The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
such a full life within the last two years, have had the very best of
England; and the flatness of existence on an old-fashioned steamer came
home to me crushingly during the nine days' voyage between Marseilles
and Port Said. Such a hush after the noisy whirlpool of life in London
in Sibyl's circle; or even the gay doings at Engledene when we had got
over the first of our mourning for the poor old Pater. There were no
newspapers and no news--nine days completely out of the world. No one
on board I knew and no one who had ever heard of me. It brought home to
me my utter insignificance! I felt a bit better when we passed through
the Suez Canal. The sound of Arabic always stimulates me to adventure.
The cold weather left us in the Red Sea. I passed most of my time
mugging up Swahili again and trying to revive my Arabic with some
Syrians who were on board. Aden cheered me up considerably. There were
the jolly laughing Somalis once again, and I engaged four bright boys to
go with me as servants and gun-carriers out hunting. You could light up
a dark passage with their flashing teeth! When we reached Unguja I
admit I felt some uncomfortableness. It is so awkward returning as a
person of no status to a place where one has been an official. But as
you know, I had taken the precaution, a month before I started, of
writing confidentially to Sir Godfrey Dewburn about my plans and
intentions. The Dewburns _could not have been kinder_. He sent the
Agency boat to meet me with one of the new Vice-Consuls in it, and here
I am at the Agency, installed as their guest till I can assemble my
_safari_ and get away up-country. Lady Dewburn plies me with questions
about you and our children....
The Dewburns are expecting promotion to a diplomatic post--possibly
Persia. They feel their work here is done, now that the Anglo-German
Treaty is ratified and Unguja is a British protectorate. The treaty has
had the best effect on Anglo-German relations here and incidentally on
my prospects of co-operation. I am to see Wissmann as soon as I land at
Medinat-al-Barkah. Eugene Schraeder, who is all-powerful in
Anglo-German finance, has written out to him. I have little doubt we
shall get a Concession over the Happy Valley for our syndicate.
Landing at Medina will be a little out of the direct route to Irangi,
but I shall travel across the Nguru country, now quite pacified and
safe, and try to take Hangodi on the way to Ugogo. What associations
the sight of it will revive if I do! That halting-place below the great
rise, where we had tea together in the shade when I met you in your
machila with Halima, and you were so taken aback that you called me
"darling"--_I_ haven't forgotten! And talking of Halima, reminds me to
say that she sends you her many salaams. Andrade is cook with the
Dewburns and Halima has some function as housemaid. I have arranged
when the Dewburns go that Andrade is to join me; so when you come out,
my darling, Halima shall be there to wait on you and on Maud.
It'll be rather horrid meeting the Bazzards again at Medina. They
returned recently from a long holiday in England--an East Coast
watering-place chiefly, where Bazzard, who doesn't know a yacht from a
barge, got elected to the local Yachting Club. I hear that Mrs. B.
looks forward confidently to her husband succeeding Dewburn when the
latter is promoted; but I think there is not the slightest chance of it.
The Stotts must have got my letter by now telling them I was on my way.
Of course there has been no time for a reply. But Callaway tells me the
last news of them was good. I have already picked up quite a third of
my Wanyamwezi "faithfuls" who were hanging about Unguja since Willowby
Patterne's _safari_ was paid off. That man is a _scoundrel_! He came
out here and made free use of my name, pretending even he had letters
from me which he never produced. He therefore got favours and
concessions and secured my original hundred men--or what was left of
them. His tour through the Mvita hinterland was one long sickening path
of slaughter: he and his companion--a poor youth who was often down with
dysentery and whom Patterne treated brutally--must have killed about
three times the amount of game they could use for food or trophies. His
ravages even shocked his carnivorous porters and annoyed the natives.
Do you know, I think he must have had just a glimmering about the
existence of the Happy Valley--he was always following me about at Glen
Sporran and cocking an eye at my correspondence. Because though
ostensibly only big-game slaughtering they made straight for the _south_
side of Kilimanjaro (instead of keeping to the British Sphere); and when
the _safari_ reached Arusha ya Juu he tried to get guides for
"Manyara"--the porters swear he used the word. He cross-questioned some
of them as to where they had been with you and me. However, fortunately
he had an odd trick of getting himself hated by all the native tribes he
met, as well as by his own porters, whom he used to flog atrociously.
(They tell disgusting stories about these floggings which I cannot put
down on paper.) When his caravan got past the slopes of Meru it fell in
with "our Masai," as I call them. And then it was like one of the old
fairy stories of the bad girl who tried to follow the good girl down the
well into fairyland, and couldn't remember the countersign. Instead of
hitting it off with the Masai he vexed them in some way and at last they
turned on him and forced his _safari_ to go back to Kilimanjaro. At
least the Wanyamwezi porters refused to continue the journey, which
comes to the same thing. He has left for England--I am glad to say--or
I might have fallen foul of him. The two of them killed enough ivory to
pay the costs of the whole outfit. So he swears he is coming back again
and will then take a large body of armed men with him and wipe out the
Masai.
Now I must bring this long letter to a close. Much love to dear old
Maud, and my most respectful greetings to my cousin and late employer.
I found her fame for beauty, wit, and dominance over Society had reached
even to Unguja.... In fact I rather winced at turning over
three-months-old illustrated papers here and seeing pictures of her in
wonderful costumes or--in the magazines--as a type of English beauty....
How far away it all seems!...
Your loving
RODGE.
_From the same to the same._
German Headquarters,
Medinat-al-Barka,
_April_ 30, 1891.
DEAREST,--
You will be rather surprised that a month has gone by and I have got no
nearer my goal than this! But firstly I went down with a bad go of
fever--all right now--and secondly I could not hustle von Wissmann, who
is Imperial Commissioner here and who has been very kind--and thirdly
the rains are so appalling just now that overland travelling is
well-nigh impossible till the country dries up a little. But I am not
losing my time otherwise. I am getting everything fixed up with the
Germans, and next shall only have to arrive at an understanding with the
natives. The boundaries of our Concession (which will include the
Stotts) cover the Happy Valley from the water-parting between the Bubu
and the Kwou on the south to the escarpment at the north end of the
lake, and on east and west include all the water-shed of Lake Manyara,
Iraku and Fiome. So they have dealt with us generously.
Wissmann I like immensely. He is a great man and has the interests of
the real natives thoroughly at heart. Our old friends the Stotts have
impressed him favourably and they are to be woven into my schemes of
development. Wissmann from the first asked me to put up at his
headquarters and treated me like a colleague in the opening up of
Africa. So I was saved the disagreeableness of staying at my former
Consulate with the Bazzards.
Mrs. Bazzard has been sickly in her protestations of friendship, utterly
insincere as you know. I fancy she is turning her pen now on Sir
Godfrey, in the hope she may oust _him_. Considering how kind the
Dewburns were to them it is odious to note how she tries to disparage
him....
There is not much news from the interior. I hear that Ali-bin-Ferhani
got rewarded by the Germans for saving Hangodi Station, and that Mbogo
is still chief there in name, the real chief of the district being Ann
Anderson, or Mgozimke--"The man-woman," as the natives call her.
In haste to catch the mail....
Your loving
ROGER.
_From the same to the same._
Mwada, The Happy Valley,
_July_ 28, 1891.
MY OWN DEAR WIFE,--
I reached the shores of the lake--which I now find is called Lawa ya
mweri--and the end of the Happy Valley on--as near as I can reckon--June
20. (The Stotts have no almanacs and are quite indifferent to dates,
times, seasons; they live under some enchantment, they tell me, since
they came here, like the legends of people carried off to Fairyland.) I
met Mr. Stott at Burungi, which now looks a flourishing station. The
Wagogo seem to me quite recalcitrant to Christianity, but the Stotts
have to keep this up as a depot for their traffic with the coast, and
they are helped in this by the German Government.... Stott and I
journeyed together through the Irangi country almost in state. The
Stotts have become enormously popular as "medicine men." They have
stopped epidemics of small-pox by vaccinating the people, have shown
them how to stay the ravages of the burrowing fleas, and they are making
a dead set against infanticide, having found one or two leading chiefs
sufficiently intelligent to appreciate the importance of a large
population. Formerly, as you may remember, there was such a prejudice
against female babies that they were often exposed to the hyenas outside
the tembe, and all children who came into the world by an irregular
presentation, or with a tooth already through the gum, likewise all
twins, were either thrown into the lake or abandoned to the carnivorous
ants or prowling carnivores. (There is a curious legend here--Stott
says--that sometimes these unhappy infants were picked up by female
baboons of the Chakma type and nursed by them with their own offspring.)
Well: you can imagine, having lived already in these parts, what the
infant death-rate amounted to. But the local chiefs having had the
whole theory exposed to them have sanctioned a crusade against
infanticide for any reason. The Wa-rangi have further been persuaded to
abandon the custom of burning alive women suspected of adultery. I did
not like to tell you at the time, but as we passed through the Irangi
country in November, '88, they were actually killing unfortunate women
in this manner. They believe that if a man goes out hunting and makes a
bad miss in throwing his spear or assegai at an elephant it is because
his wife is untrue to him at home! So when he returns from the chase
his wretched spouse is trussed up and bound to the top of a great pile
of brushwood.
Consequently, at several of the Irangi villages on our way up the Bubu
valley the women who were the wives of sporting duffers came out in
deputations to dance round the worthy Stott till they quite embarrassed
him; especially as the dances were of an indelicate nature.
The Stotts have now quite a nice-looking station to the south-east of
the main lake, on a grassy rise with the Mburu river on the south and a
much smaller salt lake on the east. This looks like sparkling ice under
the sun and is nearly solid--? salt--? soda. Its borders seem to be a
kind of salt lick for the game which is once more swarming and
singularly tame. There are no rhinos, fortunately, and the tricky
tempered elephants and buffaloes prefer the wooded regions farther north