Previous to weaving, cotton is picked and cleaned with the hand; it is then spun into a coarse thread. Like the Paharis of India, the East Africans ignore the distaff; they twist the material round the left wrist. The mlavi, or spindle, is of two forms; one is a short stick, inserted in a hole practised through a lump of lead or burnt clay, like the Indian bhaunri; the other is a thin bit of wood, about 1·5 ft. long, with a crescent of the same material on the top, and an iron hook to hold the thread. The utanda, or loom-frame differs from the vertical-shaped article of West Africa. Two side-poles about twelve feet long, and supported at the corners by four uprights, are placed at an angle, enabling the workman to stand to his work; and the oblong is completed by two cross-bars, round which the double line of the warp, or longitudinal threads of the woven tissue, are secured. The dimensions of the web vary from five to six feet in length, by two to three broad. The weft, or transverse thread, is shot with two or three thin laths, or spindles, round which the white and coloured yarns are wound, through the doubled warp, which is kept apart by another lath passing between the two layers, and the spindle is caught with the left hand as it appears at the left side. Lastly, a lath, broader and flatter than the others, is used to close the work, and to beat the thread home. As the workman deems three hours per diem ample labour, a cloth will rarely be finished under a week. Taste is shown in the choice of patterns: they are sometimes checks with squares, alternately black and white, or in stripes of black variegated with red dyes upon a white ground: the lines are generally broad in the centre, but narrow along the edges, and the texture not a little resembles our sacking. The dark colour is obtained from the juice of the mzima-tree; it stains the yarn to a dull brown, which becomes a dark mulberry, or an Indian-ink black, when buried for two or three days in the vegetable mud of the ponds and pools. The madder-red is produced by boiling the root and bark of a bush called mda’a; an ochreish tint is also extracted from the crimson matter that stains the cane and the leaves of red holcus. All cloths have the tambua or fringe indispensable in East Africa. Both weaving and dyeing are men’s not women’s work in these lands.
The cloth is a poor article: like the people of Ashanti, who from time immemorial have woven their own cottons, the East African ever prefers foreign fabrics. The loose texture of his own produce admits wind and rain; when dry it is rough and unpleasant, when wet heavy, comfortless as leather, and it cannot look clean, as it is never bleached. According to the Arabs, the yarn is often dipped into a starch made from grain, for the purpose of thickening the appearance of the texture: this disappears after the first washing, and the cloth must be pegged down to prevent its shrinking to half-size. The relative proportion of warp and weft is unknown, and the woolly fuzzy quality of the half-wild cotton now in use impoverishes the fabric. Despite the labour expended upon these cloths, the largest size may be purchased for six feet of American domestics, or for a pair of iron hoes: there is therefore little inducement to extend the manufacture.
Iron is picked up in the state called Utundwe, or gangue, from the sides of low sandstone hills: in places the people dig pits from two to four feet deep, and, according to the Arabs, they find tears, nodules, and rounded lumps. The pisolithic iron, common in the maritime regions, is not worked. The mhesi or blacksmith’s art is still in its infancy. The iron-stone is carried to the smithy, an open shed, where the work is done: the smelting-furnace is a hole in the ground, filled with lighted charcoal, upon which the utundwe is placed, and, covered with another layer of fire, it is allowed to run through the fuel. The blast is produced by mafukutu (bellows): they are two roughly rounded troughs, about three inches deep by six in diameter, hewn out of a single bit of wood and prolonged into a pair of parallel branches, pierced for the passage of the wind through two apertures in the walls of the troughs. The troughs are covered with skin, to which are fixed two long projecting sticks for handles, which may be worked by a man sitting. A stone is placed upon the bellows for steadiness, and clay nozzles, or holcus-canes with a lateral hole, are fixed on to the branches to prevent them from charring. Sometimes as many as five pairs are worked at once, and great is the rapidity required to secure a continuous outdraught. Mr. Andersson (“Lake Ngami,” chap. xvi.) gives a sketch of a similar contrivance amongst the South Africans: the clay-tubes, however, are somewhat larger than those used in Unyamwezi by “blacksmiths at work.” The ore is melted and remelted several times, till pure; tempering and case-hardening are unknown, and it is stored for use by being cast in clay-moulds, or made up into hoes. The hammer and anvil are generally smooth stones. The principal articles of ironmongery are spears, assegais, and arrow-heads, battle-axes, hatchets, and adzes, knives and daggers, sickles and razors, rings and sambo, or wire circlets. The kinda is a large bell, hung by the ivory-porter to his tusk on the line of the march: the kengere or kiugi a smaller variety which he fastens to his legs. Pipes, with iron bowls and stems, are made by the more ingenious, and the smoker manufactures for himself small pincers or pliers which, curious to say, are unknown even by name to the more civilised people of Zanzibar.
Copper is not found upon this line in East Africa. From the country of the Kazembe, however, an excellent red and heavy, soft and bright variety, not unlike that of Japan, finds its way to Ujiji, and sometimes to the coast. It is sold in bars from one to two feet long. At Ujiji, where it is cheap, four to five pounds are procurable for two doti, there worth about four dollars. Native copper, therefore, is almost as expensive as that imported from Europe. It is used in making the rude and clumsy bangles affected by both sexes, sambo, and ornaments for the spear and bow, the staff and the knobkerry.
Gourds.
The art of ceramics has made but little progress in East Africa; no Anacharsis has yet arisen to teach her sons the use of the wheel. The figuline, a greyish-brown clay, is procured from river-beds, or is dug up in the country; it is subjected to the preliminary operations of pounding, rubbing dry upon a stone, pulverising, and purifying from stones and pebbles. It is then worked into a thick mass, with water, and the potter fashions it with the hand, first shaping the mouth; he adds an inch to it when dry, hardens it in the sun, makes another addition, and thus proceeds till it is finished. Lines and other ornaments having been traced, the pots are baked in piles of seven or eight, by burning grass—wood-fire would crack them—consequently the material always remains half-raw. Usually the colour becomes lamp-black; in Usagara, however, the potter’s clay burns red, like the soil—the effect of iron. A cunning workman will make in a day four of these pots, some of them containing several gallons, and their perfect regularity of form, and often their picturesqueness of shape, surprise the stranger. The best are made in Ujiji, Karagwah, and Ugunda: those of Unyamwezi are inferior, and the clay of Zanzibar is of all the worst.
There are many kinds of pots which not a little resemble the glazed jars of ancient Egypt. The ukango, which acts as vat in fermenting liquor, is of the greatest dimensions. The mtungi is a large water-vessel with a short and narrow neck, and rounded at the bottom so as to be conveniently carried on the head. The chungu, or cooking-pot, has a wide and open mouth; it is of several varieties, large and small. The mkungu is a shallow bowl, precisely like those made at the tomb of Moses, and now familiar to Europe. At Ujiji and on the Lake they also manufacture smaller vessels, with and without spouts.
In a country where pottery is scarce and dear, the buyu or Cucurbita lagenaria supplies every utensil except those used for cooking; its many and various adaptations render it a valuable production. The people train it to grow in the most fantastic shapes, and ornament it by tatooing with dark paint, and by patterns worked in brass tacks and wires; where it splits, it is artistically sewn together. The larger kinds serve as well-buckets, water-pots, travelling-canteens, churns, and the sounding-boards of musical instruments: a hookah, or water-pipe, is made by distorting the neck, and the smaller varieties are converted into snuff-boxes, medicine-cases, and unguent-pots. The fruit of the calabash-tree is also called buyu: split and dried it is used as ladles, but it is too small to answer all the purposes of the gourd.
The East Africans excel in the manufacture of mtemba or bori—pipe-heads. These are of two kinds. One is made from a soft stone, probably steatite, found in Usonga, near Utumbara, and on the road to Karagwah: it is, however, rare, and about ten times the price of the clay bowls, because less liable to break. The other is made of a plastic or pipe-clay, too brittle to serve for pots, and it invariably cracks at the shank, unless bound with wire. Both are hand-made, and are burned in the same rough way as the pottery. At Msene, where the clay pipe is cheapest, the price of the bowl is a khete, or double string of white or blue beads. The pipe of Unyamwezi is of graceful shape, a cone with the apex downwards; this leaves but little of the hot, oily, and high-smelling tobacco at the bottom, whereas in Europe the contrary seems to be the rule. In Ujiji the bowl is small, rounded, and shallow; it is, moreover, very brittle. The most artful “mtemba” is made by the people of Uvira: black inside, like other pottery, its exterior is coloured a greyish-white, and is adorned with red by means of the Indian geru (Colcothar or Crocus Martis). Bhang is always, and tobacco is sometimes, smoked in a water-pipe: the bowl is of huge size, capable of containing at least half a pound, and its upper half is made to incline towards the smoker’s face. The Lakist tribes have a graceful variety, like the Indian “chillam,” very different from the awkward, unwieldy, and distorted article now fashionable in Unyamwezi and the Eastern countries. The usual pipe-stem is a tube of about 1·5 feet long, generally a hollow twig of the dwarf melewele-tree. As it is rudely bored with hot wire, it must be made air-tight by wax and a coating of brass or copper wire; a strap of hairy skin prevents the pipe-shank parting from the stick. Iron and brass tubes are rare and highly prized; the fortunate possessor will sometimes ask for a single specimen two shukkahs.