At the Ziwa the regular system of kuhonga, or blackmail, so much dreaded by travellers, begins in force. Up to this point all the chiefs are contented with little presents; but in Ugogo tribute is taken by force, if necessary. None can evade payment; the porters, fearing lest the road be cut off to them in future, would refuse to travel unless each chief is satisfied; and when a quarrel arises they throw down their packs and run away. Ugogo, since the closing of the northern line through the Wahumba and the Wamasai tribes, and the devastation of the southern regions by the Warori, is the only open line, and the sultans have presumed upon their power of stopping the way. There is no regular tariff of taxes: the sum is fixed by the traveller’s dignity and outfit, which, by means of his slaves, are as well known to every sultan as to himself. Properly speaking, the exaction should be confined to the up-caravans; from those returning a head or two of cattle, a few hoes, or some similar trifle, are considered ample. Such, however, was not the experience of the Expedition. When first travelling through the country the “Wazungu” were sometimes mulcted to the extent of fifty cloths by a single chief, and the Arabs congratulated them upon having escaped so easily. On their downward march they pleaded against a second demand as exorbitant as the first, adducing the custom of caravans, who are seldom mulcted in more than two cows or a pair of jembe, or iron hoes; the chiefs, however, replied that as they never expected to see white faces again, it was their painful duty to make the most from them.
The kuhonga, however, is not unjust. In these regions it forms the customs-dues of the government: the sultan receives it nominally, but he must distribute the greater part amongst his family and councillors, his elders and attendants. It takes the place of the fees expected by the Balderabba of the Abyssinians, the Mogasa of the Gallas, the Abban of the Somal, and the Ghafir and Rafik amongst the Bedouin Arabs, which are virtually assertions of supremacy upon their own ground. These people have not the idea which seems prevalent in the south, namely, that any man has a right to tread God’s earth gratis as long as he does not interfere with property. If any hesitation about the kuhonga be made, the first question put to the objector will be, “Is this your ground or my ground?” The practice, which is sanctioned by the customs of civilised nations, is, however, vitiated in East Africa by the slave-trade: it becomes the means of intrusion and extortion, of insolence and violence. The Wagogo are an importing people, and they see with envy long strings of what they covet passing through their territory from the interior to the coast. They are strong enough to plunder any caravan; but violence they know would injure them by cutting off communication with the markets for their ivory. Thus they have settled into a silent compromise, and their nice sense of self-interest prevents any transgression beyond the bounds of reason. The sultans receive their kuhonga, and the subjects entice away slaves from every caravan, but the enormous interest upon capital laid out in the trade still leaves a balance in favour of the merchants. The Arabs, however, declaring that the evil is on the increase, propose many remedies—such as large armed caravans, sent by their government, and heavy dues to be exacted from those Wagogo who may visit the coast. But they are wise enough to murmur without taking steps which would inevitably exacerbate the evil. Should it pass a certain point, a new road will be opened, or the old road will be reopened, to restore the balance of interests.
At the Ziwa we had many troubles. One Marema, the sultan of a new settlement situated a few hundred yards to the north-west visited us on the day of our arrival and reproving us for “sitting in the jungle,” pointed out the way to his village. On our replying that we were about to traverse Ugogo by another route, he demanded his Ada or customs, which being newly-imposed were at once refused by Kidogo. The sultan, a small man, a “mere thief,”—as a poor noble is graphically described in these lands,—threatened violence, whereupon the asses were brought in from grazing and were ostentatiously loaded before his eyes: when he changed his tone from threats to beggary. Kidogo relenting gave him two cloths with a few strings of beads, preferring this slender disbursement to the chance of a flight of arrows during the night. His good judgment was evidenced by the speedy appearance of the country-people, who brought with them bullocks, sheep, goats and poultry, water-melons and pumpkins, honey, butter-milk, whey and curded-milk, an abundance of holcus and calabash-flour. The latter is made from the hard dry pulp surrounding the bean-like seed contained in the ripe gourd: the taste is a not unpleasant agro-dolce, and the people declare it to be strengthening food, especially for children; they convert it into porridge and rude cakes.
This abundance of provaunt caused a halt of four days at the Ziwa, and it was spent in disputes between the great Said and the greater Kidogo. The ostensible “bone of contention,” was cloth advanced by the former to the porters—who claimed as their perquisite a bullock before entering Ugogo—without consulting the hard-headed slave, who wounded in his tenderest place of pride, had influence enough to halt the caravan. The real cause of the dispute was kept from my ears till some months afterwards, but secrets in this land are as the Arabs say, “Like musk, murder, and Basrah-garlic,” they must out, and Bombay, who could never help blurting forth the tacenda with the dicenda, at last accidentally unveiled the mystery. Said had deferred taking overcharge of the outfit from Kidogo till our arrival at the Ziwa, and the latter felt aggrieved by the sudden yet tardy demand, which deprived him of the dignity and the profits of stewardship. Sickness became rife in camp, the effect of the cold night-winds and the burning suns, and as usual when men are uncomfortable violent quarrels ensued. Again the officious Wazira, shook the torch of discord by ordering Khamisi, an exceedingly drunken and debauched son of Ramji, to carry certain bundles which usually graced the shoulders of Goha, one of the Wak’hutu porters. When words were exhausted Khamisi drew his blade upon Goha and was tackled by Wazira, whilst Goha brought the muzzle of my elephant-gun to bear upon Khamisi and was instantly collared by Bombay. Being thus “in chancery” both heroes waxed so “exceedingly brave—particular,” that I was compelled to cool their noble bile with a long pole. At length it became necessary to make Kidogo raise his veto against the advance of the caravan. He did not appear before me till summoned half-a-dozen times: when he at last vouchsafed so to do I dragged rather than led him to the mat, where sat in surly pride Said bin Salim, with the monocular Jemadar, and I ordered the trio to quench with the waters of explanation the fire of anger. After an apparently satisfactory arrangement Kidogo started up and disappeared in the huts of his men; it presently proved that he had so done for the purpose of proposing to his party, who were now the sole interpreters, that to Said bin Salim, an ignoramus in such matters, should be committed the weighty task of settling the amount of our blackmail and presents with the greedy chiefs of Ugogo. Had the mischievous project been carried into execution, we should have been sufferers to some extent: lack of unanimity however caused the measure to be thrown out. A march was fixed for the next day, when the bullock, on this occasion the scape-grace, broke its tether and plunged into the bush: it was followed by the Baloch and the porters, whose puny arrows, when they alighted upon the beast’s stern, only goaded it forwards, and at least threescore matchlock balls were discharged before one bullet found its billet in the fugitive. The camp of course then demanded another holiday to eat beef.
The reader must not imagine that I am making a “great cry,” about a little matter. Four days are not easily spent when snowed-up in a country inn, and that is a feeble comparison for the halt in East Africa, where outfit is leaking away, the valuable travelling-time is perhaps drawing to a close, health is palpably failing, and nothing but black faces made blacker still by ill-humour and loud squabbles, meet the eye and ear. Insignificant things they afterwards appear viewed through the medium of memory, these petty annoyances of travel; yet at the moment they are severely felt, and they must be resented accordingly. The African traveller’s fitness for the task of exploration depends more upon his faculty of chafing under delays and kicking against the pricks, than upon his power of displaying the patience of a Griselda or a Job.
On the 30th September, the last day of our detention at the Jiwa, appeared a large caravan headed by Said bin Mohammed of Mbuamaji, with Khalfan bin Khamis, and several other Coast-Arabs. They brought news from the sea-board, and,—wondrous good fortune!—the portmanteau containing books which the porter, profiting by the confusion caused by the swarm of bees, had deposited in the long grass, at the place where I had directed the slaves to seek it. Some difficulty was at first made about restitution: the Arab law of “lakit,” or things trove, being variable, complicated, and altogether opposed to our ideas. However, two cloths were given to the man who had charge of it, and the Jemadar and Said bin Salim were sent to recover it by any or all means. The merchants were not offended. They consented to sell for the sum of thirty-five dollars a strong and serviceable but an old and obstinate African ass, which after carrying my companion for many a mile, at last broke its heart when toiling up the steeps from whose summit the fair waters of the Central Lake were first sighted. Moreover, they proposed that for safety and economy the two caravans should travel together under a single flag, and thus combine to form a total of 190 men. These Coast-Arabs travelled in comfort. The brother of Said Mohammed had married the daughter of Fundikira, Sultan of Unyanyembe, and thus the family had a double home, on the coast and in the interior. All the chiefs of the caravan carried with them wives and female slaves, negroid beauties, tall, bulky and “plenty of them,” attired in tulip-hues, cochineal and gamboge, who walked the whole way, and who when we passed them displayed an exotic modesty by drawing their head-cloths over cheeks which we were little ambitious to profane. They had a multitude of Fundi, or managing men, and male slaves, who bore their personal bag and baggage, scrip and scrippage, drugs and comforts, stores and provisions, and who were always early at the ground to pitch, to surround with a “pai,” or dwarf drain, and to bush for privacy, with green boughs, their neat and light ridge-tents of American domestics. Their bedding was as heavy as ours, and even their poultry travelled in wicker cages. This caravan was useful to us in dealing with the Wagogo: it always managed, however, to precede us on the march, and to monopolise the best kraals. The Baloch and the sons of Ramji, when asked on these occasions why they did not build a palisade, would reply theatrically, “Our hearts are our fortification!”—methought a sorry defence.
By Kidogo’s suggestion I had preferred the middle line through the hundred miles of dreaded Ugogo: it was the beaten path, and infested only by four Sultans, namely: 1. Myandozi of Kifukuru. 2. Magomba of Kanyenye. 3. Maguru-Mafupi of K’hok’ho; and 4. Kibuya of Mdaburu. On the 1st October, 1857, we left the Ziwa late in the morning, and after passing through the savannahs and the brown jungles of the lower levels, where giraffe again appeared, the path crested a wave of ground and debouched upon the table-land of Ugogo. The aspect was peculiar and unprepossessing. Behind still towered in sight the Delectable Mountains of Usagara, mist-crowned and robed in the lightest azure, with streaks of a deep plum-colour, fronting the hot low land of Marenga Mk’hali, whose tawny face was wrinkled with lines of dark jungle. On the north was a tabular range of rough and rugged hill, above which rose three distant cones pointed out as the haunts of the robber Wahumba: at its base was a deep depression, a tract of brown brush patched with yellow grass, inhabited only by the elephant, and broken by small outlying hillocks. Southwards scattered eminences of tree-crowned rock rose a few yards from the plain which extended to the front, a clearing of deep red or white soil, decayed vegetation based upon rocky or sandy ground, here and there thinly veiled with brown brush and golden stubbles: its length, about four miles, was studded with square villages, and with the stately but grotesque calabash. This giant is to the vegetable what the elephant is to the animal world:—the Persians call it the “practice-work of nature”—its disproportionate conical bole rests upon huge legs exposed to view by the washing away of the soil, and displays excrescences which in pious India would merit a coat of vermilion. From the neck extend gigantic gnarled arms, each one a tree, whose thinnest twig is thick as a man’s finger, and their weight causes them to droop earthwards, giving to the outline the shape of a huge dome. In many parts the unloveliness of its general appearance is varied by the wrinkles and puckerings which, forming by granulation upon the oblongs where the bark has been removed for fibre, give the base the appearance of being chamfered and fluted; and often a small family of trunks, four or five in number, springs from the same root. At that season all were leafless; at other times they are densely foliaged, and contrasting with their large timber and with their coarse fleshy leaf, they are adorned with the delicatest flowers of a pure virgin-white, which, opening at early dawn, fade and fall before eventide. The babe-tree issues from the ground about one foot in diameter: in Ugogo, however, all those observed were of middle age. The young are probably grubbed up to prevent their encumbering the ground, and when decayed enough to be easily felled, they are converted into firewood. By the side of these dry and leafless masses of dull dead hue, here and there a mimosa or a thorn was beginning to bear the buds of promise green as emeralds. The sun burned like the breath of a bonfire, a painful glare—the reflection of the terrible crystal above,—arose from the hot earth; warm Siroccos raised clouds of dust, and in front the horizon was so distant, that, as the Arabs expressed themselves, “a man might be seen three marches off.”
We were received with the drumming and the ringing of bells attached to the ivories, with the yells and frantic shouts of two caravans halted at Kifukuru: one was that of Said Mohammed, who awaited our escort, the other a return “Safari,” composed of about 1,000 Wanyamwezi porters, headed by four slaves of Salim bin Rashid, an Arab merchant settled at Unyanyembe. The country people also flocked to stare at the phenomenon; they showed that excitement which some few years ago might have been witnessed in more polished regions when a “horrible murder” roused every soul from Tweed banks to Land’s End; when, to gratify a morbid destructiveness, artists sketched, literati described, tourists visited, and curio-hunters met to bid for the rope and the murderer’s whiskers. Yet I judged favourably of the Wagogo by their curiosity, which stood out in strong relief against the apathy and the uncommunicativeness of the races lately visited. Such inquisitiveness is amongst barbarians generally a proof of improvability,—of power to progress. One man who had visited Zanzibar could actually speak a few words of Hindostani, and in Ugogo, and there only, I was questioned by the chiefs concerning Uzungu “White-land,” the mysterious end of the world in which beads are found under ground, and where the women weave such cottons. From the day of our entering to that of our leaving the country, every settlement turned out its swarm of gazers, men and women, boys and girls, some of whom would follow us for miles with explosions of Hi!—i!—i! screams of laughter and cries of excitement, at a long high trot,—most ungraceful of motion!—and with a scantiness of toilette which displayed truly unseemly spectacles. The matrons, especially the aged matrons, realised Madame Pernelle’s description of an unpleasant female—
“Un peu trop forte en gueule et fort impertinente;”
and of their sex the old men were ever the most pertinacious and intrusive, the most surly and quarrelsome. Vainly the escort attempted to arrest the course of this moving multitude of semi-nude barbarity. I afterwards learned that the two half-caste Arabs who had passed us at Muhama, Khalfan and Id, the sons of Muallim Salim of Zanzibar, had, whilst preceding us, spread through Ugogo malevolent reports concerning the Wazungu. They had one eye each and four arms; they were full of “knowledge,” which in these lands means magic; they caused rain to fall in advance and left droughts in their rear; they cooked water melons and threw away the seeds, thereby generating small-pox; they heated and hardened milk, thus breeding a murrain amongst cattle; and their wire, cloth, and beads caused a variety of misfortunes; they were kings of the sea, and therefore white-skinned and straight-haired—a standing mystery to these curly-pated people—as are all men who live in salt water; and next year they would return and seize the country. Suspicion of our intentions touching “territorial aggrandisement” was a fixed idea: everywhere the value attached by barbarians to their homes is in inverse ratio to the real worth of the article. Hence mountaineers are proverbially patriotic. Thus the lean Bedouins of Arabia and the lank Somal, though they own that they are starving, never sight a stranger without suspecting that he is spying out the wealth of the land. “What will happen to us?” asked the Wagogo; “we never yet saw this manner of man!” But the tribe cannot now forfeit intercourse with the coast: they annoyed us to the utmost, they made the use of their wells a daily source of trouble, they charged us double prices, and when they brought us provisions for sale, they insisted upon receiving the price of even the rejected articles; yet they did not proceed to open outrage. Our timid Arab, the Baloch, the sons of Ramji, and the porters humoured them in every whim. Kidogo would not allow observations to be taken with a bright sextant in presence of the mobility. He declined to clear the space before the tent, as the excited starers, some of whom had come from considerable distances, were apt under disappointment to wax violent; and though he once or twice closed the tent-flaps, he would not remove the lines of men, women, and children, who stretched themselves for the greater convenience of peeping and peering, lengthways upon the ground. Whenever a Mnyamwezi porter interfered, he was arrogantly told to begone, and he slunk away, praying us to remember that these men are “Wagogo.” Caravan after caravan had thus taught them to become bullies, whereas a little manliness would soon have reduced them to their proper level. They are neither brave nor well-armed, and their prestige rests solely upon their feat in destroying about one generation ago a caravan of Wanyamwezi—an event embalmed in a hundred songs and traditions. They seemed to take a fancy to the Baloch, who received from the fair sex many a little souvenir in the shape of a kid or a water-melon. Whenever the Goanese Valentine was sent to a village he was politely and hospitably welcomed, and seated upon a three-legged stool by the headman; and generally the people agreed in finding fault with their principal Sultans, declaring that they unwisely made the country hateful to “Wakonongo,” or travellers. Fortunately for the Expedition several scions of the race saw the light safely during our transit of Ugogo: had an accident occurred to a few babies or calves, our return through the country would have been difficult and dangerous. All received the name of “Muzungu,” and thus there must now be a small colony of black “white men” in this part of the African interior.