RELIGION ON THE EAST COAST OF AFRICA.
The marvellous success of the indomitable Stanley has attracted the attention of all to Africa, that region of mystery, marvel, and malaria. The Catholic would naturally learn something of the work of the church in that continent, and of the religious condition of its population. But the subject is too vast for anything less than a large volume, and it will be more profitable to confine our attention to the dominions of the Sultan of Zanzibar. This region has a double interest. Zanzibar is the starting-point of almost every Central African expedition. Thence Livingstone, Speke and Grant, Cameron, and Stanley on two occasions, have struck into the interior and made valuable discoveries. It is also the old centre of the East African slave-trade, which, though it has received a severe check, is not yet abolished. Moreover, Zanzibar is a microcosm—a little world in itself. There one meets with the Arab, the Hindoo, the Persian, the Malagashi, the Banian, the Goa Portuguese, the negro, and the European.
The most important portion of the Sultan of Zanzibar’s territory is the islands of which Zanzibar is the chief. The name was once applied to the whole coast, and it is probable that that must have been the meaning of Marco Polo when he says (on hearsay evidence) that the island of Zanzibar is two thousand miles round. The term is supposed to signify the “Land of the Blacks.” The island is in about 6° south latitude, 48 miles long by 18 broad. It is separated from the mainland by a strait only 20 miles in breadth. As one approaches Zanzibar from the north the coast appears bare, rocky, and surrounded by low cliffs. Here dwell some wild people, almost completely cut off from the more civilized portion of the inhabitants, and following debasing and degrading superstitions. But as we sail southwards, between the island and the main, the shore becomes low and flat, the beach covered with sand of silvery whiteness, and the whole backed by rising ground not more than 300 feet high, on which grow in rich abundance cocoanut and other feathery-leaved palms. Soft breezes, laden with sweet odors from the groves of spice-trees, blow from the shore. The island is rich in fruits; mangos, oranges, limes, pummalos or shaddock, pineapples, jack-fruit, guavas, bananas, and cashew abound. But about four years ago a hurricane visited Zanzibar for the first time; almost all the dhows in the harbor were wrecked, many lives were lost, and the greater part of the trees were destroyed. On one estate known to the writer only four per cent. of the trees remained standing, and the ground, strewn with palms, was a lamentable sight.
At the entrance of Zanzibar harbor are several beautiful islands of emerald green. One of these, called French Island, is used as a burial-place for Europeans, and many wooden crosses and boards mark the last resting-place of seamen of the British navy, cut down by the fever which is so fatal on this coast. The heat is not excessive, seldom rising to 90°, but there is a feeling of depression in the atmosphere, and a short residence in this climate serves to take the energy out of most people.
Now we arrive at the city of Zanzibar, the most important place in East Africa. Its name, in the native language, is Unguja. For miles before reaching the city we have seen large white, square buildings close to the shore—the country residences of wealthy Arabs. The appearance is very pleasing, and so is that of the city from the sea, as similar houses stand near it. These are the English, French, American, and German consulates, over which wave the flags of their respective nations; also the sultan’s palace, the custom-house, and residences of rich Arabs and Hindoos. They are built of coral covered with the whitest plaster, only relieved by regular rows of windows, the brightness reflected from these houses being almost blinding. But on entering the town you cease to wonder at the bad name it has earned. With scarcely an exception Zanzibar is a heap of rubbish; the narrow lanes, or paths which do duty for streets, are surrounded by low hovels formed of earth plastered over wooden frames, roofed with palm-leaves, and possessing no means of ventilation but the doorway, the interior being consequently dark, stifling, and filthy. Many buildings have been allowed to go to utter ruin, and the very mosques are hardly presentable. But the bazaars form the sight of the city. They are, perhaps, a little wider than the other thoroughfares, and the fronts of the houses are occupied by small stalls, on which are piled articles the most incongruous—soap, fish, plantains, cotton goods, medicine, oil, etc. In the midst is seated, cross-legged, a fat old Banian, stripped to the waist, with his naked foot in a basket of grain, or a pretty dark-eyed girl with a ring in her nose. The market produce of all kinds is heaped on the ground without any attempt at order, and, as every one present is screaming at the top of his voice in his own language, the Babel of tongues is complete.
The government is in the hands of the Arabs. This people have from time immemorial had trading-stations on the coast, but Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope in 1499, and the Portuguese soon superseded the Arabs and held the coast for a couple of hundred years, when the Arabs succeeded in dislodging them, and they are now confined to Mozambique and Quilimane, at the mouth of the Zambesi.
Remains of Portuguese forts are scattered up and down the shores of the mainland, and the writer assisted once in whitewashing Vasco da Gama’s column at Melinda, which makes an excellent harbor mark. Near the fort at Zanzibar numerous Portuguese cannon, cast in a European arsenal in the present century, lie on the ground, a proud trophy for the Arabs and a humiliating spectacle for Europeans. Fifty years ago Sayid Said, the Imaum of Muscat, visited Zanzibar and fixed his residence there. At his death one of his sons succeeded to his African and another to his Arabian possessions, the former paying an annual tax of forty thousand dollars to the Imaum. Sayid Barghash, the present sultan, succeeded his brother Sayid Majid seven years ago. He had previously been exiled to Bombay at the instance of the English, whose protégé Majid was. His policy has been one of economy and retrenchment. Though the government may be called an absolute monarchy, yet it answers rather to the old feudal constitutions of Europe in the middle ages, the sultan being checked by members of his own and other powerful families.
The Arab statute-book is the Koran interpreted by what may be called the priesthood. But witchcraft is a great power, not only with the heathen but also with Mahometans, in Africa, and, after consulting his sheiks and sherifs, the sultan often has recourse to the heathen Mganga. One is reminded of the Witch of Endor, Pharao’s magicians, and many of the old superstitions which we find recorded in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures.
The population of the city may be one hundred thousand, and that of the remainder of the island rather more; but one cannot decide this with any accuracy, as it is against Moslem principles to take a census. Who are they to count the favors of God? Of the mongrel population of Zanzibar the Arab is the dominant race, though there are few, if any, pure Arabs—sometimes that name being applied to a man as black as a negro. But the better class of them are fine, handsome men, splendidly dressed, and very dignified and self-possessed. They are ignorant, however, bigoted, supercilious, and licentious. They are also very indolent and have few redeeming features. Lower classes of Arabs there are, who are soldiers, sailors, traders, and so on, and from them are drawn the villains who carry on the iniquitous slave-traffic.
There are about seven thousand British subjects—Banians and other Indian peoples. The commerce of the East African coast is chiefly in their hands, and they are the bankers and represent the moneyed interest. Those owning slaves are in danger of losing them, if the British consul discover the fact; but it is hardly possible for them not to trade in slaves, as they are always sold with landed properties, and without them labor could hardly be obtained.
Most of the army, which numbers nine hundred, is composed of Belooches, who are a motley set of rascals, brutal, lazy, and cowardly. But somehow they contrive to live, and arm themselves too, on three dollars a month, and seem to be pretty prosperous. The artillerymen are Persians—tall, handsome men with black moustaches, high black sheepskin caps, green tunics, and loose trowsers. But their battery, which is full of small brass and iron guns overlooking the sea, is a poor affair, ridiculous from a military point of view, and better adapted for firing salutes than for purposes of warfare.
There are about two thousand men from the Comoro Islands, but no one seems to have anything good to say of them.
The mass of the population is composed of blacks from the east coast. These are almost entirely slaves, and are made to work for the support of the lazy Arabs. A person acquainted with the country easily distinguishes members of the different tribes from each other; they may be known by the tribe marks—mostly punctures in the forehead—and by their general appearance. The slaves are capable of much endurance; the writer once paid thirty or forty slave women eight cents each for a day’s work, which consisted of walking thirty miles, carrying weights on their heads half the way. They did not seem at all exhausted after this arduous task. Great cruelties are perpetrated in the capture of the slaves and in conveying them to Zanzibar, but, as a rule, they are treated fairly enough when once they are received into a family, being allowed one day a week to work for themselves, besides other extra time.
There are only sixty or seventy white people—American, English, Scotch, French, and German—but without them the commerce of the place would collapse. The chief exports are spices, ivory, ebony, cocoanuts, and gum-copal. The imports are cotton fabrics, pocket-handkerchiefs of bright colors, crockery, etc.
The climate of Zanzibar is healthier than that of the mainland, though it is quite bad enough; the wonder is that any one can live there. The city lies very low, almost surrounded by a shallow lagoon, over which the water flows at every tide, leaving a deposit of reeking filth. No attempt at drainage has been made; sanitary reform is totally unknown; and the smell of the beach caused Livingstone to suggest that the name should be changed to Stinkibar. The year before the great hurricane there was a cholera epidemic which is supposed to have killed ten thousand people. Strangely enough, the Europeans, who mostly suffer much from fevers, were totally exempt, and the natives got the notion that the devil, who gave them the cholera, was afraid to attack the redoubtable Myungoo; so they sometimes whitewashed a man who showed symptoms of the disease, to cheat the devil, but the devil refused to be cheated so easily. The physical is far superior, however, to the moral condition of Zanzibar; in fact, the place is a Sodom where morality is unknown.
To arrive at an idea of the religious condition of the peoples it is necessary to consider each race separately, and try to understand their habits and modes of thought. First let us take the negro—the most numerous class. Even so we shall be generalizing for the different tribes and nations of the interior, as distinct from each other and the races of Europe.
The writer has had considerable opportunities of judging of the black man, having served in a British man-of-war engaged in the suppression of the slave-trade, and having for some time been in charge of an establishment of liberated slaves—mostly boys. The negro character is a strange series of contradictions, and it takes some time to understand him. He is profoundly conscious of his inferiority. An English officer adopted a little slave boy taken from a dhow, and we taught him a few elements of religion, which he eagerly grasped. Amongst others he was much struck by the idea of a future state. One day he was being chaffed: “Ah! you nigger—thick lips—flat nose,” when he replied: “If I’m a good nigger, after I die I shall get up again, not black then, but white as you are.” It was a long time, though, before he could believe that a negro could rise again, though it did not seem unreasonable to him for an Arab or white man to rise.
Passing with this same boy, Mumbo, through a graveyard at Zanzibar, he pointed to a grave. “Who’s there?” he said. “Arab man,” I answered, recognizing it to be so from the concrete with which the grave was covered. “He get up again?” “Yes,” I replied, after which the boy was thoughtful and silent for a while. “Who’s buried there?” he repeated, pointing to a grave marked by a wooden cross. “A Msungu” (white man), I answered. “He get up again?” “Yes.” Another pause. “And who’s there?” the boy again asked, pointing to a mean grave unmarked by cross or stone. “A nigger man,” said I. “He get up again?” But on replying in the affirmative he would not believe it, and continued obstinately sceptical for some time.
Selfishness seems to be the most prominent feature of the negro character. Civilized people mask the repulsive feeling, but not so the black. Everything is for himself and his own present sensual gratification. They have not a particle of gratitude, and if you show them kindness or give them a present it is considered a sign of weakness, and their contempt for their benefactor is apparent. There is no word expressive of thanks in the Swahili language, though the “Santa” of the Arab, accompanied by a bow, the right hand placed on the heart, is most graceful and pleasing. On taking charge of the boys’ house, in the benevolence of my heart I invested in numbers of stalks of bananas—a large one can be obtained for eight cents—and distributed them. But no word of thanks was heard, and the boys began to consider fruit as a right, and to grumble if it were not forthcoming; so I grew rather disgusted and discontinued scattering largesse amidst such a graceless set. Neither do they show much affection. This, perhaps, is hardly to be wondered at, as the slave-traffic, which has existed from time immemorial, must, by constantly separating families, have weakened and almost destroyed all ties of kindred. A gentleman well acquainted with the people told me that the only known affection amongst them was that between a son and his mother. Several slave boys whom we had liberated and kept on board the ship, on our leaving the coast were wisely sent on shore to the mission, only the one of whom I have previously spoken remaining. He wept piteously and sobbed himself to sleep. We were touched, and fancied that, after all, we had formed too low an estimate of the negro, till on waking he appeared to have completely forgotten his friends, and never spoke of them again. It then appeared that his grief had been purely selfish; for, as he phrased it, he would have no one “to skylark with.” “What will you give me?” is the view a negro takes of his neighbor, and in this the Ki-Swahili, and even the Arab, very much resemble him. One’s ear soon grows familiar with the cry of “Lata paca”—“Bring pice”—pice being little Indian copper coins which form the currency at Zanzibar. This question is asked you in the streets or country roads, not merely by the poor, but even by well-to-do people. I was one day walking home from a feast to which I had been invited by the proprietor of a sugar plantation—a Swahili man. These people are mulattoes, partly Arab, but mostly negro. They are Mahometans and call themselves Arabs. We had been hospitably fêted, and I was accompanied by a brother of my host, a nice-looking young fellow, upright as a dart—as they all are—and dressed in the graceful long white linen robe which they always wear. He was proceeding to his home, a well-built stone house, but before leaving me I was astonished at his asking in Swahili for a few pice! Doubting my ears, I asked a boy who understood English what he had said, and he told me that I had not mistaken his meaning; so I gave him two or three coppers, and he went away well pleased.
Negroes are very improvident, like most savage races. They take no thought for the morrow—not from faith, but from utter recklessness. They are also fond of desertion for the mere sake of change. Slaves sometimes leave their masters and hire themselves out for a year or two to some one else, returning afterwards as if nothing had happened, and receiving no punishment, the master fearing that he might revenge himself on him or desert again, and also arguing that it is his nature and that no better can be expected of him. I was once on a shooting party in the Kingani River, and placing one of the boats in charge of a quartermaster, left with him a Seedee boy, or black seaman, to clean the jaws of a hippopotamus that I had shot on the previous day. I went up the river in the other boat with the remaining seamen for a day’s shooting, and on my return in the evening was informed that the black had decamped, and we never saw any more of him. In the ship he was receiving about four times as much pay as he could possibly earn elsewhere, and, in addition to this, he left clothes and money behind. Yet we afterwards learnt that before leaving the vessel he had told his friends of his intention to run.
The negro is, in Africa as elsewhere, exceedingly indolent, and, nature having provided him with abundance of the necessaries of life, he indulges his laziness to the full when he possibly can—that is, in his native country or at Zanzibar, if he can manage to possess a few slaves to work for him.
He is also obstinate and headstrong. Going on shore on the beautiful island of Pemba, north of Zanzibar, to trade for provisions, they were uniformly refused us, whatever price we offered. Yet next day the natives brought the things to the ship, some miles from the shore, and offered them for sale. A little bit of a boy was so obstinate that he would not obey orders unless he chose, even if thrashed with a rhinoceros-hide whip; neither did he flinch nor utter a cry under punishment. But when he left the ship, where he had been petted by the sailors, being sent to the French Mission, he was so disgusted that the first thing he did was to roll on the beach and completely destroy his new clothes, and the missionaries were compelled to restore him his old sailor costume. Still he sulked, and when I left they had not managed to get him to speak.
Negroes are subject to sudden fits of fury almost amounting to madness, and then they cry, shout, vociferate, and argue in the most ridiculous manner. They love to eat and are very greedy, but are still more fond of drinking, and in their own country begin the day by copious potations of beer. However, at Zanzibar drunkenness would be punished by imprisonment; and that is no trifle, the prisoners being placed in a yard enclosed by four walls, and receiving no food, unless they have a friend to bring them some. They are also exceedingly depraved, and, when brought into contact with the semi-civilization of the coast, they become, if anything, worse than before. A stranger is astonished at the cool manner in which they enter a strange house, if they see the door open. They place their spear in a corner, set themselves in the best place, and talk till they are tired (they are especially fond of hearing themselves talk), when they rise and leave. It is no good trying to exclude them; their curiosity must be satisfied, and they insist on seeing and learning about everything—examining and handling your clothes and asking the value of each article.
Negroes have the redeeming feature of being mostly good-tempered and pleased by a very little. They delight in a joke, yet their wit is of the most elementary character. They are exceedingly fond of music; neither does its unvaried monotony pall on them. I once passed an old man amusing himself by drumming with two sticks on a plank; returning after some hours, I found him continuing the performance, which he had evidently kept up all the time. You will see them on a moonlight night, or even in the daytime, dancing and flinging their limbs about in the most ridiculous and ungraceful manner to the tune of tomtoms and fifes; yet they keep perfect time. A circle is formed, and a performer waltzes rapidly around the inner space, looking up to the sky, till she becomes giddy and falls into the arms of her friends. Whatever work they are engaged in, these people always sing, and in the streets you constantly hear the chant of porters, who carry tusks of ivory or bales of goods slung between two of them on a pole which rests on their shoulders.
The East African negro has been completely debased by centuries of oppression and slavery. “All the good qualities appear crushed out of the African race,” said an experienced missionary at Zanzibar to me. Their religion is the same as that of the natives of the west coast—fetichism. I believe this word is derived from the Portuguese feitiço, a doing—that is, of magic. Nature has colored the black man’s thoughts, but not with the sublime and beautiful. He sees nothing in nature but the terrible, vast, threatening, and hostile. The dense jungle with huge trees, concealing poisonous snakes, fierce lions, and spotted leopards; the fever-breeding swamp; the devastating cyclone—these have produced a feeling of dread, helplessness, and terror on his debased mind. He has but a very vague, unformed idea of a Supreme Being, and does not at all conceive of the spiritual and eternal side of man. To him death is destruction. Yet he believes that the ghost of the departed person remains, and he always imagines it to be harmful and hostile. In fact, he is for ever in terror of ghosts and witchcraft, and his religion consists in the propitiation of natural objects. The African’s creed may be reduced to two articles: the first demonology, or the existence of spectres of the dead; the second witchcraft, or black magic. Their native superstitions the slaves carry with them to Zanzibar or wherever they are taken, and so deeply rooted are these beliefs in their minds that I have often been surprised to hear negroes who have been Protestant Christians for years, and daily attending public Christian worship, speak of witchcraft in ordinary conversation as much as a matter of course as they would of any every-day occurrence. For instance, missing some pice from my drawers, I asked my servant to find out who had taken them. He replied that he could not do so, but that a man had been there years ago who “made plenty witchcraft”; he would have told me, but now he was gone. Some very good Christian boys, as I was walking with them one day, suddenly dropped their voices and told me that it was a “plenty bad place.” I imagined that fever or ague was intended, as it was low, marshy ground; but no such thing. They had once witnessed some “witchcraft” or other there.
There are Mganga—wizards and witches—who are partly impostors and partly dupes of their own imagination. To these people the negroes have recourse in any calamity or sickness. Their office is to transfer the evil from which they suffer to some one else. Of course payment is the preliminary—no pay, no work. And an African must have present payment; he attaches no value to promises of future reward, though ever so near. These Mganga endeavor to entice ghosts from possessed persons and transfer them to some inanimate object, striving to effect it by music, dancing, and drinking. Thus, they nail pieces of cloth to trees to coax the devils into them. Epileptic fits are very common, and it is not astonishing that they should regard them as the effect of seizure by some external agent. On the mainland they attempt to discover the workers of magic by most cruel ordeals.
There are also rain-makers. It does not require an exceptionally weatherwise person to infer what the weather will be in a country of regular monsoons and seasons; still, they sometimes make a mistake, and then the false prophets have to escape as best they can.
The Arabs have the utmost contempt for the negroes, and, so far from trying to convert them, purposely leave them to perdition; if they made them Mahometans they would be their equals, and this they do not at all desire.
Such is the character and religious belief of these unhappy people. We will see later on what the church can do for them, but in this inquiry one important subject must be considered—that is, the slave-trade. Slavery on the White Nile is admirably described by Sir Samuel Baker in his Nile Basin, and it is much the same on the east coast. The petty native chieftains are constantly at war with each other, the object being plunder. They try to surprise a neighboring village at night, fire it, and surround it with armed men. As the luckless inhabitants rush out to escape from the flames, their enemies shoot down the men and seize the women and children for slaves, carrying off the cattle. Sometimes a thieving Arab slaving party joins one chief who has a grudge against a neighboring village, assisting him to destroy it in the manner just described and sharing the plunder. The Arabs then manage to quarrel with their allies, and so obtain their goods also.
As long as this state of things exists mission work in the interior will be impossible. The Protestant English mission, under Bishop Mackenzie, some years ago established itself in the interior near the Zambesi, and gathered together some hundreds of natives whose improvement they hoped gradually to effect. But a powerful tribe attacking the one amongst which they dwelt, they had to perform the uncongenial task of driving off the invaders with their rifles. Their friends were saved for the time, but many of the missionaries had died from fever, and the small remainder was obliged to retire. Shortly after this the tribe with which they had been was swept away and destroyed. The slave-trade naturally prevents all progress and the increase of population. It also weakens all family ties, parents killing their offspring if they are in want. Great cruelties are practised, not only in the capture of slaves, but in their transit to the place of destination. The Arabs are very improvident, and sometimes, having failed to provide sufficient food for their caravan, they leave some of the slaves in the desert to starve, not even removing the yokes by which they are fastened together. I was told of a woman who was carrying a bale of cloth, and on the journey gave birth to a child. She could not carry both the baby and the goods; the latter were the more valuable, so the infant was brained against the nearest tree and left on the ground.
About four years ago a treaty was signed between the Sultan of Zanzibar and the British government, by which the importation of slaves was prohibited, but the Arabs were permitted to retain the slaves they already possessed. Strong pressure had to be brought to bear on the Arabs to compel them to sign this treaty; but even now a considerable traffic is carried on by the east coast with Arabia, Pemba, and Madagascar. The negroes are crowded into the slave-dhows, and their sufferings from hunger and filth must be extreme on a voyage. Many die and are thrown overboard, and the remainder land in a miserably reduced condition. But the household slaves are treated kindly and well fed; this the owner finds politic, or the slave might desert. They are addressed as “Ndugu-yango”—“My brother”—and considered part of the family.
There are two sorts of slaves in the islands—the Muwallid, or domestic, born in slavery, and the wild imported slave. The former class are much better treated than the others. Even young captured slaves are not so tractable as they, but the older ones are very obstinate and contrary and given to thieving and disorder. Sometimes in revenge they attempt the life of their master or try to get him into serious trouble, yet they are seldom punished for it, any more than with us a vicious animal would be. They are slaves, and it is their nature, and they themselves give this as their excuse when convicted of the most abominable crimes. But slaves often rise to a very important position; and as Abraham sent his servant to Mesopotamia to negotiate his son’s marriage, so slaves are entrusted by their masters with the command of trading caravans to the interior, they preferring to remain comfortably at home. Free negroes have been known to sell themselves for slaves, and, when asked about it, to reply: “What can a dog do without a master?” Also, slaves often own slaves of their own. The pilot of Zanzibar, an official of some importance called Buckett, was a slave, and, when seen habited in a naval officer’s old coat and a handsome turban on his head, he appeared a person of much distinction.
It is difficult to see how slavery can be kept up at Zanzibar, now that importation is forbidden; for the annual loss from death and desertion is thirty per cent., and the average annual importation a few years ago was estimated at thirteen thousand. Slavery, as it has been there, is an abominable institution and a complete bar to improvement.
Though the negro is so ignorant, superstitious, and debased, yet it has been abundantly shown that he is capable of improvement. I once visited the well-ordered estate of Kokotoni, in the north of Zanzibar Island, the property of Capt. Fraser. I found it in charge of an intelligent Scotchman, who said that they had about five hundred laborers resident on the plantation—half men and half women. They required them all to marry, gave them cottages, provision, grounds, and two dollars and a half each per month, and they were an orderly and well-conducted people. The overseer had taught them different trades—as that of wheelwright, necessary for the work of the estate—and, though they sometimes deserted in true negro fashion, yet the truants were sure to return again.
At Zanzibar and Bagomoyo, twenty-five miles off on the mainland, at the mouth of the Kingani River, the Société du Saint-Esprit, the parent house of which is in Paris, have most flourishing establishments. The town house is in the centre of Zanzibar, its corrugated iron roof, towering above the neighboring buildings, being a conspicuous object. On entering you will be greeted in good French by very civil negro boys dressed in blue blouse and trowsers and wearing a black glazed hat. They will conduct you to a spacious sitting-room decorated with pictures of religious subjects, and before long the superior, Père Etienne, appears. He is a tall, slight man, and has not lost the cavalry swagger which he acquired as captain in a Lancers regiment, and which forms a strange contrast to his black soutane. He is a most affable and agreeable priest, and conducts one round the interesting establishment. There is a beautiful little chapel on the first floor, and when I was last in it the walls were being stencilled. In the workshops trades are taught to the boys by the lay brethren, such as working in metals, carpentering, and boat-building. The pupils belong to the mission, they having been either handed over to it by the British consul from captured slave-dhows, or purchased by the mission in the slave-market in the old times before slavery was abolished. At Bagomoyo there is a still larger establishment under the care of Père Horner, where about ten clergy and the same number of sisters have charge of an agricultural colony on which are several hundred Christian negroes. At first the mission did not mean to Christianize the natives, thinking that they were so degraded that it would take several generations to raise them to that point; but they found them capable of more than was originally expected. The mission establishment is half a mile from the town of Bagomoyo, which contains about five thousand people, but it has the appearance of a small town itself. The grounds are laid out in a most orderly manner; it is a pleasure to walk along the straight, well-kept paths between fields of maize, millet, and sweet potatoes.
The captain of the ship in which I served was one day up the Kingani River in his boat, accompanied by a young Alsatian lay brother from the mission. Shooting a hippopotamus cow, the calf, only a week or two old, would not leave the mother’s carcase, and the captain, who had to return to his ship, giving money to the brother, advised him to obtain assistance and catch the little animal, which he presented to the mission. A few months after, as we were visiting the good fathers, the lay brother took us to a large tank surrounded with a fence, which they had formed for the accommodation of the hippopotamus. Standing at the gate, the brother called the animal by name, and it came snorting out of the water, ran up to its master, looking up into his face, and followed us about the garden and into the house like a dog. Here he was fed from a bottle with flour and milk. He was taken to the Zoölogical Gardens at Berlin shortly afterwards, and must have sold for at least six thousand dollars. Hippopotami are inimical to the crops of rice which grow near the rivers, as they come on shore in the night and devour enormous quantities of the young tender shoots, so that the fields have to be carefully watched. But more dangerous animals are found on the coast, and Père Horner told us a story of a huge lion which had carried off several of their cattle. They constructed a trap of a deserted hut, into which they enticed the animal, which, finding himself imprisoned, aroused all the establishment from their midnight slumbers by his roarings. He was shot by one of the brethren.
The fathers give their guests a good dinner of many courses in true French style, but one should not conclude, as does Stanley in his How I Found Livingstone, that champagne is their ordinary beverage. On the contrary, when I was there they could offer us nothing but a little white rum which had been sent them from our ship, and the champagne with which they welcomed Mr. Stanley was some of a small present which they had received.
Their mode of work is undoubtedly the true one: to get a certain number of negroes, isolate them as much as possible from the licentious society of their heathen brethren, and hope of them to form the nucleus of a future Christian population.
The Church of England has a mission at Zanzibar, and has also some settlements on the mainland; and as I had several friends there, I know something about it from personal observation, and regret that its members are not Catholics, for a more devoted set of workers it would be hard to find. They have a house on a shamba, or estate, two miles from the town, in which there are a number of liberated slave boys, who are instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and are taught such trades as carpentering and field labor. Dr. Steere, the third bishop of this mission, which was set on foot by the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge at the instance of Livingstone, is a linguist, being the authority on Swahili, the language commonly spoken at Zanzibar and on the coast. He has written a Swahili grammar, and translated into the language great parts of the Bible, prayers, hymns, and school-books, and these are excellently printed in the mission press by some of the pupils, a few of whom he took to England to perfect themselves in the trade at a large London printing establishment. All the printing done in Zanzibar is their work. They have a beautiful chapel, where there are daily morning and evening services, and these are attended by all the establishment; and I am told that many of the boys show great devotion, kneeling for a quarter of an hour together in the chapel. I am inclined to fear, though, that the African Anglican’s notion of religion is something which will propitiate an angry, hostile power—in fact, a relic of demonology. “Our Father” has no meaning to one who had perhaps been sold to an Arab by his parent for a bowl of rice. Two miles beyond the English mission’s boys’ house is a similar establishment for girls under the charge of women. The girls look fatter and healthier than the boys, a large proportion of whom are affected by the terrible skin diseases so prevalent amongst the blacks.
The mission had a devoted young clergyman there some years ago, who, being possessed of large means and wealthy friends, purchased the old slave market in Zanzibar, on which a handsome stone church with groined roof, and different school buildings, were erected. But he sacrificed his life, as most of the workers of this mission have done, by his zeal, and fell a victim to fever; his funeral was attended by parties from the English men-of-war in the harbor, and by some of the Catholic missionaries, and many of the European residents who wished to pay a last tribute of respect to the memory of a brave and devoted, if mistaken, man. He once told me that some of his pupils asked him a very pertinent question: Why, if the Christian religion was one, the French and English missions were not united? He evaded it by replying that they taught in English, but the others in French! When his death was announced in England a young clergyman, who had formerly worked in the same mission, was preaching for it in an English church and exhorting his hearers to give money and, if possible, their personal services to the cause. He was astonished afterwards at a young woman presenting herself and offering herself for the work. Neither pictures of fever, discomfort, nor death could deter her from going to Zanzibar, as I believe she afterwards did.
Bishop Steere used to give a weekly address in the native language in the city of Zanzibar to any who chose to attend, and I have heard that the rich Arabs used to flock to it in crowds, coming to the bishop’s house afterwards to discuss the different Christian doctrines of which they had heard. But if any Arab became a Christian he would probably be assassinated by his comrades, so great is their bigotry. Singularly, the part of the Bible which has most interest for an Arab is the genealogies; for, as is well known, they are most careful in preserving such records, even of their very horses.
The Mahometan residents at Zanzibar and on the coast, both Arab and Ki-Swahili, go to school at seven years of age, and in two or three years learn to write, and read the Koran. They are also taught a few prayers and hymns and some Arab proverbs, and this completes their education. In two points a good Moslem puts ordinary Christians to shame—in prayer and temperance. In the East one often sees even the poorest people prostrating themselves towards Mecca on their praying-mat, and repeating the accustomed prayers at the stated hours, which occur five times a day. I have seen a naked black laborer praying in a coal-lighter during an interval of work. One is reminded of the quaint old Belgian cities, where it is common to see female figures, in their long black cloaks, kneeling before a crucifix in some open space. Temperance the Arab rigidly observes; and how can one expect them to become Christians when they daily witness the drunkenness of white seamen? In fact, this objection has been urged upon me by natives, and the answer which one makes, that our religion does not permit drunkenness, is not satisfactory to them. “If we got drunk,” they say, “our sultan would put us in prison.”
Strict Mahometans are very Pharisaical. We once had great trouble with a Mahometan priest or schoolmaster who visited our ship. He refused the coffee which we offered him because it was made by a Christian, and would only condescend to drink some lime-juice out of a glass which we assured him had never been used, and even this beverage had to be prepared by his own servant. Some Arab gentlemen who accompanied him and dined with us, being prevented from eating anything that we had cooked, could get nothing but oranges.
The Hindis are a sect of Mahometans who are not recognized by the Arabs, but the exact nature of their differences I have not been able to learn. Neither could I arrive at the religion of the Banians. Their mortality at Zanzibar is very great, and you may daily see processions of Banian men going to the beach beyond the town, where they raise a funeral pyre of wood, on which their deceased friend is consumed, the remains being washed away by the rising tide.
On the coast the people are much the same as those who inhabit the island of Zanzibar. There are the lazy, cowardly Belooch soldiers and their families, and these swashbucklers are thoroughly despised and hated. The towns are ruled by headmen, who are subject to the Sultan of Zanzibar, but who enrich themselves by extortion. The Washenzi are day-laborers, and are barbarians from the interior. Banians are always found prospering in trade. The Ki-Swahili—which means people of the coast, degenerate Arabs—are ignorant and vicious. They have a great fear and hatred of the white man, particularly of the English, whom they called Beni Nar—Sons of Fire. They think that, if once the white man’s foot has been placed on the land, he is sure to obtain possession of it in the end; and in this they are not far mistaken. The Wamrina are a coast clan even more debased and vicious than the latter people, and they appear to have little reason. They are cowardly and cautious, but very cunning, and, as most of the inhabitants in those parts, lie habitually, even when there is no object to be gained thereby.
There are a number of small towns on the coast from Magadoxo, a little north of the equator, to Kilwa, the great slave-mart in the south. The chief ones are Brava, Lamu, Marka, Melinda, and Mombas. At both of the latter are Portuguese remains, and at Mombas is a Protestant mission which at the time of my visit had been established thirty years, and had cost a large amount of money, but had apparently done very little good. The celebrated Dr. Krapf, who had been four years in Abyssinia, was the first to go there, starting from Zanzibar. This was in 1844. He was the first to draw up a Ki-Swahili grammar, in which he was assisted by Dr. Rebmann, who arrived two years afterwards. Their journeys from Mombas, which is situated in 4° south latitude, are well known. They discovered Kilima Njaro, a snow-clad mountain 22,814 feet high, only 3° south of the equator, and what they heard from the natives of vast lakes in the interior, where nothing but sandy deserts had hitherto been supposed to exist, led to the famous travels which have exposed a new world to the wondering eyes of men and opened up new fields for the glorious labors of the missionary.
Dr. Rebmann was living near Mombas at the time of my visit, though old and blind, and, I hear, has since died. I did not see him, though I started to do so with one of the missionaries. I was so disgusted by this man’s narrow sectarianism in the midst of heathendom—he commencing to abuse the mission of his own church at Zanzibar—that I preferred to spend the night on the river in a boat with our seamen rather than, with my friends, accompany him to the Rabai Mission. We came across a pamphlet written by them for their English supporters, containing a lot of pious texts: “Come over and help us”; “The fields are white to the harvest”; “A wide door and effectual is open,” and so on; but it struck us as being great nonsense. However, I am told that they have since that started a large establishment of liberated slaves. The Wesleyans have a mission in the neighborhood, but of them I know nothing, as we did not visit them.
The Sultan of Zanzibar visited England two years ago, offered to place his dominions under British protection, and has exerted himself to put a stop to the slave-trade, though he fought hard against its abolition at first, as from it he derived the principal part of his revenue. If a stop could be put to this evil and peace established in the interior, a splendid field for mission-work would be the result, the black having such respect for the superior knowledge and intellect of the white man that many tribes would receive the missionary with a hearty welcome.