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Other names on the map may look important, but will prove to be only streams, or hills, or some landmarks that have been used by the surveyors to signify certain places. In our five weeks' trip through Trans-Tanaland we found only two bomas, Fort Hall and Embo, and three or four ranches where one or more white men lived.
While ascending that lofty arc of mountains which bounded westerly and northerly the basin of Imrera, extensive prospects southward and eastward were revealed. The character of the scenery at Ukawendi is always animated and picturesque, but never sublime. The folds of this ridge contained several ruins of bomas, which seemed to have been erected during war time.
Afternoon excursions to the wide plains and their bush where the wild game hide and graze. We are often asked how we manage to avoid the lions and the other wild beasts of the country that come to visit the thorn bomas that protect our transport cattle at night?
After this, on adjourning to his baraza, Ungurue the Pig, who had floored my march in Sorombo, and Makinga, our persecutor in Usui, came in to report that the Watuta had been fighting in Usui, and taken six bomas, upon which Rumanika asked me what I thought of it, and if I knew where the Watuta came from.
There the man-eaters had been successful in obtaining a victim, whom, as in the previous instance, they devoured quite close to the camp. How they forced their way through the bomas without making a noise was, and still is, a mystery to me; I should have thought that it was next to impossible for an animal to get through at all. Yet they continually did so, and without a sound being heard.
The water was on an average one foot in depth; in some places we plunged into holes three, four, and even five feet deep. Plash, splash, plash, splash, were the only sounds we heard from the commencement of the march until we found the bomas occupying the only dry spots along the line of march.
Suwarora had ordered his subjects to run up a line of bomas to protect his frontier, and had proclaimed his intention to kill every coast-man who dared attempt to enter Usui. My heart was ready to sink as I turned into bed, and I was driven to think of abandoning everybody who was not strong enough to go on with me carrying a load. 3d to 13th.
A regular panic consequently ensued, and it required all my powers of persuasion to induce the men to stay on. In fact, I succeeded in doing so only by allowing them to knock off all regular work until they had built exceptionally thick and high bomas round each camp.
Then Baraka said, "I have just heard from Makaka, that a man who arrived from Usui only a few minutes ago has said Suwarora is so angry with the Arabs that he has detained one caravan of theirs in his country, and, separating the whole of their men, has placed each of them in different bomas, with orders to his village officers that, in case the Watuta came into his country, without further ceremony they were to be all put to death."
After tracking through several miles of low bush-jungle, we came to the sites of some old bomas that had been destroyed by the Watuta not long since. This was fortunate for me, however, as Mr Balls, like M'yonga, was noted for his extortions on travellers.
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