The Seasons.
The Anglo-African traveller, in this section of the 19th century, is an over-worked professional. Formerly the reading public was satisfied with dry details of mere discovery, and was delighted with a few longitudes, latitudes, and altitudes. Of late in this, as in all other pursuits, the standard has been raised. Whilst marching so many miles per diem, and watching a certain number of hours per noctem, the traveller, who is, in fact, his own general, adjutant, quartermaster, and commissariat officer, is expected to survey and observe, to record meteorology and trigonometry, to shoot and stuff birds and beasts, to collect geological specimens and theories, to gather political and commercial information, beginning, of course, with cotton; to advance the infant study anthropology; to keep accounts, to sketch, to indite a copious, legible journal—notes are now not deemed sufficient—and to forward long reports which shall prevent the Royal Geographical Society napping through its evenings.
It is right, I own, to establish a high standard, which ensures some work being done; but explorations should be distinguished from common journeys, and a broad line drawn between the possible and the impossible. Before a march, when all my time was certain to be amply occupied, an ardent gentleman once requested me to collect beetles, and a second sent me recipes for preserving the tenantry of shells. Another unconscionable physicist deemed it his duty to complain because I had not used a sextant at Meccah, and yet another because I had not investigated the hypsometry of Harar. It was generally asserted that my humble studies of geography in the Lake Regions were of no importance, because the latitudes and longitudes, not the descriptions of the country, were the work of another hand. A bad attack of ophthalmia in Sind, and a due regard for eyes which have to do the work of four average pair, made me resolve, in 1849, never to use sextant or circle except when there is an absolute necessity. A President of the Royal Geographical Society wrote that I had done nothing for geography in South America, after having, in one of my half-a-dozen journeys, through the almost unexplored Sierra de San Luiz in the Argentine Republic, inspected and described 1300 miles of a river certainly unknown to him 10 years ago. This meagre idea of geography, reducing a journey to a skeleton of perfectly uninteresting ‘crucial stations,’ carefully laid down by lunars, occultations, and other observations, and fitted only for the humblest professional map-maker, seems to have taken root in the Royal Geographical Society’s brain, since the days when that learned body was presided over by Admiral Smyth. Volney never handled sextant; yet see what Gibbon says of his labours. We may now hope to see all such things changed.
These African explorations are campaigns on a small scale, wherein the traveller, unaided by discipline, has to overcome all the troubles, hardships, and perils of savage warfare. He must devote himself to feeding, drilling, and showing his men the use of arms, and to the conduct of a caravan, as well as study the barometer, and measure lunar distances. The Missionaries, and all those best acquainted with the country, did not approve of our making observations at Usumbara. The sight of an instrument suggests to barbarians that the stranger is bringing down the sun, stopping the rain, breeding a pestilence, or bewitching the land; and the dazzle of a brass instrument awakes savage cupidity. Such operations are sometimes impossible, and often, as in North Africa, they are highly unadvisable. The climate and petite santé, to say nothing of catarrh and jungle fever, also rob man of energy as well as of health: he cannot, if he would, collect shells and beetles, whilst the lightest geodesical labours not unfrequently, as these pages show, end badly.
The rainy season had fairly set in at Fuga, though the half of February had not elapsed. Heavy clouds rolled up from the South-West, and during our two days and nights upon the bills the weather was a succession of drip, drizzle, and drench. In vain we looked for a star—we were compelled to leave Fuga after two nights, without a single observation: even the sun of S. lat. 6° could not disperse the dense raw vapours that rose from the steamy ground. I feared to linger longer in Usumbara. We daily expected the inevitable ‘seasoning fever,’ the rains would make the lowland a hot-bed of disease, and our men were not clad to resist the cold—73° (F.) at 4 P. M., whilst upon the plains the mercury ranged between 81° and 99°. In the dry monsoon this route might be made practicable to Chaga and Kilima-njaro, both of which have been proposed in the Anglo-Indian papers as Sanitaria. With an escort of a hundred musketeers, and at an expense of £500, the invalid who desires to try this African Switzerland may, if perfectly sound in wind, limb, and digestion, reach, despite all the Wamasai, the snowy region, after 10 mountain-marches, which should not occupy more than a month. The next century will see these conditions changed.
Finding it impossible to push farther into Usumbara, we applied ourselves to gathering general information. Sultan Kimwere, I was told, is the fourth of a dynasty of Tondeurs and Écorcheurs originally from Ngu or Nguru, a hilly region to the West and South of the Upper Panga-ni stream. His father, Shubugah, conquered Bondei and pushed the Usumbara frontier from Pare Eastward to the sea and from Msihi (in M. Rebmann Emsihi Mdi), a mountain two days’ march N. East of Fuga, to the Panga-ni river and the Indian Ocean. He left Usumbara to Kimwere, Bumburri and Meringa-mountain to younger sons, and Msihi to a favourite daughter: this division of his dominions naturally caused lasting bloodshed amongst his successors. Kimwere, in youth a warrior of fame, ranked highest in the triumvirate of mountain-kings, the others being B’áná Rongwa of Chaga and B’áná Kizungu of Ukwafi. In age he has lost ground. His sister’s sons, the chiefs of Bungu in Msihi, rebelled, destroyed his hosts by rolling down stones; they were reduced, and sent to the slave market, only by the arms of 25 Baloch. The Wazegura, I have said, are also troublesome neighbours. Kimwere has a body of 400 musketeers whom he calls his Waengrezi or Englishmen: they are dispersed amongst the villages, for now the oryx-horn is silent and the beacon is never extinguished upon the mountain-passes. This ‘Lion of the Lord’ asserts present kinghood in one point only: he has some 300 wives, each surrounded by slaves and portioned with a hut and a plantation. His little family amounts to between 80 and 90 sons, some of whom have Islamized, whilst their sire remains a most ‘pragmatical pagan.’ The Lion’s person is sacred,—even a runaway slave saves life by touching the hem of his garment. Presently he will become a ghost, it will be wrapped up in matting, and placed sitting-wise under the deserted hut, a stick denoting the actual spot: dogs will be slaughtered for the funeral-feast, the people will cry, beat drums, and say, ‘O Lord, why must we die?’ and Muigni Khatib, reigning instead of his sire, will put to death all who dare, during the first two months of Matanga (mourning), to travel upon the King’s highway.
Meanwhile Sultan Kimwere rules at home like a right kingly African king, by selling his subjects, men, women, and children, old and young, gentle and simple, singly or, when need lays down the law, by families and by villages. Death, imprisonment, and mutilation of the hand are foreign articles of state machinery and rare; sale of the person and confiscation of property are indigenous and common. None may hold property without this petty despot’s permission, and, as we had an opportunity of seeing, the very ‘ministers’ dare not openly receive presents. In a realm where coin is not current revenue is thus collected. Cattle-breeders contribute the first-fruits of their flocks and herds; elephant-hunters offer every second tusk, and traders are mulcted in a portion of their merchandise. Cultivators annually pay 10 measures of grain; hence the quantity exported from Tanga and Panga-ni to Zanzibar and even to Arabia. The lion’s share is reserved for the Lion and his family, the crumbs are distributed amongst the councillors and the corps of guards (Waengrezi).
The ‘headquarter village’ of Usumbara is Fuga, situated in a cool healthy climate, nearly 4500 feet upon the sea-line. The town is a heap of some 500 huts, containing, I was told, in round numbers, 3000 souls.[[42]] It is forbidden to foreigners because the king’s wives inhabit a part, and it also shelters the chief magician-priests, in whose ‘lodges’ criminals may take sanctuary. The place is completely defenceless and unwalled: the tenements are the circular habitations, common to Inner Africa from Harar to Tinbuktu. Frameworks of concentric wattle-rings wrapped round with plantain leaves are fastened to slender uprights planted in the ground, and the inside is plastered over with fine mud. A low solid door acts also as window, and the conical roof is supported by a single central tree; a fire-place of stones distributes smoke as well as heat, and a chimney would be held expensive and uncomfortable. In some homesteads the semi-circle opposite the entrance is occupied by a raised plank framework forming a family bedstead, and in a few cases a kind of second half-story, like a magnified bunk, is raised above it.
The Wasumbara are abundantly leavened with Semitic blood; and they increase and multiply, to judge from the lodges capping every hill, and from the younglings who apparently form more than the normal fifth. Yet the Arabs declare that the women are not prolific, six children being a large family: this, if fact, must be attributed to preventatives, abortion, and infanticide. The snowy heads of the seniors show that there are still in the land Macrobian Æthiopians, men who die of sheer old age; and what else can be expected from human beings who have hardly an idea, except the fear of sale, to impede digestion? The males, though of light brown colour and stoutly made, are plain and short: they chip their teeth to points like saws, cats, or crocodiles, and they brand a circular beauty-spot in the mid-forehead. Their heads are shaven, their feet are bare, and except talismans round the neck, wrist, and ankles, their only wear is a sheet thrown over the shoulders, and a rag or skin tied around the loins. The characteristic grass-kilt of the Bedawin of the plains is unfitted for the highlands. A knife is stuck in the waist-cord, and men walk abroad with pipe, bow, and quiverless arrows tipped with bone or iron. The women are adorned with talismans in leather bags, and with massive collars of white beads, now in fashion throughout this region: a ‘distinguished person’ will carry from 3 to 4 lbs. of these barbaric decorations. The feminine body dress is the hideous African sheet bound tightly under the arms and falling over the bosom to the ankles.
The Wasumbara of both sexes are for Africans industrious, the result of cold climate necessitating comparatively many comforts. The husband and children work in the fields or drive the cattle to graze when the sun has dried up the dew: towards evening they fence the animals in the house yard, and stow away the young within the hut. At times they amuse themselves with running down the little Saltiana antelopes, and with throwing sticks at the guinea-fowls, which they have not yet learned to domesticate. To the goodwife’s share falls the work of cleansing the little corral, of fetching wood and water, of pounding maize in a large tin mortar, of baking plantain-bread, of cooking generally, and of carrying as well as of bearing the baby: it is evident that here, as among the Mormons, division of labour is called for, and it is readily supplied, without fear of arrest, by polygamy and concubinage. Meat is considered a luxury; the cattle want the enlarged udder, that unerring sign of bovine civilization, and an English cow will produce as much fluid as half-a-dozen Africans. The deficiency of milk in pastoral lands often excites the traveller’s wonder: at times, after the herds have calved, he drinks it gratis by pailsful; during the rest of the year he cannot buy a drop even for medicine. Most tribes, moreover, have some uncomfortable superstitions about it—one will not draw it before nightfall, another will not tamely stand by and see it heated. Moreover, no pastoral people that I have ever seen drink it fresh: they prefer to sour it artificially, instead of trusting to their gastric juices; and they are right. It is like the Cuisinier or rather the Cordon bleue, who vicariously does part of man’s digestion, whereas ‘Cook’ leaves all to a certain ill-used viscus. I presume that climate is the reason why the Dahi of India, the Laban of Arabia, has not been introduced into England, where curds and whey are still eaten. Usumbara produces an abundance of tobacco, whose flavour is considered superior to the other growths of the mainland: it is therefore pounded to thin round cakes, neatly packed in banana-leaves, and exported to Zanzibar. With all their advantages, the Wasumbara are yet a moody, melancholy brood, a timid, dismal, and ignoble race, as indeed are for the most part those barbarians who have exchanged pastoral for agricultural life. Perhaps these children of the mist have too much mist, and they certainly have not learned the art of defending themselves against their raw mountain air. In hot climates beware of the cold, and vice versâ.