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The sultans, however, of the different villages were generally friendly. When a desert tract had to be passed, the men went on well enough, hoping to obtain food at the next cultivated district. On the 30th of July Speke discerned, four miles off, a sheet of water which proved to be a creek at the most southern portion of the Nyanza, called by the Arabs the Ukerewe Sea.
It appears that nine months ago he was enabled, by the assistance of Mahaya, to hire some boats and men at Sukuma, and had sent his property, consisting of fifteen loads of cloth and 250 jembis or hoes, by them to Ukerewe, to exchange for ivory. But by the advice of Mahaya, and fearing to trust himself as a stranger amongst the islanders, he did not accompany his merchandise.
However, I told them that I should have gone if I had found boats ready at once to take me across; but now I saw the probability of so much delay, that I could not afford to waste time in trying to obtain boats, which, had I succeeded in getting, I should have employed my time not in going to Ukerewe, but to the more elevated and friendly island of Mzita, this being a more suitable observatory than the former.
A sheet of water an elbow of the sea, however, at the base of the low range on which I stood extended far away to the eastward, to where, in the dim distance, a hummock-like elevation of the mainland marked what I understood to be the south and east angle of the lake. The important islands of Ukerewe and Mzita, distant about twenty or thirty miles, formed the visible north shore of this firth.
On my opening Messrs Rebmann and Erhardt's map, and asking him where Nyassa was, he said it was a distinct lake from Ujiji, lying to the southward. This opened our eyes to a most interesting fact, for the first time discovered. I then asked what the word Ukerewe meant, and was answered in the same way, that it was a lake to the northward, much larger than Ujiji, and this solved the mystery.
A sultan called Machunda lives at the southern extremity of the Ukerewe, and has dealings in ivory with all the Arabs who go there. One Arab at this time was stopping there, and had sent his men coasting along this said promontory to deal with the natives on the mainland, as he could not obtain enough ivory on the island itself.
There was a passage this way, it was said, leading up to Usoga, but very circuitous, on account of reefs or shoals, and on the way the Kitiri island was passed; but no other Kitiri was known to the Waganda, though boats went sometimes coasting down the western side of the lake to Ukerewe.
Before leaving Kaze I notified my intention of visiting Ukerewe, supposing I could do so in three or four days, and explained to my men my wishes on this point. Hearing this, they told both Mahaya and Mansur, in direct terms, that I was going, and so needlessly set them to work finessing to show how much they were in earnest in their consideration of me.
It was from his mouth, on our former visit to Kaze, that I first heard of the N'yanza, or, as he called it, the Ukerewe Sea; and then, too, I first proposed that we should go to it instead of journeying westward to the smaller waters of Ujiji. He had travelled up its western flank to Kibuga, the capital of the kingdom of Uganda, and had in his employ men who had lived and traded in Usoga.
Before my departure from Kaze, Captain Burton wrote the Royal Geographical Society to the following effect: "I have the honour to transmit a copy of a field-book with a map, by Captain Speke. Captain Speke has volunteered to visit the Ukerewe Lake, of which the Arabs give grand accounts." 9th July 1858.
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