I inquired vainly about the Anzicos, Anzichi, Anzigui, Anzigi, or Anziki, whose king, Makoko, the ruler of thirteen kingdoms, was placed by Dapper north-west of Monemugi (Unyamwezi), and whom Pigafetta (p. 79) located close to the Congo, and near his northern Lake. "It is true that there are two lakes, not, however, lying east and west (Ptolemy's system), but north and south of each other, and about 400 miles asunder. The first is in south latitude 12°. The Nile, issuing from it, does not, according to Odoardo (Duarte Lopez), sink in the earth nor conceal itself, but, after flowing northwards, it enters the second lake, which is 220 miles in extent, and is called by the natives a sea." If the Tanganyika shall be found to connect with the Luta Nzige or Mwutan Lake, this passage will be found wonderfully truthful. The Tanganyika's southern versant is now placed in south latitude 8° 46' 54", or in round numbers 9°, and the other figures are nearly as correct. James Barbot causes these Anzikos to wander "almost through all Africa," from Nubia to the Congo, like negro Bedawin or Scythians; the common food was man's flesh fattened for the market and eaten by the relatives, even of those who died diseased. Their "capital," Monsol, was built by D'Anville, close to the equator in the very centre of Africa (east longitude Greenwich, 26° 20') hard by Douville's "Yanvo;" and the "Opener of Inner Africa in 1852" (pp. 3, 4, 69), with equal correctness, caused them to "occupy the hills opposite to Sundi, and extending downwards to Emboma below the Falls."
Mr. Cooley ("Ocean Highways," June, 1873), now explains the word as A-nzi-co, "people not of the country," barbarians, bushmen. This kind of information, derived from a superficial knowledge of an Angolan vocabulary, is peculiarly valueless. I doubt that a negative can thus be suffixed to a genitive. The name may simply have been A-nziko (man) of the back-settlement. In 1832, Mr. Cooley writes: "the nation of the Anziko (or Ngeco):" in 1845, "the Anziki, north of Congo:" in 1852, "the Micoco or king of the Anziko"—und so weiter. What can we make of this geographical Proteus? The first Congo Expedition who covered all the ground where the Creator of the Great Central Sea places the Anzikos, never heard of them—nor will the second.
Not being then so well convinced of the nonexistence of the Giaghi, Giagas, Gagas, or Jagas as a nation, I inquired as vainly for those terrible cannibals who had gone the way of all the Anzikos. According to Lopez, Battel, Merolla, and others, they "consider human flesh as the most delicious food, and goblets of warm blood as the most exquisite beverage." This act on the part of savage warriors might have been a show of mere bravado. But I cannot agree with the editor of Tuckey's "Narrative," "From the character and disposition of the native African, it may fairly be doubted whether, throughout the whole of this great continent, a negro cannibal has any existence." The year 1816 was the Augustan age of outrageous negrophilism and equally extreme anti- Napoleonism. "If a French general" (Introduction, p. i), "brutally seized the person and papers of a British naval officer, on his return from a voyage of discovery," who, I would ask, plundered and destroyed the fine botanical collection made at risk of health and life, during fifteen months of hard labour, by the learned Palisot de Beauvois, author of the "Flore d'Oware?" The "Reviewer" of Douville (p. 177) as sensibly declares that cannibalism "has hitherto continually retired before the investigation of sober-minded, enlightened men," when, after a century or two of intercourse with white traders, it still flourishes on the Bonny and New Calabar Rivers.
We are glad to be rid of the Jagas, a subject which has a small literature of its own; the savage race appeared everywhere like a "deus ex machina," and it became to Intertropical Africa what the "Lost Tribes" were and even now are in some cases, to Asia and not rarely to Europe. Even the sensible Mr. Wilson ("West Africa," p. 238) has "no doubt of the Jagas being the same people with the more modernly discovered Pangwes" (Fans); and this is duly copied by M. du Chaillu (chap. viii.). M. Valdez (ii. 150) more sensibly records that the first Jaga established in Portuguese territory was called Colaxingo (Kolashingo), and that his descendants were named "Jagas," like the Egyptian Pharaohs, the Roman Ceesars, the Austrian Kaisers, and the Russian Czars: he also reminds us (p. 150) that the chief of the Bangalas inhabiting Cassange (= Kasanjí) was the Jaga or ruler par excellence.
Early on the morning of September 11, I was aroused by a "bob" in the open before us. We started up, fearing that some death by accident had taken place: the occasion proved, on the contrary, to be one of ushering into life. The women were assembled in a ring round the mother, and each howled with all the might of her lungs, either to keep off some evil spirit or to drown the sufferer's cries. In some parts of Africa, the Gold Coast for instance, it is considered infamous for a woman thus to betray her pain, but here we are amongst a softer race.
Chapter XII. — Preparations for the March.
Gidi Mavunga, finding me in his power, began, like a thoroughbred African, to raise obstacles. We must pass through the lands of two kings, the Mfumo ma Vivi (Bibbie of Tuckey) and the Mfumu Nkulu or Nkuru (Cooloo). The distance was short, but it would occupy five days, meaning a week. Before positively promising an escort he said it would be necessary to inspect my outfit; I at once placed it in the old man's hands, the better to say, "This is not mine, ask Gidi Mavunga for it."
My patience had been severely tried on first arrival at Banza Nokki. From ruler to slave every one begged for cloth and rum, till I learned to hate the names of these necessaries. Besides the five recognized kings of the district, who wore black cloth coats, all the petty chiefs of the neighbourhood flocked in, importunate to share the spoils. A tariff, about one-third higher than at Boma, was set upon every article and, if the most outrageous price was refused, the seller, assuming an insipid expression of countenance, declared that great white men travelled with barrels, not with bottles of aguardente, and that without liberality it would be impossible to leave the village. Nsundi, the settlement above the Falls, was a journey of two moons, and none of the ten "kings" on the way would take less than Nessudikira's "dash." Congo Grande, as the people call São Salvador, was only four marches to the E.S.E.; the road, however, was dangerous, and an escort of at least fifty men would be necessary.