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Updated: May 1, 2025
We left our traps here to be housed by a Banyan called Lakshmidos, the collector of customs, and started on the 17th January to visit Mr Rebmann, beyond the hills overlooking this place. It was a good day's work, and was commenced by rowing about ten miles up the Rabbai branch of the creek we were in, until we arrived at the foot of the hills bearing the same name, beyond which his house stands.
I was all the more impressed with this belief, by knowing that the two church missionaries, Rebmann and Erhardt, without the smallest knowledge of the Hindus' map, constructed a map of their own, deduced from the Zanzibar traders, something on the same scale, by blending the Victoria N'yanza, Tanganyida, and N'yazza into one; whilst to their triuned lake they gave the name Moon, because the men of the Moon happened to live in front of the central lake.
Now, as the Royal Geographical Society had desired us to place ourselves in communication with Mr Rebmann, who was then at his mission-station, Kisuludini, at Rabbai, on a high hill at the back of Mombas, and to try and solicit him to go with us into the interior, where it was thought his experience in the native languages would be useful to the expedition, my companion hired a small beden, or half-decked Arab vessel, by the month, to take us about wherever we pleased; and on the 5th January 1857, having engaged a respectable half-caste Arab Sheikh, named Said, to be our guide and interpreter, we took leave of our host, set sail, and steered northwards, coasting along the shores of this beautiful clove island, until we left it, and shortly afterwards sighted the still more lovely island of Pemba, or "The Emerald Isle" of the Arabs named, doubtless, from the surprising verdure of its trees and plants.
On my opening Messrs Rebmann and Erhardt's map, and asking him where Nyassa was, he said it was a distinct lake from Ujiji, lying to the southward. This opened our eyes to a most interesting fact, for the first time discovered. I then asked what the word Ukerewe meant, and was answered in the same way, that it was a lake to the northward, much larger than Ujiji, and this solved the mystery.
The water-journey over, we commenced the ascent of Rabbai, and, soon crowning it by a steep slope, passed into the country of the Wanyika, the first true negro tribe of my acquaintance, and by a gentle decline passing through quiet little villages, we entered, after a walk of five miles, the Kisuludini mission-house, and there found Mr Rebmann, with his amiable English wife, living in their peaceful retreat.
When Rebmann discovered Kilimanjaro, not far from the equator, and told of the snows that crown the loftiest of African summits, it was decided by British geographers that Rebmann's snow was probably an imaginary aspect. The snow was there, and plenty of it, but Rebmann died before justice was done to his faithful labors.
The oddest thing to me was to see the placid equanimity with which Mr Rebmann and his wife coolly delayed a day or two, notwithstanding the near proximity of this savage band of thieves, to pack up their kit comfortably before leaving the place; but we were assured by the reverend gentleman that the Masai cared but little for anything save beef, and they therefore did not apprehend rough usage at their hands.
Mr Rebmann, who first discovered it, had sent home reports, and which had excited such angry and unseemly contests amongst our usually sedate though speculative carpet-geographers in England as rendered a further inspection highly necessary.
The good that may result from this little, yet happy accident, will, I trust, prove proportionately as large and fruitful as the produce from the symbolical grain of mustard-seed; and nobody knows or believes in this more fully than one of the chief promoters of this exciting investigation, Mr Rebmann.
On the walls of the Society's rooms there hung a large diagram, comprising a section of Eastern Africa, extending from the equator to the fourteenth degree of south latitude, and from Zanzibar sixteen degrees inland, which had been constructed by two reverend gentlemen, Messrs Erhardt and Rebmann, missionaries of the Church Mission Society of London, a short time previously, when carrying on their duties at Zanzibar.
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