Chapter VIII Tanganyika
At last, on April 2nd, we sailed from Kituta in the Good News.
Mr. Mohun and a large number of his Zanzibaris were with me. Consequently there was not much room. The Good News was originally the property of an English Mission on the Lake, and when the Mission moved to find healthier quarters, the steamer was sold at a ridiculously low figure to the African Lakes Corporation, although, I believe, the Administration of Northern Rhodesia offered a larger sum. A large hole had been knocked in her bottom and filled up with cement; and the machinery was tied together with string and strips of sardine-tins. Vast cockroaches were in possession, and night was made hideous by their peregrinations; some of them were almost as large as mice, and it was a great strain on one’s mosquito-curtain when they climbed up the sides in droves. Mr. Mohun endured them all night, but I, in a very few minutes, gave up the unequal fight and retired on deck.
Our noble captain, who was quite new to the lake, did not know where he was going, nor did he care. His idea of navigating a boat consisted in sleeping in his bunk until the natives told him we had arrived somewhere; even then, he never inquired what the place was. His only anxiety was lest he should oversleep himself and miss a meal.
In the evening we arrived at the Congo Free State post of M’liro, which is at the south-western corner of the lake, a few miles over the Anglo-Congolese boundary.
On board I discovered two of the boys who had gone up with Sharp, and who had been left at Kituta. At Kituta I had given instructions that they were to be sent back; so the following morning, having crossed the lake to a wooding station, on the eastern shore, I turned them off with their pay and cloth to buy food on the road; but one of them, on adventure bent, slipped on board again. During the night, finding the sleeping-places rather limited, he calmly threw a crate containing twenty-eight fowls, belonging to Mr. Mohun, overboard.
On April 4th we recrossed the lake and arrived at the French Mission Station of M’bala. This station is of several years’ standing, and the Fathers, who are seven in number, with several lay brothers, have built themselves a substantial and comfortable home. They have also built a magnificent cathedral, capable of holding many hundred devotees. I am afraid it would need a large expenditure of cloth and medals to fill it. There are also elaborate workshops, and the gardens, which are very extensive, are planted with numbers of flourishing fruit trees. The coffee-shrubs were particularly remarkable for their size and yield. On the walls were many gigantic sable heads. The horns of one that I measured were 46-½ in.; while many others were almost as long. All these antelope had been shot in the immediate vicinity by native hunters employed on the mission station. It was here that the record sable head which Mr. Boyd presented to me was obtained; and it is evident that these sable must be the largest in the world. They also had a few rhino horns, which had been shot in the neighbourhood.
They gave us a tremendous dinner, with a bewildering profusion of courses and some luscious kinds of fruit, amongst which the ceil-de-boeuf was particularly soothing; and delicious Algerian wine flowed freely round the festive board. There are two or three white sisters at the station; it was very sad to see how ill they looked.
After dinner, some natives brought in a large catch of fish, amongst which was a splendid kind of white-fleshed salmon. The Fathers informed me that this fish, at that time of the year, runs up the small streams, and jumps up waterfalls of considerable height.
The charming point about these white Fathers is that they never ply one with fantastic accounts of the work which they are doing. When we regretfully took our leave, they presented us with several large baskets of potatoes, tomatoes, pomegranates, and many other fruits and vegetables.
Along this shore there are enormous dug-out canoes, and we were carried to and from the steamer in one very fine specimen, probably 40 ft. in length.
On the run up to M’towa, we encountered a terrific sea, and were for several hours in imminent danger of turning turtle. The wind rushes down the narrow gulleys between the mountains that enclose the lake, and lashes the waters into a very frenzy. The arrival of these squalls is very sudden and impossible to predict; consequently, sailing on Lake Tanganyika is a most dangerous amusement. All the natives were most abominably ill, everything was wet, and the cabin and the captain formed an impossible combination.
Early in the morning the tempest subsided and we made M’towa, which is the chief Congo station on the lake. Here all the officials in the district had collected, having ignominiously fled from the rebels. One gentleman who had retired from a station further up the lake, had thrown all the station ammunition and ivory into the lake, solely on a report that the rebels were within a hundred miles. The rebels, hearing of the action, went to the place and quietly fished up both the ivory and the cartridges, thereby gaining a new lease of life. At M’towa the Belgians had built elaborate defences and had protected all the approaches with barbed wire; and in case the rebels should come they had cut down all the bananas, and were consequently short of food. There were one or two unfortunate Scandinavians in the service, who were being thrown out as pickets. One of these gentlemen came and asked us for some poison, in case he should be caught by the rebels with his totally inadequate force.
This chaotic condition has now lasted for five years, and there appears to be no man capable of grappling with the situation; it seems to me a great pity that they did not allow Commandant Henry, whom I afterwards met on the Nile, to follow up his preliminary successes against the rebels. Had he been given a free hand, in all probability the revolution would have been crushed long since.
Mr. Mohun’s expedition was camped on a hill about a mile from the Government station, and they complained of most indifferent treatment at the hands of the local officials. Although they had been ready to start operations for more than six weeks, the officials had failed to provide them with any labour. It was obvious that there was much jealousy and friction between the expedition and the authorities. Fortunately, the King of the Belgians had sent Mr. Mohun a supplementary commission, which would give him the free hand necessary to the successful carrying out of his difficult task.
I was very pleased to again meet Sharp, as we had been separated for nearly three months. He was looking very ill, having only recently been laid up with fever in Ujiji. Dr. Castellote, the medical officer of Mr. Mohun’s expedition, and who I am grieved to learn has recently died of fever, hearing of Sharp’s sorry plight, crossed the lake and brought him over to the comparatively healthy uplands near M’towa.
Sharp had visited the station of the white Fathers on the east coast of the lake, where we had only put in to obtain wood. He told me that there was an elaborate church of brick with stained-glass windows, where he had attended service. He had been much amused at watching dirty little nigger boys from the village passing in at one door, draped in the usual filthy strip of greasy cloth, and presently emerging from another door clad in scarlet cassocks and lace tippets, waving censers, etc.
Bidding a regretful farewell to our good telegraph friends, and wishing them every luck in their venture, Sharp and I, with a mean temperature of 104°, repaired across the lake to Ujiji.
It was with feelings of curiosity that I looked out for the first time on the one historic spot in Central Africa. A few mango trees and a few white buildings scattered about on the top of the long, gently sloping shore of the lake: such was Ujiji, the meeting-place of Stanley and Livingstone, and the heart of the great slave-raiding ulcer of the past.
After considerable difficulty, we landed all our belongings by means of some unstable dug-out canoes; and having piled them on the beach, left them in charge of our boys, while we rode on donkeys, sent to us by the Greek merchant, through a gruesome array of grinning skulls that still lie scattered about the beach, the last relic of the days of Arab predominance.
We were given beds in an old mission-house which is now tenanted by two Greek traders, who, by their enterprise, richly deserve the success which they are enjoying. The old mission-house is substantially built, and is surrounded by enormous mango and guava trees.
Having fixed up our loads, we crawled up to the Government house to pay our respects to Hauptmann Bethe, the German chief of the station; he is a most delightful specimen of a German officer. He treated us with every kindness and showered the most lavish hospitality upon us. Without his cordial co-operation, we should never have been able to take the route via Kivu, on which we had set our hearts. He strongly advised us to go by the hackneyed route by Tabora and the Victoria Nyanza, the road by which Dècle went from Ujiji to Uganda, and which is the high-road for all the caravans that ply between the Victoria Nyanza and Tabora, and Ujiji and Tabora. He informed us that it would be most risky to take the route which we intended without at least a hundred armed men.
He also told us that the Congolese rebels had sent a deputation to him to tell him that they intended once more to attack the Belgians. They asked whether, in the event of failure, they would be allowed to hand their guns in to him, and to come over and settle in German territory. This is an indication of the natives’ feeling towards the Congo Free State Administration.
Unfortunately both Sharp and I were too ill to see much of Ujiji and its interesting people. Many charming old Arabs, clad in gorgeous array, came and paid their respects, and sent us many presents, such as fruit, eggs, and vegetables. It was sad to see these venerable old gentlemen in their then condition, and to think of how, in the good old days gone by, they had held undisputed sway over many, many thousand square miles.
The day after our arrival we lunched with Hauptmann Bethe and his staff. We were plied with the most bewildering succession of drinks; starting with port, then through successive courses of champagne, brandy, beer, Vermouth, and claret, we slowly wended our way, with the temperature 110° in the shade. This diet, the Germans informed us, was absolutely essential to avoid fever. They protested that no teetotaller who had arrived in Ujiji had ever left Ujiji for any other place in this world; and certainly the Germans who were there were living examples of the efficacy of their treatment.
The courtesy, assistance, and confidence which we received in the German sphere shone bright in contrast with much of the treatment which we received under our own flag; and our warmest thanks are due to those whole-hearted Germans who are upholding the honour of the Fatherland on the far distant shore of Tanganyika.
My fever, which had now lasted for more than three weeks, took a decided turn for the worse, and I began to lose the proper control of my hands. Sharp, on the other hand, was slightly better.
We witnessed several dances. It was quite easy to start one, by providing the funds necessary to obtain a considerable quantity of native beer, when the natives would arrive in hundreds in the market-place and perform the wildest and most grotesque dances imaginable. Hauptmann Bethe arranged a most elaborate one for our edification.
At last, on April 12th, we had organized our caravan of one hundred and thirty men, and made a start up the lake. We had been compelled to leave some loads behind, and it was not till four in the afternoon that the last man left the courtyard. We had had no difficulty in recruiting as many men as we wanted, as the Germans afforded us every facility.
We only marched out sufficiently far to get our caravan quite clear of Ujiji; and the Germans kindly sent out a few soldiers to avoid any trouble with the men, the last farewell of the natives being invariably accompanied by much pombe. However, they all turned up, and we got them into some sort of order. I had brought from Nyassa sixteen boys—ten of whom had been drilled for a few days by one of Mr. Mohun’s Zanzibari sergeants—two of them were kitchen boys, and the other four gun-bearers and tent-pitchers: this made our caravan one hundred and fifty strong.
Sharp ignored the mosquitoes the first night, and in consequence suffered severely from blood poisoning of the hands. The path led through a fertile country, but as the high grass overhung the narrow track, it was very wet travelling and not conducive to a speedy recovery from fever. The way became gradually worse and we had many sharp rises to face, and many small streams to cross, while satisfactory camping-grounds were hard to find. On the fourth day, after a struggle up an almost perpendicular hill, we camped at an elevation of nearly 6,000 ft., and obtained some lovely views over the country to the east—high, tree-covered hills, with a few native huts and their accompanying gardens in clearings where the ground was not too steep, and, down below, deep valleys covered with dense bush—while to the west we could just catch a glimpse of the lake backed by the rugged and forbidding-looking hills on the Congo side.
A cold white mist came up in the afternoon, and put all thoughts of scenery away, driving us to refuge in tightly-closed tents.
Next day we mounted still higher—about 7,000 ft.—and the scenery amply repaid the exertion. From thence we made a rapid descent by a path so steep and rough that we had to glissade at times with the aid of a strong spear. At the villages here we found the people wearing wooden tweezers on their noses; on inquiry we discovered that they injected snuff mixed with water, and then put the apparatus on to keep the concoction from wasting away at once. A day or two later we reached the lake-shore, and the path, such as it was, came to an end. We now had to make our way along the shingle. The bush overhung the water every few yards, and as it was mostly mimosa, or other equally prickly matter, we had to wade round to avoid it—often up to our middles in the water—while an occasional mountain torrent necessitated our being carried on our boys’ shoulders. As the lake was swarming with crocodiles, this was rather exciting. Our Nyassa boys, who had earned the name of the Guinea-fowls, owing to their dress of dark-blue bird’s-eye cotton and greeny-blue fezzes, had been a great comfort, pitching our tents and doing all the little odd jobs inseparable from camp life, and we were congratulating ourselves on having some natives of a different race to our Manyema porters.
The heat and continual wetting now began to tell on the fever which we had not been able to shake off, so we hired two big canoes, and putting our deck-chairs in the largest, over which we rigged up an awning, we proceeded by water while our boys plodded through the shingle. On reaching the halting-place after our first day’s canoeing, we were horrified to find that our ten Askaris and the cook had bolted, leaving their rifles and bayonets on the path. Though I was bad with fever I got a fresh crew for the big canoe, and made all haste back to our last night’s camp. Nothing was to be seen or heard of the fugitives, and though I offered the Sultani (chief) of the village heavy rewards for each captive, we never heard any more of them, but trust that they did not escape their deserts when they reached Ujiji, if the natives on the way let them go free, which is more than doubtful. I had left Sharp to try his ’prentice hand at cooking, and returning wet through, very tired and full of fever, found his attempt at soup had ended in a few bones and a blob of fat at the bottom of the pan! The heat was intense, never a breath of air, and no shade, while the rays of the burning sun were refracted from the face of the water. At every camp one or more of the neighbouring chiefs came to pay his respects, bringing with him a present, according to his standing, of pombe, native beer, bananas, three or four fowls, and in the case of a big “swell,” two or three goats or sheep. Each chief was followed by as large a retinue as he could gather, and most of them were dressed in semi-Arab fashion—a long, white shirt or “kanzu,” a coloured cloth, and a turban or white head-dress. The natives had many knives of local manufacture, the sheaths of which were ornamented with well-carved patterns, while their spears were very thin and light, and often adorned with brass and copper wire. Of course we had to make return presents of cloth and beads to an equal value. Eggs were rather hard to obtain, and it was still more difficult to make the natives believe that we did not want them for electioneering purposes. My fever was now so bad that I had to depute my baking to Sharp, who was becoming quite a passable cook under my tuition, and retire to bed as soon as I could get my tent pitched. To add to our enjoyment Sharp got a sunstroke and a dose of fever, and we were consequently reduced to the most pitiable plight. My temperature went up to 106.9, and left me too weak to move, while Sharp, ill as he was, made superhuman efforts to look after me. At last, after several days of intolerable misery, we eventually arrived at Usambara, where the German official, Lieutenant von Gravert, took us in hand. Under his care we recovered slightly.
Usambara, with characteristic German thoroughness, has been well laid out. Substantial buildings have been put up, good gardens made, and an immense avenue of pawpaws and bananas planted from the Government House to the lake shore. A small sailing-boat adds materially to the comfort and efficiency of the commanding officer.
Every morning a large market is held, and the natives bring in enormous supplies of fish, bananas, beans, grains of different sort (even rice), and fowls. The German black troops keep splendid order, and the station has the most flourishing air. I am a great believer in the Germans’ African methods. Of course they are severely handicapped by having such a poor country to work upon. But their methods are thorough and eminently practical, and not characterized by the stinginess which paralyzes most of our African efforts. The men selected for the work are given a practically free hand, and are not cramped by the ignorant babblings of sentimentalism.