The Lake Regions of Central Africa: A Picture of Exploration, Vol. 2

by Sir Richard Francis Burton

THE NORTHERN KINGDOMS: KARAGWAH, UGANDA, AND UNYORO.

The extensive and hitherto unknown countries described in this chapter, being compact despotisms, resembling those of Ashanti and Dahomey more than the semi-monarchies of Unyamwezi and Urundi, or the barbarous republics of Uvinza and Ujiji, are designated the Northern Kingdoms. It is regrettable that oral information, and not the results of actual investigation, are offered to the reader concerning regions so interesting as the Southern Tanganyika, the Northern Kingdoms, and the provinces south of Unyanyembe. But absolute obstacles having interfered, it was judged advisable to use the labours of others rather than to omit all notice of a subject which has the importance of novelty, because it lacked the advantages of a regular exploration.

Informants agree in representing the northern races as superior in civilisation and social constitution to the other tribes of Eastern and Central Africa. Like the subjects of the Kazembe, they have built extensive and regular settlements, and they reverence even to worship a single despot, who rules with a rigour which in Europe would be called barbarity. Having thrown off the rude equality of their neighbours, they recognise ranks in society; there is order amongst men, and some idea of honour in women; they add to commerce credit, without which commerce can hardly exist; and they hospitably entertain strangers and guests. These accounts are confirmed by the specimens of male and female slaves from Karagwah and Uganda seen at Unyanyembe: between them and the southern races there is a marked physical difference. Their heads are of a superior cast: the regions where the reflective faculties and the moral sentiments, especially benevolence, are placed, rise high; the nose is more of the Caucasian type; the immoderate masticating apparatus which gives to the negro and the lower negroid his peculiar aspect of animality, is greatly modified, and the expression of the countenance is soft, kindly, and not deficient in intelligence.

From Unyanyembe to Kibuga, the capital of Uganda, are fifty-three stages, which are distributed into four crucial stations of Usui, Karagwah, dependent Unyoro, and Uganda. A few remarks concerning each of these divisions may not be unacceptable.

Between Unyanyembe and Usui are sixteen long, or nineteen short, stages. Though the road is for the most part rough and hilly, the marches can scarcely be reduced below ten statute, or six rectilinear geo. miles per diem; in fact, the geographer’s danger when making these estimates is, that of falling, through fear of exaggeration, into the opposite and equally incorrect extreme. The general direction of the line leading from Kazeh, in Unyanyembe, to Karagwah, pointed out by Snay bin Amir, bore 345° (corrected 332°); the length of the nineteen marches would be about 115 geo. miles. The southern frontier of Usui may, therefore, be safely placed in S. lat. 3° 10′.

The route from Kazeh to Usui falls at once westward of the line leading to the Nyanza Lake; it diverges, however, but little at first, as they both traverse the small districts of Ulikampuri, Unyambewa, and Ukuni. Usonga, crossed in five short marches, is the first considerable district north of Unyanyembe. Thence the road enters the province of Utumbara, which is flanked on the east by Usambiro, and on the west by Uyungu, governed by the Muhinda Sultan, Kanze. Utumbara, as has been mentioned, was lately plundered, and Ruhembe, its chief, was slain, by the predatory Watuta. In Utumbara and Usambiro the people are chiefly the Wafyoma, a tribe of Wanyamwezi: they are a commercial race, like the Wajiji—trafficking in hoes and ivory; and their present Sultan, Mutawazi, has often been visited by the Arabs. Uyofu, governed by Mnyamurunda, is the northern boundary of Unyamwezi, after which the route enters the ill famed territory of Usui.

Usui is traversed in seven marches, making a sum of twenty-six from Kazeh. According to the former computation, a total march of about 156 geo. miles would place the southern frontier of Karagwah in S. lat. 2° 40′. The road in several parts discloses a view of the Nyanza Lake. Usui is described as a kind of neutral ground between the rolling plateau of Unyamwezi and the highlands of Karagwah: it is broken by ridges in two places—Nyakasene the fourth, and Ruhembe the seventh stage, where mention is also made of a small stream. From this part of the country a wild nutmeg is brought to Kazeh by caravans: the Arabs declare that it grows upon the well-wooded hills, and the only specimen shown was heavy and well flavoured, presenting a marked contrast to the poor produce of Zanzibar island.

The Wasúí, according to the Arabs, are not Wanyamwezi. They are considered dangerous, and they have frequently cut off the route to caravans from Karagwah. Their principal sultan, a Muhinda named Suwarora, demands exorbitant blackmail, and is described as troublesome and overbearing: his bad example has been imitated by his minor chiefs.

The kingdom of Karagwah, which is limited on the north by the Kitangure or Kitangule River, a great western influent of the Nyanza Lake, occupies twelve days in traversing. The usual estimate would thus give it a depth of 72, and place the northern limit about 228 rectilinear geo. miles from Kazeh, or in S. lat. 1° 40′. But the Kitangure River, according to the Arabs, falls into the Nyanza diagonally from south-west to north-east. Its embouchure will, therefore, not be distant from the equator. The line of road is thus described: After ascending the hills of Ruhembe the route, deflecting eastward, pursues for three days the lacustrine plain of the Nyanza. At Tenga, the fourth station, the first gradient of the Karagwah mountains is crossed, probably at low levels, where the spurs fall towards the lake. Kafuro is a large district where merchants halt to trade, in the vicinity of Weranhánjá, the royal settlement, which commands a distant view of the Nyanza. Nyakahanga, the eighth stage, is a gradient similar to that of Tenga; and Magugi, the tenth station, conducts the traveller to the northernmost ridge of Karagwah. The mountains are described as abrupt and difficult, but not impracticable for laden asses: they are compared by the Arabs to the Rubeho chain of Usagara. This would raise them about 4000 feet above the mean level of the Unyamwezi plateau and the Nyanza water, and about 8000 feet above this sea. Their surface, according to the Arabs, is alternately earth and stone, the former covered with plantains and huge timber-trees, the latter bare, probably by reason of their altitude. There are no plains, bush, or jungle, but the deep ravines and the valleys intersecting the various ridges drain the surface of the hills, and are the sites of luxuriant cultivation. The people of Karagwah, averse to the labour of felling the patriarchs of the forest, burn “bois de vache,” like the natives of Usukuma. North of Magugi, at Katanda, a broad flat extends eastwards: the path thence descends the northern counterslope, and falls into the alluvial plain of the Kitungure River.

Karagwah is thus a mass of highlands, bounded on the north by dependent Unyoro, on the south by Usui, eastward by the tribes of Wahayya and Wapororo, upon the lacustrine plain of the Nyanza; on the south-west it inosculates with Urundi, which has been described as extending from the north-eastern extremity of the Tanganyika Lake. Its equatorial position and its altitude enable it to represent the Central African prolongation of the Lunar Mountains. Ptolemy describes this range, which he supposes to send forth the White Nile, as stretching across the continent for a distance of 10° of longitude. For many years this traditional feature has somewhat fallen into discredit: some geographers have changed the direction of the line, which, like the Himalayas, forms the base of the South African triangle from east and west to north and south, thus converting it into a formation akin to the ghauts or lateral ranges of the Indian peninsula; whilst others have not hesitated to cast ridicule upon the mythus. From the explorations of the “Mombas Mission” in Usumbara, Chhaga, and Kitui, and from the accounts of Arab visitors to the lands of Umasai and the kingdom of Karagwah, it appears that from the fifth parallel of S. lat. to the equator, an elevated mass of granite and sandstone formation crosses from the shores of the Indian Ocean to the centre of Tropical Africa. The vast limestone band which extends from the banks of the Burramputra to those of the Tagus appears to be prolonged as far south as the Eastern Horn, and near the equator to give place to sandstone formations. The line is not, however, as might be expected from analogy with the Himalayan, a continuous unbroken chain; it consists of insulated mountains, apparently volcanic, rising from elevated plains, and sometimes connected by barren and broken ridges. The south-eastern threshold of the Lunar cordillera is the highland region of Usumbara, which may attain the height of 3000 or 4000 feet above sea-level. It leads by a succession of mountain and valley to Chhaga, whose apex is the “Æthiopian Olympus,” Kilima-Ngao. From this corner-pillar the line trends westward, and the route to Burkene passes along the base of the principal elevations, Doengo Engai and Endia Siriani. Beyond Burkene lies the Nyanza Lake, in a huge gap which, breaking the continuity of the line, drains the regions westward of Kilima-Ngao, whilst those to the eastward, the Pangani and other similar streams, discharge their waters to the south-east into the Indian Ocean. The kingdom of Karagwah prolongs the line to Urundi, upon the Tanganyika Lake, where the south-western spurs of the Lunar Mountains form a high continuous belt. Mr. Petherick, of Khartum, travelling twenty-five marches, each of twenty miles (?), in a south-south-western and due-southerly direction from the Bahr el Ghazal, found a granitic ridge rising, he supposes 2000 to 2500 feet above the plain, near the equator, and lying nearly upon the same parallel of latitude, and in about 27° E. long. Beyond that point the land is still unexplored. Thence the mountains may sink into the great Depression of Central Africa, or, deflected northwards of the kingdom of Uropua, they may inosculate with the ridge which, separating the northern negroid races of Islamised Africa from their negro brethren to the south, is popularly known, according to Denham and Clapperton, as el-Gibel Gumhr,—Jebel Kamar,—or Mons Lunæ.

The high woody hills of Karagwah attract a quantity of rain. The long and copious wet monsoon divides the year into two seasons—a winter of seven or eight, and a summer of four or five months. The Vuli, or lesser rains, commence, as at Zanzibar, with the Nayruz (29th of August); and they continue with little intermission till the burst of the Masika, which lasts in Karagwah from October to May or June. The winds, as in Unyamwezi, are the Kaskazi, or north and north-east gales, which shift during the heavier falls of rain to the Kosi, the west and south-west. Storms of thunder and lightning are frequent, and the Arabs compare the down-pour rather to that of Zanzibar island than to the scanty showers of Unyamwezi. The sowing season at Karagwah, as at Msene and Ujiji, begins with the Vuli, when maize and millet, the voandzeia, various kinds of beans and pulse, are committed to the well-hoed ground. Rice being unknown, the people depend much upon holcus: this cereal, which is sown in October to prepare for the Masika in November, has, in the mountains, a short cane and a poor insipid grain of the red variety. The people convert it into pombe; and they make the wine called mawa from the plantains, which in several districts are more abundant than the cereals. Karagwah grows according to some, according to others imports from the northern countries, along the western margin of the Nyanza Lake, a small wild coffee, locally called mwámí. Like all wild productions, it is stunted and undeveloped, and the bean, which, when perfect, is about the size of a corking-pin’s head, is never drunk in decoction. The berry gathered unripe is thrown into hot water to defend it from rot, or to prevent its drying too rapidly—an operation which converts the husk to a dark chocolate colour—the people of this country chew it like tobacco, and, during visits, a handful is invariably presented to the guest. According to the Arabs, it has, like the kishr of Yemen, stimulating properties, affects the head, prevents somnolency, renders water sweet to the taste, and forms a pleasant refreshing beverage, which the palate, however, never confounds with the taste of the Mocha-berry. In Karagwah a single khete of beads purchases a kubabah (from 1 lb. to 2 lbs.) of this coffee; at Kazeh and Msene, where it is sometimes brought by caravans, it sells at fancy prices. Another well-known production of all these regions is the mt’hípít’hípí, or Abrus precatorius, whose scarlet seeds are converted into ornaments for the head.

The cattle is a fine variety, with small humps and large horns, like that of Ujiji and Uviva. The herds are reckoned by Gundu, or stallions, in the proportion of 1 to 100 cows. The late Sultan Ndagara is said to have owned 200 Gundu, or 20,000 cows, which late civil wars have reduced to 12,000 or 13,000. In Karagwah cattle forms wealth, and everywhere in Africa wealth, and wealth only, secures defenders and dependants. The surplus males are killed for beef; this meat, with milk in its various preparations, and a little of the fine white hill-honey, forms the food of the higher classes.

The people of Karagwah, who are not, according to South African fashion, called Wakaragwah, are divided into two orders—Wahuma and Wanyambo—who seem to bear to each other the relation of patron and client, patrician and plebeian. The Wahuma comprises the rich, who sometimes possess 1000 head of cattle, and the warriors, a militia paid in the milk of cows allotted to their temporary use by the king. The Wanyambo—Fellahs or Ryots—are, it is said, treated by the nobles as slaves. The men of Karagwah are a tall stout race, doubtless from the effect of pure mountain-air and animal food. Corpulence is a beauty: girls are fattened to a vast bulk by drenches of curds and cream thickened with flour, and are duly disciplined when they refuse. The Arabs describe them as frequently growing to a monstrous size, like some specimens of female Boers mentioned by early travellers in Southern Africa. Fresh milk is the male, sour the female beverage. The complexion is a brown yellow, like that of the Warundi. The dress of the people, and even of the chiefs, is an apron of close-grained mbugu, or bark-cloth, softened with oil, and crimped with fine longitudinal lines made with a batten or pounding club. In shape it resembles the flap of an English saddle, tied by a prolongation of the upper corners round the waist. To this scarcely decent article the chiefs add a languti, or Indian-T-bandage of goat’s skin. Nudity is not uncommon, and nubile girls assume the veriest apology for clothing, which is exchanged after marriage for short kilts and breast coverings of skin. Both sexes wear tiara-shaped and cravat-formed ornaments of the crimson abrus-seed, pierced and strung upon mondo, the fine fibre of the mwale or raphia-palm. The weapons are bows and arrows, spears, knobsticks, and knives; the ornaments are beads and coil-bracelets, which, with cattle, form the marriage settlement. The huts are of the conical and circular African shape, with walls of stakes and roofs so carefully thatched that no rain can penetrate them: the villages, as in Usagara, are scattered upon the crests and ridges of the hills.

The Mkámá, or Sultan of Karagwah, in 1858, was Armanika, son of Ndagara, who, although the dignity is in these lands hereditary, was opposed by his younger brother Rumanika. The rebel, after an obstinate attack, was routed by Suna, the late despot of Uganda, who, bribed by the large present of ivory, which was advanced by Musa Mzuri of Kazeh, then trading with Armanika, threw a large force into the field. Rumanika was blinded and pensioned, and about four years ago peace was restored. Armanika resides in the central district, Weranhanja, and his settlement, inhabited only by the royal family, contains from forty to fifty huts. He is described as a man about thirty to thirty-five years old, tall, sturdy, and sinewy-limbed, resembling the Somal. His dress is, by preference, the mbugu, or bark-cloth, but he has a large store of fine raiment presented by his Arab visitors: in ornaments he is distinguished by tight gaiters of beads extending from knee to ankle. His diet is meat and milk, with sometimes a little honey, plantains, and grain: unlike his subjects, he eschews mawa and pombe. He has about a dozen wives, an unusually moderate allowance for an African chief, and they have borne him ten or eleven children. The royal family is said to be a race of centagenarians; they are buried in their garments, sitting and holding their weapons: when the king dies there is a funeral feast.

Under the Mkama is a single minister, who takes the title of Muhinda, and presides over the Wakungu, elders and headmen, whose duty it is to collect and to transmit to the monarch once every month his revenues, in the shape of slaves and ivory, cattle and provisions. Milk must be forwarded by proprietors of cows and herds even from a distance of three days’ march. Armanika is an absolute ruler, and he governs without squeamishness. Adulterers are punished by heavy fines in cattle, murderers are speared and beheaded, rebels and thieves are blinded by gouging out the eyes with the finger-joints of the right-hand, and severing the muscles. Subjects are forbidden to sell milk to those who eat beans or salt, for fear of bewitching the animals. The Mkama, who lives without state or splendour, receives travellers with courtesy. Hearing of their approach, he orders his slaves to erect four or five tents for shelter, and he greets them with a large present of provisions. He demands no blackmail, but the offerer is valued according to his offerings: the return gifts are carefully proportioned, and for beads which suit his taste he has sent back an acknowledgment of fifty slaves and forty cows. The price of adult male slaves varies from eight to ten fundo of white, green, or blue porcelain-beads: a woman in her prime costs two kitindi (each equal to one dollar on the coast), and five or six fundo of mixed beasts. Some of these girls, being light-coloured and well favoured, sell for sixty dollars at Zanzibar. The merchants agree in stating that a European would receive in Karagwah the kindest welcome, but that to support the dignity of the white face a considerable sum would be required. Arabs still visit Armanika to purchase slaves, cattle, and ivory, the whitest and softest, the largest and heaviest in this part of Central Africa. The land is rich in iron, and the spears of Karagwah, which are, to some extent, tempered, are preferred to the rude work of the Wafyoma. Sulphur is found, according to the Arabs, near hot springs amongst the mountains. A species of manatus (?) supplies a fine skin used for clothing. The simbi, or cowrie (Cypræa), is the minor currency of the country: it is brought from the coast by return caravans of Wanyamwezi.

The country of Karagwah is at present the head-quarters of the Watosi, a pastoral people who are scattered throughout these Lake Regions. They came, according to tradition, from Usingo, a mountain district lying to the north of Uhha. They refuse to carry loads, to cultivate the ground, or to sell one another. Harmless, and therefore unarmed, they are often plundered, though rarely slain, by other tribes, and they protect themselves by paying fees in cattle to the chiefs. When the Wahinda are sultans, the Watosi appear as councillors and elders; but whether this rank is derived from a foreign and superior origin, or is merely the price of their presents, cannot be determined. In appearance they are a tall, comely, and comparatively fair people; hence in some parts every “distinguished foreigner” is complimented by being addressed as “Mtosi.” They are said to derive themselves from a single ancestor, and to consider the surrounding tribes as serviles, from whom they will take concubines, but to whom they refuse their daughters. Some lodges of this people were seen about Unyanyembe and Msene, where they live by selling cattle, milk, and butter. Their villages are poor, dirty, and unpalisaded; mere scatters of ragged round huts. They have some curious practices: never eat out of their own houses, and, after returning from abroad, test, by a peculiar process, the fidelity of their wives before anointing themselves and entering their houses. The Arabs declare that they are known by their black gums, which they consider a beauty.

The last feature of importance in Karagwah is the Kitangure River on its northern frontier. This stream, deriving its name from a large settlement on its banks, according to some travellers flows through a rocky trough, according to others it traverses a plain. Some, again, make it thirty yards, others 600, and even half a mile, in breadth. All these statements are reconcileable. The river issues from Higher Urundi, not far from the Malagarazi; but whilst the latter, engaged in the Depression of Central Africa, is drawn towards the Tanganyika, the former, falling into the counterslope, is directed to the north-east into the Nyanza Lake. Its course would thus lie through a mountain-valley, from which it issues into a lacustrine plain, the lowlands of Unyoro and Uganda. The dark and swift stream must be crossed in canoes even during the dry season, but, like the Malagarazi, about June or at the end of the rains, it debords over the swampy lands of its lower course.

From the Kitangure River fifteen stations conduct the traveller to Kibuga, the capital district of Uganda, and the residence of its powerful despot. The maximum of these marches would be six daily, or a total of ninety rectilinear geographical miles. Though there are no hills, the rivers and rivulets—said to be upwards of a hundred in number—offer serious obstacles to rapid travelling. Assuming then, the point where the Kitangure River is crossed to be in S. lat. 1° 14′, Kibuga may be placed in S. lat. 0° 10′. Beyond Weranhanja no traveller with claims to credibility has seen the Nyanza water. North of Kibuga all is uncertain; the Arabs were not permitted by Suna, the last despot, to penetrate farther north.

The two first marches from the Kitangure River traverse the territory of “dependent Unyoro,” so called because it has lately become subject to the Sultan of Uganda. In former times Unyoro in crescent-shape, with the cusps fronting eastwards and westwards, almost encompassed Uganda. From dependent Unyoro the path, crossing a tract of low jungle, enters Uganda in the concave of the crescent. The tributary Wahayya, under Gaetawa, their sultan, still extend to the eastward. North of the Wahayya, of whose territory little is known, lies “Kittara,” in Kinyoro (or Kiganda?), a word interpreted to mean “mart,” or “meeting-place.” This is the region which supplies Karagwah with coffee. The shrub is propagated by sowing the bean. It attains the height of five feet, branching out about half-way; it gives fruit after the third, and is in full vigour after the fifth year. Before almost every hut-door there is a plantation, forming an effective feature in the landscape of rolling and wavy hill, intersected by a network of rivers and streams: the foliage is compared to a green tapestry veiling the ground; and at times, when the leaves are stripped off by wind and rain, the plant appears decked with brilliant crimson cherry-like berries. The Katonga River, crossed at Kitutu, is supposed to fall into the Nyanza, the general recipient of the network of streams about Karagwah. This diagonality may result from the compound incline produced by the northern counterslope of the mountains of Karagwah and the south-westward depression necessary to form and to supply the lake. The Katonga is a sluggish and almost stagnant body of considerable breadth, and when swollen it arrests the progress of caravans. Some portions of the river are crossed, according to the Arabs, over a thick growth of aquatic vegetation, which forms a kind of matwork, capable of supporting a man’s weight, and cattle are towed over in the more open parts by cords attached to their horns. Four stations lead from the Katonga River to Kibuga, the capital district of Uganda.

Kibuga is the residence of the great Mkámá or chief of Uganda. Concerning its population and peculiarities the Arabs must be allowed to tell their own tale. “Kibuga, the settlement, is not less than a day’s journey in length; the buildings are of cane and rattan. The sultan’s palace is at least a mile long, and the circular huts, neatly ranged in line, are surrounded by a strong fence which has only four gates. Bells at the several entrances announce the approach of strangers, and guards in hundreds attend there at all hours. They are commanded by four chiefs, who are relieved every second day: these men pass the night under hides raised upon uprights, and their heads are forfeited if they neglect to attend to the summons of the king. The harem contains about 3000 souls—concubines, slaves, and children. No male nor adult animal may penetrate, under pain of death, beyond the Barzah, a large vestibule or hall of audience where the king dispenses justice and receives his customs. This palace has often been burned down by lightning: on these occasions the warriors must assemble and extinguish the fire by rolling over it. The chief of Uganda has but two wants with which he troubles his visitors—one, a medicine against death; the other, a charm to avert the thunderbolt: and immense wealth would reward the man who could supply either of these desiderata.”

Suna, the great despot of Uganda, a warlike chief, who wrested dependent Unyoro from its former possessor, reigned till 1857. He perished in the prime of life and suddenly, as the Arabs say, like Namrud, whilst riding “pickaback”—the state carriage of Central Africa—upon a minister’s shoulders, he was struck by the shaft of the destroyer in the midst of his mighty host. As is the custom of barbarous and despotic races, the event was concealed for some months. When the usual time had expired, one of his many sons, exchanging his heir-elective name “Sámunjú” for Mtesa, became king. The court usage compels the newly elected chief to pass two years in retirement, committing state affairs to his ministers; little, therefore, is yet known of him. As he will certainly tread in the footsteps of his sire, the Arabs may again be allowed to describe the state and grandeur of the defunct Suna; and as Suna was in fact the whole kingdom of Uganda, the description will elucidate the condition of the people in general.

“The army of Uganda numbers at least 300,000 men; each brings an egg to muster, and thus something like a reckoning of the people is made. Each soldier carries one spear, two assegais, a long dagger, and a shield, bows and swords being unknown. When marching the host is accompanied by women and children carrying spare weapons, provisions, and water. In battle they fight to the sound of drums, which are beaten with sticks like those of the Franks: should this performance cease, all fly the field. Wars with the Wanyoro, the Wasoga, and other neighbours are rendered almost chronic by the policy as well as the pleasure of the monarch, and there are few days on which a foraging party does not march from or return to the capital. When the king has no foreign enemies, or when the exchequer is indecently deficient, he feigns a rebellion, attacks one of his own provinces, massacres the chief men, and sells off the peasantry. Executions are frequent, a score being often slain at a time: when remonstrated with concerning this barbarity, Sana declared that he had no other secret for keeping his subjects in awe of him, and for preventing conspiracies. Sometimes the king would accompany his army to a battue of game, when the warriors were expected to distinguish themselves by attacking the most ferocious beasts without weapons: even the elephant, borne down by numbers, yielded to the grasp of man. When passing a village he used to raise a shout, which was responded to by a loud flourish of horns, reed-pipes, iron whistles, and similar instruments. At times he decreed a grand muster of his soldiery: he presented himself sitting before his gate, with a spear in the right hand, and holding in the left the leash of a large and favourite dog resembling an Arab suluki or greyhound. The master of the hounds was an important personage. Suna took great pleasure in witnessing trials of strength, the combatants contending with a mixture of slapping and pushing till one fell to the ground. He had a large menagerie of lions, elephants, leopards, and similar beasts of disport, to whom he would sometimes give a criminal as a ‘curée:’ he also kept for amusement fifteen or sixteen albinos; and so greedy was he of novelty that even a cock of peculiar or uniform colour would have been forwarded by its owner to feed his eyes.”

Suna when last visited by the Arabs was a “red man,” aged about forty-five, tall, robust, and powerful of limb, with a right kingly presence and a warrior carriage. His head was so shaven as to leave what the Omani calls “el Kishshah,” a narrow crest of hair like a cock’s comb, from nape to brow; nodding and falling over his face under its weight of strung beads, it gave him a fierce and formidable aspect. This tonsure, confined to those about the palace, distinguishes its officers and inmates, servile as well as free, from the people. The Ryots leave patches of hair where they please, but they may not shave the whole scalp under pain of death, till a royal edict unexpectedly issued at times commands every head to shed its honours. Suna never appeared in public without a spear; his dress was the national costume, a long piece of the fine crimped mbugu or bark-cloth manufactured in these regions, extending from the neck to the ground. He made over to his women the rich clothes presented by the Arabs, and allowed them to sew with unravelled cotton thread, whereas the people under severe penalties were compelled to use plantain fibre. No commoner could wear domestics or similar luxuries; and in the presence, the accidental exposure of a limb led, according to the merchants, to the normal penalty—death.

Suna, like the northern despots generally, had a variety of names, all expressing something bitter, mighty, or terrible, as, for instance, Lbare, the Almighty (?); Mbidde and Purgoma, a lion. He could not understand how the Sultan of Zanzibar allowed his subjects treasonably to assume the name of their ruler; and besides mortifying the Arabs by assuming an infinite superiority over their prince, he shocked them by his natural and unaffected impiety. He boasted to them that he was the god of earth, as their Allah was the Lord of Heaven. He murmured loudly against the abuse of lightning; and he claimed from his subjects divine honours, which were as readily yielded to him as by the facile Romans to their emperors. No Mgándá would allow the omnipotence of his sultan to be questioned, and a light word concerning him would have imperilled a stranger’s life. Suna’s domestic policy reminds the English reader of the African peculiarities which form the groundwork of “Rasselas.” His sons, numbering more than one hundred, were removed from the palace in early youth to separate dungeons, and so secured with iron collars and fetters fastened to both ends of a long wooden bar that the wretches could never sit, and without aid could neither rise nor lie. The heir-elective was dragged from his chains to fill a throne, and the cadets will linger through their dreadful lives, unless wanted as sovereigns, until death release them. Suna kept his female children under the most rigid surveillance within the palace: he had, however, a favourite daughter named Nasuru, whose society was so necessary to him that he allowed her to appear with him in public.

The principal officers under the despot of Uganda are, first, the Kimara Vyona (literally the “finisher of all things”): to him, the chief civilian of the land, the city is committed; he also directs the kabaka or village headmen. The second is the Sakibobo or commander-in-chief, who has power over the Sáwágánzí, the life-guards and slaves, the warriors and builders of the palace. Justice is administered in the capital by the sultan, who, though severe, is never accused of perverting the law, which here would signify the ancient custom of the country. A Mhozi—Arabised to Hoz, and compared with the Kazi of el Islam—dispenses in each town criminal and civil rights. The only punishments appear to be death and mulcts. Capital offenders are beheaded or burned; in some cases they are flayed alive; the operation commences with the face, and the skin, which is always much torn by the knife, is stuffed as in the old torturing days of Asia. When a criminal absconds, the males of his village are indiscriminately slain and the women are sold—blood and tears must flow for discipline. In money suits each party begins by placing before the Mhozi a sum equivalent to the disputed claim; the object is to prevent an extensive litigiousness. Suna used to fine by fives or tens, dozens or scores, according to the offender’s means; thus from a wealthy man he would take twenty male and twenty female slaves, with a similar number of bulls and cows, goats and kids, hens and even eggs. One of his favourites, who used constantly to sit by him on guard, matchlock in hand, was Isa bin Hosayn, a Baloch mercenary of H. H. Sayyid Said of Zanzibar. He had fled from his debtors, and had gradually wandered to Uganda, where the favour of the sovereign procured him wealth in ivory, and a harem containing from 200 to 300 women. “Mzagayya,”—the hairy one, as he was locally called, from his long locks and bushy beard—was not permitted, nor probably did he desire, to quit the country; after his patron’s death he fled to independent Unyoro, having probably raised up, as these adventurers will, a host of enemies at Uganda.

Suna greatly encouraged, by gifts and attention, the Arab merchants to trade in his capital; the distance has hitherto prevented more than half-a-dozen caravans travelling to Kibuga; all however came away loudly praising his courtesy and hospitality. To a poor trader he has presented twenty slaves, and an equal number of cows, without expecting any but the humblest return. The following account of a visit paid to him in 1852, by Snay bin Amir, may complete his account of the despot Uganda. When the report of arrival was forwarded by word of mouth to Suna, he issued orders for the erection of as many tents as might be necessary. The guest, who was welcomed with joyful tumult by a crowd of gazers, and was conducted to the newly-built quarters, where he received a present of bullocks and grain, plantains and sugar-canes. After three or four days for repose, he was summoned to the Barzah or audience hall, outside of which he found a squatting body of about 2000 guards armed only with staves. Allowed to retain his weapons, he entered with an interpreter and saluted the chief, who, without rising, motioned his guest to sit down in front of him. Suna’s only cushion was a mbugu; his dress was of the same stuff; two spears lay close at hand, and his dog was as usual by his side. The Arab thought proper to assume the posture of homage, namely, to sit upon his shins, bending his back, and, with eyes fixed on the ground—he had been cautioned against staring at the “god of earth,”—to rest his hands upon his lap. The levee was full; at a distance of fifty paces between the king and the guards sat the ministers; and inside the palace, so placed that they could see nothing but the visitor’s back, were the principal women, who are forbidden to gaze at or to be gazed at by a stranger. The room was lit with torches of a gummy wood, for Suna, who eschewed pombe, took great pleasure in these audiences, which were often prolonged from sunset to midnight.

The conversation began with a string of questions concerning Zanzibar, the route, the news, and the other staple topics of barbarous confabulation; when it flagged, a minister was called up to enliven it. No justice was administered nor present offered during the first audience; it concluded with the despot rising, at which signal all dispersed. At the second visit Snay presented his blackmail, which consisted of ten cotton cloths, and one hundred fundo of coral, and other porcelain beads. The return was an offering of two ivories and a pair of serviles; every day, moreover, flesh and grain, fruit and milk were supplied without charge; whenever the wish was expressed, a string of slave-girls presently appeared bending under loads of the article in question; and it was intimated to the “king’s stranger” that he might lay hands upon whatever he pleased, animate or inanimate. Snay, however, was too wise to avail himself of this truly African privilege. During the four interviews which followed, Suna proved himself a man of intelligence: he inquired about the Wazungu or Europeans, and professed to be anxious for a closer alliance with the Sultan of Zanzibar. When Snay took leave he received the usual present of provisions for the road, and 200 guards prepared to escort him, an honour which he respectfully declined: Suna offered to send with him several loads of elephants’ tusks as presents to H. H. the Sayyid; but the merchant declined to face with them the difficulties and dangers of Usúí. Like all African chiefs, the despot considered these visits as personal honours paid to himself; his pride therefore peremptorily forbade strangers to pass northwards of his capital, lest the lesser and hostile chiefs might boast a similar brave. According to Snay, an European would be received with distinction, if travelling with supplies to support his dignity. He would depend, however, upon his ingenuity and good fortune upon further progress; and perhaps the most feasible plan to explore the water-shed north of the Nyanza Lake would be to buy or to build, with the permission of the reigning monarch, boats upon the nearest western shore. Suna himself, had, according to Snay, constructed a flotilla of matumbi or undecked vessels similar in shape to the Mtope or Muntafiyah—the modern “Ploiaria Rhapta” of the Sawahili coast from Lamu to Kilwa.

Few details were given by the Arabs concerning the vulgar herd of Waganda: they are, as has been remarked, physically a finer race than the Wayamwezi, and they are as superior in character; more docile and better disciplined, they love small gifts, and show their gratitude by prostrating themselves before the donor. The specimens of slaves seen at Kazeh were, however, inferior to the mountaineers of Karagwah; the complexion was darker, and the general appearance more African. Their language is, to use an Arab phrase, like that of birds, soft and quickly spoken; the specimens collected prove without doubt that it belongs to the Zangian branch of the great South-African family. Their normal dress is the mbugu, under which, however, all wear the “languti” or Indian-T-bandage of goatskin; women appear in short kilts and breast-coverings of the same material. Both sexes decorate their heads with the tiara of abrus-seeds alluded to when describing the people of Karagwah. As sumptuary laws impede the free traffic of cloth into Uganda, the imports are represented chiefly by beads, cowries, and brass and copper wires. The wealth of the country is in cattle, ivory, and slaves, the latter often selling for ten fundo of beads, and the same sum will purchase the Wasoga and Wanyoro captives from whom the despot derives a considerable portion of his revenues. The elephant is rare in Uganda; tusks are collected probably by plunder from Usoga, and the alakah of about ninety Arab pounds is sold for two slaves, male or female. The tobacco, brought to market in leaf, as in Ujiji, and not worked, as amongst the other tribes, is peculiarly good. Flesh, sweet potatoes, and the highly nutritious plantain, which grows in groves a whole day’s march long, are the chief articles of diet; milk is drunk by women only, and ghee is more valued for unction than for cookery. The favourite inebrients are mawa and pombe; the latter is served in neatly carved and coloured gourds, and the contents are imbibed, like sherry cobbler, through a reed.

From Kibuga the Arabs have heard that between fifteen and twenty marches lead to the Kivira River, a larger and swifter stream than the Katonga, which forms the northern limit of Uganda, and the southern frontier of Unyoro. They are unable to give the names of stations. South of Kivira is Usoga, a low alluvial land, cut by a multitude of creeks, islets, and lagoons; in their thick vegetation the people take refuge from the plundering parties of the Waganda, whose chief built, as has been told, large boats to dislodge them. The Wasoga have no single sultan, and their only marketable commodity is ivory.

On the north, the north-west, and the west of Uganda lies, according to the Arabs, the land of Independent Unyoro. The slaves from that country vaguely describe it as being bounded on the north-west by a tribe called Wakede, who have a currency of cowries, and wear tiaras of the shell; and the Arabs have heard that on the north-east there is a “people with long daggers like the Somal,” who may be Gallas (?). But whether the Nyanza Lake extends north of the equator is a question still to be decided. Those consulted at Kazeh ignored even the name of the Nyam-nyam; nor had they heard of the Bahri and Barri, the Shilluks on the west, and the Dinkas east of the Nile, made familiar to us by the Austrian Mission at Gondokoro, and other explorers.

The Wanyoro are a distinct race, speaking a language of the Zangian family: they have suffered from the vicinity of the more warlike Waganda, who have affixed to the conquered the opprobrious name of widdu or “serviles;” and they have lost their southern possessions, which formerly extended between Karagwah and Uganda. Their late despot Chawambi, whose death occurred about ten years ago, left three sons, one of whom it is reported has fallen into the power of Uganda, whilst the two others still rule independently. The county is rich and fertile, and magnificent tales are told concerning the collections of ivory, which in some parts are planted in the ground to pen cattle. Slaves are cheap; they find their way to the southern markets viâ Uganda and Karagwah. Those seen at Kazeh and Kirira, where the Arab traders had a large gang, appeared somewhat inferior to the other races of the northern kingdoms, with a dull dead black colour, flattish heads, brows somewhat retreating, prominent eyes, and projecting lower jaws. They were tattooed in large burnt blotches encircling the forehead, and in some cases the inferior excisors had been extracted. The price of cattle in Unyoro varies from 500 to 1000 cowries. In this country ten simbi (Cypræa) represent one khete of beads; they are the most esteemed currency, and are also used as ornaments for the neck, arms, and legs, and decorations for stools and drums.

During my companions’ absence much of my spare time was devoted to collecting specimens of the multitudinous dialects into which the great South African family here divides itself. After some months of desultory work I had learned the Kisawahili or coast language, the lingua Franca of the South African coast: it is the most useful, because the most generally known, and because, once mastered, it renders its cognates as easy of acquirement as Bengali or Maharatti after Hindostani. The principal obstacle is the want of instructors and books—the Kisawahili is not a written language; and the elementary publications put forth in Europe gave me the preliminary trouble of composing a grammar and a vocabulary. Said Bin Salim, though bred and born amongst the Wasawahili, knew but little of the tongue, and his peculiarities of disposition rendered the task of instruction as wearisome to himself as it was unsatisfactory to me. My best tutor was Snay Bin Amir, who had transferred to the philology of East Africa his knowledge of Arabic grammar and syntax. With the aid of the sons of Ramji and other tame slaves, I collected about 1500 words in the three principal dialects upon this line of road, namely the Kisawahili, the Kizaramo—which includes the Kik’hutu—and the Kinyamwezi. At Kazeh I found a number of wild captives, with whom I began the dreary work of collecting specimens. In the languages of least consideration I contented myself with the numerals, which are the fairest test of independence of derivation, because the most likely to be primitive vocables. The work was not a labour of love. The savages could not guess the mysterious objects of my inquiry into their names for 1, 2, and 3; often they started up and ran away, or they sat in dogged silence, perhaps thinking themselves derided. The first number was rarely elicited without half an hour’s “talkee-talkee” somewhat in this style:—

“Listen, O my brother! in the tongue of the shores (Kisawahili) we say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5”—counting the fingers to assist comprehension.

“Hu! hu!” replies the wild man, “we say fingers.”

“By no means, that’s not it. This white man wants to know how thou speakest 1, 2, 3?”

“One, two, three what? sheep, or goats, or women?”—expressing the numerals in Kisawahili.

“By no means, only 1, 2, 3 sheep in thine own tongue, the tongue of the Wapoka.”

“Hi! Hi! what wants the white man with the Wapoka?”

And so on till patience was almost impossible. But, like the Irish shay-horse of days gone by, their tongues once started often hobbled on without halting. The tame slaves were more tractable, yet even in their case ten minutes sufficed to weary out the most intellectual; when the listless and incoherent reply, the glazed eye gazing at vacancy, and the irresistible tendency to gape and yawn, to nod and snooze, evidenced a feeble brain soon overworked. Said Bin Salim would sit staring at me with astonishment, and ejaculate, like Abba Gregorius, the preceptor of Ludolph, the grammarian philologist and historian of Æthiopia, “Verily in the coast-tongue words never take root, nor do they bear branches.”

The rest of my time was devoted to preparations for journeying. The Fundi’s tent, which had accompanied us to Uvira, was provided with an outer cover. The Sepoys’ “pal,” brought from Zanzibar, having been destroyed by the ill-treatment of the villain Kannena, I made up, with the aid of a blackguard Baghdadi, named ’Brahim, a large tent of American domestics, which having, however, but one cloth, and that of the thinnest, proved a fiery purgatory on the down-march eastwards. The canvas lug-sail was provided with an extra double cloth, sewn round the top to increase its dimensions: it thus became a pent-shaped affair, twelve feet long, eight broad, and six feet high—seven would have been better,—buttoned at the foot, which was semicircular, and in front provided with blue cotton curtains, most useful against glare and stare. Its lightness, combined with impenetrability, made it the model of a tent for rapid marching. It was not, however, pegged down close to the ground, as some explorers advise, without the intervention of ropes; in these lands, a tent so pitched would rot in a week. The three tents were fitted with solid male bamboos, and were provided with skin-bags for their pegs, which, unless carefully looked after, disappear almost daily. The only furniture was a kitanda or cartel: some contrivance of the kind, a “Biddulph,” or an iron bed-frame, without joints, nuts, or screws, which are sure to break or to be lost, is absolutely necessary in these lands, where from Kaole to Uvira every man instinctively attempts to sit and to sleep upon something that raises him above the ground. Moreover, I have ever found the cartel answer the threefold purpose of bed, chair, and table; besides saving weight by diminishing the quantity of bedding required.

To the task of tent-making succeeded tailoring. We had neglected to provide ourselves with the loose blanket suits, served out to sailors on board men-of-war in the tropics: they are most useful in passing through countries where changes of climate are sudden and marked. Besides these, the traveller should carry with him an ample store of flannels: the material must be shrunk before making up shirts, otherwise it will behave as did the Little Boy’s mantle when tried by the frail fair Guinever. A red colour should moreover be avoided, the dye soon turns dark, and the appearance excites too much attention. Besides shirt and trousers, the only necessary is a large “stomach-warmer” waistcoat, with sleeves and back of similar material, without collar—which renders sleeping in it uneasy—and provided with four flapped pockets, to contain a compass and thermometer, a note-book, and a sketch-book, a watch and a moderate-sized knife of many uses. The latter should contain scissors, tweezers, tooth-pick, and ear-pick, needle, file, picker, steel for fire, turnscrew, watch-spring-saw, clasp blade, and pen blade: it should be made of moderate dimensions, and for safety be slung by a lanyard to the button-hole. For the cold mornings and the noon-day heats, I made up a large padded hood, bound round the head like the Arab Kufiyah. Too much cannot be said in favour of this article, which in eastward travel defends the eyes from the fiery glare, protects, when wending westwards, the carotids against the solar blaze, and, at all times, checks the intrusive staring of the crowd. I reformed my umbrella, ever an invaluable friend in these latitudes, by removing the rings and wires from the worm-eaten stick, and by mounting them on a spear, thus combining with shelter a staff and a weapon. The traveller should have at least three umbrellas, one large and water proof—white, not black—in the shape of those used by artists; and two others of moderate size, and of the best construction, which should be covered with light-coloured calico, as an additional defence against the sun. At Kazeh I was somewhat deficient in material: my lazy “Jack of all trades,” Valentine, made, however, some slippers of green baize, soled with leather, for me, overalls of American domestics for my companion, and various articles of indigo-dyed cotton for himself and his fellow-servant, who presently appeared tastefully rigged out like Paul and Virginia in “Bengal blue.”

The minor works were not many. The two remaining portmanteaus of the three that had left the Coast were cobbled with goatskins, and were bound with stout thongs. The hammocks, of which half had disappeared, were patched and provided with the Nara, or Indian cotton-tape, which in these climates is better than either reims or cord. To save my eyes the spectacle of moribund fowls, suspended to a porter’s pole, two light cages were made after the fashion of the country, with bent and bound withes. The metal plates, pots, and pans were furbished, and a damaged kettle was mended by a travelling tinker: the asses’ saddles and halters were repaired, and, greatest luxury of all, a brace of jembe or iron hoes was converted into two pairs of solid stirrups, under the vigilant eye of Snay bin Amir. A party of slaves sent to Msene brought back fifty-four jembe, useful as return-presents and blackmail on the down-march: they paid, however, one cloth for two, instead of four. Sallum bin Hamid, the “papa” of the Arabs, sold for the sum of forty dollars a fine half-bred Zanzibar she-ass and foal—there is no surer method of procuring a regular supply of milk on Eastern journeys. My black and white beads being almost useless, he also parted with, as a peculiar favour, seventeen or eighteen pounds of pink-porcelains for forty dollars, and with a Frasibah of coffee, and a similar quantity of sugar for eighty dollars, equal to sixteen pounds sterling. On the 14th July the last Arab caravan of the season left Unyanyembe, under the command of Sayf bin Said el Wardi. As he obligingly offered to convey letters and any small articles which I wished to precede me, and knowing that under his charge effects were far safer than with our own people, I forwarded the useless and damaged surveying instruments, certain manuscripts, and various enclosures of maps, field and sketch-books, together with reports to the Royal Geographical Society.

This excitement over I began to weary of Kazeh. Snay bin Amir and most of the Arabs had set out on an expedition to revenge the murder of old Silim—an event alluded to in a former page, and the place had become dull as a mess-dinner. Said bin Salim, who was ill, who coughed and expectorated, and sincerely pitied himself because he had a cold, became more than usually unsociable: he could enjoy nothing but the society of Brahim, the bawling Baghdadi, and the crowd of ill-flavoured slavery that flocked into the vestibule. My Goanese servant, who connected my aspect with hard labour, avoided it like a pestilence. Already I was preparing to organise a little expedition to K’hokoro and the southern provinces, when unexpectedly,—in these lands a few cries and gun-shots are the only credible precursors of a caravan,—on the morning of the 25th August reappeared my companion.

At length my companion had been successful, his “flying trip” had led him to the northern water, and he had found its dimensions surpassing our most sanguine expectations. We had scarcely, however, breakfasted, before he announced to me the startling fact, that he had discovered the sources of the White Nile. It was an inspiration perhaps: the moment he sighted the Nyanza, he felt at once no doubt but that the “Lake at his feet gave birth to that interesting river which has been the subject of so much speculation, and the object of so many explorers.” The fortunate discoverer’s conviction was strong; his reasons were weak—were of the category alluded to by the damsel Lucetta, when justifying her penchant in favour of the “lovely gentleman,” Sir Proteus:—

“I have no other but a woman’s reason.
I think him so because I think him so;”[11]

and probably his sources of the Nile grew in his mind as his Mountains of the Moon had grown under his hand.

[11] The following extract from the Proceedings of the R. Geographical Society, May 9, 1859, will best illustrate what I mean:—

Mr. Macqueen, F.R.G.S., said the question of the sources of the Nile had cost him much trouble and research, and he was sure there was no material error either in longitude or latitude in the position he had ascribed to them, namely, a little to the eastward of the meridian of 35°, and a little northward of the equator. That was the principal source of the White Nile. The mountains there were exceedingly high, from the equator north to Kaffa Enarea. All the authorities, from east, west, north, or south, now perfectly competent to form judgments upon such a matter, agreed with him; and among them were the officers commanding the Egyptian commission. It was impossible they could all be mistaken. Dr. Krapf had been within a very short distance of it; he was more than 180 miles from Mombas, and he saw snow upon the mountains. He conversed with the people who came from them, and who told him of the snow and exceeding coldness of the temperature. The line of perpetual congelation, it was well known, was 17,000 feet above the sea. He had an account of the navigation of the White Nile by the Egyptian expedition. It was then given as 3° 30′ N. lat. and 31° E. long. At this point the expedition turned back for want of a sufficient depth of water. Here the river was 1370 feet broad, and the velocity of the current one-quarter of a mile per hour. The journals also gave a specific and daily current, the depth and width of the river, and every thing, indeed, connected with it. Surely, looking at the current of the river, the height of the Cartoom above the level of the sea, and the distance thence up to the equator, the sources of the Nile must be 6000 or 8000 feet above the level of the sea, and still much below the line of the snow, which was 6000 or 8000 feet farther above them. He deeply regretted he was unable to complete the diagram for the rest of the papers he had given to the Society, for it was more important than any others he had previously given. It contained the journey over Africa from sea to sea, second only to that of Dr. Livingstone. But all the rivers coming down from the mountains in question, and running south-eastward, had been clearly stated by Dr. Krapf, who gave every particular concerning them. He should like to know what the natives had said was to the northward of the large lake? Did they say the rivers ran out from or into the lake? How could the Egyptian officers be mistaken?

Captain Speke replied. They were not mistaken; and if they had pursued their journey 50 miles farther, they would undoubtedly have found themselves at the northern borders of this lake.

Mr. Macqueen said that other travellers, Don Angelo for instance, had been within one and a half degree of the Equator, and saw the mountain of Kimborat under the Line, and persisted in the statement, adding, that travellers had been up the river until they found it a mere brook. He felt convinced that the large lake alluded to by Captain Speke was not the source of the Nile: it was impossible it could be so, for it was not at a sufficiently high altitude.

The paper presented to the Society, when fully read in conjunction with the map, will clearly show that the Bahr-el-Abied has no connection with Kilimanjaro, that it has no connection whatever with any lake or river to the south of the Equator, and that the swelling of the river Nile proceeds from the tropical rains of the northern torrid zone, as was stated emphatically to Julius Cæsar by the chief Egyptian priest Amoreis 2000 years ago.

In nearly 3° N. lat. there is a great cataract, which boats cannot pass. It is called Gherba. About half-way (50 miles) above, and between this cataract and Robego, the capital of Kuenda, the river becomes so narrow as to be crossed by a bridge formed by a tree thrown across it. Above Gherba no stream joins the river either from the south or south-west.

The main argument in favour of the Lake representing the great reservoir of the White River was, that the “principal men” at the southern extremity ignored the extent northward. “On my inquiring about the lake’s length the man (the greatest traveller in the place) faced to the north, and began nodding his head to it; at the same time he kept throwing forward his right hand, and making repeated snaps of his fingers endeavoured to indicate something immeasurable; and added, that nobody knew, but he thought it probably extended to the end of the world.” Strongly impressed by this valuable statistical information, my companion therefore placed the northern limit about 4°-5° north lat., whereas the Egyptian expedition sent by the late Mohammed Ali Pacha, about twenty years ago, to explore the Coy Sources, reached 3° 22′ north lat. It therefore ought to have sailed fifty miles upon the Nyanza lake. On the contrary, from information derived on the spot, that expedition placed the fountains at one month’s journey—300 to 350 miles—to the south-east, or upon the northern counterslope of Mount Kenia. Whilst marching to the coast, my companion—he tells us—was assured by a “respectable Sowahili merchant, that when engaged in traffic some years previously to the northward of the line, and the westward of this lake, he had heard it commonly reported that large vessels frequented the northern extremity of these waters, in which the officers engaged in navigating them used sextants and kept a log, precisely similar to what is found in vessels on the ocean. Query, could this be in allusion to the expedition sent by Mohammed Ali up the Nile in former years?” (Proceedings of Royal Geographical Society, May 9, 1859.) Clearly, if Abdullah Bin Nasib, the Msawahili alluded to, had reported these words, he merely erred; the Egyptian expedition, as has been shown, not only did not find, they never even heard of a lake. But not being present at the conversation I am tempted to assign further explanation. My companion, wholly ignorant of Arabic, was reduced to depend upon “Bombay,” who spoke an even more debased dialect than his master, and it is easy to see how the blunder originated. The Arabic bahr and the Kisawahili bahari are equally applicable in vulgar parlance to a river or sea, a lake or a river. Traditions concerning a Western Sea—the to them now unknown Atlantic—over which the white men voyage, are familiar to many East Africans; I have heard at Harar precisely the same report concerning the log and sextants. Either, then, Abdullah Bin Nasib confounded, or my companion’s “interrupter” caused him to confound the Atlantic and the Lake. In the maps forwarded from Kazeh by my companion, the River Kivira was, after ample inquiry, made a western influent of the Nyanza Lake. In the map appended to the paper in Blackwood, before alluded to, it has become an effluent, and the only minute concerning so very important a modification is, “This river (although I must confess at first I did not think so) is the Nile itself!”

Beyond the assertion, therefore, that no man had visited the north, and the appearance of sextants and logs upon the waters, there is not a shade of proof pro. Far graver considerations lie on the con. side: the reports of the Egyptian expedition, and the dates of the several inundations which—as will presently appear—alone suffice to disprove the possibility of the Nyanza causing the flood of the Nile. It is doubtless a satisfactory thing to disclose to an admiring public, of “statesmen, churchmen, missionaries, merchants, and more particularly geographers,” the “solution of a problem, which it has been the first geographical desideratum of many thousand years to ascertain, and the ambition of the first monarchs in the world to unravel.” (Blackwood’s Magazine, October 1859.) But how many times since the days of a certain Claudius Ptolemæius surnamed Pelusiota, have not the Fountains of the White Nile been discovered and re-discovered after this fashion?

What tended at the time to make me the more sceptical was the substantial incorrectness of the geographical and other details brought back by my companion. This was natural enough. Bombay, after misunderstanding his master’s ill-expressed Hindostani, probably mistranslated the words into Kisawahili to some travelled African, who in turn passed on the question in a wilder dialect to the barbarian or barbarians under examination. During such a journey to and fro words must be liable to severe accidents. The first thing reported to me was the falsehood of the Arabs at Kazeh, who had calumniated the good Sultan Muhayya, and had praised the bad Sultan Machunda: subsequent inquiries proved their rigid correctness. My companion’s principal informant was one Mansur Bin Salim, a half-caste Arab, who had been flogged out of Kazeh by his compatriots; he pronounced Muhayya to be a “very excellent and obliging person,” and of course he was believed. I then heard a detailed account of how the caravan of Salim bin Rashid had been attacked, beaten, captured, and detained at Ukerewe, by its sultan Machunda. The Arabs received the intelligence with a smile of ridicule, and in a few days Salim bin Rashid appeared in person to disprove the report. These are but two cases of many. And what knowledge of Asiatic customs can be expected from the writer of these lines? “The Arabs at Unyanyembe had advised my donning their habit for the trip in order to attract less attention; a vain precaution, which I believe they suggested more to gratify their own vanity in seeing an Englishman lower himself to their position, than for any benefit that I might receive by doing so.” (Blackwood, loco cit.) This galimatias of the Arabs!—the haughtiest and the most clannish of all Oriental peoples.

But difference of opinion was allowed to alter companionship. After a few days it became evident to me that not a word could be uttered upon the subject of the Lake, the Nile, and his trouvaille generally without offence. By a tacit agreement it was, therefore, avoided, and I should never have resumed it had my companion not stultified the results of the Expedition by putting forth a claim which no geographer can admit, and which is at the same time so weak and flimsy, that no geographer has yet taken the trouble to contradict it.

I will here offer to the reader a few details concerning the Lake in question,—they are principally borrowed from my companion’s diary, carefully corrected, however, by Snay bin Amir, Salim bin Rashid[12], and other merchants at Kazeh.

[12] When my companion returned to Kazeh, he represented Ukerewe and Mazita to be islands, and, although in sight of them, he had heard nothing concerning their connection with the coast. This error was corrected by Salim bin Rashid, and accepted by us. Yet I read in his discovery of the supposed sources of the Nile: “Mansur, and a native, the greatest traveller of the place, kindly accompanied and gave me every obtainable information. This man had traversed the island, as he called it, of Ukerewe from north to south. But by his rough mode of describing it, I am rather inclined to think that instead of its being an actual island, it is a connected tongue of land, stretching southwards from a promontory lying at right angles to the eastern shore of the lake, which being a wash, affords a passage to the mainland during the fine season, but during the wet becomes submerged and thus makes Ukerewe temporarily an island.” The information, I repeat, was given, not by the “native,” but by Salim bin Rashid. When, however, the latter proceeded to correct my companion’s confusion between the well-known coffee mart Kitara and “the island of Kitiri occupied by a tribe called Watiri,” he gave only offence—consequently Kitiri has obtained a local habitation in Blackwood and Petermann.

This fresh-water sea is known throughout the African tribes as Nyanza, and the similarity of the sound to “Nyassa,” the indigenous name of the little Maravi or Kilwa Lake, may have caused in part the wild confusion in which speculative geographers have involved the Lake Regions of Central Africa. The Arabs, after their fashion of deriving comprehensive names from local and minor features, call it Ukerewe, in the Kisukuma dialect meaning the “place of Kerewe” (Kelewe), an islet. As has been mentioned, they sometimes attempt to join by a river, a creek, or some other theoretical creation, the Nyanza with the Tanganyika, the altitude of the former being 3750 feet above sea-level, or 1900 feet above the latter, and the mountain regions which divide the two having been frequently travelled over by Arab and African caravans. Hence the name Ukerewe has been transferred in the “Mombas Mission Map” to the northern waters of the Tanganyika. The Nyanza, as regards name, position, and even existence, has hitherto been unknown to European geographers; but, as will presently appear, descriptions of this sea by native travellers have been unconsciously transferred by our writers to the Tanganyika of Ujiji, and even to the Nyassa of Kilwa.

M. Brun-Rollet (“Le Nil Blanc et le Soudan,” p. 209) heard that on the west of the Padongo tribe,—whom he places to the S. of Mount Kambirah, or below 1° S. lat.—lies a great lake, from whose northern extremity issues a river whose course is unknown. In the map appended to his volume this water is placed between 1° S. and 3° N. lat., and about 25° 50′ E. long. (Greenwich), and the déversoir is made an influent of the White Nile.

Bowdich (“Discoveries of the Portuguese,” pp. 131, 132), when speaking of the Maravi Lake (the Nyassa), mentions that the “negroes or the Moors of Melinde” have mentioned a great water which is known to reach Mombaca, which the Jesuit missionaries conjectured to communicate with Abyssinia, and of which Father Lewis Marianna, who formerly resided at Tete, recommended a discovery, in a letter addressed to the government at Goa, which is still preserved among the public archives of that city. Here the confusion of the Nyanza, to which there was of old a route from Mombasah with the Nyassa, is apparent.

At the southern point, where the Muingwira River falls into the tortuous creek, whose surface is a little archipelago of brown rocky islets crowned with trees, and emerging from the blue waters, the observed latitude of the Nyanza Lake, is 2° 24′ S.; the longitude by dead reckoning from Kazeh is E. long. 33° and nearly due north, and the altitude by B. P. thermometer 3750 feet above sea-level. Its extent to the north is unknown to the people of the southern regions, which rather denotes some difficulty in travelling than any great extent. They informed my companion that from Mwanza to the southern frontier of Karagwah is a land journey of one month, or a sea voyage of five days towards the N. N. W. and then to the north. They also pointed out the direction of Unyoro N. 20° W. The Arab merchants of Kazeh have seen the Nyanza opposite Weranhanja, the capital district of Armanika, King of Karagwah, and declare that it receives the Kitangure River, whose mouth has been placed about the equator. Beyond that point all is doubtful. The merchants have heard that Suna, the late despot of Uganda, built matumbi, or undecked vessels, capable of containing forty or fifty men, in order to attack his enemies, the Wasoga, upon the creeks which indent the western shores of the Nyanza. This, if true, would protract the lake to between 1° and 1° 30′ of N. lat., and give it a total length of about 4° or 250 miles. This point, however, is still involved in the deepest obscurity. Its breadth was estimated as follows. A hill, about 200 feet above the water-level, shows a conspicuous landmark on the eastern shore, which was set down as forty miles distant. On the south-western angle of the line from the same point ground appeared; it was not, however, perceptible on the north-west. The total breadth, therefore, has been assumed at eighty miles,—a figure which approaches the traditions unconsciously chronicled by European geographers. In the vicinity of Usoga the lake, according to the Arabs, broadens out: of this, however, and in fact of all the formation north of the equator, it is at present impossible to arrive at certainty.

The Nyanza is an elevated basin or reservoir, the recipient of the surplus monsoon-rain which falls in the extensive regions of the Wamasai and their kinsmen to the east, the Karagwah line of the Lunar Mountains to the west, and to the south Usukuma or Northern Unyamwezi. Extending to the equator in the central length of the African peninsula, and elevated above the limits of the depression in the heart of the continent, it appears to be a gap in the irregular chain which, running from Usumbara and Kilima-ngao to Karagwah, represents the formation anciently termed the Mountains of the Moon. The physical features, as far as they were observed, suggest this view. The shores are low and flat, dotted here and there with little hills; the smaller islands also are hill-tops, and any part of the country immediately on the south would, if inundated to the same extent, present a similar aspect. The lake lies open and elevated, rather like the drainage and the temporary deposit of extensive floods than a volcanic creation like the Tanganyika, a long narrow mountain-girt basin. The waters are said to be deep, and the extent of the inundation about the southern creek proves that they receive during the season an important accession. The colour was observed to be clear and blue, especially from afar in the early morning; after 9 a.m., when the prevalent south-east wind arose, the surface appeared greyish, or of a dull milky white, probably the effect of atmospheric reflection. The tint, however, does not, according to travellers, ever become red or green like the waters of the Nile. But the produce of the lake resembles that of the river in its purity; the people living on the shores prefer it, unlike that of the Tanganyika, to the highest, and clearest springs; all visitors agree in commending its lightness and sweetness, and declare that the taste is rather of river or of rain-water than resembling the soft slimy produce of stagnant muddy bottoms, or the rough harsh flavour of melted ice and snow.

From the southern creek of the Nyanza, and beyond the archipelago of neighbouring islets, appear the two features which have given to this lake the name of Ukerewe. The Arabs call them “Jezirah”—an ambiguous term, meaning equally insula and peninsula—but they can scarcely be called islands. The high and rocky Mazita to the east, and the comparatively flat Ukerewe on the west, are described by the Arabs as points terminating seawards in bluffs, and connected with the eastern shore by a low neck of land, probably a continuous reef, flooded during the rains, but never so deeply as to prevent cattle fording the isthmus. The northern and western extremities front deep water, and a broad channel separates them from the southern shore, Usukuma. The Arabs, when visiting Ukerewe or its neighbour, prefer hiring the canoes of the Wasukuma, and paddling round the south-eastern extremity of the Nyanza, to exposing their property and lives by marching through the dangerous tribes of the coast.

Mazita belongs to a people called Makwiya. Ukerewe is inhabited, according to some informants, by Wasukuma; according to others, the Wakerewe are marked by their language as ancient emigrants from the highlands of Karagwah. In Ukerewe, which is exceedingly populous, are two brother Sultans: the chief is “Machunda;” the second, “Ibanda,” rules at Wiru, the headland on the western limit. The people collect ivory from the races on the eastern mainland, and store it, awaiting an Arab caravan. Beads are in most request; as in Usukuma generally, not half a dozen cloths of native and foreign manufacture will be found upon a hundred men. The women are especially badly clad; even the adult maidens wear only the languti of India, or the Nubian apron of aloe-fibre, strung with the pipe-stem bead called sofi, and blackened, like India-rubber, by use; it is fastened round the waist, and depends about one foot by six or seven inches in breadth.

The Arabs who traffic in these regions generally establish themselves with Sultan Machunda, and send their slaves in canoes round the south-east angle of the lake to trade with the coast people. These races are successively from the south; the Washaki, at a distance of three marches, and their inland neighbours the Wataturu; then the Warudi, a wild tribe, rich in ivory, lying about a fortnight’s distance; and beyond them the Wahumba, or Wamasai. Commercial transactions extend along the eastern shore as far as T’hiri, or Ut’hiri, a district between Ururu and Uhumba. This is possibly the origin of the island of Tiri or Kittiri, placed in my companion’s map near the north-west extremity of the Nyanza Lake, off the coast of Uganda, where there is a province called Kittara, peculiarly rich in coffee. The explorer heard from the untrustworthy country people that, after a long coasting voyage, they arrived at an island where the inhabitants, a poor and naked race, live on fish, and cultivate coffee for sale. The information appears suspicious. The Arabs know of no islands upon the Nyanza which produce coffee. Moreover, if the people had any traffic, they would not be without clothing.

The savagery of the races adjacent to the Nyanza has caused accidents amongst travelling traders. About five years ago a large caravan from Tanga, on the eastern coast, consisting of 400 or 500 guns, and led by Arab merchants, at the end of a journey which had lasted nearly two years, happened to quarrel with the Wahumba or Wamasai near the lake. The subject was the burning down of some grass required for pasture by the wild men. Words led to blows; the caravan, having but two or three pounds of gunpowder, was soon dispersed; seven or eight merchants lost their lives, and a few made their escape to Unyanyembe. Before our departure from Kazeh, the slaves of Salim bin Rashid, having rescued one of the wounded survivors, who had been allowed by the Wamasai to wander into Urudi, brought him back to Kazeh. He described the country as no longer practicable. In 1858 also the same trading party, the principal authority for these statements, were relieved of several bales of cloth, during their sleep, when bivouacking upon an inhabited island near the eastern shore.

The altitude, the conformation of the Nyanza Lake, the argilaceous colour and the sweetness of its waters, combine to suggest that it may be one of the feeders of the White Nile. In the map appended to M. Brun-Rollet’s volume, before alluded to, the large water west of the Padongo tribe, which clearly represents the Nyanza or Ukerewe, is, I have observed, made to drain northwards into the Fitri Lake, and eventually to swell the main stream of the White River. The details supplied by the Egyptian Expedition, which, about twenty years ago, ascended the White River to 3° 22′ N. lat., and 31° 30′ E. long., and gave the general bearing of the river from that point to its source as south-east, with a distance of one month’s journey, or from 300 to 350 miles, would place the actual sources 2° S. lat., and 35° E. long., or in 2° eastward of the southern creek of the Nyanza Lake. This position would occupy the northern counterslope of the Lunar Mountains, the upper water-shed of the high region whose culminating apices are Kilima-Ngao, Kenia, and Doengo Engai. The distance of these peaks from the coast, as given by Dr. Krapf, must be considerably reduced, and little authority can be attached to his river Tumbiri.[13] The site, supposed by Mr. Macqueen (“Proceedings of the Geographical Society of London,” January 24th, 1859), to be at least 21,000 feet above the level of the sea, and consequently 3000 or 4000 feet above the line of perpetual congelation, would admirably explain the two most ancient theories concerning the source of the White River, namely, that it arises in a snowy region, and that its inundation is the result of tropical rains.

[13] The large river Tumbiri, mentioned by Dr. Krapf as flowing towards Egypt from the northern counterslope of Mount Kenia, rests upon the sole authority of a single wandering native. As, moreover, the word T’humbiri or T’humbili means a monkey, and the people are peculiarly fond of satire in a small way, it is not improbable that the very name had no foundation of fact. This is mentioned, as some geographers—for instance, Mr. Macqueen (“Observations on the Geography of Central Africa:” “Proceedings of the R. G. S. of London,” May 9, 1859)—have been struck by the circumstance that the Austrian Missionaries and Mr. Werne (“Expedition to discover the sources of the White Nile, in 1840-41”) gave Tubirih as the Bari name of the White Nile at the southern limit of their exploration.

It is impossible not to suspect that between the upper portion of the Nyanza and the watershed of the White Nile there exists a longitudinal range of elevated ground, running from east to west—a “furca” draining northwards into the Nile and southwards into the Nyanza Lake—like that which separates the Tanganyika from the Maravi or Nyassa of Kilwa. According to Don Angelo Vinco, who visited Loquéck in 1852, beyond the cataract of Garbo—supposed to be in N. lat. 2° 40′—at a distance of sixty miles lie Robego, the capital of Kuenda, and Lokoya (Logoja), of which the latter receives an affluent from the east. Beyond Lokoya the White Nile is described as a small and rocky mountain-river, presenting none of the features of a stream flowing from a broad expanse of water like the great Nyanza reservoir.

The periodical swelling of the Nyanza Lake, which, flooding a considerable tract of land on the south, may be supposed—as it lies flush with the basal surface of the country—to inundate extensively all the low lands that form its periphery, forbids belief in the possibility of its being the head-stream of the Nile, or the reservoir of its periodical inundation. In Karagwah, upon the western shore, the masika or monsoon lasts from October to May or June, after which the dry season sets in. The Egyptian Expedition found the river falling fast at the end of January, and they learned from the people that it would again rise about the end of March, at which season the sun is vertical over the equator. About the summer solstice (June), when the rains cease in the regions south of and upon the equator, the White Nile begins to flood. From March to the autumnal equinox (September) it continues to overflow its banks till it attains its magnitude, and from that time it shrinks through the winter solstice (December) till March. The Nile is, therefore, full during the dry season and low during the rainy season south of and immediately upon the equator. And as the northern counterslope of Kenia will, to a certain extent, be a lee-land, like Ugogo, it cannot have the superfluity of moisture necessary to send forth a first-class stream. The inundation is synchronous with the great falls of the northern equatorial regions, which extend from July to September, and is dependent solely upon the tropical rains. It is, therefore, probable that the true sources of the “Holy River” will be found to be a network of runnels and rivulets of scanty dimensions, filled by monsoon torrents, and perhaps a little swollen by melted snow on the northern water-parting of the Eastern Lunar Mountains.

Of the tribes dwelling about the Nyanza, the western have been already described. The Washaki and the Warudi are plundering races on the east, concerning whom little is known. Remain the Wahinda, a clan or class alluded to in this and a former chapter, and the Wataturu, an extensive and once powerful tribe, mentioned when treating of the regions about Tura.

The Wahinda (in the singular Muhinda) are, according to some Arabs, a foreign and ruling family, who coming from a distant country, probably in the neighbourhood of Somaliland, conquered the lands, and became Sultans. This opinion seems to rest upon physical peculiarities,—the superiority of the Wahinda in figure, stature, and complexion to their subjects suggesting a difference of origin. Others explain the word Muhinda to mean a cadet of royal family, and call the class Bayt el Saltanah, or the Kingly House. Thus, whilst Armanika is the Mkámá or Sovereign of Karagwah, his brother simply takes the title of Muhinda. These conflicting statements may be reconciled by the belief general in the country that the families of the Sultans are a foreign and a nobler race, the date of whose immigration has long fallen into oblivion. This may be credited without difficulty; the physique of the rulers—approximating more to the northern races of Africa—is markedly less negroid than that of their subjects, and the difference is too great to be explained by the effects of climate or of superior diet, comfort, and luxury.

The Wahinda are found in the regions of Usui, Karagwah, Uhha, Uvinza, Uyungu, Ujiji, and Urundi, where they live in boma—stockades—and scattered villages. Of this race are the Sultans Suwarora of the Wasui, Armanika of Karagwah, Kanoni of Uhha, Kanze of Uyungu, Mzogera of Uvinza, Rusimba of Ujiji, Mwezi of Urundi, Mnyamurunde of Uyofo, Gaetawa of Uhayya, and Mutawazi of Utumbara. The Wahinda affect a milk diet which is exceedingly fattening, and anoint themselves plentifully with butter and ghee, to soften and polish the skin. They never sell their fellow clansmen, are hospitable and civil to strangers, seldom carry arms, fear nothing from the people, and may not be slain even in battle. Where the Wahinda reign, their ministers are the Watosi, a race which has been described when treating of their head-quarters Karagwah.

The Wataturu extend from the Mángewá district, two marches northward of Tura in a north-north-westerly diagonal, to Usmáo, a district of Usukuma, at the south-east angle of the Nyanza Lake. On the north and east they are limited by the Wahumba, on the south by the people of Iramba, and there is said to be a connection between these three tribes. This wild pastoral people were formerly rich in flocks and herds; they still have the best asses in the country. About five years ago, however, they were persuaded by Msimbira, a chief of Usukuma, to aid him against his rival Mpagamo, who had called in the Arabs to his assistance. During the long and bitter contest which ensued, the Arabs, as has been related, were worsted in the field, and the Wataturu suffered severe losses in cattle. Shortly before the arrival of the Expedition at Kazeh the foreign merchants had despatched to Utaturu a plundering party of sixty slave-musketeers, who, however, suddenly attacked by the people, were obliged to fly, leaving behind eighteen of their number. This event was followed by a truce, and the Wataturu resumed their commerce with Tura and Unyanyembe, where, in 1858, a caravan, numbering about 300 men, came in. Two small parties of this people were also met at Tura; they were small, dark, and ugly savages, almost beardless, and not unlike the “Thakur” people in Maharatta-land. Their asses, provided with neat saddle-bags of zebra skin, were better dressed than the men, who wore no clothing except the simplest hide-sandals. According to the Arabs this clan affects nudity: even adult maidens dispense with the usual skin-kilt. The men ignored bows and arrows, but they were efficiently armed with long spears, double-edged sime, and heavy hide shields. They brought calabash or monkey-bread flour—in this country, as in Ugogo, a favourite article of consumption—and a little coarse salt, collected from the dried mud of a Mbuga or swamp in the land of Iramba, to be bartered for holcus and beads. Their language sounded to the unpractised ear peculiarly barbarous, and their savage suspiciousness rendered it impossible to collect any specimens.

At Kazeh, sorely to my disappointment, it was finally settled, in a full conclave of Arabs, that we must return to the coast by the tedious path with which we were already painfully familiar. At Ujiji the state of our finances had been the sole, though the sufficient obstacle to our traversing Africa from east to west; we might—had we possessed the means—by navigating the Tanganyika southwards, have debouched, after a journey of three months, at Kilwa. The same cause prevented us from visiting the northern kingdoms of Karagwah and Uganda; to effect this exploration, however, we should have required not only funds but time. The rains there setting in about September render travelling impossible; our two years’ leave of absence were drawing to a close, and even had we commanded a sufficient outfit, we were not disposed to risk the consequences of taking an extra twelve months. No course, therefore, remained but to regain the coast. We did not, however, give up hopes of making our return useful to geography, by tracing the course of the Rwaha or Rufijí River, and of visiting the coast between the Usagara Mountains and Kilwa, an unknown line not likely to attract future travellers.

SAYDUMI, A NATIVE OF UGANDA.

Mgongo Thembo, or the Elephant’s Back.

CHAP. XVII.
THE DOWN-MARCH TO THE COAST.

On the 5th September 1858, Musa Mzuri—handsome Moses, as he was called by the Africans—returned with great pomp to Kazeh after his long residence at Karagwah. Some details concerning this merchant, who has played a conspicuous part in the eventful “peripéties” of African discovery, may be deemed well placed.

About thirty-five years ago, Musa, a Moslem of the Kojah sect, and then a youth, was driven by poverty from his native Surat to follow his eldest brother “Sayyan,” who having sought fortune at Zanzibar, and having been provided with an outfit by the Sayyid el Laghbari, then governor of the island, made sundry journeys into the interior. About 1825, the brothers first visited the Land of the Moon, preceding the Arab travellers, who in those days made their markets at Usanga and Usenga, distant about a dozen marches to the S.S.E. of Kazeh. Musa describes Unyamwezi as richly cultivated, and he has not forgotten the hospitable reception of the people. The brothers bought up a little venture of forty Farasilah or twenty men’s loads of cloth and beads, and returned with a joint stock of 800 Farasilah (800 × 35 = 28,000 lbs. avoirdupois) in ivory; as Sayyan died on the road, all fell to Musa’s share. Since that time he has made five journeys to the coast and several to the northern kingdoms. About four years ago Armanika, the present Sultan of Karagwah, was besieged in a palisaded village by a rebel brother Rumanika. On this occasion Musa, in company with the king, endured great hardships, and incurred no little risk; when both parties were weary of fighting, he persuaded, by a large bribe of ivory, Suna, the powerful despot of the neighbouring kingdom of Uganda, to raise the siege, by throwing a strong force into the field. He has ever since been fraternally received by Armanika, and his last journey to Karagwah was for the purpose of recovering part of the ivory expended in the king’s cause. After an absence of fifteen months he brought back about a score of splendid tusks, one weighing, he declared, upwards of 200 lbs. During his detention Salim bin Sayf, of Dut’humi, who had been entrusted by Musa with sixty-five Farasilah of ivory to barter for goods on the coast, arrived at Unyanyembe, when hearing the evil tidings, the wily Harisi appropriated the property and returned to whence he came. Like most merchants in East Africa, Musa’s business is extensive, but his gains are principally represented by outlying debts; he cannot, therefore, leave the country without an enormous sacrifice. He is the recognised Doyen of the commercial body, and he acts agent and warehouseman; his hall is usually full of buyers and sellers, Arab and African, and large investments of wires, beads, and cotton-cloths, some of them valuable, are regularly forwarded to him with comforts and luxuries from the coast.

Musa Mzuri is now a man of the uncertain “certain age” between forty-five and fifty, thin-bearded, tall, gaunt, with delicate extremities, and with the regular and handsome features of a high-caste Indian Moslem. Like most of his compatriots, he is a man of sad and staid demeanour, and he is apparently faded by opium, which so tyrannises over him that he carries pills in every pocket, and stores them, lest the hoard should run short, in each corner and cranny of his house. His clean new dress, perfumed with jasmine-oil and sandal-wood, his snowy skull-cap and well-fitting sandals, distinguish him in appearance from the Arabs; and his abode, which is almost a village, with its lofty gates and its spacious courts, full of slaves and hangers-on, contrasts with the humility of the Semite tenements.

On arrival at Kazeh I forwarded to Musa the introductory letter with which H. H. the Sayyid Majid had honoured me. Sundry civilities passed between his housekeeper, Mama Khamisi, and ourselves; she supplied the Baloch with lodgings and ourselves with milk, for which we were careful to reward her. After returning from Ujiji we found Abdullah, the eldest of Musa’s two sons by different slave girls, resting at Kazeh after his down-march from Karagwah. He knew a few words of English, but he had learned no Hindostani from his father, who curious to say, after an expatriation of thirty-five years, still spoke his mother-tongue purely and well. The youth would have become a greater favourite had he not been so hard a drinker and so quarrelsome in his cups; on more than one occasion he had dangerously cut or stabbed his servile boon-companions. Musa had spared the rod, or had used it upon him to very little purpose; after intruding himself repeatedly into the hall and begging for handsome clothes, with more instance of freedom than consisted with decorum, he was warned that if he stayed away it might be the better for his back, and he took the warning.

Musa, when rested after his weary return-march, called upon me with all due ceremony, escorted by the principal Arab merchants. I was not disappointed in finding him wholly ignorant concerning Africa and things African; Snay bin Amir had told me that such was the case. He had, however, a number of slaves fresh from Karagwah and Uganda, who confirmed the accounts previously received from Arab travellers in those regions. Musa displayed even more hospitality than his fellow-travellers. Besides the mbogoro or skinful of grain and the goat usually offered to fresh arrivals, he was ever sending those little presents of provisions which in the East cannot be refused without offence. I narrowly prevented his killing a bullock to provide us with beef, and at last I feared to mention a want before him. During his frequent visits he invariably showed himself a man of quiet and unaffected manners, dashed with a little Indian reserve, which in process of time would probably have worn off.

On the 6th September, Said bin Salim, nervously impatient to commence the march homewards, “made a khambi,” that is to say, pitched our tents under a spreading tree outside and within sight of Kazeh. Although he had been collecting porters for several days, only two came to the fore; a few refreshing showers were falling at the autumnal equinox, and the black peasantry so miscalculated the seasons that they expected the immediate advent of the great Masika. Moreover, when informed that our route would debouch at Kilwa, they declared that they must receive double pay, as they could not expect there to be hired by return caravans. That the “khambi” might assume an appearance of reality, the Baloch were despatched into “country-quarters.” As they followed their usual tactic, affecting eagerness to depart but privily clinging to the pleasures of Kazeh, orders were issued definitively to “cut” their rations in case of necessity. The sons of Ramji, who had returned from Msene, without, however, intrusion or swagger, were permitted to enter the camp. Before the march I summoned them, and in severe terms recapitulated their misdeeds, warned them that they would not be re-engaged, and allowed them provisions and protection only on condition of their carrying, as the slaves of Arab merchants are expected to do, our lighter valuables, such as the digester, medicine-chest, gun-cases, camp-table and chair. They promised with an edifying humility to reform. I was compelled, however to enliven their murmuring by a few slight floggings before they would become amenable to a moral rule, and would acquire those habits of regularity which are as chains and fetters to the African man. The five Wak’hutu porters who, after robbing and deserting us on the road to Ujiji, had taken service with my old acquaintance, Salim bin Rashid—the well-informed Coast Arab merchant, originally named by H. H. the Sayyid Majid, as my guide and caravan leader,—begged hard to be again employed. I positively refused to see them. If at this distance from home they had perjured themselves and had plundered us, what might be expected when they arrived near their native country?

As the time of departure approached, I regretted that the arrival of several travellers had not taken place a month earlier. Salim bin Rashid, whilst collecting ivory in Usukuma and to the eastward of the Nyanza Lake, had recovered a Msawahili porter, who, falling sick on the road, had been left by a caravan from Tanga amongst the wildest of the East African tribes, the Wamasai or Wahumba. From this man, who spent two years amongst those plunderers and their rivals in villany the Warudi, I derived some valuable information concerning the great northern route which spans the countries lying between the coast and the Nyanza Lake. I was also called upon by Amayr bin Said el Shaksi, a strong-framed and stout-hearted greybeard, who, when his vessel foundered in the waters of the Tanganyika, saved his life by swimming, and as he had no goods and but few of his slaves had survived, lived for five months on roots and grasses, till restored to Ujiji by an Arab canoe. A garrulous senior, fond of “venting his travels,” he spent many hours with me, talking over his past adventures, and his ocular knowledge of the Tanganyika enabled me to gather many, perhaps, reliable details concerning its southern extremity. A few days before departure Hilal bin Nasur, a well-born Harisi, returned from K’hokoro; he supplied me with a list of stations and a lengthy description of his various excursions to the southern provinces.[14]

[14] For this and other purely geographical details concerning the Southern Provinces, the reader is referred to the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xxix. 1860.

Said bin Salim, in despair that the labours of a whole fortnight spent in the jungle had produced the slenderest of results, moved from under the tree in Kazeh plain to Masui, a dirty little village distant about three miles to the east of our head-quarters. As he reported on the 25th of September that his gang was nearly completed, I sent forward all but the personal baggage. The Arab had, however, secured but three Hammals or bearers for my hammock; one a tottering old man, the other a knock-kneed boy, and the third a notorious skulk. Although supplied with meat to strengthen them, as they expressed it, they broke down after a single march. From that time, finding it useless to engage bearers for a long journey in these lands, I hired men from district to district, and dismissed them when tired. The only objection to this proceeding was its inordinate expense: three cloths being generally demanded by the porter for thirty miles. A little calculation will give an idea of the relative cost of travelling in Africa and in Europe. Assuming each man to receive one cloth, worth one dollar, for every ten miles, and that six porters are required to carry the hammock, we have in Africa an expenditure on carriage alone of nearly half a crown per mile: in most parts of Europe travel on the iron road has been reduced to one penny.

Our return from Unyanyembe to the coast was to take place during the dead season, when provisions are most expensive and are not unfrequently unprocurable. But being “Wazungu” and well provided with “African money,” we might expect the people to sell to us their grain and stores, which they would have refused at tariff-prices to Arabs or Wasawahili. We carried as stock fourteen porters’ loads of cloth, viz., 645 domestics, 653 blue-cottons, and 20 coloured cloths, principally Debwani, Barsati, and Subai, as presents to chiefs. The supply of beads was represented by one load of ububu or black-porcelains—afterwards thrown away as useless—half a Frasilah (17·5 pounds) of “locust-legs,” or pink-porcelains, purchased from Sallum bin Hamid, and eight Kartasat or papered-bundles of the heavy and expensive “town-breakers,” vermilion or coral-porcelains, amounting to seventy Fundo, each of which covered as a rule the day’s minor expenses. The other stores were the fifty-four Jembe purchased at Msene, besides a few brought from Usukuma by my companion. These articles are useful in making up kuhonga or blackmail; in Ugogo and Usagara, which is their western limit, they double in value, and go even further than a white cotton-cloth. Finally, we had sixteen cows, heifers, and calves, bought in Usukuma by my companion, at the rate of six domestics per head. We expected them to be serviceable as presents, and meanwhile to add materially to our comfort by a more regular supply of milk than the villages afford. But, alas! having neglected to mark the animals, all were changed—a fact made evident by their running dry after a few days: the four calves presently died of fatigue; whenever an animal lay down upon the road its throat was summarily cut, others were left to stray and be stolen, and the last bullock preserved for a sirloin on Christmas was prematurely lost. A small per-centage proved useful as tribute to the chiefs of Ugogo, and served as rations when grain was unprocurable. The African, however, looks upon meat, not as “Posho”—daily bread—but as kitoweyo—kitchen: two or three pounds of beef merely whet his teeth for the usual Ugali or porridge of boiled flour. It is almost needless to state that, despite the best surveillance and the strictest economy, we arrived at the coast almost destitute; cloth and beads, hoes and cattle, all had disappeared, and had we possessed treble the quantity, it would have gone the same way.

The 26th September, 1858, saw us on foot betimes. The hospitable Snay bin Amir, freshly recovered from an influenza which had confined him for some days to his sleeping-mat, came personally to superintend our departure. As no porters had returned for property left behind, and as all the “cooking-pots” had preceded us on the yester, Snay supplied us with his own slaves, and provided us with an Arab breakfast, well cooked, and as usual, neatly served on porcelain plates, with plaited and coloured straw dish-covers, pointed like Chinese caps. Then, promising to spend the next day with me, he shook hands and followed me out of the compound. After a march of three miles, under a white-hot sun, and through a chilling wind, to which were probably owing our subsequent sufferings, we entered the dirty little village of Masui, where a hovel had been prepared for us by Said bin Salim. There we were greeted by the caravan, and we heard with pleasure that it was ready, after a fashion, to break ground.

Early on the next morning appeared Snay bin Amir and Musa Mzuri: as I was suffering from a slight attack of fever, my companion took my place as host. The paroxysm passing off, allowed me to settle all accounts with Snay bin Amir, and to put a finishing touch to the names of stations in the journal. I then thanked these kind-hearted men for their many good deeds, and promised to report to H. H. the Sayyid Majid the hospitable reception of his Arab subjects generally, and of Snay and Musa in particular. About evening time I shook hands with Snay bin Amir—having so primed the dear old fellow with a stirrup-cup of burnt-punch, that his gait and effusion of manner were by no means such as became a staid and stately Arab Shaykh.

On the 4th October, after a week of halts and snail’s marches—the insufficiency of porterage compelled me to send back men for the articles left behind at the several villages—we at last reached Hanga, our former quarters on the eastern confines of the Unyanyembe district. As long as we were within easy distance of Kazeh it was impossible to keep the sons of Ramji in camp, and their absence interfered materially with the completion of the gang. Several desertions took place, a slave given by Kannena of Ujiji to Said bin Salim, old Musangesi the Asinego, and two new purchases, male and female, made by the Baloch at Kazeh, disappeared after the first few marches. The porters were troublesome. They had divided themselves as usual into Khambi, or crews, but no regular Kirangozi having been engaged, they preferred, through mutual jealousy, following Shehe, one of the sons of Ramji. On the road, also, some heads had been broken, because the cattle-drivers had attempted to precede the line, and I feared that the fall of a chance shower might make the whole squad desert, under the impression that the sowing season had set in. In their idleness and want of excitement, they had determined to secure at Hanga the bullock claimed by down caravans at Rubuga. After four days’ halt, without other labour but that of cooking, they arose under pretext of a blow given by one of the children of Said bin Salim, and packing up their goods and chattels, poured in mass, with shouts and yells, from the village, declaring that they were going home. In sore tribulation, Said bin Salim and the Jemadar begged me to take an active part, but a short experience of similar scenes amongst the Bashi-Buzuks at the Dardanelles had made me wiser than my advisers: the African, like the Asiatic, is naturally averse to the operation proverbially called “cutting off one’s own nose;” but if begged not to do so, he may wax, like pinioned men, valorous exceedingly, and dare the suicidal deed. I did not move from my hut, and in half an hour everything was in statu quo ante. The porters had thrown the blame of the proceeding upon the blow, consequently a flogging was ordered for Said bin Salim’s “child,” who, as was ever the case, had been flagrantly in the wrong; but after return, evading the point, the plaintiffs exposed the true state of affairs by a direct reference to the bullock. Thus the “child” escaped castigation, and the bullock was not given till we reached Rubuga.

At Hanga my companion was taken seriously ill. He had been chilled on the line of march by the cruel easterly wind, and at the end of the second march from Kazeh he appeared trembling as if with ague. Immediately after arrival at the foul village of Hanga—where we lodged in a kind of cow-house, full of vermin, and exposed directly to the fury of the cold gales—he complained, in addition to a deaf ear, an inflamed eye, and a swollen face, of a mysterious pain which often shifted its seat, and which he knew not whether to attribute to liver or to spleen. It began with a burning sensation, as by a branding-iron, above the right breast, and then extended to the heart with sharp twinges. After ranging around the spleen, it attacked the upper part of the right lung, and finally it settled in the region of the liver. On the 10th October, suddenly waking about dawn from a horrible dream, in which a close pack of tigers, leopards, and other beasts, harnessed with a network of iron hooks, were dragging him like the rush of a whirlwind over the ground, he found himself sitting up on the side of his bedding, forcibly clasping both sides with his hands. Half-stupefied by pain, he called Bombay, who having formerly suffered from the “Kichyoma-chyoma”—the “little irons”—raised his master’s right arm, placed him in a sitting position, as lying down was impossible, and directed him to hold the left ear behind the head, thus relieving the excruciating and torturing twinges, by lifting the lung from the liver. The next spasm was less severe, but the sufferer’s mind had begun to wander, and he again clasped his sides, a proceeding with which Bombay interfered.

Early on the next morning, my companion, supported by Bombay and Gaetano, staggered towards the tent. Nearing the doorway, he sent in his Goanese, to place a chair for sitting, as usual, during the toils of the day, outside. The support of an arm being thus removed, ensued a second and violent spasm of cramps and twinges, all the muscles being painfully contracted. After resting for a few moments, he called his men to assist him into the house. But neglecting to have a chair previously placed for him, he underwent a third fit of the same epileptic description, which more closely resembled those of hydrophobia than aught I had ever witnessed. He was once more haunted by a crowd of hideous devils, giants, and lion-headed demons, who were wrenching, with superhuman force, and stripping the sinews and tendons of his legs down to the ankles. At length, sitting, or rather lying upon the chair, with limbs racked by cramps, features drawn and ghastly, frame fixed and rigid, eyes glazed and glassy, he began to utter a barking noise, and a peculiar chopping motion of the mouth and tongue, with lips protruding—the effect of difficulty of breathing—which so altered his appearance that he was hardly recognisable, and completed the terror of the beholders. When this, the third and the severest spasm, had passed away, he called for pen and paper, and fearing that increased weakness of mind and body might presently prevent any exertion, he wrote an incoherent letter of farewell to his family. That, however, was the crisis. He was afterwards able to take the proper precautions, never moving without assistance, and always ordering a resting-place to be prepared for him. He spent a better night, with the inconvenience, however, of sitting up, pillow-propped, and some weeks elapsed before he could lie upon his sides. Presently, the pains were mitigated, though they did not entirely cease: this he expressed by saying that “the knives were sheathed.” Such, gentle reader, in East Africa, is the kichyoma-chyoma: either one of those eccentric after-effects of fever, which perplex the European at Zanzibar, or some mysterious manifestation of the Protean demon Miasma.

I at once sent an express to Snay bin Amir for the necessary drugs. The Arabs treat this complaint by applying to the side powdered myrrh mixed with yoke of egg, and converted into a poultice with flour of mung (Phaseolus Mungo). The material was duly forwarded, but it proved of little use. Said bin Salim meanwhile, after sundry vague hints concerning the influence of the Father of Hair, the magnificent comet then spanning the western skies, insisted, as his people invariably do on such conjunctures, upon my companion being visited by the mganga, or medicine-man of the caravan. That reverend personage, after claiming and receiving the usual fee, a fat goat, anointed with its grease two little bits of wood strung on to a tape of tree-fibre, and contented himself with fastening this Mpigi—the negroid’s elixir vitæ—round my companion’s waist. The ligature, however, was torn off after a few minutes, as its only effect was to press upon and pain the tenderest part.

During the forced halt which followed my companion’s severe attack, I saw that, in default of physic, change of air was the most fitting restorative. My benumbed legs and feet still compelling me to use a hammock, a second was rigged up for the invalid; and by good fortune thirteen unloaded porters of a down caravan consented to carry us both for a large sum to Rubuga. The sons of Ramji were imperatively ordered to leave Kazeh under pain of dismissal, which none would incur as they had a valuable investment in slaves: with their aid the complement of porters was easily and speedily filled up.

Seedy Mubarak Bombay—in the interior the name became Mamba (a crocodile) or Pombe (small beer)—had long before returned to his former attitude, that of a respectful and most ready servant. He had, it is true, sundry uncomfortable peculiarities. A heaven-born “Pagazi,” he would load himself on the march with his “T’haka-t’haka,” or “chow-chow,” although a porter had been especially hired for him. He had no memory: an article once taken by him was always thrown upon the ground and forgotten: in a single trip he broke my elephant gun, killed my riding-ass, and lost its bridle. Like the Eastern Africans generally, he lacked the principle of immediate action; if beckoned to for a gun in the field he would probably first delay to look round, then retire, and lastly advance. He had a curious inverted way of doing all that he did. The water-bottle was ever carried on the march either uncorked or inverted; his waistcoat was generally wound round his neck, and it appeared fated not to be properly buttoned; whilst he walked bareheaded in the sun, his Fez adorned the tufty poll of some comrade; and at the halt he toiled like a charwoman to raise our tents and to prepare them for habitation, whilst his slave, the large lazy Maktubu, a boy-giant from the mountains of Urundi, sat or dozed under the cool shade. Yet with all his faults and failures Bombay, for his unwearied activity, and especially from his undeviating honesty,—there was no man, save our “Negro Rectitude,” in the whole camp who had not proved his claim to the title triliteral—was truly valuable. Said bin Salim had long forfeited my confidence by his carelessness and extravagance; and the disappearance of the outfit committed to him at Ujiji, in favour, as I afterwards learned, of an Arab merchant-friend, rendered him unfit for the responsibilities of stewardship.

Having summoned Said bin Salim, I told him with all gentleness, in order to spare his “shame”—the Persian proverb says, Fell not the tree which thou hast planted—that being now wiser in Eastern African travel than before, I intended to relieve him of his troublesome duties. He heard this announcement with the wriest of faces; and his perturbation was not diminished when informed that the future distribution of cloth should be wholly in the hands of Bombay, checked by my companion’s superintendence. The loads were accordingly numbered and registered; the Pagazi were forbidden, under pain of punishment, to open or to change them without permission; and Said bin Salim received, like the Baloch, a certain monthly amount of beads, besides rations of rice for the consumption of his children. This arrangement was persevered in till we separated upon the seaboard: it acted well, saving outfit, time, and a host of annoyances; moreover, it gave us command, as the African man, like the lower animals, respects only, if he respects anything, the hand that gives, that feeds him. It was wonderful to see how the “bone of contention,” cloth, having been removed, the fierceness of those who were formerly foes melted and merged into friendship and fraternisation. The triad of bitter haters, Said bin Salim, the monocular Jemadar, and Muinyi Kidogo, now marched and sat and ate together as if never weary of such society; they praised one another openly and without reserve, and if an evil tale ever reached my ear its subject was the innocent Bombay—its object was to ruin him in my estimation.

Acutely remembering the trouble caused by the feuds between Said bin Salim and Kidogo upon the subject of work, I directed the former to take sole charge of the porters, to issue their rations, and to superintend their loads. The better to assist him, two disorderly sons of Ramji were summarily flogged, and several others who refused to carry our smaller valuables were reduced to order by the usual process of stopping rations. “Shehe,” though chosen as Kirangozi or guide from motives of jealousy by the porters, was turned out of office; he persisted in demanding cloth for feeing an Unyamwezi medicine-man, in order to provide him, a Moslem! with charms against the evil eye, a superstition unknown to this part of Eastern Africa. The Pagazi, ordered to elect one of their number, named the youth Twánígáná, who had brought with him a large gang. But the plague of the party, a hideous, puckered, and scowling old man who had called himself “Muzungu Mbaya,” or the “Wicked White,” so far prevailed that at the first halt Twanigana, with his blushing honours in the shape of a scarlet waistcoat fresh upon him, was found squatting solus under a tree, the rest of the party having mutinously preceded him. I halted at once and recalled the porters, who, after a due interval of murmuring, reappeared. And subsequently, by invariably siding with the newly-made Kirangozi, and by showing myself ready to enforce obedience by any means and every means, I gave the long-legged and weak-minded youth, who was called “Gopa-Gopa”—“Funk-stick”—on account of his excessive timidity, a little confidence, and reduced his unruly followers to all the discipline of which their race is capable.

As we were threatened with want of water on the way, I prepared for that difficulty by packing a box with empty bottles, which, when occasion required, might be filled at the best springs. The Zemzemiyah or travelling canteen of the East African is everywhere a long-necked gourd, slung to the shoulder by a string. But it becomes offensive after a short use, and it can never be entrusted to servant, slave, or porter without its contents being exhausted before a mile is measured.

By these arrangements, the result of that after-wisdom which some have termed fools’ wit, I commenced the down march under advantages, happy as a “bourgeois” of trappers in the joyous pays sauvage. I have detailed perhaps to a wearisome length the preparations for the march. But the success of such expeditions mainly depends upon the measures adopted before and immediately after departure, and this dry knowledge may be useful to future adventurers in the great cause of discovery.

The stages now appeared shorter, the sun cooler, the breeze warmer; after fourteen months of incessant fevers, the party had become tolerably acclimatised; all were now loud in praise, as they had been violent in censure, of the “water and air.” Before entering the Fiery Field, the hire for carrying the hammocks became so exorbitant that I dismissed the bearers, drew on my jack-boots, mounted the half-caste Zanzibari ass, and appeared once more as the Mtongi of a caravan. After a fortnight my companion had convalesced so rapidly that he announced himself ready to ride. The severe liver pains had disappeared, leaving behind them, however, for a time, a harassing heart-ache and nausea, with other bilious symptoms, which developed themselves when exposed to the burning sun of the several tirikeza. Gradually these sequelæ ceased, sleep and appetite returned, and at K’hok’ho, in Ugogo, my companion had strength enough to carry a heavy rifle, and to do damage amongst the antelope and the guinea fowl. Our Goanese servants also, after suffering severely from fever and face-ache, became different men; Valentine, blessed with a more strenuous diathesis, carried before him a crop like a well-crammed capon. As the porters left this country, and the escort approached their homes, there was a notable change of demeanour. All waxed civil, even to servility, grumbling ceased, and smiles mantled every countenance. Even Muzungu Mbaya, who in Unyamwezi had been the head and front of all offence, was to be seen in Ugogo meekly sweeping out our tents with a bunch of thorns.

We left Hanga, the dirty cow-village, on the 13th October. The seven short marches between that place and Tura occupied fifteen days, a serious waste of time and cloth, caused by the craving of the porters for their homes. It was also necessary to march with prudence, collisions between the party and the country-people, who are unaccustomed to see the articles which they most covet carried out of the country, were frequent: in fact we flew to arms about every second day, and after infinite noise and chatter, we quitted them to boast of the deeds of “derring do,” which had been consigned to the limbo of things uncreate by the fainéance of the adversary. At Eastern Tura, where we arrived on the 28th October, a halt of six days was occasioned by the necessity of providing and preparing food, at that season scarce and dear, for the week’s march through the Fiery Field. The caravan was then mustered, when its roll appeared as follows. We numbered in our own party two Europeans, two Goanese, Bombay with two slaves—the child-man Nasibu and the boy-giant Maktubu—the bull-headed Mabruki, Nasir, a half-caste Mazrui Arab, who had been sent with me by the Arabs of Kazeh to save his morals, and Taufiki, a Msawahili youth, who had taken service as gun-carrier to the coast: they formed a total of 10 souls. Said bin Salim was accompanied by 12—the charmers Halimah and Zawada, his five children, and a little gang of five fresh captures, male and female. The Baloch, 12 in number, had 15 slaves and 11 porters, composing a total of 38. The sons of Ramji, and the ass-drivers under Kidogo their leader, were in all 24, including their new acquisitions. Finally 68 Wanyamwezi porters, carrying the outfit and driving the cattle, completed the party to 152 souls.

Jiwe la Mkoa, the Round Rock.

On the 3rd November, the caravan issuing from Tura plunged manfully into the Fiery Field, and after seven marches in as many days, halted for breath and forage at Jiwe la Mkoa, the Round Stone. A few rations having been procured in its vicinity, we resumed our way on the 12th November, and in two days exchanged, with a sensible pleasure, the dull expanse of dry brown bush and brushwood, dead thorn-trees, and dry Nullahs, for the fertile red plain of Mdaburu. After that point began the transit of Ugogo, where I had been taught to expect accidents: they resolved themselves, however, into nothing more than the disappearance of cloth and beads in inordinate quantities. We were received by Magomba, the Sultan of Kanyenye, with a charge of magic, for which of course it was necessary to pay heavily. The Wanyamwezi porters seemed even more timid on the down-journey than on the up-march. They slank about like curs, and the fierce look of a Mgogo boy was enough to strike a general terror. Twanigana, when safe in the mountains of Usagara, would frequently indulge me in a dialogue like the following, and it may serve as a specimen of the present state of conversation in East Africa:—

“The state, Mdula?” (i.e. Abdullah, a word unpronounceable to Negroid organs.)

“The state is very! (well) and thy state?”

“The state is very! (well) and the state of Spikka? (my companion).”

“The state of Spikka is very! (well.)”

“We have escaped the Wagogo (resumes Twanigana), white man O!”

“We have escaped, O my brother!”

“The Wagogo are bad.”

“They are bad.”

“The Wagogo are very bad.”

“They are very bad.”

“The Wagogo are not good.”

“They are not good.”

“The Wagogo are not at all good.”

“They are not at all good.”

“I greatly feared the Wagogo, who kill the Wanyamwezi.”

“Exactly so!”

“But now I don’t fear them. I call them ——s and ——s, and I would fight the whole tribe, white man O!”

“Truly so, O my brother!”

And thus for two mortal hours, till my ennui turned into marvel. Twanigana however was, perhaps, in point of intellect somewhat below the usual standard of African young men. Older and more experienced was Muzungu Mbaya, and I often listened with no small amusement to the attempts made by the Baloch to impress upon this truly African mind a respect for their revelation. Gul Mohammed was the missionary of the party: like Moslems generally, however, his thoughts had been taught to run in one groove, and if disturbed by startling objections, they were all abroad. Similarly I have observed in the European old lady, that on such subjects all the world must think with her, and I have been suspected of drawing the long-bow when describing the worship of gods with four arms, and goddesses with two heads.

Muzungu Mbaya, as the old hunks calls himself, might be sitting deeply meditative, at the end of the march, before the fire, warming his inner legs, smoking his face, and ever and anon casting pleasant glances at a small black earthen pipkin, whence arose the savoury steam of meat and vegetables. A concatenation of ideas induces Gul Mohammed to break into his favourite theme.

“And thou, Muzungu Mbaya, thou also must die!”

“Ugh! ugh!” replies the Muzungu personally offended, “don’t speak in that way! Thou must die too.”

“It is a sore thing to die,” resumes Gul Mohammed.

“Hoo! Hoo!” exclaims the other, “it is bad, very bad, never to wear a nice cloth, no longer to dwell with one’s wife and children, not to eat and drink, snuff, and smoke tobacco. Hoo! Hoo! it is bad, very bad!”

“But we shall eat,” rejoins the Moslem, “the flesh of birds, mountains of meat, and delicate roasts, and drink sugared water, and whatever we hunger for.”

The African’s mind is disturbed by this tissue of contradictions. He considers birds somewhat low feeding, roasts he adores, he contrasts mountains of meat with his poor half-pound in pot, he would sell himself for sugar; but again he hears nothing of tobacco; still he takes the trouble to ask

“Where, O my brother?”

“There,” exclaims Gul Mohammed, pointing to the skies.

This is a “chokepear” to Muzungu Mbaya. The distance is great, and he can scarcely believe that his interlocutor has visited the firmament to see the provision; he therefore ventures upon the query,

“And hast thou been there, O my brother?”

“Astaghfar ullah (I beg pardon of Allah)!” ejaculates Gul Mohammed, half angry, half amused. “What a mshenzi (pagan) this is! No, my brother, I have not exactly been there, but my Mulungu (Allah) told my Apostle[15], who told his descendants, who told my father and mother, who told me, that when we die we shall go to a Shamba (a plantation), where——”

[15] Those who translate Rasul, meaning, literally, “one sent,” by prophet instead of apostle, introduce a notable fallacy into the very formula of Moslem faith. Mohammed never pretended to prophecy in our sense of foretelling future events.

“Oof!” grunts Muzungu Mbaya, “it is good of you to tell us all this Upumbafu (nonsense) which your mother told you. So there are plantations in the skies?”

“Assuredly,” replies Gul Mohammed, who expounds at length the Moslem idea of paradise to the African’s running commentary of “Nenda we!” (be off!), “Mama-e!” (O my mother!) and “Tumbanina,” which may not be translated.

Muzungu Mbaya, who for the last minute has been immersed in thought, now suddenly raises his head; and, with somewhat of a goguenard air, inquires:

“Well then, my brother, thou knowest all things! answer me, is thy Mulungu black like myself, white like this Muzungu, or whity-brown as thou art?”

Gul Mohammed is fairly floored: he ejaculates sundry la haul! to collect his wits for the reply,—

“Verily the Mulungu hath no colour.”

“To-o-oh! Tuh!” exclaims the Muzunga, contorting his wrinkled countenance, and spitting with disgust upon the ground. He was now justified in believing that he had been made a laughing-stock. The mountain of meat had, to a certain extent, won over his better judgment: the fair vision now fled, and left him to the hard realities of the half-pound. He turns a deaf ear to every other word; and, devoting all his assiduity to the article before him, he unconsciously obeys the advice which many an Eastern philosopher has inculcated to his disciples—

“Hold fast the hour, though fools say nay,
The spheres revolve, they bring thee sorrow;
The wise enjoys his joy to-day,
The fool shall joy his joy to-morrow.”

The transit of Ugogo occupied three weeks, from the 14th of November to the 5th of December. In Kanyenye we were joined by a large down-caravan of Wanyamwezi, carrying ivories; the musket-shots which announced the conclusion of certain brotherly ties between the sons of Ramji and the porters, sounded in my ears like minute-guns announcing the decease of our hopes of a return to the coast viâ Kilwa. At Kanyenye, also, we met the stout Msawahili Abdullah bin Nasib, alias Kisesa, who was once more marching into Unyamwezi: he informed me that the slaughter of Salim bin Nasir, the Bu-Saidi, and the destruction of the Rubeho settlements, after the murder of a porter, had closed our former line through Usagara. He also supplied me with valuable tea and sugar, and my companion with a quantity of valueless, or perhaps misunderstood, information, which I did not deem worth sifting. On the 6th of December, arrived at our old ground in the Ugogi Dhun, we were greeted by a freshly-arrived caravan, commanded by Jumah bin Mbwana and his two brothers, half-caste Hindi or Indian Moslems, from Mombasah.

The Hindis, after receiving and returning news with much solemnity, presently drew forth a packet of letters and papers, which as usual promised trouble. This time, however, the post was to produce the second manner of annoyance—official “wigging,”—the first being intelligence of private misfortune. Imprimis, came a note from Captain Rigby, the newly-appointed successor to Lieut.-Col. Hamerton at Zanzibar, and that name was not nice in the nostrils of men. Secondly, the following pleasant announcement. I give the whole letter:

Dear Burton,—Go ahead! Vogel and Macguire dead—murdered. Write often to Yours truly, N. S.

And thirdly came the inevitable official wig.

Convinced, by sundry conversations with Arabs and others at Suez and Aden, during my last overland journey to India, and by the details supplied to me by a naval officer who was thoroughly conversant with the Red Sea, that, in consequence of the weakness and insufficiency of the squadron then employed, slavery still flourished, and that the numerous British subjects and protegés were inadequately protected, I had dared, after arrival at Zanzibar, privately to address on the 15th of December, 1856, a letter upon the subject to the secretary of the Royal Geographical Society. It contained an “Account of Political Affairs in the Red Sea,”—to quote the words of the paper, and expressed a hope that it might be “deemed worthy to be transmitted to the Court of Directors, or to the Foreign Office.”[16] The only acknowledgment which I received, was the edifying information that the Secretary to Government, Bombay, was directed by the Right Honourable the Governor in Council, Bombay, to state that my “want of discretion and due regard for the authorities to whom I am subordinate, has been regarded with displeasure by the Government.”

[16] The whole correspondence, with its reply and counter-reply, are printed in [Appendix].

This was hard. I have perhaps been Quixotic enough to attempt a suggestion that, though the Mediterranean is fast becoming a French lake, by timely measures the Red Sea may be prevented from being converted into a Franco-Russo-Austrian lake. But an Englishman in these days must be proud, very proud, of his nation, and withal somewhat regretful that he was not born of some mighty mother of men—such as Russia and America—who has not become old and careless enough to leave her bairns unprotected, or cold and crusty enough to reward a little word of wisdom from her babes and sucklings with a scolding or a buffet.

The sore, however, had its salve. The official wig was dated the 23rd of July, 1857. Posts are slow in Africa. When received on the 5th of December, 1858, it was accompanied by a copy of a Bombay Newspaper, which reported that on the 30th of June, 1858, “a massacre of nearly all the Christians took place at Juddah, on the Red Sea,” and that “it was apprehended that the news from Juddah might excite the Arab population of Suez to the commission of similar outrages.”

At Ugogi, which, it will be remembered, is considered the half-way station between Unyanyembe and the coast, the sons of Ramji and the porters detained us for a day, declaring that there was a famine upon the Mukondokwa road which we had previously traversed. At the same time they warned us that we should find the great chief, who has given a name to the Kiringawana route, an accomplished extortioner, and one likely to insist upon our calling upon him in person. Having given their ultimatum, they would not recede from it: for us, therefore, nothing remained but to make a virtue of necessity. We loaded on the 7th of December, and commenced the passage of the Usagara mountains by the Kiringawana line.

I must indent upon the patience of the reader by a somewhat detailed description of this southern route, which is separated from the northern by a maximum interval of forty-three miles. The former being the more ancient, contains some settlements like Maroro and Kisanga, not unknown by report to European geographers. It is preferred by down-caravans, who have no store of cloth to be demanded by the rapacious chiefs: the up-country travellers, who have asses, must frequent the Mukondokwa, on account of the severity of the passes on the Kiringawana.

The Kiringawana numbers nineteen short stages, which may be accomplished without hardship in twelve days, at the rate of about five hours per diem. Provisions are procurable in almost every part, except when the Warori are “out;” and water is plentiful, if not good. Travel is rendered pleasant by long stretches of forest land without bush or fetid grass. The principal annoyances are the thievish propensities of the natives and the extortionate demands of the chief. A minor plague is that of mosquitoes, that haunt the rushy banks of the hill rivulets, some of which are crossed nine or ten times in the same day; moreover, the steep and slippery ascents and descents of black earth and mud, or rough blocks of stone, make the porters unwilling to work.

Breaking ground at 6 A.M. on the 7th December, we marched to Murundusi, the frontier of Usagara and Uhehe. The path lay over a rolling thorny jungle with dottings of calabash at the foot of the Rubeho mountains, and lumpy outliers falling on the right of the road. After three hours’ march, the sound of the horses announced the vicinity of a village, and the country opening out, displayed a scene of wonderful fertility, the effect of subterraneous percolations from the highlands. Nowhere are the tamarind, the sycamore, and the calabash, seen in such perfection; of unusual size also are the perfumed myombo and the mkora, the myongo, the ndabi, the chamvya, with its edible yellowish-red berries, and a large sweet-smelling acacia. Amidst these piles of verdure, troops of parroquets, doves, jays, and bright fly-catchers, find a home, and frequent flocks and herds, a resting-place beneath the cool shade. The earth is still sprinkled with “black-jacks,” the remains of trees which have come to an untimely end. In the fields near the numerous villages rise little sheds to shelter the guardians of the crops, and cattle wander over the commons or unreclaimed lands. Water, which is here pure and good, lies in pits from fifteen to twenty feet deep, staged over with tree trunks, and the people draw it in large shallow buckets, made of gourds sewn together and strengthened with sticks. Towards the evening, a cold east-wind brought up with it a storm of thunder and rain, which was pronounced by the experts to be the opening of the rainy monsoon in Usagara.

The next day led us over an elevated undulation cut by many jagged watercourses, and still flanked by the outlying masses which fall westward into the waste of Mgunda M’khali. After an hour’s march, we turned abruptly eastwards, and crossing a rugged stony fork, presently found a dwarf basin of red soil which supplied water. The Wahehe owners of the land have a chronic horror of the Warori; on sighting our peaceful caravan, they at once raised the war-cry, and were quieted only by the certainty that we were even more frightened than they were. At Kinganguku, the night was again wild and stormy; in fact, after leaving Ugogi, we were regularly rained upon till we had crossed the Mountains.

On the 9th December, we marched in six hours from Kinyanguku to Rudi, the principal district of Uhehe. It was an ascent plunging into the hills, which, however, on this line are easy to traverse, compared with those of the northern route; the paths were stony and rugged, and the earth was here white and glaring, there of a dull red colour. Water pure and plentiful was found in pits about fifteen feet deep, which dented the sole of a picturesque Fiumara. The people assembled to stare with the stare pertinacious; they demanded large prices for their small reserves of provisions, but they sold tobacco at the rate of two or three cakes, each weighing about one pound and a half, for a shukkah.

Passing from the settlements of Rudi, on the next morning we entered a thorn jungle, where the handiwork of the fierce Warori appeared in many a shell of smoke-stained village. We then crossed two Fiumaras exactly similar to those which attract the eye in the Somali country, broad white sandy beds, with high stiff earth-banks deeply water-cut, and with huge emerald-foliaged trees rising from a hard bare red plain. After a short march of three hours, we pitched under a tamarind, and sent our men abroad to collect provisions. Tobacco was cheap, as at Rudi, grain and milk, whether fresh or sour, were expensive, and two shukkahs were demanded for a lamb or a young goat. The people of Mporota are notorious pilferers. About noontide a loud “hooroosh” and the scampering of spearmen over the country announced a squabble; presently our people reappeared driving before them a flock which they had seized in revenge for a daring attempt at larceny. I directed them to retain one fine specimen—the lex talionis is ever the first article of the penal code in the East—and to return the rest. Notwithstanding these energetic measures, the youth Taufiki awaking in the night with a shriek like one affected by nightmare, found that a Mhehe robber had snatched his cloth, and favoured by the shades had escaped with impunity. The illness of Said bin Salim detained us for a day in this den of thieves.

The 12th December carried us in three hours from Mporota to Ikuka of Uhehe. The route wound over red steps amongst low stony hills, the legs of the spider-like system, and the lay of the heights was in exceeding confusion. Belted by thorny scrub and forests of wild fruit trees—some edible, others poisonous—were several villages, surrounded by fields, especially rich in ground-nuts. Beyond Ikuka the road entered stony and rugged land, with a few sparse cultivations almost choked by thick bushy jungle; the ragged villages contained many dogs, and a few peculiarly hideous human beings. Thence it fell into a fine Fiumara, with pure sweet water in pools, breaking the surface of loose white sand; upon the banks, red soil, varying from a few inches to 20 feet in depth, overlay bands and lines of rounded pebbles, based on beds of granite, schiste, and sandstone. After ascending a hill, we fell into a second watercourse, whose line was almost choked with wild and thorny vegetation, and we raised the tents in time to escape a pitiless pelting, which appeared to spring from a gap in the southern mountains. The time occupied in marching from Ikuka to Inena of Usagara was four hours, and, as usual in these short stages, there was no halt.

Two porters were found missing on the morning of the 14th December,—they had gone for provisions, and had slept in the villages,—moreover, heavy clouds hanging on the hill-tops threatened rain: a Tirikeza was therefore ordered. At 11 A.M. we set out over rises, falls, and broken ground, at the foot of the neighbouring highlands which enclose a narrow basin, the seat of villages and extensive cultivation. Small cascades flashing down the walls that hemmed us in showed the copiousness of the last night’s fall. After five hours’ heavy marching, we forded a rapid Fiumara, whose tall banks of stiff red clay, resting upon tilted-up strata of greenstone, enclosed a stream calf-deep, and from 10 to 12 feet broad. At this place, called Ginyindo, provisions were hardly procurable; consequently the caravan, as was its wont on such occasions, quarrelled for disport, and the Baloch, headed by “Gray-beard Musa,” began to abuse and to beat the Pagazis.

The morning of the 15th December commenced with a truly African scene. The men were hungry, and the air was chill. They prepared, however, to start quietly betimes. Suddenly a bit of rope was snatched, a sword flashed in the air, a bow-horn quivered with nocked arrow, and the whole caravan rushed frantically with a fearful row to arms. As no one dissuaded the party from “fighting it out,” they apparently became friends, and took up their loads. My companion and I rode quietly forward: scarcely, however, had we emerged from the little basin in which the camp had been placed, than a terrible hubbub of shouts and yells announced that the second act had commenced. After a few minutes, Said bin Salim came forward in trembling haste to announce that the Jemadar had again struck a Pagazi, who, running into the Nullah, had thrown stones with force enough to injure his assailant, consequently that the Baloch had drawn their sabres and had commenced a general massacre of porters. Well understanding this misrepresentation, we advanced about a mile, and thence sent back two of the sons of Ramji to declare that we would not be delayed, and that if not at once followed, we would engage other porters at the nearest village. This brought on a denouement: presently the combatants appeared, the Baloch in a high state of grievance, the Africans declaring that they had not come to fight but to carry. I persuaded them both to defer settling the business till the evening, when both parties well crammed with food listened complacently to that gross personal abuse, which, in these lands, represents a reprimand.

Resuming our journey, we crossed two high and steep hills, the latter of which suddenly disclosed to the eye the rich and fertile basin of Maroro. Its principal feature is a perennial mountain stream, which, descending the chasm which forms the northern pass, winds sluggishly through the plain of muddy black soil and patches of thick rushy grass, and diffused through watercourses of raised earth, covers the land with tobacco, holcus, sweet-potato, plantains, and maize. The cereals stood five feet high, and were already in ear: according to the people, never less than two, and often three and four crops are reaped during the year. This hill-girt district is placed at one month’s march from the coast. At the southern extremity, there is a second opening like the northern, and through it the “River of Maroro” sheds into the Rwaha, distant in direct line two marches west with southing.

THE BASIN OF MARORO.

Maroro, or Malolo, according to dialect, is the “Marorrer town” of Lt. Hardy, (Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society, from Sept. 1841 to May 1844,) who, in 1811-12, was dispatched with Capt. Smee by the Government of Bombay to collect information at Kilwa and its dependencies, and the East African coast generally. Mr. Cooley (Inner Africa Laid Open, p. 56) writes the word Marora, and explains it to mean “trade:” the people, however, ignore the derivation. It is not a town, but a district, containing as usual on this line a variety of little settlements. The confined basin is by no means a wholesome locality, the air is warm and “muggy,” the swamp vegetation is fetid, the mosquitos venomous, and the population, afflicted with fevers and severe ulceration, is not less wretched and degraded than the Wak’hutu. Their habitations are generally Tembe, but small and poor, and their fields are dotted with dwarf platforms for the guardians of the crops. Here a cow costs twelve cloths, a goat three, whilst two fowls are procurable for a shukkah. Maroro is the westernmost limit of the touters from the Mrima; there are seldom less than 150 muskets present, and the Wasagara have learned to hold strangers in horror.

In these basins caravans endeavour, and are forced by the people, to encamp upon the further end after marching through. At the end of a short stage of three hours we forded three times the river bed, a muddy bottom, flanked by stiff rushes, and encamped under a Mkamba tree, above and to windward of the fetid swamp. The night was hot and rainy, clouds of mosquitos rose from their homes below, and the cynhyænas were so numerous that it was necessary to frighten them away with shots. The labour of laying in provisions detained us for a day at Maroro.

On the 17th December we left the little basin by its southern opening, which gradually winds eastward. The march was delayed by the distribution of the load of a porter who had fled to the Warori. After crossing a fourth rise, the road fell into the cultivated valley of the Mwega River. This is a rush-girt stream of pure water, about 20 feet broad, and knee-deep at the fords in dry weather; its course is S.W. to the stream of Maroro. Like the Mukondokwa, it spreads out, except where dammed by the correspondence of the salient and the re-entering angles of the hill spurs. The road runs sometimes over this rocky and jungly ground, horrid with thorn and cactus, fording the stream, where there is no room for a path, and at other times it traverses lagoon-like backwaters, garnished with grass, rush, and stiff shrubs, based upon sun-cracked or miry beds. After a march of four hours we encamped in the Mwega Basin, where women brought down grain in baskets: cattle were seen upon the higher grounds, but the people refused to sell milk or meat.

The next stage was Kiperepeta; it occupied about 2 hours 30 min. The road was rough, traversing the bushy jungly spurs on the left bank of the rushy narrow stream; in many places there were steps and ladders of detached blocks and boulders. At last passing through a thick growth, where the smell of jasmine loads the air, we ascended a steep and rugged incline, whose summit commanded a fine back view of the Maroro Basin. A shelving counterslope of earth deeply cracked and cut with watercourses led us to the encamping-ground, a red patch dotted with tall calabashes, and boasting a few pools of brackish water. We had now entered the land of grass-kilts and beehive huts, built for defence upon the ridges of the hills: whilst cactus, aloe, and milk-bush showed the diminished fertility of the soil. About Kiperepeta it was said a gang of nearly 400 touters awaited with their muskets the arrival of caravans from the interior.

On the 19th December, leaving Kiperepeta, we toiled up a steep incline, cut by the sinuated channels of water-courses, to a col or pass, the water-parting of this line in Usagara: before south-westerly, the versant thence-forward trends to the south-east. Having topped the summit, we began the descent along the left bank of a mountain burn, the Rufita, which, forming in the rainy season a series of rapids and cascades, casts its waters into the Yovu, and eventually into the Rwaha River. The drainage of the hill-folds cuts, at every re-entering angle, a ragged irregular ditch, whose stony depths are impassable to heavily-laden asses. After a toilsome march of three hours, we fell into the basin of Kisanga, which, like others on this line, is an enlarged punchbowl, almost surrounded by a mass of green hills, cone rising upon cone, with tufted cappings of trees, and long lines of small haycock-huts ranged along the acclivities and ridge-lines. The floor of the basin is rough and uneven; a rich cultivation extends from the hill-slopes to the stream which drains the sole, and fine trees, amongst which are the mparamusi and the sycomore, relieve the uniformity of the well-hoed fields. Having passed through huts and villages, where two up-caravans of Wanyamwezi were halted, displaying and haggling over the cloths intended as tribute to the Sultan Kiringawana, we prudently forded the Yovu, and placed its bed between ourselves and the enemy. The Yovu, which bisects the basin of Kisanga from N. to S. and passes by the S.E. into the Rwaha, was then about four feet deep; it flowed down a muddy bed laced with roots, and its banks, whence a putrid smell exhaled, were thick lines of sedgy grass which sheltered myriads of mosquitos. Ascending an eminence to the left of the stream, we obtained lodgings, and at once proceeded to settle kuhonga with the chief, Kiringawana.

Rufita Pass in Usagara.

The father, or, according to others, the grandfather of the present chief, a Mnyamwezi of the ancient Wakalaganza tribe, first emigrated from his home in Usagozi, and, being a mighty elephant-hunter and a powerful wizard, he persuaded by arts and arms the Wasagara, who allowed him to settle amongst them, to constitute him their liege lord. The actual Kiringawana, having spent his heir-apparent days at Zanzibar, returned to Kisanga on the death of his sire, and reigned in his stead. His long residence among the Arabs has so far civilised him that he furnishes his several homes comfortably enough; he receives his tributary-visitors with ceremony, affects amenity of manner, clothes his short, stout, and sooty person in rainbow-coloured raiment, carries a Persian blade, and is a cunning diplomatist in the art of choosing cloth.

On the day of arrival I was visited by Msimbiri, the heir-apparent—kingly dignity prevented Kiringawana wading the Yovu,—who gave some information about the Rwaha river, and promised milk. The 20th of December was expended in the palaver about “dash.” After abundant chaffering, the chief accepted from the Expedition, though passing through his acres on the return-march, when presents are poor, three expensive coloured cloths, and eight shukkah of domestics and Kaniki; wondering the while that the wealthy Muzungu had neglected to reserve for him something more worthy of his acceptance. He returned a fat bullock, which was instantly shot and devoured. In their indolence the caravan-men again began to quarrel; and Wulaydi, a son of Ramji, speared a porter, an offence for which he was ordered, if he failed to give satisfaction for the assault, to be turned out of camp. A march was anticipated on the next day, when suddenly, as the moon rose over the walls of the basin, a fine bonfire on the neighbouring hill and a terrible outcry announced an accident in the village occupied by the sons of Ramji. Muinyi Buyuni had left in charge of the hearth the object of his affections, a fine strapping slave-girl, whom for certain reasons he expected to sell for a premium at Zanzibar, and she had made it over to some friend, who probably had fallen asleep. The hut was soon in flames,—in these lands fires are never extinguished,—and the conflagration had extended to the nearer hovels, consuming the cloth, grain, and furniture of the inmates. Fortunately, the humans and the cattle escaped; but a delay was inevitable. The elder who owned the chief hut demanded only eighty-eight cloths, one slave, thirteen Fundo of beads, and other minor articles:—a lesser sum would have purchased the whole household. His cupidity was restrained by Kiringawana, who named as indemnity thirty cloths, here worth thirty dollars, which I gave with extreme unwillingness, promising the sons of Ramji, who appeared rather to enjoy the excitement, that they should pay for their carelessness at Zanzibar.

During the second day’s halt, I attempted to obtain from Kiringawana a permission to depart from the beaten track. The noble descent of this chief gives him power over the guides of the Wanyamwezi caravans. In consequence of an agreement with the Diwans of the Mrima, he has lately closed the direct route to Kilwa, formerly regularly traversed, and he commands a little army of touters. He returned a gracious reply, which in East Africa, however, means no gracious intentions.

Resuming our march on the 22nd of December, we descended from the eminence into the basin of the Yovu River, and fought our way through a broad “Wady,” declining from east to west, with thick lines of tree and bush down the centre, and everywhere else an expanse of dark and unbroken green, like a plate of spinach. Passing along the southern bank amongst wild Annonas and fine Palmyras, over a good path where there was little mud, we presently ascended rising ground through an open forest, of the rainbow hues before described, where sweet air and soft filmy shade formed, whilst the sun was low and the breath of the morning was pure and good, most enjoyable travelling. After about five hours we descended into the basin of the Ruhembe rivulet, which seems to be the “Rohambi people” of Mr. Cooley’s Itinerary. (Geography of N’yassi, p. 22.) The inhabitants are Wasagara; they supply travellers with manioc, grain, and bitter egg-plants, of a scarlet colour resembling tomatos. Cultivation flourishes upon the hill-sides and in the swampy grounds about the sole of the basin, which is bisected by a muddy and apparently stagnant stream ten feet broad. We pitched tents in the open central space of a village, and met a caravan of Wasawahili from Zanzibar, who reported to Said bin Salim the gratifying intelligence that, in consequence of a rumour of his decease, his worthy brother, Ali bin Salim, had somewhat prematurely laid violent hands upon his goods and chattels.

The porters would have halted on the next day, but the excited Said exerted himself manfully; at 2 P.M. we were once more on the road. Descending from the village-eminence, we crossed in a blazing sun the fetid Ruhembe; and, after finding with some difficulty the jungly path, we struck into a pleasant forest, like that traversed on the last march. It was cut by water-courses draining south, and at these places it was necessary to dismount. At 6 P.M. appeared a clearing, with sundry villages and clumps of the Mgude tree, whose tufty summits of the brightest green, gilt by the last rays of the sun, formed a lovely picture. The porters would have rested at this spot, but they were forced forwards by the sons of Ramji. Presently we emerged upon the southern extremity of the Makata Plain, a hideous low level of black vegetable earth, peaty in appearance, and, bearing long puddles of dark scummy and stagnant rain-water, mere horse-ponds, with the additional qualities of miasma and mosquitos. The sons of Ramji had determined to reach the Makata Nullah, still distant about two hours. I called a halt in favour of the fatigued Pagazi, who heard it with pleasure, and sent to recall Wulaydi, Shehe, and Nasibu, who were acting bell-wethers. The worthies returned after a time, and revenged themselves by parading, with many grimaces, up and down the camp.

On the morning of the 24th of December, we resumed the transit of the Makata Plain, and crossed the tail of its nullah. It was here bone-dry; consequently, had we made it last night, the thirsty caravan would have suffered severely. Ensued a long slope garnished with the normal thin forest; in two places the plots of ashes, which denote the deaths of wizard and witch, apprised us that we were fast approaching benighted K’hutu. A skeleton caravan of touters, composed of six muskets and two flags, met us on the way. Presently we descended into the basin of Kikoboga, which was occupied in force by gentry of the same description. After wading four times the black, muddy, and rushy nullah, which bisects the lake, we crossed a lateral band of rough high ground, whence a further counter-slope bent down to a Khambi in a diminutive hollow, called Mwimbi. It was the ideal of a bad encamping ground. The kraal stood on the bank of a dark, miry water at the head of a narrow gap, where heat was concentrated by the funnel-shaped hill-sides, and where the dark ground, strewed with rotting grass and leaves, harboured hosts of cock-roaches, beetles, and mosquitos. The supplies, a little grain, poor sugar-cane, good wild vegetables, at times plantains, were distant, and the water was vile. Throughout this country, however, the Wasagara cultivators, fearing plunder should a caravan encamp near their crops, muster in force; the traveller, therefore, must not unpack except at the kraals on either edge of the cultivation.

The dawn of Christmas Day, 1858, saw us toiling along the Kikoboga River, which we forded four times. We then crossed two deep affluents, whose banks were thick with fruitless plantains. The road presently turned up a rough rise, from whose crest began the descent of the Mabruki Pass. This col may be divided into two steps: the first winds along a sharp ridge-line, a chain of well-forested hills, whose heights, bordered on both sides by precipitous slopes of earth overgrown with thorns and thick bamboo-clumps, command an extensive view of spur and subrange, of dhun and champaign, sprinkled with villages and dwarf cones, and watered by streamlets that glisten like lines of quicksilver in the blue-brown of the hazy distant landscape. Ensues, after a succession of deep and rugged watercourses, with difficult slopes, the second step; a short but sharp steep of red earth, corded with the tree-roots that have been bared by the heavy rains. Beyond this the path, spanning rough ground at the hill-base, debouches upon the course of a streamlet flowing southwards from the last heights of Usagara to the plains of Uziraha in K’hutu.

The bullock reserved for the occasion having been lost in Uhehe, I had ordered the purchase of half a dozen goats wherewith to celebrate the day; the porters, however, were too lazy to collect them. My companion and I made good cheer upon a fat capon, which acted as roast-beef, and a mess of ground-nuts sweetened with sugar-cane, which did duty as plum-pudding. The contrast of what was with what might be now, however, suggested only pleasurable sensations; long odds were in favour of our seeing the Christmas Day of 1859, compared with the chances of things at Msene on the Christmas Day of 1857.

From Uziraha sixteen hours distributed into fourteen marches conducted us from Uziraha, at the foot of the Usagara mountains, to Central Zungomero. The districts traversed were Eastern Mbwiga, Marundwe, and Kirengwe. The road again realises the European idea of Africa in its most hideous and grotesque aspect. Animals are scarce amidst the portentous growth of herbage, not a head of black cattle is seen, flocks and poultry are rare, and even the beasts of the field seem to flee the land. The people admitted us into their villages, whose wretched straw-hovels, contrasting with the luxuriant jungle which hems them in, look like birds’ nests torn from the trees: all the best settlements, however, were occupied by parties of touters. At the sight of our passing caravan the goatherd hurried off his charge, the peasant prepared to rush into the grass, the women and children slunk and hid within the hut, and no one ever left his home without a bow and a sheath of arrows, whose pitchy-coloured bark-necks denoted a fresh layer of poison.

We entered Zungomero on the 29th of December, after sighting on the left the cone at whose base rises the Maji ya W’heta, or Fontaine qui bouille. The village on the left bank of the Mgeta, which we had occupied about eighteen months before, had long been level with the ground; we were therefore conducted with due ceremony into another settlement on the right of the stream. An army of black musketeers, in scanty but various and gaudy attire, came out to meet us, and with the usual shots and shouts conducted us to the headman’s house, which had already been turned into a kind of barrack by these irregulars. They then stared as usual for half-a-dozen consecutive hours, which done they retired to rest.

After a day’s repose, sending for the Kirangozi, and personally offering a liberal reward, I opened to him the subject then nearest my heart, namely, a march upon Kilwa. This proceeding probably irritated the too susceptible Said bin Salim, and caused him, if not actually to interfere, at any rate to withhold all aid towards furthering the project. Twanigana, after a palaver with his people, returned with a reply that he himself was willing, but that his men would not leave the direct track. Their reasons were various. Some had become brothers with the sons of Ramji, and expected employment from their “father.” Others declared that it would be necessary to march a few miles back, which was contrary to their custom, and said that they ought to have been warned of the intention before passing the Makutaniro, or junction of the two roads. But none expressed any fear, as has since been asserted, of being sold off into slavery at Kilwa. Such a declaration would have been ridiculous. Of the many Wanyamwezi caravans that have visited Kilwa none has ever yet been seized and sold; the coast-people are too well acquainted with their own interests to secure for themselves a permanent bad name. Seeing, however, that energetic measures were necessary to open the road, I allowed them two days for consideration, and warned them that after that time Posho or rations should be withdrawn.

On the next day I was privately informed by the Mnfumo or parson of the caravan, that his comrades intended to make a feint of desertion, and then to return, if they found us resolved not to follow them. The reverend gentleman’s sister-in-law, who had accompanied us from Unyamwezi as cook and concubine to Seedy Bombay, persuaded our managing man that there was no danger of the porters traversing Uzaramo, without pay, escort, or provisions. On the 1st January, 1859, however, the gang rose to depart. I sent for the Kirangozi, who declared that though loth to leave us he must head his men: in return for which semi-fidelity I made him name his own reward; he asked two handsome cloths, a Gorah or piece of domestics, and one Fundo of coral beads—it was double his pay, but I willingly gave it, and directed Said bin Salim to write an order to that effect upon Mr. Rush Ramji, or any other Hindu who might happen to be at Kaole. But I rejected the suggestion of my companion, who proposed that half the sum agreed upon in Unyanyembe as payment to the porters—nine cloths each—should be given to them. In the first place, this donation would have been equivalent to a final dismissal. Secondly, the Arabs at Kazeh had warned me that it was not their custom to pay in part those who will not complete the journey to the coast; and I could see no reason for departing from a commercial precedent, evidently necessary to curb the Africans’ alacrity in desertion.

On the day following the departure of the gang I set out to visit the Jetting Spring, and found when returning to the village shortly before noon that my companion had sent a man to recal the “Pagazi,” who were said to be encamped close to the river, and to propose to them a march upon Mbuamaji. The messenger returned and reported that the Wanyamwezi had already crossed the river. Unwilling that the wretches should lose by their headstrongness, I at once ordered Said bin Salim to mount ass and to bring back the porters by offers which they would have accepted. Some time afterwards, when I fancied that he was probably haranguing the men, he came to me to say that he had not eaten and the sun was hot. With the view of shaming him I directed Kidogo to do the work, but as he also made excuses, Khamisi and Shehe, two sons of Ramji, were despatched with cloths to buy rations for the Pagazi, and, coûte que coûte, to bring them back. They set out on the 2nd January, and returned on the 7th January, never having, according to their own account, seen the fugitives.

This was a regrettable occurrence: it gave a handle to private malice under the specious semblance of public duty. But such events are common on the slave-path in Eastern Africa; of the seven gangs of porters engaged on this journey only one, an unusually small proportion, left me without being fully satisfied, and that one deserved to be disappointed.

We were detained at K’hutu till the 20th January. The airiest of schemes were ventilated by Said bin Salim and my companion. Three of the Baloch eye-sores, the “Graybeard Mohammed,” the mischief-maker Khudabakhsh, and the mulatto Jelai, were sent to the coast with letters, reports, and officials for Zanzibar and home. The projectors then attempted to engage Wak’hutu porters, but after a long palaver, P’hazi Madenge, the principal chief of Uziraha, who at first undertook to transport us in person to Dut’humi, declared that he could not assist us. It was then proposed to trust for porterage to the Wazaramo; that project also necessarily fell to the ground. Two feasible plans remained: either to write to the coast for a new gang, or to await the transit of some down-caravan. As the former would have caused an inevitable delay I preferred the latter, justly thinking that during this, the travelling-season, we should not long be detained.

On the 11th January, 1859, a large party of Wanyanwezi, journeying from the interior to the coast, bivouacked in the village. I easily persuaded Muhembe, the Mtongi or leader, to make over to me the services of nine of his men, and lest the African mind might conceive that in dismissing the last gang cloth or beads had been an object, I issued to these new porters seventy-two cloths, as much as if they had carried packs from Unyanwezi to the coast. On the 14th January, 1859, we received Mr. Apothecary Frost’s letters, drugs, and medical comforts, for which we had written to him in July 1857. The next day saw us fording the warm muddy waters of the Mgeta, which was then 100 feet broad: usually knee-deep, it rises after a few showers to the breast, and during the heavy rains which had lately fallen it was impassable. We found a little village on the left bank, and there we sat down patiently to await, despite the trouble inflicted by a host of diminutive ants, who knew no rest by day or night, the arrival of another caravan to complete our gang. The medical comforts so tardily received from Zanzibar fortified us, however, to some extent against enemies and inconveniences; we had æther-sherbet and æther-lemonade, formed by combining a wine-glass of the spirit with a quant. suff. of citric acid; and when we wanted a change the villagers supplied an abundance of Pombe or small beer.

On the 17th Jan. a numerous down-caravan entered the settlement which we occupied, and it proved after inquiry to be one of which I had heard often and much. The chiefs, Sulayman bin Rashid el Riami, a coast-Arab, accompanied by a Msawahili, Mohammed bin Gharib, and others, called upon me without delay, and from them I obtained a detailed account of their interesting travel.

The merchants had left the coast for Ubena in June, 1857, and their up-march had lasted six months. They set out with a total of 600 free men and slaves, armed with 150 guns, hired on the seaboard for eight to ten dollars per head, half being advanced: they could not persuade the Wanyamwezi to traverse these regions. The caravan followed the Mbuamaji trunk-road westward as far as Maroro in Usagara, thence deflecting southwards it crossed the Rwaha River, which at the ford was knee-deep. The party travelled through the Wahehe and the Wafaji, south of and far from the stream, to avoid the Warori, who hold both banks. The sultan of these freebooters, being at war with the Wabena, would not have permitted merchants to pass on to his enemies, and even in time of peace he fines them, it is said, one half of their property for safe-conduct. On the right hand of the caravan, or to the south from Uhehe to Ubena, was a continuous chain of highlands, pouring affluents across the road into the Rwaha River, and water was procurable only in the beds of these nullahs and fiumaras. If this chain be of any considerable length, it may represent the water-parting between the Tanganyika and the Nyassa Lakes, and thus divide by another and a southerly lateral band the great Depression of Central Africa. The land was dry and barren; in fact, Ugogo without its calabashes. Scarcely a blade of grass appeared upon the whity-brown soil, and the travellers marvelled how the numerous herds obtained their sustenance. The masika or rainy monsoon began synchronously with that of Unyamwezi, but it lasted little more than half its period in the north. In the sparse cultivation, surrounded by dense bush, they were rarely able to ration oftener than once a week. They were hospitably received by Kimanu, the Jyari or Sultan of Ubena. His people, though fierce and savage, appeared pleased by the sight of strangers. The Wabena wore a profusion of beads, and resembled in dress, diet, and lodging the Warori; they were brave to recklessness, and strictly monarchical, swearing by their chief. The Warori, however, were the cleaner race; they washed and bathed, whilst the Wabena used the same fluid to purify teeth, face, and hands.

At Ubena the caravan made considerable profits in slaves and ivory. The former, mostly captured or kidnapped, were sold for four to six fundo of beads, and, merchants being rare, a large stock was found on hand. About 800 were purchased, as each Pagazi or porter could afford one at least. On the return-march, however, half of the property deserted. The ivory, which rather resembled the valuable article procured at Karagwah than the poor produce of Unyanyembe, sold at 35 to 70 fundo of yellow and other coloured beads per frasilah of 35 lbs. Cloth was generally refused, and the kitindi or wire armlets were useful only in purchasing provisions.

On its return the caravan, following for eighteen stages the right bank of the Rwaha River, met with an unexpected misfortune. They were nighting in a broad fiumara called Bonye, a tributary from the southern highlands to the main artery, when suddenly a roar and rush of waters fast approaching and the cries of men struck them with consternation. In the confusion which ensued 150 souls, for the most part slaves, and probably ironed or corded together, were carried away by the torrent, and the porters lost a great part of the ivory. A more dangerous place for encampment can scarcely be imagined, yet the East African everywhere prefers it because it is warm at night, and the surface is soft. In the neighbourhood of the Rwaha they entered the capital district of Mui’ Gumbi, the chief, after a rude reception on the frontier, where the people, mistaking them for a plundering party of Wabena, gathered in arms to the number of 4000. When the error was perceived, the Warori warmly welcomed the traders, calling them brothers, and led them to the quarters of their Sultan. Mui’ Gumbi was apparently in his 70th year, a man of venerable look, tall, burly, and light-coloured, with large ears, and a hooked nose like a “moghrebi.” His sons, about thirty in number, all resembled him, their comeliness contrasting strongly with the common clansmen, who are considered by their chiefs as slaves. A tradition derives the origin of this royal race from Madagascar or one of its adjoining islets. Mui’ Gumbi wore a profusion of beads, many of them antiquated in form and colour, and now unknown in the market of Zanzibar: above his left elbow he had a lumpy bracelet of ivory, a decoration appropriated to chieftains. The Warori expressed their surprise that the country had not been lately visited by caravans, and, to encourage others, the Sultan offered large gangs of porters without pay to his visitors. These men never desert; such disobedience would cost them their lives. From the settlement of Mui’ Gumbi to the coast the caravan travelled without accident, but under great hardships, living on roots and grasses for want of means to buy provisions.

The same caravan-traders showed me divers specimens of the Warori, and gave me the following description, which tallied with the details supplied by Snay bin Amin and the Arabs of Kazeh.

The Warori extend from the western frontier of the Wahehe, about forty marches along principally the northern bank of the Rwaha River, to the meridian of Eastern Unyanyembe. They are a semi-pastoral tribe, continually at war with their neighbours. They never sell their own people, but attack the Wabena, the Wakimbu, the Wahehe, the Wakonongo, and the races about Unyangwira, and drive their captives to the sea, or dispose of them to the slavers in Usagara. The price is of course cheap; a male adult is worth from two to six shukkah merkani. Some years ago a large plundering party, under their chief Mbangera, attacked Sultan Kalala of the Wasukuma; they were, however, defeated, with the loss of their leader, by Kafrira of Kivira, the son-in-law of Kalala. They also ravaged Unyanyembe, and compelled the people to take refuge on the summit of a natural rock-fortress between Kazeh and Yombo, and they have more than once menaced the dominions of Fundikira. Those mighty boasters the Wagogo hold the Warori in awe; as the Arabs say, they shrink small as a cubit before foes fiercer than themselves. The Warori have wasted the lands of Uhehe and Unyangwira, and have dispersed the Wakimbu and the Wamia tribes. They have closed the main-road from the seaboard by exorbitant blackmail and charges for water, and about five years ago they murdered two coast Arab traders from Mbuamaji. Since their late defeat by the Watuta, they have been comparatively quiet. When the E. African Expedition, however, entered the country they had just distinguished themselves by driving the herds from Ugogi, and thus prevented any entrance into their country from that district. Like the pastoral races generally of this portion of the peninsula, the object of their raids is cattle: when a herd falls into their hands, they fly at the beasts like hyænas, pierce them with their assegais, hack off huge slices, and devour the meat raw.

The Warori are small and shrivelled black savages. Their diminutive size is doubtless the effect of scanty food, continued through many generations: the Sultans, however, are a peculiarly fine large race of men. The slave-specimens observed had no distinguishing mark on the teeth; in all cases, however, two short lines were tattooed across the hollow of the temples. The male dress is a cloak of strung beads, weighing ten or twelve pounds, and covering the shoulders like a European cape. Some wind a large girdle of the same material round the waist. The women wear a bead-kilt extending to the knees, or, if unable to afford it, a wrapper of skin. The favourite weapon is a light, thin, and pliable assegai; they carry a sheath of about a dozen, and throw them with great force and accuracy. The bow is unknown. They usually press to close quarters, each man armed with a long heavy spear. Iron is procured in considerable quantities both in Ubena and Urori. The habitations are said to be large Tembe, capable of containing 400 to 500 souls. The principal articles of diet are milk, meat, and especially fattened dog’s flesh—of which the chiefs are inordinately fond,—maize, holcus, and millet. Rice is not grown in these arid districts. They manage their intoxication by means of pombe made of grain and the bhang, which is smoked in gourd-pipes; they also mix the cannabis with their vegetable food. The Warori are celebrated for power of abstinence; they will march, it is said, six days without eating, and they require to drink but once in the twenty-four hours. In one point they resemble the Bedouins of Arabia: the chief will entertain his guests hospitably as long as they remain in his village, but he will plunder them the moment they leave it.

On the 19th January the expected down-caravan of Wanyamwezi arrived, and I found no difficulty in completing our carriage—a fair proof, be it remarked, that I had not lost the confidence of the people. The Mtongi, however, was, or perhaps pretended to be, ill; we were, therefore, delayed for another day in a place which had no charms for us.

The 21st January enabled us to bid adieu to Zungomero and merrily to take the footpath way. We made Konduchi on the 3rd February, after twelve marches, which were accomplished in fifteen days. There was little of interest or adventure in this return-line, of which the nine first stations had already been visited and described. As the Yegea mud, near Dut’humi, was throat-deep, we crossed it lower down: it was still a weary trudge of several miles through thick slabby mire, which admitted a man to his knees. In places, after toiling under a sickly sun, we crept under the tunnels of thick jungle-growth veiling the Mgazi and other streams; the dank and fetid cold caused a deadly sensation of faintness, which was only relieved by a glass of æther-sherbet, a pipe or two of the strongest tobacco, and half an hour’s repose. By degrees it was found necessary to abandon the greater part of the remaining outfit and the luggage: the Wanyamwezi, as they neared their destination, became even less manageable than before, and the sons of Ramji now seemed to consider their toils at an end. On the 25th January we forded the cold, strong, yellow stream of the Mgeta, whose sandy bed had engulfed my elephant-gun, and we entered with steady hearts the formerly dreaded Uzaramo. The 27th January saw us pass safely by the village where M. Maizan came to an untimely end. On that day Ramazan and Salman, children of Said bin Salim, returned from Zanzibar Island, bringing letters, clothing, and provisions for their master, who, by way of small revenge, had despatched them secretly from Zungomero. On the 28th January we reached the Makutaniro or anastomosis of the Kaole and Mbuamaji roads, where on our ingress the Wazaramo had barred passage in force. No one now ventured to dispute the way with well-armed paupers. That evening, however, the Mtongi indulged his men with “maneno,” a harangue. Reports about fatal skirmishes between the Wazaramo and a caravan of Wanyamwezi that had preceded us had flown about the camp; consequently the Mtongi recommended prudence. “There would be danger to-morrow—a place of ambuscade—the porters must not rise and be off too early nor too late—they must not hasten on, nor lag behind—they had with them Wazungu, and in case of accidents they would lose their name!” The last sentence was frequently repeated with ever increasing emphasis, and each period of the discourse was marked by a general murmur, denoting attention.

As I have said, there was no danger. Yet on the next day a report arose that we were to be attacked in a dense thicket—where no archer, be it observed, could bend his bow—a little beyond the junction of the Mbuamaji road with that of Konduchi, our destination. In the afternoon Said bin Salim, with important countenance, entered my tent and disclosed to me the doleful tidings. The road was cut off. He knew it. A great friend of his—a slave—had told him so. He remembered warning me that such was the case five days ago. I must either delay till an escort could be summoned from the coast, or—I must fee a chief to precede me and to reason with the enemy. It was in vain to storm, I feared that real obstacles might be placed by the timid and wily little man in our way, and I consented most unwillingly to pay two coloured cloths, and one ditto of blue-cotton, as hire to guard that appeared in the shape of four clothless varlets, that left us after the first quarter of an hour. The Baloch, headed by the Jemadar, knowing that all was safe, distinguished themselves on that night, for the first time in eighteen months, by uttering the shouts which prove that the Oriental soldier is doing “Zam,” i.e. is on the qui vive. When requested not to make so much noise they grumbled that it was for our sake, not for theirs.

On the 30th January our natives of Zanzibar screamed with delight at the sight of the mango-tree, and pointed out to one another, as they appeared in succession, the old familiar fruits, jacks and pine-apples, limes and cocoes. On the 2nd February we greeted, with doffed caps and with three times three and one more, as Britons will do on such occasions, the kindly smiling face of our father Neptune as he lay basking in the sunbeams between earth and air. Finally, the 3rd February 1859 saw us winding through the poles decorated with skulls—they now grin in the Royal College of Surgeons, London—a negro Temple-bar which pointed out the way into the little maritime village of Konduchi.

Our entrance was attended with the usual ceremony, now familiar to the reader: the warmen danced, shot, and shouted, a rabble of adults, youths, and boys crowded upon us, the fair sex lulliloo’d with vigour, and a general procession conducted their strangers to the hut swept, cleaned, and garnished for us by old Premji, the principal Banyan of the head-quarter village, and there stared and laughed till they could stare and laugh no more.

On the evening of the same day an opportunity offered of transferring the Jemadar, the Baloch, and my bête noire, Kidogo, to their homes in Zanzibar Island, which lies within sight of Konduchi: as may be imagined, I readily availed myself of it. After begging powder and et cæteras to the last, the monocular insisted upon kissing my hand, and departed weeping bitterly with the agony of parting. By the same boat I sent a few lines to H. M. consul, Zanzibar, enclosing a list of necessaries, and requesting that a Battela, or coasting-craft, might be hired, provisioned, and despatched without delay, as I purposed to explore the Delta and the unknown course of the Rufiji River. In due time Said bin Salim and his “children,” including the fair Halimah and Zawada—the latter was liberally rewarded by me for services rendered to my companion—and shortly afterwards the sons of Ramji, or rather the few who had not deserted or lagged behind, were returned to their master, and were, I doubt not, received with all the kindness which their bad conduct deserved.

We were detained at Konduchi for six days between the 3rd and 10th February. There is nothing interesting in this little African village port: instead of describing it, I will enter into a few details concerning African matters of more general importance.

The Ivory Porter, the Cloth Porter, and Woman, in Usagara.

CHAP. XVIII.
VILLAGE LIFE IN EAST AFRICA.

The assertion may startle the reader’s preconceived opinions concerning the savage state of Central Africa and the wretched condition of the slave races, negroid and negro; but is not less true that the African is in these regions superior in comforts, better dressed, fed, and lodged, and less worked than the unhappy Ryot of British India. His condition, where the slave trade is slack, may, indeed, be compared advantageously with that of the peasantry in some of the richest of European countries.

THE BASIN OF KISANGA.

The African rises with the dawn from his couch of cow’s hide. The hut is cool and comfortable during the day, but the barred door impeding ventilation at night causes it to be close and disagreeable. The hour before sunrise being the coldest time, he usually kindles a fire, and addresses himself to his constant companion, the pipe. When the sun becomes sufficiently powerful, he removes the reed-screen from the entrance, and issues forth to bask in the morning-beams. The villages are populous, and the houses touching one another enable the occupants, when squatting outside and fronting the central square, to chat and chatter without moving. About 7 A.M., when the dew has partially disappeared from the grass, the elder boys drive the flocks and herds to pasture with loud shouts and sounding applications of the quarter-staff. They return only when the sun is sinking behind the western horizon. At 8 P.M. those who have provisions at home enter the hut to refection with ugali or holcus-porridge; those who have not, join a friend. Pombe, when procurable, is drunk from the earliest dawn.

After breaking his fast the African repairs, pipe in hand, to the Iwánzá—the village “public,” previously described. Here, in the society of his own sex, he will spend the greater part of the day, talking and laughing, smoking, or torpid with sleep. Occasionally he sits down to play. As with barbarians generally, gambling in him is a passion. The normal game is our “heads and tails,” its implement a flat stone, a rough circle of tin, or the bottom of a broken pot. The more civilised have learned the “bao” of the coast, a kind of “tables,” with counters and cups hollowed in a solid plank. Many of the Wanyamwezi have been compelled by this indulgence to sell themselves into slavery: after playing through their property, they even stake their aged mothers against the equivalent of an old lady in these lands,—a cow or a pair of goats. As may be imagined, squabbles are perpetual; they are almost always, however, settled amongst fellow-villagers with bloodless weapons. Others, instead of gambling, seek some employment which, working the hands and leaving the rest of the body and the mind at ease, is ever a favourite with the Asiatic and the African; they whittle wood, pierce and wire their pipe-sticks—an art in which all are adepts—shave one another’s heads, pluck out their beards, eyebrows, and eyelashes, and prepare and polish their weapons.

At about 1 P.M. the African, unless otherwise employed, returns to his hut to eat the most substantial and the last meal of the day, which has been cooked by his women. Eminently gregarious, however, he often prefers the Iwánzá as a dining-room, where his male children, relatives, and friends meet during the most important hour of the twenty-four. With the savage and the barbarian food is the all-in-all of life:—food is his thought by day,—food is his dream by night. The civilised European, who never knows hunger or thirst without the instant means of gratifying every whim of appetite, can hardly conceive the extent to which his wild brother’s soul is swayed by stomach; he can scarcely comprehend the state of mental absorption in which the ravenous human animal broods over the carcase of an old goat, the delight which he takes in superintending every part of the cooking process, and the jealous eye with which he regards all who live better than himself.

The principal articles of diet are fish and flesh, grain and vegetables; the luxuries are milk and butter, honey, and a few fruits, as bananas and Guinea-palm dates; and the inebrients are pombe or millet-beer, toddy, and mawa or plantain-wine.

Fish is found in the lakes and in the many rivers of this well-watered land; it is despised by those who can afford flesh, but it is a “godsend” to travellers, to slaves, and to the poor. Meat is the diet most prized; it is, however, a luxury beyond the reach of peasantry, except when they can pick up the orts of the chiefs. The Arabs assert that in these latitudes vegetables cause heartburn and acidity, and that animal food is the most digestible. The Africans seem to have made the same discovery: a man who can afford it almost confines himself to flesh, and he considers fat the essential element of good living. The crave for meat is satisfied by eating almost every description of living thing, clean or unclean; as a rule, however, the East African prefers beef, which strangers find flatulent and heating. Like most people, they reject game when they can command the flesh of tame beasts. Next to the bullock the goat is preferred in the interior; as indeed it is by the Arabs of Zanzibar Island; whereas those of Oman and of Western Arabia abandon it to the Bedouins. In this part of Africa the cheapest and vilest meat is mutton, and its appearance—pale, soft, and braxy—justifies the prejudice against it. Of late years it has become the fashion to eat poultry and pigeons; eggs, however, are still avoided. In the absence of history and tradition, it is difficult to decide whether this aversion to eggs arises from an imported or an indigenous prejudice. The mundane egg of Hindoo mythology probably typified the physiological dogma “omne vivum ex ovo,” and the mystic disciples would avoid it as representing the principle of life. In remote ages the prejudice may have extended to Africa, although the idea which gave birth to it was not familiar to the African mind. Of wild flesh, the favourite is that of the zebra; it is smoked or jerked, despite which it retains a most savoury flavour. Of the antelopes a few are deliciously tender and succulent; the greater part are black, coarse, and indigestible. One of the inducements for an African to travel is to afford himself more meat than at home. His fondness for the article conquers at times even his habitual improvidence. He preserves it by placing large lumps upon a little platform of green reeds, erected upon uprights about eighteen inches high, and by smoking it with a slow fire. Thus prepared, and with the addition of a little salt, the provision will last for several days, and the porters will not object to increase their loads by three or four pounds of the article, disposed upon a long stick like gigantic kababs. They also jerk their stores by exposing the meat upon a rope, or spread upon a flat stone, for two or three days in the sun; it loses a considerable portion of nutriment, but it packs into a conveniently small compass. This jerked meat, when dried, broken into small pieces, and stored in gourds or in pots full of clarified and melted butter, forms the celebrated travelling provision in the East called kavurmeh: it is eaten as a relish with rice and other boiled grains. When meat is not attainable and good water is scarce, the African severs one of the jugulars of a bullock and fastens upon it like a leech. This custom is common in Karagwah and the other northern kingdoms, and some tribes, like the Wanyika, near Mombasah, churn the blood with milk.

The daily food of the poor is grain, generally holcus, maize, or bajri (panicum); wheat is confined to the Arabs, and rice grows locally, as in the Indian peninsula. The inner Africans, like the semi-civilised Arabs of Zanzibar, the Wasawahili, and the Wamrima, ignore the simple art of leavening bread by acidulated whey, sour bean-paste, and similar contrivances universally practised in Oman. Even the rude Indian chapati or scone is too artificial for them, and they have not learned to toast grain. Upon journeys the African boils his holcus unhusked in an earthen basin, drinks the water, and devours the grain, which in this state is called masango; at home he is more particular. The holcus is either rubbed upon a stone—the mill being wholly unknown—or pounded with a little water in a huge wooden mortar; when reduced to a coarse powder, it is thrown into an earthen pot containing boiling water sufficient to be absorbed by the flour; a little salt, when procurable, is added; and after a few stirrings with a ladle, or rather with a broad and flat-ended stick, till thoroughly saturated, the thick mass is transferred into a porous basket, which allows the extra moisture to leak out. Such is the ugali, or porridge, the staff of life in East Africa.

During the rains vegetables are common in the more fertile parts of East Africa; they are within reach of the poorest cultivator. Some varieties, especially the sweet potato and the mushroom, are sliced and sun-dried to preserve them through the year. During the barren summer they are boiled into a kind of broth.

Milk is held in high esteem by all tribes, and some live upon it almost exclusively during the rains, when cattle find plentiful pasture. It is consumed in three forms—“mabichi,” when drunk fresh; or converted into mabivu (butter-milk), the rubb of Arabs; or in the shape of mtindi (curded milk), the laban of Arabia, and the Indian dahi. These Africans ignore the dudh-pinda, or ball of fresh-milk boiled down to hardness by evaporation of the serum, as practised by the Indian halwaí (confectioner); the indurated sour-clot of Arabia, called by the Bedouins el igt, and by the Persians the Baloch, and the Sindhians kurut, is also unknown; and they consider cheese a miracle, and use against it their stock denunciation, the danger of bewitching cattle. The fresh produce, moreover, has few charms as a poculent amongst barbarous and milk-drinking races: the Arabs and the Portuguese in Africa avoid it after the sun is high, believing it to increase bile, and eventually to cause fever: it is certain that, however pleasant the draught may be in the cool of the morning, it is by no means so much relished during the heat of the day. On the other hand, the curded milk is everywhere a favourite on account of its cooling and thirst-quenching properties, and the people accustomed to it from infancy have for it an excessive longing. It is procurable in every village where cows are kept, whereas that newly-drawn is generally half-soured from being at once stored in the earthen pots used for curding it. These East Africans do not, however, make their dahi, like the Somal, in lumps floating upon the tartest possible serum; nor do they turn it, like the Arabs, with kid’s rennet, nor like the Baloch with the solanaceous plant called panir. The best is made, as in India, by allowing the milk to stand till it clots in a pot used for the purpose, and frequently smoked for purity. Butter-milk is procurable only in those parts of the country where the people have an abundance of cattle.

Butter is made by filling a large gourd, which acts as churn, with partially-soured milk, which is shaken to and fro: it is a poor article, thin, colourless, and tainted by being stored for two or three months, without preliminary washing, in the bark-boxes called vilindo. In the Eastern regions it is converted into ghee by simply melting over the fire: it is not boiled to expel the remnant of sour milk, impurities are not removed by skimming, and finally it becomes rancid and bitter by storing in pots and gourds which have been used for the purpose during half a generation. The Arabs attempt to do away with the nauseous taste by throwing into it when boiling a little water, with a handful of flour or of unpowdered rice. Westward of Unyamwezi butter is burned instead of oil in lamps.

The common oil in East Africa is that of the karanga, bhuiphali, or ground-nut (Arachis hypogæa): when ghee is not procurable, the Arabs eat it, like cocoa-nut oil, with beans, manioc, sweet-potato and other vegetables. A superior kind of cooking is the “uto” extracted from the ufuta, simsim or sesamum, which grows everywhere upon the coast, and extends far into the interior. The process of pressing is managed by pounding the grain dry in a huge mortar; when the oil begins to appear, a little hot water is poured in, and the mass is forcibly squeezed with huge pestles; all that floats is then ladled out into pots and gourds. The viscid chikichi (palm-oil) is found only in the vicinity of the Tanganyika Lake, although the tree grows in Zanzibar and its adjacent islets. Oil is extracted from the two varieties of the castor-plant; and, in spite of its unsavoury smell, it is extensively used as an unguent by the people. At Unyanyembe and other places where the cucumber grows almost wild, the Arabs derive from its seed an admirable salad-oil, which in flavour equals, and perhaps surpasses, the finest produce of the olive. The latter tree is unknown in East Africa to the Arabs, who speak of it with a religious respect, on account of the mention made of it in the Koran.

In East Africa every man is his own maltster; and the “Iwánzá,” or public-house of the village, is the common brewery. In some tribes, however, fermentation is the essential occupation of the women. The principal inebrient is a beer without hops, called pombe. This ποτος θειος of the negro and negroid races dates from the age of Osiris: it is the buzah of Egypt and the farther East, and the merissa of the Upper Nile, the ξιθον and xythum of the West, and the oala or boyaloa of the Kafirs and the South African races. The taste is somewhat like soured wort of the smallest description, but strangers, who at first dislike it exceedingly, are soon reconciled to it by the pleasurable sensations to which it gives rise. Without violent action, it affects the head, and produces an agreeable narcotism, followed by sound sleep and heaviness in the morning—as much liked by the barbarian, to whom inebriation is a boon, as feared by the civilised man. Being, as the Arabs say, a “cold drink,” causing hydrocele and rheumatism, it has some of the after-effects of gin, and the drunkard is readily recognised by his red and bleared eyes. When made thick with the grounds or sediment of grain, it is exceedingly nutricious. Many a gallon must be drunk by the veteran malt-worm before intoxication; and individuals of both sexes sometimes live almost entirely upon pombe. It is usually made as follows: half of the grain—holcus, panicum, or both mixed—intended for the brew is buried or soaked in water till it sprouts; it is then pounded and mixed with the other half, also reduced to flour, and sometimes with a little honey. The compound is boiled twice or thrice in huge pots, strained, when wanted clear, through a bag of matting, and allowed to ferment: after the third day it becomes as sour as vinegar. The “togwa” is a favourite drink, also made of holcus. At first it is thick and sickly, like honeyed gruel; when sour it becomes exceedingly heady. As these liquors consume a quantity of grain, they are ever expensive; the large gourdful never fetches less than two khete or strings of beads, and strangers must often pay ten khete for the luxury. Some years ago an Arab taught the Wanyamwezi to distil: they soon, however, returned to their favourite fermentation.

The use of pombe is general throughout the country: the other inebrients are local. At the island and on the coast of Zanzibar tembo, or toddy, in the West African dialects tombo, is drawn from the cocoa-tree; and in places a pernicious alcohol, called mvinyo, is extracted from it. The Wajiji and other races upon the Tanganyika Lake tap the Guinea-palm for a toddy, which, drawn in unclean pots, soon becomes acid and acrid as the Silesian wine that serves to mend the broken limbs of the poor. The use of bhang and datura-seed has already been alluded to. “Máwá,” or plantain-wine, is highly prized because it readily intoxicates. The fruit when ripe is peeled and hand-kneaded with coarse green grass, in a wide-mouthed earthen pot, till all the juice is extracted: the sweet must is then strained through a cornet of plantain-leaf into a clean gourd, which is but partially stopped. To hasten fermentation a handful of toasted or pounded grain is added: after standing for two days in a warm room the wine is ready for drinking.

The East Africans ignore the sparkling berille or hydromel of Abyssinia and Harar, and the mead of the Bushman race. Yet honey abounds throughout the country, and near the villages log-hives, which from their shape are called mazinga or cannons by the people, hang from every tall and shady tree. Bees also swarm in the jungles, performing an important part in the vegetable economy by masculation or caprification, and the conveyance of pollen. Their produce is of two kinds. The cheaper resembles wasp-honey in Europe; it is found in the forest, and stored in gourds. More than half-filled with dirt and wood-bark, it affords but little wax; the liquid is thin and watery, and it has a peculiarly unpleasant flavour. The better variety, the hive-honey, is as superior to the produce of the jungle as it is inferior to that of India and of more civilised lands. It is tolerable until kept too long, and it supplies a good yellow wax, used by the Arabs to mix with tallow in the manufacture of “dips.” The best honey is sold after the rains; but the African hoards his store till it reddens, showing the first stage of fermentation: he will eat it after the second or third year, when it thins, froths, and becomes a rufous-brown fluid of unsavoury taste; and he rarely takes the trouble to remove the comb, though the Arabs set him the example of straining the honey through bags of plantain-straw or matting. Decomposition, moreover, is assisted by softening the honey over the fire to extract the wax instead of placing it in the sun. The price varies from one to three cloths for a large gourdful. When cheap, the Arabs make from it “honey-sugar:” the material, after being strained and cleaned, is stored for two or three weeks in a cool place till surface-granulation takes place; the produce resembles in taste and appearance coarse brown sugar. The “siki,” a vinegar of the country, is also made of one part honey and four of water, left for a fortnight to acetise: it is weak and insipid. Honey is the only sweetener in the country, except in the places where the sugar-cane grows, namely, the maritime and the Lakist regions. The people chew it, ignoring the simple art of extracting and inspissating the juice; nor do they, like the natives of Usumbara, convert it into an inebrient. Yet sugar attracts them like flies; they clap their hands with delight at the taste; they buy it for its weight of ivory; and if a thimbleful of the powder happen to fall upon the ground, they will eat an ounce of earth rather than lose a grain of it.

After eating, the East African invariably indulges in a long fit of torpidity, from which he awakes to pass the afternoon as he did the forenoon, chatting, playing, smoking, and chewing “sweet-earth.” Towards sunset all issue forth to enjoy the coolness: the men sit outside the Iwánzá, whilst the women and the girls, after fetching water for household wants from the well, collecting in a group upon their little stools, indulge in the pleasures of gossipred and the pipe. This hour in the more favoured parts of the country is replete with enjoyment, which even the barbarian feels, though not yet indoctrinated into æsthetics. As the hours of darkness draw nigh, the village doors are carefully closed, and, after milking his cows, each peasant retires to his hut, or passes his time squatting round the fire with his friends in the Iwánzá. He has not yet learned the art of making a wick, and of filling a bit of pottery with oil. When a light is wanted, he ignites a stick of the oleaginous mtata, or msásá-tree—a yellow, hard, close-grained, and elastic wood, with few knots, much used in making spears, bows, and walking staves—which burns for a quarter of an hour with a brilliant flame. He repairs to his hard couch before midnight, and snores with a single sleep till dawn. For thorough enjoyment, night must be spent in insensibility, as day is in inebriety; and, though an early riser, he avoids the “early to bed,” in order that he may be able to slumber through half the day.

It is evident that these barbarians lead rather a “fast” life; there are, however, two points that modify its evil consequences. The “damned distillation” is unknown, consequently they do not suffer from delirium tremens, its offspring. Their only brain-work is that necessitated by the simple wants of life, and by the unartificial style of gambling which they affect. Amongst the civilized, the peculiar state of the nervous system in the individual, and in society, the abnormal conditions induced by overcrowding in cities and towns, has engendered a cohort of dire diseases which the children of nature ignore.

Such is the African’s idle day, and thus every summer is spent. As the wintry rains draw nigh, the necessity of daily bread suggests itself. The peasants then leave their huts at 6 or 7 A.M., often without provision, which now becomes scarce, and labour till noon, or 2 P.M., when they return home, and find food prepared by the wife or the slave-girl. During the afternoon they return to work, and sometimes, when the rains are near, they are aided by the women. Towards sunset all wend homewards in a body, laden with their implements of cultivation, and singing a kind of “dulce domum,” in a simple and pleasing recitative.

When the moon shines bright the spirits of the East African are raised like the jackal’s, and a furious drumming and a droning chorus summon the maidens to come out and enjoy the spectacle of a dance. The sexes seldom perform together, but they have no objection to be gazed at by each other. Their style of saltation is remarkable only for the extreme gravity which it induces—at no other time does the East African look so serious and so full of earnest purpose. Yet with all this thoughtfulness, “poor human nature cannot dance of itself.” The dance has already been described as far as possible: as may be imagined, the African Thalia is by no means free from the reproach which caused Mohammed to taboo her to his followers.

Music is at a low ebb. Admirable timists, and no mean tunists, the people betray their incapacity for improvement by remaining contented with the simplest and the most monotonous combinations of sounds. As in everything else, so in this art, creative talent is wanting. A higher development would have produced other results; yet it is impossible not to remark the delight which they take in harmony. The fisherman will accompany his paddle, the porter his trudge, and the housewife her task of rubbing down grain, with song; and for long hours at night the peasants will sit in a ring repeating, with a zest that never flags, the same few notes, and the same unmeaning line. Their style is the recitative, broken by a full chorus, and they appear to affect the major rather than the interminable minor key of the Asiatic. Their singing also wants the strained upper notes of the cracked-voiced Indian performer, and it ignores the complicated raga and ragini or Hindu modes, which appear rather the musical expression of high mathematics than the natural language of harmony and melody.

1. Paddle in East Africa. 2. The Sange or Gourd. 3. Bellows. 4. Drum. 5. Stool. 6. The Zeze (guitar). 7. The D’hete, or Kidete.

The instruments of the East African are all of foreign invention, imported from various regions, Madagascar, and the coast. Those principally in use are the following. The zeze, or banjo, resembles in sound the monochord Arabian rubabah, the rude ancestor of the Spanish guitar. The sounding-board is a large hollow gourd, open below; on the upper part, fastened by strings that pass through drilled holes, is a conical piece of gourd, cleft longitudinally to admit the arm or handle, which projects at a right angle. The arm is made of light wood, from 18 inches to 2 feet in length; the left-hand extremity has three frets formed by two notches, with intervals, and thus the total range is of six notes. A single string, made of “mondo,” the fibre of the mwale or raphia-palm, is tied to a knob of wood projecting from the dexter extremity of the handle, thence it passes over a bridge of bent quill, which for tuning is raised or depressed, and lastly it is secured round another knob at the end beyond the frets. Sometimes, to form a bass or drone, a second string is similarly attached along the side of the arm, whilst the treble runs along the top.

The kinanda, a prototype of the psaltery and harp, the lute and lyre, and much used by the southern races in the neighbourhood of Kilwa, is of two kinds. One is a shallow box cut out of a single plank, thirteen inches long by five or six in breadth, and about two inches in depth: eleven or twelve strings are drawn tightly over the hollow. The instrument is placed in the lap, and performed upon with both hands. The other is a small bow-guitar, with an open gourd attached to the part about the handle: sometimes the bow passes through the gourd. This instrument is held in the left hand, whilst the “tocador” strikes its single cord with a thin cane-plectrum about one foot long. As in the zeze, the gourd is often adorned with black tattoo, or bright brass tacks, disposed in various patterns, amongst which the circle and the crescent figure conspicuously. A third form of the kinanda appears to be a barbarous ancestor of the Grecian lyre, which, like the modern Nubian “kisirka,” is a lineal descendant from the Egyptian oryx-horn lute with the transverse bar. A combination of the zeze and kinanda is made by binding a dwarf hollow box with its numerous strings to the open top of a large circular gourd, which then acts as a sounding-board.

The wind-instruments are equally rude, though by no means so feeble as their rivals. The nai or sackbut of India, and the siwa, a huge bassoon of black wood, at least five feet long, are known only to the coast-people. The tribes of the interior use the d’hete or kidete, called by the Wasawahili zumari. It is literally the bucolic reed, a hollowed holcus-cane, pierced with four holes at the further end: the mouthpiece is not stopped in any way, and the instrument is played upon solely by the lips, a drone being sometimes supplied by the voice. Thus simple and ineffective, it has nevertheless a familiar sound to European ears. The barghumi is made by cutting an oblong hole, about the size of a man’s nail, within two or three inches of the tip of a koodoo, an oryx, or a goat’s horn, which, for effect and appearance, is sometimes capped with a bit of cane, whence projects a long zebra’s or giraffe’s tail. Like the det’he, it is played upon by the lips; and without any attempt at stops or keys, four or five notes may be produced. Its sound, heard from afar, especially in the deep silence of a tropical night, resembles not a little the sad, sweet music of the French cor-de-chasse; and when well performed upon, it might be mistaken for a regimental bugle. There are smaller varieties of the barghumi, which porters carry slung over the shoulder, and use as signals on the line of march. Another curious instrument is a gourd, a few inches in circumference, drilled with many little apertures: the breath passes through one hole, and certain notes are produced by stopping others with the fingers—its loud, shrill, and ear-piercing quavers faintly resemble the European “piccolo.” The only indigenous music of the pastoral African—the Somal, for instance—is whistling, a habit acquired in youth when tending the flocks and herds. This “Mu’unzi” is soft and dulcet; the ear, however, fails to detect in it either phrase or tune. For signals the East Africans practise the kik’horombwe, or blowing between the fore and the middle fingers with a noise like that of a railway whistle. The Wanyamwezi also blow over the edge of the hollow in a small antelope’s horn, or through an iron tube; and the Watuta are said to use metal-whistles as signals in battle.

The drum is ever the favourite instrument with the African, who uses it as the alarum of war, the promise of mirth, the token of hospitality, and the cure of diseases: without drumming his life would indeed be a blank. The largest variety, called “ngoma ku,” is the hollowed hole of a mkenga or other soft tree, with a cylindrical solid projection from the bottom, which holds it upright when planted in the ground. The instrument is from three to five feet in length with a diameter of from one to two feet: the outside is protected with a net-work of strong cord. Over the head is stretched a rough parchment made of calf’s-skin; and a cap of green hide, mounted when loose, and afterwards shrunken by exposure to fire, protects the bottom. It is vigorously beaten with the fists, and sometimes with coarse sticks. There are many local varieties of this instrument, especially the timbrel or tabret, which is about a foot long, shaped like an hour-glass or a double “darabukkah,” and provided with a head of iguana-skin. The effect of tom-toming is also produced by striking hollow gourds and similar articles. The only cymbal is the upatu, a flat-bottomed brass pot turned upside down, and tapped with a bit of wood. The “sanje,” a gourd full of pebbles, is much affected in parts of the country by women, children, and, especially, by the mganga or rain-maker; its use being that of the babe’s rattle amongst Europeans.

The insipidity of the African’s day is relieved by frequent drinking bouts, and by an occasional hunt. For the former the guests assemble at early dawn, and take their seats in a circle, dividing into knots of three or four to facilitate the circulation of the bowl. The mwandázi, or cup-bearer, goes round the assembly, giving scrupulous precedence to the chiefs and elders, who are also provided with larger vessels. The sonzo, or drinking-cup, which also serves as a travelling canteen, is made generally by the women, of a kind of grass called mávú, or of wild palm-leaf: the split stalks are neatly twisted into a fine cord, which is rolled up, beginning from the bottom, in concentric circles, each joined to its neighbour by a binding of the same material: it is sometimes stained and ornamented with red and black dyes. The shape when finished is a truncated cone, somewhat like a Turk’s fez; it measures about six inches in diameter by five in depth, and those of average size may contain a quart. This cup passes around without delay or heel-taps, and the topers stop occasionally to talk, laugh, and snuff, to chew tobacco, and to smoke bhang. The scene of sensuality lasts for three or four hours—in fact, till the pombe prepared for the occasion is exhausted,—when the carousers, with red eyes, distorted features, and the thickest of voices, stagger home to doze through the day. Perhaps in no European country are so many drunken men seen abroad as in East Africa. Women also frequently appear intoxicated; they have, however, private “pombe,” and do not drink with the men.

The East African, who can seldom afford to gratify his longing for meat by slaughtering a cow or a goat, looks eagerly forward to the end of the rains, when the grass is in a fit condition for firing; then, armed with bows and arrows, and with rungu or knobkerries, the villagers have a battue of small antelopes, hares, and birds. During the hot season also, when the waters dry up, they watch by night at the tanks and pools, and they thus secure the larger kinds of game. Elephants especially are often found dead of drought during the hot season; they are driven from the springs which are haunted by the hunters, and, according to the Arabs, they fear migrating to new seats where they would be attacked by the herds in possession. In many parts the huntsmen suspend by a cord from the trees sharpened blocks of wood, which, loosened by the animal’s foot, fall and cause a mortal wound. This “suspended spear,” sprung by a latch, has been described by a host of South African travellers. It has been sketched by Lieut. Boteler (“Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery to Africa and Arabia,” chap. iv.); and Major Monteiro (“O Muata Cazembe,” chap. v.); and described by Mr. Galton, Mr. Gordon Cumming, and Dr. Livingstone (chap. xxviii.). Throughout Ugogo and upon the maritime regions large game is caught in pitfalls, here called mtego, and in India ogi: in some places travellers run the risk of falling into these traps. The mtego is an oblong excavation like a great grave, but decreasing in breadth below the surface of the ground and it is always found single, not in pairs as in South Africa. The site generally chosen is near water, and the hole is carefully masked with thin layers of small sticks and leaves. The Indian “surrounds” and the hopo or V-shaped trap of the Bakwens are here unknown. The distribution of treasure-trove would seem to argue ancient partitions and lordships, and, in dividing the spoils of wild or tame animals, the chief claims, according to ancient right, the breast. This custom apparently borrowed by the Hebrews from Africa (Leviticus, chap. vii. 30, 31), is alluded to by almost all South-African travellers.

The elephant roams in herds throughout the country, affecting the low grounds where stagnating water produces a plentiful vegetation: with every human being its foe, and thousands living by its destruction, the animal is far from becoming scarce; indeed, the greatest number of footprints appeared near Chogwe and Tongwe, stations of Baloch garrisons close to the town of Pangani. The elephant hunt is with the African a solemn and serious undertaking. He fortifies himself with periapts and prophylactics given by the mganga, who also trains him to the use of his weapon. The elephant-spear resembles our boarding-pike rather than the light blunt arm employed in war; it is about six feet long, with a broad tapering head cut away at the shoulders, and supported by an iron neck, which is planted in a thick wooden handle, the junction being secured by a cylinder of raw hide from a cow’s tail passed over it, and shrunk on by drying: a specimen was deposited with the Royal Geographical Society. The spear is invariably guarded by a mpigi or charm, the usual two bits of wood bound together with a string or strip of skin. It is not a little curious that the East African, though born and bred a hunter, is, unlike almost all barbarians, as skill-less as an European in the art of el asr, the “spoor” or “sign.”

The hunting-party, consisting of fifteen to twenty individuals, proceeds before departure to sing and dance, to drink and drum for a consecutive week. The women form line and perambulate the village, each striking an iron jembe or hoe with a large stone, which forms an appropriate accompaniment to the howl and the vigelegele, “lullilooing,” or trills of joy. At every step the dancer sways herself elephant-like from side to side, and tosses her head backwards with a violence threatening dislocation of the atlas. The line, led by a fugle-woman by the right, who holds two jembe in one hand, but does not drum, stops facing every Arab house where beads may be expected, and performs the most hideous contortions, whirling the arms round the shoulder-socket, kneeling, and imitating the actions of various animals. The labour done, the ladies apply to their pombe, and reappear after four or five hours with a tell-tale stagger and a looseness of limb which adds a peculiar charm to their gesticulations. The day concludes with a “fackeltanz” of remarkable grotesqueness. This merrymaking is probably intended as a consolation for the penance which the elephant-hunter’s wife performs during the absence of her mate; she is expected to abstain from good food, handsome cloth, and fumigation: she must not leave the house, and for an act of infidelity the blame of failure in the hunt will fall heavily upon her. Meanwhile the men—at least as “far gone” as the women—encircle with a running jumping gait, and with the grace and science of well-trained bears, a drum or a kilindo,—the normal bark bandbox,—placed with open mouth upon the ground, and violently beaten with sticks and fists or rubbed and scraped with stones. It forms also a sounding-board for a kinanda or bow-guitar, one end of which is applied to it, whilst a shrill fife of goat’s horn gives finish and completeness to the band. Around the drum are placed several elephants’ tails, possibly designed to serve the purpose of the clay-corpse introduced into the feasts of ancient Egypt.

When thoroughly drenched with drink, the hunters set out early in the morning, carrying live brands lest fire should fail them in the jungle, and applying them to their mouths to keep out the cold air. These trampers are sometimes dangerous to stragglers from caravans, especially in countries where the robber or the murderer expects to escape with impunity. In some places hunting-huts have been erected; they are, however, seldom used when elephants are sought, as a herd once startled does not readily return to the same pasture-grounds. The great art of the African muinzi or elephant-hunter is to separate a tusker from the herd without exciting suspicion, and to form a circle round the victim. The mganga, then rising with a shout, hurls or thrusts the first spear, and his example is followed by the rest. The weapons are not poisoned: they are fatal by a succession of small wounds. The baited beast rarely breaks, as might be expected, through the frail circle of assailants: its proverbial obstinacy is excited; it charges one man, who slips away, when another, with a scream, thrusts the long stiff spear into its hind quarters, which makes it change intention and turn fiercely from the fugitive to the fresh assailant. This continues till the elephant, losing breath and heart, attempts to escape; its enemies then redouble their efforts, and at length the huge prey, overpowered by pain and loss of blood trickling from a hundred gashes, bites the dust. The victors, after certain preliminaries of singing and dancing, carefully cut out the tusks with small, sharp axes, and the rich marrow is at once picked from the bamboo and devoured upon the spot, as the hare’s liver is in Italy. The hunt concludes with a grand feast of fat and garbage, and the hunters return home in triumph, laden with ivory, with ovals of hide for shields, and with festoons of raw and odorous meat spitted upon long poles.

Throughout East Africa the mouse, as the saying is, travels with a staff: the education of youth and the exercises of manhood are confined to the practice of weapons. Yet the people want the expertness of the Somal of the North and the Kafirs of the South; their internal feuds perpetuate the necessity of offensive measures, and of the presence of arms, but their agricultural state, rendering them independent of the chase, prevents their reliance upon their skill for daily food. In consequence of being ever armed, the African like the Asiatic is nothing without his weapons; he cannot use his strength, and when he comes to blows he fights like a woman. Thus the habitual show of arms is a mere substitute for courage; in dangerous countries, as in Ugogo, the Wanyamwezi do not dare to carry them for fear of provocation, whereas at home and in comparative safety they never appear without spear or knobstick.

The weapons universally carried are the spear and the assegai. The bow and arrow, the knobkerry, the dagger, and the battle-axe are confined to certain tribes, whilst the musket and the sword are used beyond the coast only by strangers. The shield is seldom seen.

The lance of the European, Arab, and Indian is unknown to these unequestrian races. The bravest tribes prefer the stabbing-spear, which brings them to close quarters with the enemy. The weapon indeed cannot make the man, but by reaction it greatly modifies his manliness. Thus the use of short weapons generally denotes a gallant nation; the old Roman gladius, the French briquet, and the Afghan charay would be useless in the hands of a timid people. Under the impression that the further men stand from their enemies the less is to be expected from them, the French knights not inaptly termed the “villanous saltpetre” the “grave of honour,” whilst their English rivals called the gun a “hell-born murderer,” and an “instrument hateful in the sight of God and man.” The Africans have also acted upon this idea. A great Kafir chief did what Plutarch relates of Camillus: he broke short the assegais of his “magnificent savages” when he sent them to war, and forbade each warrior to return without having stained his stick with blood; the consequence was, that, instead of “dumb-shooting” at a distance, they rushed in and won.

The mkuki, farárá, or spear, is more generally used for stabbing than throwing. It has a long narrow blade of untempered iron, so soft that it may be bent with the fingers; it is capable, however, of receiving a fine edge. The shoulders are rounded off, and one or two lines extend lengthways along the centre from socket to point. At the socket where the shaft is introduced, it its covered with a bit of skin from the tail of some animal drawn on like a stocking, and sometimes the iron is forced on when heated, so as to adhere by contraction of the metal. The shaft, which is five to six feet long, is a branch of the dark-brown mkole or the light-yellow mtata-tree, chosen because close-grained, tough, pliable, and free from knots; it is peeled, straightened in hot ashes, pared down to the heart, smoothed with a knife, carefully oiled or greased, without which it soon becomes brittle, and polished with the leaves of the mkuba-tree. The wood is mostly ornamented with twists of brass and copper wire; it is sometimes plated with zinc or tin, and it is generally provided with an iron heel for planting in the ground. Some tribes—the northern Wagogo and their neighbours the Wamasai for instance—have huge spear-heads like shovels, unfit for throwing. The best weapons for war are made in Karagwah.

The kikuki, assegai, or javelin, is much used by the Warori and other fighting tribes, who enter action with a sheaf of those weapons. Nowhere, however, did the East African appear possessed of the dexterity described by travellers amongst the southern races. The assegai resembles the spear in all points, except that the head is often barbed, and it is more lightly timbered; the shaft is rarely more than four feet in length, and it tapers to the thinness of a man’s little finger. It is laid upon the palm of the right hand, and balanced with a vibratory motion till the point of equilibrium is found, when it is delivered with little exertion of the muscles beyond the run or spring, and as it leaves the hand it is directed by the forefinger and thumb. Sometimes, to obviate breaking, the assegai is made like the Indian “sang,” wholly of iron.

The East African is a “good archère and a fayre.” The cubit-high Armiger begins as soon as he can walk with miniature weapons, a cane bow and reed bird-bolts tipped with wood, to practise till perfect at gourds and pumpkins; he considers himself a man when he can boast of iron tips. With many races “pudor est nescire sagittas.” The bravest, however, the Wamasai and the Wakwafi, the Warori and the Watuta, ignore the practice; with them—

“No proof of manhood, none
Of daring courage, is the bow;”

and the Somali abandons it to his Midgan or servile. The bow in East Africa is invariably what is called a “self-bow,” that is to say, made of a single piece, and backed weapons are unknown. It is uncommonly stiff, and the strongest archer would find it difficult to “draw up a yard;” of this nature probably was the bow sent to Cambyses by the Æthiopian monarch, with the taunting message that he had better not attack men who could bend such weapons. When straight it may measure five feet from tip to tip. It is made with the same care as the spear, from a branch of the mumepweke or the mtata-tree, laboriously cut and scraped so as to taper off towards the horns, and smeared with oil or grease, otherwise it is easily sprung, and it is sometimes adorned with plates of tin and zinc, with copper or brass wire and tips. The string is made of hide, gut, the tendons of a bullock’s neck or hock, and sometimes of tree-fibre; it is nearly double the bow in length, the extra portion being whipped for strength as well as contingent use round the upper horn. In shooting the bow is grasped with the left hand, but the thumb is never extended along the back; the string is drawn with the two bent forefingers, though sometimes the shaft is held after the Asiatic fashion with the thumb and index. The bow is pulled with a jerk as amongst the Somal, and not let fly as by Europeans with a long steady loose. The best bows are made by the tribes near the Rufiji River.

The arrow is about two feet in length; the stele or shaft is made of some light wood, and often of reed. Its fault is want of weight: to inflict damage upon an antelope it must not be used beyond point-blank, fifteen to twenty paces; and a score will be shot into a bullock before it falls. The musketeer, despising the arrow at a distance, fears it at close quarters, knowing that for his one shot the archer can discharge a dozen. From the days of Franklin to the era of Silistria, Citate, and Kars, fancy-tacticians have advocated the substitution of the bow or the addition of it to the “queen of weapons,” the musket. Their reasons for a revival of the obsolete arm are its lightness, its rapidity of discharge, and its silent action. They forget, however, the saying of Xenophon, that it is impiety in a man who has not learned archery from his childhood to ask such boon of the easy gods.

The East Africans ignore the use of red-hot arrows; and the poisoned shaft, an unmanly weapon, unused by the English and French archers even in their deadliest wars, is confined to the Wanyika of Mombasah, the Wazaramo, the Wak’hutu, the Western Wasagara, and the people of Uruwwa. The Wazaramo and Wak’hutu call the plant from which the poison is extracted Mkandekande. They sold at somewhat an exorbitant price a leaf full of the preparation, but avoided pointing out to the expedition the plant, which from their description appears to be a variety of euphorbia. M. Werne (“Sources of the White Nile,” chap. viii.) says that the river tribe prepare their arrow-poison from a kind of asclepias, whose milky sap is pressed out between two stones and allowed to thicken. Dr. Livingstone (chap. viii.) mentions the use of the n’gwa caterpillar amongst the Bushmen, who also poison waters with the Euphorbia arborescens; and Mr. Andersson (chap. vii.) specifies the Euphorbia candelabrum amongst the Ovaherero and the Hill Damaras. In East Africa the poison-leaves are allowed to distil their juices into a pot, which for inspissation is placed over a slow fire; becoming thick and slab, the contents are applied with a stick to the arrow, and are smoothed between the hands. When finished, the part behind the barb is covered with a shiny brown-black coat, not unlike pitch, to the extent of four or five inches. After drying it is renewed by the application of a fresh layer, the old being removed by exposure to the fire. The people fear this poison greatly; they wash their hands after touching it, and declare that a wounded man or beast loses sense, “moons about,” and comes to the ground before running a quarter of a mile. Much exaggeration, however, must be expected upon the subject of toxicology amongst barbarians: it acts like the Somali arrow-poison, as a strong narcotic, and is, probably, rarely fatal, even when freshly applied.

Fearing the action of the wind upon such light shafts if unfledged, the archer inserts into the cloven end three or four feathers, the cockfeather being as in Europe perpendicular when the arrow is nocked. The pile or iron head is curiously and cruelly barbed with long waving tails; the neck is toothed and edged by dinting the iron when hot with an axe, and it is sometimes half-sawed that it may break before extraction. The East Africans also have forkers or two-headed shafts, and bird-bolts or blunt arrows tipped with some hard wood, used when the weapon is likely to be lost. Before loosing an arrow the archer throws into the air a pinch of dust, not to find out the wind, but for good luck, like the Tartars of Tibet before discharging their guns. In battle the heavy-armed man holds his spear and a sheaf of spare arrows in the bow-hand, whilst a quiver slung to the left side contains reserve missiles, and a little axe stuck in the right side of the girdle is ready when the rest fail. The ronga or quiver is a bark-case, neatly cut and stained. It is of two forms, full-length, and provided with a cover for poisoned, and half-length for unpoisoned, arrows.

The rungu or knobkerry is the African club or mace; it extends from the Cape to the negroid and the Somal tribes north of the equator. The shape varies in almost every district: the head is long or round, oval or irregular, and sometimes provided on one side with an edge; it is cut out of the hardest wood, and generally from one piece. In some cases the knob is added to the handle, and in others it is supplied with a spear-head. The handle is generally two feet long, and it is cut thin enough to make the weapon top-heavy. The Mnyamwezi is rarely seen abroad without this weapon; he uses it in the chase, and in battle against the archer: he seems to trust it in close quarters rather than the feather-weight arrow or the spear that bends like gutta-percha, and most murders are committed with it. The East people do not, like the Kafirs, use the handle of the knobkerry as a dibble.

The sime or dudgeon is the makeshift for the Arab jambiyah and the Persian khanjar. The form of this weapon differs in almost every tribe. The Wahumba or Wamasai use blades about four feet long by two fingers in breadth; the long, round, and guardless hilt is ribbed for security of grasp, and covered with leather; their iron is of excellent quality, and the shape of the weapon has given rise to the report that “they make swords on the model of those of the Knights Templars.” The Wazegura and the Wagogo use knives not unlike the poniard of the Somal. In some tribes it is 3·5 feet long, with a leathern sheath extending half-way up the blade. Generally it is about half that size, straight, pointed, and double-edged, or jagged with teeth. The regions about the Lake manufacture and export great numbers of these weapons varying from a finger’s length to full dimensions.

The shoka or battle-axe is much used by the tribes around the Tanganyika. It has a blade of triangular shape, somewhat longer and thinner than that used as a working tool, which is passed through the bulging head of a short handle cut out of the bauhinia or some other hard tree. Amongst the Wasagara the peculiar mundu or bill often serves for the same purpose.

The targes of the Wasagara and the Wanyamwezi have already been described; the Wavinza make a shield of basket-work six feet by two, and much resembling that of the southern Kafirs, and the Wa’ungu carry large pavoises of bull’s hide. It is probable that the exceeding humidity of the climate, so ruinous to leather, prevents the general adoption of the shield; on the march it is merely an encumbrance, and the warrior must carry it on his head beyond the reach of the dewy grass.

The maritime races, the Wazegura, and others opposite the island of Zanzibar, have imprudently been allowed to purchase fire-arms, which they employ in obstructing caravans and in kidnapping-commandos against their weaker neighbours. A single German house has, it is said, sold off 13,000 Tower muskets in one year. The arms now preferred are those exported by Hamburg and America; they fetch 4 dollars each; the French single-barrel is somewhat cheaper, averaging 3 dollars 50 cents. In the interior fire-arms are still fortunately rare—the Arabs are too wise to arm the barbarians against themselves. In Unyamwezi an old gun is a present for a chief, and the most powerful rulers seldom can boast of more than three. Gunpowder is imported from Zanzibar in kegs of 10 and 25 lbs., bearing the American mark; it is of the description used in blasting, and fouls the piece after a few discharges. The price varies at Zanzibar from 3 dollars 50 cents to 7 dollars, and upon the coast from 5 to 10 dollars per small keg; in Unyamwezi ammunition is exchanged for ivory and slaves, and some Arab merchants keep as many as thirty kegs in the house, which they retail to factors and traders at the rate of 1 to 2 shukkahs per lb.

Swords in East Africa are used only by strangers. The Wasawahili and the slave-factors prefer the kittareh, a curved sabre made in Oman and Hazramaut, or, in its stead, an old German cavalry-blade. The Arabs carry as a distinction the “faranji,” a straight, thin, double-edged, guardless, and two-handed sword, about four feet long, and sharp as a carving-knife; the price varies from 10 to 100 dollars.

The negroid is an unmechanical race; his industry has scarcely passed the limits of savage invention. Though cotton abounds in the interior, the Wanyamwezi only have attempted a rude loom; and the working of iron and copper is confined to the Wafyoma and the Lakist races. The gourd is still the principal succedaneum for pottery. The other branches of industry which are necessary to all barbarians are mats and baskets, ropes and cords.

Carpentering amongst the East Africans is still in its rudest stage; no Dædalus has yet taught them to jag their knives into saws. It is limited to making the cots and cartels upon which the people invariably sleep, and to carving canoes, mortars, bowls, rude platters, spoons, stools, and similar articles of furniture. The tree, after being rung and barked to dry the juices, is felled by fire or the axe; it is then cut up into lengths of the required dimensions, and hacked into shape with slow and painful toil. The tools are a shoka, or hatchet of puerile dimensions, perhaps one-fifth the size of our broad axes, yet the people can use it to better advantage than the admirable implement of the backwoodsman. The mbizo or adze is also known in the interior, but none except the Fundi and the slaves trained upon the coast have ever seen a hand-saw, a centre-bit, or a chisel.

Previous to weaving, cotton is picked and cleaned with the hand; it is then spun into a coarse thread. Like the Paharis of India, the East Africans ignore the distaff; they twist the material round the left wrist. The mlavi, or spindle, is of two forms; one is a short stick, inserted in a hole practised through a lump of lead or burnt clay, like the Indian bhaunri; the other is a thin bit of wood, about 1·5 ft. long, with a crescent of the same material on the top, and an iron hook to hold the thread. The utanda, or loom-frame differs from the vertical-shaped article of West Africa. Two side-poles about twelve feet long, and supported at the corners by four uprights, are placed at an angle, enabling the workman to stand to his work; and the oblong is completed by two cross-bars, round which the double line of the warp, or longitudinal threads of the woven tissue, are secured. The dimensions of the web vary from five to six feet in length, by two to three broad. The weft, or transverse thread, is shot with two or three thin laths, or spindles, round which the white and coloured yarns are wound, through the doubled warp, which is kept apart by another lath passing between the two layers, and the spindle is caught with the left hand as it appears at the left side. Lastly, a lath, broader and flatter than the others, is used to close the work, and to beat the thread home. As the workman deems three hours per diem ample labour, a cloth will rarely be finished under a week. Taste is shown in the choice of patterns: they are sometimes checks with squares, alternately black and white, or in stripes of black variegated with red dyes upon a white ground: the lines are generally broad in the centre, but narrow along the edges, and the texture not a little resembles our sacking. The dark colour is obtained from the juice of the mzima-tree; it stains the yarn to a dull brown, which becomes a dark mulberry, or an Indian-ink black, when buried for two or three days in the vegetable mud of the ponds and pools. The madder-red is produced by boiling the root and bark of a bush called mda’a; an ochreish tint is also extracted from the crimson matter that stains the cane and the leaves of red holcus. All cloths have the tambua or fringe indispensable in East Africa. Both weaving and dyeing are men’s not women’s work in these lands.

The cloth is a poor article: like the people of Ashanti, who from time immemorial have woven their own cottons, the East African ever prefers foreign fabrics. The loose texture of his own produce admits wind and rain; when dry it is rough and unpleasant, when wet heavy, comfortless as leather, and it cannot look clean, as it is never bleached. According to the Arabs, the yarn is often dipped into a starch made from grain, for the purpose of thickening the appearance of the texture: this disappears after the first washing, and the cloth must be pegged down to prevent its shrinking to half-size. The relative proportion of warp and weft is unknown, and the woolly fuzzy quality of the half-wild cotton now in use impoverishes the fabric. Despite the labour expended upon these cloths, the largest size may be purchased for six feet of American domestics, or for a pair of iron hoes: there is therefore little inducement to extend the manufacture.

Iron is picked up in the state called Utundwe, or gangue, from the sides of low sandstone hills: in places the people dig pits from two to four feet deep, and, according to the Arabs, they find tears, nodules, and rounded lumps. The pisolithic iron, common in the maritime regions, is not worked. The mhesi or blacksmith’s art is still in its infancy. The iron-stone is carried to the smithy, an open shed, where the work is done: the smelting-furnace is a hole in the ground, filled with lighted charcoal, upon which the utundwe is placed, and, covered with another layer of fire, it is allowed to run through the fuel. The blast is produced by mafukutu (bellows): they are two roughly rounded troughs, about three inches deep by six in diameter, hewn out of a single bit of wood and prolonged into a pair of parallel branches, pierced for the passage of the wind through two apertures in the walls of the troughs. The troughs are covered with skin, to which are fixed two long projecting sticks for handles, which may be worked by a man sitting. A stone is placed upon the bellows for steadiness, and clay nozzles, or holcus-canes with a lateral hole, are fixed on to the branches to prevent them from charring. Sometimes as many as five pairs are worked at once, and great is the rapidity required to secure a continuous outdraught. Mr. Andersson (“Lake Ngami,” chap. xvi.) gives a sketch of a similar contrivance amongst the South Africans: the clay-tubes, however, are somewhat larger than those used in Unyamwezi by “blacksmiths at work.” The ore is melted and remelted several times, till pure; tempering and case-hardening are unknown, and it is stored for use by being cast in clay-moulds, or made up into hoes. The hammer and anvil are generally smooth stones. The principal articles of ironmongery are spears, assegais, and arrow-heads, battle-axes, hatchets, and adzes, knives and daggers, sickles and razors, rings and sambo, or wire circlets. The kinda is a large bell, hung by the ivory-porter to his tusk on the line of the march: the kengere or kiugi a smaller variety which he fastens to his legs. Pipes, with iron bowls and stems, are made by the more ingenious, and the smoker manufactures for himself small pincers or pliers which, curious to say, are unknown even by name to the more civilised people of Zanzibar.

Copper is not found upon this line in East Africa. From the country of the Kazembe, however, an excellent red and heavy, soft and bright variety, not unlike that of Japan, finds its way to Ujiji, and sometimes to the coast. It is sold in bars from one to two feet long. At Ujiji, where it is cheap, four to five pounds are procurable for two doti, there worth about four dollars. Native copper, therefore, is almost as expensive as that imported from Europe. It is used in making the rude and clumsy bangles affected by both sexes, sambo, and ornaments for the spear and bow, the staff and the knobkerry.

Gourds.

The art of ceramics has made but little progress in East Africa; no Anacharsis has yet arisen to teach her sons the use of the wheel. The figuline, a greyish-brown clay, is procured from river-beds, or is dug up in the country; it is subjected to the preliminary operations of pounding, rubbing dry upon a stone, pulverising, and purifying from stones and pebbles. It is then worked into a thick mass, with water, and the potter fashions it with the hand, first shaping the mouth; he adds an inch to it when dry, hardens it in the sun, makes another addition, and thus proceeds till it is finished. Lines and other ornaments having been traced, the pots are baked in piles of seven or eight, by burning grass—wood-fire would crack them—consequently the material always remains half-raw. Usually the colour becomes lamp-black; in Usagara, however, the potter’s clay burns red, like the soil—the effect of iron. A cunning workman will make in a day four of these pots, some of them containing several gallons, and their perfect regularity of form, and often their picturesqueness of shape, surprise the stranger. The best are made in Ujiji, Karagwah, and Ugunda: those of Unyamwezi are inferior, and the clay of Zanzibar is of all the worst.

There are many kinds of pots which not a little resemble the glazed jars of ancient Egypt. The ukango, which acts as vat in fermenting liquor, is of the greatest dimensions. The mtungi is a large water-vessel with a short and narrow neck, and rounded at the bottom so as to be conveniently carried on the head. The chungu, or cooking-pot, has a wide and open mouth; it is of several varieties, large and small. The mkungu is a shallow bowl, precisely like those made at the tomb of Moses, and now familiar to Europe. At Ujiji and on the Lake they also manufacture smaller vessels, with and without spouts.

In a country where pottery is scarce and dear, the buyu or Cucurbita lagenaria supplies every utensil except those used for cooking; its many and various adaptations render it a valuable production. The people train it to grow in the most fantastic shapes, and ornament it by tatooing with dark paint, and by patterns worked in brass tacks and wires; where it splits, it is artistically sewn together. The larger kinds serve as well-buckets, water-pots, travelling-canteens, churns, and the sounding-boards of musical instruments: a hookah, or water-pipe, is made by distorting the neck, and the smaller varieties are converted into snuff-boxes, medicine-cases, and unguent-pots. The fruit of the calabash-tree is also called buyu: split and dried it is used as ladles, but it is too small to answer all the purposes of the gourd.

The East Africans excel in the manufacture of mtemba or bori—pipe-heads. These are of two kinds. One is made from a soft stone, probably steatite, found in Usonga, near Utumbara, and on the road to Karagwah: it is, however, rare, and about ten times the price of the clay bowls, because less liable to break. The other is made of a plastic or pipe-clay, too brittle to serve for pots, and it invariably cracks at the shank, unless bound with wire. Both are hand-made, and are burned in the same rough way as the pottery. At Msene, where the clay pipe is cheapest, the price of the bowl is a khete, or double string of white or blue beads. The pipe of Unyamwezi is of graceful shape, a cone with the apex downwards; this leaves but little of the hot, oily, and high-smelling tobacco at the bottom, whereas in Europe the contrary seems to be the rule. In Ujiji the bowl is small, rounded, and shallow; it is, moreover, very brittle. The most artful “mtemba” is made by the people of Uvira: black inside, like other pottery, its exterior is coloured a greyish-white, and is adorned with red by means of the Indian geru (Colcothar or Crocus Martis). Bhang is always, and tobacco is sometimes, smoked in a water-pipe: the bowl is of huge size, capable of containing at least half a pound, and its upper half is made to incline towards the smoker’s face. The Lakist tribes have a graceful variety, like the Indian “chillam,” very different from the awkward, unwieldy, and distorted article now fashionable in Unyamwezi and the Eastern countries. The usual pipe-stem is a tube of about 1·5 feet long, generally a hollow twig of the dwarf melewele-tree. As it is rudely bored with hot wire, it must be made air-tight by wax and a coating of brass or copper wire; a strap of hairy skin prevents the pipe-shank parting from the stick. Iron and brass tubes are rare and highly prized; the fortunate possessor will sometimes ask for a single specimen two shukkahs.

Basket-making and mat-weaving are favourite occupations in East Africa for both sexes and all ages; even the Arabs may frequently be seen absorbed in an employment which in Oman would be considered derogatory to manliness. The sengo, or common basket, from the coast to the Lake, is an open, shallow, and pan-shaped article, generally made of mwanzi, or bamboo-bark, reddened in parts and stained black in others by the root of the Mkuruti and other trees, and white where the outer coat has been removed from the bamboo. The body, which resembles a popular article in ancient Egypt, is neatly plaited, and the upper ends are secured to a stout hoop of the same material. The kanda (in the plural makanda) acts in the interior as matting for rooms, and is converted into bags for covering bales of cloth, beads, and similar articles. It is made from the myara (myala) or Chamærops humilis; the leaf is peeled, sun-dried, and split with a bit of iron into five or six lengths, joined at the base, which is trimmed for plaiting. The Karagwah, the only mat made in the interior of Africa, is used as bedding and carpeting; on journeys the porters bivouac under it; it swells with the wet, and soon becomes impervious to rain or heavy dew. It is of two kinds: one of rushes growing in the vicinity of water, the other of grass rolled up into little bundles. A complicated stitch runs along the whole length in double lines. The best description of mat is called mkeke. It is made at Zanzibar and the coast, from the young fronds of the ukhindu or brab, neatly stained with various dyes. Women of family pride themselves upon their skill in making the mkeke, which still attains a price of four dollars. Amongst the maritime races none but the chiefs have a right to sit upon it; there are no such distinctions in the interior, where these mats are carried for sale by the slaves. From the brab also are made neat strainers to purify honey, pombe, and similar articles. They are open-mouthed cylinders, from one to two feet long, and varying in diameter from three to six inches. The bottom is narrowed by whipping fibre round the loose ends of the leaves. The fishing-nets have been described when treating of the Tanganyika. The luávo, or hand-net, is made of calabash or other fibre, with coarse wide meshes; it is affixed to two sticks firmly planted in the ground, and small animals are driven into it by beaters.

The basts or barks and fibrous substances in East Africa are cheap and abundant, but labour and conveyance being difficult and expensive, they would require to be shipped from Zanzibar in the condition of half-stuff. The best and most easily divisible into pliant and knot-tying fibres are, upon the coast the pineapple, and in the interior the plantain. The next in value are the integuments of the calabash and the myombo tree. These fibres would produce a good article were it not for the artlessness of African manipulation. The bark is pounded or chewed, and, in lieu of spinning, is twisted between the hands; the largest ropes are made in half an hour, and break after a few minutes of hard work. A fine silky twine, used for fishing, is made from the aloetic plants called by the Wasawahili mkonge, and by the Arabs bag, masad and kideh: it is the hig or haskul of Somaliland, where it affects the poorest ground, cannot be burnt down, and is impassable to naked legs and cattle. The leaves are stripped of their coats, and the ends being tightly bound between two pieces of wood, the mass of fibre is drawn out like a sword from its sheath. Fatilah, or matchlock matches, are made in Zanzibar of cotton, and in the interior of calabash fibre.

As might be expected among a sparse population leading a comparatively simple life, the vast variety of diseases which afflict more civilised races, who are collected in narrow spaces, are unknown in East Africa even by name. Its principal sporadic is fever, remittent and intermittent, with its multitudinous secondaries, concerning which notices have been scattered through the preceding pages. The most dangerous epidemic is its aborigen, the small-pox, which, propagated without contact or fomites, sweeps at times like a storm of death over the land. For years it has not left the Arab colony at Kazeh, and, shortly before the arrival of the Expedition, in a single month 52 slaves died out of a total of 800. The ravages of this disease amongst the half-starved and over-worked gangs of caravan porters have already been described; as many as a score of these wretches have been seen at a time in a single caravan; men staggering along blinded and almost insensible, jostling and stumbling against every one in their way; and mothers carrying babes, both parent and progeny in the virulent stage of the fell disease. The Arabs have partially introduced the practice of inoculating, anciently known in South Africa; the pus is introduced into an incision in the forehead between the eyebrows. The people have no remedy for small-pox: they trust entirely to the vis medicatrix. There is a milder form of the malady, called shúrúá, resembling the chicken-pox of Europe; it is cured by bathing in cold water and smearing the body with ochreish earth. The Arab merchants of Unyanyembe declare that, when they first visited Karagwah, the people were decimated by the táún, or plague. They describe correctly the bubo under the axillæ, the torturing thirst, and the rapid fatality of the disease. In the early part of 1859 a violent attack of cholera, which extended from Maskat along the eastern coast of Arabia and Africa, committed terrible ravages in the island of Zanzibar and throughout the maritime regions. Of course, no precautions of quarantine or cordon militaire were taken, yet the contagion did not extend into the interior.

Strangers in East Africa suffer from dysenteries and similar disorders consequent upon fever; and, as in Egypt, few are free from hæmorrhoids, which in Unyamwezi are accompanied by severe colics and umbilical pains. Rheumatism and rheumatic fever, severe catarrhs and influenzas, are caused by the cold winds, and, when crossing the higher altitudes, pneumonia and pleurisis abound in the caravan. On the coast many settlers, Indian and Arab, show upon the skin whitish leprous spots, which are treated with various unguents. In the interior, though well provided with fresh meat and vegetables, travellers are attacked by scurvy, even in the absence of its normal exciting causes, damp, cold, and poor diet. This phenomenon has often been observed upon the upper course of the Nile; Europeans have been prostrated by it even in the dry regions westward of the Red Sea, and the Portuguese officers who explored Usenda of the Kazembe suffered tortures from the complaint.

Common diseases among the natives are umbilical hernia and prolapsus: the latter is treated by the application of powdered bhang, dry or mixed with ghee. They are subject to kihindu-hindu—in Arabic, sara—the epilepsy, which they pretend to cure by the marrow of rhinoceros’ shank. Of the many fits and convulsions which affect them, the kichyoma-chyoma is the most dreaded. The word, which means the “little irons,” describes the painful sensations, the cramps and stitches, the spasms and lancinations, which torment the sufferer. Many die of this disease. It is not extraordinary that the fits, convulsions, and contortions which it suddenly induces should lead the people to consider it in the light of possession, and the magician to treat it with charms. Madness and idiocy are not uncommon: of the patient it is said, “Ana wazimo”—“he has fiends.” In most parts the people, after middle age, are tender-eyed from the effects of smoke within, glare without, exposure and debauchery. Not a few samples of acute ophthalmic disease were seen.

In the lower and more malarious spots, desquamations, tumours, and skin diseases are caused by suddenly suppressed perspiration. The terrible kidonda or helcoma of the maritime regions and the prurigo of Ujiji have already been alluded to. The “chokea” is a hordeolum or large boil, generally upon the upper eyelid. The “funza” is supposed to result from the bite of a large variety of fly. It begins with a small red and fiery swelling, which bursts after a time and produces a white entozoon about half an inch in length. “Kumri” are common blains, and “p’hambazi” malignant blind-boils, which leave a deep discoloured scar; when the parts affected are distant from the seat of circulation, the use of the limb is sometimes lost. For most of these sores tutiya or murtutu, blue-stone, is considered a specific.

As might be expected amongst an ignorant and debauched race coming in direct contact with semi-civilisation, the lues has found its way from the island of Zanzibar to Ujiji and into the heart of Africa. It is universally believed both by the natives and by the Arabs, who support the assertion with a host of proofs, to be propagated without contact. Such, indeed, is the general opinion of the Eastern world, where perhaps its greater virulence may assimilate it to the type of the earlier attacks in Europe. The disease, however, dies out, and has not taken root in the people as amongst the devoted races of North America and the South Sea islands. Although a malignant form was found extending throughout the country, mutilation of the features and similar secondaries were not observed beyond the maritime region. Except blue-stone, mineral drugs are unknown, and the use of mercury and ptyalism have not yet exasperated the evil. The minor form of lues is little feared and yields readily to simples; the consequences, however, are strangury, cystitis, chronic nephritic disease, and rheumatism.

“Polypharmacy” is not the fault of the profession in East Africa, and the universal belief in possession tends greatly to simplify the methodus modendi. The usual cathartic is the bark of a tree called kalákalá, which is boiled in porridge. There is a great variety of emetics, some so violent that several Arabs who have been bold enough to swallow them, barely escaped with life. The actual cautery—usually a favourite counter-irritant amongst barbarous people—is rarely practised in East Africa; in its stead powder of blue-stone is applied to the sore or wound, which has been carefully scraped, and the patient howls with pain for twenty-four hours. They bleed frequently as Italians, who even after being startled resort to a mild phlebotomy, and they cut down straight upon the vein with a sharp knife. They prefer the cucurbitula cruenta, like the Arabs, who say,—

“Few that cup repent;
Few that bleed, rejoice.”

A favourite place is the crown of the head. The practitioner, after scarifying the skin with a razor or a dagger, produces a vacuum by exhausting the air through a horn applied with wetted edges; at the point is a bit of wax, which he closes over the aperture with his tongue or teeth, as the hospital “singhi” in India uses a bit of leather. Cupping—called ku hu míká or kumíká—is made highly profitable by showing strange appearances in the blood. They cure by excision the bite of snakes, which, however, are not feared nor often fatal in these lands. They cannot reduce dislocations, and they never attempt to set or splint a broken bone.

The mganga or medicine-man, in his character of “doctor,” is a personage of importance. He enters the sick-room in the dignity of antelope-horn, grease, and shell-necklace, and he sits with importance upon his three-legged stool. As the devil saves him the trouble of diagnosis, he begins by a prescription, invariably ordering something edible for the purpose, and varying it, according to the patient’s means, from a measure of grain to a bullock. He asserts, for instance, that a pound of fat is required for medicine; a goat must be killed, and his perquisite is the head or breast—a preliminary to a more important fee. Then the price of prescription—a sine quâ non to prescribing—is settled upon and paid in advance. After certain questions, invariably suggesting the presence of poison, the medical practitioner proceeds to the cure; this is generally a charm or periapt bound round the part affected. In common diseases, however, like fever, the mganga will condescend to such profane processes as adhibiting sternutatories and rubbing the head with vegetable powders. If the remedies prove too powerful or powerless, he at once decamps; under normal circumstances he incapacitates himself for performing his promise of calling the next day by expending his fee in liquor. The Africans have in one point progressed beyond Europeans: there are as many women physicians as men.

A Mnyamwezi.

A Mheha.

CHAP. XIX.
THE CHARACTER AND RELIGION OF THE EAST AFRICANS; THEIR GOVERNMENT, AND SLAVERY.

The study of psychology in Eastern Africa is the study of man’s rudimental mind, when, subject to the agency of material nature, he neither progresses nor retrogrades. He would appear rather a degeneracy from the civilised man than a savage rising to the first step, were it not for his apparent incapacity for improvement. He has not the ring of the true metal; there is no rich nature, as in the New Zealander, for education to cultivate. He seems to belong to one of those childish races which, never rising to man’s estate, fall like worn-out links from the great chain of animated nature. He unites the incapacity of infancy with the unpliancy of age; the futility of childhood, and the credulity of youth, with the scepticism of the adult and the stubbornness and bigotry of the old. He has “beaten lands” and seas. For centuries he has been in direct intercourse with the more advanced people of the eastern coast, and though few have seen an European, there are not many who have not cast eyes upon an Arab. Still he has stopped short at the threshold of progress; he shows no signs of development; no higher and more varied orders of intellect are called into being. Even the simple truths of El Islam have failed to fix the thoughts of men who can think, but who, absorbed in providing for their bodily wants, hate the trouble of thinking. His mind, limited to the objects seen, heard, and felt, will not, and apparently cannot, escape from the circle of sense, nor will it occupy itself with aught but the present. Thus he is cut off from the pleasures of memory, and the world of fancy is altogether unknown to him. Perhaps the automaton which we call spiritual suffers from the inferiority of the mechanism by which it acts.

The East African is, like other barbarians, a strange mixture of good and evil: by the nature of barbarous society, however, the good element has not, whilst the evil has, been carefully cultured.

As a rule, the civilised or highest type of man owns the sway of intellect, of reason; the semi-civilised—as are still the great nations of the East—are guided by sentiment and propensity in a degree incomprehensible to more advanced races; and the barbarian is the slave of impulse, passion, and instinct, faintly modified by sentiment, but ignorant of intellectual discipline. He appears, therefore, to the civilised man a paralogic being,—a mere mass of contradictions; his ways are not our ways, his reason is not our reason. He deduces effects from causes which we ignore; he compasses his ends by contrivances which we cannot comprehend; and his artifices and polity excite, by their shallowness and “inconsequence,” our surprise and contempt. Like that Hindu race that has puzzled the plain-witted Englishman for the century closing with the massacres of Delhi and Cawnpore, he is calculated to perplex those who make conscience an instinct which elevates man to the highest ground of human intelligence. He is at once very good-tempered and hard-hearted, combative and cautious; kind at one moment, cruel, pitiless, and violent at another; sociable and unaffectionate; superstitious and grossly irreverent; brave and cowardly, servile and oppressive; obstinate, yet fickle and fond of changes; with points of honour, but without a trace of honesty in word or deed; a lover of life, though addicted to suicide; covetous and parsimonious, yet thoughtless and improvident; somewhat conscious of inferiority, withal unimprovable. In fact, he appears an embryo of the two superior races. He is inferior to the active-minded and objective, the analytic and perceptive European, and to the ideal and subjective, the synthetic and reflective Asiatic. He partakes largely of the worst characteristics of the lower Oriental types—stagnation of mind, indolence of body, moral deficiency, superstition, and childish passion; hence the Egyptians aptly termed the Berbers and negroes the “perverse race of Kush.”

The main characteristic of this people is the selfishness which the civilised man strives to conceal, because publishing it would obstruct its gratification. The barbarian, on the other hand, displays his inordinate egotism openly and recklessly; his every action discloses those unworthy traits which in more polished races chiefly appear on public occasions, when each man thinks solely of self-gratification. Gratitude with him is not even a sense of prospective favours; he looks upon a benefit as the weakness of his benefactor and his own strength; consequently, he will not recognise even the hand that feeds him. He will, perhaps, lament for a night the death of a parent or a child, but the morrow will find him thoroughly comforted. The name of hospitality, except for interested motives, is unknown to him: “What will you give me?” is his first question. To a stranger entering a village the worst hut is assigned, and, if he complain, the answer is that he can find encamping ground outside. Instead of treating him like a guest, which the Arab Bedouin would hold to be a point of pride, of honour, his host compels him to pay and prepay every article, otherwise he might starve in the midst of plenty. Nothing, in fact, renders the stranger’s life safe in this land, except the timid shrinking of the natives from the “hot-mouthed weapon” and the necessity of trade, which induces the chiefs to restrain the atrocities of their subjects. To travellers the African is, of course, less civil than to merchants, from whom he expects to gain something. He will refuse a mouthful of water out of his abundance to a man dying of thirst; utterly unsympathising, he will not stretch out a hand to save another’s goods, though worth thousands of dollars. Of his own property, if a ragged cloth or a lame slave be lost, his violent excitement is ridiculous to behold. His egotism renders him parsimonious even in self-gratification; the wretched curs, which he loves as much as his children, seldom receive a mouthful of food, and the sight of an Arab’s ass feeding on grain elicits a prolonged “Hi! hi!” of extreme surprise. He is exceedingly improvident, taking no thought for the morrow—not from faith, but rather from carelessness as to what may betide him; yet so greedy of gain is he that he will refuse information about a country or the direction of a path without a present of beads. He also invariably demands prepayment: no one keeps a promise or adheres to an agreement, and, if credit be demanded for an hour, his answer would be, “There is nothing in my hand.” Yet even greed of gain cannot overcome the levity and laxity of his mind. Despite his best interests, he will indulge the mania for desertion caused by that mischievous love of change and whimsical desire for novelty that characterise the European sailor. Nor can even lucre prevail against the ingrained indolence of the race—an indolence the more hopeless as it is the growth of the climate. In these temperate and abundant lands Nature has cursed mankind with the abundance of her gifts; his wants still await creation, and he is contented with such necessaries as roots and herbs, game, and a few handfuls of grain—consequently improvement has no hold upon him.

In this stage of society truth is no virtue. The “mixture of a lie” may “add to pleasure” amongst Europeans; in Africa it enters where neither pleasure nor profit can arise from the deception. If a Mnyamwezi guide informs the traveller that the stage is short, he may make up his mind for a long and weary march, and vice versâ. Of course, falsehood is used as a defence by the weak and oppressed; but beyond that, the African desires to be lied to, and one of his proverbs is, “’Tis better to be deceived than to be undeceived.” The European thus qualifies the assertion,

“For sure the pleasure is as great
In being cheated as to cheat.”

Like the generality of barbarous races, the East Africans are wilful, headstrong, and undisciplinable: in point of stubbornness and restiveness they resemble the lower animals. If they cannot obtain the very article of barter upon which they have set their mind, they will carry home things useless to them; any attempt at bargaining is settled by the seller turning his back, and they ask according to their wants and wishes, without regard to the value of goods. Grumbling and dissatisfied, they never do business without a grievance. Revenge is a ruling passion, as the many rancorous fratricidal wars that have prevailed between kindred clans, even for a generation, prove. Retaliation and vengeance are, in fact, their great agents of moral control. Judged by the test of death, the East African is a hardhearted man, who seems to ignore all the charities of father, son, and brother. A tear is rarely shed, except by the women, for departed parent, relative, or friend, and the voice of the mourner is seldom heard in their abodes. It is most painful to witness the complete inhumanity with which a porter seized with small-pox is allowed by his friends, comrades, and brethren to fall behind in the jungle, with several days’ life in him. No inducement—even beads—can persuade a soul to attend him. Every village will drive him from its doors; no one will risk taking, at any price, death into his bosom. If strong enough, the sufferer builds a little bough-hut away from the camp, and, provided with his rations—a pound of grain and a gourdful of water—he quietly expects his doom, to feed the hyæna and the raven of the wild. The people are remarkable for the readiness with which they yield to fits of sudden fury; on these occasions they will, like children, vent their rage upon any object, animate or inanimate, that presents itself. Their temper is characterised by a nervous, futile impatience; under delay or disappointment they become madmen. In their own country, where such displays are safe, they are remarkable for a presumptuousness and a violence of manner which elsewhere disappears. As the Arabs say, there they are lions, here they become curs. Their squabbling and clamour pass description: they are never happy except when in dispute. After a rapid plunge into excitement, the brawlers alternately advance and recede, pointing the finger of threat, howling and screaming, cursing and using terms of insult which an inferior ingenuity—not want of will—causes to fall short of the Asiatic’s model vituperation. After abusing each other to their full, both “parties” usually burst into a loud laugh or a burst of sobs. Their tears lie high; they weep like Goanese. After a cuff, a man will cover his face with his hands and cry as if his heart would break. More furious shrews than the women are nowhere met with. Here it is a great truth that “the tongues of women cannot be governed.” They work off excitement by scolding, and they weep little compared with the men. Both sexes delight in “argument,” which here, as elsewhere, means two fools talking foolishly. They will weary out of patience the most loquacious of the Arabs. This development is characteristic of the East African race, and “maneno marefu!”—long words!—will occur as a useless reproof half a dozen times in the course of a single conversation. When drunk, the East African is easily irritated; with the screams and excited gestures of a maniac he strides about, frantically flourishing his spear and agitating his bow, probably with notched arrow; the spear-point and the arrow-head are often brought perilously near, but rarely allowed to draw blood. The real combat is by pushing, pulling hair, and slapping with a will, and a pair thus engaged require to be torn asunder by half a dozen friends. The settled tribes are, for the most part, feeble and unwarlike barbarians; even the bravest East African, though, like all men, a combative entity, has a valour tempered by discretion and cooled by a high development of cautiousness. His tactics are of the Fabian order: he loves surprises and safe ambuscades; and in common frays and forays the loss of one per cent. justifies a sauve qui peut. This people, childlike, is ever in extremes. A man will hang himself from a rafter in his tent, and kick away from under him the large wooden mortar upon which he has stood at the beginning of the operation with as much sang-froid as an Anglo-Saxon in the gloomy month of November; yet he regards annihilation, as all savages do, with loathing and ineffable horror. “He fears death,” to quote Bacon, “as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.” The African mind must change radically before it can “think upon death, and find it the least of all evils.” All the thoughts of these negroids are connected with this life. “Ah!” they exclaim, “it is bad to die! to leave off eating and drinking! never to wear a fine cloth!” As in the negro race generally, their destructiveness is prominent; a slave never breaks a thing without an instinctive laugh of pleasure; and however careful he may be of his own life, he does not value that of another, even of a relative, at the price of a goat. During fires in the town of Zanzibar, the blacks have been seen adding fuel, and singing and dancing, wild with delight. On such occasions they are shot down by the Arabs like dogs.

It is difficult to explain the state of society in which the civilised “social evil” is not recognised as an evil. In the economy of the affections and the intercourse between the sexes, reappears that rude stage of society in which ethics were new to the mind of now enlightened man. Marriage with this people—as amongst all barbarians, and even the lower classes of civilised races—is a mere affair of buying and selling. A man must marry because it is necessary to his comfort, consequently the woman becomes a marketable commodity. Her father demands for her as many cows, cloths, and brass-wire bracelets as the suitor can afford; he thus virtually sells her, and she belongs to the buyer, ranking with his other live stock. The husband may sell his wife, or, if she be taken from him by another man, he claims her value, which is ruled by what she would fetch in the slave-market. A strong inducement to marriage amongst the Africans, as with the poor in Europe, is the prospective benefit to be derived from an adult family; a large progeny enriches them. The African—like all barbarians, and, indeed, semi-civilised people—ignores the dowry by which, inverting Nature’s order, the wife buys the husband, instead of the husband buying the wife. Marriage, which is an epoch amongst Christians, and an event with Moslems, is with these people an incident of frequent recurrence. Polygamy is unlimited, and the chiefs pride themselves upon the number of their wives, varying from twelve to three hundred. It is no disgrace for an unmarried woman to become the mother of a family; after matrimony there is somewhat less laxity. The mgoni or adulterer, if detected, is punishable by a fine of cattle, or, if poor and weak, he is sold into slavery; husbands seldom, however, resort to such severities, the offence, which is considered to be against vested property, being held to be lighter than petty larceny. Under the influence of jealousy, murders and mutilations have been committed, but they are rare and exceptional. Divorce is readily effected by turning the spouse out of doors, and the children become the father’s property. Attachment to home is powerful in the African race, but it regards rather the comforts and pleasures of the house, and the unity of relations and friends, than the fondness of family. Husband, wife, and children have through life divided interests, and live together with scant appearance of affection. Love of offspring can have but little power amongst a people who have no preventive for illegitimacy, and whose progeny may be sold at any time. The children appear undemonstrative and unaffectionate, as those of the Somal. Some attachment to their mothers breaks out, not in outward indications, but by surprise, as it were: “Mámá! mámá!”—mother! mother!—is a common exclamation in fear or wonder. When childhood is passed, the father and son become natural enemies, after the manner of wild beasts. Yet they are a sociable race, and the sudden loss of relatives sometimes leads from grief to hypochondria and insanity, resulting from the inability of their minds to bear any unusual strain. It is probable that a little learning would make them mad, like the Widad, or priest of the Somal, who, after mastering the reading of the Koran, becomes unfit for any exertion of judgment or common sense. To this over-development of sociability must be ascribed the anxiety always shown to shift, evade, or answer blame. The “ukosa,” or transgression, is never accepted; any number of words will be wasted in proving the worse the better cause. Hence also the favourite phrase, “Mbáyá we!”—thou art bad!—a pet mode of reproof which sounds simple and uneffective to European ears.

The social position of the women—the unerring test of progress towards civilisation—is not so high in East Africa as amongst the more highly organised tribes of the south. Few parts of the country own the rule of female chiefs. The people, especially the Wanyamwezi, consult their wives, but the opinion of a brother or a friend would usually prevail over that of a woman.

The deficiency of the East African in constructive power has already been remarked. Contented with his haystack or beehive hut, his hemisphere of boughs, or his hide acting tent, he hates and has a truly savage horror of stone walls. He has the conception of the “Madeleine,” but he has never been enabled to be delivered of it. Many Wanyamwezi, when visiting Zanzibar, cannot be prevailed upon to enter a house.

The East African is greedy and voracious; he seems, however, to prefer light and frequent to a few regular and copious meals. Even the civilised Kisawahili has no terms to express the breakfast, dinner, and supper of other languages. Like most barbarians, the East African can exist and work with a small quantity of food, but he is unaccustomed, and therefore unable, to bear thirst. The daily ration of a porter is 1 kubabah (= 1·5 lbs.) of grain; he can, with the assistance of edible herbs and roots, which he is skilful in discovering in the least likely places, eke out this allowance for several days, though generally, upon the barbarian’s impulsive principle of mortgaging the future for the present, he recklessly consumes his stores. With him the grand end of life is eating; his love of feeding is inferior only to his propensity for intoxication. He drinks till he can no longer stand, lies down to sleep, and awakes to drink again. Drinking-bouts are solemn things, to which the most important business must yield precedence. They celebrate with beer every event—the traveller’s return, the birth of a child, and the death of an elephant—a labourer will not work unless beer is provided for him. A guest is received with a gourdful of beer, and, amongst some tribes, it is buried with their princes. The highest orders rejoice in drink, and pride themselves upon powers of imbibing: the proper diet for a king is much beer and a little meat. If a Mnyamwezi be asked after eating whether he is hungry, he will reply yea, meaning that he is not drunk. Intoxication excuses crime in these lands. The East African, when in his cups, must issue from his hut to sing, dance, or quarrel, and the frequent and terrible outrages which occur on these occasions are passed over on the plea that he has drunk beer. The favourite hour for drinking is after dawn,—a time as distasteful to the European as agreeable to the African and Asiatic. This might be proved by a host of quotations from the poets, Arab, Persian, and Hindu. The civilised man avoids early potations because they incapacitate him for necessary labour, and he attempts to relieve the headache caused by stimulants. The barbarian and the semi-civilised, on the other hand, prefer them, because they relieve the tedium of his monotonous day; and they cherish the headache because they can sleep the longer, and, when they awake, they have something to think of. The habit once acquired is never broken: it attaches itself to the heartstrings of the idle and unoccupied barbarian.

In morality, according to the more extended sense of the word, the East African is markedly deficient. He has no benevolence, but little veneration—the negro race is ever irreverent—and, though his cranium rises high in the region of firmness, his futility prevents his being firm. The outlines of law are faintly traced upon his heart. The authoritative standard of morality fixed by a revelation is in him represented by a vague and varying custom, derived traditionally from his ancestors; he follows in their track for old-sake’s sake. The accusing conscience is unknown to him. His only fear after committing a treacherous murder is that of being haunted by the angry ghost of the dead; he robs as one doing a good deed, and he begs as if it were his calling. His depravity is of the grossest: intrigue fills up all the moments not devoted to intoxication.

The want of veneration produces a savage rudeness in the East African. The body politic consists of two great members, masters and slaves. Ignoring distinctions of society, he treats all men, except his chief, as his equals. He has no rules for visiting: if the door be open, he enters a stranger’s house uninvited; his harsh, barking voice is ever the loudest; he is never happy except when hearing himself speak; his address is imperious, his demeanour is rough and peremptory, and his look “sfacciato.” He deposits his unwashed person, in his greasy and tattered goat-skin or cloth, upon rug or bedding, disdaining to stand for a moment, and he always chooses the best place in the room. When travelling he will push forward to secure the most comfortable hut: the chief of a caravan may sleep in rain or dew, but, if he attempt to dislodge his porters, they lie down with the settled purpose of mules—as the Arabs say, they “have no shame.” The curiosity of these people, and the little ceremony with which they gratify it, are at times most troublesome. A stranger must be stared at; total apathy is the only remedy: if the victim lose his temper, or attempt to dislodge them, he will find it like disturbing a swarm of bees. They will come for miles to “sow gape-seed:” if the tent-fly be closed, they will peer and peep from below, complaining loudly against the occupant, and, if further prevented, they may proceed to violence. On the road hosts of idlers, especially women, boys, and girls, will follow the caravan for hours; it is a truly offensive spectacle—these uncouth figures, running at a “gymnastic pace,” half clothed except with grease, with pendent bosoms shaking in the air, and cries that resemble the howls of beasts more than any effort of human articulation. This offensive ignorance of the first principles of social intercourse has been fostered in the races most visited by the Arabs, whose national tendency, like the Italian and the Greek, is ever and essentially republican. When strangers first appeared in the country they were received with respect and deference. They soon, however, lost this vantage-ground: they sat and chatted with the people, exchanged pleasantries, and suffered slights, till the Africans found themselves on an equality with their visitors. The evil has become inveterate, and no greater contrast can be imagined than that between the manners of an Indian Ryot and an East African Mshenzi.

In intellect the East African is sterile and incult, apparently unprogressive and unfit for change. Like the uncivilised generally, he observes well, but he can deduce nothing profitable from his perceptions. His intelligence is surprising when compared with that of an uneducated English peasant; but it has a narrow bound, beyond which apparently no man may pass. Like the Asiatic, in fact, he is stationary, but at a much lower level. Devotedly fond of music, his love of tune has invented nothing but whistling and the whistle: his instruments are all borrowed from the coast people. He delights in singing, yet he has no metrical songs: he contents himself with improvising a few words without sense or rhyme, and repeats them till they nauseate: the long, drawling recitative generally ends in “Ah! haⁿ!” or some such strongly-nasalised sound. Like the Somal, he has tunes appropriated to particular occasions, as the elephant-hunt or the harvest-home. When mourning, the love of music assumes a peculiar form: women weeping or sobbing, especially after chastisement, will break into a protracted threne or dirge, every period of which concludes with its own particular groan or wail: after venting a little natural distress in a natural sound, the long, loud improvisation, in the highest falsetto key, continues as before. As in Europe the “laughing-song” is an imitation of hilarity somewhat distressing to the spirits of the audience, so the “weeping-song” of the African only tends to risibility. His wonderful loquacity and volubility of tongue have produced no tales, poetry, nor display of eloquence; though, like most barbarians, somewhat sententious, he will content himself with squabbling with his companions, or with repeating some meaningless word in every different tone of voice during the weary length of a day’s march. His language is highly artificial and musical: the reader will have observed that the names which occur in these pages often consist entirely of liquids and vowels, that consonants are unknown at the end of a word, and that they never are double except at the beginning. Yet the idea of a syllabarium seems not to have occurred to the negroid mind. Finally, though the East African delights in the dance, and is an excellent timist—a thousand heels striking the ground simultaneously sound like one—his performance is as uncouth as perhaps was ever devised by man. He delights in a joke, which manages him like a Neapolitan; yet his efforts in wit are of the feeblest that can be conceived.

Though the general features of character correspond throughout the tribes in East Africa, there are also marked differences. The Wazaramo, for instance, are considered the most dangerous tribe on this line: caravans hurry through their lands, and hold themselves fortunate if a life be not lost, or if a few loads be not missing. Their neighbours, the Wasagara of the hills, were once peaceful and civil to travellers: the persecutions of the coast-people have rendered them morose and suspicious; they now shun strangers, and, never knowing when they may be attacked, they live in a constant state of agitation, excitement, and alarm. After the Wazaramo, the tribes of Ugogo are considered the most noisy and troublesome, the most extortionate, quarrelsome and violent on this route: nothing restrains these races from bloodshed and plunder but fear of retribution and self-interest. The Wanyamwezi bear the highest character for civilisation, discipline, and industry. Intercourse with the coast, however, is speedily sapping the foundations of their superiority: the East African Expedition suffered more from thieving in this than in any other territory, and the Arabs now depend for existence there not upon prestige, but sufferance, in consideration of mutual commercial advantage. In proportion as the traveller advances into the interior, he finds the people less humane, or rather less human. The Wavinza, the Wajiji, and the other Lakist tribes, much resemble one another: they are extortionate, violent, and revengeful barbarians; no Mnyamwezi dares to travel alone through their territories, and small parties are ever in danger of destruction.

In dealing with the East African the traveller cannot do better than to follow the advice of Bacon—“Use savages justly and graciously, with sufficient guard nevertheless.” They must be held as foes; and the prudent stranger will never put himself in their power, especially where life is concerned. The safety of a caravan will often depend upon the barbarian’s fear of beginning the fray: if the onset once takes place, the numbers, the fierce looks, the violent gestures, and the confidence of the assailants upon their own ground, will probably prevail. When necessary, however, severity must be employed; leniency and forbearance are the vulnerable points of civilised policy, as they encourage attack by a suspicion of fear and weakness. They may be managed as the Indian saw directs, by a judicious mixture of the “Narm” and “Garm”—the soft and hot. Thus the old traders remarked in Guinea, that the best way to treat a black man was to hold out one hand to shake with him, while the other is doubled ready to knock him down. In trading with, or even when dwelling amongst this people, all display of wealth must be avoided. A man who would purchase the smallest article avoids showing anything beyond its equivalent.

The ethnologist who compares this sketch with the far more favourable description of the Kafirs, a kindred race, given by travellers in South Africa, may suspect that only the darker shades of the picture are placed before the eye. But, as will appear in a future page, much of this moral degradation must be attributed to the working, through centuries, of the slave-trade: the tribes are no longer as nature made them; and from their connection with strangers they have derived nothing but corruption. Though of savage and barbarous type, they have been varnished with the semi-civilisation of trade and commerce, which sits ridiculously upon their minds as a rich garment would upon their persons.

Fetissism—the word is derived from the Portuguese feitiço, “a doing,”—scil. of magic, by euphuism—is still the only faith known in East Africa. Its origin is easily explained by the aspect of the physical world, which has coloured the thoughts and has directed the belief of man: he reflects, in fact, the fantastical and monstrous character of the animal and vegetable productions around him. Nature, in these regions rarely sublime or beautiful, more often terrible and desolate, with the gloomy forest, the impervious jungle, the tangled hill, and the dread uniform waste tenanted by deadly inhabitants, arouses in his mind a sensation of utter feebleness, a vague and nameless awe. Untaught to recommend himself for protection to a Superior Being, he addresses himself directly to the objects of his reverence and awe: he prostrates himself before the sentiment within him, hoping to propitiate it as he would satisfy a fellow-man. The grand mysteries of life and death, to him unrevealed and unexplained, the want of a true interpretation of the admirable phenomena of creation, and the vagaries and misconceptions of his own degraded imagination, awaken in him ideas of horror, and people the invisible world with ghost and goblin, demon and spectrum, the incarnations, as it were, of his own childish fears. Deepened by the dread of destruction, ever strong in the barbarian breast, his terror causes him to look with suspicion upon all around him: “How,” inquires the dying African, “can I alone be ill when others are well, unless I have been bewitched?” Hence the belief in magical and supernatural powers in man, which the stronger minded have turned to their own advantage.

Fetissism is the adoration, or rather the propitiation, of natural objects, animate and inanimate, to which certain mysterious influences are attributed. It admits neither god, nor angel, nor devil; it ignores the very alphabet of revealed or traditionary religion—a creation, a resurrection, a judgment-day, a soul or a spirit, a heaven or a hell. A modified practical atheism is thus the prominent feature of the superstition. Though instinctively conscious of a being above them, the Africans have as yet failed to grasp the idea: in their feeble minds it is an embryo rather than a conception—at the best a vague god, without personality, attributes, or providence. They call that being Mulungu, the Uhlunga of the Kafirs, and the Utika of the Hottentots. The term, however, may mean a ghost, the firmament, or the sun; a man will frequently call himself Mulungu, and even Mulungu Mbaya, the latter word signifying bad or wicked. In the language of the Wamasai “Ai,” or with the article “Engai”—the Creator—is feminine, the god and rain being synonymous.

The Fetiss superstition is African, but not confined to Africa. The faith of ancient Egypt, the earliest system of profane belief known to man, with its Triad denoting the various phases and powers of nature, was essentially fetissist; whilst in the Syrian mind dawned at first the idea of “Melkart,” a god of earth, and his Baalim, angels, viceregents, or local deities. But generally the history of religions proves that when man, whether degraded from primal elevation or elevated from primal degradation, has progressed a step beyond atheism—the spiritual state of the lowest savagery—he advances to the modification called Fetissism, the condition of the infant mind of humanity. According to the late Col. Van Kennedy, “such expressions as the love and fear of God never occur in the sacred books of the Hindus.” The ancient Persians were ignicolists, adoring ethereal fire. Confucius owned that he knew nothing about the gods, and therefore preferred saying as little as possible upon the subject. Men, still without tradition or training, confused the Creator with creation, and ventured not to place the burden of providence upon a single deity. Slaves to the agencies of material nature, impressed by the splendours of the heavenly bodies, comforted by fire and light, persuaded by their familiarity with the habits of wild beasts that the brute creation and the human claimed a mysterious affinity, humbled by the terrors of elemental war, and benefitted by hero and sage,—

“Quicquid humus, pelagus, cœlum mirabile gignunt,
Id duxere deos.”

The barbarian worshipped these visible objects not as types, myths, divine emanations, or personifications of a deity: he adored them for themselves. The modern theory, the mode in which full-grown man explains away the follies of his childhood, making the interpretation precede the fable, fails when tested by experience. The Hindu, and, indeed, the ignorant Christian, still adore the actual image of man and beast; it is unreasonable to suppose that they kneel before and worship with heart and soul its metaphysics; and an attempt to allegorise it, or to deprive it of its specific virtues, would be considered, as in ancient Greece and Rome, mere impiety.

By its essence, then, Fetissism is a rude and sensual superstition, the faith of abject fear, and of infant races that have not risen, and are, perhaps, incapable of rising to theism—the religion of love and the belief of the highest types of mankind. But old creeds die hard, and error, founded upon the instincts and feelings of human nature borrows the coherence and uniformity of truth. That Fetissism is a belief common to man in the childhood of his spiritual life, may be proved by the frequent and extensive remains of the faith which the cretinism of the Hamitic race has perpetuated amongst them to the present day, still sprouting like tares even in the fair field of revealed religion. The dread of ghosts, for instance, which is the mainstay of Fetissism, is not inculcated in any sacred book, yet the belief is not to be abolished. Thus the Rakshasa of the Hindus is a disembodied spirit, doing evil to mankind; and the ghost of the prophet Samuel, raised by the familiar of the Witch of Endor, was the immortal part of a mortal being, still connected with earth, and capable of returning to it. Through the Manes, the Umbra, and the Spectrum of the ancients, the belief has descended to the moderns, as the household words ghost, goblin, and bogle, revenant, polter-geist, and spook, Duh, Dusha, and Dukh attest. Precisely similar to the African ghost-faith is the old Irish belief in Banshees, Pookas, and other evil entities; the corporeal frame of the dead forms other bodies, but the spirit hovers in the air, watching the destiny of friends, haunting houses, killing children, injuring cattle, and causing disease and destruction. Everywhere, too, their functions are the same: all are malevolent to the living, and they are seldom known to do good. The natural horror and fear of death which may be observed even in the lower animals has caused the dead to be considered vindictive and destructive.

Some missionaries have detected in the habit, which prevails throughout Eastern and Western Africa, of burying slaves with the deceased, of carrying provisions to graves, and of lighting fires on cold nights near the last resting-places of the departed, a continuation of relations between the quick and the dead which points to a belief in a future state of existence. The wish is father to that thought: the doctrine of the soul, of immortality, belongs to a superior order of mind, to a more advanced stage of society. The belief, as its operations show, is in presentity, materialism, not in futurity, spiritualism. According to the ancients, man is a fourfold being:—

“Bis duo sunt homini, manes, caro, spiritus, umbra:
Quatuor hæc loci bis duo suscipiunt
Terra tegit carnem, tumulum circumvolitat umbra,
Manes Orcus habet, spiritus astra petit.”

Take away the Manes and the astral Spirit, and remains the African belief in the ειδωλον or Umbra, spiritus, or ghost. When the savage and the barbarian are asked what has become of the “old people” (their ancestors), over whose dust and ashes they perform obsequies, these veritable secularists only smile and reply Wáme-kwisha, “they are ended.” It proves the inferior organisation of the race. Even the North American aborigines, a race which Nature apparently disdains to preserve, decided that man hath a future, since even Indian corn is vivified and rises again. The East African has created of his fears a ghost which never attains the perfect form of a soul. This inferior development has prevented his rising to the social status of the Hindu, and other anciently civilised races, whom a life wholly wanting in purpose and occupation drove from the excitement necessary to stimulate the mind towards a hidden or mysterious future. These wild races seek otherwise than in their faith a something to emotionise and to agitate them.

The East African’s Credenda—it has not arrived at the rank of a system, this vague and misty dawning of a creed—are based upon two main articles. The first is demonology, or, rather, the existence of Koma, the spectra of the dead; the second is Uchawi, witchcraft or black magic, a corollary to the principal theorem. Few, and only the tribes adjacent to the maritime regions, have derived from El Islam a faint conception of the one Supreme. There is no trace in this country of the ancient and modern animal-worship of Egypt and India, though travellers have asserted that vestiges of it exist amongst the kindred race of Kafirs. The African has no more of Sabæism than what belongs to the instinct of man: he has a reverence for the sun and moon, the latter is for evident reasons in higher esteem, but he totally ignores star-worship. If questioned concerning his daily bread, he will point with a devotional aspect towards the light of day; and if asked what caused the death of his brother, will reply Jua, or Rimwe, the sun. He has not, like the Kafir, a holiday at the epoch of new moon: like the Moslem, however, on first seeing it, he raises and claps his hands in token of obeisance. The Mzimo, or Fetiss hut, is the first germ of a temple, and the idea is probably derived from the Kurban of the Arabs. It is found throughout the country, especially in Uzaramo, Unyamwezi, and Karagwah. It is in the shape of a dwarf house, one or two feet high, with a thatched roof, but without walls. Upon the ground, or suspended from the roof, are handfuls of grain and small pots full of beer, placed there to propitiate the ghosts, and to defend the crops from injury.

A prey to base passions and melancholy godless fears, the Fetissist, who peoples with malevolent beings the invisible world, animates material nature with evil influences. The rites of his dark and deadly superstition are all intended to avert evils from himself, by transferring them to others: hence the witchcraft and magic which flow naturally from the system of demonology. Men rarely die without the wife or children, the kindred or slaves, being accused of having compassed their destruction by “throwing the glamour over them;” and, as has been explained, the trial and the conviction are of the most arbitrary nature. Yet witchcraft is practised by thousands with the firmest convictions in their own powers; and though frightful tortures await the wizard and the witch who have been condemned for the destruction of chief or elder, the vindictiveness of the negro drives him readily to the malevolent practices of sorcery. As has happened in Europe and elsewhere, in the presence of torture and the instant advance of death, the sorcerer and sorceress will not only confess, but even boast of and believe in, their own criminality. “Verily I slew such a one!—I brought about the disease of such another!”—these are their demented vaunts, the offspring of mental imbecility, stimulated by traditional hallucination.

In this state of spiritual death there is, as may be imagined, but little of the fire of fanaticism: polemics are as unknown as politics to them; their succedaneum for a god is not a jealous god. But upon the subjects of religious belief and revelation all men are equal: Davus becomes Œdipus, the fool is as the sage. What the “I” believes, that the “Thou” must acknowledge, under the pains and penalties of offending Self-esteem. Whilst the African’s faith is weakly catholic, he will not admit that other men are wiser on this point than himself. Yet he will fast like a Moslem, because doing something seems to raise him in the scale of creation. His mind, involved in the trammels of his superstition, and enchained by custom, is apparently incapable of receiving the impressions of El Islam. His Fetissism, unspiritualised by the philosophic Pantheism and Polytheism of Europe and Asia, has hitherto unfitted him for that belief which was readily accepted by the more Semitic maritime races, the Somal, the Wasawahili, and the Wamrima. To a certain extent, also, it has been the policy of the Arab to avoid proselytising, which would lead to comparative equality: for sordid lucre the Moslem has left the souls of these Kafirs to eternal perdition. According to most doctors of the saving faith, an ardent proselytiser might convert by the sword whole tribes, though he might not succeed with individuals, who cannot break through the ties of society. The “Mombas Mission,” however, relying upon the powers of persuasion, unequivocally failed, and pronounced their flock to be “not behind the greatest infidels and scoffers of Europe: they blaspheme, in fact, like children.” With characteristic want of veneration they would say, “Your Lord is a bad master, for he does not cure his servants.” When an early convert died, the Wanyika at once decided that there is no Saviour, as he does not prevent the decease of a friend. The sentiment generally elicited by a discourse upon the subject of the existence of a Deity is a desire to see him, in order to revenge upon him the deaths of relatives, friends, and cattle.[17]

[17] That the Western African negro resembles in this point his negroid brother, the following extract from an amusing and truthful little volume, entitled “Trade and Travels in the Gulf of Guinea and Western Africa” (London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1851), will prove:—

Always anxious,—says Mr. J. Smith, the author,—to get any of them (the Western Africans) to talk about God and religion, I said, “What have you been doing King Pepple?”

“All the same as you do,—I tank God.”

“For what?”

“Every good ting God sends me.”

“Have you seen God?”

“Chi! no;—suppose man see God, he must die one minute.” (He would die in a moment.)

“When you die won’t you see God?”

With great warmth, “I know no savvy. (I don’t know.) How should I know? Never mind. I no want to hear more for that palaver.” (I want no more talk on that subject.)

“What way?” (Why?)

“It no be your business, you come here for trade palaver.”

I knew—resumes Mr. Smith—it would be of no use pursuing the subject at that time, so I was silent, and it dropped for the moment.

In speaking of him dying, I had touched a very tender and disagreeable chord, for he looked very savage and sulky, and I saw by the rapid changes in his countenance that he was the subject of some intense internal emotion. At length he broke out, using most violent gesticulations, and exhibiting a most inhuman expression of countenance, “Suppose God was here, I must kill him, one minute!”

“You what? you kill God?” followed I, quite taken aback, and almost breathless with the novel and diabolical notion; “You kill God? why, you talk all some fool” (like a fool); “you cannot kill God; and suppose it possible that God could die, everything would cease to exist. He is the Spirit of the universe. But he can kill you.”

“I know I cannot kill him; but suppose I could kill him, I would.”

“Where does God live?”

“For top.”

“How?” He pointed to the zenith.

“And suppose you could, why would you kill him?”

“Because he makes men to die.”

“Why, my friend,” in a conciliatory manner, “you would not wish to live for ever, would you?”

“Yes, I want to stand” (remain for ever).

“But you will be old by and by, and if you live long enough, will become very infirm, like that old man,” pointing to a man very old for an African and thin, and lame, and almost blind, who had come into the court during the foregoing conversation, to ask for some favour (I wonder he had not been destroyed),—“and like him you will become lame, and deaf, and blind, and will be able to take no pleasure; would it not be better, then, for you to die when this takes place, and you are in pain and trouble, and so make room for your son, as your father did for you?”

“No, it would not; I want to stand all same I stand now.”

“But supposing you should go to a place of happiness after death and——”

“I no savvy nothing about that, I know that I now live, and have too many wives, and niggers (slaves), and canoes,” (he did not mean what he said, in saying he had too many wives, &c., it is their way of expressing a great number,) “and that I am king, and plenty of ships come to my country. I know no other ting, and I want to stand.”

I offered a reply, but he would hear no more, and so the conversation on that subject ceased; and we proceeded to discuss one not much more agreeable to him—the payment of a very considerable debt which he owed me.

Fetissism supplies an abundance of professionally holy men. The “Mfumo” is translated by the Arabs Bassar, a seer or clairvoyant. The Mchawi is the Sahhar, magician, or adept in the black art. Amongst the Wazegura and the Wasagara is the Mgonezi, a word Arabised into Rammal or Geomantist. He practises the Miramoro, or divination and prediction of fray and famine, death and disease, by the relative position of small sticks, like spilikins, cast at random on the ground. The “rain-maker,” or “rain-doctor” of the Cape, common throughout these tribes, and extending far north of the equator, is called in East Africa Mganga, in the plural Waganga: the Arabs term him Tabib, doctor or physician.

The Mganga, in the central regions termed Mfumo, may be considered as the rude beginning of a sacerdotal order. These drones, who swarm throughout the land, are of both sexes: the women, however, generally confine themselves to the medical part of the profession. The calling is hereditary, the eldest or the cleverest son begins his neoteric education at an early age, and succeeds to his father’s functions. There is little mystery in the craft, and the magicians of Unyamwezi have not refused to initiate some of the Arabs. The power of the Mganga is great: he is treated as a sultan, whose word is law, and as a giver of life and death. He is addressed by a kingly title, and is permitted to wear the chieftain’s badge, made of the base of a conical shell. He is also known by a number of small greasy and blackened gourds, filled with physic and magic, hanging round his waist, and by a little more of the usual grime—sanctity and dirt being connected in Africa as elsewhere. These men are sent for from village to village, and receive as obventions and spiritual fees sheep and goats, cattle and provisions. Their persons, however, are not sacred, and for criminal acts they are punished like other malefactors. The greatest danger to them is an excess of fame. A celebrated magician rarely, if ever, dies a natural death: too much is expected from him, and a severer disappointment leads to consequences more violent than usual. The Arabs deride their pretensions, comparing them depreciatingly to the workers of Simiya, or conjuration, in their own country. They remark that the wizard can never produce rain in the dry, or avert it in the wet season. The many, however, who, to use a West African phrase, have “become black” from a long residence in the country, acquire a sneaking belief in the Waganga, and fear of their powers. The well-educated classes in Zanzibar consult these heathen, as the credulous of other Eastern countries go to the astrologer and geomantist, and in Europe to the clairvoyant and the tireuse de cartes. In one point this proceeding is wise: the wizard rarely wants wits; and whatever he has heard secretly or openly will inevitably appear in the course of his divination.

It must not be supposed, however, that the Mganga is purely an impostor. To deceive others thoroughly a man must first deceive himself, otherwise he will be detected by the least discerning. This is the simple secret of so many notable successes, achieved in the most unpromising causes by self-reliance and enthusiasm, the parents of energy and consistence. These barbarians are more often sinned against by their own fears and fooleries of faith, than sinners against their fellow-men by fraud and falsehood.

The office of Uganga includes many duties. The same man is a physician by natural and supernatural means, a mystagogue or medicine-man, a detector of sorcery, by means of the Judicium Dei or ordeal, a rain-maker, a conjuror, an augur, and a prophet.

As a rule, all diseases, from a boil to marasmus senilis, are attributed by the Fetissist to P’hepo, Hubub, or Afflatus. The three words are synonymous. P’hepo, in Kisawahili, is the plural form of upepo (a zephyr), used singularly to signify a high wind, a whirlwind (“devil”), and an evil ghost, generally of a Moslem. Hubub, the Arabic translation, means literally the blowing of wind, and metaphorically “possession.” The African phrase for a man possessed is “ana p’hepo,” “he has a devil.” The Mganga is expected to heal the patient by expelling the possession. Like the evil spirit in the days of Saul, the unwelcome visitant must be charmed away by sweet music; the drums cause excitement, and violent exercise expels the ghost, as saltation nullifies in Italy the venom of the tarantula. The principal remedies are drumming, dancing, and drinking, till the auspicious moment arrives. The ghost is then enticed from the body of the possessed into some inanimate article, which he will condescend to inhabit. This, technically called a Keti, or stool, may be a certain kind of bead, two or more bits of wood bound together by a strip of snake’s skin, a lion’s or a leopard’s claw, and other similar articles, worn round the head, the arm, the wrist, or the ankle. Paper is still considered great medicine by the Wasukuma and other tribes, who will barter valuable goods for a little bit: the great desideratum of the charm, in fact, appears to be its rarity, or the difficulty of obtaining it. Hence also the habit of driving nails into and hanging rags upon trees. The vegetable itself is not worshipped, as some Europeans who call it the “Devil’s tree” have supposed: it is merely the place for the laying of ghosts, where by appending the Keti most acceptable to the spectrum, he will be bound over to keep the peace with man. Several accidents in the town of Zanzibar have confirmed even the higher orders in their lurking superstition. Mr. Peters, an English merchant, annoyed by the slaves who came in numbers to hammer nails and to hang iron hoops and rags upon a “Devil’s tree” in his courtyard, ordered it to be cut down, to the horror of all the black beholders, of whom no one would lay an axe to it. Within six months five persons died in that house—Mr. Peters, his two clerks, his cooper, and his ship’s carpenter. This superstition will remind the traveller of the Indian Pipul (Ficus religiosa), in which fiends are supposed to roost, and suggest to the Orientalist an explanation of the mysterious Moslem practices common from Western Africa to the farthest East. The hanging of rags upon trees by pilgrims and travellers is probably a relic of Arab Fetissism, derived in the days of ignorance from their congeners in East Africa. The custom has spread far and wide: even the Irish peasantry have been in the habit of suspending to the trees and bushes near their “holy wells” rags, halters, and spancels, in token of gratitude for their recovery, or that of their cattle.

There are other mystical means of restoring the sick to health; one specimen will suffice. Several little sticks, like matches, are daubed with ochre, and marks are made with them upon the patient’s body. A charm is chanted, the possessed one responds, and at the end of every stave an evil spirit flies from him, the signal being a stick cast by the Mganga upon the ground. Some unfortunates have as many as a dozen haunting ghosts, each of which has his own periapt: the Mganga demands a distinct honorarium for the several expulsions. Wherever danger is, fear will be; wherever fear is, charms and spells, exorcisms and talismans of portentous powers will be in demand; and wherever supernaturalisms are in requisition, men will be found, for a consideration, to supply them.

These strange rites are to be explained upon the principle which underlies thaumaturgy in general: they result from conviction in a gross mass of exaggerations heaped by ignorance, falsehood, and credulity, upon the slenderest foundation of fact—a fact doubtless solvable by the application of natural laws. The African temperament has strong susceptibilities, combined with what appears to be a weakness of brain, and great excitability of the nervous system, as is proved by the prevalence of epilepsy, convulsions, and hysteric disease. According to the Arab, El Sara, epilepsy, or the falling sickness, is peculiarly common throughout East Africa; and, as we know by experience in lands more civilised, the sudden prostration, rigidity, contortions, &c. of the patient, strongly suggest the idea that he has been taken and seized (επιληφθεις) by, as it were, some external and invisible agent. The negroid is, therefore, peculiarly liable to the epidemical mania called “Phantasmata,” which, according to history, has at times of great mental agitation and popular disturbance broken out in different parts of Europe, and which, even in this our day, forms the basework of “revivals.” Thus in Africa the objective existence of spectra has become a tenet of belief. Stories that stagger the most sceptical are told concerning the phenomenon by respectable and not unlearned Arabs, who point to their fellow-countrymen as instances. Salim bin Rashid, a half-caste merchant, well known at Zanzibar, avers, and his companions bear witness to his words, that on one occasion, when travelling northwards from Unyanyembe, the possession occurred to himself. During the night two female slaves, his companions, of whom one was a child, fell, without apparent cause, into the fits which denote the approach of a spirit. Simultaneously, the master became as one intoxicated; a dark mass, material, not spiritual, entered the tent, and he felt himself pulled and pushed by a number of black figures, whom he had never before seen. He called aloud to his companions and slaves, who, vainly attempting to enter the tent, threw it down, and presently found him in a state of stupor, from which he did not recover till the morning. The same merchant circumstantially related, and called witnesses to prove, that a small slave-boy, who was produced on the occasion, had been frequently carried off by possession, even when confined in a windowless room, with a heavy door carefully bolted and padlocked. Next morning the victim was not found, although the chamber remained closed. A few days afterwards he was met in the jungle wandering absently like an idiot, and with speech too incoherent to explain what had happened to him. The Arabs of Oman, who subscribe readily to transformation, deride these tales; those of African blood believe them. The transformation-belief, still so common in Maskat, Abyssinia, Somaliland, and the Cape, and anciently an almost universal superstition, is, curious to say, unknown amongst these East African tribes. The Wahiao, lying between Kilwa and the Nyassa Lake, preserve, however, a remnant of the old creed in their conviction, that a malevolent magician can change a man after death into a lion, a leopard, or a hyæna. On the Zambezi the people, according to Dr. Livingstone (chap. xxx.), believe that a chief may metamorphose himself into a lion, kill any one he chooses, and then return to the human form. About Tete (chap. xxxi.) the negroids hold that, “while persons are still living, they may enter into lions and alligators, and then return again to their own bodies.” Travellers determined to find in Africa counterparts of European and Asiatic tenets, argue from this transformation a belief in the “transmigration of souls.” They thus confuse material metamorphosis with a spiritual progress, which is assuredly not an emanation from the Hamitic mind. The Africans have hitherto not bewildered their brains with metaphysics, and, ignoring the idea of a soul, which appears to be a dogma of the Caucasian race, they necessarily ignore its immortality.

The second, and, perhaps, the most profitable occupation of the Mganga, is the detection of Uchawi, or black magic. The fatuitous style of conviction, and the fearful tortures which, in the different regions, await those found guilty, have already been described, as far as description is possible. Amongst a people where the magician is a police detector, ordeals must be expected to thrive. The Baga or Kyapo of East Africa—the Arabs translate it El Halaf, or the Oath—is as cruel, absurd, and barbarous, as the red water of Ashanti, the venoms of Kasanji (Cassange), the muavi of the Banyai tribes of Monomotapa, the Tangina poison of the Malagash, the bitter water of the Jews, the “saucy-water” of West Africa, and the fire tests of mediæval Europe. The people of Usumbara thrust a red-hot hatchet into the mouth of the accused. Among the south-eastern tribes a heated iron spike, driven into some tender part of the person, is twice struck with a log of wood. The Wazaramo dip the hand into boiling water, the Waganda into seething oil; and the Wazegura prick the ear with the stiffest bristles of a gnu’s tail. The Wakwafi have an ordeal of meat that chokes the guilty. The Wanyamwezi pound with water between two stones, and infuse a poisonous bark called “Mwavi:” it is first administered by the Mganga to a hen, who, for the nonce, represents the suspected. If, however, all parties be not satisfied with such trial, it is duly adhibited to the accused.

In East Africa, from Somaliland to the Cape, and throughout the interior amongst the negroids and negroes north as well as south of the equator, the rain-maker or rain-doctor is a personage of consequence; and he does not fail to turn the hopes and fears of the people to his own advantage. A season of drought causes dearth, disease, and desolation amongst these improvident races, who therefore connect every strange phenomenon with the object of their desires, a copious wet monsoon. The enemy has medicines which disperse the clouds. The stranger who brings with him heavy showers is regarded as a being of good omen; usually, however, the worst is expected from the novel portent; he will, for instance, be accompanied and preceded by fertilising rains, but the wells and springs will dry up after his departure, and the result will be drought or small-pox. These rumours which may account for the Lybian stranger-sacrifices in the olden time, are still dangerous to travellers. The Mganga must remedy the evil. His spells are those of fetissists in general, the mystic use of something foul, poisonous, or difficult to procure, such as the album græcum of hyænas, snakes’ fangs, or lions’ hair; these and similar articles are collected with considerable trouble by the young men of the tribe for the use of the rain-maker. But he is a weatherwise man, and rains in tropical lands are easily foreseen. Not unfrequently, however, he proves himself a false prophet; and when all the resources of cunning fail he must fly for dear life from the victims of his delusion.

The Mganga is also a predictor and a soothsayer. He foretels the success or failure of commercial undertakings, of wars, and of kidnapping-commandos; he foresees famine and pestilence, and he suggests the means of averting calamities. He fixes also, before the commencement of any serious affair, fortunate conjunctions, without which a good issue cannot be expected. He directs expiatory offerings. His word is ever powerful to expedite or to delay the march of a caravan; and in his quality of augur he considers the flight of birds and the cries of beasts, like his prototype of the same class in ancient Europe and in modern Asia.

The principal instrument of the Mganga’s craft is one of the dirty little buyu or gourds which he wears in a bunch round his waist; and the following is the usual programme when the oracle is to be consulted. The magician brings his implements in a bag of matting; his demeanour is serious as the occasion; he is carefully greased, and his head is adorned with the diminutive antelope-horns fastened by a thong of leather above the forehead. He sits like a sultan upon a dwarf stool in front of the querist, and begins by exhorting the highest possible offertory. No pay, no predict. Divination by the gourd has already been described; the Mganga has many other implements of his craft. Some prophesy by the motion of berries swimming in a cup full of water, which is placed upon a low stool surrounded by four tails of the zebra or the buffalo lashed to sticks planted upright in the ground. The Kasanda is a system of folding triangles not unlike those upon which plaything soldiers are mounted. Held in the right hand, it is thrown out, and the direction of the end points to the safe and auspicious route; this is probably the rudest appliance of prestidigitation. The shero is a bit of wood about the size of a man’s hand, and not unlike a pair of bellows, with a dwarf handle, a projection like a nozzle, and in the circular centre a little hollow. This is filled with water, and a grain or fragment of wood, placed to float, gives an evil omen if it tends towards the sides, and favourable if it veers towards the handle or the nozzle. The Mganga generally carries about with him to announce his approach a kind of rattle called “sánje.” This is a hollow gourd of pine-apple shape, pierced with various holes, prettily carved and half filled with maize, grains, and pebbles; the handle is a stick passed through its length and secured by cross-pins.

The Mganga has many minor duties. In elephant hunts he must throw the first spear and endure the blame if the beast escapes. He marks ivory with spots disposed in lines and other figures, and thus enables it to reach the coast without let or hindrance. He loads the kirangozi or guide with charms and periapts to defend him from the malice which is ever directed at a leading man, and sedulously forbids him to allow precedence even to the Mtongi, the commander and proprietor of the caravan. He aids his tribe by magical arts in wars, by catching a bee, reciting over it certain incantations, and loosing it in the direction of the foe, when the insect will instantly summon an army of its fellows and disperse a host, however numerous. This belief well illustrates the easy passage of the natural into the supernatural. The land being full of swarms, and man’s body being wholly exposed, many a caravan has been dispersed like chaff before the wind by a bevy of swarming bees. Similarly in South Africa the magician kicks an ant-hill and starts wasps which put the enemy to flight. And in the books of the Hebrews we read that the hornet sent before the children of Israel against the Amorite was more terrible than sword or bow. (Joshua, xxiv.)

The several tribes in East Africa present two forms of government, the despotic and the semi-monarchical.

In the despotic races, the Wakilima or mountaineers of Chhaga, for instance, the subjects are reduced to the lowest state of servility. All, except the magicians and the councillors, are “Wasoro”—soldiers and slaves to the sultan, mangi, or sovereign. The reader will bear in mind that the word “sultan” is the Arabic term applied generically by traders to all the reguli and roitelets, the chiefs and headmen, whose titles vary in every region. In Uzaramo the Sultan is called p’hazi; in Khutu, p’hazi or mundewa; in Usagara, mundewa; in Ugogo, mteme; in Unyamwezi, mwami; in Ujiji and Karagwah, mkama. “Wazir” is similarly used by the Arabs for the principal councillor or minister, whose African name in the several tribes is mwene goha, mbáhá, mzágírá, magáwe, mhángo, and muhinda. The elders are called throughout the country Wagosi and Wányáp’hárá; they form the council of the chief. All male children are taken from their mothers, are made to live together, and are trained to the royal service, to guarding the palace, to tilling the fields, and to keeping the watercourses in order. The despot is approached with fear and trembling; subjects of both sexes must stand at a distance, and repeatedly clap their palms together before venturing to address him. Women always bend the right knee to the earth, and the chief acknowledges the salutation with a nod. At times the elders and even the women inquire of the ruler what they can do to please him: he points to a plot of ground which he wishes to be cleared, and this corvée is the more carefully performed, as he fines them in a bullock if a weed be left unplucked. In war female captives are sold by the king, and the children are kept to swell the number of his slaves. None of the Wasoro may marry without express permission. The king has unlimited power of life and death, which he exercises without squeamishness, and a general right of sale over his subjects; in some tribes, as those of Karagwah, Uganda, and Unyoro, he is almost worshipped. It is a capital offence to assume the name of a Sultan; even a stranger so doing would be subjected to fines and other penalties. The only limit to the despot’s power is the Ada, or precedent, the unwritten law of ancient custom, which is here less mutable than the codes and pandects of Europe. The African, like the Asiatic, is by nature a conservative, at once the cause and the effect of his inability to rise higher in the social scale. The king lives in a manner of barbarous state. He has large villages crowded with his families and slaves. He never issues from his abode without an armed mob, and he disdains to visit even the wealthiest Arabs. The monarchical tribes are legitimists of the good old school, disdaining a novus homo; and the consciousness of power invests their princes with a certain dignity and majesty of demeanour. As has been mentioned, some of the Sultans whose rule has the greatest prestige, appear, from physical peculiarities, to be of a foreign and a nobler origin.

In the aristocratical or semi-monarchical tribes, as the Wanyamwezi, the power of the Sultan depends mainly upon his wealth, importance, and personal qualifications for the task of rule. A chief enabled to carry out a “fist-right” policy will raise himself to the rank of a despot, and will slay and sell his subjects without mercy. Though surrounded by a council varying from two to a score of chiefs and elders, who are often related or connected with him, and who, like the Arab shaykhs, presume as much as possible in ordering this and forbidding that, he can disregard and slight them. More often, however, his authority is circumscribed by a rude balance of power; the chiefs around him can probably bring as many warriors into the field as he can. When weak, the sultan has little more authority than the patell of an Indian village or the shaykh of a Bedouin tribe. Yet even when the chief cannot command in his own clan, he is an important personage to travelling merchants and strangers. He can cause a quarrel, an advance, or an assassination, and he can quiet brawls even when his people have been injured. He can open a road by providing porters, or bar a path by deterring a caravan from proceeding, or by stopping the sale of provisions. Thus it is easy to travel amongst races whose chiefs are well disposed to foreigners, and the utmost circumspection becomes necessary when the headmen are grasping and inhospitable. Upon the whole, the chiefs are wise enough to encourage the visits of traders.

A patriarchal or purely republican form of government is unknown in East Africa. The Wasagara, it is true, choose their chief like the Banyai of “Monomotapa,” but, once elected, he becomes a monarch. Loyalty—or, to reduce it to its elements, veneration for the divinity that hedges in a king—is a sentiment innate in the African mind. Man, however, in these regions is not a political animal; he has a certain instinctive regard for his chief and a respect for his elders. He ignores, however, the blessings of duly limited independence and the natural classification of humanity into superior and inferior, and honours—the cheap pay of nations—are unknown. He acknowledges no higher and lower social strata. His barbarism forbids the existence of a learned oligarchy, of an educated community, or of a church and state, showing the origin of the connection between the soul and body of society. Man being equal to man, force being the only law and self the sole consideration, mutual jealousy prevents united efforts and deadens all patriotic spirit. No one cares for the public good; the welfare of the general must yield to the most contemptible individual interests; civil order and security are therefore unknown, and foreign relations cannot exist.

In the lowest tribes the chieftain is a mere nonentity, “a Sultan,” as the Arabs say, “within his own walls.” His subjects will boast, like the Somal, that he is “tanquam unus ex nobis;” and they are so sensible of restraint that “girdles and garters would be to them bonds and shackles” metaphorically as well as literally. The position of these Sultans is about equal to that of the diwans of the Mrima; their dignity is confined to sitting upon a dwarf three-legged stool, to wearing more brass wire than beads, and to possessing clothes a little better than those of their subjects. The “regulus” must make a return present to strangers after receiving their offerings, and in some cases must begin with gifts. He must listen to the words of his councillors and elders, who, being without salary, claim a portion of the presents and treasure-trove, interfere on all occasions of blackmail, fines, and penalties, demand from all petitioners gifts and bribes to secure interest, and exert great influence over the populace.

Legitimacy is the rule throughout the land, and the son, usually the eldest, succeeds to the father, except amongst the Wasukuma of N. Unyamwezi, where the line of descent is by the sister’s son—the “surer side”—for the normal reason, to secure some of the blood royal for ruling. Even the widows of the deceased become the property of the successor. This truly African practice prevails also amongst the Bachwana, and presents another of those curious points of resemblance between the Hamite and Semite races which have induced modern ethnologists to derive the Arab from Africa. The curious custom amongst the Wanyamwezi of devising property to illegitimate children is not carried out in the succession to power. Where there are many sons, all, as might be expected, equally aspire to power; sometimes, however, of two brothers, one will consent to hold authority under the other. In several tribes, especially in Usukuma, the widow of a chief succeeds to his dignity in default of issue.

Punishments are simple in East Africa. The sar, vendetta or blood-feud, and its consequence, the diyat or weregeld, exist in germ, unreduced, as amongst the more civilised Arabs, to an artful and intricate system. But these customs are founded, unlike ours, upon barbarous human nature. Instinct prompts a man to slay the slayer of his kith and kin; the offence is against the individual, not the government or society. He must reason to persuade himself that the crime, being committed against the law, should be left to the law for notice; he wants revenge, and he cares nought for punishment or example for the prevention of crime. The Sultan encourages the payment of blood-money to the relatives of the deceased, or, if powerful enough, claims it himself, rather than that one murder should lead to another, and eventually to a chronic state of bloodshed and confusion. Thus, in some tribes the individual revenges himself, and in others he commits his cause to the chief. Here he takes an equivalent in cattle for the blood of a brother or the loss of a wife; there he visits the erring party with condign punishment. The result of such deficiency of standard is a want of graduation in severity; a thief is sometimes speared and beheaded, or sold into slavery after all his property has been extorted by the chief, the councillors, and the elders, whilst a murderer is perhaps only fined.

The land in East Africa is everywhere allodial; it does not belong to the ruler, nor has the dawn of the feudal system yet arisen there. A migratory tribe gives up its rights to the soil, contrary to the mortmain system of the Arab Bedouins, and, if it would return, it must return by force. The Sultan, however, exacts a fee from all immigrants settling in his territory.

The sources of revenue in East Africa are uncertain, desultory, and complicated. The agricultural tribes pay yearly a small per centage of grain; this, however, is the office of the women, who are expert in fraud. Neither sowing nor harvest can take place without the chief’s permission, and the issue of his order is regulated by his own interests. Amongst the hunting tribes, slain elephants become the hunter’s property, but the Sultan claims as treasure-trove a tusk of any animal found wounded or dead in his dominions, and in all cases the spoils of dead lions are crown property. The flesh of game is distributed amongst the elders and the ruling family, who also assert a claim to the cloth or beads purchased by means of the ivory from caravans. Some have abditaria and considerable stores of the articles most valued by barbarians. Throughout the slave-paths the chiefs have learned to raise revenue from the slaves, who thus bribe them to forbear from robbery. But whilst the stronger require large gifts without return, the weaker make trifling presents, generally of cattle or provisions, and expect many times the value in brass wire, cloth, and beads. The stranger may refuse these offerings; it is, however, contrary to custom, and as long as he can afford it he should submit to the imposition. Fiscs and fines are alarmingly frequent. If the monsoon-rains delay, the chief summons a Mganga to fix upon the obstructor; he is at once slain, and his property is duly escheated. The Sultan claims the goods and chattels of all felons and executed criminals, even in the case of a servant put to death by his master. In the more republican tribes the chief lives by the sweat of his slaves. Briefly, East Africa presents an instructive study of human society in its first stage after birth.

I will conclude this uninteresting chapter—attribute its dulness, gentle reader, to the effects of the climate and society of Konduchi—with a subject which strikes home to the heart of every Englishman, slavery.

The origin of slavery in East Africa is veiled in the glooms of the past. It is mentioned in the Periplus (chap. iii.), as an institution of the land, and probably it was the result of the ancient trade with southern Arabia. At present it is almost universal: with the exceptions of the Wahinda, the Watosi, and the Wagogo, all the tribes from the eastern equatorial coast to Ujiji and the regions lying westward of the Tanganyika Lake may be called slave-races. An Arab, Msawahili, and even a bondsman from Zanzibar, is everywhere called Murungwana or freeman. Yet in many parts of the country the tribes are rather slave-importers than exporters. Although they kidnap others, they will not sell their fellows, except when convicted of crime—theft, magic, murder, or cutting the upper teeth before the lower. In times of necessity, however, a man will part with his parents, wives, and children, and when they fail he will sell himself without shame. As has been observed, amongst many tribes the uncle has a right to dispose of his nephews and nieces.

Justice requires the confession that the horrors of slave-driving rarely meet the eye in East Africa. Some merchants chain or cord together their gangs for safer transport through regions where desertion is at a premium. Usually, however, they trust rather to soft words and kind treatment; the fat lazy slave is often seen stretched at ease in the shade, whilst the master toils in the sun and wind. The “property” is well fed and little worked, whereas the porter, belonging to none but himself, is left without hesitation to starve upon the road-side. The relationship is rather that of patron and client than of lord and bondsman; the slave is addressed as Ndugu-yango, “my brother,” and he is seldom provoked by hard words or stripes. In fact, the essence of slavery, compulsory unpaid labour, is perhaps more prevalent in independent India than in East Africa; moreover, there is no adscriptus glebæ, as in the horrid thraldom of Malabar. To this general rule there are terrible exceptions, as might be expected amongst a people with scant regard for human life. The Kirangozi, or guide, attached to the Expedition on return from Ujiji, had loitered behind for some days because his slave girl was too footsore to walk. When tired of waiting he cut off her head, for fear lest she should become gratis another man’s property.

In East Africa there are two forms of this traffic, the export and the internal trade. For the former slaves are collected like ivories throughout the length and breadth of the land. They are driven down from the principal depôts, the island of Kasenge, Ujiji, Unyanyembe, and Zungomero to the coast by the Arab and Wasawahili merchants, who afterwards sell them in retail at the great mart, Zanzibar. The internal trade is carried on between tribe and tribe, and therefore will long endure.

The practice of slavery in East Africa, besides demoralising and brutalising the race, leads to the results which effectually bar increase of population and progress towards civilisation. These are commandos, or border wars, and intestine confusion.

All African wars, it has been remarked, are for one of two objects, cattle-lifting or kidnapping. Some of the pastoral tribes—as the Wamasai, the Wakwafi, the Watuta, and the Warori—assert the theory that none but themselves have a right to possess herds, and that they received the gift directly from their ancestor who created cattle; in practice they covet the animals for the purpose of a general gorge. Slaves, however, are much more frequently the end and aim of feud and foray. The process of kidnapping, an inveterate custom in these lands, is in every way agreeable to the mind of the man-hunter. A “multis utile bellum,” it combines the pleasing hazards of the chase with the exercise of cunning and courage; the battue brings martial glory and solid profit, and preserves the barbarian from the listlessness of life without purpose. Thus men date from foray to foray, and pass their days in an interminable blood-feud and border war. A poor and powerful chief will not allow his neighbours to rest wealthier than himself; a quarrel is soon found, the stronger attacks the weaker, hunts and harries his cattle, burns his villages, carries off his subjects and sells them to the first passing caravan. The inhabitants of the land have thus become wolves to one another; their only ambition is to dispeople and destroy, and the blow thus dealt to a thinly populated country strikes at the very root of progress and prosperity.

As detrimental to the public interests as the border wars is the intestine confusion caused by the slave trade. It perpetuates the vile belief in Uchawi or black magic: when captives are in demand, the criminal’s relations are sold into slavery. It affords a scope for the tyranny of a chief, who, if powerful enough, will enrich himself by vending his subjects in wholesale and retail. By weakening the tie of family, it acts with deadly effect in preventing the increase of the race.

On the coast and in the island of Zanzibar the slaves are of two kinds—the Muwallid or domestic, born in captivity, and the wild slave imported from the interior.

In the former case the slave is treated as one of the family, because the master’s comfort depends upon the man being contented; often also his sister occupies the dignified position of concubine to the head of the house. These slaves vary greatly in conduct. The most tractable are those belonging to the Diwans and the Wasawahili generally, who treat them with the utmost harshness and contempt. The Arabs spoil them by a kinder usage; few employ the stick, the salib, or cross—a forked pole to which the neck and ankles are lashed—and the makantale or stocks, for fear of desertion. Yet the slave if dissatisfied silently leaves the house, lets himself to another master, and returns after perhaps two years’ absence as if nothing had occurred. Thus he combines the advantages of freedom and slavery. Moreover, it is a proverb among the Arabs that a slave must desert once in his life, and he does so the more readily as he betters his condition by so doing. The worst in all points are those belonging to the Banyans, the Indians, and other European subjects; they know their right to emancipation, and consult only their own interests and inclinations. The Muwallid or domestic slave is also used like the Pombeiro of West Africa. From Unyamwezi and Ujiji he is sent to traffic in the more dangerous regions—the master meanwhile dwelling amongst his fellow countrymen in some comfortable Tembe. This proceeding has greatly injured the commerce of the interior, and necessitates yearly lengthening journeys. The slave intrusted with cloth and beads suddenly becomes a great man; he is lavish in supporting the dignity of a fundi or fattore, and consulting nothing but his own convenience, he will loiter for six months at a place where he has been sent for a week. Thus it is that ivory sold in Unyamwezi but a dozen years ago at 10 lbs. for 1 lb. of beads now fetches nearly weight for weight. And this is a continually increasing evil. No caravan, however, can safely traverse the interior without an escort of slave-musketeers. They never part with their weapons, even when passing from house to house, holding that their lives depend upon their arms; they beg, borrow, or steal powder and ball; in fact they are seldom found unready. They will carry nothing but the lightest gear, the master’s writing-case, bed, or praying-mat; to load them heavily would be to ensure desertion. Contrary to the practice of the free porter, they invariably steal when they run away; they are also troublesome about food, and they presume upon their weapons to take liberties with the liquor and the women of the heathen.

The imported slaves again are of two different classes. Children are preferred to adults; they are Islamised and educated so as to resemble the Muwallid, though they are even somewhat less tame. Full-grown serfs are bought for predial purposes; they continue indocile, and alter little by domestication. When not used by the master they are left to plunder or to let themselves out for food and raiment, and when dead they are cast into the sea or into the nearest pit. These men are the scourge of society; no one is safe from their violence; and to preserve a garden or an orchard from the depredations of the half-starved wretches, a guard of musketeers would be required. They are never armed, yet, as has been recounted, they have caused at Zanzibar servile wars, deadly and lasting as those of ancient Rome.

Arabs declare that the barbarians are improved by captivity—a partial theory open to doubt. The servum pecus retain in thraldom that wildness and obstinacy which distinguish the people and the lower animals of their native lands; they are trapped, but not tamed; they become captives, but not civilised. However trained, they are probably the worst servants in the world; a slave-household is a model of discomfort. The wretches take a trouble and display an ingenuity in opposition and disobedience, in perversity, annoyance, and villany, which rightly directed would make them invaluable. The old definition of a slave still holds good—“an animal that eats as much and does as little as possible.” Clumsy and unhandy, dirty and careless, he will never labour unless ordered to do so, and so futile is his nature that even the inducement of the stick cannot compel him to continue his exertions; a whole gang will barely do the work of a single servant. He “has no end,” to use the Arab phrase: that is to say, however well he may begin, he will presently tire of his task; he does not and apparently he will not learn; his first impulse, like that of an ass, is not to obey; he then thinks of obeying; and if fear preponderate he finally may obey. He must deceive, for fraud and foxship are his force; when detected in some prodigious act of rascality, he pathetically pleads, “Am I not a slave?” So wondrous are his laziness and hate of exertion, that despite a high development of love of life he often appears the most reckless of mortals. He will run away from the semblance of danger; yet on a journey he will tie his pipe to a leaky keg of gunpowder, and smoke it in that position rather than take the trouble to undo it. A slave belonging to Musa, the Indian merchant at Kazeh, unwilling to rise and fetch a pipe, opened the pan of his musket, filled it with tobacco and fire, and beginning to inhale it from the muzzle blew out his brains. Growing confident and impudent from the knowledge of how far he may safely go, the slave presumes to the utmost. He steals instinctively, like a magpie: a case is quoted in which the gold spangles were stripped from an officer’s sword-belt whilst dining with the Prince of Zanzibar. The slave is almost always half-naked; whatever clothes he obtains from the master are pawned or sold in the bazar; hence he must pilfer and plunder almost openly for the means of gratifying his lowest propensities, drinking and intrigue. He seems to acquire from captivity a greater capacity for debauchery than even in his native wilds; he has learned irregularities unknown to his savage state: it is the brutishness of negroid nature brought out by the cheap and readily attainable pleasures of semi-civilisation. Whenever on moonlight nights the tapping of the tomtom responds to the vile squeaking of the fife, it is impossible to keep either a male or female slave within doors. All rendezvous at the place, and, having howled and danced themselves into happiness, conclude with a singularly disorderly scene. In the town of Zanzibar these “Ngoma” or dances were prohibited for moral reasons by the late Sayyid. The attachment of a slave to his master is merely a development of selfishness; it is a greater insult to abuse the Ahbab (patroon), than, according to Eastern fashion, the father and mother, the wife and sister. No slave-owner, however, praises a slave or relies upon his fidelity. The common expression is, “There is no good in the bondsman.”

Like the Somal, a merry and light-hearted race in foreign countries, but rendered gloomy and melancholy by the state of affairs at home, the negroid slaves greatly improve by exportation: they lose much of the surliness and violence which distinguish them at Zanzibar, and are disciplined into a kind of respect for superiors. Thus, “Seedy Mubarak” is a prime favourite on board an Indian steamer; he has also strength and courage enough to make himself respected. But “Seedy Mubarak” has tasted the intoxicating draught of liberty, he is in high good humour with himself and with all around him, he is a slave merely in origin, he has been adopted into the great family of free men, and with it he has identified all his interests. Eastern history preserves instances of the valour and faithfulness of bondsmen, as the annals of the West are fond of recording the virtues of dogs. Yet all the more civilised races have a gird at the negro. In the present day the Persians and other Asiatics are careful, when bound on distant or dangerous journeys, to mix white servants with black slaves; they hold the African to be full of strange childish caprices, and to be ever at heart a treacherous and bloodthirsty barbarian. Like the “bush-negroes” of Surinam, once so dangerous to the Dutch, the runaway slaves from Zanzibar have formed a kind of East African Liberia, between Mount Yombo and the Shimba section of the Eastern Ghauts. They have endangered the direct caravan-road from Mombasah to Usumbara; and though trespassing upon the territory of the Mwasagnombe, a sub-clan of the Wadigo, and claimed as subjects by Abdullah, the son of Sultan Kimwere, they have gallantly held their ground. According to the Arabs there is another servile republic about Gulwen, near Brava. Travellers speak with horror of the rudeness, violence, and cruelty of these self-emancipated slaves; they are said to be more dangerous even than the Somal, who for wanton mischief and malice can be compared with nothing but the naughtiest schoolboys in England.

The serviles at Zanzibar have played their Arab masters some notable tricks. Many a severe lord has perished by the hand of a slave. Several have lost their eyes by the dagger’s point during sleep. Curious tales are told of ingenious servile conspiracy. Mohammed bin Sayf, a Zanzibar Arab, remarkable for household discipline, was brought to grief by Kombo, his slave, who stole a basket of nutmegs from the Prince, and, hiding them in his master’s house, denounced him of theft. Fahl bin Nasr, a travelling merchant, when passing through Ugogo, nearly lost his life in consequence of a slave having privily informed the people that his patroon had been killing crocodiles and preserving their fat for poison. In both these cases the slaves were not punished; they had acted, it was believed, according to the true instincts of servile nature, and chastisement would have caused desertion, not improvement.

As regards the female slaves, the less said about them, from regard to the sex, the better: they are as deficient in honour as in honesty, in modesty and decorum as in grace and beauty. No man, even an Arab, deems the mother of his children chaste, or believes in the legitimacy of his progeny till proved.

Extensive inquiries into the subject lead to a conviction that it is impossible to offer any average of the price of slaves. Yet the question is of importance, as only the immense profit causes men thus to overlook all considerations of humanity. A few general rules may be safely given. There is no article, even horse-flesh, that varies so much in market-value as the human commodity: the absolute worth is small compared with the wants of the seller and the requirements and the means of the purchaser. The extremes range from six feet of unbleached domestics or a few pounds of grain in time of famine, to seventy dollars, equal to 15l. The slaves are cheapest in the interior, on account of the frequency of desertion: about Unyamwezi they are dearer, and most expensive in the island of Zanzibar. At the latter place during the last few years they have doubled in price: according to the Arabs, who regard the abolition of slavery with feelings of horror, this increase results from the impediments thrown in the way by the English; a more probable explanation may be found in the greater cheapness of money. At Zanzibar the price of a boy under puberty is from fifteen to thirty dollars. A youth till the age of fifteen is worth a little less. A man in the prime of life, from twenty-five to forty, fetches from thirteen to twenty dollars; after that age he may be bought from ten to thirteen. Educated slaves, fitted for the work of factors, are sold from twenty-five to seventy dollars, and at fancy prices. The price of females is everywhere about one-third higher than that of males. At Zanzibar the ushur or custom-dues vary according to the race of the slave: the Wahiao, Wangindo, and other serviles imported from Kilwa, pay one dollar per head, from the Mrima or maritime regions two dollars, and from Unyamwezi, Ujiji, and the rest of the interior three dollars. At the central depôt, Unyanyembe, where slaves are considered neither cheap nor dear, the value of a boy ranges between eight and ten doti or double cloths; a youth from nine to eleven; a man in prime, from five to ten; and past his prime from four to six. In some parts of the interior men are dearer than children under puberty. In the cheapest places, as in Karagwah and Urori, a boy costs three shukkahs of cloth, and three fundo or thirty strings of coral beads; a youth from ten to fifteen fundo; a man in prime from eight to ten; and no one will purchase an old man. These general notes must not, however, be applied to particular tribes: as with ivory and other valuable commodities, the amount and the description of the circulating medium vary at almost every march.

It was asserted by the late Colonel Hamerton, whose local knowledge was extensive, that the average of yearly import into the island of Zanzibar was 14,000 head of slaves, the extremes being 9000 and 20,000. The loss by mortality and desertion is 30 per cent. per annum; thus, the whole gang must be renewed between the third and fourth year.

By a stretch of power slavery might readily be abolished in the island of Zanzibar, and in due time, after the first confusion, the measure would doubtless be found as profitable as it is now unpalatable to the landed proprietors, and to the commercial body. A “sentimental squadron,” like the West African, would easily, by means of steam, prevent any regular exportation to the Asiatic continent. But these measures would deal only with effects, leaving the causes in full vigour; they would strike at the bole and branches, the root retaining sufficient vitality to resume its functions as soon as relieved of the pressure from without. Neither treaty nor fleet would avail permanently to arrest the course of slavery upon the seaboard, much less would it act in the far realms of the interior. At present the African will not work: the purchase of predial slaves to till and harvest for him is the great aim of his life. When a more extensive intercourse with the maritime regions shall beget wants which compel the barbarian, now contented with doing nothing and having nothing, to that individual exertion and that mutual dependency which render serfdom a moral impossibility in the more advanced stages of human society,—when man, now valueless except to himself, shall become more precious by his labour than by his sale, in fact an article so expensive that strangers cannot afford to buy him,—then we may expect to witness the extinction of the evil. Thus, and thus only can “Rachel, still weeping for her children,” in the evening of her days, be made happy.

Meanwhile, the philanthropist, who after sowing the good seed has sense and patience to consign the gathering of the crop to posterity, will hear with pleasure that the extinction of slavery would be hailed with delight by the great mass throughout the length and breadth of Eastern Africa. This people, “robbed and spoiled” by their oppressors, who are legionary, call themselves “the meat,” and the slave-dealers “the knife:” they hate and fear their own demon Moloch, but they lack unanimity to free their necks from his yoke. Africa still “lies in her blood,” but the progress of human society, and the straiter bonds which unite man with man, shall eventually rescue her from her old pitiable fate.

The Bull-headed Mabruki.

African standing position.