as from the offing showed afar the scene;
ruled by a king for years full many famed,
the isle and city were Mombasah named.[[3]]
In João de Barros and others we read attractive details of beautiful gardens, lofty towers, a harbour full of ships; of handsome men and of honourable women habited in silk robes and adorned with gold and jewels; of the ‘knights of Mombasah,’ which now can hardly show a head of horse, and of the ‘ladies of Melinde,’ where the plundering Gallas have left only heaps of ruins. The King, ‘for years full many famed,’ received his first Portuguese visitors with peculiar empressement, and with the kindly purpose of cutting Vasco da Gama’s throat, enticed him to land by promises to furnish wax, wheat, ambergris, ivory, and precious metals,[[4]] and by sending samples of spicery—pepper, ginger, and cloves—apparently all imports, as Calicut Banyans and Christians of St Thomas were upon the spot. But when the great Captain’s ship weighed anchor to enter the port, she struck upon a shoal probably at the southern end of the channel formed by ‘Leven Reef Head’ and the mainland: the ‘Moors’ tumbled into their canoes, the Mozambique pilot took a header from the stern, and an ugly plot stood forth in its nakedness. To make certain, Da Gama of the ‘awful eyes’ extracted the truth from his Moslem captives by ‘heating lard and dropping it upon their flesh:’ unable, however, to revenge himself, he set sail for Melinde.
And here we may explain how arose the contempt and hatred which the coast has attached to the word Faranj, or Feringhee. The Orient became acquainted with Europe at a time when the Portuguese were slavers and robbers in the Lord’s name, when the Dutch were second-rate traders, and when the English were rank ‘saltwater thieves.’ Vasco da Gama did not hesitate to massacre all his prisoners, or to decorate his yard-arms with wretches suspended like the captives of ‘Sallie rovers.’ Albuquerque’s soldiers hewed off the hands and feet of women and children, the quicker to secure their rings and armlets. Torture and cruel death, especially wholesale burning, fell to the lot of Moslems and Pagans. In the seventeenth century even the commanders of the Hon. East India Company’s ships, according to Della Valle, committed robberies ashore and on the high seas: The ‘Grand Mogul’ regarded our people as a race ‘of dissolute morals and degraded religion’—tetræ belluæ, suis molossis ferociores.
In A.D. 1500 Mombasah yielded to D. Alvarez Cabral, and, three years afterwards, the Captain Ravasco settled its tribute. On August 13, 1505—events succeeded one another rapidly in those brave old times—D. Francisco de Almeyda, the first viceroy of Portuguese India, who had been gravely insulted by the turbulent citizens, attacked with his 20 ships, captured and burnt it. The Sultan was admitted to the honours of vassalship and tribute; stringent regulations were made, and the conquest having been placed in the first of the three provinces of Ethiopia and Arabia, with Mozambique as the general capital, the government was confided by the king, in A.D. 1508, to D. Duarte de Lemos. In 1516 Mombasah is described by Duarte Barbosa as a well-built, wealthy, and flourishing place, which exported honey, wax, and ivory. It was again attacked by D. Nuno da Cunha, who was bent upon avenging the insults offered to his allies, the chiefs of Zanzibar, Melinde, and Atondo. The Sultan defended himself stoutly, introduced into the city 5000 black archers, and armed a fort with cannon taken from Portuguese ships: the women and children were sent to the mainland, and a system of sorties and surprises was organized, which protracted the affair from November 14 to March 3, 1529. At length D. Nuno, after destroying the houses and cutting down the palm trees, set fire to the place, and burnt it to the ground. These active measures secured peace for some years. In 1586 the Turkish corsair, Ali Bey, persuaded Mombasah to place itself, like Makdishu, Ampaza, Lamu, Kelifi, and Brava, under the Sultan of Stambul. D. Duarte de Menezes, viceroy of India, sent from Goa a fleet of 18 ships, under Martim Affonso de Melo Bombeyro, who revenged the insult by burning Mombasah the third time.
Tradition asserts, contrary to received opinion, that the Conquistadores penetrated far into the interior, and common sense suggests that soldiers so adventurous would not confine themselves to the seaboard. The Wasawahili speak of a ruined castle on Njuira, a hill north of the Pangani river, and placed by M. Rebmann 160 miles from the ocean. At Chaga, a district west of Mombasah, whose apex is the well-known and much-vexed Kilima-njaro or Kilima-ngao, stone walls, a breastwork for cannon, and an image of a long-haired woman seated upon a chair and holding a child, are reported still to remain. The Wanyika, or ‘Desert people’ of the Mombasah Range, have preserved in their Kayas, or strongholds near Rabai Mku, certain images which they declare came from the west. According to Dr Krapf, these statuettes, called Kisukas, or little devils, are carried in war processions to encourage the combatants. No European has ever seen this ‘great medicine,’ nor has any Chief ever dared even to propose showing them to the mission: whenever a European evinced more pertinacity than was pleasing, he found the bushes upon his path bristling with bow and spear, and capped by the woolly mops of the sable Roderick Dhu’s clansmen.
‘And every tuft of broom gave life
To nigger warrior armed for strife.’
Iconolatry is unknown to these tribes, and the savages probably derived their Kisukas from some civilized race. According to Andrew Battel, of Leigh, the English captive at Angola (A.D. 1589), the Jagas, or Giagas,[[5]] did not worship, but had small images in their towns, and a life-sized figure of a man called Quesango. As a rule, however, especially in the non-maritime regions, the negro’s want of constructiveness and of plastic power prevent his being an idolater in the literal sense of the word: he finds it more convenient to make a god of ‘grass or palm-leaves and broken pieces of calabashes, to which feathers of fowls are fastened by means of blood.’[[6]]