An account of the melancholy event which cut short at Dege la Mhora the career of the first European that ever penetrated beyond this portion of the coast may here be inserted.
M. Maizan, an enseigne de vaisseau, and a pupil of the Polytechnic School, after a cruise in the seas off Eastern Africa, conceived, about the end of 1843, the project of exploring the lakes of the interior, and in 1844 his plans were approved of by his government. Arrived at Bourbon, he was provided with a passage to Zanzibar, in company with M. Broquant, the Consul de France, newly appointed after the French Commercial Treaty of the 21st Nov. 1844, on board the corvette Le Berceau, Capitaine, afterwards Vice-Admiral, Romain Desfossés, commanding. At the age of twenty-six M. Maizan had amply qualified himself by study for travel, and he was well provided with outfit and instruments. His “kit,” however, was of a nature calculated to excite savage cupidity, as was proved by the fact that his murderer converted the gilt knob of a tent-pole into a neck ornament, and tearing out the works of a gold chronometer, made of it a tobacco-pouch. He has been charged with imprudence in carrying too much luggage—a batterie de déjeuner, a batterie de dîner, and similar superfluities. But he had acted rightly, when bound upon a journey through countries where outfit cannot be renewed, in providing himself with all the materials for comfort. On such explorations a veteran traveller would always attempt to carry with him as much, not as little as possible,—of course prepared to abandon all things, and to reduce himself, whenever the necessity might occur, to the “simple besace du pélerin.” It is easy to throw away a superfluity, and the best preparation for severe “roughing it,” is to enjoy ease and comfort whilst attainable.
But M. Maizan fell upon evil times at Zanzibar. Dark innuendos concerning French ambition—that nation being even suspected of a desire to establish itself in force at Lamu, Pangani, and other places on the coast of East Africa—filled Hindu and Hindi with fear for their profits. These men influenced the inhabitants of the island and the sea-coast, who probably procured the co-operation of their wild brethren in the interior. For the purpose of learning the Kisawahili, M. Maizan delayed nearly eight months at Zanzibar, and, seeing a French vessel entering the harbour, he left the place precipitately, fearing a recall. Vainly also M. Broquant had warned him against his principal confidant, a noted swindler, and Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton had cautioned him to no purpose that his glittering instruments and his numerous boxes, all of which would be supposed to contain dollars, were dangerous. He visited the coast thrice before finally landing, thus giving the Wasawahili time and opportunity to mature their plans. He lowered himself in the eyes of the Arabs by “making brotherhood” with a native of Unyamwezi. Finally, fearing Arab apathy and dilatoriness, he hastened into the country without waiting for the strong armed escort promised to him by His Highness the late Sayyid Said.
These were grave errors; but they were nothing in comparison with that of trusting himself unarmed, after the fatal habit of Europeans, and without followers, into the hands of an African chief. How often has British India had to deplore deaths “that would have dimmed a victory,” caused by recklessness of danger or by the false shame which prevents men in high position from wearing weapons where they may be at any moment required, lest the safe mediocrities around them should deride such excess of cautiousness!
After the rains of 1845 M. Maizan landed at Bagamoyo, a little settlement opposite the island of Zanzibar. There leaving the forty musketeers, his private guard, he pressed on, contrary to the advice of his Mnyamwezi brother, escorted only by Frédérique, a Madagascar or Comoro man, and by a few followers, to visit P’hazi Mazungera, the chief of the Wákámbá, a subtribe of the Wazaramo, at his village of Dege la Mhora. He was received with a treacherous cordiality, of which he appears to have been completely the dupe. After some days of the most friendly intercourse, during which the villain’s plans were being matured, Mazungera, suddenly sending for his guest, reproached him as he entered the hut with giving away goods to other chiefs. Presently working himself into a rage, the African exclaimed, “Thou shalt die at this moment!” At the signal a crowd of savages rushed in, bearing two long poles. Frédérique was saved by the P’hazi’s wife: he cried to his master to run and touch her, in which case he would have been under her protection; but the traveller had probably lost presence of mind, and the woman was removed. The unfortunate man’s arms were then tightly bound to a pole lashed crosswise upon another, to which his legs and head were secured by a rope tied across the brow. In this state he was carried out of the village to a calabash-tree, pointed out to me, about fifty yards on the opposite side of the road. The inhuman Mazungera first severed all his articulations, whilst the war-song and the drum sounded notes of triumph. Finding the sime, or double-edged knife, somewhat blunt, he stopped, when in the act of cutting his victim’s throat, to whet the edge, and, having finished the bloody deed, he concluded with wrenching the head from the body.
Thus perished an amiable, talented, and highly educated man, whose only fault was rashness—too often the word for enterprise when Fortune withholds her smile. The savage Mazungera was disappointed in his guest’s death. The object of the torture was to discover, as the Mganga had advised, the place of his treasures, whereas the wretched man only groaned and implored forgiveness of his sins, and called upon the names of those friends whose advice he had neglected. The P’hazi then attempted to decoy from Bagamoyo the forty musketeers left with the outfit, but in this he failed. He then proceeded to make capital of his foul deed. When Snay bin Amir, a Maskat merchant,—of whom I shall have much to say,—appeared with a large caravan at Dege la Mhora, Mazungera demanded a new tribute for free passage; and, as a threat, he displayed the knife with which he had committed the murder. But Snay proved himself a man not to be trifled with.
Frédérique returned to Zanzibar shortly after the murder, and was examined by M. Broquant. An infamous plot would probably have come to light had he not fled from the fort where he was confined. Frédérique disappeared mysteriously. He is said now to be living at Marungu, on the Tanganyika Lake, under the Moslem name of Muhammádí. His flight served for a pretext to mischievous men that the prince was implicated in the murder: they also spread a notoriously false report that Mazungera, an independent chief, was a vassal of the suzerain of Zanzibar.
In 1846 the brig-of-war Le Ducoüedic, of the naval division of Bourbon, M. Guillain, Capitaine de Vaisseau, commanding, was charged, amongst other commercial and political interests, with insisting upon severe measures to punish the murderers. In vain His Highness Sayyid Said protested that Mazungera was beyond his reach; the fact of the robber-chief having been seen at Mbuamaji on the coast after the murder was deemed conclusive evidence to the contrary. At length the Sayyid despatched up-country three or four hundred musketeers, mercenaries, and slaves, under command of Juma Mfumbi, the late, and Bori, the present, Diwan of Saadani. The little troop marched some distance into the country, when they were suddenly confronted by the Wazaramo, commanded by Hembe, the son of Mazungera, who, after skirmishing for a couple of days, fled wounded by a matchlock-ball. The chief result of the expedition was the capture of a luckless clansman who had beaten the war-drum during the murder. He was at once transferred to Zanzibar, and passed off by these transparent African diplomatists as P’hazi Mazungera. For nearly two years he was chained in front of the French Consulate; after that time he was placed in the fort heavily ironed to a gun under a cadjan shed, where he could hardly stand or lie down. The unhappy wretch died about a year ago, and Zanzibar lost one of its lions.
After the slaughter of M. Maizan the direct route through Dege la Mhora was long closed, it is said, and is still believed, by a “ghul,” a dragon or huge serpent, who, of course, was supposed to be the demon-ghost of the murdered man. The reader will rejoice to hear that the miscreant Mazungera, who has evaded human, has not escaped divine punishment. The miserable old man is haunted by the P’hepo or spirit of the guest so foully slain: the torments which he has brought upon himself have driven him into a kind of exile; and his tribe, as has been mentioned, has steadily declined from its former position with even a greater decline in prospect. The jealous national honour displayed by the French Government on the occasion of M. Maizan’s murder has begun to bear fruit.
Its sensitiveness contrasts well with our proceedings on similar occasions. Rahmat, the murderer of Captain Milne, still wanders free over the hills in sight of Aden. By punishing the treacherous slaughter of a servant of Government, the price of provisions at the coal-hole of the East would have been raised. Au Ali, the murderer of Lieut. Stroyan, is still at large in the neighbourhood of Berberah, when a few dollars would have brought in his head. The burlesque of a blockade,—Capt. Playfair, in a work previously characterised, has officially mistermed it, to the astonishment of Aden, “a rigid blockade,” a “severe punishment,” and so forth,—was considered sufficient to chastise the Somal of Berberah for their cowardly onslaught on strangers and guests; and though the people offered an equivalent for the public and private property destroyed by them, the spirit of Centralisation, by an exercise of its peculiar attributes, omniscience and omnipresence, decided that the indemnity, which in such cases is customary throughout the East, must not be accepted, because—forsooth!—it was not deserved by the officers. This is a new plan, a system lately adopted by the nation once called “la plus orgueilleuse et la plus perilleuse”—to win and preserve respect in lands where prestige is its principal power. The Arabs of Yemen have already learned from it to characterise their invaders as Sahib Hilah,—a tricky, peddling manner of folk. They—wiser men than we—will not take upon themselves the pains and penalties of subject-hood, without its sole counterweight, the protection of their rulers, in cases where protection is required.