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BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
and myself travelled on the gunboats which were under the direction of 
Commander Robertson, R.N. The officers consisted of Captain Johnson, 
Lieut. Edwards, Dr. Watson, and a volunteer in the person of Mr. Clave, 
who had come out to Central Africa to study these countries on behalf of 
the Century , an American magazine. 1 Mr. Alfred Sharpe also accompanied 
the expedition. 
Our terms were rejected by Chiwaura who felt 
illimitable confidence in his clay walls, not realising 
that his town was absolutely at the mercy of a 
bombardment. It lay in a marshy plain within 700 
yards of the precipitous cliffs of a little plateau. The 
approach to this plateau was not defended by 
Chiwaura, though he might have made it very 
difficult for our forces to get there except with 
great loss of men ; but without other difficulties 
than those attending transport on men’s heads, we 
succeeded in planting our 7-pounder guns on the 
edge of the aforementioned cliffs. From this position 
we shelled Chiwaura, and the main town was soon 
in flames. The people retired to the inner citadel, 
which was not in the same way destructible, since the 
shells burst harmlessly in the adjoining forest. The 
enemy after a while called for a truce, but more 
Africano employed this interval in the hostilities to strengthen his defences, 
and when he was ready to begin again he announced the fact by firing on 
our soldiers when they approached the walls under cover of the truce. In 
fact in African warfare the hoisting of a white flag really means, “ I want a 
breathing spell,” and when both sides are rested they go on again without 
troubling themselves to announce the cessation of the truce. 
Jumbe had put 4,000 men under arms and had accompanied us to the 
scene of the fight, where he remained the whole of the time with his head 
wives. Jumbe though old and feeble was not lacking in bravery, and would 
willingly have risked his life against Chiwaura had I not held him back, 
but Jumbe’s commander was by no means a rash man. He was gaudily 
dressed in scarlet cloth and had innumerable charms hung about him to 
dispel ill-luck, but he was very much afraid of coming to close quarters 
with the enemy. During the truce we would watch with amusement this 
great mass of several thousand men surge across the quarter of a mile of 
plain which lay between us and Chiwaura’s town, but as soon as a gun was 
discharged from the ramparts by the enemy, Jumbe’s commander would shout 
■“ Tamanga ! tamanga ! ” (Run ! run !), and the whole four thousand would surge 
back to the base of the cliffs. At last the afternoon was drawing towards 
evening, and the enemy showed no disposition to yield. Jumbe’s people 
were beginning to doubt whether the white man was equal to taking such a 
place as Chiwaura’s. It was necessary to show them that not only could we 
set a place on fire at a distance of half a mile through our shells, but if 
incumbent on us we could come to close quarters and take a town by 
1 Mr. Glave was an Englishman who had served with Stanley on the Congo. He subsequently 
journeyed through British Central Africa to the Congo Free State, thence down the Congo to the 
vicinity of the Atlantic Ocean, where he unfortunately died of fever before he proceeded on board the 
•ocean-going steamer. 
CAPT. W. H. MANNING 
