The country is still inhabited, as it was in Livingstone’s time, by the Makonde, Makua, and Matambwe tribes, with the Wamwera to the north in the hinterland of Lindi, and the Mavia (Mabiha) south of the Rovuma, but they have moved about a good deal within its limits, while the Yaos have penetrated it from the west. The raids of the Angoni or Maviti have also played a great part in these changes. Dr. Weule, as we shall see, made careful inquiries on the subject of these tribal migrations, and the information given to him fits in fairly well with what others have obtained from the Yaos in the Shire Highlands and the Angoni to the west of Lake Nyasa.
Livingstone returned to this region on his last journey, when he landed at Mikindani Bay (March 24, 1866) with those unfortunate camels and buffaloes whose sufferings on the jungle-march made his diary such painful reading. The choice of camels for transport in this country was certainly a mistake; but a greater mistake—and one which he bitterly regretted—was made in the choice of the men who drove the camels.
On this occasion, Livingstone followed the Rovuma by land as far as Mtarika’s (the old village about the Lujende confluence, near Chimsaka’s former abode, not the Mtarika’s which will be found marked in Dr. Weule’s map on the Lujende itself), and struck south-westward in the direction of the Lake, which he reached, near the mouth of the Mtsinje, on the 8th of August. The route followed some years previously by Dr. Roscher, who made his way from Kilwa to Lake Nyasa, sighting it November 24, 1859, a few weeks after its discovery by Livingstone, lies somewhat to the north-west of the country dealt with in this book, and nowhere touches the scene of Dr. Weule’s travels.
In 1875, the late Bishop Steere followed in Livingstone’s tracks, starting from Lindi on the first of November, and reaching Mwembe (Mataka’s village) in a little over five weeks. This was the first of a series of remarkable journeys accomplished by members of the Universities’ Mission, of which we need here only mention, that of the Rev. W. P. (now Archdeacon) Johnson and the late Rev. C. A. Janson in 1882. The station of Masasi was founded in 1876, and that of Newala in 1882; the buildings of the former were nearly all destroyed in the “Majimaji” rising of 1906, shortly before Dr. Weule’s visit, and are only now in process of reconstruction.
The Rovuma valley was further explored in 1882, by the late Joseph Thomson, whom the Sultan of Zanzibar had commissioned to examine its mineral resources, with a view to ascertaining if workable coal-seams existed. His report was, on the whole, unfavourable, though a French engineer, M. D’Angelvy, subsequently (in 1884) despatched on a similar errand, came to a different conclusion. The Livingstone expedition had found coal near Lake Chidia, in 1862; but up to the present day it has not been utilized.
Mr. H. E. O’Neill, when British Consul at Mozambique, did a great deal of exploring, in an unobtrusive way, between the coast and Lake Nyasa, and, in 1882 examined the country inland from Tungi Bay, and south of the Rovuma, being the first European to penetrate the Mavia Plateau and come in contact with that tribe who enjoyed among their neighbours the reputation of being “so fierce and inhospitable that no one dares to pass through their country.” This exclusiveness Mr. O’Neill found to be largely if not entirely the result of the persecution the Mavia had undergone at the hands of stronger tribes, particularly the Yaos, incited by coast slavetraders. They were unwilling to guide him to their villages, and took him there by night so that he might be the less likely to find his way there a second time; but, “when once their natural suspicions were allayed and confidence established, they were hospitable and generous, and showed neither distrust nor reserve. Indeed, they seemed to me to be a particularly simple-minded, harmless folk.” Men, as well as women, wear the pelele, or lip ring, as mentioned by Dr. Weule, who never came across the Mavia for himself. Of their wearing their hair in pig-tails, Mr. O’Neill says nothing—in fact, beyond the pelele, there was little to distinguish them from neighbouring tribes, and he was disposed to consider them a branch of the Makonde. His description of their villages hidden away in the thorny jungle and approached by circuitous paths recalls what Dr. Weule says as to the difficulty of finding the Makonde settlements without a guide. In the course of this journey Mr. O’Neill discovered Lake Lidede, and at one point of his march he looked down on the Rovuma Valley from the edge of the Mavia Plateau at almost the same point as that where Dr. Weule saw it from the opposite escarpment, as described on pp. [343]–4. It is interesting to compare the two accounts:—Mr. O’Neill’s is to be found in the Proceedings of the R.G.S. for 1882, p. 30.
Mr. J. T. Last, starting from Lindi on the 28th of October, 1885, made his way overland to Blantyre, via Newala, Ngomano and the Lujende Valley, in eleven weeks. He remarks on the “desolation of the country which was formerly well populated, as the sites of the old villages show; but now there is not a house to be seen”—through the raids of the Magwangara and others. Lions were as numerous as they appear to have been in 1906, and for a similar reason. One of Mr. Last’s carriers was dragged out of the grass shelter where the men were sleeping, thus affording an almost exact parallel to the incident related by Dr. Weule on pp. [394]–8.
At this time the country was under the nominal rule of the Sultan of Zanzibar, who stationed his officials at some of the places near the coast and exercised a somewhat intermittent and uncertain authority over the chiefs in the interior. By the treaty of 1890 the whole of the mainland as far back as Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika, between the Rovuma on the south, and the Umba River on the north, was handed over to Germany, while the protectorate over what remained of the Sultan’s dominions (viz., the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba) was taken over by the British Government.
It seems improbable that this immense territory can ever be colonised by Germans in the same way in which Canada and Australia have been colonised by ourselves. There are few if any parts where German peasants and workmen could expect to live, labour, and bring up families. So far as the country has been settled at all, it is on the plantation system: European capitalists cultivating large tracts of land by means of native labour. Some coffee plantations in Usambara are, we understand, flourishing fairly well, though not producing wealth beyond the dreams of avarice; but the system, if it is to be extended to the whole territory, does not augur well for the future. It is not a healthy one for employer or employed; it always tends in the direction of forced labour and more or less disguised slavery; and, in the end, to the creation of a miserable and degraded proletariat. Much more satisfactory is the method to which Dr. Weule extends a somewhat qualified approval (though there can be no doubt that it has his sympathies) of securing to the native his own small holding and buying his produce from him, as has been done, to some extent, with the best results, in our own Gold Coast Colony. Dr. Weule remarks, somewhat naively, that a wholesale immigration from Germany would be interfered with if the native “claimed the best parts of his own country for himself.” But surely a ver sacrum of the kind contemplated is unthinkable in the case of East Africa.
It is possible that the reader may be somewhat perplexed by Dr. Weule’s estimate—or estimates—of the native character. The recurring contradictions apparent in various parts of his book arise from the plan on which it is written. In the original edition, the traveller’s narrative takes the form of letters addressed to his wife and friends from the successive stages of his journey. This form has been dispensed with (beyond the dates at the head of each chapter) in translation,[[1]] because the personal allusions, in a foreign dress, rather detract from than add to the interest of the narrative, and all the more so, as they are not, in a sense, genuine, but have been added, après coup, to impart an air of verisimilitude to the letters. The latter, in fact, were not written from the places at which they are dated, but were put into shape after the author’s return to Europe, from notes made on the spot, together with extracts from actual letters, not printed as a whole. This material, in order not to sacrifice the freshness of first impressions, has been used very much as it stood, and it will be noticed that, in many cases, the observations made at different places correct and qualify one another.