228 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



Majid, as my guide and caravan leader, — begged hard 

 to be again employed. I positively refused to see them. 

 If at this distance from home they had perjured them- 

 selves and had plundered us, what might be expected 

 when they arrived near their native country ? 



As the time of departure approached, I regretted that 

 the arrival of several travellers had not taken place a 

 month earlier. Salim bin Rashid, whilst collecting ivory 

 in Usukuma and to the eastward of the Nyanza Lake, 

 had recovered a Msawahili porter, who, falling sick on 

 the road, had been left by a caravan from Tanga amongst 

 the wildest of the East African tribes, the Wamasai or 

 Wahumba. From this man, who spent two years 

 amongst those plunderers and their rivals in villany 

 the Warudi, I derived some valuable information con- 

 cerning the great northern route which spans the 

 countries lying between the coast and the Nyanza Lake. 

 I was also called upon by Amayr bin Said el Shaksi, a 

 strong-framed and stout-hearted greybeard, who, when 

 his vessel foundered in the waters of the Tanganyika, 

 saved his life by swimming, and as he had no goods and 

 but few of his slaves had survived, lived for five months 

 on roots and grasses, till restored to Ujiji by an Arab 

 canoe. A garrulous senior, fond of " venting his 

 travels," he spent many hours with me, talking over 

 his past adventures, and his ocular knowledge of the 

 Tanganyika enabled me to gather many, perhaps, reliable 

 details concerning its southern extremity. A few days 

 before departure Hilal bin Nasur, a well-born Harisi, 

 returned from K'hokoro ; he supplied me with a list of 

 stations and a lengthy description of his various ex- 

 cursions to the southern provinces.* 



* For this and other purely geographical details concerning the Southern 

 Provinces,' the reader is referred to the Journal of the Royal Geographical 

 Society, vol. xxix. 1860. 



