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Updated: June 1, 2025
It is the main feeder of the Wami river, which empties into the sea between the ports of Saadani and Whinde. About ten miles north-east of the Makata crossing, the Great Makata, the Little Makata, a nameless creek, and the Rudewa river unite; and the river thus formed becomes known as the Wami. Throughout Usagara the Wami is known as the Mukondokwa.
We were minus two by the time we had arrived at our camp, but seven miles from Rehenneko, our first instalment of the debt we owed to Makata.
Being ignorant of its nature, and not exactly understanding what precise location was meant by Marenga Mkali, I permitted the donkeys to be taken to water, as usual after a march; and the consequence was calamitous in the extreme. What the fearful swamp of Makata had spared, the waters of Marenga Mkali destroyed.
Two hours of such a task enabled me to drag my caravan over a savannah one mile and a half broad; and barely had I finished congratulating myself over my success before I was halted by a deep ditch, which, filled with rain-water from the inundated savannahs, had become a considerable stream, breast-deep, flowing swiftly into the Makata.
Though but six miles were traversed during that miserable day, the march occupied ten hours. Half dead with fatigue, I yet could feel thankful that it was not accompanied by fever, which it seemed a miracle to avoid; for if ever a district was cursed with the ague, the Makata wilderness ranks foremost of those afflicted.
These undulations soon become broken by gullies containing water, nourishing dense crops of cane reeds and broad- bladed grass, and, emerging from this district, wide savannah covered with tall grass open into view, with an isolated tree here and there agreeably breaking the monotony of the scene. The Makata is a wilderness containing but one village of the Waseguhha throughout its broad expanse.
Shaw was still suffering from his first mukunguru; Zaidi, a soldier, was critically ill with the small-pox; the kichuma-chuma, "little irons," had hold of Bombay across the chest, rendering him the most useless of the unserviceables; Mabruk Saleem, a youth of lusty frame, following the example of Bombay, laid himself down on the marshy ground, professing his total inability to breast the Makata swamp; Abdul Kader, the Hindi tailor and adventurer the weakliest of mortal bodies was ever ailing for lack of "force," as he expressed it in French, i.e.
For two marches of eight hours each we plunged through slush, mire, deep sloughs, water up to our necks, and muddy cataclysms, swam across nullahs, waded across gullies, and near sunset of the second day arrived on the banks of the Makata River.
Though there are no villages or settlements in view of Simbo Khambi, there are several clustered within the mountain folds, inhabited by Waseguhha somewhat prone to dishonest acts and murder. The long broad plain visible from the eminences crossed between the Ungerengeri and Simbo was now before us, and became known to sorrowful memory subsequently, as the Makata Valley.
"Oh, if you don't, perhaps you would not object to me smoking, in order to assist digestion?" "Ngema good go on, master." Then began the questions, the gossipy, curious, serious, light questions: "How came the master? "By the Mpwapwa road." "It is good. Was the Makata bad?" "Very bad." "What news from Zanzibar?"
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