In the Heart of Africa

CHAPTER XVIII

Greet­ing from Kam­rasi’s peo­ple–Suf­fer­ing for the sins of oth­ers–Alone among sav­ages–The free-​ma­son­ry of Un­yoro–Pot­tery and civ­iliza­tion.

Af­ter an ex­ceed­ing­ly fa­tigu­ing march we reached the Som­er­set Riv­er, or Vic­to­ria White Nile, Jan­uary 22d. I went to the riv­er to see if the oth­er side was in­hab­it­ed. There were two vil­lages on an is­land, and the na­tives came across in a ca­noe, bring­ing the BROTH­ER OF RI­ON­GA. The guide, as I had feared dur­ing the jour­ney, had de­ceived us, and fol­low­ing the se­cret in­struc­tions of the slave wom­an Bachee­ta, had brought us di­rect­ly to Ri­on­ga’s coun­try.

The na­tives at first had tak­en us for Ma­homet Wat-​el-​Mek’s peo­ple; but, find­ing their mis­take, they would give us no in­for­ma­tion. We could ob­tain no sup­plies from them; but they re­turned to the is­land and shout­ed out that we might go to Kam­rasi if we wished, but we should re­ceive no as­sis­tance from them.

Af­ter a most en­joy­able march through the ex­cit­ing scenery of the glo­ri­ous riv­er crash­ing over in­nu­mer­able falls, and in many places or­na­ment­ed with rocky is­lands, up­on which were vil­lages and plan­tain groves, we at length ap­proached the Karu­ma Falls, close to the vil­lage of Ata­da above the fer­ry. The heights were crowd­ed with na­tives, and a ca­noe was sent across to with­in par­ley­ing dis­tance of our side, as the roar of the rapids pre­vent­ed our voic­es from be­ing heard ex­cept at a short dis­tance. Bachee­ta now ex­plained that “SPEKE’S BROTH­ER had ar­rived from his coun­try to pay Kam­rasi a vis­it, and had brought him valu­able presents.”

“Why has he brought so many men with him?” in­quired the peo­ple from the ca­noe.

“There are so many presents for the M’Kam­ma (king) that he has many men to car­ry them,” shout­ed Bachee­ta.

“Let us look at him!” cried the head­man in the boat. Hav­ing pre­pared for the in­tro­duc­tion by chang­ing my clothes in a grove of plan­tains for my dress­ing- room, and al­ter­ing my cos­tume to a tweed suit, some­thing sim­ilar to that worn by Speke, I climbed up a high and al­most per­pen­dic­ular rock that formed a nat­ural pin­na­cle on the face of the cliff, and wav­ing my cap to the crowd on the op­po­site side, I looked al­most as im­pos­ing as Nel­son in Trafal­gar Square.

I in­struct­ed Bachee­ta, who climbed up the gid­dy height af­ter me, to shout to the peo­ple that an En­glish la­dy, my wife, had al­so ar­rived, and that we wished im­me­di­ate­ly to be pre­sent­ed to the king and his fam­ily, as we had come to thank him for his kind treat­ment of Speke and Grant, who had ar­rived safe in their own coun­try. Up­on this be­ing ex­plained and re­peat­ed sev­er­al times the ca­noe ap­proached the shore.

I or­dered all our peo­ple to re­tire and to con­ceal them­selves among the plan­tains, that the na­tives might not be star­tled by so im­pos­ing a force, while Mrs. Bak­er and I ad­vanced alone to meet Kam­rasi’s peo­ple, who were men of some im­por­tance. Up­on land­ing through the high reeds, they im­me­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized the sim­ilar­ity of my beard and gen­er­al com­plex­ion to those of Speke, and their wel­come was at once dis­played by the most ex­trav­agant danc­ing and ges­tic­ulat­ing with lances and shields, as though in­tend­ing to at­tack, rush­ing at me with the points of their lances thrust close to my face, and shout­ing and singing in great ex­cite­ment.

I made each of them a present of a bead neck­lace, and ex­plained to them my wish that there should be no de­lay in my pre­sen­ta­tion to Kam­rasi, as Speke had com­plained that he had been kept wait­ing fif­teen days be­fore the king had con­de­scend­ed to see him; that if this oc­curred no En­glish­man would ev­er vis­it him, as such a re­cep­tion would be con­sid­ered an in­sult. The head­man replied that he felt sure I was not an im­pos­tor; but that very short­ly af­ter the de­par­ture of Speke and Grant in the pre­vi­ous year a num­ber of peo­ple had ar­rived in their name, in­tro­duc­ing them­selves as their great­est friends. They had been fer­ried across the riv­er, and well re­ceived by Kam­rasi’s or­ders, and had been pre­sent­ed with ivory, slaves, and leop­ard-​skins, as to­kens of friend­ship; but they had de­part­ed, and sud­den­ly re­turned with Ri­on­ga’s peo­ple, and at­tacked the vil­lage in which they had been so well re­ceived; and up­on the coun­try be­ing as­sem­bled to re­sist them, about three hun­dred of Kam­rasi’s men had been killed in the fight. The king had there­fore giv­en or­ders that up­on pain of death no stranger should cross the riv­er.

He con­tin­ued, “that when he saw our peo­ple march­ing along the bank of the riv­er they imag­ined us to be the same par­ty that had at­tacked them for­mer­ly, and they were pre­pared to re­sist us, and had sent on a mes­sen­ger to Kam­rasi, who was three days’ march from Karu­ma, at his cap­ital, M’rooli; un­til they re­ceived a re­ply it would be im­pos­si­ble to al­low us to en­ter the coun­try. He promised to despatch an­oth­er mes­sen­ger im­me­di­ate­ly to in­form the king who we were, but that we must cer­tain­ly wait un­til his re­turn. I ex­plained that we had noth­ing to eat, and that it would be very in­con­ve­nient to re­main in such a spot; that I con­sid­ered the sus­pi­cion dis­played was ex­ceed­ing­ly un­fair, as they must see that my wife and I were white peo­ple like Speke and Grant, where­as those who had de­ceived them were of a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent race, all be­ing ei­ther black or brown.

I told him that it did not much mat­ter; that I had very beau­ti­ful presents in­tend­ed for Kam­rasi, but that an­oth­er great king would be on­ly too glad to ac­cept them, with­out throw­ing ob­sta­cles in my way. I should ac­cord­ing­ly re­turn with my presents.

At the same time I or­dered a hand­some Per­sian car­pet, about fif­teen feet square, to be dis­played as one of the presents in­tend­ed for the king. The gor­geous col­ors, as the car­pet was un­fold­ed, pro­duced a gen­er­al ex­cla­ma­tion. Be­fore the ef­fect of as­ton­ish­ment wore off I had a bas­ket un­packed, and dis­played up­on a cloth a heap of su­perb neck­laces, that we had pre­pared while at Ob­bo, of the choic­est beads, many as large as mar­bles, and glit­ter­ing with ev­ery col­or of the rain­bow. The gar­den of jew­els of Al­addin’s won­der­ful lamp could not have pro­duced more en­tic­ing fruit. Beads were ex­treme­ly rare in Kam­rasi’s land; the few that ex­ist­ed had ar­rived from Zanz­ibar, and all that I ex­hib­it­ed were en­tire­ly new va­ri­eties. I ex­plained that I had many oth­er presents, but that it was not nec­es­sary to un­pack them, as we were about to re­turn with them to vis­it an­oth­er king, who lived some days’ jour­ney dis­tant. “Don’t go; don’t go away,” said the head­man and his com­pan­ions. “Kam­rasi will -” Here an un­mis­tak­able pan­tomim­ic ac­tion ex­plained their mean­ing bet­ter than words; throw­ing their heads well back, they sawed across their throats with their fore­fin­gers, mak­ing hor­ri­ble gri­maces, in­dica­tive of the cut­ting of throats. I could not re­sist laugh­ing at the ter­ror that my threat of re­turn­ing with the presents had cre­at­ed. They ex­plained that Kam­rasi would not on­ly kill them, but would de­stroy the en­tire vil­lage of Ata­da should we re­turn with­out vis­it­ing him; but that he would per­haps pun­ish them in pre­cise­ly the same man­ner should they fer­ry us across with­out spe­cial or­ders. “Please your­selves,” I replied; “if my par­ty is not fer­ried across by the time the sun reach­es that spot on the heav­ens (point­ing to the po­si­tion it would oc­cu­py at about 3 P.M.) I shall re­turn.” In a state of great ex­cite­ment they promised to hold a con­fer­ence on the oth­er side, and to see what ar­range­ments could be made. They re­turned to Ata­da, leav­ing the whole par­ty, in­clud­ing Ibrahim, ex­ceed­ing­ly dis­con­cert­ed, hav­ing noth­ing to eat, an im­pass­able riv­er be­fore us, and five days’ march of un­in­hab­it­ed wilder­ness in our rear.

The whole day passed in shout­ing and ges­tic­ulat­ing our peace­ful in­ten­tions to the crowd as­sem­bled on the heights on the op­po­site side of the riv­er; but the boat did not re­turn un­til long af­ter the time ap­point­ed. Even then the na­tives would on­ly ap­proach suf­fi­cient­ly near to be heard, but noth­ing would in­duce them to land. They ex­plained that there was a di­vi­sion of opin­ion among the peo­ple on the oth­er side: some were in fa­vor of re­ceiv­ing us, but the greater num­ber were of opin­ion that we in­tend­ed hos­til­ities; there­fore we must wait un­til or­ders could be sent from the king.

To as­sure the peo­ple of our peace­ful in­ten­tions, I begged them to take Mrs. Bak­er and my­self alone, and to leave the armed par­ty on this side of the riv­er un­til a re­ply should be re­ceived from Kam­rasi. At this sug­ges­tion the boat im­me­di­ate­ly re­turned to the oth­er side.

The day passed away, and as the sun set we per­ceived the ca­noe again pad­dling across the riv­er. This time it ap­proached di­rect­ly, and the same peo­ple land­ed that had re­ceived the neck­laces in the morn­ing. They said that they had held a con­fer­ence with the head­man, and that they had agreed to re­ceive my wife and my­self, but no oth­er per­son. I replied that my ser­vants must ac­com­pa­ny us, as we were quite as great per­son­ages as Kam­rasi, and could not pos­si­bly trav­el with­out at­ten­dants. To this they de­murred; there­fore I dropped the sub­ject, and pro­posed to load the ca­noe with all the presents in­tend­ed for Kam­rasi. There was no ob­jec­tion to this, and I or­dered Richarn, Saat, and Ibrahim to get in­to the ca­noe to stow away the lug­gage as it should be hand­ed to them, but on no ac­count to leave the boat. I had al­ready pre­pared ev­ery­thing in readi­ness, and a bun­dle of ri­fles tied up in a large blan­ket and 500 rounds of ball car­tridge were un­con­scious­ly re­ceived on board as PRESENTS. I had in­struct­ed Ibrahim to ac­com­pa­ny us as my ser­vant, as he was bet­ter than most of the men in the event of a row; and I had giv­en or­ders that, in case of a pre­con­cert­ed sig­nal be­ing giv­en, the whole force should swim the riv­er, sup­port­ing them­selves and guns up­on bun­dles of pa­pyrus rush. The men thought us per­fect­ly mad, and de­clared that we should be mur­dered im­me­di­ate­ly when on the oth­er side; how­ev­er, they pre­pared for cross­ing the riv­er in case of treach­ery.

At the last mo­ment, when the boat was about to leave the shore, two of the best men jumped in with their guns. How­ev­er, the na­tives pos­itive­ly re­fused to start; there­fore, to avoid sus­pi­cion, I or­dered them to re­tire, but I left word that on the mor­row I would send the ca­noe across with sup­plies, and that one or two men should en­deav­or to ac­com­pa­ny the boat to our side on ev­ery trip.

It was quite dark when we start­ed. The ca­noe was formed of a large hol­low tree, ca­pa­ble of hold­ing twen­ty peo­ple, and the na­tives pad­dled us across the rapid cur­rent just be­low the falls. A large fire was blaz­ing up­on the op­po­site shore, on a lev­el with the riv­er, to guide us to the land­ing-​place. Glid­ing through a nar­row pas­sage in the reeds, we touched the shore and land­ed up­on a slip­pery rock, close to the fire, amid a crowd of peo­ple, who im­me­di­ate­ly struck up a deaf­en­ing wel­come with horns and fla­geo­lets, and marched us up the steep face of the rocky cliff through a dark grove of ba­nanas. Torch­es led the way, fol­lowed by a long file of spear­men; then came the noisy band and our­selves, I tow­ing my wife up the pre­cip­itous path, while my few at­ten­dants fol­lowed be­hind with a num­ber of na­tives who had vol­un­teered to car­ry the lug­gage.

On ar­rival at the top of the cliff, we were about 180 feet above the riv­er; and af­ter a walk of about a quar­ter of a mile, we were tri­umphant­ly led in­to the heart of the vil­lage, and halt­ed in a small court­yard in front of the head­man’s res­idence.

Keed­ja wait­ed to re­ceive us by a blaz­ing fire. Not hav­ing had any­thing to eat, we were un­com­mon­ly hun­gry, and to our great de­light a bas­ket­ful of ripe plan­tains was pre­sent­ed to us. These were the first that I had seen for many years. A gourd bot­tle of plan­tain wine was of­fered and im­me­di­ate­ly emp­tied; it re­sem­bled ex­treme­ly poor cider. We were now sur­round­ed by a mass of na­tives, no longer the naked sav­ages to whom we had been ac­cus­tomed, but well-​dressed men, wear­ing robes of bark cloth, ar­ranged in var­ious fash­ions, gen­er­al­ly like the Arab “tope” or the Ro­man to­ga. Sev­er­al of the head­men now ex­plained to us the atro­cious treach­ery of Debono’s men, who had been wel­comed as friends of Speke and Grant, but who had re­paid the hos­pi­tal­ity by plun­der­ing and mas­sacring their hosts. I as­sured them that no one would be more wroth than Speke when I should make him aware of the man­ner in which his name had been used, and that I should make a point of re­port­ing the cir­cum­stance to the British Gov­ern­ment. At the same time I ad­vised them not to trust any but white peo­ple should oth­ers ar­rive in my name or in the names of Speke and Grant. I up­held their char­ac­ter as that of En­glish­men, and I begged them to state if ev­er they had de­ceived them. They replied that “there could not be bet­ter men.” I an­swered, “You MUST trust me, as I trust en­tire­ly in you, and have placed my­self in your hands; but if you have ev­er had cause to mis­trust a white man, kill me at once!–ei­ther kill me or trust in me; but let there be no sus­pi­cions.”

They seemed much pleased with the con­ver­sa­tion, and a man stepped for­ward and showed me a small string of blue beads that Speke bad giv­en him for fer­ry­ing him across the riv­er. This lit­tle sou­venir of my old friend was most in­ter­est­ing. Af­ter a year’s wan­der­ing and many dif­fi­cul­ties, this was the first time that I had ac­tu­al­ly come up­on his track. Many peo­ple told me that they had known Speke and Grant; the for­mer bore the name of “Mol­legge” (the beard­ed one), while Grant had been named “Masan­ga” (the ele­phant’s tusk), ow­ing to his height. The lat­ter had been wound­ed at Luc­know dur­ing the In­di­an mutiny, and I spoke to the peo­ple of the loss of his fin­ger. This crowned my suc­cess, as they knew with­out doubt that I had seen him. It was late, there­fore I begged the crowd to de­part, but to send a mes­sen­ger the first thing in the morn­ing to in­form Kam­rasi who we were, and to beg him to per­mit us to vis­it him with­out loss of time.

A bun­dle of straw was laid on the ground for Mrs. Bak­er and my­self, and, in lieu of oth­er beds, the ground was our rest­ing-​place. We were bit­ter­ly cold that night, as the guns were packed up in the large blan­ket, and, not wish­ing to ex­pose them, we were con­tent­ed with a Scotch plaid each. Ibrahim, Saat, and Richarn watched by turns.

On the fol­low­ing morn­ing an im­mense crowd of na­tives thronged to see us. There was a very beau­ti­ful tree about a hun­dred yards from the vil­lage, ca­pa­ble of shad­ing up­ward of a thou­sand men, and I pro­posed that we should sit be­neath this pro­tec­tion and hold a con­fer­ence. The head­man of the vil­lage gave us a large hut with a grand door­way about sev­en feet high, of which my wife took pos­ses­sion, while I joined the crowd at the tree. There were about six hun­dred men seat­ed re­spect­ful­ly on the ground around me, while I sat with my back to the huge knot­ty trunk, with Ibrahim and Richarn at a few paces dis­tant.

The sub­ject of con­ver­sa­tion was mere­ly a rep­eti­tion of that of the pre­ced­ing night, with the sim­ple ad­di­tion of some ques­tions re­spect­ing the lake. Not a man would give the slight­est in­for­ma­tion; the on­ly re­ply, up­on my forc­ing the ques­tion, was the pan­tomime al­ready de­scribed, pass­ing the fore­fin­ger across the throat, and ex­claim­ing “Kam­rasi!” The en­tire pop­ula­tion was tongue-​locked. I tried the chil­dren to no pur­pose: they were all dumb. White-​head­ed old men I ques­tioned, as to the dis­tance of the lake from this point. They replied, “We are chil­dren; ask the old peo­ple who know the coun­try.” Nev­er was freema­son­ry more se­cret than in the land of Un­yoro. It was use­less to per­se­vere. I there­fore changed the sub­ject by say­ing that our peo­ple were starv­ing on the oth­er side, and that pro­vi­sions must be sent im­me­di­ate­ly. In all sav­age coun­tries the most tri­fling de­mand re­quires much talk­ing. They said that pro­vi­sions were scarce, and that un­til Kam­rasi should give the or­der, they could give no sup­plies. Un­der­stand­ing most thor­ough­ly the nat­ural in­stincts of the na­tives, I told them that I must send the ca­noe across to fetch three ox­en that I wished to slaugh­ter. The bait took at once, and sev­er­al men ran for the ca­noe, and we sent one of our black wom­en across with a mes­sage to the peo­ple that three men, with their guns and am­mu­ni­tion, were to ac­com­pa­ny the ca­noe and guide three ox­en across by swim­ming them with ropes tied to their horns. These were the rid­ing ox­en of some of the men that it was nec­es­sary to slaugh­ter, to ex­change the flesh for flour and oth­er sup­plies.

Hard­ly had the few boat­men de­part­ed than some one shout­ed sud­den­ly, and the en­tire crowd sprang to their feet and rushed to­ward the hut where I had left Mrs. Bak­er. For the mo­ment I thought that the hut was on fire, and I joined the crowd and ar­rived at the door­way, where I found a tremen­dous press to see some ex­traor­di­nary sight. Ev­ery one was squeez­ing for the best place, and, driv­ing them on one side, I found the won­der that had ex­cit­ed their cu­rios­ity. The hut be­ing very dark, my wife had em­ployed her soli­tude dur­ing my con­fer­ence with the na­tives, in dress­ing her hair at the door­way, which, be­ing very long and blonde, was sud­den­ly no­ticed by some na­tives; a shout was giv­en, the rush de­scribed had tak­en place, and the hut was lit­er­al­ly mobbed by the crowd of sav­ages ea­ger to see the ex­traor­di­nary nov­el­ty. The go­ril­la would not make a greater stir in Lon­don streets than we ap­peared to cre­ate at Ata­da.

The ox­en short­ly ar­rived; one was im­me­di­ate­ly killed, and the flesh di­vid­ed in­to nu­mer­ous small por­tions ar­ranged up­on the hide. Blonde hair and white peo­ple im­me­di­ate­ly lost their at­trac­tions, and the crowd turned their at­ten­tion to beef. We gave them to un­der­stand that we re­quired flour, beans, and sweet pota­toes in ex­change.

The mar­ket soon went briskly, and the ca­noe was laden with pro­vi­sions and sent across to our hun­gry peo­ple on the oth­er side the riv­er.

The dif­fer­ence be­tween the Un­yoro peo­ple and the tribes we had hith­er­to seen was most strik­ing. On the north side of the riv­er the na­tives were ei­ther stark naked or wore a mere apol­ogy for cloth­ing in the shape of a skin slung across their shoul­ders. The riv­er ap­peared to be the lim­it of ut­ter sav­age­dom, and the peo­ple of Un­yoro con­sid­ered the in­de­cen­cy of naked­ness pre­cise­ly in the same light as Eu­ro­peans.

Near­ly all sav­ages have some idea of earth­en­ware; but the scale of ad­vance­ment of a coun­try be­tween sav­age­dom and civ­iliza­tion may gen­er­al­ly be de­ter­mined by the style of its pot­tery. The Chi­nese, who were as civ­ilized as they are at the present day at a pe­ri­od when the En­glish were bar­bar­ians, were ev­er cel­ebrat­ed for the man­ufac­ture of porce­lain, and the dif­fer­ence be­tween sav­age and civ­ilized coun­tries is al­ways thus ex­em­pli­fied; the sav­age makes earth­en­ware, but the civ­ilized make porce­lain; thus the gra­da­tions from the rud­est earth­en­ware will mark the im­prove­ment in the scale of civ­iliza­tion. The prime uten­sil of the African sav­age is a gourd, the shell of which is the bowl pre­sent­ed to him by na­ture as the first idea from which he is to mod­el. Na­ture, adapt­ing her­self to the re­quire­ments of an­imals and man, ap­pears in these sav­age coun­tries to yield abun­dant­ly much that sav­age man can want. Gourds with ex­ceed­ing­ly strong shells not on­ly grow wild, which if di­vid­ed in halves af­ford bowls, but great and quaint va­ri­eties form nat­ural bot­tles of all sizes, from the tiny vial to the demi­john con­tain­ing five gal­lons.

The most sav­age tribes con­tent them­selves with the pro­duc­tions of na­ture, con­fin­ing their man­ufac­ture to a coarse and half-​baked jar for car­ry­ing wa­ter; but the se­mi-​sav­age, like those of Un­yoro, af­ford an ex­am­ple of the first step to­ward man­ufac­tur­ing art, by their COPY­ING FROM NA­TURE. The ut­ter sav­age makes use of na­ture–the gourd is his uten­sil; and the more ad­vanced na­tives of Un­yoro adopt it as the mod­el for their pot­tery. They make a fine qual­ity of jet-​black earth­en­ware, pro­duc­ing ex­cel­lent to­bac­co-​pipes most fine­ly worked in im­ita­tion of the small egg-​shaped gourd. Of the same earth­en­ware they make ex­treme­ly pret­ty bowls, and al­so bot­tles copied from the va­ri­eties of the bot­tle gourds; thus, in this hum­ble art, we see the first ef­fort of the hu­man mind in man­ufac­tures, in tak­ing na­ture for a mod­el, pre­cise­ly as the beau­ti­ful Corinthi­an cap­ital orig­inat­ed in a de­sign from a bas­ket of flow­ers.

In two days re­ports were brought that Kam­rasi had sent a large force, in­clud­ing sev­er­al of Speke’s de­sert­ers, to in­spect me and see if I was re­al­ly Speke’s broth­er. I re­ceived them stand­ing, and af­ter thor­ough in­spec­tion I was pro­nounced to be “Speke’s own broth­er,” and all were sat­is­fied. How­ev­er, the busi­ness was not yet over; plen­ty of talk, and an­oth­er de­lay of four days was de­clared nec­es­sary un­til the king should re­ply to the sat­is­fac­to­ry mes­sage about to be sent. Los­ing all pa­tience, I stormed, declar­ing Kam­rasi to be mere dust, while a white man was a king in com­par­ison. I or­dered all my lug­gage to be con­veyed im­me­di­ate­ly to the ca­noe, and de­clared that I would re­turn im­me­di­ate­ly to my own coun­try; that I did not wish to see any one so ut­ter­ly de­void of man­ners as Kam­rasi, and that no oth­er white man would ev­er vis­it his king­dom.

The ef­fect was mag­ical! I rose hasti­ly to de­part. The chiefs im­plored, declar­ing that Kam­rasi would kill them all if I re­treat­ed, to pre­vent which mis­for­tune they se­cret­ly in­struct­ed the ca­noe to be re­moved. I was in a great rage, and about 400 na­tives, who were present, scat­tered in all quar­ters, think­ing that there would be a se­ri­ous quar­rel. I told the chiefs that noth­ing should stop me, and that I would seize the ca­noe by force un­less my whole par­ty should be brought over from the op­po­site side that in­stant. This was agreed up­on. One of Ibrahim’s men ex­changed and drank blood from the arm of Speke’s de­sert­er, who was Kam­rasi’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive; and peace thus firm­ly es­tab­lished, sev­er­al ca­noes were at once em­ployed, and six­ty of our men were brought across the riv­er be­fore sun­set. The na­tives had nev­er­the­less tak­en the pre­cau­tion to send all their wom­en away from the vil­lage.

CHAP­TER XIX.

Kam­rasi’s cow­ardice–In­ter­view with the king–The ex­change of blood–The roy­al beg­gar’s last chance–An as­tound­ed sovereign.

On Jan­uary 31st throngs of na­tives ar­rived to car­ry our lug­gage gratis, by the king’s or­ders. On the fol­low­ing day my wife be­came very ill, and had to be car­ried on a lit­ter dur­ing the fol­low­ing days. On Febru­ary 4th I al­so fell ill up­on the road, and hav­ing been held on my ox by two men for some time, I at length fell in­to their arms and was laid un­der a tree for five hours. Be­com­ing bet­ter, I rode on for two hours.

On the route we were de­layed in ev­ery pos­si­ble way. I nev­er saw such cow­ardice as the re­doubtable Kam­rasi ex­hib­it­ed. He left his res­idence and re­treat­ed to the op­po­site side of the riv­er, from which point he sent us false mes­sages to de­lay our ad­vance as much as pos­si­ble. He had not the courage ei­ther to re­pel us or to re­ceive us. On Febru­ary 9th he sent word that I was to come on ALONE. I at once turned back, stat­ing that I no longer wished to see Kam­rasi, as he must be a mere fool, and I should re­turn to my own coun­try. This cre­at­ed a great stir, and mes­sen­gers were at once despatched to the king, who re­turned an an­swer that I might bring all my men, but that on­ly five of the Turks could be al­lowed with Ibrahim.

Af­ter a quick march of three hours through im­mense woods we reached the cap­ital–a large vil­lage of grass huts sit­uat­ed on a bar­ren slope. We were fer­ried across a riv­er in large ca­noes, ca­pa­ble of car­ry­ing fifty men, but formed of a sin­gle tree up­ward of four feet wide. Kam­rasi was re­port­ed to be in his res­idence on the op­po­site side; but up­on our ar­rival at the south bank we found our­selves thor­ough­ly de­ceived. We were up­on a mis­er­able flat, lev­el with the riv­er, and in the wet sea­son form­ing a marsh at the junc­tion of the Kafoor Riv­er with the Som­er­set. The lat­ter riv­er bound­ed the flat on the east, very wide and slug­gish, and much over­grown with pa­pyrus and lo­tus. The riv­er we had just crossed was the Kafoor. It was per­fect­ly dead wa­ter and about eighty yards wide, in­clud­ing the beds of pa­pyrus on ei­ther side. We were shown some filthy huts that were to form our camp. The spot was swarm­ing with mosquitoes, and we had noth­ing to eat ex­cept a few fowls that I had brought with me. Kam­rasi was on the OTH­ER SIDE OF THE RIV­ER; they had cun­ning­ly sep­arat­ed us from him, and had re­turned with the ca­noes. Thus we were pris­on­ers up­on the swamp. This was our wel­come from the King of Un­yoro! I now heard that Speke and Grant had been lodged in this same spot.

Ibrahim was ex­treme­ly ner­vous, as were al­so my men. They de­clared that treach­ery was in­tend­ed, as the boats had been with­drawn, and they pro­posed that we should swim the riv­er and march back to our main par­ty, who had been left three hours in the rear. I was ill with fever, as was al­so my wife, and the un­whole­some air of the marsh ag­gra­vat­ed the dis­ease. Our lug­gage had been left at our last sta­tion, as this was a con­di­tion stip­ulat­ed by Kam­rasi; thus we had to sleep up­on the damp ground of the marsh in the filthy hut, as the heavy dew at night ne­ces­si­tat­ed shel­ter. With great dif­fi­cul­ty I ac­com­pa­nied Ibrahim and a few men to the bank of the riv­er where we had land­ed the day be­fore, and, climb­ing up­on a white ant hill to ob­tain a view over the high reeds, I scanned the vil­lage with a tele­scope. The scene was rather ex­cit­ing; crowds of peo­ple were rush­ing about in all di­rec­tions and gath­er­ing from all quar­ters to­ward the riv­er; the slope from the riv­er to the town M’rooli was black with na­tives, and I saw about a dozen large ca­noes prepar­ing to trans­port them to our side. I re­turned from my el­evat­ed ob­ser­va­to­ry to Ibrahim, who, on the low ground on­ly a few yards dis­tant, could not see the op­po­site side of the riv­er ow­ing to the high grass and reeds. With­out say­ing more, I mere­ly begged him to mount up­on the ant hill and look to­ward M’rooli. Hard­ly had he cast a glance at the scene de­scribed, than he jumped down from his stand and cried, “They arc go­ing to at­tack us!” “Let us re­treat to the camp and pre­pare for a fight!” “Let us fire at them from here as they cross in the ca­noes,” cried oth­ers; “the buck­shot will clear them off when packed in the boats.” This my pan­ic-​strick­en fol­low­ers would have done had I not been present.

“Fools!” I said, “do you not see that the na­tives have no SHIELDS with them, but mere­ly lances? Would they com­mence an at­tack with­out their shields? Kam­rasi is com­ing in state to vis­it us.” This idea was by no means ac­cept­ed by my peo­ple, and we reached our lit­tle camp, and, for the sake of pre­cau­tion, sta­tioned the men in po­si­tion be­hind a hedge of thorns. Ibrahim had man­aged to bring twelve picked men in­stead of five as stip­ulat­ed; thus we were a par­ty of twen­ty-​four. I was of very lit­tle use, as the fever was so strong up­on me that I lay help­less on the ground.

In a short time the ca­noes ar­rived, and for about an hour they were em­ployed in cross­ing and re­cross­ing, and land­ing great num­bers of men, un­til they at length ad­vanced and took pos­ses­sion of some huts about 200 yards from our camp. They now hal­looed that Kam­rasi had ar­rived, and, see­ing some ox­en with the par­ty, I felt sure they had no evil in­ten­tions. I or­dered my men to car­ry me in their arms to the king, and to ac­com­pa­ny me with the presents, as I was de­ter­mined to have a per­son­al in­ter­view, al­though on­ly fit for a hos­pi­tal.

Up­on my ap­proach, the crowd gave way, and I was short­ly laid on a mat at the king’s feet. He was a fine- look­ing man, but with a pe­cu­liar ex­pres­sion of coun­te­nance, ow­ing to his ex­treme­ly promi­nent eyes; he was about six feet high, beau­ti­ful­ly clean, and was dressed in a long robe of bark cloth most grace­ful­ly fold­ed. The nails of his hands and feet were care­ful­ly at­tend­ed to, and his com­plex­ion was about as dark brown as that of an Abyssini­an. He sat up­on a cop­per stool placed up­on a car­pet of leop­ard-​skins, and he was sur­round­ed by about ten of his prin­ci­pal chiefs.

Our in­ter­preter, Bachee­ta, now in­formed him who I was, and what were my in­ten­tions. He said that he was sor­ry I had been so long on the road, but that he had been obliged to be cau­tious, hav­ing been de­ceived by Debono’s peo­ple. I replied that I was an En­glish­man, a friend of Speke and Grant, that they had de­scribed the re­cep­tion they had met with from him, and that I had come to thank him, and to of­fer him a few presents in re­turn for his kind­ness, and to re­quest him to give me a guide to the Lake Lu­ta N’zige. He laughed at the name, and re­peat­ed it sev­er­al times with his chiefs. He then said it was not LU­TA, but M-​WOOTAN N’zige; but that it was SIX MONTHS’ jour­ney from M’rooli, and that in my weak con­di­tion I could not pos­si­bly reach it; that I should die up­on the road, and that the king of my coun­try would per­haps imag­ine that I had been mur­dered, and might in­vade his ter­ri­to­ry. I replied that I was weak with the toil of years in the hot coun­tries of Africa, but that I was in search of the great lake, and should not re­turn un­til I had suc­ceed­ed; that I had no king, but a pow­er­ful Queen who watched over all her sub­jects, and that no En­glish­man could be mur­dered with im­puni­ty; there­fore he should send me to the lake with­out de­lay, and there would be the less chance of my dy­ing in his coun­try.

I ex­plained that the riv­er Nile flowed for a dis­tance of two years’ jour­ney through won­der­ful coun­tries, and reached the sea, from which many valu­able ar­ti­cles would be sent to him in ex­change for ivory, could I on­ly dis­cov­er the great lake. As a proof of this, I had brought him a few cu­riosi­ties that I trust­ed he would ac­cept, and I re­gret­ted that the im­pos­si­bil­ity of procur­ing porters had ne­ces­si­tat­ed the aban­don­ment of oth­ers that had been in­tend­ed for him.

I or­dered the men to un­pack the Per­sian car­pet, which was spread up­on the ground be­fore him. I then gave him an Ab­ba (large white Cash­mere man­tle), a red silk net­ted sash, a pair of scar­let Turk­ish shoes, sev­er­al pairs of socks, a dou­ble-​bar­relled gun and am­mu­ni­tion, and a great heap of first-​class beads made up in­to gor­geous neck­laces and gir­dles. He took very lit­tle no­tice of the presents, but re­quest­ed that the gun might be fired off. This was done, to the ut­ter con­fu­sion of the crowd, who rushed away in such haste that they tum­bled over each oth­er like so many rab­bits. This de­light­ed the king, who, al­though him­self star­tled, now roared with laugh­ter. He told me that I must be hun­gry and thirsty; there­fore he hoped I would ac­cept some­thing to eat and drink. Ac­cord­ing­ly he pre­sent­ed me with sev­en­teen cows, twen­ty pots of sour plan­tain cider, and many loads of un­ripe plan­tains. I in­quired whether Speke had left a medicine-​chest with him. He replied that it was a very fever­ish coun­try, and that he and his peo­ple had used all the medicine. Thus my last hope of qui­nine was cut off. I had al­ways trust­ed to ob­tain a sup­ply from the king, as Speke had told me that he had left a bot­tle with him. It was quite im­pos­si­ble to ob­tain any in­for­ma­tion from him, and I was car­ried back to my hut, where I found Mrs. Bak­er ly­ing down with fever, and nei­ther of us could ren­der as­sis­tance to the oth­er.

On the fol­low­ing morn­ing the king again ap­peared. I was bet­ter, and had a long in­ter­view. He did not ap­pear to heed my ques­tions, but he at once re­quest­ed that I would al­ly my­self with him, and at­tack his en­emy, Ri­on­ga. I told him that I could not em­broil my­self in such quar­rels, but that I had on­ly one ob­ject, which was the lake. I re­quest­ed that he would give Ibrahim a large quan­ti­ty of ivory, and that on his re­turn from Gon­do­ko­ro he would bring him most valu­able ar­ti­cles in ex­change. He said that he was not sure whether my bel­ly was black or white; by this he in­tend­ed to ex­press evil or good in­ten­tions; but that if it were white I should, of course, have no ob­jec­tion to ex­change blood with him, as a proof of friend­ship and sin­cer­ity. This was rather too strong a dose! I replied that it would be im­pos­si­ble, as in my coun­try the shed­ding of blood was con­sid­ered a proof of hos­til­ity; there­fore he must ac­cept Ibrahim as my sub­sti­tute. Ac­cord­ing­ly the arms were bared and pricked. As the blood flowed it was licked by ei­ther par­ty, and an al­liance was con­clud­ed. Ibrahim agreed to act with him against all his en­emies. It was ar­ranged that Ibrahim now be­longed to Kam­rasi, and that hence­forth our par­ties should be en­tire­ly sep­arate.

On Febru­ary 21st Kam­rasi was civ­il enough to al­low us to quit the marsh. My porters had by this time all de­sert­ed, and on the fol­low­ing day Kam­rasi promised to send us porters and to al­low us to start at once. There were no prepa­ra­tions made, how­ev­er, and af­ter some de­lay we were hon­ored by a vis­it from Kam­rasi, who promised we should start on the fol­low­ing day.

He con­clud­ed, as usu­al, by ask­ing for my watch and for a num­ber of beads; the lat­ter I gave him, to­geth­er with a quan­ti­ty of am­mu­ni­tion for his guns. He showed me a beau­ti­ful dou­ble-​bar­relled ri­fle that Speke had giv­en him. I wished to se­cure this to give to Speke on my re­turn to Eng­land, as he had told me, when at Gon­do­ko­ro, how he had been obliged to part with that and many oth­er ar­ti­cles sore­ly against his will. I there­fore of­fered to give him three com­mon dou­ble-​bar­relled guns in ex­change for the ri­fle. This he de­clined, as he was quite aware of the dif­fer­ence in qual­ity. He then pro­duced a large sil­ver chronome­ter that he had re­ceived from Speke. “It was DEAD,” he said, “and he wished me to re­pair it.” This I de­clared to be im­pos­si­ble. He then con­fessed to hav­ing ex­plained its con­struc­tion and the cause of the “tick­ing” to his peo­ple, by the aid of a nee­dle, and that it had nev­er ticked since that oc­ca­sion. I re­gret­ted to see such “pearls cast be­fore swine.” Thus he had plun­dered Speke and Grant of all they pos­sessed be­fore he would al­low them to pro­ceed.

It is the ra­pac­ity of the chiefs of the var­ious tribes that ren­ders African ex­plo­ration so dif­fi­cult. Each tribe wish­es to mo­nop­olize your en­tire stock of valu­ables, with­out which the trav­eller would be ut­ter­ly help­less. The dif­fi­cul­ty of procur­ing porters lim­its the amount of bag­gage; thus a giv­en sup­ply must car­ry you through a cer­tain pe­ri­od of time. If your sup­ply should fail, the ex­pe­di­tion ter­mi­nates with your pow­er of giv­ing. It is thus ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to ar­range the ex­pen­di­ture so as to sat­is­fy all par­ties and still to re­tain a suf­fi­cient bal­ance. Be­ing ut­ter­ly cut off from all com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the world, there is no pos­si­bil­ity of re­ceiv­ing as­sis­tance. The trav­eller de­pends en­tire­ly up­on him­self, un­der Prov­idence, and must adapt him­self and his means to cir­cum­stances.

The day of start­ing at length ar­rived. The chief and guide ap­peared, and we were led to the Kafoor Riv­er, where ca­noes were in readi­ness to trans­port us to the south side. This was to our old quar­ters on the marsh. The di­rect course to the lake was west, and I ful­ly ex­pect­ed some de­cep­tion, as it was im­pos­si­ble to trust Kam­rasi. I com­plained to the guide, and in­sist­ed up­on his point­ing out the di­rec­tion of the lake, which he did, in its re­al po­si­tion, west; but he ex­plained that we must fol­low the south bank of the Kafoor Riv­er for some days, as there was an im­pass­able morass that pre­clud­ed a di­rect course. This did not ap­pear sat­is­fac­to­ry, and the whole af­fair looked sus­pi­cious, as we had for­mer­ly been de­ceived by be­ing led across the riv­er to the same spot, and not al­lowed to re­turn. We were now led along the banks of the Kafoor for about a mile, un­til we ar­rived at a clus­ter of huts; here we were to wait for Kam­rasi, who had promised to take leave of us. The sun was over­pow­er­ing, and we dis­mount­ed from our ox­en and took shel­ter in a black­smith’s shed. In about an hour Kam­rasi ar­rived, at­tend­ed by a con­sid­er­able num­ber of men, and took his seat in our shed. I felt con­vinced that his vis­it was sim­ply in­tend­ed to peel the last skin from the onion. I had al­ready giv­en him near­ly all that I had, but he hoped to ex­tract the whole be­fore I should de­part.

He al­most im­me­di­ate­ly com­menced the con­ver­sa­tion by ask­ing for a pret­ty yel­low muslin Turk­ish hand­ker­chief fringed with sil­ver drops that Mrs. Bak­er wore up­on her head. One of these had al­ready been giv­en to him, and I ex­plained that this was the last re­main­ing, and that she re­quired it…. He “must” have it…. It was giv­en. He then de­mand­ed oth­er hand­ker­chiefs. We had lit­er­al­ly noth­ing but a few most ragged tow­els. He would ac­cept no ex­cuse, and in­sist­ed up­on a port­man­teau be­ing un­packed, that he might sat­is­fy him­self by ac­tu­al in­spec­tion. The lug­gage, all ready for the jour­ney, had to be un­strapped and ex­am­ined, and the rags were dis­played in suc­ces­sion, but so wretched and un­invit­ing was the ex­hi­bi­tion of the fam­ily linen that he sim­ply re­turned them, and said they did not suit him. Beads he must have, or I was “his en­emy.” A se­lec­tion of the best opal beads was im­me­di­ate­ly giv­en him. I rose from the stone up­on which I was sit­ting and de­clared that we must start im­me­di­ate­ly. “Don’t be in a hur­ry,” he replied; “you have plen­ty of time; but you have not giv­en me that watch you promised me.” … This was my on­ly watch that he had begged for, and had been re­fused, ev­ery day dur­ing my stay at M’rooli. So per­ti­na­cious a beg­gar I had nev­er seen. I ex­plained to him that with­out the watch my jour­ney would be use­less, but that I would give him all that I had ex­cept the watch when the ex­plo­ration should be com­plet­ed, as I should re­quire noth­ing on my di­rect re­turn to Gon­do­ko­ro. At the same time I re­peat­ed to him the ar­range­ment for the jour­ney that he had promised, beg­ging him not to de­ceive me, as my wife and I should both die if we were com­pelled to re­main an­oth­er year in this coun­try by los­ing the an­nu­al boats at Gon­do­ko­ro.

The un­der­stand­ing was this: he was to give me porters to the lake, where I was to be fur­nished with ca­noes to take me to Ma­gun­go, which was sit­uat­ed at the junc­tion of the Som­er­set. From Ma­gun­go he told me that I should see the Nile is­su­ing from the lake close to the spot where the Som­er­set en­tered, and that the ca­noes should take me down the riv­er, and porters should car­ry my ef­fects from the near­est point to Shooa, and de­liv­er me at my old sta­tion with­out de­lay. Should he be faith­ful to this en­gage­ment, I trust­ed to pro­cure porters from Shooa, and to reach Gon­do­ko­ro in time for the an­nu­al boats. I had ar­ranged that a boat should be sent from Khar­toum to await me at Gon­do­ko­ro ear­ly in this year, 1864; but I felt sure that should I be long de­layed, the boat would re­turn with­out me, as the peo­ple would be afraid to re­main alone at Gon­do­ko­ro af­ter the oth­er boats had quit­ted.

In our present weak state an­oth­er year of Cen­tral Africa with­out qui­nine ap­peared to war­rant death. It was a race against time; all was un­trod­den ground be­fore us, and the dis­tance quite un­cer­tain. I trem­bled for my wife, and weighed the risk of an­oth­er year in this hor­ri­ble coun­try should we lose the boats. With the self-​sac­ri­fic­ing de­vo­tion that she had shown in ev­ery tri­al, she im­plored me not to think of any risks on her ac­count, but to push for­ward and dis­cov­er the lake–that she had de­ter­mined not to re­turn un­til she had her­self reached the “M’wootan N’zige.”

I now re­quest­ed Kam­rasi to al­low us to take leave, as we had not an hour to lose. In the coolest man­ner he replied, “I will send you to the lake and to Shooa, as I have promised, but YOU MUST LEAVE YOUR WIFE WITH ME!”

At that mo­ment we were sur­round­ed by a great num­ber of na­tives, and my sus­pi­cions of treach­ery at hav­ing been led across the Kafoor Riv­er ap­peared con­firmed by this in­so­lent de­mand. If this were to be the end of the ex­pe­di­tion, I re­solved that it should al­so be the end of Kam­rasi, and draw­ing my re­volver quick­ly, I held it with­in two feet of his chest, and look­ing at him with undis­guised con­tempt, I told him that if I touched the trig­ger, not all his men could save him; and that if he dared to re­peat the in­sult I would shoot him on the spot. At the same time I ex­plained to him that in my coun­try such in­so­lence would en­tail blood­shed, and that I looked up­on him as an ig­no­rant ox who knew no bet­ter, and that this ex­cuse alone could save him. My wife, nat­ural­ly in­dig­nant, had risen from her seat, and mad­dened with the ex­cite­ment of the mo­ment she made him a lit­tle speech in Ara­bic (not a word of which he un­der­stood), with a coun­te­nance al­most as ami­able as the head of Medusa. Al­to­geth­er the *mine en scene ut­ter­ly as­ton­ished him. The wom­an Bachee­ta, al­though sav­age, had ap­pro­pri­at­ed the in­sult to her mis­tress, and she al­so fear­less­ly let fly at Kam­rasi, trans­lat­ing as near­ly as she could the com­pli­men­ta­ry ad­dress that “Medusa” had just de­liv­ered.

Whether this lit­tle coup be the­atre had so im­pressed Kam­rasi with British fe­male in­de­pen­dence that he wished to be quit of his pro­posed bar­gain, I can­not say; but with an air of com­plete as­ton­ish­ment he said, “Don’t be an­gry! I had no in­ten­tion of of­fend­ing you by ask­ing for your wife. I will give your a wife, if you want one, and I thought you might have no ob­jec­tion to give me yours; it is my cus­tom to give my vis­itors pret­ty wives, and I thought you might ex­change. Don’t make a fuss about it; if you don’t like it, there’s an end of it; I will nev­er men­tion it again.” This very prac­ti­cal apol­ogy I re­ceived very stern­ly, and mere­ly in­sist­ed up­on start­ing. He seemed rather con­fused at hav­ing com­mit­ted him­self, and to make amends he called his peo­ple and or­dered them to car­ry our loads. His men or­dered a num­ber of wom­en, who had as­sem­bled out of cu­rios­ity, to shoul­der the lug­gage and car­ry it to the next vil­lage, where they would be re­lieved. I as­sist­ed my wife up­on her ox, and with a very cold adieu to Kam­rasi I turned my back most glad­ly on M’rooli.

CHAP­TER XX.

A sa­tan­ic es­cort–Pros­trat­ed by sun-​stroke–Days and nights of sor­row - The re­ward for all our la­bor.

The coun­try was a vast flat of grass land in­ter­spersed with small vil­lages and patch­es of sweet pota­toes. These were very in­fe­ri­or, ow­ing to the want of drainage. For about two miles we con­tin­ued on the banks of the Kafoor Riv­er. The wom­en who car­ried the lug­gage were strag­gling in dis­or­der, and my few men were much scat­tered in their en­deav­ors to col­lect them. We ap­proached a con­sid­er­able vil­lage; but just as we were near­ing it, out rushed about six hun­dred men with lances and shields, scream­ing and yelling like so many demons. For the mo­ment I thought it was an at­tack, but al­most im­me­di­ate­ly I no­ticed that wom­en and chil­dren were min­gled with the men. My men had not tak­en so cool a view of the ex­cit­ed throng that was now ap­proach­ing us at full speed, bran­dish­ing their spears, and en­gag­ing with each oth­er in mock com­bat. “There’s a fight! there’s a fight!” my men ex­claimed; “we are at­tacked! fire at them, Ilawa­ga.” How­ev­er, in a few sec­onds I per­suad­ed them that it was a mere pa­rade, and that there was no dan­ger.

With a rush like a cloud of lo­custs the na­tives closed around us, danc­ing, ges­tic­ulat­ing, and yelling be­fore my ox, feign­ing to at­tack us with spears and shields, then en­gag­ing in sham fights with each oth­er, and be­hav­ing like so many mad­men. A very tall chief ac­com­pa­nied them; and one of their men was sud­den­ly knocked down and at­tacked by the crowd with sticks and lances, and lay on the ground cov­ered with blood. What his of­fence had been I did not hear. The en­tire crowd were most grotesque­ly got up, be­ing dressed in ei­ther leop­ard or white mon­key skins, with cows’ tails strapped on be­hind and an­telopes’ horns fit­ted up­on their heads, while their chins were or­na­ment­ed with false beards made of the bushy ends of cows’ tails sewed to­geth­er. Al­to­geth­er I nev­er saw a more un­earth­ly set of crea­tures; they were per­fect il­lus­tra­tions of my child­ish ideas of dev­ils- horns, tails, and all, ex­cept­ing the hoofs. They were our es­cort, fur­nished by Kam­rasi to ac­com­pa­ny us to the lake! For­tu­nate­ly for all par­ties, the Turks were not with us on that oc­ca­sion, or the Sa­tan­ic es­cort would cer­tain­ly have been re­ceived with a vol­ley when they so rash­ly ad­vanced to com­pli­ment us by their ab­surd per­for­mances.

We marched till 7 P.m. over flat, un­in­ter­est­ing coun­try, and then halt­ed at a mis­er­able vil­lage which the peo­ple had de­sert­ed, as they ex­pect­ed our ar­rival. The fol­low­ing morn­ing I found much dif­fi­cul­ty in get­ting our es­cort to­geth­er, as they had been for­ag­ing through­out the neigh­bor­hood; these “dev­il’s own” were a por­tion of Kam­rasi’s troops, who con­sid­ered them­selves en­ti­tled to plun­der ad li­bi­tum through­out the march; how­ev­er, af­ter some de­lay they col­lect­ed, and their tall chief ap­proached me and begged that a gun might be fired as a cu­rios­ity. The es­cort had crowd­ed around us, and as the boy Saat was close to me I or­dered him to fire his gun. This was Saat’s great­est de­light, and bang went one bar­rel un­ex­pect­ed­ly, close to the tall chief’s ear. The ef­fect was charm­ing. The tall chief, think­ing him­self in­jured, clasped his head with both hands, and bolt­ed through the crowd, which, struck with a sud­den pan­ic, rushed away in all di­rec­tions, the “dev­il’s own” tum­bling over each oth­er and ut­ter­ly scat­tered by the sec­ond bar­rel which Saat ex­ult­ing­ly fired in de­ri­sion, as Kam­rasi’s war­like reg­iment dis­solved be­fore a sound. I felt quite sure that, in the event of a fight, one scream from the “Ba­by,” with its charge of forty small bul­lets, would win the bat­tle if well de­liv­ered in­to a crowd of Kam­rasi’s troops.

On the morn­ing of the sec­ond day we had dif­fi­cul­ty in col­lect­ing porters, those of the pre­ced­ing day hav­ing ab­scond­ed; and oth­ers were re­cruit­ed from dis­tant vil­lages by the na­tive es­cort, who en­joyed the ex­cuse of hunt­ing for porters, as it gave them an op­por­tu­ni­ty of for­ag­ing through­out the neigh­bor­hood. Dur­ing this time we had to wait un­til the sun was high; we thus lost the cool hours of morn­ing, and it in­creased our fa­tigue. Hav­ing at length start­ed, we ar­rived in the af­ter­noon at the Kafoor Riv­er, at a bend from the south where it was nec­es­sary to cross over in our west­er­ly course. The stream was in the cen­tre of a marsh, and al­though deep, it was so cov­ered with thick­ly-​mat­ted wa­ter-​grass and oth­er aquat­ic plants, that a nat­ural float­ing bridge was es­tab­lished by a car­pet of weeds about two feet thick. Up­on this wav­ing and un­steady sur­face the men ran quick­ly across, sink­ing mere­ly to the an­kles, al­though be­neath the tough veg­eta­tion there was deep wa­ter.

It was equal­ly im­pos­si­ble to ride or to be car­ried over this treach­er­ous sur­face; thus I led the way, and begged Mrs. Bak­er to fol­low me on foot as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, pre­cise­ly in my track. The riv­er was about eighty yards wide, and I had scarce­ly com­plet­ed a fourth of the dis­tance and looked back to see if my wife fol­lowed close to me, when I was hor­ri­fied to see her stand­ing in one spot and sink­ing grad­ual­ly through the weeds, while her face was dis­tort­ed and per­fect­ly pur­ple. Al­most as soon as I per­ceived her she fell as though shot dead. In an in­stant I was by her side, and with the as­sis­tance of eight or ten of my men, who were for­tu­nate­ly close to me, I dragged her like a corpse through the yield­ing veg­eta­tion; and up to our waists we scram­bled across to the oth­er side, just keep­ing her head above the wa­ter. To have car­ried her would have been im­pos­si­ble, as we should all have sunk to­geth­er through the weeds. I laid her un­der a tree and bathed her head and face with wa­ter, as for the mo­ment I thought she had faint­ed; but she lay per­fect­ly in­sen­si­ble, as though dead, with teeth and hands firm­ly clinched, and her eyes open but fixed. It was a coup de soleil–a sun-​stroke.

Many of the porters had gone on ahead with the bag­gage, and I start­ed off a man in haste to re­call an an­garep up­on which to car­ry her and al­so for a bag with a change of clothes, as we had dragged her through the riv­er. It was in vain that I rubbed her heart and the black wom­en rubbed her feet to re­store an­ima­tion. At length the lit­ter came, and af­ter chang­ing her clothes she was car­ried mourn­ful­ly for­ward as a corpse. Con­stant­ly we had to halt and sup­port her head, as a painful rat­tling in the throat be­to­kened suf­fo­ca­tion. At length we reached a vil­lage, and halt­ed for the night.

I laid her care­ful­ly in a mis­er­able hut, and watched be­side her. I opened her clinched teeth with a small wood­en wedge and in­sert­ed a wet rag, up­on which I dropped wa­ter to moist­en her tongue, which was dry as fur. The un­feel­ing brutes that com­posed the na­tive es­cort were yelling and danc­ing as though all were well, and I or­dered their chief at once to re­turn with them to Kam­rasi, as I would trav­el with them no longer. At first they re­fused to re­turn, un­til at length I vowed that I would fire in­to them should they ac­com­pa­ny us on the fol­low­ing morn­ing. Day broke, and it was a re­lief to have got rid of the bru­tal es­cort. They had de­part­ed, and I had now my own men and the guides sup­plied by Kam­rasi.

There was noth­ing to eat in this spot. My wife had nev­er stirred since she fell by the coup de soleil, and mere­ly respired about five times in a minute. It was im­pos­si­ble to re­main; the peo­ple would have starved. She was laid gen­tly up­on her lit­ter, and we start­ed for­ward on our fu­ne­re­al course. I was ill and bro­ken- heart­ed, and I fol­lowed by her side through the long day’s march over wild park lands and streams, with thick for­est and deep marshy bot­toms, over un­du­lat­ing hills and through val­leys of tall pa­pyrus rush­es, which, as we brushed through them on our melan­choly way, waved over the lit­ter like the black plumes of a hearse.

We halt­ed at a vil­lage, and again the night was passed in watch­ing. I was wet and coat­ed with mud from the swampy marsh, and shiv­ered with ague; but the cold with­in was greater than all. No change had tak­en place; she had nev­er moved. I had plen­ty of fat, and I made four balls of about half a pound, each of which would burn for three hours. A piece of a bro­ken wa­ter-​jar formed a lamp, sev­er­al pieces of rag serv­ing for wicks. So in soli­tude the still calm night passed away as I sat by her side and watched. In the drawn and dis­tort­ed fea­tures that lay be­fore me I could hard­ly trace the same face that for years had been my com­fort through all the dif­fi­cul­ties and dan­gers of my path. Was she to die? Was so ter­ri­ble a sac­ri­fice to be the re­sult of my self­ish ex­ile?

Again the night passed away. Once more the march. Though weak and ill, and for two nights with­out a mo­ment’s sleep, I felt no fa­tigue, but me­chan­ical­ly fol­lowed by the side of the lit­ter as though in a dream. The same wild coun­try di­ver­si­fied with marsh and for­est! Again we halt­ed. The night came, and I sat by her side in a mis­er­able hut, with the fee­ble lamp flick­er­ing while she lay as in death. She had nev­er moved a mus­cle since she fell. My peo­ple slept. I was alone, and no sound broke the still­ness of the night. The ears ached at the ut­ter si­lence, till the sud­den wild cry of a hye­na made me shud­der as the hor­ri­ble thought rushed through my brain that, should she be buried in this lone­ly spot, the hye­na–would dis­turb her rest.

The morn­ing was not far dis­tant; it was past four o’clock. I had passed the night in re­plac­ing wet cloths up­on her head and moist­en­ing her lips, as she lay ap­par­ent­ly life­less on her lit­ter. I could do noth­ing more; in soli­tude and ab­ject mis­ery in that dark hour, in a coun­try of sav­age hea­then, thou­sands of miles away from a Chris­tian land, I be­seeched an aid above all hu­man, trust­ing alone to Him.

The morn­ing broke; my lamp had just burned out, and cramped with the night’s watch­ing I rose from my low seat and see­ing that she lay in the same un­al­tered state I went to the door of the hut to breathe one gasp of the fresh morn­ing air. I was watch­ing the first red streak that her­ald­ed the ris­ing sun, when I was star­tled by the words, “Thank God,” faint­ly ut­tered be­hind me. Sud­den­ly she had awoke from her tor­por, and with a heart over­flow­ing I went to her bed­side. Her eyes were full of mad­ness! She spoke, but the brain was gone!

I will not in­flict a de­scrip­tion of the ter­ri­ble tri­al of sev­en days of brain fever, with its at­ten­dant hor­rors. The rain poured in tor­rents, and day af­ter day we were forced to trav­el for want of pro­vi­sions, not be­ing able to re­main in one po­si­tion. Ev­ery now and then we shot a few guinea-​fowl, but rarely; there was no game, al­though the coun­try was most fa­vor­able. In the forests we pro­cured wild hon­ey, but the de­sert­ed vil­lages con­tained no sup­plies, as we were on the fron­tier of Ugan­da, and M’tese’s peo­ple had plun­dered the dis­trict. For sev­en nights I had not slept, and al­though as weak as a reed, I had marched by the side of her lit­ter. Na­ture could re­sist no longer. We reached a vil­lage one evening. She had been in vi­olent con­vul­sions suc­ces­sive­ly; it was all but over. I laid her down on her lit­ter with­in a hat, cov­ered her with a Scotch plaid, and fell up­on my mat in­sen­si­ble, worn out with sor­row and fa­tigue. My men put a new han­dle to the pick­axe that evening, and sought for a dry spot to dig her grave!

The sun had risen when I woke. I had slept, and hor­ri­fied as the idea flashed up­on me that she must be dead and that I had not been with her, I start­ed up. She lay up­on her bed, pale as mar­ble, and with that calm seren­ity that the fea­tures as­sume when the cares of life no longer act up­on the mind and the body rests in death. The dread­ful thought bowed me down; but as I gazed up­on her in fear her chest gen­tly heaved, not with the con­vul­sive throbs of fever, but nat­ural­ly. She was asleep; and when at a sud­den noise she opened her eyes, they were calm and clear. She was saved! When not a ray of hope re­mained, God alone knows what helped us. The grat­itude of that mo­ment I will not at­tempt to de­scribe.

For­tu­nate­ly there were many fowls in this vil­lage. We found sev­er­al nests of fresh eggs in the straw which lit­tered the hut; these were most ac­cept­able af­ter our hard fare, and pro­duced a good sup­ply of soup. Hav­ing rest­ed for two days we again moved for­ward, Mrs. Bak­er be­ing car­ried on a lit­ter.

The next day we reached the vil­lage of Parkani. For sev­er­al days past our guides had told us that we were very near to the lake, and we were now as­sured that we should reach it on the mor­row. I had no­ticed a lofty range of moun­tains at an im­mense dis­tance west, and I had imag­ined that the lake lay on the oth­er side of this chain; but I was now in­formed that those moun­tains formed the west­ern fron­tier of the M’wootan N’zige, and that the lake was ac­tu­al­ly with­in a day’s march of Parkani. I could not be­lieve it pos­si­ble that we were so near the ob­ject of our search. The guide Rabon­ga now ap­peared, and de­clared that if we start­ed ear­ly on the fol­low­ing morn­ing we should be able to wash in the lake by noon!

That night I hard­ly slept. For years I had striv­en to reach the “sources of the Nile.” In my night­ly dreams dur­ing that ar­du­ous voy­age I had al­ways failed, but af­ter so much hard work and per­se­ver­ance the cup was at my very lips, and I was to DRINK at the mys­te­ri­ous foun­tain be­fore an­oth­er sun should set–at that great reser­voir of na­ture that ev­er since cre­ation had baf­fled all dis­cov­ery.

I had hoped, and prayed, and striv­en through all kinds of dif­fi­cul­ties, in sick­ness, star­va­tion, and fa­tigue, to reach that hid­den source; and when it had ap­peared im­pos­si­ble we had both de­ter­mined to die up­on the road rather than re­turn de­feat­ed. Was it pos­si­ble that it was so near, and that to-​mor­row we could say, “The work is ac­com­plished”?

The sun had not risen when I was spurring my ox af­ter the guide, who, hav­ing been promised a dou­ble hand­ful of beads on ar­rival at the lake, had caught the en­thu­si­asm of the mo­ment. The day broke beau­ti­ful­ly clear, and hav­ing crossed a deep val­ley be­tween the hills, we toiled up the op­po­site slope. I hur­ried to the sum­mit. The glo­ry of our prize burst sud­den­ly up­on me! There, like a sea of quick­sil­ver, lay far be­neath the grand ex­panse of wa­ter–a bound­less sea hori­zon on the south and south-​west, glit­ter­ing in the noon­day sun; and in the west, at fifty or six­ty miles’ dis­tance, blue moun­tains rose from the bo­som of the lake to a height of about 7000 feet above its lev­el.

It is im­pos­si­ble to de­scribe the tri­umph of that mo­ment. Here was the re­ward for all our la­bor–for the years of tenac­ity with which we had toiled through Africa. Eng­land had won the sources of the Nile! Long be­fore I reached this spot I had ar­ranged to give three cheers with all our men in En­glish style in hon­or of the dis­cov­ery; but now that I looked down up­on the great in­land sea ly­ing nes­tled in the very heart of Africa, and thought how vain­ly mankind had sought these sources through­out so many ages, and re­flect­ed that I had been the hum­ble in­stru­ment per­mit­ted to un­rav­el this por­tion of the great mys­tery when so many greater than I had failed, I felt too se­ri­ous to vent my feel­ings in vain cheers for vic­to­ry, and I sin­cere­ly thanked God for hav­ing guid­ed and sup­port­ed us through all dan­gers to the good end. I was about 1500 feet above the lake, and I looked down from the steep gran­ite cliff up­on those wel­come wa­ters–up­on that vast reser­voir which nour­ished Egypt and brought fer­til­ity where all was wilder­ness–up­on that great source so long hid­den from mankind, that source of boun­ty and of bless­ings to mil­lions of hu­man be­ings; and as one of the great­est ob­jects in na­ture, I de­ter­mined to hon­or it with a great name. As an im­per­ish­able memo­ri­al of one loved and mourned by our gra­cious Queen and de­plored by ev­ery En­glish­man, I called this great lake “the Al­bert N’yan­za.” The Vic­to­ria and the Al­bert lakes are the two Sources of the Nile.

The zigzag path to de­scend to the lake was so steep and dan­ger­ous that we were forced to leave our ox­en with a guide, who was to take them to Ma­gun­go and wait for our ar­rival. We com­menced the de­scent of the steep pass on foot. I led the way, grasp­ing a stout bam­boo. My wife in ex­treme weak­ness tot­tered down the pass, sup­port­ing her­self up­on my shoul­der, and stop­ping to rest ev­ery twen­ty paces. Af­ter a toil­some de­scent of about two hours, weak with years of fever, but for the mo­ment strength­ened by suc­cess, we gained the lev­el plain be­low the cliff. A walk of about a mile through flat sandy mead­ows of fine turf in­ter­spersed with trees and bush­es brought us to the wa­ter’s edge. The waves were rolling up­on a white peb­bly beach; I rushed in­to the lake, and thirsty with heat and fa­tigue, with a heart full of grat­itude, I drank deeply from the Sources of the Nile.

CHAP­TER XXI.

The cra­dle of the Nile–Ar­rival at Ma­gun­go–The blind lead­ing the blind–Murchi­son Falls.

The beach was per­fect­ly clean sand, up­on which the waves rolled like those of the sea, throw­ing up weeds pre­cise­ly as sea­weed may be seen up­on the En­glish shore. It was a grand sight to look up­on this vast reser­voir of the mighty Nile and to watch the heavy swell tum­bling up­on the beach, while far to the south-​west the eye searched as vain­ly for a bound as though up­on the At­lantic. It was with ex­treme emo­tion that I en­joyed this glo­ri­ous scene. My wife, who had fol­lowed me so de­vot­ed­ly, stood by my side pale and ex­haust­ed–a wreck up­on the shores of the great Al­bert Lake that we had so long striv­en to reach. No Eu­ro­pean foot had ev­er trod up­on its sand, nor had the eyes of a white man ev­er scanned its vast ex­panse of wa­ter. We were the first; and this was the key to the great se­cret that even Julius Cae­sar yearned to un­rav­el, but in vain. Here was the great basin of the Nile that re­ceived EV­ERY DROP OF WA­TER, even from the pass­ing show­er to the roar­ing moun­tain tor­rent that drained from Cen­tral Africa to­ward the north. This was the great reser­voir of the Nile!

The first coup d’oeil from the sum­mit of the cliff 1500 feet above the lev­el had sug­gest­ed what a clos­er ex­am­ina­tion con­firmed. The lake was a vast de­pres­sion far be­low the gen­er­al lev­el of the coun­try, sur­round­ed by pre­cip­itous cliffs, and bound­ed on the west and south-​west by great ranges of moun­tains from five to sev­en thou­sand feet above the lev­el of its wa­ters–thus it was the one great reser­voir in­to which ev­ery­thing MUST drain; and from this vast rocky cis­tern the Nile made its ex­it, a gi­ant in its birth. It was a grand ar­range­ment of na­ture for the birth of so mighty and im­por­tant a stream as the riv­er Nile. The Vic­to­ria N’yan­za of Speke formed a reser­voir at a high al­ti­tude, re­ceiv­ing a drainage from the west by the Ki­tan­gule Riv­er; and Speke had seen the M’fumbiro Moun­tain at a great dis­tance as a peak among oth­er moun­tains from which the streams de­scend­ed, which by unit­ing formed the main riv­er Ki­tan­gule, the prin­ci­pal feed­er of the Vic­to­ria Lake from the west, in about 2 de­grees S. lat­itude. Thus the same chain of moun­tains that fed the Vic­to­ria on the east must have a wa­ter­shed to the west and north that would flow in­to the Al­bert Lake. The gen­er­al drainage of the Nile basin tend­ing from south to north, and the Al­bert Lake ex­tend­ing much far­ther north than the Vic­to­ria, it re­ceives the riv­er from the lat­ter lake, and thus mo­nop­olizes the en­tire head-​wa­ters of the Nile. The Al­bert is the grand reser­voir, while the Vic­to­ria is the east­ern source. The par­ent streams that form these lakes are from the same ori­gin, and the Ki­tan­gule sheds its wa­ters to the Vic­to­ria to be re­ceived EVEN­TU­AL­LY by the Al­bert, pre­cise­ly as the high­lands of M’fumbiro and the Blue Moun­tains pour their north­ern drainage DI­RECT­LY in­to the Al­bert Lake.

That many con­sid­er­able af­flu­ents flow in­to the Al­bert Lake there is no doubt. The two wa­ter­falls seen by tele­scope up­on the west­ern shore de­scend­ing from the Blue Moun­tains must be most im­por­tant streams, or they could not have been dis­tin­guished at so great a dis­tance as fifty or six­ty miles. The na­tives as­sured me that very many streams, vary­ing in size, de­scend­ed the moun­tains up­on all sides in­to the gen­er­al reser­voir.

It was most im­por­tant that we should hur­ry for­ward on our jour­ney, as our re­turn to Eng­land de­pend­ed en­tire­ly up­on the pos­si­bil­ity of reach­ing Gon­do­ko­ro be­fore the end of April, oth­er­wise the boats would have de­part­ed. I start­ed off Rabon­ga, to Ma­gun­go, where he was to meet us with rid­ing ox­en.

We were en­camped at a small vil­lage on the shore of the lake, called Va­covia. On the fol­low­ing morn­ing not one of our par­ty could rise from the ground. Thir­teen men, the boy Saat, four wom­en, be­sides my wife and me, were all down with fever. The na­tives as­sured us that all strangers suf­fered in a like man­ner. The de­lay in sup­ply­ing boats was most an­noy­ing, as ev­ery hour was pre­cious. The ly­ing na­tives de­ceived us in ev­ery pos­si­ble man­ner, de­lay­ing us pur­pose­ly in hope of ex­tort­ing beads.

The lat­itude of Va­covia was 1″de­gree” 15′ N.; lon­gi­tude 30 “de­grees” 50′ E. My far­thest south­ern point on the road from M’rooli was lat­itude 1 “de­gree” 13′. We were now to turn our faces to­ward the north, and ev­ery day’s jour­ney would bring us near­er home. But where was home? As I looked at the map of the world, and at the lit­tle red spot that rep­re­sent­ed old Eng­land far, far away, and then gazed on the wast­ed form and hag­gard face of my wife and at my own at­ten­uat­ed frame, I hard­ly dared hope for home again. We had now been three years ev­er toil­ing on­ward, and hav­ing com­plet­ed the ex­plo­ration of all the Abyssini­an af­flu­ents of the Nile, in it­self an ar­du­ous un­der­tak­ing, we were now ac­tu­al­ly at the Nile head. We had nei­ther health nor sup­plies, and the great jour­ney lay all be­fore us.

Eight days were passed at Va­covia be­fore we could ob­tain boats, which, when they did come, proved to be mere trees neat­ly hol­lowed out in the shape of ca­noes. At last we were un­der way, and day af­ter day we jour­neyed along the shore of the lake, stop­ping oc­ca­sion­al­ly at small vil­lages, and be­ing de­layed now and then by de­sert­ing boat­men.

The dis­com­forts of this lake voy­age were great; in the day we were cramped in our small cab­in like two tor­tois­es in one shell, and at night it al­most in­vari­ably rained. We were ac­cus­tomed to the wet, but no ac­clima­ti­za­tion can ren­der the Eu­ro­pean body mosquito-​proof; thus we had lit­tle rest. It was hard work for me; but for my un­for­tu­nate wife, who had hard­ly re­cov­ered from her at­tack of coup de soleil, such hard­ships were most dis­tress­ing.

On the thir­teenth day from Va­covia we found our­selves at the end of our lake voy­age. The lake at this point was be­tween fif­teen and twen­ty miles across, and the ap­pear­ance of the coun­try to the north was that of a delta. The shores up­on ei­ther side were choked with vast banks of reeds, and as the ca­noe skirt­ed the edge of that up­on the east coast we could find no bot­tom with a bam­boo of twen­ty-​five feet in length, al­though the float­ing mass ap­peared like ter­ra fir­ma. We were in a per­fect wilder­ness of veg­eta­tion. On the west were moun­tains about 4000 feet above the lake lev­el, a con­tin­ua­tion of the chain that formed the west­ern shore from the south. These moun­tains de­creased in height to­ward the north, in which di­rec­tion the lake ter­mi­nat­ed in a broad val­ley of reeds.

We were in­formed that we had ar­rived at Ma­gun­go, and af­ter skirt­ing the float­ing reeds for about a mile we en­tered a broad chan­nel, which we were told was the em­bouchure of the Som­er­set Riv­er from Vic­to­ria N’yan­za. In a short time we land­ed at Ma­gun­go, where we were wel­comed by the chief and by our guide Rabon­ga, who had been sent in ad­vance to pro­cure ox­en.

The ex­it of the Nile from the lake was plain enough, and if the broad chan­nel of dead wa­ter were in­deed the en­trance of the Vic­to­ria Nile (Som­er­set), the in­for­ma­tion ob­tained by Speke would be re­mark­ably con­firmed. But al­though the chief of Ma­gun­go and all the na­tives as­sured me that the broad chan­nel of dead wa­ter at my feet was pos­itive­ly the brawl­ing riv­er that I had crossed be­low the Karu­ma Falls, I could not un­der­stand how so fine a body of wa­ter as that had ap­peared could pos­si­bly en­ter the Al­bert Lake as dead wa­ter. The guide and na­tives laughed at my un­be­lief, and de­clared that it was dead wa­ter for a con­sid­er­able dis­tance from the junc­tion with the lake, but that a great wa­ter­fall rushed down from a moun­tain, and that be­yond that fall the riv­er was mere­ly a suc­ces­sion of cataracts through­out the en­tire dis­tance of about six days’ march to Karu­ma Falls. My re­al wish was to de­scend the Nile in ca­noes from its ex­it from the lake with my own men as boat­men, and thus in a short time to reach the cataracts in the Ma­di coun­try; there to for­sake the ca­noes and all my bag­gage, and to march di­rect to Gon­do­ko­ro with on­ly our guns and am­mu­ni­tion. I knew from na­tive re­port that the Nile was nav­iga­ble as far as the Ma­di coun­try to about Mi­ani’s tree, which Speke had laid down by as­tro­nom­ical ob­ser­va­tion in lat. 3 “de­grees” 34′. This would be on­ly sev­en days’ march from Gon­do­ko­ro, and by such a di­rect course I should be sure to ar­rive in time for the boats to Khar­toum.

I had promised Speke that I would ex­plore most thor­ough­ly the doubt­ful por­tion of the riv­er that he had been forced to ne­glect from Karu­ma Falls to the lake. I was my­self con­fused at the dead-​wa­ter junc­tion; and al­though I knew that the na­tives must be right–as it was their own riv­er, and they had no in­duce­ment to mis­lead me–I was de­ter­mined to sac­ri­fice ev­ery oth­er wish in or­der to ful­fil my promise, and thus to set­tle the Nile ques­tion most ab­so­lute­ly. That the Nile flowed out of the lake I had heard, and I had al­so con­firmed by ac­tu­al in­spec­tion; from Ma­gun­go I looked up­on the two coun­tries, Koshi and Ma­di, through which it flowed, and these coun­tries I must ac­tu­al­ly pass through and again meet the Nile be­fore I could reach Gon­do­ko­ro. Thus the on­ly point nec­es­sary to set­tle was the riv­er be­tween the lake and the Karu­ma Falls.

The boats be­ing ready, we took leave of the chief of Ma­gun­go, leav­ing him an ac­cept­able present of beads, and de­scend­ed the hill to the riv­er, thank­ful at hav­ing so far suc­cess­ful­ly ter­mi­nat­ed the ex­pe­di­tion as to have traced the lake to that im­por­tant point, Ma­gun­go, which had been our clew to the dis­cov­ery even so far away in time and place as the dis­tant coun­try of La­tooka. We were both very weak and ill, and my knees trem­bled be­neath me as we walked down the easy de­scent. I, in my en­er­vat­ed state, en­deav­or­ing to as­sist my wife, we were the “blind lead­ing the blind;” but had life closed on that day we could have died most hap­pi­ly, for the hard fight through sick­ness and mis­ery had end­ed in vic­to­ry; and al­though I looked to home as a par­adise nev­er to be re­gained, I could have lain down to sleep in con­tent­ment on this spot, with the con­so­la­tion that, if the body had been van­quished, we died with the prize in our grasp.

On ar­rival at the ca­noes we found ev­ery­thing in readi­ness, and the boat­men al­ready in their places. Once in the broad chan­nel of dead wa­ter we steered due east, and made rapid way un­til the evening. The riv­er as it now ap­peared, al­though de­void of cur­rent, was on an av­er­age about 500 yards in width. Be­fore we halt­ed for the night I was sub­ject­ed to a most se­vere at­tack of fever, and up­on the boat reach­ing a cer­tain spot I was car­ried on a lit­ter, per­fect­ly un­con­scious, to a vil­lage, at­tend­ed care­ful­ly by my poor sick wife, who, her­self half dead, fol­lowed me on foot through the march­es in pitch dark­ness, and watched over me un­til the morn­ing. At day­break I was too weak to stand, and we were both car­ried down to the ca­noes, and crawl­ing help­less­ly with­in our grass awning we lay down like logs while the ca­noes con­tin­ued their voy­age. Many of our men were al­so suf­fer­ing from fever. The malar­ia of the dense mass­es of float­ing veg­eta­tion was most poi­sonous, and up­on look­ing back to the ca­noe that fol­lowed in our wake I ob­served all my men sit­ting crouched to­geth­er sick and dispir­it­ed, look­ing like de­part­ed spir­its be­ing fer­ried across the melan­choly Styx.

The wom­an Bachee­ta knew the coun­try, as she had for­mer­ly been to Ma­gun­go when in the ser­vice of Sali, who had been sub­se­quent­ly mur­dered by Kam­rasi. She in­formed me on the sec­ond day that we should ter­mi­nate our ca­noe voy­age on that day, as we should ar­rive at the great wa­ter­fall of which she had of­ten spo­ken. As we pro­ceed­ed the riv­er grad­ual­ly nar­rowed to about 180 yards, and when the pad­dles ceased work­ing we could dis­tinct­ly hear the roar of wa­ter. I had heard this on wak­ing in the morn­ing, but at the time I had imag­ined it to pro­ceed from dis­tant thun­der. By ten o’clock the cur­rent had so in­creased as we pro­ceed­ed that it was dis­tinct­ly per­cep­ti­ble, al­though weak. The roar of the wa­ter­fall was ex­treme­ly loud, and af­ter sharp pulling for a cou­ple of hours, dur­ing which time the stream in­creased, we ar­rived at a few de­sert­ed fish­ing-​huts, at a point where the riv­er made a slight turn. I nev­er saw such an ex­traor­di­nary show of crocodiles as were ex­posed on ev­ery sand­bank on the sides of the riv­er. They lay like logs of tim­ber close to­geth­er, and up­on one bank we count­ed twen­ty-​sev­en of large size. Ev­ery bask­ing place was crowd­ed in a sim­ilar man­ner. From the time we had fair­ly en­tered the riv­er it had been con­fined by heights some­what pre­cip­itous on ei­ther side, ris­ing to about 180 feet. At this point the cliffs were still high­er and ex­ceed­ing­ly abrupt. From the roar of the wa­ter I was sure that the fall would be in sight if we turned the cor­ner at the bend of the riv­er; ac­cord­ing­ly I or­dered the boat­men to row as far as they could. To this they at first ob­ject­ed, as they wished to stop at the de­sert­ed fish­ing vil­lage, which they ex­plained was to be the lim­it of the jour­ney, fur­ther progress be­ing im­pos­si­ble.

How­ev­er, I ex­plained that I mere­ly wished to see the falls, and they rowed im­me­di­ate­ly up the stream, which was now strong against us. Up­on round­ing the cor­ner a mag­nif­icent sight burst sud­den­ly up­on us. On ei­ther side the riv­er were beau­ti­ful­ly wood­ed cliffs ris­ing abrupt­ly to a height of about 300 feet; rocks were jut­ting out from the in­tense­ly green fo­liage; and rush­ing through a gap that cleft the rock ex­act­ly be­fore us, the riv­er, con­tract­ed from a grand stream, was pent up in a nar­row gorge of scarce­ly fifty yards in width. Roar­ing fu­ri­ous­ly through the rock-​bound pass, it plunged in one leap of about 120 feet per­pen­dic­ular in­to a dark abyss be­low.

The fall of wa­ter was snow-​white, which had a su­perb ef­fect as it con­trast­ed with the dark cliffs that walled the riv­er, while the grace­ful palms of the trop­ics and wild plan­tains per­fect­ed the beau­ty of the view. This was the great­est wa­ter­fall of the Nile, and in hon­or of the dis­tin­guished Pres­ident of the Roy­al Ge­ograph­ical So­ci­ety I named it the Murchi­son Falls, as the most im­por­tant ob­ject through­out the en­tire course of the riv­er.

At this point we had or­dered our ox­en to he sent, as we could go no far­ther in the ca­noes. We found the ox­en ready for us; but if we looked wretched, the an­imals were a match. They had been bit­ten by the flies, thou­sands of which were at this spot. Their coats were star­ing, ears droop­ing, noses run­ning, and heads hang­ing down–all the symp­toms of fly-​bite, to­geth­er with ex­treme loose­ness of the bow­els. I saw that it was all up with our an­imals. Weak as I was my­self, I was obliged to walk, as my ox could not car­ry me up the steep in­cli­na­tion. I toiled lan­guid­ly to the sum­mit of the cliff, and we were soon above the falls, and ar­rived at a small vil­lage a lit­tle be­fore evening.

On the fol­low­ing morn­ing we start­ed, the route as be­fore be­ing par­al­lel to the riv­er, and so close that the roar of the rapids was ex­treme­ly loud. The riv­er flowed in a deep ravine up­on our left. We con­tin­ued for a day’s march along the Som­er­set, cross­ing many ravines and tor­rents, un­til we turned sud­den­ly down to the left, and ar­riv­ing at the bank we were to be trans­port­ed to an is­land called Pa­tooan, that was the res­idence of a chief. It was about an hour af­ter sun­set, and, be­ing dark, my rid­ing ox, which was be­ing driv­en as too weak to car­ry me, fell in­to an ele­phant pit­fall. Af­ter much hal­loo­ing, a ca­noe was brought from the is­land, which was not more than fifty yards from the main­land, and we were fer­ried across. We were both very ill with a sud­den at­tack of fever; and my wife, not be­ing able to stand, was, on ar­rival at the is­land, car­ried on a lit­ter I knew not whith­er, es­cort­ed by some of my men, while I lay down on the wet ground quite ex­haust­ed with the an­ni­hi­lat­ing dis­ease. At length the rest of my men crossed over, and those who had car­ried my wife to the vil­lage re­turn­ing with fire­brands, I man­aged to creep af­ter them with the aid of a long stick, up­on which I rest­ed with both hands. Af­ter a walk through a for­est of high trees for about a quar­ter of a mile, I ar­rived at a vil­lage where I was shown a wretched hut, the stars be­ing vis­ible through the roof. In this my wife lay dread­ful­ly ill up­on her an­garep, and I fell down up­on some straw. About an hour lat­er a vi­olent thun­der­storm broke over us, and our hut was per­fect­ly flood­ed. Be­ing far too ill and help­less to move from our po­si­tions, we re­mained drip­ping wet and shiv­er­ing with fever un­til the morn­ing. Our ser­vants and peo­ple had, like all na­tive, made them­selves much more com­fort­able than their em­ploy­ers; nor did they at­tempt to in­ter­fere with our mis­ery in any way un­til sum­moned to ap­pear at sun­rise.

The is­land of Pa­tooan was about half a mile long by 150 yards wide, and was one of the nu­mer­ous mass­es of rocks that choke the riv­er be­tween Karu­ma Falls and the great Murchi­son cataract. My head­man now in­formed me that war was rag­ing be­tween Kam­rasi and his ri­vals, Fowooka and Ri­on­ga, and it would be im­pos­si­ble to pro­ceed along the bank of the riv­er to Karu­ma. My ex­plo­ration was fin­ished, how­ev­er, as it was by no means nec­es­sary to con­tin­ue the route from Pa­tooan to Karu­ma.

CHAP­TER XXII.

Pris­on­ers on the is­land–Left to starve–Months of help­less­ness– We re­join the Turks–The re­al Kam­rasi–In the pres­ence of roy­al­ty.

We were pris­on­ers on the is­land of Pa­tooan as we could not pro­cure porters at any price to re­move our ef­fects. We had lost all our rid­ing ox­en with­in a few days. They had suc­cumbed to the flies, and the on­ly an­imal alive was al­ready half dead; this was the lit­tle bull that had al­ways car­ried the boy Saat. It was the 8th of April, and with­in a few days the boats up­on which we de­pend­ed for our re­turn to civ­iliza­tion would as­sured­ly quit Gon­do­ko­ro. I of­fered the na­tives all the beads that I had (about 50 lbs.) and the whole of my bag­gage, if they would car­ry us to Shooa di­rect­ly from this spot. We were in per­fect de­spair, as we were both com­plete­ly worn out with fever and fa­tigue, and cer­tain death seemed to stare us in the face should we re­main in this un­healthy spot. Worse than death was the idea of los­ing the boats and be­com­ing pris­on­ers for an­oth­er year in this dread­ful land, which must in­evitably hap­pen should we not hur­ry di­rect­ly to Gon­do­ko­ro with­out de­lay. The na­tives with their usu­al cun­ning at length of­fered to con­vey us to Shooa, pro­vid­ed that I paid them the beads in ad­vance. The boats were pre­pared to fer­ry us across the riv­er; but I for­tu­nate­ly dis­cov­ered through the wom­an Bachee­ta their treach­er­ous in­ten­tion of plac­ing us on the un­in­hab­it­ed wilder­ness on the north side, and leav­ing us to die of hunger. They had con­spired to­geth­er to land us, but to re­turn im­me­di­ate­ly with the boats af­ter hav­ing thus got rid of the in­cubus of their guests.

We were in a great dilem­ma. Had we been in good health, I would have for­sak­en ev­ery­thing but the guns and am­mu­ni­tion, and have marched di­rect­ly to Gon­do­ko­ro on foot; but this was ut­ter­ly im­pos­si­ble. Nei­ther my wife nor I could walk a quar­ter of a mile with­out faint­ing. There was no guide, and the coun­try was now over­grown with im­pen­etra­ble grass and tan­gled veg­eta­tion eight feet high. We were in the midst of the rainy sea­son– not a day passed with­out a few hours of del­uge. Al­to­geth­er it was a most heart-​break­ing po­si­tion. Added to the dis­tress of mind at be­ing thus thwart­ed, there was al­so a great scarci­ty of pro­vi­sion. Many of my men were weak, the whole par­ty hav­ing suf­fered much from fever; in fact, we were com­plete­ly help­less.

Our guide, Rabon­ga, who had ac­com­pa­nied us from M’rooli, had ab­scond­ed, and we were left to shift for our­selves. I was de­ter­mined not to re­main on the is­land, as I sus­pect­ed that the boats might be tak­en away, and that we should be kept pris­on­ers; I there­fore or­dered my men to take the ca­noes, and to fer­ry us to the main land, from whence we had come. The head­man, up­on hear­ing this or­der, of­fered to car­ry us to a vil­lage, and then to await or­ders from Kam­rasi as to whether we were to be for­ward­ed to Shooa or not. The dis­trict in which the is­land of Pa­tooan was sit­uat­ed was called Shooa Moru, al­though hav­ing no con­nec­tion with the Shooa in the Ma­di coun­try to which we were bound.

We were fer­ried across to the main shore, and my wife and I, in our re­spec­tive an­gareps, were car­ried by the na­tives for about three miles. Ar­riv­ing at a de­sert­ed vil­lage, half of which was in ash­es, hav­ing been burned and plun­dered by the en­emy, we were de­posit­ed on the ground in front of an old hut in the pour­ing rain, and were in­formed that we should re­main there that night, but that on the fol­low­ing morn­ing we should pro­ceed to our des­ti­na­tion.

Not trust­ing the na­tives, I or­dered my men to dis­arm them, and to re­tain their spears and shields as se­cu­ri­ty for their ap­pear­ance on the fol­low­ing day. This ef­fect­ed, we were car­ried in­to a filthy hut about six inch­es deep in mud, as the roof was much out of re­pair, and the heavy rain had flood­ed it dai­ly for some weeks. I had a canal cut through the mud­dy floor, and in mis­ery and low spir­its we took pos­ses­sion.

On the fol­low­ing morn­ing not a na­tive was present! We had been en­tire­ly de­sert­ed; al­though I held the spears and shields, ev­ery man had ab­scond­ed. There were nei­ther in­hab­itants nor pro­vi­sions. The whole coun­try was a wilder­ness of rank grass that hemmed us in on all sides. Not an an­imal, nor even a bird, was to be seen; it was a mis­er­able, damp, life­less coun­try. We were on el­evat­ed ground, and the val­ley of the Som­er­set was about two miles to our north, the riv­er roar­ing sul­len­ly in its ob­struct­ed pas­sage, its course marked by the dou­ble belt of huge dark trees that grew up­on its banks.

My men nat­ural­ly felt out­raged and pro­posed that we should re­turn to Pa­tooan, seize the ca­noes, and take pro­vi­sions by force, as we had been dis­grace­ful­ly de­ceived. The na­tives had mere­ly de­posit­ed us here to get us out of the way, and in this spot we might starve. Of course I would not coun­te­nance the pro­pos­al of seiz­ing pro­vi­sions, but I di­rect­ed my men to search among the ru­ined vil­lages for buried corn, in com­pa­ny with the wom­an Bachee­ta, who, be­ing a na­tive of this coun­try, would be up to the ways of the peo­ple, and might as­sist in the dis­cov­ery.

Af­ter some hours passed in ram­bling over the black ash­es of sev­er­al vil­lages that had been burned, they dis­cov­ered a hol­low place, by sound­ing the earth with a stick, and, up­on dig­ging, ar­rived at a gra­nary of the seed known as “tul­la­boon;” this was a great prize, as, al­though mouldy and bit­ter, it would keep us from starv­ing. The wom­en of the par­ty were soon hard at work grind­ing, as many of the nec­es­sary stones had been found among the ru­ins.

For­tu­nate­ly there were three va­ri­eties of plants grow­ing wild in great pro­fu­sion, that, when boiled, were a good sub­sti­tute for spinach; thus we were rich in veg­eta­bles, al­though with­out a morsel of fat or an­imal food. Our din­ner con­sist­ed dai­ly of a mess of black por­ridge of bit­ter mouldy flour that no En­glish pig would con­de­scend to no­tice, and a large dish of spinach. “Bet­ter a din­ner of herbs where love is,” etc. of­ten oc­curred to me; but I am not sure that I was quite of that opin­ion af­ter a fort­night’s graz­ing up­on spinach.

Tea and cof­fee were things of the past, the very idea of which made our months wa­ter; but I found a species of wild thyme grow­ing in the jun­gles, and this when boiled formed a tol­er­able sub­sti­tute for tea. Some­times our men pro­cured a lit­tle wild hon­ey, which added to the thyme tea we con­sid­ered a great lux­ury.

This wretched fare, in our ex­haust­ed state from fever and gen­er­al ef­fects of cli­mate, so com­plete­ly dis­abled us that for near­ly two months my wife lay help­less on one an­garep, and I up­on the oth­er. Nei­ther of us could walk. The hut was like all in Kam­rasi’s coun­try, with a per­fect for­est of thick poles to sup­port the roof (I count­ed thir­ty-​two); thus, al­though it was tol­er­ably large, there was but lit­tle ac­com­mo­da­tion. These poles we now found very con­ve­nient, as we were so weak that we could not rise from bed with­out lift­ing our­selves up by one of the sup­ports.

We were very near­ly dead, and our amuse­ment was a child­ish con­ver­sa­tion about the good things in Eng­land, and my idea of per­fect hap­pi­ness was an En­glish beef­steak and a bot­tle of pale ale; for such a lux­ury I would most will­ing­ly have sold my birthright at that hun­gry mo­ment. We were per­fect skele­tons, and it was an­noy­ing to see how we suf­fered up­on the bad fare, while our men ap­par­ent­ly throve. There were plen­ty of wild red pep­pers, and the men seemed to en­joy a mix­ture of por­ridge and legumes a la sauce pi­quante. They were as­ton­ished at my falling away on this food, but they yield­ed to my ar­gu­ment when I sug­gest­ed that a “li­on would starve where a don­key grew fat.” I must con­fess that this state of ex­is­tence did not im­prove my tem­per, which, I fear, be­came near­ly as bit­ter as the por­ridge. My peo­ple had a wind­fall of luck, as Saat’s ox, that had lin­gered for a long time, lay down to die, and stretch­ing him­self out, com­menced kick­ing his last kick. The men im­me­di­ate­ly as­sist­ed him by cut­ting his throat, and this sup­ply of beef was a lux­ury which, even in my hun­gry state, was not the En­glish beef­steak for which I sighed, and I de­clined the dis­eased bull.

The men made sev­er­al long ex­cur­sions through the coun­try to pur­chase pro­vi­sions, but in two months they pro­cured on­ly two kids; the en­tire coun­try was de­sert­ed, ow­ing to the war be­tween Kam­rasi and Fowooka. Ev­ery day the boy Saat and the wom­an Bachee­ta sal­lied out and con­versed with the in­hab­itants of the dif­fer­ent is­lands on the riv­er. Some­times, but very rarely, they re­turned with a fowl; such an event caused great re­joic­ing.

We gave up all hope of Gon­do­ko­ro, and were re­signed to our fate. This, we felt sure, was to be buried in Chopi, the name of our vil­lage. I wrote in­struc­tions in my jour­nal, in case of death, and told my head­man to be sure to de­liv­er my maps, ob­ser­va­tions, and pa­pers to the En­glish Con­sul at Khar­toum. This was my on­ly care, as I feared that all my la­bor might be lost should I die. I had no fear for my wife, as she was quite as bad as I, and if one should die the oth­er would cer­tain­ly fol­low; in fact, this had been agreed up­on, lest she should fall in­to the hands of Kam­rasi at my death. We had strug­gled to win, and I thanked God that we had won. If death were to be the price, at all events we were at the goal, and we both looked up­on death rather as a plea­sure, as af­ford­ing REST. There would be no more suf­fer­ing, no fever, no long jour­ney be­fore us, that in our weak state was an in­flic­tion. The on­ly wish was to lay down the bur­den. Cu­ri­ous is the war­fare be­tween the an­imal in­stincts and the mind! Death would have been a re­lease that I would have court­ed; but I should have liked that one “En­glish beef­steak and pale ale” be­fore I died!

Dur­ing our mis­ery of con­stant fever and star­va­tion at Shooa Moru, in­sult had been added to in­jury. There was no doubt that we had been thus de­sert­ed by Kam­rasi’s or­ders, as ev­ery sev­en or eight days one of his chiefs ar­rived and told me that the king was with his army on­ly four days’ march from me, and that he was prepar­ing to at­tack Fowooka, but that he wished me to join him, as with my four­teen guns, we should win a great vic­to­ry. This treach­er­ous con­duct, af­ter his promise to for­ward me with­out de­lay to Shooa, en­raged me ex­ceed­ing­ly. We had lost the boats at Gon­do­ko­ro, and we were now nailed to the coun­try for an­oth­er year, should we live, which was not like­ly. Not on­ly had the bru­tal king thus de­ceived us, but he was de­lib­er­ate­ly starv­ing us in­to con­di­tions, his aim be­ing that my men should as­sist him against his en­emy. At one time the old en­emy tempt­ed me sore­ly to join Fowooka against Kam­rasi; but, dis­card­ing the idea, gen­er­at­ed in a mo­ment of pas­sion, I de­ter­mined to re­sist his pro­pos­als to the last. It was per­fect­ly true that the king was with­in thir­ty miles of us, that he was aware of our mis­ery, and made use of our ex­trem­ity to force us to be­come his al­lies.

Af­ter more than two months passed in this dis­tress it be­came ev­ident that some­thing must be done. I sent my head­man, or va­keel, and one man, with a na­tive as a guide (that Saat and Bachee­ta had pro­cured from an is­land), with in­struc­tions to go di­rect to Kam­rasi, to abuse him thor­ough­ly in my name for hav­ing thus treat­ed us, and tell him that I was much in­sult­ed at his treat­ing with me through a third par­ty in propos­ing an al­liance. My va­keel was to ex­plain that I was a much more pow­er­ful chief than Kam­rasi, and that if he re­quired my al­liance, he must treat with me in per­son, and im­me­di­ate­ly send fifty men to trans­port my wife, my­self, and ef­fects to his camp, where we might, in a per­son­al in­ter­view, come to terms.

I told my va­keel to re­turn to me with the fifty men, and to be sure to bring from Kam­rasi some to­ken by which I should know that he had ac­tu­al­ly seen him. The va­keel and Yaseen start­ed.

Af­ter some days the ab­scond­ed guide, Rabon­ga, ap­peared with a num­ber of men, but with­out ei­ther my va­keel or Yaseen. He car­ried with him a small gourd bot­tle, care­ful­ly stopped; this he broke, and ex­tract­ed from the in­side two pieces of print­ed pa­per that Kam­rasi had sent to me in re­ply.

On ex­am­in­ing the pa­pers, I found them to be por­tions of the En­glish Church Ser­vice trans­lat­ed in­to (I think) the “Kisua­bili” lan­guage, by Dr Krapf! There were many notes in pen­cil on the mar­gin, writ­ten in En­glish, as trans­la­tions of words in the text. It quick­ly oc­curred to me that Speke must have giv­en this book to Kam­rasi on his ar­rival from Zanz­ibar, and that he now ex­tract­ed the leaves and sent them to me as a to­ken I had de­mand­ed to show that my mes­sage had been de­liv­ered to him.

Rabon­ga made a lame ex­cuse for his pre­vi­ous de­ser­tion. He de­liv­ered a thin ox that Kam­rasi had sent me, and he de­clared that his or­ders were that he should take my whole par­ty im­me­di­ate­ly to Kam­rasi, as he was anx­ious that we should at­tack Fowooka with­out loss of time. We were pos­itive­ly to start on the fol­low­ing morn­ing! My bait had tak­en, and we should es­cape from this fright­ful spot, Shooa Moru.

Af­ter wind­ing through dense jun­gles of bam­boos and in­ter­minable groves of de­stroyed plan­tains, we per­ceived the tops of a num­ber of grass hats ap­pear­ing among the trees. My men now begged to be al­lowed to fire a salute, as it was re­port­ed that the ten men of Ibrahim’s par­ty who had been left as hostages were quar­tered at this vil­lage with Kam­rasi. Hard­ly had the fir­ing com­menced when it was im­me­di­ate­ly replied to by the Turks from their camp, who, up­on our ap­proach, came out to meet us with great man­ifes­ta­tions of de­light and won­der at our hav­ing ac­com­plished our long and dif­fi­cult voy­age.

My va­keel and Yaseen were the first to meet us, with an apol­ogy that se­vere fever had com­pelled them to re­main in camp in­stead of re­turn­ing to Shooa Moru ac­cord­ing to my or­ders; but they had de­liv­ered my mes­sage to Kam­rasi, who had, as I had sup­posed, sent two leaves out of a book Speke had giv­en him, as a re­ply. An im­mense amount of news had to be ex­changed be­tween my men and those of Ibrahim. They had quite giv­en us up for lost, un­til they heard that we were at Shooa Moru. A re­port had reached them that my wife was dead, and that I had died a few days lat­er. A great amount of kiss­ing and em­brac­ing took place, Arab fash­ion, be­tween the two par­ties; and they all came to kiss my hand and that of my wife, with the ex­cla­ma­tion, that “By Al­lah, no wom­an in the world had a heart so tough as to dare to face what she had gone through.” “El hamd el Il­lah! El hamd el Il­lah bel salaam!” (”Thank God–be grate­ful to God”) was ex­claimed on all sides by the swarthy throng of brig­ands who pressed round us, re­al­ly glad to wel­come us back again; and I could not help think­ing of the dif­fer­ence in their man­ner now and four­teen months be­fore, when they had at­tempt­ed to drive us back from Gon­do­ko­ro.

Hard­ly were we seat­ed in our hut when my va­keel an­nounced that Kam­rasi had ar­rived to pay me a vis­it. In a few min­utes he was ush­ered in­to the hut. Far from be­ing abashed, he en­tered with a loud laugh, to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from his for­mer dig­ni­fied man­ner. “Well, here you are at last!” he ex­claimed. Ap­par­ent­ly high­ly amused with our wretched ap­pear­ance, he con­tin­ued, “So you have been to the M’wootan N’zige! Well, you don’t look much the bet­ter for it; why, I should not have known you! ha, ha, ha!” I was not in a hu­mor to en­joy his at­tempts at face­tious­ness; I there­fore told him that he had be­haved dis­grace­ful­ly and mean­ly, and that I should pub­lish his char­ac­ter among the ad­join­ing tribes as be­low that of the most pet­ty chief that I had ev­er seen.

“Nev­er mind,” he replied, “it’s all over now.” You re­al­ly are thin, both of you. It was your own fault; why did you not agree to fight Fowooka? You should have been sup­plied with fat cows and milk and but­ter, had you be­haved well. I will have my men ready to at­tack Fowooka to-​mor­row. The Turks have ten men, you have thir­teen; thir­teen and ten make twen­ty-​three. You shall be car­ried if you can’t walk, and we will give Fowooka no chance. He must be killed–on­ly kill him, and MY BROTH­ER will give you half of his king­dom.”

He con­tin­ued, “You shall have sup­plies to-​mor­row; I will go to my BROTH­ER, who is the great M’Kam­ma Kam­rasi, and he will send you all you re­quire. I am a lit­tle man; he is a big one. I have noth­ing; he has ev­ery­thing, and he longs to see you. You must go to him di­rect­ly; he lives close by.”

I hard­ly knew whether he was drunk or sober. “My both­er the great M’Kam­ma Kam­rasi!” I felt be­wil­dered with as­ton­ish­ment. Then, “If you are not Kam­rasi, pray who are you?” I asked. “Who am I?” he replied. “Ha, ha, ha! that’s very good; who am I?– I am M’Gam­bi, the broth­er of Kam­rasi; I am the younger broth­er, but HE IS THE KING.”

The de­ceit of this coun­try was in­cred­ible. I had pos­itive­ly nev­er seen the re­al Kam­rasi up to this mo­ment, and this man M’Gam­bi now con­fessed to hav­ing im­per­son­at­ed the king, his broth­er, as Kam­rasi was afraid that I might be in league with Debono’s peo­ple to mur­der him, and there­fore he had or­dered his broth­er M’Gam­bi to act the king.

I told M’Gam­bi that I did not wish to see his broth­er, the king, as I should per­haps be again de­ceived and be in­tro­duced to some im­pos­tor like him­self; and that as I did not choose to be made a fool of, I should de­cline the in­tro­duc­tion. This dis­tressed him ex­ceed­ing­ly. He said that the king was re­al­ly so great a man that he, his own broth­er, dared not sit on a stool in his pres­ence, and that he had on­ly kept in re­tire­ment as a mat­ter of pre­cau­tion, as Debono’s peo­ple had al­lied them­selves with his en­emy Ri­on­ga in the pre­ced­ing year, and he dread­ed treach­ery. I laughed con­temp­tu­ous­ly at M’Gam­bi, telling him that if a wom­an like my wife dared to trust her­self far from her own coun­try among such sav­ages as Kam­rasi’s peo­ple, their king must be weak­er than a wom­an if he dared not show him­self in his own ter­ri­to­ry. I con­clud­ed by say­ing that I should not go to see Kam­rasi, but that he should come to vis­it me.

On the fol­low­ing morn­ing, af­ter my ar­rival at Kisoona, M’Gam­bi ap­peared, be­seech­ing me to go and vis­it the king. I replied that “I was hun­gry and weak from want of food, and that I want­ed to see meat, and not the man who had starved me.” In the af­ter­noon a beau­ti­ful cow ap­peared with her young calf, al­so a fat sheep and two pots of plan­tain cider, as a present from Kam­rasi. That evening we rev­elled in milk, a lux­ury that we had not tast­ed for some months. The cow gave such a quan­ti­ty that we looked for­ward to the es­tab­lish­ment of a dairy, and al­ready con­tem­plat­ed cheese-​mak­ing. I sent the king a present of a pound of pow­der in can­is­ter, a box of caps, and a va­ri­ety of tri­fles, ex­plain­ing that I was quite out of stores and presents, as I had been kept so long in his coun­try that I was re­duced to beg­gary, as I had ex­pect­ed to re­turn to my own coun­try long be­fore this.

In the evening M’Gam­bi ap­peared with a mes­sage from the king, say­ing that I was his great­est friend, and that he would not think of tak­ing any­thing from me as he was sure that I must be hard up; that he de­sired noth­ing, but would be much obliged if I would give him the “lit­tle dou­ble ri­fle that I al­ways car­ried, and my watch and com­pass!” He want­ed “NOTH­ING,” on­ly my Fletch­er ri­fle, that I would as soon have part­ed with as the bone of my arm; and these three ar­ti­cles were the same for which I had been so per­ti­na­cious­ly bored be­fore my de­par­ture from M’rooli. It was of no use to be wroth, I there­fore qui­et­ly replied that I should not give them, as Kam­rasi had failed in his promise to for­ward me to Shooa; but that I re­quired no presents from him, as he al­ways ex­pect­ed a thou­sand­fold in re­turn. M’Gam­bi said that all would be right if I would on­ly agree to pay the king a vis­it. I ob­ject­ed to this, as I told him the king, his broth­er, did not want to see me, but on­ly to ob­serve what I had, in or­der to beg for all that he saw. He ap­peared much hurt, and as­sured me that he would be him­self re­spon­si­ble that noth­ing of the kind should hap­pen, and that he mere­ly begged as a fa­vor that I would vis­it the king on the fol­low­ing morn­ing, and that peo­ple should be ready to car­ry me if I were un­able to walk. Ac­cord­ing­ly I ar­ranged to be car­ried to Kam­rasi’s camp at about 8 A.M.

At the hour ap­point­ed M’Gam­bi ap­peared, with a great crowd of na­tives. My clothes were in rags, and as per­son­al ap­pear­ance has a cer­tain ef­fect, even in Cen­tral Africa, I de­ter­mined to present my­self to the king in as fa­vor­able a light as pos­si­ble. I hap­pened to pos­sess a full-​dress High­land suit that I had worn when I lived in Perthshire many years be­fore. This I had trea­sured as ser­vice­able up­on an oc­ca­sion like the present: ac­cord­ing­ly I was quick­ly at­tired in kilt, sporran, and Glen­gar­ry bon­net, and to the ut­ter amaze­ment of the crowd, the ragged-​look­ing ob­ject that had ar­rived in Kisoona now is­sued from the ob­scure hut with plaid and kilt of Athole tar­tan. A gen­er­al shout of ex­cla­ma­tion arose from the as­sem­bled crowd, and tak­ing my seat up­on an an­garep, I was im­me­di­ate­ly shoul­dered by a num­ber of men, and, at­tend­ed by ten of my peo­ple as es­cort, I was car­ried to­ward the camp of the great Kam­rasi.

In about half an hour we ar­rived. The camp, com­posed of grass huts, ex­tend­ed over a large ex­tent of ground, and the ap­proach was per­fect­ly black with the throng that crowd­ed to meet me. Wom­en, chil­dren, dogs, and men all thronged at the en­trance of the street that led to Kam­rasi’s res­idence. Push­ing our way through this in­quis­itive mul­ti­tude, we con­tin­ued through the camp un­til at length we reached the dwelling of the king. Halt­ing for the mo­ment, a mes­sage was im­me­di­ate­ly re­ceived that we should pro­ceed; we ac­cord­ing­ly en­tered through a nar­row pas­sage be­tween high reed fences, and I found my­self in the pres­ence of the ac­tu­al king of Un­yoro, Kam­rasi. He was sit­ting in a kind of porch in front of a hut, and up­on see­ing me he hard­ly con­de­scend­ed to look at me for more than a mo­ment; he then turned to his at­ten­dants and made some re­mark that ap­peared to amuse them, as they all grinned as lit­tle men are wont to do when a great man makes a bad joke.

I had or­dered one of my men to car­ry my stool; I was de­ter­mined not to sit up­on the earth, as the king would glo­ry in my hu­mil­ia­tion. M’Gam­bi, his broth­er, who had for­mer­ly played the part of king, now sat up­on the ground a few feet from Kam­rasi, who was seat­ed up­on the same stool of cop­per that M’Gam­bi had used when I first saw him at M’rooli. Sev­er­al of his chiefs al­so sat up­on the straw with which the porch was lit­tered. I made a “salaam” and took my seat up­on my stool.

Not a word passed be­tween us for about five min­utes, dur­ing which time the king eyed me most at­ten­tive­ly, and made var­ious re­marks to the chiefs who were present. At length he asked me why I had not been to see him be­fore. I replied, be­cause I had been starved in his coun­try, and I was too weak to walk. He said I should soon be strong, as he would now give me a good sup­ply of food; but that he could not send pro­vi­sions to Shooa Moru, as Fowooka held that coun­try. With­out re­ply­ing to this wretched ex­cuse for his ne­glect, I mere­ly told him that I was hap­py to have seen him be­fore my de­par­ture, as I was not aware un­til re­cent­ly that I had been duped by M’Gam­bi. He an­swered me very cool­ly, say­ing that al­though I had not seen him, he had nev­er­the­less seen me, as he was among the crowd of na­tive es­cort on the day that we left M’rooli. Thus he had watched our start at the very place where his broth­er M’Gam­bi had im­per­son­at­ed the king.

Kam­rasi was a re­mark­ably fine man, tall and well pro­por­tioned, with a hand­some face of a dark brown col­or, but a pe­cu­liar­ly sin­is­ter ex­pres­sion. He was beau­ti­ful­ly clean, and in­stead of wear­ing the bark cloth com­mon among the peo­ple, he was dressed in a fine man­tle of black and white goatskins, as soft as chamois leather. His peo­ple sat on the ground at some dis­tance from his throne; when they ap­proached to ad­dress him on any sub­ject they crawled up­on their hands and knees to his feet, and touched the ground with their fore­heads.

True to his nat­ural in­stincts, the king com­menced beg­ging, and be­ing much struck with the High­land cos­tume, he de­mand­ed it as a proof of friend­ship, say­ing that if I re­fused I could not be his friend. The watch, com­pass, and dou­ble Fletch­er ri­fle were asked for in their turn, all of which I re­fused to give him. He ap­peared much an­noyed, there­fore I pre­sent­ed him with a pound can­is­ter of pow­der, a box of caps, and a few bul­lets. He asked, “What’s the use of the am­mu­ni­tion if you won’t give me your ri­fle?” I ex­plained that I had al­ready giv­en him a gun, and that he had a ri­fle of Speke’s. Dis­gust­ed with his im­por­tu­ni­ty I rose to de­part, telling him that I should not re­turn to vis­it him, as I did not be­lieve he was the re­al Kam­rasi I had heard that Kam­rasi was a great king, but he was a mere beg­gar, and was doubt­less an im­pos­tor, like M’Gam­bi. At this he seemed high­ly amused, and begged me not to leave so sud­den­ly, as he could not per­mit me to de­part emp­ty-​hand­ed. He then gave cer­tain or­ders to his peo­ple, and af­ter a lit­tle de­lay two loads of flour ar­rived, to­geth­er with a goat and two jars of sour plan­tain cider. These presents he or­dered to be for­ward­ed to Kisoona. I rose to take leave; but the crowd, ea­ger to see what was go­ing for­ward, pressed close­ly up­on the en­trance of the ap­proach, see­ing which, the king gave cer­tain or­ders, and im­me­di­ate­ly four or five men with long heavy blud­geons rushed at the mob and be­la­bored them right and left, putting the mass to flight pell-​mell through the nar­row lanes of the camp.

I was then car­ried back to my camp at Kisoona, where I was re­ceived by a great crowd of peo­ple.

CHAP­TER XXI­II.

The hour of de­liv­er­ance–Tri­umphal en­try in­to Gon­do­ko­ro–Home-​bound– The plague breaks out–Our wel­come at Khar­toum to civ­iliza­tion.

The hour of de­liv­er­ance from our long so­journ in Cen­tral Africa was at hand. It was the month of Febru­ary, and the boats would be at Gon­do­ko­ro. The Turks had packed their ivory; the large tusks were fas­tened to poles to be car­ried by two men, and the camp was a per­fect mass of this valu­able ma­te­ri­al. I count­ed 609 loads of up­ward of 50 lbs. each; thir­ty-​one loads were ly­ing at an out-​sta­tion; there­fore the to­tal re­sults of the ivory cam­paign dur­ing the last twelve months were about 32,000 lbs., equal to about 9,630 pounds ster­ling when de­liv­ered in Egypt. This was a per­fect for­tune for Koor­shid.

We were ready to start. My bag­gage was so unim­por­tant that I was pre­pared to for­sake ev­ery­thing, and to march straight for Gon­do­ko­ro in­de­pen­dent­ly with my own men; but this the Turks as­sured me was im­prac­ti­ca­ble, as the coun­try was so hos­tile in ad­vance that we must of ne­ces­si­ty have some fight­ing on the road; the Bari tribe would dis­pute our right to pass through their ter­ri­to­ry.

The day ar­rived for our de­par­ture; the ox­en were sad­dled, and we were ready to start. Crowds of peo­ple cane to say “good-​by;” but, dis­pens­ing with the hand-​kiss­ing of the Turks who were to re­main in camp, we pre­pared for our jour­ney to­ward HOME. Far away though it was, ev­ery step would bring us near­er. Nev­er­the­less there were ties even in this wild spot, where all was sav­age and un­feel­ing–ties that were painful to sev­er, and that caused a sin­cere re­gret to both of us when we saw our lit­tle flock of un­for­tu­nate slave chil­dren cry­ing at the idea of sep­ara­tion. In this moral desert, where all hu­man­ized feel­ings were with­ered and parched like the sands of the Soudan, the guile­less­ness of the chil­dren had been wel­comed like springs of wa­ter, as the on­ly re­fresh­ing fea­ture in a land of sin and dark­ness.

“Where are you go­ing?” cried poor lit­tle Ab­bai in the bro­ken Ara­bic that we had taught him. “Take me with you, Sit­ty!” (la­dy), and he fol­lowed us down the path, as we re­gret­ful­ly left our pro­teges, with his fists tucked in­to his eyes, weep­ing from his heart, al­though for his own moth­er he had not shed a tear. We could not take him with us; he be­longed to Ibrahim, and had I pur­chased the child to res­cue him from his hard lot and to rear him as a civ­ilized be­ing, I might have been charged with slave-​deal­ing. With heavy hearts we saw hint tak­en up in the arms of a wom­an and car­ried back to camp, to pre­vent him from fol­low­ing our par­ty, that had now start­ed.

I will not de­tain the read­er with the de­tails of our jour­ney home. Af­ter much toil and some fight­ing with hos­tile na­tives, we bivouacked one sun­set three miles from Gon­do­ko­ro. That night we were full of spec­ula­tions. Would a boat be wait­ing for us with sup­plies and let­ters? The morn­ing anx­ious­ly looked for­ward to at length ar­rived. We start­ed. The En­glish flag had been mount­ed on a fine straight bam­boo with a new lance-​head spe­cial­ly ar­ranged for the ar­rival at Gon­do­ko­ro. My men felt proud, as they would march in as con­querors. Ac­cord­ing to White Nile ideas, such a jour­ney could not have been ac­com­plished with so small a par­ty. Long be­fore Ibrahim’s men were ready to start, our ox­en were sad­dled and we were off, long­ing to has­ten in­to Gon­do­ko­ro and to find a com­fort­able ves­sel with a few lux­uries and the post from Eng­land. Nev­er had the ox­en trav­elled so fast as on that morn­ing; the flag led the way, and the men, in ex­cel­lent spir­its, fol­lowed at dou­ble-​quick pace.

“I see the masts of the ves­sels!” ex­claimed the boy Saat. “El hambd el Il­lah!” (Thank God! ) shout­ed the men. “Hur­rah!” said I; “Three cheers for Old Eng­land and the Sources of the Nile! Hur­rah!” and my men joined me in the wild, and to their ears sav­age, En­glish yell. “Now for a salute! Fire away all your pow­der, if you like, my lads, and let the peo­ple know that we’re alive!”

This was all that was re­quired to com­plete the hap­pi­ness of my peo­ple, and, load­ing and fir­ing as fast as pos­si­ble, we ap­proached near to Gon­do­ko­ro. Present­ly we saw the Turk­ish flag emerge from Gon­do­ko­ro at about a quar­ter of a mile dis­tant, fol­lowed by a num­ber of the traders’ peo­ple, who wait­ed to re­ceive us. On our ar­rival they im­me­di­ate­ly ap­proached and fired salutes with ball car­tridge, as usu­al ad­vanc­ing close to us and dis­charg­ing their guns in­to the ground at our feet. One of my ser­vants, Ma­homet, was rid­ing an ox, and an old friend of his in the crowd hap­pen­ing to rec­og­nize him im­me­di­ate­ly ad­vanced and salut­ed him by fir­ing his gun in­to the earth di­rect­ly be­neath the bel­ly of the ox he was rid­ing.

The ef­fect pro­duced made the crowd and our­selves ex­plode with laugh­ter. The ner­vous ox, ter­ri­fied at the sud­den dis­charge be­tween his legs, gave a tremen­dous kick, and con­tin­ued mad­ly kick­ing and plung­ing, un­til Ma­homet was pitched over his head and lay sprawl­ing on the ground. This scene ter­mi­nat­ed the ex­pe­di­tion.

Dis­mount­ing from our tired ox­en, our first in­quiry was con­cern­ing boats and let­ters. What was the re­ply? Nei­ther boats, let­ters, sup­plies, nor any in­tel­li­gence of friends or the civ­ilized world! We had long since been giv­en up as dead by the in­hab­itants of Khar­toum, and by all those who un­der­stood the dif­fi­cul­ties and dan­gers of the coun­try. We were told that some peo­ple had sug­gest­ed that we might pos­si­bly have gone to Zanz­ibar, but the gen­er­al opin­ion was that we had all been killed.

At this cold and bar­ren re­ply I felt al­most choked. We had looked for­ward to ar­riv­ing at Gon­do­ko­ro as to a home; we had ex­pect­ed that a boat would have been sent on the chance of find­ing us, as I had left mon­ey in the hands of an agent in Khar­toum ; but there was lit­er­al­ly noth­ing to re­ceive us, and we were help­less to re­turn. We had worked for years in mis­ery, such as I have but faint­ly de­scribed, to over­come the dif­fi­cul­ties of this hith­er­to un­con­quer­able ex­plo­ration. We had suc­ceed­ed–and what was the re­sult? Not even a let­ter from home to wel­come us if alive!

As I sat be­neath a tree and looked down up­on the glo­ri­ous Nile that flowed a few yards be­neath my feet, I pon­dered up­on the val­ue of my toil. I had traced the riv­er to its great Al­bert source, and as the mighty stream glid­ed be­fore me, the mys­tery that had ev­er shroud­ed its ori­gin was dis­solved. I no longer looked up­on its wa­ters with a feel­ing ap­proach­ing to awe, for I knew its home, and had vis­it­ed its cra­dle. Had I over­rat­ed the im­por­tance of the dis­cov­ery? and had I wast­ed some of the best years of my life to ob­tain a shad­ow? I re­called to rec­ol­lec­tion the prac­ti­cal ques­tion of Com­moro, the chief of La­tooka, “Sup­pose you get to the great lake, what will you do with it? What will be the good of it? If you find that the large riv­er does flow from it, what then?”

At length the hap­py day came when we were to quit this mis­er­able place of Gon­do­ko­ro. The boat was ready to start, we were all on board, and Ibrahim and his peo­ple came to say good-​by. Crowds lined the cliff and the high ground by the old ru­ins of the mis­sion-​sta­tion to see us de­part. We pushed off from shore in­to the pow­er­ful cur­rent; the En­glish flag, that had ac­com­pa­nied us all through our wan­der­ings, now flut­tered proud­ly from the mast­head un­sul­lied by de­feat, and amidst the rat­tle of mus­ketry we glid­ed rapid­ly down the riv­er and soon lost sight of Gon­do­ko­ro.

What were our feel­ings at that mo­ment? Over­flow­ing with grat­itude to a Di­vine Prov­idence that had sup­port­ed us in sick­ness and guid­ed us through all dan­gers. There had been mo­ments of hope­less­ness and de­spair; days of mis­ery, when the fu­ture had ap­peared dark and fa­tal; but we had been strength­ened in our weak­ness, and led, when ap­par­ent­ly lost, by an un­seen hand. I felt no tri­umph, but with a feel­ing of calm con­tent­ment and sat­is­fac­tion we float­ed down the Nile. My great joy was in the meet­ing that I con­tem­plat­ed with Speke in Eng­land, as I had so thor­ough­ly com­plet­ed the task we had agreed up­on.

We had heard at Gon­do­ko­ro of a re­mark­able ob­struc­tion in the White Nile a short dis­tance be­low the junc­tion of the Bahr el Gazal. We found this to be a dam formed by float­ing mass­es of veg­eta­tion that ef­fec­tu­al­ly blocked the pas­sage.

The riv­er had sud­den­ly dis­ap­peared; there was ap­par­ent­ly an end to the White Nile. The dam was about three-​quar­ters of a mile wide, was per­fect­ly firm, and was al­ready over­grown with high reeds and grass, thus form­ing a con­tin­ua­tion of the sur­round­ing coun­try. Many of the traders’ peo­ple had died of the plague at this spot dur­ing the de­lay of some weeks in cut­ting the canal; the graves of these dead were up­on the dam. The bot­tom of the canal that had been cut through the dam was per­fect­ly firm, com­posed of sand, mud, and in­ter­wo­ven de­cay­ing veg­eta­tion. The riv­er ar­rived with great force at the abrupt edge of the ob­struc­tion, bring­ing with it all kinds of trash and large float­ing is­lands. None of these ob­jects hitched against the edge, but the in­stant they struck they dived un­der and dis­ap­peared. It was in this man­ner that a ves­sel had re­cent­ly been lost. Hav­ing missed the nar­row en­trance to the canal, she had struck the dam stem on; the force of the cur­rent im­me­di­ate­ly turned her broad­side against the ob­struc­tion, the float­ing is­lands and mass­es of veg­eta­tion brought down by the riv­er were heaped against her and, heel­ing over on her side, she was sucked bod­ily un­der and car­ried be­neath the dam. Her crew had time to save them­selves by leap­ing up­on the firm bar­ri­er that had wrecked their ship. The boat­men told me that dead hip­popota­mi had been found on the oth­er side, that had been car­ried un­der the dam and drowned.

Two days’ hard work from morn­ing till night brought us through the canal, and we once more found our­selves on the open Nile on the oth­er side of the dam. The riv­er was in that spot per­fect­ly clean; not a ves­tige of float­ing veg­eta­tion could be seen up­on its wa­ters. In its sub­ter­ranean pas­sage it had passed through a nat­ural sieve, leav­ing all for­eign mat­ter be­hind to add to the bulk of the al­ready stu­pen­dous work.

All be­fore us was clear and plain sail­ing. For some days two or three of our men had been com­plain­ing of se­vere headache, gid­di­ness, and vi­olent pains in the spine and be­tween the shoul­ders. I had been anx­ious when at Gon­do­ko­ro con­cern­ing the ves­sel, as many per­sons while on board had died of the plague, dur­ing the voy­age from Khar­toum. The men as­sured me that the most fa­tal symp­tom was vi­olent bleed­ing from the nose; in such cas­es no one had been known to re­cov­er. One of the boat­men, who had been ail­ing for some days, sud­den­ly went to the side of the ves­sel and hung his head over the riv­er; his nose was bleed­ing!

An­oth­er of my men, Yaseen, was ill; his un­cle, my va­keel, came to me with a re­port that “his nose was bleed­ing vi­olent­ly!” Sev­er­al oth­er men fell ill; they lay help­less­ly about the deck in low mut­ter­ing delir­ium, their eyes as yel­low as or­ange-​peel. In two or three days the ves­sel was so hor­ri­bly of­fen­sive as to be un­bear­able. THE PLAGUE HAD BRO­KEN OUT! We float­ed past the riv­er So­bat junc­tion; the wind was fair from the south, thus for­tu­nate­ly we in the stern were to wind­ward of the crew. Yaseen died; he was one who had bled at the nose. We stopped to bury him. The fu­ner­al hasti­ly ar­ranged, we again set sail. Ma­hommed died; he had bled at the nose. An­oth­er buri­al. Once more we set sail and hur­ried down the Nile. Sev­er­al men were ill, but the dread­ed symp­tom had not ap­peared. I had giv­en each man a strong dose of calomel at the com­mence­ment of the dis­ease; I could do noth­ing more, as my medicines were ex­haust­ed. All night we could hear the sick mut­ter­ing and rav­ing in delir­ium, but from years of as­so­ci­ation with dis­agree­ables we had no fear of the in­fec­tion.

One morn­ing the boy Saat carne to me with his head bound up, and com­plained of se­vere pain in the back and limbs, with all the usu­al symp­toms of plague. In the af­ter­noon I saw him lean­ing over the ship’s side; his nose was bleed­ing vi­olent­ly! At night he was deliri­ous. On the fol­low­ing morn­ing he was rav­ing, and on the ves­sel stop­ping to col­lect fire­wood he threw him­self in­to the riv­er to cool the burn­ing fever that con­sumed him. His eyes were suf­fused with blood, which, blend­ed with a yel­low as deep as the yolk of egg, gave a ter­ri­ble ap­pear­ance to his face, that was al­ready so drawn and changed as to be hard­ly rec­og­nized. Poor Saat! the faith­ful boy that we had adopt­ed, and who had formed so bright an ex­cep­tion to the dark char­ac­ter of his race, was now a vic­tim to this hor­ri­ble dis­ease. He was a fine strong lad of near­ly fif­teen, and he now lay help­less­ly on his mat, and cast wist­ful glances at the face of his mis­tress as she gave him a cup of cold wa­ter mixed with a few lumps of sug­ar that we had ob­tained from the traders at Gon­do­ko­ro.

Saat grew worse and worse. Noth­ing would re­lieve the un­for­tu­nate boy from the burn­ing tor­ture of that fright­ful dis­ease. He nev­er slept; but night and day he mut­tered in delir­ium, break­ing the monotony of his mal­ady by oc­ca­sion­al­ly howl­ing like a wild an­imal. Richarn won my heart by his care­ful nurs­ing of the boy, who had been his com­pan­ion through years of hard­ship. We ar­rived at the vil­lage of Wat She­ly, on­ly three days from Khar­toum. Saat was dy­ing. The night passed, and I ex­pect­ed that all would be over be­fore sun­rise; but as morn­ing dawned a change had tak­en place; the burn­ing fever had left him, and, al­though raised blotch­es had bro­ken out up­on his chest and var­ious parts of his body, he ap­peared much bet­ter. We now gave him stim­ulants; a tea­spoon­ful of ara­ki that we had bought at Fas­hood­er was ad­min­is­tered ev­ery ten min­utes on a lump of sug­ar. This he crunched in his mouth, while he gazed at my wife with an ex­pres­sion of af­fec­tion; but he could not speak. I had him well washed and dressed in clean clothes, that had been kept most care­ful­ly dur­ing the voy­age, to be worn on our en­tree to Khar­toum. He was laid down to sleep up­on a clean mat, and my wife gave him a lump of sug­ar to moist­en his mouth and re­lieve his thick­ly-​furred tongue. His pulse was very weak, and his skin cold. “Poor Saat,” said my wife, “his life hangs up­on a thread. We must nurse him most care­ful­ly; should he have a re­lapse, noth­ing will save him.”

An hour passed, and he slept. Kar­ka, the fat, good-​na­tured slave wom­an, qui­et­ly went to his side; gen­tly tak­ing him by the an­kles and knees, she stretched his legs in­to a straight po­si­tion, and laid his arms par­al­lel with his sides. She then cov­ered his face with a cloth, one of the few rags that we still pos­sessed. “Does he sleep still?” we asked. The tears ran down the cheeks of the sav­age but good-​heart­ed Kar­ka as she sobbed, “He is dead!”

We stopped the boat. It was a sandy shore; the banks were high, and a clump of mi­mosas grew above high-​wa­ter mark. It was there that we dug his grave. My men worked silent­ly and sad­ly, for all loved Saat. He had been so good and true, that even their hard hearts had learned to re­spect his hon­esty. We laid him in his grave on the desert shore, be­neath the grove of trees.

Again the sail was set, and, filled by the breeze, it car­ried us away from the drea­ry spot where we had sor­row­ful­ly left all that was good and faith­ful. It was a hap­py end– most mer­ci­ful, as he had been tak­en from a land of in­iq­ui­ty in all the pu­ri­ty of a child con­vert­ed from Pa­gan­ism to Chris­tian­ity. He had lived and died in our ser­vice a good Chris­tian. Our voy­age was near­ly over, and we looked for­ward to home and friends; but we had still fa­tigues be­fore us: poor Saat had reached his home and rest.

On the fol­low­ing morn­ing, May 6, 1865, we were wel­comed by the en­tire Eu­ro­pean pop­ula­tion of Khar­toum, to whom are due my warmest thanks for many kind at­ten­tions. We were kind­ly of­fered a house by Mon­sieur Lom­bro­sio, the man­ag­er of the Khar­toum branch of the “Ori­en­tal and Egyp­tian Trad­ing Com­pa­ny.”

I now heard the dis­tress­ing news of the death of my poor friend Speke. I could not re­al­ize the truth of this melan­choly re­port un­til I read the de­tails of his fa­tal ac­ci­dent in the ap­pendix of a French trans­la­tion of his work. It was but a sad con­so­la­tion that I could con­firm his dis­cov­er­ies, and bear wit­ness to the tenac­ity and per­se­ver­ance with which he had led his par­ty through the un­trod­den path of Africa to the first Nile source.

While at Khar­toum I hap­pened to find Ma­hommed Il­er! the va­keel of Chenoo­da’s par­ty, who had in­sti­gat­ed my men to mutiny at La­tooka, and had tak­en my de­sert­ers in­to his em­ploy. I had promised to make an ex­am­ple of this fel­low; I there­fore had him ar­rest­ed and brought be­fore the di­van. With ex­treme ef­fron­tery, he de­nied hav­ing had any­thing to do with the af­fair. Hav­ing a crowd of wit­ness­es in my own men, and oth­ers that I had found in Khar­toum who had be­longed to Koor­shid’s par­ty at that time, his barefaced lie was ex­posed, and he was con­vict­ed. I de­ter­mined that he should be pun­ished, as an ex­am­ple that would in­sure re­spect to any fu­ture En­glish trav­eller in those re­gions. My men, and all those with whom I had been con­nect­ed, had been ac­cus­tomed to re­ly most im­plic­it­ly up­on all that I had promised, and the pun­ish­ment of this man had been an ex­pressed de­ter­mi­na­tion.

I went to the di­van and de­mand­ed that he should be flogged. Omer Bey was then Gov­er­nor of the Soudan, in the place of Moosa Pacha de­ceased. He sat up­on the di­van, in the large hall of jus­tice by the riv­er. Mo­tion­ing me to take a seat by his side, and hand­ing me his pipe, he called the of­fi­cer in wait­ing, and gave the nec­es­sary or­ders. In a few min­utes the pris­on­er was led in­to the hall, at­tend­ed by eight sol­diers. One man car­ried a strong pole about sev­en feet long, in the cen­tre of which was a dou­ble chain, riv­et­ed through in a loop. The pris­on­er was im­me­di­ate­ly thrown down with his face to the ground, while two men stretched out his arms and sat up­on them. His feet were then placed with­in the loop of the chain, and the pole be­ing twist­ed round un­til firm­ly se­cured, it was raised from the ground suf­fi­cient­ly to ex­pose the soles of the feet. Two men with pow­er­ful hip­popota­mus whips stood one on ei­ther side. The pris­on­er thus se­cured, the or­der was giv­en. The whips were most sci­en­tif­ical­ly ap­plied, and af­ter the first five dozen the slave-​hunt­ing scoundrel howled most lusti­ly for mer­cy. How of­ten had he flogged un­for­tu­nate slave wom­en to ex­cess, and what mur­ders had that wretch com­mit­ted, who now howled for mer­cy! I begged Omer Bey to stop the pun­ish­ment at 150 lash­es, and to ex­plain to him pub­licly in the di­van that he was thus pun­ished for at­tempt­ing to thwart the ex­pe­di­tion of an En­glish trav­eller, by in­sti­gat­ing my es­cort to mutiny.

We stayed at Khar­toum two months, wait­ing for the Nile to rise suf­fi­cient­ly to al­low the pas­sage of the cataracts. We start­ed June 30th, and reached Berber, from which point, four years be­fore, I had set out on my At­bara ex­pe­di­tion.

I de­ter­mined up­on the Red Sea route to Egypt, in­stead of pass­ing the hor­ri­ble Ko­rosko desert dur­ing the hot month of Au­gust. Af­ter some de­lay I pro­cured camels, and start­ed east for Souakim, where I hoped to pro­cure a steam­er to Suez.

There was no steam­er up­on our ar­rival. Af­ter wait­ing in in­tense heat for about a fort­night, the Egyp­tian thir­ty-​two-​gun steam frigate Ibrahimeya ar­rived with a reg­iment of Egyp­tian troops, un­der Gi­af­fer Pacha, to quell the mutiny of the black troops at Kas­sala, twen­ty days’ march in the in­te­ri­or. Gi­af­fer Pacha most kind­ly placed the frigate at our dis­pos­al to con­vey us to Suez.

Or­ders for sail­ing had been re­ceived; but sud­den­ly a steam­er was sig­nalled as ar­riv­ing. This was a trans­port, with troops. As she was to re­turn im­me­di­ate­ly to Suez, I pre­ferred the dirty trans­port rather than in­cur a fur­ther de­lay. We start­ed from Souakim, and af­ter five days’ voy­age we ar­rived at Suez. Land­ing from the steam­er, I once more found my­self in an En­glish ho­tel.

The ho­tel was thronged with pas­sen­gers to In­dia, with rosy, bloom­ing En­glish ladies and crowds of my own coun­try­men. I felt in­clined to talk to ev­ery­body. Nev­er was I so in love with my own coun­try­men and wom­en; but they (I mean the ladies) all had large balls of hair at the backs of their heads! What an ex­traor­di­nary change! I called Richarn, my pet sav­age from the heart of Africa, to ad­mire them. “Now, Richarn, look at them!” I said. “What do you think of the En­glish ladies? eh, Richarn? Are they not love­ly?”

“Wah Il­lahi!” ex­claimed the as­ton­ished Richarn, “they are beau­ti­ful! What hair! They are not like the ne­gro sav­ages, who work oth­er peo­ple’s hair in­to their own heads; theirs is all re­al–all their own–how beau­ti­ful!”

“Yes, Richarn,” I replied, “ALL THEIR OWN!” This was my first in­tro­duc­tion to the “chignon.”

We ar­rived at Cairo, and I es­tab­lished Richarn and his wife in a com­fort­able sit­ua­tion as pri­vate ser­vants to Mr. Zech, the mas­ter of Shep­pard’s Ho­tel. The char­ac­ter I gave him was one that I trust has done him ser­vice. He had shown an ex­traor­di­nary amount of moral courage in to­tal­ly re­form­ing from his orig­inal habit of drink­ing. I left my old ser­vant with a heart too full to say good-​by, a warm squeeze of his rough but hon­est black hand, and the whis­tle of the train sound­ed– we were off!

I had left Richarn, and none re­mained of my peo­ple. The past ap­peared like a dream; the rush­ing sound of the train re­newed ideas of civ­iliza­tion. Had I re­al­ly come from the Nile Sources? It was no dream. A wit­ness sat be­fore me–a face still young, but bronzed like an Arab by years of ex­po­sure to a burn­ing sun, hag­gard and worn with toil and sick­ness, and shad­ed with cares hap­pi­ly now past, the de­vot­ed com­pan­ion of my pil­grim­age, to whom I owed suc­cess and life– my wife.

I had re­ceived let­ters from Eng­land, that had been wait­ing at the British Con­sulate. The first I opened in­formed me that the Roy­al Ge­ograph­ical So­ci­ety had award­ed me the Vic­to­ria Gold Medal, at a time when they were un­aware whether I was alive or dead, and when the suc­cess of my ex­pe­di­tion was un­known. This ap­pre­ci­ation of my ex­er­tions was the warmest wel­come that I could have re­ceived on my first en­trance in­to civ­iliza­tion af­ter so many years of sav­age­dom. It ren­dered the com­ple­tion of the Nile Sources dou­bly grate­ful, as I had ful­filled the ex­pec­ta­tions that the Ge­ograph­ical So­ci­ety had so gen­er­ous­ly ex­pressed by the pre­sen­ta­tion of their medal BE­FORE my task was done.

End of The Project Guten­berg Etext of In the Heart of Africa, by Bak­er