The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places

by John Keay

  29th We started at 6 a.m., and marched thirteen miles to a village at the northern extremity of the district. The face of the country is still very irregular, sometimes rising into hills, at other times dropping into dells, but very well cultivated in the lower portion; whilst the brown granite rocks, with trees and brushwood covering the upper regions, diversify the colouring, and form a pleasing contrast to the scene; added to this, large and frequent herds graze about the fields and amongst the villages, and give animation to the whole. Amongst the trees, palms take a prominent part. Indeed, for tropical scenery, there are few places that could equal this; and if the traveller, as he moves along, surrounded by the screeching, howling, inquisitive savages, running rudely about and boisterously jostling him, could only divest himself of the idea that he is a bear baited by a yelping pack of hounds, the journey would be replete with enjoyment.

  Crossing some hills, the caravan sprang a covey of guinea-fowls, and at some springs in a valley I shot several couple of sand-grouse, darker in plumage than any I ever saw in Africa or India, and not quite so big as the Tibet bird. The chief of the village offered me a bullock; but as the beast did not appear until the time of starting, I declined it. Neither did I give him any cloth, being convinced in my mind that these and other animals have always been brought to me by the smaller chiefs at the instigation of the Kirangozi, and probably aided by the flesh-loving party in general. The Jemadar must have been particularly mortified at my way of disposing of the business, for he talked of nothing else but flesh and the animal from the moment it was sent for, his love for butcher-meat amounting almost to a frenzy. The sandstone in this region is highly impregnated with iron, and smelters do a good business; indeed, the iron for nearly all the tools and cutlery that are used in this division of Eastern Africa is found and manufactured here. It is the Brummagem of the land, and has not only rich but very extensive ironfields stretching many miles north, east, and west. I brought some specimens away. Cloth is little prized in this especially bead country, and I had to pay the sum of one dhoti kiniki for one pot of honey and one pot of ghee (clarified butter).

  30th The caravan started at 6 a.m., and travelled four miles northwards, amidst villages and cultivation. From this point, on facing to the left, I could discern a sheet of water, about four miles from me, which ultimately proved to be a creek, and the most southern point of the N’yanza, which, as I have said before, the Arabs described to us as the Ukéréwé Sea.3 We soon afterwards descended into a grassy and jungly depression, and arrived at a deep, dirty, viscid nullah (a watercourse that only runs in wet weather), draining the eastern country into the southern end of the creek. To cross this (which I shall name Jordan) was a matter of no small difficulty, especially for the donkeys, whose fording seemed quite hopeless, until the Jemadar, assisted by two other Beluches, with blows and threats made the lazy pagazis work, and dragged them through the mud by sheer force. This operation lasted so long that, after crossing, we made for the nearest village in the Uvira district, and completed a journey of eight miles. The country to the eastward appeared open and waving, but to the north and far west very hilly. The ground is fertile, and the flocks and herds very abundant. Hippopotami frequent the nullah at night, and reside there during the rainy season; but at this, the dry half of the year, they retreat to the larger waters of the creek. Rhinoceroses are said to pay nightly visits to fields around the villages, and commit sad havoc on the crops. The nullah, running from the south-east, drains the land in that direction; but a river, I hear, rising in the Msalala district, draws off the water from the lays we have recently been crossing, to the westward of our track, where its course lies, and empties it into the creek on the opposite side to where the nullah debouches.

  31st On hearing that a shorter track than the Sukuma one usually frequented by the Arabs led to Muanza, the place Sheikh Snay advised my going to, I started by it at 8 a.m.; and after following it westward down the nullah’s right bank a few miles, turned up northwards, and continued along the creek to a village, eight miles distant, at the farther end of the Urima district, where we took up our quarters. The country has a mixed and large population of smiths, agriculturists, and herdsmen, residing in the flats and depressions which lie between the scattered little hills. During the rainy season, when the lake swells and the country becomes super-saturated, the inundations are so great that all travelling becomes suspended.

  1st August This day’s march, commenced at 6 a.m., differs but little from the last. Following down the creek, which, gradually increasing in breadth as it extended northwards, was here of very considerable dimensions, we saw many little islands, well-wooded elevations, standing boldly out of its waters, which, together with the hill-dotted country around, afforded a most agreeable prospect. Would that my eyes had been strong enough to dwell, unshaded, upon such scenery! but my French grey spectacles so excited the crowds of sable gentry who followed the caravan, and they were so boisterously rude, stooping and peering underneath my wide-awake to gain a better sight of my double eyes, as they chose to term them, that it became impossible for me to wear them. I therefore pocketed the instrument, closed my eyes, and allowed the donkey I was riding to be quietly pulled along.

  To-day’s track lay for the first half of the way over a jungly depression, where we saw ostriches, florikans, and the small Saltiana antelopes; but as their shyness did not allow of an open approach, I amused myself by shooting partridges. During the remainder of the way, the caravan threaded between villages and cultivation lying in small valleys, or crossed over low hills, accomplishing a total distance of twelve miles. Here we put up at a village called Ukumbi, occupied by the Walaswanda tribe.

  2nd We set out at 6 a.m., and travelled thirteen miles by a tortuous route, sometimes close by the creek, at other times winding between small hills, the valleys of which were thickly inhabited by both agricultural and pastoral people. Here some small perennial streams, exuding from springs by the base of these hills, meander through the valleys, and keep all vegetable life in a constant state of verdant freshness. The creek still increases in width as it extends northward, and is studded with numerous small rocky island-hills covered with brushwood, which, standing out from the bosom of the deep-blue waters, reminded me of a voyage I once had in the Grecian Archipelago. The route also being so diversified with hills, afforded fresh objects of attraction at every turn; and to-day, by good fortune, the usually troublesome people have attended more to their harvest-making, and left me to the enjoyment of the scenery. My trusty Blissett made a florikan pay the penalty of death for his temerity in attempting a flight across the track. The day’s journey lasted thirteen miles, and brought us into a village called Isamiro.

  August 3rd The caravan, after quitting Isamiro, began winding up a long but gradually inclined hill – which, as it bears no native name, I shall call Somerset – until it reached its summit, when the vast expanse of the pale-blue waters of the N’yanza burst suddenly upon my gaze. It was early morning. The distant sea-line of the north horizon was defined in the calm atmosphere between the north and west points of the compass; but even this did not afford me any idea of the breadth of the lake, as an archipelago of islands, each consisting of a single hill, rising to a height of 200 or 300 feet above the water, intersected the line of vision to the left; while on the right the western horn of the Ukéréwé Island cut off any farther view of its distant waters to the eastward of north. A sheet of water – an elbow of the sea, however, at the base of the low range on which I stood – extended far away to the eastward, to where, in the dim distance, a hummock-like elevation of the mainland marked what I understood to be the south and east angle of the lake. The important islands of Ukéréwé and Mzita, distant about twenty or thirty miles, formed the visible north shore of this firth. The name of the former of these islands was familiar to us as that by which this long-sought lake was usually known. It is reported by the natives to be of no great extent; and though of no considerable elevation, I could discover se
veral spurs stretching down to the water’s edge from its central ridge of hills. The other island, Mzita, is of greater elevation, of a hog-backed shape, but being more distant, its physical features were not so distinctly visible.

  In consequence of the northern islands of the Bengal Archipelago before mentioned obstructing the view, the western shore of the lake could not be defined: a series of low hill-tops extended in this direction as far as the eye could reach; while below me, at no great distance, was the debouchure of the creek, which enters the lake from the south, and along the banks of which my last three days’ journey had led me. This view was one which, even in a well-known and explored country, would have arrested the traveller by its peaceful beauty. The islands, each swelling in a gentle slope to a rounded summit, clothed with wood between the rugged angular closely-cropping rocks of granite, seemed mirrored in the calm surface of the lake; on which I here and there detected a small black speck, the tiny canoe of some Muanza fisherman. On the gently shelving plain below me, blue smoke curled above the trees, which here and there partially concealed villages and hamlets, their brown thatched roofs contrasting with the emerald green of the beautiful milk-bush, the coral branches of which cluster in such profusion round the cottages, and form alleys and hedgerows about the villages as ornamental as any garden shrub in England. But the pleasure of the mere view vanished in the presence of those more intense and exciting emotions which are called up by the consideration of the commercial and geographical importance of the prospect before me.

  I no longer felt any doubt that the lake at my feet gave birth to that interesting river, the source of which has been the subject of so much speculation, and the object of so many explorers. The Arabs’ tale was proved to the letter. This is a far more extensive lake than the Tanganyika; “so broad you could not see across it, and so long that nobody knew its length.”4 I had now the pleasure of perceiving that a map I had constructed on Arab testimony, and sent home to the Royal Geographical Society before leaving Unyanyembé, was so substantially correct that in its general outlines I had nothing whatever to alter. Further, as I drew that map after proving their first statements about the Tanganyika, which were made before my going there, I have every reason to feel confident of their veracity relative to their travels north through Karagué, and to Kibuga in Uganda.

  When Sheikh Snay told us of the Ukéréwé, as he called the N’yanza, on our first arrival at Kazé, proceeding westward from Zanzibar, he said, “If you have come only to see a large bit of water, you had better go northwards and see the Ukéréwé; for it is much greater in every respect than the Tanganyika”; and so, as far as I can ascertain, it is. Muanza, our journey’s end, now lay at our feet. It is an open, well-cultivated plain on the southern end, and lies almost flush with the lake; a happy, secluded-looking corner, containing every natural facility to make life pleasant. After descending the hill, we followed along the borders of the lake, and at first entered Mahaya’s Palace, when the absence of boats arousing my suspicions, made me inquire where the Arabs, on coming to Muanza, and wishing to visit Ukéréwé, usually resided. This, I heard, was some way farther on; so with great difficulty I persuaded the porters to come away and proceed at once to where they said an Arab was actually living. It was a singular coincidence that, after Sheikh Snay’s caution as to my avoiding Sultan Mahaya’s Palace, by inquiring diligently about him yesterday, and finding no one who knew his name, the first person I should have encountered was himself, and that, too, in his own Palace. The reason of this was, that big men in this country, to keep up their dignity, have several names, and thus mystify the traveller.

  I then proceeded along the shore of the lake in an easterly direction, and on the way shot a number of red Egyptian geese, which were very numerous; they are the same sort here as I once saw in the Somali country. Another goose, which unfortunately I could not kill, is very different from any I ever saw or heard of: it stands as high as the Canadian bird, or higher, and is black all over, saving one little white patch beneath the lower mandible. It was fortunate that I came on here, for the Arab in question, called Mansur bin Salim, treated me very kindly, and he had retainers belonging to the country, who knew as much about the lake as anybody, and were of very great assistance. I also found a good station for making observations on the lake. It was Mansur who first informed me of my mistake of the morning; but he said that the evil reports spread at Unyanyembé about Mahaya had no foundation; on the contrary, he had found him a very excellent and obliging person.

  To-day we marched eight miles, and have concluded our journey northwards, a total distance of 226 miles from Kazé, which, occupying twenty-five days, is at the rate of nine miles per diem, halts inclusive.

  THE RESERVOIR OF THE NILE

  Samuel White Baker

  (1821–93)

  Amongst professional explorers and big game hunters, none was as successful as Baker. A bluff and plausible figure, wealthy and resourceful, he conducted his explorations on the grand scale, invariably reached his goal and invariably reaped the rewards, including a knighthood and the delectable Florence, his young Hungarian wife. In 1864, her golden tresses causing a sensation in darkest Africa, she shared his greatest triumph when together they left M’rooli in Uganda on the last leg of a two-year journey in search of the source of the White Nile.

  The day of starting at length arrived; the chief and guide appeared, and we were 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 in 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’zigé.”

  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 quietly, 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 mise en scène 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.