Speaking of these and other black tribes, Captain Speke very rightly observes: “How the negro has lived so many ages without advancing seems marvellous, when all the countries surrounding Africa are so forward in comparison. And, judging from the progressive state of the world, one is led to suppose that the African must soon either step out from his darkness, or be superseded by a being superior to himself. Could a government be formed for them like ours in India, they would be saved, but without it I fear there is very little chance. For at present the African neither can help himself nor be helped by others, because his country is in such a constant state of turmoil that he has too much anxiety on hand looking out for his food to think of anything else.
“As his fathers did, so does he. He works his wife, sells his children, enslaves all he can lay hands on, and, unless when fighting for the property of others, contents himself with drinking, singing, and dancing like a baboon, to drive dull care away. A few only make cotton cloth, or work in wool, iron, copper, or salt, their rule being to do as little as possible, and to store up nothing beyond the necessities of the next season, lest their chiefs or neighbors should covet and take it from them.”
The same experienced traveller then proceeds to enumerate the many kinds of food which the climate affords to any one of ordinary industry, such as horned cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, fowls, ducks, and pigeons, not to mention the plantain and other vegetable products, and expresses a feeling of surprise that, with such stores of food at his command, the black man should be so often driven to feed on wild herbs and roots, dogs, cats, rats, snakes, lizards, insects, and other similar animals, and should be frequently found on the point of starvation, and be compelled to sell his own children to procure food. Moreover, there are elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamus, buffaloes, giraffes, antelopes, guinea-fowls, and a host of other animals, which can be easily captured in traps or pitfalls, so that the native African lives in the midst of a country which produces food in boundless variety. The reasons for such a phenomenon are simple enough, and may be reduced to two,—namely, utter want of foresight and constitutional indolence.
As to the question of slavery, it may perhaps be as well to remark that slaves are not exclusively sold to white men. On the contrary, there is no slave-holder so tenacious of his acquired rights as the black man, and, for every slave sold to a white man, ten are bought by the dark races, whether on the east or west of Africa. And, when a slave begins to raise himself above a mere menial rank, his first idea is to buy slaves for himself, because they are the articles of merchandise which is most easily to be procured, and so, as Captain Speke well observes, slavery begets slavery ad infinitum. The summary of Captain Speke’s experience is valuable. “Possessed of a wonderful amount of loquacity, great risibility, but no stability—a creature of impulse—a grown child in short—at first sight it seems wonderful how he can be trained to work, for there is no law, no home to bind him. He would run away at any moment, and, presuming on this, he sins, expecting to be forgiven. Great forbearance, occasionally tinctured with a little fatherly severity, is, I believe, the best dose for him. For he says to his master, after sinning, ‘You ought to forgive and to forget, for are you not a big man who would be above harboring spite, though for a moment you may be angry? Flog me if you like, but do not keep count against me, or else I shall run away, and what will you do then?’”
The burying-places of the Waganda are rather elaborate. Captain Grant had the curiosity to enter one of them, and describes it as follows: “Two huts on a height appeared devoted to the remains of the dead. On getting over the fence surrounding them, a lawn having straight walks led up to the doors, where a screen of bark cloth shut out the view of the interior. Conquering a feeling of delicacy, I entered one of the huts. I found a fixed bedstead of cane, curtained as if to shade its bed of grass from the mosquito, spears, charms, sticks with strange crooks, tree-creepers, miniature idol-huts of grass, &c. These were laid in order in the interior, but no one was there, and we were told that it was a mausoleum.”
Many of such houses were seen on the hill-sides, but few so elaborately built. Usually they were little more than square patches of ground enclosed with a reed fence. These were called by the name of “Looaleh,” or sacred ground.
CHAPTER XL.
THE WANYORO.
CHARACTER OF THE WANYORO TRIBE — DIRTY HABITS — MODE OF GOVERNMENT — KING KAMRASI — HIS DESPOTIC CHARACTER — HIS BODY-GUARD AND THEIR PRIVILEGES — HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE — HIS GRASPING SELFISHNESS — A ROYAL VISIT — KAMRASI’S COWARDICE — EXECUTION OF CRIMINALS — CRUSHING A REBELLION — LAWS OF SUCCESSION — THE KING’S SISTERS — WANYORO SINGING — CONDITION OF WOMEN — FOOD OF THE WANYORO — CARRYING PROVISIONS ON THE MARCH — USES OF THE PLANTAIN TREE — FRAUDS IN TRADE — SUPERSTITIONS — THE MAGICIAN AT WORK — THE HORNED DOG — SPADE-MONEY.
Proceeding still northward, we come to the land of Unyoro, from which, as the reader will remember, the country of Uganda was separated. The inhabitants of Unyoro form a very unpleasant contrast to those of Uganda, being dirty, mean-looking, and badly dressed. The country, too, is far inferior to Uganda, which might be made into a perpetually blooming garden; for, as the traveller leaves the equator and passes to the north, he finds that the rains gradually decrease, and that vegetation first becomes thin, then stunted, and lastly disappears altogether. The same structure of language prevails here as in Uganda, so that the people of Unyoro are called Wanyoro, and a single person is a M’yoro.
The character of the Wanyoro is quite on a par with their appearance, for they are a mean, selfish, grasping set of people, sadly lacking the savage virtue of hospitality, and always on the lookout for opportunities to procure by unfair means the property of others. They seem, indeed, to be about as unpleasant a nation as can well be imagined, and in almost every point afford a strong contrast to others which have already been described.