When thoroughly drenched with drink, the hunters set out early in the morning, carrying live brands lest fire should fail them in the jungle, and applying them to their mouths to keep out the cold air. These trampers are sometimes dangerous to stragglers from caravans, especially in countries where the robber or the murderer expects to escape with impunity. In some places hunting-huts have been erected; they are, however, seldom used when elephants are sought, as a herd once startled does not readily return to the same pasture-grounds. The great art of the African muinzi or elephant-hunter is to separate a tusker from the herd without exciting suspicion, and to form a circle round the victim. The mganga, then rising with a shout, hurls or thrusts the first spear, and his example is followed by the rest. The weapons are not poisoned: they are fatal by a succession of small wounds. The baited beast rarely breaks, as might be expected, through the frail circle of assailants: its proverbial obstinacy is excited; it charges one man, who slips away, when another, with a scream, thrusts the long stiff spear into its hind quarters, which makes it change intention and turn fiercely from the fugitive to the fresh assailant. This continues till the elephant, losing breath and heart, attempts to escape; its enemies then redouble their efforts, and at length the huge prey, overpowered by pain and loss of blood trickling from a hundred gashes, bites the dust. The victors, after certain preliminaries of singing and dancing, carefully cut out the tusks with small, sharp axes, and the rich marrow is at once picked from the bamboo and devoured upon the spot, as the hare’s liver is in Italy. The hunt concludes with a grand feast of fat and garbage, and the hunters return home in triumph, laden with ivory, with ovals of hide for shields, and with festoons of raw and odorous meat spitted upon long poles.
Throughout East Africa the mouse, as the saying is, travels with a staff: the education of youth and the exercises of manhood are confined to the practice of weapons. Yet the people want the expertness of the Somal of the North and the Kafirs of the South; their internal feuds perpetuate the necessity of offensive measures, and of the presence of arms, but their agricultural state, rendering them independent of the chase, prevents their reliance upon their skill for daily food. In consequence of being ever armed, the African like the Asiatic is nothing without his weapons; he cannot use his strength, and when he comes to blows he fights like a woman. Thus the habitual show of arms is a mere substitute for courage; in dangerous countries, as in Ugogo, the Wanyamwezi do not dare to carry them for fear of provocation, whereas at home and in comparative safety they never appear without spear or knobstick.
The weapons universally carried are the spear and the assegai. The bow and arrow, the knobkerry, the dagger, and the battle-axe are confined to certain tribes, whilst the musket and the sword are used beyond the coast only by strangers. The shield is seldom seen.
The lance of the European, Arab, and Indian is unknown to these unequestrian races. The bravest tribes prefer the stabbing-spear, which brings them to close quarters with the enemy. The weapon indeed cannot make the man, but by reaction it greatly modifies his manliness. Thus the use of short weapons generally denotes a gallant nation; the old Roman gladius, the French briquet, and the Afghan charay would be useless in the hands of a timid people. Under the impression that the further men stand from their enemies the less is to be expected from them, the French knights not inaptly termed the “villanous saltpetre” the “grave of honour,” whilst their English rivals called the gun a “hell-born murderer,” and an “instrument hateful in the sight of God and man.” The Africans have also acted upon this idea. A great Kafir chief did what Plutarch relates of Camillus: he broke short the assegais of his “magnificent savages” when he sent them to war, and forbade each warrior to return without having stained his stick with blood; the consequence was, that, instead of “dumb-shooting” at a distance, they rushed in and won.
The mkuki, farárá, or spear, is more generally used for stabbing than throwing. It has a long narrow blade of untempered iron, so soft that it may be bent with the fingers; it is capable, however, of receiving a fine edge. The shoulders are rounded off, and one or two lines extend lengthways along the centre from socket to point. At the socket where the shaft is introduced, it its covered with a bit of skin from the tail of some animal drawn on like a stocking, and sometimes the iron is forced on when heated, so as to adhere by contraction of the metal. The shaft, which is five to six feet long, is a branch of the dark-brown mkole or the light-yellow mtata-tree, chosen because close-grained, tough, pliable, and free from knots; it is peeled, straightened in hot ashes, pared down to the heart, smoothed with a knife, carefully oiled or greased, without which it soon becomes brittle, and polished with the leaves of the mkuba-tree. The wood is mostly ornamented with twists of brass and copper wire; it is sometimes plated with zinc or tin, and it is generally provided with an iron heel for planting in the ground. Some tribes—the northern Wagogo and their neighbours the Wamasai for instance—have huge spear-heads like shovels, unfit for throwing. The best weapons for war are made in Karagwah.
The kikuki, assegai, or javelin, is much used by the Warori and other fighting tribes, who enter action with a sheaf of those weapons. Nowhere, however, did the East African appear possessed of the dexterity described by travellers amongst the southern races. The assegai resembles the spear in all points, except that the head is often barbed, and it is more lightly timbered; the shaft is rarely more than four feet in length, and it tapers to the thinness of a man’s little finger. It is laid upon the palm of the right hand, and balanced with a vibratory motion till the point of equilibrium is found, when it is delivered with little exertion of the muscles beyond the run or spring, and as it leaves the hand it is directed by the forefinger and thumb. Sometimes, to obviate breaking, the assegai is made like the Indian “sang,” wholly of iron.
The East African is a “good archère and a fayre.” The cubit-high Armiger begins as soon as he can walk with miniature weapons, a cane bow and reed bird-bolts tipped with wood, to practise till perfect at gourds and pumpkins; he considers himself a man when he can boast of iron tips. With many races “pudor est nescire sagittas.” The bravest, however, the Wamasai and the Wakwafi, the Warori and the Watuta, ignore the practice; with them—
“No proof of manhood, none
Of daring courage, is the bow;”
and the Somali abandons it to his Midgan or servile. The bow in East Africa is invariably what is called a “self-bow,” that is to say, made of a single piece, and backed weapons are unknown. It is uncommonly stiff, and the strongest archer would find it difficult to “draw up a yard;” of this nature probably was the bow sent to Cambyses by the Æthiopian monarch, with the taunting message that he had better not attack men who could bend such weapons. When straight it may measure five feet from tip to tip. It is made with the same care as the spear, from a branch of the mumepweke or the mtata-tree, laboriously cut and scraped so as to taper off towards the horns, and smeared with oil or grease, otherwise it is easily sprung, and it is sometimes adorned with plates of tin and zinc, with copper or brass wire and tips. The string is made of hide, gut, the tendons of a bullock’s neck or hock, and sometimes of tree-fibre; it is nearly double the bow in length, the extra portion being whipped for strength as well as contingent use round the upper horn. In shooting the bow is grasped with the left hand, but the thumb is never extended along the back; the string is drawn with the two bent forefingers, though sometimes the shaft is held after the Asiatic fashion with the thumb and index. The bow is pulled with a jerk as amongst the Somal, and not let fly as by Europeans with a long steady loose. The best bows are made by the tribes near the Rufiji River.
The arrow is about two feet in length; the stele or shaft is made of some light wood, and often of reed. Its fault is want of weight: to inflict damage upon an antelope it must not be used beyond point-blank, fifteen to twenty paces; and a score will be shot into a bullock before it falls. The musketeer, despising the arrow at a distance, fears it at close quarters, knowing that for his one shot the archer can discharge a dozen. From the days of Franklin to the era of Silistria, Citate, and Kars, fancy-tacticians have advocated the substitution of the bow or the addition of it to the “queen of weapons,” the musket. Their reasons for a revival of the obsolete arm are its lightness, its rapidity of discharge, and its silent action. They forget, however, the saying of Xenophon, that it is impiety in a man who has not learned archery from his childhood to ask such boon of the easy gods.