Mr. Wallis, the Vice-Consul, entertained me. He has laid the new town out most admirably, and I could scarcely believe that it had all been done in a few months. The place was alive with rats, who amused themselves all night by tobogganing down my face, rushing along my body, and taking flying leaps from my feet into outer darkness.
Commander Cullen took me over H.M.S. Gwendoline, the large new gunboat that had just been launched for patrolling the lake. It is a splendid work to have accomplished, when the difficulties of transporting some of the heavy portions round the rapids are taken into consideration. I was also introduced to a budding diplomatist, who informed me with pride that he had fired a soft-nosed bullet at an elephant at one thousand yards. The elephant escaped.
On December 15th I started on the voyage up the lake in the S.S. Domira, and at midday made Monkey Bay. It is a most beautiful little spot, and reminded me forcibly of the South Sea Islands. Bold rocky headlands plunge into the lake and enclose a white strip of sand with straggling villages at the back. The water is clear as crystal, and broken by the heads of hundreds of natives diving, swimming, and splashing about. Ringing peals of laughter echo in the rocks and startle the troops of baboons that sit watching with curious eyes the trim little steamer. Picturesque groups of natives are scattered about the beach, and the little picaninnies are playing on the skeleton of a wrecked Arab dhow, little dreaming what that dhow had meant to their fathers a few years before. In the afternoon I strolled out, hoping to get a shoot at koodoo, for which the place is famous. But the koodoo were not at home; however, I saw several impala, and shot a small buck which I believe to have been the duiker described by Sir Alfred Sharpe as a probable new species. Unfortunately, my natives devoured the skull and the rats ate the skin. It was a small, reddish-brown buck, similar in build to a klipspringer, with wiry hair and thick, high-standing hind quarters.
The next wooding station was Domira Bay, and on the 17th we arrived at Kota-Kota, which used to be the headquarters of the Arab slave traffic across the lake, and the starting-point of the Arab raids towards Mweru. Mr. Swann, the collector, who has had many years' experience of Tanganyika in the old Arab days, entertained me, and gave me two Angoni spears which had been taken in the Mpeseni trouble. There are several missionaries at Kota-Kota. They have started football, and in a rash moment I was induced to play--a freak which I regretted for many days afterwards, as it brought on a sharp attack of fever.
Kota-Kota is exceedingly beautiful, as indeed is all the coast of Lake Nyassa. The hills are heavily wooded, and their bases are broken by the waves into fantastic caves and rocky promontories against which plays the white line of surf. Small rocky islands stand out here and there, and form the resting-place of myriads of cormorants.
Here I first saw the extraordinary "Kungu" fly, which is, I believe, peculiar to Lake Nyassa. They resemble small may-flies, and at certain seasons of the year rise from the water in such stupendous clouds that they blot out the whole horizon. Seen in the distance, they have exactly the appearance of a rainstorm coming across the lake. When they are blown landwards they make every place uninhabitable by the stench which arises from the countless millions that lodge and die on every inch of sheltered ground. I myself have seen them lying a foot deep in a room, and I was told that they are often much worse. The natives sweep them up and make cakes of them. I tasted one, and found it by no means bad. The next morning we reached Bandawe, another important station, where there is a large mission-house with extensive plantations of pineapples and some splendid mango trees. At Nkata Bay, a few miles further up the coast, a native came and begged us to go and see his master, who was very ill. Accordingly we set off in the dark, and found Mr. Broadbridge of the African Trans-Continental Telegraph down with a severe attack of fever; we did what we could for him, and he shortly recovered. After a short stop at Luawi to pick up wood, we steamed into Florence Bay, and at Miss MacCallum's invitation I accompanied her up to the Livingstone Mission at Mount Waller. Mr. Stewart, one of the missionaries, who has been for some time working among the northern Angonis, told me that he had been investigating the history of the Angonis, who are descendants of the Zulus. There were two great treks north of the Zulus in the time of Chaka. One, under Moselikatse, marched to Matabeleland, leaving the ancestors of the present Matabele, and then north across the Zambesi. There they came into conflict with the Barotse, and were driven east, eventually settling in Southern Angoniland of to-day, which lies south-west by west of Lake Nyassa.
The other trek marched north through the Sabi district, leaving the present Shangaans on their way, and then crossed the Zambesi by the Kabrabasa rapids and passed near Lake Rukwa. Here the chief died and the trek split up: one part went north of Tanganyika and settled near the south-west of the Victoria Nyanza, where they were rediscovered by Stanley; another part marched round the northern shore of Lake Nyassa; and yet another returned south and founded Northern Angoniland of to-day.
Dr. Robert and Mrs. Laws treated me with the greatest hospitality; he took me round the mission, and showed me the results of their four years' work since the founding of the station. Dr. Robert Laws was one of the first explorers of Nyassaland, and was in no small way responsible for the checkmating of the Portuguese pretensions to what is now British Central Africa. The station is admirably situated on a plateau surrounded by hills with valleys intervening, and commands extensive views across the lake to Amelia Bay and the Livingstone Mountains, and to the west towards the valley of the Loangwa or Northern Angoniland. There is a large printing-machine which the natives work under the superintendence of Mr. Thomson. Here books and magazines and much work of great merit are produced. The processes of stereotyping and picture-reproducing on zinc are thoroughly understood by the skilled natives. In the workshops are several carpenters, one of whom in a few hours made me a folding camp-chair that accompanied me to Cairo. The farm and the quarry are both managed by natives. Dr. Laws' system is to employ native teaching as much as possible. If ability, whole-hearted earnestness, and hard work can accomplish any good in missionary endeavour, Dr. Laws ought to succeed. Laden with butter and gigantic water-melons, I returned to the boat, and the following day we reached Karonga's, the starting-point for the Stevenson Road.
CHAPTER VI.
KARONGA TO KITUTA ACROSS THE TANGANYIKA PLATEAU.
On arrival at Karonga I was much disappointed to find that Sharp, tired of waiting, had left two days before to try and arrange transport on Tanganyika. As it was the season for sowing their crops, very few carriers were available, and it was evident that I should have to wait some time before I could obtain sufficient men to transport our loads. I commenced operations by repacking all the food-boxes and discarding everything that was not absolutely necessary, as well as the considerable quantity of stuff that had spoilt through being improperly packed. The firm responsible, either as a practical joke or an experiment in the cultivation of fungus, had packed chocolate in paper wrappers and laid them in hay in a leaky wooden box. As a practical joke it was weak, but as a venture in fungi-culture a complete success. In fact, unpacking the boxes reminded me forcibly of the days when, as a youthful disciple of Isaac Walton, I used to dig for worms in the garden manure-heap. A series of remarkable tins of sausages added materially to the excitement of these excavations, one and all having assumed the outward and visible form of a Rugby football; while as to the inward invisible grace, I was careful to throw them down wind, when they exploded on contact with the ground in a manner most satisfactory, to the utter consternation of six Kaffir dogs and a hyæna. They, having followed up the wind of the first (a comparatively mild one), were so overcome by its successors that they clapped their tails between their legs, and, with a dismal howl, fled, convinced of the superiority of the white man, even in what they had hitherto considered the black man's monopoly. Native rumour has it that they are running still.
Having arranged everything and reduced the loads to a minimum, I succumbed to a dose of fever,