CHAPTER XII.PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE.

The wild slaves are brought over in daus which carry from 10 to 500 head. Most of thoseintended for the Island market are comparatively young: the Portuguese settlements at Mozambique give higher prices for able-bodied adults. Since the last treaty the value has more than trebled; what then cost $10 has now risen to $30 to $35. A small boy fresh from the mainland commands from $7 to $15; a girl under 7 or 8 years old, from $10 to $18. The live cargo pays duty to the Zanzibar and Kilwa custom-houses, as at Zayla, Tajurrah, and the slave-exporting harbours of the Red Sea: the sick and the refuse, however, enter free. About 1835 the import duty varied from $0.50 to $4, according to the port whence the ‘black ivory’ was shipped: some races had such an ill fame that only excessive cheapness found purchasers. Presently $2 and at last $1 were levied upon all, good or had. Of late years (1857) the annual maximum collected was $23,000: this enables us to rate the import at an average of 14,000 to 15,000 per annum, the extreme being 9000 or 18,000. In 1860-61 it rose to 19,000, in 1861-62 it fell to 14,000, and in 1862-63 there was a further declension.[122]

The impudence and audacity of the wild slaves almost passes belief. Such is their habitof walking into any open dwelling and carrying off whatever is handy, that no questions are asked about a negro shot or cut down in the act of simple trespass. At night they employ themselves in robbing or smuggling, and at times in firing a house, when they join the crowd and spread the flames for the purpose of plunder. They are armed burglars, and not a few murders are laid at their door. In the plantation they gratify their savage, quarrelsome, and ungovernable tempers, by waging desultory servile wars with neighbouring gangs; hundreds will turn out with knobsticks, stones, and a few muskets, and blaze wildly in the direction of one another: at the first casualty all will run. Some proprietors have had as many as 2000 blacks—not half the number often owned in the Southern United States, and in the Brazil—but at those times the negro was worth only from $3 to $10. They were allowed two days out of the week to fish for themselves, and to work at their own patches of ground.

Of late years the Zanzibar serviles have attempted to compete with the honest and hardworking porters of Hazramaut; but they cannot keep their hands from picking and stealing, and thus they have ruined several of their ‘Akidahs,’or headmen, who rendered themselves responsible to the merchant. Being capable of considerable although desultory exertion, they get a living by day-work on board European ships, and they prefer this employment because they receive rations of rice and treacle, with occasionally a bit of beef or pork. When there is no work upon the plantation its slaves are jobbed at the rate of 8 to 10 pice per diem, and of this sum they receive 2, about the wage of an Indian ‘biggaree.’ Of course they do their best to defraud their masters of the hire.

The following are the distant races of whom a few serviles find their way to Zanzibar.

Circassians and white slave girls being exceedingly rare, are confined to the harems of the rulers. They are brought from Persia, and are as extravagant in tastes as they are expensive in prime cost. A ‘Járiyeh bayza’ soon renders the house of a moderately rich man unendurable.

Abyssinians, or rather Africans from Gurague, Amhara, and the continent north of the parallel of Cape Guardafui, are mostly imported from El Hejaz. Boys and lads range from $50 to $100: girls, from $60 to $150. The former are circumcised, and having a good reputation for honesty, intelligence, and amiability, they areeducated as stewards, superintendents, and super-cargos. The latter, though exceedingly addicted to intrigue, are favourites with men, and, it is said, with Arab women.

Galla captives of many tribes, especially of the Arisha and a few of the southern Somal, are shipped from Hafun, Brava, and Hanir or Makdishu. They fetch low prices, and are little prized, being considered roguish and treacherous. In appearance they are savage likenesses of the Abyssinians.

The coast of Zanzibar, which before the days of the Periplus supplied the eastern world with slaves, has of late years been exhausted by over-driving. It may be divided into two sections: the northern country, which exports from Mombasah and the little adjacent harbours as far south as the Pangani river; and the southern regions between Pangani and Kilwa. Details concerning all these servile races will be given when we visit their respective ports.

CHAPTER XII.PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE.

‘The port of Zanzibar has little or no trade; that to Bombay consists of a little gum and ivory, brought from the mainland, with a few cloves, the only produce of the island; and the import trade is chiefly dates, and cloth from Muscat, to make turbans. These things are sent in small country vessels, which make only one voyage a year. The trade is consequently very trifling.’—Capt. Hart, Commanding H. M. S. Imogene, 1834.

The dry season—and uncommonly dry it had been—was judged by all old hands unfit for travel, and I was strongly advised to defer exploration of the interior till after learning something of the coast. The Rev. Mr Erhardt’s Memoir on the Chart of Eastern and Central Africa, which threw into a huge uninterrupted Caspian half-a-dozen central lakes, and called it in the south Niandsha (Nyassa), in the north Ukerewe, and on the coast Niasa and Bahari ya Uniamési,had proposed a choice of three several routes. The first was through Dshaga (Chaga), and the lands of the Wamasai. It numbered 59 days, over level land, though studded with many isolated hills and mountains, and it traded to the Wanyamwezi, ‘of the race of Wazambiro,’ probably the Wafioma of the Usambíro district, near Karagwah. The middle caravan was reported to start ‘from Bagamoyo and Mboamaji to Uniamési.’ The general features of the country, the distances, and even the position of Ujiji, were remarkably well laid down. The ‘Stadt Ujiji,’ inhabited partly by Arabians, partly by Wahas (Wahhas), of course, did not exist: the saline stream of the Wapogo[123]and the people, whose teeth became yellow by drinking of another water, were evidently the creations of some lively negro’s fancy. The ‘third or southern caravan line,’ set out from Kilwa, and after 200 miles struck the ‘Niasa or Niandsha’ Lake.In this section the distances were miscalculated, and except the Wafipa and the Wabembe, the tribes were incorrectly named and placed.

In his plan for exploring the Great Lake, and laid before the Royal Geographical Society in 1854, M. Erhardt proposed to land at Kilwa, where he had touched with Dr Krapf; to collect a party of Wasawahili, and with an outfit of $300 to march into the continent. This might have been feasible in 1854; it was impossible in 1856. The sum mentioned was inadequate; the missionaries had spent as much upon a fortnight’s march from Pangani to Fuga. Slaves are the only porters of the land, and the death of Sayyid Said had then made the coast Arabs and the Mrima people about Kilwa almost independent of Zanzibar. My directions from home were to follow, if possible, this line; Lieut. Christopher, I. N., however, who visited the coast in 1843, more wisely advised explorers to avoid the neighbourhood of Kilwa. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, moreover, strongly objected to our landing anywhere but under the guns of Zanzibar, as it were. He informed me that the Wangindo, a tribe settled behind Kilwa, had lately murdered a native trader, at the instigation of those settled on the coast; and that nothingless than a ship of war stationed at the port would open the road to a ‘Muzungu’ (white man).

The Consul had also warned me that my inquiries into the country trade, and the practice of writing down answers—without which, however, no report could have been compiled—were exciting ill will. The short-sighted traders dreaded, like Orientals, that competition might result from our discoveries, and their brains were too dull to perceive that the development of the resources of the interior would benefit all those connected with the coast. Houses that had amassed in a few years large fortunes by the Zanzibar trade, were exceedingly anxious to ‘let sleeping dogs lie.’ As far as dinners and similar hospitality, the white merchants resident on the Island received us with the usual African profuseness. There were, of course, honourable exceptions: I have especially mentioned Captain Mansfield, Mr Masury, and M. Bérard; but not a few—exempla sunt odiosa—spread reports amongst the natives, Banyans, Arabs, and Wasawahili, which were very likely to secure for us the disastrous fate of M. Maizan. Captain Speke, who subsequently ignored this fact, threatened to throw one of the ‘first houses’ out of the window;and Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton declared that unless more discretion in spreading evil reports were shown he would withdraw British protection from another well-known firm. The son of a Hamburg merchant had written to his father for leave to supply us with sums to be recovered from the Royal Geographical Society. When informed of this peculiar kindness I inquired the object, and the answer was that, intending himself to visit India, he wished to prepare his father for the expense of travel in the East. Certainly knowing all these intrigues, I see no reason why they should not be published.

The Arabs were as much alarmed at the prospect of opening up the African interior as were the foreign merchants; they knew that Europeans had long coveted a settlement upon the sea-board, and they had no wish to lose the monopoly of the copal coast and the ivory-lands. Nothing indeed would be easier, I repeat, for a European power than to establish itself upon the mainland; and if it followed the wise example of the early Portuguese, who limited their possessions to the principal ports and to the great centres of trade, it would soon monopolize an enriching traffic. With respect to copal, and to the articles most in demand, our commercialrelations with Zanzibar might be altered for the benefit of both contracting parties. It is at present an unnatural, exclusive system, a monopoly claiming advantages of which it will not, or cannot, avail itself. But all steps in these matters must be taken by the Home Governments; the petty jealousies of rival powers here render all local interference unadvisable.

At length the Kazi Muhiyy el Din, the ‘celestial doctor’ of the Wasawahili, was detailed by the curious to investigate the subject, and to represent the terrors of the public. He retired, satisfied that our plans were not of conquest. The Arab chiefs pressed Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton to swear upon the ‘Kalmat Ullah’ that the expedition was to be conducted only by English officers, upon whose good-will they could rely; that it was not a proselytizing movement of the Wanajuoni (sons of the book, missionaries), and that it would not be accompanied by ‘Dutchmen,’ as certain gentleman from Germany were called by the Zanzibaris.[124]Had the Consul hesitatedto satisfy them, the course of events is clear to all who know the Eastern man. The surface of Arab civility would have run unruffled, but the undertow would have carried us off our legs.

Persuaded at last by the earnestness of our energetic supporter, the Sayyid Sulayman bin Hamid bin Said—a noble Omani never neglects the name of his grandsire—came forward in our favour. This aged chief, a cousin of the late Sayyid, rejoiced in the nickname of Bahari Maziwa (Sea of Milk), the Ethiopic equivalent for ‘soft-sawder.’ He had governed Zanzibar during the minority of Sayyid Khalid, who died in 1854, and his influence was strong upon the sea-board. He gave us his good word in sundry circulars, to which the Prince Majid added others, addressed to Kimwere, Sultan of Usumbara; to the Diwans or Wasawahili head-men,and to the Baloch Jemadars, commanding the several garrisons. On the other hand, Ladha Damha of Mandavie, the Banyan Collector of Customs, provided me with orders upon the Hindu coast-merchants, to raise the requisite moneys, without which our reception would have been of the coolest. The horizon now began to clear, and even to look bright, as it generally will when the explorer has time and patience to await the change of weather.

If we travellers in transit had reason to be proud of our countryman’s influence at Zanzibar, the resident foreigners should have been truly thankful for it. When Lieut-Colonel Hamerton first made this Island his head-quarters (1841), he found that for nine years it had not been visited by a British cruiser, and that interested reports had been spread, representing us to be no longer masters of the Indian Seas. Slavery was everywhere rampant. Bozals, green or wild slaves, here called Baghams (بغم), were thrown overboard when sick, to avoid paying duty; and the sea-beach of the city, which acts Marine Parade, as well as the plantations, presented horrible spectacles of dogs and birds of prey devouring swollen and spotted human carcases—the remnants of‘slaves that never prayed.’[125]The Consul’s representations were listened to by Sayyid Said, who, through virtue of certain dry floggings and confiscations of property, à la Mohammed Ali, instilled into the slave-owners some semblance of humanity.

Negro insolence was dealt with as summarily. The Arabs had persuaded the Wasawahili, and even the Creoles, that a white man is a being below contempt, and the ‘poor African’ eagerly carried out the theory. Only 17 years have elapsed (1857) since a certain trading-consul, Mr W—, in consular hat and sword, was horsed upon a servile back, and was solemnly ‘bakur’d,’ in his own consular house, under his own consular flag. This occurrence was afterwards denied by the best of all authorities, the gentleman who told the tale: I have, however, every reason to believe it. A Msawahili would at any time enter the merchant’s office, dispose his sandaled or bare feet upon the table or the bureau, call for cognac, and, if refused, draw his dagger. Impudent fishermen would anchor their craft below the windows of the British Consulate,and, clinging to the mast-top, enjoy with derision the spectacle of feeding Kafirs. The Arabs jostled strangers in the streets, drove them from the centre, and compelled them to pass by the wall. At night no one dared to carry a lantern, which would inevitably have been knocked out of his hand; and a promenade in the dark usually caused insults, sometimes a bastinado. To such a pitch rose contempt for the ‘Faranj,’ that even the ‘mild Hindus,’—our ‘fellow-subjects’ from Cutch and other parts of Western India,—could not preserve with a European the semblance of civility.

Time was required to uproot an evil made inveterate, as in Japan, by mercantile tameness, and by the precept quocunque modo rem. Patience, the Sayyid’s increasing good-will, and at times a rough measure which brought the negro man to a ‘sense of his duty,’ were at last successful, and the result now is that the Englishman is better received here than at any of our Presidencies. The change is wholly the work of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, who, in the strenuous and unremitting discharge of his duties, has lost youth, strength, and health. The iron constitution of this valuable public servant—I have quoted merely one specimen of his worth—hasbeen undermined by the terrible fever, and at fifty his head bears the ‘blossoms of the grave,’ as though it had seen its seventieth summer.

Before we could set out a guide, a Mahmandar a Cafilah-báshí or Kirangozi, was requisite, and this necessary was soon provided by the ‘Sea of Milk.’ Saíd bin Sálim el Lamki, the companion of our way for many a weary league, must not depart this life unsketched. He is a half-caste Arab, as is shown by the wiry, woolly hair, which he generally, however, removes with care; by his dead yellow skin; by scanty mustachios, and by a heard which no pulling will lengthen. Short, thin, and delicate; a kind of man for the pocket; with weak and prominent eyes, the long protruding beak of a young bird, loose lips, and regular teeth dyed by betel to the crimson of chess-men, he owns to 40, and he shows 45. Of noble family on the father’s side, the Benu Lamk of the Hináwi, he was born when his progenitor governed Kilwa, hence his African blood; and he has himself commanded at the little port Sa’adani. Yet has not dignity invested him with the outer show of authority. He says ‘Karrib,’—draw near!—to all, simple and gentle. He cannot beat his naughty bondsmen, though he perpetually quotes Ali the Khalifeh—

‘Buy not the slave but with staff and sword;Or the lord will slave, and the slave will lord.’

‘Buy not the slave but with staff and sword;

Or the lord will slave, and the slave will lord.’

I have heard, him address, with ‘rotund mouth,’ his small boy Faraj, a demon of impudence; yet he is mostly ashamed to scold. This results from his extreme timidity and nervousness. He never appears abroad without the longest of daggers and a two-handed blade fit for Richard of England. He will sleep in an oven rather than open the door when a leopard has been talked of: on board ship he groans like a colicky patient at every ‘lop,’ and a shipped sea brings from his lips the involuntary squeak of mortal agony. In the hour of perfect safety he has a certain quietness of manner and mildly valorous talk which are exceedingly likely to impose. He cannot bear hunger or thirst, fatigue or want of sleep, and until Fate threw him in our way he probably never walked a single consecutive mile. Though owner of a wife, and of three quasi wives, he had been refused by Allah the gift of issue and increase. Possibly the glad tidings that a slave girl was likely to make him a father—he swore that, if a boy, Abdullah should be his name—suddenly communicated to him on his return from our first cruise, caused him tojudge my companionship canny, and once more to link his destiny with ours.

Saíd bin Sálim is a Bayázi of the Kháriji schism. He prays regularly; fasts uncompromisingly; he chews but will not smoke tobacco; he never casts away a date-stone; and he ‘sips water’ but ‘swills milk’ as the Moslem saying directs. His mother tongue is the Kisawahili: he speaks, however, the grotesque Arabic of Oman, and sometimes, to display his mastery of the humanities, he mixes hashed Koran and terminating vowels with Maskat‘baragouinage,’Paradise Lost and Thieves’ Latin. He has read syntax; he writes a pretty hand; he is great at epistles, and he loves to garnish discourse with saw and song. When in the ‘doldrums’ he will exclaim—

‘The grave’s the gate all flesh must pass—Ah! would I knew what lies behind.’

‘The grave’s the gate all flesh must pass—

Ah! would I knew what lies behind.’

I have heard him crooning for long hours—

‘The knowledge of this nether world,Say, friend, what is it?—false or true?The false, what mortal cares to know?—The true, what mortal ever knew?’

‘The knowledge of this nether world,

Say, friend, what is it?—false or true?

The false, what mortal cares to know?—

The true, what mortal ever knew?’

Sometimes he will break out into rather a ‘fast’ strain, e. g.—

‘At Meccah I saw a lass selling perfume,She put forth a hand, and I cried, “O sweet!”(Three sniffs, crescendo.)She leant over me, casting a glance of love,But from Meccah I sped, saying, “Farewell, sweet!”’(Three Kafir clicks, diminuendo, signifying ‘No go.’)

‘At Meccah I saw a lass selling perfume,

She put forth a hand, and I cried, “O sweet!”

(Three sniffs, crescendo.)

She leant over me, casting a glance of love,

But from Meccah I sped, saying, “Farewell, sweet!”’

(Three Kafir clicks, diminuendo, signifying ‘No go.’)

The reader will ask what induced me to take a guide apparently so little fit for rough and ready work? In the first place, the presence of Saíd bin Sálim el Lamki, el Hináwi, was a pledge of our utter ‘respectability,’ and as a court spy, he could report that we were not malignants. Moreover, he was well known upon the coast, and he had a knowledge-box filled with local details, which he imparted without churlishness. During the first trip I found him full of excellent gifts, courteous, thoroughly good-tempered, and apparently truthful, honest, and honourable—a bright exception to the rule of his unconscientious race. When I offered him the task he replied, ‘Verily, whoso benefiteth the beneficent becometh his lord; but the vile, when well treated, will turn and rend thee.’ I almost hoped that he would not disappoint me in the end; but the delays, the dangers, and the hardships of the second journey proved too much for Saíd bin Sálim. The thin outer varnish disappeared from the man, and the material below was not inviting. The Maskat Arab, especially the half-caste, easily becomesthe Bedáwi, the Ishmael, the Orson. These people have rarely any ‘stay’ in them; they are charming only as long as things run smooth, and after once showing true colours, they care not to conceal them. Arabs, however, are not the only handsome shoes that badly pinch. How often would fellow-travellers have avoided one another like fire, had they been able to see a trifle below the surface! Saíd bin Sálim, offended by certain remarks in my Lake Regions of Central Africa (passim), and wishing to ‘prove his character for honour and honesty,’ persuaded Capt. Speke to give him another chance, and began by telling a gross falsehood, which Capt. Speke at once believed. He accompanied the second East African expedition: he played his usual slavish tricks, and he had to be ‘dropped,’ utterly useless, at Kazeh, with the Arabs.

I had engaged at Bombay two Portuguese boys, Valentino Rodrigues and Caetano Andrade, who resolved that what Sahib Log could endure, that same could they. Having described them once there is no object in saying further of them, except that they were, despite all deficiencies, a great comfort to us; and that they proved themselves, in the long run, better men than the Arab. Taking no interest in ‘African exploration,’and desirous of seeing only the end of the expedition, they must, poor fellows, have yearned sadly for home, even Goa; and I am rejoiced to think that they both reached it alive.

The outfit and expenses of an African journey are always interesting to travellers. For the personnel, we expended in two months a total of $172 ($50 to Said, and $20 per mens. to the two Goanese), including $32 for ship hire, and the inevitable ‘Bakhshish’ which accompanies it. As presents to the native chiefs who might entertain us, we took 20 Jamdanis, or sprigged muslin, for turbans ($15); a score of embroidered Surat caps (Alfiyyah = $17.50); a broad-cloth coat and a Maskat Sabai, or loin-cloth of silk, cotton, and gold thread ($20.50) for the Sultan Kimwere; two gaudy cotton shawls, yellow and scarlet ($2.50), and 35 lbs. of small white-and-pink Venetian beads ($14). This item amounted to $69.50. I made the mistake of ignorance by not laying in an ample store of American domestics (Merkani), the silver of the country, and a greater quantity of beads, which are the small change. About $250 represented the expenses of living and travelling ($94 in January, and in February $84): this included the expenditure of the whole party. The provisions were, rice (three bags), maize flour (onebarrel), dates (one bag), sugar and coffee (each 20 lbs.), salt, pepper, onions, and curry stuff, oil and clarified butter, snuff and tobacco. Of course soap and candles were not forgotten, and we had a small but necessary supply of cords for baggage—these, however, soon followed the way of our knives. The several items form a grand total of $480, equal to about £50 per mensem. I must observe, however, that we travelled in humble guise, hired poor vessels, walked the whole way, and otherwise practised a somewhat rigid economy.

Ladha Damha, who had provided us with these necessaries, also hired for the coasting cruise an old Arab Beden, or ‘Awaysiyeh’ (foyst) called the Riámi. She was a fine specimen of her class; old and rotten, the boards and timbers of the deck were breaking up; the tanks were represented by a few Girbahs, or empty skins; the sails were in rags; the ropes and cables broke every half-hour, and the awning leaked like a cheap waterproof, despite bits of cotton rudely caulked in. Ants effected lodgment in our instrument cases, cockroaches dropped upon us all day, and the rats made marriage, as Saíd said, during the live-long night. The crew was picked up out of the bazar: one was a tailor, a second stuttered unintelligibly, athird was maimed and purblind, a fourth was sick, and a fifth, the Chelebi (fop) of the party, was a malingerer, who could do nothing but shave, pluck his eyebrows, and contemplate a flat face in the glass. The only man on board was old Ráshid, a scion of that Súrí race, the self-styled descendants of the Syrians, well-known for beggary and niggardness, for kidnapping and safe piracy. They are the most uncourteous of the Arabs; and while ever demanding Hishmah (respect) for themselves, they forget their own proverb, ‘Politeness has two heads,’ and they will on no occasion accord it to others. Ráshid, however, proved a hero and a treasure, by the side of our Nakhoda Hamid, a Saudawi or melancholist of the most approved type—never was brain of goose or heart of hen-partridge hidden by brow so broad and intellectual; never did liver of milk wear so Herculean a beard! He squats upon the deck screaming and abusing his men; now silent and surly, then answering every question with El ’ilm ’ind Allah (God knows!), and in danger he weeps bitterly. With such fellows the only system is to be as distant as possible: the least familiarity ends badly; they will hate you more for one cross word than love you for a thousand favours. The civility of a pipe or aglass of sherbet infallibly spoils them: they respect only the man who tells them once a day that they are unworthy to eat with a Walad Amir (gentleman). They will call you proud; but that matters little, and if you pay them well they will speak of you accordingly.

On the evening of Sunday, Jan. 4, 1857, we bade a temporary farewell to our kind friend and host, Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, and transferred ourselves on board the Ríami, expecting to set out. Simple souls that we were! There was neither wood nor water on board, and our gallant captain lost no time in eclipsing himself. The north-east wind coursing through the clear sky was dead against us, but he pretended that the sailors had remained in the bazar. He came on board next morning, when we made sail and ran down to Mto-ni, there filling our skins with bad saltish water. Hamid again went ashore, promising to return in half an hour, and leaving us to spend the day in vain expectation. Said bin Salim solaced himself by wishing that the Shaytan might appear to Hamid on his death-bed and say, ‘O friend of my soul, welcome home!’ But when the truant came off, he was welcomed by the half-caste Arab with a cup of coffee and a proverb importing that out of woe cometh weal; this considerablydiminished the effect of my flea in the ear and threat of the ‘bakur.’ Finally, after the loss of two nights and a day, we fished up our ground-tackle and began our journey. I afterwards learned that in this part of East Africa the traveller must ever be prepared for three distinct departures—the little start, the big start, andthestart.

Amongst our belongings was a life-boat which we determined to tow, and the trouble which it gave was endless. In consequence of a lecture delivered at the United Service Institution (May 2, 1856), by Major, now Sir Vincent, Eyre, of the Bengal Artillery, I wrote through him to Mr Joseph Francis, of New York, whose application of iron had taken the place of the old copper article in which Lieut. Lynch, of the United States navy, descended the Jordan rapids. The total length, 20 feet, was divided into seven sections, each weighing under 40 lbs. The pieces were so numbered that experienced men could put the thing together in one hour, and it was provided with rivets, bolts, nuts, and japanned waterproof awning. A flat keel and a cork fender were proposed by Major Eyre to the manufacturers, Messrs Marshall, Lefferts, and Co., and were rejected: the former would haveoffered greater hindrance to the joints, and the latter would have been only additional weight.

This life-boat, after being set up with some difficulty at Zanzibar, accompanied us on our trip northwards. The galvanized and corrugated iron, in longitudial furrows, like the roofing of railway stations, but only sixpence-thick, proved far superior to the softer copper formerly used. The Arabs, who could not sufficiently admire her graceful form, the facility with which she was handled, and above all things, her speed, called her the Sharrádeh, or runaway (mare). The ‘Louisa’ was indeed sadly given to breaking her halter and to bolting. We lost her during a storm near Mombasah, but an article so remarkable and so useless to any but ourselves was of course easily recovered. Compelled by want of carriage on the coast to reduce my material, I left her most unwillingly at Zanzibar. Buoyant as graceful, fireproof, wormproof, and waterproof, incapable of becoming nail-sick or water-logged, she would indeed have been a Godsend upon the Tanganyika lake, sparing us long delay, great expense, and a host of difficulties and hardships.

APPENDIX.THE UKARA OR UKEREWE LAKE.

A DEDUCTION FROM THE REV. MR WAKEFIELD’S ‘ROUTES.’

The following paper was read out on December 11, 1871, before a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, Major-General Sir Henry Rawlinson, President of the Society, being in the chair.

Much light had been lately thrown upon the dark points of Eastern Africa, especially those which gather round the much-vexed Ethiopic Olympus, Kilima-njaro, by the labours of the Rev. Thomas Wakefield. This gentleman, we are informed (Preface by Mr Samuel S. Barton, General Mission Secretary, to ‘Footprints in Eastern Africa.’ London: Reed, 1866), was one of four missionaries sent out to Mombasah in 1861 by the United Methodist Free Churches under charge of Dr Krapf, who first established the now world-renowned ‘Mombas Mission.’ After a residence of five years he published the interesting series of ‘Notes on a Visit to the Southern Gálas’ above alluded to; and in 1866-7, accompanied by the Rev. C. New, he marched from Mombasah to Upokomo, on the Dana river. He is therefore an African traveller of some experience; and as he has evidently mastered the Kisawahili tongue, he is unusually well qualified to supervise and tocorrect the ‘Routes of Native Caravans from the Coast to the Interior of Eastern Africa, chiefly from information given by Sádi bin Ahedi, a native of a district near Gázi (Gasi Bandar?) in Udogo, a little north of Zanzibar.’ Especially advocated by my old and tried friend Mr Alexander Findlay, F.R.G.S., this valuable paper was published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (pp. 303-339, No. xi. Vol. xl. of 1870), and I felt somewhat surprised that the extent of its importance has not attracted more attention in England.

I will consider this addition to our scanty knowledge of one of the most interesting regions in tropical Africa under two heads—the philological and the geographical.

Firstly, Mr Wakefield, like Doctors Livingstone and Kirk, all being practical linguists, invariably uses the system of Zangian orthography, adopted by the ‘Mombas Mission,’ and by myself since 1859. He speaks, for instance, of Kilima-njaro and Unyamwezi, not the Monomoezi of Mr Cooley or ‘the authentic word Mueni Muezi,’ translated landlord, or petty chief country (p. 11, The Memoir on the Lake Regions of East Africa reviewed, &c. &c., by W. D. Cooley. London: Stanford, 1864). We find in Mr Wakefield’s Notes (p. 316) ‘Líma, a term denoting extraordinary size—Mlíma being the general term for mountain,’ whilst (p. 321) Ki-Mrima is justly applied to the dialect spoken on the Mrima or mainland facing Zanzibar Island. We read also (323) ‘Mtanganyíko,[126]Kisawáhílí, meaning the place ofminglingormixture(rendezvous).’ This is precisely the meaning attached by meto the Lake’s name, yet I was assured in the Memoir above alluded to (p. 7) that nothing can be ‘more ridiculous’ than my explanation of Tanganyika. Even in philological details of the Kisawahili dialect Mr Wakefield agrees with me. He writes, for instance, Udogo (Notes, p. 313), Ugala (Footprints, p. 67, 68), and Ulangulo (Ibid. p. 63). I was assured in the Memoir (p. 9) that U is prefixed to the names of countries only by Dr Krapf and Captain Burton—this, too, after I had for years been talking of Europe as Uzungu, literally, Land of white men. Mr Wakefield speaks of Wasămbá, of Wasawahili (or Wa-Sawahili), and of Wanyamwezi, thus sanctioning the use of Wamrima, continental men, and Wakilima, hill-men. He adopts Kisawahili, Kikwavi, Kimasai, and so forth, prefixing an adjectival particle ‘Ki’ to the root, and denoting chiefly dialect, yet I was assured by Mr Cooley (Memoir, p. 9) that ‘Ki’ has never an adjectival form. I may now invite the author of Inner Africa Laid Open to revise the verdict (Memoir, p. 7) which pronounces me ‘totally ignorant’ of the language of which I affect to be master.

It may be deemed trivial to dwell upon these philological minutiæ, but, firstly, nothing is unimportant when it affects the accuracy of a traveller, especially of an explorer, in the smallest matters of detail. Secondly, without an exact nomenclature all topographical literature must be imperfect and of scant value. And, finally, as Mr Cooley and I have been differing upon these points for the last ten years, it is well that the portion of the public which takes an interest in the subject should see who is right and who is not. I have no personal feeling in the matter; and if the ‘Geographer of N’yassi’ will bring, as I have done, independent testimony to bear upon the points in question, andnot evolve his learning out of the depths of his self-consciousness, I am at all times ready and willing to own myself wrong.

Far more important and generally interesting, however, is the geographical knowledge brought home or rather confirmed to us by Mr Wakefield’s ‘Routes.’ We now know that the block whose apices are Mounts Kilima-njaro and Kenia (alias Doenyo Ebor, Mont Blanc) to be a great upland, bounded on the South by the Panga-ni river in S. lat. 5°, and on the N. West by a lacustrine region in S. lat. 6°; whilst it may possibly anastomose to the North, as was suggested by my friend Dr Beke, with the Highlands of Harar and of Moslem Abyssinia, lying upon the same meridian. The breadth between N. West and S. East will be included between East long. (G.) 37° and 39°. Assuming, therefore, roughly the bounding lines to measure 240 by 120 direct geographical miles—we obtain a superficies of 28,800 square geographical miles, more than a fourth of the area assigned to the British Islands. We can now safely believe, with Dr Krapf and Mr Rebmann, the explorers, that the block is a high volcanic country, separating the watershed of the Nilotic Basin from that of the Indian Ocean; sending off, like the Highlands of Abyssinia, its own tributary or tributaries to the White river, and corresponding with the Camarones or Theōn Ochēma in West Africa (N. lat. 4°); that it is a land of high plains and thickly forested hills, rising to summits capped, not with delomite and quartz, but with glaciers and eternal snows; and that it abounds in the lakes and swamps, sweet and salt, necessary to feed the inland ‘smoke mountains’ or volcanoes,[127]whoseexistence before appeared so problematical. And now the two mighty summits, Kilima-njaro, explored by the late lamented Baron von der Decken and Doenyo Ebor, reported to Dr Krapf under the alias Kenia or Kirenia, and unexpectedly confirmed by fresh evidence, have obtained local habitations as well as names.

But the interest of Mr Wakefield’s Routes culminates in the fact that they show even to a certainty the existence of a lake before unknown, and they lead to the conclusion that the area of 29,900 square geographical miles, assigned to the so-called Victoria Nyanza, contains at least four and probably a greater number of separate waters; that it is, in fact, not a Lake, but a Lake Region.

Mr Keith Johnston observes (p. 333), ‘It is remarkable that not one single name of a district, people, or place (with the exception of that of the Wamasai, a general name for the people of the white region west of the Lake)[128]given in these new routes has any such remote resemblance to names reported by Speke and Burton as to warrant any identification with any one of them.’ The reason will presently appear in the fact that we are speaking ofdifferent waters. The annotator further observes (p. 333) that ‘the arguments which Captain Burton used in recommending a division of the Nyanza had not a sufficient basis of proof to give them moment, as is shown by the acceptance of the Lake as one sheet by the whole geographical world.’

The mapper will readily understand that it is much more sightly and convenient to have a basin neatly outlined, and margined sky-blue, like the Damascus swamps, than to split it into fragments as I did. A volume published by the late Mr Macqueen and myself (The Nile Basin. London: Tinsleys, 1864), offered a sketch of what was actually seen by the second expedition, and the aspect of disjecta membra was not inviting. Afterwards, however (p. 334), Mr Johnston remarks, ‘Captain Burton’s recommendation would seem to receive some slight support from the new information obtained by Mr Wakefield.’ To this I would add that his language might have been less hesitating, as these ‘Routes,’ so important to the geography of Eastern Africa, at once establish the existence of two lakes wholly independent of the so-called Victoria Nyanza.

The first is that which we named from hearsay Bahari ya Ngo, contracted to Bahari Ngo, sea or water of Ngo(-land). In the atlas of Mercator (Gerhard Kauffmann) we find it written Barcena for Barenca or Barenga. Mr Wakefield prefers (324) Baringo, meaning a ‘canoe,’ and ‘possibly so called from its form.’ I shall follow his example, at the same time observing that African negroes rarely adopt such general and comprehensive views of larger features or venture upon such comparisons unless they can command a birds-eye glance at the prospect. Route No.5, from ‘Lake Nyanza’ to Lake Baringo, conclusively proves that the latter is not ‘a sort-of backwater’ connected with the former ‘by a strait, at the same distance from the East of Ripon Falls as the Katenga river is to the West.’ Nor is it a ‘vast salt marsh’ without effluent: the saline water has evidently been confused with the lately reported Lake Naïrvasha or Balibali lying S. West of Doenyo Ebor. Native description supplies the Baringo with the Northern Nyarus—the southern effluent of the same name being clearly an influent. Nyarus thus corresponds with the old Thumbiri, Tubirih, and Meri, afterwards called Achua, Usua, and Asua, words probably corrupted from Nyarus.

The map of 1864, printed by Mr now Sir Samuel Baker in the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, affirms the Asua to have been a dry channel 150 yards wide when he crossed it, in Jan. 9, 1864, but rolling 15 feet deep in the wet season. He can hardly be speaking of the drain from the Baringo Lake, which must be large and perennial, and which therefore must be sought farther north, unless it anastomoses with some other stream. M. d’Arnaud, the French engineer sent in 1840-1841 by Mohammed Ali Pasha to explore the Upper Nile, reported (Journal Royal Geographical Society, vol. xviii. p. 73) that about 30 leagues south of where the expedition was stopped by shallow water in N. lat. 4° 42′ 42″, and therefore in N. lat. 3° 12′, the several branches unite, the chief one flowing from the east.

Nº 1 BURTON & SPEKE.May 1858

Nº 2 SPEKE. 1859

Nº 3 SPEKE & GRANT. 1863

Nº 4 SIR S. W. BAKER. 1864

The Baringo Palus must act reservoir to the whole N. Western declivities of Doenyo Ebor, whose snows have given it a name. Ptolemy (iv. 8) distinctly mentions the χίονας, or (melted) snows which feed the Nile; and though he places them in S. lat. 12° 30′, he is correct as to the existenceof snowy feeders. Some years ago a Swiss traveller drew my attention to the fact that glacier-water would explain the term White river as opposed to Blue river. The quantity of melted snow or glacier-water which finds its way to the true Nile may be comparatively inconsiderable, but that little may perhaps modify the colourless complexion of rain-water when its suspended matter has been deposited, and distinguish it from the pure azure of a stream issuing from a Lake Geneva. In 1857 Captain Speke, an experienced Himalayan, easily detected, when drinking from the Pangar-ni or Rúfu river, the rough flavour of snow water.

More important, however, than Baringo is the new Lake announced to us by Mr Wakefield’s African Pandit, Sádi bin Ahedi. The latter ignoring Nyanza, calls it Nyanja, possibly a dialectic variety, and therefore a difference neither to be dwelt upon too much nor wholly to be neglected. Of greater value is the name Bahari ya Pili, or Second Sea, not called so, we are expressly informed, because inland of the First Sea—Indian Ocean—but evidently because leading to a neighbouring water on the west. Most suggestive of all, and therefore adopted by me, is the term ‘Bahari ya Ukara,’ or Sea of Ukara, the latter being the region on the Eastern shore. Here we detect the true origin of the ancient Garava, and of Captain Speke’s Ukewere, which he applied to a peninsula projecting from the Eastern shore, and which the Wanyamwezi, translating ‘island water,’ gave to the Oriental portion of the so-called Victoria Nyanza.

Respecting the length of the Ukara Lake, Sádi was informed that it could be crossed by canoes in 6 full days, paddling from sunrise to sunset; but if the men went onnight and day, the voyage is to be accomplished in three days. Now the native craft used upon these dangerous plateau-waters never dare to cross them: the voyager may rush over the narrow parts of the Tanganyika Lake, but of course he would not attempt the physical impossibility of navigating without chart or compass beyond sight of land. It is impossible to believe in a canoe-cruise of 6 days across the lake: it is evident that a coasting-cruise is meant. The total of hours, allowing the day to be 12, and without halts, would be 72. Upon the Tanganyika I estimated the rate at a little more than 2 knots an hour. Thus, in round numbers, we have 145 miles, which probably require reduction: an estimate of the mean amount of error distributed on the whole of Mr Wakefield’s ‘Routes’ gives, according to the annotator, an exaggeration of 1.24 : 1.0; and of course, when estimating the length of these distant and dangerous navigations, exaggeration would be excessive. We may, therefore, fairly assume the semi-circumference of the Ukara Lake at 120 miles, and the total circumference at 240. Sádi, we are told (p. 309), made Bahari-ni on the Eastern shore the terminus of his long journey from Tanga Bandar to the ‘Lake Nyanza’ (Nyanja?). Let us protract the full 145 miles as the exceptional rate of 3 knots an hour upon Captain Speke’s last map, without allowing anything for the sinuosities of the coast, and the end would strike the entrance of ‘Jordan Nullah’ off the ‘Bengal Archipelago,’ about half the width of the so-called ‘Victoria Nyanza.’

As regards the breadth of the Ukara Lake, we read (p. 310), ‘Standing on the Eastern shore, Sádi said he could descry nothing of land in a western direction, exceptthe very faint outline of a mountain summit, far, far away on the horizon.’ This passage is again suggestive. The sandy and level Eastern shore of the Nyanja (i. e. water) or Ukara Lake about Bahari-ni, whence Sádi sighted, it is probably in E. long. (G.) 35° 15′. The easternmost, that is, the nearest, point of the Karagwah, or, as Captain Speke writes it, the Karague Highlands, is in E. long. (G.) 32° 30′. Thus the minimum width is 165 miles, whilst man’s vision under such circumstances would hardly cover a dozen. Here, again, we have room for a First as well as for a Second Sea. Mr Johnston suggests that the mountain-summit in question might be an island rising high in the midst of the Lake; but, he adds, such a feature could not well have been missed entirely by Captain Speke. Here I join issue with him for reasons which can be deduced from these pages—my companion and second in command never saw or heard of the Ukara Lake. But it is highly improbable that those who could tell Sádi the number of days required to cross or to coast along the Lake would not have known whether the summit was that of a mountain on terra firma or of a lacustrine islet. The latter feature is not unfamiliar to Mr Wakefield’s informant: he does not fail to mention (p. 324) the small conical hill in the southern waters of the Baringo Lake.

When Sádi declared that ‘he travelled 60 days (marches?) along the shore without perceiving any signs of its termination,’ he evidently spoke wildly, as Africans will. His assertion that the natives with whom he conversed were unable to give him any information about its northern or southern limit, simply means that in this part of the African interior neither caravans nor individuals trust themselves in strange lands, especially with the prospectof meeting such dangerous plunderers as the Wasuku. Similarly a ‘two months’ journey’ and ‘going to Egypt,’ asserted by ‘all authorities without exception, African and Arab,’ signify nothing but the total ignorance of the informant concerning the country a few leagues beyond his home. A lake 120 miles in length, that is to say, even a little smaller than the Baringo is supposed to be, will amply satisfy all requirements in this matter.

Finally, we have Sádi’s report that 8 or 9 years ago (before 1867?) the Ukara Lake was navigated by Europeans. Certain very white men, we are told, who bought only short ivories (Serivellos), refusing long tusks, and who purchased large quantities of eggs—Africans have learnt by some curious process to connect Europeans with oöphagy—came up in a large vessel, carrying three masts and another in front (bowsprit?), with many white cloths (sails). The event took place only a month and a half before he reached the Lake, and it is described with an exactness of detail which seems to vouch for its truth. If this be a fact, it is clear that the Nyanja cannot be Captain Speke’s Nyanza, and that the visitors could not have made it viâ his ‘White Nile,’ with its immense and manifold obstructions. But it may be that of which he heard (Journal, p. 333) from the ‘Kidi officers,’ who reported a high mountain to rise behind the Asua (Nyarus?) river, and a lake navigated by the Gallas in very large vessels. We now understand why the ‘King’ Mtesa (Ibid. p. 294) offered to send the traveller home (to Zanzibar) in one month by a frequented route, doubtless through the Wamasai and other tribes living between the Nyanja and the Nyanza. Thus Irungu of Uganda (Ibid. p. 187) expressed his surprise that Captain Speke had come all the way round to that country,when he could have taken the short and safe direct route up the mid-length of his own lake—viâ Umasai and Usoga, by which an Arab caravan had travelled.

The Ukara Lake will be found laid down (A.D.1712) in the Africa of John Senex, F.R.S. (quoted by the late Mr John Hogg, F.R.S., ‘On some old maps of Africa, in which the central equatorial lakes are laid down nearly in their true positions’). It is evidently the Garava of Mercator (A.D.1623), whose atlas supplies it with a northern effluent draining to the Nile. The ‘Couir’ of D’Anville’s folio atlas (A.D.1749), and placed where the Lake No and the Bahr el Ghazal actually exist, may be a confusion with the equatorial Lake Kura Kawar, given by Ja’afar Mohammed bin Musa el Khwarazmi (A.D.833) in the Rasm el Arzi, published in Lelawel’s Géographie du Moyen Age (Brussels, 1850), and, like Garava, both may be derived from Ukara.

The third water is evidently the Nyanza of which I first heard at Kazah of Unyamwezi, whence Captain Speke was despatched on a reconnoitre between July 29 and August 25, 1858. After returning, he reported that this lake being nearly flush with the surface of the level country to the south, bears signs of overflowing for some 13 miles during the rains. The second expedition found no traces of flood on the marshy lands to the North and the N. West of the so-called ‘Victoria Nyanza.’ This fact, combined with a difference of level amounting to 400 feet in the surface of the two waters, speaks for itself. We are justified in suspecting a fourth lake, or broadening of a river along whose banks Captain Speke and Grant travelled northward to Uganda, and there must be more than one, if all his effluents be correctly laid down.

Briefly to resume: Mr Wakefield’s very valuable ‘Routes’ teach us these novelties:

1. That the Baringo is a Lake distinct from the so-called Victoria Nyanza; that it has a northern effluent, the Nyarus, and consequently that its waters are sweet.

2. That the Nyanja, Ukara, Ukerewe, Garava or Bahari ya Pili, is a long narrow formation like the Baringo, perhaps 20 miles broad, with 240 of circumference, and possibly drained to the White River or true Nile by a navigable channel.

And I have long ago come to the following conclusions:

1. That the 30,000 square miles representing upon our maps the area of the so-called Victoria Nyanza represent not a lake, but a Lake Region.

2. That the Victoria Nyanza Proper is a water—possibly a swamp—distinct from the two mentioned above, flooding the lands to the south, showing no sign of depth and swelling during the hot season of the Nile, and vice versâ.

3. That the Northern and N. Western portions of the so-called ‘Victoria Nyanza’ must be divided into sundry independent broads or lakes, one of them marshy, reed-margined, and probably shallow, in order to account for three large effluents within a little more than 60 miles.

I cannot finish these lines without expressing my gratitude to Mr Wakefield for the interesting information with which he supplied us. He has returned to his labours at Mombasah, amongst the Wasawahili and the Wanyika, and as he has, I am assured by my friend Captain George,R. N., qualified himself to take astronomical observations, we may rest assured that with his aid the ‘Mombas Mission’ will lose nothing of its well-won fame for linguistic study and African exploration.

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