—and dotted over with morsels of fowl, so boiled that they shredded like yarn under the teeth. This repast again concluded with a bowl of sweetened milk, and other entremets, for which both hosts amply apologised; the house had lately been burned down, and honey had been used instead of sugar. The day concluded with prayers, with a seance in the verandah and with drinking fresh milk out of gourds—a state of things which again demanded excuses. A multitude of “Washenzi” thronged into the house, especially during the afternoon, to gaze at the Muzungu. I was formally presented to the Sultan Kafrira, a tall and wrinkled elder, celebrated for ready wits and spear. The sons of Ramji had often looked in at the door whilst preparations for feeding were going on, but they were not asked to sit down: the haughty host had provided them with a lean goat, in return for which they privily expressed an opinion that he was a “dog.” Masud, boasting of his intimacy with the Sultan Msimbira, whose subjects had plundered our portmanteau, offered on return to Unyanyembe his personal services in ransoming it. I accepted with joy; but the Shaykh Masud, as afterwards proved, nearly “left his skin” in the undertaking.
The climate of Kíríra is called by the Arabs a medicine. They vaunt its virtues, which become apparent after the unhealthy air of Kazeh, and after a delicious night spent in the cool barzah, I had no reason to question its reputation. I arose in the morning wonderfully refreshed, and Valentine, who had been prostrated with fever throughout the day, became another man. Yet the situation was apparently unpropitious; the Gombe Nullah, the main drain of this region, a line of stagnant pools, belted with almost impassable vegetation, lies hard by, and the background is an expanse of densest jungle.
Three short and eventless marches through thick jungle, with scattered clearings, led me, on the 30th December, to the district of Msene, where the dense wild growth lately traversed suddenly opens out and discloses to the west a broad view of admirable fertility. Before entering the settlements, the caravan halted, as usual, to form up. We then progressed with the usual pomp and circumstance; the noise was terrific, and the streets, or rather the spaces between the houses, were lined with Negroid spectators. I was led to the Tembe of one Saadullah, a low-caste Msawahili, and there found my companion looking but poorly. Gaetano, his “boy,” was so excited by the scene, that he fell down in a fit closely resembling epilepsy.
Msene, the chief Bandari of Western Unyamwezi, may be called the capital of the Coast Arabs and the Wasawahili, who, having a natural antipathy to their brethren of Oman, have abandoned to them Unyanyembe and its vicinity. Of late years, however, the Omani merchants, having been driven from the neighbouring districts by sundry murders into Msene, may at times be met there to the number of four or five. The inhabitants are chiefly Wasumbwá, a subtribe of the Wanyamwezi race. There is, however, besides Arabs and Wasawahili, a large floating population of the pastoral clan called Watosi, and fugitives from Uhha. In 1858 the chief of Msene was the Sultan Masanza. Both he and Funza, his brother, were hospitable and friendly to travellers, especially to the Arabs, who but a few years ago beat off with their armed slaves a large plundering party of the ferocious Watuta. This chief has considerable power, and the heads of many criminals elevated upon poles in front of his several villages show that he rules with a firm hand. He is never approached by a subject without the clapping of hands and the kneeling which in these lands are the honours paid to royalty. He was a large-limbed, gaunt, and sinewy old man, dressed in a dirty Subai or Arab check, over a coating of rancid butter, with a broad brass disk, neatly arabesqued, round his neck, with a multitude of little pigtails where his head was not bald, and with some thirty sambo or flexible wire rings deforming, as if by elephantiasis, his ankles. Like the generality of sultans, he despises beads as an article of decoration, preferring coils of brass or copper. He called several times at the house occupied by the Expedition, and on more than one occasion brought with him a bevy of wives, whose deportment was, I regret to say, rather naïve than decorous.
Msene, like Unyanyembe, is not a town, but a mass of detached settlements, which are unconscious of a regular street. To the northwards lie the villages of the Sultan—Kwihángá and Yovu. These are surrounded with a strong stockade, a deep moat, and a thick milk-bush hedge, intended for defence. The interior is occupied by thatched circular huts, divided by open squarelike spaces, and wynds and alleys are formed by milk-bush hedges and palisades. There are distinct places for the several wives, families, and slaves. The other settlements—Mbugání (“in the wild”) and Mji Mpia (“new town”), the latter being the place affected by the Wasawahili—cluster in a circle, separated by short cross-roads, which after rain are ankle-deep in mud, from Chyámbo, the favourite locale of the Coast Arabs. This settlement, which contained in 1858 nine large Tembe and about 150 huts, boasts of an African attempt at a soko or bazar, a clear space between the houses, where, in fine weather, bullocks are daily slaughtered for food, and where grain, vegetables, and milk are exposed for sale. At Msene a fresh outfit of cloth, beads, and wire can be procured for a price somewhat higher than at Unyanyembe. The merchants have small stores of drugs and spices, and sometimes a few comforts, as coffee, tea, and sugar. The latter is generally made of granulated honey, and therefore called sukárí zá ásalí. The climate of Msene is damp, the neighbouring hills and the thickly-vegetated country attracting an abundance of rain. It is exceedingly unhealthy, the result doubtless of filth in the villages and stagnant waters spread over the land. The Gombe Nullah, which runs through the district, about six hours’ march from the settlements, discharges after rain its superfluous contents into the many lakelets, ponds, and swamps of the lowlands. Fertilised by a wet monsoon, whose floods from the middle of October to May are interrupted only by bursts of fervent heat, the fat, black soil manured by the decay of centuries, reproduces abundantly anything committed to it. Flowers bloom spontaneously over the flats, and trees put forth their richest raiment. Rice of the red quality—the white is rare and dear—grows with a density and a rapidity unknown in Eastern Unyamwezi. Holcus and millet, maize and manioc, are plentiful enough to be exported. Magnificent palmyras, bauhinias and sycomores, plantains, and papaws, and a host of wild fruit-trees, especially the tamarind, which is extensively used, adorn the land. The other productions are onions, sweet potatoes, and egg-plants, which are cultivated; turmeric, brought from the vicinity; tomatos and bird-pepper, which grow wild; pulse, beans, pumpkins, water-melons, excellent mushrooms, and edible fungi. Milk, poultry, honey, and tobacco are cheap and plentiful. The currency at Msene in 1858—the date is specified, as the medium is liable to perpetual and sudden change, often causing severe losses to merchants, who, after laying in a large outfit of certain beads, find them suddenly unfashionable, and therefore useless—was the “pipe-stem,” white and blue porcelain-beads, called sofi in the string, and individually msaro. Of these ten were sufficient to purchase a pound of beef. The other beads in demand were the sungomaji, or pigeon-egg, the red-coral, the pink-porcelain, and the shell-decorations called kiwangwa. The cheaper varieties may be exchanged for grain and vegetables, but they will not purchase fowls, milk, and eggs. At this place only, the palmyra is tapped for toddy; in other parts of East Africa the people are unable to climb it. The market at Msene is usually somewhat cheaper than that of Unyanyembe, but at times the prices become very exorbitant.
The industry of Msene is confined to manufacturing a few cotton cloths, coarse mats, clay pipeheads, and ironmongery. As might be expected from the constitution of its society, Msene is a place of gross debauchery, most grateful to the African mind. All, from sultan to slave, are intoxicated whenever the material is forthcoming, and the relations between the sexes are of the loosest description. The drum is never silent, and the dance fills up the spare intervals of carouse, till exhausted nature can no more. The consequence is, that caravans invariably lose numbers by desertion when passing through Msene. Even household slaves, born and bred upon the coast, cannot tear themselves from its Circean charms.
There was “cold comfort” at Msene, where I was delayed twelve days. The clay roof of the Tembe was weed-grown like a deserted grave, and in the foul patio or central court-yard only dirty puddles set in black mud met the eye. The weather was what only they can realise who are familiar with a “Rainy Monsoon.” The temptations of the town rendered it almost impossible to keep a servant or a slave within doors; the sons of Ramji vigorously engaged themselves in trading, and Muinyi Wazira in a debauch, which ended in his dismissal. Gaetano had repeated epileptic fits, and Valentine rushed into the room half-crying to show a white animalcule—in this country called Funza—which had lately issued from his “buff.” None of the half-caste Arabs, except I’d and Khalfan, sons of Muallim Salim, the youths who had spread evil reports concerning us in Ugogo and elsewhere, called or showed any civility, and the only Arab at that time resident at Msene was the old Salim bin Masud. I received several visits from the Sultan Masanza. His first greeting was, “White man, what pretty thing hast thou brought up from the shore for me?” He presented a bullock, and received in return several cloths and strings of beads, and he introduced to us a variety of princesses, who returned the salutes of the Baloch and others with a wild effusion. As Christmas-day had been spent in marching, I hailed the opportunity of celebrating the advent of the New Year. Said bin Salim, the Jemadar, and several of the guard, were invited to an English dinner on a fair sirloin of beef, and a curious succedaneum for a plum-pudding, where neither flour nor currants were to be found. A characteristic trait manifested itself on this occasion. Amongst Arabs, the remnants of a feast must always be distributed to the servants and slaves of the guests;—a “brass knocker” would lose a man’s reputation. Knowing this, I had ordered the Goanese to do in Rome as the Romans do; and being acquainted with their peculiarities, I paid them an unexpected visit, where they were found so absorbed in the task of hiding, under pots and pans, every better morsel from a crowd of hungry peerers that the interruption of a stick was deemed necessary.
At length, on the 10th January, 1858, I left Msene with considerable difficulty. The Kirangozi, or guide, who had promised to accompany me, had sent an incompetent substitute, his brother, a raw young lad, who had no power to collect porters. The sons of Ramji positively refused to lend their aid in strengthening the gang. One of Said bin Salim’s children, the boy Faraj, had fled to Kazeh. The bull-headed Mabruki was brought back from flight only by the persuasion of his brother “Bombay,” and even “Bombay,” under the influence of some negroid Neæra, at the time of departure hid himself in his hut. All feared the march westwards. A long strip of blue hill lying northwards ever keeps the traveller in mind of the robber Watuta, and in places where the clans are mixed, all are equally hostile to strangers. Villages are less frequented and more meanly built, and caravans are not admitted beyond the faubourgs—the miserable huts outlying the fences. The land also is most unhealthy. After the rain, the rich dark loam becomes, like the black soils of Guzerat and the Deccan, a coat of viscid mire. Above is a canopy of cumulus and purple nimbus, that discharge their loads in copious day-long floods. The vegetation is excessive, and where there is no cultivation a dense matting of coarse grass, laid by wind and water and decayed by mud, veils the earth, and from below rises a clammy chill, like the thaw-cold of England, the effect of extreme humidity. And, finally, the paths are mere lines, pitted with deep holes, and worn by cattle through the jungle.
After an hour and thirty minutes’ march I entered Mb’hali, the normal cultivator’s village in Western Unyamwezi;—a heap of dwarf huts like inverted birds’ nests surrounding a central space, and surrounded by giant heaps of euphorbia or milk-bush. Tall grasses were growing almost up to the door-ways, and about the settlement were scattered papaws and plantains; the Mwongo, with its damson-like fruit, the Mtogwe or wood-apple tree, and the tall solitary Palmyra, whose high columnar stem, with its graceful central swell, was eminently attractive. We did not delay at Mb’hali, whence provisions had been exhausted by the markets of Msene. The 11th January led us through a dense jungle upon a dead flat, succeeded by rolling ground bordered with low hills and covered with alternate bush and cultivation, to Sengati, another similar verdure-clad village of peasantry, where rice and other supplies were procurable. On the 12th January, after passing over a dead flat of fields and of the rankest grass, we entered rolling ground in the vicinity of the Gombe Nullah, with scattered huts upon the rises, and villages built close to the dense vegetation bordering upon the stream. Sorora or Solola is one of the deadliest spots in Unyamwezi; we were delayed there, however, three long days, by the necessity of collecting a two months’ supply of rice, which is rarely to be obtained further west.
The non-appearance of the sons of Ramji rendered it necessary to take a strong step. I could ill afford the loss of twelve guns, but Kidogo and his men had become insufferable: moreover, they had openly boasted that they intended to prevent my embarking upon the “Sea of Ujiji.” Despite therefore the persuasions of the Jemadar and Said bin Salim, who looked as if they had heard their death-warrants, I summoned the slaves, who first condescended to appear on the 13th January—three days after my departure,—informed them that the six months for which they were engaged and paid had expired, and that they had better return and transact their proprietor’s business at Kazeh. They changed, it is true, their tone and manner, pathetically pleaded, as an excuse for their ill conduct, that they were slaves, and promised in future to be the most obedient of servants. But they had deceived me too often, and I feared that, if led forwards, they might compromise the success of the exploration. They were therefore formally dismissed, with a supply of cloth and beads sufficient to reach Kazeh, a letter to their master, and another paper to Snay bin Amir, authorising him to frank them to their homes. Kidogo departed, declaring that he would carry off perforce, if necessary, the four donkey-drivers who had been engaged and paid for the journey to the “Sea of Ujiji” and back: as two of these men, Nasibu and Hassani, openly threatened to desert, they were at once put in irons and entrusted to the Baloch. They took oaths on the Koran, and, by strong swearing, persuaded Said bin Salim and their guard to obtain my permission for their release. I gave it unwillingly, and on the next march they “levanted,” carrying off, as runaway slaves are wont to do, a knife, some cloth, and other necessaries belonging to Sangora, a brother donkey-driver. Sangora returning without leave, to recover his goods, was seized, tied up, and severely fustigated by the inexorable Kidogo, for daring to be retained whilst he himself was dismissed.