UJIJI AT LAST. 435 



descended, it opened more and more into view, until it was revealed at last 

 into a great inland sea, bounded westward by an appalling black-blue range of 

 mountains, and stretching north and south, without bounds, a grey expanse 

 of water." 



After feasting their eyes on this longed-for prospect, they hurry on with 

 eager footsteps. "From the western base of the hill there was a three hours' 

 march, though no march ever passed off so quickly — the hours seemed to have 

 been quarters — we had seen so much that was novel and rare to us who had 

 been travelling so long in the highlands. The mountains bounding the lake 

 on the eastward receded, and the lake advanced. We had crossed the Ruche, 

 or Liuche, and its thick belt of matete grass ; we had plunged int o a perfect 

 forest of them, and had entered into the cultivated fields which supply the 

 port of Ujiji with vegetables, etc ; and we stood at last on the summit of the 

 last hill of the myriads we had crossed, and the port of Ujiji, embowered in 

 palms, with the tiny waves of the silver waters of the Tanganyika rolling at 

 its feet, was directly beneath us. 



" We are now about descending. In a few minutes we shall have reached 

 the spot where lives, we imagine, the object of our search. Our fate will soon 

 be decided. No one in that town knows we are coming — least of all do they 

 know we are so close to them ; if any of them ever heard of the white man at 

 Unyanyembe, they must believe we are there yet. We shall take them all 

 by surprise ; for no other but a white man would dare leave Unyanyembe for 

 Ujiji with the country in such a distracted state — no other but a crazy white 

 man, whom Sheikh, the son of Nasib, is going to report to Syed or Prince 

 Binghas, for not taking his advice." 



The supreme moment had come at last; the American flag is flung out 

 to the breeze ; muskets are loaded and fired off in hot haste to rouse the little 

 town of Ujiji, which as yet knew nothing of the strange and unexpected visi- 

 tors now at its gates. " The flags are fluttered — the banner of America is in 

 front, waving joyfully — the guide is in the zenith of his glory — the former 

 residents of Zanzibar will know it directly, and will wonder — as well they 

 may, as to what it means. Never were the stars and stripes so beautiful to 

 my mind, the breeze of the Tanganyika has such an effect on them. The 

 guide blows his horn, and the shrill wild clangour of it is far and wide, and 

 still the muskets tell the noisy seconds. . . The natives of Ujiji, . . 

 and I know not where else, hurry up by the hundreds to ask what it all means, 

 this fusillading, shouting, and blowing of horns, and flag-flying. There arc 

 Yambos (how do you do's) shouted out to me by the dozen, and delighted 

 Arabs have run up breathlessly to shake my hand and ask anxiously where I 

 come from. But I have no patience with them — the expedition goes far too 

 slow ; I should like to settle the vexed question by one personal view. Where 

 is he ? Has he fled ? Suddenly a man, a black man at my elbow, shouts in 



