VEGETABLE PRODUCTS.

307

Waganda. But in populous districts the people all came to see the convoy, and led the way in a shouting and saluting crowd. Some of the men got fuddled on their good wine in the middle of a march, and the natives tried to revive them by applications of water. They actually wished to carry one "incapable," and never tried to rob him of his clothes or gun, which he kept fiercely brandishing.

Grant was surprised by the quantity of brass-wire worn on the arms of some of the women. This, being an imported product, was more fashionable than copper. It came into the country as the result of the ivory-trade carried on with the people of Usui, at the mart of Karagué. The dwellings were detached grass huts, generally in plantain orchards, arranged in three sides of a square, with charmed poles outside. A storehouse on piles in the central space contained the grain, hoes, &c. The barkcloth tree, which they had not seen for months, was abundant here, but of small size. To get salt, the people had recourse to a flat linear-leaved rush on the bank of the river, some of whose leaves were fourteen feet long. They burnt it, washed the ashes, and used the saline water thus obtained to boil their potatoes or plantains. Door-screens, resembling a wattled hurdle, are made from the papyrus. Strips from its stems, bleached white, are made into beautiful fish-creels, while its pith is converted into wrappers, or covers for jars of wine. The pith-wood supplied floats, door-bolts, or oval shields. ful plant was the universal bottle-gourd.

Another use

They found fresh eggs placed in forks of trees and in the ceilings of huts, as medicine or Mganga (religion). It was thought unlucky to throw away the heaps of hippopotamus spoils which lay outside the houses, and a beautiful convolvulus (Argyreia sp.), with immense mauve flowers,

308

FALLS ON THE RIVER.

was planted near to honour them. This plant, held in the hunter's hand, was believed to bring certain sport. The millstone in these parts was a slab of the brick-red rough-grained granite seen along the pathways, or of hornblende, imbedded in and edged with clay. Any round stone was used to rub down the grain.

The country passed through was healthy enough when it sloped to the Nile with an eastern aspect, but Speke and Grant both suffered from sick headaches from exposure to the heat in the open canoe; and the burning glass of the river became so monotonous that they were glad to come to cataracts, and have to proceed by land. On the eighth and ninth days from the time they embarked they both had attacks of fever, sickness, and dysentery. The ground on the line of march on the 19th of November was highly cultivated, and intersected by a deep branching ravine, through which water ran. A common plant observed was the sand-paper tree, whose leaves, as rough as a cat's tongue, are used for polishing clubs and spear-handles.

After a severe day of illness during the march, Grant arrived in camp at dusk exhausted, and found Speke also laid up, but in a position where the delightful sound of a cataract was audible on both sides. When morning came, after a night of fever, vermin, and mosquitoes, the noble sight of the Karuma Falls quite revived them. Suddenly, in a deep ravine one hundred yards below, they saw the formerly placid river, up which vessels of moderate size might float two or three abreast, changed into a turbulent torrent. There were three cataracts on less than a mile of the river, and each had a music of its own. Seated upon the rocks of the central fall, they were strongly impressed with its grandeur. The cloudy sky tinted the river a mossy brown, and the water was broken into white foam by a fall of six feet through three chan

BEAUTY OF THE SCENERY.

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nels worn in the rock. On the centre block a hut had been daringly placed, in commemoration of some event. Below the falls, upon an island, other huts were erected, uninhabited, and approachable only with difficulty. They might have been placed there as stores for grain, where they were safe from the depredations of the Kidi. The trees upon the island had their branches connected by cords, on which were strung wings and feathers of birds, giving it the appearance of a charmed spot.

Looking up the river from this fall, there was a long reach, broken by foam in two places; but the enchantment of the scene consisted in the view of the steep banks, densely covered with foliage, forming a frame to the picture, and recalling the wildest scenes on the Scot

310

A THREATENED FIGHT.

tish rivers. Just below the falls, where the water eddied among rushes, several baskets were seen hanging from trees, whose object was to contain fowls as a bait for hippopotami, or as an inducement for them to come under a trap placed not far off. Across their track a cord was placed, twined with creepers, and over this a short log, shod with iron, was hung from a bough. On the cord being touched, the weight fell upon the animal, transfixing him till the villagers might come for water.

The so-called Karuma Falls were a mere sluice or rush of water between high syenitic stones, falling in a long slope down a ten-feet drop. The others were of minor importance; but one within ear-shot, down the river, was said to be very grand. It was believed that Karuma, the familiar of a certain great spirit, placed the stones that break the current; and as a reward for his doing so, his master allowed the rapids to be called by his name. At the great falls below, as Kidgwiga informed them, the king had caused the heads of a hundred prisoners taken in the war with Rionga to be cut off, and thrown into the river.

During their detention at Karuma Falls, Grant was aroused one day from his siesta by a great tumult outside the tent. Two hostile parties had collected for a fight, the Seedis on one side, with their firearms, and the natives on the other. A gun going off in a distant part of the camp caused the parties to disperse. A woman was said to have been at the bottom of it, but no harm ensued, and such scenes of excitement were of common occurrence.

The local governor called on the 22d with a large retinue, attended by a harpist, and bringing provisions. He had been very generous to Bombay on his journey to Gani. The interview was not over when it was reported that a large party of travellers were walking down the opposite side of the river. Through the grass they could see a line

CROSSING THE RIVER.

311

of people moving along, each with a load on his head, and some wearing white skin coverings. They were Kidi going to assist Rionga against the very governor with whom the officers of the expedition were conversing, and they marched along with perfect security, as a rapid river separated. the belligerents, too wide for an arrow to reach across it.

Speke's party crossed the next day to the place where they had been seen, and the whole day was consumed in the passage, the fare for the whole being a cow, with a present to the chief officer. The ferry-boats were very rotten, and obliged to be caulked with papyrus roots. Three men paddled with spoon-shaped sticks, who worked hard to pass the three hundred yards of stream, or they might have missed the landing-place, or even have been carried down the cataract. After crossing, they encamped for the night a mile from the falls on the Kidi side, in the midst of a tropical forest, where they passed a stormy and soaking night. There they waited till noon the next day for the forty porters promised by Kamrasi, of whom only twenty-five arrived, making the party seventy-eight in all. They marched across swamps, and through thick jungle and long grasses, wet, and labouring hard. The forest was only occasionally broken by a serpentine bog, along which the only path was a gutter, with grass eight feet high, meeting so close from the sides that they had to force a way through it.

At last they were rewarded by a striking view. The jungle had thinned, and they found themselves unexpectedly standing on the edge of a plateau, to the west of which for an interminable distance lay a low, flat, grass country, yellowed by the sun, with a few shrubs or trees scattered over its surface, while from fifteen to twenty miles in the rear, to the north-west, stood conspicuous the hill of Kisuga, said to be situated in Chopi, not far