Tattoo of Matambwé.
13th June, 1866.—Makoloya brought his wife and a little corn, and says that his father told him that there is a God, but nothing more. The marks on their foreheads and bodies are meant only to give beauty in the dance, they seem a sort of heraldic ornament, for they can at once tell by his tattoo to what tribe or portion of tribe a man belongs. The tattoo or tembo of the Matambwé and Upper Makondé very much resembles the drawings of the old Egyptians; wavy lines, such as the ancients made to signify water, trees and gardens enclosed in squares, seem to have been meant of old for the inhabitants who lived on the Rovuma, and cultivated also, the son takes the tattoo of his father, and thus it has been perpetuated, though the meaning now appears lost. The Makoa have the half or nearly full moon, but it is, they say, all for ornament. Some blue stuff is rubbed into the cuts (I am told it is charcoal), and the ornament shows brightly in persons of light complexion, who by the bye are common. The Makondé and Matambwé file their front teeth to points; the Machinga, a Waiyan tribe, leave two points on the sides of the front teeth, and knock out one of the middle incisors above and below.
14th June, 1866.—I am now as much dependent on carriers as if I had never bought a beast of burden—but this is poor stuff to fill a journal with. We started off to Metaba to see if the chief there would lend some men. The headman, Kitwanga, went a long way to convoy us; then turned, saying he was going to get men for Musa next day. We passed near the base of the rounded masses Ngozo and Mekanga, and think, from a near inspection, that they are over 2000 feet above the plain, possibly 3000 feet, and nearly bare, with only the peculiar grassy plant on some parts which are not too perpendicular. The people are said to have stores of grain on them, and on one the chief said there is water; he knows of no stone buildings of the olden time in the country. We passed many masses of ferruginous conglomerate, and I noticed that most of the gneiss dips westwards. The striae seem as if the rock had been partially molten: at times the strike is north and south, at others east and west; when we come to what may have been its surface, it is as if the striae had been stirred with a rod while soft.
We slept at a point of the Rovuma, above a cataract where a reach of comparatively still water, from 150 to 200 yards wide, allows a school of hippopotami to live: when the river becomes fordable in many places, as it is said to do in August and September, they must find it difficult to exist.
15th June, 1866.—Another three hours' march brought us from the sleeping-place on the Rovuma to Metaba, the chief of which, Kinazombé, is an elderly man, with a cunning and severe cast of countenance, and a nose Assyrian in type; he has built a large reception house, in which a number of half-caste Arabs have taken up their abode. A great many of the people have guns, and it is astonishing to see the number of slave-taming sticks abandoned along the road as the poor wretches gave in, and professed to have lost all hope of escape. Many huts have been built by the Arabs to screen themselves from the rain as they travelled. At Kinazombé's the second crop of maize is ready, so the hunger will not be very much felt.
16th June, 1866.—We heard very sombre accounts of the country in front:—four or five days to Mtarika, and then ten days through jungle to Mataka's town: little food at Mtarika's, but plenty with Mataka, who is near the Lake. The Rovuma trends southerly after we leave Ngozo, and Masusa on that river is pointed out as south-west from Metaba, so at Ngozo the river may be said to have its furthest northing. Masusa is reported to be five days, or at least fifty miles, from Metaba. The route now becomes south-west.
The cattle of Africa are like the Indian buffalo, only partially tamed; they never give their milk without the presence of the calf or its stuffed skin, the "fulchan." The women adjacent to Mozambique partake a little of the wild animal's nature, for, like most members of the inferior races of animals, they refuse all intercourse with their husbands when enceinte and they continue this for about three years afterwards, or until the child is weaned, which usually happens about the third year. I was told, on most respectable authority, that many fine young native men marry one wife and live happily with her till this period; nothing will then induce her to continue to cohabit with him, and, as the separation is to continue for three years, the man is almost compelled to take up with another wife: this was mentioned to me as one of the great evils of society. The same absurdity prevails on the West Coast, and there it is said that the men acquiesce from ideas of purity.
It is curious that trade-rum should form so important an article of import on the West Coast while it is almost unknown on the East Coast, for the same people began the commerce in both instances. If we look north of Cape Delgado, we might imagine that the religious convictions of the Arabs had something to do with the matter, but the Portuguese south of Cape Delgado have no scruples in the matter, and would sell their grandfathers as well as the rum if they could make money by the transaction, they have even erected distilleries to furnish a vile spirit from the fruit of the cashew and other fruits and grain, but the trade does not succeed. They give their slaves also rewards of spirit, or "maata bicho" ("kill the creature," or "craving within"), and you may meet a man who, having had much intercourse with Portuguese, may beg spirits, but the trade does not pay. The natives will drink it if furnished gratis. The indispensable "dash" of rum on the West Coast in every political transaction with independent chiefs is, however, quite unknown. The Moslems would certainly not abstain from trading in spirits were the trade profitable. They often asked for brandy from me in a sly way—as medicine; and when reminded that their religion forbade it, would say, "Oh, but we can drink it in secret."