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On his return to Kazeh he at once declared that the Victoria Nyanza and its affluents were the head waters of the Nile, and that consequently he had discovered them. As a matter of fact he had no firmer ground for making that statement than Burton had in giving the honour to Tanganyika, and each clung tenaciously to his own theory. Speke, indeed, had a very artistic eye.
"Wallahi, bana, I never heard the name; but stop, Kazeh, in Kinyamwezi, means 'kingdom. Perhaps they gave that name to the place they stopped at. But then, I used to call the first house Sny bin Amer's house, and Speke lived at Musa Mzuri's house, but both houses, as well as all the rest, are in Tabora." "Thank you, sheikh.
He shot himself by accident." Spiki dead? Mash-Allah! Ough, he was a good man a good man! Dead!" "But where is this Kazeh, Sheikh Sayd?" Kazeh? Kazeh? I never heard the name before." "But you were with Burton, and Speke, at Kazeh; you lived there several months, when you were all stopping in Unyanyembe; it must be close here; somewhere.
Where did Hajji Abdullah and Spiki live when they were in Unyanyembe? Was it not in Musa Mzuri's house?" "That was in Tabora." "Well, then, where is Kazeh? I have never seen the man yet who could tell me where that place is, and yet the three white men have that word down, as the name of the place they lived at when you were with them. You must know where it is."
In any circumstances, his life was in constant peril; but he and the majority of the party, after unexampled tortures from thirst, arrived footsore and jaded in a veritable land of Goshen Kazeh or Unyanyembe, where they met some kindly Arab merchants.
Between Tabora and the next settlement, Kwihara, rise two rugged hill ridges, separated from each other by a low saddle, over the top of which Tabora is always visible from Kwihara. * There is no such recognised place as Kazeh. They were a fine, handsome body of men, these Arabs. They mostly hailed from Oman: others were Wasawahili; and each of my visitors had quite a retinue with him.
Women were fattened for marriage just as pigs are fattened for market beauty and obesity being interchangeable terms. The wearisome proceedings in England necessary to a divorce, observes Burton, are there unknown. You turn your wife out of doors, and the thing is done. The chief trouble at Kazeh, as elsewhere, arose from the green scorpion, but there were also lizards and gargantuan spiders.
"What a contrast," exclaims Burton, "between the open-handed hospitality and the hearty good-will of this noble race the Arabs and the niggardliness of the savage and selfish African. It was heart of flesh after heart of stone." Burton found the Arabs of Kazeh living comfortably and even sybaritically.
Despite his researches, Colonel Burton was not missed in the scientific world, but his son sincerely mourned a kind-hearted and indulgent parent. At Kazeh, Fortune, which had hitherto been so favourable, now played Burton a paltry trick.
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