The coast of Zanzibar, which before the days of the Periplus supplied the eastern world with slaves, has of late years been exhausted by over-driving. It may be divided into two sections: the northern country, which exports from Mombasah and the little adjacent harbours as far south as the Pangani river; and the southern regions between Pangani and Kilwa. Details concerning all these servile races will be given when we visit their respective ports.
CHAPTER XII.
PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE.
‘The port of Zanzibar has little or no trade; that to Bombay consists of a little gum and ivory, brought from the mainland, with a few cloves, the only produce of the island; and the import trade is chiefly dates, and cloth from Muscat, to make turbans. These things are sent in small country vessels, which make only one voyage a year. The trade is consequently very trifling.’—Capt. Hart, Commanding H. M. S. Imogene, 1834.
The dry season—and uncommonly dry it had been—was judged by all old hands unfit for travel, and I was strongly advised to defer exploration of the interior till after learning something of the coast. The Rev. Mr Erhardt’s Memoir on the Chart of Eastern and Central Africa, which threw into a huge uninterrupted Caspian half-a-dozen central lakes, and called it in the south Niandsha (Nyassa), in the north Ukerewe, and on the coast Niasa and Bahari ya Uniamési, had proposed a choice of three several routes. The first was through Dshaga (Chaga), and the lands of the Wamasai. It numbered 59 days, over level land, though studded with many isolated hills and mountains, and it traded to the Wanyamwezi, ‘of the race of Wazambiro,’ probably the Wafioma of the Usambíro district, near Karagwah. The middle caravan was reported to start ‘from Bagamoyo and Mboamaji to Uniamési.’ The general features of the country, the distances, and even the position of Ujiji, were remarkably well laid down. The ‘Stadt Ujiji,’ inhabited partly by Arabians, partly by Wahas (Wahhas), of course, did not exist: the saline stream of the Wapogo[[123]] and the people, whose teeth became yellow by drinking of another water, were evidently the creations of some lively negro’s fancy. The ‘third or southern caravan line,’ set out from Kilwa, and after 200 miles struck the ‘Niasa or Niandsha’ Lake. In this section the distances were miscalculated, and except the Wafipa and the Wabembe, the tribes were incorrectly named and placed.
In his plan for exploring the Great Lake, and laid before the Royal Geographical Society in 1854, M. Erhardt proposed to land at Kilwa, where he had touched with Dr Krapf; to collect a party of Wasawahili, and with an outfit of $300 to march into the continent. This might have been feasible in 1854; it was impossible in 1856. The sum mentioned was inadequate; the missionaries had spent as much upon a fortnight’s march from Pangani to Fuga. Slaves are the only porters of the land, and the death of Sayyid Said had then made the coast Arabs and the Mrima people about Kilwa almost independent of Zanzibar. My directions from home were to follow, if possible, this line; Lieut. Christopher, I. N., however, who visited the coast in 1843, more wisely advised explorers to avoid the neighbourhood of Kilwa. Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton, moreover, strongly objected to our landing anywhere but under the guns of Zanzibar, as it were. He informed me that the Wangindo, a tribe settled behind Kilwa, had lately murdered a native trader, at the instigation of those settled on the coast; and that nothing less than a ship of war stationed at the port would open the road to a ‘Muzungu’ (white man).
The Consul had also warned me that my inquiries into the country trade, and the practice of writing down answers—without which, however, no report could have been compiled—were exciting ill will. The short-sighted traders dreaded, like Orientals, that competition might result from our discoveries, and their brains were too dull to perceive that the development of the resources of the interior would benefit all those connected with the coast. Houses that had amassed in a few years large fortunes by the Zanzibar trade, were exceedingly anxious to ‘let sleeping dogs lie.’ As far as dinners and similar hospitality, the white merchants resident on the Island received us with the usual African profuseness. There were, of course, honourable exceptions: I have especially mentioned Captain Mansfield, Mr Masury, and M. Bérard; but not a few—exempla sunt odiosa—spread reports amongst the natives, Banyans, Arabs, and Wasawahili, which were very likely to secure for us the disastrous fate of M. Maizan. Captain Speke, who subsequently ignored this fact, threatened to throw one of the ‘first houses’ out of the window; and Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton declared that unless more discretion in spreading evil reports were shown he would withdraw British protection from another well-known firm. The son of a Hamburg merchant had written to his father for leave to supply us with sums to be recovered from the Royal Geographical Society. When informed of this peculiar kindness I inquired the object, and the answer was that, intending himself to visit India, he wished to prepare his father for the expense of travel in the East. Certainly knowing all these intrigues, I see no reason why they should not be published.
The Arabs were as much alarmed at the prospect of opening up the African interior as were the foreign merchants; they knew that Europeans had long coveted a settlement upon the sea-board, and they had no wish to lose the monopoly of the copal coast and the ivory-lands. Nothing indeed would be easier, I repeat, for a European power than to establish itself upon the mainland; and if it followed the wise example of the early Portuguese, who limited their possessions to the principal ports and to the great centres of trade, it would soon monopolize an enriching traffic. With respect to copal, and to the articles most in demand, our commercial relations with Zanzibar might be altered for the benefit of both contracting parties. It is at present an unnatural, exclusive system, a monopoly claiming advantages of which it will not, or cannot, avail itself. But all steps in these matters must be taken by the Home Governments; the petty jealousies of rival powers here render all local interference unadvisable.
At length the Kazi Muhiyy el Din, the ‘celestial doctor’ of the Wasawahili, was detailed by the curious to investigate the subject, and to represent the terrors of the public. He retired, satisfied that our plans were not of conquest. The Arab chiefs pressed Lieut.-Colonel Hamerton to swear upon the ‘Kalmat Ullah’ that the expedition was to be conducted only by English officers, upon whose good-will they could rely; that it was not a proselytizing movement of the Wanajuoni (sons of the book, missionaries), and that it would not be accompanied by ‘Dutchmen,’ as certain gentleman from Germany were called by the Zanzibaris.[[124]] Had the Consul hesitated to satisfy them, the course of events is clear to all who know the Eastern man. The surface of Arab civility would have run unruffled, but the undertow would have carried us off our legs.
Persuaded at last by the earnestness of our energetic supporter, the Sayyid Sulayman bin Hamid bin Said—a noble Omani never neglects the name of his grandsire—came forward in our favour. This aged chief, a cousin of the late Sayyid, rejoiced in the nickname of Bahari Maziwa (Sea of Milk), the Ethiopic equivalent for ‘soft-sawder.’ He had governed Zanzibar during the minority of Sayyid Khalid, who died in 1854, and his influence was strong upon the sea-board. He gave us his good word in sundry circulars, to which the Prince Majid added others, addressed to Kimwere, Sultan of Usumbara; to the Diwans or Wasawahili head-men, and to the Baloch Jemadars, commanding the several garrisons. On the other hand, Ladha Damha of Mandavie, the Banyan Collector of Customs, provided me with orders upon the Hindu coast-merchants, to raise the requisite moneys, without which our reception would have been of the coolest. The horizon now began to clear, and even to look bright, as it generally will when the explorer has time and patience to await the change of weather.
If we travellers in transit had reason to be proud of our countryman’s influence at Zanzibar, the resident foreigners should have been truly thankful for it. When Lieut-Colonel Hamerton first made this Island his head-quarters (1841), he found that for nine years it had not been visited by a British cruiser, and that interested reports had been spread, representing us to be no longer masters of the Indian Seas. Slavery was everywhere rampant. Bozals, green or wild slaves, here called Baghams (بغم), were thrown overboard when sick, to avoid paying duty; and the sea-beach of the city, which acts Marine Parade, as well as the plantations, presented horrible spectacles of dogs and birds of prey devouring swollen and spotted human carcases—the remnants of ‘slaves that never prayed.’[[125]] The Consul’s representations were listened to by Sayyid Said, who, through virtue of certain dry floggings and confiscations of property, à la Mohammed Ali, instilled into the slave-owners some semblance of humanity.