The reader will readily perceive that he is upon the slave-path, so different from travel amongst the free and independent tribes of Southern Africa. The traffic practically annihilates every better feeling of human nature. Yet, though the state of the Wak’hutu appears pitiable, the traveller cannot practise pity: he is ever in the dilemma of maltreating or being maltreated. Were he to deal civilly and liberally with this people he would starve: it is vain to offer a price for even the necessaries of life; it would certainly be refused because more is wanted, and so on beyond the bounds of possibility. Thus, if the touter did not seize a house, he would never be allowed to take shelter in it from the storm; if he did not enforce a “corvée,” he must labour beyond his strength with his own hands; and if he did not fire a village and sell the villagers, he might die of hunger in the midst of plenty. Such in this province are the action and reaction of the evil.
Party of Wak’hutu Women.
CHAP. IV.
ON THE GEOGRAPHY AND ETHNOLOGY OF THE FIRST REGION.
Before bidding adieu to the Maritime Region, it will be expedient to enter into a few details concerning its geography and ethnology.[7]
[7] Those who consider the subject worthy of further consideration are referred, for an ampler account of it, to the Journal of the R. Geographical Society, vol. xxix. of 1860.
The first or maritime region extends from the shores of the Indian Ocean in E. long. 39° to the mountain-chain forming the land of Usagara in E. long. 37° 28′; its breadth is therefore 92 geographical miles, measured in rectilinear distance, and its mean length, bounded by the waters of the Kingani and the Rufiji rivers, may be assumed at 110. The average rise is under 4 feet per mile. It is divided into two basins; that of the Kingani easterly, and westward that of the Mgeta stream with its many tributaries; the former, which is the principal, is called the land of Uzaramo; the latter, which is of the second order, contains the provinces of K’hutu, by the Arabs pronounced Kutu, and Uziraha, a minor district. The natives of the country divide it into the three lowlands of Tunda, Dut’humi, and Zungomero.
The present road runs with few and unimportant deviations along the whole length of the fluviatile valleys of the Kingani and the Mgeta. Native caravans if lightly laden generally accomplish the march in a fortnight, one halt included. On both sides of this line, whose greatest height above the sea-level was found by B. P. therm. to be 330 feet, rises the rolling ground, which is the general character of the country. Its undulations present no eminences worthy of notice; near the sea they are short and steep, further inland they roll in longer waves, and everywhere they are covered with abundant and luxuriant vegetation, the result of decomposition upon the richest soil. In parts there is an appearance of park land; bushless and scattered forests, with grass rising almost to the lower branches of the smaller thorns; here and there clumps and patches of impassable shrubbery cluster round knots and knolls of majestic and thickly foliaged trees. The narrow footpaths connecting the villages often plunge into dark and dense tunnels formed by overarching branch and bough, which delay the file of laden porters; the mud lingering long after a fall of rain in these low grounds fills them with a chilly clammy atmosphere. Merchants traverse such spots with trembling; in these, the proper places for ambuscade, a few determined men easily plunder a caravan by opposing it in front or by an attack in rear. The ways are often intersected by deep nullahs and water-courses, dry during the hot season, but unfordable when rain falls. In the many clearings, tobacco, maize, holcus, sesamum, and ground-nuts, manioc, beans, pulse, and sweet potatoes flourish; the pine-apple is a weed, and a few cocos and mangoes, papaws, jack-fruit, plantains, and limes are scattered over the districts near the sea. Rice grows abundantly in the lower levels. The villages are hidden deep in the bush or grass: the crowing of the cocks heard all along the road, except in the greater stretches of wilderness, proves them to be numerous; they are, however small and thinly populated. The versant, as usual in maritime E. Africa, trends towards the Indian Ocean. Water abounds even at a distance from the rivers; it springs from the soil in diminutive runnels and lies in “shimo” or pits, varying from surface-depth to 10 feet. The monsoon-rains, which are heavy, commence in March, about a month earlier than in Zanzibar, and the duration is similar. The climate of the higher lands is somewhat superior to that of the valley, but it is still hot and oppressive. The formation, after passing from the corallines, the limestones, the calcareous tuffs, and the rude gravelly conglomerates of the coast, is purely primitive and sandstone: erratic blocks of fine black hornblende and hornblendic rock, used by the people as whetstones and grinding-slabs, abound in the river-beds, which also supply the clay used for pottery. The subsoil is near the sea a stiff blue loam, in the interior a ruddy quartzose gravel; the soil is a rich brown or black humus, here and there coated with, or varied by, clean white sand, and in some parts are seams of reddish loam. Fresh-water shells are scattered over the surface, and land-crabs burrow in the looser earths where stone seldom appears. Black cattle are unknown in the maritime region, but poultry, sheep, and goats are plentiful: near the jungle they are protected from the leopards or ounces by large wooden huts, like cages, raised on piles for cleanliness.
As a rule, the fluviatile valleys resemble in most points the physical features of the coast and island of Zanzibar: the general aspect of the country, however—the expression of its climate—undergoes some modifications. Near the sea, the basin is a broad winding line, traversed by the serpentine river, whose bed is now too deep for change. About the middle expanse stony ridges and rocky hills crop out from the rolling ground, and the head of the valley is a low continuous plain. In many places, especially near the estuary, river-terraces, like road embankments, here converging, there diverging, indicate by lines and strews of water-worn pebbles and sea-shells the secular uprise of the country and the declension of the stream to its present level. These raised seabeaches at a distance appear crowned with dwarf rounded cones which, overgrown with lofty trees, are favourite sites for settlements. In the lower lands the jungle and the cultivation are of the rankest and most gigantic description, the effect of a damp, hot region, where atmospheric pressure is excessive. The grass, especially that produced by the black soils in the swamps and marshes, rises to the height of 12-13 feet, and serves to conceal runaway slaves and malefactors: the stalks vary in thickness from a goose-quill to a man’s finger. The larger growths, which are so closely planted that they conceal the soil, cannot be traversed without paths, and even where these exist the traveller must fight his way through a dense screen, receiving from time to time a severe blow when the reeds recoil, or a painful thrust from some broken and inclined stump. Even the horny sole of the sandal-less African cannot tread these places without being cut or staked, and everywhere a ride through these grass-avenues whilst still dripping with the cold exhalations of night, with the sun beating fiercely upon the upper part of the body, is a severe infliction to any man not in perfect health. The beds of streams and nullahs are sometimes veiled by the growth of the banks. These crops spring up with the rains, and are burned down by hunters, or more frequently by accident, after about a month of dry weather; in the interim fires are dangerous: the custom is to beat down the blaze with leafy boughs. Such is the variety of species that in some parts of the river-valleys each day introduces the traveller to a grass before unseen. Where the inundations lie long, the trees are rare, and those that exist are slightly raised by mounds above the ground to escape the destructive effects of protracted submergence: in these places the decomposed vegetation exhales a fetid odour. Where the waters soon subside there are clumps of tall shrubbery and seams of forest rising on extensive meadows of grassy land, which give it the semblance of a suite of natural parks or pleasure-grounds, and the effect is not diminished by the frequent herds of gnu and antelope prancing and pacing over their pastures.
The climate is hot and oppressive, and the daily sea-breeze, which extends to the head of the Mgeta valley, is lost in the lower levels. About Zungomero rain is constant, except for a single fortnight in the month of January; it seems to the stranger as if the crops must infallibly decay, but they do not. At most times the sun, even at its greatest northern declination, shines through a veil of mist with a sickly blaze and a blistering heat, and the overcharge of electricity is evidenced by frequent and violent thunder-storms. In the western parts cold and cutting breezes descend from the rugged crags of Dut’humi.