A SLAVE ROUTE 225 



following that river, as far as possible, towards the 

 upper waters of the Lualaba ; the latter part of the 

 journey could not fail to be of exceptional interest. 

 Another reason which determined us to leave the 

 lake at Baraka was that there is from that 

 place to Kasongo, the nearest point on the Congo, 

 a well-recognized route, on which we should prob- 

 ably be able to find porters without any great 

 difficulty. This was formerly one of the principal 

 routes by which slaves were brought from the Upper 

 Congo; when they arrived at Tanganyika they were 

 shipped across in dhows to Ujiji, on the east side of 

 the lake, whence their Arab owners sent them down 

 to Zanzibar and the east coast towns. Though 

 it looks but a short distance on the map — it is, 

 in fact, only about i "jo miles in a straight line — the 

 road wanders most irritatingly in very nearly every 

 direction, and the journey from Baraka to Kasongo 

 took us exactly a month. 



The country around Baraka has been almost 

 entirely depopulated by sleeping sickness,* which 

 was unknown on the shores of Tanganyika until 

 the year 1903. Whole villages have been wiped 

 out, and huge tracts of fertile land along the lake, 

 which were formerly cultivated, have become im- 

 penetrable jungle. Between Uvira and Baraka we 

 passed the deserted relics of a mission station, which 

 had been the centre of a large settlement ; the people 

 had all died or had migrated to a less cursed country, 

 * See Appendix. 



15 



