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Updated: June 24, 2025
On we went again to Marenga Mkhaili, the "Salt Water," to breakfast, and camped in the crooked green thorns by night, carrying water on for our supper. This kind of travelling forced marches hard as it may appear, was what we liked best, for we felt that we were shortening the journey, and in doing so, shortening the risks of failure by disease, by war, by famine, and by mutiny.
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.
Sheikh Thani clever but innocently-speaking old Arab was encamped under the grateful umbrage of a huge Mtamba sycamore, and had been regaling himself with fresh milk, luscious mutton, and rich bullock humps, ever since his arrival here, two days before; and, as he informed me, it did not suit his views to quit such a happy abundance so soon for the saline nitrous water of Marenga Mkali, with its several terekezas, and manifold disagreeables.
With the night passed the fever, and, at 3 o'clock in the morning, when the march was resumed, I was booted and spurred, and the recognized mtongi of my caravan once more. At 8 A.M. we had performed the thirty-two miles. The wilderness of Marenga Mkali had been passed and we had entered Ugogo, which was at once a dreaded land to my caravan, and a Land of Promise to myself.
Besides the water of the lake partook slightly of the bitter nature of the Matamombo creek, distant fifteen miles, and in a still lesser degree of that of Marenga Mkali, forty miles off. Towards the end of the first day of our halt the Hindi cooper Jako arrived in camp, alleging as an excuse, that feeling fatigued he had fallen asleep in some bushes a few feet from the roadside.
The plain of Ugombo and its neighbour of Marenga Mkali, apparently level as a sea, was dotted here and there with "hillocks dropt in Nature's careless haste," which appeared like islands amid the dun and green expanse.
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."
After a three days' halt at Mpwapwa I decided of a march to Marenga Mkali, which should be uninterrupted until we reached Mvumi in Ugogo, where I should be inducted into the art of paying tribute to the Wagogo chiefs.
The water of Chunyo is eminently bad, in fact it is its saline-nitrous nature which has given the name Marenga Mkali bitter water to the wilderness which separates Usagara from Ugogo. Though extremely offensive to the palate, Arabs and the natives drink it without fear, and without any bad results; but they are careful to withhold their baggage animals from the pits.
Nor do I entertain the least doubt, after a two days' exploration of the neighbourhood, especially of the low plain at the western end, that this Lake of Ugombo is but the tail of what was once a large body of water equal in extent to the Tanganika; and, after ascending half way up Ugombo Peak, this opinion was confirmed when I saw the long-depressed line of plain at its base stretching towards the Mpwapwa Mountains thirty miles off, and thence round to Marenga Mkali, and covering all that extensive surface of forty miles in breadth, and an unknown length.
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