within a decade! Hopes of his assistance and
influence were therefore relinquished; and, since
the chief was not available, it became evident
that none o f his people could be obtained for
the service o f exploration. Without this insight
into Kaduma’s life and manners, it would have
been a matter for fair speculation whether his
weakness and intemperance, or his dread o f the
vast lake, were the real causes o f his reluctance
to accompany me.
T he prince was learned in the names o f several
countries or villages— but which they were,
I was then ignorant. But i f every name he repeated
to my interested ears were the names
o f real countries, then, I began to think, it might
b e true, as he himself believed, that the lake
was so large that its exploration would occupy
years. Nearly all the Wangwana, while the
Lady A lice was being prepared for sea, were
impressed with the vastness o f the enterprise,
as Prince Kaduma, his people, Sungoro, and his
s la v e s— who had really only reached Ururi—
sketched it to them with their superstitious and
crude notions o f its size. There were, th ey said,
a people dwelling on its shores who were gifted
with ta ils ;. another who trained enormous and
fierce dogs for war; another a tribe o f cannibals,
who preferred human flesh to all other kinds o f
meat. T h e lake was so large it would take
years to trace its shores, and who then at the
i Kagefr/i ] N0 VOLUNTEERS. l97
end o f that time would remain alive ? Therefore,
as I expected, there were no volunteers for the
exploration o f the Great Lake. Its opposite
shores, from their v e ry vagueness o f outline,
and its people, from the distorting fogs of
misrepresentation through which we saw them,
only heightened the fears o f my men as to the
dangers which filled the prospect.
Within seven days the boat was ready, and
strengthened for a rough sea life. Provisions o f
flour and dried fish, bales o f cloth and beads
o f various kinds, odds and ends o f small possible
necessaries were boxed, and she was declared,
at last, to be only waiting for her crew.
■“ Would any one volunteer to accompany me?”
A dead silence ensued. “ Not for rewards and
extra p a y ? ” Another dead silence: no one
would volunteer.
“ Y e t I must,” said I, “ depart. Will yo u le t
me go alone?”
. “ No.”
“What then? Show me my braves— 'those
men who freely enlist to follow their master
round the sea.”
A ll were again dumb. Appealed to individually,
each said he knew nothing o f sea life; each man
frankly declared himself a terrible coward on
water.
“ Then, what am I to d o ? ”
Manwa Sera said:—