THE LIKWATA DANCE BEING PHOTOGRAPHED BY THE AUTHOR. DRAWN BY PESA MBILI, THE MNYAMWEZI HEADMAN
CHAPTER IV
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE INTERIOR
Masasi, July 20, 1906.
Few people, I fancy, will know where Masasi is, yet those interested in the Colonies might well be acquainted with its situation, for in its own small way it is quite a civilizing centre. The English Mission[[6]] has been at work here for nearly the third of a century, and, since the suppression of the rebellion, a native corporal with a dozen black German soldiers has been gallantly maintaining his ground, in a boma specially built for the purpose, in case of any renewed warlike impulses on the part of the interior tribes.
I preferred to take up my quarters with the soldiers, not from any hostility to religion, but because the two clergymen at the mission station, about an hour’s walk from us, are both advanced in years, and it would be unfair to trouble them with visitors. Besides their station was burnt down during the rebellion, so that they are leading for the moment a more idyllic than agreeable life in their former cattle-shed. In spite of this, the two old gentlemen, as I had every opportunity of convincing myself in the course of two long visits, enjoy extraordinarily good health. Archdeacon Carnon, the younger of the two, in particular, took as lively an interest in the German Emperor and his family as if he lived in a London suburb, instead of in a negro village at the ends of the earth. Canon Porter seems to be failing a little, but this is only to be expected as he is getting on for eighty and has been in the country nearly thirty years.[[7]] In former days I understand that he studied the ethnology of his district (inhabited by Wanyasa, Wayao, and Wamakonde) very thoroughly, so that up to yesterday I had great hopes of profitable results from my intercourse with him and his more active colleague. But in this I was disappointed. At the ceremonious, and, I must say, sumptuous breakfast which the two clerical gentlemen set before us two worldlings, Ewerbeck and me, whenever I began to speak about the inhabitants of the neighbourhood and their tribal affinities, the conversation was invariably diverted towards the Emperor and his family! He must have made a truly extraordinary impression on other nations.
However, our business is with the native African, not with the white intruder, even though he should come in the peaceful guise of the missionary.
My landing at Lindi of itself implied the main course of my journey. A glance at the map of East Africa shows that the extreme south-eastern corner of our colony, considered with regard to population, stands out like an island from the almost uninhabited country surrounding it. The region north of the Middle, and partly also of the Upper Rovuma is (as Lieder, the geologist, whose early death is such a loss to science, described it) a silent pori for hundreds of miles, extending far beyond the Umbekuru and into the hinterland of Kilwa—an uninhabited wilderness, where not a single native village speaks of the large and peaceable population found here by Roscher, Livingstone and Von Der Decken nearly half-a-century ago. Only a narrow strip running parallel to the coast some distance inland connects this island of population with the north, while another, much more scantily peopled, runs up the Rovuma to the Nyasa country.
MAKUA WOMEN FROM THE LUKULEDI VALLEY
