Early on the next morning we embarked on board the canoes: the crews had been collected, paid, and rationed, but as long as they were near home it was impossible to keep them together. Each man thinking solely of his own affairs, and disdaining the slightest regard for the wishes, the comfort, or the advantage of his employers, they objected systematically to every article which I had embarked. Kannena had filled the canoes with his and his people’s salt, consequently he would not carry even a cartel. Various points settled we hove anchor or rather hauled up the block of granite doing anchoral duty, and with the usual hubbub and strife, the orders which every man gives and the advice which no man takes, we paddled in half an hour to a shingly and grassy creek, defended by a sandpit and backed by a few tall massive trees. Opposite and but a few yards distant, rose the desert islet of Bangwe, a quoin-shaped mass of sandstone and red earth, bluff to the north and gradually shelving towards the water at the other extremity: the prolific moisture above and around had covered its upper ledge with a coat of rich thick vegetation. Landward the country rises above the creek, and upon its earth-waves, which cultivation shares with wild growth, appear a few scattered hamlets.
Boats generally waste some days at Bangwe Bay, the stage being short enough for the usual scene being encored. They load and reload, trim cargo, complete rations, collect crews, and take leave of friends and relatives, women, and palm-wine. We pitched a tent and halted in a tornado of wind and rain. Kannena would not move without the present of one of our three goats. At 4 P.M., on the 11th April, the canoes were laden and paddled out to and back from Bangwe islet, when those knowing in such matters pronounced them so heavily weighted as to be unsafe: whereupon, the youth Riza, sorely against my will, was sent back to the Kawele. On that night a furious gale carried away my tent, whilst the Goanese were, or pretended to be, out of hearing. I slept, however, comfortably enough upon the crest of a sand-wave higher than the puddles around it, and—blessings on the name of Mackintosh!—escaped the pitiless pelting of the rain.
The next morning showed a calm sea, levelled by the showers, and no pretext or desire for longer detention lingered in the hearts of the crew. At 7·20 A.M., on the 12th April, 1858, my canoe—bearing for the first time on those dark waters—
“The flag that braved a thousand years
The battle and the breeze,”
stood out of Bangwe Bay, and followed by my companion’s turned the landspit separating the bight from the main, and made directly for the cloudy and storm-vexed north. The eastern shore of the lake, along which we coasted, was a bluff of red earth pudding’d with separate blocks of sandstone. Beyond this headland the coast dips, showing lines of shingle or golden-coloured quartzose sand, and on the shelving plain appear the little fishing-villages. They are usually built at the mouths of the gaps, combes, and gullies, whose deep gorges winding through the background of hill-curtain, become, after rains, the beds of mountain-torrents. The wretched settlements are placed between the tree clad declivities and the shore on which the waves break. The sites are far from comfortable: the ground is here veiled with thick and fetid grass; there it is a puddle of black mud, and there a rivulet trickles through the villages. The hamlet consists of half a dozen beehive-huts, foul, flimsy, and leaky; their only furniture is a hearth of three clods or stones, with a few mats and fishing implements. The settlements are distinguished from a distance by their plantations of palm and plantain, and by large spreading trees, from whose branches are suspended the hoops and the drag-nets not in actual use, and under whose shade the people sit propped against their monoxyles, which are drawn high up out of danger of the surf. There was no trade, and few provisions were procurable at Kigari. We halted there to rest, and pitching a tent in the thick grass we spent a night loud with wind and rain.
Rising at black dawn on the 13th April, the crews rowed hard for six hours between Kigari and another dirty little fishing-village called Nyasanga. The settlement supplied fish-fry, but neither grain nor vegetables were offered for sale. At this place, the frontier district between Ujiji and Urundi, our Wajiji took leave of their fellow-clansmen and prepared with serious countenances for all the perils of expatriation.
This is the place for a few words concerning boating and voyaging upon the Tanganyika Lakes. The Wajiji, and indeed all these races, never work silently or regularly. The paddling is accompanied by a long monotonous melancholy howl, answered by the yells and shouts of the chorus, and broken occasionally by a shrill scream of delight from the boys which seems violently to excite the adults. The bray and clang of the horns, shaums, and tomtoms, blown and banged incessantly by one or more men in the bow of each canoe, made worse by brazen-lunged imitations of these instruments in the squeaking trebles of the younger paddlers, lasts throughout the livelong day, except when terror induces a general silence. These “Wáná Máji”—sons of water—work in “spirts,” applying lustily to the task till the perspiration pours down their sooty persons. Despite my remonstrances, they insisted upon splashing the water in shovelsful over the canoe. They make terribly long faces, however, they tremble like dogs in a storm of sleet, and they are ready to whimper when compelled by sickness or accident to sit with me under the endless cold wave-bath in the hold. After a few minutes of exertion, fatigued and worn, they stop to quarrel, or they progress languidly till recruited for another effort. When two boats are together they race continually till a bump—the signal for a general grin—and the difficulty of using the entangled paddles afford an excuse for a little loitering, and for the loud chatter, and violent abuse, without which apparently this people cannot hold converse. At times they halt to eat, drink, and smoke: the bhang-pipe is produced after every hour, and the paddles are taken in whilst they indulge in the usual screaming convulsive whooping-cough. They halt for their own purposes but not for ours; all powers of persuasion fail when they are requested to put into a likely place for collecting shells or stones.[4] For some superstitious reason they allow no questions to be asked, they will not dip a pot for water into the lake, fearing to be followed and perhaps boarded by crocodiles, which are hated and dreaded by these black navigators, much as is the shark by our seamen, and for the same cause not a scrap of food must be thrown overboard—even the offal must be cast into the hold. “Whittling” is here a mortal sin: to chip or break off the smallest bit of even a condemned old tub drawn up on the beach causes a serious disturbance. By the advice of a kind and amiable friend[5], I had supplied myself with the desiderata for sounding and ascertaining the bottom of the Lake: the crew would have seen me under water rather than halt for a moment when it did not suit their purpose. The wild men lose half an hour, when time is most precious, to secure a dead fish as it floats past the canoe entangled in its net. They never pass a village without a dispute; some wishing to land, others objecting because some wish it. The captain, who occupies some comfortable place in the bow, stern, or waist, has little authority; and if the canoe be allowed to touch the shore, its men will spring out without an idea of consulting aught beyond their own inclinations. Arrived at the halting-place they pour on shore; some proceed to gather firewood, others go in search of rations, and others raise the boothies. A dozen barked sticks of various lengths are planted firmly in the ground; the ends are bent and lashed together in the shape of half an orange, by strips of tree-fibre; they are then covered with the karagwah—the stiff-reed mats used as cushions when paddling—these are tightly bound on, and thus a hut is made capable of defending from rain the bodies of four or five men whose legs which project beyond the shelter are apparently not supposed to require covering. Obeying only impulse, and wholly deficient in order and purpose, they make the voyage as uncomfortable as possible; they have no regular stages and no fixed halting-places; they waste a fine cool morning, and pull through the heat of the day, or after dozing throughout the evening, at the loud cry of “Pakírá Bábá!”—pack up, hearties!—they scramble into their canoes about midnight. Outward-bound they seek opportunities for delay; when it is once “up anchor for home,” they hurry with dangerous haste.
The following Paper by S. P. Woodward, F.G.S., communicated by Prof. Owen, appeared in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, June 28, 1859.
The four shells which form the subject of the present note were collected by Captain Speke in the great freshwater lake Tanganyika in Central Africa.