quarter of an hour of this amusement, during which I was balancing myself on a slippery bank of clay, I descended again, and coming dead up-wind succeeded in getting within two yards of one. A thick tangle of lianas alone separated us, and although I could hear him breathing, and felt sure he must hear my heart thumping, I could see nothing. I know nothing in the world more exciting than hunting elephant in this description of country. One approaches so close, and yet can see nothing; the only thing to do is to wait, in hopes of some movement bringing them into view. Then they make such extraordinary noises, and at every crash of a branch torn down one thinks they are stampeding or coming towards one. Again, the wind is so shifty in cover, and one puff will set them all off, very possibly in the least desirable direction. A dropping shot is almost out of the question, and when wounded they have a nasty knack of looking to see who did it; a whole regiment of lions cannot produce the same moral effect as one elephant when he cocks his ears, draws himself up to his full height, and looks at you, letting off at the same time a blood-curdling scream, while in all probability others invisible are stampeding on all sides with the din of an earthquake. They are so vast (one I measured was actually 15 ft. from edge of ear to edge of ear) that they seem to block out the whole horizon; one seems to shrivel, and the very gun to dwindle into a pea-shooter; try as I will, I can never quite stomach it, and always feel inclined to throw down my rifle and run till I drop.
At last the elephant, having an idea that something was amiss, moved, and showing his head, received a mate to that idea in the shape of a .303 bullet. Down the bank he rushed, taking the bark off one side of a tree, while I stepped round the other. I got another shot home as he passed, and head over heels he went like a bolting rabbit. Trees, bush, blocks of earth, vanished like chaff, till a mighty old veteran trunk pulled him up short about fifty yards below. There he lay, his legs in the air, screaming and vainly struggling to regain his feet, a path like the sea-wall at Brighton leading down to him. A few more shots finished him.
The next day I was again in this gorge, and after vainly floundering about on the spoor of a small elephant, and complimenting in suitable terms a swarm of biting ants which eventually left me indistinguishable from a splash of pickled cabbage, I saw a fine old tusker grazing in the short grass on the top of the further bank. To cross was a matter of minutes, as I knew that at any moment he might descend into the gorge, and on emerging I saw him still in the same place. Walking up quite close, I dropped the poor old brute with one shot. He had very long teeth for their weight, 8 ft. 4 in. (tip slightly broken), and 7 ft. 4 in. (tip broken), and weighing 76 and 73 lbs. respectively. Standing on his ribs--that is, about 6 ft. from the ground--I saw some more grazing on the other side of a branch gully, so I set off in pursuit; but some of the half-starved natives, who would follow me about the country, and had been lurking behind some bushes, spoilt my chance of a shot by darting out up-wind of the herd, presumably to catch any elephant that might drop.
For several days matters were very quiet, and though I ranged far and wide, one day following buffalo spoor for several hours, I saw nothing; till again I was wakened by the welcome cry of "njojo," and snatching a hasty breakfast, set off, this time backed by the double 10-bore paradox which had been sent out after me, and had arrived the previous day; and very thankful I felt for its support. My double 4-bore had gone home with Sharp, who had left his paradox in its stead as the more useful all-round gun. And though I had my double .500 magnum, the firm that provided my cartridges had sent out all expanding bullets, despite the fact of my having ordered half with solids; just to humour me, however, they labelled the packets "solid bullets," so that I never found out till north of Tanganyika. Two other firms distinguished themselves in a similar manner, one by shipping my double .303 in a case, without so much as a cleaning-rod, much less a screwdriver or spare pin, and the other by providing me at the trifling cost of 2s. 6d. each with damaged cartridge-cases for my 4-bore; the majority of them were badly split at the rim, sufficiently split to fill rapidly when held in water, and though they had been carefully repolished, on close inspection the old firing marks were quite obvious. The consequent result was that the first shot I fired I was knocked over a fallen tree two yards behind me.
Our native took us across the marsh lying below the camp by a path that in its various intricacies led into a pit of water 20 ft. deep, into which they fondly hoped some elephant would walk; then through numerous villages where the banana-groves, owing to the depredations of elephant, looked more like street barricades, till we eventually emerged from the odoriferous fog of drying elephant meat on to the ridge where I had last camped. He then told us that two elephant had come into the bananas during the night and had retired up the gorge. Skirting along the edge of the plateau, we soon saw them in the elephant-grass below, and descending with difficulty through the tangled mat of grass, I took up my position behind a tree and waited, hoping that when they moved I might have a favourable chance. One was standing under a small tree about four hundred yards away; and the other, at a distance of two hundred yards, was up to his belly in mud, his stern alone showing round a tuft of grass. Previous experience had taught me that it was useless to go down into the grass, so I had perforce to stay where I was and possess my soul in patience. After some time the one under the tree moved, and in a leisurely manner strolled up to his companion. As he emerged from the long grass round the mud-hole I had one glimpse of his tusks, and, quite satisfied, I took the only chance I was likely to obtain, and fired a half-side head shot. He drew himself up into a bunch of indignant protest, as much as to say, "Who the devil did that?" But a second shot failing to elucidate the matter, he swung round and crashed away across the gully, while number two bolted straight ahead. I rained shot into him while he swerved round and followed in the wake of his companion. Then I dashed along the side of the slope, stumbling, tripping, rolling, and diving over grass that I could not force my way through, till a sudden drop of 10 ft. landed me face first on the bed of a stream, invisible above through the grass, but painfully tangible below. Fortunately my rifle did not suffer proportionately, and scrambling out I reached a small ridge from which I could see my elephant standing about three hundred yards off. Again I fusilladed him till out of range, and then followed, falling twice to the elephant's once. He was nearly spent, but managed to reach some extra long grass, where I lost sight of him for some time, till at length he crawled out into the shade of a tree under the opposite bank. The gorge was narrow at this point, so that he was not more than one hundred yards off when I reopened the bombardment. For a long time he took the phut-phut of the bullets without showing the slightest emotion. Then suddenly over he went like a tree under the axe. He struggled to his feet once more, only to fall for the last time under the continued hail. Cutting across the dip, I climbed on to the bank about twenty yards above him; but the grass was so dense that I could not see him, although considerably above the level of the tangle where he was lying. His great sobs told me that all was over, and anxious to put him out of his misery, I went down, having to approach within two yards before I could see him, and finished him off with the 10-bore, his head being invisible. To my amazement he had only one tusk, 7 ft. 9 in., and 98 lbs.; and as I was sure that I had seen two tusks, I came to the conclusion that this must be number two, and that number one had dropped at the same time that I did. So following back on the spoor, I came on the other elephant, lying four hundred yards from where I had first hit him, but, lo and behold! he also had only one tusk, 7 ft. 7 in., and 86 lbs. So certain was I of having seen two tusks that I followed his spoor back, thinking that possibly there might have been a third hidden by the grass, but it was not so, and to this day I believe he took the other tusk off and threw it away, as a sort of Jonah! On arriving at camp I found that letters and tomatoes had arrived from Toro. Our pagasi had attempted their old games about three days' journey south of the Albert Edward and had been attacked with the loss of twenty men, amongst them Sulimani, the root of all the disturbances. His successor in office, who, like other gentlemen of his kidney, combined loudness of talk in times of peace with extraordinary fleetness of foot in times of danger, was the first to bring the news to Toro.
CHAPTER XVI.
SEMLIKI VALLEY AND KAVALLI'S COUNTRY.
Leaving this country with regret, I descended into the valley once more and marched north, crossing the Semliki to avoid the swamps mentioned by Colonel Lugard at the westerly bend of the river, and recrossed about six miles from where the river enters the lake. For some distance the mournful monotony of aloe and euphorbia is broken by groves of the stately borassus palm. The few miserable Wanyoro, who are sparsely scattered over the plain, were absolutely destitute. The prolonged drought had dried up the maize and millet, and the beans, which form their main food supply, were finished, so that three hippo that I killed for them raised me to a giddy pinnacle of fame; my tent became, for the time being, a second Lourdes, droves of pilgrims pouring in to pay homage to my .303. Their astonishment, when I showed them the size of the bullet and how the magazine worked, was most ludicrous. They had heard how it would drop a huge elephant without a wriggle of his trunk, and they had heard the three shots and could see the three hippo tied to the bank, and had imagined, I suppose, that it was a sort of 7-pounder; so that when they held a cartridge with its pencil-like bullet in their hand, and the truth gradually dawned on them, they would drop it like a hot potato. Some, when I started the mechanism, fairly took to their heels. A native's estimate of a gun varies proportionately with the size of the bore, and his idea of killing range is ten yards, or, if the sportsman is something of a marksman, perhaps twenty. I was fortunate in bringing off several shots at about four hundred to five hundred yards at nsunu,[#] and natives, having no unit of distance, consider everything from two hundred yards to about five miles as the same thing. I have several times heard my gun-bearer, Makanjira, who is a great admirer of the gun, solemnly explaining to an open-mouthed audience how he had seen me kill beasts at such a distance, pointing to a hill some three or four miles away. Consequently, its powers were magnified to the most prodigious proportions, and on the march excited natives would point to mere specks on the horizon, inform me they were buck, and expect me to kill them on the instant; they never gave me any of the credit--it was the gun, the wonderful gun, and I only obtained a reflected glory as its possessor. After crossing the river, I found the natives very nervous and suspicious, and though I visited the village near which I camped, and induced the chief to come to the river-bank to see one of the hippo, which I told him he might have, the following morning, on sending for a guide, I found that they had "shot the moon," carrying off their half-dozen miserable goats, and fled into the bush.
[#] Nsunu:Cobus Thomasi.
As the guide promised me by the chief on the other side was not forthcoming, and not wishing to delay any longer, as the sun was terrible on these arid plains, I started without one, and, after two hours' walking, found that I had penetrated well into the marshes at the south end of the lake. In trying to skirt round the arm of water and sudd that stretches to the south, we soon found ourselves in an apparently boundless sea of one of Nature's truly African inventions, a tall grass, 8 to 10 ft. high, the roots forming a hopeless tangle of matted whipcord reaching 2 ft. from the ground, and effectually hiding the honeycomb of old hippo and elephant-holes 2 ft. deep below, while the stems and leaves are covered with myriads of invisible spines, which detach themselves in one's skin and clothes, and set up the most intense irritation.
After floundering through this sea of misery for a couple of hours, we were extricated by the promised guide, who had followed on our tracks, and eventually arrived at a miserable patch of huts; we came so unexpectedly on the people that they had not time to fly, and a few explanations soon put them at their ease. I found that they were Wanyabuga, the same people who were so friendly to Lugard and belonged to Katonzi, a nominal vassal of Kasagama's, and who is now the sole survivor of Lugard's three blood brothers, Katonzi, Kavalli, and Mugenzi. They do not cultivate, but depend on the Balegga and Wakoba for grain, which they barter for fish and salt. They are quite distinct in appearance from the surrounding tribes. The type is a tall (5 ft. 8 in.), large-limbed, square-shouldered negro, bull-necked, bullet-headed, with a very low forehead and coarse features; colour very dark; but they have a jolly expression, and were some of the pleasantest natives I ever dealt with. It was curious to see even amongst these people, who live a life apart from their surroundings, the occasional delicate features, gazelle-like eyes, light colour, lithe limbs, and genteel nonchalance of the Galla influence.
At the south end of the Albert Edward, where the Rutchuru flows into the lake, forming similar marshes to those of the Semliki, there is a people living exactly the same life. Unfortunately, owing to their extreme shyness, I could find out very little about them, but from their mode of life, methods of fishing, and general appearance, I have no doubt that they are closely allied; probably survivors of former inhabitants who have found a last refuge in these intricate waterways and impenetrable marshes. The similarity in the names of these two peoples is significant.
It is a strange amphibious existence in these simmering wastes of weed and water, the stillness of which is only broken by the occasional blow of a hippo, the splash of a fish or crocodile, the wild cry of the numerous flights of wild-fowl, and the everlasting plaint of the fish-eagle. A perpetual mirage hovering over the scene adds to the general mystery; groups of huts suddenly appear where all was shimmering light, and as suddenly vanish; a canoe with its two upright punters glides past apparently in the sky, a goose suddenly assumes the proportions of an elephant, and an elephant evolves out of what one took to be a goose; and thus the scene is ever changing, till the grey of evening and the crisp light of the rising sun bring out in strong relief the placid sheets of water, the long brown bands of weeds, the tiny islands with their little huts perched among the waving reeds, the thin strips of sand with their occasional waddling hippo, the little black canoes slowly gliding in and out amongst the weed-beds and tufts of grass, and the continual flight of flocks of white ibis.
I never tired of sitting on the shore and watching the long string of little black canoes slowly wending their way towards me, bringing in fish and salt, to trade with the group of Balegga who were waiting with loads of beans and millet flour.
The small stretch of country lying between the Semliki, the Albert Lake, and the hills is called Kitwakimbi, and is distinct from Bukande, which begins at the foot of the hills and reaches back to the watershed.
My Wanyabuga friends provided me with two guides, who, after wasting two hours in visiting obscure villages, all of which were deserted, and answering my protests at our zigzag route by ambiguous allusions to marshes, eventually landed me within four hundred yards of where I had started, and suggested that I should camp. Having with difficulty persuaded them that I was annoyed, which they evidently considered unreasonable on my part, they smilingly explained that it was far from their homes, and they had hoped to find me other guides. However, vague allusions to the presence of a "kiboko"[#] convinced them of the inexpediency, not to say positive danger, of further nonsense, and they gaily proceeded on their way, chortling hugely at the success of what they thought a very merry prank. They led me to a deserted village opposite Kasenyi, a small island about a mile from the mainland, and the present headquarters of Katonzi. The Wanyabuga-Balegga market was in full swing, but vanished like mist at my sudden appearance, and it was only by going down to the beach stripped to the waist, and a happy allusion to brothership with "Kapelli," that I induced them to bring their canoes to the shore again. "Kapelli" is the native name of that gallant officer Colonel Lugard, and to have left a name in Africa that opens all doors and all hearts is the finest monument to his exploits that a man can have. They flocked in to see me under Tunja, Katonzi's eldest son, who brought several loads of food, and informed me that Katonzi had left two days before for Toro. They asked all kinds of questions about "Kapelli" and Mr. Grant, who was with Lugard in his expedition to release the Soudanese, and wanted to know why he had never come back, and had the English deserted their country after promising to protect them? I answered all their questions to the best of my ability, and when I showed them Lugard's book and the photograph of Grant, which, to my surprise, they immediately recognized, their delight knew no bounds.
[#]Kiboko: whip made of hippo hide.
The mosquitoes here defy description; even at mid-day I had to eat my food walking about, and my evening and morning toilet, combined as it was with a Dan Lenoesque extravaganza, if performed on the Empire stage would assuredly have brought down the house. I crawled into my mosquito-net with the greatest caution, disposed all my weighty belongings, such as boots and cartridge-bags, in a circle round my bed to keep down the edges of the net, exhausted all my candle-ends in exploding the odd hundred or two that had crawled in with me, and was quickly lulled to sleep by the dismal drone of myriads, happy in the knowledge that they were outside; sleep, gentle sleep, during which I evolved in one short hour from my own insignificant self through the alarming stages of Daniel in the lion's den, and a cold bread poultice, to the stern reality that they were inside; and they were, hundred and hundreds of them. In vain I searched for some hole or possible inlet, and eventually had to resign myself to the inevitable, buoyed up by the meagre consolation that I had discovered that, like the light of the glow-worm, the mosquito is possessed of the properties of the Röntgen rays.
Early the next morning Tunja came to tell me that Katonzi was coming back, and at midday he arrived in person. He is a dismal old nigger, and though somewhat rapacious, not a bad fellow. His first request was to see the wonderful book, and then how I struck a match, an accomplishment that tickled him immensely. He then naïvely asked me to give him my guns, saying that Lugard had given them two guns, but that the Belgians had taken them away. I asked him why all the people were so frightened, and where they had all gone; whereupon he proceeded to recount the same tales of misery and oppression that I had heard the day before, from which I gathered that a Congo Free State official rejoicing in the name of "Billygee" had suddenly swooped down on the country a year ago, and after shooting down numbers of the natives had returned west, carrying off forty young women, numerous children, and all the cattle and goats, and putting a finishing touch to the proceedings by a grand pyrotechnic display, during which they bound the old women, threw them into the huts, and then fired the roofs. Several absolutely independent witnesses informed me that this had been done actually in the presence of Billygee and the gentlemen who accompanied him. Katonzi's two sons, Tunja and Kutaru, were bound and taken away, but released after two months. Kavalli's eldest son is now in their hands, while a younger one escaped to the Balegga. As I have mentioned before, when in Mboga the Balegga told me similar tales; here I was repeatedly given accounts that tallied in all essentials, and further north the Wakoba made the same piteous complaints; and I saw myself that a country apparently well populated and responsive to just treatment in Lugard's time (and that under very trying conditions, owing to the numbers of destitute aliens in the country--to wit, the Soudanese) is now practically a howling wilderness; the scattered inhabitants, terrified even of one another, and living almost without cultivation in the marshes, thickets, and reeds, madly flee even from their own shadows. Chaos--hopeless, abysmal chaos--from Mweru to the Nile; in the south, tales of cruelty of undoubted veracity, but which I could not repeat without actual investigation on the spot; on Tanganyika, absolute impotence, revolted Askaris ranging at their own sweet will, while the white men are throwing their ivory and cartridges into the lake, and cutting down their bananas for fear the rebels should take them; on Kivu, a hideous wave of cannibalism raging unchecked through the land, while in the north the very white men who should be keeping peace where chaos now reigns supreme, are spending thousands in making of peace a chaos of their own. I have no hesitation in condemning the whole State as a vampire growth, intended to suck the country dry, and to provide a happy hunting-ground for a pack of unprincipled outcasts and untutored scoundrels. The few sound men in the country are powerless to stem the tide of oppression.
The departure of my mubaka provided by King Kasagama had taken a great load off my mind; he was too heavy a swell for me to keep pace with, dressed in white breeks, yellow putties, red fez, and three fancy cloths, to say nothing of a red and yellow belt; and his terrible anxiety lest he should miss a chance of putting up a large white umbrella with a green lining was so infectious that finally I found myself watching the clouds with one eye and the mubaka with the other, knowing that at the first ray of sunshine he would emerge from his hut and perform for my edification. In the cloudy intervals he devoured such masses of solid food that even with my experience of native capacity I became quite alarmed, and between the struttings and bursting-point tests, he had very little time to devote to my affairs, so that I was very glad to see the last of him.
Katonzi, after relating his own troubles, and thinking, I suppose, that it was my turn to have a few, proceeded to paint the most gruesome pictures of what was in front. With tears in his eyes he begged me to turn back, saying that if I died the white men would blame him; he informed me that all was wilderness beyond--no food, no paths, all the people dead. Putting his hand to his head, he explained how they had all just done so, lain down and expired.[#] Pressed as to the reason of this general collapse, he eagerly shook his head and murmured "Muungu" (Kismet). Though summing up the majority of these perils as "nigger gibberish," I was rather alarmed at the sudden death business, thinking that perhaps it was smallpox or the Bombay plague; but this, like the rest, was simply imagination. It is strange how natives get these ideas into their heads. I do not think it was gratuitous lying, as all his people, as far as I could see without any other reason than belief in the sudden death, were afraid even to hunt in the direction indicated; and he certainly had nothing to gain by stopping me from going forward, since he had no interest in the country. However, I thought it advisable to buy several days' provisions, and to do this it was necessary to draw the Balegga from the hills; all my overtures had failed so far, and I saw that the only way to start was to lay ground-bait for them by killing elephant or buffalo. With this object in view I sallied forth with a guide who was to take me to the elephant country. He wandered about for two or three hours in country that an elephant would not look at through a telescope, and whenever I said that I wanted elephant, he nodded his head and said, "Oh yes, elephant." Then suddenly, as if a bright idea had struck him, he said, "Oh yes,elephant!" and promptly walked back through camp to a narrow spit jutting out into the lake and about a quarter of a mile distant. As I could see water on both sides and short grass in front, I thought he meant hippo, or was mad, inclining to the latter belief; but no, he was quite confident, and stalked along muttering to himself, "Yes, elephant! Yes, elephant!" (as much as to say, "Who would have thought it?"); and sure enough there were nine elephant in the reeds in the lake at the end of the spit. The place was a mass of vegetation and honeycombed with elephant-holes. I dropped one with a single shot.
[#] I have since realized that he was referring to the sleeping sickness which entered this district at that time.
As I had expected, after a day of very hot sun, the odour was too tempting, and the Balegga swarmed down from the hills and brought me what food I wanted. I went for a stroll in the evening, and came on a small herd of buffalo; they were very small compared with the South African species, and amongst them were three light brown ones, a bull, cow, and three-parts-grown calf. They were very beautiful animals, with a black ridge of hair running along the neck and the top of the shoulders. I shot the bull, and as my pagasi had as much as they could carry, I told the natives to cure the hide and send it with the head into Toro, so I hope to be able to have it described. When I first saw them I thought they were eland, and it was with the greatest surprise that I found they had a buffalo's head attached. The small one was as light in colour as a reedbuck, and the other two a similar colour round the rump and the belly.[#] I could gather no information from the natives as to whether they had seen others; all they knew was that the buffalo was an evil beast, had once been very numerous, but was now finished.
[#] I have since found, on reference to the British Museum, that they were the Congo buffalo. This proves that their distribution is further East than was imagined. The fact that they were running in the same herd as the black Eastern variety is of considerable scientific interest.
CHAPTER XVII.
ALBERT LAKE AND UPPER NILE TO WADELAI.
An hour's walk into the valley of death brought us to a cluster of villages with a large population, which was in a state of utter destitution. The people, who were very nervous at first, eventually gathered round in numbers with the same tale of rapine and murder, and the chief gave me a guide to take me to the foot of the hills. Another hour brought us to Nsabe, which, though generally depicted on maps in large letters, consists of about five dirty little muck-heaps, only recognizable as human habitations by the filthy smell that emanated from them. All the inhabitants fled, leaving their spears, bows, and beer in their hurry, and no amount of shouting and yelling would induce them to return. Our guide promptly made a bundle of the spears and other movables, with a view to appropriation, which when complete I placed against a tree, accompanying the movement by a vigorous application of my boot to the toughest portion of his anatomy. Incorrigible, bullying, thieving curs, one is often tempted to think that the Boer method of treating natives is, after all, the only one they deserve. Their Mark Tapleyism is their sole redeeming feature, and that is attributable to the incapacity of their intellect to hold anything but the impression of the moment. Although of the same tribe and close neighbours, I expect he would have thoroughly enjoyed seeing me burn and loot the place; it is the same everywhere--a guide amongst his own people is a worse thief even than a Manyema porter. He then took us by a devious route to the shore of the lake, and seemed greatly astonished to find that the village he had mentioned did not exist; nor had it left any trace behind. I could see by the way he was behaving that he intended to bolt, and knowing that without a native of the country there was very little chance of inducing the people, in their frightened state, to remain in their villages, I kept a close eye on him. As I expected, when I sat down on the shore to wait for the boys to close up, he began edging off towards the jungle; but when he looked round to see if it was all clear, he found himself covered by my .303. I had him brought back, and explained to him that his chief had sent him to show the way to the foot of the hills, that he had led me into the wilderness and could now lead me out, the two alternatives being villages, another guide, and a present, or a race with a .303 bullet. He chose the former, and seeing that fooling was a glut in the market, promptly took us to a village of the Wakoba called Kahoma, and in Kahuma's country. Here all the people fled, but he followed, and persuaded them to bring food to trade. They, too, had been raided, and had lost two women and two children captured. They could not tell me how many white men or Askaris there were, as they had not waited to see. The majority of them are fine, well-made men, and intensely black. One in particular took my fancy. He was a tremendous swell, with anything from 15 to 20 lbs. of red clay on his head, an enormous ivory bracelet, and multitudes of iron rings. The Wakoba live all along the lake-shore and in the fringe of the hills, and, curiously enough, their villages are mixed indiscriminately with those of the Balegga, with whom they seem to be on the best of terms, although the two peoples are quite distinct, the Balegga being real out-and-out bestial little savages, while the Wakoba are much above the Central African average of intelligence, with quite a wide knowledge of local affairs. They are both in a state of parallel expansion, the Balegga working to the north into the Lendu country, and the Wakoba in the opposite direction encroaching on the Wanyabuga.
Two miles north of Kahoma the hills come down to the water's edge, leaving only a narrow shingly beach, and thenceforward our progress became painfully slow; at intervals the headlands jut out into the water, and the work of transporting the loads round these obstructions with only two or three small and very unstable canoes was one of considerable difficulty, even the latitude of Doctor Johnson's dictionary proving insufficient on occasions; scores of little streams come tumbling down into the lake, each one forming a small delta, on many of which there are Wakoba villages with a few banana palms, and signs of scratching on the hillside, where I presume something was intended to grow, but had turned dizzy and given up the attempt. After Kahanama's, which is in Kahuma's sphere, Mpigwa is the big man, and I passed through many of his villages, some of the largest being Kabora, Zingi (?), Bordo, Nsessi, and Kiboko. Most of the scenery is very fine, the little white cascades gleaming in the shadow of immense trees, many of which are covered with scarlet and yellow blossoms, and in the midst of luxuriant tangles of vegetation the great gaunt slabs of slimy rock deep-set in their snow-white bed of sand, over which the little waves come tumbling in, gurgling and splashing round their feet and moaning and sobbing into a thousand miniature caves; while great apes and little brown-eyed monkeys drop from branch to branch and sit leering and gibbering at us as we paddle past.
The continual wetting and rock-climbing had the most disastrous effect on my already attenuated wardrobe, and for two or three days I was compelled to disport myself clad in a simple shirt, which, thanks to a classical education and consequent ignorance of the art of washing, had contracted to the modest and insufficient dimensions of a chest-preserver, while assuming the durable but inappropriate consistency of a piece of oil-cloth. The roseate hues of early dawn "weren't in it" with my nether limbs after the first day's exposure to a pitiless sun, and I became a sort of perambulating three-tiered Neapolitan ice, coffee, vanilla and raspberry, a phenomenon that greatly astonished a savage who surprised me in my bath, and who immediately fetched all his kith and kin to see; on the second day, however, the alarming desertion of a third of my epidermis so pained me mentally and physically, that after a great effort I produced a double-barrelled garment that in the absence of Poole-bred critics served its turn.
Of the various arts and crafts that one is called upon to undertake in Africa, such as cooking, shoe-mending, washer-womaning, doctoring, butchering, taxiderming, armoury work, carpentering, etc.,ad infinitum, I think perhaps tailoring is the most trying; the cotton willnotgo into the eye of the needle, and the needlewillgo into one's fingers, and then when you think it is all over, you find you have sewn the back of your shirt to the front, or accomplished something equally unexpected and equally difficult to undo.
At Nsessi, two miles south of Kiboko, there is a superb waterfall; it has a drop of about 500 ft., and is divided into three stages, all at a different angle to one another, falling 100 ft., then swirling round at an angle, plunging into the next pool, and then a last long slide to the level of the lake. Stupendous silver-trunked trees, with foliage the colour of the ilex and brilliant splashes of scarlet bloom, crowd round on either side of the gorge wherever the wild rocks afford a footing; above towers a pointed peak showing bright above the dense gloom of the gorge, and a white stripe of sand fringes the little village, nestling in its banana grove, at the base.
These natives lead a curious existence, shut in between precipitous hills and the lake, their sole means of communication with one another being their leaky little 10 ft. dug-outs. They are wonderfully clever at handling them, and perform the extraordinary feat of crossing the lake, dodging in and out between the waves in the most marvellous manner. As a means of transport they are not to be recommended; the shape of a cross-section being that of an egg with its top off, one slides in with comparative ease like a pickle into a pickle-jar: once in, as with the pickle, extrication is a matter of time and patience. It needs one of Lear's Jumblies to feel thoroughly at home, as they leak like a sieve, and only perpetual bailing will keep them afloat.
The first day, in the sweet innocence of youth, I set off to round a headland with my guns and a tin box containing my indispensables on board, fearing to trust them to a native. All went smoothly at first, till I had arrived well off the rocks with a slight swell on and no landing-place near, and then she began slowly to heel over, while water seemed to be rushing in through the wood itself. After prodigious efforts I succeeded in running into the rocks, the water being then within an inch of the gunwale. I saved my guns and box, but smashed the canoe, and after that turned passenger. It looks so easy when they come dancing along, each with a native kneeling in the stern and plying a huge curved-bladed paddle; but it is a very different thing when one is wedged in oneself; physically incapable of squatting in a kneeling posture, as a native does, one finds bailing out an impossibility; the whole of the bottom of the canoe seems to be covered with boots, and the incurved edges catch the wooden bailing-dish and jerk the contents into one's lap.
Although the lake teems with fish, many of large size, the Wakoba make no attempt to catch them, trusting to the occasional chance of purchasing from the natives on the other shore or from Kasenyi.
One day I shot a baboon at the natives' request, a performance, by the way, that I shall not repeat, nor would I recommend it to any one but the most hardened villain. A frantic scramble took place for the flesh, and when I asked them what it tasted like, they "smole a smile." Amongst the countless troops of monkeys that are for ever coughing and dancing amongst the rocks and trees, I saw a small family of very beautiful little fellows with bright fox-red fringes down their sides, but I could not bring myself to shoot at them after seeing that unfortunate baboon, although I have never seen them described, or elsewhere in Africa.
At Viboko I was compelled to wait, the shore in front being impracticable and the heights behind unscaleable, till Mswa sent down the canoes, which I had requested by numerous envoys. My boys were badly in need of a rest, the work having been very trying since Kahanama's, and the fever from which I was suffering made it equally acceptable to me. In the afternoon two natives arrived, saying that a muzungu[#] was coming down to meet me with ten canoes. After inquiries as to what kind of Askaris he had, etc., etc., I gathered that it must be a Belgian official, so killed the fatted calf in the guise of a skinny sheep and sundry osseous frames masquerading as dorkings, and then plunged for the second time into the turgid flow of Zola'sRome, to cleanse my French of probable Swahili trespassers. I even exhumed a tie, and having produced a menu that exhausted all the possible combinations and permutations of an African larder, awaited anxiously his arrival, picturing to myself the joys of a little talkee-talkee once more. A stiff southerly breeze evidently was delaying them, and it was not till after dark that we heard the wild canoe-song of the flotilla, which had rounded the point and caught sight of our camp-fires. Giving a last twirl to my moustache and a nautical hitch to the Poolesque garment aforesaid, and composing my features to the iron-clad smirk indispensable to such occasions, I advanced to do the honours, and grasped the hand of a dirty, greasy little negro clad in, or rather smeared over with, a prehistoric piece of cloth! Here was my muzungu! here my gallant Belgian staggering under the gold braid of a hat of that peculiarly unbecoming shape affected by French guards and German tourists, and majestically trailing the orthodox 30-franc sword! Inquiries elicited the fact that the parasitic relic of Manchester above mentioned established a valid claim to the title of muzungu in these parts. However, he had brought the canoes, so I readily forgave him, and next day we arrived at the old Soudanese station, Mswa. Mswa is the name of the chief, who is a vassal of Tukenda, and Mahagi is the name of the country itself. He is an intelligent old native, and remembered seeing that ubiquitous officer, Bt.-Major Vandeleur, D.S.O., when he crossed from Kibero, and was delighted at the photograph which forms the frontispiece to his book entitledCampaigns on the Nile and Niger. Here let me recommend travellers to take out photographs of men who have gone before them; the effect is wonderful on those natives who can grasp the idea, though, of course, to many natives a picture is merely a piece of paper. It convinces those who can understand it that you are speaking the truth--a possibility so utterly foreign to the native mind. After exchanging presents he retired, promising to bring more boys in the morning to work the canoes; but in the morning none were forthcoming, and after waiting some time while Mswa rushed frantically round the country, shouting to his people, who walked off into the grass and laughed at him, I concluded that he was either incompetent or trying to make a fool of me, and, to his consternation, manned the canoes with my own men and started. As I expected, enough men were immediately forthcoming, but too late, and I held on my way.