Landing At Eppigoya, We Were At Once Met By The Headman, And I Proposed
That He Should Sell Us A Few Kids, As The Idea Of A Mutton Chop Was Most
Appetizing.
Far from supplying us with this luxury, the natives
immediately drove their flocks away, and after receiving a large present
of beads, the headman brought us a present of a sick lamb almost at the
point of natural death, and merely skin and bone.
Fortunately there were
fowls in thousands, as the natives did not use them for food; these we
purchased for one blue bead (monjoor) each, which in current value was
equal to 250 fowls for a shilling. Eggs were brought in baskets
containing several hundreds, but they were all poultry.
At Eppigoya the best salt was produced, and we purchased a good
supply - also some dried fish; thus provisioned, we procured boatmen, and
again started on our voyage.
Hardly had we proceeded two hundred yards, when we were steered direct
to the shore below the town, and our boatmen coolly laid down their
paddles and told us that they had performed their share, and that as
Eppigoya was divided into four parts under separate headmen, each
portion would supply rowers!
Ridiculous as this appeared, there was no contesting their decision; and
thus we were handed over from one to the other, and delayed for about
three hours in changing boatmen four times within a distance of less
than a mile! The perfect absurdity of such a regulation, combined with
the delay when time was most precious, was trying to the temper. At
every change, the headman accompanied the boatmen to our canoe, and
presented us with three fowls at parting; thus our canoes formed a
floating poultry show as we had already purchased large supplies. Our
live stock bothered us dreadfully; being without baskets, the fowls were
determined upon suicide, and many jumped deliberately overboard, while
others that were tied by the legs were drowned in the bottom of the
leaky canoe.
After the tenth day from our departure from Vacovia the scenery
increased in beauty. The lake had contracted to about thirty miles in
width, and was decreasing rapidly northward; the trees upon the
mountains upon the western shore could be distinguished. Continuing our
voyage north, the western shore projected suddenly, and diminished the
width of the lake to about twenty miles. It was no longer the great
inland sea that at Vacovia had so impressed me, with the clean pebbly
beach that had hitherto formed the shore, but vast banks of reeds
growing upon floating vegetation prevented the canoes from landing.
These banks were most peculiar, as they appeared to have been formed of
decayed vegetation, from which the papyrus rushes took root; the
thickness of the floating mass was about three feet, and so tough and
firm that a man could walk upon it, merely sinking above his ankles in
the soft ooze. Beneath this raft of vegetation was extremely deep water,
and the shore for a width of about half a mile was entirely protected by
this extraordinary formation. One day a tremendous gale of wind and
heavy sea broke off large portions, and the wind acting upon the rushes
like sails, carried floating islands of some acres about the lake to be
deposited wherever they might chance to hitch.
On the thirteenth day we found ourselves at the end of our lake voyage.
The lake at this point was between fifteen and twenty miles across, and
the appearance of the country to the north was that of a delta. The
shores upon either side were choked with vast banks of reeds, and as the
canoe skirted the edge of that upon the east coast, we could find no
bottom with a bamboo of twenty-five feet in length, although the
floating mass appeared like terra forma. We were in a perfect wilderness
of vegetation: On the west were mountains of about 4,000 feet above the
lake level, a continuation of the chain that formed the western shore
from the south: these mountains decreased in height towards the north,
in which direction the lake terminated in a broad valley of reeds.
We were told that we had arrived at Magungo, and that this was the spot
where the boats invariably crossed from Malegga on the western shore to
Kamrasi's country. The boatmen proposed that we should land upon the
floating vegetation, as that would be a short cut to the village or town
of Magungo; but as the swell of the water against the abrupt raft of
reeds threatened to swamp the canoe, I preferred coasting until we
should discover a good landing place. After skirting the floating reeds
for about a mile, we turned sharp to the east, and entered a broad
channel of water bounded on either side by the everlasting reeds. This
we were informed was the embouchure of the Somerset river from the
Victoria N'yanza. The same river that we had crossed at Karuma, boiling
and tearing along its rocky course, now entered the Albert N'yanza as
dead water! I could not understand this; there was not the slightest
current; the channel was about half a mile wide, and I could hardly
convince myself that this was not an arm of the lake branching to the
east. After searching for some time for a landing place among the
wonderful banks of reeds, we discovered a passage that had evidently
been used as an approach by canoes, but so narrow that our large canoe
could with difficulty be dragged through - all the men walking through
the mud and reeds, and towing with their utmost strength. Several
hundred paces of this tedious work brought us through the rushes into
open water, about eight feet deep, opposite to a clean rocky shore. We
had heard voices for some time while obscured on the other side of the
rushes, and we now found a number of natives, who had arrived to meet
us, with the chief of Magungo and our guide Rabonga, whom we had sent in
advance with the riding oxen from Vacovia.
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