The bazar at Ujiji is well supplied. Fresh fish of various kinds is always procurable except during the violence of the rains: the people, however, invariably cut it up and clean it out before bringing it to market. Good honey abounds after the wet monsoon. By the favour of the chief, milk and butter may be purchased every day. Long-tailed sheep and well-bred goats, poultry and eggs—the two latter are never eaten by the people—are brought in from the adjoining countries: the Arabs breed a few Manilla ducks, and the people rear but will not sell pigeons. The few herds at Ujiji which have escaped the beef-eating propensities of the Watuta are a fine breed, originally, it is said, derived by the Wahha from the mountains of Karagwah. Their horns in these lands appear unusually large; their stature combines with the smallness of the hump to render them rather like English than Indian or African cattle. They are rarely sold of later days, except for enormous prices, an adult slave being the lowest valuation of a cow. The cattle is never stalled or grain-fed, and the udder is little distended; the produce is about one quarter that of a civilised cow, and the animals give milk only during the few first months after calving. The “tulchan” of Tibet is apparently unknown in Central Africa; but the people are not wanting in barbarous contrivances to persuade a stubborn animal to yield her produce.
The fauna appear rare upon the borders of the Tanganyika: all men are hunters; every human being loves animal food, from white ants to elephants; the tzetze was found there, and probably the luxuriance of the vegetation, in conjunction with the extreme humidity, tends to diminish species and individuals. Herds of elephants exist in the bamboo-jungles which surround the sea, but the heaps of ivory sold in the markets of Ujiji are collected from an area containing thousands of square miles. Hippopotami and crocodiles are common in the waters, wild buffaloes in the plains. The hyænas are bold thieves, and the half-wild “Pariah-dogs” that slink about the villages are little inferior as depredators. The people sometimes make pets of them, leading them about with cords; but they do not object to see them shot after a raid upon the Arab’s meat, butter, or milk. These animals are rarely heard to bark; they leave noise to the village cocks. The huts are as usual haunted by the grey and the musk-rat. Of birds there is a fine fish-eagle, about the size of a domestic cock, with snowy head and shoulders relieving a sombre chocolate plume: he sits majestically watching his prey upon the tall trees overhanging the waves of the Tanganyika. A larus, or sea-gull, with reddish legs, lives in small colonies upon this lake. At the end of the monsoon in 1858 these birds were seen to collect in troops upon the sands, as they are accustomed to do at Aden when preparing to migrate. The common kingfisher is a large bird with a white and grey plume, a large and strong black bill, and a crest which somewhat resembles that of the Indian bulbul: it perches upon the branches over the waters, and in flight and habits resembles other halcyons. A long and lank black plotus, or diver, is often seen skimming the waters, and sandpipers run along the yellow sands. The other birds are the white-breasted “parson-crow,” partridges, and quails seen in Urundi; swallows in passage, curlews, motacillæ, muscicapæ, and various passerines. Ranæ, some of them noisy in the extreme, inhabit the sedges close to the lake. The termite does great damage in the sweet red soils about Kawele: it is less feared when the ground is dry and sandy. The huts are full of animal life—snakes, scorpions, ants of various kinds, whose armies sometimes turn the occupants out of doors; the rafters are hollowed out by xylophagous insects; the walls are riddled by mason-bees, hideous spiders veil the corners with thick webs, the chirp of the cricket is heard both within and out of doors, cockroaches destroy the provisions, and large brown mosquitoes and flies, ticks and bugs, assault the inhabitants.
The rise in the price of slaves and ivory has compelled Arab merchants, as will be seen in another chapter, to push their explorations beyond the Tanganyika Lake. Ujiji is, however, still the great slave-mart of these regions, the article being collected from all the adjoining tribes of Urundi, Uhha, Uvira, and Marungu. The native dealers, however, are so acute, that they are rapidly ruining this their most lucrative traffic. They sell cheaply, and think to remunerate themselves by aiding and abetting desertion. Merchants, therefore, who do not chain or cord together their gangs till they have reached the east bank of the Malagarazi River, often lose 20 per cent. The prevalence of the practice has already given Ujiji a bad name, and, if continued, will remove the market to another place, where the people are somewhat less clever and more sensible. It is impossible to give any idea of the average price of the human commodity, which varies, under the modifications of demand and supply, from two to ten doti or tobes of American domestics. Yet as these purchases sell in Zanzibar for fourteen or fifteen dollars per head, the trade realises nearly 500 per cent., and will, therefore, with difficulty be put down.
The principal tribes in this region are the Wajiji, the Wavinza, the Wakaranga, the Watuta, the Wabuha, and the Wahha.
The Wajiji are a burly race of barbarians, far stronger than the tribes hitherto traversed, with dark skins, plain features, and straight, sturdy limbs: they are larger and heavier men than the Wanyamwezi, and the type, as it approaches Central Africa, becomes rather negro than negroid.[1] Their feet and hands are large and flat, their voices are harsh and strident, and their looks as well as their manners are independent even to insolence. The women, who are held in high repute, resemble, and often excel, their masters in rudeness and violence; they think little in their cups of entering a stranger’s hut, and of snatching up and carrying away an article which excites their admiration. Many of both sexes, and all ages, are disfigured by the small-pox—the Arabs have vainly taught them inoculation—and there are few who are not afflicted by boils and various eruptions; there is also an inveterate pandemic itch, which, according to their Arab visitors, results from a diet of putrid fish.
[1] My companion observes (in Blackwood, Nov. 1859), “It may be worthy of remark that I have always found the lighter coloured savages more boisterous and warlike than those of the dingier hue. The ruddy black, fleshy-looking Wazaramos and Wagogos are much lighter in colour (!) than any of the other tribes, and certainly have a far superior, more manly and warlike independent spirit and bearing than any of the others.” The “dingiest” peoples are usually the most degraded, and therefore sometimes the least powerful; but the fiercest races in the land are the Wazaramo, the Wajiji and the Wataturu, who are at the same time the darkest.
This tribe is extensively tattooed, probably as a protection against the humid atmosphere, and the chills of the Lake Region. Some of the chiefs have ghastly scars raised by fire, in addition to large patterns marked upon their persons—lines, circles, and rays of little cupping-cuts drawn down the back, the stomach, and the arms, like the tattoo of the Wangindo tribe near Kilwa. Both sexes love to appear dripping with oil; and they manifestly do not hold cleanliness to be a virtue. The head is sometimes shaved; rarely the hair is allowed to grow; the most fashionable coiffure is a mixture of the two; patches and beauty-spots in the most eccentric shapes—buttons, crescents, crests, and galeated lines—being allowed to sprout either on the front, the sides, or the back of the head, from a carefully-scraped scalp. Women as well as men are fond of binding a wisp of white tree-fibre round their heads, like the ribbon which confines the European old person’s wig. There is not a trace of mustachio or whisker in the country; they are removed by the tweezers, and the climate, according to the Arabs, is, like that of Unyamwezi, unfavourable to beards. For cosmetics both sexes apply, when they can procure such luxuries, red earth to the face, and over the head a thick-coating of chalk or mountain-meal, which makes their blackness stand out hideously grotesque.
The chiefs wear expensive stuffs, checks, and cottons, which they extract from passing caravans. Women of wealth affect the tobe or coast-dress, and some were seen wearing red and blue broadcloths. The male costume of the lower orders is confined to softened goat, sheep, deer, leopard, or monkey skins, tied at two corners over either shoulder, with the flaps open at one side, and with tail and legs dangling in the wind. Women who cannot afford cloth use as a succedaneum a narrow kilt of fibre or skin, and some content themselves with a tassel of fibre or a leafy twig depending from a string bound round the waist, and displaying the nearest approach to the original fig-leaf. At Ujiji, however, the people are observed, for the first time, to make extensive use of the macerated tree-bark, which supplies the place of cotton in Urundi, Karagwah, and the northern kingdoms. This article, technically termed “mbugu,” is made from the inner bark of various trees, especially the mrimba and the mwale, or huge Raphia-palm. The trunk of the full-grown tree is stripped of its integument twice or thrice, and is bound with plantain-leaves till a finer growth is judged fit for manipulation. This bark is carefully removed, steeped in water, macerated, kneaded, and pounded with clubs and battens to the consistency of a coarse cotton. Palm-oil is then spirted upon it from the mouth, and it acquires the colour of chamois-leather. The Wajiji obtain the mbugu mostly from Urundi and Uvira. They are fond of striping it with a black vegetable mud, so as to resemble the spoils of leopards and wild cats, and they favour the delusion by cutting the edge into long strips, like the tails and other extremities of wild beasts. The price of the mbugu varies according to size, from six to twelve khete or strings of beads. Though durable, it is never washed: after many months’ wear the superabundance of dirt is removed by butter or ghee.
Besides the common brass-wire girdles and bracelets, armlets and anklets, masses of white-porcelain, blue-glass, and large pigeon-egg beads, and hundreds of the iron-wire circlets called sambo, which, worn with ponderous brass or copper rings round the lower leg, above the foot, suggest at a distance the idea of disease, the Wajiji are distinguished from tribes not on the lake by necklaces of shells—small pink bivalves strung upon a stout fibre. They have learned to make brass from the Arabs, by melting down one-third of zinc imported from the coast with two parts of the fine soft and red copper brought from the country of the Kazeembe. Like their Lakist neighbours, they ornament the throat with disks, crescents, and strings of six or seven cones, fastened by the apex, and depending to the breast. Made of the whitest ivory or of the teeth, not the tusks, of the hippopotamus, these dazzling ornaments effectively set off the dark and negro-like skin. Another peculiarity amongst these people is a pair of iron pincers or a piece of split wood ever hanging round the neck; nor is its use less remarkable than its presence. The Lakists rarely chew, smoke, or take snuff according to the fashion of the rest of mankind. Every man carries a little half-gourd or diminutive pot of black earthenware, nearly full of tobacco; when inclined to indulge, he fills it with water, expresses the juice, and from the palm of his hand sniffs it up into his nostrils. The pincers serve to close the exit, otherwise the nose must be temporarily corked by the application of finger and thumb. Without much practice it is difficult to articulate during the retention of the dose, which lasts a few minutes, and when an attempt is made the words are scarcely intelligible. The arms of the Wajiji are small battle-axes and daggers, spears, and large bows, which carry unusually heavy arrows. They fear the gun and the sabre, yet they show no unwillingness to fight. The Arabs avoid granting their demands for muskets and gunpowder, consequently a great chief never possesses more than two or three fire-locks.
The Lakists are an almost amphibious race, excellent divers, strong swimmers and fishermen, and vigorous ichthyophagists all. At times, when excited by the morning coolness and by the prospect of a good haul, they indulge in a manner of merriment which resembles the gambols of sportive water-fowls: standing upright and balancing themselves in their hollow logs, which appear but little larger than themselves, they strike the water furiously with their paddles, skimming over the surface, dashing to and fro, splashing one another, urging forward, backing, and wheeling their craft, now capsizing, then regaining their position with wonderful dexterity. They make coarse hooks, and have many varieties of nets and creels. Conspicuous on the waters and in the villages is the Dewa, or “otter” of Oman, a triangle of stout reeds, which shows the position of the net. A stronger kind, and used for the larger ground-fish, is a cage of open basket-work, provided, like the former, with a bait and two entrances. The fish once entangled cannot escape, and a log of wood, used as a trimmer, attached to a float-rope of rushy plants, directs the fisherman. The heaviest animals are caught by a rope-net—the likh of Oman—weighted and thrown out between two boats. They have circular lath frames, meshed in with a knot somewhat different from that generally used in Europe; the smaller variety is thrown from the boat by a single man, who follows it into the water,—the larger, which reaches six feet in diameter, is lowered from the bow by cords, and collects the fish attracted by the glaring torch-fire. The Wajiji also make large and small drag-nets, some let down in a circle by one or more canoes, the others managed by two fishermen, who, swimming at each end, draw them in when ready. They have little purse-nets to catch small fry, hoops thrust into a long stick-handle through the reed walls that line the shore; and by this simple contrivance the fish are caught in considerable quantities. The wigo or crates alluded to as peculiar in the ‘Periplus,’ and still common upon the Zanzibar coast, are found at the Tanganyika. The common creel resembles the khún of Western India, and is well-known even to the Bushmen of the South: it is a cone of open bamboo-strips or supple twigs, placed lengthways, and bound in and out by strings of grass or tree-fibre. It is closed at the top, and at the bottom there is a narrow aperture, with a diagonally-disposed entrance like that of a wire rat-trap, which prevents the fish escaping. It is placed upon its side with a bait, embanked with mud, reeds, or sand, and seems to answer the purpose for which it is intended. In Uzaramo and near the coast the people narcotise fish with the juice of certain plants, asclepias and euphorbias: about the Tanganyika the art appears unknown.