up to the time of their desertion. This I promptly
refused.
Upon the arrival of the deserters they had been
taken in charge by General Matthews, and brought
into the presence of Mr. Allen, the acting United
States Consul, who took down at full length their
statements. These statements in many cases were
conflicting, but their general trend was, that throughout
the journey I had treated them with the grossest
cruelty; that I had shot down numbers of them while
upon the march, and that many (some said twenty,
others said thirty) had died from excessive flogging.
They also said that I had engaged them for a period
of eighteen months, and that upon the expiration of
this period, finding me still desirous of continuing my
journey, they had, after long and fruitless endeavours
to induce me to return to the coast, been forced to
leave me and return to their homes in Zanzibar.
Upon arriving at Zanzibar, I had sent to our Consul
those men who had remained faithful to me. He
subjected them to a rigorous examination, and they
one and all offered testimony which absolutely refuted
in every particular the statements of the deserters
brought to Mr. Allen by General Matthews. General
Matthews was invited to be present upon this occasion,
but refused.
The statement that • I had engaged my porters for
eighteen months was absolutely untrue, as was soon
made manifest. Porters are engaged on different terms
at Zanzibar. Those who are enlisted for the purpose
of performing a fixed journey over a known road are
engaged for a certain number of months; as, for example,
for caravans which are sent with mission supplies
to posts in the interior or with Government
supplies for Uganda. These men are aware, when
they enlist, of the exact duration of their journey.
For purposes of exploration, however, a force is not
enlisted after that manner. The explorer can never
tell how long it will take to accomplish the task which
he has set for himself, and in enlisting men he cannot
with honesty agree to lead them by fixed roads
to certain places; as his purpose is to explore an unknown
country, and he is ignorant of the route and
the time necessary for its accomplishment. In engaging
my men, the usual agreement had been drawn up
by my agents, Smith, Mackenzie & Co., of Zanzibar.
In this agreement there was not one word stipulating
the length of time I intended to be gone. It contained
simply a statement of the wages I intended to
pay the different men, and the amount of money I
had advanced each of them prior to departure from
Zanzibar.
The deserters, upon being questioned by Mr. Allen,
had been unable to mention a single man of the many
whom they alleged I had killed by shooting or excessive
flogging, with the exception, of the one porter,
who had been accidentally killed early in the journey
by the Soudanese, Mahomet el Hussein; but they
said, and on this point they all concurred, that all the
alleged shooting and beating to death had occurred
prior to our first arrival at Daitcho in March, 1893.
The fact that this one man was killed, seemed, in the
minds of the authorities at Zanzibar, to warrant the
desertion of my entire caravan, although it was admit