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Finding that nothing more could be done at Caze, the travellers, assembling their caravan, commenced their march northward on the 17th of March. On the 24th they reached Mininga, where they were received by an ivory merchant named Sirboko. Here one of Sirboko's slaves, who had been chained up, addressed Speke, piteously exclaiming: "Oh, my lord, take pity on me!
Then, as soon as they left, I made Musa order some of his men off to Rungua, requesting the chief of the place to send porters to Mininga to remove all our baggage over to his palace; at the same time I begged him not to fear the Watuta's threat to attack him, as Musa would come as soon as the treaty was concluded, in company with me, to build a boma alongside his palace, as he did in former years, to be nearer his trade with Karague.
The Hottentots, too, suffered so much from sickness that, as the only hope of saving their lives, it was necessary to send them back to Zanzibar. Speke therefore found it necessary to return to Caze, which he reached on the 2nd of May, leaving Grant, who was ill, behind at Mininga.
On arriving at Mininga, I was rejoiced to see Grant greatly recovered. Three villagers had been attacked by two lions during my absence. Two of the people escaped, but the third was seized as he was plunging into his hut, and was dragged off and devoured by the animals.
With one move, by alternately crossing strips of forest and cultivation, studded here and there with small hills of granite, we forded the Qaunde nullah a tributary to the Gombe and entered the rich flat district of Mininga, where the gingerbread-palm grows abundantly. The greatest man we found here was a broken-down ivory merchant called Sirboko, who gave us a good hut to live in.
Speke reached Mininga again on the 15th, where he found Grant greatly recovered. During his absence three villagers had been attacked by a couple of lions. The men took to flight, and two gained the shelter of their hut, but the third, just as he was about to enter, was seized by the monsters and devoured.
Happily no one tried to pillage us here, so on we went to Vikora's, another officer, living at N'yakasenye, under a sandstone hill, faced with a dyke of white quartz, over which leaped a small stream of water a seventy-feet drop which, it is said, Suwarora sometimes paid homage to when the land was oppressed by drought. Vikora's father it was whom Sirboko of Mininga shot.
Grant then told me Baraka had been frightened at Mininga, by a blackguard Mganga to whom he would not give a present, into the belief that our journey would encounter some terrible mishap; for, when the M'yonga catastrophe happened, he thought that a fulfillment of the Mganga's prophecy. His dues for the present were four brass wires, and as many more when we reached the palace.
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