This has brought us to about half-past six; and, quite ready for work, I leave the tent at the moment when the soldiers are reporting for the two hours’ daily drill, which I introduced at Masasi, to keep them from becoming confirmed loafers. Hemedi Maranga comes up to me to make his report. This smart fellow has already improved the appearance of the company; he is a born soldier, while his predecessor, Saleh, was more of a hunter. Saleh has been sent by the District Commissioner to the Central Lukuledi Valley to get rid of the lions which are still decimating the unhappy inhabitants, numerous lives having been lost even since we passed through in July. All success to him in his perilous task!
While I am amusing myself with my breakfast—cocoa made very thick, and the usual large omelette with bananas—the corporal and his division have marched out into the pori, to practise bush-fighting or go through their drill. “Legt an! Feuer! Geladen!” The word of command, strange enough in the mouth of a native, rings out from a distance as clearly and sharply as if spoken by the smartest of German non-commissioned officers. But I have no time to listen to this reminder of far-off home scenes, for already my wise elders are arriving with the slow, dignified pace of the old native. It was agreed yesterday that they should be here by seven. This may sound surprising, considering that the natives have neither clocks nor watches, and would be unable to read them if they had; but it was arrived at in the following way. When we stopped work at sunset yesterday, all, white and black alike, too tired to sit up any longer, I said to the fifteen old men, getting Sefu to interpret my words into Kimakua and Kima-konde: “You are to come again to-morrow, saa” (at the hour of), and completed my sentence by stretching out my arm to the east at an angle of 15° with the horizon. The men watched me attentively. In order to make sure, I had them asked whether they understood, and each forthwith raised one arm and held it at exactly the same angle. Fifteen degrees is the height reached by the sun an hour after rising, and therefore equivalent to seven o’clock; if I want them at a later hour, I enlarge the angle accordingly. This is no invention of mine, but the universal custom of the country; and the people can indicate accurately the relative position of the sun at periods separated by the smallest intervals of time.
A couple of hours have sped quickly enough, filled up with questions and answers relating to various points of custom and tradition, and the old gentlemen are still squatting round me in a semicircle, on a huge mat. On the first day of our work in common, one of them was so far from putting any restraint on himself as to send a jet of tobacco-juice, sailor-fashion, through his teeth just in front of my feet. “Mshenzi!” (“You savage!”) I growled, half involuntarily, and since then I have had no occasion to complain of the smallest breach of good manners. It is true that they bring with them a strong effluvium of perspiration and rancid oil, so that I feel worse and worse as the hours pass; and they are accompanied by a cloud of flies, which go on doing their level best to transfer to the white stranger the ophthalmic affections from which the natives suffer; but otherwise their behaviour is deserving of all respect. The observation which I have made in all places hitherto visited, that these savages have a strong natural sense of tact, holds good here also. If we compare their behaviour with that of certain circles and strata of our home population, we are forced to the conclusion that we Europeans, though we imagine ourselves to have taken a long lease of all the culture and tact on earth, are, after all, not very much more favourable specimens of humanity.
But the shed has all this time been growing hotter, and the northern style of clothing is no longer called for. Off with the heavy boots, then, and the thick woollen stockings, as well as the warm flannel shirt, waistcoat, and neckcloth, to be replaced by thin tropical garments affording free passage of the air. At noon the khaki coat is flung into a corner, and a thin silk jacket assumed instead of it. This completes the negative process, which has to be reversed again as the sun declines. The dreaded evening gale of Newala sets in with a sharp, icy squall, and Knudsen and I, by a simultaneous and violent sneeze, prove that our chronic catarrh, though latent by day, is as vigorous as ever. There is no help for it; we must put on again, piece by piece, our whole winter stock, and, moreover, by a habit which has now become an instinct, wrap ourselves up in overcoats when the gale, now arrived at its height, whirls clouds of dirt and dust through our dwelling. In the course of the four weeks we have spent here, we have had to close in this abode more and more. The mats originally put up to protect the open side have long since been replaced by a solid wall of thatch, which has swallowed up one panel after another, so that now by the end of the month only one large window remains to admit light. In the evening the carriers tie a large tarpaulin in front of this opening, but even this complete shutting off of the wind does not make the place comfortable. When, about ten, I have finished developing my plates and come, bathed in perspiration, out of the tent which serves me for a dark-room into the baraza, I find my Norwegian friend a shapeless bundle, wrapped in all the available blankets, but his teeth chattering all the same. Each of us then makes haste to creep into his warm tent. The tents, by the bye, have only become really warm since we have had a screen of millet-straw, strengthened by strong stakes, built in front of them to windward. Before this was done, they were in danger of being blown over every night. These are the daily cares of clothing and lodging: their amount is not excessive, but in any case they take up a certain fraction of my precious time, on which still further inroads are made by the necessary provision for food and health.
Next to the bush, the greatest peculiarity of the Makonde Plateau is the fact that its surface is quite waterless; the soil, down to a considerable depth, consisting of a loose stratification of sandy loam and loamy sand. In the west these strata belong to the upper chalk formation, and are called Makonde beds, in the east they are tertiary, and are called Mikindani beds. Both are extraordinarily pervious to water, so that all atmospheric moisture, if not evaporated or retained by the abundant vegetation, rapidly sinks through them till stopped by the impervious strata—the inclined plane of the Newala sandstone or the primæval granite core (of the same nature as the insular mountains yonder in the Masasi plain), which we must suppose to exist in the depths of the Makonde Plateau. The water, flowing down along these strata, does not, of course, come to the surface till it reaches the declivity of the plateau, which, in contrast with the upper level, is a region abounding even to excess in springs and brooks.
One might therefore expect to find the plateau itself uninhabited, and all the people settled at its edges. That is the course which would have been followed by Europeans like ourselves skilled in the rationale of colonization. As a matter of fact, not a human being lives below, but on the heights there are over 80,000 Makonde, nearly 5,000 Wangoni, thousands of Wayao and Wamakua, and a—to me—unknown number of Wamatambwe. In recent times, however, the tendency to come further and further down into the well-watered lowlands, has been gaining ground. This has been caused by the cessation of the Mafiti raids and the firm rule of the German Administration. This tendency, however, only affects the more progressive elements, the Yaos and Makuas, not the Makonde. The latter follow the practice which has been usual with them from time immemorial. So soon as the most necessary work has been done in house and garden, father and son, or mother and daughter take on their shoulders a pole, some yard and a half or two yards long, to each end of which is fastened a large gourd, or perhaps two. They hurry along at a rapid walk to the edge of the plateau, from which their hamlet is inconveniently distant, scramble down a steep declivity by a difficult path, remain for a while in the marshy bottom and return with their load up the almost vertical ascent of several hundred yards. At last, having accomplished the toilsome climb, they draw a deep breath, and walk, or rather trot, back to their village. The Makonde are said to devote the greater part of their lives to tillage—which I find true as far as I have gone, though I have not reached their main centre of distribution—but beyond all doubt the second largest share of their time is absorbed by these long excursions—so foolish a waste of time according to our ideas—in search of water. If half the family has to spend two hours, or even more, daily in bringing in, at the cost of severe labour, just enough water to cook their pittance of ugali and allow every one a muddy draught all round, it is surely an economic absurdity.
DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI
Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller, without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who, as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
