d the country between this
and Tanganyika. If there were much slope this water would flow off:
this makes me suspect that Tanganyika is not so low as Speke's
measurement. The Arabs are positive that water flows from that Lake to
the Victoria Nyanza, and assert that Dagara, the father of Rumanyika,
was anxious to send canoes from his place to Ujiji, or, as some say,
to dig a canal to Ujiji. The Wanyamwesi here support themselves by
shooting buffaloes, at a place two days distant, and selling the meat
for grain and cassava: no sooner is it known that an animal is killed,
than the village women crowd in here, carrying their produce to
exchange it for meat, which they prefer to beads or anything else.
Their farinaceous food creates a great craving for flesh: were my
shoes not done I would go in for buffaloes too.

A man from the upper part of Tanganyika gives the same account of the
river from Rusisi that Burton and Speke received when they went to its
mouth. He says that the water of the Lake goes up some distance, but
is met by Rusisi water, and driven back thereby. The Lake water, he
adds, finds an exit northwards and eastwards by several small rivers
which would admit small canoes only. They pour into Lake
Chowambe--probably that discovered by Mr. Baker. This Chowambe is in
Hundi, the country of cannibals, but the most enlightened informants
leave the impression on the mind of groping in the dark: it may be all
different when we come to see it.

The fruit of the palm, which yields palm-oil, is first of all boiled,
then pounded in a mortar, then put into hot or boiling water, and the
oil skimmed off. The palm-oil is said to be very abundant at Ujiji, as
much as 300 gallons being often brought into the bazaar for sale in
one morning; the people buy it eagerly for cooking purposes. Mohamad
says that the Island of Pemba, near Zanzibar, contains many of these
palms, but the people are ignorant of the mode of separating the oil
from the nut: they call the palm Nkoma at Casembe's, and Chikichi at
Zanzibar.[60]

No better authority for what has been done or left undone by
Mohamadans in this country can be found than Mohamad bin Saleh, for he
is very intelligent, and takes an interest in all that happens, and
his father was equally interested in this country's affairs. He
declares that no attempt was ever made by Mohamadans to proselytize
the Africans: they teach their own children to read the Koran, but
them only; it is nev