Chapter XXII. Arrival At Fort Bodo.
Ugarrowwa’s old station once more—March to Bunda—We cross the Ituri River—Note written by me opposite the mouth of the Lenda River—We reach the Avatiko plantations—Mr. Bonny measures a pigmy—History and dress of the pigmies—A conversation by gesture—The pigmy’s wife—Monkeys and other animals in the forest—The clearing of Andaki—Our tattered clothes—The Ihuru River—Scarcity of food; Amani’s meals—Uledi searches for food—Missing provisions—We reach Kilonga-Longa’s village again—More deaths—The forest improves for travelling—Skirmish near Andikumu—Story of the pigmies and the box of ammunition—We pass Kakwa Hill—Defeat of a caravan—The last of the Somalis—A heavy shower of rain—Welcome food discovery at Indemau—We bridge the Dui River—A rough muster of the people—A stray goat at our Ngwetza camp—Further capture of dwarfs—We send back to Ngwetza for plantains—Loss of my boy Saburi in the forest—We wonder what has become of the Ngwetza party—My boy Saburi turns up—Starvation Camp—We go in search of the absentees, and meet them in the forest—The Ihuru River—And subsequent arrival at Fort Bodo.
1888.
Oct. 23.
Ugarrowwa’s Station.
The Expedition reached Ugarrowwa’s old station on the 23rd of October, and slept within its deserted huts. In the court of the great house of the chief of the raiders, a crop of rice had grown up, but the birds had picked every grain. Over one hundred people found comfortable shelter in the spacious passages; and had supplies been procurable within a respectable distance, it would not have ill-suited us for a halt of a week; but it was too risky altogether to consume our rations because of the comfort of shelter. It was the centre of a great desolate area, which we were bound by fear of famine to travel through with the utmost speed.
1888.
Oct. 24.
Bunda.
The following day we marched to Bunda. The river column received attention from Ugarrowwa’s old subjects, and the Manyuema sprang overboard to avoid the arrows; but the Zanzibaris from the canoe behind leaped ashore, and by a flank attack assisted us to save the bewildered Manyuema, who in their careless happy attitudes in the canoe had offered such tempting targets for the natives.
The Ituri River was now in full flood, for the rains fell daily in copious tropical showers. The streams and creeks flowing into the Ituri from the right bank were deep, which caused the land party excessive worry and distress. No sooner had they crossed one creek up to the waist, than in a few moments another of equal or greater depth had to be waded through. They were perpetually wringing their clothes, and declaiming against the vexatious interruptions. Across the mouths of deeper tributaries the canoes were aligned, and served as floating bridges for the party to cross, while each man was the subject of some jest at his bedraggled appearance. The foremost men were sure to have some wet mud or soapy clay on the boards; the garments of others would be dripping with water, and presently fall after fall would testify to the exceeding slipperiness of the bridge, and would be hailed with uproarious chaff and fun. On this day thirty-two streams were crossed by the land party.
On the 25th, we moved up to a camp, opposite the mouth of the Lenda River. We were making progress, but I came across the following note written that evening. It will be seen later that such congratulations could only have been the outcome of a feeling of temporary pleasure that the day was not far distant when we should see the end to our harder labours.
1888.
Oct. 25.
Lenda River.
“I desire to render most hearty thanks that our laborious travels through the forest are drawing to a close. We are about 160 miles to-night from the grass-land; but we shall reduce this figure quickly enough, I hope. Meantime we live in anticipation. We bear the rainy season without a murmur, for after the rain the harvest will be ready for us in the grass-land. We do not curse the mud and reek of this humid land now, though we crossed thirty-two streams yesterday, and the mud banks and flats were sorely trying to the patience. We have a number of minor pleasures in store. It will be a great relief to be delivered from the invasions of the red ants, and to be perfectly secure from their assaults by day and by night. When we have finally dried the soles of our boots and wiped the mildew of the forest off their tops, our dreams will be undisturbed by one enemy at least. While we smart under the bites of the ferocious small bees, and start at the sting of small ants, and writhe under the venom of a hornet, or groan by reason of the sting of a fiendish wasp, or flap away the ever-intrusive butterfly, or dash aside the hurtful tiger slug, or stamp with nervous haste on the advancing greenish centipede, we remind ourselves that these miseries will not be for many days now. A little more patience and then merrier times. We have had four goats since August 17th for meat. We have subsisted mainly on roast plantains. They have served to maintain the soul attached to the body. We are grateful even for this, though our strength is not to be boasted of. We complacently think of the beef, and veal, and mutton diet ahead, garnished with a variety of edibles such as the sweet potato and beans, and millet flour for porridge with milk, and sesamum oil for cooking. Relief also from the constant suspicion, provoked by an animal instinct, that a savage with a sheaf of poisoned arrows is lurking within a few feet of one will be something to be grateful for. The ceaseless anxiety, the tension of watchfulness, to provide food, and guard the people from the dangers that meet their frolics, will be relaxed; and I shall be glad to be able to think better of the world and its inhabitants than the doubtful love I entertain for mankind in the forest.”
1888.
Oct. 27.
Lenda River.
We found our camp at Umeni on the 26th, but there were only two small bunches of miniature plantains discovered here, and a raging tornado roared like a legion of demons through the forest, and shook the ancient tree giants to their base, while the dark Ituri was so beswept that it became pallid under the whistling, screaming fury of the squalls.
On the next day we rowed up to below Big Cataract, unloaded the goods, left the canoes in the bushes, shouldered our loads, and marched away after half an hour’s halt only, for five miles inland. We had left the Ituri navigation for the last time.
We entered the Avatiko plantations after three hours’ march on the 28th, and just while the majority of the people was perilously near starvation. They spread over the plantations with the eagerness of famished wolves after prey. Here we stayed two days in foraging and preparing a supply of food.
We had not been long at Avatiko before a couple of pigmies were brought to me. What relation the pair were to one another is not known. The man was young, probably twenty-one. Mr. Bonny conscientiously measured him, and I recorded the notes.
Height, 4 ft.; round head, 20¼ in.; from chin to back top of head, 24¼ in.; round chest, 25½ in.; round abdomen, 27¾ in.; round hips, 22½ in.; round wrist, 4¼ in.; round muscle of left arm, 7½ in.; round ankle, 7 in.; round calf of leg, 7¾ in.; length of index finger, 2 in.; length of right hand, 4 in.; length of foot, 6¼ in.; length of leg, 22 in.; length of back, 18½ in.; arm to tip of finger, 19¾ in.
This was the first full-grown man we had seen. His colour was coppery, the fell over the body was almost furry, being nearly half an inch in length. His head-dress was a bonnet of a priestly form, decorated with a bunch of parrot feathers; it was either a gift or had been stolen. A broad strip of bark cloth covered his nakedness. His hands were very delicate, and attracted attention by their unwashed appearance. He had evidently been employed in peeling plantains.
1888.
Oct. 28.
Avatiko.
Not one London editor could guess the feelings with which I regarded this mannikin from the solitudes of the vast central African forest. To me he was far more venerable than the Memnonium of Thebes. That little body of his represented the oldest types of primeval man, descended from the outcasts of the earliest ages, the Ishmaels of the primitive race, for ever shunning the haunts of the workers, deprived of the joy and delight of the home hearth, eternally exiled by their vice, to live the life of human beasts in morass and fen and jungle wild. Think of it! Twenty-six centuries ago his ancestors captured the five young Nassamonian explorers, and made merry with them at their villages on the banks of the Niger. Even as long as forty centuries ago they were known as pigmies, and the famous battle between them and the storks was rendered into song. On every map since Hekataeus’ time, 500 years B.C., they have been located in the region of the Mountains of the Moon. When Mesu led the children of Jacob out of Goshen, they reigned over Darkest Africa undisputed lords; they are there yet, while countless dynasties of Egypt and Assyria, Persia, Greece and Rome, have flourished for comparatively brief periods, and expired. And these little people have roamed far and wide during the elapsed centuries. From the Niger banks, with successive waves of larger migrants, they have come hither to pitch their leafy huts in the unknown recesses of the forest. Their kinsmen are known as Bushmen in Cape Colony, as Watwa in the basin of the Lulungu, as Akka in Monbuttu, as Balia by the Mabodé, as Wambutti in the Ihuru basin, and as Batwa under the shadows of the Lunae Montes.
As the gigantic Madis, and tall Soudanese, and tallest Zanzibaris towered above the little man, it was delightful to observe the thoughts within him express themselves with lightning rapidity on his face. The wonderment that filled him, the quick shifting and chilling fears as to his fate, the anxious doubts that possessed him, the hopes that sprang up as he noted humour on the faces, the momentary shades of anxiety, curiosity to know whence these human monsters had come from, what they would do with him eventually; would they kill him, how? by roasting him alive, or plunging him screaming into a vat-like cooking pot? Ach Gott! I hope not, and a slight shake of the head, with a more pallid colour on the lips and a nervous twitch showed what distress he was in. He would do anything to deserve the favour of these big men, just as the young Nassamonians were willing to do 2600 years ago, when his pigmy forefathers pointed their fingers and jabbered at them in the old Nigritian village. So we took him to sit by us, and stroked him on the back, gave him some roast bananas to put into that distended aldermanic abdomen of his, and the pigmy smiled his gratitude. What a cunning rogue he was! how quick-witted! He spoke so eloquently by gesture that he was understood by the dullest of us.
“How far is it to the next village where we can procure food?”
He placed the side of his right hand across the left wrist. (More than two days’ march.)
“In what direction?”
He pointed east.
“How far is it to the Ihuru?”
“Oh!” He brought his right hand across his elbow joint—that is double the distance, four days.
“Is there any food north?”
He shook his head.
“Is there any west or north-west?”
He shook his head, and made a motion with his hand as though he were brushing a heap of sand away.
“Why?”
He made the motion with his two hands as though he were holding a gun, and said “Doooo!”
“To be sure the Manyuema have destroyed everything.”
“Are there any ‘Doooo’ in the neighbourhood, now?”
He looked up and smiled with a gush as artful as a London coquette, as if to say, “You know best! Oh! naughty man, why do you chaff me?”
“Will you show us the road to the village where we can get food?”
He nodded his head rapidly, patted his full-moon belly, which meant, “Yes, for there I shall get a full meal; for here”—he smiled disdainfully as he pressed his thumb nail on the first joint of his left index finger—“are plantains only so big, but there they are as big as this,” and he clasped the calf of his leg with two hands.
“Oh, Paradise!” cried the men, “bananas as big as a man’s leg!” The pigmy had contrived to ingratiate himself into every man’s affection. My authority was gone until the story of the monstrous bananas would be disproved. Some of them looked as if they would embrace him, and his face mimicked artless innocence, though he knew perfectly well that, in their opinion, he was only a little lower than an angel.
And all this time, the coppery face of the nut-brown little maid was eloquent with sympathy in the emotions of the male pigmy. Her eyes flashed joy, a subtle spirit glided over her features with the transition of lightning. There were the same tricks of by-play; the same doubts, the same hopes, the same curiosity, the same chilling fear, was felt by the impressionable soul as she divined what feelings moved her kinsman. She was as plump as a thanksgiving turkey or a Christmas goose; her breasts glistened with the sheen of old ivory, and as she stood with clasped hands drooping below—though her body was nude—she was the very picture of young modesty.
The pair were undoubtedly man and woman. In him was a mimicked dignity, as of Adam; in her the womanliness of a miniature Eve. Though their souls were secreted under abnormally thick folds of animalism, and the finer feelings inert and torpid through disuse, they were there for all that. And they suited the wild Eden of Avatiko well enough.
1888.
Oct. 28.
Forest.
Burdened with fresh supplies of dried plantains, and guided by the pigmies, we set out from the abandoned grove of Avatiko E.N.E., crossed the clear stream of Ngoki at noon, and at 3 P.M. were encamped by the brook Epeni. We observed numerous traces of the dwarfs in the wilds which we had traversed, in temporary camps, in the crimson skins of the amoma, which they had flung away after eating the acid fruit, in the cracked shells of nuts, in broken twigs that served as guides to the initiated in their mysteries of woodcraft, in bow-traps by the wayside, in the game-pits sunk here and there at the crossings of game-tracks. The land appeared more romantic than anything we had seen. We had wound around wild amphitheatral basins, foliage rising in terraces one above another, painted in different shades of green, and variegated with masses of crimson flowers, and glistening russet, and the snowdrop flowerets of wild mangoes, or the creamy silk floss of the bombax, and as we looked under a layer of foliage that drooped heavily above us, we saw the sunken basin below, an impervious mass of leafage grouped crown to crown like heaped hills of soft satin cushions, promising luxurious rest. Now and then troops of monkeys bounded with prodigious leaps through the branches, others swinging by long tails a hundred feet above our heads, and with marvellous agility hurling their tiny bodies through the air across yawning chasms, and catching an opposite branch, resting for an instant to take a last survey of our line before burying themselves out of sight in the leafy depths. Ibises screamed to their mates to hurry up to view the column of strangers, and touracos argued with one another with all the guttural harshness of a group of Egyptian fellahs, plantain-eaters, sunbirds, grey parrots, green parroquets, and a few white-collared eagles either darted by or sailed across the leafy gulf, or sat drowsily perched in the haze upon aspiring branches. There was an odour of musk, a fragrance of flowers, perfume of lilies mixed with the acrid scent of tusky boars in the air; there were heaps of elephant refuse, the droppings of bush antelopes, the pungent dung of civets, and simians along the tracks, and we were never long away from the sound of rushing rivulets or falling cascades, sunlight streamed in slanting silver lines and shone over the undergrowth and the thick crops of phrynia, arum, and amoma, until their damp leaves glistened, and the dewdrops were brilliant with light.
And the next day our march underneath the eternal shades was through just such a land, and on the morning of the 1st of November we emerged into the clearing of Andaki, to refresh our souls with the promised fruit of its groves. The plantains were not very large, but they were mature and full, and before an hour had elapsed, the wooden grates were up, and the fruit lay in heaps of slices on the bars over the fire. The word was passed that the first and second day of the month should be employed in preparing as much provisions as every man could carry. We were in N. Lat. 1° 16½′. Kilonga-Longa’s station was in 1° 6′, and Fort Bodo in 1° 20′, so that our course was good.
1888.
Nov. 2.
Audaki.
On the second some scouts hunting up the various tracks extending eastward came across two women, one of whom said she knew of a great village to the north where there was food. Another said that Andari lay E.N.E., four days’ march, where there was such a stock of food that Andaki was a mere handful compared with it.
Soon after leaving Andaki, and crossing a broad ridge, we came upon a vast abandoned clearing. Probably a year had elapsed since the people had fled, and their settlements had been consumed with fire, for the banana plants were choked by the voracious undergrowth and wild plants, and the elephants had trampled through and through, and sported for months among the wasted groves, and over the crushed Musa plants, through phrynia flourishing two fathoms deep, and where the stumps of cut trees had sprouted and grown until their tufted tops were joined to one another in one great thick carpet of bush. Through this we carved our way with brandished billhooks and cutlasses; the native women had lost the track, and were bewildered by the wildly luxuriant shrubbery, under which we sweated in the damp hot-house heat, and ploughed our way through the deep green sea, until after ten hours we came to a babbling rillet, and must perforce camp from sheer exhaustion, though we had made but five miles.
1888.
Nov. 4.
Forest.
On the morning of the fourth we resumed the task, to slash, cut, creep and crawl, bore through, in and out, to clamber over logs, tread carefully over gaping rifts in the reeking compost, bend under logs, to tunnel away with might and main, to drive through—a hungry column of men was behind, a wilderness before us—to crash headlong through the plants, veer to the left, and now to the right, to press on and on, to sharpen the weapons on the stones of the brook; to take a hasty drink to satisfy our thirst, and again to the work. Cleave away merrily, boys; sever those creepers; cut those saplings down! No way now? then widen that game hole in the bush clump! Come, strike with billhook and sword, axe and cutlass! We must not die like fools in this demon world! This way and that, through and through, until after sixteen hours we had cut a crooked channel through the awful waste, and stood once more under the lordly crowns of the primeval forest.
Paddy’s traditional patchy clothes was a dress suit compared to mine, as I stood woefully regarding the rents and tatters and threads waving in tassels from my breeches and shirt; and the men smiled, and one said we looked like rats dragged through the teeth of traps, which I thought was not a bad simile. But we had no time for talk; we ate a couple of roast plantains for lunch, and continued our journey, and by 3 P.M. were within half-an-hour of the Ihuru River.
The next day, before it was full daylight, we were filing along an elephant track that ran parallel with the Ihuru, which was at this time one raging series of rapids its whole length, and sounding its unceasing uproar in our ears. Numbers of deep tributaries were waded through; but we maintained a quick pace, owing to the broad track of the elephants, and by the usual hour of the afternoon nine miles had been covered.
Thirteen Zanzibaris of the rear column, and one of the Danagla soldiers of Emin Pasha, had succumbed during the last few days, and I do not know how many Madis and Manyuema.
On the evening of the sixth, after a march of eight miles, I became impressed with the necessity of finding food shortly, unless we were to witness wholesale mortality. Starvation is hard to bear, but when loads must be carried upon empty stomachs, and the marches are long, the least break in the continuity of supply brings with it a train of diseases which soon thins the ranks. Our Nyanza people were provident, and eked their stores with mushrooms and wild fruit; but the feeble manioc-poisoned men of the rear column, Madis and Manyuema, were utterly heedless of advice and example.
A youth named Amani, who looked rather faint, was adjured to tell me the truth about what he had eaten the last two days.
1888.
Nov. 6.
Forest.
“I will,” he said. “My mess had a fair provision of plantain flour that would have kept us with ease two days longer; but Sulimani, who carried it, put it down by the roadside while he went to gather mushrooms. When he returned the food was gone. He says the Manyuema had stolen it. Each one of us then on reaching camp last night set out to hunt for mushrooms, out of which we made a gruel. That is what we had to eat last night for supper. This morning we have fasted, but we are going to hunt up mushrooms again.”
“And what will you eat to-morrow?”
“To-morrow is in the hands of God. I will live in hopes that I shall find something.”
This youth, he was only nineteen, had carried sixty pound of cartridges in the meantime, and would carry it again to-morrow, and the next day, until he dropped, and measured his length with eyes upturned to the dark cope of leaves above, to be left there to mildew and rot; for out of nothing, nothing can be extracted to feed hungry men. He was only a solitary instance of over 400 people.
We reached a Manyuema Camp, and Uledi recognised it as being a place where he had halted during a forage tour to the west of the Ihuru, while he was waiting for Messrs. Jephson and Nelson at Ipoto, and the advance column was journeying to Ibwiri in November, 1887.
On the 7th a halt was ordered, that a column might be sent under Uledi to search the clearing of Andari, six miles N.N.W. of the camp, but over a hundred were so weak that they were unable to go, whereupon the messes were ordered to bring their pots up, and three handfuls of flour were placed in each to make gruel with, that they might have strength to reach the plantation.
On the 8th, about 200 remained silent in camp awaiting the foragers. In the afternoon, perceiving that it was too long a fast to wait for them we served out more plantain flour.
1888.
Nov. 9.
Forest.
On the 9th, the foragers had not arrived. Two men had died in camp. One reeled from the effects of a poisonous fungus, as they came to get another ration of flour for their gruel; their steps were more feeble; the bones of the sternum were fearfully apparent. Three days would find us all perished, but we were hopeful that every minute we should hear the murmur of the returning column.
On the morning of the 10th, anxious for the European provisions which we were carrying for the officers at Fort Bodo, I had them examined, and discovered to my consternation that fifty-seven tins of meat, teas, coffees, milks, were short—had been eaten by the Manyuema. If a look had potency sufficient to blast them, they would have speedily been reduced to ashes. “Dear me, how could the tins have vanished?” asked the chief Sadi. Ah, how? But the provision boxes were taken from his party, and Winchester and Maxim ammunition cases were served instead to them as freight.
At 2 P.M. the column of foragers returned, bringing from three to six days’ provisions, which they had gathered from an abandoned plantation. The bearers had refreshed themselves previous to gathering. Now, in return for my gruel, each member had to refund me one pound of flour, as my reserve store, and one pound for the sick, who were deprived of the power to forage, and who were rejected by the messes. So that in this manner the sick received about eight pounds of flour, or dried plantains, and I owned a reserve of 200 pounds for future use.
Within an hour-and-a-half on the 11th we had reached Kilonga-Longa’s ferry. The natives, fearing a repetition of his raids to the west of the Ihuru, had destroyed every canoe, and thus prevented me from crossing to pay Kilonga-Longa another visit, and to settle some accounts with him. The river was also in flood, and a gaunt and hungry wilderness stretched all round us. There was no other way for it than to follow the Ihuru upward until we could find means to cross to the east, or left side. Our course was now N.E. by N.
1888.
Nov. 12.
Forest.
On the 12th, we followed a track, along which quite a tribe of pigmies must have passed. It was lined with amoma fruit-skins, and shells of nuts, and the crimson rinds of phrynia berries. No wood-beans, or fenessi, or mabungu, are to be found in this region, as on the south bank of Ituri River. On reaching camp, I found that at the ferry, near the native camp at which we starved four days, six people had succumbed—a Madi, from a poisonous fungus, the Lado soldier, who was speared above Wasp Rapids, two Soudanese of the rear-column, a Manyuema boy in the service of Mr. Bonny, and Ibrahim, a fine young Zanzibari, from a poisoned skewer in the foot.
During the 13th the great forest was perceptibly improved for travel. Our elephant and game track had brought us across another track leading easterly from Andari, and both joined presently, developing to a highway much patronised by the pigmy tribes. This we followed for two hours. We could tell where they had stopped to light their pipes, and to crack nuts, and trap game, and halt to gossip. The twigs were broken three feet from the ground, showing that they were snapped by dwarfs. Where it was a little muddy the path showed high delicate insteps, proving their ancient ancestry and aristocratic descent, and small feet not larger than those of young English misses of eight years old. The path improved as we tramped along; it grew a highway of promise. Camps of the dwarfs were numerous. The soil was ochreous, the trees were larger, and towered to magnificent heights.
1888.
Nov. 13.
Forest.
I observed as we filed into camp that it was time to obtain a further supply of food, and rest somewhere, the bearing of the people lacked confidence, their forms were shrinking under the terrible task, and perpetual daily toil and round of marching and hunger. I could have wept at the excess of misfortunes which weighed us daily lower towards the grave; but we had been for so long strained to bear violent vicissitudes, and so frequently afflicted with sights of anguish and suffering, that we were reduced to hear each day’s tale of calamity in sorrowful silence. What losses we had already borne were beyond power of plaint and tear to restore. The morrow’s grief awaited us, as certain as the morrow’s sun; and to dwell upon the sorrowful past was to unfit us for what we had yet to bear.
To make 230 loads equal to the daily lessening number of carriers was a most aggravating task. Not one out of twenty men but made some complaint of a severe ulcer, a headache, or threatened rupture, undefined bodily pains, a whitlow, a thorn in the foot, rheumatism, fever, &c. The loads remained always the same, but the carriers died.
On the 14th, the Expedition, after a six hours’ march, approached Anduta and Andikumu. As the advance guard was pressing in over the logs and débris of the prostrated forest, some arrows flew, and two men fell wounded, and immediately boxes and bales were dropped, and quite a lively skirmish with the tall-hatted natives occurred; but in half-an-hour the main body of the caravan filed in, to find such a store of abnormally large plantains that the ravenous men were in ecstacies.
In extent the clearing was equal to the famous one of Ibwiri. It was situate in the bosom of hills which rose to the east, west and south. Along one of the tracks we saw the blazings of the Manyuema on the trees, and one of the villages was in ruins; but the size of the clearing had baffled the ravaging horde in their attempt to destroy the splendid plantain groves.
On examining the boxes of ammunition before stacking them for the night, it was found that Corporal Dayn Mohammed had not brought his load in, and we ascertained that he had laid it at the base of a big tree near the path. Four headmen were at once ordered to return with the Soudanese Corporal to recover the box.
1888.
Nov. 14.
Andikumu.
Arriving near the spot, they saw quite a tribe of pigmies, men, women and children, gathered around two pigmy warriors, who were trying to test the weight of the box by the grummet at each end. Our headmen, curious to see what they would do with the box, lay hidden closely, for the eyes of the little people are exceedingly sharp. Every member of the tribe seemed to have some device to suggest, and the little boys hopped about on one leg, spanking their hips in irrepressible delight at the find, and the tiny women carrying their tinier babies at their backs vociferated the traditional wise woman’s counsel. Then a doughty man put a light pole, and laid it through the grummets, and all the small people cheered shrilly with joy at the genius displayed by them in inventing a method for heaving along the weighty case of Remington ammunition. The Hercules and the Milo of the tribe put forth their utmost strength, and raised the box up level with their shoulders, and staggered away into the bush. But just then a harmless shot was fired, and the big men rushed forward with loud shouts, and then began a chase; and one over-fat young fellow of about seventeen was captured and brought to our camp as a prize. We saw the little Jack Horner, too fat by many pounds; but the story belongs to the headmen, who delivered it with infinite humour.
Mr. Bonny was sent to the Ihuru River on the 17th, to examine an old ferry reported to be there, but returned unsuccessful in finding a canoe, but with the information that the river appeared to flow from E.N.E., and was about sixty yards wide, with quiet current, and good depth.
The afternoon of the 14th, 15th and 16th of November, were spent by the people in making amends for their past abstinence. What with boiled, roasted plantains and porridge, they must have consumed an immense number. Probably each man had eaten 140 plantains during the three days.
1888.
Nov. 19.
Anduta.
THE SCOUTS DISCOVER THE PYGMIES CARRYING AWAY THE CASE OF AMMUNITION.
Within a short time after leaving Andikumu on the 19th, we passed through Anduta; and then the column passed by a picturesque hill called Kakwa, over a rough country bristling with immense rock fragments and boulders thickly covered, and surrounded with depths of ferns. Among the rocks near our camp on this date was found a store of corn and bananas, which no doubt belonged to the dwarfs. Had the find occurred a few days previously, there would have been a riotous scramble for them; but now each man was so burdened with his private stores that they regarded it with supreme indifference. The men also so suffered from indigestion after their revel at Andikumu that they were unfit for travel.
A five-mile march was made on the 20th. Since striking the dwarfs’ highway, unlike the loamy soils which absorbed the perpetual rains nearer the Ituri, the path now led through a stiff red clayey country, which retained the rain in pools, and made it soapy and slippery.
At the noonday halt the leader of the van wandered a few hundred yards ahead on the path and encountered a native caravan from Anditoké, N. The natives uttered a howl of surprise at perceiving him, but seeing that he had no weapon, quickly advanced towards him with uplifted spears. But the howl they had raised had been heard by all at the halting-place, and the savages were met in time to save the Zanzibari leader. A skirmish took place, two of the natives were wounded and one was killed, and the effects of the caravan were captured. These effects consisted of iron rings, knobs, bracelets, and anklets, and calamus fibre leg-rings, a few native smith’s tools, and, most singular of all, several unfired Remington cartridges.
The first thought that was suggested was that Fort Bodo had either been evacuated or captured, or that some patrols had been waylaid; but on reflection we settled on the conviction that these cartridges had belonged to some raiding parties of Manyuema, but that originally they were our property.
The travelling powers of the men was noticeably low on the 21st; they still suffered from their late debauch. At noon of this day we were in N. lat. 1° 43′, which proved that, despite every effort to find a path leading eastward we were advancing north.
1888.
Nov. 21.
Forest.
Chama Issa, the last of the Somalis, was reported dead on this day, but at the noon halt I was greatly gratified to see him; his case, being as he was the last of the Somalis, excited great interest. A portion from my own table went to him daily, and two Soudanese were detailed for extra pay to serve, feed, and carry him. Up to the evening of this day thirty-two out of the Banalya rear column had perished. At Banalya I had estimated that about half of the number would not survive. While they were being carried in the canoes there was no call for exertion, but the march overland had been most fatal to the unfortunates.
On the 22nd, soon after the advance had reached camp, a cold and heavy shower of rain fell, which demoralized many in the column; their failing energies and their impoverished systems were not proof against cold. Madis and Zanzibaris dropped their loads in the road, and rushed helter-skelter for the camp. One Madi managed to crawl near my tent, wherein a candle was lit, for in a rainstorm the forest, even in daylight, is as dark as on an ordinary night in the grass-land. Hearing him groan, I issued out with the candle, and found the naked body rigid in the mud, unable to move. As he saw the candle flame his eyes dilated widely, and he attempted to grasp it with his hands. He was at once borne to a fire, and laid within a few inches of it, and with the addition of a pint of hot broth made from the Liebig Company’s extract of meat we restored him to his senses. On the road in front of the rear guard two Madis died, and also one Zanzibari of the rear column stricken instantaneously to death by the intensely cold rain.
We made a march of two hours the next day, and then despatched forty-five choice men ahead to try and obtain meal for the salvation of the Banalya men and the Madis, whose powers were too weak for further effort. The scouts returned within twenty-four hours with a goat, which was at once slaughtered to make thirty gallons of soup. When thickened with two pounds of wheaten flour, the soup made a most welcome meal for over sixty men. We reached Indemau by 10 A.M. on the 25th. The village was situated in a hollow at the base of a mount, and was distant from the Dui branch of the Ihuru six miles.
1888.
Nov. 25.
Indemau.
At Indemau the long-enduring members of the Expedition received another respite from total annihilation. The plantain groves were extensive and laden with fruit, and especially with ripe mellow plantains whose fragrance was delicious. But in the same manner that it was impossible to teach these big children to economise their rations, so it was impossible to teach them moderation when they found themselves in the midst of plenty. At Andikumu an army might have been supplied with good wholesome food, but the inordinate voracity of the famished people had been followed by severe indigestion, and at Indemau their intemperate appetites brought on such sickening repletion that we were engaged every morning in listening to their complaints and administering enemata to relieve the congested bodies.
A path from Indemau was discovered, leading across the Dui River; there was another leading to Indeperri, a large settlement about fifteen miles N.E. from Fort Bodo. It had been my original purpose to steer a course through the forest which would take us direct to the grass-land, along a more northerly route than the line of Ipoto and Fort Bodo, after sending a detachment to settle accounts with Kilonga-Longa; but in our endeavour to find a ford or ferry across the Ihuru we had been compelled by the high flood to continue parallel with the river until now. Observation proved us to be in N. lat. 1° 47′ and E. long. 29° 7′ 45″. But the discovery of Remington cartridges among the stores of a native caravan in these unknown parts, and yet within a reasonable distance of Fort Bodo, notwithstanding a rational assurance that Fort Bodo was impregnable and the garrison were now safe with Emin Pasha on the Nyanza, had intruded doubts in my mind which I thought would best be resolved by deflecting our course southward, and sweeping past the old Fort, and seeing with our own eyes what had really occurred. Mr. Bonny was therefore sent with the chief Rashid and sixty men, to build a bridge across the Dui River.
1888.
Dec. 1.
Dui River.
After a halt of five days the Expedition marched from Indemau on the 1st of December for the Dui. Mr. Bonny and old Rashid, with their assistants, were putting the finishing touches to the bridge, a work which reflected great credit on all concerned in its construction, but especially on Mr. Bonny. Without halting an instant the column marched across the five branches of the Dui, over a length of rough but substantial woodwork, which measured in the aggregate eighty yards, without a single accident.
On the other side of the Dui we made a rough muster of the people, and discovered that thirty-four of the rear column had died, and that out of sixteen Zanzibaris on the sick list, fourteen were of the Yambuya party, and they all appeared to be in such a condition that a few days only would decide their fate. Every goat and fowl that we could procure were distributed to these poor people in the hope of saving them. We cooked for them; Mr. Bonny was directed to administer medicines daily; we relieved them of every article, excepting their own rations, and yet so wrecked were their systems by what they had endured at Yambuya and Banalya, that a slight abrasion from plants, branches or creepers, developed into a raging ulcer, which in three or four days would be several inches across. Nothing but the comforts and rest obtained in a metropolitan hospital would have arrested this rapid decline.
We made a short march to the small village of Andiuba, and from thence we reached in three hours the large settlement of Addiguhha. On the 4th we reached Ngwetza in four-and-a-half hours, and formed camp outside of the plantain-grove. We had passed through ten villages of the pigmies, but without having seen one of them. The woods were dense, and the undergrowth flourishing. Belts of sloughy mud, disparted by small streams, divided one village from another. It was in just such a locality our camp was pitched on the 4th of December. Presently into the centre of the camp a full uddered goat, with two fine kids four months old, walked, and after a short stare of undisguised surprise at the family, we sprang upon them and secured the undoubted gift of the gods, and sacrificed them. Half-an-hour later we were told that one of the Uchu natives attached to Mr. Bonny had received an arrow in his body, and that the dwarfs had attacked and killed a Manyuema boy. A party was sent to convey the boy’s body into the woods, where it could be buried by his friends, but in the morning the meat had been carried away.
The criers were instructed to proceed through the camp to prepare five days’ provisions of food. Their cries were heard ringing from end to end, and huge loads of material for the wooden grates were brought in, and throughout the 5th the people devoted themselves to the preparation of flour.
1888.
Dec. 5.
Ngwetza.
The next day, as we marched southerly, it was observed that we were following a gradual slope to the river Ihuru. We crossed six broad and sluggish streams, with breadths of mud coloured red by iron; banked by dense nurseries of Raphia Palm and rattan. About 3 P.M. the advance-guard stumbled upon several families of dwarfs, and a capture was made of an old woman, a girl, and a boy of eighteen, besides a stock of bananas, and some fowls. The “old” lady was as strong as a horse apparently, and to the manner of carrying a load of bananas she appeared to be quite accustomed.
The family of little people intimated that they knew the forest well, but they had a strong inclination for an E.N.E. course, which would have taken us away from Fort Bodo. They were therefore sent to the rear, and we swung along S., and by E., sometimes S.S.E., traversed six streams on the 7th, and a similar number on the 8th.
Soon after the headquarters’ tent had been pitched, and the undergrowth of leafy plants had been cleared somewhat, I observed a young fellow stagger; and going up to him I questioned him as to the cause. I was astonished to be told that it was from weakness, and want of food. Have you eaten all your five days’ rations already? No, he had thrown it away because the dwarf captives had said that in one day they would reach a famous place for plantains, the “biggest in the world.”
Upon extending my inquiries it was found that there were at least 150 people in the camp who had likewise followed his example, and discarded superfluous food, and on that day, the 8th, they had nothing. The headmen were called that night to a council, and after being reproached for their reckless conduct, it was resolved that on the next day almost every able-bodied person should return to Ngwetza which we had left on the morning of the 6th. The distance was 19½ hours for the caravan, but as much time was necessarily lost in cutting through the jungly undergrowth, and even now and then in laying a course, the forage party would be able to return to Ngwetza in eleven hours’ travel.
1888.
Dec. 5.
Ngwetza.
On the morning of the 9th, about 200 people started for the plantain groves of Ngwetza, but before departing they contributed about 200 lbs. of plantain flour as a reserve for the sickly ones, and guards of the camp. We were about 130 in number, men, women and pigmies, the majority of whom were already distressed. I gave half-a-cupful of flour to each person for the day, then despatched Mr. Bonny with ten men to find the Ihuru River. According to my calculations, the camp was in N. lat. 1° 27′ 15″, and E. long. 29° 21′ 30″, about nine geographical miles in an air-line north of Fort Bodo, but it was useless to show the chart to men dreading that starvation was again imminent. All they saw was the eternal myriads of trees with a dead black unknown environing the camp round about, shutting out all hope, and a viewless and stern prospect of rigid wood with a dark cope of leaves burying them out of sight of sky and sunshine, as though they lived under a pall. But they knew that the Ihuru was not far from Fort Bodo, and if Mr. Bonny and his men discovered it, some little encouragement would be gained. Mr. Bonny succeeded in finding the river, and blazed a path to it.
For employment’s sake I sat down to recalculate all my observations with exactitude, to correct certain discrepancies that our journeys over the same ground had enabled me to detect; and buried in my Norie, and figures and charts, my mind was fully occupied. But on the 14th my work was done. I lived in hope the next day, with my hearing on the strain for the sound of voices. The people looked miserable, but hopeful. A box of European provisions was opened, a pot of butter and milk were taken out, and a table-spoonful of each dropped into the earthenware pots that were already filled with boiling water. In this manner a thin broth was made which would serve to protract the agony of existence. On the sixth day the pots were again ranged round me in a semi-circle, and in rotation, each cook brought his vessel of hot water to receive his butter and milk, and after being well stirred, marched off with his group to distribute the broth according to measure. A little heartened by the warm liquid they scattered through the woods to hunt up the red berries of the phrynia, and pick up now and then the amomum, whose sour-sweet pulp appeared to quiet the gnawing of the stomach. A mushroom in the course of several hundred yards’ rambling would perhaps fall to the lot of the seeker. But when 130 men have wandered about and about, to and fro, searching for the edibles, the circle widens, and day by day the people had to penetrate further and further away from the camp. And it happened that while searching with eagerness, impelled on and on by the eager stomach, that they were carried some miles away, and they had paid no regard to the course they were going; and when they wished to return to camp they knew not which way to seek it, and two full-grown men and Saburi, a little boy of eight years, did not return. I had a peculiar liking for the small child. His duty was to carry my Winchester, and cartridge pouch. He was usually a dark cherub, round as a roller, strong and sturdy, with an old man’s wisdom within his little boy’s head, and frequently when the caravan was on its mettle, and a fair road before it, I looked back often and often to see how little Saburi trotted steadily after me. Being the rifle-bearer, trained to be at my heels at any strange sound, I deprived myself of many a choice bit to nourish Saburi with, so that his round stomach had drawn a smile from all who looked at him. He looked like a little boy with a keg under his frock. But, alas! in the last few days the keg had collapsed, and he, like all the others, had penetrated into the wilderness of phrynia to search for berries. On this day he was lost.
In the dark the muzzle-loaders of the Manyuema were employed to fire signals. About 9 P.M. we thought we heard the little boy’s voice. The halloo was sounded, and a reply came from the other end of the camp. One of the great ivory horns boomed out its deep sound. Then the cry came from the opposite side. Some of the men said that it must be Saburi’s ghost wailing his death. The picture of the little fellow seeing the dark night come down upon him with its thick darkness in those eerie wilds, with fierce dwarfs prowling about, and wild boar and huge chimpanzee, leopards and cheetahs, with troops of elephants trampling and crashing the crisp phrynia, and great baboons beating hollow trees—everything terrifying, in fact, round about him—depressed us exceedingly. We gave him up for lost.
It had been an awful day. In the afternoon a boy had died. Three persons were lost. The condition of the majority was most disheartening. Some could not stand, but fell down in the effort. These sights began to act on my nerves, until I began to feel not only moral sympathy, but physical as well, as though bodily weakness was infectious.
On my bed that night the thought of the absent men troubled me; but however distasteful was the idea that a terrible misfortune—such as being lost in the woods, or collapsing from hunger before they reached the groves—it became impossible not to regard the darkest view and expect the worst, in order, if possible, to save a remnant of the Expedition that the news might be carried to the Pasha and thence to civilisation some day. I pictured the entire column perished here in this camp, and the Pasha wondering month after month what had become of us, and we corrupting and decaying in this unknown corner in the great forest, and every blaze on the trees healed up, and every trail obliterated within a year, and our burial-place remaining unknown until the end of time. Indeed, it appeared to me as if we were drifting steadily towards just such a fate. Here were about 200 men without food going thirty-five miles to seek it. Not 150 would perhaps reach it; the others would throw themselves, like the Madis, to the ground, to wait, to beg from others, if perchance they returned. If an accident to the 50 bravest men happen, what then? Some are shot down by dwarfs; the larger aborigines attack the others in a body. The men have no leader; they scatter about, they become bewildered, lose their way, or are speared one after another. While we are waiting, ever waiting for people who cannot return, those with me die first by threes, sixes, tens, twenties, and then, like a candle extinguished, we are gone. Nay, something had to be done.
On the sixth day we made the broth as usual, a pot of butter and a pot of milk for 130 people, and the headmen and Mr. Bonny were called to council. On proposing a reverse to the foragers of such a nature as to cause an utter loss of all, they appeared unable to comprehend such a possibility, though folly after folly, madness after madness, had marked every day of my acquaintance with them. The departure of men secretly on raids, and never returning, the leaping of fifty men into the river after a bush antelope, the throwing away of their rations after fifteen months’ experiences of the forest, the reckless rush into guarded plantations, skewering their feet, the inattention they paid to abrasions leaving them to develope into rabid ulcers; the sale of their rifles to men who would have enslaved them all, follies practised by blockheads day after day, week after week; and then to say they could not comprehend the possibility of a fearful disaster. Were not 300 men with three officers lost in the wood for six days? Were not three persons lost close to this camp yesterday and they have not returned? Did I not tell these men that we should all die if they were not back on the fourth day? Was not this the sixth day of their absence? Were there not fifty people close to death now? and much else of the same kind?
By-and-by, the conviction stole on their minds that if by accident we were to remain in camp inactive for three days, we should then be too weak to seek food; and they agreed with me that it would be a wise thing to bury the goods, and set out on our return to Ngwetza to procure food for ourselves. But there was one difficulty. If we buried the goods, and fifty sick men preferred to remain in the camp to following us, should we return to the caché, we should find that the sick had exhumed the goods, and wrecked everything out of pure mischief.
STARVATION CAMP: SERVING OUT MILK AND BUTTER FOR BROTH.
Mr. Bonny then came to the rescue, and offered to stay with ten men in camp, if I provided food for him and the garrison for ten days, the time we decided we should be absent. Food to make a light gruel for so small a number for ten days was not difficult to find. Half a cupful of cornflour per man for thirteen men for ten days was measured, with the addition of four milk biscuits per man each day. A few tins of butter and condensed milk were also set apart to assist the gruel. For those unwilling or unable to follow us to the plantains we could do nothing. What might sustain a small garrison of thirteen men for many days would not save the lives of fifty when they were already so far gone, that only an abundance of digestive plantain flour could possibly save them.
On this morning little Saburi walked into camp quite unconcerned, and fresh as from a happy outing. “Why Saburi! where have you been?” “I lost my way while picking berries, and I wandered about, and near night I came to a track. I saw the marks of the axes, and I said—Lo! this is our road, and I followed it thinking I was coming to camp. But, instead of that, I saw only a big river. It was the Ihuru! Then I found a big hollow tree, and I went into it and slept; and then I came back along the road, and so and so, until I walked in here. That is all.”
We mustered every soul alive in the camp on the morning of the 15th. Sadi, the Manyuema headman, reported fourteen of his people unable to travel; Kibbobora reported his sick brother as being the only person of his party too sick to move; Fundi had a wife and a little boy too weak for the journey. The Expedition was obliged to leave 26. 43 persons verging on dissolution unless food could be procured within twenty-four hours. Assuming a cheery tone, though my heart was well-nigh breaking, I told them to be of good courage, that I was going to hunt up the absentees, who no doubt were gorging themselves; most likely I should find them on the road, in which case they would have to run all the way. “Meantime, pray for my success. God is the only one who can help you!”
1888.
Dec. 9.
Starvation Camp.
We set out 1 P.M. on our return journey towards Ngwetza, thirty-five miles distant, with sixty-five men and boys and twelve women. We travelled until night, and then threw ourselves on the ground, scattered about in groups, or singly, each under his own clump of bush, silent and sad, and communing with his own thoughts. Vain was it for me to seek for that sleep which is the “balm of hurt minds.” Too many memories crowded about me; too many dying forms haunted me in the darkness; my lively fancies were too distorted by dread, which painted them with dismal colours; the stark forms lying in links along the path, which we had seen that afternoon in our tramp, were things too solemn for sudden oblivion. The stars could not be seen to seek comfort in their twinkling; the poor hearts around me were too heavy to utter naught but groans of despair; the fires were not lit, for there was no food to cook—my grief was great. Out of the pall-black darkness came out the eerie shapes that haunt the fever-land, that jibe and mock the lonely man, and weave figures of flame, and draw fiery forms in the mantle of the night; and whispers breathed through the heavy air of graves and worms, and forgetfulness; and a demon hinted in the dazed brain that ‘twere better to rest than to think with a sickening heart; and the sough of the wind through the crowns of the thick-black bush seemed to sigh and moan “Lost! lost! lost! Thy labour and grief are in vain. Comfortless days upon days; brave lives are sobbing their last; man after man roll down to the death, to mildew and rot, and thou wilt be left alone!”
“Allah ho Akbar,” was the cry that rang through the gloom, from a man with a breaking heart. The words went pealing along through the dark, and they roused the echoes of “God is great” within me. Why should a Moslem recall a Christian to thoughts of his God? “Ye fools, when will ye be wise? He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see?” And, lo! worthier thoughts possess the mind, the straining of the eyes through the darkness is relaxed, and the sight is inverted to see dumb witnesses of past mercies on this or that forgotten occasion; one memory begets another, until the stubborn heart is melted, and our needs are laid as upon a tablet before the Great Deliverer.
Towards morning I dozed, to spring up a few hours later as the darkness was fading, and a ghostly light showed the still groups of my companions.
“Up, boys, up! to the plantains! up! Please God we shall have plantains to-day!” This was uttered to cheer the sad hearts. Within a few minutes we had filed away from our earthy couches, and were on the track in the cheerless light of the morning, some hobbling from sores, some limping from ulcers, some staggering from weakness. We had commenced to feel warmed up with the motion of the march, when, hark! I heard a murmur of voices ahead. Little Saburi held the rifle ready, observant of the least sign of the hand, when I saw a great pile of green fruit rising above the broad leaves of the phrynia that obstructed a clear view, and intuitively one divined that this must be the column of foragers advancing to meet us, and in a second of time, the weak, the lame, and the cripple, the limping and moaning people forgot their griefs and their woes, and shouted the grateful chant which goes up of its own accord towards the skies out of the full and sensitive hearts, “Thanks be to God.” Englishman and African, Christian and Pagan, all alike confess Him. He is not here, or there, but everywhere, and the heart of the grateful man confesseth Him.
It needed only one view of the foremost men to have told what the heedless, thoughtless herd had been doing. It was no time for reproaches, however, but to light fires, sit down and roast the green fruit, and get strength for the return, and in an hour we were swinging away back again to Starvation Camp, where we arrived at 2.30 P.M., to be welcomed as only dying men can welcome those who lend the right hand to help them. And all that afternoon young and old, Zanzibari and Manyuema, Soudanese and Madi, forgot their sorrows of the past in the pleasures of the present, and each vowed to be more provident in the future—until the next time.
1888.
Dec. 17.
Ihuru River.
On the 17th we reached the Ihuru, and the next day forded the river, and from thence we cut our way through the forest, through bush and plants which were the undergrowth, and early in the afternoon of the 19th we emerged out of the trackless bush, and presently were on the outskirts of the plantations of Fort Bodo, at which all the people admired greatly.
On the 20th we cut a track through the deserted plantations, and after an hour’s hard work reached our well-known road, which had been so often patrolled by us. We soon discovered traces of recent travel, and late foraging in piles of plantain skins near the track; but we could not discover by whom these were made. Probably the natives had retired to their settlements; perhaps the dwarfs were now banqueting on the fat of the land. We approached the end of our broad western military road, and at the turning met some Zanzibari patrols who were as much astonished as we were ourselves at the sudden encounter. Volley after volley soon rang through the silence of the clearing. The fort soon responded, and a stream of frantic men, wild with joy, advanced by leaps and bounds to meet us; and among the first was my dear friend the Doctor, who announced, with eyes dancing with pleasure, “All is well at Fort Bodo.”
