8th.—Halt. I purchased two jembies for one shukka merikani, but could not come to any terms with these grasping savages about their cows, although their country teems with them, and they are sold at wonderfully cheap prices to ordinary traders. They would not sell to me unless I gave double value for them. The fauna of this country is most disappointing. Nearly all the animals that exist here are also to be found in the south of Africa, where they range in far greater numbers. But then we must remember that a caravan route usually takes the more fertile and populous tracks, and that many animals might be found in the recesses of the forests not far off, although there are so few on the line. The elephants are finer here than in any part of the world, and have been known to carry tusks exceeding 500 lb. the pair in weight. The principal wild animals besides these are the lion, leopard, hyena, fox, pig, Cape buffalo, gnu, kudu, hartebeest, pallah, steinboc, and the little madoka, or Saltiana gazelle. The giraffe, zebra, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus are all common. The game-birds are the bustard, florikan, guinea-fowl, partridge, quail, snipe, various geese and ducks, and a very dark-coloured rock-pigeon or sand-grouse. The birds in general have very tame plumage, and are much more scarce, generally speaking, than one finds in most other countries.
The traveller on entering these agricultural districts meets with a treatment quite opposite to what he does from the pastoral tribes, such, for instance, as the Somali, Gallas, Masai, &c. &c. Here they at once hail his advent as a matter of good omen, or the precursor of good fortune, and allow him to do and see whatever he likes. They desire his settling amongst them, appreciate the benefits of commerce and civilisation, and are not suspicious, like the plundering pastorals, of every one coming with evil intentions towards them. The Somali, about as bad a lot as any amongst the rovers, will not admit a stranger into their country, unless accompanied by one of their tribe, who becomes answerable for the traveller's actions, and even with this passport he is watched with the eyes of Argus. Every strange act committed by him, no matter how simple, absurd, or trifling, is at once debated about in council, and always ends to Viator's disadvantage.
They add to everything they see or hear, by conjuring up the most ridiculous phantoms; and the more ridiculous they are, the more firmly do they at last believe in them themselves. The worse their grounds are, the more jealously do they guard against anybody's seeing them; and woe betide any one who should frequent any particular spot too often: he is at once set down as designing a plot against it, to fortify the place and take it from them; this idea is their greatest bugbear. Among that tribe blood shed by any means—by the stealthy knife or in fair fight—is deemed meritorious and an act of heroism. No one is ever sure of his life unless he has force to carry him through, or can rely on the chief of the clan as his pillar of safety. This latter plan is probably the safer one, for, as the old adage goes, "There is honour amongst thieves;" so with these savages it is a matter of importance to their honour and dignity, according to their quaint notions of rectitude, to protect their trust to their utmost; whereas, on the contrary, were that trust not reposed in them, they would feel justified in taking any liberties, or act in opposition to any of those general laws which guide the conduct of civilised men.
I would not, however, desire the African agricultural people to be considered models of perfection. Individually, or in small bodies, the mass of them are very far from being so, for they would commit any excesses without the slightest feelings of compunction. The fear of retribution alone keeps their hands from blood and plunder. The chiefs and principal men, if they have no higher motives, keep their different tribes in order, and do not molest travellers without good cause, or from provocation, as they know that protecting the traveller is the only way in which they can keep up that connection with the commerce of the coast which they all so much covet. It may be worthy of remark that I have always found the lighter-coloured savages more boisterous and warlike than those of a dingier hue. The ruddy black, fleshy-looking Wazaramo and Wagogo are much lighter in colour than any of the other tribes, and certainly have a far superior, more manly and warlike independent spirit and bearing than any of the others.[69]
9th.—We started early, and crossed the Jordans by a ferry at a place lower down than on the first occasion. After leaving the low land, we rose up to the higher ground where we had first gained a sight of the N'yanza's waters, and now took our final view. To myself the parting with it was a matter of great regret; but I believe I was the sole sufferer from disappointment in being obliged to go south, when all my thoughts or cares were in the north. But this feeling was much alleviated by seeing the happy, contented, family state to which the whole caravan had at length arrived. Going home has the same attraction with these black people that it has with schoolboys. The Beluches have long since behaved to admiration, and now even the lazy pagazis, since completing their traffic, have lighter hearts, and begin to feel a freshness dawn upon them. We soon entered our old village in Néra, having completed fourteen miles. Here the chief, who had travelled up the western shore of the N'yanza, assured me that canoes like the Tanganyika ones were used by the natives, and were made from large trees which grew on the mountain-slopes overlooking the lake. The disagreeable-mannered Wasukuma (or north men) are now left behind; their mode of articulation is most painful to the civilised ear. Each word uttered seems to begin with a T'hu or T'ha, producing a sound like that of spitting sharply at an offensive object. Any stranger with his back turned would fancy himself insulted by the speaker.
The country throughout is well stocked with cattle, and bullocks are cheap, two dhotis, equal to four dollars, being the price of a moderate-sized animal; but milch cows are dear, in consequence of the great demand for sour curd. Sheep and goats sell according to their skills; a large one is preferred to a shukka, equal to one dollar; but a dhoti, the proper price of three small goats, is scarcely the value of the largest. The bane of this people is their covetousness. They do not object to sell cheaply to a poor man, yet they hang back at the sight of much cloth, and price their stock, not at its value, but at what they want, or think they may get, obstinately abiding by their decision to the last. Cattle are driven from this to Unyanyembé, and consequently must be cheaper here than in those more southern parts: still I could not purchase them so well; indeed, a traveller can never expect to buy at a reasonable rate in a land where every man is a sultan, and his hut a castle—where no laws regulate the market, and every proprietor is grasping. Bombay suggests that to buy cattle cheap from the Washenzi (savages), you should give them plenty of time to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the transaction, for their minds are not capable of arriving at a rapid conclusion; but friend Bombay forgets that, whilst waiting to beat them down a cloth or two, four or five are consumed by the caravan in waiting. The women, especially the younger ones, are miserably clad here; a fringe, like the thong kilt of the Nubian maidens, made of aloe fibres, with a single white bead at the end of each string, is the general wear; it is suspended by a strap tied round the waist. Hanging over the belly, it covers about a foot of ground in breadth, but not more than seven or eight inches in depth. The fibrous strings, white by nature, soon turn black, and look like India-rubber, the effect of butter first rubbed in, and then of constant friction on the grimy person. The dangling, waving motion of this strange appendage, as the wearer moves along, reminded me of the common fly-puzzler sometimes attached to horses' head-stalls. Amongst a crowd of fifty or sixty people, not more than two or three have a cloth of native make, and rarely one of foreign manufacture is to be seen. Some women have stood before me in the very primitive costume of a bunch of leafy twigs.
But far worse clad than these are the Wataturu, a tribe living to the eastward, and the Watuta, living to the westward of this place, besides the Warori and others.
Of the first mentioned, the Wataturu, a people living a little to the northward of Turu, I have only seen a few males, and they were stark naked. The Wataturu despise any one who is weak enough to cover his person, considering that he does so only to conceal his natural imperfections. Their women are currently reported to be as naked as the men, but I did not see any of them, and cannot vouch for it.
The Watuta, on the other hand, require a special notice, because they are the naked Zulu Kafirs whose peculiar costume, if such it may be called, has caused so much risibility at the Cape of Good Hope. In the very first instance, I am inclined to believe these Watuta were Cushites, who migrated from the shores of the Caspian Sea, across Arabia and the Red Sea, to Abyssinia. There, mixing with the negro aborigines, they became in process of time woolly-headed. Later still, they broke off from the parent stock, lost their original name, and took instead that of Masai. By some unaccountable means they then separated from the Masai and migrated south to the Cape of Good Hope; here they appear to have changed their name to Kafir, from which a branch of the tribe were called Zulu Kafirs. These Zulu Kafirs becoming restless, after a time migrated again to the west of the Nyassa, and there settled with their flocks and herds, devastating the Babisa's country. From thence again they have been migrating in detachments north, up the east side of the Tanganyika Lake. Whilst doing so they came at Fipa on the Wapoka, another offshoot of the Cushite-Abyssinians, who, crossing the Nile, took the name of Wahuma, and have spread as far down south as Fipa, where their name, in course of time, had changed from Wahuma to Watusi, and from Watusi to Wapoka, in the same way as the Watuta had changed their name from Masai to Kafir and Zulu Kafir, and again from that to Watuta. Now, these Watuta are still pushing northwards, fighting, plundering, and conquering wherever they go. They have knocked the Watusi out of the southern hills of Urundi, overlooking the Tanganyika Lake, and have spread to the southern limits of Usui, devastating the countries en route, in the same way as they have done on the west of the Nyassa. Strange as it may appear, neither these Watuta nor the Watusi know anything of their common origin. They are very different in physical form and appearance from one another; for, whilst the Watusi alias Wahuma retain their Abyssinian type, the Watuta alias Zulu Kafirs are much more like the Somali and Masai—thus, I think, showing that the Wahuma have detached themselves at a later period than the Kafirs from the parent stock. The Wahuma are certainly the finer-looking people of the two, but the Watuta are rougher in nature. Both, however, are strictly pastoral, though the Wahuma in the equatorial regions affect to maintain large kingdoms.[70]
It is to be hoped that India, when once aroused to the advantages of dealing more extensively with this country, will never lose sight of the fact that the negro as well as more enlightened man can detect the difference between good and poor stuffs; that the nation which makes the strongest stuffs will be considered to be the honestest; and the more lasting the material, the more readily it will be taken. In sending cloths great care should be taken that every piece be of the same length, and always evenly divisible by cubits, or eighteen-inch measure. If the Lion and the Unicorn, figuring on the outside of each piece—Thân or Gora, as it is called respectively in India and Africa—were security of its being English manufacture, and, by being so, sure to be of uniform quality and size, much respect would be given to it; and "Shukka Anglési" (English shukka) would soon take the place of "merikani," which are by different mills, and of different lengths and qualities. The only reason for the negro taking a large goat-skin in preference to a shukka, is because it is stronger.