The fourth division is a hilly table-land, extending from the western skirts of the desert Mgunda Mk’hali, in E. long. 33° 57′, to the eastern banks of the Malagarazi River, in E. long. 31° 10′: it thus stretches diagonally over 155 rectilinear geographical miles. Bounded on the north by Usui and the Nyanza Lake, to the south-eastwards by Ugala, southwards by Ukimbu, and south-westwards by Uwende, it has a depth of from twenty-five to thirty marches. Native caravans, if lightly laden, can accomplish it in twenty-five days, including four halts. The maximum altitude observed by B. P. therm. was 4050 feet, the minimum 2850. This region contains the two great divisions of Unyamwezi and Uvinza.
The name of Unyamwezi was first heard by the Portuguese, according to Giovanni Botero, towards the end of the sixteenth century, or about 1589. Pigafetta, who, in 1591, systematised the discoveries of the earlier Portuguese, placed the empire of “Monemugi” or Munimigi in a vast triangular area, whose limits were Monomotapa, Congo, and Abyssinia: from his pages it appears that the people of this central kingdom were closely connected by commerce with the towns on the eastern coast of Africa. According to Dapper, the Dutch historian, (1671,) whose work has been the great mine of information to subsequent writers upon Africa south of the equator, about sixty days’ journey from the Atlantic is the kingdom of Monemugi, which others call “Nimeamaye,” a name still retained under the corrupted form “Nimeaye” in our atlases. M. Malte-Brun, senior, mentioning Mounemugi, adds, “ou, selon une autographe plus authentique, Mou-nimougi.” All the Portuguese authors call the people Monemugi or Mono-emugi; Mr. Cooley prefers Monomoezi, which he derives from “Munha Munge,” or “lord of the world,” the title of a great African king in the interior, commemorated by the historian De Barros. Mr. Macqueen (‘Geography of Central Africa’), who also gives Manmoise, declares that “Mueno-muge, Mueno-muize, Monomoise, and Uniamese,” relate to the same place and people, comprehending a large extent of country in the interior of Africa: he explains the word erroneously to mean the “great Moises or Movisas.” The Rev. Mr. Erhardt asserts that for facility of pronunciation the coast merchants have turned the name “Wanamesi” into “Waniamesi,” which also leads his readers into error. The Rev. Mr. Livingstone thus endorses the mistake of Messrs. Macqueen and Erhardt: “The names Monomoizes, spelt also Monemuigis and Monomuizes, and Monomotapistas, when applied to the tribes, are exactly the same as if we should call the Scotch the Lord Douglases.... Monomoizes was formed from Moiza or Muiza, the singular of the word Babisa or Aiza, the proper name of a large tribe to the north.” In these sentences there is a confusion between the lands of the Wanyamwezi, lying under the parallel of the Tanganyika Lake, and the Wabisa (in the singular Mbísá, the Wavisa of the Rev. Mr. Rebmann), a well-known commercial tribe dwelling about the Maravi or Nyassa Lake, S.W. of Kilwa, whose name in times of old was corrupted by the Portuguese to Movizas or Movisas. Finally M. Guillain, in a work already alluded to, states correctly the name of the people to be Oua-nyamouczi, but in designating the country “pays de Nyamouezi,” he shows little knowledge of the Zangian dialects. M. V. A. Malte-Brun, junior (‘Bulletin de Géographie,’ Paris, 1856, Part II. p. 295) correctly writes Wanyamwezi.
A name so discrepantly corrupted deserves some notice. Unyamwezi is translated by Dr. Krapf and the Rev. Mr. Rebmann, “Possessions of the Moon.” The initial U, the causal and locative prefix, denotes the land, nya, of, and mwezi, articulated m’ezí with semi-elision of the w, means the moon. The people sometimes pronounce their country name Unyamiezi, which would be a plural form, miezi signifying moons or months. The Arabs and the people of Zanzibar, for facility and rapidity of pronunciation, dispense with the initial dissyllable, and call the country and its race Mwezi. The correct designation of the inhabitants of Unyamwezi is, therefore, Mnyamwezi in the singular, and Wanyamwezi in the plural: Kinyamwezi is the adjectival form. It is not a little curious that the Greeks should have placed their της σεληνης ορος—the mountain of the moon—and the Hindus their Soma Giri (an expression probably translated from the former), in the vicinity of the African “Land of the Moon.” It is impossible to investigate the antiquity of the vernacular term; all that can be discovered is, that nearly 350 years ago the Portuguese explorers of Western Africa heard the country designated by its present name.
There is the evidence of barbarous tradition for a belief in the existence of Unyamwezi as a great empire, united under a single despot. The elders declare that their patriarchal ancestor became after death the first tree, and afforded shade to his children and descendants. According to the Arabs the people still perform pilgrimage to a holy tree, and believe that the penalty of sacrilege in cutting off a twig would be visited by sudden and mysterious death. All agree in relating that during the olden time Unyamwezi was united under a single sovereign, whose tribe was the Wakalaganza, still inhabiting the western district, Usagozi. According to the people, whose greatest chronical measure is a Masika, or rainy season, in the days of the grandfathers of their grandfathers the last of the Wanyamwezi emperors died. His children and nobles divided and dismembered his dominions, further partitions ensued, and finally the old empire fell into the hands of a rabble of petty chiefs. Their wild computation would point to an epoch of 150 years ago—a date by no means improbable.
These glimmerings of light thrown by African tradition illustrate the accounts given by the early Portuguese concerning the extent and the civilisation of the Unyamwezi empire. Moreover, African travellers in the seventeenth century concur in asserting that, between 250 and 300 years ago, there was an outpouring of the barbarians from the heart of Æthiopia and from the shores of the Central Lake towards the eastern and southern coasts of the peninsula, a general waving and wandering of tribes which caused great ethnological and geographical confusion, public demoralisation, dismemberment of races, and change, confusion, and corruption of tongues. About this period it is supposed the kingdom of Mtándá, the first Kazembe, was established. The Kafirs of the Cape also date their migration from the northern regions to the banks of the Kei about a century and a half ago.
In these days Unyamwezi has returned to the political status of Eastern Africa in the time of the Periplus. It is broken up into petty divisions, each ruled by its own tyrant; his authority never extends beyond five marches; moreover, the minor chiefs of the different districts are virtually independent of their suzerains. One language is spoken throughout the land of the Moon, but the dialectic differences are such that the tribes in the east with difficulty understand their brethren in the west. The principal provinces are—Utakama to the extreme north, Usukuma on the south,—in Kinyamwezi sukuma means the north, takama the south, kiya the east, and mwere the west,—Unyanyembe in the centre, Ufyoma and Utumbara in the north-west, Unyangwira in the south-east, Usagozi and Usumbwá to the westward. The three normal divisions of the people are into Wanyamwezi, Wasukuma or northern, and Watakama or southern.
The general character of Unyamwezi is rolling ground, intersected with low conical and tabular hills, whose lines ramify in all directions. No mountain is found in the country. The superjacent stratum is clay, overlying the sandstone based upon various granites, which in some places crop out, picturesquely disposed in blocks and boulders and huge domes and lumpy masses; ironstone is met with at a depth varying from five to twelve feet, and at Kazeh, the Arab settlement in Unyanyembe, bits of coarse ore were found by digging not more than four feet in a chance spot. During the rains a coat of many-tinted greens conceals the soil; in the dry season the land is grey, lighted up by golden stubbles and dotted with wind-distorted trees, shallow swamps of emerald grass, and wide sheets of dark mud. Dwarfed stumps and charred “black-jacks” deform the fields, which are sometimes ditched or hedged in, whilst a thin forest of parachute-shaped thorns diversifies the waves of rolling land and earth-hills spotted with sun-burnt stone. The reclaimed tracts and clearings are divided from one another by strips of primæval jungle, varying from two to twelve miles in length. As in most parts of Eastern Africa, the country is dotted with “fairy mounts”—dwarf mounds, the ancient sites of trees now crumbled to dust, and the débris of insect architecture; they appear to be rich ground, as they are always diligently cultivated. The yield of the soil, according to the Arabs, averages sixty-fold, even in unfavourable seasons.
The Land of the Moon, which is the garden of Central Intertropical Africa, presents an aspect of peaceful rural beauty which soothes the eye like a medicine after the red glare of barren Ugogo, and the dark monotonous verdure of the western provinces. The inhabitants are comparatively numerous in the villages, which rise at short intervals above their impervious walls of the lustrous green milk-bush, with its coral-shaped arms, variegating the well-hoed plains; whilst in the pasture-lands frequent herds of many-coloured cattle, plump, round-barrelled, and high-humped, like the Indian breeds, and mingled flocks of goats and sheep dispersed over the landscape, suggest ideas of barbarous comfort and plenty. There are few scenes more soft and soothing than a view of Unyamwezi in the balmy evenings of spring. As the large yellow sun nears the horizon, a deep stillness falls upon earth: even the zephyr seems to lose the power of rustling the lightest leaf. The milky haze of midday disappears from the firmament, the flush of departing day mantles the distant features of scenery with a lovely rose-tint, and the twilight is an orange glow that burns like distant horizontal fires, passing upwards through an imperceptibly graduated scale of colours—saffron, yellow, tender green, and the lightest azure—into the dark blue of the infinite space above. The charm of the hour seems to affect even the unimaginative Africans, as they sit in the central spaces of their villages, or, stretched under the forest-trees, gaze upon the glories around.
In Unyamwezi water generally lies upon the surface, during the rains, in broad shallow pools, which become favourite sites for rice-fields. These little ziwa and mbuga—ponds and marshes—vary from two to five feet below the level of the land; in the dry season they are betrayed from afar by a green line of livelier vegetation streaking the dead tawny plain. The Arabs seldom dig their wells deeper than six feet, and they complain of the want of “live-water” gushing from the rocky ground, as in their native Oman. The country contains few springs, and the surface of retentive clay prevents the moisture penetrating to the subsoil. The peculiarity of the produce is its decided chalybeate flavour. The versant of the country varies. The eastern third, falling to the south-east, discharges its surplus supplies through the Rwaha river into the Indian Ocean; in the centre, water seems to stagnate; and in the western third, the flow, turning to the north and north-west, is carried by the Gombe nullah—a string of pools during the dry season, and a rapid unfordable stream during the rains—into the great Malagarazi river, the principal eastern influent of the Tanganyika Lake. The levels of the country and the direction of the waters combine to prove that the great depression of Central Africa, alluded to in the preceding chapter, commences in the district of Kigwa in Unyamwezi.
The climate of the island and coast of Zanzibar has, it must be remembered, double seasons, which are exceedingly confused and irregular. The lands of Unyamwezi and Uvinza, on the other hand, are as remarkable for simplicity of division. There eight seasons disturb the idea of year; here but two—a summer and a winter. Central Africa has, as the Spaniards say of the Philippine Isles,