The principal diseases of the valley are severe ulcerations and fevers, generally of a tertian type. The “Mkunguru” begins with coldness in the toes and finger-tips; a frigid shiver seems to creep up the legs, followed by pains in the shoulders, severe frontal headache, hot eyes, and a prostration and irritability of mind and body. This preliminary lasts for one to three hours, when nausea ushers in the hot stage: the head burns, the action of the heart becomes violent, thirst rages, and a painful weight presses upon the eyeballs: it is often accompanied by a violent cough and irritation. Strange visions, as in delirium, appear to the patient, and the excitement of the brain is proved by unusual loquacity. When the fit passes off with copious perspiration the head is often affected, the ears buzz, and the limbs are weak. If the patient attempts to rise suddenly, he feels a dizziness, produced apparently by a gush of bile along the liver duct: want of appetite, sleeplessness and despondency, and a low fever, evidenced by hot pulses, throbbing temples, and feet painfully swollen, with eruptions of various kinds, and ulcerated mouth, usher in the cure. This fever yields easily to mild remedies, but it is capable of lasting three weeks.
A multitude of roads, whose point of departure is the coast, form a triangle and converge at the “Makutaniro,” or junction-place, in Central Uzaramo. The route whose several stations have been described is one of the main lines running from Kaole and Bagamoyo, in a general southwest direction, till it falls into the great trunk road which leads directly west from Mbuamaji. It is divided into thirteen caravan stages, but a well-girt walker will accomplish the distance in a week.
No apology is offered for the lengthiness of the ethnographical descriptions contained in the following pages. The ethnology of Africa is indeed its most interesting, if not its only interesting feature. Everything connected with the habits and customs, the moral and religious, the social and commercial state of these new races, is worthy of diligent observation, careful description, and minute illustration. There is indeed little in the physical features of this portion of the great peninsula to excite the attention of the reader beyond the satisfaction that ever accompanies the victory of truth over fable, and a certain importance which in these “travelling times,”—when man appears rapidly rising to the rank of a migratory animal,—must attach to discovery. The subject, indeed, mostly banishes ornament. Lying under the same parallels with a climate whose thermical variations know no extremes, the succession of alluvial valley, ghaut, table-land, and shelving plain is necessarily monotonous, the soil is the same, the productions are similar, and the rocks and trees resemble one another. Eastern and central inter-tropical Africa also lacks antiquarian and historic interest, it has few traditions, no annals, and no ruins, the hoary remnants of past splendour so dear to the traveller and to the reader of travels. It contains not a single useful or ornamental work, a canal or a dam is, and has ever been, beyond the narrow bounds of its civilisation. It wants even the scenes of barbaric pomp and savage grandeur with which the student of occidental Africa is familiar. But its ethnography has novelties: it exposes strange manners and customs, its Fetichism is in itself a wonder, its commerce deserves attention, and its social state is full of mournful interest. The fastidiousness of the age, however, forbidding ampler details, even under the veil of the “learned languages,” cripples the physiologist, and robs the subject of its principal peculiarities. I have often regretted that if Greek and dog-Latin be no longer a sufficient disguise for the facts of natural history, human and bestial, the learned have not favoured us with a system of symbols which might do away with the grossness of words.
The present tenants of the First Region are the Wazaramo, the Wak’hutu, and their great sub-tribe, the Waziraha; these form the staple of population,—the Wadoe and the Wazegura being minor and immigrant tribes.
The Wazaramo are no exception to the rule of barbarian maritime races: they have, like the Somal, the Gallas, the Wangindo, the Wamakua, and the Cape Kafirs, come into contact with a civilisation sufficiently powerful to corrupt without subjugating them; and though cultivators of the ground, they are more dreaded by caravans than any tribe from the coast to the Lake Region. They are bounded eastward by the thin line of Moslems in the maritime regions, westward by the Wak’hutu, northward by the Kingani River, and on the south by the tribes of the Rufiji. The Wazaramo, or, as they often pronounce their own name, Wazalamo, claim connection with the semi-nomade Wakamba, who have, within the last few years, migrated to the north-west of Mombasah. Their dialect, however, proves them to be congeners of the Wak’hutu, and distinct from the Wakamba. As in East Africa generally, it is impossible to form the remotest idea of the number of families, or of the total of population. The Wazaramo number many sub-tribes, the principal of which are the Wákámbá and the Wáp’hangárá.
These negroids are able-bodied men, tall and straight, compared with the Coast-clans, but they are inferior in development to most of the inner tribes. The complexion, as usual, varies greatly. The chiefs are often coal-black, and but few are of light colour. This arises from the country being a slave-importer rather than exporter; and here, as among the Arabs, black skins are greatly preferred. The Mzaramo never circumcises, except when becoming a “Mháji,” or Moslem convert; nor does this tribe generally tattoo, though some adorn the face with three long cicatrized cuts, like the Mashali of Mecca, extending down each cheek from the ear-lobes to the corners of the mouth. Their distinctive mark is the peculiarity of dressing their hair. The thick wool is plastered over with a cap-like coating of ochreish and micaceous clay, brought from the hills, and mixed to the consistency of honey with the oil of the sesamum or the castor-bean. The pomatum, before drying, is pulled out with the fingers to the ends of many little twists, which circle the head horizontally, and the mass is separated into a single or a double line of knobs, the upper being above, and the lower below, the ears, both look stiff and matted, as if affected with a bad plica polonica. The contrast between these garlands of small red dilberries and the glossy black skin is, however, effective. The clay, when dry, is washed out with great trouble by means of warm water—soap has yet to be invented—and by persevering combing with the fingers. Women wear the hair-thatch like men; there are, however, several styles. It is usually parted in the centre, from the crinal front-line to the nape of the neck, and allowed to grow in a single or double dense thatch, ridging the head breadthwise from ear to ear: this is coloured or not coloured, according to the wearer’s taste. Some of the Wazaramo, again, train lumps of their wool to rise above the region of cautiousness, and very exactly simulate bears’ ears. The face is usually lozenge-shaped, the eyes are somewhat oblique, the nose is flat and patulated, the lips tumid and everted, the jaw prognathous, and the beard, except in a few individuals, is scanty. The sebaceous odour of the skin amongst all these races is overpowering: emitted with the greatest effect during and after excitement either of mind or body, it connects the negroid with the negro and separates him from the Somal, the Galla, and the Malagash. The expression of countenance is wild and staring, the features are coarse and harsh, the gait is loose and lounging; the Arab strut and the Indian swagger are unknown in East Africa. The Wazaramo tribe is rich in albinos; three were seen by the Expedition in the course of a single day. They much resemble Europeans of the leucous complexion; the face is quite bald; the skin is rough, and easily wrinkles in long lines, marked by a deeper pink; the hair is short, sharp-curling, and coloured like a silk-worm’s cocoon, and the lips are red. The eyes have grey pupils and rosy “whites:” they appear very sensitive to light, and are puckered up so as to distort the countenance. The features are unusually plain, and the stature appears to range below the average. The people who have no prejudice against them, call these leucœthiops Wazungu, “white men.”
The Wazaramo tribe is wealthy enough to dress well: almost every man can afford a shukkah or loin-cloth of unbleached cotton, which he stains a dirty yellow, like the Indian gerua, with a clay dug in the subsoil. Their ornaments are extensive girdles and bead necklaces of various colours, white disks, made from the base of a sea-shell, and worn single on the forehead or in pairs at the neck. A massy ring of brass or zinc encircles the wrist. The decoration peculiar to the tribe, and common to both sexes, is the mgoweko, a tight collar or cravat, 1 to 1·50 inches broad, of red and yellow, white and black beads, with cross-bars of different colours at short intervals. Men never appear in public without an ostentatious display of arms. The usual weapons, when they cannot procure muskets, are spears, bows, and arrows, the latter poisoned, and sime, or long knives like the Somali daggers, made by themselves with imported iron. The chiefs are generally seen in handsome attire; embroidered Surat caps bound with a tight snowy turban of a true African shape, which contrasts well with black skins and the short double-peaked beards below. The body-garment is a loin-cloth of showy Indian cotton or Arab check; some prefer the long shirt and the kizbao or waistcoat affected by the slaves at Zanzibar. The women are well dressed as the men—a circumstance rare in East Africa. Many of them have the tibia bowed in front by bearing heavy water-pots at too early an age; when not burdened they have a curious mincing gate, they never veil their faces, and they show no shame in the presence of strangers. The child is carried in a cloth at the back.
The habitations of the Wazaramo are far superior in shape and size to those of K’hutu, and, indeed, to any on this side of Unyamwezi. Their buildings generally resemble the humbler sort of English cow-house, or an Anglo-Indian bungalow. In poorer houses the outer walls are of holcus canes, rudely puddled; the better description are built of long and broad sheets of Myombo and Mkora bark, propped against strong uprights inside, and bound horizontally by split bamboos tied outside with fibrous cord. The heavy pent-shaped roof often provided with a double thatch of grass and reeds, projects eaves, which are high enough to admit a man without stooping; these are supported by a long cross bar resting on perpendiculars, tree-trunks, barked and smoothed, forked above, and firmly planted in the ground. Along the outer marginal length of this verandah lies a border of large logs polished by long sittings. The interior is dark and windowless, and party-walls of stiff grass-cane divide it into several compartments. The list of furniture comprises a dwarf cartel about 4 feet long by 16 inches broad, upon which even the married couple manages to make itself comfortable; a stool cut out of a single block, a huge wooden mortar, mtungi or black earthen pots, gourds, ladles of cocoa-nut, cast-off clothes, whetstones, weapons, nets, and in some places creels for fishing. Grain is ground upon an inclined slab of fine-grained granite or syenite, sometimes loose, at other times fixed in the ground with a mud plaster; the classical Eastern handmill is unknown in this part of Africa. The inner roof and its rafters, shining with a greasy soot, in wet weather admit drenching lines of leakage, and the only artifice applied to the flooring is the tread of the proprietors. The door is a close hurdle of parallel holcus-straw bound to five or six cross-bars with strips of bark. In a village there will be from four to twelve “bungalows;” the rest are the normal haycock and beehive hut of Africa. Where enemies are numerous the settlements are palisaded; each has, moreover, but a single entrance, which is approached by a narrow alley of strong stockade, and is guarded by a thick planking that fits into a doorway large enough to admit cattle.
The Wazaramo are an ill-conditioned, noisy, boisterous violent, and impracticable race. A few years ago they were the principal obstacle to Arab and other travellers entering into East Africa. But the seizure of Kaole and other settlements by the late Sayyid of Zanzibar has now given strangers a footing in the land. After tasting the sweets of gain, they have somewhat relented; but quarrels between them and the caravans are still frequent. The P’házi, or chief of the district, demands a certain amount of cloth for free passage from all merchants on their way to the interior; from those returning he takes cattle, jembe, or iron hoes, shokah or hatchets, in fact, whatever he can obtain. If not contented, his clansmen lie in ambush and discharge a few poisoned arrows at the trespassers: they never have attempted, like the Wagogo, to annihilate a caravan; in fact, the loss of one of their number causes a general panic. They have hitherto successfully resisted the little armies of touters that have almost desolated K’hutu, and they are frequently in hostilities with the coast settlements. The young men sometimes set out on secret plundering expeditions to Bagamoyo and Mbuamaji, and enter the houses at night by mining under the walls. The burghers attempt to defeat them by burying stones and large logs as a foundation, but in vain: their superior dexterity has originated a superstitious notion that they possess a peculiar “medicine,” a magic spell called “Ugumba,” which throws the household into a deep trance. When a thief is caught in flagrante delicto, his head soon adorns a tall pole at the entrance of the settlement: it is not uncommon to see half a dozen bloody or bleached fragments of humanity collected in a single spot. When disposed to be friendly the Wazaramo will act as porters to Arabs, but if a man die his load is at once confiscated by his relatives, who, however, insist upon receiving his blood-money, as if he had been slain in battle. Their behaviour to caravans in their own country depends upon the strangers’ strength; many trading bodies therefore unite into one before beginning the transit, and even then they are never without fear.
The Wazaramo chiefs are powerful only when their wealth or personal qualities win the respect of their unruly republican subjects. There are no less than five orders in this hereditary master-class. The P’hazi is the headman of the village, and the Mwene Goha is his principal councillor; under these are three ranks of elders, the Kinyongoni, the Chúmá, and the Káwámbwá. The headman, unless exceptionally influential, must divide amongst his “ministry” the blackmail extorted from travellers. The P’hazi usually fills a small village with his wives and families; he has also large estates, and he personally superintends the labour of his slave-gangs. He cannot sell his subjects except for two offences—Ugoni or adultery, and Ucháwe or black magic. The latter crime is usually punished by the stake; in some parts of the country the roadside shows at every few miles a heap or two of ashes with a few calcined and blackened human bones mixed with bits of half-consumed charcoal, telling the tragedy that has been enacted there. The prospect cannot be contemplated without horror; here and there, close to the larger circles where the father and mother have been burnt, a smaller heap shows that some wretched child has shared their terrible fate, lest growing up he should follow in his parents’ path. The power of conviction is wholly in the hands of the Mgángá or medicine-man, who administers an ordeal called Bága or Kyápo by boiling water. If the hand after being dipped show any sign of lesion, the offence is proven, and the sentence is instantly carried into execution.