The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

At this point Baraka, the head of my Wanguana (emancipated slaves) became discontented; ambition was fast making a fiend of him, and I promoted Frij in his place. Shortly afterwards my Hottentots suffered much from sickness, and Captain Grant was seized with fever. In addition to these difficulties we found that avarice, that fatal enemy to the negro chiefs, made them overreach themselves by exhorbitant demands for taxes, for experience will not teach the negro who thinks only for the moment. The curse of Noah sticks to these his grandchildren by Ham, they require a government like ours in India, and without it the slave trade will wipe them off the face of the earth. We travelled slowly with our sick Hottentot lashed to a donkey; the man died when we halted, and we buried him with Christian honours. As his comrades said, he died because he had determined to die—an instance of that obstinate fatalism in their mulish temperament which no kind words or threats can cure.

After crossing the hilly Usagara range, leaving the great famine lands behind, we camped, on November 24, in the Ugogo country, which has a wild aspect well in keeping with the natives who occupy it, and who carry arms intended for use rather than show. They live in flat-topped square villages, are fond of ornaments, impulsive by nature, and avaricious. They pester travellers, jeering, quizzing, and pointing at them on the road and in camp intrusively forcing their way into the tents.

In January, after many very trying experiences, we arrived at Unyamuézi—the Country of the Moon—with which the Hindus, before the Christian era, had commercial dealings in ivory and slaves. The natives are wanting in pluck and gallantry, the whole tribe are desperate smokers and greatly given to drink. Here some Arabs came to pay their respects, they told me what I had said about the N'yanza being the source of the Nile would turn out all right, as all the people in the north knew that when the N'yanza rose, the stream rushed with such violence it tore up islands and floated them away. By the end of March we had crossed the forests, forded the Quandé nullah and entered the rich flat district of Mininga, where the gingerbread palm grows abundantly.

During my stay with Musa, the king at Kazé, who had shown himself friendly on a previous expedition, I underwent some trying experiences in trying to mediate between two rival rulers, Snay and Manua Séra, between whom there was continual wrangle and conflict. On one occasion Musa, who was suffering from a sharp illness, to prove to me that he was bent on leaving Kazé the same time as myself, began eating what he called his training pills—small dried buds of roses with alternate bits of sugar candy. Ten of these buds, he said, eaten dry, were sufficient, especially after having been boiled in rice water or milk.

Struggling on, faced by the thievish sultans and followed by my train of quarrelling servants, I at last reached Uzinza, which is ruled by a Wahuma chief of Abyssinian stock, and here I found the petty chiefs quite as extortionate in extorting hongo (tax) as others. To add to my troubles a new leader I had previously engaged, called "the Pig," gave me great annoyance, causing a mutiny amongst my men. Some were saying, "They were the flesh and I was the knife; I cut and did with them just what I liked, and they couldn't stand it any longer." However, they had to stand it, and I brought them to reason.

II.—Travel Difficulties and a King's Hospitality

A bad cough began to trouble me so much that whilst mounting a hill I blew and grunted like a broken-winded horse, and during an enforced halt at Lumérési's village I was in constant pain, so much that lying down became impossible. This chief tried to plunder and detain me, and Baraka, my principal man, began to grow discontented, because in my intention to push on to Karagué I was acting against impossibilities. "Impossibilities!" I said. "What is impossible? Could I not go on as a servant with the first caravan, or buy up a whole caravan if I liked? What is impossible? For God's sake don't try any more to frighten my men, for you have nearly killed me already in doing so." My troubles did not end here. A letter came in from Grant, whom I had left behind through sickness, that his caravan had been attacked and wrecked and he was, as Baraka had heard, in sore straits. However, to my inexpressible joy, a short time afterwards Grant appeared and we had a good laugh over our misfortunes.