When there is no dancing, and the porters can no longer eat, drink, and smoke, they sit by their fires, chatting, squabbling, talking and singing some such “pure nectar” as the following. The song was composed, I believe, in honour of me, and I frequently heard it when the singers knew that it was understood. The Cosmopolitan reader will not be startled by the epithet “Mbaya,” or wicked, therein applied to the Muzungu. A “good white man,” would indeed, in these lands, have been held an easy-going soul, a natural, an innocent, like the “buona famiglia,” of the Italian cook, who ever holds the highest quality of human nature to be a certain facility for being “plucked without ’plaining,” and being “flayed without flinching.” Moreover, despite my “wickedness,” they used invariably to come to me for justice and redress, especially when proximity to the coast encouraged the guide and guards to “bully” them.
“Muzungu mbaya” (the wicked white man) goes from the shore,
(Chorus)Puti! Puti! (I can only translate it by “grub! grub!”)
We will follow “Muzungu mbaya.”
Puti! Puti!
As long as he gives us good food!
Puti! Puti!
We will traverse the hill and the stream,
Puti! Puti!
With the caravan of this great mundewa (merchant).
Puti! Puti! &c., &c.
The Baloch and the sons of Ramji quarrel, yell, roar, and talk of eating—the popular subject of converse in these lands, as is beer in England, politics in France, law in Normandy, “pasta” at Naples, and to say no more, money everywhere—till a late hour. About 8 P.M., the small hours of the country, sounds the cry lala! lala!—sleep! It is willingly obeyed by all except the women, who must sometimes awake to confabulate even at midnight. One by one the caravan sinks into torpid slumber. At this time, especially when in the jungle-bivouac, the scene often becomes truly impressive. The dull red fires flickering and forming a circle of ruddy light in the depths of the black forest, flaming against the tall trunks and defining the foliage of the nearer trees, illuminate lurid groups of savage men, in every variety of shape and posture. Above, the dark purple sky, studded with golden points, domes the earth with bounds narrowed by the gloom of night. And, behold! in the western horizon, a resplendent crescent, with a dim, ash-coloured globe in its arms, and crowned by Hesperus, sparkling like a diamond, sinks through the vast of space, in all the glory and gorgeousness of Eternal Nature’s sublimest works. From such a night, methinks, the Byzantine man took his device, the Crescent and the Star.
The rate of caravan-marching in East Africa greatly varies. In cool moonlit mornings, over an open path, the Pagazi will measure perhaps four miles an hour. This speed is reduced by a quarter after a short “spurt,” and under normal, perhaps favourable, circumstances, three statute miles will be the highest average. Throughout the journey it is safe to reckon for an Indian file of moderate length—say 150 men—2·25 English miles, or what is much the same, 1·75 geographical miles per hour, measured by compass from point to point. In a clear country an allowance of 20 per cent, must be made for winding: in closer regions 40-50 per cent., and the traveller must exercise his judgment in distributing his various courses between these extremes. Mr. Cooley (Inner Africa Laid Open, p. 6) a “resolute,” and I may add a most successful “reducer of itinerary distances,” estimates that the ordinary day’s journey of the Portuguese missionaries in West Africa never exceeded six geographical miles projected in a straight line, and that on rare occasions, and with effort only, it may have extended to 10 miles. Dr. Lacerda’s porters in East Africa were terrified at the thought of marching ordinarily 2·50 Portuguese leagues, or about 9·33 statute miles per day. Dr. Livingstone gives the exceedingly high maximum of 2·50 to 3 miles an hour in a straight line, but his porters were lightly laden, and the Makololo are apparently a far “gamer” race, more sober and industrious, than the East Africans. Mr. Petherick, H. M.’s Consul at Khartum, estimates his gangs to have marched 3·50 miles per hour, and the ordinary day’s march at 8 hours. It is undoubted that the negro races north of the equator far surpass in pedestrian powers their southern brethren; moreover the porters in question were marching only for a single day; but as no instruments were used, the average may fairly be suspected of exaggeration. Finally Mr. Galton’s observation concerning Cape travelling applies equally well to this part of Africa, namely, that 10 statute or 6 rectilinear geographical miles per diem is a fair average of progress, and that he does well who conducts the same caravan 1,000 geographical miles across a wild country in six months.
I will conclude this chapter with a succinct account of the inn, that is to say the village in East Africa.
The habitations of races form a curious study and no valueless guide to the nature of the climate and the physical conditions to which men are subject.
Upon the East African coast the villages, as has been mentioned, are composed of large tenements, oblongs or squares of wattle and dab, with eaves projecting to form a deep verandah and a thatched pent-roof, approaching in magnitude that of Madagascar.
Beyond the line of maritime land the “Nyumba” or dwelling-house assumes the normal African form, the circular hut described by every traveller in the interior: Dr. Livingstone appears to judge rightly that its circularity is the result of a barbarous deficiency in inventiveness. It has, however, several varieties. The simplest is a loose thatch thrown upon a cone of sticks based upon the ground, and lashed together at the apex: it ignores windows, and the door is a low hole in the side. A superior kind is made after the manner of our ancient bee hives; it is cup-shaped with bulging sides, and covered with neat thatch, cut in circles which overlap one another tile-fashion: at a distance it resembles an inverted bird’s nest. The common shape is a cylindrical framework of tall staves, or the rough trunks of young trees planted in the earth, neatly interwoven with parallel and concentric rings of flexible twigs and withies: this is plastered inside and outside with a hard coat of red or grey mud; in the poorer tenements the surface is rough and chinked, in the better order it is carefully smoothed and sometimes adorned with rude imitations of life. The diameter averages from 20 to 25, and the height from 7 to 15 feet in the centre, which is supported by a strong roof-tree, to which all the stacked rafters and poles converge. The roof is subsequently added, it is a structure similar to the walls, interwoven with sticks, upon which thick grass or palm-fronds are thrown, and the whole is covered with thatch tied on by strips of tree-bark. It has eaves which projecting from two to six feet—under them the inhabitants love to sit or sun shade themselves—rest upon horizontal bars, which are here and there supported by forked uprights, trees rudely barked. Near the coast the eaves are broad and high: in the interior they are purposely made so low that a man must creep in on all fours. The door-way resembles the entrance to an English pig-sty, it serves, however, to keep out heat in the hot season, and to keep in smoke and warmth during the rains and the cold weather: the threshold is garnished with a horizontal log or board that defends the interior from inundation. The door is a square of reeds fastened together by bark or cord, and planted upright at night between the wall and two dwarf posts at each side of the entrance: there is generally a smaller and a secret door opposite that in use, and jealously closed up except when flight is necessary. In the colder and damper regions there is a second wall and roof outside the first, forming in fact one house within the other.
About Central Usagara the normal African haystack-hut makes place for the “Tembe” which extends westward, a little beyond Unyanyembe. The Tembe, though of Hamitic origin, resembles the Utum of the ancients, and the Hishan of the modern Hejaz, those hollow squares of building which have extended through Spain to France and even to Ireland: it was, probably, suggested to Africa and to Arabia by the necessity of defence to, as well as lodging for, man and beast. It is to a certain extent, a proof of civilisation in Eastern Africa: the wildest tribes have not progressed beyond the mushroom or circular hut, a style of architecture which seems borrowed from the indigenous mimosa tree.
Westward of Unyamwezi in Uvinza and about the Tanganyika Lake the round hovel again finds favour with the people; but even there the Arabs prefer to build for themselves the more solid and comfortable Tembe.