338 



GEOGRAPHICAL PROGRESS AND DISCOVERY IN 1875. 



the jungle. In Urimi they came across a tribe, 

 of unusual beauty of person, of men and women, 

 girded only with goat-skins ; they owned no 

 chief, but were obedient to the old men. 

 This people they induced with difficulty to sell 

 them provisions, or to grant them leave to pass 

 through. At Chiwyu, 400 miles on their route, 

 Edward Pocock died. Farther northward they 

 entered a land of springs and rivulets, the ex- 

 treme fountain-heads of the Nile. By the vil- 

 lage of Vinyata, containing two or three thou- 

 sand inhabitants, in Ituru, a district of north- 

 ern Urimi, they struck the river Leewumbu, 

 which drains this whole region. The natives 

 received them coldly and suspiciously, and cast 

 avaricious glances upon their stores. They 

 bought milk, eggs, and chickens, from the 

 people, and exchanged cloth and beads with 

 the " magic doctor," whom the tribe respects 

 like a king, in return for a fat ox, and endeav- 

 ored to conciliate this personage with further 

 gifts. On the following day the war-cry, which 

 sounded like "Hehu, a hehul" was raised 

 through the 200 villages of the plain; soon 

 after the camp was surrounded by warriors, 

 armed with spears in their right hands and 

 bows and arrows in their left, with plumes of 

 bustards, eagles, and kites, upon their heads, 

 and the manes of zebras and giraffes about 

 their brows. They held a parley with the 

 elders through an interpreter, and when it was 

 charged that one of the white men had stolen 

 milk and butter, they acceded to their demand 

 of four yards of sheeting, whereupon they de- 

 parted appeased. But the warriors were not 

 diverted from their hostile purposes; a band 

 hurried around to the other side of the camp, 

 and there wounded a man who was gathering 

 firewood. An attack soon commenced. The 

 Wanguana, or freemen of Zanzibar, engaged 

 with the savages, while the camp was fortified 

 with a palisade, or high fence of thorn-bushes. 

 The next morning the enemy reappeared in 

 greater numbers, reenforced, Mr. Stanley sus- 

 pected, from the neighboring nations. It has 

 since been reported that they were aided by 

 the followers of Seyvid ben Selim, Governor 

 of Unyanyembi. Four several detachments 

 were sent out, and drove the savages before 

 them. One of these detachments, over-con- 

 fident, pursued the fleeing enemy to a distant 

 plain, when suddenly they turned, and slaugh- 

 tered the detachment, every man ; one of the 

 other companies was saved from a like fate by 

 being reenforced in time upon the warning of a 

 fleet runner. The other two companies, more 

 successful, fired the villages, a score or more, 

 on every side, and returned at evening with 

 booty of cattle and grain. The killed of this 

 day's fighting were 21 men, against a reported 

 loss among the savages of 35. The third day 

 60 men were sent out to complete the demoli- 

 tion of the enemies' places ; they took another 

 large village, and before noon the savages were 

 completely subdued. On entering Isamba and 

 Usukuma they heard rumors of the wars of the 



robber-chief Mirambo, and as they approached 

 the Victoria they were but a day's march from 

 the spot where this conquering tyrant was 

 fighting with the tribes of Usandu and Masari. 

 North of Mizanza the party entered an un- 

 known region, passing, as far as the boundary 

 of Usandawi, for thirty-five miles through a 

 plain of the altitude of 2,800 feet; thence, on 

 their westerly and northwesterly course, they 

 crossed a broad, wooded plateau of about 4,500 

 feet mean altitude, which takes in all the ter- 

 ritory of Uyanzi, Unyanyembi, Usukuma, Uri- 

 mi, and Irumbo, or the whole tract between 

 the valley of the Rufigi on the south and the 

 lake Victoria Nyanza. As far as Urimi a thick 

 growth of acacias covered the shallow soil, 

 with here and there only a huge euphorbia 

 rooted in the cleft of a rock. In the basin of 

 Matongo, in Southern Urimi, and upon all the 

 ridges and basins up to the Victoria Nyanza, 

 they observed evidences of the action of a 

 primeval ocean upon the underlying granitic, 

 porphyritic, and gneissic rock. The Leewumbu 

 River, after a course of 170 miles, in Usukuma 

 is called by the name of Monangah, and, after 

 flowing 100 miles more, takes the name of the 

 Shimeeyu. Crossing a broad, level flat, which 

 in the masiTca^ or rainy season, is inundated, 

 and which must once have been a bay of the 

 lake, they entered Usukuma, a country thickly 

 peopled and rich in cattle, consisting of rolling 

 plains, intersected at wide distances by chains 

 of rocky hills. At the arrival on the shore of 

 the lake, Stanley, upon mustering his force, 

 found that he had left only 3 whites and 166 

 Wanguana soldiers and carriers, over half his 

 band having been lost by death and desertion. 

 The lake Victoria Nyanza was first discov- 

 ered by Captain John Banning Speke, in 1858. 

 He was convinced that it and its tributaries 

 were the headwaters of the Nile. On a second 

 expedition, accompanied by Colonel Grant, 

 1859-'63, Speke endeavored, unsuccessfully, to 

 find its connection with the Nile, and his hy- 

 pothesis was therefore extensively discredited. 

 Subsequently Captain Richard Burton wrote to 

 disprove the theory, affirming that the Victoria 

 was an unimportant chain of small lakes, and 

 claiming that the Tanganyika was the chief 

 source of the great river, supporting his rebut- 

 tal with the difference in the altitude found by 

 Speke between the northern and southern sides 

 of the lake, and by several outlets, marked on 

 Speke's chart, on the northern side. In 1864 

 Baker confirmed the statements of Grant and 

 Speke of a southerly outflow ; but the belief 

 that the Victoria was only a group of lagoons 

 has prevailed, and on the maps it has been so 

 designated. This supposition was strengthened 

 by the report of Colonel Long, in 1874, who 

 declared that the breadth of the lake from 

 north to south was but slight. In 1871 Stan- 

 ley and Livingstone examined the north end 

 of the Tanganyika, and did not find the outlet 

 supposed by Burton and others to exist. In 

 1874 Cameron discovered the western issue of 



