From the Cape to Cairo: The First Traverse of Africa from South to North. Ewart Scott Grogan
and managed by a Scotchman. The output from its extensive plantations during the season, which lasts three months, amounts to one hundred and twenty tons a week.
It is a dreary, hot, monotonous journey.
The river is most uninteresting, of great breadth, with low grass-covered banks and destitute of trees, except near the delta, where there are some thriving cocoanut plantations. The stream is cut up by numerous islands and sandbanks, haunted by vast flocks of geese, pelicans, and flamingoes.
At Senna there are a few miserable huts, and a few yet more miserable Portuguese, and at Songwe there is an Indian settlement, where there is some trade from the interior.
On reaching the Shiré we were transferred to an animated tea-tray, by courtesy called a steamer, which carried us to Chiromo. The food for five Europeans for two and a half days consisted of one ancient duck, three skinny fowls, and a few tins of sardines. There was no bread, butter, milk, or Worcester sauce, without which life, or rather native cookery, is intolerable. Luckily, at the villages on the way we were able to buy fowls, eggs, and tomatoes.
Before reaching Chiromo we put in at the first B.C.A. post, Port Herald, where dusky Napoleons ponder over wild orgies of the past. A broad road planted with shade trees leads up to the collector's house, and cross-roads, similarly planted, give quite a pleasant appearance to the place, backed in the distance by a high mountain.
Chiromo is laid out at the junction of the Ruo and Shiré rivers, while on the north-west side the station is hemmed in by the vast Elephant Marsh, now a closed game preserve, owing to the inconsiderate slaughter in time past. Lions can be heard almost every night, and the day previous to our arrival a lion appeared in the town in broad daylight, and carried off a native. Though the available population turned out to slay, he escaped untouched. Many shots were fired at him from many varieties of guns, and the range varied from five to five hundred yards. But still he wandered round, the least excited individual in the place. Eventually the Nimrod of Chiromo, who arrived late, hurt his feelings by tumbling off a tree on to his back. This was too much, and he majestically stalked off into the Marsh, wondering at the inscrutable ways of men.
Leopard spoor was also a common sight in the street in the morning, while in the Ruo the crocodiles lived an easy life, with unlimited black meat at their command near the bathing-places.
From its position, the town is the inland port of British Central Africa, and with the fast-growing coffee industry will become a place of considerable importance. Already the building plots command a high price, and stands are being eagerly bought up by the African Flotilla Company and Sharrers' Transport Company, who are rapidly ousting the African Lakes Corporation from their position of hitherto unquestioned monopolists. There are also several German traders who display considerable activity, apparently with satisfactory results, and there are rumours of a coffee combination, financed by a prominent German East Coast firm, making their headquarters here.
A large estate on the right bank of the Shiré, called Rosebery Park, is owned by the African Flotilla Company, which makes excellent bricks, and opposite the town a fibre-extracting company has started work. The company has obtained Foulke's patent fibre-cleaning machine, and a concession of the fibre-gathering rights over all Crown lands, and another similar concession in the Portuguese territory.
The plant employed is Sanseveira, of which there are about twenty varieties, the most common in the neighbourhood being S. cylindrica and S. guiniensis; the former, owing to the greater ease with which it can be worked, being the most valuable. The length of leaf is 3 to 6 ft., and the diameter about ¾ in. I found it growing in immense quantities on the plains round Chiperoni.
The treatment is very simple. The green stuff is put over rollers, which take it past a rapidly revolving brush under a strong jet of water. The resulting fibre is then dried in the shade, tied into bundles, and is ready bleached for the market. Consequently the cost of production is very low. The fibre is fine, strong, and clean, and the waste is very small, the proportion of fibre to reed being 4 per cent. The strength is estimated at two and a half times that of the best manilla.
The cost of fuel (wood) to run one engine for a day is only four shillings, and as the fibre needs no cleaning, only one process is necessary.
Mr. H. MacDonald, the Collector and Vice-Consul, royally entertained us at his house, the only cool spot in Chiromo. His method of providing fish for dinner was to fire a round from his .303 into the edge of the river, when one or two fish would rise stunned to the surface.
The climate of the vicinity is very trying to Europeans; the heat is intense, and, being a moist heat, is at times insufferable. We repeatedly registered 115° and 120° in the shade, and owing to the amount of vapour held suspended in the air, there was very little diminution of temperature at night.
Periodical waves of fever prostrate the population when the wind blows from the Elephant Marsh, and the death-rate assumes alarming proportions. A form of Beri-Beri is also prevalent.
Large numbers of natives frequently apply for permission to come over from the Portuguese country and settle in British territory, and the population is thus becoming very dense, and food is easily obtainable in large quantities.
CHAPTER IV.
CHIPERONI.
The Ruo, the main tributary of the Shiré river, which two rivers at their angle of confluence enclose Chiromo (native word, "the joining of the streams"), rises in the Mlanje Hills, whence it flows in two main streams which join about twenty-five miles north of its junction with the Shiré. Ten miles south of this are the beautiful Zoa Falls.
As there was every prospect of having to wait some weeks for the errant loads, we made arrangements for some shooting, having heard great tales of the rhinoceros on Mount Chiperoni, which lies about forty miles east of the Ruo in Portuguese territory. Having been provided with porters by Mr. MacDonald, and obtained a permit from the Portuguese, which entitled us to carry a gun and shoot meat for the pot, we crossed the river and marched up towards Zoa.
The country was exceedingly dry and burnt up: consequently the little game that remained in the vicinity was concentrated near the water. After some hard days' work under an impossible sun, I shot a klipspringer, which, curiously enough, was down in the flat country, and fully twenty miles from the nearest hills. The bristly hairs reminded me of a hedgehog, and came out in great quantities during the process of skinning. These antelopes are exceedingly heavy in the hind quarters, short in the legs, and have the most delicate feet imaginable. We both searched high and low for koodoo, which were reported to be plentiful, but without effect, though I found a couple of worm-eaten heads lying in the bush; and for some days we had no luck with sable, although there was much fresh spoor; but eventually I succeeded in bagging a fair bull. No antelope looks grander than an old bull sable, standing like a statue under some tree, his mighty horns sweeping far back over his shoulders. The bristling mane gives a massive appearance to his shoulders; there is something suggestive of the goat about him, both in his lines and carriage: a giant ibex!
One evening some natives came to camp with a wonderful catch of fish, amongst which I noticed four different species. One was a long, eel-shaped fish with a curious bottle snout, and very small teeth. The eye, entirely covered with skin, was almost invisible. There is a closely allied fish in the Nile. Another one resembled a bream with very large fins. A third resembled a carp with enormous scales, and was very poor eating. While the fourth, which I have never seen elsewhere, and which was unknown to Mr. MacDonald, who is a keen naturalist, resembled a heavily-built carp with large scales and prominent fins, and was of a beautiful green colour.
Sharp having decided to go to the north of Nyassa to arrange transport across the plateau, then returned to Chiromo, and I quickly followed. But a few days later