21st And 22d. - At The Place Where I Left Off, I Now Sprang A
Large Herd Of Fifty Or More Buffaloes, And Followed Them For A
Mile, When The Wounded One, Quite Exhausted From The Fatigue,
Pulled Up For A Charge, And Allowed Me To Knock Him Over.
This
was glorious fun for the villagers, who cut him up on the spot
and brought him home.
Of course, one half the flesh was given to
them, in return for which they brought us some small delicacies
to show their gratitude; for, as they truly remarked, until we
came to their village they never knew what it was to get a
present, or any other gift by a good thrashing.
23d. - To-day I tried the ground again, and, whilst walking up the
hill, two black rhinoceros came trotting towards us in a very
excited manner. I did not wish to fire at them, as what few
bullets remained in my store I wished to reserve in better sport,
and therefore for the time being, let them alone. Presently,
however, they separated; one passed in front of us, stopped to
drink in a pool, and then lay down in it. Not heeding him, I
walked up the hill, whilst the other rhinoceros, still trotting,
suddenly turned round and came to drink within fifty yards of us,
obstructing my path; this was too much of a joke; so, to save
time, I gave him a bullet, and knocked him over. To my surprise,
the natives who were with me would not touch his flesh, though
pressed by me to "n'yam n'yam," or to eat. I found that they
considered him an unclean beast; so, regretting I had wasted my
bullet, I went farther on and startled some buffaloes.
Though I got very near them, however, a small antelope springing
up in front of me scared them away, and I could not get a front
shot at any of them. Thus the whole day was thrown away, for I
had to return empty-handed.
24th to 30th. - Grant and I after this kept our pot boiling by
shooting three more antelopes; but nothing of consequence
transpired until the 30th, when Bukhet, Mahamed's factotum,
arrived with the greater part of the Turk's property. He then
confirmed a report we had heard before, that, some days
previously, Mahamed had ordered Bukhet to go ahead and join us,
which he attempted to do; but, on arrival at Panyoro, his party
had a row with the villagers, and lost their property. Bukhet
then returned to Mahamed and reported his defeat and losses; upon
hearing which, Mahamed at once said to him, "What do you mean by
returning to me empty-handed? go back at once and recover your
things else how can I make my report at Gondokoro?" With these
peremptory orders Bukhet went back to Panyoro, and commenced to
attack it. The contest did not last long; for, after three of
Bukhet's men had been wounded, he set fire to the villages,
killed fifteen of the natives, and, besides recovering his own
lost property, took one hundred cows.
31st. - To-day Mahamed came in, and commenced to arrange for the
march onwards. This, however, was no easy matter, for the Turks
alone required six hundred porters - half that number to carry
their ivory, and the other half to carry their beds and bedding;
whilst from fifty to sixty men was the most a village had to
spare, and all the village chiefs were at enmity with one
another. The plan adopted by Mahamed was, to summon the heads of
all the villages to come to him, failing which, he would seize
all their belongings. Then, having once got them together, he
ordered them all to furnish him with so many porters a-head,
saying he demanded it of them, for the "great government's
property" could not be left on the ground. Their separate
interests must now be sacrificed, and their feuds suspended: and
if he heard, on his return again, that one village had taken
advantage of the other's weakness caused by their employment in
his service, he would then not spare his bullets, - so they might
look out for themselves.
Some of the Turks, having found ninty-nine eggs in a crocodile's
nest, had a grand feast. They gave us two of the eggs, which we
ate, but did not like, for they had a highly musky flavour.
1st. - On the 1st of February we went ahead again, with Bukhet and
the first half of Mahamed's establishment, as a sufficient number
of men could not be collected at once to move all together. In a
little while we struck on the Nile, where it was running like a
fine Highland stream between the gneiss and mica-schist hills of
Kuku, and followed it down to near where the Asua river joined
it. For a while we sat here watching the water, which was
greatly discoloured, and floating down rushes. The river was not
as full as it was when we crossed it at the Karuma Falls, yet,
according to Dr Khoblecher's[FN#26] account, it ought to have
been flooding just at this time: if so, we had beaten the stream.
Here we left it again as it arched round by the west, and forded
the Asua river, a stiff rocky stream, deep enough to reach the
breast when waded, but not very broad. It did not appear to me as
if connected with Victoria N'yanza, as the waters were falling,
and not much discoloured; whereas judging from the Nile's
condition, it ought to have been rising. No vessel ever could
have gone up it, and it bore no comparison with the Nile itself.
The exaggerated account of its volume, however, given by the
expeditionists who were sent up the Nile by Mehemet Ali, did not
surprise us, since they had mistaken its position; for we were
now 3§ 42' north, and therefore had passed their "farthest point"
by twenty miles.
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