What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the NileSpeke, John Hanning
History
What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile
Speke, John Hanning
Horn of Africa -- Description and travel; Nile River; Tanganyika, Lake
been our fate, left as we should have been with a large amount of
non-marketable property, and having numbers of people to feed, whilst
my companion was unable to move without the assistance of eight men to
carry him in a hammock, we being totally without the means of purchase
in the territory of one of the most inhospitable of all the tribes
with whom we have had connection.
This timely supply was one of the many strokes of good fortune which
befell us upon this journey, and for which we have so much reason to
be grateful. Help had always reached us at the time when least we
expected it, but when we most required it. My health had been
improving ever since I first reached the lake, and enjoyed those
invigorating swims upon its surface, and revelled in the good living
afforded by the market at Ujiji. The facilities of the place giving us
such a choice of food, our powers in the culinary art were tried to
their fullest extent. It would be difficult to tell what dishes we did
not make there. Fish of many sorts done up in all the fashions of the
day--meat and fowl in every form--vegetable soups, and dishes of
numberless varieties--fruit-preserves, custards, custard-puddings, and
jellies--and last, but not least, buttered crumpets and
cheese,--formed as fine a spread as was ever set before a king.
But sometimes we came to grief when our supply of milk was, on the
most foolish pretexts, stopped by Kannina, who was the only
cow-proprietor in the neighbourhood. At one time he took offence
because we turned his importunate wives out of the house, in mistake
for common beggars. On another occasion, when I showed him a cheese of
our manufacture, and begged he would allow me to instruct his people
in the art of making them, he took fright, declared that the cheese
was something supernatural, and that it could never have been made by
any ordinary artifice. Moreover, if his people were shown the way to
do it one hundred times, they would never be able to comprehend it. He
further showed his alarm by forbidding us any more milk, lest, by our
tampering with it, we should bewitch his cows and make them all run
dry. The cattle this milk was taken from are of a uniform red colour,
like our Devonshire breed; but they attain a very great height and
size, and have horns of the most stupendous dimensions.
A year's acclimatisation had by this time produced a wonderful effect
on all the party; so that now, with our fresh supplies, most of us
marched away from Ujiji in better condition than we had enjoyed since
leaving the coast. The weather was very fine, the rainy season having
ceased on the 15th May; we marched rapidly across the eastern horn of
the mountains back to the ferry on the Malagarazi, but by a more
northernly route than the one by which we came.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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