‘I have backed the steed since my eyes saw light,
And have fronted Death till he feared my sight;
And the riven helm and the piercèd mail
Were my youthtide’s dream, are my manhood’s delight.’
After two hours of brisk sailing, we lay abreast of a headland called by our crew Kwala (Chala Point of the Hydrographic Map), bounding the deep inlet and outlying islets of Jongolia-ni or Chongolia-ni. Approaching the gape of Tanga Bay, he shortened sail, or we might have made it at 4 P.M.: the entrance, however, is intricate; we had no pilot, and the crew preferred hobbling in under a bit of artemon or foresail, which they took a good hour to hoist. At sunset, having threaded the ‘Bab’ or narrow rock-bound passage which separates Ra’as Rashid, the northern mainland-spit, a precipitous bluff some 20 feet high, from the head of Tanga Islet, we glided into the smooth bay, and anchored in three fathoms, opposite and about half a mile from the town, which is known by the cocoas and calabashes crowning the ridge.
Tanga Bay is placed by Captain Owen in S. lat. 4° 35′, or five miles N. of Wasin Island, and thus the positions of the whole Coast are thrown out.[[22]] It is in S. lat. 5°; South of Wasin, and between that place and the mouth of the Panga-ni river. This extraordinary error can have been made only by a confusion of the survey-sheets, and it appears the more singular in a work of such correctness. The inlet, called probably from its shape, Tanga, the sail, or kilt, is five miles deep by four broad, and the entrance is partially barred by a coralline bank, the site of the ancient Arab settlement. Tanga Islet, a lump of green, still contains a scatter of huts, and a small square stone Gurayza (fort), whose single gun lies dismounted: it is well wooded, but the water obtained by digging pits in the sand is scarcely potable. As a breakwater it is imperfect during the N. East trades: when a high sea rolls up ships must anchor under the mainland, and when the S. West monsoon blows home it is almost impossible to leave the harbour without accident. The bay, embanked with abundant verdure and surrounded by little settlements, receives the contents of two fresh-water streamlets: westward (311°) is the Mtofu, and N. of it (355°) the Mto Mvo-ni[[23]] or Kiboko-ni—Hippopotamus river. The latter at several miles distant from its mouth must be crossed in a ferry; it affords sweet water, but the people of Tanga prefer scratching into their sand to the trouble of fetching the pure element. The ‘Kiboko’ is found in small numbers at the embouchures of these islands, and often within a few yards of where the boys bathed. I defer an account of our sport till we meet that unamiable pachyderm upon the Panga-ni river.
Like all the towns of the ‘Mrima’ proper, which here, I have said, begins, Tanga is a patch of thatched pent-roofed huts, built upon a bank overlooking the sea in a straggling grove of cocoa and calabash. The population is laid down at 4000 to 5000 souls, including 20 Banyans and 15 Baloch, with the customary consumptive Jemadar. The citizens are chiefly occupied with commerce, and they send twice a year in May to June and in October to November, after the Great and Little Rains, trading parties to Chaga and Umasai. At such times they find on the way an abundance of water: the land, however, supplies no food. From Tanga to Mhina-ni (the place of Mhina, Henna, or the P.N. of man, in Herr Petermann’s Map ‘Mikihani,’ and in Mr Wakefield Mihináni), on the Upper Panga-ni river, passing between Mbaramo and Pare, are 13 marches: here the road divides, one branch leading northward to Chaga, the other westward across the river to the Wamasai’s country. The total would be 15 stages, at least 20 days for men carrying[[24]] merchandise. These caravans are seldom short of 400 to 500 men, Arabs and Wasawahili, Pagazi or free porters who carry 50 lbs. each, and slaves. The imports are chiefly cotton-stuffs, iron wires (Senyenge), brass wires (Másángo), and beads, of which some 400 varieties are current in these countries. The usual return consists chiefly of ivory, per annum about 70,000 lbs., we were told—a quantity hardly credible. I heard of some gold dust from Umasai being sent as a specimen to Sayyid Mayed: they bring also a few slaves, some small mangey camels, and half-wild asses.[[25]] The citizens trade with the coast-savages, and manufacture, from imported iron, billhooks and hard wares for the Wasegeju. This tribe, once powerful, now uninfluential, preserves a tradition that when expelled with the Wasawahili from Shungaya by the Gallas, it migrated to the River Ozi or Dana (Zana), to the Bay of Kilifi, and finally to Wanga and Tanga. The dialect, they say, is similar to that of the Pokomo of the Dana, hence probably Mr Guillain (i. 402) declares them to have been indigens of the coast about Melinde. Still a violent, warlike, and furious brood, as described by Do Couto (Decad. xi. chap. xxi.), they hunt the Bondei Hills for slaves, and of late years, having sundry blood-feuds with their neighbours the Wadigo, they have sought the protection of King Kimwere and of the Wazegura race south of the Panga-ni river. Tanga has for some time since been spared the mortification of the Wamasai, who in this vicinity have driven and harried many a herd. I here saw two of their women, veritable human Cynocephali, flat-headed, with receding brows à la Robespierre, eyes close together, long low noses with open nostrils, projecting muzzles, and ears in strips. The land is now, comparatively speaking, thickly inhabited, and dotted with flourishing villages, Mvo-ni, Ambo-ni, Janja-ni, and others.
The only modern tribe which figures in the history of the coast is the Wasegeju. We first read of them in 1589, when the Zimba or Wazimba Kafirs, who had devastated the dependencies of Tete and Rios de Sena, on the Zambeze, swarmed northwards, massacring, and, it is said, devouring, all who opposed them between Kilwa and Mombasah. After destroying Kilwa, where they are reported to have killed and eaten 3000 Moors, men and women, they appeared upon the seaboard opposite Mombasah, whilst Thomé de Souza Coutinho was attacking the rebellious city in which the Corsair Ali Bey had taken refuge. The savages sided with the Portuguese, crossed the ford, and fell upon the townspeople with assegai and arrow. The citizens fled, preferring to face the sword and the musket of the Christian invader. After this the Zimbas marched upon Melinde, and threatened it with the fate of Kilwa and Mombasah. But the firmness of the Sultan and the courage of Mattheus Mendes de Vasconcellos were equal to the occasion: they reinforced themselves with a host of 3000 Wasegeju, and they succeeded in annihilating the cannibals. In 1592 the Wasegeju, again summoned to the assistance of Melinde, slew its enemy, the Shaykh of Kilifi. The last Shirazi Sultan of Mombasah, determining to avenge the death of his kinsmen, assembled 5000 wild men from the neighbouring hills to attack Melinde. The Wasegeju, however, not only defeated and slew him, with three of his sons, and many of the chief Moslems who accompanied him; they also captured Mombasah, and sending a young son of the defunct Sultan to Melinde, they gave up to it a city, which for a whole century had been its deadly enemy. The name ‘Mosseguaies, very barbarous,’ appears in the map of John Senex (1712). The tribe is mentioned by Dr Krapf (‘Wasegedshu’ Church Missionary Intelligencer of 1849, p. 86), and by Mr Wakefield (Wasegeju, p. 212).
We landed on the morning of Jan. 27, and were received with peculiar cordiality. In the absence of the Arab Governor, Mohammed bin Ali, we were met upon the seashore by Khalfan bin Abdillah, Hammed bin Abdillah, and the headman Kibaya Mchanga, with sundry Diwans and Wasawihili notables; by the Jemadar, with his Baloch, and by Miyan Sahib, a daft old Hindu, who here collects the customs. They conducted us up the bank to the hut formerly tenanted by M. Erhardt, seated us on chairs facing couches; brought coffee, fruit, and milk, with a goat, by way of welcome, and succeeded in winning our hearts. That day was spent in inquiries about the commerce and geography of the interior, and in listening to wild tales concerning the Æthiopic Olympus, the Sierra Nevada of Eastern Africa, which Jupiter Cooley decreed to be eternally snowless. Most of the people here pronounced the word Kilima-ngao ‘Mont bouclier,’ Ngáo being the umbo or shield-boss: from others I heard Kilima-njaro, which in Kikwafi, according to the missionaries, means ‘Mountain of Greatness.’[[26]] Here Sheddad bin ’Ad built the City of Brass, and encrusted the hill-top with a silver dome, that shines with various and surprising colours. Here the Jánn, beings made of fire, as humans are of earth and mermen of water, hold their court, and baffle the attempts of man’s adventurous feet. The mountain recedes as the traveller advances, and the higher he ascends the loftier rises the summit. At last blood bursts from the nostrils, the fingers bend backwards (with cramp?), and the hardiest is fain to stop. Amongst this Herodotian tissue of fact and fable[[27]] ran one golden thread of truth,—all testified to the intense cold.
Westward of the great mountain are placed in the ‘Mombas Mission Map’ the Wabilikimo (Wambelikimo), ‘literally the two measuring, i. e. twice the measure from the middle fingertip to the elbow. This is of course an exaggeration, but they are no doubt a diminutive race of men. They come to Jagga to trade, where they are called Wakoningo.’ The name, however, ‘Kimo,’ or Vazimba, the first occupants of Ankova (Madagascar), is mentioned even by Rochon: he makes them a people of pigmies, in stature averaging three feet six inches, of a lighter colour than the negro, long-armed, and with short woolly hair. South of Kafa, again, the Doko[[28]] race is said to be only four feet in stature. Formerly we explained these traditional Blemmyes, or pigmies, by supposing them to be apes that have been submitted to savage exaggeration. But the state of the question has been completely changed since the Second Expedition of my friend Paul du Chaillu, who, despite the late Mr John Craufurd, discovered, the ‘Obongo,’ a race not only dwarfish, but living close to a tribe of unusually tall and powerful negroes: curious to say, they occupy about the same parallel of latitude as do the traditional Wabilikimo.