AFRICAN WARRIORS.
The shields and assegais are flourished in the air while the demon-like
warriors dance and yell in preparation for battle.
"The Wagogo warrior carries as his weapons a bow and a sheaf of murderous-looking arrows, pointed, pronged and barbed; a couple of light, beautifully-made assegais; a broad, sword-like spear, with a blade over two feet long; a battle-axe, and a rungu or knob-club. He has also a shield, painted with designs in black and white, oval-shaped, sometimes of rhinoceros, or elephant, or bull-hide. From the time he was a toddling urchin he has been familiar with his weapons, and by the time he was fifteen years old he was an adept with them.
"He is armed for battle in a very short time. The messenger from the chief darts from village to village, and blows his ox-horn, the signal for war. The warrior hears it, throws his hoe over his shoulder, enters his house, and in a few seconds issues out again, arrayed in war-paint and full fighting costume. Feathers of the ostrich, or the eagle, or the vulture nod above his head; his long crimson robe streams behind him, his shield is on his left arm, his darting assegai in his left hand, and his ponderous man-cleaver—double-edged and pointed, heading a strong staff—is in his right hand; jingling bells are tied around his ankles and knees; ivory wristlets are on his arms, with which he sounds his approach. With the plodding peasant's hoe he has dropped the peasant's garb, and is now the proud, vain, exultant warrior—bounding aloft like a gymnast, eagerly sniffing the battle-field. The strength and power of the Wagogo are derived from their numbers.
"Though caravans of Wagogo are sometimes found passing up and down the Unyamwezi road, they are not so generally employed as the Wanyamwezi in trade. Their villages are thus always full of warriors. Weak tribes, or remnants of tribes are very glad to be admitted under their protection. Individuals of other tribes, also, who have been obliged to exile themselves from their own tribes, for some deed of violence, are often found in the villages of the Wagogo. In the north, the Wahumba are very numerous; in the south may be found the Wahehe and Wakimbu, and in the east may be found many a family from Usagara. Wanyamwi are also frequently found in this country. Indeed, these latter people are like Scotchmen, they may be found almost everywhere throughout Central Africa, and have a knack of pushing themselves into prominence.
"As in Western Usagara, the houses of the Wagogo are square, arranged around the four sides of an area—to which all the doors open. The roofs are all flat, on which are spread the grain, herbs, tobacco and pumpkins. The back of each department is pierced with small holes for observation and for defense.
"The tembe is a fragile affair as constructed in Wagogo; it merely consists of a line of slender sticks daubed over with mud, with three or four strong poles planted at intervals to support the beams and rafters, on which rests the flat clay roof. A musket-ball pierces the wattled walls of a Wagogo tembe through and through. In Uyanzi, the tembe is a formidable affair, because of the abundance of fine trees, which are cut down and split into rails three or four inches thick.
"The tembe is divided into apartments, separated from each other by a wattled wall. Each apartment may contain a family of grown-up boys and girls, who form their beds on the floor, out of dressed hides. The father of the family, only, has a kitanda, or fixed cot, made of ox-hide, stretched over a frame, or of the bark of the myombo tree. The floor is of tamped mud, and is exceedingly filthy, smelling strongly of every abomination. In the corners, suspended to the rafters, are the fine, airy dwellings of black spiders of very large size, and other monstrous insects.
"Rats, a peculiarly long-headed, dun-colored species, infest every tembe. Cows, goats, sheep and cats are the only domestic animals permitted to dwell within the tembe.