XIII. THE REAL START FOR TANGANYIKA IN THE INTERIOR…

XIII. THE REAL START FOR TANGANYIKA IN THE INTERIOR

"When we left Zanzibar the Sultan of Zanzibar and the Sawahil and his sons came on board with three letters of introduction. One was to Musa Mzuri, the Indian doyen of the merchants settled at Unyamwezi; secondly, a letter to the Arabs there resident, and thirdly, one to all his subjects who were travelling in the interior. I carried, in an étui round my neck, the diploma of the Shaykh El Islam of Mecca, and a passport from Cardinal Wiseman to all the Catholic missionaries. His Highness the Sultan Said of Muscat had died on his way from Arabia to Zanzibar. The party, besides Jack and I, were two Goanese boys, two negro gun-carriers, the Seedy Mubárak Mombai (Bombay), his brother, and eight Beloch mercenaries appointed by the Sultan. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, her Majesty's Consul at Zanzibar, a friend of mine, gave me all particulars and recommendations, and enlisted in my favour the Sayyid Sulayman bin Hamid bin Said (the noble Omani, 'who never forgets the name of his Grandsire'), landed us upon the coast, and superintended our departure, attended by Mr. Frost, the apothecary attached to the Consulate.

"My desire was to ascertain the limits of the Sea of Ujiji, Tanganyika, or Unyamwezi Lake, to learn the ethnography of its tribes, and determine the export of the produce of the interior. The Foreign Office granted £1000, and the Court of Directors allowed me two years' leave of absence to command the Expedition. Consul Hamerton warned us against Kilwa, where any one attempting to open the interior ran the danger of being murdered.

[Sidenote: A Long March.]

"We landed at Wale Point, about eighty-four miles distant from the little town of Bagamóyo. We wanted to engage one hundred and seventy porters, but we could only get thirty-six, and thirty animals were found, which were all dead in six months, so we had to leave part of our things behind, greater part of the ammunition, and our iron boat. The Hindoos were faithful to their promise to forward everything, but, great mistake, received one hundred and fifty dollars for the hire of twenty-two men to start in ten days; we went on, obliged to trust, but we did not get them for eleven months. We paid various visits to the hippopotamus haunts, and had our boat uplifted from the water upon the points of two tusks, which made corresponding holes in the bottom. My escort were under the impression that nothing less than one hundred guards, one hundred and fifty guns, and several cannon would enable them to fight a way through the perils of the interior. We were warned that for three days we must pass through savages, who sat on the trees, and discharged poisoned arrows into the air with extraordinary dexterity (meaning the Amazons); that they must avoid trees (which was not easy in a land all forest); that the Wazaramo had sent six several letters forbidding the white man to enter their country, and that they buried their provisions in the jungle, that travellers might starve; that one rhinoceros kills two hundred men; that armies of elephants attack camps by night; that the craven hyæna is more dangerous than a Bengal tiger.

"We owed all our intrigues to a rascal named Ramji, who had his own commerce in view, and often to our Ras Kaptan, or Caravan leader, Said bin Salim, who did not wear well. The varnish soon melted, and showed him as great a liar and thief as his men. At times it is good to appear a dupe, to allow people to think and to say that you are a muff, chronicling a vow that they shall change places with you before the end of the game. I confided to Mr. Frost two manuscripts addressed through the Foreign Office, one to Mr. John Blackwood of Edinburgh, the other to Mr. Norton Shaw, of the Royal Geographical Society. Blackwood's arrived safe, Norton Shaw's in six years.[1] I took a melancholy leave of my warm-hearted friend, Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, who had death written on his features. He looked forward to death with a feeling of delight, the result of his Roman Catholic religious convictions, and, in spite of my entreaties, he would remain near the coast till he heard of our safe transit through the lands of the dangerous Wazaramo. This courage was indeed sublime, an example not often met with. After this affecting farewell we landed at Kaolé. I insisted that Ladha, the Collector of customs, and Ramji, his clerk, should insert in the estimate the sum required to purchase a boat upon the Sea of Ujiji. Being a Hindoo, he thought I was ignorant of Cutchee, so the following conversation took place:--

"Ladha. Will he ever reach it?

"Ramji. Of course not. What is he that he should pass through Ugogo? (a province about halfway).

"So I remarked at once that I did intend to cross Ugogo, and also the Sea of Ujiji, that I did know Cutchee, and that I was even able to distinguish between the debits and the credits of his voluminous sheets. The worst loss that I had was that my old and valued friend, Dr. Steinhaüser, civil surgeon at Aden, sound scholar, good naturalist, skilful practitioner, with rare personal qualities, which would have been inestimable, was ill and could not come. His Highness the late Sayyid Said, that great ally of the English nation, had made most public-spirited offers to his friend, Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, for many years. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton's extraordinary personal qualities enabled him to perform anything but impossibilities amongst the Arabs, and he was dying. Finally, as Indian experience taught me, I was entering the 'unknown land' at the fatal season when the shrinking of the waters after the wet monsoon would render it a hotbed of malaria, but I was tied by scanty means and a limited 'leave;' it was neck or nothing, and I determined to risk it. All the serving men in Zanzibar Island and the East African coast are serviles. There is no word to express a higher domestic. There was no remedy, so that I paid them wages, and treated them as if they were free men. I had no power to prevent my followers purchasing slaves, because they would say, 'We are allowed by our law to do so;' all I could do was to see that their slaves were well fed and not injured; but I informed all the wild people that Englishmen were pledged against slavery, and I always refused all slaves offered as presents.

"In eighteen days we accomplished (despite sickness and every manner of difficulty) a march of one hundred and eighteen indirect statute miles, and entered K'hutu, the safe rendezvous of foreign merchants, on the 14th of July. On the 15th we entered Kiruru, where I found a cottage, and enjoyed for the first time an atmosphere of sweet, warm smoke." (In all Richard's wilder travels in damp places, he laid such a stress upon "sweet, warm smoke.") "Jack (that is, Speke), in spite of my endeavours, would remain in the reeking miry tent, and laid the foundations of the fever which threatened his life in the mountains of Usagára.

[Sidenote: Marsh Fever.]

"As soon as we reached Dut'húmi, where we were detained nearly a week, the malaria brought on attacks of marsh fever. In my case it lasted twenty days." (In all Richard's fever fits, and for hours afterwards, both now and always, he had a queer conviction of divided identity, never ceasing to be two persons, who generally thwarted and opposed each other, and also that he was able to fly.) "Jack suffered still more; he had a fainting-fit which strongly resembled a sunstroke, and it seemed to affect him more or less throughout our journey. Our sufferings were increased by the losses of our animals, and we had to walk, often for many miles, through sun, rain, mud, and miasmatic putridities. The asses shy, stumble, rear, run away, fight, plunge and pirouette when mounted; they hog and buck till they burst their girths; they love to get into holes and hollows; they rush about like pigs when the wind blows; they bolt under tree-shade when the sun shines; so they have to be led, and if the least thing happens the slave drops the halter and runs away.

"The Zanzibar riding-asses were too delicate and died; we were then reduced to the half-reclaimed beast of Wamyamwezi. As to the baggage animals, they were constantly thrown, and the Beloch only grumbled, sat down, and stared. They stole the ropes and cords; they never were pounded for the night, nobody counted them, and we were too ill to look after it. We were wretched; each morning dawned with a fresh load of care and trouble, and every evening we knew that another miserable morrow was to dawn, but I never relinquished the determination to risk everything, myself included, rather than to return unsuccessful. At Dut'húmi, two Chiefs fought, and the strongest kidnapped five of his weaker neighbour subjects. I could not stand by and see iniquity done without an attempt, so I headed a little Expedition against the strong, and I had the satisfaction of restoring the rescued, the five unhappy stolen wretches, to their hearths and homes, and two decrepit old women, that had been rescued from slavery, thanked me with tears of joy" (Richard lightly calls this "an easy good deed" done), "after which I was able, though with swimming head and trembling hands, to prepare a report for the Geographical Society.

"On the 24th of July we were able to move on under the oppressive rain-sun. From Central K'hutu to the base of the Usagára Mountains there were nothing but filthy heaps of the rudest hovels, built in holes of the jungle. Their miserable inhabitants, whose frames are lean with constant intoxication, and whose limbs are distorted by ulcerous sores, attest the hostility of Nature to Mankind.

"Arrived at Zungomero, we waited a fortnight for the twenty-two promised porters. It was a hotbed of pestilence, where we nearly found wet graves. Our only lodging was the closed eaves of a hut; the roof was a sieve, the walls all chinks, and the floor a sheet of mud. The Beloch had no energy to build a shed, and became almost mutinous because we did not build it for them.

"Our life here was the acme of discomfort; we had pelting showers, followed by fiery sunshine, which extracted steam from the grass, bush, and trees. My Goanese boys got a mild form of 'yellow Jack,' and I was obliged to take them into my hut, already populated with pigeons, rats, flies, mosquitoes, bugs, and fleas. We were weary of waiting for the porters and baggage, so we prepared our papers, and sent them down by a confidential slave to the coast. Jack and I left Zungomero on the 7th of August. We were so weak, we could hardly sit our asses, but we were determined to get to the nearest ascent of the Usagára Mountains, a march of five hours, and succeeded in rising three hundred feet from the plain, ascending its first gradient.

[Sidenote: They ascend from Zungomero to a Better Climate.]

"This is the frontier of the second region, or Ghauts. There was no vestige of buildings, nor sight nor sound of Man. There was a wondrous change of climate at this place, called Mzizi Maogo; strength and health returned as if by magic, even the Goanese shook off their mild 'yellow Jack.' Truly delicious was the escape from the nebulous skies, the fog-driving gusts, the pelting rain, the clammy mists veiling a gross growth of fœtor, the damp raw cold rising as it were from the earth, and the alternations of fiery and oppressive heat; in fact, from the cruel climate of the river valley, to the pure sweet mountain air, alternately soft and balmy, cool and reviving, and to the aspect of clear blue skies, which lent their tints to highland ridges well wooded with various greens.

"Dull mangrove, dismal jungle, and monotonous grass were supplanted by tall solitary trees, amongst which the lofty tamarind rose conspicuously graceful, and a card-table-like swamp, cut by a network of streams, nullahs, and stagnant pools, gave way to dry healthy slopes, with short steep pitches and gently shelving hills. The beams of the large sun of the Equator--and nowhere have I seen the Rulers of Night and Day so large--danced gaily upon blocks and pebbles of red, yellow, and dazzling snowy quartz, and the bright sea-breeze waved the summits of the trees, from which depended graceful llianas and wood-apples large as melons, whilst creepers, like vine tendrils, rising from large bulbs of brown-grey wood, clung closely to their stalwart trunks. Monkeys played at hide-and-seek, chattering behind the bolls, as the iguana, with its painted scale-armour, issued forth to bask upon the sunny bank; white-breasted ravens cawed when disturbed from their perching places, doves cooed on the well-clothed boughs, and hawks soared high in the transparent sky. The field-cricket chirped like the Italian cicala in the shady bush, and everywhere, from air, from earth, from the hill-slopes above, and from the marshes below, the hum, the buzz, and the loud continuous voice of insect life, through the length of the day, spoke out its natural joy. Our gypsy encampment lay

'By shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals.'

By night, the soothing murmurs of the stream at the hill's base rose mingled with the faint rustling of the breeze, which at times, broken by the scream of the night-heron, the bellow of the bull-frog in his swamp home, the cynhyæna's whimper, and the fox's whining bark, sounded through the silence most musical, most melancholy. Instead of the cold night rain, and the soughing of the blast, the view disclosed a peaceful scene, the moonbeams lying like sheets of snow upon the ruddy highlands, and the stars hanging like lamps of gold from the dome of infinite blue. I never wearied with contemplating the scene, for, contrasting with the splendours around me, still stretched in sight the 'Slough of Despond,' unhappy Zungomero, lead-coloured above, mud-coloured below, wind-swept, fog-veiled, and deluged by clouds that dared not approach these Delectable Mountains.

"All along our way we were saddened by the sight of clean-picked skeletons, and here and there the swollen corpses of porters who had perished in this place by starvation. A single large body which passed us but yesterday had lost fifty of their number by small-pox, and the sight of their deceased comrades made a terrible impression. Men staggering on, blinded by disease, mothers carrying on their backs infants as loathsome as themselves. The poor wretches would not leave the path, as every step in their state of failing strength was precious. He who once fell would never rise again. No village would admit a corpse into its precincts, no friend or relation would return for them, and they would lie till their agony was ended by the raven, the vulture, and the fox. Near every kraal were detached huts set apart for those seized with the fell disease. Several of our party caught the infection, and must have thrown themselves into some jungle, for when they were missed we came back to look and there was no sign of them. The further we went on, the more numerous were the corpses. Our Moslems passed them with averted faces, and with the low 'La haul!' of disgust, and a decrepit old porter gazed and wept for himself. At the foot of the 'Goma Pass' we found the outlying huts for the small-pox, and an old kraal, where we made comfortable for the night. All around peeped the little beehive villages of the Wakaguru and the Wakwivi.

"When we arrived at Rufuta I found that nearly all our instruments had been spoilt or broken, the barometer had come to grief, no aneroid had been sent from Bombay, and we had chiefly to get on with two bath thermometers. Zonhwe was the turning-point of the expedition's difficulties. The 17th of August, as we went on, the path fell easily westwards down a long grassy jungly incline, cut by several water-courses. At noon I lay down fainting in the sandy bed of the Muhama nullah, meaning the 'Palmetto' or 'Fan-palm,' and keeping Wazira and Mabruki with me, I begged Jack to go on, and send me back a hammock from the halting-place. The men, who were partly mutinous and deserting, suddenly came out well; they reappeared, led me to a place where stagnant water was found, and showed abundant penitence. At three o'clock, as Jack did not send the hammock, I remounted and passed through another 'Slough of Despond' like Zungomero, and found two little villages, and on a hillside my caravan halted, which had been attacked by a swarm of wild bees. At Muhama we halted three days, and forded the Makata, and pursuing our march next day, I witnessed a curious contrast in this strange African nature, which is ever in extremes, and where extremes ever meet, where grace and beauty are seldom seen without a sudden change to a hideous grotesqueness.

[Sidenote: From Lovely Scenery to Fœtid Marshes.]

"A splendid view charmed me in the morning. Above lay a sky of purest azure, flaked with fleecy opal-tinted vapours floating high in the empyrean, and catching the first roseate smiles of the unrisen sun. Long lines, one bluer than the other, broken by castellated crags and towers of the most picturesque form, girdled the far horizon; the nearer heights were of a purplish-brown, and snowy mists hung like glaciers about their folds. The plain was a park in autumn, burnt tawny by the sun or patched with a darker hue where the people were firing the grass--a party was at work merrily, as if preparing for an English harvest home--to start the animals, to promote the growth of a young crop, and, such is the popular belief, to attract rain. Calabashes, palmyras, tamarinds, and clumps of evergreen trees, were scattered over the scene, each stretching its lordly form over subject circlets of deep dew-fed verdure. Here the dove cooed loudly, and the guinea-fowl rang its wild cry, whilst the peewit chattered in the open stubble, and a little martin, the prettiest of its kind, contrasted by its nimble dartings along the ground, with the vulture wheeling slowly through the upper air. The most graceful of animals, the zebra and the antelope, browsed in the distance; now they stood to gaze upon the long line of porters, then, after leisurely pacing, with retrospective glances, in an opposite direction, they halted motionless for a moment, faced about once more to satiate curiosity, and lastly, terrified by their own fancy, they bounded in ricochets over the plain.

"About noon the fair scene vanished as if by enchantment. We suddenly turned northwards into a tangled mass of tall fœtid reeds, rank jungle, and forest. One constantly feels, in malarious places, suddenly poisoned as if by miasma; a shudder runs through the frame and a cold perspiration, like a prelude for a fainting fit, breaks from the brow. We came upon the deserted--once flourishing--village of Wasagara, called Mbumi. The huts were torn and half burnt, the ground strewed with nets and drums, pestles and mortars, cots and fragments of rude furniture; the sacking seemed to be about ten days old. Two wretched villagers were lurking in the jungle, not daring to revisit the wreck of their own homes. The demon of Slavery reigns over a solitude of his own creation; can it be, that by some inexplicable law, where Nature has done her best for the happiness of Mankind, Man, doomed to misery, must work out his own unhappiness?

[Sidenote: Ants.]

"Next day our path was slippery as mud, and man and beast were rendered wild by the cruel stings of a small red ant and a huge black pismire. They are large headed; they cannot spring, but show great quickness in fastening themselves to the foot or ankle as it brushes over them. The pismire is a horse-ant, about an inch in length, whose bulldog head and powerful mandibles enable it to destroy rats and mice, lizards and snakes; its bite burns like a pinch of a red-hot needle. When it sets to work, twisting itself round, it may be pulled in two without relaxing its hold. As the people stopped to drink they were seized by these dreadful creatures, and suddenly began to dance and shout like madmen, pulling off their clothes, and frantically snatching at their lower limbs. In the evening it was like a savage opera scene. One would recite his Korán, another pray; a third told funny stories; a fourth trolled out in a minor key lays of love and war that were familiar to me upon the Scindian hills. This was varied by slapping away the black mosquitoes, ridding ourselves of ants, and challenging small parties of savages who passed us from time to time with bows and arrows.

"Now we also began to suffer severely from the tzetze fly, which is the true Glossina morsitans. It extended from Usagara westward as far as the Central Lakes. It has more persistency of purpose than an Egyptian fly; when beaten off, it will return half a dozen times to the charge. It cannot be killed except by a smart blow, and its long sharp proboscis draws blood through a canvas hammock. The sting is like an English horse-fly and leaves a lasting trace. This land is eminently fitted for breeding cattle and for agriculture, which, without animals, cannot be greatly extended. Why this plague should have been placed here, unless to exercise human ingenuity, I cannot imagine. Perhaps some day it will be exterminated by the introduction of some insectiferous bird, which will be the greatest benefactor that Central Africa ever knew. The brown ant has cellular hills of about three feet high, whereas in Somali-land they become dwarf ruins of round towers. When we reached Rumuma the climate was new to us, after the incessant rains of the Maritime Valley, and the fogs and mists of the Rufuta range; but it was in extremes--the thermometer under the influence of dewy gusts sank in the tent to 48° F., a killing temperature in these latitudes to half-naked and houseless men. During the day it showed 90° F.; the sun was fiery, and a furious south wind coursed through skies purer and bluer than I had ever seen in Greece or Italy.

"When we were ill our followers often mutinied, and would do nothing, but stole and lost our goods, and would not work. Sometimes, though they carried the water, they would refuse us any. Jack was as ill as I was. We reached Rubeho, the third and westernmost range of the Usagára Mountains, and here we were welcomed with joy, and given milk and butter and honey, a real treat. Here we were in danger of being attacked by the Wahúmba. Next day a Caravan arrived, under the command of four Arab merchants, of which Isa bin Hijji was most kind, and did us good service. I was always at home when I got amongst Arabs. They always treat me practically as one of themselves. They gave us useful information for crossing the Rubeho range, and superintended our arrangements. When they went away I charged them not to spread reports of our illness. I saw them depart with regret. It had really been a relief to hear once more the voice of civility and sympathy.

[Sidenote: The War-cry of the Wahúmba.]

"Our greatest labour was before us. Trembling with ague, with swimming heads, ears deafened by weakness, and limbs that would hardly support us, we contemplated with dogged despair the perpendicular scramble over the mountains and the ladders of root and boulder, up which we and our starving, drooping asses had to climb. Jack was so weak that he had three supporters; I, having stronger nerves, managed with one. We passed wall-like sheets of rock, long steeps of loose white soil and rolling stones. Every now and then we were compelled to lie down by cough and thirst and fatigue; and when so compelled, fires suddenly appeared on the neighbouring hills. The War-cry rang loud from hill to hill, and Indian files of archers and spearmen, streaming like lines of black ants, appeared in all directions down the paths. It was the Wahúmba, who, waiting for the Caravans to depart, were going down to fall fiercely on the scattered villages in the lowlands, kill the people, and to drive off the cattle, and plunder the villages of Inengé. Our followers prepared to desert us, but, strange to say, the Wahúmba did not touch us. By resting every few yards, and clinging to our supporters, we reached the summit of this terrible path after six hours, and we sat down amongst aromatic flowers and bright shrubs, to recover strength and breath. Jack was almost in a state of coma, and could hardly answer. The view disclosed a retrospect of severe hardships past and gone.

"We eventually arrived, after more walking, at a place called the Great Rubeho, where several settlements appeared, and where poor Jack was seized with a fever fit and dangerous delirium; he became so violent that I had to remove his weapons, and, to judge from certain symptoms, the attack had a permanent cerebral effect. Death appeared stamped upon his features, and yet our followers clamoured to advance, because it was cold. This lasted two nights, when he was restored and came to himself, and proposed to advance. I had a hammock rigged up for him, and the whole Caravan broke ground. We went on ascending till we reached the top of the third and westernmost range of the Usagára Mountains, raised 5700 feet above sea level, and we begin to traverse Ugogi, which is the halfway district between the Coast and Unyanyembe, and stands 2760 feet above sea level, and the climate of Ugogi pleases by its elasticity and its dry healthy warmth.

[Sidenote: Evil Reports.]

"The African traveller's fitness for the task of Exploration depends more upon his faculty of chafing under delays and kicking against the pricks than upon his power of displaying the patience of a Griselda or a Job. Another Caravan of coast Arabs arrived. They brought news from the sea-board, and, wondrous good fortune, the portmanteau containing books, which a porter, profiting by the confusion when they were attacked by bees, had deposited in the long grass at the place where I directed the slaves to look for it. Some half-caste Arabs had gone forward and spread evil reports of us. They said we had each one eye and four arms; we were full of magic; we caused rain to fall in advance, and left droughts in our rear; we cooked water-melons, and threw away the seeds, thus generating small-pox; we heated and hardened milk, thus breeding a murrain amongst cattle; our wire, cloth, and beads caused a variety of misfortunes; we were Kings of the Sea, and therefore white-skinned and straight-haired, as are all men who live in salt water, and next year we would seize their land.

[Sidenote: Game.]

"As far as our followers were concerned, there was not a soul to stand by Jack and me except ourselves. Had anything happened we must have perished. We should have been as safe with six as with sixty guns, but six hundred stout fellows, well armed, might march through the length and breadth of Central Africa." (Richard said when the Government sent Gordon to Khartoum they failed because they sent him alone. Had they sent him with five hundred soldiers there would have been no war.) "And now a word to sportsmen in this part of Africa. Let no future travellers make my mistake. I expected great things without realizing a single hope. In the more populous parts the woodman's axe and the hunter's arrows have melted away game. Even where large tracks of jungle abound with water and forage, the notes of a bird rarely strike the ear, and during the day's march not a single large animal will be seen. In places such as the park-lands of Dut'húmi, the jungles and forests of Ugogi and Mgunda Mk'hali, the barrens of Usukuma, and the tangled thickets of Ujiji, there is abundance of noble game--lions, leopards, elephants, rhinoceroses, wild cattle, giraffes, gnus, zebras, quaggas, and ostriches; but the regions are so dangerous that a sportsman cannot linger. There is miasma, malaria, want of food, rarely water, no camels, and every porter would desert, whilst the extraordinary expense of provision and of carriage would be the work of a very rich man. As for us, we could only shoot on halting days at rare periods, and there is nothing left but the hippopotamus and the crocodile of the seacoast.

[Sidenote: Vermin.]

"On the 8th of October we fell in with a homeward-bound Caravan headed by Abdullah bin Nasib, who was very, very kind to us. He kindly halted a day that we might send home a mail, and gave me one of his riding animals, and would take nothing for it except a little medicine. We left K'hok'ho, a foul strip of crowded jungle, where we were stung throughout the fiery day by the tzetze fly, swarms of bees, and pertinacious gadflies, where an army of large poisonous ants drove us out of the tent by the wounds which they inflicted between the fingers and other tender parts of the body, till kettles of boiling water persuaded them to abandon us. These ant-fiends made the thin-skinned asses mad with torture. In this ill-omened spot my ass Seringe, the sole survivor of the riding animals brought from Zanzibar, was so torn by a hyæna that it died of its wounds, and fifteen of my porters deserted, so that I thought that it was no use continuing my weary efforts and anxiety about baggage.

[Sidenote: A Hard Jungle March.]

"I gave Jack my good donkey, because he was worse than I was, and I took one of the poor ones, and found that I must either walk or leave valuable things behind. Trembling with weakness, I set out to march the length of the Mdáburu jungle. The memory of that march is not pleasant. The burning sun and the fiery reflected heat arising from the parched ground--here a rough, thorny, and waterless jungle, where the jessamine flowered and the frankincense was used for fuel; there a grassy plain of black and sun-cracked earth--compelled me to lie down every half-hour. The water-gourds were soon drained by my attendant Beloch; and the sons of Ramji, who, after reaching the resting-place, had returned with ample stores for their comrades, hid their vessels on my approach. Sarmalla, a donkey-driver, the model of a surly negro, whose crumpled brow, tightened eyes, and thick lips, which shot out on the least occasion of excitement, showed what was going on within his head, openly refused me the use of his gourd, and--thirst is even less to be trifled with than hunger--found ample reason to repent himself of the proceeding. Near the end of the jungle I came upon a party of the Beloch, who, having seized upon a porter belonging to a large Caravan of Wanyamwezi that had passed us on that march, were persuading him, half by promises and half by threats, to carry their sleeping mats and their empty gourds.

"Towards the end of that long march I saw with pleasure the kindly face of Seedy Bombay, who was returning to me in hot haste, leading an ass and carrying a few scones and hard-boiled eggs. Mounting, I resumed my way, and presently arrived at the confines of Mdáburu, where, under a huge calabash, stood our tent, amidst a kraal of grass boothies, surrounded by a heaped-up ridge of thorns.

"We left Ugogi and pursued our way to 'Mgunda Mk'hali,' a very wild part, and at last got to Jiwella Mkoa, the halfway house. We were cheered by the sight of the red fires glaring in the kraal, but Jack's ass, perhaps frightened by some wild beast which we did not see, reared high in the air, bucked like a deer, broke his girths, and threw Jack, who was sick and weak, heavily upon the hard earth. Our people had become so selfish that they always attended to themselves first, and Said bin Salim, the leader, actually refused to give us a piece of canvas to make a tent. Bombay made a memorable speech: 'If you are not ashamed of your Master, O Said, be at least ashamed of his servant,' which had such an effect that he sent the whole awning, and refused the half which I sent back to him.

"The three Tribes of this part are the Wagogo (the Wamasai), the Wahúmba, and the Wakwafi, who are remarkable for their strength and intelligence, and for their obstinate and untamable characters. They only sell their fellow tribesmen when convicted of magic, or from absolute distress, and many of them would rather die under the stick than work. The Wagogo are thieves; they would rob during the day, are importunate beggars, and specify their long lists of wants without stint or shame. An Arab merchant once went out to the Wahúmba to buy asses. He set out from Tura in Eastern Unyamwezi, and traversing the country of the wild Watatúru, arrived on the eighth day at the frontier district, I'ramba, where there is a river which separates the tribes. He was received with civility, but none have ever since followed his example.

"As we neared Unyanyembe the porters became more restive under their light loads, their dignity was hurt by shouldering a pack, and day after day, till I felt weary of life, they left their burdens upon the ground. At Rubuga I was visited by an Arab merchant, who explained something which had puzzled me. Whenever an advance beyond Unyanyembe was spoken of, Said bin Salim's countenance fell. The merchant asked me if I thought the Caravan was strong enough to bear the dangers of the road between that and Ujiji, and I replied that I did, but even if I did not, I should go on. The perpetual risk of loss, discourages the traveller in these lands. In a moment papers which have cost him months of toil may be scattered to the winds. Collectors should never make them on the march upwards, but on their leisurely return. My field and sketch-books were entrusted to an Arab merchant who preceded me to Zanzibar. Jack sent down maps, papers, and instruments, and I my vocabularies, ephemeris, and drawing-books, which ran no danger, except from Hamerton's successor, who seemed careless.

"The hundred and thirty-fourth day from leaving the coast, after marching over six hundred miles, we prepared to enter Kázeh. I was met by Arabs who gave me the Moslem salutation, and courteously accompanied me. I was to have gone to the tembe kindly placed at my disposal by Isa bin Hijji and the Arabs met at Inengé, but by mistake we were taken to that of Musa Mzuri, an Indian merchant, for whom I bore an introductory letter, graciously given by H.H. the Sayyid Majjid of Zanzibar. Here I dismissed the porters, who separated to their homes. What a contrast between the open-handed hospitality and the hearty good will of this truly noble race (Arabs), and the niggardliness of the savage and selfish African! It was heart of flesh after heart of stone. They warehoused my goods, disposed of my extra stores, and made all arrangements for my down march on return. During two long halts at Kázeh, Snay bin Amir never failed to pass the evening with me, and, as he thoroughly knew the country all around, I derived immense information from his instructive and varied conversation.

"Here were the times when Jack was at such a disadvantage from want of language; he could join in none of these things, and this made him, I think, a little sour, and partly why he wished to have an expedition of his own. Snay bin Amir was familiar with the language, the religion, the manners, and the ethnology of all the tribes. He was of a quixotic appearance, high featured, tall, gaunt, and large limbed. He was well read, had a wonderful memory, fine perceptions, and passing power of language. He was the stuff of which I could make a friend, brave as all his race, prudent, ready to perish for honour, and as honest as he was honourable. At Unyanyembe the merchants expect some delay, because the porters, whether hired at the coast or at Tanganyika, here disperse, and a fresh gang has to be collected. When Snay bin Amir and Musa Mzuri, the Indian, settled at Kázeh, it was only a desert; they built houses, sunk wells, and converted it into a populous place. The Arabs here live comfortably and even splendidly. The houses are single-storied, but large, substantial, and capable of defence. They have splendid gardens; they receive regular supplies of merchandise, comforts, and luxuries from the coast; they are surrounded by troops of concubines and slaves, whom they train to divers crafts and callings. The rich have riding asses from Zanzibar, and the poorest keep flocks and herds. When a stranger appears he receives hishmat l'il gharib, or 'the guest welcome.' He is provided with lodgings, and introduced by the host to the rest of the society at a general banquet. A drawback to their happiness is the failure of constitution. A man who escapes illness for a couple of months boasts, and, as in Egypt, no one enjoys robust health. The residents are very moderate in their appetites, and eat only light dishes that they may escape fever.

[Sidenote: Description of Caravans and Difficulties.]

"From Unyanyembe there are twenty marches to Ujiji upon the Tanganyika, seldom accomplished under twenty-five days. The two greatest places are, first, Msene; the second is the Malagarázi river; but now I bade adieu for a time to the march, the camp, and the bivouac, and was comfortably housed close to my new friend, Shakyh Snay bin Amir. You are all familiar with the Arab Kafilah and its hosts of litters, horses, camels, mules, and asses; but the porter-journeys in East Africa have, till this year of my arrival, escaped the penman's pen. There are three kind of Caravans. These are the Wanyamwezi, the Wasawahili free men, and lastly that of the Arabs. That of the Arabs is splendid, and next to the Persian, he is the most luxurious traveller in the East. A veteran of the way, he knows the effects of protracted hardship and scarcity upon a wayfarer's health; but the European traveller does not enjoy it, because it marches by instinct rather than reason. It dawdles, it hurries, it lingers, losing time twice. It is fatal to observation, and nothing will induce them to enable an Explorer to strike into an unbeaten path, or to progress a few miles out of the main road. Malignant epidemics attack Caravans, and make you repent joining them. For the rest, the porters, one and all, want to eat, drink, sleep, carry the lightest load or none at all; for the slightest service they want double pay; they lose your mules and your baggage; they steal what they can; they desert when they can; they run away when there is the slightest danger. When it is safe, they are mutinous and insolent, because you are dependent on them. If you come to a comfortable place, you cannot dislodge them; if you come to a dangerous place, they will not give the necessary time for food or sleep, or resting the animals. Everything is done to get as much out of you as possible, to do as little as they can for it; gain and self are almost their only thoughts. Bombay proved more or less an exception. During our journey from start to finish, there was not one, from Said bin Salim, the leader, to the very porter, except Bombay and the two Goanese Catholics, who did not attempt to desert.

"About five p.m. the camp was fairly roused, and a little low chatting commences. The porters overnight have promised to start early, and to make a long wholesome march; but, 'uncertain, coy, and hard to please,' the cold morning makes them unlike the men of the warm evening, and so one of them will have fever. In every Caravan there is some lazy lout and unmanageable fellow whose sole delight is to give trouble. If no march be in prospect, they sit obstinately before the fire, warming their hands and feet, and casting quizzical looks at their fuming and fidgety employer. If all be unanimous it is vain to tempt them; even soft sawder is but 'throwing comfits to cows,' and we return to our tent. If, however, there be a division, a little active stimulating will cause a march. They hug the fire till driven from it, when they unstack the loads piled before our tents and pour out of camp or village. Jack and I, when able, mount our asses; we walk when we can, but when unable for either we are borne in hammocks. The heat of the ground, against which the horniest sole never becomes proof, tries the feet like polished leather boots on a quarter-deck in the dog-days near the Line. Sometimes, when in good humour, they are very sportive. When two bodies meet, that commanded by an Arab claims the road. When friendly caravans meet, the two kirangozis sidle up with a stage pace, a stride and a stand, and, with sidelong looks, prance till they arrive within distance; then suddenly and simultaneously 'ducking,' like boys 'giving a back,' they come to loggerheads and exchange a butt violently as fighting rams. Their example is followed by all with a rush and a crush, which might be mistaken for the beginning of a fight; but it ends, if there be no bad blood, in shouts of laughter.

"When a Unyamwezi guide is leader of a Caravan the kirangozi deliberately raises his plain blood-red flag, and they all follow him. If any man dares to go before him, or into any but his own place, an arrow is extracted from his quiver to substantiate his identity at the end of the march.

"The Wamrima willingly admit strangers into their villages, and the Wazaramo would do the same, but they are constantly at feud with the Wanyamwezi, and therefore it is dangerous hospitality. My Goanese boys, being 'Christians,' that is to say, Roman Catholics, consider themselves semi-European, and they will not feed with the heathenry, so there are four different messes in the Camp. The dance generally assumes, as the excitement increases, the frantic semblance of a ring of Egyptian dervishes. The performance often closes with a grand promenade, all the dancers being jammed in a rushing mass, a galop infernale, with features of satyrs, and gestures resembling aught but human. Sometimes they compose songs in honour of me. I understand them, and the singers know that I do. They sing about the Muzungú Mbáya, 'the wicked white man;' to have called me a 'good white man' would mean that one was a natural, an innocent, who would be plucked and flayed without flinching; moreover, despite my wickedness, it was always to me that they came for justice and redress if any one bullied or ill-treated them.

"The Caravan scene at night is often very impressive. The dull red fires flickering and forming a circle of ruddy light in the depths of the black forest, flaming against the tall trunks, and defining the foliage of the nearer trees, illuminate lurid groups of savage men, in every variety of shape and posture. Above, the dark purple sky, studded with golden points, domes the earth with bounds narrowed by the gloom of night. And, behold, in the western horizon, a resplendent crescent, with a dim, ash-coloured globe in its arms, and crowned by Hesperus, sparkling, like a diamond, sinks through the vast space in all the glory and gorgeousness of Eternal Nature's sublimest works. From such a night, methinks, the Byzantine man took his device, the crescent and the star.

[Sidenote: Reptiles.]

"At Kázeh, as in Ugogi and everywhere else, the lodgings are a menagerie of hens, pigeons, rats, scorpions, earwigs (the scorpions are spiteful), and in Ugogi there is a green scorpion from four to five inches long, which inflicts a torturing wound. Here they say that it dies after inflicting five consecutive stings, and kills itself if a bit of stick be applied to the middle of its back. House crickets and cockroaches are plentiful, as well as lizards, and frightful spiders weave their webs. One does not count ticks, flies of sorts, bugs, fleas, mosquitoes, and small ants, and the fatal bug of Miana, which vary in size, after suction, from almost invisible dimensions to three-quarters of an inch. The bite does not poison, but the irritation causes sad consequences. Huts have to be sprinkled with boiling water to do away with some of these nuisances.

[Sidenote: Ill and attended by a Witch.]

"It is customary for Caravans proceeding to the Tanganyika to remain for six weeks or two months at Unyanyembe for repose and recovery from the labours they are supposed to have endured, to enjoy the pleasures of 'civilized society,' to accept the hospitality offered by the Arabs. All our party, except Jack and I, considered Unyanyembi the end of the exploration, but to us it merely meant a second point of departure easier than the first, because we had gained experience. We had, however, a cause of delay. Jack had become strong, but all the rest got ill. Valentine, my Goanese boy, was insensible for three days and nights from bilious fever, and when he recovered Gaetano got it and was unconscious. Then followed the bull-headed slave, Mabruki, and lastly Bombay, while the rest of the following, who had led a very irregular life, began to pay the penalty of excess. They brought us a mganga, or witch, who doctored us. However, we got distressing weakness, liver derangement, burning palms, tingling soles, aching eyes, and alternate chills of heat and cold, and we delayed till the 1st of December, during which we learnt a lot of necessary things.

"My good Snay bin Amir sent into the country for plantains and tamarinds, and brewed a quantity of beer and plantain wine. He lent me valuable assistance concerning the country and language, and we were able, through him, to learn all about the Nyanza or Northern Lake, and the maps forwarded from Kázeh to the Royal Geographical Society will establish this fact, as they were subsequently determined, after actual exploration, by Jack. Snay bin Amir took charge of all the letters and papers for home, and his energy enabled me afterwards to receive the much-needed reserve of supplies in the nick of time.

"On the 15th we went on to Yombo, where I remarked three beauties who would be deemed beautiful in any part of the world. Their faces were purely Grecian, they had laughing eyes, their figures were models for an artist, like the bending statue that delights the world, cast in bronze. These beautiful domestic animals smiled graciously when, in my best Kinyamwezi, I did my devoir to the sex, and a little tobacco always secured for me a seat in the 'undress circle.'

"On the 22nd of December Jack came back, and we left on the 23rd of December, and marched to the district of Eastern Wilyankuru; and there we again separated, and I went on alone to Muinyi Chandi, and my people were very troublesome. Said bin Salim, believing that my days were numbered, passed me on the last march without a word. The sun was hot, and he and his party were hastening to shade, and left me with only two men to carry the hammock in a dangerous jungle, where shortly afterwards an Arab merchant was murdered. On Christmas Day I mounted my ass, passed through the western third of the Wilyankuru district, and was hospitably received by one Salim bin Said, surnamed Simba the Lion, who received me with the greatest hospitality. He was a large, middle-aged man, with simple and kindly manners, and an honesty of looks and words which rendered his presence extremely prepossessing.

"The favourite dish in this country is the pillaw, or pilaf, here called pulao; and here I want to digress. For the past century, which concluded with reducing India to the rank of a British province, the proud invader has eaten her rice after a fashion which has secured for him the contempt of the East. He deliberately boils it, and after drawing off the nutritious starch, or gluten, called conjee, which forms the perquisite of the Portuguese or his pariah cook, he is fain to fill himself with that which has become little more nutritious than the prodigal's husks. Great, indeed, is the invader's ignorance upon that point. Peace be to the manes of Lord Macaulay, but listen to and wonder at his eloquent words: 'The Sepoys came to Clive, not to complain of their scanty fare, but to propose that all the grain should be given to the Europeans, who required more nourishment than the natives of Asia. The thin gruel, they said, which was strained away from the rice, would suffice for themselves. History contains no more touching instance of military fidelity, or of the influence of a commanding mind.' Indians never fail to drink the conjee. The Arab, on the other hand, mingles with his rice a sufficiency of ghee to prevent the extraction of the 'thin gruel,' and thus makes the grain as palatable and as nutritious as Nature intended it to be--and dotted over with morsels of fowl, so boiled that they shredded like yarn under the teeth.

"Shaykh Masud boasted of his intimacy with the Sultan Msimbira, whose subjects had plundered our portmanteau, and offered, on return to Unyanyambe, his personal services in ransoming it. I accepted with joy, but it afterwards proved that he nearly left his skin in the undertaking. The climate of Kíríra, where I arrived on the 27th of December, is called by the Arabs a medicine, and I spent a delicious night in the cool Barzah after the unhealthy air of Kázeh. Three marches more brought me to Msene, where I was led to the tembe of one Saadullah, a low-caste Msawahili, and there I found Jack, looking very poorly. We were received with great pomp and circumstance; the noise was terrific, and Gaetano, Jack's boy, was so excited by the scene that he fell down in an epileptic fit, which fits returned repeatedly.

"On the 10th of January we left, and arrived at Mb'hali, and passed through dense jungle, and eventually came to Sorora and Kajjanjeri, and here we were freshly ill from miasma. About three in the afternoon I was forced to lay aside my writing by an unusual sensation of nervous irritability, which was followed by a general shudder as in the cold paroxysm of fevers. Presently my extremities began to weigh, and began to burn as though exposed to a glowing fire, and my jack-boots became too tight and heavy to wear. At sunset the attack reached its height. I saw yawning wide to receive me--

'Those dark gates across the wild That no man knows.'

My body was palsied, powerless, motionless; the limbs appeared to wither and die; the feet had lost all sensation, except a throbbing and a tingling as if pricked by needle points, the arms refused to be directed by will, and to the hands the touch of cloth and stone was the same. Gradually the attack spread upwards till it seemed to compress my ribs, and stopped short there. This at a distance of two months of any medical aid, and with the principal labour of the expedition still in prospect! If one of us was lost, I said to myself, the other might survive to carry home the results of the exploration, which I had undertaken with the resolve either to do or die. I had done my best, and now nothing appeared to remain for me but to die as well.

[Sidenote: Partial Paralysis. Blindness. Elephants.]

"It was partial paralysis, brought on by malaria, well known in India. I tried the usual remedies without effect, and the duration of the attack presently revealed what it was. The contraction of the muscles, which were tightened like ligatures above and below the knees, and those λύταγούνατα [Greek: lytagounata], a pathological symptom which the old Greek loves to specify, prevented me from walking to any distance for nearly a year; the numbness of the hands and feet disappeared more slowly, but the Fundi predicted that I should be able to move in ten days, and on the 10th I again mounted my ass. At Usagozi, Jack, whose blood had been impoverished, and whose system had been reduced by many fevers, now began to suffer from inflammation of the eyes, which produced an almost total blindness, rendering every object enclouded by a misty veil. Goanese Valentine suffered the same on the same day, and subsequently, at Ujiji, was tormented by inflammatory ophthalmia. I suffered in a minor degree. On the 3rd of February we debouched from a jungle upon the river plain; the swift brown stream, there fifty yards broad, was swirling through the tall wet grasses of its banks on our right hand, hard by our track. Upon the off-side, a herd of elephants in Indian file broke through the reed fence in front of them.

[Sidenote: The Crossing of the Great River Malagarázi.]

"The Malagarázi, corrupted by speculative geographers to Mdjigidgi--the uneuphonious terminology of the 'Mombas Mission Map'--to 'Magrassie,' and to 'Magozi,' has been wrongly represented to issue from the Sea of Ujiji. According to all travellers in these regions, it rises in the mountains of Urundi, at no great distance from the Kitangure, or river of Karagwah; but whilst the latter, springing from the upper counterslope, feeds the Nyanza, or Northern Lake, the Malagarázi, rising in the lower slope of the equatorial range, trends to the south-east, till it becomes entangled in the decline of the Great Central African Depression--the hydrographical basin first indicated in his address of 1852 by Sir Roderick I. Murchison, president of the Royal Geographical Society of London.[2] Thence it sweeps round the southern base of Urundi, and, deflected westwards, it disembogues itself into the Tanganyika. Its mouth is in the land of Ukaranga, and the long promontory behind which it discharges its waters is distinctly visible from Kawele, the head-quarters of Caravans in Ujiji. The Malagarázi is not navigable; as in primary and transition countries generally, the bed is broken by rapids. Beyond the ferry the slope becomes more pronounced, branch and channel islets of sand and verdure divide the stream, and as every village near the banks appears to possess one or more canoes, it is probably unfordable. The main obstacle to crossing it on foot, over the broken and shallower parts near the rock-bars, would be the number and the daring of the crocodiles.

"The mukunguru of Unyamwezi is the severest seasoning-fever in this part of Africa; it is a bilious-remittent lasting three days, which reduces the patient to nothing, and often followed by a long attack of tertian type. The consequences are severe and lasting, even in men of the strongest nervous diathesis; burning and painful eyes, hot palms and soles, a recurrence of shivering and flushing fits, extremities alternately icy cold, then painfully hot and swollen, indigestion, sleeplessness, cutaneous eruptions, fever sores, languor, dejection, all resulting from torpidity of liver, from inordinate secretion of bile, and shows the poison in the system. Sometimes the fever works speedily; some become at once delirious, and die on the first or second day.

"From Tura to Unyamwezi the Caravans make seven marches of sixty geographical miles. The races requiring notice in this region are two--Wakimbu and the Wanyamwezi."

[1] Some of these things disappeared in a very singular manner, and one was very curiously fated. It was missed here, and came home to me in six years. Later on, in 1863, it again disappeared for six years. It was stolen at Fernando Po in 1863; it was marked by somebody on a bit of parchment, "Burton's Original Manuscript Diary, Africa, 1857." Colonel Maude, the Queen's Equerry, saw it outside an old book-shop, was attracted by the label on the Letts's Diary. He bought it for a few shillings, called on Lord Derby, and left it in the hall, forgetting it. Lord Derby, coming down, saw the book, recognized my handwriting, wrote to Colonel Maude for permission to restore the private diary to its rightful owner. We happened to be in town. He kindly called and gave it back to us, so that journal twice disappeared for six years, but had to come home. Who shall say there is no destiny in this?

[2] "The following notice concerning a discovery which must ever be remembered as a triumph of geological hypothesis, was kindly forwarded to me by the discoverer:--

"'My speculations as to the whole African interior being a vast watery plateau-land of some elevation above the sea, but subtended on the east and west by much higher grounds, were based on the following data:--

"'The discovery in the central portion of the Cape Colony, by Mr. Bain, of fossil remains in a lacustrine deposit of Secondary age, and the well-known existence on the coast of loftier mountains known to be of a Palæozoic or Primary epoch, and circling round the younger deposits, being followed by the exploration of the Ngami Lake, justified me in believing that Africa had been raised from beneath the ocean at a very early geological period; and that ever since that time the same conditions had prevailed. I thence inferred that an interior network of lakes and rivers would be found prolonged northwards from Lake Ngami, though at that time no map was known to me showing the existence of such central reservoirs. Looking to the west as to the east, I saw no possibility of explaining how the great rivers could escape from the central plateau-lands and enter the ocean except through deep lateral gorges, formed at some ancient period of elevation, when the lateral chains were subjected to transverse fractures. Knowing that the Niger and the Zaire, or Congo, escaped by such gorges on the west, I was confident that the same phenomenon must occur upon the eastern coast, when properly examined. This hypothesis, as sketched out in my 'Presidential Address' of 1852, was afterwards received by Dr. Livingstone just as he was exploring the transverse gorges by which the Zambesi escapes to the east, and the great traveller has publicly expressed the surprise he then felt that his discovery should have been thus previously suggested.'"

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XIV. OUR REWARD--SUCCESS

"At length we sight the Lake Tanganyika, or the 'Sea of Ujiji.' The route before us lay through a howling wilderness laid waste by the fierce Watuta. Mpete, on the right bank of the Malagarázi river, is very malarious, and the mosquitoes are dreadful. We bivouacked under a shady tree, within sight of the ferry. The passage of this river is considered dangerous on account of attacks of the tribes. At one place I could only obtain a few corn cobs, and I left the meat, with messages, for the rear. In the passages of the river our goods and chattels were thoroughly sopped. After a while, from a hillside we saw, long after noon, the other part of our Caravan, halted by fatigue, upon a slope beyond a weary swamp; a violent storm was brewing, and the sky was black, and we were anxious and sorry about them.

"On the 13th February, after about an hour's march, I saw the Fundi running forward, and changing the direction of the Caravan, and I followed him to know why he had taken this responsibility upon himself. We breasted a steep stony hill, sparsely clad with thorny trees, which killed Jack's riding ass. Our fagged beasts refused to proceed. 'What is that streak of light which lies below?' said I to Bombay. 'I am of opinion,' said Bombay, 'that that is the water you are in search of.' I gazed in dismay; the remains of my blindness, the veil of trees, a broad ray of sunshine illuminating but one reach of the lake, had shrunk its fair proportions. I began to lament my folly in having risked life and lost health for so poor a prize, to curse Arab exaggeration, and to propose an immediate return to explore the Nyanza, or Northern Lake.

[Sidenote: Scenery.]

"Advancing a few yards, the whole scene suddenly burst upon my view, filling me with admiration, wonder, and delight. Nothing I in sooth could be more picturesque than this first view of Tanganyika Lake, as it lay in the lap of the mountains, basking in the gorgeous tropical sunshine. There were precipitous hills, a narrow strip of emerald green, a ribbon of glistening yellow sand, sedgy rushes, cut by the breaking wavelets, an expanse of light, soft blue water foam thirty to thirty-five miles wide, sprinkled by crisp tiny crescents of snowy foam, with a background of high broken wall of steel-coloured mountain flecked and capped with pearly mist, sharply pencilled against the azure sky, yawning chasms of plum-colour falling towards dwarf hills, which apparently dip their feet in the wave. One could see villages, cultivated lands, fishermen's canoes on the water, and a profuse lavishness and magnificence of Nature and vegetation. The smiling shores of this vast crevasse appeared doubly beautiful to me after the silent and spectral mangrove-creeks on the East African sea-board, and the melancholy monotonous experience of desert and jungle scenery, tawny rock and sun-parched plain, or rank herbage and flats of black mire. Truly it was a revel for Soul and Sight! Forgetting toils, dangers, and the doubtfulness of return, I felt willing to endure double what I had endured; and all the party seemed to join with me in joy. Poor purblind Jack found nothing to grumble at, except the 'mist and glare before his eyes.' Said bin Salim looked exulting--he had procured for me this pleasure; the monoculous Jemadar grinned his congratulations, and even the surly Beloch made civil salaams.

[Sidenote: In an Arab Craft to Ujiji.]

"As soon as we were bivouacked, I proceeded to get a solid-built Arab craft, capable of containing thirty or thirty-five men, belonging to an absent merchant. It was the second largest on the lake, and being too large for paddling, the crew rowed, and at eight next morning we began coasting along the eastern shore of the lake in a north-westerly direction, towards the Kawele district. The picturesque and varied forms of the mountains rising above and dipping into the lake were clad in purplish blue, set off by the rosy tints of the morning, and so we reached the great Ujiji. A few scattered huts in the humblest beehive shape represent the Port town. This fifth region includes the alluvial valley of the Malagarázi river, which subtends the lowest spires of the highlands of Karagwah, and Urundi, the western prolongation of the chain which has obtained, probably from African tradition, the name of 'Lunar Mountains.'

"At Ujiji terminates, after twelve stages, the transit of the fifth region. The traveller has now accomplished a hundred stages, which with necessary rests, but not including detentions and long halts, should occupy a hundred and fifty days. The distance, on account of the sinuosities of the road, numbers nine hundred and fifty statute miles, which occupied us seven and a half months on account of our disadvantages and illnesses. Arab Caravans seldom arrive at the Tanganyika, for the same reasons, under six months, but the lightly laden and the fortunate may get to Unyamyembe in two and a half, and to the Tanganyika in four months. It is evident that the African authorities (this was written thirty-five years ago) have hitherto confounded the Nyanza, the Tanganyika, and the Nyassa Lakes. Ujiji was first visited in 1840 by the Arabs, and after that they penetrated to Unyamwesi. They found it conveniently situated as a central point from whence their factors and slaves could navigate the waters, and collect slaves and ivory from the tribes upon its banks, but the climate proved unhealthy, the people dangerous, and the coasting voyages ended in disaster. Ujiji never rose to the rank of Unyamyembe, or Msene. Now, from May to September, flying Caravans touch here, and return to Unyamyembe so soon as they have loaded their porters. The principal tribes are the Wajiji, the Wavínza, the Wakaránga, the Watúta, the Wabuha, and the Wáhha; but the fiercest races in the whole land, and also the darkest, are the Wazarámo, the Wajíji, and the Watatúru. The Lakists are almost an amphibious race, are excellent divers, strong swimmers and fishermen, and vigorous eaters of fish, and in the water they indulge in gambols like sportive water-fowls, whether skimming in their hollow logs, or swimming.

"It is a great mistake not to go as a Trader. It explains the Traveller's motives, which are always suspected to be bad ones. Thus the Explorer can push forward into unknown countries, will be civilly received and lightly fined, because the host expects to see him or his friends again: to go without any motive only induces suspicion, and he is opposed in every way. Nobody believes him to be so stupid as to go through such danger and discomfort for exploring or science, which they simply do not understand.

"The cold damp climate, the over-rich and fat fish diet, and the abundance of vegetables, which made us commit excesses, at first disagreed with us. I lay for a fortnight upon the earth, too blind to read or write, too weak to ride, too ill to converse. Jack was almost as groggy upon his legs as I was, suffering from a painful ophthalmia, and a curious contortion of the face, which made him chew sideways, like an animal that chews the cud. Valentine was the same. Jack and Valentine were always ill of the same things, and on the same days, showing that certain climates affected certain temperaments and not others. Gaetano ate too much and brought on a fever. I was determined to explore the northern extremity of the lake, whence, every one said, issued a large river flowing northwards, so I tried to hire the only dhow or sailing craft, and provision it for a month's cruise, and at last Jack went to look after it, and I was twenty-seven days alone.

"I spent my time chiefly in eating, drinking, smoking, dozing. At two or three in the morning I lay anxiously expecting the grey light to creep through the door-chinks; then came the cawing of crows, and the crowing of the village cocks. When the golden rays began to stream over the red earth, torpid Valentine brought me rice-flour boiled in water with cold milk. Then came the slavey with a leafy branch to sweep the floor and to slay the huge wasps. This done, he lit the fire, the excessive damp requiring it, and sitting over it, he bathed his face and hands--luxurious dog!--in the pungent smoke. Then came visits from Said bin Salim and the Jemadar (our two headmen), who sat and stared at me, were disappointed to see no fresh symptoms of approaching dissolution, told me so with their eyes and faces, and went away; and I lay like a log upon my cot, smoking, dreaming of things past, visioning things present, and indulging myself in a few lines of reading and writing.

[Sidenote: More Scenery.]

"As evening approached, I made an attempt to sit under the broad eaves of the tembe, and to enjoy the delicious spectacle of this virgin Nature, and the reveries to which it gave birth--

'A pleasing land of drowsihed it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye, And of gay castles in the clouds that pass For ever flushing round a summer sky.'

"It reminded me of the loveliest glimpses of the Mediterranean; there were the same 'laughing tides,' pellucid sheets of dark blue water, borrowing their tints from the vinous shores beyond; the same purple light of youth upon the cheek of the earlier evening; the same bright sunsets, with their radiant vistas of crimson and gold opening like the portals of a world beyond the skies; the same short-lived grace and loveliness of the twilight; and, as night closed over the earth, the same cool flood of transparent moonbeams, pouring on the tufty heights and bathing their sides with the whiteness of virgin snow.

"At seven p.m., as the last flush faded from the occident, the lamp--a wick in a broken pot full of palm oil--was brought in. A dreary, dismal day you will exclaim, a day that--

'lasts out a night in Russia, When nights are longest there.'

[Sidenote: After Twenty-seven Days Speke returns.]

"On the 29th of March the rattling of matchlocks announced Jack's return. He was moist, mildewed, and wet to the bone, and all his things were in a similar state; his guns grained with rust, his fireproof powder-magazine full of rain, and, worse than that, he had not been able to gain anything but a promise that, after three months, the dhow should be let to us for five hundred dollars. The very dhow that had been promised to me whenever I chose to send for it! The faces of my following were indeed a study.

"I then set to work to help Jack with his diaries, which afterwards appeared in Blackwood, September, 1859, when I was immensely surprised to find, amongst many other things, a vast horseshoe of lofty mountains that Jack placed, in a map attached to the paper, near the very heart of Sir R. Murchison's Depression. I had seen the mountains growing upon paper under Jack's hand, from a thin ridge of hills fringing the Tanganyika until they grew to the size given in Blackwood, and Jack gravely printed in the largest capitals, 'This mountain range I consider to be the true Mountains of the Moon;' thus men do geography, and thus discovery is stultified. The poor fellow had got a beetle in his ear, which began like a rabbit at a hole to dig violently at the tympanum, and maddened him. Neither tobacco, salt, nor oil could be found; he tried melted butter, and all failing, he applied the point of a penknife to its back, and wounded his ear so badly that inflammation set in and affected his facial glands, till he could not open his mouth, and had to feed on suction. Six or seven months after, the beetle came away in the wax. At last I got hold of Kannena the Chief, and after great difficulty and enormous extortion, I promised him a rich reward if he kept his word; for I was resolved at all costs, even if we were reduced to actual want, to visit the mysterious stream. I threw over his shoulders a six-foot length of scarlet broadcloth, which made him tremble with joy, and all the people concerned in my getting the dhow received a great deal more than its worth. I secured two large canoes and fifty-five men.

"On the 11th of April, at four in the morning, I slept comfortably on the crest of a sand-wave, and under a mackintosh escaped the pitiless storm, so as to be ready to start lest they should repent, and at 7.20 on the 12th of April, 1858, my canoe, bearing for the first time on those dark waters--

'The flag that braved a thousand years The battle and the breeze,'

stood out of Bangwe Bay, and, followed by Jack's canoe, we made for the cloudy and storm-vexed north. The best escort to a European capable of communicating with and commanding them, would be a small party of Arabs, fresh from Hazramaut, untaught in the ways and tongues of Africa. They would save money to the explorer, and also his life. There were great rejoicings at our arrival at Uvira, the ne plus ultra, the northernmost station to which merchants have as yet been admitted. Opposite still, rose in a high broken line the mountains of the inhospitable Urundi, apparently prolonged beyond the northern extremity of the waters. Some say the voyage is of two days, some say six hours; the breadth of the Tanganyika here is between seven and eight miles.

"Now my hopes were rudely dashed to the ground. The stalwart sons of the Sultan Maruta, the noblest type of Negroid seen near the lake, visited me. They told me they had been there, and that the Rusizi enters into and does not flow out of the Tanganyika. I felt sick at heart. Bombay declared that Jack had misunderstood, and his (Bombay's) informer now owned that he had never been beyond Uvira, and never intended to do so. We stopped there nine days, and there I got such a severe ulceration of the tongue that I could not articulate. An African traveller may be arrested at the very bourne of his journey, on the very threshold of his success, by a single stage, as effectually as if all the waves of the Atlantic or the sands of Arabia lay between him and it. Now Maruta and his young giants claimed their blackmail, and also Kannena, and I had to pay up. Slaves are cheaper here than in the market of Ujiji. Gales began to threaten, and the crews, fearing wind and water, insisted on putting out to sea on the 6th of May.

[Sidenote: A Fight.]

"We touched at various stages and anchored at Mzimu, our former halting-place, where the crew swarmed up a ladder of rock, and returned with pots of palm oil. We left again at sunset; the waves began to rise, the wind also, and rain in torrents, and it was a doubt whether the cockleshell craft could live through the short chopping sea in heavy weather. The crew was frightened, but held on gallantly, and Bombay, a noted Agnostic in fine weather, spent the length of that wild night in reminiscences of prayer. I sheltered myself under my then best friend, my mackintosh, and thought of the couplet--

'This collied night, these horrid waves, these gusts that sweep the whirling deep; What reck they of our evil plight, who on the shore securely sleep?'

Fortunately the rain beat down the wind and sea, or nothing could have saved us. The next morning Mabruki rushed into the tent, thrust my sword into my hands, said the Warundi were upon us, and that the crews were rushing to their boats and pushing them off. Knowing that they would leave us stranded in case of danger, we hurried in without delay; but presently no enemy appeared, and Kannena, the Chief, persuaded them to re-land, and demand satisfaction of a drunken Chief who had badly wounded a man, and then there was a general firing and drawing of daggers. The crew immediately confiscated the three goats that were for our return, cut their throats, and spitted the meat upon their spears. Thus the lamb died and the wolf dined; the innocent suffered, the plunderer was joyed; the strong showed his strength, the weak his weakness--as usual. I saw the sufferer's wounds washed, forbade his friends to knead and wrench him as they were doing, and gave him a purgative which did him good. On the second day he was able to rise. This did not prevent the report at home that I had killed the man.

"On the 11th of May we paddled round to Wafanya Bay, to Makimoni, a little grassy inlet, where our canoes were defended from the heavy surf. On the 12th we went to Kyasanga, and the next night we spent in Bangwe Bay. We were too proud to sneak home in the dark; we deserved the Victoria Cross, we were heroes, braves of braves; we wanted to be looked at by the fair, to be howled at by the valiant.

[Sidenote: Are received with Honour.]

"On the 13th of May we appeared at the entrance of Kawele, and had a triumphal entrance; the people of the whole country-side collected to welcome us, and pressed waist-deep into the water. Jack and I were repeatedly 'called for,' but true merit is always modest; it aspires to 'Honour, not honours.'[1] We regained the old tembe, were salaamed to by everybody, and felt like a 'return home.' We had expended upwards of a month boating about the Tanganyika Lake. All the way down, we were like baited bears, mobbed every moment; they seemed to devour us; in an ecstasy of curiosity they shifted from Jack to me, and back again, like the well-known ass between the bundles of hay. Our health palpably improved. Jack was still deaf, but cured of his blindness; the ulcerated mouth, which had compelled me to live on milk for seventeen days, returned to its usual state, my strength increased, my feet were still swollen, but my hands lost their numbness, and I could again read and write. I attribute the change from the days and nights spent in the canoe, and upon the mud of the lake. Mind also acted upon matter; the object of my Mission was now effected, and I threw off the burden of grinding care, with which the imminent prospect of a failure had before sorely laden me."

Although Richard did not get the meed of success in England, and it has taken the world thirty-four years to realize the grandeur of that Exploration, he was the Pioneer (without money, without food, without men or proper escort, without the bare necessaries of life, to dare and do, in spite of every obstacle, and every crushing thing, bodily and mentally) who opened up that country. It is to him that later followers, that Grant and Speke, and Baker and Stanley, Cameron, and all the other men that have ever followed, owe it, that he opened the oyster-shell for them, and they went in to take the pearl. I do not want to detract from any other traveller's merits, for they are all brave and great, but I will say that if Richard Burton had had Mr. Stanley's money, escort, luxuries, porterage, and white comrades, backed by influence, there would not have been one single white spot on the whole map of the great Continent of Africa that would not have been filled up. Owing to shameful intrigues (which prospered none of the doers, but injured him, the man who did all this), he got very few words of praise, and that from a few, yet the World owes it to him now that there are Missions and Schools and Churches, and Commerce, and peaceful Settlements, and that anybody can go there. To him you owe "Tanganyika in a Bath-Chair;" but Speke got the cheering of the gallery and the pit, and Stanley inherited them. And here I insert the innocent joy-bells of his own heart, as I found them scribbled on the edge of his private journal, and anybody thinking of what he had done and what he had passed through, can warmly enter into his feelings of self-gratulation, so modestly hidden--

"I have built me a monument stronger than brass, And higher than the Pyramids' regal site; Nor the bitterness shown, nor the impotent wind, Nor the years' long line, nor the ages' flight Shall e'en lay low!

"Not all shall I perish; much of me Shall vanquish the grave, and be living still, When Mr. Macaulay's Zealanders view The ivied ruin on Tower Hill, And men shall know

"That when Isis hung, in the youth of Time, Her veil mysterious over the land, And defied mankind and men's puny will, All that lay in the shadow, my daring hand Was first to show,

"Then rejoice thee, superb in the triumph of mind, And the Delphian bay-leaf, O sweet Muse, bind Around my brow!"

[Sidenote: A Caravan arrives.]

"The rainy monsoon broke up after our return to Kawele. The climate became truly enjoyable, but it did not prevent the strange inexplicable melancholy which accompanies all travellers in tropical countries. Nature is beautiful in all that meets the eye; all is soft that affects the senses; but she is a syren whose pleasures pall, and one sighs for the rare simplicity of the desert. I never felt this sadness in Egypt and Arabia; I was never without it in India and Zanzibar. We got not one single word from the agents who were to forward our things, and Want began to stare us in the face. We had to engage porters for the hammocks, to feed seventy-five mouths, to fee several Sultans, and to incur the heavy expenses of two hundred and sixty miles' march back to Unyanyembe, so I had to supplement with my own little patrimony. One thousand pounds does not go very far, when it has to be divided amongst a couple of hundred greedy savages in two and a half years. On the 22nd of May musket-shots announced arrivals, and after a dead silence of eleven months arrived a Caravan with boxes, bales, porters, slaves, and a parcel of papers and letters from Europe, India, and Zanzibar. Here we first knew of the Indian Mutiny. This good fortune happened at a crisis when it was really wanted, but as my agent could find no porters for the packages, he had kept back some, and what he had sent me, were the worst. They would take us to Unyamyembe, but were wholly inadequate for exploring the southern end of the Tanganyika, far less for returning to Zanzibar, viâ the Nyassa Lake and Kilwa, as I hoped to do.

[Sidenote: Geographical Remarks.]

"At the time I write, the Tanganyika, though situated in the unexplored centre of intertropical Africa, and until 1858 unvisited by any European, has a traditionary history of its own, extending over three centuries. The Tanganyika, 250 miles in length, occupies the centre of the length of the African continent. The general formation suggests the idea of a volcanic depression, while the Nyanza is a vast reservoir formed by the drainage of the mountains. The lay is almost due north and south, and the form a long oval widening at the centre, and contracting at the extremities; the breadth varies from thirty to thirty-five miles, the circumference about 550 miles, and the superficial area covers about 5000 square miles. By the thermometers we had with us, the altitude was 850 feet above sea-level, and about 2000 feet below the Nyanza or Northern Lake, with high hill ranges between the lakes, which precluded a possibility of a connection between the waters. The parallel of the northern extremity of the Tanganyika nearly corresponds with the southern creek of the Nyanza, and they are separated by an arc of the meridian of about three hundred and forty-three miles. The waters of the Nyanza are superior to those of Tanganyika. The Tanganyika has a clear soft blue, like the ultramarine of the Mediterranean, with the light and milky tints of tropical seas. I believe that the Tanganyika receives and absorbs the whole river system, the network of streams, nullahs, and torrents of that portion of the Central African Depression, whose watershed converges towards the great reservoir. I think that the Tanganyika, like the Dead Sea, as a reservoir, supplies with humidity the winds which have parted with their moisture in the barren and arid regions of the south, and maintains its general level by the exact balance of supply and evaporation, and I think it possible that the saline particles deposited in its waters may be wanting in some constituent, which renders them evident to the taste; hence the freshness.

"According to the Wajiji, from their country to the Marungú river, which enters the lake at the south, there are twelve stages, numbering one hundred and twenty stations, but at most of them provisions are not procurable, and there are sixteen tribes and districts. The people of Usige, north of the Tanganyika, say that six rivers fall into the Tanganyika from the east, and westernmost is the Rusizi, and that it is an influent.

"The Chief Kazembe is like a viceroy of the country lying south-west of the Tanganyika, and was first visited by Dr. Lacerda, Governor of the Rios de Sena, in 1798-99. He died, and his party remained nine months in the country, without recording the name and position of this African capital. A second expedition went in 1831, and the present Chief was the grandson of Dr. Lacerda's Kazembe. He is a very great personage in these parts, and many Arabs are said to be living with him in high esteem. Marungú, though dangerous, was visited by a party of Arab merchants in 1842, who assisted Sámá in an expedition against a rival. He compelled the merchants to remain with him; they had found means of sending letters to their friends, they are unable to leave the country, but they are living in high favour with the Kazembe who enriched them. Of course there are people who doubt their good fortune. I collect my details from a mass of Arab oral geography.

"The 26th of May, 1858, was the day appointed for our departure en route for Unyamyembe. Kannena had been drunk for a fortnight, and was attacked by the Watuta, and fled. I heard of him no more. He showed no pity for the homeless stranger--may the World show none to him! I shall long remember my last sunrise look at Tanganyika, enhanced by the reflection that I might never again behold it. Masses of brown purple clouds covered the sunrise. The mists, luminously fringed with Tyrian purple, were cut by filmy rays, and the internal living fire shot forth broad beams like the spokes of a huge aërial wheel, rolling a flood of gold over the light blue waters of the lake, and a soft breeze, the breath of morn, awoke the waters into life.

[Sidenote: Troublesome Following.]

"The followers were very tiresome, mutinous, and inconsequent in their anxiety to escape from Kannena and the fighting Watuta. So, desiring the headman to precede me with a headstrong gang to the first stage, and to send back men to carry my hammock and remove a few loose loads, I breakfasted, and waited alone till the afternoon in the empty and deserted tembe; but no one came back, and the utter misery depicted in the countenance of the Beloch induced me to mount my manchil, and to set out carried by only two men. As the shades of evening closed around us we reached the ferry of the Ruche river, and we found no camp. The mosquitoes were like wasps, and the hippopotamus bellowed, snorted, and grunted; the roars of the crocodiles made the party miserable, as the porters waded through water waist-deep, and crept across plains of mud, mire, and sea-ooze. As it was too dark and dangerous to continue the march, and that, had I permitted, they would have wandered through the outer gloom, without fixed purpose, till permanently bogged, I called a halt, and we snatched, under a resplendent moon and a dew that soaked through the blankets, a few hours of sleep. We were destitute of tobacco and food, and when the dawn broke, I awoke and found myself alone; they had all fled and left me. About two p.m., some of them came back to fetch me; but they were so impertinent, ordering me to endure the midday heat and labour, that I turned them out, and told them to send back their master, Said bin Salim, in the evening or the next morning. Accordingly, the next morning, the 28th of May, at nine o'clock, appeared Said, the Jemadar, and a full gang of bearers. He was impertinent too, but I soon silenced him, and then we advanced till evening: for having tricked me he lost two days. Later on, a porter placed his burden upon the ground and levanted, and being cognac and vinegar, it was deeply regretted. Then the Unyamwezi guide (because his newly purchased slave-girl had become footsore and was unable to advance) cut off her head, lest out of his evil should come good to another. The bull-headed Mabruki bought a little slave of six years old. He trotted manfully alongside the porters, bore his burden of hide bed and water gourd upon his tiny shoulders. At first Mabruki was like a girl with a new doll, but when the novelty wore off, the poor little devil was so savagely beaten that I had to take him under my own protection. All these disagreeables I was obliged to smooth down, because a traveller who cannot utilize the raw material that comes to his hand, will make but little progress. Their dread of the Wavinza increased as they again approached the Malagarázi ferry. Here there are magnificent spectacles of conflagration.

[Sidenote: Forest on Fire.]

"A sheet of flame, beginning with the size of a spark, overspreads the hillside, advancing on the wings of the wind with the roaring rushing sound of many hosts where the grass lay thick, shooting huge forky tongues high into the dark air, where tall trees, the patriarchs of the forest, yielded their lives to the blast, smouldering and darkening, as if about to be quenched, where the rock afforded scanty fuel, then flickering, blazing up and soaring again till, topping the brow of the hill, the sheet became a thin line of fire, and gradually vanished from the view, leaving its reflection upon the canopy of lurid smoke studded with sparks and bits of live braise, which marked its descent on the other side of the buttress.

"We were treated with cruel extortion at the crossing of the Malagarázi, but the armies of ants, and an earthquake at 11.15 a.m. on the 4th of June, which induced us to consent, was considered a bad omen by my party. They took seven hours to transport us, and at four p.m. we found ourselves, with hearts relieved of a heavy load, once more at Ugogi, on the left bank of the river. Fortunately I arrived just in time to prevent Jack from buying a little pig for which he was in treaty, otherwise we should have lost our good name amongst the Moslem population. On the 8th of June we emerged from the inhospitable Uvinza into neutral ground, where we were pronounced 'out of danger.' The next day, when in the meridian of Usagozi, we were admitted for the first time to the comforts of a village.

"On the 17th of June, in spite of desertions, we came to Irora, the village of Salim bin Salih, who received us very hospitably. Here we saw the blue hills of Unyanyembe, our destination. Next day we got to Yombo, where we met some of our things coming up by the coast, sent by the Consul of France--the French do things smartly--and a second packet of letters. Every one had lost some friend or relation near and dear to him. My father had died on the 6th of last September, after a six weeks' illness, at Bath, and was buried on the 10th, and I only knew it on the 18th of June--the following year. Such tidings are severely felt by the wanderer who, living long behind the world, is unable to mark its gradual changes, lulls (by dwelling upon the past) apprehension into a belief that his home has known no loss, and who expects again to meet each old familiar face ready to smile upon his return, as it was to weep at his departure.

"We collected porters at Yombo, passed Zimbili, the village of our former miseries, and re-entered Kázeh, where we were warmly welcomed by our hospitable Snay bin Amir, who had prepared his house and everything grateful to starving travellers. Our return from Ujiji to Unyanyembe had been accomplished in twenty-two stations, two hundred and sixty-five miles. After a day's repose, all the Arab merchants called upon me, and I had the satisfaction of finding that my last order on Zanzibar for four hundred dollars' worth of cloth and beads had arrived, and I also recovered the lost table and chair which the slaves had abandoned.

"During the first week following the march, we all paid the penalty of the toilsome trudge through a perilous jungly country in the deadly season of the year, when the waters are drying up under a fiery sun, and a violent vent de bise from the east pours through the tepid air like cold water into a warm bath. I again got swelling and numbness of the extremities; Jack was a martyr to deafness and dimness of sight, which prevented him from reading, writing, and observing correctly; the Goanese were down with fever, severe rheumatism, and liver pains; Valentine got tertian type, and was so long insensible that I resolved to try the tinctura Warburgii. Oh, Doctor Warburg! true apothecary! we all owe you a humble tribute of gratitude; let no traveller be without you. The result was miraculous; the paroxysms did not return, the painful sickness at once ceased; from a death-like lethargy, sweet childish sleep again visited his aching eyes; chief boon of all, the corroding thirst gave way to appetite, followed by digestion. We all progressed towards convalescence, and in my case, stronger than any physical relief, was the moral effect of Success and the cessation of ghastly doubts and fears, and the terrible wear and tear of mind. I felt the proud consciousness of having done my best, under conditions, from beginning to end, the worst and most unpromising, and that whatever future evils Fate might have in store for me, it could not rob me of the meed won by the hardships and sufferings of the past.

[Sidenote: He sends Speke to find the Nyanza.]

"I had not given up the project of returning to the seaboard viâ Kilwa. As has already been mentioned, the merchants had detailed to me, during my first halt here, their discovery of a large lake, lying about sixteen marches to the north; and, from their descriptions and bearings, Jack laid down the water in a hand-map, and forwarded it to the Royal Geographical Society. All agreed in claiming for it superiority of size over the Tanganyika, and I saw that, if we could prove this, much would be cleared up. Jack was in a much fitter state of health to go. There was no need for two of us going, and I was afraid to leave him behind at Kázeh. It is very difficult to associate with Arabs as one of themselves. Jack was an Anglo-Indian, without any knowledge of Eastern manners and customs and religion, and of any Oriental language beyond broken Hindostanee. Now, Anglo-Indians, as everybody knows, often take offence without reason; they expect civility as their due, they treat all skins a shade darker than their own as 'niggers,' and Arabs are, or can be, the most courteous gentlemen, and exceedingly punctilious.[2]

"Jack did not afterwards represent this fairly in Blackwood, October, 1859. He said I 'was most unfortunately quite done up, and most graciously consented to wait with the Arabs and recruit my health;' but in July, 1858, writing on the spot, he wrote, 'To diminish the disappointment caused by the shortcoming of our cloth, and in not seeing the whole of the Sea of Ujiji, I have proposed to take a flying trip to the unknown lake, while Captain Burton prepares for our return homewards.' Said bin Salim did all he could to thwart the project, and Jack threatened him with the forfeiture of his reward after he returned to Zanzibar. Indeed, he told him it was already forfeited. He said 'he should certainly recommend the Government not to pay the gratuity, which the Consul had promised on condition that he worked entirely for our satisfaction, in assisting the expedition to carry out the arranged plans.' How Jack reconciled himself to misrepresent my conduct about the payment on reaching home, will never be understood.

"Our followers were to receive certain pay in any case, which they did receive, and a reward in case they behaved well; our asses, thirty-six in number, all died or were lost; our porters ran away; our goods were left behind and stolen; specimens of the fine poultry of Unyamwezi, intended to be naturalized in England, were bumped to death in the cases; our black escort were so unmanageable as to require dismissal; the weakness of our party invited attacks, and our wretched Beloch deserted us in the jungle, and throughout were the cause of an infinity of trouble. Jack agreed with me thoroughly, that it would be an act of weakness to pay the reward of ill-conduct; instead of putting it down to generosity, they would have put it down to fear, and they would have played the devil with every future traveller; yet he used this afterwards as a means to procure the Command of the next Expedition for himself, and pointed it at me as a disgrace.

"By dint of severe exertion, Jack was able to leave Kázeh on the 10th of July. These northern kingdoms were Karágwah, Uganda, and Unyoro. The Mkámá, or Sultan, of Karágwah was Armaníka, son of Ndagára, who was a very great man. He is an absolute Ruler, and governs without squeamishness. He receives the traveller with courtesy, he demands no blackmail, but you are valued according to your gifts. A European would be received with great kindness, but only a rich man could support the dignity of the white face. Corpulence is a beauty. Girls are fattened to a vast bulk by drenches of curds and cream, thickened with flour, and are beaten when they refuse, and they grow an enormous size.

[Sidenote: The Chief Suna.]

"From the Kitangure river, fifteen stations conduct the traveller to Kibuga, the capital of Uganda, the residence of its powerful despot, Suna. The Chief of Uganda has but two wants, with which he troubles his visitors. One is a medicine against Death, the other a charm to avert thunderbolts, and immense wealth would reward the man who would give him either of these two things. The army of Uganda numbers three hundred thousand men; each brings an egg to muster, and thus something like a reckoning of the people is made. Each soldier carries one spear, two assegais, a long dagger, and a shield; bows and swords are unknown. The women and children accompany, carrying spare weapons, provisions, and water. They fight to the sound of drums, which are beaten with sticks like ours; should this performance cease, all fly the field.

"Suna, when last visited by the Arabs, was a red man, of about forty-five, tall, robust, powerful of limb, with a right kingly presence, a warrior carriage, and a fierce and formidable aspect. He always carried his spear, and wore a long piece of bark-cloth from neck to ground; he makes over to his women the rich clothes presented by the Arabs. He has a variety of names, all expressing something terrible, bitter, and mighty. He used to shock the Arabs by his natural, unaffected impiety. He boasted to them that he was the God of earth, as their Allah was the Lord of heaven. He murmured loudly against the abuse of lightning, and claimed from his subjects divine honours, such as the facile Romans yielded to their Emperors. His sons, numbering more than a hundred, were confined in dungeons; the heir elect was dragged from his chains to fill a throne, and the cadets linger through their dreadful lives till death releases them. His female children were kept under the most rigid surveillance within the palace; but he had one favourite daughter, named Nasurú, whose society was so necessary to him, that he allowed her to appear with him in public.

[Sidenote: Richard collects a Vocabulary.]

"Suna encouraged, by gifts and attentions, the Arab merchants to trade in his capital, but the distance has prevented more than half a dozen caravans from reaching him; yet all loudly praised his courtesy and hospitality. My friend Snay Bin Amir paid him a visit in 1852. He was received in the audience hall, outside which were two thousand guards, armed only with staves. He was allowed to retain his weapons. He saluted the Chief, who motioned his guest to sit in front of him. Two spears were close to his hand. He has a large and favourite dog, resembling an Arab greyhound. The dog was, and is always, by his side. The ministers and the women were also present, but placed so that they could only see the visitor's back. He was eager of news. When the despot rose, all dispersed. At the second visit, Snay presented his blackmail, and it was intimated to the 'King's Stranger' that he might lay hands upon whatever he pleased, animate or inanimate; but Snay was too wise to avail himself of this privilege. There were four interviews, in which Suna inquired much about the Europeans, and was anxious for a close alliance with the Sultan of Zanzibar. He treated Snay very generously; but Snay, when he could without offence, respectfully declined things. Like all African Chiefs, the despot considered these visits as personal honours paid to himself. It would depend, however, upon his ingenuity and good fortune whether a traveller would be allowed to explore further, and perhaps the best way would have been to buy or to build boats upon the nearest western shore, with Suna's permission. During Jack's absence, I collected specimens of the multitudinous dialects. Kisawahili, or coast language, into which the great South African family here divides itself, is the most useful, because most generally known, and, once mastered, it renders the rest easy. With the aid of the slaves, I collected about five hundred words in the three principal dialects upon this line of road--the Kisawahili, the Kizaramo, which included the Kik'hutu, and the Kinyamwezi. It was very difficult, for they always used to answer me, 'Verily in the coast tongue, words never take root, nor do they ever bear branches.' The rest of my time was devoted to preparation for journeying, and absolute work--tailoring, sail-making, umbrella-mending, etc.

"On the 14th of July the last Arab Caravan left Unyanyembe, under the command of Sayf bin Said el Wardi. He offered to convey letters and anything else, and I forwarded the useless surveying instruments, manuscripts, maps, field and sketch books, and reports to the Royal Geographical Society. This excitement over, I began to weary of Kázeh.

DIFFERENCES BEGIN BETWEEN SPEKE AND RICHARD.

"Already I was preparing to organize a little expedition to K'hokoro and the southern provinces, when unexpectedly--in these lands a few cries and gun-shots are the only credible precursors of a Caravan--on the morning of the 25th of August reappeared Jack.

[Sidenote: Speke returns and the Differences arose.]

"At length Jack had been successful. His 'flying trip' had led him to the northern water, and he had found its dimensions surpassing our most sanguine expectations. We had scarcely, however, breakfasted before he announced to me the startling fact that 'he had discovered the sources of the White Nile.' It was an inspiration perhaps. The moment he sighted the Nyanza, he felt at once no doubt but that the 'lake at his feet gave birth to that interesting river, which has been the subject of so much speculation and the object of so many explorers.' The fortunate discoverer's conviction was strong. His reasons were weak, were of the category alluded to by the damsel Lucetta, when justifying her penchant in favour of the 'lovely gentleman,' Sir Proteus--

'I have no other but a woman's reason-- I think him so because I think him so;'[3]

and probably his Sources of the Nile grew in his mind as his Mountains of the Moon had grown under his hand.

"His main argument in favour of the lake representing the great reservoir of the White Nile was that the 'principal men' at the southern extremity ignored the extent northward. 'On my inquiring about the lake's length,' said Jack, 'the man (the greatest traveller in the place) faced to the north, and began nodding his head to it. At the same time he kept throwing forward his right hand, and making repeated snaps of his fingers, endeavouring to indicate something immeasurable; and added that nobody knew, but he thought it probably extended to the end of the world.' Strongly impressed by this valuable statistical information, Jack therefore placed the northern limit about 4° to 5° N. lat., whereas the Egyptian Expedition sent by the late Mohammed Ali Pacha, about twenty years ago, to explore the coy Sources, reached 3° 22' N. lat. The expedition therefore ought to have sailed fifty miles upon the Nyanza Lake. On the contrary, from information derived on the spot, that expedition placed the fountains at one month's journey--three hundred to three hundred and fifty miles--to the south-east, or upon the northern counterslope of Mount Kenia.

"Whilst marching to the coast, Jack--he tells us--was assured by a 'respectable Sawahili merchant that when engaged in traffic, some years previously, to the northward of the Line and the westward of this lake, he had heard it commonly reported that large vessels frequented the northern extremity of these waters, in which the officers engaged in navigating them used sextants and kept a log, precisely similar to what is found in vessels on the ocean. Query, Could this be in allusion to the expedition sent by Mohammed Ali up the Nile in former years?' (Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, May 9, 1859). Clearly, if Abdullah bin Nasib, the Msawahili alluded to, had reported these words, he merely erred. The Egyptian Expedition, as has been shown, not only did not find, they never even heard of a lake. But not being present at the conversation, besides the geographical difficulties which any scientific geographer could see at a glance, I am tempted to assign further explanation. Jack, wholly ignorant of Arabic, was obliged to depend upon 'Bombay.' Bombay misunderstood Jack's bad Hindostani. He then mistranslated the words in Kisawahili to the best African, who, in his turn, passed it on in a still wilder dialect to the noble savages who were under cross-examination. My experience is that words in journeys to and fro are liable to the severest accidents and have often bad consequences, and now I felt that an influent of the Nyanza was described as an effluent, and the real original and only genuine White Nile would remain thus described for years to our shame, and it is easy to see how the blunder originated.

"The Arabic bahr and the Kisawahili báhari are equally applicable, in vulgar parlance, to a river or sea, a lake or river. Traditions concerning a Western sea--the to them now unknown Atlantic--over which the white men voyage, are familiar to many East Africans; I have heard at Harar precisely the same report concerning the log and sextants. Either, then, Abdullah bin Nasib confounded, or Jack's 'interrupter' caused him to confound, the Atlantic and the lake. In the maps forwarded from Kázeh by Jack, the river Kivira was, after ample inquiry, made a western influent of the Nyanza Lake. In the map appended to the paper in Blackwood, before alluded to, it has become an effluent, and the only minute concerning so very important a modification is, 'This river (although I must confess at first I did not think so) is the Nile itself.'

"Beyond the assertion, therefore, that no man had visited the north, and the appearance of 'sextants' and 'logs' upon the waters, there is not a shade of proof pro. Far graver considerations lie on the con side; the reports of the Egyptian Expedition, and the dates of the several inundations which--as will presently appear--alone suffice to disprove the possibility of the Nyanza causing the flood of the Nile. It is doubtless a satisfactory thing to disclose to an admiring public of 'Statesmen, Churchmen, Missionaries, Merchants, and more particularly Geographers,' the 'solution of a problem, which it had been the first geographical desideratum of many thousand years to ascertain, and the ambition of the first Monarchs in the World to unravel' (Blackwood's Magazine, October, 1859). But how many times since the days of a certain Claudius Ptolemæius, surnamed Pelusiota, have not the fountains of the White Nile been discovered and re-discovered after this fashion?

"What tended at the time to make me the more sceptical, was the substantial incorrectness of the geographical and other details brought back by Jack. This was natural enough. The first thing reported to me was 'the falsehood of the Arabs at Kázeh, who had calumniated the good Sultan Muhayya, and had praised the bad Sultan Machunda:' subsequent inquiries proved their rigid correctness. Jack's principal informant was one Mansur bin Salim, a half-caste Arab, who had been flogged out of Kázeh by his compatriots; he pronounced Muhayya to be a 'very excellent and obliging person,' and of course he was believed. I then heard a detailed account 'of how the Caravan of Salim bin Rashid had been attacked, beaten, captured, and detained at Ukerewe, by its Sultan Machunda.' The Arabs received the intelligence with a smile of ridicule, and in a few days Salim bin Rashid appeared in person to disprove the report. These are but two cases of many. And what knowledge of Asiatic customs can be expected from the writer of the following lines?--'The Arabs at Unyanyembe had advised my donning their habit for the trip in order to attract less attention; a vain precaution, which I believe they suggested more to gratify their own vanity in seeing an Englishman lower himself to their position (?), than for any benefit that I might receive by doing so' (Blackwood, loco cit.). This galamatias of the Arabs! the haughtiest and the most clannish of all Oriental peoples.

[Sidenote: Richard soliloquizes on Speke's Change of Front.]

"Jack changed his manners to me from this date. His difference of opinion was allowed to alter companionship. After a few days it became evident to me that not a word could be uttered upon the subject of the lake, the Nile, and his trouvaille generally without offence. By a tacit agreement it was, therefore, avoided, and I should never have resumed it, had Jack not stultified the results of my expedition by putting forth a claim which no geographer can admit, and which is at the same time so weak and flimsy, that no geographer has yet taken the trouble to contradict it.

"Now, for the first time, although I had pursued my journey under great provocations from time to time, I never realized what an injury I had done the Expedition publicly, as well as myself, by not travelling alone, or with Arab companions, or at least with a less crooked-minded, cantankerous Englishman. He is energetic, he is courageous and persevering. He distinguished himself in the Punjaub Campaign. I first found him in Aden with a three years' furlough. His heart was set on spending two years of his leave in collecting animals north of the Line in Africa. He never thought in any way of the Nile, and he was astonished at my views, which he deemed impracticable. He had no qualifications for the excursion that he proposed to himself, except that of being a good sportsman. He was ignorant of the native races in Africa, he had brought with him about £400 worth of cheap and useless guns and revolvers, swords and cutlery, beads and cloth, which the Africans would have rejected with disdain. He did not know any of the manners and customs of the East; he did not know any language except a little Anglo-Hindostani; he did not even know the names of the Coast Towns. I saw him engage, as protectors or Abbans, any Somali donkey-boys who could speak a little English. I saw that he was going to lose his money and his 'leave' and his life. Why should I have cared? I do not know; but as 'virtue is really its own reward,' I did so, and have got a slap in the face, which I suppose I deserve. I first took him to Somali-land; then I applied officially for him, and thus saved his furlough and his money by putting him on full service. You would now think, to see his conduct, that the case was reversed--that he had taken me, not I him; whereas I can confidently say that, except his shooting and his rags of Anglo-Hindostani, I have taught him everything he knows. He had suffered in purse and person at Berberah, and though he does not know French or Arabic, though he is not a man of science, nor an acute astronomical observer, I thought it only just to offer him the opportunity of accompanying me as second in command into Africa. He quite understood that it was in a subordinate capacity, as we should have to travel amongst Arabs, Belochs, and Africans, whose language he did not know. The Court of Directors refused me, but I obtained it by an application, to the Local Authorities at Bombay. He knew by experience in Somali-land what travelling with me meant, and yet he was only too glad to come.

"I have also done more than Jack in the cause. The Royal Geographical Society only allowed us £1000, and sooner than fail I have sacrificed a part of the little patrimony I inherited, and my reward is, that I and my expenditure, and the cause for which I have sacrificed everything, are made ridiculous."

N.B.--Richard's kind-heartedness and forethought for others often militated against himself, owing to the meanness and unworthiness of the objects it was bestowed upon.

A FEW DETAILS OF THE LAKES FOR GEOGRAPHERS.

[Sidenote: For Geographers.]

"I will here offer to the reader a few details concerning the lake in question; they are principally borrowed from Jack's diary, carefully corrected, however, by Snay bin Amir, Salim bin Rashid,[4] and other merchants at Kázeh.

"This fresh-water sea is known throughout the African tribes as Nyanza, and the similarity of the sound to 'Nyassa,' the indigenous name of the little Maravi, or Kilwa Lake, may have caused in part the wild confusion in which speculative geographers have involved the Lake Regions of Central Africa. The Arabs, after their fashion of deriving comprehensive names from local and minor features, call it Ukerewe, in the Kisukuma dialect meaning the 'place of Kerewe' (Kelewe), an islet. As has been mentioned, they sometimes attempt to join by a river, a creek, or some other theoretical creation, the Nyanza with the Tanganyika, the altitude of the former being 3750 feet above sea-level, or 1900 feet above the latter, and the mountain regions which divide the two having been frequently travelled over by Arab and African caravans. Hence the name Ukerewe has been transferred in the 'Mombas Mission Map' to the northern waters of the Tanganyika. The Nyanza, as regards name, position, and even existence, has hitherto been unknown to European geographers; but, as will presently appear, descriptions of this sea by native travellers have been unconsciously transferred by our writers to the Tanganyika to Ujiji, and even to the Nyassa of Kilwa.

"M. Brun-Rollet ('Le Nil Blanc et le Soudan,' p. 209) heard that on the west of the Padongo tribe--which he places to the south of Mount Kambirah, or below 1° S. lat.--lies a great lake, from whose northern extremity issues a river whose course is unknown. In a map appended to his volume this water is placed between 1° S. and 3° N. lat., and about 25° 50' E. long. (Greenwich), and the reservoir is made an influent of the White Nile.

"Bowditch ('Discoveries of the Portuguese,' pp. 131, 132), when speaking of the Maravi Lake (the Nyassa), mentions that the 'negroes or the Moors of Melinde' have mentioned a great water which is known to reach Mombaça, which the Jesuit missionaries conjectured to communicate with Abyssinia, and of which Father Lewis Marianna, who formerly resided at Tete, recommended a discovery, in a letter addressed to the Government at Goa, which is still preserved among the public archives of that city. Here the confusion of the Nyanza, to which there was of old a route from Mombasah, with the Nyassa is apparent.

"At the southern point, where the Muingwira river falls into the tortuous creek, whose surface is a little archipelago of brown rocky islets crowned with trees and emerging from the blue waters, the observed latitude of the Nyanza Lake is 2° 24' S.; the longitude by dead reckoning from Kázeh is E. long. 33° and nearly due north, and the altitude by B. P. thermometer 3750 feet above sea-level. Its extent to the north is unknown to the people of the southern regions, which rather denotes some difficulty in travelling than any great extent. They informed Jack that from Mwanza to the southern frontier of Karágwah is a land journey of one month, or a sea voyage of five days towards north-north-west, and then to the north. They also pointed out the direction of Unyoro N. 20° W. The Arab merchants of Kázeh have seen the Nyanza opposite Weranhanja, the capital district of Armanika, King of Karágwah, and declares that it receives the Kitangure river, whose mouth has been placed about the equator.

"Beyond that point all is doubtful. The merchants have heard that Suna, the late despot of Uganda, built matumbi, or undecked vessels, capable of containing forty or fifty men, in order to attack his enemies, the Wasoga, upon the creeks which indent the western shores of the Nyanza. This, if true, would protract the lake to between 1° and 1° 30' of N. lat, and give it a total length of about 4°, or 250 miles. This point, however, is still involved in the deepest obscurity. Its breadth was estimated as follows:--A hill about two hundred feet above the water-level, shows a conspicuous landmark on the eastern shore, which was set down as forty miles distant. On the south-western angle of the line from the same point, ground appeared; it was not, however, perceptible north-west. The total breadth, therefore, has been assumed at eighty miles--a figure which approaches the traditions unconsciously chronicled by European geographers. In the vicinity of Usoga, the lake, according to the Arabs, broadens out; of this, however, and in fact of all the formation north of the equator, it is at present impossible to arrive at certainty.

"The Nyanza is an elevated basin or reservoir, the recipient of the surplus monsoon rain, which falls in the extensive regions of the Wamasai and their kinsmen to the east, the Karágwah line of the Lunar Mountains to the west, and to the south Usukuma, or Northern Unyamwezi. Extending to the equator in the central length of the African peninsula, and elevated above the limits of the depression in the heart of the continent, it appeared to be a gap in the irregular chain which, running from Usumbara and Kilima-ngao to Karágwah, represents the formation anciently termed the Mountains of the Moon. The physical features, as far as they were observed, suggest this view. The shores are low and flat, dotted here and there with little hills; the smaller islands also are hill-tops, and any part of the country immediately on the south would, if inundated to the same extent, present a similar aspect.

"The lake lies open and elevated, rather like the drainage and the temporary deposit of extensive floods than a volcanic creation like the Tanganyika, a long narrow mountain-girt basin. The waters are said to be deep, and the extent of the inundation about the southern creek proves that they receive during the season an important accession. The colour was observed to be clear and blue, especially from afar in the early morning; after nine a.m., when the prevalent south-east wind arose, the surface appears greyish or of a dull milky white, probably the effect of atmospheric reflection. The tint, however, does not, according to travellers, ever become red or green like the waters of the Nile. But the produce of the lake resembles that of the river in its purity; the people living on the shores prefer it, unlike that of the Tanganyika, to the highest and clearest springs; all visitors agree in commending its lightness and sweetness, and declare that the taste is rather of river or of rain water, than resembling the soft slimy produce of stagnant, muddy bottoms, or the rough harsh flavour of melted ice and snow.

"From the southern creek of the Nyanza, and beyond the archipelago of neighbouring islets, appear the two features which have given to this lake the name of Ukerewe. The Arabs call them 'Jezirah'--an ambiguous term, meaning equally insula and peninsula--but they can scarcely be called islands. The high and rocky Mazita to the east, and the comparatively flat Ukerewe on the west, are described by the Arabs as points terminating seawards in bluffs, and connected with the eastern shore by a low neck of land--probably a continuous reef--flooded during the rains, but never so deeply as to prevent cattle fording the isthmus. The northern and western extremities front deep water, and a broad channel separates them from the southern shore, Usukuma. The Arabs, when visiting Ukerewe or its neighbour, prefer hiring the canoes of the Wasakuma, and paddling round the south-eastern extremity of the Nyanza, to exposing their property and lives by marching through the dangerous tribes of the coast.

"The altitude, the conformation of the Nyanza Lake, the argilaceous colour and the sweetness of its waters, combine to suggest that it may be one of the feeders of the White Nile. In the map appended to M. Brun Rollet's volume, before alluded to, the large water west of the Padongo tribe, which clearly represents the Nyanza or Ukerewe, is, I have observed, made to drain northwards into the Fitri Lake, and eventually to swell the main stream of the White River. The details supplied by the Egyptian Expedition, which, about twenty years ago, ascended the White River to 3° 22' N. lat. and 31° 30' E. long., and gave the general bearing of the river from that point of its source as south-east, with a distance of one month's journey, or from three hundred to three hundred and fifty miles, would place the actual sources 2° S. lat. and 35° E. long., or in 2° eastward of the southern creek of the Nyanza Lake. This position would occupy the northern counterslope of the Lunar Mountains, the upper watershed of the high region whose culminating apices are Kilima-ngao, Kenia, and Doengo Engai. The distance of these peaks from the coast as given by Dr. Krapf must be considerably reduced, and little authority can be attached to his river Tumbiri.[5] The site, supposed by Mr. Macqueen (Proceedings of the Geographical Society of London, January 24th, 1859) to be at least twenty-one thousand feet above the level of the sea, and consequently three or four thousand feet above the line of perpetual congelation, would admirably explain the two most ancient theories concerning the source of the White River, namely, that it arises in snowy regions, and that its inundation is the result of tropical rains.

"It is impossible not to suspect that between the upper portion of the Nyanza and the watershed of the White Nile there exists a longitudinal range of elevated ground, running from east to west--a furca draining northwards into the Nile and southwards into the Nyanza Lake--like that which separates the Tanganyika from the Maravi or Nyassa of Kilwa. According to Don Angelo Vinco, who visited Loquéck in 1852, beyond the Cataract of Garbo--supposed to be in N. lat. 2° 40'--at a distance of sixty miles lie Robego, the capital of Kuenda and Lokoya (Logoja), of which the latter receives an affluent from the east. Beyond Lokoya the White Nile is described as a small and rocky mountain river, presenting none of the features of a stream flowing from a broad expanse of water like the great Nyanza reservoir.

"The periodical swelling of the Nyanza Lake, which, flooding a considerable tract of land on the south, may be supposed--as it lies flush with the basal surface of the country--to inundate extensively all the low lands that form its periphery, forbids belief in the possibility of its being the head-stream of the Nile, or the reservoir of its periodical inundation. In Karágwah, upon the western shore, the masika, or monsoon, last from October to May or June, after which the dry season sets in. The Egyptian Expedition found the river falling fast at the end of January, and they learned from the people that it would rise again about the end of March, at which season the sun is vertical over the equator. About the summer solstice (June), when the rains cease in the regions south of and upon the equator, the White Nile begins to flood. From March to the autumnal equinox (September) it continues to overflow its banks till it attains its magnitude, and from that time it shrinks through the winter solstice (December) till March.

"The Nile is, therefore, full during the dry season and low during the rainy season, south of and immediately upon the equator. And as the northern counterslope of Kenia will, to a certain extent, be a lee-land like Ugogi, it cannot have the superfluity of moisture necessary to send forth a first-class stream. The inundation is synchronous with the great falls of the northern equatorial regions, which extend from July to September, and is dependent solely upon the tropical rains. It is therefore probable that the true sources of the 'Holy River' will be found to be a network of runnels and rivulets of scanty dimensions, filled by monsoon torrents, and perhaps a little swollen by melted snow on the northern water-parting of the eastern Lunar Mountains.

OUR RETURN.

"At Kázeh, to my great disappointment, it was settled, in a full Arab conclave, that we must return to the coast by the path with which we were painfully familiar. It was only the state of our finances which prevented us, whilst at Ujiji, from navigating the Tanganyika southwards and arriving, after a journey of three months, at Kilwa. That and 'leave' prevented us from going to Karágwah and Uganda. The rains, which rendered travelling impossible, set in about September; our two years' leave of absence were drawing to a close, and we were afraid to risk it, but we meant to return and do these things, tracing the course of the Rufiji river (Rwaha) and visiting the coast between the Usagára Mountains and Kilwa, an unknown line.

[Sidenote: The Kindness of Musa Mzuri and Snay bin Amir.]

"Musa Mzuri returned with great pomp to Kázeh; he is between forty-five and fifty, tall, gaunt, with delicate extremities, and the regular handsome features of a high-caste Indian Moslem. He is sad and staid, wears a snowy skull-cap, and well-fitting sandals. His abode is a village in size, with lofty gates, spacious courts, full of slaves and hangers-on, a great contrast to the humility of the Semite tenements. His son knew a little English, but he had learnt no Hindostani from his father, who, though expatriated for thirty-five years, spoke his mother tongue purely and well. Musa was a man of quiet, unaffected manner, dashed with a little Indian reserve. One Salim bin Rashid, while collecting ivory to the eastward of the Nyanza Lake, had recovered a Msawahili porter, who, having fallen sick on the road, had been left by a Caravan amongst the wildest of the East African tribes, the Wahuma (the Wamasai). From this man, who spent two years amongst these plunderers and their rivals in villany, the Warudi, I gained most valuable information. I also was called upon by Amayr bin Said el Shaksi, a strong-framed, stout-hearted Arab, who, when his vessel foundered in the Tanganyika, swam for his life, and lived for five months on roots and grasses, until restored to Ujiji by an Arab canoe. He spent many hours a day with me--he gave me immense information; and Hilal bin Nasur, a well-born Harisi returned from K'hokoro, also gave me most valuable facts.

"It is needless to say that, with all our economy and care, we arrived at the coast destitute. The hospitable Snay bin Amir came personally, although only a convalescent, to superintend our departure, provided us with his own slaves and a charming Arab breakfast; he spent the whole of that day with us, and followed us out of the compound through a white-hot sun and a chilling wind; nay, he did more--he followed us to our next station with Musa, and he helped us to put the finishing touches to the journals. I thanked these kind-hearted men for their many good deeds and services, and promised to report to H.H. the Sayyid Majid the hospitable reception of his subjects generally, and of Snay and Musa in particular. In the evening we took a most affecting farewell.[6] On the 4th of October, insufficiency of porterage compelled me to send back men for articles left by them at several of the villages, and we at last reached Hanga, our former quarters. Desertions were rife, and so were quarrels, in which I was always begged to take an active part, but experience amongst the Bashi-Bazouks in the Dardanelles taught me better.

LITTLE IRONS.

[Sidenote: Speke's Illness.]

"At Hanga, Jack had been chilled on the march from the cruel easterly wind, and at the second march he had ague. At Hanga we were lodged in a foul cowhouse full of vermin, and exposed to the fury of the gales. He had a deaf ear, an inflamed eye, and a swollen face, but worst of all was a mysterious pain, which shifted--he could not say whether it was liver or spleen. It began with a burning sensation as by a branding iron above the right breast, and then extended to the heart with sharp twinges. It then ranged round the spleen, attacked the upper part of the right lung, and finally settled in the liver.

"On the 10th of October, at dawn, he woke with a horrible dream of tigers, leopards, and other beasts, harnessed with a network of iron hooks, dragging him, like the rush of a whirlwind, over the ground. He sat up on the side of his bed, forcibly clasping both sides with his hands. Half stupefied by pain, he called to Bombay, who had formerly suffered from this kichyomachyoma, 'the little irons,' who put him in the position a man must lie in, who gets this attack. The next spasm was less severe, but he began to wander. In twenty-four hours, supported by two men, he staggered towards the tent to a chair; but the spasms returning, he was assisted back into the house, where he had a third fit of epileptic description, like hydrophobia. Again he was haunted by crowds of devils, giants, lion-headed demons, who were wrenching with superhuman force, and stripping the sinews and tendons of his legs down to his ankles. With limbs racked by cramps, features drawn and ghastly, frame fixed and rigid, eyes glazed and glassy, he began to bark with a peculiar chopping motion of the mouth and tongue, with lips protruding, the effect of difficulty of breathing, which so altered his appearance that he was not recognizable, and terrified all beholders. When the third and severest spasm had passed away, and he could speak, he called for pen and paper, and wrote an incoherent letter of farewell to his family. That was the crisis. I never left him, taking all possible precautions, never letting him move without my assistance, and always having a resting-place prepared for him; but for some weeks he had to sleep in a half sitting-up position, pillow-propped, and he could not lie upon his side. Although the pains were mitigated, they did not entirely cease; this he expressed by saying, 'Dick, the knives are sheathed!'

"During Jack's delirium he let out all his little grievances of fancied wrongs, of which I had not had even the remotest idea. He was vexed that his diary (which I had edited so carefully, and put into the Appendix of 'First Footsteps in Eastern Africa') had not been printed as he wrote it--geographical blunders and all; also because he had not been paid for it, I having lost money over the book myself. He asked me to send his collections to the Calcutta Museum of Natural History; now he was hurt because I had done so. He was awfully grieved because in the thick of the fight at Berberah, three years before, I had said to him, 'Don't step back, or they will think we are running.' I cannot tell how many more things I had unconsciously done, and I crowned it by not accepting immediately his loud assertion that he had discovered the Sources of the Nile; and I never should have known that he was pondering these things in his heart, if he had not raved them out in delirium. I only noticed that his alacrity had vanished; that he was never contented with any arrangement; that he left all the management to me, and that then he complained that he had never been consulted; that he quarrelled with our followers, and got himself insulted; and, previously to our journey, having been unaccustomed to sickness, he neither could endure it himself, nor feel for it in others. He took pleasure in saying unkind, unpleasant things, and said he could not take an interest in any exploration if he did not command it.

"These illnesses are the effects of fever, and a mysterious manifestation of miasma in certain latitudes; for in some tracts we were perfectly well, in other tracts we were mortally sick, and the changes were instantaneous. Cultivation and Civilization will probably wear these effects out, by planting, clearing jungle, and so on.

"I immediately sent an express back to Snay bin Amir, for the proper treatment, and found that they powdered myrrh with yolk of egg and flour of mung for poultices. I saw that, in default of physic, change of air was the only thing for him, and I had a hammock rigged up for him, and by good fortune an unloaded Caravan was passing down to the coast. We got hold of thirteen unloaded porters, who for a large sum consented to carry us to Rubuga, else we should have been left to die in the wilderness. Bombay had long since returned to his former attitude, that of a respectful and most ready servant. He had on one trip broken my elephant gun, killed my riding-ass, and lost his bridle, and did all sorts of irrational things, but for all that he was a most valuable servant, for his unwearied activity, his undeviating honesty, and his kindness of heart. Said bin Salim had long forfeited my confidence by his carelessness and extravagance, and the disappearance of the outfit committed to him at Ujiji--in favour of one of his friends, as I afterwards learned--rendered him unfit for stewardship. The others praised each other openly and without reserve, and if an evil tale ever reached my ear, it was against innocent Bombay, its object being to ruin him in my estimation.

[Sidenote: They cross the "Fiery Field."]

As I knew we should be short of water, I prepared by packing a box with empty bottles, which we could fill at the best springs, and by the result of that after-wisdom which some have termed 'fool's wit,' I commenced the down march happy as a bourgeois or a trapper in the Pays Sauvage. Before entering the 'Fiery Field' the hammock-bearers became so exorbitant that I drew on my jackboots and mounted an ass, and Jack had so far convalesced that he wanted to ride too. He had still, however, harassing heartache, nausea, and other bilious symptoms, when exposed to the burning sun; but when he got to K'hok'ho in Ugogi, sleep and appetite came, he could carry a heavy rifle, and do damage amongst the antelope and guineafowl. Now all began to wax civil, even to servility, grumbling ceased, smiles mantled every countenance, and even the most troublesome rascal was to be seen meekly sweeping out our tents with a bunch of thorns. We made seven marches between Hanga and Tura, where we arrived on the 28th of October, and halted six days to procure food. My own party were 10; Said bin Salim's, 12; the Beloch, 38; Ramji's party, 24; the porters, 68--in all 152 souls. We plunged manfully into the 'Fiery Field,' and after seven marches in seven days, we bivouacked at Jiwe la Mkoa, and on the 12th of November, after two days' march, came into the fertile red plain of Mdaduru, in the transit of Ugogi. After that, where I had been taught to expect danger, it reduced itself to large disappearances of cloth and beads. Gul Mahommed was our Missionary, but he was just like the European old lady, who believes that on such subjects all the world must think with her. I have long been suspected of telling lies, when describing the worship of a god with four arms, and the goddesses with two heads. The transit of Ugogi occupied three weeks. At Kanyenye we were joined by a large down-Caravan of Wanyamwezi, who, amongst other news, told us that our former line through Usagára was closed through the fighting of the tribes.

[Sidenote: An Official Wigging.]

"On the 6th of December we arrived at our old ground in the Ugogi Dhun, and met another Caravan, which presently drew forth a packet of letters and papers. This post brought me rather an amusing official wigging. Firstly, there was a note from Captain Rigby, my friend Hamerton's successor at Zanzibar. Secondly, the following letter:--

"'3, Savile Row.

"'DEAR BURTON,

"'Go ahead! Vogel and MacGuire dead--murdered. Write often.

"'Yours truly,

"'NORTON SHAW.'

"The 'wig' was this. I had paid the Government the compliment of sending it, through the Royal Geographical Society, an account of political affairs in the Red Sea, saying I feared trouble at Jeddah, which I had had from my usual private information from the interior, being fearful that there would be troubles at Jeddah; and the only thanks I got was a letter, stating 'that my want of discretion and due regard for the authorities to whom I am subordinate, has been regarded with displeasure by the Government.' They are cold and crusty to reward a little word of wisdom from their babes and sucklings; but what was so comically sad was this:--The official wig was dated the 1st of July, 1857. Posts are slow in Africa, so that by the same post I got a newspaper with an account of the massacre of nearly all the Christians at Jeddah on the Red Sea, expressing great fears that the Arab population of Suez also might be excited to commit similar outrages. This took place on the 30th of June, 1858, exactly eleven months after I had warned the Government.

"We loaded on the 7th of December, and commenced the passage of the Usagára Mountains by the Kiringawána line. This is the southern route, separated from the northern by an interval of forty-three miles. It contains settlements like Maroro and Kisanga. It is nineteen short stages; provisions are procurable, water plentiful, and plenty of grass, as long as you can pass the Warori tribe. Mosquitoes are plentiful. The owners of the land have a chronic horror of the Warori, and on sighting our peaceful Caravan they raised the war-cry, and were only quieted on knowing that we were much more frightened than they were. We had wild weather, we stayed at Maroro for food; at Kiperepeta there were gangs of four hundred touters, with their muskets, waiting the arrival of Caravans.

[Sidenote: Christmas Day, 1858.]

"On Christmas Day, 1858, at dawn, we toiled along the Kikoboga river, which we forded four times. Jack and I had a fat capon instead of roast beef, and a mess of ground nuts sweetened with sugar-cane, which did duty for plum-pudding. The contrast of what was, with what might be, now however suggested pleasurable sensations. We might now see Christmas Day of 1859, whereas on Christmas Day, 1857, we saw no chance of that of 1858. Fourteen marches took us from the foot of Usagára Mountains to Central Zungomero, traversing the districts of Eastern Mbwiga, Marundwe, and Kirengwe. It is a road hideous and grotesque: no animals, flocks, or poultry; the villages look like birds' nests torn from the trees; the people slink away--they are all armed with bows and poisoned arrows. At Zungomero, the village on the left bank of the Mgeta, which we had occupied on the outer march, was razed to the ground. I here offered a liberal reward to get to Kilwa. However, I did not succeed, and there was some intrigue about the pay afterwards, which I never understood, which was annoying to me; but such events are common on the slave-paths in Eastern Africa. Of the seven gangs of porters engaged on this journey, only one, an unusually small portion, left me without being fully satisfied, and that one fully deserved to be disappointed.

"On the 14th of January, 1859, we received Mr. Apothecary Frost's letters, drugs, and medical comforts, for which we had written to him July, 1857. After crossing the Mgeta, we sat down patiently on a bank, in spite of the ants, to await the arrival of a Caravan to complete our gang, but the new medical comforts enabled us to have ether-sherbet and ether-lemonade, and it did not hurt us. On the 17th of January a Caravan came, which I had been longing to meet. The Arab Chiefs Sulayman bin Rashid el Riami and Mohammed bin Gharib, who called upon me without delay, gave me most interesting information. To the south, from Uhehe to Ubena, was a continuous chain of highlands pouring affluents across the road into the Rwaha river, and water was only procurable in the beds of the nullahs and fiumaras. If this chain be of any considerable length, it may represent the water-parting between the Tanganyika and Nyassa Lakes, and thus divide by another and a southerly lateral band the great Depression of Central Africa.

"The 21st of January we left Zungomero, and made Konduchi on the 3rd of February in twelve marches. The mud was almost throat-deep near Dut'humi, and we had a weary trudge of thick slabby mire up to the knees. In places, after toiling under a sickly sun, we crept under the tunnels of thick jungle-growth veiling the streams, the dank fœtid cold of which caused a deadly sensation of faintness, which was only relieved by a glass of ether-sherbet or a pipe of the strongest tobacco. By degrees it was found necessary to abandon the greater part of the remaining outfit and luggage. The 27th of January saw us pass safely by the village where M. Maizan was murdered.

"On the 28th there was a report that we were to be attacked at a certain place, and Said bin Salim came to tell me that the road was cut off, and that I must delay till an escort could be summoned from the coast. I knew quite well that it was only an intrigue, but I feared that real obstacles might be placed in our way by the wily little man, and as soon as bakshish was mentioned, four naked varlets appeared in a quarter of an hour as escort.

"On the 30th of January the men screamed with delight at the sight of the mango tree, and all their old familiar fruits.

"On the 2nd of February, 1859, Jack and I caught sight of the sea. We lifted our caps, and gave 'three times three and one more.' The 3rd of February saw us passing through the poles decorated with skulls--a sort of negro Temple Bar--at the entrance of Konduchi; they now grin in the London Royal College of Surgeons.

"Our entrance was immense. The war-men danced, shot, shouted; the boys crowded; the women lulliloo'd with all their might; and a general procession conducted us to the hut, swept, cleaned, and garnished for us, by the principal Banyan of the Head-quarter village, and there the crowd stared and laughed until they could stare and laugh no more. A boat transferred most of our following to their homes, and they kissed my hand and departed, weeping bitterly with the agony of parting. I sent a note to the Consul at Zanzibar, asking for a coasting craft to explore the Delta and the unknown course of the Rufiji river. I liberally rewarded Zawáda, who had attended to Jack in his illness. We were detained at Konduchi for six days, from the 3rd to the 10th of February.

[Sidenote: Speke leaves Richard Ill, but apparently Friendly.]

"On the 9th of February the craft arrived at Konduchi from Zanzibar, and we rolled down the coast with a fair, fresh breeze towards Kilwa, the Quiloa of De Gama and of Camoens. We lost all our crew by cholera, and we were unable to visit the course of the great Rufiji river, a counterpart of the Zambesi in the south, and a water-road which appears destined to become the highway of nations into Eastern Equatorial Africa. The deluge of rain and floods showed me that the travelling season was at an end. I turned the head of the craft northwards, and on the 4th of March, 1859, we landed once more on the island of Zanzibar. Sick and wayworn, I entered the house in sad memory of my old friend, which I was fated to regret still more. The excitement of travel was succeeded by an utter depression of mind and body; even the labour of talking was too great. The little State was in the height of confusion, in a state of Civil war; the eldest brother of the Sultan was preparing a hostile visit to his youngest brother, the Sultan Sayyid Majid of Zanzibar. After a fortnight of excitement and suspense, a gunboat was sent to the elder brother to persuade him to return. His Highness Sayyid Majid had honoured me with an expression of his desire that I should remain until the expected hostilities might be brought to a close. I did so willingly, in gratitude to a Prince to whose good will my success was mainly indebted, but the Consulate was no longer bearable to me. I was too conversant with local politics, too well aware of what was going on, to be a pleasant companion to its new tenant. I was unwilling to go, because so much remained to be done. I wanted to wait for fresh leave of absence and additional funds, but the evident anxiety of Consul Rigby to get rid of me, and Jack's nervous impatience to go on, made me abandon my intentions. Said bin Salim called often at the Consulate, but Captain Rigby agreed with me that he had been more than sufficiently rewarded, and the same with the others. Jack also was of the same opinion, but it suited Jack, with his secret prospects or intentions of returning without me, to change his mind afterwards, and he was evidently able to get Captain Rigby to do the same. There can be little doubt that Jack's intention of returning on the second Expedition, on the lines of the one which he had done so much to spoil, had a great deal to do with his action on this occasion. When H.M.S. Furious, carrying Lord Elgin and Mr. Laurence Oliphant, his secretary, arrived at Aden, passage was offered to both of us. I could not start, being too ill. But he went, and the words Jack said to me, and I to him, were as follows:--'I shall hurry up, Jack, as soon as I can,' and the last words Jack ever spoke to me on earth were, 'Good-bye, old fellow; you may be quite sure I shall not go up to the Royal Geographical Society until you come to the fore and we appear together. Make your mind quite easy about that.'

"With grateful heart I bid adieu to the Sultan, whose kindness and personal courtesy will long dwell in my memory, and who expressed a hope to see me again, and offered me one of his ships of war to take me home. However, a clipper-built barque, the Dragon of Salem, Captain Macfarlane, was about to sail with the south-west monsoon for Aden. Captain Rigby did not accompany us on board, a mark of civility usual in the East, but Bombay's honest face turned up and seemed peculiarly attractive.

"On the 22nd of March, 1859, the clove shrubs and coco trees of Zanzibar faded from my eyes, and after crossing and recrossing three times the tedious Line, we found ourselves anchored, on the 16th of April, near the ill-omened black walls of the Aden crater. The crisis of my African sufferings had taken place at the Tanganyika; the fever, however, still clung to me.

"I left the Aden coal-hole of the East on the 20th of April, 1859, and in due time greeted with becoming heartiness my native shores.

"The very day after he returned to England, May 9th, 1859, Jack called at the Royal Geographical Society and set on foot the scheme of a new exploration. He lectured in Burlington House, and when I reached London on May 21st I found the ground completely cut from under my feet. Sir Roderick Murchison had given Jack the leadership of a new Expedition; my own long-cherished plan of entering Africa through Somali-land, landing at the Arab town Mombas, was dismissed as unworthy of notice. Jack published two articles in Blackwood's Magazine, assumed the whole credit to himself, illustrated a wonderful account of his own adventures and discoveries, with a chart where invention is not in it. He said he did all the astronomical work, and had taught me the geography of the country through which we travelled, which made me laugh. Jack, who literally owed everything to me, habitually wrote and spoke of me to mutual friends in a most disagreeable manner. Many people who professed to be friendly to me said it would be more dignified to say nothing, but I knew how unwise it is to let public sentence pass by default, and how delay may cause everlasting evil, so I wrote the most temperate vindication of my position."[7]

[1] This was Richard's favourite and self-composed motto, and Chinese Gordon quoted it in every letter he wrote him to the last day of his life, with a word of congratulation as to its happy choice.--I. B.

[2] The Arabs always gave Richard the most courteous and cordial reception, treating him practically as one of themselves. They could not be expected to think so much of Speke, because he did not know their language or their religion, and he always treated them as an Anglo-Indian treats a nigger. He was burning to escape from Kázeh, and the society of an utterly idle man to one incessantly occupied is always a drawback, and Richard, whose stronger constitution had enabled him to bear up at first with greater success, was gradually but surely succumbing to the awful African climate.--I. B.

[3] "The following extract from the _Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society_, May 9, 1859, will best illustrate what I mean:--

"'Mr. Macqueen, F.R.G.S., said the question of the sources of the Nile had cost him much trouble and research, and he was sure there was no material error either in longitude or latitude in the position he had ascribed to them, namely, a little to the eastward of the meridian of 35° and a little northward of the equator. That was the principal source of the White Nile. The mountains there were exceedingly high, from the equator north to Kaffa Enarea. All the authorities, from east, west, north, or south, now perfectly competent to form judgments upon such a matter, agreed with him; and among them were the officers commanding the Egyptian Commission. It was impossible they could all be mistaken. Dr. Krapf had been within a very short distance of it; he was more than a hundred and eighty miles from Mombas, and he saw snow upon the mountains. He conversed with the people who came from them, and who told him of the snow and exceeding coldness of the temperature. The line of perpetual congelation, it is well known, was seventeen thousand feet above the sea. He had an account of the navigation of the White Nile by the Egyptian Expedition. It was then given as 30° 30' N. lat. and 31° E. long. At this point the expedition turned back for want of a sufficient depth of water. Here the river was 1370 feet broad, and the velocity of the current one quarter of a mile per hour. The journals also gave a specific and daily current, the depth and width of the river, and everything, indeed, connected with it. Surely, looking at the current of the river, the height of the Cartoom above the level of the sea, and the distance thence up to the equator, the sources of the Nile must be six or eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, and still much below the line of snow, which was six or eight thousand feet farther above them. He deeply regretted he was unable to complete the diagram for the rest of the papers he had given to the Society, for it was more important than any others he had previously given. It contained the journey over Africa from sea to sea, second only to Dr. Livingstone. But all the rivers coming down from the mountains in question, and running south-eastward, had been clearly stated by Dr. Krapf, who gave every particular concerning them. He should like to know what the natives had said was to the northward of the large lake. Did they say the rivers ran out from or into the lake? How could the Egyptian officers be mistaken?

"'Captain Speke replied. They were not mistaken; and if they had pursued their journey fifty miles further, they would undoubtedly have found themselves at the northern borders of this lake.

"'Mr. Macqueen said that other travellers--Don Angelo, for instance--had been within one and a half degrees of the equator, and saw the mountain of Kimborat under the Line, and persisted in the statement, adding that travellers had been up the river till they found it a mere brook. He felt convinced that the large lake alluded to by Captain Speke was not the source of the Nile; it was impossible it could be so, for it was not at a sufficiently high altitude.

"'The paper presented to the Society, when fully read in conjunction with the map, will clearly show that the Bahr-el-Abiad had no connection with Kilimanjaro, that it has no connection whatever with any lake or river to the south of the equator, and that the swelling of the river Nile proceeds from the tropical rains of the northern torrid zone, as was stated emphatically to Julius Cæsar by the Chief Egyptian Priest, Amoreis, two thousand years ago.

"'In nearly 3° N. lat. there is a great cataract, which boats cannot pass. It is called Gherba. About halfway (fifty miles) above, and between this cataract and Robego, the capital of Kuenda, the river becomes so narrow as to be crossed by a bridge formed by a tree thrown across it. Above Gherba no stream joins the river either from the south or south-west.'"

[4] "When Jack returned to Kázeh, he represented Ukerewe and Mazita to be islands, and although in sight of them, he had heard nothing concerning their connection with the coast. This error was corrected by Salim bin Rashid, and accepted by us. Yet I read in his 'Discovery of the Supposed Sources of the Nile:' 'Mansur, and a native, the greatest traveller of the place, kindly accompanied and gave me every obtainable information. This man had traversed the island, as he called it, of Ukerewe from north to south. But by his rough mode of describing it, I am rather inclined to think that instead of its being an actual island, it is a connected tongue of land, stretching southwards from a promontory lying at right angles to the eastern shore of the lake, which being a wash, affords a passage to the mainland during the fine season, but during the wet becomes submerged, and thus makes Ukerewe temporarily an island.' The information, I repeat, was given, not by the 'native,' but by Salim bin Rashid. When, however, the latter proceeded to correct Jack's confusion between the well-known coffee mart Kitara, and 'the island of Kitiri occupied by a tribe called Watiri,' he gave only offence, consequently Kitiri has obtained a local habitation in Blackwood and Petermann."

[5] "The large river Tumbiri, mentioned by Dr. Krapf as flowing towards Egypt from the northern counterslope of Mount Kenia, rests upon the sole authority of a single wandering native. As, moreover, the word T'humbiri or Thumbili means a monkey, and the people are peculiarly fond of satire in a small way, it is not improbable that the very name had no foundation of fact. This is mentioned, as some geographers--for instance, Mr. Macqueen ('Observations on the Geography of Central Africa,' Proceedings of the R.G.S. of London, May 9, 1859)--have been struck by the circumstance that the Austrian missionaries and Mr. Werne ('Expedition to discover the Source of the White Nile, in 1840-41') gave Tubirih as the Bari name of the White Nile at the southern limit of their exploration."

[6] Richard long mourned the loss of his friend, whom Captain Speke, on his second journey with Colonel Grant--whether unable to assist I know not--left to be killed by the negroes of Mirámbo, his African enemy, in the bush.--I. B.

[7] Richard was a strong-willed, outspoken, and grievously injured man, under the greatest provocation ever put forth. He behaved with dignity, calmness, and generosity, above all praise.--I. B.

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XV. RICHARD AND I MEET AGAIN

"For life, with all its yields of joy and woe And hope and fear, Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love-- How love might be, hath been indeed, and is." ----ROBERT BROWNING.

"Dying is easy; keep thou steadfast. The greater part, to live and to endure." ----MRS. HAMILTON KING, The Disciples.

"When Calumny's foul dart thy soul oppresses, Think'st thou the venomed shaft could poison me? No! the world's scorn, still more than its caresses, Shall bind me closer, O my love, to thee.

"Should the days darken, and severe affliction Close whelming o'er us like a stormy sea, Love shall transform them into benedictions Binding me closer, O my love, to thee."

* * * * *

"When truth or virtue an affront endures, The affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours; Mine as a friend to every worthy mind, And mine as man who feels for all mankind." ----POPE.

Just as I was getting into despair, and thinking whether I should go and be a Sister of Charity (May, 1859), as the appearance of Speke alone in London was giving me the keenest anxiety, and as I heard that Richard was staying on in Zanzibar, in the hopes of being allowed to return into Africa, I was very sore.[1]

On May 22nd, 1859, I chanced to call upon a friend. I was told she was gone out, but would be in to tea, and was asked if I would wait. I said, "Yes;" and in about five minutes another ring came to the door, and another visitor was also asked to wait. The door was opened, and I turned round, expecting to see my friend. Judge of my feelings when I beheld Richard. For an instant we both stood dazed, and I cannot attempt to describe the joy that followed. He had landed the day before, and came to London, and now he had come to call on this friend to know where I was living, where to find me. No one will wonder if I say that we forgot all about her and tea, and that we went downstairs and got into a cab, and took a long drive.

I felt like one stunned; I only knew that he put me in and told the cabman to drive. I felt like a person coming to after a fainting fit or in a dream. It was acute pain, and for the first half-hour I found no relief. I would have given worlds for tears or breath; neither came, but it was absolute content, which I fancy people must feel the first few moments after the soul is quit of the body. The first thing that happened was, that we mutually drew each other's pictures out from our respective pockets at the same moment, which, as we had not expected to meet, showed how carefully they had been kept.

After that, we met constantly, and he called upon my parents. I now put our marriage seriously before them, but without success as regards my mother.

I shall never forget Richard as he was then; he had had twenty-one attacks of fever, had been partially paralyzed and partially blind; he was a mere skeleton, with brown yellow skin hanging in bags, his eyes protruding, and his lips drawn away from his teeth. I used to give him my arm about the Botanical Gardens for fresh air, and sometimes convey him almost fainting to our house, or friends' houses, who allowed and encouraged our meeting, in a cab.

The Government and the Royal Geographical Society looked coldly on him; the Indian army brought him under the reduction; he was almost penniless, and he had only a few friends to greet him. Speke was the hero of the hour, the Stanley of 1859-1864. This was one of the martyrdoms of that uncrowned King's life, and I think but that for me he would have died.

He told me that all the time he had been away the greatest consolation he had had was my fortnightly journals, in letter form, to him, accompanied by all newspaper scraps and public and private information, and accounts of books, such as I knew would interest him, so that when he did get a mail, which was only in a huge batch now and then, he was as well posted up as if he were living in London.

[Sidenote: _We try to effect a Reconciliation between Speke and Richard._]

He never abused Speke, as a mean man would have done; he used to say, "Jack is one of the bravest fellows in the world; if he has a fault it is overweening vanity, and being so easily flattered; in good hands he would be the best of men. Let him alone; he will be very sorry some day, though that won't mend my case." It is interesting now to mark in their letters how they descend from "Dear Jack," and "Dear Dick," to "Dear Burton," and "Dear Speke," until they become "Sir!" But I must relate in Speke's favour that the injury once done to his friend, and the glory won for himself, he was not happy with it.

Speke and I had a mutual friend, a lady well known in Society as Kitty Dormer (Countess Dormer)--she would be ninety-four were she now living. She was one of the fashionable beauties of George IV.'s time, and was engaged to my father when they were young.

About a hundred years or more ago, a John Hanning Speke had married one of the Arundells of Wardour, and Lord Arundell always considered the Spekes as sort of neighbours and distant connections, so through this lady's auspices, Speke and I met, and also exchanged many messages; and we nearly succeeded in reconciling Richard and Speke, and would have done so, but for the anti-influences around him. He said to me, "I am so sorry, and I don't know how it all came about. Dick was so kind to me; nursed me like a woman, taught me such a lot, and I used to be so fond of him; but it would be too difficult for me to go back now." And upon that last sentence he always remained and acted.

Richard was looking so lank and thin. He was sadly altered; his youth, health, spirits, and beauty were all gone for the time. He fully justified his fevers, his paralysis and blindness, and any amount of anxiety, peril, hardship, and privation in unhealthy latitudes. Never did I feel the strength of my love as then. He returned poorer, and dispirited by official rows and every species of annoyance; but he was still, had he been ever so unsuccessful, and had every man's hand against him, my earthly god and king, and I could have knelt at his feet and worshipped him. I used to feel so proud of him; I used to like to sit and look at him, and to think, "You are mine, and there is no man on earth the least like you."

At one time, when he was at his worst, I found the following in his journal--

"I hear the sounds I used to hear, The laugh of joy, the groan of pain; The sounds of childhood sound again. Death must be near!

"Mine eye reviveth like mine ear; As painted scenes pass o'er the stage, I see my life from youth to age. Ah, Death is near!

"The music of some starry sphere, A low, melodious strain of song, Like to the wind-harp sweeps along. Yes, Death is near!

"A lovely sprite of smiling cheer, Sits by my side in form of light; Sits on my left a darker sprite. Sure, Death is near!

"The meed for ever deemed so dear, Repose upon the breast of Fame; (I did but half), while lives my name. Come then, Death, near!

"Where now thy sting? Where now thy fear? Where now, fell power, the victory? I have the mastery over thee. Draw, Death, draw near!"

[Sidenote: My Appeal to my Mother.]

I felt bitterly not having the privilege of staying with Richard and nursing him, and he was very anxious that our marriage should take place; so I wrote the following letter to my mother, who was still violently opposing me, and who was absent on some visits:--

"October, 1859.

"MY DEAREST MOTHER,[2]

"I feel quite grateful to you for inviting my confidence. It is the first time you have ever done so, and the occasion shall not be neglected. It will be a great comfort to me to tell you all; but you must forgive me if I say that I have one tender place too sore to be touched, and that an unkind or slighting word might embitter all our future lives. I know it is impossible for you, with your views for me, both spiritual and temporal, to understand, far less sympathize with me on the present occasion.

"I feel nothing in common with the world I live in. I dreamt of a Companion and a Life that would suit me exactly, and I them. Like many other people, I suppose, I found my heart yearning, and my tastes developing towards quite opposite things to those which fall naturally in my way. I am rather ashamed to tell you that I fell in love with Captain Burton at Boulogne, and would have married him at any time between this and then, if he had asked me. The moment I saw his brigand-daredevil look, I set him up as an idol, and determined that he was the only man I would ever marry; but he never knew it until three years ago, before he went to Africa. From Boulogne he went to Mecca and Medina, and then to Harar, and then to the Crimea, and on his return home, in 1856, you may remember he came to see us, and I saw him again, and then he fell in love with me and asked me to be his wife, and was perfectly amazed to find that I had cared for him all that time. He was then just going to start for Central Africa; he could not marry me, he could not take me, but we promised to be true to each other, and, as you well know, we met every day. When I came home one day in an ecstasy and told you that I had found the Man and the Life I longed for, that I clung to them with all my soul, and that nothing would turn me, and that all other men were his inferiors, what did you answer me? 'That he was the only man you would never consent to my marrying; that you would rather see me in my coffin.' Did you know that you were flying in the face of God? Did you know it was my Destiny? Do you not realize that, because it is not your ideal, you want to dash mine from me? He has been away three years, and I have waited for him, feeling sure that in the end you would relent. You have faith in the hand of God in these matters! I called on a friend who was not at home. I was asked to wait; five minutes after the bell rang again, and another visitor was also asked to wait; the door opened, and Captain Burton and I stood face to face. He had disembarked the night before, had just arrived in town, and called there to know where I was living. The year and eight months' silence, which had distressed me so awfully, when you all said he had forgotten me, that he had been eaten by jackals, that he never meant to return, had been spent in the wildest part of the desert, where there was no means of communication. He had had twenty-one fevers, temporary blindness, and partial paralysis of the limbs; he has come back with flying colours, but youth, health, good looks, and spirits temporarily broken up from hardships, privations and dangers, and also many a scar. It surprises me that you should consider mine an infatuation, you who worship talent, and my father bravery and adventure, and here they are both united. Look at his military services--India and the Crimea! Look at his writings, his travels, his poetry, his languages and dialects! Now Mezzofanti is dead he stands first in Europe; he is the best horseman, swordsman, and pistol shot. He has been presented with the gold medal, he is an F.R.G.S., and you must see in the newspapers of his glory, and fame, and public thanks, where he is called 'the Crichton of the day,' 'one of the Paladins of the Age,' 'the most interesting figure of the nineteenth century,' 'the man par excellence of brain and pluck.' In his wonderful explorings, he goes where none but natives have ever trod, in hourly peril of his life, often wounded, often without food and water. One day he is a doctor, one day a priest, another he keeps a stall in the bazar, sometimes he is a blacksmith. I could tell you such adventures of him, and traits of determination, which would delight you, were you unprejudiced. It makes me quite ill to see little men boasting of the paltry things that they have done or seen, after this man, who has never been known to speak of himself. He is not at all the man, speaking of his private character, that people take him to be, or what he sometimes, for fun, pretends to be. There is no one whom you would more respect, or attach yourself to, for he is lovable in every way; and what fascinates me is, that every thought, word, or deed is that of a thorough gentleman. I wish I could say the same for all our own acquaintances or relations. There is not a particle of pettiness or snobbery in him; he is far superior to any man I ever met; he has the brain, pluck, and manliness of any hundred of those I have ever seen, united to exceeding sensitiveness, gentleness, delicacy, generosity, and good pride. He is the only being who awes me into respect, and to whose command I bow my head; and any evil opinions you may have ever heard of him, arise from his recklessly setting at defiance conventional people, talking nonsense about religion and heart and principle, which those who do not know him unfortunately take seriously, and he amuses himself with watching their stupid faces. Once he is married to me, he will be the favourite of our family, and you will all be proud of him, and have implicit confidence in him. And let me tell you another thing: you and my father are immensely proud of your families, and we are taught to be the same; but from the present to the future, I believe that our proudest record will be our alliance with Richard Burton. I want to 'Live.' I hate the artificial existence of London; I hate the life of a vegetable in the country; I want a wild, roving, vagabond life. I am young, strong, and hardy, with good nerves; I like roughing it, and I always want to do something daring and spirited; you will certainly repent it, if you keep me tied up. I wonder that you do not see the magnitude of the position offered to me. His immense talent and adventurous life must command interest. A master-mind like his exercises power and influence over all around him; but I love him because I find in him so much depth of feeling, and a generous heart; because, knowing him to be as brave as a lion, he is yet so gentle, of a delicate, sensitive nature, and the soul of honour. I am fascinated by his manners because they are easy, dignified, simple, and yet so original; there is such a touching forgetfulness of himself and his fame. He appears to me a something so unique and romantic. He unites the wild and daring, with the true gentleman in every sense of the word, and a stamp of a man of the world of the very best sort, having seen things without the artificial atmosphere we live in, as well as within. He has even the noble faults I love in a man, if they can be so called. He is proud, fiery, satirical, ambitious; how could I help looking up to him with fear and admiration? I worship ambition. Fancy achieving a good which affects millions, making your name a national one? It is infamous the way most men in the world live and die, and are never missed, and, like us women, leave nothing but a tombstone. By ambition I mean men who have the will and power to change the face of things. I wish I were a man. If I were, I would be Richard Burton; but, being only a woman, I would be Richard Burton's wife. He has not mere brilliancy of talent, but brains that are a rock of good sense, and stern decision of character. I love him purely, passionately, and respectfully; there is no void in my heart, it is at rest for ever with him. It is part of my nature, part of myself, the basis of all my actions, part of my religion; my whole soul is absorbed in it. I have given my every feeling to him, and kept nothing back for myself or for the world. I would this moment sacrifice and leave all to follow his fortunes, even if you all cast me out--if the world tabooed me, and no compensation could be given to me for his loss. Whatever the world may condemn of lawless or strong opinions, whatever he is to the world, he is perfect to me, and I would not have him otherwise than he is.

"That is my side of the business, and now I will turn to your few points. You have said that 'you do not know who he is, that you do not meet him anywhere.' I don't like to hear you say the first, because it makes you out illiterate, and you know how clever you are; but as to your not meeting him, considering the particular sort of society which you seek with a view to marrying your daughters, you are not likely to meet him there, because it bores him, and it is quite out of his line. In these matters he is like a noble, simple savage, and has lived too much in the desert to comprehend the snobberies of our little circles in London. He is a world-wide man, and his life and talents open every door to him; he is a great man all over the East, in literary circles in London, and in great parties where you and I would be part of the crowd, he would be remarkable as a star, also amongst scientific men and in the clubs. Most great houses are only too glad to get him. The only two occasions in which he came out last season it was because I begged him to, and he was bored to death. In public life every one knows him. As to birth, he is just as good as we are; all his people belong to good old families. The next subject is religion. With regard to this he appears to disbelieve, pretends to self-reliance, quizzes good, and fears no evil. He leads a good life, has a natural worship of God, innate honour, and does unknown good. At present he is following no form; at least, none that he owns to. He says there is nothing between Agnosticism and Catholicity. He wishes to be married in the Catholic Church, says that I must practise my own religion, and that our children must be Catholics, and will give such a promise in writing. I myself do not care about people calling themselves Catholics, if they are not so in actions, and Captain Burton's life is far more Christian, more gentlemanly, more useful, and more pleasing to God--I am sure--than many who call themselves Catholics, and whom we know. No. 3 point is money, and here I am before you, terribly crestfallen--- there is nothing except his pay. As captain, that is, I believe, £600 a year in India, and £300 in England. We want to try and get the Consulship of Damascus, where we could have a life after both our hearts, and where the vulgarity of poverty would not make itself apparent. If you do not disinherit me, I shall settle my portion on him, and after on any children we may have, in which case he would insure his life. He may have expectations or not, but we can't rely on them.

"Now, dearest mother, I think we should treat each other fairly. Let him go to my father, and ask for me properly. Knowing you as I do, your ideas and prejudices, I know that a man of different religion and no means, would stand in a disagreeable position; so does he, and I will not have him insulted. I don't ask you to approve, nor to like it; I don't expect it. I do entreat your blessing, and even a passive, reluctant consent to anything that I may do. We shall never marry any one else, and never give each other up, should we remain so all our lives. Do not accuse me of deception, because I shall see him and write to him whenever I get a chance, and if you drive me to it I shall marry him in defiance, because he is by far my first object in life, and the day he (if ever) gives me up I will go straight into a convent. If you think your Catholic friends and relatives will blame you, shut your eyes, give me no wedding, no trousseau, let me get married how I can; but when it is done, acknowledge to yourself that I neither could nor would be dishonourable enough to marry any other man, that God made no law against poor people becoming attached to each other, that I am of an age when you can only advise but not hinder me, that your leave once asked my duty ends, that your life is three parts run, and mine is before me, and that if I choose to live out of the 'World' that forms your happiness, what is it to you? how does it hurt you? I have got to live with him night and day, for all my life. The man you would choose I should loathe. I see all the disadvantages, and am willing to accept them with him. Why should you object? I do not ask you to share it. You will see that I am so set on it, that the whole creation is as nothing in comparison, that nothing will keep me from it. Do not embitter my whole future life, for God's sake. I would rather die a thousand times than go through again what I have borne for the last five years. Do not quarrel with me, or keep me away from you, and you shall not regret it. I shall have a wide field for a useful, active life, if you do not crush me by an unhappy coldness. When you take the 'World' into your confidence, remember that the day will come when you will forgive and repent, and you will feel quite hurt to find that the 'World' does not forgive, that it remembers all you said when you were angry, and that you have debarred your own children from many pleasant things in this life. When we are parted there will be endless regrets. I will not allude to other marriages that you have consented to, but you should rejoice that I have got a man who knows how to protect me, and to take care of me. Do think it all over in earnest, and if you love me as you say you do--and I believe it well--do be generous and kind about this. Parents hold so much power to bless or curse the future. Which will you do for me? Let it be a blessing! I look upon him as my future husband; I only wait a kind word from you, the appointment, and Cardinal Wiseman's protection. Do write to me, dearest mother, but write not with your views, but entering into mine.

"Your fondly attached child,

"ISABEL ARUNDELL."

[Sidenote: My Letter to my Mother--Not a Success.]

The only answer to this letter was an awful long and solemn sermon, telling me "that Richard was not a Christian, and had no money." I do not defend my letter to my mother; I should not wish that girls should say or think that this is the way to write to one's mother, nor would mothers in general like to receive such a letter. I print it to show what Richard's character was, and the impression that a girl would receive of it, what views, and what feelings she was capable of entertaining for him. I only plead that I was fighting for my whole future life, and my natural destiny; that I had waited for five years; and that I saw that I had to force my mother's hand, or lose all that made life worth living for. Richard used to say that my mother and I were both gifted with "the noble firmness of the mule." Of course I can see now what an aggravating letter it must have been to a woman whose heart was set on big matches for her daughters.

Richard now brought out the "Lake Regions of Equatorial Africa" (2 vols., 1860), and the Royal Geographical Society dedicated the whole of Vol. XXXIII. to the same subject (Clowes and Sons, 1860). My mother still remained obstinate, and Richard thought we should have to take the law into our own hands. I could not bear the thoughts of going against my mother.

One day in April, 1860, I was walking out with two friends, and a tightening of the heart came over me that I had known before. I went home and said to my sister, "I am not going to see Richard for some time." She said, "Why, you will see him to-morrow." "No, I shall not," I said; "I don't know what is the matter." A tap came at the door, and a note with the well-known writing was put into my hand. I knew my fate, and with deep-drawn breath I opened it. He had left--could not bear the pain of saying good-bye; would be absent for nine months, on a journey to see Salt Lake City. He would then come back, and see whether I had made up my mind to choose between him or my mother, to marry me if I would; and if I had not the courage to risk it, he would go back to India, and from thence to other explorations, and return no more. I was to take nine months to think about it.

I was for a long time in bed, and delirious. For six weeks I was doctored for influenza, mumps, sore throat, fever, delirium, and everything that I had not got, when in reality I was only heartsick, struggling for what I wanted, a last hard struggle with the suspense of my future before me, and nothing and nobody to help me. I felt it would be my breaking up if circumstances continued adverse, but I determined to struggle patiently, and suffer bravely to the end.

At this juncture, as I was going to marry a poor man, and also to fit myself for Expeditions, I went, for change of air, to a farmhouse, where I learnt every imaginable thing that I might possibly want, so that if we had no servants, or if servants were sick or mutinous, we should be perfectly independent.

On my return I saw the murder of a Captain Burton in the paper, and even my mother pitied me, and took me to the mail office, where a clerk, after numberless inquiries, gave us a paper. My life seemed to hang on a thread till he answered, and then my face beamed so that the poor man was quite startled. It was a Captain Burton, murdered by his crew. I could scarcely feel sorry--how selfish we are!--and yet he too, doubtless, had some one to love him.

Richard, meantime, had gone all over the United States, and made a wonderful lot of friends; had gone to Salt Lake City to see Brigham Young, where he stayed with the Mormons and their Prophet for six weeks at great Salt Lake City, visiting California, where he went all over the gold-diggings, and learnt practically to use both pick and pan. He asked Brigham Young if he would admit him as a Mormon, but Brigham Young shook his head, and said, "No, Captain, I think you have done that sort of thing once before." Richard laughed, and told him he was perfectly right.

About this time there was a meeting at the Royal Geographical Society--November 13. I quote from the papers--

"Lord Ashburton (President) in the chair.--Captain J. Grantham, R.E.; R. Lush, Q.C.; J. A. Lockwood, and H. Cartwright, Esqs., were elected Fellows.--The minutes of the former meeting having been confirmed, the Chairman said that a letter would be read from Captain Burton, by the Secretary. It would be a matter of pleasure to all present to know that Captain Burton was in good health. Dr. Shaw then read the following characteristic letter, which had been addressed to him by that officer:--

"'Salt Lake City, Deserat, Utah Territory, September 7.

"MY DEAR SHAW,

"'You'll see my whereabouts by the envelope; I reached this place about a week ago, and am living in the odour of sanctity,--a pretty strong one it is too,--apostles, prophets, et hoc genus omne. In about another week I expect to start for Carson Valley and San Francisco. The road is full of Indians and other scoundrels, but I've had my hair cropped so short that my scalp is not worth having. I hope to be in San Francisco in October, and in England somewhere in November next. Can you put my whereabouts in some paper or other, and thus save me the bother of writing to all my friends? Mind, I'm travelling for my health, which has suffered in Africa, enjoying the pure air of the prairies, and expecting to return in a state of renovation and perfectly ready to leave a card on Muata Yanoo, or any other tyrant of that kind.

"'Meanwhile, ever yours,

"R. F. BURTON.'

"The paper read was, 'Proposed Exploration in North-Western Australia under Mr. F. Gregory.'--Mr. Galton read letters from Captain Speke, in command of the East African Expedition, conveying the gratifying intelligence that, through the kind assistance of Sir George Grey, Governor at the Cape of Good Hope, the party had been strengthened by the accession of a guard of twelve Hottentot soldiers and £300. Admiral Keppel had conveyed the expedition in her Majesty's steamer Brisk to Zanzibar.--A despatch from Sir George Grey on Mr. Chapman's and Mr. Anderson's late journeys in South Africa was read.--The President announced that subscriptions would be received at the Royal Geographical Society, 15, Whitehall Place, in aid of Consul Petherick's Expedition, to co-operate with that under Captains Speke and Grant, viâ Khartoum and the Upper Nile."

Richard travelled about twenty-five thousand miles, and then he turned his head homewards. He wrote the "City of the Saints," 1 vol., on the Mormons, and he brought it out in 1861. It was reprinted by Messrs. Harper of New York, and extensively reviewed, especially by the Tour du Monde.

[Sidenote: News of Richard and Subsequent Return.]

It was Christmas, 1860, that I went to stop with my relatives, Sir Clifford and Lady Constable (his first wife, née Chichester), at Burton Constable,--the father and mother of the present baronet. There was a large party in the house, and we were singing; some one propped up the music with the Times which had just arrived, and the first announcement that caught my eye was that "Captain R. F. Burton had arrived from America."

I was unable, except by great resolution, to continue what I was doing. I soon retired to my room, and sat up all night, packing, and conjecturing how I should get away,--all my numerous plans tending to a "bolt" next morning,--should I get an affectionate letter from him. I received two; one had been opened and read by somebody else, and one, as it afterwards turned out, had been burked at home before forwarding. It was not an easy matter. I was in a large country-house in Yorkshire, with about twenty-five friends and relatives, amongst whom was one brother, and I had heaps of luggage. We were blocked up with snow and nine miles from the station, and (contra miglior noler voler mal pugna) I had heard of his arrival only early in the evening, and twelve hours later I had managed to get a telegram ordering me to London, under the impression that it was of the most vital importance.

What a triumph it is to a woman's heart, when she has patiently and courageously worked, and prayed, and suffered, and the moment is realized that was the goal of her ambition!

As soon as we met, and had had our talk, he said, "I have waited for five years. The three first were inevitable on account of my journey to Africa, but the last two were not. Our lives are being spoiled by the unjust prejudices of your mother, and it is for you to consider whether you have not already done your duty in sacrificing two of the best years of your life out of respect to her. If once you really let me go, mind, I shall never come back, because I shall know that you have not got the strength of character which my wife must have. Now, you must make up your mind to choose between your mother and me. If you choose me, we marry, and I stay; if not, I go back to India and on other Explorations, and I return no more. Is your answer ready?" I said, "Quite. I marry you this day three weeks, let who will say nay."

When we fixed the date of our marriage, I wanted to be married on Wednesday, the 23rd, because it was the Espousals of Our Lady and St. Joseph, but he would not, because Wednesday, the 23rd, and Friday, the 18th, were our unlucky days; so we were married on the Vigil, Tuesday, the 22nd of January.

We pictured to ourselves much domestic happiness, with youth, health, courage, and talent to win honour, name, and position. We had the same tastes, and perfect confidence in each other. No one turns away from real happiness without some very strong temptation or delusion. I went straight to my father and mother, and told them what had occurred. My father said, "I consent with all my heart, if your mother consents," and my mother said, "Never!" I said, "Very well, then, mother! I cannot sacrifice our two lives to a mere whim, and you ought not to expect it, so I am going to marry him, whether you will or no." I asked all my brothers and sisters, and they said they would receive him with delight. My mother offered me a marriage with my father and brothers present, my mother and sisters not. I felt that that was a slight upon him, a slight upon his family, and a slur upon me, which I did not deserve, and I refused it. I went to Cardinal Wiseman, and I told him the whole case as it stood, and he asked me if my mind was absolutely made up, and I said, "Absolutely." Then he said, "Leave the matter to me." He requested Richard to call upon him, and asked him if he would give him three promises in writing--

1. That I should be allowed the free practice of my religion.

2. That if we had any children they should be brought up Catholics.

3. That we should be married in the Catholic Church.

[Sidenote: A Family Council decides the Matter.]

Which three promises Richard readily signed. He also amused the Cardinal, as the family afterwards learnt, by saying sharply, "Practise her religion indeed! I should rather think she shall. A man without a religion may be excused, but a woman without a religion is not the woman for me." The Cardinal then sent for me, promised me his protection, said he would himself procure a special dispensation from Rome, and that he would perform the ceremony himself. He then saw my father, who told him how bitter my mother was about it; that she was threatened with paralysis; that we had to consider her in every possible way, that she might receive no shocks, no agitation, but that all the rest quite consented to the marriage. A big family council was then held, and it was agreed far better for Richard and me, and for every one, to make all proper arrangements to be married, and to be attended by friends, and for me to go away on a visit to some friends, that they might not come to the wedding, nor participate in it, in order not to have a quarrel with my mother; that they would break it to her at a suitable time, and that the secret of their knowing it, should be kept up as long as mother lived. "Mind," said my father, "you must never bring a misunderstanding between mother and me, nor between her and her children."

I passed that three weeks preparing very solemnly and earnestly for my marriage day, but yet something differently to what many expectant brides do. I made a very solemn religious preparation, receiving the Sacraments. Gowns, presents, and wedding pageants had no part in it, had no place. Richard arranged with my own lawyer and my own priest that everything should be conducted in a strictly legal and strictly religious way, and the whole programme of the affair was prepared. A very solemn day to me was the eve of my marriage. The following day I was supposed to be going to pass a few weeks with a friend in the country.

[Sidenote: Our Wedding.]

At nine o'clock on Tuesday, the 22nd of January, 1861, my cab was at the door with my box on it. I had to go and wish my father and mother good-bye before leaving. I went downstairs with a beating heart, after I had knelt in my own room, and said a fervent prayer that they might bless me, and if they did, I would take it as a sign. I was so nervous, I could scarcely stand. When I went in, mother kissed me and said, "Good-bye, child, God bless you." I went to my father's bedside, and knelt down and said good-bye. "God bless you, my darling," he said, and put his hand out of the bed and laid it on my head. I was too much overcome to speak, and one or two tears ran down my cheeks, and I remember as I passed down I kissed the door outside.

I then ran downstairs and quickly got into my cab, and drove to a friend's house (Dr. and Miss Bird, now of 49, Welbeck Street), where I changed my clothes--not wedding clothes (clothes which most brides of to-day would probably laugh at)--a fawn-coloured dress, a black-lace cloak, and a white bonnet--and they and I drove off to the Bavarian Catholic Church, Warwick Street, London. When assembled we were altogether a party of eight. The Registrar was there for legality, as is customary. Richard was waiting on the doorstep for me, and as we went in he took holy water, and made a very large sign of the Cross. The church doors were wide open, and full of people, and many were there who knew us. As the 10.30 Mass was about to begin, we were called into the Sacristy, and we then found that the Cardinal in the night had been seized with an acute attack of the illness which carried him off four years later, and had deputed Dr. Hearne, his Vicar-general, to be his proxy.

After the ceremony was over, and the names signed, we went back to the house of our friend Dr. Bird and his sister Alice, who have always been our best friends, where we had our wedding breakfast.

During the time we were breakfasting, Dr. Bird began to chaff him about the things that were sometimes said of him, and which were not true. "Now, Burton, tell me; how do you feel when you have killed a man?" Dr. Bird (being a physician) had given himself away without knowing it. Richard looked up quizzically, and drawled out, "Oh, quite jolly! How do you?"

We then went to Richard's bachelor lodgings, where he had a bedroom, dressing-room, and sitting-room, and we had very few pounds to bless ourselves with, but were as happy as it is given to any mortals out of heaven to be. The fact is that the only clandestine thing about it, and that was quite contrary to my desire, was that my poor mother, with her health and her religious scruples, was kept in the dark, but I must thank God that, though paralysis came on two years later, it was not I that caused it.

I here insert the beautiful and characteristic letter which my husband wrote to my father on the following day, in case he should wish to give it to my mother. For the first few days of our marriage, Richard used to be so worried at being stared at as a bridegroom, that he always used to say that we had been married a couple of years; but that sort of annoyance soon wore off, and then he became rather proud of being a married man. To say that I was happy would be to say nothing; a repose came over me that I had never known. I felt that it was for Eternity, an immortal repose, and I was in a bewilderment of wonder at the goodness of God, who had almost worked miracles for me.

[Sidenote: We are received at Home again.]

During this time my brothers visited us, keeping us up in all that was going on. Some weeks later, two dear old aunts, Mrs. Strickland-Standish and Monica, Lady Gerard, who lived at Portobello House, Mortlake, nearly opposite to where I live now, and where I had frequently passed several weeks every year (for they made a sort of family focus), got to hear that I was seen going into a bachelor lodging, and bowled up to London to tell my mother. She wrote in an agony to my father, who was visiting in the country, "that a dreadful misfortune had happened in the family; that I been seen going into a bachelor lodging in London, and could not be at the country house where I was supposed to be." My father telegraphed back to her, "She is married to Dick Burton, and thank God for it;" and he wrote to her, enclosing the letter just inserted, and desired her to send one of my brothers for us, who knew where to find us, and to mind and receive us properly. We were then sent for home. My mother behaved like a true lady and a true Christian. She kissed us both, and blessed us. I shall never forget how shy I felt going home, but I went in very calmly, I kissed them all round, and they received Richard in the nicest way, and then mother embarrassed us very much by asking our pardon for flying in the face of God, and opposing what she now knew to be His will. My husband was very much touched. It was not long before she approved of the marriage more than anybody, and as she grew to know him, she loved him as much as her own sons. And this is the way we came to be married.

In short, mother never could forgive herself, and was always alluding to it either personally or by letter. It always was the same burthen of song--"that she exposed me to such a risk, that my relations might have abandoned me, that Society might not have received me, that I might have been forbidden to put my name down for the Drawing-room, when I had done nothing wrong;" and she said, "All through me, and God had destined it, but I could not see it. I never thought you would have the courage to take the law in your own hands;" and I used to answer her, "Mother, if you had all cast me out, if Society had tabooed me, if I had been forbidden to go to Court, it would not have kept me from it--I could not have helped myself--I am quite content with my future crust and tent, and I would not exchange places with the Queen; so do not harass yourself."

However, by the goodness of God, and the justness and kindness of a few great people, none of these catastrophes did happen. We used to entreat of her not to say anything more about it, but even on her deathbed she persisted in doing so. I shall never forget that first night when we went home; I went up to my room and changed my things, and ate my dinner humbly and silently. We were a very large family and were all afraid to speak, and as Richard was so very clever, the family stood rather in awe of him; so there was a silence and restraint upon us; but the children were allowed to come down to dessert for a treat, and, with the intuition that children have, they knew that he wanted them, and that they could do what they liked with him. One was a little enfant terrible, and very fond of copying our midshipmen brothers' slang. They crowded round my mother with their little doll-tumblers waiting for some wine. He was so constrained that he forgot to pass the wine at dessert as it came round to him, when a small voice piped out from the end of the long table, "I say, old bottle-stopper--pass the wine!" He burst out laughing, and that broke the ice, and we all fell to laughing and talking. Mother punished the child by giving him no wine, but Richard looked up and said so sweetly, "Oh, Mother, not on my first night at home!" that her heart went out to him.

We had seven months of uninterrupted bliss. Through the kindness of Lord John Russell, Richard obtained the Consulship of Fernando Po, in the Bight of Biafra, West Coast of Africa, with a coast line of six or seven hundred miles for his jurisdiction, a deadly climate, and £700 a year. He was too glad to get his foot on the first rung of the ladder, so, though it was called the "Foreign Office Grave," he cheerfully accepted it. It was not quite so cheerful for me, because it was a climate of certain death to white women, and he would not allow me to go out in an unlimited way.

[Sidenote: A Delightful London Season.]

We had a glorious season, and took up our position in Society. He introduced me to all the people he knew, and I introduced him to all the people that I knew. Lord Houghton (Monckton-Milnes), the father of the present Lord Houghton, was very much attached to Richard, and he settled the question of our position by asking his friend Lord Palmerston to give a party, and to let me be the bride of the evening; and when I arrived, Lord Palmerston gave me his arm, and he introduced Richard and me to all the people we had not previously known, and my relatives clustered around us as well. I was allowed to put my name down for a Drawing-room. And Lady Russell, now the Dowager, presented me at Court "on my marriage."

[Sidenote: Fire at Grindlay's.]

Shortly after this, happened Grindlay's fire, where we lost all we possessed in the world, except the few boxes we had with us. The worst was that all his books, and his own poetry, which was beautiful, especially one poem, called "The Curse of Vishnu," and priceless Persian and Arabic manuscripts, that he had picked up in various out-of-the-way places, and a room full of costumes of every nation, were burnt. He smiled, and said in a philosophical sort of way, "Well, it is a great bore, but I dare say that the world will be none the worse for some of those manuscripts having been burnt" (a prophetic speech, as I now think of it). When he went down to ask for some compensation, he found that Grindlay was insured, but that he was not--not, he said, that any money could repay him for the loss of the things. As he always saw the comic side of a tragedy as well as the pathetic, "the funniest thing was the clerk asking me if I had lost any plate or jewellery, and on my saying, 'No,' the change in his face from sympathy to the utter surprise that I could care so much for any other kind of loss, was amusing."

In 1861, when the Indian army changed hands, Richard suffered, and, as Mr. Hitchman remarked, "his enemies may be congratulated upon their mingled malice and meanness." He just gave the official animus a chance. It was a common thing in times of peace for Indian officers to be allowed to take appointments and remain on the cadre of their regiment, temporarily or otherwise. Richard, in remonstrance, would not quote names for fear of injuring other men, but any man who knew Egypt could score off half a dozen. His knowledge of the East, and of so many Eastern languages, would have been of incalculable service in Egypt, upon the Red Sea, in Marocco, Persia, in any parts of the East, and yet he, who in any other land would have been rewarded with at least a K.C.B. and a handsome pension, was glad to get his foot on the lowest rung of the ladder of the Consular service, called the "Foreign Office Grave," the Consulate of Fernando Po, and we could not think enough of, talk enough of, or be grateful enough to Lord John Russell, who gave it him; yet the acceptance of this miserable post was made an excuse to strike his name off the Indian army list, and the rule, which had been allowed to lapse in a score of cases, was revived for Richard's injury under circumstances of discourtesy so great, that it would be hard to believe the affront unintentional. He received no notice whatever, and he only realized, on seeing his successor gazetted, that his military career was actually ended, and his past life become like a blank sheet of paper. It would have been stretching no point to have granted this appointment, and to have been retained in the army on half-pay, but it was refused; they swept out his whole nineteen years' service as if they had never been, without a vestige of pay or pension.

All his services in Sind had been forgotten, all his Explorations were wiped out, and at the age of forty he found himself at home, with the rank of Captain, no pay, no pension, plenty of fame, a newly married wife, and a small Consulate in the most pestilential climate, with £700 a year. In vain he asked to go to Fernando Po temporarily till wanted for active service. He wrote--

"It will be an act of injustice on the part of the Bombay Government to solicit my removal on account of my having risked health and life in my country's service.

"They are about to treat me as a man who has been idling away my time and shirking duty; whereas I can show that every hour has been employed for my country's benefit, in study, writings, languages, and explorations. Are my wounds and fevers, and perpetual risk of health and life, not to speak of personal losses, to go for nothing?

"The Bombay Government does not take into consideration one iota of my service, but casts the whole into oblivion. I consider the Bombay Government to be unjustly prejudiced against me on account of the private piques of a certain half-dozen individuals. Will the Bombay Government put all its charges against me in black and white, and thus allow me a fair opportunity of clearing myself of my supposed delinquencies? Other men--I will merely quote Colonel Greathed and Lieut.-Colonel Norman--are permitted to take service in England, and yet to retain their military service in India.

"In the time of the Court of Directors, an officer might be serving the Foreign Office and India too, as in the case of Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, late Consul at Zanzibar; but since the amalgamation, the officers of her Majesty's Indian Army hope that they may take any appointment in any part of the world, as a small recompense for their losses; i.e. supercession and inability to sell their commissions, after having paid for steps."

At first he wanted to try me, so he pretended he did not like my going to Confession, and I used to say, "Well, my religion teaches me that my first duty is to obey you," and I did not bother to go; so he at once took off this restraint, and used to send me to Mass, and remind me of fish-days. It astonished me, the wonderful way he knew our doctrine, and frequently explained things to me that I did not know myself. He always wore his medal. I was very much surprised, shortly after we were married, at my husband giving me £5. Whilst he had been away one of my brothers had met with a sudden death; his horse had fallen on him and crushed him in a moment. He said, "Take this and have Masses said with it for your poor brother." I only thought then what generosity and what good taste it was. He was always delighted with the society of priests--not so much foreign priests, as English ones--especially if he got hold of a highly educated, broad theologian of a Jesuit; but in all cases he was most courteous to any of them, and protected them and their Missions whenever he was in a position to do so. Once he went with me to a midnight Mass, and he cried all the time. I could not understand it, and he said he could not explain it himself. I had no idea then that he had ever been once received into our Church in India. He always bowed his head at "Hallowed be Thy Name," and he did that to the day of his death.

[Sidenote: Delightful Days at Country Houses.]

We passed delightful days at country houses, notably at Lord Houghton's (Fryston), where, at his house in the country, and his house in Brook Street, and at Lord Strangford's house in Great Cumberland Place, we met all that was worth meeting of rank and fashion, beauty and wit, and especially all the most talented people in the world. I can shut my eyes and mentally look round his (Lord Houghton's) large round table even now, which usually held twenty-five guests. I can see Buckle, and Carlyle, and all the Kingsleys, and Swinburne, and Froude, and all the great men that were, and many that are, for the last thirty-two years, and remember a great deal of the conversation. But I am not here to describe them, but to give a description of Richard Burton. I can remember the Due d'Aumale cheek by jowl with Louis Blanc. The present Lord Houghton, and his two sisters, Lady Fitzgerald and the Hon. Mrs. Henniker, were babes in the nursery. I can remember the good old times in the country, at Fryston, where breakfast was at different little round tables, so people came down when they liked, and sat at one or another, and he would stroll from one table to another, with a book in his hand. Swinburne was then a boy, and had just brought out his "Queen Mother Rosamund," and Lord Houghton brought it up to us, saying, "I bring you this little book, because the author is coming here this evening, so that you may not quote him as an absurdity to himself." I can remember Vambéry telling us Hungarian tales, and I can remember Richard cross-legged on a cushion, reciting and reading "Omar el Khayyám" alternately in Persian and English, and chanting the call to prayer, "Allahhu Akbar."

My Society recollections, my happy days, are all of the pleasantest and most interesting. The evil day came far too soon; this was a large oasis of seven months in my life, and even if I had had no other it would have been worth living for. We went down to Worthing to my family, where we passed a very happy time, and he here gave me a proof of affection which I shall never forget. He had gone to see his cousin, Samuel Burton, at Brighton, and had promised to be back by the last train, but he did not make his appearance. I was in a dreadful state of mind lest anything should have happened to him. He arrived about one in the morning, pale and worn out. He had gone to sleep in the train, and had been carried some twenty miles away from Worthing. He could get no kind of conveyance, being in the night; so, inquiring in what direction Worthing lay, and settling the matter by a pocket compass, he started across country, and between a walk and a sort of long trot, from nine to one, he reached me, instead of waiting, as another man would have done, till the next morning for a train back.

[Sidenote: Richard goes to West Africa.]

I shall never forget when the time came to part, and I was to go to Liverpool to see him off, for he would not allow me to accompany him till he had seen what Fernando Po was like. It was in August, 1861, when we went down to Liverpool, and we were very sad, because he was not going to a Consulate where we could hope to remain together as a home. It was a deadly climate, and we were always going to be climate-dodging. I was to go out, not now, but later, and then, perhaps, not to land, and to return and ply up and down between Madeira and Teneriffe and London, and I, knowing he had Africa at his back, was in a constant agitation for fear of his doing more of these Explorations into unknown lands. There were about eighteen men (West African merchants), and everybody took him away from me, and he had made me promise that if I was allowed to go on board and see him off, that I would not cry and unman him. It was blowing hard and raining; there was one man who was inconsiderate enough to accompany and stick to us the whole time, so that we could not exchange a word (how I hated him!). I went down below and unpacked his things and settled his cabin, and saw to the arrangement of his luggage. My whole life and soul was in that good-bye, and I found myself on board the tug, which flew faster and faster from the steamer. I saw a white handkerchief go up to his face. I then drove to a spot where I could see the steamer till she became a dot.

"Fresh as the first beam Glittering on a sail, Which brings our friends up From the under world; Sad as the last, which reddens over one, That sinks with all we love below the verge."

Here I give Richard's description of going out, read later--

"A heart-wrench--and all is over. Unhappily I am not one of those independents who can say, Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte.

"Then comes the first nightfall on board outward-bound, the saddest time that the veteran wanderer knows. Saadi the Persian, one of the best travellers,--he studied books for thirty years, did thirty of wanderjahre, and for thirty wrote and lived in retirement--has thus alluded to the depressing influence of what I suppose may philosophically be explained by an absence of Light-stimulus or Od-force--

'So yearns at eve's soft tide the heart, Which the wide wolds and waters part From all dear scenes to which the soul Turns, as the lodestone seeks its pole.'

"We cut short the day by creeping to our berths, without even a 'nightcap,' and we do our best to forget ourselves, and everything about us."

[1] "Aussitôt qu'un malheur nous arrive il se recontre toujours un ami prêt à venir nous le dire et à nous fouiller le cœur avec un poignard en nous faisant admirer le manche."--BALZAC. This friend I had, but--

"There are no tricks in plain and simple Faith."--Julius Cæsar, iv. ii.

I received only four lines in the well-known hand by post from Zanzibar--no letter.

TO ISABEL.

"That brow which rose before my sight, As on the palmers' holy shrine; Those eyes--my life was in their light; Those lips my sacramental wine; That voice whose flow was wont to seem The music of an exile's dream."

I knew then it was all right.

[2] My mother was one of the best and cleverest of women--a queenly woman in manners and appearance (people who have been much at Courts have told me that they always felt as if they were in Royal presence when with her). She had a noble heart and disposition, was generous to a fault, and was exceedingly clever. She was, at the time I write of, still a worldly woman of strong brain, of hasty temper, bigoted, and a Spartan with the elder half of her brood. We trembled before her, but we adored her, and we never got over her death in 1872.

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