General Character of the Country Traversed — The Huts — The Geology — Productions — Land of Promise — Advice to Missionaries — Leave Ulekampuri — Return of the Expedition — Register of Temperature — Wages and Kit.

24th August.— During the last four days we have marched fifty-eight miles, and are now at our old village in Ulékampuri. As we have now traversed all the ground, I must try to give a short description, with a few reflections on the general character of all we have seen or heard, before concluding this diary.

To give a faithful idea of a country, it is better that the object selected for comparison should incline to the large and grander scale than to the reverse, otherwise the reader is apt to form too low an idea of it. And yet, though this is leaning to the smaller, I can think of no better comparison for the surface of this high land than the long sweeping waves of the Atlantic Ocean; and where the hills are fewest, and in lines, they resemble small breakers curling on the tops of the rollers, all irregularly arranged, as though disturbed by different currents of wind.

Where the hills are grouped, they remind me of a small chopping sea in the Bristol Channel. That the hills are nowhere high, is proved by the total absence of any rivers along this line, until the lake is reached; and the passages between or over them are everywhere gradual in their rise; so that in travelling through the country, no matter in which direction, the hills seldom interfere with the line of march. The flats and hollows are well peopled, and cattle and cultivation are everywhere abundant. The stone, soil, and aspect of the tract is uniform throughout. The stone is chiefly granite, the rugged rocks of which lie like knobs of sugar over the surface of the little hills, intermingled with sandstone in a highly ferruginous state; whilst the soil is an accumulation of sand the same colour as the stone, a light brownish grey, and appears as if it were formed of disintegrated particles of the rocks worn off by time and weathering. Small trees and brushwood cover all the outcropping hills; and palms on the plains, though few and widely spread, prove that water is very near the surface. Springs, too, are numerous, and generally distributed. The mean level of the country between Unyanyembé and the lake is 3767 feet; that of the lake itself, 3750. The tribes, as a rule, are well disposed towards all strangers, and wish to extend their commerce. Their social state rather represents a conservative than a radical disposition; their government is a sort of semipatriarchal-feudal arrangement; and, like a band of robbers, all hold by their different chiefs from feeling the necessity of mutual support. Bordering the south of the lake there are vast fields of iron; cotton is also abundant, and every tropical plant or tree could grow; those that do exist, even rice, vegetate in the utmost luxuriance. Cattle are very abundant, and hides are found in every house. On the east of the lake ivory is said to be very abundant and cheap; and on the west we hear of many advantages which are especially worthy of our notice. The Karagué hills overlooking the lake are high, cold, and healthy, and have enormous droves of cattle, bearing horns of stupendous size; and ivory, fine timber, and all the necessaries of life, are to be found in great profusion there. Again, beyond the equator, of the kingdom of Uganda we hear from everybody a rapturous account. That country evidently swarms with people who cultivate coffee and all the common grains, and have large flocks and herds, even greater than what I have lately seen. Now if the N’yanza be really the Nile’s fount, which I sincerely believe to be the case, what an advantage this will be to the English merchant on the Nile, and what a field is opened to the world, if England does not neglect this discovery!

But I must not expatiate too much on the merits and capabilities of this part of inner Africa, lest I mislead any commercial inquirers; and it is as well to say at present, that the people near the coast are in such a state of helplessness and insecurity, caused by the slave-hunts, that for many years, until commerce, by steady and certain advance, shall in some degree overcome the existing apathy, and excite the population to strive to better their position by setting up strong constitutions to protect themselves and their property, no one need expect to make a large fortune by dealing with them. That commerce does make wonderful improvements on the barbarous habits of the Africans, can now be seen in the Masai country, and the countries extending north-westward from Mombas up through Kikuyu into the interior, where the process has been going on during the last few years. There even the roving wild pastorals, formerly untamable, are now gradually becoming reduced to subjection; and they no doubt will ere long have as strong a desire for cloths and other luxuries as any other civilised beings, from the natural desire to equal in comfort and dignity of appurtenances those whom they now must see constantly passing through their country. Caravans are penetrating farther, and going in greater numbers, every succeeding year, in those directions, and Arab merchants say that those countries are everywhere healthy. The best proof we have that the district is largely productive is the fact that the caravans and competition increase on those lines more and more every day. I would add, that in the meanwhile the staple exports derived from the far interior of the continent will consist of ivory, hides, and horns; whilst from the coast and its vicinity the clove, the gum copal, some textile materials drawn from the banana, aloe, and pine-apples, with oleaginous plants such as the ground-nut and cocoa-nut, are the chief exportable products. The cotton plant which grows here, judging from its size and difference from the plant usually grown in India, I consider to be a tree cotton and a perennial. It is this cotton which the natives weave into coarse fabrics in their looms. Rice, although it is not indigenous to Africa, I believe is certainly capable of being produced in great quantity and of very superior quality; and this is also the case with sugar-cane and tobacco, both of which are grown generally over the continent. There is also a species of palm growing on the borders of the Tanganyika Lake, which yields a concrete oil very much like, if not the same as, the palm-oil of Western Africa; but this is limited in quantity, and would never be of much value. Salt, which is found in great quantity in pits near the Malagarazi river, and the iron I have already spoken about, could only be of use to the country itself in facilitating traffic, and in maturing its resources.

These fertile regions have been hitherto unknown from the same cause which Dr Livingstone has so ably explained in regard to the western side of Africa — the jealousy of the shortsighted people who live on the coast, who, to preserve a monopoly of one particular article exclusively to themselves (ivory), have done their best to keep everybody away from the interior. I say shortsighted; for it is obvious that, were the resources of the country once fairly opened, the people on the coast would double or triple their present incomes, and Zanzibar would soon swell into a place of real importance. All hands would then be employed, and luxury would take the place of beggary.

I must now (after expressing a fervent hope that England especially, and the civilised world generally, will not neglect this land of promise) call attention to the marked fact, that the missionaries, residing for many years at Zanzibar, are the prime and first promoters of this discovery. They have been for years past doing their utmost, with simple sincerity, to Christianise this negro land, and promote a civilised and happy state of existence among these benighted beings. During their sojourn among these blackamoors, they heard from Arabs and others of many of the facts I have now stated, but only in a confused way, such as might be expected in information derived from an uneducated people. Amongst the more important disclosures made by the Arabs was the constant reference to a large lake or inland sea, which their caravans were in the habit of visiting. It was a singular thing that, at whatever part of the coast the missionaries arrived, on inquiring from the travelling merchants where they went to, they one and all stated to an inland sea, the dimensions of which were such that nobody could give any estimate of its length or width. The directions they travelled in pointed north-west, west, and south-west, and their accounts seemed to indicate a single sheet of water, extending from the Line down to 14° south latitude — a sea of about 840 miles in length, with an assumed breadth of two to three hundred miles. In fact, from this great combination of testimony that water lay generally in a continuous line from the equator up to 14° south latitude, and from not being able to gain information of there being any land separations to the said water, they very naturally,............