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Updated: June 12, 2025
The fortifications are on an Arabic Persic model combining Arab neatness with Persian plan. Through a ride of 950 miles in Persia I never met a town outside of the great cities better fortified than Simbamwenni. In Persia the fortifications were of mud, even those of Kasvin, Teheran, Ispahan, and Shiraz; those of Simbamwenni are of stone, pierced with two rows of loopholes for musketry.
On its most desirable site, with the river flowing close under the walls, he built his capital, and called it Simbamwenni, which means "The Lion," or the strongest, City.
The distance from Bagamoyo to Simbamwenni we found to be 119 miles, and was accomplished in fourteen marches. But these marches, owing to difficulties arising from the Masika season, and more especially to the lagging of the fourth caravan under Maganga, extended to twenty-nine days, thus rendering our progress very slow indeed but a little more than four miles a-day.
It serves as a drain to a score of peaks and two long ranges of mountains; winding along their base, it is the recipient of the cascades seen flashing during the few intervals of sunlight, of all the nullahs and ravines which render the lengthy frontage of the mountain slopes so rugged and irregular, until it glides into the valley of Simbamwenni a formidable body of water, opposing a serious obstacle to caravans without means to build bridges; added to which was an incessant downfall of rain such a rain as shuts people in-doors and renders them miserable and unamiable a real London rain an eternal drizzle accompanied with mist and fog.
Necessity compelled us to purchase eatables of them, and, to the credit of the country and its productions, be it said, their honey had the peculiar flavour of that of famed Hymettus. Following the latitudinal valley of the Ungerengeri, within two hours on the following morning we passed close under the wall of the capital of Useguhha Simbamwenni.
The men sent after him were seized and imprisoned by the Sultana of Simbamwenni, and, though ultimately liberated by the interference of an Arab sheikh, nothing could be found of the missing cook. Shaw also fell ill, and left the task of urging on the floundering caravan through marshes and rivers to his superior.
A railroad from Bagamoyo to Simbamwenni might be constructed with as much ease and rapidity as, and at far less cost than the Union Pacific Railway, whose rapid strides day by day towards completion the world heard of and admired.
The nights were pleasant too cold without a pair of blankets for covering; and, as far as Simbamwenni, they were without that pest which is so dreadful on the Nebraska and Kansas prairies, the mosquito.
On the third day the camp was visited by the ambassadors of Her Highness the Sultana of Simbamwenni, who came as her representatives to receive the tribute which she regards herself as powerful enough to enforce. Though it was by no means "very well " in fact, as it will be seen in a subsequent chapter how the female Simbamwenni took advantage of an adverse fortune which befell me to pay herself.
In old age the successful robber and kidnapper changed his name of Kisabengo, which had gained such a notoriety, to Simbamwenni, after his town; and when dying, after desiring that his eldest daughter should succeed him, he bestowed the name of the town upon her also, which name of Simbamwenni the Sultana now retains and is known by.
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