CHAPTER III
On the 5th of May we were woke by the horns and drums of the Kirangozis (leaders of the caravan) at three o'clock, according to arrangement. The large camp-fires, which had been prepared overnight, were lighted, and breakfast--tea or coffee, with eggs and cold meat for us whites, a soup of meat and vegetables for the Swahili--was cooked; and by the light of the same fires preparations were made for starting. The advance-guard, consisting of the hundred éclaireurs and twenty lightly laden packhorses, accompanied by thirty mounted pioneers, started an hour after we awoke. The duty of the advance-guard was, with axe, billhook, and pick, so to clear the way where it led through jungle and thicket as to make it passable for our sumpter beasts with the larger baggage; to bridge, as well as they were able, over watercourses; and to prepare the next camping-place for the main body. In order to do this, the advance-guard had to precede us several hours, or even several days, according to the character of the country. We learnt from our guides that no great difficulties were to be anticipated at the outset, so at first our advance-guard had no need to be more than a few hours ahead.
It was eight o'clock when the main body was in order. In the front were 150 of us whites, headed by Johnston and myself; then followed in a long line first the led horses, then the asses, and finally the camels; twenty whites brought up the rear. Thus, at last, we left our camp with the sun already shining hotly upon us; and, throwing back a last glance at Mombasa lying picturesquely behind us, we bade farewell to the sea foaming below, whose dull roar could be distinctly heard despite a distance of four or five miles. To the sound of horns and drums we scaled the steep though not very high hills that separated us from the so-called desert which lay between us and the interior. The region, which we soon reached, evidently deserves the name of desert only in the hot season; now, when the three months' rainy season was scarcely over, we found the landscape park-like. Rich, though not very high, grass alternated with groves of mimosa and dwarf palm and with clumps of acacia. When, after a march of two hours, we had left the last of the coast hills behind us, the grass became more luxuriant and the trees more numerous, and taller; antelopes showed themselves in the distance, but they were very shy and were soon scared away by the dogs, which were not yet broken of the habit of useless hunting. About eleven o'clock we halted for rest and refreshment in the shade of a palm-grove which a dense mass of climbing plants had converted into a stately giant canopy. All--men and beasts--were exhausted, though we had been scarcely three hours on the march; the previous running and racing about in camp for four hours had been the reverse of refreshing to us, and after ten o'clock the heat had become most oppressive. Johnston comforted us by saying that it would be better in future. In the first place, we should henceforth be less time in getting ready to march, and should therefore start earlier--if it depended upon him, soon after four--doing the greatest part of the way in the cool of the morning, and halting at nine, or at the latest at ten. Moreover, the district we were now going through was the hottest, if not the most difficult, we should have to travel over; when we had once got into the higher regions we should be troubled by excessive heat only exceptionally.
Reinvigorated by this encouragement, and more still by a generous meal--the bulk of which consisted of two fat oxen bought on the way--and by the rest in the shade of the dense liana-canopy, we started again at four o'clock, and, after a trying march of nearly five hours, reached the camping-place prepared by our advance-guard in the neighbourhood of a Wa-Kamba village between Mkwalé and Mkinga. We did not come up with the advance-guard at all; they had rested here about noon, but had gone on several hours before we arrived, in order to keep ahead of us. However, they had left our supper in charge of one of their number--eleven antelopes of different kinds, which their huntsmen had shot by the way. The Swahili who had been left with this welcome gift, and who mounted his Arab horse to overtake his companions as soon as he had delivered his message, told us that they had unexpectedly come upon a large herd of these charming beasts, among which the white huntsmen had committed great havoc. Five antelopes had furnished his company with their midday meal, as many had been taken away for their evening meal, and the rest--among which, as he remarked, not without a little envy, were the fattest animals--had been left for us. This attention on the part of our companions who were ahead of us was received by us all the more gratefully as, in the Wa-Kamba villages which we had passed through since our midday halt, we had found no beasts for sale, except a few lean goats, which we had refused in hopes of getting something better; and we had been less fortunate in the chase than our advance-guard. Nothing but a few insignificant birds had come within reach of our sportsmen, and so we had already given up any hope of having fresh meat when the unexpected present furnished us with a dainty meal, the value of which only those can rightly estimate who have left an exhausting march behind them, and have the prospect of nothing but vegetables and preserved meats before them.
On the morning of the next day, mindful of the inconvenience experienced by us the day before, we began our march as early as half-past four. At first the country was quite open; but in a couple of hours we reached the Duruma country, where our advance-guard had had hot work. For more than half a mile the path lay through thorny hush of the most horrible kind, which would have been absolutely impassable by our sumpter beasts but for the hatchets and billhooks of our brave éclaireurs. Thanks, however, to the ample clearance they had made, we were quickly through. Towards eight o'clock the way got better again; and this alternation was repeated until, on the evening of the third day, we left Durumaland behind us and entered upon the great desert that stretches thence almost without a break as far as Teita. We once got very near to our advance-guard; I gave my steed the spur, in order to see the men at their work, but they made it their ambition to prevent us from getting quite close to them. With eager haste they plied knife and hatchet in the thick thorny bush, until a passage was made for us; and they then at once hurried forward without waiting for the main column, the head of which was within a mile and a quarter of them.
Nothing noteworthy occurred during these days. We left our camp about half-past four each morning, made our first halt about nine, resumed our march again before five in the afternoon, and camped between eight and nine in the evening. The provisioning in Durumaland was difficult; but we succeeded in procuring from the pastoral and agricultural inhabitants sufficient vegetables and flesh food, and of the latter a supply large enough to last us until we had passed through the Duruma desert. The soil seems to possess a great natural fertility, but its best portions are uncultivated and neglected, since the inhabitants seldom venture out of their jungle-thickets on account of the incessant inroads of the Masai. We heard everywhere of the evil deeds of these marauders, who had only a few weeks before fallen upon a tribe, slain the men, and driven off the women, children, and cattle, and were said to be again on the war-path in search of new booty. Our assurance that we would shortly free their district, as well as the districts of all the tribes with whom we had contracted or expected to contract alliance, from this scourge, was received by the Wa-Duruma with great incredulity; for the Sultan of Zanzibar himself had failed to prevent the Masai from extending their raids and levying contributions even as far as Mombasa and Pangani. Nevertheless, our promise spread rapidly far and near.
On the morning of the fourth day of our journey, just as we were preparing to enter upon the desert, we learnt from some natives, who hurried by breathless with alarm and anxiety, that a strong body of Masai had in the night made a large capture of slaves and cattle, and were now on their way to attack us. Thereupon we altered our arrangements. As the position we occupied was a good one, we left our baggage and the drivers in camp, and got ourselves