THE NORTHERN KINGDOMS: KARAGWAH, UGANDA, AND UNYORO.
The extensive and hitherto unknown countries described in this chapter, being compact despotisms, resembling those of Ashanti and Dahomey more than the semi-monarchies of Unyamwezi and Urundi, or the barbarous republics of Uvinza and Ujiji, are designated the Northern Kingdoms. It is regrettable that oral information, and not the results of actual investigation, are offered to the reader concerning regions so interesting as the Southern Tanganyika, the Northern Kingdoms, and the provinces south of Unyanyembe. But absolute obstacles having interfered, it was judged advisable to use the labours of others rather than to omit all notice of a subject which has the importance of novelty, because it lacked the advantages of a regular exploration.
Informants agree in representing the northern races as superior in civilisation and social constitution to the other tribes of Eastern and Central Africa. Like the subjects of the Kazembe, they have built extensive and regular settlements, and they reverence even to worship a single despot, who rules with a rigour which in Europe would be called barbarity. Having thrown off the rude equality of their neighbours, they recognise ranks in society; there is order amongst men, and some idea of honour in women; they add to commerce credit, without which commerce can hardly exist; and they hospitably entertain strangers and guests. These accounts are confirmed by the specimens of male and female slaves from Karagwah and Uganda seen at Unyanyembe: between them and the southern races there is a marked physical difference. Their heads are of a superior cast: the regions where the reflective faculties and the moral sentiments, especially benevolence, are placed, rise high; the nose is more of the Caucasian type; the immoderate masticating apparatus which gives to the negro and the lower negroid his peculiar aspect of animality, is greatly modified, and the expression of the countenance is soft, kindly, and not deficient in intelligence.
From Unyanyembe to Kibuga, the capital of Uganda, are fifty-three stages, which are distributed into four crucial stations of Usui, Karagwah, dependent Unyoro, and Uganda. A few remarks concerning each of these divisions may not be unacceptable.
Between Unyanyembe and Usui are sixteen long, or nineteen short, stages. Though the road is for the most part rough and hilly, the marches can scarcely be reduced below ten statute, or six rectilinear geo. miles per diem; in fact, the geographer’s danger when making these estimates is, that of falling, through fear of exaggeration, into the opposite and equally incorrect extreme. The general direction of the line leading from Kazeh, in Unyanyembe, to Karagwah, pointed out by Snay bin Amir, bore 345° (corrected 332°); the length of the nineteen marches would be about 115 geo. miles. The southern frontier of Usui may, therefore, be safely placed in S. lat. 3° 10′.
The route from Kazeh to Usui falls at once westward of the line leading to the Nyanza Lake; it diverges, however, but little at first, as they both traverse the small districts of Ulikampuri, Unyambewa, and Ukuni. Usonga, crossed in five short marches, is the first considerable district north of Unyanyembe. Thence the road enters the province of Utumbara, which is flanked on the east by Usambiro, and on the west by Uyungu, governed by the Muhinda Sultan, Kanze. Utumbara, as has been mentioned, was lately plundered, and Ruhembe, its chief, was slain, by the predatory Watuta. In Utumbara and Usambiro the people are chiefly the Wafyoma, a tribe of Wanyamwezi: they are a commercial race, like the Wajiji—trafficking in hoes and ivory; and their present Sultan, Mutawazi, has often been visited by the Arabs. Uyofu, governed by Mnyamurunda, is the northern boundary of Unyamwezi, after which the route enters the ill famed territory of Usui.
Usui is traversed in seven marches, making a sum of twenty-six from Kazeh. According to the former computation, a total march of about 156 geo. miles would place the southern frontier of Karagwah in S. lat. 2° 40′. The road in several parts discloses a view of the Nyanza Lake. Usui is described as a kind of neutral ground between the rolling plateau of Unyamwezi and the highlands of Karagwah: it is broken by ridges in two places—Nyakasene the fourth, and Ruhembe the seventh stage, where mention is also made of a small stream. From this part of the country a wild nutmeg is brought to Kazeh by caravans: the Arabs declare that it grows upon the well-wooded hills, and the only specimen shown was heavy and well flavoured, presenting a marked contrast to the poor produce of Zanzibar island.
The Wasúí, according to the Arabs, are not Wanyamwezi. They are considered dangerous, and they have frequently cut off the route to caravans from Karagwah. Their principal sultan, a Muhinda named Suwarora, demands exorbitant blackmail, and is described as troublesome and overbearing: his bad example has been imitated by his minor chiefs.
The kingdom of Karagwah, which is limited on the north by the Kitangure or Kitangule River, a great western influent of the Nyanza Lake, occupies twelve days in traversing. The usual estimate would thus give it a depth of 72, and place the northern limit about 228 rectilinear geo. miles from Kazeh, or in S. lat. 1° 40′. But the Kitangure River, according to the Arabs, falls into the Nyanza diagonally from south-west to north-east. Its embouchure will, therefore, not be distant from the equator. The line of road is thus described: After ascending the hills of Ruhembe the route, deflecting eastward, pursues for three days the lacustrine plain of the Nyanza. At Tenga, the fourth station, the first gradient of the Karagwah mountains is crossed, probably at low levels, where the spurs fall towards the lake. Kafuro is a large district where merchants halt to trade, in the vicinity of Weranhánjá, the royal settlement, which commands a distant view of the Nyanza. Nyakahanga, the eighth stage, is a gradient similar to that of Tenga; and Magugi, the tenth station, conducts the traveller to the northernmost ridge of Karagwah. The mountains are described as abrupt and difficult, but not impracticable for laden asses: they are compared by the Arabs to the Rubeho chain of Usagara. This would raise them about 4000 feet above the mean level of the Unyamwezi plateau and the Nyanza water, and about 8000 feet above this sea. Their surface, according to the Arabs, is alternately earth and stone, the former covered with plantains and huge timber-trees, the latter bare, probably by reason of their altitude. There are no plains, bush, or jungle, but the deep ravines and the valleys intersecting the various ridges drain the surface of the hills, and are the sites of luxuriant cultivation. The people of Karagwah, averse to the labour of felling the patriarchs of the forest, burn “bois de vache,” like the natives of Usukuma. North of Magugi, at Katanda, a broad flat extends eastwards: the path thence descends the northern counterslope, and falls into the alluvial plain of the Kitungure River.
Karagwah is thus a mass of highlands, bounded on the north by dependent Unyoro, on the south by Usui, eastward by the tribes of Wahayya and Wapororo, upon the lacustrine plain of the Nyanza; on the south-west it inosculates with Urundi, which has been described as extending from the north-eastern extremity of the Tanganyika Lake. Its equatorial position and its altitude enable it to represent the Central African prolongation of the Lunar Mountains. Ptolemy describes this range, which he supposes to send forth the White Nile, as stretching across the continent for a distance of 10° of longitude. For many years this traditional feature has somewhat fallen into discredit: some geographers have changed the direction of the line, which, like the Himalayas, forms the base of the South African triangle from east and west to north and south, thus converting it into a formation akin to the ghauts or lateral ranges of the Indian peninsula; whilst others have not hesitated to cast ridicule upon the mythus. From the explorations of the “Mombas Mission” in Usumbara, Chhaga, and Kitui, and from the accounts of Arab visitors to the lands of Umasai and the kingdom of Karagwah, it appears that from the fifth parallel of S. lat. to the equator, an elevated mass of granite and sandstone formation crosses from the shores of the Indian Ocean to the centre of Tropical Africa. The vast limestone band which extends from the banks of the Burramputra to those of the Tagus appears to be prolonged as far south as the Eastern Horn, and near the equator to give place to sandstone formations. The line is not, however, as might be expected from analogy with the Himalayan, a continuous unbroken chain; it consists of insulated mountains, apparently volcanic, rising from elevated plains, and sometimes connected by barren and broken ridges. The south-eastern threshold of the Lunar cordillera is the highland region of Usumbara, which may attain the height of 3000 or 4000 feet above sea-level. It leads by a succession of mountain and valley to Chhaga, whose apex is the “Æthiopian Olympus,” Kilima-Ngao. From this corner-pillar the line trends westward, and the route to Burkene passes along the base of the principal elevations, Doengo Engai and Endia Siriani. Beyond Burkene lies the Nyanza Lake, in a huge gap which, breaking the continuity of the line, drains the regions westward of Kilima-Ngao, whilst those to the eastward, the Pangani and other similar streams, discharge their waters to the south-east into the Indian Ocean. The kingdom of Karagwah prolongs the line to Urundi, upon the Tanganyika Lake, where the south-western spurs of the Lunar Mountains form a high continuous belt. Mr. Petherick, of Khartum, travelling twenty-five marches, each of twenty miles (?), in a south-south-western and due-southerly direction from the Bahr el Ghazal, found a granitic ridge rising, he supposes 2000 to 2500 feet above the plain, near the equator, and lying nearly upon the same parallel of latitude, and in about 27° E. long. Beyond that point the land is still unexplored. Thence the mountains may sink into the great Depression of Central Africa, or, deflected northwards of the kingdom of Uropua, they may inosculate with the ridge which, separating the northern negroid races of Islamised Africa from their negro brethren to the south, is popularly known, according to Denham and Clapperton, as el-Gibel Gumhr,—Jebel Kamar,—or Mons Lunæ.