Captain Owen learned, considerably to his mortification, that there were two Kilwas—he might have said half-a-dozen. The name, by the people generally called Kirwa, but never Kulwa as in Ibn Batuta—probably a clerical error—was originally applied to the island; now it is that of a district, not of a place. Hence we find in Abu Saíd (13th cent.) the Island of Kilwa containing three cities, all built upon the banks of rivers. The settlements are separated by Khírán, or salt-water inlets, stretching through mangrove-swamps, which often extend many miles inland. Native vessels enter and quit them with the flow, and remain high and dry at the ebb, whilst cutting wood and making salt. Upon the N. West of the Bay, distant about five miles, is Majinjera, streamlet and settlement, of which Mr Cooley erroneously says, ‘It is the island commonly known as Kilwa.’[[65]] It is separated by a promontory from its neighbours, Ugoga, Mayungi-yungi, and Kivafi or Kivavi: hence doubtless the Cuavo of Pigafetta, the ’Fiume Coavo che sbocca a Quiloa created by Giovanni Botero, and the Suabo supposed to have a common origin with the Zambezean Shire. It is the Geographer of N’yassi’s imaginary Quavi, or river of Kilwa, a branch of the Lufiji, and ‘reported to descend from the Zébé, that is Ziwa in Sawâhili, or the Lake.’ But unhappily there is no Kilwa river, any more than a ‘Mombas river.’ The fabled stream is a mere ‘Khor,’ like that near the Mayungi-yungi village,[[66]] and a surface drain running for a few miles. The next and the most important is Kilwa Kivinjya, or Mgongeni, in the map Kibendji, and Kevingi in the ‘Geographer,’ who erroneously calls it Old Kilwa, whereas it was built (in S. lat. 8° 42′ 59″) by the Islanders when flying from the fleet of the late Sayyid Said. Adjoining this to the south is Tekwiri (not Tekiri), the Tekewery of Owen and the Tikewery of Horsburg: here are the ruins of an older Kilwa. Lastly, and about 12 direct geographical miles farther south (S. lat. 8° 57′ 12″), is Kilwa Kisiwá-ni, the island upon which remnants of mosques and other buildings are found: the Geographer confounds it with Tekiri. Such are the half-dozen settlements which have in turn been known as Kilwa, a name confined in modern days to Kivinjya.

Kivinjya, the settlement, is surrounded by mangrove-swamps, with scatters of tall cocoas, which the wind snubs. The long narrow line, disposed somewhat in Brazilian style, shows nothing but country huts, except a large masonry-built Custom House called a Fort. There is a bazar garnished with the usual shops, which supply amongst other things Epsom salts, empty bottles, peppermint water, and Eau de Cologne. The prices were high—here the rupee becomes a dollar: we were asked 0.75 cents for a common umbrella worth 0.30, and $2.50 for 12 cubits of domestics. Provisions were scarcely procurable,—two ships lying in the offing had raised lean chickens from six to three per dollar; sheep are here brought from the Rufiji river, goats from the Washenzi of the interior, and black cattle from Chole Island.

The once wealthy and important trade of Kilwa is now in the hands of a few Arabs, 53 Hindus, and about 100 Hindostanis—Kojahs, Mehmans, and Borahs. Of the Banyans none had died by cholera: the Indian Moslems had lost 11 or 12. An old Hindostani kindly housed us in a neat, clean dwelling with matted floor, white mattresses rolled up in the corners, black-wood writing-desks in the niches, pictures of men with gigantic moustaches on the walls, an old wooden clock still ticking, and two noble tusks of Uhiao ivory, bearing the purchaser’s mark. The tenement was not so pleasant outside: it was invested with a mass of filth, the sea washed up impurities to the very palisades, and farther out the bay-water was covered with a brown scum of sickening taint. We were presently visited by the very civil and obliging Wali, Sayf bin Ali, an old traveller to Unyamwezi: the people being greatly demoralized, he ordered our lodgings to be guarded at night. Yarok, the Jemadar of Baloch, also confided to us his desire of becoming C. O.: the step was vacant by cholera, and many of his men had lost the number of their mess.

After seeing and smelling Kilwa I did not wonder that cholera during the last 15 days had killed off half the settlement. According to the people, it was the first attack ever known to East Africa: that which decimated Maskat in July, 1821, did not extend to Zanzibar. They agreed that it came down in vessels from Zanzibar: all held it highly infectious, as indeed under the circumstances it certainly was; hands would not ship on board our Batela, and at first no one would even visit us. They declared the disease to be dying out, yet the wealthier classes still clung to their mashamba, where the water is good and clean as it is filthy in the towns; and hyænas walked the streets at night.

Accustomed to face cholera since my childhood, I never saw even in Italy, in India, or in Sind, such ravages as it committed at Kilwa. Soil and air seemed saturated with poison, the blood appeared predisposed to receive the influence, and the people died like flies. Numbers of patients were brought to us, each with the ominous words, ‘He has the death;’ and none hardly had energy to start or wince at what would under other conditions have frightened them out of their senses. They sometimes walked two miles to see us; the only evil symptoms were dull congested eyes, cold breath, and a thready feeble pulse, which in the worst cases almost refused to beat. After the visit they would return home on foot, lie down and expire in a collapse, without cramps or[cramps or] convulsions, emesis, or other effort of nature to relieve herself. Life seemed to have lost all its hold upon them. Of course we were the only doctors, and our small stock of ether and brandy were soon exhausted; the natives, however, treated the complaint sensibly enough with opium and Mvinyo, spirits locally distilled, and did not, like the Anglo-Indian surgeon, murder patients with mercury, the lancet, and the chafing-dish.

There were hideous sights about Kilwa at that time. Corpses lay in the ravines, and a dead negro rested against the walls of the Custom House. The poorer victims were dragged by the leg along the sand, to be thrown into the ebbing waters of the bay; those better off were sewn up in matting, and were carried down like hammocks to the same general depôt. The smooth oily water was dotted with remnants and fragments of humanity, black and brown when freshly thrown in, patched, mottled, and parti-coloured when in a state of half pickle, and ghastly white, like scalded pig, when the pigmentum nigrum had become thoroughly macerated. The males lay prone upon the surface, diving as it were, head downwards, when the retiring swell left them in the hollow water; the women floated prostrate with puffed and swollen breasts—I have lately seen this included amongst ‘vulgar errors.’ Limbs were scattered in all directions, and heads lay like pebbles upon the beach: here I collected the 24 skulls afterwards deposited in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and which it is said (Journal Anthro. Soc. No. 28, xli.) Professor Busk is now investigating. They were gathered at random; doubtless they belonged to both sexes, and they represented chiefly the slave population. The latter is here mainly recruited by the Wahiao, the Wagao, the Wamwera, the Wangindo, the Makonda, the Wakomango, the Wadoka, the Wakhwinde, and the other tall stout races lying between Kilwa and the Nyassa Lake. It will not be easy to forget one spectacle,—the lower portion of some large strong man, whose legs had parted at the knees, came again and again, persistent as the flood, up to the very walls of our dwelling, and bowing with the ripple, it seemed to claim acquaintance with us.

There was no subsequent attack of cholera on the Zanzibar coast till early 1870, when one-third of the native population was reported to have been swept away. In six weeks, besides 13 out of the score which composed the European and American residents at Unguja, 10,000 people perished in the city, 30,000 on the Island: at Kilwa there were 200 daily deaths amongst the slaves, and the survivors found no purchasers at $1 a head. This visitation is supposed to have come from the interior, appearing first at Panga-ni; yet, curious to relate, it again went inland viâ Bagamoyo, and extended to Ugogo, where ivory was left on the road and caravans were stopped by ‘the death.’

Kilwa makes from £5000 to £20,000 per annum by the tax upon wild slaves. The market is supplied chiefly by the tribes living about the Nyassa Lake, the Wahiáo, as I have said, being preferred to all others, and some may march for a distance of 400 miles. After this long journey they reach the coast where they exported in the following numbers, according to the Custom House of Kivinjya:—

1862-3 exported to Zanzibar and elsewhere—
13,000 5500
1863-4 14,000 3500
1864-5 13,821 3000
1865-6 18,344 4000
1866-7 17,538 4500
76,703 20,500
20,500
Total97,203exported from Kilwa to Zanzibar in five years.
Year ending August 23, 1869, exported, 14,944.

The next process is either the short voyage in Daus or native craft to Zanzibar Island, or the long passage to Turkish Arabia, the Red Sea, Persia, and the N. Zangian coast. At present they make some half the journey without being molested by British cruisers, but this portion of the treaty will probably be modified. Slaves liberated from the Daus were—and are still—taken to the Seychelles, a dependency of the Mauritius, or to Aden and Bombay, at a heavy cost to the Imperial Exchequer. The mortality of the captives on the march, throughout Africa as far as my knowledge extends, is immensely overrated, except in case of cholera or small-pox, at 1 : 5, or even 1 : 10. The fact is, that the mortality on the Kilwa-Nyassa line is excessive, because the negroes fight, and the ‘chattels’ run away. Where I am personally acquainted with it the loss of slaves on the down-march does not exceed that of freemen, and the latter when poor have less chance than the valuable property.