L A K E V IC TO R IA N Y A N Z A TO U G A N D A
by a kind of lattice of fine straw to form a filter. Attached
to their clothes they generally carry two little bags made
of banana fibre, one to hold tobacco, and the other a very
small kind of wild coffee called “ muani,” which they
chew raw. They also wear a great number of wooden
charms, and a goat’s or ram’s horn or a boar’s tusk,
containing the inevitable medicine (dawa). Each man
also carries an axe of a peculiar form.
On Sunday, the 22nd October, after having passed
a large number of islands, most of them hilly and
denuded of trees, with only clumps of bananas appearing
near the villages, we made a halt on the mainland,
not far from Bukoba. The coast consists of hills rising ™
above the lake, and tumbling sheer into it. These are
covered with grass, and in the valleys between them flow
streams fringed with trees. The natives of the various
islands we had visited live, like my boatmen, almost entirely
on bananas. Their huts are of beehive shape. These people
are great fishermen, either spearing the fish at night by
the light of a torch, which attracts them to the surface,
or taking them in nets. We arrived at Bukoba next day
—the most northern German station founded by Emin
Pasha, consisting of a few very miserable buildings. In
the absence of the captain in charge I was received by
a sergeant-major, a thoroughly objectionable creature,
who spoke of his officers in a revolting manner. Captain
Macdonald had most kindly sent me a steel boat from
Uganda; but the sergeant insisted so urgently that I
should await the arrival of his captain, that I consented
to delay my start for a day or so.
The four principal chiefs of the west coast of the lake
up to the river Kagera, which forms the boundary between
the British and German spheres, are Kahigi, Mokotani,
Kayoza, and Muta Tembo. Mokotani’s village being a
trifle over a mile from Bukoba, I determined to fill up
some of the time by paying him a visit. Climbing the
rocks which sweep towards the lake, we found ourselves