Chapter XVI Semliki Valley and Kavalli’s Country
Leaving this country with regret, I descended into the valley once more and marched north, crossing the Semliki to avoid the swamps mentioned by Colonel Lugard at the westerly bend of the river, and recrossed about six miles from where the river enters the lake. For some distance the mournful monotony of aloe and euphorbia is broken by groves of the stately borassus palm. The few miserable Wanyoro, who are sparsely scattered over the plain, were absolutely destitute. The prolonged drought had dried up the maize and millet, and the beans, which form their main food supply, were finished, so that three hippo that I killed for them raised me to a giddy pinnacle of fame; my tent became, for the time being, a second Lourdes, droves of pilgrims pouring in to pay homage to my.303. Their astonishment, when I showed them the size of the bullet and how the magazine worked, was most ludicrous. They had heard how it would drop a huge elephant without a wriggle of his trunk, and they had heard the three shots and could see the three hippo tied to the bank, and had imagined, I suppose, that it was a sort of 7-pounder; so that when they held a cartridge with its pencil-like bullet in their hand, and the truth gradually dawned on them, they would drop it like a hot potato. Some, when I started the mechanism, fairly took to their heels. A native’s estimate of a gun varies proportionately with the size of the bore, and his idea of killing range is ten yards, or, if the sportsman is something of a marksman, perhaps twenty. I was fortunate in bringing off several shots at about four hundred to five hundred yards at nsunu,13 and natives, having no unit of distance, consider everything from two hundred yards to about five miles as the same thing. I have several times heard my gun-bearer, Makanjira, who is a great admirer of the gun, solemnly explaining to an open-mouthed audience how he had seen me kill beasts at such a distance, pointing to a hill some three or four miles away. Consequently, its powers were magnified to the most prodigious proportions, and on the march excited natives would point to mere specks on the horizon, inform me they were buck, and expect me to kill them on the instant; they never gave me any of the credit—it was the gun, the wonderful gun, and I only obtained a reflected glory as its possessor. After crossing the river, I found the natives very nervous and suspicious, and though I visited the village near which I camped, and induced the chief to come to the river-bank to see one of the hippo, which I told him he might have, the following morning, on sending for a guide, I found that they had “shot the moon,” carrying off their half-dozen miserable goats, and fled into the bush.
As the guide promised me by the chief on the other side was not forthcoming, and not wishing to delay any longer, as the sun was terrible on these arid plains, I started without one, and, after two hours’ walking, found that I had penetrated well into the marshes at the south end of the lake. In trying to skirt round the arm of water and sudd that stretches to the south, we soon found ourselves in an apparently boundless sea of one of Nature’s truly African inventions, a tall grass, 8 to 10 ft. high, the roots forming a hopeless tangle of matted whipcord reaching 2 ft. from the ground, and effectually hiding the honeycomb of old hippo and elephant-holes 2 ft. deep below, while the stems and leaves are covered with myriads of invisible spines, which detach themselves in one’s skin and clothes, and set up the most intense irritation.
After floundering through this sea of misery for a couple of hours, we were extricated by the promised guide, who had followed on our tracks, and eventually arrived at a miserable patch of huts; we came so unexpectedly on the people that they had not time to fly, and a few explanations soon put them at their ease. I found that they were Wanyabuga, the same people who were so friendly to Lugard and belonged to Katonzi, a nominal vassal of Kasagama’s, and who is now the sole survivor of Lugard’s three blood brothers, Katonzi, Kavalli, and Mugenzi. They do not cultivate, but depend on the Balegga and Wakoba for grain, which they barter for fish and salt. They are quite distinct in appearance from the surrounding tribes. The type is a tall (5 ft. 8 in.), large-limbed, square-shouldered negro, bull-necked, bullet-headed, with a very low forehead and coarse features; colour very dark; but they have a jolly expression, and were some of the pleasantest natives I ever dealt with. It was curious to see even amongst these people, who live a life apart from their surroundings, the occasional delicate features, gazelle-like eyes, light colour, lithe limbs, and genteel nonchalance of the Galla influence.
At the south end of the Albert Edward, where the Rutchuru flows into the lake, forming similar marshes to those of the Semliki, there is a people living exactly the same life. Unfortunately, owing to their extreme shyness, I could find out very little about them, but from their mode of life, methods of fishing, and general appearance, I have no doubt that they are closely allied; probably survivors of former inhabitants who have found a last refuge in these intricate waterways and impenetrable marshes. The similarity in the names of these two peoples is significant.
It is a strange amphibious existence in these simmering wastes of weed and water, the stillness of which is only broken by the occasional blow of a hippo, the splash of a fish or crocodile, the wild cry of the numerous flights of wild-fowl, and the everlasting plaint of the fish-eagle. A perpetual mirage hovering over the scene adds to the general mystery; groups of huts suddenly appear where all was shimmering light, and as suddenly vanish; a canoe with its two upright punters glides past apparently in the sky, a goose suddenly assumes the proportions of an elephant, and an elephant evolves out of what one took to be a goose; and thus the scene is ever changing, till the grey of evening and the crisp light of the rising sun bring out in strong relief the placid sheets of water, the long brown bands of weeds, the tiny islands with their little huts perched among the waving reeds, the thin strips of sand with their occasional waddling hippo, the little black canoes slowly gliding in and out amongst the weed-beds and tufts of grass, and the continual flight of flocks of white ibis.
I never tired of sitting on the shore and watching the long string of little black canoes slowly wending their way towards me, bringing in fish and salt, to trade with the group of Balegga who were waiting with loads of beans and millet flour.
The small stretch of country lying between the Semliki, the Albert Lake, and the hills is called Kitwakimbi, and is distinct from Bukande, which begins at the foot of the hills and reaches back to the watershed.
My Wanyabuga friends provided me with two guides, who, after wasting two hours in visiting obscure villages, all of which were deserted, and answering my protests at our zigzag route by ambiguous allusions to marshes, eventually landed me within four hundred yards of where I had started, and suggested that I should camp. Having with difficulty persuaded them that I was annoyed, which they evidently considered unreasonable on my part, they smilingly explained that it was far from their homes, and they had hoped to find me other guides. However, vague allusions to the presence of a “kiboko”14 convinced them of the inexpediency, not to say positive danger, of further nonsense, and they gaily proceeded on their way, chortling hugely at the success of what they thought a very merry prank. They led me to a deserted village opposite Kasenyi, a small island about a mile from the mainland, and the present headquarters of Katonzi. The Wanyabuga-Balegga market was in full swing, but vanished like mist at my sudden appearance, and it was only by going down to the beach stripped to the waist, and a happy allusion to brothership with “Kapelli,” that I induced them to bring their canoes to the shore again. “Kapelli” is the native name of that gallant officer Colonel Lugard, and to have left a name in Africa that opens all doors and all hearts is the finest monument to his exploits that a man can have. They flocked in to see me under Tunja, Katonzi’s eldest son, who brought several loads of food, and informed me that Katonzi had left two days before for Toro. They asked all kinds of questions about “Kapelli” and Mr. Grant, who was with Lugard in his expedition to release the Soudanese, and wanted to know why he had never come back, and had the English deserted their country after promising to protect them? I answered all their questions to the best of my ability, and when I showed them Lugard’s book and the photograph of Grant, which, to my surprise, they immediately recognized, their delight knew no bounds.
The mosquitoes here defy description; even at mid-day I had to eat my food walking about, and my evening and morning toilet, combined as it was with a Dan Lenoesque extravaganza, if performed on the Empire stage would assuredly have brought down the house. I crawled into my mosquito-net with the greatest caution, disposed all my weighty belongings, such as boots and cartridge-bags, in a circle round my bed to keep down the edges of the net, exhausted all my candle-ends in exploding the odd hundred or two that had crawled in with me, and was quickly lulled to sleep by the dismal drone of myriads, happy in the knowledge that they were outside; sleep, gentle sleep, during which I evolved in one short hour from my own insignificant self through the alarming stages of Daniel in the lion’s den, and a cold bread poultice, to the stern reality that they were inside; and they were, hundred and hundreds of them. In vain I searched for some hole or possible inlet, and eventually had to resign myself to the inevitable, buoyed up by the meagre consolation that I had discovered that, like the light of the glow-worm, the mosquito is possessed of the properties of the Röntgen rays.
Early the next morning Tunja came to tell me that Katonzi was coming back, and at midday he arrived in person. He is a dismal old nigger, and though somewhat rapacious, not a bad fellow. His first request was to see the wonderful book, and then how I struck a match, an accomplishment that tickled him immensely. He then naïvely asked me to give him my guns, saying that Lugard had given them two guns, but that the Belgians had taken them away. I asked him why all the people were so frightened, and where they had all gone; whereupon he proceeded to recount the same tales of misery and oppression that I had heard the day before, from which I gathered that a Congo Free State official rejoicing in the name of “Billygee” had suddenly swooped down on the country a year ago, and after shooting down numbers of the natives had returned west, carrying off forty young women, numerous children, and all the cattle and goats, and putting a finishing touch to the proceedings by a grand pyrotechnic display, during which they bound the old women, threw them into the huts, and then fired the roofs. Several absolutely independent witnesses informed me that this had been done actually in the presence of Billygee and the gentlemen who accompanied him. Katonzi’s two sons, Tunja and Kutaru, were bound and taken away, but released after two months. Kavalli’s eldest son is now in their hands, while a younger one escaped to the Balegga. As I have mentioned before, when in Mboga the Balegga told me similar tales; here I was repeatedly given accounts that tallied in all essentials, and further north the Wakoba made the same piteous complaints; and I saw myself that a country apparently well populated and responsive to just treatment in Lugard’s time (and that under very trying conditions, owing to the numbers of destitute aliens in the country—to wit, the Soudanese) is now practically a howling wilderness; the scattered inhabitants, terrified even of one another, and living almost without cultivation in the marshes, thickets, and reeds, madly flee even from their own shadows. Chaos—hopeless, abysmal chaos—from Mweru to the Nile; in the south, tales of cruelty of undoubted veracity, but which I could not repeat without actual investigation on the spot; on Tanganyika, absolute impotence, revolted Askaris ranging at their own sweet will, while the white men are throwing their ivory and cartridges into the lake, and cutting down their bananas for fear the rebels should take them; on Kivu, a hideous wave of cannibalism raging unchecked through the land, while in the north the very white men who should be keeping peace where chaos now reigns supreme, are spending thousands in making of peace a chaos of their own. I have no hesitation in condemning the whole State as a vampire growth, intended to suck the country dry, and to provide a happy hunting-ground for a pack of unprincipled outcasts and untutored scoundrels. The few sound men in the country are powerless to stem the tide of oppression.
The departure of my mubaka provided by King Kasagama had taken a great load off my mind; he was too heavy a swell for me to keep pace with, dressed in white breeks, yellow putties, red fez, and three fancy cloths, to say nothing of a red and yellow belt; and his terrible anxiety lest he should miss a chance of putting up a large white umbrella with a green lining was so infectious that finally I found myself watching the clouds with one eye and the mubaka with the other, knowing that at the first ray of sunshine he would emerge from his hut and perform for my edification. In the cloudy intervals he devoured such masses of solid food that even with my experience of native capacity I became quite alarmed, and between the struttings and bursting-point tests, he had very little time to devote to my affairs, so that I was very glad to see the last of him.
Katonzi, after relating his own troubles, and thinking, I suppose, that it was my turn to have a few, proceeded to paint the most gruesome pictures of what was in front. With tears in his eyes he begged me to turn back, saying that if I died the white men would blame him; he informed me that all was wilderness beyond—no food, no paths, all the people dead. Putting his hand to his head, he explained how they had all just done so, lain down and expired.15 Pressed as to the reason of this general collapse, he eagerly shook his head and murmured “Muungu” (Kismet). Though summing up the majority of these perils as “nigger gibberish,” I was rather alarmed at the sudden death business, thinking that perhaps it was smallpox or the Bombay plague; but this, like the rest, was simply imagination. It is strange how natives get these ideas into their heads. I do not think it was gratuitous lying, as all his people, as far as I could see without any other reason than belief in the sudden death, were afraid even to hunt in the direction indicated; and he certainly had nothing to gain by stopping me from going forward, since he had no interest in the country. However, I thought it advisable to buy several days’ provisions, and to do this it was necessary to draw the Balegga from the hills; all my overtures had failed so far, and I saw that the only way to start was to lay ground-bait for them by killing elephant or buffalo. With this object in view I sallied forth with a guide who was to take me to the elephant country. He wandered about for two or three hours in country that an elephant would not look at through a telescope, and whenever I said that I wanted elephant, he nodded his head and said, “Oh yes, elephant.” Then suddenly, as if a bright idea had struck him, he said, “Oh yes, elephant!” and promptly walked back through camp to a narrow spit jutting out into the lake and about a quarter of a mile distant. As I could see water on both sides and short grass in front, I thought he meant hippo, or was mad, inclining to the latter belief; but no, he was quite confident, and stalked along muttering to himself, “Yes, elephant! Yes, elephant!” (as much as to say, “Who would have thought it?”); and sure enough there were nine elephant in the reeds in the lake at the end of the spit. The place was a mass of vegetation and honeycombed with elephant-holes. I dropped one with a single shot.
As I had expected, after a day of very hot sun, the odour was too tempting, and the Balegga swarmed down from the hills and brought me what food I wanted. I went for a stroll in the evening, and came on a small herd of buffalo; they were very small compared with the South African species, and amongst them were three light brown ones, a bull, cow, and three-parts-grown calf. They were very beautiful animals, with a black ridge of hair running along the neck and the top of the shoulders. I shot the bull, and as my pagasi had as much as they could carry, I told the natives to cure the hide and send it with the head into Toro, so I hope to be able to have it described. When I first saw them I thought they were eland, and it was with the greatest surprise that I found they had a buffalo’s head attached. The small one was as light in colour as a reedbuck, and the other two a similar colour round the rump and the belly.16 I could gather no information from the natives as to whether they had seen others; all they knew was that the buffalo was an evil beast, had once been very numerous, but was now finished.
Notes
13 Nsunu: Cobus Thomasi.
14 Kiboko: whip made of hippo hide.
15 I have since realized that he was referring to the sleeping sickness which entered this district at that time.
16 I have since found, on reference to the British Museum, that they were the Congo buffalo. This proves that their distribution is further East than was imagined. The fact that they were running in the same herd as the black Eastern variety is of considerable scientific interest.