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It led past numerous villages of the Wagogo for the first two hours; then we should strike a jungle; and a three hours' march would then bring us to Simbo, where there was water, but no village. Starting early next morning, we would travel six hours when we would arrive at a pool of water.
The first words I heard in Ugogo were from a Wagogo elder, of sturdy form, who in an indolent way tended the flocks, but showed a marked interest in the stranger clad in white flannels, with a Hawkes' patent cork solar topee on his head, a most unusual thing in Ugogo, who came walking past him, and there were "Yambo, Musungu, Yambo, bana, bana," delivered with a voice loud enough to make itself heard a full mile away.
Perceiving that a little manliness and show of power was something which the Wagogo long needed, and that in this instance it relieved me from annoyance, I had recourse to my whip, whose long lash cracked like a pistol shot, whenever they overstepped moderation.
Carrying water with us, we next marched half-way to the first settlement of Ugogo, and bivouacked again, to eat the last of our store of Mbumi grain. At length the greater famine lands had been spanned; but we were not in lands of plenty for the Wagogo we found, like their neighbours Wasagara, eating the seed of the calabash, to save their small stores of grain.
It may be worthy of remark that I have always found the lighter-coloured savages more boisterous and warlike than those of a dingier hue. The ruddy black, fleshy-looking Wazaramo and Wagogo are much lighter in colour than any of the other tribes, and certainly have a far superior, more manly and warlike independent spirit and bearing than any of the others. 9th.
If he was astonished before he was a thousand times more so now, and expressed his belief that the Wagogo could not stand before the Musungu in battle, for wherever a Mgogo was seen such a gun would surely kill him.
The road led through a flat elongated plain, lying between two lengthy hilly ridges, thickly dotted with the giant forms of the baobab. Kididimo is exceedingly bleak in aspect. Even the faces of the Wagogo seemed to have contracted a bleak hue from the general bleakness around.
The first march to Kisokweh was purposely made short, being barely four miles, in order to enable Sheikh Thani, Sheikh Hamed, and five or six Wasawahili caravans to come up with me at Chunyo on the confines of Marenga Mkali. Mortality amongst the baggage animals. The contumacious Wagogo Mobs of Maenads. Tribute paying. Necessity of prudence. Oration of the guide. The genuine "Ugogians."
With most of the Wagogo chiefs lives a Mnyamwezi, as their right-hand man, prime minister, counsellor, executioner, ready man at all things save the general good; a sort of harlequin Unyamwezi, who is such an intriguing, restless, unsatisfied person, that as soon as one hears that this kind of man forms one of and the chief of a Mgogo sultan's council, one feels very much tempted to do damage to his person.
One of my soldiers requested them to lessen their vociferous noise; but the evil-minded race ordered him to shut up, as a thing unworthy to speak to the Wagogo! When I imploringly turned to the Arabs for counsel in this strait, old Sheikh Thani, always worldly wise, said, "Heed them not; they are dogs who bite besides barking." * White man's land.
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