Passing with this same boy, Mumbo, through a graveyard at Zanzibar, he pointed to a grave. “Who’s there?” he said. “Arab man,” I answered, recognizing it to be so from the concrete with which the grave was covered. “He get up again?” “Yes,” I replied, after which the boy was thoughtful and silent for a while. “Who’s buried there?” he repeated, pointing to a grave marked by a wooden cross. “A Msungu” (white man), I answered. “He get up again?” “Yes.” Another pause. “And who’s there?” the boy again asked, pointing to a mean grave unmarked by cross or stone. “A nigger man,” said I. “He get up again?” But on replying in the affirmative he would not believe it, and continued obstinately sceptical for some time.
Selfishness seems to be the most prominent feature of the negro character. Civilized people mask the repulsive feeling, but not so the black. Everything is for himself and his own present sensual gratification. They have not a particle of gratitude, and if you show them kindness or give them a present it is considered a sign of weakness, and their contempt for their benefactor is apparent. There is no word expressive of thanks in the Swahili language, though the “Santa” of the Arab, accompanied by a bow, the right hand placed on the heart, is most graceful and pleasing. On taking charge of the boys’ house, in the benevolence of my heart I invested in numbers of stalks of bananas—a large one can be obtained for eight cents—and distributed them. But no word of thanks was heard, and the boys began to consider fruit as a right, and to grumble if it were not forthcoming; so I grew rather disgusted and discontinued scattering largesse amidst such a graceless set. Neither do they show much affection. This, perhaps, is hardly to be wondered at, as the slave-traffic, which has existed from time immemorial, must, by constantly separating families, have weakened and almost destroyed all ties of kindred. A gentleman well acquainted with the people told me that the only known affection amongst them was that between a son and his mother. Several slave boys whom we had liberated and kept on board the ship, on our leaving the coast were wisely sent on shore to the mission, only the one of whom I have previously spoken remaining. He wept piteously and sobbed himself to sleep. We were touched, and fancied that, after all, we had formed too low an estimate of the negro, till on waking he appeared to have completely forgotten his friends, and never spoke of them again. It then appeared that his grief had been purely selfish; for, as he phrased it, he would have no one “to skylark with.” “What will you give me?” is the view a negro takes of his neighbor, and in this the Ki-Swahili, and even the Arab, very much resemble him. One’s ear soon grows familiar with the cry of “Lata paca”—“Bring pice”—pice being little Indian copper coins which form the currency at Zanzibar. This question is asked you in the streets or country roads, not merely by the poor, but even by well-to-do people. I was one day walking home from a feast to which I had been invited by the proprietor of a sugar plantation—a Swahili man. These people are mulattoes, partly Arab, but mostly negro. They are Mahometans and call themselves Arabs. We had been hospitably fêted, and I was accompanied by a brother of my host, a nice-looking young fellow, upright as a dart—as they all are—and dressed in the graceful long white linen robe which they always wear. He was proceeding to his home, a well-built stone house, but before leaving me I was astonished at his asking in Swahili for a few pice! Doubting my ears, I asked a boy who understood English what he had said, and he told me that I had not mistaken his meaning; so I gave him two or three coppers, and he went away well pleased.
Negroes are very improvident, like most savage races. They take no thought for the morrow—not from faith, but from utter recklessness. They are also fond of desertion for the mere sake of change. Slaves sometimes leave their masters and hire themselves out for a year or two to some one else, returning afterwards as if nothing had happened, and receiving no punishment, the master fearing that he might revenge himself on him or desert again, and also arguing that it is his nature and that no better can be expected of him. I was once on a shooting party in the Kingani River, and placing one of the boats in charge of a quartermaster, left with him a Seedee boy, or black seaman, to clean the jaws of a hippopotamus that I had shot on the previous day. I went up the river in the other boat with the remaining seamen for a day’s shooting, and on my return in the evening was informed that the black had decamped, and we never saw any more of him. In the ship he was receiving about four times as much pay as he could possibly earn elsewhere, and, in addition to this, he left clothes and money behind. Yet we afterwards learnt that before leaving the vessel he had told his friends of his intention to run.
The negro is, in Africa as elsewhere, exceedingly indolent, and, nature having provided him with abundance of the necessaries of life, he indulges his laziness to the full when he possibly can—that is, in his native country or at Zanzibar, if he can manage to possess a few slaves to work for him.
He is also obstinate and headstrong. Going on shore on the beautiful island of Pemba, north of Zanzibar, to trade for provisions, they were uniformly refused us, whatever price we offered. Yet next day the natives brought the things to the ship, some miles from the shore, and offered them for sale. A little bit of a boy was so obstinate that he would not obey orders unless he chose, even if thrashed with a rhinoceros-hide whip; neither did he flinch nor utter a cry under punishment. But when he left the ship, where he had been petted by the sailors, being sent to the French Mission, he was so disgusted that the first thing he did was to roll on the beach and completely destroy his new clothes, and the missionaries were compelled to restore him his old sailor costume. Still he sulked, and when I left they had not managed to get him to speak.
Negroes are subject to sudden fits of fury almost amounting to madness, and then they cry, shout, vociferate, and argue in the most ridiculous manner. They love to eat and are very greedy, but are still more fond of drinking, and in their own country begin the day by copious potations of beer. However, at Zanzibar drunkenness would be punished by imprisonment; and that is no trifle, the prisoners being placed in a yard enclosed by four walls, and receiving no food, unless they have a friend to bring them some. They are also exceedingly depraved, and, when brought into contact with the semi-civilization of the coast, they become, if anything, worse than before. A stranger is astonished at the cool manner in which they enter a strange house, if they see the door open. They place their spear in a corner, set themselves in the best place, and talk till they are tired (they are especially fond of hearing themselves talk), when they rise and leave. It is no good trying to exclude them; their curiosity must be satisfied, and they insist on seeing and learning about everything—examining and handling your clothes and asking the value of each article.
Negroes have the redeeming feature of being mostly good-tempered and pleased by a very little. They delight in a joke, yet their wit is of the most elementary character. They are exceedingly fond of music; neither does its unvaried monotony pall on them. I once passed an old man amusing himself by drumming with two sticks on a plank; returning after some hours, I found him continuing the performance, which he had evidently kept up all the time. You will see them on a moonlight night, or even in the daytime, dancing and flinging their limbs about in the most ridiculous and ungraceful manner to the tune of tomtoms and fifes; yet they keep perfect time. A circle is formed, and a performer waltzes rapidly around the inner space, looking up to the sky, till she becomes giddy and falls into the arms of her friends. Whatever work they are engaged in, these people always sing, and in the streets you constantly hear the chant of porters, who carry tusks of ivory or bales of goods slung between two of them on a pole which rests on their shoulders.
The East African negro has been completely debased by centuries of oppression and slavery. “All the good qualities appear crushed out of the African race,” said an experienced missionary at Zanzibar to me. Their religion is the same as that of the natives of the west coast—fetichism. I believe this word is derived from the Portuguese feitiço, a doing—that is, of magic. Nature has colored the black man’s thoughts, but not with the sublime and beautiful. He sees nothing in nature but the terrible, vast, threatening, and hostile. The dense jungle with huge trees, concealing poisonous snakes, fierce lions, and spotted leopards; the fever-breeding swamp; the devastating cyclone—these have produced a feeling of dread, helplessness, and terror on his debased mind. He has but a very vague, unformed idea of a Supreme Being, and does not at all conceive of the spiritual and eternal side of man. To him death is destruction. Yet he believes that the ghost of the departed person remains, and he always imagines it to be harmful and hostile. In fact, he is for ever in terror of ghosts and witchcraft, and his religion consists in the propitiation of natural objects. The African’s creed may be reduced to two articles: the first demonology, or the existence of spectres of the dead; the second witchcraft, or black magic. Their native superstitions the slaves carry with them to Zanzibar or wherever they are taken, and so deeply rooted are these beliefs in their minds that I have often been surprised to hear negroes who have been Protestant Christians for years, and daily attending public Christian worship, speak of witchcraft in ordinary conversation as much as a matter of course as they would of any every-day occurrence. For instance, missing some pice from my drawers, I asked my servant to find out who had taken them. He replied that he could not do so, but that a man had been there years ago who “made plenty witchcraft”; he would have told me, but now he was gone. Some very good Christian boys, as I was walking with them one day, suddenly dropped their voices and told me that it was a “plenty bad place.” I imagined that fever or ague was intended, as it was low, marshy ground; but no such thing. They had once witnessed some “witchcraft” or other there.
There are Mganga—wizards and witches—who are partly impostors and partly dupes of their own imagination. To these people the negroes have recourse in any calamity or sickness. Their office is to transfer the evil from which they suffer to some one else. Of course payment is the preliminary—no pay, no work. And an African must have present payment; he attaches no value to promises of future reward, though ever so near. These Mganga endeavor to entice ghosts from possessed persons and transfer them to some inanimate object, striving to effect it by music, dancing, and drinking. Thus, they nail pieces of cloth to trees to coax the devils into them. Epileptic fits are very common, and it is not astonishing that they should regard them as the effect of seizure by some external agent. On the mainland they attempt to discover the workers of magic by most cruel ordeals.
There are also rain-makers. It does not require an exceptionally weatherwise person to infer what the weather will be in a country of regular monsoons and seasons; still, they sometimes make a mistake, and then the false prophets have to escape as best they can.