At The
Advice Of Musa, I Sent Maula's Son Off At Night To Tell The Old
Chief How Sorry I Was To Find The Arabs So Hot-Headed I Could Not
Even Effect An Arrangement With Them.
It was a great pity; for
Manua Sera was so much liked by the Wanyamuezi, they would, had
they been able, have done anything to restore him.
Next day the non-belligerent Arabs left in charge of the station,
headed by my old friends Abdulla and Mohinna, came to pay their
respects again, recognising in me, as they said, a
"personification of their sultan," and therefore considering what
they were doing only due to my rank. They regretted with myself
that Snay was so hot-headed; for they themselves thought a treaty
of peace would have been the best thing for them, for they were
more than half-ruined already, and saw no hope for the future.
Then, turning to geography, I told Abdulla all I had written and
lectured in England concerning his stories about navigators on
the N'yanza, which I explained must be the Nile, and wished to
know if I should alter it in any way: but he said, "Do not; you
may depend it will all turn out right;" to which Musa added, all
the people in the north told him that when the N'yanza rose, the
stream rushed with such violence it tore up islands and floated
them away.
I was puzzled at this announcement, not then knowing that both
the lake and the Nile, as well as all ponds, were called N'yanza:
but we shall see afterwards that he was right; and it was in
consequence of this confusion in the treatment of distinctly
different geographical features under one common name by these
people, that in my former journey I could not determine where the
lake had ended and the Nile began. Abdulla again - he had done so
on the former journey - spoke to me of a wonderful mountain to the
northward of Karague, so high and steep no one could ascend it.
It was, he said, seldom visible, being up in the clouds, where
white matter, snow or hail, often fell. Musa said this hill was
in Ruanda, a much larger country than Urundi; and further, both
men said, as they had said before, that the lands of Usoga and
Unyoro were islands, being surrounded by water; and a salt lake,
which was called N'yanza, though not the great Victoria N'yanza
lay on the other said of the Unyoro, from which direction
Rumanika, king of Karague, sometimes got beads forwarded to him
by Kamrasi, king of Unyoro, of a different sort from any brought
from Zanzibar. Moreover, these beads were said to have been
plundered from white men by the Wakidi, - a stark-naked people who
live up in trees - have small stools fixed on behind, always ready
for sitting - wear their hair hanging down as far as the rump, all
covered with cowrie-shells - suspend beads from wire attached to
their ears and their lower lips - and wear strong iron collars and
bracelets.
This people, I was told, are so fierce in war that no other tribe
can stand against them, though they only fight with short spears.
When this discourse was ended, ever perplexed about the
Tanganyika being a still lake, I enquired of Mohinna and other
old friends what they thought about the Marungu river: did it run
into or out of the lake? and they all still adhered to its
running into the lake - which, after all, in my mind, is the most
conclusive argument that it does run out of the lake, making it
one of a chain of lakes leading to the N'yanza, and through it by
the Zambezi into the sea; for all the Arabs on the former journey
said the Rusizi river ran out of the Tanganyika, as also the
Kitangule ran out of the N'yanza, and the Nile ran into it, even
though Snay said he thought the Jub river drained the N'yanza.
All these statements were, when literally translated into
English, the reverse of what the speakers, using a peculiar Arab
idiom, meant to say; for all the statements made as to the flow
of rivers by the negroes - who apparently give the same meaning to
"out" and "in" as we do - contradicted the Arabs in their
descriptions of the direction of the flow of these rivers.
Mohinna now gave us a very graphic description of his fight with
Short-legs, the late chief of Khoko. About a year ago, as he was
making his way down to the coast with his ivory merchandise, on
arrival at Khoko, and before his camp was fortified with a ring-
fence of thorns, some of his men went to drink at a well, where
they no sooner arrived than the natives began to bean them with
sticks, claiming the well as their property. This commenced a
row, which brought out a large body of men, who demanded a
bullock at the point of their spears. Mohinna hearing this, also
came to the well, and said he would not listen to their demand,
but would drink as he wished, for the water was the gift of God.
Words then changed to blows. All Mohinna's pagazis bolted, and
his merchandise fell into the hands of the Wagogo. Had his camp
been fortified, he think he would have been too much for his
enemies; but, as it was, he retaliated by shooting Short-legs in
the head, and at once bolted back to Kaze with a few slaves as
followers, and his three wives.
The change that had taken place in Unyanyembe since I last left
it was quite surprising. Instead of the Arabs appearing
merchants, as they did formerly, they looked more like great
farmers, with huge stalls of cattle attached to their houses;
whilst the native villages were all in ruins - so much so that, to
obtain corn for my men, I had to send out into the district
several days' journey off, and even then had to pay the most
severe famine prices for what I got.
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