AS days and weeks went on, the work of the pioneer missionaries to Uganda seemed to grow more, instead of less, trying and difficult. "The Daisy," stores, and many other things, all had to be carried for hundreds of miles on the shoulders of men, and he found himself obliged to take the command of a caravan of more than two hundred. Very often the road lay through marshes, where they were forced to wade knee-deep through stagnant water, quite unfit for drinking, and even when boiled and filtered still dirty and ill-smelling. Repeated attacks of swamp-fever left him so weak that some days he was too ill to travel at all, and more than once he thought himself dying. But his work in Africa was not done, and through the mercy of God he recovered.
Small-pox broke out among his men, and though he used all the means in his power to prevent its spread, several of his native porters died. Writing to his sister, he said, "It would have shocked an English doctor to have seen my donkey-boy, almost covered from head to foot with small-pox sores, wading for a couple of days through the swamps with very little clothing on; but here he is to-day, quite well, and with hardly a mark upon him.”
Most of his provisions were either lost or stolen, and sometimes the whole party knew what it was to be short of food. It was no uncommon thing for a porter to throw down his load and run away, and when they came near a native town, or even a cluster of mud huts, the chief, or headman, never failed to expect and demand large presents in the way of cloth, salt and beads.
Soon after passing Mtamburu, Mackay was seized with such a severe attack of fever that in his already weak state he could scarcely bear even to be carried in a hammock. His companions decided that he must return to the coast, but he was with difficulty presuaded to do so. Mackay at last consented, and set off eastwards, carried by two strong men, and eight others with his tent, clothes and other things on their shoulders. With this small party a rapid journey to the coast was made, and there a sea voyage in the mission steamer "Highland Lassie," did his health good.
When he was again fit for work he set about collecting another caravan for the relief of his companions on the Nyanza, intending to go with it in order to join the party he had accompanied in the autumn. Porters were more difficult to obtain than when the previous caravan had started, so he made a tour of three hundred miles northward and back along the coast to collect men. Often he and the few men who were still with him had to wade for hours across swamps where they were waist-deep in mud and water, sleeping in the open air or in cow-sheds, and living on roots, berries, or anything they could get.
Before setting out again for Uganda, Mackay received instructions to try, if possible, to construct a road, the first ever made in Central Africa, and though a severe attack of fever forced him to be idle for six weeks he was soon at work collecting men and tools. The Sultan of Zanzibar seemed much pleased at the proposal, and gave Mackay a fine horse to ride on.
By May day the work was fairly begun, and to his great delight he was able to engage as his personal servant and interpreter Susi, an old servant of Dr. Livingstone's, one of the faithful few who helped to carry his body to the coast, and afterward went with his remains to England. He could speak several native languages, and proved a real help and comfort to the lonely missionary.
The slave-trade was still a cause of great trouble and anxiety to Mackay. He writes: "How many poor slaves are being nightly driven to the coast no man can tell. A well-beaten track leads from here to the sea, and every time I cross it, I shudder to think of the unhappy men, of the helpless women and children who, after being stolen from their homes, are being driven along it to be crowded into the hold of slave-dhows.
A British man-of-war, for the suppression of the trade, was stationed off the coast; but its boats and men were too few for the work that needed to be done. The Sultan could, he said, do nothing to prevent the slave trade, and Mackay soon found that the native interpreters, who were engaged to help the British sailors, were often bribed by the slave traders to allow their dhows to pass unnoticed, or to say that the women on board those captured were the wives or household servants of the owners.
Still he kept bravely on, and his home letters were bright and cheerful. Here is one. "I am well again, thank God, and camp life has set my spirits up. My horse, my dog, my goat, my oxen and donkey, with my household of nearly seventy men and a few women, are enough to feed, and quite enough to look after at one time. It is now dark and all is quiet, my men are going to rest. I have given them their food, and they know I shall take a good day's work out of them to-morrow. The insects are hard at it again; midges, flies and mosquitoes above, and ants and other creeping things below. A cup does duty for my inkstand, with a little powder mixed with water for ink; but eight or nine o'clock is bedtime when one is on the march or in camp, and I must turn in, so good night.”
Day by day the work went on; miles of forest and jungle had to be cut through, trees felled, and river banks sloped down. Herds of elephants roamed through the jungle, and tracks of the lion and panther were often seen. Camp-fires had often to be kept burning all night, but the party were preserved from the attacks of wild beasts, and in rather less than twelve months two hundred and thirty miles of road were completed.
The business of road-making over, Mackay was once more free to set out for his beloved Uganda, though it was still six hundred miles away. He was advised to travel by bullock-cart, and to his great delight found a young Englishman, an earnest Christian, and by trade a carpenter, had been sent out to help him. His new companion proved of great use in improving or repairing the native carts, and as his strength had not, like Mackay's, been wasted by frequent attacks of fever, he was able to manage the wilder oxen.
At last they started. Six large carts loaded, eighty oxen, sixty men, half of whom were drivers, the rest porters, five donkeys, a flock of sheep and goats, with six dogs, made up the party.
But every day the carts upset, sometimes two or three times; and in some places the jungle was so thick that it was found that twenty oxen yoked to one cart were hardly able to draw it.