50 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



the camp, making these jet-bearded and fierce-eyed hen- 

 hearts faint with fears. Boxes had been prepared by 

 the barbarians for myself, and gates had been built 

 across the paths to arrest my party. P'hazi Mazungera, 

 M. Maizan's murderer, had collected a host that num- 

 bered thousands, and the Wazaramo were preparing a 

 levee en masse. To no purpose I quoted the Arab's pro- 

 verb— " the son of fifty dieth not at thirty" ; all would 

 be heroic victims marching to gory graves. Such reports 

 did real damage : the principal danger was the tremulous 

 alacrity with which the escort prepared upon each tri- 

 vial occasion for battle and murder, and sudden death. 

 At one place a squabble amongst the villagers kept the 

 Baloch squatting on their hams with lighted matches 

 from dusk till dawn. At another, a stray Fisi or Cyn- 

 hyasna entering the camp by night, caused a confusion 

 which only the deadliest onslaught could have justified. 

 A slave hired on the road, hearing these horrors, fled in 

 dismay; this, the first of desertions, was by no means 

 the last. The reader may realise the prevalence and 

 the extent of this African traveller's bane by the fact 

 that during my journey to Ujiji there was not a soul in 

 the caravan, from Said bin Salim the Arab, to the veriest 

 pauper, that did not desert or attempt to desert. 



Here, at the first mention of slaves, I must explain to 

 the reader why we were accompanied by them, and 

 how the guide and escort contrived to purchase them. 

 All the serving-men in Zanzibar Island and on the coast 

 of E. Africa are serviles ; the Kisawahili does not contain 

 even a word to express a hired domestic. For the evil 

 of slave-service there was no remedy : I therefore paid 

 them their wages and treated them as if they were free- 

 men. I had no power to prevent Said bin Salim, the 

 Baloch escort, and the " sons of Ramji," purchasing 



