The Wanyoro are a distinct race, speaking a language of the Zangian family: they have suffered from the vicinity of the more warlike Waganda, who have affixed to the conquered the opprobrious name of widdu or “serviles;” and they have lost their southern possessions, which formerly extended between Karagwah and Uganda. Their late despot Chawambi, whose death occurred about ten years ago, left three sons, one of whom it is reported has fallen into the power of Uganda, whilst the two others still rule independently. The county is rich and fertile, and magnificent tales are told concerning the collections of ivory, which in some parts are planted in the ground to pen cattle. Slaves are cheap; they find their way to the southern markets viâ Uganda and Karagwah. Those seen at Kazeh and Kirira, where the Arab traders had a large gang, appeared somewhat inferior to the other races of the northern kingdoms, with a dull dead black colour, flattish heads, brows somewhat retreating, prominent eyes, and projecting lower jaws. They were tattooed in large burnt blotches encircling the forehead, and in some cases the inferior excisors had been extracted. The price of cattle in Unyoro varies from 500 to 1000 cowries. In this country ten simbi (Cypræa) represent one khete of beads; they are the most esteemed currency, and are also used as ornaments for the neck, arms, and legs, and decorations for stools and drums.
During my companions’ absence much of my spare time was devoted to collecting specimens of the multitudinous dialects into which the great South African family here divides itself. After some months of desultory work I had learned the Kisawahili or coast language, the lingua Franca of the South African coast: it is the most useful, because the most generally known, and because, once mastered, it renders its cognates as easy of acquirement as Bengali or Maharatti after Hindostani. The principal obstacle is the want of instructors and books—the Kisawahili is not a written language; and the elementary publications put forth in Europe gave me the preliminary trouble of composing a grammar and a vocabulary. Said Bin Salim, though bred and born amongst the Wasawahili, knew but little of the tongue, and his peculiarities of disposition rendered the task of instruction as wearisome to himself as it was unsatisfactory to me. My best tutor was Snay Bin Amir, who had transferred to the philology of East Africa his knowledge of Arabic grammar and syntax. With the aid of the sons of Ramji and other tame slaves, I collected about 1500 words in the three principal dialects upon this line of road, namely the Kisawahili, the Kizaramo—which includes the Kik’hutu—and the Kinyamwezi. At Kazeh I found a number of wild captives, with whom I began the dreary work of collecting specimens. In the languages of least consideration I contented myself with the numerals, which are the fairest test of independence of derivation, because the most likely to be primitive vocables. The work was not a labour of love. The savages could not guess the mysterious objects of my inquiry into their names for 1, 2, and 3; often they started up and ran away, or they sat in dogged silence, perhaps thinking themselves derided. The first number was rarely elicited without half an hour’s “talkee-talkee” somewhat in this style:—
“Listen, O my brother! in the tongue of the shores (Kisawahili) we say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5”—counting the fingers to assist comprehension.
“Hu! hu!” replies the wild man, “we say fingers.”
“By no means, that’s not it. This white man wants to know how thou speakest 1, 2, 3?”
“One, two, three what? sheep, or goats, or women?”—expressing the numerals in Kisawahili.
“By no means, only 1, 2, 3 sheep in thine own tongue, the tongue of the Wapoka.”
“Hi! Hi! what wants the white man with the Wapoka?”
And so on till patience was almost impossible. But, like the Irish shay-horse of days gone by, their tongues once started often hobbled on without halting. The tame slaves were more tractable, yet even in their case ten minutes sufficed to weary out the most intellectual; when the listless and incoherent reply, the glazed eye gazing at vacancy, and the irresistible tendency to gape and yawn, to nod and snooze, evidenced a feeble brain soon overworked. Said Bin Salim would sit staring at me with astonishment, and ejaculate, like Abba Gregorius, the preceptor of Ludolph, the grammarian philologist and historian of Æthiopia, “Verily in the coast-tongue words never take root, nor do they bear branches.”
The rest of my time was devoted to preparations for journeying. The Fundi’s tent, which had accompanied us to Uvira, was provided with an outer cover. The Sepoys’ “pal,” brought from Zanzibar, having been destroyed by the ill-treatment of the villain Kannena, I made up, with the aid of a blackguard Baghdadi, named ’Brahim, a large tent of American domestics, which having, however, but one cloth, and that of the thinnest, proved a fiery purgatory on the down-march eastwards. The canvas lug-sail was provided with an extra double cloth, sewn round the top to increase its dimensions: it thus became a pent-shaped affair, twelve feet long, eight broad, and six feet high—seven would have been better,—buttoned at the foot, which was semicircular, and in front provided with blue cotton curtains, most useful against glare and stare. Its lightness, combined with impenetrability, made it the model of a tent for rapid marching. It was not, however, pegged down close to the ground, as some explorers advise, without the intervention of ropes; in these lands, a tent so pitched would rot in a week. The three tents were fitted with solid male bamboos, and were provided with skin-bags for their pegs, which, unless carefully looked after, disappear almost daily. The only furniture was a kitanda or cartel: some contrivance of the kind, a “Biddulph,” or an iron bed-frame, without joints, nuts, or screws, which are sure to break or to be lost, is absolutely necessary in these lands, where from Kaole to Uvira every man instinctively attempts to sit and to sleep upon something that raises him above the ground. Moreover, I have ever found the cartel answer the threefold purpose of bed, chair, and table; besides saving weight by diminishing the quantity of bedding required.