United States or British Virgin Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Khamis bin Abdullah, a bold and brave man, ever ready to stand up for the privileges of the Arabs, and their rights to pass through any countries for legitimate trade, is the man who, in Speke's `Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, is reported to have shot Maula, an old chief who sided with Manwa Sera during the wars of 1860; and who subsequently, after chasing his relentless enemy for five years through Ugogo and Unyamwezi as far as Ukonongo, had the satisfaction of beheading him, was now urging the Arabs to assert their rights against a chief called Mirambo of Uyoweh, in a crisis which was advancing.
The next day was a march of eight miles, from East Mvumi to West Mvumi, where lived the Sultan of the district. The quantity and variety of provisions which arrived at our boma did not belie the reports respecting the productions of Ugogo.
After gazing in stupid wonder at the table, on which was placed some crockery and the few books I carried with me; at the slung hammock, which he believed was suspended by some magical contrivance; at the portmanteaus which contained my stock of clothes, he ejaculated, "Hi-le! the Musungu is a great sultan, who has come from his country to see Ugogo."
From the pond we went on to the middle of a large jungle, and bivouacked for the night in a shower of rain, the second of the season. During a fierce downpour of rain, the porters all quivering and quaking with cold, we at length emerged from the jungle, and entered the prettiest spot in Ugogo the populous district of Usekhe where little hills and huge columns of granite crop out. Here we halted.
The view was not such as I expected. I had imagined a plateau several hundred feet higher than Marenga Mkali, and an expansive view which should reveal Ugogo and its characteristics at once.
My men had brought no food either for us or their friends, as the cloths they took with them, "which were their own," were scarcely sufficient to purchase a meal famines being as bad where they had been as in Ugogo.
Sheikh Said was his clerk and constant companion, and the Tots were well fed on his goats at my expense, however. On hearing my fix, Abdalla said I should have men; and, what's more, he would go with me as his father had promised to do; but he had a large caravan detained in Ugogo, and for that he must wait.
Petherick, we heard, was in a difficulty of the same kind, upon which I proposed to go down with Baker and Grant to succour him; but he arrived in time, in company with his wife and Dr James Murie, to save us the trouble, and told me he had brought a number of men with him, carrying ivory, for the purpose now of looking after me on the east bank of the Nile, by following its course up to the south, though he had given up all hope of seeing me, as a report had reached him of the desertion of my porters at Ugogo.
Resuming our march, after a halt of an hour, in foul hours more we arrived at Mukondoku Proper. This extremity of Ugogo is most populous, The villages which surround the central tembe, where the Sultan Swaruru lives, amount to thirty-six.
They would therefore not rest satisfied until they had reduced Khoko and Usekhe both, by actual force, to acknowledge their superiority, "feeding on them" until the Ramazan, when they would return with all the merchants detained in Ugogo, and, again combining their forces, they would fall on Usui, to reduce that country also. When these men had gone, a lunatic set the whole place in commotion.
Word Of The Day