Musa Said This Hill Was
In Ruanda, A Much Larger Country Than Urundi; And Further, Both
Men Said, As They
Had said before, that the lands of Usoga and
Unyoro were islands, being surrounded by water; and a salt lake,
Which was called N'yanza, though not the great Victoria N'yanza
lay on the other said of the Unyoro, from which direction
Rumanika, king of Karague, sometimes got beads forwarded to him
by Kamrasi, king of Unyoro, of a different sort from any brought
from Zanzibar. Moreover, these beads were said to have been
plundered from white men by the Wakidi, - a stark-naked people who
live up in trees - have small stools fixed on behind, always ready
for sitting - wear their hair hanging down as far as the rump, all
covered with cowrie-shells - suspend beads from wire attached to
their ears and their lower lips - and wear strong iron collars and
bracelets.
This people, I was told, are so fierce in war that no other tribe
can stand against them, though they only fight with short spears.
When this discourse was ended, ever perplexed about the
Tanganyika being a still lake, I enquired of Mohinna and other
old friends what they thought about the Marungu river: did it run
into or out of the lake? and they all still adhered to its
running into the lake - which, after all, in my mind, is the most
conclusive argument that it does run out of the lake, making it
one of a chain of lakes leading to the N'yanza, and through it by
the Zambezi into the sea; for all the Arabs on the former journey
said the Rusizi river ran out of the Tanganyika, as also the
Kitangule ran out of the N'yanza, and the Nile ran into it, even
though Snay said he thought the Jub river drained the N'yanza.
All these statements were, when literally translated into
English, the reverse of what the speakers, using a peculiar Arab
idiom, meant to say; for all the statements made as to the flow
of rivers by the negroes - who apparently give the same meaning to
"out" and "in" as we do - contradicted the Arabs in their
descriptions of the direction of the flow of these rivers.
Mohinna now gave us a very graphic description of his fight with
Short-legs, the late chief of Khoko. About a year ago, as he was
making his way down to the coast with his ivory merchandise, on
arrival at Khoko, and before his camp was fortified with a ring-
fence of thorns, some of his men went to drink at a well, where
they no sooner arrived than the natives began to bean them with
sticks, claiming the well as their property. This commenced a
row, which brought out a large body of men, who demanded a
bullock at the point of their spears. Mohinna hearing this, also
came to the well, and said he would not listen to their demand,
but would drink as he wished, for the water was the gift of God.
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