In their totality the evils enumerated may not signify more than a succession of pin-pricks; but even such trifling interferences with human well-being may in the end appreciably diminish one’s enjoyment of life. With the attractions of Chingulungulu as an additional inducement, it was not surprising that only a day or two intervened between the first suggestion that we should migrate southward and our actual departure. With their usual monkeylike agility, my carriers one evening packed a large heap of specimens in convenient loads, and as quickly the order was given to Saleh, the corporal in command of the askari, and Pesa mbili, the leader of the porters, “Safari to-morrow at six!”
Next to Matola, the Yao chief of Chingulungulu, no man in the country is oftener in men’s mouths than his illustrious colleague and fellow tribesman, Nakaam, of Chiwata in the north-western part of the Makonde plateau. The Europeans on the coast are not agreed as to which of these two chiefs is the more powerful. In the interior, however, Matola seems to be far more looked up to by the natives than the chief of Chiwata. Nevertheless, I thought it absolutely necessary to visit the latter and his people. My plans are not based on any fixed line of march, but were expressly arranged so that I should be able to take whatever route circumstances might render most convenient.
I must confess that my stay at Masasi has turned out a disappointment as regards the customs, habits and ideas of the natives, though I have gained a very fair insight into the outward, material details of their life. But here too, Nils Knudsen is ready with consolation and encouragement. “What can you expect, Professor? the people here are a terribly mixed lot, after all, and have lost all their own traditions and customs. Don’t waste any more time in this wretched hole of a Masasi, but come to Chingulungulu; you have no idea what a fine place that is!”
NAKAAM, A YAO CHIEF
We marched at daybreak on July 31. The road through the Masasi district, as already mentioned, skirts the great chain of insular mountains on the east, passing, at a sufficient height to afford an extensive view to the east and south, over an escarpment formed by the products of aerial denudation from the gneiss peaks. Did I say the plain? it is an ocean that we see spread out before our eyes, a white, boundless expanse, studded with islands, here one, there another, and yonder, on the misty horizon, whole archipelagoes. This wonderful spectacle, passing away all too quickly as the sun climbs higher—the peaks rising like islands from the sea of the morning mist, while our caravan trails its length along the shore—pictures for us as in a mirror the aspect it presented in those distant ages when the blue waves of the primæval ocean rolled where now the blue smoke of lowly huts ascends to the heavens.
The goal of our first day’s march was Mwiti, where, to judge from the importance given to it on the map, I expected a large native settlement. Not far from the Masasi Mission station, the road to Mwiti branches off from the Coast road on the right. I order a halt; the column opens out; I shout into the fresh morning air “Wapagazi kwa Lindi!” (“the carriers for Lindi!”); and the oldest and also the tallest of my porters, a Mnyamwezi of pronounced Masai type, strides up with a heavy, swaying motion like a camel.
INTERIOR OF A COMPOUND AT MWITI
His name, Kofia tule, was at first a puzzle to me. I knew that kofia means a cap, but, curiously enough it never occurred to me to look up tule (which, moreover, I assumed to be a Nyamwezi word) in the dictionary. That it was supposed to involve a joke of some sort, I gathered from the general laughter, whenever I asked its meaning. At last we arrived at the fact that kofia tule means a small, flat cap—in itself a ridiculous name for a man, but doubly so applied to this black super-man with the incredibly vacant face.