They are an excitable and rather quarrelsome people, and are quite capable of taking their own parts, even against the Weezees, with whom they occasionally quarrel. They do not carry their weapons continually, like the Wagogo and the Weezees, contenting themselves with a stick about five feet long, with a knob at the end, without which they are seldom to be seen, and which is not only used as a weapon, but is employed in greeting a friend.
The mode of saluting another is to hold out the stick to the friend, who touches the knobbed end with his hand, and repeats a few words of salutation. Yet, although they do not habitually carry weapons, they are very well armed, their bows being exceedingly powerful and elastic, more than six feet in length, and projecting a spear-headed arrow to a great distance. Spears are also employed, but the familiar weapon is the bow. A bow belonging to M’nanagee, the brother of Rumanika, the then head chief or “sultan” of Karague, was a beautiful specimen of native workmanship. It was six feet three inches in length, i. e. exactly the height of the owner, and was so carefully made that there was not a curve in it that could offend the eye. The string was twisted from the sinews of a cow, and the owner could project an arrow some two hundred yards. The wood of which it was made looked very like our own ash.
The Wanyambo were very polite to Captain Grant, taking great care of him, and advising him how to preserve his health, thus affording a practical refutation of the alarming stories respecting their treachery and ferocity of which he had been told when determining to pass through their country. The Wanyambo are obliged to furnish provisions to travellers free of charge, but, although they obey the letter of the law, they always expect a present of brass wire in lieu of payment. They are slenderly built, very dark in complexion, and grease themselves abundantly. They do not, however, possess such an evil odor as other grease-using tribes, as, after they have anointed themselves, they light a fire of aromatic wood, and stand to leeward of it, so as to allow the perfumed smoke to pass over them.
The Wahuma are of much lighter complexion, and the royal caste, or Moheenda, are remarkable for their bronze-like complexions, their well-cut features, and their curiously long heads. The members of this caste are further marked by some scars under the eyes, and their teeth are neither filed nor chipped. There is rather a curious law about the succession to the throne. As with us, the king’s eldest son is the acknowledged heir, but then he must have been born when his father was actually king. Consequently, the youngest of a family of brothers is sometimes the heir to the throne, his elder brothers, having been born before their father was king, being ineligible to the crown.
According to Captain Speke, the Wahuma, the Gallas, and the Abyssinians are but different branches of the same people, having fought and been beaten, and retired, and so made their way westward and southward, until they settled down in the country which was then inhabited by the Wanyambo. Still, although he thinks them to have derived their source from Abyssinia, and to have spread themselves over the whole of the country on which we are now engaged, he mentions that they always accommodated themselves to the manners and customs of the natives whom they supplanted, and that the Gallas or Wahuma of Karague have different customs from the Wahuma of Unyoro.
The king or sultan of Karague, at the time when our travellers passed through the country, was Rumanika. He was the handsomest and most intelligent ruler that they met in Africa, and had nothing of the African in his appearance except that his hair was short and woolly. He was six feet two inches in height, and had a peculiarly mild and open expression of countenance. He wore a robe made of small antelope skins, and another of bark cloth, so that he was completely covered. He never wore any headdress, but had the usual metallic armlets and anklets, and always carried a long staff in his hand. His four sons appear to have been worthy of their father. The oldest and youngest seem to have been peculiarly favorable specimens of their race. The eldest, named Chunderah, was twenty-five years old, and very fair, so that, but for his woolly hair and his rather thick lips, he might have been taken for a sepoy. “He affected the dandy, being more neat about his lion-skin covers and ornaments than the other brothers. He led a gay life, was always ready to lead a war party, and to preside at a dance, or wherever there was wine and women.
“From the tuft of wool left unshaven on the crown of his head to his waist he was bare, except when decorated round the muscle of the arms and neck with charmed horns, strips of otter skin, shells, and bands of wood. The skin covering, which in the Karague people is peculiar in shape, reaches below the knee behind, and is cut away in front. From below the calf to the ankle was a mass of iron wire, and, when visiting from neighbor to neighbor, he always, like every Karague, carried in his hand a five-feet staff with a knob at the end. He constantly came to ask after me, bringing flowers in his hand, as he knew my fondness for them, and at night he would take Frij, my headman, into the palace, along with his ‘zeze,’ or guitar, to amuse his sisters with Zanzibar music. In turn, the sisters, brothers, and followers would sing Karague music, and early in the morning Master Frij and Chunderah would return rather jolly to their huts outside the palace enclosure. This shows the kindly feeling existing between us and the family of the sultan; and, although this young prince had showed me many attentions, he never once asked me for a present.”
The second son, who was by a different mother, was not so agreeable. His disposition was not bad, but he was stupid and slow, and anything but handsome. The youngest of the four, named Kukoko, seemed to have become a general favorite, and was clearly the pet of his father, who never went anywhere without him. He was so mild and pleasant in his manner, that the travellers presented him with a pair of white kid gloves, and, after much trouble in coaxing them on his unaccustomed fingers, were much amused by the young man’s added dignity with which he walked away.
Contrary to the usual African custom, Rumanika was singularly abstemious, living almost entirely upon milk, and merely sucking the juice of boiled beef, without eating the meat itself. He scarcely ever touched the plantain wine or beer, that is in such general use throughout the country, and never had been known to be intoxicated. This wine or beer is made in a very ingenious manner. A large log of wood is hollowed out so as to form a tub, and it seems essential that it should be of considerable size. One end of it is raised upon a support, and a sort of barrier or dam of dried grass is fixed across the centre. Ripe plantains are then placed in the upper division of the tub, and mashed by the women’s feet and hands until they are reduced to a pulp. The juice flows down the inclined tub, straining itself by passing through the grass barrier. When a sufficient quantity has been pressed, it is strained several times backward and forward, and is then passed into a clean tub for fermentation. Some burnt sorghum is then bruised and thrown into the juice to help fermentation, and the tub is then covered up and placed in the sun’s rays, or kept warm by a fire. In the course of three days the brewing process is supposed to be completed, and the beer or wine is poured off into calabashes.
The amount of this wine that is drunk by the natives is really amazing, every one carrying about with him a calabash full of it, and even the youngest children of the peasants drinking it freely. It is never bottled for preservation, and, in fact, it is in such request that scarcely a calabash full can be found within two or three days after the brewing is completed. This inordinate fondness for plantain wine makes Rumanika’s abstinence the more remarkable.