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In about half an hour we had left the tall matama and fields of water-melons, cucumbers, and manioc; and, crossing a reedy slough, were in an open forest of ebony and calabash. In its depths are deer in plentiful numbers, and at night it is visited by the hippopotami of the Kingani for the sake of its grass.
Leaving this second river-bank, we splashed, waded, occasionally half-swimming, and reeled through mire, water-dripping grass and matama stalks, along the left bank of the Makata proper, until farther progress was effectually prevented for that day by a deep bend of the river, which we should be obliged to cross the next day.
A sheep cost one chukka; six chickens were also purchased at that price; six measures of matama, maweri, or hindi, were procurable for the same sum; in short, we were coming, at last, into the land of plenty. On the 10th June we arrived at Kiti after a journey of four hours and a half, where we found the irrepressible Hamed halted in sore trouble.
But instead, while travelling from the tall weeds which covered the clearing which had preceded the cultivated parts, we had entered into the depths of the taller matama stalks, and, excepting some distant hills near Mvumi, where the Great Sultan lived the first of the tribe to whom we should pay tribute the view was extremely limited.
Before an hour went by, there came boxes full of choroko, beans, rice, matama or dourra, and Indian corn, carried on the heads of a dozen villagers, and shortly after the Mtemi himself came, followed by about thirty musketeers and twenty spearmen, to visit the first white man ever seen on this road.
At Umanda, six hours from Mfuto, our warriors bedaubed themselves with the medicine which the wise men had manufactured for them a compound of matama flour mixed with the juices of a herb whose virtues were only known to the Waganga of the Wanyamwezi.
Towards night, the scene having reached its acme of unpleasantness, the rain ceased, and the natives poured into camp from the villages in the woods with their vendibles. Foremost among these, as if in duty bound, came the village sultan lord, chief, or head bearing three measures of matama and half a measure of rice, of which he begged, with paternal smiles, my acceptance.
Parts of the Holy Scriptures, catechisms, and spelling-books, were printed; the ship, with the assistance of the Society of which Marsden was agent, was purchased, a schooner of ninety tons, and named Te Matama, the Beginner; a person named Scott secured, at 150l. per annum, to instruct the natives in the cultivation of sugar and tobacco, and stores laid in of presents for the natives, clothes for the women, shoes, stockings, tea-kettles, tea-cups, saucers, and tea.
Besides much undigested matama and grass there were found twenty-five short, thick, white worms, sticking like leeches into the coating of the stomach, while the intestines were almost alive with the numbers of long white worms. I was satisfied that neither man nor beast could long exist with such a mass of corrupting life within him.
His misfortunes arose from the fact that, being too busily engaged in fidgeting about the camp, he permitted his donkeys to stray into the matama fields of Pembera Pereh, the Sultan.
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