by Mark Hodder
On the morning the expedition departed Nzasa, having stayed there for a single night, Sir Richard Francis Burton sent Pox to Isabel to report his position. When the parakeet returned, it squawked: “Message from Isabel Arundell. We are still harassing the stinky-mouthed enemy. I have so far lost eighteen of my women to them. They are preparing a moronic party to follow you. We will try to hold them back. Grubby pants. Message ends.”
With the threat of pursuit, Burton tried to establish a greater sense of urgency among his porters, but already his safari was assailed by problems. Upon packing to leave the village, it was discovered that two boxes of equipment were missing and three of the Wasawahili had deserted; one of the mules appeared to be dying; and water had found its way into three sacks of flour, rendering them unusable.
The explorer, who from previous experience had resigned himself to such misfortunes, put a bullet through the mule's head, discarded the flour, redistributed the loads, and got his people moving.
The second day saw them trek from Nzasa to Tumba Ihere. The route led over gently undulating grasslands and through miry valleys, past a bone-strewn burial ground where witches and other practitioners of uchawi-black magic-had been burned at the stake, and across a fast-flowing stream where they lost another mule after it slipped and broke a leg.
They rested for an hour.
Swinburne abandoned his stretcher.
“I'm fine and dandy! In the pink! Fit as a fiddle!” he announced. “How far to the next village?”
“At least four hours' march,” Burton replied. “You can't possibly be in full bloom. You had half your blood sucked out a couple of days ago.”
“Pah! I'm perfectly all right. Confound it! I was hoping the village would be closer.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to try that pombe African beer you once told me about!”
They started moving again, crossing a plain that seethed with wildlife, and for half an hour, Swinburne, who was now riding a mule while holding an umbrella over his head, amused himself by shouting the names of every species he spotted: “Zebra! Koodoo! Giraffe! Guinea-fowl! Lion! Quail! Four-legged thingummy!”
He then fell off his mount, having fainted.
They put him back onto the stretcher.
After wrestling their way through a long stretch of sticky red soil and onto firmer, hilly ground, they were met by men from the village of Kiranga-Ranga. These Wazamaro warriors each bore three long puckered scars extending across both cheeks from their earlobes to the corners of their mouths. Their hair was plastered down with ochre-coloured mud and twisted into a double row of knobs that circled their heads. They wore loincloths of unbleached cotton and had strings of beads looped around their necks, which were also fitted with tightly beaded bands, known as mgoweko collars. A solid ring of brass circled their wrists. They carried muskets, spears, bows with poisoned arrows, and long knives.
They were not friendly.
Tribute was demanded, haggled over, and finally paid in the form of two doti of cloth and some much-prized sami-sami beads.
The safari continued, meandering past fertile fields of rice, maize, and manioc before coming up against a snarled and riotous jungle, which they were still hacking through when the rains started. They eventually stumbled out of it, soaked to the skin and covered with ticks, and found themselves amid fetid vegetation from which misshapen dwarf mango trees grew, and in this unlikely spot-Tumba Ihere-they were forced to establish their camp.
That evening, in the main Rowtie, Isabella Mayson announced that she was feeling out of sorts. By the morning she was trembling with ague and hallucinating that ravenous birds were trying to peck out her eyes. Swinburne gave up his stretcher for her.
“I have developed a horror of the horizontal!” he declared.
“Sit on your mule,” Burton instructed, “and don't overexert yourself.”
The explorer ordered the commencement of the next march.
“Kwecha! Kwecha!” Said bin Salim and his Askaris yelled. “Pakia! Hopa! Hopa!” Collect! Pack! Set out! Safari! A journey! A journey today!
So began the third day of their hike.
Pox made the daily flight eastward and back again. The report was not good. A ship had delivered two thousand Prussian reinforcements to Mzizima. The Daughters of Al-Manat had divided into two groups of ninety women, one continuing to wage a guerrilla campaign against the burgeoning town, the other harassing a contingent of men that had set off in pursuit of Burton's expedition.
“We have to move faster,” the king's agent told Said.
“I will do all I can, Mr. Burton,” the ras kafilah promised in his habitually polite manner, “and the rest is as Allah wills it.”
They tramped through alternating bands of richly cultivated land and matted flora, with Said's Askaris forcing the porters to a brisk pace wherever possible, until they eventually found themselves in a large forest of copal trees that oozed resin and filled the air with a cloying perfume. Horseflies attacked them. Thomas Honesty was stung below the left eye by a bee and the side of his face swelled up like a balloon. Trounce started to feel a stiffness in his limbs. For an hour a strange whistling noise assaulted their ears. They never discovered its source.
They kept going.
About noon, Burton-who'd succumbed to the turgid heat and was gazing uncomprehendingly at the back of his mule's head-was roused by Swinburne, who, in his piping voice, suddenly announced:
“The dense hard passage is blind and stifled
That crawls by a track none turn to climb
To the strait waste place that the years have rifled
Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time.
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;
The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain.”
“What?” Burton mumbled.
“Police pottery,” Swinburne replied. “Do you remember Matthew Keller in Leeds? Feels like a long time ago, durn't it?”
“I'm losing track,” Burton replied. “Since we left the Orpheus, I've been forgetting to record the date in my journal. I don't know why. It's out of character.”
He squinted against the glaring light and for the first time realised that the forest had been left behind; they were now traversing broad grain fields. He recognised the place-he'd passed through it during his previous expedition.
“We're approaching the village of Muhogwe. Its people have a reputation for violence but last time I was here they settled for mockery.”
William Trounce cleared his throat and said, “My apologies, Richard.” He slipped to the ground.
It was another case of seasoning fever.
“We're succumbing considerably sooner than I expected,” Burton said to Sister Raghavendra as they lowered the police detective onto a litter.
“Don't worry,” she replied. “There's usually a fairly long incubation period with this sort of affliction but the medicine I've been feeding you negates it. The stuff brings on the fever more rapidly, makes it burn more fiercely, and it's all over and done with in a matter of hours instead of weeks.”
Burton raised his eyebrows. “I should have liked that during my previous expedition!”
They came to Muhogwe. It was abandoned.
“Either the slavers have taken the entire population, or the entire population has upped and moved to avoid the slavers,” Burton observed.
“The latter, I hope,” Swinburne responded.
Beyond the village it was all jungle and forest again, then a quagmire where they had to fire their rifles into the air to scare away a herd of hippopotami.
A slope led up to a plateau, and here they found a boma-a fenced kraal-and decided to set up camp. No sooner had they erected the last tent than the clouds gathered and the rain fell.
They ate and rested, except for Burton who braved the downpour to take stock of the supplies. He found that two more porters had run
away and three bundles of specie were missing.
Night came. They tried to settle but the air smelled of putrefying vegetation, the mosquitoes were remorseless, and they all felt, to one degree or another, ill and out of sorts.
Hyenas cackled, screamed, and whined from dusk until dawn.
And so it went. The days passed and the safari crept along, seemingly at a snail's pace, and wound its way over the malarious plain of the Kingani River toward the low peaks of the Usagara Highlands. Each in turn, they came down with fever then made an astonishingly rapid recovery. Burton was in no doubt that Sister Raghavendra was a miracle worker, for there could be no greater contrast than that between his first Nile expedition, during which he and John Speke had been permanently stricken with an uncountable number of ailments, and this, his second, where illness was the exception rather than the rule.
Isabel's reports came every morning. A force of four hundred men was now following in the expedition's tracks. The Daughters of Al-Manat were making daily attacks against them but nine more of her followers had been killed and the distance was closing between the two groups.
“If we can just make it to Kazeh before they catch up,” Burton told his friends. “The Arabians there are well disposed toward me-they will loan us men and weapons.”
They trudged on.
Plains. Hills. Forests. Swamps. Jungle. The land challenged their every step.
Sagesera. Tunda. Dege la Mhora. Madege Madogo. Kidunda. Mgeta. The villages passed one after the other, each demanding hongo, each whittling away at their supplies.
Desertions. Theft. Accidents. Fatigue. The safari became ever more frayed and difficult to control.
One night, they heard distant gunshots.
They were camped at Kiruru, a small and semi-derelict village located deep in a plantation of holcus, whose tall, stiff canes almost completely hid the ragged beehive huts and slumping bandani.
Herbert Spencer, freshly wound up, had been explaining to them some of his First Principles of Philosophy when the crackle and pops of rifle fire echoed faintly through the air.
They looked at each other.
“How far away?” Thomas Honesty asked.
“Not far enough,” Maneesh Krishnamurthy grunted.
“It's from somewhere ahead of us, not behind,” Burton noted.
“Lardy flab!” Pox added.
“Sleep with your weapons beside you,” the explorer ordered. “Herbert, I want you to patrol the camp tonight.”
“Actually, Boss, I patrol the camp every blinkin' night,” the philosopher answered.
“Well, with extra vigilance tonight, please, and I think Tom, William, Maneesh, Algy, and I will stand shifts with you.”
Burton turned to Said. “Wilt thou see to it that we are packed and on the move well before sunrise?”
Said bowed an acknowledgement.
The night passed without incident but the march the following morning was one of the worst they'd so far experienced.
They found themselves fighting through thick razor-edged grass, which towered over their heads and dripped dew onto them. The black earth was greasy and slippery and interlaced with roots that caught at their feet. The mules brayed in distress, refused to be ridden, and had to be forced along with swipes of the bakur, not moving until the cat had raised welts on their hindquarters.
Pox, who'd been sent to Isabel earlier, returned and shrieked: “Message from Isabel Big Nose Arundell. We have reduced their cretinous number by a quarter but they are less than a day behind you. Move faster, Dick. Message bleeding well ends.”
“We're moving as fast as we bleeding well can!” Burton grumbled.
The grass gave way to a multitude of distorted palms, then to a savannah which promised easier going but immediately disappointed by blocking their progress with a sequence of steep nullahs-watercourses whose near-vertical banks dropped into stinking morasses that sucked them in right up to their thighs.
“I suspect this plain is always water-laden,” Burton panted, as he and Krishnamurthy tried to haul one of the mules through the mire. “The water runs down from Usagara and this area is like a basin-there's no way for it to quickly drain. Were we not in such a confounded hurry, I would have gone around it. The ridge to the north is the best route, but it would've taken too long to get there. Bismillah! I hope they don't catch us here. This is a bad place for armed conflict!”
Krishnamurthy pointed ahead, westward, at plum-coloured hills. “Higher ground there,” he said. “Hopefully it'll be easier going. The height would give us an advantage, too.”
Burton nodded an agreement and said, “Those are the hills of Dut'humi.”
They finally reached the slopes.
Burton guided his expedition along a well-trodden path, up through thick vegetation, over a summit, and down the other side. They waded through a swamp that sent up noxious bubbles of hydrogen sulphide with their every step. The rotting carcass of a rhinoceros lay at the far edge of the morass, and beyond it a long, sparsely forested incline led them to an area of tightly packed foliage. Monkeys and parrots squabbled and hooted in the branches around them.
They forced their way along the overgrown trail until they suddenly came to a clearing, where seven elderly warriors stood, each holding a bow with a trembling arrow levelled at them. The old men were plainly terrified and tears were streaming down their cheeks. They were no threat and they knew it.
Said called for the porters to halt, then stepped forward to speak to the old men, but one suddenly let loose a cry of surprise, dropped his weapon, pushed the Arab aside, and ran over to Burton.
“Wewe! Wewe! Thou art Murungwana Sana of Many Tongues!” he cried. “Thou wert here long long days ago, and helped our people to fight the p'hazi whose name is Manda, who had plundered our village!”
“I remember thee, Mwene Goha,” Burton said, giving the man his title. “Thy name is Mavi ya Gnombe. Manda was of a neighbouring district, and we punished him right and good, did we not? Surely he has not been raiding thy village again?”
“No, not him! The slavers have come!” The man loosed a wail of despair. “They have taken all but the old!”
“When did this happen?”
“In the night. It is Tippu Tip, and he is still here, camped beyond the trees, in our fields.”
A murmur of consternation rose from the nearest of the porters and rippled away down the line. Burton turned to Said. “See to the men. Bring them into this clearing. Do not allow them to flee.”
The ras kafilah signalled to his bully boys and they started to herd the porters into the glade.
The king's agent instructed Trounce, Honesty, Krishnamurthy, Spencer, Isabella Mayson, and Sister Raghavendra to help the Arab guard the men and supplies. He gestured for Swinburne to join him, then addressed Mavi ya Gnombe: “Mwene Goha, I wouldst look upon the slavers' camp, but I do not wish the slavers to see me.”
“Follow, I shall show thee,” the elder said. He and his companions, who'd put away their arrows, led Burton and Swinburne to the far side of the clearing where the path continued.
Between the glade and the cultivated fields beyond there was a thick band of forest. The trail led halfway through this, then veered sharply to the left. The African stopped at the bend and pointed down the path.
“It is the way to the village,” he said.
“I remember,” Burton replied. “The houses and bandani are in another clearing some way along. I had arranged for a forward party of Wanyamwezi porters to meet us at thy village with supplies, but the plan went awry.”
“Had they come, they would now be slaves, so it is good the plan did not work. Murungwana Sana, this is one of three paths from the village clearing. Another leads from it down to the plain and is better trodden than this.”
“I was wondering why this one is so overgrown,” said Burton. “The last time I was here, it was the main route.”
“We changed it after Manda attacked us.”
“And the third
path?”
“Goes from the village, through the forest, to the fields. All these paths are now guarded by old men, as this one was. But let us not follow this way. Instead, we shall go through the trees here, and we will come to the fields at a place where the slavers would not expect to see a man, and will therefore not be looking. My brothers will meanwhile return to the village, for the grandmothers of those taken are sorely afraid.”
“Very well.”
Mavi ya Gnombe nodded to his companions, who turned and continued down the trail, then he pushed through a sticky-leafed bush and disappeared into the undergrowth. Burton followed, and Swinburne stepped after him, muttering about leeches and ticks and fleas and “assorted creepy-crawlies.”
They struggled on for five minutes, then the trees thinned, and the men ducked low and proceeded as quietly as possible. They came to a bush, pushed aside its leaves, and looked out over cultivated fields, upon which was camped a large slave caravan.
There were, Burton estimated, about four hundred slaves, men and women, mostly kneeling, huddled together and chained by the neck in groups of twelve. Arabian traders moved among and around them-about seventy, though there were undoubtedly more in the large tents that had been erected on the southern side of the camp.
A little to the north, a great many pack mules were corralled, along with a few ill-looking horses.
Swinburne started to twitch with fury. “This is diabolical, Richard!” he hissed. “There must be something we can do!”
“We're vastly outnumbered, Algy,” Burton said. “And we have the Prussians breathing down our necks. But-”
“But what?”
“Perhaps there's a way we can kill two birds with one stone. Let's get back to the others.”
They retraced their steps through the foliage until they emerged once again onto the path. Burton addressed the elderly African: “Mavi ya Gnombe, go thou to thy village and bring all who remain there to the glade where we encountered thee. Do not allow a single one to remain behind.”
The old man looked puzzled, but turned and paced away to do as commanded.
Burton and Swinburne returned to the clearing, where they found the porters restless and unhappy. The king's agent walked over to the bundle of robes that hid Herbert Spencer and reached up to the parakeet that squatted atop it. Pox jumped onto his outstretched hand, and Burton took the bird away from his companions and quietly gave it a message to deliver to Isabel. He included a description of their location, outlined a plan of action, and finished: “Report the enemy's numbers and position. Message ends.”
