The loads of the Pagazi, it has appeared, are composed of beads, cloth, and wire, which in this land of “round trade” or barter, supply the wants of a circulating medium, and they severally represent copper, silver, and gold. For a detailed notice, the reader is referred to the appendix; in this place a few general remarks will suffice to set before him the somewhat complicated use of the articles.
Of beads there are about 400 varieties, some of which have each three or four different names. The cheapest, which form the staple of commerce, are the Hafizi, Khanyera or Ushanga Waupe, a round white porcelain, the price of which averages at Zanzibar 1 dollar per 5 or 6 lbs. avoirdupois. The most expensive are the Samsam or Samesame, also called Joho (scarlet cloth), Kimara-p’hamba (food-finishers), because a man will part with his dinner to obtain them, and Kifunjyá-mji (town-breakers), because the women will ruin themselves and their husbands for them: these are the small coral-bead, scarlet enamelled upon a white ground, they are of fifteen different sizes, and the value at Zanzibar is from 13 to 16 dollars per 35 lbs. Beads are purchased from the Banyan monopolisers unstrung, and are afterwards mounted by the merchant upon T’hembe, or threads of palm-fibre; much depends for success in sale upon the regularity and the attractiveness of the line. The principal divisions are the bitil and the khete, which may represent the farthing and the penny. The former is a single length from the tip of the index to the wrist; the latter, which comprises four of the former, is a double length round the thumb to the elbow-bone, or what is much the same, twice the circumference of the throat. Ten khete compose the fundo or knot, which is used in the larger purchases, and of these from two to three were daily expended in our small expenses by the Goanese servants, whilst the usual compensation for rations to an African is a single khete. The utmost economy should be exercised in beads: apparently exhaustless a large store goes but a little way, and a man’s load rarely outlasts a month. It is difficult to divine what becomes of these ornaments: for centuries ton after ton has been imported into the country, they are by no means perishable substances, and the people carry, like the Indians, their wealth upon their persons. Yet not a third of the population was observed to wear any considerable quantity; possibly the excessive demand in the lands outlying direct intercourse with the coast, tends to disperse them throughout the vast terra incognita of the central African basin.
The African preserves the instincts of infancy in the higher races. He astonished the enlightened De Gama some centuries ago by rejecting with disdain jewels, gold, and silver, whilst he caught greedily at beads and other baubles, as a child snatches at a new plaything. To the present day he is the same. There is something painfully ludicrous in the expression of countenance, the intense and all-absorbing admiration, and the greedy wistfulness with which he contemplates the rubbish. Yet he uses it as a toy: after sacrificing perhaps his goat or his grain to become the happy possessor of a khete, he will hang it round his neck for a few days, and then, child-like, weary of the acquisition, he will do his best to exchange it for another. In all bargains beads must be thrown in, especially where women are concerned: their sisters of civilisation would reproach themselves with an unconscious lapse into the “nil admirari” doctrines so hateful to the muscular system of the age, and with a cold indifference to the charms of diamonds and pearls, could they but witness the effect of a string of scarlet porcelains upon the high-born dames in Central Africa.
The cloths imported into East Africa are of three kinds, Merkani, Kaniki, and “cloths with names.”
“Merkani,” in which we detect the African corruption of American, is the article “domestics”—unbleached shirting and sheeting from the mills near Salem. Kaniki, is the common Indian indigo dyed cotton. “Cloths with names,” as they are called by the Africans, are Arab and Indian checks, and coloured goods, of cotton or silk mixed with cotton. Of these the most common is the Barsati, a dark blue cotton cloth with a broad red stripe, which representing the dollar in the interior is useful as presents to chiefs. Of double value is the Dabwani, made at Maskat, a small blue and white check, with a quarter breadth of red stripe, crossed with white and yellow: this showy article is invariably demanded by the more powerful Sultans for themselves and their wives, whilst they divide the Merkani and Kaniki, which composes their Honga—“blackmail” or dash—amongst their followers.
The people of East Africa, when first visited by the Arabs, were satisfied with the coarsest and flimsiest Kaniki imported by the Banyans from Cutch. When American merchants settled at Zanzibar, Kaniki yielded before the advance of “Merkani,” which now supplies the markets from Abyssinia to the Mozambique. But the wild men are fast losing their predilection for a stuff which is neither comfortable nor durable, and in many regions the tribes satisfied with goat-skins and tree barks, prefer to invest their capital in the more attractive beads and wire. It would evidently be advantageous if England or her colonies could manufacture an article better suited to the wants of the country than that now in general use; but as long as the Indian short-stapled cotton must be used, there is little probability of her competing with the produce of the New World.
In Eastern Africa cotton cloth is used only for wear. The popular article is a piece of varying breadth but always of four cubits, or six feet, in length: the braça of Portuguese Africa, it is called by the Arabs, shukkah, by the Wasawahili, unguo, and in the far interior upande or lupande. It is used as a loin-wrapper, and is probably the first costume of Eastern Africa and of Arabia. The plate borrowed from Montfaucon’s edition of the “Topographia Christiana,” by Dr. Vincent (Part I. Appendix to the Periplus) shows the Shukkah, to be the general dress of Ethiopians, as it was of the Egyptians, and the spear their weapon. The use of the Shukkah during the Meccan pilgrimage, when the devotees cast off such innovations as coats and breeches for the national garb of their ancestors, proves its antiquity throughout the regions eastward of the Red Sea. On the African coast the Shukkah Merkani is worth about 0·25 dollars = 1s. 01⁄2d., in the interior it rises to the equivalent of a dollar (4s. 2d.) and even higher. The Kaniki is but little cheaper than the Merkani, when purchased upon the sea-board; its increase of value in the interior, however, is by no means in proportion to its prime cost, and by some tribes it is wholly rejected. A double length of Shukkah, or twelve feet, the article worn by women who can afford it, is called a Doti, and corresponds with the Tobe of Abyssinia and of the Somali country. The whole piece of Merkani, which contains from seven to eleven Doti, is termed a Jurah or Gorah.
After beads and piece-goods, the principal imports into Eastern Africa, especially on the northern lines and in the western portion of the great central route, are Masango or brass wires of large sizes, Nos. 4 and 5. They are purchased at Zanzibar, when cheap, at 12, and when dear at 16, dollars per Frasilah of 35 lbs. When imported up-country the Frasilah is divided into three or four large coils, called by the Arabs “daur,” and by the Africans “khata:” the object is convenience of attachment to the porters’ banghy-poles. Arrived at Unyanyembe they are converted by artisans into the kitindi, or coil-bracelet, a peculiarly African decoration. It is a system of concentric circles extending from the wrist to the elbow; at both extremities it is made to bulge out for grace and for allowing the joints to play; and the elasticity of the wire keeps it in its place. It weighs nearly 3 lbs., yet—“vanity knows no sore”—the women of some tribes will wear four of these bulky decorations upon their arms and legs. It is mostly a feminine ornament. In the Lake Regions, however, men assume the full-sized armlet, and in the mountains of Usagara their wrists, arms, and ankles are often decorated with half and quarter lengths, which being without terminal bulges, appear to compress the limbs painfully. At Unyanyembe the value of a kitindi varies from two to four shukkah; at Ujiji, where the ornament is in demand it rises to four or five.
The remainder of the live stock forming the personnel of the caravan is composed of asses. At Zanzibar I had bought five riding animals to mount the chiefs of the party, including Said bin Salim and the Goanese. The price varied from fifteen to forty dollars. Of the twenty-nine asses used for carriage, only twenty remained when the muster was made at Zungomero, and the rapid thinning of their numbers by loss, death and accident began to suggest uncomfortable ideas.
The following “Equipment of the Expedition,” sent by me to Mr. Francis Galton, the South African traveller, and bearing date, “Camp Zungomero in Khutu, Sunday, 2nd August, 1857,” is here republished: it will assist the reader in picturing to himself the mass of material which I am about to drag over the mountains.